Posts by jake 26682 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
There's nowt wrong with either Vim or nvi. Install both. And stevie. And elvis. Comes in handy when you have a need to automate stuff on various platforms. For example, Vim on Apple, stevie on Windows ... The basics work across all of them, but the details vary if you're trying to do anything out of the mainstream.
Things were changing so fast back then that it would have been near impossible for a software based solution to keep up. Remember, small garage-based Mom&Pop ISPs were going from startup to "global" in a period of months. Business evolution was out-stripping the technology. Manually adding what was necessary worked (mostly), so that was how it was done. It wasn't right or wrong, it just was.
We've moved on. I'm not all that certain things are better now.
"DNS wasn't around in the 1970s. And neither was vi or emacs. The 70s and early 80s Arpanet used the hosts.txt file."
Not as DNS, no (that was 1983) ... But there were (localish) implementations of name to numbers translation that mostly worked.
I think you'll find vi & EMACS[1] were both born in the same year, that year being 1976. I remember swearing at Bill Joy in person over vi, and at rms via email over EMACS, both well before 1980.
The first copy of Jake Feinler's file that I received from Jon was called HOSTS.TXT ... yes, all caps. It was renamed to hosts a couple years later. The Hosting Name Registry started in 1972.
In the late '90s I used to host install parties[0] at Foothill JC in Los Altos (sometimes at De Anza or Cañada). The first time around (late '95 or early '96), I pointed out the existence of mc, (release 3.0 or 3.1). Several of the newbies latched onto it as being somewhat familiar. I guess I hadn't impressed on them the necessity of creating a user account, especially when they were just starting out with *nix ... Much hilarity ensued. I corrected my approach, and the issue almost went away (there is always one ...).
Oddly enough, the single biggest mistake was "tidying" the file system.
[0] BSD, Slackware and/or Minix, Coherent if you had your own set of disks.
"And they both ripped off the Xerox Alto environment."
Back then the concept of "ripping off" didn't really exist in the computing world. As one example, almost all computers shipped with complete source code, not just to the OS, but also to the applications. Consider that nobody attending The Mother of All Demos had to sign an NDA.
It wasn't until after Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists" that the big-wigs in the computer world started jealously guarding this kind of thing.
I still use mc (Midnight Commander, a GPLv3 clone of the Norton offering) occasionally on my *nix systems. It's a useful tool, and a lot more powerful that it looks on first glance. Recommended.
N.B. Be VERY careful if you choose to run it as root ... it will do exactly what you tell it to do. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I wondered: "Where are you going to put it?"
Answer: Malham Cove. Of course. A couple masts to the South and East and a little rigging to support the reflectors and receiver, and Bob's yer auntie.
I'll leave it to the usual "Experts" here to figure out how to fund it.
Meteor Crater[0] is square, not round. Seriously, look at it. It's also the wrong shape top to bottom. Turning it into a dish would involve quite a bit more bedrock removal than one might think. Also, sinking the necessary anchors around the circumference would be problematic, due to the impact fractured rock surrounding the site.
Utah has plenty of Earthquakes. See here for current 'quakes.
[0] Strangely enough, it got its name from the nearest Post Office, not the rock from space ... at the time, most folks thought it was Volcanic in nature.
Good idea. The more the merrier!
But ... Where are you going to put it? How are you going to fund it? (You know that an American Mile is 8 furlongs, same as in Blighty, right? This is a good thing, or your records at Santa Pod would be meaningless on the World stage ...)
Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton (looking down on Silly Con Valley) still does useful work with optical kit that is over 130 years old, despite the best efforts of last August's SCU Lightning Complex Fire.
Similar for Mount Wilson Observatory, looking down on the LA basin (has also been threatened by fires in recent years).
In the mid-late '80s I was a Yank working in a Yank company. Our software had an Abort command, and another Yank company asked us to change the name. We told them to fuck off.
No, really, our CEO called their CEO and asked if they were kidding about renaming abort. Their CEO indicated they were serious. Our CEO told him to fuck off. In those words. Their CEO sputtered and blustered. Our CEO asked him what part of "fuck off" did he misunderstand? Theirs sputtered and blustered some more. Our CEO laughed at him. Theirs finally hung up. Ours said "I was wondering how long I could keep the shithead on the line." Best conference call I ever sat in on :-)
Actually, this Yank learned about the Barbary Pirates raiding Europe for slaves way back when he was enrolled in Ray Lyman Wilbur Junior High School in Palo Alto. They raided all the way up to Iceland, if I recall correctly.
However, this same Yank remembers no mention of the Barbary pirates at all from school in Yorkshire. Viking raids, yes, but not Islamic raids. But then they never mentioned Sir Francis Drake's pirate & slave trading days, either.
Note that I know Word quite well. I've even taken courses on it over the years. One can't properly advise others to avoid a product unless you understand it and it's competition thoroughly.
But that doesn't mean that I use it. Familiarity truly breeds contempt in this case.
You are clearly inventing stupid excuses to change the language ... and in this very forum, the people who use this lingo day in and day out are telling you that the ends don't justify the necessary means to implement your demands. And yet you still insist your crusade is correct, and all the rest of us are wrong?
There's a word for that.
As for "These changes are typically invisible to the end users anyway" ... If so, then what's the fucking point? Change for change's sake, to make you feel better about something that you (hopefully!) never participated in?
There's a word for that, too.
... An AC who is seemingly in favo(u)r of somehow sanitizing Technical English so as not to offend anybody accidentally somehow sees fit to use insulting language when addressing the group he disagrees with?
There is a word for that, and I don't think it's going to become sanitized anytime soon.
[0] If my use of the word "straight" in this context offends you, seek help,
It's hardly confined to left wing nuts. Wingnuts of every political stripe engage in this kind of asshattery, and you know it just as well as I do.
I humbly submit that this particular branch of human stupidity can and should stand alone without dragging politics into it.
Edit: Damn cat keeps posting for me ... This round's on me.
"Software updates can obviously update language as part of other updates, online docs can be amended, graphics may take some time to be redone or if the original files exist could be automated."
You are volunteering your time and money to implement this world-wide? Kewl. Be sure to let us all know when you are done, OK? Have fun!
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