You are here: Home

News

Page 1 of 8  > >>

Feb 13, 2013
Why Is It So Hard To Make An Accurate Progress Bar?
Category: General
Posted by: mtoto
I've always been amused at the Micosoft Windows progress bar. It seems to go forward and back at random, as far as I've ever been able to tell. I've thought about making a joke animated gif about it doing just that. Well, I'm not alone in thinking these things.
[More]
Feb 13, 2013
COBOL Will Outlive Us All
Category: General
Posted by: mtoto
Here's an old computer science joke: What's the difference between hardware and software? If you use hardware long enough, it breaks. If you use software long enough, it works. The truth behind that is the reason that so much decades-old COBOL code is out there still driving crucial applications at banks and other huge companies. Many attempts to replace COBOL applications flopped in the 1980s and '90s, and we're stuck with them for the foreseeable future — but the Baby Boomers who wrote all that code are now retiring en masse.
[More]
Sep 18, 2012
Good, cheap Tablets on the way
Category: General
Posted by: mtoto
"You can buy a reasonable Android phone for $100 retail, and I wanted to see if I could find a $150 tablet. This consultant pointed me to a mall filled with hundreds of stalls selling nothing but tablets. I walked into the middle of the scrum to a random stall... If this were a movie, the lights would have dimmed and all the activity in the room frozen. 300 renminbi is US $45. And that was the initial offer price given to a bewildered foreigner in China, no haggling. I felt a literal shock."
[More]
CMS - 1.9.4.2 - Faanui
 
Print this page

Home

My wide-ranging PC IT background includes desktop and server programming, lan, email and database admin, web design, content management, technical writing, desktop publishing, technical support and consulting.

I’m a jack-of-web-techs, skilled in internet technologies. I enjoy using open source software to frame technology solutions. How can I help you?


Computer problems
are endless.
I encourage daily walks in nature for health*,
meditation for equanimity,
and hiring me
to keep your tech-work
runnin smooth.

On Open Source Technology

(Cooperation Makes Sense)

“The basic idea behind open source is very simple. When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.

“ We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.” —from OpenSource.org

A couple of Open Source articles:

A couple of open source freeware sites:

*: Five minutes of exercise in nature improves physical and mental health: A new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that just a five-minute 'dose' of exercising in nature provided the biggest boost in people's self esteem. The study further found that being active in natural spaces with water provided additional improvements in people's mental health.

What is Ubuntu?

I like using the open-source linux distribution called "Ubuntu" as the operating system on most of my PCs. Why? It's free! And more efficient, and more socially cooperative in spirit. (I also have Windows PCs, a Mac notebook, an iPad and a Kindle Fire tablet.) Here's a definition of Ubuntu:

"I am what I am because of who we all are." (From a translation offered by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee.)

Archbishop Desmond Tutu offered a definition in a 1999 book:[2]

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Tutu further explained Ubuntu in 2008:[3]

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.

We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

—from Wikipedia

^  Top
  Next page: Design