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.