Personal computing discussed

Moderators: askfranklin, renee, emkubed, Captain Ned

 
trackerben
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Topic Author
Posts: 2188
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:28 am
Location: 'Tween oceans...

RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:30 am

We've lost a great author, a visionary who brought a little light in a darkening world.
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:47 am

Sad to hear that. I enjoyed many of his novels (especially the Ringworld series), and also remember reading his column in Byte.

Edit: Sh*t. Ringworld was Niven, not Pournelle. :oops: Pournelle collaborated with Niven on a bunch of other projects (many of which I've read) though, hence my brain fart. Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer, and Legacy of Heorot were great.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
trackerben
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Topic Author
Posts: 2188
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:28 am
Location: 'Tween oceans...

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 9:36 am

That's understandable, I tend to confuse them also as they did their most memorable work together. Such as the Motie series, which for me is the best alien contact storyline ever. Pournelle was the rare irreligious fellow who readily listened to reason and hardly condemned anyone outright.
 
Dposcorp
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2771
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2001 7:00 pm
Location: Detroit, Michigan

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 9:45 am

I didnt know anything about him, until I heard he passed on the TWIT podcast, where they played back short clips of his interviews; he was fun an funny to listen to
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech ... tart=false


I then did more reading on him.

He was the first author to write a novel on a computer.

He did this on his PC named "Ezekial", whom he called his old friend who happened to be a Z-80, ran at 1 MHZ, featured 2 64-Kilobyte 8” floppy disks, and 64 Kilobytes of memory.
He pulled the Z-80 out of storage, and revived it at the request of the Smithsonian Museum. The Smithsonian only wanted him for a display as the first computer to have been used to write a science fiction novel, For years he was in the hall of communications and computers, next to an old Imsai 8080.
"For several years I used to say to people How many people have you met who have their personal computer on display at the Smithsonian? In future the answer will be all of them.”

Source:
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosman ... rocessing/
 
techguy
Gerbil XP
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:12 am

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 11:17 am

RIP Jerry. I read quite a bit of his work, including aforementioned co-works with Larry Niven. Good sci fi.

On a side-note, allow me to unburden myself (and I'm sorry for the political aside) by saying I find it reprehensible that certain people online are commenting in article comment sections along the lines of "but he was a conservative".
 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
Posts: 28704
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: Vermont, USA

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:27 pm

And let's leave the R&P right there.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
NovusBogus
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1408
Joined: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:37 am

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:11 pm

That's too bad, I really liked the guy for a number of reasons.
 
whm1974
Emperor Gerbilius I
Posts: 6361
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2014 5:29 am

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:06 pm

Yeah I read many of his novels when I was younger. One of my favorites.
 
farmpuma
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2810
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2004 12:33 am
Location: Soybean field, IN, USA, Earth .. just a bit south of John .. err .... Fart Wayne, Indiana
Contact:

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:27 am

RIP among the stars
[img]http://[/img] Image
.* * M-51 * *. .The Whirlpool Galaxy. .TV muted, X dual flying birds & a mantra, "Specter be Gone"
 
Mr Bill
Gerbil Jedi
Posts: 1819
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: Colorado Western Slope
Contact:

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Wed Sep 13, 2017 1:59 pm

I've enjoyed his books since the early 80's and especially his comments about his own computer equipment. I had a subscription to BYTE Magazine and always read his column 'Chaos Manor'.
X6 1100T BE | Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ | XFX HD 7870 | 16 GB DDR3 | Samsung 830/850 Pro SSD's | Logitech cherry MX-brown G710+ | Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex mouse | SeaSonic SS-660XP 80+ Pt | BenQ 24' 1900x1200 IPS | APC Back-UPS NS-1350 | Win7 Pro
 
freebird
Gerbil
Posts: 89
Joined: Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:03 pm

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Wed Sep 13, 2017 3:00 pm

Mr Bill wrote:
I've enjoyed his books since the early 80's and especially his comments about his own computer equipment. I had a subscription to BYTE Magazine and always read his column 'Chaos Manor'.


Yeah, I enjoyed his "Chaos Manor" column (probably the "go to" column I read 1st in BYTE Magazine, which was a great deal in the 1990's. I had a six-year subscription, running from 1993 to end of 1999. Unfortunately, they got bought out by someone in 1998 (i think) and I was offered 2 one year subscriptions to something much less read...

On a separate note,
BYTE magazine always seemed to have the best articles on hardware and numerous OSes; especially Object-oriented OSes that were all the rage like GEOS, BeOS, OS/2 and NeXTSTEP. My personal favorite Object based OS we used to use at work was OS/400, later to become i5/OS and now IBM i, but that ended in the early 2000s as we migrated to Microsoft.
 
Cuhulin
Gerbil First Class
Posts: 170
Joined: Sun Mar 02, 2003 12:52 pm
Location: Meridian, Idaho

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Wed Sep 13, 2017 6:03 pm

Chaos Manor was the goto article for me in Byte as well. Jerry will be missed!
For Work: Corsair One Pro, i7-7700, 16GB, GTX 1080, Samsung 49KS8000 and 2xAsus 27" 4K, 2 x Sonos Play 5

For Play: Ryzen 5, MSI B350M, 8GB, Radeon 580 and building....
 
Pancake
Gerbil First Class
Posts: 161
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:04 am

Re: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Wed Sep 13, 2017 8:06 pm

freebird wrote:
Mr Bill wrote:
I've enjoyed his books since the early 80's and especially his comments about his own computer equipment. I had a subscription to BYTE Magazine and always read his column 'Chaos Manor'.


Yeah, I enjoyed his "Chaos Manor" column (probably the "go to" column I read 1st in BYTE Magazine, which was a great deal in the 1990's. I had a six-year subscription, running from 1993 to end of 1999. Unfortunately, they got bought out by someone in 1998 (i think) and I was offered 2 one year subscriptions to something much less read...

On a separate note,
BYTE magazine always seemed to have the best articles on hardware and numerous OSes; especially Object-oriented OSes that were all the rage like GEOS, BeOS, OS/2 and NeXTSTEP. My personal favorite Object based OS we used to use at work was OS/400, later to become i5/OS and now IBM i, but that ended in the early 2000s as we migrated to Microsoft.


You missed out on the best years of Byte - during the early to late '80s. It became a shell of its former self after that period when it became nothing more than another lame PC magazine. In its heyday the technical articles on new computer systems, RISC microprocessors, new operating systems etc was inspiring to a teenage geek. Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar was an inspiration in my becoming an electronics engineer designing embedded systems (once upon a time - now a Java developer). Pournelle? Not so much. A lightweight which I barely tolerated - hardly worthy to be in a tech-heavy journal. Some of his sci-fi was ok though.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
GZIP: On