What a lot of letters! It may become reality if AT&T succeeds in its bid to buy NCR. So far NCR has refused (and I may not have this exactly right - stocks are not my strong suit) stock offers of $85 and $90 per share, but AT&T isn't giving up

The US political climate is about as strange as the average Ithaca weather in that it's seldom predictable, but often involves slush. Battles have been waged over issues like flag burning (does it count if I throw a TIFF image of the American flag in my Mac's trash can?) and other free expression issues

This is our 32nd issue, and it seems like a fine time for the first official TidBITS Survey. "Why the 32nd issue?" you ask. No reason whatsoever, we assure you, except that it's nice to know who out there reads TidBITS

[Editor's Note: Thanks to Terry Harpold for sending this for TidBITS. If you can make it to this session, we guarantee that it will be a stimulating hour and fifteen minutes

A Texas company called Cork Computer Corp. claims to have designed a computer requiring only the 128K ROMs from a Mac 512KE, Plus, or SE to give it a IIci's performance

Yes folks, the epic tale of confusion continues. We just saw a press release from Claris and there are not one, not two, but three different releases of HyperCard 2.0

As you may already know, the Classic will boot from a ROM disk if you perform the dextrous feat of holding down the command-option-x-o (XO was the Classic's code name) keys during startup

For those of you who haven't been napping through the printer innovations of the last two years, one of the classiest and snazziest printers around is the Hewlett-Packard DeskJet (and no, they didn't pay us anything to say that - we've used it for several years personally and have watched the line grow from the DeskJet to the DeskJet Plus, branch out to the DeskWriter, and then move back to the DeskJet 500 - of course if they wanted to pay us lots of money we wouldn't complain)

Yeah, they're cool and they're fun to own and they let you show off how hard you work by making it look like you are working absolutely all the time, even in the bathroom

These aren't the exciting ones that promise great features that you would have given your first born for. No, these are the little ones, the updates that you need because otherwise you'll be irritated for the rest of the week because your new program isn't working quite right. The first and most important update is to QuicKeys 2

It seems that the Xanadu special issue we put out last week was quite a hit. However, at the time we didn't have complete contact information. We have gotten some more names and addresses and even email addresses

Ted Nelson's worldwide open-hypertext-publishing network, Xanadu, has once again been delayed. The version described in Literary Machines 87.1, etc., has been completed, but put on the shelf due to the absence of some key software mechanisms

Ultimately it may take an astrologer or a sun-spot specialist to find a plausible explanation for the remarkable two weeks in the fall of 1960 when Ted Nelson figured it all out

And what are those mysterious 'transclusive fragments?' Ted Nelson has a definition ready for the term he coined two years ago; finally giving The Vision the right generic name

Then there is the problem of the many modalities available for presentation. Many are available, but none are on speaking terms with each other. Text documents are those made up of words on paper