[Glastonbury] for reference

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 11:04:02AM +0100, nick irwin wrote:
> In fact, doesn't the address say it all?
> 	http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/preface.html
> 
> It's just Microsoft propaganda written by Employees of Microsoft and Apple 
> (who are courting Microsoft).
> 
Nick,

Read more critically :)  The author was a professor at Stanford when
he wrote this book.  It was intended as a semi-joke - the UNIX in-crowd
could see themselves going along with a lot of the stuff in here -
the "Ouch" factor of awful recognition when you laugh along with others
who are suffering as you had to suffer.

He's become a Microsoft staffer since then - his other colleagues have
also moved on.

It's notable that this is in the same series as the "for Dummies" books
and so needs to be taken less seriously than a heavyweight textbook.

> One other point that made me stare with disbelief was the passage that reads:
> 
> 	"Computer science would have progressed much further and faster if all of the 
> time and effort that has been spent maintaining and nurturing Unix had been 
> spent on a sounder operating system. We hope that one day Unix will be 
> relinquished to the history books and museums of computer science as an 
> interesting, albeit costly, footnote."
> 
** Joke ** Joke ** Joke **

However, most things become an expensive footnote.  I met someone the
other day who started serious programming in the 1950's on a Leo 
machine.  This was the white heat of technology - computerised stock 
taking and tallying for the chain of Lyons coffee houses [and there
used to be a Lyons in each major town].  This was bespoke applications
on a general purpose operating system but where the programmers could
ask for features to be added to the OS to suit them.

Completely dead and gone - like the Baby at Manchester. [Although the
simulator runs on Linux to drive the original displays :) ]

The Bletchley Park trust have solved the Y2K problem for Colossus, 
however - they just run it in 1944.

Andy