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How far we’ve come…

scaredpoet

From 1954:

homecomputer

The caption reads:

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a “home computer” could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet implemented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve those problems. With teletype interface and the FORTRAN language, the computer will be easy to use and only…

Unfortunately the remaining text was cut off, otherwise I think we would have gotten an idea of what a 1954-era person would think a 2004-era computer would have cost.

Funny, I never learned FORTRAN, yet I can use my two home computers and one laptop just fine (I don’t think they know FORTRAN, either). Besides, from what I hear from friends who once had to learn FORTRAN as part of an engineering course in college, it’s something that’s not exactly easy to use by any stretch of the imagination, especially compared to the point-and-click GUI environments of today.

My computers don’t have that awesome steering wheel though. I’d love to have one of those mounted to my computer-wall. 🙂

Vote for Kerry, and the terrorists win

scaredpoet

I am really sick and tired of Republicans telling people that if we don’t do certain things, if we don’t think a certain way, if we don’t stick to conservative Republican ideals, then the terrorists win. Now they have gone too far:

At a campaign rally Saturday in his Illinois district with Vice President Dick Cheney, [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert said al Qaeda “would like to influence this election” with an attack similar to the train bombings in Madrid days before the Spanish national election in March.

When a reporter asked Hastert if he thought al Qaeda would operate with more comfort if Kerry were elected, the speaker said, “That’s my opinion, yes.”

If this is the kind of discourse that is deemed acceptable in this country now, then the terrorists have already won. The thought police now have the spectre of “this is what the terrorists want” to enforce their agenda.

Another sad tale in the sage of child actors

scaredpoet

Macaulay

Yeah, that’s Macaulay Culkin’s mugshot. Scary, isn’t it?

(CNN) — Actor Macaulay Culkin, who gained fame as a child in the smash hit film “Home Alone,” was charged Friday in Oklahoma City with marijuana possession and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription, police said.

At least the charges aren’t too terrible, but they do smack of the start of Culkin going down a long and treacherous path that other child stars have gone through. Only, Macauley is getting dangerously close to his looks fading really fast, from the so-cute-it’s-sickening “Home Alone” kid to a certain other actor at the far opposite end of the looks spectrum.

Blogs: The new bandwidth hog?

scaredpoet

It would appear that some pundits are worried that blogs, and in particular, RSS – the standard which forms the basis for most blogs – might end up being the next big threat to bandiwdth on the ‘net:

“RSS is broken,” wrote Microsoft technical evangelist Robert Scoble in a Sept. 8 blog posting. “It’s not scalable when tens of thousands of people start subscribing to thousands of separate RSS feeds and start pulling down those feeds every few minutes…Clearly, RSS is losing some of its advantages. More and more sites are not providing full-text feeds.”

Funny, how just a year ago, multimedia, ultra-huge MPEG video files and file sharing were the bane of the ‘net. Now, we’re suddenyl skittish over clear, simple paragraphs of text?