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Inflation Calculator
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BYTE Magazine Archive
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Unofficial BYTE FAQ
( R.I.P. 1975-1998 )
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Recent Movies
Inception is a mind-bending drama about industrial spies who can enter the dreams of their targets to steal their most hidden secrets. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the team leader who accepts an even more challenging assignment—plant an idea in an industrialist's mind and make it seem his own. This film glories in complex storytelling, unfolding a series of dreams within dreams. In an especially impressive special effect, a dream architect played by Ellen Page folds the city of Paris in half. Writer and director Christopher Nolan is famous for his mind benders, starting with Memento in 2001. But Inception would have been better with the low budget of Memento, a tightly edited film. Inception is filled with gratuitous combat, car chases, and explosions, as if Nolan forgot he wasn't making another of his Batman movies.
The Girl Who Played With Fire is the second film in the Millennium trilogy of Swedish novels by Stieg Larsson. It picks up where the first film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009), left off. Renegade computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (spookily played, as before, by Noomi Rapace) returns to Sweden from her tropical hideaway and soon is suspected of multiple murders. She hunts the real killers but gets deeper enmeshed. Meanwhile, her journalist friend Michael Nyqvist (reprised by Mikael Blomkvist) tries to prove her innocence. This sequel is faster paced than the first film and explains more about Salander's mysterious past. It's a good thriller and seems less violent, but only because the first one was over the top. It strains credulity, however, when one character seems to rise from the grave. (In Swedish with English subtitles.)
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is a revealing documentary about the influential comedienne who doggedly continues to pursue her career at the age of 75. Rivers broke boundaries with her coarse humor in nightclubs and on The Tonight Show in the 1960s. This film provides historical context but focuses on the present, as Rivers pounds the pavement looking for work, work, and more work. She's possibly the heaviest user (or abuser) of plastic surgery since Michael Jackson, and the camera is at times unflattering, but she doesn't shy from risking public rejection. Show biz is a tough biz, and this film shows why.
Toy Story 3 completes a trilogy of outstanding animated features that leaves me wanting more sequels—a rare accomplishment for any work in film. In this installment, a grown-up Andy prepares to depart for college and leave his boyhood (and toys) behind. Will his once-loved playthings be retired to the attic in hope of a next generation, or will they be forever entombed in a garbage dump? Turns out there's a third fate that may be heaven or hell—donation to a child-care center. Toy Story 3 is an adventure as compelling as any classic fairy tale, and it never lacks wit or cleverness. It's so good that you won't miss much if you skip the 3D version.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a surprisingly dark and violent Swedish murder mystery. The elderly head of a wealthy family hires a crusading journalist to investigate the 40-year-old murder of his favorite niece. The reporter gets reluctant help from a goth computer hacker (the girl with the dragon tattoo) who is ruthless when crossed. A brutal rape scene and its aftermath are detours from the main story, which already is complicated by a surplus of suspects. After what seems like the dramatic climax, the story continues for a little too long, deflating the drama with a redemptive coda that doesn't quite fit the film's darker tone. Sometimes less is more. Another 15 minutes of footage should have been left on the cutting-room floor. (In Swedish with English subtitles.)
>> See more mini-reviews, including Iron Man 2 ... Robin Hood ... Mother and Child ... Harry Brown ... The Joneses ... The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers ... The Runaways ... The Ghost Writer ... Alice in Wonderland ... Shutter Island ... Crazy Heart ... Avatar ... The Book of Eli ... Sherlock Holmes ... and many more!
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Inflation Calculator
Tom's Inflation Calculator includes the latest U.S. government inflation data for 2009, plus four alternative data sets. This calculator is a free Java applet that automatically runs in your web browser by clicking on the link. It can adjust U.S. dollar amounts forward or backward in time for any years between 1666 and 2071 for retail price inflation, and between 1936 and 2010 for medical-cost inflation. You can view inflation rates for any intermediate range of years, too.
New improved version 7.5 is available now. Tom's Inflation Calculator now includes the latest 2009 government inflation data, the Congressional Budget Office's inflation forecasts through 2020, and optional inflation data from ShadowStats, a private company that believes the U.S. government understates inflation. The best inflation calculator on the Internet just got better!
Computer Dictionary
Common Terms Defined
Are you baffled by a technical term or acronym you've never seen before? Or just curious about the latest techie slang? Tom's Computer Dictionary may have the answer. From "AAC" to "zoo virus," it defines more than 750 terms in plain language.
Guitar Cheat Sheet
Do you want to learn the most common major and minor guitar chords? Instantly transpose songs from one major key to another? Find out which major and minor chords go together? Play scales in any major key? Learn the notes on the fretboard? It's easy! And it's free! Just download and print Tom's Guitar Cheat Sheet.
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Microprocessor Report
Index to Tom's Articles
Here's an index to more than 280 of Tom's articles in Microprocessor Report, the insider's guide to microprocessor hardware. Learn about embedded processors, microcontrollers, digital-signal processors, and other chip-related topics. (Subscription required for most articles.)
Microprocessor Report Editorials
Read Tom's editorials in MPR. No subscription required!
Test Your Java Security
How safe is your system from hostile Java applets? Find out with JSecure, one of Tom's free applets. JSecure harmlessly tests the security manager of your Web browser or applet viewer by trying to access information from your computer's operating system and hard disk. Try it today!
Scramble Text With ROTator
ROTator is a Java applet that lets you encode and decode text in the popular Internet format known as "ROT 13." Lots of other programs do that, too, but Tom's ROTator applet goes further by allowing you to encode and decode text in any rotational letter-substitution format. With ROTator, you can shift the letters left or right, and you can shift them by any number of letters from ROT 1 to ROT 26.
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BYTE Articles
Here is an index to more than 180 of Tom's computer articles from BYTE Magazine published from 1992 to 1998. (BYTE ceased publication in June 1998.) Most articles are still available online and include the original photographs, figures, and screen shots.
And more stuff...
- Tom's Mini Movie Reviews. Snappy reviews of recent movies, like those in the blue column on the left. Reviews that scroll off the column end up on the Mini Movie Reviews page.
- Shutterbug Articles. More than a dozen of Tom's photography articles from Shutterbug magazine are now online. Learn how to personalize your film speed, banish dust from your darkroom, make professional-looking postcards, find the best deals on used cameras, create special effects with open flash, and more.
- Tom's Oscar Contest. An annual tradition for 25 years, Tom's Oscar Contest is both entertaining and challenging. Hundreds of people have tried to guess who will win an Oscar in each Academy Award category. Competing against them is the computer brain of Tom's famed OscarCalc program, which sometimes wins the contest and always places near the top.
- The Death of BYTE Magazine. In 1998, after 23 years of operation, BYTE Magazine was shut down by its new owner, CMP Media. A year later, CMP launched BYTE.com as a very different web-only publication. To learn the inside story about what happened to the world's second personal computer magazine, see Tom's Unofficial BYTE FAQ: The Death of BYTE Magazine.
- Tom's Favorite Web Links. Find information about personal computers, microprocessors, Java, and other technologies. There are quite a few photography-related sites, plus some offbeat places you've never been. Lots of new links!
- Tools for Web Builders. The hardware, software, programming tools, and books used to build this web site might be useful to you, too. Most of these tools are linked to their vendors' web sites so you can find more information.
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