|
John Walker (programmer)
John Wallace Walker (May 16, 1949 – February 2, 2024) was an American computer programmer, author and co-founder of the computer-aided design software company Autodesk. He was later recognized for his writing on his website Fourmilab. Early projects Walker was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 16, 1949. He studied electrical engineering at Case Western Reserve University. In 1974/1975, Walker wrote the ANIMAL software, which self-replicated on UNIVAC 1100 machines. It is considered one of the first computer viruses. Walker also founded the hardware integration manufacturing company Marinchip. Among other things, Marinchip pioneered the translation of numerous computer language compilers to Intel platforms. Autodesk In 1982, John Walker and 12 other programmers pooled US$59,000 to start Autodesk, and began working on several computer applications. The first completed was AutoCAD, a software application for computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting. AutoCAD had begun life as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States cities by population, 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the Metropolitan statistical areas, 20th-largest metropolitan area in the country at 2.84 million residents. The city is also part of the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area, which had a population of 9.97 million in 2020. Baltimore was designated as an Independent city (United States), independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851. Though not located under the jurisdiction of any county in the state, it forms part of the central Maryland region together with Baltimore County, Maryland, the surrounding county that shares its name. The land that is present-day Baltimore was used as hunting ground by Paleo-Indians. In the early 160 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Fermilab's Main Injector, two miles (3.3 km) in circumference, is the laboratory's most powerful particle accelerator. The accelerator complex that feeds the Main Injector is under upgrade, and construction of the first building for the new PIP-II linear accelerator began in 2020. Until 2011, Fermilab was the home of the 6.28 km (3.90 mi) circumference Tevatron accelerator. The ring-shaped tunnels of the Tevatron and the Main Injector are visible from the air and by satellite. Fermilab aims to become a world center in neutrino physics. It is the host of the multi-billion dollar Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) now under construction. The project has suffered delays and, in 2022, the journals ''Science'' and ''Sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1949 Births
Events January * January 1 – A United Nations-sponsored ceasefire brings an end to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. The war results in a stalemate and the division of Kashmir, which still continues as of 2025 * January 2 – Luis Muñoz Marín becomes the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. * January 11 – The first "networked" television broadcasts take place, as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, goes on the air, connecting east coast and mid-west programming in the United States. * January 16 – Şemsettin Günaltay forms the new government of Turkey. It is the 18th government, last One-party state, single party government of the Republican People's Party. * January 17 – The first Volkswagen Beetle, VW Type 1 to arrive in the United States, a 1948 model, is brought to New York City, New York by Dutch businessman Ben Pon Sr., Ben Pon. Unable to interest dealers or importers in the Volkswagen, Pon sells the sample car to pay his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, Audible audiobooks, and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. The hardware platform, which Amazon subsidiary Lab126 developed, began as a single device in 2007. Currently, it comprises a range of devices, including e-readers with E Ink electronic paper displays and Kindle applications on all major computing platforms. All Kindle devices integrate with Windows and macOS file systems and Kindle Store content and, as of March 2018, the store had over six million e-books available in the United States.Kindle Store: Kindle eBooks . Retrieved March 30, 2018. Naming and evolution< ...
|
The Right To Read
''The Right to Read'' is a short story by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, which was first published in 1997 in Communications of the ACM. It is a cautionary tale set in the year 2047, when copy protection technologies are employed to restrict the readership of books, and the sharing of books and written material is a crime punishable by imprisonment. In particular, the story touches on the impact of such a system on university students, due to their need for materials, one (Dan Halbert) of whom is forced into a dilemma in which he must decide whether to loan his computer to a fellow student (Lissa Lenz), who would then have the ability to illegally access his purchased documents. It is notable for being written before the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology was widespread (although DVD video discs which used DRM had appeared the year before, and various proprietary software since the 1970s had made use of some form of copy protection), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hacker And The Ants
''The Hacker and the Ants'' is a science fiction novel by American writer and mathematician Rudy Rucker, published in 1994 by Avon Books. It was written while Rucker was working as a programmer at Autodesk, Inc., of Sausalito, California from 1988 to 1992. Plot summary Jerzy Rugby is trying to create truly intelligent robots. While his actual life crumbles, Rugby toils in his virtual office, testing the robots online. Then, something goes wrong and zillions of computer virus ants invade the net. Rugby is the man wanted for the crime. He's been set up to take a fall for a giant cyberconspiracy and he needs to figure out who — or what — is sabotaging the system in order to clear his name. Plunging deep into the virtual worlds of Antland of Fnoor to find some answers, Rugby confronts both electronic and all-too-real perils, facing death itself in a battle for his freedom. Transrealism The main character is a transrealist interpretation of Rucker's life in the 1970s. (Rucker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cellular Automaton
A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessellation structures, and iterative arrays. Cellular automata have found application in various areas, including physics, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of ''cells'', each in one of a finite number of ''State (computer science), states'', such as ''on'' and ''off'' (in contrast to a coupled map lattice). The grid can be in any finite number of dimensions. For each cell, a set of cells called its ''neighborhood'' is defined relative to the specified cell. An initial state (time ''t'' = 0) is selected by assigning a state for each cell. A new ''generation'' is created (advancing ''t'' by 1), according to some fixed ''rule'' (generally, a mathematical function) that dete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (; born March 22, 1946) is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which (''Software (novel), Software'' and ''Wetware (novel), Wetware'') both won Philip K. Dick Awards. He edited the science fiction webzine ''Flurb'' until its closure in 2014. Early life Rucker was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, son of Embry Cobb Rucker Sr (October 1, 1914 - August 1, 1994), who ran a small furniture-manufacture company and later became an Episcopal priest and community activist, and Marianne (née von Bitter). The Rucker family were of Huguenot descent. Through his mother, he is a great-great-great-grandson of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Rucker attended St. Xavier High School, Louisville, Kentucky, St. Xavier High School before earning a Bachelor of Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Life
Artificial life (ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. In 1987, Langton organized the first conference on the field, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: ''soft'', from software; ''hard'', from computer hardware, hardware; and ''wet artificial life, wet'', from biochemistry. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to recreate aspects of biological phenomena. Overview Artificial life studies the fundamental processes of living systems in artificial environments in order to gain a deeper understanding of the complex information processing that define such systems. These topics are broad, but often include Evolutionary algorithm, evolutionar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evil Empires Bumper Sticker
Evil, as a concept, is usually defined as profoundly immoral behavior, and it is related to acts that cause unnecessary pain and suffering to others. Evil is commonly seen as the opposite, or sometimes absence, of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or supernatural/eternal. While some religions, world views, and philosophies focus on "good versus evil", others deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people. Evil can denote profound immorality, but typically not without some basis in the understanding of the human condition, where strife and suffering (cf. Hinduism) are the true roots o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works (e.g. software, multimedia content) and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption. Laws in many countries criminalize the circumvention of DRM, communication about such circumvention, and the creation and distribution of tools used for such circumvention. Such laws are part of the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the European Union's Information Society Directive – with the French DADVSI an example of a member state of the European Union implementing that directive. Copyright holders argue that DRM technologies are necessary to protect intellectual proper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imprimatur
An imprimatur (sometimes abbreviated as ''impr.'', from Latin, "let it be printed") is a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement. The imprimatur rule in the Catholic Church effectively dates from the dawn of printing, and is first seen in the printing and publishing centres of Germany and Venice; many secular states or cities began to require registration or approval of published works around the same time, and in some countries such restrictions still continue, though the collapse of the Soviet bloc has reduced their number. Catholic Church In the Catholic Church an imprimatur is an official declaration by a Church authority that a book or other printed work may be published; it is usually only applied for and granted to books on religious topics from a Catholic perspective. Approval is given in accordance with canons 822 to 832 of the Code of Canon Law, which do not require the use of the wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
