User talk:Allynnc

Welcome to Wikipedia. I appreciate your interest in the automobile articles, and look forward to your future contributions. I edited your Datsun Sports content, however, as it was a bit too enthusiastic - see NPOV for more. Also, note that Sports Car International Top Sports Cars is a list of cars compiled by a magazine, not our own personal opinions on the topic. Please drop by Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles and join our effort! --SFoskett 20:33, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Why I reverted your changes to ARPANET and History of the Internet

Hello:

Sorry I had to revert your additions to this pages, but I am quite familiar with all the major published sources on the history of the Internet (Hafner, Abbate, etc.), as well as most of the online ones, and I have never heard of the bizarre theory you articulated. And yes, I am aware that the Air Force Office of Scientific Research has published a lot of declassified reports about ARPANET research, and I have read quite a number of them.

I ran a few Google searches and no historians have posted any indication that Air Force general Albert Clark had anything to do with Internet development. If his role was so important, it is quite likely by now that someone would have posted at least one reference to offline proof of his involvement. After all, it has become routine for teenagers and college undergraduates to do reports on the history of the Internet for their history classes.

If you know of a particular declassified report or memorandum that explicitly mentions Albert Clark and substantiates his involvement, please post a full citation, and then feel free to reinsert your assertions. Otherwise, if you have no proof, or the only proof you know of is still classified, I'm afraid your theories will have to stay off Wikipedia because of the Wikipedia:No original research policy. --Coolcaesar 01:53, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

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How about the paperwork presenting government cash awards annually for office automation from 1980-1989? It might be possible to dredge up some from the 1960's

The government does not usually publish in magazines nor can a government employee copyright an idea or software developed as part of the job. Some of the proof would be in cash awards given to Albert Clark over the years that specifically mention the initiatives. He was not a "General", but a high level working stiff that created the ideas and presented his cases to generals and worked through the bureaucracy of getting permissions, money, assembling systems analyists and contract programmers to execute those ideas. You would be naive to think a general would specifically do anything other than support or reject an idea. Generals don't do, they decide what or not. In return he was given a few hundred dollars per year extra for annual awards. Came in the top 4 for a national government-industry award once, but the judges did not believe computers would ever be used by non-computer professionals. Not much fanfare, no real credit, but does that make it false.

How about a user guide written by him in the 1979 timeframe? Most people were using key punch cards and batch reports when his team was producing interactive software being used and shared nationwide by non-computer professionals.

As an example of the academicians' history, take NCSA Mosaic (TM), copyright 1993. Whoops, I regularly carried a copy with me in the late 1980's in case a government computer did not have it installed. Mosaic is listed as the base software under Netscape and MS Internet Explorer under "Help" and "About...". You won't find that on the official pages about Mosaic.

Huh? Mosaic (web browser) clearly mentions both uSoft and Netscape, and Abbate's book mentions the Netscape connection too.

-Going the wrong way. Mosaic pre-dated Netscape by a long way. Just go to Netscape or MSIE, click on help, chick on about, and there is the tribute to Mosaic. Plus, I was there. If you look at the webpages on Mosaic they claim invention long after I was a user and freely distributing copies.

Anyway, getting back to Albert Clark, I'm afraid anything as late as 1979 was in no way notable; use of interactive systems was quite wide-spread by then (although not ubiquitous).

-I'm am well aware of interactive systems being in use. The difference is adding thousands of ordinary government employees to a formal interactive system for the conduct of day to day non-computer related business. Prior to that time, at least in the government, computers were key punch cards fed in by computer professions who printed out batch reports.

Any material dating to the 1960's would be of considerably more interest, though. Not that it will necessarily produce any great change in the histories; I don't think his work was significant to the ARPANet people, who were going along the path laid out quite a few years earlier by J. C. R. Licklider, and, AFAIK, knew nothing of Clark's work.

- I don't know as AFAIK existed in the 60's. Certainly no one working there now. My documentation shows that Clark did not go through formal computer request processes. He defined a need through the management side who took action to build a system that became the ARPANET.

- As far as Licklider, I read some of his stuff around 1960-1966, not sure when. I read of lot of other science fiction so I know the idea was mainstream future. Might seem increadible to someone younger, but in 1960 they were predicting computer controlled automobiles that would follow wired highways by 1984...didn't happen...still waiting. People were playing chess against computers in the 1950's. His funding priorities really helped though. It was R&D money looking for a home. The money was close to being taken away by Congress when the requirement for computers to share data came to DARPA. Army computer talking to Air Force computer, perfect. (Army is the main driver of DARPA and involving AF made it a joint service project). Use the money to pay for University study and software programming, perfect. Quick response to immediate problem, perfect. Who gets the credit? The person with no idea but influence to get money or the guy with the idea to apply the money.

I encourage you to obtain a read a copy of Lick's excellent biography (The Dream Machine, Mitchell Waldrop) which covers the early period (from the later 50's onward) in great detail. Noel (talk) 22:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

- I just love how people come along long after the fact and try to document things that happened before they were born. The Dream Machine copyright is 2001. History should be written by people that were there that have nothing to gain financially.

Just a note

Articles have to consist of more than an external link--see Wikipedia:Stubs for more info on writing good, but short, articles, even if you don't know much about the topic. Best wishes, Meelar (talk) 18:29, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

I've been looking through your contributions, and many of your articles are unformatted and hard to understand. Why not look at some featured articles to see how the articles should be formatted and written? Best wishes, Meelar (talk) 18:36, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Well, there are a number of reasons. First of all, there's the problem of link rot. Secondly, texts on other sites probably aren't under a free licence like the GFDL. Thirdly, it's much more useful for WP readers to have an article on this site. Fourthly, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia--it should have articles on these, and having a red link at least alerts other editors that something needs to go there. In general, the article namespace is for articles only. Best wishes, Meelar (talk) 19:37, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for that. You might also want to include a few wikilinks at the beginning of your articles, and remember to start them with a sentence like "Foo is a bar from Barsville", or something of that sort--people should immediately grasp what the article is about. Best, Meelar (talk) 19:57, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for created Findlater Castle, the article I requested at Template:Opentask. And welcome to Wikipedia! Warmest regards --Neutrality^talk 21:58, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

GM Minivans

Hi, I was wondering if you would support me in the discussion to keep the GM minivans separate, rather than merge them with the Chevrolet Lumina APV and Chevrolet Venture articles. I'd really appreciate your help ans support. -Bavaria 17:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Important WikiProject Automobiles Discussion

Hello! As a Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles member, I just thought you might want to input your opinions on an important discussion we're currently having about whether articles regarding similar vehicles should be merged into one or split by brand. If you would like to comment or read further, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles#Articles of Similar Vehicles. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and feedback. Airline 23:16, 13 February 2006 (UTC)