HEY, CONGRATULATIONS! I'm so excited that you guys will finally be able to see what we've here in the States been seeing for a little while. Now you can FINALLY look up all those posts you filtered out and/or ignored about our (us Americans') reactions to the s3 eps and actually be able to put in some of your OWN opinions. Congratulations again!
deena lissa I'm so excited for you guys
"No, no, no, don't believe anything you hear. Get the real shit from me." -- Simon LeBon, "Behind the Music" (VH-1) Daria: I know what you mean, and that scares me.
I was going to say "what unpleasantness?" but then it clicked <lol>... Err, sorry. The other newsgroups I frequent are mostly kinda hostile, I'm not used to flame-free groups... :)
With Season 3 finally coming to the UK, does this mean no more spoiler space? Or do we have to wait until it's been seen in every country in the world?
So does anyone go on any newsgroups that are as generally non-unpleasant as this one? I go on alt.music.nirvana which is full of spam, crossposts, and "Kurt Cobain murder vs. suicide" threads, has an elite few who've been there for *years*, and is thus notorious for not being very welcoming; alt.fan.courtney-love which is an AOL-user-filled wasteland/spill-over for a.m.n. and has more trolls than regulars; and alt.music.manics which is mostly friendly appart from the monthly flamefest between three of the regulars, in which almost everyone participates, but from which nobody appears to learn as it happens every four weeks (conclusion: someone gets bad PMT... <g>). So this is the only newsgroup I frequent that is remotely friendly for any more than three weeks at a time. <g>
Well, I guess it's up to the 7% of non-UK or US a.t.d.-ers... That, or MTV. ;)
Hmph. Pity I don't like sports, if the newsgroups are all friendly.
Kyle, is your sole purpose in life to alter my sig to make it more "amusing" (read: filthy<g>)? I know it's already the only reason you reply to my posts. :P
Ah, but you still posted when I didn't have a sig. ;:)
Yes, I kinda hoped that your actual humour level was somewhere above the level you're exhibiting with these sig alterations. :) I would return the favour and make something funny out of your sig, only I have no imagination whatsoever and am not amusing enough to even make a half-way good "stupid grade school stuff" one. :)
Yes but he said it was his soul purpose, not his sole purpose.
I notice that C5 are not starting with the musical - is Through a Lens Darkly number #301, and does this mean we are going to see the season in the order in which it was intended? That would be cool.
My God, a message that's actually relevant to this particular thread! Someone mark the date and time on the calendar! <grin>
Yes, TALD is episode #301. D! was episode #307. Thus, you probably are going to see the episodes in production order, which would be "Through A Lens Darkly" (#301), "The Old and the Beautiful" (#302), "Depth Takes a Holiday" (#303), "Daria Dance Party" (#304), "The Lost Girls" (#305), and "Daria!" (#307).
Martin (to send E-mail, remove the "nospam" from my E-mail address) ---- Quinn: "When they got nervous, they'd drink cocoa." Helen: "Now, sweetie, there's nothing to worry about." (door slams) "Looters!" ---- Outpost Daria: Your Online Database for All Things Daria! http://systech.simplenet.com/daria/
One thought here, are channel 5 contractually obliged to show only the episodes that MTV has already shown in the states, or is there a remote possibility that use poor repressed Brits could get to see the rest of the series before the states?
Anybody got someone on the inside at channel 5 for the answers?
I don't think we need that! 8-) ISTM that if MTV keep to their declared intention of starting the second half of series three in May, the US fans *must* see the rest of the series before the UK fans. I'm making these assumptions: that c5 continues to show only one new episode a week, on a Saturday; that MTV continues to show no more than one new episode a week, on a Wednesday. Even if MTV restarts Daria on the very last Wednesday in May, and c5 shows the whole series in one uninterrupted block (use a monospaced font to view):
If MTV were to restart the series on the last Wednesday in May, the USA and UK fans will see 306 within a few days; after that, the gap is more than a week. It's going to make mincemeat of my filters! ISTM that using ep numbers in the headers might prove even more useful if things pan out in accord with the above scenario. Aren't the US fans going to get really fed up at us Brits discussing eps the week after they've discussed them? <sigh>
Of course, if MTV restart on any other Wednesday in May, the gap would widen.
Just one thought, will channel 5 show them in order, I only became interested in daria towards the end of the last showing on channel 5 and it appeared to be pretty random then, have they shown the others in order first in the past and then gone for a random approach ?
It would be cool if at least a couple of episodes showed at the sameish time on both sides of the pond.
I assume they will. I noted the dates I saw the eps in the repeat of series two (should I seek counselling?) and the ones I saw were in order.
time
Well, it may happen if either channel shows eps out of order (as you point out), or if MTV start on the last Wednesday in May *and* cancel Daria one week for some sort of special to take its slot.
On 22 Apr 1999 01:13:30 GMT, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from [email] (Kyle), and it said:
Note: original post didn't appear on my server.
Both alt.games.civ2 and alt.games.daggerfall are extremely flame-retardant. I think in the case of civ2, there's just not much to flame about, and there's always on topic stuff to talk about. It doesn't, howevert scream "community" like this one does.
Daggerfall, on the other hand, has a vibrant community of friends, and a large group of regulars who all know how to handle flames: patiently request that they cease their hostility, point out there error, and if they still refuse to be civil, killfile. Daggerfall is an old game, so we don't get droves of newbies that don't know the status-quo, but it has intense staying power (with those that like it), so many of them have been in the group for as much as two or three years. I'm pushing a year there, myself. Incidentally, a lot of the OT tangents you'll find there are very simelar to the ones you'll find here (like the dictionary thread, for example ;)
Most of the ngs I'm on are non-unpleasant. I think flames occur mainly on teen-oriented ones, advocacy ones, and ones that suffer from malicious cross-posting such as that Star Trek thread that recently popped up on all tv groups. The only high-flame ng I can think of offhand that I'm on is alt.folklore.urban. Using a smiley there is enough to cause a flame war (they see them as an affront to literate people). Oh and the digital photography / photoshop newsgroups have an ongoing war between two opposing schools of thought on how the tonal values of photographs should be encoded digitally. Each claims that the other is promoting bad practice and poor picture quality. Oh and come to think of it there's a fan newsgroup where the argument about whether or not it's ok to post binaries has descended to the "your mother was a whore" level. So I suppose unpleasant newsgroups are not all that uncommon amongst the ones I read after all.
atd is still one of the most tolerant groups I've been on though, for better or worse people here let lapses of netiquette slide rather than complain about them. The My So-Called Life newsgroup also used to be equally pleasant, but it's pretty much dead now.
Killjoys. ;-) They merely prove the theory that people who worry too much about *appearing* to be literate are too damn uptight (and probably not very intelligent, either) :P Esse quam vidieri.
They're both wrong. Film over digital! Let the Jihad continue! Death to the CCD-loving infidels! <g>
Well it's nice to see that some bits of the net are still as infantile as ever. <g>
Actually, some of the comp.os.linux newsgroups are pretty good, and rec.video.desktop is okay. As for rec.arts.animation and alt.animation, well, other than the odd flame, they seem okay.
The reason why I ignore breaches of nettiquette is simply because I choose to ignore certain societal constructs that I didn't get to have any active input in creating. Either that, or I'm just too damn lazy to enforce someone else's ideals. <g>
oh, well, such is USENET.
rich.
Quinn: People are so weird!
Daria: Some are weird. Some are just astonishingly self-centered and deceitful.
alt.tv.star-trek.voyager is probably on of the most hostile newsgroups I've ever posted to. It's hard to explain exactly what goes on there. alt.tv.simpsons is pretty hostile, too, and most of their hostility is decidedly on-topic (which I find weird).
So, to answer your question: no (unless I count alt.fan.sifl-olly, which has had about five posts in the last three weeks).
Hey, I have newsgroups like that! Actually some, like alt.fan.bonzo-dog, depend on how much time Mike has to post, and if anyone besides Mike posts something, which will happen, on occasion. But that's a fairly friendly group, except our one flame war about ukelele tuning. alt.fan.goons is pretty nice, too, although it's generally a vontinual stream of quotes, but alt.books.kurt-vonnegut , while sometimes friendly, is very flame-prone.
Dagny misery chick, cynic
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"Did you ever get the feeling That the truth is less revealing Then a downright lie? And did you think your head is hip To certain things it's not equipped to qualify?" Neil Innes
I don't think this newsgroup is at all unpleasant, so I guess that does say a lot for the newsgroups that I frequent (alt.culture.us.1980s, alt.music.duran-duran, alt.music.eighties, sometimes I'll read alt.config too). But with alt.culture.us.1980s, there is a lot of traffic so there's bound to be conflict, and there are a lot of older people who slag off the '90s while romanticizing the '80s. alt.music.duran-duran is only entertaining when some bit of news occurs, like the "Behind the Music" they showed of the band a few weeks back, the release of "Strange Behaviour"/"Night Version Companion"/"With Love and Thanks", discussion on the "Greatest" video, the very recent US tour dates announcement, and talk of what people feel about the upcoming "Hallucinating Elvis" release. Otherwise it's just a lot of eBay announcements and "I have a list of items I'd like to sell off. Please e-mail me for the list." alt.music.eighties is a new newsgroup and so its traffic is very light, although I do see it being populated quite heavily when it gets established and onto more news servers.
"MTV, you better play 'Daria' worldwide or we'll do something you'll not like...take over your airwaves and play nonstop Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli and say you guys like that type of music best. *evil cackle*"
Yes, we're spoiled here. Head over to alt.journalism.gonzo by comparison, they're in a constant state of flame war. I don't remember there ever NOT being a flame war, but I guess that's to be expected with them. At least it's not all people going "I jUst tooK a BUNCH of Acid and BOOOYYY I fele GooD maaaann!!!!!11..." any more. And we're not always in a cuteness argument like alt.music.monkees, which was also why I think it was all females besides the one gay guy with a crush on Mike Nesmith.
Dagny misery chick, cynic
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"Did you ever get the feeling That the truth is less revealing Then a downright lie? And did you think your head is hip To certain things it's not equipped to qualify?" Neil Innes
On 22 Apr 1999 00:37:35 GMT, [email] (Eccles9697) wrote:
Or head over to any of the comp.*.advocacy newsgroups, where it's the norm to flame the competition and its users, rather than advocate your favorite computer/operating system (gee, what a novel concept for an ADVOCACY newsgroup!). :-)
Martin (to send E-mail, remove the "nospam" from my E-mail address) ---- Quinn: "When they got nervous, they'd drink cocoa." Helen: "Now, sweetie, there's nothing to worry about." (door slams) "Looters!" ---- Outpost Daria: Your Online Database for All Things Daria! http://systech.simplenet.com/daria/
I'm trying to think of something to quote that would imply happiness or enthusiasm of some sort, but I can't. So I'll think of something to say myself: it's good series 3's being shown. Pity about all the exams and bad stuff happening.
Where do you get all these from?? You change your sig, like, every post. The chocolate one was funny, too. And very true.
Actually that one was a trick quote. Have you ever seen Reboot? Hex's "happy" smile is the sort of thing that would make your blood turn to ice. (Although in this instance she was full of glee as she'd just turned everyone to stone with her Medusa virus.)
It changes automatically each time I reboot, which, given the flakiness of Windoze, is quite often. (I worked out today that I have to reboot it 500 times as often as the Unix system I used to use!) I can also change the sig on demand if I get bored with the one currently in use. There's a Unix program called "fortune" which each time you run it displays a quote or joke picked at random from a database of thousands of the things. I have a DOS version of it which I patched into my newsreader sig file. It re-does the quote on my website homepage too, though I don't get round to changing that quite as often.
(See also the entry for "fortune cookie" in the newly updated jargon file on my website, <URL: http://www.xerez.demon.co.uk/lexicon.html>, (also available by choosing "word salad" from the Cafe Shez menu).)
I've updated my TV guide page now to include the Daria news, along with a new pic from my files. <URL: http://www.xerez.demon.co.uk/TVupdate.html>
Something good has happened. That's errm, good. Makes up for my stomach ache, which is again bad enough to warrant a day off school (which is in most ways another good thing). ;)
What a good bit of news, it almost makes up for the 3 mcdonalds happy meals I endured in an attempt to get beanie babies (I ended up with 3 the same and a sore gut, did they just add another quart of grease to the fries recipe).
You didn't have to EAT all those happy meals, if you just wanted the toys. My brother used to love eating at the golden arches until the products fell into his "I don't eat anything that's green" category, and I'm not talking about pickels and lettuce.
Why would you want the toys anyway? Sorry, I kinda bypassed the "liking toys" stage of development altogether <g> so I haven't even got childhood memories of eating happy meals to get toys, and thus have absolutely *no* understanding of people who collect all the toys and that... :)
Me neither, the plan was collect the full set and sell them on, as there have been 2 million sets produced and there's an estimated 6 million collectors, though I must admit that I'm seriously thinking about collecting them cos they're cute and I could do with a bit more cute in my life.
the only flaw in the plan was I'd forgotten just how awfull the entire mcdonald experiance is from the "can I take your order please" right up to enduring the "food". And for this promotion only they're forcing you to buy the meal, you can't just buy the toys and a coke
On Wed, 21 Apr 1999 22:56:25 +0100, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from "Bettster" , and it said:
Yeah, I can only agree with this. I tend to like the chance of winning something, so when Taco Bell has game pieces on their cups, I tend to go to Taco Bell a lot. (Hey, I like the food!) I had the same plan with McDonalds... but I just couldn't endure the food... the stuffs absolutely disgusting!
On Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:59:21 +0100, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from "endless, nameless" , and it said:
Though I've never been one to collect "all the toys" with regard to anything, I did jump on the chance to grab the entire Voltron lions set. ;) Actually, there is one set of fast food toys I did collect. It was the Star Wars toys Taco Bell sold when the special editions were showing.
"Meet the babies conceived with the aid of a burger house soda cup, next, on Sick, Sad World."
Or, "Why, yes, good sir, they do so say round these parts as the old ways is the best. Now if you and your lady dance seven times widdershins round the maypole at midnight under a full moon, cast a piece of silver into the old well, and eat three Happy Meals before you retire to your chamber...."
Perhaps if I endure more happy meals the Gods will see my sacrifice and get my mum to tape Daria off the crystal clear cable instead of the 3 free ghosts from the roof top signal. Or maybe this week I won't have to trust other people.
LOL, yeah, hehehehe. I was in town with one of my friends on saturday and she wanted to get a happy meal, but I didn't let her because I was feeling really shit on saturday but I'm fine now so that's good, I'm just a bit hyper, hehehe, people kept telling me to calm down and stuff. She wanted to wear a hat thingie as well (talking about my friend again now LOL) but I wouldn't let her because my other friend was working there and I didn't want her to make a prat of us both in front of him, hehehe... I went into town with him today, actually, and I kept talking all the time and stuff, and we went in McDonalds but didn't get a happy meal LOL. Sorry, I'm just really weird today, which is why I'm posting today LOL. :)
Congratulations, guys! May the eps bring you as much enjoyment as they did me, and more in a few cases <g> It's going to be fun reading your reactions.
-Mindy (Who is in a *very* good mood because her father just bought her a shiny old TRS-80! The stuff of legends! Now I just have to get it to boot up, LOL.)
On Wed, 21 Apr 99 20:44:09 GMT, [email] (Mindy) wrote:
Ah, the old Trash-80! You're looking at a veteran of the Radio Shack microcomputer years. Which one did you get? Model I? III? 4? Color Computer? Ahh, them were the days...
Martin (to send E-mail, remove the "nospam" from my E-mail address) ---- Quinn: "When they got nervous, they'd drink cocoa." Helen: "Now, sweetie, there's nothing to worry about." (door slams) "Looters!" ---- Outpost Daria: Your Online Database for All Things Daria! http://systech.simplenet.com/daria/
Model 4. I'm in love with the thing! It's got that cute little case and the keyboard stashes away so nicely... <g> Now I have to fish out and install one of my old 5.25" drives into my REAL computer, so I can make the poor lil' guy a boot disk. Then I can find out if it's got a hard drive. But before I can get started with any of that, I promised myself I'd get my old 286 up and running. Stupid hardware incompatibility issues. I guess I should be seeing it as a "challenge," and something of a privelege - not a lot of 13-year-olds get the opportunity to learn about technology in such a hands-on way.
-Mindy Who's off to mount an expedition to find her old peripheral cards
Well, there's a great little office suite that will work on a 286 called New Deal Office
http://www.newdeal.com/
that you should look at for your 286. I strongly suggest getting IBM DOS 2000 for that 286...it has a Y2K TSR that actually *works* with old non-Y2K compliant machines.
Now, as far as that Model 4 goes...I dunno what to do about Y2K compliance on a machine like that. However, it will be SO COOL when you get that running.
I am totally against disposable computers. I have an IBM PC 5150 (original IBM 5-slot) that unfortunately doesn't work, a couple of compact Macs that do (Mac Classic and Mac Classic II), as well as a 486DX2-66 which almost has all the parts I need to get it fired up again, a K5-166 based PC, and a Mac Performa 460 which is what I'm writing this on. I want to eventually get a Mac SE/30 to trick out and turn into a web server, and some sort of Quadra AV. Finally, I also want an iMac.
Yes, I prefer Macs to PCs. But anything that runs is worth saving and using somehow. Compact Macs like Classic IIs and SE/30s are particularly worth saving because they are so small and portable and can get on the Internet with ease. But even a PCXT or a Mac Plus can use a shell connection to the Internet. People give lip service to the idea of refurbishing computers for Information Have-Nots, but nobody's really DOING it.
Well, I remember that the operating system (TRSDOS 6) was patched many years back to allow dates through 1999, but I don't know about 2000 and beyond. My best guess would be "I seriously doubt it."
Martin (to send E-mail, remove the "nospam" from my E-mail address) ---- Quinn: "When they got nervous, they'd drink cocoa." Helen: "Now, sweetie, there's nothing to worry about." (door slams) "Looters!" ---- Outpost Daria: Your Online Database for All Things Daria! http://systech.simplenet.com/daria/
Hey, thanks! I've been looking for stuff for it; my mother threw out a lot of our old 286 stuff.
I know! <bg> I haven't had a lot of time to work with it, unfortunately. School and my "social life" and schtuff. Hopefully I can get something accomplished this week... i.e., making it say something other than an error message when I turn it on.
Ugh, the very idea of disposable computers seems ridiculous to me. We've had one of our computers since '89, although pretty much the only thing that's still the same is the case. My dad's got a pretty cool system for upgrades, actually. The new thing gets put in the P2-300, the thing we had to take out of the P2-300 goes to my P1-133, which in turn gets funneled to my dads 486DX-90, which isn't even operational yet. They're all networked together and proxied on the P2-300. More fun than a conditional operator. Plus our old PS/2, the 286, and the TRS-80, which all in all means we have three times as many computers in my house as people.
*Whew* </brag>
I'm thinking about maybe buying an old LC2 from my school, if I can get a decent price on it, just to play around with the OS and maybe crack it open and see the differences between it and my PC. Fixing old computers can be a real pain, but it's so rewarding when you flip the switch and *pow!* it actually DOES something.
If you can snag an LCIII, do it, because they are more capable machines than the LCII which is a bit crippled. An LCII can only take 10MB RAM (2 on the motherboard and two 4MB 30-pin SIMMS in the slots) runs best with System 7.1, and will not allow you to run more than one or two proggies at once before running out of RAM.
However, you can run MacTCP and MacPPP and connect to the Internet with this machine. Which makes it pretty capable in my book.
Oh yeah, if you get the right adapter, you can use a standard PC VGA monitor with it.
On Thu, 22 Apr 99 02:35:21 GMT, [email] (Mindy) wrote:
Stashes away...? Oh! You've got the Model 4P. Nice little machine. I've got one of those tucked away somewhere in my basement, along with my old Model 4 (it had a larger screen integrated with the keyboard and disk drives in a single solid case). I never use 'em, but I just can't seem to let go of 'em.
It doesn't. Hard drives for the old TRS-80 line were bulky external units, as the controllers at the time were *huge* compared to the ones used today. Besides, there's literally no room left in the 4P's tightly packed case. (Warning: Don't ever take it apart unless you are *very* confident you can put it back together. <grin>)
Martin (to send E-mail, remove the "nospam" from my E-mail address) ---- Quinn: "When they got nervous, they'd drink cocoa." Helen: "Now, sweetie, there's nothing to worry about." (door slams) "Looters!" ---- Outpost Daria: Your Online Database for All Things Daria! http://systech.simplenet.com/daria/
Oh. Thanks! You've just saved me quite a bit of trouble. I can imagine the look on my face when I got the case off, LOL, although I have the utmost confidence in my abilities as a Computer Geek (which is usually when things start to go wrong, isn't it?).
The Commodore 64 was my first computer. We got it when I was four. I still have a photo of me and my mom right after we got it. It was hooked up to an old tv on the kitchen table and I'm trying to play one of my new games on it, even though I can barely reach the keys. Unfortunatly they sold it at a yard sale after about eight or ten years. :(
The Plus 4 was a 64K computer, with it's own internal office packages: word processor, spreadsheet, database software, disk drive manager. I guess it was intended as a sort of business machine. However, it used the C16 OS, so the only games my brother and I could get were winky weeny Commodore 16 games (the only advantage being they didn't take 10 mins to load). We didn't even have a printer or disk drive to make use of the word processsor and stuff.
Our Dad got it one Christmas as it was bundled with a load of stuff (cassette drive, joystick, games) for a bargain price (�99.99 if I remember correctly, less than half what you'd pay if you got everything separately).
The line died about a year and a half after it came out. I think our machine is still around, and it still works.
Cassette Drive? (*shudders*) -- I'd put in a "Daria Dance Party" spoiler-ref here, but I'll resist the urge. <g> I have *very* bad memories attached to the Atari 410 "Program Recorder." Yeah, right. Wait 20 minutes to CLOAD Zaxxon, and then it barfs data all over the screen. (*shudders again*) Or, CSAVE your little Basic project, then find out that you used tape that was a little *too* cheap, and see it stretch obscenely and watch in horror as your hard work fails to load. Ick.
You should hold on to it-- it'll probably be worth something in about 20 years, considering that I'd never even *heard* of it at all. BTW, what ever happened to the BBC computer? Did it ever make it to market?
rich.
Mr. O'Neill: Let's pledge to make Daria's dream a reality!
Daria: You mean the one where people walking down the street burst into flames?
I remember years later, putting on one of my old cassettes, and thinking it was Lou Reed's _Metal Machine Music_ or an Alvin Lucier piece...but no, it was just a set of old Atari programmes. ;-{)>
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"I don't do emotions. I just sing notes." --Wendy Smith
ARRGHGH!! And that damned onboard speaker buzz that came with it. But I did once run a program that manipulated the internal speaker to play music. Bleepy and horrible, of course, as those of you who played games on pre-soundcard PC's ought to know. Remember the original SIM City?
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"The only completely consistent people are dead" --Aldous Huxley
N.P.:"Drive Baby Drive"- S h o n a L a i n g / S o u t h
Ah, C64's were for wimps. All the funky graphics characters were printed -right there on the keys-, fer cryin' out loud! Where's the adventure in that? ;)
Chris Majors Who used to have the memory map for his old Atari 800XL -memorized,- thankewverymuch. :)
You know, I still have a lot of old Atari Programming books and a bunch of old Antic and Analog mags... they're all in the same box as my 800... not an XL, the *old* 800. ;-) Hmm... if I could get my hands on an old-fashioned 5-pin DIN RGB cable, I could get that puppy running again... anybody got any ideas? ;-)
starting to seriously geek out, rich.
Jake: I love camping! I love it! ... Has anybody seen my pants?
My first toy! I remember playing Sesame Street games on one of those when I was about three. I cried when my dad sold it :-( If you comb the Goodwills and Salvation Armys in your town and any nearby major metropolis, you're likely to find one... eventually. If not, don't blame me... although you are likely to find some pretty interesting stuff while you're looking. I recently found a Whole Earth Catalog from 1980 while looking for a cheap monitor. It's kinda cool to look at one, after hearing my dad talk about them so much.
-Mindy Sitting around like a lazy bum while her dad and second cousin do housework
I still have my old TRS-80 Model II in the basement. I did lots of interesting things with that computer. Helps if you have an assembler. Connected it to the shortwave and decoded tty messages, built a MIDI adapter for it and downloaded SYSEX PCM data from a synth, computed Fourier power series of same (takes patience), learned all kinds of stuff about all kinds of stuff, and of course, met all kinds of interesting people online. Computing was fun when everyone gasped at the things you did with it, though they frequently weren't even well- enough informed to know when to be impressed. Now EVERYONE is using computers even though they usually haven't the foggiest notion of how they work and you can't impress anyone anymore no matter how impressive your achievements. Takes all the fun out of it somehow. Using software used to be fun when you'd pore over pages of printout to figure out where you screwed up or check register contents in a debugger as you single-step through. The tension when you wondered if your assembler program was going to run amok and lock up the system. The thrill of achievement when it ran the way it was supposed to. Satisfying your muse by thinking up new swear words when things didn't go right. Now it's tear off the shrink-wrap and run setup and if it doesn't work you go online to the manufacturer's web page. No disassembly required. Sure, a great deal has been gained but a little something has been lost too. The excitement of doing something for yourself. It's hardly worth bothering with it now that all the software worth writing has already been written. They call it "Re-inventing the Wheel."
I've realized I've been using Microsoft software long before anyone ever heard of the IBM PC. Maybe I should have bought the stock then instead of the computer.
Well, if you're feeling bored and unchallenged, there's always Linux-- the community is always looking for new contributions to the growing pile of GNU software, and installation can be as Byzantine as you want it. ;-)
rich. (who took over a week to get X Windows running on his old laptop.)
Jake: Who do you want in an emergency? Superman, or your *damn inner child?*
Sorry, that quote just popped into my head and I felt like sharing all of a sudden....
OK, back to your regularly scheduled old computers discussion, which I can't enter into because the first time I actually TOUCHED a computer was in 1993, and I've only owned two computers since that time.
Gawd... the first 'puter I used in school was a Trash-80 Model I in 4th grade-- that and an Apple II+ I always wanted an Apple, but I never could afford one. :( Still can't. :P The first 'puter I actually *owned* was an Atari 400 -- the one with the wipe-off keyboard. I still have my old Atari 800 in a box somewhere... geez... I wonder how many puters I've had over the years? On second thought, better not go there... I might start looking like a geek. ;-)
rich.
Quinn: I can't be a brain! My friends will hate me!
You had computers in school? We used slide rules! Well not quite, actually we used calculators and used to vie over whose had the most scientific functions or best programmability.
I had an Amstrad PCW, the computer that computerised all the authors, lecturers etc. in the UK who couldn't afford Macs (which is probably most of them). It had great support for special characters, I was shocked when I switched to a PC and found I could no longer type open & close quotes or long dashes into my documents, nor most Greek or Mathematical characters and symbols. Even under Windows you can't type these directly from the keyboard like you could on the PCW, you have to use 4 digit codes or pick them from the charmap utility. I think the PCW had the widest character set of any software I've ever used. Sadly it used non-standard 3" floppy disks and had very little in the way of decent comms software, which means it's incredibly hard to transfer data to/from other machines, so mine now just gathers dust in a corner.
Arrghgh! That awful membrane keyboard. It took so much abuse from me,
eventually the semicolon "key" stuck, and whenever you turned it on, a cascade
of semicolons would spill down. I also recall that Atari's BASIC was different
from standard...probably because of copyright. I recall trying to translate
programmes from standard BASIC to Atari BASIC. I think that's where the
frustration started, well that *and* the fact that it was a four-bit piece of
s-h-i-crap.
Our junior-high school had about a dozen Commodore PET computers and one
Apple IIe, which was then considered "high-tech". There was always some oily
geek hogging the Apple, leaving the rest of us proles to the crappy PETs.
..........................."'Puter"? %-{)>
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"Parece cosa de maligno. Los pianos no estallan por casualidad." --Gabriel Garcia Marquez
N.P.:"Way of insight"- T a l i e s y n / W h e n S i l e n c e W i l l B e U n b e a r a b l e
Well, let's see...when I was in late elementary school (late 80's), we'd get to use the AppleII's as a special treat (and I guess it was then) every once in a while. They'd have us play little games like "Word Munchers" and "Math Racer" (or something like that). For all I knew then, that's all computers were used for.
"Beats algebra, though, doesn't it?" **************************************** "Awww, poor baby. You want some cheese for that whine?" "You want some corn for that pun?"
Use of the Poly's computer centre was negotiated for our school's sixth formers.
Of course, providing you had a valid username to authorise your programs, the staff couldn't tell a tall 4th/5th former from a sixth former. ;-)
I used to walk into town, descend to the basement, produce my programs a line at a time on punched cards, feed the card stack into a machine that printed human-readable characters across the top, verify each card, take the stack to the tape punch and produce the paper tape, fill in a job card, and hand over the paper tape and job card at the window, and go back the next day to collect the printout.
It's no wonder I was the last person I know to install Windows! "C:>" was a great user interface (compared to a stack of blank cards!).
And *why* did they always put those things in the basement? My experience was pretty much the same. Three, count 'em, three choices of programming language (BASIC, COBOL, or FORTRAN)! No need to know anything about the operating system, it's on a mainframe ten miles away. You're using a terminal connected by a MoDem, which can send or recieve at an amazing 300 baud.
I do still have a couple of punch tapes downstairs. I think one runs a routine to print "HERBERT!" 317 times. Don't ask why; Just because. I have absolutely no idea what the other one is. And I probably couldn't find out, since I don't think there are any machines left to read it.
TDR: Do you think Daria knows Unix?
Peace Kevin (who's proud to know his grep from his sed).
On 24 Apr 1999 17:28:57 GMT, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from [email] (KTrick45), and it said:
I doubt it. A person her age, in her time, would have little reason to learn, and even less access to a machine using this language. She could probably figure it out without too much trouble, but I never saw Unix until I was in college, let alone someone who is now sixteen in a Microsoft dominated (at least at the surface) computing world.
I disagree-- if she has a 486-33, she's got a computer that's able to run Linux. (And run it pretty well, IMO.) It's more of a question of personality/temperment.
Daria's never struck me as the hard-core compu-geek type that would spend a lot of spare time trying to install Linux, let alone spend the time to learn it.. ;-) Now, as for CyberKron and Cannibal Fragfest, well, that's different... ;-)
hanging out with the other fanatical Linux users, rich.
Quinn: I can't be a brain! My friends will hate me!
On Sun, 25 Apr 1999 00:06:23 GMT, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from [email] (Tarvok), and it said:
I should really stop posting for a few days. This is the second time I've posted something inaccurate and/or stupid, and those were just the one's I saw without any help... :(
Hey, I know UNIX, and I have little to no reason to. I just learned it about three months ago, when I decided knowing HTML didn't make me an Internet geek. Perhaps she decided to learn it out of curiosity, or Highland High gave her an opportunity to harass people by playing "compuer lady" in study hall, telling people to select everything and press "deliver" to save <eg>. The computers are networked together on UNIX, and she thinks she should have some actual knowledge of how to work it. That seems kind of like her, doesn't it?
-Mindy telnet kusd.edu 25 mail from: [email] rcpt to: [email] data BLAH! .. quit
Well since I have an old Sun 3/60 called Daria, I can say with cirtainty that daria *RUNS* unix :-) (Hey Jane too....but she's a Silicon Graphics.....).
Phill.
/----------------[ Courage is Grace Under Pressure. ]--------------------\
\--------[ I Want to look at life, In the Available Light ]--------------/
I remember "getting" to triple up on Apple II's for a treat in about second grade or so. Then everyone got excited, because the school got two classrooms chock-full of LC II's. We'll never know what happened to the Apple II's, although my fifth-grade teacher (at another school BTW) had about 14 of them, and made us write BASIC on them in our "free time". I remember that well...
10 PRINT "I am a computer!" 20 END
Hey, we were in fifth grade, cut us some slack.
-Mindy To prove I've moved on to bigger and better (?!) things, <script language="JavaScript"> alert("I am a computer!"); </script>
Yeah, I thought of that, but I think I'll just stick with Windows 98. It does what I want done with a minimum of trouble. Time for to quit fooling around and start using the computer for serious tasks. Now, lessee, where's that Duke Nukem CD? <G>
"It was time for us to move on." "If you want to call it that."
Yeah, now we have to pore over pages of vacuous online help trying to figure out how to use the damn software in the first place.
I've just been having something like that in producing my own version of the Jargon File (aka Hackers dictionary) - I wrote some macros to process the html files it consists of, and when you let an automated script loose on 2,216 files all in one go it's always a bit nailbiting as to whether it will work or screw everything up. With one run I incautiously didn't do a test run first, and it proceeded to spew out a huge mass of error messages. By the time I managed to kill it entries A - B had vanished: 270 files gone in seconds!
I wonder if Daria ever got her webpage up in the end, I seem to recall Quinn pinched the software for it.
On Thu, 22 Apr 1999 10:08:29 +0100, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from Shez , and it said:
I was about to write something wondering why she needed the special software in the first place, but then I remembered: she wasn't interested in setting up a web page in the first place. "The shrink wrap never comes off." She just wanted to trade it in for some ultraviolent computer game. Had she really wanted a web page, I'm sure she could've set it up long ago, _without_ using up parent credits.