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Post by gillianren on Mar 27, 2008 15:07:16 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. Gods know something has to. No, I totally agree with what you're saying. What I'm trying to do is to assure those other people who, like me, don't understand half of what you guys say on these subjects, that they're not being picked on just because they don't. Speaking to the lurkers, as it were. I know you don't mean that us ignorant-about-science types can't understand the evidence that makes Apollo's reality the only logical conclusion. I just want them to know that there's a place here even for us. Every once in a while, I feel the need to make that clear. You guys can be a little intimidating sometimes, simply because you know so much on the subject. Now, having a serious conversation about, oh, grammar and etymology with me can no doubt be intimidating as well, and I assuredly don't mean it as an insult. And again, I know that you're not trying to imply anything with your statement other than that HB-types don't care about their ignorance because they believe the world should work the way they expect it to. Sometimes, though, I just feel the need to interject my own ignorance.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Mar 27, 2008 16:49:43 GMT -4
To be fair, though, I don't know much about how computers work. It's a not well known fact that computers run on the tranferance of smoke along tiny tubes set into the boards. If you accidently lett that smoke out, the whole thing ceases to work.
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Post by gillianren on Mar 27, 2008 20:49:23 GMT -4
Thank you, PW!
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Post by Ginnie on Mar 27, 2008 20:55:47 GMT -4
To be fair, though, I don't know much about how computers work. It's a not well known fact that computers run on the tranferance of smoke along tiny tubes set into the boards. If you accidently lett that smoke out, the whole thing ceases to work. Smoke? Really? I always thought it was darkness in those tubes, although I must say I've seen on at least two occasions smoke coming out of computers - and they did indeed cease to work. ;D
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Mar 27, 2008 21:34:01 GMT -4
It's not just computers - nearly anything electronic runs on smoke.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Mar 27, 2008 22:55:12 GMT -4
And mirrors.
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Post by Data Cable on Mar 28, 2008 1:12:20 GMT -4
That's HB claims, LO.
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Post by tedward on Mar 28, 2008 4:38:35 GMT -4
Well, I do not know how a computer works directly but I can understand how it was implemented for that particular job much in the same way as I understand the fuel injection ECU has a role and it does not need to do much outside its given task, if anything. Just typing this, the CPU indicator is nearly dead. 92% idle says a little box. So it has a screen and keyboard to monitor maybe a few other OS tasks to keep an eye like the HD etc. Take all that away and what is left for the computer to deal with?
Also I understand the instructions were hard wired? If so then it reminds me of the Amiga and earlier 8 bits. The Amiga 4000 (?), acording to an article I read, was chosen by the Royal Navy (it was a good few years ago!) as the re boot time due to the OS being on a chip was very quick. My 1200 was the same. No loading from disk and very quick.
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Apr 15, 2008 5:22:41 GMT -4
I thought computers were run by those little guys in glowing blue and red jumpsuits, racing round in tanks and hi-tech motorcycles whilst hurling disks at invading viruses and stuff.
So much for my indepth computer knowledge.
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Post by tofu on Apr 15, 2008 10:59:15 GMT -4
Just typing this, the CPU indicator is nearly dead. 92% idle says a little box. There's a process named System Idle that constantly consumes 99% of my CPU time. I took the computer to a repair shop and asked them to remove this obvious spyware. I was shocked when they told me that this is actually part of the Windows OS! I called Microsoft and *demanded* that they provide a way to uninstall it. They claimed they couldn't - right, just like they couldn't uninstall IE. I'm starting a class action suit against microsoft. Anybody want to get in on this?
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Post by echnaton on Apr 15, 2008 13:49:15 GMT -4
I'm there.
It is a little know fact that the system idle process is what actually runs the MSN web site through distributed computing. The slowdowns and occasional outages at MSN are caused by people either using too many of their own clock cycles or turning off their computers. It is rumored that somewhere in the EULA for Windows, there is a requirement that the user leave a certain amount of clock cycles free for system idle. However no one has ever read and understood the whole EULA without their head exploding, so this can't be confirmed. Even the Softie lawyers must focus on certain sections and limit daily EULA exposure to safe levels.
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Post by Ginnie on Apr 15, 2008 14:57:47 GMT -4
My CPU is running at 1 to 3 percent. Of course I'm running Linux.
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Post by dinsmore on Apr 19, 2008 13:23:14 GMT -4
According to NASA SP-200 "The Moon as viewed by Lunar Orbiter", on this earlier spacecraft "A flight programmer with a 128-word memory provided the capability for up to 16 hours of automatic spacecraft and camera operation or for action on real-time commands". Furthermore, the Sinclair Spectrum general purpose computer I had in the early 80s played joystick controlled space games with colour graphics just fine. This was the luxury model with 16k ROM plus 48k RAM; many games ran on the 16k RAM version en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum. A flatmate at college had the earlier Sinclair ZX81 which had 8k ROM plus 1k RAM en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81. The graphics weren't much good, but it was still useful for plotting best fit lines on graphs for our laboratory coursework.
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Post by JayUtah on Apr 19, 2008 13:33:36 GMT -4
The early ICBM guidance system had only 6 words of erasable memory: just enough to hold the state vector. They also had ALUs optimized only for the operations required for guidance, and obviously then instruction sets that addressed only that.
Most of us who remember life before the ubiquity of computers have used some truly primitive computers, and managed to get them to do some pretty amazing things. Back in the 1950s and 1960s you programmed digital systems by getting down and dirty with the hardware. Not to be too cynical, but it seems like today's graduates can't get a computer to do anything without massively overweight runtime support systems. Because that has become necessary for much of today's commercial software engineering, it's natural (although wrong) to believe that's the way all digital stored-program systems must be programmed.
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Post by nomuse on Apr 19, 2008 16:19:31 GMT -4
Heh. It's an interesting perspective. I've been doing hobbyist electronics for years but just got into physical computing recently. And at that, I started just a little late to be really comfortable with discretes. My teachers would slap an oscillator together out of back-to-back NPN's, or the SCR-capacitor-neon trick. I'd back-to-back two inverters, or a pair of NAND gates with their legs tied together, when I was being efficient: or pull out the old LM555 when I wasn't. So, already, I'm at a less efficient and more abstracted way of working, in which a pile of gates and other discretes are humming away inside those dips to get me a result I could have gotten with a smaller number of actual junctions et al.
But now I've ventured into physical computing, via Arduino at the moment, and its a whole new level of abstraction. To make an "oscillator" (or, rather, to blink an external LED) I now write a routine in C.....and I hate to think of how many levels of architecture, and how many twisty little bits of doped silicon, are involved executing that task I used to do with a pair of transistors and an RC pair.
It's rather horrid, really. Want to debounce a button? Write two lines of code. Invert? Throw away those 7404's, it's easier to call a function. I'm almost....reluctant....to put in discretes on an Arduino-based device even in places where they are clearly superior.
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