Odd Lots
- This overlong, (10,000 word) wandering, muddled, and occasionally brilliant essay is a must-read if you feel (like I do) that tribalism and tribal hatred are the greatest threat facing humanity today. We’re precisely one month away from the midterms, and my phone is ringing a dozen times a day with haters demanding that I hate whole groups of people who have little in common with one another beyond their being hated by the callers. Here’s a clue, folks: Politics does not give you permission to hate. If you hate, you’re a hater…and those of us who don’t hate know who the haters are.
- Jim Strickland sends a link to new research on creating organic solar cells based on short vertical nanopillars that look like well-trimmed blades of grass, or a short-pile shag carpet.
- Here’s as clear a statement as I’ve ever seen why not to play with bitcoin, quite apart from the fact that law enforcement probably considers posession of bitcoins ample evidence of criminal activity. No thanks.
- There was 53K of RAM on our planet in 1953. And damned if the computers didn’t want 64.
- A case that was a long time brewing may establish additional precedent that DRM is an antitrust violation. Actually, what DRM really does is turn honest customers into pirates.
- Michigan vineyards are having their worst grape harvest ever this year, thanks to last winter’s record-breaking cold. That’s a shame; Michigan makes some damned fine wines, especially sweet wines, which we drink when we’re in Chicago. (I don’t see them here in Colorado.)
- Wines, yes: Back in 1973 I had my first can of wine. The other night I had my second. My first thought: The Seventies are returning, egad. My second thought: Hey, that’s not bad wine!
- The real reason there will be no Windows 9: Some lazy code jockeys will mistake “Windows 95” and “Windows 98” for “Windows 9.” This makes sense to me, and if it reduces the universe’s bug supply even a little, it’s a very, very small price to pay.
- Wow. There are no longer any cartoons on Saturday Morning broadcast TV. Which doesn’t mean that the universe is not awash in cartoons, most of them simply hideous.
- Before reading this article, I had never heard of Axe Deodorant. Now, all else being equal, I’d rather smell like nothing. But do I read here that there’s an SKU with the scent of…solder? How about Bakelite terminal strips plus capacitor wax?
- Pertinent to the above: The last aftershave I think I ever used regularly was called Nuts & Bolts in, I believe, 1971.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: hardware · history · Memoir · programming · psychology · science · windows · wine
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Only 53k in 1953? That has to be the result of naive or uninformed reporting.
The earliest random access memories were mechanical. Phone companies had millions of bits of random access relay storage even before WW2.
In the 1940’s, the first electronic computers used thousands of vacuum tubes for logic and memory. In 1946, the Selectron tube offered 256 bits of RAM, and the Williams tube 1000 bits.
Core memory was invented in the 1940’s, and in commercial use by the 1950’s. The famous “Whirlwind” computer alone had 16k of core in 1951. Its use expanded rapidly, and by 1953, core memory was even used in mass-produced jukeboxes.
Transistors suitable for making computer memories didn’t become available until 1955. Therefore, the memories talked about in this article would have *all* been relay, tube, or core-based.
>Pertinent to the above: The last aftershave I think
>I ever used regularly was called Nuts & Bolts
Why would you want to put aftershave on your bolts?
Agreed. It was just nuts.
My tribe is the tribe that hates tribalism.
Just stumbled across your post about the reason for skipping “Windows 9”.
Rang a bell about a tweet I saw from Ray Ozzie:
He pulled the same shortcut in Lotus Notes — for Windows 1 version checking…