16 Nov
2017
16 Nov
'17
4 a.m.
Remember Eedie & Eddie, Peter Langston’s DecTalk voice synthesizers who would answer
the phone with “Yes, operator, I will accept the charges!” and then responded to touch
tone commands to perform algorithmic compositions and sing songs together to you over the
telephone?
http://www.langston.com/SVM.html <http://www.langston.com/SVM.html>
Good thing Bellcore had all the free long distance phone service they could use, because
anyone who knew the phone number for Eedie & Eddie could use it to make as many free
third party charge long distance phone calls as they desired!
(Spoiler: The phone number was listed in the title of Peter S. Langston’s 1986 Summer
USENIX paper!)
Search Results
201 644-2332 or Eedie & Eddie on the Wire: An Experiment in Music Generation
http://www.langston.com/Papers/2332.pdf
-Don
On 16 Nov 2017, at 02:56, Erik E. Fair
<fair-tuhs(a)netbsd.org> wrote:
Sorry, "psl" is Peter S. Langston, so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(1972_video_game)
http://www.langston.com
That Wikipedia entry should describe it as a "computer game" (or
"simulation") rather than as a "video game", given the common
understanding of those phrases. PSL's "empire" was a multiplayer game
similar (sort of) to the board game "Risk" and the "graphics" were
ASCII-maps.
I played that game at some length after leaving UCB - it was "guaranteed to drop
your GPA two points" (addictive as hell). Another way to parboil your brain with it
was to set the "update interval" to 5 seconds (a.k.a. a "flash" game)
and have a several hour (instead of the more typical several month) gaming session with
like-minded crazies ... I mean, "players" ... in a terminal room.
I recall one such evening up at LBL with Craig Leres and Jef Poskanzer, among others ...
Anyway, the Dave Pare mentioned in the Wikipedia entry is the same one who worked on
decompiling the Morris worm, with the aforementioned tools he'd developed (he liked
playing empire and wanted to fix bugs and extend the game, but psl was only supplying
binaries ...).
It's funny where tools come from sometimes.
Erik