Personally I think you are right and that Cugnot is unjustly erased from the historical record, for the most part.
The story goes that when Cugnot demonstrated the device for Napoleon he accidentaly knocked down a brick garden wall which scared Napoleon so that he banned free running self propelled vehicles from all of Europe under his control.
The cure for this was to put it on rails and thus the train only came to exist out of a whim of Napoleon.
This story also serves as an example of a certain myopia tech developers can have. Once the idea that self powered land vehicles ran on rails it simply never really occured to people to remove it from the rails LONG after the reason for their being there in the first place was no longer relevant.
For a full century the development of the car simply ceased to exist, by Napoleon's fiat.
Daimler and Benz invented the car * as we know it.*
To be fair, if we're going to include the Cugnot tractor in the argument we're going to have to inculde the Babbage machine on the computer side.
Even if we start the development of the PC from ENIAC automotive development historically outstripped computer technology.
For further reference the IBM 360 that I was working on less than 10 years before the release of the PC cost $3 million, and you couldn't get a "video card" for it at all. Output was to an IBM Selectric typewriter, which we thought was pretty damn cool because we could * change fonts* by physically changing the typeball.
I think you underestimate the reticence of people to spend money on software at the time, *particularly* on an OS. As I've pointed out several times the real reason DOS won over CP/M was cost. DOS cost $40, CP/M cost $249. Even though CP/M was, at the time, the de facto standard people simply wouldn't pay $200 extra for an OS, even AFTER spending several thousand on hardware.
Remember, this is the same time era in which the FSF was born. People expected a computer to simply COME with both an OS and full development enviroment of some sort. The aforementioned IBM 360 had much of APL *hardcoded* into the cpu, not only was it free with the machine but it was literally impossible to uninstall.
I remember a company not batting an eye at popping $13,000 for a 386 server, and then putting up a fight for months over a few hundred dollars worth of software to make it actually useful.
Hardware is REAL. It sits on your desk or in your rack. You OWN it.
Software is invisible. It isn't REAL. More importantly you know, because the company that wrote it makes damn SURE you know, that you don't own it. You buy it and it isn't even yours. If you want to spend a bit of money and take a bit of time you know that you can hire a programer or ten to write a workalike that you DO own, whereas you arn't going to build a chip fab.
The cost of software has always been treated differently than the cost of hardware because software IS different. No one expects hardware to be free but there are now literally millions of people around the world wondering why software costs *anything.*
Particulaly an OS which, in practical terms, is really PART of the computer.
As for the fact that hardware for UNIX cost a premium over DOS that was *by design of the UNIX companies.* They wanted it to cost a lot, it wasn't inherent in the software. The more it cost the more "valuable" and "high tech" it was, at least in the marketing mind. They liked it that way. They made a mistake. Now they can't go back because, once again, UNIX has become free before they could retrench and make it cheap.
I stand by my point and suggest that if UNIX had been available for the 386 at the same price, or lower, than Windows Linux wouldn't even exist. The UNIX vendors blew it.
It illustrates an interesting point though. Back then there were literally hundreds of companies with Digital in their names somewhere. It never occured to anyone at the time that someone could claim to have sole title to the word Digital in their comapny name.
Indeed, the courts of the time would dismissed such a claim without hearing it.
Bill Gates invented he EULA. That's about the extent of his "innovation," and we all may suffer for it for generations.
The real damage comes from those that have grown up entirely within the EULA era and think that it applies generally. I've even seen someone trying to apply software style licensing to furniture plans, they claim to license the plan and require that you buy a "license" for each iteration of the item. Buy the plans, make a chair. Make another chair and they want you to pay them again.
I'd like to see them try to support that in court, but it's just the sort of thing we're going to see people trying all over the place because they think that if it applies to software it applies to anything.
Bill is going to have lot more to answer for than his software when the roll is called.
As I point out in other posts the PC at the time of release DID come with CP/M. . . for $250. PC-DOS was only $40. As always the consumer picked the cheaper product.
MS did not have a monopoly at the time as most people seem to believe. I think the real issue was the MS was a one trick pony. DOS was their one ticket to real profiability and they rode the pony hard.
Their competitors all viewed PCs as a side market that might not go anywhere and conservatively, and right so givent he knowledge at the time, continued to concentrate on those products and markets that made them they industrial giants they already were.
However, the point still is that the PC was available with CP/M from the day of release and had there been no MicroSoft there still would have been a PC based on an open architechture, a clone market, and multiple choices of operating systems, such as DR-DOS to run on them.
Just as if Daimler and Benz hadn't built cars we'd still be pretty much where we are today in the motor industry.
Well no, not JUST marketing. First of all there was accident. IBM adopted the open architecture of the PC because they came late to the market and then had to release product on as short a development cycle as possible. Thus off the shelf parts from outside suppliers. Had they gotten off their butts just a year or two earlier and developed from the ground up it never would have happened the way it did.
The existence of Microsoft as we know it is due to the accident of IBM not being able to strike a deal with Digital right off the bat, ( they DID reach a deal with Digital and by the time the PC hit the market you COULD by it off the shelf with Digital's CP/M, nobody did though).
The NEXT accident was IBM figuring that the open architechture was safe because the *BIOS* was propriatary. Little did they think that it would not only be reverse engineered but that the *courts* would find this legal.
The NEXT accident was the UNIX guys looking at the whole affair as "toy" computers and operating systems. Everyone at the time WANTED to run UNIX. Everyone knew it was the REAL operating system.
It cost $2500 minimum, CP/M was one tenth that and PC-DOS was one tenth THAT. Had the UNIX guys taken the PC seriously and realized the potential market and priced accordingly, about $50, we'd all be using UNIX today and not having to dual boot. *MS itself would have used UNIX had it been financially feasable.* Indeed, "Quick and Dirty OS" was a quick and dirty ripoff of UNIX needing a few years more development.
( As an aside have you noticed that depending on the circumstances MS attacks Linux either for being "Old" tech OR "Too new and undeveloped"? Cute, huh?)
And thus was the Intel/MS/IBM unholy trinity born.
Pure accident.
THEN came the marketing, and it was good. Good enough for a few years to invoke the third factor that has brought us the pile of cruft and kludge we all know and love today.
The leverage of installed base.
IBM/Intel/MS all realized the value of installed base and maintained backward compatability. All of their competitors relied on developing higher quality, more advanced systems. The consumer didn't want that. They wanted cheap, and they wanted to continue to run the programs they already had.
I was a Tandy guy. Why did I buy my first PC? Because none of my friends had TRS-80s. They all had IBM compatables.
This is the power of installed base.
What do we do about it? Damned if *I* know.
The fact of the matter is that the average high school geek could, at this point, pull an "Apple" and develop a new home computer and operating system combo that blows everything on the market right now clean away with an investment of about two years time.
But who would BUY it? THAT is the question. And the answer is clearly noone. Why not? Because we don't do it that way. The leverage of installed base again, although this time on a largely psychological factor.
Think about this. The most commonly voiced complaint about *NIX is that the CLI is too opaque. Why dosn't someone rewrite the CLI?
Well, the fact of the matter is that literally dozens HAVE. Linux allows anyone who wants to take the time to set up a directory structure, named however they wish, and a CL shell with any command structure they want. Many of those that have already written are in many ways superior to what we all use and available for download if you take a little time to search them out.
Nobody cares. Why not? We don't do it that way.
The power of installed base.
Gnome and KDE are most criticized for reproducing the Windows GUI interface. Just about everyone old enough to remember its introduction hates it. Remember seeing the "START" button for the first time and thinking "What the fsck is THAT and what goofball thought it up?"?
Other superior GUI's are available. We don't use them. Why not? Well, we just don't, that's all.
The power of installed base.
When will the PC as we know it die and finally be replaced with superior technology, most of it availble for years already? The instant no one cares about the installed base anymore.
I'd only add this addendum that most people these days don't remember. By the time the PC was released a deal HAD been reached with Digital and you could have your PC with either PC-DOS OR CP/M.
Why don't people remember this? Because CP/M cost $240 and PC-DOS only cost $40.
Ok, big business might have popped for the CP/M because it was standard at the time, and a few did, but most didn't because it just so happened that right at that same time Digital was introducing the next generation of CP/M that * wasn't backward compatible* with CP/M.
Ok, so if you were going to have to scrap all of your software *anyway* it made sense to buy the cheaper OS as long as it did what you wanted it to.
If the PC had been introduced either one year earlier, or one year LATER Digital would still rule and only a few of us old timers would even remember that MicroSoft had even existed.
Indeed. Either/or Microsoft/IBM are generally given credit for the computer economic 'miracle.'
In fact it was the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS that let the Genie out of the bottle and let the clones out of the lab to ravage the land and the netscape, and yet this event, the KEY event in the development of the PC as we know it today, isn't even mentioned in most short histories of the development of the PC.
Of course that belies the fact that the car wasn't invented in 1960, it was invented in the late 1880s and by 1900 only the richest of the rich could afford one and the personel to keep it running, but by 1903 their engines had developed enough so that two poor bicycle mechanics could afford one to invent powered flight and the land speed record was faster than most street cars can go today.
By 1912 we had the four valve per cylinder double overhead cam engine that is now ubiquitous and the Model T Ford that sold for no more in real dollars than a Ford Taurus does now, and only a couple of years later the French were able to commandeer enough public taxi cabs from the streets of Paris to move an army.
The fact of the mater is that the automobile DID out perform the computer during the same period of its development.
Let's see how much the computer develops between 2060 and 2100. THAT will be a fairer comparison.
If you take the water away completely and hold the frog over the heat sorce itself it will roast.
Sorry, I'm "in a mood" today and I couldn't help myself.
Still, it's interesting. If you put the frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat what it will do, being cold blooded, is go to sleep long before it dies and *poaches.*
What is the relevance and why should anyone care? Lobster.
The correct way to cook a lobster, not matter what *anyone* tells you, is to put it in cold water and bring the heat up. The lobster relaxes and goes to sleep before it cooks.
If you just dump it in hot water it goes " Eeeeeeeeeeee," tightens up all of its muscles and pumps lactic acid throughout its system before it dies.
Starting in cold water is both more humane and results in quite noticably tastier lobster.
Tell me about it. Ok, driving games arn't quite as popular as they once were but Pole Position was the number one game in the world for some time as measured by quarters at the arcade.
If you spend anytime reading gaming mags and sites you'll find that they're nearly always derisive of driving games though. Why? Damed if I know.
I do know this though, when the current crop of kiddies is thinking of Half-Life as, " That old piece of crap" there will be people still playing Papyrus's "Grand Prix Legends" with the dedication of a professional.
So is Mark Twain. Ok, so he really IS dead now, but he wasn't when he had to make the claim that reports of his death had been greatly exagerated.
Business wants a profitable internet. Very good. Business can *want* anything they damn well please. That dosn't neccessarily make it so.
It has been said that the best business is a post office box that people send money to. "Business" wants an internet that transfers all of your assets. . . plus 10%, into the corporate bank account simply because you logged on.
Business likes to think it has a RIGHT to make money. It dosn't. I has a right to do business and *attempt* to make money. It is up to the *customer* to decide whether a company gets their business. Even then poor managment can blow it and lose. It is an often ignored truism that the most likely time for a small business to fail is when it succeeds! Can anyone out there say "Osborne"?
I knew you could.
I have concocted a plan for a business friendly, profitable, internet.
Offer goods and/or services that customers believe are desirable at a price that they find a good value.
This is my theory. It is mine. That is why I call it my theory.
I think that gives me the right to name it. I think I'll call it. . .
You should see some of the things that people do to VERY expensive cars. Rolls Royces seem favorite targets. I think it has something to do with the new rich, i.e., trailer trash with money.
Of course there are two questions, did he stick on the ducks with super glue, and would removing them increase or *decrease* the value of his tradein.
As someone who was a dealer in used exotic cars for a few years I can tell you that buying a car without tires is not only easy but that it happens all the time.
MANY people already own a set of tires of a brand and model that they prefer that they wish to put on their new rides.
Yes, people do this with NEW cars as well.
All you have to do is ask.
As general rule you can can get a car with/without any legal equipment you want if you ask for it.
Hell, if you want a particular individual car but it's a color you don't like the dealer will MAKE it that color.
All you have to do is ask.
"I'd really, really like to buy that Porsche for $100,000 but it dosn't have a rubber duck glued to the roof. I have my own, would you glue it on for me, or should I just walk?"
Hey, I've got an idea, why don't you go on the web and find some pictures of karts. Guess what, they're all built like ladders. In fact "Ladder Frame" is an official engineering designation for such frames.
A good example of a ladder frame, and how outright dangerous and against all good engineering practices the idea is, is the Shelby Cobra. Everybody knows what a piece of crap that is.
How about the Corvette? Not even a ladder frame! Just ONE tube down the middle. My God, it's going to just break right in half sitting at the curb. There arn't any triangles, were going to DIE!
Oh no, I just noticed my backyard deck is just a bunch of sticks with sticks across the top of them. There's no triangulation, everybody off in a hurry!
And Stonehenge, my goodness the untriagulated horry of it all!
Sorry Sparky, but sometimes a simple beam is the appropriate engineering solution.
And get new glasses Sparky. The frame holding up the jet engine was triangulated, although in tension, which for some reason you don't like.
Let me propose that you perform this little experiment. Get a friend on top of a ten story building. Have him tie brick to a piece of parachute cord and let him hang it a foot over your head. So far so good. There is the brick hanging on 9 and a half stories of cord. If he were strong to hold it you could grab the cord and climb up, parachute cord can support well in excess of the 100 lbs of thrust the jet engine can produce. By the way, that's an engineering principle figure out the load and use a material of appropriate strength. He could have used line from a Weed Whacker and had exceptable reserves of strength.
Assuming, of course, he didn't try to use it under compression.
To illustrate, let him now turn the whole thing around. He'll be up at the top * holding the brick* and the end of the cord will be dangling over your head. Grab the end of the cord. Now have your friend *release the brick* and hold it up with the compression on the cord. Wear a good helmet.
You see, under tension the cord could hold up the brick, and you, and Yo'Mama! Under compression it couldn't even hold up the brick.
Now you know why sailboat masts and and airplane wings and pup tent poles are braced under tension.
Go compress yourself.
"Hey, what happened to Harry?"
"Well, he went skydiving, and fancying himself an engineer he decided it would be better if the shrounds were under compression rather than tension, and . . . well. . . "
Ah yes, the IEEE.
"Harry what went wrong with your bistable multivibrator?"
"I don't know, maybe I should have put the capacitors under compression instead of tension, or maybe the resistor has too great a torsional load on it. Guess I'll weld an I-beam to it."
Yeah, the IEEE know their karts.
And finally, let me see if I've got this straight, it is your contention that if I WERE really an engineer I wouldn't say so and put my name to it but would just use inuendo to denigrate anyone who did so under the cover of being an Anonymous Coward?
Make for an interesting business card.
"I can't tell you what I do because I'm a professional but that guy down the hall that SAYS he's an engineer is really a putz"
There's a technical phrase we people who pretend to be engineers because we're willing to say so and sign our names to it use to dismiss any niggling little problem that won't seem to go away.
Not all about, just a considerable amount. I study it. Just as some people study operating systems. It fascinates me. I have a love of brackets as well. It takes all kinds to make a world you know.
I know little to nothing about any kind of steak. Never touch the stuff. It's "ucky."
Determining the speed and direction of a vehicle from skid marks is fairly elementary physics that anyone can learn fairly quickly. I picked it up in Physics 101 at college. The real tire geeks, ( yes, there is such a thing), can extract amazing amounts of information from a skidmark. I don't know how they do it. I think it's magic.
Sorry, I'm not a troll. She prefers simple flats and slippers although she does have a taste for olive drab clothing which she prefers to get at, oh the shame, Deb. Go figure.
Someone has to make the trains you know. They don't just grow like mushrooms in the night.
Slashdot Mirror
The device you are thinking of is this one:
http://www.digitalhistory.org/cugnot.htm
Personally I think you are right and that Cugnot is unjustly erased from the historical record, for the most part.
The story goes that when Cugnot demonstrated the device for Napoleon he accidentaly knocked down a brick garden wall which scared Napoleon so that he banned free running self propelled vehicles from all of Europe under his control.
The cure for this was to put it on rails and thus the train only came to exist out of a whim of Napoleon.
This story also serves as an example of a certain myopia tech developers can have. Once the idea that self powered land vehicles ran on rails it simply never really occured to people to remove it from the rails LONG after the reason for their being there in the first place was no longer relevant.
For a full century the development of the car simply ceased to exist, by Napoleon's fiat.
Daimler and Benz invented the car * as we know it.*
To be fair, if we're going to include the Cugnot tractor in the argument we're going to have to inculde the Babbage machine on the computer side.
Even if we start the development of the PC from ENIAC automotive development historically outstripped computer technology.
KFG
And where would we be now if Xenix had cost $50?
Where do you think BSD and Linux would be?
Remember the time frame we're talking here, a decade before FreeBSD and Linux even its earliest crudest form were even available.
KFG
For further reference the IBM 360 that I was working on less than 10 years before the release of the PC cost $3 million, and you couldn't get a "video card" for it at all. Output was to an IBM Selectric typewriter, which we thought was pretty damn cool because we could * change fonts* by physically changing the typeball.
I think you underestimate the reticence of people to spend money on software at the time, *particularly* on an OS. As I've pointed out several times the real reason DOS won over CP/M was cost. DOS cost $40, CP/M cost $249. Even though CP/M was, at the time, the de facto standard people simply wouldn't pay $200 extra for an OS, even AFTER spending several thousand on hardware.
Remember, this is the same time era in which the FSF was born. People expected a computer to simply COME with both an OS and full development enviroment of some sort. The aforementioned IBM 360 had much of APL *hardcoded* into the cpu, not only was it free with the machine but it was literally impossible to uninstall.
I remember a company not batting an eye at popping $13,000 for a 386 server, and then putting up a fight for months over a few hundred dollars worth of software to make it actually useful.
Hardware is REAL. It sits on your desk or in your rack. You OWN it.
Software is invisible. It isn't REAL. More importantly you know, because the company that wrote it makes damn SURE you know, that you don't own it. You buy it and it isn't even yours. If you want to spend a bit of money and take a bit of time you know that you can hire a programer or ten to write a workalike that you DO own, whereas you arn't going to build a chip fab.
The cost of software has always been treated differently than the cost of hardware because software IS different. No one expects hardware to be free but there are now literally millions of people around the world wondering why software costs *anything.*
Particulaly an OS which, in practical terms, is really PART of the computer.
As for the fact that hardware for UNIX cost a premium over DOS that was *by design of the UNIX companies.* They wanted it to cost a lot, it wasn't inherent in the software. The more it cost the more "valuable" and "high tech" it was, at least in the marketing mind. They liked it that way. They made a mistake. Now they can't go back because, once again, UNIX has become free before they could retrench and make it cheap.
I stand by my point and suggest that if UNIX had been available for the 386 at the same price, or lower, than Windows Linux wouldn't even exist. The UNIX vendors blew it.
KFG
Not a nit pick, but an addendum.
It illustrates an interesting point though. Back then there were literally hundreds of companies with Digital in their names somewhere. It never occured to anyone at the time that someone could claim to have sole title to the word Digital in their comapny name.
Indeed, the courts of the time would dismissed such a claim without hearing it.
My, times have changed.
KFG
$Simplify = $Simplify * 3
KFG
Bill Gates invented he EULA. That's about the extent of his "innovation," and we all may suffer for it for generations.
The real damage comes from those that have grown up entirely within the EULA era and think that it applies generally. I've even seen someone trying to apply software style licensing to furniture plans, they claim to license the plan and require that you buy a "license" for each iteration of the item. Buy the plans, make a chair. Make another chair and they want you to pay them again.
I'd like to see them try to support that in court, but it's just the sort of thing we're going to see people trying all over the place because they think that if it applies to software it applies to anything.
Bill is going to have lot more to answer for than his software when the roll is called.
KFG
My, we're a spunky little bag of teenaged testosterone tonight, arn't we?
KFG
Don't you know sarcasm when you hear it Charlie Brown?
KFG
As I point out in other posts the PC at the time of release DID come with CP/M. . . for $250. PC-DOS was only $40. As always the consumer picked the cheaper product.
MS did not have a monopoly at the time as most people seem to believe. I think the real issue was the MS was a one trick pony. DOS was their one ticket to real profiability and they rode the pony hard.
Their competitors all viewed PCs as a side market that might not go anywhere and conservatively, and right so givent he knowledge at the time, continued to concentrate on those products and markets that made them they industrial giants they already were.
However, the point still is that the PC was available with CP/M from the day of release and had there been no MicroSoft there still would have been a PC based on an open architechture, a clone market, and multiple choices of operating systems, such as DR-DOS to run on them.
Just as if Daimler and Benz hadn't built cars we'd still be pretty much where we are today in the motor industry.
KFG
Well no, not JUST marketing. First of all there was accident. IBM adopted the open architecture of the PC because they came late to the market and then had to release product on as short a development cycle as possible. Thus off the shelf parts from outside suppliers. Had they gotten off their butts just a year or two earlier and developed from the ground up it never would have happened the way it did.
The existence of Microsoft as we know it is due to the accident of IBM not being able to strike a deal with Digital right off the bat, ( they DID reach a deal with Digital and by the time the PC hit the market you COULD by it off the shelf with Digital's CP/M, nobody did though).
The NEXT accident was IBM figuring that the open architechture was safe because the *BIOS* was propriatary. Little did they think that it would not only be reverse engineered but that the *courts* would find this legal.
The NEXT accident was the UNIX guys looking at the whole affair as "toy" computers and operating systems. Everyone at the time WANTED to run UNIX. Everyone knew it was the REAL operating system.
It cost $2500 minimum, CP/M was one tenth that and PC-DOS was one tenth THAT. Had the UNIX guys taken the PC seriously and realized the potential market and priced accordingly, about $50, we'd all be using UNIX today and not having to dual boot. *MS itself would have used UNIX had it been financially feasable.* Indeed, "Quick and Dirty OS" was a quick and dirty ripoff of UNIX needing a few years more development.
( As an aside have you noticed that depending on the circumstances MS attacks Linux either for being "Old" tech OR "Too new and undeveloped"? Cute, huh?)
And thus was the Intel/MS/IBM unholy trinity born.
Pure accident.
THEN came the marketing, and it was good. Good enough for a few years to invoke the third factor that has brought us the pile of cruft and kludge we all know and love today.
The leverage of installed base.
IBM/Intel/MS all realized the value of installed base and maintained backward compatability. All of their competitors relied on developing higher quality, more advanced systems. The consumer didn't want that. They wanted cheap, and they wanted to continue to run the programs they already had.
I was a Tandy guy. Why did I buy my first PC? Because none of my friends had TRS-80s. They all had IBM compatables.
This is the power of installed base.
What do we do about it? Damned if *I* know.
The fact of the matter is that the average high school geek could, at this point, pull an "Apple" and develop a new home computer and operating system combo that blows everything on the market right now clean away with an investment of about two years time.
But who would BUY it? THAT is the question. And the answer is clearly noone. Why not? Because we don't do it that way. The leverage of installed base again, although this time on a largely psychological factor.
Think about this. The most commonly voiced complaint about *NIX is that the CLI is too opaque. Why dosn't someone rewrite the CLI?
Well, the fact of the matter is that literally dozens HAVE. Linux allows anyone who wants to take the time to set up a directory structure, named however they wish, and a CL shell with any command structure they want. Many of those that have already written are in many ways superior to what we all use and available for download if you take a little time to search them out.
Nobody cares. Why not? We don't do it that way.
The power of installed base.
Gnome and KDE are most criticized for reproducing the Windows GUI interface. Just about everyone old enough to remember its introduction hates it. Remember seeing the "START" button for the first time and thinking "What the fsck is THAT and what goofball thought it up?"?
Other superior GUI's are available. We don't use them. Why not? Well, we just don't, that's all.
The power of installed base.
When will the PC as we know it die and finally be replaced with superior technology, most of it availble for years already? The instant no one cares about the installed base anymore.
And not one instant before.
KFG
Indeed. Without MicroSoft there would be no such thing as a PC operating system. Why don't people get this?
KFG
Bah! I just use Othello chips and manually set the bits to either black or white.
Of course my frame rate in Quake is a bit slow, but it scales almost infinately.
KFG
I'd only add this addendum that most people these days don't remember. By the time the PC was released a deal HAD been reached with Digital and you could have your PC with either PC-DOS OR CP/M.
Why don't people remember this? Because CP/M cost $240 and PC-DOS only cost $40.
Ok, big business might have popped for the CP/M because it was standard at the time, and a few did, but most didn't because it just so happened that right at that same time Digital was introducing the next generation of CP/M that * wasn't backward compatible* with CP/M.
Ok, so if you were going to have to scrap all of your software *anyway* it made sense to buy the cheaper OS as long as it did what you wanted it to.
If the PC had been introduced either one year earlier, or one year LATER Digital would still rule and only a few of us old timers would even remember that MicroSoft had even existed.
On such twists of fate does history turn.
KFG
Indeed. Either/or Microsoft/IBM are generally given credit for the computer economic 'miracle.'
In fact it was the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS that let the Genie out of the bottle and let the clones out of the lab to ravage the land and the netscape, and yet this event, the KEY event in the development of the PC as we know it today, isn't even mentioned in most short histories of the development of the PC.
KFG
What are you talking about? The IBM Selectric ball typwriter that was the output device on my computer always ahd upper and lower case.
That's what you get for abandoning tried and true technology for some upstart that wasn't going anywhere.
KFG
Of course that belies the fact that the car wasn't invented in 1960, it was invented in the late 1880s and by 1900 only the richest of the rich could afford one and the personel to keep it running, but by 1903 their engines had developed enough so that two poor bicycle mechanics could afford one to invent powered flight and the land speed record was faster than most street cars can go today.
By 1912 we had the four valve per cylinder double overhead cam engine that is now ubiquitous and the Model T Ford that sold for no more in real dollars than a Ford Taurus does now, and only a couple of years later the French were able to commandeer enough public taxi cabs from the streets of Paris to move an army.
The fact of the mater is that the automobile DID out perform the computer during the same period of its development.
Let's see how much the computer develops between 2060 and 2100. THAT will be a fairer comparison.
KFG
If you take the water away completely and hold the frog over the heat sorce itself it will roast.
Sorry, I'm "in a mood" today and I couldn't help myself.
Still, it's interesting. If you put the frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat what it will do, being cold blooded, is go to sleep long before it dies and *poaches.*
What is the relevance and why should anyone care? Lobster.
The correct way to cook a lobster, not matter what *anyone* tells you, is to put it in cold water and bring the heat up. The lobster relaxes and goes to sleep before it cooks.
If you just dump it in hot water it goes " Eeeeeeeeeeee," tightens up all of its muscles and pumps lactic acid throughout its system before it dies.
Starting in cold water is both more humane and results in quite noticably tastier lobster.
KFG
Tell me about it. Ok, driving games arn't quite as popular as they once were but Pole Position was the number one game in the world for some time as measured by quarters at the arcade.
If you spend anytime reading gaming mags and sites you'll find that they're nearly always derisive of driving games though. Why? Damed if I know.
I do know this though, when the current crop of kiddies is thinking of Half-Life as, " That old piece of crap" there will be people still playing Papyrus's "Grand Prix Legends" with the dedication of a professional.
KFG
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/20810.html
So is Mark Twain. Ok, so he really IS dead now, but he wasn't when he had to make the claim that reports of his death had been greatly exagerated.
Business wants a profitable internet. Very good. Business can *want* anything they damn well please. That dosn't neccessarily make it so.
It has been said that the best business is a post office box that people send money to. "Business" wants an internet that transfers all of your assets. . . plus 10%, into the corporate bank account simply because you logged on.
Business likes to think it has a RIGHT to make money. It dosn't. I has a right to do business and *attempt* to make money. It is up to the *customer* to decide whether a company gets their business. Even then poor managment can blow it and lose. It is an often ignored truism that the most likely time for a small business to fail is when it succeeds! Can anyone out there say "Osborne"?
I knew you could.
I have concocted a plan for a business friendly, profitable, internet.
Offer goods and/or services that customers believe are desirable at a price that they find a good value.
This is my theory. It is mine. That is why I call it my theory.
I think that gives me the right to name it. I think I'll call it. . .
Capitalism.
KFG
when you get it with a machine.
Linux is purchased as a donation.
The difference may be too subtle for some to grasp I guess.
KFG
You should see some of the things that people do to VERY expensive cars. Rolls Royces seem favorite targets. I think it has something to do with the new rich, i.e., trailer trash with money.
Of course there are two questions, did he stick on the ducks with super glue, and would removing them increase or *decrease* the value of his tradein.
KFG
I mean, just who do they expect to buy this?
Windows users looking for a good Linux oriented game?
Linux users who have the open version?
I don't get it.
KFG
As someone who was a dealer in used exotic cars for a few years I can tell you that buying a car without tires is not only easy but that it happens all the time.
MANY people already own a set of tires of a brand and model that they prefer that they wish to put on their new rides.
Yes, people do this with NEW cars as well.
All you have to do is ask.
As general rule you can can get a car with/without any legal equipment you want if you ask for it.
Hell, if you want a particular individual car but it's a color you don't like the dealer will MAKE it that color.
All you have to do is ask.
"I'd really, really like to buy that Porsche for $100,000 but it dosn't have a rubber duck glued to the roof. I have my own, would you glue it on for me, or should I just walk?"
Trust me, they'll glue on the rubber duck.
KFG
Hey, I've got an idea, why don't you go on the web and find some pictures of karts. Guess what, they're all built like ladders. In fact "Ladder Frame" is an official engineering designation for such frames.
A good example of a ladder frame, and how outright dangerous and against all good engineering practices the idea is, is the Shelby Cobra. Everybody knows what a piece of crap that is.
How about the Corvette? Not even a ladder frame! Just ONE tube down the middle. My God, it's going to just break right in half sitting at the curb. There arn't any triangles, were going to DIE!
Oh no, I just noticed my backyard deck is just a bunch of sticks with sticks across the top of them. There's no triangulation, everybody off in a hurry!
And Stonehenge, my goodness the untriagulated horry of it all!
Sorry Sparky, but sometimes a simple beam is the appropriate engineering solution.
And get new glasses Sparky. The frame holding up the jet engine was triangulated, although in tension, which for some reason you don't like.
Let me propose that you perform this little experiment. Get a friend on top of a ten story building. Have him tie brick to a piece of parachute cord and let him hang it a foot over your head. So far so good. There is the brick hanging on 9 and a half stories of cord. If he were strong to hold it you could grab the cord and climb up, parachute cord can support well in excess of the 100 lbs of thrust the jet engine can produce. By the way, that's an engineering principle figure out the load and use a material of appropriate strength. He could have used line from a Weed Whacker and had exceptable reserves of strength.
Assuming, of course, he didn't try to use it under compression.
To illustrate, let him now turn the whole thing around. He'll be up at the top * holding the brick* and the end of the cord will be dangling over your head. Grab the end of the cord. Now have your friend *release the brick* and hold it up with the compression on the cord. Wear a good helmet.
You see, under tension the cord could hold up the brick, and you, and Yo'Mama! Under compression it couldn't even hold up the brick.
Now you know why sailboat masts and and airplane wings and pup tent poles are braced under tension.
Go compress yourself.
"Hey, what happened to Harry?"
"Well, he went skydiving, and fancying himself an engineer he decided it would be better if the shrounds were under compression rather than tension, and . . . well. . . "
Ah yes, the IEEE.
"Harry what went wrong with your bistable multivibrator?"
"I don't know, maybe I should have put the capacitors under compression instead of tension, or maybe the resistor has too great a torsional load on it. Guess I'll weld an I-beam to it."
Yeah, the IEEE know their karts.
And finally, let me see if I've got this straight, it is your contention that if I WERE really an engineer I wouldn't say so and put my name to it but would just use inuendo to denigrate anyone who did so under the cover of being an Anonymous Coward?
Make for an interesting business card.
"I can't tell you what I do because I'm a professional but that guy down the hall that SAYS he's an engineer is really a putz"
There's a technical phrase we people who pretend to be engineers because we're willing to say so and sign our names to it use to dismiss any niggling little problem that won't seem to go away.
"Bugger off!"
KFG
Not all about, just a considerable amount. I study it. Just as some people study operating systems. It fascinates me. I have a love of brackets as well. It takes all kinds to make a world you know.
I know little to nothing about any kind of steak. Never touch the stuff. It's "ucky."
Determining the speed and direction of a vehicle from skid marks is fairly elementary physics that anyone can learn fairly quickly. I picked it up in Physics 101 at college. The real tire geeks, ( yes, there is such a thing), can extract amazing amounts of information from a skidmark. I don't know how they do it. I think it's magic.
Sorry, I'm not a troll. She prefers simple flats and slippers although she does have a taste for olive drab clothing which she prefers to get at, oh the shame, Deb. Go figure.
Someone has to make the trains you know. They don't just grow like mushrooms in the night.
KFG