- COFF - www.tuhs.org

Re: [COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 16:52:58 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: > If 4.3BSD is old enough, the System Administrator's Manual (e.g. > http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/isi/bsd/490197C_Unix_4.3BS…) > section 4.2 _et seq_. > > On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 4:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote: > >> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the >> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for >> a big computer was from source. Now I've been asked for a reference, >> and I can't find one! Can anybody help? > > How olden days do you mean? Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I was thinking commercial systems of the 1960s and 1970s, not any form of Unix. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

4 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

by Clem Cole

Moving to COFF. below. On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 10:40 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Clem, > > It figures. I should have known there was a reason for the shorter lines > other than display. Conventions are sticky and there appears to be a > generation gap. I use single spaces between sentences, but my ancestors > used 2... who knows why? :). > You never use a real typewriter. Double-space allows you to edit (physically) the document if need be. This was how I did everything before I had easy computer access. I went to college with an electric typewriter and all my papers were done on it in the fall of my freshman year (until I got access to UNIX). I did have an CS account for the PDP-10 and they had the XGP, but using it for something like your papers was somewhat frowned upon. However, the UNIX boxes we often bought 'daisy wheel' typewriters that had RS-232C interfaces. Using nroff, I could then do my papers and run it off in the admin's desk at night. Clem

4 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

[Coff, etc] On Saturday, 7 November 2020 at 0:29:01 +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in > <20201106225422.GD99027(a)eureka.lemis.com>: >> On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 7:46:57 -0800, Chris Torek wrote: >>> In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification, >>> we have "stretchy spaces" between words. The space after end-of- >>> sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than >>> the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get >>> stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space. >> >> FWIW, this is the US convention. Other countries have different >> conventions. My Ausinfo style manual states >> >> There is no need to increase the amount of punctuation ... at the >> end of a sentence. >> >> I believe that this also holds for Germany. I'm not sure that the UK >> didn't have different rules again. > > Yes, the DUDEN of Germany says for typewriters that the punctuation > characters period, comma, semicolon, colon, question- and > exclamation mark are added without separating whitespace. The next > word follows after a space ("Leerschritt", "void step"). Thanks for the confirmation. Where did you find that? I checked the yellow Duden (âRichtlinien fÃ¼r den Schriftsatzâ) before sending my previous message, but I couldn't find anything useful. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

4 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

by Clem Cole

Exactly -- just re-read Will's question. 2 spaces after punctuation is a fix-size typeface solution to the 1.5 typographer layout. I was referring to why typed papers were traditionally double spaced between the lines. On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 11:02 AM Chris Torek <torek(a)elf.torek.net> wrote: > >I use single spaces between sentences, but my ancestors > >used 2... who knows why? :). > > Typewriters. > > In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification, > we have "stretchy spaces" between words. The space after end-of- > sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than > the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get > stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space. Note that this is > all in the variable-pitch font world. > > Since typewriters are fixed-pitch, the way to emulate the > 1.5-space-wide gap is to expand it to 2. > > Chris >

4 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

by Dave Horsfall

[ Moving to COFF (if your MUA respects "Reply-To:") ] On Fri, 6 Nov 2020, Larry McVoy wrote: > But I'm pretty old school, I write in C, I debug a lot with printf and > asserts, I'm kind of a dinosaur. You've never experienced the joy of having your code suddenly working when inserting printf() statements? Oh dear; time to break out GDB... -- Dave

4 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

[Following clemc's example and moving to COFF] On Friday, 6 November 2020 at 7:19:24 -0800, Chris Torek wrote: >> I'm lazy. > > I am too, but I still use a big screen: I just fit a lot of smaller > windows in it. Agreed. There's a second issue here: for reading text, 70 to 80 n widths is optimal. For reading computer output, it should be much wider. I've compromised by fitting two 120 character wide xterms on my monitors, left and right. I still display only 70-80 characters for text. > I'd like to have a literal wall screen, especially if I'm in an > interior, windowless (as in physical glass windows) room, so that > part of the wall could be a "window" showing a view "outside" (real > time, or the ocean, or whatever) and other parts of the wall could > be the text I'm working on/with, etc. The issue there is perspective. I could do that (modulo cost) in my office, but I'd have a horizontal angle of about 90Â°, and that's uncomfortable. > (But I'll make do with these 27" 4k displays. :-) ) Yes, that's about the widest I find comfortable, and it took me a while to adapt. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

4 years, 7 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

by Clem Cole

I'd be curious to hear from the folks a few years older than I (I started in the later 60s with the GE-635), but my own experiences of having lived through some of it, I personally think it was more to do with all of the systems of the time switching from cards to the Model 28 and later the 33 then Unix or AT&T. Unix was just one of the systems that we used at the time of the transition from cards. But the other timesharing systems of those days began to transition to the tty's requirements. On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 12:27 PM Stephen Clark <sclark46(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > On 11/6/20 12:13 PM, Adam Thornton wrote: > > I’m going to chime in on pro-80-columns here, because with the text a > comfortable size to read (although this is getting less true as my eyes > age), I can read an entire 80-column line without having to sweep my eyes > back and forth. > > > > I can’t, and never could, do that at 132. > > > > As a consequence, I read much, much faster with 80-column-ish text > blocks. > > > > I also think there is something to the “UNIX is verbal” and “UNIX nerds > tend to be polyglots often with a surprising amount of liberal arts > background of one kind or another,” argument. That may, however, merely be > confirmation bias. > > > > Adam > May have had to do with the first terminal commonly used with UNIX. > > The Model 33 printed on 8.5-inch (220 mm) wide paper, supplied on > continuous > 5-inch (130 mm) diameter rolls and fed via friction (instead of, e.g., > tractor > feed). It printed at a fixed 10 characters per inch, and supported > 74-character > lines,[13] although 72 characters is often commonly stated. > >

4 years, 7 months

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Views of the future from 1970?

by Finn O'Leary

Hey all, I was browsing my small corner of the fediverse, when I came across a post that said: > @pastelpunkbandit@hellsite.site > i wonder if people from the 70s would make fun of us for still using vi It got me wondering -- what /was/ the view of the future of computing, by people working deeply with the systems of the time? I know that people worked on what they felt was the future -- and returned bearing the gifts of Smalltalk. Prolog, etc ad nausem. Surely there was the expectation that things would be improved, but what form did those expectations take? Incidentally, if there /were/ jokes about people using $program in the future -- I think that would be of interest too :) Thanks! -- "Too enough never much is!"

4 years, 8 months

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Views of the future from 1970?

by Rudi Blom

Just watched this the other day. The original story is from 1958 written by Isaac Asimov, the short movie was made in 1978 All the Troubles of the World https://youtu.be/svIXTDeZzDg

4 years, 8 months

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German Z4 User Manual from 1945 found

by Rudi Blom

Nothing to do with UNIX, but a reminder that occasionally long thought lost manuals still pop-up. "Researchers will be able to gain a deeper understanding of what’s considered the world’s oldest surviving (digital) computer after its long-lost user manual was unearthed. The Z4, which was built in 1945, runs on tape, takes up most of a room and needs several people to operate it. The machine now takes residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, but it hasn’t been used in quite some time." https://www.engadget.com/oldest-computer-manual-zuse-z4-161214346.html

4 years, 9 months

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A little networking tool to reduce having to run emulators with privilege

by Adam Thornton

I finally got around to tidying up a little shell tool I wrote that turns a network interface you specify into a bridge, and then creates some tap devices with owning user and group you specify and attaches them to that bridge. This gets around having to run emulated older systems under sudo if you want networking to work. It’s mostly intended for the PiDP-11/simh, but it also works fine with klh10 and TOPS-20. Maybe it will be useful to someone else. https://github.com/athornton/brnet <https://github.com/athornton/brnet> Adam

4 years, 9 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] reviving a bit of WWB

by Clem Cole

Moving to COFF On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 7:56 PM John Cowan <cowan(a)ccil.org> wrote: > Rereading that made me wonder: if someone retargeted an old compiler (pcc, > say) to produce i386 code, > I thought SVR3's was PCC (maybe PCC2). But I thought I remember that is had a i386 code. Certainly by SVR4 time. IIRC, the time frame of SVR3's front end would have been original ANSI (i.e. White Book V2). > how much faster would it run than a VAX? > In the time frame of the SVR3 (mid/late 80s), the Intel processors was faster than the 1MIP (780 circa 1977) in raw computes. The issue was always I/O. Most PC did not have the same amount of I/O HW that much earlier Vaxen. > I see that there is a pcc derivative at <http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/>, but > supposedly it has been heavily rewritten for C99 compliance and other > things. > And my point is that by the time of C99, it was a different language than the early 1970s when Dennis created fit or the original PDP-11/20 he and Ken used for the first UNIX kernel and tools implementations. "When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd." dmr

4 years, 9 months

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three performance modeling books available again

by Charles H Sauer

In the early 1970s, when computing capabilities were tiny, tiny, tiny compared to even a cell phone today, and those resources were typically time-shared across multiple users, queueing network models became a primary tool to analyze and improve system performance. Queueing models had been studied for years before regarding communication systems and other systems, but networks of queues seemed especially apropos for understanding time-sharing systems. Computer Systems Performance Modeling, which Professor K.M. Chandy and I wrote in 1978-9, previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. is now out of print. We are making PDF copies of lightly edited versions available under a Creative Commons license. https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/computer-systems-performan… Ed MacNair and I published two books based on The Research Queueing Package, RESQ: Simulation of Computer Communication Systems and Elements of Practical Performance Modeling. Those books, previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. are now out of print. We are making PDF copies of lightly edited versions available under a Creative Commons license. Though we have written two prior articles about RESQ history, those did not cover subsequent development, so another recap seems appropriate now. https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/remembering-resq/ (Mainstream Videoconferencing: A Developer’s Guide to Distance Multimedia, which Joe Duran and I wrote from 1994-96, became available again in 2008: https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2008/02/14/mainstream-videoconferenci…) -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer(a)technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer

4 years, 10 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Monitoring by loudspeaker (was: BTL pranks)

by Michael Kjörling

(This should probably be on COFF because I don't think this has much to do with UNIX.) On 11 Jul 2020 22:22 -0400, from doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy): > a loudspeaker hooked to the low-order bit of the accumulator played > gentle white noise in the background. The noise would turn into a > shriek when the computer got into a tight loop, How did that work? I can see how tying the low-order bit of the accumulator to a loudspeaker would generate white noise as the computer is doing work; but I fail to see how doing so would even somewhat reliably generate a shrieking sound when the computer is in a tight loop. Please, enlighten me. :-) -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

4 years, 10 months

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Translating Schopenhauer (was: Style command source available?)

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 17:23:11 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > > It was Schopenhauer who definetely said > > Neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva! How about that, I even understood that. But for the fun of it I put it through Google Translate, and the result is worth showing: Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you are able to: strengthen the faint! Of course, if you drop the !, it changes to: Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you can, help the How I love syntax-independent translation! Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

4 years, 10 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler

by Lars Brinkhoff

Noel Chiappa writes: > > From: Larry > > It's possible the concept existed in some other OS but I'm not > > aware of it. > > It's pretty old. Both TENEX and ITS had the ability to map file pages > into a process' address space. I have a date for when this feature was announced for ITS. The previous .CBLK UUO could not access files. RMS 09/30/73 10:13:28 JOBS! BE FIRST IN YOUR TREE TO INSERT A DISK FILE PAGE! SEE .INFO.;CORBLK ORDER FOR DETAILS. (This is now redirected to COFF.) In related news: A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from 1971 has been found. It includes full source code and documentation for the system, including ITS version 671, DDT, TECO, MIDAS, (MAC)LISP, CHESS (MacHack), MUDDLE, LOGO, MACSYMA, etc.

4 years, 10 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler

by Tony Finch

--> COFF Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> wrote: mmap() / $CRETVA > The VMS image activator (runtime loader in Unix-speak) used these > primitives to load program images into virtual memory. More than one > process can map the same region of a file. This is how sharing of > read-only program segments such as .text is implemented. > > I think Burroughs OSes had this concept even before VMS. Did MULTICS work the same way? The Manchester / Ferranti Atlas had virtual memory in 1962 but I don't know how much they used it for multiprogramming (and by implication shared text segments) - it didn't do timesharing until later, but AIUI virtual memory helped it to have an exceptionally good job throughput for the time. Perhaps their motivation was more to do with having a good shared implementation of overlays and paged IO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-level_store Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, gender, or sexual orientation

4 years, 10 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic]

by Tony Finch

moving to COFF ... Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen(a)firemail.de> wrote: > >I'm sure everyone here knows this, but the Cray 1 (I think, the one > that had what looked like a circular bench seat around the bottom) was > designed like that because the clock was at the center and the clock > signal went to all the boards and was right because all the clock lines > to the boards were the same length.< > > you mean that? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Cray-1-deutsches-museum… I found the Cray 1M site planning reference manual very interesting - here's a summary with links to the actual documents http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2012/06/15/they-called-it-big-iron-for-… Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ Ardnamurchan Point to Cape Wrath: North or northeast 3 to 5, becoming variable 2 at times. Slight or moderate, becoming smooth or slight between Barra and Canna. Fog patches. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor.

4 years, 10 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] 2bsd tarball -> pdtar, with a side of uuslave

by Nemo

(Sent to COFF as too far afield for a subthread) On 29/07/2020, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote (in part): [...] > There was another chapter to the "tar wars" after UNIX and after POSIX. First, thank you for the chapter. #6-) > I put the pdtar code into the public domain, so it could be widely used. > This produced a variety of support headaches. [...] This eventually led me to > understand more of the value in using the GNU General Public License. As everyone knows, a lot of Usenet source was released into the public domain. I have been told, time and again, by IP lawyers never to release s/w unencumbered. Without an appropriate encumbrance, the author may be liable for any damage caused by said s/w -- as insane as that sounds. (I was told that there is even case law but I cannot remember what.) So your support woes could have been worse. N.

4 years, 10 months

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Cheby[cs]hev (was: Regular Expressions)

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

[Moved to COFF] On Monday, 10 August 2020 at 9:53:14 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Interesting; I was taught it was "Chebychev", which as second ranking > doesn't even come close to "Chebyshev"... > > Possibly a cultural thing; I went to an Australian university (UNSW). I don't think so, more like coincidence. I first came across the name as "Chebyshev" at the CSIRO in Melbourne. But the difference in spelling could be attributed to the person doing the transliteration: "ch" in French corresponds in sound to "sh" in English. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

4 years, 10 months

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Re: [COFF] BSD 211 Help forum

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Will Senn > So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when > it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I > can't get this or that working line? > ... > The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often > arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to > throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? I'd just say TUHS. Your questions would me more on-topic than 1/3 of the posts. Noel

4 years, 10 months

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BSD 211 Help forum

by Will Senn

So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I can't get this or that working line? As an example, I'm having some challenges with the networking in 211, right now. I finally (after on again off again attempts over 2 years) gotten both a vanilla 211BSD p195 system to be accessible via telnet on my local lan and am able to ping out to the internet, if I so choose, and Andru Luvisi's 211BSD p495 doing networking as well. Thanks to Andru's notes and Warner Losh's blog. In both cases, everything just "works"... well most things work :). In the 195 system, I don't seem to be able to get hostname set correctly: Assuming NETWORKING system ... sparks: bad value add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1 Whereas on the 495 system, it sets fine... Assuming NETWORKING system ... add host sparks: gateway localhost add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1 and on the 195 system, name resolution doesn't seem to function, whereas it does on the 495 system. On neither of the systems do I know how to display the routes (no netstat and route doesn't seem to have a display mode). Anyhow, I'm not really asking the question here (feel free to answer it though, if you feel so inclined), but it's the kind of question that I sit on not knowing where to ask it. I know that I often tread the knife's edge between interesting and annoying on some of my questions in TUHS and SIMH because of my lack of knowledge around these systems, but I really enjoy working in them when they work and have found that everything I learn interacting with these ancient systems significantly enhances my skills in the modern realm at least with regards to FreeBSD/Linux and Mac. Whereas, on the other hand, most of what I know about the modern systems doesn't really have an easily accessible analog in ancient unix. Take the question above, to view the route table in freebsd - it's just netstat -r, easypeasy, what the heck it might be in 211bsd is a complete mystery. Grepping the manual turns up nothing that I recognize, which is more often the case than I'd like to admit. The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? Regards, Will -- GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF

4 years, 10 months

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[TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will)

by Clem Cole

This topic is still primarily UNIX but is getting near the edge of COFF, so I'll CC there if people want to follow up. As I mentioned to Will, during the time Research was doing the work/put out their 'editions', the 'releases' were a bit more ephemeral - really a set of bits (binary and hopefully matching source, but maybe not always) that become a point in time. With 4th (and I think 5th) Editions it was a state of disk pack when the bits were copies, but by 6th edition, as Noel points out, there was a 'master tape' that the first site at an institution received upon executing of a signed license, so the people at each institution (MIT, Purdue, CMU, Harvard) passed those bits around inside. But what is more, is what Noel pointed out, we all passed source code and binaries between each other, so DNA was fairly mixed up [sorry Larry - it really was 'Open Source' between the licensees]. Sadly, it means some things that actually were sourced at one location and one system, is credited sometimes credited from some other place the >>wide<< release was in USG or BSD [think Jim Kulp's Job control, which ended up in the kernel and csh(1) as part in 4BSD, our recent discussions on the list about more/pg/less, the different networking changes from all of MIT/UofI/Rand, Goble's FS fixes to make the thing more crash resilient, the early Harvard ar changes - *a.k.a.* newar(1) which became ar(1), CMU fsck, e*tc*.]. Eventually, the AT&T Unix Support Group (USG) was stood up in Summit, as I understand it, originally for the Operating Companies as they wanted to use UNIX (but not for the licenses, originally). Steve Johnson moved from Research over there and can tell you many more of the specifics. Eventually (*i.e.* post-Judge Green), distribution to the world moved from MH's Research and the Patent Licensing teams to USG and AT&T North Carolina business folks. That said, when the distribution of UNIX moved to USG in Summit, things started to a bit more formal. But there were still differences inside, as we have tried to unravel. PWB/TS and eventually System x. FWIW, BSD went through the same thing. The first BSD's are really the binary state of the world on the Cory 11/70, later 'Ernie.' By the time CSRG gets stood up because their official job (like USG) is to support Unix for DARPA, Sam and company are acting a bit more like traditional SW firms with alpha/beta releases and a more formal build process. Note that 2.X never really went through that, so we are all witnessing the wonderful efforts to try to rebuild early 2.X BSD, and see that the ephemeral nature of the bits has become more obvious. As a side story ... the fact is that even for professional SW houses, it was not as pure as it should be. To be honest, knowing the players and processes involved, I highly doubt DEC could rebuild early editions of VMS, particularly since the 'source control' system was a physical flag in Cutler's office. The fact is that the problem of which bits were used to make what other bits was widespread enough throughout the industry that in the mid-late 80s when Masscomp won the bid to build the system that Nasa used to control the space shuttle post-Challenger, a clause of the contract was that we have put an archive of the bits running on the build machine ('Yeti'), a copy of the prints and even microcode/PAL versions so that Ford Aerospace (the prime contractor) could rebuild the exact system we used to build the binaries for them if we went bankrupt. I actually, had a duplicate of that Yeti as my home system ('Xorn') in my basement when I made some money for a couple of years as a contract/on-call person for them every time the shuttle flew. Anyway - the point is that documentation and actual bits being 100% in sync is nothing new. Companies work hard to try to keep it together, but different projects work at different speeds. In fact, the 'train release' model is what is usually what people fall into. You schedule a release of some piece of SW and anything that goes with it, has to be on the train or it must wait for the next one. So developers and marketing people in firms argue what gets to be the 'engine' [hint often its HW releases which are a terrible idea, but that's a topic for COFF].

4 years, 10 months

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Knuth

by Paul Palmer

Nice article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithm… Near the end, in the picture labelled "a few notes" you can see the corner of what looks like a calculator. Can anybody identify it?

4 years, 11 months

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Re: [COFF] Calculator

by Paul Palmer

Heres the article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithm… On Sat, Aug 1, 2020, 10:13 PM Paul Palmer <paul.allan.palmer(a)gmail.com wrote: > From an article on knuth. A corner of an early calculator of his. Can > anyone identify? > > > >

4 years, 11 months

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COFF