The DreamLand Express - Charles Oppermann's Software Blog

Last night I went to the party at Mountain View's Computer History Museum hosted by IBM.  I figured it would be a low key affair with other curious folks like me.  Nope the parking lot was full and the lecture hall packed.  Had several laughs listening to Fred Brooks talk about the development of the System/360.  Fred’s the author of “The Mythical Man-Month”, one of the great project management books.  He also was the manager of the Job Control Language (JCL), which he terms “the worst programming language ever.”

Apparently until recently, the Linux kernal value that measures “uptime” was a 32 bit number.  Uptime is measured in centiseconds (.01) and thus after 497 days, 2 hours, 27 minutes and 53 seconds, the counter wraps around to zero.  Doing a Google search on “Linux uptime 497“ produced a number of folks who encountered the issue and discussions about it.

Oooo am I mad!  Maybe someone from the TSA saw my rant two weeks ago on inconsistant security standards and decided to get even.

Microsoft has released a new white paper titled, “Best Practice Guide for Securing Active Directory Installations.”

I predict that spam, at least spam as we now it now, will be eliminated by September, 2005, probably sooner.

Arrrgh!  It’s week 8 here in San Jose.  Flying out this morning from SeaTac, I was asked to remove my sneakers.  Only about half the time at SeaTac am I asked to do this.  Never am I asked at SJC.  When I mentioned that I didn’t have to do it last week, the lady said “Oh, it’s required.  We always ask.”  As if I’d slap my forehead and say “Oh of course, I’d forgotten I was humiliated in a degrading manner last time I was here, silly me.”  Oh, on each trip, I wear the same Nike white tennis sneakers.

Oh, this is good.  Representative Ron Lewis (R-KY) has introduced a bill in Congress last week that aims to overthrow Supreme Court decisions concerning the constitutionality of acts of Congress.

The CSUN Conference on Disabilities, kicks off today at the LAX Marriot for its 19th year.  This is the yearly event that people working on enabling technology attend.  It’s a great place to share what you’ve been doing with not only your peers, but those who will benefit directly.  From 1990 through 1994 I attended this conference as a representative of Henter-Joyce (now Freedom Scientific) as developer of the JAWS screen reader.  Starting in 1995 through 1999, I represented Microsoft as a Program Manager for various projects, including accessibility to Windows, and Internet Explorer, and Active Accessibility.