101–110 of 116 posts
Don Eyles has a web site, where there's an interesting article called "Tales From the Lunar Module Guidance Computer": https://doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html
I was a little surprised to see his home address there. But that website made me happy. It evokes memories of a simpler era on the web.
Don Eyles has a web site, where there's an interesting article called "Tales From the Lunar Module Guidance Computer": https://doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html
I was a little surprised to see his home address there. But that website made me happy. It evokes memories of a simpler era on the web.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whose side was Reagan on? He certainly wasn't on the side of a lot of gays, blacks, or the other minorities his administration threw in jail, poisoned, or just let die through inaction.
That's just nonsense. Re. gays, Mr. Reagan signed into law federal outlays of $5.73 billion for AIDS research and treatment and he opposed California Proposition 6, which would have fired public-school teachers for advocating homosexuality. Re. blacks, his administration did push hard for tough-on-crime measures — measures which were supported by black groups in the 80s. They may or may not have been wise in retrospe…
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/18/us/reagan-defends-financi...
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/reagan-administratio...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the articles from 1971 that get reposted today represent the top 1% of articles from then, making articles from then seem so much better than now?
My experience looking at, say, the front-page (or more likely these days, inside-page briefings section) of a newspaper, today vs. say 1970, or at an issue of a leading magazine, is that writing and editorial standards have changed, largely for the worse. Newspapers are an easier direct comparison, and though I don't have a specific example to show (a selection, say, of front pages from the same day of the month acro…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The climate happened, I think. Difficult to maintain optimism on the ultimate destiny of consciousness when the science is telling you there's an extinction event on your doorstep.
Climate-change concern became a thing in the 90s. The peace-love-dope crowd were a reaction to our defense of South Vietnam. Once North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace and successfully invaded South Vietnam, there was no need anymore to react — we weren't defending anyone at that point. I imagine that there might also have been some embarrassed reactions to the boat people, the re-education camps and the mass murder…
This is a peculiar comment to make under an article about a member of the 'peace-love-dope crowd' who had a job which he performed at an elite level.
Don is still around, and is still awesome! His memory for events around that time is surprisingly sharp, for it being 50 years ago. He's been an invaluable resource for us at the VirtualAGC project [1]. He provided over half (!) of the AGC programs we've made available, including LM software for Apollo 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15-17, plus several other ground development programs. He also was the source of a majorit…
"What we had in common was a spirit of exploration." @17:10
> “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s…
Way easier. It is hardly noteworthy for a programmer to know a half dozen programming languages well, but a person who knows a half dozen human languages well is.
> “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s…
I had the same experience with Java and its vast standard library and the community (e.g. J2EE, Spring). And with Javascript and the entirety of web development and (nowadays) package management and backwards compatibility.
So yeah you can learn the words and letters - most languages only have a couple dozen keywords and characters anyway - but the language is much more complicated than just the words and letters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience looking at, say, the front-page (or more likely these days, inside-page briefings section) of a newspaper, today vs. say 1970, or at an issue of a leading magazine, is that writing and editorial standards have changed, largely for the worse. Newspapers are an easier direct comparison, and though I don't have a specific example to show (a selection, say, of front pages from the same day of the month acro…
In Australia, our independent public broadcaster reads like a clickbait rag. I routinely find basic spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in newspapers. That's not how I used to remember the news.