Radio Shack missed the boat in my opinion. Sure they were before their time when they first opened but by now they should have moved to warehouse-sized stores because if they had played their cards right, I'm sure they could have done it and they could be making a lot more money right now.
They tried - ever hear of Tandy's Incredible Universe??? The one in San Diego became the first Fry's in S.D.
For some reason "Incredible Universe" always reminded me of Michael Jackson.
I sorta went the other way with my first PC - buying a Seattle Computer 8086 system - which predated the IBM PC by two years and was three times faster (8 MHz clock and 16 bit bus). It also came with pretty good documentation, including the source for IO.SYS in case you wanted to interface a new S-100 or funky disk drive. Most importantly, Tim Paterson paid attention to Intel documentation and did not use any of the interrupts below 20H - which is why DOS used 21H for OS calls. Unfortunately, most MS-DOS software was written to be PC dependent (most important was Lotus 1-2-3 which made the IBM PC) and not strictly MS-DOS.
I do agree with a former co-worker's rant that the world would have been much better off had IBM gone with the 68K and OS-9 - however it did take Moto a few years to come up with their answer to the 8087.
The main reason for going the turboelectric route on a sub was to allow the turbine to be isolated from the hull - the generator and turbine are mounted on a vibration isolating "raft" and the motor is much more rigidly mounted to the hull (torque).
A 40,000 SHP electric motor for the Lady Lex and Sister Sara would look something like a 30MW water turbine alternator of that era (hydroelectric plant) - a low head water turbine looks pretty much like a propeller in a casing.
Transit systems are a good source for DC power handling - typically running 600 to 660VDC (BART is an oddball at 1,000VDC) - though a data center probably wouldn't have to worry about a lightning strike to the DC power bus. Aluminum smelters use HUGE quantities of DC power - heard someone tell about a visit to one, wondering who was tugging at his keys and then realizing it was the magnetic field from the bus bars.
Other large DC power installations include particle accelerators (the Bevatron at peak field used ~14,000A at 8,000V) and fusion experiments - the Doublet III used ~ 250MW of power and one at LLNL used 1GW (this figure was from PG&E).
To sum it up, DC powered data centers don't involve anything out of current experience.
Norman Friedman's "U.S. Submarines since 1945", (Naval Institute Press, 1994) lists the Lipscomb as having 12,500 SHP (used an S5W reactor). No mention was made whether the drive was DC or AC. The turbo-electric ships of the 1915 to 1925 time frame used 2 phase AC - the electric drive was used instead of reduction gears (also cut down on shaft length) - the Lexington and Saratoga had 160,000 SHP.
The Barbel is listed as having 4,700 SHP - single shaft and DC. The Sailfish had a bit over 8,000 SHP, presumably in two shafts - saw that boat in San Diego Dec 1971 and got a tour of a post war Guppy.
The LA class is normally thought to have 30,000 SHP and the Ohio class is thought to have 60,000 SHP.
RG-58 is high quality cable when compared to RG-174 - but a better choice in that size would be RG-223. RG-6 is 75 ohm, and coaxial cables are usually referred to as unbalanced lines as the outer conductor is usually at ground potential.
The point of these mines is to be more deadly to their intended target, not to civillians wandering down the area after peace breaks out again. My undertsanding is the avtive life of the mines is determined by the battery - once that discharges, the mine is pretty inert.
Another key point - the mines are not intended to be buried, which should make it much easier to clean up afterwards. The will also have a fair amount of metal in them, so should be easier to spot with a metal detector than the current generation of plastic landmines (plastic is used because it is cheaper than metal as well as being a bitch to detect - best approach is a combination of ground penetrating radar and nuclear quadrupole resonance).
Thermal diffusion, calutrons, gaseous diffusion,and centrifuges - sounds like 4 methods to me. Two big problems with thermal diffusion, one is it is a huge energy hog and two it takes a couple of years before you get significant HEU output.
You're a bit off in the order - the first batch of uranium was first slightly enriched with the S-50, the further enriched with the Y-12, then finally with the A and B racetracks.
The Little Boy bomb was spectacularly inefficient, the 12.5 kT yield was 1% of the theoretical 1.3 MT yield if all of the uranium was fissioned.
Now we're seeing things like the JRMI Model Train SDK project getting sued (1/2 pg. down) for $300,000.00 for infringing patents. The impact of this kind of suit on small software developers, whether free or closed, will be devastating.
What's even worse is that JMRI was first distributed 6 months before the application for the "infringed patent" was filed. Do note that the patent holder is Japanese, but he does have an American legal form doing the dirty work.
It shouldn't be too difficult to migrate back to UNIX if it makes sense in the future - Solaris on Opterons is probably more cost effective than anything that will run on a Dell box (unless Dell gives up their Intel fetish).
OTOH, it does seem distressingly easy to write code that will run only on Linux.
Somewhere along the way, people forgot that, ultimately, word processing and typesetting are separate tasks, and if you really look at the current contenders, they're not really good at either...
Very insightful comment.
I would add that there are three separate tasks being done by M$-Weird and its ilk. In addition to word processing and typesetting, the third task is long technical document preparation, with TeX and Lotus Manuscript being a couple of notable examples.
I have fond memories of using a contemporary of ApplixWare - Island Write, Draw and Paint. The process that Island Write uses to insert graphics (define container, then insert graphics) makes a hell of a lot more sense then using either Word or Open/StarOffice.
One of his more outrageous boo-boos was back in th '87-'88 timeframe talking up some Taiwanese 286 mobo's that had some really smoking benchmarks with some song and dance about how they were able to speed up the 286. Turns out what they really did was to slow down the clock used by the benchmark.
The really surprising thing was that Dvorak actually printed a mea culpa saying that he allowed himself to get snookered.
At the time, Kahan was arguing in favor of using the full power of the Intel/AMD 80-bit extended precision doubles [i.e. embedding 64-bit doubles in an 80-bit space, performing calculations with the greater accuracy afforded therein, and then rounding the result back down to 64-bits and returning that as your answer], but, truth be told, the Sine Qua Non of hardware-based calculations is true 128-bit "quad-precision" floating point calculations as performed in hardware.
The CDC 6600's single precision arithmetic used 60 bits and the architecture had hardware support for doing double precision - and Kahan was familiar with the CDC ISA (the main computer at UCB at that time he started there was still the 6400 in the basement of Evans Hall).
The whole point of the 80-bit extended precision in the 8087 and successors was to be able to get reliable results with "pencil and paper" algorithms. IOW, get reasonable numbers without doing Numerical Analysis. The reality is that a programmer who is aware of roundoff issues can get better results with 64 bits that a clueless programmer with 80 bits.
The T2 is supposed to have an FPU for each core, so would be a simpler solution tan trying to use a grpahics card. The T2 is also supposed to have double the number of threads per core and even more memory bandwidth.
Until we can develop fusion, energy production will be ugly
You have any idea of what kind of messes are made by 14 MeV neutrons??? Atoms getting knocked out of the their lattices, lotsa interesting (n,p) and (n,alpha) reactions... not a lot cleaner than fission.
I have no idea what a 36 bit signed-magnitude integer mainfraim (( Yeah, they really existed -- CDC made them ))
CDC made 48 bit machines (1604 and 3000 series) and 60 bit machines (6000 series, 7600 and some Cyber's) but not a 36 bit machine AFAIK. The 6600 had 60 bit reals and long ints, 18 bit short ints, 12 bit words for the peripheral processors - a real PITA for C.
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The IIIi is quite real (I'm replying on a IIIi machine), it is the IIIi+ that's been imaginary.
They tried - ever hear of Tandy's Incredible Universe??? The one in San Diego became the first Fry's in S.D.
For some reason "Incredible Universe" always reminded me of Michael Jackson.
No, my first impression was reading 'GE' as General Electric as well. Also tend to read GM as General Motors...
The Sun "UNIX" keyboard has the control key next to the "A" key as God intended. Sun has the "PC" key for the infidels.
I do agree with a former co-worker's rant that the world would have been much better off had IBM gone with the 68K and OS-9 - however it did take Moto a few years to come up with their answer to the 8087.
From what I've heard with folks who dealt with him "rather large pain" is an understatement.
A 40,000 SHP electric motor for the Lady Lex and Sister Sara would look something like a 30MW water turbine alternator of that era (hydroelectric plant) - a low head water turbine looks pretty much like a propeller in a casing.
Transit systems are a good source for DC power handling - typically running 600 to 660VDC (BART is an oddball at 1,000VDC) - though a data center probably wouldn't have to worry about a lightning strike to the DC power bus. Aluminum smelters use HUGE quantities of DC power - heard someone tell about a visit to one, wondering who was tugging at his keys and then realizing it was the magnetic field from the bus bars.
Other large DC power installations include particle accelerators (the Bevatron at peak field used ~14,000A at 8,000V) and fusion experiments - the Doublet III used ~ 250MW of power and one at LLNL used 1GW (this figure was from PG&E).
To sum it up, DC powered data centers don't involve anything out of current experience.
The Barbel is listed as having 4,700 SHP - single shaft and DC. The Sailfish had a bit over 8,000 SHP, presumably in two shafts - saw that boat in San Diego Dec 1971 and got a tour of a post war Guppy.
The LA class is normally thought to have 30,000 SHP and the Ohio class is thought to have 60,000 SHP.
RG-58 is high quality cable when compared to RG-174 - but a better choice in that size would be RG-223. RG-6 is 75 ohm, and coaxial cables are usually referred to as unbalanced lines as the outer conductor is usually at ground potential.
The USN was somewhat unique in using a series hybrid design (no connection between the crankshaft and propellers).
GE built some diesel eletric hybrid locomotives ca 1930 - which could also run off a catenary (Lackawana) or third rail (NY Central).
Didn't know there was a lesbian sex technique called the "Trib".
Another key point - the mines are not intended to be buried, which should make it much easier to clean up afterwards. The will also have a fair amount of metal in them, so should be easier to spot with a metal detector than the current generation of plastic landmines (plastic is used because it is cheaper than metal as well as being a bitch to detect - best approach is a combination of ground penetrating radar and nuclear quadrupole resonance).
Other than that, the artocle does make sense.
Thermal diffusion, calutrons, gaseous diffusion,and centrifuges - sounds like 4 methods to me. Two big problems with thermal diffusion, one is it is a huge energy hog and two it takes a couple of years before you get significant HEU output.
You're a bit off in the order - the first batch of uranium was first slightly enriched with the S-50, the further enriched with the Y-12, then finally with the A and B racetracks.
The Little Boy bomb was spectacularly inefficient, the 12.5 kT yield was 1% of the theoretical 1.3 MT yield if all of the uranium was fissioned.
From Flesh Gordon.
What's even worse is that JMRI was first distributed 6 months before the application for the "infringed patent" was filed. Do note that the patent holder is Japanese, but he does have an American legal form doing the dirty work.
Theo may be a royal PITA at times, but his personality is a good match for the goals of the OpenBSD project.
What's makes it even worse for people who are allergic to religion, is that the concept is a big one on the Catholic Church,
The legal largely ignores "sins of omission", but there are a few exceptions, notably knowing about plans to commit a capital crime.
OTOH, it does seem distressingly easy to write code that will run only on Linux.
Very insightful comment.
I would add that there are three separate tasks being done by M$-Weird and its ilk. In addition to word processing and typesetting, the third task is long technical document preparation, with TeX and Lotus Manuscript being a couple of notable examples.
I have fond memories of using a contemporary of ApplixWare - Island Write, Draw and Paint. The process that Island Write uses to insert graphics (define container, then insert graphics) makes a hell of a lot more sense then using either Word or Open/StarOffice.
The really surprising thing was that Dvorak actually printed a mea culpa saying that he allowed himself to get snookered.
The CDC 6600's single precision arithmetic used 60 bits and the architecture had hardware support for doing double precision - and Kahan was familiar with the CDC ISA (the main computer at UCB at that time he started there was still the 6400 in the basement of Evans Hall).
The whole point of the 80-bit extended precision in the 8087 and successors was to be able to get reliable results with "pencil and paper" algorithms. IOW, get reasonable numbers without doing Numerical Analysis. The reality is that a programmer who is aware of roundoff issues can get better results with 64 bits that a clueless programmer with 80 bits.
The T2 is supposed to have an FPU for each core, so would be a simpler solution tan trying to use a grpahics card. The T2 is also supposed to have double the number of threads per core and even more memory bandwidth.
You have any idea of what kind of messes are made by 14 MeV neutrons??? Atoms getting knocked out of the their lattices, lotsa interesting (n,p) and (n,alpha) reactions... not a lot cleaner than fission.
CDC made 48 bit machines (1604 and 3000 series) and 60 bit machines (6000 series, 7600 and some Cyber's) but not a 36 bit machine AFAIK. The 6600 had 60 bit reals and long ints, 18 bit short ints, 12 bit words for the peripheral processors - a real PITA for C.