[Phoenix-pm] job opening

Bill Nash billn at billn.net
Tue Oct 5 14:37:19 CDT 2004


On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Scott Walters wrote:

> Every worthwhile programming task was completed in the 1970's. The switched
> phone network was finished, airlines has their reservation systems running,
> Eliza was chatting up humans, humans were navigated to the moon and back...
> since then we've just been doing the same things on different scales for

I don't see how packet switching voice, as a revolution over line
switching, falls into this category. Neither do self-healing networks,
unless you count cellular, and I don't. Lossless 12:1 audio compression in
software clearly wasn't in the This Era project plan, either.
Incidentally, Frontier turned down it's last operational 'party line'
system in the late 90s. I'd hardly call the domestic line switched system
complete until that point.

I'm pretty sure automated exploration of the human genome, much less the
concept of practical computational genetic algorithms, was barely a
twinkle in some doctor's pants, in the 70s. Glucose powered chips in the
blood stream to monitor vitals? Get outta here. The control systems for
such a feat were surely the product of a social event whose theme is best
summarized by Pat Boone's cover of "Smoke on the Water". Or not.

I think NASA is going to disagree with you a lot, too. Otherwise, they
wouldn't be shopping for off-the-shelf products to plug into their Mars
landers, since they'd already have it all. For that matter, I'm pretty
sure the concept of a radio tuner with a 150khz to 3+ghz tuning range,
almost completely realized in a single DSP chip, was on the radar either.
Being able to park one anywhere on the planet you can get power, and being
able to tune it from anywhere else on the planet, as a basic civilian, was
probably just as sneaky a concept. Yes, I own one of these.

> Seriously, I'm so badly traumitized by past employment I don't think
> I could work in the tech sector again. It's my lot to sit at home and
> eat ramen and write CPAN modules, sometimes pausing to guess where
> rent might come from.

If it didn't kill you, and it didn't make you stronger, Darwin still won.

- billn



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