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Author Archives: Kate Fortune
Posted on December 5, 2019 by Kate Fortune
Literary scholar and writer Sarah Shieff will receive the 2020 research grant to assist her latest project, to publish a collection of the letters of poet Allen Curnow ONZ CBE (1911-2001).
Noting that Allen Curnow is widely recognised as New Zealand's most distinguished poet, Sarah aims to "tell the story of his long life in his own words". She believes that publishing his letters will go some way to make up for the fact that he never wrote his own autobiography.
Sarah Shieff is Associate Professor of English in the School of Arts, University of Waikato. She has previously published Letters of Frank Sargeson (Random House, 2012), and her Letters of Denis Glover (Otago University Press, 2020) is forthcoming.
From her previous research on the letters of Frank Sargeson and especially of Denis Glover – who was Allen Curnow's oldest and closest friend – Sarah is ideally placed to make use of the Alexander Turnbull Library's extensive holdings. As well as preparing a scholarly edition of Curnow's letters for publication, she plans to develop a fully-searchable database that will assist future scholars.
Kate Fortune, president of the Friends of the Turnbull Library is delighted that the 2020 research grant will be $20,000 in the centenary year of the Alexander Turnbull Library. She said "This is the first time we have been able to offer $20,000 to a researcher, and we feel that Sarah's project is particularly apt for the Turnbull's centenary year.
"This latest grant brings the total number of projects assisted by the Friends of the Turnbull Library to eighteen since the first grant (of $5000) was awarded to Philip Norman in 2004 for his biography of Douglas Lilburn. Six biographies have been awarded research grants and a very diverse range of other projects including a history of rugby league (awarded in 2017), and Nick Bollinger's current project on New Zealand's 'Counterculture 1960-75' (awarded last year).
"The Alexander Turnbull Library – a world-class research library that attracts scholars from around the globe – provides fertile soil for many diverse research projects. We would love to be able to support more researchers," Ms Fortune said. "We encourage people who might be able to make donations or to set up bequests to come and talk to us about how they could help."
Posted on September 23, 2019 by Kate Fortune
'Outstanding', 'high calibre' and 'skilfully composed' — these are some of the words used to describe the incredible creative work of our rangatahi who entered the 2019 Smart Alex competition. The winners, runners-up and highly commended entries will receive cash prizes and book tokens totalling $3,000.
See 2019 Competition Results for full details and all the prize-winning entries.
The competition, now in its second year, attracted tamariki from secondary schools around Aotearoa who were asked to respond to an image found in Alexander Turnbull Library's online collections. They could showcase their creative talent through writing or a graphic drawing.
The competition is organised by Friends of the Turnbull Library (FOTL) in conjunction with the Alexander Turnbull Library and the Services to Schools branch of the National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.
This year's entries from about seventy schools were both diverse and captivating. Entrants responded to emotive issues such as the horrors of war, the environment, and Māori and Pasifika traditions.
The judging panel this year consisted of noted children's author Eirlys Hunter, Susan Wallace from National Library Services to Schools, and FOTL members Elle Green and Rachel Underwood.
Kate Fortune, President of FOTL, said that all the judges were very impressed with the high calibre of entries submitted.
Posted on July 5, 2019 by Kate Fortune
Please join us at the Takapuna Public Library, Level 1, for the second of our Auckland public talks, on Friday 26 July 2019 at 6.00pm.
Wellington historian, author and digital communicator Jock Phillips ONZM, who created and developed the online encyclopedia, Te Ara, has been busily researching in the Turnbull Library some of the wider issues behind the Royal visits to New Zealand.
Māori and Royal Tours is a fascinating story of how Māori used the visits of royalty to emphasise their special relationship with Queen Victoria and her successors, and hoped through that special relationship to alleviate some of their issues with the New Zealand Government. It begins with the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869; looks at the great Māori hui in Rotorua in 1901; then surveys Royal tours in 1920, 1927, 1934 and 1953. Finally, Jock briefly examines subsequent events at Waitangi. The talk is richly illustrated.
Jock Philllips has published 15 books on New Zealand history including: "To The Memory: New Zealand's War Memorials"; "Settlers: New Zealand Immigrants from England, Ireland and Scotland, 1800-1945 (with Terry Hearn); "Going Public: The Changing Face of New Zealand History" (with Bronwyn Dalley); "In the light of the past: stained glass windows in New Zealand houses" (with Chris Maclean); and "A Man's Country: The Image of the Pakeha Male". His recently published memoir is "Making History: A New Zealand Story" (AUP).
Refreshments at 6.00pm, talk starts at 6.30pm.
Entry is free, but donations welcome. Hats and flags optional!
Please RSVP on Takapuna Library Website, or call Lester Chung at 890 4919 or email lester.chung@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz
Congratulations to Rachel Underwood, immediate past president of the Friends of the Turnbull Library (FoTL), who has been awarded a Queen's Service Medal (QSM) in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Rachel has served on the FoTL committee since 1987, and led the organisation as president from 1996 to 2018. She has been an inspirational leader, notably developing and maintaining a broad national membership in support of the Library; and initiating and organising the highly effective advocacy that successfully achieved changes to the National Library Act 2002.
Her energy and drive has also led to the successful establishment of the Friends of the Turnbull Library Research Grant that has now provided funding of almost $120,000 to assist seventeen separate research projects since 2004.
Posted on May 22, 2019 by Kate Fortune
Sarah Gaitanos spoke about her new book, "Shirley Smith: An Examined Life" (VUP, 2019), on Sunday 19 May at this year's Auckland Writers Festival. This popular event was sponsored by the Friends of Turnbull Library, as the inaugural talk of three years of celebrating research in the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library.
Sarah says: "The Turnbull Library has been like a home to me for many years since researching for my biography of Nola Millar. In that case it was not just a treasure trove but also a subject of my research as Nola Millar worked there in the 1930s and 40s, becoming reference librarian until she gave it all up for theatre. The Shirley Smith papers are in the Turnbull, my oral history projects are too, and I belong to the FoTL so I'm delighted to be the inaugural speaker."
Sarah Gaitanos is an independent writer, researcher and oral historian.
Researching the life of Alexander Turnbull
Posted on January 10, 2019 by Kate Fortune
In May this year the Friends of Turnbull Library reaches a milestone anniversary, celebrating 80 years of supporting and promoting the work of the Alexander Turnbull Library. One of the ways we have begun to mark this special birthday year is by commissioning two writers to produce research essays on the life of our benefactor, Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull. Both Robyn Maree Pickens (of Dunedin) and Redmer Yska (of Wellington) will be writing biographical essays on Alex Turnbull's life for us, and will be investigating areas such as his alleged homosexuality and drug addiction.
Redmer Yska (pictured left) has already produced a preliminary article ("A Collector's Habit") for the NZ Listener, 22 December 2018. For those who missed it, there is a link below to an online version of his piece, which begins:
"In 1901, wealthy Wellingtonian Alexander Turnbull, founder of New Zealand's greatest private library, enjoyed an idyllic Christmas cruise in the Marlborough Sounds on his yacht Iorangi. Within a few years, he spiralled into depression and cocaine addiction. What went wrong? He's the handsome devil with the waxed moustaches who died a century ago. Alexander Turnbull, the millionaire bookman whose 55,000 volumes made a library, has been the toast of Wellington in 2018. There's been a "Smart Alex" writing contest, a memorial walk, an iced cake as big as a shelf of encyclopedias …"
https://www.noted.co.nz/currently/history/alexander-turnbull-millionaire-book-collector/?fbclid=IwAR1qEGlZiq84W2vzu7uzID7RMfQaAiLHoetmPEmN1-TpCzSxGPvjV-1j7z0
Numbers Tell the Story!
Posted on December 11, 2018 by Kate Fortune
(Updated after second and different OIA response from Archives NZ)
In 2010 Cabinet approved a proposal to incorporate Archives New Zealand and the National Library into the Department of Internal Affairs. It was justified on essentially financial grounds.
It was claimed that the incorporation would lead to:
the futureproofing of both entities
lower corporate overheads
the achievement of cost savings and economies of scale.
Once implemented, the incorporation was said to be part of the "wider machinery of government changes to improve the performance and service delivery of public sector agencies."
So, what happened? The financial numbers tell the depressing story.
Over the period 2013 — 2018:
Vote Internal Affairs INCREASED 12.4%
Total National Library budget DECLINED 9%
National Library overheads INCREASED 25.7%, and together with Depreciation and Capital Charge they account for 51.9% of the total National Library budget
Monies under the control of the Turnbull Librarian DECLINED 9.7%
Total Archives New Zealand budget DECLINED 1.4%
Archives overheads INCREASED 279% and together with Depreciation and the Capital Charge, account for 67.4% of the total Archives budget
Secretary of Internal Affairs remuneration INCREASED 49%
According to Stats New Zealand, average NZ weekly earnings INCREASED 18%.
It is clear that lower overheads have not been achieved. Declining expenditure, it can be argued, is evidence of deliberate under-funding, not the achievement of cost efficiencies, or proper support for important legally mandated roles.
The Internal Affairs CEO has eight Deputy Secretaries assisting him as part of the Executive Leadership Team, which does not include the National Librarian or Chief Archivist.
Dr D.M. Gilling FCA FCPA
Posted in test
Follow the Money SCOOP Wellington
Follow the money: the Archives, the Library and the Dept of Internal Affairs
Photo credit: Jacob Pollock
by Don Gilling
At the height of the Watergate scandal, when the story had seemed to stall, Deep Throat told Bob Woodward that to understand what was going on he needed to "Follow the Money." In similar vein, if we are to understand the experience of Archives New Zealand and the National and Turnbull Libraries under the control of the Department of Internal Affairs, it helps to follow the money.
In 2010 Cabinet approved a proposal to incorporate Archives New Zealand and the National Library (which includes the Turnbull Library) into the Department of Internal Affairs. It was justified on essentially financial grounds. It was claimed that the incorporation would enable the futureproofing of both entities by placing them on a much larger corporate platform, which would lead to lower corporate overheads. More importantly, the Cabinet Paper that advocated the incorporation promised that the statutory functions of both agencies together with appropriate financial safeguards as to their independence would be maintained even while cost savings and economies of scale would be achieved.
Amongst those safeguards was the promise, in June 2010, by the Minister responsible for the three agencies, that separate Budget Votes and Ministerial roles would continue.
Within a year of the incorporation these financial transparency safeguards were dispensed with. The consequence is that information on the expenditure of Archives and the National and Turnbull libraries is no longer separately disclosed in the Internal Affairs Annual Report, but is lumped together with other areas of spending and buried within different categories of output.
The Watergate Special Prosecutor had to go to Court to obtain the tapes that would reveal Nixon's guilt; I had to use the Official information Act to obtain the evidence necessary to evaluate the incorporation of the Archives and Library into Internal Affairs. What I found was this:
Before the incorporation into Internal Affairs, the National Library's total Annual Operating Expenditure was $72 million. But by 2018 it had dropped to $62.7 million. Over the period 2013 —2018, it has DECLINED 9.0%, in sharp contrast to the 12.4% INCREASE in Vote Internal Affairs since 2013. Meanwhile, consumer prices — an indication of the underlying cost rises from inflation — ROSE 12.9%.
Over the same period, Centrally Managed Costs, which are imposed on the Library by Internal Affairs, and which include property costs, ICT costs, and Corporate Support, INCREASED by 25.7%, with the yearly remuneration of the CEO of Internal Affairs INCREASING by 49%.
The claim, therefore, that incorporation would lead to lower overheads has certainly not been borne out. The importance of central costs is shown by the fact that in 2018 these costs accounted for 42.3% of the total Annual Operating Expenditure of the National Library.
In contrast, the operating expense of the National Library (i.e the funds under the control of the National Librarian, which do not include Internal Affairs' centrally imposed costs) amounted to $30.1 million in 2018. Over the period 2013 — 2018 this DECLINED by 24.8%.
In 2018, the Capital Charge levied on the National Library, together with Depreciation and the allocation of central costs, accounted for 51.9% of the Library's total expenditure.
The Capital Charge is a central cost levied by The Treasury on all government agencies for the use of assets. It is designed to encourage efficiency in the use of assets and/or the divestment of assets not essential to the operations of the agencies. This makes no sense, of course, in the case of Libraries and Archives, whose purpose is to collect, protect, preserve and build up their asset base. Illogically, it is applied to the National Library and the Archives.
The Turnbull's Annual Operating Expenditure, excluding the allocation of central costs which are borne by the National Library as a whole, amounted to $6.5 million in 2018. Over the period 2013 — 2018 this expenditure has DECLINED by 9.7%.
The smaller sum of monies under the direct control of the Turnbull Librarian, have DECLINED by 3.6% over the period 2013 — 2018.
In 2013, spending on the Turnbull made up 10.2% of the Government's Budget Vote for the National Library. But by 2018, the Turnbull's share of the National Library cake had dropped to 9.8%.
Archives New Zealand have also suffered from declining budgets. Between 2013 and 2018, the Operating Expenditure component of the Archives budget DECLINED 18.7%, while the monies under the direct control of the Chief Archivist DECLINED by nearly 30%. Further stress on the Archives budget has come from the INCREASE in Corporate overheads of 279% over the period 2013 — 2019.
In the case of the Libraries the significance of Centrally Managed Costs, and particularly the inclusion therein of Corporate Support (whatever that may mean), lends considerable weight and support to the following points made in the Friends of the Turnbull Library's submission to the Ministerial Review Group looking at whether to remove both Libraries and Archives from under the Internal Affairs umbrella:
(14) Recent pronouncements by both Minister and Senior DIA managers have suggested that a continuation of the present legal and structural arrangements is necessary because the DIA "needs the money." This is disturbing since it implies that monies have been, and may in the future, be transferred, by various creative accounting means such as overhead re-allocations, away from the Libraries to other DIA functions and activities in possible breach of the Public Finance Act.
Alternatively, the argument may be simply that the DIA needs a bigger budget and more business units in order to spread the corporate overhead more widely. But this raises the real possibility that Libraries are, in effect, paying for the overhead generated by say Passports or Dog Control. The absence of a clear and specific appropriation for Libraries, therefore, means that there is insufficient transparency, as well as no public assurance, or safeguards, as to the financial independence and finances of the National and Turnbull Libraries.
On a broader canvas, the following comment made by the Turnbull Librarian, in his submission to the Ministerial Review Group, is particularly pertinent:
Operational resourcing — ongoing operational funding cuts over the last several years have left the National Library, and the Turnbull within it, severely weakened and demoralised. These are now manifesting in staff cuts and service closures. This is an area of immediate concern, and rates as the most urgent challenge.
These comments are also echoed in the National Librarian's submission when he says
"After seven years of financial pressure and staff reductions, stakeholders and staff of the Library now strongly believe that, despite the Library's best efforts, we are failing to perform properly in each of our three statutory roles."
Following the money, therefore, shows that the central promises of 2010 have not been kept. Declining expenditure is evidence of deliberate under-funding, not the achievement of cost efficiencies. The Libraries and the Archives have not been "futureproofed", statutory functions are increasingly at significant risk, and important safeguards have faded away.
Resourcing them properly, and turning the National and Turnbull Libraries into an Autonomous Crown Entity, under the control of an independent Board of Trustees, would go a long way to restoring necessary safeguards and public trust. The new legal status would also allow the public, in effect, to shape, build and ultimately control our documentary heritage and taonga, for the benefit of current and future generations of New Zealanders.
And making the Chief Archivist an Officer of Parliament would give them sufficient authority to fully control and shape proper archival processes and support their constitutional role as the keeper of the public record.
This article was first published in the Briefing Papers and is reprinted with permission.
Dr Donald Gilling has taught at Universities in Australia, England and New Zealand, and for nine years was Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Waikato. He holds Fellowships in both Professional Accounting Bodies in Australasia and is the author of over 90 papers in academic and professional journals, covering topics in public finance, accounting and auditing, and the economics of education. He has acted as an expert witness in a number of applications for Judicial Review of the operations and decision making of government and public bodies. He has been a member of the committee of the Friends of the Turnbull Library for nearly 20 years.
Independence for the National Library and Archives NZ?
In mid 2018 the Government called for submissions on the current status and future of "National Archival and Library Institutions" (NALI). The Friends of Turnbull Library immediately submitted that the National Library of New Zealand (along with the Alexander Turnbull Library) needs independence to do its job properly. At present it is under the control of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) where it is a subset of Information and Knowledge Services. The absence of a clear and specific appropriation for both Archives and Libraries means that there is insufficient transparency as well as a lack of public assurance and safeguards for the financial independence and finances of the National and Turnbull Libraries and for Archives New Zealand. For the full NALI submission see here.
Recent further research has been carried out to show the increasingly dismal state of Library finances. See Follow the Money.
And see also The Numbers Tell the Story.
The Government is planning to make an announcement in the New Year.
Treasures of Turnbull Library inspire two writers
Posted on November 23, 2018 by Kate Fortune
Two well-known writers are co-recipients of 2019 Friends of Turnbull Library Research Grants.
Wellington writer and broadcaster Nick Bollinger receives a research grant to assist his latest project, eventually to be published as an illustrated book chronicling the development of the counterculture in New Zealand during the years 1960-1975. Bollinger will be drawing on the rich and diverse collections of the Turnbull Library to trace the roots of countercultural ideas, how they evolved and how they affected New Zealand society.
Bollinger is presenter and producer of The Sampler for RNZ, and is the author of the acclaimed Goneville: a memoir, published by Awa Press in 2016. He says the term "counterculture" originated in the 1960s and became widely used to identify a range of groups and individuals broadly sharing a belief in an alternative society. "From Baxter's poetry to the music of Blerta, from Roger Donaldson to Tim Shadbolt, the counterculture has had a profound and lasting impact on New Zealand culture."
Wellington historian Dr Vincent O'Malley – whose fine book The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000, was published by Bridget Williams Books in 2016 – receives a research grant to assist him to continue work on a book on the New Zealand Wars aimed at secondary school students as well as a general market.
Dr O'Malley says that his project "takes us to the heart of the series of conflicts that profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation's history." His new book will focus on a number of quite lengthy first-hand accounts (manuscripts held in the Alexander Turnbull Library) from Māori and Pākehā who either fought in or witnessed the wars that ravaged New Zealand between 1845 and 1872. From Heni Te Kiri Karamu's narrative of her remarkable exploits as a wahine toa, through to Gustavus Ferdinand von Tempsky's colourful account of his time in the Forest Rangers and beyond, these stories will resonate with New Zealanders who are now acknowledging the need to remember, embrace and own our past.


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Ка́м'янка — село в Україні, у Алчевській міській громаді, Алчевського району Луганської області. Населення становить 248 осіб. До 2020 орган місцевого самоврядування — Петрівська сільська рада. Перша згадка з'являється про хутір Кам'янка у 1715 р. Відстань до Перевальська становить близько 15 км і проходить автошляхом місцевого значення.

Відповідно до Розпорядження Кабінету Міністрів України від 12 червня 2020 року № 717-р «Про визначення адміністративних центрів та затвердження територій територіальних громад Луганської області» увійшло до складу Алчевської міської громади.

Знаходиться на тимчасово окупованій території України.

Населення
За даними перепису 2001 року населення села становило 248 осіб, з них 81,85% зазначили рідною українську мову, 16,94% — російську, а 1,21% — іншу.

Примітки

Посилання
 Погода в селі Кам'янка

Села Луганської області

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Chicago's 'Reform-Minded' DA Lets Gunman Off Easy After Killing a Man and Wounding a Bystander
OPINION: Sleepy Joe Can't Stop Me From Buying F-15s for Protection Against Doddering Tyrants Like Him
Biff Diddle
MSNBC Report on Venezuela Makes Case for Second Amendment
'In Venezuela, gun ownership is not something that's open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power'
Andrew Kugle
MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders unwittingly made the American case for the Second Amendment during a report Tuesday on the political upheaval in Venezuela.
Anchor Andrea Mitchell introduced Sanders for his report by commenting on the surprising ability of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to stay in power, despite the pressure on him to step down.
"Not only hanging on but he appears to still control the military," Sanders said. "You have to understand, in Venezuela gun ownership is not something that's open to everybody. So if the military have the guns, they have the power and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country."
Maduro's socialist regime has presided over economic devastation in Venezuela, where citizens are beset by rising prices and food and medical shortages. The country banned private gun ownership in 2012 under Maduro's authoritarian predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
The Associated Press reports that opposition leader Juan Guido took the streets to protest Maduro's government and called on the military to join him:
Anti-government demonstrators clashed with troops loyal to Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro at an air base in the capital hours after opposition leader Juan Guaidó took to the streets in a bold and risky attempt to lead a military uprising against the embattled socialist.
The early-morning rebellion seems to have only limited military support.
But it was by far the most-serious challenge yet to Maduro's rule since Guaidó, with the backing of the U.S. and dozens of other countries, declared himself the country's interim president in January in rejection of a government he accused of stealing last year's presidential election.
The dramatic events began early Tuesday when Guaidó, flanked by a few dozen national guardsmen and some armored crowd control vehicles, released a three-minute video filmed near a Caracas air base in which he called on civilians and others in the armed forces to join a final push to topple Maduro.
Some of the clashes were captured on video. One showed Maduro soldiers in an armored vehicle running over protesters.
https://twitter.com/ConsumerSOS/status/1123269022785646592
Published under: Guns , MSNBC , Venezuela

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Now the fastest growing moderate political podcast in the nation! Join two best friends, Rob, a liberal (against leftism), and Justin, a conservative (don't call him a Trumper), as they engage in some calm and less calm, but always civil, discourse. DTM is a show about politics and current events through the lens of moderation, measuredness, common ground, understanding, and compassion. Indoctrinate yourself into moderate values, and join the Moderation Revolution!
Down the Middle: A Political Podcast The Intermediary Network
Episode 32: "I heard Justin and Rob work for the CIA now!", The Conspiracy Theory Episode
Redacted.
Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe
Here are all our links in one place: https://linktr.ee/downthemiddle
Episode 31: "Rush to Judgement"
On Episode 31 of the pod, Justin finally gets a question, we go through the various political problems facing several prominent politicians; talk about the power grid in Texas, revist the Disney v. Gina Carano issue, and we discuss Rush Limbaugh and the rise of alternative media.
Episode 30: "How to Reduce Crime without going Nuclear"
This week on the pod, we answer some user questions aimed at Rob, as per usual; discuss the impeachment, or lack thereof and its implications; you finally get to see us spar about cancel culture and conservative discrimination, and we wrap up our discussion with Editor-in-Chief, Clay Cogman about the decriminalization of drugs.
Special Guest: Clay Cogman.
Episode 29: "How to Destroy the Nuclear Family"
On Episode 29 of the pod, we go through the news of the week, talk about Bidenomics, and the impeachment trial, bring on a special guest to remind us that politics can be both funny and stupid, and continue our conversation from last week about hookers and blow.
Special Guests: Andrea More and Clay Cogman.
Episode 28: "How to Create a Crime Syndicate"
On Episode 28 of the podcast, we discuss the ongoing saga of the market, GameStop and Robinhood, give some important updates concerning impeachment and executive orders, and Rob presents his case for the legalization of cocaine and hookers.
Episode 27: "Slow Joe's Foes Don't Like the EOs"
Join us for Episode 27 of the podcast where we cover the Biden inaguration, Trump's upcoming impeachment hearings, and we go through aaaall the executive orders your little hearts could ever desire and much more.
© 2021 The Intermediary Network
AdamSpaulding , 12/23/2020
The Best Political Podcast in America
I've been listening to these guys since the first episode, and I've worked my entire career in media. The growth that Rob has made in the field of punditry in 25 episodes is nothing short of amazing. His analysis is incredibly insightful, and his ability to take the news of the day and relate it to larger cultural issues in the country and in the west is a special talent. And somehow it is never so sophisticated that a political novice wouldn't understand the greater points, yet it is also thought provoking enough for the political junkie. He's also able to combine it all with humor and give the listener the impression that he takes politics with a grain of salt and recognizes the insignificance of vapid political quarreling, something that has turned so many of us off to the hyperbolic nature of the "news anchors" of the day. His indifference to the "thought police" that exist on both sides of the aisle and his confidence to express views on certain issues that are sometimes staunchly conservative and sometimes tremendously progressive would likely deny him an opinion spot on any of the current media networks, but that is precisely the point of why his analysis is such a breath of fresh air. It represents the lens in which the majority of Americans probably view these issues and why more and more of us are hungry for alternate media choices.
Justin has also developed an undeniably important role on the show as the historian and soft-spoken often-agreeable persona who expresses traditionally conservative viewpoints in a relatable and succinct manner. He is the perfect counterpoint to Rob, who is often fiery and protracted, because he has a knack for closing out a particular topic with one precise and honest statement, which is a great way of buttoning up a point that Rob is making. His expertise as a theologian is an asset to the show, especially for people like me who trend towards atheism. My viewpoints on religion and its place in society would be dramatically different if more religious people thought like Justin and had the ability to retain humility rather than arrogance and certitude in their faith. It's Justin's ability to see politics through a similar lens to that of which he sees religion that makes him perfect for a podcast that prides itself on being measured.
All in all, Down the Middle is as close to a perfect political podcast as is possible. It's compelling, funny, educational, and very entertaining. Perhaps my favorite element of the show is the fact that I can sense a deep and loving friendship between the two hosts that is rare and frankly inspiring. The listener gets a sense that the political conservations and debates taking place on the show are secondary to the sincere friendship and respect the hosts have for each other. They are so confident in their relationship that they're able to speak up when they think the other person is wrong about something without making the listener feel uncomfortable that one of them will take something too personally. Again, a breath of fresh air is the best term I can use to describe it. If more people listened to Rob and Justin and the Down the Middle Podcast, we'd be a better country. There's no doubt about it.
emkatw16 , 08/19/2020
I love the variety of topics and viewpoints. They do an amazing job of including the complexity of an issue while showing different sides and opinions. Refreshing look on what politics should be. Definitely one of my favorites!!
Politically Pragmatic , 08/18/2020
True to it's name
I really like how this podcast has been fair to the political spectrum in presenting different viewpoints. They are respectful in their discussions and the way in which they host their guests. I feel educated after having listened to their latest podcast episode to date. Instead of appealing to emotions, these guys are dedicated to discussing issues in a factual way instead of using divisive rhetoric. It's refreshing!
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The 'strange' detail on King Charles' new bank notes has got all royal fans talking
King Charles' new bank notes have been revealed but fans have spotted that something is missing!
King Charles' new bank notes have been revealed but royal fans have all been saying the same thing about one 'strange' detail.
The Royal family has released the first-look of the new bank notes featuring the portrait of King Charles III.
King Charles is set to replace the late Queen Elizabeth when the new notes are rolled out by the Bank Of England in mid-2024.
This royal news (opens in new tab) comes as it's revealed why Prince Louis will eat Christmas dinner in a 'different room' away from Kate and William (opens in new tab).
King Charles' new bank notes have been unveiled to the nation but some royal fans have pointed out that one thing is missing.
The monarch, who took to the throne in September following the death of Queen Elizabeth II (opens in new tab), is now King in the royal line of succession (opens in new tab) and his portrait has been drawn up for the new £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes.
And the samples have been released by the Bank of England and shared by the Royal Family instagram account.
It wrote, "Today, The Bank of England has unveiled designs for new bank notes featuring His Majesty The King. They are expected to enter circulation in the UK by mid-2024.
"Although the Monarch's likeness has appeared on coins since the eighth century, bank notes are a much more recent invention. The British Sovereign has only been featured on British bank notes since 1960, making His Majesty just the second Monarch - and the first King - to appear on currency in this way," the caption beside the post added.
But some fans have pointed out a 'strange' detail.
Taking to the comment section of the upload, one penned, "Oh lovely portrait of his Majesty but it's so strange and a bit sad not to see the Queen on them. I know they'll be in circulation for a while yet but still."
Meanwhile, another wondered why a crown was missing, adding, "Why doesn't he have a crown on?"
A post shared by The Royal Family (@theroyalfamily) (opens in new tab)
A photo posted by on
The unveiling of the note designs come after King Charles' 50p coin effigy (opens in new tab) was revealed by the Royal Mint and featured a special tribute to the late Queen.
A new £50 note (opens in new tab) has also been drawn up for release featuring the face of British mathematician and scientist Alan Turing.
And some other notes are going out of circulation (opens in new tab) so you will need to check your change.
Princess Charlotte to miss out on this honour after King Charles has 'change of heart'
Princess Charlotte was thought to be set for a special new title
Prince George, Charlotte and Louis set to bond with King Charles over this rare school activity
The Wales kids are set to take part in this nature-based learning activity at their school
Why the royals could soon hold 'peace talks' with Harry and Meghan
The Royal Family are being urged to hold 'peace talks' with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex before the Coronation.
King Charles' heartbreaking plea to Prince Harry and William for his 'final years'
The King is said to have issued the warning to both his sons at Prince Philip's funeral, according to an extract from memoir Spare.
By Selina Maycock • Published 5 January 23
The hidden meaning behind King Charles' Christmas speech suit
King Charles has taken notes from the late Queen who too understood the undeniable power of clothes
By Charlie Elizabeth Culverhouse • Published 25 December 22
King Charles gives poignant nod to the Queen in first Christmas speech
In the first glimpse of King Charles' Christmas speech, an image shows him recording standing in St George's Chapel, Windsor.
By Naomi Bartram • Published 24 December 22
King Charles' security to be stepped up ahead of Christmas appearance after two 'egg attacks'
Royal security bosses are in talks to tighten security for the King ahead of Christmas at Sandringham.
By Selina Maycock • Published 23 December 22
Camilla Queen Consort's £267k 'lucky' jewels on her and King Charles' Christmas card explained
Jewellery experts unpick Camilla Queen Consort's Christmas card jewellery choices


The Foundation Madalief (formerly Fazazoma), was born out of love and empathy for the children of Madagascar. Madalief is a non-profit organization which aims to give the most disadvantaged children in Madagascar a chance for a better future.
It started as a cooperative partnership with a local partner, but five years later it has become a foundation that supports multiple projects and programmes in Madagascar.
It is a story of women and men in Ambositra, a small town in Madagascar, who give help to the children who need it.
A story of two women in the Netherlands, who use their qualities and connections to raise funds.
And a story of a woman who travels back and forth between the two countries.
That is how these people make their dreams come true by helping these Malagasy children with support from the Netherlands.
Plus all partners in both the Netherlands and Madagascar.
Please do not forget to mention your address on the bank transfer/bank statement o that we can send you the half-yearly newsletter!


text:
Gaffur Khahn
Gaffur Khan & Group
Embedding fragrance of culture in Sufi
Gaffur Khan is 56 and belongs to the Maanganiyar community of Rajasthan, a community of folk singers who were the musicians in the Royal court of Jaisalmer. Tutored under Ustaad Nihaal Khan, Gaffur Khan has been singing since he was 8 years old, and has been the recipient of Radio Station Aakashwani Rajasthan Award too. Like all musical families, music has been transferred through generations in his family, and he drew his inspiration from his father. So far, Gaffur Khan has performed in about 40-45 countries and wants his children to continue this tradition of the "Guru-Shishya" (Teacher-Disciple) parampara(tradition).
He also teaches music at home to his children and to over 50 students. Apart from vocals, he and his group are also proficient in playing other instruments like Dholak, Khadtaal(castanet), Harmonium and Khamaicha. Talking about the importance of music in his life, he says, that even when a newborn cries in their family, it's in a perfect melodious pitch! Personally his favorite genre is Sufi music. As is the case of most popular manganiyaar singers, his patron is also Komal Kothari. While he has performed in many countries till date, his favorite place to perform is Paris. He fondly speaks about the importance of education in his and his children's life. Apart from music, this talented man from Jaisalmer wants his children to be well educated apart from providing them a training in music. His children are equally passionate about music, and want to pursue it further. As Ashraf Khan (his son) says, he mainly sings in Raag Sorath and is learning harmonium as well. His guru is his father. Gaffur Khan also takes music workshops in training camps. His musical themes are deeply inspired by and embedded in the culture of Jaisalmer.
Everyone in this group is A-Grade certified artists as per All India Radio. His group also comprises of Mushtaque Khan on Dholak and Feroze Khan and Dilawar Khan on Khadtaal, and three kids, Aaraf Khan, Roshan Khan and Insaaf Khan. Their songs comprise of themes from almost all aspects of the royal life, childbirth, marriage, love and longing for one's beloved. At times, their songs are customized for special occasions for the royal family. One could almost smell the aroma and fragrance of the first rain while hearing these melodious tunes. It's interesting to note that how the mundane, daily things have been woven into this musical magic by Manganiyars. The golden city of Jaisalmer and its surrounding villages are famed for their rich history of kings and poets, and is a place where Muslim and Hindu mystical traditions come together -timeless and beyond borders. True to its nickname, the music of the Golden city is pure gold as well, heated in this mystical land and honed through generations. This is the land of music, seasons, mystery, colors, puppets, ruins, architecture, stones and love. And this is the beauty of the folk music of these Manganiyaars, simple yet expressive and one couldn't help but relate to it and love it more. Their songs grow on you with time, and you might find yourself humming bits and pieces of it without realizing it.
FELLOW MUSICIANS
Kootal Khan
Mushtaq Khan
Dilaawar Khan
FOLK MUSIC IS NOTHING WITHOUT CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY
UNDERSTAND THEIR MUSIC
Contact GAFFUR KHAN at +91 9414965939
© Anahad Foundation (www.anahad.ngo)


Until this outfit, I hadn't worn overalls since the 3rd grade. I'll be honest with you guys, I was completely against the overall trend until recently. It's not that I didn't like them on other people, I just never thought that I would feel comfortable enough to wear them myself. BUT since my goal for this year was to let go of my fears & do things that put me out of my comfort zone, I decided to be brave & just buy the dang overalls! I know, a very small feat for my goal but it was a small victory for me. Go big or go home, right?
How do you guys feel about this trend? Is it something you would wear (or already wear) OR are you 100% against it & think that only children should wear them? Sound off in the comments below!
Love this outfit! Perfect for Spring!


text:
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text:
Amilcar Cabral
National liberation and peace, cornerstones of non-alignment
Written:196
First Published:1969
Source: Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, stage 1, London, 1974, pp
Translated: Richard Handyside
Transcription/Markup: Steve Palmer
Proofread:Unknown
Copyleft: Copyright stage 1 .
Extracts from a speech made in Cairo to the 2nd Conference of Heads of State and Governments of Non-Aligned Countries, 1964
For some days we have been following with great attention the speeches in the general debate. For us these speeches have given us grounds to feel proud and have greatly encouraged us in our liberating struggle.
In your speeches, you have unanimously condemned imperialism and every sort of foreign domination as being the main source of the tensions, the suffering and the dangers which burden humanity. You have unequivocally reaffirmed your hatred of war, of foreign military bases and of recourse to violence as a means of settling conflicts between ideologies, between nations and between states. You have fiercely defended peaceful co-existence, loyal and constructive international co-operation and the need for equitable sharing of the world's riches, which have been created by man. By an argument as intelligent as it is free from prejudice you have shown that the banning of nuclear tests and weapons, as well as general and total disarmament, have become a necessary condition for guaranteeing the survival of the human species and even of our planet. In your just and exemplary aspiration to serve humanity you have reaffirmed your support for the principles of the United Nations Charter. You have thus shown your firm determination to work effectively for the immediate liberation of that Organisation, which is at present a giant with its hands tied, so that, its structure renewed, its institutions democratised and its voice strengthened to include those of hundreds of millions of human beings, it may fully serve the noble causes of freedom, fraternity, progress and happiness for mankind.
But you have done more than this. Faithfully translating the unanimous feelings of active solidarity of your peoples with our liberation struggle, you have given a striking proof of your position as combatants for liberty. You, our fellow combatants, at present occupy the place of honour which history has reserved for you and which allows you to contribute by all necessary means to the pressing elimination of colonial domination in our countries.
In the framework of your concrete solidarity with the national liberation of peoples and with their inalienable right to control their own destinies-one of the cornerstones of non-alignment-you have also, directly or indirectly, given your fraternal support to the peoples of heroic and socialist Cuba, of South Vietnam, indefatigable and victorious combatants, of Cyprus and of the Congo, tragically related by the blow of brazen foreign intervention, of martyrised Arab Palestine and of Puerto Rico, that small island which is so often forgotten and in which, as the evidence of its delegation has shown us, more than two million human beings are still suffering under the double yoke of imperialism and colonialism and are struggling, despite the power which faces them, for national independence.
Mr President, Your Majesties, Your Exellencies, the walls of the University of Cairo will guard with understandable zeal the echoes of your speeches, which have been so many commitments and lessons of humanism. And tomorrow, in the course of research into notable contributions to the wellbeing of humanity, people may well ask themselves whether, given the limitations imposed on the United Nations in this year 1964, the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, in which no spectre can stifle the freedom to be free or fidelity to principles, has not constituted the most important or at least the most effective international organisation of our times.
Mr President, before returning to continue the political and armed struggle for the liberation of our peoples, we wish to reaffirm our active confidence in the practical value of this high international gathering. For our part, we are aware that the complex nature of our struggle is not limited simply to the elimination of the colonial yoke. Whether we wish it or not, we are fighting against imperialism, which is the basis of colonialism, in every form.
It is on the basis of this universal principle that we would like to express our firm conviction that our struggle, be it purely political or armed, is also an expression of the great struggle for peaceful co-existence and for peace. We want to carry out, at least, a policy of peaceful co-existence and peace with all peoples and all states, but in our concrete situation we consider that our very existence as free and independent nations and states is a sine qua non for this policy of coexistence and peace. To co-exist one must first of all exist, so the imperialists and the colonialists must be forced to retreat so that we can make a new contribution to human civilisation, based on the work, the dynamic personality and the culture of our peoples.
To make this contribution in independence, fraternity and equality with all peoples, it does not seem to us to be necessary to get involved in the ideological disputes and conflicts which are splitting the world. We do not need to follow any line: our position must be and remain based on the fundamental aspirations of our peoples. There is, however, in our ethic of non-alignment one vital need for alignment: we must be capable-and free-to adopt without equivocation any position which aims to serve the dignity, emancipation and progress of peoples.
Mr President, Your Majesties, Your Excellencies, you all represent peoples who have had experience in the struggle for national liberation, albeit to differing degrees, according to the diversity of your historical conditions. Thus you know better than we do that this struggle is in its very essence a daily capitalisation of efforts and sacrifices for a better life and for social liberation. Allow us to affirm to you that the policy of non-alignment which was defined three years ago in Belgrade and has been strengthened during this Conference, is a guarantee for the efforts and sacrifices capitalised by our peoples for their total liberation from every sort of oppression.
Marxist Writers' Archive | Amilcar Cabral Archive | Marxism and Anti-imperialism in Africa


text:
Adviser log in
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Boal & Co was established in January 1995 and operates from offices in Douglas (Isle of Man), St Helier (Jersey), Gibraltar and Dublin (Ireland). Our consultancy team has both actuarial and non-actuarial skills and expertise.
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On 25th May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") comes into effect across the European Union. GDPR represents a significant change in data protection legislation and is designed to provide you with greater transparency and control over your personal data.
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Two new beatsticks that gain Power based on your G Zone when they Stand.
ACT (RC) 1/Turn Generation Break 1: [Rest this Unit] Choose up to 5 of your Rearguards, during that turn, they gain "CONT (RC): Resist".
Rush – AUTO (RC) 1/Turn: When this Unit Stands due to your card's effect, for each face-up card in your G Zone, during this turn, this Unit gains Power+4000.
Rush – AUTO (RC) 1/Turn: When this card Stands due to your card's effect, for each face-up card in your G Zone, during that turn, this Unit gains Power+5000.


There are many ways to approach a multi-track recording, a lot of them being quite effective.
The band, or at least the rhythm section, would record all at once with a guide vocal that is not intended to be the final lead vocal. Each musician would overdub and change his or her part. Then on to the next song.
So as you sing your "scratch" vocals, do the best you can and don't worry about mistakes. What you're trying to do here is merely help the rhythm section capture the feel, groove, mood and spirit of the song and your performance. For different reasons, Chet Atkins use to say that if you make a mistake, wait until that part comes back around again and play the exact same thing. If they want it changed, they'll tell you, if not . . .
At the end of this session, the tracks would be ready for lead vocals, any additional lead or rhythm instruments, background vocals, and mixing. This can take anywhere from two sessions a song, to as many as six or more sessions per song for master quality work.
What is the most important element of the session? Feel. Listen to hits, all the rules get broken eventually, but they all have a good "feel" to them.
The vocal performance is, perhaps, the second most important element of the recording. A great vocal can make a song. Harmonies are also important. Most hit records have well done harmonies.
Another extremely important element is the groove. The groove is the interplay of rhythms played by the drummer, bass player, and others that give the song its rhythmic character.
And, also important, is the lead instrument. It should advance the song and fit in with its character.
A good rule of thumb in recording is that if you can't hear every word in the lyrics, you're playing too much. If you can't hear all of the other instruments, you're playing too loud!
If you are singing, know your songs completely. Be able to sing them without mistakes, preferably "a capella" several times each day before the session date. Don't strain your voice. If you're not used to singing, don't sing more than three or four songs total each day. Increase one song a day weekly. Start well ahead of your session.
If you are recording with members of your band, make sure you've rehearsed well enough. The studio can be a more difficult place to play than the stage. Know your material as well as you can, you'll save time and money.
Get plenty of sleep the night before. Don't be hung-over, drunk or drugged. Under these conditions the only person you'll sound good to is yourself and eventually you'll be sober and find that "tape doesn't lie and there's no hype on tape".
Have a copy of the words ready no matter how well you know the song. It may be useful to the producer and the musicians as well. The lyrics tell of the character, the scene and the mood and you're looking for your musicians to capture this and bring it to life.
If possible, spend what is called: "pre-production" time with your producer. You will outline the way the session will run, and generally, save time at the session.
Make sure you have done your homework. Be sure you've shopped well. By the day of the session, you should have listened to several demos and/or masters by the producer. You should have talked to some of their clients. You should know who the engineer is, you should know who the core rhythm section players are. Know how much your demo or recording will cost in total. Cheap demos aren't always bad; it's just more likely that they will be. Knowledge like this can help you reach a comfort zone, which in turn, will lead you to a better recording.


Tooth Replacement: What Are The Options?
Losing teeth is a traumatic event. We do not take it lightly in the dental office. When teeth are lost it is important to know where that person is in their understanding of the problem and the possible solutions. There are four options: do nothing, make a removable denture, make a fixed bridge or place a dental implant(s) and crown(s).
Do nothing: This option may leave an undesirable esthetic effect with a gap somewhere in the smile. A missing tooth will also adversely affect chewing. Most people will chew on the side that is more effective, causing wear and tear on that may also cause some joint (TMJ) pain. When teeth do not touch another tooth they will usually drift which can change the bite. When a space is left it will catch more food making it harder to clean which will leave the area more susceptible to decay and gum disease. This option starts out as the least expensive but fixing the problems caused by not replacing the tooth will cost more time and money in the long run.
Make a removable denture: This was the option of choice many years ago before we had more stable means to replace teeth. It is the least costly replacement option. It can function well for chewing but it has some significant drawbacks. The biggest problem is that dentures always move which puts pressure on the gums and adjacent teeth to which they are attached. This movement can lead to problems with the adjacent teeth. Metal clasps are used on the adjacent teeth to hold the denture in place and may be esthetically unappealing. Removable dentures need to be removed for cleaning both the denture and the teeth. They will catch food while eating which can be uncomfortable and unsightly.
The fixed bridge option: Until implants became available this was the most desirable option for tooth replacement because it was cemented into place, no movement. Bridges are traditionally made of metal with porcelain over the metal for esthetics, however, today some bridges can be made of all ceramic materials. Bridges can be very esthetic and can be long lasting. The biggest drawback is that to make a bridge other teeth need to be cut back to support the bridge and cleaning is difficult. Cleaning under the bridge is very challenging especially in the back of the mouth. This leads to an increased incidence of decay and gum disease.
The dental implant option: Dental implants are strong, long lasting tooth replacement option. Implants have now been in regular use for 30 years. Implants can be used to replace single teeth, multiple teeth or all of the teeth. The implant option is usually more expensive than the other options but may save money in the long run. Let me explain that, replacing a single tooth with an implant and crown is more expensive than a bridge or removable denture the first time it is done. However, if we live long enough, all dental materials will need to be replaced at some time. Usually the implant does not need to be replaced but the crown may. If you have to replace one crown on an implant that will cost less than a fixed bridge. If you are young enough you may need to replace a crown or bridge several times. At some point the teeth supporting a bridge or a removable denture may break to the point that they cannot be used any more and the area of treatment has now become larger and more expensive.
Should you lose a tooth or teeth be sure to explore all of these options with your dentist and the short and long term expenses associated with each. Esthetics are certainly a concern but most importantly a full set of functioning teeth is crucial for your overall heath.
Dr. Robert A. Gallegos is a Fellow in the Academy of General Dentistry, he is on the faculty of Spear Education, a member the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine and the American Dental Association. Dr. Gallegos practices dentistry in Middleburg, VA. www.MiddleburgSmiles.com.


text:
Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.5
The 1.5 revision of Things Every Hacker Once Knew is out.
Alas, I had to drop the reference to the Space Cadet keyboard. Turns out it shipped a 32-bit status word and this had nothing to do with 9-bit bytes at all. The indirect reference to the SAIL extended ASCII keyboard is still in.
Patrick Maupin's revelation about the AT prefix is summarized.
The fact that UUCP was a hack around the old two-tier structure of phone rates is mentioned.
There's more about TTL serial. Gary Miller, my very hardware-savvy lieutenant and now acting lead on the GPSD project, thinks this didn't become a common way to ship data off peripherals and daughterboards until after 2000, with GPS chips leading the way. This matches my recollection, but I was pretty oblivious about that sort of thing until the last decade so I don't consider my recollection very good evidence. Commentary an correction invited.
I'd like to pin down the year cathode-ray tubes disappeared. I know the leading display vendors ceased production in 2005, but I think the transition might have been as much as two years sooner. Again, corrections welcomed.
71 thoughts on "Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.5"
Did you push the update? I'm still getting v1.4, even after a refresh.
iajrz on 2017-02-06 at 07:57:24 said:
Still getting v1.4, too; also, I think the versioning info up top is better, (a la How to Become A Hacker)
>Still getting v1.4, too; also, I think the versioning info up top is better, (a la How to Become A Hacker)
I've pushed 1.5.
The trouble with versioning info up top is that I have to effectively duplicate what's at the head of the change log, and yes they fall out of sync when I do that. Better to have a single point of truth.
Evan Summers on 2017-02-06 at 08:11:50 said:
At least in some countries, for most people, 56k modems were replaced by ADSL routers which offered speeds of 128k, so there wasn't the jump from 56k modems to 1Mbit "wide area Internet" as you seem to imply. In recent years, common home ADSL bandwidth might have increased every year or two e.g. from 384k to 512k to 1Mbit.
>so there wasn't the jump from 56k modems to 1Mbit "wide area Internet" as you seem to imply.
Not immediately in places without SDSL, true. On the other hand there's much to be said for artful vagueness here. I know ADSL still lags, but the ramp-up to fast SDSL and optical happened pretty fast after '97 – I know I got FIOS with 15mbps down/5mbps up in 2002 which
was already an order of magnitude batter that 1mbps.
Red on 2017-02-06 at 08:21:43 said:
You have stumbled on some popular content. Seems like it would be better to expand this, and make it a chapter of V2 of The Art of Unix Programming. With git and other changes since publishing, it needs an update anyway.
Michael on 2017-02-06 at 08:22:02 said:
the first workhorse Unix machine was the PDP-11 (first shipped in 1970). It had 16-bit words – but, due to some unusual peculiarities of the instruction set, octal made more sense for its machine code as well.
This seems misstated. I've written a fair bit of PDP-11 assembler and I'd say that its affinity for octal was a feature, not a peculiarity. Eight registers, references to both fall naturally in groups of 3 in a single word instruction. Looks like it was designed for octal, and the older machines that had key switches on the front panel were labelled and grouped in octal IIRC. Not to mention that octal appeared everywhere in the documentation.
https://infogalactic.com/info/PDP-11_architecture#Double-operand_instructions
https://infogalactic.com/info/File:Pdp-11-70-panel.jpg
One key item that might be worth mentioning here is that octal was more popular than hex possibly in great part because 7-segment LED displays were dirt cheap and available everywhere while the equivalent bit-point hex displays were rare, expensive and *very* power hungry.
>One key item that might be worth mentioning here is that octal was more popular than hex possibly in great part because 7-segment LED displays were dirt cheap and available everywhere while the equivalent bit-point hex displays were rare, expensive and *very* power hungry.
That is very interesting, but if it was causative it was causation not generally understood at the time.
I'll disagree about the 7-segment, bit, too: you can display hex just fine on a 7-segment display. Uppercase A, C, E, and F, and lowercase b and d, are all unambiguous.
Were circuits for converting hex to 7-segment as widely available as the ones for converting binary-coded decimal (and therefore octal – the fourth bit could be held off, or with discrete logic anything depending on it could be simplified out)? They had to have been more expensive, though it's possible that needing more displays might have made up the difference.
Were there a significant number of octal machines that actually used this style of display? To my understanding, the PDP-11 simply used a light per bit, with printed boxes around them grouping them in groups of three.
Maybe it was considered easier, therefore, to keep the conversions between binary and octal in your head than hex. It would have also indisputably have been easier to convert to text in a program, only needing to OR the value of the zero character, rather than either adding a different value or doing a memory lookup.
The 7447 series BCD-to-7-segment decoders, which seems to be the most common commodity decoder today (and has apparently existed at least since 1974), outputs nonsense for A-E and blank for F.
Ed on 2017-02-06 at 09:47:05 said:
CRTs didn't disappear, they faded away. :-P
If I'm not mistaken, the absolute last holdouts for CRTs were Quake players. Something about the circle jumps in that game (presumably due to low lag) made it a necessity for anyone who played seriously.
Not necessarily hacker specific, but since it's Quake, definitely in the Venn pool.
> Eight registers, references to both fall naturally in groups of 3 in a single word instruction
Eight addressing modes too. When I noticed it, I thought it was extremely elegant that immediate operands are just (pc)+ – or, in octal, 27 [37 for memory]
RCS can't take care of that?
>RCS can't take care of that?
Not when I'm using git, no. :-)
Anyway, RCS version numbers don't correspond to the external release number. The former changes much faster.
Patrick Maupin on 2017-02-06 at 10:29:24 said:
Not bad on the "AT" command set. One nit: 0100000101010100 isn't quite right. The time sequence, for an uppercase "AT" at 8 bits with no parity, in a regexp any hacker ought to be able to understand, but with whitespace inserted for clarity, is this:
1+0 1000 0010 1+0 0010 1010 1+
I still think you should put a note in about asynchronous start stop data. Most really old-time hackers knew they needed to match modems — they couldn't use a synchronous modem with their async terminal. The synchronous modems were used for things like connecting an IBM mainframe to a 3270 terminal concentrator. But the connectors were the same, because they all used the RS-232 standard, which is data-stream agnostic.
The protocols, such as bisync and HDLC/SDLC, used with synchronous modems allowed error correction and more efficient use of the precious PSTN bandwidth. This was such a good idea that even the later iterations of "asynchronous" modems used these under the hood, starting with MNP and V.42. When you sent data using an earlier modem, the actual data you sent was shipped over the wire. But with MNP or V.42, it was packetized and shipped synchronously (without start and stop bits), trading latency for bandwidth, and allowing transparent error correction. With later versions of MNP, and V.42bis and V.44, on-the-fly compression was added as well. (The V.42bis LZW compression was very similar to that used in .gif files.)
>I still think you should put a note in about asynchronous start stop data. Most really old-time hackers knew they needed to match modems — they couldn't use a synchronous modem with their async terminal.
I guess I'm not old-time enough. Your mentions of 3270 and SDLC/HDLC suggests they were IBM mainframe tech, which would have put them outside of hacker common knowledge.
Alsadius on 2017-02-06 at 11:12:47 said:
The death of the CRT was around the time you mentioned – as with all such things, it took some time, but I recall seeing my first non-CRT screen in the late 90s(when they were rare and expensive), and getting my first flatscreen around 2003-04(by which point they were the obvious choice for anyone wanting a new monitor). I know I got my first flatscreen late enough in the game that I could dual-monitor my PC with no undue hassles on either hardware or software after an initial reboot – I think I used the VGA port for the CRT and the DVI port for the flatscreen, which implies a GPU new enough to have both(which fits, I bought that computer in 2002, well into DVI's reign but before HDMI was big).
Jorge Dujan on 2017-02-06 at 11:25:50 said:
I'm still using a CRT. :-)
Jon Brase on 2017-02-06 at 11:35:39 said:
> I'd like to pin down the year cathode-ray tubes disappeared. I know the leading display vendors ceased production in 2005, but I think the transition might have been as much as two years sooner.
This sounds correct, but I'm not sure it's apropos to "things every hacker once knew". It's more "things every adult is old enough to remember".
In 5 or 10 years there may be enough hackers that have never seen a CRT for it to fit in the article, but even then, the transition happened well after computing became a consumer thing (so the knowledge would be much more widely distributed than hackerdom), the electronic interfaces to LCD and CRT monitors were the same at the time of the transition (VGA/DVI), and the reasons that one would want an LCD vs a CRT can be determined by trying to carry them. I don't think there's too much there that is knowledge unique to old-time hackerdom.
>I don't think there's too much there that is knowledge unique to old-time hackerdom.
You raise a fair objection, but…while the fact that the transition happened is something every adult remembers, the date is something I think people are already forgetting. (The last time this happened was when hackers – and everybody else – forgot that color bit-mapped displays hadn't always been ubiquitous; this happened remarkably soon after they became so in 1992.)
I may take this out; as you say, it's borderline. Or I may leave it in to continue the narrative arc that begins with the earliest VDTs in '69. You know, it's hard to grasp that the entire lifespan of the CRT-based terminal was only 36 years.
Troutwaxer on 2017-02-06 at 11:44:33 said:
You might note that (very short) serial connections are still commonly used for configuration purposes in the networking world. Generally a laptop is plugged into the console port (RJ-45 form factor, but still serial) of a Cisco or Juniper device (or occasionally another manufacturer's device) or there's a serial connection from a phone line with a modem to the RJ-45 console (or Aux) port on the networking device. This second form of connection is rapidly dying.
>You might note that (very short) serial connections are still commonly used for configuration purposes in the networking world.
I think this falls under "niche applications".
Mycroft Jones on 2017-02-06 at 12:08:13 said:
Was Pr1mos ever very common? It was a minicomputer OS, and someone over on LWN.net was praising its implementation of dynamic libraries as being very snappy.
Been reading Alan Kay lately, which took me down the mainframe rabbit hole. Now that regular desktops are as powerful as old mainframes, it would be interesting to see an article about what lessons from the mainframe world still remain to be brought forward into our world.
Burroughs MCP is still being shipped as Unisys Clearpath. Multics is still being sold as Stratus VOS. And from their descriptions, they still seem more advanced than Unix/Linux. Dynamic libraries on MCP sound like they are really thought out and done The Right Way.
>Was Pr1mos ever very common?
Not to my knowledge. I knew it existed, but never saw it running live.
A senior citizen on 2017-02-06 at 12:15:30 said:
About the disappearance of CRTs, it happened at different times in different communities. I think the last holdouts were photographers and designers because early LCD screens had horrible color accuracy and most of the existing color calibration tools couldn't handle them. The CRTs also had blacker blacks and the colors didn't shift if you looked at the screen off-angle.
I glanced at some photo forum archives, though, and by the end of 2003 the consensus (among photographers) already seems to have been that the LCDs are almost there and if you're willing to spend an unreasonable amount of money, you could get something as good as the (cheaper) CRT. So I would probably say that the photo/design people switched en masse around 2004 and that implies that people who don't care as deeply about color switched in 2002-2003.
>people who don't care as deeply about color switched in 2002-2003.
I myself didn't switch till late because I had the requirements of a page-layout person at a publishing house – I wasn't as fussy about color as the photographers, but I needed to be able to view two 8.5×11 typeset pages at actual size.
For a few years after 2003 you still couldn't get a flatscreen that capable at non-ruinous prices. I think I decomissioned my last monster CRT in 2006 – I remember I was well behind the curve on this, and it might even have been a year or two later.
The main thing hackers knew about synchronous modems was that they were useless for regular communications of the kind hackers were doing. They'd crop up at hamfests and the like, and it was not uncommon for an unwary hacker to pounce on what he thought was a smoking deal only to discover that he'd brought home a doorstop.
There were computers that used seven-segment hex displays, such as the KIM-1, that were widely used by contemporary hackers.
Consider this myth busted.
guest on 2017-02-06 at 13:01:06 said:
> 1992 Bit-mapped color displays ship on consumer-grade PCs.
The Amiga and Atari ST shipped in 1984, with support for color RGB CRT's (this obviously skipped the problematic RF modulation step which was needed when hooking them up to a TV). Some home computers may also qualify here, especially if you don't insist on a fully-general bitmapped display and allow for "character" modes much like what a terminal would generate. For instance, the Amstrad CPC, which was indeed quite popular; and the BBC micro, which launched as early as 1981.
>especially if you don't insist on a fully-general bitmapped display and allow for "character" modes much like what a terminal would generate.
I specifically meant to insist on fully bit-mapped and digitally-driven color displays here. I remember the earlier color displays based on repurposing TV hardware and driven through analog modulation; they were horrible kludges unsuited for any serious work.
@Jay:
>The main thing hackers knew about synchronous modems was that they were useless for regular communications of the kind hackers were doing.
Exactly my point. Knowledge of which poisonous nuts and berries to avoid.
I think you're dating bitmapped displays on PCs a bit too late. I bought a genuine IBM PC/AT in 1986 with an EGA display that was, I'm pretty sure, fully bitmapped and color. Yes, most consumers didn't have them then, but every hacker/hobbyist I knew began getting them about that time.
The VGA display came out in 1987 with 256 colors and was the true beginning of the modern display era.
>I think you're dating bitmapped displays on PCs a bit too late. I bought a genuine IBM PC/AT in 1986 with an EGA display that was, I'm pretty sure, fully bitmapped and color.
Yes. Now, do you remember its resolution, and its character width and height when used in terminal mode? Probably not: if you're like most people, you have mercifully blotted them from your memory.
Here's a hint: though EGA theoretically supported higher resolutions, the monitors generally available at the time maxed out at a 40×25 character display. Thus, EGA displays remained inferior to VDTs if you were doing any kind of programming or word processing. Which, in fact, is why IBM sold monochrome displays – they could form better, more readable text and were actually competitive with VDTs.
That is what didn't change until around 1992. Color display technology had to evolve for longer before it could match the dot pitch of a monochrome VDT.
Jeff L on 2017-02-06 at 14:54:18 said:
Not new to this version, but just a comment on the wording of this paragraph (bottom of the Hardware Context section):
Often, however, nostalgia obscures how very underpowered those machines were. For example: a DEC VAX 11-780 minicomputer in the mid-1980s, used for timesharing and often supporting a dozen simultaneous uses, had less than a thousand times the processing power and less that five thousand times as much storage available as a low-end smartphone does in 2017.
Although it's obvious what you meant here (which is probably why it didn't register when I read it the first time), the wording is confusing: "Less than 1000 times the processing power" seems to imply that a VAX 11-780 had "almost 1000 times more processing power" than a smartphone, which is obviously not what you meant. Likewise, having "less tha[n] 5000 times as much storage" as a smartphone seems to imply that a VAX 11-780 had almost 5000 times more storage than a smartphone, which is also obviously not what you meant.
I suggest changing the wording to something resembling the following:
Often, however, nostalgia obscures how very underpowered those machines were. For example: a DEC VAX 11-780 minicomputer in the mid-1980s, used for timesharing and often supporting a dozen simultaneous uses [users?], had less than 1/1000 of the processing power and less than 1/5000 of the storage capacity of a low-end smartphone in 2017.
> Here's a hint: though EGA theoretically supported higher resolutions, the monitors generally available at the time maxed out at a 40×25 character display.
If you're suggesting that MDA, CGA, and EGA monitors did not support 80×25 (the former only in text mode; EGA supported graphics modes of the same resolution), this is an extraordinary claim that requires evidence.
It is true though that IBM monochrome displays did have superior quality to color displays, with a pixel resolution of 720×350 compared to CGA's 640×200 and EGA's 640×350. (VGA matched and exceeded it with a text mode resolution of 720×400.)
There were almost certainly also quality differences not related to resolution, between monochrome displays that did not have shadow masks and subpixels, vs even white text at the same resolution on color displays. That could be what you're thinking of?
>If you're suggesting that MDA, CGA, and EGA monitors did not support 80×25
It's tricky. The standards supported that resolution; the monitors generally available at the time did not. Their effective dot pitches were too coarse. This was a continuing annoyance for me through the 1980s.
>There were almost certainly also quality differences not related to resolution, between monochrome displays that did not have shadow masks and subpixels, vs even white text at the same resolution on color displays. That could be what you're thinking of?
It's almost equivalent to what I just said. Displays had to improve to the point where a three-color subpixel array had shrunk to the effective size of the monochrome dot on a VDT before they could actually obsolesce VDTs. Before that, you got all kinds of nasty artifacts and fringing, especially around the edges of text, that was quite eyestrain-inducing.
> You raise a fair objection, but…while the fact that the transition happened is something every adult remembers, the date is something I think people are already forgetting.
I think part of that is that the transition was much fuzzier than you may be remembering, and different people will have made it at different times or have different definitions for when it occurred.
Portable computers made the transition very early, because "portable CRT" is an oxymoron. For the desktop transition, engineers for display manufacturers will remember the dates of the transition as "when we started design work to when we shipped the first unit", salespeople will remember "when LCD monitors became n% of our total sales", and the masses will tend to remember "when I bought my first LCD monitor to when I put my last CRT out to pasture."
For my family, that last one covers the range of approximately 2008-2015.
>I think part of that is that the transition was much fuzzier than you may be remembering, and different people will have made it at different times or have different definitions for when it occurred.
Which is more or less why I cited the date at which the majors stopped making CRTs. That's a hard fact, and the clearest possible indication of where people with skin in the game thought CRTs were going.
I think the source of confusion is that there are at least three plausible meanings of the term "resolution" involved here, and I picked the wrong one. Plus a difference between "supported 80 columns at all" – enough to be minimally usable, perhaps to someone not 'spoiled' by monochrome displays, vs "supported well enough to replace VDTs".
It doesn't help that the most commonly available monitors in the CGA era were probably televisions or equivalent "composite monitors", which allowed for some neat tricks to get more colors than CGA otherwise supported via carefully chosen dot patterns, but certainly weren't any good as text displays
>I think the source of confusion is that there are at least three plausible meanings of the term "resolution" involved here, and I picked the wrong one.
And I should have made my original assertion clearer. I've revised the document accordingly.
Deron E Meranda on 2017-02-06 at 17:19:35 said:
Before terminfo there was termcap, and manually editing termcap entries to describe new terminal devices was not uncommon back then.
In addition to bold and reverse text, some terminals supported a blinking text attribute; which I suspect was inspiration for the early HTML tag (but I don't have a source).
Can you provide more information about the transition from the VT-100 style escape sequences to the later adoption of the ANSI-style sequences, which introduced a color palette?
Should there be a mention of the early file transfer protocols? In particular I remember the progression of popular ones begin Kermit, XMODEM, YMODEM, and finally ZMODEM. And before any of those semi-automated protocols there was the uuencode(1)/uudecode(1) pair of commands which was the predecessor to Base-64 encoding still used today for embedding binary data in a stream of text characters.
> I specifically meant to insist on fully bit-mapped and digitally-driven color displays here. I remember the earlier color displays based on repurposing TV hardware and driven through analog modulation
Well, doesn't 'RGB monitor' specifically imply that it's _not_ driven by TV-like composite input? I'm also not disputing that monochrome monitors used to be a lot better in resolution – there's a reason they were commonly used in DTP-like workflows. Early models of the Macintosh were obviously monochrome, and the Atari ST shipped with an option for a monochrome monitor. Perhaps 1992 is a good timeframe for 'monochrome CRTs falling into disuse as color displays became cheaper and reached comparable quality' – but this seemingly doesn't have much to do with the end of dedicated terminals! I suspect that organizational inertia was a factor in their continued survival when they could've been replaced by terminal emulation software, running on cheap ("home") micros. (For instance, the reasonably-cheap Commodore 128 had support for running CP/M, with 80×25-character output on a RGB monitor, independently of the main composite ('TV') screen. Surely other micros would've had broadly similar capabilities.)
d5xtgr on 2017-02-06 at 22:03:38 said:
I know ADSL still lags, but the ramp-up to fast SDSL and optical happened pretty fast after '97 – I know I got FIOS with 15mbps down/5mbps up in 2002 which was already an order of magnitude batter that 1mbps.
I think this is more regionally variable than you suspect. While you probably have an accurate timeframe for urban hackers, rollout to other parts of the country was substantially later. DSL service areas only reached my home about a decade ago (the gee-whiz feature wasn't actually the new speeds, but the fact that being online no longer blocked incoming phone calls; away from urban areas many residences aren't covered by cell networks and still rely on landlines).
Duncan Bayne on 2017-02-07 at 01:03:33 said:
> It's tricky. The standards supported that resolution; the monitors generally available at the time did not. Their effective dot pitches were too coarse. This was a continuing annoyance for me through the 1980s.
I remember my Amstrad CPC 464 having a perfectly readable 80 x 25 mode, especially when green or gray on black text was used.
But I'm also remembering how it looked a) relative to other micros that used TV screens, and b) when seen through the eyes of an eight year old.
I'll drag mine out of storage this weekend and see if it's as usable as I remember.
To clarify the above: the CPC was supplied with a monitor, which also contained the power supply for the system unit (a typically Amstrad design).
https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/3997137_f520.jpg
I'm faaaaairly sure the author of that ad copy had never used a 'workstation'; either that, or the term meant a different thing in the 80s.
And now that I think about it, I'd given myself CRT-induced eyestrain at the age of ten, an oddity back in late 80s New Zealand. ESR may have a point ;)
>And now that I think about it, I'd given myself CRT-induced eyestrain at the age of ten, an oddity back in late 80s New Zealand. ESR may have a point ;)
Yeah, see? People forget these things. I've noticed a chronic tendency for people to to back-project the performance of later, better hardware onto the older stuff and then react with initial disbelief when reminded of their own experience.
A parallel kind of forgetting is hackers old enough to remember pre-Linux days nevertheless spacing how much of our work used to be done on proprietary systems using closed-source software. I've seen that a lot, too.
On the subject of serial cables, I ran into something new (at least for me) today. This was a cellular modem which supported a USB cable. The USB cable was attached to a box with four 9-pin serial connectors, each of which fed a Cisco console cable. So does the modem host some kind of terminal emulation software, or is the USB cable given an IP Address?
>> You might note that (very short) serial connections are still commonly used for configuration purposes in the networking world.
> I think this falls under "niche applications".
In nine years of doing my job, every Cisco or Juniper device I've ever unpacked came with a serial cable, and this is still the primary way of configuring your router or switch, to the point that something like 95% of all the routers/switches I've installed were configured by this method. At the very least, each professional grade router/switch needs, by serial cable, a startup configuration which tells it where to find the TFTP server which hosts it's real configuration.
So definitely not niche, though possibly not a "hacker" thing.
So does the modem host some kind of terminal emulation software, or is the USB cable given an IP Address?
Most likely, the box with the cell modem is a terminal server (providing telnet/SSH access to those serial ports on TCP ports), and the USB device is a compatible multiport serial adapter.
Astro Jetson on 2017-02-07 at 11:30:25 said:
Serial TTL has been around since 1977, the wonderful SC/MP chip had it. There is an 8 bit register ("E") that you could load data into and it would clock it out, likewise it would clock data into it. If you dig back into your pile of Dr Dobbs there were computers that used this function. It was the perfect way to connect SC/MP systems to the TV Typewriter. (And a side note, the SC/MP was one of the first micro chips that supported multiple processors).
I also remember Kermit fondly, it was one way to connect to the SUNY systems "big iron" from a microcomputer. Lots of other University systems offered Kermit servers at the time, so it wasn't just Columbia and SUNY.
I think the most obvious reason why octal was popular is that the symbols it uses are a subset of those used in decimal, so no one had to learn any new symbols to work with it, and they were already encoded in consecutive locations in the ASCII character set. (In retrospect, having uppercase A follow 9 would have made bases through 36 far easier to handle.) The non-trivial work necessary to support the disjoint symbols was eventually overcome by the nice "two hex digits per byte" feature, as memory prices fell and the extra complexity of handling hex became seen as well worth the effort.
As Tom Lehrer famously observed "Base Eight is just like Base Ten, really. . . If you're missing two fingers."
(In retrospect, having uppercase A follow 9 would have made bases through 36 far easier to handle.)
Perhaps, but you can't fit both into a 32-sized row, and there's only room in ASCII for two 64-sized rows. You couldn't have all those nice bit structure properties we just spent a week talking about. In exchange for a row of 36 consisting of uppercase letters, you'd have to give up either lowercase being one bit off of uppercase, or control characters being a contiguous block easily mapped to (mostly) letters by bitmasking. Probably the best you could do is map ctrl-0..9A..F to one row of control characters, and ctrl-G..V to the other row, leaving ctrl-WXYZ unused. (In exchange you'd also gain shift *always* setting bit 32 instead of sometimes setting bit 16 – but the control rows wouldn't be contiguous, so it would require a bit more logic. The 6-bit subsetting also wouldn't be as nice, either.
I forgot to mention the alternative of keeping the character set mostly as-is (perhaps with A as 64 instead of 65), but placing 0-9 at the end of the preceding row (codes 54 to 63). This loses the ability to convert to decimal digits with a bitwise-or instead of an add, which I'm not sure if it was historically important or not, but both ASCII and EBCDIC had.
Indeed, there would have been some tradeoffs. But that just indicates those points were considered more important than making symbols higher-base numbers contiguous. If it were really important, we could have gone with [0..9A..Za..z] occupying 62 out of a block of 64 consecutive code points, trading "shift is bit-flip" for "shift is subtract 26" and if the other two code points were chosen well, we'd have gotten Base64 encoding just by adding 32 to the six bits to be encoded.
>trading "shift is bit-flip" for "shift is subtract 26"
Crash landing. Bit-flip was an achievable thing, if just barely, when your keyboard was an ASR-33-like maze of mechanical actuators connected to keycaps. Subtract 26 would have been utterly impractical.
Duncan and Eric mentioned CRT-induced eyestrain. I use a glass filter with my CRT. It's not possible to hang a glass filter on an LCD/LED monitor, is it? :-P
> Bit-flip was an achievable thing, if just barely, when your keyboard was an ASR-33-like maze of mechanical actuators connected to keycaps.
ASR-33 didn't even have lower-case letters, so it's a completely different sort of "shift" from the "32" bit-flip we associate with alphas. I think it had a proprietary code scheme anyway, because back when it was created, there weren't really any standards.
Flipping the "16" bit worked for <, >. [{ ]} \| 1! 2@ 3# 4$ 5%, but not 6-0 or :; '" so clearly by the time ASCII was codified, things had moved past some kind of simple scan code directly representing the key combo. I always assumed such things were implemented as a simple lookup table in the terminal's ROM by then.
> always assumed such things were implemented as a simple lookup table in the terminal's ROM by then.
Oh ho ho ho. ROM? What's that?
There weren't no steenking ROM in the ASR-33. It was electromechanical logic all the way down, baby!
@The Monster The ASR-33 was one of the first ASCII terminals – previous Teletypes having used a Baudot style code (a variant of ITA-2) And anyway, you can easily google pictures of the keyboard – shift-1..9 are !"#$%&'() and shift-KLMNOP are [\]^_@, perfectly matching to switching the fifth bit of the character value in ASCII.
Incidentally, if you google an ASR-32, and google the Baudot code (actually a variant of ITA-2), you may notice that this code was also designed to make keyboards easy to make: QWERTYUIOP in the letter set map to 1234567890 in the figure set.
Also, you're making some unwarranted assumptions if you think :; belonged together on the keyboards being discussed (you're also making mistakes about the existence of some keys, and some characters, on the ASR-33 in particular). If you haven't, you should definitely read http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/kybint.htm
I did manage to find an ASR-33 manual at http://www.soemtron.org/teletypemanuals.html – the shift key inverting the fifth bit was absolute – there were no keys for which it did anything else. It also mechanically prevented pressing any keys other than 1-9 and KLMNOP. The control key locked out all keys except the letter keys. The manual specifically mentions the ability to generate ESC by Shift-Ctrl-K, etc.
Er, and the other symbol keys ,< .> /? :* ;+ -= of course – I meant it locked out all the other letters and zero (one might imagine shift-zero producing a space, which was why I looked for the manual in the first place, but evidently not.)
@ESR @Random832
>The ASR-33 was one of the first ASCII terminals
I was misremembering it as having been born just before ASCII was adopted, perhaps influencing some ASCII design decisions and/or incorporating some emerging consensus about what ASCII should look like. I missed out on actually using them, but I'm sure I saw a few of them. I distinctly remember the paper tape thing on some terminals, but it's possible that was some other model, which might explain fuzzy memory on key placement.
We still had card-punch machines at school until about 1980, when we finally got green-screen terminals (and an APL/BASIC switchable [before boot] micro for the computer lab).
The ASR-33 did have paper tape (that's actually the reason for "ASR" – the non-paper-tape model was called "KSR"), but it was ASCII paper tape.
It looks like the 33 evolved alongside ASCII – earlier versions of the manual have code charts and keyboard diagrams showing ASCII63, and Shift-NO generate arrows instead of ^_. The 1963 manual doesn't mention ASCII by name (but shows a full code chart that matches ASCII63 exactly), the 1964 manual does. Incidentally, another thing I noticed on this read-through – the keyboard in the versions described in the 1964 manual onwards actually physically encoded even parity – and the ctrl and shift key both inverted the parity bit in addition to their other operation. (1963 manual version had mark parity)
http://www.rtty.com/CODECARD/codecrd1.htm (which I looked up to show some examples of ASCII paper tape) also indicates another reason for the structure of ASCII – uppercase-only terminals needed to be able to convert incoming lowercase codes to uppercase. (Incidentally, the typewheel coding card mentions "ASCII66", which doesn't seem to have been a year that a revision to X3.4 was actually published)
>It looks like the 33 evolved alongside ASCII
That is correct. If you look at the list of early papers on ASCII at Bob Bemer's website, you'll find strong indications that the 33 was prototyped simultaneously with ASCII in 1961-63. The head of the X.34 committee was a Teletype employee, and it would be thus quite surprising (given the timing) if the evolving ASCII spec and the design process of the 33 didn't influence each other.
>33 was prototyped simultaneously with ASCII in 1961-63
Then I wasn't misremembering this much: When the `33 was designed, ASCII didn't actually exist yet, but it definitely had its pulse on that "emerging consensus".
>Then I wasn't misremembering this much: When the `33 was designed, ASCII didn't actually exist yet, but it definitely had its pulse on that "emerging consensus".
The people involved are mostly dead now, but I'd bet that if we could ask we'd find there was conscious coordination between X.34 and the 33's designers. All the incentives were virtuously aligned for people to play nice: X.34 stood to benefit from having a demonstration device by a major manufacturer, and Teletype stood to benefit from being able to say the 33 conformed to an ANSI standard.
More evidence of the coordination: The 1963 preliminary design lacked upper-case characters, just like the `33 itself.
John Moore on 2017-02-11 at 22:47:41 said:
A data point on octal. I first encountered it on the GE 615/625/635 36-bit mainframe computer which came out in the mid-60's, and then on (IIRC) the DEC-10. I vaguely remember that some other mainframes of the day also used octal. On the 635, half-words were 9 bits, and instruction codes were 9 bits and short addresses 18. Octal is far friendlier to those than Hex.
The GE 635 was the basis for the GE 645, the MULTICS machine. Perhaps that lineage led to the use of octal in Unix, or perhaps it was DEC.