I'd be the last person to ask about your weapons cache, Denys. I often get surprised when I hear that kind of report. (Like the time one good friend took a walk with me wearing a fanny pack. We talked about weapons as a hobby, and he said, "I'm packing right now." Unzip the pack, there's the pistol. Or the report that another friend wears his pistol on his hip around the house. People are going to love what they want, and I'm not a guy to diss love.) I know weapons a little. After all, I'm one of the spare few among our readers who's carried a loaded M-16 into German woods for one weekend, wearing a helmet, a field jacket, and Army rank on my collar.
But dissing disrespect -- yeah, I'm all about that. Maybe my weakness. But before this devolves into a debate about guns and military-grade explosives, we could take a minute to consider what's being shown.
If this was about blowing anything at all up, then why choose an HP 3000? I think that by using the "sensitive" in the title with sarcasm, these fellows are proud of being insensitive. Not sensitive at all about the unjust plight of people who've lost jobs, commuted three hours a day each way to stay employed and support their families, or been forced into retirement because a product didn't fit a business plan. When their 3000 was decommissioned at their business, some of them might've felt like Going Postal on a target other than a machine.
HP blew up a computer with very high grade explosives, proudly. That Superdome was vaporized, probably. But the happy ending was that an instant cutover of the system preserved all data. Not that the computer was junk to be sunk as a reef. (For the record, it was George Stachnik who pushed that 3000 off a roof, and there was a happy ending there, too -- they booted up the machine they'd tossed off a two-story office building.) I've got links to both of these up on the Podcast section of the blog.
But when I watched this latest bit of snuff, I felt the same way as when people who don't know this computer pronounced it dead, or chortled at the idea of companies using it to prosper, or just survive these hard times.
To me, this hapless machine represents my 26 years of devotion to a marginalized, underestimated and now-dismissed ideal. If anybody's watching this and doesn't feel that way -- that there's just a clump of plastic and metal being destroyed -- they might have missed the point in the title. Blowing things up usually doesn't involve the [misspelled] word decommissioned. If their aim was to kick something while it was down, then com-Mission Accomplished.
There's a commission of some sort going on here, but it's not comedy, unless you're 12 -- or happy to acknowledge there was nothing in that plastic and metal to be devoted to in the first place.
This isn't about guns. It's about personal injury, mostly because my ardor outweighs my resignation. Me, I'm just interested in who these Brave Citizen Soldiers are, and what they do at jobs so they can stock their gun cabinets and ammo boxes. Can't be knowing the 3000; one of its points of pride is that it was the computer that ensured you didn't need a mainframe.
Ron
On May 6, 2011, at 8:58 AM, Denys Beauchemin wrote:
> Ron, you really should refrain from anthropomorphizing a machine. The
> HP3000 doesn't have feelings, it does not cry, it does not know fear, it
> just runs programs.
>
> And before you ask, no I do not know who the "perps" are and I don't have
> class 3 weapons.
>
> Denys
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of Ron Seybold
> Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 4:27 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] de-comissioned HP3000 for spare parts [failed
> comedy]
>
> Hello Friends,
>
> Well, this is the kind of defiling that makes a fellow serious about
> discovering the perps handling the automatic weapons. And laughing about it.
>
> There's about 350 or so readers here. I've got another few thousand up on
> the Newswire blog. Then there's print, coming out this month.
>
> Can we make it a shared mission to find out who's laughing at our expense?
> Not talking about a jihad here -- but really, like Jim said: What K Class
> server which powered a company faithfully for years deserves to be the butt
> of this kind of joke?
>
> Help me out here, if you can. A little ID technology, anyone, from the
> Wetware Division? About the 3-minute mark a fellow walks by the camera,
> post-cannon, with lots of facial features visible.
>
> Not getting the joke here,
>
> Ron Seybold
> Editor, 3000 Newswire - 512.331.0075
> 3000newswire.com/blog
> Twitter @3000newswire | Skype ronseybold
>
> On May 5, 2011, at 12:43 PM, Mark Landin wrote:
>
>> Allegedly.
>>
>> On 5/5/11, Hawkins, Jim (ESSN TCE&Q) <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf
>>> Of joseph dolliver
>>> Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 9:19 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: [HP3000-L] de-comissioned HP3000 for spare parts
>>>
>>> If you can find them
>>>
>>> http://www.cleanvideosearch.com/media/action/yt/watch?videoId=laZGMa4O2X4
>>>
>>> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
>>> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>>>
>>>
>>> I am all for a little explosive fun now and then but this just left me
> sad.
>>> What did this K-Class ever do to deserve this fate? Even Bin Laden's
> body
>>> got treated better than that. . .
>>>
>>> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
>>> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Sent from my mobile device
>>
>> "He's old enough to know what's right and young enough not to choose
>> it. He's strong enough to win the world and weak enough to lose it." -
>> Neal Peart
>>
>> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
>> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
|
