Transcript

      Tapes of many kinds of records around from Air Force base to Air Force base. There's a question of how could you deal with all of these things that used to be card images and then because tape had come in were starting to be more and more complicated uh formats and somebody almost certainly an enlisted man because officers didn't program back then um came up with a and came up with the following idea. This person said,

      "On the third part of the record on this tape, we'll put all of the records of this particular type."

      The second part, the middle part, we'll put all of the procedures that know how to deal with the formats on this third part of the tape. And in the first part, we'll put pointers into the procedures.

      And in fact, let's make the first 10 or so pointers standard like reading and writing fields and uh trying to print and let's have a standard vocabulary for the first 10 of these and then we can have idiosyncratic ones later on. And so all you had to do to read a tape back in 1961 was to read the the front part of a record, one of these big records into core storage and start jumping in direct through the pointers and the procedures were there. Now I really would like you to contrast that with what you have to do with HTML on the internet.

      Think about it. HTML on the internet has gone back to the dark ages. because it presupposes that there should be a browser that should understand its formats.

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      This has to be one of the worst ideas since MS DOSs.

      This is really a shame. It's it's maybe what happens when you when physicists decide to play with computers. I'm not sure.

      And in fact, we can see what's happening to the internet now is is it's gradually getting there two wars going on. There's a set of browser wars which are 100% irrelevant.

      They're basically an attempt either at demonstrating a non-understanding of how to build complex systems or a even crudder attempt simply to gather territory which I suspect Microsoft is in the latter camp here.

      You don't need a browser if you followed what this staff sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961.

      You just read it in.

      It should travel with all the things that it needs and you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows. hopefully better.

      But basically, you want to be able to distribute all of the knowledge of all of these things that are there. And in fact, the internet is starting to move in that direction as people discover ever more complex HTML formats ever more intractable.

      So, this is this is one of these mistakes that has been recapitulated every generation, and it's just simply not the way to do it. space to air force base. There's a question of how could you deal with all of these things that used to be card images and then because tape had come in were starting to be more and more complicated uh formats and somebody almost certainly an enlisted man because officers didn't program back then um came up with a and came up with the following idea. This person said,

      "On the third part of the record on this tape, we'll put all of the records of this particular type."

      The second part, the middle part, we'll put all of the procedures that know how to deal with the formats on this third part of the tape. And in the first part, we'll put pointers into the procedures.

      And in fact, let's make the first 10 or so pointers standard like reading and writing fields and uh trying to print and let's have a standard vocabulary for the first 10 of these and then we can have idiosyncratic ones later on. And so all you had to do to read a tape back in 1961 was to read the the front part of a record, one of these big records into core storage and start jumping in direct through the pointers and the procedures were there. Now I really would like you to contrast that with what you have to do with HTML on the internet.

      Think about it. HTML on the internet has gone back to the dark ages. because it presupposes that there should be a browser that should understand its formats.

      This has to be one of the worst ideas since MS DOSs.

      This is really a shame. It's it's maybe what happens when you when physicists decide to play with computers. I'm not sure.

      And in fact, we can see what's happening to the internet now is is it's gradually getting there two wars going on. There's a set of browser wars which are 100% irrelevant.

      They're basically an attempt either at demonstrating a non-understanding of how to build complex systems or a even crudder attempt simply to gather territory which I suspect Microsoft is in the latter camp here.

      You don't need a browser if you followed what this staff sergeant in the Air Force knew how to do in 1961.

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