I started my history with computers on the PDP 11/40 at my Dad's university.
Years later when my company was writing Unix software and we were porting to all the major vendors, DEC loaned us an Alpha workstation so we could port to OSF/1. That machine was blindingly fast, way way better than any of the Sun, HP, IBM, etc. hardware we had in the office. It quickly became my desktop because it came with a gorgeous monitor. I strung out the loan as long as I could and was sad when it had to leave.
James Gosling spoke at our developer conference around that time, and talked about the Alpha design team (who got to create this fast RISC processor without worrying about the "embarrassingly large" backward compatibility footprint the modern x86 chips were saddled with), and how great the Alpha was as a platform for Java. DEC and Sun were my two favorite tech companies; I'm glad I got to use their products when they were at their height.
I got early access and wired it into our software, which essentially processed streams of various events. And you could get a sense for when the pace picked up, or something unusual was happening more often than normal. Sadly the project was shut down at some point.
Here in Minneapolis (one of the first two cities that got it), there are 6 (count them, 6) locations downtown near the Vikings stadium, and that's it. Yeah, I won't be ponying up for that any time soon.
There are, of course, many exceptions to this "rule". From the preface to my favorite calculus book:
My aim is to exhibit the close connexion between analysis and its applications and, without loss of rigour and precision, to give due credit to intuition as the source of mathematical truth. The presentation of analysis as a closed system of truths without reference to their origin and purpose has, it is true, an aesthetic charm and satisfies a deep philosophical need. But the attitude of those who consider analysis solely as an abstractly logical, introverted science is not only highly unsuitable for beginners but endangers the future of the subject; for to pursue mathematical analysis while at the same time turning one's back on its applications and on intuition is to condemn it to hopeless atrophy. To me it seems extremely important that the student should be warned from the very beginning against a smug and presumptuous purism; this is not the least of my purposes in writing this book.
- Richard Courant, Differential and Integral Calculus [1]
Courant, who trained — under Hilbert, no less — as a pure mathematician, never tired of pointing out the importance of applications to pure mathematics and vice versa. In addition to the calculus books, see, e.g.,
Yes, and in the same way, once the AA execs realized how much it was costing them, they started looking for some way to get out from under the agreement they made.
I had something similar happen with a national tire-and-brake chain, from whom I bought a "lifetime alignment" for one of my cars for the cost of about 2 alignments. After a few years had passed, it was always a huge rigamarole: "I don't show that in the computer; do you have your receipt paperwork?" "We don't offer lifetime alignments any more." "This store has a new manager since then and we're no longer honoring that deal." They always gave it to me after I persisted, but never easily.
Look, I'm not responsible for your shortsightedness; I bought the deal on your terms, and now you need to honor the deal.
You're assuming it works. Where I work we have an intranet-based web app that pushes the new password to all the various corporate systems. We're forced to choose a new password every 90 days. I'd say 1 time out of 3 something doesn't work, and I have to open a support ticket. While I'm waiting for support, I'm not getting emails, or can't log in to some systems, etc. Multiply that by hundreds of users at my company.
Twice, support resolved the issue by resetting my password and telling me the new one... which is my last name plus 4 digits. Then I can live with a very insecure password for 90 days, or try the reset app roulette again.
Years later when my company was writing Unix software and we were porting to all the major vendors, DEC loaned us an Alpha workstation so we could port to OSF/1. That machine was blindingly fast, way way better than any of the Sun, HP, IBM, etc. hardware we had in the office. It quickly became my desktop because it came with a gorgeous monitor. I strung out the loan as long as I could and was sad when it had to leave.
James Gosling spoke at our developer conference around that time, and talked about the Alpha design team (who got to create this fast RISC processor without worrying about the "embarrassingly large" backward compatibility footprint the modern x86 chips were saddled with), and how great the Alpha was as a platform for Java. DEC and Sun were my two favorite tech companies; I'm glad I got to use their products when they were at their height.