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On 9/5/2012 3:06, scott wrote:
> Oh we had plenty of teachers who didn't even know there was an on/off switch
> at the back of the machine.
I can one-up that. One of the teachers took home the TRS-80 over the weekend
to learn about it so he could teach about it. 6:15PM friday evening, the
phone rings.
"Is it supposed to smoke when I turn it on?"
"What? No, of course not!"
"Should I turn it off, then?"
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."
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On 9/5/2012 6:14, scott wrote:
>> I moved on from C64 BASIC to C64 assembler - or rather, machine code. I
>> couldn't afford an actual assembler program. So I used to do it old
>> skool - you know, with pencil and paper and a giant opcode table.
>
> Ouch. Good job the instructions were only 8 bit then...
Most machines back then had reasonable instruction sets. For one, they were
designed to be programmed in assembler. For two, they had actual humans
designing them, rather than humans giving specs to a CPU-compiler.
I still remember the instruction layout and register layout of the mainframe
I used in the late 70s, because it made such sense.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."
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On 9/5/2012 12:41, Stephen wrote:
> On 05/09/2012 4:40 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> I didn't say tablet, I said iPad.
>
> What is an iPad if it is not a tablet?
>
> And you use an on screen keyboard.
http://blog.makezine.com/2012/08/30/mechanical-typewriter-keyboard-for-ipad/
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."
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On 9/5/2012 14:11, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:53:37 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>
>> On 05/09/2012 05:43 PM, nemesis wrote:
>>> hello, caveman. Our minimum smartphone screen sizes are now 4"
>>
>> Wouldn't that make the phone too small to fit in your pocket?
>
> Is there /any/ physical circumstances where something could be /too
> small/ to fit in a container?
Only when you start talking quantum levels.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."
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On Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:21:35 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/5/2012 14:11, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:53:37 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>
>>> On 05/09/2012 05:43 PM, nemesis wrote:
>>>> hello, caveman. Our minimum smartphone screen sizes are now 4"
>>>
>>> Wouldn't that make the phone too small to fit in your pocket?
>>
>> Is there /any/ physical circumstances where something could be /too
>> small/ to fit in a container?
>
> Only when you start talking quantum levels.
Sounds interesting - but that would be a very tiny mobile phone indeed. ;)
Jim
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On 9/4/2012 11:43, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> "Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern
> spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM used in
> Wi-Fi network connections, and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless
> telephones."
Or, more specifically,
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/04/Howspreadingactuallyworks.shtml
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."
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>> Damn. And here I was thinking that's what people watch the news and read
>> newspapers for...
>
> Not WHILE they are being shot at!
>
> Did you miss the part where I said that "There were lots of people _in
> that theater_ who wanted to know what the heck was going on."
And I thought the only people who use electronic communications rather
than running for their lives are the people who write those IRC quotes
on bash.org :-P
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>> And you use an on screen keyboard.
>
> http://blog.makezine.com/2012/08/30/mechanical-typewriter-keyboard-for-ipad/
1. That looks like it would probably shatter the screen.
2. Isn't this the /opposite/ of portability?
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On 05/09/2012 10:08 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>> On 05/09/2012 02:57 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>>> "Apps" are the software that you run on iThings.
>>>
>>> For example, the Wolfram Alpha app that you mentioned earlier.
>>
>> ...the Wolfram Alpha app I mentioned as an example of utter
>> pointlessness?
>
> Having a front-end client that sanitizes the user's input before sending
> transactions back to the back-end server is NOT pointless when you are
> dealing with devices that have limited (and/or expensive) bandwidth
> capabilities, or small screen resolutions.
In the case of Wolfram Alpha, it's /supposed/ to accept free-form
natural language input, which it then does extensive sophisticated [and
frequently changing] processing on at the server side. Attempting to
work out whether a given query string will return any results on the
client side would require a severe amount of processing, not to mention
access to Alpha's multi-terebyte database... It's just not feasible.
> for example, on my phone, I could fire up the browser and access the
> phone book web site, wait while it downloads the logos, ads, etc... and
> then have to either zoom in and scroll all over the place to put the
> person's name and city and then scroll some more until I get to the
> "search" button, or I can use the app that acts as a front-end client
> for the web site and is more suited to the 640x480 resolution of the
> phone's screen. I suspect the Wolfram app is similar. (Disclaimer: I may
> be wrong, as I haven't tried it.)
Wait - they perfected web page zooming?? o_O
> Privacy concerns aside, I don't know of anyone who would want to have
> their phone vibrate whenever they get in the vicinity of a particular
> chain of clothing store. Then again, I'm not a teenage girl!
My lolrus!
>>> There are
>>> also word processors, spreadsheets, presentation packages, etc...
>>
>> How can you operate a word processor or a spreadsheet without a keyboard?
>
> Magic!
>
>
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTWfurnBt-2DPkqVngr0dQE37Vj8xclsMZDmmuGo9_BR38Ne2-t
That must be the slowest, most awkward thing EVER! o_O
>>> Who said the only thing you could do on a tablet was surf the net?
>>
>> I didn't say tablet, I said iPad.
>
> And the iPad is what, in your opinion, if not a tablet?
An iPad is one specific model of tablet. From what I've seen, "tablet"
covers a wide and vaguely-defined range of devices. (E.g., I once
purchased a "tablet" that was merely a normal PC laptop with a touch
screen. But it was the size and weight of a laptop, with a physical
keyboard, running Microsoft Windows on a normal x86 CPU. None of which
are things that describe an iPad...)
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On 05/09/2012 10:11 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:53:37 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>
>> On 05/09/2012 05:43 PM, nemesis wrote:
>>> hello, caveman. Our minimum smartphone screen sizes are now 4"
>>
>> Wouldn't that make the phone too small to fit in your pocket?
>
> Is there /any/ physical circumstances where something could be /too
> small/ to fit in a container?
*facepalm*
Obviously I meant to type "too big"...
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