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Walter Mitty

 Discussion on question by Schilive: W…

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Walter Mitty
Feb 24 14:42
I am not sure what CRT-only means. Spacewar was a video game. A lot better than Pong, and even, I would say, better than Space Invaders. and much earlier. While only 53 PDP-1 were built, I count that as a success, as far as influence on the comuter industry goes. It certainly helped make DEC a success, such that ten years later, it became the king of the miniciomputer market. The PDP-6 was a commercial failure, but the PDP-10, a follow on, was very successful in the timeshraing market.
Walter Mitty
Feb 24 14:42
My intro to CRTs on computers came with Spacewar on the PDP-1. The display was not the control console, but game players didn't care. I wrote software to display protein molecules on the PDP-6 CRT in 1965. SHRDLU also used the display.
 

 The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

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Walter Mitty
Aug 11, 2023 11:26
I suggest adding a new tag to DBA. [templates] . This tag is in SO. DBAs often find it useful to work with templates in conjunctionwith data lists extracted from a database.
 

 Discussion on question by Amruth A: W…

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Walter Mitty
May 19, 2023 10:29
What is the correlation between corruption and redistributed wealth?
 

 Discussion on question by Neil Meyer:…

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Walter Mitty
Jan 21, 2023 09:01
An interesting footnote in the invention of garbage collection is IPL, which did NOT have a GC, even though it had dynamic memory allocation. This dates to 1956. By 1959 McCarthy knew he wanted a GC. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Processing_Language
Walter Mitty
Jan 21, 2023 09:01
I wrote a garbage collector in 1971. It was for Muddle, a language derived from Lisp 1.5. It was part of an entire memory allocation module for the language, as others have commented. What was novel about Muddle, compared to Lisp 1.5, was support for arrays. This required degragmenting the recovered space.
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Who…

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Walter Mitty
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
And Zork was written initially in Muddle.
Walter Mitty
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
Muddle, aka MDL was unkown outside of the Dynamic Modeling group at project MAC, led by JCR Licklider. I was on staff there from 1970 to 1972. It doesn't get mentioned in Hewitt or Sussman's bio, but I believe it played a role in the progress of their thinking.
Walter Mitty
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
Although it's only a minor language, maybe Muddle deserves mention. Carl Hewitt, one of the main architects of Mudddle, just passed. I wrote the GC for Muddle, as part of memory management. Wikipedia
 

 Discussion on answer by Stephen Kitt:…

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Walter Mitty
Dec 7, 2022 15:44
When I am typing Spanish on a US keyboard, I tell the operating system to use Mexico layout, and keep a cheat sheet of what all the keycaps ought to be to help me. I couldn't do this if the keyboaards were hard wired to a single layout.
 

 Discussion on question by zomega: Why…

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Walter Mitty
Dec 6, 2022 07:18
Preemptive multitasking. What more needs to be said?
 

 Discussion on question by Vince: Why …

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Walter Mitty
Nov 8, 2022 18:24
The US got used to road signs in the 1920s and 1930s. Drivers with a drivers license had to pass a written test. Assuming they could read english made more sense than inventing a system of pictograms. Once a communication system comes into use, it is notoriously hard to get rid of.
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 Discussion on answer by davidbak: Wha…

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Walter Mitty
Aug 11, 2022 08:52
It would be interesting to know if the Multics convention had been influenced by the development of CTSS. The fact that Corbato is listed as one of the authors suggests that this may be the case. I have not been able to find an online document that says how CTSS defined error codes.
 

 Discussion on question by Mike Ainsel…

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Walter Mitty
Nov 29, 2021 19:16
The question illustrates the sampling problem. When a test examines the person's proficiency in a random subset of the actual material, there is always the possibilty that the student will be highly proficient in just that subset. You hppened to have studied the right subset. That's not unethical. If you had had advance warning that it was going to be on the test, that would have been unethical.
 

 Discussion on question by Norman: Can…

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Walter Mitty
Nov 10, 2021 17:39
You can survive in industry as well as a Psychology major can. The hard part is breaking into that first entry level job, and accepting work that is far below your actual capabilities. The people who post want ads are looking for somebody with experience. Everybody lands their first job with no work experience, and most employers hire people with no experience, even though they won't admit it.
 

 La Tertulia

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Walter Mitty
Oct 29, 2021 12:38
Isn't it surprising that a song like A La Playa doesn't have posted lyrics on the internet? Why not?
 

Sandbox

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Walter Mitty
Oct 29, 2021 11:25
I'd like to get started with chats. What do you say after you say hello? I'm not sure. Sometime I'd like to join a community of retired IT professionals who are helping each other remain somewhat technical. The most intersting thing I've learned since retirement is Powershell.
 

 Discussion on question by I_love_vege…

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Walter Mitty
Sep 6, 2021 04:24
Ah, what a brave new world it is, that has such people in it.
 

 Discussion on question by Aadhavan: W…

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Walter Mitty
Jul 17, 2021 19:11
What makes a groupof people a "country"? Adams would have considered his country to be Massachusetts.
 

 Discussion on question by dekaliber: …

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Walter Mitty
Jul 17, 2021 17:32
I found dozens of antonyms for "devalue". They all seem to touch on some aspect of improving the value, or the perceived value of something. The closest one to what you seem to be looking for is "refine", but this suggests that you are removing slag or contaminants.
 

 Discussion on question by Logan R. Ke…

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Walter Mitty
Jun 11, 2021 15:08
It can also be used to store tree structured data, as illustrated here.bing.com/images/….
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Why…

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Walter Mitty
Apr 30, 2021 17:54
If we want to do further back, we can note that Dartmouth Basic (1965?) was imitating the syntax of FORTRAN.
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Wha…

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Walter Mitty
Apr 21, 2021 15:33
The PDP-1 was a whole lot easier to operate that the 360. But there were only 52 of them ever made. So it wasn't an office machine, to be sure. Then a guy named Dan Murphy wrote a text processor called TECO. That's not a word processor, but it was good for programmers.
Walter Mitty
Apr 21, 2021 15:33
Word processing may have been a fantasy, But some people had already written primitive word processors, like Expensive Typewriter (q.v.). What was still fantasy was a mass market for them.
 

 Discussion on question by Leo B.: Wha…

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Walter Mitty
Apr 8, 2021 17:31
If we extend the scope of the question to include cases where the executable is compressed, but the compressor is the process that creates the executable, and the decompressor is the system process that launches the executable, then the first of these goes way back into the 1960s or 1950s, as soon as these were executable files.
 

 Discussion on question by epsilon-emp…

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Walter Mitty
Apr 7, 2021 19:30
The etiquette could be culturally dependent. What's good in the US or the UK might be bad in India.
 

 Discussion on question by OmarL: Why …

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Walter Mitty
Mar 29, 2021 17:56
The IBM 7090 was a sign magnitude machine. I took a course on that before I got my hands on a PDP-1. The best way to get a grasp of twos complent is to think of a car odometer. 999,999 is minus one.
Walter Mitty
Mar 29, 2021 17:56
A bit of editorializing. Twos complement makes more sense. It takes more logic to implement one's complement. And negative zero is easier to deal with in two's complement: it doesn't exist!
 

 Discussion on question by AvaTaylor: …

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Walter Mitty
Mar 24, 2021 15:35
I don't suppose anybody remembers the term "glass TTY", other than me.
 

 Discussion on question by Schezuk: Ch…

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Walter Mitty
Feb 19, 2021 09:13
Does it work by flipping switches to enter a program? Sort of. Keep in mind what dirkt said about core memory surviving a power loss. Also keep in mind that, in normal operation, the PDP-6 references fast accumulators for locations 0 through 15. Thus, what ever program is stored in those locations will tend to endure for a long time. Initially, the papertape reading program has to be entered in in binary using the toggle switches.
Walter Mitty
Feb 19, 2021 09:13
The hardware readin mode for the pdp-10 was handled by built in logic, not ROM driven. There were seven toggle swithes set to choose the readin device, usually paper tape but possibly DECtape.
Walter Mitty
Feb 19, 2021 09:13
Machines like the DEC PDP-6 or PDP-10 had a "hardware read-in mode" for paper tape, triggered by a toggle on the console. This was capable of reading in a papertape reading program, which then read the rest of the papertape. Hardware readin mode was NOT ROM, but it performed a similar function in the general scheme of things.
Walter Mitty
Feb 19, 2021 09:13
Read in modefor the PDP-6 could actually start a program residing in core locations 0..15 in core memory. On a machine with fast accumulators, these core locations were shadowed by the accumulators, unless in read in mode. Thus, they were semipermanent. Not ROM, but close.
 

 Discussion on question by user2352714…

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Walter Mitty
Feb 17, 2021 03:44
Agreed, it is fiction. It still could help shed light on whether such a scenario is realistic.
Walter Mitty
Feb 17, 2021 03:44
Look up Brigadoon.
 

 Discussion on question by Matt Copper…

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Walter Mitty
Feb 4, 2021 02:55
Most idioms have an element of humor in them, if they deal with foolishness or stupidity. And nearly all humor is offensive to someone.
Walter Mitty
Feb 4, 2021 02:55
I saw a reference to the World's Greatest Programmers school. But that probably offends somebody.
 

 Discussion on question by 11Bravo: Ho…

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Walter Mitty
Jan 23, 2021 04:06
Consider ants or corals. These are multiple organisms, but they can almost be treated like a single organism with a distributed nervous system.
 

 Discussion on question by user20534: …

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Walter Mitty
Jan 16, 2021 19:08
The earliest machine to support virtual memory was the Manchester Atlas, IIRC. So every prior machine would be an example.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_%28computer%29
 

 Discussion on answer by L.Dutch - Rei…

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Walter Mitty
Oct 14, 2020 04:47
Contact with domestic animals sometimes provided the solution to an epidemic as well as creating the problem. In particular, contact with cattle provided exposure to cowpox in Europe. People who caught cowpox became immune to smallpox, and that is why the European survival rate was better than the American rate. Discovery of this phenomenon led to the development of the smallpox vaccine.
 

 Discussion on question by Rattler: Wh…

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Walter Mitty
Apr 23, 2020 08:04
Some people pronounce 'nurse' like 'noice'.
 

 Discussion on question by Charlie Her…

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Walter Mitty
Feb 13, 2020 11:15
How do I know whether this question was asked by a person?
 

 Discussion on question by Nigel J: Wh…

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Walter Mitty
Dec 5, 2019 01:56
Within my lifetime, the word "racism" has changed it connotation. The primary conern of a racist of sixty years ago was not hostility towards other races, but the belief in the superiority of one race, usually their own. This often played out as antagonism to equal rights for other races, and especially hostility to racial mixing. The idea that racists are defined by the people they disdain is of recent vintage.
 

 Discussion on question by Epipihany: …

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Walter Mitty
Oct 28, 2019 05:50
I recommend you read Brain Wave, a short story by Poul Anderson. In this story everyone starts getting smarter, even the animals. It's a natural 9henomenon. It doesn't address your question, but it's a good read.
 

 Discussion on question by Incognito: …

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Walter Mitty
Aug 15, 2019 11:56
It might be useful if you were to explain the difference between negative consequences and intended consequences. Presumably there is some intent behind giving people advance notice, maybe changing some behavior. But what is disruptive?
 

 Discussion on answer by quiet flyer: …

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Walter Mitty
Jul 29, 2019 18:09
Excellent explanation. Since you mentioned cars, it should be noted that interstate highways are often slightly banked in the turns, so as to accelerate the cars toward the center of the turn. The effect is more visible in oval racetracks, where the banking is quite steep.
 

 Discussion on question by Sidney: Wha…

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Walter Mitty
Jul 3, 2019 03:43
Off topic but definitely worth your attention. Look into the history of the pseudoterminal. This is one of those ideas that keeps getting reinvented and then forgotten again. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoterminal
 

 Discussion on question by Dronz: What…

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Walter Mitty
Jun 3, 2019 19:22
Not long bridges, but you might want to look at the way the Incas spanned deep gorges with pre-medieval technology.
 

 Discussion on answer by L.Dutch: Buil…

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Walter Mitty
Jun 3, 2019 16:44
The structural argument is sufficient. But even if the structural problem could be overcome, there's another problem. If you build a pyramid that's big enough, you will move the center of mass of the earth. You are never going to get far enough away from the center of gravity.
 

 Discussion on question by Beefster: E…

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Walter Mitty
Mar 27, 2019 03:28
Bob, if I were to ask you if the sun is shining, what would you say?