johnkemeny.com

First name Mister middle name Period last name T

I try not to mix work-related stuff into my blog, but when Mr. T derides my product – well it is just too funny.  Without further ado here is the yahoo video from our competitor, Hitachi Data Systems, featuring Mr. T.

If you want an alternate, more serious, view, here is an article published in Computer Technology Review by EMC Vice President Doc D’Errico. 

 

A spigot algorithm pumps out digits one at a time and does not reuse the digits after they are computed.  In 1995 Stanley Rabinowitz and Stan Wagon produced a remarkable spigot algorithm for generating decimal digits of Ï€ (paper in pdf).  Today the remarkable Akira Haraguchi finished reciting 100,000 digits of Ï€ from memory – a world record.

You can use the Pi-Search Page to find the location of the digits of π within π.  For example, The string 3 occurs at position 9 counting from the first digit after the decimal point.  It looks like the following plotted on a log chart.

David Bau has written a Sudoku Generator with output in PDF, Postscript, plaintext, and HTML.  Nice thing to do.  Difficult ones, requiring lots of guesses, have ratings above 3.00, while a rating of 0.00 means no guesses required.  Enjoy!

This cartoon, printed in a Russian newspaper, says “We never taught them to do that…” .  The paper was closed down.  You can find the original politically incorrect cartoons on Michelle Malkin’s blog. Not so incidentally, Michelle’s site has recently been subjected to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.  Here is where to find the “Buy Danish” Corner Banner Code.

Check out your online computer store at 

 

and be assured you are buying from a reputable vendor,

such as  or .

Want to send a large file to someone – too big to email?  You can use yousendit to send a file up to 100 MB (1 Gb with $4.99/month subscription) in size.  The recipient gets an email with the download location.  So send me that large file.

Of course, the logo will never win any paper airplane contests.  But you can use NASA lesson plans and software to design your own paper airplane.  You could learn something like:

You are flying an F-117A fully equipped, which means that your aircraft weighs 52,500 pounds. You want to maintain equilibrium in straight and level flight at an altitude of 30,000 feet, cruising at 400 knots to conserve fuel. The aircraft’s wing area is 1,140 square feet. At what angle of attack should the F-117A be set to maintain equilibrium?

 

In September 2000 I recieved the following email:

Congratulations!  You’ve won a Personal Video Recorder from TiVo! A team of discriminating judges read the essay you submitted to “The Great TiVo Giveaway Contest” and decided you were most definitely in need of our help!

The contest was the idea of the, now reclusive, original TiVo evangelist Richard (TiVolutionary) Bullwinkle.  My winning essay was the following poem (with serious apologies to Lewis Carroll):

Easy billing, and smiling TIVOs
Are nimble and glisten on the tube.
Commercials are where the boredom goes
And where Mom and Dad’s wrath is engaged.

“Beware of the Infomercial, my son!
The engine oil, the home gyms glut!
Beware the Station Break, and shun
The 30-second sp’t!”

With his old remote in hand
Long time he surfed for shows he sought,
But with TIVO’s Suggestion Guide
It was done without a thought.

And, as he watched, eyes ‘n ears attune,
An Infomercial soon leaped out,
It alleged, sincerely loon,
And soon began to shout!

“Buy two! Buy four! Easy financing. At your door!”
The verbal assault would last and last,
But he took control, TIVO’s control,
And sent it spinning to the past.

“And hast thou slain the Commercial spot?”
“Thanks to TIVO!” revealed the boy.
Oh famous day! Hooray! Hooray!
They chuckled in their joy.

Easy billing, and smiling TIVOs
Are nimble and glisten on the tube:
Commercials are where the boredom goes
And where Mom and Dad’s wrath is engaged.

Oh cay, not grate rime or ti ming (past spelt chequer) .  But it got me my first TiVo.  My low-tech wife Alice said no-way could I buy a TiVo, but here was one she couldn’t refuse (she now agrees with former FCC Chairman Michael Powell about TiVo, and is addicted to TiVo).

    

Although we were both born in Budapest, both of Jewish heritage, and both have a keen interest in computers & mathematics, I am only related to the famous Professor John Kemeny by name.  I did meet him once – he had a fine Hungarian accent.  I have read two of his books, Introduction to Finite Mathematics (pdf) and Man and the Computer.

Jonathan Rotenberg, who founded the Boston Computer Society at age 13, once told Bill Gates, who had started discussing John Kemeny, that “We have our own John Kemeny.”  I was leading the Timex-Sinclair group at the time.