Facebook (FB) founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that “the age of privacy is over” – not a comforting message from a man who oversees an Internet community with 400 million members. The occasion of this Orwellian assessment was FB’s plan to expose more member information on the Internet.
… a day to celebrate and encourage women in technology. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; as such she is often regarded as the world’s first computer programmer.
She was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke, but had no relationship with her father, who died when she was nine. As a young adult she took an interest in mathematics, and in particular Babbage’s work on the analytical engine. Between 1842 and 1843 she translated an article by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with a set of notes of her own. These notes contain what is considered the first computer program, that is, an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine. Though Babbage’s engine was never built, Lovelace’s notes are important in the early history of computers. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities. (Wikipedia)
One of the things we learn as kids is that clouds can take on countless shapes. We know the forms we see are illusory – vapor masquerading as something substantial – but we keep on looking up into the sky, inviting the illusion and collaborating with it through our imaginations. Sometimes I think the name “cloud computing” is particularly apt. Like those in the sky, this cloud seems to change its form every time we look at it.
Like most developers, I’m a fan of free development tools – Eclipse, Aptana Studio, and Notepad++, for example. I do own UltraEdit, which I bought a few years ago and have upgraded occasionally. But I think I’m hooked on an IDE that is going to cost me some money: Jetbrains’ PHPStorm.
Every few months, someone who seems smart enough to know better predicts the imminent demise of the PC. The latest one to jump off a building thinking this tired forecast will fly him into prophetic genius territory is Google executive George Herlihy. As reported by siliconrepublic.com, Herlihy predicted that “in three years or so desktops will give way to mobile as the primary screen from which most people will consume information and entertainment”. According the article, this seems to be the party line at Google.