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Domain: memex.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to memex.org.

Comments · 7

  1. Re: What bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Sci-Fi Authors and Scientists Predict an Optimistic Future
    It's part of the geek mythology that somehow imagination trumps reality, and if you can imagine it, it can happen.

    Do you have *any* idea of the quantity of sci-fi written that *didn't* predict anything at all?

    What nonsense!

    You want leadership, well you'll need to talk about people like Vannevar Bush that *thought out* the Memex, or JCR Licklider who talked about gigabit computing possibilities in the *1960s* in engineering papers.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

    http://memex.org/licklider.pdf

    He write any sci-fi? Nah.

    Not some daydreamer writing some stories that half a century later get selected by hindsight as being "inspirational"! When it was the other way around; the thinkers inspired the writers!!!

  2. J.C.R. Licklieder?!? by dtmos · · Score: 1 · on How Allan Scherr Hacked Around the First Computer Password

    Um, no. J.C.R. Licklider.

    I think the submitter copied the typo in the title of this blog. But really! It's not like he's some unknown guy.

  3. *Piloted* mission to Mars by benja · · Score: 1 · on One-Way Ticket to Mars?
    It really irks me how everybody talks about "manned" missions. From an interview with Dan Goldin, NASA director:

    David Bennahum: Can you give me a sense of how the interest in these unmanned missions to Mars have influenced the urgency, or the interest, in a manned mission to Mars?

    Dan Goldin: Can I respectfully push on you a little bit, and say "we have robotic missions and we have piloted missions." We do not have "manned missions" at NASA. We have thirty female astronauts.

    DB: Okay.

    DG: I don't want to be pushy about this, but when I took this job, I told my daughters, "You will no longer use the name 'the manned spacecraft program.'" Okay. In any case, I think that it was a watershed event, the Pathfinder mission.

  4. Re:anyone know where to get this famous 'spock' ? by vrmlguy · · Score: 1 · on Appreciation For All Things ASCII
    Try WU Archive. Before the web took off, they had more stuff archived than anyone else, including lots of line-printer art. I was poking around a few years ago, and it was still there. I'd guess that it's still there somewhere, but a quick search didn't turn up anything. You might have more luck using FTP. Here's their blurb:
    Wuarchive was established in 1988 through a variety of grants and donations. During the era of Good Times, before the World Wide Web was anything but a pipe dream of the common spider, before the dot-com explosion and subsequent implosion, and some time after man first set foot on the moon, there was Wuarchive. Rumor has it that a year or two after its creation, Wuarchive was involved in 15% of worldwide Internet traffic. To the relief of those who pay our bandwidth bills, this is no longer true, but Wuarchive remains a useful resource for both the Washington University community and the public at large.
    And here's a discussion about Spock, the Enterprise, and the Mona Lisa.
  5. A long time coming by The+Cunctator · · Score: 3 · on DoD developing Linux-based "Soldier's Radio"
    The people who developed the Internet, including J.C.R. Licklider (the first head of the IPTO (no, not that IPTO or that IPTO, this IPTO, okay, it's ITO now)) and Len Kleinrock (the man who invented packet-switching), proposed and worked on the idea of deploying mobile radio networks via soldiers back in the 60's.

    A central problem is that all the efficiencies possible in a large-scale network are lost without some aggregation, some centralization. Kleinrock worked a bit on the idea of allowing groups of soldiers to cluster together to form temporary hubs close to where additional bandwidth was necessary, but the problem is extraordinarily difficult both mathematically and physically--it's taken a long time for systems to get small enough for the research to be feasible.

    Moreover, ARPA/IPTO/ITO really lost steam around the 80's, when Bob Kahn stepped down (no offense, Saul). And they didn't have no Linux, neither. So maybe the time is right, now.

    --

  6. Re:Vaporware? Not likely by Alien54 · · Score: 2 · on Linux 2.4 Wins 4th Place ... in Vaporware
    ahh, this is useful. But this is not the only time bill has done this.

    In this regard, these make interesting reads:

    • Calderas' legal brief against MS PreAnnouncement claims
    • The early history of vaporware, as discussed in a computer history mailing list archive from 1996
    Someone ought to do a full list of all of the dirty deeds of Bill G, just so that it doesn't get forgotten. y'know, things like IE3.O for Unix.
  7. Beware of "education experts" ... by alispguru · · Score: 1 · on Are Computers in Classrooms Bad for Learning
    ... who blame computers for problems better assigned to:

    Teachers who don't know how to use computers

    Educational sofware writers who can't get past drill-and-kill programs

    Administrators and funding agencies who think dumping hardware and software into classrooms is sufficient.

    Everyone should go sit down calmly, take a stress pill and read Seymour Papert. Computers are needed in classrooms, but not to teach kids how to surf the web. They are needed to transform education from its current one-way, passive mode to something more active.