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Post by cos on Mar 25, 2008 20:36:51 GMT -4
From the index page under Computer Technology, this point is made; Recall that the Apollo computer was not a general purpose computer. It didn't have to run games or spreadsheets, or do payrolls, or store inventory databases. It only had to navigate the spacecraft to the moon. There were no printers or disk drives required. No tape drives, no card readers or card punches. And so it was a pretty lean computer.And this article I think neatly illustrates the point; news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7094881.stmQuote; "A virtual Colossus written to run on a Pentium 2 laptop takes about the same time to break a cipher as Colossus does," he said.
It was so fast, he said, because it was a single purpose processor rather than one put to many general purposes like modern desktop computers.
So it took 50 years for a general purpose machine to equal a specialised machine. So I'd really like to know specifically what technology wasn't up to the task of landing Men on he Moon in 1969. True to form no HB is keen to get into specifics.....
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Post by echnaton on Mar 25, 2008 20:54:33 GMT -4
Welcome to the forum, Cos. HBs are understandably short on giving specifics. Understandable because they don't have any to give.
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Post by JayUtah on Mar 25, 2008 21:31:03 GMT -4
Hi, Cos. Thanks for the link. I love hearing about efforts to reconstruct early computer technology.
I've recently taken some pictures of other special-purpose computers throughout history and I hope to add them to the site. The Iridium satellite system computer was built according to the same physical principles of construction as the Apollo guidance computer. Pictures of one could be mistaken for pictures of the other. I've also been photographing the instrument units of various ballistic missiles.
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Post by cos on Mar 25, 2008 21:47:39 GMT -4
Thanks. I just needed to meet some sane people after coming across 4 people in the last couple of years who are HBs, three of whom were degree educated (but not in a numerate discipline). To be honest I was dumbfounded at the lack of critical reasoning in people I had regarded as intelligent.
It is worrying how such a fictional work of misinformation (the Fox 'documentary') has taken root. When I first saw it I fell off my chair laughing but I had no idea the effect it would have on the scientifically illiterate.
One thing I have noticed is that people susceptible to the Hoax Theory are; a) not scientists or engineers b) generally too young to have been around or too young to remember the Apollo missions.
So far I have convinced 3 of the 4 of their foolishness but one remains a work in progress (unfortunately he has been universally ridiculed on the forum (not my game plan) and he has retreated into a shell).
Hopefully this will all end when something films the landing sites and then we can start a whole new conspiracy theory about how (despite not being able to get to the Moon in 1969), Nasa has managed to plant all the kit on the moon in the subsequent years. Now just where are those secret Saturn 5 size rockets taking off from?
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Post by Ginnie on Mar 25, 2008 21:57:10 GMT -4
Nasa has managed to plant all the kit on the moon in the subsequent years. Made of balsa wood, of course! ;D What amazes me is when HB accuse NASA of having secret technology that is superior to anything we've ever seen - artificial zero gravity chambers, giant vacuum hangers etc. But they still say NASA couldn't put a man on the moon because it didn't have the technology. I just find that puzzling.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Mar 26, 2008 1:55:34 GMT -4
As Jay keeps pointing out, it's not about the technology, it's about the eviliness of them doing it.
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Post by tedward on Mar 26, 2008 5:20:31 GMT -4
Funnily enough I came across this the other day after following a link on the BBC news web site about the reunion of the BBC B designers. The link took me to trom the Computer Conservation Society. Sort of related? www.computerconservationsociety.org/special.htmAmazing stuff.
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Post by sts60 on Mar 26, 2008 9:16:40 GMT -4
Hi, cos. Welcome to the board.
In regard to your question about specifics, the lead-pipe cinch disproving Apollo is that the AGC only had 32k of 15-bit words, but computers built up specifically to play space games require something like a gigabyte of RAM!
And bitchin' speakers, too. No speakers on the AGC.
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Post by cos on Mar 26, 2008 10:01:45 GMT -4
In regard to your question about specifics, the lead-pipe cinch disproving Apollo is that the AGC only had 32k of 15-bit words, but computers built up specifically to play space games require something like a gigabyte of RAM!
And bitchin' speakers, too. No speakers on the AGC.
LOL! It's too funny. I am crying. It almost wrecks your brain trying to get into their heads! I hadn't seen this argment before I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Thanks.
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Post by Count Zero on Mar 26, 2008 15:04:12 GMT -4
I've seen that one too. The other day I was playing WWII Air Combat Simulator. It made me wonder what sort of computer the P-51 had. ;D
Btw, welcome, cos!
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Post by tofu on Mar 26, 2008 15:08:09 GMT -4
If you're still engaged in this debate, here's a little analogy for you (that the HBs will ignore or claim isn't valid): I can go down to radioshack and get a pushbutton switch. I can wire this switch to a com port or a joystick port on a computer. I can then mount the switch in a door jam such that when the door is closed, the switch is closed.
When the door/switch is closed, the result is that a location of shared memory is updated. This has nothing to do with the operating system. This will work on an Apple II or a Commidore 64 or whatever.
I can now write a program in assembly language to take some action when the switch is closed. Perhaps the program will update another area of shared memory - in this case, corresponding to the video screen. The program will certainly be less than 1k in size.
So to review, 1k is more than enough to have a system in which the status of a door is shown on a computer screen.
Now if I want to *simulate* that there are all sorts of ways I might do it, but for argument sake, let's say I write a Java program with a UI consisting of a picture of a door and a picture of a computer monitor. The door itself would be represented by a data structure, and object, that would undoubtedly be much larger than 1k. The entire program will incorporate the JVM, variously libraries like Swing, resources like images of doors (just the graphics would be several hundred k). And of course, if I specify that this program must run in windows, the requirements for it are perhaps 1G of ram and a modern, fast computer.
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Post by JayUtah on Mar 26, 2008 15:37:06 GMT -4
The moral of the story being that people who actually understand how computers work have less of a problem with the AGC than people who think they know about computers just because they own one.
Industrial computers are simpletons compared to our consumer models, because they're built for reliability and not for flashiness. Life-safe computing is done on simple architectures such as PID controllers and PLCs that have very reliably predictable behavior.
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Post by gillianren on Mar 27, 2008 2:20:56 GMT -4
To be fair, though, I don't know much about how computers work.
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Post by JayUtah on Mar 27, 2008 8:52:00 GMT -4
But if you re-read my first paragraph you'll discover that the problem lies not in failing to understand the inner workings of a computer, but in one's behavior when that is the case. People who fail to understand something can either trust those who do understand it or expand their own understanding, and thereby still lay claim on reason. Conspiracy theorists persist in their ignorance but deny it, inventing their own rules by which the thing works. You may not understand how computers work, but you don't pretend that you do. That's what makes you a reasonable person.
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Post by tofu on Mar 27, 2008 9:23:32 GMT -4
Conspiracy theorists persist in their ignorance but deny it, inventing their own rules by which the thing works. I've long thought that this behavior is actually a survival adaptation among social species. It helped in the past, but doesn't help us today.
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