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R

Richard Bos

Mabden said:
I'm Canadian. But the computer was invented in America,

Germany is in America, now?
The font you are using was designed there,

You have no idea which font we use. It could be Garamond.
The server hosting your words is in America, although you probably have
a local mirror.

Complete and utter bullshit.
The books sitting in your room are almost all written in America

You don't know what books are sitting in my room. Some were written in
Ireland; some in Poland; many in the UK. Only a minority in America, and
not all of those in the USA.
Name a piece of software you use that wasn't written in America (that
you didn't write yourself or for work).

Pegasus Mail.
No one. I got a job doing Assembler on Z80 cpus which I had never worked
on before, and learned that by reading the manual and working on
existing code. We didn't even have all the sources, and had to
disassemble the .obj files to see how some stuff worked.

Oh, you poor boy. When I wur a youngster, my dad usedta beat us all day
with the toggle keyboard we entered our machine language with. But you
tell the children these days that, and they won't believe you.
I am in one.

No, you aren't. In a world of your own, maybe, and in cloud-cuckoo-land,
but not in a mononational newsgroup.

Richard
 
R

Richard Bos

Richard Heathfield said:
Mabden said:


Colossus: Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England. Designed by Max Newman
(not John von Neumann!), an Englishman, and built by Tommy Flowers, an
Englishman, over a period of ten months, finally delivering it on 8 Dec
1943, over a year before ENIAC.

*Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.
Apparently even had a separate floating point processor. Also the first
formalised programming language, Plankalkuel. Mostly ignored or even
unknown in the Anglophone world, for reasons that escape me after over
sixty years.
comp.lang.c is an international newsgroup, and many (although by no means
all) of its most valued contributors are from non-US countries - notably
England, Holland,

*Cough* And the rest of the Netherlands... Mark? May I borrow your
shillelagh to punish these Sassenachs with?

Richard
 
M

Michael Mair

Richard said:
*Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.
Apparently even had a separate floating point processor. Also the first
formalised programming language, Plankalkuel. Mostly ignored or even
unknown in the Anglophone world, for reasons that escape me after over
sixty years.

Ah, thank you -- I thought I just imagined Zuse...

*Cough* And the rest of the Netherlands... Mark? May I borrow your
shillelagh to punish these Sassenachs with?

Indeed, it is interesting that Scotland also got left out.
Let alonge Germany but this is obviously to be ignored so that
Zuse has never existed... ;-) (Okay, de.comp.lang.c might have
to do something with it)


Cheers
Michael
 
C

Chris Hills

Mabden said:
I'm Canadian.

Not judging by the rest of the rubbish you have rewritten below.
But the computer was invented in America,

No, it wasn't.... It was in UK during WW2
the machine I am actually using was also not developed in the US
and the
languages created there.

No.... Many were created in Europe especially HTML
The program you are using right now was written
there,

No it wasn't. this News reader was created in the UK (as was all my
comms SW)
unless you use Linux in which case it was 95% written there,
Nope.

with
some parts written in Europe by the man who lives there now.

Who?
The
transmition protocol was written there

Based on work at NPL UK

and the WWW was entirely a European thing.
and the lines the signal are
going down was invented there.

Nope... I used to work for a major telecomms company so I know who
invented what.
The keyboard you are using was designed
there, and the placement of the keys was decided by someone there. The
font you are using was designed there,

Wrong again. You have no idea what font I am using.
even tho you could have any
number of different ways to show letters, you use one Made In America.
Nope.

And so do the people in India, China, Japan, Africa, Sweden, Norway,
etc.
The server hosting your words is in America, although you probably have
a local mirror.

Nope. The server isn't in the US it is in the UK and you may have a
mirror... In fact MOST servers are outside the US.
The books sitting in your room are almost all written in America
(dictionaries and legal books don't count).

Not a chance! Most of the 5,000 books in my house are NOT by Us authors.
Name a piece of software you use that wasn't written in America (that
you didn't write yourself or for work).

the list is long so I am not going to put it here. but to generalises:-
The comms SW
All the compilers I use (not GCC)
The editors I use
Al the debugging SW I use (mainly German)

No friends? that figures.
I got a job doing Assembler on Z80 cpus which I had never worked
on before, and learned that by reading the manual and working on
existing code. We didn't even have all the sources, and had to
disassemble the .obj files to see how some stuff worked.

So the rest of us should not ask for help because you didn't?
Hang on... who is "we" so you were working with people who could help
each other.
When the
company bought a C-based program to replace the one we had, they sent me
to a 1 month class in Washington (the state) and I bought the K&R
version 1.

So you have no help.... except the course you went on and people you
worked with?
Back then CompuServe was $12 and hour

Never bothered with Compuserve. There were other systems. Not in the US.
Even Janet.
and when you had a question you
typed it out well and in detail, logging on for the minimum time you
could. But I mostly asked and solved DOS questions back then.

I mostly asked and solved Dos questions.... Asked? I thought no one
helped you?
I am in one. Why are YOU here? ;-)

Comp.lang.C is NOT a US NG it is an international one and no more US
than anything else.

Yes it could. Just another example of outsourcing - you can't even make
up an original insult without copying it.

Well the US copied most of it's technology from outside the US anyway.
 
W

Wolfgang Riedel

I'm Canadian. But the computer was invented in America,

by a guy called Zuse?
(I know of others)
Name a piece of software you use that wasn't written in America (that
you didn't write yourself or for work).

Opera, Papyrus, [Open|Star]Office, SAP...
btw., where do you think are the main labs, making db2 (surprise)?
 
M

Mark F. Haigh

<entire post snipped>

First, for the record, Keith's contributions to comp.lang.c are
exemplary. Much more often than not he's perfectly correct with his
advice. And when he's not, he's generally the first to correct himself
or requalify his advice.

Keith, please do not modify your posting habits in the slightest. I
speak for many when I say that your contributions to the C community do
not go unnoticed.

And Mabden, if you don't like it, piss off. Don't let the doorknob hit
your ass on the way out. At least have the decency to respond with
some wit or intelligence.


Mark F. Haigh
(e-mail address removed)
 
M

Michael Wojcik

*Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.
Apparently even had a separate floating point processor. Also the first
formalised programming language, Plankalkuel. Mostly ignored or even
unknown in the Anglophone world, for reasons that escape me after over
sixty years.

Raul Rojas wrote an excellent piece on the Z3 for _Dr Dobb's Journal_
a few years back.[1] It included a Java Z3 simulator and a proof
that the Z3 was Turing-complete (or more precisely that it was a
complete TM with bounded tape), despite its lack of explicit condi-
tional branching instructions.

Further discussion of the Z3 should probably go to
alt.folklore.computers.


1. http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=881/ddj0009e/0009e.htm
 
D

Dik T. Winter

>
> *Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.
> Apparently even had a separate floating point processor. Also the first
> formalised programming language, Plankalkuel. Mostly ignored or even
> unknown in the Anglophone world, for reasons that escape me after over
> sixty years.

Wasn't the Not Invented Here Syndrome invented in the USA?
 
D

Dik T. Winter

>
> *Cough* And the rest of the Netherlands... Mark? May I borrow your
> shillelagh to punish these Sassenachs with?

Holland is good enough, the remainder is insignificant.
 
J

John Devereux

*Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.
Apparently even had a separate floating point processor. Also the first
formalised programming language, Plankalkuel. Mostly ignored or even
unknown in the Anglophone world, for reasons that escape me after over
sixty years.

I guess is depends on your definition of "computer". There was clearly
a progression from mechanical to electromechanical (relay logic) to
thermionic valves. The question of which nation invented "The"
computer is impossible to settle, so I think we should all just learn
to get along and agree it was the British.
 
C

Chris Hills

Yes.... but.... the winners get to write the history :-( Did the
Machine and the people survive the war? If so what happened to them?
I guess is depends on your definition of "computer". There was clearly
a progression from mechanical to electromechanical (relay logic) to
thermionic valves. The question of which nation invented "The"
computer is impossible to settle, so I think we should all just learn
to get along and agree it was the British.

Not withstand the German propaganda above :) The Computer as we know it
was a British invention and AFAIK the first "commercial" one was the
Manchester one followed by the Leo.

As for the "PC" The American designed IBM PC is long dead. Even that was
not All American. Many of the add in cards were not to start with. As it
developed the architecture and parts have a distinctly international
feel to them.

When the PC developed PCI, VESA, AGP etc are not American as many people
had an input. There are many chip-sets and Bios in use in a modern PC
not al are American.

What the Americans forget is most of their inventions were mainly done
by non-US citizens who moved to the US because of the upheavals in
Europe in the 20th century. Einstein for one. He was German.

90% of the US aero-space technology is German. They removed it from
Germany at gunpoint. That includes shooting at and imprisoning their
allies at some points.

Much of the US jet engine design came from Germany and the UK (My
father worked on jet engine design just after the war, TSR2, Olympus and
Pegasus etc)

In fact many things the US think they inventor were invented somewhere
else. Jeremy Clarckson did along list of them a while back.
 
M

Martin Ambuhl

John said:
The question of which nation invented "The"
computer is impossible to settle, so I think we should all just learn
to get along and agree it was the British.

Or someone else. And that it matters only to those with chauvinistic
priapism.
 
R

Richard Tobin

Colossus: Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England.
[/QUOTE]
*Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.

You can justify any of these and several others by prefixing
"computer" with one or more adjectives such as "general-purpose",
"electronic", and "stored-program".

-- Richard
 
N

Netocrat

I have opinions similar to Keith Thompson's,

Likewise. Appropriate and creative Zen (or other) humour is welcome in
moderation, but the focus of the group is standard C.
but it's tedious to enforce topicality all of the time.

And subject to being labelled anal-retentive or a net-cop, especially if
sensible style conventions are also pointed out. There doesn't seem to be
a guaranteed way to convey this information and no doubt some deliberately
flout conventions for a reaction (Mabden doesn't seem to be a deliberate
troll, I think he's just overreacted).
 
M

Mark McIntyre

Er, no.
Next you'll be saying that lager is a kind of beer.

Yes, and yes. Check your dictionary, mate. And visit Czechia. (No,
really. Do. You can't knock Pilsener until you've tasted it.)[/QUOTE]

*sigh*
Beer is warm, dark in colour and does NOT have vast amounts of CO2 in
it. Whatever Lager is, its not Beer....
 
M

Mark McIntyre

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 06:37:40 GMT, in comp.lang.c ,
*Cough* Z3: Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Konrad Zuse, German. 1939-1941.
Apparently even had a separate floating point processor. Also the first
formalised programming language, Plankalkuel. Mostly ignored or even
unknown in the Anglophone world, for reasons that escape me after over
sixty years.

Probably because it was thought until quite recently not to be a true
computer as it wasn't considered turing-complete. It was also
mechanical, unlike the UK devices and their later cousins, and thus
more akin to Babbages difference engine. If you allow the Z3 to be a
computer, you probably have to allow the DI too.
*Cough* And the rest of the Netherlands... Mark? May I borrow your
shillelagh to punish these Sassenachs with?

giggle...
 
T

Tim Rentsch

Richard Heathfield said:
Mabden said:


Colossus: Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England. Designed by Max Newman
(not John von Neumann!), an Englishman, and built by Tommy Flowers, an
Englishman, over a period of ten months, finally delivering it on 8 Dec
1943, over a year before ENIAC.

In the US, the first digital electronic computer wasn't the ENIAC but
the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, built at Iowa State University by John
Atanasoff and Cliff Berry. They had a working prototype in 1939.

John Mauchly visited John Atanasoff at ISU in 1941, and it's clear
that ideas from Atanasoff's work influenced the design of the ENIAC.

As with other early computer efforts (Colossus, Zuse's Z1 and Z2,
Harvard Mark I, the Bell Labs machines built by George Stibitz), the
"ABC" was a special purpose rather than Turing-complete computer.
 

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