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Technology: Organizations, Reviews, People This is a collection of Technology items that I've done over the years. I'm a bit of a geek and a pedant, especially around User Interface. I often err on the side of comprehensive than simple: why you like/don't like something is more important than whether you do, at least for others. As they may not have the same currency as I do. ℹ️ Info

Title	Summary
2003.05.15 PowerBook Repair	I've had quite a few good, and a few bad experiences with Apple Support. This was support issues around a finicky model, that Apple wasn't good about supporting. (Certainly not as good as Old Apple / Pre-Jobsian). New Apple has shorter warranties, but they enforce them looser to convince you they are giving your grace. Sometimes.
64 bit	Bits of bits... how many bits should my computer be and why should I care? It mattered before 64 bits (2002 or so). After we got to 64 bit computing, this became ancient history. The idea was if 16 is good, then 32 must be twice as good, and then 64 has to be great. The truths of engineering aren't that clear. 32 bit did 99% of what people needed. 64 covered the rest.
Adobe	These are a few articles (stories) on my experiences as an Adobe employee for couple of decades. I like the company and the people. All companies have quirks, these are some of the amusing or memorable experiences/observations. No slams, just more journaling life experiences.
Agile	Agile is a process for doing Rapid Application Development. Sort of formalizing what works (and what doesn't) from the dozens of rapid-application processes (and the failures of Waterfall) that predated it.
Amazon	I was neither advocate nor foe of Amazon, but they converted me to foe through censorship and new CEO's douchebaggery. I was OK with better selection at lower prices, but their fees/costs of shipping killed some of that. Then their censorship, partisan sponsorships/politics worked against them (for me).
Anti-aliasing	What is Anti-Aliasing? It is using color to increase the percieved resolution on a display. It can't really alter resolution, but it can appear to do it, to the eye.
Apple	A list of various articles and topics of discussion around Apple. Since they're a secretive company (and I've been an insider), I tend to avoid opining on a lot of things about them, out of respect for their desire and right to control their own messaging. So I tend to only focus on the trivial for a reason.
Apple's Greatest Misses	I'm not an Apple basher, or Apple fanboy. The former looks only at the worst, the latter at only the best. I prefer to admit both. This article isn't into their many revolutions and successes, just a few highlights of technologies or ideas they went *splat*. Not to bash my Fruity friends in Cupertino, but any mistake is useful if you learn from it.
Artificial Intelligence	Computers aren't "intelligent". But you can program them to learn patterns from data, in pretty limited ways. This isn't self-awareness, and for now they can barely "learn", and even that is more about pattern matching than being able to learn how to learn. But here's some terms/ideas and a starting point.
Backup	Are you backed up? No, this isn't an advertisement for laxatives; I'm talking about your data (computer). Unless everything you care about is stored "in the cloud" and being backed up by them, then you should make sure to go out and buy a drive and back your data up. In fact, you should do it even if you have a cloud account and keep your own copy.
Balanced tech company	What does it take to have a well-balanced (well run) company? I have been a consultant for companies for a dozen years, and been an employee at various companies for at least that many. So here are some oversimplified (for brevity) views on what makes a tech company successful or not. No company gets it all right, some just get it more wrong than others.
Basics of BASIC	People ask me, "How do I get started programming?" There are many choices, and it really depends on what you are trying to do. There is programming Applications, scripting, Web Programming, and so on. The most important thing is to just get started and try something. BASIC is a great intro to programming language.
Belkin	Belkin/Linksys/Wemo: American manufacturers of consumer electronics: including routers, iPod and iPhone accessories, mobile computing accessories, surge protectors, network switches, hubs, (USB and computer network) cables, KVM switches, racks and enclosures, and other peripherals.
Tim Berners-Lee	In 1989 Berners-Lee ripped off HyperText (1980s) or SGML (1970s) and created a subset that became HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Poorly designed and implemented, it took off in spite of the incompetence (and took 20 years to mature to what should have been in the 1.0). Without it, we would have had email, forums, and better viewers.
Beta	Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta... what is a beta version anyways? The short version is just letters of the Greek Alphabet: Alpha (1st) was generally for in house testing, Beta (2nd) was for outside testers, and Golden Masters were versions burned onto prototype CD's (that were gold in color) and sent to places that would manufacture many CDs/DVDs from. So pre-release software.
Big or Little Endian	What is Endian? How do you like your eggs? Big or little end up? If there are two equally valid ways to do something, then odds are that two different companies will chose to do those things differently. This is Murphy's law in action -- and it applied to different chip designers and how they ordered data in memory.
Bill Gates is a Genius	Is Bill Gates a genius? I don't think he's dumb - he was certainly smart and motivated enough to take advantage of opportunities that fell into his lap. And he was very industrious and competitive. But if you put 100 motivated people in that situation, I bet 30 could have been wildly successful. A few more successful and less jerky.
Binary, OCTal, HEXadecimal	Counting in Computerese: The Magic of Binary, Octal and Hexadecimal. Computers deal in the mystical numbering systems, like Hexadecimal, Octal and Binary. People get concerned over it sounding complex, but they are really quite simple. If you can read this article, you should have a really good understanding of what they are, and how they work.
Blockchain	Blockchain is the new technology of the day. That's not to say it is useless, just that it is somewhat overhyped.
Bots, Crawlers and Spiders, oh my!	The terms bots, crawlers and spiders are likely to give arachnophobes the heebie-jeebies, but they're really just an important part of the way search engines work. The automated critters just go to the front page of a website, and look at every link in that page... then go to each of those and do the same, and so on.
Buying Computers	Forget what everyone tells you about buying a computer, I'm here to give you good advice. When should you move up the line (higher performance), or down the line (lower cost), and why? Where are the best values? Where should you spend your money? These are all just my opinions on what makes sense, but they're pretty objective ones.
China Privacy	China doesn't believe that individuals matter: they care about the collective. That means that individual privacy is not something they even fathom. Why wouldn't you spy on your neighbor? If the state's objective is to protect the state, than places that don't use the Internet to protect the state are stupid and going to be darwin'ed out of the gene pool someday. And China is patient.
Command Line Interface	There is an ancient computer debate about command-lines versus a GUI (Graphical User Interfaces). One side argues that command line is where the magic happens, and if you don't know it, you don't know computers. And one computers designed that way, there's a small grain of truth. but a lot of bias and things to unpack as well.
Computer Basics	Many people get intimidated or even "scared" of computers, but computers (at their core) are really very simple devices. I can explain how they work, in detail, in one small and simple article.
Cookies	If you've heard Internet slang thrown around, you probably heard someone reference "cookies". What are cookies, how do they work, and what do they mean for your privacy? This article covers the basics.
Copland	Apple's Copland was their nest OS before they bought NeXT: looking back at what happened, and what might have been. NOTE: I think Apple's new management was far better than it's old management. And I'm not saying I could have done a better job than they did. But I'm very into honest post-mortem's to try to learn the lessons that life is offering.
Cracking	Cracking is the black art of removing copy protection from other people's programs. There are many "pirates" (people that use software without buying it) -- but far fewer crackers. Cracking requires enormous dedication and patience. It was far easier in yesteryear (systems were simpler) -- but now days there are better tools, so in some ways that makes it easier.
DMCA	Recording Industry and DMCA: biting the hand that feeds them. Media companies (like the recording industry) have been passing waves of bad legislation in order to "protect" us. Even the government got in the act (or started it), by passing laws granting them a monopoly on invading our privacy. And the worst laws have to do with private data and usage: the DMCA.
Databases	What is a database? What are the kinds of databases? Why do you care? A Database is just a place that is used to so store and organize data (information). Your address book, a spreadsheet, basically anything that has a lot of similar (like) elements, is the basics of a database. This tries to demystify some of the basic terms.
Digital or Analog	What is Digital? Why not just use analog? Why is digital better? A lot of people hear and use the term "digital", but do not really know what it means. In humans, digital means digits (fingers), in clocks it means that the clock shows the actual digits (numbers) and not a hand that points to the numbers. In computers, digital is another way of saying "binary".
Digitized Sound	Digitized Sound: understanding samples, rates and digital audio is really pretty simple. Sound is nothing but pressure waves traveling through the air, and hitting your ear -- which your brain decodes as sound (from noise or music). Computers can either generate waves (synthesize tones), or digitize the sound (sample the pressure wave very quickly and reproduce it later).
DoodleBook	DoodleBook: I hacked my MacBook by doing a custom paint job (with my own doodle on the inside), and making my MacBook a bit psychedelic. Later, I sold it and swapped the case back -- and kept the doodle.
Jack Dorsey	If generation-TidePod needed a leader, that person would be CEO of Twitter (Jack Dorsey). He thinks thinks Democrats should start and win a cultural civil war, by a generation that doesn't know not to eat laundry detergent, or how to hunt and skin a free range Tofurky. He forgets the other side could beat his goat-yoga practicing ass into next week, without breaking a sweat.
Dotcom Bubble	People on both sides of the dot-com bubble can be wrong at the same time. The Internet IS changing the global economy, and this IS NOT just a "flash-in-the-pan" fad that's going to be gone tomorrow. But the other side is that investors CAN overreact to hype, get way ahead of returns, and that can cause a big pullback. But in the long term, this is the new normal.
Driving by watching the rear view mirror	A common mistake I've seen businesses repeat, over and over again - or more accurately I've seen many companies do once or twice until they go out of business or the idiots doing it are fired, is to "drive by watching the review mirror". Instead of analyzing and thinking, learning technology (and markets and customers), they decide, "someone else is doing it, and since it worked for them, it'll work for us". You're not them.
EMail	The Origins, history and evolution of eMaill, forums and live chat. Ever since man learned how to communicate, he started looking for ways to improve communications. And ever since women learned how to communicate, we've had spam, and men looked for ways to filter communications. (Just a joke). Here's the basics of email.
Easter Eggs	What are easter eggs, and where do they come from? And I'm not talking about the physical ones in springtime, I'm talking about hidden features or credits in software.
Electric Cars	Electric cars are great for the tech side. Quiet, torquey, plug-in all the time over getting gas every other week. HoV lane access if you live in leftist part of the country. Solar charging during the day, and it might be a bit green. We love ours. Just don't get preachy about it, because environmentalism is one of their weakest points, not their strongest.
Electric Vehicles	Whatever you wanted to know about Electric Cars, but were afraid to ask. (Or didn't lookup any place else).
Enterprise Tools	Enterprise, Opensource or Commercial tools, which is better and why? Of course the answer is, "it depends": different tools are better for different things. Now I know that doesn't sound revolutionary, but that does seem to perplex some people. People don't understand the different tools or market segments they fit into, or what they are good for.
Ergonomics	Ergonomics is the study of people's efficiency in their working environment. But it practically means adapting our environment (or tech) to meet our needs. How we design our workplace (environment) to maximize our productivity or minimize our operator fatigue and discomfort. Let's focus on how it applies to computers and the workplace.
FUD	FUD means "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", it was used by big companies to scare users away from small companies software (or hardware). They'd sow uncertainty, so customers would buy from the safest (largest) company, even if it wasn't currently the best... or scare them into buying the most expensive software for features they might someday need.
Facebook	I want a social network that gives me control of what I see and share. Zuckerberg thinks ruthlessly stumbling on to lucky timing is the same thing as being really smart, and the world would be a better place if he ran it. Dunning-Kruger gets inflated by narcism and being surrounded by yes-men. Then he got political, and made him an enemy of Democracy.
Female Geeks	Why are there so few female geeks? Sexism is a part of life. Some who don't know me might call me a sexist pig. Not because I think one gender is better than the other, I just think everything in life is about tradeoffs. Genders are not better or worse, but there are differences.
Firewalls	A firewall (in real life or software) is something that protects one area from another to keep a fire from spreading. In computers and networking it basically does the same thing, but the "fire" that it is trying to slow/stop is an intruder or security leak.
First Network Gaming Party	My fiends and I (from the Mousehole), did the first Mac Network Gaming Party.
Forward Compatibility	People talk about "Backwards" compatibility, but Forward Compatibility is often more important. Backwards compatibility is when new stuff plays old stuff. But even better is designing things so you current stuff can take advantage of features that aren't yet available, but will be. And then when they are available, "tada" they just start working.
Free Features	A free feature in software, is like a free lunch: there's no such thing as a free lunch. The value of something is directly related to how much it does what you need, and how much it doesn't try to do stuff you don't need. Most "free" features, are things that programmers thought wouldn't be hard to add, but become distractions, support, and bug magnets.
Geeks aren't Wizards	Too many people in this world look for "authorities" then trust them blindly on topics they don't fully understand. Since most people don't understand computers, they tend to find their local tech nerd and trust them blindly. Not a good move. Geeks are not wizards.
Getting a raise	Tips for getting a raise... assuming you're actually worth more than you're getting paid. and if you're not, then you can learn to be worth more. (1) Reduce the risk to your company (2) be easy to work with (3) Manage expectations (4) Show your worth (5) Demand what your worth (6) be prepared to leave (7) leave if you can get more elsewhere.
Google	In 1995, two 20-something Ph.D. students from Stanford were looking for something to do their dissertations on, and decided that they should focus on a Web crawler. They found funding, a revenue stream based on advertising, and became a Unicorn (a multi-billion dollar company). Their saga from College Dormitory Culture to anti-American Corporate hate-Cult began.
Graphical User Interface	Computers originally started off with programmer having to program them. Then they added built in programs that you could run with simple commands. (You could Operate it, with an Operating System). Then we created Graphical Objects and metaphors for the real world that you could visualize and interact with. This article offers some of that history.
Hack, Crack or Phreak	What are Hackers, Crackers and Phreaks? I did a little of all three, but that was decades ago (literally), and in computer times that is ancient history. But the concepts are still valid -- even if I'm no longer "plugged in" or have lost interest in doing them.
Hacking	It is not that hard to hack into a network/machine, but far harder (and different) than the movies make it seem. There are many levels to break in -- from the ballsy "impersonating an employee" (social hacking) and just walking around a company, to stealing network traffic and analyzing it.
Hammers and Computers	Here is a classic tale from the old Internet archives... a story most Mac users are familiar with. This story was written during the early days of Macs (and DOS). But it applies to more than just early platform wars, and what was better Mac or Windows (DOS), it's about people who can learn, versus people who choose not to.
Hardware	In computerese, if you can touch it, it's hardware. The computer, keyboard, screen, mouse, peripherals, rocks.
High Speed Rail	High-Speed Rail can be a great thing. Just not if it's done by politicians, especially Progressive ones. Then it'll become a boondoggle.
Hiring Programmers	Many Human Resources and Managers, don't know how to hire or utilize programmers; proven by their job reqs. They act like they can just throw programmers around from one task to another, or they select programmers based on language (Syntax), and not what really matters (skills and abilities).
History of Visual Basic	The History of Visual Basic is a bit of a history of early computers and Microsoft, how they borrowed other people's ideas and even implementation and then took credit.
Hollywood Hackers versus real life	While I'm not exactly an intrusion or defense expert, I do know more than about 99% of the public and have a CISSP (a broadly recognized security credential). And I a can say that Hollywood doesn't know shit about computer security.
How Secure are you?	How secure are your devices from intruders? The answer is "it depends", on a lot of things, like what machine you have, what you do, and so on. The OS's are more secure than the Apps you run. And iOS is best, then Android/Chrome, Mac, Unix, Windows. Store apps are safer than random downloads from the Internet.
How does compression work?	How does software Compression work? How do you make something smaller? In some ways you don't -- you just encode the data in a more efficient way. This article explains some basic concepts about data storage and compression: which are far simpler than people realize (it's just the implementation that can get some hairy math).
ITunes	iTunes (💩🎶) started out as a mediocre Music app, and got worse year after year until the shit show of Apple Music. I stopped buying Music BECAUSE of Apple. I won't support their proprietary Music store, and they don't work well with things outside their music store. So we're not friends; and I only play music I already have or use other streaming services.
Information Age	I first wrote this in the early 80's. Then reworked in the early 90's, late 90's, and so on. The idea is the competing realities of infinite storage vs infinite network bandwidth. Which is better and why? And which is going to obviate the other? Of course the truth (so far) is that both are advancing.
Information Age/Copyrights	The information age is disruptive, and one of the most disrupted areas is copyrights (intellectual property). Economic wars are being fought over who owns what, and for how long, and it's breaking whole markets. The Music industry sort of collapsed and is scrambling because used music is as good as the original. The value of books, articles, images is following.
Information Age/Media Democratized	In the past, the media/press had a lot of power over people. They controlled the information, and that alters people's perspectives and their entire lives. People fail to realize how significant this power is. Now it is being wrested from their control and put in the hands of the common man. Will anarchy result?
Information Age: Dueling Futures	Is our future infinite bandwidth (virtual networks) or infinite storage and having everything with you (little super storage devices)? Time will tell. But in the real world, both are competing and advancing. In the 60s, 70s -- it was terminals and remote computers. In the 80s - 2000s it was devices. Then more and more cloud services and virtual has sprung up.
Information Age: History Repeating	Some people read my last article on the future of information, and ideas about infinite data or infinite network, and they credited me with some big insight (it was going sort of pre-viral). The truth is less glamorous; I just observed the past. Alan Kay and his Dynabook is a good lesson.
Input-Output	A computer computes, but I/O does work... or at least it keeps things fed so that it can do the work, and shows you what it did. In security there's a joke that a computer is secure when it's turned off, and locked in a closet. The ideao if there's no I/O there's no threat. Of course, there's no work being done or value in having it either.
Inside Macintosh	In 1984 Apple released the Macintosh with the famous "1984" Commercial. They also released the less famous "Inside Macintosh" volumes 1, 2 and 3, which were 3 books printed on cheap paper which looked like telephone books, that were the developers bible. Later, they added many more books to the series, and printed the whole series on better stock.
Journaling	Journaling is the art of creating logs of things that you're doing, such that you can reverse or recreate things, using the logs. I joke it's, "Dear Diary, now I'm going to make a change..." Basically it is like being followed around by the FBI or a secretary, and have them writing down every little thing you do, every day. A minute by minute diary of events.
Legacy Kills	Ahh Legacy, being haunted by the past. Sometimes great, always painful, a products legacy can be both its greatest strength (name recognition, customers, trained users, and so on), and it can be it's greatest weakness (cruft, resistance to change, millstone to drag around, etc). Customers hate change, thus legacy can suffocate innovation through products own success.
Luddite Phone	One person (Joshua Haskell) experiments with rejecting a full-featured smartphone, to become more engaged in life. This Luddite reaction was a way to deal with the temptation for distraction, and to become more engaged in living in the moment, instead of the virtual world. It worked for them -- but probably isn't for everyone.
MHz or GHz	MHz or GHz, what does it mean? It's just clock speed - but that doesn't mean what some people think. Many people assume that MHz (or GHz) is how much work a computer can get done (horsepower): but it's more like RPM's in a car than MPH. If all other things are equal, it can mean the car is going faster, but usually they aren't. So it doesn't translate car to car.
Mastodon	An OpenSource Twitter competitor that far-left "Journalists" fled to, when Musk brought Twitter back to it's original charter (being communications for everyone, not just far leftists). The Nanny-State Hall Monitors started reporting on each other, and blocking themselves and the posts, in a comedy of errors.
Memory (Permanent)	Computers have a few types of memory; temporary (short-term) or permanent (long-term).Long term memory (or permanent memory) is for things that we want to remember for long periods of time or even if you lose power. In computers, we often do this by "saving" (writing) chunks of memory (files, pages or programs) to some device that is meant to provide our permanent storage.
Memory (Temporary)	Temporary Memory is often called RAM (a kind of temporary memory). A computers memory works a little like a persons memory. We have two types of memory; short term and long term, or in computerese this is called temporary and permanent storage (memory).
Multiprocessing	Mutliprocessing is the concept of using more than one processor (at the same time) to help you accomplish tasks. We sort of capped out (or the rate of improvement dramatically slowed) for single-processing, but the idea of getting computers to do more than one thing at once is still growing exponentially. So let's look at what this means.
Network Basics	Network Basics: What is a network? A "network" is just a way to allow many devices to talk to each other. The basics are that one device can talk to other device(s), via some shared hardware and software protocol. The protocol defines the language they speak so they can understand each other.
Network Casting and Subnets	What is Network casting and subnets? Networks are ways to break up information into smaller chunks (packets) and then send them over a shared line or radio frequency, to other devices, where the parts can be rebuilt into the whole again. Casting and Subnets are ways to send to many people at once, but not everyone.
Never trust the Internet	Think of the internet as "the net of 1,000 lies". This is a bastion of free speech. But never forget that free does not always mean "correct"! Sometimes you get what you pay for. So trust, but verify. Heck, that's good enough advice to use it every day -- the same applies to teachers in school, and textbooks, certainly politicians, and so on.
Nextdoor	Thought geo-local, no-anonymity, and dictatorial moderation would make a different type of Social Media platform. And it might, if it wasn't run by leftist asshats from SF. As it is, just a bunch of wokescolds censoring and irritating people in most markets. The false civility and double standards of leftist PC thought-police who couldn't make it at Twitter.
Online Shopping	Shopping and Physical Security: One of the areas that people are very concerned about security is on-line shopping. I think they are often focusing on the lesser threats. People can hack your online shopping -- but it's a lot of work. It's far easier to steal your information through other means.
Open Floorplans	Open Floorplans: a really bad idea brought into popularity by idiots and bean counters. (Adobe went to Open Floorplans while I was there, to the grousing of most but a few corporate sycophants). Then COVID hit, vindicating all of us who pointed out that they are disease passing, producitivity killing, open septic tanks. COVID converted me from anbout to leave, to happy remote worker.
Open Offices	Planners decided that if Google/Facebook/Twitter succeeded in spite of a horrendously distracted working environment, then everyone should suffer. Corporate America (especially Tech) started shifting to Open Office to the annoyance of tech workers everywhere. This was sold as "more collaborative", but distracting is more accurate.
Oracle and Tik Tok	The anti-Trump, TDS-suffering Verge embarrasses itself trying to spin the significance of the Tik Tok & Oracle deal, as no big accomplishment. Either they are really poor at understanding tech, or they let their political agenda suffocate reason. This isn't as big a deal as if Microsoft had bought them, but it's still a pretty big deal.
Origins of the Internet	Most of the technologies and features we know and use on the Internet were created, improved and adopted by our private sector decades before the Internet. The reason it was created in the U.S., and not one of the socialist countries, is because of our private sector, otherwise everyone would be on France’s Minitel.
PCs 20 year anniversary	The media claimed last week (2002) was the 20 years anniversary of the "PC", and it was, if you think the IBM PC was the beginning of the computer or personal computer revolution. But of course it wasn't. The truth and history is more expansive and rich than media tropes, and popular opinions.
Photoshop	Collection of stories about Photoshop
Phreaking	Phreaking is when hackers broke the phone companies security, to get access to control the phones. Most often used to make free phone calls, or get operator powers. Because of improvements in security, consequences of getting caught and commoditization of long distance phone call costs, it largely doesn't exist any more.
Printers	Buyers can get befuddled by all the jargon when they are looking at buying a printer; but it really isn't hard. There are only a few basic technologies that are popular right now in printers: Laser Printers, Ink-Jet Printers, and impact printers. (And you don't get many impact printers). So you're mostly just dealing with types of the other two.
Privacy	Privacy and the web: how safe is your info? The other night I was watching a Television show that discussed computers and privacy, and like a geek, I was getting annoyed and talking back to the show; it seems that Hollywood needs to get better technology consultants instead of terrorizing the public with misinformation and calling it entertainment.
Quality Assurance	Quality Assurance is a bit of an oxymoron, as quality is never assured. I spent a lifetime doing Software Quality Assurance one summer. After that, my dealings with QA, and appreciation for what they do has never been the same. I'm a better programmer than QA person, or at least I was at the time: I prefer to fix things than just fine things. And so I wasn't a fit for Pertec, and that culture is partly why Pertec is no longer around.
Quantum Computing	Quantum Computing makes my ears bleed. I can understand a lot of the micro (individual parts of the issue), but when it comes to the macro (and putting it together), there's still gaps. MIT has a pretty good mile-high primer that explains a few of the parts. But you just have to accept and pretend it works by magic, because there's too much stuff that doesn't make sense.
Quark	Quark helped revolutionize Desktop publishing. But they also became synonymous for how to fuck-up your business. 3 out of 4 of their customers paid money and time to convert away from their product (and support) within a few years. Because their development, support, and licensing was that bad.
RISC or CISC	During the 80s and 90s there was a Computer Chip design war about RISC or CISC. What does that mean, and which is better? For a while, Intel (and AMD) were able to spend more on design and delay the inevitable, but once mobility (with performance per watt) became important, ARM and RISC designs have taken over for x86's older CISC design.
Raster Images	Sometimes you'll hear people say, "rasterized image" (often as opposed to vector images), but what exactly does that mean? Here's the very basics of pictures or rasterized images (and a little bit about compression).
Security	Articles about Security (usually cyber-security, but also physical security).
Sharyl Attkisson	Sharyl Attkisson is an American writer, TV host as well as an authority on media, media bias, and disinformation. I really like her stuff, partly because she's easy on the eyes and ears, and she agrees with me, but mostly because she forms well thought out and well explained points, with anecdotes and data to back them up.
Slack	An internal messaging/communication tool (1:1 and many:many) that gives users the impression that their communications/channels are private, but the truth is that are able to be monitored by IT/managers/corporate eyes. So popular by users as an opproved way to communicate, popular by HR because it allows anyone to be fired for cause.
Smart Home	There is no such thing as a smart home: there's a lot of devices that you can interconnect that makes your home more interactive. But Google, Apple and Amazon are playing it from different directions.
Software Consultants	I worked over a decade as a consultant (both agencies and independent), and used and managed them for a couple decades more. I have nothing against consultants or consulting (they're a useful resource), but there is an art to using consultants wisely, and most companies blow it. I explain some of the pitfalls and ways to use consultants better.
Software Development Life Cycle	There's a lot of variants of a Software Development Life Cycle. And the methodology has changed over the years... but mostly the underlying issues remain fairly constant because human nature, resource management, and the concepts behind writing software itself don't really change.
Spam	When asked why are unsolicited emails called spam? (Where does the term come from?) In my usual geek style -- ask a simple question and get a four page answer that may eventually stumbles into the point. But the short version is a Monty Python skit where every breakfast came with spam (and a song).
Speed and Performance	Speed and Performance: how they differ. Many people understand simple specs and performance changes in a subsystem. What they don't understand is those effects on the whole system. Improving a subsystem's speed may have a very small impact on real-world performance. This is why you hear speed increase 50% or 100%, and users see a 5% performance gain.
Richard Stallman	On 2019.09.17 Stallman (bigmouth) said that the most likely scenario that hurt his friend (Marvin Minsky) was Minsky was having consensual sex with a 17 year old in a country where that was legal. For that he was fired (forced to resign from MIT and FSF). Cancel-Culture going way overboard, again.
Stupid Knowledge	In computers (as well as other aspects of life), there are things you need to know, but shouldn't have to. This isn't useful knowledge, because if it was done "right", you wouldn't need to know it at all. You only need to know because humanity is too lazy to fix it. Thus I coined the term "Stupid Knowledge™", for things you have to know, but you shouldn't have to.
Synthesized Sound	Synthesized Sound is just making waves. Computers have two basic ways of recreating sound, one way is Digitized Sound (sample it, and then play it back later), the other is to synthesize it (make a waveform that approximates what you want) -- creating pressure waves by algorithm, rather than recording it.
Tech Reviews	This is a collection of Technology Reviews that I've done over the years.
The Verge	Owned by far-left Vox, The Verge launched in 2011 by pirating folks from Engaget. But it's a reasonably good tech site that only occasionally delves into leftist advocacy (e.g. lets the editors bias through). Basically, it was an AOL editor's next big thing, and it mixed in a lot of podcast and video stuff.
Throughput and Latency	Speed is relative. What kind of speed are you talking about? There are a few aspects to speed on a computer. People start looking at benchmarks, or hearing numbers, and they don't always understand what they mean. For example twice as fast doesn't take half as long, because twice as fast at one thing is not twice as fast overall.
Tik Tok	A short-form video platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, founded in 2016, with lots of pranks, stunts, tricks, jokes, and entertainment. Since China has laws allow it to spy on users, this causes concerns for people in the Free World (Americans). For example, they could track soldiers locations, or backgrounds and metadata can reveal secret information.
Turing test	A test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Thus the idea is that if a human can't tell if you're a human or not, you must be sentient.
Twitter	It's not that Twitter lacks intellectual diversity (and is 99.7%+ Democrats, based on political donations), or that they censor conservative truths that are too hard for them to debate. It's that they lied about it, and pretended there was no shadow campaign or bias. Hopefully Elon Musks acquisition will help with that.
UNIX	I'm both a big UNIX fan, and one of its detractors. UNIX is the old war-bird of Operating Systems -- which is ironic since it really isn't an Operating System any more -- but more on that later. UNIX was created as a private research project by AT&T's Bell Laboratories (Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie) in 1969.
Virus, Worms, Trojans	Virus, Worms and Trojans, some various hacker terms/attacks explained (simply).
Web Basics	Have you ever wondered how the Web works? The majority of the Internet and computers are actually very simple to understand. The jargon and alphabet soup (acronyms) only make it sound more mysterious and complex than it really is. This article covers the basics of what happens when you go to a website.
Web Search Basics	The basics of searching the web, or how to use Google better. Unfortunately, Web Searching is still not very good -- partly due to complexities of language, mostly due to poor implementations. But sadly, since Google and others have done a really poor job of adapting to you, you're going to have to learn how to adapt to them.
Wetware	The other day, I got the pleasure of speaking with a bunch of teens at a career center, on a "career day", about what it is that I do, and why I do it (I was Director of New Media for a Media Conglomerate: I put Newspapers online). One of the things I was asked about is what is holding technology back the most. The answer was easy, "Wetware (People)".
What is DNS?	What and how Domain Names work" how to turn a human readable Domain name (like https://www.igeek.wiki) into computer readable IP address (in older v4 it's something like 192.168.2.1, in newer v6 form something like 2001:db8:85a3:8d3:1319:8a2e:370:7348).
What is MP3?	What is MP3? It's just a compressed file format used for sound (that came from MPEG's version 3). Video requires a lot compression, and the Motion Picture Expert Group did such a good job on compression, that we use it without a video track to compress Music/Audio as well. It is called MPEG Audio Layer III, aka MP3.
What is a WebApp?	What is a Web Application, and how does it vary from a traditional website? Normally, when you browse, you're just looking at files on someone else's computer. But sometimes, instead of just static files, sometimes the host is running an Application that serves you simulated files based on a lot more information than just URLs/pathnames.
What is a bus?	A "bus" is short for omnibus. Omnibus is Latin meaning, "for all". Which is exactly what a bus is -- a way for ALL the devices to talk to each other. Think of it as public transportation for your computer chips or peripherals.
Why did IBM choose DOS?	In 1980 a big computer company was needed an OS for the computer they had slapped together. I won't mention their name, but their initials were I.B.M. They didn't have time to develop the OS themselves -- so they hunted for a microcomputer OS they could stick in, that wouldn't be a threat to their important computers (their mainframes), and in came Bill Gates.
Why is software so buggy?	Why are programs so buggy? They're not bugs, they're undocumented features... sorry, that's an old programmer joke. Everyone has problems with their programs (software), it crashes, stalls, or does unexpected things. People ask about these "bugs", why are there so many, and what can they do about it. Hopefully this helps you understand why.
Wink	American software and hardware company that does smart home devices. During the middle of a COVID pandemic they went from paid to subscription only, with 7 days notice to customers. Pay the extortion or their products became useless. Users were going to be irked either way, but the way they handled it was guaranteed to cause maximum irritation and alienation
YouTube	YouTube (a division of Google) has a specially abusive place when it comes to the world of selective censorship - that only seems to apply to truths liberals hate to hear.
Mark Zuckerberg	Arrogant, contemptuous (of his customers), man-child billionaire. Wannabe "Steve Jobs", without having the talent to back it up. Zuck lets his ego get him into things he knows nothing about (like politics). Zuckerberg has uniquely been able to parlay the bad will he's earned into being a parody of a caricature.

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👁️ See also

• Tech - Technology: Organizations, Reviews, People

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