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From: Adrian Tuddenham on 19 Jun 2010 16:19 Justin C <justin.1006(a)purestblue.com> wrote: > In article <1jkccm4.e9jku21v9uwpsN%adrian(a)poppyrecords.invalid.invalid>, > Adrian Tuddenham wrote: > > Justin C <justin.1006(a)purestblue.com> wrote: > > > >> In article <883cceFgicU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Chris Ridd wrote: > >> > What sort of blind alleys would we avoid? > >> > >> Copper telephone lines to each house - we'd put fibre optic in from the > >> outset! > > > > ...and when the mains fails during an emergency situation...? > > Oh, you really are a glass-half-empty kinda guy, aren't you?! This is not something to be dismissed with "It'll never happen". Power cuts aren't all that frequent, but sometimes they occur as the result of something catastrophic - that is not the time to discover that the 'phone doesn't work when the mains is off. There is a legal requirement for one telephone per line to work independently of the mains and there is a good reason for that rule. [We can throw the fire extinguishers away, we didn't use any of them last year.] -- ~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply) www.poppyrecords.co.uk
From: Woody on 19 Jun 2010 18:23 Ian McCall <ian(a)eruvia.org> wrote: > We being the general marketplace, not particular individuals within > it. Transputers never really caught on in a big way, and all was said > to be down to optimising compilers and languages for multithreading > and getting developers to understand it properly. I so wanted the atari transputer workstation. I loved the idea of occam and it seemed such a logical design for the future of computing. Of course viewing it from a software point of view rather than a world view didn't help. Was too young to realise (actually care) that the world didn't want flashy computers, they wanted to write rubbishy powerpoints instead. >Of course, twenty/twenty five years later we don't have that problem of > course, with all compilers languages having been fully optimised for > multithreading and all developers fully able to take advantage of it > without trouble. I mean, imagine someone in this day and age who just > puts things on a single thread, or who doesn't understand fully how to > safely code in a multithreaded, multicore environment. Ridiculous! reminds me that I need to take a good look at F# and see if there is any occam based goodness left in that Ps: sorry if quitting is screwed. I took the PowerBook to the applestore today to get its long term problem fixed, and am now on the iPad full time -- Woody
From: Ian McCall on 19 Jun 2010 18:42 On 2010-06-19 23:23:40 +0100, Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> said: > I so wanted the atari transputer workstation. I loved the idea of occam > and it seemed such a logical design for the future of computing. Of > course viewing it from a software point of view rather than a world view > didn't help. Was too young to realise (actually care) that the world > didn't want flashy computers, they wanted to write rubbishy powerpoints > instead. Lancaster University at the time I was there ran an experimental Dynix machine that used 16 386 chips (I forget the megahertz) - this was considered advanced stuff. >> Of course, twenty/twenty five years later we don't have that problem of >> course, with all compilers languages having been fully optimised for >> multithreading and all developers fully able to take advantage of it >> without trouble. I mean, imagine someone in this day and age who just >> puts things on a single thread, or who doesn't understand fully how to >> safely code in a multithreaded, multicore environment. Ridiculous! > > reminds me that I need to take a good look at F# and see if there is any > occam based goodness left in that Yeah, I -do- hope people realised the bitter sarcasm in my quote above. I deal in multithreaded low-latency apps daily, and the messes some make are just hilarious. F# sounds interesting but I've always been on Unix so never tried it. Looks like may have to at least get involved with C#/.NET at some level soon though (probably not doing the bulk of the coding, but understanding how those who -are -doing the coding are getting on, which essentially means I'll have to know my way around the language at least at some level). Might be a chance to look at F# while I'm there. > Ps: sorry if quitting is screwed. I took the PowerBook to the applestore > today to get its long term problem fixed, and am now on the iPad full > time That's a beautiful typo - quitting is screwed, I'm on the iPad full time. Excellent. Cheers, Ian
From: Richard Tobin on 19 Jun 2010 19:00 In article <1jkchit.x1ilfdtbpezN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: >> I just >> mean the transitive closure of the programs used to produce it. >I can see nothing that permits any meaning to be attached to the >intersection of the concepts of transitive closure with that of computer >software. Consider the binary relation R on the set of computer programs where A R B iff B was used to produce A. Let R' be the transitive closure of R. By the "ancestors" of a program P I mean the set of programs Q such that P R' Q. -- Richard
From: Woody on 19 Jun 2010 19:03
Ian McCall <ian(a)eruvia.org> wrote: > On 2010-06-19 23:23:40 +0100, Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> said: > >> I so wanted the atari transputer workstation. I loved the idea of > > occam >> and it seemed such a logical design for the future of computing. Of >> course viewing it from a software point of view rather than a world > > view >> didn't help. Was too young to realise (actually care) that the world >> didn't want flashy computers, they wanted to write rubbishy > > powerpoints >> instead. > > Lancaster University at the time I was there ran an experimental Dynix > machine that used 16 386 chips (I forget the megahertz) - this was > considered advanced stuff. Wow, 16,386 is a lot :) That is pretty impressive. I actually started looking at multiprocessing stuff without access to one, and I remember doing my first multitasking stuff in dos, and being seriously impressed with it. Had to wait a very long time before I finally got a real dual processor machine. But the occam ideas, I remember going through the book, and seeing as a lot of what I did at the time was still 68000 assembler, it made really good sense. In fact I think I still have the book. >>> Of course, twenty/twenty five years later we don't have that problem > > > of >>> course, with all compilers languages having been fully optimised for >>> multithreading and all developers fully able to take advantage of it >>> without trouble. I mean, imagine someone in this day and age who > > > just >>> puts things on a single thread, or who doesn't understand fully how > > > to >>> safely code in a multithreaded, multicore environment. Ridiculous! >>> reminds me that I need to take a good look at F# and see if there is > > > any >> occam based goodness left in that > > Yeah, I -do- hope people realised the bitter sarcasm in my quote > above. I deal in multithreaded low-latency apps daily, and the messes > some make are just hilarious. Obviously, as the messes people make without it are quite impressive on their own. > F# sounds interesting but I've always been on Unix so never tried it. I have never got round to trying it as it is really not in the sort of stuff I do. I do a lot of c# and java and like it for the day job, a luckily trailing off bit of c++ but at home I am really getting into ipad development. So opportunities for playing about with other languages a bit limited >Looks like may have to at least get involved with C#/.NET at some level > soon though (probably not doing the bulk of the coding, but > understanding how those who -are -doing the coding are getting on, > which essentially means I'll have to know my way around the language > at least at some level). Might be a chance to look at F# while I'm > there. Not much really I wouldn't think. As I say, c# is most of my programming day job (actually xslt is, but I don't count that) and I haven't yet got round to f#. I do have visual studio 2010 installed though, so I have it, so if the opportunity presents itself I may have a stab at it >> Ps: sorry if quitting is screwed. I took the PowerBook to the > > applestore >> today to get its long term problem fixed, and am now on the iPad full >> time > > That's a beautiful typo - quitting is screwed, I'm on the iPad full > time. Excellent. Oops.. Quoting. Hopefully some of the news tap faults will get fixed soon! -- Woody |