[TUHS] History repeating itself (was: Unix v6 problem with /tmp)

[Michael Kjörling]

On 27 Jul 2016 21:03 -0400, from pechter at gmail.com (William Pechter):
> When I saw the Windows Ready Boost and Intel Turbo memory I really
> flashed (ugh pun not intended) to the day I installed the early
> ML11... Nothing new in the OS business that wasn't done in the old
> days.  Unfortunately, there's very little love for history in the industry.

I remember when this newfangled thing called "the cloud" started
becoming _the_ thing that was being talked about recently, and I kept
asking myself how on Earth that's anything new. Large timeshared
systems fell out of favor basically when local systems with adequate
storage and processing capabilities became affordable, and now large
timeshared systems - under a different name, mind you, because history
does not repeat itself, it rhymes - have become favorable again
(despite the fact that essentially _any_ desktop system today has
processing capabilities not entirely dissimilar to a supercomputer of
twenty years ago). But this time, very often it's _actually_ _someone
else's computer_; it's not just sitting in some other department
within the company. I'll admit, it's awfully convenient at times, but
it's hardly something _new_.

Now all that's really missing is that stationwagon loaded with tapes
for regular large-scale data transfer, and with some of the
discussions going on in the last few years I wouldn't be the least bit
surprised if sneakernet has seen a rebound at least in some places.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
                 “People who think they know everything really annoy
                 those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)