Posts by Bob Bramwell

Junk? I don't think so

I got an XO through the G1G1 program and have been quite favourably impressed. There are problems and shortcomings, true, but there are a whole lot of very good ideas. The hardware is robust, well thought out and eminently suitable for environments where the power supply is iffy (at best). I would be interested to know how well the competing devices work in rural Peru after a year or so of use by an elementary school kid.

Where, exactly, did Negroponte "admit" that the XO is a piece of junk? I didn't see it.

How about greener software?

Back in the old days programmers actually had to pay attention to the amount of code they were generating, how efficiently it ran and old fashioned stuff like that. Is it time for a revival? There is lots of talk about software bloat and the amount of hardware required to run newer operating systems, so it seems to me that a few billion computers worldwide running leaner software ought to be worth thinking about.

Non-patentable idea

This thing looks as though all it is is a cassette-shaped case for a USB stick. How dull. What would be really useful for those of us who are technologically backward is a cassette-shapped MP3 player that one could push into a cassette player (e.g. in a car stereo) and play tunez. If such a gizmo had a detachable USB stick, so much the better.

There, I've said it. Now, if someone tries to patent one this ought to scuttle it. Remember, you head it here first.

Cyber 172

Never did touch a CDC 6600, but the first big machine I got to play with was a 6400. Those ASR33 Teletypes were such a Great Thing! Oh Boy! Interactive Computing with a rhythm sectin thrown in! Way too cool.

Later the University of Calgary acquired a Cyber 172 which (IIRC) was more or less an integrated-circuit update of the 6000 series hardware.

Regrettably I have no pictures of the 6400, but you can find a (rather poor) picture of the Cyber 172 console at:

http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~bramwell/cyber-172-console.jpg

I've seen the same display on a 6400 screen. The console display was driven by a dedicate PPU (Peripheral Processor Unit), basically a mini-computer that front-ended the CPU. At the time the console was the most advanced graphics device available on the system. I believe our configuration had 12 PPU's that mostly managed I/O peripherals.

One amusing oddity of the CDC machines was that one did not "boot" them: one performed a "deadstart":

http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~bramwell/cyber-172-deadstart.jpg

which loaded a program into PPU-0 (again, IIRC) from a panel of toggle switches.

They were fascinating machines, but I have to say I was glad to see the back end of the last one they wheeled out. The next box ran Multics....

Workaround?

Is an authentication cookie valid only for a session? And is the session terminated when I explicitly "log out" from the site concerned? If so, presumably one can limit the damage radius by avoiding the "remember me" options (which are likely to involve more persistent cookies) and being sure to terminate one's session explicitly. Please correct me if I am wrong: this would be useful to know.

I'm a believer

I have been a home Solaris (SPARC) user since about 1993 when used Sparc 1's became available at a reasonable price. Linux was barely on the radar then. Over the years I have used many different Linux systems, none of which (especially Gentoo!) have convinced me to switch allegiance. The only two big wins I see with Linux are the increased range of available end-user software and hardware support, and the fact that it runs on cheap machines. I certainly wish Gnome and related GUI programs were better supported on Solaris but I can live with what is available. Solaris really is a very solid system, and in these uncertain days of Windows for Warships I am a big fan of reliable operating systems.

While Linux has given the open source movement a huge boost I lament the deterioration in portability of a lot of the software. Perhaps OpenSolaris will help to change that. I look forward to it with anticipation!