Jihad needs scientists
in [Design]
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From: MassiveProng on 4 Feb 2007 18:36 On Sun, 04 Feb 07 12:57:36 GMT, jmfbahciv(a)aol.com Gave us: >In article <45C5BBC6.48B4837C(a)hotmail.com>, > Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >> >> >>Phil Carmody wrote: >> >>> Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> writes: >>> > unsettled wrote: >>> > > MassiveProng wrote: >>> > > > A computer takes what we call DATA, and performs computational >tasks >>> > > > on it to turn it into what we call INFOrmation. >>> > > > >>> > > > There is a difference, and you and BAH obviously do not know what >>> > > > that difference is. >>> > > > >>> > > > http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/microcontroller >>> > > > >>> > > > http://m-w.com/dictionary/microcontroller >>> > > > >>> > > > Neither mention the word computer at all. >>> > > >>> > > An electronic device for the storage and processing of information. >>> > > www.micro2000uk.co.uk/hardware_glossary.htm >>> > >>> > I suggest you consider the difference between general purpose and >embedded. >>> > >>> > Can BAH's stove print "Hello world" for example ? >>> >>> As someone who's just quit a gig at a very big name semiconductor >>> company which makes everything from milliwatt 8-bits to fire-breathing >>> 64-bit processors, I have to just say >>> >>> THIS BRANCH OF THE THREAD IS NOT WORTH GOING DOWN. >>> >>> Everything's shades of grey, and where people chose to draw >>> the line between black and white is almost completely arbitrary. >>> >>> Notably, I'm not even going to tell you where on that scale I >>> view 'computer' to become an inappropriate term. >> >>I will though. >> >>I expect a computer to have some decent input and output devices / ports. A >few >>buttons and a 4 character display don't cut it for example. > >Son, that's a computer system. > No, it isn't. At best, that would be a "stand alone computing device". It would by no means qualify under today's acceptance of the term computer, and is by no means a "system".
From: MassiveProng on 4 Feb 2007 18:40 On Sun, 04 Feb 07 13:50:02 GMT, jmfbahciv(a)aol.com Gave us: >In article <9lk9s2t50t9i9iinqcefji61rihs9o4jpc(a)4ax.com>, > MassiveProng <MassiveProng(a)thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote: >>On Sat, 03 Feb 07 12:11:28 GMT, jmfbahciv(a)aol.com Gave us: >> >>>In article <9c9e$45c38013$4fe768e$12122(a)DIALUPUSA.NET>, >>> unsettled <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> wrote: >>>>Eeyore wrote: >>>>> >>>>> jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> "T Wake" <usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>><jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote in message >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>>They [Muslims] can't even buy >>>>>>>>shoes unless the shoe has been approved by the clerics (I think >>>>>>>>those are the people who do this work). >>>>>>> >>>>>>>Really? I can find no example of this being true. Can you support the >>>claim >>>>>>>that Islam dictates what shoes people can wear? >>>>>> >>>>>>Of the three Abraham-based religions, only Christianity doesn't >>>>>>have rules about living styles. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> More obfuscation. Did you take a course in not answering the question btw >? >>>>> >>>>> Can you support the claim that Islam dictates what shoes people can wear >? >>>>> >>>>> Graham >>>>> >>>>http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/072.sbt.html >>> >>>Thank you. I can't get out today to check the blurb; but I'll trust >>>your judgement. >>> >>>/BAH >> >> >> Isn't this where we're all supposed to say "BAHahahahahahahahahah!"? >> >> You sit in front of that thing ALL DAY. > >Check the date-time stamps. Your fantasyland has a clock tick bug. > >> I doubt there are any days >>where you get out. > >I get out about once a week. >> >> Are your groceries delivered? > >No. I have to know what I'm going to be out of two weeks in advance >to have somebody else do the shopping for me and it costs $20/hour >with the clock starting at the time the shopper leaves her house >and gets back to her house. It wasn't worth all the energy to >train them. > >/BAH > Out here, we use a thing called The World Wide Web, and we log onto major grocery store web sites, and put in our entire order, and it gets delivered for ten bucks. Why do you think you need to train the world when it is you that refused to get an upgrade? All the while, at the same time, claiming to have worked with the world's most renowned "bit gods". What happened to *you*?
From: MassiveProng on 4 Feb 2007 18:44 On Sun, 04 Feb 07 15:56:58 GMT, jmfbahciv(a)aol.com Gave us: >In article <45C34470.DCB07DFF(a)hotmail.com>, > Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >> >> >>jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: >> >>> Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >>> > >>> >I think you should read up about rationing during WW2. >>> >>> I have. It is significant that England couldn't figure out how >>> to stop war rations until 3 decades after the warring stopped. >> >>3 decades ! Where on earth did you get that figure from ? What was being >>rationed in 1975 ? > >I found it. whew! > >Reference: _The Downing Street Years_; Margaret Thatcher, Harper-Collins; >1993; page 44. > >"But I took greatest personal pleasure in the removal of exchange >controls -- that is the abolition of the elaborate statuatory >restrictions on the amount of foreign exchange British citizens >could acquire. These had been introduced as an 'emergency measure' >at the start of the Second World War and maintained by successive >governments, largely in the hope of increasing industrial >investment in Britain and of resisting pressure on sterling." > >/BAH That's not "rationing", dingledorf. That's inflation control, and economic growth initiative.
From: MassiveProng on 4 Feb 2007 18:48 On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 17:14:04 +0000 (UTC), kensmith(a)green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) Gave us: >In article <87k5yxc3vd.fsf(a)nonospaz.fatphil.org>, >Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: >[.....] >>Unsurprisingly you can't get your facts right. >>The ts1000 and the Sinclair ZX81 both had 8KB ROM. >>The former had 2KB RAM, the latter 1KB. The screen, >>more like a text buffer, took up to 768 bytes. >> >>Of course, it was well worth saving up for the 16k RAM >>pack, wobble or no wobble. > >A trip down memory lane: > >I built my own 32K RAM for a ZX80. You could only use the upper part of >the RAM as display area and a data memory. You couldn't fetch from it. > >I wrote an FFT program and software that did pixel by pixel graphics on >it. > >I still have a listing of the 4K ROM contents I ran through a decompiler. >The pixel by pixel graphics required some serious slight of hand to make >it work. Normally, the ZX80 looked up the character and line in the PROM >to turn it into pixels. I had to get the lookup action to look into the >graphics image. The line of text was made to be: > >00H 01H 02H .... 76H > >The 76H is the halt instruction of a Z80. The hardware decoded this and >allowed it into the micro. The rest wer fetched but replaced with NOPs > > Cool build.
From: unsettled on 4 Feb 2007 19:00
Phil Carmody wrote: > unsettled <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> writes: >>Phil Carmody wrote: >>>an externally generated NMI, synchronised with the horizontal flyback? >>>Of course, you'd not have enough time during he vertical flyback to >>>actually chage much of the "screen", surely? >>Nomenclature lesson: retrace > It was a bleedin' telly - it was flying back. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/tv8.htm "Horizontal-retrace signals to tell the TV when to move the beam back at the end of each line "Vertical-retrace signals 60 times per second to move the beam from bottom-right to top-left" http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/tv9.htm " The horizontal-retrace signals are 5-microsecond (abbreviated as "us" in the figure) pulses at zero volts. Electronics inside the TV can detect these pulses and use them to trigger the beam's horizontal retrace. The actual signal for the line is a varying wave between 0.5 volts and 2.0 volts, with 0.5 volts representing black and 2 volts representing white. This signal drives the intensity circuit for the electron beam. In a black-and-white TV, this signal can consume about 3.5 megahertz (MHz) of bandwidth, while in a color set the limit is about 3.0 MHz. "A vertical-retrace pulse is similar to a horizontal- retrace pulse but is 400 to 500 microseconds long. The vertical-retrace pulse is serrated with horizontal- retrace pulses in order to keep the horizontal-retrace circuit in the TV synchronized." See the referred to figure on the web page. |