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 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
While I use Wikipedia as an easy reference, I recognize that most of it was written or edited by youngsters that were not there. I am already on social security plus other retirements so I guess I do not insist on accuracy on the history of the ARPANET. Professors and others that depend on their "inventions" and "written word" freely publish from their protected ivory towers and modify history to suit themselves. The youngsters that were not there then read this one sided documentation and believe they are verifying facts when they are simply adding credibility to the ivory tower viewpoints. To heck with fact. Do I really care? Not really. But, in fact I did write a requirement in 1968 for computers to talk to each other as if they were one big computer. In fact, at least part of the ARPANET effort and some of the funding were to support my requirement. PC's growth from computer nerds to office tools came from my requirements in 1979. IBM PCs became the computer of choice simply because I did not have to justify sole source. That led to millions of PCs linked with email, shared databases etc. across the government and government related industry. Yes, the Commodore and Mac were better computers with much more existing software with almost nothing written for IBM, but I would have had to justify one over the other so I picked IBM compatible because IBM had given up the PC chase and released their specs so anyone could manufacture them, negating my need to justify a brand. Another reason for picking IBM compatibles was so we could have multiple manufacturers building parts and completed computers. In my opinion Commodore and Apple could not have manufactured them fast enough. Except for justifying a brand I would have picked Commodore because at that time it was better than the Mac. However, that is all old history. If you were to check the government DESKTOP 2,3,4 requests for proposal, I had to approve them before they went out for bid because Desktop One did not meet my specific specifications that they be IBM compatible. Destop One was the Zenith 100 aka Heathkit but assembled and delivered to the government. Over 1 million IBM PCs purchased to my specifications drove IBM compatibles to the top of the heap where they have stayed. Much of the early PC software was written to my specs also. Actually, the government created a lot of the early software in house and freely distributed it to industry. ORACLE was written for the CIA but the user interface was largely written for me originally on the VAX then a reduced PC version. See ORACLE history, 1981 (called RDMS by some). In 1985, we had ORACLE working with a VAX acting as server, but the users operating on the IBM compatible PCs (see Oracle history 1985) We paid only $15.000 per year for several years to pay for software development, the entire ORACLE software package, their travel to visit with me, and all the mailing of beta versions every 2-3 weeks. Not to take anything away from ORACLE. They were the only company that had a reasonable product that they could modify to work the way I wanted a database to work. My dream was to have a monster database across all the government computers where someone (authorized) could pull up any government data. In theory I could build a report to pull data from all government branches and industry for use in planning. I could prevent duplication of effort by being able to see all DOD R&D programs, etc. That fell apart when I left the field in 1989. The DOD, FBI, State, etc are still operating independently. Too many people want to keep their domain private to make themselves more important. They don't want to share their data.

Do I care that Wikipedia is wrong? Not really. But knowing that some information is misguided makes everything questionable. I am fully retired now, so I'm just having fun. However, I am a little concerned that software and hardware progress has slowed tremendously since I got out of the office arena in 1989. I was still in electronic research and development until August 2007, but the office computer industry has nearly stalled. Too bad.

--allynnc (talk) 17:39, 24 July 2008 (UTC)Al Clark, Lieutenant Colonel and civil servant, retired,

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 No original research policy. --Coolcaesar 01:53, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

---

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 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 --Neutralitytalk 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 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. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and feedback. Airline 23:16, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Automobiles Notification
Hi Allynnc, you were on the list of members at WikiProject Automobiles and we are introducing a new way of listing members, as the old list was becoming too long. Our new method involves having all of our members in a category.

To add yourself to the category just add the userbox to your user page by putting   where you want the userbox. Alternatively if you don't like the userbox you can add   to your userpage.

If you no longer wish to be a member of the project, simply don't add the userbox or category, there's no pressure. Thanks for your time, James086Talk 04:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)