User talk:Wernher/Archive 3

YM2149 --> GI AY-3-8192

I moved the Yamaha YM2149 article to General Instruments AY-3-8912, which I am pretty sure is the right direction -- I think Yamaha was the 2nd source, not the other way around? Anyway I also added notes on the different GI versions, as well as some details on how the system worked. See what you think. Maury 16:59, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess that's correct; I too think GI was the originator. --Wernher 19:29, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The edits look great, it inspires me to break out the middle section too. The empty article is my fault, I moved it to a typo!Maury 23:20, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Why V1 --> V-1?

Hey Wernher, is there a wiki style for changing V1 to V-1 within V1 flying bomb? Google reveals V1 is by far the predominant common usage. In fact, if you search Google for V-1 flying bomb it actually asks whether you meant V1 flying bomb. Cheers. --Moriori

Well, I prefer to go by the serious literature on the subject rather than heaps of more or less correctly written titles in websites all over. I think the 'Ten billion flies can't be wrong -- Eat shit!' argument is quite a suitable one to describe this case. I guess that's also the case with Google here; it goes by weight of numbers only. Finally, consider the correspondence to the V-2 rocket article. --Wernher 23:48, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

'V-1 flying bomb' redirect deleted

I saw your request at Angela's talk page, and have deleted the redirect for you. Go ahead and move the page. Gentgeen 00:00, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the lightning-quick response! Page moved a couple of minutes ago. I hope most wikipedians (contributors, mainly) agree with me on the move; see the article's talk page for the 'lively debate' (or see the above thread on this page). --Wernher 00:21, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You need to go clean up all the double redirects that you created, especially with such heavily linked to article. Gentgeen 04:17, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Will do. --Wernher 13:50, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Done. I will also correct some of the links from general articles as time and occasion permits. --Wernher 16:33, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contributor confusion

Placing my sig, then asking me about?: I don't know what your doing, but placing my sig by somone else's comment ('Moriori' according to your talk history) and then asking me about it seems rather odd. As far as the naming goes I much prefer V-1 as well, and had actually considered moving it back myself. (I ran into the same issue you solved by having it deleted) In anycase, please do not put my sig down on pages. Greyengine5 01:27, 2004 Aug 15 (UTC)

Ooops. Sorrysorrysorry. I don't know what might have been happening in my 'top floor' at the instant I did that -- i.e. neither do I know what I'm doing at all times. I seem to remember that when checking the history of my talk page I found your name at the relevant edit. A mistake on my part, no doubt. Oh well, hope we're still wikifriends. I know I appreciate all your contributions in the aerospace domains, which is one of my great interests as well (and job, for that matter). And thanks for supporting me on the V-1 vs V1 issue. --Wernher 01:41, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah certainly no big deal. I didn't mean to come off quite so hardline there but I was a bit taken back the oddity of it all! I should have suspected it was just some wierd error. I theorize that since I had made a tweak to one of the redirects of V-1, you may have looked at that when trying to find who made the comment in your page. No harm done and hats off to you for working in aerospace. I certainly admire your work in wiki as well, so let me know if you need a vote for adminship. Greyengine5 02:15, 2004 Aug 15 (UTC)

Adminship

You should definitely apply for adminship. I'm amazed you're not one already. I would nominate you myself, but quite a few people have told me they don't find it appropriate for me to vote on RfA since the election so I try to stay away from it. I can't imagine there being too much objection if you do apply. You'll make a great admin. Angela. 00:11, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks ~1E6! *blushing* *full of himself* :-) --Wernher 00:21, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---oooOOOooo---

Recently I did some analysis of contribution history for Wikipedia, the fruits of which are at Wikipedia:Another list of Wikipedians in order of arrival. As I reviewed the list, I noted that there are about a dozen longtime contributors who have not been made administrators. You are one of them. Accordingly, I would like to nominate you for adminship, with your permission. If you would appreciate such a nomination, please let me know on my talk page. If you do wish to decline, a note so saying would also be appreciated, though not necessary. Kindest regards, The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:47, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think I'll need a little time to find out what's needed for the 'job' (checking the reading list) and seeing if it is compatible with my state of health and -eh- personality. :-) --Wernher 00:48, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, let's have a go at it. I have read some of the stuff on the reading list and hope to be a good admin in (some/the fullness of) time. --Wernher, 2X Nov 2004

I have nominated you for adminship at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Wernher. Please edit that page and indicate your acceptance, as some people involved in adminship matters now expect that to be done even though you have already agreed to be nominated. Please be aware that there are baseless objections to many adminship nominations; do not be upset if that should occur. If you have any questions or comments, you can contact me on my talk page or via email. --The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:25, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, will answer the admin candidate Qs and brace myself against possible badmouthing. Again, thanks for inviting me (I'll refrain from any puns on your user name... ;\) --Wernher 05:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your support, all! (you know who you are). --Wernher 17:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More kudos, etc, on Congratulations, Wernher!, below. :) --W.

MESS sysinfo.dat depreciation

Hello - I am working on obsoleting a "system information" plain text file that is used in association with the emulator MESS(See www.mess.org) and merging the data into wiki. The sysinfo.dat file has a ton of information but not always organized in the best way and sometimes very technical. So the short story is I appreciate your help on a few of the stubs I have created. I have created an temporary project page to track my progress at my user page. It would be cool if you could at least check it...Have a good one. Hobie 03:00, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

PETSCII Article

Hello, I've noticed the changes to the PETSCII article.

About typography--the Wikipedia style guide does say to use plain typography, that is ASCII marks and not smart quotes, en-dashes, em-dashes as the like. I have no objection to the use of smart typography, but I avoided its use in the article because of the style guide.

Hi; thanks for commenting. Regarding the typography, I have simply been following the example of innumerable articles I've read and edited over the last year. No good argument, of course, but the dashes etc seem to be very common. In the great majority of articles I've been involved in, a '--' will be replaced by an mdash in a jiffy. :-) --Wernher 19:27, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

About PETSCII--what I wrote about the inability to mix uppercase and lowercase isn't accurate. Checking with the WinVice Commodore 64 emulator, I see there are two modes, one which is really ASCII-1963 compatible (uppercase only, in 0x41-0x5A), and another which is a PETSCII or at least C64 hack: 0x41-0x5A for lowercase letters (ASCII-1963 and ASCII-1967 both have uppercase there) and 0x61-0x7A for uppercase (ASCII-1963 undefined, ASCII-1967 lowercase, PETSCII block graphics when unshifted). Shlomital 19:14, 2004 Sep 27 (UTC)

OK, great that you noticed and fixed it! I think the article is quite informative and hope it's become reasonably correct by now. I would like to put in a table/picture of the block graphic characters, though -- but I'm unsure about the copyright issue. An alternative might be to draw the chars from memory and include them that way? --W

Category:IBM PC compatibles

Hi! Could you please address my concerns on the talk page of Category:IBM PC compatibles? — David Remahl 04:40, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, done. --Wernher 03:14, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Greetings from NPC

Hi. I am looking for people interested in computers for inviting them to my non-Wikipedia (and non-Wikimedia) project. I found you via the history of the Richard Stallman article. I had a look at your contributions in Wikipedia and found them very good. If you want to be considered for invitation to my wiki, please list yourself in User:Npc/List. I promise you that I will not post any more messages to you if you don't answer to this message. Thank you! Npc 23:31, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the flattering, and very polite, invitation. :-) However, I don't think I possess more encyclopedic energy than what I use today on Wikipedia, so I'll have to decline for the time being. --Wernher 03:22, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Comment on my recent edits

I humbly invite you to 3D Monster Maze and the associated edit adding Wolfenstein 3D#See also. Comments are welcome; I am, of course, watching both articles and their talk pages. BACbKA 23:48, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! No need to be humble, though; I'm just another old fart with a good deal of "8-bit enthusiasm" :-) I think the article has become a nice piece of gaming tech history; good work! BTW, couldn't keep myself from doing some edits, hope they're OK. --Wernher 11:21, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Category:Early computers

Hi, I see you listed the PDP-6 as an early computer? What exactly is your criteria for being an "early computer"? I certainly wouldn't have listed the PDP-6 in that list - nothing with transistors would make my list of "early computers". I don't have time now, but I have a numebr of good books on early computers, and I'll enter the titles in the "Further reading" section of some page. (Oh, I wonder who listed it as a "Minicomputer" - that was pretty funny!) I have a bunch of good pages I have stored up to link to, and one of them has pictures - it's definitely not "mini"). Also, there are some errors on the page I'll have to fix - the registers were optional, IIRC. Noel 21:11, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My criteria for "early computers" is actually just what the category intro text says, namely machines that were built up to 1963--64 and thereabouts. This means the era before the advent of compatible computer "families" such as the 360s. Nothing more, really. But I guess I wouldn't protest vehemently against a reconsideration of the inclusion criteria. --Wernher 20:59, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, let me think about it for a while, and I'll carefully read the category text. 1945/6 - 1963/4 does cover an lot of computer evolution. I'll see if I can drag down those reference books and type in the titles of the best ones - I have quite a few. Also, do note that even before the 360's there were families that were "semi-compatible", like the IBM 709/7094/etc family. If I wasn't so tired, I could probably think of more.

You're absolutely right. After having chewed on this for a while now, I have changed my mind a little in "your direction", and am going to remove the IBM 7090 & 7094, the UNIVAC 1107, and the PDP-6 and -8 from the category. The remaining computers, I'd argue, is properly to be counted among the early computers. --Wernher 13:22, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I have a whole long list of reference books I want to list. Should I put them on Category:Early computers? We don't seem to have an Early computers (or Early Computers)? Noel (talk) 17:45, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, having heard nothing, I'm going to put them in History of computing hardware; if we have a better page for them later, we can move them. Noel (talk) 16:54, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Talk pages

Oh, also, people generally reply on the Talk: page of the person who wrote a message to them - that way, someone doesn't have to monitor a whole long list of Talk: pages (one for each person who they are having a "conversation" with. Noel 04:02, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for not leaving a note on your Talk page about "my" (and many others') scheme regarding Talk threads. I prefer to have each thread on one page; this makes the discussion much easier to follow, like on a newsgroup. --Wernher

That is an advantage, but I still think the disadvantages outweigh it; it doesn't work well if you have lots of conversations going -> lots of other User_talk: pages to watch. Also, I would have to either check your page manually; or if I list it on my Watchlist, when I see it listed as changed, I still have to check it to see whether it was you replying to me, or someone else.

Anyway, let me suggest a (hopefully superior) alternative. How about we start Wikipedia:WikiProject Early computers? That way, the Talk: page for that would be a central place for everyone who is interested, and the discussions would easy to find for newcomers. You can see how it looks at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt which I am part of. Noel (talk) 17:45, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I waited a couple of days to hear from you, and I had a prototype page (above) ready to go, so I went ahead and hit the "Save Page" button. If we decide it's a bad idea, we can go ahead and get rid of it. Please let me know (on my talk page) if you eventually comment. Noel (talk) 16:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PS: The reason I alternated no indent (for me) and single indent (for your replies) was to prevent it getting indented too far - if the conversation goes on for a while, it winds up crushed into the right hand margin! I don't like the way that looks, and with just two people there's no real need for multiple levels of indent - I generally keep that for when I come in later and comment on a thread which happened a while ago. Noel (talk) 22:15, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

DEC Alpha

The chief architect was not the person you mentioned. The two architects who were responsible for the Instruction set were Rich Witek and Dick Sites. Rich Witek became the implementation architect for EV3/EV4. EV5 implemenation architect was John Edmondson (from what I remember). EV6 implementation architect was Dirk Meyer, later Jim Keller after Dirk left for AMD. EV7 implementation architect was Pete Bannon. I don't know after that as I lost interest after that. Dyl 17:04, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Ooops, sorry; I relied on a Norwegian source which was more patriotic than reliable, it seems. Will fix it immediately (Fossum was one of the guys in the arch team). --Wernher 20:40, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) *blushing*

The Alpha arhitecture came out of the design group at Hudson, MA. Fossum was working in the Marlboro, MA mainframe ECL group originally. That is, totally different divisions of the company. Fossum was the main architect for the mainframe vax - vax 9000? (I forgot the product name). I seem to remember he might have been the architect for EV8 (my memory is hazy on this) in the latter years as many of the original Alpha people moved onto other companies. Dyl 23:30, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Major programming languages template

Hey, sorry for kinda changing my mind, but I decided to add back some of the languages you excluded — I consider them quite significant, and the box is still 3-4 lines at most screen widths. See Template talk: Major programming languages small. Deco 22:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moving pages, double redirects

When you move pages be sure to check what links here for double redirects, the link to columbia from Current events was broken as a result of the move. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:24, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)

Oops, I'm sincerely sorry! But I honestly thought I had checked!? Is there a special way to check for dbl redirects (aside from checking "What links here", which I did this time as I always do)? --Wernher 01:43, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not that i know of, you have to go to "What links here" and if a redirect links to a redirect ( two levels deep ) that has to be fixed. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:53, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)

OK, then it can't have been anything else than a good old-fashioned braino on my behalf -- the dbl #rd must have eluded me when I checked. Well, thanks for reminding me; I'll pay (even more) particular attention to this from now on. --Wernher 02:07, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 19:23, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Please let me take my time educating myself about, and contemplating, this stuff. --Wernher 14:03, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's not a problem, just let me know whenever you decide. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 16:59, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Grammar (in WP:RFA)

Not at all! I think click-on-diffing is a wonderful verb. I click-on-diff, he click-on-diffs, we click-on-diff. --fvw*† 14:01, 2004 Dec 4 (UTC)

Well, thanks anyway for embracing my -eh- original verb construction. :-) However, what I meant by 'gr fix' was the chg from [...] tire [...] by having to [...] → [...] tire [...] from having to [...]. (Or, [...] tire [...] of having to [...] might be better.) --Wernher 14:13, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)