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On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 18:08:56 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> I often wonder... like, how much did [famous obsolete computer] actually
> cost? What did it physically look like? What were its technical
> capabilities? It's very hard to gather a general overview of this type
> of data.
Google is really useful. I hear they have pictures and everything. ;)
> For that matter, how many FLOPS can you get out of an Inter Core i7? I
> have absolutely no idea; it seems very hard to find data for this...
Depends on the speed of the CPU and the number of cores, but a google
search for "intel core i7 flops" turned up useful results.
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 18:17:38 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 28/10/2015 06:06 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> But in technology, I see this all the time - IoT isn't a new thing,
>> really - I remember seeing networked coffee makers, VCRs, and microwave
>> ovens back in the 90's. It didn't catch on then, but the demo was
>> pretty cool.
>
> HTTP 418: I'm a teapot.
>
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324
>
> Seriously. There is a defined HTTP status code for interacting with an
> IoT teapot.
It's funny, yeah - but the history of that error code isn't really IoT,
more like RFC 1149. 418 was defined in the HTCPCP/1.0 protcool, defined
in the referenced RFC as an April Fool's day joke in 1998.
It's a fun read. (Did I mention that I work with a product that secures
websites, and HTTP geek stuff is what I currently work with daily? ;) )
>> The idea of on-demand programming was something I was first introduced
>> to by someone who worked at NBC back in the mid 90's as well. He
>> described pretty much what we see now with Netflix and other
>> streaming/on-demand video services.
>
> Some day, maybe I'll try that.
Definitely worth it, IMHO.
> Ah, who am I kidding? I'll just sit here surfing YouTube...
>
> (I'm still puzzled as to why YouTube can actually exist. But that's
> another story.)
People want to publish videos. Youtube gives them a platform to do that.
And gives Google another platform to push advertising on.
It's about that simple, really. :)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 18:40:04 +0000, Stephen wrote:
> On 10/28/2015 6:06 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Just you wait. It comes to us all.:-P
>>> >
>>> >Wait one.
>> Waiting.;)
>>
>>
> Your custom is important to us.
> Please listen to this elevator musak...
Only if it's good. Then again, you said "musak", so it probably isn't. :P
>> The idea of on-demand programming was something I was first introduced
>> to by someone who worked at NBC back in the mid 90's as well. He
>> described pretty much what we see now with Netflix and other
>> streaming/on-demand video services.
>>
> If you read any amount of SF the infinite monkeys got there first.
> Mobile (cell) phones excepted.
Star Trek communicators. The design of the Motorola Flip phone allegedly
was taken from Star Trek.
> Strange how that got missed by everyone except Dick Tracy.
More the Apple Watch, but yeah.
>>> >Thinking about it. I'm glad that my time is when it is. I despair
>>> >when I see the way the world is going.
>> I think we all reach that point eventually.
>>
>>
> So it seems. Just glad I'm normal in one aspect. ;-)
LOL
>>> >If I am asked what I want to be on the next turn of the wheel. I will
>>> >say. "A rock." And I don't mean St. Peter.
>> I wouldn't have guessed that. Or maybe I would have.;)
>
> You have a head start. :-)
>
> I was talking about Edinburgh Rock. The best thing to come out of
> Edinburgh, the road to Glasgow, excluded. ;-)
I'll have to remember that one the next time I'm talking with friends who
live in Scotland. Especially the ones who live in Edinburgh. ;)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 10/28/2015 7:06 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 18:40:04 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>
>>>
>>>
>> Your custom is important to us.
>> Please listen to this elevator musak...
>
> Only if it's good. Then again, you said "musak", so it probably isn't. :P
>
Elevator music is another name for musak. Which is often heard when on
hold. Or in a hotel foyer.
>> If you read any amount of SF the infinite monkeys got there first.
>> Mobile (cell) phones excepted.
>
> Star Trek communicators. The design of the Motorola Flip phone allegedly
> was taken from Star Trek.
>
More a walkie talkie than a phone that everyone uses. I think.
>> Strange how that got missed by everyone except Dick Tracy.
>
> More the Apple Watch, but yeah.
>
Yip!
>>
>> I was talking about Edinburgh Rock. The best thing to come out of
>> Edinburgh, the road to Glasgow, excluded. ;-)
>
> I'll have to remember that one the next time I'm talking with friends who
> live in Scotland. Especially the ones who live in Edinburgh. ;)
>
It is a steal from Dr Johnson.
--
Regards
Stephen
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On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 19:43:08 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>> Only if it's good. Then again, you said "musak", so it probably isn't.
>> :P
>>
>>
> Elevator music is another name for musak. Which is often heard when on
> hold. Or in a hotel foyer.
So "elevator musak" is redundant. ;)
>>> If you read any amount of SF the infinite monkeys got there first.
>>> Mobile (cell) phones excepted.
>>
>> Star Trek communicators. The design of the Motorola Flip phone
>> allegedly was taken from Star Trek.
>>
>>
> More a walkie talkie than a phone that everyone uses. I think.
Well, from a design standpoint, though, that's what inspired Motorola, I
hear.
>>> I was talking about Edinburgh Rock. The best thing to come out of
>>> Edinburgh, the road to Glasgow, excluded. ;-)
>>
>> I'll have to remember that one the next time I'm talking with friends
>> who live in Scotland. Especially the ones who live in Edinburgh. ;)
>>
>>
> It is a steal from Dr Johnson.
Oh, sure, try and defer the credit. ;)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 28/10/2015 07:04 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 18:17:38 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> HTTP 418: I'm a teapot.
>> Seriously. There is a defined HTTP status code for interacting with an
>> IoT teapot.
>
> It's funny, yeah - but the history of that error code isn't really IoT,
> more like RFC 1149. 418 was defined in the HTCPCP/1.0 protcool, defined
> in the referenced RFC as an April Fool's day joke in 1998.
>
> It's a fun read. (Did I mention that I work with a product that secures
> websites, and HTTP geek stuff is what I currently work with daily? ;) )
Wasn't the world's first "webcam" a camera in some university ward so
they could watch the coffee pot?
>>> The idea of on-demand programming was something I was first introduced
>>> to by someone who worked at NBC back in the mid 90's as well. He
>>> described pretty much what we see now with Netflix and other
>>> streaming/on-demand video services.
>>
>> Some day, maybe I'll try that.
>
> Definitely worth it, IMHO.
Even for somebody who doesn't watch TV?
>> (I'm still puzzled as to why YouTube can actually exist. But that's
>> another story.)
>
> People want to publish videos. Youtube gives them a platform to do that.
>
> And gives Google another platform to push advertising on.
>
> It's about that simple, really. :)
No, I mean... why is it possible for one company to ever buy enough
harddisks to store even 0.01% of the data that YouTube holds? It seems
like there shouldn't be enough mass storage devices on Earth to hold
this much data...
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On 28/10/2015 06:51 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 10/28/2015 6:08 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>
>>
>> I often wonder... like, how much did [famous obsolete computer] actually
>> cost? What did it physically look like? What were its technical
>> capabilities? It's very hard to gather a general overview of this type
>> of data.
>>
> PDP-8 1965 $18,500 12 ~50,000 The smallest and least expensive PDP
Interesting. Now how about the Cray 2, the VAX, UNIAC and all the other
legendary systems?
To be clear, I'm sure all the data is out there. It's just rather a lot
of effort to collate it all into a short summary.
>> PostScript. And it wasn't *once*. ;-)
Did I tell you about the time I wrote a text to PostScript converter as
an MS-DOS batch script?
Actually, the script just concatenates the text file with some
hand-written PostScript code; the text file itself becomes a giant text
string in a PostScript program. The program itself is a semi-complete
formatting engine, which adds a filename, page number and date of
printing to each page, and scans the characters looking for line breaks.
It even line-wraps the text and adds little arrows when it does so. (I
think there *might* be a bug if it line-wraps on the last line on a page
though...)
Damn, my talents are completely unappreciated! :-(
>> Actually, I did start trying to write a PostScript *interpreter*, to
>> make debugging this stuff easier! It turns out the language has a lot
>> more edge-cases than you'd think though...
>
> One edge-case is more than I ken.
> I would ask what an edge-case is but then you would say that I can't
> Google. :-)
It's simple. An edge-case is where a function is supposed to do XYZ,
*except* in this one really obscure case where if A, B and C happen
simultaneously, it does something totally different. Like when you
configure how many pages you want to print, but if you put in -1 it
prints *all* the pages. Not -1 pages.
PostScript does some slightly strange things with token parsing. You can
take a text string and ask the PostScript interpreter to parse out the
first token, giving you back the token and the remainder of the string.
But the specification gives some really inconsistent rules for whether
it should or shouldn't skip spaces...
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On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 21:27:17 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Wasn't the world's first "webcam" a camera in some university ward so
> they could watch the coffee pot?
That sounds familiar. Whether it's true or not, though, I've no idea
offhand.
>> Definitely worth it, IMHO.
>
> Even for somebody who doesn't watch TV?
Do you watch movies? I hear they have those available as well. ;)
>>> (I'm still puzzled as to why YouTube can actually exist. But that's
>>> another story.)
>>
>> People want to publish videos. Youtube gives them a platform to do
>> that.
>>
>> And gives Google another platform to push advertising on.
>>
>> It's about that simple, really. :)
>
> No, I mean... why is it possible for one company to ever buy enough
> harddisks to store even 0.01% of the data that YouTube holds? It seems
> like there shouldn't be enough mass storage devices on Earth to hold
> this much data...
And yet there are, so maybe you're not aware either of the totality of
mass storage available in the world, or the way in which the content is
stored in order to account for the amount of data involved.
But that's just a guess. ;)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 10/28/2015 8:13 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Oct 2015 19:43:08 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>
>>> Only if it's good. Then again, you said "musak", so it probably isn't.
>>> :P
>>>
>>>
>> Elevator music is another name for musak. Which is often heard when on
>> hold. Or in a hotel foyer.
>
> So "elevator musak" is redundant. ;)
>
No it is an emphasiser like saying hot hot.
>> More a walkie talkie than a phone that everyone uses. I think.
>
> Well, from a design standpoint, though, that's what inspired Motorola, I
> hear.
>
Yes yes.
>>>> I was talking about Edinburgh Rock. The best thing to come out of
>>>> Edinburgh, the road to Glasgow, excluded. ;-)
>>>
>>> I'll have to remember that one the next time I'm talking with friends
>>> who live in Scotland. Especially the ones who live in Edinburgh. ;)
>>>
>>>
>> It is a steal from Dr Johnson.
>
> Oh, sure, try and defer the credit. ;)
>
Just trying to save you embarrassment. The phrase is very well known, by
the educated. :P
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 10/28/2015 9:34 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 28/10/2015 06:51 PM, Stephen wrote:
>
> Interesting. Now how about the Cray 2, the VAX, UNIAC and all the other
> legendary systems?
>
What did your last slave die of?
> To be clear, I'm sure all the data is out there. It's just rather a lot
> of effort to collate it all into a short summary.
>
Dinkums! Too important to do a bit of work, are we? :P
>>> PostScript. And it wasn't *once*. ;-)
>
> Did I tell you about the time I wrote a text to PostScript converter as
> an MS-DOS batch script?
>
No but I am sure you will. ;)
> Actually, the script just concatenates the text file with some
> hand-written PostScript code; the text file itself becomes a giant text
> string in a PostScript program. The program itself is a semi-complete
> formatting engine, which adds a filename, page number and date of
> printing to each page, and scans the characters looking for line breaks.
> It even line-wraps the text and adds little arrows when it does so. (I
> think there *might* be a bug if it line-wraps on the last line on a page
> though...)
>
> Damn, my talents are completely unappreciated! :-(
>
Not completely, I'm sure.
Your mother loves you and your boss hasn't sacked you. :)
>>> Actually, I did start trying to write a PostScript *interpreter*, to
>>> make debugging this stuff easier! It turns out the language has a lot
>>> more edge-cases than you'd think though...
>>
>> One edge-case is more than I ken.
>> I would ask what an edge-case is but then you would say that I can't
>> Google. :-)
>
> It's simple. An edge-case is where a function is supposed to do XYZ,
> *except* in this one really obscure case where if A, B and C happen
> simultaneously, it does something totally different.
Are you sure about that?
Do all the cases (A,B & C) have to happen simultaneously?
My reading is when one of them is on the edge of the design parameters.
Like when you
> configure how many pages you want to print, but if you put in -1 it
> prints *all* the pages. Not -1 pages.
>
> PostScript does some slightly strange things with token parsing. You can
> take a text string and ask the PostScript interpreter to parse out the
> first token, giving you back the token and the remainder of the string.
> But the specification gives some really inconsistent rules for whether
> it should or shouldn't skip spaces...
Hit it with a shifting spanner then.
I can't stand uppity software. ;)
--
Regards
Stephen
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