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Submission + - Xerox Alto Source Code Released To Public (computerhistory.org) 1

zonker writes: In 1970 the Xerox Corporation established the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) with the goal to develop an “architecture of information” and lay the groundwork for future electronic office products. The pioneering Alto project that began in 1972 invented or refined many of the fundamental hardware and software ideas upon which our modern devices are based, including raster displays, mouse pointing devices, direct-manipulation user interfaces, windows and menus, the first WYSIWYG word processor, and Ethernet.

The first Altos were built as research prototypes. By the fall of 1976 PARC’s research was far enough along that a Xerox product group started to design products based on their prototypes. Ultimately ~1500 were built and deployed throughout the Xerox Corporation, as well as at universities and other sites. The Alto was never sold as a product but its legacy served as inspiration for the future.

With the permission of the Palo Alto Research Center, the Computer History Museum is pleased to make available, for non-commercial use only, snapshots of Alto source code, executables, documentation, font files, and other files from 1975 to 1987. The files are organized by the original server on which they resided at PARC that correspond to files that were restored from archive tapes. An interesting look at retro-future.

Comment The shipping industry never learns... (Score 1) 275

It's interesting that the shipping industry never seems to learn. They continue to bring on more and more capacity while shipping prices are at historic lows.

Perhaps the plan is to flood the market with even cheaper capacity and drive a bunch of competition out of business so they can raise rates later... Then the cycle will start all over again.

Comment Alpha children wear grey (Score 1) 366

Genetically modifying such genes is unlikely to happen any time soon

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.

Comment Re:Story title needs a warning! (Score 4, Insightful) 274

I didn't realize she was under-age when I saw the headline. A few quick Google searches later, and I'd unwittingly accessed what counts as child porn.

Serious, Slashdot editors, this title needs a fix to include a warning, like instantly.

The title does not need fixing.
Your idiotic laws do. Like instantly.

Comment Re:These stories make me feel sick to my stomach (Score 1) 462

I hate stuff like this. I hate it because it is crooked and evil. I hate it because there is very little recourse for the average citizen to make against an attack like this.

But you won't do anything to stop it.

Contact your congress reps, local and federal. Try to get them to change the law. What is happening in these stories should be illegal.

They won't do anything to stop it either.

Comment Re:Lua[0]? (Score 1) 729

It is recent computer scientists that started

Not "computer scientists". Just C programmers. The first two languages designed, Fortran and Cobol, start at 1. Algol('68) and all the languages descended from or influenced by it let the programmer set the starting bound (this includes Ada, Pascal and all the other Wirth languages).

Pretty much every language that uses 0 as the only allowable starting index is either descended from C, or borrowed large amounts of its syntax from it. (Some BASICs use 0, but that language is so egregiously unstandardized that its tough to say anything about it with certainty).

That's because C does not have arrays, they are just syntactic sugar for pointers. array[index] is another way of writing *(pointer + offset)
Therefore: a[5] == *(a+5) == *(5+a) == 5[a]

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