http://www.baen.com/ sell reasonably priced ebooks and have some free (as in beer) ones. Good start for an SF library, we just need a few more publishers* to follow that example.
... and, of course, for this new device to be able to accept them.
* a good start would be one that does detective stories - that itself might be sufficient to bootstrap ebooks to a larger audience.
Indeed... at the time I started in computing "the" Supercomputer was the CDC6600
(having just overtaken the Atlas and Stretch). Hanging on the belt round my waist
I now have: A mobile phone; A PDA; An MP3 player; and a digital camera.
Each of these has - and arguably needs - significantly more compyer power than that old
CDC6600. ... and in those days I was proud to be allocated 2 minutes CPU time per week on the 6600.
I thought one part of the definition of a supercomputer was that the cost exceeds a million (used to be that cost exceeds ten million). Dollars or Pounds, doesn't really matter even with the current exchange rate:-)
In theory, at least, a further problem is that, of the set of facilities provided by the different filesystems, there are features of each that are not supported by others.
e.g. Unix-derived (like Linux) filesystems are fully case-sensitive; NTFS (as presented by Windows) is case preserving but insensitive.
NTFS provides essentially unlimited file attributes and data streams Unix-derived fs behave as "stream of bytes" (and old mainframe fs typically had many other abilities such as generation numbers and atomic commit)
There isn't a perfect solution - if people start using NTFS outside Windows MS will probably retrospectively change the spec in a way that doesn't make windows worse, but crashes non-ms implementations. If ext2 gets used then some program that uses file attributes constructively will get up and bite you - even ext3 may not handle everything that Vista may use. Separate filestore from OS by using network attached files?
There is also a large Meccano-based differential analyser in the computing gallery (in the NE corner - the other side from the Pegasus) I'm pretty sure it is an original, not a replica - tho' I'm not quite so sure that it is complete.
"However, the only original, complete Differential Analyser left in the world happens to be the one that helped Barnes Wallis design his famous bouncing bombs."
In that case, what is the one that is in the Science Museum, London?
The other difference is that perhaps 1 person in 100 has the skills necessary to do this to Open Source code, whereas possibly 1 in 50,000 has the reverse-engineering skills to understand (and possibly modify) binary-only systems.
If the end-user can modify the source with reasonable ease:
They can easily bypass any "broadcast flag"; They can remove restrictions on which channels a scanner can scan; They may be able to transmit on forbidden channels or at power levels that are above those permitted for a channel.
That is the sort of hacking that frightens the FCC
Good points, but I can see certain organisations for whom its (presumed) low maintenance / low noise properties will be worth a lot of money. Also any mobile application (locomotives, small ships, maybe even airbourne) will have massive
gains from requiring a much reduced fuel load for the same performance.
Expect it to be under serious evaluation by the US Army, US Coastguard, probably also the Navy and emergency services. And if it does perform as implied they will be paying military procurement prices - keeping the public price up - for a long time.
Andy
Don't know if the v100 is still available or, for that matter, if it is compatible with US mobile systems. A phone specifically designed for texting but pretty well useless for speech (!).
More realistically look at the Nokia E62 if you can find a decent connection deal. Better yet, get the E61 (probably have to import from Europe) this supports WiFi connectivity as well as GSM (and 3G) and dozens of messaging features.
Does it still work in marginal reception areas (like on the borders of 3 regions) and in unfavorable weather (either heavy rain reducing signal levels or high pressure allowing interference from very long ranges)?
Present Freeview has problems in places not 30 miles from the centre of London - especially on the ITV channels that use the higher symbol rate.
Andy (Rayleigh, Essex - on the fringes of London, Meridian, and Anglia areas)
is not finding the hardware - there's more of that around than you might expect. There are even a lot of manuals floating around... "real programmers" tended to keep a manual or two when the machine was replaced. However, the software - which is perhaps the heart of the machine - and the cables tended to get thrown away separately as soon as the CPU was closed down. For example for the most popular mainframe in the UK in the 1970s - the ICL1900 series - most of the small machine software (the operators Executive; the operating systems George I & II; and the compilers that were used on the small machines like the 4K versions of Algol and Fortran) seems to have been lost. It is lucky that one project has managed to preserve the large system operating system (George 3) and some related software... tho' discovering where to download the emulator and software is tricky, to say the least. I have also seen no evidence that anyone has preserved the GeCOS operating system from the large Honeywell systems (6000, and its successor the Level 66). OK, it is not so "special" as Multics, which ran on similar hardware, but still does contain many interesting features - most notably in file handing. For that matter has the B programming language (predecessor of C, designed for large-word oriented machines) been saved anywhere?
When I saw the subject, I thought this might be about another problem that I have been considering: wall power sockets for small gadgets. It seems somewhat inefficient to take the 12v output of a solar array or mini wind turbine then invert this to mains voltage (230v over here / 110v in North America) then send this out to (large) wall sockets and plug in a wall-wart to bring it back to 12v or lower. I had assumed that there were basically two options available: high current, but ugly, car "cigarette-lighter"- type 12v sockets and small, convenient, but low current (as the article points-out) USB. Most gadgets come with cables that will work with at least one - and often both - of these. Firewire only seems to be used seriously in the video field where, perhaps, its strong support for DRM is considered vital by the manufacturers (even if not the consumers). Any other thoughts?
Concrete has been used to build some very attractive housing in the UK - not just horrible blocks. In the "Art Deco" (I think) period of the '20s some architects made excellent use of the material - especially it's ability to form smooth curves. See examples in the "Poirot" TV series, for example. Of course, I don't know how practical they are for everyday living, but I suspect they are no worse than typical modern rabbit-hutches. The problem will be
find your building plot
get a design made
spend six months getting planning permission
spend another six months modifying to meet building regulations
a month preparing the site
organise the manchinery to arrive
put everything off for a week when the typical British weather opens up
then you can build in a day
somewhere in that sequence there should be the traditional/. "profit", but I don't see it.
Anyone who frequents boot sales in the UK will have noticed that the going price for VHS films is now down to 50p each/3 for £1 or less... and they'll barely selling at that.
The machines still sell - generally to Nigerians who export them in bulk.
I think that is evidence of terminal decline - the last signs of life will last a little longer.
So, when MS switch-off a copy of XP (or Vista) remotely FOR WHATEVER REASON they are breaking the letter of this law - and have "the necessary intent". So will we extradite Bill and bang him up for lots of 5-year sentences?
According to The Times: "He said a new offence would ban the possession of porn depicting "scenes of extreme sexual violence" and other obscene material such as bestiality and necrophilia".
So it is rather wider than the BBC article would suggest. And it isn't yet law - it has to get through the House of Commons (but how many MPs would be prepared to put their heads above the parapet on this issue?) and the House of Lords (who, because unelected, tend to be more concerned with civil liberties and less concerned with being populist).
"A big part of the vision for Dreamblade was a game where the rules/gameplay and the IP situation would be suitable for a (large, cash prize) competitive environment."
"The game is fun"
Once the "large cash prize" players get down to serious analysis I doubt seriously whether it will remain "fun".
I would very much doubt if most of the people who were asked to respond to the survey are really aware of the use of software within their institution. Before I retired I was a senior member of computer services within a UK University. A survey like this would be considered low priority by the typical director and it would be passed-on to a (typically) random (almost certainly) low-level member of staff to complete. Now some of these will have quite a good "grapevine" knowledge of what is going-on within their institution; but many will only know what is "policy" or installed on centrally-provided systems. Departments tend to be fiercely independent in what they do - typically more so if there are strict central policies to the contrary. To get reliable results, the questions would have to be (actually) answered by someone who had authority, respect, and time - all of which are likely to be in short supply in the computing services of a UK University nowadays.
As there are an uncountable infinity of points arbitrarily close to each of those negligible points, and we are talking about continuous functions, it appears to me that those points are truly neglibile for all practical purposes.
Andy
Hoping that he hasn't misapplied some math that he hasn't used since his degree more than 35 years ago.
In the days when I was first involved in setting-up Unix systems (when SUN 3s were the fancy new toy), 8MB was a huge deal on a system with 4MB RAM. Thus we essentially banned emacs and stuck to vi. Now my thought would be "only 8MB, whats the worry". But has emacs also had feature creep since then, with corresponding memory growth?
Worrying too much about effeciency (memory or processor) can be bad. Failing to keep it at least in the back of your mind while designing and coding leads to some of the awful performance we see in some programs nowadays... and not only from Microsoft.
First and foremost, the camera must be small and light enough that I can always carry it with me - and yet have a useful optical zoom. Concord seem to have that problem solved. More than the 3 MPxl resolution would be nice, but is not the top priority for me. Reducing the latency to near-zero is my next request - cheap camera-phones almost manage it; why not "proper" compact cameras. Good low-light performance, and a flash that can be set to a default of "off" would also be good. (Again, those camera phones seem to do pretty well in this... in fact they don't have flash!) Now you've solved these I'll happily push up to 6-8 Mpxl if this does not lose the low-latency low-light performance. I might even pay £100 for such:-)
A 15-y-o 3-series (as used in the test) is almost as much a classic example of "through the hedge, backwards" as an early Porsche 911: Wonderfully responsive for the skilled driver even close to the limits; safe for the average driver if they stay well clear of the limits; a deathtrap for any but the most skilled if pushed really to the limit.
If, for that test track, the drivers were being encouraged to "get the fastest time" or similar and were not well practiced in that particular vehicle under track conditions then it is no wonder that they were spinning the car.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.baen.com/ sell reasonably priced ebooks and have some free (as in beer) ones. Good start for an SF library, we just need a few more publishers* to follow that example.
... and, of course, for this new device to be able to accept them.
* a good start would be one that does detective stories - that itself might be sufficient to bootstrap ebooks to a larger audience.
Indeed ... at the time I started in computing "the" Supercomputer was the CDC6600
(having just overtaken the Atlas and Stretch).
... and in those days I was proud to be allocated 2 minutes CPU time per week on the 6600.
Hanging on the belt round my waist I now have:
A mobile phone;
A PDA;
An MP3 player;
and a digital camera.
Each of these has - and arguably needs - significantly more compyer power than that old CDC6600.
I thought one part of the definition of a supercomputer was that the cost exceeds a million (used to be that cost exceeds ten million). Dollars or Pounds, doesn't really matter even with the current exchange rate :-)
In theory, at least, a further problem is that, of the set of facilities provided by the different filesystems, there are features of each that are not supported by others.
e.g. Unix-derived (like Linux) filesystems are fully case-sensitive;
NTFS (as presented by Windows) is case preserving but insensitive.
NTFS provides essentially unlimited file attributes and data streams
Unix-derived fs behave as "stream of bytes"
(and old mainframe fs typically had many other abilities such as generation numbers and atomic commit)
There isn't a perfect solution - if people start using NTFS outside Windows MS will probably retrospectively change the spec in a way that doesn't make windows worse, but crashes non-ms implementations. If ext2 gets used then some program that uses file attributes constructively will get up and bite you - even ext3 may not handle everything that Vista may use. Separate filestore from OS by using network attached files?
Andy
Um, no - that is the replica Babbage Engine.
There is also a large Meccano-based differential analyser in the computing gallery
(in the NE corner - the other side from the Pegasus)
I'm pretty sure it is an original, not a replica - tho' I'm not quite so sure that it is
complete.
Andy
"However, the only original, complete Differential Analyser left in the world happens to be the one that helped Barnes Wallis design his famous bouncing bombs."
In that case, what is the one that is in the Science Museum, London?
The other difference is that perhaps 1 person in 100 has the skills necessary to do this to Open Source code, whereas possibly 1 in 50,000 has the reverse-engineering skills to understand (and possibly modify) binary-only systems.
Andy
If the end-user can modify the source with reasonable ease:
They can easily bypass any "broadcast flag";
They can remove restrictions on which channels a scanner can scan;
They may be able to transmit on forbidden channels or at
power levels that are above those permitted for a channel.
That is the sort of hacking that frightens the FCC
Andy
Expect it to be under serious evaluation by the US Army, US Coastguard, probably also the Navy and emergency services. And if it does perform as implied they will be paying military procurement prices - keeping the public price up - for a long time.
Andy
Don't know if the v100 is still available or, for that matter,
if it is compatible with US mobile systems.
A phone specifically designed for texting but pretty well useless for
speech (!).
More realistically look at the Nokia E62 if you can find a decent
connection deal. Better yet, get the E61 (probably have to import from Europe)
this supports WiFi connectivity as well as GSM (and 3G)
and dozens of messaging features.
Andy
There is an awful lot of "will" and very little "is" as far as I can see on the site.
>> experimentally it works
Does it still work in marginal reception areas (like on the borders of 3 regions) and in unfavorable weather (either heavy rain reducing signal levels or high pressure allowing interference from very long ranges)?
Present Freeview has problems in places not 30 miles from the centre of London - especially
on the ITV channels that use the higher symbol rate.
Andy
(Rayleigh, Essex - on the fringes of London, Meridian, and Anglia areas)
is not finding the hardware - there's more of that around than you might expect. ... "real programmers" tended to ... tho' discovering where to download the emulator and software
There are even a lot of manuals floating around
keep a manual or two when the machine was replaced.
However, the software - which is perhaps the heart of the machine - and the cables
tended to get thrown away separately as soon as the CPU was closed down.
For example for the most popular mainframe in the UK in the 1970s - the ICL1900 series -
most of the small machine software (the operators Executive; the operating systems
George I & II; and the compilers that were used on the small machines like the 4K
versions of Algol and Fortran) seems to have been lost. It is lucky that one project
has managed to preserve the large system operating system (George 3) and some
related software
is tricky, to say the least.
I have also seen no evidence that anyone has preserved the GeCOS operating system
from the large Honeywell systems (6000, and its successor the Level 66). OK, it is
not so "special" as Multics, which ran on similar hardware, but still does contain
many interesting features - most notably in file handing. For that matter has the
B programming language (predecessor of C, designed for large-word oriented machines)
been saved anywhere?
When I saw the subject, I thought this might be about another problem that I have been considering: wall power sockets for small gadgets. It seems somewhat inefficient to take the 12v output of a solar array or mini wind turbine then invert this to mains voltage (230v over here / 110v in North America) then send this out to (large) wall sockets and plug in a wall-wart to bring it back to 12v or lower.
I had assumed that there were basically two options available: high current, but ugly, car "cigarette-lighter"- type 12v sockets and small, convenient, but low current (as the article points-out) USB. Most gadgets come with cables that will work with at least one - and often both - of these.
Firewire only seems to be used seriously in the video field where, perhaps, its strong support for DRM is considered vital by the manufacturers (even if not the consumers).
Any other thoughts?
Concrete has been used to build some very attractive housing in the UK - not just horrible blocks. In the "Art Deco" (I think) period of the '20s some architects made excellent use of the material - especially it's ability to form smooth curves. See examples in the "Poirot" TV series, for example.
/. "profit", but I don't see it.
Of course, I don't know how practical they are for everyday living, but I suspect they are no worse than typical modern rabbit-hutches.
The problem will be
find your building plot
get a design made
spend six months getting planning permission
spend another six months modifying to meet building regulations
a month preparing the site
organise the manchinery to arrive
put everything off for a week when the typical British weather opens up
then you can build in a day
somewhere in that sequence there should be the traditional
Andy
Anyone who frequents boot sales in the UK will have noticed that the going price for VHS films is now down to 50p each/3 for £1 or less ... and they'll barely selling at that.
The machines still sell - generally to Nigerians who export them in bulk.
I think that is evidence of terminal decline - the last signs of life will last a little longer.
So, when MS switch-off a copy of XP (or Vista) remotely FOR WHATEVER REASON they are breaking the letter of this law - and have "the necessary intent". So will we extradite Bill and bang him up for lots of 5-year sentences?
According to The Times:
"He said a new offence would ban the possession of porn depicting "scenes of extreme sexual violence" and other obscene material such as bestiality and necrophilia".
So it is rather wider than the BBC article would suggest.
And it isn't yet law - it has to get through the House of Commons (but how many MPs would be prepared to put their heads above the parapet on this issue?) and the House of Lords (who, because unelected, tend to be more concerned with civil liberties and less concerned with being populist).
"The game is fun"
Once the "large cash prize" players get down to serious analysis I doubt seriously whether it will remain "fun".
I would very much doubt if most of the people who were asked to respond to the survey are really aware of the use of software within their institution.
Before I retired I was a senior member of computer services within a UK University. A survey like this would be considered low priority by the typical director and it would be passed-on to a (typically) random (almost certainly) low-level member of staff to complete.
Now some of these will have quite a good "grapevine" knowledge of what is going-on within their institution; but many will only know what is "policy" or installed on centrally-provided systems.
Departments tend to be fiercely independent in what they do - typically more so if there are strict central policies to the contrary.
To get reliable results, the questions would have to be (actually) answered by someone who had authority, respect, and time - all of which are likely to be in short supply in the computing services of a UK University nowadays.
Andy
Hoping that he hasn't misapplied some math that he hasn't used since his degree more than 35 years ago.
When you can remember running 60 users on a mainframe with about 1MB RAM and a processor no faster than a 386.
In the days when I was first involved in setting-up Unix systems (when SUN 3s were the fancy new toy), 8MB was a huge deal on a system with 4MB RAM. Thus we essentially banned emacs and stuck to vi. Now my thought would be "only 8MB, whats the worry".
... and not only from Microsoft.
But has emacs also had feature creep since then, with corresponding memory growth?
Worrying too much about effeciency (memory or processor) can be bad. Failing to keep it at least in the back of your mind while designing and coding leads to some of the awful performance we see in some programs nowadays
First and foremost, the camera must be small and light enough that I can always carry it with me - and yet have a useful optical zoom. ... in fact they don't have flash!) :-)
Concord seem to have that problem solved.
More than the 3 MPxl resolution would be nice, but is not the top priority for me.
Reducing the latency to near-zero is my next request - cheap camera-phones almost manage it; why not "proper" compact cameras.
Good low-light performance, and a flash that can be set to a default of "off" would also be good.
(Again, those camera phones seem to do pretty well in this
Now you've solved these I'll happily push up to 6-8 Mpxl if this does not lose the low-latency low-light performance.
I might even pay £100 for such
Andy
A 15-y-o 3-series (as used in the test) is almost as much a classic example of "through the hedge, backwards" as an early Porsche 911: Wonderfully responsive for the skilled driver even close to the limits; safe for the average driver if they stay well clear of the limits; a deathtrap for any but the most skilled if pushed really to the limit.
If, for that test track, the drivers were being encouraged to "get the fastest time" or similar and were not well practiced in that particular vehicle under track conditions then it is no wonder that they were spinning the car.