Aucbvax.1401
fa.human-nets
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!DERWAY@MIT-ML
Sat May 23 21:12:21 1981
HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #105
HUMAN-NETS AM Digest Sunday, 24 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 105
Today's Topics:
Queries - CompuFiction & Fortran Speed Queues & Holographic Printer,
Correction - Ownership of S.F. Chronicle,
Communicating via Network - Impacts on Language,
Impacts of Automation - Screen Size
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 22 May 1981 1137-PDT
From: LEWIS at SRI-AI (Bil Lewis)
Subject: "Compu-fiction"
As I remember, at the West Coast Computer Faire there were
some people pushing some sort of computer based fiction story that
allowed the user\\\\reader? to stick in their two-bits worth and
redirect the story. Anyone out there know more about this?
There is method to my madness here, as some of us are going to
meet with a gentleman from a large publishing firm next week that is
interested in exploring the possibilities. Now I have a good idea of
the general type of things that are possible, but would love to her
what others think.
Full text generation from some sort of formal schema is out of
course (See Mann & Moore in AJCL V7 N.1. They cover the work of
Badler, Meehan, Schank, Carbonell, &c.). Thus we can't pretend to use
AI, but are rather stuck with writing out all of the text ourselves
and using "clever programming". The real question is "How clever can
that programming be?" Ideas?
-Bil
------------------------------
Date: 5 MAY 1981 0948-PDT
From: TCWCSS at I4-TENEX
Subject: Fortran Speed Ques
Dear folks- I'm polling y'all for benefit of a person trying to
accumulate some stats on the subject of execution times for operations
written on 11/34 in assembler versus Fortran. I realize this is too
open-ended a question to make any sense..considerations (nature of
routines, total number of shift-ops, environment and hdwe config)
notwithstanding but if anyone has something to contribute i'm most
certain it would be invaluable, in lieu of stats, the general topic
(considerations in software evaluations) is addressable as well.
Response is kindly appreciated. The DEC contact (unnamed to protect)
has no "generalized" offering, so i thot it best to 'go to the people'
for the empirical approach. thankyou.
<WELCH>@I4-Tenex
------------------------------
Date: 11 May 1981 1705-EDT
From: GILBERT at MIT-XX (Ed Gilbert)
Subject: holographic laser scanning
>From the Wall Street Journal - Friday, May 8, 1981 - p.29:
----------------
Laser printing is becoming less expensive.
A small private company in South Plainfield, N.J., General
Optronics, introduces a desk-top machine that uses a beam of
concentrated light to produce an image or text on ordinary paper.
Instead of the spinning mirrors found in high-speed laser printers
made by Xerox and others, the slow General Optronics printer employs
holograms, a form of three dimensional photography, and has only one
moving part in its optical system. The manufacturer says its new
machine will produce up to 2,600 lines of letter-quality print a
minute and will be sold in about a year for less than $4,000 dollars
to companies that will resell it as a computer or text-editing
printer.
----------------
Does anyone know anything about this technology, or know enough about
holograms to guess?
Ed Gilbert
------------------------------
Date: 22 May 1981 18:51 PDT
From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #104
I beg to differ with Frankston on the ownership of the SF Chronicle.
The Examiner and Chronicle are both owned by the Hearsts. They even
have many of the same features and news articles, as well as jointly
publishing a Sunday paper.
-- Larry --
------------------------------
Date: Wed May 13 12:21:33 EDT 1981
From: Greg Woodbury (mhtsa!hocsr!ggw)
Subject: Lingo and human communications
My comments concerning the source of the term <FLAME> was not
intended as meaning that the word was specifically taken from the gay
subculture for this purpose, but to point out that various minority
subcultures are the breeding ground for new uses of language in
general. Certainly, a "few Eyewitness news accounts" is not a
sufficient amount of information to base any kind of valid judgment
upon, but MANY times in human history such miniscule information has
been used to judge and condemn many minority groups to oppression and
extinction.
The most interesting effect that I have noticed from this
discussion so far, is that that term has practically dissappeared from
the net. Are the denizens of this world any less intolerant of others
because of their "liberal" education and attitudes? I had a better
opinion of the computer using community.
Etymologies of many words are totally lost because their origin
or variation of usage was based in a transient or oppressed
subculture. Further commentary on etymology I leave to the
professional wordmongers.
------------------------------
Date: 14 May 1981 1408-PDT (Thursday)
From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban)
Subject: Lexicography
There sure seems to be a lot of discussion generated by the
suggestion that homosexual jargon is present in the Hacker lexicon.
But, aside from the pretty weak example given in the original message
("Flame" in hackerese and "Flaming" in homophilese), nobody seems to
have come up with any concrete examples of ANY sort of linguistic
penetration into the hacker jargon, or at least none that isn't also
present in the general language.
In fact, most of the movement seems to have been in the other
direction. Computerese, through management, has managed to get into
the general language pretty well. Many people seem to think of it as
"Watergatese". This Management Subset of Computerese consists of
phrases like "parameter" (often misused)), "buzzword" (nicely
recursive), "time-frame" and "scenario". However, at this point in
time, to the best of my recollection, I cannot think of a single
jargon phrase from Black or Gay or even Science-Fiction-Fannish
subcultures that have managed to get exclusively into the CS
vocabulary.
OK, someone, prove me wrong! Please?
Mike
PS. I am not necessarily an expert on Black or Gay or even
Science Fiction Fannish dialects. Sheeeeeeeeeeit!
------------------------------
Date: 17 May 1981 07:17:18-PDT
From: ARPAVAX.olson at Berkeley
Subject: furthering feldman's cry -- Re: HN(v3)#98
A study of the demography of computer science would be
interesting. I have no idea whether the gay population in the field
would be disproportionately high, but see no reason to suspect so.
Most of my gay friends are involved with computers somehow, but this
could well be because I met most of them at work.
The suggestion that gays are using computers to get "strokes"
is more interesting, but I doubt that the trend is limited to gays; it
seems instead to be the norm for the programmers I know. The feeling
of control I get (well, sometimes) over the huge beastie in the
corner, as well as a sense of accomplishment and usefulness, make me
enjoy my work. That's why I'm still at it, and not loading boxes at
Sears. Most of the people I spoke to about this voiced similar
opinions -- one hard-core hacker told me that he'd rather work with
machines than people, because "machines are more reasonable. People
get bitchy, but machines never do."
That's really a frightening statement. The whole idea of
computers is to >improveour I don't appreciate ROODE's short-sighted and thoughtless
opinion. To understand the need for 32x14 characters on a page, one
must look at the audience that CompuServe, The Source, and such
information utilities are directed at: the home computer user who does
not have "free" and possibly sub rosa access to a KL-10 or a Multics
that's being paid for out of somebody else's budget.
If you're not going to be a parasite, you use what you can afford.
And what most people can afford has (surprise!) 64x16 (TRS80) or 40x16
(Apple ][) or 32x16 (TI and Atari(?)) characters on its screen - and
no way to display larger screensfull of information. Furthermore
their modems run at 300 baud. The reason is price.
You can talk all you want about how "losing" home computers are, but
I'd like to see what you would do deprived of resources like ARPAnet
and mainframes that you did not and could not afford to pay the rent
on.
<FLAME OFF> --Bill
------------------------------
Date: 20 May 1981 1400-PDT
From: ROODE at SRI-KL (David Roode)
Subject: affordability
There are several 24 by 80 CRT terminals available for $600-800. This
competes quite favorably with the Videotex gizmo that requires that a
television be tied up while it is in use and does not cost that much
less. I imagine the keyboard is improved as well as the size of the
screen.
A fully utilized DEC-20 with all the trimmings ought to be operable
for a connect time charge of under $2 per hour, 24 hours a day.
Telenet and Tymnet offer network access for $.75 per hour to volume
users at the hours CIS and The Source operate, and these services
restrict operation to off hours. They sell time at much higher rates
in the daytime.
The volume of use on a CIS-like service that charged $3 per hour and
was available 24 hours a day (by local phone call only during the
daytime, to avoid net charges) would be many times that CIS and The
Source are experiencing now.
As for 1200 baud modems, you have a point. However there is no reason
not to offer that service for those who wish to buy them.
Furthermore, if 2,000 people use each of these Infomration Utility
machines, and there were 10-20 established around the country, and the
1200 baud modems were given a chance to catch on, the price would come
down to much the same as the 300 baud modems.
<FLAME OFF>
------------------------------
Date: 20 May 1981 17:57 cdt
From: VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan)
Subject: Re: affordability
It would be incorrect to suppose that a terminal could or would
replace a personal computer, even if there were no price differential.
I doubt that many Apple users are solely interested in The Source, and
Radio Shack's sales of pure Videotex terminals (which, even including
the TV, are cheaper than a 24x80 with modem) are not high.
Ya can't play Space Invaders or Zork on an adm3a.
Worth noting: the Compuserve page size may be screwy, but at least
it's a page, which is more than I can say for good old TTY-oriented
things like Human-Nets.
Bill
------------------------------
End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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