Aucbvax.1401 fa.human-nets utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!DERWAY@MIT-ML Sat May 23 21:12:21 1981 HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #105 HUMAN-NETS AM Digest Sunday, 24 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 105 Today's Topics: Queries - CompuFiction & Fortran Speed Queues & Holographic Printer, Correction - Ownership of S.F. Chronicle, Communicating via Network - Impacts on Language, Impacts of Automation - Screen Size ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 May 1981 1137-PDT From: LEWIS at SRI-AI (Bil Lewis) Subject: "Compu-fiction" As I remember, at the West Coast Computer Faire there were some people pushing some sort of computer based fiction story that allowed the user\\\\reader? to stick in their two-bits worth and redirect the story. Anyone out there know more about this? There is method to my madness here, as some of us are going to meet with a gentleman from a large publishing firm next week that is interested in exploring the possibilities. Now I have a good idea of the general type of things that are possible, but would love to her what others think. Full text generation from some sort of formal schema is out of course (See Mann & Moore in AJCL V7 N.1. They cover the work of Badler, Meehan, Schank, Carbonell, &c.). Thus we can't pretend to use AI, but are rather stuck with writing out all of the text ourselves and using "clever programming". The real question is "How clever can that programming be?" Ideas? -Bil ------------------------------ Date: 5 MAY 1981 0948-PDT From: TCWCSS at I4-TENEX Subject: Fortran Speed Ques Dear folks- I'm polling y'all for benefit of a person trying to accumulate some stats on the subject of execution times for operations written on 11/34 in assembler versus Fortran. I realize this is too open-ended a question to make any sense..considerations (nature of routines, total number of shift-ops, environment and hdwe config) notwithstanding but if anyone has something to contribute i'm most certain it would be invaluable, in lieu of stats, the general topic (considerations in software evaluations) is addressable as well. Response is kindly appreciated. The DEC contact (unnamed to protect) has no "generalized" offering, so i thot it best to 'go to the people' for the empirical approach. thankyou. @I4-Tenex ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1981 1705-EDT From: GILBERT at MIT-XX (Ed Gilbert) Subject: holographic laser scanning >From the Wall Street Journal - Friday, May 8, 1981 - p.29: ---------------- Laser printing is becoming less expensive. A small private company in South Plainfield, N.J., General Optronics, introduces a desk-top machine that uses a beam of concentrated light to produce an image or text on ordinary paper. Instead of the spinning mirrors found in high-speed laser printers made by Xerox and others, the slow General Optronics printer employs holograms, a form of three dimensional photography, and has only one moving part in its optical system. The manufacturer says its new machine will produce up to 2,600 lines of letter-quality print a minute and will be sold in about a year for less than $4,000 dollars to companies that will resell it as a computer or text-editing printer. ---------------- Does anyone know anything about this technology, or know enough about holograms to guess? Ed Gilbert ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1981 18:51 PDT From: Reed.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #104 I beg to differ with Frankston on the ownership of the SF Chronicle. The Examiner and Chronicle are both owned by the Hearsts. They even have many of the same features and news articles, as well as jointly publishing a Sunday paper. -- Larry -- ------------------------------ Date: Wed May 13 12:21:33 EDT 1981 From: Greg Woodbury (mhtsa!hocsr!ggw) Subject: Lingo and human communications My comments concerning the source of the term was not intended as meaning that the word was specifically taken from the gay subculture for this purpose, but to point out that various minority subcultures are the breeding ground for new uses of language in general. Certainly, a "few Eyewitness news accounts" is not a sufficient amount of information to base any kind of valid judgment upon, but MANY times in human history such miniscule information has been used to judge and condemn many minority groups to oppression and extinction. The most interesting effect that I have noticed from this discussion so far, is that that term has practically dissappeared from the net. Are the denizens of this world any less intolerant of others because of their "liberal" education and attitudes? I had a better opinion of the computer using community. Etymologies of many words are totally lost because their origin or variation of usage was based in a transient or oppressed subculture. Further commentary on etymology I leave to the professional wordmongers. ------------------------------ Date: 14 May 1981 1408-PDT (Thursday) From: Mike at UCLA-SECURITY (Michael Urban) Subject: Lexicography There sure seems to be a lot of discussion generated by the suggestion that homosexual jargon is present in the Hacker lexicon. But, aside from the pretty weak example given in the original message ("Flame" in hackerese and "Flaming" in homophilese), nobody seems to have come up with any concrete examples of ANY sort of linguistic penetration into the hacker jargon, or at least none that isn't also present in the general language. In fact, most of the movement seems to have been in the other direction. Computerese, through management, has managed to get into the general language pretty well. Many people seem to think of it as "Watergatese". This Management Subset of Computerese consists of phrases like "parameter" (often misused)), "buzzword" (nicely recursive), "time-frame" and "scenario". However, at this point in time, to the best of my recollection, I cannot think of a single jargon phrase from Black or Gay or even Science-Fiction-Fannish subcultures that have managed to get exclusively into the CS vocabulary. OK, someone, prove me wrong! Please? Mike PS. I am not necessarily an expert on Black or Gay or even Science Fiction Fannish dialects. Sheeeeeeeeeeit! ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 1981 07:17:18-PDT From: ARPAVAX.olson at Berkeley Subject: furthering feldman's cry -- Re: HN(v3)#98 A study of the demography of computer science would be interesting. I have no idea whether the gay population in the field would be disproportionately high, but see no reason to suspect so. Most of my gay friends are involved with computers somehow, but this could well be because I met most of them at work. The suggestion that gays are using computers to get "strokes" is more interesting, but I doubt that the trend is limited to gays; it seems instead to be the norm for the programmers I know. The feeling of control I get (well, sometimes) over the huge beastie in the corner, as well as a sense of accomplishment and usefulness, make me enjoy my work. That's why I'm still at it, and not loading boxes at Sears. Most of the people I spoke to about this voiced similar opinions -- one hard-core hacker told me that he'd rather work with machines than people, because "machines are more reasonable. People get bitchy, but machines never do." That's really a frightening statement. The whole idea of computers is to >improveour I don't appreciate ROODE's short-sighted and thoughtless opinion. To understand the need for 32x14 characters on a page, one must look at the audience that CompuServe, The Source, and such information utilities are directed at: the home computer user who does not have "free" and possibly sub rosa access to a KL-10 or a Multics that's being paid for out of somebody else's budget. If you're not going to be a parasite, you use what you can afford. And what most people can afford has (surprise!) 64x16 (TRS80) or 40x16 (Apple ][) or 32x16 (TI and Atari(?)) characters on its screen - and no way to display larger screensfull of information. Furthermore their modems run at 300 baud. The reason is price. You can talk all you want about how "losing" home computers are, but I'd like to see what you would do deprived of resources like ARPAnet and mainframes that you did not and could not afford to pay the rent on. --Bill ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 1981 1400-PDT From: ROODE at SRI-KL (David Roode) Subject: affordability There are several 24 by 80 CRT terminals available for $600-800. This competes quite favorably with the Videotex gizmo that requires that a television be tied up while it is in use and does not cost that much less. I imagine the keyboard is improved as well as the size of the screen. A fully utilized DEC-20 with all the trimmings ought to be operable for a connect time charge of under $2 per hour, 24 hours a day. Telenet and Tymnet offer network access for $.75 per hour to volume users at the hours CIS and The Source operate, and these services restrict operation to off hours. They sell time at much higher rates in the daytime. The volume of use on a CIS-like service that charged $3 per hour and was available 24 hours a day (by local phone call only during the daytime, to avoid net charges) would be many times that CIS and The Source are experiencing now. As for 1200 baud modems, you have a point. However there is no reason not to offer that service for those who wish to buy them. Furthermore, if 2,000 people use each of these Infomration Utility machines, and there were 10-20 established around the country, and the 1200 baud modems were given a chance to catch on, the price would come down to much the same as the 300 baud modems. ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 1981 17:57 cdt From: VaughanW at HI-Multics (Bill Vaughan) Subject: Re: affordability It would be incorrect to suppose that a terminal could or would replace a personal computer, even if there were no price differential. I doubt that many Apple users are solely interested in The Source, and Radio Shack's sales of pure Videotex terminals (which, even including the TV, are cheaper than a 24x80 with modem) are not high. Ya can't play Space Invaders or Zork on an adm3a. Worth noting: the Compuserve page size may be screwy, but at least it's a page, which is more than I can say for good old TTY-oriented things like Human-Nets. Bill ------------------------------ End of HUMAN-NETS Digest ************************ ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.