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kinda reminds me of when they looked like this and actually were the #1 search engine ...

http://web.archive.org/web/19961017/www2.yahoo.com /

Yep, those were the days. Notice how clean and "google-esque" it truly was? Hmm... could the return to their roots? Perhaps if they're willing to get rid of the cruft. Portals suck. Search engines are useful. Don't confuse "portal" with "search engine" Yahoo, don't.

I guess I have no sympathy for the music biz, and, equally, no sympathy for the Kazaa crowd.

Why don't we celebrate 30 years of my cock in your ass, you sycophant?

Archive.org link

look at the amazing things that robots do!
robots can get your hat...fix your furnace...the possibilities are endless...

That was Panotools - you can read the story here.

iPix claims to own the concept of flattening out an image taken through a fisheye lens into a panorama. They are rather aggressive in going after anyone they thing might infringe.

This is part of the reason that iPix has a rather bad reputation among many people (the other reasons are the low quality of the images their software generates, and the per-image-generated fees they charge for the use of their software).

It's sad to see him go, but I do have to say that at the height of his game he was one arrogant SOB, and proud of that too. I saw him speak on a panel discussion in 1982 with Bill Gates and a few other folks. The panel was about the future of personal computing, sponsored by the now defunct Boston Computer Society. Adam stole the show, brashly predicting that Osborne Computers would dominate the industry. I can't help thinking of that evening as my personal "Dead Zone" moment, as I got the opportunity to chat with Bill Gates for several minutes after the show. But history can't be changed post facto, so I can't dwell on missed opportunities...

Games don't expire. But, without a lot of effort on my part, I can't just go and play Doom like I did in 1995. I need to go get a 486 or a P1 around 100Mhz in speed if I want to play Doom the way I did.

OTOH, I can still play SMB3 off of my SNES Mario Allstars cart, and that's older than Doom by a couple of years. In PC gaming, games may not expire, but targetted architectures do. This classic interview contains some insight into this (Glide/Verite vs. OpenGL targetting).

> I can't remember which magazine it was in, but I
> remember reading an interview

archived copy

Does this mean that the QuickBasic site can have the URL back?
quickbasic sonicblue
Has the old QB website pages

But don't confuse design with innovation. Apple's hardware is mostly put together from off-the-shelf components. Sure, they choose nice components, but so do high-end PC vendors. Their software technology is mostly NeXSTStep, which is itself a combination of a Objective-C, open source Mach, and Adobe's graphics engine, none of which were developed either at NeXT or at Apple.

Apple used to try to innovate: they had research groups in speech recognition, handwriting recognition, human-computer interaction, multimedia, 3D graphics, and hardware. But none of that exists anymore. It is a real shame. But Apple didn't have the money to support it, and whatever they did, Microsoft essentially just cloned, if not in quality, at least in appearance.

And this does raise the question: where is Apple going? I selling nicely designed high-end machines running a homegrown OS enough in the long run?

I wonder what ever happened to this project to redo Command HQ

Link courtesy of the Wayback Machine - I guess it is time I retired this bookmark :-)

Wouldn't combining Project Gutenberg's freely available texts with Freenet's distributed storage be a great enhancement for both projects?

Slightly OT but I was following a discussion on Project Gutenberg the other day and came across an interesting site, Distributed Proofreading . This site lets you proofread a page at a time, comparing the scanned image with the OCR'd text and making corrections. According to the site, they are now "the main source of PG e-books."

I've only done a dozen or so pages. Each page takes between 5-10 minutes, depending on the complexity (I just did an index page, which took quite some time, but most are quicker). The OCR software does a good job; there are few errors. Hopefully they'll use the "output" of the human part of this effort to combine with the output from the OCR, to refine the OCR so even fewer errors get through as time goes on.

It's a bit time-consuming but if you just do one or two pages at a time it's a nice break from whatever you're doing. ;-) And you can think of it as volunteer work.

As for Freenet being stable enough, I (and others) have a problem with Freenet dropping information which is "unpopular" (i.e., noone's requesting it). Example, not all of Shakespeare's works are downloaded, so a few of them "disappear." Then there is no longer a "complete collection of Shakespeare" on Freenet. (Yes, I know the solution is to constantly insert the data, but that requires effort and a running computer, and when the "maintainer" disappears without notifying anyone then the data runs the risk of disappearing as well.)

Heh, that brings back memories. I even put a script on my home page that would attempt to nuke the Windows user that dared click on it, and posted screen shots of the blue-screened VPC.

A (now defunct) company called VEGA Technologies (link points to archive.org cache) used to make a product called 'Buddy', which was basically an ISA card with a cheap video card and a PS/2 bus for a keyboard and mouse. It allowed two users to use the same PC simultaneously. I don't think they ever got in trouble for it, and they are doing something fairly similar to what you want to do.

Not to mention having been commonplace in Japan for over 2 years. I can't agree more with this dracken.

When I read this I thought "wait a minute ... video phones have been out here in Japan for almost 12 months, yet we're still talking about phones with still cameras in them ? Did I end up in the Internet Archive site by mistake ?"

Give me a break. It's a case of brand confusion. If you create a company called Zerocks to make photocopiers, you don't think you'll hear about it from Xerox? He setup a site which sounds exactly the same as Google, made it look like Google, act like Google (even offering search through Google), and then put a email link asking for credit cards. Sure, he can say it's a joke, and maybe it was, but how does he know what every visitor to his site will think? If he really wanted to redirect to Google, just put a forwarder in.

But if you look at Altavista in 1996, before the big portalization, you'll still see a bit more clutter than you see on Google. And, Excite in 1996 is far from clean. I can't remember Excite any earlier because I don't think I ever used it much. I was a devoted AltaVista user until they stopped/slowed indexing new sites, portalized it, and just made it not worth using. Then I found Google, and it became my new home page.

You can not deny, however, that Teoma, HotBot, AllTheWeb, AltaVista and WiseNut have all been influenced by Google's successful design. You don't need to invent something to make it popular.

But if you look at Altavista in 1996, before the big portalization, you'll still see a bit more clutter than you see on Google. And, Excite in 1996 is far from clean. I can't remember Excite any earlier because I don't think I ever used it much. I was a devoted AltaVista user until they stopped/slowed indexing new sites, portalized it, and just made it not worth using. Then I found Google, and it became my new home page.

You can not deny, however, that Teoma, HotBot, AllTheWeb, AltaVista and WiseNut have all been influenced by Google's successful design. You don't need to invent something to make it popular.

I don't know if there was ever a time it was on the web but not the pimped commercial version it currently is.
Ahhh the good old days of the internet.....when there was rarely more than one static image banner per page, check out IMDB from 1996

Want to do it for free? Here you go. (Note: site seems to be down, no idea why, but I've been there before and the Internet Wayback Machine has copies of the old pages.)
GCom and TPS Systems both have products that might do what you need on Linux.
There's also the IBM Communications Server but I don't think it's what you're looking for.

As a little kid in the '60s I saw the last of this brand of futurism when it was still taken seriously. It's actually dates back to the early 1900s, and came to a head in the pre-war optimism of the 1939-40 New York Wolrds Fair.

Some awesome video (from film) of that is available online here,
http://archive.org/movies/prelinger.php, or more precisely here.

As a little kid in the '60s I saw the last of this brand of futurism when it was still taken seriously. It's actually dates back to the early 1900s, and came to a head in the pre-war optimism of the 1939-40 New York Wolrds Fair.

Some awesome video (from film) of that is available online here,
http://archive.org/movies/prelinger.php, or more precisely here.

The Internet Archive currently uses it for distributing live concert recordings, so it should work great for video too.

There's no reason why you couldn't do the same with video files.

btw, I made Andromeda and if you're interested in trying this sort of thing, please let me know...

That isn't the Interface Hall of Shame, it's the "OS X-centric Hall of Shit." iarchitect.com is gone, but the Wayback Machine still has it.

Interface Hall of Shame A lot of this OS X IHoS's sections are like those in the original Hall of Shame. Interesting. The original is no longer up to date, however. I'd have loved to see their views of OS X and Windows XP, as well as the up-and-coming X Window desktops.

The problem ,with the qnx disk mentioned above, is that you can't find the "incredible 1.44 challenge demo disk" (or something like that) on the qnx site anymore... Using the wayback machine, you can see it

And as mentioned on Tiny apps.org, the downloads are available here

Everyone should try these at least once. I was really impressed by what you could acheive with a simple 1.44 floppy disk. You get a gui with a net acess and a simple browser! (And this was done in 1998!)

Anyway, this a good starting point for making those computers works.

One advice i can give it that theses olds computers can be put to simple use like routers or graphicals terminals, but don't expects a lot out of a 386. Your best bet would be to start by visiting google and google directories. You can also try the Linux terminal server project page. They have debian-based packages, so it's not to hard to install on any computer.

Yes, that welding bit is a bit of a problem. Fortunately, welding gear is affordable, if not exactly cheap, and just because they don't own any it doesn't mean they've never used any.

By the way, this is by no means the first effort of it's type: take a look at this. Unfortunately, many of their links only exist in the web archive.

However, some work as stated: http://bitter.swee.to/gundam.html
This one seems to be one or both of the following: a hoax, and a BattleBot or equivalent. (It's the conspiracy bits in the engrish that make me wonder)
MekaToro

Of course, I had to save the best for last. Take a look at RoboSaurus.

The only changes I'd make are:
1. Rip out the flamethrower. It'll look like fire when you've got the muzzleflash from a 20mm Vulcan going full blast.
2. Add a pair of BOFORS 40mm cannon to each arm. From what I'm told, it would perform just fine against hard targets, and they're very well recoil-dampened.

By the way, I'm the former Anonymous Coward that posted the link to MechaPS.com; I just registered because I've been reading this site more and more lately.

Yes, that welding bit is a bit of a problem. Fortunately, welding gear is affordable, if not exactly cheap, and just because they don't own any it doesn't mean they've never used any.

By the way, this is by no means the first effort of it's type: take a look at this. Unfortunately, many of their links only exist in the web archive.

However, some work as stated: http://bitter.swee.to/gundam.html
This one seems to be one or both of the following: a hoax, and a BattleBot or equivalent. (It's the conspiracy bits in the engrish that make me wonder)
MekaToro

Of course, I had to save the best for last. Take a look at RoboSaurus.

The only changes I'd make are:
1. Rip out the flamethrower. It'll look like fire when you've got the muzzleflash from a 20mm Vulcan going full blast.
2. Add a pair of BOFORS 40mm cannon to each arm. From what I'm told, it would perform just fine against hard targets, and they're very well recoil-dampened.

By the way, I'm the former Anonymous Coward that posted the link to MechaPS.com; I just registered because I've been reading this site more and more lately.

AS 7007, to be precise. It is listed with ARIN as "Florida Internet Exchange" for reasons which I don't recall. I find it amusing that it is still being discussed. (I even see a reference to it in a mailing list last November.)

For those interested, an archived copy of the apology issued after this incident is here

The owner of the AS happens to be a close friend. I'm waiting for him to start advertising a block with it just to see how many routers still have an AS7007 filter up.

Geesh, now I feel like an old-timer.

Blackley was the "producer" for that game, and also wrote (unsuccessfully) the physics engine. "Why did physics code that was barely usable actually ship?" says Game Developer's postmortem, which names Blackley as the major problem with the project.

Blackley has since turned to evangelism and punditry, at which he's better.

One must always remember that Seamus was responsible for one of the most stunningly bad games in recent memory. (Some of the incriminating links from the original Usenet article have gone stale, so here are some handy wayback links to the developer puffery on the game's physics, audio, design, ai, and art.)

One must always remember that Seamus was responsible for one of the most stunningly bad games in recent memory. (Some of the incriminating links from the original Usenet article have gone stale, so here are some handy wayback links to the developer puffery on the game's physics, audio, design, ai, and art.)

One must always remember that Seamus was responsible for one of the most stunningly bad games in recent memory. (Some of the incriminating links from the original Usenet article have gone stale, so here are some handy wayback links to the developer puffery on the game's physics, audio, design, ai, and art.)

One must always remember that Seamus was responsible for one of the most stunningly bad games in recent memory. (Some of the incriminating links from the original Usenet article have gone stale, so here are some handy wayback links to the developer puffery on the game's physics, audio, design, ai, and art.)

One must always remember that Seamus was responsible for one of the most stunningly bad games in recent memory. (Some of the incriminating links from the original Usenet article have gone stale, so here are some handy wayback links to the developer puffery on the game's physics, audio, design, ai, and art.)

I wonder if the traffic can be correlated back to the actual number of "transactions" that are being done on the Internet? Like when I visit a website, a lot of the traffic (large banners, pop-up, etc) aren't really what I am doing or after.

Is this simply a bandwith increase or are we talking about more real transactions? Probablly a bit of both...

Already yanked--403, and Google's cache returns a blank page. But it's still at the Wayback Machine, for the moment.

Is this recent? I bought an iBook last July with 10.1 and I don't remember getting Quicken.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bcache%3Awww.ison ews.com%2Fportal.php3%3Ft%3D2

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.isonews.co m

Before they grab this too!

There must be some violation of copyright going on their...

*sigh*

Have no fear! Jon Stewart is here!

I know that's Score:5 Funny but there's a serious note here.

If a site is down, Mozilla could pretty easily grab the google cache instead. Or, if there's no google cache or if the cache matches the current page, check archive.org. Mozilla could auto-generate a page offering the user some options. Think about it - it would be the end of 404 errors. Instead of

404 The requested page could not be found.

you could get

The site you requested is currently down. Would you like to use Google's cache instead? I also have a snapshot of the page you requested from August 12, 2002 but older ones are available here.

I know that's Score:5 Funny but there's a serious note here.

If a site is down, Mozilla could pretty easily grab the google cache instead. Or, if there's no google cache or if the cache matches the current page, check archive.org. Mozilla could auto-generate a page offering the user some options. Think about it - it would be the end of 404 errors. Instead of

404 The requested page could not be found.

you could get

The site you requested is currently down. Would you like to use Google's cache instead? I also have a snapshot of the page you requested from August 12, 2002 but older ones are available here.

The patent was filed on 3 Feb 1999. Depending on how you read the legalese of the claims, use of CVS (for web development) may or may not be covered by this patent.

Prior art with regard to CVS is easy to prove. Back in 1997 cyclic.com already had a CVS and the Web page. That page references amongst others L.D.Stein's book How to set up and maintain a web site, that makes mention of the use of CVS for version control.

By 1998 the same page on cyclic included a link to Sean Dreilinger's CVS Version Control for Web Site Projects (link to current version). archive.org does not appear to have the original document, but the link is on cyclic.com circa Dec 1998, and Sean's Copyright is dated back to 1997.

Cyclic.com also had a page listing sites using CVS (for web development, 1998).

And just in case anyone didn't get the message, WebDAV (RFC) has a history (and more) going back to 1996. The RFC was published in (surprise surprise) Feb 1999.

The patent was filed on 3 Feb 1999. Depending on how you read the legalese of the claims, use of CVS (for web development) may or may not be covered by this patent.

Prior art with regard to CVS is easy to prove. Back in 1997 cyclic.com already had a CVS and the Web page. That page references amongst others L.D.Stein's book How to set up and maintain a web site, that makes mention of the use of CVS for version control.

By 1998 the same page on cyclic included a link to Sean Dreilinger's CVS Version Control for Web Site Projects (link to current version). archive.org does not appear to have the original document, but the link is on cyclic.com circa Dec 1998, and Sean's Copyright is dated back to 1997.

Cyclic.com also had a page listing sites using CVS (for web development, 1998).

And just in case anyone didn't get the message, WebDAV (RFC) has a history (and more) going back to 1996. The RFC was published in (surprise surprise) Feb 1999.

The patent was filed on 3 Feb 1999. Depending on how you read the legalese of the claims, use of CVS (for web development) may or may not be covered by this patent.

Prior art with regard to CVS is easy to prove. Back in 1997 cyclic.com already had a CVS and the Web page. That page references amongst others L.D.Stein's book How to set up and maintain a web site, that makes mention of the use of CVS for version control.

By 1998 the same page on cyclic included a link to Sean Dreilinger's CVS Version Control for Web Site Projects (link to current version). archive.org does not appear to have the original document, but the link is on cyclic.com circa Dec 1998, and Sean's Copyright is dated back to 1997.

Cyclic.com also had a page listing sites using CVS (for web development, 1998).

And just in case anyone didn't get the message, WebDAV (RFC) has a history (and more) going back to 1996. The RFC was published in (surprise surprise) Feb 1999.

The USDOJ put up a link about this, which they then took down a few days later. Fortunately, it got archived during that time, and you can find it here.

These links have been thrown around a lot on Slashdot already, but I think they deserve to be posted at least once in every story about books...

If you would like to read more free scifi e-books, the Baen Free Library is the place to start looking. I especially recommend David Weber's Harrington novels (the first two are available, and they weren't boring back then).

Then of course there is Project Gutenberg, which has most stuff worth reading up to circa 1920. Even more books are available on their distributed proofreading site, featured on Slashdot a while back.

Are there other, similar places where one can - legally! - find quality reading material?