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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

#71

Post by fotbr »

guardiangod wrote: post #39
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…

>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-force method(s) I was used to.

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

#72

Post by totierne2 »

Back in 1992 I was using a neural network library in Pascal. I did not know the admins were killing long running nohup tasks, rather than the program failing, so I could not run it on the UNIX boxes in the background, hence lots of foreground and usenet reading. The neural network use was applied, 'how did number of nodes, number of layers matter?' to analysing fetal heart rate data. Backpropagation was built in. I was recovering from a nervous breakdown, so my virtual neural network having breakdowns was a little bit strange. I got a 2:1 for the project i.e. good, but a 2.2 for the whole final year, i.e. very average.

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

#73

Post by a3n »

WalterBright wrote: post #67
a3n wrote: post #45

In 19 and 82 or 3, I worked at Lockheed Shipyard in Seattle, in a sort of tech writing capacity on a Navy ship building project, based on my recent experience in the Navy. The business closed with completion of the ships. We had to fill out lots of forms that documented what we called "analysis," and we'd often have to change them based on some factor changing. One change could cascade through the whole form. Paper f…

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…

> In the same time frame, I worked at Boeing doing design work on the 757.

After I graduated I worked at Boeing in a test group, and wrote control software for test rigs, mainly to test Fuel Quantity Indicating Systems on the 57 and 67, 47-400, and 77.

That was in Les Carpenter's group, and they still had some test rigs lying around built with relays mounted on wooden boards.

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

#74

Post by tbrock »

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…

The name of the program was "At Ease". It had two big folders with icons that looked very much like a precursor to iOS's springboard we know today.

The two folders were labeled "Applications" and "Documents": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

You could also trigger the NMI via Apple key + power button and I remember the magic code to set the memory to zero and crash finder being: SM0A964GO

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

#75

Post by atat7024 »

grogenaut wrote: post #50
gambiting wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Opening the web inspector is such a normal moment of dealing with other people's websites, I have no clue how people manage without it. As a C++ programmer who has absolutely no idea how to even open the dev console in browser - I just close the website. If I can't scroll it, if it has stupid popups that I can't dismiss, if it lets me get halfway through checkout and then misteriously empties my basket? I'll maybe…

F12

Or right clicking on, and "Inspect" on the specific element that you're trying to work with.

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

#76

Post by simon1ltd »

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?

It was AtEase. In the earlier macs, those with a button to trigger a debugger in firmware, you could completely exit AtEase by entering the debugger and typing “G H”

I know it worked on System 7, and I think there was a variation that worked in System 8 as well.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

a3n wrote: post #45

In 19 and 82 or 3, I worked at Lockheed Shipyard in Seattle, in a sort of tech writing capacity on a Navy ship building project, based on my recent experience in the Navy. The business closed with completion of the ships. We had to fill out lots of forms that documented what we called "analysis," and we'd often have to change them based on some factor changing. One change could cascade through the whole form. Paper f…

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by ecshafer »

vuciv1 wrote: post #4
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…

I graduated last year, and I worked for my colleges IT department. We used to have to come knocking at the door if a student even had their own printers set up. It definitely would not go well. That being said, I did know people who clogged the cs department's machines with batch jobs to train really expensive ML models that did God knows what. Its not the same as bypassing a security system, but it is an instance of…

I couldn't imagine a situation where if someone knocked on my dorm room door asking if I had a printer in there, I would not have told them off with very unflattering language and telling them to perform fellatio upon themselves.

How many students are just rolling over and saying sorry? I would imagine most would give you a very hard time.

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

#79

Post by StavrosK »

grogenaut wrote: post #50
gambiting wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Opening the web inspector is such a normal moment of dealing with other people's websites, I have no clue how people manage without it. As a C++ programmer who has absolutely no idea how to even open the dev console in browser - I just close the website. If I can't scroll it, if it has stupid popups that I can't dismiss, if it lets me get halfway through checkout and then misteriously empties my basket? I'll maybe…

F12

Ctrl+W

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

#80

Post by leephillips »

andai wrote: post #26
taldo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or on a single modern smartphone?

On that note, I'd like to share a clip about how fast modern machines are relative to early 90s supercomputers (the relevant part is in the first 5 minutes): https://youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4GcZs7y6g

Ha, I did a small bunch of calculations on the CM5. Thanks for the memories.
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