«In fatto di lettura, noi "lettori" ci accordiamo tutti i diritti, a cominciare da quelli negati ai giovani che affermiamo di voler iniziare alla lettura. 1) Il diritto di non leggere. 2) Il diritto di saltare le pagine. 3) Il diritto di non finire un libro. 4) Il diritto di rileggere. 5) Il diritto di leggere qualsiasi cosa. 6) Il diritto al bovarismo. 7) Il diritto di leggere ovunque. 8) Il diritto di spizzicare. 9) Il diritto di leggere a voce alta. 10) Il diritto di tacere.» -- Daniel Pennac /Colonna sonora: ``Filastine - Colony Collapse''/ ``The humble programmer'', Edsger W. Dijkstra --------------------------------------------- Continuiamo a dare un'occhiata ad alcuni articoli storici, questa volta di Edsger W. Dijkstra. Qualche parte saliente: «To put it quite bluntly; as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them - it has created the problem of using its products.» ...e...: «But if I start to analyze the thinking habits of myself and of my fellow human beings, I come, whether I like it or not, to a completely different conclusion, viz. that the tools we are trying to use and the language or notation we are using to express or record our thoughts are the major factors determining what we can think or express at all!» ...e...: «The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humilty, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague.» ...e: «Another lesson we should have learned from the recent past is that the development of "richer" or "more powerful" programming languages was a mistake in the sense that these baroque monstrosities, these conglomerations of idiosyncrasies, are really unmanageable, both mechanically and mentally.» ``Where Code Comes From: Architectures of Automatic Control from Babbage to Algol'', Thomas Haigh and Mark Priestley -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Articolo in cui ci si chiede l'origine del termine `programmazione' per come lo intendiamo oggi. Riportando direttamente alcune parti: «EDVAC, as described by von Neu- mann, would drop ENIAC's special- purpose units and its elaborate system of distributed control. Like Babbage's Analytical Engine and the relay com- puters of the 1940s, EDVAC would read and decode orders one at a time, per- forming the operation specified by the code. The novelty was the code inte- grated control and arithmetic instruc- tions in a single, aggressively mini- malistic, set of orders. EDVAC did not need the hybrid control schemes of the relay machines or the special-purpose mechanisms and programming wires and switches of ENIAC.» e: «This provides a rather different view of the invention of computer program- ming, and its relationship to logic, from the widely held assumption that computer development in the 1940s was guided directly by the theoretical work of Alan Turing. In that view of his- tory, a metaphysical attraction to the idea of "universality" inspired a com- petition amongst computer builders to be the first to check a box labeled "Tur- ing complete." Von Neumann's design for EDVAC was elegant and its general- ization and simplification of ENIAC's control capabilities unquestionably reflected his grounding in mathemati- cal logic. The usefulness of a computer able to tackle many different kinds of calculations was certainly appreciated by the creators of the first automatic computing machines. The computer builders of the 1940s and 1950s adopt- ed EDVAC's new design paradigms be- cause they provided an efficient way to automate real machines, running real computations to solve real problems.» ``Why I Hate Video, Part 548'', Kevin Drum ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Probabilmente nei prossimi 5 anni, almeno su Facebook ci saranno sempre più video e il testo (secondo il CEO di Facebook). Nicola Mendelsohn, `Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa' di Facebook si è sbilanciata ancor più: «The best way to tell stories in this world, where so much information is coming at us, actually is video, Mendelsohn said. It conveys so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually the trend helps us to digest much more information.»^[citation needed] (il `^[citation needed]' è mio, dato che non ho trovato nessun riferimento a ciò). Ovviamente ciò è assolutamente falso sotto diversi punti di vista. ``New Report: FBI Can Access Hundreds of Millions of Face Recognition Photos'', Jennifer Lynch ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Articolo interessante dal Deeplinks Blog della EFF.