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Book review - Moon is a harsh mistress

Posted by: aigarius in books, history, people, politics, science 9 years, 8 months ago

I finally made myself read a classic sci-fi book and the choice fell on The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. I missed this writer somehow while I was growing up and reading all the books I could find left and right. I sure will seek out and read more of his work now.

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The Deamon, the Gnu and the Penguin

Posted by: aigarius in history, news 13 years, 5 months ago

The Deamon, the Gnu and the Penguin (chapters 4 & 5)
It is really fun to read about the earlyest history of computer software. Especially it is fun to see how for most of the computerized history of the world, the software has been free in all sences of the word.
Evolution on networking and text editors is detailed in these chapters. The only names I would recognise right away are vi and Emacs. Guess what! They have common ancestors :) As they say - relatives fight harder then strangers.
It was quite a revelation to me how instrumental UUCP was for the creation of Net and particulary - UseNet.
As usual on Groklaw, the comments are quite revealling too: bang-path email addresses, phone tariffs, flame about too litle mentioning of RMS, and even some OT post about bananas :)
All in all - a fascinating read that will be assembled into a book. Now thats one more reserved space on the bookshelf.

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