4 ms·

How did you manage to keep such a tiny digital artifact like this email over all these decades…? I imagine that must mean a near-herculean backup effort at leas

How did you manage to keep such a tiny digital artifact like this email over all these decades…? I imagine that must mean a near-herculean backup effort at least for the pre-Dropbox decades?

DonHopkins 3y ago
I've lost more than I saved, but Lars Brinkhoff and others have restored lots of stuff off of old backup tapes! ITS had no file security or privacy, and users were encouraged to learn to use the system and programming by snooping around in other people's directories and email. I remembered having run across a Universal Turing Machine written in TECO in Marvin Minsky's home directory on MIT-AI, but didn't squirrel away a copy. I mentioned it Hacker News years ago, and Howard Ancell (HGA@MIT-AI) saw it and gave me a copy he saved! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161002 DonHopkins on Sept 2, 2015 | parent | context | favorite | on: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy –... I remember running across a Turing machine emulator implemented in TECO in Minsky's home directory that I'd REALLY love to get ahold of. hga on Sept 2, 2015 [–] Ask and yea shall receive: MSG: APL 1 DISTRIB: *BBOARD EXPIRES: 03/17/81 23:08:54 MINSKY@MIT-MC 03/11/81 23:08:54 Re: too-short programs APL is compact, I suppose. So is TECO. When I wrote the following Universal Turing Machine, which works, I actually understood it. [ I've interpolated the non-printing characters as displayed by (Gnu) EMACS, escape is ^], ^^ is one character, as is \356: ] i1Aul qq+^^0:iqm^[29iiq\356y0L1 00L1 11L2 A1L1 y0L1 0yR2 1AR2 AyR6 yyL3 00L0 1AL3 A1L4 yyL4 0yR5 11L7 A1L4 yyR5 0yL3 1AR5 A1R5 yyR6 0AL3 1AR6 A1R6 y0R7 0yR6 11R7 A0R2 ^[j<sR^[;-d-2ciql-^^^[ci"ed^^^[cii^[ciuq'^[> j<sL^[;-d-2ciql-^^^[ci"ed^^^[cii-2c^[ciuq'^[>jxblx1lx2lx3lx4lx5lx6lx7hk iyyAyyAyy^[32<i0^[>ji110101110000010011011^[ 1uq<htmbqq=> I do not advise attempting to understand this code, which is almost as bad as that for the Universal Turing machine. ADDED: or http://ancell-ent.com/share/minsky-TECO-turing-machine.txt http://ancell-ent.com/share/minsky-TECO-turing-machine.txt Please ack receipt of this and/or send me email (in my HN info); for others, note this is ITS TECO, which I was told was by far the most powerful version of it (fortunately, by the time I showed up learning it was no longer really necessary). DonHopkins on Sept 3, 2015 | parent [–] OOP ACK! It was a shot in the dark, but I am SO GLAD I asked!!! Thank you Harold! It looks just like I remember. ;)

How did you manage to keep such a tiny digital artifact like this email over all these decades…? I imagine that must mean a near-herculean backup effort at least for the pre-Dropbox decades?

DonHopkins 3y ago

I've lost more than I saved, but Lars Brinkhoff and others have restored lots of stuff off of old backup tapes! ITS had no file security or privacy, and users were encouraged to learn to use the system and programming by snooping around in other people's directories and email. I remembered having run across a Universal Turing Machine written in TECO in Marvin Minsky's home directory on MIT-AI, but didn't squirrel away a copy. I mentioned it Hacker News years ago, and Howard Ancell (HGA@MIT-AI) saw it and gave me a copy he saved! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161002 DonHopkins on Sept 2, 2015 | parent | context | favorite | on: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy –... I remember running across a Turing machine emulator implemented in TECO in Minsky's home directory that I'd REALLY love to get ahold of. hga on Sept 2, 2015 [–] Ask and yea shall receive: MSG: APL 1 DISTRIB: *BBOARD EXPIRES: 03/17/81 23:08:54 MINSKY@MIT-MC 03/11/81 23:08:54 Re: too-short programs APL is compact, I suppose. So is TECO. When I wrote the following Universal Turing Machine, which works, I actually understood it. [ I've interpolated the non-printing characters as displayed by (Gnu) EMACS, escape is ^], ^^ is one character, as is \356: ] i1Aul qq+^^0:iqm^[29iiq\356y0L1 00L1 11L2 A1L1 y0L1 0yR2 1AR2 AyR6 yyL3 00L0 1AL3 A1L4 yyL4 0yR5 11L7 A1L4 yyR5 0yL3 1AR5 A1R5 yyR6 0AL3 1AR6 A1R6 y0R7 0yR6 11R7 A0R2 ^[j<sR^[;-d-2ciql-^^^[ci"ed^^^[cii^[ciuq'^[> j<sL^[;-d-2ciql-^^^[ci"ed^^^[cii-2c^[ciuq'^[>jxblx1lx2lx3lx4lx5lx6lx7hk iyyAyyAyy^[32<i0^[>ji110101110000010011011^[ 1uq<htmbqq=> I do not advise attempting to understand this code, which is almost as bad as that for the Universal Turing machine. ADDED: or http://ancell-ent.com/share/minsky-TECO-turing-machine.txt http://ancell-ent.com/share/minsky-TECO-turing-machine.txt Please ack receipt of this and/or send me email (in my HN info); for others, note this is ITS TECO, which I was told was by far the most powerful version of it (fortunately, by the time I showed up learning it was no longer really necessary). DonHopkins on Sept 3, 2015 | parent [–] OOP ACK! It was a shot in the dark, but I am SO GLAD I asked!!! Thank you Harold! It looks just like I remember. ;)