laser-lovers@uw-beaver (05/20/85)
From: Chuck Bigelow <CAB@SU-AI.ARPA> Les: The $ appended to many of my messages is purely a meaningless artifact derived from the arbitrary assignment of ASCII symbols to the highly obscure "quote" mode of the `non-edit' display mode of the arcane WAITS operating system of the SAIL computer system which I log onto remotely from a primitive Heath/Zenith terminal. When I send a mail message by typing "escape - control - `w' - control - `j' as recommended in the SAIL "Monitor Command Manual" (a masterpiece of obfuscational prose with text layout in the "delerium tremens" typographic style beloved by many computer document designers) the mail gets sent with the spurious `$' that you have noted. It is not a SYMBOL of anything, though it is an INDEX of my lack of SAIL/WAITS erudition. The `$' doesn't appear when I send mail from a Stanford Data Disk, nor when I used to send mail from the remote Data Media. Unfortunately, the Data Media was stolen from my San Francisco studio by some enterprising degenerate drug-addict burglar who thought it might be a valuable personal computer and who probably tossed it into the Bay when it turned out to be a highly specialized Arificial Intelligence terminal usable with only one computer system, and more or less useless for playing games, except the kind that are designed to reward the winner with DARPA grants. Dan Mills, following your query, discovered that the "escape" part of the controlsequence can be left off, without apparently voiding the mail command. Maybe you, Les, could enlighten me further about SAIL sometime in person at Stanford. Since the question is raised, I append the disclaimer that I have been a paid consultant to Adobe, Imagen, DEC, and other firms that manufacture laser printers, though presently all of my non-academic time (and I mean ALL) is spent designing digital typefaces in collaboration with Kris Holmes. Cheers, Chuck #
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (05/20/85)
From: Les Earnest <LES@SU-AI.ARPA> Chuck, Inasmuch as I designed the weird keyboard of that "highly specialized Arificial Intelligence terminal usable with only one computer system, and more or less useless for playing games" let me assure you that it *is* useful for quite a few dandy games. It also can function as a vanilla ASCII Datamedia terminal if you punch the right buttons. Meanwhile, I too am reduced to using a Heathkit at home (sob!). The last time one of the SAIL terminals was stolen, a Stanford AI Lab alumnus working at Lucasfilm spotted it a year or so later being offered for sale at a computer fair in San Francisco. With suitably swift cooperation from the police it was recovered. The seller couldn't understand how we knew it was stolen! Cheers, Les Earnest