Tech Thread Flame War Cease Fire Declared (vanity)

(self) ^ | 2010-07-24 | Dayglored

[dayglored]

Jim Robinson has laid down the law with regard to tech thread flame wars.

I am motivated to make sure we tech-thread-heads are aware of this. This vanity is a heads-up with regard to Jim's comments last night, and I've added a few thoughts of my own as an observer.

Here's what Jim said:

To All: [That goes for everyone.] I don’t see any reason whatsoever to be having flamewars on FR over computer products. Those who have a problem with Apple should just not buy the product and that takes care of that. Don’t come to FR to flame those who like the product. That’s just dumb. Who cares what computer products people use.

Everyone on these threads need to lighten up! On all sides!!

I think Jim's declaration of a cease-fire is clear as a bell -- the disruption, flame wars, abusive comments, etc. that have characterized many tech threads, especially Apple threads, are to stop.

I'm sure we can all abide by this reminder of FR site policy, with no loss of meaningful content, and our enjoyment of the conversations in these threads will increase considerably. Arguments can be had civilly, and without rancor. We're adults, not 13-year-olds.

Personally, I think this applies by simple extension to the Windows threads, Linux threads, indeed any of the computer / high-tech threads. So I encourage ALL partisans, pro-Apple and anti-Apple, pro-Microsoft and anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux and anti-Linux, etc. to heed this reminder.

I am going to ping a handful of my FRiends of all tech persuasions, so that we can spread the word as widely as necessary, to ensure that nobody can claim they didn't know about it.

Here's to a saner, more enjoyable tech environment on FreeRepublic!

Thanks,
Dayglored

[NerdDad]

Boy, that brings back misty memories. A friend and I wrote a football statistics program in BASIC on one of those babies with a tiny thermal printer. We provided on demand stats for radio broadcasts of high school football games all over West Texas in the mid-80s.

[discostu]

I’ll believe it when I see it. And I got a buck that says I ain’t gonna see it.

[cynwoody]

you're all noobs....punch cards are it

That's a line of Job Control Language on your punch card. Fred Brooks, under whose leadership JCL was invented, has called it the worst programming language ever designed anywhere by anybody for any purpose. Fred Brooks is a Mac user.

[BunnySlippers]

Thank you. It will be much nicer here.

[smalltownslick]

This would seem to be common sense. When someone comes here with a tech question, they are looking for HELP from a community with a lot of expertise and wisdom. So the endless “you should just get_____ fill in the blank instead of what you’re using” posts are not only not helpful, but insulting to someone who asked an honest question.

[xp38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_punch_card

[WVKayaker]

The fastest "computer" i have seen was an old Chinese guy in Hong Kong calculating the cost of silk brocade and ivory purchases...

[meyer]

I have a Timex Sinclair. With a radio shack cassette tape recorder and the 16K rampac, as pictured. Haven’t used it in a while. A long while!

[NerdDad]

I still have a stack of those. I use them for bookmarks. Then I have to explain what they are to the kids sitting around me in my college classes (and some of my professors).

[Raycpa]

[Cboldt]

-- Real men roll with Sinclair. --

Programmed in assembly using "poke."

[meadsjn]

Motor oil is motor oil.

[La Lydia]

How quaint. Kind of cute.

[dfwgator]

Back in my day, we coded with 0’s and 1’s, and sometimes we didn’t even have the 1’s.

[piytar]

Will I don’t consider a simple chmod to be hacking. I’m talking about hacking with TBUG on the fly! LOL

[Syntyr]

Dude. I still have my working Timex Sinclair 1000!!!
Its Da Bomb!!

[PA Engineer]

I remember those. Typos were a bitch! I will never forget when I dropped a 5 inch stack of cards (a class project) held together by rubber bands exploded on the floor. Luckily I had an error free printout to hand in.

I can appreciate that. I had finally got my Fortran final to compile and I started to head home in the early morning. It was winter and as I was stepping up into a bus and I fell on the ice. My box of cards went flying into the slush. I spent the next couple hours in the lab bathroom under the hand dryers. It felt like the end of the world.

[Syntyr]

You bet ya!!!

.MODEL Small
.STACK 100h
.DATA
msg db ‘Hello, world!$’
.CODE
start:
mov ah, 09h
lea dx, msg
int 21h
mov ax,4C00h
int 21h
end start

[meyer]

Laugh at the punch cards if you wish. Up until the early/mid 1990’s, the energy management computer system used to control the entire generation and transmission system of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company was still programmed with IBM cards. It operated without them, of course, but programming was still done that way.

I miss the Sigma-5!

Back in the day (late ‘70s, early ‘80s), when I was a meter reader for that company, we used IBM cards to mark the meter readings (with #2 soft lead, of course) so that data processing could calculate the electric bills. They hated it when it rained because the cards would get pretty soggy.

[Clay Moore]

The local electric utility use to send a punch card that you returned with your check. Somehow, mine usually got in a fight with a icepick. Maybe that is why they stopped using them. (^;