Steve Jobs discussed in TIME magazine

For Jobs, belief in an integrated approach was a matter of righteousness. "We do these things not because we are control freaks," he explained. "We do them because we want to make great products, because we care about the user, and because we like to take responsibility for the entire experience rather than turn out the crap that other people make." He also believed he was doing people a service. "They're busy doing whatever they do best, and they want us to do what we do best. Their lives are crowded; they have other things to do than think about how to integrate their computers and devices."

In a world filled with junky devices, clunky software, inscrutable error messages, and annoying interfaces, Jobs's insistence on an integrated approach led to astonishing products marked by delightful user experiences. Using an Apple product could be as sublime as walking in one of the Zen gardens of Kyoto that Jobs loved, and neither experience was created by worshipping at the altar of openness or by letting a thousand flowers bloom. Sometimes it's nice to be in the hands of a control freak.

All the stuff is written here:
http://stikhin.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/time-magazine-10072011-steve-jobs-commemorative-issue/

Girls In Computing - A 21st Century Solution

Girls are (if you believe it or not) an important part of computing, they created platforms in computing which all men seem to claim for their own. Women have been very influential in computing, and the number of women in highly ranked computing jobs is rather significant. Women first made their stand in computing during 1842 where Ada Lovelace was described as the first computer programmer. 

Women had several more successes in computing throughout the end of the 19th century and  into the 20th Century . In 1965 Mary Allen Wilkes – a computer programmer, was not only the first developer of the first minicomputer but also the first person, ever, to use a private laptop in a private home. This seems to be the catalyst for what was a revolutionary stage for women in computing:

§  1965: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller first American female Doctorate of Computer Science.

§  1978: Sophie Wilson, designed the Acorn Microcomputer.

§  1979: Carol Shaw, game designer and programmer for Atari Corp. and Activision

§  1980: Carla Meninsky, game designer and programmer for Atari 2600 games Dodge 'Em and Warlords

§  1984: Susan Kare, created icons and interface for the original Apple Macintosh 

§  1985: Irma Wyman, first Honeywell CIO

§  1997: Anita Borg, the founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT)

§  2004: Jeri Ellsworth, self-taught computer chip designer & creator of C64 Direct-to-TV

§  2005: Mary Lou Jepsen, Founder and CTO of One Laptop Per Child; founder of Pixel Qi.

§  2006: Frances E. Allen, first female recipient of the ACM's Turing Award

§  2009: Barbara H. Liskov, winner of the ACM’s Turing prize

It was also been proven that girls coming from families of engineers; where one or both parents are involved in a field closely related to Computer Science are more likely to enter the field. This is due to their experience with computing which usually dates back to a very early age and as a result have a closer connection and therefore a better reason to stay in computing; compared to if they were relatively new to computing.  In 2009, there was research issued that had found if you are a female executive,  in IT you are more likely to be paid more than your equal man part than any other industry with an average 2% higher pay than them.

Yet, there is a concern for the young women who show an interest in technology later in their high schooling years. This is because they give it up due to the unpleasant working environment, bad teaching, high pressure and usually negative stereotypes. These factors are ruining every girl’s chance at developing a good base for future generations to work in and around. So, it is a necessity that this group of girls, such as myself, need to be encouraged to stay in Computer Science and develop their potential further in order to allow not only themselves a happy and enjoyable future but those after them. We are the ones who have the opportunity to infiltrate the mainly male dominated area and should take advantage of this.

So guys, the challenge is for you to not mock and laugh at those girls succeeding in computing class but support them and make use of their skills in a way that will encourage them to follow the path into computing. You never know one of us could be your boss one day.

Download Scratch Now!

Scratch is a great way to learn programming and is capable of creating full games for playing online.

It's available for MAC and WINDOWS and is FREE!

Download the program here

If you create an account on their website you can download and upload games.

Memristor

This is relatively old news in the geek department, but here goes:
On April 30, 2008, HP Labs found the fourth circuit element called the memristor, which stands for "memory resistor". It has been theorized for around 37 years before the discovery, but HP's memristor is the first actual memristor made. The device could have multiple different applications in computer hardware, such as  traditional RAM, hard drives and processors, and also transistors as a more specific usage. It also has the potential to be far more energy efficient as RAM thanks to the fact that information written to it is not volatile, while maintaining similar if not higher speeds. The memristor also has the capability to emulate the workings of a human brain - hello, AI! In other words, the memristor has the potential to change the computing world as we know it.

Courtesy innovativeblood.blogspot.com and NewScientist

Hynix Semiconductor and HP are working together to make the memristor mass production ready, and they estimate its release to be within three years. Right now, HP is working on R&D for the memristor, making it smaller and faster. When it was first found in 2008, it had a switching operation of only about 1 Hz. The most recent announcement tells us that in April 2010 - 2 years after the initial finding - HP have memristors of size 3nm by 3nm operating at around 1GHz - a billion times the initial speed. At even this early stage in development, it could rival current SSD technologies, the full potential of some of which are already bottlenecked by typical SATA connectors. Prices of memristor storage at launch are expected to be much lower than those of SSDs, with multiple times the data density (more storage).

For more in depth info on memristors, look it up on Wikipedia - they have most of the latest updates about memristors compiled there.