… you can be almost certain that it isn’t.  For instance, spam claiming to be “legal software sales”, but offering popular commercial software for pennies on the dollar.

One of the earliest uses of punched card tabulating machines, the forerunner of modern computers, was the US Census, as described by Wikipedia:
[Herman] Hollerith built machines under contract for the US Census Bureau, which used them to tabulate the 1890 census in only one year. The 1880 census had taken eight years. [...] In [...]

I’ve generally been happy with my Epson Stylus R300 printer.  I chose it because of its ability to print onto printable CD-R/DVD-R media, which wasn’t common at the time.  As with all inkjet printers, though, it subjects the owner to the Inkjet Conspiracy.

Joe and Fred were relaxing on the beach in Florida, and struck up a conversation. Joe asked Fred what he did for a living, and Fred relied, “I owned a grocery store. Business was good, but last year there was a fire and the building burned down. I got an insurance settlement, [...]

On March 6, I went to the Admissions and Records office at Mission College, and turned in two separate things:

An “Application for Degree” form, with math course substitutions from other institutions signed off by the chairman of the math department, and a completed worksheet  (the application deadline was March 7)
A transcript from De Anza College, [...]

The lecture on phasors went on for about an hour, and I was surprised that no one cracked a single Star Trek joke.

Arthur C. Clarke invented the geostationary satellite, hence the designation of the circular orbit over the equator as the “Clarke Orbit”.  His science fiction has received many awards, including the Hugo and Nebula.

I’ve suspected it for a while, but today I finally saw proof that my roommates’ dog Ralphie is a space alien or robot or something.  The first indication was that when he plays with his stuffed animal squeaky toys, he is careful not to tug on them hard enough to damage them.  But the incontrovertible [...]

On Thursday I submitted my Application for Degree to Mission College.  It’s for an Associate of Arts in Mathematics degree.  This is my second attempt; after I submitted one a year ago, I ended up dropping English Composition I due to a schedule conflict.  I finally completed English Composition I at De Anza College in [...]

I went to Costco on the weekend, and bought, among other things, a 64 oz. jug of real maple syrup. Today I was getting something out of a kitchen cabinet, and discovered that the bottom of the cabinet was covered with syrup. It appears that the jug has a hairline crack on the [...]