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Amused: I like your reference.
Nit-pickingly: though we also have Sphynxians from Honor Harrington series.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Yeah, Heinlein was even very specific about his sliderules being made of bamboo. (Sun Hemi?)
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 I still have one.
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman Series is what I immediately thought of.
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Could be, but it's nearly 40 years since I read them, and that is about all I can recall.
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I think I was on that crew. Did we make it there and back?
I still have a couple of slide rules here and know how to use them I never used a calculator until I was in Grad School. Never owned one until I left school and got a job.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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In Heinlien's 1952 story "The Rolling Stones" a family buys a used space ship and travels around the solar system. Dad makes each of the kids calculate their burns and courses with slide rules, then compares the results. It takes them days each time.
The Rolling Stones (novel) - Wikipedia[^]
The tribbles connection is fun.
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No batteries needed; we are in space after all.
Does the slide rule get shorter once you approach the speed of light?
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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Had a quick flick through, I really miss the "new frontier" excitement of it all displayed in the magazine. They're literally debating whether machines should be used to teach the "regular curriculum" or Comp. Sci. principles - as if it's an either/or choice. Also, pages of hardware, listings and the remarkable question "Visual Basic too slow?" with the remarkable answer "learn Assembly language!" (pp119/pp120 - depending whether you believe the PDF or the print).
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That was before everyone was preaching that compilers are better than the average assembly programmer and also before processors that were not meant to be programmed in assembly anymore. Over in Q&A you can see what you get when teachers destroy all confidence students may have before they even had a chance to try.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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CodeWraith wrote: Over in Q&A you can see what you get when teachers destroy all confidence students may have before they even had a chance to try.
I don't think that's whats happening, the problem seems to be the kids* aren't interested in how programming/machines work in general. What they want to do is cobble together an app as quickly as possible from a set of readily downloadable parts, preferable with a name related to caffine. It looks like old school hacking ( hacker - sense 1) but without the desire to know how any of it hangs together / works. They then leave university with huge amounts of confidence, but not the ability to match, because they've managed to tack together a few small lego-brick style systems. The immediate reaction also seems to be to seek help, rather than to try and figure out the problem individually first - and then we end up with the "send codez plz" requests.
Obviously that's a mahoooooooosive and sweeping generalisation on my part, but it does seem to be the trend, and not a new one. I remember experienced hands when I graduated saying similar things about my cohort when we entered the jobs market. Perhaps it's because we've been deskilling the task of programming and the "hard" knowledge has become less necessary until you hit actual problems?
* anyone under, say, 30. Mutters under own breath. Exhorts people to get of my lawn. Uses words like exhorts.
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I always feel a little sorry for them. At every corner they are being told that nobody uses this oldschool stuff anymore. Very much of that is fueled by an industry that only wants to sell some more stuff. Trust the marketing. They will happily tell you what you need to know.
Don't you think that they would learn a little more by building a small 8 bit computer and then programming a simple BIOS than by learning yet some more JavaScript? When nobody teaches them the basics, how are they supposed to undestand what they are doing on their own?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I remeber the Computer Shopper magazine, not sure if it was just local, but they had all the computer hardware that was available listed. I used to drool ove it!
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Wow, had I read it back in 1981, I would have still laughed at this article. This guy was out of touch even back then.
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Yeah. Let's bring our boxes online and send each other mails. Later we can perhaps even reach 9600 bps. Our computers back then had bit banged software controlled serial communication at 300 bps. Later we optimized it up to 2400 bps in software and 4800 bps if we raised the CPU's clock frequency. 9600 bps does not sound totally out of the question.
As for the modem - we tried, but our contraption did not work. At least our poor parents honestly could not explain what happened and their innocence was absolutely plausible. 
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Yeah, modems definitely sucked back then...I still remember the acoustically coupled ones where you actually had to put the phone's headset into a rubber cup-like receptacle.
That said, the direction of e-mail was fairly obvious even back then. They started standardizing e-mail headers as far back as the early 70's (RFC 561). Arpanet had been kicking around for a while, when CSNET debuted in 1981...the year this guy wrote the article. I remember actually sending e-mails over CSNET as early as 1982.
So, a small amount of reading, even back then, should have exposed this as an idea who's time had already passed.
Though, starting in 1983, that didn't stop products like MCI Mail from making money on a slight variation of the idea...for quite a while. Heck, over its 20 year lifetime, that product alone made a fair amount of money. If you add in similar products, collectively they probably did make a billion
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BY 1981 I was using a home built IBM clone and running Fidonet at 2400 baud, leter went up to 96000 baud a few years later..
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Really? The IBM PC was first sold in September 1981 and you already had a built a clone? Was it perhaps a CP/M machine instead and the PC came later?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Good to know that they described a fax machine essentially and that the author was right. Had he known that in another 4 years that there would be a full stack of networking protocols finished on BSD he would have described the rough system of Email. John C. Dvorak would have probably written a similar article. Also don't look up the address in the ad to the right of the article. It's not exactly in the good part of Cleveland.
I also like the author's byte encoded word dictionary compression rom idea.
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Sometimes, I really wish Randall wouldn't get it quite so right[^] - particularly the mouse over text ... 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Those were the days...
Nothing to do all day but making holes into things with guns and other even better means.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I used to have a toy called Super Flight Deck - if the plane was replaced with a small marble which was then fired at a standard single pane of glass (such as one might find in one's parent's sitting room) the marble shattered on impact while punching a perfectly circular marble sized hole through the glass. The presence of several such holes were evidence that the first one wasn't a fluke. My father was less than impressed by my experimentation.
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What some people fail to understand is that it takes less time to drill the 500 holes manually than to have SW bug-free enough mechatronics that work-
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 That's what I was thinking.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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