the ART COLONY

[sesame]

Superman, batman, spiderman, wonderwoman... ...
Somehow I like superman more.

[sesame]

Einstein giving the clarion call to promote free software!
Kidding! There were no computers or software at the time of Einstein.
But then I always say thumbs up for open source software.
Its a service to the spirit of mankind and philosophy of free thought.

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

ummm, of course there were computers in the time of Einstein, and you don't get real computers without software. Einstein lived at the same time as Alan Turing, who pretty much invented the modern definition of a computer, and built the amazing Colossus machines, the first electronic, digital, programmable computers. Of course, there was no free software, as all the Colossus machines and thier software were UK military secrets and the workings of the Harvard-IBM mark 1 was a military secret of the US navy. However, Einstein lived till 1955, so he would have been around to see he first commercial computers around 1951, however costing hundreds of thousands and only used by large busineses, there wouldn't have been any free software, so Einstein and computers in the modern sense shared the planet for about 11 years. As a socialist, I'm sure Einstein would have strongly approved of free software though.

[sesame]

J. H. Felker and J. R. Harris created TRADIC, the first transistor driven computer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1955. No vacuum tubes, just 800 transistors, Not hot, but cold & highly efficient;
Power requirement = 100 watts

But even so, dear sister Anna, it was only a giant 3 cubic feet calculator!

I guessed beforehand that someone will fill the information hole and most probably ...

[sesame]

GRH, Jimnaseum, hanky, Bionca... have you all gone into hiding or have you attained RIP status?

Post your Rant here! Grrrrrah!

'Nyway, found this interesting album cover.

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

Originally Posted by sesame

J. H. Felker and J. R. Harris created TRADIC, the first transistor driven computer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1955. No vacuum tubes, just 800 transistors, Not hot, but cold & highly efficient;
Power requirement = 100 watts

But even so, dear sister Anna, it was only a giant 3 cubic feet calculator!

I guessed beforehand that someone will fill the information hole and most probably ...

Transistors have no difference in function to valves, only in size, speed and heat efficiency.

Anyway, what do you think a computer is? All a computer actually does is perform a series of mathematical operations. The only difference is the scale.

Colossus could still decode German transmissions, I'd like to see you do that on your pocket calculator.

[sesame]

Arithmetic and Logic, Anna.
And computers in those days and many years to come had very limited capabilities. Forget the complex dataprocessing and analyses and image processing and rendering and sound processing and simulation and interactivity & whatever you see nowadays.

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

Originally Posted by sesame

Arithmetic and Logic, Anna.
And computers in those days and many years to come had very limited capabilities. Forget the complex dataprocessing and analyses and image processing and rendering and sound processing and simulation and interactivity & whatever you see nowadays.

Just remember, they landed on the moon with a 2mhz precessor and ~4k of RAM, you done anything more complex than that on your computer recently?

Colossus when scaled against a modern computer would have a clock speed of 5.8mhz and memory limited only by the amount of tape available.

Colossus was Turing complete. This means that it can perform the functions of a Turing machine, except not to an infinite degree. This means it can perform any algorithm given enough time and memory. In essence all Turing complete machines are non-infinite versions of a Turing machine, they simply differ in scale and speed. There is no operation that one cannot perform that another can given enough storage. Essentially if you had enough tape, good enough programming skill and a very long life span, you could apply the same image manipulations with colossus as you do with photoshop on your laptop. of course your image would be displayed as a very long binary number on a very long piece of paper. You would also have a very long beard.

But the point is, colossus is as valid a computer as your desktop, and capable of some incredibly sophisticated calculations.

[jimnaseum]

Two self portraits