Quothe Ashley Carder, from writings of Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 04:16:12PM -0400: So do I. I'm using Mutt as the mail user agent on my PC, running a recent version of FreeBSD; mutt is modern technology and it's text based. Try it, you might like the way it does things right. Is it just me, or do others get a feeling most peculiar when seeing the words "Micro$oft" and "technologies" together in the same sentence? Why? Just because some supervisor says to do something is no reason to do something if it's senseless. Ok, well, when you seemingly have no choice... but you do: as a taxpayer, you certainly should be able to take a set of Linux or FreeBSD CD-ROMs with you to a public library and use them to "repair" at least one of their computer systems. Doing so may certainly freak a pretentious librarian out, who claims to know something about computers and doesn't, but that's not something that you need concern yourself with. Hence, if a librarian starts jumping up and down and screaming when your work is discovered, or in progress, consider it entertainment and don't forget to say "One is supposed to be quiet in a library, and as a librarian, you ought to know that! I should file a complaint. What's your name?" :-) Just for show and tell? Why not for useful functionality? -- Copyright (C) 2003 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved | My VAX | an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & www.rddavis.org | runs VMS & | her other creatures, using dogma to justify such 410-744-4900 | doesn't crash!| beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

I like my paycheck a lot. Keeping up with the modern "technologies" and developing systems on them that big companies will pay lots of money for has allowed me to make a good living for the last 25 years or so, and has helped me purchase a 68 acre farm, build a nice home on a 6 acre pond/lake, and send my kid to college. That paycheck also allows me to attempt to purchase "Classic Computer" stuff. I also have not forgotten that I owe a lot to the older technologies. That's where I got started. If I had not met the PDP 11/40 in 1976, I would not be where I am today. Ashley ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Donzelli" <aw288(a)osfn.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 4:49 PM Subject: Re: Available: DEC LA120 printer

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Roger Merchberger wrote: That's actually a really good point. I wonder if Librarians could be properly educated about Knoppix (certainly on a library by library basis). A decent (though not terribly crafty) analogy is that the computer is now like a pad of paper and a pen. You come in and use the paper that you need, then rip those pages out and take them with you. The pad is then made fresh for use for the next person. The computer is now just hardware, and soon enough, with cool technology like keychain harddrives or what not, you'll bring in your own OS and software tools and modify the hardware to your purposes, leaving it as it was for the next user. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

This would be good, if it were the way it worked. Places that do that (start clean for each new user) are notable by their rarity - and how many of them do you think went to the trouble of making sure their motherboards either didn't have flashable BIOS or had a hardware disable on it so that you can't reflash them without opening the case? I'd guess it didn't even cocur to most of them. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 17:05:51 -0400 Roger Merchberger <zmerch(a)30below.com> wrote: I don't know if I would trust a library computer system that was open to patron use but so insecured that it allowed a bootable CD-ROM to work. With spam problems being the way they are, I'd hope any publicly accessable, taxpayer funded computer system would be more secured than that. I wouldn't mind a bit if said computer system was running NetBSD or even, perhaps, Linux. I think I'd like it better than a Microsoft (spelled correctly) Operating System. But that's really beside the point, as any of the above can be properly secured for use in a library. As to email clients to use: this is the 21st century, and while it's fine for people to enjoy classic computers, and immerse themselves in them to whatever degree they like (I personally enjoy using my SparcStation IPX with a real VT-220 as the text console from time to time), I couldn't get by on this list without an email client that properly threads and nests the messages, like Sylpheed, which I run on a Slackware system. I suppose it could display messages with a monospaced font, though I haven't looked for that feature. The great-great-grandparent post which flamed a sig did seem out of order and even rude, at least to me.