[Leica] mars

[Mark Rabiner <mark@rabinergroup.com>]

I suspect reading the Edgar Rice Bouroughes John Carter mars Barsoom series....

will teach you all you want to know about the forthiary planet.

http://www.budplant.com/prod.itml/icOid/11301


Mark Rabiner
Portland, Oregon USA
http://www.rabinergroup.com

http://www.donotcall.gov/


also:


Mars (märz) n.The fourth planet from the sun, having a sidereal period
of revolution about the sun of 687 days at a mean distance of 227.8
million kilometers (141.6 million miles) and a mean diameter of
approximately 6,726 kilometers (4,180 miles). [Middle English, from
Latin MErs.]

 conspicuous for the redness of its light.


2: (Roman mythology) Roman god of war and agriculture;

    Romulus and Remus' Dad.

counterpart of Greek Ares [syn: {Mars}]

counterpart of DC Comics The Flash [syn: {Speedy}]

counterpart of Marvel Comics Dr Doom [syn: {Doc}]


Mars, PA (borough, FIPS 47672)
  Location: 40.69663 N, 80.01409 W
  Population (1990): 1713 (672 housing units)
  Area: 1.2 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
  Zip code(s): 16046

Mars n. A legendary tragic failure, the archetypal Hacker Dream Gone
Wrong. Mars was the code name for a family of PDP-10-compatible
computers built by Systems Concepts (now, The SC Group): the
multi-processor SC-30M, the small uniprocessor SC-25, and the
never-built superprocessor SC-40. These machines were marvels of
engineering design; although not much slower than the unique {Foonly}
F-1, they were physically smaller and consumed less power than the much
slower {DEC} KS10 or Foonly F-2, F-3, or F-4 machines. They were also
completely compatible with the DEC KL10, and ran all KL10 binaries
(including the operating system) with no modifications at about 2-3
times faster than a KL10.

When DEC cancelled the Jupiter project in 1983, Systems Concepts should
have made a bundle selling their machine into shops with a lot of
software investment in PDP-10s, and in fact their spring 1984
announcement generated a great deal of excitement in the PDP-10 world.
TOPS-10 was running on the Mars by the summer of 1984, and TOPS-20 by
early fall. Unfortunately, the hackers running Systems Concepts were
much better at designing machines than at mass producing or selling
them; the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of
perfectionism into continually improving the design, and lost
credibility as delivery dates continued to slip. They also overpriced
the product ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the
KL10 and VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun
Microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power
comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC
shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had
already made the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for
VMS or Unix boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended up being
purchased by CompuServe.

This tale and the related saga of {Foonly} hold a lesson for hackers: if
you want to play in the {Real World}, you need to learn Real World moves.

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