My first job out of college (1978-79) was at General Dynamics/WDSC down in San Diego, where I worked on a variety of projects. One such project was an effort to distinguish between wheeled vehicles (like trucks) and tracked vehicles (like tanks) using stand-off radar. It seems the Soviets had built plywood shells that looked like […]
This is one of the earliest (1993) ‘mainstream’ (non-tech-magazine) cartoons about the Internet and still one of the most famous: A Google search on the caption yields nearly half a million hits. ..bruce w..
The good news is that Google has taken me off their badware list (as of May 1st), though it took them over a week to do so (along with multiple review requests and a posting at the Google Webmaster groups). You can see quite clearly the impact of this blog having the label of doom […]
j[UPDATED 05/02/08: Google has lifted the designation; more details here.] Last Monday (4/21), I brought up the SiteMeter statistics page for this blog and noted in passing that the traffic seemed a bit light that morning. I chalked it up to the usual variations in site flow and didn’t think much of it. But then […]
I left a slightly snarky and flamebaity comment over at Slashdot on a post about problems with C++ education; among the deluge of responses, pro and con, was a post from someone saying that programming was a dead end and that “computers write programs”. I pointed out that I’ve been hearing that for decades — […]
[UPDATED 03/27/08 — some additions and a few corrections] Of course, I’m talking specifically about “anthropogenic [human-caused] global warming” (AGW), the cause célèbre of the Environmental Left. Here’s the short answer: because I have a degree in computer science, I’ve done professional work in simulations and modeling, and I’ve had classes in numerical analysis (not […]
My step-son Aaron sent me this link about how Edwin Soto used Google Maps on the fly in traffic court to beat a traffic ticket: The officer stated the street I was on was a one way westbound street and I was turning onto an avenue that was at a two way street separated by […]
I just found out (via Instapundit) that Jerry Pournelle is currently undergoing radiation therapy for some kind of brain tumor or growth. Jerry is a well-known science fiction author; he was also for many years one of the most influential (if not the most influential) columnists in the personal computing field. I met Jerry after […]
Anyone who has been following the financial news knows that banks and other large financial institutions are under a growing amount of strain given the misguided investments in speculative ventures over the past 5 years, including mortgages and exotic credit / investment packages. While chasing down what state a company like Merrill-Lynch might be tough, […]
In case you’re not aware, Microsoft is being sued for allegedly setting misleading levels of hardware compatibility for “Vista Capable” computers. In other words, the suit claims that Microsoft knowingly set low levels of Vista-compatibility for hardware, even though many of the computer models so designated would not be able to run anything above Vista […]
