A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs High School yearbook

T

his appeared today in The New York Times:

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
Published: October 30, 2011

Mona describes the close relationship that she and Steve shared, and the relationships that he had with his other family members. Then she describes Steve’s last days.

Who was Steve Jobs? If you watch nothing else about Steve, listen to his 2005 Stanford commencement address.

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Another reason that I don’t recommend Norton 360

Norton 360 screenshot

Malware infects a PC despite protection by Norton 360.

 

A couple of years ago, I discovered that Symantec’s Norton 360 prevented Windows’ critical System Restore function from working [Norton 360 has (at least one) fatal flaw]. This flaw placed it on my “Not recommended” list.

For the past few months, suspicious pop-up ads had been appearing on a client’s Windows XP laptop that was protected by a current copy of Norton 360. Recently, it nagged her to purchase disinfection “from Microsoft” for an annual fee. The offer’s many misspellings raised her suspicion that maybe the offer wasn’t actually from Microsoft. A full scan by Norton 360 found no infections, yet the obnoxious pop-ups clearly indicated that the computer was infected..

When I scanned the laptop with SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes’ Antimalware, they discovered 4 malware infections. Since Norton 360 had failed to do its job, I removed it (using Symantec’s software removal tool) and replaced it with Microsoft Security Essentials. Then Security Essentials found another malware infection.

I’m surprised that Norton 360 failed to defend against these infections. Symantec is a serious company and Norton 360 has an impressive user interface with many user-configurable parameters, but in this instance it didn’t work. Microsoft Security Essentials has a less impressive user interface, but it works pretty well.

Nobody (or computer program) is perfect.

I’m fond of saying, “There is no perfect anti-virus program”. All occasionally produce a false negative or a false positive, and relative performance varies from week to week. Av-comparatives.org publishes quarterly results of anti-virus program tests.

I’ve seen other big-name anti-virus programs fail before:

• Trend Micro: Even the best anti-virus / anti-malware strategy isn’t perfect
• Computer Associates: Another big name anti-virus program fails

 

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Defraggler now displays SMART disk data.

Check disk’s health while defragmenting it.

Defraggler screenshot + SMART detail

I just noticed that Piriform’s Defraggler program now includes a page that displays the disk’s SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data. This strikes me as a great idea: when I’m thinking about defragmenting a disk, I want to see how many hours the disk has run, and if it shows signs of imminent failure.

I’m not sure exactly when Piriform added the SMART data display to Defraggler. Version 2.07.346, which I just downloaded, has it. I don’t recall seeing the SMART page in previous versions. Way to go, Piriform!

Relevant articles:

• Use your SMARTs to avoid disk disasters
• Monitor disk’s SMART data within Windows
• When will my hard drive fail?

 

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Blackberry outage hurt RIM.

2nd Q 2009 2nd Q 2010

Last week’s Blackberry outages couldn’t have occurred at a worst time for RIM.

R

esearch In Motion, Ltd., (RIM) has positioned its Blackberry as the smartphone for business people who can’t afford downtime. Its email and instant messaging services use their own servers, which ensure privacy and until last week were pretty reliable.

Last week, on the eve of Apple’s iPhone 4s launch, something in RIM’s European backbone broke, disconnecting Blackberry users from, well, everything. The outage spread to North America and most Blackberry users were without service for about 3 days.

RIM sounded the PR alarm and offered $100 value free apps to its users, but the press isn’t good:

• ZDnet: RIM’s BlackBerry outage: $350 million max hit, but losing enterprise
• Wired: RIM, Blackberry, and The Outage That Dare Not Speak Its Name
• AP: BlackBerry outage creates ripple effect, spreads to North America

The smartphone market is changing quickly. Apple iPhone and Android phone sales are exploding, and Blackberry sales are quickly shrinking. RIM has had to retreat to the corporate market, whose IT managers like the control that RIM’s servers give them.

Everybody else is jumping aboard the iPhone and Android trains, and RIM’s outage last week gave those trains even more fuel.

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com

© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

RIP, Dennis.

Dennis Ritchie 1941 – 2011

The creator of the C programming language and co-creator of UNIX died last week.

Dennis Ritchie died last week of prostate cancer and heart disease. He was 70 years old. I first encountered Kernighan and Ritchie’s classic book “The C Programming Language” around 1983 when I tackled C. (Come to think of it, “C tackled me” is more apt.)

Dr. Ritchie earned a BS in Physics and a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University. In 1967 he was hired by Bell Labs and worked at its headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey until his retirement in 2007.

He created the C programming language and co-created the UNIX operating system. Geoff Duncan light-heartedly asks, Was Dennis Ritchie more important than Steve Jobs?. Mr. Duncan states, “UNIX and C lie at the heart of everything from Internet servers to mobile phones, set-top boxes . . . “

In Dennis Ritchie: the other man inside your iPhone, John Naughton points out that every one of Apple’s products is built upon UNIX. The irony is that Ritchie loved terse user interfaces, while Apple’s user interfaces drip with icons, windows, shadows, etc.

Here’s Dr. Ritchie’s typically modest autobiographical sketch, still hosted by Bell Labs.

Dennis Ritchie laid foundation for today’s computers

Eweek.com published an excellent summary of Dr. Ritchie’s enormous influence.

Both C and Unix allow terse expression: You can do a lot with a little bit of code.

In 1969, Dennis and Ken Thompson initially wrote UNIX in DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) PDP-7 assembler. In an age of batch processing, a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system that could be moved from one type of computer to another was a huge step forward. Dennis created the C programming language because he wanted a programming language which allowed faster development than assembler, could be used to develop operating systems, and could run on any computer hardware. Then he and Ken Thompson rewrote most of UNIX in C, which made it portable. They implemented UNIX on a DEC PDP-11 and A.T.&T. announced UNIX to the world in 1973.

The Book

I describe C as a low-level language with high-level constructs. It’s not my favorite language because its flexibility allows programmers to write poorly-documented and buggy code. C requires that the programmer know precisely what he’s doing. Many of today’s buffer over-run exploits by malware are possible because C’s free-form nature allows vulnerable applications to be written (by programmers who don’t know precisely what they’re doing).

Dennis Ritchie’s legacy

Most of the Internet’s backbone runs on servers whose operating systems are UNIX or its derivatives. JavaScript and C++ are direct descendents of C. Linux, Android, and Apple’s Mac OS and iOS are direct descendents of UNIX. Dennis Ritchie was a true heavyweight. He didn’t use his talent to make billions of dollars, and he’s unknown to the general public, but his influence will continue to be felt for many decades.

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Most people mourn Steve Jobs. Some people don’t.

Steve Jobs holding a MacBook Air (at MacWorld Conference & Expo 2008 – Moscone Center – San Francisco) photo: Matthew Yohe

Not everyone agreed with Steve about the proprietary nature of Apple products.

A

midst the outpouring of grief that’s followed the death of Steve Jobs, I was surprised to read that Richard Stallman, the champion of open source software, wrote, “I’m glad he’s gone.”

Read ZDNet article Free software founder, Richard M. Stallman is glad Jobs is gone, written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

Richard Stallman has always been outspoken, but this is unseemly. He added, “I didn’t say that I’m glad that he’s dead. I’m glad that he’s gone.”

Who’s Richard Stallman?

He’s a brilliant programmer who loudly advocates open-source software. He might describe himself as a libertarian or an anarchist. We owe a lot to him. He created the concept of Free software, and coined the term “copyleft” to describe its licensing terms.

Anyone who uses Linux is using software that was written by Mr. Stallman. Annoyed by A.T.&T.’s license for UNIX, in 1984 he undertook the creation of his own UNIX-like operating system, which he named “GNU”. He created all of the UNIX-like utilities, but before he completed the kernel, Linus Torvald’s Linux appeared. Stallman’s open-source GNU was merged with Torvald’s open-source Linux. We call it Linux, but its proper name is GNU/Linux.

Richard Stallman artwork: h2g2bob (David Batley)

Why Stallman’s opinion matters

Over the years Mr. Stallman has decried most commercial software, not just Apple’s. He has a major point: if it weren’t for Stallman’s GNU Project, Linus Torvalds’ Linux, and the thousands and thousands of other open-source developers, we’d be paying a “Microsoft tax” on our GPSs, Android phones, controllers of all sorts, most of the Internet’s web servers, etc. In a very real sense, the open-source concept and Mr. Stallman’s Free Software Foundation have kept money in our pockets, rather than giving it to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and other software magnates. For this, I’m grateful.

I support the open-source idea, and benefit by using open-source software, but I think that Mr. Stallman could be more considerate of Steve’s friends and family.

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

How not to install Internet service.

I knew that Comcast was not a business-grade ISP (despite their ads), but this low-rent installation surprised even me.

A friend recently (against my recommendation) switched his business’ Internet Service Provider (ISP) from AT&T DSL to Comcast cable. I visited his small business to see the new installation.

Roughly 75 feet separates the outside walls of his adjoining shop and office. They share a common supporting wall. The existing AT&T phone and DSL service entrance point is in his office. For some reason, the new Comcast cable service entrance point is in his shop. Rather than run a cable from the Comcast service entrance point to his existing router in the office, the installer chose to terminate at the new Comcast entrance point, install a second Comcast router in the office, and link them wirelessly. I’d estimate that he saved about 1 hour of labor.

This should have failed a quality control inspection.

If I had been on site, I wouldn’t have accepted this installation. Why? Because this installation violates Russ Bellew’s First Law Of WiFi: Wireless should be your last choice, not your first choice. It also violates my Second Law Of WiFi, which is If both points are fixed (not mobile), connect them with cable, not wireless. Worse, by needlessly occupying a WiFi channel, he’s crowded limited WiFi spectrum and restricted the business owner’s future WiFi expansion possibilities (and maybe those of his neighbors).

Q: Does WiFi ever make sense between fixed points?

A: Yes. Here’s one case:
Connect buildings with WiFi

Although the bandwidth of 802.11g is published as 54 Mbps, its real data throughput is about half of that, due to 802.11’s high protocol overhead. Also, 802.11g is half-duplex, as opposed to 100baseT’s full duplex communication. In short, wireless should have been the installer’s last choice.

I’d guess that to run a cable from the outside wall of the shop to the outside wall of the office would require about 1 hour of labor. The cable could be run either within the building or along its outside wall. This must have looked like hard work to the installer.

 

The old Bell System published and adhered to its standards and practices, which specified the right way to do everything. Customer premise wiring, when done by a Bell System installer, was done properly.

Does Comcast have any quality control?

This installation was probably done by a Comcast contractor, who’s paid per installation. He wants to complete each job as quickly as possible, even if that means taking shortcuts. What standards must Comcast contractors follow? Who oversees quality control of business premise installations?

I see dumb WiFi setups every week, but they’re always cobbled together by naïve end-users. This is the first time that I’ve seen a dumb WiFi lash-up by an ISP. This is one more piece of evidence that Comcast is not REALLY ready for business class service (despite their advertisements).

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

D’oh! I forgot Ada Lovelace Day.

Ada Lovelace, 19th century British mathematician (1836) Painter: Margaret Carpenter (1793-1872)

October 7 honors the first computer programmer.

Ada Lovelace was a gifted mathematician who was born in 1815, the daughter of poet Lord Byron. She composed plans that calculated Bernoulli number sequences for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Today we’d call these plans a “program”. She also proposed that the steam-driven Analytical Engine could not only perform arithmetic, but could compose music and create graphics. This was around 1845! The Analytical Engine was never completed and Ada died of cancer at age 36. She never saw the Analytical Engine execute her program.

A modern computer language, Ada, is named in her honor. I’ve been fascinated with this language because it contains features similar to Pascal that result in reliable programs. It’s designed for use in real-time applications and is used today to create fly-by-wire and similar critical systems. In 1987 the US Department of Defense mandated that Ada would be the only acceptable language for new defense systems.

In 2009, some Brits set aside a day to commemorate Ada Lovelace as well as all women in technology and science. That day was originally in March. It was moved to October 7 this year. A website, findingada.com, has been created for Ada Lovelace Day.

“Babbage intended to use punched cards to feed instructions and data into the Analytical Engine. The smaller cards are ‘Operational Cards’ which specify the mathematical operations to be performed – multiplication, division, addition or subtraction. The larger cards are ‘Variable Cards’ which dictate where the numbers to be operated on are found in the machine and where the results should be placed.” Punched cards for programming the Analytical Engine, 1834-71 · Science Museum, London Photo: Karoly Lorentey

Like Homer Simpson forgetting Marge’s birthday, I forgot Ada Lovelace Day. D’oh! Maybe next year.

Further reading

Learn about Ada Lovelace from these sources:

• Women in the History of Computing Technology
• Wikipedia

Ada Lovelace reported in her notes on the Analytical Engine: “Mr. Babbage believes he can, by his engine, form the product of two numbers, each containing twenty figures, in three minutes”. By comparison the Harvard Mark I [large electromechanical calculator c 1944] could perform the same task in just six seconds. A modern PC can do the same thing in well under a millionth of a second. (from Wikipedia) Learn more about Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine from:

• Wikipedia

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

RIP, Steve.

Apple said in a statement, “We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.” He was 56 years old and suffered from pancreatic cancer. This is very sad news.

NPR has put up a a continuously updated page with tributes to the man who repeatedly revolutionized how we use technology.

Steve Wozniak comments: (video clip)

AT&T wants the whole telecom pie (again).

photo: Mattia Luigi Nappi

If the US FCC and DOJ allow AT&T to buy T-Mobile, there won’t be many crumbs left on the table.

On

its surface, the attempt by AT&T to purchase T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom is clearly anti-competitive. Now it seems that beneath its surface, it’s clearly anti-competitive, as well.

Joan Lappin, in a Forbes Magazine article titled For ATT, It’s Deja Vu All Over Again, Even The Same D.C. Courthouse points out the absurdity of AT&T claims that this “merger” would be a good thing for consumers. Read the informative comments that follow the article.

Broadband Reports yesterday published Group Laments AT&T T-Mobile Deal ‘Cloak of Secrecy’ by Karl Bode. The article closes with:

“AT&T’s claims of job creation, network coverage expansion and infrastructure investment improvement appear to be entirely fabricated when simply examining AT&T’s own data. Other AT&T claims, such as the idea that eliminating T-Mobile and weakening Sprint would lower prices and increase competition, are easier to disprove simply by looking at history and reality.”

I’m

a happy T-Mobile customer. Their service is good, and their pricing seems fair. For speech-quality reasons, I prefer GSM.to CDMA cell systems. SIM cards, used worldwide by GSM phones, are a good idea, too. In the US, AT&T and T-Mobile are the only nationwide GSM carriers. Everyone else uses CDMA (whose voice-quality is inferior). I continue to hear complaints from i-Phone users of AT&T’s mobile service. I don’t want any part of that. Any bureaucrat, elected or appointed, who signs off on this proposed “merger” (it’s actually closer to a devouring) should be removed from his or her cushy (and probably paid-for by AT&T) position.

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com

© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Google Analytics Premium is now available (at a premium).

Graphic: Google

Google introduces Google Analytics Premium. When they say “Premium”, they aren’t kidding: it costs $150,000 per year.

Google Analytics is a website owner’s favorite tool for analyzing website usage: it shows where users came from, their geographical location, what pages they visited, how long they lingered, etc. It’s available free of charge from Google.

One limitation of Google Analytics is that its website usage reports are delayed by 24 hours. If you can’t wait that long, now you can sign up with Google Analytics Premium. It offers real-time website usage information, training, a Service Level Agreement (SLA), 24 hour telephone support, and a dedicated account executive. Its cost: $150,000 per year.

For high-volume e-commerce sites with time-sensitive items (think eBay, Amazon, etc.), Google Analytics Premium may make sense.

For now, I’ll remain with the plain-Jane free of charge Google Analytics.

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com

© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Facebook’s Timeline is a new way to expose yourself.

Exhibitionists will love Facebook’s new Timeline.

Logo: Facebook

Facebook continues to skate on thin privacy ice. Until now, if you posted on Facebook, you posted contemporary information about yourself. Facebook just announced Timeline, which allows you to post your entire personal history as well.

This is great for Facebook. With personal history information from millions of Facebook users, Facebook will be able to charge even more money for access to that information. Facebook’s users won’t see one penny of that revenue.

What’s scarey is that when you place a “Visit my Facebook page” link, you’ll be inviting people to learn all about you.

What do I do with Facebook? Nothing. I don’t trust Facebook because of its continued lack of respect for user privacy. In fact, Facebook’s business model is built upon disrespect for personal privacy.

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com

© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Why I like Mozilla Firefox

Custom tailor your web browser to suit your needs.

icon from LiNsta pack v0.3

For years, I’ve used Mozilla Firefox as my default web browser. In that time, Internet Explorer has improved, but the wealth of add-ons for Mozilla Firefox keeps me with Mozilla Firefox.

Recently, Mozilla has released version 7.0.1 of Firefox, which uses less memory than Firefox 6, which had a lifetime of about one month. Traditionally, Mozilla has been quick to respond to security threats. The fact that it doesn’t execute Active-X code is an advantage, from a security point of view.

Firefox’s add-ons set it apart.
There’s a huge selection of add-ons available, including powerful add-ons that find package tracking numbers on a page and display their in-transit status, and others that track stocks and commodities, etc. Here are my favorite Mozilla Firefox add-ons (cue Julie Andrews’ “These are a few of my favorite things”):

• AdBlock Plus: This prevents advertisements on web pages from displaying. You simply don’t see them, although you can choose to see them when you wish. (When installing it, be sure to subscribe to at least one filter, or it won’t block anything.)

 

• Cookie Culler: Control which cookies you wish to protect from deletion, and which ones you wish to delete at the start of each session. It’s simple and effective. (I choose the “Delete Unprotected cookies on Startup” option, and drag and drop the cookie button on to the navigation bar.)

 

• Noscript: If you want to prevent websites from taking actions that you object to, noscript is the add-on for you. Caveat: by default, it disables all client-side scripting on all pages. It will take a bit of experimenting on your favorite websites until you discover exactly how much scripting power you wish to grant each website. Once you’ve tweaked noscript, it’s great.

 

• Torbutton: Toggle TOR on and off with the press of a button. (TOR is The Onion Router, a way to hide your true IP address from websites.) It’s bundled with Vidalia bundle, and not available from Firefox’s built-in add-ons.

 

In some cases, Firefox interprets HTML tags slightly differently than Internet Explorer does. This can be maddening for web site developers. I’ve read that Firefox adheres strictly to HTML standards, but there are rare cases when its display doesn’t make sense to me.

The name “Mozilla”? In the early days of the web, Mosaic was the leading web browser. Netscape (Mozilla Project’s ancestor) hoped to crush Mosaic like Godzilla crushed buildings.

Update: October 23, 2011 Steve Gibson (GRC), a programmer whose opinion I respect, found that Firefox 7 was chewing through memory, to the extent that when left with maybe 2 dozen tabs open, it consumed 1.8 GB(!). He reinstalled previous versions and found that every Firefox version since 4.0 consumed way too much memory (over time). He’s reverted to Firefox version 3 dot something. I may do the same, or just switch to Google Chrome. – RB

 

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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Gordon Welchman, Codebreaker

Gordon Welchman was an Englishman who, while working on decoding German messages at Bletchley Park during World War II, invented traffic analysis. His idea was that even if one couldn’t decipher message contents, just tabulating who messaged whom, when, and how frequently, lent knowledge about the enemy.

After the war, he emigrated to America, where he became an American citizen and taught the first computer course at M.I.T. He worked for Remington Rand and eventually for the MITRE Corporation, where he enhanced traffic analysis technology and helped develop C³ (Command, Control, and Communication) systems.

Following the publication of his book The Hut Six Story in 1982, which detailed the work of his Hut Six group at Bletchley Park, his security clearance was revoked. This killed his career in intelligence.

Today we call the information that surrounds a message “metadata”.

Snowboarding NYC, Jan 2016

Well, both snowboarding and skiing. Reminds me of water skiing. The middle east coast states received buckets of snow this weekend and these New Yorkers made the best of it. Yes, that looks like Broadway in Times Square.

A 2000 year old computer

Nova: The 2000 Year-Old Computer – Decoding the Antikythera Mechanism (first aired on American PBS television network in 2013)

“It re-writes the history of technology.”

 

The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Jo Marchant explains: In search of lost time

Hillary Clinton-approved email server

I love this parody.  It’s a humorous advertisement for your own mail server:

Do you run a government agency but hate complying with the law?  Then you need DC Matic, the Hillary Clinton-approved email server!

credit: Written and performed by Remy.  Video directed and edited by Meredith Bragg

What’s Hillary hiding?  Classified emails?  Sure.  Evidence of her negligence in Benghazi that led to the murders of US citizens?  Of course.  Security breaches via assistant Huma Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood connections?  Probably.  No, the ticking time bomb in this server is bribery.  Maybe treason as well.  She’s hiding written evidence of her deals that traded State Department help in exchange for large donations to the Clinton Foundation and large fees for speaking engagements by Bill Clinton.

Putney Swope and Barack Obama

Today’s laughably corrupt Obama regime is life imitating art. Which art? Cinema. Whacked-out cinema. Farce. Namely, 1969’s Putney Swope:

Both Swope and Obama were elected to office by fools who suffer from chronic white guilt.

In 1969, Putney Swope announced:

The changes I’m gonna make will be minimal. I’m not gonna rock the boat. Rockin’ the boat’s a drag. What you do is sink the boat.

In 2008, Barack Obama bragged:

. . . we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

Mr. Obama is trying to transform America, alright. Transform it from a prosperous capitalist economy governed by a constitutional republic to a bankrupt socialist economy governed by a corrupt tyrannical dictatorship. Barack is following Putney’s credo, “What you do is sink the boat.”

YouTube subtitle humor

Here’s a funny video that’s supposedly an Iranian negotiator recounting the stupidity of Messrs Obama and Kerry:

The sardonic subtitles were added by Madison McQueen. (She apparently is the granddaughter of actor Steve McQueen.)

The best line:

I’ve had tougher negotiations over a falafel sandwich!

I first saw this sort of humor in a video clip taken from a biography of Hitler: United broke Hitler’s guitar, too!.

I like this sort of humorous subtitling. And I like its message: Obama and Kerry are fools.

Wanna see jitterbug? Wanna hear rock & roll?

Check out this video:

The tune, “Slow Down”, is performed on piano and sung by its composer, Larry Williams. He was from New Orleans (of course). The tune, ringing with ninth chords, was released on disc in 1958. I think that the dancers are from a 1950s Hollywood rock & roll movie. Larry also composed Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Bad Boy, and Bony Moronie — classic rock tunes, all. He was born in 1935 and died on this date, January 7, in 1980.

In the mid-1950s, Williams inherited star billing from Little Richard (who’d forsaken rock and roll for religion) at New Orleans’ record label Specialty Records.

While Williams was alive, the Beatles paid their respects by admirably covering Larry’s Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Slow Down, and Bad Boy. I’m amazed that Larry Williams isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Extra credit assignment: Compare and contrast the Beatles’ cover of Slow Down with Larry Williams’ original. This clip includes the fab four wailing in Liverpool’s Cavern Club: (If YouTube has taken down this video clip, you can hear the same recording with groovy rock and roll clips (sorry — requires Flash) from 1950s America and early Beatles. Sorry for the Flash format.)

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, et al on YouTube

I’m delighted to discover that the video of Joni Mitchell’s classic Shadows and Light concert (1980) can be viewed in full (1h 13m) on YouTube. Supporting players are Jaco Pastorius on bass, Pat Metheny on guitar, Michael Brecker on sax, Don Alias on drums, Lyle Mays on keyboards, and The Persuasions. It’s among my favorite videos of a concert performance.

Jaco Pastorius

Jaco was a Fort Lauderdale kid who began playing in rock bands around town in a variety of clubs: She, The 4 O’Clock CLub, The Village Zoo, The Flying Machine, The Button, Bachelors III, Ocean Mist . . . When I first heard Jaco in the early 1970s, he was playing bass for straight-ahead local rock bands. He graduated to more jazz- and fusion- related music and put his unique fretless Fender bass stamp on Weather Report. I’ve heard bass players tell me that they tried to imitate Jaco’s technique, but gave up trying; they claim that Jaco changed what it meant to play electric bass guitar. Jaco’s friend Pat Metheny, who plays a beautiful lead guitar in this concert, is a University of Miami music school graduate.

Jaco seemed to still have his act together when he played this concert. Wikipedia has a good Jaco biography. He had a rapid rise to the top followed by a quick ride back down again. I had musician friends c 1984-87 who were torn up watching their friend Jaco dismantle his life. This Warner Brothers recording artist and Down Beat Hall of Fame member was sleeping on park benches and shooting baskets in a local public park.

Michael Brecker and Don Alias died a few years ago.

This is a classic performance by master musicians who were at the top of their games. Too bad it couldn’t last forever.

FCC may fine NBC for Miley Cyrus “Bangerz” show

According to Rolling Stone magazine, the FCC is considering disciplining NBC for airing an indecent performance on July 6, Miley Cyrus’ “Bangerz Tour”. I watched it. It was provocative, but artful. Bertolt Brecht would have loved the production: live dancers against rear-projection oversized animation with creative costumes and lighting. I loved it. Some of the images, such as Miley riding a giant “Mr. Wiener”, were sexually suggestive.

Click to stream or download full 862 Megabyte video performance

The concert (recorded in Barcelona) reminded me of Madonna’s shows twenty-five years ago. Both performers have acceptable contralto voices, energetic dance skills, and assemble exciting Brechtian spectacles. I love the costuming and choreopgraphy. Shocking? “Bangerz” pushed the limits on prime-time American TV, I suppose. But that week on television, the atrocious performance by the Brazilian football team was truly shocking.

I’d prefer that the FCC take no action on this. They have enough serious issues on their plate already. Censoring art is, in my opinion, a slippery slope for any government agency . . . and I think that this production can be labeled “art”. Here’s the full show (862MB H264 1h 25m mp4 video file, 720 x 404 pixel) for download or streaming:

Click to stream or download full 862 Megabyte video performance

You’ll need a fast Internet connection to smoothly stream this. You might be better to download the file and then play it locally with a good video player such as VLC.

Is it Miley’s performance or just modern low distortion recording technique that for the first time makes John Lennon’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” lyrics (at 44m 35s) sound so . . . so . . . clear, logical, and complete?

What do you think?

How are modern integrated circuits manufactured?

I’ve worked with integrated circuits (I.C.s) since the 1960s, but haven’t been involved in their manufacture — only their application.

Intel Haswell wafer with a pin for scale
photo: Intel Free Press

Today’s integrated circuit manufacture is a high stakes capital intensive business whose players use trade secrets to maintain their market advantage. I’ve never been inside an I.C. “fab” (factory), so it was a treat to find an hour-long presentation by an industry manufacturing engineer on YouTube. The technologies used at nano dimensions are mind-boggling.

Here’s the excellent presentation, in full:

The speaker mentions that lithographic imaging of the mask is now being done at 193 nanometer (nm). As you can see, we’re well above visible light and on our way to x-rays(!). Here’s the electromagnetic spectrum in that region:

Click for full-size
graphic by: Shigeru23

The presentation is aimed at the layperson and is filled with surprises. For instance, one gigabyte of semiconductor memory can be produced on a flat substrate within the diameter of a human hair. I give it two (gloved) thumbs up.

Technology and Politics

“The price of avoiding politics is being ruled by your inferiors.” — Plato

Henry Ford’s comment on confidence

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

Henry Ford

How to program, lesson 1

Good programming advice:

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. — Lewis Carroll

Infinity

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. — Albert Einstein

Steve & Jimi on choices

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. — Steve Jobs

I’m the one that’s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to. — Jimi Hendrix

Albert Einstein liked simple language.

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

— Albert Einstein

Both aphorisms have been attributed to Dr. Einstein. I mentioned in Plain English that,

In my experience, the best scientists and engineers explain complex concepts by using simple words in simple sentences. Dolts, on the other hand, make everything sound complicated.

I’m glad that Dr. Einstein agreed. (After watching his video biography, I now think of him as “Uncle Albert”.)

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Those who dare, risk failure.
Those who don’t, ensure it.

Walt Mossberg, WSJ Tech Critic

I just listened to an excellent interview with Walt Mossberg, who since 1991 wrote a weekly computer industry column for the Wall Street Journal. Walt’s now retired. Leo Laporte, an industry podcaster, coaxes some great stories from Mr. Mossberg. 

Walt’s perspective was always that of a user — not a tech freak. Most industry reporters are techies who don’t appreciate that most of us don’t care about the inner workings and secret mechanisms of computers.

Walt speaks a bit about his long relationships with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. (Walt sat in the passenger seat as Gates, frustrated by traffic, drove his Lexus for miles on the road’s shoulder.)

It’s a pleasant and informative hour-long conversation. 

[Triangulation (MP3)] Triangulation 310: Walt Mossberg

http://podplayer.net/#/?id=39772523 via @PodcastAddict

ABBA reconsidered

In the 1970s and early 1980s, I loved ABBA’s music. I was pleased to discover this recent critique, in both spoken and written form. I didn’t realize that ABBA were considered politically incorrect in their home country.

The world according to ABBA (audio clip)

Intelligent Life magazine‘s Matthew Sweet observes that ABBA’s songs progressed from naiveté through sophistication to melancholy. As Matthew says, “Many of their songs are about accepting the failure of relationships”.

Here’s the companion article, Thank You for the Music, by Matthew Sweet, from a recent issue of Intelligent Life. Both the article and the audio clip stem from his visit to Stockholm’s ABBA Museum.

Truths about swimming

These observations will help you get the most from your swimming. (They’re from Australian podcast Effortless Swimming). Each is a short audio clip of less than ten minutes.  (The first truth is that one or two swim workouts a week won’t cut it.)

  Part one

 

  Part two

 

  Part three

I enjoy listening to all Effortless Swimming podcasts.

Taking Back the English Language

I listened to KERA’s Krys Boyd interview author Steven Pinker about one of my favorite topics: plain English. Mr. Pinker authored The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. He claims that education often interferes with a person’s clarity. He refers to this wordy English dialect as academese, which is similar to corporate hack boilerplate.

I agree. Most academic papers are terribly written, as is the text in many corporate websites.

Both dialects employ the passive voice and zombie nouns: nouns created from verbs. For example, instead of appearing, there is an appearance. Instead of cancelling, there is a cancellation.

Mr. Pinker closes with the “prime directive” of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style:

Omit needless words.

Why not a movie about Ada?

Now that not just one, but two movies (Breaking The Code and The Imitation Game) have been produced about Alan Turing, it’s time we had a movie about Ada Lovelace. She seems to have possessed an unusual combination of precise reasoning and imagination, strong will, and feminine charm. Plus, she was in the middle of a tug o war between her feuding parents, poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella.

Why is Ada important? She’s acknowledged to be the first computer programmer (c 1840!). Like Mozart and Turing, her life was tragically cut short at a young age. I propose this biopic today because it’s Ada Lovelace Day!

BBC Great Lives 28-minute audio portrait of Ada Lovelace.

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695

While verifying quotation authenticity, I found a useful — and delightful — website, quoteinvestigator.com, which tries to chase down the origins of quotations.

W.C, Fields in 1935

The most recent entry quotes an aging W.C. Fields, when discovered reading a Bible, explaining,

I’m looking for loopholes.

.

New and Improved Method

If you’re using Windows 7 or 8.1, and you’re sick of being nagged by Microsoft’s pop-up to upgrade to Windows 10, go to the Ultimate Outsider website and download and install their GWX Control Panel. It’s received rave reviews. Cost: gratis. Here’s the full description.

Microsoft Strikes Again – How to NOT Upgrade to Windows 10

 

Update, April 3, 2016: Steve Gibson, founder of GRC (Gibson Research Corp), has written a great little freeware utility that also blocks upgrades to Windows 10. Steve writes most of his code in assembler, so his utilities are tiny. He calls this newest utility Never10. He’s created a page dedicated to Never10, where you may download it for free. It’s only 81 kilobyes in size and doesn’t require installation on your Windows PC.  You need just run it once to turn off upgrades to Windows 10, and run it again to allow upgrades to Windows 10. Short and sweet, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Save time when installing application programs on a PC.

Installing two or more application programs on a PC can chew up your time as you wade through web pages, download prompts that don’t always work, and questions and answers. Now ninite.com (http://ninite.com/) does this tedious work for you. I’ve tried it on a few PCs and it’s worked flawlessly. Install everything in one easy step on your brand-new Windows 7 PC!

 

Thanks to The Real Deal podcast for this tip.

Visit my website: http://russbellew.com