Over The Edge – Dan Rosenbaum's random musings

No More Monday

Remember how, last month, word came out that PriceWaterhouseCoopers was going to rename its consulting branch Monday? I think this is a good thing, but IBM has spared us all a lot of fun; it’s buying the division for $3.5 billion. In the process, it’s dumping the name Monday, which was supposed to take effect next […]

A Real Resume Problem

Angela Gunn points out this amusing and odd piece from the WAPost: FREETOWN, Sierra Leone 淼 Losing your job, quitting school, going broke and moving back home with your mother after living abroad for years would be tough on anyone. It’s even tougher when you’re a former military dictator who once had the power to […]

Yesbut…

A columnist with the Cornell Daily Sun had trouble with his local Kinkos when he tried to get them to photocopy some of his published work.They demurred on copyright grounds: I was miffed by his self-important anal-retentiveness. “I wrote that article, look, my picture is on the top,” I said. He told me that didn’t […]

GRASP Exceeding Our Reach?

Jane’s Defense Weekly is not a publication noted for its levity, so it’s probably true that Boeing is now experimenting with anti-gravity propulsion. The Boeing drive to develop a collaborative relationship with the scientist in question, Dr Evgeny Podkletnov, has its own internal project name: ÎGRASPâ ÷ Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion. A GRASP […]

Is It Search & Seizure If We Just Give It To Them?

Think they’re not watching? Think again. From the Village Voice: As John Ashcroft’s Citizens Corps spy program prepares for its debut next month, it seems scores of American companies have already become willing snitches. A few months ago, the Privacy Council surveyed executives from 22 companies in the travel industryot just airlines but hotels, car […]

Disposable Cell Phones Imminent

I first wrote about disposable cell phones nearly two years ago, but they finally look like they’re about to hit the market. Reuters reports that Hop-On says it’s gotten FCC approval to sell a mass-market recyclable cell phone with 60 minutes of service. Price: $40. “Hop-On mobile devices are plastic, two-way phones the size of a […]

So the Schools Will Run Linux, Right?

The New York City school system is about to get a new chancellor: Joel Klein. Yes, that Joel Klein. The one who (successfully, so far) represented the U.S. government in its antitrust case against Microsoft. The one who was, until today, the U.S. head of Bertelsmann. (What this means for Bertelsmann, one of the world’s […]

This is How Bad It Is.

Story in the NYTimes this morning that Ziff Davis, hobbled by debt and crushing declines in the tech advertising market, will probably go Chapter 11 this week. At one time, Ziff Davis also owned a thriving events business that included Comdex, which it spun off and is now called Key3Media. So, should Ziff have kept […]

The Sun Rises Online

When the New York Sun launched this past spring as the first new daily broadsheet in decades, some thought it odd that there wasn’t a companion website for the right-leaning daily. Myself, I considered it a good idea to concentrate on the main deal and wait to go online until the underlying machine was spinning steadily. […]

Credit Where It’s Due

So while Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom are splashed across the airwaves and the front pages, as the stock market plummets and people’s retirement funds are wiped away in a matter of weeks, what’s Congress doing? Why, making it harder for poor people to declare bankruptcy, of course. A “bankruptcy reform” bill has been moving through […]