-----Original Message----- From: owner-politech@politechbot.com [mailto:owner-politech@politechbot.com]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 12:14 AM To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: More on 20th anniversary of first IBM personal computer

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From: Jim Horning To: "'declan@well.com'" Subject: RE: 20th anniversary of first IBM personal computer Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 18:56:05 -0700

What *I* find ironic and amusing is the whole notion that IBM (or Apple) invented the first personal computer.

Forget about the Xerox PARC Alto in 1973.

My first program was written for a personal computer in 1959.

Of course the Bendix G-15D ran at 100KHz, had only 8KB of main memory, used paper tape for backing store, and cost $50K, but it was a sure-enough interactive single-person machine that was marketed to the world at large. Designed by Harry Huskey of the University of California, closely following some Alan Turing's ideas (Harry spent a year in the UK working with Alan).

Douglas Aircraft reported equipped some of their top engineers with individual G-15Ds, but as students we had to sign up for time slots. Actually, when I went to work at PARC, I felt guilty about turning my back on my Alto, not keeping the machine busy...

Jim H.

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-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Answers

Somehow, I always thought that a PDP-11 I used in College for crystallography was MY first "personal computer". I used to man the terminal at 9 PM and work for hours plugging in coordinates to a Fortran program that would crunch away and print me out a long collection of "dots". The game was truly find the pattern and connect the dots.

Once, my Professor wandered in about 7:30 and asked what I was doing. I told him that I had stayed all night and the mountain of paper on the floor was evidence I had been working. He told me that I better stop because others would have to use the account. Then I knew it wasn't MY machine just almost my machine. (I'll bet he was also wondering how much of his account I had used up.)

I always thought that little episode got me both an "A" and an invitation to do my Ph.D. with him which I had to turn down after deciding I didn't want to be a Grad Slave.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

BTW, the Structure was not solved with the sample I used. Another was prepared and the structure fell out on 2 passes of the program. The sample I had used had too much H20 in it which ruined the X=Ray data collection. I had even noted that might be a reason for the failure in my efforts.

It was a great semester's worth of work in real Bench Science.

The great thing about Experimental Science done the "real way" is that even when you fail, you learn and thus you win. Plus, you don't have to deal with humans who can't think and aren't discussing things without understanding the exact context of the words they are using. Sort of like the mumblers TK and confused.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

My gosh, such a background. PDP-11 hardware. Fortran programming. X-Ray data sampling.

With state-of-the-art high tech experience like this, no wonder cpr is considered a computer expert by so many here...

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Pretty obvious what areas TK's expertise lies in---STUPIDITY and HELPLESSNESS.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

DO-looping to infinity.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Yup, the loop to infinity was such that hitting cancel after 30 minutes of crunching was almost mandatory. When the program couldn't resolve it would keep going. In contrast, when it did resolve it would resolve very, very fast in less than 10 minutes. Today, it might be possible to do that in less than a minute with a P2 or PIII. (Apple users need not comment. We know about the graphics.)

OTOH, the Do Loop of TK is more of a Writeln("that is nuttiness, I have said so") in a X==1, Do While >0 loop.

Aka: LOOPY as in "Here we go loop di loop..........

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Oh BTW, AssholY-TK, I wrote a paper for Grad BioPhysics (you did take that of course) called "The Mathematics of Tuneable Lasers". It got an A also. About 25 pages of symbols with a few alphas you might recognize as nouns or verbs.

Don't try to Bull Shit. You have given considerable evidence here that you don't know squat about much and are incapable of learning beyond surface treatment. Sort of the 20 sec. moving heads rendition of events found on commercial tv during the real commercials themselves.

That is the true badge of ignorance. Wear it on your tee shirt proudly after all, many who Pontificate OUTSIDE THEIR FIELDS make the same error and many of those have Ph.Ds.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

OTOH, the Do Loop of TK is more of a Writeln("that is nuttiness, I have said so") in a X==1, Do While >0 loop

cpr, you are truly at your funniest when you least intend it. Your Fortran "Do loop" is nothing of the sort; looks more like Pascal, as a matter of fact. Sounds like, once again, you are "confused".

Here you go, Mr. Computer Expert, this is probably what you meant to say in Fortran ('77 or '90):

X=1.0
DO WHILE (X.GT.0.0)
WRITE(*,*) "that is nuttiness, I have said so"
ENDDO

though the better compilers would probably catch and disallow the infinite loop, so you would probably want to change the first line to be X=Y where you previously set Y to a positive value, so as to allow the run-time code to get generated.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Nowhere did cpr say the writeln loop was FORTRAN.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

EXACTLY. And for him, what I wrote was most appropriate.

Pseudo-Code.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Nowhere did cpr say the writeln loop was FORTRAN.

Gee, must be a new programming construct that I am not familiar with. Learn something new every day...


EXACTLY. And for him, what I wrote was most appropriate.

Pseudo-Code.

"Yes sir, a 'writeln loop' written in pseudo-code, that's what it was. Sure enough. Yes sir. That's what we call it 'round here. Yes sireeeeee-doggie."


It is just so inspiring, watching the pros...

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

You can't infer that when I said "writeln loop" I meant a loop containing a writeln?

Go push somebody else's buttons.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

For T(rol)K, fyi, I wrote a full scale accounting package for a company I owned to replace the full integrated networked Sorcim-IUS that blew up on us. I used dBASE II and III and eventually updated it with IV. That was all command line code.
THE REASON I KNEW ABOUT Y2K COMPUTER DATE PROBLEMS WAS BECAUSE I HAD USED THE SHORT FORM FOR ALL THE DATE FIELDS TO "SAVE SPACE" ON MY 10 AND 20 MEG. HDS AND MY MERE 2 MEGS OF RAM. AND BECAUSE I WAS A dBASE JUNKIE (it is the only language or script I could ever make do things), I knew that most of the custom programs around the Ashton Tate and even the alternate X-Base packages like FOX-PRO had been customized with the truncated field, I knew there **could be** a possible serious problem. I also knew that most of it could be fixed if people would just "do it" but for the longest time in 1996 and early 1997 getting attention to the problem in the small and midsized companies was a problem. After MSFT "ramped up" as did most others, I also knew by 1999 the problems were being addressed. NOT ADDRESSED WAS THE BULL SHIT FROM YOUR "EXPERTS TAKING CARE OF IT". And unless you are in the hardware business, you have no idea of what BS the "embedded systems" fiasco was. BUT, I also knew about that. The biggest NON-Problem ever. If the truth ever came out about how much money was WASTED to find so few problems because Lawyers and non- techs insisted the "testing be done" there would be stock holder suits and demands to clean out DC.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Last but not least, I wrote the Accounting package because I felt like it. Not because I had to. Most of the time I simply hire people to do such things BUT there is one thing for sure. NOBODY I HIRE can BULL SHIT ME as to time or effort involved in doing the job. They can't highball or lowball me either. Same in hardware where I can still buy at the 'nut'.

In case you think you can BS me about newer languages or techniques try this, I completed the course given by an IBM authorized Seminar in XML and could take the test to become a IBM Certified XML Consultant (I think it is IBM test 140 or 142). I delayed taking the test waiting for the finalization of XML Schema which now will blow out DTDs. STILL THINK YOU KNOW SQUAT ABOUT ME?

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001