Favourite computer history books?
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From: Walter Bushell on 13 May 2010 22:56 In article <hsi2cg$3dh$16(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap(a)verizon.net> wrote: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 10:41:50 -0700, Michelle Steiner wrote: > > > In article <hshaol$3dh$15(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > > Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap(a)verizon.net> wrote: > > > >> >> I would regard 2.251 as a *huge* value of two. > >> > > >> > It rounds to 2. > >> > >> Egro, 3 = 2 for sufficiently small values of three. > > > > You mean like > > > > (round 2.9) = (round 3.1) > > > > --> true > > Maybe. So that's what the hymn about a "round young virgin mother and child" was justified. -- A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
From: DMcCunney on 14 May 2010 10:32 * Michelle Steiner: > And, despite almost universal opinion to the contrary, I include Heinlein's > The Number of the Beast. I wouldn't, but I don't share the near universal condemnation. While it's one of the few RAH books I have no particular desire to *re-read*, it has its moments. RAH wrote this one when an assortment of authors were retconning their material to make it part of a overall universe (like Michael Moorcock subsuming all of his work under the Eternal Champion theme.) RAH liked to play games with solipsism, and did so with a vengeance in NotB, tying together not only everything *he* had ever written, but everything anyone else had ever written, too. I almost fell off my chair when I realized what he'd done. And I have to love an SF novel whose ending takes place at an SF convention (though I think I'm happy I wasn't on the Con Committee for it...) ______ Dennis
From: Charlie Gibbs on 14 May 2010 12:14 In article <hsi2cg$3dh$16(a)news.eternal-september.org>, my.spamtrap(a)verizon.net (Roland Hutchinson) writes: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 10:41:50 -0700, Michelle Steiner wrote: > >> In article <hshaol$3dh$15(a)news.eternal-september.org>, >> Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap(a)verizon.net> wrote: >> >>>>> I would regard 2.251 as a *huge* value of two. >>>> >>>> It rounds to 2. >>> >>> Egro, 3 = 2 for sufficiently small values of three. >> >> You mean like >> >> (round 2.9) = (round 3.1) >> >> --> true > > Maybe. "Takes the worry out of being close." -- /~\ cgibbs(a)kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
From: Patrick Scheible on 14 May 2010 13:46 DMcCunney <plugh(a)xyzzy.com> writes: > * Michelle Steiner: > > > And, despite almost universal opinion to the contrary, I include Heinlein's > > The Number of the Beast. > > I wouldn't, but I don't share the near universal condemnation. While > it's one of the few RAH books I have no particular desire to *re-read*, > it has its moments. > > RAH wrote this one when an assortment of authors were retconning their > material to make it part of a overall universe (like Michael Moorcock > subsuming all of his work under the Eternal Champion theme.) RAH liked > to play games with solipsism, and did so with a vengeance in NotB, tying > together not only everything *he* had ever written, but everything > anyone else had ever written, too. I almost fell off my chair when I > realized what he'd done. I enjoyed NotB too. I think it worked a lot better than, for instance, Asimov's later attempt to link the Robot series and the Foundation series. -- Patrick
From: DMcCunney on 14 May 2010 16:52
* Ian Gregory: > On 2010-05-04, Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer(a)cs.nmsu.edu> wrote: > >> When we can see that something can be done, arbitrarily decreeing that >> it's "impossible" for a machine to do it is, as Patrick points out, >> bizarre. > > According to folklore the laws of aerodynamics prove that the bumblebee > should be incapable of flight but scientists never claimed that they had > evolved an anti-gravity organ or anything like that. It was always clear > that we simply didn't have an adequate grasp of aerodynamics, fluid > dynamics, biomechanics etc to explain such a complex phenomenon. IIRC, those "proofs" treated the bumblebee as a *fixed wing* monoplane. No surprise they cranked out wrong answers. > Ian ______ Dennis |