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2 definitions found
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) : [ foldoc ]
eighty-column mind
The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the
transition from punched card to paper tape was traumatic
(nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that
these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder
of IBM, will be buried "face down, 9-edge first" (the 9-edge
being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on
IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous
bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of
which are as follows:
He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.
The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to
dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking.
See fear and loathing, card walloper.
[{Jargon File]
(1996-08-16)
From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) : [ jargon ]
eighty-column mind n. [IBM] The sort said to be possessed by persons
for whom the transition from punched card to tape was traumatic
(nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these
people, including (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be
buried `face down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the
card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers
and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the
climactic lines of which are as follows:
He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried,
Face down, 9-edge first.
The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's
customer base and its thinking. This only began to change in the
mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of the
killer micro. See IBM, fear and loathing, card walloper. A copy
of "The Last Bug" lives on the the GNU site at
`http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html'.
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