First Blog

 In the photo below, you see 62,000 punch cards which could contain 5mb (not giga) of data back in 1966. These are the old punch cards, the original storage medium of information back then. This amounts to one short tune (uncompressed), one picture on your iPhone, or a long novel.

Begin with definitions.   For Facebook, (1) The customers are those agencies that purchase information from their product (2), the personal data produced by their 2 billion users.     Most of those 2 billion were scarcely aware their personal data was being sold. Thus, for Facebook, implied data privacy is a myth. For Facebook, there seems little measure of business ethics. When the CEO Mark Zuckerberg was caught data-ripping he apologized, and then again when caught again.   “We have much to learn.”   I believe he did learn. Taken to the next step , it would not be surprising if Facebook sold customer data to other customers .   Now Facebook is the principal behind a new cryptocurrency .   With it, people will be able to transfer (and pay) funds from point to point.   This new venture, called Libra *, goes live next year.     With Libra , Facebook will have access to another dimension of data –   financial data, account numbers, and more. Facebook promises they will no

Most pundits use poll/survey results that validate what they want to prove.   But… Remember the 2016 outcome? Totally missed by pollsters and pundits.   One reason is many simply don’t respond to polls any more. It is important to know that poll results are flushed into huge data lakes and combined with other information (about you) so that political social engineers can better manipulate Y-O-U.   If the pollster dials your phone, much is known about you already.   Forget random sampling – merely the newest fiction to create facts.   You might say, “I rely on RealClearPolitics for my data.”   Well, if you average the results of 100 bad polls you still get bad results. Bad does not average to good, much less accurate. What’s in your Data?   Garbage or Truth?

Here's a tidbit for the very depressed. Even if Zuckerberg promised to wrap all Facebook data in some kind of digital chastity belt, the partners and friends who originally scraped the personal data still have it.  It is still being used, and it is still a marketing tool. And it will live as such a tool as long as it has value.  Years, probably.  You see, hacked or otherwise procured data is forever.  This is also true for hacked information from any of the hundreds of hacked servers worldwide. Modifying the old joke: What lasts longer than true love?  The old answer was venereal disease.  The new answer is your data . DATA IS FOREVER

The End of Computing.   We put forth the question as to the end of computing.   That is, we ask when will computing and computers come to their end of innovative applications, though this is not a discussion about bigger and faster machines.   Sure, bigger, faster computers can and will push to new limits ordinary and well explored topics.    They have this, and will so continue.   We are entered into a discussion about the use of computers to solve new, even revolutionary, problems   of this world.  Examples of innovations now at the end of their road .   Of course, these examples may simply reveal this author’s lack of futuristic insights.  ·          Watch making – long the epitome of machines, the watch is now engineered with precision and at least mechanically do just about everything ever desired – extremely accurate time keeping.   Even still there has evolved a new technology for this task. ·            The horizontal milling machine - Just about everything a m