They’re cleaning out an office down the hall from me, and I’ve been passing the big waste bin all week. I don’t know whose office it was, but the person obviously hadn’t weeded his or her collection for a long time.

I restrained myself from taking the Token-Ring card (in its original box), even though it was one of the fancy 4/16 Mb models. I even passed up the copy of Lotus Notes 4 for Dummies. But when I saw two classic James Martin books, I couldn’t resist.

So now I’m the proud “owner” of Security, Accuracy, and Privacy in Computer Systems and Design of Man-Computer Dialogues, both from 1973, part of the comprehensive James Martin collection.

It should be interesting comparing what Martin was saying in 1973 with today’s practice.

Tim Bray writes about today’s atrocity:

This may sound nuts, but doing our best to just ignore them would be good. They’re not gonna cause any policy changes this way, but at least they get to control what’s on CNN & the BBC for a while; maybe if they couldn’t even do that, the strap-on bomb would be less attractive.

Dean Ing wrote a story, “Very Proper Charlies”, 25 years ago, suggesting ridiculing terrorists rather than just ignoring them. I thought it was a good idea then, and still do.

I have great sympathy for the victims of today’s attack (we’ll be in London later this month, so perhaps it’s easier to put myself in their place than it might otherwise be); I have nothing but contempt and ridicule for the assholes who think that killing innocents is an effective way of making a political point.

Tim, Korentang, and others also point out that Londoners have been targets before (by Hitler and the IRA, to name but two), so this is unfortunately not new to them.