4 ms·

Interesting, having read about the Symbolics machines for years in various hacker-centric history texts, but never actually seen what their interfaces were like

by unwind 16y ago

Interesting, having read about the Symbolics machines for years in various hacker-centric history texts, but never actually seen what their interfaces were like, this certainly piqued my interest. However (s the dynds.org domain name hints) this is very likely hosted in someone's home, on (guessing) ADSL or so. It seems to be very much starved for bandwidth, at the moment ... I gave up, for now.

lispm 16y ago
Right, it is an iMac at my home behind an ADSL line. It's not really made for Hackernews size traffic. Interested persons might come back later, when the traffic died down. Typically Lisp Machines are only interesting for a few persons - so the average traffic is not really high.
- kez 16y ago
  I think you might be underestimating the click-happy masses (myself included) who will happily pump the middle mouse button to queue up some even potentially interesting reads!
- dexen 16y ago
  A quick workaround would be linking via Coral Cache: http://lispm.dyndns.org.nyud.net/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples.html http://lispm.dyndns.org.nyud.net/symbolics-ui-examples/symbo... (note the .nyud.net bit in hostname) But it won't work right now, as CC can't connect to your server at all... Edit: more info on http://coralcdn.org/ http://coralcdn.org/
- Natsu 16y ago
  You might be surprised at the interest something like this could generate if more people saw it. I can imagine a lot of things that people might want to do with these images. Not just the obvious historical interest, but I can imagine even stranger things, like it showing up as prior art for some patent. Don't laugh. I forget which computer, but I remember reading about how someone brought out a (working!) computer from the early 80s as a demonstration at trial. Makes me think I should see if that 8088 of mine still works or not.... Anyhow, please put them on a photo sharing site somewhere and consider putting them on Flickr/Picasa/whatever and giving them a CC license. I was tempted to mirror them myself until I saw the 'Terms of use: no crawlers, no wget, no site copying, use of pictures and text only with permission. No excessive rss feed checking.' bit at the bottom.
  - gwern 16y ago
    You are suggesting that he give screenshots of copyrighted software a CC license? ....Right.
    - gnok 16y ago
      How is that different from say, a CC licensed photograph of a car or an iPhone?
      - gwern 16y ago
        I'm at -3 and you're at 9. I feel deeply ashamed on behalf of Hacker News for your aggressive ignorance of copyright law. Hacker News, you're usually better than this. --- A screenshot is a document like a photograph or essay or article; it's not a physical object. Cars and iPhones are not copyrighted. Software and software UIs and documents mechanically reproducing them are. Tell me, do you think the copyright on the text in a software UI just magically goes away because it's a screenshot? How about the icons? Or the fonts? Or any images? What if the software is displaying a photograph or book? Did you just discover a way to make anything under the sun public domain? (An amazing discovery!) Tell me, do you and all your upvoters think you know better than Wikimedia Commons when it writes (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Screenshots http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Screenshots) : > Screenshots are subject to the copyright of the displayed work, may it be a video, television program, or a computer program. Do you think you know better than the librarian who wrote http://web.archive.org/web/20080216021841/http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/copyrightalexmorrisson.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080216021841/http://www.jiscleg... ? Or how about http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID809 http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID809 or http://lifehacker.com/193343/ask-the-law-geek--is-publishing-screenshots-fair-use http://lifehacker.com/193343/ask-the-law-geek--is-publishing... or any of a dozen links you could have found in seconds googling 'copyright screenshot'? Notice the only question is whether fair use will defend you when you infringe on copyright by making screenshots and not whether screenshots are copyrighted at all, because they are copyrighted. Do you, in fact, have the slightest argument besides a specious analogy?
- yinhm 16y ago
  Now, it's down.
- tdoggette 16y ago
  The thing is, if these screenshots are interesting, they'll spread from HN to blogs to the programming subreddit, and your iMac will just keep failing. Even just an archive of these uploaded somewhere with a server would make them accessible.
rbanffy 16y ago
One day, when I finally learn VHDL, I'll make a compact Symbolics-compatible Lisp Machine. I have already done some research on what would be needed to build USB Symbolics/Space Cadet keyboards... Unfortunately, I doubt a keyboard without arrow keys would be very popular beyond a small group.
- lispm 16y ago
  You can build keyboards with arrow keys. IIRC the keyboards from TI for their Explorer Lisp Machines had arrows, etc. Even with Genera you can use arrow keys. You can configure a new keyboard layout and use that for your keyboard. Genera can for example be used over X11 or on the MacIvory. There keyboards typically have arrows and Genera knows about them...

by unwind 16y ago

lispm 16y ago

Right, it is an iMac at my home behind an ADSL line. It's not really made for Hackernews size traffic. Interested persons might come back later, when the traffic died down. Typically Lisp Machines are only interesting for a few persons - so the average traffic is not really high.

kez 16y ago
I think you might be underestimating the click-happy masses (myself included) who will happily pump the middle mouse button to queue up some even potentially interesting reads!
dexen 16y ago
A quick workaround would be linking via Coral Cache: http://lispm.dyndns.org.nyud.net/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples.html http://lispm.dyndns.org.nyud.net/symbolics-ui-examples/symbo... (note the .nyud.net bit in hostname) But it won't work right now, as CC can't connect to your server at all... Edit: more info on http://coralcdn.org/ http://coralcdn.org/
Natsu 16y ago
You might be surprised at the interest something like this could generate if more people saw it. I can imagine a lot of things that people might want to do with these images. Not just the obvious historical interest, but I can imagine even stranger things, like it showing up as prior art for some patent. Don't laugh. I forget which computer, but I remember reading about how someone brought out a (working!) computer from the early 80s as a demonstration at trial. Makes me think I should see if that 8088 of mine still works or not.... Anyhow, please put them on a photo sharing site somewhere and consider putting them on Flickr/Picasa/whatever and giving them a CC license. I was tempted to mirror them myself until I saw the 'Terms of use: no crawlers, no wget, no site copying, use of pictures and text only with permission. No excessive rss feed checking.' bit at the bottom.
- gwern 16y ago
  You are suggesting that he give screenshots of copyrighted software a CC license? ....Right.
  - gnok 16y ago
    How is that different from say, a CC licensed photograph of a car or an iPhone?
    - gwern 16y ago
      I'm at -3 and you're at 9. I feel deeply ashamed on behalf of Hacker News for your aggressive ignorance of copyright law. Hacker News, you're usually better than this. --- A screenshot is a document like a photograph or essay or article; it's not a physical object. Cars and iPhones are not copyrighted. Software and software UIs and documents mechanically reproducing them are. Tell me, do you think the copyright on the text in a software UI just magically goes away because it's a screenshot? How about the icons? Or the fonts? Or any images? What if the software is displaying a photograph or book? Did you just discover a way to make anything under the sun public domain? (An amazing discovery!) Tell me, do you and all your upvoters think you know better than Wikimedia Commons when it writes (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Screenshots http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Screenshots) : > Screenshots are subject to the copyright of the displayed work, may it be a video, television program, or a computer program. Do you think you know better than the librarian who wrote http://web.archive.org/web/20080216021841/http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/copyrightalexmorrisson.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080216021841/http://www.jiscleg... ? Or how about http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID809 http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID809 or http://lifehacker.com/193343/ask-the-law-geek--is-publishing-screenshots-fair-use http://lifehacker.com/193343/ask-the-law-geek--is-publishing... or any of a dozen links you could have found in seconds googling 'copyright screenshot'? Notice the only question is whether fair use will defend you when you infringe on copyright by making screenshots and not whether screenshots are copyrighted at all, because they are copyrighted. Do you, in fact, have the slightest argument besides a specious analogy?
yinhm 16y ago
Now, it's down.
tdoggette 16y ago
The thing is, if these screenshots are interesting, they'll spread from HN to blogs to the programming subreddit, and your iMac will just keep failing. Even just an archive of these uploaded somewhere with a server would make them accessible.

rbanffy 16y ago

One day, when I finally learn VHDL, I'll make a compact Symbolics-compatible Lisp Machine. I have already done some research on what would be needed to build USB Symbolics/Space Cadet keyboards... Unfortunately, I doubt a keyboard without arrow keys would be very popular beyond a small group.

lispm 16y ago
You can build keyboards with arrow keys. IIRC the keyboards from TI for their Explorer Lisp Machines had arrows, etc. Even with Genera you can use arrow keys. You can configure a new keyboard layout and use that for your keyboard. Genera can for example be used over X11 or on the MacIvory. There keyboards typically have arrows and Genera knows about them...