• Anon (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Al Gore:
    Kef Schecter:
    Anon:
    And before that could happen, he had to wait for somebody to invent the internet.

    insert tired old Al Gore joke even though he never actually claimed to have invented the internet in the first place

    "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore#Second_presidential_run_.282000.29

    Gore never claimed he invented the internet. What he actually said, in a 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer was this:

    During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

    And this was entirely true. He was the man who wrote/introduced/sponsored the “Gore Bill” which allocated funding and resources to making the internet available to the public. Entirely true. The two men who literally invented the internet (that is, the internet protocol- IP- that you’re using right now to read this), Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, backed up Gore’s statement 100%:

    [A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: “During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.

    Gore took the initiative in Congress, that nobody else had taken. He pushed for funding of a public “information superhighway” (he popularized and may have even made up that term by the way), when nobody else seemed interested in it. But he never claimed that he invented the internet. And the two people who literally did invent the internet say that what he said was entirely accurate, and that he wasn’t giving himself too much credit whatsoever.

    http://www.thedailybackground.com/2006/12/24/associated-press-repeates-tired-false-claim-about-al-gore/

    Do you really think that explaining it will stop the morons who like to trot out the "Al Gore claimed he'd invented the internet" line whenever they get the chance? A valiant try.

  • Lett's not (unregistered) in reply to Konrads
    Konrads:
    What's with the Latvian army?

    Nezinams!

  • (cs) in reply to Konrads
    Konrads:
    What's with the Latvian army?
    It was part of the plot of the Billion Dollar Brain movie.
  • RandomCoder (unregistered) in reply to MP

    Yeah. This Truck.

  • RandomCoder (unregistered) in reply to MP
    MP:
    Code Dependent:
    IV:
    The government used to be the type of organization that didn't frivilously throw money at stuff
    cough.splatter(screen, coffee);

    Now you just pull your Halliburton truck up under the hopper and they dump the money in.

    Oh, wait, that was a year ago.

    Yeah, now the pick-up truck is a full-sized dump truck.

    Yeah, This truck.

  • Herby (unregistered)

    This episode reminds me of the printer paper I was exposed to. It had a red legend that said (paraphrasing) "This document is classified UNLESS this red legend is the only thing printed on the page". They didn't want to order the paper from an army depot or some such and have it classified (secret, or whatever) when it was blank.

    As I remember it it was the early 70's and the "cold war" was going full steam.

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to Severity One
    Severity One:
    We'll have to wait for the comment system to be secured before the first comment can be added.

    So far so good, no spam yet!

  • TK (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    anon:
    Al Gore:
    Kef Schecter:
    Anon:
    And before that could happen, he had to wait for somebody to invent the internet.

    insert tired old Al Gore joke even though he never actually claimed to have invented the internet in the first place

    "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_gore#Second_presidential_run_.282000.29

    Gore never claimed he invented the internet. What he actually said, in a 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer was this:

    During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

    And this was entirely true. He was the man who wrote/introduced/sponsored the “Gore Bill” which allocated funding and resources to making the internet available to the public. Entirely true. The two men who literally invented the internet (that is, the internet protocol- IP- that you’re using right now to read this), Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, backed up Gore’s statement 100%:

    [A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: “During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.

    Gore took the initiative in Congress, that nobody else had taken. He pushed for funding of a public “information superhighway” (he popularized and may have even made up that term by the way), when nobody else seemed interested in it. But he never claimed that he invented the internet. And the two people who literally did invent the internet say that what he said was entirely accurate, and that he wasn’t giving himself too much credit whatsoever.

    http://www.thedailybackground.com/2006/12/24/associated-press-repeates-tired-false-claim-about-al-gore/

    Do you really think that explaining it will stop the morons who like to trot out the "Al Gore claimed he'd invented the internet" line whenever they get the chance? A valiant try.

    I'm one of those "morons." I've read the original quote many times before, and also the article "debunking" the "morons."

    You may have noticed that "Al Gore" (with the corresponding wikipedia quote) quoted the exact same Gore quote as "anon," our attempted debunker. Exactly how does one debunk a quote by quoting the same thing a second time? Perhaps if the original quote was taken out of context, but that surely is not the case here.

    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created." Are you really saying that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" is not reasonably paraphrased as "I invented the Internet?" Seriously?

    Perhaps our friend Al just misspoke, or didn't mean to convey the fullness of what he actually said. I've never heard Al himself clarify what he meant, just people grasping at straws trying to defend him.

    Going back to Al's original quote, I don't see any evidence Al created anything. He popularized the Internet, surely. Marketed, if you prefer. Created? I'm afraid not.

    The opinions of the actual creators of the Internet obviously differ. I strongly suspect they appreciated Al's marketing efforts, and wanted to help him save a little face. That still doesn't make them right.

  • iToad (unregistered)

    Whenever you work in places where the guards carry automatic weapons, this sort of thing isn't a WTF at all. It's normal behavior.

  • (cs) in reply to TK
    TK:
    I'm one of those "morons."
    You've made that clear.
    TK:
    Perhaps if the original quote was taken out of context, but that surely is not the case here.
    No, you're just misunderstanding it.
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created." Are you really saying that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" is *not* reasonably paraphrased as "I invented the Internet?" Seriously?
    The word "created" does not appear anywhere in the quote. And since you've mentioned "context", perhaps you should go read it.
    TK:
    Going back to Al's original quote, I don't see any evidence Al created anything.
    Reading/comprehension problem? He didn't say he created it. He said he "took the initiative in creating" it. It's not the best sentence structure, but the unspoken-yet-understood words expand to "I took the initiative in supporting the creating of the internet". It's quite clear, except to someone who has a strong need to justify his insistence on falsehood.
  • Lithp (unregistered) in reply to TK
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created".

    Except it's not, not really, and unless you conducted a vote, recording opinions and IQs (or any other data on voters' intelligence), drop the bullshit rhetoric, would you?

    If you have trouble grasping the difference in meaning - Charles Babbage invented the Analytical Engine. But he didn't really create one.

    Besides, I think you're severely underestimating the massive impact this "marketing", as you wrote it off, had on the Internet. I may think that Al Gore is a prick, but he did see a possibility there before others did, and he did help it come about.

  • SP (unregistered) in reply to emurphy
    emurphy:
    This is why we have Remote Desktop or equivalent access to all our significant clients, so 99% of the time we don't have to wade through that particular circle of hell any more.

    The company that makes the base software (we mostly customize it for clients who need it) insists on using the same web-based service for everyone (it works, but they have to call every time and have someone establish the other side of the link), or else blithely suggests uploading a copy of the database (possible but tedious when the compressed file is 50 MB, more so when it's 2 GB).

    And this is why I will never use your software. Also let us know who some of your "significant clients" are so I know what idiots to avoid. No way in hell you are getting a remote desktop into any machine at any of the clients I ever worked for.

    About a year ago I had a barely able to speak a full sentence support person that wanted to do a remote connect. I said no. He kept telling me it would help him. I said, "Look at my email address, the TLD, do you really think we would let anyone in?" He said that it will be fine as long we don't have a firewall.

    Now really what company of any size doesn't have a firewall in place? And don't ask for a firewall rule chnage, that takes paper work and approvals. Then I'd bet it requires some ActiveX thing to install on my machine, which I don't have admin rights to, so that's not going to happen.

    This guy just wouldn't let it drop, every few minutes he brought it up again. I had to yell at him to get him to understand that we have a firewall, and even if we didn't I couldn't let him in. Also that he needs to never ask for this again, tell his bosses that many customers will never let a remote connection happen.

    In the end the problem was some junk needed to be truncated from a table, and he couldn't remember the name of it and just wanted to poke around for a bit till he saw something he remembered. I now have the instructions to fix it as part of an email.

  • Xythar (unregistered)

    I've worked for my own country's DoD in the past and I believe this story 100%.

  • KP (unregistered) in reply to TK
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created."
    If that were true then most intelligent people would be wrong. You can create without inventing and you can invent without creating. And to "take the initiative in creating" is not even the same thing as "creating" - maybe "enabling" is closer to the intended meaning.

    I really don't see how anyone benefits by wilfully misunderstanding what other people say. Isn't that just sabotaging honest attempts at communication?

  • TK (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    TK:
    I'm one of those "morons."
    You've made that clear.
    Insulting other people doesn't mean you automatically win the argument. Really, it just means you know your position is too weak to stand up to logic and reason.
    Code Dependent:
    TK:
    Perhaps if the original quote was taken out of context, but that surely is not the case here.
    No, you're just misunderstanding it.
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created." Are you really saying that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" is *not* reasonably paraphrased as "I invented the Internet?" Seriously?
    The word "created" does not appear anywhere in the quote. And since you've mentioned "context", perhaps you should go read it.
    Are you saying you do not recognize that "created" and "creating" have the same root word of "create?" Seriously? You don't think those words have anything in common?
    Code Dependent:
    TK:
    Going back to Al's original quote, I don't see any evidence Al created anything.
    Reading/comprehension problem? He didn't say he created it. He said he "took the initiative in creating" it. It's not the best sentence structure, but the unspoken-yet-understood words expand to "I took the initiative in supporting the creating of the internet". It's quite clear, except to someone who has a strong need to justify his insistence on falsehood.
    I'm always amazed at the extreme lengths people will go to to defend their heroes. Why do you do that?

    If there's some clear language I missed, perhaps you can try explaining it without the insults?

    As it stands, I find your twisting of clear words quite bizarre.

  • configurator (unregistered) in reply to Herby
    Herby:
    This episode reminds me of the printer paper I was exposed to. It had a red legend that said (paraphrasing) "This document is classified UNLESS this red legend is the only thing printed on the page". They didn't want to order the paper from an army depot or some such and have it classified (secret, or whatever) when it was blank.

    Funny. Where I was in the army, we had paper that simply said "Classified" at the top. It was printed in a print shop owned by a veteran with clearance to see the "Classified", and he had to renew his clearance every year to continue printing - and he was not allowed to print this paper while anyone else (other workers included) was in the shop.

  • TK (unregistered) in reply to KP
    KP:
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created."
    If that were true then most intelligent people would be wrong. You can create without inventing and you can invent without creating. And to "take the initiative in creating" is not even the same thing as "creating" - maybe "enabling" is closer to the intended meaning.

    I really don't see how anyone benefits by wilfully misunderstanding what other people say. Isn't that just sabotaging honest attempts at communication?

    Well, I assume most intelligent people know the definition of synonym and can use a thesaurus.

    See: http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/invent

    I quote: invent Synonyms: concoct, contrive, cook (up), devise, fabricate, make up, manufacture, think (up) Related Words: coin, contrive, create, design, hatch, produce; daydream, dream, fantasize; conceive, envisage, imagine, picture, visualize

    Note that they don't consider it a synonym, but a related word. Of course even a synonym doesn't mean exactly the same thing, it's just has the "the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses."

    Create and invent certainly would apply.

    Now, if Al had said "enabling," there never would have been a controversy in the first place.

  • TK (unregistered) in reply to Lithp
    Lithp:
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created".

    Except it's not, not really, and unless you conducted a vote, recording opinions and IQs (or any other data on voters' intelligence), drop the bullshit rhetoric, would you?

    Would you prefer I just insult everyone who disagrees with me?

    I apologize for trying to have a rational discussion.

    If there are flaws in my argument, point it out.

    Lithp:
    If you have trouble grasping the difference in meaning - Charles Babbage *invented* the Analytical Engine. But he didn't really *create* one.

    See http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/invent

    For good measure, also look up: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paraphrase

    As I said originally, perhaps my interpretation of Al's quote is incorrect. Certainly his words were ill-chosen. But my interpretation is completely valid, given what he actually said.

    Unfortunately Al has never (to my knowledge) clarified his original intent. That hasn't stopped legions of his followers from defending him, though.

    Without clarification from Al, my interpretation is just as valid as yours, based on the clear meaning of the words he said.

    Lithp:
    Besides, I think you're severely underestimating the massive impact this "marketing", as you wrote it off, had on the Internet. I may think that Al Gore is a prick, but he *did* see a possibility there before others did, and he *did* help it come about.
    My point is that the Internet was created (or invented if you prefer), without any help from Al whatsoever. He called for the creation of something that already existed, but wasn't widely known about by the general population.

    He was very successful in popularizing something that already existed. Sounds like marketing to me. What would you call it?

  • KP (unregistered) in reply to TK
    TK:
    KP:
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created."
    If that were true then most intelligent people would be wrong. You can create without inventing and you can invent without creating. And to "take the initiative in creating" is not even the same thing as "creating" - maybe "enabling" is closer to the intended meaning.

    I really don't see how anyone benefits by wilfully misunderstanding what other people say. Isn't that just sabotaging honest attempts at communication?

    Well, I assume most intelligent people know the definition of synonym and can use a thesaurus.

    See: http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/invent

    I quote: invent Synonyms: concoct, contrive, cook (up), devise, fabricate, make up, manufacture, think (up) Related Words: coin, contrive, create, design, hatch, produce; daydream, dream, fantasize; conceive, envisage, imagine, picture, visualize

    Note that they don't consider it a synonym, but a related word. Of course even a synonym doesn't mean exactly the same thing, it's just has the "the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses."

    Create and invent certainly would apply.

    Now, if Al had said "enabling," there never would have been a controversy in the first place.

    So you base your argument on the fact that "invent" and "create" are synonyms therefore they mean the same thing, and when somebody pulls you up on it you claim that that isn't what synonym means at all thus destroying your own argument. Not very good at this trolling lark, are you?

  • Moe Ronic (unregistered)

    Politicians often speak of creating jobs. Obviously, this is nonsense, because they have not personally invented the idea of exchanging work for money, and they couldn't possibly be referring to changes in the employment numbers in their areas.

    ...or, perhaps, 'invent' and 'create' don't always mean quite the same thing.

    captcha: vindico

  • TK (unregistered) in reply to Moe Ronic
    Moe Ronic:
    ...or, perhaps, 'invent' and 'create' don't always mean quite the same thing.
    Perhaps you've stumbled on the very definition of "synonym."
  • LL (unregistered)

    Actually 'create' and 'invent' are very similar when you are talking about a single thing rather than an instance of a thing. For example 'I created the mona lisa' or 'I created the hubble telescope'.

    It is different when you are talking about an instance such as 'I created a newspaper' or 'I created jobs'. In those cases you didn't invent the concept, you just created an instance. But for things where the object is the concept (i.e. it is unique) then you pretty much created both the object and the concept.

  • Marshall (unregistered)

    I think we've got a lot of poetic licence here.

    I left at the end of 1968 and the 8200 hadn't been delivered at that time. Just the 1800 and a newly arrived 200, both tape-only machines.

    I started as a PIT (Programmer In Training) before becoming a Programmer - so I'm not sure what a Software Support Engineer was.

    This was Australia so nobody used the term "freshy" .. much less bellowing in the corridor outside the computer room (the one with the windows on one (in)side and offices on the other (outside to provide a cooling buffer).

    The 8200 was an 1800 with a tightly coupled 200 added for IO, not an extended 200.

    We got to program in FACT (see the front page of your Cobol manual).

    The 1800 was fed from punched paper tape not cards (a room full of operators) so there were no (punched card) sorters and collators as mentioned in the story.

    On the good side I worked in one of the (really) high security sections so we got to turf everyone out and run the H200 ourselves (COBOL if I remember correctly). We also had our own paper tape operator who got to live inside a copper covered "cage" inside the office.

    I don't remember anything about telephone numbers but we were given lectures by ASIO on how to lie and tell people we worked for Army or Navy (who only did admin stuff at that time) instead of Defence.

    I do remember my boss coming back from a training course on the 8200 and trying to explain to me how disk drives worked :-)

  • slebetman (unregistered) in reply to TK

    I agree that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" IS reasonably paraphrased as "I invented the Internet?". However it IS ALSO reasonably paraphrased as "I promoted the invention of the Internet". Or even as "I started the invention of the Internet". Hooray for the English Language!

  • (cs) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    Whenever you work in places where the guards carry automatic weapons, this sort of thing isn't a WTF at all. It's normal behavior.

    Our clients have armed guards, but only at their UAE office. I suspect they'd have them at the UK one too, if they were allowed.

  • (cs) in reply to hikari

    Not DOD related, but I worked for a large, international company that makes pay telephones in the late 80's/early 90's, when magnetic strip phone cards were the latest thing. Because the cards were more or less equivalent to money there was major paranoia around the phone's firmware.

    The main card reader and motherboard were manufactured by a Japanese company and the contract had long and detailed clauses about what we could and couldn't do. Mostly couldn't.

    The code was in EPROMS that my company had to mass produce in order to make the phones but we weren't allowed to even burn a single EPROM without a representative of the Japanese company present in the room. I never quite understood why they trusted a building full of Australian engineers not to ever do it during the months when the Japanese dudes weren't around.

    But what was more fun was that I was QA'ing the software, and I found some intermittent problems. In an effort to figure out what the cause was I ended up having to put a bus analyzer across the data and address busses (it was a 680x microprocessor), printing out the bus traces and reverse engineering the code by hand from the bus traces.

    My boss loved it because the way the contract was worded I hadn't actually broken the agreement, since at no point did I have a soft copy of the code, it was all scrawled on bits of paper.

  • Mike5 (unregistered) in reply to Major Fault
    Major Fault:
    Ob Server:
    Sure, scissor the sensitive data out of the core dumps, makes sense to me. In fact I think I'm going to try that on our developers.

    But, given that no one is allowed to see the data, who does the scissoring?

    The Senior Scissor Sargent, of course. And he's blind.

    Well, he used to do this, before he lost most of his fingers.

    Mike5

  • Martin (unregistered)

    Yesterday, I was debuggin some PHP code (over the phone), which ran successfully on our servers, but not at server of our client.

    Even the final address of the website was classified. We didn't know which hosting it is, what php version is there, nothing. They said only "it passes your technical requirements and it's not working"

    After 30 minutes of talking, I was allowed to hear the actual error message. It was "invalid character on line 15: /". I said "but we have no / on line 15"! And the client: "I've added that line of code, because hosting needs it there!".

  • David (unregistered)

    Marshall who commented a few above is closest, especially when he suggested that there is some hyperbole in Alex's telling of the story.

    The 8200 was a combined 1800 and 200. The 200, as explained above, was a character machine used for IO in the 8200. The 1800 component did the grunt work and was a 48 bit three address word machine: Add A to B giving C for instance.

    The 8200 had done away with paper tape input, although we did retro-fit it to each release of the software at one site.

    David

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I think TK makes a perfectly valid point. You can argue over it till the cows come home (not recommended, none of you own cows) but whatever side of the divide you stand on one thing is clear: Gore chose his words extremely badly and he's been paying the price for it ever since. It was his speech, it was planned in advance, he knew exactly what he was saying but he still chose a turn of phrase that was entirely inappropriate for what he actually meant. Seasoned public speakers should know better than to make such schoolboy errors.

  • (cs) in reply to Dwayne
    Dwayne:
    Technically, the 8200 (and the earlier 200) series mainframes used 6-bit “characters” instead of 8-bit bytes; so that’d be 6,291,456 usable bits, which would be the equivalent of 786,432 bytes.
    Even more technically, those are still bytes. They're just six-bit bytes rather than the octets we usually use nowadays.

    So they're sextets? See, even back then porn was the major driver for every technical innovation.

  • Hgr (unregistered)

    "[1] Technically, the 8200 (and the earlier 200) series mainframes used 6-bit “characters” instead of 8-bit bytes; so that’d be 6,291,456 usable bits, which would be the equivalent of 786,432 bytes. Kinda. Go read the manual if you want to learn more."

    Techically technically, the 8200 used 6-bit bytes instead of 8-bit bytes, also known as octets today. There. Fixed that for you. Gee, you don't have to dumb it down.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Hgr
    Hgr:
    "[1] Technically, the 8200 (and the earlier 200) series mainframes used 6-bit “characters” instead of 8-bit bytes; so that’d be 6,291,456 usable bits, which would be the equivalent of 786,432 bytes. Kinda. Go read the manual if you want to learn more."

    Techically technically, the 8200 used 6-bit bytes instead of 8-bit bytes, also known as octets today. There. Fixed that for you. Gee, you don't have to dumb it down.

    It already says exactly that at the bottom of the article. No wonder Alex has to "dumb it down" when people like you don't even read the article.

  • Still Not Tim (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    but whatever side of the divide you stand on one thing is clear: Gore chose his words extremely badly and he's been paying the price for it ever since.

    Or he chose his words extremely carefully, to take the initiative in creating a claim that was exaggerated and yet also contained exactly the required amount of deniability ?

    No, that's not possible. No politician would ever do such a thing.

  • (cs) in reply to Da' Man
    Da' Man:
    When I was younger, so much younger than today...

    ...I lived in a strange foreign land, whose language is completely incomprehensible to people like me (but whose people are very friendly; especially the female ones ;-)

    Job was good too (money wasn't, but that didn't matter with all the rest being so swell) and the company was very well connected and manage to pull of some very interesting (and probably quite lucrative) jobs from all the big players and the government, too.

    One of this government jobs was to program the software that was actually used for computer-based driving license tests. Quite a good one, I must say, it was later also sold to a number of other countries, and the government made a nice little profit from this development.

    However, there was one issue: the actual database with the questions was of course highly sensitive. No one could be trusted to see these questions.

    No one? Wait, we have this guy here who won't understand a word!

    Oh, that's OK. He's got to do it.

    That's how I won my first public tender :-)

    That's awesome - for once ignorance of what you were working on was NOT a WTF. It's a good thing babelfish didn't exist back then...

    Anonymous:
    I think TK makes a perfectly valid point. You can argue over it till the cows come home (not recommended, none of you own cows)...
    I'd bet on them arguing over it till the cows come home even though they don't have any. TK, MR, will you two just get a room already? NO ONE ELSE CARES

    Addendum (2009-07-15 09:12): guess it was TK, MR, KP, and code dependent. make it "you four".

  • (cs) in reply to TK
    TK:
    If there's some clear language I missed, perhaps you can try explaining it without the insults?
    No, thanks. Once I realize someone isn't a reasoning person, I don't waste any more time trying to reason with them. Bye, now.
  • schmitter (unregistered) in reply to TK
    TK:
    Lithp:
    TK:
    Most intelligent people would consider "invented" to be a synonym for "created".

    Except it's not, not really, and unless you conducted a vote, recording opinions and IQs (or any other data on voters' intelligence), drop the bullshit rhetoric, would you?

    Would you prefer I just insult everyone who disagrees with me?

    I apologize for trying to have a rational discussion.

    If there are flaws in my argument, point it out.

    Lithp:
    If you have trouble grasping the difference in meaning - Charles Babbage *invented* the Analytical Engine. But he didn't really *create* one.

    See http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/invent

    For good measure, also look up: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paraphrase

    As I said originally, perhaps my interpretation of Al's quote is incorrect. Certainly his words were ill-chosen. But my interpretation is completely valid, given what he actually said.

    Unfortunately Al has never (to my knowledge) clarified his original intent. That hasn't stopped legions of his followers from defending him, though.

    Without clarification from Al, my interpretation is just as valid as yours, based on the clear meaning of the words he said.

    Lithp:
    Besides, I think you're severely underestimating the massive impact this "marketing", as you wrote it off, had on the Internet. I may think that Al Gore is a prick, but he *did* see a possibility there before others did, and he *did* help it come about.
    My point is that the Internet was created (or invented if you prefer), without any help from Al whatsoever. He called for the creation of something that already existed, but wasn't widely known about by the general population.

    He was very successful in popularizing something that already existed. Sounds like marketing to me. What would you call it?

    Let's just get to the point. Do you think that Gore is a dummy? What he should have said is the accurate representation of what he did. "I took the initiatave to suport the application public (read TAXPAYER dollars) towards the expantion of a public network that would one day be called the Internet." He did NOT say this however and went with creating, knowing full well that many would falsly give him credit for more than he really did, helping his political carrer. The real question I have is how effective were his efforts, and would we all be reading this in a newspaper instead of on the Internet if Gore did nothing?

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I think TK makes a perfectly valid point. *snip* ...[Gore] still chose a turn of phrase that was entirely inappropriate for what he actually meant.
    So you acknowledge that Gore didn't mean "I invented the internet". Therefore TK, who insists that Gore actually did mean that, does not have a valid point.
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Hgr:
    "[1] Technically, the 8200 (and the earlier 200) series mainframes used 6-bit “characters” instead of 8-bit bytes; so that’d be 6,291,456 usable bits, which would be the equivalent of 786,432 bytes. Kinda. Go read the manual if you want to learn more."

    Techically technically, the 8200 used 6-bit bytes instead of 8-bit bytes, also known as octets today. There. Fixed that for you. Gee, you don't have to dumb it down.

    It already says exactly that at the bottom of the article. No wonder Alex has to "dumb it down" when people like you don't even read the article.

    Epic rebuttal fail.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Same thing happened in the UK with ICL, who being the only UK computer company left by that time were the only provider trusted to supply certain parts of the government like the MoD. What the scissor-wielders never realised was that the hex values next to the carefully-excised ASCII text contained the same data, only in hex, which anyone who'd get sent in to debug these things had little trouble reading.

  • Florent (unregistered) in reply to Dwayne
    Dwayne:
    Technically, the 8200 (and the earlier 200) series mainframes used 6-bit “characters” instead of 8-bit bytes; so that’d be 6,291,456 usable bits, which would be the equivalent of 786,432 bytes.
    Even more technically, those are still bytes. They're just six-bit bytes rather than the octets we usually use nowadays.
    If you're going this way, the bytes we use today are mostly 32 bits and some 64 bits
  • (cs) in reply to kastein
    kastein:
    Addendum (2009-07-15 09:12): guess it was TK, MR, KP, and code dependent. make it "you four".
    Nobody cares if nobody cares, man. It's the eternal battle of good vs evil, right vs wrong, yin vs yang, frick vs frack, Nancy Drew vs Hardy Boys.

    Relax, man. It's gonna be okay.

  • Tama (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    SAMO (c):
    My gov't asked me to fix the 8200, so I looked at a bunch of scissored core dumps, blamed the hardware team and then NOTHING happened. LONG LIVE THE LONGEST STRAW!
    Oh wow, that was so much funnier than when you did on the last article. I don't know about anyone else but I'm really looking forward to your input on the next one.

    So am I. I love funny, witty and original comments like these.

  • (cs) in reply to Florent
    Florent:
    Dwayne:
    Even more technically, those are still bytes. They're just six-bit bytes rather than the octets we usually use nowadays.
    If you're going this way, the bytes we use today are mostly 32 bits and some 64 bits
    Err, no.

    The word you're looking for is 'word'. The 'byte' is the smallest addressable unit of storage, whereas the 'word' is the natural unit of storage (usually the register size, or whatever). There may be machines out there with 32-bit bytes, but I don't know of them.

  • Grzes (unregistered)

    There were no Latvian army these times. The article is either fake or "not entirely true".

  • Niels (unregistered) in reply to Dwayne
    Even more technically, those are still bytes. They're just six-bit bytes rather than the octets we usually use nowadays.

    Hmmm, I always thought that the word "byte" was derived from "by eight".

  • Old Timer (unregistered) in reply to Dwayne

    Actually, they had eight bits. It's just that one was devoted to the word mark and the other to the paragraph mark - leaving six to denote the character. I worked on the design of those machines and we never thought of a character as a byte, not even our six-plus-two bit characters.

  • Maarten (unregistered) in reply to Dwayne
    Dwayne:
    Technically, the 8200 (and the earlier 200) series mainframes used 6-bit “characters” instead of 8-bit bytes; so that’d be 6,291,456 usable bits, which would be the equivalent of 786,432 bytes.
    Even more technically, those are still bytes. They're just six-bit bytes rather than the octets we usually use nowadays.
    Actually, that would make them words, as bytes are always 8 bits.
  • nimis (unregistered) in reply to TK
    TK:
    Code Dependent:
    TK:
    I'm one of those "morons."
    You've made that clear.
    Insulting other people doesn't mean you automatically win the argument. Really, it just means you know your position is too weak to stand up to logic and reason.
    Out of curiosity, do you always oppose people who agree with you?
  • (cs)

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