Big Questions Facing Mankind!

[bbry@bu.edu (Bryony Bechtold)]

A few questions to which the answers presently elude me, thus causing them
to bubble up from the depths of my subconscious and batter against the 
doorways of my mind, again and again, until my mind is very sore.  This 
chain of events has led me to lose sleep, coherence, and a real good job with
the NY sanitation department, and threatens to burst asunder and crush the 
very essence of my being, until I am nothing more then the sort of person 
who once might have adored his C64 and dreamt of buying a PC so that he might
run MSDOS and bask in the grandeur that sprung fully realized from the genius
that is William Gates. 


  )=-> I'm not entirely sure that this is a reasonable capability to think
       the Apple might have been capable of -- but then again, that is 
       equally applicable to a whole ablotta stuff that seemed implausible
       yet worked anyway.  To cut short my ranting:  Was there ever a
       ethernet card developed for the Apple ][ ...?  I think that prolly
       the Apple -- even an accelerated one -- would have been way too
       slow to manage this, so if the thing did exist, I'd imagine itt was
       probably pretty interesting.

	Anyway, more information please, especially where I might purchase
        one of these NOW if they did/do exist. 

  )=-> Does anyone know WHEN Novation went chapter 11 (What year)...?

	[Novation made the Apple-Cat modems, and a lot of marketing mistakes
	 which allowed a company with technically excellent products, to go
	 down the toilet, while Hayes, which at that time manufactured junk,
	 thrived and went on to do great things, just like Bill Gates, who 
	 is my personal Hero]

  )=-> Are there SCSI cards that work with the Apple ][.  If yes, where can 
       I buy one. 

  )=-> Is that newsletter thing started by one of the ex-Beagle Brothes dudes,
       still being published?  I think it was called Open Apple. 

  )=-> Whatever happened to AppleWorks?  Scanning the messages here, it seems
       like Apple dumped it, and somebody purchased the rights.  Is it still
       being made, and will it work with an Apple //e, enhanced, 128k? 

  )=-> Out of complete curiosity, out of the people reading this message who 
       are still using Apple ]['s as their main system -- in other words when
       you use a computer, you're using the Ap'ple, not because you want to
       dust it off once a month and regain a sense of awe when you go back 
       to using your SGI or NeXT, and take a nostalgia detour while playing 
       Lode Runner and Dino Eggs -- uhmmm, WHY ...?  I can understand "I'm
       poor, I'm not a computer geek, I need to word process stuff and maybe
       log in someplace and get my email, I don't need to be going 140mips to
       run a 52meg version of FrameMaker," and I sorta understand the concept
       of legacy apps, and just having so much junk laying around from the
       daze of yore, so your [usually educational] institute is locked into 
       keeping some Apple's laying around.  

       . . . but, what makes me wonder, a lot... is what is the deal with 
       people who seem to be investing a tremendous amount of time, effort 
       and devotion, to porting a fucking Unix clone to the Apple, or people
       who go on with APPLE ][ FOREVER DUDE!!@#!@#!111...  Because, yeah . . .
       I would say the ][+ and onwards had major effects on my life, and 
       Apple rocked when it was The Woz and Crazy Steve, and the boring & lame
       PC was introduced, Trash-80s and C64's were nowhere near as cool as 
       the Apple, and  the Apple Mafia and WareLords and 1200 Club and Black 
       Bag existed and wArez were neat, and...  sorry, had to real in my 
       mind there, it started to wander again.  So like, what I'm asking 
       is...  why bother with it NOW.  Surely its a really rough way to 
       make a living; the market is small and not gonna get anything but 
       smaller; as cool as the pathos and mystique of the time, place and
       headspace that surrounded the Apple ][ all were ... its over mahn, 
       and if you luv neat toys, there is a lot of stuff from NeXT and SGI,
       or even the <GasP> Amiga and its teetering on the brink of death 
       saga, which are all not in the mainstream, all extremely cool and 
       interesting, and have a lot more life and energy buzzing through 'em
       then the Apple.

       Just wondering...  I mean I will prolly have one or two of these
       things laying around in 20 or 30 years, because what else am I gonna
       do with 'em.  I don't need the $50 bucks they're worth to sell, and 
       they make entertaining nostalgia receptacles, and prevent me from 
       throwing out some 2,000 5.25" disks which mostly still boot, or are
       readable by somerthing like darc or locksmith... 

Anywaze, this happens when I don't sleep for 2 days, so like whatever, but 
if anybody knows about either ethernet, scsi cards, or the current whereabouts
of AppleWorks, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Oh, PS:  As interesting as your reply might be; as much as the terrifying and 
awesome power of your "YOU SUCK YOU LAME LOSER" flame might serve to put me
in my place and maintain your important position in the hierarchy of the 
Apple ][ net_geekPowerStructure() circa 1994; and basically, as much as I'd
really like to know the answers, to these questions, and many tothers... the 
sad truth is I will prolly lose interest and forget to ever read this group
again, even though I will try to remember, and maybe actually do so in the
near future .. so please drop me some mail and tell me everything you want 
me to hear, because you're special and there's no one else like you. 

May god bless us, everyone, and share with us his eternal, all-encompassing 
and undying love, so that we might have the courage to grow into the full
potential of our spiritual destinies and become as gods upon the earth, 
like William Gates, and Glenn (with 2 n's, who ran SpecElite and had the 
courage to stand proudly and love ELITENESS because it was cool, and new warez
kids were lame, while old warez kids were not.