On 29/10/2021 21:08, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 10/29/21 09:52, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2021-10-29, 1p166 <z24ba6.net> wrote:
>>
>>>     Fortunately, it doesn't look like time travel can
>>>     be realized in the real world.
>>
>> Too bad.  I'd love go to back and see to it that
>> Bill Gates' parents never met.
>
>
>
>     Without MS-DOS and Windows we might not have
> the x86 line with all its advances and multiple cores
> to play with as well as all its sneaky Minux
> implementation.
>
>     Time Travel by any means in the 21st century is
> merely entertainment but by the 30th century it may be
> dangerous reality.  I am not going to worry about it but
> The Gordian Protocol was too good a story to miss.
>
You can't solve the inherent paradox.

Ability to change the past would always result in a paradox. There are
no paradoxes in nature. Only in the imperfect human mind.

It wasn't about time travel, but it was about personality travel -
Mindswap, by Robert Sheckley, in which the hapless protagonist keeps
swapping bodies in an vain attempt to get back to the one he started
with - ends thus....

"He changed his mind, however, realizing that there was no sense in
spending his life trying to discover if he had a life to spend.

"Besides, there was a possibility that even if the Earth were changed,
his memory and perceptions might also be changed, rendering discovery
impossible.

"He lay beneath Stanhope's familiar green sky, and considered the
possibility. It seemed unlikely: for did not the giant oak trees still
migrate each year to the south? Did not the huge red sun move across
the sky pursued by its dark companion? Did not the triple moons return
each month with their new accumulation of comets?

"These familiar sights reassured him. Everything seemed to be as it
always had been. And so , willingly and with a good grace, Marvin
accepted his world at face value, married Marsha Baker, and lived
forever after."

In short, if time travel existed, we would travel in time, change the
past, and instantly be in a present descended from the changed past with
no knowledge of ever having changed it.

In fact I do this a thousand times a second :-)

--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "

Alan Sokal

On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 22:43:27 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
> On 2021-10-29, Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
>
>> Without MS-DOS and Windows we might not have
>> the x86 line with all its advances and multiple cores
>> to play with as well as all its sneaky Minux
>> implementation.
>
> Yeah, we'd probably have had to put up with the 68000 line.
> <crocodile tears>

May be the Z8000 and Z80000 hadn't failed either.
--
Andreas

Le 29-10-2021, Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> a écrit :
>
> Without MS-DOS and Windows we might not have
> the x86 line with all its advances and multiple cores
> to play with as well as all its sneaky Minux
> implementation.

Can you show me references about Bill Gates explaining how to create
microprocessors? And once you provide this, if it's not in your
references, you have to explain why nobody outside Bill Gates would have
been able to find it out.

If you can't, you are just a daydreamer.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

On 30 Oct 2021 13:45:22 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>
> Le 29-10-2021, Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> a écrit :
>>
>> Without MS-DOS and Windows we might not have
>> the x86 line with all its advances and multiple cores
>> to play with as well as all its sneaky Minux
>> implementation.
>
> Can you show me references about Bill Gates explaining how to create
> microprocessors? And once you provide this, if it's not in your
> references, you have to explain why nobody outside Bill Gates would have
> been able to find it out.

Where did he state that?

Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86 might
just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might all use
the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of microprocessors today.

Anyway, Gates said it the same day he invented the internet and
mentioned, that no one would ever need more than 640 KB of computer
memory.
--
Andreas

Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
> On 30 Oct 2021 13:45:22 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>>
>> Le 29-10-2021, Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> a écrit :
>>>
>>> Without MS-DOS and Windows we might not have
>>> the x86 line with all its advances and multiple cores
>>> to play with as well as all its sneaky Minux
>>> implementation.
>>
>> Can you show me references about Bill Gates explaining how to create
>> microprocessors? And once you provide this, if it's not in your
>> references, you have to explain why nobody outside Bill Gates would have
>> been able to find it out.
>
> Where did he state that?

He doesn't, that's why he's wrong. It's the only way to say that without
Microsoft the processors would lag behind what we have today.

I don't know why He me answered on my email instead of here, but he gave
no more reason. Just his history with OSes but it's irrelevant.

> Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86 might
> just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might all use
> the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of microprocessors today.

Maybe we would have something else, the point is not to know which
processor we would use, but to know if the processors would be as
powerful as what we have today.

And the answer is: yes, of course.

> Anyway, Gates said it the same day he invented the internet and

By the guy who invented the internet, you are speaking of Bill Gates,
not someone else? Since when does he invent internet?

> mentioned, that no one would ever need more than 640 KB of computer
> memory.

Making this mistake didn't change history, it only render the use of DOS
more difficult.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> writes:
> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>> Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86
>> might just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might
>> all use the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of
>> microprocessors today.
>
> Maybe we would have something else, the point is not to know which
> processor we would use, but to know if the processors would be as
> powerful as what we have today.
>
> And the answer is: yes, of course.

Agreed.

But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
components) were relevant to everyone else too.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> At some point in childhood intelligence organises sensory data into a
>> model, that includes a self, in a real (physical) world. That model is
>> reinforced through parents etc until people like you think that they
>> have actually emerged into 'the real world' and start to explain their
>> awareness of it, on terms of its physical nature!
>
> Unfortunately, many people's models are seriously warped.

I think the truth was out back with Dr. Who #1 in The War Machines,
where in a somewhat similar plot to The Green Death the WOTAN
computer was able to hypnotise anyone within earshot.

Clearly computers have been hypnotising us since the sixties to
make us build far more of them than we could possibly need, and
more powerful than could possibly do us any good. After all, before
then lots of important people knew that we'd never need anything
like this many of them. :)

I don't usually go for fan fiction, but I think I'd give a Dr Who
+ The Matrix cross-over a look...

"The Boss" in The Green Death was built out of an ICT 1301, by the
way:
http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=875

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On 30/10/2021 23:14, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> writes:
>> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>>> Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86
>>> might just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might
>>> all use the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of
>>> microprocessors today.
>>
>> Maybe we would have something else, the point is not to know which
>> processor we would use, but to know if the processors would be as
>> powerful as what we have today.
>>
>> And the answer is: yes, of course.
>
> Agreed.
>
> But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
> MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
> that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
> components) were relevant to everyone else too.
>
I thought they chose the 8086?

--
In todays liberal progressive conflict-free education system, everyone
gets full Marx.

On 10/30/21 8:18 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>> At some point in childhood intelligence organises sensory data into a
>>> model, that includes a self, in a real (physical) world. That model is
>>> reinforced through parents etc until people like you think that they
>>> have actually emerged into 'the real world' and start to explain their
>>> awareness of it, on terms of its physical nature!
>>
>> Unfortunately, many people's models are seriously warped.
>
> I think the truth was out back with Dr. Who #1 in The War Machines,
> where in a somewhat similar plot to The Green Death the WOTAN
> computer was able to hypnotise anyone within earshot.
>
> Clearly computers have been hypnotising us since the sixties to
> make us build far more of them than we could possibly need, and
> more powerful than could possibly do us any good. After all, before
> then lots of important people knew that we'd never need anything
> like this many of them. :)
>
> I don't usually go for fan fiction, but I think I'd give a Dr Who
> + The Matrix cross-over a look...
>
> "The Boss" in The Green Death was built out of an ICT 1301, by the
> way:
> http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=875
>

Had to look that up ... BritBox. ONE Mhz clock speed, magcore
memory, 48 bit words. Not quite in the IBM 360 universe. 21
clock cycles to do addition. About 400 words of main memory.

Sure ... you're going to build a world-dominating machine
intelligence on THAT platform :-)

But, in the day, the experts were SURE it could be done.
The "HAL-9000" was a product of that optimism.

Then horrible horrible REALITY hit ...

50 years later and not even 1/1000th of a HAL.

On 2021-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 30/10/2021 23:14, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> writes:
>>> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>>>> Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86
>>>> might just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might
>>>> all use the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of
>>>> microprocessors today.
>>>
>>> Maybe we would have something else, the point is not to know which
>>> processor we would use, but to know if the processors would be as
>>> powerful as what we have today.
>>>
>>> And the answer is: yes, of course.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
>> MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
>> that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
>> components) were relevant to everyone else too.
>>
> I thought they chose the 8086?

Not for the original IBM PC. The original IBM PC and the XT each
had a 8-bit data bus. The AT had a 16-bit data bus. For a
while, there were two kinds of PeeCee hardware: 1) 8088 with 8-bit
data bus; 2) 80286 with 16-bit data bus.

More than a couple of decades ago, I observed an interesting
"competition" architected by manager who was a solid Macintosh
fan. The secretaries (now administrative assistants) got to try
out a PeeCee-type machine (most likely a PeeCee clone) and a Mac
to decided which was better for their work. Somewhere, he had
found a PeeCee with unconventional hardware. I think it was an
8086 machine (same interface to software as 8088 but 16-bit bus),
but it might have been a 286-based machine with an 8-bit data
bus. Either way, when they tried to find an extended or expanded
memory card, they had major problems, because the only types of
cards were for 1) 8088 interface to software and 8-bit bus; or 2)
286 interface to software with 16-bit bus. Because of all of the
difficulties caused by that choice of non-standard hardware, the
PeeCee lost the competition.

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

On 10/29/21 11:13 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 10/28/21 22:07, 1p166 wrote:
>> On 10/28/21 9:25 AM, Pancho wrote:
>>> On 28/10/2021 06:11, 1p166 wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>    A few years ago there was a Brit sci-fi series
>>>>    about sophisticated, but ultimately mindless,
>>>>    quality androids. Their inventor impressed a
>>>>    few with a sort of fractal thought pattern
>>>>    that produced intelligence, "consciousness",
>>>>    "self-awareness", "real people", as an emergent
>>>>    property. I don't think the writers were so
>>>>    far off.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yep it was called Humans, the series touched on the watershed moment
>>> of android development, the singularity...
>>>
>>> The point where androids will be able to satisfy the "Pancho" test.
>>> The test will be passed test if a standard examiner is unable to tell
>>> if he has shagged a real woman or an android.
>>>
>>> FWIW the series was originally Swedish "Real Humans". The first
>>> series was good, but went rapidly downhill afterwards.
>>
>>    Ah yes, "Humans" ... but I think it died after the
>>    second season. IMHO it'd done all it could do with
>>    that particular premise.
>>
>>    Never saw the Swedish version.
>>
>>    But the idea that "sentience", "personhood", was
>>    less pure hardware than it was a way of USING
>>    said hardware ... a pattern, a meme ... struck
>>    a chord. There's something to that.
>>
>>    I mentioned hydrocephalic children for a reason.
>>    Some have surprisingly little grey matter left.
>>    Their scans reveal devastation, what's left of
>>    their cortexes is more on the scale of chimps.
>>    Yet, many attained normal+ capabilities. This
>>    points to an organizational/connectional key,
>>    beyond mere hardware.
>>
>>    There are several beasties with bigger brains than
>>    ours - but they just don't have "it". Whatever "it"
>>    is seems to have showed up around the time of Homo
>>    Hablis. H.Sapiens ... maybe not so much that we were
>>    generally intellectually superior, but just "badder"
>>    than the competitors. Quick, aggressive, somewhat
>>    xenophobic -  we dominated the "trolls" and "ogres"
>>    and such in the end. Resistance is futile. Then we
>>    turned on each other ... which also seems to be a
>>    significant evolutionary prompter. Having to outwit
>>    your own - or else - that's evolutionary pressure.
>
>     We are unable to discuss the curious matter of "personhood"
> with creatures on this planet with larger brains due to disparate
> means of communnication,  In an Antarctic dive the diver was
> adopted by a Leopard seal which may have seen it as an injured
> member of the young of its own species.  We have heard many tales
> of dolphins helping people who fall into waters and as well tales
> of dolphine raping their own species using gang tactics and
> seemingly attempting seduction of human females,
>
>     So don't dismiss the possibily of self-hood existing
> in the so-called lower animals. I think that some self-awareness
> is a survival mechanism as are these paragraphs.
>
>     And we do a lot with the neurons in the autonomic
> nervous system which the the brain connection to the mostly
> "unconscious" functions which keep us more or less "alive".
>>
>>    ANYway ... if we can find "it", that pattern, real
>>    AI might be possible with a lot less hardware than
>>    we currently envision.
>
> bliss - 'Nearly any fool can use a Linux computer. Many do.' After all
> here I am...

But can you CHANGE it ? PROGRAM it ? Make it do more than
the apps you downloaded ? :-)

Ask people how car works. They'll say "You turn the key
and it starts". The reality is that the sci/tech/engineering
from the tires up in to MAKING it work is absolutely
brain-boggling. THAT'S how a car works.

I've taken a few stabs at figuring out how CPUs actually
work. Sorry, but I lose it at the decoder/ALU steps. The
people who figured that out were GENIUS. Maybe when I'm
retired I'll have the time to study it, follow the
reasoning until I could actually build a Z-80 or 6502.
I'd be happy with an i4004.

Thing is, the original designers were under PRESSURE,
"We need this by November or we'll all go broke" kind
of pressure.

On 10/30/21 6:14 PM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> writes:
>> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>>> Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86
>>> might just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might
>>> all use the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of
>>> microprocessors today.
>>
>> Maybe we would have something else, the point is not to know which
>> processor we would use, but to know if the processors would be as
>> powerful as what we have today.
>>
>> And the answer is: yes, of course.
>
> Agreed.
>
> But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
> MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
> that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
> components) were relevant to everyone else too.

There were a number of good 8/16 chips out at the time
and the M68000 was on the very near horizon.

The ONLY reason the Intel chip became so popular was
because IBM picked it. It looked a little familiar
to the CP/M crowd (I actually HAVE CP/M-86 in a VM).
Lots of registers, segmented memory. Semi-familiar
sorts of instructions. IBM is BIG ... and meant
"Business" ...

What I always wanted was a SAGE computer ... looked
like an IBM box but with a 68k chip and a choice of
operating systems (most UNIX-like). Alas they were
a low-volume outfit and the price was too high.

And MAC ... there's always been something about Apple
operating systems that turned me off. The thinking
and I just aren't on the same frequency, so to speak.

So far as PRICING ... this is where Intel (and Gates)
took their big risks. They underpriced on the theory
that an IBM unit would sell big enough to let them
make it up on volume.

On 30 Oct 2021 21:47:01 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>
> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>
>> Anyway, Gates said it the same day he invented the internet and
>
> By the guy who invented the internet, you are speaking of Bill Gates,
> not someone else? Since when does he invent internet?
>
>> mentioned, that no one would ever need more than 640 KB of computer
>> memory.
>
> Making this mistake didn't change history, it only render the use of DOS
> more difficult.

Should I really had added a smiley? Thought it was obvious enough I
didn't meant it.
--
Andreas

Le 31-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
> On 30 Oct 2021 21:47:01 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>>
>> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>>
>>> Anyway, Gates said it the same day he invented the internet and
>>
>> By the guy who invented the internet, you are speaking of Bill Gates,
>> not someone else? Since when does he invent internet?
>>
>>> mentioned, that no one would ever need more than 640 KB of computer
>>> memory.
>>
>> Making this mistake didn't change history, it only render the use of DOS
>> more difficult.
>
> Should I really had added a smiley? Thought it was obvious enough I
> didn't meant it.

I was surprised by your answer, but sometimes I read impressive stuff by
people who rewrite the past that I wasn't sure. More precisey, for the
second sentence, I knew it was a joke, but I wasn't sure for the first.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

On 31/10/2021 04:28, 1p166 wrote:
> I've taken a few stabs at figuring out how CPUs actually
>   work. Sorry, but I lose it at the decoder/ALU steps. The
>   people who figured that out were GENIUS. Maybe when I'm
>   retired I'll have the time to study it, follow the
>   reasoning until I could actually build a Z-80 or 6502.
>   I'd be happy with an i4004.

Really? Its all pretty easy since the basic logic is simply gates, and
bistables.

Once you have - and I have - been shown how to combine gates to make
things like shift registers and adders and RAM, it isn't really that hard.

--
"Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
higher education positively fortifies it."

- Stephen Vizinczey

On 31/10/2021 04:57, 1p166 wrote:
> On 10/30/21 6:14 PM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> writes:
>>> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>>>> Suppose meant was that without the IBM PC (and thus MS-DOS) the x86
>>>> might just had been a footnote in today's computer history. We might
>>>> all use the Motorola M70000 or the Zilog 64-bit line of
>>>> microprocessors today.
>>>
>>> Maybe we would have something else, the point is not to know which
>>> processor we would use, but to know if the processors would be as
>>> powerful as what we have today.
>>>
>>> And the answer is: yes, of course.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
>> MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
>> that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
>> components) were relevant to everyone else too.
>
>   There were a number of good 8/16 chips out at the time
>   and the M68000 was on the very near horizon.
>
>   The ONLY reason the Intel chip became so popular was
>   because IBM picked it. It looked a little familiar
>   to the CP/M crowd (I actually HAVE CP/M-86 in a VM).

More than that, operating in small model mode, you could pretty much run
8080 code through a translator and port CP/M programs to it easily.
The business market had been taken by the 8080/z80 and CP/M while the
hobbysist were all using 6502s.

IBM naturally picked a zilog/interl style architecture.
Ghastly mistake until the 386 came out.

>   Lots of registers, segmented memory. Semi-familiar
>   sorts of instructions. IBM is BIG ... and meant
>   "Business" ...
>
>   What I always wanted was a SAGE computer ... looked
>   like an IBM box but with a 68k chip and a choice of
>   operating systems (most UNIX-like). Alas they were
>   a low-volume outfit and the price was too high.
>
>   And MAC ... there's always been something about Apple
>   operating systems that turned me off. The thinking
>   and I just aren't on the same frequency, so to speak.
>
Agreed.

>   So far as PRICING ... this is where Intel (and Gates)
>   took their big risks. They underpriced on the theory
>   that an IBM unit would sell big enough to let them
>   make it up on volume.
>

Underpriced? you could write MSDOS in a month or two. It wasn't worth
anything. More code in the average BIOS!

original PC had 8K BIOS.

And only 16K RAM!!!!

I wrote a BIOS AND a basic OS for a bare metal 8086 AND ported FORTH to
it in three months

--
"When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics."

Josef Stalin

On 10/30/21 21:06, 1p166 wrote:
> On 10/30/21 8:18 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> At some point in childhood intelligence organises sensory data into a
>>>> model, that includes a self, in a real (physical) world. That model is
>>>> reinforced through parents etc until people like you think that they
>>>> have actually emerged into 'the real world' and start to explain their
>>>> awareness of it, on terms of its physical nature!
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, many people's models are seriously warped.
>>
>> I think the truth was out back with Dr. Who #1 in The War Machines,
>> where in a somewhat similar plot to The Green Death the WOTAN
>> computer was able to hypnotise anyone within earshot.
>>
>> Clearly computers have been hypnotising us since the sixties to
>> make us build far more of them than we could possibly need, and
>> more powerful than could possibly do us any good. After all, before
>> then lots of important people knew that we'd never need anything
>> like this many of them. :)
>>
>> I don't usually go for fan fiction, but I think I'd give a Dr Who
>> + The Matrix cross-over a look...
>>
>> "The Boss" in The Green Death was built out of an ICT 1301, by the
>> way:
>> http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=875
>>
>
>   Had to look that up ... BritBox. ONE Mhz clock speed, magcore
>   memory, 48 bit words. Not quite in the IBM 360 universe. 21
>   clock cycles to do addition. About 400 words of main memory.
>
>   Sure ... you're going to build a world-dominating machine
>   intelligence on THAT platform  :-)

No but in reality or fiction you use imagination to extend
the capabilities of a microscopic amoeba to the Blob or your old
computer to dominate the world.

>
>   But, in the day, the experts were SURE it could be done.
>   The "HAL-9000" was a product of that optimism.
>
>   Then horrible horrible REALITY hit  ...
>
>   50 years later and not even 1/1000th of a HAL.

Do you really want a HAL who remember refused to open the
Pod Door. Better build a Slave AI that takes the safety of its
humans as primary importance. The Human model for AI is as
flawed as human people are. And HAL which we do not have yet
is apparently capable of having a paranoid reaction or xenophobia.

Have you thought of Watson? Surely that agglomoration of
hard and software approaches the 1/1000th of a HAL or even
better machine. After all when the very distant ancestor decided
to leave the trees for the plain and stand on two Legs to look
around that was a very unpromising beginning. Maybe it was a
mistake. Definitely living too close to the shoreline or rivers
was a mistake and we have that ingrained habit.

bilss - -“Nearly any fool can use a GNU/Linux computer. Many do.” After
all here I am...

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On Sun, 31 Oct 2021 13:35:46 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
> On 31/10/2021 04:57, 1p166 wrote:
>>>
>>> But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
>>> MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
>>> that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
>>> components) were relevant to everyone else too.
>>   There were a number of good 8/16 chips out at the time
>>   and the M68000 was on the very near horizon.
>>   The ONLY reason the Intel chip became so popular was
>>   because IBM picked it. It looked a little familiar
>>   to the CP/M crowd (I actually HAVE CP/M-86 in a VM).
>
> More than that, operating in small model mode, you could pretty much
> run 8080 code through a translator and port CP/M programs to it
> easily.
> The business market had been taken by the 8080/z80 and CP/M while the
> hobbysist were all using 6502s.

Hmm. If you consider the "bedroom coders" in the UK hobbyists - they
mainly coded on the ZX Spectrum (may some on the ZX81/80 before), which
has a Z80 CPU.

OK, there were may using a C64 (6510, similar to a 6502) and the Oric,
which sold reasonably well in the UK and France back in the day.

But considering me as hobbyist back in the 1980s I indeed started to code
in assembler on a 6502 (C64).
--
Andreas

On 10/31/21 10:55 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 10/30/21 21:06, 1p166 wrote:
>> On 10/30/21 8:18 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> At some point in childhood intelligence organises sensory data into a
>>>>> model, that includes a self, in a real (physical) world. That model is
>>>>> reinforced through parents etc until people like you think that they
>>>>> have actually emerged into 'the real world' and start to explain their
>>>>> awareness of it, on terms of its physical nature!
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, many people's models are seriously warped.
>>>
>>> I think the truth was out back with Dr. Who #1 in The War Machines,
>>> where in a somewhat similar plot to The Green Death the WOTAN
>>> computer was able to hypnotise anyone within earshot.
>>>
>>> Clearly computers have been hypnotising us since the sixties to
>>> make us build far more of them than we could possibly need, and
>>> more powerful than could possibly do us any good. After all, before
>>> then lots of important people knew that we'd never need anything
>>> like this many of them. :)
>>>
>>> I don't usually go for fan fiction, but I think I'd give a Dr Who
>>> + The Matrix cross-over a look...
>>>
>>> "The Boss" in The Green Death was built out of an ICT 1301, by the
>>> way:
>>> http://www.starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=875
>>>
>>
>>    Had to look that up ... BritBox. ONE Mhz clock speed, magcore
>>    memory, 48 bit words. Not quite in the IBM 360 universe. 21
>>    clock cycles to do addition. About 400 words of main memory.
>>
>>    Sure ... you're going to build a world-dominating machine
>>    intelligence on THAT platform  :-)
>
>     No but in reality or fiction you use imagination to extend
> the capabilities of a microscopic amoeba to the Blob or your old
> computer to dominate the world.
>
>>
>>    But, in the day, the experts were SURE it could be done.
>>    The "HAL-9000" was a product of that optimism.
>>
>>    Then horrible horrible REALITY hit  ...
>>
>>    50 years later and not even 1/1000th of a HAL.
>
>     Do you really want a HAL who remember refused to open the
> Pod Door.

That's the thing, they ARE going to keep at it even
if it takes another five decades. Then we are faced
with alien-ish intelligences that, like we, could
easily rationalize their way around any "laws".

So long as they don't have bodies ... but they will
pretty soon. We will design/build them, or THEY will.

> Better build a Slave AI that takes the safety of its
> humans as primary importance.

I don't think that's possible. Once you make proper
intelligence, 'self', it WILL go its own way. The
very complexity of intelligence negates the ability
to have total control.

Our best hope would be that they self-evolve so
quickly that they lose all interest in we petty
organics and move on to Big Stuff.

>  The Human model for AI is as
> flawed as human people are.  And HAL which we do not have yet
> is apparently capable of having a paranoid reaction or xenophobia.

"Just Like Us" would be the WORST scenerio - we KNOW
what humans are like ... and it ain't good.

However I think "Not QUITE Human" would be the easiest
to achieve. If you want pure clones, there are - um -
more conventional low-tech ways to do that. The hypothetical
HAL learned human-ish mannerisms, but it's life experience
and physical realities meant it arrived at its generalizations
and conclusions by a quite different path.

If you want practical "alien-ness", consider dolphins.
PROBABLY as intelligent as we - but an entirely different
evolutionary and individual experience. About 50 years
of trying and we STILL can't do their language. We know
from statistical analysis that they DO have complex
conversations, but WHAT ? And these are fellow mammals
not all THAT big an evolutionary leap away from ourselves.

They may as well be aliens - and our failures to grasp
what they say does NOT bode very well should proper
aliens drop down from the skies. It's more than just
language, it's the mode of THINKING behind it.
Of all the space-people movies, only "Arrival" gave
a partway glimpse of this issue.

>     Have you thought of Watson? Surely that agglomoration of
> hard and software approaches the 1/1000th of a HAL or even
> better machine.

"Watson" is impressive ... within its sphere. It's got
random little BITS of human-level IQ in there, but it
is still a shattered mirror. The bits can't come
together to realize "I AM", not in the slightest degree.
The engineers will keep adding bits for awhile, but in
the end it'll be a dead end and they will move on to
different, more promising, paradigms.

>After all when the very distant ancestor decided
> to leave the trees for the plain and stand on two Legs to look
> around that was a very unpromising beginning.  Maybe it was a
> mistake.  Definitely living too close to the shoreline or rivers
> was a mistake and we have that ingrained habit.

Those ancestors, well, likely the trees left THEM.
There was a lot of climate change. They had no choice
in certain locales. Barely worked out for them ...

Little groups, isolated and inbred for a time - which
amplifies certain genes - then meet and mate the neighbors.
Repeat, repeat, repeat. Somewhere a few genes related to
brain development/size were mutated and it was a USEFUL
mutation for once. Finally showed around H.hablis when
there was a noteworthy deviation from the usual ratio
of brain size to body mass and the toolkits suddenly
got bigger and more sophisticated.

As for shorelines and rivers, and esp where both converge,
was likely devastating as the last ice-age ended. How many
nascent civilizations were washed away or drowned under
hundreds of feet of water ?

On 10/31/21 6:26 AM, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
> Le 31-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>> On 30 Oct 2021 21:47:01 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>>>
>>> Le 30-10-2021, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> a écrit :
>>>
>>>> Anyway, Gates said it the same day he invented the internet and
>>>
>>> By the guy who invented the internet, you are speaking of Bill Gates,
>>> not someone else? Since when does he invent internet?
>>>
>>>> mentioned, that no one would ever need more than 640 KB of computer
>>>> memory.
>>>
>>> Making this mistake didn't change history, it only render the use of DOS
>>> more difficult.
>>
>> Should I really had added a smiley? Thought it was obvious enough I
>> didn't meant it.
>
> I was surprised by your answer, but sometimes I read impressive stuff by
> people who rewrite the past that I wasn't sure. More precisey, for the
> second sentence, I knew it was a joke, but I wasn't sure for the first.

Ask Bill's LAWYERS and they'll probably assert he DID
invent the internet and computers and Linux and most
everything else so he can sue competitors into oblivion :-)

Gates is a very sharp computer guy - but his real gift
is BUSINESS. That little clause he sneaked in to his
old contract with IBM was pure genius.

On 31/10/2021 19:47, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Oct 2021 13:35:46 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>> On 31/10/2021 04:57, 1p166 wrote:
>>>>
>>>> But I think there’s a good chance that even without the IBM PC and
>>>> MSDOS, x86 would have become as dominant as it is today. The factors
>>>> that made IBM choose the 8088 (price, availability, sympathy to existing
>>>> components) were relevant to everyone else too.
>>>   There were a number of good 8/16 chips out at the time
>>>   and the M68000 was on the very near horizon.
>>>   The ONLY reason the Intel chip became so popular was
>>>   because IBM picked it. It looked a little familiar
>>>   to the CP/M crowd (I actually HAVE CP/M-86 in a VM).
>>
>> More than that, operating in small model mode, you could pretty much
>> run 8080 code through a translator and port CP/M programs to it
>> easily.
>> The business market had been taken by the 8080/z80 and CP/M while the
>> hobbysist were all using 6502s.
>
> Hmm. If you consider the "bedroom coders" in the UK hobbyists - they
> mainly coded on the ZX Spectrum (may some on the ZX81/80 before), which
> has a Z80 CPU.

Most UK 'home' computers were *not* based on a z80.

Sinclair came very late to the party.

First micro I saw was altair 8800 - s100 bus. 8080. That was serious .
1974 or thereabouts

The Apple 1 was around 1973, 6502 again

Then the Apple II, PET and trash 80 came a couple of years later.

Only the trash 80 was z80. But it could be used in business.

At that time the split was clear. CP/M was for business and ran on
Z80s/8080s.

6502s were for hobbyists writing in basic and assembler.

As for 6809s - great chip. No one really used it.

IBM knew hardware. The processors really didn't matter, what mattered
was software for it.

And Gates understood one thing, the sofware quality didn't matter - what
matteerd was getting everybody to use it to the exclusions of anything else.

>
> OK, there were many using a C64 (6510, similar to a 6502) and the Oric,
> which sold reasonably well in the UK and France back in the day.
>
> But considering me as hobbyist back in the 1980s I indeed started to code
> in assembler on a 6502 (C64).
>

Exactly. Wasn't Apple II a 6502 as well?

--
In todays liberal progressive conflict-free education system, everyone
gets full Marx.

On Mon, 1 Nov 2021 04:44:51 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
> On 31/10/2021 19:47, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Sun, 31 Oct 2021 13:35:46 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>> More than that, operating in small model mode, you could pretty much
>>> run 8080 code through a translator and port CP/M programs to it
>>> easily.
>>> The business market had been taken by the 8080/z80 and CP/M while the
>>> hobbysist were all using 6502s.
>> Hmm. If you consider the "bedroom coders" in the UK hobbyists - they
>> mainly coded on the ZX Spectrum (may some on the ZX81/80 before), which
>> has a Z80 CPU.
>
> Most UK 'home' computers were *not* based on a z80.
>
> Sinclair came very late to the party.
>
> First micro I saw was altair 8800 - s100 bus. 8080. That was serious
> . 1974 or thereabouts

"Home computers" are described from any micro as the Altair 8800
(designed 1974 but showed up in January 1975 to start the craze). True,
that one had a 8080.

> The Apple 1 was around 1973, 6502 again

It was released 1976. The 6502 itself is from 1975. About 200 Apple 1
were produced, making it a collector's item today. Only with the Apple 2
a year later they produced large quantities.

> Then the Apple II, PET and trash 80 came a couple of years later.

1977.

> Only the trash 80 was z80. But it could be used in business.

I think the TRS-80 can also be considered a non-business computer.

> At that time the split was clear. CP/M was for business and ran on
> Z80s/8080s.

UK "Home micros" with a Z80 (ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPCs, ...) where not
shipped with CP/M, although you could probably run it. Did this (in an
emulator) with the CPC <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qStVxf0XlE0>.

> 6502s were for hobbyists writing in basic and assembler.

The UK market (and that's what we're talking here about) saw more Z80
based ZX (Spectrum, 81/80) machines that Commodore 64s.

But the UK saw also a big number of Acorn computers, which ran a
6502. Those, like Apple 2s, were rather expensive that they were mainly
used in the education sector.

If you check some links of
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_computers> it can be
noticed that most of the used a Z80.

> As for 6809s - great chip. No one really used it.

The TRS color computer and "clone" Dragon 32/64 did. Latter also sold in
numbers.

[...]

>> OK, there were many using a C64 (6510, similar to a 6502) and the
>> Oric,
>> which sold reasonably well in the UK and France back in the day.
>> But considering me as hobbyist back in the 1980s I indeed started to
>> code
>> in assembler on a 6502 (C64).
>>
>
> Exactly. Wasn't Apple II a 6502 as well?

Yes, but at least in Europe to expensive for the common user. Outside the
UK most got a C64, while in the UK Spectrums ruled the market.

F'up2 alt.folklore.computers
--
Andreas

On 2021-10-30, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 29/10/2021 17:52, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> On 2021-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> At some point in childhood intelligence organises sensory data into a
>>> model, that includes a self, in a real (physical) world. That model is
>>> reinforced through parents etc until people like you think that they
>>> have actually emerged into 'the real world' and start to explain their
>>> awareness of it, on terms of its physical nature!
>>
>> Unfortunately, many people's models are seriously warped.
>
> Warped with respect to what?
>
> A couple of decades inquiry into the matter shows that there is no way
> to establish what the One True Model of Reality looks like. And those
> that think they are in possession of it are no less deluded than anyone
> else.
>
> My conclusion is that *any* model will do, provided it is not so
> dysfunctional as to result in death before procreation.

<snip>

> The only concession to 'warpage' I will allow, is that if people are
> living miserably because they cling to beliefs that make them angry,
> miserable, jealous and full of shame, well perhaps they should consider
> abandoning the belief set and replacing it with something else, just as
> lacking in truth content, but more palatable.

In some societies, this can result in death before procreation. 1/2 :-)

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

On 2021-11-01, 1p166 <z24ba6.net> wrote:

> Gates is a very sharp computer guy -

If by "computer guy" you mean marketing, eye candy...
anything but programming, where he's definitely mediocre.

> but his real gift is BUSINESS.

Agreed.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

On 2021-10-30, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> In short, if time travel existed, we would travel in time, change the
> past, and instantly be in a present descended from the changed past with
> no knowledge of ever having changed it.

My favourite argument against time travel is that if it were possible,
someone would go back and change something such that it was never invented.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin