The Internet Archive (http://archive.org) is doing the same thing. They have old software stored that you can run in online emulators. I only wish they had instructions for how to use the emulators. The old keyboards and controllers are not like today's.
I think for so many important cases, this is almost the only way to do it. The problems were caused by short-sighted vendors and programmers getting locked into particular computers and OS software.
For contrast, one could look at a much more compact way to do this that -- with more foresight -- was used at Parc, not just for the future, but to deal gracefully with the many kinds of computers we designed and built there.
Elsewhere in this AMA I mentioned an example of this: a resurrected Smalltalk image from 1978 (off a disk pack that Xerox had thrown away) that was quite easy to bring back to life because it was already virtualized "for eternity").
This is another example of "trying to think about scaling" -- in this case temporally -- when building systems ....
The idea was that you could make a universal computer in software that would be smaller than almost any media made in it, so ...
The Internet Archive (http://archive.org) is doing the same thing. They have old software stored that you can run in online emulators. I only wish they had instructions for how to use the emulators. The old keyboards and controllers are not like today's.
Here is another example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155203
Their larger goals are important.
Do you think they are on the right path to their larger goals?
I think for so many important cases, this is almost the only way to do it. The problems were caused by short-sighted vendors and programmers getting locked into particular computers and OS software.
For contrast, one could look at a much more compact way to do this that -- with more foresight -- was used at Parc, not just for the future, but to deal gracefully with the many kinds of computers we designed and built there.
Elsewhere in this AMA I mentioned an example of this: a resurrected Smalltalk image from 1978 (off a disk pack that Xerox had thrown away) that was quite easy to bring back to life because it was already virtualized "for eternity").
This is another example of "trying to think about scaling" -- in this case temporally -- when building systems ....
The idea was that you could make a universal computer in software that would be smaller than almost any media made in it, so ...
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