Reshared text: SCE Computer Room Art Adams 1966 from the current online exibition Form and Landscape in Southern California http://pstp-edison.com/krieger/
#paris#cartography#cartographie Diachronic analysis of the Paris urban area: a geomatic approach AnaLyse diachronique de l'espace urbain PArisien : approche GEomatique
Looking for a FLAC -> ALAC converter, for PC, fast & free. Any hint ? Features needed : does not alter the ID3 tags, fast (uses muti core), easy (drag&drop).
Interactive Parisian Metro map associated with various data, income, density, traffic, unemployment rate, political opinion, singles, etc. etc. Very nice.
Vous connaissez la base Open Food Facts ? Vachement bien le truc, en plus il y a une app pour fofone et drodroid, enfin on peut savoir pleins de choses sur les produits que l'on mange. En plus c'est facile de contribuer, vraiment.
Reshared text: Recently, somebody in comp.arch (yes, Usenet is still there :-) posted an interesting link about CPU and system architects of vintage but well known CPUs and computer systems. The extensive list has links to additional websites, interviews, videos, books. Enjoy!
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Black Betty had a child (Bam-ba-Lam) The damn thing gone wild (Bam-ba-Lam) She said, "I'm worryin' outta mind" (Bam-ba-Lam) The damn thing gone blind (Bam-ba-Lam) I said Oh, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Oh, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
She really gets me high (Bam-ba-Lam) You know that's no lie (Bam-ba-Lam) She's so rock steady (Bam-ba-Lam) And she's always ready (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
She's from Birmingham (Bam-ba-Lam) Way down in Alabam' (Bam-ba-Lam) Well, she's shakin' that thing (Bam-ba-Lam) Boy, she makes me sing (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam) Whoa, Black Betty BAM-BA-LAM
Just as automated machinery replaces the tired muscles of man, computers are being developed that can replace the bored minds of men who are engaged in the repetitive production of goods and services in our industrial society. And just as automated machinery does a better job on repetitive tasks than the human hand, a computer outperforms a human mind. The circuits in an electronic computer can respond in less than a millionth of a second. This is over a thousand times faster than it takes the neurons in our brains to respond to incoming stimuli. Robert Theobald has pointed out, ". . . in the near future we will see that the computer can take over any structured task . . ."
Man worked toward the development of a computer for a long time. The simple abacus of ancient times was a first step. In 1671 Gottfried Leibnitz tried unsuccessfully to invent a mechanical calculating machine. "It is unworthy of excellent men," he wrote, "to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation." An Englishman named Charles Babbage worked out many of the principles of modern mechanical calculating machines in 1834, but he was unable to produce a successful model because the technology of his time could not turn out accurate gears. It was not until 1944 that the first true computer was produced by Howard Aiken, a professor at Harvard University. It is a sad reflection of our times that this pioneering computer was used to compute weapon trajectories for the U.S. Navy.
Aiken's first computer was soon overshadowed by the famous ENIAC, developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Though a great improvement, EN I AC had 18,000 vacuum tubes, was unreliable, and took too much space. Computers began to trim their waistlines and speed up their operations about 1958 when small reliable transistors and other solid-state components replaced the vacuum tubes. Computers today can multiply a half-million ten-digit numbers in a second. Many computers can make more calculations in an hour than an auditorium full of mathematicians could accomplish in their lifetime. In 1951 there were under 100 computers in operation in the United States. By 1965 the number had jumped to 22,500 and is constantly accelerating. Some companies use up to 200 of them.
As long ago as 1959 the Sperry-Rand Corporation produced a computer that was able to handle 250,000 additions and subtractions of twelve-digit numbers per second. This enables it to make up a monthly payroll for 15,000 employees in only fifteen hours. Previously, it took 450 to 900 hours to do this job. Since only a part of the circuits of the computer are used while calculating a payroll, it can simultaneously solve scientific problems on the side!
By 1965 computers had been used in more than 700 specific tasks. At the time you read this page this number will have increased enormously. Major airlines use computers to give instant information on seats available on all flights. Stock Exchanges use computers to give instant stock quotations. Computers are now busy setting newspaper type, pawing over our income tax returns, controlling the flow of electricity of most power companies, helping you make long distance phone calls by ferreting out available circuits, navigating planes and ships, and providing railroads with instant information on where their freight cars are hiding out. Computers can land a plane in foggy weather without any human help. Our space ships that orbit the earth, spy on the moon, and whiz by the planets are highly dependent on computers from the design board to the final inch of their spectacular flights. Much of today's business, government, and science would be paralyzed if the computers were ever to demand a vacation.
It has been estimated that if there were no computers, the phone company would now have to hire all the working women in the country just to handle the flood of calls. Computers today control the production machinery in the petrochemical, petroleum, paper, and steel industries. At Western Electric's "Plant of Tomorrow" computers handle the billing, shipping, and warehousing; they order materials, write checks, and decide what to manufacture and how many. Time magazine has pointed out:
Computers have helped scientists to discover more than 100 new subatomic particles, and are busy analyzing strange radio signals from outer space. Biochemists have used the computer to delve into the hitherto unassailable secrets of the human cell, and hospitals have begun to use it to monitor the condition of patients. Computers now read electrocardiograms faster and more accurately than a jury of physicians. The Los Angeles police department plans to use computers to keep a collection of useful details about crimes and an electronic rogue's gallery of known criminals. And in a growing number of schools, computers have taken jobs as instructors in languages, history and mathematics.
"Technology," Time, April 2, 1965, p. 86. Courtesy TIME; Copyright Time Inc., 1965.
Although recently invented, computers are rapidly transforming our civilization. "In a Chicago radio plant," according to Walter Buckingham:
1000 radios a day now are assembled by two men where two hundred had been required before automation. The duPont Company, using a computer at M.I.T., solved in thirty hours a chemical problem that would have required one man, working forty hours a week for twenty years to do the arithmetic alone.At the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton an electronic computer works out weather predictions in three hours that would take one man with an adding machine three centuries.In these last two cases, the job would not have been practical or economical to tackle without automation.
Walter Buckingham, Automation (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp.27-8
In the war against the drug cartels, Mexican villagers have paid a terrible price. In the Costa Grande region of Guerrero state, whole communities have been driven from their homes.
Reshared text: Dr. Jacob shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr. Jacques Monod and Dr. André Lwoff, his colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, for their discovery that cells can switch on and switch off certain genetic information. Their work, which focused on bacteria, increased understanding of how genes could be selectively deployed by an organism.
“The regression we saw in some countries this year was disappointing, but it does not reverse the worldwide trend against using the death penalty. In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
The Apple eMate 300, designed for the education market, features a 25 MHz ARM 710a processor, 8 MB of ROM, 3 MB of RAM (1MB of DRAM, 2 MB of Flash Memory for user storage), a PCMCIA slot, IrDA-beaming capabilities, and a Newton InterConnect port for multiple connectivity options, in a translucent aquamarine and black "clamshell" portable case with a 480x320 16-shade grayscale backlit LCD display for use with either a provided stylus or the built-in keyboard.
The eMate is the only Newton model to resemble a traditional laptop rather than a handheld, but had the Newton line continued, additional models would have likely followed. Please note that eMate is technically not a 'Mac', as it does not operate the MacOS, and instead uses the NewtonOS (also developed by Apple).
Well, the night I was born Lord I swear the moon turned a fire red The night I was born I swear the moon turned a fire red Well my poor mother cried out "Lord, the gypsy was right!" And I seen her, fell down right dead (Have mercy)
Mexican rebel leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa with one of the motorcycles used in the Battle of Torrero. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images). August 1914
The Dynasphere, an electrically-driven wheel, invented by Mr. J. A. Purves of Taunton and his son. It had 2.5 horse power and once attained a speed of 25 mph. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). 1932