I first used the Internet in 1988, and well remember the Postnews warnings about "costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars" every time I posted to Usenet.
"Damn it Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"
I've got a 1995-era BURKS (Brighton University Resource Kit) CD around here somewhere - as luck would have it, it's still preserved on the web in all its Web 1.0 glory at
The funniest support call I ever had was from my boss (of a software company), trying to install a set of floppy disks using our install script (written in PowerBatch IIRC) on his laptop, on a train, communicating via his mobile phone (he often did this, as he seemed to like doing things at the worst possible times and in the worst situations).
Anyway, the batch script looked for a specific MS-DOS disk label in order to verify that the correct disk was in the drive, and it appeared that his disk set didn't have the correct labels set, so we asked him to change the label (to DISK#3 or somesuch). A while later he rang back and said it hadn't helped - he'd stuck a new label on the disk and surprisingly the software hadn't recognised this...
I took 10 O-levels back in 1985 (passed 9). Pretty much everyone at my school (a fairly ordinary rural comprehensive) took 9 or 10 subjects at either O-level or CSE. BTW these were all real subjects, none of your General Studies etc. I don't recall anyone going insane (although there was a lot of homework).
A similar thing happened at my old company - we had a set of internal newsgroups allowing people at sites all across the country (and world in some cases) to communicate freely...however, management wanted to ensure that the control of the information flow remained with them (knowledge is, after all, power, and I often knew about things going on in the company before my managers did) and they wanted to crush the emerging subculture. Thus we were driven to use public mailing lists and there we remain (though we are careful not to trade secrets).
Funnily enough, a few years later I heard that they are now setting up internal social networking à la Facebook...
You have a lot to learn about socialism if you think Obama is anywhere near it.
For those of us in the reality-based community, Obama is center-right, McCain slightly more right, though you need a 2D representation à la politicalcompass.org to do it justice. I'm pretty sure the politicalcompass people have already plotted the candidates for your edification.
Slashdot Mirror
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." - John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
Except he wasn't *actually* elected - twice...
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtape."
I first used the Internet in 1988, and well remember the Postnews warnings about "costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars" every time I posted to Usenet.
Apparently he once said:
"I've just written a 17-verse poem entitled, "U2 - Four Heads Up One Arse".
"Damn it Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"
Firefox? Why not use Arachne - it only needs svgalib:
http://www.glennmcc.org/aralinux/arachne-svgalib-1.93.tgz
As for word processing - shurely LaTeX is all you need?
I've got a 1995-era BURKS (Brighton University Resource Kit) CD around here somewhere - as luck would have it, it's still preserved on the web in all its Web 1.0 glory at
http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/
You could use Arachne instead of Lynx and get the graphics too - all you need is svgalib:
http://www.glennmcc.org/aralinux/arachne-svgalib-1.93.tgz
The funniest support call I ever had was from my boss (of a software company), trying to install a set of floppy disks using our install script (written in PowerBatch IIRC) on his laptop, on a train, communicating via his mobile phone (he often did this, as he seemed to like doing things at the worst possible times and in the worst situations).
Anyway, the batch script looked for a specific MS-DOS disk label in order to verify that the correct disk was in the drive, and it appeared that his disk set didn't have the correct labels set, so we asked him to change the label (to DISK#3 or somesuch). A while later he rang back and said it hadn't helped - he'd stuck a new label on the disk and surprisingly the software hadn't recognised this...
> I think the main problem is the "anybody can grow up to be president" mentality.
The "election" of Dubya was surely an ample demonstration of the truth of this assertion, though...
I took 10 O-levels back in 1985 (passed 9). Pretty much everyone at my school (a fairly ordinary rural comprehensive) took 9 or 10 subjects at either O-level or CSE. BTW these were all real subjects, none of your General Studies etc. I don't recall anyone going insane (although there was a lot of homework).
Gnuplot?
http://www.gnuplot.info/
A similar thing happened at my old company - we had a set of internal newsgroups allowing people at sites all across the country (and world in some cases) to communicate freely...however, management wanted to ensure that the control of the information flow remained with them (knowledge is, after all, power, and I often knew about things going on in the company before my managers did) and they wanted to crush the emerging subculture. Thus we were driven to use public mailing lists and there we remain (though we are careful not to trade secrets).
Funnily enough, a few years later I heard that they are now setting up internal social networking à la Facebook...
Reminds me of http://www.infinitecat.com/
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." - John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
Only in the sense that McCain is much closer to TCM than, say, Attila the Hun.
You have a lot to learn about socialism if you think Obama is anywhere near it.
For those of us in the reality-based community, Obama is center-right, McCain slightly more right, though you need a 2D representation à la politicalcompass.org to do it justice. I'm pretty sure the politicalcompass people have already plotted the candidates for your edification.
Trouble is, it's *never* the year to vote for a third party - every time, it's "oh no, wait until next time, this time is *far* too important..."
By voting for the lesser evil, you still end up with evil.
Then you'll just get campaign ads that appeal to fat people...
Well, there was that famous quote by the then head of Diebold to the effect of "promising to deliver Ohio's votes for the Republican party" in 2004. See here http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.html for example.
No, it was because they were already up to Word 5.1 on the Mac - it created a unified numbering scheme.
Rob
No - they'll become Aethists instead:
http://www.messybeast.com/dragonqueen/aeth.htm
Rob
For FORTRAN: http://www.fortran.com/
For Ada: http://www.adahome.com/
HTH
Umm, it got slashdotted?