Lomcevak

As I age, I find that I’ve developed an appreciation for tech history. I was delighted this morning to run across a short piece by Dan Murphy, the creator of TECO, entitled The Beginnings of TECO.

You see, TECO was the editor for which Richard Stallman created a macro package called Emacs (for Editor MACroS). A flavor of Emacs is usually the first program I launch and the last to quit. It’s been that way since the mid eighties, which is around when it became very useful to me to be able to edit text on a variety of different platforms. For Emacs has been ported to just about every computing platform there is. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this piece in an Emacs buffer right now! (Before you ask, the implementation I use these days is from Lugaru Software, LTD. Theirs is a commercial product, but go visit them for a fully capable free trial.)

But I digress – go read The Beginnings of TECO for a fascinating glimpse into the past, when things were more… well, interesting… in some ways than they are today.

[...] TECO was nothing if not terse. Fairly complex loops and other command sequences could be written in TECO, and mostly looked like line noise. TECO was one of the first languages to spawn the practice of handing someone a one-line string of near gibberish and asking with a grin, “tell me what it does.”

NY Times: Listening In on a Pay Phone in Queens

Be sure to check out the photo set as well!

Whuh!

http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi

This one’s planted firmly in the WTF department. See for yourself.

http://www.vhemt.org/

“May we live long and die out”

Privacy is important to me. Sure, like everyone else I leave a rather wide data trail in my wake, but at least I try to be aware of it.

I was reading about some of the inappropriate uses of telephone records when I ran across this unclassified document from the U.S. Department of Justice entitled A Review of the FBI’s Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for Telephone Records.

I’m just throwing it out there, have fun if you care to. Patience, the document’s a little under 6 MB.

I’m wondering whether law enforcement officials would use deploy this in pursuit of a motorcycle.

http://blutube.policeone.com/Clip.aspx?key=8E7AF35948367905

I tend to pull over when requested, but what if???

Yep, this is an admittedly cheap post.

There’s this file that’s always open in my favorite editor, ready to capture anything that strikes my fancy. I was clearing it out and found these delightful videos.

Some folks think I’m nuts for riding motorcycles here in Jersey. I submit that by comparison to this stuff, I might as well be just another old fart relaxing in the Barcalounger. Go grab a fresh cup of coffee and have a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x98jCBnWO8w
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a11_1239425564
http://vimeo.com/1527459
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1778399&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1

Whew!

It seems like only yesterday that Joe and me would while away the wee hours on the printer-terminals in the basement at Hill Center, ‘playing’ on the ARPANET after shooting pool and drinking beers… That was actually in the ’70s. The ‘net has come quite a way from those days, hasn’t it?

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090830/D9ADCOL00.html

Here’s what the ARPANET looked like in 1982.

Kinda different today. Say, I’m a little curious. Does anyone remember the pain of using bangist-style email addresses in the ancient, pre-DNS days? Stuff that looked like this:

fishpond!mcdphx!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!portal!cup.portal.com!plav

Yeah, that’s actually an email address. It used to reach me, in fact – well, from some networks, anyway. Getting it all to work together used to be really, really hard work!

As a motorcyclist, I can talk for hours and hours about first-hand encounters with drivers preoccupied with their cell phones (not to mention food, newspapers, computers, GPS units, ad nauseum). We (the editorial we) pass all kinds of stupid laws all the time, why can’t we have more like these? Just as, or perhaps even more importantly, why can’t we actually enforce them as vigorously as needed in order that they’re effective in changing behavior?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/technology/29distracted.html?_r=1

It seems absurdly simple. We’re spending money hand over fist. Taxes will, with absolute certainty, soon rise. It seems likely to me that taxes will rise to rates never before seen in this land.

Can anyone tell me a rational reason why churches enjoyed tax-exempt status?

We absolutely need to tax all churches, as we do every other non-profit.

Check out this Web site to learn a little  more (edited 2-Sep-09) to read some more; it was the first hit Google returned when I searched.

Who’s with me on this?

Every now and again I run across something that’s just plain delightful. Check it out:

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/can-do/

Thanks, Tim!

“The global warming alarm is dressed up as science, but it’s not science.  It’s propaganda.”

Actually, this is a pointer to video, not something to read.

http://blasphemes.blogspot.com/2009/04/global-warming-swindle.html

“The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it’s legitimate for me to call them ‘anti-human’. Like, okay, you don’t have to think humans are beter than whales, or better than owls or whatever you don’t want to. Right, but surely it is not a good idea to think of humans as sort of being scum, you know, that it’s okay to have hundreds of millions of them go blind or die or whatever.  I… I just can’t relate to that.”

Patrick Moore
Co-founder, Greenpeace

I think I may start selling t-shirts.

Bob Evans wrote in Information Week’s Global CIO Blog an article entitled IBM, Microsoft, And The Myth Of ‘Our Jobs’.

Proving once again that there are statistics to support just about anything you’ve got to say.

Neuroenhancement, brain boost, mind hacking, or simply drug abuse?

I just read a fascinating article in The New Yorker that really opened my eyes. On the one hand, I’ve been known to quaff a Red Bull or two to get me through a particularly trying meeting (or maybe to get a few more hours out of a good Friday night) but on the other I’ve been known to speak out against our over-medicated society.

Go check this out, I practically guarantee you’ll learn something.

Brain Gain – The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs
by Margaret Talbot
The New Yorker – April 27, 2009
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all

They’re at it again. The States State tax authorities, faced with declining sales tax revenue, are about to take another stab at getting Congress to mandate tax collection for online shopping.

I’ve been following this; I’ve got a stake in it because I sell stuff online. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m opposed to the idea. I collect – and pay the state Treasury – sales tax from customers here in New Jersey because my business presence is here. But I simply haven’t got the manpower to keep track of the nuances of 7,000-plus tax authorities in the US alone.

Well, I’m not writing here to complain. What I’d like to do it point you toward a particularly coherent article on ZDNet: