I suppose not. Really, it's been many years since Karen Carpenter died. A whole new generation has grown up without her, so I suppose y'all can be forgiven for not knowing "BEachwood 4-5789"
Some of us old fogeys still miss Karen's mellow voice.:( I couldn't care less what I was doing the day that Elvis died, but I vividly recall how devastated I was at her death.
I'm not so sure that humans are the root cause behind any global warming, especially after seeing that Mars is just coming out of an ice age of its own. Given that humans have had, like, zero impact on the climate of Mars, but solar output has impact on both Mars and Earth, doncha think that global warming might, just might, be caused by the sun, not humans?
I'm not saying that humankind has no impact on Earth's climate, but that maybe blaming us for global warming is just another Chicken Little espousing that the sky is falling. We'll likely know better, in a few million years or so. Till then, I'm not holding my breath.
My first computers
on
First Computers
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The very first one I owned was an Ohio Scientific single-board trainer, complete with 6502 CPU, slide-switches, red LEDs and a whopping whole 128 *bytes* of RAM. It taught me how to really be frugal with memory, that's for sure! I used it to make music, one squarewave note at a time. Sadly, my father threw it out a long time ago:( I still miss hacking in binary on it, and thanks to that I can still add, subtract and multiply, in my head, in binary and hexadecimal.
My next machine was a huge step up - an OSM Zeus 4 multi-user unit, complete with 10 megabyte hard drive. It had 5 Z-80s, each with 64k of RAM, and ran a varient of CPM as an OS. That machine, I used not only to write programs for businesses to use, but multi-player, multi-user text games. That unit taught me C, and gave me an even better grasp on assembler. Sadly, it went to the same fate that my OSI met, when my father cleaned out the attic one spring:(
Next was a throw-back, sort-of. A Zorba luggable. Z-80, 65k RAM, dual floppies, tiny green screen. This one could *natively* read, write and format almost any soft-sectored 5.25" format, wheee! I took it, and an Eagle II, to Ohio, and hand-crafted a "bootstrap" program, in machine code, to allow me to download all my software onto my friend Greg's brand-new Heathkit computer... that used hard-sectored disks. grrrr! Goddess, what a weekend~ I managed to craft, in machine code in DDT, a simple program that allowed me to send MODEM7 over, and then we used MODEM7 to send Wordstar, Spellstar, Calcstar, Basic, C, CBASIC and a shirtload more. I was wiped - 48+ hours of no sleep, plus the most intense hacking session I'd done to then, but Greg and his new wife sure appreciated it. Wheee!
I still have that old Zorba in my closet. My father never even got near it, I defended it with my life:) Some day, I'll be buried beside it, and their I'll lie, "dreaming" of Wordstar 3.3 and DDT, content to rest, at last.:)
Most "just plain femmes" are interested in butch women, not other femmes. There are very few femme-femme couples out there:(
As for dating services, very few even try to work for same-sex couples. Even worse, most of the online ones I've seen and used, far more of the femmey women seeking are bisexuals looking for another woman to join them and their husband/boyfriend for a fast frolic in the sack. I've spent the last few years searching for some non-sexual femme-friends online, and have found exactly zero, this despite living in Seattle.
So, instead, I stay at home, play with computers, pet my cats and cut gemstones. At least it helps pass the time.
A "lipstick lesbian" is a femme lesbian, who loves other femme lesbians. Usually, we're the ones who dress smartly, wear makeup and perfume and shave our legs and armpits. In short, we're like any other normal, well-groomed woman... except that we're exclusively interested in others like ourselves.
For us, opposites do *NOT* attract.:)
Mind you, because we do look just like other women, we're very hard to spot, which sure makes it hard to find a date:-/ Even more fun, when I go to a lezzy bar, I usually get the extreme cold shoulder - or, worse, I get hit on by some drunken, boorish bull dagger who won't take "no" for an answer.
Needless to say, we don't tend to get many dates:(
I did. DCC Sales. Found them on Pricewatch, and thought it worth a chance. In the end, I was out the money to ship it back to them - the original shipping was free.
I'd be inclined to agree, at least some of these ridiculous surcharges are deliberate. Recently, I purchased some DDR Ram, for which they tried to charge me extra to test it. When it arrived, I installed it, and my machine did nothing at all. I got the RMA, and sent it back for refund - they told me I'd get the "restocking" fee.
Thankfully, I'd used VISA to buy it, and complained to my bank, which refunded it in toto. The company did, eventually, issue me a credit - not only did they take out their "restocking" fee, but charged me to test it when it got there, *and* then credited me based on the current price of the ram, not what I'd paid!
Thank heaven for VISA. I did get *all* my money back (had to let the bank take the pitiful excuse for a refund that the company issued).
So yes, these "hidden" charges are, in at least some cases, the way companies can increase their profit margins. Caveat emptor, indeed!
Ward Christenson writes MODEM7 and CBBS, while Randy Suess slings the solder. Ward is forgotten, while Randy starts Chinet, one of Chicago's first publicly-available UNIX systems, complete with e-mail *and* Usenet news:)
Karl Deninger and Randy Suess - Randy runs Chinet while Karl learns about UNIX on it, then Karl starts his own ISP - MCS.Net.
I lost track of that whole crowd many moons ago, when I moved away. Haven't heard about any of them, but far as I know, both Chinet and MCS are still alive and kicking.
People seem to have high opinions of themselves and their precious egos. Try reading some court decisions about libel and the net - there's a darned high threshold that must be passed for it to be considered libel. Denbeste had a great comment about this - scan down to the entry labelled "Stardate 20031027.0423" to read it.
Oj, yes, the obligatory IANAL, just in case anybody was wondering.
I wonder what effect this, and the smaller, earlier, storm will have on the ISS and its occupants? I know, they most likely used SOS (silicon on sapphire substrate) semiconductors, so the station itself should be OK,but still, this is supposed to be a big storm. Are the astronauts going to be OK? Is there any particularly rad-hardened section they can stay in, or are they just plain SOL?
Goddess, I hope they'll be OK. If they get a fatal dose of radiation from this, coming so soon after the shuttle disaster, I fear we might scal way back on manned space exploration in the near future, andthat would be a real shame.
Except that I wasn't exactly laid off, I became disabled. About seven years ago. Unlike the writer here, though, I learned a whole lot more. Useful stuff, like how to make flavored noodles, with just a package of ramen noodles and hot tap water from any public washroom, or how to make twenty dollars last five months plus, or what are the best bridges under which to sleep. Thankfully, Social Insecurity did come through, after a year or two, so at least I'm no longer on the street.
I wish him luck. Being unemployed ain't really fun, but if he becomes homeless, he'll be able to look back at this period with longing - at least he has a safe place to sleep, for the moment.
Goddess, that had to be one heckuva bug / feature to track down, and had I had to do it, I too would have left it in there as an inspiration to programmers everywhere.
After being rudely awakened by a telemarketer (when *dies* that "do not call" list take effect?), my partner has corrected me. The program is CWIRC, not IRCQ/ Sorry if this caused any trouble.
As a former ham radio geek, I too had to learn CW, at least 5wpm - back then, it was a requirement to be able to use much above 30mHz. I survived the test, and forgot nearly everything about CW after that, workig on packet radio, satellite and 6m ssb dxing.
My partner also learned CW, and loves it, eventually getting her Extra-class license. As we now live in an apartment, antennas are not allowed, so we both gave up on ham radio. However, she hasn't given up on CW.
She's found a new program - IRCQ - that uses CW over the Net. Yikes!:) So, while the FCC is finally hoping to abolish CW for more technologically-advanced communications, the old curmudgeons can still use their dinosaur-mode skillset.
So, I guess that CW won't die, despite the FCC's wishes. I personally won't mourn iys passing, but I do see how it can be useful in a very tight situation. Maybe I'll even give ITCQ a try some day,
Back when I used to work as a software engineer, we had a large automotive engine tester that we made. Our boss, VP of Engineering, was out trying to help sell gobs of them to some large car repair chain. They asked him, "What operating system does it use?" His reply? "We use Microsoft Word."
There is no hope for him. I'm glad I'm out of there now.
"I always do what teddy says" Harry Harrison, 1963.
"I Always Do What Teddy Says (1963) is set in a utopia where mechanical teddy bears are used to condition children against anti-social behaviour: The Times reported on 1st April 1998 that, "Teddy bears...will soon be fitted with tiny cameras to spy on families across Britain.""
Am I the only person who is reminded of an old scifi short story, about a future utopia where a child's teddy bear would teach the child how to behave? Apparently, one person removed the circuitry of one child's bear, tampered with it, and replaced it, resulting in an adult, apparently normal as everybody else, who was able to kill the world leader, because teddy never taught him that it was bad to kill people.
Is this doll a step in that direction? I sure hope not!
(Aside note - I read that story when I was very young (I was a precocious kid), and it really hurt me to think that *anybody* would take apart a *teddy bear* and make it do evil things. This doll evokes the same sort of feeling in me. )
Yeah, I run Debian Stable. I know it's old. It's also stable, hence the name. I like it, generally, but have a few grumbles.
I use KDE as a windows manager, and ***most*** of the time, when you highlight some text, it doesn't go to the cut-n-paste buffer. Yjis usually leads to me highlighting the text a dozen or so times, hoping that at least once it will work. Sometimes, even then, it doesn't. Whine-Doze doesn't have that problem.
I also use an old 14" monitor, and must routinely increase the text size to make it readable. Yeah, I know, buy a bigger monitor - hard to do that on my disability check. Anyways, some programs allow this, though many don't, and the few that do allow it make you jump through so many hoops it's unreal. In Whine-Doze, it's one setting that affects every program.
I'm also a bit gritchy about the forced-fsck every 27 restarts. See, I tend to do something, then turn my machine off until I have something else to do. It really saves power that way - again, an artifact of having so little spare cash these days. I can run through that 27 restarts in three days, and then I'm forced to endure a full fsck on every drive I have mounted. In Whine-Doze, I only have to endure it's checking when it crashes, which was about every 6 days, the last time I used it regularly.
Yes, I should lose Debian Stable, and move to something written in the last thirty years. What, though? Over the years, I've also used Slackware, and Redhat - Debian is far less crash-prone.
Folks, a 5mm bend is darned tight. 5mm is almost 1/5th of an inch. Even a 15mm bend is pretty tight - just over half an inch.
I'd take this "study" with a large block of saly, personally. I never bent myheliax abtebba cable this tight, and I doubt that any sane technician would try to bend glass optical cable this tight, either.
they can at least find you handy. Right? Or did I fall asleep while watching the Red Green show, and am now dreaming of the Red Green/. show? Quick, call Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Service, and get rid of all the trolls!
GM grains. They are evil because, why again? They compete with life like everything else and happen to be better than the things they kill off?
Well, for one, the GM soybeans behave differently than non-GM soybeans. The placement of the genes added seem to have trashed some of the phyto-chemicals that make soybeans healthy to eat. The good news is that the GM soy is more available, but the bad news is that the GM soy is not good for you like the non-GM soy.
Personally, until the plants have been thoroughly studied, I'll take the non-GM stuff. We're still at the beginning of genetic engineering, and we need to learn, fast, from these minor mistakes, because there *are* consequences.
Now, about the fish... I'd be very tempted to get a few of them, for my aquarium (currently in storage). I think they'd be cool, and might have a longer lifespan than neon tetras (where the bright color seems to be a large "EAT ME!" sign:( ).
What concerns them is that, when they ask an ISP to tell them who so-and-so is, the ISP can, and sometimes (often?) does, tell so-and-so that they are being investigated, thus giving the person time to shred documents and purge files. Normally, this would be called "obstruction of justice", but it's darned hard to prove everything, and tie it all up in a neat bundle, without that now-destroyed information.
What the FTC wants is to keep the ISP quiet, while they investigate. Is that too much to allow them?
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose not. Really, it's been many years since Karen Carpenter died. A whole new generation has grown up without her, so I suppose y'all can be forgiven for not knowing "BEachwood 4-5789"
:( I couldn't care less what I was doing the day that Elvis died, but I vividly recall how devastated I was at her death.
Some of us old fogeys still miss Karen's mellow voice.
I'm not so sure that humans are the root cause behind any global warming, especially after seeing that Mars is just coming out of an ice age of its own. Given that humans have had, like, zero impact on the climate of Mars, but solar output has impact on both Mars and Earth, doncha think that global warming might, just might, be caused by the sun, not humans?
I'm not saying that humankind has no impact on Earth's climate, but that maybe blaming us for global warming is just another Chicken Little espousing that the sky is falling. We'll likely know better, in a few million years or so. Till then, I'm not holding my breath.
The very first one I owned was an Ohio Scientific single-board trainer, complete with 6502 CPU, slide-switches, red LEDs and a whopping whole 128 *bytes* of RAM. It taught me how to really be frugal with memory, that's for sure! I used it to make music, one squarewave note at a time. Sadly, my father threw it out a long time ago :( I still miss hacking in binary on it, and thanks to that I can still add, subtract and multiply, in my head, in binary and hexadecimal.
:(
... that used hard-sectored disks. grrrr! Goddess, what a weekend~ I managed to craft, in machine code in DDT, a simple program that allowed me to send MODEM7 over, and then we used MODEM7 to send Wordstar, Spellstar, Calcstar, Basic, C, CBASIC and a shirtload more. I was wiped - 48+ hours of no sleep, plus the most intense hacking session I'd done to then, but Greg and his new wife sure appreciated it. Wheee!
:) Some day, I'll be buried beside it, and their I'll lie, "dreaming" of Wordstar 3.3 and DDT, content to rest, at last. :)
My next machine was a huge step up - an OSM Zeus 4 multi-user unit, complete with 10 megabyte hard drive. It had 5 Z-80s, each with 64k of RAM, and ran a varient of CPM as an OS. That machine, I used not only to write programs for businesses to use, but multi-player, multi-user text games. That unit taught me C, and gave me an even better grasp on assembler. Sadly, it went to the same fate that my OSI met, when my father cleaned out the attic one spring
Next was a throw-back, sort-of. A Zorba luggable. Z-80, 65k RAM, dual floppies, tiny green screen. This one could *natively* read, write and format almost any soft-sectored 5.25" format, wheee! I took it, and an Eagle II, to Ohio, and hand-crafted a "bootstrap" program, in machine code, to allow me to download all my software onto my friend Greg's brand-new Heathkit computer
I still have that old Zorba in my closet. My father never even got near it, I defended it with my life
Most "just plain femmes" are interested in butch women, not other femmes. There are very few femme-femme couples out there :(
As for dating services, very few even try to work for same-sex couples. Even worse, most of the online ones I've seen and used, far more of the femmey women seeking are bisexuals looking for another woman to join them and their husband/boyfriend for a fast frolic in the sack. I've spent the last few years searching for some non-sexual femme-friends online, and have found exactly zero, this despite living in Seattle.
So, instead, I stay at home, play with computers, pet my cats and cut gemstones. At least it helps pass the time.
A "lipstick lesbian" is a femme lesbian, who loves other femme lesbians. Usually, we're the ones who dress smartly, wear makeup and perfume and shave our legs and armpits. In short, we're like any other normal, well-groomed woman ... except that we're exclusively interested in others like ourselves.
:)
:-/ Even more fun, when I go to a lezzy bar, I usually get the extreme cold shoulder - or, worse, I get hit on by some drunken, boorish bull dagger who won't take "no" for an answer.
:(
For us, opposites do *NOT* attract.
Mind you, because we do look just like other women, we're very hard to spot, which sure makes it hard to find a date
Needless to say, we don't tend to get many dates
I did. DCC Sales. Found them on Pricewatch, and thought it worth a chance. In the end, I was out the money to ship it back to them - the original shipping was free.
DCC Sales.
I'd be inclined to agree, at least some of these ridiculous surcharges are deliberate. Recently, I purchased some DDR Ram, for which they tried to charge me extra to test it. When it arrived, I installed it, and my machine did nothing at all. I got the RMA, and sent it back for refund - they told me I'd get the "restocking" fee.
Thankfully, I'd used VISA to buy it, and complained to my bank, which refunded it in toto. The company did, eventually, issue me a credit - not only did they take out their "restocking" fee, but charged me to test it when it got there, *and* then credited me based on the current price of the ram, not what I'd paid!
Thank heaven for VISA. I did get *all* my money back (had to let the bank take the pitiful excuse for a refund that the company issued).
So yes, these "hidden" charges are, in at least some cases, the way companies can increase their profit margins. Caveat emptor, indeed!
Don't forget a few other notable pairs, like:
:)
Ward Christenson writes MODEM7 and CBBS, while Randy Suess slings the solder. Ward is forgotten, while Randy starts Chinet, one of Chicago's first publicly-available UNIX systems, complete with e-mail *and* Usenet news
Karl Deninger and Randy Suess - Randy runs Chinet while Karl learns about UNIX on it, then Karl starts his own ISP - MCS.Net.
I lost track of that whole crowd many moons ago, when I moved away. Haven't heard about any of them, but far as I know, both Chinet and MCS are still alive and kicking.
People seem to have high opinions of themselves and their precious egos. Try reading some court decisions about libel and the net - there's a darned high threshold that must be passed for it to be considered libel. Denbeste had a great comment about this - scan down to the entry labelled "Stardate 20031027.0423" to read it.
Oj, yes, the obligatory IANAL, just in case anybody was wondering.
I wonder what effect this, and the smaller, earlier, storm will have on the ISS and its occupants? I know, they most likely used SOS (silicon on sapphire substrate) semiconductors, so the station itself should be OK,but still, this is supposed to be a big storm. Are the astronauts going to be OK? Is there any particularly rad-hardened section they can stay in, or are they just plain SOL?
Goddess, I hope they'll be OK. If they get a fatal dose of radiation from this, coming so soon after the shuttle disaster, I fear we might scal way back on manned space exploration in the near future, andthat would be a real shame.
Except that I wasn't exactly laid off, I became disabled. About seven years ago. Unlike the writer here, though, I learned a whole lot more. Useful stuff, like how to make flavored noodles, with just a package of ramen noodles and hot tap water from any public washroom, or how to make twenty dollars last five months plus, or what are the best bridges under which to sleep. Thankfully, Social Insecurity did come through, after a year or two, so at least I'm no longer on the street.
I wish him luck. Being unemployed ain't really fun, but if he becomes homeless, he'll be able to look back at this period with longing - at least he has a safe place to sleep, for the moment.
In one word: Mel.
Goddess, that had to be one heckuva bug / feature to track down, and had I had to do it, I too would have left it in there as an inspiration to programmers everywhere.
She says it's irc.freenode.net.
After being rudely awakened by a telemarketer (when *dies* that "do not call" list take effect?), my partner has corrected me. The program is CWIRC, not IRCQ/ Sorry if this caused any trouble.
As a former ham radio geek, I too had to learn CW, at least 5wpm - back then, it was a requirement to be able to use much above 30mHz. I survived the test, and forgot nearly everything about CW after that, workig on packet radio, satellite and 6m ssb dxing.
:) So, while the FCC is finally hoping to abolish CW for more technologically-advanced communications, the old curmudgeons can still use their dinosaur-mode skillset.
My partner also learned CW, and loves it, eventually getting her Extra-class license. As we now live in an apartment, antennas are not allowed, so we both gave up on ham radio. However, she hasn't given up on CW.
She's found a new program - IRCQ - that uses CW over the Net. Yikes!
So, I guess that CW won't die, despite the FCC's wishes. I personally won't mourn iys passing, but I do see how it can be useful in a very tight situation. Maybe I'll even give ITCQ a try some day,
73 de N9JZW
Back when I used to work as a software engineer, we had a large automotive engine tester that we made. Our boss, VP of Engineering, was out trying to help sell gobs of them to some large car repair chain. They asked him, "What operating system does it use?" His reply? "We use Microsoft Word."
There is no hope for him. I'm glad I'm out of there now.
"I always do what teddy says" Harry Harrison, 1963.
"I Always Do What Teddy Says (1963) is set in a utopia where mechanical teddy bears are used to condition children against anti-social behaviour: The Times reported on 1st April 1998 that, "Teddy bears...will soon be fitted with tiny cameras to spy on families across Britain.""
Hope this helps.
Am I the only person who is reminded of an old scifi short story, about a future utopia where a child's teddy bear would teach the child how to behave? Apparently, one person removed the circuitry of one child's bear, tampered with it, and replaced it, resulting in an adult, apparently normal as everybody else, who was able to kill the world leader, because teddy never taught him that it was bad to kill people.
Is this doll a step in that direction? I sure hope not!
(Aside note - I read that story when I was very young (I was a precocious kid), and it really hurt me to think that *anybody* would take apart a *teddy bear* and make it do evil things. This doll evokes the same sort of feeling in me. )
Yeah, I run Debian Stable. I know it's old. It's also stable, hence the name. I like it, generally, but have a few grumbles.
I use KDE as a windows manager, and ***most*** of the time, when you highlight some text, it doesn't go to the cut-n-paste buffer. Yjis usually leads to me highlighting the text a dozen or so times, hoping that at least once it will work. Sometimes, even then, it doesn't. Whine-Doze doesn't have that problem.
I also use an old 14" monitor, and must routinely increase the text size to make it readable. Yeah, I know, buy a bigger monitor - hard to do that on my disability check. Anyways, some programs allow this, though many don't, and the few that do allow it make you jump through so many hoops it's unreal. In Whine-Doze, it's one setting that affects every program.
I'm also a bit gritchy about the forced-fsck every 27 restarts. See, I tend to do something, then turn my machine off until I have something else to do. It really saves power that way - again, an artifact of having so little spare cash these days. I can run through that 27 restarts in three days, and then I'm forced to endure a full fsck on every drive I have mounted. In Whine-Doze, I only have to endure it's checking when it crashes, which was about every 6 days, the last time I used it regularly.
Yes, I should lose Debian Stable, and move to something written in the last thirty years. What, though? Over the years, I've also used Slackware, and Redhat - Debian is far less crash-prone.
Folks, a 5mm bend is darned tight. 5mm is almost 1/5th of an inch. Even a 15mm bend is pretty tight - just over half an inch.
I'd take this "study" with a large block of saly, personally. I never bent myheliax abtebba cable this tight, and I doubt that any sane technician would try to bend glass optical cable this tight, either.
they can at least find you handy. Right? Or did I fall asleep while watching the Red Green show, and am now dreaming of the Red Green /. show? Quick, call Rothschild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Service, and get rid of all the trolls!
*GRIN*
GM grains. They are evil because, why again? They compete with life like everything else and happen to be better than the things they kill off?
... I'd be very tempted to get a few of them, for my aquarium (currently in storage). I think they'd be cool, and might have a longer lifespan than neon tetras (where the bright color seems to be a large "EAT ME!" sign :( ).
Well, for one, the GM soybeans behave differently than non-GM soybeans. The placement of the genes added seem to have trashed some of the phyto-chemicals that make soybeans healthy to eat. The good news is that the GM soy is more available, but the bad news is that the GM soy is not good for you like the non-GM soy.
Personally, until the plants have been thoroughly studied, I'll take the non-GM stuff. We're still at the beginning of genetic engineering, and we need to learn, fast, from these minor mistakes, because there *are* consequences.
Now, about the fish
What concerns them is that, when they ask an ISP to tell them who so-and-so is, the ISP can, and sometimes (often?) does, tell so-and-so that they are being investigated, thus giving the person time to shred documents and purge files. Normally, this would be called "obstruction of justice", but it's darned hard to prove everything, and tie it all up in a neat bundle, without that now-destroyed information.
What the FTC wants is to keep the ISP quiet, while they investigate. Is that too much to allow them?
No, thankfully, *not* Washington State. Try North Carolina and West Virginia, at least according to the American Library Association's web site