On Tue, 14 Sep 1999 20:02:25 -0700 Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> writes:
The landlord said the guy lived there several years, alone,
> with almost no furniture. All the foil was hung shiny side out (?).
> Software guy for Taligent. He paid the rent on time and wasnt actually
> damaging the apartment, soooo, OK.
It is possible that the guy had a screw loose, but there may be another explanation. In the 1980s I was working at a communications equipment manufacturer where the advertising writer was of the opinion that the electronics lab about 40 feet from his office was affecting his computer which he used for word processing. He hung aluminum foil all over two walls of his office. He wasn't crazy, just uninformed. The lab did not produce any significant amount of EMI (and computers in the lab worked perfectly), computers are practically immune from normal levels of EMI, and covering a wall with ungrounded foil would only be effective shielding against microwaves and higher frequencies. And his computer, like most PCs, was already in a grounded steel case.
I mentioned all this to him, but I did not make too big a deal about it because he only spent $5 or $10 on the foil, and it made him feel better.
At the time (1986 / 1987), he was investing in the stock of a small software company named Microsoft, which had recently come out with an product for PCs called Windows.
Ron Kean
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