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To: rudedog who wrote (41101)	2/9/2001 11:27:20 AM
From: JC Jaros	Respond to of 64865

You people don't know anything... Wildfire was written by Larry Cansler and Michael Martin Murphy in 1975. In the song it says exactly who named Wildfire 'Wildfire', and that evidently did happen a long long time before the song was written about it. She comes down from Yellow Mountain On a dark, flat land she rides On a pony she named Wildfire With a whirlwind by her side On a cold Nebraska night Oh, they say she died one winter When there came a killing frost And the pony she named Wildfire Busted down its stall In a blizzard he was lost She ran calling Wildfire By the dark of the moon I planted But there came an early snow There's been a hoot-owl howling by my window now For six nights in a row She's coming for me, I know And on Wildfire we're both gonna go We'll be riding Wildfire On Wildfire we're gonna ride Gonna leave sodbustin' behind Get these hard times right on out of our minds Riding Wildfire SHE named the pony Wildfire. Not Compaq. Not Sun. *SHE! Sheesh! -JCJ

To: rudedog who wrote (41101)	2/9/2001 4:49:50 PM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

After anticipating rudedog, that you'd attempt to make a direct connection to Wildfire, and/or it's mistress to DEC somehow aquiring (prior art) Wildfire rights via adoption of the animal or employment of it's owner prior to her death, I've done some forensic work. I think I've come up with a clearer picture of the facts. First of all, (a minor point) Wildfire wasn't a actually a 'pony' [1]. Wildfire was a horse. If Wildfire were a pony, it would have gnawed through the stall and not 'busted it down'[2]. In determining the age of the horse at the time of the incident, we use clues from the song. "They say she died one winter"[3] says that she and Wildfire had been there in Nebraska for several years after coming down from Yellow Mountain on a cold night far in advance of the cold night of the incident. It also says that Wildfire had been kept in the stall for at least several winters, was not used to being out in the open as a horse in the wild would, growing a winter coat, etc. I think we can safely say that Wildfire was right around 10 years old, and assuming she raised him from a colt, was therefore named 'Wildfire' by her 10 years prior to her death in the blizzard incident. The song was written in the winter of 1974. We know she didn't die that winter or the winter before (1973) because otherwise the song would have said she died 'this winter' or 'last winter' instead of 'one winter'[4] which pretty much indicates 1972 or earlier. Exhibit 1 She comes down from Yellow Mountain On a dark, flat land she rides On a pony she named Wildfire [1] With a whirlwind by her side On a cold Nebraska night[3] Oh, they say she died one winter[4] When there came a killing frost And the pony she named Wildfire Busted down its stall [2] In a blizzard he was lost She ran calling Wildfire By the dark of the moon I planted But there came an early snow There's been a hoot-owl howling by my window now For six nights in a row She's coming for me, I know And on Wildfire we're both gonna go We'll be riding Wildfire On Wildfire we're gonna ride Gonna leave sodbustin' behind Get these hard times right on out of our minds Riding Wildfire --- In the course of hunting down historical Nebraska climate data and determining DEC's pressence in that state at that time, I ran across this RFC from 1972. It reports that Global Weather Central at Omaha (network address 158) was running a TIP installation and not a PDP-10 or PDP-11 as many of the other network nodes had. In Lincoln, they used a timeshare system on a mainframe. The University of Nebraska did indeed acquire one or more PDP-11s, but it was after 1972. Exhibit 2 RFC#332 (pg 2 removed for brevity) Network Working Group Ellen Westheimer NIC #9925 BBN RFC #332 25 April 1972 Categories: F, G.3 Updates: RFC #330 Obsoletes: None NETWORK HOST STATUS This RFC reports on the status of most Network Hosts from April 10 to April 21. During this interval the IBM 360/44 at the University of Southern California (Network Address 23) was connected to the Network; also, a Terminal IMP was installed in Omaha, Nebraska at Global Weather Central (Network Address 152) on April 18. Several Hosts are currently excluded from the daily testing. These Hosts fall into two categories: 1) Hosts which are not expected to be functioning on the Network as servers (available for use from other sites) on a regular basis for at least two weeks. Included here are: Network Address Site Computer ------- ---- -------- 134 MIT-AI PDP-10 13 Case PDP-10 2) Hosts which are currently intended to be users only. Included here are the Terminal IMPs, which are presently in the Network (AMES, MITRE, NBS, ETAC, USC, GWC, and BBN). This category also includes the Network Control Center computer (Network Address 5) which is used solely for gathering statistics from the Network. Finally, included among these Hosts are the following: Network Address Site Computer ------- ---- -------- 7 Rand IBM-360/65 73 Harvard PDP-1 12 Illinois PDP-11 19 NBS PDP-11 23 USC IBM-360/44 The tables on the next two pages summarize the Host status for this period. ________________ The BBN Terminal IMP (Network Address 158) is a prototype and as such is frequently not connected to the Network, but being used to refine and debug the Terminal IMP programs. "STATUS OR SITE PREDICTIONS" ADDRESS SITE COMPUTER STATUS OR PREDICTION OBTAINED FROM ------- ---- -------- -------------------- ------------- 1 UCLA SIGMA-7 Server # Limited Jon Postel 65 UCLA IBM-360/91 NETRJS now Bob Braden (Telnet in April) 2 SRI(NIC) PDP-10 Server John Melvin 66 SRI(AI) PDP-10 Server Len Chaiten 3 UCSB IBM-360/75 Server Jim White 4 UTAH PDP-10 Server Barry Wessler 5 BBN(NCC) DDP-516 Never Alex McKenzie 69 BBN(TENEXA) PDP-10 Server Dan Murphy 133 BBN(TENEXB) PDP-10 Server (Exper.) Dan Murphy 6 MIT(Multics) H-645 Server Mike Padlipsky 70 MIT(DM) PDP-10 Server Bob Bressler 134 MIT(AI) PDP-10 User Now Jeff Rubin 7 RAND IBM-360/65 User Only Eric Harslem 71 RAND PDP-10 Server Eric Harslem 8 SDC IBM-360/155 Server Bob Long 9 HARVARD PDP-10 Server Bob Sundberg 73 HARVARD PDP-1 Server Bob Sundberg 10 LINCOLN IBM-360/67 "Soon" Joel Winett 74 LINCOLN TX-2 Server Will Kantrowitz 11 STANFORD PDP-10 "Soon" Andy Moorer 12 ILLINOIS PDP-11 User Only John Cravits 13 CASE PDP-10 June Charles Rose 14 CARNEGIE PDP-10 "Soon" Hal VanZoeren 15 AMES ILLIAC Server John McConnell (B6500) 16 AMES IBM-360/67 "Soon" Wayne Hathaway 144 AMES TIP User Only 145 MITRE TIP User Only 19 NBS PDP-11 User Only Robert Rosenthal 147 NBS TIP User Only 148 ETAC TIP User Only USC IBM-360/44 "Soon" 151 USC TIP User Only 152 GWC TIP User Only 158 BBN TIP User Only (Prototype) _____________________ Host not included in daily testing. #The NMC is a research site and would like to have prior arrangement with each user. --- The only mention anywhere of a PDP machine in Nebraska earlier than a PDP-11 at the univeristy was this mention of a PDP-8 in use by the railroad. But the reference is to 1974 and it should be assumed that that machine was brought west to Nebraska from a previous installation replaced with something else. Exhibit 3 _________________________________________________________________ * To: stamps@parallaxinc.com * Subject: Re: [STAMPS] "I'M NOT SHOUTING..." * From: George Baker <w5yr@swbell.net> * Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:54:20 -0500 * Organization: AutoPOWER Systems * References: <0973f1710070f97UPIMSSMTPUSR03@email.msn.com> * Reply-To: stamps@parallaxinc.com * Sender: owner-stamps@parallaxinc.com _________________________________________________________________ John Craig wrote: > > I had a personal computer in my old Nebraska rented farm house in 1974! My > field service job (bar code scanners and weigh-in-motion scales for the > railroad) allowed me to bring home a spare DEC PDP-8E and a noisy old > teletype. This was also a 12 bit machine, but it had a whole 4K of toroid > core memory! > > After toggling in a minimalistic bootstrap loader program from the front > switches (I had those instructions memorized) the paper tape loader was > smart enough to load in a bigger and better paper tape loading program. In > turn, a much bigger paper tape program was loaded to provide a BASIC-like > language called FOCAL. Then, it was sheer bliss as I programmed the machine > to print rows of asterisks to draw the current phase of the moon, and do > other fun things. > > Ahhh, those were the days <GGGG> ---- Conclusion- DEC, DEC field office, DEC Western Research, DEC anything did not exist in Nebraska during the life of Wildfire's owner and therefore DEC could not have employed her or otherwise secured the name 'Wildfire' from her. DEC did not adopt Wildfire after the incident because the song clearly says that MMM is looking for Wildfire to return in 1975, that Wildfire was lost, and unless the horse could talk, DEC couldn't possibly know it's name was Wildfire even if it found the horse. Finally, the winter of 1972 was mild. To find the winter of the tragic incident, we need to go back 6 years earlier to 1966 to find the type of hard winter described in the song. Wildfire, being 10 years old at the time of the incident (1966) would then have been born (and named) in 1956, a full year before DEC's founding in 1957. -JCJ