What's the deal with BitCoin?

"Another currency, you say, why the heck would I want that?" It's a good question and one I asked myself recently when Bitcoin starting becoming a common


theme in a lot of the tech blogs I read. Before we start to talk about Bitcoin technically, it's better to clear out the philosophical reasoning behind it.
Uncontrolled inflation - Government needs more money? It prints more money, the money you have is worth less. That sucks.What's wrong with government backed currency (US Dollars, Euros, British Pounds, etc)?

• The costs of money - I have to pay a bank to hold my money, they use my money to give other people money which they get paid for as well. I don't want to carry around fat stacks of cash so I use a credit card to simplify transactions but now I have to pay the credit card companies money. Sounds like everyone gets a slice of my money!


• Control - If the government thinks I am doing something wrong, they have the ability to freeze all of my money. Where my money comes from and goes to is reported to them.

This is why we need a better currency and Bitcoin looks like the right solution. In my first post on Bitcoin, let's see if it's inflation-proof.

Working for a start-up finally pays off

After years of dedicated hard work for Rhythms Netconnections and the more than $10,000 of hard-earned money invested in the company, it finally paid off. I got my check today in the mail!

The IPv4 shortage isn't a hoax!

Imagine that you are starting your new business, you call up the phone company to get a new phone number and they tell you, "Sorry, there are no more phone numbers left in the whole world, we're out."

What would you do?

What would businesses do?

What would the world do?

Microsoft is in trouble, Mac is using the Big Tobacco approach

My wife and I recently attended our kids 1st grade patriotic presentation. It was adorable and sweet, the kids all sang and gave speeches on American symbols like the flag and the statue of liberty. After the presentation we were taken back to the classroom and our kids got to show us the work they had done to prepare for the patriotic presentation including an individual multimedia CD. Being a tech geek myself I was very interested to see this presentation so we headed off to find a computer to view it on. There was a set of about 20 Mac laptops sitting on desks in the pod area, all in use by kids showing parents their presentation. The classroom computer was already in use. We headed off to the lab and found another 50 Mac's in-use and not a single seat available. Next stop was the library. There were 15 Mac's and 15 Dell PCs along the wall. Every single Mac was in use as well but the PCs sat untouched. My son looked up at me and said we would have to wait for a computer. I was in complete disbelief that my son, who had used a PC since he was 3 years old was completely PC illiterate. I told him to his surprise that we could watch his presentation on one of the available PCs. We sat down and I blew the dust off the keyboard and mouse and up came the Ctrl-Alt-Del login screen. I am not sure how a 6-year old is supposed to understand this screen and why the school would leave the corporate login screen active when it was just as easy to setup the more friendly Welcome screen up with fun icons to login with. I went ahead and gave the 3-finger salute and up came the username and password which, of course, my son had no idea what his login information was. The very sad part is that I work for the technology department for the school district and had to use my login to get to the desktop.