Nick, when I was 17, there were no computers that you could get near. The year was 1955, and I was just as eager as you seem to be to prepare for what I saw as the coming computer age. I had a part time job in a shoe store, and was 2 years away from university. The store was small in a small town, and the owner was a proud man, proud of the students he had working there who had gon on to be judges, lawyers, politicians and such.
At the time I didn't think I would ever live up to his hopes for me, but I tried my best and I learned a lot. A few years later, I realized that the University education that I could get would not take me where I wanted to go, so I left before graduation. Meanwhile I had done many jobs in mechanical engineering, electronics manufacturing, and even forestry research, always looking for employers and supervisors who were mentors for their employees, and who helped them proceed.
It was not until 1965, when I was 27, that I found the job I was looking for, as a computer hardware technician. Computers were just exiting from the vacuum tube age, and the germanium switching transistors of the time were considerably less reliable that today's high performance silicon; but the time was short -- reliability improved, the fun was out of it, and by 1973 I went on to different things, things that built on some of the other jobs I had and people who trained me in the work that they loved to do and were proud of doing.
My advice is that when you look for work while you continue your education look for an employer who wants you to learn what he knows. My love affair with the nuts and bolts of digital hardware was only 8 years, and 10 years after I was 17. The people who taught me and the jobs that I had in that 10 year period, have been invaluable through the succeeding years. Don't focus too narrowly on your chosen career, but do something that's fun for the people you are working with. It will be fun for you and you'll learn a lot, and some day it may be very useful to you. There'll be time for that narrow focus on your chosen path, but meanwhile keep an eye on the big picture. You never know when you may have to advance to something different.
I am 67 years old and have been reading/. almost since its inception. At my age, however my eyesight plays tricks on me, and pink and white tend to alternate. Possibly you could recommend some 27 year old geekesse to read the articles to me.
I guess this has been burning here for a long time, and Id really like your views on the music scene as it has developed. I am 64 years old which means that I was a teen-ager at the introduction of the 45rpm single, and those little RCA portable players that you could save up to buy, and take to your friends house; or if they had a player you could just take the records. At the same time Columbia Records & CBS began promoting the LP.
The RCA discs cost 47 cents here in Canada at the beginning, and I can remember paying 98 cents for Heartbreak Hotel just after Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Well, the war between Columbia/CBS and RCA continued with the record industry in the midst, and after a while, the only thing being marketed was albums. Still, on radio, the industry was promoting single tunes, while trying to sell an album based on the one song. Well I can remember how bad it was to get a complete non listenable dud on the B side of a 45, so it doesnt surprise me that the pressure was there to strip the individual tunes from a CD, and compile them into something you might like to hear.
Radio today no longer has a Top 40, and stations are automated & play formula stuff. Web stations have been shut down by the very industry that used to inundate us with records and coerce our little station to play them.
So the music industry has shot itself in the foot, while having in hand the means of salvation. Kids want single tunes, something they like to play over & over again, just like we did on that little RCA player back in the 50s. mp3 audio provided a way to do that, but the music industry refused to embrace the new technology, and now they remind me so much of the Luddites that tried to stop the Industrial Revolution that it makes me sick.
So after this tirade Id love the opinion of someone in the industry on the thoughts of one who has enjoyed bits of it, and been saddened by others. Above all I appreciate the artists who have given us so much pleasure, and I would like to see a means where their works could be suitably rewarded.
Not for the job, but for the requisite approval. My page has a few facts, plus some hidden pictures of my first grandchild. I'm sure there are lot's of innocent pages like mine. Soon we will all be able to emigrate to South Austrailia, and get a government job right away.
Well maybe they're finally seeing the light. One way to ensure "Canadian Content" is to guarantee high speed access to every Canadian home.
Let's see, if they ramp this up quickly enough, by 2005 we'll have close to 10,000,000 different versions of Wayne's World emanating from 10,000,000 Canadian basements. "Canadian Culture Invades the World" -- I can see the happy CRTC faces now!
It happened in 1970, but no one in the mainstream was interested in using the film footage. Budge Crawley of Crawley films in Ottawa Canada took up the challenge. The film won the academy award for the Best Feature Lenght Documentary in 1976.
Well I guess I was wrong in my earlier comment. The Mercury system used by Metropolitan Life Insurance from 1960 on their Honeywell 800 machines did this. I always considered it a program loader but it did allocate memory to different programs as they were loaded. The rest of the job was looked after by the H-800 hardware.
The standard configuration used 8 Mag tapes, and was able to run 2 or 3 jobs simultaneously on the multitasking hardware. The hardware itself was capable of running up to 8 programs at once, but I/O considerations kept the practical number low.
Job scheduling was done using JCL, fed through a card reader. The machines were not particularly reliable by today's standard, but you could usually run a small diagnostic in an unused program group to help isolate a problem while the machine was still running.
The whole thing, though, was never considered an "Operating System". By '65 though IBM claimed TOS for the 7040/7090, and DOS as well for the machines that had disks. At that time these things were not much more than program loaders, and those machines did not multitask.
IBM probably started it with the 360, but maybe GE was first. I was with Honeywell from 1964, and when the H200 was introduced they didn't call any of the software OS200. That came later probably 66/67. Before that everything was done by people. Most everyting was batch, and on larger systems punched cards controlled things, and the OS were called Operators. They mounted tapes, and often controlled or changed the jobs through the console card reader.
I didn't see much Interactive stuff 'till we joined with GE in 1968. Gecos was there then, and I can recall logging in to Dartmouth College on a GE hardcopy terminal to have my first exposure to Basic.
BTW if you look in the Password file layout in your Linux (or any othe Unix like) system, you'll see that the GECOS field is still there.
Here in Ontario, Canada, the only affordable DSL service for the individual is ADSL Lite. Initially it was only offered by Bell Sympatico, but after some good work by ISP's and the government regulators, it can now be offered by ISP's. I resisted switching ISP's especially to Sympatico after hearing lots of horror stories about mail problems, and other difficulties.
By getting DSL service through my ISP, Trytel Internet, I achive the following. 1. Mail that works 2. News that works 3. In my opinion, a faster backbone connection. 4. Service 7 days a week. 5. An IP address that doesn't change every few hours. 6. A point of contact that knows how to deal with the telephone bureaucracy when something goes wrong.
In summary I just have a better degree of comfort dealing with a smaller organization that will get things done on my behalf.
Thanks for the pointer to the VAX Bar. My first exposure to the VAX 11/780 was in the (Very) early '70s, when I was an observer at a benchmark conducted by DEC in their Marlboro Mass. facility. While the technical folks tried their programmes, DEC had set up to capture one of the local FM Radio stations, and also invited me to play theit "Lunar Lander Game on a nice 24" (monochrome in those days) terminal.
About an hour in, things were going well with the benchmark, but I got bored with the game, so I took the lander about 100 miles up and turned it around and drove it full tilt into the moon.
Crassh!! Yep that's right, I killed the whole VAX. Apparently there wasn't quite enough memory to fit the lander in, and the most violent crash of the lander ate the O/S for lunch.
Despite all this being explained to the customer, and DEC's insistance that we now do the benchmark with me properly annointing the official observe chair, we did not buy a VAX for that requirement.
Slashdot Mirror
Nick, when I was 17, there were no computers that you could get near. The
year was 1955, and I was just as eager as you seem to be to prepare for what
I saw as the coming computer age. I had a part time job in a shoe store, and
was 2 years away from university. The store was small in a small town, and
the owner was a proud man, proud of the students he had working there who
had gon on to be judges, lawyers, politicians and such.
At the time I didn't think I would ever live up to his hopes for me, but I
tried my best and I learned a lot. A few years later, I realized that the
University education that I could get would not take me where I wanted to
go, so I left before graduation. Meanwhile I had done many jobs in
mechanical engineering, electronics manufacturing, and even forestry
research, always looking for employers and supervisors who were mentors for
their employees, and who helped them proceed.
It was not until 1965, when I was 27, that I found the job I was looking
for, as a computer hardware technician. Computers were just exiting from the
vacuum tube age, and the germanium switching transistors of the time were
considerably less reliable that today's high performance silicon; but the
time was short -- reliability improved, the fun was out of it, and by 1973 I
went on to different things, things that built on some of the other jobs I
had and people who trained me in the work that they loved to do and were
proud of doing.
My advice is that when you look for work while you continue your education
look for an employer who wants you to learn what he knows. My love affair
with the nuts and bolts of digital hardware was only 8 years, and 10 years
after I was 17. The people who taught me and the jobs that I had in that 10
year period, have been invaluable through the succeeding years. Don't focus
too narrowly on your chosen career, but do something that's fun for the
people you are working with. It will be fun for you and you'll learn a lot,
and some day it may be very useful to you. There'll be time for that narrow
focus on your chosen path, but meanwhile keep an eye on the big picture. You
never know when you may have to advance to something different.
I am 67 years old and have been reading /. almost since its inception. At my age, however my eyesight plays tricks on me, and pink and white tend to alternate. Possibly you could recommend some 27 year old geekesse to read the articles to me.
Cheers
I guess this has been burning here for a long time, and Id really like your views on the music scene as it has developed. I am 64 years old which means that I was a teen-ager at the introduction of the 45rpm single, and those little RCA portable players that you could save up to buy, and take to your friends house; or if they had a player you could just take the records. At the same time Columbia Records & CBS began promoting the LP.
The RCA discs cost 47 cents here in Canada at the beginning, and I can remember paying 98 cents for Heartbreak Hotel just after Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Well, the war between Columbia/CBS and RCA continued with the record industry in the midst, and after a while, the only thing being marketed was albums. Still, on radio, the industry was promoting single tunes, while trying to sell an album based on the one song. Well I can remember how bad it was to get a complete non listenable dud on the B side of a 45, so it doesnt surprise me that the pressure was there to strip the individual tunes from a CD, and compile them into something you might like to hear.
Radio today no longer has a Top 40, and stations are automated & play formula stuff. Web stations have been shut down by the very industry that used to inundate us with records and coerce our little station to play them.
So the music industry has shot itself in the foot, while having in hand the means of salvation. Kids want single tunes, something they like to play over & over again, just like we did on that little RCA player back in the 50s. mp3 audio provided a way to do that, but the music industry refused to embrace the new technology, and now they remind me so much of the Luddites that tried to stop the Industrial Revolution that it makes me sick.
So after this tirade Id love the opinion of someone in the industry on the thoughts of one who has enjoyed bits of it, and been saddened by others. Above all I appreciate the artists who have given us so much pleasure, and I would like to see a means where their works could be suitably rewarded.
Bill Edwards
Not for the job, but for the requisite approval. My page has a few facts, plus some hidden pictures of my first grandchild. I'm sure there are lot's of innocent pages like mine. Soon we will all be able to emigrate to South Austrailia, and get a government job right away.
Bill
Well maybe they're finally seeing the light. One way to ensure "Canadian Content" is to guarantee high speed access to every Canadian home.
Let's see, if they ramp this up quickly enough, by 2005 we'll have close to 10,000,000 different versions of Wayne's World emanating from 10,000,000 Canadian basements. "Canadian Culture Invades the World" -- I can see the happy CRTC faces now!
It happened in 1970, but no one in the mainstream was interested in using the film footage. Budge Crawley of Crawley films in Ottawa Canada took up the challenge. The film won the academy award for the Best Feature Lenght Documentary in 1976.
Well I guess I was wrong in my earlier comment. The Mercury system used by Metropolitan Life Insurance from 1960 on their Honeywell 800 machines did this. I always considered it a program loader but it did allocate memory to different programs as they were loaded. The rest of the job was looked after by the H-800 hardware.
The standard configuration used 8 Mag tapes, and was able to run 2 or 3 jobs simultaneously on the multitasking hardware. The hardware itself was capable of running up to 8 programs at once, but I/O considerations kept the practical number low.
Job scheduling was done using JCL, fed through a card reader. The machines were not particularly reliable by today's standard, but you could usually run a small diagnostic in an unused program group to help isolate a problem while the machine was still running.
The whole thing, though, was never considered an "Operating System". By '65 though IBM claimed TOS for the 7040/7090, and DOS as well for the machines that had disks. At that time these things were not much more than program loaders, and those machines did not multitask.
IBM probably started it with the 360, but maybe GE was first. I was with Honeywell from 1964, and when the H200 was introduced they didn't call any of the software OS200. That came later probably 66/67. Before that everything was done by people. Most everyting was batch, and on larger systems punched cards controlled things, and the OS were called Operators. They mounted tapes, and often controlled or changed the jobs through the console card reader.
I didn't see much Interactive stuff 'till we joined with GE in 1968. Gecos was there then, and I can recall logging in to Dartmouth College on a GE hardcopy terminal to have my first exposure to Basic.
BTW if you look in the Password file layout in your Linux (or any othe Unix like) system, you'll see that the GECOS field is still there.
Well, maybe two will be enough so that THEY will miss one of them. Let's not send a bunch and annoy THEM enough to start a war! :-)
Here in Ontario, Canada, the only affordable DSL service for the individual is ADSL Lite. Initially it was only offered by Bell Sympatico, but after some good work by ISP's and the government regulators, it can now be offered by ISP's. I resisted switching ISP's especially to Sympatico after hearing lots of horror stories about mail problems, and other difficulties.
By getting DSL service through my ISP, Trytel Internet, I achive the following.
1. Mail that works
2. News that works
3. In my opinion, a faster backbone connection.
4. Service 7 days a week.
5. An IP address that doesn't change every few hours.
6. A point of contact that knows how to deal with the telephone bureaucracy when something goes wrong.
In summary I just have a better degree of comfort dealing with a smaller organization that will get things done on my behalf.
Thanks for the pointer to the VAX Bar. My first exposure to the VAX 11/780 was in the (Very) early '70s, when I was an observer at a benchmark conducted by DEC in their Marlboro Mass. facility. While the technical folks tried their programmes, DEC had set up to capture one of the local FM Radio stations, and also invited me to play theit "Lunar Lander Game on a nice 24" (monochrome in those days) terminal.
About an hour in, things were going well with the benchmark, but I got bored with the game, so I took the lander about 100 miles up and turned it around and drove it full tilt into the moon.
Crassh!! Yep that's right, I killed the whole VAX. Apparently there wasn't quite enough memory to fit the lander in, and the most violent crash of the lander ate the O/S for lunch.
Despite all this being explained to the customer, and DEC's insistance that we now do the benchmark with me properly annointing the official observe chair, we did not buy a VAX for that requirement.