Most of the times I go through the web for finding tweaks for Firefox. I found these articles are very interesting and tweaks contained in these articles help me to improve the performance of Firefox.

1. About:config Entries – This is a reference to about:config entries which you can get basic understanding about those entries.
2. Ten Mysteries of about:config – about:config tweaks from Linux Journal.
3. Top Firefox 2 config tweaks – Written by Gina Trapani from lifehacker.com.
4. Firefox about:config Hacks and assorted tips – Some greate performance hacks for Firefox from Tech Yantra.
5. Make Firefox much faster about:config tutorial – Video tutorial from youtube.com and you can find more from related video list.
6. The secrets of about:config – Firefox Hacks from computerworld.
7. Firefox Tweak Guide – 12 page Firefox tweak guide from tweakguides.com.
8. Firefox Tweaks – Firefox tweaks for network connections and plugins.
9. Firefox performance tweaks – Another Firefox performance hacks.
10. Firefox memory tweaks – High usage of memory is some time a problem for Firefox users. This guide will help you to tweak the memory settings.

These guides some times contain same tweaks but I prefer you to read these and choose the best things.

Most of the people suffering from low speed of downloading. Some suffering from crashed downloaded when using browser’s download manager. Here are four popular download managers for Linux. All of them are free software. I have tested these on Ubuntu 7.04.

D4X(Downloader for X) - Simple Linux download manager.

Install using sudo apt-get install d4x in Ubuntu.

wxDownload Fast – Cross platform tool with more features. Free Software.

Debian package can be found at this link.

KGet – This work with KDE and Konqueror browser. Also works well with Gnome.

Gwget – Wget front-end for Gnome.

Install using sudo apt-get install gwget in Ubuntu.

Csope is a ultimate tool for interactively locating specified elements of C code. Cscope will make your life easier with it’s features.

• Allows searching code for:

all references to a symbol

global definitions

functions called by a function

functions calling a function

text string

regular expression pattern

a file

files including a file

• Curses based (text screen)
• An information database is generated for faster searches and later reference
• The fuzzy parser supports C, but is flexible enough to be useful for C++ and Java, and for use as a generalized ‘grep database’ (use it to browse large text documents!)
• Has a command line mode for inclusion in scripts or as a backend to a GUI/frontend
• Runs on all flavors of Unix, plus most monopoly-controlled operating systems.

KScope is a KDE front-end to Cscope. It provides a source-editing environment for large C projects, such as the Linux kernel.

Kscope

Synopsis

dojo.data.MediaWiki is a project aimed at implementing read-only datastore that reads semi-structured data from MediaWiki sites by creating data items from the data in info-boxes and parameterized templates. Currently Dojo Data module support Csv files, Opml format files, Yahoo Search Web service, del.icio.us web service and RDF data sources. Current implementations lacks the support of MediaWiki content.

Main area of focus in this project is to implement standard set of dojo.data data-access APIs to support read semi-structured content from MediaWiki site. The support for MediaWiki based content as data sources will be an added advantage because, now data which describes most of the things in the world is exposed as Wikis and content of these Wikis are added and created by the community in all parts of the world.
And I believe this project will help to achieve the goals of Dojo data-access APIs by supporting for another data source.

Project Details

Sites that allow visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content without the registration normally called a wiki. This ease of interaction and operation of Wikis, they have become fantastic tool that allows collaborative authoring.
MediaWiki is a web based wiki software application used by all projects of MediaWiki foundation, all wikis hosted by Wikia and many other largest and popular wikis. MediaWiki project is originally started to host the Wikipedia free encyclopedia and now used by many companies all over the world as a knowledge management solution and content management solution.
MediaWiki use infobox, generalization of a taxobox which summarizes information for an organism or group of organisms to  provide summary information consistently between articles with common subject or to improve navigation between articles which have common subject. As described in WikiPedia infobox is a table that formatted in consistent manner.
Parameterized Templates are use in MediaWiki to reuse the view of common structured data that have differences in few parameters.
Example from Wikipedia:

Template: Name-Example

:I am a template example, my first name is ”’{{{firstName}}}”’ and my last name is ”’{{{lastName}}}”’.
:
:You can reference my page at [[{{{lastName}}}, {{{firstName}}}]].
We can use this Template in following way inside page: {{Name-example | firstName=John | lastName=Smith}}

Result:
:I am a template example, my first name is ”’John”’ and my last name is ”’Smith”’.
:
:You can reference my page at [[Smith, John]].

Dojo Data module is a datastore object provider which can use in Javascript programs to access various data sources. dojo.data module currently provides standards set of basic data-access APIs, and five simple datastore implementations. Main goal of dojo.data module is to have standard set of data-access APIs, and a large set of datastore implementations that implement those APIs.

Main aim of this project is to provide read-only datastore conforms to the standard set of data-access API which read semi structured content from the previously described MediaWiki ifoboxes and parameterized templates. This datastore will provide data synchronously from the Mediawiki data sources.
The dojo.data.MediaWiki will implement dojo.data.core.Read API as initial stage. dojo.data.MediaWiki datastoore will parse the  content inside infoboxes and parameterized templates and create the data item using that data. Infoboxes and parameterized templates are described data in semi-structured manner and manipulating these data and converting them to the data item will be the main challenge in this project.
The project will mainly focused on preparing suitable documentation and some examples after completing the dojo.data.MediaWiki datastore and extending the functionality of the datastore.

Delivarables 

1.Complete implementation of  dojo.data.MediaWiki which supports info-boxes and parameterized templates.
2.Documentation relevant to project
3.Examples and Test Cases

Project Plan

My main goal of this project is to implement dojo.data.MediaWiki datastore with required documentation and samples. Motivation for this project came with the my interest on Javascript based toolkits, Web Design, Semantic Web, and my involvement in the Mashup server project at my internship period.
Currently dojo.data module have five datastores, bu it does not include datastore that support MediaWiki Infoboxes and parameterized templates. Implementing MediaWiki datastore will take another step towards the main goal of providing large set of datastore implementations that conforms to dojo.data data access APIs.
First I’ll study the architecture of dojo.data, dojo.data APIs and MediaWiki content structure. After that I’ll design and implement  the necessary algorithms and routines to manipulate MediaWiki content which will be used to implement the data access APIs.
Then these algorithms and routines will be used to implement the MediaWiki datastore according to standard APIs.
After completing the implementation I’ll mainly focus on preparing the documentation, writing samples and preparing test cases to make sure the functionality of the project.

Project Schedule

April 11th to May 28th
Studying the Dojo Toolkit, Dojo Data Module and MediaWiki structure and become more familiar with Dojo toolkit by doing examples and tutorials available.

May 29th to June 2nd
Designing main architecture of the dojo.data.MediaWiki datastore to read content from MediaWiki based Infoboxes and parameterized templates.

June 3rd to July 2nd
Implementing initial part of dojo.data.MediaWiki datastore

July 3rd July 5th
Test the implemented features and get the comments and suggestions from the community.

July 6th to July 31st
Extend the functionality and features of the MediaWiki datastore.

August 1st to August 20th
Prepare documentation and samples. And submitting the complete project to Google.

Biography

I am a 22 years old undergraduate student at Computer Science and Engineering Department,  University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I am currently in Level 3 and will start the Level 4 (Final year) next May.
I have worked on Axis2/C Code Generation Tool and several other parts of Axis2/C. I was accepted as Apache Committer in January this year for the contribution I have done to Axis2/C project. I have been working with WSS4J project prior to working in Axis2/C. In parallel with Axis2/C project I have worked on Javascript based Screen Scraping tool and Javascript based UI for Mashup Server and have experinced in some Javascript toolkits like YUI, Prototype, and YUI-EXT.
I am really interested in Javascript related projects and I hope this project will give me the opportunity to work and learn Javascript related technologies and improve my knowledge about Web 2.0 concepts. I am sure that previous work I have done in Axis2/C Web Services project and Javascript based project will be helpful in successfully completing this project.

1. Five simple steps to better typogrphy (Mark Boulton)

2. Five simple steps to better typography – Part 2 (Mark Boulton)

3. Five simple steps to better typography – Part 3

4. Five simple steps to better typography – Part 4

5. Five simple steps to better typography – Part 5

6. Semantic Typography: Bridging the XHTML gap

7. Elastic Design (http://www.alistapart.com)

8. A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which is Best and When?

This article explain what is the best web font based on the reading time, perceived font legibility, perceived as having personality, perceived as being elegant, perceived as being youthful & fun and etc..

9. Accessible web typography

10. Typography Matters

11.The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)

12. The Readable Page 

Apache Axis2/C is the C language implementation of popular Axis2 Architecture. Axis2/C can be used as a web service client and web service application server that will host web services. In this Article Axis2/C project lead Samisa Abeysighe discuss four main concepts of Axis2/C architecture which will make the Axis2/C the Webserivce Engine.

Link: http://wso2.org/library/777

1. Download the Spidermonkey source from following link.

2. Extract the tarball to directory somewhere in your system. It will create ‘js’ sub directory.

Derectory Structure look like tihs:

. .. jsd/ READMe src/
3. Then change to the ’src’ directory.

4. Use ‘make -f Makefile.ref’ to build the source.

When tried to installing under Uuntu Edgy (6.10) you can ended up with following compiling errors.

It turns out these errors were caused by the -g debugging flag when compiling jscpucfg.

Please change the following part of config.mk which is under src directory

120: ifdef USE_MSVC
121: OPTIMIZER  = -Zi
122: else
123: OPTIMIZER  = -g
124: endif
125: DEFINES    += -DDEBUG -DDEBUG_$(shell whoami)

to

120: ifdef USE_MSVC
121: OPTIMIZER  = -Zi
122: else
123: OPTIMIZER  = 
124: endif
125: DEFINES    += -DDEBUG -DDEBUG_$(shell whoami)

5. When build is complete you shuold see some messages probably similar to this.

This says the build was successful. libjs.so is stored inside ‘Linux_All_DBG.OBJ’ directory.

6. Now you can use these commands to move the libs and headers to default locationd.

Once you follow these steps Spidermonkey is successfully installed in your system.

Yahoo Pipes, the Yahoo’s new mashup making tool is impressed me by it’s capabilities like interactive feed aggregating and manupulation. It’s a nice tool which is in its beta stage that can use to create amazing RSS feed related mashups in a interactive manner.

Using this nice tool you can mix feeds and other data in a structured, algorithmic and hierachical way in a visual manner.

Here are some useful links:

Here franticindustries explained 5 cool ways to use Yahoo Pipes.

YahooTunes example by Nick Bradbury.

Lifehacker: Create your master feed with Yahoo! Pipes

Jehan Shuman was used to dealing with the men in authority on
long-embattled earth. He was only a civilian but he originated
programming patterns that resulted in self-directing war computers of
the highest sort. Generals, consequently listened to him. Heads of
congressional committees too.
There was one of each in the special lounge of New Pentagon.
General Weider was space-burned and had a small mouth puckered almost
into a cipher. He smoked Denebian tobacco with the air of one whose
patriotism was so notorious, he could be allowed such liberties.
Shuman, tall, distinguished, and Programmer-first-class, faced
them fearlessly.
He said, “This, gentlemen, is Myron Aub.”
“The one with the unusual gift that you discovered quite by
accident,” said Congressman Brant placidly. “Ah.” He inspected the
little man with the egg-bald head with amiable curiosity.
The little man, in return, twisted the fingers of his hands
anxiously. He had never been near such great men before. He was only
an aging low-grade technician who had long ago failed all tests
designed to smoke out the gifted ones among mankind and had settled
into the rut of unskilled labor. There was just this hobby of his that
the great Programmer had found out about and was now making such a
frightening fuss over.
General Weider said, “I find this atmosphere of mystery
childish.”
“You won’t in a moment,” said Shuman. “This is not something
we can leak to the firstcomer. Aub!” There was something imperative
about his manner of biting off that one-syllable name, but then he
was a great Programmer speaking to a mere technician. “Aub! How much
is nine times seven?”
Aub hesitated a moment. His pale eyes glimmered with a feeble
anxiety.
“Sixty-three,” he said.
Congressman Brant lifted his eyebrows. “Is that right?”
“Check it for yourself, Congressman.”
The congressman took out his pocket computer, nudged the
milled edges twice, looked at its face as it lay there in the palm
of his hand, and put it back. He said, “Is this the gift you brought
us here to demonstrate. An illusionist?”
“More than that, sir. Aub has memorized a few operations and
with them he computes on paper.”
“A paper computer?” said the general. He looked pained.
“No, sir,” said Shuman patiently. “Not a paper computer.
Simply a piece of paper. General, would you be so kind as to suggest
a number?”
“Seventeen,” said the general.
“And you, Congressman?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Good! Aub, multiply those numbers, and please show the
gentlemen your manner of doing it.”
“Yes, Programmer,” said Aub, ducking his head. He fished a
small pad out of one shirt pocket and an artist’s hairline stylus out
of the other. His forehead corrugated as he made painstaking marks on
the paper.
General Weider interrupted him sharply. “Let’s see that.”
Aub passed him the paper, and Weider said, “Well, it looks
like the figure seventeen.”
Congressman Brant nodded and said, “So it does, but I suppose
anyone can copy figures off a computer. I think I could make a
passable seventeen myself, even without practice.”
“If you will let Aub continue, gentlemen,” said Shuman without
heat.
Aub continued, his hand trembling a little. Finally he said in
a low voice, “The answer is three hundred and ninety-one.”
Congressman Brant took out his computer a second time and
flicked it. “By Godfrey, so it is. How did he guess?”
“No guess, Congressman,” said Shuman. “He computed that result.
He did it on this sheet of paper.”
“Humbug,” said the general impatiently. “A computer is one
thing and marks on a paper are another.”
“Explain, Aub,” said Shuman.
“Yes, Programmer. Well, gentlemen, I write down seventeen, and
just underneath it I write twenty-three. Next I say to myself: seven
times three —-”
The congressman interrupted smoothly, “Now, Aub, the problem is
seventeen times twenty-three.”
“Yes, I know,” said the little technician earnestly, “but I
start by saying seven times three because that’s the way it works. Now
seven times three is twenty-one.”
“And how do you know that?” asked the congressman.
“I just remember it. It’s always twenty-one on the computer.
I’ve checked it any number of times.”
“That doesn’t mean it always will be, though, does it?” said
the congressman.
“Maybe not,” stammered Aub. “I’m not a mathematician. But I
always get the right answers, you see.”
“Go on.”
“Seven times three is twenty-one, so I write down twenty-one.
Then one times three is three, so I write down three under the two of
twenty-one.”
“Why under the two?” asked Congressman Brant at once.
“Because—” Aub looked helplessly at his superior for support.
“It’s difficult to explain.”
Shuman said, “If you will accept his work for the moment, we
can leave the details for the mathematicians.”
Brant subsided.
Aub said, “Three plus two makes five, you see, so the twenty-
one becomes a fifty-one. Now you let that go for a while and start
fresh. You multiply seven and two, that’s fourteen, and one and two,
that’s two. Put them down like this and it adds up to thirty-four. Now
if you put the thirty-four under the fifty-one this way and add them,
you get three hundred and ninety-one, and that’s the answer.”
There was an instant’s silence and then General Weider said,
“I don’t believe it. He goes through this rigmarole and makes up
numbers and multiplies and adds them this way and that, but I don’t
believe it. It’s too complicated to be anything but horn-swoggling.”
“Oh no, sir,” said Aub in a sweat. “It only seems complicated
because you’re not used to it. Actually the rules are quite simple and
will work for any numbers.”
“Any numbers, eh?” said the general. “Come, then.” He took out
his own computer (a severely styled GI model) and struck it at random.
“Make a five seven three eight on the paper. That’s five thousand
seven hundred and thirty-eight.”
“Yes, sir,” said Aub, taking a new sheet of paper.
“Now”—more punching of his computer—”seven two three nine.
Seven thousand two hundred and thirty-nine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now multiply those two.”
“It will take some time,” quavered Aub.
“Take the time,” said the general.
“Go ahead, Aub,” said Shuman crisply.
Aub set to work, bending low. He took another sheet of paper
and another. The general took out his watch finally and stared at it.
“Are you through with your magic-making, Technician?”
“I’m almost done, sir. Here it is, sir. Forty-one million,
five hundred and thirty-seven thousand, three hundred and eighty-two.”
He showed the scrawled figures of the result.
General Weider smiled bitterly. He pushed the multiplication
contact on his computer and let the numbers whirl to a halt. And then
he stared and said in a surprised squeak, “Great Galaxy, the fella’s
right.”
The President of the Terrestrial Federation had grown haggard
in office and, in private, he allowed a look of settled melancholy to
appear on his sensitive features. The Denebian War, after its early
start of vast movement and great popularity, had trickled down into a
sordid matter of maneuver and counter-maneuver, with discontent rising
steadily on earth. Possibly, it was rising on Deneb, too.
And now Congressman Brant, head of the important Committee on
Military Appropriations, was cheerfully and smoothly spending his
half-hour appointment spouting nonsense.
“Computing without a computer,” said the president impatiently,
“is a contradiction in terms.”
“Computing,” said the congressman, “is only a system for
handling data. A machine might do it, or the human brain might. Let me
give you an example.” And, using the new skills he had learned, he
worked out sums and products until the president, despite himself,
grew interested.
“Does this always work?”
“Every time, Mr. President. It is foolproof.”
“Is it hard to learn?”
“It took me a week to get the real hang of it. I think you
would do better.”
“Well,” said the president, considering, “it’s an interesting
parlor game, but what is the use of it?”
“What is the use of a newborn baby, Mr. President? At the
moment there is no use, but don’t you see that this points the way
toward liberation from the machine. Consider, Mr. President” —the
congressman rose and his deep voice automatically took on some of the
cadences he used in public debate— “that the Denebian War is a war
of computer against computer. Their computers forge an impenetrable
shield of countermissiles against our missiles, and ours forge one
against theirs. If we advance the efficiency of our computers, so do
they theirs, and for five years a precarious and profitless balance
has existed.
“Now we have in our hands a method for going beyond the
computed, leapfrogging it, passing through it. We will combine the
mechanics of computation with human thought; we will have the
equivalent of intelligent computers, billions of them. I can’t
predict what the consequences will be in detail, but they will be
incalculable. And if Deneb beats us to the punch, they may be
unimaginably catastrophic.”
The president said, troubled, “What would you have me do?”
“Put the power of the administration behind the establishment
of a secret project on human computation. Call it Project Number, if
you like. I can vouch for my committee, but I will need the
administration behind me.”
“But how far can human computation go?”
“There is no limit. According to Programmer Shuman, who first
introduced me to this discovery—”
“I’ve heard of Shuman, of course.”
“Yes. Well, Dr. Shuman tells me that in theory there is
nothing the computer can do that the human mind cannot do. The
computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite
amount of operations on them. The human mind can duplicate the
process.”
The president considered that. He said, “If Shuman says this,
I am inclined to believe him—in theory. But, in practice, how can
anyone know how a computer works?”
Brant laughed genially. “Well, Mr. President, I asked the
same question. It seems that at one time computers were designed
directly by human beings. Those were simple computers, of course,
this being before the time of the rational use of computers to design
more advanced computers had been established.”
“Yes, yes. Go on.”
“Technician Aub apparently had, as his hobby, the
reconstruction of some of these ancient devices, and in so doing he
studied the details of their workings and found he could imitate them.
The multiplication I just performed for you is an imitation of the
workings of a computer.”
“Amazing!”
The congressman coughed gently. “If I may make another point,
Mr. President—the further we can develop this thing, the more we
can divert our federal effort from computer production and computer
maintenance. As the human brain takes over, more of our energy can
be directed into peacetime pursuits and the impingement of war on the
ordinary man will be less. This will be most advantageous for the
party in power, of course.”
“Ah,” said the president, “I see your point. Well, sit down,
Congressman, sit down. I want some time to think about this. But
meanwhile, show me that multiplication trick again. Let’s see if I
can’t catch the point of it.”

Programmer Shuman did not try to hurry matters. Loesser was
conservative, very conservative, and liked to deal with computers as
his father and grandfather had. Still, he controlled the West
European computer combine, and if he could be persuaded to join
Project Number in full enthusiasm, a great deal would be accomplished.
But Loesser was holding back. He said, “I’m not sure I like
the idea of relaxing our hold on computers. The human mind is a
capricious thing. The computer will give the same answer to the same
problem each time. What guarantee have we that
the human mind will do the same?”
“The human mind, Computer Loesser, only manipulates facts. It
doesn’t matter whether the human mind or a machine does it. They are
just tools.”
“Yes, yes. I’ve gone over your ingenious demonstration that
the mind can duplicate the computer, but it seems to me a little in
the air. I’ll grant the theory, but what reason have we for thinking
that theory can be converted to practice?”
“I think we have reason, sir. After all, computers have not
always existed. The cavemen with their triremes, stone axes, and
railroads had no computers.”
“And possibly they did not compute.”
“You know better than that. Even the building of a railroad
or a ziggurat called for some computing, and that must have been
without computers as we know them.”
“Do you suggest they computed in the fashion you demonstrate?”
“Probably not. After all, this method—we call it
‘graphitics,’ by the way, from the old European word ‘grapho,’ meaning
‘to write’—is developed from the computers themselves, so it cannot
have antedated them. Still, the cave men must have had some method,
eh?”
“Lost arts! If you’re going to talk about lost arts—”
“No, no. I’m not a lost art enthusiast, though I don’t say
there may not be some. After all, man was eating grain before
hydroponics, and if the primitives ate grain, they must have grown
it in soil. What else could they have done?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll believe in soil growing when I see
someone grow grain in soil. And I’ll believe in making fire by
rubbing two pieces of flint together when I see that too.”
Shuman grew placative. “Well, let’s stick to graphitics.
It’s just part of the process of etherealization. Transportation by
means of bulky contrivances is giving way to mass transference.
Communications devices become less massive and more efficient
constantly. For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the
massive jobs of a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of
doing away with computers altogether? Come, sir, Project Number is a
going concern; progress is already headlong. But we want your help.
If patriotism doesn’t move you, consider the intellectual adventure
involved.”
Loesser said skeptically, “What progress? What can you do
beyond multiplication? Can you integrate a transcendental function?”
“In time, sir. In time. In the last month, I have learned to
handle division. I can determine, and correctly, integral quotients
and decimal quotients.”
“Decimal quotients? To how many places?”
Programmer Shuman tried to keep his tone casual. “Any number!”
Loesser’s jaw dropped. “Without a computer?”
“Set me a problem.”
“Divide twenty-seven by thirteen. Take it to six places.”
Five minutes later Shuman said, “Two point oh seven six nine
two three.”
Loesser checked it. “Well, now, that’s amazing. Multiplication
didn’t impress me too much because it involved integers, after all,
and I thought trick manipulation might do it. But decimals—”
“And that is not all. There is a new development that is, so
far, top secret and which, strictly speaking, I ought not to mention.
Still—we may have made a break-through on the square root front.”
“Square roots?”
“It involves some tricky points and we haven’t licked the bugs
yet, but Technician Aub, the man who invented the science and who has
amazing intuition in connection with it, maintains he has the problem
almost solved. And he is only a technician. A man like yourself, a
trained and talented mathematician, ought to have no difficulty.”
“Square roots,” muttered Loesser, attracted.
“Cube roots, too. Are you with us?”
Loesser’s hand thrust out suddenly. “Count me in.”

General Weider stumped his way back and forth at the head of
the room and addressed his listeners after the fashion of a savage
teacher facing a group of recalcitrant students. It made no difference
to the general that they were the civilian scientists heading Project
Number. The general was over-all head, and he so considered himself at
every waking moment.
He said, “Now square roots are fine. I can’t do them myself
and I don’t understand the methods, but they’re fine. Still, the
project will not be sidetracked into what some of you call the
fundamentals. You can play with graphitics any way you want to after
the war is over, but right now we have specific and very practical
problems to solve.”
In a far corner Technician Aub listened with painful attention.
He was no longer a technician, of course, having been relieved of his
duties and assigned to the project, with a fine-sounding title and
good pay. But, of course, the social distinction remained, and the
highly placed scientific leaders could never bring themselves to
admit him to their ranks on a footing of equality. Nor, to do Aub
justice, did he, himself, wish it. He was as uncomfortable with them
as they with him.
The general was saying, “Our goal is a simple one, gentlemen
—the replacement of the computer. A ship that can navigate space
without a computer on board can be constructed in one fifth the time
and at one tenth the expense of a computer-laden ship. We could build
fleets five times, ten times, as great as Deneb could if we could but
eliminate the computer.
“And I see something even beyond this. It may be fantastic
now, a mere dream, but in the future I see the manned missile!”
There was an instant murmur from the audience.
The general drove on. “At the present time our chief
bottleneck is the fact that missiles are limited in intelligence.
The computer controlling them can only be so large, and for that
reason they can meet the changing nature of anti-missile defenses
in an unsatisfactory way. Few missiles, if any, accomplish their
goal, and missile warfare is coming to a dead end, for the enemy,
fortunately, as well as for ourselves.
“On the other hand, a missile with a man or two within,
controlling flight by graphitics, would be lighter, more mobile,
more intelligent. It would give us a lead that might well mean the
margin of victory. Besides which, gentlemen, the exigencies of war
compel us to remember one thing. A man is much more dispensable than
a computer. Manned missiles could be launched in numbers and under
circumstances that no good general would care to undertake as far as
computer-directed missiles are concerned . . .”
He said much more, but Technician Aub did not wait.

Technician Aub, in the privacy of his quarters, labored long
over the note he was leaving behind. It read finally as follows:
“When I began the study of what is now called graphitics, it
was no more than a hobby. I saw no more in it than an interesting
amusement, an exercise of mind.
“When Project Number began, I thought that others were wiser
than I, that graphitics might be put to practical use as a benefit to
mankind, to aid in the production of really practical
mass-transference devices perhaps. But now I see it is to be used only
for death and destruction.
“I cannot face the responsibility involved in having invented
graphitics.”
He then deliberately turned the focus of a protein depolarizer
on himself and fell instantly and painlessly dead.

They stood over the grave of the little technician while
tribute was paid to the greatness of his discovery.
Programmer Shuman bowed his head along with the rest of them
but remained unmoved. The technician had done his share and was no
longer needed, after all. He might have started graphitics, but now
that it had started, it would carry on by itself overwhelmingly,
triumphantly, until manned missiles were possible with who knew what
else.
Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is
sixty-three, and I don’t need a computer to tell me so. The computer
is in my own head.
And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him.

This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written. After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won’t tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you. It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything — and I’m satisfied that it should.

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face — miles and miles of face — of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac’s.

For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth’s poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public functions, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.

“It’s amazing when you think of it,” said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. “All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever.”

Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.

“Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert.”

“That’s not forever.”

“All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Ten billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?”

Lupov put his fingers through his thinning hair as though to reassure himself that some was still left and sipped gently at his own drink.”Ten billion years isn’t forever.”

“Well, it will last our time, won’t it?”

“So would the coal and uranium.”

“All right, but now we can hook up each individual spaceship to the Solar Station, and it can go to Pluto and back a million times without ever worrying about fuel. You can’t do that on coal and uranium. Ask Multivac, if you don’t believe me.

“I don’t have to ask Multivac. I know that.”

“Then stop running down what Multivac’s done for us,” said Adell, blazing up, “It did all right.”

“Who says it didn’t? What I say is that a sun won’t last forever. That’s all I’m saying. We’re safe for ten billion years, but then what?” Lupow pointed a slightly shaky finger at the other. “And don’t say we’ll switch to another sun.”

There was silence for a while. Adell put his glass to his lips only occasionally, and Lupov’s eyes slowly closed. They rested.

Then Lupov’s eyes snapped open. “You’re thinking we’ll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren’t you?”

“I’m not thinking.”

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