Skeptic Tank

Hi Grandma!

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 02:40:47 -0000

My grandmother supposedly died in 2017. Except she didn't.

One of her favorite restaurants was Piazza Roma on route 6 in Mohegan Lake. She loved when we went there.

She wasn't happy when my aunt and uncle moved out of town in 2016 and were not up front with her about their intentions. She was also not happy when my sister got married in 2017 and had the wedding out of town, with Grandma too frail to travel.

So it's pretty clear what happened. Grandma didn't die. She faked her own death and has been hiding at Roma's ever since. She's 101 years old now and as far as I'm concerned she's still there.

A couple of months ago my father died at age 81 with mid to late stage Alzheimer's disease. It is also very clear that, because of the Alzheimer's, he forgot that he was dead and went to go hang out with Grandma at the restaurant.

I'd like to go visit them both, but the restaurant isn't there anymore.

It's not "AI", please call it...

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 20:37:17 -0000

As all sensible people know, the technology pundits are calling "Artificial Intelligence" is neither artificial nor intelligent. This is not to say that they aren't doing some very impressive things. But it isn't sentient, it never will be, and some of the noisiest and unpleasant people are leading the talk in the cluelessosphere tech press. Let's come up with a better term to refer to this technology. I sometimes use "very dense algorithms" but that isn't very catchy. "The technology inappropriately referred to as AI" is obviously too many syllables. But as the commoditization of massively parallel processing and inference models continues, it'll be in the hands of more people, so we need a better name. Any ideas?

My WWVB clock is still cool

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 03:54:28 -0000

Let's talk 60 KHz.

As you may know, I have a lovely WWVB-synchronized clock that I built by hand about five years ago. Here's a photo:

The firmware is my own code and once in a while I tweak it a bit to try to get a little better performance out of it. The little module on the top left, just below the ferrite antenna, is a WWVB receiver module that pulls in the 60 KHz signal and outputs it on a single pin, as a high-or-low state. The pulse train from this pin must then be decoded. I think you can see that I used an Arduino Nano as the brains of the operation. It then speaks to the display using I2C.

We had a brief power blip, just for a few seconds, on Monday morning. Here on Wednesday evening it still hadn't picked up a full frame of time code. There is no battery backed RTC on this thing, and no manual setting buttons (a deliberate design choice) so it's been sitting there with a blank screen for three days. Not cool. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I noticed that the time code pulses (the yellow LED) were totally readable by me just by looking at them, so why couldn't I train the software to be smarter? What it needed was some hysteresis. The original code read the receiver pin every loop cycle and considered high=1 and low=0, so if there was even the tiniest flickering of the signal in the middle of a pulse, it would throw the whole frame away. I added some new code: now we take 100 samples (which still happens in less than 1 millisecond) and if at least 20% of those samples are high then we consider that a 1; fewer than 20% is a 0. If that sounds like a ridiculous

The photo above was taken this evening, right after I brought the clock back into my bedroom after reprogramming it. It locked on to the time signal in the very first minute and set the clock.

That's what the red LED on the bottom is, by the way. I cut out the Nano's power LED. The built-in LED on D11 illuminates when the software has detected the top-of-minute frame marker and is locked in and receiving time code. If it receives any pulse length other than 200 (logical 0), 500 (logical 1), or 800 (marker bit) milliseconds, it assumes it's receiving junk and throws the frame away. The red LED goes out and it waits for a new frame to begin. If it completes the frame, however, it sets (or resets) the time, and illuminates the green LED. When I see green, I know it has performed a complete synchronization within the last 24 hours.

It's got a few more tricks up its sleeve, however.

As previously noted, there's no battery backed RTC. It's completely a free-running software clock timed by the 1 ms timer interrupt on the Arduino. That means 60,000 timer ticks is one minute. Or is it? As it turns out, the accuracy of this timer is terrible. One minute is somewhere around 60,000 ticks, give or take a few hundred. So even if we didn't receive a full frame of time code, if we receive the start-of-minute marker we can do a couple of things:

1. We know the end of the marker is exactly 800 ms past the top of the minute. So if the software clock reads anywhere between :45 and:15 seconds, we snap to :00.8

2. If we have two top-of-minute markers in a row, even if the time code in between was garbled, we now know the exact number of timer ticks that comprise a minute on this hardware. So we save that number. Up to ten of them, actually. And we average those out, and that becomes our reference minute.

Bonusfest: there's also a cadmium cell detecting ambient light. We crank up the display brightness when the room is bright, to avoid it washing out, and we dim the display in darkness, so it doesn't blasticate the room with display light while we're trying to sleep.

All in all it's been a ton of fun, and in addition to being a useful bedroom clock that never needs to be set manually, it also lets me geek out every night while I am drifting to sleep by watching das blinkenlichten.

In death, as in life...

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 22:23:56 -0000

David Heinemeir Hansson is the CEO of 37signals, the company behind HEY and BaseCamp. One feature of HEY is that you can post to your blog simply by composing a new message addressed to it. It works well, but I've got news for ya, Dave: Citadel has had that feature for well over a decade. I like him, though. He's got good insights and is a fun read. If you're reading my blog here on Uncensored, and you want to read his blog too, go to the hidden room called "DHH" to follow it. But this blog post isn't about him. It's about people I *don't* like. Specifically, Dianne Feinstein, and Richard Marx Stallman. The former recently died, and the latter is terminally ill. And so, out come the chants of "YOU MUST RESPECT TEH DEAD!!!1" Nope. In death, as in life, and as I have blogged to death (heh) in this location before: RESPECT IS EARNED. If you were not worthy of respect when you were alive, you don't suddenly become respectable simply because you're now taking a dirt nap. DiFi was a scumbag of the worst kind in life, and she remains a scumbag in death. As Richard Marx Stallman once said of Steve Jobs: "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Stallman was glad that Jobs was no longer a malign influence on computing. It is one of the few things I agree with him on. And when Stallman himself is gone, I will say the same thing about him. To wish death upon another human being or to celebrate their death is in poor taste, with one and only one exception: I will take the indulgence of celebrating the death of Bill Gates. May that day come soon and may Gates, the worst person in the history of the entire world, experience extreme pain and misery on his way down. But no, if you're an Ultimate Scumbag you don't get respect simply because you died. Some of you might know that I come from a family in which there were quite a few people who were funeral directors. One of them was my great grandfather, who famously said, "don't be concerned about dead people; it's the alive ones you've got to worry about." Someday I too will pass from this side of eternity into the other side. I will continue to do my best to keep my affairs in order and maintain the respect of my family, friends, and peers. Because, for the thousandth time, respect is earned. I hope that I have done my best to earn the respect of you my readers. I usually only say this on March 10 (the site's birthday) but I truly appreciate the online company of each and every one of you.

IBM is obsolete

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 04:10:33 -0000

Thirty years ago, I completed a college degree and joined the millions of people who discovered that a college degree is completely useless and I want my money back. But that's not what this blog post is about.

My alma mater ran just about everything on a Burroughs A-9 mainframe. Burroughs was later acquired by Sperry-Univac and at some point they upgraded to a Unisys A-12 mainframe. Whatever. Today, they are still keeping track of class enrollments, grades, tuition, housing, and all the other day-to-day minutiae using the same software, but on "Unisys ClearPath" -- which of course runs on bog-standard AMD64 hardware and emulates the old mainframe.

Unisys people have accepted this fate. IBM people have not. Because they are morons.

From a purely subjective level, you know a platform is dead when the information stupidhighway is saturated with articles written by people who insist that it is not dead. Oh, it's so MODERN now, they breathlessly chant to anyone who is willing to listen (which is nobody, so they then move on to bothering people who don't want to hear about it). It has files and pipes and internet and cloud and rainbows and unicorns and all sorts of modern wonders!

This is very true with regard to AIX (sorry, "IBM p") which is so dead that IBM has sacked all of their AIX developers in the United States and moved support-and-maintenance to an offshore sweatshop. But it's *extremely* true with regard to System/38, which eventually got renamed to "AS/400" and is now known as "IBM i" and runs on the same hardware as AIX, using the same CPU that Apple abandoned two generations ago.

There's a litmus test. Simply ask yourself, "Would I build a brand new (greenfield) workload on this platform?" And I'm not talking about some bank or insurance company that has a bunch of old AS/400 stuff already running and just needs to add one more task. If you're opening a new organization with a new IT department and all new software, are you going to build them on "IBM p" or "IBM i"? No, you would get fired for that, and you would deserve it.

Anything from IBM is, without question, a legacy platform. You might be supporting existing workloads for a few more decades, but as a go-forward play it's dead. It's technical debt. Call it what it is, and stop trying to pretend otherwise. You sound like an idiot.

Thoughts from AWS re:Invent 2022

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 21:28:31 -0000

[DISCLAIMER: the opinions posted here do not necessarily represent those of my employer.]

To great relief, I am now back in the Northeast after a trip to AWS re:Invent 2022. For the benefit of no one in particular I am now journaling my thoughts, in no particular order.

My biggest observation is, quite simply, to hell with Las Vegas. It's not the place for me. Very overstimulating. Everyone and everything wants your attention, and there is almost no escape from it. I can only imagine what my introvert daughter would do if she were there ... she'd probably curl into a ball with a blanket over herself and noise-canceling headphones on for the entire time. There are not just lights, but jumbotrons everywhere. On the sides of buildings, on the backs of trucks, there are flashing lights everywhere everywhere everywhere. There is no keeping to yourself in Las Vegas; everyone and everything is in your face.

Amazon wasted a lot of space. Their convention took up space in half a dozen different hotels. And these aren't just ordinary hotels; each one of them is a mini city with a large convention center, a casino, an entire shopping mall, and thousands of rooms. I believe they wasted a lot of space and they could have done the convention in maybe one or two of these hotels. And they didn't have to spread it out all over the strip either. How about using hotels that are all next to each other so you don't need buses to get between them! Including the beautiful and fabulous Trump hotel, which they passed on because Amazon is full of the kind of people who work for Amazon.

How about the food? The food in Las Vegas is overpriced. It's good, but I'm from New York so I'm no stranger to good food. It's just "good". Not out-of-this-world. But the food inside the convention? Practically inedible. Once again, it was put together by the kind of people who would work for Amazon. Nearly all of it gluten-free, dairy-free, and taste-free. Even the "ethnic" food was lousy: a man of Indian origin who sat at a table with me said "I have eaten a lot of curry, and this is not good curry." Hey Amazon, how about you just put out a table full of hot dogs? It's the easiest food in the world to serve to tens of thousands of people. In the world of food, wide appeal is diametrically opposed to politically correct food fads. After about the second day our team didn't even bother with the grub hall and we just went out for lunch. Maybe they're counting on that. (If I go back next year I'll probably hack the system by requesting a kosher meal. Thos

To be honest ... I really think that Amazon simply doesn't care. They're the biggest name in technology right now and this whole convention is just a way for them to flaunt their bigness. There's no pan-industry conference like COMDEX anymore, so "anyone who's anyone" simply shows up at re:Invent, sometimes with only a barely viable token connection to cloud computing. And that's probably what Amazon is thinking: "bring the whole industry to here because we are the industry." And for the time being, that is true, since "cloud" is the current mania.

(For the truth about cloud mania, read David Hansson's excellent blog post "Why We're Leaving The Cloud [https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47e0]" in which he correctly points out the places where hyperscale cloud computing excels -- at the small end of the market where a new organization can't afford infrastructure, and at the high end where massive elasticity is needed -- and that the stable, predictable middle is better served by other hosting setups.)

As mentioned in the disclaimer, my opinions do not necessarily represent those of my employer. As an IT architecture professional I work in both public and private cloud spaces. As a technolibertarian I want a level playing field, and my opinion is that both Amazon and its conference are too damn big. The only relief I found was at a Denny's across the street from my mega-hotel, where I sat, late in the evening, in a room that was not overcrowded, without flashing lights in my face, without loud noise everywhere, sipping some good coffee and finding my zen. In that moment, I found a peaceful space that mimicked home, until I could finally get home.

NWO Spy Devices -- is one in your home?

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 00:26:19 -0000

DANGER!! WARNING!! NEW WORLD ORDER HAS SPY DEVICES IN HOMES AROUND THE WORLD!!!

We have learned this shocking new secret about the shadowy cabal of globalists who secretly control all of the power and wealth in the world. While their media outlets try to distract you by having their controlled opposition point you to the World Economic Forum, their Hitler-equivalent criminals such as George Soros and Bill Gates ar

What you didn’t know will shock you … perhaps literally!

As it so happens, the relationship between “Bilderburg” and The same evil scientists who created the bioweapon called “the covid-19 vaccine” -- and, eventually, a virus that it supposedly fights – have also deployed millions of these “stuffed animals” which contain devices that track all human activity within the immediate area. When your child “kisses the heart” of the toy before inserting it into its delivery system, he or she leaves a DNA imprint which is This data is merged with other tracking data collected by Facebook, Alexa, and other eavesdropping systems into a massive database maintained by the New World Order. What is most frightening, however, is that each device also contains a massive explosive charge which can be detonated remotely if specific citizens need to be silenced quickly.

This is why it is extremely important to continue wearing your tinfoil hat when you are indoors, even in your own home. As an alternative, you can wrap the bear in tinfoil, as this will also suppress The Signal.

More creative work stolen by Disney Corp.

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 22:32:19 -0000

The people who now operate Disney Corporation are a bunch of pedophile communists who ought to be vaporized by Zombie Walt Disney after he sees what horrible things they've done with the company that bears his name. But that's not what I'm writing about today.

Consider the following musical passage - the first three bars of "Into the Unknown" written by Kristen and Robert Lopez for "Frozen 2":

This passage is sung twice by Idina Menzel as "aah-aaaah, aah-aaaah" before her lyrical performance begins. The accompaniment is built around a C-minor chord, the key in which the piece is written.

Now consider the following musical passage, written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and found at approximately 6:25 into Led Zeppelin's magnum opus "Stairway to Heaven":

This passage is repeated four times, coming out of an epic guitar solo and entering into the final vocal section of the piece. "Stairway" is written in A-minor, but the transposition to C-minor and a meaningless time signature change (overall, the note values do not change, at least in this passage) does not obfuscate its obvious origin.

It is clear that Lopez and Lopez blatantly stole this passage from Page and Plant. But that is what the post-Walt version of Disney does: they appropriate the work of others and masquerade it as their own.

But I suppose turnabout is fair play, since Led Zeppelin's entire act is a ripoff of Deep Purple.

Phrase of the day

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:27:25 -0000

"This thing keeps attacking me"

In our house, this phrase means "I opened the door to the [refrigerator | cupboard | etc] and an item fell out and landed on me. This has happened before. I will now pick up the item and carelessly replace it in a manner that it will probably happen again."

"Sleeps"

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 16:27:07 -0000

"Four more sleeps until we go on vacation!"

It's something we say to children, to make it easier to grasp the span of time between now and some upcoming event. But as an engineer I like it for adults too! Because it's non-ambiguous. We don't have to worry about days vs. nights, about whether you're including the first and/or last day of the count, or anything like that. I'm writing this on a Wednesday, and after four sleeps it will be Sunday. It only falls apart when you're talking to someone who sleeps multiple times per 24-hour period, which is a problem because I'm currently trying to explain to my daughter's cat how long it will be before she comes home from the trip she's on.

Honorable mention goes to the 1987 musical "Into The Woods" where they counted "midnights". (And by the way -- Bernadette Peters was awesome as the Witch, and Meryl Streep completely blew the role, because she's a horrible person who sucks at everything). One midnight gone! Two midnights gone! It's the laaaaaaaaaaaaaaast midnight... So that's a nice computer-compatible way to do it -- count the number of times the date changes. :)

Now if someone could figure out that cat problem, I'd appreciate it.

A word about "authority"

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 16:16:10 -0000

Most of you have heard something like this from me before, but I'll put it on record in the best words I can find.

No, I don't respect authority.

Authority by itself does not deserve respect. Acting in a respectable way deserves respect. Perhaps if someone is in a position of authority, they might be worth giving a bit of additional time to earn your respect.

The best authority figures I've ever observed -- both in the public and in my own circles -- earned my respect without even trying. And here's the thing about people who are wired like me -- we'll work our asses off for and with people we respect.

Contrariwise ... when those in positions of authority abuse it by being sanctimonious, judgmental, bossy, and by treating adults like children ... not only do they deserve zero respect, but it is our obligation to destroy them.

You want my respect? Earn it. I can be your biggest champion or your worst nightmare. The choice is yours.

Thoughts from the polling place

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 18:45:33 -0000

This is about the American democratic process. It isn't intended to be the latest volley in the bloodsport of post-2008 American politics. If anyone wants to go there, you know what room it's in.

Some of you might know that I am an election inspector in Westchester County. It's my way of being able to say that I participated in the process instead of just talking about it. I certainly don't do it for the money -- my time is certainly worth more than the stipend we are paid for a grueling work day. We have to be at the polling place at 5:00am on election day, and we don't get to go home until we have completely closed the polls. This includes bringing in anyone who was still standing in line at the offical closing time of 9:00pm, then completing a lot of administrivia to properly close the machines and read off the totals while a bunch of poll watchers are breathing down our necks. All told, it was an 18-hour workday this past Tuesday, when we were there for the primaries.

And that brings me to my first observation: there were A LOT of people who weren't aware that it was primary day for the two major American political parties. As is usually the case, I blame the media for this. There has been so much hype over voters rights, vote by mail, voter fraud, voting this, voting that, and of course we've all been inundated with the Perise Practical ad and others like it which shout from the rooftops "June 23 is Election Day!" So what happened? A lot of people dutifully got in line to vote, thinking it was a general election. We turned away a lot of registered independents who were led to believe they needed to vote, but since they weren't registered to either of the parties holding a primary, they were not eligible to vote. We had just as many who didn't know their party registration, or who re

And I don't mean a few people either. I'd say a large percentage of the people in line didn't know why they were voting. We had Republicans asking why there was only one race on the ballot. We had Democrats asking what "delegates" are and why they're on the ballot. And we had people asking why Mr. Trump wasn't on the ballot (for those of you outside the US who don't know: he's running uncontested).

The next thing that I observed is the difference in opinion between politicians/pundits and actual voters with respect to the idea of requiring ID to vote. The supposed argument against an ID requirement is that it suppresses the vote of low-income citizens who cannot afford an ID. What I observed at the pool is this: no one cares. I saw people lining up with their ID in hand. In fact, these were people who were obviously not affluent, but they had their ID and had no qualms about showing it. So from this perspective it's difficult to argue that any politicians or pundits who are anti-ID are actually pro-fraud.

So now let's cover another observation: how the rules about "electioneering" are handled. We had a candidate who set up a table right in front of the polling place, but just outside of the 100 foot distance required by law. These people were legally "not at the polls" but for all practical purposes they were -- you practically had to walk past their table to get in the door. We were not permitted to ask them to move any further away. Then later in the morning we had a hyper-mega-bitch wearing a shirt with a black power fist, a rainbow flag, and some moronic slogan about "intersectionality" standing in the room lecturing us for 20 minutes about voter suppression while demanding that she be allowed to vote a second time. She didn't get kicked out, and stayed in the room harassing other voters until we gave her a provisional ballot. But another voter who walked in peacefully and attempted to vote quietly while wearing a shirt with the name of a candidate on it -- the election chairperso

For all its flaws, it's still a good process, and I think it works. Yes, I do believe we still have massive election fraud, but I don't see it happening at the polling place. It happens later when fraudulent ballots find their way into the system. The polls themselves are well-run. I like how the machines provide totals for rapid tabulation, but the process still retains physical ballots which can be recounted later. And I like the new computer based check-in system that eliminates the big books, but it's clearly a Version 1.0 product and it needs some refinement.

I'll be back in November, which is certain to be the biggest circus of all time.

I will NEVER respect authority.

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 18:43:33 -0000

This is a rant. Hit (S)top now if you don't want to hang around while I vent my spleen.

I don't respect authority. Authority does not, by itself, deserve respect. Go take your position of authority and shove it.

Respect is EARNED. I've said so on this blog before. There are people with authority in my life who I respect, because they've shown themselves to be inspirational and competent leaders. Show me that you know what you're doing, prove to me that you've earned your position of leadership, and I will be the greatest team player you have ever worked with. That's because you have earned my respect, and among people wired like me, respect is the currency of the realm.

On the other hand, if you pull rank for no reason, if you micromanage people who have more experience and knowledge than you, it doesn't matter if your rank says that you're the emperor of the galaxy; you've lost my respect and I don't respect your authority. If you're lucky I will leave your team.

I've had the blessing of working with some truly wonderful leaders. These are relationships that transcend any reporting structure because everyone gets on the same page. And even when there's a disagreement, I find it acceptable to let the person in charge make the final decision on something, because they've demonstrated that they've earned the right to do that. (Hint: it's always "because of X, Y, and Z" rather than "because I said so.") Relationships like that can even turn into long term friendships if the conditions are favorable.

So no, I will never respect authority on its own. Show me that you've earned the respect and you'll get it in spades. If you don't agree with that, go find some other world to live in that doesn't have me in it.

Sorry!

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 18:55:26 -0000

I'm looking through some of my old blog posts and realizing that I seem to use a different "voice" when I write in this blog than elsewhere.

So without further ado:

BLAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! schmeep schmeep schmeep. ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS HITLER!!!!!!!111111

BE GOOD
HAVE FUN
LAUNCH COMMIES INTO THE SUN

It's called LINUX, not GNU/Linux. And NEVER forget: CITADEL F**KING R00LZ!!!

Thank you.

I only want two simple things.

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 14:22:30 -0000

There are really only two simple things that I want in this life.

One of them is a tree that grows marshmallows. No leaves, just marshmallows. This would be the perfect tree for campfires. The fallen limbs can be used as firewood, and the smaller branches will have marshmallows on the end of them for toasting. No longer would we have to buy marshmallows, clean up the sticks to use as marshmallow sticks, and then toast them ... just reach for a stick-with-marshmallow already put together, and stick it in the fire. How wonderful would that be? I want to live in that kind of world. I like campfires.

Speaking of fire ... the other thing that I want is a universal detonator. I want to be able to blow up anything, anywhere, at any time, without having to plant explosives first. When I push the button, anything I want to explode must explode. Don't like the way that asshole in the Lexus is hogging the highway? Click, BOOM. Problem solved. Building next door blocking my view of the sunset? Click, BOOM. Turn on the TV and find that The View is on? Click, BOOM. (Note: in that last case, the explosion occurs in the TV studio, not in my living room. The universal detonator must work remotely.)

I don't ask for much. I just want these two simple things.

It's time to retire Ronald McDonald.

Sun, 23 Aug 2015 18:14:35 -0000

Let's face it, folks: clowns are creepy.

No one likes clowns anymore. They are an antiquity of the 20th century, when adults and children alike found them funny and entertaining. That just isn't the case anymore.

(Image credit: Matthew Inman, theoatmeal.com)

That being the case, why does McDonald's still have the creepy clown Ronald McDonald as its mascot?

It is obviously time for Ronald McDonald to retire. Unfortunately, when I did a web search for "Retire Ronald McDonald," instead of seeing a bunch of people who agree with this sentiment, I instead found an obnoxious campaign by a bunch of nanny-state activists complaining that the McDonald's mascot is bad because they are marketing directly to children. So what? My kids don't decide when we eat at McDonald's. That decision is always made by me, and/or their mother, and we feed our children a balanced diet. Sometimes we go out, and sometimes we treat them to lunch at McDonald's. It's nothing to be ashamed of! They sell burgers and fries, which will make you fat if you eat there every day. We don't eat there every day, or even every week. I don't blame McDonald's for being who they are (some would disagree). They are an American success story, they sell greasy food, and they should

So let's collectively ignore the Food Nazis and let Ronald retire for the right reasons. His garish colors are from the McDonald's decor of a bygone era, now that McDonald's restaurants have all been redecorated for the 21st century. He's not entertaining anymore. People think clowns are creepy. People still love burgers and fries. Now go out there and enjoy a clown-free lunch.

Until the "2.0 DRM" is removed, GOODBYE KEURIG.

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 19:13:34 -0000

Dear Keurig,

Ever since becoming the owner of a Keurig coffee maker a few years ago, I have been a happy customer. As I am the only coffee drinker in my home, I find it very convenient to brew single servings of coffee throughout the day when I want them, instead of having to brew an entire pot at a time. Your product is innovative and changed the face of the industry. Over these few years I've sampled many of the coffee pod selections sold or licensed by Green Mountain and have enjoyed many of them.

This year at CES, Acer is introducing two new desktops – yes, you read that correctly, desktops – running the wildly successful variant of Linux known as Android. They're cleverly positioning these exactly as I've been predicting for a long time: as monitors. They're monitors with video inputs that the luddites can connect to a computer running Windows 8, complete with touchscreen input. But they also have a full Android stack available, which will operate independently with no external computer attached.

Why is this relevant?

At the current price point set by Acer, it isn't. However, we should hope to expect that this will become the norm for all new monitors, just like televisions now include “Smart TV” features. Mass production of SoC (system on a chip) components will make it a no-brainer for even cheap monitors.

Now imagine your typical Windows luddite, trying to get something done on their old-fashioned desktop computer, when Windows does what it always does: it fails. If our luddite has technical knowledge, he may be faced with setting aside his work or research or whatever, and spending the next couple of hours repairing or reinstalling Windows. If our luddite is a nontechnical consumer, he will have to stop and wait for someone to come and help – or, possibly, spending money at the local computer shop having Windows fixed again.

But wait! Our luddite suddenly remembers that there is another computer built into the monitor. He unplugs the mini-tower and boots into Android. He's back on the Internet and he has a working computer again. The day is saved! After a few days, he begins to realize that he doesn't need the Windows hassle, and stuffs the mini-tower up into the attic, never to be seen again. Our newly minted non-luddite is now a happy Linux desktop user. He doesn't ever have to worry about viruses, spyware, lost data, or being regularly gouged for money by Microsoft.

This, my friends, is the Network Computing vision of the mid 1990's. Thanks to mobile data, ubiquitous Internet connectivity, and excellent Linux client operating systems like Android, it is rapidly becoming a reality. Windows has no place in the post-PC era, and Android desktops are accelerating the pace of adoption.

I hate clarinets. And here's why.

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 19:49:02 -0000

When asked the simple question:

Which instruments do you play, Ig?

I gave the answer...

Recorder (C and F), flute, guitar, keyboards, and a bit of teh drums. And I have a three octave vocal range.

But I couldn't just stop there. Not when I was given the chance, like Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz, to tell another emotionally scarring backstory.

As is the case with every child receiving a public school education in the People's Socialist Communist Republic of New York, I played the recorder in third grade. It's just a standard part of the music curriculum for that year, and I loved it.

Fourth grade came along and I was told that the instrumental music program was available to us and I could select an instrument and play in the band too. Naturally I said that I wanted to continue playing the recorder. And of course I was told that the recorder was not a band instrument and I would have to select something else.

We're aaaaaaaaaall connecteddd...

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 12:48:55 -0000

It was probably 1983 or so when New York Telephone (now Verizon) upgraded our exchange from electromechanical switching to an AT&T 5ESS. I clearly remember the day when I finished dialing a friend's number and didn't hear that satisfying "ka-CHUNK" indicating that you had successfully dropped a trunk line and the call was on its way. I also remember shortly after that, using touch-tone on our line even though "we didn't have that service."

Adding touch-tone to a line served by mechanical switch required modifications that really did cost telco money. On an electronic switch it was just an intrinsic part of the system, but for several years they tried to get away with continuing to charge extra for it. I used tone dial on my modem and when telco tried to slap us with the fee we told them, "nope, not paying for it, shut the service off." I knew they didn't have the ability to do that, so they simply took the fee off the bill.

That was a generation ago, when my dad was skeptical that I could even make a touch tone dialer work, and even more skeptical when he brought in the phone bill and I told him we can easily refuse to pay for tone service. Today, my kids wouldn't know how to use a rotary phone if they saw one (Wes would probably figure it out, he's into that kind of stuff) but

John Calvin and his spiritual elitism

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 23:52:00 -0000

Ok folks, a few words here about a little thing called respect. Respect is not something to which everyone is entitled regardless of their behavior. Furthermore, things like age, position, status, etc. do not make someone worthy of respect. Respect is earned. If you go through life lying, cheating, and abusing people as if you were some sort of gangster, I don't care where it's gotten you in life: you don't deserve respect, you deserve all the scorn that is heaped upon you from all directions.

A couple of days ago I heaped a big pile of scathing criticism upon a prominent public figure. I consider this particular public figure to be so completely devoid of propriety that I often call into question whether he is even human. To my surprise, I became the target of a personal attack by a 'helpful' friend who suggested that I have fallen out of favor with God because of this display.

(Go ahead and do your double-take now, I'll wait...)

I happen to know that this person enthus

Sacrilege: I don't want an iPad

Sat, 08 May 2010 23:41:00 -0000

After trying out an iPad, all I can say is, it really isn't all that impressive. Yes, they've done a nice job -- they always do. But those of us who live outside of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field are already seeing that it's not the universe-changing milestone of modern computing that the fanbois are claiming it to be. (Although I'm very amused that Apple is succeeding where Microsoft failed -- it's very satisfying to watch because tablets were Bill Gates' pet project. More on that later.)

I do like my netbook, though. Now you've got to keep in mind that netbooks were not originally intended to be "very small laptops" which is how they eventually ended up getting positioned in the market. They were supposed to be access devices, companion devices. Not full-blown PC's. That only happened after Microsoft started freaking out because people were actually buying Linux-based computers (oh no!) and because these devices were being manufactured by PC makers, they had the leverage to force

Rosie O'Donnell Murders A Three Year Old Girl

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0000

Yesterday's news reported that a three year old girl in Tennessee accidentally shot and killed herself after mistaking a loaded .380 caliber Smith and Wesson handgun for a Wii Remote.

Supposedly the child's stepfather 'accidentally' left the weapon out on a table right next to the video game system. As a responsible parent, I don't believe this for a minute. No one would be so careless as to put their child in that kind of danger. I believe that this was no accident. It is a scheme deliberately set up by people who want more draconian gun control laws.

Perhaps the most well known gun control advocate is Rosie O'Donnell, who claims that the Second Amendment is 'not really a right'. So there you have it: a three year old child is dead because of Rosie O'Donnell.

I am not a gun owner, but at some point I would like to learn to shoot an

Racism in the Age of Obama

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:52:00 -0000

I hate Facebook.

But you knew that already. I think it's a gigantic pile of crap. It's a mile wide and an inch deep, and it's impossible to have a truly deep discussion of any topic there. A few months ago, however, I allowed myself to be assimilated into Mr. Zuckerberg's present-day incarnation of The Borg, mainly because I have a number of friends who are pretty much unreachable anywhere else.

On my very first day in the Facebook cesspool I was friended by one particular chap that I knew in college. We never really got along all that well, but we ran with the same crowd so we both did what we could to make it work. Most of the time, anyway. For the purpose of this discussion, let's call him "Tim," -- partially because it's convenient to type, but also because that happens to be his real name. I won't mention his last name or whereabouts because I generally try not to do the libel thing, and he's not a public figure; he's a private citizen.

I use the term "citizen" loosely, though, b

Xenix: the little operating system that could (have been)

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:26:00 -0000

The worst of Xenix was still preferable to the best of Windows.

Microsoft had several opportunities to ubiquitize a quality operating system, irrespective of their horrific business practices. They could have built their next-gen OS on top of Xenix. They could have finished the OS/2 project instead of stabbing IBM in the back and doing Windows on top of DOS. They could have even completed Dave Cutler's vision for Windows NT instead of MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE and top-loading all of their crap into the Win32 layer instead of building around the NT microkernel.

They could have done any of the above, and still practiced their bullshit monopolistic business practices, and they could have still taken over the market. In fact, if they had built Presentation Manager on top of Xenix, it's entirely possible that Linux would not exist today, and the X Window System would never have evolved past the days of TWM and Athena Widgets because all the unixheads would have happily moved to the commodity

How to survive "The Collapse"

Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:54:00 -0000

(a practical guide to the completely ridiculous)

Civilization as we know it is about to collapse. It will happen any day now. Just ask your local "survivalist" lunatic. He or she will tell you that it's coming, and it's coming soon.

(We'll set aside, for the moment, the fact that "The Collapse" has been coming "Real Soon Now" for close to two decades.)

Personally, I think the whole "survivalist" movement is a complete waste of time. I'm not saying that our society is stable and our way of life will never be threatened -- not by any means. What I believe, however, is that if anything does happen, it will happen in unexpected and unpreparable ways.

If you take a close look at your unfriendly neighborhood "survivalist" you will see a person with absolutely no social skills whatsoever. This person is completely incapable of functioning in a normal social setting (except, perhaps, with others who share their particular brand of brain damage). This is why th

Breakthrough Technology

Thu, 05 Aug 1999 04:13:00 -0000

Amazing insights into innovative creations

One of the fundamental problems with the progress of technological innovation is that we incur an ever-increasing dependence on energy. Recently, I spent an evening at the movies with the lovely Mrs. F00bar and another couple -- an independent computer consultant and an IT manager for a cellular phone company. Between the two of them, they had at least five personal gadgets, including cell phones, pagers, a Palm Pilot, and some sort of digital organizer gizmo with an acoustic coupler on the back. And I thought to myself ... "the batteries they must go through!"

But that's all about to change. An independent group of scientists from Delaware (there's nothing to do in Delaware, so they spent all their time hanging out in the science lab, I guess) recently patented a technique which harnesses approximately 32,000 kilowatthours from an ordinary 12-ounce can of Pepsi. Sustained load can be up to 3 kilowatts (enough to power your ty

A small tribute

Tue, 19 Jan 1999 04:49:00 -0000

There is a semi-popular cliche that mentions something about some people walking into our lives and then walking right back out, while others leave lasting footprints. Traditions come and go (with the exception of some traditions in my family which nobody wants to bother with anymore but my mother insists on dragging out year after year, but I digress...), but one of our group's more memorable traditions was the weekly "user meetings" held at the North Castle Diner from 1993 through 1997.

In the early days, it was just me, Stu, and Ethan, getting together in the time-honoured nerd tradition to conspire on bizarre and inconceivable networking specifications for our BBS's. Eventually, of course, that particular project reached its maturity, but the diner meets kept on going. Soon, others joined in, and by 1996 we often had ten or more people each week.

Each week, we were greeted by Annette Gall, a truly remarkable waitress and a kind, compassionate human being. Annette put up wit

Welcome to IG's Skeptic Tank

Fri, 28 May 1971 05:10:00 -0000

For several years now I've been intending to start a personal blog. I assured myself that I would begin as soon as I wrote my own blogging software. That's still the plan -- I want to add blogging capabilities into the Citadel system. But those plans are behind schedule, and in the mean time I've missed out on the opportunity to write about various things happening in my life, in the news, in the world, and in general.

Today I had some comments that I posted to my home page, which hasn't yet evolved past the 1990's and is still maintained as static HTML. I was copying those comments to LiveJournal because I have a friend there who I wanted to share them with, and I realized that I had enough bits and pieces sitting around that if I collected them all and back dated them, I'd have a blog that goes back more than a decade. So I did, and here it is. I don't really have a good starting date to associate with this int