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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Israel’s strike on Syria — nuclear materials from North Korea?

Israel’s strike on Syria — nuclear materials from North Korea?

| October 8, 2007 | Reply

I’ve been following the coverage (little as there is) about Israel’s strike on an Syrian military site back on September 6th. There are several remarkable aspects to the strike and its aftermath: Israeli jets flew all the way across Syria to the site in question — which is by the Turkish border — and back […]

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Does this strike anyone else as a really bad idea?

Does this strike anyone else as a really bad idea?

| September 22, 2007 | 1 Reply

I’m in the middle of making a large batch of spaghetti sauce last week, and a commercial comes on for something called “Equity Repositioning.” The basic idea is to borrow against your house and invest the money in something else. Of course, that “something else” has to provide enough regular income to make the payment […]

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Slow posting

Slow posting

| September 22, 2007 | Reply

Like I need to tell you that. I’m in Chicago for about 10 days for a patent trial (I’m an expert witness and will be testifying this coming week) and so am pretty tied up. But I’ll see if I can come up with something interesting soon.  ..bruce..

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Avast, ye scurvy dogs!

Avast, ye scurvy dogs!

| September 19, 2007 | Reply

It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day! And here, courtesy of Language Log (one of my favorite blogs), is an handy instructional video: Yo ho! ..bruce..

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The best space news I’ve seen…

The best space news I’ve seen…

| September 13, 2007 | Reply

…since the last X Prize: SANTA MONICA, Calif., September 13, 2007 – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded […]

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December 8, 2007: “Pretend to be a Time-Traveller Day”

December 8, 2007: “Pretend to be a Time-Traveller Day”

| September 12, 2007 | Reply

UPDATED: Here’s a comic to check out. OK, this is the funniest idea I’ve run across since “Talk like a Pirate” day (which comes up just next week, by the way): You must spend the entire day in costume and character. The only rule is that you cannot actually tell anyone that you are a […]

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Lest we forget

Lest we forget

| September 11, 2007 | Reply

Gerard Vanderleun — who was just across the river from Manhattan, in Brooklyn Heights, when the WTC was hit — has posted his own memories of that day: The Wind in the Heights Notes made on September 11, 2001 — Brooklyn Heights I’ll simply link to my posts from last year, as well as Bruce […]

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House to House: An Epic Memoir of War (a brief review)

House to House: An Epic Memoir of War (a brief review)

| September 10, 2007 | Reply

I just finished reading House to House: An Epic Memoir of War by SSG David Bellavia (with John R. Bruning). Bellavia took part in the US battle for Fallujah (Iraq) in November 2004; his squad was one of the first to enter the city, in which insurgents had spent months entrenching themselves and booby-trapping much […]

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The ReDistricting Game (no, really, it’s a game)

The ReDistricting Game (no, really, it’s a game)

| September 6, 2007 | Reply

As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’m a bit of a political junkie, and one of the great political spectacles is the national redistricting that occurs every 10 years — after the Federal Census — and sometimes more often than that. So it has been fascinating to run across The ReDistricting Game, a browser-based Flash game that […]

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The Star Wars Holiday Special, the condensed version

The Star Wars Holiday Special, the condensed version

| September 6, 2007 | Reply

First, some background via Wikipedia: A Gary Smith-Dwight Hemion Production in association with 20th Century Fox Television, The Star Wars Holiday Special was produced with a budget of a little over a million dollars. At the time, it was considered one of the most expensive TV endeavors of its kind. Taping began in October and […]

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