WAITS: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search

WAITS (view source)

Revision as of 12:12, 30 October 2012

4,032 bytes added ,  30 October 2012
no edit summary
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Expand}}
{{WIP}}


{{OSinfobox
{{OSinfobox
Line 5: Line 5:
|image= waitsavi.png
|image= waitsavi.png


|cname= WAITS-tan
|cname= WAITS
|alias= Nicknamed "West-coast Alternative to ITS"
|alias= "West-Coast Alternative to ITS", "Worst Acronym Invented for a Timesharing System"
|hname = Willow Stanford
|hname = Willow Stanford
|debut= Dec 2007
|debut= Dec 2007
|height= 168 cm (5'6")
|height= 168 cm (5'6")
|haircolor= Brown
|haircolor= Medium-brown
|eyecolor= Green
|eyecolor= Green-yellow
|weapon = N/A
|weapon = N/A
|apfaction= [[Deceased OS-tans|deceased]] (died in 1991)
|apfaction= Thought to be unaligned; [[Deceased OS-tans|deceased]] as of 1991.
|lineage= descended from [[TOPS-10]]
|lineage= Descended from [[TOPS-10]]
|rival= The Unix family
|rival= The Unix family


|osper= WAITS  
|osper= The WAITS operating system and its SAIL hardware
|osdev= Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratories
|osdev= Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratories
|reldate= Jun 6 1966
|reldate= Jun 6 1966
Line 24: Line 24:


==Technical details==
==Technical details==
WAITS is an OS developed by Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a heavily-modified variant of TOPS-10 and was designed for the SAIL mainframe computers. Contrary to what many say, WAITS 'acronym' does not stand for anything. WAITS was released Jun 6 1966 and the last system was shut down in the early 1990's.  
Developed by Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, WAITS is a heavily-modified variant of TOPS-10 which ran on the lab's PDP-10 computer system (called SAIL). WAITS is noteworthy for its numerous unusual features, including a high level of multimedia-integration in terminals (audio and video signals could be switched to programming terminals, and the contents of one terminal could be viewed on others) and a newswire "search engine" that allowed users to store and find AP and New York Times newswires and search for stories through keywords.
 
Combined with its hardware, WAITS made up a system known as SAIL. SAIL was one of the world's foremost research systems, specializing in such diverse fields as artificial intelligence and robotics, computer music, speech recognition, text formatting and human-computer interaction and psychiatry.
 
Although WAITS is less well-known than other PDP-10 OSes and SAIL a relative footnote in computer history, they exerted a large influence on systems and companies to come. SAIL alumni went on to found Xerox PARC and Sun Microsystems, and interactive text-editing, spell-checking, multi-region windowing and "bucky bits" all originated on the system.


==Character details==
==Character details==
WAITS-tan is represented as a hippie woman with long brown hair, green eyes and wears wild outfits that look like a cross between Victorian-era fashion and 1960's fashion. Her outfits are in light yellow with blue trim, the color scheme of the SAIL computers. She was [[TOPS-10 | TOPS-10-tan's]] daughter and [[ITS | ITS-tan's]] step sister. She was close friends with ITS | ITS-tan and [[Emacs | Emacs-kun]] and strongly disliked the Unices. WAITS-tan passed away in the early 1990's.  
''Note: WAITS-tan represents both the WAITS operating system, and the SAIL PDP-10 hairdware on which it ran''
 
====General====
WAITS-tan is represented as a mature woman with long, often dishevled-looking long brown hair and yellow-green eyes. She tends to dress in eclectic clothing that can be best described as a wild mix of old-European Bohemian and 1960s "flower child" fashion. Drawn depictions often put her in airy sundresses, fringed vests, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat decorated with feathers.
 
Her attitude is best summed up as relaxed, and in spite of her busy schedule and the fact that she is rarely without some experiment or project, she looks at life with a sort of energetic serenity. Socially speaking, she is thoroughly counter-cultural, living by the hippie ideals of progressive-mindedness, free-loving and rebellion against the stuffy mores of proceeding generations.
 
WAITS-tan is an accomplished academic and possesses a near-genius intellect. She has a wide scope of interests, ranging from the fairly-standard-for-an-OS-tan artificial intelligence and mathematics, to music, language and psychology.
 
====Family and Relationships====
WAITS' direct genetic ancestor is [[TOPS-10]]-tan, although they rarely acknowledge one anthers' existence, perhaps due to geographic disparity and divergent personalities. Likewise, they share very little in common physically, WAITS being smaller and less shapely than her ancestor.
 
Her closest friends are arguably [[PDP-10]], [[Emacs]] and [[ITS]]-tan, with whom she frequently collaborates on various projects. Going against the established customs of the era, WAITS-tan saw nothing wrong about dating human partners and had a number of unconfirmed romantic interests.
 
Although WAITS-tan is an extremely pacifistic person and doesn't believe in the concept of enemies, she carries a certain level of mistrust toward the Unix-tans and resents their displacement of PDP-10 and destruction of the ''Elder Days'' Hacker Culture.  
 
==History and Background==
====Early Life====
WAITS-tan's life began in 1966 at Stanford University, in a lonely lab above the foothills of the city. Her creation was a rather difficult and painful on; common precautions against overheating hadn't been taken, and she nearly perished from heat in the process. Unusual for an OS-tan of any time period, WAITS-tan was conscious for the entire duration and seems to have a clear recollection of her birth. Her caretakers were able to stabilize her and she quickly recovered from the trauma, starting work not long after.


WAITS-tan was an accomplished professional and genius in the fields of mathematics, language and music but also progressive-thinking, witty, free-loving and lived with a great zest for life with a love of debauchery. She was a rebel in her youth, shunning the stuffy ideals of most OS-tans in the 1960s and her fashion sense was deemed outrageous for the time.  
In the fall of 1966, WAITS-tan developed a case of uncontrollable hiccuping that was soon discovered to be caused by a powerful radar station belonging to her elder relative [[SAGE]]-tan. WAITS appealed to SAGE to do something about the station, but SAGE refused, and WAITS' engineers had to work out a way to fix her.


In spite of her home's isolated setting and her status as the only computer at the lab, WAITS maintained friendships with many of the other OS-tans living and working at Stanford. [[PDP-1]]-tan became an especially dear friend, and despite their seemingly large age gap PDP-1-tan taught a young WAITS-tan much about life at the lab and as an academic OS-tan. Later on she befriended her fellow research systems [[NLS]] and [[BTSS]]-tan. Despite a large geographic gap, WAITS and ITS-tan came to know each other well, collaborating on many projects and compiling the compendium of hacker folklore, ''The Jargon File'', together.


See also:
WAITS-tan performed tasks that were fairly standard for a university computer-tan – providing data-processing services and assisting in teaching – and ones that were fairly exotic, like robotics development, and operated an advanced mechanical arm. She dabbled in a wide number of fields, seemingly taking up any interest that caught her fancy (or that a student needed help with). Unfortunately, few records exist detailing her exact accomplishments, and a great many of them are thought to have been lost to history.
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAITS  Wikipedia article on WAITS]
*[http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html WAITS autobiography]


[[Category:Mainframe]][[Category:Deceased]]
[[Category: Historical]][[Category: Mainframe]][[Category: Deceased]]
Retrieved from "https://www.ostan-collections.net/wiki/index.php/Special:MobileDiff/3697"

Navigation menu