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The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Things i Hate (Or: Rants by an Old Man) Post 303030467 by gull04 on Monday 11th of February 2019 08:11:15 AM
Old 02-11-2019
After 10 years at Sea I decided on a career switch and in 1979 is started work as an Electronic Engineer, I worked for a number of companies like Ferranti, Olivetti, Norsk Data, Motorola, Phillips, DEC and a number of others over the 40 intervening years.

Floppy drives were 8 inches in diameter, memory was made of ferrite and came in wooden boxes and a steel carrier - it weighed about 2 pounds per Kb. You could fix things, for some of the equipment I worked on you had to write your own diagnostics to do this - but you could fix things. Now systems are not repairable, all these things are just throwaway - and sad to say attitudes have followed. We went through the discrete components, to integrated circuits in Ceramic and Plastic encapsulations, then we went through the low power versions of it all. Now we have integrated circuits that have densities that were undreamt of just fifteen years ago.

But essentially all that has happened is that the skill set has been replaced by a courier, who will take a replacement unit to site and plug it in - possibly transferring a hard drive from one chassis to the other.

As to the commercialisation of the experience - in my opinion one of the worst decisions ever made, there was an earlier reference to "Altavista" - it was brilliant but it did cost a significant amount to run. Forgetting to renew the domain was also a problem in this particular case.

I watch the vendors (usually sales or value added resellers) repeatedly mislead customers, I could give you numerous quotes of things I have heard over the years - lead people into a place that they don't want to be. This isn't done maliciously, it's normally through ignorance - the job of a sales person is to sell and few of them undestand the technology.

It's usually left to some techie to make things work, even things that weren't meant to work together. Which is where the good old Google search really comes into it's own, a generic search for an item of equipment will bring you a couple of pages on how to buy one - followed by in most cases nothing of any use!

Arrrrrrgh!!!!!! Many thumps on the keyboard!
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MONOP(6)							 BSD Games Manual							  MONOP(6)

NAME
monop -- Monopoly game SYNOPSIS
monop [file] DESCRIPTION
monop is reminiscent of the Parker Brother's game Monopoly, and monitors a game between 1 to 9 users. It is assumed that the rules of Monop- oly are known. The game follows the standard rules, with the exception that, if a property goes up for auction and there are only two sol- vent players, no auction is held and the property remains unowned. monop The game, in effect, lends the player money, so it is possible to buy something which you cannot afford. However, as soon as a person goes into debt, he must ``fix the problem'', i.e., make himself solvent, before play can continue. If this is not possible, the player's property reverts to his debtee, either a player or the bank. A player can resign at any time to any person or the bank, which puts the property back on the board, unowned. Any time that the response to a question is a string, e.g., a name, place or person, you can type '?' to get a list of valid answers. It is not possible to input a negative number, nor is it ever necessary. A Summary of Commands: quit quit game: This allows you to quit the game. It asks you if you're sure. print print board: This prints out the current board. The columns have the following meanings (column headings are the same for the where, own holdings, and holdings commands): Name The first ten characters of the name of the square. Own The number of the owner of the property. Price The cost of the property (if any). Mg This field has a '*' in it if the property is mortgaged. # If the property is a Utility or Railroad, this is the number of such owned by the owner. If the property is land, this is the number of houses on it. Rent Current rent on the property. If it is not owned, there is no rent. where where players are: Tells you where all the players are. A '*' indicates the current player. own holdings List your own holdings, i.e., money, get-out-of-jail-free cards, and property. holdings holdings list: Look at anyone's holdings. It will ask you whose holdings you wish to look at. When you are finished, type 'done'. mortgage mortgage property: Sets up a list of mortgageable property, and asks which you wish to mortgage. unmortgage unmortgage property: Unmortgage mortgaged property. buy buy houses: Sets up a list of monopolies on which you can buy houses. If there is more than one, it asks you which you want to buy for. It then asks you how many for each piece of property, giving the current amount in parentheses after the property name. If you build in an unbalanced manner (a disparity of more than one house within the same monopoly), it asks you to re-input things. sell sell houses: Sets up a list of monopolies from which you can sell houses. It operates in an analogous manner to buy. card card for jail: Use a get-out-of-jail-free card to get out of jail. If you're not in jail, or you don't have one, it tells you so. pay pay for jail: Pay $50 to get out of jail, from whence you are put on Just Visiting. Difficult to do if you're not there. trade This allows you to trade with another player. It asks you whom you wish to trade with, and then asks you what each wishes to give up. You can get a summary at the end, and, in all cases, it asks for confirmation of the trade before doing it. resign Resign to another player or the bank. If you resign to the bank, all property reverts to its virgin state, and get-out-of-jail-free cards revert to the deck. save save game: Save the current game in a file for later play. You can continue play after saving, either by adding the file in which you saved the game after the monop command, or by using the restore command (see below). It will ask you which file you wish to save it in, and, if the file exists, confirm that you wish to overwrite it. restore restore game: Read in a previously saved game from a file. It leaves the file intact. roll Roll the dice and move forward to your new location. If you simply hit the <RETURN> key instead of a command, it is the same as typing roll. AUTHOR
Ken Arnold FILES
/usr/share/games/monop-cards.pck Chance and Community Chest cards BUGS
No command can be given an argument instead of a response to a query. BSD
March 25, 1993 BSD
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