November 2012 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

another book by Knuth which is not another volume of TAOCP
by Dave Walden 08 Mar '13

08 Mar '13

See my review at <http://www.tug.org/books/reviews/tb103reviews-knuth9-walden.html>http://www.tug.org/books/reviews/tb103reviews-knuth9-walden.html It will be published in the upcoming issue of the TeX User Group's journal. As the review says, I think this will be a useful volume for computing historians whose research brings them toward Knuth's life and publications.

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History at "Computing Conversations"
by William McMillan 06 Jan '13

06 Jan '13

Greetings, SIGCIS members. I'm not sure how many on this list are aware of the historical content presented by the University of Michigan's Charles Severance in his "Computing Conversations" for IEEE's *Computer* magazine and web site: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/computing-conversations Severance frequently includes historical content, even for relatively modern technologies. At the above site you'll find a link to a very well done video on Bletchley Park and some other topics that might be of interest. His column in the November *Computer* on the origins of PHP seems not to be linked yet on the site above, but can be read or heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqMW78GVcs http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=6353438&punumber=2 Nothing Earth-shaking about these presentations, but I find it interesting to see how history is presented to practicing computing professionals and what they seem to be interested in. - Bill

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Older computers (1940-1950)
by Evan Koblentz 14 Dec '12

14 Dec '12

>> I am not sure why this discussion thread seems to be going out of its way to degrade the importance of the ABC machine. Speaking only for myself, there are two reasons why the AB machine should not be included on the original poster's list. 1. It's a calculator, not a computer. A calculator requires human intervention various steps of a problem. A computer runs a program runs until it's finished. The AB machine did the former. 2. AB never finished it. I do not view this as degrading the importance of the machine. But I would also point out an earlier example of separating memory from processing (Babbage), an earlier example of using vacuum tubes for digital logic (cosmic ray counters); and a long appeal about why Judge Larsen and Remington's attorneys both may have been tragically wrong.

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] real doctors, dirty pictures
by Nathan Ensmenger 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

My apologies if this comes through twice. I am having trouble posting directly to the list. On Nov 30, 2012, at 12:43 PM, "M. Hicks" <mhicks1(a)iit.edu> wrote: > One quibble: shouldn't they have referred to you as Dr. or Prof. Medina, rather than Ms.? Or is that how the NYT always does things? Tom has it correct about the NY Times style guides: according to them, PhDs aren't "real doctors" (this also happens to be my mother-in-law's policy, which she reminds me of not infrequently...) As for the inappropriate picture: While the inclusion in the promotional film may or may not be intentional, the pervasive presence of such images is, of course, not usual or coincidental. I have always wanted to do a little history of the pin-up photo in the computer industry, with its attendant implications for the gendering of the computing professions: One of my favorite images of the SAGE system is of a test program that technicians ran to test the CRT displays, which produced a crude outline of a pin-up girl. Here it is: [http://thecomputerboys.com/?attachment_id=482] And, of course, there is the infamous "Lena" image, which was a Playboy centerfold that became the reference image for academic computer scientists (and others) working on image processing technologies. It remains so to this day, and was just recently featured in an article in Nature Nanotechnology. There is a nice little piece in the IEEE Professional Communication Society newsletter that details the history of the Lena image, although it focuses on the copyright angle, rather the sexual harassment issue. [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf] Here also is a copy of the letter that the departing editor of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processsing sent out in 1996 in response to the controversy. He was not too concerned. He even quotes a feminist friend of his who was not at all offended! [http://ndevilla.free.fr/lena/] -Nathan -- Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/

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Eden Medina makes the New York Times - congratulations!
by Paul N. Edwards 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

SIGCISters - Eden Medina's great book, SIGCIS and SHOT prizewinner Cybernetic Revolutionaries, made the New York Times op-ed page yesterday! Will Wiles compared Cybersyn to British PM David Cameron's iPad app — the "No. 10 Dashboard," with which he apparently now runs the British government. Congratulations, Eden! - Paul ___________________________ Paul N. Edwards Professeur invité, Sciences Po, Paris, 2012-13) Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010) Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing) Mailing address (2012-13): 82 rue Mouffetard 75005 Paris, France (206) 337-1523 (fax) pne.people.si.umich.edu

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Members Digest, Vol 29, Issue 17
by Erik Rau 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

Thanks, Jim (and Tom)! I saw this on TV when it aired. It made me recall that in WWII, the US Army Signal Corps was responsible for nearly all of the Army’s information technology (ENIAC, famously, was supported the Army’s Ordnance Ballistic Proving Ground at Aberdeen, MD). This included everything from pigeons to typewriters to radar and cyrptography. -- Erik P. Rau, PhD Director, Library Services Hagley Museum and Library P.O. Box 3630, 298 Buck Road Wilmington, DE 19807 302.658.2400, ext. 344 erau(a)hagley.org<mailto:erau@hagley.org> www.hagley.org/library<http://www.hagley.org/library> On 2012.Nov.28, at 12:00 , <members-request(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members-request@sigcis.org>> <members-request(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members-request@sigcis.org>> wrote: Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request(a)sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner(a)sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. "WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders" (Thomas J. Misa) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:56:38 -0600 From: "Thomas J. Misa" <tmisa(a)umn.edu> To: sigcis <members(a)sigcis.org> Cc: Thomas Misa <tmisa(a)umn.edu> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] "WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders" Message-ID: <B149464D-DDCA-48CF-937B-B087B9DC2990(a)umn.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message to list from Jim Cortada -- see these BBC news items about long-dead pigeon code . . . . TJM <http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9772000/9772402.stm> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20456782> On Nov 28, 2012, at 8:54 AM, James Cortada wrote: This is way too much fun to ignore. Tom, for some reason, I can't send messages through the siglist, can you do that? Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada IBM Institute for Business Value 2917 Irvington Way Madison, WI 53713 USA jwcorta(a)us.ibm.com 608-270-4462

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Fwd: cfp: TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN RETAIL FINANCE OF SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

Colleagues Please circulate to anyone who might be able to make a contribution, and please have them contact J. Carles Maixe-Altes <maixe(a)udc.es> on a first instance. Kind regards Bernardo and Carles *Call for papers*** ** ** *TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN RETAIL FINANCE OF SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA ***** (Session proposal for the 11th International Congress of the Spanish Association of Economic History, [XI Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Española de Historia Económica, AEHE]. Madrid, September 2014)*** * ** ** *Organisers: *J. Carles Maixé-Altés (maixe(a)udc.es) and Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo ( b.batiz-lazo(a)bangor.ac.uk)**** ** ** Several authors have noted that the history of computing and information technology must be considered in a wide context, spanning countries, industries and societies. With this in mind whilist continuing with the effort by Bátiz-Lazo, Maixé-Altés and Thomes (Routledge, 2011), we aim to focus in greater depth on a region that seems to have received little attention. Spain and Latin America form a nucleus of exceptional importance. Most business organizations in these geographies are chiefly "late" adopters of adopters of computer technology, that is, they tend to embrace tried and tested applications and emphasise "tropicalization" and "domestication". This panel thus aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to better understand the historical transformations in which technological change has operated in retail finance within Spain and Latin America. In this framework, the following lines of work are proposed: ** ** - Technology within different financial institutions: banks, savings banks, mutual banks, central banks, cooperative banks and public banks -The world of insurance and its companies **** - Mechanisation and automation of stock markets and financial markets **** - Financial businesses and hardware manufacturers**** - The viewpoint of the history of applications and software in retail finance: systems of bank interconnection, new financial products and the scale and diversification of markets **** - “Plastic cards” and financial self servicing **** - The historical and sociological basis of a cashless society, financial digitalisation and customer relationship management**** - Comparisons between industries and countries **** - Digitalisation and financial globalisation **** ** ** *Agenda:* All parties interested in contributing to this session are invited to send a proposal of their paper via electronic post to any of the organisers (including a title, authors, relationship and a brief extract of the proposal). The deadline for receipt is 21 December 2012. In the spirit of the organisers, we plan to promote an edited book collecting the contributions to this session. **** -- ================== Twitter @BatizLazo Technological Innovation in Retail Finance: International Historical Perspectives Edited by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, J. Carles Maixé-Altés, Paul Thomes http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415880671 Home page: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/business/staff/bernardo_batiz-lazo.en.php Working papers: http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba14.html

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"WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders"
by Thomas J. Misa 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

Message to list from Jim Cortada -- see these BBC news items about long-dead pigeon code . . . . TJM <http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9772000/9772402.stm> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20456782> On Nov 28, 2012, at 8:54 AM, James Cortada wrote: > This is way too much fun to ignore. Tom, for some reason, I can't send messages through the siglist, can you do that? > > Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada > IBM Institute for Business Value > 2917 Irvington Way > Madison, WI 53713 USA > jwcorta(a)us.ibm.com > 608-270-4462

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FYI: update of the IEEE Computer Society computing timeline
by Dave Walden 27 Nov '12

27 Nov '12

Hi, You may be interested that the Computer Society History Committee <http://www.computer.org/portal/web/volunteercenter/history>http://www.computer.org/portal/web/volunteercenter/history has updated the Society's computing history timeline <http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/Publications/timeline.pdf>http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/Publications/timeline.pdf Please note that our committee does not claim that this is in any sense a list of "most important" events during any of the time intervals from 1997-2010 that the committee covered in its update. Rather, these are meant to be representative events including international and technology diversity. Best regards, Dave

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CHM event summary: 25th Anniversary of Sun's SPARC Microprocessor
by Alan J Weissberger 22 Nov '12

22 Nov '12

Please put the blog post on the front page of sigcis.org CHM Event Commemorating the 25th anniversary of Sun Micro’s SPARC Microprocessor http://www.sigcis.org/node/366 Happy Thanksgiving to all Alan J Weissberger Manager of IEEE ComSoc Community web site North American Correspondent IEEE GCN --- On Tue, 11/20/12, members-request(a)sigcis.org <members-request(a)sigcis.org> wrote: From: members-request(a)sigcis.org <members-request(a)sigcis.org> Subject: Members Digest, Vol 29, Issue 14 To: members(a)sigcis.org Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 9:00 AM Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)sigcis.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request(a)sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner(a)sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Two-tonne Witch computer gets a reboot (Brian Randell) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:41:51 +0000 From: Brian Randell <brian.randell(a)newcastle.ac.uk> To: "members(a)sigcis.org" <members(a)sigcis.org>, Dag Spicer <spicer(a)computerhistory.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Two-tonne Witch computer gets a reboot Message-ID: <A417A863-1C7F-4B18-8FA6-201EFC7D79C4(a)ncl.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi: >From the BBC Two-tonne Witch computer gets a reboot The world's oldest original working digital computer is going on display at The National Museum of Computing in Buckinghamshire. <snip> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20395212 Cheers Brian Randell School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Members mailing list Members(a)sigcis.org http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members End of Members Digest, Vol 29, Issue 14 ***************************************

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