Cat Picture | 28 | 2.8 | #12

Revealed preferences

Steven Sinofsky writes in the outstanding Building Windows 8 blog:

Few operations in Windows are as scrutinized, measured, and picked apart as boot. This is understandable—boot times represent an effective proxy for overall system performance and we all know the boot experience is an incredibly important thing for us to get right for customers. Data shows that 57% of desktop PC users and 45% of laptop users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep. Overall, half of all of users shut down their machines rather than putting them to sleep.

See, my interpretation would have been: The 57% of desktop PC users who shut down their machine instead of putting it to sleep must not care very much about boot time. Otherwise, they would just put the damned thing to sleep instead.

I guess that’s why I’m not in charge of Windows 8.

CompTIA Security Minus

Today I took and passed the CompTIA Security+ 2008 exam. I don’t see a lot of value in these certifications, but it was a requirement for work, and my employer paid for the exam, so that was all fine.

Anyway, this post is about the security practices of CompTIA, the organization that thinks it’s competent to judge my knowledge of security practices.

Maybe “Public Timeline” was not the best name for that

Slate discovers “consumer surplus”

Annie Lowrey writing in Slate:

It sounds ridiculous, but many economists would love to run this experiment. That is because they suspect that our computers are worth, in some strange way, more than what we pay for them.

Strange? You mean like every other good that people purchase voluntarily?

Sentence of the day: Java edition

As a Java programmer for many years, this was both exciting and horrifying: my own tools had turned on me!

Why does Apple use a picnic table as the “Apps” icon?

And you thought Stuxnet was bad

Roger C. Davidson walked into a computer services shop on Main Street in Mount Kisco, N.Y., seeking help with his virus-plagued computer.

…

The owner of the shop, Vickram Bedi, 36, confirmed that there was a virus on Mr. Davidson’s computer, a virus Mr. Bedi said was so troublesome that it had also damaged the shop’s computers, officials said.

This led, of course, to $6 million dollars in fees being paid to the computer shop, and a tale of intrigue involving the CIA and Opus Dei.

Confessions of a market manipulator

From RISKS 26.19, Financial market automated amplification of trades:

"The two men worked out how the computerized system would react to certain trading patterns—allowing them to influence the price of low-volume stocks." Although the article gives no indication of how they did it, the day traders “gave false and misleading signals about supply, demand and prices'', which caused the robots to take action—which the day traders then took advantage of.

Yeah, I did that once.

The SACS Report, Episode 6

The SACS Report was a public-access cable television show produced by the Southern Alleghenies Computer Society of Johnstown, PA, in the early 1990s. For more background, please see the entry for Episode 2.

In Episode 6, the last episode in my collection, I step up the wardrobe, and wear a dress shirt and necktie, along with the requisite patterned socks. The reason for the fancy duds? My guest, George Bradley, Area Manager for WordPerfect Corporation, who wore a suit.

The SACS Report, Episode 5

The SACS Report was a public-access cable television show produced by the Southern Alleghenies Computer Society of Johnstown, PA, in the early 1990s. For more background, please see the entry for Episode 2.

Episode 5 aired February 3, 1993. In this episode, we have another specimen from my awesome sweater collection: a white V-neck item, paired once again with aggressively patterned socks. My guests in this episode are Jery Allison and Geoff Ford, fellow SACS officers who discuss the organization's plans for the new year.

Jery, who was the sysop of a local BBS, provided an overview of the local BBS scene, while Geoff announced an upcoming BBS demo day at the Galleria Mall. We also discuss "the next biggest thing in computers," the CD-ROM and multimedia. Jery opines that CD-ROM drives have become so inexpensive that anyone can afford one... watch the episode to find out how cheap Geoff's new drive was!

The panelists also discuss the sizes (physical and capacity) of the latest hard drives, and compare these modern marvels with the primitive disks of yesteryear. I lament dealers who try to sell customers "more computer than they need." What home user could possibly make good use of those new Pentium chips?

On a more touching note, Jery recalls participating in the SaudiNet email system during the 1990–91 Gulf War, relaying messages from home to the troops, and back. This email system was technologically similar to FidoNet, which Jery also discusses. Imagine sending email to someone around the world, and having them read it in just a few hours or days!

__
                  /  \
                 /|oo \
                (_|  /_)
                 _`@/_ \    _
                |     | \   \\
                | (*) |  \   )) 
   ______       |__U__| /  \//
  / FIDO \       _//|| _\   /
 (________)     (_/(_|(____/

The SACS Report, Episode 4

The SACS Report was a public-access cable television show produced by the Southern Alleghenies Computer Society of Johnstown, PA, in the early 1990s.  For more background, please see the entry for Episode 2.

In this episode, we see the debut of my awesome sweater collection, featuring a button-up V-neck sweater over a turtleneck.  My patterned socks also figure prominently in this episode.  Unfortunately, the age of the VHS tape results in extremely poor video quality—the worst of the series—and my stunning wardrobe is mostly obscured.  The good news is that you’ll be able to devote your attention instead to my panel of guests, Craig Haynal, Mike MacInnis, and Ben Hauger.

The SACS Report, Episode 3

The SACS Report was a public-access cable television show produced by the Southern Alleghenies Computer Society of Johnstown, PA, in the early 1990s.  For more background, please see the entry for Episode 2.

I was the moderator of the show, and apparently nobody ever told me not to wear the same outfit twice in a row when you’re on TV.

My guest for Episode 3 was Ben Hauger, who demonstrated an Apple IIgs, including its music-playing abilities (just $50 for a stereo upgrade!) and a variety of games and demos.  Also:  The difficulty of finding the floppy disk you need, and the ability to have more than 16 colors on the screen at once.

The Occasional WTF #1

Amazon Music Downloader

The SACS Report, Episode 2

In the early 1990s, when I was in high school, I was a member of a community computer club.  In those days the ‘tubes were short, and your online community mostly consisted of nearby people who could make local calls to the same BBSes.  We met monthly for demonstrations of the latest hardware and software.  As a form of community outreach and education, we put together a show on the latest computing news.  This was before “podcasts” and “live streaming,” so we used the 20th-century equivalent: public access cable television.  Think Leo Laporte meets Wayne and Garth.

I was selected as the moderator of the show, presumably on the basis of my outstanding sweater collection.  Just as Star Trek’s pilot episode was missing Captain Kirk, Episode 1 of the SACS Report did not feature yours truly as the moderator.  I’d rather poke fun at myself, so I’m starting this series with Episode 2.

The video quality of the footage varies from poor to adequate.  The episodes, being an irreplaceable relic of my youth, were lovingly archived at SLP speed on a VHS tape previously used to record baseball games.  The audio quality of this episode improves after a couple of minutes.  My archive consists of 6 episodes.  I assume it is complete, but I’m not certain.  I’ve simply assigned the numbers 1-6 to the episodes on my tape.

Episode 2 features two guests, Craig Haynal and Mike Dom, presenting the hottest computer games of the era, including The Sims, Wolfenstein 3D, and Los Dados Afortunados.  Revisiting this episode is appropriate, as Intel recently demonstrated a raytraced, cloud-computed remake of Wolfenstein 3D.  A massively multiplayer, raytraced, 3D update of Los Dados Afortunados is expected in Q2 2011, and should give Portal 2 una carrera por su dinero.