The-Asterisk

From Bloomberg Businessweek Senate Clears Way for $30 Billion Small Business Fund So let me get this straight. Let's say I have a small business, I am in dire straights, cashflow-wise, and I need money. My credit cards are maxed, uncashed paychecks sit in my safe and my three employees leave early on payday to make sure their check gets in the bank that day. I am going to go down to my local hometown bank, sit down in front of the friendly loan officer and say "Hi. I would like to borrow $100,000 dollars from that cool $30,000,000,000 fund that the government has set up for small businesses that need funding." How is that conversation going to go? I have a house that is still 20 years from being paid off and it has a second mortgage based on its inflated valuation in 2007, so I have -$45,000 in equity. I am the guy that needs the money. Anybody out there think I am going to get it? Especially if I am a healthy white male? (No, not a white whale... a white male .) Memo to...

First it was Robert Scoble late last week announcing an earth shattering product that will change the way social media and the internet were viewed (but he was under NDA so he couldn't elucidate). Then the tweets started rolling around 8pm on Tuesday about this new thing called Flipboard. I googled flipboard and found numerous references to a prop for skatr boyz and a link or two about the real company, flipboard.com . Here is the first video that most of us saw on the product: The problem was, it would not be released until midnight California time. I am on the east coast and I wasn't about to wait until 3am to download a cool program, so off to bed I went. By 7am the next morning, the internets were all a-twitter (yes, pun was severely intended.) I found a few posts about @flipboard so I clicked on over and followed them. I was #105. Cool. I then went to iTunes and loaded the app on my iPad. Cooler. Then I tried to set up my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Not so cool. Seems...

VDI, for those of you who don't know, is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Generally speaking, VDI is the technology where you set up multiple virtual PCs on a host computer. What you end up with is a server running VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen, or some other hypervisor with a number of PC images running on top of the hypervisor. Each image is then controlled by a client device, be it a thin client, re-purposed PC running special software, or some other equipment. Contrast this with Terminal Services (now called Remote Desktop Services) which is where a server multitasks and allows multiple users to share the same server simultaneously. VDI hosts multiple instances (Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Linux, Windows 98) running at the same time whereas RDS allows Windows Server 2008R2 to be run by 20-30 or more users at the same time. Now that we have all of that established, there are a bunch of cool technologies out, or coming out that support VDI in a variety of ways. T...

Just saw a tweet from Michael Arrington and it made me think. When you or I or someone we care about dies, where does our digital legacy go? This Arrington article speaks mainly about a new company, 1000Memories that provides a place for people to memorialize someone that will remain in place 'forever'. That is a great idea... a common gathering place for memories and recollections. A sort of "Tombstonebook" where The Wall has no participation from the subject. (Now that I think about it, I wonder what Facebook's policy is on the death of a FB participant?) What his article really made me think about though, is the other stuff that comprises one's digital life. Word documents, spreadsheets, online email accounts, Outlook pst file, digital photos, digital movies, accounts and passwords, virtual money in Second Life or FarmVille. Think about it. Most of this stuff is now virtual. I mean, it is not tangible, but is it any less valuable? When my grandmother di...

It seems that our President has brought immigration back into the national conversation by proposing "comprehensive immigration reform". What does comprehensive mean? All inclusive? Omnibus? Actually it is code for amnesty along with a bunch of other stuff thrown in to get votes which will never get enforced (except for the amnesty part.) As a lifelong right-wing, but independent, thinker, I have an opinion on what would work to cure our immigration ills. (If you are a regular reader of The-Asterisk, you will already know that I have an opinion on just about any subject. If you want to know more, leave a comment at the end of this entry.) My solution is fairly comprehensive, so let me give it a go. The-Asterisk's Totally Awesome Comprehensive Immigration Reform Plan 1. Nationally sponsored identification card. Privacy nuts... get over it. The cat is out of the privacy bag. The barn door has been left open. It is water under the bridge. Enough metaphors? We ar...