I learned to program on PLATO. It was an AMAZING system. In addition to supporting a variety of development environments, their system used a proprietary language called TUTOR. A good bit of networking technology today is derivative of this amazing system. I wasn't rich, although I noted a lot of kids who had access to PLATO tended to be children of CEOs and such. My parents worked at a college that had a grant to have the terminals available. The games on the system were also amazing.

As a programmer, PLATO was a great example of the "cloud"-type systems that will eventually become standard.. what Google is doing and Adobe is now proposing was done in the 70s at Plato, with centrally-hosted apps that routinely are updated automatically. As developers we could put in requests for program features and see them reflected in newer versions of the API. 512x512 resolution, touch sensitive screens, multi-player, real-time games between people all over the world..... in the 70s.

By the way, the original PLATO system has been ported and is running over TCP/IP. If you're willing to donate to the project, they have been known to grant access to people wanting to experience what it was like. See: http://www.cyber1.org/

By the way if anyone has the archive of the PLATO game 0drygulch.. PLEASE contact them... we've been dying to find that code and put it online.

You have interesting ideas for sure. Have you considered making a long, rambling and alarmist youtube video?

Sounds like you, for one, don't welcome our new bitcoin & Tesla pimping overlords.

The antelope refuge?

Whereas in fact manly vigor comes from driving a dinosaur-sized truck that guzzles fossil fuel.

Invoking an uncaused god to "explain" an uncaused universe doesn't do anything except add a middle man, and ultimately leaves *more* unexplained than before.

Then you were unknown; now you're universally known as The Bad Pianist.

I'm the opposite: *I* don't use DST, and I have to spend most of the year reminding myself that "those idiots" think it's an hour later than it is.

Right. Then they fake a video as "evidence" that it happened.

You mean you read that crap?

We're in an interglacial, still in same ice age.

As someone who was out there in the gulf documenting the effects of the spill, I'm disappointed that there is no actual details or data or maps indicating where actually the oil is located? Where are the details?

Ignoring crackpots isn't always safe. Anti-vaccination crackpots have gotten a lot of people sick or dead.

(The question is, how do you know whether any particular flavor of crackpot is harmful or harmless.)

That seems to be a popular view among the well-to-do in the USA even today.

Sorry, it will be BYODrugs.