Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Remember when.......

كل سنه و إنتم طيبين


Do you remember nice days when there were no computers?

Remember when.......

A computer was something on TV
from a science fiction show of note
a window was something you hated to clean
And ram was the cousin of a goat

Meg was the name of a girl,
And gig was your middle finger upright.
Now they all mean different things,
And that really mega bytes!

An application was for employment
a program was a TV show
a cursor used profanity
a keyboard was a piano

Memory was something that you lost with age
a cd was a bank account
and if you had a 3.5" floppy
you hoped nobody found out

Log on was adding wood to the fire
hard drive was a long trip on the road
a mouse pad was where a mouse lived
and a backup happened to your commode

Cut you did with a pocket knife
paste you did with glue
a web was a spider's home
and a virus was the flu

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
and the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
but when it happens, they will wish they were dead.




Friday, October 12, 2007

TV typewriter, A TV and a Typewriter

TV typewriter, A TV and a Typewriter

From the historic stories which shows ingenuity and loyalty of a hacker is this one:

One poor MIT hacker had a motorbike accident and broke his leg. He stayed in hospital for a while. During this period two of his friends brought him a terminal and a modem to use his computer from the hospital.

When they went to the hospital they were stopped by the guard saying that it’s not permitted to bring terminals to the hospital, permitted things are: tape players, TVs, typewriters, radios … while computer terminals are not allowed.

They didn’t give up and came the next day and a guard stopped them again and asked them what are they carrying. They answered a TV typewriter. When the guard investigated the devices, they showed him that each character typed on the typewriter appears on the TV -terminal- instead of paper. Finally the guard said “A TV is all right, a typewriter is all right ... okay, take it on in!"

TV typewriters are real! But not that stated in the story. They are video terminals which display typed characters on a TV and they are connected to a keyboard. Low cost designs were available from 1973, invented by Don Lancaster and published in TV Typewriter Cookbook.