7 posts tagged “web 0.2”

On Sunday, the x86 architecture turns 30! This is the classic "PC" architecture, but now runs Macs, as well as many of the servers on the Internet. I dare say that the vast majority of the servers my company hosts are x86 based.

Happy birthday, x86! An industry standard turns 30

http://www.computerworld.com/action/a...

Thirty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Intel Corp. introduced its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086, with a splashy ad heralding "the dawn of a new era."

The text and a scan of a 1970s Life magazine article, showing a family using a computer in the home for several odd things. They rocked the BASIC, it would seem. No mention of Twitter.

The Handy Uses of a Home Computer

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/0...

Computers for the home have been envisioned by science fiction writers and engineers ever since a huge, unwieldy prototype was developed 25 years ago. The whole futuristic age they prophesied, with an omnipotent electronic monster named Horace in every living room, is still a long way from realization, but compact consumer computers have quietly entered the household. While the market hardly rivals TV sets or refrigerators, the computer-as-home-appliance is now more than just a toy for the wealthy or a mysterious instrument for technical specialists. Those pioneer families who have one, like the Theodore Rodmans of Ardmore, Pa., have discovered their obedient machine can perform a large variety of useful functions. Dr. Rodman originally brought it home for medical research, but then his family found it could also plan mortgage payments, help out with homework, even play with the children. Although the cost is still high, computers like theirs have come within possible reach of a two-car family budget. A small, self-contained model is available for $8,000, complete. The Rodmans’ computer system, called time-sharing, uses a Teletype terminal connected to a big central unit via telephone. It costs $110 a month to rent, plus $7.50 per hour of use.

Ever want to surf on an Apple II?

Two bits of tech I got used (and old) ten years ago work together. I have an old SparcStation 20 I want to use for a little development project I going on. However, I wanted to lay down a fresh OS. My MacBook lacks a serial port, but I did have an old Compaq PDA (using the first version of Windows CE). Connect one to the other, tweak the serial settings, and I have a PDA acting as a dumb terminal

IMG_0519

Some people are Civil War re-enactors. Others get into Steampunk. I've decided to take up historical Information Technology re-enactment. I'm calling it Web 0.2. I confess this was inspired, in part, by watching "Wargames" the other evening. Like Steampunk, it may involve using historical techniques in a contemporary setting. I wrote a command-line utility to update Twitter, for instance.

Another angle is historical reproduciton. Like Civil War or Renaissance re-enactors, it would involve finding relatively historically accurate reproductions--for instance, emulation of historical technology (I'm not about to build my own data center for this, after all (my wife probably be concerned). One tool I found to do this is GLTerminal. It's been out for a while, but someone put up a pretty good port of it for Leopard. It is a terminal program for OS X--basically, a program to give you a command prompt.

For the basic enter-commands-at-prompt functions, it really is no different than the terminal program that comes with OS X--in fact, there may be a few odds and ends it lacks. However, the Web 0.2 angle comes in with the "Classic Terminal" setting. Here, it will emulate some of the visual quirks of older dumb terminals. My job at Miami was, in part, supporting a system fed by these.

Visual quirks--a "fisheye" screen and noticeable flicker is one thing. To really get the feel of working on a VAX late at night from your dorm room, there is "baudrate simulation." Where our contemporary DSL connections give us 763 Kbs, you can pretend you are working with your system at 2 Kbs (or less). Here is a screencast of GLTerminal in action.