Hi,
Anyone on here using Charter Telephone VOIP service? I've currently
got Verizon, but the wife hates it because our phone lines get flaky
all the time, esp when it rains.
So I'm thinking to save money and combine all my stuff onto Charter.
I've already got High Speed internet and regular old cable. Not wild
about Digital Cable since I'm happy with Tivo and I don't want yet
another set top box to have to deal with...
So, any horror stories about Charter Phone VOIP quality and service?
Thanks,
John
I met KO once in Maynard at the Old Mill and got to see his original
orange-crate desk that he shared with Gordon Bell. Nice guy and
down-to-earth.
First fulltime techie gig I had was at Simplex Time Recorder, Gardner, MA,
operator for DEC PDP-11 running RSX CAD/CAM stuff, and a MicroVax running
VMS 3.5 for the software engineers. 1986. Previously, as an assistant
bookstore manager at Clark U., I'd been in charge of selling the DEC Rainbow
PCs as part of the University's program for students, faculty and staff.
1984-85.
Last time I worked on DEC stuff was the VAX/VMS 7000 and the Alpha OpenVMS
boxen running 7.1 at an outfit in downtown Woostuh. 2006-07.
>From what I've heard inside the old DEC social circles is that a lot of the
VMS engineering that didn't migrate to HP went to India, and that many of
the old VMS guys have long since moved on to...drum roll....Linux.
In other old DEC scuttlebutt, there was supposed to be an open field
somewhere off Route 12 in Leominster that contained all kinds of hw
dumped/stored there by whatever DEC facility back in the day. During my own
time at DEC in 87-89 one of our operators told us he'd gotten all kinds of
stuff from there and was now storing it in his front yard in Sterling.
Regards from the shores of Lake Champlain in winter,
Dave Hardy
> 2. nice remembrances: Ken Olsen, DEC, ..... (Doug Mildram)
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2011 12:35:39 -0500
> From: Doug Mildram <dmildram(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wlug] nice remembrances: Ken Olsen, DEC, .....
> To: wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTinCQXAHYjbuzRC+7YH9wZvVAoeokGCZoRiMDre3(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> A nice article from Jon Hall is on top of the blog
>
>
> http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-mad…
>
> along with many other replies about PDP-* systems, VMS, etc.
>
> My first HIGHtech job (1985) was hanging tapes and keeping dumb terminals
> alive and connected to four
> VAX 750/780's running (not VMS but) BSD4 unix (before NFS, before NIS)
> for a robotics shop in Billerica called Automatix. csh% a.out
> hello, world !
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://mail.wlug.org/pipermail/wlug/attachments/20110209/aeb596ff/attachmen…
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wlug mailing list
> Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org
> http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
>
>
> End of Wlug Digest, Vol 88, Issue 10
> ************************************
>
Since we are reminiscing about DEC and KO....
I started at DEC in 1978 working on the DECSYSTEM20. My first manager
was one of the first 100 DEC employees and even though I was initially
working as a contractor for DEC (on an air force base) in Rome NY we
made a trip to Maynard where he introduced me to the mill and to Ken
Olsen. It was a fascinating time as I worked at the place which
essentially funded the ARPANET and TCP/IP. I went to work in DEC
engineering in Marlboro in 1981. Eventually I ended up at Stratus where
among other things I now manage the Linux group (I never worked on VMS
although I did do some stuff with the Ultrix group). It still amazes me
(and many others) that DEC went away. I often tell my engineers that
when I see some computer or software technology that DEC did not have I
will let them know (there is some but not much that DEC did not have
first and for which very little credit is given).
I shall reveal my age. I was a working AN/FSQ7 programmer in Group 67 at Lincoln Labs when KO took off on his crazy venture to that mill in Maynard. I did not know Ken at the time as he was in Group 64 if my memory serves me correctly.
DEC's first products were 'logic boards'. Those were the days of 'wire wrap' breadboarding. Ken's cards built with itty bitty new fangled transistor things slipped securely into a standard wire wrap board. I do not remember any specific cards, but I know they consisted of multiple individual NAND and NOR gates and probably a couple of FLIP FLOPs.
>From that came the PDP-1 which I never saw. My memory focuses on the PDP-8 which was popular - so to speak. To put this in perspective the US had just deployed the SAGE air defense computers all around the country to detect and intercept Russian atomic bomb carrying jet airplanes. The SAGE computers used water cooled vacuum tube technology.
I suggest, if you can find a library (remember them?), that is open check out "DEC is Dead, Long LIve DEC" The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation by Edgar Schein. (Is it available on NOOK?). My read of that book was that DEC was fine and healthy so long as it's engineers were producing products the customers did not know they needed, ie DEC was never consumer driven. (This is part of why KO was so beloved.) I was a TCP/IP aware person when I went to work for DEC in 1985. Inside those DEC walls DECnet was not only everything, it was the only thing.
Ken Jones
A nice article from Jon Hall is on top of the blog
http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-mad…
along with many other replies about PDP-* systems, VMS, etc.
My first HIGHtech job (1985) was hanging tapes and keeping dumb terminals
alive and connected to four
VAX 750/780's running (not VMS but) BSD4 unix (before NFS, before NIS)
for a robotics shop in Billerica called Automatix. csh% a.out
hello, world !
Hi folks,
Our next WLUG meeting is tonight at 7:00 PM at the WPI campus in
Worcester, MA USA. The meeting room is in WPI's Morgan Hall (building
'H' on the campus map [1]), down the hallway to the right of the
dining hall entrance.
[1] http://www.wpi.edu/Images/CMS/WPI/walkingmap.pdf
Chuck
President, Worcester Linux Users' Group
Northeast GNU/Linux Fest Details
Date: Saturday, April 2, 2011
Time: 10:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Location:
Worcester State University
Student Center
486 Chandler St.
Worcester MA 01602
----- Forwarded message from Jonathan Nadeau <northeastlinux(a)gmail.com> -----
From: Jonathan Nadeau <northeastlinux(a)gmail.com>
To: cra(a)WPI.EDU
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 09:15:08 -0500
Subject: Northeast GNU/Linux fest
Greetings,
My name is Jonathan Nadeau and I'm coordinator of the Northeast GNU/Linux
fest (http://www.northeastlinuxfest.org) which will be held in Worcester,
MA on April 2, 2011.
I was given your contact info by Jon Maddog Hall (who will be speaking at
the event), and I'm writing to you to see if you would be willing to
attend, and if you would please announce this to the people in your group.
Thanks for your time and help.
Jonathan
----- End forwarded message -----
Hello,
I've made a survey for Linux User Group members across North America. I
would like to get the pulse of different groups and see what's working so
that all LUG's can improve the experience. This data will be published on
http://clug.ca (the Calgary Linux User Group website) on August, 2011. The
survey is only 12 questions, and shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to
complete.
http://www.lonesomecosmonaut.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=94921&newtest=Y&l…
Thank you for your participation!
-Dafydd
President of Calgary Linux User Group
