Working Up

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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by Dwayne Phillips My iMac disk dies so I have to recover everything from backup. But wait, not everything as my Google world is still there. Short story about my Apple iMac computer. I was updating the operating system and the installer froze the machine. The guy at the Reston Apple Store was very helpful. […]

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Sometimes it just isn’t worth being on the leading edge. It was 1981 and an attempt to purchase an office computer turned into a monster. 1981 – the Apple II was fun and the TRS-80 was, well it was something you could buy at Radio Shack. These little computer things could store data on floppy disks. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Wearing a health monitor practically 24 hours a day is now possible. Our physicians can know everything about our life style and work with us on our health. But do we want to be that healthy? Computers are smaller and lighter and use less battery power and all those things that engineers […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Why don’t we have more engineers and computer scientists? Maybe, for better or worse, we don’t have enough “tough” people. I have recently read of a shortage of engineers and computer scientists. I have my doubts about this shortage, but enough people are declaring it that there may be some truth to […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is a trend lately for young male programmers to act like fraternity pledges. This is just the last in a long line of dysfunction in computer science. The percentage of female computer science graduates and professional programmers is declining. It has been in decline for several decades. There is much speculation […]

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