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Milestones

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Eulalia said:
It required the lateral thinking of a woman, Ada Lovelace (one of Byron's brats)
to see where it would lead:

the first published description of a stepwise sequence of operations for solving certain mathematical problems and Ada is often referred to as 'the first programmer'. The collaboration with Babbage was close and biographers debate the extent and originality of Ada's contribution.

Perhaps more importantly, the article contained statements by Ada that from a modern perspective are visionary. She speculated that the Engine 'might act upon other things besides number... the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent'. The idea of a machine that could manipulate symbols in accordance with rules and that number could represent entities other than quantity mark the fundamental transition from calculation to computation. Ada was the first to explicitly articulate this notion and in this she appears to have seen further than Babbage. She has been referred to as 'prophet of the computer age'. Certainly she was the first to express the potential for computers outside mathematics. In this the tribute is well-founded.'
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Interesting, Eul. Another smart woman snubbed by male history writing?:(
 
Yes, she's received rather more attention in recent years, especially around her bicentenary in 2015 -
apart from her impressive contribution to maths and the beginnings of computing,
her own life story was pretty hair-raising from start to finish,
but in her too-short adult life she moved with some of the most brilliant minds of her time -
the Wiki article on her is quite good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
 
windar said:
It's interesting how decisive code-breaking was in both the European and Pacific theaters. And given how much of our lives are led on-line and how many complex systems depend on computers, imagine how much of a role it would play today. Cyberwarfare is war even if no bullets fly.



Yes the last 70 years have been incredibly peaceful for most of humankind, despite the nasty small-scale conflicts that have broken out. But the entire Americas, Europe, China and India have been largely conflict free for many years. And that's well over half of humanity. So while the post WWII order is not perfect, when people talk about overturning it, my reaction is "Not so fast!".
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One interesting question is whether the atomic bomb kept the peace. It certainly ended the Korean War ("police action") when Ike threatened to use it. Maybe the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prevented another conventional world conflict with much improved technology. Of course now things are unraveling, and the likelihood of a "low-level" atomic war (India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, Iran/Israel/Saudi Arabia) of the kind that would have horrified people in the '50s looks increasingly likely.
 
phlebas said:
Thanks Windar, a song that has become an important part of Australian culture and war remembrance, along with Redgum's I Was Only 19. Very powerful.
The scrolling text at the start of the video is wrong however, Australia did not suffer 50,000 dead at Gallipoli but closer to 8,000. We lost 60,000 in the whole of WWI.
Eric Bogle himself was originally from Scotland, but with this song he gave an Australian voice to the spirit of naive adventure and senseless loss that comes with wars like that one. It's almost unbearably sad.
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Another casualty was the British physicist Henry Moseley, who provided the experimental confirmation of the periodic table of the elements. He had rushed to enlist, and was killed at Gallipoli serving with the Royal Engineers. A book on the history of chemistry I read said "that alone made the war an obscenity". In World War II they tried to keep trained scientists out of the fighting working on technology. Gallipoli is yet another illustration of the fact that consequences of incompetent generalship and poorly thought-out strategy (Douglas MacArthur comes to mind) falls on the people in the ranks, although Winston Churchill did have to resign after the fiasco in the Dardanelles.
 
Frank Petrexa said:
One interesting question is whether the atomic bomb kept the peace. It certainly ended the Korean War ("police action") when Ike threatened to use it. Maybe the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prevented another conventional world conflict with much improved technology. Of course now things are unraveling, and the likelihood of a "low-level" atomic war (India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, Iran/Israel/Saudi Arabia) of the kind that would have horrified people in the '50s looks increasingly likely.
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One of the tragedies that lead up to the Great War was the idea which became generally accepted amongst the European nations was that it would be better to go to war now then later. In other words, war as an act of government became acceptable rather than diplomatic means of arranging a acceptable peace.
 
Eulalia said:
Yes, she's received rather more attention in recent years, especially around her bicentenary in 2015 -
apart from her impressive contribution to maths and the beginnings of computing,
her own life story was pretty hair-raising from start to finish,
but in her too-short adult life she moved with some of the most brilliant minds of her time -
the Wiki article on her is quite good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
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There is Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire's mistress, who became pregnant at 42 (a death sentence in those days) and rushed to complete her work before she delivered.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200812/physicshistory.cfm
There is also Emma Noether, who as a woman could only get a post at Smith College but made major contributions to physics and mathematics.
Years ago I sat next to an elderly lady on a plane, who told me she had signed up for a biochemistry course in an American college taught by a straight-laced German professor. He told her flat out he would flunk her, and he did.
Fortunately, things are finally changing.
 
Gibbs505 said:
One of the tragedies that lead up to the Great War was the idea which became generally accepted amongst the European nations was that it would be better to go to war now then later. In other words, war as an act of government became acceptable rather than diplomatic means of arranging a acceptable peace.
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war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument,
a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means

Carl von Clausewitz On War (1832) 1.24
 
Eulalia said:
war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument,
a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means

Carl von Clausewitz On War (1832) 1.24
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I understand. In 1914 however, war became acceptable rather then the last resort.
 
Gibbs505 said:
I understand. In 1914 however, war became acceptable rather then the last resort.
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In the viewpoint of 1914, what happened then was a 'campaign', not a war. A quick way to secure one's borders by taking away the enemy threat by means of defeating its army. But then the western front got stuck, and something else happened, Britain took the opportunity to a worldwide invasion of German colonies, something Germany considered as 'foul play' (they saw the conflict limited to the European theatre). That event blocked any chance on a negociated peace, since Germany's reaction was unlimited submarine warfare.
 
Gibbs505 said:
I understand. In 1914 however, war became acceptable rather then the last resort.
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quite - Clausewitz's vision of warfare as a manageable extension of diplomacy was - and is - a dangerous delusion
 
madiosi said:
Devil again! :devil:
I forget my 3st anniversity on CF to celebrate. Member since June 15, 2014. :mad:
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I had a hunch I ought to celebrate something this evening,
so I opened a bottle of Muscadet.
Now I know why! :D
 
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