Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Nearholmer]

Sorry! I'll be quiet now.

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I, on the other hand, tend to the belief that the proportion of eejits in the population has remained constant, at a fairly high level, ....

And as the world population is increasing rapidly, so the actual number of eejits is increasing at the same rate!  Cream may always float to the top, but so do certain less savoury things.

Jim

[Regularity]

5 hours ago, rocor said:

IQ = intelligence quotient.

 

Quotient = the result of division; the number of times one quantity is contained in another.

IQ is the result of dividing the mental age by the chronological age.

It was originally intended as a developmental tool, e.g. an 8 year old with an IQ was performing intellectually the same as an average 12 year old.

 

Nothing to do with the number of people on the planet.

[rocor]

14 hours ago, Regularity said:

IQ is the result of dividing the mental age by the chronological age.

It was originally intended as a developmental tool, e.g. an 8 year old with an IQ was performing intellectually the same as an average 12 year old.

 

Nothing to do with the number of people on the planet.

 

It was just me being fatuous, I will consider having had my knuckles justifiably rapped.

[burgundy]

When Castle Aching Parish Council meets on Zoom, is the discussion recorded?

 Best of the Handforth Parish Council Planning & Environment Committee Thursday 10th December 2020 - YouTube

Best wishes 

Eric

[Regularity]

23 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

It was just me being fatuous

I knew that, you knew that, but not everyone reading this thread would know that.

[ian]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

I knew that, you knew that, but not everyone reading this thread would know that.

Ah, but how do you know that?

[Compound2632]

27 minutes ago, ian said:

Ah, but how do you know that?

 

It's not what he knows he doesn't know, or even what he doesn't know he doesn't know, or for that matter what he doesn't know he knows, but what he knows he knows, that's worrying.

[petethemole]

“He who knows not,
and knows not that he knows not,
is a fool; shun him.

He who knows not,
and knows that he knows not,
is a student; Teach him.

He who knows,
and knows not that he knows,
is asleep; Wake him.

He who knows,
and knows that he knows,
is Wise; Follow him.”

 

Old Arabian saying, possibly much older.

 

[Edwardian]

33 minutes ago, petethemole said:

“He who knows not,
and knows not that he knows not,
is a fool; shun him.

He who knows not,
and knows that he knows not,
is a student; Teach him.

He who knows,
and knows not that he knows,
is asleep; Wake him.

He who knows,
and knows that he knows,
is Wise; Follow him.”

 

Old Arabian saying, possibly much older.

 

 

Or, more succinctly

 

 

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, ian said:

Ah, but how do you know that?

Ah, but then, you would also know, wouldn't you?

[DonB]

I'm glad that I don't know,... I shall sleep easy tonight.

[Schooner]

9 hours ago, petethemole said:

He who knows,
and knows that he knows,
is Wise; Follow him.

 

 

How things change.

 

[Annie]

This afternoon I retired my ancient clockwork Nokia cellphone I've owned for almost the past two decades and took up the ownership of a terribly modern Nokia 8 smartphone.  What forced my hand was that I could no longer log into my Audible audiobook account without owning a smartphone with a touch screen and I was naturally enough very upset by this.

 

Knowing that I'm not good with ultra magic technology my daughter very patiently set up my new Nokia 8 to work with my accounts as well as transferring over my phonebook from my old phone to the new one.  The really big bonus with my new cellphone is that I can download audiobooks directly to it and listen to them.  Normally I would have to use my Dell tablet notebook for that  if I wanted to listen to an audiobook while sitting out on the verandah and with it being a lot bigger and it's battery life being only two and a half hours it's nothing like as convenient to carry around.

 

However I do wonder how other old bites older folk like me get on who don't have a clever daughter who studied computer science at university to set up modern technology for them.  Suddenly their trusty old button phone is rendered obsolete and they are faced with dealing with a touch screen phone with fingers that are not exactly steady or well coordinated.  Due to narcolepsy I'm gifted micro pauses and microsleeps as well as random finger twitches, - all of which are really helpful when it comes to operating a touch screen phone.  My Dell tablet is a touch screen device as well, but at least I can plug a mouse into that.  Fortunately holding a stylus helps to minimise the finger twitches, but I can see that my new cellphone is  going to be a somewhat steep learning curve before I feel confident about using it.

 

The first computer I ever owned never gave me these kinds of problems.

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

18 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It's not what he knows he doesn't know, or even what he doesn't know he doesn't know, or for that matter what he doesn't know he knows, but what he knows he knows, that's worrying.

 

And then along came QAnon followed by at least half the planet and promptly redefined the dictionary meaning of dumb ........

[Ian Simpson]

1 hour ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

And then along came QAnon followed by at least half the planet and promptly redefined the dictionary meaning of dumb ........

I can live with the people who don't know that they don't know (after all I may be one myself). It's the people who don't care that they don't know that worry me.

[Ian Simpson]

Given our current debate on the stupidity of other people, I've been unsuccessfully playing Spot the Castle Aching Village Idiot.

As every village is supposed to have one, and I really can't see a suitable candidate in CA, I've reluctantly concluded that it must be me.

[ian]

7 hours ago, Annie said:

The first computer I ever owned never gave me these kinds of problems.

 

And it powered up and was ready to use a lot quicker too.

[ian]

42 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Given our current debate on the stupidity of other people, I've been unsuccessfully playing Spot the Castle Aching Village Idiot.

As every village is supposed to have one, and I really can't see a suitable candidate in CA, I've reluctantly concluded that it must be me.

 

A volunteer is worth ten pressed men...

[Compound2632]

Just to be clear here, I wasn't aiming to suggest that @Regularity is a disciple of QAnon - he's evidently very far from that! It's the range of things he knows that is worrying in its scope, at least in the field of pre-grouping railways.

[Annie]

10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Just to be clear here, I wasn't aiming to suggest that @Regularity is a disciple of QAnon - he's evidently very far from that! It's the range of things he knows that is worrying in its scope, at least in the field of pre-grouping railways.

Well no he couldn't be could he since he has an active fully functioning brain in his head.

[Hroth]

8 hours ago, Annie said:

...

 

The first computer I ever owned never gave me these kinds of problems.

 

 

My first computer looked like this, more or less:

 

Science of Cambridge Mk14.

 

My most recent computer:

Raspberry Pi Pico.

 

42 years between the two, and now you don't even get a display, or a keyboard!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Hroth

[Nearholmer]

The first one I encountered, as opposed to owned, was at senior school. It had been donated by a local firm who specialised in control and instrumentation, I think having been their training or trade-demonstrator machine for a few years. 

 

It was the size and shape of an upright piano, and had a big array of lamps (pea-bulbs under little domes), and a big array of switches, that was it as far as human-machine interface went, and IIRC programs were input using manila cards about the size of postcards, into which holes were punched. It only understood binary (the lamps gave output in binary), and had very, very limited memory, so programs could only be a few postcards long - maybe about a hundred lines of code in total(*).

 

We used to attempt to write programs in an early form of high-level language, then transcribe them to the binary level that it could digest, then run them, but really only one maths master could properly understand how it worked, and eventually it got put in the corner of the French Classroom with a sheet over it  and forgotten.

 

I never saw inside it, but my assumption is that it was entirely discreet components, and what the memory consisted of I have no idea (probably flip-flop circuits). My guess is that it dated from the early 1960s, and certainly the aesthetic of the cabinet etc was a cross between "early nuclear power station control room" and "flight deck of USS Enterprise". Ive since come to think that it probably originated as or related to the controller for a Bloodhound Missile set-up, so a predecessor of the Ferranti Argus, which I later encountered at the heart of industrial remote control systems.

 

(*) If I'm right that it was an early or proto Argus, that could accept 64 'words'.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Caley Jim]

3 hours ago, Ian Simpson said:

I can live with the people who don't know that they don't know (after all I may be one myself). It's the people who don't care that they don't know that worry me.

The ones that make it up as they go along are the real worry!

 

3 hours ago, Ian Simpson said:

Given our current debate on the stupidity of other people, I've been unsuccessfully playing Spot the Castle Aching Village Idiot.

As every village is supposed to have one, and I really can't see a suitable candidate in CA, I've reluctantly concluded that it must be me.

You know what they say in Yorkshire - 'All's queer except me and thee, and I' not so sure about thee'!

 

Jim

[Hroth]

Further to old computers...

 

I've got a book (somewhere) about how a posh sort of school who, in the early/mid 60s, had their own minicomputer, an Elliot of some description. We were nowhere near as fortunate but our school was sponsored by Unilever for some reason and this resulted in a Teletype 33 terminal being installed in a room and connected by telephone line to a Unilever computer somewhere.   I never got near the thing, it was reserved for an A Level maths course...

 

The funny thing is that the Mk14 above used a SC/MP processor with 128 bytes of memory and was essentially the sort of thing that controlled washing machines, etc.  The Pico is in roughly the same class, though faster, with more memory, etc,  intended for controller activities, though already someone has programmed it to emulate a BBC B computer...

 

There's some clever folk out there!