CallMeAl (like Alan)

Free Software Enthusiast

  • 9 Posts
  • 197 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: December 14th, 2025

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  • As someone who loves dogs and has had a couple of wonderful dogs, I don’t think this would work because dogs aren’t using sounds as a language. My experience is that they communicate as much or more with body language as sound.

    My dog bark has a bark to get my attention but she shows me the reason. For example, bark while standing by and looking at food bowl means she wants food. If she wants to go out for a walk (always) she will bark and bring me her leash. If she wants me to follow her, she will bark and gesture or look in the direction.

    Reminds me of a joke that someone invented a dog translator and all dogs say is “hey” but maybe they say it in different ways to mean different things.










  • It’s always funny to me to read a history of something I lived through written by someone who didn’t. I don’t think anyone who was in the industry at the time would say the Zip drive dominated the 1990s.

    To set the scene, most people in the 90s didn’t own a computer at all and the majority of people who did own a computer never owned a zip drive. While Zip was the most successful of the Superfloppies, it was never ubiquitous. By the sales numbers, 10-15% of computer owners bought zip drives. Compare to a floppy or CDROM which is close to 100%.

    The reason it vanished quickly was simple: Zip was never that good and CDRW was much better. As soon as the prices dropped for CDRW, Zip was a goner.