Text 5598, 75 rader
Skriven 2010-03-04 07:44:42 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 5548 av Bo Simonsen (2:236/100.0)
Ärende: Windows Update Fix
==========================
Replying to a message of Bo Simonsen to Ward Dossche:

 WD>> When I had your age:
 WD>> 
 WD>> * The 747 had been flying for just a couple of years

 BS> Hm.. I cannot beat that at that time I guess.. Unless we can
 BS> cross the atlantic by driving under the earth.. :)

 WD>> * A small computer was a 360/20

 BS> I am not familiar with this model.

It's been a museum piece since about 1980.  SAC was still running what
must have been the last functioning IBM 360 when I retired in 1983.
And SAC had an IBM service contract, which means that if the machine broke
IBM would fix it - even if it had to manufacture the part(s) to do it.

You've probably never seen a removeable disk pack, but we used them a lot.
SAC had four different computer systems in its headquarters (2 Honeywell,
2 (BM), and all four used removeable disk packs.  Anyhow, the 360 shop down
the hall used sticky tape labels on the bottom platter of each disk pack to
hold
identifying information (we used a magic marker to write on that bottom
platter);
note that the bottom face of the bottom platter isn't used.  During one shift
the
supervisor noticed his new operator moving a disk pack from drive to drive and
asked the guy what he was doing.  The kid replied that for some reason the
drives couldn't read that particular pack.  Turned out that that sticky label
had
started to shred and had tiny pieces of sticky paper on some of the surfaces 
the drives used.  Not only was that disk pack rendered useless, but the drives
it
had been on had had their read/write heads destroyed by those tiny little
pieces
of sticky paper.  A very, very expen$ive problem.  An edict came down from on
high right after that to the effect that removeable sticky labels would *NOT*
be used on disk packs - fortunately we weren't using them <g>.

 WD>> * Colour TV had been introduced in Belgium but B/W sets
 WD>> were still available

 BS> I've had a B/W TV, but I guess I was the only one in that
 BS> town which had such one, everyone else had color tv.

 WD>> * An apple was a fruit

 BS> Last time I checked it's still.

It's *also* a computer company (and before that a record label).

 WD>> * A mouse was a pest

 BS> A computer mouse is definitely.

 WD>> * "One day every house will have a computer" generated a
 WD>> good laugh

 BS> Can I say something today besides living on the moon or mars
 BS> that would generate laugh?

IBM's founder, Thomas Watson, predicted there would only be a market
for about one hundred computers in the United States.  That back in the
late 1930s.

In the late 1970s Ken Olsen, then president of Digital Equipment Corp.,
said there'd never be a significant market for home computers.

Bill Gates commented that nobody would ever need more than 640 KB of
RAM.  He also said that "OS/2 is the wave of the future" even as his
company was busily sabotaging that project.

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 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)