>> ls, cp, mv, rn and friends. Becuase, let's face it, adding two octets to
>> cp to make copy would be a crime...
> 
> there were no visual text editors back then.  You entered chars and there was a
> lag before they were printed.  The less chars, the less the chance of errors.
> Kinda like the choice of bits too.

When I was briefly in the local council offices, I went into their 
central computer room.

Now, this was 1997 or so, but I am not kidding, EVERYTHING WAS BROWN! Do 
you have any idea how long ago they stopped making computers in brown 
and cream?!?

They had a machine with a big green screen - you know, the kind where 
you can actually *see* the scanlines, and text takes a split second or 
two to actually fade off the screen. (And you can see what the most 
common message is, because it's permanently burned into the phosphor.)

Anyway, when you type on the clunky keyboard, there's a sort of 2-second 
delay, and then the character appears on the screen. Apparently the 
mainframe you're operating is actually 60 miles down the road, connected 
over some kind of telephone link. And the terminal is a *real* dumb 
terminal. o_O

I have no idea what kind of system it runs - it wasn't Unix, or at least 
didn't appear to be. But if you type in something like "lx 37f7h.b" or 
similar, the huge line printer next to it suddenly goes crazy and starts 
printing people's benefits cheques.

It wouldn't surprise me if that's how the council's computer systems 
*still* work...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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