Dowe Keller's Blog (4)

Or rather, I watched about two thirds of the movie before throwing the dvd across the room. Okay, I didn't actually throw the dvd, Blockbuster doesn't like it when you do that, but I really felt like doing that. One would assume that film-makers creating a historical drama would spend a tiny portion of their budget doing some actual research. I do realize that drama based on fact does take liberties to make a more compelling story, but the movie went way too far, making stuff up when the… Continue

Steven Levy's book consists of a series of narrative essays about the ubiquitous iPod, it's genesis, the MP3 music revolution, and the unforeseeable consequences of Apple's amazing iPod. If you've read my review of Hackers, you know that I am a fan of Mr. Levy's writing. This book is the most on-target of the three Steven Levy books that I read. He takes the reader on an interesting ride inside Apples pro… Continue

Steven Levy's book covers hacker history from the late fifties to the early eighties. Levy captures the passion of these young men for the computer. He distills for the layman the adventure of programming as few have. Particularly in parts 1 and 2. This book is however marred by Levy's lack of computer knowledge coupled with apparently shoddy research (several key program names are misspelled). This is not serious, but his tendency to loose track of the subject matter, spending too much time wr… Continue

I'm a long time Apple fan and Mac fan. My first Mac was a Plus with flaky video circuitry. I then, a few years later came upon a mac IIci that didn't work and a LC III with a bad hard-disk. The ci's drive was too tall for the LC case, so LC got a hard-disk shaped sunroof and a new drive. I loved my LC, but gave it up so that a little girl who's mom couldn't afford to buy a computer would have something to do her homework on, and was macless for several years. Then a couple years back, my intel… Continue