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@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@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 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@acm.org --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss