Tuesday, August 2, 2005

Punch This!

Via BoingBoing: how many punch cards would be needed to store a 3 minute mp3 file? Answer: 40,960 (assuming you add the 8 digit sequence number).

Wonder how long it would take an IBM-029 to read through that stack? I started coding on an IBM 3270 terminal, missing using an 029 by about three feet (it was next to the terminal but I could never find any punch cards to use.

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Related: The Undead: The little secret that haunts corporate America ... A technology that won't go away, The Stilyagi Air Corps: The online resource for the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association.

e.p.c. posted this at 07:46 GMT on 2-Aug-2005 . , Comments [1]

Drat

I've been in the ACM since 1986, though not very active, I mostly let my CACMs pile up in a corner and skim through them once a year. Today, though, I got invited (as I'm guessing every ACM member within 75 miles of Philadephia did) to the 2005 Turing lecture by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. And...I'll be in Chicago, or on the road back from Chicago, no where near Philadelphia.

Drat.

e.p.c. posted this at 16:18 GMT on 2-Aug-2005 .

Slightly acerbic and eccentric dog walker who masquerades as a web developer and occasional CTO.

Spent five years running the technology side of the circus known as www.ibm.com.

More about me here.

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