termcap - off topic musing

[Richard Kreiss]

My daughter was in 7th grade and had a terminal in her room.  She used
Scriptsit and MultiPlan to do her school work.  She was probably the only
kid with access to a computer at the time.

I do remember teaching her basic as she had to take a course in basic.  The
one lesson I clearly remember was when she and her friends came over to
learn If/When programming.  I took most of the girls about an hour to grasp
the concept.  This lesson was started the first week in April (class met
once a week).  My daughter went to her band practice rather than the
computer class. Although she did attend the first class of each month.  She
came home amazed that the class was still working of the basics of  if/then
programming.  

We have reached a point where an external device can hold 64Tb of storage.
The next step is petabytes I think.  As it is my new NAS has 4 -4TB drives
in a raid 5 configuration. 

1024 Gigabytes=1 Terabyte
1024 Terabytes=1 Petabyte (take 256 4TB drives or 16 - 16 4TB drive
enclosures)
1024 Petabytes=1 Exabyte
1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte

For those of us who grew up with floppy disks and the high cost of a 15 Mb
hard drive, these numbers are enormous.  However, we have to keep in mind
that the early pendants often asked, "who would ever need a 35 or even a
75MB hard drive".   Well with storage moving to "The Cloud", there storage
farms will need ever larger amounts of storage capacity.  

I expect that eventually people will carry around a memory stick with a
Zettabyte of capacity and think it has limited capacity.  I marvel at 128 or
256GB memory stick. Or how about 64GB memory card for one's camera.   Not a
great idea if it is damaged or lost.  I shot in both RAW and Jpeg format so
an 8 or 16Gb card fills up quickly.  I am now off-loading pictures to memory
sticks.  At least two before reformatting the card in my camera.

Richard Kreiss



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Filepro-list [mailto:filepro-list-
> bounces+rkreiss=verizon.net at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of Bill
Campbell via
> Filepro-list
> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2018 12:06 PM
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> Subject: Re: termcap
> 
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2018, Fairlight via Filepro-list wrote:
> >On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 01:01:53PM -0700, Bill Campbell via Filepro-list
thus
> spoke:
> >> Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping?  Too many keystrokes to do
> >
> >That was back in the days when 8MB actually meant something.  Nowadays,
> >a single apache child takes 230MB or so, and there are usually at least
> >five or ten running as spares. :)
> 
> IIRC, the Radio Shack Xenix system came on about 8 8in floppies, and ran
on a
> 5MB hard drive.
> 
> >Besides, emacs never -really- took eight.
> >
> >I never had a huge problem with the amount of keystrokes, having
> >previously used WordStar.  Remembering some of the more arcane
> >constructs centered around the meta commands was a bigger deal, because
> it's a lot to remember.
> 
> WordStar is a great example of software written by people who didn't have
a
> clue about serial communications.  They used Ctrl-S for something which
didn't
> work too well on a serial connection.
> The Radio Shack Scripsit program did the same thing which didn't cause
many
> problems until Radio Shack mapped a control key by the numeric keypad to
send
> it.  I don't know how many customer calls I got from people saying their
terminal
> wasn't responding.
> Ctrl-Q solved their immediate problem.
> 
> At least Scripsit was logical, Ctrl-I == Insert, Ctrl-D == Delete, and so
forth (I
> guess Ctrl-S == Stop :-).
> 
> Bill
> --
> INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
> URL: http://www2.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
> Mobile:         (206) 947-5591  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
> Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc
> 
> Freedom from prices is freedom from responsibility. You can simply pass
laws,
> using the magic wand of government to satisfy your own desires at
unspecified
> costs to be paid by others. -- Thomas Sowell Aug 2000
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