On 23-Sep-05 Bob Dove wrote:
Hi Folks,
Greetings from Colonia Claudius.
I know that the Wallsend = World's End is a funny - the 'real' World's End is in Chelsea, part of Londinium! I know you all know too that Wallsend is where Hadrian's wall ended! We all learnt at school that Hadrian built the wall to keep the Scots out, the truth of the matter is that there were probably as many gates through the wall as there were watch towers on it. To come through the gate (to trade) you had to pay a tax on your sale goods. Customs and Excise - good idea eh? Julius Caesar 'Veni, Vedi, Veci'? Nah, Veni and Vedi perhaps but he went home with the 'flu! Claudius' army came and found of course already Romanised Celtic tribes and Roman trading posts so the battles were probably not as extensive as the post Roman propaganda would have us believe!!! Alas, the Romans didn't have Linux...
Cheers,
Bob Dove.
Well, that's disputable and a matter of intetrpretation. Here are are a couple of documents from the period, in the run-up to Y0K, whose discovery I was privileged to participate in. ================================================================= Papyrus I. ---------- I thought some of you might be interested in this translation of a recently discovered piece of papyrus.... Dear Cassius, Are you still working on the Y0K problem? This change from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left. I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to start thinking upwards. You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it to us to sort it all out at the last minute. I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar. He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty. We called in Consultus but he simply said that continuing downwards, using minus BC, won't work and as usual charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. Surely, we will not have to throw out all our hardware and start again? Macrohardius will make another fortune out of this I suppose. The money lenders are paranoid, of course! They have been told that all usury rates will invert and they will have to pay their clients to take out loans. It's an ill wind... As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upwards. We have heard that there are three wise men in the East working on the problem but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's all over. I have also heard that there are plans to stable all horses at the turn of the year as there are fears that they will stop and try and run backwards, causing immense damage to chariots and possible loss of life. Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition. Anyway, we are still continuing to work on the blasted Y0K problem. I will send a parchment to you if anything further develops. If you have any ideas let me know. Plutonius -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-= Mark O'Leary, | Voice: +44 (0161) 2756110 Network Support Officer, | Email: Mark.O'Leary@mcc.ac.uk Manchester Computing, UK | or: mark@mcc.ac.uk Papyrus II. ----------- Dear Marcus, Your scroll arrived. Interesting story you scribed there. Here we are beginning to believe that a lot of these stories are put about by soothsayers, who are doing multo bene, gratias, out of the gullible masses who are queuing up to learn what disasters to look out for; not forgetting their little friends who turn up later at your atrium with "Y0K bugging you, gub? No problem, we'll rip it all out and see you straight. New double sealing on your clepsidrae, no more trouble with time leaks, guaranteed to the end of time. Centi libri up front of course, got to buy the materials before we can start". Mind you, we're pretty sure there's something in all this Cassandran hypo. I read that there's a lot of folks around been installing soft wares from some joker calling himself Microsophist ("ignoramus", it should mean, though he seems pretty smart in his way, but most of our plebs wouldn't know what it stands for; they just think it sounds cute and cuddly). Some Greek (Geek? There's a stain on the parchment here, we're always having trouble with trashed flies from that quarter). Anyway, with his stuff Y0K has nothing to do with it. Time leaks out anyway and just stops, it'd have been the same back in 500. I reckon this Y0K scare is just a cover-up so he can say it's all happening because real time is running out, the only way to keep going when the clepsidra falls over is to install a new and bigger one which is supposed to update your time but actually doesn't work any better. Meanwhile, there's some Egyptian invention new on the scene, Nilux it's called. Apparently it won't even notice when Y0K happens, it'll just keep going for ever. Only problem is, you can't point to where it comes from. You just go round asking until you find someone who'll make you one and give it to you. All the tabularii in togas are throwing up their hands and asking "quem in jus vocabimus?" since they don't really care if it works so long as they can get their money back, only there's no money here to get back, is there? Nescio, Marco, quo advenit mundus? One thing's sure, it won't be the same again. Borealis. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Date: 05-Feb-99 Time: 18:08:33 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 24-Sep-05 Time: 11:34:34 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------