Charles Russell Severance

University of Michigan | U-M · School of Information

Engineers at Living Computers: Museum + Labs have salvaged one of the world's first supercomputers. In the Web extra at https://youtu.be/wDc1630krls, Charles Severance goes behind the scenes at the Living Computers: Museum + Lab to discover how its engineers salvaged one of the world's first supercomputers. In the second Web extra at https://youtu....

Charles Severance visits the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington, to get back to his programming roots.

Security expert Bruce Schneier discusses security from the perspectives of both the National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The first Web extra at https://youtu.be/opT6pIfyGUs is a video interview with Bruce Schneier, who talks about security from the perspectives of both the National Security Agency and the...

Security guru Bruce Schneier talks about what it takes to think like a security expert. The first Web extra at https://youtu.be/eZNzMKS7zjo is a video in which security guru Bruce Schneier talks with Charles Severance about what it takes to think like a security expert. The second Web extra at https://youtu.be/ZFa9gXBvCcU is an audio recording in w...

edX CEO Anant Agarwal discusses what the online learning provider has achieved in its first three years and where it's heading. The first Web extra at https://youtu.be/tgluUdmQTXM is a video in which edX CEO Anant Agarwal talks with Charles Severance about what the online learning provider has achieved in its first three years and where it's headin...

Computer scientist Anil Jain discusses the evolution of the biometric recognition field. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/Wb_JbpdFoz4 is a video in which Anil Jain talks with Charles Severance about the evolution of the biometric recognition field. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/_NdKzKybyQ4 is an audio recording in which author Charl...

Roy T. Fielding reminisces about his PhD dissertation, which defined the Representational State Transfer architectural style. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/w5j2KwzzB-0 is a video in which Roy T. Fielding talks with Charles Severance about his PhD dissertation, which defined the Representational State Transfer architectural style. The secon...

John Resig discusses the birth of the JavaScript library jQuery and how it came to play a key role in the browser software ecosystem. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/B7Aut4OUuvs is a video in which jQuery creator John Resig talks with Charles Severance about the birth of the JavaScript library jQuery and how it came to play a key role in the...

Python creator Guido van Rossum talks about the growing pains--and rewards--the programming language experienced as it evolved. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/rTTFh7HOlC0 is a video in which Python creator Guido van Rossum talks with Charles Severance about the growing pains and rewards the programming language experienced as it evolved. Th...

Guido van Rossum discusses the initial development of Python, which has increasingly become the programming language of choice for many scientific fields due to its extensibility and ease of use. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/xLVxoz-mQFs is a video in which Guido van Rossum talks with Charles Severance about the birth of the general-purpos...

John Resig and Pamela Fox discuss the addition of computer science to the topics covered by Khan Academy, where instructors upload short educational lectures on YouTube. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/veQaSgjQO2E is a video in which John Resig and Pamela Fox discuss the somewhat recent addition of computer science to the topics covered by K...

Ian Foster describes how the Globus project helps move large amounts of data efficiently and safely, allowing scientists to focus on their research and not on IT problems. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/Z7NWk8QpQWQ is a video interview in which author Charles Severance interviews Ian Foster about how the Globus project helps move large amou...

Innovation on ICT-based learning depends on the ability of researchers, developers and services (and content) providers to push new kinds of tools and services in real life contexts. This implies that new developments need to be interoperable with the current LMS that are running almost everywhere. Thus, either new developments have to be custom bu...

Innovation on ICT-based learning depends on the ability of researchers, developers and services (and content) providers to push new kinds of tools and services in real life contexts. This implies that new developments need to be interoperable with the current LMS that are running almost everywhere. Thus, either new developments have to be custom bu...

The story of bringing the Internet to Africa is one of cooperation and collaboration for the common good. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/5LXvSs_zugk is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Nii Quaynor about how the story of bringing the Internet to Africa is one of cooperation and collaboration for the common good...

Elizabeth Fong describes the standards behind SQL. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/rLUm3vst87g is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Elizabeth Fong about how the standards were created for the Structured Query Language (SQL) database. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/hrx32RJiCnk is an audio recording of au...

Andrew S. Tanenbaum describes the motivation, development, and market impact of the MINIX operating system. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/86_BkFsb4eI is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Andrew S. Tanenbaum about the motivation, development, and market impact of the MINIX operating system. The second Web extra...

Nathaniel Borenstein describes how mail evolved from plaintext to multimedia. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/LOUqh5xw99w is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Nathaniel Borenstein about how email evolved from plaintext to multimedia. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/U0u4AOx6dd4 is an audio recording of au...

Doug Van Houweling describes how the NSFNet went from connecting a few supercomputers to becoming "the Internet." The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/uY7dUJT7OsU is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Doug Van Houweling about how the NSFNet went from connecting a few supercomputers to becoming "the Internet." The seco...

Len Kleinrock describes the Internet's humble beginnings. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/uY7dUJT7OsU is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Len Kleinrock about the Internet's humble beginnings. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/r6nCrbitq0U is an audio recording of author Charles Severance reading his Comput...

Joseph Hardin describes the emergence of Mosaic and the rise of the browser. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/-c8iWUh3Sv4 is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Joseph Hardin about the development of the Mosaic browser at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and how it introduced the World Wide Web t...

Massimo Banzi describes the origins and evolution of the Arduino microcontroller. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/0VAbvQ2Ti50 is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Massimo Banzi about the origins and evolution of the Arduino microcontroller. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/N6wN1_qLfEQ is an audio recordin...

Andrew Tanenbaum describes how he came to write one of the key books in the computer science field. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/i69Ngf8rips is a video interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Andrew Tanenbaum about how he came to write one of the key books in the computer science field. The second Web extra at http://youtu...

Ian Horrocks describes the early days of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the effort it took to standardize it and other languages. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/MVTNSRwSCxM is an audio interview in which author Charles Severance speaks with Ian Horrocks about the early days of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the effort it took to s...

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer new opportunities for both students and instructors, but their design and purpose distinguish them in significant ways from on-campus classes. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/SQ0HXfB8Q1w is a video segment of Charles Severance's "Grand Finale" lecture for the Internet History, Technology, and Security Cour...

Eben Upton describes why and how he formed the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/JVU5QBg5l6g is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Eben Upton about the formation of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/P5KEiu...

John C. Hollar, president and chief executive officer of the Computer History Museum, describes the museum's focus and exhibits. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/F5NcxIbuW-0 is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with John C. Hollar, president and chief executive office...

Len Kleinrock describes his path to packet networks. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/Tb3sbXOyxWI is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Len Kleinrock about his early work on packet networks. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/qsgrtrwydjw is video segment of C...

Katie Hafner describes how she came to write her book, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, about the history of the Arpanet. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/IUk2KyqrmF8 is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Katie Hafner about how she came to write her book, Where Wizards...

Gordon Bell describes how the minicomputer served as a building block for computing-enabled innovation and the eventual evolution of computing applications. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/NFiWx_OBAXU is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Gordon Bell about how th...

Bob Metcalfe describes how the Ethernet local area network was created 40 years ago at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/rLhoFp2YIgU is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Bob Metcalfe about how the Ethernet local area network was cr...

Larry Smarr describes Mosaic's birth and evolution at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/3FEx-Eg4S2s is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Larry Smarr about the birth and evolution of Mosaic at the National Center...

Pooja Sankar describes an online collaboration tool that's growing in popularity among engineering and computer science students. The Piazza online collaboration tool is quickly becoming a popular way to enhance student interaction and involvement in engineering and computer science courses. Piazza combines features from blogs, wikis, and threaded...

Mitchell Baker describes how Firefox, which has its roots in the browser wars of the mid-1990s, emerged from the ashes of Netscape. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/FQPjRwahrGw is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Mitchell Baker about the Mozilla Foundation, the...

Content-centric networking is much more than caching of content-it also works well for live streams of popular data. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/Gyt7DFOYt-w is an audio recording of Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column, in which he discusses his interview with Van Jacobson about content-centric networking. The Web extra at http:/...

TCP/IP evolved from 20 years' research that sought a way to move from a telephone-style circuit-switched infrastructure to a packet-switched infrastructure. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/B2-NhlmkDMo is a video interview with Vint Cerf about how TCP/IP evolved from ARPANET, an earlier small-scale research network. The second Web extra at ht...

Unique among most of its peers, PHP wasn't conceived as a pure programming language.

From "A Patchy Server" to the Apache Software Foundation that is an important part of the open source movement today, Brian Behlendorf describes the ASF's history. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/6kRMlfIBMCY is a video interview with Brian Behlendorf about the Apache Software Foundation and its key role in the open source movement. The secon...

For more than 30 years, Bertrand Meyer has taught the computer science field about formal software engineering and object-oriented approaches; he continues do so through his many books, conferences, and Eiffel. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/tEJZF73IfNs is a video interview with Bertrand and Annie Meyer about the Eiffel programming language, soft...

The increasing interest in moving forward from the simple sharing of course materials to develop a more course-like online experience represents the next step toward realizing the vision for open education.

With a goal of improving how computer science is taught, Niklaus Wirth created some of the field's most influential programming languages, including Pascal, Modula, and Oberon. An audio recording of author Charles Severance's Computing Conversations column is available at http://youtu.be/Wel2b93LjhY. In it, he discusses his interview with Niklaus W...

This month marks the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth. His ground-breaking work in the 1940s continues to have an impact on computer science as we know it. The first featured Web extra at http://youtu.be/5nK_ft0Lf1s is a video interview with Paul Kellar, Kevin Murrell, and Joel Greenberg of the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park...

Approximately 20 years ago, TCP/IP got a big boost from Van Jacobson and his team in the form of the slow-start algorithm. The first featured Web extra is a video interview with Van Jacobson on the creation of the National Science Foundation network in the 1980s. The second featured Web extra is an audio recording of the Computing Conversations col...

JSON is moving from being an underground secret, known and used by very few, to becoming the clear choice for mainstream data applications. The first Web extra is a video interview with Douglas Crockford on the creation of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). The second Web extra is an audio podcast by Charles Severance, author of Computing Conversat...

Smaller, localized computing museums like the one hosted at Australia's Monash University offer an important complement to larger sites. The featured video Web extra is an interview with Monash Museum of Computer History Director Judy Sheard and Chris Avram of Monash University discussing the history and future of computing in Australia. In the sec...

The evolution and use of JavaScript, a language developed in 10 days back in 1995, is really just getting started. The featured Web extra is a video interview with Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer (and JavaScript's creator), Brendan Eich.

Jobs-inspired Apple and NeXT products were platforms for many of the amazing innovations we take for granted today. Much has been written about Steve Jobs' amazing leadership at Apple and how he transformed the company into one of the world's most recognizable and profitable brands after his return from NeXT. But if you look closer, it's easy to fi...

This talk looks at how Universities need to apply the concept of “open” across their entire enterprise. The boundaries between the university and the world outside of the university are becoming increasingly blurry. The move toward a more porous approach across the domain of higher education activity is necessary to maintain the relevance, value, a...

Since the beginning of the discipline, eLearning has been about innovation. New software, systems, contents and tools are being created and experimented with and in constant evolution. But when systems, contents and tools become successful and part of the regular infrastructure of educational institutions, interoperability becomes an issue. Systems...

Creating a friction-free marketplace for the exchange of software and content for teaching and learning would contribute to solving the problem of how to best use this technology.

This paper speculates about the future of LMSs considering the upcoming new learning applications and technologies, and the different attitudes of learners and teachers, given their technological background described using the digital natives and immigrants metaphor. Interoperability is not just a nice to have feature, but a must have features for...

In this paper we apply the concept of "the long tail" (Anderson, 2006) to teaching and learning tools to discuss how the limitations of current Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be overcome to allow instructors to customize the technology they use to support their own classroom practices. Learning tools in the long tail are those that are widel...

This paper speculates about the future of LMSs considering the upcoming new learning applications and technologies, and the different attitudes of learners and teachers, given their technological background described using the digital natives and immigrant’s metaphor. Interoperability is not just a nice feature to have, but a must have feature for...

To appreciate the opportunities and make wise choices about the use of technology, information professionals need to understand the architectures of modern information systems. In alternative system architectures, storage, communication, and processing substitute for and complement each other in different ways. This course introduces students, at s...

Current Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are focused very much on meeting the needs of the institution in providing a basic, common technology platform for teaching and learning. However monolithic VLEs are too hard to customize at the individual user level, and evolve far too slowly to meet teaching and learning of users who want their teachin...

The Sakai Project ( http://www.sakaiproject.org ) is developing a collaborative environment that provides capabilities that span teaching and learning as well as e-Research applications. By exploiting the significant requirements overlap in the collaboration space between these areas, the Sakai community can harness significant resources to develop...

We review the efforts of the Open Grid Computing Environments collaboration. By adopting a general three-tiered architecture based on common standards for portlets and Grid Web services, we can deliver numerous capabilities to science gateways from our diverse constituent efforts. In this paper, we discuss our support for standards-based Grid portl...

this paper, various NEESgrid components are introduced and their roles in NEESgrid are identified. Subsequently, the MultiSite Online Simulation Testbed (MOST) experiment, which was conducted on July 30, 2003 to showcase the NEESgrid software capabilities, will be discussed. The MOST experiment coupled two large-scale physical experiments in Illino...

Earthquake engineers have traditionally investigated the behavior of structures with either computational simulations or physical experiments. Recently, a new hybrid approach has been proposed that allows tests to be decomposed into independent substructures that can be located at different test facilities, tested separately, and integrated via a c...

NEESgrid, the system integration component of the NEES project, links earthquake researchers across the U.S. with leading-edge computing resources and research equipment, allowing collaborative teams (including remote participants) to plan, perform, and publish their experiments. The integrated tools and components made available by NEESgrid enable...

The NEESgrid project is revolutionizing the way earthquake engineering (EE) researchers collaborate to plan, perform, share and publish research even while being geographically separated. The proposed demonstration is in complement to the NEESgrid paper titled "Distributed Hybrid Earthquake Engineering Experiments: Experiences with a Ground-Shaking...

In a WWW-based virtual learning environment where students and teachers are physically separated, the quantity and quality of interaction among students and with instructors affects learning. Lack of constructive activity is often identified as one of the major causes for poor learning. We developed support tools (prompts which support students to...

A new software architectural model for the archival of slide-based presentations on the Internet is proposed. This architecture is based on the concept of the "lecture object," a persistent format, independent of the lecture production and viewing technology. The work has been undertaken in the context of the Web Lecture Archive Project, a collabor...

A new software architectural model for the archival of slide-based presentations on the Internet is proposed. This architecture is based on the concept of the "lecture object," a persistent format, independent of the lecture production and viewing technology. The work has been undertaken in the context of the Web Lecture Archive Project, a collabor...

Several independent sources forecast that in deep-submicron (DSM) process geometries, 80 percent or more of the delays of critical paths will be directly linked to interconnect. This forecast is supported by the significant timing-closure problems that ...

This paper describes the implementation of thread balancing software intended to allow the sharing of a large parallel processing system under a variety of load conditions. The system under consideration for this study is the Convex Exemplar scalable, parallel-processing system. While this paper is focused on the performance of this technique on th...

The author considers how the Posix reference model remains accurate while other standards are becoming obsolete. The reference model identifies four main interfaces at which standards really matter: application programming interface; user interface; data interface; and communications interface

For the past two years, the Michigan State University College of Engineering working with the Capital Area Science and Math Center has been putting a weekend program introducing students to virtual reality. The program is very simple but very effective. After a short motivational speech, the middle school students are given a self-paced handout in...

The article discusses the IEEE 1394 networking standard, otherwise known as FireWire. FireWire was designed to link personal computers, digital cameras, televisions, DVD players, printers, and other home electronics equipment. At the time FireWire seemed like a perfect idea whose time had come, but there was one small problem: a competing technolog...

ATM and Gigabit Ethernet, the subjects of intense speculation by industry observers and potential users of the technologies, appear as if they may be ready to begin competing for their place in the networking sun. The demand for both technologies is ...

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Sometime in the future, we will all look back at January 1998 and laugh about the current conflicts in the technology industry. A hindsight perspective inevitably generates a few chuckles, but it also allows us to recognize that conflict is essential to innovation. Conflict energizes the entire process. If there were no conflict (over market shares...

The World Wide Web has the potential to revolutionize instruction and increase educational opportunities across corporate, government and educational sectors. Not only will the Web enable distance learning and peer-to-peer connectivity, but it will also enhance student feedback and let instructors understand whether and how long students have studi...

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About a year ago, Netscape Communications, with the support of more than 40 other companies, adopted the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Notably absent from the list of early LDAP supporters, Microsoft came on board eight months later. LDAP is a protocol that allows a program such as a browser or an e-mail package to perform directory...

The work considers the best way to handle a diverse mix of multi-threaded and single-threaded jobs running on a single symmetric parallel processing system. The traditional approaches to this problem are free scheduling, gang scheduling, or space sharing. The paper examines a less common technique called dynamic space sharing. One approach to dynam...

The capabilities of our personal computers have increased dramatically over the past 15 years, and so has the number of connectors on the back of our systems. Originally, we needed a serial port for a modem and a parallel port for a printer. Now we also need ports for a mouse, audio input, audio output, video input, video output, Ethernet, and a ca...

The Internet Engineering Task Force-the primary organization for Internet standards-is experiencing phenomenal growth, which implies a vote of confidence in its approach to standards-making. IETF is similar to the IEEE in that both organizations focus on participation by individual engineers rather than by organizations. Moreover, both organization...

The Internet Engineering Task Force-the primary organization for Internet standards-is experiencing phenomenal growth, which implies a vote of confidence in its approach to standards-making. IETF is similar to the IEEE in that both organizations focus ...

Many industry observers believe the key to the future of the Internet and corporate intranets will be the ability of the information infrastructure to quickly transmit large quantities of data. The Internet and intranets will need more speed and bandwidth ...

There are several forms of digital currency and electronic charges that will begin to allow micropayments for Internet site access. Once there is a convenient way to collect micropayments, the number of quality sites will increase dramatically and attract a wide range of Internet users. Digital currency schemes, including CyberCash, First Virtual,...

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Automatic self allocating threads (ASAT) is proposed as a way to balance the number of active threads across a shared-memory multiprocessing system. Our approach is significant in that it is designed for a system running multiple jobs, and it considers the load of all running jobs in its thread allocation. In addition, the overhead of ASAT is suffi...

MANAGING THE OVERALL BALANCE OF OPERATING SYSTEM THREADS ON A MULTIPROCESSOR USING AUTOMATIC SELF-ALLOCATING THREADS (ASAT) While commodity processor based parallel processing systems have an advantage over traditional supercomputers in price/performance, traditional supercomputers retain a significant advantage over parallel processing systems in...

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Discusses the value of profiles and how they differ from standards. Profiles address the problem of computer standards not being precisely designed to meet end-user needs. A standard's scope is generally much narrower than an entire computer system. To support user needs, a particular computer system may have to comply with many individual standard...

The purpose of this article is to critique the process of developing formal standards, which are those that have been approved by an official standards-making body. The bodies that impact US computer standards most include the International Standards Organization (ISO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the American National Standar...

This paper explores some of the issues in the improvement of the performance of Real-Valued Indexed (RVI) arrays using dynamic load balancing. RVI arrays are a possible extension to FORTRAN which allow the programmer to express spatial problems in an intuitive manner allowing the compiler and run-time environment flexibility in the actual storage l...

As businesses demand more low-cost storage and more PCs infiltrate the home market, sales of CD-ROM drives are rising. Worldwide sales of CD-ROM readers are expected to reach $50 million by the end of 1995, according to Infotech, a multimedia research ...

A number of commercial companies are now attempting to develop production quality parallel processing systems. These systems are often targeted to take over the role of Vector/Parallel supercomputers. While these systems have excellent raw compute power for their cost, they lag behind traditional supercomputers in a number of important areas. One i...

A number of commercial companies are now attempting to develop production quality parallel processing systems. These systems are often targeted to take over the role of Vector/Parallel supercomputers. While these systems have excellent raw compute power for their cost, they lag behind traditional supercomputers in a number of important areas. One i...

The paper proposes a simple extension to FORTRAN - arrays which allow indices to be real numbers. Additional FORTRAN constructs for the manipulation of these arrays are provided. Arrays with real-valued indices can be used in scientific applications which process spatial information. Initial efforts exploring the use and performance of these extens...

The design, implementation, and performance of a main memory file system are presented. The implementation is based on a two-stage abstract parallel processing model. The objective of this model is to maximize throughput and minimize response time. To maximize throughput, lock structures, access structures, and shared variables are distributed amon...