John Walker (programmer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Walker is a computer programmer and a co-founder of the computer-aided design software company Autodesk, and a co-author of early versions of AutoCAD, a product which Autodesk originally acquired from programmer Michael Riddle.
Before Autodesk, John founded a hardware integration manufacturing company called Marinchip. Among other things, Marinchip pioneered the translation of numerous computer language compilers to Intel platforms.
John Walker now engages in projects at Fourmilab, in Switzerland, including a hardware random number generator called HotBits[1] and his Earth and Moon viewer.[2] John is also known for his efforts in the 196 Palindrome Quest, by taking it to 1,000,000 digits.
Besides programming, John Walker is a social advocate who has written many articles, including a well-known one about Internet censorship called The Digital Imprimatur. He is also known for his book The Hacker's Diet, a guide to approaching weight loss "as both an engineering and a management problem." He gained notoriety during the fall of the Soviet Union for creating a bumper sticker that announced, "Evil Empires: One down, one to go" with the Soviet and US flags.
[edit] References
- ^ HotBits: Genuine random numbers, generated by radioactive decay. Retrieved on 2006-03-30.
- ^ Earth and Moon Viewer. Retrieved on 2006-03-30.
[edit] External links
- John Walker's home page
- Microsoft at Apogee
- John Walker's essay "The Digital Imprimatur" about the threats of the internet
- Three Years of Computing - Reaching 1,000,000 digits in the 196 Palindrome Quest
