Multiple habitable worlds in system Christopher Sean Hilton (16 Oct 2016 22:30 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Evyn MacDude (17 Oct 2016 01:12 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Christopher Sean Hilton (17 Oct 2016 03:13 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Tim (17 Oct 2016 02:53 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Jerry Barrington (17 Oct 2016 09:00 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Tim (17 Oct 2016 12:55 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Jerry Barrington (17 Oct 2016 18:09 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Kelly St. Clair (17 Oct 2016 20:10 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system C. Berry (17 Oct 2016 20:17 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Bruce Johnson (17 Oct 2016 20:26 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system C. Berry (17 Oct 2016 20:34 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Bruce Johnson (17 Oct 2016 20:45 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system C. Berry (17 Oct 2016 20:52 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system shadow@xxxxxx (18 Oct 2016 06:24 UTC)
Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Jerry Barrington (18 Oct 2016 08:25 UTC)

Re: [TML] Multiple habitable worlds in system Bruce Johnson 17 Oct 2016 20:26 UTC

> On Oct 17, 2016, at 1:10 PM, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:
>
>  And when computers WERE brought to bear on the issue, the programs used were primitive and error-prone; consider the first Atlas of the Imperium, and its notoriously bad dataset, with whole sectors of bad output.

That was fixable even then; the Apple BASIC RAND() function was actually pretty good.  (iirc an Apple II was what was used to generate the Atlas) IF you didn't commit the rookie error of re-seeding it with the same value every time :-/ Also I do believe that someone sold a card that sampled background radiation for a true random seed. I know I considered getting one at one point, just couldn’t justify the $150-ish cost.

I did a bunch of rand() testing with my ][+ back in the day; I repeatedly ran out to (iirc) 500,000 rolls of 2 and 3D6 and got a nice smooth distribution curve that looked properly bell shaped. Took 4 or 5 hours to do each set, of course. A 1kHz clock speed’ll do that for yah :-)

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs