I've had a run of letters recently along the lines of "Who are you to criticize Steve Jobs and Bill Gates?" and "Where/what the heck is this 'Swaine Manor' you keep talking about?" and "Do you get paid for writing this stuff?" (All actual quotes or close paraphrases.) I think maybe it's time to review the basic plotlines and sets, and run down the cast of characters for those who tuned in this soap opera in midseason and are a little disoriented.
Mike Swaine: Me. The protagonist of our ongoing drama, a humble scrivener by trade, a high-tech low-life by rep, and a Webbish nebbish from way back.
Cousin Corbett: My frequently visiting relative, a typical entrepreneur/inventor.
Billg: William H. Gates III, thirtysomething boy billionaire, big cheese, and prime rennet of Microsoft Inc. Here's Bill: "IBM is a big company." "The Internet is a great phenomena."
Zelda: The product-testing Lab. She's pretty hard on UPS drivers, too.
Apple: The patience-testing company.
Basic: She's only in the show because she's Aaron Spelling's daughter.
Dylan: The recently orphaned sexy loner.
C: The most popular girl in school, and it's not because she's pretty.
Swaine's World: http://www.cruzio.com/~mswaine/. Party time. Excellent.
Foo Bar: A secret Silicon Valley watering hole much frequented by high-tech CEOs and gentlefolk of the fourth estate, where I moonlight as a relief bartender.
Stately Swaine Manor: The mountain fastness where I weave this screed. (Also a nod to Byte magazine columnist Jerry Pournelle, who refers to his home as "Chaos Manor.")
I hope this helps those of you having a hard time telling the actors from the props. If you hate to have the jokes explained, skip the preceding section.
In a truly chaotic manner, the dog-shy UPS driver recently flung another load of books from the truck, including one by an author who has written much on the subject of chaos, Clifford Pickover. The latest Pickover offering is Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide (John Wiley & Sons, 1996). I don't have the physics background to appreciate this fully, but it's surprising how far Pickover can take a non-physicist with his engaging way of motivating an equation. Yes, there are equations in the book; in fact, each chapter revolves around one important equation regarding black holes (there also are numerous programs, in C and Basic, that demonstrate key concepts). For example, the chapter on gravitational time dilation presents the equation for what happens to time in the vicinity of a black hole, gives some sample data, offers some implications for science-fiction writers trying to be realistic, and frames it all in Pickover's own science fiction story. It all works, and it's all just sufficiently odd. Pickover conveys the weirdness of black holes better than anybody else who's tried.
I want to end the column this month with a challenge. Because I'm curious as to just how historically savvy today's developer is, I've put together the following quiz. The task is simply to arrange these 15 more or less famous computers in their proper chronological order, based on the date each was first delivered. In the case of one early computer that may never actually have been built, the date it was first clearly described will do. But you don't have to get the dates, just the order. I've numbered the 15 computers in hexadecimal; a solution consists of the 15 nonzero hex digits in some order, such as 1984BA72EFD365C. Send your solution to mswaine@cruzio.com. As is our tradition, no prizes will be awarded and your immortal soul becomes the property of Miller Freeman Publishing. But you may get your name in print.
1 Atanasoff-Berry Computer 6 Data General Nova B IBM PC/AT 2 CDC 6600 7 DEC VAX 11/780 C MITS Altair 8800 3 Colossus Mark I 8 DEC PDP-1 D Sperry Rand UNIVAC 1103 4 Commodore VIC-20 9 ENIAC E Xerox Star 8010 5 Cray-1 A IBM 360/50 F Zuse Z1Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mswaine@cruzio.com