On 02/16/2016 06:04 AM, MICHAEL LOO -> DALE SHIPP wrote:

 ML> I'm not fond of it. As I've told Dave, I'd happily
 ML> go back to 32-bit or even 16-bit operations perhaps
 ML> at the speed that the 21st century could provide
 ML> rather than slow 64-bit systems with "features"
 ML> that take up many percent of the added processing
 ML> power.

Just started messing around with Wine, today, which might run the 2
applications that I can't run under linux.  The DOS emulator works swell for MM
already. Looks like one of them will at least fire off, since I've never
installed it I'll find out if I can get it to configure and run properly in the
next few days.  I'd love to dump the OS on the two Windows 7 computer I have.

MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05

      Title: Ripe Fruits - Part 1
 Categories: Fruits, Ffbb, Info
      Yield: 1 Info

           Ripeness Is All

  Ripe fruit wants to be eaten.  It has no other function, makes no
  other contribution.  It does not produce sugar to nourish the rest of
  the plant, as the leaves do.  It does not search for water and
  collect minerals like the roots or distribute nutrients like the
  stem.  A fruit's only purpose is to seduce animals like you and me
  into becoming cheerful dupes in its secret reproductive agenda.
       The dream of every plant is to propagate its own genes and
  species. For most, this means spreading their seeds far from the
  mother tree or bush so that the offspring will not compete with its
  parents for water, breathing space, and sunlight.  Every seed has its
  own means of transportation, papery wings or balls of fluff that ride
  the wind, or burs that hook onto your jeans or fur.  Fruits have
  another way.  As springs draws into summer, they become plump and
  juicy and brilliantly colored, sweet and perfumed and irresistible.
       At least that is what nature had in mind.  Yet last summer I
  hardly dared to eat a Prunus persica, and this year's portents are
  even worse; I doubt that travelers would have brought today's
  supermarket peaches from China to Persia to Europe in the first
  place. Peaches and melons and pineapples - most fruit, in fact - do
  not get any sweeter or more flavorful after they are picked from the
  tree, vine, bramble, or bush (though they may improve in texture or
  color). Yet most of American agriculture, even some farmers at my
  local green market, seem determined to harvest fruit earlier and
  greener every year.  And there are no laws ensuring that those little
  "Vine Ripened" stickers on the most expensive produce at your store
  mean anything at all.  The penalty for pasting a sticker on a hard,
  tasteless piece of fruit should be the same as the penalty for
  printing counterfeit ten-dollar bills.
       Eternal vigilance is the price of ripeness.  Make it a habit to
  return unripe fruit.  Throw a scene if need be.  You message may
  reach the wholesaler or the grower.  For the smallest fruit, here's a
  handy tip: When nobody is looking, remove a berry from its little
  basket and conceal it in your palm.  With you other hand, quickly
  wheel your shopping cart into a dark corner of, say, the cheese
  department and pop the berry into your mouth.  Chew.  Appraise its
  texture, sweetness, aromatic flavor compounds, and seediness.  Then
  decide whether to invest in an entire basket.  But first buy some
  cheese.  You can never have enough good ripe cheese.
       This grazing technique is unwieldy with the larger melons.  For
  honeydews and most of your other summer fruit favorites, we must
  return to basics. Here are answers to the twenty most commonly asked
  question about fruit and ripeness:
       1.  What is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?
       The answer has nothing to do with what kind of plant it came
  from, and everything to do with what part of the plant it was.  A
  vegetable is a plant we raise for food.  Anatomically, every
  vegetable is composed of roots, stems, stalks, branches, leaves,
  flowers, and fruit.  Yes, nearly every vegetable has a fruit.  So
  asking whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable is as silly as
  asking whether that large gray wrinkled tube over there is a trunk or
  an elephant.  A fruit is the ovary of a plant - the seeds and the
  tissue surrounding them. Not only is a tomato the fruit of the tomato
  plant, but a green or purple pepper, filled as it is with seeds, is
  the fruit of the pepper plant.  And the same goes for green beans,
  eggplant, zucchini, avocado, and pea pods - all fruits we eat during
  the savory part of the meal. When fruit is juicy and high in sugar,
  we tend to save it for dessert, and then we call it a fruit, even
  when it is anatomically a stem, like rhubarb.
       Most edible plants have only one part we especially like - and
  for which the plant has been bred, some for 1,000 or more years. When
  we eat beets, turnips, carrots, celeriac, and salsify, we concentrate
  on the roots, underground storage depots for starch and sugar, though
  we also eat celery branches, and some of use eat beet greens.
  Zucchini and cucumbers are fruits; we may eat their flowers, stuffed
  or not, baked or fried, but never their roots or leaves. When we are
  in the mood for eating leaves, we turn to spinach, cabbage, lettuce,
  sorrel, and all the herbs. Asparagus is a stalk or shoot.  Beans and
  peas in a pod are seeds; when they are immature and their pods or
  shells are green and edible, they are fruits. We eat pea shoots but
  not bean shoots.  Most of us ignore the potato flower and artichoke
  stem. Potatoes, we need no reminding, are not roots. They are tubers
  ~ the swollen, fleshy, starchy subterranean section of the stem
  between the roots and the outside world.
       2.  Then what is a fruit?
       A fruit is an ovary we eat for dessert.  Peaches, apricots,
  nectarines, plums, and cherries are pretty simple ovaries - one seed
  surrounded by luscious flesh (the enlarged ovary wall) and wrapped in
  vividly colored skin.  Incidentally, a nectarine is not a cross
  between a peach and a plum but a fuzzless variety of peach with an
  ancient pedigree.
       3.  What about raspberries?
       Raspberries are more complicated.  They are not true berries like
  currants and grapes.  Each little segment is an entire stone fruit
  all in itself; a raspberry is made up of many ovaries from the same
  flower joined together.  The strawberry wears its ovaries on the
  outside.
       4.  Do you mean that a strawberry is a fig turned inside out?
       Just so.  And a pineapple is a collection of berries all fused
  together.  Watermelons are placental tissue riddled with seeds, a
  discovery that has somehow made watermelon less appealing to me.

MMMMM

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