Word: weaning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hour approaches midnight on the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, but in Wean Hall, C.M.U.'s computer center, it might as well be high noon. On the fifth floor, two dozen undergraduates pound computer terminal keyboards, complete class assignments or work on research projects. In a glass-walled room two floors below, 20 students are seated at terminals. Down the hall from them, in a large room known as the SPICE rack (for a project called the Scientific Personal Interactive Computing Environment), several young men and women tap away on Wean Hall's most sophisticated machines...
Welcome to the world of the computer hacker. As midnight wears on to 3 a.m. and then 6 a.m., the hum of conversation dies and Wean Hall becomes very quiet. But the lights burn on, the soft-drink machine on the third floor continues to dispense 16-oz. bottles, and nocturnal computerniks still sprawl before green screens, clack-clacking their instructions into the memory of a DEC-20 system...
Neither are the bone-weary hackers who trudge out of Wean Hall at dawn's first light. They repair to dorm rooms and Victorian houses in quiet neighborhoods to spend the day in owl-like slumber, skipping both meals and classes. As dusk descends, they will meander back to the computer rooms, returning to the fluorescent comfort of typed instruction and programmed response, ready to hack again...
...returns to a climate of "purposeful change," but it is not that easy to wean a bottle baby, and the moving scenes that follow vividly illustrate W.H. Auden's line, "We must love one another or die." Treat Williams, best known for his work in the film Prince of the City, makes a princely return to the stage. As for Philip Bosco, he is an actor's actor who, in his range, finesse, intelligence and discipline, ennobles his craft...
...authors say that the solution to this dangerous predicament is to wean energy users away from Middle Eastern oil. To achieve this, Global Insecurity urges a three-pronged effort: finding new reserves, developing alternative sources like solar power and syn thetic fuels, and conserving energy by using it more efficiently...