ComPundit

Mini Mac by Apple

2005-01-22T16:02:00.000+01:00

The blog Datapoint at ZDNet points to an amazing explosion of readership for Apple in the last month, a "heightened buzz" which they attribute to announcement of a low cost Mac PC, which also fits into the iPod strategy.

A Special Report at Platinax Internet News entitled "Apple explodes mass marketing" covers not only the "Mac Mini" but also Apple's unprecedented "major incursion into mass consumer shopping", citing to NixLog.

There is surely enough dissatisfaction out there about Microsoft Windows, its instability and security problems, that many will now give a cheaper Apple a second look. The PC competitors always had some advantages. We ourselves look fondly back to the days of our Atari Mega ST4 (in those days with absolutely dependable 4MB RAM) which ran without a hitch for years and NEVER crashed - not once. We have a good friend who composes music and today still runs his synthesizer programs on a Korg workstation using aging Ataris. Incredible.

By contrast, our Windows XP PC still crashes (freezes) regularly as it reaches its memory and virtual memory limits.

So it will be interesting to see what the "Mini Mac" can do.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Comdex 2004 cancelled

2004-06-30T13:37:00.000+02:00

Comdex 2004 cancelled

A June 23, 2004 article by David Becker of CNET News reports at ZDNet that Organizer cancels Comdex 2004.

This is a distrubing sign of the troubled times being experienced by the pc sector of the once glamorous computer industry which has been replaced by consumer electronics as the symbol of modern "high tech".

Op-Ed Columnist: Meet the Zippies

2004-02-24T12:27:00.000+01:00

At Op-Ed Columnist: Meet the Zippies a February 22, 2004 article by Thomas L. Friedman, we meet Generation Z in India, the zippies, to whom we are increasingly outsourcing technological work. What does the future hold? Read the article.

Worm and Virus Writers

2004-02-08T20:36:00.000+01:00

Clive Thompson at the New York Times has an article on worm and virus writers called The Virus Underground. It is a lengthy well-researched read on this growing internet problem. Thompson points out that what youngsters initially think is simply fun can land them in jail.

Smack the penguin

2004-02-06T01:51:00.000+01:00

Here is a game for anti-Linux users (?) Smack the penguin [steroids version]!!! which probably violates all kinds of SPCA regulations in spirit, but it is kind of fun, and no harm is done. Click the caveman once to get the penguin to jump and try to strike him like a baseball and send him on his way with the club which will give you a score - our top is 1200,1. Hint: a vertical trajectory gets more distance than a high flyer.

It is absolutely mindless entertainment but the fact that you have the motivation of obtaining a high score - as always - is catching.

Internet Replacing Television

2004-01-11T19:00:00.000+01:00

Via Steve Hall's blog AdRants we discover that the Internet is in fact moving 18 to 34 year-old males away from Television to the World Wide Web. This in part massive and we expect continuing move of "viewers" from traditional TV to WWW will greatly change the media scene over time.

Hail to the Queen ! - Tim Berners-Lee to be Knighted

2004-01-07T14:53:00.000+01:00

Tim Berners-Lee is to be knighted.

See the W3C under the title "W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to be made Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire".

It is beginning to appear that those persons who are recently being "knighted" by Queen Elizabeth are looking very much more like a "Who's Who" of the world than those being honored by allegedly more illustrious awards such as the Nobel Prize, which - as in the case of the Nobel Prizes for Peace and Literature - appear to be very politically motivated and, in the case of the sciences represented, often go to persons who work in obscurity and remain obscure even after the award.

By contrast, the Knighthoods seem to be awarded to people who are visibly shaping our world.

Hail to the Queen!

Internet Governance by the UN ?

2003-11-11T22:37:00.000+01:00

Internet Governance by the United Nations (UN) as a subject came via links at A Voyage to Arcturus to the the following websites

Financial Times
and the
ITU.

The idea of taking internet governance out of the hands of ICANN is not new - and certainly discussionable.

The idea of taking internet governance out of the US and putting it into the hands of the United Nations - to become a political football (?) in the General Assembly or Security Council - is new and has zero chances of implementation.

What is AAC?

2003-11-10T16:35:00.000+01:00

MP3, AAC and general Audio and Multimedia standards such as MPEG explained.

What for example is AAC?

Go to the Fraunhofer Institut website at

Fraunhofer IIS - Audio & Multimedia - Home of Layer 3 and AAC

iTunes for Mac AND Windows

2003-11-10T15:39:00.000+01:00

Time Magazine has an article entitled "The 99 cent Solution" at

TIME Magazine: Coolest Inventions 2003, Apple Music Store

in which writer Chris Taylor sings the praises of Steve Jobs and his simple solution to get around the problem of music piracy and illegal file-sharing.

See iTunes Music Store where this solution is now availabe for Mac AND Windows.

Our question is, we all know that the Mac Users have always had cash to burn, so it is no suprise that they are paying for music. But what percentage of the - on average - poorer Windows users will pay 99 cents per song?

Apparently, the start is good, according to the TIME Magazine article.

FOLDOC - Computing Dictionary

2003-10-11T17:00:00.000+02:00

FOLDOC

The free online dictionary of computing - FOLDOC - Computing Dictionary - is an essential link.

ComPundit

2003-10-11T00:11:00.000+02:00

Our first posting to COMPundit relates to the beginning (or history) of the COMputer.
There are many beginnings for the computer, reaching clear back into the early days of civilization and man's first systems of counting. It just depends on what we select to be important. We will utlimately cover many of the possible roots of computing.

TIMELINES

A good succinct timeline is found at the Rhode Island Computer Museum website, starting with Stonehenge and Avebury.

A recent timeline starting at 1945 is found at computerhistory.org
This site is recommended for photos - click e.g. "more on computers" in 1945 e.g. to see photos of the machines.

The Digital Computer Museum Catalog gives a comprehensive view going back into antiquity.

We find one time-line for "calculators", which preceded computers, at the Vintage Calculators Web Museum.

Triumph of the Nerds is a PBS-Timeline for computing.

The Birth of Modern Computing and Programming Ideas is found at the History of Programming Languages.

An excellent one-page History of Computation is found at Dunne.

A chronological account of computing with a time-line is found at the site of The IEEE Computer Society, the world's oldest and largest professional association of people in computing.

For a general overview, see History of Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin and "Early Math" at recovered science.

Here is our selection of landmarks from these and other time-lines, together with our selection of links to other, specialized websites for detailed discussion of persons or inventions:

OUR TIMELINE

3000 BC - astronomically oriented methods of calculation by megaliths
1800 BC Babylon - algorithm developed
1500 BC Egypt - shadow clock invented
650 BC Egypt - merkhet invented
500 BC Egypt - abacus invented
325 BC Salamis tablet constructed (early form of abacus)
150 BC Astrolabe invented
82 BC Antikythera navigational calculator constructed, probably by Geminus at Rhodes
65 BC Antikythera device lost in wreck at sea
50 BC Andronicos of Kyrrhos builds tower of the Winds at Athens
48 BC Julius Caesar reforms the Roman Calendar
ca 200 AD Construction started on American "Woodhenge" at Cahokia
ca 1200 AD Chinese abacus developed
1335 First great clock constructed at Milan
1410 Astrolabe clock constructed at Prague
1612 - John Napier - first use of the decimal point, Napier also invented logarithms
1622 - William Oughtred - created the slide rule using Napier's logarithms
1623 - Wilhelm Schickard - builds first mechanical calculator, but is perhaps preceded in this honor by Leonardo da Vinci
1642 - Blaise Pascal - first adding machine
1673 - Gottfried Leibniz - first calculator capable of multiplication
1801 - Joseph-Marie Jacquard - invention of an automatic loom using punched cards
1820 - Charles Xavior Thomas builds the Arithmometer - first commercially sold desktop calculator
1822-23 - Charles Babbage - known as the "father of computing" designs a "difference engine", a steam-powered mechanical calculator for printing astronomical tables and conveices a mechanical "analytical machine" - Babbage is honored today by the CBI, Charles Babbage Institute, Center for the History of Information Technology
1842 - Ada Augusta (Byron) King - world's first computer "programmer"
1854 - George Boole describes his Boolean Logic
1890 - Herman Hollerith (his company later became IBM) wins competition to do the US Census
1925 - Vannevar Bush builds a differential analyzer
1935 - Konrad Zuse builds his Z-1 mechanical calculator
1936 - John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed the ABC computing machine
1937 - Alan Turing develops the idea of a Universal Machine
1939 - George Stibitz - Complex Number Calculator (later the Bell Labs Model 1)
1940 - The Colossus is built - Tommy Flowers, Sir Harry Hinsley
1943 - Work on ENIAC started. ENIAC (Electronic Numeral Integrator and Calculator) - which begins modern computer industry was developed by John Brainerd, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, Herman Goldstine
1944 - Harvard Mark I developed - Howard Aiken
1945 - John von Neumann develops the idea of internal computer storage of data (priority not accepted by all) EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Computer). Internal programming of computers - i.e. modern software - is largely due to the formative ideas of von Neumann, probably the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, also famous for the development of game theory.
1947 - ENIAC goes public; William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invent the transistor Click the various radio buttons. Prior to the transistor, computers were of immense size - the transistor meant they could be miniaturized.
1948 - Manchester Mark I is first operating stored program machine
1949- UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) - Details
1952 - Automatic programming- - i.e. a compiler - Grace Hopper
1953 - IBM - The Defense Calculator is IBM's real entry into computing
1954 - FORTRAN - John Backus - first computer programming language
1954 - NSF (National Science Foundation) awards a grant in computing to John von Neumann - we will hear about the NSF and the internet later.
1958 - Integrated circuit (IC) - the microchip - invented by Jack St. Clair Kilby
(this will yet be edited, updated and continued)