BOORA-RUNG-EE (THE MAN WHO ASKS WHY): David McKnight 1935?2006

Why Don't They Practice What Ee Preach?

One of the most intractable problems in software is getting engineers to consistently use effective methods. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has worked on this problem for a number of years and has developed effective methods for addressing it. This paper describes these methods and shows what they have accomplished with several hundred students and working engineers. After first descr...

Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief – but Who Is Who in the Capitalist Economy

The thesis of this paper is that a free-market capitalist economy is biased against supplying basic needs of poor consumers and also biased against creating inventing and using green technology. We begin by identifying the patterns of perverse logic in the system of market supply and in the process of technological advance under capitalism. The first pivotal problem is that economic decision ma...

The Man Who Invented Music

We all know Pythagoras did quite a lot for high school mathematics; most of us are aware that his "Theorem" is also the basis for trigonometry, and trigonometry is the theoretical background to that most fundamental of sound waves, the sine wave. But that is not even scratching the surface of the work of the Pythagorean School. The man himself, and his own ideas, are only known to us through th...

David Oliver: Why shouldn't hospitals challenge inspections?

England’s health regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), recently judged Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge as “inadequate” and instigated special measures. The hospital’s reputation guaranteed headlines, as did the resigning chief executive’s self defence. Commentators fanned the flames, questioning the value of over-zealous regulation. The CQC then published a blog, Shooting theMesseng...

Who Is This Man?