Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>>   There were no children many hundred billion years ago.
> > 
> >> I was waiting for that one... *sigh*
> > 
> >   It's a so-called mathematician's answer.

> Technically, 1 hundred billion years is about 7.3 times the estimated 
> age of the universe

  Depends on whether you are using American billions or European billions.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>>>>>   There were no children many hundred billion years ago.
>>>> I was waiting for that one... *sigh*
>>>   It's a so-called mathematician's answer.
> 
>> Technically, 1 hundred billion years is about 7.3 times the estimated 
>> age of the universe
> 
>   Depends on whether you are using American billions or European billions.

NAAAAAARGH!! >_<

I never did like Americans... (Then again, they probably don't like me 
either.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
>>> 1997? o_O
>>
>> just in time for the first version of GHC... :-)
> 
> Actually about ten years *after* the first version of GHC.
> 
> Yes, I realise that sounds utterly absurd...

Timing was just as innacurate as the original post.  All for the sake of 
a good joke. :)

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>>>> 1997? o_O
>>>
>>> just in time for the first version of GHC... :-)
>>
>> Actually about ten years *after* the first version of GHC.
>>
>> Yes, I realise that sounds utterly absurd...
> 
> Timing was just as innacurate as the original post.  All for the sake of 
> a good joke. :)

Hey, *I* had to look it up.

It still slightly frightens me that Haskell is actually this old... Just 
think how much better the world could be today if its ideas had caught 
on back then?

-- 
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http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
>>> It still somewhat blows my mind that you could do anything useful 
>>> with so little memory. Presumably for processing large datasets, most 
>>> of the data at any one time would be in secondary storage?
>>
>> Large datasets then were also very tiny compared to large datasets of 
>> today. :)
> 
> Sure. But 1MB is such a tiny amount of memory, it could only hold a few 
> thousand records (depending on their size). It would almost be faster to 
> process them by hand then go to all the trouble of punching cards and 
> feeding them through a computer.

that's not quite what Hollerith found with the American 1890's census. ;)

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
>>>>> 1997? o_O
>>>>
>>>> just in time for the first version of GHC... :-)
>>>
>>> Actually about ten years *after* the first version of GHC.
>>>
>>> Yes, I realise that sounds utterly absurd...
>>
>> Timing was just as innacurate as the original post.  All for the sake 
>> of a good joke. :)
> 
> Hey, *I* had to look it up.
> 
> It still slightly frightens me that Haskell is actually this old... Just 
> think how much better the world could be today if its ideas had caught 
> on back then?

hey, Lisp was born before C or even Algol and that didn't help either! :P

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>> It still slightly frightens me that Haskell is actually this old... 
>> Just think how much better the world could be today if its ideas had 
>> caught on back then?
> 
> hey, Lisp was born before C or even Algol and that didn't help either! :P

Oh well. I guess as in all other aspects of technology, the least 
effective technology always wins.

-- 
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http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> So the concept of a filesystem storing named files already existed at
> >> this time?
> >
> > Generally, yes. But you usually wound up pre-allocating files, and they
> > were contiguous on disk.
>
> OK.
>
> Files only on disk? Or on tape too? (From what I've seen, punch cards
> didn't have this level of abstraction. It wouldn't be terribly necessary
> I guess...)

Data on punch cards are treated no differently than data on mag tape, paper tape
or disk.  It is a sequential file with a fixed record length of 80 bytes.
A program only knows it reads 80 byte records, it doesn't care what physical
device its on. Just don't try to read the punch card data backwards.

> >> Interesting. So the system actually "knows" where each field of a
> >> record is then?
> >
> > Records were fixed size, so it was trivial to calculate.
>
> OK. But does the system know where the *fields* in a record are? Or just
> what size the records are?

The file systems does not understand fields.  It understands file organization
(sequential, indexed, random access), record type (fixed, variable, undefined),
and maximum record length and block size.  Interpretation of data at the field
level is done by the program.  If the file is a part of a database, the database
manager handles field definition.

>
> >> Really? I didn't think anybody had mainframes any more... just big
> >> server farms.
> >
> > The people who want to do lots of I/O have machines where instead of
> > GPUs they have IOPs.  A 800,000 line phone switch, for example, is
> > pretty much all IOP, with something like a 68000 running the actual
> > switching part.
> >
> > Of course, what one might call a "PC" nowadays has a terabyte of RAM and
> > 96 quad-core processor chips, so the lines blur.
>
> Yeah, I think the term "mainframe" is probably obsolete now. There are
> probably more exact ways to describe what type of computer you mean.
>

There is a lot of overlap between a "mainframe" and a "PC". There are some PC
configurations that are more powerful than some mainframes.  So what is or is
not a mainframe can be debatable. There are very few things a modern mainframe
can't do that a PC can and vice versa.  You can run Linux on an IBM z/series
machine, just like on a PC.  As a user it would be difficult to tell the
difference.  Its all a matter of scale.

> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Isaac

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> It still somewhat blows my mind that you could do anything useful with
> >> so little memory. Presumably for processing large datasets, most of
> >> the data at any one time would be in secondary storage?
> >
> > Large datasets then were also very tiny compared to large datasets of
> > today. :)
>
> Sure. But 1MB is such a tiny amount of memory, it could only hold a few
> thousand records (depending on their size). It would almost be faster to
> process them by hand then go to all the trouble of punching cards and
> feeding them through a computer. So it must have been possible to
> process larger datasets than that somehow.

You never read the entire dataset into memory. You process it a record at a
time.
The only limit on file size is the media, not memory.  There is no difference in
memory consumption between processing 10 records or 10 million records.

>
> > see the revolution that were programs like ed (and its successor vi) in
> > bringing flexible terminal text editing rather than wasting tons of
> > paper... :)
>
> ...not to mention card...
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Isaac

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>>>> It still somewhat blows my mind that you could do anything useful with
>>>> so little memory. Presumably for processing large datasets, most of
>>>> the data at any one time would be in secondary storage?
>>> Large datasets then were also very tiny compared to large datasets of
>>> today. :)
>> Sure. But 1MB is such a tiny amount of memory, it could only hold a few
>> thousand records (depending on their size). It would almost be faster to
>> process them by hand then go to all the trouble of punching cards and
>> feeding them through a computer. So it must have been possible to
>> process larger datasets than that somehow.
> 
> You never read the entire dataset into memory. You process it a record at a
> time.

Right. That's what I figured.

> The only limit on file size is the media, not memory.  There is no difference in
> memory consumption between processing 10 records or 10 million records.

If you're trying to, say, sort data into ascending order, how do you do 
that? A bubble sort? (Requires two records in memory at once - but, more 
importantly, requires rewritable secondary storage.)

-- 
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http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 18-5-2010 12:56, Invisible wrote:
> I had always assumed that the first computers were like current 
> computers, just using relays or whatever instead of transisters, and 
> with vastly inferior specifications.
> 
> However, it appears that this isn't the case.
> 
> For example, I thought they all used latch circuits for memory, but 
> apparently not. There were things like core memory, which I'd never 
> heard of. Presumably it's faster and cheaper to make core memory as 
> opposed to wiring up thousands of latch circuits?
> 
> Another example. According to legend, there was a time when if you 
> wanted to run a program, you used a machine not unlike a typewriter to 
> punch holes into a card. You "type in" the program onto punch cards like 
> this, and only once the entire program and all its data has been punched 
> do you even go near the actual *computer*. You feed the cards into a 
> reader. It reads them all, and then spends the next six months running 
> the program. Finally, you get a stack of new punched cards representing 
> the results.
> 
> Does anybody know approximately when this time was?

1980, except that it was the next day and not six months later.

> For that matter, does anybody have a broad timeline of when various 
> technologies were in use? What are the dates for things like core 
> memory, drum memory, punch cards, magnetic tape, relays, vacuum tubes, 
> transistors, ICs, etc?

There is probably a wikipedia page about that, have fun searching.

> Was there ever a time when programs were entered into memory via 
> switches rather than some other medium?

Yes. Use a hex pad like scott myself in 1984 and had a friend who had 
build his own computer and booted it by manually starting the booting 
process using a row of binary toggle switches.

New programs were enetered the same way.

> Was there ever a "punched tape" medium similar to punch cards?

Yes. E.g used for boot loading the machine in my former department until 
1987 or so.

> Similarly, you hear people talk about the VAX, the PDP, the varouis IBM 
> mainframes and Cray supercomputers. Does anybody know the timeline for 
> these, the technologies used and the basic design and performance details?

Wikipedia again I assume

(Some answers on http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=cmptr)

> (Sure, you can look up individual questions on Wikipedia, but the 
> articles tend to contain huge amounts of minute detail about specific 
> things. I'm trying to get a general overview of an entire era.)

The page you are looking for must be there also.

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>>> It still somewhat blows my mind that you could do anything useful with
> >>>> so little memory. Presumably for processing large datasets, most of
> >>>> the data at any one time would be in secondary storage?
> >>> Large datasets then were also very tiny compared to large datasets of
> >>> today. :)
> >> Sure. But 1MB is such a tiny amount of memory, it could only hold a few
> >> thousand records (depending on their size). It would almost be faster to
> >> process them by hand then go to all the trouble of punching cards and
> >> feeding them through a computer. So it must have been possible to
> >> process larger datasets than that somehow.
> >
> > You never read the entire dataset into memory. You process it a record at a
> > time.
>
> Right. That's what I figured.
>
> > The only limit on file size is the media, not memory.  There is no difference in
> > memory consumption between processing 10 records or 10 million records.
>
> If you're trying to, say, sort data into ascending order, how do you do
> that? A bubble sort? (Requires two records in memory at once - but, more
> importantly, requires rewritable secondary storage.)

Right, you read as many records in as you have memory for, and use rewritable
secondary storage for work files.  Preferably disk, but if your not in a hurry
mag tape will work.  When VIPs would come around for a tour of our datacenter,
we would always start up a sort using tape for work files.  It was fun to watch
the sort program read, read backwards, rewind, and forward space the tapes.
Slow but fun to watch.

>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Isaac

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>>>>   There were no children many hundred billion years ago.
> >>>> I was waiting for that one... *sigh*
> >>>   It's a so-called mathematician's answer.
> > 
> >> Technically, 1 hundred billion years is about 7.3 times the estimated 
> >> age of the universe
> > 
> >   Depends on whether you are using American billions or European billions.

> NAAAAAARGH!! >_<

> I never did like Americans... (Then again, they probably don't like me 
> either.)

  Then why are you using the American billion above?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 18/05/2010 7:20 PM, Clarence1898 wrote:
> Stephen<mca### [at] aolDOTcom>  wrote:
>> On 18/05/2010 4:44 PM, Invisible wrote:
>>>> As I recall about 60 characters per second.  The tape was paper, was 8
>>>> holes
>>>> wide, and easily broken or scrunched.
>>>
>>> Mmm, that's fairly fast for an optical system.
>>
>> Was it optical? I seem to remember it was mechanical with spring loaded
>> teeth.
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>   Stephen
>
> I was thinking it was optical.  I don't ever remember having maintenance on the
> read head.

I’m probably thinking of a teletype 33. I remember the teeth moving up 
and down. Of course the high speed tape readers must have been optical.

> But that's been over 35 years ago. Now I sometimes have a hard time
> remembering what I had for breakfast.
>

I get round that problem by having the same thing every day. ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 18/05/2010 7:23 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Was there ever a "punched tape" medium similar to punch cards?
>>
>> Yes. That's why DEL is up at 127. Think about it.
>
> Oh... oh dear god. You *are* kidding me, right??

He is not. It the smart thing to do. Is it not?

Oh! on second thoughts you could glue the chad back into the holes. :-P

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> It still slightly frightens me that Haskell is actually this old... Just 
> think how much better the world could be today if its ideas had caught 
> on back then?

A lot of the stuff you take for granted wasn't possible back then.

It's like "how much cooler would movies be if the ideas behind modern GPUs 
caught on back when we were still using discrete transistors and core memory?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Files only on disk? Or on tape too? 

Obviously tape files were contiguous.  I must be misunderstanding what 
you're asking.

>>> Interesting. So the system actually "knows" where each field of a 
>>> record is then?
>>
>> Records were fixed size, so it was trivial to calculate.
> 
> OK. But does the system know where the *fields* in a record are? Or just 
> what size the records are?

You compiled it into the program. Often when they weren't actually fixed 
size, they were fixed size anyway and padded (like cards).  Or the size was 
stored in the header of the file.

> Yeah, I think the term "mainframe" is probably obsolete now. There are 
> probably more exact ways to describe what type of computer you mean.

Could be.  There's something clearly between "small" and "large" now.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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Clarence1898 wrote:
> You can run Linux on an IBM z/series machine, just like on a PC.  

Actually, last I read, you could run some 300 Linux VMs on a z/series 
machine without noticing a slow-down. :-)
-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> So it must have been possible to process larger datasets than that somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_sorting

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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andrel wrote:
> 1980, except that it was the next day and not six months later.

To be clear, they pretty much stopped making that sort of machine in the 
late 70s, but many of them lasted into the 90s before they ahd to be 
retired, often for lack of parts.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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>> Files only on disk? Or on tape too? 
> 
> Obviously tape files were contiguous.  I must be misunderstanding what 
> you're asking.

 From what little I've seen, with punch cards it's a case of "please 
read this bunch of cards". You don't have filenames or anything. 
Presumably on magnetic disk you have a file *system* which describes 
logical files with names and things. I'm asking whether the same holds 
for tape, or whether it's just treated as an endless stream of bytes (or 
records or whatever).

>> OK. But does the system know where the *fields* in a record are? Or 
>> just what size the records are?
> 
> You compiled it into the program. Often when they weren't actually fixed 
> size, they were fixed size anyway and padded (like cards).  Or the size 
> was stored in the header of the file.

Right. So it's a property of the program, not the system.

>> Yeah, I think the term "mainframe" is probably obsolete now. There are 
>> probably more exact ways to describe what type of computer you mean.
> 
> Could be.  There's something clearly between "small" and "large" now.

Minicomputers! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> So it must have been possible to process larger datasets than that 
>> somehow.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_sorting

See, now sometimes discussions can throw up interesting stuff - and it's 
not all of purely historical interest. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:

> To be clear, they pretty much stopped making that sort of machine in the 
> late 70s, but many of them lasted into the 90s before they ahd to be 
> retired, often for lack of parts.

Now that's reliability engineering for ya.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I'm asking whether the same holds 
> for tape, or whether it's just treated as an endless stream of bytes (or 
> records or whatever).

Oh, I see. It depends whether you are using a labeled tape or an unlabeled 
tape. I.e., that depends on the OS.

> Right. So it's a property of the program, not the system.

Again, depends on the OS. On the really primitive ones, it was a property of 
the program. On the really modern ones, it's also a property of the program. 
On the ones in between, they made it a property of the files.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Now that's reliability engineering for ya.

Indeed. That's another important differentiation.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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>> Now that's reliability engineering for ya.
> 
> Indeed. That's another important differentiation.

Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like 
"desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think so...)

I think the "real" difference between a desktop and a server is probably 
fault-tolerance. When I first joined the 2-bit company I'm with now, we 
had a server with a 500 MHz AMD Thunderbird CPU and 128 MB RAM. Now we 
also had 4 GHz Intel Pentium IV workstations with 256 MB RAM in the lab, 
which makes a bit of a mockary of the "server" tag. But the lab PCs 
didn't have multiple Ultra320 SCSI HDs, hardware RAID controllers, 
redundant PSUs or 30,000 cooling fans. But the "servers" did. ;-)

(Seriously, it didn't have 30,000 cooling fans, but it did have *a lot* 
Probably way, way more than necessary, IMHO...)

The HP ProLiant I was briefly in charge of was really nice, actually. It 
had a little diagram on the front showing the system board, and a little 
red LED for every component on it for which a failure sensor exists.

It has ECC RAM, and yet it has multiple RAM banks, and it can compare 
them and tell you if one RAM bank is faulty. (I gather this works in up 
to a 4-way configuration, for 4x RAM redundancy, in case the ECC doesn't 
catch it. Oh, and the RAM is hot-swap. HOT-SWAP!)

It also has more fans than it is sane for any one device to have... 
although... it is quite a small form-factor, so maybe it does need it, 
actually.

Also has hot-swap HD bays with indicator lights. The RAID software even 
has a function to make the lights change colour so you can yank the 
correct unit. (Nice!)

And as if all that wasn't enough, there's a second computer inside it 
which you can use remotely to manage the server. Do stuff like see the 
video output, control the keyboard and mouse, and even make the main 
computer think there's a CD in the drive when really it's an ISO image 
you're serving from your remote control PC. So you literally turn the 
server on and off, fiddle with the BIOS and install the OS, all without 
ever physically being in the same country.

Some day I may own a desktop computer which makes this server's dual 
quad-core Xeons seem puny and pathetic. But it won't have reliability 
and management features like a "server" does.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I think the "real" difference between a desktop and a server is probably 
> fault-tolerance. 

Yep. And when downtime starts costing you thousands of dollars per second, 
you start doing things like having two independent entirely separate power 
companies supplying the power to your building, along with several 
independent ways of getting to your networks, including both satellite and 
land lines, as well as several leased lines guaranteed not to be in physical 
proximity and terminated in different states.

Now, maybe a large bomb in the building or an airliner crashing into it 
would have taken it out, so they're probably behind the times compared to 
(say) google, but it was pretty impressive for 20 years ago.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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On Tue, 18 May 2010 22:10:15 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like
> "desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think so...)

Depends on what the server is doing.  If it's just serving files up, 
that's more than adequate; hell, I used to do file & print on an 80286 
with 16 MB of memory.

Jim

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion 
: 4bf2725b$1@news.povray.org...
> Does anybody know approximately when this time was?

I actually typed one single punch card in 1983 just before the machine was 
sent to greener pastures. IIRC it was an Olivetti wih a red diode display 
(no CRT) but I can't find the model right now.
In 1986 I worked in a lab where the punch card computer had just been 
replaced by a mini-computer with CRTs (so there were stack of cards laying 
around). The old tech guy who had been the punch card operator was being 
retrained and had a hard time adapting to these new-fangled "monitors". 
Before, when he was using the cards, launching a program consisted in 
finding the right batch of cards, moving it *** very carefully *** to the 
computer room (there were stories about him spilling programs on the floor) 
, loading it in the computer and press a button. Now he had to use a regular 
keyboard just like a secretary and type lists of foreign-looking commands 
that didn't make any sense. He hated that.

G.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Clarence1898 wrote:
> > You can run Linux on an IBM z/series machine, just like on a PC.
>
> Actually, last I read, you could run some 300 Linux VMs on a z/series
> machine without noticing a slow-down. :-)
> --
> Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>     Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
>     you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

I read an article in one of IBM's technical bulletins where they started running
more and more copies of z/Linux under z/VM.  Somewhere past 10000 concurrently
running copies of z/Linux the machine finally cried enough.  Depending on what
hardware you are running on, you could do that easily.  That is unless you
started running Povray on all those copies.

Isaac

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Files only on disk? Or on tape too?
> >
> > Obviously tape files were contiguous.  I must be misunderstanding what
> > you're asking.
>
>  From what little I've seen, with punch cards it's a case of "please
> read this bunch of cards". You don't have filenames or anything.
> Presumably on magnetic disk you have a file *system* which describes
> logical files with names and things. I'm asking whether the same holds
> for tape, or whether it's just treated as an endless stream of bytes (or
> records or whatever).

If the mag tape has standard labels, the file attributes are defined in the tape
label header record. The tape label also contains the last 18 characters of the
dataset name. If its an unlabeled tape, it has no tape label headers, so the
program has to have the attributes hard coded in the source code.  98% of all
the tape we process are created internally.  We have a tape management system
that keeps track of what dataset is on what tape volume.  If the operator mounts
the wrong tape, it will be rejected and the operator will be re-prompted to
mount the right tape.  If its an external tape we just tell the TMS to bypass
validity checking.

>
> >> OK. But does the system know where the *fields* in a record are? Or
> >> just what size the records are?
> >
> > You compiled it into the program. Often when they weren't actually fixed
> > size, they were fixed size anyway and padded (like cards).  Or the size
> > was stored in the header of the file.
>
> Right. So it's a property of the program, not the system.

Yes, typically the record structure is defined in an include file, much like C.
Thus a common record format is available to all programs that access that file.

>
> >> Yeah, I think the term "mainframe" is probably obsolete now. There are
> >> probably more exact ways to describe what type of computer you mean.
> >
> > Could be.  There's something clearly between "small" and "large" now.
>
> Minicomputers! :-D

There can be so much overlap in performance of PCs, Minis, and mainframes, it
can still be difficult to classify where a particular machine goes.

>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


Isaac

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Now that's reliability engineering for ya.
> >
> > Indeed. That's another important differentiation.
>
> Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like
> "desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think so...)
>
> I think the "real" difference between a desktop and a server is probably
> fault-tolerance. When I first joined the 2-bit company I'm with now, we
> had a server with a 500 MHz AMD Thunderbird CPU and 128 MB RAM. Now we
> also had 4 GHz Intel Pentium IV workstations with 256 MB RAM in the lab,
> which makes a bit of a mockary of the "server" tag. But the lab PCs
> didn't have multiple Ultra320 SCSI HDs, hardware RAID controllers,
> redundant PSUs or 30,000 cooling fans. But the "servers" did. ;-)
>
> (Seriously, it didn't have 30,000 cooling fans, but it did have *a lot*
> Probably way, way more than necessary, IMHO...)
>
> The HP ProLiant I was briefly in charge of was really nice, actually. It
> had a little diagram on the front showing the system board, and a little
> red LED for every component on it for which a failure sensor exists.
>
> It has ECC RAM, and yet it has multiple RAM banks, and it can compare
> them and tell you if one RAM bank is faulty. (I gather this works in up
> to a 4-way configuration, for 4x RAM redundancy, in case the ECC doesn't
> catch it. Oh, and the RAM is hot-swap. HOT-SWAP!)
>
> It also has more fans than it is sane for any one device to have...
> although... it is quite a small form-factor, so maybe it does need it,
> actually.
>
> Also has hot-swap HD bays with indicator lights. The RAID software even
> has a function to make the lights change colour so you can yank the
> correct unit. (Nice!)
>
> And as if all that wasn't enough, there's a second computer inside it
> which you can use remotely to manage the server. Do stuff like see the
> video output, control the keyboard and mouse, and even make the main
> computer think there's a CD in the drive when really it's an ISO image
> you're serving from your remote control PC. So you literally turn the
> server on and off, fiddle with the BIOS and install the OS, all without
> ever physically being in the same country.
>
> Some day I may own a desktop computer which makes this server's dual
> quad-core Xeons seem puny and pathetic. But it won't have reliability
> and management features like a "server" does.
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Reliability and redundancy is one of the strong points of IBMs last few
generations of mainframes.  If any page of memory fails, the error can be
corrected, if it is a hard error, that page of memory will be automatically
taken offline. If a processor fails, there are spare processors that can take
over and continue the operation if one fails.  Multiple paths to all i/o devices
where possible.  Of course redundant power supplies. Much of the machines
circuitry has redundant components. When a component fails, the machine phones
home and reports the failure.  Many time operations is completely unaware of any
problem until an IBM CE shows up at the door with a replacement part in hand.
And many components can be replaced on the fly, with out any downtime. The
latest machines are not totally fault tolerant, but each new generation is
better than the last.  I think the latest z/9 and z/10 models have a MTBF of
over 30 years.

Isaac

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Clarence1898 wrote:
> Yes, typically the record structure is defined in an include file, much like C.

Heh. More like a COBOL file division. ;-)

"Hand me the stack of cards for the payroll file definition."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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On 18/05/2010 11:34 PM, Gilles Tran wrote:
> Now he had to use a regular keyboard just like a secretary and type
> lists of foreign-looking commands that didn't make any sense. He hated
> that.
>

LOL, I remember when “managers” lost their secretaries and had to start 
typing their letters and keeping their own diaries. I think it was in 
1996 when I overheard an office worker talking about her C: drive, in 
the street. Before that it was just geeks who knew about those things.

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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>  Then why are you using the American billion above?

Because he doesn't realise he is using the same billions as America (as have 
the rest of the UK for a few decades now).

I wonder if there are actually any English-speaking countries that use 1 
billion = 1e12?  If you see "billion" written (in English) then you can 
probably assume it is 1e9.

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>> It still slightly frightens me that Haskell is actually this old... 
>> Just think how much better the world could be today if its ideas had 
>> caught on back then?
> 
> A lot of the stuff you take for granted wasn't possible back then.
> 
> It's like "how much cooler would movies be if the ideas behind modern 
> GPUs caught on back when we were still using discrete transistors and 
> core memory?"

A GPU isn't much use without the ability to actually display the image 
it produces. (Hell, they didn't even have enough memory to implement a 
framebuffer. You'd have to print the image on to film incrimentally or 
something.) And given that they also didn't have colour TV yet... or 
even colour film, IIRC...

A paradigm for writing mathematical transformations, however, would seem 
useful no matter how slow the system is. (Although compiling the sucker 
might take a while.)

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>> Yes, typically the record structure is defined in an include file, 
>> much like C.
> 
> Heh. More like a COBOL file division. ;-)
> 
> "Hand me the stack of cards for the payroll file definition."

Suddenly Pascal makes so much more sense... o_O

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>>> Yes. That's why DEL is up at 127. Think about it.
>>
>> Oh... oh dear god. You *are* kidding me, right??
> 
> He is not. It the smart thing to do. Is it not?

Chances of making the new holes line up with the existing ones? Minimal. :-S

> Oh! on second thoughts you could glue the chad back into the holes. :-P

Or just, say, print a new card? :-P

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>>> Yes. That's why DEL is up at 127. Think about it.
>>
>> Oh... oh dear god. You *are* kidding me, right??
> 
> He is not. It the smart thing to do. Is it not?

But the really scary part, of course, is that today, 60 years later, the 
DEL code-point is *still defined* and still has the same value. WTF is 
up with *that*?!

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scott wrote:
>>  Then why are you using the American billion above?
> 
> Because he doesn't realise he is using the same billions as America (as 
> have the rest of the UK for a few decades now).

More exactly, I didn't realise that that is how Wolfram Alpha would 
interpret it.

> I wonder if there are actually any English-speaking countries that use 1 
> billion = 1e12?  If you see "billion" written (in English) then you can 
> probably assume it is 1e9.

I always assumed that 1 billion = 1 million million.

The solution, of course, is to simply never use the word "billion". Then 
there can be no ambiguity. (Possibly the one and only grammar suggestion 
from MS Word that actually makes sense...)

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On 19/05/2010 9:13 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
> Chances of making the new holes line up with the existing ones? Minimal.
> :-S

I would say 100%

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 19/05/2010 9:17 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>>> Yes. That's why DEL is up at 127. Think about it.
>>>
>>> Oh... oh dear god. You *are* kidding me, right??
>>
>> He is not. It the smart thing to do. Is it not?
>
> But the really scary part, of course, is that today, 60 years later, the
> DEL code-point is *still defined* and still has the same value. WTF is
> up with *that*?!

Why not, what would you suggest?


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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>> But the really scary part, of course, is that today, 60 years later, the
>> DEL code-point is *still defined* and still has the same value. WTF is
>> up with *that*?!
> 
> Why not, what would you suggest?

Firstly I would suggest that we no longer _need_ character encodings for 
*control codes*. But more importantly, I would suggest that we shouldn't 
still be using 60-year old technology.

But hey, who gives a fig what *I* think?

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>> Because he doesn't realise he is using the same billions as America (as 
>> have the rest of the UK for a few decades now).
>
> More exactly, I didn't realise that that is how Wolfram Alpha would 
> interpret it.

Why not?  As UK and USA both use 1 billion = 1e9, it makes perfect sense for 
an English website to use that.

> I always assumed that 1 billion = 1 million million.

You assumed incorrectly.  Whenever you see "billion" mentioned in the UK it 
means 1e9.  For example in this news article from BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8686822.stm

The "59bn euro" means 59e9 euro.  Ditto for all other places "bn" or 
"billion" is mentioned.  The universe is also 13.7 bn years old, that means 
13.7e9 years old.  Note in some languages/countries they have two separate 
words for 10e9 and 10e12, so there is no such confusion.

> The solution, of course, is to simply never use the word "billion". Then 
> there can be no ambiguity.

Or just be aware that in some places (but not UK or USA) "billion" (or a 
word sounding like it) might have the alternative meaning.

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On 19/05/2010 9:50 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> But the really scary part, of course, is that today, 60 years later, the
>>> DEL code-point is *still defined* and still has the same value. WTF is
>>> up with *that*?!
>>
>> Why not, what would you suggest?
>
> Firstly I would suggest that we no longer _need_ character encodings for
> *control codes*. But more importantly, I would suggest that we shouldn't
> still be using 60-year old technology.
>

How long have we been using levers, wheels, pulleys etc.? Do you think 
we should change everything every ten years or so.


> But hey, who gives a fig what *I* think?

Well it is up to you to make suggestions that are worth listening to.


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 19/05/2010 9:20 AM, Invisible wrote:
> I always assumed that 1 billion = 1 million million.

That changed in 1975 when Denis Healey announced that the treasury would 
adopt the US billion thenceforth.

How old were you then?

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> The solution, of course, is to simply never use the word "billion".

  Use "milliard" instead. And a thousand milliards is a thousand milliards.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>>> Why not, what would you suggest?
>>
>> Firstly I would suggest that we no longer _need_ character encodings for
>> *control codes*. But more importantly, I would suggest that we shouldn't
>> still be using 60-year old technology.
> 
> How long have we been using levers, wheels, pulleys etc.? Do you think 
> we should change everything every ten years or so.

Yes, but levers, wheels, pulleys, etc are *useful*. Assigning character 
codes to things that aren't characters isn't.

>> But hey, who gives a fig what *I* think?
> 
> Well it is up to you to make suggestions that are worth listening to.

I doubt that's going to work.

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On 19/05/2010 1:00 PM, Invisible wrote:
>
> Yes, but levers, wheels, pulleys, etc are *useful*. Assigning character
> codes to things that aren't characters isn't.
>

So is a rubber (eraser)

>>> But hey, who gives a fig what *I* think?
>>
>> Well it is up to you to make suggestions that are worth listening to.
>
> I doubt that's going to work.

That's your problem. ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> a écrit dans le message de news: 
4bf3ae8a@news.povray.org...

> Note in some languages/countries they have two separate words for 10e9 and 
> 10e12, so there is no such confusion.
>
There are strange countries in the world aren't they? ;-)

Marc

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