Pleasant@Rutgers (10/22/82)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Saturday, 23 Oct 1982 Volume 5 : Issue 98
Today's Topics:
Computers and People - Office Automation &
Unique Signatures (4 msgs),
Technology - CMU Distributed Computing (3 msgs)
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Date: 14-Oct-82 22:50-PDT
From: DAUL at OFFICE
Subject: International Conference on Office Work and New Technology
Date: 2 Oct 1982 1138-EDT
Sender: ka:ren <kew at MIT-OZ>
From: ka:ren <kew at MIT-MC>
Subject: Important international meeting
To: arpanet-bboards at MIT-ML
International Conference on Office Work and New Technology
Oct. 28 and 29
Boston, MA
Parker House Hotel
The International Conference on Office Work and New Technology will
bring together European and North American office workers,
scholars, trade union representatives, policy makers, and corporate
users and manufacturers of office technologies to discuss the
social impacts of office automation.
The Goals of the conference are:
1) To inform concerned constituencies and the North American
public about the problems and potentials of office automation,
relevant findings, and government, trade union, and management
efforts in this area on these issues.
2) To demonstrate, by sharing European and North American
experiences, that alternative approaches to automation are both
possible and viable.
Speakers will include labor, academic, government, and employer
representatives from Norway, Sweden, England, France, Germany and
Italy who are experts on employment impacts and policies, job
design and job stress, career training and equal opportunity,
and computer systems design.
Featured panels will examine:
Automation and Office Employment
Occupational Health
Effects on Quality of Work, Skills, and Training, and Equal
Opportunity
Alternatives for the Future
Participatory workshops will follow each panel to explore the issues
and alternatives in greater depth, and to provide for consultation
with European experts.
The Working Women Education Fund is a non-profit corporation
conducting research and education programs in the interest of women
office workers. Many of the programs of the Working Women
Education Fund are carried out by 9 to 5, National Association of
Working Women, a national association of clerical workers working to
win rights and respect on the job.
For more information on fees and registration, please write or call:
International Conference
Working Women Education Fund
1224 Huron Road, 3rd floor
Cleveland, Ohio 44115
(216/566-9308)
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Date: 15 Oct 1982 1504-PDT
From: Ian H. Merritt <MERRITT at USC-ISIB>
Subject: Re: Unique signatures
This topic has spurred far more interest than I had anticipated. In
light of this, I am saving all the messages I receive either
directly, or via human-nets, and I will compile a single file to be
made available for FTP after enough responses roll in.
<>IHM<>
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Date: Saturday, 16 Oct 1982 15:35-PDT
Subject: Personal signatures
From: obrien at RAND-UNIX
One system I once worked on (PLATO) had terminals on it with
downline-loadable character sets. In certain discussion groups,
everyone pretty much played the same games, and hence generally had
the same character set loaded up in their terminal. Hence there was
a wide variety of personal signatures:
a) Some folks used gaming characters outright. A signature
consisting of a flaming skull carried a bit more pizazz than, say,
"--Lauren--".
b) Some others took advantage of the fact that the terminals
only ran at an effective 1800 baud (6-bit characters made that 180
characters-per-second). They manually and laboriously typed in long
sequences of printing and graphic codes to make little animated
drawings which served as a signature.
The latter became an art form in its own right, and some
maniacs would spend hours "typing" in a drawing that would take up
to a minute to "execute" when read as a simple text message. Of
course, all this was made possible only by virtue of an absolutely
unvarying terminal driver and terminal type across the system.
Nevertheless, the ability to send not only graphics, but animated
graphics, as part of a text message gave the system discussion and
conferencing programs an added dimension that the original PLATO
implementors never even dreamed of. Certainly I've never seen
anything like it in everyday use on any other system.
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Date: Fri Oct 15 14:21:18 1982
From: UCBVAX.decvax!cwruecmp!krm@Berkeley
Subject: signatures
Recently, I have been working extensively in lisp. I feel VERY
lisped out. My signature and catch-phrase for the semester at least
are:
'(rich magill)
(go (get 'em))
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Date: 19 October 1982 08:31 edt
From: Dehn.DEHN at MIT-MULTICS
Subject: "Unique Signatures"
These "unique signatures" are very much like the "initials" that
people often write at the end of a personal note or business memo,
and which are usually different from the full signature (as on a
letter or check). This is appropriate, since most of what we call
electronic mail could be described as "electronic notes" or
"electronic memos" (rather than "electronic letters"). In the paper
world, as here, the "initials" are often not really initials;
sometimes they are an abbreviation of the first or last name, a
nickname, or some other mark that the person has chosen to express
his or her individuality.
In the transition from paper to computer, some adjustments have been
made, of course. For example, on paper I write my "initials" with a
roman-numeral three ("III"). I write this as if it were a single
character. When I started using electronic mail, I thought that
three "I"s was too long, so I decided to use "3". (At the time, I
also thought this was appropriate because I thought computers had
something to do with numbers.)
Other people with less standard marks (that don't have simple ASCII
representations) have had to make larger adjustments, or perhaps
choose a completely new way of signing their messages. In this
respect, the electronic medium is more limited than paper (at least
given current ideas of what a standard terminal is).
-jwd3
P.S. Why are my computer "initials" lower case? Probably because I
first used electronic mail on Multics, where lots of things were
lower case that had traditionally been upper case.
P.P.S. The "-" I consider to be a sort of punctuation. I often
write it on paper also.
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Date: Fri Oct 15 01:38:06 1982
From: UCBVAX.decvax!cornell!pavel@Berkeley
Subject: CMU Wired?
NEWSWEEK "Periscope", October 18, 1982:
Carnegie-Mellon Gets Wired
Carnegie-Mellon University is about to become the first
University in the world to make the computer standard
equipment for students. CMU will sign a contract with IBM
or Digital Equipment Corp. to install a network of personal
computers throughtout its Pittsburgh campus. By the time
the system is fully wired in 1986, students will be
expected to purchase their own computers (they will have
four years to pay) just as they now buy books. Graduating
students will be able to take their computer terminals with
them and plug into the Carnegie-Mellon system from anywhere
in the country.
-----------------
I can think of several questions this brings to mind immediately,
like are these terminals or computers, what kind of network, what
kind of system, how many of these things are they envisioning, etc.
Can someone from CMU fill in the details?
Pavel
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Date: 20 Oct 1982 1627-EDT
From: DAVID.LEWIN <LEWIN at CMU-20C>
Subject: CMU Distributed Computing Agreement with IBM
The following are the news release and semi-technical backgrounder
on Carnegie-Mellon University's plans for a distributed personal
computing network which will be developed with IBM.
--David I. Lewin <LEWIN at CMU-20C>
Dir. of Science & Technology Information
Dept. of Public Relations
CMU
Contact: Don Hale For release: 1 p.m., Wednesday,
Carnegie-Mellon and IBM Sign
Joint Development Contract
PITTSBURGH--A prototype distributive computing project designed to
give every student at Carnegie-Mellon University direct personal
access to the full information resources of the university will be
developed jointly by CMU and International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM).
Dr. Richard M. Cyert, president of Carnegie-Mellon, said the goal of
the three-year agreement signed today is to lay the technological
foundation, in equipment and programming, for powerful computer
workstations and communications services to be available to students
and faculty, whether at home in an office or in a laboratory. The
development effort will build on existing software research done by
the CMU Department of Computer Science.
By 1986, several thousand personal workstations for the university's
staff, faculty and 5,500 students will be in place, CMU officials
predict.
"The comprehensive computing environment planned by the university
differs greatly from the traditional way computer facilities have
been used in higher education," Dr. Cyert said.
"For example, in 1991, we expect to have about 7,500 personal
workstations, each with its own powerful computer and graphics
display, all interconnected through a high-speed local area network.
In addition to communications between every workstation, there will
be a unified data file system and a central computing facility
available to all workstations.
"Our objective is to extend this computing system and supporting
network for faculty and students beyond the CMU campus to the
greater Pittsburgh area through cable television or telephone
lines," he said.
The agreement with IBM, which involves a commitment through a
three-year development phase, calls for the establishment of an
Information Technology Center (ITC) at the university. It will be
staffed by both IBM and CMU personnel. The agreement also expresses
the intent of IBM to continue its support through 1987, based on
progress of the project.
IBM will provide funds and equipment for the ITC. IBM and CMU
personnel will work together at the center to develop the
programming for the prototype computing environment.
"Carnegie-Mellon is aware that it now costs more than $10,000
annually for someone to attend college," Dr. Cyert said. "We want to
provide students with a competitive edge, and this is the next step
in meeting the challenges of the future.
"The university remains committed to a financial aid policy that
makes it possible for any qualified student to attend the
university."
"Carnegie-Mellon is an appropriate campus for this prototype
computing environment because it is a leader in computer science and
technological innovation," said Dr. Lewis Branscomb, IBM vice
president and chief scientist. "The university is large enough to
test this concept in all disciplines, yet small enough to make the
test economically feasible."
The agreement with IBM provides for the establishment of a
consortium of universities, with each university designating a
person as primary liaison with the CMU-IBM project. Regular meetings
of these designated individuals will be held and, as elements of the
integrated computing environment become operational, they may be
made available to members of the consortium.
###
_____________________________________________
Carnegie-Mellon University's Personal Computing Environment
The personal computing environment at Carnegie-Mellon University
will be implemented in two stages, a two-year transition phase
introducing personal workstations into the CMU computing
environment, and an advanced phase, introducing a distributed
computing environment.
To get experience in working with personal workstations, a
substantial number of existing machines will be brought into the
Carnegie-Mellon computing environment over the next two years. These
transition machines will be linked to the current computing
facilities.
Currently under evaluation as the transition machine is a
workstation with a 16-bit (Motorola 68000) processor and a
bit-mapped graphic display, manufactured by the IBM Instruments
Division. Initially, over a hundred transition machines are
expected to be available on campus in the fall of 1983, growing to
several hundred in following years. Software, including an editor
and text processing facilities, will be developed at the
Carnegie-Mellon Computation Center to function in an environment
based on the UNIXtm operating system. It is expected that FORTRAN,
Pascal and the C programming languages will be supported.
While the transition system is implemented and evaluated, work will
be in progress within the joint CMU-IBM Information Technology
Center on software for the second phase of the university's personal
computing plan. During the transition period, IBM will work on
networking and advanced workstations.
Carnegie-Mellon's objective is to begin deploying the computing
environment resulting from integrating all these elements, including
a new operating system environment for distributed personal
computing, in late 1985.
The workstations will have a 32-bit processor with virtual memory
capable of executing 0.5-1 million instructions per second (MIPS),
from 500,000 to 1 millions bytes of random access memory, a
high-resolution bit-mapped graphics display, and a graphics tablet
and keyboard input. Both an on-board disc memory and color display
will be options.
Rather than using built-in disc storage, clusters of 50 to 100
workstations will share a file server through a local area network;
the clusters will be linked together--and to the university's
mainframe computers--through a backbone network. Users will be able
to access files from any workstation in the network.
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Date: 20 Oct 1982 1633-EDT
From: DAVID.LEWIN <LEWIN at CMU-20C>
Subject: Personal Computing
The overall design of the personal computing plan is a direct
outgrowth of CMU-CSD's SPICE Project, though I'm sure this is clear
from the official statements.
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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