Email and Forum Profiles in IT: Thomas Eugene Kurtz Profiles in IT: 2007 Reviewed MIT Technology Review's Year in Hardware JP Morgan Bullish on Internet Stocks Physics of Traffic Jams New Hookup Technique at Bars in Europe and Middle East Using Bluetooth Texting
Email from Amy: I want to download NOD32 and am asked to select either the 64-bit or 32-bit version. Which one is better. I decided to drop Norton Antivirus and am going to NOC32, based on your recommendation. I am using Windows Vista. Amy
Tech Talk Answers: The version depends on your operating system. XP comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. In all likelihood, you have a 32-bit version. The 64-bit OS is allows you to address more memory. You can check which OS you have by opening the Control Panel and clicking on the System Icon. and looking at the OS facts. You will see a line for System Type: 32-bit or 64-bit Operating System.
BTW, the 32-bit OS can address around 4GB of RAM. The 64-bit OS can address 4 billion times more memory or around 16 Exabytes??virtually unlimited given the cost of RAM. 64-bit OS are typically used in servers where large blocks of RAM are needed for database manipulations.
Email from John: I want to try something this weekend and it doesn’t work. I want to try BlueJacking with my Motorola Razr V3M. I can’t seem to get it work. What is wrong. How can I do it? John
Tech Talk Answers: The Razr does have Bluetooth, but it does not support digital file transfer via OBEX (OBject Exchange). I tried it and It does not work.
Email from Dennis: Hi Dr. Shurtz, What do you think of the security suite that verizon offers? I am getting a new computer and I want to ditch zone alarm and norton virus.. The suite looks good (firewall, popup block, virus scan). Thanks Dennis
Tech Talk Answers: I would not rely on their anti-virus and malware detection. I also dropped Norton and am now using NOD32. I use the hardware firewall in the router and the Windows Software firewall. In addition is use Microsoft Defender for Spyware detection. I am quite satisfied. Real-time threat scanning while browsing is essential.
Profiles in IT: Thomas Eugene Kurtz
Co-developer (with John G. Kemeny) of the Programming Language, BASIC
BASIC stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
Kurtz was born on February 22, 1928, in Oak Park, Illinois.
Interested in science from his youth, Kurtz entered Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He graduated in 1950 with a B.A. in mathematics (specializing in statistics).
From 1952 to 1956, Kurtz served as a research assistant in the Analytical Research Group at Princeton, where he wrote programs to help solve classified research problems, such as those concerned with the effectiveness of air-to-air rocket salvos.
Kurtz graduated from Princeton in 1956 with a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics.
He was recruited by John G. Kemeny, chair of Dartmouth’s mathematics department.
Kurtz’s was assigned to be liaison to the New England Regional Computer Center at MIT, where learned assembly language programming for the Center’s IBM 704.
In 1959, Dartmouth purchased its own computer, an LGP-30.
Kurtz was appointed to be Dartmouth’s first Director of Computing that same year.
Kurtz felt that all students should be able to use the computing facilities.
In February of 1964, Kurtz and Kemeny began developing a time sharing computer system with the General Electric Corporation. Completed in June, .the goal of the project was to make access to computing as simple as checking out a book.
But writing programs in the computer languages was a more challenging task.
Kurtz and Kemeny decided that a simplified programming language was needed.
The resulting programming language was called Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC.
The first implementation is a compiler. The first BASIC program ran at about 4:00 a.m. on May 1, 1964. They did not apply for any patents or trademarks.
In 1983 a group of graduating Dartmouth students persuaded Kemeny and Kurtz to offer their programming language as a commercial product.
The company, True BASIC Inc., was formed and versions of the language were created for both the DOS and Mac operating systems.
What had been Dartmouth BASIC 7 became the first version of True BASIC. From the beginning, True BASIC was a fully structured language.
True Basic Website: http://truebasic.com
From 1974 to 1984, Kurtz chaired a committee of the American National Standards Institute, devoted to developing a national standard for BASIC.
He served from 1987 to 1994 as convener of an International Standards Organization working group, concerned with developing an international standard for BASIC.
Kurtz was recognized as a Computer Pioneer by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1991 and was made a Fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) in 1994.
Kurtz vision of basic, ?BASIC was invented in 1964 so that students could quickly write useful computer programs and at the same time understand what they were doing. English-like functions and statements helped ordinary folks perform extraordinary feats with their computer programs.?
44 years later, BASIC is the most widely used programming language in the world.
Profiles in IT: 2007 Reviewed
We started Profiles in IT on June 2, 2007
Since then we have complete 30 installments
We expect another full slate in 2008
Below is a run down of our 2007 Profiles
June 2, Rasmus Lerdorf, Creator of PHP
June 9, Ada Lovelace, First Programmer
June 9, Charles Babbage, Inventor of Analytical Engine
June 16, Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor, Developers of Intel’s first CPU
June 23, Linus Tovalds, Developer of Linux kernel
July 7, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, Father’s of the Internet
July 14, Robert T. Morris, Creator of Morris Worm
July 21, Tim Berners Lee, Inventor of WWW
July 28, Ray Tomlinson, Inventor of Email
August 4, William Henry Gates III, Co-founder of Microsoft
August 11, Dan Bricklin, Co-developer of Visicalc
August 18, James Gosling, Developer of Java
August 25, Steve Job, Co-founder Apple
September 1, Alan Turing, Founder of Computer Science and Turing Test
September 8, Bill Yeager, Inventor of the Router
September 15, Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of Ethernet
September 22, Douglas Engelbart, Inventor of the Mouse and GUI
September 29, Larry Ellison, Founder of Oracle
October 6, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Founders of Google
October 13, Reynold Johnson, Inventor of Hard Drive
October 20, Martin Cooper, Inventor of Cell Phone
October 27, Vic Hayes, Father of Wi-Fi
November 3, John Backus, Developer of Fortran
November 10, Karlheinz Brandenburg, Father of MP3
November 17, Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com
December 1, Robert Rivest, Co-inventor of RSA
December 8, Ken Thompson, Co-developer of Unix
December 15, William Shockley, Co-inventor of Transistor
December 22, Grace Murray Hopper, Mother of COBOL and IT Pioneer
Tactile Feedback — Researchers are exploring ways to add a tactile cue that lets a person know when a button on a smooth screen has been tapped. This field, called haptics, is also used to make virtual-reality experiences more real ? simulating feel of water or vests worn while playing video games.
Context-Aware Gadgets — This year, a number of products and research projects tried to make phones, laptops, and other gadgets better by using context. Nokia introduced a powerful tablet PC with a Global Positioning System (GPS) chip. Google recently announced a technology helps a person place himself on a map, within about 1,000 meters, using information from a cell-phone tower. Researchers at have developed an application for a phone that suggests things that the user might want to do, places to eat and shop, and things to see.
Brain-Computer Interfaces — Startup Emotiv is betting on a wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) cap for gamers that lets them control the game by concentrating on certain tasks. Another company, Emsense, believes that EEG can help it collect better market-research data about how people respond to advertisements, video games, and political speeches. Microsoft researcher Desney Tan is leveraging EEG in a different way: he’s using it to collect people’s subconscious responses to pictures in order to try to teach computers to recognize certain types of images.
Multicore Computers — This year, consumers became accustomed to dual-core chips, processors with two number-crunching engines–and ever more powerful computers with many more cores are on their way. But as each generation of processor comes out with a larger number of cores, engineers will run into problems. No one quite knows how best to design a consumer processor with tens or hundreds of cores, and no one knows how to make it easy to program. New methods to network and program the cores are currently in research labs in order to optimize the use of multiple cores.
Autonomous Vehicles — This year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a robotic-car competition that attracted the world’s best minds in robotics and artificial intelligence. Two years ago, DARPA put on the Grand Challenge, in which cars drove for miles on an empty desert road. This year’s Urban Challenge required them to obey traffic laws and interact with other cars on the road (including other robotic cars). In the end, the vehicle from Carnegie Mellon completed the race the fastest, and with the most sensible driving of any of the six that crossed the finish line. Stanford came in second, and Virginia Tech’s entry was awarded third place.
JP Morgan Bullish on Internet Stocks
JPMorgan’s Internet analyst Imran Khan and his team released a massive 312-page report last week Nothing But Net.
It forecasts a bullish picture for the major Internet stocks (Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Expedia, Salesforce.com, Ominiture, ValueClick, Monster.com, Orbitz, Priceline, CNET, etc.).
It notes that in 2007 Internet stocks delivered a 14 percent return versus 5 percent for the S&P 500.
It predicts 34 percent earnings growth in 2008 for the Internet stocks it covers versus 8 percent earnings growth for the S&P 500.
The report observes that e-commerce revenues track broadband
It further notes that advertising revenues actually outpace the adoption of broadband:
Free cash flow at large Internet companies will keep going up, fueling M&A and share buybacks.
JPMorgan estimates that free cash flow among just five of the top Internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and Expedia) will rise from $8.8 billion last year to $12.5 billion in 2008.
Search advertising will continue to dominate, rising from $22 billion globally last year to $50 billion in 2010.
Physics of Traffic Jams
Researchers say that a "backward traveling wave" can explain why traffic jams sometimes appear seemingly out of nowhere.
This holiday season, many of us will take to the roads. Which means many of us are also about to face rather unpleasant traffic jams. The most frustrating ones seem to occur for no reason at all. You’re stuck, positive something catastrophic must have happened up ahead. Then for no apparent reason, the traffic clears.
Now mathematicians from England’s University of Exeter believe they have solved this mystery. They modeled the effect of various highway events, such as a truck slowly pulling out from the merge lane. If the truck’s approach causes the car behind to quickly drop below a certain speed, then the next driver back also hits his or her brakes. This continues in a braking chain that the authors call a backward traveling wave. It could stretch back miles.
So it’s not necessarily the volume of traffic, but rather a sudden interruption in the flow that causes delays. The authors advise drivers to pay attention, and, when necessary, brake gently and slowly. If you suddenly overreact and hit the brakes, you could be causing someone to grimace in frustration in a car many miles away.
New Hookup Technique at Bars in Europe and Middle East Using Bluetooth Texting
Called Toothing or BlueJacking
Not support on all phones, including my Razr.
It started as a prank that tricked the world’s media, but now spoof stories about people using their mobile phones to hook up with strangers have come true.
News organizations across the world, including Reuters, The Guardian, the BBC and Wired News, fell for the story and reported that "toothing" had taken off among commuters.
To play, you need you need to activate the Bluetooth facility available on your mobile phone, which will then show a list of people within a few yards who are also active. Then write a message and press send.
Young men in Dubai have been using the technology to contact women in public places, according to the BBC’s website.
At L’Elephant, a bar on Milan’s popular Via Melzo, toothers gather once a week with manager Massimo Maruccia on hand to explain the technology to beginners.