word processor history -- interesting article (Evan Koblentz)

[Liam Proven]

On 9 July 2016 at 05:00, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
>> I can remember more functionality via WordStar keystrokes than I can via
>> vi ones! :-)
>
> That's the very reason I teach Vi in classes but privately still use Joe
> extensively. I prefer muscle-memory-macro-keystrokes over what I'd call
> "conscious modes". I respect the ideas in Vi, and occasionally I dwell in
> it a lot and code there etc...

Well yes, OK. But whereas I remember more Word* from the '80s than I
do vi, which I have used this year, I remember more CUA keystrokes now
than anything else.

The lovely Roger Pugh from this very list gave me a BNIB Amstrad
PCW9512+ a few years back. (Thanks again, Roger!) I recall him being
amazed that, with the thing sitting on my coffee table, not having
touched a PCW in 25y, I could remember the key combo to reboot one.
:-D

> I play some musical editor games. I even
> occasionally use the Motif-based "nedit" (esp on SGI boxen, it just ...
> feels... right).

Never used an SGI. :-(

Well, apart from an x86 Visual Workstation running Windows.

> However, I feel most natural in Joe. I think it's simply
> just a "style" or taste issue based on past comfort with the WS and
> descendants.

Fair enough. For me, that feeling is a CUA editor, from Notepad to
Gedit to OS X TextEdit. And that is what I miss at shell level in
Linux.

>> Yes, it did look better, true.
>
> Do you happen to know that backstory about the color research? I remember
> that, but only vaguely.

I'm a frayed knot.

>> But all those arcane Ctrl-shift F5, shift-F7, alt-F11, F3, ctrl-F1
>> patterns -- eeuw.
>
> Clerks, admins, secretaries, receptionists, record hounds, and many others
> were freakin' ninjas with them. My mom was a Q&A Write disciple, still
> uses it in DOSBox, and still can do things with it I can't reproduce
> without coding. I know they were sorta arcane, and I won't lie and say I
> was a WP badass, but I witnessed some word processing badassery in
> conjunction with it by the aforementioned tradeswomen and men.


Oh yeah, I've seen such people.

My line manager at Red Hat was like that in jEdit. I watched him do
stuff I didn't know text editors could do.

Note, I don't code any more. So 99% of editor advocacy is irrelevant
to me -- I have zero use for syntax highlighting, colouring,
formatting, autocomplete, any of it. I write English text, nothing
else. This strips away a lot of the discussion, I find.

But Silas was writing English text in a code editor, and flipping
paragraphs around like a ninja. Astonishing. I've not seen such editor
virtuosity since the DOS days of the end-'80s/start-'90s.

> Remember that scene in one of the Star Trek movies where he firsts
> exclaims "You mean it's a MANUAL!" when he's told the computer he's
> attempting to voice command won't respond ? You think he's going to fumble
> with the keyboard then he starts typing so fast you think he's about the
> smoke the model M or whatever he's bangin' on at lightspeed. Some folks
> are like that with their word processing skills... My awesome grandma was.

:-)

Yes, I do, and no, I'm not. But I can still boggle Windows users with
my ability to control it without a mouse. I learned Windows 2 in a job
where we didn't own a PC mouse. We didn't need 'em -- we sold Macs. So
I learned all the shortcuts. Many still work.

I upgraded the seldom-used Win7 partition on my Thinkpad X200 to Win10
last month. To my surprise, I rather like it. And a lot of the
shortcuts /still/ work.

> Maybe you are one! You definitely seem to have written extensively and
> from some obvious experience and authority with word processing in
> general.

I was a support guy for 15-20y, mostly on desktop stuff. I built and
installed servers, but customers don't need hands-on help with
servers, generally. It's with desktops and laptops. So for me to know
all the apps was a professional skill.

[Insert "must support all the things" meme]

>> When WP 5.1 caught on, at least I could use drop-downs for the stuff I
>> couldn't remember the f-key combos for.
>
> Ah yes, I remember discovering that to my delight as well.

Clunky, but they were a huge help. Menus are /much/ more discoverable
than hotkeys.

>> I have a download of WP 6 for DOS here, waiting for me to try in a VM.
>
> Yeah, I have a massive DOS collection o' piracy and purchases that are
> slowly coalescing over the years into a few organized VMs and DOSBox
> instances I've been nurturing.

I'm considering building and offering an assortment of DOS VMs for
download, because a lot of kids are curious about this stuff but have
absolutely no idea how to install and configure any of these apps.

Pre-built downloadable DOS VMs with classic apps pre-installed.

>> I have Word 5.5 and 6 for DOS, but they can readily and repeatably crash
>> DOSemu. :-(
>
> I'll take your *Word* for it (ugh, sorry).

:-D

> I do remember it had a spiffy
> B&W graphical splash screen with someone writing with a pen, IIRC. Maybe
> that was 5.5. I think I have it around somewhere too, blaspheming some
> bits in one of my archives. :-P

Actually, I don't remember that!

>> But, yes, it certainly contributed to the dumbing-down of software and
>> users both.
>
> Well, I think also that when commercial software puts effort into simply
> giving people what the want. It's like that old saying about people in
> democracies getting the government they deserve. In commercial software
> money = voting. People appear to *want* some of the garbage we have these
> days. Either that, or corporations are so powerful they can afford to be
> tone-deaf and full of hubris toward their customers.

Bit of both?

> Hmm, wait I just
> remembered I'm a Comcast customer: my only option for fast Internet
> access. They rape me for vulgar sums and I just suck it up quietly; no
> choice.

I know nothing of American ISPs or telcos. I didn't even know
"Verizon" rhymed with "horizon" until a few years ago. Never seen an
ad, never dealt with any of 'em.

Europe has its own. Indeed, like for many things, there's the
worldwide standard offerings, and then there are the American ones.

E.g. I read some good, approachable science stuff about
palaeontological climate change yesterday, but it's useless to me
because it only uses Fahrenheit. I'm 50 next year. I've /never/ used
Fahrenheit. It was already historical when I was at school.

I am familiar with inches, feet, yards, miles, but I don't know how
many yards are in a mile, and I've never understood ounces & pounds.
Metric FTW.

>> Sadly, only the surface appearance, though -- not the ubiquitous
>> networking, not the OOPS dev tools.
>
> I hear ya. I've been doing a lot of fiddlin' with old 68k Macs and
> anything before Open Transport was, uhm, not so great. Even then, it's
> damn fragile and I feel like it's going to lock up at any time or this guy
> is going to show up and lecture me:
>
> GI: Joe PSA - "Stop all the DOWNLOADIN!"
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eA3XCvrK90


Oh yes. I restored a Mac Classic II a few years ago, and ran MacOS
7.6.1 on it -- although this wants a minimum of 12MB and the Classic
II maxes out at 10MB (RAMdoubler to the rescue) because at least with
7.6 I can use OpenTransport.

>> I am fully aware that my feelings towards MS Word are a form of
>> Stockholm Syndrome. I don't think it's a good app, just the one I now
>> know best.
>
> Hehe, nice. At least you have a sense of humor about your heresy. :-)

;-)

>> It's for good reasons that I use the oldest versions I can.
>
> I can't even stand *trying* it now. 2003 is the last one I could even sit
> in front of. When recruiters or HR folks *DEMAND* my resume in Word,
> that's what I reach for. Been burned too many times by trying to export
> from Abiword or Libre/Open/Star Office. *claps weakly* Thanks guys, I know
> you tried. Most of the time they will grudgingly accept PDFs. I imagine
> myself smoldering and shaking with tremors the whole time spent in that
> shameful act of kowtowing to the man, though. :-> At least I have the
> decency to run it in CrossOver. That's my only defense.

:-D

> Long gone are the days I could send my resume over to an engineering
> manager as a man-page and someone would actually think it was cool.

Not seen that, but I remember the first HTML CV and the first
Macromedia Flash one.

>> Shame -- WP for Mac was a good app. They made it freeware and I used it
>> occasionally.
>
> I'll have to dig it up while I have my two 68k's out.

Hmmm. I think -- not sure -- that it was a PowerPC app.


Brief info here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Macintosh

Prebuilt SheepShaver VM here:

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/mac-intel.html

>> WP4W started out bloaty and slow, and matured into a sleek, fast,
>> efficient app. But too late.
>
> I've seen other with the same despairing praise. Kinda sad.

It's life. Some programs went like that. Sadly the recipe for
/commercial/ success is to keep adding features, relying on hardware
improvements to keep performance usable, and periodically, change file
formats to force customers to upgrade.

We all know who has made that work for them.

>> I will give Emacs a try once it is dragged kicking and screaming into
>> 1985.
>
> I've used it off and on over the years, but it's too heavy for me. I know
> what it's about, and it's cool that some folks get all zealous about it,
> but I never really caught the bug for it.

Its "weight" isn't a problem these days. Its bizarre 1970s UI is.

>> This is one of the weird things. I actively like Linux because it's a
>> PC-native OS. Its commands understand PC keyboards and can display bold
>> and underline and colours on the console.
>
> Actually, FreeBSD does that quite nicely for me on PCs. It's just that
> almost *nothing* takes advantage of it by default because UNIX coders like
> to target the lowest common denominator that still has screen control:
> vt100. Unfortunately, it's colorless. However bold underline and several
> other attributes are, available and somewhat underused, IMO.

Quite. Even on OS X, the FreeBSD-derived ``top'' command doesn't use
bold and inverse like the Linux one has for 2 decades.

>> The keyboard behaves sanely -- all the keys work and do what I expect.
>
> I assume you are speaking of using modern Linux with the framebuffer
> console.

And in terminal windows.

> It does perform nicely and has always been a joy, I agree.
> However, even DOS ANSI color sequences are still a bit more visually
> flexible.
>
>> But old Unix hands say that it feels like a lash-up and FreeBSD feels
>> like Real Unix.
>
> I'd be with them on that. Experience has definitely given me that
> perspective.

Yeah, I've heard it a lot.

But I lack the Unix deep knowledge to know. All I see is the surface
stuff, the appearance at boot and in a window, the setup program, the
options for commands and the helpfulness of the help.

Here, Linux still stomps all over FreeBSD, and AIUI FreeBSD is much
more modern than the other BSDs.

I think I told you that, inspired by your comments, I did get FreeBSD
installed and running fine in VirtualBox. It still took literally
hours of work and a fair bit of Googling.

>> Which to me means that FreeBSD can't handle PC extended screen modes --
>> the console always boots up in 80*25. If I want a Linux box with a text
>> console, I can set it to 132*50 and see lots of lovely status messages.
>> Not on FreeBSD, oh no. No VGA support here: you get MDA and like it,
>> punk.
>
> Hehe. Okay, let me come to FreeBSD's defense a bit on this one. It's
> really really popular as a server OS in some industries. To this day, a
> lot of the datacenters I've worked in (and still do quite a bit) still
> have more available serial access (via big-az concentrators that run on
> Cat5-to-RS232 mostly) than they have fancy IP-KVMs or similar. Just about
> all serious servers have serial-rendering modes for the BIOS, the setup
> tools, everything... So, FreeBSD runs in these places and they keep the
> console at the rough level you describe because it makes it WAY more
> convenient to run/install FreeBSD on either these types of environments or
> virutalized ones that want to have a virtual serial console you can
> multiplex into some big management tool et al.

Ahh, OK, very good point and one I hadn't considered.

But OK, while that is legit, would it hurt to have a hotkey or even a
readily-accessible option to switch to higher-res text modes, at
least? I never found one.

> Soooo, the point of describing that is that it might really piss some
> people off that FreeBSD doesn't install with graphical options (but PC-BSD
> does) and doesn't automatically flip into a framebuffer console when it
> can clearly see that you have VESA capable hardware attached. They assume
> you're more likely to be trying to get something done on a crappy DRAC/ILO
> virtual console or via serial etc... When linux flips into 1920x1080 on
> one of those out-of-band access devices it's a huge pain to manage the
> window. Not to mention that you can use the serial remote console on most
> HP ILOs for free, but if you want a graphical console (like Linux FBcon
> will require) then you pay $$$ for an "ILO Advanced" license. Lawyering
> bastiches. So, FreeBSD just gives friendly nods to folks buried deep in
> IT, too. It's not all nostalgia and curmudgeons throwing poop at new
> ideas.

Yes, understood, but I'm not even asking for graphics mode, just a
hi-res text mode so I can see more of the bootup messages as they
scroll past.

I know what you mean, though.

About 10y back I tried to built a FreeBSD webserver to host my own
homepages. For nostalgic reasons, it was a newer motherboard in a
cannibalised IBM PC-AT case, with an IBM MDA adaptor and a mono CRT.

(I couldn't get it working well enough to use.)

Trying to get Debian Linux to boot on that was "interesting". The
installer runs in text mode, but during startup, the installer flips
into graphics mode to display the spiral Debian logo. If you haven't
_got_ graphics, it hangs.

Working around _that_ took a _lot_ of work.

This is a 100% text-only OS with no GUI at all. Except for the bloody
logo. I'd like to slap whoever thought that was a good idea.

Around 2012, I tried to put Ubuntu Server on an old Dell Poweredge
server a client had given me for free. I put an old mono VGA CRT on
it. 640*480 or nothing.

Ubuntu Server -- again, a text-only OS -- assumed I'd have _at least_
800*600 on a VGA console. Just like Debian, it was a real bitch to
disable console mode switching. I think I had to build a custom boot
CD image!

So, incidentally, did Windows Server 2008. That, I got into a
half-Nelson. I installed over RDP, installed native graphics chip
drivers, then set the monitor type to VGa 640*480 and finally,
reluctantly, Windows let me the console.


> Also, NetBSD has a framebuffer console a lot like Linux's. However, it
> doesn't play well with 'fbset' (from Linux land) which is quite nice for
> folks doing things like arcade cabinet timing adjustment and the like.
> Nonetheless, it's quite capable, but you do need to compile it into your
> kernel which sets the bar a bit high for newcomers to easily use it. Most
> folks just dive straight to an X display manager anyhow (like KDM, GDM, or
> XDM).

I should look at that, too, I guess. I tried to put NetBSD on my old
SPARCstation IPX but I was not 'leet enough to get it working.

>> It doesn't even understand PC partitioning. Oh no. I can't put it in a
>> logical drive like a grown-up PC OS; oh no, it needs a primary and then
>> in that it makes it own weird alien non-PC disk format.
>
> Disklabels are finally going out of fashion, even for BSD folks. We're
> moving to "wedges", GPT partitions, ZFS metadata labels, and all that
> happy stuff.

Yes, GPT does make all this go away, but IMHO it doesn't excuse 25
years of refusing to play nice with the host machine's native formats.

> Unless of course you are using DragonFly BSD and playing with
> HAMMER which is also quite advanced feature-wise, resembling a cross
> between WAFL, CXFS, and ZFS.

(!) Never tried that, either. I confess I had the impression it was moribund.

>  Coming from DOS, I had some of those feelings
> way back when I first encountered SunOS. However, I got over it quickly
> when I saw the brighter spots in the OS and understood the logic once I
> dove into volume management schemes of the day and now. Early disk
> management wasn't one of BSD's strongest points. There was no GEOM, no
> RAIDFrame, no LVM, and for sure no ZFS.

I guess. I've never used most of them. I mostly play with desktop stuff.

> Nowadays, with GPT and ZFS you can feel super-modern, have sky-high (well,
> zettabyte, literally) file system limits, too. Not to mention dominating
> performance, and tunability to anything else I've encountered using ZFS's
> tunables and taking advantage of ultra-fast block devices for L2ARC and
> ZIL caching (much better than with BTRFS volumes or LVM2 caching I've
> tried). You also can flip on deduplication or multiple compression types
> if you get bored. With block-level encryption, at the volume management
> level, you can also get as paranoid as you like.

A friend, and now listmember, had a home Linux server with ZFS for
Linux. He raved about it except when he regularly spent 2-3 days
hunched over the system console cursing at it when something went
wrong.

Which puts me /right/ off it, TBH.

> Anyhow, BSD is now, IMHO, a seriously powerful storage/server OS with
> awesome capabilities that mostly cost big money from commercial vendors
> and performs with panache'. Modern FreeBSD also has great network package
> management and dependency solving with the newish 'pkg' tool now poised to
> supersede the independent binaries such as pkg_info, pkg_add etc...
> without harming flexibility via it's clever CLI layering. If I were going
> to bust on FreeBSD it wouldn't be for storage/partitioning woes (though
> before ZFS the diskabel interface in the installer is a bit painful) or on
> it's really basic defaults for video and terminal settings. If I was going
> to pick on FreeBSD, it'd be for it's (soon to be over in v11) lagging X11
> driver efforts especially for Intel Haswell (out a long ways back in
> computer time fellas).

OK, noted. I am learning that it does get more use than I realised.

>> For me, "real Unix feel" means my keyboard doesn't behave, the utilities
>> don't use PC features from 1981 such as bold, underline, flash, italics
>> or colour, cursor keys may not work.
>
> Damn, man you got mauled by some UNIX boxes.

Oh gods yes.

Here in Czechia, there's a strong culture of software piracy. People
use low-end kit (including phones) because it's not a rich country,
and a lot of people run pirated Windows because it's what they know.

Trying to get people to switch from stolen commercial software ($free)
to FOSS (Free free, as well as $free) is /tough./

I have a reputation as a Unix/Linux zealot, I think.

I'm not. I'm a barely-competent fumbler in my own harsh
self-assessment. Always have been. I was a DOS guru, sure, and pretty
damned good on Netware, but since then, the tech's moved away. I
stopped using Windows early this century, and am now somewhat dated on
that, too.

I just use Linux because I'm cheap and it's the least-bad option I have.

Now I have some money, my desktop's a Mac because it was a cheap used
box, with cheap used screens, classic Apple keyboard and cheap Dell
5-button mouse. The apps are all freeware or FOSS.

It's just less hassle.

But I'm no Unix guru, not really.

I still -- heresy ahead! -- prefer MS-DOS COMMAND.COM or NT CMD.EXE to
any Unix shell.

Yes, really. Really truly. I don't like Unix shells. I don't grok
regex or wildcard expansion, I like file extensions, I like DOS
wildcards which do predictable things.

Shell always feels like it's fighting back, or trying to trick me into
doing something massively destructive.

> They *can* do all that, but
> I'll admit they do manage to screw those things up a heckuva lot more than
> I ever remember even ANSI + DOS doing. I blame the huge diversity, too,
> but I don't excuse the modern instances where I too am a saying "c'mon
> guys, is it really that hard to let me use the !#$@ing arrow keys?" If I
> can find and fix those bugs with my modest skills, then let's get busy. Of
> course, I have had some patches accepted for such annoyances before, so at
> least I'm not just slingin' mud at my precious UNIX variants. :-) I'm just
> trying to be clear eyed.

I am watching with interest to see what Linux evolves into, the
further it moves from its Unix roots. I'm trying to suspend judgement,
so long as it still works for me, which thus far it does.

>> The stuff that makes Real Unix People feel at home, apparently, means I
>> feel like I'm using an alien OS from the bad old days.
>
> Sadly, you aren't alone. I have some good (smart) friends who also
> complain that UNIX folks are mean to them in online forums and rude to the
> uninitiated acting as if they hold special power the rubes will never
> understand. I find that pretty frustrating. I want to teach people about
> the wonderful, beautiful, awesome parts of the blessed continuum of Unix
> goodness out there. I want them to behold with the same wonder my kick ass
> collection of gloriously Unixy things. So, I hate hearing my brothers are
> being rude to the noobs (as annoying as they are sometimes) who are just
> struggling to bring up their Ubuntu box or whatever. I guess when I've got
> my back up on some stuff like that it's because I feel like people won't
> work to learn like I did and the only way out is *through*. However, there
> isn't any real reason for being rude, so that's always a shame to hear.

Human nature.

But also, well, a brief aside:

I used to have a lodger in my house who was a real Unix guru.
Doctorate in computational modelling of fluid dynamics on grids and
clusters, maintainer of the OpenGL bindings for Perl 5.

He watched me struggle with Ubuntu and often helped.

But eventually, he had an epiphany.

He said to me something like "you're not a programmer!"

I agreed that no, I wasn't. I was once, on ZX Spectrum and Archimedes,
noodling with BASIC. But not on anything modern. The fun has all gone
away now.

He said, "I've just realised. So much of the stuff I love about Unix
and Linux is because it's an OS *by* programmers, *for* programmers.
Even the shell is a programming language. It does stuff in odd ways
because it makes it easier to script it. And for you, as a
non-programmer, who doesn't even write simple scripts any more --
although you can, and you did once, you don't know because you don't
need to. So all the stuff that I love about it makes *no sense to you*
because you're not a programmer. The wonderful power and flexibility
for me and people like me, to you, is just pointless and obstructive.
That's why you like Windows. Windows is an OS built for system
administrators. Unix is built for programmers. The stuff that is
restrictive to me on Windows actually helps you. Being able to 'MOVE
*.log OLDLOGS\*.*.old" is more useful to you than all the amazing
stuff I can do at a shell prompt because you don't write scripts and
you don't need it."

It was wonderful watching the light go on over this _very VERY_  smart
man's head.

But after he realised it, it was like he pitied me a bit. Because I
was a blind man blundering around in an art gallery full of beauty
that I couldn't appreciate.

I don't love Linux, and definitely not Unix. I miss classic MacOS's UI
elegance, I miss BeOS's streamlined media-rich multitasking
performance, I miss RISC OS's accessibility to a BASIC programmer and
its raw grunt, its sheer thin-layer-over-the-metal  speed. I miss
EPOC's lithe battery-frugal elegance on my Psion PDAs. I miss the
vision of Newton OS's amazing UI.

I loved all of them.

Linux, I just tolerate because it gets the job done easier than
Windows and cheaper than a Mac.

I don't love it and never did.

I don't love Windows. I like to say I hate it, but I don't, I just
miss the days when it was small and simple and clean.

I didn't love MS-DOS. I made it my slave, I could make it somersault
backwards through hoops while whistling the Star-Spangled Banner, but
it was always a sad crippled thing.

I didn't love OS/2. It was amazing and _so_ much better than Windows
3, but it was a pain in the butt. A horror to install,  a nightmare to
update, and never very stable or solid.

I've never loved any OS on x86 except BeOS. Classic MacOS _looked_
lovely, and it was a joy to use, but like RISC OS, their multitasking
and networking both sucked, and they were unstable.

Unix is just the least worst option. It's still nasty. As
user-friendly as a cornered rat.


>> Linux  just shrugged and adopted native practices: it uses DOS disk
>> partitioning, DOS keyboard layouts, DOS screen formatting, DOS screen
>> modes, etc.
>
> BSD can use DOS disk partitions, too, but as you pointed out earlier they
> further complicate it with disklabels and don't give you the option to
> simply use the partitions "raw" without having to fiddle with a label.

Go on then. Show me FreeBSD installed with root in a DOS logical drive
in an extended partition, with /home in a different logical drive and
swap in a third.

Go on. I dare you.

It can /access/ them but you can't install into them. It tolerates
them as second-class citizens for supplemental data storage, no more.

> That's kind of the intention of "wedges" but with a lot more flexibility
> and less of the disklabel suck. BTRFS and ZFS go a completely different
> direction and suck up the whole disk making it none of your business what
> they are are doing with it, mostly. That has good and bad effects, but the
> overall feel for me has been positive. Though I still have some instances
> were it's easier just to deal with partitions and LVM.

Great on a server. Fairly useless on a desktop which may have to
multi-boot 3 or 4 OSes.

>> *BSD flips you the finger and is extremely reluctant to use anything
>> that didn't work on a PDP-11 before I was born.
>
> Heh, well there is some "spunk" in the BSD spirit where folks get
> downright religious about leaving some things alone. I'm one of those
> dudes who sees BSD flip the finger, as you point out, but says "You go
> girl!" and applauds the raised-finger.

Yeah, I understand your POV, but that's where we part company.

Get with the system or GTFO is more my position.

> However, I do still get off the BSD bus at the corner of Termdef Ave and
> Colorblind Street fairly close to your place.

:-D

>> So, yes, when I say that the diversity of UIs in the DOS era was
>> horrid, I really meant it, from extensive personal experience.
>
> I read your other posts on the topic and skimmed the blog post. You ain't
> kiddin'. It sounds like it was a bit more than just collecting, too. I
> haven't heard of about 1/3rd of the ones you mention, at a minimum.

That's the EU/US divide, I reckon.

Interestingly many of the WPs popular in GB were actually written in
the US and sold by American vendors.

>> *The* nastiest was Samna Executive. It was meant for bosses and was
>> supposed to be super easy. I couldn't work it at all.
>
> Hehehe. Now I have to go find it and try it!

Let me know if you do! I haven't seen it since about 1992. Not that I
miss it. ;-)


> Your mini-"review" reminds me
> a bit of this wonderful (but terribly critical) video game review of "Big
> Rigs" that cracked me up:

>
> "[...] The graphical problems don't stop there, either. Big Rigs is easily
> one of the worst-looking PC games released in years. The truck models are
> amazingly terrible,"
> http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing-review/1900-6086528/

Heh.

-- 
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