Robin Garr "invades" India

This just in from New Delhi:


U.S. regulations do not prohibit the use of the term Brunello for United States-produced wines and at least three American wineries produce wines carrying the Brunello name.

In a survey conducted by the well-known website http://www.wineloverspage.com in which a limited number of experts have participated so far, the views are split almost to the middle, with 60% not favouring the use. Whereas there is general agreement that the producer is taking the benefit of the popularity of the wine, it is not the clear cut case of a terroir or region like Champagne, Chablis, Burgundy, Port or Chianti which the US producers of cheap or not-so-cheap wine had earlier used to the hilt.

Supporters of the use for Sonoma, including Robin Garr who runs this extremely popular and my favourite website, are of the point of view that if we do not allow the use of Brunello grape (clone of Sangiovese), in future France could also hold a case against Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, as the grape varietal name did originate in Bordeaux.

Whatever the results of the case, this is one battle that is bound to generate heated debates between the lovers of one of the best and most loved wines of Italy and the California cavaliers and it will be interesting to see who wins in the case between Brunello vs. Brunello.

It is widely accepted that Italian migrants all over the world try to emulate the best from their country-Brunello can be no exception. However, Brunello del Montalcino is a composite term referring to Brunello as well as Montalcino. It refers to the region, varietal and the terroir. It may be somewhat overpriced in my mind but that is purely due to its extreme popularity and demand created in the US- a fact well known to Signor Petroni. It does violate the spirit of the various agreements and if I were to vote in Robin Garr's survey I would go against him-editor

The article appears in full at the Indian Wine Acadamey at http://www.indianwineacademy.com/item_8_204.aspx

[David M. Bueker]

The best part is that the rest of us jokers are referrred to as "experts."

The best part is that the rest of us jokers are referrred to as "experts."

Just goes to show you David, you're an optimist. I read it to mean that a "limited number" of us were experts.

But maybe it's just that I know many Indians love ambiguity.

[Jenise]

The best part is that the rest of us jokers are referrred to as "experts."

Excuse me, Guru, what you denyin'?

[David M. Bueker]

I'm just looking forward to that glorious day when we can outsource our winemaking decisions to a help desk in New Delhi.

Hello - my malolactic fermentaion is stuck. Can you help me?

Did you try re-booting?

[David M. Bueker]

The best part is that the rest of us jokers are referrred to as "experts."

Excuse me, Guru, what you denyin'?

Good point.

[Jenise]

I'm just looking forward to that glorious day when we can outsource our winemaking decisions to a help desk in New Delhi.

Hello - my malolactic fermentaion is stuck. Can you help me?

Did you try re-booting?

I may have mentioned this before, but there's an Albert Brooks movie where he goes to India, and he's given office space down the hall from one of those boiler room operations. Every time he walks past the door he hears something like "Good morning, General Motors", "Good afternoon, State Farm Insurance". But the big laugh comes when he walks past and hears, "Thank you for calling The White House...."

I'm just looking forward to that glorious day when we can outsource our winemaking decisions to a help desk in New Delhi.

Hello - my malolactic fermentaion is stuck. Can you help me?

Did you try re-booting?

I may have mentioned this before, but there's an Albert Brooks movie where he goes to India, and he's given office space down the hall from one of those boiler room operations. Every time he walks past the door he hears something like "Good morning, General Motors", "Good afternoon, State Farm Insurance". But the big laugh comes when he walks past and hears, "Thank you for calling The White House...."

There was a Simpsons episode exactly like that, except it was one guy answering about 20 phones and speaking in different accents.

I called the Dell help line when my old laptop crashed. To avoid the inevitable, I immediately told the guy on the other end of the line that I already tried rebooting and nothing happened. To which he answered, "OK, now try turning it off and turning it back on."

I called the Dell help line when my old laptop crashed. To avoid the inevitable, I immediately told the guy on the other end of the line that I already tried rebooting and nothing happened. To which he answered, "OK, now try turning it off and turning it back on."

This is a very valid response. A reboot is not the same as turning the power off on a PC. A reboot does not clear out and refresh the whole of the computer's memory. To many people a 'reboot' just means selecting 'Restart' from the Start menu options.

I called the Dell help line when my old laptop crashed. To avoid the inevitable, I immediately told the guy on the other end of the line that I already tried rebooting and nothing happened. To which he answered, "OK, now try turning it off and turning it back on."

This is a very valid response. A reboot is not the same as turning the power off on a PC. A reboot does not clear out and refresh the whole of the computer's memory. To many people a 'reboot' just means selecting 'Restart' from the Start menu options.

My mistake--I always thought rebooting meant shutting it down completely and then turning it back on. Learn something new every day!!

My mistake--I always thought rebooting meant shutting it down completely and then turning it back on. Learn something new every day!!

We found this was a common problem, Lizbeth, when I was in charge of Administration for a big legal department. It is really caused by the "Start" menu in Microsoft -- lot's of people have trouble with going to Start to stop a machine. Once we got folks over that hurdle, they were faced with the Standby, Turn Off and Restart options.

We used to have a trick that captured two basic problems. We told our "clients" to unplug and plug in the machine. We said that sometimes the floor cleaning fluids from the cleaning staff would "corrode" the plugs and they had to be "cleaned". Lawyers always believed us, but the secretaries would just laugh.

Nonetheless, unplugged machines and failure to shut down and starting completely over solved over 90% of our service calls.

Incidentally, booting and rebooting is often considered the same thing, but the effect might be different depending on the machine. "When you start (or re-start) your computer, that's called "booting". If you want to get all technical, when you power on your computer, it's a "cold boot". Restarting it is a "warm boot"."

The linguistic history of "boot" is not entirely clear to me, even though I've tried to parse it out a number of different times. Maybe there's a techie around who does know.

Bob

[David M. Bueker]

It's simple Bob - every time I use my computer I want to boot it as far as I can.

The linguistic history of "boot" is not entirely clear to me, even though I've tried to parse it out a number of different times. Maybe there's a techie around who does know.

Not sure I qualify as a techie, Bob, but here's the answer: "boot" is short for "bootstraps" because most computer systems must have a bootstrap routine to start the computer, i.e., to pull itself up by the bootstraps. Although these days most computers use a boot block on the hard disk for this, it used to be resident on a paper tape that would be read in by the system operator. It's the job of the bootstrap routine to clear memory and reload the operating system into the proper location, in the old days usually overwriting the bootstrap routine in the process -- hence the origin of the term as a metaphor. These days, power cycling will accomplish the same thing, but Way Back When (when I was a techie) in the days of magnetic core, you could cut the power, come back the next day, plug it back in and have it resume its operation where it left off. That's why early IBM 360s had an "emergency stop" lever on the front panel that, if activated, would burn out the circuitry to stop a runaway process.

Mark Lipton

'Boot' is probably derived from the word 'bootstrap'. A Bootstrap program used to be a very small program, often keyed in manually, that would initiate the loading of the main operating software program/s. In the Mini computer that I used in the UK in 1972 the bootstrap program was 17 instructions long and I could key it on the set of 18 flip switches in about 15 seconds. I was very slow. Others could do it about 5.

The Boot record in a modern PC will contain this small set of instructions, which is why this was the prime target of virus 'programmers' (I could use other words for these individuals...). It was easy to screw it up so that your computer would never start again without having to reformat your hard drive.

From Wikipedia: "The term is believed to have entered computer jargon during the early 1950s by way of Heinlein's short story By His Bootstraps first published in 1941."

Edit: Hmm, bit slow there Neil. Mark said it all.

[James Roscoe]

NOW I know why I am referred to as a wine Guru. I guess I better go and light some incense and make some kind of offering.

'Boot' is probably derived from the word 'bootstrap'. A Bootstrap program used to be a very small program, often keyed in manually, that would initiate the loading of the main operating software program/s. In the Mini computer that I used in the UK in 1972 the bootstrap program was 17 instructions long and I could key it on the set of 18 flip switches in about 15 seconds. I was very slow. Others could do it about 5.

The Boot record in a modern PC will contain this small set of instructions, which is why this was the prime target of virus 'programmers' (I could use other words for these individuals...). It was easy to screw it up so that your computer would never start again without having to reformat your hard drive.

From Wikipedia: "The term is believed to have entered computer jargon during the early 1950s by way of Heinlein's short story By His Bootstraps first published in 1941."

Edit: Hmm, bit slow there Neil. Mark said it all.

Thanks, Mark and Neil. It's the Heinlein reference that puzzles me. Certainly "bootstrap" was used for many years before 1941 -- there was the Townsend Plan for getting out of the Depression, for example, and Joyce used it in the 20s in poetry, all in the sense Heinlein, where the hero moves assets from one time period to another.

It was used in technical discussions of electricity, for example 1946 Jrnl. Inst. Electr. Engin. XCIII. III A. 308/1 The ‘Bootstrap’ Circuit..is much used for generating a linear rise of voltage with time, for time-base and other purposes... It is called a ‘bootstrap’ circuit because the potential at A is apparently being ‘pulled up by its own bootstraps’. I've found references to the "bootstrap technique" as early as 1898 in discussions of electricity.

Similarly early computer usages are very specific: 1953 Proc. IRE XLI. 1273/1 A technique sometimes called the ‘bootstrap technique’...Pushing the load button..causes one full word to be loaded into a memory address previously set up..on the operator's panel, after which the program control is directed to that memory address and the computer starts automatically.

I'm sure booting was derived from "bootstrap" but don't think Heinlein deserves any credit. Bob

[David M. Bueker]

Failing to give credit to Heinlein - them's fightin' words Bob. (whether he deserves credit or not)

Now if you will excuse me, this thread has drifted waaaaaaayyyyyy off course, so I will have to refer you to technical support. Shall I connect you?

Don't forget the BIOS (or equivalent - I'm not sure if BIOS is a universal term), a small routine stored in nonvolatile memory that runs when you boot the machine. It initializes the hardware and selects the device from which to read the boot record (e.g., the Windows machines I've owned have been set up to boot from the hard drive, but if a disk was in the CD-ROM drive, they would attempt to boot from that).