Re: Computers are a scam invented by the Illuminati
From: Leslie A Rhorer (lrhorer_at_satx.rr.com)
Date: 02/14/05
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Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 09:12:46 GMT
"Toney" <lose_vtjones_es_spann@indy.rr.com> wrote in message
news:mjrPd.21440$XY5.7641@fe2.columbus.rr.com...
> Actually, this guy is more right than he knows.
Statements witout facts to support them are not useful.
> Before computers, banks and insurance companies were able to function
> fine.
They did function, surely. However, virtually every bank had to shut
down their tellers at 2:00 PM so the receipts cold be tallied and the money
counted. Each bank was limited by the number of highly skilled workers it
could manage to find, and banking transactions took on average 3 to 4 days -
but only if all the parties involved were local. A loan approval could take
a week or more. Now most banks do business 24 hours a day, and most of the
employees are all engaged in actuallu handling transactions, not filling out
the books. The workers must still be skilled, but their skills are much
less highly specialized. What's more, keeping the employees honest was a
full time job for a significant fraction of the staff. Now, checks and
balances are fully automatic, and the numbers of auditors is a tiny fraction
of the total number of employees. Loans can be approved in a matter of
minutes with much greater surety than every before, and banks can transfer
tens of millions of dollars in a few milliseconds.
Insurance actuaries once toiled for months to try to produce a usable
actuarial table, and sometimes the table would be obsolete before it was
even finished. The data could take weeks to collect, and once collected the
calculations could each take many hours. Hundreds of such calculations are
required to produce a table Now a computer can collect and calculate the
outcome in less than a second. Claims used to take weeks to process, and
while the insurance companies will still take plenty of time to (try to)
make sure fraud is not involved, the claims themselves only take a few hours
worth of employees' time.
> The phones worked better
You obviously have never worked on a phone switch of any sort, and never
made any phone calls in the 1950s or 1960s. Phone service was terrible -
and expensive. I am a telecommunications engineer, and somewhat of an
authroity on both modern and legacy phone equipment. I mean no offense, but
you're completely full of it. Phone service has improved manyfold since its
invention in the middle 1800s, with most of that improvement being directly
related to computers in the last 40 years. Fiber optic systems are at the
heart of the improvementys of the last 30 years, and modern fiber optic
systems are completley impossible without computers. Computers must be used
to make the fiber, manufacture the hardware, and control the transport and
switching equipment. Now with Voice-Over-IP, the computers *ARE* the
switching equipment. Our company maintains a large number of 5E switches.
While completely computerized, the switching fabric of the 5E is not a
computer per se. We haven't bought any new 5E switches in over 5 years, and
we never will again. All of our purchases of switches in the last 5 years
have been "soft" switches, which are in essence nothing but a network of
computers. The 5E in our local Central Office has a currently equipped
caqpacity of 100,000 lines. It takes up 50 large bays and over 3000 squqre
feet of floor space. It's current draw is 1100 Amperes. We also have a
soft switch, capable of handling in it's current configuration over 200,000
lines. It takes up only a portion of two small bays, a total of 12 square
feet of floor space, and draws less than 40 amperes. Its in service down
time is a tenth of the 5E's, on average. The 5E cost 3 million dollars.
The soft swicth cost less than 300,000 dollars.
Legacy non-computerized transport systems we doing very well indeed to
manage 1 nanobit errored per bit transferred. Noise becomes objectionable
for nost people at around 1 microbit errored per bit, so for long distance
this was not a problem. Local lines often suffered thorugh error rates of
more than 1 errored bit per 100,000. Modern SONET transport systems never
exceed 1 picobit errored per bit. More importantly, SONET systems are
fully protected and are monitored by computers 24 hours a day. On legacy
equipment, 99.1% in service rates were considered very good. Contemporary
SONET systems typically manage 99.9943% or better. When one of our systems
fails, we know about it in a matter of seconds in the network Operations
Center, no matter where in the world the problem happens. If the problem is
serious (most are not, because the computer systems can re-route most
service affecting problems in less than 50ms), a tech will be dispatched
within 15 minutes.
> and cars were easier to fix. People
Yes, but they also failed more often. It's true the quality of
electronics in consumer automobiles has lagged far behind the quality of
electronics in other areas, but that is also changing. What's more, most of
the increased difficulty in fixing automobiels has nothing to do with
computers. Indeed, fixing a broken computer n the car is easy. The module
simply snaps out and a new module is snapped in. The major reason modern
cars are harder to fix is the much tighter engine pit and cramped mechanical
systems. We used to own a 1942 Dodge Army weapons carrier. I could
literally stand on the ground in the engine pit next to the engine to work
on it. Now I can't even get my arm into the space next to a lot of the
modern engines. Some are so bad one must almost remove the engine just to
change a spark plug or oil filter. I have a minivan which must have a
section of the frame disassembled and the window washer, fan shroud, and
part of the pollution system removed just to change the battery.
> got higher resolution and better sound quality from the movies than they
> do from DVDs.
Whwe do you get this @%^#%!@#? I'm no fan at all of most modern movies.
The directing, scripting, and often acting of most modern films positively
sucks - with some very notable exceptions. However the sound quality of
films until the advent of digital recording media was horrible. Pops,
clicks, whistles, and hiss were the order of the day. Analog recording got
much better in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so for a rather narrow time
period, analog sound recording was indeed competitive with the sound quality
we enjoy today, but with none of the sophistication. The video is a little
different matter. Picture quality prior to the 1930s was not very good.
The films were grainy and the motion was not well regulated. This changed
in the 1930s and 1940s, and some of the picture quality of the black and
white films from that era is still unmatched by any medium even today. Then
came color, and the pictures suffered a signifcant drop in picture quality -
as well as quality of content. With time, however, the color processes also
grew better, as did lighting techniques for color media. Certainly no
digital medium in use is able to exceed the quality of an IMAX film. On the
other hand, no one has yet been able to produce a feature length IMAX film.
A 40 minute IMAX film reel set fills a large table and the projectors are
the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. A six hour DVD in its player can fit in my
pocket.
> The one thing computers do allow us to do is save money on explosives.
> Because of modern guidance systems, it now takes a hundred pounds of
> whoopass to blow up something that needed a thousand pounds before. Of
> course the computers are more expensive than the whoopass.
Where do you come up with this total nonsense? The desktop computer I
am using right now cost me $500 retail. My company buys them by the dozen
for much less. Depending on what sort of explosive one is using, it would
take far less than a hundred pounds of explosive to destroy my house, which
is worth about 500 times as much as the computer. Destroying all the
computers in the U.S. however, would require more nuclear weapons than we
have, becaue one would have to destroy over 70% of the dwellings and over
95% of the offices in the US. Gawd, talk about a vaccuous point!
> Maybe computers benefit innocent bystanders,
WRT this discussion, what the Hell is an "innocent bystander"?
> but where is all that leisure time they were supposed to buy for me?
Anyone who thinks computers would ever produce more leisure time is a
moron. The point of the computer is to allow one to spend more time
working, AND to make that time more effective. They wer never intended to
increase liesure time. Leisure time is not productive, and computers are
about production. If you want more leisure time, then there is one and only
one solution, which has nothing to do with computers, electricity, steel, or
even steam. Spend less time working, period. Of course if you do so,
you'll make less money, and for some people that means enjoying their
leisure less. None of this, however, has anything to do with computers, or
any other tool, from supercomputer to horse and buggy.
If you want more leisure time, you should go back to the 13th or 14th
century. You would have had much more leisure time. In fact, you would
have worked on average about 20% less time than we do today. You woud also
almost certainly have been dead by the time you were 45, but hey, you
wouldn't have had to work as much. You'd have worked far harder, but not
nearly as long.
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- In reply to: Toney: "Re: Computers are a scam invented by the Illuminati"
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