On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Stuart Johnson wrote:
>How about
we punch all of our messages on to cards and post PNG images of
Another thought -
leave the printing across the top of the cards off and let
the hard-core types write their own program to read the cards in and
"verify" them. This should bring back fond memories of using their
university dp center keypunch machines, or for those older programmers among
us, using the machines at work.
Absolutely.
Except that the printing of text across the top is called "INTERPRET"ing.
"VERIFY"ing is, instead a process of typing the same text again, and
seeing if both tries matched. If so, the "VERIFY" machine would punch a
notch in the side of the card. It was done as a way to increase accuracy.
But we once caught a service bureau that had come up with the clever idea
of prepunching the notches. Then they would punch the data onto cards
that already had the "verify" notch, and save the effort of keying twice.