Historical Geography and GIS. Historical GIS is the use of GIS data to document the given geography of an area in history. GIS can be used in historical geography research to map out ancient areas and the changes in cities and places over time. NHGIS (National Historical Geographic Information System) stores historical GIS data for census data and US boundary files dating as far back as 1790. The AAGs offers a historical GIS Clearinghouse and Forum as a “central reference point for scholars seeking to access or catalogue projects that apply geographic technologies to historical research.” There are several academic institutions focused on the use of GIS in historical geography.
The Ancient World Mapping Center promotes cartography, historical geography and geographic information science as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies through innovative and collaborative research, teaching, and community outreach activities. Crowdsourcing Historical GIS A lot has changed in the last 158 years.
Arthur C. Clarke: His New Odyssey | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD. Famed science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday at 90 years old. The prolific Clarke, pictured here, who was also a scientist and deep-sea diver, was most famous for his novel, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It was, of course, made into an award-winning movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
But I have always been an admirer of Clarke’s three laws of prediction, which are wholly applicable to the digital arena and–more to the point–are spot-on: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It was actually Clarke who was indistinguishable from magic. And here’s a video of the first unforgettable minute of “2001″ (Duum! The Pac-Man Dossier. It was 1977 when a self-taught, capable young man named Toru Iwatani came to work for Namco Limited, a Tokyo-based amusement manufacturer whose main product lines at the time were projection-based amusement rides and light gun shooting galleries.
He was just 22 years old with no formal training in computers, visual arts, or graphic design, but his creativity and aptitude for game design were obvious to the Namco executives that met with Iwatani. They offered to hire him—with assurances they would find a place for him in the company—and he accepted. Iwatani eventually found his place designing titles for Namco's new video games division.
His limited computer skills necessitated his being paired with a programmer who would write the actual code while Iwatani took on the role of game designer for the project. Iwatani had initially wanted to work on pinball machines, but Namco had no interest in the pinball business. But the paddle games were losing ground fast to a new genre. —Toru Iwatani. Open Source Developers at Google Speaker Series: Camino.
Opacity - Abandoned Photography and Urban Exploration. ACM Classic: Reflections on Trusting Trust. Reprinted from Communication of the ACM, Vol. 27, No. 8, August 1984, pp. 761-763. Copyright © 1984, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Also appears in ACM Turing Award Lectures: The First Twenty Years 1965-1985 Copyright © 1987 by the ACM press and Computers Under Attack: Intruders, Worms, and Viruses Copyright © 1990 by the ACM press. I copied this page from the ACM, in fear that it would someday turn stale. Introduction I thank the ACM for this award.
I can't help but feel that I am receiving this honor for timing and serendipity as much as technical merit. There is an old adage, "Dance with the one that brought you," which means that I should talk about UNIX. That brings me to Dennis Ritchie. I am a programmer. Stage I In college, before video games, we would amuse ourselves by posing programming exercises. More precisely stated, the problem is to write a source program that, when compiled and executed, will produce as output an exact copy of its source. Stage II "Hello world\n" Gramophone record. A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record (in American English), vinyl record (in reference to vinyl, the material most commonly used after about 1950), or colloquially, "a record", is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove.
The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. Phonograph records are generally described by their diameter in inches (12-inch, 10-inch, 7-inch, etc.), the rotational speed at which they are played ("331⁄3 rpm", "78", "45", etc.), their time capacity ("long playing"), their reproductive accuracy, or "fidelity" ("high fidelity", "Orthophonic", "full-range", etc.), and the number of channels of audio provided ("mono", "stereo", "quadraphonic", etc.). Phonograph records were the primary medium used for music reproduction for most of the 20th century, replacing the phonograph cylinder, with which it had co-existed, by the 1920s. Early history Early speeds. Centopeia. 25 years of Macintosh - the Apple Computer report card | Register Hardware.
High performance access to file storage Part One In two short months, Apple's Macintosh will turn 25 years old. My, how tempus doth fugit. To mark the awesome inevitability of January 24, 2009 following January 24, 1984 after exactly one quarter-century, tech pundits will bloviate, Apple-bashers will execrate, and Jobsian fanboyz will venerate the munificence that flows unabated from The Great Steve. The din will be deafening. To avoid the crowds, we at The Reg decided to go first. Follow along as we run the rule over Apple Inc. We'll also give Apple its report card, slicing and dicing the 25-five-year operation into bite-sized letter grades. Don't say we didn't warn you. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Steve Apple's last quarter century is best divided into a trio of Jobsian epochs: Steve I, No Steve, and Steve II. Steve I - or Steves I, if you consider co-founder Steve Wozniak - saw the breakthrough of the Apple II (thanks, VisiCalc!)
Jobs and Woz. Where Are They Now? A History of Gaming Platforms: The Apple II. [Gamasutra's A History of Gaming Platforms series continues with a look at the Apple II system. Perhaps best-remembered for its ubiquity in U.S. classrooms in the 1980s, the computer was also a popular gaming system. Need to catch up? Check out the first two articles in the series, covering the Commodore 64 and the Vectrex.] The Apple II is one of the most successful, influential and long-lived home computers of all time. Perhaps more than any other machine, it moved the home computer from the worktable of the hobbyist to the living room of the typical American family. The Apple series debuted in 1977 and became a definitive home computer after the introduction of the Disk II drive in 1978.
The "Platinum" IIe, the last of the Apple II line, was in production until November 1993. History Jobs became Atari's 40th employee in 1974, serving the innovative young company as an hourly technician. Working out of Woz's bedroom and Jobs' garage, the two soon began production on the Apple I. Diagram & history of programming languages.