Primeiro sistema operacional de tempo compartilhado, ele estava muita a frente do seu tempo e desta forma tornou-se um projeto muito influente, introduzindo um grande número de novos conceitos, incluindo linkagem dinâmica, um sistema de arquivos hierarquico, uma arquitetura de segurança inovadora; que foi premiada em 1982 com qualidade B2 de segurança pelo NCSC, sendo o primeiro sistema e durante anos o único a ter uma qualificação de segurança deste nível.

Aliás, arquitetura era um dos seus pontos fortes, visto que de tão sólida o manual do programador do sistema foi acabado muito antes do sistema operacional e "diz a lenda" que quando o MULTICS ficou pronto este manual do desenvolvedor mantinha-se fidedigno ao produto concluído.

Para ele, foi desenvolvido o MRDS (Multics Relational Data Store) que foi o primeiro banco de dados relacional da época em 1978.

Porém, muitos mitos são contados a respeito do MULTICS e uma página bem interessante que relata alguns deste mistos é o Myts about Multics [3] no MULTICIANS [2]
A último computador rodando Multics foi desativado em 31 de outubro de 2000 e agora seu código fonte está disponível para quem quiser entender um pouco deste sistema.

Seu fonte está disponível em http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/

[1] MIT Releases Source of MULTICS

[2] MULTICIANS

[3] Myts about Multics

So were the scientists and other Gentlemen in his crew, even some of the mates. They didn't have the word blogger yet, but they were writing something part log, part journal, part essay. And what they blogged was the raw material for published books: very influential books.

I just finished the wonderful biography by Nicholas Thomas, Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook.

One of the major themes of Thomas' view of Cook is his growth and
transformation as a person and a writer during each
of the three voyages, especially the first two. Cook is transformed by his personal experiences of managing first contacts with other cultures, and it is reflected in his journals.

He starts as a prosaic logger of voyage realia, but develops into a reflectic, aware writer, using his journals to help him come to some understanding of the novelties of cross cultural contact.

Of course, there are differences between the late 18th century journal and a modern blog: privacy, for one.

But the differences are not as much as we think.

It was evident that all the journal writers on Cook's voyages talked to each other and interacted with each other about the issues in their journals. They write drafts, then change them later in light of such conversations.

And when back in England, the journals are collected together, read and scrutinized by committees, and then edited into books -- some telling the officially sanctioned stories that the Admirality wanted to promulgate, and some not.

As the raw material of popular books, these journals became enormously influential in creating the perceptions that fueled empire:  New Zealand was understood to have an already complex indigenous civilization and so was bargained with by formal treaty, hence Waitangi Day; while the "savages" on the eastern coast of Australia did not (and to some, still do not), hence the treatyless Invasion of Australia.

Did we mention the myth of Tahiti as a tropical sexual paradise?

But most of all, the journals of Cook show us the complexities of real life, of a real person dealing with unprecedented experiences the best he could, belying the superficial symbols of Cook as either The Bringer of Civilization or The Corruptor of Paradise.

In the future, will the blogs of today become primary source material for historians?

Yes, if they can be found....

In the medieval period -- the 1980s -- I spent hours with my favorite Personal Information Managers, not just using them, but tweaking them to fit in the old DOS high memory spaces with the other TSRs.
Our PCs were crammed with useful programs like PopUp Tools, Borland's venerable Sidekick, and my favorite Tornado (renamed InfoSelect), as well as a slew of lesser known, one purpose tools, including gems by Michael Mefford of PC Magazine fame.

Some PIMs, such as Infoselect and Sidekick, made the leap to Windows 3.1 and later Win 95, but many did not: Lotus Agenda and GrandView being two of the most lamented. New more graphical PIMS like ACT!, Ecco, Lotus Organizer, and Zoot arrived.

In the pre-32-bit, pre PDA world, PIMS were most of all highly personal.

People developed very personal relations with their favorite -- idiosyncracy could be a virtue rather than a flaw.  And that meant even in the world of centralized corporate standards for email and scheduling, there was still lots of room for PIMS on business desktops.

But PIMS were killed, or at least seriously wounded, by two things: the PDA, especially the Palm Pilot, and integration of PIM functions with email in MS Outlook.

Page Too

Well, PIMS are back. Not on the desktop, but on the webtop.

A Couple of Reviews

• Web Worker Daily: 7 Apps for Online Note-Taking
• Read/Write Web: Roundup of free online Web. 20 tools for students

The Three Heavy Hitters

iGoogle -- The rebranded Google webtop, with the sparse, utilitarian interface only a penitent could love. But it is the 800 pound Gorilla with a devoted developer base.

Zoho -- Trying to match and then outdo Google in a feature war, especially in webtop versions of traditional desktop applications, but it has moved beyond that arena. But they don't have Google's base or leverage. Zoho has some very nice apps, feature rich, that will find a niche among those who needs advanced features, but ultimately can it avoid the fate of Lotus, Wordperfect & DBase?

Facebook -- Here is where the real action is. A superb interface, strong user demographic, a well designed architecture, and a newly released API that is terrific. Forget MySpace, which has none of those things, Facebook's real competition is Google. Sound far-fetched? Just watch the dozens of new applications being added everyday to it. This is the space to watch.

Some Tools of the Sort I Like

I like sticky notetaking type tools with multiple types of organizations ranging from hierarchical to free form tagging. My favorite PIM of all time was MicroLogic's original DOS version of InfoSelect. Alas, it changed unrecognizably when it make the leap to Windows.

Here are a few of the ones I have tried out in the recent past and am still playing with, each with strengths and weaknesses:

• Stikkit
• Backpack
• Notefish
• Stikipad

I will review then anon. There are so many web-based sticky note applications, so I will have to post about them separately.

Lots of choices: at the moment. But I predict that history will repeat itself -- PIMS on the webtop will shake out in much the same way as they did on the desktop a dozen years ago.

An important difference will be the app and your data are up there somewhere in magical server land, not on your desktop. So guard your data.

Grande homenagem a Alan Turig, pai conceitual do Colossus, o projeto foi gerenciado por John Harper, engenheiro da computação de 69 anos aposentado, e foi patrocinado pela Sociedade Britânica de Computação; recebendo a colaboração de mais de 60 voluntários entusiastas. Segundo Harper, somente o processo de aquisição e estudo dos desenhos técnicos da máquina levou mais de 2 anos.

Valentine de Jean, que trabalhou com as Bombas originais durante a guerra, contou à BBC que a máquina "tabalhava belamente e nunca entrou em colapso".

A réplica vai à exposição geral em Bletchley Parlk em 23 de setembro.
Leia a notícia na íntegra em: Wartime Nazi code cracker rebuilt by Tim Castle

Em 1994, um grupo liderado por Tony Sale - primeiro curador do Museu de Bletchley Park e mantenedor do site http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/ - iniciou a reconstrução de uma réplica do Colossus.

Quem estiver afim de ler sobre o assunto, uma referência hiper interessante é o livro de Simon Singh, "O Livro dos Códigos - A ciência do sigilo - do antigo Egito à criptografia quântica"; 1999 - Editora Record