I would revise the computer programs that are available. When the LBBs were written computer programs were long drawn affair. You had to know Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL, PASCAL, or ADA. Computer memory was extremely limited, and programming was dictated by bytes not Megabytes or Teraflops like today. The first set of "stand-alone" computers that the Army used were TACCs which basically came in two trunks with an operating speed of Intel 8080 CPU. The Apollo 11 computers are dwarfed in speed and memory by our cellphones today. The Army's "portable" computer for the field was the DAS3 which was in a semi-trailer and ran on a COBOL compiler. My team replaced them worldwide in 1992 with the DS4 Tabletop computer.
Reinventing Traveller
- Thread starter DaltonSpence
- Start date
I’m pretty happy with the MgT system, pretty consistent from ship computers to personal to cybernetics. Haven’t got the robot book but expect it will be in the same ballpark.
False. BASIC was available; Dartmouth BASIC was running in 1964... the Wang 2200 desktop all-in-one had basic at launch in 1973.
C has been around since 1972; it was available for many microcomputers in 1988, but a few as early as 1976.
most functional computers (not trainers) in the mid 1970's had kilobytes of ram. The MITS Altair 8800 was one of the lowest, at 265 bytes, but it was ready to receive the rest of 1k, and its BASIC version needed 4kB.
most 1976-1977 "home computers" had at least 16kb, and could address up to 64kb.
"You have more computing power in your pocket than what is used to power and control Voyager. I'm not talking about your phone, I'm talking about your car key fob."
I had 640k of assignable memory to partitions in my circa 1981 NCR at work.
Granted BASIC was around, but to do more advanced calculations you needed the above-cited languages to do advanced programming. For example, in the movie "Hidden Figures" used FORTRAN in the calculations for space flight. BASIC was based originally on FORTRAN and was not designed for scientific usage but for personal computing. The original BASIC program that we learned in college programming during the 70s was enhanced over the years. The argument was that the classic Traveller was written at the time when computers were basically using compilers and memory was scarce. The ability to run multiple programs was hampered (waiting in line for the college computer to run programs was standard). You learned to "shave" some of the programming steps to save on memory. Today, we run multiple programs even on the simple computers.
What were the size of the programs that you ran?
I've used several 1975 versions of BASIC; several of those had a relatively full suite of functions, but lacked large variable types, just as most still do.
Nice move of the goalposts there.
Most required just 35-64k, we would assign some processes 128-256k and sometimes had a 384k whopper, if the program could take advantage of it.
Never intended to move the goal posts. For example, although Quantum computing was discussed in 1980 (Paul Benioff of the Argonne National Laboratory posited the idea), does that change the capabilities of the computers in the Imperium? The LBB also did not explore the ramifications of AI (in my opinion). How much AI is in a robot versus extensive programming? Where does the machine stop and a sentient being begin? Does it meet the Turing conditions? Remember that Bill Gates in 1981 said the 640k was enough? Have we reached the maximum under Moore's law? The only thing I mentioned was that the basic formula for computers in the LBB needed to be adjusted for real time developments.
Oh please.
FORTRAN was used because it was the handiest hammer available. It was the dominant scientific language of the 60s, "everybody" knew it, and there was years of legacy code written for it that could be used, notably numeric processing subroutines which are fiddly at best.
Outside of that, FORTRAN had 3 potential advantages to BASIC. First is performance, a lot of time went into making FORTRAN perform. Second was Double Precision Floating Point, which is nice, but hardly necessary. Third was direct support for a COMPLEX data type, also nice, but, note, it was NOT Double Precision. Other BASIC got DPFP later on, but not out the gate.
But beyond that, FORTRAN primary benefit was simple momentum in the industry. BASIC came late to the game.
It should be noted, that when the mini computers started arriving, as a rule, they all ran BASIC first, with other languages coming later. DEC had a very popular and powerful BASIC on its PDP systems. So did everyone else (Burroughs, HP, Data General, Prime, etc.) You COULD get a FORTRAN for it (along with other languages), but "out of the box", it came with BASIC. BASIC was a much better "universal" language than FORTRAN, especially the FORTRAN of the day (FORTRAN 66). Those poor sods in Aeronautical Engineering still learning FORTRAN 66 in the 80's. While the CS department updated their curriculum to FORTRAN 77, the engineering schools did not.
Don't forget to dredge out ALGOL, PL/I, JOVIAL, SIMULA, FOCAL, as well as a bevy of other long dead languages that folks were using back in the day. (JOVIAL was very popular in the aerospace industry.)
Better to leave that box closed and give the key to Pandora.
It doesn't. It's not a gradient. It's a step, and if we've learned anything we've learned that "general AI" is farther and farther away. Everything we have today is a sophisticated magic trick, and nothing more, and not getting better.
Turing isn't really a valid test. More magic tricks. A seal with a ball on its nose. Quite different from a signing Gorilla.
It is enough, actually. It's still enough for an enormous magnitude of applications. 640,000 bytes is still a staggering amount of information.
The vast majority of our memory is consumed by graphics. Anything left is cache for stuff stored on increasingly faster persistent storage.
But, since we have capacity, we naturally consume it. I have 72GB of RAM on my machine, and its still slow.
It's like Bowfinger:
I'm waiting for the new iPhone so I can upgrade mine because I want more storage. For some reason, mine is gorged with cat photos, and I don't particularly want to take them offline.
Outside of video games (and the bottomless performance black hole that is the web browser), on a personal level, we reached "peak computer", having "fast, and big enough" computers a long time ago.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
Actually, it's coming later this year (10.69 FSD anyone?).
Granted, it won't be "perfected" for probably a decade or more ... but real world application of AI is happening by the mid-2020s, assuming civilization doesn't collapse first.
The first "robots" to use the technology are going to have 4 wheels.
Soon after, the next set of robots will have 2 arms and 2 legs ... (think about it) ...
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I think my view for those who wish to reinvent Traveller, buy and download a PDF of the rules that you to work with, and then get to copying, pasting, and editing. As long as you use this for your personal use, and do not try to distribute it, you can do what you want. That, or get the Cepheus Engine, and do your editing on that. As much of that is open source, you could share that.
HanleyTucks
SOC-11
My key fob's got some serious bloat, then.
Maybe a large part of diminishing returns of computing is the bloat.
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Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
My first computer programming class back in 1968 used FORTRAN. The instructor assured us that it would be used for a very long time.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
They weren't wrong ... it was used for a long time.
Note that "long time" does not equate to "eternity" ...
One thing I keep coming back to is that I started using PDAs fairly soon after they came out, then smartphones; and after about 2003-ish, they could do pretty much everything that smartphones do now -- just with less memory, lower screen resolution, and shorter battery life. Video/audio playback, docs and spreadsheets. Yes, they were limited and required outside processing (ripping video at lower resolution, for example, and the mobile version of Word was approximately MS WordPad), but they could do it. Since then, it's just been refining and adding capabilities.
I'm still sentimental over both Handspring/Palm and Windows Mobile 5.
