On June 16, William Donzelli wrote:
> I'm curious - what will some of us folks do when HTML in email is used by
> 99 percent of the population? Is anyone writing mailers for the old
> systems that can handle the HTML properly? Let's face it, HTML in email
> is here and its growing. I would venture to say it is a natural
> evolution, and all of the complaining we as a group do will have no
> effect on the rest of the world. The rest of the world can use the excuse
> "get a modern computer" - and for the most part they are right.
I still insist that it has nothing to do with "old" or "new"
computers...or even "old" or "new" mailers!
"Get a modern computer" doesn't do the trick...I can spin up X on a
twenty-year-old MicroVAX-II and run state-of-the-art GUI-fied email
software (kmail, vm under xemacs, whatever you want!) that will deal
with HTML email.
It really does seem to me that it's very much a Windoze/non-Windoze
thing. Next time someone emails you HTML crap, look at the headers.
It *all* comes from Windoze boxes. On the other hand, everyone I
associate with around here (home and work) uses Unix boxes of one
form or another...for the most part, they're all running perfectly
*NEW* modern hardware, running current, state-of-the-art
software...and I get NO HTML crap from any of them.
Non-HTML email is not exclusive to those of us who are into classic
computing. Non-HTML email isn't a "dying, quaint old way of doing
things" like some of the sold-on-Microsoft people seem to think.
-Dave McGuire
This is too cool. Advertised in the Dec/82 issue of Computers &
Electronics, there's an ad on page 67 for a game for the TS-1000/ZX-81
called Krakit. It's a puzzle type adventure game. What makes it special
is that the publisher put up a $20,000 prize for the first person who
could crack it.
"KRAKIT consists of 12 clues on a ready-to-run ZX81 or TS1000 cassette
tape (16k RAM). The answer to each clue is the name of a country, or a
city or town, and a number. If you are the first qualified entrant to
solve all 12 clues and declared the winner, you receive two tickets to the
city of the secret KRAKIT vault location. When you arrive at that
location, a check for a minimum amount of $20,000.00 (U.S.) will be
presented to you. The amount of the prize money is augmented weekly."
Has anyone ever heard of this? Did anyone ever crack it?
This game was published by International Publishing & Software Inc. It
seems like an awful lot of money for a relatively unknown outfit to be
offering. I wonder if it wasn't all just a sham, i.e. one of the clues
was so hard as to be impossible to solve :)
If anyone has this game I'd like to have a copy of it.
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
Dammit, that was supposed to be private.
Sorry Guys . . .
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 18:59:36 -0500 jeff.kaneko(a)juno.com writes:
>
>
> On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 13:28:07 -0500 (CDT) "Charles P. Hobbs
> (SoCalTip)"
> <transit(a)lerctr.org> writes:
________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
On June 16, Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip) wrote:
> I *do* know there is a big difference between my Apple II (which still
> does yeoman service running my Syntauri synthesizer) and the
> PowerComputing PowerCenter 240 that I do most of my "real work" on. And,
> no, I'm not going back to the Apple II and a dot-matrix printer to do my
> newsletters on, or surf the Net.
I think you're taking it to an extreme here, though, given the
context. I'm talking about the Pentium-II/233 that was "wow fabulous
wonderful my god check out my new machine!!" three years ago that are
heading to trash bins today.
There is *NO* reason for this. Those machines are just as
functional today as they were three years ago...but people are
treating them like trash simply because something faster has been
introduced by the vendor!
-Dave McGuire
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 13:28:07 -0500 (CDT) "Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip)"
<transit(a)lerctr.org> writes:
>
>
> On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, William Donzelli wrote:
>
> >
> > If you tried to pull the same thing on the ice fishing list, you
> would
> > probably catch hell.
>
>
> I'm on an Electronic Organ list, an Amtrak Advocacy list, a Web for
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hey! You may be interested in a couple of manuals I have:
Schematic sets for the MONDAINO MONOTRON/POLYTRON, and another one
for the MONDAINO H6000/H7000. The drawings are dated 1980.
I'm not into these, but maybe you (or one of your buddies) is . . .
Jeff
________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
I'm reading through an issue of Computers & Electronics from November 1982
(formerly Popular Electronics) I found here at work.
Here's something on page 23 for Marvin & Hans (and anyone else who has
one):
Microcomputer Trainer. The Micro-Professor is a Z80-based system
featuring a six digit LED display, 2K-bytes of ROM (expandable to 8K),
2K-bytes of RAM, 24 I/O lines, 2K monitor, cassette interface,
countertimer circuits, a user wire-wrap area, 36-key keyboard, 9-volt
power adapter, and an extension connector. The system is expandable.
$129.95. Address: Etronix, 14803 N.E. 40th, Redmond, WA 98052
Here's something for the Commodore fans (same page). I've never heard of
this one before:
CBM 16-bitter. The BX256 is a multiprocessor system using a 6509 and 8088
with an optional Z80, 256K of internal RAM expandable to 640K externally,
40K of ROM, and interfaces for IEEE-488, RS232, CBM cassette, 8-bit user
port, and a carthridge slot. The green phosphor video monitor has
80-columns of 25 lines and has tilt/swivel controls. The detachable
94-key keyboard includes a separate numeric keypad featuring a double-zero
key, clear entry key, and a double-size enter key for ease of use. The
keyboard also has 10 user-definable keys. A built-in 6581 CPU allows a
full 3-voice, 9-octave music synthesizer having an output for an external
audio system. A dual disk drive is built in as is a realtime clock.
Software includes BASIC 4.0, with options of CP/M, CP/M-86, and UCSD
Pascal. The BX256 micro processor system supportsd all CBM peripherals.
Planned price is $2995. Address: Commodore Business Machines Inc., The
Meadows, 487 Devon Park Drive, Wayne, PA 19087.
I love this stuff!
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:19:45 -0400 "Jason McBrien" <jbmcb(a)hotmail.com>
writes:
> I vote that workstation hardware older than 7 years old counts as a
> classic,
> if it's oddball enough. PA-RISC is pretty oddball in my opinion.
> They run
> OpenSTEP well, though. Dittos on the VAXstations...
And DG AViiONs!
What you lookin' at me like that for?!?!
88000 ain't oddball enuf fer ya?!
________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit:
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On June 16, Chuck McManis wrote:
> >On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Dave McGuire wrote:
> > > 1) It's just not necessary for effective communications.
>
> No, smoke signals work as well. Everyone on this knows that THIS IS
> SHOUTING and *this* is an emphatic point. HTML gives you better markup than
> case and punctuation symbols. Sending :-) is not as intuitive as sending
> the smiley face symbol.
It's just as intuitive to me...and to you as well, I'm sure, Chuck.
It's all a matter of what one is used to.
Sure, one summer day about nineteen years ago I asked a friend what
that strange-looking colon-hyphen-closeparen deal was that I was
seeing all over the place. He grabbed my head and wrenched it
sideways and I learned what a "smiley" was all about. Sure, it wasn't
immediately intuitive...but nowadays, I can't see a colon anywhere near a
paren without my mind converting it into some sort of face!
> > > 2) It's a waste of bandwidth and system resources.
>
> Again false. There is less waste due to the <html>/</html> and
> <font></font> tags than there is from idiots that include a 600 line rant
> and tag "I agree" on to the end. To steal a phrase, HTML doesn't waste
> bandwidth, people do. :-) Correctly constructed, HTML is pretty efficient
> at capturing added typographical information. Mailers that insist on
> sending both an HTML version and a plain version are broken in my opinion.
I agree with the "people do" point...but the HTML mail that I see is
typically bloated by 20-50% past the original text. Sure, if it were
all nice, efficient hand-coded HTML it could be a lot better...but
it's NOT. It's coming out of dumbass Windows software and is bloated
as hell.
> > > 3) Technical people generally want genuine functionality to
> > > prevail over "flash"...which is why many (most) technical people
> > > in the industry (Visual Basic programmers don't count) don't
> > > have Windows boxes on their desks if they have anything to say
> > > about it.
>
> HTML and windows are not tied as closely as you might think. Since HTML was
> developed at CERN on Sun UNIX boxes it was tied at the time more closely to
> UNIX. However, it is genuinely functional if I can include a diagram
> in-line with my text that is _not_ composed of ascii characters and thus
> won't be gobbledy gook when you see it.
I'm quite intimately familiar with the history of HTML & HTTP...and
while I do agree with your statement of functionality, using HTML
for any sort of diagramming is a stretch at best.
Formatting/coloring/sizing text, sure...but diagramming??
> > > 4) It's a clear outgrowth of the overcommercialization of the Internet,
> > > in which uneducated users think the World Wide Web *IS* the
> > > Internet, thus they try to cram the World Wide Web into
> > > everything they do, and conversely, cram everything they do into
> > > the World Wide Web.
>
> You are confusing HTTP with HTML. HTML was explicitly designed so that a
> "modern" computer (one that had a bitmapped screen rather than a terminal)
> could be taken advantage of when you were *exchanging* documents. It was a
> lot simpler than the printer description languages of the day, (and PDF
> today) and, when tied with a convention (the URL) and a network protocol,
> it could "link" related documents rather than include them and thus waste
> precious bandwidth.
Not at all. As I mentioned above I'm quite familiar with the
history of both. Please reread my #4 point above with this in mind:
I'm speaking completely from the standpoint of the *current* popular
use of this technology...not the original reasons for its development.
I apologize for not being more clear about that originally.
-Dave McGuire
> sheesh, just because it wasnt the greatest of designs doesnt
> give you carte blanche to disparage the person wanting to fix
> one. I have a /// that still boots off its profile drive, but
> i wonder when it will stop working. 2 years ago i gave a
> nonworking /// to a friend who ebayed it. he actually got $60 for it.
Nothing I wrote was disparaging to Louis.
I never had trouble getting one to boot, I had trouble with
it working as any reasonable person with programming skills
would expect a computer to operate.
Let me elaborate. I was developing a job costing package
for a small local construction firm. We didn't have one
to do development on, so I had to work on the customer's
machine. While I understand that SOS (wasn't that the
name of the OS, Apple SOS, pronounced "Applesauce"?)
did have other development environments available, Pascal
coming to mind, I was directed to use the native Basic
interpreter.
Well, I'd be typing in my code, when randomly, without
warning or notification, the /// would pick a point in
my source code, and either delete a chunk out of the
middle, or from a point to the end of the code.
And I mean randomly; it would truncate in the middle
of a line number! Clearly, what was happening is that
I was overflowing the interpreter's symbol table. But
nuking my source code is not an acceptable way of
informing me as a user that it could not handle what I
was asking of it. Hell, at least it could have started
beeping when I'd try to enter a new line of code. So
I'd start saving to disk every 5 lines. Since I compose
to paper (and still do and cannot understand why some
programmers compose directly into thr machine), at
least I didn't _really_ lose anything except peace of
mind.
As I said, I had to work at the customer site, and since
they had to use the machine during the work day, that
meant I had to work the remaining hours. It became
customary for me to still be there in the morning when
they'd come in, although I tried like hell to be out
by 6am. One morning around 8am, one of the owners asked
me "how much longer it would take", to which I replied
"it would've been done by now if you'd bought a different
computer." That was my last day on the project and if
I could do it all over again, I'd have defenestrated
the computer before his very eyes.
'Nuff said; I intended and maintain committed no disparagement
of Louis, only of the Apple ///. I was this very day going
to compose and post a message about Computers I Love to Hate,
but the timing of his posting changed the opportunity.
cheers,
-doug q
