Posted in retro, technology on January 29, 2009 by Jason Wells
The story of the CT-650, a computer built out of paperclips and other household items. It includes directions on how to construct old-school technologies like core and drum memories and front panel displays. The book, How to Build a Working Digital Computer, gave away all the secrets to nerdy schoolboys in the late 1960s. It’s inspiring to think about. Maybe a hobby project in the works?
The parts list for core memory (see below) include paperclips, scrap wood, a tin can and adhesive tape. Before there was Make, there was paperclip computer!
Posted in retro, technology on January 29, 2009 by Jason Wells
Via Make, here is a video of a Turing machine built from a LEGO Mindstorms kit:
Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science, conceptualized the eponymous machine to demonstrate the theoretical limits of computation. He did it so well that his work is relevant these many decades later and his work continues to be memorialized in LEGO form.
There’s good statistics and some broad generalizations on Christianity.ca about the no-longer-upcoming Millennials. I did enjoy the remark, “They have no problem believing in God; their problem is believing in Christians.” Hopefully the Church is up this generation’s aspirations.
Posted in retro, technology on January 26, 2009 by Jason Wells
DePauw University put together course materials on programming a 1970′s-era PDP-11 minicomputer. The materials fit into a larger course on computer organization and design. While the acting is sometimes corny, the technology is true. They demonstrate how computer programs were made thirty years ago: paper tape, toggled-in loaders and two-pass assemblers.
It was easier to tell, the second time. The secret was getting lighter. I didn’t embellish, I didn’t hide anything. I came clean.
I’d heard of coming clean before but I’d never understood what it meant until I did it. Holding in the secret had dirtied me, soiled my spirit. It had made me afraid and ashamed. It had made me into all the things that Ange said I was.
A little over halfway through the book, Marcus tells everything to his dad: his tangles with Homeland Security, his role in Xnet and what happened to Darryl. The description is a familiar one to anyone who has come clean with a secret or for anyone who has made a confession in church.
Here’s one conjecture about their finding: systems and devices that have familiar features also tend to be more usable. There are lots of ways you might imagine to control the direction or transmission of a car: but most people have learned to use steering wheels and console-based shifters, and consequently you can get into most any car with no confusion about how to operate it. (in UI design, these features are called affordances) I suspect many people prefer Gothic-style buildings, not because they work better, but simply because they present a more familiar user interface that matches their expectations of how the outside of a church “works.”
Well said! Of course, looks can be deceiving. The City Hall in Manchester, NH is gothic in style and looks “churchy,” while being a public government building.
Affordances are cultural, not universal. In terms of UI, the reason affordances work is that the user typically has expectations about how they should work. Mac OS X and GNOME make sense because the user is already trained for Windows XP (and vice versa). The differences between these three and a UI like Ratpoison, ion, or screen are much bigger and don’t offer the same cultural expectations (menu bars, icons, pointers, etc).
If past experiences, training and culture effect how computer user interfaces work, surely the same goes for churches as “user interface.”
The blog gemini_alternative has a not-too-bad article on the distinction between freeware and free software. Without falling back on the terminology of “free-as-in-beer” and “free-as-in-freedom,” the writer talks about the basic GNU freedoms. In some places the article feels clumsy, but it explains the question sufficiently without falling into too much GNU jargon.
From the article:
Freeware is software developed created by volunteers, and distributed for free. Most of the time, freeware is developed by a single programmer.
To list the very best software which is completely free for non-commercial use. Freeware programs listed do not time-out, are fully functional (though they may be ‘lite’ versions of commercial or shareware programs) and the author does not demand payment for the continued use of the program.
But freeware cannot be modified it is proprietary software but the author gives the user the authority to use it for free. The user is restricted to improve the program and release the improvements to the public with its own version of codes. It is said that, “retain control of the source code”.
In the web we can see a lot of available software that we can download without paying for it like movies, songs, books, or other software. It is just a click away from hundreds of existing site we can search in the web. Most of us are relying on “free” available software including games or software applications.
The wide-scale copying and distribution of the Scriptures is a benefit to our spiritual lives:
The law of Moses was wonderfully preserved by heavenly providence rather than by human effort. And although by priests’ negligence the law lay buried for a short time, after godly King Josiah found it [II Kings 22:8; cf. II Chron. 34:15], it continued to be read age after age. Indeed, Josiah did not put it forward as something unknown or new, but as something that had always been of common knowledge, the memory of which was then famous. The archetypal roll was committed to the Temple; a copy was made from it and designated for the royal archives [Deut. 17:18-19]. What had happened was merely this: the priests had ceased to publish the law itself according to the solemn custom, and the people themselves had also neglected the habit of reading it. Why is it that almost no age goes by in which its sanction is not confirmed and renewed? Was Moses unknown to those who were versed in David? But, to generalize concerning all sacred authors, it is absolutely certain that their writings passed down to posterity in but one way: from hand to hand.
John Calvin, trans. Battles, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.viii.9
Here’s the relevant quote from Deuteronomy 17:18-20:
When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the levitical priests. 19It shall remain with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, 20neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.
Thank God that Moses didn’t copyright the Torah! Without an interest to copy, duplicate and distribute, the scroll Hilkiah found in 2 Kings 22 would have been worm food.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
The day after Bishop Robinson’s invocation at the We Are One concert, the Union Leader ran this disappointing editorial disparaging his prayer:
Gene Robinson, Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, gave the opening prayer for the inaugural festivities in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. Ignoring the theme of unity set for the inauguration, Robinson gave not a prayer but a political speech, one worthy of a college sophomore hot to tweak his parents.
Robinson explained his non-Christian “prayer” by saying he thought previous inaugural prayers were “aggressively Christian.” In hope of excluding no one, he excluded Christ. Except, he mentioned God, so he left the athiests out in the cold. Oh, well.
By Robinson’s own logic, he should not have been allowed to pray at all for fear of offending nonbelievers. But that’s silly. And so is refusing to mention Christ for fear of offending non-Christians.
Through the years, Robinson has had many opportunities to make his beliefs known in ways that don’t offend and divide people. Most of the time, he chooses to divide. For a man of God, that’s really not productive behavior. But it sure draws a lot of attention to Gene Robinson.
While not the Union Leader’s work, this comment implicated God’s almighty hand as meddling with the event sound system:
Don’t feel too bad, apparently the microphone or speakers stopped working as soon as Robinson started his tirade, and only a few people at the front actually heard him. The vast 700 thousand more couldn’t hear a word, and as the Obama inauguration team told HBO that Robinson’s “prayer” was confined to the pre-show portion, it wasn’t recorded or televised across the nation.
Perhaps God’s hand in action? I think he’s trying to tell Gene Robinson something, let’s hope he listens.
- Karen Duffy, Manchester, NH
