Stilgherrian » ibm

Links for 12 September 2008 through 14 September 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:00:52 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 12 September 2008 through 14 September 2008, arranged thanks to a raspberry muffin:

Beecher v Devine: The threat to public trust journalism | Crikey: Crikey publisher Eric Beecher’s response to Frank Devine’s attack. Today’s class exercise: compare and contrast the two styles of argument, with particular reference to the “straw man” argument and other logical fallacies.
Keep Beecher from the hack lagoon | The Australian: Estimable columnist Frank Devine attacks Crikey publisher Eric Beecher. Today’s class exercise: identify and describe all of the logical fallacies and rhetorical techniques he uses.
The Future Of Journalism | TPN :: GDay World: One take on yesterday’s Future of Journalism conference in Brisbane. Here Cameron Reilly makes the point that the industry is changing mnot because of a technological revolution but an economic revolution.
2008 NSW Local Council Elections | ABC: Full raw results for the NSW local government elections held yesterday. Enough votes counted so far to indicate trends, but thanks to ~~proportional representation~~ preferential voting most councils’ results won’t be known officially or a week or two.
Semi Automatic Ground Environment | Wikipedia: Wikipedia’s artice on SAGE, the first computer-assisted nuclear defence system.
On Guard! The Story of SAGE | Internet Archive: A lovely 15-minute promotional film about SAGE, the Semi Automatic Ground Environment, the first computer-assisted nuclear defence system. Be astounded by the technological breakthrough of the Visual Display Unit!

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Links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008

del.icio.us — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:42:00 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008, gathered with care and compassion:

Social networking comes of age, sort of | MISaustralia.com: Renai LeMay’s article for the Australian Financial Review, based on material gathered at PubCamp.
IT List | Skippy’s List: “42 Things That I Am No Longer Allowed To Do in IT”, beginning with “1 Not allowed to randomly rickroll users upon login to the application”. Somewhat amusing.
Seven dirty words | Wikipedia: The seven English words comedian George Carlin listed in his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”, and a history of the furore this routine started.
7 things you can’t say on the Internet | evolvingWe: Following comedian George Carlin’s death, Josh Legard compiled this list. Read it, digest it, help prevent groupthink.
La Boheme - Restaurant Reviews | smh.com.au: I’m told we should go to this restaurant some time. Gotta love a review which starts, “Those of us who fancy a bit of porcine action…”.
Direct Note Access :: celemony_: Peter Neubäcker’s new Melodyne version 2 software can identify and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material. This is extremely cool, and extremely important.
Top 500 supercomputers: Welcome to the petaflop generation | NetworkWorld.com Community: Welcome to the petaflop generation. The new most powerful supercomputer in the world is IBM’s US$100 million Roadrunner system at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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Wednesday, in which I fail to learn about Web 2.0

Stilgherrian — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:37:24 +0000

Well if you were following my Twitter feed just now, you’d know that I abandoned the “Web 2.0″ presentation put on for the ACS Web Technology SIG. 15 minutes in, I hadn’t heard anything I didn’t already know, and there was no sign that would change. Disappointed.

It unfolded like this:

I arrive just after Mr IBM started. Room of cubicle droids are astounded by a YouTube video of “Does it blend?” Much polite lolz. Apparently you can upload your own videos to YouTube.
We’re told there’s a trend away from the desktop. Gosh. Does that explains how I can Twitter from my phone? I notice there’s no pizza left. I don’t want pizza anyway.
Mr IBM introduces Runescape as an example of a virtual world, and then shows a static screenshot of IBM’s tennis presence in Second Life from the Australian Open. Why not actually demo SL?
Audience member asks what the most popular site is. Mr IBM says it’s hard to say, probably BigPond in Australia and hard to say globally. Audience member asks if he means “the web or Second Life”. SL, he says. Sheesh, if you don’t know for sure, just tell ‘em it’s the furrysex dungeon and go for lolz, yeah?
I decide there’s no way I can raid the chocolate biscuits without drawing attention to myself, and I’m not learning anything new.
Pub.

The guy from IBM would be wrapping up and chatting with the crowd about now. I’ve already gone to the pub, had a beer and a “Thai” chicken salad, and posted this. That’s Web 2.0.

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Reminder: ACS Web 2.0 presentation tonight

Stilgherrian — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:13:42 +0000

A reminder: I’m going to the Australian Computer Society’s Web Technology SIG’s presentation on Web 2.0, in Sydney from 1800 tonight. Apparently the redoubtable Laurel Papworth will be there too, so the presenter from IBM ain’t gonna have an easy time.

I’ll be Twittering it at twitter.com/stilgherrian and writing something afterwards. You don’t need a Twitter account to follow what I’ll say. My Twitterings also appear in the sidebar of my website, but only refreshed every 15 minutes or so.

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ACS Web 2.0 presentation

Stilgherrian — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:15:39 +0000

Next Wednesday 6 February, I’ll be going to the Australian Computer Society’s Web Technology SIG’s presentation on Web 2.0. Dunno if I’ll learn anything new, but I’ll post something about it. Anyone have any questions for the presenter, who’s from IBM?

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The Internet, 1994

Stilgherrian — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:54:23 +0000

“A global electronic mall is under construction,” enthuses this wonderful promotional video from 1994 extolling the virtues of the Internet. “Come, take a look at the future we can build together,” says Digital Equipment Corporation, once one of the world’s most important computer companies.

Here [on the Internet], the smallest of companies can search and shop on a global scale for the best resources and products at the best prices. Here those same small companies can market their own abilities and products in a global marketplace. This means a new array of risks and opportunities. In the future you’ll be forced to compete with distant companies you’ve never encountered before. And you’ll be able to expand to new markets at low cost.

Only 13 years on, watching this video is already a retro experience. The grey pages of the Mosaic web browser were state of the art in 1994 — pictures as well as text! 1994 is still a year before the Internet exploded into popular awareness. A year before Netscape and Yahoo! and Amazon.com and Windows 95. A year before I was headhunted to move to Sydney to play in the dot.com boom.

For me, there’s two levels of nostalgia in his video — nostalgia for the Internet before it really did become that “shopping mall”, and nostalgia for Digital.

Digital Equipment Corporation made the most popular scientific computers from the late 1960s. The PDP-10 mainframe (later DECsystem-10) was at the heart of every decent computing science department in the 70s.

But what every programmer wanted was the coolest toy of all, the PDP-11 minicomputer. From a programmers point of view it was well-engineered, it was designed for mass production — and it just looked so goddam cool.

I never encountered a PDP-11 in real life, so I never saw those glorious purple buttons with my own eyes. But at university I did play with its successor, the VAX-11 — essentially a souped-up PDP-11 with integrated circuits instead of transistors — and soon understood why programmers thought it was so good. It just worked.

The BSD Unix operating system which underpinned the Internet and which inspired Linux was first written for PDP-11s and Vaxen (the accepted plural of “VAX”). They inspired the design of Motorola’s microprocessors — clean and simple to program — which were used by Apple’s early machines right through to only two years ago. Much cleaner and more logical than the clunky Intel processors which powered IBM’s PC and its clones.

Digital made computers designed by programmers for programmers — it was as simple as that.

“Digital is here already as a leader in the field,” boasts the video. But alas Digital is no more. “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home,” said Digital’s founder, Ken Olsen. But he was wrong. The minicomputer market disappeared as the PC revolution took hold. Digital was bought out by Compaq, who in turn were bought out by HP.

Look at that video a couple of times. Remember, that’s only 13 years ago. Now look at the Internet available right in front of you now — and try to imagine what it’ll all be like in another 13 years.

Thanks to Memex 1.1 for the pointer and further observations.