Macintosh XL

Macintosh XL Specifications

The Macintosh XL was a modified version of the Apple Lisa personal computer made by Apple Computer. In the Macintosh XL configuration, the computer shipped with MacWorks XL, a Lisa program that allowed 64K Macintosh ROM emulation. An identical machine was sold as the Lisa 2/10 with the Lisa OS only.

The Macintosh XL had a 400K 3.5" floppy drive and an internal 10 MB proprietary Widget hard drive with provision for an optional 5 or 10MB external ProFile hard drive. At the time of release, the Macintosh XL was colloquially referred to as the "Hackintosh", although this name has also been used more generally to describe Macintosh computers assembled from unusual combinations of parts.

Processor: 68000, 5
PMMU:none
FPU: none
Data Path:16, 5
L1 Cache: none
L2 Cache: none
2nd Processor: none
Slots: 3 Lisa slots

Logic Board: none
RAM Slots: 2, Lisa cards
Min - Max RAM: 0.5 MB - 2 MB
RAM Sizes: 512 K
Install in Groups of: 1

Panopticon

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."

The architecture

incorporates a tower central to a circular building that is divided into cells, each cell extending the entire thickness of the building to allow inner and outer windows. The occupants of the cells are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls, and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen. Toward this end, Bentham envisioned not only venetian blinds on the tower observation ports but also maze-like connections among tower rooms to avoid glints of light or noise that might betray the presence of an observer
Ben and Marthalee Barton

"Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated - instruction diffused - public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the poor-law not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in Architecture!"

Bentham derived the idea from the plan of a military school in Paris designed for easy supervision, itself conceived by his brother Samuel who arrived at it as a solution to the complexities involved in the handling of large numbers of men. Bentham supplemented this principle with the idea of contract management; that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where the director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality. The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than the prisons of his time, as it required fewer staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model," Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler. You will see ... that the gaoler will have no salary -- will cost nothing to the nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labour walking on wheels to spin looms or run a water wheel. This would decrease the cost of the prison and give a possible source of income.

Bentham devoted a large part of his time and almost his whole fortune to promote the construction of a prison based on his scheme. After many years and innumerable political and financial difficulties, he eventually obtained a favourable sanction from Parliament for the purchase of a place to erect the prison, but in 1811 after Prime Minister Spencer Perceval (1809-1812) refused to authorise the purchase of the land, the project was finally abandoned. In 1813 he was awarded a sum of £23,000 in compensation for his monetary loss which did little to alleviate Bentham's ensuing unhappiness.

While the design did not come to fruition during Bentham's time, it has been seen as an important development. For instance, the design was invoked by Michel Foucault (in Discipline and Punish) as metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and its pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical structures like the army, the school, the hospital and the factory have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it.

Information Theory

Information Theory

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, information theory developed to find fundamental limits on compressing and reliably communicating data. Since its inception it has broadened to find applications in statistical inference, networks other than communication networks, biology, quantum information theory, data analysis, and other areas, although it is still widely used in the study of communication.

A key measure of information that comes up in the theory is known as information entropy, which is usually expressed by the average number of bits needed for storage or communication. Intuitively, entropy quantifies the uncertainty involved in a random variable. For example, a fair coin flip will have less entropy than a roll of a die.

Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP files), lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s), and channel coding (e.g. for DSL lines). The field is at the crossroads of mathematics, statistics, computer science, physics, neurobiology, and electrical engineering. Its impact has been crucial to success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the CD, the feasibility of mobile phones, the development of the Internet, the study of linguistics and of human perception, the understanding of black holes, and numerous other fields. Important sub-fields of information theory are source coding, channel coding, algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information theory, and measures of information.

The most important quantities of information are entropy, the information in a random variable, and mutual information, the amount of information in common between two random variables.



Entropy of a Bernoulli trial as a function of success probability, often called the binary entropy function, Hb(p). The entropy is maximized at 1 bit per trial when the two possible outcomes are equally probable, as in an unbiased coin toss.

A-5 Vigilante

A-5 Vigilante

The North American A-5 Vigilante was a powerful, highly advanced carrier-based supersonic bomber designed for the United States Navy. Its service in the nuclear strike role to replace the A-3 Skywarrior was very short.

Designated A3J-1, the Vigilante first entered squadron service with VAH-3 in June 1961, replacing the A-3 Skywarrior in the heavy attack role. All variants of the Vigilante were built at North American Aviation's facility at Port Columbus Airport in Columbus, Ohio, alongside the T-2 Buckeye and OV-10 Bronco.

Under the Tri-Services Designation plan implemented under Robert McNamara in September 1962, the Vigilante was redesignated A-5, with the initial A3J-1 becoming A-5A and the updated A3J-2 becoming A-5B. The subsequent recce version, originally AJ3-3P, became the RA-5C.



The Vigilante's early service proved troublesome, with many teething problems for its advanced systems. It also arrived in service during a major policy shift in the Navy strategic role, which switched to emphasize submarine launched ballistic missiles rather than manned bombers. As a result, in 1963 procurement of the A-5 was ended and the type was converted to the fast reconnaissance role. The first RA-5Cs were delivered in July 1963, with Vigilante squadrons redesignated RVAH.

Despite the Vigilante's useful service, it was expensive and complex to operate, and it was phased out after the end of the Vietnam War. Disestablishment of RVAH squadrons began in 1974, with the last Vigilantes completing their final deployment in September 1979.

The Vigilante did not end the career of the Skywarriors, which would carry on as electronic warfare platforms and tankers. Fighters fitted with pods would replace the RA-5C. Following up to present day, the weight of fighters such as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet has evolved into the same 62,950 lb class as the Vigilante. The Super Hornet fighter is also planned to cover the strike, reconnaissance, tanker, and electronic warfare roles of these old bomber types.

Although the Vigilante served in the attack and recce roles, its design and configuration was believed to be a major influence on one of the world's most famous postwar interceptors: the Soviet MiG-25 'Foxbat' was apparently heavily influenced by the A-5's design. (The MiG-25 would look even more familiar if the Vigilante had retained the twin vertical fins of the prototype; although North American originally specified two fins, like the later Foxbat, that part of the design was vetoed by the Navy in favor of one folding tailfin.) Other western aircraft such as the F-15 Eagle would also adopt a high mounted wing and wedge-shaped intake geometry.

Xandria

Xandria Official

Xandria is a band, founded in Bielefeld, Germany, in 1997. The band's music combines elements of symphonic metal and rock making it hard to define exactly what music genre they are part of.

After various demos and great success on different MP3 portals, they released their first album in 2003, entitled Kill the Sun, which reached #98 on the German music charts. The follow-up album, Ravenheart (2004), stayed on the charts for 7 weeks, reaching #36. In 2005 they released their third album India, which is more oriented to the symphonic metal.

Starting December 14th, 2006 Xandria began recording their fourth album, Salomé - The Seventh Veil, which was released on May 25th, 2007.

Albums

* Kill the Sun (May 3, 2003)
* Ravenheart (May 24, 2004)
* India (August 22, 2005)
* Salomé - The Seventh Veil (May 25, 2007)

Line Up

Lisa Middelhauve - Vocals, Piano
Marco Heubaum - Guitar, Keyboard
Gerit Lamm - Drums
Philip Restemeier - Guitar
Nils Middelhauve - Bass Guitar

DEC

DEC CPUs


Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC. (This acronym was frequently officially used by Digital itself, but the official name was always DIGITAL.) Its PDP and VAX products were arguably the most popular minicomputers for the scientific and engineering communities during the 1970s and 1980s. DEC was acquired by Compaq in June 1998, which subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. As of 2007 its product lines were still produced under the HP name. From 1957 until 1992 its headquarters was in an old woolen mill in Maynard, Massachusetts.


Accomplishments

Digital supported the ANSI standards, especially the ASCII character set, which survives in Unicode and the ISO 8859 character set family. Digital's own Multinational Character Set also had a large influence on ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) and, by extension, Unicode.

The first versions of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system ran on Digital's PDP series of computers (first on a PDP-7, then the PDP-11's), which were among the first commercially viable minicomputers, although for several years Digital itself did not encourage the use of Unix.

Work on the first hard-disk-based MP3-player, the Personal Jukebox, started at the DEC Systems Research Center. (The project was started about a month before the merger into Compaq was completed.)

PDA concepts created in DEC's Western Research Lab, originally called Itsy, were incorporated into The iPaq which was developed as a successor to Compaq's own PDA, the Aero, originally developed to showcase WindowsCE using display and other technology from Nintendo color GameBoy.

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Charon

Charon NASA

Charon discovered in 1978, is, depending on the definition employed, either the largest moon of Pluto or one member of a double dwarf planet with Pluto being the other member. With the discovery in 2005 of two other moons of Pluto (Nix and Hydra), Charon is now also referred to as Pluto I. The New Horizons mission is scheduled to visit Charon and Pluto in July 2015.


Distant Pluto and Charon (Hubble Space Telescope)

Charon appears to be covered by water ice, which differs from Pluto's surface of frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. One theory is that the materials that formed Charon were blasted out of Pluto in a collision. That's very similar to the way in which our own moon is thought to have been created.