by comparion ... projected NASA budget for 2011 is $19billion
this pegs 2011 US GDP at nearly $15T
making NASA budget (rockets) slightly over tenth of a percent of GDP (about 1/50th that of claimed cost of dealing with tax code).
-- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
somewhat related to recent post mentioning congress is the most corrupt institution on earth:
I've mentioned before early last year, I was asked to take the scan of the Pecora hearings (done the previous fall at boston public library) ... HTML them, heavily cross-index, and also provide links between what went on then and what went on this time. This was apparently in anticipation that the new congress had an appetite for doing something. After putting quite a bit of work into it, I got a call that said it didn't look like congress was interested in doing anything real after all.
I was using tesseract to try and improve OCR of the scans ... but still was doing lots & lots of manual fixups (the documents were printed in the 30s and scans were somewhat faded):
old reference from early last year (hear in a.f.c):
other past posts mentioning Pecora Hearings
-- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
terryc wrote
Thats not a backup and is completely useless if someone loses the whole box of cards.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile shit that any 2 year old could leave for dead.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile shit that any 2 year old could leave for dead.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile shit that any 2 year old could leave for dead.
there have been several past threads about 1403 being much better than avg. in print quality. normally 1403 was loaded with (cheaper) fabric ribbon ... but for "finished" copy there was a "film" ribbon that resulted in higher quality output.
selectric typewriters (and computer version 2741 terminal) had similar choice of ribbons, fabric ribbons for normal operation and "film" ribbons for higher quality output. this mentions, fabric, film, two-color, and correcting:
the above mentions that film ribbons were only used once and could have security implications ... being able to reproduce what was typed from old ribbons. the above also mentions 2741 selectric terminal. I had one at home from spring of 1970 until summer of 1977 ... when it was replaced with cdi "miniterm" ... some old photos here
lots of corporate documents started off with standard book production ... some old
... however, as some of the documents were moved to CMS script ... there were more and more had characteristic of originating on 1403. One of the earliest such was principle of operations:
A major reason for moving principle of operations to cms script was the material was actually a subset of the "architecture manual" (or "readbook" for being distributed in red 3-ring binder). As cms script file ... it was possible to have the "conditional" indicators bracketing the sections that were only in the "principle of operations" ... and then depending on how cms script was invoked, produce the full architecture manual or the POP subset.
In the mid-70s, installations started getting the 3800 laser printer ... which could produce higher quality output
-- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Hey Barb, I think you've broken it.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. |
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote just the puerile shit that any 2 year old could leave for dead.
on.
pockets.
numbering.
paper.
At the CSIRO Dept of Computing Research back in the mid 70s the hairy legged "Computer scientists" used to output all their jobs to the card punch as well as the printer. Some offices were stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes of cards. The cardpunch itself was a bastard to maintain, it was always jamming or punching askew. I got the job of finding the problem which turned out to be that the baseplate had been completely worn out under the springs that braked the cards as they were fed into the punching station. The baseplate was the thing that the whole punch was built on and was a non replaceable part. So I got the job of telling them that either they could buy a new punch (secondhand as the punch was obsolete) or do without. There was much sobbing and gnashing of teeth, we took the punch out and they never punched another card again which made it obvious that the millions of cards that they had punched were a total waste of time and money.
ABS were using cards as input right up to the early 80s.
on.
pockets.
Depends on the type, some had oil impregnated into them. Left a nasty stain in your pocket and hard to write on.
A number of companies gave away cards of the same form factor as punch cards but thinner an with the company logo as note pads.
I haven't seen a punch card in decades though.
If you wanted to be really nerdy, you carried the dummy cheques that IBM provided to test their cheque sorters as note pads. I found one the other day stuck in an old programming manual as a bookmark.
A good slapping?
One of the things I've been thankful for having started when cards were still in use is that I've never had any problem understanding files, records or fields. When you could hold the "records" in your hand and look at the "fields" on the card it became very clear. I've used this to teach the concepts several times. Most recently, I had to bring up some pictures of cards on the screen because the student had never seen any. But when I did they got an instant "Oh, yeah!" Of course, "do not bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate" didn't mean anything to her, but that's the way it goes.
- Bill
keithr wrote
on.
pockets.
numbering.
paper.
"Computer scientists" used to output all
Pigs arse they did.
cardpunch itself was a bastard to maintain,
which turned out to be that the
as they were fed into the punching
a non replaceable part. So I got the
punch was obsolete) or do without. There
punched another card again which made it
time and money.
Yeah, the boxes of punched cards were used to move data between the
1620 and the 360/50 at the ANU, well before that time you are talking about.keithr wrote
on.
pockets.
None the ones I ever bought in large quantity ever did.
but thinner an with the company logo as
I've still got about half a box of them left.
When I was at Burroughs, I was out in Atlanta training some folks on the new medium systems MCP, and was testing the reader-sorter code; the test checks were cancelled employee paychecks from other sites - found several old checks for current colleagues.
scott
I saw one yesterday. I'm using it as a bookmark.
--
Today is Setting Orange, the 43rd day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3176
"Always mount a scratch monkey."
Looks that way. He still hasn't really answered my question. So I'll guess he wasn't the one to make the decisions and doesn't know all the details of that particular site.
Trying to get back to an on-topic....
I remember the 33s causing field service to create new swear words. However, I don't remember keypunches doing that. I do remember one
33 which took about a month to fix (one of the ones I busted by typing too fast). If a keypunch broke badly enough to get IBM in to fix it, it didn't take long to have it working again.So, another question is: Speedybongzalas implied that keypunches were difficult to fix. Were they really?
/BAH
write on.
pockets.
numbering.
of paper.
cards.
Do you know how that practice began? Was it a course all of them took which required both media to be used for the course's problems?
/BAH
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