Doron Swade was the main force behind building a Difference Engine in modern times. His book "The Cogwheel Brain" provides a lot of detail of Babbage himself, the design of the DE (and the complexities involved) and the process of building a physical copy (should he old manufacturing techniques or modern?, should he fix mistakes in the plans?).
Babbage is the epitome of an engineer wanting to solve a problem through the most elegant means possible. He didn't just design something to be functional. Eg incrementing 2999999999 to 3000000000 with the obvious way to carry the ones puts enormous forces on small gears that would have to drive every cog in the register. Instead he found a way to carry all those ones through a separate drive train with very little stress on each gear. He also revisited solutions to find even better solutions that used either less force or less gears or less time. He also incorporated error checking that would stop the machine if something didn't match.
You just described the perfect clothes for Europe and the top half of N.America but certainly not for Australia, South East Asia, Africa or the Middle East.
All the organs of the body were having a meeting, trying to decide who was the one in charge. "I should be in charge," said the brain, "Because I run all the body's systems, so without me nothing would happen." "I should be in charge," said the blood , "because I circulate oxygen all over so without me you'd all waste away." "I should be in charge," said the stomach , "because I process food and give all of you energy." "I should be in charge," said the legs , "because I carry the body wherever it needs to go." "I should be in charge," said the eyes, "Because I allow the body to see where it goes." "I should be in charge," said the rectum , "Because I'm responsible for waste removal." All the other body parts laughed at the rectum and insulted him, so in a huff, he shut down tight. Within a few days, the brain had a terrible headache, the stomach was bloated, the legs got wobbly, the eyes got watery, and the blood was toxic. They all decided that the rectum should be the boss.
The Moral of the story? The ass hole is usually in charge!
Why do most bitmap image programs do circles by clicking on one point (which forms one corner of the circle's bounding box) and then dragging to the opposite corner of the bounding box? Most of the time that I want to draw a circle I want to click on the centre (usually a well defined place) and then drag out the radius until I can see that it is as big as a I want. Not such a problem with vector programs like Inkscape - I can slap any ol' circle on the page and then manipulate it to what I want.
South Australia has enough desert to make the occasional off-coarse rocket less of a problem - instead of landing on someone's head. It is "close enough" to the equator . It has nearby industrial infrastructure.
Northern territory doesn't have that last one.
Personally I think WA also has all those advantages but our pollies didn't shout as loud as SA did.
So you think out sourcing national security is a better idea?
Hopefully the Australian industry retains the ability to design and make advanced stuff (or at least the opportunity to learn). Better than being a nation of consumers that simply sells our iron ore to buy what other countries make. Well on our way to being a 3rd world country:(
A bus or a train requires significantly more energy to move than car, so it needs to carry more passengers to break even - plus the expense of hiring the driver.
Granted that the train takes more energy to move than a car. But that energy should be compared to all the cars it replaces, not just a single car. If it takes 100 times the energy of one car but transports 1000 people (vary the numbers if you will, depending on the size of your train) then you should compare it to the the energy required to move 1000 cars.
"It is much better to bring the fuel to the truck than to pull the truck offline to recharge it.
Excellent idea. Have a trailer of batteries brought by an auxiliary vehicle The new batteries can either be plugged into the fire truck as-is or some form of battery swap could be done.. Repeat as often as necessary. A gen-set trailer is also an option which could use the same electrical connection as a battery trailer. Plenty of options.
What happens if you are killed in a some type of aeroplane crash or industrial accident where they can't find your hand? What happens if you are kidnapped and are never seen again? What happens if you lose your hand (but still survive) in some accident? No chip, no will ! Might be wise to have a back up plan for that will.
But the phono cartridge produces a very small voltage. Which has to be amplified. Which is almost always by an amplifier connected to mains current. So, we're back to "Amplification? Power Supply modulated by a music signal."
That small voltage has to get from the cartridge to the amplifier. The cables need to well shielded if they aren't pick up stray electric field from, say, a nearby mains power equipment and/or cables.
And the vinyl is being spun by an electric motor. Which is powered from the mains current. Which can speed up/down according to power supply fluctuations, contributing (at least in part) to wow and flutter.
Public transportation isn't popular in America because public transportation is a bad solution. Private cars are better - period.
Try the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway. Or the equivalent in Shenzhen, Singapore or Taipei. All excellent. Never felt the need to own a car during my 6 year stay in HK.
A well designed and implemented subway system that gets regular maintenance and updates works extremely well. But a badly maintained system that isn't updated makes people believe that subways don't work.
Musk has always said he wants to grow the industry, not just his own company. Hence the giving away of patents. I'm sure he'd love to sell batteries to the new company - making money for his own company and growing the industry at the some time. win-win
Windows supported pre-emptive multitasking but only among DOS tasks. (Most) DOS tasks knew nothing about multitasking, so Windows would give them a time slice and then rip it away again a short time later. Proper Windows tasks were expected to play nicely by handling an event and then returning control to the OS.
I used to use Windows 3.1 mostly to run multiple DOS programs on one PC. Typically I would have one or two copies of vi running, a command line make and a terminal emulator connected to the embedded device that I was building. Same thing I used to do at university by using 4 smart terminals angled towards me.
Slashdot Mirror
Doron Swade was the main force behind building a Difference Engine in modern times.
His book "The Cogwheel Brain" provides a lot of detail of Babbage himself, the design of the DE (and the complexities involved) and the process of building a physical copy (should he old manufacturing techniques or modern?, should he fix mistakes in the plans?).
Babbage is the epitome of an engineer wanting to solve a problem through the most elegant means possible.
He didn't just design something to be functional.
Eg incrementing 2999999999 to 3000000000 with the obvious way to carry the ones puts enormous forces on small gears that would have to drive every cog in the register.
Instead he found a way to carry all those ones through a separate drive train with very little stress on each gear.
He also revisited solutions to find even better solutions that used either less force or less gears or less time.
He also incorporated error checking that would stop the machine if something didn't match.
You just described the perfect clothes for Europe and the top half of N.America but certainly not for Australia, South East Asia, Africa or the Middle East.
All the organs of the body were having a meeting, trying to decide who was the one in charge.
"I should be in charge," said the brain, "Because I run all the body's systems, so without me nothing would happen."
"I should be in charge," said the blood , "because I circulate oxygen all over so without me you'd all waste away."
"I should be in charge," said the stomach , "because I process food and give all of you energy."
"I should be in charge," said the legs , "because I carry the body wherever it needs to go."
"I should be in charge," said the eyes, "Because I allow the body to see where it goes."
"I should be in charge," said the rectum , "Because I'm responsible for waste removal."
All the other body parts laughed at the rectum and insulted him, so in a huff, he shut down tight.
Within a few days, the brain had a terrible headache, the stomach was bloated, the legs got wobbly, the eyes got watery, and the blood was toxic. They all decided that the rectum should be the boss.
The Moral of the story?
The ass hole is usually in charge!
2 minutes?
Why do most bitmap image programs do circles by clicking on one point (which forms one corner of the circle's bounding box) and then dragging to the opposite corner of the bounding box?
Most of the time that I want to draw a circle I want to click on the centre (usually a well defined place) and then drag out the radius until I can see that it is as big as a I want.
Not such a problem with vector programs like Inkscape - I can slap any ol' circle on the page and then manipulate it to what I want.
South Australia has enough desert to make the occasional off-coarse rocket less of a problem - instead of landing on someone's head.
It is "close enough" to the equator .
It has nearby industrial infrastructure.
Northern territory doesn't have that last one.
Personally I think WA also has all those advantages but our pollies didn't shout as loud as SA did.
So you think out sourcing national security is a better idea?
Hopefully the Australian industry retains the ability to design and make advanced stuff (or at least the opportunity to learn). :(
Better than being a nation of consumers that simply sells our iron ore to buy what other countries make.
Well on our way to being a 3rd world country
Yes. I majored in physics, and I find this theory utterly repulsive.
That's a charged statement!
A bus or a train requires significantly more energy to move than car, so it needs to carry more passengers to break even - plus the expense of hiring the driver.
Granted that the train takes more energy to move than a car. But that energy should be compared to all the cars it replaces, not just a single car. If it takes 100 times the energy of one car but transports 1000 people (vary the numbers if you will, depending on the size of your train) then you should compare it to the the energy required to move 1000 cars.
"It is much better to bring the fuel to the truck than to pull the truck offline to recharge it.
Excellent idea. Have a trailer of batteries brought by an auxiliary vehicle The new batteries can either be plugged into the fire truck as-is or some form of battery swap could be done.. Repeat as often as necessary. A gen-set trailer is also an option which could use the same electrical connection as a battery trailer. Plenty of options.
So you are saying that 20 year old pedestrians are not allowed a vote in a pedestrian vs passenger life/death scenario?
What happens if you are killed in a some type of aeroplane crash or industrial accident where they can't find your hand?
What happens if you are kidnapped and are never seen again?
What happens if you lose your hand (but still survive) in some accident?
No chip, no will !
Might be wise to have a back up plan for that will.
You mean the one next to Germany?
PROM is a write once memory that is basically a fuse for every bit. Blow the fuse and it is now permanently stored for life.
EPROM is the one where UV light through the window erases everything back to all ones, ready for some new writes.
rom-com?
I thought it was a road-trip movie with a bit of a travelogue thrown in.
Sounds similar to how Nissan Motors tried to force (unsuccessfully) Mr Uzi Nissan to give up his nissan.com domain name.
See nissan.com for his story.
But the phono cartridge produces a very small voltage.
Which has to be amplified.
Which is almost always by an amplifier connected to mains current.
So, we're back to "Amplification? Power Supply modulated by a music signal."
That small voltage has to get from the cartridge to the amplifier.
The cables need to well shielded if they aren't pick up stray electric field from, say, a nearby mains power equipment and/or cables.
And the vinyl is being spun by an electric motor.
Which is powered from the mains current.
Which can speed up/down according to power supply fluctuations, contributing (at least in part) to wow and flutter.
Let's bring back the spring powered gramophone !
Public transportation isn't popular in America because public transportation is a bad solution. Private cars are better - period.
Try the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway. Or the equivalent in Shenzhen, Singapore or Taipei. All excellent. Never felt the need to own a car during my 6 year stay in HK.
A well designed and implemented subway system that gets regular maintenance and updates works extremely well.
But a badly maintained system that isn't updated makes people believe that subways don't work.
Not to mention earlier editors like vi, ed, SOS (DEC machines), teco.
Musk has always said he wants to grow the industry, not just his own company.
Hence the giving away of patents.
I'm sure he'd love to sell batteries to the new company - making money for his own company and growing the industry at the some time.
win-win
Woz ?
they all have diesel generators in them. That is they burn GASOLINE...
Diesel engines burn diesel, not gasoline.
Australia is almost as big as the USA, is bordered by no countries (at least not land borders) and we went metric in the 1970s.
But the US will always vote to wait for the old people to die first, while busily training the next generation to continue with imperial.
Windows supported pre-emptive multitasking but only among DOS tasks.
(Most) DOS tasks knew nothing about multitasking, so Windows would give them a time slice and then rip it away again a short time later.
Proper Windows tasks were expected to play nicely by handling an event and then returning control to the OS.
I used to use Windows 3.1 mostly to run multiple DOS programs on one PC.
Typically I would have one or two copies of vi running, a command line make and a terminal emulator connected to the embedded device that I was building.
Same thing I used to do at university by using 4 smart terminals angled towards me.
It spans the whole Earth, from Arizona to the South Pole. I wonder what the Canadians have to say about that comment?
Religious? When did Greenpeace become religious?