OT: Extended theory of evolution....

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 11:58:36 PM UTC+11, Mike Coon wrote:

In article <992a5b3c-0975-433c...@googlegroups.com>,
bill....@ieee.org says...

On Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 8:51:29 PM UTC+11, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su2g5c$ajf$1...@dont-email.me>, spam...@blueyonder.co.uk
says...

If I rest a cup of coffee on a stool, has it become a table?
I think you have to be a member of Mensa to answer that one!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other achievements to boast about.

The archetypical Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things. Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

He was based in Cambridge around the time I worked there, and lots of people had Clive Sinclair stories.

But did you get the specific relevance and joke?

Mensa is Latin for a table, but not a stool. If there\'s a joke in there, it\'s not one to get excited about.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 12:45:46 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:

On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 8:51:29 PM UTC+11, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su2g5c$ajf$1...@dont-email.me>, spam...@blueyonder.co.uk
says...

If I rest a cup of coffee on a stool, has it become a table?
I think you have to be a member of Mensa to answer that one!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things.
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

He was based in Cambridge around the time I worked there, and lots of
people had Clive Sinclair stories.

The late /Sir/ Clive Sinclair was a hugely successful entrepreneur who
revolutionised the calculator and home computer market in particular,
and without whom you would probably not have anything remotely like the
computers you have today.

He did have plenty of failures - some due to a disconnect between making
technically good solutions without enough consideration of large
commercial companies and their power to control markets, and some
because his ideas were too early and the technology was not ready.

But mostly because he insisted on the cheapest solution, even when it was much too nasty to serve the intended purpose.

But you do not earn a knighthood for outstanding services to industry if
you \"don\'t have any other achievements to boast about\" or \"did quite a
few clever things\". The guy was responsible for a revolution first in
the pocket calculator industry, then the home computer industry - making
products that were a small fraction of the size and cost of the
alternatives, outselling everyone else put together, and bringing
computing to at least an order of magnitude more people than had ever
heard it before.

He was eccentric, certainly, but he was a genius whom Britons can
remember with pride as the UK sinks slowly into oblivion.

I was in Cambridge in the 80s, and can corroborate what Bill said.

People there had a /much/ better opinion of Acorn Computers
(which later morphed into ARM).

Acorn designed far better computers, both software and hardware - anyone
who has used a BBC Micro and a ZX Spectrum would be in no doubt which
was technically superior. But the BBC cost 3 times as much as the
spectrum - more, when you included buying a monitor instead of using an
old TV. The Spectrum (and its predecessor the ZX 81) were at least an
order of magnitude more popular as home computers - the BBC was
primarily found in schools.

But they were popular because they were cheap, rather than an anything like good.

The engineers at Acorn were also geniuses, and also highly important to
the British computer industry - but that does not in any way detract
from Sinclair\'s achievements.

Chris Curry wasn\'t exactly a genius, but he got out from under Clive Sinclair because Clive was too much of a cheapskate to sell anything good enough to be much use.

And Sinclair had a smarter business strategy - anyone could make
software (and even hardware) for the Spectrum, while Acorn tried to keep
control of everything themselves. If the Acorn folks had been more
open, we\'d be using the descendants of Acorn-compatible computers
running MOS rather than IBM-compatible computers running DOS.

Fat chance.

There are many reasons why Sinclair\'s computers are in the past, while
ARM microcontrollers (but not Acorn computers) are ubiquitous today.
But one thing you can be /very/ sure about, is that it is not because
Clive Sinclair was a man with a high IQ and no other achievements!

Clive\'s IQ was high, but his judgement sucked. When Chris Curry was working for Clive, he ran for the National Front in Cambridge, subsidised by Clive. That tells you all you need to know about both of them.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 10/02/22 13:45, David Brown wrote:

On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 8:51:29 PM UTC+11, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su2g5c$ajf$1...@dont-email.me>, spam...@blueyonder.co.uk
says...

If I rest a cup of coffee on a stool, has it become a table?
I think you have to be a member of Mensa to answer that one!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical  Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things.
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

He was based in Cambridge around the time I worked there, and lots of
people had Clive Sinclair stories.


The late /Sir/ Clive Sinclair was a hugely successful entrepreneur who
revolutionised the calculator and home computer market in particular,
and without whom you would probably not have anything remotely like the
computers you have today.

He did have plenty of failures - some due to a disconnect between making
technically good solutions without enough consideration of large
commercial companies and their power to control markets, and some
because his ideas were too early and the technology was not ready.

But you do not earn a knighthood for outstanding services to industry if
you \"don\'t have any other achievements to boast about\" or \"did quite a
few clever things\".  The guy was responsible for a revolution first in
the pocket calculator industry, then the home computer industry - making
products that were a small fraction of the size and cost of the
alternatives, outselling everyone else put together, and bringing
computing to at least an order of magnitude more people than had ever
heard it before.

He was eccentric, certainly, but he was a genius whom Britons can
remember with pride as the UK sinks slowly into oblivion.

I was in Cambridge in the 80s, and can corroborate what Bill said.

People there had a /much/ better opinion of Acorn Computers
(which later morphed into ARM).


Acorn designed far better computers, both software and hardware - anyone
who has used a BBC Micro and a ZX Spectrum would be in no doubt which
was technically superior. But the BBC cost 3 times as much as the
spectrum - more, when you included buying a monitor instead of using an
old TV. The Spectrum (and its predecessor the ZX 81) were at least an
order of magnitude more popular as home computers - the BBC was
primarily found in schools.

Agreed.

The engineers at Acorn were also geniuses, and also highly important to
the British computer industry - but that does not in any way detract
from Sinclair\'s achievements.

Sinclair\'s achievements were primarily financial not technical,
from his first mail-order transistors business onwards.

Yes, cost is important, but so is quality - ask anyone with one
of his late 60s audio amps.

His stuff was /just/ fit for purpose. The C5 wasn\'t even that,
unless you lived in a contour-free landscape such as Cambridge.
Personally I think the C5 might have had a niche future, e.g. on
large factory sites or tourist destinations. But he grossly
over-sold its capabilities (shades of Tesla?).

And Sinclair had a smarter business strategy - anyone could make
software (and even hardware) for the Spectrum, while Acorn tried to keep
control of everything themselves. If the Acorn folks had been more
open, we\'d be using the descendents of Acorn-compatible computers
running MOS rather than IBM-compatible computers running DOS.

I doubt that.

The key point the PC was that IBM backed it, and that moved it
from the realm of enthusiast tinkerers to corporate purchasers.
\"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM\".

IIRC the first Archimedes file system was /very/ strange;
suitable for academic purposes but not much more.

There are many reasons why Sinclair\'s computers are in the past, while
ARM microcontrollers (but not Acorn computers) are ubiquitous today.
But one thing you can be /very/ sure about, is that it is not because
Clive Sinclair was a man with a high IQ and no other achievements!

The principle reason is that hardware cost was continually
reducing, to the point where you didn\'t compensate for
grotty engineering. That removed Sinclair\'s USP.

 

[David Brown]

On 10/02/2022 15:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 12:45:46 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 8:51:29 PM UTC+11, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su2g5c$ajf$1...@dont-email.me>, spam...@blueyonder.co.uk
says...

If I rest a cup of coffee on a stool, has it become a table?
I think you have to be a member of Mensa to answer that one!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things.
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

He was based in Cambridge around the time I worked there, and lots of
people had Clive Sinclair stories.

The late /Sir/ Clive Sinclair was a hugely successful entrepreneur who
revolutionised the calculator and home computer market in particular,
and without whom you would probably not have anything remotely like the
computers you have today.

He did have plenty of failures - some due to a disconnect between making
technically good solutions without enough consideration of large
commercial companies and their power to control markets, and some
because his ideas were too early and the technology was not ready.

But mostly because he insisted on the cheapest solution, even when it was much too nasty to serve the intended purpose.

The point was to make things cheap, so that many people could afford
them. It worked for some of his products, not for others.

But you do not earn a knighthood for outstanding services to industry if
you \"don\'t have any other achievements to boast about\" or \"did quite a
few clever things\". The guy was responsible for a revolution first in
the pocket calculator industry, then the home computer industry - making
products that were a small fraction of the size and cost of the
alternatives, outselling everyone else put together, and bringing
computing to at least an order of magnitude more people than had ever
heard it before.

He was eccentric, certainly, but he was a genius whom Britons can
remember with pride as the UK sinks slowly into oblivion.

I was in Cambridge in the 80s, and can corroborate what Bill said.

People there had a /much/ better opinion of Acorn Computers
(which later morphed into ARM).

Acorn designed far better computers, both software and hardware - anyone
who has used a BBC Micro and a ZX Spectrum would be in no doubt which
was technically superior. But the BBC cost 3 times as much as the
spectrum - more, when you included buying a monitor instead of using an
old TV. The Spectrum (and its predecessor the ZX 81) were at least an
order of magnitude more popular as home computers - the BBC was
primarily found in schools.

But they were popular because they were cheap, rather than an anything like good.

Which would you rather have? A home computer that worked well and was
within budget, but had an unpleasant keyboard, or a dream about one that
was far better? Most people would choose the one they could afford to
buy. As a kid I learned a /lot/ working on my ZX Spectrum. If I had
had the money, I would have bought a BBC Micro. But I didn\'t have the
money.

Your attitude here is incredibly arrogant - you are accusing Sinclair of
selling cheap crap to people too miserly to be willing to pay several
times as much for good (in your not so humble opinion) alternatives.

The Spectrum (and the ZX81 before it, and Sinclair calculators before
that) were /good enough/. They were not as technically brilliant as the
BBC Micro - few machines of that time, cheaper or dearer, were as
technically good. But the Spectrum was good enough technically, and
excellent value for money. It opened the market and popularised home
computers, as well as bringing important steps to mass-market
electronics such as the use of a ULA.

Clive\'s IQ was high, but his judgement sucked. When Chris Curry was working for Clive, he ran for the National Front in Cambridge, subsidised by Clive. That tells you all you need to know about both of them.

I have no idea what the people here were like personally. That is not
the issue. /You/ brought up Clive Sinclair as a prime example of a
person who has a high IQ and whose only notable achievement was being in
Mensa. That is complete and absolute shite, and no amount of wild
back-peddling, claims of penny-pinching, comparisons to others, or
personal attacks (however true they might be) will change that.

Isaac Newton was a nasty, evil, vindictive man and spent a great deal of
his life sniffing mercury fumes, trying to fabricate gold, and producing
weird theology writings. Does that mean we should ignore his
accomplishments in maths and physics?

 

[Don Y]

On 2/10/2022 7:16 AM, Tom Gardner wrote:

The key point the PC was that IBM backed it, and that moved it
from the realm of enthusiast tinkerers to corporate purchasers.
\"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM\".

Exactly. Not just the hardware but the availability of software!
I\'ve got a 512KB Z80 CPM/MPM box that I was using to develop products
before the PC existed. Speedy (use the RAM as a disk cache),
small, etc.

But, finding much software to run on it was a chore.

Enter IBM and suddenly people were crawling out of the woodwork
with offerings!

IIRC the first Archimedes file system was /very/ strange;
suitable for academic purposes but not much more.

There are many reasons why Sinclair\'s computers are in the past, while
ARM microcontrollers (but not Acorn computers) are ubiquitous today.
But one thing you can be /very/ sure about, is that it is not because
Clive Sinclair was a man with a high IQ and no other achievements!

The principle reason is that hardware cost was continually
reducing, to the point where you didn\'t compensate for
grotty engineering. That removed Sinclair\'s USP.

I think he also hacked together really kludgey devices
(like tape stores) that didn\'t fare well, over time.

You want a device to be *easy* to use, not a chore!
(imagine what driving would be like if you still had to turn
it over by hand?)

 

[Don Y]

On 2/10/2022 2:47 AM, Mike Coon wrote:

In article <su1eta$e93$2@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

ISTR there is an extreme lack of diversity among banana trees (?)

Yes, the commercial \"Cavendish\" strain, bred to satisfy supermarket
customers and could not exist \"in the wild\". A bit like pedigree dogs
bred to satisfy some random cosmetic criteria that are then subject to
all sorts of inbred genetic conditions.

Dunno. I am pretty uninterested in plant life, fruits, etc.

They are relatively common, here (though require \"protected\"
settings to avoid frost damage and wind damage).

They are magnificent to encounter, for the first time! \"Holy
Shit! That\'s a banana!!\" Likewise for artichokes in bloom
(I have not been able to grow my own -- and now feel terrible
whenever I *eat* one... which didn\'t have an opportunity to
\"show off\"!)

I think many people have very limited exposure to these sorts
of things growing naturally.

We had grapes, strawberries, italian plums, bosc pears, some
sort of apple, peaches (didn\'t fare well) on our property,
growing up. Ditto walnuts. Raspberries (black and red) growing
wild by the roadsides. School in the middle of a corn field.
And we were surrounded by apple orchards.

Grandpa grew italian figs. And, (roma) tomatoes were ubiquitous.
(you mean there are other kinds???)

My inlaws grew garlic, cantelope, italian parsley and peppers.
LOTS of peppers! (the hotter, the better)

Here, we have lemons (there are different types with very different
tastes!), limes (which turn YELLOW when ripe -- just before they
start to rot!), three different varieties of oranges, pomegranates,
and pineapple guava. (and figs are boringly common, *here*!)

I\'ve encountered pineapple, artichoke, pecans and bamboo \"in the wild\".

In each case, it\'s an OhMiGosh sort of moment. (well, where the
hell did you THINK these things came from???) Especially for the
items that weren\'t commonly encountered in youth. (ever have
a Sanguinella orange? wicked cool!)

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 1:41:06 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:

On 10/02/2022 15:02, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 12:45:46 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 8:51:29 PM UTC+11, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su2g5c$ajf$1...@dont-email.me>, spam...@blueyonder.co.uk
says...

If I rest a cup of coffee on a stool, has it become a table?
I think you have to be a member of Mensa to answer that one!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things..
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

He was based in Cambridge around the time I worked there, and lots of
people had Clive Sinclair stories.

The late /Sir/ Clive Sinclair was a hugely successful entrepreneur who
revolutionised the calculator and home computer market in particular,
and without whom you would probably not have anything remotely like the
computers you have today.

He did have plenty of failures - some due to a disconnect between making
technically good solutions without enough consideration of large
commercial companies and their power to control markets, and some
because his ideas were too early and the technology was not ready.

But mostly because he insisted on the cheapest solution, even when it was much too nasty to serve the intended purpose.

The point was to make things cheap, so that many people could afford them. It worked for some of his products, not for others.

Unfortunately Clive made them too cheap to work all that well. They may have worked well enough to to clue people into the fact that a slightly more expensive system could have been much more useful, and the world now uses rather more powerful machines.

But you do not earn a knighthood for outstanding services to industry if
you \"don\'t have any other achievements to boast about\" or \"did quite a
few clever things\". The guy was responsible for a revolution first in
the pocket calculator industry, then the home computer industry - making
products that were a small fraction of the size and cost of the
alternatives, outselling everyone else put together, and bringing
computing to at least an order of magnitude more people than had ever
heard it before.

He was eccentric, certainly, but he was a genius whom Britons can
remember with pride as the UK sinks slowly into oblivion.

I was in Cambridge in the 80s, and can corroborate what Bill said.

People there had a /much/ better opinion of Acorn Computers
(which later morphed into ARM).

Acorn designed far better computers, both software and hardware - anyone
who has used a BBC Micro and a ZX Spectrum would be in no doubt which
was technically superior. But the BBC cost 3 times as much as the
spectrum - more, when you included buying a monitor instead of using an
old TV. The Spectrum (and its predecessor the ZX 81) were at least an
order of magnitude more popular as home computers - the BBC was
primarily found in schools.

But they were popular because they were cheap, rather than an anything like good.

Which would you rather have? A home computer that worked well and was
within budget, but had an unpleasant keyboard, or a dream about one that
was far better? Most people would choose the one they could afford to
buy.

They did. And moved on to something a great deal better as son as it got to be affordable.

> As a kid I learned a /lot/ working on my ZX Spectrum. If I had had the money, I would have bought a BBC Micro. But I didn\'t have the money.

A lot of what you learn as a kind has to be unlearned when you get older and have different and better tools to lay with. I suspect the ZX Spectrum encoruage a lot of bad habits.

> Your attitude here is incredibly arrogant - you are accusing Sinclair of selling cheap crap to people too miserly to be willing to pay several times as much for good (in your not so humble opinion) alternatives.

There were certainly better alternatives around that did cost more money. Cost-benefit analysis will probably show that money spent on Sinclair hardware didn\'t pay off as well as a bit more money spent on better hardware. His machines may have sucked a generation of twelve-year-olds into computing, but they would probably have done as well (or better) if they\'d been sucked in a bit later by the better-performing machines that had then become cheap enouhg to be accessible.

The Spectrum (and the ZX81 before it, and Sinclair calculators before
that) were /good enough/. They were not as technically brilliant as the
BBC Micro - few machines of that time, cheaper or dearer, were as
technically good. But the Spectrum was good enough technically, and
excellent value for money. It opened the market and popularised home
computers, as well as bringing important steps to mass-market
electronics such as the use of a ULA.

Clive\'s IQ was high, but his judgement sucked. When Chris Curry was working for Clive, he ran for the National Front in Cambridge, subsidised by Clive. That tells you all you need to know about both of them.

I have no idea what the people here were like personally. That is not
the issue. /You/ brought up Clive Sinclair as a prime example of a
person who has a high IQ and whose only notable achievement was being in
Mensa. That is complete and absolute shite, and no amount of wild
back-peddling, claims of penny-pinching, comparisons to others, or
personal attacks (however true they might be) will change that.

Alan Sugar made a lot more money out of Amstrad computers than Clive Sinclair ever did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sugar

His products were cheap, but good enough to be useful. My first two home computers were Amstrad\'s.
Clive Sinclair got a lot of publicity, but never hit the price-value sweet spot.

> Isaac Newton was a nasty, evil, vindictive man and spent a great deal of his life sniffing mercury fumes, trying to fabricate gold, and producing weird theology writings. Does that mean we should ignore his accomplishments in maths and physics?

He spent the last half of his life trying to prove that he - and not Leibniz - had invented calculus. He was a capable man and his self-glorification worked pretty effectively. His crack about standing on the shoulders of giants sounds slightly different when you realise that he applied his mathematical skills to the ideas generated by Hooke and Wren - Hooke was remarkably short (and twisted by a curvature of the spine) and Wren wasn\'t above average height - and turned them into Newtonian gravitation.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 10/02/2022 15:16, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 10/02/22 13:45, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

The original claim I found contentious was:

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical  Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things.
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

Can we at least all agree that Sinclair /did/ have many achievements to
boast about? No one disagrees that he had plenty of failures too. And
I have no idea what he was like as a person. But /millions/ of people -
many tens of millions - had access to computers because of what he made.
Most, of course, used their home computers for games - but many got an
introduction to programming from them. (Vastly more kids learned to
program with home computers running BASIC than learn from modern computers.)


There can be no doubts that the ZX Spectrum was a massive success.
There can be no doubts that is was a massive /achievement/.

It had far more functionality for its cost in comparison to alternatives
of the era, such as the Commodore 64 or the BBC Micro. As well as being
a lot cheaper, it was faster. But it also had a hideous keyboard,
poorer hardware expansion support, and did not have anything like the
wonderful architecture and software of the BBC.


Most people, I think, would consider it an engineering marvel to get so
much into such a small space and low cost. Of course that meant other
compromises were made - that\'s what engineering is about, finding ways
to achieve your needs without other aspects suffering more than you can
live with. Being good enough for the task required is good engineering
- being better, is a waste of money. The Spectrum was good enough for
its purpose.


I have no idea about his audio stuff - that was before I was old enough
to care. And I know why his later computer stuff failed - there was no
real possibility of functionally expanding the Spectrum, and so no way
to give customers the features they could get from others without
starting from scratch.

As for the C5, it was too little, too early, too hyped, and unsuitable
for most of his imagined uses at the time. It fell between the gaps -
it was too big and heavy to be an electric bike, too small and slow to
be an electric car, and was seriously dangerous on roads. Does it count
as an \"achievement\" ? In its own special way, yes.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 11:47:35 PM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:

On 10/02/2022 15:16, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 13:45, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
The original claim I found contentious was:

And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things..
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.

Can we at least all agree that Sinclair /did/ have many achievements to
boast about? No one disagrees that he had plenty of failures too. And
I have no idea what he was like as a person. But /millions/ of people -
many tens of millions - had access to computers because of what he made.

Computers of a sort. A whole lot more had access to better computers made by other people, and did a a great deal more with them because they worked better.

Most, of course, used their home computers for games - but many got an
introduction to programming from them. (Vastly more kids learned to
program with home computers running BASIC than learn from modern computers.)

Again, programming of a sort. My approach to programing was severely distorted by the very expensive computer I started out on a million dollar IBM 7040/44. The compiler was on magnetic tape, and each subroutine added a couple of minutes to the compile time.

> There can be no doubts that the ZX Spectrum was a massive success.

Clive sold a lot of them, and to that extent it was a success.

> There can be no doubts that is was a massive /achievement/.

It probably set back the computerisation of British society by years. Once exposed to the ZX you ended up a very low opinion of a what a computer could do, and how fast it could do it

> It had far more functionality for its cost in comparison to alternatives of the era, such as the Commodore 64 or the BBC Micro.

It didn\'t cost much, and it didn\'t do much. You needed a PC clone to do anything worth doing. Apple ran Visicalc, which meant that you could use to keep simple accounts, and that sold a lot of Apples . I don\'t recall anything equivalent for the ZX.

> As well as being a lot cheaper, it was faster. But it also had a hideous keyboard, poorer hardware expansion support, and did not have anything like the wonderful architecture and software of the BBC.

In other words it was cheap crap.

> Most people, I think, would consider it an engineering marvel to get so much into such a small space and low cost.

The process of getting more functionality into a small number of integrated circuits kept a lot of people busy from the time integrated circuits were invented.

The ZX was just one species in a rapidly evolving universe of things you could make from tolerably complicated integrated circuits. Clive Sincleiar just bought the bits he could get his hands on and put them together. Noe of them were all that marvellous.

> Of course that meant other compromises were made - that\'s what engineering is about, finding ways to achieve your needs without other aspects suffering more than you can live with. Being good enough for the task required is good engineering - being better, is a waste of money. The Spectrum was good enough for its purpose.

Which was to make money for Clive Sinclair. Like most of his products, it would have been quite a lot better if he\'d spent a little more money on making it better. It was decidedly sub-optimal.

> I have no idea about his audio stuff - that was before I was old enough to care.

When I was working for Plessey in Australia (1979 - 1981) Clive was selling the Plessey 2.5 W audio integrated circuit as a 10 Watt device - which it was for few months, until the aluminium tracks on the integrated circuit migrated across silicon and it stopped working. Apparently he\'d been repeatedly told that this would happen, and ignored the advice. I knew enough about audio to get the occasional letter published in HiFi News and Record Review, and Clive\'s audio offering were all under-designed and \"optimistically\" rated.

> And I know why his later computer stuff failed - there was no real possibility of functionally expanding the Spectrum, and so no way to give customers the features they could get from others without starting from scratch..

Cheap crap.

> As for the C5, it was too little, too early, too hyped, and unsuitable for most of his imagined uses at the time. It fell between the gaps - it was too big and heavy to be an electric bike, too small and slow to> be an electric car, and was seriously dangerous on roads.

Too cheap and nasty to be useful - typical Clive.

> Does it count as an \"achievement\" ? In its own special way, yes.

It epitomised his \"too cheap to be useful\" design style.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 11/02/22 12:47, David Brown wrote:

On 10/02/2022 15:16, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 13:45, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:58, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 10/02/22 11:55, David Brown wrote:
On 10/02/2022 12:20, Anthony William Sloman wrote:


The original claim I found contentious was:


And probably a member of Mensa to ask it. Mensa is a society for
people who score very well on IQ tests, but don\'t have any other
achievements to boast about.

The archetypical  Mensa member was the late Clive Sinclair, who not
only scored well on IQ tests but also did quite a few clever things.
Sadly he was also brilliant at snatching defeat from the jaws of
victory, usually by some feat of mindless penny-pinching.



Can we at least all agree that Sinclair /did/ have many achievements to
boast about? No one disagrees that he had plenty of failures too. And
I have no idea what he was like as a person. But /millions/ of people -
many tens of millions - had access to computers because of what he made.
Most, of course, used their home computers for games - but many got an
introduction to programming from them. (Vastly more kids learned to
program with home computers running BASIC than learn from modern computers.)


There can be no doubts that the ZX Spectrum was a massive success.
There can be no doubts that is was a massive /achievement/.

It had far more functionality for its cost in comparison to alternatives
of the era, such as the Commodore 64 or the BBC Micro. As well as being
a lot cheaper, it was faster. But it also had a hideous keyboard,
poorer hardware expansion support, and did not have anything like the
wonderful architecture and software of the BBC.


Most people, I think, would consider it an engineering marvel to get so
much into such a small space and low cost. Of course that meant other
compromises were made - that\'s what engineering is about, finding ways
to achieve your needs without other aspects suffering more than you can
live with. Being good enough for the task required is good engineering
- being better, is a waste of money. The Spectrum was good enough for
its purpose.

The spectrum was a commercial success, and some have
credited it (and the Beeb) with laying the foundations
for people being interested in creating computer games.

Let\'s not consider the QL and microdrives

To me more of an achievement was the Sinclair Scientific
calculator a decade earlier. Everything from keyboard
scanning to display driving and trig routines shoehorned
into just 320 instructions.
http://files.righto.com/calculator/sinclair_scientific_simulator.html

I have no idea about his audio stuff - that was before I was old enough
to care. And I know why his later computer stuff failed - there was no
real possibility of functionally expanding the Spectrum, and so no way
to give customers the features they could get from others without
starting from scratch.

As for the C5, it was too little, too early, too hyped, and unsuitable
for most of his imagined uses at the time. It fell between the gaps -
it was too big and heavy to be an electric bike, too small and slow to
be an electric car, and was seriously dangerous on roads. Does it count
as an \"achievement\" ? In its own special way, yes.

 

[Jeff Layman]

On 09/02/2022 01:19, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has an interesting paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/119/6/e2120037119.full.pdf

I\'m fairly sure that I don\'t understand all that much of it, but what I can understand strikes me as impressive.

I\'m absolutely sure that I don\'t understand any of it. But in the
introduction, it mentions NASA\'s definition of life. This was new to me,
but on searching for further information I came across an interesting
page at
<https://www.sfu.ca/colloquium/PDC_Top/OoL/whatislife/Vikingmission.html>.
The creation date of that page doesn\'t appear, but it\'s obviously after
NASA first stated their definition. What amused me was the final
paragraph (which predates the NASA definition), and perhaps shows the
sort of pitfalls this area provides even for \"experts\":

\"What is the definition of life? I remember a conference of the
scientific elite that sought to answer that question. Is an enzyme
alive? Is a virus alive? Is a cell alive? After many hours of launching
promising balloons that defined life in a sentence, followed by equally
conclusive punctures of these balloons, a solution seemed at hand: “The
ability to reproduce—that is the essential characteristic of life,” said
one statesman of science. Everyone nodded in agreement that the
essential of a life was the ability to reproduce, until one small voice
was heard. “Then one rabbit is dead. Two rabbits—a male and female—are
alive but either one alone is dead.” - Daniel E Koshland, The Seven
Pillars of Life
(NB the link at the end of that ends up at a 404. More info in the wiki
at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Pillars_of_Life>)

--

Jeff