Posts by Old Used Programmer 723 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2010
A company I worked at would push software updates to in-store servers and pull daily sales activity over night. At one store, we were having a terrible time doing this. After a lot of swapping in new components, someone noticed that the phone line used for data transfer connected to the building right next to the transformer for the neon sign...that was only turned on at night...
Definitely. In 1947, the US launched a V-2 with an Army "Wac Corporal" (rocket) as a second stage and achieved an altitude of 250 miles. Plus, achieving orbit is more than just altitude and velocity. The vector has to be correct. Putting stuff in orbit depends nearly as much on computational ability as it does rocketry.
For part of the 1990s, I worked at a company that had an in-house set of date handling subroutines that we were all supposed to use. At one point, a new version of them was released, so I tested a couple of critical dates. On the first pass I discovered that it showed 1900 as a leap year, so I set the programmer who'd done the work a note about the century year rule. One the second pass, 1900 wasn't a leap year and neither was 2000. Another note was sent. On the third pass he got it right.
Wildest piece of compact code I ever wrote was a two card boot loader for an IBM S360/30 that would IPL load, bring an object deck into memory at the target programs preferred location, and run it. Took two cards because when you hit the IPL button, after selecting the card readed as to boot device, it would read one record and start the IO command chain on it.
I even managed to keep columns 73 to 80 clear (for sequence numbers) by having the code on the second card use the second IO command word from the first card (no seek needed, so getting the second card into memory only needed one IO command).
I switched my wife over to OpenOffice (and then LibreOffice) when she got a PC new enough that it wouldn't run Word for Windows 2.0. She intensely disliked later versions of Word,as all she wanted it for was writing SF. Her earlier transition was from vi/nroff/-ms macros. Until she died, she still had an e-mail account on a unix system and used mail. For news, she stuck with trn.
The IBM 1620 Mod II used a Selectric for a console typewriter (as did the S/360 systems until they went with CRTs), so--yes--there has been a computer keyboard that good. When IBM brought out the PC, they tried to match the "touch" of the Selectric and came fairly close. Hence all the people here talking about IBM Model M and Unicomp keyboards.
Yeah... The Pi500 has a better keyboard, but not much better. For the market and price, it's the sort of keyboard one would expect. It's okay for occasional use, but I wouldn't want to use it full time.
What I really wish would happen is for a third party to make a good mechanical keyboard for the Pi400/Pi500. Have to be a third party because I really doubt there is enough demand and enough price flexibility for the RPL to do it themselves, but they might easily work with a third party so an aftermarket replacement would fit and work properly.
My late wife was VERY picky about keyboards, but she wasn't a programmer at all. She spent her working life...typing. Loved Selectrics. For computer keyboards, she decided that Unicomp were as close to a Selectric "feel" as she could find. (Which is not particularly surprising, as IBM was trying to match the Selectric feel with the Model M and came fairly close.)
In the early 1970s my father was a civilian employee of the US Navy, working on ground support equipment. At one point, a knob was lost from one unit. He said he could have gone across San Diego Bay (he was working at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado) and purchased a replacement for about $0.25, or if he went to an inexpensive source, probably $0.10 to $0.15. He could also have walked over (about 100 yards) to the supply depot and pointed to the shelf where the spares were. But that's not how the Navy did things, so he put in a supply requisition for a replacement knob.
Six months later... A box showed up on his desk. The box had been sent from Bremerton, WA. In the box was an invoice for one knob for $10.52. The knob was in the box...and 51 more exactly like it.
He used to comment that his one hope for the US was that Soviet Naval Supply system was worse than ours...
At one point in the mid-1930s my father was the staff electrician in NY residence hotel. One person there wouldn't pay his electric bill, so they'd pull the fuses. He replaced them with pennies. All my father would say about his solution was that the next time the guy pulled that he'd "get a handful of fire." After that...he paid his electric bill on time.
I spent a couple of summers in the US Federal Summer Employment program working in the data center of the 11th Naval District in San Diego. This required a security clearance--Confidential, which is as low as it gets. I sometime wonder what the reaction of those doing the clearance was when they came across my father. He had a job for several years with a clearance high enough to crawl around inside nuclear armed Air Force B-52s on the flight line, and he had sockets welded to the bumper of his personal car to hold the flight line flags he kept in the trunk. (Yes...as a civilian, he was allowed to drive his *personal* car on the flight line of a SAC base.)
I get assorted spam calls for my late wife. I tell them that she is no longer at this number. NONE of them have ever asked for a new number to contact her. I'd be tempted to find--and provide--a number for the Vatican (as she was Catholic). One time I mentioned the problem someone suggested that I supply the number for Dial-a-Prayer.
Hmmm.... An ancestor of mine was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1757. He happened to be in the UK when the US revolutionary war broke it. He was "detained", escaped, got to New England, signed on board a privateer (pirate...to the other side), went out on a cruise, when the ship returned to port, he signed off the privateer.
Then he made his way home to SC. Three days later, he a had a commission as a Lieutenant in the SC Navy (I'm guess that he used the proceeds of the privateer cruise to buy it), was assigned to a very small warship (16-gun Brig'o'war). The ship captured a British stores ship. My ancestor was appointed to command the prize crew and was able to get the prize back to a friendly port. When the warship returned to port, the captain retired and suggested that command be given to my ancestor...which was done. This was all before he was 20. He was in command for the following 3 years, during which they were involved in the capture, recapture or sinking of 63 vessels. What was that about the competence of Young Gentle(wo)men?
The Lawrence Berkeley Lab (the one up the hill from the UC campus that does unclassified work, not the one in Livermore that works for DoD) had to tell PG&E (local utility provider) when they wer going to start or stop the Bevatron particle accelerator. Rather large inductive load. They also had to notify the Field Free Lab, about half a mile away.
My wife tested at 100wpm on a Selectric. We figured she was self-limiting because a Selectric will fail its rollover limit at about 110wpm and she would occasionally get the symptom of that: hyphens. Later, when what she had a work was a Mac, she called Apple support to ask if there were keyboard shortcuts for *everything*. The rather puzzled support person said there weren't and why would she want them. Couldn't she just use the mouse? She somewhat testily pointed out at, if she took her hand off the keyboard to use the mouse, it slowed down her typing. (She also used to type up manuscripts on a unix--BSD 2.9--system inserting nroff -ms commands on the fly at full speed.)
I have mixed feelings about Pournelle... I was once asked to be on a panel discussion at an SF con with him. It was during one of his...better lubricated...periods and he was at least two sheets to the wind. Any time he couldn't make his point rationally or logically, he tried making it louder. I got a lot of sympathy from the audience...
You hope.
UC Berkeley had--by contract--two independently routed lines to an East Coast site as part of the internet backbone. A farmer in New Jersey with a backhoe took out a single fiber cable and both lines went down. What ensued was a lot of pointing at contracts and bills and a sizable payment made over the lack of *actual* independent routing.
