Dave Barry’s Year In Review, 2013 edition

Dave’s summary this year includes plenty of references to on-line phenomena. From The Miami Herald: Dave Barry’s Year In Review, 2013 edition:

In technology news, Microsoft, acknowledging widespread consumer dissatisfaction with Windows 8, announces that it has been chosen as the operating system for the much-anticipated Obamacare website.

and

Weather scientists at both the Weather Channel and Colorado State University, using sophisticated computer models, predict that the 2013 hurricane season will be unusually active. These scientists are immediately recruited to work on the much-anticipated rollout of Obamacare.

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

Windows XP is losing popularity

I used Statcounter to report on the mix of desktop operating systems seen worldwide by websites with Statcounter. In two years, the percentage of Windows XP users has declined from over 40% of website visitors to a little over 20%, while Windows 7 use has grown to over 50%.

Many small businesses remain XP users. Aside from Microsoft ceasing to support (i.e., patch security holes) XP in April 2014, most businesses could continue to use Windows XP, but this will make them vulnerable to new virus exploits.

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

Google Maps for bicycles needs work

Last Thanksgiving, I again cycled 19 miles to a friend’s house. Again, Google Maps on my Android phone helped, but revealed flaws in its bicycle routes. It tried to route me about four miles out of my way.

While on Stirling Road, rather than routing me directly westbound on Stirling Road, Google Maps wanted me to head a couple miles north to Griffin Road, head west to Flamingo Road, then head south for about two miles to Stirling Road.

This route would make sense only if Stirling Road were impassable. In fact, Stirling Road is friendlier to bicycles than Griffin Road. (Google Maps correctly suggested that cars use Stirling Road.)

Afterward, I used Google Maps’ user feedback facility to inform Google of this bug. With luck, Google will correct it before next Thanksgiving.

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

NSA surveillance lawful, judge says

Today a New York-based federal judge ruled that NSA’s surveillance of telephone traffic data is lawful. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/25529677

This contradicts the 16 December ruling by a California-based federal judge, who ruled that the NSA’s telephone surveillance is “probably unconstitutional”.

I guess that this critical question needs to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alan Turing pardoned for 1952 “crime”

English mathematician Alan Turing, who in 1952 was convicted of “gross indecency” (read: homosexuality), today received a pardon from Queen Elizabeth. His death in 1954 was ruled a suicide. His work at Bletchley Park had led to the breaking of the German naval Enigma code during WW2. BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315

Thanks to Mike Cole for the headzup.

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

Against the wind

I was thinking about biking and how much pleasure it’s been over the decades, from my first tricycle, through my 20-inch bike with training wheels, through a succession of bikes of all types.

One emotion runs through my memories of all of my bikes: freedom. The only bad memories involve headwinds. Hours and hours of headwinds.

In the 1960s I attended college in the middle of Kansas. I had no car, and saved my money for a new Schwinn Continental (a gorgeous but heavy 10-speed bike). I’d regularly ride that bike about 20 miles to Salina, KS. The roads were flat, but the never-ending wind was a killer. I’d not yet learned about the near-necessity of padded bicycle shorts or gloves. The rides would just beat me up, especially if I faced a headwind both northbound and southbound. (Yes, it happened sometimes — a front would come through and the wind would shift direction by 180 degrees. Result? Forty miles in first and second gear!)

Last month I was amused to find a Kansas bicycle podcast and the first thing that they mentioned was the difficulty of cycling into the wind. That persistent Kansas wind.

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

Kingsbury Commitment, 1913

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Bell telephone system’s regulated monopoly.

Bell System logo in 1900

Until December 1913, the Bell system, under the leadership of Theodore Vail, had aggressively absorbed smaller independent telephone companies. It refused to grant competing phone companies access to its growing network, which crushed small would-be competitors. It had also acquired Western Union, which controlled the telegraph industry. Bell dominated both the domestic telegraph and the domestic telephone markets.

In 1913, the U.S. federal government was considering nationalizing the growing Bell phone system (Britain had nationalized its phone system in 1912) or breaking up Bell’s monopoly. Clearly, the government would take antitrust action of some sort, so AT&T negotiated with the Justice Department. On December 19, 1913, AT&T Vice President Nathan Kingsbury sent a letter to the Attorney General in which AT&T agreed “to divest itself of Western Union, to provide long distance services to independent exchanges under certain conditions, and to refrain from acquisitions if the Interstate Commerce Commission objected.” (Wikipedia)

1913’s Kingsbury Commitment allowed AT&T to operate as a monopoly until Judge Greene broke them up in 1984. They had a good run.

Inside Bell during its 1984 breakup

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

NSA’s “all-encompassing, indiscriminate dump of phone metadata”

From today’s L.A. Times editorial:

In a powerful opinion released Monday in Washington, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon castigated what he called an “almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States.” Yet Leon also noted that the government had not cited “a single instance” in which the data had stopped an imminent attack.

A few months ago I noted the NSA’s poor ROI.

Finally, someone in government is doing their job! I had hoped that Congress would exercise oversight of the NSA, but the Judicial branch has beaten Congress to the punch. Note that Judge Leon is a George W. Bush appointee.

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

Innovation Act of 2013

The US House of Representatives has passed “The Innovation Act of 2013” (H.R. 3309) by a vote of 325 to 91. It’s expected to be passed by the Senate.

The bill, introduced by Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), is aimed at stopping the abuse of patents by “patent trolls”. The bill

1. allows 3rd party companies to step into a patent infringement lawsuit
2. allows discovery in a patent infringement case only after the judge examines the patent claim
3. requires that a patent infringement lawsuit plaintiff pay the legal costs of a successful defendant

The Innovation Act is an improvement, but the Patent Office needs to overhaul the patent system. It must stop granting stupid weak patents for pre-existing art and somehow the federal courts of Eastern Texas need to quit being a haven for patent troll lawsuits. Maybe the average East Texas juror isn’t smart enough to understand the issues in tech patent cases?

National Law Review article: The Top Ten Things You Should Know About The Innovation Act of 2013 (For Now)

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

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”.)

Microsoft, Apple et al as patent trolls

When Nortel (née Northern Telecom) went belly up, its assets went up for auction. Microsoft bought a block of more than 600,000 IP addresses from Nortel for $7.5 million. A consortium comprising Microsoft, Apple, BlackBerry, Sony, and Ericsson was high bidder at $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio. Google bid, but lost to the consortium.

That consortium has named itself Rockstar and become a NPE (non-practicing entity – a polite term for “patent troll”). On its website www.ip-rockstar.com, it calls itself “an intellectual property (IP) licensing company”. It has sued Google, Samsung, et al for patent infringement by Google’s Android operating system. The suit was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas — the favorite venue for patent trolls.

Android really bugged Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs. According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Steve swore,

I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.

The majority of the industry press disagrees with Steve:

• Arstechnica: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google
• Engadget: Apple, Microsoft-backed ‘Rockstar’ uses Nortel patents to sue Google, Samsung and others
• Dailytech: Steve Jobs: “I’m Going to Destroy Android, Because It’s a Stolen Product”

Apparently Rockstar consists of a handful of ex-Nortel software people, who’ve spent the last 18 months diligently looking for patent infringements. Rockstar itself has few assets aside from its patents, and is clearly acting as an agent for its principals. The existence of Rockstar seems to allow Microsoft, Apple, et al to disavow knowledge of the dubious dirty work done by patent trolls . . . while still doing the dirty work of patent trolls.

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

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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

Were we warned of Pearl Harbor attack?

Like the September 11, 2001 attacks, it appears that lack of co-ordination and bad luck prevented America from preparing for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. There was plenty of warning.

America had cracked the Japanese diplomatic codes — Purple and JN-25 — and was aware that Japan was becoming hostile, but nobody “connected the dots”. (We’d not yet broken their naval code. In any case, the Japanese naval task force maintained radio silence.)

Air Corps Lt. Kermit Tyler, on his second day in charge of a new 106 MHz transportable radar station on Hawaii’s Opana Point, didn’t report radar detection of incoming aircraft. (A fighter pilot, he thought that the SCR-270 radar had detected a flight of B-17s that was expected to arrive that morning.) At 7:02 AM, his two brand-new untrained radar operators had detected some of the incoming 354 Japanese fighters and bombers. Estimated range was 132 miles. Estimated ground speed was 180 MPH. The two operators continued to track the planes until 7:40 AM. Lt. Tyler, certain that they were tracking the incoming B-17s, told his two radar operators, “Don’t worry about it. Let’s have breakfast.”

At 6:37 AM, our destroyer Ward detected and used depth charges to sink a submarine in Pacific waters outside Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor’s commanding officer, Admiral Kimmel, received the radioed report via telephone at 7:30 AM, discussed it via telephone with Rear Admiral Claude Block, and at 7:50 dispatched a destroyer to confirm the Ward’s report.

Pearl Harbor came under attack at 7:55 AM.

---

Listen to the American broadcast radio response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Includes news reports, man in the street interviews, FDR’s “day of infamy” congressional address, and his fireside chat.

1913’s Prelude to Rock n Roll

2013 marks 100 years since Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes kicked down music’s barriers. The Rite Of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps) debuted in Paris on 29 May, 1913. Western music would never be the same. I want to pay tribute to this milestone before the year ends.

The work of a madman.

The piece opened with a bassoon in a high register: a sound never before heard in a concert hall. Then the whole orchestra, in unison, became an insistent frantic drum. No orchestra had ever sounded anything like this: it pulsed and throbbed while flutes punctuated its staccato thumping. Many listeners hated it. A near riot broke out in the audience. Theater management called the police and threw out about 40 noisy audience members.

The choreography was by legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. As revolutionary as Stravinsky’s music, it introduced what’s now called modern dance.

1913 marked a sharp break with the past: the Titanic sank while World War I festered just over the horizon. The Rite Of Spring introduced the world to the music of the future. That future would include jazz, big band, bebop, and . . . rock n roll. Yup, decades before Chuck Berry, way back in 1913, Igor Stravinsky shouted, “Roll Over, Beethoven!”

---

Audio clip: 9-minute BBC description of this performance
Listen: Internet Archive – Rite Of Spring
NPR produced an audio documentary about the Rite Of Spring premiere. It calls the music “angular, dissonant and totally unpredictable.”

YouTube is loaded with Rite Of Spring performances.

Here’s an entire blog that’s devoted to The Rite of Spring.

EFF’s Security Report

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) has begun publishing its Who’s Doing What report, which contains the results of EFF’s survey of Internet service providers’ internal security measures.

We should all examine this report to learn how secure our entrusted data are. It will help us more wisely choose service providers of all kinds — from your ISP to email, retail sales, and search providers.

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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.)

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© 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.

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