Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Google, Adobe, Chromebooks, and Creative Cloud take us yet again forward to a day long ago. Google and Adobe have just announced that we can run Adobe’s Creative Cloud on a Chromebook. Wow. I am not trying to be flippant. This is a big deal. You buy a $200 or $100 Chromebook […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Most of today’s “computers” are nothing but I/O devices to the cloud. Persons like me who use a computer that is in front of us are rare and disappearing. Here is a little, historical lesson on computing. A computer has three basic parts: processor memory input/output (I/O) That’s it folks. Nothing else. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips After several recent experiences, I know a little about cloud computing. I have been experimenting in several ways recently with cloud computing. The basic sales pitch from a cloud computing provider is: We’ll buy and maintain the computers. You rent them from us. This takes us forward to the past to a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips While the PC dies, home computing continues to thrive. The PC just died in my in-laws home. Not really, it still works, but my in-laws are moving on and participating in the “death of the PC.” Their Windows XP PC still runs along just fine. They, however, don’t want to have it […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Just about anyone can learn to program a computer. Not many people earn degrees in Computer Science. I first noticed the above statement in 1978 (yes, I am that old). Students were telling me how they loved to write computer programs. We were taught something called PL/I in those days. Then the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I enter the world of cloud computing and learn that, once again, we go forward to the past. I finally did it. I entered the world of actual virtual cloud computing. Not just Facebooking or DropBoxing, but actual computing. Well, not much computing, but making a few bits move. Earlier this year […]

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by Dwayne Phillips What is the least-expensive in the store these days? Is it really a computer or merely a terminal? I was browsing a few stores recently (you know those places that actually exist, have an exterior and interior?). I looked at the computers and, being as cheap as I am, sought the least-expensive […]

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by Dwayne Phillips All magazines are thinner than they used to be – not so. Somehow, the IEEE keeps its magazines thick. I have been an IEEE Computer Society member for 30 years (yes, I am that old). Computer is the lead publication of that group. The monthly magazine is still 136 pages long. That […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Same song, “x” is replaced by something else. It is called “software compatibility.” A little history in the field of computing. In the beginning, the dominant cost was hardware. Two or three programmers could occupy the most expensive computer in the world. The computer cost a million times more than the programmer’s […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I learn how NOT to backup an Apple computer. Apple has a piece of software called “Time Machine.” It automates backups. The software puts all the files on the computer disk into a “big ball of bytes” on a backup disk. You must have Time Machine to access the individual files in […]

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