[Info-vax] Real Usenet clients, was: Re: backups and compaction or nocompaction might be better

[AEF]

On Jan 31, 1:25 pm, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <kee4n5$oi... at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
>
> <seaoh... at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> > > I learned to type on a manually powered typewriter which would hit the
> > > end of the carriage and overstrike and any additional keystrokes!
>
> I learned on a semi-electric (electric keys, but manual carriage return
> and line feed).

I learned on a manual, and found the electric significantly less
demanding on the hand muscles.

>
> > But have you moved on from those old manual typewriters, maybe to an
> > electric typewriter, and probably from now to a computer?
>
> yes i hav sir but normally i write in the oldskool style because it is
> easier to read and gives U the impression that i have some minimal
> standard of education but of course if it is 2hard4u then dont bother as
> im sure some fancy cloud computing stuff can decode ur linez

With computers you can type while you drive! Excuse me, text. (Not
recommended, and fortunately not legal.)

Computers are great for editing movies. :-| I'm working on some of my
Super 8 greats. I'm using iMovie, which has a great design, but too
many annoying bugs, esp. when you change the frame rate, as I was
forced to do. Oh, if you have 18 fps footage, convert it to 30 fps,
not 24 fps, especially if there's any fast motion, or even regular-
speed panning and such, in your films.

> > Hopefully
> > not using paper for reading postings, and hopefully you've avoided the
> > generations of printing terminals that were around.  (Or have you
> > connected that old manual typewriter into an nntpd net news server
> > directly somehow?  That'd be an interesting hack.  News postings
> > arriving, and clattering away as they're printed.  :-)

A similar feat was done in the Star Trek TOS episode "Assignment:
Earth". Miss Roberta Lincoln (played by Terri Garr) would speak and
the (electric) typewriter, via Gary Seven's multi-purpose device,
would type everything she said on an actual typewriter, including
punctuation!

>
> There is an expression: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Yes,
> technical progress is good, but that is no reason to break with
> tradition if those traditions are good, in particular if they are better
> than the new stuff.  I remember reading an interview with Thomas Dolby

Sorry, I got lost. What traditions are we talking about?

> 20 years or so ago (i.e. he was interviewed and I read the interview; I
> didn't read with him) in which he said something like "In the future,
> maybe you can see some old geezer with long hair and a shiny guitar in a
> small club, but most music will be like this", meaning his music.  Like
> the cars of the 1940s, this futuristic stuff became dated more quickly
> than is normally the case.  Blinded by science indeed!  I recently read
> that he now writes ring tones for Nokia (no joke!)

Brian Eno wrote the only cool sound that ever emanated from Windows:
the Windows 95 start-up tune (a mirco-composition). I always thought
it was a really cool sound. Now I know why: it was written by a actual
musician. The Mac has nothing like it. There should be a law. Also,
the Windows 95 tune is on YouTube, but it doesn't sound quite right.
Needs more bass, or something. Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUbjTapNImM

Moral: programmers shouldn't write music. Would you want musicians
writing code? Look what happened when the Beatles produced a movie on
their own (_Magical Mystery Tour_). Leave music to the musicians, etc.

And why are there pictures on animals on the covers of O'Reilly
computer books? Would you put photos of computers, or code, on the
covers of animal books?

> and the Stones are
> still a big draw,

Beethoven, too!

Springsteen can still fill stadiums. The Grateful Dead filled stadiums
for years, too.

> Led Zeppelin gets great reviews for Celebration Day

I don't see why. Talk about dated and overly repetitive. OK, some of
it's good. I like "Houses of the Holy".

> etc.  Go figure.  Has any music dated more quickly than the
> over-produced 1980s stuff with too much echo on the drums back when even
> Joni Mitchell had a Fairlight?

Disco? The music on Tom Synder's "Tomorrow" TV show. Also some other
awful 70's music on some other show I saw recently, but can't recall
at the moment what it was. Oh, it was "That's My Line" with Bob
Barker. I saw a clip of James Randi exposing some psychic as a fraud.
Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlfMsZwr8rc to hear it and see
The Amazing Randi expose James Hydrick as a fraud.

> > If you're using a computer now, then that can perform some amazing
> > feats, depending on what software is loaded into it.  Some computers
> > can even decode MIME headers, and can wrap text to the particular width
> > you prefer to use, and can even display characters that weren't
> > available on those old manual typewriters provided.   And unlike the
> > old typewriters, computer software can be updated.
>
> Yes, but this is often unnecessary.  Why burn the cycles just BECAUSE
> YOU CAN?  There is simply no point in being fancy in a text-based
> newsgroup.

I prefer to burn calories (ducks while audience throws fruit at me).

"Burn" cycles? Any bloatware can do that. Hey, try working with hi-def
video. Talk about resource intensive!

>
> > ————
>
> Err, right.

AEF

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