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Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

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Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#201

Post by dsr_ »

exikyut wrote: post #127
dsr_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything interesting on twitter takes more than one tweet. I wonder if there's a place for "fast Usenet", where you can write a message of arbitrary length with some markdownish syntax, let it be flooded to anybody subscribed to that group, and automatically drop into a searchable no-new-comments archive after, say, a week.

Curious why your comment got collapsed, it's very interesting. Genuine question: why archive? While I don't really have a substantive list, I very often come across archived threads on here and elsewhere that I'd like to respond to. "Wow this is awes--" "oh it's from 2016". I guess I just don't understand the hate against necroposting. If there's a thread out there that has exactly the context and disposition I was l…

Why archive? Because history is good.

Why the anti-necroposting provision? Because if it's really relevant, having you jump through the additional hoop of quoting the good bit and copy-pasting into a new thread not only forces you to put a little bit of thought into it, but also prevents threads from being months or years (or decades) long and thus only being accessible to people who have read the whole darn thing.

In my experience in Usenet, conversations go off topic remarkably quickly.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#202

Post by plausibledeny »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #178
WalterBright wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same time frame, I worked at Boeing doing design work on the 757. I didn't know how to do complex numbers using drafting tools, but I knew how to use a computer. The only computer in the building was an '11 in a special locked room with raised floor and A/C. It was under the control of Boeing Computer Services, a totally separate division from Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, which I worked for. Anyhow, I b…

> hand them off to the secretary pool to type up This brought back a memory. In the late 80s I got a job at a very high-tech science and engineering firm. A colleague told me to be careful about writing code. His supervisor had walked by his office one day and saw him writing code on a terminal. He chewed him out for "typing" because "typing is for secretaries." Apparently the correct procedure was to hand-write your…

Worked for a medium-size software company in the 90s. When our company got a new CEO someone at an all-hands asked him to describe his experience with computers. He was very clear that he didn't use them, wouldn't have one in his office and that he had an executive assistant for that sort of thing.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#203

Post by mwcampbell »

fotbr wrote: post #71
guardiangod wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the name of that program that blocked access to the Finder FoolProof? The bane of my elementary school existence. Just let me play SimCity 2000.

Trivially defeated with a boot disk and ResEdit. Breaking things with ResEdit was pretty much my jr. high school hobby. It took a bit before I figured out how to restore things when I was done. Head "tech" guy in the building eventually figured out it was me, showed me a few things and ended up just giving me an un-limited login and a few rules. Also taught me how to intelligently use ResEdit instead of the brute-for…

You didn't even need a boot disk and ResEdit. Just hold down the Shift key while the Mac was booting from the hard drive, and system extensions including Foolproof would be disabled.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#204

Post by jcims »

nonbirithm wrote: post #193
jcims wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right about that exact same time I commandeered an entire lab (30-40?) of SGI Indigo 2's at Ohio State to do distributed raytracing. Wasn't nearly as educational or diplomatic but I did have fun with it until I got shut down for essentially using twice the storage in my home directory as the entire rest of the class. Between that, usenet (of course) and trolling cuseeme reflectors all over the world from the odd smel…

I hadn't heard of CU-SeeMe before. It's videoconferencing software from 1992 (!), around the time the Web had just barely been formed. There seems to be a lot of interesting history surrounding it: https://sattlers.org/mickey/CU-SeeMe/internetTVwithCUSeeMe/c...

It was pretty awesome. I commuted to school and my 2400 baud modem wouldn’t cut it. But lots of students would run clients or ‘reflectors’ from their dorm rooms and i would stay in the labs until the wee hours just hanging out. I never got into MUDs but ‘talkers’ were similar in concept. Just themed text chat. I would hang out on one called ‘Oceanhome’ and make dumb faces on cuseeme. It felt like another universe

People weren’t that much different na back then then they are today.

This provides a per good impression of what it was like. This was 30 years ago.

https://youtu.be/PC33Y4Jbiys

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#205

Post by WalterBright »

plausibledeny wrote: post #202
dreamcompiler wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hand them off to the secretary pool to type up This brought back a memory. In the late 80s I got a job at a very high-tech science and engineering firm. A colleague told me to be careful about writing code. His supervisor had walked by his office one day and saw him writing code on a terminal. He chewed him out for "typing" because "typing is for secretaries." Apparently the correct procedure was to hand-write your…

Worked for a medium-size software company in the 90s. When our company got a new CEO someone at an all-hands asked him to describe his experience with computers. He was very clear that he didn't use them, wouldn't have one in his office and that he had an executive assistant for that sort of thing.

Probably the last of his kind!

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#206

Post by saagarjha »

withinboredom wrote: post #161
Tepix wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I setup a MAC based internet filter at home, secretly hoping my kids will figure out how to bypass it.

Most OSs don’t let you change a WiFi’s MAC address these days. Sometimes even the hardware doesn’t support it.

I believe iOS rotates it periodically.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#207

Post by saagarjha »

mywittyname wrote: post #191
Jtsummers wrote: post #2

For anyone still at or associated with a university, how would they react to behavior like this today? When I was in school (circa 2000), the IT offices were starting to crack down on students (with some threats of expulsion) for activities like this, though it wasn't yet typical or uniform. I know at GT there were a few computer labs that, if you paid a bit of attention, you could easily get ssh access to every comp…

My university had a lap specifically for computer security research. So you could do anything you wanted in there, including screw with network infrastructure (though, you were asked to plug all the machines back into the appropriate ports after you were done). There were apparently scripts set up that would reset everything every Sunday.

That’s a rather unfortunate typo you have there.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#208

Post by saagarjha »

megameter wrote: post #122
throw5away wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generated two random 35 digit primes, multiplied them, and then tossed the product into the first hit for "factor integer online": https://www.alpertron.com.ar/ECM.HTM 1731 322587 637083 705865 442033 654804 904216 446486 784497 444181 466938 498269 (70 digits) = 25317 847509 490819 861309 522806 413689 (35 digits) × 68383 482718 586893 688113 139227 257221 (35 digits) Time elapsed: 0d 0h 0m 23.8s This is in JavaSc…

Ran the same program and input on my phone. Time elapsed: 0d 0h 5m 38.2s

Took about 50s on my iPhone.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#209

Post by amenghra »

amenghra wrote: post #33
thaumaturgy wrote: post #32

Ah yes, good memories. I'm having a really hard time right now remembering the name of that program that blocked access to the Finder; I think it was "Easy"-something. Google fails me on the name too. Breaking it was a hobby. Some school labs had left access to Hypercard available through that program, so you could just pull up Hypercard and make a new stack that would tell the program to quit. The other way to get a…

AtEase?

I used to bypass AtEase using MacBasic or something like that. Write a one liner to launch Finder, done.

Compare AtEase to your iOS home screen. We have come full circle?

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#210

Post by gdubs »

jcims wrote: post #123
elengyel wrote: post #19

I'd like to clarify that my code was running only on machines that were otherwise idle. Not many people were in the lab late in the evenings. MPQS processing nodes could be added and removed dynamically, so if somebody needed a computer that was part of my cluster, they could just quit my program and everything would go back to normal. Also, once the number theory professor learned of what I had implemented, he worke…

Right about that exact same time I commandeered an entire lab (30-40?) of SGI Indigo 2's at Ohio State to do distributed raytracing. Wasn't nearly as educational or diplomatic but I did have fun with it until I got shut down for essentially using twice the storage in my home directory as the entire rest of the class. Between that, usenet (of course) and trolling cuseeme reflectors all over the world from the odd smel…

30-40 Indigo2’s must have be one expensive lab.
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