Posts by Mikezzz

This gun says you ain’t leaving until my PC is fixed

When I worked for Prime Computer back into around 1985, a customer (major financial institution) locked one of our Field Engineers in a room until repairs were completed.

There were some frantic phone calls resulting in the release of the field engineer before things got too ugly.

OFFICIAL: Humans will only tolerate robots as helpful SLAVES

Make no mistake. Large numbers of robots will be "appointed" by governments and they will be telling us what to do!

One of the first and prolific examples was the simple traffic light. Government loves this kind of technology because it's (relatively) cheap, politically correct, and a very effective instrument of control. Expect to see many more such devices deployed over the next 10-20 years. We will be required to comply with their instructions and that will be backed with the force of law.

British computing pioneer James Martin found dead in Bermuda sea

Sad

In the mid-1980's I listed to James Martin speak at one of his seminars. It was a whole week long and I was glued to the edge of my chair for the entire time. He was a true visionary!

I still have his book "The Design of Real-Time Systems" on my bookshelf. His logic on queuing theory still works flawlessly.

Unfortunately, I think about it every time I'm waiting in a queue at the airport, post office or whatever. It tells me that I'm waiting in line because the airline, USPS, or whomever, actually *wants* it to be that way! Yes, folks, all the organizations could know, should know, and probably do know just how long you're waiting. It's 100% predictable.