Back in the day, it was popular to use line printers to print out large (multiple sheets taped together) ASCII images to hang on walls and such. Some of these were very popular with us guys (keep in mind this was a heavily male-centric CS-era, even worse than now) and were NSFW -- but still ended up hanging in various places where they really shouldn't have been.
At the ARPANET site #1 lab at UCLA, we wanted some "Star Wars" posters. At the time, the only place I knew of with a potentially usable video digitizer (black and white, very low resolution by today's standards of course) was at the original Stanford AI Lab (SAIL / SU-AI).
So. A nationwide TV Star Wars special was coming up. This was my chance. I arranged with the gentleman who had the digitizer at SAIL to have it tuned to the appropriate local channel in Stanford at the correct time.
Then, from my bedroom here in L.A., over the ARPANET via my account on the SAIL / SU-AI system that controlled the digitizer, I grabbed various key images as I watched the same program locally.
Then, after the program was done, I FTP'd (file transferred) those files down to UCLA, where I had a UNIX program to create those ASCII posters.
Mission accomplished, thanks to the Defense Department's ARPANET!
Though this was fun stuff, a LOT was being learned about distributed systems and resources through these kinds of amusements.
@lauren I think you and I might be the same person.
I worked at a printing company and wrote a system to convert images to print on a Versatec thermal printer. Later, on a brand new invention, ink jet!!, 72 dpi. As far as we knew back then, it was the first continuous tone image printing.
At home, I used my dot matrix to make posters of continuous strips taped together in my picture window. Six, eight pages wide by four or five strips. People thought it was amazing.
@tqwhite We had a Versatec at the UCLA Lab. Thermal paper. Was always giving us trouble as I recall! Of course Stanford had (as far as I know) the first laser printer in regular use. If I remember right it was about a full rack worth of equipment at the time.
@lauren We both recall that. The paper was too fragile and the drive didn't pull evenly all the time. But my management was thrilled. It was a printing company and being able to see a page in primitive WYSIWIG without using very expensive film was huge.
A few weeks ago, there was a weekend hackathon up here in SF. Someone tweeted a video of Sergey Brin answering a question at the hackathon, but the first shot of the video was of a guy asking Sergey a question wearing a t-shirt featuring naked female breasts.
Uproar ensued, and the organizers (who retweeted the video btw) said it wouldn't happen again as the guy was from out of town.
But in the year 2024, no one thought to tell the dude to knock it off.
I've been working in a majority male field, on mostly male dominated teams (more often than not, I'm usually the first female hire) and I've greatly enjoyed my career so far.
But with age, comes wisdom. In any setting, the jerks will come and go, but I do look for the allies.
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