Age cutoff, was: Recommendations for operating system

[Doc Shipley]

Evan Koblentz wrote:
>>>>>We could exclude certain CPUs, but that doesn't address the issue that
> 
> anything that runs on an older CPU will probably run on a newer CPU of the
> same family, so one might as well include the newer ones. I don't know what
> the answer is.  <<<<
> 
> I do.  The answer is to define what's on-topic using carefully chosen words,
> not dumbed-down years.  LOL, I'm not saying I know what those words might
> be.  But in general I think there should be healthy debate and discussion
> (not necessarily here and now) rather than the usual "you're an idiot" vs.
> "no you are" that spawns here every six months.

   I find it a little odd that an advocate of healthy debate and 
discussion would start the discussion in such a vehement way.

   It also looks to me as if completely irrelevant threads die a natural 
death unless we start the on-topic/off-topic skirmish.  The ones that 
don't, Jay smacks down reasonably quickly.

   There is absolutely no way any topic guideline is going to cover even 
a reasonable subset of possible submissions.

   A good example is this thread.  While the hardware is pretty blah, 
it's turning into a fairly interesting comparison of older OS possibilities.

   Another is one of my Pentiums that started life as a P75 w/16MB is 
one of my primary tools for dealing with my older computers.  Disk 
transcription, disk/tape emulation, and a host of other functions that 
*can* be replaced by a computer that meets your definition of on-topic, 
but with no functional difference whatsoever.  There have been a number 
of threads dealing with using Windows 9x/NT/2k/XP in that sort of 
supportive capacity.

   As far as I'm concerned, those are both far more on-topic than 
worrying to the list about online plagiarism.


	Doc