M$ drops support for security essentials in xp

On 01/09/2014 01:46 PM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
I also started out in the punched card days

Todd replied:
I remember those days too. I hated the things

Rode the punch card wave from 1961 to 2008. Loved it. Got to work on all
sorts of weird stuff.
Was supposed to become 7070 trained but another CE got crosstrained and
I hit the first UR account, 51 column cards, high speed skip, mod10
selfcheck, then a year later the 2nd, add Friden adding machine to the
keypunches and all sorts of other equipment processing cards.

On 01/11/2014 03:53 PM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 11:22:21 -0600, philo wrote:

On 01/11/2014 09:20 AM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 18:31:19 -0600, philo wrote:


The place where I worked hired a programmer part time.
He was retired but started in 1948.


What did he program in 1948? There were very few computers then.




He worked for Oscar Meyer


I should have been clearer; I meant what *computer* did he program?
Very few computers had been released that far back.


I don't know the details but he told me that they used a pickup truck to
transfer the data (punch cards) from the Milwaukee to their main
location in Madison, WI


OK. If you don't know, no big deal; I was just curious.




There is no way I'd remember what it was.

He started with the company I worked for right after they got rid of the
PDP-11 and got a Nixdorf . That was somewhere around 1980



He also said that he'd run a pencil across the stacks of cards and make
a diagonal line in case someone dropped a stack...to facilitate
re-ordering them.


Yes, that was standard practice, not just with him and with Oscar
Meyer, but with almost everybody using punched cards. And a magic
marker was more common than a pencil.

And by the way, that diagonal line didn't really facilitate reordering
them; more than anything else it simply showed you whether the deck
was still in sequence or needed fixing. If only a few cards were out
of sequence that break in the diagonal might help you reorder them
manually, but if the deck had been dropped, the way to reorder them
was to run them through a card sorter.





OK.

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 14:17:08 -0500, Paul wrote:

On 1/11/2014 12:22 PM, philo wrote:
On 01/11/2014 09:20 AM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 18:31:19 -0600, philo wrote:


The place where I worked hired a programmer part time.
He was retired but started in 1948.


What did he program in 1948? There were very few computers then.




He worked for Oscar Meyer

I don't know the details but he told me that they used a pickup truck to
transfer the data (punch cards) from the Milwaukee to their main
location
in Madison, WI


He also said that he'd run a pencil across the stacks of cards and make
a
diagonal line in case someone dropped a stack...to facilitate
re-ordering
them.


Probably their daily production and possibly payroll records.
(just guessing)

Punched cards have existed for a long time :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom

"Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store
information a step further when he created a punched card
tabulating machine which was used in the 1890 U.S. Census."

So even if they don't store a computer program, they
can be used for "data analysis".



Yes, as you say, they contained data well before they were used for
computer programs.


As I said earlier, I started programming on an IBM 1401 in 1962.
Around the time I started, the company I worked for got its first
computer. But they already had *tons* of punched cards. The cards were
used to contain data that was processed by EAM machines (IBM 402,
407, etc.)

I recall taking Fortran in college in the mid 1960's, and we only had
limited access to one computer on campus - the University's IBM 1620
mainframe.
By "limited access", I mean that you wrote your Fortran assignments on punch
cards, turned it your assignment to the mainframe room, and, if you were
lucky, you got it back *a week later* (since the administration stuff had
precedence). But if you made a single programming error, it was tough
nuggies for your grade on that assignment. Can you even imagine something
like that today for our kids?? If they don't get their results back
instantly, they're upset! :-)

On 01/11/2014 07:38 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
X
snip


I recall taking Fortran in college in the mid 1960's, and we only had
limited access to one computer on campus - the University's IBM 1620
mainframe.
By "limited access", I mean that you wrote your Fortran assignments on punch
cards, turned it your assignment to the mainframe room, and, if you were
lucky, you got it back *a week later* (since the administration stuff had
precedence). But if you made a single programming error, it was tough
nuggies for your grade on that assignment. Can you even imagine something
like that today for our kids?? If they don't get their results back
instantly, they're upset! :-)




Yep. I had a similar experience in the late 60's when I started college.

Wait in line to use the keypunch.

Wait in line to submit your cards.

Wait several hours to get the printout.

If you were missing as much as one unambiguous parentheses the program
was spit out and not even run.

Though we did not have to wait a week to get our program back...
it did take a full week of constant work , waiting in line etc
to actually get it working.



Those dot matrix printers were fast though!

On 1/11/2014 5:01 PM, edfair wrote:
On 01/09/2014 01:46 PM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
I also started out in the punched card days

Todd replied:
I remember those days too. I hated the things

Rode the punch card wave from 1961 to 2008. Loved it. Got to work on all
sorts of weird stuff.
Was supposed to become 7070 trained but another CE got crosstrained and
I hit the first UR account, 51 column cards, high speed skip, mod10
selfcheck, then a year later the 2nd, add Friden adding machine to the
keypunches and all sorts of other equipment processing cards.



I thought IBM cards (OK, Hollerith cards) were a great improvement over
paper tape -- until I saw one of my colleagues drop the semi-sequenced
one-and-only copy of the OS, 5 (or so) full trays of cards, onto the
hall floor. We blocked all traffic through that main hall of the lab
for hours, while working on the punch-card jigsaw puzzle ("Hey, this
pile looks like the disk driver").

Anybody can manually punch an extra hole into an IBM card, but only
the pro's know how to glue chad back and produce a readable card.

IBM cards were sensitive to handling, dirt, temperature, humidity,
and (probably) the phase of the moon; and, some card colors worked
better than others. But IBM's intelligent card readers and card punches
only jammed on rush jobs; how ever did they know?

When people tell you about the good old days, you can bet that they
never used IBM cards or outhouses.
--
Cheers, Bob

On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 10:31:32 -0500, Bob Willard
wrote:

Anybody can manually punch an extra hole into an IBM card, but only
the pro's know how to glue chad back and produce a readable card.


Glue was never used, as far as I know. You simply pressed it in place
and it would usually be held in place by friction (at least for a
while).

But if you wanted a permanent fix, you would just punch a new card, or
copy the card on a keypunch and fix the erroneous column.

On 01/12/2014 09:31 AM, Bob Willard wrote:


I thought IBM cards (OK, Hollerith cards) were a great improvement over
paper tape -- until I saw one of my colleagues drop the semi-sequenced
one-and-only copy of the OS, 5 (or so) full trays of cards, onto the
hall floor. We blocked all traffic through that main hall of the lab
for hours, while working on the punch-card jigsaw puzzle ("Hey, this
pile looks like the disk driver").

Anybody can manually punch an extra hole into an IBM card, but only
the pro's know how to glue chad back and produce a readable card.

IBM cards were sensitive to handling, dirt, temperature, humidity,
and (probably) the phase of the moon; and, some card colors worked
better than others. But IBM's intelligent card readers and card punches
only jammed on rush jobs; how ever did they know?

When people tell you about the good old days, you can bet that they
never used IBM cards or outhouses.



That was old technology of course. No one then could have predicted that
in the future how trouble-free that was all to become. Florida would use
voting machines completely free of any chad problems. G

Bob Willard wrote:
On 1/11/2014 5:01 PM, edfair wrote:
On 01/09/2014 01:46 PM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
I also started out in the punched card days

Todd replied:
I remember those days too. I hated the things

Rode the punch card wave from 1961 to 2008. Loved it. Got to work on all
sorts of weird stuff.
Was supposed to become 7070 trained but another CE got crosstrained and
I hit the first UR account, 51 column cards, high speed skip, mod10
selfcheck, then a year later the 2nd, add Friden adding machine to the
keypunches and all sorts of other equipment processing cards.



I thought IBM cards (OK, Hollerith cards) were a great improvement over
paper tape -- until I saw one of my colleagues drop the semi-sequenced
one-and-only copy of the OS, 5 (or so) full trays of cards, onto the
hall floor. We blocked all traffic through that main hall of the lab
for hours, while working on the punch-card jigsaw puzzle ("Hey, this
pile looks like the disk driver").

I'm wondering how it would be possible to put them back in order. How was
that even done?

Anybody can manually punch an extra hole into an IBM card, but only
the pro's know how to glue chad back and produce a readable card.

IBM cards were sensitive to handling, dirt, temperature, humidity,
and (probably) the phase of the moon; and, some card colors worked
better than others. But IBM's intelligent card readers and card punches
only jammed on rush jobs; how ever did they know?

When people tell you about the good old days, you can bet that they
never used IBM cards or outhouses.

Yeah, except for the fact that the life was a bit simpler (but not
necessarily easier) back then, and most folks had a greater sense of
personal responsibility than now.

On 1/12/2014 11:17 AM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 10:31:32 -0500, Bob Willard
wrote:

Anybody can manually punch an extra hole into an IBM card, but only
the pro's know how to glue chad back and produce a readable card.


Glue was never used, as far as I know. You simply pressed it in place
and it would usually be held in place by friction (at least for a
while).

Not actual glue; we used fingernail polish to glue the chad back in
place. Other glue-like stuff we tried let the chad fall out, or
jammed the reader.

But if you wanted a permanent fix, you would just punch a new card, or
copy the card on a keypunch and fix the erroneous column.

Easy enough to punch a new non-binary card; nobody would bother with
the chad-glue process except for binary cards. (ISTR that IBM 026
card punches would not copy some binary cards.)
--
Cheers, Bob

On 1/12/2014 2:09 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Bob Willard wrote:
On 1/11/2014 5:01 PM, edfair wrote:
On 01/09/2014 01:46 PM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
I also started out in the punched card days

Todd replied:
I remember those days too. I hated the things

Rode the punch card wave from 1961 to 2008. Loved it. Got to work on all
sorts of weird stuff.
Was supposed to become 7070 trained but another CE got crosstrained and
I hit the first UR account, 51 column cards, high speed skip, mod10
selfcheck, then a year later the 2nd, add Friden adding machine to the
keypunches and all sorts of other equipment processing cards.



I thought IBM cards (OK, Hollerith cards) were a great improvement over
paper tape -- until I saw one of my colleagues drop the semi-sequenced
one-and-only copy of the OS, 5 (or so) full trays of cards, onto the
hall floor. We blocked all traffic through that main hall of the lab
for hours, while working on the punch-card jigsaw puzzle ("Hey, this
pile looks like the disk driver").

I'm wondering how it would be possible to put them back in order. How was
that even done?


Very carefully :-P

When a card deck is dropped from a few feet, some bunches of the
cards will stay together - and that helps a lot. Next, many
of the cards had sequence numbers (columns 72-80?), and many
had the instruction printed ("Hey, this pile looks like the
disk driver"). Finally, after re-ordering the cards as much as
possible, we re-assembled and started debugging.
--
Cheers, Bob

On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 06:37:15 -0500, Bob Willard
wrote:

On 1/12/2014 2:09 PM, Bill in Co wrote:

I'm wondering how it would be possible to put them back in order. How was
that even done?


Very carefully :-P

When a card deck is dropped from a few feet, some bunches of the
cards will stay together - and that helps a lot. Next, many
of the cards had sequence numbers (columns 72-80?),



You're talking about a deck of program cards. Yes, they normally had
sequence numbers (except when they were left out). But most decks of
cards, and the biggest decks of cards, were normally data, not program
cards. And data almost never had sequence numbers (nor did they
normally need to be in any particular sequence).