From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.1 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 30798 invoked from network); 8 Mar 2023 20:18:54 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (2600:3c01:e000:146::1) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 8 Mar 2023 20:18:54 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 34E3941302; Thu, 9 Mar 2023 06:18:52 +1000 (AEST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=tuhs.org; s=dkim; t=1678306732; h=from:from:reply-to:reply-to:subject:subject:date:date: message-id:message-id:to:to:cc:cc:mime-version:mime-version: content-type:content-type:in-reply-to:in-reply-to: references:references:list-id:list-help:list-owner:list-unsubscribe: list-subscribe:list-post; bh=8vqlwEQZvDWyN4HoeGr20rWapopZLTsLfMP15KM0fTQ=; b=sNLDuEjrzh0GNx6NQhraXdjiTTqNiv1pxKz25w5Q2LeN3zlwO7gRCJL8wWrvaP0F8Zb5x8 sAs1WaxVVHZ6M2Sq7tTdY4lue5+HOxox1tbkdHJVjiB0haIp0HGeEguC7PYv0S/77Z2G7V QFN4v88kvgT5b17sUAszWT42hV5zIuI= Received: from barsoom.hamartun.priv.no (barsoom.hamartun.priv.no [IPv6:2001:8c0:c904:10::8]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4570841301 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2023 06:18:47 +1000 (AEST) Received: from thuvia.hamartun.priv.no (thuvia.hamartun.priv.no [193.71.27.7]) (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits) key-exchange X25519 server-signature RSA-PSS (2048 bits) server-digest SHA256) (No client certificate requested) by barsoom.hamartun.priv.no (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4PX3YH37c7zG2YM; Wed, 8 Mar 2023 21:18:43 +0100 (CET) Authentication-Results: barsoom.hamartun.priv.no; arc=none smtp.remote-ip=193.71.27.7 ARC-Seal: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=hamartun.priv.no; s=barsoom; t=1678306723; cv=none; b=BGclJNFC+wir1raPI0mwhCXdco42XHatsWxroIceDDu4vComC1ljdHweWDZyZH/7HWKC2IdF59f/KpVWi5V2N6IdH6iLZGBiuJ5t/YAsOR+QSY7m8hEZqxS2v+Upqt9d6OSuznKOg7JDmRaWS6vxIMh3QIt166IeCwtudzeZx74= ARC-Message-Signature: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=hamartun.priv.no; s=barsoom; t=1678306723; c=relaxed/simple; bh=JjbDDXAuR2IWAJmhs39i4bHmEBW3h8dh5ftM8etujSQ=; h=DKIM-Signature:Received:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:Date: In-Reply-To:Message-ID:User-Agent:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=yQifFzzWsxwv3oHzB3QzJ8Xgdbn6M2ieabGO92NJprXugSOXh5GEhx8zbDqHLqAW6tMlJROI7lFh9PvD13vI0sL+Qk8N6UkYe9wcvR1X0OogP361ZABGme2QHcCiolXMPV92SRsh59ms9JRSmeH7uqvHROgTrGmdMKO6TLuYKYQ= ARC-Authentication-Results: i=1; barsoom.hamartun.priv.no DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=hamartun.priv.no; s=20200727; t=1678306723; bh=8vqlwEQZvDWyN4HoeGr20rWapopZLTsLfMP15KM0fTQ=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:References:Date:In-Reply-To:From:To:Cc:Subject: Date; b=HHz6QPDBwyI2pZyHJOv2+Vk5BtFX7NVFCTlE4y9Fb/lcBvOYE5G0b/0AWeAAAg178 sjGg0+coQI09ae4iT2YdxHk03g5UkSzVp5kGS96tvfFvgJ2Gglnj2EVoGCU2Ju6jZL XHQ2sPbBIq4k41w0sT0YP+0URZimSkXXU83W4AI4XnWGnANdYFEoEQnqAQlA9km9fL kJ5RJETlqJofG/GXjF8qmvemspXUkpVja2AYcxFracr2N8Qfs+HbBtNVgRervjgroa lzlbjtoWkiK6e4cUiK0l/i+4G2JNYOqPjTvFpuRRoiWTDX/GPSofBvYlsnhxHPvxv/ qeMK7qThGIg8w== Received: by thuvia.hamartun.priv.no (Postfix, from userid 501) id D7DC84DF37; Wed, 8 Mar 2023 21:18:42 +0100 (CET) To: Dan Cross References: Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2023 21:18:42 +0100 In-Reply-To: (Dan Cross's message of "Wed, 8 Mar 2023 14:52:43 -0500") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Message-ID-Hash: OST4L52BG3W577BJMYE44XIVXYCWTYGX X-Message-ID-Hash: OST4L52BG3W577BJMYE44XIVXYCWTYGX X-MailFrom: tih@hamartun.priv.no X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: ron minnich , coff@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [COFF] Re: the wheel of reincarnation goes sideways List-Id: Computer Old Farts Forum Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: From: Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via COFF Reply-To: Tom Ivar Helbekkmo X-Spam: Yes Dan Cross writes: > About a year ago, I ran across an email written a decade or more prior > on some mainframe mailing list where someone wrote something like, > "wow! It just occurred to me that my Athlon machine is faster than the > ES/3090-600J I used in 1989!" Some guy responded angrily, rising to > the wounded honor of IBM, raving about how preposterous this was > because the mainframe could handle a thousand users logged in at one > time and there's no way this Linux box could ever do that. > > I was struck by the absurdity of that; it's such a ridiculous > non-comparison. I did one of those. Back in the early nineties, I had a 286 box running MINIX 1.5 as my home workstation, and a similar one running DOS at work. My job, however, was as one of a team of sysadmins caring for a VAX-780 running VMS. I used C-TeX to format documents on the DOS PC, and spent a couple of days porting it to the VMS C compiler. Performance was utterly dismal at first, but once I realized that the stdio stuff in the standard libary was the problem, I modified C-TeX to do output to binary files of fixed size 512 byte blocks in RMS, the VMS file system. In the small hours of the night, I discovered that the big and expensive VAX-780 was able to pretty much exactly match my 286-box when formatting documents. The very next day, I found that the same machine did the TeX formatting just as fast, while a hundred or so other people were actively using it for their own work. -tih -- Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay