cyberspacial musings
bits about the real and virtual worlds

At a recent conference, Alan Cooper, the father of the Visual Basic programming language, made the following statement: “The act of constructing software is, in fact, not an engineering process. Engineering to me is problem-solving, which is very different from solution implementations, which is what programmers [do].” [see this Infoworld article for the details] Cooper’s [...]

There’s nothing more amusing than a bill with a self-serving component. The Washington Post reports today that the House approved a bill setting up a national “Do Not Call” list for those of us who do not want to be called by telemarketers. Of course, the telemarketers are fighting this tooth and nail on the [...]

Looks like those crazy guys in the record industry are the subject of a class action suit for price fixing! What a surprise! Go to the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement web site and sign up. It’s unlikely you’ll see any dollars from this, but it’ll serve as a punitive measure against [...]

I’ve had a difficult time with job titles throughout my career because it seems that few of the people who are not in my industry understand what it is that I do for a living. That may seem trite and unimportant, but I’ve found that it’s quite the contrary. Today I had a brief discussion [...]