Walt Fair, Jr. wrote:

I started coding in about 1967 (IBM 1620 assembly

Wow! Someone else who coded on the IBM1620! My first access to that machine (using a crippled Fortran called Gotran) was late in 1965 at Juniata College in Huntingdon PA. I moved up :laugh: to assembly in 1966. Our math prof had a random packing experiment which took about 80 hours to complete. When Penn State got their IBM 360, he requested some machine time. At first he thought it hadn't run because it finished so quickly. When he got the bill (and the results) he found that it had worked and had taken only a few CPU seconds to complete!

I still have a working BBC Micro. It's amazing what you could do in 16KB. I upgraded to 32KB and was really glad I did! I also have an Acorn RISC machine which STILLdoes more in 4MB than a lot of PCS can do in 1GB! My PC is a simple homebrew 4GB with Weven, so I don't just have out-of-date equipment.

Ravel H. Joyce wrote:

Dalek Dave wrote: Nazi's We could talk about your Hitleresque misuse of the possessive case.

Actually, in the case of Nazi, the plural may also use an apstrophe, since this is an abbreviation of the full "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei Mitglied" (National Socialist German Worker Party Member). Hitler (or even DD), in this case, might have been right to use this apostrophe. :-D

Newly married: too poor to have a TV, too "busy" to watch! ;)

I also had a seemingly simple problem - creating a DVD from three video clips. Very little editing, the videos were already on my hard drive and I had the latest version (14) of the editing software. I have very carefully stayed with the same editor since version 6 (and invested a lot of money over the years upgrading), so I thought I'd be fine - my "know-it-all" gene was working overtime... The only fly in the ointment: two of the clips were standard definition and the third was high definition. I created the project and burned the DVD. The first two clips worked fine, but the third started stuttering about 100 frames in and then the picture froze (the sound continued). Like you, I tried again (with the same result). When I visited relatives in the USA at Christmas(bear with me, there's a reason for this segue...), I had my new PAL HD camera and needed to create an NTSC DVD. A friend of my Dad's loaned me his laptop and I was able to use his software to burn the DVD. After I retuned to the UK, I found that this s/w was on sale at Amazon for half the price that I paid for version 14 of the "tried and trusted" s/w, so I bought it. I even went so far as to install it on my machine, but I hadn't used it in anger because of its unfamiliarity. I fired the "cheap" s/w up, did the editing and burned the project. The DVD worked first time (at 3.30 in the morning...)! Next day: The third clip was also needed for a YouTube video. I applied for GoogleMail and YouTube accounts, created the video with the version 14 s/w and tried to use this software's "Upload to YouTube" option: nada. I tried multiple times with the same result. I created a file of the recommended resolutions, etc., for YouTube and uploaded it. God, did it look awful - washed out, pixellated and impossible to watch. I checked the "cheap" s/w and it also had a "Upload to YouTube" option. It rendered the clip in less than half the time taken by "version 14" and it uploaded without a hitch. For a YouTube video, it's pretty sharp. I'm happy, and I won't be using the version 14 s/w anymore! I now no longer believe that you "get what you pay for". I also believe that staying with a piece of s/w because it's "the devil you know" is definitely not always the best option.

I went to High School with Dean (he was in the Bedford High School, Bedford PA, Class of '63 or '64 and I was in Class of '65). Our English teacher was Miss Winona Garbrick, whom he cited in one or more of his early works. She taught us how to catch a trapdoor spider with chewing gum...

An IBM 360 mainframe. I started programming in 1965.

In 1972 I had a Renault 16 with an accelerator cable which snapped. Back then, the words "fail safe" (used together) were unknown. The subsequent ride around the "Middle Ring" in Munich was exciting, but with judicious use of clutch, brake and gears, I was able to drive "safely" at full revs from the failure point to my home on the Leopoldstrasse (about 5 Km). I was relatively luck with the parking spot though... By the way, I had left my home country (The United States) only one year prior to that incident, so overgeneralisation about country of origin and driving ability is definitely wrong. Admittedly, I was used to the "stick shift" because of my farming background: one of my dad's tractors (a John Deere 420 ("putt-putt")) had a 5(forward)-speed transmission and it was possible to change into any forward gear (except for 1st) without using the clutch. I think that the modern computer controlled "fly by wire" systems are probably at least as dangerous as letting the driver make all the mistakes decisions. Remember the first Airbus! :-D

Being in my sixties and with crushed vertebrae in my back from an accident when I was 11 and bad knees and ankles from a skiing accident 35 years ago, you'd think that I would have trouble exercising. The best thing I ever did was to take up Scottish Country Dancing 13 years ago. I lost weight and gained friends. We live in the UK, but have done demonstrations all over Europe (this year we were in Finland) and have even demonstrated Scottish Dancing in Mongolia. See here. This reminds me that I need to update the web site to include the pictures from the Finnish trip, but I've been too busy dancing and having fun to get "a round tuit".

Classic all the way. Can't stand Aero and have no use for Glass.

Steve_Harris wrote:

It'd not an English word but a borrowing so doesn't follow English rules, such as they are.

This isn't limited to English. German is a very phonetic language because it was one of the last languages in Europe to be set down in written form. If you can pronounce it, you can spell it (and vice-versa). However, words originating in a different language don't follow the phonetic rule (and many don't sound like the original either, even though the Germans do try their best...).

The pronunciation of "Gluck" as "Glick" is because the original was the German: "Glück". This sounds like "Glick" to the English (American?) ear.

Rage wrote:

I could give you a good address

Yes, please. Red is preferable... Strasbourg is our twin city! Coincidence, or what?

We're off to France next Sunday. We saw Colmar on the "Tour de France" so my wife and I thought we'd find a camp site and tour the area. Friends from Karlsruhe coming to see us, so we're hoping that a good time will be had by all: German lager, French wine...

2 Worked for Siemens in Munich until I met my wife. Moved to the UK. Worked at the same place since then. (I'm now 61...) Now, as for changing employers, that's a whole different kettle of fish. We've been bought and sold so many times, I'm not sure who I'm working for now! :laugh:

Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:

I always wanted to go to Iceland to look at it once

I've been to Iceland and would go again at the drop of a hat! As far as the Aurorae are concerned, I've seen them quite a number of times from a relatively southerly latitude (Mason-Dixon line) when I was a kid back on the dairy farm in southern Pennsylvania. There were some perks to getting up on a crisp winter's morning and going to the barn at 4.30 (AM) to milk the cows...

Sounds fishy to me. I associate "rocks" with "founders"...

Oakman wrote:

Jun 10

Does it count if this is my wife's birthday?

POS has LOTS of meanings. See: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/POS BTW, I'm pretty naive, so I didn't think of anything but Point of Sale...

Take two slices of bread. First slice (order of application): butter, peanut butter, bacon, scrambled egg, cheese, chutney Second slice (order of application): mayo, lettuce, tomato, beet root, pickles Put slices together, don apron, unhinge jaw, prepare for taste sensation! OK, so it's not simple :-D