Dr Wingnut

Category: Computer

  • Happy 78th Birthday Robert!

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    Computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago.Robert Moog

  • Java versus Smalltalk

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    I heard this said in the early nineties, and I believe it is still true: “Java: Twice the complexity and half the productivity of Smalltalk.”Of course in those days, the performance of Smalltalk was not great, but if you could compile it into byte code and run it in the Java Virtual Machine like they…

  • Color e-paper

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    The News Briefs section of IEEE Computer, April 2008, page 20, said that we would have color e-paper in three or four years.Has that happened?  Nope, color e-paper readers were shown at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2011, so they were off by a little time, but the reviews (PC Magazine) weren’t too…

  • Incremental Improvement

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    As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.Dave Parnas

  • Stock answer for non-sensical questions

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    I had peanut butter toast for breakfast.Thanks Doug V.

  • What to carry in your sysadmin toolkit

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    From TechRepublic plus some other things that I find happy to have with me most days. Backpack to carry all this junk A laptop A smartphone Tripp-lite keyspan serial to USB converter Big thumb drive (32GB+) Maxtech 16521MX 32-Piece Precision Bit Set Ethernet cable Small variety of USB cables FireWire cable Male DVI to Female…

  • Radial or Radio?

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    There’s a bad case of misunderstanding around my office lately where people keep calling radio buttons; radial buttons.  Use this simple picture guide to keep track of which item has buttons and which does not.RadioRadio: Has buttons?  Yes, a radio has radio buttons.Radial tireRadial: Has buttons?  No!  A radial tire does not have radial buttons.