Slashdot Mirror
Computer Folklore, Circa 1984
savetz writes "The full text of the classic 1984 computer book Digital Deli, The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy, is now on the Web. (Autstralian mirror) A wonderful look at technology culture in the golden age of the microcomputer. 20 other old computer books are at the site, too."
"X" is for Xerox: the word processor's friend. Even though your computer printer will gladly produce 340 copies of your 430-page report, it could have a coronary at the end. If you use a slow daisy wheel printer (one page every few minutes), this might take over two hundred days to print nonstop. A special benefit for dot matrix users is that xeroxing makes the dots fill in nicely to look more like letter-quality hard copy.
Wow. One page every few minutes. And users complain because their laser printer takes 20-30 seconds to warm up...
I have an old (~1994?) Introduction to Networking (QUE) text in which it says TCP/IP is a standard that will more or less fade because the DOD insists that future protocols comply with GOSIP (Government OSI Profile). Nice call QUE!
Reading through this article, I spotted this bit:
"Whenever there's a lull in the conversation, some fool Atari owner invariably throws out the telecommunications equivalent of "What's your sign?":
Interesting to see that while parents today complain about their kids using incomprehensible speech in IM, their generatation was doing it 20 years ago (and it was just as looked-down on then).
And with the introduction of Apple's next generation of easy-to-use 32-bit computers in the Lisa/ Macintosh series, the Apple culture seems destined to grow and flourish.
I guess there was a time apple wasn't doomed.
I enter the office at exactly 8:59 to prompty start work no latter the 9:01. The first order of businness is to read the day program specs delieved to me by my highly competent management. At 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, and 11:30 we take a two minute break where everyone in the office stands up in our cubes to look at each other. Our management forbids us to talk to each other, but we are allowed to make jestors. At 12:00 our management deliever us a tray with our lunch on it. When have until 12:40 to finsh lunch. For the next twenty minutes we are allow to use the restroom or have a smoke. However, we are not allow to leave our cudes. At 1:00 we return to our code. Again, every thirty minutes we take a two minute break. At the end of the day our management strikes the bell and we return to our cages. I need to go now the management sees me. It's about time to return to the code. This is my life as a code monkey.
For obvious reason I must post anonymously.
And of course, you can see where this line of thought took Microsoft. Clippy. Microsoft Bob. At least the latter got Gates laid.
^_^
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
...it's just that the heaviest users are all virgins, so nobody's had an opportunity to notice.
I was just at a local library book sale and saw a copy of this.
It was a paperback, so it would've been $0.10.
And I didn't pick it up, because my arms were already kind of full, and it wouln't have fit into the stack very well. (that, and I thought that it looked kind of useless.)
If only i had known that this was HISTORY that I was looking at (and not 10-year-old cruft),I would have surely bought it.
*ARRGH*!!
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?