computer scientist

Links

i'm not a big fan of blog posts that are nothing more than a collection of links -- especially when that was all you posted last time too.

Regardless, here's one:

The UK Prime Minister issued a formal apology to Alan Turing - the brillian computer scientist who was forced to undergo chemical castration after being found guilty of homosexuality
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571

Follower reports on the Digital NZ hackfest in Christchurch
http://words.rancidbacon.com/digitalnz-hackfest-christchurch-2009.html

BLDBLOG have another story on the Maunsell Towers
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/maunsell-towers.html

10th anniversary of the filming of LOTR to pass unremarked in Wellington on 10th October.
http://nznoldor.blogspot.com/2009/09/lotr-filming-day-one-10th-anniversa...

The Onion reveals that only 13% of wikipedia contributors are women
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/238/the-onions-vox-pop-on-wikipe...

UNICEF reports a 28 per cent decline in the under-five mortality rate, from 90 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990, to 65 deaths per 1000 live births in 2008
http://www.unicef.org.nz/article/1084/Globalchildmortalitycontinuestodro...

Ada Lovelace Day - Grace Hopper

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, "an international day of blogging to draw
attention to women excelling in technology".

http://findingada.com/

To take part
All you need to do is sign the pledge, pick your tech heroine and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about - everyone is invited.


Here is my Heroine:


Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was a computer scientist and United States Naval officer.

She developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.

Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace".

In the 1970s, she pioneered the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

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