Zathras' Great Machine

Speaking of Apples, check out "Parrish's Great Machine" - a new column in American Feed Magazine (which will HOPEFULLY be updated in a few hrs.) Now, I gotta get the right graphic header for it. I'm thinkin' about using a pic. of a trs-80 III

And who is 'dis Missunderstood?

"Needless to say, sorting thru all that junk by hand and moving it back into new mailboxes in Eudora would be a major headache."

*raises eyebrows* Doesn't Eudora for the Mac have filters or the option to run filters manually? I know that the Windows version has had them for about seven years, as otherwise my inbox would be a disaster!

"For the time being, I'm just using Explorer, since that's included with OS X as well, but I know Denise won't leave me in peace until I've downloaded and tried Mozilla *grin* so I'll probably have a look at that, too. In fact, I might as well download it now."

Well, of course. IE sucks hairy goat balls, I can't imagine anyone voluntarily using it. I mean, if you're going to use MS products, why not just use a PC and get it over with? (I would assume that if one avoids MS, it's usually out of dislike for it...)

Yes, the Mac version of Eudora does have filters, of course... the problem is, that would handle a good deal of my mail, but I'd still probably have a few thousand that I'd have to handle on a case-by-case basis. For example, I have a "Miscellaneous" folder where I file emails that I want to keep but that don't fit into any other category, and it has 2,800 emails in it. I wouldn't really be able to write a filter to handle everything that's in there right now.

I suppose that if my archiving system were more "finely tuned", as it were, your idea would work better. *grin* Thank you for the suggestion... it was a good one.

As to IE and MS in general, well, yes, one of the reasons I'm a Mac user is to avoid MS... but I also have to go with what *works*. I don't like using IE, for example, but there are some sites that Safari can't handle, and for those, I had to use IE instead. We'll see how Mozilla handles them.

I hate using all of 'em. MS/IEeeeeeeee/Apple/Pear/Banana etc.

Here we are in da 21st century, and I don't think PC tech. has really gotten as far as it should.

Of course, here I am sayin' this as I'm lookin' for books on A+ certs.

"I hate using all of 'em. MS/IEeeeeeeee/Apple/Pear/Banana etc."

How about Amiga? *g*

I rather like "public" collaborative software myself, when it actually runs correctly.

"Here we are in da 21st century, and I don't think PC tech. has really gotten as far as it should."

On the one hand, I agree with you because I get annoyed at the limitations with what we have. OTOH, a lot of what *our* PCs aren't set up to do easily is available and common in computers built for those with various disabilities. Also, of course, there's always the option I've always taken: if my PC doesn't come doing what I want, I find some way of making it do so on my own. That's most of the fun for me. ;^)

*glares over at old laptop* Of course, sometimes it's a challenge just to install an operating system...

I used to use an Amiga/Video Toaster at a public access station in NH.

Sometimes the computer itself has a gazillion disabilites. I wanna park this friggin' Compaq I have in a handicapped spot. I'd prob. get away with it too...$!@#!#!#

In fact, I was just thinking how much the Commodore stuff was a helluva lot more workable than not only lotta the computers back then, but also some of the stuff today.

Even their version of the Internet, which was called C-Net er somethin'erather (what was the name of it?), that worked pretty good at even 1200bps

Also: the Commodore computers seemed a lot more user friendly. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like you're "on your own" with these new 'puters.

Yah, commodore net. I used to farg around with that way back when. (mom: what could you possibly need am odem for? There's no one to call! me: shows what you don't know.) That's how I first found out who Tim Leary was - he got on the commodore net at one point and was telling us all how we were the wave of the future and how he believed that in the future everyone would be doing what we were doing. I had no idea who he was until I was talking to Mom about this guy who was telling us all how great we were and Tim this and Tim that and when I said something about Leary, she freaked out. She always had a bad feeling about "that talking on the computer stuff" anyway and then when she found out what sort of miscreants I was talking to, she almost took my modem away.

I don't think I'd consider the old C64s to be more user friendly than stuff today. Yeah, after a while they were. But in the beginning, you had to use casette tapes to save your data and there were almost no programs for them unless you wrote stuff yourself.

Even if you handed a later version C64 to someone today who was used to plug and play stuff, they'd probably grumble at how involved it was and how much stuff they had to learn before they could use it.

I miss Leary. Tune in, turn on, drop out. . . Luvely guy.

Maybe I'm just remembering all those Commodore ads with Shatner (he's user friendly!) The one thing I do remember from the C64 that was a b*cth was how my programs would disappear from the floppy discs.

Program upon program, I couldn't figure out how programs like WWF Wrestlefest or even Jumpman (god I miss that one) would not run. Turns out it was because I kept putting the discs on top of the disc drive. Wiped them (and some of my fav. childhood things) away...

Shatner did Commodore commercials? I don't remember ever seeing one. How odd. (That might have been during the years I didn't own a television. I intentionally had no television from about 1986 to about 1995.)

I saw Shatner in an episode of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits or something like that and it was pretty funny because I had the closed captions on and the captions for everything he said looked like this:

"but ... do you know ... where they went ... at all?"

Too funny!

Yeah, those drives were all magneto-fied and crap and I don't remember ever seeing a warning with them about putting disks on them.

Ever see the (rumored damaging) routines that made your commodore drive make "music" by making it access certain sectors in sequence?

And then there was that magazine.... Commodore World? Commodore Fun? I can't remember the name, but I'd always type in programs from the pages and they wouldn't work right. Once I typed in a program that was supposed to generate random music in the style of Mozart and all it did was play a sequence of five notes over and over like a broken record. I don't think Wolfie would have approved.

I NEVER could make anything work right from those $!#!# Commodore World programs. I was trying to get this one program to work that would have put "puppets" onto the computer - computer generated figurines that would "move" for you. SO, after all my typing, they ended up with no heads . . . . "Nitemare of the Living Headless Pixels".

Shatner...did...all of...THIS OVERACTING, anywhere anytime he was on any show (he did a lot of Twilight Zones, Playhouse 40s etc.) Accordin' to TV Guide, he supposedly did Sparticus with Adam West in the 60's (?!) I know there's footage of the C64 ads somewhere, but I remember they were no better than, than...than...than anything else he's done! When an actor can affect the CC on tv in that way, y'know he's scary.

I kind of like Shatner's hosting of the "One Hit Wonders" show (on VH1? MTV? I think it's on VH1.) He seems to have a sense of humor, mostly about himself. He says these stiff, stilted, frighteningly over-the-top deadpan things but you can see a little twinkle behind it like he's saying, "I'm a sucky actor. Isn't it funny?"

Did you ever see "Incubus"? It's a movie he made back in 1965 or so, right before Star Trek, and the entire movie is in the artificial language Esperanto. As someone who has studied Esperanto, I can officially say that not only is his acting bad, his pronunciation of Esperanto is atrocious.

Shatner was also pretty great in Roger Corman's "I Hate Your Guts!", a movie where Shatner is a racist who runs around from town to town inciting riots over school integration.

I wish I were old enough to have seen him as Ranger Bob on the Howdy Doody show. My dad remembers that (even though Dad was about twenty at the time. Like college student today, he and his buddies used to sit around watching children's television in between classes.)