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User: bootc

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  1. Re:Not Turing Machines? on Krawtchouk's Mind · · Score: 1

    The fact that Colossus machines were Turing machines makes a lot of sense, considering Alan Turing himself worked at Bletchley Park during that time, and wrote his papers on the Turing Test, among others. It would follow logically that the machines were designed around his papers or vice versa.

    I find this period of history very interesting, with all the various goings on in early computer science and cryptography, both of which I find fascinating.

  2. Re:You're never paranoid enough... on Should you Fear Google? · · Score: 1

    Sure, watching people's lives may be ever so boring. But in that case, why are TV shows like Big Brother so popular? Surely, some people must find it interesting in some way if one of the more popular TV shows out there is based around it.

    Just my £0.02

  3. Proteus on AOL and .mac IM Not Entirely Integrated · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The other day I signed on to my AIM account using Proteus and a new contact was magically added to my buddies list: "PleaseUpgrade000". That sort of told me that I had to give up on Proteus.

    Just to add more to the discussion, I remember that even AIM had to be upgraded to work with or see Mac.com buddies, so it's just that the others haven't caught up yet.

  4. The Magenta Rectange Thing on Installing Linux On The New Apple iBook · · Score: 1

    There's a pretty good technical reason for this: in the older computers (those with Apple DVD Player 1.x), all of the decoding is done in hardware. Consequently, to avoid having to pump the video through software, all the software does is denote a region of the screen to use for DVD playback. This region happens to be a magenta rectangle. I'm pretty sure that if you hid the DVD player program and opened that screen shot, you would have your DVD playing inside it.

    My old 5400's TV/Video card works in a very similar way, except the color isn't magenta but a whacky black color.

    If you have DVD Player 2.x, then I have no idea why this would be so, but probably to avoid going through QuickDraw (which isn't that quick) to draw the frames. Playing a DVD means pumping through a lot of data.

    Hope this explains it a bit.

  5. The Real Thing on Do You Have Your 'Crisis Week'? · · Score: 1

    Hehe, during the easter vacation, I had to go into school to work on the yearbook. We're only a small international school in the South of France, so I brought my own computer to speed up the pace of work. BAD idea. For some reason, the Win NT server decided to pack up its bags and go home, and as the yearbook team (a group of 4) were the only people there, we got the blame. OUCH
    Those darned teachers, maybe they should learn to actually use a computer before they try to administer a network running them. I mean, who connects 50 computers together using only 10 Base-T hubs? No switches in sight. Oh, and internet access for the whole network is through a single 64K ISDN line.
    Pity this is France, people don't get sued or thrown out of their jobs for stuff like this here.

  6. Poor Design on Is Your P4 Working At Half Speed? · · Score: 1

    Why don't Intel or AMD design chips better? I mean the PowerPC might have a lower clock rate, but it keeps cool, uses much less power, and kicks the Pentium's ass any day. I'm sorry, but I just don't understand. The PowerPC 7410 takes 1.8 and 2.5 volt poer supplies and has a maximum power consumption of 12.5 watts. Now tell me that's better than 70 something.