links for 2008-09-16

"Anti-Theft Lunch Bags are regular sandwich bags that have green splotches printed on both sides. After your sandwich is placed inside, no one will want to touch it."

…and you can get them today in Dell R900s. Cool. Gotta love socket compatibility. The Intel 7400 series CPUs are definitely the sweetest CPUs around right now.

Said it as well or better than I would have: "Anyway, you never got a sense that Mendel was another Gates or Jobs. Whatever you think of departures, I think Mendal/Greene kitchen-table story will in years to come be one of those key stories of the IT industry. You get the feeling there is a being a cull at VMware – clearing people who probably got elevated to positions beyond the abilities just because they were in VMware early, and there was no-one else better to take that role."

Mendel Rosenblum gone, but those who start companies often aren't the best to run them once they get large. His ideas were revolutionary but there are a lot of others out there that are taking those ideas to the next level. This is all my long way of saying: VMware will be fine. Plus, I wish people would quit assuming VMware will roll over and die because they encounter a setback.

Good stuff here, including the classic: "Reboots are not SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). If an application dies, or locks up (which is rare, but can happen, usually with bleeding edge versions of apps), your OS is usually fine." Learn how to use ps, kill, and the scripts in /etc/init.d (or equivalent).

A compilation of his essays in Harper's Magazine.

"When someone very gifted kills themselves, it's like the best student dropping out of high school. There's the tragedy, but it's set in a particular and personal fear: What are they seeing that we don't? The loss to his family is impossible to imagine. The loss to us is easy." Sad news for this world.