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Showing posts from October, 2011

Where is Dennis Ritchie's day?

It's now a week since the creator of the C programming language, and co-creator of the UNIX operating system, Dennis Ritchie , died after a long illness. I still have the distinct impression that Steve Jobs' charisma and Apple's links to pop culture have generated far more hype than the former's profound contributions to technology. A few days ago I'd shared the New York Times obituary on Ritchie, which garnered comments from my loyal readers (thank you, Klaus and Mick!) Since then, I'd been looking at various media sources to see what more would be said about him. However, I see announcements instead like this (Californian governor declares October 16 Steve Jobs Day), and threads like this (Google has neither created a doodle nor provided a hyperlink to Ritchie, despite doing the latter for Jobs). It seems there must be many more people who share my disappointment and outrage that Ritchie's passing has been eclipsed so effectively by the timing of J

Time management thoughts, Part 1

I'd recently admitted to some friends that, ironically (and funnily enough) the topic of time management has been on my mind. The irony being that this post comes more than halfway through October, with the greatest gap in time that had transpired since the blog was launched in May. Here is a quote from the TV series "Bones", which has a protagonist whose behaviour I can relate to quite well. She's being interviewed by a bubbly morning chat show hostess in the following exchange: Courtesy of IMDB : Stacy Goodyear : I'm Stacie Goodyear and joining me on Wake Up, D.C. is Dr. Temperance Brennan. She is the author of the best-selling mystery novel "Bred in the Bone" and she's also - now tell me if I get this wrong - an anthropologist who works with the F.B.I. to solve crimes? Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan : Yes, that's correct. I use the bones of people who have been murdered, or burned, or blown up, or eaten by animals or insects, or