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FYI Windows 10... won't be bad... You're going to use it eventually whether you like it or not.

On the contrary, I did try Windows 10 and it finally convinced me to just use Debian* on everything. Admittedly, I only have five computers, not a datacenter full, but after giving Windows 10 what I consider a very fair shot, I then took Windows off every machine using a Debian install disc/USB stick. My only (admittedly distasteful) concession to windows is that I have Vista in a VM for running Turbotax, and by the time Turbotax starts to require Windows 10 or later, I'll be on some other solution. So, no, I won't be using it eventually. As GP wisely replied to you,

I don't like Win10 because of the big brother issues with it, not because it's unstable.

* I know Debian's not for everyone, but there are many alternatives.

I did a quick google for free Modula-2 compilers. It would appear to be alive. I've never had any desire to learn it, but if I wanted to start using it I could.

> if there were a decent, free (as in beer) disassembler out there.

Define decent? :-) You mean interactive?

Hiew or something here doesn't fit the bill ?
http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/disassemblers.shtml

(Granted, hiew isn't open-source, and technically a hex editor, but it is good.)

Why not clone IDA Pro and OllyDbg ?

There are also emulators for such systems. Google brought this site up for Apple ][ stuff: http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/apple-2.shtml

You have to find a ROM, but that's not a big hurdle. :)

Jeez, talk about overkill. For most purposes, wiping the disk is perfectly adequate. If your hat is made of tinfoil, use software that implements DoD 5220.22M. But really, if you're up against somebody who can recover data after even a basic destructive overwrite (someone like the NSA), they already know all your secrets — assuming they even care that you exist.

http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/lego-mindstorms-nxt.shtml

Use Linux so that they have all tools and doc available that they can explore on their own. Challenge them to think differently and give them an introduction into the languages and concepts that they can use. They should learn how to use "man" and learn how to Google tutorials on the web to discover how to do things on their own. They should also be encouraged to use tools that help them work together like DARCS, git, mercurial, or bzr.

There are COBOL compilers for the PC, some are even free (even if they are a few years old). Google COBOL compiler or take a look at this site: Thefreecountry.

Included at this site are links to old favorites such as COBOL650 and Fujitsu COBOL compiler (student version).

SheepShaver runs Mac OS 9 on top of the existing OS. Mac OS 9 provides 68k emulation. It should "just work" so long as the app in question could run on a PowerPC-based Mac and you have an appropriate version of Mac OS that was capable of running the app. I could be wrong, though. There might be some PPC instructions (probably supervisor mode) in the 68k emulation code that can't be emulated by Rosetta and/or SheepShaver. At some point, it might be easier to run a 68k emulator directly rather than running an emulator on top of another emulator.

I think id Games used to compile on SGIs. I know MS did some development on Xenix/i286 and Xenix/i386 (somewhere, there's an MS quote about how MS-DOS/Win is not suitable for serious development..hah). In fact, the i286 had a memory management unit, but the only OS (that I know of) which took full advantage of it was Xenix. Minix/i286 may have supported it to some extent, as well.
Some emulator pages....mac&ppc, simos (for SGI/IRIX5), DEC 10 and Big Iron, various DEC emulation, Apple Lisa, Z80 sim&development, yaze Z80, Apricot and Amstrad, bochs x86, ... and there's always emulators that run under DOS that you could run under Bochs or QEMU.

Other possibly helpful links:
emulators on freshmeat
OS kernels on freshmeat
OS's on freshmeat
bunches of old OS disk images
CP/M and MP/M
CP/M disks
Lisa Xenix
LisaOS
tandy xenix
elks and uclinux
freevms
freedos
Apple I (not II) development
reactos - winnt clone
MAME stuff and pinball Mame
info about tandy disk images
solaris minix
minix info and version 3
various free (as in beer and/or speech) OS list
The OS list at tunes.org

I can point other HUGE problem regarding Windows on OLPC:

- Lack of OPEN developer tools

OPEN or FREE? Because I think most people don't give a rats ass about being able to recompile the compiler or the IDE, so how would that be a HUGE problem? In any case:

and it means being forced to Microsoft Windows and Visual Studio

How is that? There are plenty of Open Source development products. To name just a few: gcc, Watcom, #develop. Of course there are also tons of Free as in Beer products, including a version Visual Studio (or C++/C# or something). http://www.thefreecountry.com/ is a good resource to see what's there.

"I cannot think of any other OS that even approaches the maturity of Linux at this point."

IBM might just decide to knock the dust off OS/2. In many ways Linux and Windows and yes even OSX still have not caught up with where it was a decade ago. I don't know of a 64 bit kernel for it or its offspring eCS but it might be hiding in one of the IBM labs in Boca Raton.

Actually the advances in hardware, emulators and virtualizers are making real time simulation of an entire hardware platform API or a specific OS API more practical. I suspect that any posix compliant OS with well written emulators or virtulizers will soon make reduce a specific OS like Windows to application level importance anyway.

I realize that most here are aware of these efforts, but are some urls anyway for the few that are not.

http://www.xensource.com/
http://www.parallels.com/
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/about/virtua lization/about/systems.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/pc.shtml
http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/macintosh. shtml
http://www.winehq.com/

Matthew

"I cannot think of any other OS that even approaches the maturity of Linux at this point."

IBM might just decide to knock the dust off OS/2. In many ways Linux and Windows and yes even OSX still have not caught up with where it was a decade ago. I don't know of a 64 bit kernel for it or its offspring eCS but it might be hiding in one of the IBM labs in Boca Raton.

Actually the advances in hardware, emulators and virtualizers are making real time simulation of an entire hardware platform API or a specific OS API more practical. I suspect that any posix compliant OS with well written emulators or virtulizers will soon make reduce a specific OS like Windows to application level importance anyway.

I realize that most here are aware of these efforts, but are some urls anyway for the few that are not.

http://www.xensource.com/
http://www.parallels.com/
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/about/virtua lization/about/systems.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/pc.shtml
http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/macintosh. shtml
http://www.winehq.com/

Matthew

Perl or python will work just fine as a basic replacement for those types of projects. If you don't like Python or Perl you also have Ruby and PHP to choose from. Under Linux I believe there is even a handy dandy version of basic that works just fine.
Yes you would have to learn a new language but that isn't all that hard. Once you learn one language learning a new one is pretty simple. Depending on how long it was since you used basic last it might not be much harder to learn Python than to remember Basic.

If you must have good old basic this might work for you. https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou p_id=49546

I found more links to basic stuff here http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/basic.shtm l

Hmm.

I have VS.Net Express installed. All of it (except J#).

That's VB, C#, C++ and Visual Web Developer.

The only one of these that does not, by default, have "resource file" listed amongst it's "New Item" template list is VB. All the others permit you to add a resource file and edit strings, and add images, icons, audio clips, and other material to the file. The file iteself is an XML file, and could thus feasibly be edited by hand.

You can get around the lack of the template in VB by the staggeringly hard step of adding a new text file to the project and sticking ".resx" on it instead of ".txt", henceforth the resource editor will be used to open it.

Ok, you can't edit icons, bitmaps and cursors. For that, you might need to get a free editor.

Or is there something staggering that the VS.NET 2003 does for you that the VS Express one doesn't (other than those pesky bitmaps)? (no, really, I want to know what I'm missing...)

You know there are programs that can securely erase individual files (like these) so it wouldn't take very long to do it. Though it most probably takes more time than you can make the police stand behind your door. =) But really, if he really did upload the movie, he wiped the movie after sending it (if he is paranoid :) or, more likely, he wiped it after he heard that Paramount or someone was on to him. (And then Paramount or police would find that he had wipe/sdelete/srm/etc. installed.)

Troll? No. Clever? Thanks, yes I know, but don't let that frighten you.
As an AC I don't get any real chance to defend my side but I can
promise you that I have built at least three _working_ systems.
Jitter can be solved many ways, simple reordering, windowed backbuffering,
lots of fancy stuff - or for a budget DIY system just don't bother about
it too much, it's not like the OP asked for a fully commercial system is it?
Here's a few obvious links to help. I'm guessing you are enraged by my suggestion
because you work for a commercial VoIP provider. What can I say? Please grow up.
I also guess you have never actually built such such a system either, try it, go on,
fire up that C compiler and amaze yourself at how easy it is. Really, you don't need a load of fancy stuff, VoIP hardly even needs a processor, man you could get a 4MHz Z80 to
do most of what is required.

here
here
here
here
here
and here

To address the temp and swap file issues, you can use tools to wipe them on a regular basis. This website has a lot of useful information about that.

Also you might want to try TrueCrypt. You could use that to encrypt your entire temp drive. I am not sure, but I don't believe it will let you encrypt the swap file itself.

Now what I do agreee with you on: I would also rather pay $129/year and a half, but it is for the ease of use, and east of use only.

Perhaps Microsoft should include an option, like 'Prepare this computer for resale,' which utterly destroys all data."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't the format command do this already?

IMHO, if you're reselling a pre-built PC and have system recovery disks but don't wipe the HD and use the recovery disks to restore the system to the original condition, you're not doing it right.

In any case, there are free tools http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelet e.shtml/ to do the wiping.

Maybe I'm missing the obvious.

(and no, I don't know how to properly insert URLs)

My first experience with a computer was when I was five. My dad had an Atari 800. (He ended up selling it because he couldn't afford a disk drive! This was when disk drives cost hundreds of dollars.) I remember one night he typed in a program that acted like an etch-a-sketch.

I few years later, my parents bought me an Atari ST. I was hooked on computers from that point on. One day I was reading an article in Atari Explorer magazine about programming. The article presented a simple "Hello, world" type program in BASIC. I decided to play around with it and see if I could change it slightly. (This was back when every computer came with a copy of BASIC.)
I ended up teaching myself BASIC over the summer.

Anybody remember when computer magazines used to publish type-in programs? :-)

I know nowadays a lot of people don't like BASIC because of goto and what not. But I think it is a good language to teach some basic principles (what a variable is, what a loop is, etc).

I'm currently learning python. I've wondered if it would be a good first language for someone. I'm not sure it would be. For one, I'm not sure if someone who learns it would appreciate all the things it does for you. Second, when they learn another language, I'm not sure what the learning curve will be like. It might take them a while to get used to the new ideas. On the other hand, maybe starting fresh and not carrying some of the baggage of older languages would be good for a new generation of programmers.

I've never used Pascal, but I've heard it's a good language for learning programming.

Now, I've heard some people say that OO is the way to go and should be taught to newbies. But even with OO you still use parts from procedural programming: you still use variables, still use loops, still call functions, etc. I see no harm in using a simpler language to teach the fundamentals before moving on to objects.

Maybe what we need is a version of knoppix set up for teaching programming.

Python links:
Main python site: http://www.python.org/
Dive Into Python book: http://diveintopython.org/

Pascal:
A free Pascal compilerhttp://www.freepascal.org/

Basic:
I don't have a link for a version of basic. But I know there are some on the web. And Win 95 & 98 have a copy (buried) on the setup disk. Look in the other\oldmsdos folder.

More:
http://thefreecountry.com/ Has links to free compilers & more for various languages.

Old computer magazine archives:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/

http://www.openwatcom.org/?

Or something else?
http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/cpp.shtml

COBOL is so easy, business types can learn it. Check out these freebie COBOL languages.

Pascal is one of the easiest languages to learn, they used to teach it in high school. Lazarus has a good IDE to help with development. Also Delphi has a free demo to download and try out.

Also consider Lingo.

If she still cannot program in those, give up. They are about the easiest there is to learn. Not everyone can learn how to program. Instead teach her how to draw pictures in TuxPaint and if she fails to learn that one, take away her Internet privliges.

There is even an active Qbasic community: www.qbasicnews.com

The problem with Qbasic is that it is becoming harder and harder to get DOS software to run properly with each release of Windows. You could also try one of these Basic compilers/interpretters: Basic compiler/interpretters list

I'd love to have had it "so hard".

Some thoughts...
1. Notepad + i.e = scripting
2. PHP
3. perl
4. The other 1,000,000 free compilers here (or a hundred other such lists): http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/
5. The MASSIVE amount of free information, tutorials and source code available

ANYONE with access to a PC and the internet cannot whine about not having qbasic/BASIC/etc. It is a non-issue. I only learned basic because my vic20 had (er has) it. I wanted to learn a "real" language, but there were no free compilers, damn little PD source, and few free tutorials.

Dan

Well, there's always the heavy overtones of GNU//Llinux being the only freeware in the world.( at least that's how it seems on /. )
However there are many places on the net that can supply even the lowly Windows user with tools.
Here are a few:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/
http://freebyte.com/programming/
http://www.mingw.org/
^-- ( for those who can't live without gcc/g++ =) )

You asked me where other free references etc could be
found online.

Hogan Books has a pretty nice list:


ftp://hoganbooks.com/weball.zip

`Numerical Recipes in C/F77/F90'. I think it may be
included above.


http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/Numerical_Reci pe s/

Mostly science books, but has `A Simplified
Introduction to LaTeX'.


http://samizdat.mines.edu/


Of course, the Linux Documentation Project has its
HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs and Guides in .ps or .pdf or
sometimes .dvi format:


http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/othe r- formats/


http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/mini /o ther-formats/


http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/linux-doc- pr oject/

Adobe keeps all of their specs online; the PDF and
PostScript language references, stuff about TrueType
and the new Compact Font Format, etc etc.


http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/technote s/ main.html

`Thinking in PostScript', posted by the author in some
ridiculous proprietary format, as well as in PDF.


http://www.rightbrain.com/pages/book-download.sh tm l

A whole variety of programming books; most seem to be
available in PDF/PS:


http://www.free-book.co.uk/computers-internet/pr og ramming/index.htm

A variety of free online programming references.


http://www.thefreecountry.com/developercity/onli ne references.shtml

The Free Country's Developer City has links to an absolute crapload of free stuff, including a heap of free Pascal and Delphi compilers. The Borland abandonware stuff is here (free registration required).

The Free Country's Developer City has links to an absolute crapload of free stuff, including a heap of free Pascal and Delphi compilers. The Borland abandonware stuff is here (free registration required).

The Free Country's Developer City has links to an absolute crapload of free stuff, including a heap of free Pascal and Delphi compilers. The Borland abandonware stuff is here (free registration required).

A simple search (e.g., "free compilers for windows"), yields a lot of pertinent hits, including this one http://www.thefreecountry.com/d evelopercity/cc.html which lists several C/C++ compilers for windows.

(And that's just C/C++).

You didn't research point #1 very hard, now did you?