alt.folklore.computers :: Stories & anecdotes about computers (some true!).

Re: IBM PC competitors

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 09:16:59 PST

Quadibloc wrote:
> On Dec 21, 11:08 am, krw att.bizzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
>
>> I use far more frequently and that isn't really enough to
>> justify the key, out of the way as it is.
>
> Of course, it is only needed for historical reasons, because the
> original IBM PC did not have a separate cursor keypad. But what I
> would like the caps lock key to do is, instead of giving you lowercase
> letters when you shift a letter, give you a set of mathematical
> symbols useful in programming languages.

Being Danish born, I frequently need the three additional vowels
missing from the English alphabet. I tried getting a Danish
keyboard, but it had a bunch of issues, such as having the
@ [ ] \ | glyphs on ALT GRAPHIC shift in very strange places,
so that cure was worse than the original problem. (Imagine trying
to type a command line that needs a pipe symbol, and needing to
switch from 90%% touch typing to two-finger hunt and peck in
order to get the pipe. Not fun !! I now mostly
use the US INTL keyboard layout. I wish I could get a keyboard
(at a reasonable price) with the ALT GRAPHIC glyphs marked.

The CAPS lock key is a pain in the neck. Different keyboard
layouts have different rules for when to release it. Some release
it on a second touch of CAPS LOCK, others ignore that and require
you to hit the SHIFT key instead (which the first group
use only to downshift the characters typed while it is depressed).

I am starting to get around this issue by disabling CAPS LOCK
altogether on the Windows machines I use regularly.

/ Lars Poulsen

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Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 07:16:28 PST

Casper H.S. Dik wrote:
> Walter Bushell panix.com> writes:
>
>
>>My father talked about megaherty when comparing the x86 vs. G4 or G5 and
>>he would razz me for days if I confused gasoline engine horsepower with
>>Diesel. Big Bucks trump good architecture.
>
>
> Strange because horsepower for Diesel and gasoline is the same ....
>
> Torque is different, but a modern turbo-charged gasoline and a
> turbo-charged diesel aren't all that different.

I would guess that Walter's father was talking about horsepower from a
diesel truck engine vs a gasolene auto engine. A 300kW (~400hp) truck
engine can produce that power for hours on end, while gasolene auto
engine with the same rating would get very unhappy if ran at full power
for very long.

Other possibiliity is that Walter's father may have been referring to
diesel engine manufacturers typically being more honest about the actual
power output. In the early 1990's, the engine options for the Dodge HD
(gvwr > 8500lb) pickups included a "300hp" V-10 and a 160hp Cummins BT6.
IIRC, on a chassis dyno, the V-10 produced 225hp while the Cummins
produced 165hp.

I'm sure you can think of equivalent examples in the computer biz.

- Erik

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Re: IBM PC competitors

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 01:40:39 PST

On Dec 21, 4:00 pm, krw att.bizzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
> In article <68af5ae2-b644-4ca6-b50e-f5cc4aaf8b7f@
> 40g2000prx.googlegroups.com>, jsav...@ecn.ab.ca says...
>
> > On Dec 21, 11:08 am, krw att.bizzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
>
> > > I use far more frequently and that isn't really enough to
> > > justify the key, out of the way as it is.
>
> > Of course, it is only needed for historical reasons, because the
> > original IBM PC did not have a separate cursor keypad. But what I
> > would like the caps lock key to do is, instead of giving you lowercase
> > letters when you shift a letter, give you a set of mathematical
> > symbols useful in programming languages.
>
> Not enough geeks to justify special keycaps. The rest is easy, as
> things stand.
>
> Get an APL keyboard. ;-)

An APL keyboard is important too, in order to be able to use APL. I
was thinking, though, _in addition_ to having the APL character set,
in its usual arrangement on the keyboard, as an alternative mode of
operation, to have extra characters following the usual selection
available for various versions of the Space Cadet type of keyboard
found in LISP and AI environments.

I have updated my page at

http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/kybint.htm

with an illustration of the _basic_ changes I'd like to make to the PC
keyboard. Thus, an APL keyboard is shown on the front of the keys, and
a few alternate character substitutions are shown for the regular
keyboard to allow it to be used in a "word processing" mode.

Also, the keys are color-coded to distinguish between special keys
(black), function keys (brown), shift keys (cream), control-character
keys (green), and printable character keys (grey). The pre-PC keyboard
styling of centering the characters on the keys is used.

John Savard

Posted In: alt.folklore.computers

10 Comments

Re: Globa Warning. was Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:51:19 PST

Dave Garland wizinfo.com> wrote:
>Bernd Felsche wrote:

>> Which 5%% is more important?

>Depends on what "important" means. In terms of describing
>meteorological phenomena, which is what we were doing? I wouldn't
>think it made much difference. If you're talking about how it affects
>humans, maybe whatever 5%% has the highest value contents, or the
>highest population, or is most susceptible to damage. Places like the
>island nations of Tuvalu and the Maldives, which will submerge
>completely if sea levels rise 1-2m, or Bangladesh, which seems to be

IF. But the world doesn't obey the simplistic computer models that
are flawed from the outset due to the chaotic influence of arbitrary
assumptions and parameters. Not that most climate researchers
actually seem to take the models seriously, anyway. The models
generate pretty pictures for PR; to assist in opening wallets so
that even high-resolution fictions can appear on the
main-stream-media. Models are a funding lever.

Sea levels are not rising by those amount any time soon. vis the
decades of work by Niels Axel Moerner. No change in the rise of sea
levels over the century leading up to the late 1990's.

Average rate of sea level rise has slowed over the past decade.

>half underwater every time there's a cyclone already. (Sea level
>rose 20-30cm during the 20th century.) Or New Orleans, Shanghai,
>or the rice-growing areas of SE Asia.

Sea levels have been rising at that rate since the last "proper" ice
age ended about 10,000 years ago.

Erecting buildings and other stuff closer to the shore-line is NOT a
rise in sea level.

New Orleans? It's been widely debunked that the flooding of New
Orleans had anything to do with "climate change" or "global
warming".

How far BELOW mean sea level were the flooded parts of New Orleans
before the flooding?

There was significant SUBSIDENCE of the land during the 20th
century. That's not a rise in sea level. The land sank. The same
areas were prone to flooding even before the 20th century.

Similar "natural disasters" occur when people build on
flood-plains, or strip the vegetation holding up the hillsides above
their valley.

It's the inappropriate, often short-sighted land use that produces
such human disasters.

Stupidity rules. That's why little heed is paid to predictable
outcomes; and so much more is squandered on propping up the sky,
lest it continue to fall.
--
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | Second to agriculture, humbug is the
X against HTML mail | biggest industry of our age.
/ \ and postings | -- Alfred Nobel

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Re: Happy DEC-20 Day,

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:33:49 PST

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
> Charles Richmond wrote:
>
... snip ...
>
>> "You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tune a fish."
>
> What's the difference between a saxophone and a filesystem (or
> a lawnmower)?

The first letter of the name, in English.

--
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year
Joyeux Noel, Bonne Annee, Frohe Weihnachten
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>

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Re: Globa Warning. was Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:42:13 PST

On Dec 22, 7:23�pm, Mensanator aol.com> wrote:
> On Dec 22, 5:24�pm, Peter Flass Yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > > On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 07:24:52 -0500
> > > Peter Flass Yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > >> I'd like to hear more about this Global Warming thingy. �When is it
> > >> supposed to start? �So far this is the worst winter in 30+ years.
>
> > > � �Have you not had anyone explaining to you that cold winters are an
> > > expected effect of global warming and that global warming doesn't
> > > necessarily imply that the weather is getting warmer.
>
> > Then why don't they call it "global cooling?"
>
> Ever hear of a concept called "average"?
>
> And speaking ofChicago, I think the last time it was
> colder than this year was about 25 years ago. I remember
> that year vividly as that's the time the plastic steering
> wheel of my Fiat shattered in the cold (below -20) like
> a banana dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Was in Chicago for what was recorded then as the lowest
temperature and the deepest snowfall. Began mid-day
on New Year's Day 1999; I was up in Northbrook looking
at a BMW 635, about noontime; I drove it on a big loop
into Lake County, and by the time we returned to
Lake-Cook Road, the snow was approaching whiteout
conditions (the owner of the 635 didn't get to drive my
533i, which would have showed him the sorry state of
his car); drove back down to Niles (Touhy Avenue) and
parked my car in front of my cell at the Days Inn. It
snowed a lot over the next twenty-four hours (a Sunday,
as I recall) and on Sunday night, when the snow stopped,
the temperature dropped, and dropped. Somewhere
early Monday morning, 1999-01-03, O'Hare had something
like -26 F. The hood of my car had a six-foot drift on top.
I did not even attempt to dig out or start my car for about
five days of so afterwards (I could walk to my contract
job at W. W. Grainger). When we dig out the car, and the
temperature was up to about 15 F, it started right up,
with a sort of "where you been?" attitude.

Bruce B. Reynolds, Trailing Edge Technologies, Glenside PA

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Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 12:01:12 PST

In article ,
Dave Garland wizinfo.com> in alt.folklore.computers
wrote:

>Cydrome Leader wrote:
>
>> COPY in DOS still has one thing unix doesn't that's cool- you can use
>> wildcards on both sides of the copy, as a substitution.
>>
>> for example
>>
>> COPY *.EXE *.BAK
>>
>> Did CP/M behave this way too?
>
>I don't think so. The corresponding command would have been
>
>PIP *.BAK=*.EXE
>
>I don't think you could copy to an ambiguous file name that wasn't
>either an entire disk [user area], or the result of a concatenation.
>The CP/M command syntax (and name) was reportedly copied from DEC
>usage, so perhaps one of the old DEC hands would know how the original
>worked.

Many similarities to OS/8 and RT11. A wildcard (but not wild
characters) in the output specification is legal, ie RT11allows:-

R PIP
*.BAK=*.SAV
or
COP *.SAV *.BAK

OS/8 PIP is too dumb to understand wildcards: use FOTP instead.

R FOTP
*.BK<*.SV
or
COP *.BK<*.SV

Regards,

David P.

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Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:47:20 PST

* pne.chomko@comcast.net:

> When you run a program in Perl on a Windows box and call the "shell",
> what exactly do you get?

A command line interpreter (CLI).

> Backticks, case you didn't know.

In case you didn't know, this is not DOS. It is a CLI, nothing more. On
32bit Windows this CLI also provides an emulation for 16bit DOS
programs. On 64bit Windows, even this is gone.

> You get DOS
> commands.

Yes, you get DOS commands. And if I install the "Services for UNIX" I
also get UNIX commands (like "ls"). Does that make Windowsxp an UNIX?
Probably not.

> What exactly is "Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]"?
> That is what I get when I execute:
> Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt, and enter "ver"
> on the command line.
>
> What do you call the NT command line "shell"?

Command Line Interpreter. That's what it is. Just because the CLI
understands DOS commands doesn't mean it is DOS.

Benjamin

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Re: Globa Warning. was Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 08:40:50 PST

On Dec 23, 6:04 pm, Morten Reistad last.name> wrote:
> In article news.motzarella.org>,
> Peter Flass Yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >Mensanator wrote:
> >> On Dec 22, 5:24 pm, Peter Flass Yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 07:24:52 -0500
> >>>> Peter Flass Yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>>> I'd like to hear more about this Global Warming thingy. When is it
> >>>>> supposed to start? So far this is the worst winter in 30+ years.
> >>>> Have you not had anyone explaining to you that cold winters are an
> >>>> expected effect of global warming and that global warming doesn't
> >>>> necessarily imply that the weather is getting warmer.
> >>> Then why don't they call it "global cooling?"
>
> >> Ever hear of a concept called "average"?
>
> >That's what I'm thinking of. Some years ago when Morten's distant
> >relatives colonized Greenland it really was a "green land". The icecaps
> >had receded farther from shore than at present, and the colonists were
> >able to easily grow crops and raise sheep. It wasn't called the "little
> >climatic optimum" for nothing, and no one complained about global
> >warming then.
>
> Not quite so green. The naming of Greenland is one of the first
> examples of not-quite-the-whole-truth marketing. Erik the Red
> (Eirik Raude), who is credited with discovering Greenland, got
> to name it. He had been recruiting settlers toIcelandfrom Norway
> (and Denmark?) and the naming was a definate marketing blunder, as
> he saw it. So he sat out to correct it; with plausible deniability.

Iceland was settled 250 years before Eric went to settle Greenland and
he had no part in the marketing of that, but Greenland had quite green
and fertile coastal areas in the south and south-west of the country.

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Re: : Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 08:01:08 PST

Roland Hutchinson verizon.net> wrote:

[snip]

>Design premise: Given enough raw power, you can bludgeon bread into slices.

From my sig collection:

From RFC 1925: "(3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure
where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under
them as they fly overhead."

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.

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