Saturday, March 21, 2020

Compare and Contrast Calpurnia and Portia in Julius Ceasar essays

Compare and Contrast Calpurnia and Portia in Julius Ceasar essays Calpurnia and Portia are both important in Julius Caesar not just for what we know about them but what they tell us about their husbands. Calpurnia is the wife of Caesar. She invests a great deal of authority to omens and portents. One night she has a horrible dream, which she feels is the report of a bad omen. She warns Caesar against the Ides of March but he refuses and decides to go anyway. Calpurnia seems to be a very cautious person and worries a lot. Calpurnia seems to be very dependent like most women is that era. From the way Caesar ignores her warning, leads me to believe that she is not someone who is taken seriously. It also reveals that his wife like most leaders does not influence Caesar his decisions, but it is strictly his own ambition. Portia is the wife of Brutus is the daughter of a noble king who has taken the side against Caesar. Portia seems to be more independent than Calpurnia and Brutus finds it comfortable to confide in wife about his troubled day. Although Portia seems to be much less cautious, she does kill herself out of grief that Antony and Octavius have become so powerful. The most important aspect that the wives reveal about these two men is that although Brutus appears completely determined in his interactions with the conspirators, his inability to confess his thoughts to Portia signifies that he still harbors traces of doubt regarding the legitimacy of his plan. Portia is a represents Brutus private life, of correct intuition and morality, just as Calpurnia is for Caesar in the following scenes. Her husbands dismissal of her intuitions, like Caesars of Calpurnias, leads to his largest mistake; his decision to ignore his private feelings, loyalties, and misgivings for the sake of a plan that he believes to be for the public good. ...

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and the First Spreadsheet

Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and the First Spreadsheet Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner. That’s what Dan Bricklin, one of the inventors of the first computer spreadsheet. VisiCalc was released to the public in 1979. It ran on an Apple II computer. Most early microprocessor computers had been  supported by BASIC and a few games, but VisiCalc introduced a new level in application software. It was considered a fourth generation software program. Before this,  companies were investing time and money creating financial projections with manually calculated spreadsheets. Changing a single number meant recalculating every single cell on the sheet. VisiCalc allowed them to change any cell and the entire sheet would be automatically recalculated. VisiCalc took 20 hours of work for some people and turned it out in 15 minutes and let them become much more creative,† Bricklin said. The History of VisiCalc Bricklin and Bob Frankston invented VisiCalc. Bricklin was studying for his Master of Business Administration degree at Harvard Business School when he joined up with Frankston to help him write the programming for his new electronic spreadsheet. The two started their own company, Software Arts Inc., to develop their product. I dont know how to answer what it was like because early Apple machines had so few tools,† Frankston said about programming VisiCalc for the Apple II. â€Å"We just had to keep debugging by isolating a problem, looking at memory in the limited debugging – which was weaker than the DOS DEBUG and had no symbols – then patch and retry and then re-program, download and try again and  again...   An Apple II version was ready by the fall of 1979. The team started writing versions for the Tandy TRS-80, the Commodore PET and the Atari 800. By October, VisiCalc was a fast seller on the shelves of computer stores at $100.   In November 1981, Bricklin received the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in honor of his innovation. VisiCalc was soon sold to Lotus Development Corporation where it was developed into the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet for the PC by 1983.  Bricklin never received a patent for VisiCalc because software programs were not eligible for patents by the Supreme Court until after 1981. Im not rich because I invented VisiCalc,† Bricklin said, â€Å"but I feel that Ive made a change in the world. Thats a satisfaction money cant buy.   Patents? Disappointed? Dont think of it that way, Bob Frankston said. Software patents werent feasible then so we chose not to risk $10,000.   More on Spreadsheets The DIF format was developed in 1980, allowing spreadsheet data to be shared and imported into other programs such as word processors. This made spreadsheet data more portable.   SuperCalc was introduced in 1980, the first spreadsheet for the popular micro OS called CP/M. The popular Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet was introduced in 1983. Mitch Kapor founded Lotus and used his previous programming experience with VisiCalc to create 1-2-3.   Excel and Quattro Pro spreadsheets were introduced in 1987, offering a more graphical interface.