Did you see Ironman this weekend? Did you notice the Oracle Exadata server in the van?

No spoiler alert needed. I’m not giving anything away about the movie. It’s a decent popcorn crunching film. But what left me in awe wasn’t the film, but what may be the most outrageous product placement ever by an IT company.

The movie makes several references to Oracle databases as our hero, Tony Stark, battles the latest evil-doer.

Creative people are inventive throughout their life. For them, the creative process is about continuing advancement. But in high-tech there is a tendency to believe that creativity is the domain of youth, something that may be true at Facebook.

Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis, makes the argument, in his most recent newsletter, that Facebook favors the young in hiring.

Within weeks of getting a Chromebook Samsung Series 5 550, I was checking eBay to see what it could fetch.

You may like the Chrome browser and Google Docs on a full featured machine, but moving to a Chromebook is like stepping from the simulator into the cockpit.    

Absolutely everything in a browser? No note pad? No delete key? No native apps?

If the White House is a big supporter of telecommuting why, then, isn't Yahoo?

The spouse of a military vet writes about challenges facing vets, which include for-profit colleges and H-1B visa workers.

The effort in the U.S. Senate to increase the H-1B visa cap may begin to deliver benefits immediately to Indian IT outsourcing firms, well before the bill sees final action.

Data caps are the clearest sign that America is in decline. We either come up with a strategy for removing data caps, or surrender the future.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is considered as someone who will help shape immigration policy for the Republicans. But what will Rubio do about tech immigration?

Elevators once had attendants. When elevator operators were replaced by buttons, did shoppers start using stairs in protest?  I don’t think so, but going to the human cashier at my local Safeway or Giant feels like an act of resistance.

The problem with unions is they can’t protect jobs. They can’t stop a company from moving jobs overseas, closing offices, and replacing workers with automation.

I grew up in Connecticut, a heavily unionized state. In the post-war period, the state’s industries made typewriters, appliances, bearings, locks, tools.  None of them survived.