What's "ga" stand for in a chat?
Mac Breck
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What's "ga" stand for in a chat?
e.g. "jmsatb5: if THOSE do well, they may commission something Crusade-ish
to follow. Or they may commission a B5 somethingorother in advance of that
(i.e., maybe a tv movie or something), but all of this is totally
speculative, full of balloon juice, and should not be trusted, especially
given the source (me). ga "
Mac
Mac Breck
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As luck would have it, I found the answer in the Adrian Paul and Jeffrey
Willerth chats I read right afterward. Haven't read the entire JMS chat
yet.
"Moderator: (For those of you inquiring -- jeff is not shilling for the
Georgia state tourism board. "ga" means "go ahead.)"
Mac
Claire A. Murray
"Mac Breck" <macb...@access995.com> wrote in message
news:014e01c02557$23ae93c0$24d2...@cobweb.net...
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JBONETATI
<<What's "ga" stand for in a chat?>>
Some chats use 'protocol' to aid the Moderator. This is generally used, for
instance in a classroom situation where questions or comments are 'called on'
by the Moderator.
" ? " means that the person has a question.
" ! " means that they have a comment.
" ga " means that the response ( or question or comment) is complete and it's
now sombody else's (usually the Moderator's) turn to type again.
Usually you will see JMS use an ellipsis ( . . .) when he's sent part of his
response to the screen and ' ga ' when he's ready for another question. I was
in a chat of his once where the Moderator didn't seem to know protocol and kept
sending another question before JMS was finished answering the last one. Very
confusing.
And btw, JMS, if you read this, it's so nice to be in a chat with a fast typist
doing the responding!!!
Hope this helps.
Jan
Jms at B5
>typist
>doing the responding!!
120 words per minute...and very few typos in any chat I do, which I'm kinda
dopily proud of.
And ga refers to "go ahead" with the next question.
jms
(jms...@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com
(all message content (c) 2000 by
synthetic worlds, ltd., permission
to reprint specifically denied to
SFX Magazine)
JBONETATI
Wizards.com chat with JMS from back in July? I missed the first 15 minutes of
it and Wizards doesn't seem to be in any hurry to get it posted even though
it's listed as being available.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Jan
Mac Breck
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Thanks for the extra info.
Mac
> And btw, JMS, if you read this, it's so nice to be in a chat with a fast
typist
Rob Perkins
news:20000924140758...@ng-ch1.aol.com...
>
> <<What's "ga" stand for in a chat?>>
>
> Some chats use 'protocol' to aid the Moderator. This is generally used,
for
Oh, fer cryin' out loud. It means "go ahead", or, in ameteur radio parlance,
"over", indicating permission for the parties in your conversation to begin
typing, because you're done.
The great-grand-mommy of Internet Chat is the Telecommunications Device for
the Deaf. TDD. Shame on you if you thought it was AOL People Connection, or
any early version of IRC.
Back in the late-70's these devices lacked more than a 40-column LED screen
(sometimes a 20-column screen!), where the input and output was shared
equally with both users in a typed conversation. In the 60's and 70's, they
consisted of scrolling paper, something like a DECWriter, for anyone who
remembers back that far. Printers used to be absolutely the only way to
communcate with a computer.
Anyway, different abbreviations for communicating over the devices were
developed, AND published and agreed to by the people who used them.
It was a shortcut. The Braille letters for "sh", "ou", and "th" and so forth
are no different; they helped the physically handicapped keep up with *us*
by using shortcuts we un-physically-handicapped didn't think of.
You have to picture something like this scrolling across one line, like the
scrolling stock marquee on Times Square:
hi john ga hi joe ga whats up ga not much you? ga going to see empire
strikes back its got subtitles in english want to come? ga sure what time ga
i dunno how about the 330 show downtown ga ok sounds good meet me at the
theatre ga ok see you there ga bye now ga bye
Now, when BBS systems were new, and chatting began to be, the obvious (and
really only) nomenclature to draw from was the TDD nomenclature. BBS sysops
would publish it as a help to newbies on the board. Thus "ga" found its way
into BBS chats.
JMS was surely around and using computers and BBS's during that time, and
may even have made use of TDD's to talk to friends etc. He's a smart guy for
using such an obviously cool and politically correct shortcut in a chatroom.
:-D
Rob
James Bell
modern devices still go by this abbreviation.
Jim
Gharlane of Eddore
In <xKLz5.115789$Ur3.1...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
"Rob Perkins" <rob_p...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> Oh, fer cryin' out loud. It means "go ahead", or, in ameteur radio
> parlance, "over", indicating permission for the parties in your
> conversation to begin typing, because you're done.
>
Absolutely not.
In Morse, or RTTY standard, the letter "K" is the prompt prosign
that means "I'm done talking, now I'm listening."
"ga" has only been used for a couple of decades, not by hams,
and derives primarily from florists, other users of old-style
commercial TTY networks, and deaf folks. It is *NOT* a standard
save among non-cognoscenti newbies who are willing to type two
characters with the weak hand rather than creating a clear field
faster and with less effort, by using strong-hand CRLF and ">>" .
>
> The great-grand-mommy of Internet Chat is the Telecommunications Device
> for the Deaf. TDD. Shame on you if you thought it was AOL People
> Connection, or any early version of IRC.
>
Actually, no. ( I.e. "That proves not to be the case." )
( Actually, HECK no, and where were you in the forties and fifties,
when RTTY "Nets" ( i.e. multi-user radio roundtable discussions
via teletype ) became common? )
Hams using RTTY in the thirties and forties had vastly quicker conventions,
and they were in place long before the first ARPAnet links came on line;
in the late sixties and early seventies, the *COMMONEST* form of user
prompt was to hit a couple of CRLF's, and then type ">>" at the start of
a line, indicating the link was open for the recipient to type back.
Time-sharing computers, starting in the early and mid-sixties, provided
facilities to link two terminals so users could communicate; these were
typically 10-cps teletypes at 110 baud or less, and NO ONE used "ga."
( Again, typically "CRLF-CRLF->>" for a prompt. )
Early UNIX systems, in the early seventies, had a wide range of such
link programs.
With the advent of affordable CRT terminals, other options became
available; the later "phone" program, which got around the I/O mixing
problem by splitting the screen into two sections, for example; it
used one section for what you're sending, and one to display incoming
traffic.
Later variants allowed you to talk to multiple correspondents by splitting
the screen into horizontal blocks, allocating as many lines of space
as you cared to for each correspondent.
The first decent packetized commo programs on large mainframes ( "large"
as in non-DEC ) started showing up on CDC products in the early seventies;
the classic was "APL LINK," which did well enough, but ate system
overhead like a herd of starving hogs. The first major breakthrough
in terms of low system impact and high efficiency was John Van Essen's
"$TALK" program from the early seventies, a multi-port "chat"-like
operation that provided huge flexibility and served as the proximate
operational model for all subsequent multi-user commo programs.
( It was written in CDC Cyber "COMPASS," and the "ultimate" version
dates from around '75 or '76. )
Only the earliest crude "link" programs required procedural signals
to avoid text mixing, and the default for these was always a couple
of CRLF's and a prompt, almost invariably ">>" .
Note that "ga" has never been a widespread commo prompter, and has been
used only in limited venues. ( You're correct on the assertion that
it is a common procedural on the TTY/TTD systems used by deaf folks;
but they've always been in the huge minority compared to active RTTY
hams and mainframe talkhackers. )
HTH.
Rob Perkins
Uh, Gharlane, florists and deaf people are people too, y'know. And the ham
radio population and mainframe talkhackers aren't really as numerous as all
that. I think it would be much more accurate to say that those types are two
more limited venues, all things considered.
Anyway, I can only speak to my own background, which includes TDD's,
DECWriters, and the BBS scene of the early and mid eighties. And, I *really
did* see the published chat guidelines in BBS circles that included "ga" as
a convention. As well as the devices that had one line of text. I could
never afford enough paper back then to make use of more
That, and I've actually *used* the convention in chats, as far back as the
'80's. I'd wager there are kids in this forum who have never even seen a
tractor feed dot matrix printer.
All ranting aside, it means "go ahead, I'm done jabbering".
Rob
ArsenicMan
[ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
Personally, I'm only 15, and I've got one sitting across the room from me,
hooked up to my Mac. Seen one, used one, hate it (although it's the only
spare printer I have for it, but it's from the days of the Apple II).
>
> All ranting aside, it means "go ahead, I'm done jabbering".
>
> Rob
>
>
ArsenicMan
==================================================
It's our last, best hope for peace? We're *so* screwed.
Jms at B5
>may even have made use of TDD's to talk to friends etc. He's a smart guy for
>using such an obviously cool and politically correct shortcut in a chatroom.
I've been online since 1984, 16 years now, logging in at 300bps on a Kaypro II.
Martin A. Hohner
>I've been online since 1984, 16 years now, logging in at 300bps on a Kaypro
>II.
Good god...I actually have a Kaypro II sitting in my front entranceway, being
used as a doorstop. It still works, actually (as a computer, I mean), but
we're saving it in case it has value someday as a museum piece.
Fun to know that back around 1985, JMS and I (never heard of him at the time,
darnit) were banging away on the same kind of computer.
Martin "The Mess" Hohner <*> Simn...@aol.com
United States of Earth? Schoonmaker for President!
Expansionist Party of the United States Website:
**** http://hometown.aol.com/XPUS/index.html ****
Gharlane of Eddore
This is utterly hilarious.
JMS shaped the electrons to say:
>
> I've been online since 1984, 16 years now,
> logging in at 300bps on a Kaypro II.
>
In <20000926013533...@ng-fy1.aol.com>
simn...@aol.com (Martin A. Hohner) writes:
>
> Good god...I actually have a Kaypro II sitting in my front entranceway,
> being used as a doorstop. It still works, actually (as a computer,
> I mean), but we're saving it in case it has value someday as a museum
> piece.
>
> Fun to know that back around 1985, JMS and I (never heard of him at the
> time, darnit) were banging away on the same kind of computer.
>
*LARGE SNICKER* The "Kaypro" gear was largely regarded as "mature
technology" by those of us who'd been at it for a while.
Heck, twenty years before that I was using a cheap "solid-state" terminal
made from discrete-component shift registers and a single-character
display ( at 10 characters/second you *can* read normally on a single-
character display, and the number of diodes you need in a full ASCII
decoding array to do the character generation mitigates against the
use of multiple characters, after all! ) over a discrete-component
FSK modem whose main resonance components were hand-wound tuned
coils on WWII surplus 88mH toroids....
The early-seventies "TV TYPEWRITER" that Don Lancaster "designed" was
a huge step up for those of us constrained to teletype equivalents,
but that design was hugely crippled, which was why we came up with
the "Bay Area TV Typewriter (Mark II)" that would lead to the Apple I
in the mid-seventies.
Of course, by the late seventies, *serious* people were using the
top-of-the-line models from Cromemco or CompuPro. Those of us
with financial limitations were constrained to IMSAI gear up to
around '76, which is the point at which the EST Graduates took over
the company and turned it into something very strange and non-viable.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I also have clear and agonized memories of the discrete-component
code-conversion array I constructed to use a Model 17 ( and later,
a Model 19 ) "Five-Level" "Baudot" ( actually, U.S.-style
*pseudo*-Baudot ) teletype to talk to an ASCII-using mainframe
over a 110 baud dialup in the late sixties.
Some of use were using mainframes to argue over, and discuss, SF
and Fantasy... and round-robin *write* the stuff... THIRTY-FIVE
YEARS AGO, when Joe was still trying to cope with impending
puberty... *EVIL GRIN*
=================================
Nota bene: The choice of "KayPro" gear for professional work was
a good one; during that approximate period, KayPros were
supporting Arthur C. Clarke, Niven, Pournelle, and a number
of scriptwriters I *could* name, but aren't mentioning since
they haven't publicly mentioned their brand preferences.
Their hardware / software package was quite good for the era.
Rob Perkins
news:20000926003612...@ng-cl1.aol.com...
> >JMS was surely around and using computers and BBS's during that time, and
> >may even have made use of TDD's to talk to friends etc. He's a smart guy
for
> >using such an obviously cool and politically correct shortcut in a
chatroom.
>
Kaypro II.
Metoo, but mine was a DECWriter, and then shortly thereafter a Commodore 64.
Always at 300 bps.
On the DECWriter, I'd use the paper 'till it was gone, then feed it in
backwards, and use the reverse side 'till it was gone, then feed it in
frontwards/mirrored, and use it again, then feed it in backwards mirrored,
and use it yet again.
So you can see why a double CRLF plus a ">>" would have been economically
bad for me. :-)
As far as I'm concerned, the world began then. :-D
Rob
Gharlane of Eddore
In <YhQz5.116206$Ur3.1...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
"Rob Perkins" <rob_p...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> Ohwell. I stand roundly corrected, I guess.
>
> Uh, Gharlane, florists and deaf people are people too, y'know.
> And the ham radio population and mainframe talkhackers aren't
> really as numerous as all that.
>
Do you have *ANY* idea of the size of membership of the Amateur
Radio Relay League?
And the mainframe talkhackers are the ones who CAME UP with
the concepts and software constructs that allow you to "chat"
your buns off on a zillion systems whenever you want; they
didn't get that done by writing letters.
There are a GREAT many more amateur radio operators than there
are deaf folks, although there's an interesting crossover
percentage, since deaf folks, for some reason, often get quite
interested in communication. Some of the fastest, sharpest
RTTY operators and brasspounders I've encountered have been
deaf as posts.
>
> I think it would be much more accurate to say that those types
> are two more limited venues, all things considered.
>
Again, an Acute Case of Out To Lunch. You need to think about
how many active Hams running RTTY rigs there were, and are;
and how *few* deaf folks had *any* sort of TTY/TTD available
until very recent years.
*Huge Snicker* Once again, you're a product of your generation;
your stance *presumes* the availability of affordable TTY/TTD/CRT
gear.
Stop and think; in the late thirties and early forties ( up to the
time the FCC shut down the Hams for the duration of WWII, for
national security reasons ) the *only* people using radioteletype
systems ( or the commercial wired TTY communications ) were major
news syndicates who ran "Wire Services," and amateur radio wizards
who spent time trying to *build* the things no one else could afford.
In this era, a huge number of "Amateur Radio Operators" simply
buy their equipment, plug it in, and turn it on. Fifty and
sixty years ago, only RICH people could afford to do that, and
even then, if you had any ability, you could build better than
you could buy.
I don't, offhand, know of any deaf folks who used TTY/TTD type
communications over phone lines in the fifties, due to the
sheer horrendous *expense* involved; all of that WWIII surplus
TTY gear ( mostly Model 15's and Model 17's ) was only starting
to trickle down to individual user level, and constructing FSK
modem gear that could run reliably over that era's phone lines,
and provide a sixty-ma current loop for teletypes, withOUT the
use of transistors and solid-state circuits, was a NON-trivial
task.
Prior to the availability of the WWII surplus bonanza, *danged*
few people could afford such expensive toys, and presuming
availablity, it was largely useless, due to the fact that there
were so few people to talk *with*... at least for NON-TECHNICAL
types, who couldn't do their own design/fabrication/maintenance/
repair, and who didn't spend time running RTTY networks to relay
message traffic.
I'm sure there were a few, although probably supported by some
outside financial aid; and it's worthwhile to note that any
sort of FSK modem that could operate over the quality of phones
available in the U.S. in that era was limited to a very low
bit rate.
( Bear in mind that as recently as the mid-seventies, there were
still a huge number of telephone companies in this nation who
were quite happy to inform customers that it was flatly "ILLEGAL"
to use any sort of modem device over the phone line; this let
them avoid the concomitant hassles of line-quality assurance
and signal bleed-over to adjacent lines. )
>
> Anyway, I can only speak to my own background, which includes TDD's,
> DECWriters, and the BBS scene of the early and mid eighties.
> And, I *really did* see the published chat guidelines in BBS circles
> that included "ga" as a convention. As well as the devices that
> had one line of text. I could never afford enough paper back then
> to make use of more
>
The first one-line-of-text devices that I know of started appearing
in the early seventies, and used "nixie tube" variants, alphanumeric
display lines. These TTD's, incidentally, typically sold for five
to eight THOUSAND, and that's in early-seventies dollars. In other
words, we're not talking about anything that was real common, here.
The current-era equivalent uses modern microprocessor technology
and a line or two of LCD display; they sell for a couple of hundred
or less, and the primary market is to deaf folks who are so computer
phobic that they don't want to get involved in a desktop. ( Or who
simply use the thing so rarely that it would be uneconomical. )
Hilariously, the single most effective use of modern telecomm tech
for deaf communications is a machine that will run a netbrowser and
has a video pickup; so that each communicant can *SEE* the other,
and SIGN the traffic, at a vastly higher information rate than
most folks can type. I know a number of signers who can easily
exceed 200 words/minute data rates using such gear, in comparison
to the average U.S. speech rate of 120 words/minute ( or 150 if
you're a fast talker. )
>
> That, and I've actually *used* the convention in chats, as far
> back as the '80's. I'd wager there are kids in this forum who
> have never even seen a tractor feed dot matrix printer.
>
> All ranting aside, it means "go ahead, I'm done jabbering".
>
Uh, actually, "ga" -- when used by anyone but a deaf florist --
means:
"I'm a callow newbie using kewl technology, and learned everything
I think I know from some junior dweeb who ran a local BBS sans
knowledge or experience."
But the major point here is that, WHATEVER procedural signs someone
uses to communicate, as long as the conventions are mutually
understandable and accepted, THEY WORK FINE.
The first rule of engineering is, "If it works, don't mess with it."
My objections were to your sublime ignorance of the history of this
aspect of telecommunication, rather than to the left-handed utility
of a poorly chosen two-letter procedural flag.
-30- ( major *evil grin* )
^^^^ ( You can look this one up yourself. )
Catherine Anne Foulston
Gharlane of Eddore <ghar...@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu> wrote:
>save among non-cognoscenti newbies who are willing to type two
>characters with the weak hand rather than creating a clear field
>faster and with less effort, by using strong-hand CRLF and ">>" .
Weak hand or not, I find "ga" a lot easier to type than two
CRLF's and ">>". But then, I'm not as strongly "handed" as
some people, and more importantly, perhaps at the time you're
discussing, there was only one case and a shift was not required
to type a ">"?
Not that I'm arguing with you about what was in actual use, mind
you (I don't have any asbestos underwear). My first computer use
was writing BASIC over a paper teletype with an acoustic modem
hookup to "the mainframe downtown", but this was 1980ish, when that
was a technology on its way out. There were a couple of TRS-80's
in the room too. I never saw "ga" until I read some B5-related
chat transcripts.
Unix has a command, "write," that allows you to send a line at a
time to another user's terminal. The man page, if I remember
correctly, used to suggest "-o-" to indicate "over" ("go ahead")
and "-oo-" for "over and out." The current page suggests the even
more cumbersome "(o)" and "(oo)". I personally never carried on
a long enough conversation with "write" to need such a convention.
I used Unix "talk," which doesn't really need them.
--
Catherine Foulston cathyf @ rice.edu
Rice University Networking & Telecommunications
Pat Donnelly
on shooting it for fun but now maybe I'll clean it up and hang it on the
wall. (Or maybe not.)
In 1982 I bought a Hayes 300 Baud modem for $350 and though it a great deal
because the price dropped a couple hundred! Hooked it to an 8 bit Atari and
signed up on Delphi. Compuserve was far too expensive at the time. GEnie
came along in 84 I think and offered a lot for a good price so signed up
there. Conpuserve got competitive and still offered things that couldn't be
had anywhere else so joined them in 85. I was also writing BBS software
and running the local Atari users group BBS around then.
I remember hearing second hand on GEnie about discussions of a new SF show
but never took the time to track down the posts. Silly me. Discovered B5
early in second season and shortly put two and two together (the show and
the internet) Became a huge fan while watching the last scene of GROPOS.
"Now this is TV"
Thanks JMS for one of what I consider to be a good part of my life. That
show is worthy.
Thanks to others here for tying it all together and the history. This
community is worthy.
peace
--
Pat
Learn what you know.
Catherine Anne Foulston
Gharlane of Eddore <ghar...@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu> wrote:
>*LARGE SNICKER* The "Kaypro" gear was largely regarded as "mature
>technology" by those of us who'd been at it for a while.
Although I understand where you're coming from, it doesn't seem
"mature" when considered as part of the personal computer era.
I believe it used CP/M -- who uses that any more? When I first
encountered one, I thought it was the coolest thing ever because
it was portable! Not easily, at large desktop case size and
20-ish pounds, but it was portable.
> a good one; during that approximate period, KayPros were
> supporting Arthur C. Clarke, Niven, Pournelle, and a number
> of scriptwriters I *could* name, but aren't mentioning since
I think Piers Anthony has said he used a KayPro. At least, I
think I remember author's notes in one of his books discussing
the relative merits of CP/M and MS-DOS.
I realize that many people here, probably including Gharlane, will
consider "Piers Anthony used it" to be a recommendation opposite
to "Clarke, Niven and Pournelle used it." :-)
Rob Perkins
news:8r3a76
> Not that I'm arguing with you about what was in actual use, mind
> you (I don't have any asbestos underwear).
Nor do I. Not that I can say it to Gharlane's face; he keeps alt.dev.null in
the reply-to field of his messages, a strong indicator that when he shouts,
he doesn't want to hear the reply, especially from us "callow newbies" who
would *never find* something like that...
Yeesh.
(I've since used my copy of Outlook Express (which he probably also
despises) to plonk him good. May he distrust everyone under 30 as long as he
wishes. I don't want to hear it anymore.)
"ga" was in *actual use*, by us BBS users in southwest Washington in the
early-to-mid '80's, regardless of the size of the set-intersection of ham
radio users and mainfame talkhackers.
> My first computer use
> was writing BASIC over a paper teletype with an acoustic modem
> hookup to "the mainframe downtown", but this was 1980ish, when that
> was a technology on its way out.
I did that, too. What memories.
Rob
Gharlane of Eddore
"Catherine Anne Foulston" <cat...@lost.is.rice.edu> wrote in message
news:8r3a76
>
> Not that I'm arguing with you about what was in actual use, mind
> you (I don't have any asbestos underwear).
>
In <BNrB5.130405$Ur3.1...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
"Rob Perkins" <rob_p...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>
> Nor do I.
> Not that I can say it to Gharlane's face; he keeps alt.dev.null in
> the reply-to field of his messages, a strong indicator that when he
> shouts, he doesn't want to hear the reply, especially from us "callow
> newbies" who would *never find* something like that...
>
> Yeesh.
>
Note that Ms. Foulston, who obviously experienced minimal difficulty
in both responding to my posting and taking polite exception to much
of my attitude and general demeanor, has obviously chosen to employ her
three-digit I.Q. in being willing to take the trouble to communicate;
as opposed to certain lazy persons such as yourself, who'd sooner
confine their efforts to rote operation of a canned software product
marketed by MicroSloshed, ( and thereby relegate themselves to a kind
of constrained dependence on the surface features of the kind of
product sold by Bill The Great Satan ) and gripe about others rather
than making valid points on the actual subjects at issue.
>
> ( I've since used my copy of Outlook Express (which he probably
> also despises) to plonk him good. May he distrust everyone under
> 30 as long as he wishes. I don't want to hear it anymore. )
>
I don't "despise" "Outlook Express." It's a great little package
for undemanding appliance operators who can't afford that ultimate
in closed-interface, mouse-dependent, rote-function desktop appliances,
the Mac'N'Wak.
You have to supply *something* for the civilians who don't want to
take the time to learn how to actually control what's going on in
their computers, and are such shoddy typists that they find forced
use of a mouse in the middle of a text-based operation to be an
acceptable degree of harassment from the software vendor.
Real commo hackers resent having to take their hands off the keyboard
and grab a mouse to do something that should be accomplishable without
moving fingertips more than an inch from the "home row."
Life is too short to impair your bandwidth that way.
>
> "ga" was in *actual use*, by us BBS users in southwest Washington
> in the early-to-mid '80's, regardless of the size of the
> set-intersection of ham radio users and mainfame talkhackers.
>
Since this post-dates the first "constant-on" stable BBS networks
by approximately THREE DECADES, it is best regarded as a vaguely
serviceable re-invention of the wheel by callow newbies who were
too far out of the communications mainstream to have any idea what
was going on in the world, or pay any attention to concepts like
efficiency and human factors engineering.
It's cool they *did* it, but the first rule of engineering is "Never
re-invent the wheel." In this case, it should probably read,
"Never re-invent the wheel, particularly if you're not going to
take the trouble to make it round."
"Catherine Anne Foulston" <cat...@lost.is.rice.edu> wrote in message
news:8r3a76
>
> My first computer use was writing BASIC over a paper teletype with
> an acoustic modem hookup to "the mainframe downtown", but this was
> 1980ish, when that was a technology on its way out.
>
Actually, it's still in use in some parts of the world.
A long-time buddy of mine is the network maintance wizard for an
educational system that uses 2400-baud dialups for remote education
in a low-population-density area where the phone lines are rotten,
and the kids would otherwise have to bus hundreds of miles to go to
school. ( Not naming any nations or states, but there are kangaroos
there. )
In <BNrB5.130405$Ur3.1...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
"Rob Perkins" <rob_p...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> I did that, too. What memories.
>
Would you like to hear about using a hand-crafted Marconi Coherer to
receive spark-gap Morse? ( That was in the Great Winter of '30,
the year the bears were so bad, and all the booze was home-made... )
Kids. Gotta love 'em, especially when they start bragging about
how long they've been doing something... They're so cuuuuuute.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| __ __ |
| We are dreamers, shapers, singers and makers. / | / \ |
| We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, -|---+----+- |
| Crystal and scanner, holographic demons, | | | |
| And invocations of equations. |_/ \__/ |
| |
| These are the tools we employ. And we know... many things. |
| |
| .....including how to spell "gray." +\../- |
| |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
cgla...@hotmail.com
ghar...@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu (Gharlane of Eddore) wrote:
> In <BNrB5.130405$Ur3.1...@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
> "Rob Perkins" <rob_p...@hotmail.com> writes:
> > Nor do I.
> > Not that I can say it to Gharlane's face; he keeps alt.dev.null in
> > the reply-to field of his messages, a strong indicator that when he
> > shouts, he doesn't want to hear the reply, especially from
> > us "callow newbies" who would *never find* something like that...
> >
> > Yeesh.
> >
>
> Note that Ms. Foulston, who obviously experienced minimal difficulty
> in both responding to my posting and taking polite exception to much
> of my attitude and general demeanor, has obviously chosen to employ
> her three-digit I.Q. in being willing to take the trouble to
> communicate; as opposed to certain lazy persons such as yourself,
> who'd sooner confine their efforts to rote operation of a canned
> software product marketed by MicroSloshed, ( and thereby relegate
> themselves to a kind of constrained dependence on the surface
> features of the kind of product sold by Bill The Great Satan )
He doesn't even have that excuse. Remember, *I* am a rote operator of
MicroSloshed software, and on top of that my primary Usenet interface
is *Deja.com* of all things!
And yet I have absolutely *no* trouble replying to a Gharlane post
whenever I feel like it.
Then again, I also have an awareness factor at least slightly *above*
that of a spoiled turnip's...
> and gripe about others rather than making valid points on the actual
> subjects at issue.
[snip]
> > ( I've since used my copy of Outlook Express (which he probably
> > also despises) to plonk him good. May he distrust everyone under
> > 30 as long as he wishes. I don't want to hear it anymore. )
> I don't "despise" "Outlook Express." It's a great little package
> for undemanding appliance operators who can't afford that ultimate
> in closed-interface, mouse-dependent, rote-function desktop
> appliances, the Mac'N'Wak.
AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! He said the word! The word that
we Knights Of Redmond cannot bear to hear!
> You have to supply *something* for the civilians who don't want to
> take the time to learn how to actually control what's going on in
> their computers, and are such shoddy typists that they find forced
> use of a mouse in the middle of a text-based operation to be an
> acceptable degree of harassment from the software vendor.
> Real commo hackers resent having to take their hands off the keyboard
> and grab a mouse to do something that should be accomplishable without
> moving fingertips more than an inch from the "home row."
And *real* professional typists don't have to have their fingers hover
above 'home row' like baby chicks around mama hen to make sure that
they don't lose it, because *real* typists can take their hands off the
keyboard, move anything they please to anywhere they please, and then
go right back to typing without skipping a beat.
So nyah nyah.
:-)
--
Chuckg
"You got to learn three things. What's real, what's not real, and
what's the difference..." -- Granny Weatherwax
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Gharlane of Eddore
I said:
>
> You have to supply *something* for the civilians who don't want to
> take the time to learn how to actually control what's going on in
> their computers, and are such shoddy typists that they find forced
> use of a mouse in the middle of a text-based operation to be an
> acceptable degree of harassment from the software vendor.
>
> Real commo hackers resent having to take their hands off the keyboard
> and grab a mouse to do something that should be accomplishable without
> moving fingertips more than an inch from the "home row."
>
In <8rb1jp$dm9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com> Ex-Swabbie
cgla...@hotmail.com writes:
>
> And *real* professional typists don't have to have their fingers
> hover above 'home row' like baby chicks around mama hen to make
> sure that they don't lose it, because *real* typists can take
> their hands off the keyboard, move anything they please to anywhere
> they please, and then go right back to typing without skipping a beat.
>
> So nyah nyah.
>
> :-)
>
I wasn't talking about "professional typists." Some of us have
better ways to earn a living.... Those to whom bandwidth is
important *never* like to move hands away from a central position
at the keyboard, because time spent moving hands around is time
lost forever; time spent grabbing and moving a mouse is *NOT*
putting data into the stream.
Get back to us when you get your typing speed above 100 wpm or so,
and you've begun to understand why the First Mission of the Time
Patrol will be a voyage to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, circa
1970, to Terminate With Extreme Prejudice all the two-finger
"typists" who thought "mice" were a good idea..... and thus clean
up the timeline for the four-decade period prior to the perfection
of the field-linked neural interface at BYU in 2012.
I can say no more.
Except:
Nyaahh, nyaaahh NYAHHHH....
Mark Maher
<8rb1jp$dm9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>In article <8raq4u$4...@news.csus.edu>,
>
>
>> Real commo hackers resent having to take their hands off the
keyboard
>> and grab a mouse to do something that should be
accomplishable without
>> moving fingertips more than an inch from the "home row."
>
fingers hover
>above 'home row' like baby chicks around mama hen to make sure
that
off the
>keyboard, move anything they please to anywhere they please,
and then
>go right back to typing without skipping a beat.
>
Try telling that to a legal secretary whose livelihood depends
on stamping out 120-150 wpm on a continuous basis. That's why MS
Word took so long to get into the legal marketplace. The folks
there couldn't bear the constant interruption of reaching for
the stupid mouse. Most of them would rather use WordPerfect
version 5.1 than put up with Word.
__!_!__
Gizmo
cgla...@hotmail.com
"Mark Maher" <marka...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
[snip]
> Try telling that to a legal secretary whose livelihood depends
> on stamping out 120-150 wpm on a continuous basis. That's why MS
> Word took so long to get into the legal marketplace. The folks
> there couldn't bear the constant interruption of reaching for
> the stupid mouse. Most of them would rather use WordPerfect
> version 5.1 than put up with Word.
Very well, I sit corrected.
(But why couldn't they just learn the keyboard shortcuts for MS Word?
I almost *never* have to use the mouse...)
Mark Maher
cgla...@hotmail.com wrote in message
<8re50j$ulj$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>In article
<zDoC5.776$Pw1....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> "Mark Maher" <marka...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>> Try telling that to a legal secretary whose livelihood
depends
>> on stamping out 120-150 wpm on a continuous basis. That's why
MS
>> Word took so long to get into the legal marketplace. The
folks
>> there couldn't bear the constant interruption of reaching for
>> the stupid mouse. Most of them would rather use WordPerfect
>> version 5.1 than put up with Word.
>
>Very well, I sit corrected.
>
>(But why couldn't they just learn the keyboard shortcuts for MS
Word?
>I almost *never* have to use the mouse...)
>
Because most of the keyboard shortcuts for Word usually require
two or more keys to be pressed down simultaneously. This effort
generally requires the hand to be contorted in such a way that
the index fingers are pulled off of the home keys. *That's* why
dyed-in-wool touch typists hate Word. I worked on three
different BETAs of Word vainly trying to get this point across
and *nobody* at Microsoft wanted to hear it. Now that they are
buying into Corel, they are gaining a measure of control over
the only competitor left (sorta) standing, and that is
WordPerfect. Not to mention the implicit threat to move their
corporate HQ to Canada and therefore neatly dodge any judicial
action against them in the U.S.
__!_!__
Gizmo
Wayne Throop
: Get back to us when you get your typing speed above 100 wpm or so, and
: you've begun to understand why the First Mission of the Time Patrol
: will be a voyage to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, circa 1970, to
: Terminate With Extreme Prejudice all the two-finger "typists" who
: thought "mice" were a good idea..... and thus clean up the timeline
: for the four-decade period prior to the perfection of the field-linked
: neural interface at BYU in 2012.
Pfffft. Look, anybody can see that the mouse is an ergonomic nightmare
if they think about it, but the fact that so many independent forms of
gestural input device (lightpen trackball, touchscreen) all developed
rather independently indicates there's a niche for them, and it was
"steamboat time". Just optimizing things for those who type a lot
more than they browse isn't really much of an improvement. You still
need a gestural interface rather than a discrete keyboard interface
to exploit hand-eye coordination to select from a large area with
high resolution; something that's needed for zillions of reasons.
Don't terminate them. Some other sub-optimal kludge will just gain
promenance, and the resulting timeline will just be different, but very
possibly not much better. You'd have to get extremely prejudiced
extremely often before you'll end up with a reasonable timeline. So
don't bother going down that route; just get somebody to incorporate a
thumbball below the spacebar on keyboards. Maybe just leave a prototype
out for them to discover. Take a dvorak keyboard with non-jamming
linkages back to the QWERTY era, too, while you are at it.
You know, I've really always wondered wy the mouse has buttons anyways;
I mean, in more than the apple "only one big button" way; I mean, why
at all. You've got this big pad with near a hundred buttons on it,
many of which most people don't use at all, and especialy not when
using gestural intput (ie, "while mousing").
And just TRY to find even so much a keyboard that at least moves huge
keypads away from the right of the primary alpha keycluster, so a
right-handed person like myselves doesn't have to reach three times as
far as necessary, let alone a below-spacebar thumbball capable of using
the zillions of keys as "mouse buttons" for backwards compatiblity with
the current software. Some streamlined "hackers keyboards" can be had,
but it's rare. Horribly rare. And even those suffer from anti-gestural
reaction-prejudice syndrome.
Sigh.
Not only that, the timeline where the eye-tracking heads-up display
used for consensual mixed live/virtual 3-d imaging was marketed
commercially in 1995 seems a better one to aim for, instead of
making everybody wait for the pie-in-the-sky neural interfaces.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
"He's not just a Galaxy Ranger... he's a Super-Trooper!"
Andrew Swallow
Maher" <marka...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>[snip] Not to mention the implicit threat to move their
>corporate HQ to Canada and therefore neatly dodge any judicial
>action against them in the U.S.
>
I wonder why Microsoft does not do a proper job and move to say the Virgin
Islands, saving a lot of taxes. (I will give you 3 guesses which music and
airline group is registered there.)
Andrew Swallow
Rob Perkins
> I wonder why Microsoft does not do a proper job and move to say the Virgin
> Islands, saving a lot of taxes. (I will give you 3 guesses which music
and
> airline group is registered there.)
You wanna try and get 21,000 people to move to the Virgin Islands, to live
and work and be expatriates?
Also, even if they headquartered in the VI's, they would still have to
register a daughter corporation in the United States, somewhere, in order to
sell product here. Then, there come all the issues of import tariffs. If
they don't get taxed on the income, they will on the imports.
It might be different between nations in the British Commonwealth, but I
don't think the VI's have more than normal trade relations with the U.S. I
know Canada has NAFTA, so they might could relocate to B.C., but Canada
taxes are just as brutal, at least, as U.S. and Washington State taxes.
Rob