[HN Gopher] I found an obscure political joke in the scan of a 1...
___________________________________________________________________
I found an obscure political joke in the scan of a 1971 IBM logic
block manual
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 62 points
Date : 2020-04-12 06:33 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| draugadrotten wrote:
| OMG, 1971, it's almost like finding a joke in a cave drawing!
| simonblack wrote:
| Now come on, 1971 wasn't all that long ago. I got married for
| the first time that year. My car at the time had a rotary
| engine and it cruised at 85mph on the road every weekend. Did I
| mention that fuel was 31 cents a gallon? (And that was classed
| as expensive.)
|
| It really wasn't back in 'horse and buggy' days.
| rfrey wrote:
| Well, it's another piece of evidence to support the hypothesis
| that our parents and grandparents had modern human-like
| qualities. Don't discount it: these theories proceed by slow
| aggregation of data, not one big-bang discovery.
| kens wrote:
| The manual has a diagram of a FET (field-effect transistor) with
| the source, gate, and drain. Someone wrote on the diagram: Nixon
| FET. Economic Drain. Water Gate, Unimpeachable Source.
| jsjddbbwj wrote:
| Thank you, very valuable comment.
| throwanem wrote:
| Yes, it is. Not everyone can see well enough to read text in
| images. For those who have that difficulty, describing the
| content of an image enables enjoyment of a joke that would
| otherwise be inaccessible.
| kens wrote:
| Many people may not be aware that Twitter allows you to put
| alt text on an image so people using assistive technologies
| can get a description of the image. I encourage people to
| use this feature.
| throwanem wrote:
| It's too bad their implementation of the feature is so
| poor [1], requiring it to be first enabled via
| accessibility settings [2] that most Twitter users
| probably never look at.
|
| [1]
| https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2019/twitter-
| alt-t...)
|
| [2] https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-
| descriptio...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| He's tanned, rested, and ready [1], and now available in
| convenient PEZ dispenser form factor [2].
|
| "I'll give you my Millard Fillmore PEZ Dispenser when you pry
| it from my cold, dead hands!" [3]
|
| [1] https://louisianavoice.com/2015/07/02/taking-a-break-to-
| addr...
|
| [2] https://www.momopez.com/dispenser-detail.asp?ID=7583
|
| [3] https://www.momopez.com/dispenser-detail.asp?ID=5954
| userbinator wrote:
| For those for whom those references are a bit before their
| time:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
| sohkamyung wrote:
| Found on Figure 1-20, page 1-11 of the manual [1]
|
| [1] http://bitsavers.trailing-
| edge.com/pdf/ibm/logic/SY22-2798-2...
| raverbashing wrote:
| This seems to be an older or non-standard FET depiction
|
| The modern symbol has an arrow and doesn't have a closed
| rectangle
| kens wrote:
| Yes, this was IBM's symbol for a FET. They had their own
| nonstandard symbol for bipolar transistors too, three stacked
| boxes labeled N, P, N, with a triangle on the emitter. (See
| page 1-4 of the document above.) IBM also had their own logic
| gate symbols: an OR gate looked like an AND gate, and an AND
| gate looked like an op amp.
|
| I came across the FET joke while looking up IBM transistor
| symbols in response to TubeTime's thread on the history of
| transistor symbols (which is an interesting thread you should
| read):
| https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1249023089528078337
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| Why is that?
|
| My "IBM is evil" bias leads me to guess they wanted to make
| their own standard that people started using. Then charge
| ridiculous license fees.
| kens wrote:
| I think several factors led to IBM's non-standard
| symbols. The standards didn't exist at the beginning, so
| different companies used different things. IBM also had
| historical baggage, wanting to stay consistent over time.
| In some ways IBM's symbols were better, for instance
| making NPN vs PNP obvious. Finally, IBM was big enough
| that they could do their own thing and train their own
| people.
| amelius wrote:
| Indeed an interestng thread, thanks!
| DanBC wrote:
| I think it's a logic diagram, not an electrical symbol.
|
| For anyone looking for an explanation of the newer symbol,
| this is a nice source: https://www.petervis.com/electronics/M
| OSFET_Symbol/MOSFET_Sy...
|
| Arrows were used in 1975, see page 57: https://www.noao.edu/e
| ts/Mechanical/Policies/ANSI%20Y32.2-19...
| pachico wrote:
| Who knows the amount of jokes being written now given the current
| political landscape...
| CalChris wrote:
| I found an obscure dirty joke on p. 46 of the _Mac OS X Assembler
| Guide._ [1] .fill 69,4,0xfeadface | put out 69
| 0xfeadface's
|
| [1]
| http://personal.denison.edu/~bressoud/cs281-s07/Assembler.pd...
| Zenst wrote:
| AIX used to (probably still does) use DEADBEEF as a hex value
| to clear memory out.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-04-12 23:00 UTC)