On Fri, 3 Feb 2012, Sevetson, Phil wrote: > Tomasz, I hear where you're coming from with "time is fixed", but > in-my-opinion it acts more like an expense stream, and a sunk cost. No > matter what you're doing with it, it's going by.
Ehem :-). I am not sure if I read you well. I guess this is a problem with my English, since I'm not a native speaker. Even more funny, I'm not sure what did I write in my previous message. What I wanted to say is this: I try to keep an eye on, say, broad spectrum of computing. There is more than few articles to be read to get some understanding about things like mainframes, high performance computing, clusters, personal digital assistants or do-it-yourself computers. And I don't claim I will ever get any kind of practical, hands on knowledge about all this. But for some reason I like spending my time collecting pieces of data on those subjects. There are folks who drink beer but I like to learn about strange computing thingies. Perhaps I should write a song about it. Time is limited, so obviously there is no way I can be an expert in any of these fields. My best hope is keep learning, so I keep learning. The platform of choice for me is, at present and for some future, a PC. It is cheap, flexible, I can have it in few sizes (desktop or laptop), it can run a lot of software that interests me (I am keeping an eye on a similarly broad spectrum of software, too, and with same results). Whenever there is problem with it, either soft or hard, I can fix it myself and costs are low to zero. I can connect PC to various devices, like cheapish fm radio, without paying fortune for proprietary connector. I detest computers with no compilers or interpreters installed on them or easily available. I don't have any kind of problem with mainframes or the way they are. I accept the fact they are different from what I am used to, and at the same time I am interested. It's just I don't want to put all my time in them. With some amount of work, mainframe could become as flexible and cheap as PC, but I don't think this would happen soon. Ok, not as cheap as PC but not as pricey as now either. Anyway, they are not going to be easily available for me, so I would rather stick to what I can have. After all, what counts for me is ability to write and run software. I can do it on a mainframe if I have to, I am nowadays very positive about it, even though right now I still lack practical knowledge about how exactly achieve this (i.e. what key presses or card punches take me there). I think I am quite close to writing my first job or something, but I will get there when I get there. Sorry for all this off topic postings. I wanted to make myself clear, just in case. BTW, it is good to have a place like this list, so I can hang on and once a week pick a thread with interestingly looking subject. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
