RE: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
USA paper currency used to be the size of punchcards. So, if one were to have a LOT of it, you could use the same trays, and counting machines, etc. Do you suppose that Hollerith had a lot of paper currency? On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, Rich Alderson via cctalk wrote: Actually, Hollerith designed his card that size precisely so that storage drawers for bank notes could be used. I deliberately inverted that, in a futile attempt at humor. Pennies used to be copper. Now, they are mostly zinc, due to copper costing more than a penny. But, they managed to maintain the copper color. During WW2, pennies were briefly made out of steel. Technically, they were bronze, a copper-tin alloy. Sometime in the 1970s, IIRC, pennies became copper (or bronze) coated aluminum. I've always heard copper plated zinc from 1982 on. They seem a little too heavy to be aluminum, although the newer pennies are slightly lighter. The Wikipedia article says that 1.5 million were made of aluminum in 1974, and then that was rejected, and supports the copper plated zinc that I had heard. Pennies will never stop being minted--the members of Congress representing the state of Illinois would not stand for it. In spite of costing more to make them than they are worth.
RE: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
From: Fred Cisin Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2019 6:57 AM On Sat, 29 Jun 2019, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: >> US currency is very confusing to me. All the notes seem to be the same size >> and colour, so you can't readily sort them. I mean, I know America doesn't >> believe in helping people when they're sick, but it wasn't until I visited >> that I realised you saved up particular hatred for the blind and >> partially-sighted and went out of your way to make life more difficult for >> them. > USA paper currency used to be the size of punchcards. So, if one were to > have a LOT of it, you could use the same trays, and counting machines, > etc. Do you suppose that Hollerith had a lot of paper currency? > "If Hollerith were alive today, how many birthdays would he have had?" > requires being aware that 1900 was NOT a leap year. Actually, Hollerith designed his card that size precisely so that storage drawers for bank notes could be used. >> You use nicknames for 2 denominations which most of us foreigners don't know >> -- I still don't know which is a "nickel" (which is a metal to me) and which >> is a "dime" (which is a Swedish chocolate-covered sweet bar, of which I'm >> very fond but can't eat because I'm overweight). > A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs. > The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation. The name comes from an old French coin (pre-Republic) > A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs. > The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size. The $0.05 coin is a nickel-copper alloy. At one time, an easy way to distinguish between US and Canadian nickels was that the nickel content in the Canadian coin was higher, enough so that a magnet would pick them up. In the 19th Century, $0.05 was a silver-copper alloy coin like the $0.10 dime, $0.25 quarter, and $0.50 half dollar. (The silver dollar was something like 0.997 pure silver.) There was a nickel-copper $0.03 coin called, astonishingly enough, a nickel. > "Silver Dollar pancakes" are actually larger than a silver dollar, but > nobody complains. >> And the base unit is a cent, but you call them "pennies", the base >> unit of _my_ old country's currency, and you didn't even put the >> symbol into ASCII. Yes, "cent" because they were $0.01. "Penny" because that was what the small coins were called. There was no need for ha'farthings, farthings, ha'pennies in the Brave New Decimal Currency! > Pennies used to be copper. Now, they are mostly zinc, due to copper > costing more than a penny. But, they managed to maintain the copper > color. During WW2, pennies were briefly made out of steel. Technically, they were bronze, a copper-tin alloy. In 1943, at the height of the war, zinc-coated steel pennies were issued. In 1944, there was a return to bronze, but the coins were a different color because expended artillery shells were melted down for the metal, and had a higher tin content. > 6 decades ago, pennies said "One Cent" on the back, with pictures of > wheat; then they changed to a picture of the Lincoln memorial, which is at > the end of Memorial bridge in Washington, DC. >From 1909 until 1959, the Lincoln penny had the wheat ears. (The nifty thing about the image of the Lincoln Memorial is that on new enough pennies one can see the statue of Lincoln in the center of the Memorial.) Sometime in the 1970s, IIRC, pennies became copper (or bronze) coated aluminum. Pennies will never stop being minted--the members of Congress representing the state of Illinois would not stand for it. Prior to 1909, for I forget how long and I'm not going to look it up, the obverse of the penny had an image of an "Indian" head--which was actually the image of the sculptor's daughter wearing a feather headdress. OB vious: Someone was an avid coin collector as a kid. Rich
Re: RS2030 MIPS workstation
I’ve only just joined cctalk, so apologies for the delayed response to this query from May, but I thought the information might be useful to others in future. I’m the person working on emulating MIPS workstations in MAME recently, and I’m a fair way through getting the Rx3230 model to a fully working state (Rx2030 is already working as of last month). For the MIPS Rx3230 systems, which use an M48T02, the mac address should be in the first 6 bytes of NVRAM. You can read/write the NVRAM through the boot monitor using the “g” (get) and “p” (put) commands. You also need to provide the “-b” argument to specify byte width, and the relevant address. The NVRAM is mapped at 0x1d00-0x1d001fff in the physical address space, but must also set the high bit to access it through kseg0. Each 32-bit word in that range corresponds to a single byte in the NVRAM, so the resulting commands will be something like: * g -b 0x9d03 (read first byte of NVRAM) * g -b 0x9d07 (read second byte of NVRAM) * ... Or conversely: * p -b 0x9d03 0xff (write 0xff to first byte of NVRAM) I haven’t tried to decode the rest of the NVRAM for the Rx3230 at this point (although most of the monitor variables seem to be at offset 0x600-0x6a7), but at least I can see those are the bytes that are read from NVRAM and then written to the mac address of the LANCE, and setting them to a valid address makes the network layer in MAME behave as expected. -- Pat.
NASA Ames (Moffet Field) Computation Division?
Anyone know what hardware was at NASA Ames in the late 70s? I've got some tapes from there and would like to avoid guessing. --Chuck
Re: Need Fileware twiggy diskette picture for Wikipedia
On 7/1/19 4:36 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
>
>
>
>> I hereby grant permission for my images of 3M FileWare ("Twiggy")disk image
>> to be used under the terms of the
>> Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
I just noticed the 3M disk has no index hole.
Re: Need Fileware twiggy diskette picture for Wikipedia
> I hereby grant permission for my images of 3M FileWare ("Twiggy")disk image
> to be used under the terms of the
> Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
> images:http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/disk/twiggy/photos/3M_Fileware.jpg
> license:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_4.0_International_License
>
> I hold the copyright on the images but not, of course, on the original
> Apple and Verbatim materials. In my opinion, such use of images of the
> original Apple and Verbatim materials is fair use under US copyright law.
> However, I am not a lawyer.
>
Re: Need Fileware twiggy diskette picture for Wikipedia
On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 4:58 PM David Griffith via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> Someone informed me that the Fileware diskette image I uploaded to
> Wikipedia has unclear copyright status. See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fileware-floppy.jpg. Would someone
> with a good specimen please scan it and upload to Wikipedia or send it to
> me?
>
I hereby grant permission for my images of Apple FileWare ("Twiggy") and
Verbatim Optima Series FileWare disks to be used under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
images:http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/lisa/twiggy.html
license:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_4.0_International_License
I hold the copyright on the images but not, of course, on the original
Apple and Verbatim materials. In my opinion, such use of images of the
original Apple and Verbatim materials is fair use under US copyright law.
However, I am not a lawyer.
Need Fileware twiggy diskette picture for Wikipedia
Someone informed me that the Fileware diskette image I uploaded to Wikipedia has unclear copyright status. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fileware-floppy.jpg. Would someone with a good specimen please scan it and upload to Wikipedia or send it to me? -- David Griffith d...@661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
Oh, but we are proud of our unremembered heritage, and fiercely resist change. We still use Fahrenheit. And efforts to "go metric" have made little headway. On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, dwight wrote: Not every thing makes sense to go metric. Clearly bold sizes are better off in fractional sizes. Also for wrenches. I have to have 13, 14 and 15 mm wrenches. A 9/16 would have covered the entire range. I have a spot on my car that I need a 23mm offset box wrench. What a pain. I find that an SAE set of wrenches and a metric set of wrenches tend to need similar quantities. German cars switched from 14mm to 13mm heads for 8mm bolts about 5 decades ago. Japanese use 12mm heads on 8mm bolts, and 13mm and 15mm are rare on Japanese cars. Unless you are dealing with vintage stuff - 10,13,15,17,19 for German cars; 10,12,14,17,19 for Japanese cars 16mm, 18mm seem rare. Whitworth is finally rare Yes, once you get above an inch, sizes are less standardized. 9/16 doesn't cover everything. It could, if you provided appropriate punishment for any use of a 17/32 or 19/32 bolt head. 1/4-20 bolts use 7/16" heads, which is about 11mm. But lately, I have encountered some 1/4-20 with 10mm heads! (Chinese specification change)
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
> On Jul 1, 2019, at 2:10 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > > > >>> A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs. >>> The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation. >>> A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs. >>> The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size. >> I'm broadly aware but I can never remember which is 5¢ and which is 10¢. > > Think of the "dime" as a "deci" > > "nickel and dime" is used to mean small and irrelevant. > "nickel" and "dime" are also slang for $5 and $10 respectively, except in > casinos, because while the casinos still had coin slot machines In terms of denominations that the US used, originally there was no nickel. There was a half-dime to represent $0.05. It was a silver coin half the size of the dime. The mint changed over to nickel because the half-dime was too small. The original nickel was almost identical to the $5 gold piece of the time, so with some simple chemistry (basically gold plating the nickel) you could pass it off as a $5 gold piece. The mint changed the design of the nickel so as to make the subterfuge more obvious to the causal observer. US coinage is littered with denominations that are no longer used: half-cent ($0.005) copper “large” cent ($0.01 but the approximate size of a quarter but of copper instead of silver) 2 cent piece (copper) 3 cent piece (nickel) half-dime (silver) 20 cent piece (silver) And then of course there the gold coins: $1 (about the size of a dime) $5 (about the size of a nickel) $10 (about the size of a quarter) $20 (about the size of a half dollar) $50 (rare and about the size of a silver dollar) Each coin (be it silver or gold) was intended to approximately represent the value of the metal in the coin (that is a $10 gold coin was supposed to contain roughly $10 of gold). I believe at the time an ounce of silver was $1.25 and I believe gold was $32/oz. These are of course troy ounces - 12 troy ounces to a pound versus 16 avoirdupois ounce to a pound. TTFN - Guy
Re: STOP IT : "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
ENOUGH ALREADY! Surely there must be better lists to carry on this conversation. On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, dwight via cctalk wrote: Not every thing makes sense to go metric. Clearly bold sizes are better off in fractional sizes. Also for wrenches. I have to have 13, 14 and 15 mm wrenches. A 9/16 would have covered the entire range. I have a spot on my car that I need a 23mm offset box wrench. What a pain. Dwight From: cctalk on behalf of Fred Cisin via cctalk Sent: Monday, July 1, 2019 2:10 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR Now that the dollar coin is a different color than the quarter, they don't end up mixed. But, the replacement of the Washington quarter, that even included when they were silver, with the commemorative quarters means they are now all different designs, and the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins no longer have more of a difference of appearance from quarters than a Canadian quarter. A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs. The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation. A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs. The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size. I'm broadly aware but I can never remember which is 5¢ and which is 10¢. Think of the "dime" as a "deci" "nickel and dime" is used to mean small and irrelevant. "nickel" and "dime" are also slang for $5 and $10 respectively, except in casinos, because while the casinos still had coin slot machines they had nickel ones, and did NOT confuse those with $5 chips. But, without the little paper-cup bucket of coins, what's the appeal of scanning a card, and then, if the machine malfunctioned and you won, it prints out a piece of paper to take to the cashier cage? Yeah, but we reformed and decimalised it all about 50y ago, and now, as an olde pharte, all the old units and multiples are arcane and weird even to me. I have only the dimmest memories of seeing shillings and things like that. I barely understand feet and inches and don't really grasp pounds, ounces and so on at all. I have never used Fahrenheit. Oh, but we are proud of our unremembered heritage, and fiercely resist change. We still use Fahrenheit. And efforts to "go metric" have made little headway. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
Not every thing makes sense to go metric. Clearly bold sizes are better off in fractional sizes. Also for wrenches. I have to have 13, 14 and 15 mm wrenches. A 9/16 would have covered the entire range. I have a spot on my car that I need a 23mm offset box wrench. What a pain. Dwight From: cctalk on behalf of Fred Cisin via cctalk Sent: Monday, July 1, 2019 2:10 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR Now that the dollar coin is a different color than the quarter, they don't end up mixed. But, the replacement of the Washington quarter, that even included when they were silver, with the commemorative quarters means they are now all different designs, and the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins no longer have more of a difference of appearance from quarters than a Canadian quarter. >> A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs. >> The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation. >> A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs. >> The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size. > I'm broadly aware but I can never remember which is 5¢ and which is 10¢. Think of the "dime" as a "deci" "nickel and dime" is used to mean small and irrelevant. "nickel" and "dime" are also slang for $5 and $10 respectively, except in casinos, because while the casinos still had coin slot machines they had nickel ones, and did NOT confuse those with $5 chips. But, without the little paper-cup bucket of coins, what's the appeal of scanning a card, and then, if the machine malfunctioned and you won, it prints out a piece of paper to take to the cashier cage? > Yeah, but we reformed and decimalised it all about 50y ago, and now, > as an olde pharte, all the old units and multiples are arcane and > weird even to me. I have only the dimmest memories of seeing shillings > and things like that. I barely understand feet and inches and don't > really grasp pounds, ounces and so on at all. I have never used > Fahrenheit. Oh, but we are proud of our unremembered heritage, and fiercely resist change. We still use Fahrenheit. And efforts to "go metric" have made little headway. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
Now that the dollar coin is a different color than the quarter, they don't end up mixed. But, the replacement of the Washington quarter, that even included when they were silver, with the commemorative quarters means they are now all different designs, and the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins no longer have more of a difference of appearance from quarters than a Canadian quarter. A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs. The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation. A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs. The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size. I'm broadly aware but I can never remember which is 5¢ and which is 10¢. Think of the "dime" as a "deci" "nickel and dime" is used to mean small and irrelevant. "nickel" and "dime" are also slang for $5 and $10 respectively, except in casinos, because while the casinos still had coin slot machines they had nickel ones, and did NOT confuse those with $5 chips. But, without the little paper-cup bucket of coins, what's the appeal of scanning a card, and then, if the machine malfunctioned and you won, it prints out a piece of paper to take to the cashier cage? Yeah, but we reformed and decimalised it all about 50y ago, and now, as an olde pharte, all the old units and multiples are arcane and weird even to me. I have only the dimmest memories of seeing shillings and things like that. I barely understand feet and inches and don't really grasp pounds, ounces and so on at all. I have never used Fahrenheit. Oh, but we are proud of our unremembered heritage, and fiercely resist change. We still use Fahrenheit. And efforts to "go metric" have made little headway. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
Re: Latest Additions to the Virtual Warehouse of Computing Wonders Sale Inventory
I think the big difference between Sellam and a lot of people selling on, say, eBay is that Sellam is One Of Us: He’s a collector and enthusiast himself, not just someone hoping to make a buck off of a market in which they’re not themselves a participant. So the stuff that I’ve gotten from Sellam feels like stuff *of Sellam’s* that I’ve gotten, rather than stuff Sellam just picked up to resell. And that’s something I really appreciate. -- Chris
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
> A few years ago, one of the motorsports events that I help organize used > PayPal. The entry fee was around $1000-2000 (depending on the type of > entry) and I think we got around 50 entries that year. Most of the > competitors pay their entry fee on the last day of the "early entry" > deadline before the price goes up. When that happened, PayPal flagged > the event's account and locked access to the funds in the account. Did anyone in the organization warn Paypal of sudden influx of transactions? This can make a world of difference. -- Will
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On 7/1/19 10:09 AM, William Donzelli via cctalk wrote: Maybe for you. I did a group purchase of tickets for a club I am a member of. Almost everyone paid me for their tickets paid with checks. I help organize motorsports events; my expenses are reimbursed with checks. Paypal seems to be king for this sort of thing around here. Got one PayPal for the tickets. My daughter does a lot of Venmo. A few years ago, one of the motorsports events that I help organize used PayPal. The entry fee was around $1000-2000 (depending on the type of entry) and I think we got around 50 entries that year. Most of the competitors pay their entry fee on the last day of the "early entry" deadline before the price goes up. When that happened, PayPal flagged the event's account and locked access to the funds in the account. They kept it locked until after the event was run. There was no reason for this; the event had been running for almost a decade with no financial issues. However, there are pre-event expenses that the event has to cover and, thanks to PayPal, it had no access to the entry fee money for this. If it were not for member's of the organizing committee loaning the event money for those expenses, the event would not have happened that year. So, PayPal (and, by association, any other electronic payment system) isn't even considered these days. alan
Re: OT: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On 7/1/19 10:01 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 at 17:46, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote: I sold a $3500 car once for cash to a guy who sold his goods at a booth at fairs and shows. He received lots and lots of $20 bills in payment, so that is what he paid me with. I kept the cash instead of depositing it in the bank and going to an ATM to get cash out. I hear that. I also bought a motorbike this way once. The dealers gave me a discount "for cash". I was naïve and thought that meant actual specie and turned up with £2000 in notes. The poor salesman nearly had an unfortunate little personal accident and was fearful his boss would give him grief for leaving so much in the company safe. He had merely meant "not for credit" and had expected a banker's draft or the like. I had another car that I sold for $24000 where the buyer paid in cash. The largest denomination in circulation here is the $100 bill (note), so that was a stack of cash. That went into the bank (after taking some creative photos with the money). There are small bank branches in grocery stores here and I deposited the money at one of those kinds of branches. It was more cash than they were used to dealing with and they didn't want to take it. alan
Re: Latest Additions to the Virtual Warehouse of Computing Wonders Sale Inventory
I'll also vouch for Sellam. His prices are a bit higher than I might prefer, but he's a straight dealer as far as I've ever seen; I bought an Apple IIc from him and he gave me no trouble at all about exchanging it when the board turned out to be cracked.
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
> Maybe for you. I did a group purchase of tickets for a club I am a > member of. Almost everyone paid me for their tickets paid with checks. > I help organize motorsports events; my expenses are reimbursed with checks. Paypal seems to be king for this sort of thing around here. -- Will
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 at 17:46, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote: > I sold a $3500 car once for cash to a guy who sold his goods at a booth > at fairs and shows. He received lots and lots of $20 bills in payment, > so that is what he paid me with. I kept the cash instead of depositing > it in the bank and going to an ATM to get cash out. I hear that. I also bought a motorbike this way once. The dealers gave me a discount "for cash". I was naïve and thought that meant actual specie and turned up with £2000 in notes. The poor salesman nearly had an unfortunate little personal accident and was fearful his boss would give him grief for leaving so much in the company safe. He had merely meant "not for credit" and had expected a banker's draft or the like. > Maybe for you. I did a group purchase of tickets for a club I am a > member of. Almost everyone paid me for their tickets paid with checks. > I help organize motorsports events; my expenses are reimbursed with checks. This matches what I've heard. I suspect that my Czech bank probably lacks any facilities for processing paper cheques whatsoever. I still used them occasionally in Britain when I left, circa 2014, but they'd been very rare for ~5 years by then. In the noughties I still used them regularly and caused some institutions -- e.g. my ISP -- quite serious operational problems by doing so. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On 7/1/19 5:01 AM, William Donzelli via cctalk wrote: In every other country I've visited or lived in -- about 30 or 40 of them -- banknotes are all different sizes, so that totally blind people can sort by size if they have a few of them. I daresay the very skilled can do it by absolute, not relative, size. Sighted people can and do do it by touch without really thinking about it. US currency is the most most seriously counterfeited in the world, due to being useful almost anywhere. This is why the bills are not very distinctive - you are supposed to look at them. Most counterfeits are good, but not good enough, and can (and will) stick out in a batch of bills - the might just look "funny" or "odd". Have millions of eyes looking for the counterfeits ever day of the year is actually quite effective. I once worked at a bank, and the number of bogus bills that the tellers would get every month was very significant - and most actually stuck out like a sore thumb!. I sold a $3500 car once for cash to a guy who sold his goods at a booth at fairs and shows. He received lots and lots of $20 bills in payment, so that is what he paid me with. I kept the cash instead of depositing it in the bank and going to an ATM to get cash out. One day I was counting out some cash and two of the bills felt funny. This was before a lot of the anti-counterfeiting features in current $20 bills. The bills themselves looked really close to real ones, but the feel of the paper was wrong. Paper cheques disappeared in Britain a decade ago and are very rare now. That is mostly the case here as well. Most under-40 people do not have a checkbook anymore. In my business, I get maybe two payments per year with checks - well under 1/10 of a percent of total payments. My American friends and colleagues over here talk about US cheque processing and sending _images_ of cheques to one another, and the Czechs are incredulous. This is like hearing about carrying letters by horse-drawn carriage in these parts; this is a technology that never really happened here and that pretty much no living person has ever seen. There are still a few institutions and older folks that still use checks (like the annoying people that hold up the line in a grocery store, writing out a check), so the image deposit system is just an effort to cut down the foot traffic to banks. More convenience for customers, and less labor costs for banks. It is handy to have, but really, not many people use it much, simply because getting a paper check is just a rare occurrence these days. Maybe for you. I did a group purchase of tickets for a club I am a member of. Almost everyone paid me for their tickets paid with checks. I help organize motorsports events; my expenses are reimbursed with checks. alan -- Will
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 at 15:26, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > Checks can be relatively convenient and cheap compared to other options. I > can (for free) send a check of any size to anyone I want by filling out a > form on my bank's website to pay someone (mostly limited by my account's > balance). You need to use a cheque to do that?! o_O > Running a business, I have to occasionally transfer more money between my > LLC and personal account that goes over the monthly limit I can do, so I have > them print a check, and go to the branch, pick it up, and deposit it into the > other account. :-o ... I am astounded. I have only done that I think once in my life, to buy a motorcycle, about 30y ago. UK cheques were guaranteed by your card up to £50. IOW they got the money even if you didn't have it. For bigger purchases, sometimes, vendors might refuse. So you could get a "counter cheque" or "banker's draft" for large transactions -- i.e. thousands to tens of thousands -- which means the bank guarantees it, not you personally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banker%27s_draft > It's dumb, but reliable and easier/cheaper than doing it electronically. I feel like the Reddit thread where the Americans discovered that for everyone else, SMS are free to receive, and the Europeans discovered that Americans pay to _get_ SMS as well as to _send_ SMS. You *pay* for EFT?! I am astounded, aghast, shocked! > Plus, checks are easier to deposit at home using a phone app than cash is. I heard that. I think it's hilarious. It's like, I don't know, chiselling a message into a rock, then taking a photo of the rock and mailing it. Like an Asterix comic book, from a parallel universe where no one invented paper and pen. > EFT costs money, have relatively low limits, and require you to know the bank > account # of the recipient. *Boggle* I bought my new _apartment_ by EFT in April. Of _course_ it didn't cost me anything. I'd no more expect to pay than I'd expect to pay to breathe. Yes I have the account numbers. Everyone does. You can't withdraw using it, only deposit. > Personal "internet-based" electronic payment systems fix the account number > problem, but I've got accounts on like five different ones to be able to send > money to different people who don't all use the same one. The EU system is EU-wide. > At least in the US, card processing costs (usually) the recipient some > percentage of the transaction. As a merchant, I just factor that into the > costs of doing business. If I have to pay an extra 3% to send money to a > friend for a shared expense, that's annoying. That is normal but only a concern for merchants. > NFC-based tap-to-pay systems (Google/Apple Pay, etc) are nice where they're > adopted. I enjoyed using them pretty universally in Australia, and was sad at > now few seemed to exist in New Zealand. The nicest part was that it kept the > terminal from asking me to sign a receipt. There were a fair number of > situations where I tried to pay for things, but they refused > chip-and-signature cards, and had to find cash. I was in the Nethelands at new year and found I could not use my cards to pay. This is the first time it's happened to me this century. This includes non-EU countries, across the Caribbean, etc. > As an aside, coming from the US, it seems strange to pay (business/strangers) > for things and use a card that draws directly from a bank account instead of > credit. If someone steals the account # or the merchant screws me over, > there's basically no protections on my debit card, especially if I don't > notice it right away. If you have good enough credit to get a credit card, > it's easily worth the benefits. If there is a dodgy withdrawal or payment, the bank refunds you and then use their might and clout and lawyers to chase the miscreant. You don't pay. We mostly only use credit cards for transactions when we don't have the money, e.g. big payments before payday, or for additional services -- e.g. mine gives me automatic travel insurance whenever I buy travel tickets with it. So I buy all my airfares and things that way. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 8:01 AM William Donzelli via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > That is mostly the case here as well. Most under-40 people do not have > a checkbook anymore. In my business, I get maybe two payments per year > with checks - well under 1/10 of a percent of total payments. > > > My American friends and colleagues over here talk about US cheque > > processing and sending _images_ of cheques to one another, and the > > Czechs are incredulous. This is like hearing about carrying letters by > > horse-drawn carriage in these parts; this is a technology that never > > really happened here and that pretty much no living person has ever > > seen. > > There are still a few institutions and older folks that still use > checks (like the annoying people that hold up the line in a grocery > store, writing out a check), so the image deposit system is just an > effort to cut down the foot traffic to banks. More convenience for > customers, and less labor costs for banks. It is handy to have, but > really, not many people use it much, simply because getting a paper > check is just a rare occurrence these days. > A few more thoughts from watching this conversation.. Checks can be relatively convenient and cheap compared to other options. I can (for free) send a check of any size to anyone I want by filling out a form on my bank's website to pay someone (mostly limited by my account's balance). Running a business, I have to occasionally transfer more money between my LLC and personal account that goes over the monthly limit I can do, so I have them print a check, and go to the branch, pick it up, and deposit it into the other account. It's dumb, but reliable and easier/cheaper than doing it electronically. Plus, checks are easier to deposit at home using a phone app than cash is. I'm still waiting for that one to be figured out... EFT costs money, have relatively low limits, and require you to know the bank account # of the recipient. Personal "internet-based" electronic payment systems fix the account number problem, but I've got accounts on like five different ones to be able to send money to different people who don't all use the same one. At least in the US, card processing costs (usually) the recipient some percentage of the transaction. As a merchant, I just factor that into the costs of doing business. If I have to pay an extra 3% to send money to a friend for a shared expense, that's annoying. NFC-based tap-to-pay systems (Google/Apple Pay, etc) are nice where they're adopted. I enjoyed using them pretty universally in Australia, and was sad at now few seemed to exist in New Zealand. The nicest part was that it kept the terminal from asking me to sign a receipt. There were a fair number of situations where I tried to pay for things, but they refused chip-and-signature cards, and had to find cash. As an aside, coming from the US, it seems strange to pay (business/strangers) for things and use a card that draws directly from a bank account instead of credit. If someone steals the account # or the merchant screws me over, there's basically no protections on my debit card, especially if I don't notice it right away. If you have good enough credit to get a credit card, it's easily worth the benefits. Pat
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 at 14:01, William Donzelli wrote: > > US currency is the most most seriously counterfeited in the world, due > to being useful almost anywhere. This is why the bills are not very > distinctive - you are supposed to look at them. Most counterfeits are > good, but not good enough, and can (and will) stick out in a batch of > bills - the might just look "funny" or "odd". Have millions of eyes > looking for the counterfeits ever day of the year is actually quite > effective. I once worked at a bank, and the number of bogus bills that > the tellers would get every month was very significant - and most > actually stuck out like a sore thumb!. That's kinda a good point. :-) Fake bills aren't a big problem in Europe in my experience, but I have seen them and it does happen. > Mind you, I think US currency is very ugly, compared to many other > currencies, but I see the point of the design. Personally I don't hugely care about that. I remember when the Euro became common a lot of people thought they were too modern, too colourful, etc. Comments such as "it looks like Monopoly money" were common. But we've all got used to them now. > Yes, that is the case all around, for the entire population. Well, yes, but more so. As in, paying for 1 beer, or other small transactions that for most sighted people wouldn't be worth it. > That is mostly the case here as well. Most under-40 people do not have > a checkbook anymore. In my business, I get maybe two payments per year > with checks - well under 1/10 of a percent of total payments. That doesn't jar with the experiences of my American friends over here, who have to send cheques to the US for processing, get cheques in the mail and send images back, stuff like that. A friend sends photos of cheques to his sister for her to process for him for small stuff "back home". It seems to be quite an everyday thing. > There are still a few institutions and older folks that still use > checks (like the annoying people that hold up the line in a grocery > store, writing out a check), so the image deposit system is just an > effort to cut down the foot traffic to banks. And freighting trucks full of cheques from bank to bank, I thought? > More convenience for > customers, and less labor costs for banks. It is handy to have, but > really, not many people use it much, simply because getting a paper > check is just a rare occurrence these days. Hmm. It certainly is for me, but not from what I hear for others... -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
> In every other country I've visited or lived in -- about 30 or 40 of > them -- banknotes are all different sizes, so that totally blind > people can sort by size if they have a few of them. I daresay the very > skilled can do it by absolute, not relative, size. Sighted people can > and do do it by touch without really thinking about it. US currency is the most most seriously counterfeited in the world, due to being useful almost anywhere. This is why the bills are not very distinctive - you are supposed to look at them. Most counterfeits are good, but not good enough, and can (and will) stick out in a batch of bills - the might just look "funny" or "odd". Have millions of eyes looking for the counterfeits ever day of the year is actually quite effective. I once worked at a bank, and the number of bogus bills that the tellers would get every month was very significant - and most actually stuck out like a sore thumb!. So if you get a stack of US currency, and need to count it, you really need to look at each one, even if just a partial quick glance. With a stack of Euros, you can do a quick sort by color or size, and bogus bills can slip right by. It is a trade off. Mind you, I think US currency is very ugly, compared to many other currencies, but I see the point of the design. On the other hand, US coins really are not faked very much anymore (it is mostly limited to older collectibles), so the US Mint have been playing around a lot with new coin designs, maybe more than ever before. They are even starting to purposely introduce limited editions into circulation (the "W Quarter"), just for fun. The are, of course, still constrained by the physical aspects of the coins, due to mechanical changers and such. > To be honest, even in the UK, my blind friends mostly dislike dealing > in both paper and metal currency and if they can, these days they pay > with a card. Yes, that is the case all around, for the entire population. > Paper cheques disappeared in Britain a decade ago > and are very rare now. That is mostly the case here as well. Most under-40 people do not have a checkbook anymore. In my business, I get maybe two payments per year with checks - well under 1/10 of a percent of total payments. > My American friends and colleagues over here talk about US cheque > processing and sending _images_ of cheques to one another, and the > Czechs are incredulous. This is like hearing about carrying letters by > horse-drawn carriage in these parts; this is a technology that never > really happened here and that pretty much no living person has ever > seen. There are still a few institutions and older folks that still use checks (like the annoying people that hold up the line in a grocery store, writing out a check), so the image deposit system is just an effort to cut down the foot traffic to banks. More convenience for customers, and less labor costs for banks. It is handy to have, but really, not many people use it much, simply because getting a paper check is just a rare occurrence these days. -- Will
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On Sat, 29 Jun 2019 at 15:57, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > USA makes a pretense of accommodating disabilities, but is actually pretty > hostile to the disabled. :-( > The "new" paper currency, that is s'posedly good for blind people has > slightly different shades of the same colors. (!) I googled pictures. Amazing. I am reminded of a famed quote from TV snooker commentator Ted Lowe, describing a position of the balls on the table: "Steve is going for the pink ball - and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green." Snooker is a cue/ball game a bit like pool but much harder and on a far bigger table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snooker > A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs. > The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation. > > A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs. > The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size. I'm broadly aware but I can never remember which is 5¢ and which is 10¢. Thanks for the info on drug purchasing, in case I ever need that. :-D > "Silver Dollar pancakes" are actually larger than a silver dollar, but > nobody complains. :-D > Pennies used to be copper. Now, they are mostly zinc, due to copper > costing more than a penny. But, they managed to maintain the copper > color. During WW2, pennies were briefly made out of steel. I think many "copper" or "brass" coins around the world now are steel with a coating -- it's cheaper. > Our parent country taught us to make currency weird, and we have carried > on the tradition. Yeah, but we reformed and decimalised it all about 50y ago, and now, as an olde pharte, all the old units and multiples are arcane and weird even to me. I have only the dimmest memories of seeing shillings and things like that. I barely understand feet and inches and don't really grasp pounds, ounces and so on at all. I have never used Fahrenheit. I recently bought Dr Spock's famed baby book and have discovered to my dismay that all the units in it are incomprehensible. :-( -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: "half-dollar"/"50 cent piece" Was: Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR
On Sat, 29 Jun 2019 at 13:39, William Donzelli wrote: > > Your knowledge is way out of date. I was first there about 25y ago, and last there about 17y ago. The much-vaunted redesign was, to my European eyes, so subtle as to be indistinguishable. No, I'm not kidding. > US currency changed about twenty > years ago, partially to benefit the blind. Other than the one dollar > note, they all now have much larger portraits, big plain numbers on > the back, and subtle color variations. There is a tradeoff in the > design - the mint makes them distinctive enough for the blind, yet > identical enough to force people to actually look at the notes. In every other country I've visited or lived in -- about 30 or 40 of them -- banknotes are all different sizes, so that totally blind people can sort by size if they have a few of them. I daresay the very skilled can do it by absolute, not relative, size. Sighted people can and do do it by touch without really thinking about it. Braille is all very well but requires careful manual searching to find the codes and then reading of them. Note size is much quicker and easier. > Additionally, the newer brass color dollar coins are fairly successful > with the blind. They have a distinct color and edge, which does make > them very easy to distinguish from the Quarter, unlike the earlier > Susan B Anthony coin. This I didn't know but I'll take your word. To be honest, even in the UK, my blind friends mostly dislike dealing in both paper and metal currency and if they can, these days they pay with a card. Facebook's efforts to introduce a cryptocurrency highlighted that its management are rich enough that, even if they are well-travelled now, they don't personally pay for stuff. Most of the developed world has working contactless payment systems now, and we don't need Apple Pay or anything. My main British and Czech bank cards are all contactless. I don't insert them in slots much any more and I don't sign for things any more -- that went out in the 20th century. I just tap the card on a reader, and if the transaction is more than a cutoff, I enter my PIN. Obviously it's hard for blind people to sign for things; they mostly cannot write or fill in paper forms, including cheques. However entering a PIN is easy. Here in Czechia, there is little use of internet payment systems such as Paypal. They bypassed the whole cheque era; most Czechs have never seen a chequebook and a few friends were fascinated when I showed them my old British ones. Paper cheques disappeared in Britain a decade ago and are very rare now. Trivial payments are by card; large ones are by bank-to-bank electronic transfer. I can buy train tickets, theatre or concert tickets by sending the money directly from my bank via their website or smartphone app to the vendor's account. So people don't use their cards much online here, as they do now in Britain and Western Europe. In China, they don't even use cards -- it's a mobile phone app. Actual cash is disappearing. They bypassed cheques _and_ plastic cards and went from cash to apps. My American friends and colleagues over here talk about US cheque processing and sending _images_ of cheques to one another, and the Czechs are incredulous. This is like hearing about carrying letters by horse-drawn carriage in these parts; this is a technology that never really happened here and that pretty much no living person has ever seen. -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
