Author Archive: bfwebster

Webster is Principal and Founder at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at bwebster@bfwa.com, or you can follow him on Twitter as @bfwebster.

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Solid state replacing optical media

Solid state replacing optical media

| January 19, 2008 | Reply

Some 18 months ago, I wrote about the Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD format battle and suggested that both formats were a dead-end, and that the real next-generation video media would be based on solid-state storage (e.g., flash RAM). I predicted this was quite a few years away, though. What I forgot is that there’s another optical […]

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“Cloverfield”: A brief review (w/spoilers at the end)

“Cloverfield”: A brief review (w/spoilers at the end)

| January 15, 2008 | Reply

[Thanks to the incoming links, particularly from io9 and Ace of Spades HQ, two of my favorite blogs; as the saying goes, feel free to look around (and to hit the tipjar over in the right column). Also, the first section of this review is spoiler-free; all the spoilers are in a white-text section at […]

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I’m not a big Katie Couric fan…

I’m not a big Katie Couric fan…

| January 15, 2008 | Reply

…but this video of outtakes while anchoring in New Hampshire makes her downright likable: Doesn’t mean that I’m going to start watching CBS Evening News, though. I haven’t watched network evening news since David Brinkley retired or thereabouts. Hat tip to Suitably Flip. ..bruce w..

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Stranger than fiction

Stranger than fiction

| January 14, 2008 | Reply

When a science fiction author postulates some bizarre astronomical or planetary configuration, hordes of fans (and not a few scientists) will tsk-tsk, saying that such a system could never possibly exist. And then there’s this: A quartet of stars has been discovered in an intimate cosmic dance, swirling around each other within a region about […]

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A modest proposal

A modest proposal

| January 14, 2008 | 2 Replies

Posted by Frank J over at IMAO: A reader of the Corner sent in an idea that I think was a pretty good suggestion: The Republicans stop their feuding and their fighting and combine announcing Fred Thompson as president, Mitt Romney as Vice President, McCain as Secretary of Defense, and Giuliani as Secretary of Homeland […]

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Oh, man, does this bring back memories…

Oh, man, does this bring back memories…

| January 11, 2008 | Reply

Not that I ever did any ditch surfing, but that standing water in the roadside ditches…. I lived in Houston (actually, Clear Lake and League City) for two years and saw ditches like this filled with water like this a lot. Hat tip (again) to Dave Barry. ..bruce w..

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Boomsday is coming

Boomsday is coming

| January 11, 2008 | 1 Reply

Megan McArdle, my favorite blogging economist, has a lengthy, thoughtful analysis of what the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation may mean to America: As the Boomers age, they will consume fewer of the things that we produce efficiently, and more of the things that we provide relatively inefficiently. Productivity is notoriously difficult to pro­ject, […]

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What’s going on in this picture?

What’s going on in this picture?

| January 11, 2008 | Reply

It’s even stranger than you think. Hat tip to Dave Barry. ..bruce w..

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I, for one, welcome….

I, for one, welcome….

| January 11, 2008 | Reply

The Onion, not content with mere print/web journalism, has moved into video as well: In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power? ..bruce w..

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The challenges of hiring software engineers

The challenges of hiring software engineers

| January 10, 2008 | Reply

As noted in Works in Progress, I’m writing a book called Surviving Complexity, which deals with the challenges of IT development and deployment. Over at my personal website, I’ve posted material adapted from the first chapter of that book: In my forthcoming book, Surviving Complexity, the very first chapter is called “The Wetware Crisis”. This […]

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