nfinite Mac is a collection of classic Macintosh system releases and software, all easily accessible from the comfort of a (modern) web browser.Pick any version of System Software/Mac OS from the 1980s or 1990s and run it (and major software of that era) within a virtual machine. Files can imported and exported using drag and drop, and System 7 and onward have more advanced integrations as well – refer to the welcome screen in each machine for more details.

How Visual Basic became the world’s most dominant programming environment, its sudden fall from grace, and why its influence is still shaping the future of software development.

[Bush] urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For years inventions have extended man’s physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but not the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages.

The collaboration between Ada, countess of Lovelace, and computer pioneer Charles Babbage resulted in a landmark publication that described how to program the world’s first computer

[stupidly formated PDF is a little bit hard to read. I wanna find a cleaner version]

Dithering, so my original understanding, was a technique to place pixels using only a few colors from a palette in a clever way to trick your brain into seeing many colors.

The von Neumann algorithm is known as the middle-square method. You start with an n-digit number called the seed, which becomes the first element of the pseudorandom sequence, designated x0 x 0 . Squaring x0 x 0 yields a number with 2n digits (possibly including leading zeros). Now select the middle n digits of the squared value, and call the resulting number x1 x 1 . The process can be repeated indefinitely, each time squaring xi x i and taking the middle digits as the value of xi 1 x i

1 . If all goes well, the sequence of x x values looks random, with no obvious pattern or ordering principle. The numbers are called pseudo­random because there is in fact a hidden pattern: The sequence is completely predictable if you know the algorithm and the seed value.

In which I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft… and give it to you.

The history of computing could arguably be divided into three eras: that of mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers. Minicomputers provided an important bridge between the first mainframes and the ubiquitous micros of today. This is the story of the PDP-11, the most influential and successful minicomputer ever.

Two Spectrum stars go Forth