Updating the Computer, Circa 1969 124
Coudal points out a "Swell article from UK Magazine 'Design' from 1969," excerpting "Designing a computer is a continuous process in which technological breakthroughs must be matched by new hardware, and new hardware by new software, without invalidating the systems already in use."
Conversational Computing (Score:5, Interesting)
My theory is that computing and humanity interrelate: in an environment where Latin is taught alongside math, your users and developers are sharper and more humane.
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Re:Conversational Computing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
I'm unsure what 'that' refers to, what you think is debateable.
English draws much of its vocabulary from French (thanks to the Norman Invasion of England in 1066), while it gets a lot of its grammar and structure from its Germanic roots. English is probably more accurately considered a Romance-influenced Germanic tongue.
Which does not contradict what I wrote at all.
Norman-french is one of the (many) ways that Latin roots have crept into English. More have come in via Class
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
So you don't subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Fair enough, you can certainly poke it quite full of holes - Though somehow, the shreds remain basically intact.
For example, even though the Pirahã (and others) have no words for numbers over two and resultingly cannot grasp even basic arithmatic you could probably form some extended sentence to express "one and one and one". From that "circumlocution", someone already familiar wi
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Re:Conversational Computing (Score:5, Interesting)
There is an advantage to a dead language; unlike English meanings aren't mutatingl thus you can often get a better feel for exactly what someone from a different era and different culture was saying without the problem of words such as "gay", "Stupid" or "sick" having very different meanings a few generations later.
'Good' language is that which communicates what and as you intend, be it technical jargon, slang, Oxford English, Spanglish; if the sender and receptor send and receive the right message it's good language; withing that context Latin can, and often is, highly effective.
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
Gah! EVERY language has specific words or phrases that have become common across language barriers.
You mentioned French, so try:
à la carte
agent provocateur
attaché
carte blanche
cliché
décor
déjà vu
dossier
entrepreneur
faux
genre
laisser-faire
etc. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_ French_phrases_used_by_English_speakers&oldid=5869 8093#A [wikipedia.org]
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
could you imagine...
AH MEUS DEUS! EQUUS PARVULUS!!!
(sorry, i'm sure someone can come and correct my latin)
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:1)
Ave Caesar! Fuck you Cicero! (Score:1)
A tip for you (Score:2)
Your use of the definate article is ugly and redundant. What you wrote translates into English as "... than the point-and-grunt interface of today's the people".
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A tip for you (Score:2)
You tell 'im, CR.
Actually, no. (Score:2)
Actually, no. It means "(the) masses" or "(the) general populace". That's what makes language so interesting: it tends to transmute over time.
Re:A tip for you (Score:1)
A couple things:
The feater translation, therefore, would be “today's manifold;” with an implicit scilicet: “today's manifold [people, indw
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:1)
Wow... maybe someday computers will become powerful enough to use this "command-line-interaction" you speak of...
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:1)
Maybe for most tasks, but for porn, pointing and grunting is a perfect fit.
Golden ratio (Score:1)
Obsessed with the Golden Ratio, are we?
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:2)
Which clearly explains the rise of the largest violent empire the West had ever known: the Roman Empire.
Re:Conversational Computing (Score:1)
Oh, sure (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone knows that Intel and Microsoft have never invalidated a system already in use.
Of course not. (Score:2)
They just wait a few hours for it to crash first
O.T. (Score:2)
Re:O.T. (Score:2)
Re:Oh, sure (Score:1)
Come on. . . (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Come on. . . (Score:1)
Re:Come on. . . (Score:1)
Re:Come on. . . (Score:1)
Gigli Gigli, alright !
Oh... *turn off personalized search results*
Yep, there it is, salon.com
l 903A central processor (Score:4, Funny)
Re:l 903A central processor (Score:2)
Okay I don't personally remember the day of glowing vacume tubes, and manually operated switching relays but we had them once upon a time
Re:l 903A central processor (Score:3, Funny)
Re:l 903A central processor (Score:1)
Re:l 903A central processor (Score:4, Funny)
Re:l 903A central processor (Score:1)
- KillerHamster
tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:2)
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:1)
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:2)
Computers were more fun in the old days.
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:3, Funny)
If vintage porn has taught me anything, she's probably surprisingly hairy under there. You've been warned!
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:2)
Re:tagged as "rawwrrrr" (Score:2)
The Story of LEO (Score:3, Informative)
The article's mention of ICL (formerly ICT) made me think of the book "LEO, The Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer". The 1968 ICT merger with English Electric Computers to form ICL, connects the company with LEO, a computer designed by a Bakery company in the late 1940's/early 1950's. A bizarre and entertaining tale, if you are into obscure computer history.
Portable version (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Portable version (Score:1)
And dude! What's with the half door with no latch? I wouldn't want someone playing Commander Keene in my computrailer...
Yeah, "swell" (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, "swell" (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, "swell" (Score:1)
And the <p> tag wasn't invented 'till 1990
Or they used a really old wysiwyg editor
Re:Yeah, "swell" (Score:1)
Well, okay, not in the HTML, but the scans are high enough resolution to read. Shame there's no search capability.
heh (Score:3, Funny)
Very funny, but does anyone else remember? (Score:2, Informative)
Designing your computer you had the choice of something like:
Rockwell's 6500 (8 bit 1 Mhz cpu)
Motorola's very first 6800
Intel's (Who's Intel? Never heard of them) 8080 was under development or mebbe in prototype
The Next kid onto the block was Zilog with the Z80 in 1973 or thereabouts.
When Motorola introduced the 16 bit 68000 (at a blistering 15Mhz eventually) hey, that was for
minicomputers &
Re:heh (Score:2)
Re:heh (Score:1)
You'd think... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You'd think... (Score:2)
clearly... (Score:3, Funny)
A blast from the past... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A blast from the past... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A blast from the past... (Score:1)
MILF? (Score:2)
And to think... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And to think... (Score:2)
Oh, the memories...
What a great archive! (Score:2, Informative)
I worked on this project - it was 1996 -ish ! (Score:2)
So for folks wondering why it's so basic - a little more info.. short answer: it was a small project and it was about ten years ago.
I think we started about 1995 or 1996 - description here [ukoln.ac.uk]. Pat Batley is a visionary librarian who could see the value of digitisation and pushed to get archive resources digitised. She got in conta
nothing to see here... (Score:2)
Re:nothing to see here... (Score:3, Insightful)
You know how people watch old movies, learn history, carry on traditions, things like that? It's called culture. Now I don't know if you're a professional, or even just a dedicated hobbyist, but if either is true then this is your culture. Knowing who Atanasoff and Barry are, or what ENIAC stands for and what it was used for, or what a Hollerith Card is, or who Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace (Ada Byron) are and what they did is maybe not a necessity, but I personally don't see how you can take real pride
Re:nothing to see here... (Score:2, Interesting)
But then, who wants to do something well when you can do a half arsed job, spend twice as long ironing out the bugs and then get a reputation for being a fuckwit.
Sales department puffery (Score:5, Interesting)
At a given point in the development of computers a lot of people end up working on the same problems and often come up with similar solutions. While I was at Honeywell they bought GE's computer division and we got to see the design documents for GE's new computer. It was very interesting reading since we could look at each turning point in the design and say: "Oh, they decided to do it that way." All of the problems were ones that we'd worked on and the solutions were all ones that we'd considered. For the most part they'd made the same decisions we had. It was an experience that's given me a real respect for the notion that an invention is "in the air." It isn't necessarily because the problems are being widely discussed but more that a given state of technology dictates certain questions and that the solutions follow logically from the questions.
Re:Sales department puffery (Score:1)
Re:Sales department puffery (Score:1)
But the patenting of obvious inventions is hardly a recent idea.
Real Soon Now (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk about vaporware (pun not intended, though also funny).
Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:2)
When you look at it, you wonder why the US designers are so retarted to design ugly stuff like the KSR-33 [kekatos.com].
That Olivetti unit looks like it was made 20 years later...
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:4, Informative)
Probably because the Olivetti extensively used plastic or die-cast white metal in the case. If you look at the old ugly stuff like the KSR, the cases were _steel_ which is why they look so bland. You can't get the same shapes by stamping steel like you can with plastic-injection molding or die-casting and the style of the Olivetti simply screams "molded parts".
Back then it was a cultural thing. Plastic was "cheap" and steel meant quality. If the case wasn't heavy enough to kill someone with, it wasn't quality.
--
BMO
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, I suspect the real reason that Teletype Model 33 looks so ancient is that, from looking at the internals, it appears to be a clone/ripoff of a Siemens Model 100 [iprimus.com.au] or a Creed Model 47 [iprimus.com.au] - both much earlier models - updated with an "electronic" keyboard. IIRC, Teletype Corp bought (or maybe partnered with) the UK-based Creed.
(Slashdotters with a mechanical bent really should look into the old electromechanical teleprinters. They're amazing machines; a real tribute to the ingenuity of their designers. Given a motor spinning at 3000 RPM, and no electronics, how would you convert a 5-bit code to printed text?)
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:2)
--
BMO
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:2)
Sounds interesting - given enough time, I could even probably come up with a solution (something involving solenoids, cams, clutches, and ratchets - among other things - would be needed). If you want to see something simila
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:2)
That's pretty much it - the trick is all in the timing (and keeping the timing in sync).
;-)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - no relays allowed, at least not in the receive signal path. You can't go building a shift register / buffer that easily
Yup, very similar technologies. In fact, I'd be prepared to bet money that the early e
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:2)
Actually, it seems like there is a dearth of interest in anything historically related to computers prior to about 1990 by most people, even among self-described "computer geeks". I personally find the history of compu
Re:Let's not forget the user-interface... (Score:2)
To be fair, the IBM 2741 [columbia.edu] isn't quite so ugly, and the IBM 1050 was also a bit less clunky-looking (i.e., they, like the Olivetti, look more as if they actually belong in the Swinging '60's than did the Models 33 and 35 Teletypes). Even Teletype came out with the Model 37 eventually....
Successful model 1911 series... (Score:3, Funny)
However, the Colt 1911 model still works fine - not really a computer, unless it involves questions where the answer is BANG!
Re: (Score:2)
British Computer Joke (Score:3, Funny)
I Grew up with those things (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I Grew up with those things (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I Grew up with those things (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I Grew up with those things (Score:1)
The 1900's architecture predated the IBM/360. It was based on the Canadian FP 6000 design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti-Packard_600
The metric I want to know (Score:2)
I have a computer under my desk. If you go backwards in time, computers get worse and worse. Until, finally, you reach this interesting point, where, if you look at the aggregate computation power of every computer on the planet in active use, my single computer arguably has them all collectively beat. In terms, say, of mathematical operations per second. I'd like to know what year that is. It's going to be later than 1950, 1960, 1970... Could it be as high as 19
Re:The metric I want to know (Score:1)
Re:The metric I want to know (Score:2)
Re:The metric I want to know (Score:2, Interesting)
But this is where the problem is. With a little research, it's quite possible to get a good estimate for the speed of,
Re:I'm confused [miniaturization] (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yeah, but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yeah, but.... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, but.... (Score:1)