OT: Apologies
Alan Lothian
postingsit's because my net connections are seriously foutues, as we
say in France. Your magic broadband box is now activé, they announce.
But since they haven't sent me the fucking magic box, what they have
actually done is grabbed by landline telephone; thus re,omoving both
phone and my modest dialup connection. Fortunately, I have imported a
stout English cudgel:
Posting via google groups on a French keyboard is bloody horrible:
Again, apologies.
Jack Linthicum
Are there visiting hours? Or is the box in solitary confinement?
David E. Powell
Best of luck. Dialup generally has the headaches at the install phase.
If they get it to you soon it should be OK from then on. Can you get a
Broad band adapter for your phone?
dott.Piergiorgio
>> Fortunately, I have imported a
>> stout English cudgel:
> Are there visiting hours? Or is the box in solitary confinement?
because of a thing called "schengen agreement" everyone can travel
without fuss inside EU, also with heavy wooden tools...
(at the last pair or so of "global riots" inside EU, the suspension of
said schengen agreement (enabling checks at the internal EU borders) are
circumvented by a "strategic preplacement" of riot "tools" inside the
interested EU Nation...)
let's make a simple example for USaians: it's akin to an Oregonian or
Idahoan crossing CA (California...) border, beat the ass out with
cudgels, pickhandles & like and cross back the border, exploiting the
thing called jurisdiction....
More on this in the late summer 2011, about The Ventimiglia-Mentone
border area.... ;)
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
tankfixer
dott.Pierg...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it says...
> let's make a simple example for USaians: it's akin to an Oregonian or
> Idahoan crossing CA (California...) border, beat the ass out with
> cudgels, pickhandles & like and cross back the border, exploiting the
> thing called jurisdiction....
>
Idahoan's must cross either Nevada or Oregon to enjoy the please of
beating Californicators on their home turf..
Most Idahoan's just wait for said caliFornicators to fly north to ski an
then take their money..
La N
> If I haven't responded to, or 'maintained' as the usage used to be,
> postingsit's because my net connections are seriously foutues, as we
> But since they haven't sent me the fucking magic box, what they have
> actually done is grabbed by landline telephone; thus re,omoving both
> phone and my modest dialup connection. Fortunately, I have imported a
> stout English cudgel:
>
> Posting via google groups on a French keyboard is bloody horrible:
> Again, apologies.
This is a very lame excuse for letting your readership down. You deserve a
spanking.
- nilita
dott.Piergiorgio
I have put another state together with OR for circumventing the old
joke, but seems that was inevitable....
Jack Linthicum
> In article <%C_Om.44138$813.41...@tornado.fastwebnet.it>,
> dott.PiergiorgioNI...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it says...
>
> > let's make a simple example for USaians: it's akin to an Oregonian or
> > Idahoan crossing CA (California...) border, beat the ass out with
> > cudgels, pickhandles & like and cross back the border, exploiting the
> > thing called jurisdiction....
>
> Idahoan's must cross either Nevada or Oregon to enjoy the please of
> beating Californicators on their home turf..
>
> Most Idahoan's just wait for said caliFornicators to fly north to ski an
> then take their money..
Or mow their lawns
Peter Skelton
Or an English keyboard. Lots of folks will mail one to you for
twenty euros or less.
Peter Skelton
William Black
He'll also need the keyboard driver...
--
William Black
"Any number under six"
The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of
Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat
single handed with a quarterstaff.
Peter Skelton
<willia...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>Peter Skelton wrote:
>> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:30:57 GMT, "La N"
>> <nilita20...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Alan Lothian wrote:
>>>> If I haven't responded to, or 'maintained' as the usage used to be,
>>>> postingsit's because my net connections are seriously foutues, as we
>>>> say in France. Your magic broadband box is now activ�, they announce.
>>>> But since they haven't sent me the fucking magic box, what they have
>>>> actually done is grabbed by landline telephone; thus re,omoving both
>>>> phone and my modest dialup connection. Fortunately, I have imported a
>>>> stout English cudgel:
>>>>
>>>> Posting via google groups on a French keyboard is bloody horrible:
>>>> Again, apologies.
>>> This is a very lame excuse for letting your readership down. You deserve a
>>> spanking.
>>>
>> Or an English keyboard. Lots of folks will mail one to you for
>> twenty euros or less.
>
>He'll also need the keyboard driver...
Comes included in all Microsoft OS's since DOS 2.11.
Peter Skelton
Richard Casady
wrote:
>Or an English keyboard. Lots of folks will mail one to you for
>twenty euros or less.
Back in the dawn of microcomputing, before Apple, before MS-DOS, you
had a machine based on the S-100 bus, running CP/M. The good keyboard
was the IBM Selectric. I got two for ten bucks at Goodwill. Nothing
better has been available in the last thirty years. Matter of fact,
there is one on Ebay for the next couple of hours, $9.99. No bids. The
best they ever made. The Rolex of keyboards. No bids. Go figure.
Casady
Peter Skelton
My favorite is a membrane. Virtually indestructible, impervious
to weather, grease, oil, dirt etc. Reistant to animals, rolls up
small enough for a jacket pocket or SWMBP's purse. $7.99 at
Princess auto.
That being said, nothing beats a selectric for typing. Why IBM
didn't clone it into keypunches, terminals and PC's beats me.
Peter Skelton
tankfixer
dott.Pierg...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it says...
You have but three US States to choose from that border Cali, Oregon,
Nevada and Arizona...
La N
First he has to get out of bed ....
- nilita
Alan Lothian
<skel...@cogeco.ca> wrote:
> >
> Or an English keyboard. Lots of folks will mail one to you for
> twenty euros or less.
Use French internet cafe, use French keyboard. However.... ta ra ta ra
ta ra..... all fixed up. Am running on "haut d�bit", no warning lights
(yet) on the damage control board.
>
>
> Peter Skelton
--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" -- Ibn Khaldun
If you wish to email me, try putting a dot between alan and lothian.
Blueyonder is a thing of the past.
William Black
The original IBM-PC AT used the Selectric keyboard.
They were undoubtedly the best computer keyboard I've ever used.
Of course you can't get them now, or anything like them in quality...
William Black
Sorry, can't afford M$...
dott.Piergiorgio
> You have but three US States to choose from that border Cali, Oregon,
> Nevada and Arizona...
TX don't border CA ? I have also avoided this because of its obvious
political flame-igniter....
For the rest, as others pointed out in past, keeping a mental picture of
US state borders east of Appalachian is really difficult, with all these
straight lines with 90� or 45� bendings, rarely coincident with actual
geographical features....
Best regards from Italy,
Dptt. Piergiorgio.
dott.Piergiorgio
>>> Posting via google groups on a French keyboard is bloody horrible:
>>> Again, apologies.
>> This is a very lame excuse for letting your readership down. You deserve a
>> spanking.
> Or an English keyboard. Lots of folks will mail one to you for
> twenty euros or less.
there's a more simple solution: configure the kbd driver for uk kbd,
and, if needed, put stickers on the fr kbd's offending keys (not only
Q/A/Z but also the block of keys between P/L/M/0 and BS/CR/R Shift) to
remind of their actual uk char.
Side note, last night's coding was around explaining to the VICE
emulator (the main emulator of commodore 8-bit machines) the relations
between my it keyboard and the emulated commodore kbd....
dott.Piergiorgio
> Comes included in all Microsoft OS's since DOS 2.11.
also with Linux and X11, and gives also a near-zero expense solution,
also w/o involving slow snail mail... (see my other post)
I have done many times an on-the-fly kbd reconfiguration via setxkbmap
(1), and, in past, with DOS keyb ...
dott.Piergiorgio
> Back in the dawn of microcomputing, before Apple, before MS-DOS, you
> had a machine based on the S-100 bus, running CP/M. The good keyboard
> was the IBM Selectric. I got two for ten bucks at Goodwill. Nothing
> better has been available in the last thirty years. Matter of fact,
> there is one on Ebay for the next couple of hours, $9.99. No bids. The
> best they ever made. The Rolex of keyboards. No bids. Go figure.
historical Italian side note, the selectric typewriter was known here as
"the terrorist's typewriter", because, well, during the 1970s ugliness,
the Red Brigades have a penchant for this specific typewriter, also
because the rotating headwheel (actually an "headball" was easy to
remove and "mark" (that was, file a bit some of the chars here and
there, giving something like the number codes used then and now by IRA
and ETA to authenticate their calls) thus giving easy authentication of
the communiqu�s of said organization.
also, another historical keyboard/terminal was the ASR-33 and the
frieden flexowriter (the latter used by US mil, so we return somewhat
back in topic ;) )
Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorigo.
Roger Conroy
"dott.Piergiorgio" <dott.Pierg...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it> wrote in
message news:fSePm.44878$813....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...
Speaking of Commodore (naval content LOL!), the first computer I got to use
( I think around 1980-1) was my Dad's Commodore CBM 8032. He's still has it
stowed away in the attic, with most of the software (on 5.25" floppy disks)
too. A spreadsheet (IIRC it was called Visicalc), a word processor, a
customised accounting package and a few games. IIRC it booted up with BASIC
on a ROM.
The only CP/M command I can remember now is diRd0 or diRd1 which caused the
directory list of either of the dual floppy drives (0 and 1) to be displayed
on the green screen. Dad had the RAM upgraded from the standard 32KB to a
whopping 96KB!!! I also remember that tractor feed fan-fold paper (US Letter
size) was available from only two shops in the whole country - one in Cape
Town and one in Johannesburg. By the time Dad "upgraded" to an IBM XT clone
by Sperry a few years later (running MS-Dos 2 - Dad still has the original
manual stashed away somewhere) Paper had become widely available - also in
(standard for SA) A4 size.
Dennis
> For the rest, as others pointed out in past, keeping a mental picture of
> US state borders east of Appalachian is really difficult, with all these
> straight lines with 90� or 45� bendings, rarely coincident with actual
> geographical features....
Well, there *aren't* that many geographical features in much of that
territory! I'm an American, and I don't have a lot of trouble keeping it
in order. I know vaguely where a lot of the Italian provinces are, but
couldn't recite them all. And forget the Swiss cantons.
Q: In the Large Hadron Collider, are there customs stations for the protons
at the Franco-Swiss border?
A: Yes! The protons have to slow down at the border and some are taken
aside for further testing. Besides, it simplifies operation: each particle
just had to make a declaration at customs of its energy transport. The
measurements are that much simpler. As for efficiency, in view of the
efficiency of the Franco-Swiss customs agents, they'll soon find the Higgs
boson. You'll see!
Dennis
Dennis
>> Posting via google groups on a French keyboard is bloody horrible:
>> Again, apologies.
>
> This is a very lame excuse for letting your readership down. You
> deserve a spanking.
As you ought to know, that's an English practice, not a French one.
;-)
Dennis
dott.Piergiorgio
> "dott.Piergiorgio" <dott.Pierg...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it> wrote in
> message news:fSePm.44878$813....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...
>> Peter Skelton ha scritto:
>>
>>>>> Posting via google groups on a French keyboard is bloody horrible:
>>>>> Again, apologies.
>>>> This is a very lame excuse for letting your readership down. You
>>>> deserve a spanking.
>>> Or an English keyboard. Lots of folks will mail one to you for
>>> twenty euros or less.
>> there's a more simple solution: configure the kbd driver for uk kbd, and,
>> if needed, put stickers on the fr kbd's offending keys (not only Q/A/Z but
>> also the block of keys between P/L/M/0 and BS/CR/R Shift) to remind of
>> their actual uk char.
>>
>> Side note, last night's coding was around explaining to the VICE emulator
>> (the main emulator of commodore 8-bit machines) the relations between my
>> it keyboard and the emulated commodore kbd....
>>
>> Best regards from Italy,
>> Dott. Piergiorgio.
>
> Speaking of Commodore (naval content LOL!), the first computer I got to use
> ( I think around 1980-1) was my Dad's Commodore CBM 8032. He's still has it
> stowed away in the attic, with most of the software (on 5.25" floppy disks)
> too. A spreadsheet (IIRC it was called Visicalc), a word processor, a
> customised accounting package and a few games. IIRC it booted up with BASIC
> on a ROM.
huh ? really this start to became interesting as serendipidiy, because I
actually was working on the PET part of Vice (xpet)....
I also think that you remember correctly on the SS, because VC was
(also) for the PET.
> The only CP/M command I can remember now is diRd0 or diRd1 which caused the
> directory list of either of the dual floppy drives (0 and 1) to be displayed
> on the green screen.
*ahem* these was NOT CP/M commands, but BASIC 4.0 commands for the Drive
(as many 8-bit PCs, the BASIC environment was also a sort of disk
OS/shell...)
> Dad had the RAM upgraded from the standard 32KB to a
> whopping 96KB!!!
that was, upgraded to the equivalent of the later PET 8096.... the
bankswitching system is one of the relatively few thing of PET series I
know nil (the large majority of the docs floating on the 'Net are
centered on 20xx, 30xx and 40xx series.....)
> I also remember that tractor feed fan-fold paper (US Letter
> size) was available from only two shops in the whole country - one in Cape
> Town and one in Johannesburg. By the time Dad "upgraded" to an IBM XT clone
> by Sperry a few years later (running MS-Dos 2 - Dad still has the original
> manual stashed away somewhere) Paper had become widely available - also in
> (standard for SA) A4 size.
urgh... don't remember me the long strings of cursing & swearing during
the time expended in bringing to cooperate together shareware manuals
from US of A in ASCII, printers & A4 papers (back then, with single-task
OS, having a printed doc nearby was indispensable....)
Joe Osman
wrote:
> Richard Casady wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:13:47 -0500, Peter Skelton <skelt...@cogeco.ca>
Unicomp bought the IBM buckling spring technology from Lexmark. See
http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/. The patents expired mow. There's
also http://www.clickykeyboards.com/ Never used one myself.
Joe
Joe Osman
> > messagenews:fSePm.44878$813....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...
My first home computer was a PET 4016. The first word my son could
spell was "RUN" spelled "R-U-N-Enter". I've never had as much fun with
computers as I had with my Commodore 64 and Amiga.
Joe
dott.Piergiorgio
> My first home computer was a PET 4016. The first word my son could
> spell was "RUN" spelled "R-U-N-Enter". I've never had as much fun with
> computers as I had with my Commodore 64 and Amiga.
one still can have fun with the appropriate OS, e.g. Linux ;)
Side note, the last Ubuntu upgrade led to the very first actual
reduction of memory footprint of the OS & services I ever see in PC...
The after-bootup free(1) reveals >30M Ram free (and if I convert my few
postgres 8.3 db's to Postgres 8.4 I can have even another four or so Mb
more of free memory...)
William Black
It's faster as well...
Keith Willshaw
"Joe Osman" <Joseph...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:34890768-ae9a-4e10...@s31g2000yqs.googlegroups.com...
> My first home computer was a PET 4016. The first word my son could
> spell was "RUN" spelled "R-U-N-Enter". I've never had as much fun with
> computers as I had with my Commodore 64 and Amiga.
> Joe
I used a PET at work but my first home computer was a Sinclair ZX-81
with extended memory pack that gave me a whole 16 kb to play with
The Commodore Amiga was a revelation when I bought it, it blew the
socks off the IBM PC AT I had on my desk at work
Keith
dott.Piergiorgio
>> Side note, the last Ubuntu upgrade led to the very first actual
>> reduction of memory footprint of the OS & services I ever see in PC...
>>
>> The after-bootup free(1) reveals >30M Ram free (and if I convert my
>> few postgres 8.3 db's to Postgres 8.4 I can have even another four or
>> so Mb more of free memory...)
>>
>
> It's faster as well...
in general, apparently not much (of course,the Machines here are always
well-tuned) but at least the serious screw-up from the 9,04 release with
some grx cards from the 9,04 release is fixed....
dott.Piergiorgio
>
> I used a PET at work but my first home computer was a Sinclair ZX-81
> with extended memory pack that gave me a whole 16 kb to play with
>
> The Commodore Amiga was a revelation when I bought it, it blew the
> socks off the IBM PC AT I had on my desk at work
aside graphics, in terms of computing power all depend on the speed of
the AT box. I came to the conclusion that, the ratio between a 68k and
286 is roughly 3/2, and a 8Mhz 60k is roughly equivalent to an 12mhz 286
, and some more in the m$dog environment, because of the heavy use of
MOV instruction caused by the lack of register flexibility in the x86
architecture; I suspect that, aside grh and sound, a 12 Mhz AT using his
native mode and a more saner OS & system architecture can theoretically
give better computing prestation than an Amiga (whose CPU uses a 7.16
Mhz 68k)
Keith Willshaw
"dott.Piergiorgio" <dott.Pierg...@KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it> wrote in
message news:2kJPm.46220$813....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...
Graphics aside is the biggie. The graphics processor on the Amiga gave
MUCH better graphical performance than the pitiful EGA cards on the
AT and an OS that gave you full access to the memory and hard drive
didnt hurt.
Keith
William Black
I had serious problems with the install of 9.04 and I had to scrub the
hard disk and do a clean install.
9.10 seems a lot better, probably because the next one will be the
'long term support' one and Canonical have already said that they're not
looking to do anything major.