20 Oct
2011
20 Oct
'11
11:43 p.m.
On 21 October 2011 01:02, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
:?)
There was a Windows 3.11 as well as Windows for Workgroups 3.11, you
know. They're not the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.11#Windows_3.11
> Mostly
unrelated Q: In Windoze 3.11, if you used the calculator to subract
> 3.10 from 3.11 , it gave a result of 0 ! ?What was the cause of THAT
> error?
On Thu, 20 Oct 2011, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
An overly truthful upgrade policy?
Windoze 3.11 was "WFW". ?MS said that that was "Windows For
Workgroups",
but some people claimed that the second 'W' was for a word that is
offensively obscene to Brits.
On Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Liam Proven wrote:
Nice.
Vaguely parallel story. I used to work for a VAR on the Isle of Man -
a small isolated crown dependency in the middle of the Irish Sea.
Chap came to one of my employers and told them he was the sole
representitive of a UK-wide charity on the Isle of Man & they'd told
him to buy a PC. He had a spec. No installation needed - the charity
was going to send someone over to install their special S/W on it. He
didn't know *anything* about PCs, not even how to turn one on.
They sold him a PC. 386, Windows 3.1.
He took it back.
The charity never sent anyone.
3Y later he came back in.
He had, eventually, got bored, unboxed it and puzzled out how to
assemble it. He turned it on and played. He discovered Windows Write.
He discovered he could print.
He didn't have any printer drivers - it was in "generic/text-only"
mode. But it worked.
He *loved* it.
He found Write vastly preferable to a typewriter - on his own, he'd
discovered text editing. No formatting. Probably not even the tab key.
But he loved it, said it had saved him days and weeks of work.
"Fantastic gadget, this thing."
He never knew to shut down, so the disk was full of temp files and
lost clusters. Didn't matter. He's never discovered file saving or
loading - he started a new doc every time and threw it away.
It was still a fantastic aid to him.
This is why I think computers are too complicated and why I think we
still need simpler, easier ones these days. Because the *really* basic
stuff can be life-altering, but all the features on top just make it
more inaccessible.
--
Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
:?D
I'd forgotten that!
IIRC, the rumour was that it was written by a student on a summer
work-experience posting. It was considered good enough and included.
Also, they lost the source code, so it couldn't be readily fixed, and
in the end had to be completely rewritten by someone costing much more
money.
It is handy, and it is nice that the newer one has some minimal
"scientific" and BASE CONVERSION functions. ?It doesn't compare with an
HP REAL calculator, but I can always find it.
Also see Windows Write - again, went pretty much
unchanged through
about 5 or 6 releases of Windows because they'd lost the source. It
was rewritten and replaced by Wordpad.
Pointless rambling Windows Write anecdote: I was the first person in the
UC Berkeley School of Library and Information Studies to use a word
processor for PhD written exams. ?Mostly because I publicly demanded that
they publicly state their REASONS for requiring hand written, and I
assured them that I would still be able to make enough spelling erors.
They were panic-stricken over how to "sanitize" a computer so that answers
couldn't be smuggled in! ?But, then they asked ME to pick a
word-processor! ?Since all that I wanted was a TEXT EDITOR and a printer,
I responded, "ANY word processor. ?ANY. ?Just tell me which one a week
ahead, so that I can learn enough of its quirks to use it." ?We settled on
Windows Write, which protected me from even more insane choices or botched
installation, and protected them from the possibility that I might
recompile from source [on PC-Write or the like] or object code edit in
paragraphs of pre-written text. ?But mostly it let them choose which PC to
use at the last minute. ?After all of that, they ended up just handing me
a few blank disks and key to an office with a PC in it, and never even
checked up on me. And then THEY printed out my files. ? I passed. ?Which
shows how sloppy their standards are!