Re: tlug: parallel-port IDE

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, Karl-Max Wagner wrote:

> > Sounds reasonable to me, because virtually all computer technology
> > derives from English-speaking communities. User interfaces can be
> 
> ???? And where do you think the term "Urlader" comes from ? Yes,
> I mean that little chunk of code that loads the first sector on
> disk and thus initiates the bootloading process.
> 
> It is german and means "primordial loader", litterally
> translated. The term was coined by Konrad Zuse, one of the most
> brilliant minds in computer history.
> 
> Computer technology is the result of joint efforts of many
> people from many cultures and nations. To see what I mean let's
> dig a bit into computr history.
> 

Fascinating article (really, I didn't know a lot of that stuff before).
However, there's only one mention of Japan in the whole thing, and if
Fujitsu's current computer models are anything to go by, they didn't
learn very MUCH from the Z3 :)

Anyhow, as your article pointed out, computer development was largely a
European and American deal.  The Asians seem to have been left out of the
early stages of it almost completely.  The computers of today can function
with most European languages fairly easily, but require extensive software
modifications to understand asian languages properly.

Now, I'm not sure how things would have been different if the Chinese or
the Japanese had been more involved - there are certain inherent problems
with written languages that are several orders of magnitude more complex
than the average European language, when you have a limited amount of desk
space for your keyboard.  Besides, knowing the Japanese propensity for
NIH, we might have ended up with UNIVAC-98 from NEC :)

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Head of TurboLinux Development/Systems Administrator
Pacific HiTech, Inc (USA) / Pacific HiTech, KK (Japan)
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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