Fred P. Brooks, 1931-2022

[Quadibloc]

Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month, who worked on the IBM STRETCH or 7030 computer and the System/360, particularly OS/360, passed away this November 17.

John Savard

[Peter Flass]

Post by Quadibloc
Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month, who worked on the IBM
STRETCH or 7030 computer and the System/360, particularly OS/360, passed
away this November 17.

:-(

Post by Quadibloc
John Savard

[D.J.]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 12:11:40 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc

Post by Quadibloc
Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month, who worked on the IBM STRETCH or 7030 computer and the System/360, particularly OS/360, passed away this November 17.
John Savard

My condolences.
--
Jim

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by D.J.
On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 12:11:40 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc

Post by Quadibloc
Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month, who worked on the
IBM STRETCH or 7030 computer and the System/360, particularly OS/360,
passed away this November 17.

My condolences.

Ditto. His book occupies an honoured place on my shelf.
One of my favourite quotes:

The bearing of a child takes nine months,
no matter how many women are assigned to the task.

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Charlie Gibbs
Ditto. His book occupies an honoured place on my shelf.
The bearing of a child takes nine months,
no matter how many women are assigned to the task.

Quoting from perhaps imprcise memory,

I have gone to a commune in Vermont where the shortest period
of time I expect to deal with is a season.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On 30 Nov 2022 03:11:54 -0400

Post by Mike Spencer
Quoting from perhaps imprcise memory,
I have gone to a commune in Vermont where the shortest period
of time I expect to deal with is a season.

That was in The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (also an
excellent book)- I forget which engineer it was.

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On 30 Nov 2022 03:11:54 -0400

Post by Mike Spencer
Quoting from perhaps imprcise memory,
I have gone to a commune in Vermont where the shortest period
of time I expect to deal with is a season.

That was in The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (also an
excellent book)- I forget which engineer it was.

Dang! I knew I should have groveled around on my bookshelf before
engaging my keyboard. Tnx for the correction.

[Kurt Weiske]

To: Mike Spencer
-=> Mike Spencer wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

MS> Quoting from perhaps imprcise memory,

MS> I have gone to a commune in Vermont where the shortest period
MS> of time I expect to deal with is a season.

Was that from "The Soul of a New Machine", by Tracy Kidder?

I loved that book growing up. The first season of "Halt and Catch Fire", set
around the creation of an IBM-compatible PC reminded me a lot of the book.

I also liked that in the final scenes of the show, when the camera pans
through Joe McMillan's office (former product manager for the PC, now a
Humanities professor) he has a copy of "Soul of a New Machine" in his
bookcase.

poindexter fortran | pfortran at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/***@fidonet




... Slow preparation, fast execution
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
--- Synchronet 3.19c-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

In Memoriam: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. - a Personal Recollection
https://circleid.com/posts/20221119-in-memoriam-frederick-p-brooks-jr-a-personal-recollection

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Computer Design Innovator, Dies at 91. He was a
lead designer of the computers that cemented IBM's dominance for
decades. He later wrote a book on software engineering that became a
quirky classic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/technology/frederick-p-brooks-jr-dead.html

RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

... 8bit ... then there is ebcdic fiasco (instead of ascii)

BCD was supposed to go to 8-bit ASCII ... but (comedy? of)
circumstances, it went to EBCDIC instead (gone 404, but lives on at
wayback machine):
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/ASCII.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/BACSLASH.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/FATHEROF.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/HISTORY.HTM

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
... 8bit ... then there is ebcdic fiasco (instead of ascii)

ASCII and ye shall receive.
-- the computer industry

ASCII not, what your machine can do for you.
-- IBM

(seen in Ted Nelson's _Computer Lib_)

[Peter Flass]

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case. Most input was by
keypunch, which didn’t support it. Most common terminals prior to the 3270
didn’t support it (TTY, VT-100, or 2260; 2741 did support mixed-case), and
the “text keyboard” on the 3270 was a non-standard (and maybe extra-cost)
option. Drum printers didn’t support it, and mixed-case trains on the 1403
reduced the speed a lot. This isn’t to say it wasn’t done - I saw a
mixed-case application a guy was working on in 1969, but it was exotic back
then. It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
... 8bit ... then there is ebcdic fiasco (instead of ascii)

ASCII and ye shall receive.
-- the computer industry
ASCII not, what your machine can do for you.
-- IBM
(seen in Ted Nelson's _Computer Lib_)

[Thomas Koenig]

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case. Most input was by
keypunch, which didn’t support it. Most common terminals prior to the 3270
didn’t support it (TTY, VT-100, or 2260; 2741 did support mixed-case), and
the “text keyboard” on the 3270 was a non-standard (and maybe extra-cost)
option. Drum printers didn’t support it, and mixed-case trains on the 1403
reduced the speed a lot. This isn’t to say it wasn’t done - I saw a
mixed-case application a guy was working on in 1969, but it was exotic back
then. It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

Brian Kernighan wrote in his PhD thesis on a line printer using
lower-case letters in 1969. He also wrote a runoff implementation
in a Fortran dialect of that age to be able to print it.

The story is in "UNIX: A History and a Memoir", which anybody
interested in computer history should have read already :-)

[Peter Flass]

Post by Thomas Koenig

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case. Most input was by
keypunch, which didn’t support it. Most common terminals prior to the 3270
didn’t support it (TTY, VT-100, or 2260; 2741 did support mixed-case), and
the “text keyboard” on the 3270 was a non-standard (and maybe extra-cost)
option. Drum printers didn’t support it, and mixed-case trains on the 1403
reduced the speed a lot. This isn’t to say it wasn’t done - I saw a
mixed-case application a guy was working on in 1969, but it was exotic back
then. It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

Brian Kernighan wrote in his PhD thesis on a line printer using
lower-case letters in 1969. He also wrote a runoff implementation
in a Fortran dialect of that age to be able to print it.

Sure, they had mixed-case print trains. As I said, I saw the output from
one and was very impressed. I’m not sure how much they slowed the printer
down, but it could conceivably been as much as 50%. (fewer of each
character in the train meant more rotational delay). Some places only used
them for special jobs, but changing one might take around 10 minutes, and
operators HATED changing print trains. Laser printers were a game-changer.
I had PPOE get an LN03 and designed an application around it to print
financial aid notices for students.

Post by Thomas Koenig
The story is in "UNIX: A History and a Memoir", which anybody
interested in computer history should have read already :-)

[Peter Flass]

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Thomas Koenig

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case. Most input was by
keypunch, which didn’t support it. Most common terminals prior to the 3270
didn’t support it (TTY, VT-100, or 2260; 2741 did support mixed-case), and
the “text keyboard” on the 3270 was a non-standard (and maybe extra-cost)
option. Drum printers didn’t support it, and mixed-case trains on the 1403
reduced the speed a lot. This isn’t to say it wasn’t done - I saw a
mixed-case application a guy was working on in 1969, but it was exotic back
then. It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

Brian Kernighan wrote in his PhD thesis on a line printer using
lower-case letters in 1969. He also wrote a runoff implementation
in a Fortran dialect of that age to be able to print it.

Sure, they had mixed-case print trains. As I said, I saw the output from
one and was very impressed. I’m not sure how much they slowed the printer
down, but it could conceivably been as much as 50%. (fewer of each
character in the train meant more rotational delay). Some places only used
them for special jobs, but changing one might take around 10 minutes, and
operators HATED changing print trains. Laser printers were a game-changer.
I had PPOE get an LN03 and designed an application around it to print
financial aid notices for students.

What was really fun were 1493 shops that needed a special character, like
a logo. They’d probably only have one in the print train, and the printer
would seem to pause while the single hammer fired for that one slug.

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Post by Thomas Koenig
Brian Kernighan wrote in his PhD thesis on a line printer using
lower-case letters in 1969. He also wrote a runoff implementation
in a Fortran dialect of that age to be able to print it.
The story is in "UNIX: A History and a Memoir", which anybody
interested in computer history should have read already :-)

lots of 2741 (selectric) terminal on CTSS, Multics, and CP67 in 60s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2741
also used for APL (with APL selectric golf ball). 2741 used tilt-rotate
"code" ... translation between computer character and tilt-rotate golf
ball character position.

CTSS (some of the CTSS people had gone to 5th flr for multics, others
went to science center on the 4th flr) runoff was rewritten for CMS
SCRIPT and output runoff on 1403 "TN" (w/lower case; some number of IBM
CP67/CMS documents) ... final copy was sometimes even runoff on 2741
with "film" ribbon (rather than fabric
ribbon)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TYPSET_and_RUNOFF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRIPT_(markup)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS

GML was invented at the science center in 1969 and GML tag processing
added to SCRIPT (decade later, GML morphs into ISO standard SGML, after
another decade morphs into HTML at CERN).
http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language

one of the first main stream IBM documents done in CMS SCRIPT was 370
architecture document (sometimes called "REDBOOK" for distribution in
RED 3-ring binders). CMS SCRIPT command line options were used to select
printing the full 370 architecture document or the 370 Principles of
Operation subset (w/o all the engineering notes, alternatives,
justification, etc) can be seen from printing with 1403 TN ... something
blocky w/o proportional spacing, predating 3800).

[Quadibloc]

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
CMS SCRIPT command line options were used to select
printing the full 370 architecture document or the 370 Principles of
Operation subset (w/o all the engineering notes, alternatives,
justification, etc) can be seen from printing with 1403 TN ... something
blocky w/o proportional spacing, predating 3800).

Which full architecture document no doubt was highly secret within IBM.

However, nowadays, stuff like Program Logic Manuals, which were IBM
Confidential, are turning up on Bitsavers.

John Savard

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Post by Quadibloc
Which full architecture document no doubt was highly secret within IBM.
However, nowadays, stuff like Program Logic Manuals, which were IBM
Confidential, are turning up on Bitsavers.

PLMs were less so, it was the unannounced features ... like before 370
virtual memory ... somebody leaked some details to industry press which
resulted in witch hunt ... and then all internal IBM copiers were
retrofitted with serial under the glass that would appear on every page
copied ... to try and help localize where leak might have originated.

Cambridge did have a joint project with Endicott to modify CP67 to
provide 370 (virtual memory architecture) virtual machines. This was in
regular operation a year before any engineering 370 hardware supporting
virtual memory was operational. Cambridge had to demonsrate fairly
strong security since staff, professors, and students from Boston area
univ. were also using the Cambridge CP67 system.

Then for FS
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Future_Systems_project

IBM tried to eliminate all classified hard copy documents, specially
modified VM370 system where documents could only be read on specifically
identified 3270 terminals and all functions but reading was disabled.

When FS imploded, there was mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product
pipelines ... including kicking off 370/xa and quick and dirty 3033 and
3081 in parallel. Initially 370/xa hard copy were "IBM registered
confidential" (referred to as "811" for nov78 publication date) ... each
page had off-color, page size, document serial number embossed ... serial
number was registered to specific person and there were periodic
surprise security audits to make sure they were kept under double
lock&key.

IBM security classification had evovled to:

IBM Internal Use Only
IBM Confidential
IBM Confidential - Restricted
IBM Confidential - Registered

something of a joke: 1974, CERN had done an analysis comparing VM370/CMS
and MVS/TSO and presented result at (IBM mainframe user group) SHARE
... and copies were freely available ... except inside IBM where they
got stamped "IBM Confidential - Restricted" (available on need to know
basis only) ... wanted as much as possible to minimize availability of
the analysis to IBM employees.

I ran into something similar when TYMSHARE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare
in Aug1976 started offering their CMS-based online computer
conferencing facility free to SHARE as VMSHARE ... archives
here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare

I cut a deal with TYMSHARE to get monthly tape dump of all VMSHARE files
for putting up on internal network and internal systems. The biggest
problem I had were the lawyers concerned that IBM employees would be
contaminated exposed to customer information (and/or internal employees
were being fed stuff about customers that didn't correspond to what
customers were actually saying).

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by Peter Flass
It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

True. My point, though, was that it took even longer for people's
minds to become so enabled.

[Stefan Ram]

Post by Peter Flass
For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case.

When one turns on the Pet 2001, one can enter capital
letters and small pictorial symbol, like "▀". However,
"POKE 59468,14" will modify the system so that it will
display lower case characters instead of the small
pictorial symbols.

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case. Most input was by
keypunch, which didn’t support it. Most common terminals prior to the 3270
didn’t support it (TTY, VT-100, or 2260; 2741 did support mixed-case), and
the “text keyboard” on the 3270 was a non-standard (and maybe extra-cost)
option. Drum printers didn’t support it, and mixed-case trains on the 1403
reduced the speed a lot. This isn’t to say it wasn’t done - I saw a
mixed-case application a guy was working on in 1969, but it was exotic back
then. It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

Unix supported lower-case, even from uppercase only peripherals like a
teletype. By allowing the user to escape the uppercase characters to produce the
lower-case equivelent (or vice versa, see next paragraph).

The login program would, if it detected upper-case input, automatically
downcase it before using it for both the username and the password and
set a flag in the terminal driver to perform such downcasing automatically,
in which case the user would escape (prefix with a backslash) to obtain
uppercase.

[Bob Eager]

Post by Scott Lurndal
Unix supported lower-case, even from uppercase only peripherals like a
teletype. By allowing the user to escape the uppercase characters to
produce the lower-case equivelent (or vice versa, see next paragraph).
The login program would, if it detected upper-case input, automatically
downcase it before using it for both the username and the password and
set a flag in the terminal driver to perform such downcasing
automatically, in which case the user would escape (prefix with a
backslash) to obtain uppercase.

I remember that! We had two or three terminals that did lower case, and
some teletypes. There was always a rush to get to the former, of course.

[Quadibloc]

Post by Bob Eager

Post by Scott Lurndal
Unix supported lower-case, even from uppercase only peripherals like a
teletype. By allowing the user to escape the uppercase characters to
produce the lower-case equivelent (or vice versa, see next paragraph).
The login program would, if it detected upper-case input, automatically
downcase it before using it for both the username and the password and
set a flag in the terminal driver to perform such downcasing
automatically, in which case the user would escape (prefix with a
backslash) to obtain uppercase.

I remember that! We had two or three terminals that did lower case, and
some teletypes. There was always a rush to get to the former, of course.

On the computer system I remember from those days, when one used
a terminal that supported lower-case, the system would automatically
convert it to upper-case. One could turn that off with a front-end
command (which would start with % - perhaps it was %LCASE) if one
were going to enter text.

But operating system commands and programming languages were all
in upper-case only, because the card punches were only in upper case.

No ASR 33 Teletypes, though. If one wasn't using a fancy 3270, then one
would be using a 2741, which still supported lower-case. At least it
ran MTS, so I didn't have to learn JCL of the double slashes.

John Savard

[Robin Vowels]

Post by Peter Flass

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

.

Post by Peter Flass
For a long time it was very difficult to use lower-case. Most input was by
keypunch, which didn’t support it. Most common terminals prior to the 3270
didn’t support it (TTY, VT-100, or 2260; 2741 did support mixed-case), and
the “text keyboard” on the 3270 was a non-standard (and maybe extra-cost)
option. Drum printers didn’t support it, and mixed-case trains on the 1403
reduced the speed a lot. This isn’t to say it wasn’t done - I saw a
mixed-case application a guy was working on in 1969, but it was exotic back
then. It took a long time for input/output devices to catch up to enable
lower-case.

.
The ASR38 was upper and lower case.
So were Memorex, Diablo, Qume, and other similar keyboard/printers.
Dot matrix printers did upper and lower case (maybe not all, but easy enough
for a manufacturer to build).

[Thomas Koenig]

Post by Charlie Gibbs

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project
management. Turing Award winner who helped spread the eight-bit byte
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/
The most important single decision I ever made was to change the IBM 360
series from a 6-bit byte to an 8-bit byte, thereby enabling the use of
lowercase letters. That change propagated everywhere.

Except into people's minds, for a long time. I saw many people who just
couldn't accept the concept of lower case, regardless of how transparently
it was implemented. I think a lot of people believed that only upper case
was "computerish" (i.e. legitimate). Only over the last decade or two
have I seen this belief dwindle. Maybe, as with so many other ideas,
the old generation had to die off and get out of the way.

Post by Anne & Lynn Wheeler
... 8bit ... then there is ebcdic fiasco (instead of ascii)

ASCII and ye shall receive.
-- the computer industry
ASCII not, what your machine can do for you.
-- IBM

ASCII a stupid question, get a stupid ANSI.