software

The Ariane 5 Flight 501

The Ariane 5 Flight 501

On June 4, 1996, European heavy lift launch vehicle Ariane 5‘s first test flight failed with the rocket self-destructing 37 seconds after launch because of a malfunction in the control software. A data conversion from 64-bit floating point value to 16-bit signed integer value to be stored in a variable representing horizontal bias caused a processor trap (operand error) because the floating point value was too large to be represented by a…
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How Dan Bricklin created VisiCalc, the first Spreadsheet Software

How Dan Bricklin created VisiCalc, the first Spreadsheet Software

On July 16, 1951, computer scientist Dan Bricklin was born. Together with Bob Frankston he created VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet computer program (1979) which created a market beyond hobbyists for the emerging personal computers. Today, everybody knows spreadsheet programs, no matter if you choose a desktop application or a web based application, spreadsheets are everywhere. And sometimes, we don’t have any idea, how we could possibly get along without them. Spreadsheets So,…
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GNU’s not Unix – From Operating Systems to Political Activism

GNU’s not Unix – From Operating Systems to Political Activism

On September 27, 1983, American software freedom activist and computer programmer Richard Stallman announced the GNU project. Its aim is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices, by collaboratively developing and providing software. You’ve probably never heard of GNU, unless you are a computer scientist or some kind of software developer. But, GNU denotes the starting point of a development that still continues…
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