Apr 28 2009
An article on Page A-4 of Tuesday's Post-Gazette caught TechMan's eye.
"Global e-library focusing on relics," reported the inauguration of the World Digital Library (www.wdl.org), a Web site that seeks "to display and explain the relics of all human cultures."
This ambitious project was the brainchild of the U.S. Librarian of Congress James Billington with the backing of the Library of Congress and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
When TechMan hears of a project like this, he thinks back to the early days of the Internet, when excitement was building about the idea that all human knowledge could be made available to everyone.
That idea has been around for centuries.
The ancient Library at Alexandria, founded at the beginning of the third century B.C., was charged with collecting all the world's knowledge. It did so partially by pulling the books from every ship that came into port, making copies and returning the originals. Sort of like early file sharing.
In 1946, a famous article appeared in The Atlantic Monthly by Vannevar Bush, a prominent science policymaker. Called, "As We May Think," it proposed a microfilm-based machine called the memex, from which large amounts of knowledge could be accessed.
"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them," he wrote. Although in the computer age the memex seems crude, these "associative trails" suggested the idea of hypertext that developed into the links so widely used today on the Web.
With the advent of the CD-ROM in the 1980s, the availability of high-density media that could contain text, images, audio and video again raised thoughts of large accumulations of knowledge being available on one device.
CD-ROM encyclopedias appeared, the most popular of which was Microsoft's Encarta. Last month, Microsoft announced that it was pulling the plug on Encarta. The press announcement didn't mention Wikipedia, but the allusion was there.
The Web boom in the '90s again excited the dream of making all human knowledge accessible to everyone.
Gone was the idea of storing a lot of knowledge on one machine. Instead the knowledge lives on millions of computers that can be accessed from home through a network -- the Internet.
The Web and online databases give us the means of digital access; now the challenge is to make the knowledge digital and get it into databases so it is accessible.
Which brings us back to the World Digital Library. As these efforts to get human knowledge and human artifacts online burgeon, we get closer to the dream of all knowledge being universally accessible.
The World Digital Library is bringing cultural objects online; the Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org) is posting information on every species on earth; The Universal Digital Library Million Book Collection (www.ulib.org), begun at Carnegie-Mellon University, is digitizing as many books as copyright allows.
These efforts often are being made at the governmental level. The European Library (theeuropeanlibrary.org) allows access to the holdings of the national libraries of 48 countries in Europe. The American Memory collection of the Library of Congress (memory.loc.gov) has more than 9 million items documenting U.S. history and culture.
Of course, we are still a long way from all human knowledge being accessible to everyone. But we're getting there.
Apr 28 2009
All this talk about swine flu and pandemics reminded me of an excellent Ted talk by Steven Johnson about how the source of cholera was discovered in 19th century London.
Apr 24 2009
The Conficker worm was written off by many as a false alarm when it did not launch a massive attack on April 1 as some had predicted. But security experts say it is still out there spreading itself and spam.
Apr 23 2009
Welcome to the first episode of the infrequent TechMan series, “It’s right in front of me, but what is it?” This also is the first TechMan “hands on” column.
So put your hands on the keyboard and read on.
Today’s topic is the numpad (which derives from “number pad,” not from another word we won’t mention here), a grouping of 17 keys to the right of a standard keyboard. There are usually three small bulbs above the numpad that can be on or off. Most laptops do not have a numpad for reasons of a smaller keyboard.
I’m assuming that numpads arose from the belief in the early days that computers would just be fancy adding machines. The numpad keys are arranged in the same pattern as an adding machine.
But “adding machine” is just one of three modes that the numpad possesses. It is the way the keys operate with the num lock on (when the little light, usually the left one, is on.) The num lock key is the upper leftmost key of the numpad.
If the num lock is off, the key’s function is indicated by the lower label on each key.
You will notice that, on most keyboards, these keys have the same function as those just to the left of the numpad. Why? You got me.
“Delete” (Del), “Insert” (Ins) and the arrow keys are self- explanatory, “home” and “end” take you to the beginning and end of a line, and “page up” and “page down” scroll you one screen’s worth at a time.
You can combine other keys with the numpad keys. If you hold down the Shft key while using the arrow keys, you will select and unselect in that direction, just as with the standard arrow keys. Holding down the Ctrl key with home or end will move to the top or bottom of the document. Adding the Shft key will select to the top or bottom. (These keys may work differently in some programs.)
As an aside, the other two lights above the numpad indicate the condition of the caps lock key (the most irritating key on the keyboard, as far as I’m concerned) and the scroll lock key, the use of which has been forgotten by all. humans.
If you are constantly enraged by mistakenly depressing the caps lock key instead of the Shft key, you can enable a warning tone. In Windows, go to the start menu, settings, control panel, accessibility options, keyboard. With the “use toggle keys” box checked, you will hear a beep when depressing the caps lock, num lock or scroll lock key.
It doesn’t solve the problem, but at least you get a chance to turn off the caps lock before YOU START TYPING LIKE THIS.
There is a third mode for the numpad number keys on a PC keyboard, which produces what are called Alt codes.
If you hold down the Alt key (num lock on or off) and type specific strings of numbers, you can produce symbols not visible on the keyboard.
Try it. Open a word processing document, make sure the num lock is on, hold down the alt key and type 0169 on the num pad. Release the alt key and you’ll see the copyright symbol. Now you can copyright everything you write. Go ahead and try these: alt 0128, alt 0165, alt 0215. There are dozens of these. Whoopee.
The Apple Macintosh keyboard lacks a num lock key (perhaps Microsoft could use this in a commercial: “I’m a PC and I have a numlock key.”). The num lock key is replaced by the “clear” key. The numpad also has other differences.The Apple numpad also adds an “equals” key, has a “help” key, instead of an “insert” key, and, on the most recent aluminum keyboards, a “fn” key, which toggles the use of the function keys.
Lately Apple has begun to drop the numpad. For new iMacs, the wireless keyboard lacks a numpad and the wired keyboard comes with or without.
In some video games, the numpad keys are used to move characters, because unlike the “standard” arrow keys, they allow diagonal movement. And some systems use the numpad for input of Chinese characters.
So the next time you look down and see the numpad squatting there quietly to the right of your more useful keys, have a little pity. Sure it’s outmoded, redundant and maybe not cool, but it does have its uses.
Want to send a question to TechMan? Just fire an E-mail to questions to techman@post-gazette.com and include your name, hometown and a daytime phone number. Visit his blog at post-gazette.com/techman. You also can listen to the weekly audio Tech Talk podcast at post-gazette.com/podcast or catch the video version at post-gazette.com/multimedia.
Apr 22 2009
An interesting article on a recent attack on the fiber optics connections of a city in Calif. It is amazing how many things could be disabled from one location.
Apr 20 2009
Famed physicist Stephen Hawking has been rushed to a hospital in Cambridge, England, and is very ill. Hawking has ALS, known in the U.S. as Lou Gehrig's disease, so any health problems he has must be viewed as serious.
Apr 16 2009
Fired up my computer for the first time since Tuesday, when Microsoft usually releases updates, and my auto update downloaded eight of them (it is an XP machine.) Be sure you get them.
Apr 16 2009
A model of the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, is also the largest Lego battelship ever built, using more than 2000,000 blocks. TechMan just loves these massive Lego projects, although he would never have the patience to build one.
Apr 15 2009
The latest plan for a way for newspapers to be reimbursed for news on the Web has some big names behind it and a slightly different approach. But it still has to overcome an ingrained belief of many that, on the Web, everything should be free.
Apr 12 2009
Both rendering problems I had with IE8, a Facebook gadget on iGoogle and my Gmail inbox were fixed when I entered them into "compatibility view settings" under "tools."
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