Someone mentioned the other day that there seems to be a high correlation between woodworkers and computer-oriented folks. After giving the matter serious consideration for about two minutes, it occurred to me that the computer-oriented folks were the most likely to get to this newsgroup. How big is the percentage of non-computer-oriented folks who are familiar with Usenet? The number of woodworkers on computers in not small though--about
17000 over at LumberJocks.com, for instance.Bill
Yup... like there being a high correlation between the number of fire trucks and the size of the fire.... some folks might get the casual direction backwards. Though, around here there seem to have been a lot of volunteers lighting fires over the years so maybe that's a bad example...
John
It would be extremely rare for a non-computer oriented person to know about USENET. A better question is, "How many computer users know about USENET? Very few from my experience. Off the top of my head, I know of one other out of dozens of people connected to the internet.
...and how many of them were using the Internet before the World Wide Web?
In news:HoWdnUvf4a03flvWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com, Ed Pawlowski spewed forth:
the FIOS tech that installed my service looked like a deer in the headlights when I asked what the news server addy was. sadly, they don't need to know now, because they don't offer usenet sevice anymore
yeah. It's not often anymore I get to explain something to my 28 year old making-a-ton-of-$-programming son.
Anybody here under 60?
(born in the first half of the last century)
Slightly...
How about the last half of the last century?
Guess I was an early adopter as I started playing with IBM 360 main frames in the early 70s as a kid. This via an Boy Scout Explorer Post that was sponsored by IBM... Playing is probably the correct term as Fortran and APL things we did were pretty basic. I recall playing a tank vs aircraft game on an APL terminal... piles of paper spewed out of what was pretty much an IBM Selectric typewriter! As I recall it was via a 300 baud acoustic coupler modem.
John
Yes. Still a couple of years to go.
*Last* half of the *previous* century. I doubt it'll be the last, though the Demonicrats are trying hard.
I started playing with ForTran in high school. The local university wanted to see if high school students could learn to program (really). At the time ('67), CS was in the Graduate College and for the most part only graduate math students took CS coursework. They offered PLATO terminals to the local high schools but the school boards (some things never change), in their infinite wisdom, refused them. "If computers do the math, student's won't learn math." The university then gave any student who would show up, free books, classroom space, unlimited computer time (360/75, no less), and instructors. I did it for two years, until I started college. After than, other than one required course in college (the same course, same books, as I'd already done in HS), I didn't use a computer again until I graduated, and stared designing them for IBM. ;-)
NE Department taught FORTRAN via paper coding only in 2nd-semester "Intro to NE" department prerequisite before start core class work/labs sophomore year. Was taught entirely on paper w/ coding forms and walkthrough to judge correctness until semester-end assignment was submitted to the uni 370 compiler. Eng'g had 1620 for undergraduates for lab work w/ the ubiquitous Selectric as "console" but no line printer -- everything went in on cards and came out on cards that were fed to printer. More than once did that pos eat a card deck at end... :( That was starting in '63; they had taught the same sequence for several years at that point altho had moved up a notch or two from the original FORTRAN to McCracken by the time I got there (and had dropped the machine code segment except for the obligatory of "this is how _real_ programmers _used_ to have to do it" :) ).
After uni, graduated to Philco 2000's at B&W until they were replaced by CDC 6600s and eventually Cyber 7600s. Never had another IBM mainframe (thankfully) in subsequent 40 years except for an occasional requirement to use the ORNL machines on contract work for them altho most of it was on the DEC 10/20... :)
Then came VAXen and VMS and the world was never the same...
--
I still have my Sinclair Z-80 (8k RAM, 8K "operating system") in a box around here somewhere. Learned a whole lot from that machine. Even did the machine code programming. Took a "flight sim" program and added LowFuel warning, and countdown to zero. All this on the B&W TV when wife wasn't watching and the kids were still in their high chairs in the little house in the city. Ended up teaching myself about four flavors of BASIC, graduating up through C=128 and then realized the world was moving too fast as I got into the DOS machines in the suburb.
Stil manage to surprise my two 'puter sons (one's a programmer, one's about to get his CS degree ..after 6 years; 'bout time, eh?!) with an occasional DOS batch file that actually does a useful trick. I tried to get into VisBasic, but I never did learn the C-type structure that requires. Does anybody miss Compuserv?
Then I discovered gaming...upgrading the Flight Sim from the wireframes to "X" ...then Gordon, Alyx,...earlier, the Strogg.... later years, Lt Mitchell... writing maps for Starcraft and UT before him.. and now the Borderland crew. I'll have to do an adult-ed somewhere down the road to get back into programming........but first I've been upgrading my little shop-under-the-stairs instead and working on all those little things the wife wanted. Two garden benches are among the current sawdust and ...there are those coasters I've promised for 15 years. .... And then there are the Michigan deer demanding thinning ... and trails that want to see my boots. Life's wayyyy too short.
john
Yes. Haven't hit 50 yet.
I am under 60....., for two more months.
I remember hitting the big four oh.
Now I don't even care.
Aging brings cynicism, oops, I mean wisdom.
Yup. only by 10% though
Ahh, the old 2741 Interactive Terminal. Saw one of those eat a Big Mac once--fragments of all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions flying all over the place (the sesame seed bun was still in the guy's hands). Ran for two weeks after that, before it needed a service call. Poor IBM tech almost lost his lunch. Still got my APL element for it.
A guy I knew wrote a Star Trek game in APL. Of course that was when Star Trek was a dead TV series and nobody was trying to enforce the trademark.
Me either; two more years to go...
Be happy--the 360 at NERDC would go down a couple of times a day. The
370 that replaced it wasn't much better. Was cleaning up the other day and found a CDC 6600 dump behind a drawer--looked at it and was amazed that I used to be able to read the things. Thinking about it I should have framed it. Not gonna see another one of those in this lifetime.
Z-80? Wow. I started on a ZX-81 (1k ram...), when I was twelve. You could store programs on a tape recorder, but I didn't get a compatible one of those until years later... So essentially, when I wanted to play a game, I had to type the source code from a book. Learned programming real fast (I added features like the hidden 'add 100 to the score' key so I could beat my brother at said games.
And I can almost tie this back to woodworking... A few years ago I designed a TV cabinet with a built in microprocessor (it had moving parts and an IR receiver...) Unfortunately I haven't got the opportunity to build it yet :-P
Another John
Hmmm.... seems to be a high correlation between guys named John and woodworking too if we use this thread as the data set.
John
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