Computer Science Existentialism

This quote from an interview with Van Jacobson made me quiver.

"Also, we use buffer memory in such a way that it’s valuable only if it’s empty, because otherwise it doesn’t serve as a buffer. What we do is try to forget what we learned as soon as we possibly can; we have to do that to make our buffer memory empty."

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1508215

Three Mile Island: 30 years later

When I was young "TMI" meant Three Mile Island. Living in NJ, there were weeks (months?) of headlines with the acronym "TMI". It took me years to see "TMI" as "Too Much Information".

While I'm critical of Bob Cringely's rumor columns, his article about TMI's accident are quite interesting. I think that at the time the public was not computer literate enough to understand what really happened. However now it all seems to obvious:

http://www.cringely.com/2009/03/three-mile-island-memories/

Windows XP Service Pack 3

At home I have a single Windows box which I use for Quicken. Quicken is sooo much better on Windows than on the Mac. Yes, I could move it all to a VMWare instance on my Mac, but why bother when I do all my finances either at the desk that includes this PC? (The things that aren't done at my desk can be done from any web browser.)

So today I get a prompt asking if I should install "Windows XP Service Pack 3". Whaa? That was released a million years ago! Could I really not be running it? Well, surprise surprise! I've been at SP2 forever.

I was about to install it when I realized that this computer is so old that I have no clue whether or not I'd be able to find the license key for the disk I used. According to the PDF file, I'll be able to run SP3 for 30 days before it asks for the license key. It doesn't say what happens after that.

What happens after 30 days?

What should I do?

Don't call me close-minded because I don't believe in the supernatural.

Asking for evidence is the BASIS of being open minded.

If you don't know how to counter someone who says you're closed-minded if you don't believe in the supernatural.... watch this vid:

(thanks to quietchris who found this on atheist)