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Wilson Tuckey, supergenius
Kevin Rudd must secretly love Wilson Tuckey, in the way that one might value a psychopath who happens to inhabit the enemy bunker and can’t actually fire a weapon. In other words, Tuckey plays right into Rudd’s political message. Perhaps feeling a little defensive over all the condemnation of his [intlink id=”935″ type=”post”]boat terrorist hypothesis[/intlink],…
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It’s teh boat terrorists!
The existence of Wilson Tuckey is truly an unnecessary contribution to the heat death of the universe. Quite predictably, he suggests that terrorists are lurking among asylum seekers arriving by boat. Sayeth the Great Purveyor of Entropy, himself a convicted criminal: If you wanted to get into Australia and you have bad intentions what do…
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Fire drill
I do respect fire drills. Honestly, I do. However, when the alarm started sounding at around 11:30 this morning I happened to be naked, wet and soapy, as a result (fortunately) of being in the shower. I was fairly certain it was a drill because I’d seen another drill earlier in the morning for the…
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The Liberal war
Costello is quitting politics, Wilson Tuckey isn’t quitting politics, Peter Dutton (the shadow health minister) has had politics quit on him. Turnbull is the voice of (relative) sanity in the Liberal Party, but not many – either in the Party or in the wider population – seem inclined to listen to it. Some seem to…
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Software defect costs
In my persuit of software engineering data, I’ve recently been poring over a 2002 report to the US Government on the annual costs of software defects. The report is entitled “The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing“. Ultimately, it estimates that software defects cost the US economy $59.5 billion every year. Modelling such…
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The colloquium
An “official communication” from early June demanded that all Engineering and Computing postgraduate students take part in the Curtin Engineering & Computing Research Colloquium. Those who didn’t might be placed on “conditional status”, the message warned. A slightly rebellious instinct led me to think of ways to obey the letter but not the spirit of…
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The right to die
The story of the end of Christian Rossiter has been in the news recently, and serves as another hook into the euthanasia debate. Euthanasia is one of those controversial subjects where the politics seems stubbornly opposed to what people generally regard as sensible. I’m not unreservedly committed to the right to die. I consider myself…
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The American hypothesis
I have a hypothesis on politics – a somewhat unfortunate hypothesis given its implications. Roughly speaking, it’s this: the workability of democracy diminishes with large populations. I’m not talking about the logistics of holding elections, but about the ability of society to engage in meaningful debate. My reasoning goes like this. Insofar as I can…
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Freedom of obfuscation
I have regrettably discovered that my old faithful source of technology news (which I haven’t paid much attention to in recent years) is engaging in one of those enlightening let’s-all-laugh-at-the-scientists climate change denialism campaigns. This article in The Register caught my attention today, and made me despair a little. Andrew Orlowski reports light-heartedly on a…
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Old computers
The Linux boot up message of the moment: / has gone 49710 days without being checked, check forced. This would place the manufacturing date of the computer in question at around 1872 or earlier; a century before the UNIX epoch (the official Dawn of Time for UNIX-based computers) and at least 86 years prior to…
The sporadic blog of David J A Cooper. I write sci-fi, teach software engineering, and occasionally say related (or not related) things.
Check out Nova Sapiens: The Believers.