Authors: Paul Strathern.
Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Anchor
Publication Date: 1999-04-20
Edition: 1st Anchor Books Ed

Reviews :

    Turing and the Computer offers an encapsulation of the groundwork that led to the invention of the computer as we know it and an absorbing account of the man who helped develop it. Eccentric and principled, Alan Turing would lay aside a brilliant career in mathematics to serve his country by breaking German codes during the Second World War. Openly homosexual, he would later be put on trial on indecency charges and forced to undergo hormone treatments that wrecked his body and his spirit. But the modern machine he helped create lives on. Just a few of the big ideas included in this riveting book are how Turing mapped out the theory of computers before a single computer had been conceived, how Turing's Colossus broke the German Enigma codes, and Turing's proof of the existence of artificial intelligence....

    Few concepts in the history of 20th-century thought are as rich with both philosophical and practical implications as the computer. And few people in the history of computing are as intellectually and personally complex as Alan Turing, the man whose brilliant mathematical imagination laid the foundation for computers as we know them. You could easily spend the rest of the millennium reading up on Turing and his ideas, but if you've only got an afternoon, this engaging, pamphlet-length summary of the man's life and work should get you nicely up to speed.

Author Paul Strathern sets Turing's accomplishments in their historical context. He starts with the long prehistory of the computer--its roots in devices such as the abacus, the slide rule, and Charles Babbage's remarkably sophisticated 19th-century "difference engine." Strathern then moves deftly through the great mathematical debates that led to Turing's formulation of the abstract "universal computing machine" in the mid-1930s. The author also lucidly presents Turing's contributions to turning that abstraction into a concrete mechanism, beginning with Turing's work on the Colossus machine, which cracked Germany's secret codes during World War II.

Strathern conveys with equal vividness the haunted private side of Turing's life--his furtive homosexuality, his difficult relationships, and his conviction in the early '50s on charges of indecency, a not-so-private scandal that apparently led to his suicide. The book owes its rich detail to the work of pioneering Turing biographer Alan Hodges, and Strathern graciously acknowledges the debt. But the accomplishment of packing Turing's big life and big ideas into such a compact package is entirely Strathern's own. --Julian Dibbell...

Authors: Rhonda R. McClure.
Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Premier Press
Publication Date: 2000-09-28
Edition: 8

Reviews :

    Genealogy is one of today’s hottest hobbies. Family Tree Maker is the #1 selling family tree program for genealogy lovers. It hosts the largest Internet genealogy community in the world and provides access to over 1 billion names. With the Family Tree Maker software, Family Tree Maker Version X Fast & Easy: The Official Companion teaches you how to create your first family tree. You learn researching techniques to help you discover historic information about your family. This book can be used by the beginner who has no previous experience with Family Tree Maker or by someone who has used Family Tree Maker before and just wants a quick reference that covers the new version of the software....

Authors:
Hardcover, 437 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 2006-06-16


Reviews :

    New media poetry—poetry composed, disseminated, and read on computers—exists in various configurations, from electronic documents that can be navigated and/or rearranged by their "users" to kinetic, visual, and sound materials through online journals and archives like UbuWeb, PennSound, and the Electronic Poetry Center. Unlike mainstream print poetry, which assumes a bounded, coherent, and self-conscious speaker, new media poetry assumes a synergy between human beings and intelligent machines. The essays and artist statements in this volume explore this synergy's continuities and breaks with past poetic practices, and its profound implications for the future.

By adding new media poetry to the study of hypertext narrative, interactive fiction, computer games, and other digital art forms, New Media Poetics extends our understanding of the computer as an expressive medium, showcases works that are visually arresting, aurally charged, and dynamic, and traces the lineage of new media poetry through print and sound poetics, procedural writing, gestural abstraction and conceptual art, and activist communities formed by emergent poetics.

Contributors:
Giselle Beiguelman, John Cayley, Alan Filreis, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Alan Golding, Kenneth Goldsmith, N. Katherine Hayles, Cynthia Lawson, Jennifer Ley, Talan Memmott, Adalaide Morris, Carrie Noland, Marjorie Perloff, William Poundstone, Martin Spinelli, Stephanie Strickland, Brian Kim Stefans, Barrett Watten, Darren Wershler-Henry...

Authors:
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Routledge
Publication Date: 2003-02


Reviews :

    Cyberactivism examines the growing importance of on-line activism. The contributors show how online activists have used new technologies as a tool for change, and how they have given new meaning to terms such as 'activism' and 'community'. Topics addressed include the Mexican Zapatista movement's use of the web to promote their cause globally, and the activities of 'hacktivists' who disrupt commercial computer websites....

Authors:
Paperback, 864 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Publication Date: 1996-02-22


Reviews :

    This comprehensive overview of programming languages, their history, current application, and future direction, is based on the proceedings of the second conference on the History of Programming Languages. Its contents include a summary of the HOPL conferences, plus sections addressing successful programming languages by some of the most prominent names in computing....

Authors: Rick Crume.
Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Betterway Books
Publication Date: 2004-04


Reviews :

    Now every genealogist can unlock the treasure trove of real, digitized records, or transcriptions of records, found on the Internet and CD-ROMs. In Plugging Into Your Post, Rick Crume gives readers a guided tour of the fast-growing list of resources available right at their fingertips. His friendly and accessible instruction makes it easy for genealogists of all skill levels to coax vital clues about their family history from electronic records and databases. Readers will learn how to quickly locate everything from marriage and census records to family bible pages and headstone transcriptions. This indispensable reference is packed with tips, tricks and strategies for tapping online genealogy resources. It's the key to finding what one needs on the Internet - the most powerful tool in family history research....

Authors: Sarfaraz K. Niazi.
Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: CRC
Publication Date: 2003-04-28
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Securing a patent through the traditional paper process is slow and expensive. Market demands and the worldwide migration to online patent application systems require attorneys and inventors alike to become familiar with Wweb-based filing. Pursuing patents via the Internet is quicker and more affordable, and makes good business sense. Unfortunately, existing online patent software is cumbersome and difficult to master, forcing many inventors and attorneys to rely on outdated, expensive methods. Filing Patents Online: A Professional Guide provides patent attorneys, inventors, and businesses with a step-by-step guide for filing and pursuing patents electronically. This comprehensive analysis of online patent systems from around the world recommends the proper choices for filers, saving time and money and increasing the odds of success. By following the hands-on examples of real filings contained in this book and its accompanying media kit, you can harness the power of the Internet to research, plan, and write winning claims. Filing Patents Online can result in thousands of dollars in savings and a secured patent that will keep a company ahead of the competition....

Authors: G A Oddie.
Paperback, 374 pages
Publisher: Sage Publications
Publication Date: 2006-01-30


Reviews :

   

This important book explores the emergence and subsequent refinement of the idea of Hinduism as it developed among British Protestant missionaries in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The author demonstrates how the missionaries’ construction of Hinduism grew out of their own roots in post-Enlightenment Europe, their Christian conception of ‘religion’, the colonial reality of India, and their need to ‘know the enemy’ in order to spread Christianity more effectively.

Drawing upon missionary writings, Geoffrey Oddie shows how the early view of Hinduism as pagan or heathen settled into the dominant paradigm of Hinduism as a unitary, brahman-controlled ‘system’, ridden with idolatry, ritualism, superstition and sexual licence. This ‘other’ was compared with evangelical Christianity, in which inward devotion counted for more than outward ritual, and where the individual was free from oppression and ‘priestcraft’.

Finally, this book looks at the impact of these representations of Hinduism in India and the West. By the late nineteenth century, as the author demonstrates, the missionaries’ increasing acquaintance with Hinduism not only prompted a more sympathetic approach, but a revision of the unitary model. Some even spoke of ‘the many Hindu religions’. Among Hindu leaders, in contrast, the notion of being ‘Hindu’ and of Hinduism as one ‘system’ had taken hold.

Issues of topical interest discussed in this book include the nature of knowledge, notions of ‘religion’, concepts of ‘Hinduism’, the Orientalism debate, and the relationship between missionaries and empire. This fascinating and thorough work of scholarship will appeal to all those interested in South Asian history, religion and society, as well as to students and scholars of anthropology, theology, philosophy, intellectual history and political science.

...

Authors: Jon Watson.
Paperback, 60 pages
Publisher: Nimble Books LLC
Publication Date: 2008-06-27


Reviews :

    Unix, DOS, Lisa, Macintosh, Windows, Linux...

Authors: Bernard Diederich.
Paperback, 216 pages
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-11-16
Edition: 0

Reviews :

   

The Dictator Beat, a nonfiction historical thriller by an award-winning foreign correspondent, and set in the second-largest island of the Caribbean, is akin to a Hitchcockian suspense drama. Two side-by-side dictators—Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier in Kreyòl and French-speaking Haiti and Generalissimo Rafael (Chapita) Trujillo Molina in the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, sharing the island that Columbus named Hispaniola—were in the year 1960 each endeavoring to crush rising dissatisfaction among their peoples.

Though very different in their personas, the two tyrants bore the same contempt for human life, which filled their respective countries with the unmarked graves of their countless victims.

In Haiti, Papa Doc Duvalier, though elected president three years earlier, had assumed virtually absolute power. His murderous “Tontons Macoutes” thugs roamed at will, striking fear into all. On the Dominican side, Trujillo, after nearly three decades in power, was finally losing his grip. Yet his dreaded secret police still cruised the streets at night, reinforcing Trujillo’s long siege of terror. The question was: What would be the fate of these two tyrants themselves? The answer is provided in this mesmerizing book by Author Bernard Diederich, who spent years reporting from both countries.

...