There are very long, federally mandated warranties on automotive emission control systems. I believe it is currently 8 years/80,000 miles for certain parts.
It's a sad day when you can't decide whether you want to pay extra for the warrantee or not.
Like many other areas where consumer protection laws have been passed, consumer "choice" is often an illusion. In reality, its "take or leave it", with most vendors offering near-identical terms, written by lawyers who are trying to shield their client from all liability. These laws are not passed because it was a slow day in the legislature and they didn't have anything better to do.
I used a 110 baud ASCII Teletype connected to a RCA Spectra 70 mainframe via a Bell 103A modem. It was a big improvement over submitting batch jobs on punch cards.
There is a National Radio Quiet Zone that protects the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank and the NSA intercept station at Sugar Grove.
Can't recall ever meeting an interpreter for Fortran. Were there such beasties ?
I'm not sure if you could call it a true interpreter, but WATFOR (Waterloo FORTRAN) was a "load-and-go" FORTRAN compiler that compiled directly into core from the user's source code. A history of Waterloo FORTRAN can be read here. From the user's point of view, it behaved like a FORTRAN interpreter.
In later years, I used DEC FORTRAN on RT-11. This compiled into threaded code with a large run-time package. I'm not sure how to classify it.
UNIX was the first operating system that I had seen that made the user command processor an ordinary program that could be modified or replaced by the user.
Are there any earlier examples of this?
Other operating systems that I had used, such as RT-11 and RSX-11, put the user command processor in the kernel or made it a special privileged task that directly mucked around in the kernel.
Intel didn't do anything that was revolutionary with the 8086. The IBM 360 series supported a common instruction set and programmer's model across a wide variety of hardware implementations. DEC did a similar thing with the PDP-8 and PDP-11.
The 8086 was an much improved version of the 8080 and MS-DOS was a clone of CP/M-80, nothing revolutionary there. The 8087 was a true innovation, the predecessor of what became IEEE floating point.
The web page for the Tour Group at Rice University can be found here. It has links to other articles on molecular computing. Beware, the page has a 500K picture on it, not very modem friendly.
I used to have a GSM phone, then my service provider dumped GSM and replaced it with a CDMA phone. GSM is really taking hold:-). I get better coverage with the CDMA phone. If all else fails, the phone falls back to AMPS.
GSM may be the standard in other countries but that is irrelevant to most Americans. I might care if I frequently travelled to Europe, but I don't.
There are lots of Macs and UNIX workstations at NASA, it depends on where you are, your management and what software needs to be run. I know a few people who will give up their Macs when they pry them loose from their cold, dead fingers:-).
When you look at systems other than PCs used for standard office applications, there is a wide variety of hardware and operating systems in use, including open source operating systems.
Wrong. There are large numbers of PCs running NT at NASA, although Windows 9X is probably more common on desktops. The standard PC desktop software package is Windows 9X/NT, Microsoft Office, Netscape and Eudora.
How many people could afford to purchase and maintain a helicopter? I took a few flying lessons in a Cessna 150. I asked the instructor about flying a helicopter. He said that it cost $200 an hour to rent their helicopter, about 10 times the cost of renting a Cessna 150 at that time. Signing up for the Army seemed to be the only affordable way to learn how to fly a helicopter.
Marijuana was criminalized long before Nixon became president. Harry Anslinger, who worked for the Treasury, pushed hard for the criminalization of marijuana in the 1930s, resulting in the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937. Remember the movie "Reefer Madness"?
I once had a very old chemistry teacher who had worked at a federal marijuana research farm in Mississippi back in the 1930s. He said that the place was guarded like Fort Knox.
I've noticed various weird display problems on Windows and Linux systems when the display resolution is smaller or larger than the system the application was developed on. Plus, some of the operating system provided graphics and fonts do not scale well.
Are there any fixes for this problem? What happens when we get 4000x3000 displays?
Let's assume that the big NSPs and ISPs sign on to an effort to eliminate Napster and other forms of peer-to-peer file sharing and subversion. They will try to filter out certain IP addresses and protocols.
What if everyone ran IP over encrypted, point-to-point, tunnels? A snooper could see the source and destination addresses, but the ports and packet contents would be protected. It would make it difficult for an ISP/NSP to filter out "bad" protocols and services.
The problem would be implementing this without killing servers under the load of encrypted connections, something that I've heard is a problem with current secure web servers.
Don't forget all of the people in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, who are mostly Democrats, who contribute large amounts of money to Democratic candidates.
If Al Gore gets elected, there will be plenty of "Friends of Al" who will be advocates for the MPAA and RIAA.
SCSI drives report the total number of blocks (READ CAPACITY command). It is the SCSI BIOS on a PC that translates that into cylinders, heads and sectors.
Sure you say, it's not bomb-grade material, but it's still radioactive.
So what? Bananas are radioactive (Potassium-40). You get an annual dose of about 39 millirem from radioactive elements in your own body, most of the dose is from Potassium-40 (see this page).
The USB hub's and controller's have translator's,
all communications between high speed devices occur at high speed.
Wouldn't this require the replacement of all USB 1.X hubs with USB 2.0 hubs/translators? Some existing USB hubs are built into other devices, like keyboards and monitors, and can't be easily replaced.
Why is this so? Shouldnt the hub isolate the USB 1.X devices and translate their
communication to high speed USB 2.0?
From what I've read, when the host is talking to a USB 1.X device, the entire USB bus runs at USB 1.X speed. Every time slot assigned to a USB 1.X device results in the entire bus running at low speed during that time slot. The USB 1.X hub doesn't behave like a packet switch, more like an signal buffer/amplifier.
The demonstration
featured an FPGA bridge designed and
manufactured by In-System Design, an I/O
design and engineering firm specializing in
USB bridging solutions.
This is the same company that doesn't seem able to write a USB 1.X CD-R device driver that doesn't blue screen Windows 2000.
USB 1.X works, it's cheap and standardized. Why does Intel insist on screwing it up by trying to make it into a high speed interface, something it was not designed to be? Mixing USB 1.X and 2.0 devices will not work well, the USB 1.X devices drag the average bus speed way down. USB 2.0 silicon is too expensive and power hungry for cheap peripherals like mice and keyboards.
Firewire (IEEE-1394) is here today, works better at high speeds, an IEEE standard, with working silicon and device drivers. Why not use it?
The hard disk code in the PC BIOS needs to be redesigned, along with the disk partitioning scheme and data structures. The problem is that this breaks all existing operating systems on the PC.
How do you fix the problem and maintain backwards compatibility? The BIOS could be modified to look for new signatures in the disk and operating system boot blocks. If it found the new signatures, it would use the redesigned code. If not, it would fall back to the current kludge. You would need Intel and Microsoft's support to make this work.
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There are very long, federally mandated warranties on automotive emission control systems. I believe it is currently 8 years/80,000 miles for certain parts.
Like many other areas where consumer protection laws have been passed, consumer "choice" is often an illusion. In reality, its "take or leave it", with most vendors offering near-identical terms, written by lawyers who are trying to shield their client from all liability. These laws are not passed because it was a slow day in the legislature and they didn't have anything better to do.
OS/360 and JCL builds character :-).
There is a National Radio Quiet Zone that protects the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank and the NSA intercept station at Sugar Grove.
I'm not sure if you could call it a true interpreter, but WATFOR (Waterloo FORTRAN) was a "load-and-go" FORTRAN compiler that compiled directly into core from the user's source code. A history of Waterloo FORTRAN can be read here. From the user's point of view, it behaved like a FORTRAN interpreter.
In later years, I used DEC FORTRAN on RT-11. This compiled into threaded code with a large run-time package. I'm not sure how to classify it.
Are there any earlier examples of this?
Other operating systems that I had used, such as RT-11 and RSX-11, put the user command processor in the kernel or made it a special privileged task that directly mucked around in the kernel.
The 8086 was an much improved version of the 8080 and MS-DOS was a clone of CP/M-80, nothing revolutionary there. The 8087 was a true innovation, the predecessor of what became IEEE floating point.
I don't think these are biological storage devices. From some of the examples, it looks like they are using organic chemistry, not biochemistry.
The web page for the Tour Group at Rice University can be found here. It has links to other articles on molecular computing. Beware, the page has a 500K picture on it, not very modem friendly.
GSM may be the standard in other countries but that is irrelevant to most Americans. I might care if I frequently travelled to Europe, but I don't.
When you look at systems other than PCs used for standard office applications, there is a wide variety of hardware and operating systems in use, including open source operating systems.
Wrong. There are large numbers of PCs running NT at NASA, although Windows 9X is probably more common on desktops. The standard PC desktop software package is Windows 9X/NT, Microsoft Office, Netscape and Eudora.
How many people could afford to purchase and maintain a helicopter? I took a few flying lessons in a Cessna 150. I asked the instructor about flying a helicopter. He said that it cost $200 an hour to rent their helicopter, about 10 times the cost of renting a Cessna 150 at that time. Signing up for the Army seemed to be the only affordable way to learn how to fly a helicopter.
I once had a very old chemistry teacher who had worked at a federal marijuana research farm in Mississippi back in the 1930s. He said that the place was guarded like Fort Knox.
Are there any fixes for this problem? What happens when we get 4000x3000 displays?
What if everyone ran IP over encrypted, point-to-point, tunnels? A snooper could see the source and destination addresses, but the ports and packet contents would be protected. It would make it difficult for an ISP/NSP to filter out "bad" protocols and services.
The problem would be implementing this without killing servers under the load of encrypted connections, something that I've heard is a problem with current secure web servers.
If Al Gore gets elected, there will be plenty of "Friends of Al" who will be advocates for the MPAA and RIAA.
SCSI drives report the total number of blocks (READ CAPACITY command). It is the SCSI BIOS on a PC that translates that into cylinders, heads and sectors.
So what? Bananas are radioactive (Potassium-40). You get an annual dose of about 39 millirem from radioactive elements in your own body, most of the dose is from Potassium-40 (see this page).
U235 is the isotope used in fission devices.
Wouldn't this require the replacement of all USB 1.X hubs with USB 2.0 hubs/translators? Some existing USB hubs are built into other devices, like keyboards and monitors, and can't be easily replaced.
From what I've read, when the host is talking to a USB 1.X device, the entire USB bus runs at USB 1.X speed. Every time slot assigned to a USB 1.X device results in the entire bus running at low speed during that time slot. The USB 1.X hub doesn't behave like a packet switch, more like an signal buffer/amplifier.
This is the same company that doesn't seem able to write a USB 1.X CD-R device driver that doesn't blue screen Windows 2000.
Firewire (IEEE-1394) is here today, works better at high speeds, an IEEE standard, with working silicon and device drivers. Why not use it?
How do you fix the problem and maintain backwards compatibility? The BIOS could be modified to look for new signatures in the disk and operating system boot blocks. If it found the new signatures, it would use the redesigned code. If not, it would fall back to the current kludge. You would need Intel and Microsoft's support to make this work.