Author: luimbe

Grace Hopper on “Late Night with David Letterman”

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Google has dedicated a doodle to her 107th birthday:
Grace Hopper's 107th Birthday Google Doodle

Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University. The MARK series of computers began with the Mark I in 1944. Imagine a giant roomful of noisy, clicking metal parts, 55 feet long and 8 feet high. The 5-ton device contained almost 760,000 separate pieces. Used by the US Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations, the Mark I was in operation until 1959.

The computer, controlled by pre-punched paper tape, could carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and reference to previous results. It had special subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric functions and used 23 decimal place numbers. Data was stored and counted mechanically using 3000 decimal storage wheels, 1400 rotary dial switches, and 500 miles of wire. Its electromagnetic relays classified the machine as a relay computer. All output was displayed on an electric typewriter. By today’s standards, the Mark I was slow, requiring 3-5 seconds for a multiplication operation.

via Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper – Inventors of the Mark I Computer.

She also was responsible for development of COBOL and more importantly all programming languages that humans could read that could be translated to computer readable assembly language:

She is probably most celebrated for her pioneering work in the development of COBOL, one of the first programming languages that could work independently of a particular machine, but we should perhaps thank her most for her popularisation of the word ‘debugging’ – dating from an anecdote when an actual moth was found in a computer she was working on, and that was slowing down its processes.

via Grace Hopper: Computer scientist’s 107th birthday marked with Google Doodle – News – Gadgets & Tech – The Independent.

It really was a revolution: coding using plain english.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was interviewed by David Letterman about her groundbreaking work…

Letterman: “How did you know so much about computers then?”

Rear Adm. Hopper: “I didn’t. It was the first one.”

Watch the interview to see computer technology explained in plain english.

How Dems were pushed to restrict the filibuster

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Dems decided to restrict the filibuster because extremist judges they confirmed in the spirit of civility when George W. Bush was president ended up being the right wing extremists they said they would be restricting reproductive rights from the bench.

What digby said:

For a long time the Democrats bargained with women’s bodies to try to get votes from people who would never vote for them and it never worked. Some things you just can’t split the difference on and thats assuming the other side isn’t simply playing you for a fool. I’m ever so slightly optimistic that our leaders may have finally learned their lesson.

It’s time Democrats get to staffing the benches and the rest of President Obama’s government. This is so long overdue. The next year better be chock full of nominations and confirmations to remedy the record amount of filibusters of President Obama’s judicial and political nominees.

Give them Thanksgiving back

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jerks fighting over stuff.

jerks fighting over stuff.

I think it’s generally sh*tty to have some weird compulsion that you HAVE to go shopping on Thanksgiving Day or 5 am Black Friday for cheap craps to give your kids on Christmas, but it’s even crappier to have to forgo a holiday to sell it to people who are worked into a frenzy for that crap. It’s supposed to be a day off. And for people that work in retail stores, it used to be their only guaranteed kick your feet up, family’s driving in, see the new family members faces kind of day until the New Year. Retailers are open extended hours from now through the New Year. That means leaving their kids early and not being there at night in time to say walk them from the school bus. When winter break starts, they will miss most of that time as well. They won’t have any real time to rest. I worked retail in college to get cheap clothes even cheaper so I’ve seen the nonsense up close. This is some major b.s. to not even give them the full thanksgiving day holiday, a national holiday, off. No one needs to shop at 5 AM. People stampeding into stores to buy stuff someone just has to have this year on the day people observe Jesus’ birthday is literally one of the more depressing things about our consumer culture.
The important thing to remember: it’s cheaper, but the cheap stuff is the worst made, worst constructed garbage version of what you actually want to have.

If I wanted anything every Christmas, it’s for American consumers to stop this embarrassing garbage and make this not make sense for retailers and give retailers Thanksgiving Day back.

The royal “us” in “keep us safe”

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The royal “us” in “keep us safe”:

Huffington Post has unearthedNSA documents, provided by Edward Snowden, which describe how “personal vulnerabilities” could be learned through electronic surveillance, then exploited to undermine a target’s credibility. Among the vulnerabilities mentioned are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.

The document actually discussed six specific targets, and it should be pointed out that none are explicitly referred to as being involved in terror plots. All things considered, though, it seems like a very tangential way of preventing a terrorist attack on the US.

The “us” is clandestine government interests.

Thanksgiving holiday night not Black Friday eve

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The extension of retail bonanza is a travesty for retail workers so it’s encouraging to read in Venture Beat that folks aren’t about The Thanksgiving night “shopping orgy”.

According to a 4,600-person survey by Visa, 49 percent of us are not impressed with the over-commercialization of the Thanksgiving weekend and don’t plan to shop on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, or any of the other shopping days this weekend.

[…]

Which begs the question: Will we really not shop on the weekend, or do we just want to think of ourselves as people who, on Thanksgiving, are actually giving thanks, rather than reaching out for an ever-bigger piece of the consumer pie that retailers are dangling in front of our faces.

We can make retailers give this day back to their works by not showing up. This is one of the rare times our buying dollars are directly responsible for screwing people who work for a living.

Taking their country back…

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A couple retired generals hate Obama so much they want to defy the constitution and install military rule:

You are in luck, people, because a couple of retired generals — Army Gen. Paul E. Vallely and Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Jones, who already run a “We Hate Bamz” organization — created something terrifying that they’re calling a “Citizens’ Commission” that purports to exist to give advice to the legislative and executive branches of government but is really just a garden variety demand that Obama resign or else and also, too, taxation is unjust, except, of course, with the added excitement of hoping people will take up arms to accomplish those things.

really.

McDonald’s McResources: You lose employee!

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Ronald McDonald says: "Cut this sammy into quarters, eat 10 fries and only drink a palmful of this delicious drink! Last ya four days!"

Ronald McDonald says: “Cut this sammy into quarters, eat 10 fries and only drink a palmful of this delicious drink! Last ya four days!”

McDonald’s McResources: You lose employee!

McDonald’s McResource Line, a dedicated website run by the world’s largest fast-food chain to provide its 1.8 million employees with financial and health-related tips, offers a full page of advice for “Digging Out From Holiday Debt.” Among their helpful holiday tips: “Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.”

Elsewhere on the site, McDonald’s encourages its employees to break apart food when they eat meals, as “breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full.” And if they are struggling to stock their shelves with food in the first place, the company offers assistance for workers applying for food stamps

Atlas Scrooged: Stossel says don’t give money to poors. Doesn’t mention volunteering.

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Happy Holidays! Let’s celebrate with John Stossel suggesting we step over the homeless scammers begging for your money… ladies and gentlemen! (this steaming pile of Fox News jerks courtesy of Wonkette)

The best case for giving money to the homeless was laid out to me by a college friend who is/was a self described “bleeding heart” who maintained she would always gave homeless people money whenever she could. She just wanted to help ease a homeless person’s pain. If she knew they were in pain (even from withdrawal) and that money would help them in anyway, she wanted to do that. That showed real compassion. Quite often, the homeless person does really want some food or coffee and you can buy them that if you don’t want to give them cash. fine.

Stossel’s whole pretend homeless schtick was so dehumanizing, reductive, childish and unprofessional, then to see that resident moron Doocy ask Stossel “what it felt to be like to be homeless” was one of the worst things ever. Stossel was out there for a small part of the day. He felt what it was like to be a hairy ticket scalper or a kid who skipped school on Halloween dress up day. He did not learn what it felt to be homeless.

To be fair to the (g)libertarian Stossel, you do get better holistic bang for your buck giving to charities that have established programs. But no one disputes that. But the best bang for your buck is giving your time to the homeless and Stossel never mentions that! It’s a whole choice between giving and not giving.

I’ve volunteered with The Doe Fund’s Ready, Willing and Able…it’s an awesome program. I also volunteer with Covenant House PA here in Philly. Another awesome charity. And yes, Charity Navigator is excellent, before I started walking in the PanCan walk a few years back, I checked them through that site. As someone who does pass up giving out money on the street, I find giving time is much better. Go do something about it.

Rand Paul’s anti-bully whine

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This sounds so weak:

“I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate,” Paul said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “I mean, now we’ve got a big bully — Harry Reid says he’s just going to break the rules and make new rules. He’s gotta have everything his way; he’s gotta control everything. This is more about them trying to control the agenda, and shift it away from Obamacare, than it is anything else.

via .

It sounds weaker when you consider the fact that this is not some law in the US Code of Law or the constitution, it’s literally rules established under parliamentary order which can be changed just as they were. It’s just called the “Nuclear option” because media horse race/both siders decided that 60 vote threshold to get routine nominations through was sensible.