Forum: Author Hangout

The NYPost should be excluded but the WaPo shouldn't - the NYT is gonna be pretty much what the NYC fishwrap covers, but the WaPost will have slightly more political coverage due to all the available sources.

Curious as to why you consider the NY Post to be excluded. They're consistently the second highest circulation newspaper out of New York, and even 10 or 15 years ago, had more customers than the WAPO.

Obviously, actual PRINT newspapers are biting the dust for most people. As of 2015 (which is the last year I can find data for without paying for a subscription for the statistics) and counting print and online subscriptions -

NY Times - 2,2372601
LI Newsday - 512,118
LA Times - 507,395
NY Post - 424,721
Dallas Morning News - 410,587
Chicago Tribune - 384,962
WA Post - 356,768

Obviously as well, the NY Post has gone for the least common denominator factor in their paper layout and online presence. The LCD factor being that sex sells, so they have numerous articles about movie stars and glamour. That doesn't detract from their actual fact-based reporting.

Other than that, the WSJ is considered a trade publication - almost exclusively read with intent on investing, and with a (relatively) small circulation (especially in demographic).

I would argue strongly against that. Very strongly.

With a circulation of over 2.8 million physical copies every day, it is the most widely distributed newspaper in the nation.

And if you think it is only about investing, then obviously you have never read it. When I was most active in the IT industry, it was a "must read", especially in the 1990s. They were very good at publishing about future trends, and giving peeks at what was to come in the future.

It covers all industries, from manufacturing and transportation, to agriculture, IT, and everything else. From raw materials and their processing, to manufacturing, distribution, and selling things.

Not a trade paper, and not about investing. That is really only a very tiny part, other than it is a great reference for investors as it gives so much information about so many different industries.

The NYT local news coverage is a joke.

The "ABC World News" is a joke. I don't think they ever report on what's happening in the world.

And look what happened to the term "Breaking News." It used to be used when they interrupted local programming for something breaking. Now they all call their news breaking news.

The "ABC World News" is a joke. I don't think they ever report on what's happening in the world.

This was not always the case.

I for one am old enough to remember in 1979 when they started to run a half-hour program every night because of the Iran Hostage Crisis. A show which later evolved into Nightline, and still runs today.

We live in Animal Farm.

The crow chirps whatever the Pig wants from the fence. The pig blames the previous pig for all the current failures. The Pig is surrounded by his attack dogs which he can sick on anyone.

The horse works hard and when he is of no value he will be sent to the glue factory with a heroes send off.

The sheep sit in the feild and bleet, and when they get it backward and are bleeting two legs good, four legs bad none of them even realize or correct the others.

The Crow is/was/never objective. He works for the pig.

The Crow is/was/never objective. He works for the pig.

Of course, it might also help if you understand the book and reference it correctly.

Moses the Raven is not media. He symbolizes religion. Only allowed to exist, so long as he tells things in a way that is approved by the state.

I suggest you try reading the book again. The closest in the book was actually the pig Squealer, who was essentially the minister of Propaganda.

Actually, the NYT is a joke.

The NYT list of best sellers certainly appears to be a joke, yet Wikipedia (spit!) claims "The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States."

AJ

Sadly, all news reporting has become more of a skewed editorial rather than a statement of facts.

Agree.

They're after ratings and sensationalism, not reporting the news unbiasedly. Ted Turner blasted CNN (which he started) because he said it wasn't a news program anymore. They are driven by ratings. So are all the others.

And, yes, they do lean right or left. And they misreport because of that. That's the fake news people talk about. Quotes out of context. Partial truth which doesn't tell the truth. Whatever it takes to make it sound the way they want it to sound (either because of their readership or editors' leaning).

What does that say about the advantages of capitalism?

Depends on who has the money. The big newspapers with the least accuracy are all managed by socialists or owned by rich socialists, many of whom made their money by stealing it from others.

I'd be curious how you could have possibly had the time to read all the stories in all the newspapers

With the great majority of the stories from the MsM outlets you only need to read one first, then enough of their running mates to know they're pushing the same propaganda. That cuts out hundreds of outlets. Once you get enough data to know where things really stand the headlines supporting the propaganda are enough to know what follows is rubbish. That works on both sides of the political street.

When a newspaper reported that there was a fire in the lion's house at the local zoo, does saying the fire chief they quoted was 47 when he was only 46 make it an erroneous story?

Nope. But when they report it was an accident while the security footage shows some person in a black outfit with Antifa in white on it pouring fuel around prior to tossing a lit flare into the building, then the report of an accident is very erroneous.

When they broke up AT&T they did it geographically. That worked for a telco.

It didn't work in the UK with electricity distribution companies, water companies, transport companies etc. Did the US telcos have any local competition or were they local monopolies doing the same old same old?

1. Windows still comes with IE pre-installed.

IIRC you're no longer forced to have it as the default browser and M$ had to make interfaces available to their competitors.

AJ

Name one act that is prohibited by the Sherman Act without reference to company size and/or market power.

Amusingly enough, I just had to study this in depth for my real estate training. Based upon what I just read, quite a number of things don't get the national attention, but do get prosecuted because they're not national. You have a city with two big real estate brokers in it and one tells the other, you take the south side of town, I'll take the north side of town, and make things easier for both of us. That's ALSO a violation.

you take the south side of town, I'll take the north side of town

That's collusion.

That's collusion.

It's called market allocation, and is a violation of anti-trust laws.

Price fixing. (requires cooperation from the competition)

Apple indulges in price-fixing - if retailers try to sell Apple products below the price stipulated by Apple, Apple will refuse to supply them.

AJ

Apple indulges in price-fixing - if retailers try to sell Apple products below the price stipulated by Apple, Apple will refuse to supply them.

That's not price fixing. Price fixing is when two companies fix a price.

I always thought gas stations were sort of price fixing. The price per gallon is basically the same from station to station.

That's not price fixing.

'Price fixing is setting the price of a product or service, rather than allowing it to be determined naturally through free-market forces.' - courtesy of Investopedia.

AJ

'Price fixing is setting the price of a product or service, rather than allowing it to be determined naturally through free-market forces.'

Again, by multiple companies.

I set the price of my book on Bookapy at $4.99. Lazeez decides to sell it at $3.99. I take my book down from Bookapy and won't sell it there because he's selling it for less than I want it sold for.

That's not price fixing (me fixing the price at $4.99). That's the seller setting a price. It's "pricing" not "price fixing."

Now if I got in touch with all the authors selling on Bookapy and we collectively agree to sell our books at $4.99, that's price fixing.

ETA: Even if Lazeez lowers the price to $3.99 but still pays me the royalty on $4.99. I might feel selling my book for $3.99 lowers the value of my writing and could even impact sales of my other books sold at $4.99.

That's not price fixing

It is in the UK. UK and US law must differ.

ETA - Apple have been fined in France, Italy and Russia for price-fixing according to the wider definition used in the UK.

AJ

I always thought gas stations were sort of price fixing. The price per gallon is basically the same from station to station.

No, that's called direct competition charging what the market will bear. And every so often you get a little price war going on at certain street corners that you may not see three blocks away.

Keep in mind that are this is WHY the Standard Oil Trust was broken up in the first place. The companies that were part of that trust could charge less than any individual competition could, thus driving the competition out of business. While they might be taking a loss for a while, once the competition was gone, then they could charge what they wanted.

I was the assistant manager of a Speedway station a long damned time ago, and we carefully watched what the other stations within half a mile of us were doing. If another station dropped their price a couple of cents, we'd call corporate so that we could match them.

Keep in mind that are this is WHY the Standard Oil Trust was broken up in the first place. The companies that were part of that trust could charge less than any individual competition could, thus driving the competition out of business. While they might be taking a loss for a while, once the competition was gone, then they could charge what they wanted.

Standard Oil was broken up for political purposes, not for any actual harm done to consumers - in fact, consumers benefitted from lower prices achieved through efficiency and streamlining. Competitors were harmed by Standard Oil's better operations and ran to the government for protection.

The breakup was ordered on the theory that Standard Oil could raise prices if they drove their competitors out of business, but it never got to that point. So, when it comes down to brass tacks, they were broken up for something they might do to consumers, not something they did.

Most importantly, the government's theory was wrong, as Standard Oil's market share in kerosene (aka paraffin) (the main product in question, as gasoline/petrol was not nearly so important at the time) had decreaed from 1904 to 1906 (when the case was filed) and continued to decrease until 1911 (when the company was broken up). There was never (as some commentators have insisted) any attempt at monopolization of exploration and extraction (they had about 10% at the time).

As with AT&T later, much of Standard Oil recominbed (e.g. Exxon/Mobil). And, to put a cherry on top - JD Rockefeller made nearly a BILLION dollars on share appreciation after the breakup. I'll take that kind of 'punishment' any day!

And to have Microsoft unwind Windows Explorer from their operating system.

What?

Sorry, they not only did not do that, they wrapped it even tighter into the OS than ever before. It literally is impossible to remove, it's so tightly embedded into the code.

And while even though MS themselves have long abandoned Explorer, it is still in every OS they sell. What the final outcome was not that at all, not even close. What actually happened was that Microsoft was required to release key parts of their source code, so other companies could release products that work better with Windows.

Next time, try understanding what it is you are trying to discuss. That was completely wrong.

...started spreading money around DC, which they'd neglected to do earlier.

Not at all.

What many people fail to realize is that a monopoly is not in itself against the law. Only if a company achieves it through fraud or illegal practices, or uses it to crush competition.

I have been in the industry long enough to remember most of the competition Microsoft beat. Even IBM was one of them, they simply made a better product. And in the brutal cut-throat world of the 1990's, none of the others could survive. IBM did not just loose the OS wars, they lost their entire PC business.

MS was never broken up, because there was never any proof that they acted illegally in attaining their monopoly. They simply were made to give up the SPI used to make programs for their systems.

And money had not a damned thing to do with it. They lost plenty of lawsuits over the decades, but once again that has nothing to do with anti-trust.

...started spreading money around DC, which they'd neglected to do earlier.

And it worked. A crucial decision against them got reversed. The finest justice money can buy!

AJ

The decision to take them to court, and the DoJ. (After being instructed to, unofficially, by several ranking congresscritters.)

Oh nonsense.

As an FYI, I watched that case (and others MS was involved in) very carefully during that era. And even at that point, everybody in the industry knew it was impossible yo break up the company.

Now one thing they have done since then is to diversify, but there is still not a single thing to show they have violated their power as a monopoly. In 2020 dollars compared to 1990 dollars, they charge less than they do for their products. And just like in 1990 there is plenty of competition and alternatives. It's simply that nobody wants to use them.

I have watched them for 40 years take over the industry. And not by manipulation, but simply by having a better product. Hell, I still remember being proud when I finally got my Novell certification. By far the most dominant networking OS on the planet, when the Microsoft solution was absolutely horrible. I remember when Hughes Aerospace a decade later decided to go ahead and use NT Server for small group servers, to take the load off of their hundreds of Novell servers.

And where is Novell now? Gone, largely forgotten like Banyon and all of the other previous platforms. Why? Because they never tried to innovate, they simply kept doing the "same thing", as MS came out with new products and passed them by. Which is why they dominate that area as well.

I see some keep alluding to money, but fail to ever state what MS did that was illegal. Or even how they could have been broken up even if it was.

Yeah, but Firefox is better than the M$ replacement of Exploder, now, which is relevant. And hell, Mosaic was better than that M$ garbage.

You are aware are you not, that Internet Explorer was cancelled over 4 years ago now, right?

As for which is "better", this to me is nothing but fanboi nonsense. I always thought that kind of behavior was silly, as well as largely stupid and showed a lack of any understanding. Like the Ford-Chevy debate, or any others.

In almost any such discussion I see, I normally find the most vocal are also the most uninformed. Trying to argue from pure emotion and hatred-fanaticism, instead of from informed positions.

And yet it's still there in the latest installs of the most recent versions of Windows. The just installed a second browser (Edge) and buried IE in the start menu so it's hard to find.

Well duh! Explorer as I said ended in 2016. Windows 10 came out in 2015. So yea, it's still going to be in there.

I have watched them for 40 years take over the industry. And not by manipulation, but simply by having a better product.

One of the central tenets to a capitalist economy is a free market where price is fixed by competition. M$ used its operating system dominance to force PC manufacturers to charge more for their machines with Linux installed than with Windows. I'm not sure if any legal action was taken against such market abuse, but I remember Dell being extremely embarrassed when they were outed as one of M$'s 'stooges'.

AJ

One of the central tenets to a capitalist economy is a free market where price is fixed by competition. M$ used its operating system dominance to force PC manufacturers to charge more for their machines with Linux installed than with Windows.

Hmmmm, not quite true.

Those sales basically work on the principal of a Site License. And when a major manufacturer (Dell, Compaq, etc) agrees to sell Windows on every computer, conditions are made in both directions.

In these cases, the OEM does indeed agree to include the OS on every computer it sells. And what does MS give them?

The right to print official license stickers to put on the case. Which they pay around $15 per license. Yep, that is what a major company like Dell pays for each copy of Windows 10. Not the $110 or whatever it is you and I pay, they pay about $15 each. MS provides no disks, no customer support, they provide that all themselves.

So charge more, $15? Hell, the shipping cost more than that. The boxes the computer came in probably cost close to that much. Eliminate a few magazine ads per month and they could give them away.

The rate charged for a major OEM is miniscule. Most of them simply do not like working with other OS because of the cost to them. The thousands of hours of testing and configuration, not to mention the incredible alphabet soup of constant changing and forking variants of all the little UNIX clones running around out there. I most often use MINT, and they get major updates twice a year.

What company wants to get into that mess? Oh, there have been attempts. LINDOWS was one such. But ironically, it was not even Microsoft that killed that, but the Linux community itself. They saw it as "selling out", and the insanely anarchist part of the community cut the throat of Linspire and many refused to make software that would work on it.

But on the other side, do you think Dell was an "Intel Stooge", because they also had an exclusive agreement to only use Intel chips?

when a major manufacturer (Dell, Compaq, etc) agrees to sell Windows on every computer

or not be allowed to sell windows at all if the other operating systems are sold at a lower or equal price.

Market abuse.

AJ

or not be allowed to sell windows at all if the other operating systems are sold at a lower or equal price.

Market abuse.

OK, fine. No more selling Windows. Every computer is shipped with one of the thousands of variants of Linux out there.

And every customer must buy a full retail copy of Windows, at over $100 a copy. Yes, that will teach those dirty rats at Microsoft.

Of all the Linux variants, there are only two or three really strong players.

If every customer who wanted to run windows had to pay $100 and install it on their Linux machine, M$ would have ended up with a negligible market share.

The capitalist solution would be for M$ to allow OEM installations of windows for $10 on new PCs and not try to rig the market by making stipulations as to the pricing of alternative offerings. If Windows is the better operating system (and some would say it isn't), it should out-compete the opposition.

It's like Coca-Cola telling a supermarket chain that they'll supply it with Coke but only if they charge a higher price for Pepsi.

AJ

The capitalist solution would be for M$ to allow OEM installations of windows for $10 on new PCs and not try to rig the market by making stipulations as to the pricing of alternative offerings. If Windows is the better operating system (and some would say it isn't), it should out-compete the opposition.

What makes you think the companies even want to do that in the first place?

Do you really think that Dell or HP want to have to handle the large amount of calls that would come in if every user was shipped some version of Linux?

Have you ever actually worked in the IT industry? Because I have. From small computer stores, to Fortune 15 corporations. For over 3 decades. Remove that, and they will continue just as they are today.

To be honest, they do not want to do that because then they would have to support it. The cost would be huge, and they do not want to bother.

The difference is akin to how for decades McDonald's did not let you special order. They simply were not set up for it. And many companies like Dell and Compaq were selling DR-DOS as an option in the early 1990's. Then Digital Research went under, and they had to send all the ones in the warehouse back to get reimaged all over again. Then go out and but MS-DOS all over again to put on them.

The major OEM do not want to mess with Linux. Plain and simple, there is nowhere near enough money in it to justify the cost of setting up how to do it.

They do support Red Hat, on Enterprise systems. Because there, there is enough money to be worth the investment. IN the smaller home systems, with maybe 10% profit margin? Forget about it. They have a much better idea of what the users want than you do.

No, I think the problem is you aren't hearing each other.
You're saying, essentially "at least 10% of users would like to get away from Windoze et al" and he's saying "more than 80% of the market doesn't care, and the big firms make better profit catering to the unintelligent masses:

Oh, I understand it perfectly.

But the bottom part is not correct.

What is cheaper, power windows, or manual crank windows? A car without AC, or a car with AC?

Well, ultimately what matters is what people want. And computer companies that deal in large volume sell to the mass market. They do not care about the 10%, never have. They simply cater to the 90%. The 10%? They can go to XYZ computers, Dell does not care.

And it is not "unintelligent masses" at all. They simply do not care. Do you think most people care about the kind of automatic clutch system is in their car? That kind of coolant is in their AC system? Hell, most do not even know what the right tire pressure is for their tires. They simply do not care.

They do not want to be computer experts, they want to be able to play their games, surf the web, and put as little effort into it as possible. It is not that they are unintelligent, they simply do not care, and never will care.

As I have said, I have seen so many debates like this over the decades. About 35 years ago, Piers Anthony wrote extensively on his preference for the Dvorak keyboard, and CPM. I found it interesting, but I bet 90% of those that read his author notes had no clue what he was talking about. And yes, I remember seeing Dvorak keyboards in the early 1990's, right before those funky split keyboards became all the rage.

What happened to those split keyboards, that everybody said was the wave of the future?

What both of you keep doing is spinning things to fit your belief. I simply recognize that the vast majority do not care. It does not matter to them, they have no more of a permanent attachment to their computer and OS than they do to their brand of coffee filter. And a great many would not want to return to an era of text commands.

But here, try this sometime.

sudo -u MakePeopleCare

I do however think there there is a big enough segment that wants away from both MS and Apple but isn't computer savvy enough to build their own machines from scratch that SOMEBODY could make a profit serving that market with pre-built Linux machines using one of the more stable distros.

You mean by picking one of the over 100 major Linux distros, based on over a dozen different kernals?

There are thousands that do exactly that. But most of them are the small individual stores, where somebody there is knowledgeable with it. I have worked with Linux for over 2 decades, and built systems several times based on it. I even put a Linux system on ones at stores I worked at.

But guess what? In the end we converted them all to WIndows systems. Nobody ever bought those, nobody wanted them. They wanted to be able to go to Walmart, or Game Stop and be able to buy the programs they wanted. And guess what? Neither of them sold software for Linux. In fact, the list of commercial games for Linux is very small.

As I keep saying over and over, Linux is not a "User Gauge" OS. it never was one, it never will be. Until 2 years ago I even had my own computer store, and all of the systems *I* used ran Linux (mostly Mint). And if I had a duplicate system for sale, I always threw it on. But guess what? I never sold a one of them.

But I did sell a few. Mostly to small businesses as a file server. You seem to be grossly overestimating the demand of Linux, and not realizing that most users do not know or care. And I keep seeing that no matter how often I say the same thing over and over again, everybody avoids andwering the same thing.

Software.

You want to have a computer to play Civilization, or Fallout, or some other game. Guess what? It does not run natively in Linux. You need to use some program for work, and once again it does not run on Linux. I find it fascinating that I have said this over and over, and nobody gets it.

And do not even bother mentioning WINE. Hell, I bet most do not even know what WINE is, let alone TWAIN.

No, I'm not thinking necessarily of demand specifically for Linux. Just not MS or Apple. Not a lot of other options out there.

And that was Darwin in action.

I can only guess that most in here are quite young, and had nothing to do with the industry in the 1980's. It was literally a shark tank in that era. Atari 400/800, Atari ST, Texas Instruments, Commodore PET, VIC-20. 64, SX-64, 128, MAX, +4, Apple II (and the various flavors), Apple III, Mac, Tandy-Radio Shack, and easily a dozen others. Almost none compatible with any others.

And for 90% of users, within a year they had as much if not more invested in the software than they did in the hardware. Microsoft was smart, they realized early on that is what drove the industry. IBM did also, with releasing an open architecture platform and allowed others to copy it (then shot themselves in the foot with Microchannel).

Business is very Darwinian. There is little different from an early VW, and early Yugo, and an early Kia. But some made it, some did not. All but 2 of the computer standards of the 1980's are gone. And even then, a PC or Apple of 2020 is almost nothing like one from 1988.

But they both established standards. Most important was that when they released a new product, you could use your old software on them. Commodore was not passed until the mid 1990's in total units sold, and still has to this day the largest selling single model in computer history. But their asking users to throw away their entire library if they wanted to upgrade killed them. By the time the Amiga came out, people had moved away never to return.

I actually agree with this. I never said Dell should offer bare machine with no OS, only that they could do so if they chose to.

And they should be free to set the price at which they sell it, without interference from M$. Dell were embarrassed because they could have charged less for their Linux boxes but were restricted from doing so by M$'s bully-boy tactics.

AJ

When we buy computers in the UK, the seller supports the hardware and, to some extent, the initial familiarisation process, but the operating system is supplied 'as is' and any support comes from its developer. If computer vendors are required to support the operating system etc in the USA, that's very different.

AJ

If computer vendors are required to support the operating system etc in the USA, that's very different.

They are not required, but that is what is expected.

That is the reason companies like Dell became as big as they have. They themselves are the complete technical support, from start to finish. That is why you pay them a bit more than most other companies, because along with the computer you get that support.

It is not required, but it is what makes people comfortable in buying from them.

You're saying, essentially "at least 10% of users would like to get away from Windoze et al"

No, I'm saying that M$ is trying to stop customers having a choice by unfairly rigging the market.

I suspect Linux has far more than 10% of the server market because Windows was so bug-ridden and unreliable. That seems to be changing, and server farms are slowly back to M$.

AJ

I suspect Linux has far more than 10% of the server market because Windows was so bug-ridden and unreliable. That seems to be changing, and server farms are slowly back to M$.

I seriously doubt that. And exactly which version of Windows are you talking about?

It's only in the last few years that server farms have been moving back to Windows. Would that mean Windows 10? I understand security used to be a major issue but there's not much in it now.

AJ

Sort of. Versioning works a little different on the server versions of MS Windows. Most of the Wintel servers where I work are running Windows 2016

Exactly.

I think what we are seeing here is that the majority do not even know what they are talking about. And trying to convince me, who is an actual IT professional that they know what they are talking about.

I happen to have multiple certifications, going all the way back to Novell 2 and 3. My first Microsoft cert is actually in NT Sever 4.0.

I suspected people with no actual knowledge, as they skipped the most important things in everything I was saying. And when I read "Windows 10" when they were trying to talk about an NOS, I just wanted to smack my head.

SO now I have pretty much flushed everything that has been said into "Conspiracy Theory nonsense". Because that is really all it is. "I heard", and "some day", and not even understanding how the industry works at all.

I also work in IT, but most of my career is application development in a highly specialized niche market.

Network infrastructure and server admin is a bit out of my wheel house.

I was a programmer myself, but back when COBOL and punchcards were the norm. For the last 30+ years have been primarily hardware and networking.

It's only in the last few years that server farms have been moving back to Windows. Would that mean Windows 10?

Doe snot apply, Windows 10 is not an NOS.

And I find it hard to believe companies would move away from an NOS< do you have any idea how much time and money that would take?

I have no idea what you are hearing, but I think somebody has been feeding you a bunch of crap. Most organizations tend to stay at least 1 generation back in their NOS. There is a lot involved, and they do not just jump to the newest one as soon as it comes out.

I read that claim of his as meaning businesses just getting into setting up their own servers are more likely to use m$ now than they were a few years back when deadrat was looking like it might become standard.

Can you talk in English please?

Businesses have been setting up their own servers for over 30 years. And for over 20, the system of choice has been NT, or one of the successors of it.

Once again, this is the danger of trying to blow smoke up the ass of somebody who is an actual professional in the industry. Ultimately, you just come off as looking silly.

And Linux will never become the "standard" in small businesses, unless all they want is the absolute minimum in file sharing. And if that is all you want, you do not even need to do that. Just share the folders on the individual computers themselves.

Or just get a drop-in NAS solution.

Many small businesses have switched to the cloud. They don't have the IT knowledge to maintain their own servers, heck, most of them probably don't even know what kind of server they are using. I agree that a lot of them would have enough with a good NAS if they have someone to handle backups and security.

You might be surprised. I was helping work on Novell and NT 4 servers decades ago in small businesses of only a few people. One of the beauties of NT was that there were a lot of books, so almost any idiot could administer one.

And NAS can be incredibly cheap and easy to use. Almost anybody can hook up a 6 TB NAS device onto a network in under an hour.

But most do not go to the cloud. It is not hard to bring in somebody like me, and in an hour or so I can teach all the basics needed to do basic operation from something they own inside their business for a few hundred dollars. I have even done remote monitoring at home of video cameras in a business for almost nothing.

I think you are underestimating how easy it is to use a Windows server, and that most who are not really into the technology do not want to have to learn to use a new system.

I moved between several NOS over the decades. LANtastic, Banyan, WEB, multiple iterations of Novell, Unix, Linux, NT and beyond. But your common user want nothing to do with a CLI. They want everything point and click. And free to use for as long as they want internally.

This is another thing about most users and small businesses. They are resistant to change or upgrading. I left my pager company in 1999, because when I went to pay my bill they admitted they could not take a payment. Their computer would not let them.

I looked at their system, Novell Netware 286, on a 286. All over 10 years old, none of it Y2K compliant. I told them their problem, gave them a seriously lowball price including a new motherboard-CPU and installing a patch. The owner said it was way to much, and passed. I found out later from a friend that worked there that they had to bring in a guy 6 months later that charged them over 10 times what I would have.

I have seen Win2K servers in use as recently as 3 years ago, and even 15 years ago was in one place that was still entirely using DOS on a 386. Most businesses take the attitude "If it works, leave it alone", and will literally use such things until they die. They do not want to pay for such services, when they can find somebody to sell them something and show them the basics.

Especially a great many that remember the early days. Of jumping onto the Internet bandwagon real early, only to see that service you were paying for vanish. I am lucky, in that I got my Hotmail account over 25 years ago, but those at the time that relied upon say their local ISP might see that account vanish as they got bought up or went under.

As I said, I also went to Linux for most of my operations. My POS was Linux, but I was able to work with it. I am comfortable in both, but unless a company is large enough to have at least a "part time IT staff", they are not going to want to mess with that.

My first jobs installing networks in businesses still involved coax cable and terminators. A chain of video rental stores in the Bay Area in the early 1990's.

1991 - internet?

ARPANET was started in 1969. 200+ computers on it by 1981; TCP became the ARPANET standard in 1983 (had been NCP); Superceded in 1990 by NSFNET. I was on NSFNET while at a commercial company in 1992. Email, Usenet, gopher, ftp were all available.

First Internet virus was the Morris worm in 1988. I witnessesd that one first-hand.

First large-scale commercial spam was in 1994. Google 'Green card spam' for details. It was Usenet, but by then quite a bit of it was carried by network rather than UUCP. Witnessed that first-hand, too.

We recently (about 6 months ago) were forced to replace an IBM PS/1 on a test rig dating from 1991, because it would not read the 3 1/2" disk.
Replaced it with a Win 95 machine I saved from the bin about 10 years ago for that very purpose.

An amazing amount of that old legacy equipment is still around. I am even starting to see brand new motherboards with ISA slots on them again. About 10 years ago that original standard had pretty much vanished, then some realized that some people actually needed to use them for various reasons, so started to put them back on.

And most interestingly, on their highest end boards. I have even seen reviews of them with actual COM and Parallel ports. Is nice to see that at least some in the industry have woken up to the fact that a lot of things still need them.

One of the last jobs I had in Alabama before I joined the Army was rebuilding a system for a stone cutting business. They had a computer for water etching stones, and it ran on Windows 3.1. The computer up and died, and it was a real oddball system. The main computer was just a backplane, and the CPU (386) and MFM controller were on the same daughterboard.

And I have not seen a 16 bit MFM controller card for probably 15 years. The only one in the entire shop (along with the ST-225) was an 8 bit controller, so I could not use that.

Thankfully, we were a Microsoft Distributed Network vendor, so had the entire archive. Including the CD with every version of Windows and DOS on it. They had tossed their disks ages before. S0 it ended with a 1 GHz Dell, running DOS and Windows 3.1. And if I remember, that was the last computer we had that had the ISA slot on it.

An amazing amount of that old legacy equipment is still around.

Back in the mainframe days we sent tape backups offsite to Iron Mountain. Not the ones we needed to do a normal recovery from, but those archived "just in case" or for legal reasons.

I forget why, but we needed to read something on one of those old tapes so we got it back from Iron Mountain. The problem was, we no longer had the tape drives for those tapes.

The problem was, we no longer had the tape drives for those tapes.

Irony of irony. Maybe a month or so back I wrote something almost like that into one of my stories.

Well, that's that. I drove to the shop after loading a dozen systems into the back of my car. Once they were unloaded I looked around and saw that that giant HP table thing was gone. It had become such a common sight in the front I rarely noticed it anymore. "Dee, you sold the desk?"

"Yep, some guy said he was driving by saw it and he had to get it. Seems he works for an engineering company up in Lancaster, and they used one about a decade or so ago. They recently got a proposal to update some of their old systems for a new Air Force contract. And then they realized that all of their archives were on disk for it and they had gotten rid of theirs years ago. They called here right after I opened, and were here an hour later and they loaded it into a van."

I gave her a hug, and said "Nice!". That was over 2 grand in the pocket. I had checked around and put a price on it over the normal price, but I had managed to put in some formulas so it would run a series of moving shapes and lines, so it made a great display piece. "Yep, they not only did not balk at the price, they asked if we had anything else to go with it."

I got their card and gave them a call. I said the only other thing I had was a large washing machine sized unit that had a capacity of 20 megabytes, with 4 disk packs. He asked how much, and I simply said "$2,000". He said they would be there in the evening.

This is why I have had so much fun the last month or so, writing about that era of computer history. The first generation legacy equipment was being replaced, and sometimes they started to realize that some of them were still needed at a later date.

And yes, in rereading it, I am aware that those old massive HP systems built into tables used tapes and not disks. I will have to fix that next time I edit it. I myself have not seen one since the 1990's, and can't even remember what they were called anymore.

sometimes they started to realize that some of them were still needed at a later date.

You would never guess how we read the tape.

It was way back when the tape density wasn't as high as it is now. We called in IBM and they sprinkled white powder on the tape and put scotch tape over it. They read the bits.

nless all they want is the absolute minimum in file sharing

Nearly twenty year ago I set up file service, printing, email, remove fax, etc, etc, on a Linux server for a pyschology practice RedHat all the way. Eleven of the twelve users had no clue that the server was running Linux. The one who did was the one who authorized replacing their Windows server with Linux (he was a former IT guy who 'retired' into clinical psychology). Worked perfectly, little maintenance necessary, and cost a quarter of an equivalent Windwos solution.

Sell the computer separate from the OS. Let the buyer choose which OS he orders with the computer (or no OS)

Why not force the auto companies to sell their cars without an engine? Let the buyer put his own engine in the car he buys.

Why not force the auto companies to sell their cars without an engine? Let the buyer put his own engine in the car he buys.

Or tires. For a century, every Ford rolled out of the factory with only Firestone tires. Every single car company has that kind of agreement in place.

What some people do not see is that doing so will cost the company and consumer a lot more money. I am amazed that some want to essentially see everybody charged $100 more, just for the 5% that want a different OS. And an OS on top of that which only adds around $15 to the final cost of the product.

And the cost will be a lot more than an additional $100. Say Dell did that, they would have to then most likely have to add support for 5 or more different variations of Linux. Any idea how much that will add to their customer support costs? That is already often the number 3 or 4 in the budget of such a company. Expect that to quickly jump to #1, and the cost of support to jump to the largest expenditure of the company.

And then, well I see most of them just saying "fuck it" and leaving the home computer industry. Most of them do not even need the home users, it has quickly become almost miniscule. Corporate and Enterprise is their real money. So rather than do that, they will just leave that market all together, and leave the customers with nothing.

And do not think they would not do so. Panasonic for example is a name almost unknown to people who buy computers. And they are less than 2% of the market. But in their specific nitch (ruggedized laptops), they are by far the industry leader, with a 60-70% market share.

All these insane demands to force company to have to support other operating systems for a tiny fraction of the market will just have them leave the market. It's not like Dell and Compaq-HP need the home market, they are #1 and 2 in the corporate world.

That is why for years they flooded people with those $250 Dimensions. They were selling $8,000 servers and $2,000 laptops and systems to the corporate world.

And shipping a computer without an OS? What the fuck, are we really talking about going back to 1988 again? When you got your computer with just some disks, and you had to load it yourself? Guess what? 98% of the market DOES NOT WANT THAT!

If you want it, great. THen build your own. DO not force the rest of the world to bow to your wishes.

You really think it will stay at $100 if this was to happen? No way.

No, it will go up.

Most do not even realize that the price Windows is sold at is artificially low. And no, I am not kidding.

The price of DOS 6 alone in 1993 was $80, almost $150 today. Windows 3.1 was $150, that is $270 today. Windows 10 would be the equivalent of buying DOS 6 and Windows 3.1 in 1993. In today's currency, that would be over $400 dollars.

This is because the bulk licenses lets them sell copies at a low cost to them, and pass that to the other customers.

So no, I have absolutely no doubt that if that chain vanished, they would have to hike up the cost to everybody because they would have to return to sending out physical media again.

I remember Bill Gates predicting that one day computer hardware would be virtually free and companies would make their money through software costs.

So, with free hardware and free software, why have computer prices soared recently? ;-)

AJ

Dell already offers computers with Ubuntu.

That was the version of Linux sold on the netbooks I mentioned. Intel Atom, Micro SD Card storage and Windows 10 or Ubuntu for £120.

AJ

Why not force the auto companies to sell their cars without an engine? Let the buyer put his own engine in the car he buys.

Something like that happens already. These days, so much auto technology is shared that, depending on which engine size you choose in your new car, the engine could have been developed by completely different manufacturers.

AJ

Something like that happens already. These days, so much auto technology is shared that, depending on which engine size you choose in your new car, the engine could have been developed by completely different manufacturers.

Not quite the same. You may choose a 4 cylinder or a 6 cylinder depending on the model of the car, but you still get an engine from the manufacturer (whoever built it for them).

Not quite the same.

True.

There are examples of manufacturers not wanting to develop a small-penis engine so buying them from Ford or BMW, or not wanting to develop an ultra-frugal city runabout engine so buying 3-pots from a Japanese manufacturer.

AJ

The Dodge Viper has an 8.4-liter V-10.

That would be a micro-penis engine! ;-)

AJ

Most auto companies offer choices for different engines.

Yes, but try buying the car without an engine because you know of an engine company that makes better engines.

Sell the computer separate from the OS. Let the buyer choose which OS he orders with the computer (or no OS) and the seller sets a price for the OS and the installation.

I've seen that done already. Someone was selling netbooks with either Windows 10 or Ubuntu for the same price.

AJ

And they could offer bare machines with no OS for people who want linux or something obscure.

Most that are at that point are going to be like me. We would simply build out own computer.

In all my life, I have owned exactly 1 "Name Brand" PC that I did not buy used. That was my first, a Franklin Ace 8088 clone. And I can't think of any serious Linux nut that I know of that would buy a brand new name brand computer. These guys ten to get into screaming matches about a minor change in a code, or which chipset is on a motherboard. They are not going to be buying name brand.

There is a not insignificant market segment that would like to get away from windows, doesn't think Apple is any better than MS, but aren't Linux nuts and don't have the skills to build their own machine from components. But they could possibly handled installing one of the more mainstream and stable Linux distributions (Red Hat for example) on a pre-built bare machine.

But this is what you are missing.

Most people do not want to know Linux. They do not want to know about the various forks and deviations of the huge numbers of different projects. They just want to be able to get a program, and put a button and have it work.

I have had people come to the stores I worked at and pay us $5 to install a new version of Norten every year. Think they want to mess around with BASH and SUDU? Worry about WHICH version of a program they want, because there are 4 or 5 different ones, each for a different flavor of Linux?

This is the very reason wht Microsoft rose to dominance in the first place. They are the ultimate winners of what I call the "OS Wars". MS-DOS, CPM, DE-DOS (which became Novell DOS), 4-DOS, OS/2, ROM-DOS, and a slew of others.

Then in the GUI side you had Windows, GEOS, GEM, X-Windows, Visi-On, and a slew of others. But each was it's own world. And in the early days, it was not unusual to require 2 or 3 different GUI shells, because a particular program you ran needed one, and another program needed a different one.

Microsoft was smart, because they basically made the "Swiss Army Knife" of GUI. They made the OS, and gave away the API so other companies could use their system (where as others often wanted to be paid for others to use it).

But it was nothing sneaky or underhanded, it was the better product, in a market horribly over-saturated with competition. Most of those companies did not even last past 1995.

And the "Home Computer" really did not explode until all that was said and done, and computers became easier to work with. Do you really think Grandma wants to learn a new OS, and have to worry about text based interfaces? No, not at all.

Plus, the simple fact that most programs and games are made for Windows, not Linux.

Red Hat isn't the version of Linux that Dell installed on their more-expensive-than-windows PCs, but I can't remember which was.

When the scandal was first reported, I was actually sceptical. Then I visited Dell's website and saw the difference in prices for identical spec PCs with Windows and with Linux.

AJ

And they could offer bare machines with no OS for people who want linux or something obscure.

Or even better, why hot force Apple to allow their OS to be run on any computer, instead of only those they make?

Oh, wait, as in really break up a company that really is a monopoly, and has a decades long history of destroying competition? Nawwww, that'll never happen.

Or even better, why hot force Apple to allow their OS to be run on any computer, instead of only those they make?

Oh, wait, as in really break up a company that really is a monopoly, and has a decades long history of destroying competition? Nawwww, that'll never happen

Except Apple is not a monopoly and never has been one. They aren't even the largest individual PC or phone vendor.

Don't like Apple or their policies? No problem. By from their numerous competitors - Dell/HP/Lenovo/Sony etc for PCs; LG/Samsung/OnePlus/Nokia/Sony.

It depends on how you define the market.

If we follow that logic, then every manufacturer who sells a completed product is a monopolist and has to be broken up.

Considering IBM wanted to use their own in-house OS but put off developing anything because the DoJ was investigating them at the time... any company that's sufficiently vertically integrated seems to get looked at.

Not sure where that idea came from. But it's false.

The IBM 5150 was first proposed in mid-1980, and actual work started in late 1980. And it was released in August 1981. IBM simply knew there was no way they could ever rush out an OS in that kind of timeframe.

And that was not even their first "Personal Computer", the 5100 came out half a decade earlier. But it used APL, more of a programming interface than an actual OS, designed for mainframes.

But they had seen the work done by Digital Research and Microsoft, so simply decided to go "outside the box" and get it, from companies that had spent years making small and efficient code for individual computers. They would still have been bogged down in 1985 in meetings if they had decided to try and make the OS themselves.

The team simply knew they lacked the experience to create a "small computer OS", and if they had tried they would have ended up with another variant of something like APL.

Or what many in IBM were trying to push instead. The XT/370. Literally an XT class system, with the capability to run some Mainframe code. Yes, many high up in IBM did not even believe in the PC program from the start. And pushed to have them really sold as less expensive mainframes. Going outside IBM for the OS was the only way the PC Team could keep control of their project.

but try as I might I just can't convince them to have the A&W Root Beer or better yet Faygo Cream Soda chilled.

And that may also be because of the coolers.

Here is something a great many do not know. Those endcap coolers at the checkstands? Most retailers do not actually own those. They are provided by the soda company, and as the contract only their soda can go into it. That is why you see Pepsi in the blue ones, and Coke in the red ones. In a great many, the store staff does not even stock them, the distributors do that.

Who you should be talking to is Coke. They are the distributor of A&W. As they are for all Keurig Dr. Pepper products. So call your local Coke distributor and ask them to add them to the coolers.

Faygo, a local regional beverage. Call them up, and ask if they have a cooler system in place for retailers. I bet they do not, therefore none are going to sell it chilled.

People didn't know that the coolers with Coca-Cola (or, in much more pathetic stores, Pepsi) distinctly emblazoned on them were the property of the suppliers of those, rather than the stores? Hell, even Walmart (which has far more selection not in coolers) doesn't even bother stocking the shelves with soda, leaving that to the delivery guys.

Hell, many who work there do not even know that.

And yes, Walmart does stock soda themselves, but only that which comes through their own distribution system. Go to the bread isle, you will see some they stock themselves, some the bread companies stock. I worked at one where the Hostess products were stocked by the Hostess guy, and at another where we got them off of our trucks and we stocked them ourselves.

Beer is the only thing that I have ever seen in a Walmart that they never stock themselves. I think that is the only item which 100% comes from regional distributors.

Hence, occasionally some big theft will make the news where some joker wearing say a Budweiser shirt will come in and clear out a store. Boosters impersonating distributors are a major cause of ORC.

it is no different then when you buy a 16 ounce pop(soda) here where I live that will cost you $1.35 but if you buy a 2 liter of pop(soda) it is 99 cents. a 2 liter is 67.6 ounces or 4 of those 16 ounce pop(soda). That is what buying in bulk gets you.

Which is what the big sellers pass on to the customers. Which is why I find it stupid that some suggest they sell computers without an OS and have the customers but one.

And there is more at play than that. "Coke" really does not sell to most stores, the local bottling plant does. And those are almost all franchises, just as your local McDonalds is. They make the agreements, they set their own prices.

SO when anybody suggests that Coke can "use their power" to freeze out Pepsi, they show they are an idiot and do not understand business. It is the XYZ regional bottling plant that sells the soda to BigCo, and not even SodaInc. Want proof, then travel a bit like I have. See Coke for one price, and 200 miles away in the same store it is a different price. That is an agreement between the individual bottling companies with the regional store districts.

I used to work for a major "Dollar Store Chain". And in our local area, we sold 1.5 liter bottles of Coke products. Where I live now, the same chain sell the same size, but Pepsi. Go to some areas, you will not even find certain sizes or varieties, that is all up to the local company. That Coke and Pepsi do not control.

My point was to why Dell and large companies can buy a license of Windows for $15 dollars and a single person (home owner) pays $100 for a license. Large companies buy in bulk and get that deep discount. You are correct about franchises on what and how they can sell which product.

But there is more involved.

MS only provides the license. All technical support is the responsibility of the other company. They provide any disks (or how to make them), even pay to have the license printed. It is so cheap because the company literally has to make nothing.

When a Microsoft sells such to an individual, they provide a disk, the sticker, at least some kind of manual, distribution of the media, and the technical support needed. That is what you are paying for when you buy it yourself. Dell for example saves money in the license, but then they have to pay their own technical support staff because Microsoft does not do it.

Bullshit. Firefox was superior to Exploder. M$ regularly changed OS code to make competitors software less efficient or less secure, for the reason that having advanced knowledge of what the OS code was doing allowed for releasing updated software that performed better until the competition adapted to the changes, at which point the competition was usually better.

You are aware that the anti-trust case was resolved in 2001, right? And Firefox was not even released until 2002. And that Firefox had full and complete access to the API, so if there were any issues, that was with them, not Microsoft.

Sorry, not sure where you are getting your information from, but it's wrong.

Oh, and your description of how IBM got in the PC market was very wrong. And in fact, MicroSoft was seen as competition, and their first choice for an OS was Digital Research and CP/M. But DR kept blowing IBM off over and over again, and demanding insanely high prices. MS swooped in and offered them a very low cost OS, only asking that they be allowed to sell it themselves to other companies.

Not really unlike Lucas did with the merchandising rights for Star Wars. Like 20 Century Fox, IBM saw no money in the sales of DOS to other companies, so gave it to them. And yes, Digital Research CP/M was the industry leader at the time for professional operating systems. And it was an option you could get with your nice new IBM 5150. But at around $650 each, most people settled on the much cheaper IBM-DOS (just rebadged MS-DOS).

As I said, I still remember this era very clearly. YOu are getting your information from somebody that does not know what in the hell they are talking about.

Didn't the reversal coincide with a new president, one of the Bushes? Everyone thought at the time that he'd been bought off.

AJ

Didn't the reversal coincide with a new president, one of the Bushes? Everyone thought at the time that he'd been bought off.

What happened is that the original order was impossible. And the Government finally bothered to ask real experts if it was even possible.

They wanted to force them to cut into 2 parts. One side made the Operating System. The other make everything else. Including the Network System. And it was impossible to do that. It would be like ordering GM to separate Chevy and Buick into 2 completely different companies. An NOS in the modern era is just a more capable OS. And vise-versa. The entire "Home" and "Business" OS model died with Windows 98-NT4. Today we are in forks of Win2K-XP. All of the technology that the original Anti-Trust case was trying to decide over was already obsolete by the time they reached a decision.

What finally happened is that the company has divided into 2, but mostly on their own. The OS-NOS part, which is what most think of. But also now MIcrosoft Games, which is quickly becoming a major player in the industry. Their recent buyout of Zenimax is still sending some shockwaves through the industry.

And many chuckle, in that when the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout games come out for Playstation, MS will be getting a check for each copy sold.

It would be like ordering GM to separate Chevy and Buick into 2 completely different companies.

Why can't that be done? They started as separate companies. Sure they might share parts and chassis and paint colors, but so what?

Why can't that be done? They started as separate companies. Sure they might share parts and chassis and paint colors, but so what?

They share factories. They share R&D, as well as other companies that both companies rely upon (AC-DELCO for one). YOu are only dooming the spin-off to death, as there is not enough there to make a full company.

Hell, look at what happened to Hummer when it was spun off. Sure, it made it for a while. 11 years, then it was shut down because it just could not survive as its own company without GM.

M$ managed to do a splits-lite by separating Explorer and Internet Explorer sufficiently to enable users to chose another browser as their default.

I'm not familiar with Chevy and Buick. Do they make badge variants of the same cars, like Volkswagen, Audi and Seat?

I know GM has being doing lots of splitting recently. Vauxhall was one of the brands they let go, and it's now part of the Peugeot-Citroen bloc.

AJ

Please. What decision, and who reversed it?

It's a conspiracy theory, no explanation needed.

What was reversed was the decision by several companies that had sued MS for things like patent infringement. Stac for example was a huge one, but it was not reversed, MS simply agreed to remove any offending code and it went away.

There was another similar one between them and Quarterdeck, MS also once again agreed to stop making it so they could operate their program with DOS, and the lawsuit went away. Not because of any kind of DoJ action, in fact each time MS paid them some large payments to drop the case.

In the Stac case, MS paid them over $40 million. But it did not matter worth a damn, 9 years later the company was gone. Why? Certainly not MS, they were a 1 trick pony in the IT world. They made a program to compress hard drives, something really important in 1992 when a 200 MB drive was "big". By the early 2,000 when 1 TB drives were coming out, nobody wanted or needed it anymore.

The same with Quarterdeck. They made 2 major products, DeskView which let you easily multitask DOS programs, and QEMM which let you handle memory more efficiently. DeskView went obsolete by 1995 when most new software was Windows based, and people stopped using DOS. And when Windows 95 eliminated the "640k barrier" and RAM became super cheap (down from $100 per MB), their program also became obsolete. They did not even last through the 1990's, going out of business in 1998.

Not only was I in the industry then, I was at least peripherally involved in both cases. And in one of my stories right now I talked quite a bit about QEMM and DeskView. Did MS try to drive them out? Sure they did, that is just business. But it did not matter, those were doomed technologies, that would die not because of anything MS did, but because the very things they were trying to help consumers do (save memory and hard drive space) became obsolete because the hardware makers made their products much-much cheaper.

Back in 1992, I shelled out $1,000 for a 700 meg HD. About 2 months ago, I bought a 1.2 TB drive for $65. Why in the hell would I want to mess with compression? I bet most do not even know that drive compression is still in Windows to this day. It is that unimportant of a technology in 2020.

because some things he wants to do he simply can not do on the 2 different versions of Linux he has installed.

That's how M$ won. Not because of a superior operating system, but because they got companies to write programmes for Windows.

The software I use for my research only runs on 32-bit Windows. Not on Apple, not on Linux, not on 64-bit Windows. I have a feeling of impending doom ...

AJ

That's how M$ won. Not because of a superior operating system, but because they got companies to write programmes for Windows.

Have you used any of the other systems I listed?

Because I have used all of them. And more.

I'd like to praise this entry from Switch Blayde.

Then why don't you?

You may think I'm being as pedantic at the Grinning Dick with this comment, but I'm actually not. It's something that annoys my wife, and I've picked up on it enough that it allows me to make a bit of humor out of it.

Specifically, you haven't said, "I'm offering praise to Switch Blayde." What you HAVE said is that you'd like to do so. But you haven't actually DONE so.

I'd like to thank you ... then why don't you?

Otherwise, you're exactly correct, regarding his notice of the bias that was inserted into what otherwise should have simply been a reporting of events. This is something that I started noticing after I'd read the book, 'Bias', by Bernard Goldberg.

Read an article, especially about a natural event, such as a flood or tornado. You would think it'd be impossible to put bias into something like that. Rivers flood and spring time in the US brings tornadoes, every year. How many times do you now here climate change thrown in as a cause?

Later that week he made the Statue of Liberty vanish and reappear.

Ayep, he did that as part of his work as a TV special effects artist.

A real magician can do his tricks any time of day or night and do it repeatedly in front of you as part of a live audience.

There's a number of TV Magicians who do tricks that only work on TV with the cooperation of the live audience where they're doing the trick as it's all special effects by moving the cameras to get the effect they're looking fro. Also, many of those types of tricks can only be done at night as the day sky will show they changed cameras.

In base13 6x9 is 42 ;)

This suggests that the people who created the question had 13 fingers. Why else would they use base 13 as their numbering system.

This suggests that the people who created the question had 13 fingers. Why else would they use base 13 as their numbering system.

And there is also Chisanbop. I use it myself fairly often, especially when trying to remember large numbers. It is a finger method that lets you count up to 99.

Right thumb is 5, each finger is 1. Left thumb is 50, each finger is 10.

When I think of spam in the early days of the internet I think of porn emails. I even used that in one of my novels.