User:Scootercatter/randomStream

A Random Walk Hop
such as

Level 4
I noticed some errors but want to understand Wikipedia's structure and etiquette, and its rules and technical functions more thoroughly before I start getting too bold about anything more than minor edits, and this page.

If anybody is still reading, this might get boring. I do need to practice writing, so...

In real life whatever that is I am not a public figure or anybody notable. When I used Google.com to search for myself and "special forces" I do show up on a few websites.

In a previous career incarnation I wrote too many programs. Some of the programs I wrote 20 to 35 years ago are still running corporate and government and the big drug companies mainframe data processing systems and telephony networks.

Programming and data processing gobbled up most of my life. From 1974 to 1991 I was obsessed with communications software, a classy-sounding combination of words that means bunches of computer programs that supposedly work together.

Some of the most popular software like Windows and Facebook are actually ever-growing ineffable globs of partly debugged device drivers. These apps were originally written to control screens, keyboards, printers and other physical input/output devices. They can also control databases, parameter files and other peripherals connected to the system bus.

In actual practice, software controls the lives of whoever uses that software more than a few times.

Although the War on Spam was a dismal failure, I believe the politicians should declare War on Software that does not exist. Politicians, media, governments and criminal organizations have found that wars on common nouns are highly profitable for their own interests in addition to the interests of businesses in noun-specific industries. A successful big-time common noun war against smoking, poverty, drugs or terrorism also creates new, and expands existing, venues for advertisers, politicians and other posers and public ripoff artists. Historic common noun wars like those against witchcraft and heresy, have occurred but were generally about as short as conventional military wars, while the late 20th century common noun wars are lasting longer than any regular wars ever did. So why can't people like me buy stock in the company that makes TSA's hot selling full body scanners, like Rapescan (sic) Corporation run by Deepok Chopra? I think I will sign up at We Won't Fly.com until I figure that one out, how to cash in on the noun wars' successes at things like marketing illegal drugs and clogging up US airports. putting uniforms and badges on people who would otherwise be collecting welfare. At least these serious new warriors against nouns are doing something besides sitting pacified by beer and TV, and this could be a very bad thing.

In 1977 I leased my first modem from the Ma Bell System telephone company. Two Bell technicians showed up with the modem and took all day to connect it into my computer and to my new "data-grade" telephone line. It's maximum speed was 1200 baud. I upgraded to the 2400 baud model 201C, and then to the 4800 baud 208B within a few months. Transmitting and receiving bi-synchronous data four times faster than 1200 baud actually reduced my long distance phone bills down by more than enough to pay for the high speed modem and line rent to Ma Bell. Things [ too vague ] have changed with communication hardware so much that if you have a high-speed internet connection your modem speed is (in December 2010) at least 100,000 baud and it could be 500,000 or a million baud. And you don't care  about long distance charges on your network connection.

During the 20-year programming frenzy I was full of the kind of energy that motivates 96-hour workdays living on pizza and Cheetos and Coca-cola, with sleeping bags and jackets  for pillows near the cafeteria.

It wasn't all contract hustle. There were some salaried jobs, but mostly I did projects. A big company or government agency or a political party, actually anybody with enough money to be interesting to me would start thinking  that they needed something done with data that they already had and a computer or network of computers that they either had or dreamed   about getting. I would make a deal with them where I would get paid actual money to use their data to define some data structures and invent some algorithms, and then use the algorithms to turn the structured data into whatever they thought  they wanted. Most of them wanted masses of boring numbers tabulated and converted into repetitive things like paychecks and water bills and mailing lists. Others wanted computers to answer their phones. In the 1970s some wanted more than one screen on their screen (I am not making this up, they worked at Xerox) when most people were still looking at punch card hoppers, switches and blinking light control panels. Everybody wanted me to keep everything secret and just because I was paranoid did not mean nobody was following me around.

Writing programs was the fun part. We called it "pounding code" to make it sound like hard work to Management. But we couldn't do any coding until after figuring out the primary functional algorithms and data structures to the point where building a prototype program for testing was feasible. This process was called Systems Analysis in those days and it was the kind of thing you do while walking or riding a bike. Motorcycles don't work but can be useful to reset a clogged mind in a pinch. Then came the actual programming. [rewrite needed]

After the mysterious near-disappearance of IBM Cards my computer programs took form as text files that appeared as white letters on black monitor screens. Each 80-character line of text equaled one IBM card. If you're still reading and born after 1965 you're probably getting cross-eyed by this.... but it took a lot of card punchers a long long while to get used to text files. You could hold a deck of cards and know what it was. Text files were just electrons on screens and they didn't weigh anything. But eventually we got over it.

IBM cards came in special boxes that held a deck of 2000 cards and weighed few pounds. Each card contained 80 columns of rectangular holes. With combinations of holes arranged in columns, each column represented one byte of data or program code, up to a maximum of 80 characters per card. The cards were good for both input and output, shoving data into and out of the computer. We got tired of this card business and took steps to make life easier but it took another 39 years for a generation of programmers and engineers to come up with the iPhone.

Some languages had more functionality than others and there is nothing like the Assembly languages for sheer power. It's about the only humanly usable language that lets you walk through firewalls. ignore passwords, and generally make the computer or network do whatever you want it to do. New and naive network targets that don't understand assembly language abilities like these gave rise to the hackster and anti-virus industries. I guess that's good for the economy, maybe.