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Technology’s Infestation of my Life

Examples of how technology has permeated every single bit of my life.

For The Price of a Computer in 1989

This is going to be somewhat unscientific, but here goes.

20MHz Intel 80386 Microprocessor -> Today’s Price ~ $1.56 (3.2GHz Intel P4 @ $250 / 3200 X 20)
2MB RAM -> Today’s Price ~$0.36 (256MB Kingston Value RAM @ $50 / 256 X 2)

The cost of the CPU is roughly 48% of the total cost of the unit (at least it is today). So that leads to a computer worth around $3.25…monitor, keyboard, and mouse not included of course ;-).

From $8499 to $3.25 in just sixteen years. Wow.

See the full ad.

Starting on LON-CAPA

I’m finally hunkering down and starting on my LON-CAPA homework. For those not at Mines or the few dozen other schools that use Learning On-Line – Computer Assisted Personalized Approach, LON-CAPA is an “Open Source Freeware Distributed Learning Content Management and Assessment System” developed by the Michagan State University In short, it’s a way to deliver and automatically grade homework assignments. So while each of the students will receive relatively the same assignments, the numbers will be different (i.e. instead of the car having a velocity of 35.6 m/s, it will have a velocity of 22.9 m/s).

Educational Tablet PC Goodies

I’m actually not quite sure how I found this link. I think it was in one the handful of blogs I read. In any event, Microsoft has released a free Education Pack for the Tablet PC. Incremental Blogger reports that it comes with:

* Equation Writer–Converts your handwritten equations to typewritten images.
* GoBinder Lite–Keep track of your schedule with this planner.
* Hexic – MSN game that’s Tablet enhanced
* Ink Flash Cards–Create flash cards to help you learn facts or study for an exam.
* Send to Microsoft Office OneNote 2003–Print web pages, pictures and other files to OneNote so you can annotate them.

I actually remember looking for a flash card program last year and not finding one I liked. So I’m pumped to try it out. I’m also looking forward to seeing what the Go Binder Lite is all about. I currently use Outlook because it lets me sync with my SPOT watch. I currently use the Windows Journal program to markup files, so it should be nice to keep them all in OneNote.

The price also isn’t too bad either, can’t really beat $0.00.

The War on Terror: As Viewed From The Bourne Shell

This gave me a good laugh, something good for a Monday. From Sun Ray Blog:

$ cd /middle_east
$ ls
Afghanistan Iraq Libya Saudi_Arabia UAE
Algeria Israel Morrocco Sudan Yemen
Bahrain Jordan Oman Syria
Egypt Kuwait Palestine Tunisia
Iran Lebanon Qatar Turkey

$ cd Afghanistan
$ ls
bin Taliban
$ rm Taliban
rm: Taliban is a directory
$ cd Taliban
$ ls
soldiers
$ rm soldiers
$ cd ..
$ rmdir Taliban
rmdir: directory "Taliban": Directory not empty
$ cd Taliban
$ ls -a
. .. .insurgents
$ chown -R USA .*
chown: .insurgents: Not owner
$ cd ..
$ su
Password: *******
# mv Taliban /tmp
# exit
$ ls
bin
$ cd bin
$ ls
laden
$ cd ..
$ rm -r bin/laden
bin/laden: No such file or directory
$ find / -name laden
$
$ su
Password: *******
# mv bin /tmp
# exit
$ pwd
/middle_east/Afghanistan
$ cd /opt/UN
$ ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda /middle_east/Iraq/.
ln: cannot create /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda: Permission denied
$ su
Password:*******
# ln -s /Bad_Guys/Al_Qaeda /middle_east/Iraq/.
# cd /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
Al_Qaeda: does not exist
# rm /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# mkfile 100g /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
mkfile: No space left on device
# rm /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# cd /opt/Coalition/Willing
# mkfile 1b /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
# chown -R USA:Proof /middle_east/Iraq/Al_Qaeda
#exit
$ cd /middle_east/Iraq
$ ls
saddam
$ ls
saddam
$ ls
saddam
$ ls -a
. .. saddam
$ find / -name [Ww][Mm][Dd]
/Korea/North/wMd
$ wall Propaganda.txt
Broadcast Message from USA (pts/1) on USS_Abraham_Lincoln Th May 1st
Mission Accomplished!
$ rm saddam
saddam: No such file or directory
$ find / -name saddam
/var/opt/dictators/spiderhole/saddam
$ wall NewsWorthy.txt
Broadcast Message from USA (pts/1) on Time.Magazine Sat Dec 13
We Got Him!
$ mv /var/opt/dictators/spiderhole/saddam /opt/jail
$ cd /opt/USA
$ cp -Rp Democracy /middle_east/Iraq
$ cd /middle_east/Iraq/Democracy
$ ./install
Install Error: Install failed. See install_log for details.
$ more install_log
Installed failed!
Prerequisite packages missing
Conflicting package Wahhabism found in /midde_east/Saudi_Arabia
Packages Church and State must be installed separately
File System /PeakOil nearing capacity
Please read the install guide to properly plan your installation.
$

Skype Is Still Freakin Awesome

Just got off the phone with Liz Purdy, who is in London with Devan Owens and Katie Shaiman. The best part is, it only costs 1.7 Euro cents/minutes (which is about 2.03 US cents…still not bad). Anyway, it sounds like they are having fun. They were in the tunnel when the bombings happened, only a few stops behind one of them. Scary. We’re going to try and have a conference call tomorrow, so if you’re in Seattle, drop my house around 1pm local time and we’ll call ’em up.