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Comment Re:Long time coming... (Score 2) 150

An anecdote from Dr. James C. Cain (former head of section, gastroenterology and internal medicine at Mayo), from about 1981:

A patient came to May Clinic with vague symptoms. One histologist remarked "This guy has weird blood. I've seen it before, but can't remember where." Several days later the histologist came back with the book where he had seen that "weird blood." Leprosy. Mayo didn't get many lepers.

"We were just lucky," said Dr. Cain, "that the histologist remembered the pattern. But imagine what we could do with a computerized search."

Comment Re:DecorMyCell.com (Score 1) 225

Did you put the name in quotes, to get an exact match? There is a good summary in this InfoWorld article. Note that in his first computer scam he passed as "Col. David W. Winthrop, USAF retired" in a Santa Maria CA computer club. Santa Maria is a stones throw from Vandenberg AFB, and I imagine that a large part of the tech community there worked at Vandenberg. Amazing, I think that he pulled it off. I never met him, but heard that he was a *very* personable fellow.

In those days (1977 or so) it was common for computer start-ups to take money in advance of shipment and use that money to fund development. Hunt used that model, except that he was planning to skip town with the money. He did hire engineering staff and a receptionist to make DataSync (no relation to any current company using that name) look legitimate. I understand that the staff were made corporate officers, which meant they were working for stock options rather than salary.

After Hunt was caught the staff - which had not known that they were working for a con man - tried to make a go of what was left. The receptionist was required to warn customers with a script that went something like this: "I must inform you that the advertisements placed by DataSync were fraudulent, and the person responsible for them is now in jail. Knowing that, would you still like to order quality products from DataSync?" But DataSync finally folded before filling any customer orders.

Comment Re:DecorMyCell.com (Score 5, Informative) 225

Modded funny. Okay, but perhaps the moderators have forgotten the case of Norman Henry Hunt. Mr. Hunt was convicted of mail fraud (phony computer parts). He escaped from prison, was caught and convicted again (more mail fraud, plus the escape). After the second conviction, he was found to be running a mail order business out of a P.O. Box at NNCC. His ads represented NNCC as the Northern Nevada Computing Center; it was actually the Northern Nevada *Correctional* Center.

Comment Re:Bit = Binary Digit (Score 1) 151

Everyone knew a byte was 8 bits, so everyone knew base 10 didn't apply in computers, being binary and all.

Parent has history backwards. Disks were invented, and measured in megabytes, back when bytes were not necessarily 8 bits and computers were not necessarily sold as "binary" machines. The typical disk record was 80 bytes long, since it came from a Hollerith card. The IBM 1401 was typically sold with 4K bytes of main memory. Four thousand 6-bit bytes.

Comment Re:I'm still waiting for it... (Score 1) 623

Extending the dataflow model to structured data with a nice 2d shell that let you tie your pipes and filters together in ways that the UNIX shell couldn't dream of seemed like the obvious next step.

CMS Pipelines did some of this. Not with structured data, nor literally 2D, but you could split and combine flows, and code feedback loops.

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