The big news last month was the Ansari X PRIZE, which was won by SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan and paid for by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Now I make no doubt that all but a very few BYTE.com readers will find this interesting and exciting, but it may not be so obvious why it's particularly important to the computer community.
The Honorable Marion Blakey, Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, presents a plaque congratulating Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne designer (left), and grinning Paul Allen, visionary (center), on winning the Ansari X PRIZE and advancing the cause of commercial space travel.
First, of course, it was paid for by one of our own, Paul Allen. When the computer revolution began, IBM's vision of the future was ten to a hundred thousand big central computers, all operated by white-coated technicians, serviced by IBM Customer Engineers, and running software leased from IBM or an authorized IBM partner. Bill Gates and Paul Allen had a different vision: a computer on every desk, and in every home, and in every classroom; and while it is likely that Moore's Law would see to it that the great computer revolution took place without Microsoft, it's pretty certain that it wouldn't have happened so quickly without that vision.
We tend to forget that a decade after the introduction of the PC there were serious debates about how much education it took to become computer literate, and computer literacy instruction techniques were taught in our colleges of education. UNIX gurus battled over the purity of programming, there were language wars, and many thought that while computers in homes and offices were useful, they wouldn't become ubiquitous because they weren't user friendly. That battle has long been settled, but it wasn't obvious to all that things would go as they have.
Extending Enterprise Value with Web 2.0 In this webcast we will talk about how to simply build and quickly remix Web 2.0 applications and the role of the IT department and how they support mashups. We will discuss how IBM can help IT teams adapt existing enterprise systems as well as develop unique ones that can support end user driven mashups in a reliable, scalable and secure way. We will highlight a simple scenario adapting an enterprise information source for mashups and how to test it. We will also cover how IBM can help you build agile, fast and simple web applications based on dynamic scripting languages that dramatically reduces development time. Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - 12pm PT / 3pm ET
2008 International Mathematica Conference Dr. Dobb's interviews Wolfram Research's Theo Gray, co-founder and Director of User Interfaces, and Roger Germundsson, Director of Research and Development, about the upcoming 2008 International
Mathematica Conference.
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
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