With apologies to “Our Anne” (with an “e”) the Spy this months takes note of some notable disappointments, failures, and wonders who or what is on the brink. We start with the technological realm itself of course, but this column has always been about much more than machinery. The industry giants have had their share […]
Technology News and Views Since 1983May 2021 The academic realm is often stereotyped as an impregnable, remote-from-life, unscalable ivory tower with little to say to the real world. The Spy’s corner of said kingdom is actually an ivory basement overdue for new carpeting and a coat of paint, and he likes to think his […]
With the announcement this past week that Volkswagen was to embrace the electric era by changing the corporate name to Voltswagen, the Spy decided to research the matter of pending corporate name changes and related issues. He made some fascinating discoveries. And, in an exclusive to this intrepid reporter comes word on internal debates at […]
Some things just last longer than others Those comfortable old sweaters, housecoats, a few pants and shirts worn to threadbare, and even beyond as they get relegated to gardening work, the 91 Buick Regal we kept till last year, and traded in before it was really finished with life, the forty year old rototiller, the […]
Technology News and Views Since 1983February 2021 Why is understanding so difficult? The Spy’s opening lectures to both his first year calculus classes, and his third year computing students taking programming language concepts start with much the same words. “To date you have been shown recipes for ways to manipulate your algebras (that’s what a […]
January 2021 The Technology Industry did well in the otherwise annus horribilis of 2020. Remote teaching, learning, business and personal teleconferencing, combined with the need to outfit and/or upgrade home offices meant that sales of computing equipment finished well after a short-lived COVID-induced slowdown. Preliminary indications to the third quarter show that Lenovo, GP, and […]
The global villagewas much touted back in the 60s and 70s. Better knowledge of our neighbours, countrypersons and those of other nations was supposed eventually to bring about unity, prosperity and a great love-in. The Spy has noted before in this space that his own prediction back in the day was quite the opposite, that […]
COVIDhas dramatically changed university teaching, and not in the Spy’s humble opinion, for the better. Oh, yes, students can still take university courses when, but for a few requiring personal skills performance, they are entirely online. But the Spy has four major concerns: 1. the lack of face-to-face interaction. Not only does the professor not […]
Apple and Tesla last week split their stock, the former by four-to-one and the latter by five-to-one. Since splits make the price of a single stock lower, such actions tend to attract more retail investors and this pushes the price up further. In the case of Apple this is merely the latest in a long […]
Applewas the first corporation to reach a stock valuation of $1 Trillion. Spectacular latest earnings results have pushed that to $1.85T, putting the company back in first place worldwide and poised to become the first to surpass $2T. Not bad for the little outfit from Cupertino that all the pundits once forecast would fail. Earnings […]
Somethings new at WWDCdelivered a spate of announcements across the board about Apple products. The big one had long been predicted here, and the timeline was roughly as forecast when the Spy first mentioned it a few years back. Apple will now abandon Intel chips for the Macintosh line and switch to its in-house design, […]
Will we?Yes, eventually, but as said repeatedly here, the Pandemic is far from over, and this particularly so in the rush by governments, corporations and unions to “return to business”. We cannot and we will not return to the way it was last Fall.We cannot because many of those employers are no longer in business […]
Technology News and Views Since 1983May 2020 The Spy is a little latewith his meanderings and prognostications this month. The two weeks of year end meetings and activities lacked an actual graduation ceremony–a great disappointment for students to be sure, who have to wait till November or later for their walk across the stage and […]
Technology News and Views Since 1983 April 2020 Alas the Spy with this column breaks a many years’ long tradition, for there will be no levity (or levitation for that matter) this foolish month. There are more serious matters of the techie and wider world to ponder. Velocity, as the Spy’s regular geeky reader surely […]
Technology News and Views Since 1983 March 2020 Our long time reader will recall the Spy’s having many moons ago differed sharply from the majority view that the “global village” created by what we today call the Internet that many of us saw coming in the heady early 80s when this column was first started, […]
Technology News and Views Since 1983 First Impressions of the Spy’s brand new MacBookPro sixteen inch machine from a strictly hardware point of view are mixed but generally positive as it stacks up very well in comparison to his older 2015 portable–the one he is now wary about taking into any airport in case the […]
Our reader has enjoyed the appearance of many predictions and forecasts in this space. Many were laughed at. Of those, some (rise of Apple from the ashes, fall of the Berlin Wall) came true, and others (demise of MS) have not (in its case, forestalled by a change of management and direction). Others (various automation […]
The Spy went out on a limb in October concerning the MacBook Pro 16″ model that had been the subject of so many rumours. How did his predictions and preferences do? – He implied it. would be out by the end of October. Missed it by a few weeks. Chinese trade war and Trump tariffs? […]
Why is Hallowe’en like Christmas? Because both have become commercialized to the point of morphing into insanely materialistic binges fueled by greed maintained by non-stop advertising? Because both, having lost all meaning as holy times, have become holidays with no more true significance than a ski weekend? Because 25 (Dec) = 31 (Oct)? Or, to […]
The Biggest Change to the society of the Fourth Civilization will not be pervasive computing technology per se. Certainly, the compound, sliding, dual bevel mitre saw we call the computing appliance, whether in big iron, small iron, desktop, laptop, pocket, or embedded form, is already ubiquitous. One assumes the embedded form will soon also be […]