It's a shame that CIO Magazine which goes to many business people who lead large computer companies made no mention that this museum needs help. Maybe they weren't asked, perhaps. Most of those machines will probably go to the wreckers. A few dedicated individuals maintain this museum at $1000/month out of their own pocket. Over the years of people asking for financial help and space not a single company is interested in helping to preserve this history. Nor has any Federal or State Govt come to help as they don't see that Australias track record in computing is important. Having immigrants answer a question about Don Bradman on their citizenship test is far more important. There are enough computer companies in Australia that owe so much to computer history that they should find a permanent place for this treasure and support it.
Animates is right. I have seen the machine in operation at the Melbourne Linux Conf and even the white plastic parts are of very poor quality. And that is all it could make. The white plastic bits are lumpy and structurally weak. That can be improved but the real problem with all the hype over these machines is that they will never be able to make the electronic components or the print head or anything needing tensile strength like steel rods (which it uses). However it can make some ripoff Lego blocks for your kids but the Chinese copies would be better quality:-)
Geez, thats mighty expensive booths at $3,000 or even $300. In Australia nationwide we have cardboard booths setup in just about every public school when vote time comes around. The booths are cheap, the voting is done on a paper ballot, and it's tallied by volunteers whilst being scrutinised. It can be recounted. It has an audit trail. **It's understandable** And cause it's cheap any small town can put lots of booths in so I might have to wait for just one or two people vote till a booth is free. Even with preferential voting we get results that night.
I do hope we never get Diebold or those other companies here pushing silly expensive solutions to non existant problems.
Your right. Electronic voting is not needed. It's far too expensive at present. It's confusing to many and there is no trust behind the system because its too opaque.
In Australia our Federal elections are done using cardboard booths setup in just about every school. Paper forms are used for voting. The elderly can use a paper form without being completely bewildered. Cardboard booths and paper are cheap. The smallest town can get as many as they need so we don't have long queues waiting to vote. The system leaves an audit trail that anyone can follow. Recounts can be done. And we still get most of the election results that night - and we even have a proportional voting system, not some lame arsed first-past-the-post system:-) If you want we can come over there and show you how cardboard boots and paper forms work:-)
This person has the clincher. "I would ask to see that policy in writing." But also see if you can get the store to put it in writing why they won't do the repair and for the store person to sign it.
I have also come across this weird spelling whereby some folks append an 's'. In Australia this change to the popular spellling was recently covered on the radio by a linguist. Thanks for the URL above, it will be useful to be able to refer people to that for the correct spelling. Now I had best get back to putting those drapes in front of the curtains to stop then fading:-) Mike
Yes it does work, and we trust it too. Cardboard booths and paper forms can be used anywhere. They are cheap and don't break down. Elderly or computer challenged users can use write with a pencil on the ballot paper. The checking is done by an 'army' of volunteers with scrutineers as well. We can watch that evening as all the tallies come in and the election is decided by late evening. Some close seats may take a bit longer as we have a preferential voting system (much more democratic that the US) and that may take a day longer. Oh and we can always do a re-count:-)
Graffiti on copper clad buildings using Brasso!
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
When I was a student at Sydney University in the early 80's I belonged to a caving club (SUSS) that used to abseil down the face of the Unis Library during Student Orientation Week. This building was about 9 stories high and clad with copper - very nicely tarnished to an elegant hue. One day, when I was just getting out of my abseling gear at the bottom a guy from 'BUGAUP' (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, very active in the 80's in Australia, they used to write 'BUGGA UP' over walls) approached me with an interesting idea. This guy asked if I could abseil down and use Brasso to graffiti the copper cladding! Geez man, I did want to get a degree. Still it was tempting:-)
I was bitten by this update last week. I have a dual boot OSX/Linux system and it stopped Linux booting properly. Its taken many emails and several people on the Debian PPC and Sydney Linux Users Group have given me time to help fix it. I'd say its cost about a few days worth of time. I didn't send any rude emails to Apple nor winge as Apple is not responsible for my Linux but I do get pissed off when I see statements like "extremely small (but vocal) minority with problems". You may not have probs but others do and most are not yelling and screaming - they just try and fix it and move on. Next time I won't be so eager to take a bite of that juicy Apple from the Garden. Some are rotten:-)
I just don't trust private coorporations anymore. Lets say it a payout for a worker killed is $5Million x 7 astonauts = 35 Mil = small compared to the cost of the entire program so they will not be worried at all by such 'financial responsibility'. OK OSHA laws will apply eh? Well if they were negigent with safety try to get the information out of the coorporations to prove it. With NASA you can impound data, private companies can quicky have a data centre failure instead or literally shred data like Authur Anderson and Enron. Oh and the companies wont go under as the US Govt will direct judges not to split up the company if they are found guilty - eg KPMG is now be found to have been doing lax auditing but govt cant really shut them down as that would leave only 3 international auditing firms left. Same with a few big private companies doing space transport. They would be so crucial to the US Govt that they would get the kid glove treatment in any court case involving safety. Am I too cynical:-)
Yes I agree I am a little naive to think that nations could band together and have one space program but it's the only way. I think space transport is prob too expensive even for corporations. Who are the customers? What will they pay? Someone before raised the problem though that it would be like the ISS, a lack of direction could mean that it would be a floundering behemoth.
The obvious answer? Space travel is expensive both in $ and resources and its so important that the only way forward is for all nations to have a single Space Agency where nations that wish to contribute to space travel do so to a common pool. They might specialise, some might develop launchers, others plasma drives (like at Australian National University and Rod Boswell) while others might just do theory calculations. But all could participate in the world wide challenge. This is the solution and the way up.
I would second Bob's suggestion of LaTeX but combine it with a literate programming system such as noweb (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nr/noweb/).
In literate programming like noweb you write code and the documentation that describes that code in a document that introduces, describes and the orders the code in the way that is best understood by a human. Later to create the code or documentation for printing you use simple commands (in noweb; notangle and noweave) to extract all the code parts and assemble them into your full program. I write Makefiles to extract PostScript, dvi, HTML and code from my noweb base files. It's really cool but you will have to learn a bit of LaTeX. Yes LaTeX is poor for letters but excells at technical documentation. Have a look at the noweb homepage.
Best wishes.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a shame that CIO Magazine which goes to many business people who lead large computer companies made no mention that this museum needs help. Maybe they weren't asked, perhaps. Most of those machines will probably go to the wreckers. A few dedicated individuals maintain this museum at $1000/month out of their own pocket. Over the years of people asking for financial help and space not a single company is interested in helping to preserve this history. Nor has any Federal or State Govt come to help as they don't see that Australias track record in computing is important. Having immigrants answer a question about Don Bradman on their citizenship test is far more important. There are enough computer companies in Australia that owe so much to computer history that they should find a permanent place for this treasure and support it.
Animates is right. I have seen the machine in operation at the Melbourne Linux Conf and even the white plastic parts are of very poor quality. And that is all it could make. The white plastic bits are lumpy and structurally weak. That can be improved but the real problem with all the hype over these machines is that they will never be able to make the electronic components or the print head or anything needing tensile strength like steel rods (which it uses). However it can make some ripoff Lego blocks for your kids but the Chinese copies would be better quality :-)
Geez, thats mighty expensive booths at $3,000 or even $300. In Australia nationwide we have cardboard booths setup in just about every public school when vote time comes around. The booths are cheap, the voting is done on a paper ballot, and it's tallied by volunteers whilst being scrutinised. It can be recounted. It has an audit trail. **It's understandable** And cause it's cheap any small town can put lots of booths in so I might have to wait for just one or two people vote till a booth is free. Even with preferential voting we get results that night.
I do hope we never get Diebold or those other companies here pushing silly expensive solutions to non existant problems.
Your right. Electronic voting is not needed. It's far too expensive at present. It's confusing to many and there is no trust behind the system because its too opaque.
:-) If you want we can come over there and show you how cardboard boots and paper forms work :-)
In Australia our Federal elections are done using cardboard booths setup in just about every school. Paper forms are used for voting. The elderly can use a paper form without being completely bewildered. Cardboard booths and paper are cheap. The smallest town can get as many as they need so we don't have long queues waiting to vote. The system leaves an audit trail that anyone can follow. Recounts can be done. And we still get most of the election results that night - and we even have a proportional voting system, not some lame arsed first-past-the-post system
This person has the clincher. "I would ask to see that policy in writing."
But also see if you can get the store to put it in writing why they won't do the repair and for the store person to sign it.
I have also come across this weird spelling whereby some folks append an 's'. In Australia this change to the popular spellling was recently covered on the radio by a linguist. :-)
Thanks for the URL above, it will be useful to be able to refer people to that for the correct spelling.
Now I had best get back to putting those drapes in front of the curtains to stop then fading
Mike
Yes it does work, and we trust it too. :-)
Cardboard booths and paper forms can be used anywhere. They are cheap and don't break down. Elderly or computer challenged users can use write with a pencil on the ballot paper.
The checking is done by an 'army' of volunteers with scrutineers as well. We can watch that evening as all the tallies come in and the election is decided by late evening. Some close seats may take a bit longer as we have a preferential voting system (much more democratic that the US) and that may take a day longer.
Oh and we can always do a re-count
When I was a student at Sydney University in the early 80's I belonged to a caving club (SUSS) that used to abseil down the face of the Unis Library during Student Orientation Week. This building was about 9 stories high and clad with copper - very nicely tarnished to an elegant hue. One day, when I was just getting out of my abseling gear at the bottom a guy from 'BUGAUP' (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, very active in the 80's in Australia, they used to write 'BUGGA UP' over walls) approached me with an interesting idea. This guy asked if I could abseil down and use Brasso to graffiti the copper cladding! Geez man, I did want to get a degree. Still it was tempting :-)
I was bitten by this update last week. I have a dual boot OSX/Linux system and it stopped Linux booting properly. Its taken many emails and several people on the Debian PPC and Sydney Linux Users Group have given me time to help fix it. I'd say its cost about a few days worth of time. I didn't send any rude emails to Apple nor winge as Apple is not responsible for my Linux but I do get pissed off when I see statements like "extremely small (but vocal) minority with problems". You may not have probs but others do and most are not yelling and screaming - they just try and fix it and move on. Next time I won't be so eager to take a bite of that juicy Apple from the Garden. Some are rotten :-)
> Of course, Gareth Powell, the original author of
. txt
> the story, might have gotten his facts wrong or
> confused,
Quite likely. Look for "Who is Gareth Powell" at
http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/media/amw-faq
I just don't trust private coorporations anymore. Lets say it a payout for a worker killed is $5Million x 7 astonauts = 35 Mil = small compared to the cost of the entire program so they will not be worried at all by such 'financial responsibility'. OK OSHA laws will apply eh? Well if they were negigent with safety try to get the information out of the coorporations to prove it. With NASA you can impound data, private companies can quicky have a data centre failure instead or literally shred data like Authur Anderson and Enron. Oh and the companies wont go under as the US Govt will direct judges not to split up the company if they are found guilty - eg KPMG is now be found to have been doing lax auditing but govt cant really shut them down as that would leave only 3 international auditing firms left. Same with a few big private companies doing space transport. They would be so crucial to the US Govt that they would get the kid glove treatment in any court case involving safety. Am I too cynical :-)
Yes I agree I am a little naive to think that nations could band together and have one space program but it's the only way. I think space transport is prob too expensive even for corporations. Who are the customers? What will they pay? Someone before raised the problem though that it would be like the ISS, a lack of direction could mean that it would be a floundering behemoth.
The obvious answer? Space travel is expensive both in $ and resources and its so important that the only way forward is for all nations to have a single Space Agency where nations that wish to contribute to space travel do so to a common pool. They might specialise, some might develop launchers, others plasma drives (like at Australian National University and Rod Boswell) while others might just do theory calculations. But all could participate in the world wide challenge. This is the solution and the way up.
I would second Bob's suggestion of LaTeX but combine it with a literate programming system such as noweb (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nr/noweb/).
In literate programming like noweb you write code and the documentation that describes that code in a document that introduces, describes and the orders the code in the way that is best understood by a human. Later to create the code or documentation for printing you use simple commands (in noweb; notangle and noweave) to extract all the code parts and assemble them into your full program. I write Makefiles to extract PostScript, dvi, HTML and code from my noweb base files. It's really cool but you will have to learn a bit of LaTeX. Yes LaTeX is poor for letters but excells at technical documentation. Have a look at the noweb homepage.
Best wishes.