Finally making use of PowerLisp despite several **horrible** bugs it has

On Aug 10, 5:27*pm, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > *You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
> the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
> * reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore
> as they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
> before the long winter nights return.
>
> Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark and my heart sank, for I
> remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
> games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
> fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
>
> If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
> unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
>

> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> loiter there, it seems.

From selling to trading to bartering everything from apartments to
bikes to bookshelves to sex, it's hard to imagine how the Bay Area
would function without it. I only wish there were something like it in
Paris.

> > If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>
> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.

He'd need to dig further back than that. 3.x was the last of the 68k
MCLs. 4.x was PPC, 5.x was/is OS X. Myself, I'm holding on to my
(single) copy of 4.3 as long as I still have Classic running on my
iBook.

"Thomas F. Burdick" <tburdick@gmail.com> writes:
>> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>>
>> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
>> loiter there, it seems.
>
> From selling to trading to bartering everything from apartments to
> bikes to bookshelves to sex, it's hard to imagine how the Bay Area
> would function without it. I only wish there were something like it in
> Paris.

http://paris.fr.craigslist.org/

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__

On Aug 12, 4:29*pm, "xah...@gmail.com" <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 10, 4:32 am, "Thomas F. Burdick" <tburd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Aug 10, 1:00 am, jaycx2.3.calrob...@spamgourmet.com.remove (Robert
>
> > Maas,http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> > > REM> PowerLisp 2.01 68k, released in 1994, apparently the last
> > > REM> version of PowerLisp that works on 68xxx CPUs such as in my
> > > REM> Macintosh Performa, has three utterly horrible bugs, which
> > > REM> compound to make usage very very painful:
>
> > > TFB> You continue to surprise and amaze us with your choice of
> > > TFB> tools. Bravo! Engineering this is not ... but art!
>
> > > Is that supposed to be satirical or something like that?
>
> > Sarcastic, yes. You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> > You live in the Bay Area. You can get a junker computer that is 1000x
> > better than your current for free, or the cost/trouble of taking
> > public transit. If you have anything at all to barter you can get an
> > even better one thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist. If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL. I'm sure you
> > won't, and no I don't want to hear the why.
>
> > (Okay, I admit to a perverse curiosity, but I won't help)
>
> How can you blame one Robert Maas?

By occasionally making snide comments when he finds a particularly
interesting way to defeat himself? I have to say, I was pretty
surprised by the Performa/PowerLisp combination.

> Let's face it, lispers here are weired and old in general. Rainer,
> still uses and trumpet Lisp Machines and its extremely non-ergonomic
> keyboard.

Yep, he uses some wacky old stuff. The difference is that we know that
Rainer is using a Symbolics keyboard with his mac because he posts the
details about how he managed to get that Frankenstein's beast up and
walking. More power to him (Rainer, not the monster). What he did not
do was post 17k word plaints about how it's impossible to work without
his wacky keyboard but impossible to work with it.

> On the other hand, there's Kenny, who sells a highschool algebra
> software with accolades from the mid 1990s.
>
> Then, there's Pitman, who's purpose is to remind us what he has been
> doing in the 1980s.

Yeah, among other thngs those two do. I'm not saying c.l.l is a great
forum for talking about the useful work one is doing right now (it's
not, and you all here don't hear from me on the cool things I'm doing
at work). Wait, what was my point here? Oh yeah, Zidane retired, the
Supersonics look like they'll never again be a challenge to the Lakers
and now they're going to move to Oaklahoma? That's it, I give up, I'm
concentrating on my multi-player Ltk Pong.

> I'd say Jon Harrop is more of a avant garde here. And, i'm beginning
> to enjoy fully, the free-for-all nature of comp.lang.lisp, including,
> the dogfight of propriety.

Dude, the vanguard is a shill? If he were honestly trying to convince
us to switch to ML du jour, I might agree with you; but deeply
dishonest hit-and-run marketing is not the wave of the future, I hope.

On Aug 13, 12:40*pm, p...@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)
wrote:
> "Thomas F. Burdick" <tburd...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> >> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> >> loiter there, it seems.
>
> > From selling to trading to bartering everything from apartments to
> > bikes to bookshelves to sex, it's hard to imagine how the Bay Area
> > would function without it. I only wish there were something like it in
> > Paris.
>
> http://paris.fr.craigslist.org/

Now compare and contrast with http://sfbay.craigslist.org/ -- no one
uses CL Paris. There are other places online to look for the various
things people us CL for in the BA. It's that particular magic that
happens when they're all the same site that's missing. To bring this
back on topic, I would not look for an old LE LISP manual on CL Paris,
but the BA site would not be a bad place to start looking for an old
copy of MCL.

Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> On Aug 10, 5:27 pm, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> If you wanted
>>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> He'd need to dig further back than that. 3.x was the last of the 68k
> MCLs. 4.x was PPC, 5.x was/is OS X. Myself, I'm holding on to my
> (single) copy of 4.3 as long as I still have Classic running on my
> iBook.

Ah, sans digging, 3.9 is my earliest. Of course I would do a bundle with
a 4.3 since that was an upgrade of the 3.9.

But I thought we were moving him to an XT and CLisp?

kt

--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> I have to say, I was pretty
> surprised by the Performa/PowerLisp combination.

You mean "impressed", right? rem more than any of is us doing what he
has to do Lisp. I remember feeling sorry for myself back in Manhattan
sitting on the stoop and looking up to see the guy from the old folks
home up the block making his way along the sidewalk with his walker
three inches at a time. Every day, one trip each way. Turns out he was
just making his way to and from the benches along what used to be Needle
Park. I dialed back on the self-pity.

> but deeply
> dishonest hit-and-run marketing is not the wave of the future, I hope.

F*ck. I need a new business plan.

kenny

--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

On Aug 13, 1:14*pm, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > On Aug 10, 5:27 pm, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> If you wanted
> >>> to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
> >> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> > He'd need to dig further back than that. 3.x was the last of the 68k
> > MCLs. 4.x was PPC, 5.x was/is OS X. Myself, I'm holding on to my
> > (single) copy of 4.3 as long as I still have Classic running on my
> > iBook.
>
> Ah, sans digging, 3.9 is my earliest. Of course I would do a bundle with
> a 4.3 since that was an upgrade of the 3.9.
>
> But I thought we were moving him to an XT and CLisp?

Either way. MCL has good documentation and a nice IDE. I'm happy to
put up with Emacs/SLIME as an interface when running on a Huge Sun of
Doom (no I'm not, actually, I bitch about the UI nonstop ... but MCL
doesn't run on said beast). For a desktop, a free PC running Linux
would have much more in terms of compute resources, but oy, the UI. On
the other hand, I think Robert is used to Emacs, so it's probably a
non-issue in reality. So yeah, forget 3.9 ... a contemporary Emacs/
SLIME/SBCL setup is the right solution.

BTW, totally off topic and an inappropriate place to complain about it
but ... why oh why does Franz torture us? ACL would be such a
fantastic environment, if only it would ship with a reasonable IDE. I
mean one that works on machines appropriate for Real Engineering Work.
Windows makes a nice host for running a citrix client...

Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> BTW, totally off topic and an inappropriate place to complain about it
> but ... why oh why does Franz torture us? ACL would be such a
> fantastic environment, if only it would ship with a reasonable IDE. I
> mean one that works on machines appropriate for Real Engineering Work.

Is the GTk-based IDE on ?nix not as good as on Win32? Anyway, my guess
is they figure people would just keep on using emacs/slime anyway, why
bother. It's a huge effort.

But if they had listened to me they would have a portable IDE
accelerated by OpenGL by now. And it would make funny sounds.

No one listens to me. Let's me say whatever I want. Where were we?

kt


--

$$$$$: http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
BSlog: http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

On Aug 13, 2:01*pm, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > BTW, totally off topic and an inappropriate place to complain about it
> > but ... why oh why does Franz torture us? ACL would be such a
> > fantastic environment, if only it would ship with a reasonable IDE. I
> > mean one that works on machines appropriate for Real Engineering Work.
>
> Is the GTk-based IDE on ?nix not as good as on Win32? Anyway, my guess
> is they figure people would just keep on using emacs/slime anyway, why
> bother. It's a huge effort.

Last time I tried it, it was pretty crappy. I should maybe give it
another shot, since it's officially supported now, the annoying bugs
should at least be gone. But a giant window containing its own series
of pseudo-windows that don't respond to the normal window manager
makes it pretty bad. And it only works on Linux (sigh) which I guess
is reasonable in that that's the obvious Unix to target, but I do tend
to do my interactive work on ?olaris.

But yeah, I'm sure it's a question of market forces going on here and
the low expectations everyone has for Linux.

> But if they had listened to me they would have a portable IDE
> accelerated by OpenGL by now. And it would make funny sounds.
>
> No one listens to me. Let's me say whatever I want. Where were we?

And if they listened to Peter they'd have a portable IDE that supports
remote display :-)

On Aug 10, 5:27*pm, Kenny <kentil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas F. Burdick wrote:
> > *You are constantly complaining (at extreme length)
> > about the strangest problems here, and whenever a solution is given,
> > you always have an even longer and stranger complaint waiting as to
> > why it Cannot Possibly Work.
>
> Yes, it is almost like a video game, but in classroom discipline one of
> the tricks is to catch the chronic troublemaker doing something good and
> * reinforce. My theory is that the long days have energized our Eeyore
> as they have me, and we must build whatever momentum we can in the man
> before the long winter nights return.
>
> Just yesterday evening I noticed it was dark and my heart sank, for I
> remember 8:45pm as about the last pitch of the nightly pickup softball
> games of my first youth and that we knew it was time to go home when a
> fly ball to the outfielder went unseen. I digress.
>
> If we have lost almost an hour, given the rule of twelve things will
> unravel degrade quickly now...it is time to act!
>
> " the wonder that is Craigslist."
>
> That is the second recommendation of CL I heard this week. I should
> loiter there, it seems.
>
> > If you wanted
> > to, I'm sure you could track down a 68k copy of MCL.
>
> I believe I have three licensed MCL4.3 CDs I do not need.
>
> kt
>
> --
>
> $$$$$:http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
> Cells:http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
> BSlog:http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

Kenny,

If you don't need them, I would be interested ... for sentimental
reasons. I've been using this piece of software at the University and
it would be nice to have it, on my old iBook. Please contact me, if
You really don't need those CD's

regards
Chris