Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

[greenaum]

Someone who had good reason to know, that is, not just some bloke in a pub.

Disappointing lack of source-code comparison, in modern pubs.

Mind I once knocked-up a Roman <> Arabic numeral converter in C for a
student I met in one once. Tried to explain it to her with plentiful
notes, no idea. I did quite a nice job for a couple of hours' work.
Perhaps it dragged her average up, to compensate for her utter
ignorance of what she was doing.

No, I've no idea why there were teaching programming to people who
weren't interested.

My mate got to go to a party with her mate, and possibly got off with
her. OTOH mine was the better looking, which doesn't really matter
when nothing happens. Chicks just don't dig programming skills. I get
better results with offers of perversion, or with booze.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #

 

[greenaum]

It isnt as if it even costs you any more for the OS you prefer.

Of course it does, stupid. You don't think they give Windows out for
free? When you buy a new computer, it's got Windows on it. The vendor
had to pay for that, and you have to pay the vendor for it. Even
though you don't want it.

That's how come Microsoft make so much money, stupid.

Imagine a supermarket who gave away apples with a particular box of
washing powder. There is no other way to buy an apple. You don't want
any washing powder, you just want an apple. And some idiot comes along
and says "What are you complaining about? The apples are free!".

Imagine a cafe full of Vikings, and you don't want any spam.

Changing your posting name is a facile method of evading killfiles. It
will not, however, stop people ignoring your posts for all the shit
you write. It's a very petty victory usually appreciated by trolls and
spammers.

Myself, I will start ignoring you when I've had enough of criticising
you. Why are you such a fucking douchbag, anyway? You act like an
unpleasant 9 year old, only more unpleasantly. Why do that? If you
don't like the group, go start your own. You could agree with yourself
all day long, which would be a nice change for you. Why post just to
pour bile on people, over such an unimportant topic as old computers?

Not that it's a bad topic. I'm interested in it but it's hardly
something to tie your ego to.

stupid.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #

 

[Huge]

Oh, Rod, Rod, Rod, how did someone as dumb as you ever get onto the Internet? I
thought most anencephalics died at birth.

Windows *still* hasn't caught up with Xerox. Clearinghouse had capabilities
that AD still doesn't. The Windows UI is full of logical inconsistencies (*)
that would have had you thrown off the roof at PARC.

(* Why is an LPD printer treated as a local printer?)

Trumpet Winsock wasn't much of a challenge to use, but it was still
the days when you had to know what you were doing. Back on good ol'
3.1, where one program going wrong totalled the system. Anyway there's
more to networking than it's user interface. In fact they're
completely separate.

Wrong. Previously done by Xerox with XFS. And I imagine there are earlier
examples than that.

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

It wasn't a copy, it was very much like it.

Only in the sense that they share a set of
APIs so its easy to port apps from CP/M etc.

Thats not a copy or even close when new code is involved.

The two aren't the same.

Never said they were.

Why are you so hostile and bitter

Just another of your silly little fantasys.

over something as unimportant as computer software?

Then why do you bother discussing it at all ?

You're still alive! There's still a chance you might get laid before you die!

You're projecting.

Smell the flowers!

**** the flowers, too gaudy for me.

Urinate on trees!

Thats illegal now, stupid.

Stupid fucking pigs-arse trees. Standing there all photosynthetically.
Trees are shit and have the intellect of 2 year olds.

I've reported you to the RSPSCBTHF. You'll be soorree...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working class.
They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able to
read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts, sorted." #

That shit is sposed to have a line with just -- on it in front of it
so the better usenet clients can just auto flush it where it belongs.

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

I think that was their integrating their word processor
into it where a text editor would have been fine.

You're wrong, they do use a text editor, not a word processor.

All about making it "simple", where to do one specific thing,
requires no thought. To do anything slightly different requires
calls to tech support and reinstalling the operating system. Usually.
Fantasy.

This is true!
Nope.

And yet the news blamed it entirely on the virus writers!
If you walked through South Central LA with $100 bills
stuck to your T-shirt, you'd get robbed. The robber's to
blame but you couldn't really say you were being sensible.

I used to, when a friend got a new PC, try de-install Norton
etc as a first move. Which isn't as easy as it looks, it's like
a fucking cancer! Spreads branches all over the damn place.

Now, I leave it alone.

More fool you.

Unfortunately slowing your computer down to less than
half-speed, turns out to be better than the alternative, on
Windows, the Typhoid Mary of things that come on shiny disks.

I have to wonder why there isn't a Norton for Linux. No I don't.
It's because they designed in security from the start.

Nope, its because **** all use it.

Security's almost a side-effect of the structure of the thing. In
Windows security is something you add on. As an application with
a few dark tendrils into mysterious unknowable bits of the workings.

Maybe it's a plan. Perhaps one day the botnets will evolve
consciousness, as they integrate more semantic processing
to get through anti-spam measures. The perfect spam-sneaker
would speak English like a person, to get through protection.
Markov chains have already been used. Perhaps it already has
happened, and a bunch of computers are Bill Gates's dark master.

You'll end up completely blind if you dont watch out.

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

Yes but they'd had 20 years!

And Xerox never managed to get enough market interest to last anything like that long PCs.

Prior to that, there was a lot less.

Irrelevant to that lie.

And it's not "a lie". If it is indeed wrong, it's "a mistake", or "an
error". Or in fact "an opinion".

Its a lie.

Switch your brain over from pejorative mode.

Go and **** yourself.

Trumpet Winsock

Wasnt talking about that.

wasn't much of a challenge to use, but it was still
the days when you had to know what you were doing.
Back on good ol' 3.1, where one program going wrong
totalled the system. Anyway there's more to networking
than it's user interface. In fact they're completely separate.

Irrelevant to whether MS innovated in that area compared with the approach Novell etc took.

Windows networking evolved from people using Novell under
DOS, and Windows 3.1 would use those same DOS calls.

Irrelevant to whether it was a lot easier for a stupid user than Novell.

Innovate does NOT mean no one else ever had anything in the same area etc.

It evolved from there, but isn't particularly revolutionary.

Innovation and revolutionary arent the same thing. We have different words for a reason.

And if Novell still existed, they might well have done it better.

No they never did for stupid users.

Anyway now the entire Internet

Wasnt talking about that.

and most internal networks use IP anyway.

Irrelevant to what was being discussed, whether some stuff did come from MS.

Finally, something wins because it's better.

Are you actually stupid enough to believe that with Win ?

That, and the idea of mass-to-mass communication
turned out more popular than The Microsoft Network,

And Win turned out more popular than *nix.

Now that you've just shot both feet off, you can fall over now.

their version of Compuserve just as Compuserve was breathing it's last.

Leaves anything from the *nix area for dead.

Even usenet is dying in the arse.

Apart from renaming "Bookmarks", oh, and bastardising HTML
(admittedly started by Netscape for similar reasons), what?
Pathetic.

That's because they want to attract new users, who can
move over much easily if things work the way they're used to.

There is much more to it than that.

Not necessarily the best way, and that itself's another
plague, locking people into specific UI mindsets.

Corse no one else ever did anything like that, eh ?

Until recently it had a very different interface, evolved directly from Xerox.

Linux is still a bit too complicated.

Particularly for stupid users who just want to turn the PC on and use it.

Not as much as the nightmare of Slackware years gone by,
where I was expected to work out the timing in milliseconds
of my monitor's electron gun, then edit it into a text file, just
to get a frigging picture. Which I never got to work.

Yep, completely fucked approach even for non stupid users.

The Linux problem is it's written by people who use it, and
obviously being the system programmers, know every inch of it.

The real problem is that most of them wouldnt
know a decent UI if it bit them on their lard arses.

They need to get a bunch of newbies and old
ladies in to user-test it, then take some notes.

And most of them are too stupid to ever do something like that.

Obviously this doesn't fit in well with their
model of not being a corporate behemoth.

There is no model, just a bunch of amateurs.

I once read that computers crash less the longer you've used them.
Basically software is "training" it's users to subconsciously avoid
the things that make it go wrong, in the case of more adept users,
they barely notice they're doing it. Simpler users keep a notepad.

And a well designed system doesnt work like that.

I think this is related to Linux's main problem. They speak the
lingo too fluently, confusing it with English for normal people.

Their real problem is that is so diverse that hardly anyone
ever bothers to install it on the hardware most buy so the
buyer of the hardware can just turn it on and use it.

And thats never gunna change while ever there are so many different flavors.

Its only ever going to be used by those who can work out what flavor they prefer etc.

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

It's true, that 95 only used DOS as a bootloader. But in 3.1, drivers for
sound, networking, file access and pretty much everything else, were
loaded in DOS, and used by Windows through the usual DOS interrupts.

There was the late addition of "32-bit disk access", which stopped
the processor needing to flick in and out of Protected Mode dozens
of times a second, whenever you needed to access the disk.

So your claim is just plain wrong with the most important driver.

The exceptions are perhaps just printers and video.

No perhaps about it.

Talking of protected mode, what was the thing where the
PC had some sort of hack to reset the CPU to get back
into Real Mode from Protected, and back again? Sounds
a pain in the arse to program and keep everything consistent.
Especially lots of times a second, flicking the reset line at
audio frequencies. Is it still present now,

Nope. And it never was that bad either.

or did Intel do something to the processors?

Didnt need to.

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

Huge [email protected] wrote

Disappointing lack of source-code comparison, in modern pubs.

Mind I once knocked-up a Roman <> Arabic numeral converter
in C for a student I met in one once. Tried to explain it to her
with plentiful notes, no idea. I did quite a nice job for a couple
of hours' work. Perhaps it dragged her average up, to
compensate for her utter ignorance of what she was doing.

No, I've no idea why there were teaching programming to people who
weren't interested.

For the same reason they teach math and latin to those who arent interested.

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

Rod Speed wrote

Of course it does, stupid.
Nope.

You don't think they give Windows out for free?

Irrelevant to whether it costs you any MORE to use Linux instead.

When you buy a new computer, it's got Windows on it.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt.

The vendor had to pay for that,

Plenty dont.

and you have to pay the vendor for it. Even though you don't want it.

Nope, I havent paid a cent for it for any PC I have.

That's how come Microsoft make so much money, stupid.

Not from me it aint.

Imagine a supermarket who gave away apples with a particular box of
washing powder. There is no other way to buy an apple. You don't want
any washing powder, you just want an apple. And some idiot comes along
and says "What are you complaining about? The apples are free!".

Imagine a cafe full of Vikings, and you don't want any spam.

Been having these pathetic little fantasys long ?

<reams of your even sillier stuff flushed where it belongs>

 

[Rod Speed]

Huge wrote

Windows *still* hasn't caught up with Xerox.

And Xerox has been so stunningly successful with the
PC that we all swoon at the mear mention of its name.

Clearinghouse had capabilities that AD still doesn't.

And Xerox has been so stunningly successful with the
PC that we all swoon at the mear mention of its name.

<reams of your puerile shit any 2 year old could leave for dead flushed where it belongs>

 

[Jasen Betts]

Talking of protected mode, what was the thing where the PC had some
sort of hack to reset the CPU to get back into Real Mode from
Protected, and back again? Sounds a pain in the arse to program and
keep everything consistent. Especially lots of times a second,
flicking the reset line at audio frequencies. Is it still present now,
or did Intel do something to the processors?

When intel made the 80286 they made the first x86 protected mode,
and the egineers were so in awe of its power and utility that they
were sure noone would ever want to leave it.

Then IBM made the PC/XT-286 ... and there was a problem.

by the time the 80386 came out it was understood that an exit strategy
could be useful.

 

[greenaum]

That shit is sposed to have a line with just -- on it in front of it
so the better usenet clients can just auto flush it where it belongs.

I know. I wasn't aware, for the first couple of months I used it, but
now I keep it that way on purpose to annoy pedants. Works great!

Your flaming skillz are rubbish, btw.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #

 

[greenaum]

<snip>

But more importantly, why ARE you such a douchebag?

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #

 

[greenaum]

The whole episode has left the ISO itself in a very bad light indeed,
with calls for revising the procedures that let this happen.

Still, the ISO have lots of standards, they don't all stick. That's
the great thing about standards etc.

Can you have an ISO standard that only one company would be allowed to
implement? Or does this mean they're publishing their hidden APIs and
file specifications?

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #

 

[greenaum]

Maybe a thud a it's chopped up for paper to produce copies of a 6000
page standard no one will read.

They tried to read it but it was in a language noone understands. It
isn't really 6000 pages long, just 5 when you actually read it. And it
contains 7 previous versions, bits of other standards, and the credit
card details of most of the committee.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #

 

[Rod Speed]

greenaum wrote

Rod Speed <[email protected]> wrote

Your flaming skillz are rubbish, btw.

You wouldnt know what a real flame was if your lard arse was on fire.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Still, the ISO have lots of standards, they don't all stick. That's
the great thing about standards etc.

Can you have an ISO standard that only one company would be allowed to
implement? Or does this mean they're publishing their hidden APIs and
file specifications?

To the best of my knowledge, there is no requirement that an ISO
standard not rely on patented technologies, nor any requirement that a
company with patented technologies make them available to implementers.
So yes, it's possible to have an ISO standard that only one company can
implement.

Of course, OOXML serves as an example of an ISO standard that *no*
company has been able to implement at present.

 

[Charlie Gibbs]

I have to wonder why there isn't a Norton for Linux. No I don't. It's
because they designed in security from the start. Security's almost a
side-effect of the structure of the thing. In Windows security is
something you add on. As an application with a few dark tendrils into
mysterious unknowable bits of the workings.

Dark tendrils are a part of the Windows philosophy, from overly-complex
installation procedures to the Registry.

Maybe it's a plan. Perhaps one day the botnets will evolve
consciousness, as they integrate more semantic processing to get
through anti-spam measures. The perfect spam-sneaker would speak
English like a person, to get through protection. Markov chains have
already been used. Perhaps it already has happened, and a bunch of
computers are Bill Gates's dark master.

Let's just hope that its name isn't Skynet.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Is that an ISO standard? I thought it was ECMA...

ISO/IEC 25900 (apparently it was first standardized by Ecma; the ISO
standard is a later version).

 

[Charles Richmond]

To the best of my knowledge, there is no requirement that an ISO
standard not rely on patented technologies, nor any requirement that a
company with patented technologies make them available to implementers.
So yes, it's possible to have an ISO standard that only one company can
implement.

Of course, OOXML serves as an example of an ISO standard that *no*
company has been able to implement at present.

Perhaps the OOXML had a double oophorectomy... ;-)

--
+----------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond |
| |
| plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com |
+----------------------------------------+