• (cs) in reply to Programming Praxis
    Programming Praxis:
    galgorah:
    amischiefr:
    Code Dependent:
    little Johnny is going to be on the receiving end of "march yourself to the principal's office right this minute young man"
    No no. That image is of the teacher. Little Johnny is going to be on the receiving end of "Straight A's (plus $1000) or I send this to the newspaper."
    Either that or Little Johnny is going to be doing some "after school curriculum"
    I'm reminded of the Venom song "Teacher's Pet" google the lyrics but remember NSFW.
    Just an observation, if the genders of the student and teacher were reversed, it would be much less acceptable to comment on Janie doing some "after school curriculum."
    'much less acceptable'? Who gives it shit, it would still be funny. Maybe you want www.thedailythingsthatarentpropper.com.
  • (cs) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    This isn't the Victorian era, you can write MASTERBATION!
    On a side note, when my brother (one grade higher than me in high school) graduated, I accompanied him and a few of his buddies on their celebratory outing. A quickly-drunken spree (none of us could hold our booze back then) turned into a trip to The Kettle (an all-night restaurant, for those who don't know). I hadn't had enough to make a complete idiot of myself; my brother and his graduating buddies, however... I can remember being embarrassed as bro perused the menu and announced, in a voice that could be heard all over the restaurant and probably out onto the street, "Hey, y'all, I want a MASTERBATER!"... in reference to the Kettle's best hamburger, the Masterburger.

    Shortly after, one of the proud graduates went to the restroom and, for reasons none of us know, punched his hand through the glass window. It cut him badly, and he came hurrying out, trailing blood everywhere. Everyone in the restaurant had heard the sound of breaking glass.

    One of the customers, a big hulking giant of a man, got up and headed him off, wrapped his bleeding wrist up in a hand towel, and led him over to the night manager, a lady who was crying by this time. He made the dumbass apologize and cough up $20 to pay for the window and the towel, and then ordered us all out. As we left, I heard her thanking him profusely.

    I would bet $1000 against 10 that my brother doesn't remember this.

  • Khazwossname (unregistered) in reply to Ken B
    Ken B:
    Buddy:
    Thought of a slogan - there's no masturbation without U. Have no idea what it could be used for.
    There's no masturbation without "bat". (And I have even less of an idea how to use that one.)
    "There's no masturbation without 'ur mast'"
  • (cs) in reply to Ken B
    Ken B:
    Buddy:
    Thought of a slogan - there's no masturbation without U. Have no idea what it could be used for.
    There's no masturbation without "bat". (And I have even less of an idea how to use that one.)

    Almost entirely unrelated, but I was always fond of:

    "There's no I in Team. But there is an I in Team Cheerios."

    Makes you think, don't it?

  • NoEyeDeer (unregistered)

    Too much time on my hands. I was looking at the ad for American Small Business - the multi bazillion disk drives sold by the guys with the 80's moustaches. There was a name there - Robert Webster - google is my friend so I thought - what it Bob up to these days. Well it turns out Bob and Mike are just fine. The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX for - check this out "Total consideration for the purchase and sale of the stock andreal estate shall be: Real Estate ONE MILLION ONE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY TWO DOLLARS ($1,121,332)

    plus a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies."

    Yes - Cookies!

    http://www.secinfo.com/dsvrp.896z.5.htm

    Well done Bob!

  • (cs) in reply to NoEyeDeer
    NoEyeDeer:
    The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX for - check this out "Total consideration for the purchase and sale of the stock andreal estate shall be: Real Estate ONE MILLION ONE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY TWO DOLLARS ($1,121,332)

    plus a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies."

    Yes - Cookies!

    Snatcherly. Viagra ensures that both of you get your cookies.

  • Arthur Spotty Bottom (unregistered)

    RLE was is for wussies. Back in the early 90's real programmers used pcx compression, or the out of patent lz stuff. worked like rle but, used used pattern matching to encode more than just runs of a single value.

    Those were heady days. It didn't feel like we were playing with toys, but looking back it all looks a lot simpler than today's problems.

    Try writing an entire app in assembly language, though, and you'll find the challenges were just as tough, even if they were along a different axis.

  • (cs)

    Why does Anne's computer look like a cat box?

    I remember that in the early days of microcomputers, things were a little more "home made", but did they really have to use a "Kitty Hide-A-Poo" for a case?

  • jim steichen (unregistered) in reply to anothercontractor
    anothercontractor:
    Why does Anne's computer look like a cat box?

    I remember that in the early days of microcomputers, things were a little more "home made", but did they really have to use a "Kitty Hide-A-Poo" for a case?

    Hate to rain on your parade but it looks like an ADM dumb glass terminal.
  • (cs) in reply to Khazwossname
    Khazwossname:
    Ken B:
    Buddy:
    Thought of a slogan - there's no masturbation without U. Have no idea what it could be used for.
    There's no masturbation without "bat". (And I have even less of an idea how to use that one.)
    "There's no masturbation without 'ur mast'"

    There's no masturbation without 'ur ma'.

  • IGadget (unregistered) in reply to Zygo
    Zygo:
    Anyone notice that the printer ad contained an offer to upgrade the firmware of existing printer owners for "only" 100 1981 dollars? With just three PROM chips, apparently.

    With just three blank 64k (maybe 128k or 256k each) PROM chips no less. Someone forgot to cover the quartz window so ambient UV didn't erase them.

    The picture on the page is more believable if you consider that the holes on form feed paper are about 1/8th of an inch in diameter and you are looking at a picture that when was printed was 4" wide, photographed from about 10 feet away, converted to halftone for the magazine print and then scanned with a scanner that didn't quite have the original square to get the half toning filter working properly and then saved as a an 800K JPeG. The little lady now is 60x150 pixels.

    The thing that annoys me is I know I've seen that image before someplace.

  • Herby (unregistered)

    Why is it that pictures like this go around. Oh, never mind. I helped scan one with a computer connected TV camera back in the early (pre microprocessor) 1970's. It did take a while, but the persistance of about 5 guys stitched together three scans. It eventually made up a "demo" that printed on the IBM 1130's printer at about 100 lines/minute (i.e. VERY SLOW). It DID work, and it didn't take up much. Something like 200 by 200 pixels at 4 bits each.

    Somewhere I've got a printout of a personal scan from this era. I was MUCH younger then!

    Spare time breeds these things!

  • zippy (unregistered) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    Almost entirely unrelated, but I was always fond of:

    "There's no I in Team. But there is an I in Team Cheerios."

    P1: "There's no 'I' in 'team'." P2: "But there's a 'u' in 'cunt'"

    P1: "There's no 'I' in 'team'." P2: "But there is a 'me'"

  • Buddy (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer
    NoEyeDeer:
    ... The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX ...

    Well done Bob!

    I read that as Viagra Fix, thought WTF, it's Via Grafix!

  • (cs) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    NoEyeDeer:
    ... The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX ...

    Well done Bob!

    I read that as Viagra Fix, thought WTF, it's Via Grafix!
    Shame here...

    np: Death Cab For Cutie - Styrofoam Plates (The Photo Album)

  • Brendan (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    Shouldn't VIAGRAFIX be hyphenated?

    -Brendan

    WARNING: This comment says Akismet is spam.

  • sagaciter (unregistered) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    There's an Asian women with the flawless British accent who lives in the same building as me, I think she's a he.

    Not really sure of a lot of things these days.

    Ask her on a date to find out.

  • bpb da bp (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer
    NoEyeDeer:
    The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX for - check this out "Total consideration for the purchase and sale of the stock andreal estate shall be: Real Estate ONE MILLION ONE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY TWO DOLLARS ($1,121,332)

    plus a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies."

    ViagraFix? No, that's ViaGrafix!

  • mmmmCookies (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer
    NoEyeDeer:
    Too much time on my hands. I was looking at the ad for American Small Business - the multi bazillion disk drives sold by the guys with the 80's moustaches. There was a name there - Robert Webster - google is my friend so I thought - what it Bob up to these days. Well it turns out Bob and Mike are just fine. The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX for - check this out "Total consideration for the purchase and sale of the stock andreal estate shall be: Real Estate ONE MILLION ONE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY TWO DOLLARS ($1,121,332)

    plus a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies."

    Yes - Cookies!

    http://www.secinfo.com/dsvrp.896z.5.htm

    Well done Bob!

    I think you missed something there. The real estate was sold for that much. The company itself was another $1,978,670 for a total of $3,100,002.00 and a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies. Personally, I would have held out for $3,100,005.00 and a box of tagalongs.

  • Mr A (unregistered) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    Ken B:
    Buddy:
    Thought of a slogan - there's no masturbation without U. Have no idea what it could be used for.
    There's no masturbation without "bat". (And I have even less of an idea how to use that one.)

    Almost entirely unrelated, but I was always fond of:

    "There's no I in Team. But there is an I in Team Cheerios."

    Makes you think, don't it?

    It certainly made me think. There is no I in TEAM, but there is a ME.

    In fact, there's no 'I' in PSYCHOPATH, APPLE-STRUDEL or UNPLANNED-FAECAL-RELEASE.

    It's almost as if all those business sound bites are made up by overpaid, winnet-ridden tossers who think pop-tarts are the height of human achievement.

    Next time I meet one, I shall remind them there is a U in CU*T.

  • Mike D. (unregistered) in reply to mmmmCookies
    Arthur Spotty Bottom:
    RLE was is for wussies. Back in the early 90's real programmers used pcx compression, or the out of patent lz stuff. worked like rle but, used used pattern matching to encode more than just runs of a single value.
    Last thing I remember making routine use of RLE was the MacPaint file format in the mid-80's. The original MacOS had RLE routines in the API. PackIt used Huffman compression and StuffIt came along later with LZ. Didn't use PCs pre-Linux, so I don't remember them. I think Unix 'compress' was just LZ?
    Arthur Spotty Bottom:
    Try writing an entire app in assembly language, though, and you'll find the challenges were just as tough, even if they were along a different axis.
    Assembly isn't difficult, just tedious. VERY tedious. A good macro assembler can help, but it makes your code opaque to others.
    mmmmCookies:
    NoEyeDeer:
    Real Estate ONE MILLION ONE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY TWO DOLLARS ($1,121,332)

    plus a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies."

    The company itself was another $1,978,670 for a total of $3,100,002.00 and a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies. Personally, I would have held out for $3,100,005.00 and a box of tagalongs.
    Yeah, but then they would have given you a bad box. The nice thing about McDonalds stuff is it's consistently bad, so you know what you're getting.

    I have to wonder if the cookies bit was some standard thing to force a face-to-face closing or some other stunt. Like the rock band that wanted a dish of M&M's sans one color, just to make sure the venue reps read the whole contract.

  • Bob (unregistered)

    There's no "I" in "team". But there are six "I"s in "dissociative identity disorder".

  • Just Another Geek (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Howard

    It's 42, doofus.

  • (cs)
    a silly spammer:
    Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
    Not me. I am the architect of my own database schema, though. My salary will never become a fortune, but break my tables and I will rip your hands off and stuff them down your throat.

    And yes, I also read VIAGRA-FIX the first time before realising it was supposed to be VIA-GRAFIX. What a wonderful name for a company. I wonder, how much that domain would go for?

  • Someone who actually worked with hardware (unregistered) in reply to IGadget
    IGadget:
    Zygo:
    Anyone notice that the printer ad contained an offer to upgrade the firmware of existing printer owners for "only" 100 1981 dollars? With just three PROM chips, apparently.

    With just three blank 64k (maybe 128k or 256k each) PROM chips no less. Someone forgot to cover the quartz window so ambient UV didn't erase them. .

    You are having a laugh, aren't you?

    Ambient UV isn't going to erase an EPROM for a very, very long time. Conceivably you might get bit errors over the long haul, but while it may be bad practice not to cover the EPROM once you're sure you don't want to erase it again, it was far from uncommon to see EPROMs in shipping products with their windows exposed in those days.

  • Someone who actually worked with hardware (unregistered) in reply to Someone who actually worked with hardware
    Someone who actually worked with hardware:
    IGadget:
    Zygo:
    Anyone notice that the printer ad contained an offer to upgrade the firmware of existing printer owners for "only" 100 1981 dollars? With just three PROM chips, apparently.

    With just three blank 64k (maybe 128k or 256k each) PROM chips no less. Someone forgot to cover the quartz window so ambient UV didn't erase them. .

    You are having a laugh, aren't you?

    Ambient UV isn't going to erase an EPROM for a very, very long time. Conceivably you might get bit errors over the long haul, but while it may be bad practice not to cover the EPROM once you're sure you don't want to erase it again, it was far from uncommon to see EPROMs in shipping products with their windows exposed in those days.

    (Unless, I hasten to add for the pedants' sake, by 'ambient UV' you mean 'leaving them on a windowsill for a couple of weeks in the height of summer', but I believe that sort of usage was frowned upon even if you did have a cover over the window, cooking them being as likely an outcome as erasing them.)

  • (cs) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    java.lang.Chris;:
    Is "cheering the end of dithering" another term for m*sturbation, like "polishing the one eyed gopher" or "burping the worm"?

    Oh my stars, such a vile tongue -- With apologies to the ladies and gentlemen of refinement who perchance have steeled themselves in anticipation of further horrors -- would I be in your disagreeable presence, should I remove my glove and strike you forthwith!

    This isn't the Victorian era, you can write MASTERBATION!

    Why do we need euphemisms in the first place? They are all pretty stupid-sounding anyway.

  • It Girl (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.
    Mike D.:
    NoEyeDeer:
    Real Estate ONE MILLION ONE HUNDRED TWENTY ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTY TWO DOLLARS ($1,121,332)

    plus a box of McDonalds Chocolaty Chip Cookies."

    I have to wonder if the cookies bit was some standard thing to force a face-to-face closing or some other stunt. Like the rock band that wanted a dish of M&M's sans one color, just to make sure the venue reps read the whole contract.

    And I have to wonder why it would be necessary to force a read of the contract when you're selling the business to yourself (and I'm guessing the same brother that was part of the original business)

  • (cs)

    sigh The NorthStar was one freakin' kewl computer.

  • Jordan Brown (unregistered)

    The Epson image doesn't seem at all unreasonable. Remember that those are black and white pixels - a bit over a megabit, or around 165K uncompressed. That would fit on two floppies of the day. I don't know about the scanning end of it, but nobody said the kid did the scanning... or even that that's a scanned image.

  • Jordan Brown (unregistered) in reply to Jordan Brown

    Don't mind me, I'm an idiot - I only saw the "featured comment" before I commented.

  • Mike Webb (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    Tangential, but I wonder what the company that probably intended to be though of as "ViaGrafix" is now more likely to be read as "ViagraFix"?

    Bet all of their email is flagged as spam...

  • Tom Wilson (unregistered)

    regarding the printout....

    Keeping in mind that dot matrix printers only printed mono images, and that any graphic stored for printing would have been a dithered B&W image, that picture could have fit on a single floppy disc on any "modern" computer at the time.

    Also, remember that programmers squeezed every byte out of their storage space, often bit-encoding flags to save space. So if that image had a raw resolution of 1347840 pixels, it would have been condensed in to an 8-pixel per byte format. That comes out to 168480 bytes... just small enough to fit on a double-density 5.25" floppy diskette on an IBM PC, a Commodore 64, an Apple II, all of which were available in 1981.

  • überRegenbogen (unregistered)

    Nothing in the GrafTrax ad describes the actual resolution of the image being presented; it could be fairly blocky at close range. If was say, 500x1000 pixels at 1 or 2 bits deep, it would be only 50 to 100k (smaller with data compression)—easily within the bounds of an average 1981 personal computer system. The image could be captured with a simple hack involving a phototransistor attached to the head of the printer. We had our ways. ☺

  • überRegenbogen (unregistered) in reply to Mr A
    Mr A:
    In fact, there's no 'I' in PSYCHOPATH, APPLE-STRUDEL or UNPLANNED-FAECAL-RELEASE.
    The last of which you damned near caused with that. ;P
  • überRegenbogen (unregistered) in reply to IGadget
    IGadget:
    With just three blank 64k (maybe 128k or 256k each) PROM chips no less.

    Probably more like 2kB (16kb) PROMs (hopefully not blank). I'm not up for digging out and cracking open my MX-80 to check; but 192kB (or even 24kB—in case you meant kb instead of kB) would be an absurdly large amount of firmware for a dot matrix printer.

  • überRegenbogen (unregistered) in reply to überRegenbogen

    (Well, maybe 4kB PROMs, considering that there are fonts in there if they completely replace the original ROMs.)

  • überRegenbogen (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    Spectre:
    Code Dependent:
    No no. That image is of the teacher. Little Johnny is going to be on the receiving end of "Straight A's (plus $1000) or I send this to the newspaper."
    Didn't you mean the sending end?
    That would be logically correct. I noted that fact about the original statement, but felt that adjusting it in my response would be too esoteric and confusing for the masses, so I just followed Mark's footsteps down his errant path for the sake of expediency.
    Moving the quotation mark would have been the thing to do: Little Johnny is going to be on the receiving end of straight A's (plus $1000) "or I send this to the newspaper".
  • überRegenbogen (unregistered) in reply to überRegenbogen

    [Ah crap! That's twice in a row that i forgot to fix the character salad in my nym.]

  • (cs)

    A Corvus Constellation may be able to handle oil rigs, but it couldn't handle sitting quietly in a high school computer lab. My high school beta-tested it for them - not that we knew we were beta testing, we thought we were lucky enough to be the first ones to get one.

    Beta-testing might be generous, at that. We had Corvus guys showing up on a regular basis, and half of them were clueless. The one who couldn't tell a fake Apple ][ command prompt (one that, when you typed "list", printed a shopping list, and so on for all commands) from a real one still sticks in my mind today.

  • Dan H (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    My god, I thought you were joking about the cookies, but alas there they are listed right alongside the seven figure purchase price.

    Then there was also the revelation that the buyer had nothing to do with Viagra ™: ViaGrafix (not ViagraFix) The 1995 date was the second tipoff :)

  • Owen (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    The REALLY interesting thing is that American Small Business was sold to VIAGRAFIX

    Is it bad that I read that as VIAGRA-FIX?

  • (cs)

    and there's no T in China.

  • Barc (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    Hey, NoEyeDeer! You only included the land & building. You left off the important part of the transaction:

    ASBC 1422 shares Capital Stock, ONE MILLION NINE HUNDRED SEVENTY EIGHT THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED SEVENTY DOLLARS ($1,978,670).

    totaling the sum of THREE MILLION ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND AND TWO DOLLARS ($3,100,002.00)

  • DAR (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    I do hope that's pronounced as "via grafix", and not "viagra fix"!

  • (cs) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    Thanks!

  • Tannen (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    I didn't parse VIAGRAFIX as Via Grafix.

  • Tannen (unregistered) in reply to NoEyeDeer

    I didn't parse VIAGRAFIX as Via Grafix.

  • rtfsetzq (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.
  • Derekwaisy (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

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