Re: That seems a bit close to an urban area
I recall the Chinese bolts used to secure the San Francisco Bay Bridge weren’t up to snuff either. Seems to be a habit in China.
968 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009
When I were a student, we had access to the school's CDC mainframe running the Mass Storage Operating System and the operator’s console. I confess I was tempted and succumbed to that temptation in 1970.
On the last day to turn in our class projects (in the form of a deck of IBM punch cards), the input tray of the card reader was full and my project sat many decks from the front. Knowing I couldn’t get my program run before the deadline I allowed the devil to influence me. Having perused the operators manual, I knew I could command the operating system to search the card reader for a specific deck, identified by the JCL card supplied by my instructor. In that moment I sinned and entered that command with my deck's ID. Immediately, the reader began moving decks from the input tray to the output stackers without a pause until it reached mine, then it slowed, read and compiled my code and printed my output. Other students retrieved their unread decks with puzzled looks, while I retrieved my deck and listing with great satisfaction.
Until now, I remembered that little escapade with great pleasure. Knowledge is power! Now, I wonder how many lives I ruined by walking over them. Power corrupts, and I confess my corruption.
In the previous century when the Soviet Union was considered a threat, there were large radar installations above the arctic circle searching for incoming bombers.
The technicians maintaining the antennae would stand in the radar beam to warm up.
I've always wondered how their health fared in later years, and whether they were able to father children after they left the service.
Flooding the server room sounds like the sort of incompetent action Trump would order. Discs are usually in airtight cases, and only the external electronics are exposed, so the data is probably accessible.
Trump probably thought he could flush the data the same as he did paper documents in the White House.
Excellent reuse of the chandrayan orbiter as a commas node.
However it seems to me that if we are to continue reaching out to the Moon, we should build out communications infrastructure in the form of lunar satellites incorporating packet switching and lunar gps. We will need these things soon enough.
I agree, a vehicle with a touch screen will never be mine. However, I own a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle that has no touch screen. It is fun to drive, and I'm one of the lucky few that can charge it up at work for free. Given the price swings for gasoline, electricity is far more reliably priced.
I was part of the team developing the 8010, using the Alto. What a revelation! Although the cartridge disk drive only had a capacity of 2MB, it was adequate for the time.
While I never used BCPL, I did use MESA.
The network speed was (I think) 10Mb/second, but it was quite fast until it was 'productized', with multiple added envelopes in each packet.
The Computer Museum in Seattle has a working Alto, and an 8010.
Indeed! I took a course in industrial processes that required us to learn to use lathes, milling machines, shapers, and to make gears among other metal things. The instructor caught me attempting to shave the metal to fit, and accused me of carpentry. It seems he considered that to be a Bad Thing.
The great thing about standards is that there are so many of them. The Russians have standards, NASA has standards, ESA has standards, the Chinese have standards, the Japanese have standards, etc. Take your choice. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood, a man has to have a standard.
California currently (pun not intended) has the largest grid-scale switchable battery storage in the world at 6000 megawatts. Every new solar field in California includes battery storage. However, they must increase the power available (now about 52000 megawatts) by 68% to accommodate a complete replacement of ICE vehicles and add fully electric buildings without natural gas heating.