Entries this day: Harry_Potter _6function_calculator

Harry Potter

9:13 am Friday 21 December 2001

Last night Wende and I went to see Lord of the Rings but the show was sold out at least 30 minutes early (7pm show), so we saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone instead. I hadn't seen it. I pretty much entirely enjoyed it. I'm happy for the three young stars of the show. I understand this is the debut on the big screen for each of them.

'I shouldn't have told you that,' by Haggis (sp) over and over was pretty funny.

Snape (Alan Rickman) reminded me a lot of Trent Reznor's face. I haven't seen images of Reznor in a while though.

6function calculator

I got this reply today after emailing Jeff Harrow, who writes a super great fun newsletter every couple of weeks:

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Harrow [mailto:Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com]
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 3:37 PM
To: Rob Nugen
Subject: RE: 6 function calculator


A very good point indeed, Rob.  You're clearly correct.

I'm glad you're enjoying The Harrow Technology Report, and I hope you'll let
many other folks know that they can subscribe at
http://www.theharrowgroup.co
m/signup.asp.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey R. Harrow
Principal, The Harrow Group
Author - "The Harrow Technology Report"
Web  ->   http://www.theharrowgroup.com/
Email ->  Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Nugen [mailto:rob@fsd.nu]
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 10:50 AM
To: jeff@theharrowgroup.com
Subject: 6 function calculator


Your most recent issue includes the term "commodity computing power," which
reminds me of a (true) story.

I was walking across University of Houston campus and found a small
calculator floating in the water fountain.  It weighs less than one ounce,
and after all the water dried out of the calculator, it works well.  It
supports operations + - / * % and square root.

I realized an amazing thing.  In not so many years, I will find computers
floating in the UH fountain with as much computing power as an expensive
computer today.

- - -

According to "http://www.datamath.org/Story/Datamath.htm#The Cal-Tech
Project" one of the first calculators weighed 55 pounds and cost $2500
in
1965.  (they didn't do square root, though)

According to http://eh.net/e
hresources/howmuch/dollar_question.php $2500 in
1965 had the same purchasing power as $14000 today.

SO in the equivalent of 35 technology-years (Moore's law, etc) I will find
floating in a water fountain the processing power of a computer that costs
$14,000 today.

Wowza!

        Thanks for your continued research!
        - Rob