Computing

If there’s ever a book that you can say is pure geek indulgence, it’s Cryptonomicon. No other book I’ve seen takes the abstract concepts of topics as varied as UNIX, cryptography and normalising preferences between siblings for Grandma’s inheritance through a distribution on a cartesian plane formed in a parking lot. You can tell this isn’t your daddy’s war novel. Stephenson weaves together two stories, interlinked through blood - in the 1930s, Lawrence Waterhouse, a borderline-Autistic mathematician encounters Alan Turing shortly before World War II is due to break out; Bobby Shaftoe is a U.S. Marine stationed in Asia, retreating from Shanghai ahead of the march of the Japanese through China, while Goto Dengo is Bobby’s counterpart of sorts on the Japanese side, a soldier who dares to think of self-preservation ahead of the Emperor’s wishes. ...

I’ve been an Apple user since 2006, but I’ve been a Windows user since 1993 - the sheer gravity of Microsoft Windows on the computing landscape is inescapable, and it’s given me a certain amount of perspective: you can’t be ideological about what you use to get your work done[ref]Or at least, it doesn’t help. YMMV.[/ref]. Last week, Microsoft introduced the upcoming Windows 8 at its BUILD conference to an audience of developers. In many ways, it’s almost the direct opposite of what Apple would do - introduce to devs and market to devs the biggest change in the user interface since Windows 95, instead of a consumer-friendly presentation. The key here is that Microsoft needs developers on board much more than they need the consumers - for all the hype Apple gets, it’s still only around 10% of the computing market, and the overwhelming weight of Microsoft in the corporate environment will give Windows inertia for years. ...

We’ve been here before. I wonder if anyone else recognises it? (Well, I haven’t, though I’ve read about it. Let me explain…) There’s an eerie sense of deja vu about the computer industry right now, if you look at it the right way. The PC wars were pretty much over by the time I was born, definitely so by the time I was old enough to be conscious of a computer, but from what I’ve gleaned from my history books and a little recent reading, things weren’t always so straightforward in the computer industry as they’ve been over the last few years. ...