Talk:Computers

Spelling of Licen[cs]e

Here's what the OED says:

The spelling license, though still often met with, has no justification in the case of the n. In the case of the vb., on the other hand, although the spelling licence is etymologically unobjectionable, license is supported by the analogy of the rule universally adopted in the similar pairs of related words, practice n., practise vb., prophecy n., prophesy vb. (The rule seems to have arisen from imitation of the spelling of pairs like advice n., advise vb., which expresses a phonetic distinction of historical origin.)

I got it sdrawkcab, so I'm going to edit it to make the spelling consistent with this.

Diference Engine, anyone?

I think the title says it all. --Sikulu 23 December 2005, 10:17 (GMT)

Keyboards

In IB, rather than having the QWERTY, QWERTZ or AZERTY keyboards, the computing world has chosen the "Dvorak" keyboard, as there are not the technological hurdles of typewriters to deal with. What do you mean by that? Are you saying typewriters didn't exist *there*? Or are you saying that typewriters were on teh Dvorak standard already? Also, I seem to recall some talk earlier on the list about there being multiple standards in use in various nations Nik 19:53, 27 February 2006 (PST)

I'm saying that Typewriters exist, as it says lower in the paragraph, but that the computers are leaning to the Dvorak keyboard instead because there are smart enough to know that QWERTY was only because of the typewriter keys mashing together (because of typing speeds). I don't remember the multiple standards, and that's why it's a conditional proposal. If that's the case, we can withdraw it. :) BoArthur 20:31, 27 February 2006 (PST)

But, I don't see why they wouldn't simply continue the same standard that typewriters had. Most people used to typewriters aren't going to want to learn a new standard, even if it's arguably better than the one they're used to. Nik 20:47, 27 February 2006 (PST)

Oh, Ytterbion, hush! I like my whimsy. :P BoArthur

Dvorak could work. Just push it back to the typewriter era. Early typewriters had a number of different layouts, and you could simply decide that the Dvorak layout, or somethign similar, was created in those days, before they were standardized. Nik 21:07, 27 February 2006 (PST)

If you can come up with a keyboard layout that satisfies the constraints--avoidance of keysticking--that imposed QWERTY, yet results in efficiency coming close to that of a Dvorak keyboard, I'm for it. --Kgaughan 17:46, 1 March 2006 (PST)

@ ! " # £ % & ' ( ) _ { }
` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 [ ] 
   ^ < > F T Y C R O P ? +
   ~ , . f t y c r o p / -
    A S D U I G H E L * + |
    a s d u i g h e l : ; \
     Q X J K B N M W V Z
     q x j k b n m w v z

An ASDUI, anyone? --Quentin 09:40, 15 December 2006 (PST)

It's not the most readable in that layout, and I'll probably take this into a graphic format, but that's basically what I had in mind! Chapeau, Quentin. BoArthur 19:21, 15 December 2006 (PST)

Yep. If you ahve time, can you put the Dvorak and Qwerty next to it? Thanks! --Quentin 03:11, 22 December 2006 (PST)

Would language with diacritic need extra keys or would they use key combinations ? --Marc Pasquin 15:25, 22 December 2006 (PST)

I doubt typing letters with diacritics by using several keys for each letter would be convinient - especially for languages where diacrtics actually marks separate letters that are spelt differently (for example, ž in Lithuanian (and afak some other languages too) is like j in French (if I am not mistaken about how j sounds in French) rather than like z). Different alphabets (Cyrillic, Arabic) adds to this. So probably there would either be extra keys or (like here) different layouts. I kinda like the possibility for having completely different keyboard standards for different alphabets however (as it was in typewriters I believe) - maybe it could be explained by the fact that computers in IB developed in various places rather than in a single country as it was here (anglophonic USA). Having such keyboards would indeed be convenient for languages that has more letters than English, as *here* it usually means that the layouts of these languages has less special symbols (i.e. !, ~, {}, <>, etc.) which poses a trouble in for example various programming languages where these symbols needs to be used. Abdul-aziz 15:46, 22 December 2006 (PST)

I could possibly go with different keyboards for different nations, because of typewriters, however, I'm fairly 100% that it's QSS that computers have basically only been developed in Ireland and they're strictly proprietary. BoArthur 16:17, 9 January 2007 (PST)

Encoding

Exactly how does it deal with; þ (English) ß (German) ſ (German, Riksmal) å (Riksmal)

External Architecture

Would IB's computer look any different from the outside then one *here* (apart from the keyboard) ? I'm thinking of various trends from the past (data glove, trackball, keyboard-hardrive combination, WR glasses, etc...) that might have been adapted somehow *there* .

For that matter, would any of the difference mentioned in the article in term of internal components have any impact on its design ? would it make any difference in term of type of storage devices ? --Marc Pasquin 16:36, 20 December 2006 (PST)

What an extremely interesting question! Zahir 18:57, 20 December 2006 (PST)

Video Disks as storage method, methinks. --Quentin 03:05, 22 December 2006 (PST)

How about using a trackball instead of a mouse. That way, you don't need to move the entire object just to more the pointer. --Sikulu 03:27, 20 February 2007 (PST)

I think the trackball is right in line. I don't know about Video Disks; possibly. Remember that computer tech there is in the 1980's equivilancy, and I remember fondly my Apple IIe that had no internal hard-drive, was ram based, and took two external disk drives to boot up and to be able to read/write data to. BoArthur 07:27, 20 February 2007 (PST)

Tentative Timeline for Computer Development

Clearly, while the basics have been worked out, we still haven't figured out many important details. Here is a tentative timeline that I'm proposing for why and how IB computer development happened in a slower, more protracted manner than *here*.

• The existence of Turing and the crypto-logic bomb suggests that British code-breaking methods proceeded as they did *here*, which implies the existence of Colossus and therefore suggests that vacuum tubes were invented before World War II rather than after. So clearly, unless some sort of weirdness happened, the invention of computer technology by Solas couldn't have been of the vacuum-tube sort. (Although perhaps Colossus *there* was electromechanical like the bombe/crypto-logic bomb, but this really depends on how similar the FK's code-breaking project was to the UK's code-breaking project *here* and IB technology is enough of a dinosaur as is, I don't know if we need to set it back furthér!)
• The transistor *here* was invented in 1947 and rendered vacuum tubes obsolete in around the late 1950s if I understand correctly. Now, adjusting for GWII (bit hard to carry out civilian technological development in the middle of a war, don't you think?) and assuming transistor development proceeded as *here*, they would be invented in 1951 and render vacuum tubes obsolete in the early 1960s. Now, in the article it says that vacuum tubes are "30 year old technology", which appears to have been written in 2005. This suggests that vacuum tubes were still being used in 1975. Now, does "30 year old technology" mean that they were in common use in 1975, or that they haven't been used (much) since then? If they were still in common vogue in 1975, then why didn't the transistor replace them earlier? Here are two solutions I can think to that little issue:

• The transistor is invented in 1951 as I outlined. Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley (or some Irish equivalents) receive the Nobel Prize for their brilliant invention, and everyone goes home happily ever after. And then... nothing happens. The lack of a Cold War simply means that no support is drummed up for more advanced computers. They remain a magnificent invention, but little more than a university curiosity. Until a couple of young Irish geniuses start looking into developing the technology further, computer development remains static (maybe at around ENIAC-level).
• The transistor is invented in the 1960s by the founders of Solas Teoranta. I'm open to this suggestion, but I think we might need at least a handwave for it. If anyone else thinks that's the best course of action, then that's the best course of action. Be warned though--no transistors also sets back a lot of the rest of technology!

• What is the status of liquid-crystal displays? Wikipedia seems to suggest they were never really connected to computer development, or needed any sort of transistors, but I still would like to know if IB has gotten around to that at the same pace that we did *here*.

Those are just about all my concerns. I think I'll elaborate more on it later. Juan Martin Velez Linares 18:09, 26 October 2015 (CDT)

Part of what drove computing was the Space Race and Cold War. Without either, I think that gives enough of a shove to slow things down *there*. While the transistor is/was useful, the integrated circuits were directly influenced by the Apollo I disaster. Without the Space Race and without the Apollo I disaster or an analog, I don't know that computers would see much use outside of defense and university settings, and there would be little reason to change them.

I have no qualms with the transistor being developped QAA, but even with it developed, without integrated circuits and racing need for modernization, we likely didn't have the integrated circuits until much later with Solas's innovations.

LCDs would require integrated circuitry, as well, so that pushes them back, timeline-wise, too. No question that they're catching up, but between parallel processing and the later development of integrated circuitry, that, to me, explains the delay in Ill Bethisad.

Make sure you cross-post this to Conculture with a subject of "IB: " and whatever else you want to name it. That way we're sure Padraic can give his tuppence. BoArthur 11:53, 27 October 2015 (PDT)