DiskDoubler

DiskDoubler (DD) was a data compression utility for compressing files on the Apple Macintosh platform. Unlike most such programs, which compress numerous files into a single archive for transmission, DiskDoubler was intended to compress single files "in place" to save space on the drive. When such a file was opened, DiskDoubler would decompress the file before handing it off to the application for use. A later addition, AutoDoubler, added background compression, finding and compressing files automatically when the computer was idle.

DiskDoubler was created by Terry Morse and Lloyd Chambers, fellow employees at a small software firm that went out of business in 1989. Chambers had already released a version of the Unix Compress utility on the Mac as MacCompress, and while working on another "real" project, Chambers wrote DiskDoubler in his spare time. When demonstrating their new product at a local Mac store, they noticed that it was DiskDoubler that got all of the attention. It was first shown publicly at the San Francisco MacWorld Expo in April 1990 (normally in January, but delayed that year) and by the end of the show had sold 500 copies. By the summer they were selling 1000 copies a month.

Salient

Salient may refer to:

See also

Salient (magazine)

Salient is the weekly students' magazine of the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association (VUWSA) at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Salient was established in 1938 and originally published in newspaper format, but is now published as a magazine. Salient's style and editorial position can change from year to year due to changes in editors. However, the magazine has generally taken a left-wing stance.

Organisation

Editor

The Salient editor-in-chief is an employee of VUWSA operating under a charter that grants editorial independence. The editor is appointed and employed under a fixed term contract that covers roughly the beginning to end of the academic year. Previous involvement with the magazine is not a prerequisite for applicants, although most have had some role at Salient prior to their editorship. At various times in Salient's history, and consistently since 2011, the editorship has been shared between two people.

Notable past editors include former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, editor of Metro magazine Simon Wilson, Queen's Counsel Hugh Rennie, and New Zealand Listener writer Toby Manhire.

Salient (geography)

A salient is an elongated protrusion of a geopolitical entity, such as a subnational entity or a sovereign state.

While similar to a peninsula in shape, a salient is not surrounded by water on three sides and connected to a geographical mainland. Instead, it is delimited by a land border on at least two sides and extends out from the larger geographical body of the administrative unit.

In American English the term panhandle is often used to describe Florida or a similar shape. Less common descriptors include chimney (if protruding northward, as a chimney does from a roof) and bootheel (if protruding southward, as the heel underneath a boot).

Origin

The term salient is derived from military salients. The term "panhandle" derives from the analogous part of a cooking pan, and its use is generally confined to the United States.

The salient shape is the result of arbitrarily drawn international or subnational boundaries, although the location of some administrative borders takes into account other considerations such as economic ties or topography.

Software

Computer software also called a program or simply software is any set of instructions that directs a computer to perform specific tasks or operations. Computer software consists of computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data (such as online documentation or digital media). Computer software is non-tangible, contrasted with computer hardware, which is the physical component of computers. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be realistically used without the other.

At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit (CPU). A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also (indirectly) cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to "jump" to a different instruction, or interrupted.

Software (novel)

Software is a 1982 cyberpunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It won the first Philip K. Dick Award in 1983. The novel is the first book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, and was followed by a sequel, Wetware, in 1988.

Plot summary

Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer — a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers — living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st — born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. — a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

Software (development cooperation)

See also

Further reading