2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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eighty-column mind
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. [IBM] The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition
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from punched card to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about
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disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old
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joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried face down, 9-edge first (the 9-edge
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being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and
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1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called The
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Last Bug , the climactic lines of which are as follows: Hediedattheconsole
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Ofhungerandthirst. Nextdayhewasburied, Facedown,9-edgefirst. The
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eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer
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base and its thinking. This only began to change in the mid-1990s when IBM
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began to reinvent itself after the triumph of the killer micro. See IBM ,
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fear and loathing , code grinder. A copy of The Last Bug lives on the the
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GNU site at http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.
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