I'm getting tired of this movement that insists it's OK to deprive people and business operating in public places to electronic convinences just because it annoys
you.
Well, boy-howdy, I guess you don't mind me shouting into my cell phone at the next table when you're on a date...
But I think it would be on the order of "say, that's weird"...."oh shit." One would have to happen far enough from us to be not fatal but still well-observable, not to mention that we'd have to be looking at it.
But what about your mortgage? And while your penis may be big enough, what about some Levitra or Viagra to go with it? Won't want to be caught... limp...
By the way, I have the sum of $45,000,000 (FOURTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS) in petro-money stuck in Nigeria....
Yeah, the problem that I see is that it's too darn fragile to use in most places, due to its temperature requirements. But the process could prove to be hardier than the plant itself.
Still, one wonders why they didn't pick spiroulina instead...
Realistically, though, would legalization be such a bad thing? Sure, we'd face a shortage of Twinkies and Pink Floyd records for the first few weeks, but everyone would be mellow about it...
No, the APL typeball wasn't third-party. It was the genuine IBM article, used on 134.5baud Selectric terminals for... programming in APL, which was generally done at IBM.
And, you're missing at least one typeball from your "complete" list, the APL typeball. I used an APL typeball plenty of times in the 1970s. This leaves me wondering what other typeballs are missing....
Assuming the site isn't lying about the forensics expert.
Assuming you choose to ignore that Word's "th" is placed such that the bottom of "th" is colinear with the bottom of the top of the '7', whereas the memo of the 18th shows the bottom of the "th" resting below the bottom of the top of the '7'. Ditto for the 5/4 memo and 111th.
Not to mention that Word would have superscripted the "st" in "1st Lt. Bush" but the August 1 memo does not reflect that.
Or are you running a special version of Word that doesn't do that?
I was willing to buy it at first, but the backpedaling is highly amusing to watch!
Oh the debunking has been hilarious. "Typewriters are monospaced!".... "Uh, ok, some typewriters were proportional - but if I type it into Word, it comes out the same!".... "And no typewriters had a 'th' superscript!".... "Ok, some did but the Executive didn't!"... "It uses a font that didn't exist until 1984!"
Still haven't seen
Photograph of an Executive keyboard [IDs keys]
Memo as typed on an Executive
Explaination as to why one "th" is normally typed out, not automagiced as per Word's wont
Explaination as to why the font differs from Times in the 'd' 'b' & 'g' characters.
I suspect that 1. will be taken care of in the next couple of days.
What needs to be done is to find an Executive and type out the memo on it, scan and post it to the net.
The 'd' and 'b' characters are pretty unique and their variation from Times doesn't look like a generational error. I don't see kerning in the memos, either. Word, on the other hand, does a good job kerning the "fe" in "feedback", for example.
An IBM Executive typewriter wasn't typesetting equipment, but it was designed to produce camera-ready copy in short order. If my mother wasn't having surgery today, I'd ask her if [a] she still had her typewriter and [b] type up a copy of the memo and scan it in.
It wasn't insanely expensive, it was a model that had been produced by IBM since 1941, and cheap enough after the introduction of the Selectric that a low-level IBMer such as my mom could afford one.
It's a lot like a Word document because the folks who made WYSIWYG editor programs in the '70s and '80s copied the look and feel of the output of a typesetter, same as IBM did when they designed the typewriter back in the early half of the previous century. It's called "good engineering".
What you need to look for are indications of "produced on a typewriter" versus "produced on a computer". The most obvious one is flying letters from being too fast or slow on the shift key. I don't see any indications of that which could be due to a careful typist or perhaps an interlock mechanism on what was IBM's premier typewriter.
As to "it looks the same in Word", no it does not. I just typed in the 8/18 memo, and while the spacing is the "same" [line breaks in the same places], the fonts are different. In the memo, notice that the serifs on the letters hang below the baseline... and most interestingly, the 'b' hangs below - it's a less round 'b' than the one Word uses. Also note that in Word, the letters ['p', 'g', 's'] have sharp tips on them, but in the memo they're blunted. See for yourself. Grab a copy of Word and go for it.
Don't comlain about the MX-80 too much - at least it wasen't a thermal printer.;)
Oh, for the days of a Silent 700, a power outlet and a payphone! I had to drive to Rockville MD [next town south] in order to get cheap [local call] rates to school.
Now, do you remember the electrostatic printers with the cool silver paper? Those were spiffy!
So they were a horrible pain to work with. They were also a status symbol. And remember secretaries? The boss didn't type stuff himself!
Not to mention, of course, that there weren't any typewriters of this sort that used a superscript small "th" like the example in the one memo.
Says who? When you realize that lowercase 'L' was used for the digit 1 on most typewriters and that the top row was longer than the standard 101-key keyboard we're used to, and the symbol set was different [cents key, for example]... So, find one of these typewriters, take a photo of its keyboard, put it on the net. I googled about for a good photo of an Executive typewriter but all I could find were low-quality scans.
The point of having a proportionally-spacing typewriter was that you could add things like a "th" superscript key and make it look good [not squished] in order to produce camera-ready copy... or to be a status symbol ["Executive"] for muckety-mucks such as unit commanders.
The White House says they're authentic. Why do you resist?
But I think that the older-design Executive was still cheaper than the new-fangled Selectric. My mom bought one of the Executives [employee discount] in the '70s and I remember the pain of typing on it for school papers. It sure made for a pretty report, though. When the Personal Computer hit, going to a mono-spaced font on the Epson MX-80 seemed like a step backwards.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no SSH. Still. Telnet, yes. SSH, no.
Yeah, so we all wish, but Steve would never allow it.
Buy an old Newt from evilBay or relent and buy a Plam.
Well, boy-howdy, I guess you don't mind me shouting into my cell phone at the next table when you're on a date...
Dogma was a great movie. Sure, Jay & Silent Bob SB sucked, but...
You're right of course.
But I think it would be on the order of "say, that's weird"...."oh shit." One would have to happen far enough from us to be not fatal but still well-observable, not to mention that we'd have to be looking at it.
It's not as if we wouldn't see it coming. Of course, if we're still stuck on this rock...
And don't forget the wipe-out-nearly-all-life gamma ray bursts! No advance warning on those puppies.
Actually, I haven't seen much spam in my gmail account and I posted to usenet multiple times during the summer.
But what about your mortgage? And while your penis may be big enough, what about some Levitra or Viagra to go with it? Won't want to be caught ... limp ...
By the way, I have the sum of $45,000,000 (FOURTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS) in petro-money stuck in Nigeria....
Yeah, the problem that I see is that it's too darn fragile to use in most places, due to its temperature requirements. But the process could prove to be hardier than the plant itself.
Still, one wonders why they didn't pick spiroulina instead...
Well, it grows wild in all 50 states.
Realistically, though, would legalization be such a bad thing? Sure, we'd face a shortage of Twinkies and Pink Floyd records for the first few weeks, but everyone would be mellow about it...
PDWD - Packed Deep With Dren
No, the APL typeball wasn't third-party. It was the genuine IBM article, used on 134.5baud Selectric terminals for ... programming in APL, which was generally done at IBM.
We're not talking Selectric.
And, you're missing at least one typeball from your "complete" list, the APL typeball. I used an APL typeball plenty of times in the 1970s. This leaves me wondering what other typeballs are missing....
Assuming the site isn't lying about the forensics expert.
Assuming you choose to ignore that Word's "th" is placed such that the bottom of "th" is colinear with the bottom of the top of the '7', whereas the memo of the 18th shows the bottom of the "th" resting below the bottom of the top of the '7'. Ditto for the 5/4 memo and 111th.
Not to mention that Word would have superscripted the "st" in "1st Lt. Bush" but the August 1 memo does not reflect that.
Or are you running a special version of Word that doesn't do that?
I was willing to buy it at first, but the backpedaling is highly amusing to watch!
The Selectric typewriter was monospaced (typesetting version not withstanding). The Executive typewriter was proportionally spaced.
Still haven't seen
I suspect that 1. will be taken care of in the next couple of days.
What needs to be done is to find an Executive and type out the memo on it, scan and post it to the net.
The 'd' and 'b' characters are pretty unique and their variation from Times doesn't look like a generational error. I don't see kerning in the memos, either. Word, on the other hand, does a good job kerning the "fe" in "feedback", for example.
Well, thus endeth the accusations that politics.slashdot is left-wing only.
Got a photo of the keyboard handy? I haven't been able to google up anything better than small bad scans of old adverts.
Unless it, like many typewriters of the era, had a "th" key.
An IBM Executive typewriter wasn't typesetting equipment, but it was designed to produce camera-ready copy in short order. If my mother wasn't having surgery today, I'd ask her if [a] she still had her typewriter and [b] type up a copy of the memo and scan it in.
... and most interestingly, the 'b' hangs below - it's a less round 'b' than the one Word uses. Also note that in Word, the letters ['p', 'g', 's'] have sharp tips on them, but in the memo they're blunted. See for yourself. Grab a copy of Word and go for it.
It wasn't insanely expensive, it was a model that had been produced by IBM since 1941, and cheap enough after the introduction of the Selectric that a low-level IBMer such as my mom could afford one.
It's a lot like a Word document because the folks who made WYSIWYG editor programs in the '70s and '80s copied the look and feel of the output of a typesetter, same as IBM did when they designed the typewriter back in the early half of the previous century. It's called "good engineering".
What you need to look for are indications of "produced on a typewriter" versus "produced on a computer". The most obvious one is flying letters from being too fast or slow on the shift key. I don't see any indications of that which could be due to a careful typist or perhaps an interlock mechanism on what was IBM's premier typewriter.
As to "it looks the same in Word", no it does not. I just typed in the 8/18 memo, and while the spacing is the "same" [line breaks in the same places], the fonts are different. In the memo, notice that the serifs on the letters hang below the baseline
Oh, for the days of a Silent 700, a power outlet and a payphone! I had to drive to Rockville MD [next town south] in order to get cheap [local call] rates to school.
Now, do you remember the electrostatic printers with the cool silver paper? Those were spiffy!
Says who? When you realize that lowercase 'L' was used for the digit 1 on most typewriters and that the top row was longer than the standard 101-key keyboard we're used to, and the symbol set was different [cents key, for example]... So, find one of these typewriters, take a photo of its keyboard, put it on the net. I googled about for a good photo of an Executive typewriter but all I could find were low-quality scans.
The point of having a proportionally-spacing typewriter was that you could add things like a "th" superscript key and make it look good [not squished] in order to produce camera-ready copy... or to be a status symbol ["Executive"] for muckety-mucks such as unit commanders.
The White House says they're authentic. Why do you resist?
But I think that the older-design Executive was still cheaper than the new-fangled Selectric. My mom bought one of the Executives [employee discount] in the '70s and I remember the pain of typing on it for school papers. It sure made for a pretty report, though. When the Personal Computer hit, going to a mono-spaced font on the Epson MX-80 seemed like a step backwards.
Link to IBM's history site