I really meant I was repeating one my own jokes, the 
age of the joke or other sources never even crossed 
my mind.

Tracy Johnson
MSI Schaevitz Sensors 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Emerson, Tom [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 5:55 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] duplicating slt media?
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Johnson, Tracy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> > 
> > I've been able to combine these two items
> [...]
> > (This repeats an old joke from June 2002.)
> 
> The joke is older than that -- I seem to recall WAAAAAAY back 
> in "high school"(*), when (PC) computers were "new" and 
> software distributors came up with all sorts of "creative" 
> copy protection schemes [mainly for the Apple] that relied on 
> either "weak bits" [bits that weren't written "at full 
> strength", thus they would tend to "flip" if you re-read them 
> several times...] or even holes burned into the media [so 
> there was nothing there to read -- if you could write to and 
> successfully "read" that sector, you knew you weren't on a 
> "protected" disk...]
> 
> In any case, the joke at the time was that someone developed 
> the FASTEST "mirror image copier" -- guaranteed to make 
> perfect copies INSTANTANEOUSLY -- in fact, you didn't even 
> need a disk drive: you held it up to the disk you wanted to 
> copy and BING! at the speed of light you had a "perfect 
> mirror (image) copy"
> 
> 
> Tom
> 
> (*) that would be >ahem< a couple decades ago by now...
> 
> 
> p.s.  I also recall a pizza parlor that would fax you back a 
> pizza if you faxed them the money first...  Never really 
> caught on -- the pizzas tended to be a bit dry...
> 

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *