• Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout

    From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to All on Thu Sep 23 13:54:31 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mark Jackson@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Thu Sep 23 15:59:34 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/23/2021 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    In article <94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser  <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote: >>>> Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Right. Besides even if the paper isn't using a canned comics page from
    an outside vendor it's highly likely that nobody in editorial or
    production even looks at the strips. Plug in and print, to repent at
    leisure if there are complaints about content.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday
    night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    Partly true:

    Read this carefully: “Bloom County” had a weekly deadline for 10
    years. I missed 100 percent. Each of those 500 weeks, I had to drive 40
    miles at 4:30 a.m. to the airport at whatever city I lived in to put the strips on a plane as cargo, delivered by a cabdriver in Washington,
    D.C., a few hours later. Every. One.

    (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html)

    However comics are one of the parts of the paper that are printed well
    ahead of the distribution date - Saturday night is absurd.

    --
    Mark Jackson - https://mark-jackson.online/
    Poverty is a choice made by governments not individuals.
    - Fiona the Unemployed Bettong (Andrew Marlton)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to All on Thu Sep 23 14:33:20 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    In article <94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday
    night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John W Kennedy@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Thu Sep 23 16:20:32 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    In article <94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser  <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote: >>>> Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday
    night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take
    something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    Hell, I can remember a time when it would have taken 24 hours. (I can
    also remember a time when only a one-off water-cooled supercomputer
    would meet the performance specs of a gawddam Apple Watch.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to Mark Jackson on Thu Sep 23 16:54:58 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/23/2021 2:59 PM, Mark Jackson wrote:

    On 9/23/2021 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    In article <94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser  <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire
    wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Right.  Besides even if the paper isn't using a canned comics page from
    an outside vendor it's highly likely that nobody in editorial or
    production even looks at the strips.  Plug in and print, to repent at leisure if there are complaints about content.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth
    of inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on
    Saturday night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    Partly true:

    Read this carefully: “Bloom County” had a weekly deadline for 10
    years. I missed 100 percent. Each of those 500 weeks, I had to drive 40
    miles at 4:30 a.m. to the airport at whatever city I lived in to put the
    strips on a plane as cargo, delivered by a cabdriver in Washington,
    D.C., a few hours later. Every. One.

    (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html)


    However comics are one of the parts of the paper that are printed well
    ahead of the distribution date - Saturday night is absurd.

    Thanks, I could not find the article that I read that from. My memory
    is just not very good anymore. I would have sworn that he had to hire a
    jet. Instead, he just used a regular cargo jet and a taxi.

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Scott Lurndal@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Fri Sep 24 14:52:05 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
    On 9/23/2021 2:59 PM, Mark Jackson wrote:

    On 9/23/2021 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    In article <94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser  <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire
    wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd >>>>> be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Right.  Besides even if the paper isn't using a canned comics page from
    an outside vendor it's highly likely that nobody in editorial or
    production even looks at the strips.  Plug in and print, to repent at
    leisure if there are complaints about content.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth
    of inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on
    Saturday night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    Partly true:

    Read this carefully: “Bloom County” had a weekly deadline for 10
    years. I missed 100 percent. Each of those 500 weeks, I had to drive 40
    miles at 4:30 a.m. to the airport at whatever city I lived in to put the >>> strips on a plane as cargo, delivered by a cabdriver in Washington,
    D.C., a few hours later. Every. One.

    (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html)


    However comics are one of the parts of the paper that are printed well
    ahead of the distribution date - Saturday night is absurd.

    Thanks, I could not find the article that I read that from. My memory
    is just not very good anymore. I would have sworn that he had to hire a
    jet. Instead, he just used a regular cargo jet and a taxi.

    Pre-9/11, counter-to-counter shipping was common for such things. Drop
    it at the airport and someone would pick it up at the other end.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-to-counter_package

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul S Person@21:1/5 to mjackson@alumni.caltech.edu on Fri Sep 24 08:36:18 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On Thu, 23 Sep 2021 15:59:34 -0400, Mark Jackson
    <mjackson@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:


    On 9/23/2021 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
    In article <94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote: >>>>> Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Right. Besides even if the paper isn't using a canned comics page from
    an outside vendor it's highly likely that nobody in editorial or
    production even looks at the strips. Plug in and print, to repent at
    leisure if there are complaints about content.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday
    night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    Partly true:

    Read this carefully: Bloom County had a weekly deadline for 10
    years. I missed 100 percent. Each of those 500 weeks, I had to drive 40
    miles at 4:30 a.m. to the airport at whatever city I lived in to put the
    strips on a plane as cargo, delivered by a cabdriver in Washington,
    D.C., a few hours later. Every. One.

    (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.html)

    However comics are one of the parts of the paper that are printed well
    ahead of the distribution date - Saturday night is absurd.

    Not to mention the "Bulldog" edition (well, the papers in Seattle had
    these at the time, so I presume those in NYC did as well), which was a
    Sunday paper that came out ... on Saturday.

    The Sunday paper wasn't about the news; it was about the advertising
    circulars and other inserts. And columns.
    --
    "I begin to envy Petronius."
    "I have envied him long since."

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Wolffan@21:1/5 to John W Kennedy on Fri Sep 24 15:22:17 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.


    Hell, I can remember a time when it would have taken 24 hours. (I can
    also remember a time when only a one-off water-cooled supercomputer
    would meet the performance specs of a gawddam Apple Watch.)

    oh, yes.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Wolffan@21:1/5 to Mark Jackson on Fri Sep 24 15:15:34 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 2021 Sep 23, Mark Jackson wrote
    (in article <ir44lfFren4U1@mid.individual.net>):


    On 9/23/2021 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Right. Besides even if the paper isn't using a canned comics page from
    an outside vendor it's highly likely that nobody in editorial or
    production even looks at the strips. Plug in and print, to repent at
    leisure if there are complaints about content.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    Partly true:

    Read this carefully: “Bloom County” had a weekly deadline for 10
    years. I missed 100 percent. Each of those 500 weeks, I had to drive 40 miles at 4:30 a.m. to the airport at whatever city I lived in to put the strips on a plane as cargo, delivered by a cabdriver in Washington,
    D.C., a few hours later. Every. One.

    (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/arts/bloom-county-40-berkeley-breathed.htm
    l)

    However comics are one of the parts of the paper that are printed well
    ahead of the distribution date - Saturday night is absurd.

    Back when I was working in the pre-press section of a newspaper (pre-press created the film and the plates used to print the paper) we would start printing some sections of the Sunday paper on Wednesday or Thursday. That
    would usually be thing like the ‘magazine’, and various chunks of full-page, two-page, and quad-page adverts. The entertainment section, including things like crosswords and the comics, and the tv guide (remember them?) would be printed on Thursday or Friday. Note that printing the tv
    guide was a major production. At first we had a SyQuest disk (God, how we
    hated SyPest with the fury of 10,000 suns) then we got a network 56k modem
    and I got to go to tv guide people’s FTP site and spend over an hour downloading a massive 9 MB file every Wednesday. Then we, and the tv guide people, got broadband and I could get the file, which had doubled or tripled
    in size, in a matter of minutes. We’d verify that we got the _correct_ file (one reason for the SyPest disk had been that they sent _all_ the files...)
    and send it to film and burn plates, and stack them for the press guys to
    crank them out at their convenience. Recall that black pages were one page of film, and one plate, spot colour was two pages, full colour was four. Film
    was $3/foot, plates varied up to $50 each. We had a circulation of over 550,000, a set of plates was good for about 50,000 impressions, so we burned about a dozen plates per. Two dozen for spot colour, four dozen for full colour. You may detect why full colour wasn’t common until relatively recently, when the price of plates went down. Comics pages for the Sunday editions were, of course, full colour. You better believe that the comics, tv guide, ‘magazine’, and things like opinion and fashion and what not were all printed by Friday, or the editor and the senior press guy would be most irate. We printed about 75% of the Sunday paper by Friday. The main holdouts would be sports and editorial; if certain games ran late the sports people would still be producing copy at 23:00 Saturday night... which is when the presses started prting the parts of the Sunday paper not yet printed. If the sports guys didn’t deliver copy in time, we went with filler and got the paper out the door. Which meant that early editions looked remarkably
    different from late editions. If you think that sports reporting sometimes looked rushed, that’s because it _was_ rushed.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Scott Lurndal@21:1/5 to Wolffan on Fri Sep 24 21:10:29 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> writes:
    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd >> > > > be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload. >> >
    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday
    night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take
    something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.

    I spent some time at one of the Dow Jones (WSJ) printing plants in the
    1990's. They switched from hand pasteup to downloading the
    negatives (or positives depending on how the plates were created)
    via C-band dish every afternoon. By the mid 90's, the digital
    data stream was printed directly on a plate with a laser, rather
    than the former photographic method. The nice thing about offset
    is that the plate is oriented the same as the page, rather than
    a mirrored image - much easier to proof.

    They started printing about 6:00 pm (2star edition) so they could
    get it on a plane to Hawaii, the front page was updated sometimes
    for later editions (3star and 4star) depending on how local the
    target market was. Print run ended about 11:00 pm.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Michael Trew@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Fri Sep 24 17:31:34 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/23/2021 2:54 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    Lynn


    Ah, thanks, first comment.. the strip is backwards.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Mark Jackson@21:1/5 to Wolffan on Fri Sep 24 18:15:43 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/24/2021 3:15 PM, Wolffan wrote:
    We printed about 75% of the Sunday paper by Friday. The main
    holdouts would be sports and editorial; if certain games ran late the
    sports people would still be producing copy at 23:00 Saturday
    night... which is when the presses started prting the parts of the
    Sunday paper not yet printed. If the sports guys didn’t deliver copy
    in time, we went with filler and got the paper out the door. Which
    meant that early editions looked remarkably different from late
    editions. If you think that sports reporting sometimes looked rushed, that’s because it_was_ rushed.

    By contrast, our local (Gannett) paper often defers reports of
    yesterday's non-early sports until tomorrow - when it often then prints
    only the scores. For example East Coast AAA baseball games starting as
    early as 5 PM yesterday didn't make today's paper at all.

    --
    Mark Jackson - https://mark-jackson.online/
    Poverty is a choice made by governments not individuals.
    - Fiona the Unemployed Bettong (Andrew Marlton)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John W Kennedy@21:1/5 to Wolffan on Sat Sep 25 14:27:53 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote: >>>>>> Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd >>>>> be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload. >>>
    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday
    night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take
    something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little off
    on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and
    2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    Hell, I can remember a time when it would have taken 24 hours. (I can
    also remember a time when only a one-off water-cooled supercomputer
    would meet the performance specs of a gawddam Apple Watch.)

    oh, yes.


    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Wolffan@21:1/5 to John W Kennedy on Sat Sep 25 17:35:43 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 2021 Sep 25, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<StSdnX9yYP6099L8nZ2dnUU7-enNnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>, Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little off
    on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and 2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    when I started it was with a dedicated 33.6k modem, connecting to a First
    Class BBS. Then a 56k network modem, connect at first to the BBS, then to the FTP site. Getting an internet connection paid for itself in savings from long-distance charges pretty much instantly. Then we got broadband; 1.5M.
    What had taken hours now took minutes at most. After a bit the FTP site was replaced by a website. We got a faster broadband connection, and didn’t
    care that the downloads grew to 20+ and even 30+ MB, gigantic files which
    would have taken most of a day to download from the BBS. And oh, our _file server_ had two 4 GB drives, so you had to be careful that you didn’t use
    up your allocated space. Fortunately I was also in charge of the network, so
    I could up my allocation if necessary.

    Nowadays I get more than 20 MB email in a morning and have allocated space on the office system measured in tens or hundreds of GB; the office has a 300 M connection, home has a 75 M connection. A 30 MB file would be both downloaded in seconds and too small to be concerned about.



    Hell, I can remember a time when it would have taken 24 hours. (I can also remember a time when only a one-off water-cooled supercomputer
    would meet the performance specs of a gawddam Apple Watch.)

    oh, yes.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul S Person@21:1/5 to All on Sun Sep 26 08:53:55 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On Sat, 25 Sep 2021 17:35:43 -0400, Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com>
    wrote:

    On 2021 Sep 25, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<StSdnX9yYP6099L8nZ2dnUU7-enNnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan> wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>, >> > > > > Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com> wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd
    be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday >> > > > night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take
    something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.

    That would, of course, depend on the modembut I see I was a little off
    on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (Im old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and
    2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    when I started it was with a dedicated 33.6k modem, connecting to a First >Class BBS. Then a 56k network modem, connect at first to the BBS, then to the >FTP site. Getting an internet connection paid for itself in savings from >long-distance charges pretty much instantly. Then we got broadband; 1.5M. >What had taken hours now took minutes at most. After a bit the FTP site was >replaced by a website. We got a faster broadband connection, and didnt
    care that the downloads grew to 20+ and even 30+ MB, gigantic files which >would have taken most of a day to download from the BBS. And oh, our _file >server_ had two 4 GB drives, so you had to be careful that you didnt use
    up your allocated space. Fortunately I was also in charge of the network, so >I could up my allocation if necessary.

    Nowadays I get more than 20 MB email in a morning and have allocated space on >the office system measured in tens or hundreds of GB; the office has a 300 M >connection, home has a 75 M connection. A 30 MB file would be both downloaded >in seconds and too small to be concerned about.

    It's taken a while but, with my 2GB hard drive and 2GB external, I've
    finally reached the point where a 30 MB file is indeed, too small to
    worry about.

    Twenty years ago I was counting every byte!
    --
    "I begin to envy Petronius."
    "I have envied him long since."

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to John W Kennedy on Wed Sep 29 15:49:25 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/25/2021 1:27 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan>  wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com>  wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire
    wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd >>>>>> be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern
    upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks worth of >>>> inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday >>>> night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take
    something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little off
    on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and 2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    Dad had an eight line 4,800 baud (bps) modem in 1975 when UCC
    (University Computing Company) moved their Univac 1108 from Houston to
    Dallas (we were in Houston). Our terminal had an integrated card reader
    (no card punch) and a 100 line per minute printer. No teletype or tape
    drive though (IIRC). It looked like something straight out of Star Trek.

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Scott Lurndal@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Thu Sep 30 14:41:32 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
    On 9/25/2021 1:27 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little off
    on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and
    2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    Dad had an eight line 4,800 baud (bps) modem in 1975 when UCC
    (University Computing Company) moved their Univac 1108 from Houston to
    Dallas (we were in Houston). Our terminal had an integrated card reader
    (no card punch) and a 100 line per minute printer. No teletype or tape
    drive though (IIRC). It looked like something straight out of Star Trek.

    That device is typically referred to as a 'Remote Job Entry' (RJE) station;
    not a terminal; an RJE station would multiplex the card reader and
    line printer (and optionally an operator station)traffic over a single bisynchronous
    data communications line.

    An eight-line 4800 baud modem in 1975 seems a bit early (and would be
    quite expensive, and only a single line would be required for the RJE
    station).

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John W Kennedy@21:1/5 to Scott Lurndal on Thu Sep 30 15:45:17 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/30/21 10:41 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
    Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
    On 9/25/2021 1:27 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little off >>> on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and
    2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    Dad had an eight line 4,800 baud (bps) modem in 1975 when UCC
    (University Computing Company) moved their Univac 1108 from Houston to
    Dallas (we were in Houston). Our terminal had an integrated card reader
    (no card punch) and a 100 line per minute printer. No teletype or tape
    drive though (IIRC). It looked like something straight out of Star Trek.

    That device is typically referred to as a 'Remote Job Entry' (RJE) station; not a terminal; an RJE station would multiplex the card reader and
    line printer (and optionally an operator station)traffic over a single bisynchronous
    data communications line.

    An eight-line 4800 baud modem in 1975 seems a bit early (and would be
    quite expensive, and only a single line would be required for the RJE station).


    You could get as much as 57,600 over eight lines by the late 60s (and we
    called it “broadband”). But such speeds were normally used only for computer-to-computer links. What with space compression, other forms of compression, and six-bit codes without lower case, RJE stations
    generally needed only 9600 to keep running at capacity.


    --
    John W. Kennedy
    Algernon Burbage, Lord Roderick, Father Martin, Bishop Baldwin,
    King Pellinore, Captain Bailey, Merlin -- A Kingdom for a Stage!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John W Kennedy@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Thu Sep 30 15:30:39 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/29/21 4:49 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/25/2021 1:27 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Sep 23, John W Kennedy wrote
    (in article<nd6dnaYQqowNfNH8nZ2dnUU7-V3NnZ2d@giganews.com>):

    On 9/23/21 3:33 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 9/23/2021 2:24 PM, Ted Nolan<tednolan>  wrote:
    In article<94ab98c9-ba17-4bac-a954-9305dce8c3a1n@googlegroups.com>, >>>>>> Ross Presser <rpresser@gmail.com>  wrote:
    On Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 2:54:36 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire >>>>>>> wrote:
    Pearls Before Swine: Strip Layout
    https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2021/09/23

    What could go wrong ?

    I think if he'd randomized the order instead of just reversing, it'd >>>>>>> be funnier.

    The premise sounds false, just in there to set up the joke.

    I can't imagine that a full comic strip actually taxes a modern
    upload.

    Berkeley Breathed used to hire a charter jet to send his weeks
    worth of
    inked Bloom County strips from Austin, TX to New York City on Saturday >>>>> night for the Sunday newspapers from 1980 to 1989.

    This very strip is 5.4 MB. In 1980, on home equipment, it would take
    something like ten hours to upload. In 1990, about 12 and a half
    minutes. Today, of course, the time is humanly negligible.

    it took literal hours to FTP down 6 to 9 MB files in the mid 1990s.

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little
    off on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of
    the century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like
    that could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel,
    and 2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    Dad had an eight line 4,800 baud (bps) modem in 1975 when UCC
    (University Computing Company) moved their Univac 1108 from Houston to
    Dallas (we were in Houston).  Our terminal had an integrated card reader
    (no card punch) and a 100 line per minute printer.  No teletype or tape drive though (IIRC).  It looked like something straight out of Star Trek.

    Technically, “baud” doesn’t translate into bps. “Baud” is the number of
    boops and beeps per second. If, for example, there is a set of four
    possible signals (boop, bop, bip, beep), then 100 baud carries 200 bps.

    Not that people didn’t used to make the mistake all the time, including
    yours truly.


    --
    John W. Kennedy
    Algernon Burbage, Lord Roderick, Father Martin, Bishop Baldwin,
    King Pellinore, Captain Bailey, Merlin -- A Kingdom for a Stage!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Lynn McGuire@21:1/5 to Scott Lurndal on Thu Sep 30 21:38:28 2021
    XPost: rec.arts.sf.written

    On 9/30/2021 9:41 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
    Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
    On 9/25/2021 1:27 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
    On 9/24/21 3:22 PM, Wolffan wrote:

    That would, of course, depend on the modem—but I see I was a little off >>> on the timeline. 57,600-bps home modems were nearer the turn of the
    century than 1990. (I’m old enough to remember when speeds like that
    could be achieved only by leasing eight lines to run in parallel, and
    2000-bps dial-up modems were the size of a toaster oven.)

    Dad had an eight line 4,800 baud (bps) modem in 1975 when UCC
    (University Computing Company) moved their Univac 1108 from Houston to
    Dallas (we were in Houston). Our terminal had an integrated card reader
    (no card punch) and a 100 line per minute printer. No teletype or tape
    drive though (IIRC). It looked like something straight out of Star Trek.

    That device is typically referred to as a 'Remote Job Entry' (RJE) station; not a terminal; an RJE station would multiplex the card reader and
    line printer (and optionally an operator station)traffic over a single bisynchronous
    data communications line.

    An eight-line 4800 baud modem in 1975 seems a bit early (and would be
    quite expensive, and only a single line would be required for the RJE station).

    Thanks for the RJE nomenclature. I wish I could find a picture of the
    device, it was impressive. I have no idea if it was made by Univac or not.

    The 4800 baud modem was the size of a dorm refrigerator and weighed
    about 80 lbs or so. It was connected to eight leased phone lines
    between Houston and Dallas. We never turned it on/off, it was always connected.

    Lynn

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)