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Charles Babbage invented the modern computer and with it started the development of computer science and all the computer technology that we take for granted today. Babbage's Bag is a look at many of the interesting ideas that are at the heart of computing. It's not quite theory and it's not quite practice. It certainly is fun if you give it a chance and it will provide a background of knowledge that it's all too easy to miss.
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Where you store data is as important to the computer as the data itself yet the importance of the address if often overlooked ...
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Extensible hashing and perfect hashing are ideas that are worth exploring.
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Written by Harry Fairhead
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The Kinect is currently the hardware that provides developers with the greatest opportunities for innovative programs - both games and "serious" artificial applications. How does it work? How do you use it? What can you use it for?
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Artificial Intelligence - strong and weak |
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The search for intelligent machines started long before the computer was invented and AI has many different strands.
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Assemblers and assembly language |
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The sort of instructions that most computers recognise are too simple for humans to be bothered with - and so we invented assembly language.
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What could be simpler than binary arithmetic? It’s just two-fingered counting and once you know how it works then it seems natural for a computer to use it. But this isn’t always how it was.
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Binary - negative numbers |
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Binary arithmetic is easy but what about negative numbers - it can be tricky!
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You don't often encounter the BIOS any more but when you do it is usually something very messy and unpleasant. What is the BIOS and why do we need it?
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It may sound like a daunting topic but Boolean logic is very easy to explain and to understand.
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Buses are everywhere and yes when you are looking for one they tend to come in threes! With that joke out of the way, let’s take a look at what a bus is in general and in particular.
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We discover what cache memory is, what it does, how it does it and how much do you need
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You might well think that “chaos” isn’t something that really should be mentioned in the same breath as “computer” but you’d be wrong. Here's an overview of a fascinating and disturbing topic.
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Theories of how we should organize databases are thin on the ground. The one exception is the work of E.F. Codd, the originator of the commandment-like “Codd’s Rules”.
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Information theory – perhaps one of the most remarkable inventions of the twentieth century - naturally leads on to the consideration of how information can be coded and hence coding theory.
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The question “what can be computed?” doesn’t
have a straightforward answer.
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A lightening guide to the basic ideas of computational complexity without the maths or the proofs. It's almost more fun than programming!
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Confronting the unprovable |
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Given infinite computing power surely there cannot be any problem or puzzle that is incapable of solution?
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Copy protection, or Digital Rights Management (DRM) in general, is something that in most cases users hate and the entertainment industry really likes.
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The real complexity of any computer system resides in the processor. Here we explore how it works ...
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Data compression the dictionary way |
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If you want to know how zipping a file works - read on.
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