If I have been able to see further than others,
It is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. - Sir Isaac Newton
It's not that this is some startling revelation... but I think we should step back and think about how we got where we are sometimes. When I hit "Post Changes", how many millions of person-hours will I benefit from?
(If you know enough to consider the question, draw the "technology tree" sometime that has everything necessary to create a web browser and a network to use it on. Don't forget the routers, the concept of a Turing machine, compilers, hardware, time to learn how to optimize the hardware, AND gates, OR gates, XOR gates, pipelines, caching, hard drives, RAM, fiber optics, modems/network, protocols, standarization, display technology, the science behind all of this stuff, input technology, time to test the technology, the list just goes on.)
My guess would be that the web-page view would be at least an order of magnitude greater, if not two or three. A bold claim, and I can't back it up. But who knows?
I was thinking of how to explain to them why what I do is hard enough to justify an education and that money they hear so much about. And I started wondering... if you could add up all of the person-hours spent on the processes invoked when you viewed this web page... from the web-browser and network connection you're using down to the silicon itself... how would that compare to the person-hours spent preparing for the invasion of Normandy, which I believe is still the largest military exercise ever (correction invited).
I don't know why exactly, but I was thinking about my grandparents and what they think of my education in computer science.
French Group Takes Yahoo to Court Over Nazi Site: Missed this one, dated last Tuesday. Mostly interesting because of the line "LICRA did not say how access to a worldwide Web site could be blocked in France only." A concrete example of international laws in conflict.
More playing with gems: What does the shortcut do...? [Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "manilaSuite" hasn't been defined.]
[Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "manilaSuite" hasn't been defined.]
ahhh... cool!
I like taking web sites and condensing them down to as few bytes as possible, once you've cached the constant objects. I have 20KB of Javascript on another site I've created... goodness help the poor student who will be hired to replace me in a few months...