Vanishing point: the rise of the invisible computer

The Grauniad ^ | 26 Jan 2017 | Tim Cross

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

Ciexyz :" Using computers is logical. Using computers for Facebook is illogical.
Facebook is getting very weird with the Democrats posting their drivel against Trump."

Computer safty calls for malware and virus potection.
The cellphone that most people use is, in reality, a mini-computer
yet most cellphones don't have antivirus protection
Add to that compulsory applications required by 'Googglie' on your android cellphone,
many of which are insecure, and cross to other applications, even without the user/owners permission,
making the cellphone only as secure as your computer without virus protection.
The problems magnify as more and more application companies are bought up by larger application corporations.

[WMarshal]

They didn’t build that! Al Gore had a dream and Lo, when he awoke, it was there on his pillow. Gore then gave it to Intel to reverse engineer and copy. /s

[dfwgator]

We can get our porn even faster now.

[cynwoody]

Just to put it into perspective, PC’s have had for quite some time now, more memory than IBM mainframe models 360 & 370 combined

The IBM 370 was introduced in 1970, the year before Intel produced the 4004 chip mentioned in the article. The 370 could address a maximum of 16 megabytes of RAM (addresses were 24-bit), however, the machines initially offered maxed out at three megabytes of installed RAM.

In 1983, IBM expanded the 370's address space from 24 bits to 31 bits, making two gigabytes addressable. Why not 32 bits, you might ask? Two reasons:

1. Although RAM had become cheap enough that people wanted more the sixteen megabytes, two gigabytes was still unimaginably large.
2. Pointers in software had all along been stored in 32-bit words, and programmers had become accustomed to using the left-most eight bits to store flags. The most important flag bit was the left-most bit, commonly used to mark the end of a variable-length address list. Usage of the next seven bits was much less common. So, to ease the transition, IBM opted to leave the hi-order bit available as a flag.

[Rebelbase]

http://www.primewire.ag/watch-2764120-Humans-online-free

[oblomov]

>>The machine Davinci they use for operations is hacking people up and is drowning in law suiots for slicing >>intestines and people bleeding out ...(doctors remotely operate with this thing)

They should have called it Picasso.

[Hot Tabasco]

I don’t understand your post, is it new on AMC or not”? Did I miss a season?

[cynwoody]

And the military.

The government (with the possible exception of one particular agency) tends to run behind the state of the art in IT. The state of the art is determined by international competition between private entities.

An amusing article popped up recently which claimed the government actually had an IBM 7074 still in use. Supposedly, it was running a legacy app that was being screen-scraped by a Java application running on more modern hardware.

However, the story lacks credibility. How would you ever keep the beast running? Where are the spare parts? Where are the customer engineers? And how to justify the electric bill?

Turns out, it was more than likely a 7070 emulator running in software on a modern z/Architecture mainframe. That's bizarre enough.

[cynwoody]

and you will never see a machine doing re-roofs/plumbing installs...siding/changing over electrical panels....if all you can do is push paper then you should worry...me not so much...I have never seen a machine twisting wrenches for car repair?...The machine Davinci they use for operations is hacking people up and is drowning in law suiots for slicing intestines and people bleeding out ...(doctors remotely operate with this thing)

Bipedal robot walking around, doing stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY

Quadrupeds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8YjvHYbZ9w

[marktwain]

Already starting to happen.

[moovova]

The first season is on FireTV thru Amazon Prime (at no charge). I’d seen commercials for it thru last year but the commercials didn’t make it sound appealing. I wound up trying it on FireTV, and watched the entire season in two days.

I do believe the second season is coming up on regular TV. I’ll be watching it. We aren’t THAT far from that kind of life.

[dsc]

Webmaster lists two seasons.

Not sure if season two is complete, though.

[Rebelbase]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series)

[Hot Tabasco]

In other words, you don’t know if the debut of Humans on AMC beginning 2/13 is the first season or not........Correct?

[Hot Tabasco]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series)

LOL! You posted that link in jest right? You got me on that one..........LOL!

[dsc]

No, I know that there is a season one and a season two already out. I just don’t know if season two is complete yet or not.

Ah! Just had a moment of clarity. This one is British.

[RBStealth]

Eric?

[dsc]

Just found another series called “Real Humans.” Not sure if it’s any good.

[Dr. Sivana]

if the car from 1971 had improved at the same rate as computer chips, then by 2015 new models would have had top speeds of about 420 million miles per hour.

Not a good comparison. The processor is only one part of the equation, and my word processing documents don't load much faster than they did 30 years ago because the formatting got more complex and no one writes major apps in assembler anymore.

[Hot Tabasco]

Just found another series called “Real Humans.” Not sure if it’s any good.

Evidently "Humans" is based on the Swedish series you posted..........

From what I could find, the Feb. 13 premier is actually the beginning of Season 2.......I didn't know there was a Season 1.

Interesting enough, my Comcast On Demand requires that I purchase the individual episodes of Season 1..........

I never experienced that before. Usually the TV series were free to watch.......