Alan Turing @ 100
Today would be the 100th Birthday of a hero of mine - Alan Turing. As I expect many of you know, Alan was a British mathematician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. During the Second World War, he worked at GCCS at Bletchley Park as the Head of Hut 8, whose primary role was to decipher German Naval messages.
During this time, he used his statistical expertise to help crack the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers, which many believe shortened the war by several years.
After the war, he worked at the National Physics Laboratory, developing the first stored-program computer, amongst other achievements.
The tragedy of the story is Turing treatment by the legal system of the time. He was prosecuted in 1952 for 'gross indecency', leading to his security clearance being revoked and his eventual suicide in 1954, supposedly by eating an apple injected with cyanide.
Posted by: OBH at 14:45
Tags: Turing
Location: Battle, East Sussex
Day 5 under Ubuntu!
Today marks the end off my first week running Ubuntu.
This term, I've been doing a course in Operating Systems and networks at uni and I've finally seen the light that there may be more to the world than Windows!
Ubuntu (which I'm relably informed is pronounced oo-boon-too) is a free open-source distribution of the Linux operating system. I can't recommend it enough - its very quick, light-weight and very elegant. Having said that, it might not be for everyone - it is a bit of work to get it installed without losing all your files but it's definitely worth it! Having a fast internet connection to download the 695MB of installer would be a bonus too!
Posted by: OBH at 10:58
Tags: Ubuntu
Location: Battle, East Sussex
Wikipedia Blackout
Remember this day!
In 10 years, Wikipedia has never been down for more than a few minutes at a time. Today the largest encyclopedia in human history has been blacked-out for 24 hours in protest of the new copyright laws being pushed through the American Congress. Wikipedia (and many others) believe this new legislation will fatally damage the open, free internet we have today. If you would like to find out more about their campaign, visit en.wikipedia.org.Posted by: OBH at 09:18
Tags: Wikipedia
Location: Battle, East Sussex
Flash's days are numbered
This morning, news broke that Adobe will be stop developing Flash for mobile devices. This news came just days after it was annouced that Windows 8 will drop support for Flash in its Metro view so that it is totally plug-in free.
Have Adobe finally seen the light that open formats like HTML5 are the future? I hope so! Don't get me wrong, I recognise 8 or 10 years ago Flash was ground-breaking, allowing web developers to do incredible things previously impossible, but times have changed. It's time for the web to say goodbye to Flash!
Posted by: OBH at 12:53
Tags: Flash, HTML5
Location: Falmer, East Sussex
The Beauty of the (Modern) Web
slides.html5rocks.com
Wow! I can't think of any other word to describe what greets you when you visit this website. As a web designer, I'd like to think I was up with modern web standards, but oh no! What this website showcases is the power of the modern web standards and these are the future!
Posted by: OBH at 16:17
Tags: HTML5, CSS3
Location: Battle, East Sussex