In Wired Magazine, Simson Garfinkel lists History’s Worst Software Bugs. I’d already heard about many of these, but not all. This one is particularly intriguing:

1982 — Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet’s history.

We decided to pop some popcorn for Halloween, so I broke out our harvest gold hot air popcorn popper from the 1980s. The kids had never seen such a device and were fascinated by the popcorn popping and coming out the shoot. Next time they complain about being bored, I’m breaking out the Popcorn Pumper again.

I’m a self-identifying English language usage curmudgeon. But I tell you, misuse of apostrophes has become so rampant, it hardly even gets a rise out of me any longer. In just a few minutes of news scanning this morning, I ran across two incidents:

Google envisions a world in which all content is free; and of course, it controls the portal through which Internet user’s access that content.

Web store fails to monitor it’s own reviews board.

I just can’t get outraged any longer. It just makes me sad and tired.

A little juvenile humor for the middle of the week (click on image for larger version):

Our office manager usually keeps individually wrapped wintergreen Life Savers in the candy dish on the reception desk. But last week, she put out a Halloween bucket filled with chocolate. As I was eating more of the chocolate than I should have, I realized that they chocolates all had ‘Fun Size’ on the package. This got me thinking about the marketing team at Mars sitting around discussing this new product.
Marketing drone #1: OK, we’ve got this new product: bags of small mixed chocolates. How do we market them? We can’t market them on using our usual parameters: an increase in something–size, flavor, etc.
Marketing drone #2: I know! How about ‘Fun size!’ It’s devoid of any actual meaning, but it conveys excitement for a product that really has nothing going for it except that you can bag them up.