test

IBM

Is this a real test, or has Big Iron fallen so far that it resorts to this?

Here’s a hint. Know your target market. We’re not going to be interested in Big Iron. We’re Little Iron. Maybe more like those iron filings you used to play with in the Physics lab, until you discovered that they stick to all sorts of magnets and magnetic fields, including the crazy stuff (magnets+HT, whee!) that happens inside the big ol’ television in the lower dormitory rest room.

Not that I would know anything about something like that…

<walks away whistling>

PS: It was IBM’s President, in the ‘40s, that predicted that the world really only has a need for five computers. Granted, computers then were monsters, nothing like computers now. Just as well, as I have six¹ on my desk right now, and that’s not even counting embedded stuff like harddisc controllers or my photo scanner².

¹ Netbook, Pi, current smartphone, previous smartphone (trying to find a song), iPad, and Beagle.

² If we’re to count ARM processors, well… The Pi and Beagle, two Android phones, a Livephone, the iPad, seven SD cards, three USB harddiscs, and it’s a pretty logical guess that the photo scanner will contain an ARM. Which means that I have seventeen ARM processors on my desk. Around the room? More. The drone is some sort of ARM (M0?), more SD cards, some actual old-school Archimedi, etc. Also a bunch of MIPS (the networking kit and the DVD/satellite equipment). And the runner up, the x86. Got a few of them too. And two 6502s, one in a Beeb and one on a co-pro board. I think, at a rough guess, there’s probably 40-50 processors in my room… Yikes. Better not tell mom, she’d probably tell me anything more than one is too many, without realising how many she uses daily (well, the phone and Livebox contain them!)…

there’s probably 40-50 processors in my room

Enough for the whole solar system.

And the runner up, the x86. Got a few of them too.

Of course the HD in each of those lumps has a controller,
then there’s the NIC’s and…

Apparently they have only got as far as simple transistors in roses

Actually the IBM’s president (Tom Watson) was predicting the world market for a single type of computer that IBM had built. http://freakonomics.com/2008/04/17/our-daily-bleg-did-ibm-really-see-a-world-market-for-about-five-computers/

You mean like above?

Leave a blank line (if not the top), begin the line with lowercase b then lowercase q then full stop then space and follow that with what you want to quote. Leave a blank line before your reply.

bq. This is quoted.

This is your reply. 

This is quoted.

This is your reply.

Ahh. I see Rick. That was easy

Hi, I just wanted to see if an edit button would be visible for this post.