This has been done many times. It gets "discovered" and makes a splash every 5 years or so. I did it at Sydney university in 1985. With the university we looked into patenting it, and found prior art even then.
There was a CACM article on it in 1994 or so, if I remember right. And there was a company doing the same thing a bit later on.
Terry
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 1
Just a quick comment on the whole idea of being "due" for one and some of the subsequent comments on this thread: it is not valid to use simple memoryless stochastic processes as a basis for talking about when a pandemic will hit. Evolution is not memoryless - far from it. Advantageous changes get locked in (often for the long term), non-advantageous ones do not. The flu virus is not just flipping a coin trying out wholesale new genomes, it is gradually accumulating mutations that better enable it to reproduce. There is evolutionary pressure towards these mutations. One can expect it to adapt itself to its hosts. We're not talking about purely random chance here - and that's before you even start to consider a whole world of other detail on influenza - such as structural constraints, and much much more.
couldn't agree more. here's an ode i wrote back in april 2000:
i've carried my HP41CX calculator around for 17 years, with the
original manuals, carrying case, card reader, the first programs i
ever wrote (all on small magnetic cards), and some other related
items.
i have hardly used it at all in the last 13 years or so, but i think
of it often and very fondly.
today i bought it a new set of batteries and powered it up for the
first time in acouple of years.
i've been flipping throughthe manuals to remind myself of just how
incredibly great it is. i bought my first HP41C in about 1979, then an
HP41CV and finally an HP41CX. So this technology is about 20 years
old. The manuals are great - they don't assume you're an idiot and
they show you how to do tons and tons of stuff.
apart from making connections to the internet and having less memory,
i reckon my HP41 compares pretty favorably with the PDAs i'm familiar
with. i've never been able to get over how great it was. i wonder what
happened to that technology and direction. i guess the PC world just
took over in some way, but i still can't carry a PC around in my
pocket. maybe there just weren't enough geeky engineer types buying
these things to keep them going. the latest and greatest from HP has
seemed to be those big screen graphing calculators seemingly meant for
undergraduates doing calculus.
anyway, here are some of the features this calculator has...
- non-volatile memory
- fully re-mappable keyboard. put any function anywhere, including the
programs you write yourself. one-key toggle between standard
keyboard layout and your customized layout.
- clock and date functions (including many to do arithmetic on times
and dates, get day of week, etc). no Y2K problem either!
- 319 data registers. these could be used as simple memories, or as
space to hold programs. the boundary between data memories and code
could be moved as you pleased. i have machine up to about 6K of
storage using additional memory modules and some hardware mods.
- over 200 built in functions.
- alarms with date/time/repeat interval/message
- control alarms to execute programs at specified times with repeat
intervals. all alrams function whether the machine is on or off. an
alarm going off an activating the machine turns it on and the
program runs. the program can turn the machine off when it is done.
- stopwatch with 1/100 precison and storage for 100 lap times. display
of lap time diffs.
- basic stats - sums, means, standard dev.
- full alpha-numeric keyboard (40 key)
- text files and a basic editor. ls functionality. possibility to
re-size files. file pointers. 1 line 10 character display:-)
- ten audible tones.
and you could do all this via programs too. so you could write a
function to turn the machine on at a certain time, check a text file,
create a new alarm, play a little song, re-map the keyboard, display
how many seconds until your birthday, and turn the machine off.
i used to keep it by my bed, switched off. before i went to sleep i'd
run a program to re-map the keyboard so that all (or many anyway) keys
were mapped to a program i wrote called "dark". dark got the time and
parsed it and played the hours and minutes in different tones (and
then turned itself off). so i could hear what the time was. later, i
had my university schedule in there and a basic todo list.
apart from the "don't you guys think this is pretty cool too?" factor,
i guess my general question is something about the dumbing down of
personal devices and the rise of the simplistic and opaque GUI.
twenty years ago it seemed like we were on the right track (for
someone like me), now i feel very unattracted to the new wave of PDAs
because i can't really get at them.
yes, i know you can do neat things with a Palm, and i'm tempted. but
still, i bet you can't do half of what i just described 2 paragraphs
above. with the
T9 is so dated and much more annoying than useful, unless you always speak the Queen's English, and are a perfect speller and typist. There's a better way, I have it at home now on a Panasonic cordless phone. It's called LetterWise, from Eatoni. Have fun.
You can enter words from different languages without having to change language (if the current language has the letters you need), and this actually works well. Apparently there is no dictionary.
And they have Luxmebourgish too.
Want it in your phone? Call the manufacturer and tell them. I have it in my one month old Panasonic 755 SMS cordless phone at home. It's a blast and dead easy to learn/use.
A possible next step in this kind of foolishness is for the manufacturer to start selling you the door but only leasing you the remote. The remote remains the property of the manufacturer. But with the DMCA already in place, why would the manufacturer bother? They'd claim to have a stronger legal case against reverese engineering of the remote. Of course it's still your door...
Slashdot Mirror
This has been done many times. It gets "discovered" and makes a splash every 5 years or so. I did it at Sydney university in 1985. With the university we looked into patenting it, and found prior art even then. There was a CACM article on it in 1994 or so, if I remember right. And there was a company doing the same thing a bit later on. Terry
Just a quick comment on the whole idea of being "due" for one and some of the subsequent comments on this thread: it is not valid to use simple memoryless stochastic processes as a basis for talking about when a pandemic will hit. Evolution is not memoryless - far from it. Advantageous changes get locked in (often for the long term), non-advantageous ones do not. The flu virus is not just flipping a coin trying out wholesale new genomes, it is gradually accumulating mutations that better enable it to reproduce. There is evolutionary pressure towards these mutations. One can expect it to adapt itself to its hosts. We're not talking about purely random chance here - and that's before you even start to consider a whole world of other detail on influenza - such as structural constraints, and much much more.
i've carried my HP41CX calculator around for 17 years, with the original manuals, carrying case, card reader, the first programs i ever wrote (all on small magnetic cards), and some other related items. i have hardly used it at all in the last 13 years or so, but i think of it often and very fondly.
today i bought it a new set of batteries and powered it up for the first time in acouple of years. i've been flipping throughthe manuals to remind myself of just how incredibly great it is. i bought my first HP41C in about 1979, then an HP41CV and finally an HP41CX. So this technology is about 20 years old. The manuals are great - they don't assume you're an idiot and they show you how to do tons and tons of stuff.
apart from making connections to the internet and having less memory, i reckon my HP41 compares pretty favorably with the PDAs i'm familiar with. i've never been able to get over how great it was. i wonder what happened to that technology and direction. i guess the PC world just took over in some way, but i still can't carry a PC around in my pocket. maybe there just weren't enough geeky engineer types buying these things to keep them going. the latest and greatest from HP has seemed to be those big screen graphing calculators seemingly meant for undergraduates doing calculus. anyway, here are some of the features this calculator has...
- non-volatile memory
- fully re-mappable keyboard. put any function anywhere, including the programs you write yourself. one-key toggle between standard keyboard layout and your customized layout.
- clock and date functions (including many to do arithmetic on times and dates, get day of week, etc). no Y2K problem either!
- 319 data registers. these could be used as simple memories, or as space to hold programs. the boundary between data memories and code could be moved as you pleased. i have machine up to about 6K of storage using additional memory modules and some hardware mods.
- over 200 built in functions.
- alarms with date/time/repeat interval/message
- control alarms to execute programs at specified times with repeat intervals. all alrams function whether the machine is on or off. an alarm going off an activating the machine turns it on and the program runs. the program can turn the machine off when it is done.
- stopwatch with 1/100 precison and storage for 100 lap times. display of lap time diffs.
- basic stats - sums, means, standard dev.
- full alpha-numeric keyboard (40 key)
- text files and a basic editor. ls functionality. possibility to re-size files. file pointers. 1 line 10 character display :-)
- ten audible tones.
and you could do all this via programs too. so you could write a function to turn the machine on at a certain time, check a text file, create a new alarm, play a little song, re-map the keyboard, display how many seconds until your birthday, and turn the machine off.
i used to keep it by my bed, switched off. before i went to sleep i'd run a program to re-map the keyboard so that all (or many anyway) keys were mapped to a program i wrote called "dark". dark got the time and parsed it and played the hours and minutes in different tones (and then turned itself off). so i could hear what the time was. later, i had my university schedule in there and a basic todo list.
apart from the "don't you guys think this is pretty cool too?" factor, i guess my general question is something about the dumbing down of personal devices and the rise of the simplistic and opaque GUI. twenty years ago it seemed like we were on the right track (for someone like me), now i feel very unattracted to the new wave of PDAs because i can't really get at them.
yes, i know you can do neat things with a Palm, and i'm tempted. but still, i bet you can't do half of what i just described 2 paragraphs above. with the
Their demo runs fine under wine.
T9 is so dated and much more annoying than useful, unless you always speak the Queen's English, and are a perfect speller and typist. There's a better way, I have it at home now on a Panasonic cordless phone. It's called LetterWise, from Eatoni. Have fun.
You can enter words from different languages without having to change language (if the current language has the letters you need), and this actually works well. Apparently there is no dictionary.
And they have Luxmebourgish too.
Want it in your phone? Call the manufacturer and tell them. I have it in my one month old Panasonic 755 SMS cordless phone at home. It's a blast and dead easy to learn/use.
A possible next step in this kind of foolishness is for the manufacturer to start selling you the door but only leasing you the remote. The remote remains the property of the manufacturer. But with the DMCA already in place, why would the manufacturer bother? They'd claim to have a stronger legal case against reverese engineering of the remote. Of course it's still your door...