HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen)
Subject: Re: Screen colors (Was Re: Zork/Dungeon)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 05:25:07 GMT

In <Xs76RB1w164w@lorc.UUCP> lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen) writes:

>xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen) writes:
>> 
>> That would be 4096 x 4096 resolution...  Pretty snazzy monitor!

>This is very true.  But, even with a 4096x4096 screen, you still couldn't see
>16 million colors.  Why?  The eye can only distinguish about 4 milllion colors.
>So, those other 12 million are just useless baggage.  Although using 24 bits
>for color info is easy on the hardware and the programmer, these days, due to 
>IBM's success at pushing 8-bit bytes.

Interesting observation...

However, with 24 bits, you can only represent 256 different values of
true grey...  and I assure you that my eye can distinguish more than 256
shades of grey, so therefore either more bits are needed or the bits available
must be used more effectively to cover the entire spectrum that the human
eye can distinguish.

On a related note, are you covering the entire distinguishable intensity
range of the human eye?  Your source of 4M colors may only be referring to
pigment colors.  When the intensity of the source comes into play, you may
find that you can perceive up to 4M colors at any of hundreds of intensities.

A relatively easy test to see that your eye has more color resolution than
your 24 bit monitor would be to plot two adjacent colors (on a large scale)
that only differ by at most one intensity value in each of the R, G, and B
registers.  When I do this for greys, they are perceivable...  Some other
colors are not, however.

---Xeno

>--

>Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant, GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC
>***********************************************************************
> Opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not reflect policy
>   or opinions of the General Electric Company or its subsidiaries.
>***********************************************************************
From: jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Citation needed
Date: 16 Oct 92 23:42:10 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

This paper has entered the folklore level...maybe somebody out there knows...

The paper in question was allegedly written by Knuth and discussed
ancient Greek algorithm representation.  In particular, the problem was
that in the absence of algebra there was no abstract way to represent
an algorithm.  So the problem became one of choosing initial values for
the instance such that all intermediate values were unique, and thus
a number could stand for a variable.

I want to cite this paper in a paper I am writing.  I cannot locate a
citation in any of the resources available to me at CMU.  This means that
one of the following is true (a) it was not written by Knuth (b) it was
not published in an archival journal (c) it was not published in a 
canonical computer publication.  

If anyone has any memory of this paper or can tell me where it was
published, or even how to find a citation to it, I would appreciate it. 
I will happily
pay for a FAX or photocopy of same if you actually have one.  Please reply
directly to me rather than via the newsgroup (or cc: to me or the newsgroup)
as I don't have ready access and can't peruse the newsgroup for an answer.
                            thanks
                                joe
From: jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Screen colors (Was Re: Zork/Dungeon)
Date: 17 Oct 92 01:25:20 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.alt.folklore.computers: 10-Oct-92 Re: Screen
colors (Was Re: .. by Karthik P Sheka@cunixb.c 
> As for how many colors a person can see, its not a constant even for a
> single person in a single one-hour period.  

Many years ago, around the age of 11 or so, I wondered why I saw
slightly different colors from my left and right eyes.  One eye seems to
give a slightly yellow cast to what I see, and the other a slight blue. 
I can't tell offhand, because it has been years since I played with
this, and it only happens when I'm looking at something brightly lit,
like sunlight on a white bedsheet (I discovered this when trying to
avoid getting up early...)

However, in later years I discovered that I have a red/green color blindness
(which surprised me, as I can readily tell red from green, but I can't find
the numbers and shapes on the standard charts for colorblindness testing)
It is apparently severe enough to disqualify me from military service.

So tell me: what does red look like to you?
                                    joe
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Connection Machine posters 
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 07:20:55 GMT

Real programmers don't need posters.
They MAKE their own. Others ask for THEIR posters.
Silly request.	;^)

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
  Scientific Programming
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Seeking Books to buy:	Bongard, Pattern Recognition
			Imhof, Cartographic Relief Presentation
			Books on or by Benjamin Whorf
			Wulf et al, The Design of an Optimizing Compiler
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1992 00:15:25 -0400 
From: "Joseph M. Newcomer" <jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?

Does anyone remember the days of prime number word size computers?
For example, 17-bit machines (no, it WASN'T parity!), 19-bit machines,
23-bit machines, 29-bit machines...

These were machines designed to some DoD requirement, and used the
MINIMUM number of bits to do the job.  For example, if you needed
only 8K of memory, you used 13 address bits.  The four opcode bits meant
17 bits.  Oh, you want indirect addressing and an index register?  OK,
19 bits.  

This way, your company could bid a machine to do the job and bid it at
the lowest cost.  No wasted bits (hey, $5/bit for MIL-SPEC bits was not
out of line!), no wasted power budget, but oh, the programming 
nightmares...
                                    joe

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: gardner_c@apollo.hp.com (Cal Gardner)
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Summary: Stretch and 64 bit operations
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 06:11:13 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <14930@auspex-gw.auspex.com> guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>(Followups to "alt.folklore.computers".)
>
>>The PDP-6 was designed and built before the days of 8 bit character codes -
>
>But was it designed and built before the days of 7-bit character codes?
>The PDP-10's OS from DEC used ASCII as the character set for text (it
>may have used SIXBIT, or whatever it was called, for symbols in
>programming languages and object files, but it used ASCII for text); did
>the PDP-6's OS do so as well?
>
>>The first (8-bit) byte-oriented machine was the IBM 360,
>
>Didn't the IBM 7030 - a machine with, as I remember, 32-bit words, and
>bit addressibility - antedate the 360?  (BTW, was the 7030 a tube or
>transistor machine?  I thought it was a transistor machine, but somebody
>else here thinks it was a tube machine.)
>
>I don't think the 7030 was a huge seller, though; I think it was a
>specialized supercomputer.  The 360 *may* have been the first
>big-selling 8-bit-byte computer, but I could believe that it wasn't....

Let's see.  I have before me my very own copy of a document entitled
Reference Manual - 7030 Data Processing System, which was known to all
as Stretch.  As I recall old TJ told the annual meeting that even IBM
would go belly-up if they sold enough of them.  Seem to recall that the
stripped model went for about 8 megabucks in 1959 Dollars.  Stretch
memory was a 72 bit word organized as a 64 bit word with 8 bits of ecc.
Not bad for an old vacuum tube monster.  Instructions were either 32 or
64 bits in length. Floating point was implemented within a 64 bit word.

Integer operations were up to 64 bits.  The combined A and B registers
spanned 128 bits. I have a hard time seeing Stretch as a 32 bit box.
Now the Sage machine (ANFSQ/7) was, if I recall correctly, a 32 bit unit.
The Stretch memory sans the ecc logic ended up as the original 7090 
memory unit.  The first 7090s read a double word from the core stack and
muxed the selected 36 bit word to the CPU.  During a memory write, only
half of the word was written with new data and the original data was
writtten back into the other half word.  BTW - The Q/7 was also a tube
machine.

Cal
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: phillips@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au (Christopher Phillips)
Subject: Gears. (was Re: The need for an assem)
Organization: Elec Eng, Univ of Western Australia
Date: 15 Oct 92 07:20:04 GMT

lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>With only an automatic, all I can do is drive as agressively and stupidly
>as they do, swinging back and forth between lanes to ward off fair use of
>the road in the short spurts between red lights that has average Manhattan
>traffic moving at about 4.6 MPH.  Instead, with the good low-end torque of 
>a manual transmission, I can evade them entirely.  If you are driving a
>wimpy 5-speed no-power car, you don't *belong* in Manhattan!

But the more 'intelligent' automatics (admittedly very rare at the moment)
guess whether you are after power or efficiency by the way you are driving.
So if you slam the accelerator, you get all the 'low-end torque' you could
possibly want!


--
Christopher Jam	__________________________________________________
phillips@swanee.ee.uwa.edu.au			c64 forever!!!!
300,000 c64's were sold in the fiscal year ending June 1991 :)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:15091 rec.games.int-fiction:547
From: caa@Unify.Com (Chris A. Anderson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:28:43 GMT
Reply-To: caa@unify.com (Chris Anderson)
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
Distribution: na
Organization: Unify Corporation, Sacramento, California

Ok, here's one...

At a company that I used to work for, the CEO's brother  was  the
"system  operator".   It was his job to do backups, maintentance,
etc.  Problem was, he didn't have a clue about Unix.  We were re-
quired to go through him to do anything, though.

Well,   I   was   setting   up   a   Plexus   P-95   to   be    a
news/mail/communications machine and needed to wipe the disks and
install a new OS.  El CEO requested that his brother do  the  in-
stallation  and disk partitioning.  He had done this before, so I
gave him the partition maps and let him at it.  When he was done,
everything  seemed to be ok.  Great, on with the install and set-
up.

Things went fine until I started  compiling  the  news  and  mail
software.   All  of  a sudden, the machine paniced.  I brought it
back up and the root file system was  amazingly  corrupt.   After
rebuilding  things,  it  all seemed to be fine -- diagnostics all
ran fine, etc.  So I started again -- this time keeping an eye on
things.  Sure enough, the root file system became corrupted again
when the system started to load.

This time I brought it down and checked everything.  The problem?
Swap space started at block zero and so did the root file system.
ARRRGGGHHHHH!!

Oh yes, the brother still works there.

Chris
-- 
+------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Chris Anderson, Unify Corp.                caa@unify.com  |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger)
Subject: Re: Computer hate slogans
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Organization: Joint Center for Radiation Therapy
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 22:54:00 GMT

	When I ran the DECUS SIGs newsletter, we got a rather irate
	letter from Hallmark complaining about our use of one of their
	trademarks without our reporting same. Unfortunately they did not
	have the decency to tell us what page and issue the infraction
	occurred. We searched in vain to find anything.

	And then, much later I discovered what it was. We had reported that:

	When the Ruskies were cloning PDP11s and VAXes as fast as they could,
	some DEC engineers had the following etched on some CPU boards.

	"VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best."


   Frank R. Borger - Physicist    __       Internet:  Frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Michael Reese - Univ. of Chicago |___      Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
  Center for Radiation Therapy   | |_) _   I guess I must have had New England
                                   | \|_)  ancestors away back and inherited
    "Birthplace of Softball"          |_)  some of their staunch and rugged
					   fear of the police. - O. Henry
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: michaely@zero.ics.Hawaii.Edu (Michael Yokoyama)
Subject: Re: The third variable.
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 04:33:40 GMT

In article <1992Sep21.185056.18771@cubic.com> hees@cubic.com (Phil Hees) writes:
>mjg51721@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael James Gebis) writes:
>>Alright....the first variable is foo, and the second variable is bar.  What
>>is the third?  Is is sna -->sna foo bar, or is it toe -->toe foo bar?  Is
>>it something else?  Does anyone have any other creative variable names?
>
>Around Stevens Tech a decade or so ago, the Sacred Order of the Names
>was as follows:
>
>foo
> bar
>  baz
>   waldo

I thought the third one was 'blech'.  At least that's how it was in the C
language manuals I edited when I was consulting for ASCII Corporation in
Tokyo back in 1985.

By the way I think 'foo' might mean regurgitation or something like that.

--
MICHAEL YOKOYAMA        | Internet:  michaely@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.EDU
Aiea, Hawaii  USA       | UUCP:      uunet!ucsd!nosc!pilikia!michael
NYSC delegate, HI '72   | Globe:     21 deg. 19' N; 157 deg. 52' W
From: krm@sdc.boeing.com (Keith Michaels)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Date: 7 Oct 92 19:15:46 GMT
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Organization: Boeing Computer Services (ESP), Seattle, WA

In article <1as5frINNeda@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM>, smckinty@sunicnc.France.Sun.COM (Steve McKinty - Sun ICNC) writes:
|> 
|> 
|> > >>I used to change the parity and baud rate on our vt220 terminals
|> > >>in our lab.  When turned on, they responded with gibberish and 
|> > >>the normal "idiot newbie" responded by trying to find another
|> > >>terminal.  I never waited for a terminal after I started doing this.
|> > >>
|> .
Anyone that used a real VT220 remembers the program VT220.FOR that allowed
you to download different character sets, including one called BACK.DAT
which was the mirror image of the regular character set.  I had fun
downloading this to a colleagues terminal (a guy with just a touch of
dyslexia anyway), while he was using it.  I also had a composite character
set with just the 'e's backwards.  This was great fun since all the 'e's
on his screen would mysteriously reverse, and then after a few seconds
I'd switch them back.  (How cruel!).

-- 
/*-------------------------------------------------------------------*
 * Keith R. Michaels       | The Boeing Company                      *
 * krm@sdc.boeing.com      | Seattle, WA.                            *
 * Warning: May cause drowsiness.  Do not operate heavy machinery.   *
 *-------------------------------------------------------------------*/
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: souva@aibn58.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Ignatios Souvatzis)
Subject: Re: Zilog System 8000
Reply-To: isouvatzis@babsy.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
Organization: Radioastronomisches Institut der Universitaet Bonn, Bonn, FRG
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 19:51:21 GMT

hm...

I have no hardware manual, don't know what kind of disk you would have
to plug in, and where to get a system for it. Ask some Zilog rep.

The OS was called Zeus, which stands for Zilogs extended unix system?

The software corp. I once worked for had one, with a 100+/-5% full 10M
hard disk. The OS was some kind of early BSD. The machine  used to get
sloooooooow when starting to swap...  and we all  were supposed to  do
our 'tar u ~' before leaving,  so that not  more  than one day's labor
would be lost... it was very bad to leave early in the afternoon, when
many ppl were around....

We used to reboot often, to cut down log file sizes...


--
Paper mail: Ignatios Souvatzis, Radioastronomisches Institut der 
            Universitaet Bonn, Auf dem Huegel 71, D-5300 Bonn 1, FRG
Internet:   souva@babsy.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de ignatios@cs.uni-bonn.de


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
From: djs@jet.uk (David J Stevenson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 13 Oct 92 08:14:10 GMT
Organization: Joint European Torus

In <1992Oct12.143545.2018@netcom.com> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:

>In article <1992Oct12.080944.23519@jet.uk> djs@jet.uk (David J Stevenson) writes:
>>In <W1NRB20H@cc.swarthmore.edu> hirai@cc.swarthmore.edu (Eiji Hirai) writes:
>>>...[some deleted]
>>>(4) I heard this from a fellow sysadmin friend.  My friend was forced to
>>>work with some sysadmins who didn't have their act together.  One day, one
>>>of them was "cleaning" the filesytem and saw a file called "vmunix" in /.
>>>"Hmm, this is taking up a lot of space - let's delete it".  "rm /vmunix".
>>
>>>My friend had to reinstall the entire OS on that machine after his coworker
>>>did this "cleanup".  Ahh, the hazards of working with sysadmins who really
>>>shouldn't be sysadmins in the first place.
>>When this happened to a colleague (when I worked somewhere else) he restored
>>vmunix by copying from another machine.  Unfortunately, a 68000 kernel does
>>not run very well on a Sparc...
> 
>If it was a Sparc and still running, could you not have re-compiled the
>kernal and copied ti back to root?
> 
But I think that someone who deleted vmunix, then copied from an incompatible
machine, didn't know what the file was. Therefore, he wasn't expected to know
how to rebuild it!  [I was working on IBM OS/2 at the time, so I didn't have
such problems, it (then) only ran on PS/2 machines].
-- 
+---------------------------------------------------+
| David Stevenson  djs@jet.uk   Tel: +44 235 465028 |
+---------------------------------------------------+
- Disclaimer: Please note that the above is a personal view and should not 
  be construed as an official comment from the JET project.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: kps@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Karthik P Sheka)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Reply-To: kps@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Karthik P Sheka)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 18:08:10 GMT

>> There is no excuse for the continuous rewriting of "hello world" programs.
>
>> The GNU version is superior to all previous version. 
>
>Yes, but the GNU version only runs on UNIX, and requires 512K of stack and
>2-4 MB of VM (depending on whether shared libraries are available). It won't
>run on 286 or PDP-11 systems, either, though there's a micro-gnu-hello-world
>that's supposed to fit in 64K with overlays.
>-- 
>Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
> `-_-'   "Segodnja volka obnimal?"
>  'U`  
>Dette kan umulig vaere mitt rom, eftersom jeg ikke puster ammoniakk.


I had to take a Software Design Lab class last year, in which the final
project involved creating a client/server system that did various things.
As practice, I created a "hello world" server.  The client told the server
that it was awake, and the server returned a message string ("hello, world",
of course) to print to the user.  How many others created "unusual"
versions of "hello world"?

//Karthik Sheka
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: dagbrown@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Dave Brown)
Subject: Re: dirty tricks
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 15:41:42 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.135525.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> sbakerjr@cc.curtin.edu.au writes:
>When someone leaves their VAX terminal without logging off (fatal mistake)
>I find it hilarious to add the line to the front of thier login.com file...
>
>$ LOGOFF
>
>This really creates a riotous situation...
>

Okay, that's not terribly original, but how about this:

$	DELETE/NOCONF/SYMBOL *

just before the EXIT command?  It happened to me...took me the _longest_ time
to figure out why my symbols weren't working....


-- 
Dave Brown
dagbrown@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
Phone: (519) 438-0530
"What God want, God gets.  God help us all."  --Roger Waters
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: ftit@engin.umich.edu (Sergej Roytman)
Subject: Re: What was the intended advantage of using 36bits CPU?
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 01:05:23 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <1bfq4bINNrtv@uwm.edu> anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber) writes:
|In article <1992Oct13.225620.10861@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
|>rounded up value of 16 bits/char.  (Or is someone going to justify a
|>replacement character code set with 65536 unique combinations?)
|
|Yep, one of them is Unicode.  At least 16 bits is needed to handle the
|various Asian languages, plus there are lots of other characters out
|there that would be nice to have.  Right now 16 bit character support
|is mandatory in Japan.

Man!  What do the keyboards look like over there?

|<-:(= Anthony Stieber	anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu   uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
|  ftit@engin.umich.edu   |   "... a stainless steel rat in the       |
|    (Sergej Roytman)     |  ferroconcrete wainscoting of Internet"   |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Say no to four-line .sigs.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: mdw@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh)
Subject: Re: Total erasure of hard drive data??
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 20:53:29 GMT

In article <aldavi01.718662098@starbase.spd.louisville.edu> aldavi01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Arlie Davis) writes:
>In <1992Oct09.124407.4731@NeoSoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> Yes, but the GNU version only runs on UNIX, and requires 512K of stack and
>> 2-4 MB of VM (depending on whether shared libraries are available). It won't
>> run on 286 or PDP-11 systems, either, though there's a micro-gnu-hello-world
>> that's supposed to fit in 64K with overlays.
>
>Yes, but the GNU hello-world can read mail, news, can fake mail, can print
>out "Zippy the Pinhead" quotes, can greet the user in any of 1024 modern
>languages and 64 classical languages, can write itself in any of 10 popular
>modern compiled languages and three dialects of Lisp, can start the Sun's
>CD player, and can translate from *any* image format to PPM.
>
>And those are just the documented features.

Nonoonononoo..... you're thinking of "emacs"! Has it been renamed to "hello"
on your system? That's one amazing hello-world program, even for RMS. :)

Seriously, however, the GNU hello-world program doesn't print the just the 
canonical "Hello, world!"... it lets you browse through it in texinfo
format, and lists the full GPL when it's done (so that the copyleft is
absolutely clear to all users of the program).

Plus.... it's free!

mdw

-- 
Matt Welsh    mdw@tc.cornell.edu        +1 607 253 2737
Systems Programmer, Cornell Theory Center
  "Yow! Up ahead! It's a DONUT HUT!!"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,rec.games.int-fiction