[ML-General] Looking to develop curriculum for childrens technology camps

[Matt]

On 02/07/2016 07:52 PM, david wrote:
> Nits to pick:
> Computers:
> mainframe -- huge, multi-million dollar dinosaurs that have 1 to few
> processors but engineered to serve thousands of ($$$) terminals and
> designed to centralize data and functions.  Examples IBM, Unisys, Honeywell;
> mini-computer -- washing machine sized computers, mostly for engineering
> departments.  examples DEC PDP 8, PDP 11, Wang mini's, and so on.  Cost
> tens of thousands of dollars and up;
> micro-computers -- desktop machines originally designed for
> single-person computing, but boy, did it grow up!  Cost around $1,000
> and up;
> Now, we have what I term the pico-computers (to follow the name history)
> -- mostly designed as embedded device, grew into system-on-chip capable
> of handling some desktop functions as long as they are not
> comute-intensive.  Cost $5 to a few hundred, with peripherals covering a
> wide spectrum.
> 
> What's next?  A nano-comuter (quantum machines?)  Interfaces to humans
> still gonna cost the same as all tiers but the (outdated) mainframe. 
> Capable of enormous compute power, memory requirements/accomodations
> will be phenomenally large.
> 
> Meaningless historical trivia:  The IBM PC was designed as a *terminal*
> only, for their mainframes and the IBM engineers and marketers had
> deduced it was incapable of operating as a stand-alone computer. 
> Follow-on trivia: in 1983, I designed and installed a network of PC's in
> a department in a nuclear power plant, for purposes of database,
> record-keeping, and some compute-intensive jobs.  When IBM came out and
> examined what I had done, they turned white as a sheet and said, out
> loud and to the room, "This is impossible."  And after the PC has
> already established itself as a capable (sort of) stand-alone office
> computer.  Yet it worked for many years.  My OS of choice at that time
> was QNX, a variant of UNIX, of course.
> 
> David Merchant
> Man, how I do ramble sometimes.

David,

Where does the quad core android phone in my pocket fit on this chart?

#matt

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