On Tue, 04 May 2004 09:22:10 +0100, Anthony Frost
wrote:

In message
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

The Welch was the length of time one would go between nearly killing oneself
in some unusual way (falling on an ice axe and just barely missing impaling
oneself, overshooting a sled while jumping on it... etc.)

Now you see? There's a perfect example of confusing units. In the rest
of the world that is the "Nicoll".

....And then there's the "Mickey", which was the unit of reference
Micro$oft tried to push for, IIRC, determining the accuracy of a mouse
vs the speed of the ball while in motion, or some other marketing goon
bull****. The original Twin Green Button Mouse that M$ came out with
had that actually listed in the manual under the specifications of all
things. However, although Gates, Allen and Ballimer all have denied
this over the years, they dropped their efforts after Disney's lawyers
stuck their noses into the matter and claimed it was a copyright
infringement and not the tribute that the M$ team had intended it to
be.

....Wish I still had that mouse, tho. After 10 years of use and wearing
out the internal buttons - the only component I couldn't get new ones
to replace - I retired it and somewhere between the apartment moves it
disappeared. The one I had was one of the last five produced, and they
were in such a hurry to get it off the line that the mouse ball wasn't
even rubberized. This allowed me to prove once and for all my theory
that the balls they were using were, in fact, pinballs. Same size,
weight and density, and one of the most commonly produced ball bearing
designs back then as well as today. Just another example of how the
early PC industry was founded on spare parts that could be bought in
bulk *very* cheaply. Just ask the guys at IBM who took advantage of
the demise of the CB Radio fad and bought those 5-Pin DIN plugs for
their keyboards at 1/100th the cost of the connectors the engineers
originally wanted.

OM

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