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jmason + history   58

A short history of btrfs [LWN.net]
wow, sounds good! looking forward to this hitting production-ready status
btrfs  history  zfs  linux  open-source  licensing  storage  sysadmin  b-trees  b+trees  algorithms  fs  filesystems 
august 2009 by jmason
OrbixWeb V3.1 release notes
wow, software archaeology. looks like the 3.1 release (which I worked on) still has its HTML release docs online
orbix  orbixweb  history  java  1998 
july 2009 by jmason
CompuServe "Logans Run"-Inspired Ad
"Someday, in the comfort of your home, you'll be able to shop and bank electronically, read instantly updated newswires, analyze the performance of a stock that interests you, send electronic mail across the country, then play Bridge with three strangers in LA, Chicago and Dallas." just not with CI$. oops
compuserve  cis  history  antiques  future  jumpsuits  logans-run  scifi 
july 2009 by jmason
Last few remaining C=64 DTV PAL units available
'The last few C64DTV PAL units are available for sale at £100 GBP Plus shipping. There are no more units available anywhere in the world as production ceased in 2005 and due to complicated licensing issues, it's unlikey that the unit will ever re-enter production.'
c64  commodore-64  dtv  games  history  jeri-ellsworth  c-one  hardware  retrogaming 
july 2009 by jmason
Introducing The Computer of 2010
hilariously off-base predictions from Forbes ASAP back in 2000. pretty much everything is wrong, except for the available disk capacity of 1TB (via Tony)
history  computing  prediction  funny  2010  forbes  frogdesign  fail  pc  future  via:fanf 
june 2009 by jmason
Boxing above your weight
Chris Horn with advice for Irish tech startups from his experience with IONA. lots of IONA history here
iona  irish  technology  business  history  startups  advice  chris-horn 
june 2009 by jmason
YouTube - 1964 Antique MODEM Live Demo
amazing -- watching the text slowly update on the screen is very evocative; brings me right back to dialing into TCD on a 2400 baud modem
hardware  history  modems  telephone  antique  youtube  video 
may 2009 by jmason
Artificial Owl
"The most fascinating abandoned man-made creations, and their story & location". my new favourite photoblog, and great name too (via JWZ)
via:jwz  blogs  history  photography  travel  photos  architecture  decay 
may 2009 by jmason
How Michael Osinski Helped Build the Bomb That Blew Up Wall Street
'Catastrophe, depression, busted banks, forced auctions of entire tracts of houses -- the fact that my software, over which I would labor for a decade, facilitated these events is numbing. Is capitalism inherently corrupt? I don’t think the free flow of goods in and of itself is the culprit. No, it’s the complexity masked by thousands of unseen whirring widgets that beguiles people into a sense of power, a feeling of dominion over the future.'
coding  capitalism  work  politics  history  programming  banking  money  economics  recession  crash  2009  finance  subprime  mortgages  complexity  wallstreet  securities  cmo  cdo 
may 2009 by jmason
Chino Otsuka: "Imagine Finding Me"
the artist's childhood photos, digitally manipulated to feature the artist as an adult alongside. fantastic (via Waxy)
via:waxy  art  chino-otsuka  photography  photoshop  history  memories  self-portraits 
april 2009 by jmason
TopatoCo: Time Traveler Essentials Shirt
'Go back in time wearing this and you'll invent heavier-than-air flight! YOU'LL discover penicillin. YOU'LL be the first to isolate aluminum. Did you know aluminum used to be more valuable than gold? YOU'RE GONNA BE RICH.'
funny  history  science  design  clothing  t-shirts  awesome  topato 
april 2009 by jmason
The reality behind Area 51
A top-secret 1960's spy plane project called OXCART. 'The shape of OXCART was unprecedented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast quantities of fuel. Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The aircraft's titanium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, "UFO".' but then -- isn't that what they'd _want_ you to think? ;)
area51  ufo  debunking  fortean  cold-war  spy-planes  oxcart  u-2  nevada  history 
april 2009 by jmason
history of the "twit bit"/"selective invisibility"
ie. 'the moderation technique of hiding the activity of troublemakers and trolls from everyone but the troll themselves' (via waxy)
via:waxy  moderation  community  internet  mefi  history 
march 2009 by jmason
The ASF was ten years old yesterday!
excellent. long may it continue
asf  apache  software  open-source  history  computing  spamassassin 
march 2009 by jmason
ClubOrlov: Social Collapse Best Practices
more cheery stuff from Dmitry Orlov, this time in much greater depth than the "Collapse Gap" slides
orlov  collapse  usa  russia  economy  recession  food  history  politics  survival  crisis  long-now 
february 2009 by jmason
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
I came across this a while back and have been looking for it again for a while. Good document on what happened in the former USSR after its society collapsed -- pretty funny too. A bit heavy-handed in its criticism of the US though (via Bruce Sterling)
politics  history  usa  government  society  russia  ussr  economy  collapse  sustainability  orlov  futurism  america  world 
january 2009 by jmason
Newgrange Winter Solstice live stream
actually, it was live this morning at 8:58am. Missed it :( Still, the archived stream of the sun entering the burial chamber at Newgrange on the winter solstice is viewable here -- and one to bookmark for next year...
newgrange  ireland  archaeology  solstice  history  heritage  events  winter 
december 2008 by jmason
441-year-old bitmap font rendering
wow, so cool. A serif typeface from '"La Vera Perfettione del Disegno di varie sorte di ricami", an embroidery guide by Giovanni Ostaus, published in 1567.' Plus ca change... (via waxy)
type  fonts  books  renaissance  history  embroidery  typography  pixels  giovanni-ostaus  1567  lace  via:waxy 
november 2008 by jmason
retrocomputing hackers reminisce about the 1541 diskette drive
skip to the comment thread, it's fantastic. I used to know lots of this stuff (via Donncha)
via:donncha  commodore-64  hacks  1541  disks  copy-protection  drm  hardware  hacking  history  retro  c64 
october 2008 by jmason
Tech Bubble 1.0 Stars: Where Are They Now?
wow, who the hell are these people? totally forgotten
web1.0  interwebs  via:nishad  trivia  history 
october 2008 by jmason
Stanislav Petrov Day
last Friday, but worth celebrating. on 26 September 1983, a little-known Russian military officer averted global nuclear war, by disobeying procedures and correctly identifying a missile-launch report as a false positive. phew!
stanislav-petrov  war  nuclear  russia  cold-war  80s  anniversaries  history 
september 2008 by jmason
Atari 800 "Donkey Kong" source code review
retrogaming fans find source for 1983 game cartridge, then original developer appears with commentary. hooray for internets!
atari  history  retrogaming  retro  donkey-kong  assembler  coding  8-bit  programming 
september 2008 by jmason
The Evolution of Pre-Launch Gmail In Screenshots
fascinating! They really did a good job improving the UI, early revs were quite uninspiring
gmail  google  history  email  web  ui 
august 2008 by jmason
"Jake Leg"
'large numbers of [adulterated Prohibition-era alcohol, Jamaican Ginger Extract] users began to lose use of their hands and feet. Some victims could walk, but they had no control over the muscles which would normally have enabled them to point their toes upward. Therefore, they would raise their feet high with the toes flopping downward, which would touch the pavement first followed by their heels. The toe first, heel second pattern made a distinctive “tap-click, tap-click" sound as they walked. This very peculiar gait became known as the jake walk and those afflicted were said to have jake leg'
jake-leg  walking  history  prohibition  alcohol  odd  bizarre  adulteration  poison  1930s 
august 2008 by jmason
10 years of Boards.ie
massive ~50GB RDF/XML dump, for open crunching, to generate interesting "SIOC Semantic Web" apps
sioc  semantic-web  history  ireland  boards.ie 
july 2008 by jmason
the completion of MAME's Bubble Bobble emulation
I had no idea it took this kind of work -- incredible reverse-engineering, including microscopic analysis of the traces on the ROM chip. The dedication of this is amazing, great gaming archaeology by the MAME guys (via Nelson)
via:nelson  gaming  reverse-engineering  hardware  roms  bubble-bobble  archaeology  history  tamperproofing  emulation  mame 
july 2008 by jmason
chris horn's blog: IONA
'one of my mentors told me that the chief responsibility of a CEO to his staff is to improve the CV of every staff member [..] I sincerely hope that each and every career immensely benefited as a result.' Certainly worked for me - thanks Chris!
chris-horn  iona  ireland  software  dot-coms  history  1990s 
june 2008 by jmason
San Diego Republican Party Chairman's "Warez Dood" Past Surfaces | GameCulture
previously AKA 'Strider' of the Fairlight group on the C=64 cracking scene
cracking  history  us-politics  scene  demos  c=64  commodore-64  warez 
may 2008 by jmason
Merry Spamiversary
30 years ago last Friday, the first spam ever was sent over the ARPANET
spam  arpanet  via:risks  history  computing  email 
april 2008 by jmason
Type-in program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
a truly encyclopedic article. Feck Java, this is probably what gave me tendonitis
type-in  wikipedia  c64  history  computing  typing  magazines  1980s 
april 2008 by jmason
vnStat - network traffic monitor for Linux
'a network traffic monitor for Linux that keeps a log of daily network traffic for the selected interface(s)' -- lots of nice (albeit console) graphs and historical data, perfect for my openwrt
router  networking  vnstat  statistics  network-statistics  bandwidth  graphs  traffic  history 
january 2008 by jmason
a tour of the modern web with Netscape 0.93b
modern "Content-Type:" headers are unparseable, and it doesn't send "Host:" header; CSS and   are rendered. so pretty hard to browse with, all told
netscape  mosaic  mcom  history  web  www  archaeology  via:jwz 
january 2008 by jmason
_Colmcille and the Battle of the Book: Technology, Law and Access to Knowledge in 6th Century Ireland_ [PDF]
great examination of the birth of copyright at the hands of Colmcille in saints-and-scholars Ireland, by Ray Corrigan, presented at the Gikii conference in the UK last week (via Danny)
copyright  copyfight  colmcille  st-columba  ireland  monks  history  law 
september 2007 by jmason
when to visit the mummies of St. Michans Church
a medieval Dublin church has a crypt containing several mummified bodies, and they're on public display again. of course, Daev Walsh has the details of opening hours, contact number etc. ;)
daev  dublin  st-michans  mummies  death  history  crypt  forteana 
august 2007 by jmason
Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky
'When one considers that this pioneering work on text adventures was happening during a time span which includes Star Wars and the first Apple, it is not likely that any other similar time span has encompassed so many seminal events in geek culture.'
will-crowther  mammoth-cave-national-park  colossal-cave  caving  gaming  games  text-adventures  geek-history  history  zork  advent 
august 2007 by jmason
TV Solidarity
fantastic account of pirate TV broadcasting by a dissident radio astronomer during the martial law period in 1980s Poland -- with the aid of a ZX Spectrum!
zx-spectrum  science  poland  solidarnosc  history  1980s  television  jamming  broadcast  pirate-tv  pirate-radio 
april 2007 by jmason
Marking Time: No longer Celtic and Christian
Enda Kenny makes an odd-sounding "Celtic and Christian" remark in a public speech, which later disappears from the online transcript on Fine Gael's official website. tut tut
enda-kenny  fine-gael  spin  ireland  politics  history 
february 2007 by jmason
The complete work of Charles Darwin Online
'more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images of both publications and handwritten manuscripts. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled.'
charles-darwin  evolution  archives  science  history  open-access 
october 2006 by jmason
Tunnels Underneath Dublin
Fascinating thread on Archiseek; there's lots, apparently, including a rail tunnel under the Phoenix Park which is still in use today, and a tunnel under the Liffey used to carry water and cabling
tunnels  underground  dublin  urban-exploration  archiseek  history 
september 2006 by jmason
Richard Delevan's sicNotes: Download My Manifesto
Caroline Nash, IBEC's assistant director of policy: "Texting, online chat, Bebo - they all involve a style of interaction that is acceptable among young people, but which fails to make the grade in the working world." ha! HER working world, maybe
ibec  ireland  employers  luddism  history  via:sigla 
august 2006 by jmason
Zenarchery: Dark Miracle
Joshua Ellis' visit to the Trinity site -- really great writing
joshua-ellis  trinity-site  history  science  nevada  nuclear-power 
april 2006 by jmason
E Clampus Vitus
The history of this California Gold Rush "historical drinking society" / "drinking historical society"
e-clampus-vitus  ecv  history  drinking  satire  gold-rush  california 
february 2006 by jmason
Inside Firefox - The Inside Track on Firefox Development
amazing history of Firefox, from the Netscape codebase, to where it is now; the 7th most-recognised global brand
firefox  mozilla  history  technology  software  netscape  browsers  web 
february 2006 by jmason
Software Usability II
A classic post-mortem leaked from SGI back in Oct 1993, after the release of the (awful) IRIX 5.1. 'Luckily, I'm on a 32 megabyte system ..., or I'd be swamped by paging.'
irix  memroy  resource-usage  bloat  sgi  history  guis 
january 2006 by jmason
Your History Here . com
nice site allowing people to annotate Google Maps with local history data, fully open source, from MySociety
mysociety  history  mapping  mashups  geowanking  metadata  google-maps 
december 2005 by jmason
New Scientist: Email and letter writing share fundamental pattern
easy/urgent questions answered quickly, hard questions wait; this pattern was true for Darwin and Einstein
via:boingboing  email  letters  correspondence  history  factoid 
october 2005 by jmason
Lyrics to "Shaft", translated to old English
that badde mooder-swyver [via mrneutron]
via:mrneutron  funny  history  dialects  old-english  chaucer 
october 2005 by jmason
We See Things Differently, by Bruce Sterling
A Sterling short story from 1989, parallel-world clash-of-cultures sci-fi. It's long been one of my favourites
bruce-sterling  sci-fi  short-stories  fiction  reading  culture-clash  history  parallel-reality  via:randomfoo 
october 2005 by jmason
Deadly Photo: Loughcrew Megalithic Tombs, Meath, Ireland
some great pics from a megalithic tomb in Meath. one to visit when I get back
meath  equinox  archaeology  ireland  megalithic-sites  history 
september 2005 by jmason
Google Maps - Chiang Mai, Thailand
look at that amazing square downtown area! what a cool city
chiang-mai  thailand  urban-design  city  history 
august 2005 by jmason
Foreign Affairs - Sinking Globalization - Niall Ferguson
'Could globalization collapse? It may seem unlikely today. Yet despite many warnings, people were shocked the last time globalization crumbled, with the onslaught of World War I.'
globalization  world-politics  politics  free-trade  history 
june 2005 by jmason
The Simnuke Project
a sombre 60-year commemoration of the "Trinity" atomic test, through simulating a nuclear detonation
art  pyrotechnics  history  anti-nuke  green  cnd 
may 2005 by jmason
The Berners Street Hoax
A historic hoax -- one which brought London to a halt for a day
hoax  prank  history  london 
february 2005 by jmason
jwz - ten years?
wow -- 10 years since Mosaic Netscape's first public beta! how time flies
computer  history  web 
october 2004 by jmason
NYT: Truth Stranger Than 'Strangelove'
Herman Kahn: '[many nuclear war survivors would] feel "a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead."' yep, that's Dr. Strangelove alright
cold-war  history  movies  peter-sellers  stanley-kubrick 
october 2004 by jmason
Googie Architecture Online
'Googie' is the post-war Jetsons-esque style of architecture big in LA and OC, rapidly being bulldozed these days. catch it while you can!
architecture  futuristic  googie  history  los-angeles  orange-county 
october 2004 by jmason
YesterdayLA: vintage postcards of Orange County
amazing to see South Coast Plaza when it was built, surrounded by empty fields. OC wasn't always autopian sprawl
history  orange-county  pictures  postcards 
october 2004 by jmason
Binge drinking craziness in the 1600s
'The archives record .. several Royalists drinking to the King’s health in their own blood'; 'on average between 6 and 8 pints of beer were consumed per person, each day'
alcohol  history 
september 2004 by jmason

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