Well, that’s what I was going to write anyway: a face off review of both products. I’ve been using both for around the same time since May this year and it seemed to make sense to do a comparison. Having realized that there are probably dozens of similar reviews I thought I would just make some comments on both, but without a particular logical path.

Microsoft seems to be slightly war-weary these days. It seems that the criticisms of Vista are mounting, but the difference this time around is that the origin of the commentary is more business-oriented and more likely to make a dent in the normally po-faced Steve Ballmer. It wasn’t too long ago that he was seen yelling, “Vista… yeah!” at the Microsoft launch party. Although some people have noted that every Windows product has suffered teething-pains in the past, I don’t believe that to be true. Vista was released with the same fanfare as XP, and as I recall there were only initial quibblings surrounding XP’s hardware compatibility. That soon went away and XP has grown to be one of the most sturdy Windows OS’s in history. Windows 95, probably the most hyped operating system of all time, was not without its problems, but it too wasn’t quite as bad as Vista is turning out to be. Only the much-hated Windows ME ever had this many problems, the worst being that it simply didn’t work! Microsoft have announced that Service Pack 1 will be with us in the early part of 2008, and frankly that day won’t come soon enough.

So what’s my overall impression of Vista (in my case, Vista Business)? It’s probably similar to what you’ve already read: nice new eye candy, some changes in the way things are laid out (some of which make sense, others not so much), and… ahem… not much else. I used the search function exactly one time (actually four times in quick succession) and still couldn’t find the file I was looking for. I eventually used an Ubuntu terminal (read: CLI) to locate a mirror of the file on the server. No muss, no fuss.

There are also issues with stability. Explorer, the API that drives the desktop and all the windows, will crash when it feels like it. There’s no rhyme or reason as to when or why it crashes. All of the program icons in the Taskbar get mashed on top of one another, and things will randomly flicker, all the while the clock either freezes of disappears completely. I’m sure I could use more memory but this is the least stable Explorer I’ve seen to date. Windows 2000 had some issues when using Web pages or JPG images as wallpaper, but the problem was easy to identify and resolve.

Almost every time I open an application, the window will appear and I’m immediately treated to an apparent ‘wait time’ whereupon clicking anywhere renders a “(Not responding)” message in the title bar. This happens worst with Photoshop CS2, but then that’s to be expected. CS2 and Vista have an ongoing war of wills. Photoshop refuses to use Aero’s color scheme, or maybe Vista is with-holding that for some reason.

As for Aero itself, it has that nice 3-dimensional rendering of all open applications. I never use it myself. I’m a die-hard Alt-Tabber myself. They’ll take that functionality out of my cold, dead hands… or possibly with SP1.

So, let me wrap up with a quick overview of the beast that is Ubuntu. For those who are not aware, Ubuntu is a flavor of Linux that is built around the Debian ‘distro’. It’s been hailed as the most user-friendly Linux, and it is a snap to install. You can even try it out first using the Live CD, which I did.

Installing Ubuntu was as easy as installing Windows so potentially anyone can have a go. The desktop version uses, by default, the Gnome desktop manager, which I’ve been using since RedHat 9, but there is a KDE version (”Kubuntu”) available also. Once I had the desktop version installed, I began getting all my favorite goodies, such as Apache, PHP and MySQL, and then other important stuff, such as SSH and Samba. This was all achieved using the apt-get package manager at the command line interface. Basically, it was all too easy and it was up and running everything I needed within a couple of hours.

The only hitch I’ve encountered was when I upgraded to the latest version and was met at reboot with a blank screen and not much else. The only solution at that point was a full fresh install of the new version, but once again I had it all back to normal (only better) by the end of the night. Using Red Hat 9, that would have taken a good 2-3 days to achieve, plus a lot more reading of man pages and various Web sites.

My conclusion at the end of the day is probably: Vista — bad, Ubuntu — good.

Authorities say a pipe bomb was the cause of a fire that destroyed a Las Vegas tattoo shop in the early morning hours Monday [yesterday].

The device went off around 2 a.m. at the Black Pearl Tattoo shop on Fort Apache at West Flamingo. This is the second time the business has been targeted in just seven months.

The first time was in October when someone set fire to the shop. The owner of the shop didn’t want to show her face on camera for fear whoever targeted her business would go after her and her family.

And after Monday morning’s pipe bomb explosion, the owners are starting to believe the same person is responsible for both fires. They got the call just after 2:30 a.m. Monday that their tattoo shop was on fire.

When they arrived fire trucks and fire fighters were surrounding the building and their business was destroyed.

Las Vegas is stunned by an Explosion in the Luxor parking structure, apparently designed to kill one man. It’s not Al-Qaeda, but rather a throwback to a Vegas of the past.

“This was not a terrorist event,” said Officer Bill Cassell, a Las Vegas police spokesman, “We believe the victim of this event was the intended target.”

Rather than recall a terrorist attack, this incident recalls the famous 1982 incident outside Marie Callendar’s restaurant, where Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal was the victim of a car bomb set off a few moments after he got into his 1981 Cadillac Eldorado, depicted in the 1995 film, Casino.

Not that this, most recent, bomb was mob-related, we simply don’t know that at this point. But it was not, from what we can find out, in any way an attack on the Luxor or Las Vegas. Rather, the LVPD considers this a murder by a unique means.

Perhaps less famous, but even more similar to the current case, was a car bomb that exploded in 1972 in the downtown Las Vegas parking garage. The former head of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, Bill Coulthard, was killed in an explosion so powerful, it was reported that “cars were burning all over the third floor of the parking garage” and that “it ripped a gaping hole in the concrete and steel-reinforced floor beneath the car” (Las Vegas Sun: New lead reopens car bomb mystery).

Time to move…

From SignOnSanDiego.com:

LAS VEGAS – Police and federal agents were piecing together evidence Tuesday after a homemade bomb exploded and killed a casino hot dog stand employee as he picked it up off the roof of his car outside a Las Vegas Strip resort.

A woman who left the Luxor hotel-casino with the victim and was standing nearby escaped injury when the device blew up just after 4 a.m. Monday on the top level of a two-story parking garage, police and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents said.

Police did not immediately identify the dead man or the uninjured woman.

“She is very lucky she wasn’t killed or extremely injured,” Tom Mangan, a senior special agent with the ATF office in Phoenix, said of the witness.

“She did not have a scratch on her,” said Officer Bill Cassell, a Las Vegas police spokesman Cassell said detectives believed the man was the intended target of the device and characterized the slaying as “a homicide with an unusual weapon.”

Mangan called the bomb “a homemade device, an improvised explosive device, or an IED” that produced a blast about the size of a stick of dynamite and blew a 12-inch hole in the man’s car.
Shrapnel penetrated nearby vehicles, and pieces of the bomb were scattered across the parking structure, Mangan said. He declined to describe the bomb’s components or confirm a broadcast report that the bomb had been disguised as a cup.

Deputy Las Vegas Police Chief Ted Moody called it “a small device that was constructed in such a way to target a single individual victim.”

“It was successful in doing that, unfortunately,” Moody said.
The man was taken to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, where he was pronounced dead, the Clark County coroner’s office said.
Police said the blast was not a terrorist act or a mob hit, but an apparent murder of a man who worked at a business inside the Luxor. Police would not say why the man might have been targeted.
Mangan confirmed reports by various Luxor employees that the man worked at a Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand.

Workers at Nathan’s would not comment, and a spokesman for Nathan’s corporate offices in Westbury, N.Y., referred calls to the store franchise owner in Las Vegas. A message seeking comment early Tuesday was not immediately returned.

The eatery is one of a handful of non-casino businesses that remain open all night in a second-floor food court near an arcade and several shops inside the Luxor, a pyramid-shaped hotel with more than 4,400 rooms and 4,200 employees at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.
Homicide investigators on Monday reviewed casino and parking lot security videotapes, hoping they would show who left the device atop the man’s car.

Moody said investigators were reviewing videotapes from multiple cameras in and around the two-story parking structure.
Access to the garage remained restricted through the day, frustrating hotel guests who could not retrieve their vehicles. It was reopened late Monday.

“They said they’d call me and let me know when,” said Shon Brown, 32, a real estate agent from Lakewood, Calif., who wheeled his luggage away from an exit overlooking a sun-splashed pool and walked back into the casino. “But my phone’s in my car.”
Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage Inc., which owns the Luxor, said vehicle owners were allowed to remove their vehicles from some parts of the parking structure after they were inspected by authorities.

ATF Special Agent Niña Delgadillo, regional spokeswoman for the agency in San Francisco, said the painstaking evidence collection process was important at a crime scene that will revert to a busy parking lot once authorities leave.

“You don’t want to miss any bits of evidence that might provide investigative leads,” she said.

After watching Colossus: The Forbin Project recently, I found this wonderful article recently which is actually regarding the real Colossus (the movie is completely unrelated cold war science fiction), the world’s first electronic computer. The tale itself was related by Bob Bemer, who is variously regarded as the "father" of ASCII, and the "grand-father" of COBOL, alongside many other accomplishments that he gave to the world.

I was there at a very dramatic moment of the invitational International Research Conference on the History of Computing, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, beginning 1976 June 10. Others there may have recounted it, but I can add a facet to this jewel of a revelation.

The conference started on a Thursday, and I had been in New York City for the very overcrowded National Computer Conference, as well as for the 18th RAND symposium, run by Fred Gruenberger and Paul Armer. On Wednesday the 9th I was glad to depart that city to Albuquerque, with Dr. Heinz Zemanek (President of IFIP, the International Federation for Information Processing) as my seatmate. He regaled me with some wonderful stories of early European computing devices, and various usages in Austria as well, where he had created a computer history museum. I rented a car at the airport and drove us to Los Alamos.

I was so weary of New York that I bought steak, canned corn, a metal grill, charcoal, reading material, and Scotch. I then took myself all alone to a little mesa East of Los Alamos, and viewed a 1000 foot sheer drop while I had a wonderful, solitary dinner.

On Friday evening a reception was given by the Director of the Los Alamos Labs, in the Red Room of the Ray Bradbury Science Museum. That alone could have warned me of science non-fiction to come. Among the many that I conversed with was a medium-sized Englishman named Dr. A. W. M. Coombs, who was so excited about something that he was literally bouncing up and down. Not being bashful I asked (and he didn’t mind) about the cause of his excitement, and he replied “You’ll know tomorrow morning — you’ll know”.

Saturday morning we regathered in the Auditorium of the Physics Division. I sat third row from the front, a couple seats in from the right, to get a good view of all the famous attendees. To my left in the same row, three empty seats intervening, was the bouncy Englishman, all smiles and laughter. In front of him, two seats to his left, was Professor Konrad Zuse, who had already told the conference about his use of relay computers to trim the control surfaces on the V-1 buzz bombs going to London, and how Hitler had refused to allow him to develop an electronic computer for Germany during World War II (Hitler said it would not be needed, because the V-2 rockets were going to be so successful). In the fifth row, again to the left, was Dr. John Mauchly, of ENIAC fame.

On stage came Prof. Brian Randell, asking if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing had done during World War II? He then showed slides of a place called Bletchley Park, home base of the British cryptographic services during that period. After a while he showed us a slide of a lune-shaped aperture device he had found in a drawer whilst rummaging around there. Turned out it was part of a 5000-character-per-second (!) paper tape reader.

From there he went on to tell the story of Colossus, the world’s really first electronic computer, used to break the German Enigma cipher. Of course everyone knows about it now. Much has been written on the subject. And most have agreed that the Allies could very well have lost the war without the services of Colossus and its successors in unbuttoning Enigma. But that day at Los Alamos was close to the first time the British Official Secrets Act had permitted any disclosures.

My decision to keep everyone in view paid off. I looked at Mauchly, who had thought up until that moment that he was involved in inventing the world’s first electronic computer. I have heard the expression many times about jaws dropping, but I had really never seen it happen before. And Zuse — with a facial expression that could have been anguish. I’ll never know whether it was national, in that Germany lost the war in part because he was not permitted to build his electronic computer, or if it was professional, in that he could have taken first honors in the design of the world’s most marvelous tool.

But my English friend (who told us all about it later) was the man doing the day-to-day running of Colossus. I saw then why he was so terribly excited. Just imagine the relief of a man who, a third of a century later, could at last answer his children on “What did you do in the war, Daddy?”

colossus, forbin, bob bemer, ascii, cobol

We went to Madison last week for a job interview. I have been researching this town for months… and I mean researching. It was not what I expected.

It’s tiny! It was a bit of a shock, I must say. I had to detach myself from it.

Then, after we were back in Vegas, I realized that Madison truly is the place I want to be. I’m ready for small town. Small town with big city views. Well, liberalism anyway.

I absolutely love UWisc, and I so want to go through the master’s program in journalism there. I want to meet all of the people whose work I’ve been reading. I want mentorship and guidance from the best!

State Street was great. It’s like a mini Haight-Ashbury/Berkeley. Madison does remind me a bit of Berkeley. Only smaller. I keep coming back to the size. I think it will be very refreshing to live in a small town.

I am over the traffic and congestion. I am certainly over the conservativism of Vegas. It is just so hard for me to be here. I am like a fish out of water. Literally. I need water!

We really like all of the activities and things to do around Madison. We went to the Celebrate Madison festival while we were in town, and I could see us doing a lot of that type of thing. And the water… oh, the water!

Now, I only have to worry about how we’ll handle the winters. I’m sure we’ll do fine.

Oh, I guess we should worry about this stuff when we know if he got the job! Fingers crossed…

madison, uwisc, las vegas

This week I am home from work, spending time with my soon-to-be 5 year old daughter. This week-long hiatus from work is what is usual for the university for its yearly holiday break. For me, it feels strange being at home again for a whole week after only being back at work for two months.

From September 2002 through October 2006 I was a stay-at-home mom. It was a hard job. The hardest I’ve ever had - everyone says this, right? But it really was hard for me. The person I thought I was all of my life - the patient, domestic, loving, and caring one - turned out to be very different. A very different person, indeed.

As it turns out, I am far from patient. Sure, when Abbie was a baby it was all sweetness and bliss, but the moment she was able to express her strong will I was slapped hard in the face with reality. The quiet and obedient little doll I had signed up for turned out to be stubborn, resistant, needy, and moody. I have spent the last four years vascillating between trying to make her listen and follow the rules (my rules, escpecially) and worrying about breaking her strong spirit.

I would worry about this constantly. I would also worry that the bad choices she was making at 3 years old would turn out to be a lifelong pattern. I worry that her obstinence and bossiness will cause her to be lonely…..devoid of friends.

And then the next day she awoke as a little angel. She was clever and actually very funny with a great sense of humor for someone of any age, let alone a four year old. She turned into my best little buddy with whom I spent the majority of my time. I could see her mimic me - my words and phrases coming out of her little mouth. The good and the bad words and phrases unfortunately.

She would dance and sing and play. She would tackle me with hugs and kisses. She would throw tantrums and refuse to do anything I told her to do. I was her idol one minute and her biggest pain in the ass the next.

All of this activity made me weary. Gloriously happy, almost constantly fretful, incredibly frustrated, and amazingly weary. Still, I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave her for work and have her in preschool all day.

Unfortunately, all things must change and I had to get a job. I worried that she wasn’t ready for nine hour days at preschool five days a week. As it turns out, we have a hard time getting her to leave her friends. Additionally, I found my breath going back to work. It’s like I am me again…..not just Abbie’s mom. I am with adults who have adult conversations and who only rarely pout and sulk.

I also got very lucky to get a job at the university so I work with folk who like higher learning and NPR and who are mostly democrats. I get lots of vacation and sick time and every holiday off, including a week at Christmas.

And this is where I am today. Last week, when the office was planning to be out for over a week, everyone was very excited to have the time off, while I felt a little sad. I didn’t tell anyone because I knew it sounded crazy, but that is where I was. Not really looking forward to being home again. I LIKE going to work. I like doing my job. I like the people I work with, and I like meeting new people.

And this, my first day home alone with my daughter for our week of vacation, I see how much I do love being with her. We haven’t gotten out of our pajamas today and it’s almost dinner time. I did manage to get some cleaning done and make a few important phone calls, but most of the day has been spent playing with dolls, dancing and watching Abbie with her new toys she received for Christmas yesterday.

It has been a lazy day, and I feel very happy.

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to one of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl’s home and calling her father’s workplace. Our clinic director reports that the girl was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these "crisis pregnancy centers" across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What’s more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They’re being funded by our tax dollars.

A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!

planned-parenthood, crisis-pregnancy-center

White Noise "An Electric Storm"

It’s funny what you find when you haven’t been paying attention for five or six years. I was just trolling Google, looking up Andy McClusky, wanting mainly to understand why he got involved with the dreadfully trite Atomic Kitten. After my initial foray, I start reading about the remastered works of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark which are must-have-but-have-to-wait products. I then looked up Paul Humphries and found to my delight that he’s been working with Claudia Brücken (formerly of Propaganda) of all people! They produced an EP under the name OneTwo, which curiously contains a song co-written by Claudia and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.

Well, it’s obvious that I have to get out of the house more! I’ve mostly been spending my time drinking in Music Thing because as a self-confessed music geek and electronics fetishist I just have to read about the people and machines of early synthdom (and earlier).

Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Apart from spending more time in my humble studio, working on something that has a long way to go, I’ve been listening to an ancient album called ‘’An Electric Storm'’ by White Noise. The album is primarily the work of David Vorhaus, but is notable for featuring Delia Derbyshire. Now you’re probably wondering who on Earth that could be, but I guarantee that you have heard her work before. She was instrumental in realizing Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme way back in 1963. Having no synthesizers to work with, she used an array of signal generators in combination with tape machines, tape splicing, and all manner of ingenious sound generation techniques. No version of the theme has ever quite managed to capture the essence of Grainer’s theme better than the original. Many have tried… and failed.

Here’s part of the review for "An Electric Storm" over at Head Heritage:

…one of the freakiest, most frightening, far out and forward thinking albums you may ever get to hear. This is no ordinary album. An Electric Storm will take you to outer space, into the future, tear your brain apart and then give it back; stimulants should be taken with caution guys. It’s electronic and psychedelic yet stills slots in nicely into any psyche, kraut or space rock fans collection. This gorgeous heavy black hunk of celluloid is 35 years old and it still sounds totally far out. I don’t know a whole lot about electronic music, but I know it started here, there was nothing like it at the time, it was ahead of it’s time. This could be why this record never gets mentioned and is in severe danger of being lost, save for a few champions. It’s one of those you’ll never hear about it until someone lets you in on the secret, and once you’ve been initiated, there is no return. I guarantee once you hear this record you will never forget it.

Read more articles like this at TuneFishr.

electronic-music, omd, propaganda, doctor-who, delia-derbyshire

I found myself doing a little reading regarding the early history of the United States of America. This history is obviously taught in schools in the U.S. but to what extent are the little people exposed to the amazing acts of courage that founded this nation? I certainly learned a thing or two…

The Founding Fathers—the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Indepence—had much more to lose from revolution than they would gain by it.

John Hancock was the first to put his name to paper. He signed in enormous letters right in the center of the document so that his Majesty (George III) could now read his name without glasses. He said, "The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward.".

These men knew only too well what was at stake. The penalty for treason (which this was of course) was death by hanging. Far from being fanatics, they were simply asking for the status quo to remain. It was change they resisted. They wanted equality with Britain and taxation with representation. These men were all true conservatives.

So what happened to these men once they finally put pen to paper and signed away their apparent freedom?

Francis Lewis, a New York delegate saw his home plundered and his estates in what is now Harlem, completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and tortured. She later died from the effects of her abuse.

William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children and lived in Connecticut as refugees for seven years. When they finally returned, there was literally nothing to return to.

Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was prevented from returning to his home and family.

John Hart of New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man, without ever finding his family.

Dr. John Witherspoon, was president of the College of New Jersey, what we now call Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but was betrayed. He was pulled from his bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton’s parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the revolution. After his death, his family was forced to live off charity.

William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, looked on as his property was burned to the ground.

Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war, and five were captured and imprisoned. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at some point in time the subjects of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their estates completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned.

So… in this year, 2006, wouldn’t it just be a tiny sacrifice, a very small thing indeed, if we can all get off of our asses, and go out and vote?!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you an excerpt from the U.S. Declaration of Independence…

… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

us-history, declaration-of-independence, voting

Well, tonight I went down the rabbit hole to quote Will Wheaton of (we)blogging fame.

I was watching a rerun of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" when I noticed Haviland Morris’s name come up as one of the guests. I know her as the actress who played the part of Caroline Mulford in "Sixteen Candles". I got to reading some of the many reviews, quite happy that in most people’s eyes this is one of John Hughes‘ more charming pieces. It’s certainly one of my favorite John Hughes movies, and I love pretty much all of them. There were, however, a small sampling of negative reviews, and I got to thinking about who might not appreciate this movie…

{ I re-read this today and realized that I was either lying or being modest. I recognized Haviland Morris from her face, and then backed up the DVR to check if I was correct. I was of course! }

Well, that got me thinking about the 80’s in particular. I think that we Gen-X’ers are a particularly lucky lot in general, and this goes back to a conversation I had last week with a couple of friends. Y’see, unlike today’s cellphone-Internet-CGI generation, we saw the genesis of a good many technical innovations, and more importantly, we remember what life was like without these things. I guess that’s why I can’t get too excited about a cell phone that takes pictures, reads and writes email, and can play awful 22khz samples of ‘the latest soundz’. The fact that this little device can keep me in touch with wifey at ten thousand paces is still pretty amazing compared with what was available circa 1982—namely, a phone box that smelled of last night’s urine.

Also, when I was around 10 or 11 years old, I tried desperately to learn about the subject of Computer Science. In one visit I had read all three CS books that were available at the main library in our town. They were concerned with the miracle of magnetic ink (MICR) on checks, and the infinitely available paper tape and how it was a major improvement over the still-used punched cards! A little later, the home computer revolution hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Suddenly, there were stores popping up with an array of (relatively expensive) little boxes that purported to solve all your computer needs. My mother was famously heard to often say, "Yes, but what would I need one for?" Some short time after that she found herself working with the darned things, almost as a matter of course, as they slowly permeated every walk of professional life. By the time I had begun working (in earnest) there were no end of temporary jobs that I could get using the generic little grey boxes known as IBM ‘clones’.

But what is important is that I actually remember a world where these things were confined to science fiction. Kids today do not have that appreciation and never will. Who knows what innovations will shape their futures, if any? The Internet and Short Message Service ("text messaging") are things that we appreciate because we can see how they have changed the world in which we live, and better yet, some of us have made careers out of them!

the-80's, john-hughes, computers, internet, cellphones, movies, will-wheaton