dredging up the "way back" machine (was: Re: Google--Bell Labs West?)

[Bryan O'Neal]

I just wanted to say, I loved my mid 80's C64!  I could produce 16 bit
color and sound back when most of the people I knew could only do 8 bit
color and what seemed like 4 bit sound :)  The School still had
monochrome machines so I was living it large :)  And fast! The C64 ran
rings around the AplleIIE with 256K of memory! And so much faster and
more capable then the IBM PC's of the day (At least the ones I had
access to).  I don't know any one who used one who did not love it.  And
with a 300 baud modem, I was surfing the net before it existed...  As
for the monitor, we hooked up a buddy's laser disk player to it and man,
star wars never looked so good ;) 

Ah, Geek Nostalgia :)



-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Mike
Schwartz
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 7:09 PM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Cc: Gerald Thurman; Mike L Schwartz
Subject: dredging up the "way back" machine (was: Re: Google--Bell Labs
West?)

On Jan 15, 2008 8:04 AM, Gerald Thurman <nanofoo at gmail.com> wrote:

> The January 2008 issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM)
> celebrated 50 years of publication.  The issue contains numerous
articles
> written by a variety of computing gurus.  In more than one article I
came
> across reference to Ken Thompson's ACM Turing award paper titled
> "Reflections on Trusting Trust."  (1984)
>
> http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
>
> Thompson's homepage was last modified in 2002 with one exception--in
> 2007 he changed his email address and it now appears as though
Thompson
> has joined Pike (and other Bell Labs alumni) at Google.  Note:  Vinton
Cerf,
> co-creator of the Internet, is also a Googler.
>
> ---
>
> Since I'm typing in an email message... here's another document that
> Dennis Ritchie has on his homepage.  The creation of the pipe is what
> caused the Unix shell to become a powerful computing tool.
>
> Why Ken Had To Invent |
> http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/mdmpipe.html
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - [...]

Thanks,
I enjoyed reading this [some of the stuff that you linked to].
    By the way, I was present at the acm conference "acm '83" in NY
(stayed with a friend's father to save on hotel bills) and heard the
Turing
Award lecture in person, which I think was an earlier draft of [what
later
became] "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
    At that conference, they gave away one "door prize", and all you had
to do was to get your registration in early enough to be entitled to the
"early bird" discount - ((which was the *main* reason why most of those
who did not miss that deadline, got their registrations in early
enough.))
I won it [the door prize] - and it was a Commodore-64, including a
monitor,
printer, and a floppy drive (5.25").  At that time, a floppy drive for
the C-64
was a bulky external peripheral.  [separate box - only a little smaller
than the system unit itself, or the printer].
The C-64 is still in my garage -- except for the monitor -- it's still
in use.
It is one of the best quality monitors I have ever seen.
The monitor has been used by my son and daughter lo these many years,
for their video games -- even to this very day, long after
the C-64 was no longer [quite so] "in vogue" as a desktop machine.
It has been through many generaions of said video games, including the
original Nintendo, then Sega Genesis, [a contemporary of Super
Nintendo],
then some others I've forgotten, but I think including an N-64,
meaning Nintendo 64, which I think is sorta still in use.  Also, one of
them
[our next gen family members] got a Playstation (2 I think - not 3 - but
I
don't know my way around those versions)
so it was definitely quite a sequence of platforms.
Another good one:
------- ---- ----
I found at
 
http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/Y/You-are-not-expected-to-understand-thi
s.html
a link to
      http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html
which probably brings back memories for *nix folks who go back
further than I do.
-- 
Mike Schwartz
Glendale  AZ
schwartz at acm.org
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