News You Can Bruise for 2003 October 15

I know I previously swore revenge on Ned Batchelder's weblog, but it's growing on me. On Monday he linked to a big list of historical documents from computer science, including the feelies of historical computer science, flowchart templates. My dad gave me a couple flowchart templates when I was a kid, and I drew with them, and I just now realized in a where-does-your-father-do-his-barnacles moment that not every child drew or draws pictures made of flowchart template shapes.

Anyway, that's the software side of things, and on the hardware side there's the collection of old scanned computer manuals, truly a labor of love. A random skim through the manuals reveals, eg. the Hayes Stack Chronograph, which is an external system clock. I thought external CD-ROM drives were old school, but it turns out that that school was built on the ruins of an even older school.

[Wait, under what circumstances did you swear revenge on Ned Batchelder's weblog? -Ed. Such questions are not productive in these times of transition, as we seek to reopen friendly relations with Ned Batchelder's weblog. How come I never heard about this? Is this one of those delusional things you make up as you type to make an entry more interesting? -Ed. You're a spy for Ned Batchelder's weblog, aren't you? Fie! This means war!]

"Why is this joke so funny?"
"I give up, why?"
"Because the punchline is completely novel!"

You can only tell that joke once, but you could coast on this for a while:

"Why is this joke so funny?"
"I give up, why?"
"Are you kidding? It's a classic!"

But eventually you would have to switch to this one:

"Why is this joke not so funny?"
"Because the punchline is so stale."
"Yep."