The sun is shining. A new day calls. You have work to do, but you’re playing hooky from the office. Fortunately you have your new Compaq LTE. You can take your work anywhere! And you do! Off to the coffee bistro you roll. In tow is your fully-charged 8086, 250K laptop and your Microsoft Thumb Mouse. The year is 1989.
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February 12, 2014Before Laptops Had Trackpads
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February 11, 2014Cell Phone Kill Switch Law ProposedThis is one I would prefer be enabled by the cellular carriers as opposed to the government. While it sounds good to have a cell phone kill switch, something you could remotely activate should your phone be lost or stolen, there are — as is always said about laws — unintended consequences. February 10, 2014My Most Ancient Computer BooksI started buying computer references back in the early 1980s. Al Gore had stubbornly not yet invented the Internet, so budding young computer enthusiasts such as myself had no other choice but resort to the dead tree version of a reference. And I bought a lot of computer books. February 8, 2014Bye, Bye Flappy BirdThe insanely frustrating Android game Flappy Bird is to be no more. Download it before midnight tonight!
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February 7, 2014A World of Empty HeadsOnce upon a time, I had about two dozen phone numbers memorized. I knew the birthdays for just about every family member. I could keep a week’s worth of appointments, as well as upcoming due dates, right in my head. I even had trivial facts memorized and could recite poetry or explain important dates. Today, my tablet knows all that stuff. February 5, 2014Mistakes Apple Wishes You’d ForgetThey are the perhaps the most prestigious company on the planet. They represent a certain status. Only the cool kids use their stuff. Of course, it’s Apple, the company that revolutionized technology with the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. That’s the same company that failed to revolutionize anything with some ripe products in their boneyard — stuff that they’d wish people would forget. February 3, 2014Feminists Take On WikipediaWikipedia is just too slanted to the male perspective, or so say feminists who want to fix it through extensive editing. They’ll be holding editing-a-thons across the country over the next few weeks. Being a man, of course, I can’t fathom their specific issues. I expect they’ll be changing the third person singular from “he” to “she” all over the place. You can’t do that in Chinese or Latin or other languages. And maybe references to a ship as “she” will go down the tubes. I know a ship is a “she” in Italian. Can’t change that one, of course. Oh, English is so sexist!
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Would You Like to Play a Game?Joshua, the computer personality of the WORP mainframe from the film War Games, uttered the most famous line in all of computer gaming history. It asked Matthew Broderick’s hacker character, “Would you like to play a game?” How can anyone say no to that? |
