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OriginalGriff wrote: As usual, the "Search for Beginnings" is complicated...
What was first? The chicken or the egg? 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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That one's easy: the egg.
1) Long, long before the first even vaguely recognisable chicken-like creature, dinosaurs were laying eggs (among a lot of other species over the years)
2) And then...[^]
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: What does a computer do that this doesn't? (Apart from play Doom )
We can't say for sure if we didn't try. The result would be one of a kind cloth 
Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true
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I think the ping time would make it kinda difficult to play!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Why? With such a low framerate you'd have plenty of time to react so you should be able to hit anything with a perfect shot
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By which time it's in a different county, never mind room!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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The Ping is the excuse of the weak !
Microsoft ... the only place where VARIANT_TRUE != true
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Argonia wrote: The Ping is the excuse of the weak week!
FTFY!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: What does a computer do that this doesn't? (Apart from play Doom )
It took me Four Hours to make that f***in' cacodemon, and you just chopped it up with a f***in' chainsaw!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Yes, Charles Babbage went to France and saw a Jacquard loom that created a multi-color silk portrait of Napoleon using over a million cardboard rectangles into which holes were punched to regulate weaving.
But, I'm not sure I'd call that digital.
«If you search in Google for 'no-one ever got fired for buying IBM:' the top-hit is the Wikipedia article on 'Fear, uncertainty and doubt'» What does that tell you about sanity in these times?
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It's binary - on for a hole, off for the absence of a hole. So it isn't analog!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I'm not sure that the Jacquard Loom can be considered digital. Certainly the Loom meets the test of "fully programmable" in the sense that, up to its mechanical/physical limits, it could render any design that could be made with the thread at hand.
And, the cardboard "program" (sewn together cards) was, indeed, rolled off a spindle in a sequence, as I recall (based on reading over thirty-years ago). No undo, no goto, no recursion: the ultimate declarative language ? 
Would a true "digital" computer have to have a memory-store, and the capability of some kind of branching based on conditional evaluation, and looping ? I think so. I'm trying to remember the names of those three Italian theorists who stipulated that those three attributes were essential for a Turing machine, but drawing a blank.
I'm inclined to think the true "computer" in the case of the Jacquard Loom was the human intelligence that figured out what cards were needed, and how they should be punched.
cheers, Bill
«If you search in Google for 'no-one ever got fired for buying IBM:' the top-hit is the Wikipedia article on 'Fear, uncertainty and doubt'» What does that tell you about sanity in these times?
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Quite right, I was aware of the German work. Forgot it was called the Z3. The Nazis didn't see what it was good for.
Destroyed by bombing if I remember. Another first.
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The first "modern" computer build the german civil engineer Konrad Zuse.
A memorial in Berlin (Germany) .
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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Wow. Thanks for dissipating some of my ignorance 
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Interesting article.
I've seen the one at the Smithsonian, it's pretty cool.
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.0
There's a fine line between crazy and free spirited and it's usually a prescription.
I'm currently unsupervised, I know it freaks me out too but the possibilities are endless.
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Leslie[^] 
Kent beat you to it.
Marc
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I keep getting lost on the way to the forum.
And no.
It wasn't a funny thing. 
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Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote: the World's First Computer was Collossus at Bletchley Park, or even Charles Babbage's 'Difference Engine'
The difference engine may or may not really count as a computer, but the Royal Navy had genuine analogue computers during World War 1 -- a major historical point is that the Admiralty refused to use them for targeting at the battle of Jutland.
A major not-really-historical point is that some countries' armed forces manage to actually keep things secret, no matter how much money can be made from selling them or claiming ownership.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Well, how about the Antikythera Mechanism circa 3rd. century BCE (Before Common Era). It's age has, recently, been reported to be at least a century older than previously thought: [^].
The Antikythera Project and Musuem: [^].
Another Antikythera site: [^].
Videos: [^].
But, it's not digital.
«If you search in Google for 'no-one ever got fired for buying IBM:' the top-hit is the Wikipedia article on 'Fear, uncertainty and doubt'» What does that tell you about sanity in these times?
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Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators" contains an excellent history of early computing and the individuals involved.
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As many of you know, I'm with the Swiss Air Force (and will be until March '15).
I know that some of you are gun enthusiastic, and decided to post a little writeup about the Army guns I used during the past few months.
I initially got the SIG 550 assault rifle, but since they found me a good fit as SFC I was given the SIG P220[^].
The rifle is very precise over a distance to up to 500 meters, and reasonably easy to keep clean. I still like the P220 better, though. Of course you can't really compare these two directly, one is an assault rifle and the other one a handgun, so this judgement might be because I like handguns better. However, the P220 is very neat - Precise, reliable and lies nice in my hand. Went shooting it yesterday, 20 rounds on a 10 point target. Got 181 points out of 200, not too bad that it was the first time I shot this gun (I used the instructor's gun the time I went shooting before).
The console is a black place
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Marco Bertschi wrote: As many of you know, I'm with the Swiss Air Force
I didn't even know the Swiss had an Air Force, let alone you had joined them!
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