In this article, Ed Hurst talks about installing software from the ports and using joe. However, he doesn't talk about portinstall, a tool that makes installing software from the ports much easier.
Port installation couldn't be much easier the way it already *is*. portupgrade makes managing those ports *much* easier across upgrades, though.
Actually, I was guessing that the UNIVAC itself was causing the tubes to burn out, not the tube itself. I can imagine that at 1,000 calculations per second, those things might be a bit more ready to burn out than with more, atleast at the time, common use.
I guess it really depends upon how they were being used--radio transmission tubes are used pretty hard, but don't burn out quickly. Probably a case of intended use vs. actual use.
Back in 1951 there were factories that pumped out vacuum tubes by the millions. That was convenient, because Univac burned out tubes by the thousands.
Firing up an old Univac would require firing up some old tube factories, too.
All this talk is making it sound as though tubes are inherently unreliable. I'm betting that there wasn't a whole lot of forced air cooling in this beast, and heat *will* eventually get tubes, just like other electronics.
I've had tube based electronics run for years on end without failure. Granted, they weren't computers, but the better ones used proper cooling.
I was just pointing out that the original submitter and the comment I was replying to assumed he was a scientist at URI, when he was not. I also thought the NYT article was interesting enough to be submitted as an additional link.
So, you have to have a degree in order to do science? I think not.
The website brags that this thing has a whole month of battery life in it's low-power mode. Big fricking deal. I bought my HP in about 1990. I have replaced the batteries in it exactly ONCE. There's nothing more useless than a calculator that you've picked up and realized you forgot to plug it in last night to recharge it, and it's dead.
Roger that! I bought my HP-15C in 1984, and have replaced the batteries 3 times. The tactile keys just *work* [unlike the several TI-55 II's which it replaced].
I also have an RPN on my PDA [NeoCalc], but only as a convenience. If I need to do real calculating, I whip out the 15C or the slide rule.
I use rpc on my computer all the time. It's not graphing, it's not pretty, but it's a very capable RPN calculator, and makes a great complimentary computing device to my slide rule(s).
The ice that is pervasive throughout the nuggets and fries melts during a deep fry and gets trapped under the surface. This dilutes the oil and reduces the overall quality. As the oil cools and hardens, the water remains trapped inside the oil.
Really? Gee, water boils at 212F under standard pressure. Fryers operate at what, 450F? While water *can* be a problem in oil, once you heat the oil past 212F for any length of time, it's *gone*.
Then again, if you're frying at 212F, I don't want to eat in that restaurant.
there's an outfit in Missouri called Greasel that makes conversion kits so you can run your vehicle on straight vegetable oil without converting it to biodiesel [no methylation step].
One of the cool things they sell is the the fuel line heater kit, known as the Triple Bypass.
Refining crude oil is amazingly complex compared with filtering cooking oil and adding a little kerosene and lye.
Gotta pick nits here, but it ain't a matter of adding some kerosene and lye. You're going to methylate or ethylate the oil, which means using either methanol or ethanol.
Golly, you can even make these two raw materials on your own!
I run OpenBSD 3.4 on an Ultra1 and an Ultra2 with no problems whatsoever. Granted, they are machines at home that the kids use [for doing homework, playing games, surfing the web], but they hold up well, are relatively quiet, and aren't going to get easily hacked.
The main reason I run OpenBSD on these machines, is that the graphics support was superior to NetBSD [which I run on an old SS20], and FreeBSD doesn't support the SBUS [yet].
IIRC, a patent can be overturned if it is later shown that the invention was obvious or that prior art existed. This patent would surely never hold up in court, so it's only useful for intimidation tactics.
It helps to keep in mind that in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they're different.
I've seen patents based on prior art in other industries go unchallenged, and allowed to flourish. Don't think that this one won't because 'that's how patents are supposed to work.'
Interesting. The definition of 'from scratch' with software is much more nebulous, IMHO. And now with software radio, it's possible to build an HDTV with nothing but software.
You still need hardware to receive the signal, and you still need the computer hardware to actually run the software. Hate to pick nits, but that's the way it is.
And how, exactly, does that argument help Linux's position in any way? You're basically sending the message to the public that the Linux community is a bunch of scofflaws who, given a free product that flouts the law, would never dream of paying for a legal, licensed product... and that this fact is so widely known that nobody has even bothered to start a business to test the theory.
I think the OP was getting at the point that the Linux community is a bunch of cheap skates who would never shell out the $$ for one.
Where's your benchmark from 'from scratch' then? Does the person have to start out naked in a forest. then build from there? I mean, there's an awful lot of manufacturing that goes into making a transistor, resistor, capacitor, or even a wire. Doesn't seem to me like using those should be thought of as 'from scratch'.
Have you ever built anything electronically more involved than an oscillator, with no instructions? Building anything more complicated than that by the seat-of-your-pants counts as 'scratch' in my book. If you can take discrete components, some theory, and through an iterative [build, test, scratch head, fix, repeat] process build something that does what you set out to do, that is essentially scratch.
If you're British, you must included gum, paste and toothpicks, I believe.
In this article, Ed Hurst talks about installing software from the ports and using joe.
...--
However, he doesn't talk about portinstall, a tool that makes installing software from the ports much easier.
Port installation couldn't be much easier the way it already *is*. portupgrade makes managing those ports *much* easier across upgrades, though.
--...
Actually, I was guessing that the UNIVAC itself was causing the tubes to burn out, not the tube itself. I can imagine that at 1,000 calculations per second, those things might be a bit more ready to burn out than with more, atleast at the time, common use.
I guess it really depends upon how they were being used--radio transmission tubes are used pretty hard, but don't burn out quickly. Probably a case of intended use vs. actual use.
Amateur (ham) packet radio networks have been doing exactly this since the early 1980s. They are designed to be independant of the Internet.
True, and packet networks [at least where I'm from] are just as dead as BBS's.
Back in 1951 there were factories that pumped out vacuum tubes by the millions. That was convenient, because Univac burned out tubes by the thousands.
Firing up an old Univac would require firing up some old tube factories, too.
All this talk is making it sound as though tubes are inherently unreliable. I'm betting that there wasn't a whole lot of forced air cooling in this beast, and heat *will* eventually get tubes, just like other electronics.
I've had tube based electronics run for years on end without failure. Granted, they weren't computers, but the better ones used proper cooling.
I was just pointing out that the original submitter and the comment I was replying to assumed he was a scientist at URI, when he was not. I also thought the NYT article was interesting enough to be submitted as an additional link.
So, you have to have a degree in order to do science? I think not.
The website brags that this thing has a whole month of battery life in it's low-power mode. Big fricking deal. I bought my HP in about 1990. I have replaced the batteries in it exactly ONCE. There's nothing more useless than a calculator that you've picked up and realized you forgot to plug it in last night to recharge it, and it's dead.
Roger that! I bought my HP-15C in 1984, and have replaced the batteries 3 times. The tactile keys just *work* [unlike the several TI-55 II's which it replaced].
I also have an RPN on my PDA [NeoCalc], but only as a convenience. If I need to do real calculating, I whip out the 15C or the slide rule.
Do one thing, and one thing well.
Depends what you're using it for
:-P
3
enter
2
enter
+
that's 5
Golly, on my HP-15C it's:
3
enter
2
+
that's 4
3
+
2
=
that's 4
granted, when you get higher up i'm sure it's a lot more time saving, so i'll just stop talking now
I read this as, "VisiCalc Turns 25, creators interned."
Serves 'em right, I thought.
I use rpc on my computer all the time. It's not graphing, it's not pretty, but it's a very capable RPN calculator, and makes a great complimentary computing device to my slide rule(s).
The ice that is pervasive throughout the nuggets and fries melts during a deep fry and gets trapped under the surface. This dilutes the oil and reduces the overall quality. As the oil cools and hardens, the water remains trapped inside the oil.
Really? Gee, water boils at 212F under standard pressure. Fryers operate at what, 450F? While water *can* be a problem in oil, once you heat the oil past 212F for any length of time, it's *gone*.
Then again, if you're frying at 212F, I don't want to eat in that restaurant.
there's an outfit in Missouri called Greasel that makes conversion kits so you can run your vehicle on straight vegetable oil without converting it to biodiesel [no methylation step].
One of the cool things they sell is the the fuel line heater kit, known as the Triple Bypass.
Refining crude oil is amazingly complex compared with filtering cooking oil and adding a little kerosene and lye.
Gotta pick nits here, but it ain't a matter of adding some kerosene and lye. You're going to methylate or ethylate the oil, which means using either methanol or ethanol.
Golly, you can even make these two raw materials on your own!
when Vegans everywhere can be lunched into space.
Sorry, I meant 'launched.'
I've been wanting to know how to run P2P apps in jail, so this tutorial ought to be instructive!
remove the swastika flags from the vans before they come prowling through my neighborhood?
I run OpenBSD 3.4 on an Ultra1 and an Ultra2 with no problems whatsoever. Granted, they are machines at home that the kids use [for doing homework, playing games, surfing the web], but they hold up well, are relatively quiet, and aren't going to get easily hacked.
The main reason I run OpenBSD on these machines, is that the graphics support was superior to NetBSD [which I run on an old SS20], and FreeBSD doesn't support the SBUS [yet].
Take your loud, obnoxious computer, and immerse the entire thing in mineral oil
Noise gone, computer still working. . .
and BASIC was born.
It always struck me that BASIC was easier to understand if you were high.
IIRC, a patent can be overturned if it is later shown that the invention was obvious or that prior art existed. This patent would surely never hold up in court, so it's only useful for intimidation tactics.
It helps to keep in mind that in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they're different.
I've seen patents based on prior art in other industries go unchallenged, and allowed to flourish. Don't think that this one won't because 'that's how patents are supposed to work.'
This is the Guvmint we're talking about.
Interesting. The definition of 'from scratch' with software is much more nebulous, IMHO. And now with software radio, it's possible to build an HDTV with nothing but software.
You still need hardware to receive the signal, and you still need the computer hardware to actually run the software. Hate to pick nits, but that's the way it is.
And how, exactly, does that argument help Linux's position in any way? You're basically sending the message to the public that the Linux community is a bunch of scofflaws who, given a free product that flouts the law, would never dream of paying for a legal, licensed product ... and that this fact is so widely known that nobody has even bothered to start a business to test the theory.
I think the OP was getting at the point that the Linux community is a bunch of cheap skates who would never shell out the $$ for one.
I ought to know--I'm a cheapskate meself!
Where's your benchmark from 'from scratch' then? Does the person have to start out naked in a forest. then build from there? I mean, there's an awful lot of manufacturing that goes into making a transistor, resistor, capacitor, or even a wire. Doesn't seem to me like using those should be thought of as 'from scratch'.
Have you ever built anything electronically more involved than an oscillator, with no instructions? Building anything more complicated than that by the seat-of-your-pants counts as 'scratch' in my book. If you can take discrete components, some theory, and through an iterative [build, test, scratch head, fix, repeat] process build something that does what you set out to do, that is essentially scratch.
If you're British, you must included gum, paste and toothpicks, I believe.
Ever been to Mississippi or Arkansas? I don't *think* so. . .
I'm kind of afraid now my first kid will have an extra testical and be able to read people's minds.
I guess that's better than your kid having an extra mind, and being able to read people's testicles.
Free Mordechai Vanunu from Israel!
Save them! Collect them! Trade them with your friends!