> kind of like when IBM tried to move the architecture to micro channelThat was when IBM suddenly went from major player to has-been.
Before IBM there was the S-100 Bus, which went back to the days of personal computers that you wired yourself from kits. Most serious commercial machines were S-100 Bus, whether they ran on 6800s or 8080s. Or even a few with multiple 68000s. Heck, I used to own a SuperBrain CP/M box with dual processors and bank-switched RAM...
IBM's PC had a new bus, but it was thoroughly documented as far as the signals. The PC also had the BIOS, which was a firmware layer over the hardware, that 'virtualized' hardware access. IBM wasn't the first to do this, but they were the first to publish the complete electrical and software specs in their reference documentation ("IBM PC Technical Reference Manual"), and they freely allowed others to use their spec. It took less than a year before IBM clones appeared, and a year after that, IBM was the dominant player in the PC market. If you weren't running some kind of IBM clone, you were off in the fringes somewhere.
It wasn't "Open Source" by 21st century standards, but for the 1980s, it was a whole new thing.
About the time IBM had attained total market domination, they came up with the Micro Channel bus. It was a *much* smarter bus, with provision for software configuration of the cards. If you ever tried sorting out DIP switch settings in Chinglish, you remember how it used to be.
Technically, there was nothing wrong with Micro Channel. In fact, the PCI bus is very similar to it. But IBM patented and copyrighted the Micro Channel, and their licensing fees were steepish - $5000, if I remember right. And your cards all had to have unique Micro Channel IDs, just like NIC cards, and they had to be registered with IBM. There was some talk that IBM was going to do their own testing and refuse to register drivers for vendors who didn't fully comply with the specs, but I don't know if that ever happened; damn few vendors were willing to both pay IBM's licensing fees *and* deal with the registry hassle.
The clone industry stayed with the old architecture. First had been the 8-bit PC slots, then IBM extended them to the 16-bit AT slots. There were some bobbles as vendors tried jacking with clock speeds on the slots, two-slot boards, and the like, and then EISA more or less became the new 32-bit industry standard as the market scraped away IBM like something off a shoe.
I don't think the Suits at Armonk ever really understood the PC business. The success of the IBM PC took them by surprise; the PC group was always the bastard stepchild of the company. Then they thought they could dictate to their new customers like they could their big iron customers, and that didn't work. They were dealing with the public instead of corporate purchasers, and dictating to the public has much in common with herding cats. "The public" in this case also included the thousands of hardware manufacturers worldwide who were building and selling products based on the XT/AT architecture.
> If the US had won the war, there would be peace in the streets of > Baghdad, the country would be functioning normally, and the bulk of > US troops would have been back to enjoy Christmas at home, several > Christmasses ago.You either have an interesting definition of "win" or an interesting definition of "peace." You've left yourself too many escape paths this time.
I amuse myself replying to your trolls, but you're getting sloppy nowadays. Frankly, I've come to expect a somewhat more sophisticated approach from you. On the (Corrected) Internet Troll-O-Meter, your last attempt was barely more than a 2 on a scale of 1 to 5.
You *do* have to pick your audience, you know. Simply dropping in some anti-war, anti-Bush, or anti-Blair keywords would probably send some lists into a pop-eyed frenzy of agreeable indignation. Remember the old joke about the guys in prison? It's all quiet then one of them yells "53" and the whole place busts up laughing. The new guy doesn't get it and asks what's going on. They explain: "We've all been here so long we just number the jokes." Anti-war liberals aren't real bright, so they're easy to troll. We're a tougher audience here, though.
> o Is there currently global warming ? > o Is it caused by man? > o Can man alter it?Hey, I remember those kind of questionnaires from propaganda class.
Any answer to the second or third question depend on the answer to the first question being "yes."
"Yes. I think it's called the bill."
- (Terry Pratchett, Eric)
>This is the typical attitude of someone who has never worked with their > hands a day in their life, they do not think skilled labor exists.It's common enough at management level.
In the mid-1800s most industrialized countries used vast amounts of unskilled labor. Workers stood in line at factories, were handed a chit if accepted for the day, then exchanged the chit for cash at the end of the day. The employer didn't even know their name, and didn't care.
This is what Karl Marx talked about when he used the word "labor" in his writing. But even before his death, employers often didn't want day laborers any more. They had all the unskilled labor they could use, just by opening the door. What they wanted were pipefitters, welders, set-up men, and so forth. Increasing mechanization eliminated much of the old day labor jobs; contractors don't hire a wino to push a wheelbarrow up 40 stories of planks any more, they hire a cement boom operator. And so forth.
Ironically, the main category of unspecialized, unskilled labor that still exists is just what Marx railed against most... management. People trained in "management" sincerely believe they can manage any business without knowing a thing about it, "because workers are the same everywhere."
I've noticed receivables have stretched out considerably in the last year, besides more delinquent or uncollectable accounts. I imagine it's happening to everyone.
Most companies I deal with offer the usual net30 terms. Some of them have started offering a two or three percent discount for payments within 15 days. Either their cashflow has gotten so tight they don't want to float their customers a full 30 days any more, or they might be seeing so many of their customers go under they expect some of them not to be in business 30 days from now.
On the flip side, I always just write a check for steel and tooling. I don't carry any open accounts anywhere. But that makes me a "COD customer", which in the usual customer heirarchy makes me the equivalent of something stuck to the bottom of their shoe. The attitude seems to be that if I was a "real" business I'd wait for them to send an invoice and then mail them a check. COD is the customer ghetto, the fate of companies that can't be depended on to pay their bills.
[sigh]
If the goal of offering a discount for net15 is to tighten up receivables, why not offer a discount for COD? Or am I missing the whole point of something?
> BINGO! Office workers send out bills and log checks into the journal. > Truck drivers make deliveries, and get paid more than office workers. > When you force the truck driver to handle the bill and the payment, > you cost the company money, without reducing the cost of their office > staff, because they still have to do their thing after the driver > turns your payment in. Therefore, you will never get a discount for COD.Possibly. But the more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to call up a few places and tell them if they're willing to offer a discount on a maybe-payment and not my good check, I'll see if their competition might want my business more than they do. There are still a few things around here with more than one supplier.
The local steelyards in particular have been scouting for new business, and now might be the time to shop for a new vendor. It can't hurt to try, anyway.
O'Reilly's - Gates - $15 Advance - Dayco - $10 AutoZone - Kelly-Springfield - $5I had to replace the flexplate, which was cracked. I put AB on the phone to shop. The average price was $27, the lowest was $25, and then there was NAPA, at $61. Uh-yeah.
-> expecting company.It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your -> Nair with Rogaine,I remember Nair commercials from when I was a kid. In context, I can guess what Rogaine is supposed to do...
... but it sure sounds like the name of a product you'd purchase to alleviate "that itching, burning sensation" mentioned by the ad for a preparation marketed by a single letter.
I clipped this from fas.org instead of boring through the Fed.
[snip]
Category I-Firearms
*(a) Nonautomatic, semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms to caliber .50 inclusive, and all components and parts for such firearms. (See § 121.9 and §§ 123.16-123.19 of this subchapter.)
(b) Riflescopes manufactured to military specifications, and specifically designed or modified components therefor; firearm silencers and suppressors, including flash suppressors.
*(c) Insurgency-counterinsurgency type firearms or other weapons having a special military application (e.g. close assault weapons systems) regardless of caliber and all components and parts therefor.
(d) Technical data (as defined in § 120.21 of this subchapter) and defense services (as defined in § 120.8 of this subchapter) directly related to the defense articles enumerated in paragraphs (a) through (c) of this category. (See § 125.4 of this subchapter for exemptions.) Technical data directly related to the manufacture or production of any defense articles enumerated elsewhere in this category that are designated as Significant Military Equipment (SME) shall itself be designated SME.
[some snippage]
Category III-Ammunition
*(a) Ammunition for the arms in Categories I and II of this section. (See § 121.6.)
(b) Components, parts, accessories, and attachments for articles in paragraph (a) of this category, including but not limited to cartridge cases, powder bags, bullets, jackets, cores, shells (excluding shotgun shells), projectiles, boosters, fuzes and components therefor, primers, and other detonating devices for such ammunition. (See § 121.6.)
(c) Ammunition belting and linking machines.
*(d) Ammunition manufacturing machines and ammunition loading machines (except handloading ones).
(e) Technical data (as defined in § 120.21 of this subchapter) and defense services (as defined in § 120.8 of this subchapter) directly related to the defense articles enumerated in paragraphs (a) through (d) of this category. (See § 125.4 of this subchapter for exemptions.) Technical data directly related to the manufacture or production of any defense articles enumerated elsewhere in this category that are designated as Significant Military Equipment (SME) shall itself be designated SME.
[/snip]
Other sections seem to cover fish finders, "mil spec" laptops, walkie-talkies, scanning receivers, cellphones and radios that use encryption, EMF shielding, and (depending on how stringently things are interpreted) a whole host of other consumer items.
What I find most interesting is that whole categories of information - for example, cartridge loading data - are covered. So are many machinist-oriented or software-oriented web sites and forums.
Compliance with the DTC consists of registering your business, providing business records to them, and paying the Commerce Department $2250 per year for that privilege. So, basically, it's a $2250/yr hidden tax.
Web sites, forums, and books that fall under the DTC aren't businesses, so it's hard tosee how the payment scheme works for that, though I'm sure there are guidelines somewhere. By strict interpretation, this web site is a DTC munition due to the military-oriented machining information available.
Thoughtcrime. Who'd 'a thunk it?
> When was New York founded? Didn't know it was losted.Eh? What? You mean they renamed New Amsterdam?!
Jeez, quit paying attention for a couple hundred years, and the world just leaves you behind...
It's a good example of how a tool shapes its output. Blog-things are intended to be read every day, and they try to enforce that by making it awkward if you miss a day.
This weblog is essentially a random brain dump, so it probably wouldn't matter whether it was top-down or the extended-list method I prefer. But if I was continuing commentary across multiple entries, it would be a whole lot easier for new or occasional readers to follow.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
> Every Jewish holiday is the same: they tried to kill us, we got away, > let's eat.Every Irish holiday is the same: the English are bastards, free Ireland!, let's get so drunk we pass out in the gutter.
> Lyvim has a 27 hour day, and Ed apparently has some 'medicine' he ain't sharing ? > > I'll address you both: > Lyvim - You can have your 27 hour day, sometimes 24 is too much for me.Well, we have 24 now, a legacy of Sumerian timekeeping, but eventually the ISO is going to metricate that, too. I can already see it - one day = 10 decidays = 100 centidays = 1000 millidays... except being the ISO, they'll use some bastard baseline like minutes or fortnights. That, or the ISO Standard Chronon will be an irrational number, like 3.1416... seconds.
One of the nice things about the English measurement system is, rather than trying to fold, spindle, and mutilate things to fit a completely arbitrary system, units are created when they might be useful. The inch, foot, and yard, among other "English" measurements, go all the way back to when the Pharaohs standardized measures in ancient Egypt. "Nautical miles" and "knots", for example, were designed to simplify calculations back when ships took readings with ropes and sextants. The unit for measuring the movement of a computer mouse is the "mickey." My favorite unit, though, is the "shake," which is what physicists use when things start getting into really small amounts of time.
> I have been on the Internet so long, I still am bugged the Internet went > commercial when the web started. I think we might have a few others that > were online before the web, in the subscribers of this mail list.Web? What's that?
[yes, I remember Cantor and Seigel]
> Don't remember how long ,but I used a Telegraph key instead of a browser ;-)Yeah, and someone's going to pop up and say they had to file down 0s to make 1s....
> That's the origin of the name and what it's been called since, oh, about > 376AD (or CE for any politically correct folks on the list).It's Anno Domini, dammit, and some gay-ass collegiates calling it "Common Era" is bullshit.
Regardless of its origins, Anno Domini is the accepted standard of the entire world.
Yes, it has a religious base date, but who cares? It's part of Western history and culture, the Babdeez aren't going to send Jesus-rays at your brain because you think "AD" instead of "CE." Get a life. Or some aluminum foil...
Of course, "since the founding of Rome" was popular for a long time; if they're intent on changing things, I could go with that...
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth)
>> Or as Napoleon Bonaparte put it "God is on the side of the big >> battalions!""How many divisions has the Pope?" - Josef Stalin
> > What's secret about the NSA?It says in their charter that they're a secret agency. Not that it seems to matter much one way or the other... after all, they have a public web site.
> > They came to my college to hire summer > > interns once. They said it cost them $10,000 in background checks to > > hire one, so they hoped anyone who worked summers for them would come on > > full time.Heh. A standard "secret" clearance used to consist of seeing if the FBI had anything in your file about hanging around any Commies or queers, then smacking the application with the big rubber stamp. It was pathetic, which was how we wound up with so many Soviet spies in the military and security agencies, supposedly drawing down under $40K per year, and spending $250,000. Dropping $20 to TRW or Equifax would have set off major alarm bells, except all the bells were disconnected.
Two major warning flags for a potential security risk, for anyone who does their own checking: mismatch between earnings and expensitures is #1, major family problems (the kind that generates a state paper trail) is #2. Or just read any of the many books by ex-KGB or GRU spies, which covered the kinds of things they looked for in potential "clients" in detail.
>> If YoU cAn ReAd DiS sHiZzNnIt, ThAnK MTV. iT's WaCkEd AnD sH!T.I see a lot of advertising like that in the trade magazines. Usually with each word in a different font and type size. Sometimes feature articles are like that. It's like trying to read a ransom note. So I flip right on by, just like I ignore the weirdly morphed faces and giant staring eyeballs that seem to be de rigeur for that sort of magazine.
>> ishouldlearntoreadandunderstandmexican.It's easier than some of that claims to be "English" nowadays.
>> Just think, in the 70's I would get into trouble for saying "man" all the >> time.Oh, ma-aaannn...
I was in a restaurant last week, and some bozo about eight tables down was having a shouted conversation with his cellular phone. (mystery: why must they SHOUT at the phone?) Every few seconds he'd say, "You unnerstan' whut Ah'm sayin'?" I started replying to him in a loud voice, which got me a few amused looks, but PhoneBoy was too wrapped up in his conversation to notice. Or perhaps the occasional "Right on!" and "Hallelujah!" were too subtle for him.
> Now, as to "protection of the workforce", I'll want to have definitions > of "protect", "workforce", and a clear definition of what they are to > be protected from.[waves hand uncertainly]
I'd like to be protected from the US Government.
Rapacious robber-baron sweatshops and company towns with company thugs are starting to look like the good old days, compared to getting threatening letters from EEOC lawyers, psychotic inspectors from OSHA, or incomprehensible directives from the EPA.
> Dave dave dave, don't you realize MTV doesn't play music anymore? Catch up man!Hey, it's one of the advantages of a TV-free lifestyle, along with seeing giant bulletin boards advertising TV shows I've never heard of.
I could probably wander off to Canada or Australia without near the feeling of dislocation some people get, at least until I got a hamburger with pickled beets on it...
- Marcus Cole, Ranger to Franklin, Babylon 5, "A Late Delivery from Avalon"
>> >>It's widely recognized across the states, districts, territories, and >> >>protectorates of the United States that there *is* a license to speed - >> >>a badge. > > Different over here, police take a pleasure in booking each other, and the > > over zealous book fire engines and ambulances too.The chief of police at the state capitol (Little Rock) decided he would come up with his own interpretations of the way things were done, and had his policemen chasing down and stopping fire trucks and ambulances to write them tickets.
This went on for a month or so, until they stopped an ambulance en route to a hospital emergency room, and the young lady in back died while the cop was writing out the ticket. This touched off a huge furor, with talk of charging the officer and the chief with manslaughter.
The city police work for, and get their authority from, the city government. The city is in a county, which has its own police, called the sheriff's department, which has authority over everything in the county, and gets its authority from a body called the Quorum Court, which is a vestigial body that mostly worries about zoning issues and only meets four times per year.
In one of the few shining moments of local law enforcement, we had a few weeks of the Pulaski County Sheriff and his deputies escorting emergency vehicles through Little Rock, authorized to use "deadly force" (meaning "shoot them") against anyone (meaning LRPD) who tried to interfere. There were several tense, heavily-armed encounters before the Little Rock city management reined in their Chief and explained the facts of life to him.
The US Department of Justice authorizes and empowers "Federal Marshals", which mostly transport prisoners between states, and before the Homeland Security BS, they were the recognized authority over airports and aircraft. Then there's the FBI, which claims to be the highest police organization in the country, but their powers have never been clearly defined. Some states and local police refuse to recognize the authority of the marshals or FBI. The Federal organizations are outside their chain of authority and responsibility, which stop at the local city or county government, or the Governor.
It's not quite the RHSA of Nazi Germany, but "the police" is by no means a unified organization in the USA, despite continual efforts by the Fed to try to put them all under Federal rein.
If I had that kind of money and power, I'd drive something ostentatious too. Though I'd probably go for some classic British iron, and let my mechanics take care of keeping them all ready to roll.
Let's see... an AC '428', which was the AC Cars hardtop version of the 427 Cobra. A Jensen FF - that's a Chrysler big block, four wheel drive, and ABS in a 1972 British sedan. A couple of Aston Martins; probably an early Vantage and something else. A Bristol 507 sedan (Chrysler power) and a Bristol Beaufighter (turbocharged Chrysler V8).
Then a few Italians. A Maserati Bora, of course. And one of the early Lamborghini coupes. From France, one of the big Bugattis, and of course a Voisin with the sleeve valve Knight engine.
Of course, those are all readily available cars, if you meet the price. And any hoser can buy a Mercedes and have it gold plated; it's just a matter of writing a check. But if you *really* want conspicuous consumption, you want a classic - a Speed Six Bentley, or a Cord, or a Dusenberg, or a Mercedes SSK.
Those would definitely limit any potential copycats. Or you could go for something really unique - Adolf Hitler's Mercedes can be had if you meet the price. Valentino's Dusenberg. Churchill's Humber. Even the Lincoln JFK was assassinated in.
Gold-plated Mercedes? Feh!
Actually, they looked just fine...
Online credit card orders via "commerce functions" have been around since the mid '90s; we're talking mature, prepackaged technology here. So why...
1) why do some pages still report "unknown error" or "invalid credit card number" when you enter the number as xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx instead of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx? It takes about four command tokens in Perl to strip non-numeric data. Or why can't they even report a reasonable error message?!
2) years typically have twelve months. But instead of letting you type the date - well, considering they can't parse a credit card number, I can't imagine how they'd handle a date - they always want you to use a drop-down box. These invariably have ten selections, January through October. My card expires in December, so I have to grab the thumb and scroll down to the bottom of the list. WTF? How hard can it be to put "12" in the list field instead of "10"?
3) they want an expiration date. Not always, but often enough, the selection field in the drop-down box defaults to years ago. I realize "this year or later" is probably beyond the "mad koding skillz" of webmaster hackerzz, but these are all canned routines coming from e-commerce vendors, who *should* be able to figure this sort of thing out.
"Back in the old days, we filed down 0s to make 1s..."