Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

In article <vpol5t$2r3ql$1@dont-email.me>, Rich  <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>

And COMPASS?  That's a very very strange assembler to teach....

>
It was the timeshare system the university had for students.  They had
a Cyber 7600 and a Cyber 8600, I only ever had accounts on the 7600. 
But since it was the system they used, Compass (I'd forgotten that
name, but that was it) was the assembler.

 
gatech used the Cybers to teach an emulated assembler... first they used
Donald Knuth's idealized machine, then later an 8080 emulator.  Much easier
to teach than a 60-bit assembler with pipeline issues.

Indeed yes.  I, however, was not so lucky.  I got the full 60-bit
experience with the official assembler.  And it was a weird CPU as
compared to writing 6502 code.  Move addresses to an address register,
wait the requisite number of cycles, and a data fetch from memory at
that address magically appears in the corresponding data register.
Quite oddball vs. lda $0602.

I acclimated to the oddness and got an A from the course, but damn if
that CPU wasn't weird six ways from Sunday.