In defense of Windows
J.D. Baldwin
In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it.-T. Lehrer
***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve VanDevender
> In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
> from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
Oh, yes, Microsoft's brilliant initiative to have people host "Windows 7
launch parties". Who has a working trebuchet? I hear you can get a
free copy of Windows 7 for hosting a launch party, so you wouldn't even
have to spend anything to launch it.
Also, the new round of Windows 7 TV commercials is using the theme from
"The A-Team". Maybe they really are trying to remind people of horrible
things from the 80s.
--
Steve VanDevender "I ride the big iron" http://hexadecimal.uoregon.edu/
ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu PGP keyprint 4AD7AF61F0B9DE87 522902969C0A7EE8
"bash awk grep perl sed df du, du-du du-du,
vi troff su fsck rm * halt LART LART LART!" -- the Swedish BOFH
Garrett Wollman
Steve VanDevender <ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>Also, the new round of Windows 7 TV commercials is using the theme from
>"The A-Team". Maybe they really are trying to remind people of horrible
>things from the 80s.
Hey, I *liked* the A-Team.
I was twelve, what do you expect?
(Not that I'd be particularly interested in watching more than a
minute or two of it again, but I'm surely not the only person with at
least the first six bars of the theme song burned indelibly into my
memory. Yes, I watched "Knight Rider", "Airwolf", "Simon & Simon",
"Remington Steele", and pretty much all of the NBC early-prime lineup
in those days.[1] Have I mentioned that I have a pretty good auditory
memory, despite no other evidence of musical ability? Also buried in
there are "Voltron" (the "Lion Force" series), the Quebec-French dub
of "Battle of the Planets", a French original adaptation of Edmond
Hamilton's "Captain Future" called "Capitaine Flam", "MASK", and other
similar horrors. But nothing that aired on ABC, because we lived too
close to Mount Mansfield to get a usable signal from the local ABC
affil.)
I have thus far avoided exposure to any "Windows 7 TV commercials" in
the past few months, not even when visiting my parents (who watch
commercial TV almost exclusively).
-GAWollman
[1] Never watched any of the much-acclaimed 10pm (9 Central) dramas of
that era, such as "Hill Street Blues" or "St. Elsewhere", although I
do remember HSB's theme music as well, which was respected enough to
get radio airplay the week the show went off the air. (I'm not sure
if the same happened with "M*A*S*H" but I suspect not, because it was
already in its second decade of syndication at the time. If HSB was
ever syndicated for domestic broadcast, I don't recall stumbling
across it.)
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org>
wrote:
> Hey, I *liked* the A-Team.
>
> I was twelve, what do you expect?
>
> (Not that I'd be particularly interested in watching more than a
> minute or two of it again, but I'm surely not the only person with at
> least the first six bars of the theme song burned indelibly into my
> memory.
At least it gave us Mr. T as a cultural meme, a boon for which a lot
of other sins against Art can be forgiven.
(He was on Conan the other night, pitying fools and everything. I
never get tired of that shtick. Never.)
> I have thus far avoided exposure to any "Windows 7 TV commercials"
> in the past few months, not even when visiting my parents (who watch
> commercial TV almost exclusively).
With the exception of one Saturn commercial back in the early 1990s
with which I still have an unhealthy obsession, I didn't think it was
possible for me to hate a commercial more than those "I'm a PC, and
I'm a stereotype" make-your-own-dorky-video pastiches. And then I saw
the cute kittens and duckies and the six-year-old girl putting the
"happy words" (excerpts of Windows 7 reviews) on the "happy pictures."
The first time I saw one of these things, I blurted out loud, "Okay,
now you people are just fucking with me." To an empty (except for me
and the pets) house.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Rob Adams <roba...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> >In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
> >from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
> >
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
>
> have breakfast. I think my brain just turned to mush.
I just loved the article; I skipped over the video.
I was only able to make it halfway through, so someone please tell me:
did the black dude ever get to utter a single line with actual
content? (i.e., not counting "Uh-uh" and "Right" in response to
points made by th white folks.) I don't go for those "count up the
contribution quotas in a spreadsheet matrix of every race / ethnicity /
sex / <your pet issue here> combination" games, but all that guy was
doing was shoving orange food into his face.
I need to find a .avi of that and keep it on my phone. Now that they've
banned syrup of ipecac, you never know when you might need an emetic.
David Gersic
> In article <h9u6r9$20kg$1...@isis.novusordo.net>,
> Steve VanDevender <ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>
>>Also, the new round of Windows 7 TV commercials is using the theme from
>>"The A-Team". Maybe they really are trying to remind people of horrible
>>things from the 80s.
>
> Hey, I *liked* the A-Team.
It seems a good metaphor for Win7. It's got a nutty guy in it, cobbled
together solutions that randomly go bang!, and tons of useless gold
chain^W^Wbells and whistles.
> I was twelve, what do you expect?
>
> (Not that I'd be particularly interested in watching more than a
> minute or two of it again, but I'm surely not the only person with at
> least the first six bars of the theme song burned indelibly into my
Not a bad theme song, actually.
> [1] Never watched any of the much-acclaimed 10pm (9 Central) dramas of
> that era, such as "Hill Street Blues" or "St. Elsewhere", although I
HSB was pretty good, from what I recall of it. That was a long time ago.
I'd have to see it again to see if I still think that.
> do remember HSB's theme music as well, which was respected enough to
> get radio airplay the week the show went off the air. (I'm not sure
> if the same happened with "M*A*S*H" but I suspect not, because it was
> already in its second decade of syndication at the time. If HSB was
> ever syndicated for domestic broadcast, I don't recall stumbling
> across it.)
I've heard "Suicide is Painless" on the radio, but not the way they
cobbled it up for the TV show theme. HSB is syndicated, there's a local
Chicago station showing it now. They're also showing Knight Rider and
a few other things I've been avoiding.
Garrett Wollman
David Gersic <usenet_s...@zaccaria-pinball.com> wrote:
>I've heard "Suicide is Painless" on the radio, but not the way they
>cobbled it up for the TV show theme. HSB is syndicated, there's a local
>Chicago station showing it now. They're also showing Knight Rider and
>a few other things I've been avoiding.
Which strongly suggests to me that it wasn't syndicated during its
original run, because in a market like Chicago the residuals would
have run out by now if it had been. (I was actually in the room where
the tapes from the studio are ingested into the video server that the
station you are referring to is played out of. The same company also
manages and co-owns "This TV", which plays mostly movies from the MGM
library, which don't have the same residual issues as television
series. Essentially, the problem is that the studios only have the
right to sublicense for a limited number of broadcast airings per
market; since "This TV" is a national broadcast network, they can only
air programs that have not exhausted their quota anywhere, which is
very difficult to track down. But their partner in the service is
MGM, which owns a large library of movies -- although not the "MGM"
library per se -- which they can air because movies have a different
residual scheme that doesn't limit the number of broadcasts.)
-GAWollman
Lionel
> On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:31:16 +0000 (UTC),
> INVALID...@example.com.invalid (J.D. Baldwin) wrote:
>
>>
>> In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
>>from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
>
> have breakfast. I think my brain just turned to mush.
Aaargh! The tentacles! 10 seconds of the video was as much as I could stand.
--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Jim
>>>
>>> In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
>>>from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
>>
>> Welll thats my day wasted, do NOT watch the video if you are yet to
>> have breakfast. I think my brain just turned to mush.
>
> Aaargh! The tentacles! 10 seconds of the video was as much as I could stand.
>
I've often wondered what 'toe-curlingly bad' meant. Thanks to that video, I
now know.
Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
My Oasis of Calm has dried up. However, my Garden of Angry is
flourishing quite nicely.
Dave
> In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
> from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
It's Charlie Brooker - 'nuff said.
As someone else said "Oi! iPhone owners! You only brought it, you didn't
design it..."
Dave
--
millibrachiate tentacular coelenterates
Steve VanDevender
> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:34:33 +1000, Lionel <imag...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Rob Adams wrote:
>>> On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:31:16 +0000 (UTC),
>>> INVALID...@example.com.invalid (J.D. Baldwin) wrote:
>>>
>>>> In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
>>>>from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
>>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
>>>
>>> Welll thats my day wasted, do NOT watch the video if you are yet to
>>> have breakfast. I think my brain just turned to mush.
>>
>>Aaargh! The tentacles! 10 seconds of the video was as much as I could stand.
>
> I think it was the accents and the porn star blonde that did it for
> me.
Since you mentioned "porn star blonde", I did see someone link to a
modified version of the video that used some strategic bleeping to
suggest that the actors were preparing to do a very different sort of
film. Although with that bunch of actors it would be truly awful even
by the standards of that other genre.
--
Steve VanDevender "I ride the big iron" http://hexadecimal.uoregon.edu/
ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu PGP keyprint 4AD7AF61F0B9DE87 522902969C0A7EE8
Little things break, circuitry burns / Time flies while my little world turns
Every day comes, every day goes / 100 years and nobody shows -- Happy Rhodes
Maarten Wiltink
news:h9uk39$4tm$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> [...] And then I saw the cute kittens and duckies and the six-year-old
> girl putting the "happy words" (excerpts of Windows 7 reviews) on the
> "happy pictures."
You mean like LOLcats?
> The first time I saw one of these things, I blurted out loud, "Okay,
> now you people are just fucking with me."
*Of course* they are. We all are.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Jim
> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:27:06 +0000 (UTC), David Gersic wrote:
>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:29:56 +0000 (UTC), Garrett Wollman
>>
>> It seems a good metaphor for Win7. It's got a nutty guy in it, cobbled
>> together solutions that randomly go bang!, and tons of useless gold
>> chain^W^Wbells and whistles.
>
> they've screwed up. It won't be pretty but it'll do in a pinch.
>
"Lipstick on the pig of Vista" is how I tend to think of it.
Dave
> Have I mentioned that I have a pretty good auditory
> memory, despite no other evidence of musical ability?
I've had the theme to the cartoon version of 'The Incredible Hulk'
lodged in my head from since I was a youngster, but absolutely no
recollection of ever having watched the show.
Err, which now makes we wonder if it -is- the theme to the cartoon
version of 'The Incredible Hulk' or something else entirely now.
> Also buried in there are...
I had a shock when I watched the last Charlie Brooker show about
comptuer games - he finished with the credits from a very old BBC
computing show called 'Micro Live' (cue lots of flying owls so no
advertising there then....) - that took me right back.
Jim
> ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) wrote:
>> Rob Adams <roba...@ozemail.com.au> writes:
>> > I think it was the accents and the porn star blonde that did it for
>> > me.
>>
>> Since you mentioned "porn star blonde", I did see someone link to a
>> modified version of the video that used some strategic bleeping to
>> suggest that the actors were preparing to do a very different sort of
>> film. Although with that bunch of actors it would be truly awful even
>> by the standards of that other genre.
>>
>
I endorse this service.
Kevin Goebel
<roger+a...@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:
>Michel Buijsman wrote:
>>On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:27:06 +0000 (UTC), David Gersic wrote:
>>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:29:56 +0000 (UTC), Garrett Wollman
>>>> Hey, I *liked* the A-Team.
>>> It seems a good metaphor for Win7. It's got a nutty guy in it, cobbled
>>> together solutions that randomly go bang!, and tons of useless gold
>>> chain^W^Wbells and whistles.
>>Indeed. Something they bodged together to save their ass after
>>they've screwed up. It won't be pretty but it'll do in a pinch.
>I love it when an OS comes together.
<The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this
software?>
[Run] [Cancel] [Run in circles, scream and shout]
"Of course I want to run it, fool! I wouldn't click on the icon if I didn't
want to run it! I pity the fool that installs Windows 7 before service pack
three!"
Kevin Goebel
Maarten Wiltink
news:slrnhc8l0n.2c1....@my-286.myhome.westell.com...
[...]
> I think I understand now.
>
> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows XP : Windows ME
> or
> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 98 : Windows 95
> or
> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 3.1 : Windows 3.0
Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0, and by the time
Windows ME arrived, was old enough to know to avoid it.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Lawns 'R' Us
> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
>
> I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0, and by the time
> Windows ME arrived, was old enough to know to avoid it.
I'm reminded of my first reaction when I saw Windows 3.0 - "Hey, this
is neat!" Then I found out, gradually, that it sucked.
Then my father came home with a copy of Abegba Qrfxgbc. I had much the
same reaction, but I found out how much it sucked in a much shorter
space of time - it was a massive resource hog, after all.
Nowadays, I assume that the shinier something is, the more it sucks.
It's much quicker overall.
Jim
> news:slrnhc8l0n.2c1....@my-286.myhome.westell.com...
> [...]
>> I think I understand now.
>>
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows XP : Windows ME
>> or
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 98 : Windows 95
>> or
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 3.1 : Windows 3.0
>
> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
STONE THE HERETIC!
David Skinner
<slrnhc8pjh...@invalid.hostname.does.not.exist.666.au>,
nob...@nowhere.example.com says...
> I'm reminded of my first reaction when I saw Windows 3.0 - "Hey, this
> is neat!" Then I found out, gradually, that it sucked.
And I recall our first viewing of a beta copy of Windows 95, in the days
when it was relatively hard to lay your hands on beta software.
Visually, it was very impressive compared to 3.1 - mouse shadows,
convincing 3D effects, nicer icons, scaled well to 800x600 or better,
and so on. It ran quicker than we expected, the bundled apps were more
comprehensive, and it didn't seem to crash as much[1].
But we took one look at the new control panel - massively more detailed
than anything before - so much more to tweak - and it filled us with
dread. If the students started dicking around with this stuff, we'd
/never/ be able to spot what they'd done. And this "registry" thing
seemed to be a terribly complicated way to reinvent win.ini and
system.ini (I'm not ROTting - I can't be bothered) which would prevent
us from pulling tricks like having multiple sets of ini files under the
control of a .bat menu on bootup.
[1] It crashed even less when we realised that the machine we ran it on
was sucking hot air in from the heater behind it, causing it to overheat
after an hour or so. Internal heat sensors were rare in desktop machines
in those days.
Jim
> On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 09:23:02 +0100, Jim wrote:
>> On 2009-10-01, Maarten Wiltink <maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:
>>> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
>>
>> STONE THE HERETIC!
>
> install process had a certain charm. Every time I put the cd in the
> drive for yet another reinstall it was like meeting an old friend.
I always found it rather amusing the way it would forget it had a CD drive
mid-install. From the CD drive.
Well, when it wan't me installing it, obviously.
Dave
> I always found it rather amusing the way it would forget it had a CD drive
> mid-install. From the CD drive.
Shit, I'd forgotten it did that. Why am I now get blearily eyed
nostalgic about Windows 95? Eww.
Jim
> Jim <j...@magrathea.plus.com> writes:
>
>> I always found it rather amusing the way it would forget it had a CD drive
>> mid-install. From the CD drive.
>
> Shit, I'd forgotten it did that. Why am I now get blearily eyed
> nostalgic about Windows 95? Eww.
Because it's far enough in the past to (hopefully) no longer be considered a
danger.
Peter Corlett
[...]
> Because it's far enough in the past to (hopefully) no longer be considered
> a danger.
Say, I could always post you this hologrammed drinks coaster that's in the
junkpile...
TimC
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
How old are you again?
Because I was only 16 or so when I first experienced Win98, and I was
already too old.
I experienced Win98 before my first kiss. Is that not how you set up
the rest of your life?
--
TimC
Yesterday, after years of trying, I finally managed to take a photo of a
subway train that said "INSTRUCTION CAR" just so that someday I can caption
it "...but where's the DATA CDR?" when I'm ready to make a joke that's
nerdy even by the standards of jokes about LISP. -- James "Kibo" Perry
Jim
Not unless you want it returned to you, Tron-like, at high speed.
Jim
>> Jim <j...@magrathea.plus.com> writes:
>>> I always found it rather amusing the way it would forget it had a CD drive
>>> mid-install. From the CD drive.
>>
>> Shit, I'd forgotten it did that. Why am I now get blearily eyed
>> nostalgic about Windows 95? Eww.
>
> so not enough bother to get annoyed over, just leaving one with a
> bit of a smirk at how the bloody hell this ever got past everyone
> and onto the shelves in this state. Innocent times...
I'm happy to report that I can no longer remember how top get around it, and
most certainly do not wish to be reminded.
I might collect old crap but I have standards. Not very good ones, perhaps,
but they're mine.
Dave
> Jnfag vg unys na BF i2 gung erdhverq gur vagreany naq rkgreany PCH
> pnpur or ghearq BSS va beqre gb fhpprffshyyl vafgnyyrq.[1]
We brought a pile of computers from Fnzfhat that were that broken once -
in order for them to work reliably the cache had to be disabled.
Unfortunately, in order to sell them to us, they also had to not be that
broken. So Fnzfhat edited the BIOS to report that the cache was working
even though it was perminantly disconnected. Took a long time to get
over that. I'm perfectly happy with storage stuff though.
Peter Corlett
[...]
> Not unless you want it returned to you, Tron-like, at high speed.
High speed seems unlikely, given the postal strikes. If we're really lucky,
they'll lose it.
Jim
Lionel
> On 2009-09-30, Michel Buijsman <ab...@rubberchicken.nl> wrote:
>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:27:06 +0000 (UTC), David Gersic wrote:
>>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:29:56 +0000 (UTC), Garrett Wollman
>>>> Hey, I *liked* the A-Team.
>>> It seems a good metaphor for Win7. It's got a nutty guy in it, cobbled
>>> together solutions that randomly go bang!, and tons of useless gold
>>> chain^W^Wbells and whistles.
>> Indeed. Something they bodged together to save their ass after
>> they've screwed up. It won't be pretty but it'll do in a pinch.
>>
>
> "Lipstick on the pig of Vista" is how I tend to think of it.
I'd phrase that as "Lipstick on Vista's pig".
--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Lionel
> "Dan Birchall" <feeping....@cow-tapult.example.com> wrote in message
> news:slrnhc8l0n.2c1....@my-286.myhome.westell.com...
> [...]
>> I think I understand now.
>>
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows XP : Windows ME
>> or
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 98 : Windows 95
>> or
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 3.1 : Windows 3.0
>
> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
>
> I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0,
Shit, I was running CorelDraw on Windows 2.03.
(Not that there was much else to run on it...)
Lionel
> Because I was only 16 or so when I first experienced Win98, and I was
> already too old.
> I experienced Win98 before my first kiss. Is that not how you set up
> the rest of your life?
Bloody kids. At the time Win 2.03 was released, I was up to my second
line-in GF.
Lionel
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Rob Adams wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:31:16 +0000 (UTC),
>>>> INVALID...@example.com.invalid (J.D. Baldwin) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In which we learn that ... well, no one here has anything to *learn*
>>>> >from this, but it's entertaining as hell nevertheless:
>>>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/charlie-brooker-microsoft-mac-windows
>>>> Welll thats my day wasted, do NOT watch the video if you are yet to
>>>> have breakfast. I think my brain just turned to mush.
>>> Aaargh! The tentacles! 10 seconds of the video was as much as I could stand.
>> I think it was the accents and the porn star blonde that did it for
>> me.
>
> Since you mentioned "porn star blonde", I did see someone link to a
> modified version of the video that used some strategic bleeping to
> suggest that the actors were preparing to do a very different sort of
> by the standards of that other genre.
This is what I love about ASR - we can corrupt anything.
Brian Kantor
I did too. Primarily because it was so easy to get it out of
the way and run under the last working DOS ever to come out
of that company.
FREEDOS is a good bootloader and system monitor these days.
Mostly because it's cheap.
If this was UI, you need a new job.
- Brian
Kenneth Brody
> Maarten Wiltink wrote:
>> "Dan Birchall" <feeping....@cow-tapult.example.com> wrote in message
>> news:slrnhc8l0n.2c1....@my-286.myhome.westell.com...
>> [...]
>>> I think I understand now.
>>>
>>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows XP : Windows ME
>>> or
>>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 98 : Windows 95
>>> or
>>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 3.1 : Windows 3.0
>>
>> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
>>
>> I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0,
>
> Shit, I was running CorelDraw on Windows 2.03.
> (Not that there was much else to run on it...)
Does Windows 1.0 pre-Beta win this DSW?
--
Kenneth Brody
Brian Kantor
>in order for them to work reliably the cache had to be disabled.
>Unfortunately, in order to sell them to us, they also had to not be that
>broken. So Fnzfhat edited the BIOS to report that the cache was working
>even though it was perminantly disconnected. Took a long time to get
>over that. I'm perfectly happy with storage stuff though.
How short-term a storage? I've got a pile of over 100 of their DIMMS
here that about 3 out four work most of the time, and the rest don't.
Would you like to own them or should I continue to donate them to plant
maintenance as paint stirrers?
- Brian
Niklas Karlsson
>
> Bloody kids. At the time Win 2.03 was released, I was up to my second
> line-in GF.
Isn't it more customary to apply the mic to them?
Niklas
--
Butterscotch schnapps is a great memory restorative. Now I remember why I don't
drink it more often.
-- Stevo, asr
Jim
> >STONE THE HERETIC!
>
> I did too. Primarily because it was so easy to get it out of
> the way and run under the last working DOS ever to come out
> of that company.
>
> FREEDOS is a good bootloader and system monitor these days.
> Mostly because it's cheap.
>
> If this was UI, you need a new job.
It wasn't, but I think I do.
Jim
--
Please help support Bletchley Park. If you are a UK resident
then please sign the petition for government funding at:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/
http://www.UrsaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
Jim
> >> Indeed. Something they bodged together to save their ass after
> >> they've screwed up. It won't be pretty but it'll do in a pinch.
> >>
> >
> > "Lipstick on the pig of Vista" is how I tend to think of it.
>
> I'd phrase that as "Lipstick on Vista's pig".
Well, ok, but as long as we're clear that there's lipstick, Vista, and a
pig involved. It's important.
Jim
--
"Microsoft admitted its Vista operating system was a 'less good
product' in what IT experts have described as the most ambitious
understatement since the captain of the Titanic reported some
slightly damp tablecloths." http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
Paul
news:7ik7h1F...@mid.individual.net:
> On 2009-10-01, Lionel <imag...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Bloody kids. At the time Win 2.03 was released, I was up to my
>> second line-in GF.
>
> Isn't it more customary to apply the mic to them?
>
> Niklas
They must have been high level. Were they balanced?
--
Paul the Legacy Server
Full Recovery reached May 30, 2008
"People can be educated beyond their intelligence"
-- Marilyn vos Savant
Graham Reed
> As someone else said "Oi! iPhone owners! You only brought it, you didn't
> design it..."
I feel much the same about the nuts going around saying things like,
"We won the big game last night!"
I mean, they're not even on the _team_, let alone were playing.
Actually, maybe it's the same part of the brain that does it. The
ride-someone's-coattails cortex or something.
(Not to imply prosletyzing anything owners aren't annoying.)
--
"I think I was in heaven. Remember when we went to Toys'R'Us and
bought toys with the company credit card during work hours?"
-- John Lasseter in the _Toy Story_ commentary
Graham Reed
> [Run] [Cancel] [Run in circles, scream and shout]
>
> "Of course I want to run it, fool! I wouldn't click on the icon if I didn't
> want to run it! I pity the fool that installs Windows 7 before service pack
> three!"
That's even more annoying now that I know what's Actually Happening
under the covers.
It's like they almost had the right idea, it was RIGHT THERE just
waiting to be implemented, and there are even free-as-in-BSD style
implementations to crib from.
No, instead, they did something in the most confusing way possible, by
hooking it up in the most stupid ways they could.
Unlike the FruitCo commercial says, turning it off doesn't JUST defeat
the whole purpose. Instead, it reverts all behaviour to the previous
release. It's not the same as if "OK" was automatically clicked, it's
ACTUALLY WORSE.
And people think the next one will be better?
I know "past performance is no indication of future results", but
man... at least we can play spot-the-trend once in a while?
--
"If you have to ask what kind of meat it is, you're too sober."
-- Rincewind the Wizard
Graham Reed
>>We brought a pile of computers from Fnzfhat that were that broken once -
>
> How short-term a storage? I've got a pile of over 100 of their DIMMS
Wow, that takes me back. I had an A2052 RAM board made with their
41256 chips, and the damn thing ran hot enough to fry bacon on.
Well, actually, still have... but it's been replaced by one that loads
8x1M 30 pin SIMMs.
Wow... SIMMs are just about 2 decades ago....
--
"Dead people don't spam."
Garrett Wollman
>I feel much the same about the nuts going around saying things like,
>"We won the big game last night!"
>
>I mean, they're not even on the _team_, let alone were playing.
Spectator sports invoke the same feelings of solidarity -- for which
we all come preprogrammed -- as battles and wars. Only they're a bit
less harmful, probably, I think. But most wars aren't run on a
for-profit basis. See also S.J. Gould, /Triumph and Tragedy in
Mudville/ (2003).
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Steve VanDevender
> "Dan Birchall" <feeping....@cow-tapult.example.com> wrote in message
> news:slrnhc8l0n.2c1....@my-286.myhome.westell.com...
> [...]
>> I think I understand now.
>>
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows XP : Windows ME
>> or
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 98 : Windows 95
>> or
>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 3.1 : Windows 3.0
>
> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
>
> I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0, and by the time
> Windows ME arrived, was old enough to know to avoid it.
I got a lot older during the year or two I had to use Windows 3.1.
--
Steve VanDevender "I ride the big iron" http://hexadecimal.uoregon.edu/
ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu PGP keyprint 4AD7AF61F0B9DE87 522902969C0A7EE8
"bash awk grep perl sed df du, du-du du-du,
vi troff su fsck rm * halt LART LART LART!" -- the Swedish BOFH
Shmuel Metz
at 08:57 PM, TimC <tcon...@no.spam.accepted.here-astro.swin.edu.au>
said:
>I experienced Win98 before my first kiss. Is that not how you set up the
>rest of your life?
I had assumed that once you used 'doze 98 that nobody would be willing to
kiss you. Or was I thinking of 'doze ME?
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
Shmuel Metz
at 02:51 AM, Lionel <imag...@gmail.com> said:
>This is what I love about ASR - we can corrupt anything.
A dirty mind is a joy forever.
Shmuel Metz
at 05:09 PM, Graham Reed <gr...@pobox.com> said:
>Wow... SIMMs are just about 2 decades ago....
Real programmers use core. Hand strung.
Is it true that General Mills used to market a cereal computer?
Brian Kantor
>Spectator sports invoke the same feelings of solidarity -- for which
>we all come preprogrammed -- as battles and wars. Only they're a bit
>less harmful, probably, I think. But most wars aren't run on a
>for-profit basis. See also S.J. Gould, /Triumph and Tragedy in
>Mudville/ (2003).
Heh. Bread and circuses.
- Brian
Garrett Wollman
I don't think so, really; "bread and circuses" is usually conceived as
a mechanism of social control, whereas spectator sports are about
something different. (I almost said "making money" there, but most
sports teams lose money, or at least have very poor return on
capital. But whatever the motive, social control clearly isn't it.)
Brian Kantor
>I don't think so, really; "bread and circuses" is usually conceived as
>a mechanism of social control, whereas spectator sports are about
>something different. (I almost said "making money" there, but most
>sports teams lose money, or at least have very poor return on
>capital. But whatever the motive, social control clearly isn't it.)
Hmm. Ok, I'll agree to that. Although I see sports as a way for
people to vicariously blow off their thirst for violence as well.
- Brian
Kenneth Brody
>>>> I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0,
>>> Shit, I was running CorelDraw on Windows 2.03.
>>> (Not that there was much else to run on it...)
>> Does Windows 1.0 pre-Beta win this DSW?
>
Well, we were talking Windows here. I was programming computers for 13+
years before Windows 1.0 was released.
[...]
--
Kenneth Brody
stevo
> On 2009-10-01, Maarten Wiltink <maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:
>> "Dan Birchall" <feeping....@cow-tapult.example.com> wrote in message
>> news:slrnhc8l0n.2c1....@my-286.myhome.westell.com...
>> [...]
>>> I think I understand now.
>>>
>>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows XP : Windows ME
>>> or
>>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 98 : Windows 95
>>> or
>>> Windows 7 : Windows Vista :: Windows 3.1 : Windows 3.0
>>
>> Hey, I *liked* Windows 95.
>
>
One could argue that liking Win95 has been it's own punishment.
--
Stevo st...@madcelt.org
stevo
> stevo posted thus:
>>One could argue that liking Win95 has been it's own punishment.
>
Shit! Where did that ' come from?
Mea Culpa
--
Stevo st...@madcelt.org
Steve VanDevender
> Bloody kids. At the time Win 2.03 was released, I was up to my second
> line-in GF.
What happened to the first one? Did you blow out her tweeters by
jacking in with the volume too high?
--
Steve VanDevender "I ride the big iron" http://hexadecimal.uoregon.edu/
ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu PGP keyprint 4AD7AF61F0B9DE87 522902969C0A7EE8
Little things break, circuitry burns / Time flies while my little world turns
Every day comes, every day goes / 100 years and nobody shows -- Happy Rhodes
Alexander Schreiber
> In article <877hveo...@7deadly.org>, Graham Reed <gr...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>I feel much the same about the nuts going around saying things like,
>>"We won the big game last night!"
>>
>>I mean, they're not even on the _team_, let alone were playing.
>
> Spectator sports invoke the same feelings of solidarity -- for which
> we all come preprogrammed -- as battles and wars. Only they're a bit
> less harmful, probably, I think. But most wars aren't run on a
> for-profit basis. See also S.J. Gould, /Triumph and Tragedy in
> Mudville/ (2003).
Oh, but wars usually[0] _are_ run on a for-profit basis.
It's just that the ones most directly affected by the acts of war
(soldiers, civilians in the war zone, ...) are not the ones raking in
the profit from the war.
HTH,
Alex.
[0] Completely shit-for-brains religious crusades omitted - but even
there, if you look deep enough, there tends to be some real world
profit gaining involved in the movers behind the scenes.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Phil Launchbury
> TimC wrote:
>> Because I was only 16 or so when I first experienced Win98, and I was
>> already too old.
>> I experienced Win98 before my first kiss. Is that not how you set up
>> the rest of your life?
>
> line-in GF.
Pah. When Windows 2 was released I had been married for 5 years. And
had been a IBM mainframe programmer for 4.5 of those years.
Phil
--
Phil Launchbury
'I speak to machines with the voice of humanity'
'Speak to the wise with the voice of insanity'
Phil Launchbury
> Kenneth Brody <kenb...@spamcop.net> writes:
>
>> Does Windows 1.0 pre-Beta win this DSW?
>
> Probably not in here. And this isn't even afc.
>
Likewise. That program enabled me to run Ultima (6?) while ostensibly
running the IBM 3270 emulator on my PS/2 50z powerhouse.. (a whole 12M
of RAM!).
The alt-singlekey session switch was great.
Maarten Wiltink
news:125439452...@hexane.ssi.swin.edu.au...
> On 2009-10-01, Maarten Wiltink (aka Bruce)
> was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
[...]
>> I'm too young to have worked with Windows 3.0, and by the time
>> Windows ME arrived, was old enough to know to avoid it.
>
Erm... Just turned 39, why?
I managed to hold off starting 'work' until quite late, and in my
private life, somehow everybody I knew seemed to be still running
DOS in what must have been Windows 3.0's heyday elsewhere.
> Because I was only 16 or so when I first experienced Win98, and I was
> already too old.
I can deal with almost every aspect of getting older *except* having
to recognise such toddlers as Real People. I still flinch when seeing
someone who's obviously ten years younger than I[0], step into a car
and drive away.
> I experienced Win98 before my first kiss. Is that not how you set up
> the rest of your life?
Not sure what you mean there? (While I do fondly remember my first kiss,
it was embarassingly late in my life.)
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
[0] This sentence may be made better or worse by inserting the word
'feel' at this point.
Richard Bos
> ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) wrote:
> > Rob Adams <roba...@ozemail.com.au> writes:
> > > I think it was the accents and the porn star blonde that did it for
> > > me.
> >
> > Since you mentioned "porn star blonde", I did see someone link to a
> > modified version of the video that used some strategic bleeping to
> > suggest that the actors were preparing to do a very different sort of
> > film. Although with that bunch of actors it would be truly awful even
> > by the standards of that other genre.
> >
> Eh, they mostly just bleeped the product name...
Don't we all...
Richard
Shmuel Metz
at 11:01 AM, Phil Launchbury <ph...@launchbury.org.uk> said:
>Pah. When Windows 2 was released I had been married for 5 years. And had
>been a IBM mainframe programmer for 4.5 of those years.
Feh! I'm not the only one here to have been programming before you were
out of diapers.
Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
drives.
mikea
> In <slrnhcbjr7...@mail.launchbury.org.uk>, on 10/02/2009
> at 11:01 AM, Phil Launchbury <ph...@launchbury.org.uk> said:
>
>>Pah. When Windows 2 was released I had been married for 5 years. And had
>>been a IBM mainframe programmer for 4.5 of those years.
>
> Feh! I'm not the only one here to have been programming before you were
> out of diapers.
>
> Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
> got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
> drives.
Sorry; Williams tube memory here, then 1024 words (54 bits plus parity) of
ferrite RAM. After that, a VOZ 1620 and 7044; then CDC 160G and 1604 and
3200 and 3600 and 3800. The 160G and 3200 were donkey engines, building
input tapes and printing/punching output tapes for the 1604, which was
replaced by a 3600, which was replaced by 3800 S/N 1 -- with all the
interesting behaviors that predictably come with S/N 1 of a product.
--
> Which activity will get you the biggest chance to get laid?
You could crawl up the north end of a southbound ostrich....
Jeanne (Cynthia Gee), to "Jennifer Thompson" in rec.org.sca
c...@nospam.netunix.com
>
> Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
> got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
> drives.
Decatrons.
--
From the quill of Chris Newport g4jci.
mikea
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
>> got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
>> drives.
>
> Decatrons.
Wow! That's Right Down There.
OK, then, let's try for relay machines. Anyone?
--
Slow? Geological. Tectonic plates muttering about the slowpoke, that
sort of thing.
-- Michel Buijsman, in the Monastery
Phil Launchbury
> In <slrnhcbjr7...@mail.launchbury.org.uk>, on 10/02/2009
> at 11:01 AM, Phil Launchbury <ph...@launchbury.org.uk> said:
>
>>Pah. When Windows 2 was released I had been married for 5 years. And had
>>been a IBM mainframe programmer for 4.5 of those years.
>
> Feh! I'm not the only one here to have been programming before you were
> out of diapers.
My first experience of programming was on a Cambridge Scientific 4-bit
SC/MP board.
With a whole 256 bytes of RAM. And a 4-digit (count 'em - 4!) LED
display.
Must have been around 1975-76.
> Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
> got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
No - but they did have core-store on the syllabus for Computer Studies
O level.
Shmuel Metz
That's almost as old as the acoustic delay line. 701?
>160G
That's pretty rare; not nearly as common as its little brothers.
In <fi7hp6-...@mikea.ath.cx>, on 10/02/2009
at 07:16 AM, mikea <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> said:
>3600, which was replaced by 3800
I hate you! I had lust in my heart for those machines?
Shmuel Metz
at 01:49 PM, Phil Launchbury <ph...@launchbury.org.uk> said:
>My first experience of programming was on a Cambridge Scientific 4-bit
>SC/MP board.
Much more recent.
>No - but they did have core-store on the syllabus for Computer Studies O
>level.
But by then core was the old technology; when I started it had been around
for less than a decade.
c...@nospam.netunix.com
> c...@nospam.netunix.com wrote in <ha4s7a$cr8$1...@news.albasani.net>:
> > Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
> >>
> >> Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
> >> got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
> >> drives.
> >
> > Decatrons.
>
> Wow! That's Right Down There.
>
> OK, then, let's try for relay machines. Anyone?
Back in the 1960s I used to work on strowger telephone exchanges, but
that probably does not count. Register/translators[1] using relay logic
were interesting.
Decatrons replaced the mechanical register contraptions in the late
sixties but were very soon replaced by "proper" electonics.
[1] Store a dialled[2] number xxxyyyy[3] and replace xxx with up to six
transit digits required to get to the xxx exchange and pass on yyyy.
[2] Proper dials, 10pps disconnect pulses.
[3] Subscriber trunk dialling came in at around the same time with a
national number format 0zzzxxxyyyy, requiring a new layer of
register/translation to route zzz to the correct city. The first one
of these was in Bristol and called GRACE. The incoming digits were
counted on decatrons and used to pull the routing from a drum store.
mikea
>>Sorry; Williams tube memory here,
>
> That's almost as old as the acoustic delay line. 701?
>
>>160G
>
> That's pretty rare; not nearly as common as its little brothers.
>
> In <fi7hp6-...@mikea.ath.cx>, on 10/02/2009
> at 07:16 AM, mikea <mi...@mikea.ath.cx> said:
>
>>3600, which was replaced by 3800
>
> I hate you! I had lust in my heart for those machines?
I have the Principles of Operations for the 3600, and Bitsavers has lots
of CDC material. I *really* found the 3[268]00 boxes to be extremely
nice. They were seriously limited by being word-oriented and by their
48-bit word size, but the 3600 and 3800 were quite innovative for their
time. I would be ecstatic to have a 3800 manual, or the addendum and
updates to make a 3600 manual into a 3800 manual.
--
Imagine a stegosaurus wearing rocket powered roller skates, & you'll
get a fair idea of its elegance, stability & ease of crash recovery.
-- Lionel Lauer
Garrett Wollman
>Back in the 1960s I used to work on strowger telephone exchanges, but
>that probably does not count. Register/translators[1] using relay logic
>were interesting.
From the descriptions I've read, I suspect a WECo #5 crossbar would be
a bit more interesting. But perhaps that's just transpondial bias.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Paul
> Is it true that General Mills used to market a cereal computer?
Yes, but it was all 0s.
--
Paul the Legacy Server
Full Recovery reached May 30, 2008
"People can be educated beyond their intelligence"
-- Marilyn vos Savant
Garrett Wollman
Gary Barnes <g...@adminspotting.org> wrote:
>On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 22:22:56 +0000 (UTC), Garrett Wollman
><wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
>:
>: Spectator sports invoke the same feelings of solidarity -- for which
>: we all come preprogrammed
>
>Speak for yourself, solidarity-boy.
There's no wiggling out of it, unless you want to admit to being a
sociopath.
Brian Kantor
>
>At that exact moment everybody pulled out some appleware or
>similar "does it even work as a phone?" phone and started
>twittering and facebooking at each other, and I was the only
>one at my table who was offline[1].
The solution to that is to leave that table and find one that
is not populated by uber-geeks. The folks with the PLOs (Phone-Like-Objects)
won't notice you're gone, and someone else gets to appreciate
your humanity. Extra points if you can do it before the PLOOPs*
divide up the bill.
- Brian
* Phone-Like-Object-Owning-Person
Brian Kantor
>Anyone here start on a computer with an acoustic delay line for storage? I
>got to use a drum, with 60 words of core to buffer the tape and disk
>drives.
Your first computer was digital?
Uphill both ways.
- Brian