After more than two years as a regular in our "Programmer's Bookshelf" section, Andrew Schulman is changing DDJ hats, putting aside his book beat to launch a column called the "Undocumented Corner." Andrew, whose books Undocumented DOS and Undocumented Windows have made him the de facto guru of undocumented operating-system features, will be examining programming interfaces for the likes of DOS, Windows, OS/2, networks, and more.
However, "Undocumented Corner" will be different from columns you'll find in this and other magazines. While Andrew will write many of the articles himself, he'll also be working with you to explore undocumented features you've uncovered. To this end, "Undocumented Corner" is, in the finest DDJ tradition, a forum where you can interact and share ideas and techniques with your fellow programmers. This month, for example, Andrew presents Joe Newcomer and Bruce Horn's investigation into the undocumented RGNOBJ structure of Microsoft Windows.
With the recent passing of John Kemeny, the programming community lost yet another pioneer. Along with fellow Dartmouth College professor Thomas Kurtz, Kemeny was the co-inventor in 1964 of the Basic programming language.
Before his stint at Dartmouth (which culminated with his being president from 1970-1981), Kemeny worked on the Manhattan Project, and later served as a research assistant to Albert Einstein while studying at Princeton. Near the end of his Dartmouth career, Kemeny chaired the federal commission (known as the Kemeny Commission) that investigated the Three Mile Island power plant nuclear accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.
Still, it's Kemeny and Kurtz's research into programming languages that's relevant to us. While another programming language would surely have come along, the world of computing would be much different today if Kemeny and Kurtz hadn't developed the easy-to-grasp language they called the "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code," or Basic for short.
You could, in fact, argue whether or not the PC industry would have gotten out of the gate with such fury had not Basic been there to jumpstart it. (Can you imagine programming the early TRS-80s, Apples, or Commodore PETs in ROM-based Fortran or Cobol, for example?)
Nor would Bill Gates and Paul Allen have implemented a version of the language for the Altair, leading us to wonder whether Microsoft would be the software giant it is--if it existed at all.
And, of course, without Kemeny and Kurtz's efforts, Bob Albrecht and Dennis Allison would never have created Tiny Basic--and then launched Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia to present their implementation to the world.
With all of the current hubbub over C++ and its object-oriented cousins, it's easy to forget that Basic was one of the keystones of an industry that daily continues to change the way we live. Kemeny's work made a difference, and we should all be glad he did what he did, when he did.
The 1100-mile long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is underway in Alaska, leading me to think that even embedded systems are going to the dogs.
For the first time, race organizers have resorted to computer technology as a means of keeping things on track. In the past, individual dogs have been identified by numbers painted on their backs, making it relatively easy for unprincipled mushers to substitute fresh dogs at opportune times. Starting this year, however, veterinarians are injecting computer chips the size of a grain of rice under the dog's skin using syringes equipped with fat, hollow-tipped needles. Race officials then pass a hand-held scanner over each of the 1600 dogs in the race to read their ID codes, which are displayed on the scanner's LCD. Officials can cross-reference the IDs to a database to ensure that the Fido is indeed Fido, not Bruno.
The computer technology is admittedly being kept on a short leash. The tiny read-only chips (manufactured by Avid Inc.) only store about four bytes of data. The EPROM chips consist of a minute ferrite coil, a capacitor, and a custom IC that attends to power supply, clock signals, memory sequencing, and output. The IC is encoded by the manufacturer and encapsulated within biocompatible glass. The one-pound, battery-powered scanner (also made by Avid) sends RF wakeup signals to the passive chip, which returns the preprogrammed code in less than 0.04 seconds. The scanner can store up to 450 ID reads and, via an RS-232 interface, send the data to a PC.
Actually, there's nothing new about this application of embedded-systems technology, known as "transcutaneous avian identification." Services like "InfoPet," "DataPet," and "PETtrac" will, for $30.00 or $40.00, implant an ID chip into your pet and register your name with a listing service. If you're interested, you can find out more about all this in recent issues of Dr. Dogg's Journal.
Copyright © 1993, Dr. Dobb's JournalJohn Kemeny, R.I.P.
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