[GTALUG] video: Benno Rice on "The Tragedy of systed"

o1bigtenor o1bigtenor at gmail.com
Fri Feb 8 16:17:15 EST 2019


On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 3:07 PM Russell Reiter via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019, 12:15 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk at gtalug.org wrote:
>>
>> | From: Russell Reiter via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
>>
>> | These days people can laugh at the UNIX concept of connecting typewriters
>> | but in the lexicon of the 60's the typewriter was the person and the
>> | typwriting machine was the compositing device.
>>
>> Not in the 1960's.  Perhaps in the 1860's.
>>
>> In the 1960's I had a typewriter.  And it wasn't a human (slaves had
>> been emancipated; actually before 1860 in Upper Canada).
>>
>> And we didn't think of typewriters as doing compositing.  If you did
>> it, you did it with a board and with wax as temporary glue (but
>> ordinary people didn't do that).
>
>
> I went to a vocational school which had a full blown print shop and touch typing classes for students in the administrative track. Our curriculum and textbooks were a little out of date, but I specifically recall the definition of a typewriter as a person and the typewriting machine as the tool. Although that may have been in a historical context, academically speaking, I always remember that distinction.
>
> I also remember running bristol board through the waxer and cutting and pasting typewritten text in preparation for creating photo offset printing plates. Also some wierd tool where you could insert a font wheel, which came in several point sizes for headlines etc. You dialed each letter one by one, just like a dymo label tool, except the result was printed and not embossed and then it was pasted up to create a photo negative which was used in order to create the positive plate for offset printing.
>
> I probably should have said compositing process in my origional post. Certainly the people who took touch typing as part of secretarial and administrative course work wouldn't call it a compositing machine.
>
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that they used the word "typewriter" since "Teletype"
>> was and is a registered trademark of Teletype Corporation (registered
>> 1916) (now called Teletype LLC).  If I remember correctly, at the
>> time, Teletype Corporation was owned by ATT.
>>
>> Under US trademark law, if the owner of a trademark allows the name to be
>> widely used generically, they lose the trademark.  Think "Aspirin" (no
>> longer protected in US but still Bayer's in Canada, I think).
>
>
> I remember at one point that it was Xerox corporation who tried to sue in order to stop employees from saying take this to the copy room and Xerox it, unless an actuall Xerox machine was being used. That one didnt get out of the gate.
>>
>>

>
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 8:11 PM o1bigtenor <o1bigtenor at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Greetings
>>
>> We've 'chatted' occasionally on NewAGTalk.
>>
>> I'm trying to figure out how to minimize lamb losses when lambing in
>> colder times of the year in the barn. You look to have been doing this
>> for a while so I thought I would ask and pic your brain to improve my
>> live lamb rates.
>>
>> I have figured out how to maximize the lamb drop rate.
>> Now I would like to reduce my losses from birth to say a week.
>>
>> One think I'm wondering - - - what range of temperature do you prefer
>> for your ewes when they're lambing fairly fresh sheared in the barn
>> At the time, UNIX seemed to call the devices TTYs.  Generically.
>>
>> The industry called them "terminals", but that's a terrible name.  It
>> kind of means "endpoint of a circuit".  But then a lineprinter, a
>> papertape reader, a lamp could all be called terminals.
>>
>> "Typewriter" was a pretty good term.  Ordinary folks knew what a
>> typewriter was.
>>
>> Originally UNIX ran on the DEC PDP-7 and then PDP-11.  They came with
>> a real Teletype model 33 or 35.  Horrible but amazing (supposedly a
>> design based on a German WWII device; no machined parts!).
>>
>> I managed to get UNIX to support an IBM 2741, which was an IBM
>> Selectric typewriter with a serial connection.  This was not easy
>> since the 2741 used a totally different character set ("tilt rotate
>> code") and was half-duplex on a line-of-text basis.
>>
>> When CRT terminals came in, there was a struggle for naming them (not
>> to mention architecting them):
>>
>> - glass TTYs
>>
>> - VDU (Video Display Unit)
>>
>> - [CRT] terminal <== the winner in my world
>>
>> | Unix is dead and all thats left is Linux and some rounding errors. & Ask
>> | grampa about getty.
>>
>> MacOS and offshoots are somewhat UNIX and quite widespread.
>>
>> But, sadly, his point is valid.
>
>
> I liked what he said at the end about finding what you like about systemd and working with that. Along with affirming that no one should have sent Lennart Pottering death threats over systemd development. A little good humored dissent is one thing, a culture of contempt is quite another. Kudos to the presenter for framing some of the more divisive issues of teamwork in a most humane way.
>
I appreciated this talk a lot. Made my wife sit through it to grin!
He showed what was good AND what was bad about it and also
lightly poked at the less than positive way it was introduced. What
was impressive was that he could use humor in most interesting
ways and yet wasn't denigrative in the process. Helped me to
'understand' things a bit better although I still am not clear on
whether to move further into systemd or not.

When it comes to containers - - - well I got royally burned by them suckers
about a year ago so whilst I think that they're a great idea the implementation
needs to be different than lxd before I'm going to touch the idea again.
(LXD itself isn't the largest part of the problem. Its LXD has chosen to
rely upon snapd and both have embraced the concept of the programmer
knowing everything and the users being idiots that don't know how to
keep a system up to date. If I had the skills I would be working on forking
LXD - - - its a great idea.)

Dee


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