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I found an obscure political joke in the scan of a 1971 IBM logic block manual
- sohkamyung 7y agoFound on Figure 1-20, page 1-11 of the manual [1] [1] http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/logic/SY22-2798-2_LogicBlocks_AutomatedLogicDiagrams_SLT,SLD,ASLT,MST_TO_Oct71.pdf http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/logic/SY22-2798-2...
- raverbashing 7y agoThis seems to be an older or non-standard FET depiction The modern symbol has an arrow and doesn't have a closed rectangle
- kens 7y agoYes, this was IBM's symbol for a FET. They had their own nonstandard symbol for bipolar transistors too, three stacked boxes labeled N, P, N, with a triangle on the emitter. (See page 1-4 of the document above.) IBM also had their own logic gate symbols: an OR gate looked like an AND gate, and an AND gate looked like an op amp. I came across the FET joke while looking up IBM transistor symbols in response to TubeTime's thread on the history of transistor symbols (which is an interesting thread you should read): https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1249023089528078337 https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1249023089528078337
- my_usernam3 7y agoWhy is that? My "IBM is evil" bias leads me to guess they wanted to make their own standard that people started using. Then charge ridiculous license fees.
- kens 7y agoI think several factors led to IBM's non-standard symbols. The standards didn't exist at the beginning, so different companies used different things. IBM also had historical baggage, wanting to stay consistent over time. In some ways IBM's symbols were better, for instance making NPN vs PNP obvious. Finally, IBM was big enough that they could do their own thing and train their own people.
- amelius 7y agoIndeed an interestng thread, thanks!
- drfuchs 7y agoIBM used all sorts of non-standard terminology of their own. You'd hear their folks seriously talking about PELs instead of Pixels ("Picture Elements"); and DASDs (pronounced "dah-z-dee") instead of disks ("Direct Access Storage Device"). Not clear if it was intentionally designed to be alienating to outsiders, but it sure seemed cultish.
- DanBC 7y agoI think it's a logic diagram, not an electrical symbol. For anyone looking for an explanation of the newer symbol, this is a nice source: https://www.petervis.com/electronics/MOSFET_Symbol/MOSFET_Symbol.html https://www.petervis.com/electronics/MOSFET_Symbol/MOSFET_Sy... Arrows were used in 1975, see page 57: https://www.noao.edu/ets/Mechanical/Policies/ANSI%20Y32.2-1975.pdf https://www.noao.edu/ets/Mechanical/Policies/ANSI%20Y32.2-19...
- kens 7y agoThe manual has a diagram of a FET (field-effect transistor) with the source, gate, and drain. Someone wrote on the diagram: Nixon FET. Economic Drain. Water Gate, Unimpeachable Source.
- jsjddbbwj 7y agoThank you, very valuable comment.
- throwanem 7y agoYes, it is. Not everyone can see well enough to read text in images. For those who have that difficulty, describing the content of an image enables enjoyment of a joke that would otherwise be inaccessible.
- kens 7y agoMany people may not be aware that Twitter allows you to put alt text on an image so people using assistive technologies can get a description of the image. I encourage people to use this feature.
- throwanem 7y agoIt's too bad their implementation of the feature is so poor [1], requiring it to be first enabled via accessibility settings [2] that most Twitter users probably never look at. [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2019/twitter-alt-text.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2019/twitter-alt-t...) [2] https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptions https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptio...
- Kye 7y agoMeanwhile, Mastodon has it right in front with OCR built in. Someone often comes along to reply with a description if you don't/aren't able to do one.
- draugadrotten 7y agoOMG, 1971, it's almost like finding a joke in a cave drawing!
- rfrey 7y agoWell, it's another piece of evidence to support the hypothesis that our parents and grandparents had modern human-like qualities. Don't discount it: these theories proceed by slow aggregation of data, not one big-bang discovery.
- simonblack 7y agoNow come on, 1971 wasn't all that long ago. I got married for the first time that year. My car at the time had a rotary engine and it cruised at 85mph on the road every weekend. Did I mention that fuel was 31 cents a gallon? (And that was classed as expensive.) It really wasn't back in 'horse and buggy' days.
- caiobegotti 7y agoIt's like someone installing Windows 95 just bought from a store and you say you got married when WWII was just ending :-)
- pavlov 7y agoInterestingly the things you mention do make it sound like a different era. Many millennials don’t drive, don’t know what fuel costs today, and have no idea what a rotary engine is. The American fascination with cars probably peaked around 1971.
- casefields 7y agoMazda used them. The 2012 RX-8 being the most recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine
- serf 7y ago>The American fascination with cars probably peaked around 1971. that's an interesting question. cars/motorcycles/fast things were a huge box-office theme in the 90s and 2000s, with many franchises featuring car thieves, enthusiasts, and racers -- but the same trend was around in the 70s. If one generalizes social direction by using box office themes as an indicator, like plenty of people (probably unwisely) do, it's a tough question. Sports car sales, a decent indicator of automotive interest due to their singular purpose nature, were higher in the 90s and 2000s than the 70s. Just as a singular example, take the Corvette[0]. A practically useless car for anything but enthusiasts, sports driving, and status. It sold 21 thousand units in 71, and 53 thousand units in 84. If that's any indicator, the peak must've been past 71, at least, albeit that's a fairly weak indicator given the gas crisis a few years later that spurred most folks away from anything with a big engine. Cars are still a huge status symbol for the rich, famous, and successful. Millenial-aged rappers are still buying Lamborghinis. To be clear : I think you're dead-on correct that millenials are driving less, but personally I think that means more about millenials lack of financial mobility more than it does the failure of the automobile to allure current generations. [0]: https://www.corvsport.com/corvette-sales-volume-year/ https://www.corvsport.com/corvette-sales-volume-year/
- CalChris 7y agoI found an obscure dirty joke on p. 46 of the Mac OS X Assembler Guide. [1] .fill 69,4,0xfeadface | put out 69 0xfeadface’s [1] http://personal.denison.edu/~bressoud/cs281-s07/Assembler.pdf http://personal.denison.edu/~bressoud/cs281-s07/Assembler.pd...
- Zenst 7y agoAIX used to (probably still does) use DEADBEEF as a hex value to clear memory out.
- mjlee 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak There are some fun entries there for hex values used as magic numbers. Apple have some great ones used in their crash report exception types - 0x2bad45ec (too bad for sec) and 0xc00010ff in the event of being killed for overheating.
- saagarjha 7y agoA list of such codes: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2151/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40008184-CH1-EXCEPTION_INFO https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2151...
- saagarjha 7y agoI’m surprised it’s not 0xfeedface, the magic for 32-bit Mach-O binaries.
- pachico 7y agoWho knows the amount of jokes being written now given the current political landscape...
- smortaz 7y agoThe Burroughs OS (“Master Control Program”) in the 70s had a routine from which all other processes were started. Its name was MotherForker(). It was eventually renamed when HR found out.
- PostOnce 7y agoBurroughs MCP impresses me with its lifespan (which is ongoing) Initial release 1961; 59 years ago Latest release 19.0[1] / June 2019 I wonder who uses it today and for what?
- smortaz 7y agoDefinitely. The OS, HW and Extended Algol had some nice features that were ahead of their time. I haven’t kept up, but their mainframes were very popular with banks etc.
- drfuchs 7y agoExcept that in the 70's it would have been "Personnel Administration" (or more commonly "Personnel") rather than "HR".
- DaiPlusPlus 7y agoHonestly, that's a much better name than "Human Resources" - where did "HR" come from anyway?
- tiny_epoch 7y agoThe need to conflate humans with resources so the C-level can exploit them without too much thought.
- eru 7y agoWikipedia has got you covered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources#Origins_of_the_terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources#Origins_of_the... They also have 'Concerns about the terminology' as the next section.
- cowmix 7y agoI wonder what year this really is from. Watergate wasn't a thing in 1971.
- lainga 7y agoWell, the way it's been annotated, I'd bet whoever did the joke scrawled it in a few years after it was printed.
- mirimir 7y agoMany years ago, in a previous life, I heard about the ~friendly competition between Caltech's Dabney and Flemming houses. Various spacecraft components would have "DEI" (Dabney Eats It) or "FEIF" (Flemming Eats It Faster) hidden on them. But there's apparently nothing online about that. Or at least anything that's indexed. Anyone?
- BalinKing 7y agoCourtesy of Dabney Hovse’s official website: https://dabney.caltech.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=dei https://dabney.caltech.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=dei (see the end paragraphs about the moon and Voyager)
- StephanTLavavej 7y agoLegends of Caltech, page 69 has the story and a photograph (looking at my copy right now). It was a valve package plate on the Voyagers ink-stamped with “DEI/FEIF”.
- jrochkind1 7y agonot too obscure
- tome 7y agoYeah I was surprised by that description too. Wasn't the topic the biggest political event of the 20th century?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThere are people in the workforce of our industry that were born in 21th century. In a few years, they will be the majority of our industry.
- saagarjha 7y agoThe ones who’ve taken 11th grade history should know this, at least…
- TeMPOraL 7y agoAmerican history in the US, maybe. Rest of the world probably doesn't care - and if a typical history class is like all my classes in primary, secondary and high school, you barely reach World War II when the school year ends.
- saagarjha 7y agoI’m not sure I could call it that considering the century also held two World Wars.
- unnouinceput 7y agoI would argue that Einstein's relativity theory is the biggest event of said century, that shaped the world in more ways then the two world wars did. Also, speaking of wars, I'd say the 3rd one, the Cold guy, is a bigger event then those 2.
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- sideshowb 7y ago"The trouble with political jokes is that very often they get elected" Will Rogers
- speplop 7y agoTektronix, longstanding producer of high-end electronics testing and measurement equipment, used to be heroes at both drawing beautiful schematics as well as adding silly little easter eggs to them. Some samples: http://turingbirds.com/temp/tek-datasheets/ http://turingbirds.com/temp/tek-datasheets/