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Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411694 is a reply to message #411655] Wed, 06 October 2021 03:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-10-05, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>> On 2021-10-05, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> example, seem to want to control anything anyone might say about them.
>>>
>>> Free Hong Kong!
>>
>> With every pack of cornflakes?
>>
>> Do a bit of history reading. Hong Kong was set during the opium wars to
>> ease the smuggling of opium into china. Not England's finest hour.
>>
>>
>
> Sure, but most recently they were relatively free and democratic, and were
> an financial powerhouse. Now the first two are gone, and the third is
> circling the drain.
>


I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?.. Boris promised 120,000
visas to people who wanted to get out of HK. Talk about going to the
sinking ship.

--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411695 is a reply to message #411668] Wed, 06 October 2021 03:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-10-05, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 14:02:14 -0500
> Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> wrote:
>
>> Eh, there's a fair list of countries that the US has done that to,
>> because their relatively democratic governments didn't sufficiently
>> follow the US line. And some clearly non-free undemocratic countries
>> that the US is BFF with. Doesn't make it right for the PRC, but I'm
>> not sure us USAns have the moral standing to object.
>
> Last time I looked there were no saints among nations, most seem to
> be getting better over time though.
>

Neither are there any saints among people.


--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411696 is a reply to message #411660] Wed, 06 October 2021 03:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-10-05, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> schrieb:
>>
>>> Why Amazon is within its rights to remove access to your Kindle books
>>
>>> https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-amazon-is-within-its-right s-to-remove-access-to-your-kindle-books/
>>
>> Yuck. The author makes a very strong case for paper-based books (and
>> for buying DVDs instead of streaming).
>
> Buy the ebook, so the author gets a pittance from the publisher,
> then pick up a copy sans DRM from the internet (or usenet) so you can read
> it forever. Many authors also have Patreon for more direct support.

In Ireland, there has been a surge of `coffee table' books with
beautiful pictures of trees, gardens, etc. I have bought some of them.



--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411699 is a reply to message #411695] Wed, 06 October 2021 06:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 6 Oct 2021 07:54:16 GMT
Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:

> On 2021-10-05, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 14:02:14 -0500
>> Last time I looked there were no saints among nations, most
>> seem to be getting better over time though.
>>
>
> Neither are there any saints among people.

Ah, of course. Just as people have to be dead for several
centuries[1] before they can be declared saints it would seem that nations
with their longer lifespans would need to be dead for many millennia before
being eligible for sainthood.

[1] Long enough so that any sins can be convincingly denied.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: empty buildings was What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411717 is a reply to message #411694] Wed, 06 October 2021 14:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
John Levine is currently offline  John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
According to Maus <rhunDARNtheSPAM@DARNtheSPAMkatamailDARNtheSPAM.com>:
>> Sure, but most recently they were relatively free and democratic, and were
>> an financial powerhouse. Now the first two are gone, and the third is
>> circling the drain.
>
> I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
> Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
> situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?

Vancouver has luxury apartment blocks that are dark at night because
nobody lives there. So do Toronto and NY, but I gather it's worse in
Vancouver. It's one of the reasons that Vancouver real estate is
completely unnafordable to normal people. They have made weak attempts
to control it with surtaxes on unoccupied foreign owned flats, but the
far worse problem is that most of the city is zoned to prohibit
anything denser than detatched single houses and to require vast parking
garages for multi-unit structures.

a First Nations tribe that owns a large chunk of Vancouver real estate
recently voted to develop it with 50 story mixed use towers that will
both provide housing to their members and a lot of other people and
businesses, and with more transit access and much less parking than
the city would require. They can do that because they can ignore the
city's zoning.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411720 is a reply to message #411694] Wed, 06 October 2021 16:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-10-06, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:

> On 2021-10-05, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2021-10-05, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> example, seem to want to control anything anyone might say about them.
>>>>
>>>> Free Hong Kong!
>>>
>>> With every pack of cornflakes?
>>>
>>> Do a bit of history reading. Hong Kong was set during the opium wars to
>>> ease the smuggling of opium into china. Not England's finest hour.
>>
>> Sure, but most recently they were relatively free and democratic, and were
>> an financial powerhouse. Now the first two are gone, and the third is
>> circling the drain.
>
> I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
> Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
> situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?..

HK-bashers are plentiful here, and there is a rising tide of anti-Asian
sentiment (which, as usual, is ill-conceived). Housing prices are now
among the highest in the world. This is considered a Good Thing by
developers, realtors, and the governments that they've bought, and any
slacking of housing prices' meteoric rise is considered a grave situation
by these parties. The provincial government has brought in a "speculation
tax" in an attempt to discourage foreign speculators - while remaining
suspiciously silent regarding domestic speculators. There's even been
talk about housing subsidies so people can buy condos without housing
prices leveling off or - horrors! - falling to an affordable level.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin
Re: empty buildings was What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411721 is a reply to message #411717] Wed, 06 October 2021 16:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-10-06, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> According to Maus <rhunDARNtheSPAM@DARNtheSPAMkatamailDARNtheSPAM.com>:
>
>>> Sure, but most recently they were relatively free and democratic, and were
>>> an financial powerhouse. Now the first two are gone, and the third is
>>> circling the drain.
>>
>> I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
>> Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
>> situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?
>
> Vancouver has luxury apartment blocks that are dark at night because
> nobody lives there. So do Toronto and NY, but I gather it's worse in
> Vancouver. It's one of the reasons that Vancouver real estate is
> completely unnafordable to normal people. They have made weak attempts
> to control it with surtaxes on unoccupied foreign owned flats, but the
> far worse problem is that most of the city is zoned to prohibit
> anything denser than detatched single houses and to require vast parking
> garages for multi-unit structures.

Zoning changes move slowly, but if you're a rich enough developer you
can get it done. Council has begun to listen to developers' crocodile
tears about the costs of including parking garages in new towers, and
is even talking about passing bylaws prohibiting adequate parking from
being built, as part of a war against vehicular traffic that they have
been waging for decades. It's easier - and more fun - to make life
miserable for those who dare to take a car downtown than it is to make
life easier for those who are willing to take transit - even if that
takes three times as long.

> a First Nations tribe that owns a large chunk of Vancouver real estate
> recently voted to develop it with 50 story mixed use towers that will
> both provide housing to their members and a lot of other people and
> businesses, and with more transit access and much less parking than
> the city would require. They can do that because they can ignore the
> city's zoning.

The city is too busy going after buildings consisting of a row of
storefronts with one or two storeys of apartments above them for
shopkeepers, etc. Under a policy they call "highest and best use"
(gag), they're taxing these buildings as if they were 50-storey
mixed-use towers, which is killing the small businesses that occupy
the ground floor. Once those businesses been gotten rid of, the
deserted hulks of these buildings be torn down and another 50-storey
tower built. And they still talk about "building communities". Feh.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin
Re: empty buildings was What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411734 is a reply to message #411717] Thu, 07 October 2021 06:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-10-06, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
> According to Maus <rhunDARNtheSPAM@DARNtheSPAMkatamailDARNtheSPAM.com>:
>>> Sure, but most recently they were relatively free and democratic, and were
>>> an financial powerhouse. Now the first two are gone, and the third is
>>> circling the drain.
>>
>> I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
>> Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
>> situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?
>
> Vancouver has luxury apartment blocks that are dark at night because
> nobody lives there. So do Toronto and NY, but I gather it's worse in
> Vancouver. It's one of the reasons that Vancouver real estate is
> completely unnafordable to normal people. They have made weak attempts
> to control it with surtaxes on unoccupied foreign owned flats, but the
> far worse problem is that most of the city is zoned to prohibit
> anything denser than detatched single houses and to require vast parking
> garages for multi-unit structures.
>
> a First Nations tribe that owns a large chunk of Vancouver real estate
> recently voted to develop it with 50 story mixed use towers that will
> both provide housing to their members and a lot of other people and
> businesses, and with more transit access and much less parking than
> the city would require. They can do that because they can ignore the
> city's zoning.
>

Ta

--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411735 is a reply to message #411720] Thu, 07 October 2021 06:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-10-06, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-10-06, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2021-10-05, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>
>> I read a few years ago that HK'ers had bought a lot of property in
>> Vancouver but had not moved there, leaving property there in an odd
>> situation. Perhaps Charlie can elucidate?..
>
> HK-bashers are plentiful here, and there is a rising tide of anti-Asian
> sentiment (which, as usual, is ill-conceived). Housing prices are now
> among the highest in the world. This is considered a Good Thing by
> developers, realtors, and the governments that they've bought, and any
> slacking of housing prices' meteoric rise is considered a grave situation
> by these parties. The provincial government has brought in a "speculation
> tax" in an attempt to discourage foreign speculators - while remaining
> suspiciously silent regarding domestic speculators. There's even been
> talk about housing subsidies so people can buy condos without housing
> prices leveling off or - horrors! - falling to an affordable level.
>

As usual, the popular view is wrong. The problem is deeper, and will not
be solved by attacking the `usual suspects'. Subsidies only encourage
sellers to raise prices.


--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411778 is a reply to message #410715] Fri, 08 October 2021 10:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: stefano capelli

https://www.pcgamer.com/dutch-legend-has-been-running-his-ca mpsite-since-1986-using-an-atari-st/
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411949 is a reply to message #410761] Fri, 22 October 2021 03:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: D Gillies

I wrote a multi-connection TCP for the IBM PC (called PC/IP which became FTP Software) in 1984. With a 4K control block (2K send, 2K receive), it could run finger with 7 tcp connections at a time on a 64K IBM PC circa x 10 different flavors of TCP (Multics, Tenex, Tops-10, PDP v7 Unix, BSD 4.15 which had a terrible TCP Bug, etc.). Our project was the first one to put the IBM PC on the Arpanet as a full network citizen, including FTP, which needed my protocol stack.

https://people.ece.ubc.ca/~gillies/pages/9802net.html

- Don Gillies, class of '84
Palo Alto, CA, USA

On Monday, September 6, 2021 at 1:30:03 AM UTC-7, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Sep 2021 06:30:46 -0000 (UTC)
> Jason Evans <jse...@mailfence.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:06:43 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:
>>
>>> You can run Unix from a teletype. Not something anyone in their right
>>> mind wants to do these days but you can do it.
>>
>> Linux via ham radio RTTY would be stupid and awesome, lol.
> Erm KA9Q was originally TCP/IP over souped up RTTY (aka packet
> radio) was it not. OK it was not Linux (that was still in the future) but
> it did come with email, usenet, ftp and a multi-tasking kernel to run them
> under messy dos - I never saw the CP/M version but 64K is awfully tight for
> TCP/IP.
>
> It was awesome and far from stupid.
>
> --
> 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. | http://www.sohara.org/
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411950 is a reply to message #411949] Fri, 22 October 2021 03:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: D Gillies

KA9Q (by Phil Karn) was written in 1985, and I met him when we both worked at Qualcomm Corporate R&D in the early 2000's. Mine was open source and multi-threaded (using an MIT explicity-give-up-the-processor threading package) because it was a part of my bachelor's thesis (a full Mail Security Proxy). I think Phil - being part of the Ham Radio community - probably did a better job of sharing his code and it became the more well-known stack in the hobbyist community, but was not as commercially successful.

- Don Gillies
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411954 is a reply to message #411950] Fri, 22 October 2021 11:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Kurt Weiske

To: D Gillies
-=> D Gillies wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

DG> KA9Q (by Phil Karn) was written in 1985, and I met him when we both
DG> worked at Qualcomm Corporate R&D in the early 2000's.

That must have been a heckuva place to work back then. I was a huge fan of
Eudora, as were most in the '90s. I was amazed at how much we could do with
text-based address books and mbox formatted email on a Windows/Mac client.

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet






.... I hear he can kill people with an init string.
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411972 is a reply to message #411556] Sun, 24 October 2021 10:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Jorgen Grahn is currently offline  Jorgen Grahn
Messages: 606
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Sun, 2021-10-03, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2021-10-03, Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 01/10/2021 18:43, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2021-10-01, Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 23/09/2021 02:15, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > You only update software when the benefit justifies the cost.
>>>>
>>>> The problem is that a lot of updates don't add any real functionality,
>>>> they just plug security holes that someone has found.
>>>
>>> Or they add security holes when the vendors decide they don't
>>> don't have their hooks into you deeply enough.
>>
>> I'm paranoid, but I'm not _that_ paranoid.
>>
>> Do you have a source for that assertion?
>
> No definite examples, but I did read the entire Windows EULA back
> around the XP days. I found a clause in which Microsoft claimed
> entitlement to walk into your machine whenever they felt like it,
> take a look around, and remove anything which they in their sole
> estimation felt you should not have.
>
> That nobody recognizes automatic updates as a wide-open back door
> has always amazed me.

I think people do now, maybe. The extortion attack on swedish food
store chain Coop (and others) in July went that way. The cash
registers got new software pushed to them, and the new software was
ransomware: someone in the long chain of suppliers and cloud thingies
had been hacked.

> Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Yes, perhaps the cash registers are now feeding my grocery list to the
NSA again.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411976 is a reply to message #411972] Sun, 24 October 2021 23:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 24 Oct 2021 14:36:53 GMT
Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:

> Yes, perhaps the cash registers are now feeding my grocery list to the
> NSA again.

Did they finish building their zettabyte store then ?

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: What is the oldest computer that could be used today for real work? [message #411985 is a reply to message #411976] Mon, 25 October 2021 13:53 Go to previous message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-10-25, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On 24 Oct 2021 14:36:53 GMT
> Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>
>> Yes, perhaps the cash registers are now feeding my grocery list to the
>> NSA again.
>
> Did they finish building their zettabyte store then ?

Almost - that's what that last budget appropriation was really for.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin
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