ajp166 wrote: I have to admit, it was not exactly accurate. :) At the time, I thought it was. However, I had successfully made my point. As for methods of learning, I don't think telling them that all cars don't fly, when there are some that do is proper. Telling them that cars, in common practice, do not fly, yet there are some that do, is more effective. That might challenge the student (the one who is actually interested) to find out for themselves which cars do actually fly, and why. I left high school because of my home status (I didn't have one), and found computers to be an excellent way to change that. When I tried college, I found that I was learning more through messing around by myself. I learned through my own tinkering at my own speed (quicker than the classes). Seems to have worked so far (except for my Palm incident a year ago ;) ). And my token "old computer" mention for the day is: While watching the credits for Star Trek: The Motion Picture tonight, I noticed the the computer displays in Sick Bay were done on DEC equipment. Mentioned in the credits, along with Apogee Software (unfortunately, not your good ol' makers of Commander Keen adventures... :( ). -- Tim Harrison Network Engineer harrison(a)timharrison.com http://www.networklevel.com/

You're in good company: Don't forget Ken Olson's comment on personal computers back in the same time period. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society Convention, 1977 -+-+=-+- ...and then again there's the following. (Both quotes are in my FreeBSD box MOTD as a reminder. One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 -+-+=-+- Didn't Arthur C. Clarke make a comment as to if an old scientest says something is possible it probably is and if he says it's impossible it may not be. There's something to remember -- people in a field often get locked in to a certain view and can't see the changes that will happen (and in DEC's case run over it like a bus over some roadkill). Bill -- bpechter(a)monmouth.com | Microsoft: Where do you want to go today? | Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow? | BSD: Are you guys coming, or what?