Indeed. Heh. But seriously, that's awesome. And thanks for the link to Shakes' place. I hadn't been back since she redesigned the site.
It's a cheap shot, but a great cheap shot.
Being able to vote for Rangel is one of the good things about my neighborhood -- every two years, I get to vote for someone I don't loathe and who's guaranteed to win. (I feel sorry for the poor schmucks they field against him. I saw one shaking hands on my street corner in 2004, or trying to -- no one would talk to him. I felt bad enough that I stopped and chatted for a bit, and lied about being a Republican: it just seemed like he needed the lift.)
It would be funnier if there was a new sentence instead of a semicolon.
I would have said "as if", not "like".
I'm imagining Ben going around saying "as if!" all day long like Alicia Silverstone.
And between Farber and w-lfs-n, I'm surprised LB hasn't chucked this blogging thing and told us to all go shove it.
The rest of us ♥ you, LB.
(for you Mac users: that's a heart, not a bitwise OR)
b-wo. That's why it's a clone--same genetic makeup, but a different environment produced a different person who still has no sense of humor about grammar.
I amend 9 - I thought w-lfs-n was correcting LB's post, not correcting the w-lfs-n clone in 4.
12: I didn't get your point Becks and appreciate your amendment, but I will add that you can't go wrong saying that you heart LB. I know that I do.
Becks, I'm on a Mac and it looks like a heart to me.
Impugn not the Apple.
I don't see the heart! Wtf! (I'm on a mac).
If I might be so bold as to offer an utterly unsolicited housekeeping-type suggestion (I hope without giving offense, and with apology proffered in advance if I do give offense), it might possibly, perhaps, be a better idea to link to the actual permalink of a blog post you are citing/crediting, rather than the entire blog, since a) when someone runs across this post in two weeks, they'll have to start googling to find the Shakespeare's Sister post otherwise; and b) right now people have to make the additional minor step of doing a "find" or scrolling, or whatever, to find said post. And it's not more difficult to link to the permalink than it is to link to the blog, or to include the general blog link, as well (although anyone who can't figure out how to just cut the part of the URL that goes to a specific blog post isn't apt to be reading here, I'd think).
As I said, purely a suggestion, and I apologize if you had some other purpose in mind, or if I'm otherwise offending, effendi (okay, I don't know the female term there, and amn't looking it up).
Trivial note: WLIW is the Long Island, NY PBS station, and thus the nearest one to me when I was living on Long Island from late 1999 until December, 2001, and it was the only tv station I could get on September 11th, and thereafter, since I had only broadcast tv (just as now), and you know where all the other antennas were located. They broadcast BBC coverage for several days, nonstop, putting me in the odd position of only seeing British tv coverage of what was going on just a few miles away. I was, nonetheless, extremely grateful.
They also create or import a few of the best documentaries that then go out to the general PBS "network." One of the better PBS stations.
Snappy line from Rangel, of course, but he's often good for those.
Um, I heart LB, too, but thanks for implying I don't. I suspect I've been hearting her a few years longer than Becks, too, though I might be wrong.
Of course, I show my hearting in my own peculiar way, which is by no means to everyone's taste. Season on your own, as you like, or not, though I'm not usually all that bland.
There's a distinction, incidentally, between being serious about something, and being solemn. One can take something seriously, and be funny as hell about it, but being solemnly funny is different; arguably an oxymoron, arguably not. Discuss. Or not.
Silvana, Are you operating OS X? Are you using Safari?
Unfogged: Where Charlie Rangel --> PC v. Mac wars in 10 steps.
Yes, B, but that is why we are awesome, wizard cocksucker commeners. We do not take amusing anecdotes as proof positive of impending doom.
I felt bad enough that I stopped and chatted for a bit, and lied about being a Republican: it just seemed like he needed the lift.
That's incredibly humane of you. My view would have been that as a member of the party that's destroying this country and the world, the guy deserved all the grief he was getting, and more.
I thought LB was following FL's "via" style. Or does Labs usually link to the post and not the blog and I'm thinking of someone else?
Gary, my tongue was firmly in cheek in 9. If ever in doubt, assume I'm being facetious.
Okay, weird. I don't know how I typed that. I was using Firefox to see whether one could see the heart (you can't on a Mac) and I typed my e-mail into the wrong box--except that I left off the 1.
#19: Whereas the PC v. Mac wars are DEADLY SERIOUS.
You shouldn't use PC to mean Windows/Intel. It's politically incorrect.
In my next life I'm going to learn more linguistics. Or maybe it's marketing. Or maybe it's synecdoche. But somehow Microsoft has taken what were once generic terms and gotten people to use them to refer only to Microsoft products. Like DOS. Like PC. Maybe it's related to the pronounciation of modem. I don't quite know how, but it sure is clever.
27: Yes, I remember when people said,"Do you have a Mac or an IBM-compatible computer?"
Or arguably, Mac users are so devotedly brand-loyal that we call our computers by the brand name, spurning generic terms.
Right, BG. That's what I remember (however dimly). The days of the IBM PC and IBM PC-XT. So (I think) it got shortened from IBM PC compatible to PC compatible to PC. But early on, PC meant Personal Computer, and included a whole bunch of machines. Timex. CompuSys. TRS. DR. etc. And now, somehow, by some magic, Personal Computer means Windows/Intel.
There are lots of examples of the transformation going in the other direction - Kleenex, cellophane, Xerox. But a generic becoming treated as a brand, of that I can't think of other examples.
I've run into people that think Macintosh is the name of the company. There seems to be a whole lot of spurning going on. Spurn, baby, spurn.
"Where Charlie Rangel --> PC v. Mac wars in 10 steps."
Pretty damn inefficient. On Usenet we used to manage it in one.
"But early on, PC meant Personal Computer"
For some value of "early on." For others, "early on" might mean Osborne or Amstrad and CP/M or BASIC for software (the first computer language I ever used, though not more than incredibly slightly, in 1975). For those folks (including me), "IBM PC" means "really effing late." It's not as if there was a shortage of personal computers in the Seventies.
Some folks were building Heathkits (I've never really been any more or a hardware person than a software person; less!; but I did do a few as a kid), many years before all that, of course, though the Heathkit EC-1 was before my day. Legendary, though.
The DEC PDP-8 was once pretty well known, even earlier, and I certainly remember it, though only through having read of it. The Altair was the first personal computer I saw that wasn't a Heathkit, I think. The Apple II was a couple of years later, but a zillion people had them. I guess that was the first real personal computer I ever played a bunch with, though I never could afford one of my own.
By '78 I remember playing with Vonda McIntyre's Osborne; Osborne was the workhorse of the day.
I shouldn't forget to mention Atari machines, of course. And Tandy and Commodore. Just sticking to widespread, popular, stuff from memory.
I didn't get a real computer of my own until after everyone I knew, more or less, had had one for years. It was a Mac SE, and it wasn't until 1988.
1981? Really late, though.
Kids! (Plenty of folks, of course, can run through a complete and thorough list of other machines from memory.)
I had a Tandy in the late 80's. It had no hard-drive. I upgraded it by getting an extra 3 1/2 in. floppy. That meant that you could copy disks without having to switch disks all the time.
I just thought that word processing (as opposed to typing) was so great. School was all Apples--though not Macs. Highschool didn't have many Macs until my Senior year. I think there was a program called LOGO where you drew a little arrow and added colored lines.
Then I got a cast-off IBM PS/2 from my Dad's business. He thought it had Word Perfect on it, but it actually had no software. So we installed Windows 3.0--I used some lame program that didn't do footnotes for word processing.
I got a Gateway which was a massive tower in 94 (Freshman year of college) which operated Windows 3.11; I'm now a Mac convert.
Sorry, I shouldn't have capitalized Personal Computer. I meant the term to include the Osborne, the MITS Altairs, etc. TWhat you call Tandy I called the TRS (e.g. TRS-80, Tandy Radio Shack). Personal, as opposed to the mainframes, the IBM 360 systems, the CDC 6400s, etc. But then, I'm older than you.
Yes, anything was better than a typerwriter. Although I remember getting really excited when my father got a Selectric with the self-correcting feature. With one button it sprayed water on the clay tabled, and then smoothed it over.
I read about LOGO, but never tried it. It sounded way nicer than loading registers on an 8088, under CP/M, and calling Interrupt 21. Calling interrupts involved a bonfire, a dead black cat, a pentagram, and could only be done at midnight under a full moon. It made graphics slow.
"I upgraded it by getting an extra 3 1/2 in. floppy."
Remember when floppies were, you know, floppy? 5+ inch?
Me, I had an IBM paper-tape memory typewriter. It could store upwards of twenty words or so! Bought it used at a garage sale, mind, in 1978.
The DEC mainframe wordprocessing programs before then were cool. Up to 99 phrases could be stored in the buffer! Awesome.
And we really liked playing with our Wangs.
My first real computing experience was with BASIC on mainframes in '75, but I've never been a computer person, hardware or soft, as I've said. Plenty of friends of mine were working with or on 'frames in the Sixties and Fifties, though. Although my first (non-participatory) experience with online discussion was getting monthly print-outs of sf-lovers from ARPA-net circa 1977 or so (I first typoed that as "1877," which I was tempted to leave to see what comments it would generate).
"lthough I remember getting really excited when my father got a Selectric with the self-correcting feature."
Oh, completely. They were the bestest back in the day, for those of us who weren't computer people. Selectric II particularly. (Knowing history of typewriters is how I wound up in the whole Killian memo debate, which is how I wound up a footnote here, and once in a while still get a hit from it.)
When I lived in Rangel's district mumblety-mumble years ago, Rangel was the Democratic candidate, the Liberal candidate and the Republican candidate. Only the Right-to-lifers stood their own candidate. And I don't think he (the RTL guy) ever actually showed his face in the district.
Remember when floppies were, you know, floppy? 5+ inch?
Gary, I've got no computing experience from the 70's, since I was just a babe. I do emember the 5" floppies. The 3 1/2 in. once on my Tandy seemed so advanced to me at the time.
Yeah, when I was a babe, floppies were floppies. Hard drives ended in a touchdown; score! Those were the days.
And I think his name was Au Wang, not Oh Wang.
"The 3 1/2 in. once on my Tandy seemed so advanced to me at the time."
Being me, I've only occasionally been able to bring myself to call them "floppies." Though there are definitely other obsolete usages I do indulge in. I probably still occasionally refer to "dialing a phone number," for instance.
When I was a kid, movies were so slow that we had to sit still for a long time just to watch a single frame. And no one called them movies: they went by the name "daguerreotype."
When I was a kid we didn't even have Windows XP yet.
I converted some 5" floppies (in Wordstar) only 2-3 years ago.
At my first real job, in '93, we had to use a word processor called Volkswriter. I figured it had been developed in Germany for WWII. I think this was some eccentricity of our boss's rather than any issue of the available technology.
I thought Volkswriter was ported from a heliograph-XT
I may be thinking of Enigma, which was an early asynchronous communication protocol with a proprietary data structure.
Thanks for the reminder about Logo, BG -- I've been meaning to download the freeware one to get Sylvia started with programming. It's fun, and she likes turtles.
Ah -- here it is. MSW Logo for Windows from Softronix.
I think there was a program called LOGO where you drew a little arrow and added colored lines.
I know this is all most people remember of LOGO, but that is one seriously cool computer language. (And I'm not just saying that because of the family connection.) Turtle graphics are good, but beyond that is a real language from which it is just a hop, skip, and/or jump to Scheme and thence to LISP.
I can't sit back and let errant pedants impugn the floppiness of the 3½-inch floppy disk. Yes, the casing was hard, but it was also square (as it was with the 5¼ and 8-inch disks) and no one is saying any floppy disc should be denied its essential disciness because casual observation would not reveal its roundness. So should it be with floppiness.
Okay, I remember using floppies to play Adventure while using my dad's map hand-drawn on green-n'-white-striped print-outs from his own Adventure playin' on the punch-card mainframes at Chevron.
That established, I'm still ever-so slightly pissed at Rangel for the resolution to reinstate the draft that he authored in, what was it? 2002? It was just too early for that argument, I think; maybe he didn't realistically have any bridges to burn at that point, but as a supportive, liberal constituent I could feel the isolation coming. It didn't stop me from voting for him, mind you, but I do wish my congressman had some more federal clout than Rangel seems to be aiming for.
Floppies were never 5 in., they were 5.25 in.
Decathlon anyone? Or Test Drive (the original in CGA?). Oh, there were other great games too. Like Snipes! Think I'll go play some snipes.
Olympic Decathlon on the Apple II+ ate up way too many of my afternoons. Jeez, while I was probably listening to Cheap Trick.
Between 7th and 8th grade (or maybe between 6th and 7th) I took a summer programming class in LOGO. Definitely not just turtles all the way down.
Through high school (1997), I used an old Compaq with a gold on black monitor and an 8086 chip. I believe that old computer is still working.
It was all the Apple IIGS at school. PEN UP, dammit. PEN UP!
I don't know if we were teh hard core or what, but we never had Logo in school, although it was extant; no, it was all Pascal, baby. A few years before that it was BASIC on a Honeywell mainframe. What, old? Me?
Yeah my only exposure to computers in grade school was BASIC on a Commodore PET. My dad however had an Apple II with Logo on it.
(Computer classes were available in H.S., I believe the machines were 8086's; but I fancied myself a Luddite and did not take any.)
In 1980 I studied computer on a mainframe with punchcards. That never went anywhere. You had to wait maybe 3 hours to find out that you'd left out one period or one bracket.
5" floppies (let's not get pedantic!) were genuinely floppy. I ruined a few by mishanding them.
It didn't stop me from voting for him, mind you, but I do wish my congressman had some more federal clout than Rangel seems to be aiming for.
He's got clout; he's one of the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, right? I see his position as the guy with the absolutely safe seat who doesn't have to watch his mouth -- he's not particularly out on the political extremes, but he is completely free of the need to self-censor.
(And 9, 16: You all would not believe how thick my skin is. Conversations with my family are devoted entirely to mocking each other for our ignorance, and baroque in-jokes. (e.g, my father's cats, Ceremony, Umbrage, and Poetic. Yowls of distress are heard whenever someone stands on Ceremony, takes Umbrage, or waxes Poetic.(Rrrrrip. "Rrrrooowwww!")))
"Through high school (1997), I used an old Compaq with a gold on black monitor and an 8086 chip. "
Until the middle of 2005, I was still using a Pentium 1 and a 33k modem. This was not by choice.
I still live in terror of something going wrong with the P4, since there'd be no possible way I could afford to fix it. I wasn't reassured when my 55-week-old cheap-ass DVD player died spontaneously last week, although that I at least have a 2-year "replacement plan" on, and thus will only have to spend $17 to get another (plan; a DVD player is one of the few objects it's a good idea to toss money after that way, as life has just demonstrated to me for the second time), and I can actually manage that this month.
Someday it would be nice to get a decent video card, but that's about #72 on the priority list, with being able to see a dentist much closer to the top. But I shouldn't start. At least I was able to find and afford and get a decent replacement monitor for $10 via Craigslist a couple of weeks ago (from a guy only two blocks away, who could drive it over, no less, which is good, since walking & carrying would not have been an option); first time in 9 months I can really see what I'm doing, and first time in 2-3 months I don't have to put a blanket over my head during the bright afternoon to see what's on the monitor; this is a stunning improvement in the quality of my life (also because of going from 13" to 17").
"Conversations with my family are devoted entirely to mocking each other for our ignorance, and baroque in-jokes...."
My people!
"He's got clout; he's one of the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, right? "
I think the notion is that he's not in the majority. Doing is better than saying. I'm just saying. I think perhaps many would not define "clout" as "being able to speak freely." If that's the definition, I have all the clout in the world, and yet: not so much.