I only need to post one example of voter power - the Dixiecrats. They only ran in one election. They carried a few southern states, and were never a threat to win the presidency or either house of congress. A few states? That is a pile of electoral votes. Both parties took notice, and the Republicans started building a formidable southern constituency. The losing candidate for President was Strom Thurmond. He used the political base of that election to gain lifetime employment as Senator. Your vote does count. A true cynic will sell himself to both sides, attend all campaign parties offering free beer or free food, and vote a carefully picked mixed ticket on election day. On a smaller scale, students at UT Arlington (TX) voted in a Student Council headed by a liberal, a conservative, and a radical. They felt that any legislation those three could agree on would benefit the university.
I did not enumerate all of the Clinton/Gore sins against the constitution because only boredom would result. One thing I do ask: Whether you are a Conservative, voting for everything right, a Liberal, voting for whatever is left, or a third party man disgusted with both major parties, please VOTE. I will live with whatever results, but it really scares me that less than 26 per cent of eligible voters could rule the country because half the voters did not care enough to vote. This is a sure way to get unpopular laws rammed down the throat of a lethargic electorate that did not voice its opinions at the polls.
Commander Taco will vote for the self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet, a man who will disarm the citizens and make all communities as safe as New York City and Washington D.C., instead of perpetuating armed havens like the dangerous State of Vermont, where any citizen can carry a concealed weapon. Be advised that convicted felons do not have citizen's rights. Gore also slams the Republican VP candidate for not outlawing plastic pistols supposedly invisible to X-rays, which they are not. Glock pistols photograph quite clearly when X-rayed. Dick Cheney also decided not to outlaw "cop killer" bullets, a measure meant to outlaw all bullets eventually. No bullet in any pistol outpenetrates even a very ordinary bullet in a hunting rifle. If you wish to vote for another four years of constitutional destruction by immoral liars, be my guest. My vote will cancel the one cast by Cmdr. Taco.
I won't argue with Robert Heinlein being first with advertising on the moon, but I also remember Arthur C. Clarke's description of an unnamed corporation bribing a trademark on the moon. Clarke said the C's and L's looked good, but the A's and O's were a little off. Judge Dredd looked good, even in the failed movie, but his tale about moon advertising is not a first.
I liked Bruce Campbell in Hercules, I like him in Jack of all Trades, but X-Files is a different show. Bruce Campbell does not take himself too seriously, does not mind being the victim, and does make his female partners look prettier and smarter. He would be good company for Scully, but not as Mulder in X-Files.
I remember a past report where ATI decided to release input/output specs to the XFree86 people. This enabled them to write drivers with no knowledge of the technology, and my ATI64 driver works quite well, thank you. Driver writers need specifications. There is no need for the writer to know the technology used to reach the specification. As to reverse engineering, Kipling wrote the answer many years ago:
"They could copy every thing I did, But they couldn't copy my mind, So I left them sweating and cursing A month and a half behind."
I do not believe ATI personnel are headed for the poorhouse yet.
At last, a/. reader with an intelligent question. A few percentage points in benchmark testing are not a big deal to the average home user. I offer my own example. I built an "upgrade kit", which allowed me to use my SCSI drives in a new, faster computer, 16MHZ to 300MHz CPU speed change. Following the supplier's suggestions, I ended up with a computer running 100 MHz memory at 66MHz, and the CPU at 150 MHz. There were several reasons to limit memory speed, cool running and conservative practice being two. However, the CPU slowdown was just a goof. The technician thought there was another doubler in the CPU. Eventually, an update to X-windows was unacceptably slow to load. After checking the setup, I changed the CPU multiplier to get 300 MHz. Everything worked without a problem, and the only noticeable speedup was the X-windows load. Mind you, these are hardly small, incremental differences I am discussing. The answer for the average home user is still the same. Determine the equipment that will do your job, then buy it. For most of us poor boys, this makes price a powerful parameter, far more significant than a few percentage points in an irrelevant benchmark.
Two FBI fiascoes of late involve the shooting of an unarmed mother carrying her baby and barbecueing a church congregation. Both cases should have been handled by the ATF, which is yet another problem agency. The man in charge, Dick Rogers, wanted his men to receive bonuses and promotions for these vile acts. I hear Mr. Rogers is no longer with the FBI, but I am sure he is not getting the internment he justly deserves. The FBI is not interested in the liberty of ordinary citizens, and indeed is willing to sacrifice them in large numbers to receive good press coverage. Janet Reno accepted responsibility for the deaths of children at Mount Carmel, but has yet to turn herself in for proper punishment. Don't hold your breath waiting. Do read, and live by, the Benjamin Franklin quote about liberty and safety.
I gained lots of knowledge about this viewpoint over the years. Here are a few points.
1. How young is too young? An ancient 8088 computer was set up in a local nursery school for use by toddlers. I don't know the programs supplied. Parents could watch them play with the computer through a large window. They were amazed at how quickly the youngsters figured out how to use the machine.
2. One six-year-old at a school told a reporter,"Computers are absolutely stupid. You have to tell them everything." Insight like this marks the start of real knowledge.
3. My own career in computing started with a class of technicians off the street, learning machine language program maintenance in a few days. We had a remarkable teacher, and the lessons served me well for the next twenty years, including earning an engineering degree, getting a PE license, and maintaining the same computers in many locations and environments.
4. A niece in school was absolutely delighted to use my home computer (TI-99/4) for a few days. Her own computer classes consisted of sitting in a classroom while a teacher displayed a computer on a desk and talked about it. No student was allowed to touch the computer. This is the worst case I remember.
5. At work, after changing jobs, I started using a computer data base to keep calibration records, along with about twenty other technicians. The computer was a real lifesaver. The records were entered on a terminal and stored on a mainframe. Data was always readily available. When upper management commented on the amount of money spent on data entry and storage, we asked them to run a study on costs of records when the computer was not used. Nothing more was heard from upper management.
6. At college, computer resources were limited and terminals rationed in 30 minute increments. My instructor purposely wrote assignments that could be done on a card punch to ease the strain. Most students ignored this. I didn't, and saved much time and frustration. This method also enforced careful entry, because card punches don't have erasers.
7. Back at work, another job, the boss decided to put everyone on computers. There were only enough available for clerks to use as database terminals and engineers to use for reports, calculations, and database work. I decided I knew enough to use any computer in the shop for my own work, and donated mine to the technicians. They required very little instruction, due to prior experience. One man flatly refused to learn anything until he had a playable game. I donated a lunar lander game program, and he quickly became an enthusiastic user, for his job and for the company fishing club.
8. One volunteer project I had for a while was teaching disabled people to use donated computers. Blessed with classes no larger than twenty attendees, teaching was a breeze. I asked, "What do you want to know?", and we were on our way. The questions? "We have all these free disks with compressed programs. How do we use them?" Look for a README file, or something similar. It will describe the programs and tell how to unpack them. Still have problems? Ask me. "How do I move a program to my hard disk, or another floppy disk?" I'll show you.
If you wish to see real enthusiasm, just watch a disabled person who must concentrate hard on each key punch learn to operate a computer. Giving up is not even considered.
9. The answers to Luddite objections to computers in schools can be found in many comments on this page. Teachers wishing to use computers as tools must be able to teach computer use. A computer is a tool, not an end, and must be used properly. There is no such thing as too young, once communication is established. Tools can be misused and badly taught, just as subject material can be inappropriate and tests can be written for easy grading in preference to checking knowledge and skills. Teachers must do their job, and the best are very good, able to use the tools at hand, be it voice, books, paper and pencil, blackboard, recorder, film, or computer. My great-grandfather used books on the desk for teaching, and alongside the head for discipline. The methods worked quite well on a rowdy group, infamous for running off teachers. Great-grandfather taught until the boys were happy to greet and keep a new schoolmaster.
I have seen massage parlors, bathtub clubs, and XXX bookstores brought down by small groups united in protest. The assembly must be peaceable and trespassing will bring the police. Destruction of property is not peaceable assembly. Talking to business owners, carrying signs, holding press conferences, photographing customers, all have been effective. Be aware that this behavior outside the United States can lead to jail without trial, beatings, or death. If in a foreign country, you are a guest of the local government, and expected to behave politely. Protest may be a capital offense, and all the US Consul can do is see that you are treated no worse than the local citizens. In many cases, the US Consul will not even do that.
I have worked for several companies that have female geeks, several in important jobs. Having worked in several locations abroad where "male only" is a mandatory requirement, I welcome their presence and admire their skills. Companies are in business to make money, and if prejudice gets in the way, it gets downgraded. Many of the women I met in industry were accomplished technicians, programmers, engineers, and even administrators of geeks (Managing engineers is like herding cats). The majority were married and raising families, some while also going to school and working full time. The presence of ladies in the workplace makes life a little better, and I am always happy to have my wife meet any of them. A talented geek will be given more responsibility and more privileges as long as the company continues to profit from her. I saw only a few at high levels, but their knowledge and ability in all phases of their jobs was awesome. I am happy to have them as friends and associates. If they are holding me back, or reducing my salary, it is only because they have more to contribute and a better way to present it. Competition exists, second chances are rare, and life is tough, but everybody gets the same lousy breaks. Sex, race, and religion take a back seat to profit and ability in the USA these days.
Will Intel learn? Probably not, but the indications are that Intel leaders have seen the threat posed by Transmeta, and diarrhea is the result. Competition benefits the consumer, and consumer benefit has been a secondary consideration at Intel for a long time. Their attitude seems similar to some fellow that packages and sells licenses with software in Redmond, WA.
I defer to M. Godfrey on his/her description of later Cray computers. The only one I actually saw was being used as furniture in a museum computer exhibit. However, to avert a flame war, I said Mr. Cray designed a single purpose computer, and M. Godfrey said it was for general purpose computation. We do not disagree. Mr Cray designed his computers to do a vector calculation very quickly. This is not simple, and requires college level math to understand. And yes, this complex caculation can be programmed to do an enormous variety of math problems. It is a tool that is both very powerful and very general. Don't forget, the earliest computers were limited to addition and subtraction of integers. Multiplication, division, and real numbers were done with software. Putting multiplication, division, and real numbers into hardware was hard work. Seymour Cray put vector calculations into hardware, and that is awesome.
Seymour Cray's early supercomputers used DEC computers as front ends. The i/o for a Cray was a single connector. The i/o and housekeeping for the Cray, a vector computer, were done by the connected DEC. Seymour Cray was a pioneer in the field of making computers that do one thing, do it well, and do it very quickly.
IBM started down the road to infamy by separating the administrators from the programmers, and the users from both of these groups. Using Linux on a mainframe makes it practical for a single person to do all three functions. Linux allows thousands of users to each have their own tailored operating system, personal programming environment, and customized terminal. Each user can operate with full freedom, knowing that a blunder will affect only the guilty user. The mainframe environment provides full backup, logs, and protection of the innocent. The main gain is restoring all functions to a single person. Remember, this is what made the original IBM PC so popular. Now IBM can offer the freedom of a PC on a reliable (and profitable) mainframe, letting everybody in any large organization have the best of both setups, all under the watchful eye of a CIO. Slashdotters may not care for that last item, but the big corporations that buy IBM 390 computers love it.
The first air-conditioned house I can remember was built in Florida about 1865, not exactly in the 20th Century. I was educated in south Texas before air conditioning was economical, and never missed it. Engineering made it economical, and now most people cannot imagine life without it. Life without air conditioning is possible. Fans, light clothes, and shade become very important, as does frequent bathing.
I use the paper documents I have, even the ancient ones, preferring them to trying to get useful information from a monitor. When forced, my usual reaction is to print out the man page or how-to, then study it. My home computer library gets cleaned time to time when I have trouble finding anything in the room for all the books and papers. All manufacturers who think that documents on disk, or documents at the company site, are enough for anyone deserve the one-sprained-finger salute. Printed documents are bad enough. Some of that posted material would confuse Solomon, and the author should get bastinado at a very minimum.
Yes, I read the LOC article by James H. Billington, and it is far different from the report posted by Slashdot. Librarian Billington regards the Internet as a tool, subject to misuse, like any other tool. He does seem to recognize that eventual posting of the entire Library of Congress will improve the Internet. As for the size of the effort, slashdotters should know something of the storage capability of a few DVD's. He also recognizes the place of brick and mortar libraries in neighborhoods. The LOC is not about to concentrate its resources on any single effort to spread the benefits of book leaning to everyone. He also makes it clear that no good tool will go unused. The report posted by Slashdot seemed to be biased by sloppy writing and out-of-context quotes, making a good and careful man look like a Luddite.
I was delighted to support Slashdot. The Webby Awards site is a different matter. They get the one-sprained-finger salute for being confusing, annoying, demanding, arrogant, and generally irritating. Bastinado ("The act of walking on wood without exertion." - Ambrose Bierce) is recommended for the Webmaster.
A LinuxCare employee recently addressed our user group (NTLUG), telling us of the things LinuxCare was attempting, and what they were doing. His talk was from a sales/technical point of view. They are doing well on a Linux cluster. They need to break through the resistance of able managers to using Linux, mainly by establishing themselves as an on-call, always ready service organization. The mini-CD-ROM he passed out had a lot to offer, including reboot capability. He made no comment about upper management, and none was requested. Users are interested in useful product, not high-sounding statements. The delay in the IPO involved matters of no real interest to the user group, other than we wish them to continue doing business.
The first temptation is to shout "Sieg Heil!", but the truth is that J. Edgar Hoover kept just this type of data base, covering such dangerous radicals as Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lucille Ball. Presumably, all you Southerners should remember that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants rule, and your neck should be red, not black, brown, or yellow. Those with pasty white necks will be sent to seminars on wearing gimme caps. Pinkerton, keepers of the newest data base, showed their taste for Truth, Justice, and the American Way when they shot strikers during the 1930's. I am not a Socialist, and never will be, however I remember Mr. Socialist, Norman Mattoon Thomas. He was jailed as a dangerous radical for reading the US and New York Constitutions in public, had his phone tapped by several law enforcement agencies, and suffered much abuse from established business and political interests for promoting laws against child labor, for limited work weeks, and for a national retirement program. Every plank of every political platform he ever wrote or advocated became law of the land before he died. Enemies of radicals should be chastised. Bastinado will do for a first offense.
When my father studied chemistry, before 1930, a chemist handed a transistor would have decided it was remarkably pure silicon, and not have understood its electrical properties. Anyone explaining the operation of a tunnel diode would have been immediately labeled a crackpot. And even at the end of World War II, the ray gun was seen only in comic strips and science fiction. Be careful what you call impossible, and understand that a physics degree does not make anyone infallible.
Re:But why bother with an iMac
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
The man bothered with an iMac because it would do his job. Why invest in bigger when iMac is good enough? I congratulate him on a job well done. He solved many problems on the way to his elegant solution. I work with IBM compostables by choice, but see nothing wrong with the way Apples do the job. I used and enjoyed them on a one-year contract. Again, my congratulations to a problem solver.
I checked out one of the sites identified as correctly blocked. It contained some shots of a movie actress posing topless. Playboy established that this was not pornography about 1954. Our would-be censors are clueless as well as mistaken. Parents should explain to their children why some material is objectionable, and viewing it is a waste of time. Companies being censored should sue the censors, but stupidity is not yet a crime. If it was, censor executions would be the next great TV show.
I won't comment on your abilities as a system administrator. I do say that your use of English would be grounds to fail you at any accredited college or university. College should give you a well rounded education and show you how to think. Specialists are trained in technical schools.
Slashdot Mirror
I only need to post one example of voter power - the Dixiecrats. They only ran in one election. They carried a few southern states, and were never a threat to win the presidency or either house of congress. A few states? That is a pile of electoral votes. Both parties took notice, and the Republicans started building a formidable southern constituency. The losing candidate for President was Strom Thurmond. He used the political base of that election to gain lifetime employment as Senator. Your vote does count. A true cynic will sell himself to both sides, attend all campaign parties offering free beer or free food, and vote a carefully picked mixed ticket on election day. On a smaller scale, students at UT Arlington (TX) voted in a Student Council headed by a liberal, a conservative, and a radical. They felt that any legislation those three could agree on would benefit the university.
I did not enumerate all of the Clinton/Gore sins against the constitution because only boredom would result. One thing I do ask: Whether you are a Conservative, voting for everything right, a Liberal, voting for whatever is left, or a third party man disgusted with both major parties, please VOTE. I will live with whatever results, but it really scares me that less than 26 per cent of eligible voters could rule the country because half the voters did not care enough to vote. This is a sure way to get unpopular laws rammed down the throat of a lethargic electorate that did not voice its opinions at the polls.
Commander Taco will vote for the self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet, a man who will disarm the citizens and make all communities as safe as New York City and Washington D.C., instead of perpetuating armed havens like the dangerous State of Vermont, where any citizen can carry a concealed weapon. Be advised that convicted felons do not have citizen's rights. Gore also slams the Republican VP candidate for not outlawing plastic pistols supposedly invisible to X-rays, which they are not. Glock pistols photograph quite clearly when X-rayed. Dick Cheney also decided not to outlaw "cop killer" bullets, a measure meant to outlaw all bullets eventually. No bullet in any pistol outpenetrates even a very ordinary bullet in a hunting rifle. If you wish to vote for another four years of constitutional destruction by immoral liars, be my guest. My vote will cancel the one cast by Cmdr. Taco.
I won't argue with Robert Heinlein being first with advertising on the moon, but I also remember Arthur C. Clarke's description of an unnamed corporation bribing a trademark on the moon. Clarke said the C's and L's looked good, but the A's and O's were a little off. Judge Dredd looked good, even in the failed movie, but his tale about moon advertising is not a first.
I liked Bruce Campbell in Hercules, I like him in Jack of all Trades, but X-Files is a different show. Bruce Campbell does not take himself too seriously, does not mind being the victim, and does make his female partners look prettier and smarter. He would be good company for Scully, but not as Mulder in X-Files.
I remember a past report where ATI decided to release input/output specs to the XFree86 people. This enabled them to write drivers with no knowledge of the technology, and my ATI64 driver works quite well, thank you. Driver writers need specifications. There is no need for the writer to know the technology used to reach the specification. As to reverse engineering, Kipling wrote the answer many years ago:
"They could copy every thing I did,
But they couldn't copy my mind,
So I left them sweating and cursing
A month and a half behind."
I do not believe ATI personnel are headed for the poorhouse yet.
At last, a /. reader with an intelligent question. A few percentage points in benchmark testing are not a big deal to the average home user. I offer my own example. I built an "upgrade kit", which allowed me to use my SCSI drives in a new, faster computer, 16MHZ to 300MHz CPU speed change. Following the supplier's suggestions, I ended up with a computer running 100 MHz memory at 66MHz, and the CPU at 150 MHz. There were several reasons to limit memory speed, cool running and conservative practice being two. However, the CPU slowdown was just a goof. The technician thought there was another doubler in the CPU. Eventually, an update to X-windows was unacceptably slow to load. After checking the setup, I changed the CPU multiplier to get 300 MHz. Everything worked without a problem, and the only noticeable speedup was the X-windows load. Mind you, these are hardly small, incremental differences I am discussing. The answer for the average home user is still the same. Determine the equipment that will do your job, then buy it. For most of us poor boys, this makes price a powerful parameter, far more significant than a few percentage points in an irrelevant benchmark.
Two FBI fiascoes of late involve the shooting of an unarmed mother carrying her baby and barbecueing a church congregation. Both cases should have been handled by the ATF, which is yet another problem agency. The man in charge, Dick Rogers, wanted his men to receive bonuses and promotions for these vile acts. I hear Mr. Rogers is no longer with the FBI, but I am sure he is not getting the internment he justly deserves. The FBI is not interested in the liberty of ordinary citizens, and indeed is willing to sacrifice them in large numbers to receive good press coverage. Janet Reno accepted responsibility for the deaths of children at Mount Carmel, but has yet to turn herself in for proper punishment. Don't hold your breath waiting. Do read, and live by, the Benjamin Franklin quote about liberty and safety.
I gained lots of knowledge about this viewpoint over the years. Here are a few points.
1. How young is too young? An ancient 8088 computer was set up in a local nursery school for use by toddlers. I don't know the programs supplied. Parents could watch them play with the computer through a large window. They were amazed at how quickly the youngsters figured out how to use the machine.
2. One six-year-old at a school told a reporter,"Computers are absolutely stupid. You have to tell them everything." Insight like this marks the start of real knowledge.
3. My own career in computing started with a class of technicians off the street, learning machine language program maintenance in a few days. We had a remarkable teacher, and the lessons served me well for the next twenty years, including earning an engineering degree, getting a PE license, and maintaining the same computers in many locations and environments.
4. A niece in school was absolutely delighted to use my home computer (TI-99/4) for a few days. Her own computer classes consisted of sitting in a classroom while a teacher displayed a computer on a desk and talked about it. No student was allowed to touch the computer. This is the worst case I remember.
5. At work, after changing jobs, I started using a computer data base to keep calibration records, along with about twenty other technicians. The computer was a real lifesaver. The records were entered on a terminal and stored on a mainframe. Data was always readily available. When upper management commented on the amount of money spent on data entry and storage, we asked them to run a study on costs of records when the computer was not used. Nothing more was heard from upper management.
6. At college, computer resources were limited and terminals rationed in 30 minute increments. My instructor purposely wrote assignments that could be done on a card punch to ease the strain. Most students ignored this. I didn't, and saved much time and frustration. This method also enforced careful entry, because card punches don't have erasers.
7. Back at work, another job, the boss decided to put everyone on computers. There were only enough available for clerks to use as database terminals and engineers to use for reports, calculations, and database work. I decided I knew enough to use any computer in the shop for my own work, and donated mine to the technicians.
They required very little instruction, due to prior experience. One man flatly refused to learn anything until he had a playable game. I donated a lunar lander game program, and he quickly became an enthusiastic user, for his job and for the company fishing club.
8. One volunteer project I had for a while was teaching disabled people to use donated computers. Blessed with classes no larger than twenty attendees, teaching was a breeze. I asked, "What do you want to know?", and we were on our way. The questions? "We have all these free disks with compressed programs. How do we use them?" Look for a README file, or something similar. It will describe the programs and tell how to unpack them. Still have problems? Ask me. "How do I move a program to my hard disk, or another floppy disk?" I'll show you.
If you wish to see real enthusiasm, just watch a disabled person who must concentrate hard on each key punch learn to operate a computer. Giving up is not even considered.
9. The answers to Luddite objections to computers in schools can be found in many comments on this page. Teachers wishing to use computers as tools must be able to teach computer use. A computer is a tool, not an end, and must be used properly. There is no such thing as too young, once communication is established. Tools can be misused and badly taught, just as subject material can be inappropriate and tests can be written for easy grading in preference to checking knowledge and skills. Teachers must do their job, and the best are very good, able to use the tools at hand, be it voice, books, paper and pencil, blackboard, recorder, film, or computer. My great-grandfather used books on the desk for teaching, and alongside the head for discipline. The methods worked quite well on a rowdy group, infamous for running off teachers. Great-grandfather taught until the boys were happy to greet and keep a new schoolmaster.
I have seen massage parlors, bathtub clubs, and XXX bookstores brought down by small groups united in protest. The assembly must be peaceable and trespassing will bring the police. Destruction of property is not peaceable assembly. Talking to business owners, carrying signs, holding press conferences, photographing customers, all have been effective. Be aware that this behavior outside the United States can lead to jail without trial, beatings, or death. If in a foreign country, you are a guest of the local government, and expected to behave politely. Protest may be a capital offense, and all the US Consul can do is see that you are treated no worse than the local citizens. In many cases, the US Consul will not even do that.
I have worked for several companies that have female geeks, several in important jobs. Having worked in several locations abroad where "male only" is a mandatory requirement, I welcome their presence and admire their skills. Companies are in business to make money, and if prejudice gets in the way, it gets downgraded. Many of the women I met in industry were accomplished technicians, programmers, engineers, and even administrators of geeks (Managing engineers is like herding cats). The majority were married and raising families, some while also going to school and working full time. The presence of ladies in the workplace makes life a little better, and I am always happy to have my wife meet any of them. A talented geek will be given more responsibility and more privileges as long as the company continues to profit from her. I saw only a few at high levels, but their knowledge and ability in all phases of their jobs was awesome. I am happy to have them as friends and associates. If they are holding me back, or reducing my salary, it is only because they have more to contribute and a better way to present it. Competition exists, second chances are rare, and life is tough, but everybody gets the same lousy breaks. Sex, race, and religion take a back seat to profit and ability in the USA these days.
Will Intel learn? Probably not, but the indications are that Intel leaders have seen the threat posed by Transmeta, and diarrhea is the result. Competition benefits the consumer, and consumer benefit has been a secondary consideration at Intel for a long time. Their attitude seems similar to some fellow that packages and sells licenses with software in Redmond, WA.
I defer to M. Godfrey on his/her description of later Cray computers. The only one I actually saw was being used as furniture in a museum computer exhibit. However, to avert a flame war, I said Mr. Cray designed a single purpose computer, and M. Godfrey said it was for general purpose computation. We do not disagree. Mr Cray designed his computers to do a vector calculation very quickly. This is not simple, and requires college level math to understand. And yes, this complex caculation can be programmed to do an enormous variety of math problems. It is a tool that is both very powerful and very general. Don't forget, the earliest computers were limited to addition and subtraction of integers. Multiplication, division, and real numbers were done with software. Putting multiplication, division, and real numbers into hardware was hard work. Seymour Cray put vector calculations into hardware, and that is awesome.
Seymour Cray's early supercomputers used DEC computers as front ends. The i/o for a Cray was a single connector. The i/o and housekeeping for the Cray, a vector computer, were done by the connected DEC. Seymour Cray was a pioneer in the field of making computers that do one thing, do it well, and do it very quickly.
IBM started down the road to infamy by separating the administrators from the programmers, and the users from both of these groups. Using Linux on a mainframe makes it practical for a single person to do all three functions. Linux allows thousands of users to each have their own tailored operating system, personal programming environment, and customized terminal. Each user can operate with full freedom, knowing that a blunder will affect only the guilty user. The mainframe environment provides full backup, logs, and protection of the innocent. The main gain is restoring all functions to a single person. Remember, this is what made the original IBM PC so popular. Now IBM can offer the freedom of a PC on a reliable (and profitable) mainframe, letting everybody in any large organization have the best of both setups, all under the watchful eye of a CIO. Slashdotters may not care for that last item, but the big corporations that buy IBM 390 computers love it.
The first air-conditioned house I can remember was built in Florida about 1865, not exactly in the 20th Century. I was educated in south Texas before air conditioning was economical, and never missed it. Engineering made it economical, and now most people cannot imagine life without it. Life without air conditioning is possible. Fans, light clothes, and shade become very important, as does frequent bathing.
I use the paper documents I have, even the ancient ones, preferring them to trying to get useful information from a monitor. When forced, my usual reaction is to print out the man page or how-to, then study it. My home computer library gets cleaned time to time when I have trouble finding anything in the room for all the books and papers. All manufacturers who think that documents on disk, or documents at the company site, are enough for anyone deserve the one-sprained-finger salute. Printed documents are bad enough. Some of that posted material would confuse Solomon, and the author should get bastinado at a very minimum.
Yes, I read the LOC article by James H. Billington, and it is far different from the report posted by Slashdot. Librarian Billington regards the Internet as a tool, subject to misuse, like any other tool. He does seem to recognize that eventual posting of the entire Library of Congress will improve the Internet. As for the size of the effort, slashdotters should know something of the storage capability of a few DVD's. He also recognizes the place of brick and mortar libraries in neighborhoods. The LOC is not about to concentrate its resources on any single effort to spread the benefits of book leaning to everyone. He also makes it clear that no good tool will go unused. The report posted by Slashdot seemed to be biased by sloppy writing and out-of-context quotes, making a good and careful man look like a Luddite.
I was delighted to support Slashdot. The Webby Awards site is a different matter. They get the one-sprained-finger salute for being confusing, annoying, demanding, arrogant, and generally irritating. Bastinado ("The act of walking on wood without exertion." - Ambrose Bierce) is recommended for the Webmaster.
A LinuxCare employee recently addressed our user group (NTLUG), telling us of the things LinuxCare was attempting, and what they were doing. His talk was from a sales/technical point of view. They are doing well on a Linux cluster. They need to break through the resistance of able managers to using Linux, mainly by establishing themselves as an on-call, always ready service organization.
The mini-CD-ROM he passed out had a lot to offer, including reboot capability. He made no comment about upper management, and none was requested. Users are interested in useful product, not high-sounding statements. The delay in the IPO involved matters of no real interest to the user group, other than we wish them to continue doing business.
The first temptation is to shout "Sieg Heil!", but the truth is that J. Edgar Hoover kept just this type of data base, covering such dangerous radicals as Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lucille Ball. Presumably, all you Southerners should remember that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants rule, and your neck should be red, not black, brown, or yellow. Those with pasty white necks will be sent to seminars on wearing gimme caps. Pinkerton, keepers of the newest data base, showed their taste for Truth, Justice, and the American Way when they shot strikers during the 1930's. I am not a Socialist, and never will be, however I remember Mr. Socialist, Norman Mattoon Thomas. He was jailed as a dangerous radical for reading the US and New York Constitutions in public, had his phone tapped by several law enforcement agencies, and suffered much abuse from established business and political interests for promoting laws against child labor, for limited work weeks, and for a national retirement program. Every plank of every political platform he ever wrote or advocated became law of the land before he died. Enemies of radicals should be chastised. Bastinado will do for a first offense.
When my father studied chemistry, before 1930, a chemist handed a transistor would have decided it was remarkably pure silicon, and not have understood its electrical properties. Anyone explaining the operation of a tunnel diode would have been immediately labeled a crackpot. And even at the end of World War II, the ray gun was seen only in comic strips and science fiction. Be careful what you call impossible, and understand that a physics degree does not make anyone infallible.
The man bothered with an iMac because it would do his job. Why invest in bigger when iMac is good enough? I congratulate him on a job well done. He solved many problems on the way to his elegant solution. I work with IBM compostables by choice, but see nothing wrong with the way Apples do the job. I used and enjoyed them on a one-year contract. Again, my congratulations to a problem solver.
I checked out one of the sites identified as correctly blocked. It contained some shots of a movie actress posing topless. Playboy established that this was not pornography about 1954. Our would-be censors are clueless as well as mistaken. Parents should explain to their children why some material is objectionable, and viewing it is a waste of time. Companies being censored should sue the censors, but stupidity is not yet a crime. If it was, censor executions would be the next great TV show.
I won't comment on your abilities as a system administrator. I do say that your use of English would be grounds to fail you at any accredited college or university. College should give you a well rounded education and show you how to think. Specialists are trained in technical schools.