Technologists Notes

“A very good place to start” – Oscar Hammerstein II

IBM 801 Building ca. 1975

Late last year I became aware of “The Unix Heritage Society”, a fascinating archive and mailing list on UNIX history (and often, tangential topics). Even Ken Thompson occasionally contributes.

There have been various TUHS discussions of AIX in the 1980s, the RT/PC, etc. Often I want to say, “no, that’s not how it was, or, at least, not how it seemed to me when I was in the middle of things”, but I’ve avoided joining those discussions.

Since I don’t know of a good history of AIX, nor the associated hardware projects prior to the RS/6000, this is my attempt to say what I can to clarify and fill in the lesser known history. (Peter Salus’ A Quarter Century of Unix is a comprehensive reference, but barely mentions AIX. The RT book is a snapshot at the time of the first release and only incidentally covers history. AIX Turns 20 reflects on the first two decades.) Read the rest of this entry »

An attempt at organizing thoughts & readings

Tuesday (and early voting in the weeks before) was a measurement, and though decisive, not a very complete or illuminating diagnosis of our population, any more than taking a person’s temperature characterizes their health. Our electoral health is not good. Read the rest of this entry »

“Genghis Khan and his brother Don
Could not keep on keepin’ on”
(1971) “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – Bob Dylan

For many years, starting in high school, one of my ambitions was to make good recordings of live music. Until I could afford and justify the cost of good machines, I progressed through a series of mediocre, but less expensive reel to reel recorders, starting with a Wollensak similar to the photo at left. Read the rest of this entry »

“Genghis Khan and his brother Don
Could not keep on keepin’ on”
(1971) “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – Bob Dylan

VMware Server 1.0 wasn’t broke…

After almost 10 years of being comfortable with VMware Server 1.0^{[1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6]}, I mostly needed to move on: Read the rest of this entry »

“Genghis Khan and his brother Don
Could not keep on keepin’ on”
(1971) “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – Bob Dylan

(What is the plural of “Linux”?)

I guess it was trepidation from memories of upgrading to Fedora 19. I kept checking out the subsequent releases, 20, then 21, then 22, then 23, but not doing much with them. “Enough is enough” I said to myself, and even put my toe in the water with the beta release of Fedora 24. Five months later, I wonder what was holding me back. Though much has changed between 19 and 24, getting going with 24 really didn’t seem that hard. Read the rest of this entry »