Re: COBOL ain't quite dead - yet !

Pete Dashwood wrote:
<docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gec9p1$9b1$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <6mtfb8Figc16U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Pete Dashwood <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

Speaking of that, I had an unexpected visit from a lady I know and had not
seen for some time.
[snip]

"What about a downloadable guitar tuner, that you could have on your cell
phone?"

I realised this was a stroke of brilliance and wheels in the back of my head
started spinning, processing what would be involved.
How curious... I recall reading, decades on back, in a Very Reputable
Source (I think it was 'The Reader's Digest') that there was a
telephone-number one could dial in Austria and get - granted, with the
quality available in the late 1960s, rotary-dial telephones and actual
copper-wire connections - a 'concert A', 440 cycles, in the same way that
one could, during those days, call a local number in some parts of the USA
and get the time of day.

I never heard about that. It's impressive, for the time.

Back in the 70s when I was working in broadcasting in the US, before the
breakup of the Bell (AT&T) System, Ohio Bell in Columbus (at least) had
not only a tone source but also a dialable termination (for measuring
noise) and a line pair switch, ie the tip and ring wires were switched
every so many seconds.


[snip]

The trouble with really good ideas is that if you have them, other people
probably do too... :-)

In seconds I found 15 different applications that could be loaded to a cell
phone and would enable it to act as a guitar tuner. :-)
It has been my experience, Mr Dashwood, that *very* few people are
sufficiently creative to want something Truly New... in the business-world
I inhabit I usually see 'Well, what I want is more-or-less what Jim gets
for the quarterlies and Jane gets for the semi-annuals... but sorted
differently... and could you somehow get it to underline the deleted
entries that aren't there any more?'

Yes, but we should live in hope... right, Doc? :-)

Pete.

Jeff


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