#old school computing

[basic-retro-programming]

WordStar 7.0 für DOS ist gerettet ...

Autor macht 30 Jahre alten "besten Text-Editor aller Zeiten" verfügbar

"Never change a running System": Nach diesem Motto hat der Sci-Fi-Autor Robert J. Sawyer während der gesamten Karriere das mittlerweile ural

Post #314: WinFuture, Robert J. Sawyer macht 30 Jahre alten Text-Editor "WordStar 7.0" verfügbar, 2024.

[withasmoothroundstone]

Does anyone still have trouble...

...with the fact that, these days on most standard computers, you can put spaces in filenames?

...with the fact that you can put more than 8 letters/numbers in a filename?

...with the fact that most of the time, typing the file extension while naming a file is not necessary unless you’ve specifically set things up that way or it’s one of those “filetype determined by extension” saves in specific programs like GIMP?

Because I have trouble with all of these.  I am getting better (I just named an entire series of files “Igor head snuggle 01″ etc. without trying to type .jpg at the end, without eliminating the spaces or replacing them with dashes or underscores, and without saving it as IGRHSN01.JPG or IGORHD01.JPG or IGORHEAD.JPG or something.)  But it feels wrong, and I’m still ridiculously efficient at figuring out how to condense things down to 8 letters or fewer.

And don’t get me started on what directories got called on a GUI.  (Our first major computer was an Amiga 1000 so I still have a weird tendency to think of them as “drawers”, something that never really took off the way “folders” did.)  Or the fact that GUIs are the norm, and that there are avid computer users who have never seen or heard of a command line in their life.  And watch-sized computers (calculator watches -- with individual buttons -- were the nerd equivalent when I was a kid).

Or the fact that our first-ever computer stored files on tapes (like the same kind of tape you taped music on, which also doesn’t happen much these days it seems, although at least people still know tapes exist).  Or when floppy disks were usually floppy (and when they were seemingly rigid, they were just keeping the floppy bits inside and invisible), and most computers didn’t have hard drives.  Or modems.  And USB wasn’t a thing so every type of computer had a different configuration of pins for peripherals to plug in(1).  Or when all web pages were written by hand in text editors.  

Or just... argh.  I feel like my brain can’t keep up with technology anymore, even cars freak me out.(3)  Especially the new kind that don’t have keys.  I mean on the one hand it’s cool living in The Future, but in other ways my brain just can’t keep up with what technology exists let alone how to use or even coexist with some of it.  And seriously 37 (or really 36 I think, it’s 37 in August, I’m also losing count of birthdays these days so I go by year -- when I can remember the year -- and then get confused) isn’t that old.

(Photos from that Igor series coming up by the way, they’re adorable.)

(1)  Which was obnoxious enough that my dad designed something akin to USB -- but never went to the trouble of marketing or patenting it.  Which makes me imagine that tons of people were inventing similar things at the same time.  

If that confuses you, see multiple discovery/simultaneous invention.  a.k.a. also the same thing (that people’s ignorance of pisses me off about) when people start fighting over who “really” coined a word or phrase when I can vividly remember multiple simultaneous (or non-simultaneous but without having ever heard of each other) coinings.  When a concept or invention is necessary and two or more people have very similar situations, background knowledge, etc., then two or more people are very likely to come up with the exact same word, invention, etc., without having known each other.  

Famous example:  The word autism, originally coined by Bleuler to describe a symptom for his also-newly-coined diagnostic term schizophrenia, was picked up and changed in meaning almost exactly simultaneously by Kanner and Asperger to describe two almost completely overlapping(2) groups of kids they were working with.  They had roughly the same background, the same training, and the same social and cultural circumstances that made certain people stand out who hadn’t stood out that often before, so they slapped the same name on us while (for many reasons) emphasizing slightly different aspects of who we were.

(2) No, really, there are a lot of myths about both groups of kids that cause people to assume they were wildly different.  They weren’t.  Kanner’s patients were usually far more capable (speech, college, etc.) than people who’ve never read him assume they were, and Asperger’s patients were sometimes (including speech delays) less capable than people who have and haven’t read him assume (he emphasized and sometimes distorted their capabilities and downplayed their difficulties to save them from Nazi eugenics).  There are people in Asperger’s original writings who would meet DSM-IV and previous criteria for ‘autistic disorder’ or ‘PDDNOS’, and there are people in Kanner’s original writings who would meet (or be falsely assumed to meet and therefore get diagnosed with, which often amounts to the same thing given how all professionals starting with Kanner and Asperger see traits that aren’t there and miss ones that are) DSM-IV and previous criteria for ‘Asperger disorder’ or ‘PDDNOS’.  The two original doctors also both focused on different aspects of similar people, so if you sent the same kid to both people he’d be described totally differently.  Mind you I don’t even consider autism to be a thing the way most people do.  But even though I consider it to actually be a bunch of people who don’t always have significant things in common, I don’t consider the differences to have anything whatsoever to do with Kanner vs. Asperger, that’s barking up the wrong tree entirely even for people who believe fervently in these ways of categorizing people.  

(3) Including, when delirious a few years ago, part of what gave me a delusion that it was about 30 years in the future, was the car they used to drive me home from the hospital that had some kind of computer screen embedded in the dashboard (with GPS, various monitors, air conditioning controls, etc.) and other ridiculously high-tech crap.  A lot of which makes me nervous.  Hell, power windows still make me nervous -- the idea of needing power in your car in order to open the window, with no manual override, strikes me as incredibly unsafe.  And manual overrides aren’t hard to put in.  My dad and I designed about three  entirely separate ways to do it within five minutes of conversation.  And that’s conversation slowed down by the fact that I type to communicate.

[emma-cmm-year2]

First Documentation of How to Send an E-mail - Research

I found this video through LinkedIn and thought it was really mind boggling how only 30 years ago, e-mailing was such a novelty to people and programmes like this were made to demonstrate how it worked for people who didn’t even own a computer.