Category Archives: Technology

Sunday Nerding: The Browser Wars

In the early days of the World Wide Web – (as distinct from the internet itself) – there was a war. A war between two sides – Netscape and Microsoft – over who would control how people used the web. One of those sides won the war, but severely damaged itself in the process. That’s […]

Sunday Nerding: Impossible Mission

Chances are, if you had a Commodore 64 in the 1980’s, you had the game “Impossible Mission”. I personally spent hours playing this game For its time, Impossible Mission was remarkably well thought out, combining aspects of the platform, and adventure game genres, as well as getting players to have a good hard think at […]

The Internet Has Not Changed – But Malcolm Has!

Oh, how the mighty will flip-flop when the political need arises – right? The government has released a discussion paper through Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Attorney-General George Brandis, with a view towards having internet service providers police the illegal downloading of content. “The Abbott government has moved to crack down on illegal downloading, saying […]

Sunday Nerding: Computer For Apollo

Back into space this week, with a discussion of the development by MIT of the navigational computer for the Apollo spacecraft that took man to the moon in the 1960’s.

Sunday Nerding: The Phone Phreakers

The exact definition of what is or is not a hacker is constantly evolving, and it is perhaps true that an exact definition will never be found. Today, a look at phone phreaking, one of the early most forms of what could really be called ‘hacking’, through the exploits of John Draper, Steve Wozniak and […]

Sunday Nerding: Commodore 64

Back to my computing roots this week, with the Commodore 64. This computer came into my family in September of 1984, and I was hooked from day one – and ultimately, it became the foundation of my career in computing. Some of my first breakout computing moments happened on this machine. Like being told off […]

Turnbull Dismally Fails First NBN Test

It has been a pretty common refrain from Malcolm Turnbull that the management of the National Broadband Network project by the previous government was “pathetic” – both before and after the previous election in September 2013. Count how many times he uses that exact word in this transcript. Morever, how about this quote? “This is […]

Sunday Nerding: The Computers Of NASA

Two of my favourite topics this week: computing, and space. This video from NASA describing their use of computing to plan, carry out and manage the space program of the 1960’s. Although not dated, this video appears to have been prepared in the 1970’s, as it would seem the moon landings have already taken place, […]

Sunday Nerding: Cable To The Continent

This week, a cheesy – (and admittedly self-promoting) – video from AT&T about the laying of the TAT-2 submarine cable in 1959. Designed to provide a whopping “36 or more interference free telephone circuits” between Newfoundland and France, the video details the long and difficult process in laying that cable more than 50 years ago. […]

Sunday Nerding: The UNIX Operating System

A bit of nostaglia today for all the UNIX geeks out there, with a presentation put together by AT&T in 1982 about the UNIX operating system. While UNIX is still around and in active use in many organisations, most organisations these days make use of Linux-based systems when UNIX-like functionality is required. Linux is a […]