The story about "the width of the backsides of two Roman horses" is just a myth. Which should be obvious if you look at the many different railway gauges in use. You can trace it back to 19C standardisation, and argue over whether Brunel's 7'¼" was better than standard gauge, or if we should all have converted to 3m Breitspurbahn, but that's a different question.
Yes - but that's the gauges you are taking as standard. In fact narrow gauge railways are pretty common, since they are easier and cheaper to put through some landscapes. But as for main line high speed / high load railways, the balance of cost vs utility usually works out the same. Another major effect is standardisation in Victorian Britain (which is why Brunel's gauge on the GWR was replaced). Those engineers went out in to the wider world, and took standard gauge with them, and often the locomotives were manufactured in Britain. Hence the long distance railways often use exactly the same gauge - but the exact measurement was a matter of Parliament deciding on what compromise to draw based on early railway lines, bearing in mind that it was a lot easier to reduce gauge rather than increase it.
But this doesn't really contradict the myth. You certainly can have rail gauges that are _smaller_ than two horses' asses. You don't _have_ to use all the available width all the time.
It's the lack of something significantly larger that matters for this myth.
> Hence the long distance railways often use exactly the same gauge - but the exact measurement was a matter of Parliament deciding on what compromise to draw based on early railway lines, bearing in mind that it was a lot easier to reduce gauge rather than increase it.
The Russian railway was specifically designed to be incompatible with others (it's slightly larger) to make it harder for invading forces to use it. But even then it was not that much different from others.
I can't say I'm wild about a world where Digital Research won. When they were dominant with CP/M, the tools and documentation were bad to the point where most machines had Z80 processors and DR only provided an 8080 assembler, so you had to DB significant bits of code to get the missing opcodes. Developing RSXs to access bank-switched memory under CP/M 3 could have been so much easier with a few examples and perhaps debugging tools. MS/DOS was just so much easier.
I remember using a Z80 assembler on a CP/M 1.x machine, way back when. If it wasn't by DRI could it possibly have been (shock, horror) Microsoft??? We did have a Microsoft Fortran compiler, which was crap, but that was mostly down to being floppy disk based.
Not trying to be funny, I used the assembler a lot, but I really can't remember who supplied it.
Oh, just had a thought - this was on Research Machines 380Zs, so perhaps it was Research Machines home-grown one?
Yes, there were one or two third party assemblers available. From memory, the issue was with the downstream tools - so for instance on CP/M 3.0, I think you had to use the DR one to be able to build an RSX (equivalent of a TSR under DOS. You could count the number of 8080 CP/M 3.0 machines on the fingers of one foot.
You've reminded me that I have a 380Z or 480Z in the loft - I must get it going again.
DR-DOS was more than alright, if Microsoft hadn't smothered it the computing world would look very very different today …
I'm sure this is a mostly forgotten part of computing lore; apologies for the Gemini's Overview:
“Microsoft actively stifled DR-DOS in the early 1990s through anti-competitive tactics, primarily using the "AARD code" in Windows 3.1, which deliberately created compatibility errors to scare users away from the competing operating system. Microsoft also used FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) tactics, such as hinting at future incompatibilities.
Key Tactics Used by Microsoft:
The AARD Code: Windows 3.1 installer contained heavily obfuscated code, discovered in 1992, that specifically checked if the system was running DR-DOS. If detected, it displayed a fake "Non-Fatal Error" message to induce panic.
Vaporware Announcements: Microsoft announced upcoming versions of MS-DOS to dampen demand for current versions of DR-DOS.
OEM Pressure: Microsoft leveraged its monopoly to ensure pre-installed Windows came with MS-DOS, hindering DR-DOS's retail market success.
While Digital Research released a patch (the "business update") to bypass the AARD code, the damage to market perception and OEM deals was significant. The case was later part of legal battles between Caldera (which acquired DR-DOS) and Microsoft.”
Yeah we know of the issues, and related lawsuits, and here we are OEMs still only sell GNU/Linux devices on their online shops, leaving to regular consumer stores Android, WebOS and Chromebooks.
Ah, and Valve had to come up with Proton, as game studios can't be bothered to natively target GNU/Linux.
There's a bit of a tradition of introducing engineering ideas through stories. I remember a novella which was used to introduce something like MRP II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_requirements_planning) in the 80's. One of the reasons I think it works is that it keeps a focus on the human elements - like why Tom fitted the switch in your story. I remember automating a lab system back in 1985, which would bring in £1000 per day. Two weeks later I found out that the reason it wasn't in use was that the user wanted an amber monitor rather than a green one. I fitted the switch.
I don't know if this is what the future will look like, but this looks realistic. And if my non-existent grandson starts re-coding my business without asking, he's going to spend the next six months using K&R C.
One of my jobs is taking funerals in the UK. (It's always useful for a project manager to have access to a number of deep holes). As the article says, things are different in Europe, and even between the constituent countries of the UK. In England, where I am, probably 90% of funerals lead to a cremation rather than a burial. There was a revolutionary change from "illegal and heretical" to "absolutely fine and normal" in a short period of the 19C. I've taken a service at the original crematorium in Woking, which has plaques for a few notable people including Eleanor Marx and Alan Turing. That made the London Necropolis obsolete - a huge graveyard in the same town, with its own dedicated railway leading out of Waterloo station, built when London was running out of room.
I said I took a service at the crematorium: most crems are run by local councils, have one or two chapels as part of the complex, and are set in a cemetery. Stand-alone crematoria for direct cremation do exist, and I think that this will be the way of the future, with funerals taken with a box of pre-cremated ashes rather a coffin, mainly to reduce cost. Cost is high, though far from as high as in the USA: no embalming, hence no need for vaults for pollution control, simple coffin which is cheaper and only needs four bearers, crematoria run more as a public service than as a profit centre, ashes often scattered rather than needing a grave. But it still ends up costing a lot because so many people are needed to run the service.
We do have the equivalent of body disposal by the county. A basic funeral is funded by the local authority, and it is a funeral, not just body disposal. I've done a small number where someone has died with little money, and without known friends or family. I have spent some time contacting pubs, churches and clubs to find anyone who might want to come or be able to tell me anything for the eulogy.
It's a fascinating job - I can't think of anyone other than midwives who can visit homes from such a wide section of society and hear life stories. Today I took a huge funeral for a matriarch from a very clannish area of the town - you often get four generations of a family living within a few hundred yards of each other. It's a very different culture to my own middle-class background.
It's also fun to go to the biennial National Funeral Exhibition - several thousand people who are habitually kind and empathetic, descending on an exhibition hall in the middle of an agricultural showground, to see the latest advances in high-altitude disposal of ashes and demonstrations of the manufacture of wicker coffins (personally I would go for the felt coffin). My wife is looking forward to it, though she has advised me that if I continue to call her Morticia she's going to be picking up some business cards for her own use.
Yup. I wondered if it was Communicating Sequential Processes when I followed a link. No, clearly not, but only found a candidate expansion 2/3 of the way through the article.
If you want to do that, you can set many keyboards up to do exactly that. They just need to run the standard software - QMK, ZMK or Vial. You'll need to pick a keyboard with enough keys, of course, but there is plenty of choice. However there are other ways of solving the problem, e.g. a single key that is mapped to produce that combination. It's a matter of taste and experiment, and there is no reason for you to do it the same way as anyone else.
Thumbs: true, but I think some take it way too far - up to seven keys per thumb! The thumb is articulated at the wrong angle to move very far, so I find that two or perhaps three keys per thumb in a single arc is about as much as I can use fast.
I used Modula-2 to build an automated lab system. It worked, but I found myself being annoyed by small features. For instance the type conversion keywords seemed to have no pattern to them, and the case sensitivity meant you were always hammering shift. Some good ideas, but I'm not sure that the problems of the time and the size of the available computers made them particularly useful.
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