On 12/09/2015 06:03 PM, Joseph Lang wrote: Turn it upside down?

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, Adrian Stoness wrote: "Get with the times" ??!? You should be able to get with the times of the kinds of computers that you are interested in. Top posting implies that you are only interested in computers from the 1990s or newer.

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, Adrian Stoness wrote: and therefore, you can argue that you are entitled to use the style that was prevalent at the time of your machines. In 1968, . . . I don't remember much of those days, and most who claim to remember them probably weren't there. I remember only random bits of what I was doing then - toiling 1968-1971 at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Building 26 Space Sciences Data Center, doing some APL, FORTRAN, writing some trivial code to graph results from Generalized Least Squares Program on Calcomp 570?, 780?, and SC4020/SD4060, and gofer for a British physicist doing on-site contract studies about Van Allen belts. There were few messages other than warnings of impending outages and being pre-empted from the 360 9x machines for active missions, etc. We were rather concerned with overhead, and any replies would have had very little of the message that we were replying to. If there was any quoting, it would be a bare few words, folloewed by reply. Lack of excess quoting might have been mostly due to no automated insertion of old message, and therefore a need to manually type it. I remember of the very few, one of my last messages there was right before XMAS - we earned massive bonuses that year, our company allocated it as major cash bonuses to upper executives, and gave each of us a gift certificate towards a turkey, and then informed us that because there had been an unscheduled holiday earlier in the year, that we would have to take XMAS as "vacation". I sent a note that I had vacation plans, please arrange to have the building opened so we could come in and work. IIRC, I closed with "HAPPY HUMBUG". (no lc available)

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, drlegendre . wrote: I thought that it was the other way around

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, Mike Stein wrote: Top-posting is like taking a crap in your pants because that's where your arse was when you needed to go. -- David Griffith dave at 661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On 12/09/2015 10:42 PM, Mike Stein wrote: So just to be sure This is the correct way to post?? from the bottom. in my online gmail i dont get all the rest just the reply I will have to look at the settings i guess.

Bad news is Gmail never deletes your emails, ever. They remove them from your view but keep it on their servers for profiling you.

On 10 December 2015 at 16:54, <ethan at 757.org> wrote: *I* never delete my emails. I have a trail back to 1994. So? Also, [[Citation needed]] for paranoid ravings. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)

On 12/10/15 8:47 AM, ethan at 757.org wrote: Sadly, I'm seeing more and more organizations abandoning hosting their own mail servers (and mailing lists) because it has become too much of a PITA to keep spam / being blacklisted under control. CHM is in the process of shutting down all of their mailing lists because the IT people don't want to support them any more. The radio station I volunteer for (KFJC) trying to decide if it's worth doing it themselves or just having Google do it :-( So much for Mailman list archives :-(

On Thu, 10 Dec 2015, Liam Proven wrote: useful Let's indulge, for a moment, in some paranoid rantings, . . . IF Google were not so honorable and ethical, what kind of power COULD they eventually wield with such complete knowledge of people? But, they would never become like jEdgar (who we've been told only used his powers for good) Who has access to the data? If guvmint wants access, will Google charge them money? Do they contract with NSA?, or compete with? Is NSA scared of Google? Soon, they will provide encryption! Nobody but the user and Google will be able to decrypt. Watch for Google-Locker coming soon! How many infospheres (twice the size of three ordinary memory banks)have they filled? Are they contracting with the brain spawn?

From: Liam Proven Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 8:33 AM Piker. My e-mail archives extend back to the 1970s, stored on 9-track mag tape (with slight interruptions for job changes--learned that lesson after a while). Oh, ;-) On the subject line topic, I read this list via an Exchange/Outlook setup, since it's job-related. To reply, I "C-a C-x" and paste into an Emacs window to edit and respond to points made, then "C-x h C-c C-x"[1] to put the result into the clipboard and "C-v" it in the Outlook reply window. Simple. Quick. Gives me time to think about what I'm going to say. Rich [1] Personalized key binding: Otherwise, M-x clipboard-kill-region, which is much less convenient. :-) Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

From: Liam Proven Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 10:54 AM Two cultures separated by a common language, and all that. According to the dictionaries of American English which I just consulted, it is refers to small-time gamblers and others who make limited cash outlays. Hmm. In nearly 60 years of reading and watching movies and television program(me)s, the internalized definition I have for it is any person who does something in a small way. Usually used jokingly. Thus, that your collected e-mail is two decades' less duration than mine leads to such a description. Certainly no offense intended. Well, given that I first learned EMACS (to give the TECO spelling) when you were all of 8 years old, the method I described *is* simple and quick, for me. Isn't this the Old Geezers club? :-) Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

Thank you for the Museum link Rich.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike" <tulsamike3434 at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 2:22 PM Subject: Re: [cctalk] Re: TOP POSTING When I started in 1969, displays certainly were not commonplace, but we got the jobs done anyhow. All our (administrative) jobs started as punched cards (later data-entry on IBM 3740), were read via an IBM 2540 card reader / puncher, handled on an IBM 360/40, with output on e.g. the venerable 1403 printer. Data was kept on magnetic tapes and 2311 harddisks, with each a whopping 7.25 MB capacity. So, when you had to look at something, you looked at fanfold paper, with holes on both sides. Other applications could put holes in cards /Nico -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. SPAMfighter has removed 1222 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len Do you have a slow PC? Try a Free scan http://www.spamfighter.com/SLOW-PCfighter?cid=sigen

Mike, One of the key manners of getting information processed was batch jobs run by the computer staff. You never see the computer at all. Individual programs (usually one at a time - using the whole machine for one program) were loaded, pointed at input files, run and then unloaded with the output file or a printout as the end result. Some of the batch jobs did such tasks as: Sorting the input file Adding account information to a ledger in a bank Calculating what is going to happen in a simulated physics problem Calculating trajectories of artillery shells Calculating Averages, Means and Standard Deviations of Statistical data Generating form letters based on an input list of names and addresses and printing them out etc. The batch job consisted of a Batch Number for accounting, the keyword-coded header card(s) to tell the computer what to do with the following cards such as Compile, Link, Execute then Output for a Fortran source. Any options are read in from the input file or set in the source file. This was often done by preparing stacks of cards with the input or control options and putting them in with the source deck. Then there was a card indicating the end of the source file. Following the source you would find the cards listing the input for the program, such as a list of accounts and amounts to be added together or sorted. Last you would find a specially punched control card to indicate the end of the batch job card deck. The total amount of CPU time taken to accomplish the batch job would be tracked and printed out for accounting at a rate per CPU second. This rate could vary based on priority or time of day. So it was in your best interest to write efficient programs. Your source and input deck was returned to you in a cardboard tray together with any resultant punched cards, paper tape or printouts (usually on fan-fold paper). If there was an error during the run, any error messages are returned to you for resolution. Error messages were usually in English, but your output could just be a stream of numbers, letters or sometimes a printed out graph or picture, line by line. What the computer did as a job was hopefully something that was not easier done by hand. Robyn ?

On 2015-Dec-12, at 4:15 PM, Eric Christopherson wrote: I entered university on the tail end of the batch era, and for student coursework that was the way it worked: job control cards, source, data. Compile, list, execute, program-output all in one submission. (This was under MTS, which despite being a timesharing system (Michigan Terminal System), still had support for batch.) The good thing about batch is there was always the incentive to get your entire program right the first time.

On 12/12/2015 11:06 AM, Jon Elson wrote: Thank you Jon that makes more sense!

I'll add that very few (if any) high-speed card punches interpreted (i.e. printed the characters corresponding to the punches) their output. Many punches could offset (displace slightly from the stack) individual cards, so it was customary to punch a "lace card" so offset between punch job output with the job ID clearly punched as a humanly-readable pattern. A tremendous help to I/O clerks. However, if you really wanted printing on the cards, you could use a keypunch with an interpreter feature to process a deck--slowly. The alternative was to use a unit-record machine like an IBM 557 interpreter (100 cpm) with the appropriate plugboard to do the job much faster. However, there were some gotchas: 1. There was space for only 60 printed columns across a card, so an 80-column card usually was interpreted in two rows; columns 1-60 on the top row, with columns 61-80 on the second row. Although there were printed cards made for this purpose, correlating printed columns with punched columns, they weren't the usual stuff found in the community blank card stocks. 2. The 557 was an alphanumeric interpreter; it had letters, numbers and a few special characters (comma, period,etc.), and so substituted letters and/or numbers when it didn't have the appropriate character in its character set. It made reading "interesting" in many cases. 3. On the other hand, you place printed output pretty much anywhere on a card, in any order, with a little creative rewiring of the plugboard. Great for practical jokes, since the average programmer generally was not wise to the ways of unit record gear. That being said, if you're over a certain age, it's quite likely that you've run into the product of a 557 or 558. Government checks, for example. I've heard from a couple of CEs that the loathing for the 557 was legend. And while you were there with the UR gear; sorters, reproducing punches, interpreters, collators, you'd make a stop by the 407 accounting machine set up to do 80-80 listings so you'd have a printed version of your card deck to mark up with your blunders. --Chuck

On Dec 13, 2015, at 1:20 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: It almost seems like it was a lot more physical not mental to run computers back in the day.

On 12/14/2015 06:05 PM, Paul Koning wrote: Same here. But it's not outside the range of possibility that *someone* called them X and Y, although I don't know who did. Doug Jones doesn't mention it. Let's not forget the System/3 96-column cards. BA8421 (sort of like 7-track mag tape), with a really wacky way to combine the columns to make 8-bit bytes. Univac, of course, had their own system with their double-45 column system, round holes and all. --Chuck

On Tue, 15 Dec 2015, Dave Wade wrote: In my experience, they were called 'X'/'Y', or "12"/"11", but there were occasional other names, even "high"/"low". Since the cards were not marked, people could come up with all sorts of other cockamamie choices. There were "window" cards that carried a piece of micro-fiche. Were the makers of those aware of Gldberg's "Rapid-Selector" and/or Vannevar Bush's Memex? (Both of which were motion picture film based microfilm with optical reading of dot patterns for selection) There were even punched cards that also carried a mag-stripe (a transitional device?) I even saw some crude attempts to implement McBee edge sort - set of holes around the perimeter that were linked or not linked with a slot to the edge; poke a knitting needle through the hole(s) and see which ones shook out. Some also carried "normal" punched card data punched on them. Only once did I see a "multi-value" system - multiple holes punched in a column, and edge slot going varying number of holes deep - "I want a value of greater than or equal 3": poke the needle through 3, and 3, 2, and 1 would all shake out. My father claimed that the use of round holes on divergent cards was due to an attempt by IBM to patent the shape of the hole in the cards. He also thought that the development of optical card readers was significantly boosted along by an IBM attempt to patent use of a brass roller. For "The National Driving Test" (CBS 1966?), he had a sample MAIL back port-a-punch (pre-perfed alternate columns) cards! IBM succeeded in reading them! But, IBM's statistical programming resulted in our whole family starting to learn FORTRAN the next day.

On Thu, 17 Dec 2015, Mike Boyle wrote: Then you should start designing a database to keep track of the parts, and the ones that you have. You will need several boxes of punched cards, a sorter (084?), and a 407. Or, a TRS80 with two floppies is adequate (barely) to handle a reasonable inventory, if you want a screen. (I did that in 1979) In your time frame, all parts should have the "new" Honda part numbers, which were introduced in about 1966? although some parts would still be labelled with the old part code numbering system, which was a 5 or 6 digit number. The "new" part number system (still in use!) has multiple parts. The first field is normally 5 digits, although sometimes also suffix letter(s). Of those 5 digits, the first two are the "function number", followed by three digits of "component number". That pretty much tells you what the part is, although not enough to get the right one for your vehicle. The second field, separated by hyphens is the "product code" or "parts classification number", and is a three digit alphanumeric code for what model first used that part (NOT necessarily the model of your vehicle). For example, "001" was a C100 motorcycle, "500" was an S500 car (not imported into USA, although there are dozens of S600s in USA), "551" and "568" were AN600, "634" was a Civic, etc. The third field, usually 3 digits, but often exteded with suffixes, is 2 digits for modification number, and a digit for subcontractor. But "standard" parts, such as nuts and bolts, will sometimes use an alternate numbering system. The first field is two digits for function and 3 digits for type. The second field is dimensions. The optional third field is sometimes used for ISO designations. FINDING the right part requires extensive knowledge, including historical of which models previously used that part, and/or massive cross-referencing, such as using the Honda parts books to find the part in an exploded view and then treat the provided number as arbitrary. Parts books can be found. Dealer price lists are harder to come by. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com (Honda cars 1965 - 1980)

On Sat, 12 Dec 2015, Tulsamike3434 at gmail.com wrote: Yes. If you dealt with the cards long enough, or consciously tried to, you learned the punch patterns. They were not complicated. or you could make a printout or you could feed the cards through an INTERPRETER, which printed the card content on the card. The usual INTERPRETER used a larger font, and only printed 60? of the columns. If you had unusual needs for which columns to print, or wanted to rearrange, etc., then you could program it with a plug-board. You kept some of those plug-boards around for specific tasks. For many years, I kept around a plug-board labelled "COBOL INTERPRETER", just to prove that a COBOL interpreter was possible :-) There was also a sb-model of the 029 punch series that was a "punch/interpreter". It could take a card, or a deck thereof, and print the content of the card along the top. It had a significant advantage over the INTERPRETER in that it printed 80 columns, aligned with the columns of punches in the card. On "normal" cards (not round-hole, system3, film-window, etc.), there were 80 columns (numbered 1-80), and 12 rows (X,Y,and 0 through 9). [When I die, bury my remains face down, 9 edge first] Text was encoded with a punch in Y, X, or 0 plus a punch in 1 through 9. Special characters and punctuation were other combinations. Lower case was generally not used. Other punch combinations were possible, and occasionally used, such as raw binary codes. Punching out all punches in a column or columns created a "lace card", which wasn't liked by the reader. "/*" in the first two columns had special meaning for 360 JCL, which required some extra care when attempting C compilers. Only in the aerospace industry would you find people who spoke in plane english. Everybody else preferred it "plain". -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Sat, 12 Dec 2015, Eric Christopherson wrote: Yes, I was deliberately conflating two disparate meanings of the word. When a friend was discussing compilers V interpreters, I pointed to the plug-board, and said, "SEE! There IS a COBOL interpreter!" The board was itself not a COBOL interpreter, nor even intended to be labelled as such. The ladelling was intended to identify that it was a plug-board FOR the Interpreter (not BEING an interpeter), and that it was plug-wire programmed for doing decks of cards containing COBOL code. "COBOL" and "INTERPRETER" should have been two separate labels. I kept the board around for years, just for the sake of making that ridiculous misinterpretation. I don't know where it is now. After I retired (after 30 years), I took too long to move my stuff out, and about a week later found that a college administrator had ordered the remaining contents of my office dumpstered, rather than wait an additional week for me to finish the task. (They were fully aware of my planned schedule, and had implied that my timeframe was acceptable) I had also been promised verbally a month to forward content from my email account there, notify contacts, etc. Verbal promises, particularly from college administrators, are not worth the paper they are printed on. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

notice the "emoticon" at the end of my original post. I was trying to convey knowledge of the misinterpretation, and the humor of it. On Sat, 12 Dec 2015, Charles Anthony wrote: Exactly. That's why there was a plug-board kept around on a shelf preprogrammed for the desired formatting for COBOL programs. However, being for an "INTERPRETER", not a "407 ACCOUNTING MACHINE" (used for generating printouts from decks of cards), the plug-board controlled the column positions where the material was printed on the card, not printout. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 12/12/2015 06:13 PM, Eric Christopherson wrote: I'm pretty sure this was a joke based on the meaning of the word interpreter. If he could have actually run an arbitrary COBOL program, with named variables and conditional branching on a plugboard-based accounting machine, I think IBM would have been VERY interested in hiring him! (Or possibly having him dumped in a nearby body of water with concrete overshoes.) Jon

[2^6 lines of irrelevance omitted] On Sat, 12 Dec 2015, Mike wrote: graphics! Instead of a screen, you looked at "paper" (a flat, thin, slightly flexible product made form ground-up dead trees). There was a campaign called "The Paperless Office" set up by the papermills to sell more paper, by claiming that xerox machines, and using fax machines instead of post office, would "save paper" (actually intended to "save paper industry") Sometimes, it was non-simultaneously interactive, using a device called a TTY. You typed in a command, and it did it, and then it typed its answer. PI SYNTAX ERROR PRINT PI 0 PRINT 2 + 2 4 or DOWN YOU DON'T FIT THROUGH A TWO INCH SLIT and N YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES ALL ALIKE Sometimes, it was printed reports. A thick fan-fold pile of continuous form paper that listed all of your SYNTAX ERRORs Sometimes, it was special forms (also fanfold continuous), such as your paycheck. Sometimes, it was a deck of punched cards. (They are "PUNCHED cards", not "PUNCH cards", once there are some holes in 'em - "PUNCH card" can only mean blank cards to feed the PUNCH with). Those went into drawer in a room full of special file cabinets, or into the input of another machine, such as a different machine such as "accounting machine" (which was used as a dedicated printer), or the card reader of another computer. Inter computer communication was handled by a "gofer" carrying, or pushing a cart full of, decks of punch cards. Each deck of cards, if less than 2000 in a box, was inadequately secured with rubber bands and had diagonal lines made with magic markers, to recognize the rearrangements after the deck or box got dropped. That process was later upgraded to "sneaker-net". Sometimes, it was a reel of tape. Used in similar ways to punched cards, except that the storage room was called a "tape library", and other than a tape number, and maybe owner's name, there weren't any diagonal lines across them. There were "tape hangers" that wrapped around the outside of the reel, and small plastic "rubber" rings near the hub called "write rings". The tape drives were the iconic image that filmmakers used instead of computers, which "don't look like a computer". Sometimes, it was a big picture! Take the deck of cards or tape to another machine that was dedicated to operating a "PLODDER". It would be a large table, or a lorge roller (and since late 1960s sometimes a machine that wrote to 16mm or 35mm film!). The plodder moved "pids" (rapidograph like pens) around, responding to commands summarized as N, S, E, W, UP, DOWN (oft subverted into manufacturer proprietary commands). Large libraries of subroutines would convert into those primitives from commands such as LINE, CIRCLE, GRID, PLOT xxx V yyy. Sometimes, the owner of some small machines, or the paid operator of some larger machines, would have a "FRONT PANEL", that was full of blinkenlights. When the operator wasn't feeding the printers (trying to start a new box of paper without turning off the printer), they could stare at those lights. Occasionally, an operator might start screaming or giggling uncontrollably when the computer told them a good joke, such as program counter repeating itself. Sometimes, they controlled dedicated equipment (such as looms, milling machines, spaceships, etc.) RARELY, there was voice output. A quarter of a century ago, I had a friend who used a VOTRAX. She had a laptop with a big gaping hole where a screen had once been. The first email that she sent me (she believed that the proper quoting was "NO QUOTES!"), said: WINDOWS SUCKS MOSAIC SUCKS CAN I BORROW AN AXE? Like her, if you know what you are doing, you do not need a screen. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk A 30 minute film "1963 Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks" -- Charles

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015, Mike wrote: Mike, here's another piece of mailing list netiquette that I think has been mentioned recently but only briefly: when you start a new topic, please do so by sending a brand-new email to cctalk at classiccmp.org instead of replying to an existing message. Your question about what earlier computers were like was a good one that brought up some interesting responses, but I fear those messages got ignored by people because they were still shown as replies to this neverending top posting thread (most of which anyone would be 100% justified in throwing in the trash without reading). Sending a new email to start threads not only gives you a good chance to write a subject line that actually describes what you're saying, but it causes decent mail clients to not link the message with earlier ones on another topic. Different email readers do that in different ways -- some just treat any messages with the same subject line as a thread, while some (like mutt, which I use) are happy to ignore subject lines and just go by the reference field in the emails' headers (a field which is often hidden from view). So, by all means, start new discussions. But make sure they're treated as new by emailing cctalk at classiccmp.org directly instead of replying. -- Eric Christopherson

On 12/14/2015 11:17 AM, Charlie Carothers wrote: Whoops, I should have read further before changing the subject! Sorry about that. Hopefully this will "fix" it, even though I'm probably committing a no-no by replying to my own post. Charlie C.

Thank you Paul for that reply I have learned more about the history in the short time I have been on here than I have if I would have spent 10 bagillion dollars in collage I'm just a busted up old welder now but I wet to collage for that and it was not cheap I could not even fathom what it would cost to have a teaching degree in computer science.... Again thank you very much for your input you a humble me greatly and I have the highest respect for all the pioneers of the computers rocky road some of you have went down.

the Computers without screens were used for almost everything that you use computers with screens for. They are still that "Universal Machine" envisaged by Turing... Almost all had some kind of console that could be used for playing games, when not used for operating the computer. The experimental MU5 machine at Manchester University used to play tunes when not doing other work. The console switches selected the tune. When it was changed MU5 would compose a suitable short piece of music to provide a graceful change... A lot of the real work was accounting. My first computing job was at an insurance company. At least in the UK most Insurance Companies had converted to Punch Card systems in the 1940's so moving their systems to computers was easy. At first they just used card files to record the basic policy details, and last premium paid. Then they moved to tape files. The tapes contained details of each policy, for a "Life" policy it would record the Name, Date of Birth, Premium, Payment Frequency, Policy Type, Sum Assured etc. The main update program would have as inputs the current file and a file of updates. The updates might be "premium paid", "add new policy" , "Lapse a policy", "Pay the sum assured" etc. The outputs would be a new updated master file, a journal of changes and perhaps letters or checks. This basic three file update was used for insurance policies, stock control, financial account of other types (e.g. stock and shares trading), pensions mortgages, payroll. There were other programs that ran to work out what funds we needed to pay the policies, these were called "valuations".... ... then I went to work at a Scientific establishment. Here we ran tidal prediction programs, ocean models, and did media conversion to convert data Calcomp plotter that was driven from tape and used to print graphs of the height of the tide. .;.. and of course the most important job of all, printing line printer pictures. So Christmas Trees, Father Christmas, Sleighs and Reindeer, Best wishes for Birthdays, Weddings and retirements.... Dave G4UGM P.S. I noted one Christmas at Newcastle University after the file space had been cleaned up and the Christmas Prints deleted there was a note in the data prep area which read:- "Due to a lack of Reindeer Santa will not be directing an output stream down Roger's (The ops manager) chimney"

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015, Mike wrote: --- I started in the IT field way back in 1962 working for a service bureau preparing payroll cheques, invoices, the usual accounting reports, market research statistics etc. for clients, and the first time I used a screen-oriented system was when I bought a Commodore PET in 1977; as a matter of fact none of the systems I worked on professionally at that time had screens either and used printing 'terminals' to keep an audit trail of what the operator had entered. So you can definitely do lots of useful stuff without a screen, although I imagine NetFlix or YouTube on a Selectric terminal might lose something... m

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 04:47:33PM -0700, ben wrote: Old thread, but I remember writing a tic-tac-toe program for the 1401 using the sense switches and lights. Does that count as a display less computer? -- - db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db

----- Original Message ----- From: "drlegendre ." <drlegendre at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2015 7:44 PM Subject: Re: TOP POSTING (was: RE: Best 200 buck I have ever spent!!! Deal of a lifetime!!! I hear that Donald Trump top-posts...

On 12/09/2015 11:14 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: And he is one of the smartest finatual men in the world and soon he will be your pres.... CRAZY hmmmmm.

On 12/09/2015 10:50 PM, Mike wrote: And I'm be looking to colonize on the Moon if he becomes US president. Sigh. this is WAY off topic! Mike misspeled smartest - shuld bee smartist. John ;-#)# -- John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9 Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames) www.flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"

There are good civilized email clients available in plenty; if you don't happen to have any, I can only assume you can't be bothered. No. If your email client defaults to top-posting, it probably also defaults to no-trimming, which is possibly an even greater offense; take a few moments to trim your quotes for relevance and put your text where it belongs (which is inline after the parts you're responding to, not just moved to the bottom). If your email client won't let you do that, it is just plain broken and has no place in civilized discourse. Or, of course, feel free to be as obnoxious as you want in how you format your outbound email. But everyone else is equally free to ignore you. I know I certainly am likely to, if you insist on top-posting and/or not trimming. Actually, it's just plain arrogant (and/or rude). I've written up a piece which describes how I see this, which is at ftp.rodents-montreal.org:/mouse/blah/2012-09-26-1a.txt; the last three paragraphs are especially relevant to this point. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

It was thus said that the Great Mike Boyle once stated: Um ... what, exactly, is the purpose of this text? Your email address is gmail.com so I'm assuming you aren't using your employer's email server for this. There is no guarantee that I've destroyed all electronic and non-electronic copies of this communication and even if I didn't follow through, there's no way for you to know I didn't (or anyone else that received this *on a public mailing list*). -spc (By reading this email, you have agreed to the terms of service ... )

On 12/09/2015 09:52 PM, Peter Cetinski wrote: It's a leagle thing.

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015, Mouse wrote: Right on. Can I REFUSE to accept modern "reality"?

happen I have searched high and low for a decent e-mail client for Windows. All the ones I have tried suck in some way. Outlook will no longer let me post in-line on HTML mails. FreeBird won't look at calendars. Em is just a pain. no- is bottom). If no place trimming. which

On 12/11/2015 12:56 PM, Liam Proven wrote: I can't for the life of me get it to thread this list nicely. It works everywhere else, and is reasonably capable, but for some posts here it insists on starting a new thread for the same subject, or burying a new thread (i.e. different subject) deep within an existing one. I think the former problem is down to a missing 'references' line in a message (anything from certain posters, e.g. Noel Chiappa and Ed Sharpe, seems to trigger it). The latter problem I think is when someone replies to a message purely as a way of populating the 'to' field and then completely changes the subject line. Thunderbird's behavior is sort of understandable in both cases, it's just annoying on a list where traffic can be high; I think what I really want it to do is *always* thread according to the subject line, then use the references line (if present) to tie messages with the same subject together, and to fall back on the message timestamp otherwise. cheers Jules

, Dave G4UGM <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> That kind of happens to me. Thunderbird is a PITA. In order to get buttons that let you go to the next message you need several plug-ins. Whenever its updated at least one of these breaks. I still have it for UseNet news.

On 12/11/2015 05:57 PM, Dave Wade wrote: Uh, no you don't. RIght-click n the toolbar, select Customize. Get the buttons you want. -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech -http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst -http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

On 12/11/2015 12:25 PM, wulfman wrote: OH look, every app all wants to be windows. You update for bug fixes and look at the crap you get. Ben. BTW If you trim posts, who cares if you top post or not. PS: I also hate long sig files.

On 12/11/2015 05:58 PM, Dave Wade wrote: You're not running current Thunderbird, are you? -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech -http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst -http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

I am using Thunderbird 38.4.0 on a couple of PC's. I use Google calendar for scheduling. Tony Pflum On 12/12/2015 3:08 PM, Dave Woyciesjes wrote:

On 12/11/2015 3:50 PM, Dale H. Cook wrote: I'm using the current version of Thunderbird[*] right now and it not only quotes properly, but I've got it configured such that even if the inbound message is HTML it converts it to plain text when I hit reply. ;) The calendar function is built in, but because I have no use for it I'm not sure what connectivity options it offers. g. [*] A power outage on Wednesday killed the power supply in my main mail exchanger that I read email on via Alpine. F*ck Dell and their proprietary power supplies and connectors!

I have no desire to 'get with the times' -- this is classiccmp after all. If your mail program doesn't let you scroll to the end of a message and start typing then it is fundametnally broken. It may not be convenient, but that is not my problem! Like most English-speakers I read text from top to bottom. As a result it makes sense for the reply to come _after_ the original message. And how on earth do you reply to individual points if you top-post? Put the reply before the paragraph you are commenting on??? -tony]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote: Any of you guys have mail clients that let you compose mails about *anything* other than the apparent evils of TOP POSTING? - Josh

It does not make sense for the ply to come at the end. It's a total waste of time having to re-read all the unnecessary crap many times just to get to a one sentence reply. duell start is before

IFF people were to be considerate and delete/trim/remove all of the irrelevant parts of the quoted material, then the placement of the reply would not matter. We are arguing over which is the best way to work around refusal to trim by lazy inconsiderate people.

On 2015-Dec-11, at 4:43 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: On this list many replies involve responses to multiple points in the prior material. Even if people trim the prior material, top-posting will still be non-sensical and confusing. For discussions of the nature for which this list is intended, bottom-posting - after appropriately trimmed/selected prior point(s) - is the clearest and most (or only) consistent method. Top posting may be workable for simple, private, casual conversations. That's not this list.

On 11 December 2015 at 23:48, Dave Wade <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote: You don't. I don't. Any decent MUA suppresses this. Again, if you see this kind of behaviour, you have a broken email client. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)

On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 07:03:04PM -0500, Joseph Lang wrote: I've never figured it out either. My iPhone is great for a lot of things. E-Mail isn't one of them. I stick with a PC and Mutt for e-mail. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

Just move the cursor under the quoted text and start typing. It's no different than using a keyboard, except that you use your thumb instead of arrow keys, and there's generally a lot more swearing involved as you fumble about trying to select parts of the quote that you want to trim. :) -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

The iPhone does show what you are replying to, and it's quite easy to get to the bottom to post. The signature, however, can only (annoyingly) be before the quoted message. Sent from my iPhone 4S...

On 12/10/2015 05:39 AM, Joseph Lang wrote: Yep. -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech -http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst -http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

At 07:03 PM 12/9/2015, Joseph Lang wrote: Top posting isn't bad if the poster edits his top posts so that only a line or two is quoted. If I see an entire message in a top post I junk that message unread. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

I'm not sure I understand what all this posting business is about. The application (Thunderbird) puts the text where it wants. In my case at the top. ie LIFO or latest first. It does the same with the list of messages Decmail did this from its inception as did the IBM, HP. etc mail systems. I can't understand what the fuss is about. Please explain Rod On 10/12/2015 02:17, David Griffith wrote:

On 10/12/2015 13:29, Dale H. Cook wrote: Look I'm bottom posting or posting at the bottom. So its now called Editing your quotes. My quotes are usually Shakespere, Churchill or JKF. I never use them here so I cant edit them (not that I would) Well thats two different answers. Next answer please!!

At 09:17 AM 12/10/2015, Rod Smallwood wrote: The crucial matter is editing the quoted message. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

On 12/10/2015 07:04 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: THunderbird does what you tell it to. There is an option in Account Settings to change where the cursor goes in replies & such. -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech -http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst -http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ Registered Linux user number 464583 "Computers have lots of memory but no imagination." "The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back." - from some guy on the internet.

it impossible to edit quotes for relevance, then they have no place in civilized email, like any other MUA with that property. Not broken, on web or android (I can't speak for iPhone). On web, click the a little 3 dot icon and the text opens to edit. For this thread, however, the most important feature is 'mute'. I'll be using that next. :-)

On 12/09/2015 10:35 PM, Gene Buckle wrote: Will do!

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 4:35 PM, Mark Wickens <mark at wickensonline.co.uk> wrote: So glad I never had to use it. We had VMS MAIL and we liked it ! Rage is a good word for it. I don't recall any kind words about ALLIN1 30 years ago. -ethan