It's not Microsoft ... nor is it any other software house ... it's the dummies who prefer the glitz and glamour, taking appearance over substance every time. If it weren't for them, Detroit would have been a wasteland decades ago. They're what the US economy survives on. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> To: "Classic Computers" <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 6:59 PM Subject: Re: And someone has one... Re: Virus Alert !!!

On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote: As someone else here stated, perhaps people who lack the intellect to be able use some random flavor of UNIX, VMS, etc. shouldn't be using computers. That said, I believe that most computers users are not incapable of using *NIX, etc.; they're not lacking intellegence, they're just naieve when it comes to computers, and they would probably like *NIX, etc. once they began using it. Well designed cars, now turned "classic," are, like classic computers, vanishing. Regarding Detroit: After renting a 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis for nearly two months, I will say that it's not as nice a car as my 1972 Mercury Montego MX Broughm - despite many nice modern features like dome lights that dim as they go out, however, it's still a much nicer car than any of the little Japanese cars and most other imports that I've seen. It's not only Detroit that's deteriorated. Look at Volkswagens for example; the old VW Beetles were well-engineered, fun to drive and easy to repair---very nice cars, even if they did crumple up like tin cans; the new Beetles are, well, annoying. At least Detroit still makes reasonably nice pick-up trucks like the Dodge Ram 3500 and Ford F550s, even if they can't build useful station wagons anymore. New cars are even a pain to drive with one hand on the steering wheel, and resting one's arm on the window-sill/ledge (or whatever it's called) when the window is down is not comfortable; strange design. Blame the U.S. government for fuel economy regulations that killed off nice cars, not the U.S. auto manufacturers. It's unfortunate that the metal has been shaved down to being nearly paper-thin in various places to make the cars lighter, and that plastic is used where metal should be used, etc. - these new cars probably won't even last 30 years or more. Alas, safe, solid, comfortable, nearly a ton and much heavier, 300 to 400-plus horsepower---with relatively simple V8 engine designs, rear-wheel drive cars seem to be a thing of the past, but it's not Detroit's fault entirely. Just like the substantial well-designed, easily repairable, computers, like our beloved PDP-11s, etc. have gone out of manufacture, so have well-designed, easily-repairable, cars. ...of course, marketing droids, no doubt, play a major role in the deterioration of both nice cars and computers. -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis Ancient guru who see future once say: All Rights Reserved "wise man who meditate upon immortal wisdom rdd(a)perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 of Bart Simpson's words: "Don't have a cow, http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd man" will enjoy interesting life."

On 8 Mar 2001, Iggy Drougge wrote: Alas, you need help. Not to worry; start up Emacs and type: M-x doctor (ESC-x doctor) ;-) :-) :-) So that one can have a useful computer system. Why not drive a lorry to work? Wouldn't you like to drive a big, shiny, new Ford F550 pickup truck to work? I recon that you're afraid that your cow-orkers would turn green with envy... let 'em. :-) What's a Vespa? I've never heard of one, but I wouldn't want to drive something with a name like that. Cheap? Over US$1.50 a gallon is not cheap; it was over US$1.70 several months ago... it would be reasonably priced, however, if our dear lame-brained, tax-hungry, common-sense-deprived, politicians weren't taxing it so heavily. At 12 to 13 miles per gallon on the highway, such prices have a way of adding up. Perhaps we should just find a way to bottle the hot-air from politicians' mouths and then find a way to use it to propel vehicles; then, there would be no real, or perceived, energy shortage. -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis Ancient guru who see future once say: All Rights Reserved "wise man who meditate upon immortal wisdom rdd(a)perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 of Bart Simpson's words: "Don't have a cow, http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd man" will enjoy interesting life."

I guess since I'm the de facto Network Server guru ... :-) The RAID card only works with the Apple-branded AIX for the ANS, making it effectively worthless for other PCI PowerMacs and the vast majority of other Network Servers which now probably run LinuxPPC. It's a hardware RAID device and supposedly it's blindingly fast. I just don't have enough SCSI interconnect boards or drives in mine to make it worthwhile at the moment. -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland either. -- Boston mayor Kevin White

It was up to slightly over $2 per gallon last summer. My truck only gets 12.5 on the highway, @80mph :-) Its a regular cab, long box 4x4, K3500 (1-ton). If I were drive a little slower it would get about 14mpg. I really need to get something cheaper to drive to work. I drive 90 miles per day, round trip! Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA

Snip Agreed, fuel here in canada is still bit expensive. Time to unearth Sarbaru 360's (sounds like revving snowmobile) or any fuel-sipping vehicles, even a FI bug, 1100cc bug or diesel bunny. :-) Newer vehicles (last few years) had MPG go downhill except for honda, tercel, echo and few others but aren't interested in honda or newer vehicles due to cost. Plus, I'm yet to have one so first used vehicle has to be reliable and cheap, has manual tranny. I'm more concerned about able to obtain inexpensive parts which might be n. american vehicles. If anyone say otherwise, do tell. Cheers, Wizard

Geoff Roberts wrote: Its a Chevy, or Chevrolet if you prefer the proper name :-) Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Alex Holden wrote: You are a bit out on your maths Alex... 0.78p/litre is 3.56UKP or $5.68 at $1.60/UKP. To drag this topic kicking and screaming back towards the list topic, as many engines over the past 10 for 15 years have used computerised engine management systems, why have we not seen much improvement in specific fuel consumption? I would have thought that the systems would be able to run the engine at optimum mixture and thus give a significant improvement in economy. What processors have been used in these systems over the years? -- Regards Pete

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Peter Joules wrote: Gah, Unix units works in US gallons, I'm pretty sure I paid 79.9p/litre last weekend, and http://www.xe.net/ucc/ gives $1.43/UKP. Sorry. -- ------- Alex Holden ------- http://www.linuxhacker.org/ http://www.robogeeks.org/

Your car should get better MPG on highway, 20 to 24 is what you should see, recheck your driving habits and do full tune up, get emissions up to snuff are suggested. 18 mpg city is not bad, highway not. My brother owns 20+ yr old heavy car w/ V8 and he said he can get 24mpg highway in that thing, btw it does have carb because I grew up w/ that nanny's, now his car. Oh remembered that, my other friend with a '89 caravan LE w/ V6 3.0L 3spd auto get that in city driving and bit better on road. Another friend has '90 caravan 2.5L n/a, 3spd auto got that terrible MPG too when O2 sensor was bad and no tune up till we did it. Actually, the torque went up, HP much less for given engine types but MPG *went* down and still is in '01. The fault is in weight have risen due to more options and safety stuff that is needlessly added for *no reason*. N.american big 3 didn't bother to develop more efficient enegines with latest stuff more especially on MPG and give us vehicles with less weight. Also Big 3 makers I think quit making small and compact vehicles. And didn't address the new vehicle cost. 24,000 is still much for same thing. Which I consider this a big must to survive this gas price crunch. Toyota, honda and VW and few other did their homework 20 years ago and still doing it now. For example, VW 1.8TDI get very good MPG and compareable HP compared to Chrysler's 2.5L turbo or 3.0 V6, both has less MPG and already 14 years old, same n/a 2.4L but it's still doesn't give good mpg, my brother car w/ v8 beat it that. There's more examples but I will leave this one alone for you to consider. I know I'm bummed for comparing gas to diesel but honda, toyota and others does produce efficient gas engines as well. This is my view because I'm keeping my eye on mailing lists and on newsgroups, websites so I'll be aware when looking for first vehicle of my own when I land job. I'd prefer to have a reliable bit-crunchy vehicle with seatbelt and manual stuff in it, leave computer alone just for that engine, and manual tranny, 40+MPG and bit nimble if I have to avoid accidents. I cannot find this in most vehicles for last 8 years. You can see I'm not looking at Honda, Hyraduai, KIA, I'm looking at older VWs, older 4 cylinder Chryslers, many Toyota and Nissan. Cheers, Wizard

Mike Ford skrev: There is no such thing as a little Volvo, save for the old 66 and the now- defunct 300 series. They're all huge, really. -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6a. A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

<http://www.volvocanada.com/new/V40/index.html> We like this little one.

Your car should get better MPG on highway, 20 to 24 is what you should see, recheck your driving habits and do full tune up, get emissions up to snuff are suggested. 18 mpg city is not bad, highway not. My brother owns 20+ yr old heavy car w/ V8 and he said he can get 24mpg highway in that thing, btw it does have carb because I grew up w/ that nanny's, now his car. Oh remembered that, my other friend with a '89 caravan LE w/ V6 3.0L 3spd auto get that in city driving and bit better on road. Another friend has '90 caravan 2.5L n/a, 3spd auto got that terrible MPG too when O2 sensor was bad and no tune up till we did it. Actually, the torque went up, HP much less for given engine types but MPG *went* down and still is in '01. The fault is in weight have risen due to more options and safety stuff that is needlessly added for *no reason*. N.american big 3 didn't bother to develop more efficient enegines with latest stuff more especially on MPG and give us vehicles with less weight. Also Big 3 makers I think quit making small and compact vehicles. And didn't address the new vehicle cost. 24,000 is still much for same thing. Which I consider this a big must to survive this gas price crunch. Toyota, honda and VW and few other did their homework 20 years ago and still doing it now. For example, VW 1.8TDI get very good MPG and compareable HP compared to Chrysler's 2.5L turbo or 3.0 V6, both has less MPG and already 14 years old, same n/a 2.4L but it's still doesn't give good mpg, my brother car w/ v8 beat it that. There's more examples but I will leave this one alone for you to consider. I know I'm bummed for comparing gas to diesel but honda, toyota and others does produce efficient gas engines as well. This is my view because I'm keeping my eye on mailing lists and on newsgroups, websites so I'll be aware when looking for first vehicle of my own when I land job. I'd prefer to have a reliable bit-crunchy vehicle with seatbelt and manual stuff in it, leave computer alone just for that engine, and manual tranny, 40+MPG and bit nimble if I have to avoid accidents. I cannot find this in most vehicles for last 8 years. You can see I'm not looking at Honda, Hyraduai, KIA, I'm looking at older VWs, older 4 cylinder Chryslers, many Toyota and Nissan. Cheers, Wizard

At 07:41 PM 3/20/01 +0000, Pete wrote: Probably because carurators are a lot more effective than most people think. One major advantage of the comperized system is that it should not degrade over time the way that a mechanical carburator does. In addition, an electronic system with it's feedback system can adjust for a wider range of conditions than a carburator can. The one area where an electronic system is much more effective than a carburator is in cold starting. In a cold engine, a lot of the fuel puddles on the metal surfaces causing wasted fuel and high hydro-carbon emmissions. Direct fuel injection in to the combustion chamber alleviates a lot of that. Joe

At 09:54 AM 3/8/01 -0500, Rich Lafferty wrote: I'm in support of one hand clapping and even invisible hands, but who's the "us" in Sellam's "well if they'd just hand it over to us", and who's to say what would be accomplished? Handing over the Microsoft source base wouldn't necessarily solve the problems that this thread was once about. The Microsoft code would undergo massive ecological and evolutionary changes, long-term and short-term, like dumping a barge of fertilizer in the ocean. As for WINE, I thought http://neomueller.org/~isamu/line/line.php was pretty cool, too. It's along the lines of the hypothetical Microsoft distro I dreamed of: it can do Linux as well as Redmond. - John

At 08:00 AM 3/8/01 -0800, you wrote: I haven't forgotten. I just don't think today's programmers, young or old, are yearning to refine some obscure end of Access or Word or Outlook unless someone's paying them Bill's rates. - John

It was thus said that the Great Sellam Ismail once stated: The two largest open source projects, Linux and Mozilla, both total maybe 3-4 million lines of code. It's estimated that there are anywhere from 5 to 50 million lines of code in Windows. You also have to contend with finding any open source programmers willing to even *work* with Microsoft code. When Netscape was released, it was 1.5 million lines of code (I counted. Very boring work 8-) and it took *how* long to get a working version? Two years? When it was released, Netscape wouldn't even compile, since large portions where ripped out because of cross licensing issues. And I know there is IBM code within Windows (or the MS-DOS portion). That has to either come out, or some deal struck with IBM to release that code. And that's just IBM. Who know what other companies have code in there? You've never had to maintain code, have you? -spc (Let me tell you about hacker code ... it ain't pretty ... )

John Foust skrev: Look at Mozilla. Ooh, isn't that a remarkable feat of development? Now apply that to a project which is equivalent to Mozilla squared. Open source is great for making difficult operating systems, but I've yet to see something open source and easy-to-use. -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6. "I'm all man underneath my skirt." Boy George