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I have no particular attachment to Luther, but....

This remark was an off-hand comment made out of ignorance years before Copernicus published his treatise. In general, Luther didn't have anything to say on the subject, so this is hardly representative of his views, and we really don't know what Luther's views were after the publication of the treatise (if he had any). Moreover, even this extreme comment (given that he had no detailed knowledge of Copernicus's theory) was merely a statement in line with the commonly-held scientific opinion of the day.

Historians of science have been quoting this for many years to show the backwardness of Protestantism, but scholars have also known for many years that people who cite this don't give context and cite it out of ignorance.

http://www.physik.uni-halle.de/Fachgruppen/history/luther_sum.htm

If you look around a bit, you'll quickly discover that this statement wasn't made out of "biblical-inerrancy induced idiocy." This was the common opinion at the time, and without the details of Copernicus's ideas being known at that time, it's pretty common for educated people to dismiss someone as a quack when it flies in the face of established scientific opinions.

Personally I don't care much about bees, but they are cold blooded anyways and they are way too small to fit anything inside it after all...

As for being too small, here's a link to a report about them killing attacking hornets by surrounding them and raising the temperature to around 45 C (that's 113 in bee degrees, which coincidentally happens to be the same as degrees F).

Check this out.

While the manufacturer's page doesn't mention it at all, the keyboard and trackpad of this little powerhouse are detachable and use Bluethooth. I'm sure you need more than a laptop can provide as an HTPC, but maybe you can get one of the keyboards as a spare part.

I assume it has batteries that need to be charged, and I don't know how that would happen without the laptop to chrage it.

URL: http://dunkels.com/adam/contiki/links.html

System information and emulators

Commodore 64/128

The Commodore 64 is based on the 6510 CPU, which is a 6502-derived 8-bit CPU. It has 64k of RAM and 16k ROM which includes a BASIC interpreter and some basic I/O services. Graphics is provided by the VIC chip which has 16 colors and a maximum resolution of 320x200 in hi-res mode. It provides a 40x25 raster of characters in character mode. The three voices of digital sound is produced by the SID chip.

The Commodore 128 is an extended version of the Commodore 64 that contains a 8510 CPU which is capable of 2 MHz operation and can address 128k RAM (hence the name Commodore 128). It also has a Commodore 64 compatibility mode which is extremely similar to a regular C64 but with a few minor differences.

The SuperCPU is a 20 MHz 16-bit 65816-based computer that is plugged into the back of the Commodore 64 or 128. It uses the C64 keyboard and joysticks for input and the VIC and SID chips for audiovisual output. The SuperCPU is capable of addressing several megabytes of memory and is usually used together with a 16 megabytes RAM expansion board.

There are no SuperCPU emulators avaliable.

• The VICE emulator is capable of emulating a large number of Commodore machines. It emulates the C64, the C128, the VIC20, most of the PET models, and the CBM-II. VICE runs under Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and a number of other host systems.
  
• Joakim Eriksson's Web C64 emulator, written in Java, runs as an applet within a web browser.
  
• Per Håkan Sundell's CCS64 emulator works under Windows and DOS.
  
• The ec64 emulator is developed for Linux and was originally written entirely in x86 assembler.
  
• An article by Simon N Goodwin about C64 emulators.
  
• The Commodore emulators category in the Dmoz has more links.
  

Commodore 64/128

There are plenty of alternative operating systems for the C64, mostly written in 6502 assembler. Some of them are far from complete, however, and only appear as dark shadows on a few web pages - MagerValp's SMOS and my own osT are among those.

• GEOS from 1986 probably is the most well-known graphical operating system for the C64. It is still sold commercially by CMDKEY.com.
  
• LUnix NG is an open-source multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP/PPP-support, a *nix-like command shell, and a number of *nix-like utilities such as ls and cp.
• Craig Bruce's ACE is a text-based single-tasking operating system for the 64 and the 128. It provides a *nix-like command shell, a text-editor, a terminal program for the SwiftLink RS232 interface, as well as device drivers for a lot of devices
  
• GeckOS/A65 is a multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP support and a *nix-like command shell.
  
• Wheels is a version of GEOS that requires RAM expansion to run.

With its 20 MHz and megabytes of memory, the SuperCPU is powerful enough to run fully-fledged graphical operating systems that rival early Machintosh or Microsoft Windows systems.

• Wings is a TCP/IP-enabled graphical operating system for the SuperCPU. It includes a MOD music player, JPEG viewer, web page download utility, etc.
• JOS is an older version of Wings.
  

TCP/IP and PPP connectivity

To surf the web, send or read email, etc., the first step is to actually get in touch with the Internet. This requires both physical access to an ISP, either via a modem and a phone-line or an Ethernet broadband connection, and the TCP/IP software running on the C64.

There are a number of programs that make it possible to reach the Internet with a C64/C128.

• LUnix NG contains a TCP/IP stack and a PPP implementation which makes it possible to reach the Internet using a modem and a dial-up ISP.
  
• GeckOS/A65 also contains a TCP/IP stack, but no PPP dialer.
  
• My own uIP TCP/IP stack has been used for some time to run a web server on a Commodore 64. uIP currently does not include a PPP dialer.
  
• Novaterm 10 contains a PPP dialer and enough TCP/IP code to be able to run telnet over the Internet.
  

SuperCPU

All of the above mentioned SuperCPU operating systems have TCP/IP support.

• The Wave is a web browser for the SuperCPU (and not for the Commodore 64/128 as the web page claims) that runs under the Wheels operating systems. Here is another page with information about The Wave (that also falsely claims that The Wave is for the Commodore 64/128). The latter page also includes screenshots of The Wave in action.
  

Small graphical user-interfaces (GUIs)

User interfaces for embedded systems range from the simple buttons on the front of a washing machine to those of fully fledged web browser type interfaces on information stations. The underlying technology varies from simple electronic circuits to full-scale PC compatibles.

• PicoGUI is a GUI architecture designed for embedded systems to desktop machines. It does not require any supporting GUI system and can be used on anything from graphical screens to text based systems. Their smallest target system are handheld terminals and the compiled object code size is on the order of hundreds of kilobytes.
  
• Microwindows/NanoGUI is a graphical user interface system designed to run without support from an underlying system. On 16-bit systems Microwindows is about 64k large.
  

The smallest web browsers are usually specially designed for the limitations of embedded systems and other specialized computers such as car navigation systems, set-top boxes and medical equipment. There are also a few small web browsers for old DOS PCs available.

• Interniche's NicheView Portable Embedded Web Browser is probably the smallest full-featured web browser around with its 35 kilobytes code footprint. There is also an additional JavaScript module available.
  
• AU-systems' AU Mobile Internet Browser supports both HTML/TCP/IP and WML/WAP as well as SSL. It occupies 340 kilobytes of code (plus an additional 190 kilobytes for the protocol stacks) and uses 5 kilobytes of RAM when idle (plus 8 kilobytes used by the protocol stacks). Extra RAM is used when downloading web pages.
  
• The Fusion WebPilot Embedded Micro-Browser supports much of the features found in modern web browsers including frames, authentication, and JavaScript. The web page does not specify memory footprint.
  
• MicroDigial's Graphical MicroBrowser supports tables, frames, images as well as FTP as uses 260 kilobytes of code memory and requires a minimum of 210 kilobytes of RAM apart from that. A demo version is available.
  
• The 2net Alice Web Browser is intended for handheld computers and PC based architectures and requires 400 kilobyte of free RAM and 200 kilobytes of code memory. It includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• WebBoy is a fully-fledged browser with SSL support intended for 386 DOS boxes with more than 4 megabytes of memory. Includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• The Arachne web browser runs under MS-DOS or Linux and requires at least 1 megabyte of memory. Does not include a TCP/IP/PPP stack.
  
• Lynx is probably the most well-known text-based web browser around. It is ported to many different operating systems and architectures including MS-DOS.
  
• The Off by One Web Browser has been labeled as the smallest web browser ever, but is quite large in comparison with other small web browsers. It is 1.1 megabytes large and requires support from an underlying Windows operating system.
  
• Mirko Sobe's BOSS-X HTML browser for 8-bit Ataris is not a full web browser, but an off-line HTML viewer with hyperlinking abilities written in three days.
  
• The pre-alpha v0.3 GEMWeb browser supports 640x480x16 VGA.
  
• The Atari Phoenix Web Browser is a non-existant vapor-ware web browser project intended for the 8-bit Ataris.
  

The EGA palette wasn't fixed. You could change it.

See INT 10 - VIDEO - SET ALL PALETTE REGISTERS in the list.

On a whim I did a Google search for a more recent version (kinda like what these two great guys did with Xscorch). Someone seems to have liked it enough to make a GNU version, although there's not a lot there yet.

-B

i remember reading about this. it was a huge array of sgi boxes with a fiber ring connecting them. people would request a movie and one box in the cluster would stream it to them. in addition you could fast forward it, rewind, etc. it was available in orlando, florida. here's a link to a news letter that has a blurb on it.

the year? why it was 1994 (and i think i heard about it in 1993, but i'm not certain).

granted what the /. story covers is more than movies, but the principle is the same.

Allow me to nominate xteddy, the only desktop application you'll really need:

http://www.physik.uni-hall e.de/~e2od5/debian/xteddy.html

This version of xteddy allows you to use different teddy images, among them a rubber duck, a stuffed penguin, various other stuffed animals.

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The Z3 was not fully programmable: Zuse forgot about the Jump and If-then-else instructions. No loops possible, oops. If you wanted the Z3 to do lots of calculations, you had to feed it a long program on punched tape :-) A German description of the Z3's architecture is here.

The first fully programmable computer was Babbage's analytic engine. Steam power rules! Of course, it was never built. Vaporware rules twice! By the way, his GF Ada Lovelace invented the loop. Chicks rule thrice!

The first operational fully programmable computer was ENIAC (you programmed it by replugging cables). Colossus was a secret special purpose cracking machine for the German Lorenz code and hat limited programmability.

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