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How FORTRAN Happened
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The IBM System/360
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The Prehistory of the Computer
The earliest device used to calculate was the abacus. This number crunching device has been found in use as far back as the Sumerians, circa 2700BC. The abacus can be found throughout Asia, the Middle East, and India through ancient history. Don’t worry, the rate of innovation always speeds up as multiple technologies can be combined. Leonardo da Vinci sketched out the first known plans for a calculator. But it was the 17th century, or the Early modern period in Europe, that gave us the Scientific Revolution. Names like Kepler, Leibniz, Boyle, Newton, and Hook brought us calculus, telescopes, microscopes, and even electricity. The term computer is first found in…
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Iron Wars
Occasionally I say that everything I need to know I learned from the game Civilization (partially in jest). In Civilization, you need to amass a certain amount of resources in order to build things in your various cities (and generate armies). Iron is something you can use to build a number of things. There are other resources you need to be concerned about, of course… In modern times, in order to be able to sell iron, you need a compelling reason for people to buy it – and corporate wars ensue to end competition to this end. One really great reason is the best threading model on the market; another…
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IBM to Buy Sun?
I’ve been saying for some time that something is going to happen with Sun. They’re too awesome to wallow in mediocrity. Now, IBM might be buying Sun for $6.5 Billion. Sun shares are up (drastically), IBM shares down. This merger is hard to imagine. To me, Sun is a great company that is like a boat without a rudder. They are entrenched in the open source movement, with their purchase of MySQL, but have not shown that they can reconcile other corporate cultures into their own. It’s hard to imagine that things will be different with integrating their own corporate culture into that of IBM. But Sun has a vast…
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Partner Programs
So I’ve been working on getting us into a bunch of new partner programs recently. Some companies get it, others not so much. Companies I rather like working with: Cisco, IBM, SonicWALL, CheckPoint, PGP