I know a guy (haven’t actually seen him in years, but we still swap christmas cards every year) who in the 1950ies worked with a machine originally designed by Zuse. It was one of the first machines Siemens put on the market after they bought Zuse. That thing used a mechanical buffer memory to store values. It was basically a rotating steel drum (like in a washing machine) that had toggle levers which were set and read like some sort of braille pattern.
3 Likes
I think any sort of OS made with profit in mind is part of the “church of prosperity”… which is derived from Calvinist thought, if I’m remembering my early modern european history correctly.
Basically correct (hey, the starting point was Geneva) but a bit more complex - but what issue involving church and/or religion isn’t?
(cue angry mob shouting “Splitters! Splitters!”)
EDIT: typo.
1 Like
When UNIX came out in 1973, the custom was for computer manufacturers to release the source of their operating systems, at least in human readable form and sometimes in machine readable form. Even IBM published source for its IBM 1130 operating system and had detailed program logic manuals for figuring out how things like the FORTRAN compiler worked. Other companies were even more open.
UNIX was distributed free to universities, but cost something like $10,000 per machine for a license to run it for commercial purposes. The hope was to get it accepted as a research and teaching standard and then have a trained cadre of engineers selling it to the companies they worked at or consulted for. The plan worked very nicely, and later licensing costs came down, but when hardware prices plummeted with the introduction of personal computers, UNIX was too expensive to consider until LINUX, the free version was introduced. UNIX did continue to dominate at universities and research outfits where it was subsidized by the US government, but commercially it was never a real success.
1 Like
I’m not too sure about Stross’s religious interpretation. Christianity never charged $10,000 or more as an entry fee, and its big selling point was that it sanctioned slave marriage. Slaves could not marry under Roman law, but Christian slaves could marry, at least within their church. Under Roman law, a marriage was a public declaration. The idea of a secret marriage was self-contradictory, but Christian marriage was a mystical sacrament, so slaves could marry in secret. I know that eunuchs can marry, but this is probably against Roman Catholic teachings which places an emphasis on reproduction.
Wow, 25 comments and no mention of Windoze as having Satanic roots.
1 Like
Gene Roddenberry foresaw the emergence of iOS as a religion… In 'Trek episode “The Apple” one sees future Jersey Shore residents worshipping iOS 32 ‘Vaal’:
2 Likes
Unix is Jewish: > “First, in order to fully understand and use Unix, you must master a strange and unintelligible language, used only by the faithful. The full extent of revelation can be understood only by learning the commentaries (‘man pages’) written in such seeming gibberish that the student cannot hope to understand them without a rabbi (‘system administrator’). However, once the rabbi explains them, their meaning is crystal clear, and the student finds immense spiritual treasure. When one cannot understand how to do something, one goes to his rabbi (system administrator) who gives detailed instructions of what to do. The instructions seem preposterous, but they always work very well.”
2 Likes
There’s even a shofar (pipe: |), a torah scroll (more), a mezuzah (.bashrc file), a yarmulke (your shell), and a dreidel (the various unices & linuces available).
1 Like
I want to say that you guys are an amazing group of intellects. Thanks for the straightening and the depth.
Have a good new year, everybody.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
