Someone stated in the early days of the war, a feeling that was reciprocated by the soldier in khaki and the sailor in blue, that a mechanical device would be the determining factor in ending the world conflict, favorably, of course, for the United States and her allies. 1
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Dropshipping AliExpress watches, AI-generated SEO spam websites... marginally legal and ethical passive income schemes, that serve to generate that income mostly for their promoters, can feel like a modern phenomenon. The promise of big money for little work is one of the fundamental human weaknesses, though, and it…
A programming note: I am looking at making some changes to how I host things like Computers Are Bad and wikimap that are going to involve a lot more recurring expense. For that and other reasons, I want to see if y'all would be willing to throw some money my way. If everyone reading this gave $3 a month, we could…
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while, but it has always been the case that you get what you pay for and Computers Are Bad is nothing if not affordable. Still, this is a topic on which I am moderately passionate and so I can probably stretch it to an implausible length.
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the balance tracking and authorization decisions happen within a financial institution that…
It's the first of the new year, which means we ought to do something momentous to mark the occasion, like a short piece about telephones. Why so much on telephones lately? I think I'm just a little burned out on software at the moment and I need a vacation before I'm excited to write about failed Microsoft ventures…
In a previous life, I worked for a location-based entertainment company, part of a huge team of people developing a location for Las Vegas, Nevada. It was COVID, a rough time for location-based anything, and things were delayed more than usual. Coworkers paid a lot of attention to another upcoming Las Vegas…
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology. From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
How much do you remember from elementary school? I remember vinyl tile floors, the playground, the teacher sentencing me to standing in the hallway. I had a teacher who was a chess fanatic; he painted a huge chess board in the paved schoolyard and got someone to fabricate big wooden chess pieces. It was enough of an…
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly in the early days of digital computing, the military was a key customer, and fundamental concepts of modern computing arose in universities and laboratories serving military contracts. Of course, the war would not last forever, and…
I haven't written anything for a bit. I'm not apologizing, because y'all don't pay me enough to apologize, but I do feel a little bad. Part of it is just that I've been busy, with work and travel and events. Part of it is that I've embarked on a couple of writing projects only to have them just Not Work Out. It…
In the United States, we are losing our fondness for cash. As in many other countries, cards and other types of electronic payments now dominate everyday commerce. To some, this is a loss. Cash represented a certain freedom from intermediation, a comforting simplicity that you just don't get from Visa. It's funny to…
Last time we perambulated on telephones, we discussed open-wire long-distance telephone carriers and touched on carriers intended for cables. Recall that, in the telephone industry, cable refers to an assembly of multiple copper twisted pairs (often hundreds) in a single jacket. There is a surprising amount of…
Recently, I covered some of the history of Ethernet's tenuous relationship with installed telephone cabling . That article focused on the earlier and more business-oriented products, but many of you probably know that there have been a number of efforts to install IP networking over installed telephone wiring in a…
I think I've mentioned occasionally that various devices, mostly cellular modems, just use the Hayes or AT command set. Recently I obtained a GPS tracking device (made by Queclink) that is, interestingly, fully configured via the Hayes command set. It's an example of a somewhat newer trend of converging the…