A couple of years ago, I pointed out that DEC minicomputers were best operated with the assistance of young women wearing miniskirts.
Diligent technical research by yours truly has revealed that DEC was following the lead of IBM in the operation of its mainframe systems.
Verizon Fios 2006
Verizon Fios 2024
Who will own the original solid-state mixing console used at Abbey Road to record Abbey Road?
https://reverb.com/item/84510567-emi-tg-12345-abbey-road-console
In the fun, bad old days of the Internet, technical experts were active on computer-related Usenet newsgroups. Back then, trolling someone was called flaming.
By 2000, most of the technology professionals and academics who weren’t already fed up with the commercialization of the Net, or been told by their employer to stay away from online forums, disappeared with the waning of Usenet. Since then, it’s mostly been know-nothings, usually well-meaning, trying to help those who know even less.
For a long time, I was limited to accessing the Internet using ProComm for DOS with a modem over a UNIX Shell account. Downloads were done using the XMODEM, YMODEM, and ZMODEM file transfer protocols. As you might guess, XMODEM was developed first.
I once followed a Usenet thread on comp.dcom.modems where a user was having trouble with a YMODEM transfer. Someone who seemed knowledgeable offered a suggestion that sounded solid to me.
The user flamed him, saying his suggestion was stupid and he didn’t know anything. The person he flamed was Ward Christensen, who wrote the original version of XMODEM. Ward coined the term YMODEM and he created the first Bulletin Board System. Christensen has passed away.
Here’s a story I told on LinkedIn, about a technical heavy-hitter I connected with in 1995, when the Internet was still what it was. Before they let the rabble in.
I am a frequent visitor to the Internet Archive. A generous amount of its content has been used here. The site, at archive.org, has been shut down since last week, following a hack.
Will the archive be available again? Is Wikipedia next? If Trump is elected, what online services will he ban, with the impunity of immunity from prosecution?
This is a remembrance I have submitted for an obituary:
https://www.hochfuneralhome.com/obituaries/john-lemay-2
I have quite a few records that Capitol reissued into the early 80s. As I listened to them, I noticed that some had a consistently distinctive and appealing sound quality. It was full and smooth and, to my preference, not overly bright. In the run-out grooves, those records were all signed “Jay Lemay,” “J. Lemay,” or simply “Jay,” as seen in the photo. I always wanted to tell Lemay how much I appreciated his eminently listenable work as a mastering engineer.
