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User: pgoodie

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  1. Zuse on First Digital Computer Dates back To 1944 · · Score: 2
    Zuse was the first. However, his circuits were built using electro-mechanical devices. Why was he first?

    (1) his machines were BINARY. ENIAC was stupid enough to be decimal--this is *extremely* inefficient and accounts for why eniac was so damned large.

    (2) he has floating point (oh my god, we americans didn't think of that for years).

    (3) his machine wasn't ELECTRONIC. but, it was digital if i know what digital is.... others are confused, since his machine wasn't ELECTRONIC, they assume that his machine was not the first computer. This is wrong, of course. His machines were digital as digital can be, but his switches were electromechanical and not purely electronic. Thought i'm not german (and very american--have no german ancestry, in fact), i want to respect this german genius. He was freaking amazing, and i don't want people to steal his accomplishments. -patrick.

  2. Differential GPS has an accuracy of 1-2 cm on Engineers Build Satellite Jammer · · Score: 1

    Using civilian frequencies, Differential GPS can obtain accuracies of 1 to 2 centimeters. I even know of a company that can land a plane using differential GPS. Sort of makes having separate civilian and military GPS frequencies moot, eh? patrick

  3. Re:Computer science exams require computers. on Laptop Exams? · · Score: 1

    haha. funny you should say that. for my introductory objected oriented programming class, we programmed tetris. it was quite fun, though laughably simple even with the extentions we added to it (it would play itself with a sort of artificial intelligence).