In a course on automation in the eighties, I had already seen pneumatic components and their equivalent description by Boolean concepts.
In 1995, I followed a course on automation which included pneumatics and hydraulics hands on, and the course also described certain components in Boolean terms. In fact, when I was there one of the teachers was building a pneumatic computer (never got the details on it, unfortunately).
Since the basic functions of pneumatic and hydraulic components are about the same, there is no theoretical reason why it is not possible to build a hydraulic computer.
There is one practical problem, however. Hydraulic components are mostly power components, designed to work with oil and with pressures from 10 to 100 bar, and they need a lot of space, and they are rather slow. Pneumatics is much faster and lightweight.
Yes, the main accomplishment is that it has no moving parts.
What many people do not know, or fail to understand, was that RMS did not develop the concept of Free Software out of altruistic reasons. He had very pragmatic and selfish goals.
His first problem was a driver for a HP laser printer, which he could not modify to make it work with his systems.
His second problem was that a whole lot of people from the MIT lab went to Symbolics, taking with them all the Lisp code developed at the MIT lab, to be used in the Symbolics machines and not to be given back to the MIT lab or the community at large.
Personally I am afraid that in small countries like Belgium, the Microsoft lobby is even stronger. I think that for Flanders it is even worse. I've seen in Datanews that the Wallonian government has more initiatives which use FLOSS.
Well, in the beginning of the 90's we did 500 page technical documents with WP5.1 on a machine with 640 kB of RAM, with graphically created overlays for headers and footers.
You can blame the bankers, but the bank only gives money when they know they can win on both sides. Either you have a good businessplan and you can pay back your loan with interest, or you have enough assets, in case you fail, they can seize the assets. If you do not have assets, they won't loan any money.
The problem that I perceive in many IT environments is this.
Due to the dumbing down so that MS tools are rather easy to deploy, many people who wouldn't have been in IT in the past, are now. They have the skills to do some networking and administration tasks, but they lack the real skills that are needed to really add value to all the installed stuff, they should be able to analyse and program for the company.
It is not because the stuff is installed, that it automatically will add value to the company.
One example that I have is the company where my wife works. They are about 500 people, and completely on Microsoft. They use Axapta for ERP.
However, I think that the people who run the IT department, are only people who can deploy and keep things running. However, these people are ballast. Instead, they should outsource deployment and babysitting, and get people who are capable of learning the tools themselves, and who can record and analyse current businesspractices and map them to Axapta.
What is the case now ?
The company is split up in several divisions, but data in Axapta is intermixed. Due to this, my wife got information from another department on a delivery order.
Production does not seem to use Axapta. They pass their production on paper to shipping responsible.
The shipping responsible creates from this paper a spreadsheet.
This spreadsheet is passed to my wife, who then creates shipping documents and has to enter things in Axapta.
I also needed something new, but also something that I wanted to do for a long time, and to concentrate on.
Since last August, I have been designing a CPU, but you could say with the Lego approach.
I have been simulating components using Common Lisp, and now I am almost ready to start implementing my first simulated design.
This really is a logical and creative exercise. The creative part stems from the fact that I wanted to implement something that did not need many functions, and that I always keep in the back of my head, that if I want it to implement it for real, the only parts reasonably available are TTL-related ones.
What I think it comes down to, is that you should choose a large but understandable project, which should be (slightly) out of your normal line of duty, concentrate your free time on that (hey, I have a house, a wife and a kid, and a garden, my free time is what is over after considering these things), and start organising, documenting and
writing that project.
What I also do, is play with my daughter and Lego. That is also a challenge, to come with ever new forms and designs to surprise her.
I had to install one a couple of years ago, for a customer who had an application which used a floppy as a means of authentication, on a brandnew HP desktop system, which did not have floppies.
I have seen too many people being driven out of their rented home because the owner only invested in it for his children. My grandparents where some of them.
I absolutely have no good feelings towards landlords. They just want to get money for free. Almost of them pass the buck on maintenance towards the tenants, or do nothing to modernise or replace old and worn infrastructure.
A new player on the market, Mehano, has a nice kit (electrostatics, magnetism, batteries, electromagnetism and electronics). I do not know of course if it is on the US market, it is European.
First of all, a couple of years ago there was already a very interesting piece about robots and the technological progress needed to make them real REAL. The year computed by the people who wrote the article, was about 2050, and things like Moore's Law and other ideas about technological advancements where taken into account toreach this conclusion.
Secondly, I always read the article's author's biographies. I have never seen an article of someone who didn't have a real degree, and who was not (currently or in the past) into real research.
I have seen the last two years, however, some bias from SA towards Bill Gates. I think that should not be. Bill Gates has ABSOLUTELY NO scientific credibility, and that is why articles from him should not appear in Scientific American.
Just my thoughts today on my first working day after the Christmas holidays.
I have the same problem, and what I did was just use no password at all, but create different roles for the system.
Our programs have only a certain role in which they can insert or update only certain parts of the database. Really sensitive tasks must always be done by an operator, who has to log in manually.
Unfortunately, we are using mySQL, which is not as rigorous. For update actions the restricted role must also have query capabilities.
I think that by using postgreSQL or Oracle it is much easier to restrict this role even further, so that no query capabilities are needed, probably through a view or by using stored procedures.
Yes, try adding the same amount of Common Lisp/Scheme compilers/interpreters as are available in Debian, to Red Hat.
Or even other languages. Debian should be the choice distro for people who read Dr. Dobbs' Journal (I once bought their languages CD somewhere in the middle of the nineties.).
Slashdot Mirror
New for fluidics, or for hydraulics ?
In a course on automation in the eighties, I had already seen pneumatic components and their equivalent description by Boolean concepts.
In 1995, I followed a course on automation which included pneumatics and hydraulics hands on, and the course also described certain components in Boolean terms. In fact, when I was there one of the teachers was building a pneumatic computer (never got the details on it, unfortunately).
Since the basic functions of pneumatic and hydraulic components are about the same, there is no theoretical reason why it is not possible to build a hydraulic computer.
There is one practical problem, however. Hydraulic components are mostly power components, designed to work with oil and with pressures from 10 to 100 bar, and they need a lot of space, and they are rather slow. Pneumatics is much faster and lightweight.
Yes, the main accomplishment is that it has no moving parts.
What many people do not know, or fail to understand, was that RMS did not develop the concept of Free Software out of altruistic reasons. He had very pragmatic and selfish goals.
His first problem was a driver for a HP laser printer, which he could not modify to make it work with his systems.
His second problem was that a whole lot of people from the MIT lab went to Symbolics, taking with them all the Lisp code developed at the MIT lab, to be used in the Symbolics machines and not to be given back to the MIT lab or the community at large.
Yeah, I think there was an article back in 1993 or 1994 in Byte about such processors. It seems that in practice, the theory doesn't add up.
Personally I am afraid that in small countries like Belgium, the Microsoft lobby is even stronger. I think that for Flanders it is even worse. I've seen in Datanews that the Wallonian government has more initiatives which use FLOSS.
Well, in the beginning of the 90's we did 500 page technical documents with WP5.1 on a machine with 640 kB of RAM, with graphically created overlays for headers and footers.
The ideal software team is someone who knows the business to explain exactly what is wanted and someone who knows software to design it properly.
They used to call them analysts and programmers.
You can blame the bankers, but the bank only gives money when they know they can win on both sides. Either you have a good businessplan and you can pay back your loan with interest, or you have enough assets, in case you fail, they can seize the assets. If you do not have assets, they won't loan any money.
The problem that I perceive in many IT environments is this.
Due to the dumbing down so that MS tools are rather easy to deploy, many people who wouldn't have been in IT in the past, are now. They have the skills to do some networking and administration tasks, but they lack the real skills that are needed to really add value to all the installed stuff, they should be able to analyse and program for the company.
It is not because the stuff is installed, that it automatically will add value to the company.
One example that I have is the company where my wife works. They are about 500 people, and completely on Microsoft. They use Axapta for ERP.
However, I think that the people who run the IT department, are only people who can deploy and keep things running. However, these people are ballast. Instead, they should outsource deployment and babysitting, and get people who are capable of learning the tools themselves, and who can record and analyse current businesspractices and map them to Axapta.
What is the case now ?
What kind of creativity are you looking for ?
I also needed something new, but also something that I wanted to do for a long time, and to concentrate on.
Since last August, I have been designing a CPU, but you could say with the Lego approach.
I have been simulating components using Common Lisp, and now I am almost ready to start implementing my first simulated design.
This really is a logical and creative exercise. The creative part stems from the fact that I wanted to implement something that did not need many functions, and that I always keep in the back of my head, that if I want it to implement it for real, the only parts reasonably available are TTL-related ones.
What I think it comes down to, is that you should choose a large but understandable project, which should be (slightly) out of your normal line of duty, concentrate your free time on that (hey, I have a house, a wife and a kid, and a garden, my free time is what is over after considering these things), and start organising, documenting and writing that project.
What I also do, is play with my daughter and Lego. That is also a challenge, to come with ever new forms and designs to surprise her.
The strange thing is that the original StarOffice 5.1 had such a package.
Is there anyone from OO.o who knows why it did not come to OpenOffice.org ?
I had to install one a couple of years ago, for a customer who had an application which used a floppy as a means of authentication, on a brandnew HP desktop system, which did not have floppies.
Ha, Sinclair MicroDrives!
No, the need to think you are ub3r-1337.
This man should be modded up.
His last line says it all : IT IS INSURANCE!
I have seen too many people being driven out of their rented home because the owner only invested in it for his children. My grandparents where some of them.
I absolutely have no good feelings towards landlords. They just want to get money for free. Almost of them pass the buck on maintenance towards the tenants, or do nothing to modernise or replace old and worn infrastructure.
It is a despicable kind.
A new player on the market, Mehano, has a nice kit (electrostatics, magnetism, batteries, electromagnetism and electronics). I do not know of course if it is on the US market, it is European.
IBM chose the 8088 because they needed less components due to the 8-bit data bus.
Yes, but modular programming is anti-thetical to Microsoft's way of doing things.
The Jetsons predicted this already.
The thing I wonder about is why they did it.
First of all, a couple of years ago there was already a very interesting piece about robots and the technological progress needed to make them real REAL. The year computed by the people who wrote the article, was about 2050, and things like Moore's Law and other ideas about technological advancements where taken into account toreach this conclusion.
Secondly, I always read the article's author's biographies. I have never seen an article of someone who didn't have a real degree, and who was not (currently or in the past) into real research.
I have seen the last two years, however, some bias from SA towards Bill Gates. I think that should not be. Bill Gates has ABSOLUTELY NO scientific credibility, and that is why articles from him should not appear in Scientific American.
Just my thoughts today on my first working day after the Christmas holidays.
A very good summary of what I found out myself.
I have the same problem, and what I did was just use no password at all, but create different roles for the system.
Our programs have only a certain role in which they can insert or update only certain parts of the database. Really sensitive tasks must always be done by an operator, who has to log in manually.
Unfortunately, we are using mySQL, which is not as rigorous. For update actions the restricted role must also have query capabilities.
I think that by using postgreSQL or Oracle it is much easier to restrict this role even further, so that no query capabilities are needed, probably through a view or by using stored procedures.
Yes, try adding the same amount of Common Lisp/Scheme compilers/interpreters as are available in Debian, to Red Hat.
Or even other languages. Debian should be the choice distro for people who read Dr. Dobbs' Journal (I once bought their languages CD somewhere in the middle of the nineties.).
I use apt-mirror.
Granted, the first download is of course rather large, but after that a daily update is on average about 200 Mb.
Maybe they should set up a single CD installation, and a multiple DVD installation.
Everything in between can be handled by apt-get to the repository of your choice or apt-mirror.
The jargon alert should have been before 'service-oriented applications'.
Stay the Recourse
Probably true.
I remember a USA guitar magazine organised a competition several years ago.
The winner was someone playing an acoustic guitar, which he recorded using only a standard tape recorder.