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Comment Re:It's not hard to do, just moderately expensive (Score 5, Informative) 56

You are quite correct that we have not built a single demo part. In the two years since I started talking about this project the following has happened:

1. Persuaded the Science Museum to digitize all of Babbage's plans and notebooks (this in itself was a non-trivial task involving a great deal of effort at all levels and they should be thanked for taking on the task).
2. Got the leading Babbage experts to join and work with me (Doron Swade who built the Difference Engine No. 2 and Tim Robinson)
3. Started a UK-based charity (again these things take time as there are legal requirements and the recruitment of a board of trustees)
4. Started research on the Babbage archive itself
5. Begun fund-raising.

No. 4 is non-trivial because there are literally thousands of pages of notes and > 230 large scale plans to decipher. Plus there's a hardware description language to work with. And the archive is not well documented. There are a number of different cross references that conflict with each other. I realize that all this stuff is boring and people would like to see an immediate result, but that's not going to happen. It's years of work to properly study this stuff and build a historically accurate machine.

Note that we have not proposed building the 1,000 memory location machine. That's far too much to demonstrate that it would work and would add to the cost and size. As for the number of parts, until we've deciphered all the plans and come up with a definitive plan that it's hard to answer but we believe there will be roughly 40,000 to 50,000 components to be made.

Comment Re:Great idea, probably not happening (Score 5, Informative) 132

You are correct that I care about the PR side of things. I need to because I need to raise a substantial amount of money.

But it's far from all PR. There's now a registered British charity with a board of trustees and the pre-eminent Babbage expert, Doron Swade, who built the Difference Engine No. 2 at the Science Museum is running the technical side of the project.

Study of the digitized plans has been underway since February and some first results will be announced this summer. We actively want to build a 3D working model in a tool like Autodesk.

Comment Re:It's all stuff that ships with Linux (Score 2, Insightful) 356

How these tools are used and % of userbase that cares about them:

Windows:

- <- Developers
------------------- <- Everyone else

Linux:

------------------- <- Developers
- <- Everyone else

Do you really think the average office worker cares about examining mount points or finding out how many USER handles a process is using? That's why Microsoft doesn't ship any of that with Windows, and they probably never will. More importantly, I'd rather have a third party write these kinds of tools. They're not limited by what marketing and support think is a good idea to ship. If Microsoft made them they probably wouldn't be as useful - not to mention everyone would whine about how they're evil because they're killing a niche.

As long as these tools are available, I could care less where I have to get them from or what I couldn't do before I install them. Duh.

Comment Re:Control freak (Score 4, Insightful) 543

You just know that he would have demanded that Linux be called 'GNU/Linux' and so on. He's known for turning down speaking engagements from people who refuse to do that, too.

I beginning to think Richard Stallman is techdom's Michael Jackson. Once brilliant, his past work is appreciated by all... but he currently exists in a vacuum where he lives off his dwindling reputation and fawning attention of a few creepy adoring fans while everyone else just scratches their heads and wonder what the hell happened to him.

Comment Re:Move Microsoft to India (Score 1) 1144

These always make me smile. Microsoft, the big bad outsourcer. You're going to move IBM as well? IBM is the largest consumer of L1 visas in the US. These are much more insidious than the evil H1-Bs, I suggest reading up on them.

I don't know if you've ever interacted with IBM - specifically IBM Global Services (aka IBM India), but lately I've been thinking that the only American left in that company is Palmisano. Everyone else has to be either Indian or Chinese. I jest - just slightly.

While you're at it, send all the large financial and services companies in the US. Heck, just transfer the entire Fortune 1000 over there. That will take care of your problems.

Oh and BTW, I love the "Ballmer was at it again" bit here. Any chance of the submitter actually mentioning which CEOs have lobbied Washington for increased quotas and more relaxed requirements? Naaah, that doesn't sell any ad impressions nowadays.

Comment Re:and this is different from other platforms... h (Score 1) 948

several apps written by Apple itself don't follow standard UI conventions

Not following interface guidelines in itself is quite common on both Windows and OS X, but that usually has nothing to do with the lack of a unified platform UI.

The Windows situation is even worse: there are several native toolkits there

You're confusing the shell's control library with the stack used to access it. On Windows when you write a .NET, WTL, MFC or plain Win32 application, you're still targeting the Windows shell native controls.

Comment I didn't cry (Score 1) 4

And I think he (Potts) sucks at singing.

I hate opera, so that might have something to do with it. But I do like the "crossover" artists like Andrea Boccelli and Sarah Brightman and that other british chick whose name I forget right now.

But Potts is nowhere near being a proper opera singer.

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