May 1st: 30th Anniversary of the First Spam Email

April 28th, 2008

The very first spam was sent on May 1, 1978. Here are the details:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

This was not one of the high points of DEC advertising.

VMS Bootcamp is Coming!

April 21st, 2008

Want a meeting that’s 100% VMS? The OpenVMS Advanced Technical Bootcamp is for you!

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/symposium/may_2008/agenda.html

This will be the last one held in Nashua, NH, the current home of VMS Engineering.  VMS Engineering is moving to Marlboro, MA.  Next year’s location is TBD (to be determined).

DevDisasters: Jurassic Programmers

March 6th, 2008

Here’s a true tale of trying to turn a functional VMS financial application into a “cool” .NET application:

http://reddevnews.com/devscope/print.aspx?editorialsid=935
(written by Alex Papadimoulis in Redmond Developer News)

I don’t know where the author got his example, but I have a friend with an identical story.  His story is has a follow-on — they’ve lost so many customers by pushing “version 2″ that they will declare bankruptcy soon.

As for DIBOL, the language in the article, it is fully maintained, and now cross-platform.  If only the rock stars had known…

New old technology, the hard way

January 14th, 2008

Here’s a video of a guy who makes his own vacuum tubes!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3wrzo_fabrication-dune-lampe-triode_tech

Are you LinkedIn?

December 17th, 2007

Looks like chunks of the VMS community are.

View Stanley Quayle's profile on LinkedIn

Get a free VMS sweater

December 15th, 2007

Enter the contest for old instance of VMS here:

http://www.hp.com/go/celebrate30

If you have the oldest, you’ll win a free HP Integrity rx2660 server.  All entries will get a 30th anniversary sweater.

Hurry, the offer expires January 15, 2008.

Why did HP make this USA only?  Maybe they’re trying to save on shipping…  :-)

Text Messages? You’re using VMS!

December 4th, 2007

HP has posted this neat video. Look for Acision under Telecommunications,

Upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1

November 1st, 2007

I’ve upgraded the blog to WordPress 2.3.1.  It was almost painless!

HP *does* celebrate VMS

October 30th, 2007

Take a look at HP’s main page (http://www.hp.com). It mentions VMS!

I’ve keep a screen scrape here, just in case…

OpenVMS at 30

October 26th, 2007

Well, it happened! VMS made it to 30 years yesterday. The HP site now has a video from Mark Hurd, the guest book comments (with some hilarious stories), and a list of VMS “firsts”. Well worth checking out:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/30th/index.html

Again, Happy Birthday!