I'll reply to messages here, unless requested otherwise. |
Thank you for assistance
Hey I just wanted to thank you for helping me understand the protocols around page protection. It's a small thing but if you hadn't said anything I probably would have just given up. Much obliged. Connorlong90 (talk) 06:47, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Connorlong90: Glad to help. I know that WP:RFPP and the other noticeboards have trouble dealing with some (many?) kinds of problems and I'd be glad to offer an opinion if you ever need assistance. Johnuniq (talk) 08:18, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
The first LAN in thee world
Dear Johnuniq, I added the paragraph on my invention, design, construction, implementation, and operation of the first LAN in the world. I invented the system to use it in the European Parliament electronic voting systems in Strasbourg, France, and Luxembourg. The system was sold by Olivetti Spa, an Italian company, to the Parliament after winning an international bid to which all major European companies presented a proposal. My system was the favorite for its price/performance characteristics. Official records from the European Parliament attest to the truth of the above statement. The system was using 430 microprocessor-controlled voting terminals each; the microprocessor was an Intel 8047, just released to the market by Intel. The LAN used a twisted-pair telephone cable wiring system, arranged in a star configuration, controlled by a Central Control computer; initially, an Olivetti P6060 running an interpreted basic LAN control polling-selecting software. The first time the first system was tested in Strasbourg in late 1980, the response time was miserably slow. Official records from the European parliament can attest to it. Olivetti asked me to solve speed: I proposed replacing the P6060 with a polling-selecting microcomputer based on an 8080 CPU, with a PL/M software. They accepted my proposal, and the "Concentratore Intelligente" - as I called the polling/selecting unit - was installed in the second system in Luxembourg. This system was used for the first time for the votation and approval of the European Union budget in 1980 - it was the first time that the Parliament was involved in the procedure to approve the European budget, and it was the reason why they have invested 24 million Belgian Francs in having the system. The budget's approval required more than 500 nominal votes - and to register the vote that each of the 430 deputies had expressed. If done manually with the existing procedures, the votes would have required more than three days, at a cost for the Parliament of three-person for each MEP: the MEP, his/her secretary, and his/her assistant. The parliament would have paid for their expenses of staying out of town. With my LAN-based system, the 500 votes have been completed and registered in less than five hours. Again, official records of the European Parliament can attest to the truth of the above sentence. Unfortunately, the Olivetti engineer who was the project manager asked me to implement in the terminal firmware a new feature, that was not present before, and was such that if at power-up one of the voting buttons was pressed, the terminal would go into test mode, starting to transmit a square wave. My flat has been to not question his request and implement it. It happened: the first time the LAN system was used in Luxembourg a few MEPs pressed the voting button and the system failed, as you can see from the Italian RAI TV service https://vimeo.com/408089128 The Olivetti engineer who requested the change did not know what to do. As you can see in the RAI video, I was the operator of the system and intervened by manually switching off and on the terminals that were in maintenance mode. It lasted for five hours, and the Parliament completed all the voted successfully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tangoitalia (talk • contribs) 14:32, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Tangoitalia: Thanks for the interesting details but a claim of "first" for Local area network needs an independent reliable source. Please do not comment here about an article. Instead, you might like to reply at Talk:Local area network#First LAN. Johnuniq (talk) 01:11, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
You are correct, my posting should read "The first implementation of a microcomputer LAN" and not generically "The first implementation of a LAN", as this statement includes LANs of mainframes too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tangoitalia (talk • contribs) 07:35, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Email?
Do you accept email through your account? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 02:10 on January 24, 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, it's enabled. I don't promise to reply but I eventually read all emails. Johnuniq (talk) 02:11, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
- OK, I'll be sending you one (via the website) within the next couple minutes. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 02:17 on January 24, 2021 (UTC)
- Just sent. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 02:27 on January 24, 2021 (UTC)
- OK, I'll be sending you one (via the website) within the next couple minutes. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 02:17 on January 24, 2021 (UTC)
Sorry I forgot to ping you and ask you before removing protection from June 1. I hope you don't mind. Warmly, Lourdes 05:31, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Lourdes: No problem! I did notice that the fuss was due to one IP but I didn't like to block as I could not see a genuine attempted engagement with them so I tried a nice talk page comment. Alison Hinds claims the person was born on 1 June 1970 and so should be listed at births in June 1 although I cannot see a reference for that date, so it should be removed from the biography. At any rate, I agree that blocking the IP was needed although I saw it differently at the time. Johnuniq (talk) 05:40, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
Broken RfC at Talk:Philosophy Tube
Hi, the instructions on reopening the RfC you put at Talk:Philosophy Tube#RfC draft seem to have confused Legobot, so the RfC is listed incorrectly. Seems like it has confused the actual RfC with your example code. I don't know how to fix it, could you take a look? Also pinging Legoktm as bot operator. – Rummskartoffel (talk • contribs) 14:46, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
- Ouch, that's the second time I've made that blunder and I suspect Redrose64 had to correct me last time as well. I'll record the problem as a reminder:
- I put the following as a guide to what was needed to restart the RfC:
<nowiki>{{rfc|bio|style|policy}}</nowiki>
- But when the RfC bot arrived it read the wikitext without regard to the nowiki and treated my comment as a (broken) RfC. Instead should use the following as documented at Template:Rfc#Usage.
{{tlx|rfc|bio|style|policy}}
which displays as{{rfc|bio|style|policy}}
- Johnuniq (talk) 22:17, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).
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- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people
, replacing the 1932 cutoff.
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
- Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!
You have a kind temperament
Hi! You are a good soul. You understand about compromise, give and take. That's just one example. Here's another one. The editor who got all worked up is DrMi3s, who is on noticeboard a lot. He always wins. (Yes, yes, I know we're not supposed to think of it as winning or losing on AI. Even though I'm a girl, woman, XX chromosomer, whatever, I see it this way.) Sometimes, Dr. Mees is right. But I understand about people (e.g. Super Dino) getting bad attitudes. You assuage the feelings of those who might feel BITTEN, and gently explain our sometimes-inscrutable WP protocols.
You are an agent of peace with dignity. I wish there were more people like you on Wikipedia, and in this world. Keep up the good work.
Your Wikipedia friend--FeralOink (talk) 09:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)