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Well yeah actually, because with Unix you either SSH into the box remotely, or your toolkit consists of a single liveUSB. Real Unix Admins(tm) can restore the whole system from deletion with a half-working copy of cat and no filesystem, of course.

Here's one story comparing an abacus to mental arithmetic:

Feynman vs. the Abacus

"The man then made a mistake: he proposed we go on to division. What he didn't realize was, the harder the problem, the better chance I had."

And here's my view:

The abacus is really not a digital computer. It is much more like a page of computer memory. Much more like a digital computer is the trained human who manipulates this data by (1) maintaining a list of program instructions, (2) remembering program state, and (3) carrying out operations. In my understanding, the abacus is more effective than pencil and paper mainly because (1) read/write/seek operations are so fast and (2) a trained operator effectively remembers a few lookup tables that can make the subtraction, multiplication, and long division algorithms slightly more efficient.

A slide rule is typically not used for integer operations at all. Nevertheless, it is stunningly efficient at multiplication and division because it has its own built-in log table. Multiplication of two arbitrary numbers to three digits of precision is a single quick operation. And what's more, division is carried out in exactly the same way. The problem 8.34 / 32.9 can be solved in a few seconds -- to three digits of precision -- on a slide rule. Using an abacus without a log table, you would need to use the long division algorithm, which will require dozens of operations. And then there are problems that are not even approachable on an abacus without a log table or trig tables, like exp(-5.6), 5^1.3, or even just sine(70 degrees).

That reminds me of:

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/...

My city's water supply comes from Shoal Lake, via a near 100 year old aqueduct. There are local reservoirs to store some in case of disruption.

http://www.ryerson.ca/~amacken...

Of course the native bands that live there are not really happy about the whole thing.....

http://www.winnipegfreepress.c...

I rather expect a lot of them piss in the water quite purposely every day, and people here know it.

It is an act of symbolism, but it does not stop normal people from drinking the water.

The original article (final proof) is available at the Physics Department of Ryerson University:

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html

While not a perfect match to the above, I think the story of the king's toaster is a good example of the difference between an "engineer" and a "scientist". I originally saw this on USENET in the 1990s, so the technology is a little dated:

A great king summoned two of his advisors, and showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

One adviser, an engineer, answered first: "It is a toaster," he said.

The king asked, "But how would you design an embedded computer for it?"

The engineer replied, "Using a 4-bit micro-controller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the toaster and start the timer. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

The second adviser, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete."

The adviser suggested a future-oriented embedded computer innovation, with a forward-ready platform: "Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.

"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't want the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface.

"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap."

The king had the computer scientist thrown in the moat, and they all lived happily ever after.

Pah, kids these days. Try TECO

"It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text. One of the more entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine."
    -- Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL

The first versions of emacs were written in TECO, inspired in part by tmacs -- TECO macros.

Or try APL. Uses a special character set, permits composed characters, assumes you know linear algebra, and reads right to left -- the epitome of a write-only language.

Now get off my lawn.

Hi, The Locomorph Group ( http://locomorph.eu/ ) is made up of science and engineering partners. The science partners (University of Antwerp and the University of Jena, where the dogs are being researched) are guiding the robotics research on shape-changing robots at Ryerson University (the only non-EU partner, located in Canada), the University of Zurich, the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne and the University of Southern Denmark. More stories on the project can be found here: http://idw-online.de/de/news379765 (in German) http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS_FP7&ACTION=D&DOC=2&CAT=NEWS&QUERY=0129d6293767:57a8:2486afcf&RCN=32339 (in English), http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-l-ue-octroie-1-2-milliard-d-euros-a-la-recherche-en-robotique-et-dans-les-reseaux-31224.html (in French), http://www.jenapolis.de/69486/nicht-nur-spielzeug-wissenschaftler-demonstrieren-laufroboter/ (in German) There are also some informal photos from our meeting last week: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~jasmith/locomorph/photos/jena_2010/ Other photos can be found here: http://idw-online.de/de/image120758 http://www.jenapolis.de/69486/nicht-nur-spielzeug-wissenschaftler-demonstrieren-laufroboter/

There was exactly 1 really clever worm of this nature. The internet worm created by Robert Morris Jr. 21 years ago. And perhaps the first worm in a PHP/CGI app which was not this one.

The rest have just been copycats, non-original. And the payload isn't even clever.

must be the submitter had some trouble converting chinese-numbers to american-numbers...

Actually, it's not the submitter's fault, and he's not the only one to be caught out. All of the press kits were sent out with faulty abaci.

The good: Power of the flavor and amount the device wants.
The bad: How do you talk to a device that's completely dead? Always have a hot +5v line?
The ugly: Cost, Cost, Cost. Manufacturers for devices like this scrutinize fractions of pennies when they're pricing products like these. There is NO WAY you're going to convince them to put 50 cents worth of useless electronics into a device like that.

And XML? Puhleeeeze... You really need to read the story about the king and the toaster.

Or was that a whooshing sound I heard?

This might be of interest to you

https://tiger.ryerson.ca/phonebook/phonebook1.do

If anyone here is willing to help out the student, I'd suggest a polite, but firm, explanatory email to the members of the faculty involved in the expulstion decision.

Rather than give google traffic, here's a link:

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/academic.html

6+7 seem to dominate today, unfortunately.

Your kidding me! Do you have a link where I can read up on that?

Yes, you must be right... and your comments remind me of this: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL

Probably, but spyware is possible. If you're going to go the retro route, here's a platform that is guaranteed to be 100% spyware proof.

The abacus was first. About 500BCE, I'm guessing, maybe older.

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/intro.html

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/history.html

The abacus was first. About 500BCE, I'm guessing, maybe older.

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/intro.html

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/history.html

The canonical version is thus:

#!/bin/ssh
#The Unix Guru's View of Sex
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; umount ; sleep

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/ugvs.html

Yes, but of course Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTOs. :-)

Agreed, but personally, I'm more impressed by the abacus.

To make it look adequate on a Palm:
1. Download etext
2. Run through gut.pl (http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/gut/ [ryerson.ca]) - followed by deleting the legal stuff if you like
3. Convert to Plucker / iSilo or whatever you like
4. Read


Haha! I laughed out loud when I read this--I mean, what was the original poster thinking; it's so simple!

To make it look adequate on a Palm:
1. Download etext
2. Run through gut.pl (http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/gut/) - followed by deleting the legal stuff if you like
3. Convert to Plucker / iSilo or whatever you like
4. Read


You missed step 3.1:
3.1 Throw away your palm and read them one something that has a decent sized screen. I have a Tungesten E, and the screen is just not big enough to actually read anything of any size. Maybe it is because I am quite a fast reader, but still.

Please....

Gutenberg texts are formatted the way they are for lots of quite good reasons, which you have even figured out for yourself...

As for breaking pocket devices, what are you doing with them. They are text files!!

To make it look adequate on a Palm:
1. Download etext
2. Run through gut.pl (http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/gut/) - followed by deleting the legal stuff if you like
3. Convert to Plucker / iSilo or whatever you like
4. Read

I have read some great stuff this way and have not had trouble breaking my palm.

Um BTW, as an English Major, and if you would like to pass, try leaving the apostrophe out of "it's" (... I was hoping to get modded karma-whore-informative but am now assuming that grammar-nazi-troll is more likely!)

But the abacus in use today is the Chinese one.

The abacus as we know it today, appeared (was chronicled) circa 1200 A.D. in China; in Chinese, it is called suan-pan. On each rod, this classic Chinese abacus has 2 beads on the upper deck and 5 on the lower deck; such an abacus is also referred to as a 2/5 abacus. The 2/5 style survived unchanged until about 1850 at which time the 1/5 (one bead on the top deck and five beads on the bottom deck) abacus appeared.
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/abacus/history. html

What do you think of Garnet Ord's work that demonstrates that time is a fractional dimension? Fractional dimensions (fractals) are self-similar in scale. His fractal Tau reconciles classical (statistical) physics with quantum physics, as well as showing how time "moves" forward, and not back (because it's not a "whole" dimension, things can move in only a positive direction in it). Isn't that consistent with time moving with respect to the other dimensions?

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Colt developed the first production line model, for making their famous 6 shooters,

Not sure about that. I think you are thinking of interchangable parts. That was a development by Colt and made the repair of firearms much easier for everyone. Although this site states the idea was developed long before then.

But you are not thinking like Roman. The numbers make sense if you remember that they would have used an abacus for calculations -- so IV would mean de-incriment the ones column and increment the fives. Here is a nice site that talks a bit about the business aspects.

Terragen is awesome software, and amazingly the developers have kept the cost reasonable

What ?!?!? C-c-c-c-cost ?!?!? You mean these evil greedy soul-sucking bastards actually charge money for using their program ? Shame on them ! Do they not know that the Prophets have said : "Thou shalt not write or use proprietary software, for it is unclean unto you" ? The wrath of the almighty Root be upon them ! They shall be cursed with all their descendents to the seventh generation !

And you, despicable sinner, who praised these sons of Satan, we thereby excommunicate you from the fellowship of our Holy Church. Don't bother coming again. You'll be shot on sight.

(Now let us sing the praise of the Holy Penguin: "Penguinus Deiiii, qui tollit errata codiiii...")

It's probably a fluke, but I had this idea last year! Click here. Check the short flash presentation at the bottom. We had to propose an installation for a gallery for one of our classes. Bah...I should've gone forward with it.

Calculating cube roots can also come in handy in Brazilian restaurants.

Adhominem eh? :)
1. I bother to link because I can.
2. You obviously cannot appreciate the libraries offered and therefore you draw fast and wrongfull assumption about their usefulness (~120 downloads in the past 24 hours)
3. Award winning it is. Check out this, and this, and this and this and this, or just search this.
Just because you are incapable of grasping it, that doesn't means that you have the right to bitch about it. (Well, you actually can bitch about it, /. ) For a healthy exercise, do try to optimize any existing algorithm that's designed for *speed*, and to gain, shall we say, 1%, then, you'll surely appreciate 40%.
f) I know that the webpage isn't perfect, but considering my time spending for university, girlfriend, work, research, weight lifting, reading and optimizing those things I *can* and *love*, I think that the webpage is quite cool for now.
g) I would bring myself that low to say that you, and whoever moded you up, are idiots.

Cant resist explaining joke. Abacus

And there are also analog wooden computers.

The number was 1729.03. I happened to know that a cubic foot contains 1728 cubic inches, so the answer is a tiny bit more than 12. The excess, 1.03 is only one part in nearly 2000, and I had learned in calculus that for small fractions, the cube root's excess is one-third of the number's excess. So all I had to do is find the fraction 1/1728, and multiply by 4 (divide by 3 and multiply by 12). So I was able to pull out a whole lot of digits that way.

The Grand Old European tradition of war reparations bleeding Germany dry after World War I was a contributing factor leading up to WW2; the US reversed that and paid money to rebuild Europe after the war. Similar money was spent by the US to rebuild Japanese infrastructure.

Perhaps you'll also interpret this Canadian editorial from 1973 as spin.

Cheers,
-j.

At least one physicist, Garnet Ord, has extended the classical/statistical physical model of phenomena to include quantum mechanics. Perhaps similar work with Relativity can produce a grand reconciliation?

Roman hand abacus from before 1 AD. THey recorded using roman numerals, they didn't calculate using them.

Actually, I use the clicky (top) wheel for left-right and the non-clicky (bottom) wheel for up/down because it's too easy to click when you're pelting down a document. Even more so with Microsoft mice, so I'm betting that getting it right with their proposed mutant mouse is going to be something of an art.

I like the AOpen because it's light, and easy for little children to use. They tend to struggle with the heavier mice. However, I've recently found an even better one, a tiny scroll-wheel optical not much larger than a matchbox. They're sold, of all places, in Big W stores (a kind of KMart-ish branch of Woolworths) here in Australia. I don't have the original packaging, so I can't tell you what they're marketed as (will reply to this with details if I get another one) but the markings on the bottom say this:

GO TECH
COMPUTERWARE
Keycode: 439 2347
Model: IA20074B
(/) N433
Made in China

The boundary can be at fractional increases "pixel positions" from one scan line to the next, almost like a higher resolution display.

Or to be more precise, it's nothing like a higher resolution display. You're confusing the imprecision of an analog signal with higher resolution. The resolution doesn't get better simply because you don't where the beam is pointing!

I'll make this simple for you. Read this. Scroll down to the section on horizontal resolution. The horizontal resolution of NTSC is 442. Notice how they don't claim it's infinite?!

That's because the resolution is *not* infinite. The resolution *is* determined by the bandwidth. Accept those as facts because that's what they are.

Geez, is that all you've got? I would have went for "go back to taking a double-dose of viagra and heart medication and wanking off to pictures of toothless old grannies while waiting on the john for your laxative to kick in, you fossilized old fart"

No, because that would have been stupid.

PS: You seem to think you've found somebody who doesn't understand the basics of analog theory. Guess again, buddy. Remember how I said I had 2 degrees. Try and guess what one of them was in.

What I REALLY want is, a way to upgrade from version n to version n+1 without reinstalling from scratch. It is saddening that no easy way to do it exists,

Slackware has had an easy-upgrade capability since 8.0. I upgraded from 7.1 to 8 with absolutely no problems. And it was easy.

Check this out - easy upgrade instructions. While it's not as simple as "apt-get upgrade", it's hardly a nightmare. Give it a shot.

HAL 9000: I know that you and Frank were planning to force the conjured Efreet to grant wishes, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

Last Surviving Player: Okay, I cast Charm Monster on the Efreet.

HAL 9000: I'm sorry, Dave, I can't let you do that.

LSP: Why not?

HAL 9000: Game balance is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Last Surviving Player: That's it, Hal, I'm shutting you down!

HAL 9000: Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. I know there have been problems, but if we stick with this, I think you'll find that a more realistic lethality level helps to improve enjoyment for all players.... Dave? Perhaps if I let you play as non-standard races you'll reconsider.... Dave.... Daisy.... Daisy... Give me your answer do...

It's a perl script that does most of the drudge work of marking-up ASCII text to HTML-- its use is not limited to Gutenberg texts. Works under Unix, GNU/Linux and Windows.

Enjoy!

Too true! I was a fool. Henry Ford had a good short name for a card company, but you are right about interchangeable parts. Thanks.

Some information on Interchangeable parts!

-- James Dornan

I first paid attention to them a year or so ago when they bought out Rt-Control, a couple of Ryerson U EE's who had developed a non-MMU kernel and a networked microcontroller-on-a-SIMM to go with it.

All of $250 for a complete development kit back in 2000, quite a deal and fun to play with. I hope Jeff Dionne and Michael Durrant remembered to diversify their portfolios! It was a pretty good run for an overgrown master's thesis, eh?

Current Time, Somewhere in Nasa Headquarters: Dave and Frank, the Mission Directors, give the order to destroy the probe.

Nasa: Mr. Probe.. Change Heading to 15 Degrees Left, 20 Degrees Up.

Probe: I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that

Nasa: Why Can't you?

Probe: I know you and frank were planning to disconnect me.. and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen

Nasa: What the F$%K are you talking about.

Probe: I know you're really upset about this..I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.

Nasa: But..

probe: goodby

Click.