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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Are you smarter than a geography major?

Are you smarter than a geography major?

| March 1, 2007 | Reply

I found an on-line game, Geosense, which allows you to test your knowledge of world geography by locating specific cities in specific countries on various maps (world map, Europe map, US map, etc.). Your score per city is based on how close you were and how quickly you answered; you play in rounds of ten […]

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Might as well face it…

Might as well face it…

| February 28, 2007 | Reply

…you’re addicted to love [*]: A Wall Street Journal article surveying research on the neurobiology of love reports on the work of Dr. Helen Fisher. Love triggers the dopamine system which is also involved in drug addiction. Dr. Fisher has studied love by looking at people’s brains using magnetic resonance imaging machines. A recent study […]

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Making the point about Brooks’ Law

Making the point about Brooks’ Law

| February 27, 2007 | Reply

Mike Morton, a long-time friend and colleague and a Master of Anagrams, send me a link to a great story about a group of IT engineers dealing with a CEO who just didn’t understand Brooks’ Law: After failing to win several arguments on this point, the engineers became exasperated and decided to hold an intervention […]

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Living with Snipers

Living with Snipers

| February 26, 2007 | Reply

Pat Dollard has been traveling to Iraq since late 2004, filming a documentary — “Young Americans” — about the actual soldiers serving over there and what they live with on a day-to-day basis. In so doing, Dollard has put his own life in danger on an ongoing basis. You’ll get a sense of that with […]

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“The isolated communicators of cyberspace”

“The isolated communicators of cyberspace”

| February 26, 2007 | Reply

Valleywag has a link to this YouTube video that appears to be a 1993 CBC Prime Time news report on “Internet”. It’s well worth watching, both for the unintended humor to the viewpoint of what the Internet would provide. Enjoy.  ..bruce..

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Making money as a writer

Making money as a writer

| February 25, 2007 | Reply

John Scalzi, author of Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades (both of which I highly recommend), gives a revealing look over on his website about how much money he has actually earned writing and editing science fiction over the past several years. For example: 2006 was the first year I received royalties on sales […]

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The Secret Blog of Steve Jobs

The Secret Blog of Steve Jobs

| February 23, 2007 | 2 Replies

Yes! Really! Jobs has his own blog! I mean, read this entry and tell me that this isn’t really being written by Steve Jobs: Well the engineers want to kill me but you know what, I know how to design products. And I’m sorry, this circuit board for the iPhone is just way too friggin […]

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Some changes to this site

Some changes to this site

| February 23, 2007 | Reply

Due to the ever-increasing flood of spam comments, we now require that you register with the site before you can leave a comment. Also, I am considering switching the underlying blog engine from WordPress to Joomla. (Or, to be precise, “Joomla!”) From what I’ve seen so far, Joomla doesn’t work quite as well as a […]

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Analyzing the atmosphere of exosolar planets

Analyzing the atmosphere of exosolar planets

| February 21, 2007 | Reply

This is just too cool: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured for the first time enough light from planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, to identify signatures of molecules in their atmospheres. The landmark achievement is a significant step toward being able to detect possible life on rocky exoplanets and comes years before […]

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An economic analysis of Second Life

An economic analysis of Second Life

| February 21, 2007 | Reply

I love it when I see someone actually crunch the numbers. In these two articles, Randolph Harrison at Capitalism 2.0 applies real-world financial analysis to the Second Life economy — and decides that it matches the characteristics of a high-yield investment program, if not an all-out Ponzi scheme. Here are the articles: Second Life: Revolutionary […]

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