Five decades ago (way before the WWW), there were two secretaries in the company I worked for who were so sheltered and innocent that they couldn't understand why they kept having customers call to ask for a manager to complain about their "language." The reason for customer complaints? Their names were Frances Screws and Susie Bangs, which they clearly stated when answering the phone for their bosses. They were married, respectively, to Dick Screws and Hardrick Bangs. This was the Bible Belt, and my simply using the word "darn" would shock them (they considered it to be profanity); both would frown and blush. I did worse, however; they didn't like me a lot. Apparently, their husbands were equally sheltered and naive. I met both of the husbands once, only briefly, at a "holiday" party, but I didn't disagree with that characterization by others who knew them better. I thought the situation was of little real consequence, a little more than funny, but apparently (I learned after I had left) it caused both couples quite a bit of trouble in the real (Bible belt) world trying to do mundane things like making restaurant and motel reservations. I was told they had to get notarized, certified copies of their birth and marriage certificates in order to open bank accounts (and for one of them, a BankAmericard credit card account, which ultimately they were denied). My secretary explained to me that she had tried to explain to Susie what the verb "to bang" meant so she would know why folks she talked to were so offended, but first she had to explain what the verb "to fuck" meant and what "intercourse" was; Susie had never heard the first, but knew of the second, but wanted to call sex with her husband "marital relations." She simply failed to accept that the verb "to bang" could possibly mean what was claimed. So incredibly sheltered. About 20 years ago someone all of us had worked with back then told me both couples ended up legally changing their names (but that had happened in the late 80s, long before the web). While I would have much more sympathy today, I did convince upper management to allow them to use an "incorrect" name when answering the phone. Frances didn't want to do that because she considered it to be telling a lie, but someone or something eventually made her come around.
I've met a half dozen or so people in my travels whose last names were either Screws or Bangs (or something else once considered "suggestive"). They appear to enjoy hearing about Frances and Susie, but each of them had their own stories to tell.
| The IBM 360 used mostly stand-alone transistors and sometimes magnetic core memory (iron donuts on a wire grid).
Sometimes? Nope. Essentially exclusively. All but two (individual machines) in the IBM System/360 model line used magnetic ferrite-core memory exclusively. The singular exception was the Model 95 [360/95] processor. IBM built only two, for NASA: one was installed at the Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and the other at the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland. Even so, the The Model 95 still used a hybrid main memory technology: each had only 1MB of thin-film memory, but also 4MB of conventional ferrite-core memory.
I suspect that one class of software the AC was referring to was the various shops' own (whether they developed it themselves or purchased it and then customized it, which was very common in those days) [business] applications software. In that case, the assertion is certainly true and, the larger the company, the more often that will be the case, simply because there was a (then) huge investment in COBOL or PL/I (or even Assembler) programs in the System/360 era, which was replaced, but not that quickly, with the System/370 machines (particularly the Models 155, 165 and 158 and 168). But there's another class of System/360 software: all the lines of code that constituted OS/360 itself and all of its mostly free subsystems. There were some licensed program products that IBM had just started to charge for, such as IMS and CICS, that did run on OS/360, so I will include them as well. It is my estimate that more than 25% of all the lines of code that were ever included in OS/360 and its subsystems still exist in z/OS or the current generation of those subsystems. A lot of OS/360 code was of course replaced, rewritten, or discarded as it became OS/VS2 SVS and then OS/VS2 MVS, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, OS/390, and finally z/OS. But much of that code still remains [in the source] as can be seen by anyone who can look and knows what to look for and where to look. Two major OS/360 subsystems, ASP and HASP, now called JES3 and JES2 respectively, still contain more than 25% of their original lines of code that once ran on a System/360 running OS/360. I still have object decks of PL/I programs compiled in 1967 that will still bind (link) and run on z/OS Version 2 Release 2 -- that's 48 year-old code. Not only that, but at one of my old shops, they still run Assembler and a small number of COBOL programs that were last compiled (and last linked, even) in 1973! The programs work, and there has never been a need to change them. That is rare, of course, but not unheard of and I suspect more common that many insiders would ordinarily think.
The concept here is really, if you have an auction, have a possibility to set a predefined price and if anyone pays that, the auction is called off. Is that non obvious? Has that never be thought of or done?
Books have been sold by rare book dealers this way ever since I started buying them, which would be since the early 1960s. A dealer will issue a catalog, which is usually only distributed (although not restricted) to other dealers; these catalogs typically list an expected sales price range for each book, and sometimes (but not always) what is termed the take price (I have been told, but never read, that this was shorthand for a will take price or a take it now price).
Catalogs are typically issued only for actual auctions, which used to always take place at (a location designated by) the selling dealer(s), but which are increasingly taking place either online or simply by telephone, given the availablity of digital cameras and the internet to enable access by potential buyers to a better description of a book than words alone in a printed catalog entry could ever do. It is simply understood that all items (even those without an explicit take price indicated) are offered subject to prior sale -- without those words being explicitly stated (although they sometimes are).
As far as my own experience indicates, the take price represents exactly the same concept as eBay's Buy It Now function. Note that book take prices are usually set much higher than the indicated high end of the expected sales price range (if the book actually does go into auction), whereas my experience with items listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price is that this price is generally supposed to be less than what the item is actually expected to sell for. If you read what sellers frequently write in the description of such items, you gather that the way they set the Buy It Now price is so that, if the buyer is willing to pay that price right now, for immediate gratification purposes, then they are supposed to think that they are getting a bargain, guaranteeing they won't have to pay what will presumably be a higher price if the item were to get into a bidding war (which is something that is in fact becoming much more common on eBay these days for items in many categories).
I think book take prices are set significantly higher than the upper end of the expected sales price simply for greed: if someone wants the book that badly, then they can get it for what the seller expects to be a premium (in contrast to a discount in the case of most eBay Buy It Now auctions). On eBay, at least in the case of books and electronic equipment, I typically see that items offered with a Buy It Now price that do not actually end up being purchased using Buy It Now sell for much more than the original Buy It Now price. So the Buy It Now price does usually represent a discount to the expected (or at least the eventual) sale price. Thus, a book auction's take price is actually a more realistic estimate than a typical eBay auction's But It Now price.
Books that don't get "taken" (which are still available, not withdrawn by the seller, and actually offered at the auction) sell for less than the low end of the estimated range as often as they do within the estimated range. Since the dealers generally know what each book is actually worth (that is, will actually sell for), it's unusual for a book to sell for much more than the high end of the range, but it happens (after which, all the dealers immediately adjust their prices --the final prices of all books sold are, by convention, distributed to all [registered] auction participants, whether they bought anything or not). But when a book does sell at actual auction for a figure that is significantly higher than the high end of the range, the sales price is usually way beyond the listed take price; that this might happen is, of cou
No, that's a bad example because the bubonic plague is now incerasingly (stet) believed to have had nothing to do with the Black Death.
Nothing to do with it? That's not exactly correct. It had quite a lot to do with it. But perhaps you were trying to make this point instead? The key paragraph there reads:
What happened is that during the summer of 1347 the world was ravaged by the bubonic plague. This was indeed passed by rat fleas. However, during the winter, the bubonic plague developed into pneumonic plague. This is when the pestis bacterium becomes localised in a person's lungs. The victim of pneumonic plague will begin to cough up blood. The plague will now spread directly from human to human by 'droplet' infection. This is the deadliest bacterial disease known to humankind and virtually everyone who catches the disease will be dead in four days. Most people died during the Black Death of pneumonic plague, not bubonic plague. Pneumonic plague has nothing to do with rats and that is why they were not in evidence during this outbreak.
The original Star Wars release doesn't have the Episode IV: A New Hope at the start either, that was slipped in later.
Uh... no, not so. It most certainly did; it was not "slipped in later." I saw the original release of Star Wars, in 1977, more than a dozen times, in fact. But, I, and everyone with me that day (we had left work to see the very first showing in Charlotte, NC on opening day), immediately commented, aloud, when we saw "Episode IV" in the crawl, "What happened to the first three!?"
Within a minute, it was clear that this was no ordinary movie, and that whatever happened in the first theee episodes would somehow, someday, be revealed.
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Five decades ago (way before the WWW), there were two secretaries in the company I worked for who were so sheltered and innocent that they couldn't understand why they kept having customers call to ask for a manager to complain about their "language." The reason for customer complaints? Their names were Frances Screws and Susie Bangs, which they clearly stated when answering the phone for their bosses. They were married, respectively, to Dick Screws and Hardrick Bangs. This was the Bible Belt, and my simply using the word "darn" would shock them (they considered it to be profanity); both would frown and blush. I did worse, however; they didn't like me a lot. Apparently, their husbands were equally sheltered and naive. I met both of the husbands once, only briefly, at a "holiday" party, but I didn't disagree with that characterization by others who knew them better. I thought the situation was of little real consequence, a little more than funny, but apparently (I learned after I had left) it caused both couples quite a bit of trouble in the real (Bible belt) world trying to do mundane things like making restaurant and motel reservations. I was told they had to get notarized, certified copies of their birth and marriage certificates in order to open bank accounts (and for one of them, a BankAmericard credit card account, which ultimately they were denied). My secretary explained to me that she had tried to explain to Susie what the verb "to bang" meant so she would know why folks she talked to were so offended, but first she had to explain what the verb "to fuck" meant and what "intercourse" was; Susie had never heard the first, but knew of the second, but wanted to call sex with her husband "marital relations." She simply failed to accept that the verb "to bang" could possibly mean what was claimed. So incredibly sheltered. About 20 years ago someone all of us had worked with back then told me both couples ended up legally changing their names (but that had happened in the late 80s, long before the web). While I would have much more sympathy today, I did convince upper management to allow them to use an "incorrect" name when answering the phone. Frances didn't want to do that because she considered it to be telling a lie, but someone or something eventually made her come around.
I've met a half dozen or so people in my travels whose last names were either Screws or Bangs (or something else once considered "suggestive"). They appear to enjoy hearing about Frances and Susie, but each of them had their own stories to tell.
| The IBM 360 used mostly stand-alone transistors and sometimes magnetic core memory (iron donuts on a wire grid).
Sometimes? Nope. Essentially exclusively. All but two (individual machines) in the IBM System/360 model line used magnetic ferrite-core memory exclusively. The singular exception was the Model 95 [360/95] processor. IBM built only two, for NASA: one was installed at the Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and the other at the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland. Even so, the The Model 95 still used a hybrid main memory technology: each had only 1MB of thin-film memory, but also 4MB of conventional ferrite-core memory.
I suspect that one class of software the AC was referring to was the various shops' own (whether they developed it themselves or purchased it and then customized it, which was very common in those days) [business] applications software. In that case, the assertion is certainly true and, the larger the company, the more often that will be the case, simply because there was a (then) huge investment in COBOL or PL/I (or even Assembler) programs in the System/360 era, which was replaced, but not that quickly, with the System/370 machines (particularly the Models 155, 165 and 158 and 168). But there's another class of System/360 software: all the lines of code that constituted OS/360 itself and all of its mostly free subsystems. There were some licensed program products that IBM had just started to charge for, such as IMS and CICS, that did run on OS/360, so I will include them as well. It is my estimate that more than 25% of all the lines of code that were ever included in OS/360 and its subsystems still exist in z/OS or the current generation of those subsystems. A lot of OS/360 code was of course replaced, rewritten, or discarded as it became OS/VS2 SVS and then OS/VS2 MVS, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, OS/390, and finally z/OS. But much of that code still remains [in the source] as can be seen by anyone who can look and knows what to look for and where to look. Two major OS/360 subsystems, ASP and HASP, now called JES3 and JES2 respectively, still contain more than 25% of their original lines of code that once ran on a System/360 running OS/360. I still have object decks of PL/I programs compiled in 1967 that will still bind (link) and run on z/OS Version 2 Release 2 -- that's 48 year-old code. Not only that, but at one of my old shops, they still run Assembler and a small number of COBOL programs that were last compiled (and last linked, even) in 1973! The programs work, and there has never been a need to change them. That is rare, of course, but not unheard of and I suspect more common that many insiders would ordinarily think.
The concept here is really, if you have an auction, have a possibility to set a predefined price and if anyone pays that, the auction is called off. Is that non obvious? Has that never be thought of or done?
Books have been sold by rare book dealers this way ever since I started buying them, which would be since the early 1960s. A dealer will issue a catalog, which is usually only distributed (although not restricted) to other dealers; these catalogs typically list an expected sales price range for each book, and sometimes (but not always) what is termed the take price (I have been told, but never read, that this was shorthand for a will take price or a take it now price).
Catalogs are typically issued only for actual auctions, which used to always take place at (a location designated by) the selling dealer(s), but which are increasingly taking place either online or simply by telephone, given the availablity of digital cameras and the internet to enable access by potential buyers to a better description of a book than words alone in a printed catalog entry could ever do. It is simply understood that all items (even those without an explicit take price indicated) are offered subject to prior sale -- without those words being explicitly stated (although they sometimes are).
As far as my own experience indicates, the take price represents exactly the same concept as eBay's Buy It Now function. Note that book take prices are usually set much higher than the indicated high end of the expected sales price range (if the book actually does go into auction), whereas my experience with items listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price is that this price is generally supposed to be less than what the item is actually expected to sell for. If you read what sellers frequently write in the description of such items, you gather that the way they set the Buy It Now price is so that, if the buyer is willing to pay that price right now, for immediate gratification purposes, then they are supposed to think that they are getting a bargain, guaranteeing they won't have to pay what will presumably be a higher price if the item were to get into a bidding war (which is something that is in fact becoming much more common on eBay these days for items in many categories).
I think book take prices are set significantly higher than the upper end of the expected sales price simply for greed: if someone wants the book that badly, then they can get it for what the seller expects to be a premium (in contrast to a discount in the case of most eBay Buy It Now auctions). On eBay, at least in the case of books and electronic equipment, I typically see that items offered with a Buy It Now price that do not actually end up being purchased using Buy It Now sell for much more than the original Buy It Now price. So the Buy It Now price does usually represent a discount to the expected (or at least the eventual) sale price. Thus, a book auction's take price is actually a more realistic estimate than a typical eBay auction's But It Now price.
Books that don't get "taken" (which are still available, not withdrawn by the seller, and actually offered at the auction) sell for less than the low end of the estimated range as often as they do within the estimated range. Since the dealers generally know what each book is actually worth (that is, will actually sell for), it's unusual for a book to sell for much more than the high end of the range, but it happens (after which, all the dealers immediately adjust their prices --the final prices of all books sold are, by convention, distributed to all [registered] auction participants, whether they bought anything or not). But when a book does sell at actual auction for a figure that is significantly higher than the high end of the range, the sales price is usually way beyond the listed take price; that this might happen is, of cou
Nothing to do with it? That's not exactly correct. It had quite a lot to do with it. But perhaps you were trying to make this point instead? The key paragraph there reads:
Do you have any sources for your assertion?
Uh ... no, not so. It most certainly did; it was not "slipped in later." I saw the original release of Star Wars, in 1977, more than a dozen times, in fact. But, I, and everyone with me that day (we had left work to see the very first showing in Charlotte, NC on opening day), immediately commented, aloud, when we saw "Episode IV" in the crawl, "What happened to the first three!?"
Within a minute, it was clear that this was no ordinary movie, and that whatever happened in the first theee episodes would somehow, someday, be revealed.