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Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS

--emphasis mine

Windows 9x is a series of hybrid 16/32-bit operating systems.

You could even still boot straight to DOS (command not cmd) and type 'win' to start Windows just like under 3.1. If you still had 3.1 in a directory you could run 'win' from there and still go into win 3.1. Win 9x still had and used the autoexec.bat and config.sys files. Win 9x didn't protect the first meg of memory so you could still reboot the computer by opening a DOS window and writing directly to memory. And there were more websites like this back in the day.

I agree with the bottom up approach to learning programming & CS.

I started off learning BASIC, but it was very slow going. As soon as I got into 8086 Assembly everything clicked into place. After making a few simple games, I built my own Boot loaders and toy OSs, Languages, etc. without any teaching or courses needed. I remember thinking, "I wonder how you make a bootable disk?", Turns out everything I needed to know was in the BIOS documentation: Interrupt 19

I agree that knowing about the circuitry was neat, and necessary for completeness, but it's by no means essential for CS, IMO. Learning the electronics didn't really help me much because at the instruction level even things like CALL are abstractions for more logic... Maybe if I had been learning on RISC hardware, or had been content to stay in some VM Sandbox I'd have a different view?

The difference between the NAND to Tetris course, and taking a crash course on (x86 | ARM) Assembly + RTFM for your BIOS and CPU is in the end, my programs actually worked on Real hardware. That makes my efforts far more useful immediately and far more relevant. For instance, I built disk partition tools and undelete utilities and actually sold them on a BBS I built myself, and I still use them to this day. I've got a .ISO with my OS and disk tools, and some games that I can put on Floppies, HDs, USB drives, CDs / DVDs, etc. and boot them with any x86 or x64 system.

I understand the course is for Universities, and so contains a certain level of depth, but IMO, after you study how NANDs can perform computations they should switch to ARM or x86 assembly using Real hardware -- A Raspberry PI costs less than their damn physical book!

Furthermore, NANDs alone do not a computer make. That's just WRONG. You need something to pulse the logic gates, like a Capacitor. If you want it to be actually useful then it'll need I/O: You'll need some buttons and a display. If you're not going to teach CS then why focus on the irrelevant underlying circuitry to such a large degree? When I was 18 I actually wired transistors, capacitors, resistors, LEDs and button switches together to "Program" an actual working Tetris game -- Didn't require a VM to run, and my friends were far more impressed than they would have been with some program inside an existing computer.

My point is: Don't preach building computers from scratch unless you're actually going to enable folks to do just that in real life. If it's a CS course then utilize an actual chipset. IMHO, Save time & download (QEMU | VMWare) + (GNU Assembler | NASM) then start building your own bootstrap loader that will run on real hardware.

You're right - the default textmode when booting an x86 system "since pretty much forever" is 80x25, BIOS video mode 3.. A lot of distros are evil and change to other textmodes, or framebuffer modes, without asking you, though.

No joke. It was just a command line OS, which it did fine. There were certainly no blue screens of death. I'd say the worse part was trying to configure AUTOEXEC.BAT for getting just the right amount of memory for certain games. Otherwise, it was fine. Maybe you're associating other problems of the PC's with the computer (like segmented memory, i.e. only available to 640K without crazy EMS/XMS memory managers... that had nothing to do with MS-DOS, that was the Intel 80x86 architecture).

MS-DOS was essentially a bunch of file commands like "DISKCOPY" and its API was interrupts (see http://www.ctyme.com/intr/int.htm). To the end user, the commands like "DIR" and "COPY" were much more user friendly than Unix... granted, they weren't very user friendly in modern terms, but like I said, it was a command line OS.

> You have a bunch of commands that use / as the symbol indicating a flag. You want to add directories to your file system. Are you going to change all the commands and thus make any scripts no longer work, use the / for both a directory separator and a flag, thus giving ambiguous commands or use a different separator?

Why does config.sys have the SWITCHAR= command then??

DOS 2+ - SWITCHAR - SET SWITCH CHARACTER
AX = 3701h
DL = new switch character

Return:
AL = status 00h successful FFh unsupported subfunction

Notes: Documented in some OEM versions of some releases of DOS; DOS 2.x had a SWITCHAR=c setting in CONFIG.SYS. Supported by OS/2 compatibility box and Novell DOS 7. Ignored by MS-DOS 5+ and DR DOS 3.41-6.0; DR DOS 6.0 and Novell DOS 7 leave AX unchanged

http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-2753.htm

I think you are confusing the fact that it was impossible to change any character on the screen other than the one under the cursor. Yes it might make sense to have a different call that moved the blinking cursor indicator, but that was not done. You had to move the "cursor" to change where the other bios call updated the sceen. Therefore unless your gui worked by changing only a single character on the screen, which happened to be exactly where you wanted the blinking cursor, you had to use this move-cursor call if you wanted any changes.

The function I referenced did in fact take a coordinate pair in the DX register, implying (I say implying because I have not the facilities to craft a suitable test given my operating system) it would write to where the programmer specified, not to the current cursor position. See here. Had to Google for that, having misplaced by copy of the book - ahh, Ralf Brown's Interrupt List... that takes me back.

I'm not sure about the 0x13 bios call, there was a reason nobody (including that DOS write-string call) used it. I think it may have ignored the cursor position? The only working way to use the BIOS to update the screen with any ability to position the cursor was to call set-cursor-postion and write-character alternately for every single screen location on the screen. Obviously no sane programmer did this on a 5Mhz machine.

Lots of insane programmers did, however, use it. It was "official", therefore it must have been the proper thing to use. Microsoft discouraged programmers from using tricks to make things work better.

There are a few webhosts out there that advertise as "free speech". I have no experience with any of them, but they may fit your needs.

http://www.anonhost.org/
http://hosting.dod.net/
http://www.crisishost.com/
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
http://www.secureservertech.com/
http://www.ctyme.com/

Nice :)

In case that was a little obscure, I'll elaborate by saying that 0xCC is the x86 single-byte opcode for the int3 instruction, to generate a CPU breakpoint interrupt.

INT instruction (x86).
Interrupt 3, the generated interrupt.
Prior art: 1974.

I can't believe these obituaries for Ray Noorda highlight his supposed business skill, when he rode Novell straight into the ground and singlehandedly destroyed both Digital Research and WordPerfect. Noorda's Novell bought WordPerfect for $855 million in June 1994, when its word processor, formerly the industry standard, was struggling and needed smart management. After Noorda left the company, Novell promptly sold WordPerfect to Corel in January 1996 for 10 million shares of Corel stock and $11 million in cash -- that's right, an $800 million loss in 18 months. Meanwhile, WordPerfect's market share had totally collapsed.

An October 2000 article in Computer Business Review Online, "Why Companies Fail", discusses Noorda's reign:

"[M]anagement monomania is perhaps the most insidious and avoidable trap. The company that has shown damagingly obsessive behaviour has been network operating system company, Novell. CEO and founder Ray Noorda, after failed takeover talks with Microsoft, became obsessed with the fact that Microsoft was trying to destroy his company - a focus that became so intense, ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myrvold dubbed him 'Captain Ahab' in 1993.
"Even though Novell had successfully fought off Microsoft in its core network operating system business for five years, Noorda decided that he had to take direct aim at the industry's Moby Dick. He bought 20 companies, including Digital Research (an operating systems company), Unix System Laboratories and office suite developer WordPerfect (subsequently sold to equally mismanaged Corel) over a three-year period. Even after Noorda retired in 1994, and his successor had divested most of his acquisitions, Novell was damaged beyond repair. [...] Novell fatally lost direction under Noorda, let its core products lapse and ceded market dominance. Since then it has suffered a steady decline."

Of course, Noorda also found the Canopy Group, of which the less said the better.

Noorda achieved some great things, but for much of his latter career he was a force for chaos and destruction.

You're no man man!

This is a man man!

A very interesting remark. Why? lately i viewed the BCC Documentary, "the Power of Nightmares", which indeed reveiled that Al-Qeida is just a name for a organisation which does not exist! the name Al-Qeida is a fabrication by the Federal US Prosecutors in order to get warrent for arrest to nail Osama Bin Laden, a.k.a. Tim Osman within the CIA.

See also :

"Al-Qaeda Is Fiction: The Organization Doesn't Exist"

"
Mark Perkel | July 4 2005

I came across three films produced by the BBC called "The Power of Nightmares" which explain how various groups use the fear of terrorism to advance their political power. I've spent all day converting them to a smaller format so that they can be ea silly downloaded. But they are an hour long each and are about 75 megs each. They are however extraordinary and it's quite an education into the history of Islamic Terrorism and American neo conservatives. Here are the links:

Baby it's Cold Outside
The Phantom Victory
The Shadows in the Cave>

Sorry for the windows (WMV) format but it allowed me to shrink the video to 1/10 it's original size. I don't think there's a copyright issue but if there is I'll wait till someone screams about it. I think the BBC would want people to see these films.

In particular the third film makes a shocking revelation. The terrorist group al-Qaeda in fact does not exist. It was made up in January of 2001 in order to prosecute Osama bin Laden in his absence. In order to prosecute bin Laden there had to be an organization like the Mafia for which he was a part of. Under the law if such an organization exists then the head of the organization can be prosecuted under the law. So in order to bring the prosecution they made up the organization and called it al-Qaeda.

But the organization is fiction. It doesn't exist. It's all a huge fraud.

After 9-11 - a terrorist act that was organized by a bin Laden aide and funded by bin Laden - Bush dug up the name al-Qaeda from the prosecutors in the New York case against him. And since then we have been in a battle against a fictional enemy. The very people who made the story up now are believing their own lies.

What I first heard about this movie I too was skeptical. I thought, "Yeah right! al-Qaeda doesn't exist - sure!" But now that I watched it, and with the other two movies providing further background, I am sitting here in shock and awe. Keep in mind that this was made by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) which is hardly some tin foil hat organization!

Here's the BBC Link that talks about the 3 films. I edited off the front part of the last two because it was identical to the first one and I wanted to save bandwidth.

If what this movie says is true then we shouldn't be able to find any al-Qaeda references in the news before the begining of 2001. So lets start hunting this up and find out where the name al-Qaeda first surfaced. "

Cheers,

Robert

A very interesting remark. Why? lately i viewed the BCC Documentary, "the Power of Nightmares", which indeed reveiled that Al-Qeida is just a name for a organisation which does not exist! the name Al-Qeida is a fabrication by the Federal US Prosecutors in order to get warrent for arrest to nail Osama Bin Laden, a.k.a. Tim Osman within the CIA.

See also :

"Al-Qaeda Is Fiction: The Organization Doesn't Exist"

"
Mark Perkel | July 4 2005

I came across three films produced by the BBC called "The Power of Nightmares" which explain how various groups use the fear of terrorism to advance their political power. I've spent all day converting them to a smaller format so that they can be ea silly downloaded. But they are an hour long each and are about 75 megs each. They are however extraordinary and it's quite an education into the history of Islamic Terrorism and American neo conservatives. Here are the links:

Baby it's Cold Outside
The Phantom Victory
The Shadows in the Cave>

Sorry for the windows (WMV) format but it allowed me to shrink the video to 1/10 it's original size. I don't think there's a copyright issue but if there is I'll wait till someone screams about it. I think the BBC would want people to see these films.

In particular the third film makes a shocking revelation. The terrorist group al-Qaeda in fact does not exist. It was made up in January of 2001 in order to prosecute Osama bin Laden in his absence. In order to prosecute bin Laden there had to be an organization like the Mafia for which he was a part of. Under the law if such an organization exists then the head of the organization can be prosecuted under the law. So in order to bring the prosecution they made up the organization and called it al-Qaeda.

But the organization is fiction. It doesn't exist. It's all a huge fraud.

After 9-11 - a terrorist act that was organized by a bin Laden aide and funded by bin Laden - Bush dug up the name al-Qaeda from the prosecutors in the New York case against him. And since then we have been in a battle against a fictional enemy. The very people who made the story up now are believing their own lies.

What I first heard about this movie I too was skeptical. I thought, "Yeah right! al-Qaeda doesn't exist - sure!" But now that I watched it, and with the other two movies providing further background, I am sitting here in shock and awe. Keep in mind that this was made by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) which is hardly some tin foil hat organization!

Here's the BBC Link that talks about the 3 films. I edited off the front part of the last two because it was identical to the first one and I wanted to save bandwidth.

If what this movie says is true then we shouldn't be able to find any al-Qaeda references in the news before the begining of 2001. So lets start hunting this up and find out where the name al-Qaeda first surfaced. "

Cheers,

Robert

A very interesting remark. Why? lately i viewed the BCC Documentary, "the Power of Nightmares", which indeed reveiled that Al-Qeida is just a name for a organisation which does not exist! the name Al-Qeida is a fabrication by the Federal US Prosecutors in order to get warrent for arrest to nail Osama Bin Laden, a.k.a. Tim Osman within the CIA.

See also :

"Al-Qaeda Is Fiction: The Organization Doesn't Exist"

"
Mark Perkel | July 4 2005

I came across three films produced by the BBC called "The Power of Nightmares" which explain how various groups use the fear of terrorism to advance their political power. I've spent all day converting them to a smaller format so that they can be ea silly downloaded. But they are an hour long each and are about 75 megs each. They are however extraordinary and it's quite an education into the history of Islamic Terrorism and American neo conservatives. Here are the links:

Baby it's Cold Outside
The Phantom Victory
The Shadows in the Cave>

Sorry for the windows (WMV) format but it allowed me to shrink the video to 1/10 it's original size. I don't think there's a copyright issue but if there is I'll wait till someone screams about it. I think the BBC would want people to see these films.

In particular the third film makes a shocking revelation. The terrorist group al-Qaeda in fact does not exist. It was made up in January of 2001 in order to prosecute Osama bin Laden in his absence. In order to prosecute bin Laden there had to be an organization like the Mafia for which he was a part of. Under the law if such an organization exists then the head of the organization can be prosecuted under the law. So in order to bring the prosecution they made up the organization and called it al-Qaeda.

But the organization is fiction. It doesn't exist. It's all a huge fraud.

After 9-11 - a terrorist act that was organized by a bin Laden aide and funded by bin Laden - Bush dug up the name al-Qaeda from the prosecutors in the New York case against him. And since then we have been in a battle against a fictional enemy. The very people who made the story up now are believing their own lies.

What I first heard about this movie I too was skeptical. I thought, "Yeah right! al-Qaeda doesn't exist - sure!" But now that I watched it, and with the other two movies providing further background, I am sitting here in shock and awe. Keep in mind that this was made by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) which is hardly some tin foil hat organization!

Here's the BBC Link that talks about the 3 films. I edited off the front part of the last two because it was identical to the first one and I wanted to save bandwidth.

If what this movie says is true then we shouldn't be able to find any al-Qaeda references in the news before the begining of 2001. So lets start hunting this up and find out where the name al-Qaeda first surfaced. "

Cheers,

Robert

In fact, I never go to google.com. I use the "Quick Search" feature of Firefox to do all my searches (g for google l for google/linux img google images def for google define fm for freshmeat man for man pages cpan for perl modules w for wikipedia and so on..)

There's also a handy extension that allows me to select text and open a right-click menu with all those searches for that text.

During the install Peerguardian detected communication to/from:

Sitefinder (ip: 12.158.80.10:80) on local ports 3901->3906

Upon installing the google web accelerator, during web browsing my box immediately started trying to send information to/from

http://www.ctyme.com/ (ip address: 209.237.228.10:80) from ports 3978->4108

I have run peerguardian for a LONG time now and have never seen communication to either of these sites until installing the Google Web Accelerator.

Can anyone else confirm/deny?

Heh. Been awhile for me. I got the NOPs, but had to look up int 19

This guy did exactly that to PayPal.

"Sir, I do not give you permission to record this call" ... "Yes you did. Right at the beginning of this call a voice said, 'This call may be recorded. It didn't say by whom'"

cLive ;-)

http://paypal.ctyme.com/paypal/paypalsucks.htm

The best bit is how PayPal allows you to record their conversations :-)

Come on man, your logic is awesome, you just didn't fully apply it.

...then double check with Reuters and the AP

Even they screw up. There was a recent "issue" by all the major media, including Reuters and AP. In fact, on the website of the people that made it they talk about the problems of mass media. What is especially amusing is how the media didn't apologize but instead bad mouthed the producers.

grep text

compressed tarballs

OO.o document

mime-encoded files

Evil Microsoft documents

PDF files

This would make a great shell script project. You could use file to detect the type and then filter and grep it appropriately. This sounds useful enough that I'll probably write this script this weekend. Thanks for the idea.

What would Jesus do? One word: SMITE!

Are you this guy, perchance?

I doubt that most of these things can be flashed in our modern protected mode OS's. That is usually the reason you usually have to boot off of a DOS floppy to flash your system and video card BIOS. Unless the operating system enables the proper interrupt line for the BIOS's flash mechanism, there would be no way for the CPU to pass along the message. This would generate an 'unhandled exception' error in Windows, just like when you try to do a lot of old school low level things that used to work in DOS. Unless the manufacturer includes the proper VXD or SYS file, with support for the flashing mechanism built in, I don't think Windows will allow it to happen.

Ralf is your friend. My guess is this is what you're looking for. BASIC ROM? Yikes. Good luck on that one :)

Ralf is your friend. My guess is this is what you're looking for. BASIC ROM? Yikes. Good luck on that one :)

Programming IPv6 apps is actually quite easy, and actually involves programming protocol family independent code if you want to do it right. On the client end, this basically involves using a function (getaddrinfo(3)) to get a linked list of all addresses associated with a given hostname in any protocol family (IPv4, v6, or even something fun like AppleTalk) and walking along the list until you get a good connection. This has the added advantage that if you are trying to connect to a host that has multiple IP addresses, and some of them are non-responsive (i.e. a round-robin DNS situation), your client will try connecting to each IP address until it succeeds.

If you're trying to learn how to configure and use IPv6 on your hosts, try some of these:

• Microsoft
• The Kame project (*BSD)
• The 6bone for general IPv6 stuff, as well as information on connecting to the experimental IPv6 backbone.
• Peter Bieringer's Linux IPv6 page.

As people have now already said ( yah yah, I know... redundant. Shut up already...) sed is the Stream EDitor. Windows people probably would have no clue what sed is. People new to *nix systems probably would have no clue what sed is. It is often assumed though (possibly incorrectly, but I digress) that the main audience of /. is made up of people not in those 2 categories. (note that I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people not knowing what sed is, just that most people on /. would probably have enough exposure to *nix to know.)

If you want to know more about sed, look at the man page, available http://linux.ctyme.com/man/man2377.htm

Also, for anyone who doesn't know/can't figure it out, man page is short for MANual page. If you have any access to a *nix system, I hope you know about man. For those that may not, the man pages are a wonderful help utility provided with linux systems to give information about various programs, commands, etc. A user simply types `man [commandname]` and up pops a helpful page telling all about the command or program. In our case, it would be `man sed`.

Slightly on a tangent, does anyone know of a help system for *nix similar to the old DOS help system (which MS has so helpfully removed and replaced with that stupid paperclip/dog/whatever)? It was nice to be able to simply browse the available commands, jump from help page to help page, etc. A similar thing for *nix could be nice at times.

For something more on topic... nice hack. From what little I've played with sed, I can't imagine having the patience to write a game with it. The only question I have is, why?

Wow! I never knew Gary Larson reads slashdot. Welcome!