Want to make a billion dollars
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Yeah. Let's bring our boxes online and send each other mails. Later we can perhaps even reach 9600 bps. Our computers back then had bit banged software controlled serial communication at 300 bps. Later we optimized it up to 2400 bps in software and 4800 bps if we raised the CPU's clock frequency. 9600 bps does not sound totally out of the question. As for the modem - we tried, but our contraption did not work. At least our poor parents honestly could not explain what happened and their innocence was absolutely plausible. :-)
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
Yeah, modems definitely sucked back then...I still remember the acoustically coupled ones where you actually had to put the phone's headset into a rubber cup-like receptacle. That said, the direction of e-mail was fairly obvious even back then. They started standardizing e-mail headers as far back as the early 70's (RFC 561). Arpanet had been kicking around for a while, when CSNET debuted in 1981...the year this guy wrote the article. I remember actually sending e-mails over CSNET as early as 1982. So, a small amount of reading, even back then, should have exposed this as an idea who's time had already passed. Though, starting in 1983, that didn't stop products like MCI Mail from making money on a slight variation of the idea...for quite a while. Heck, over its 20 year lifetime, that product alone made a fair amount of money. If you add in similar products, collectively they probably did make a billion :)
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In Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet, they used books of binary tables in order to convert data for input into the astrogation computer. :omg:
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
Yeah, Heinlein was even very specific about his sliderules being made of bamboo. (Sun Hemi?)
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Yeah, Heinlein was even very specific about his sliderules being made of bamboo. (Sun Hemi?)
:laugh: I still have one.
Mark Just another cog in the wheel
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I once read a series of science fiction stories (cannot remember the titles or author), and every time the team needed to travel to a new planet or galaxy, they calculated their course(s) using slide rules.
I think I was on that crew. Did we make it there and back? I still have a couple of slide rules here and know how to use them I never used a calculator until I was in Grad School. Never owned one until I left school and got a job.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Had a quick flick through, I really miss the "new frontier" excitement of it all displayed in the magazine. They're literally debating whether machines should be used to teach the "regular curriculum" or Comp. Sci. principles - as if it's an either/or choice. Also, pages of hardware, listings and the remarkable question "Visual Basic too slow?" with the remarkable answer "learn Assembly language!" (pp119/pp120 - depending whether you believe the PDF or the print).
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
I remeber the Computer Shopper magazine, not sure if it was just local, but they had all the computer hardware that was available listed. I used to drool ove it!
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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I once read a series of science fiction stories (cannot remember the titles or author), and every time the team needed to travel to a new planet or galaxy, they calculated their course(s) using slide rules.
In Heinlien's 1952 story "The Rolling Stones" a family buys a used space ship and travels around the solar system. Dad makes each of the kids calculate their burns and courses with slide rules, then compares the results. It takes them days each time. The Rolling Stones (novel) - Wikipedia[^] The tribbles connection is fun.
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Yeah. Let's bring our boxes online and send each other mails. Later we can perhaps even reach 9600 bps. Our computers back then had bit banged software controlled serial communication at 300 bps. Later we optimized it up to 2400 bps in software and 4800 bps if we raised the CPU's clock frequency. 9600 bps does not sound totally out of the question. As for the modem - we tried, but our contraption did not work. At least our poor parents honestly could not explain what happened and their innocence was absolutely plausible. :-)
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
BY 1981 I was using a home built IBM clone and running Fidonet at 2400 baud, leter went up to 96000 baud a few years later..
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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BY 1981 I was using a home built IBM clone and running Fidonet at 2400 baud, leter went up to 96000 baud a few years later..
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
Really? The IBM PC was first sold in September 1981 and you already had a built a clone? Was it perhaps a CP/M machine instead and the PC came later?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I have been reading the editorial of this magazine from 1981.[^]. In case the link to the page only workes on my computer: It's on page 6. The editor had an idea how to make a ton of money and even believed that his idea could later run at fantastic speeds, like 9600 bps. If we only had something like that... Edit: Look on page 106 how to professionally update Apple DOS! :-) Edit^2: On page 172 we have a program for relativistic space travel. In BASIC.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats. His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
Good to know that they described a fax machine essentially and that the author was right. Had he known that in another 4 years that there would be a full stack of networking protocols finished on BSD he would have described the rough system of Email. John C. Dvorak would have probably written a similar article. Also don't look up the address in the ad to the right of the article. It's not exactly in the good part of Cleveland. I also like the author's byte encoded word dictionary compression rom idea.
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I once read a series of science fiction stories (cannot remember the titles or author), and every time the team needed to travel to a new planet or galaxy, they calculated their course(s) using slide rules.