{"id":1649,"date":"2007-02-13T09:29:44","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T12:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/bb\/viewtopic.php?p=2096"},"modified":"2010-05-08T18:33:01","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T21:33:01","slug":"the-times-they-are-still-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2007\/02\/13\/the-times-they-are-still-interesting\/","title":{"rendered":"The times, they are still interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been getting some positive feedback lately about my “Interesting Times<\/a>” articles, so I thought I’d repost some pointers to them. The column itself is, sadly, now defunct, but new material crops up now and then; I’ve decided to post it here instead. In retrospect, the way this blog\/forum is organized could use a few revisions, but that’s not likely to happen very soon.<\/p>\n

So, “Highly Advanced But Obsolete<\/a>” talks about the QI900, which was an 8-bit CP\/M-based computer I helped design in the middle-80s:<\/p>\n

…the Z80 was too slow for a fully graphical interface, and we hadn’t the mechanical know-how to build a mouse.<\/p>\n

…here’s the final result: the QI-900 had menus…<\/p>\n

…and moveable windows…<\/p>\n

…and, even better than the original Macintosh, it had preemptive multitasking – or rather, multithreading inside the same application.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I promised a follow-up article with more details, but never had the time to do the necessary research. Maybe later in the year.<\/p>\n

Everybody’s favorite seems to be, however, “This Internet isn’t worth anything…<\/a>“, where I tell some stories about setting up a commercial ISP in the early 90s:<\/p>\n

(At Embratel – that was the government’s telecomm monopoly)<\/em><\/p>\n

Me: “I want an Internet connection.”<\/p>\n

Embratel Salesman: “OK. I suggest a 2400 or 9600 link, the price will be X cents per packet. That’s 20% of what it costs to send a TELEX<\/a>. Isn’t that revolutionary?”<\/p>\n

Me: “A packet means how many Kbytes?”<\/p>\n

Embratel Salesman: “What? It’s 64 bytes per packet!”<\/p>\n

Me: “And if a user decides to download a larger file, say, 500 Kbytes? It’ll cost hundreds of dollars!”<\/p>\n

Embratel Salesman: “Don’t worry, that will never happen!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been getting some positive feedback lately about my “Interesting Times” articles, so I thought I’d repost some pointers to them. The column itself is, sadly, now defunct, but new material crops up now and then; I’ve decided to post it here instead. In retrospect, the way this blog\/forum is organized could use a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware","tag-history"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-qB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}