| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 441.1 | Thermodynamics and Theology | NY1MM::BOWERS | Dave Bowers | Wed Feb 11 1987 17:07 | 9 |
| I seem to remember an Asimov short story in which larger & larger
computers are being built (the Solar Computer, the Galactic Computer,
etc.). Finally the Universal Computer is constructed in hyper-space
and set to work on the problem of reversing entropy, since by this
time the universe is beginning to run down. The last line of the
story is:
And the Universal computer said, "Let there be light." And there
was light.
|
| 441.2 | the title | CACHE::MARSHALL | hunting the snark | Wed Feb 11 1987 19:05 | 10 |
| Re .1:
The short story was "The Last Question" and has appeared in numerous
collections.
/
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/
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| 441.3 | | BPT::MOREAU | Ken Moreau | Thu Feb 12 1987 12:24 | 8 |
| RE: .0
When I first saw this announcement (in 1978), the company which was developing
OS/VU was IBM, not DEC.
Its nice to know DEC is over-taking IBM in all sorts of areas :-)
-- Ken Moreau
|
| 441.4 | | AMRETO::CHELSEA | Mostly harmless. | Thu Feb 12 1987 18:37 | 3 |
| I remember seeing an announcement in the same vein. The part I
remember best is the virtual CPU - it looks like your job is running
now when it's actually running next week.
|
| 441.5 | Oldie but Goldy (I sa it in 75) | MUNICH::BEARDSWORTH | Name is toooo long | Wed Sep 28 1988 08:13 | 6 |
| Yup, late again, but it was IBM originally. ITS obvious, if you
read the BLURB. IEHGOD (all of the IBM standard utilities on eg
MVT MVS and their errors have names like IEFBR, IEBGENER etc) The
libraries tend to be called sys1.lib etc.
Rob
|
| 441.6 | Deep Thought | KYOA::CORCORAN | deep thought | Thu Sep 29 1988 00:55 | 12 |
| re: *.2
But I thought the answer was 42!
As long as we're on this topic, I remember a story told to me
by a professor of Logic at CCNY. Seems if you take HAL from
2001 and replace each letter with the next in alphabet, you
come up with IBM.
People spend all day thinking of stuff like this... ;-)
Rich
|
| 441.7 | HAL => IBM | TFH::MARSHALL | hunting the snark | Thu Sep 29 1988 10:37 | 14 |
| re .6:
Arthur C. Clarke mentioned this little tidbit of quasi-numerology
in his book "Lost Worlds of 2001" (or maybe it was in "The Making
of 2001") He says that it was purely coincidental. HAL, as explained
in the novel _2001_ stands for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic
computer".
/
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/
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| 441.8 | RIGHT! | MEMIT1::SCOLARO | A keyboard, how quaint | Thu Sep 29 1988 10:58 | 0 |
| 441.9 | A Trivial 2� worth of an aside. | TARKIN::WISMAR | Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. | Fri Sep 30 1988 10:25 | 8 |
| Clarke mntioned that fact in 2001 itself! He mentioned that <insert
character name - the one who built HAL n the first place> had been,
ahh...., *perturbed* when Dave or one of the other characters had
insinuated that he had named the machine HAL so as "to be one step
ahead of IBM.", to which <insert character name again> replied that
the name HAL was the afforementioned acronym....
-John.
|
| 441.10 | RE 441.9 | MTWAIN::KLAES | No atomic lobsters this week. | Fri Sep 30 1988 12:57 | 4 |
| Where was this mentioned?
Larry
|
| 441.11 | Not very helpful. | TARKIN::WISMAR | Zdravstvuytye. | Tue Oct 04 1988 12:12 | 9 |
| I'd have to re-read the book.... It's been several years.
But I remember that the comment had been made that the name was
just an attempt to be one step ahead of IBM, immediately following
which was the explanation of what HAL really meant....
I'll have to be re-reading the book again anyway in preparation
for the newest sequel....
-John.
|
| 441.12 | What You Always Wanted to Know... | BMT::MENDES | AI is better than no I at all | Tue Oct 04 1988 23:23 | 11 |
| Re .5, minor correction: IBM's OS software uses prefixes which can
be used to logically group things together. IEFBR14, for example,
is a utility program used to allocate/deallocate datasets. (It consists
of little more than a branch on register 14 to return to its caller).
IEBGENER is used to generate datasets; IEBCOPY to copy them.
Messages also have a standard format- 3 letters to logically group
things and 3 digits within the group. A letter suffix lets you know
if this is an <A>ction, <I>nformation or <W>arning message, etc.
- Richard
|