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June 26, 2009
Kodachrome Dying: The Fading Away of the Analogue?
Tuesday morning. Guardian read of the day... And a shocking news - for me: Kodak is taking its 'Kodachrome' product range off the market. Kodak's decision is quite understandable. That type of film, which most of those among us below 30 do not really remember, does not sell any more with the rise...
June 8, 2009
Those Anniversaries We Love ... And Those We Avoid...
A quick glance at the calendar reminded me the other day that my family birthdays' season is starting up as every year... This got me to think about the computing birthdays passed during the last decade or so... A quick stroll on-line and so we have had so far, at least, those of: the transistor,...
April 17, 2009
Pirate Bay, pirates of the modern virtual world
So the verdict is in. After being indicted in February for copyright infringement and the promotion of illegal file-sharing, The Pirate Bay has finally - maybe not so surprisingly - lost its case against the Swedish government. That means one year imprisonment for the four leaders of The Pirate...
March 10, 2009
Computers in Moving Pictures, Then and Now
As part of a search for material for an animation for the local popular science festival, I went back looking out for videos and films usable for computing history. Returning, hopeful, to the on-line prelinger Internet Archive, three videos emerged out, one was On Guard! The Story of SAGE, a film...
February 23, 2009
From Berkeley's 'Giant Brains' to Chess Playing Computers...
A couple of weeks ago, Evan Koblentz, president of MARCH, non-profit user group for vintage computer collectors, asked the SIGCIS members' opinion as regards to E.C. Berkeley's paternity of the expression 'Giant Brains'. Given his famous eponymous 1949 Giant Brains or Machines that Think, of which...
November 28, 2008
Bell Telephone Antwerp's American Ways
While in the just-over hectic fortnight spent at pre-preparing for a project proposal with the FNRS, the Belgian funding agency for scientific research, I got the sad news that Nicolas Rouche, one of the Belgian pioneers who had helped our research on the Machine Mathématique IRSIA-FNRS had died...
November 3, 2008
Close Encounter of the Third Kind with a Trained-by-Fun 'Informaticien'
A week or so ago, I went to Louvain-la-Neuve catching up with my readings on the economics of technology, especially the writing by Nathan Rosenberg on technological pathways and Tissot and Veyrassat's interesting edited volume on technological trajectories. The trip was also the occasion to visit...
September 25, 2008
The Interface Strikes Back
Recently I bought a new laptop. Since then, I have been in heavenly misery. Pre-new machine, my life was simple. My machine being about five years old, I lacked the basic technology for a survival in this hyper up-to-date current age. Although most up-to-date when I got it - I was one of the rare...
September 8, 2008
Towards Geek Polities?
The other day, after being asked to contribute as a tutor for freshers, I had a nosey sneak through the faculty freshers' handbook. Besides being filled with answers to freshers' refreshingly naive and silly questions, this handbook struck me by its constant referring to computing: procedures to be...
July 10, 2008
Introduction: Hazards of life…
Maybe this post ought to have come first before my comment on the Three Societies Meeting just up the blog. Still as it was more about me I have preferred leaving it out as second. I hope not being murdered for that. I am Sandra Mols, young researcher on an interdisciplinary project with Marie...
July 10, 2008
A few historians of computing among lots of historians of science
When recently I got contacted about the opportunity to contribute to this blog, I thought as a first post to report on the panels on the history of computing of the 6th Three Societies Meeting . This joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, the History of Science Society and...