Software rental, "trusted computing", etc. (was Re: Is this for real -- a new C64/128)

From: allisonp <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Tue May 16 19:06:54 2000

>I am sometimes asked 'what can that 20-year-old machine do'. One correct
>answer is 'Everything it did 20 years ago' (I was having this discussion
>with Philip Belben the other day, so some ideas here may have come from
>that). In other words, that 20-year-old CP/M box with Wordstar was doing
>word processing back then. It can still do word processing. Maybe not
>with all the fancy fonts and formatting tricks of a more modern machine.
>But it can still print letters, books, etc. And quite honestly, that's
>all I need (and if people can't accept a plain ascii file from me, I have
>no intention of dealing with them!).


I would have said the same.... save for now we know that even with
older hardware things like fonts and pretty printing are easily doable
on hardware like IMSAIs and PDP11s (and often done well!).

>It never fails to amaze me that computers are wonderful machines
>_because_ they can be programmed to do just about anything. And then
>modern OSes/applications (and things like the TCPA) seem to be preventing
>you from programmming them. Go figure.


The only difference between a PDP-11 and a PIII/750 is how long you may
 wait for the same results. Granted some software projects are only doable
in reasonable time scales as a result of speed. For practical projects
I have a 386/16 that does run W95 so speed is not the absolute catalyst.

Remember: Stable Mature systems we know how to use, applies here.

Allison
Received on Tue May 16 2000 - 19:06:54 BST