Grosse Pointe Quickies

Nostradumbass told us about HandHeldCrime. This is cool for people that like to read on their Palm. jleader shared a link to a revolutionary new airplane design being built at the Van Nuys airport in Los Angeles. As if you couldn't tell from his name, linuxsucks_dot_com thinks that Linux Sucks! Use it as a tool, not as flamebait. SEWilco told us about a little cyber kid-leashing, and while you?re making sure the kids are where they need to be, kawlyn told us about the x86 Still. Beinoni shared a link to some interesting nonlinear emergent phenomena. An Anonymous Coward sent in a link to an interesting Scientific American story about anti-aging. dolanh sent in a cool question: What was your first computer? Okay, you caught me. My first real computer of note was an Apple //c. Still have the monitor. Zeitgeist gave us a link to a tool for the paranoid, Mindguard.

Comments

First computer

[David Gerard]

Using a PDP-11 running RSTS/E when I was thirteen. Programming in BASIC on it. Got a moon lander game and adapted it with lots of ASCII graphics ...

First machine of my very own was a Dick Smith System-80, a TRS-80 clone.

Re:First computer

[Kailden]

An Apple IIGS, GS for graphics and sound. Big plus was the hi-res graphics mode. had one of the first 3.5" disk drives which you could load the "system disk and system tools" which was a GUI interface that really didn't do much. Mine did not have a hard drive, that came out shortly afterwards. I remember the time it took to load the appleworks disk.

Re:First computer

[MOMOCROME]

my first was actually my dad's first, a timex sinclair that booted up to some assembly interpreter. It had grainy black and white ntsc output, had a membrane keyboard and would have been able to fit inside my current computers case with the cover on! It was just terrible though.
We returned it and got a TI/994a a while later. I quickly monopolized the 99, and moved it into my bedroom. To get the full effect for Trek, (transcribed from an issue of Compute!) I would dim the lights, turn on a blacklight and wear my surplus Russian tank pilot goggles. Then I would tweak the text colors all to hell to get the important info to stand out more clearly (klingons!). Surely this is way too geeky, but it is where I developed my keen interest in UI design. Now I do interfaces for video games and make rather good money. And to think, my parents completely discouraged this by making me chop firewood, play outside, do the dishes. From their perspective even watching TV was a better way to spend my time!

Say it ain't so!

[cluening]

> As if you couldn?t tell from his name,
> and while you?re making sure

Is Slashdot being attacked by the killer Micros~1 ? == ' feature too?

Re:Say it ain't so!

[Fester213]

> Is Slashdot being attacked by the killer
> Micros~1 ? == ' feature too?

You know, I've never figured out excatly WHY that happens. Why does it?

-- Fester

Re:Say it ain't so!

[Anonymous Coward]

demoroniser: DEMORONISER Correct Moronic Microsoft HTML

This page describes, in Unix manual page style, a Perl program available for downloading from this site which corrects numerous errors and incompatibilities in HTML generated by, or edited with, Microsoft applications. The demoroniser keeps you from looking dumber than a bag of dirt when your Web page is viewed by a user on a non-Microsoft platform. NAME demoroniser - correct moronic and gratuitously incompatible HTML generated by Microsoft applications SYNOPSIS demoroniser [ -u ] [ -w cols ] [ infile ] [ outfile ] DESCRIPTION Many slick, high profile corporate Web sites I visit seemed to exhibit terrible grammar completely inconsistent with the obvious investment in graphics and design. Apostrophes and quote marks were frequently omitted, and every couple of paragraphs words were run together which should have been separated by a punctuation mark of some kind.

This remained a mystery to me until I wanted to convert a presentation I'd developed in 1996 using Microsoft PowerPoint into a set of Web pages. A friend was kind enough to run the presentation through PowerPoint's "Save as HTML" feature (I have abandoned all use of Microsoft products, so I did not have a current version of PowerPoint which includes this feature). When I got the PowerPoint-generated HTML back and viewed it in my browser, I discovered that it contained precisely the same grammatical errors I'd noted on so many Web sites, and which certainly were not present in my original presentation.

A little detective work revealed that, as is usually the case when you encounter something shoddy in the vicinity of a computer, Microsoft incompetence and gratuitous incompatibility were to blame. Western language HTML documents are written in the ISO 8859-1 Latin-1 character set, with a specified set of escapes for special characters. Blithely ignoring this prescription, as usual, Microsoft use their own "extension" to Latin-1, in which a variety of characters which do not appear in Latin-1 are inserted in the range 0x82 through 0x95--this having the merit of being incompatible with both Latin-1 and Unicode, which reserve this region for additional control characters.

These characters include open and close single and double quotes, em and en dashes, an ellipsis and a variety of other things you've been dying for, such as a capital Y umlaut and a florin symbol. Well, okay, you say, if Microsoft want to have their own little incompatible character set, why not? Because it doesn't stop there--in their inimitable fashion (who would want to?)--they aggressively pollute the Web pages of unknowing and innocent victims worldwide with these characters, with the result that the owners of these pages look like semi-literate morons when their pages are viewed on non-Microsoft platforms (or on Microsoft platforms, for that matter, if the user has selected as the browser's font one of the many TrueType fonts which do not include the incompatible Microsoft characters).

You see, "state of the art" Microsoft Office applications sport a nifty feature called "smart quotes." (Rule of thumb--every time Microsoft use the word "smart," be on the lookout for something dumb). This feature is on by default in both Word and PowerPoint, and can be disabled only by finding the little box buried among the dozens of bewildering option panels these products contain. If enabled, and you type the string,

"Halt," he cried, "this is the police!"

"smart quotes" transforms the ASCII quote characters automatically into the incompatible Microsoft opening and closing quotes. ASCII single and double quotes are similarly transformed (even though ASCII already contains apostrophe and single open quote characters), and double hyphens are replaced by the incompatible em dash symbol. What other horrors occur, I know not. If the user notices this happening at all, their reaction might be "Thank you Billy-boy--that looks ever so much nicer," not knowing they've been set up to look like a moron to folks all over the world.

You see, when you export a document as text for hand-editing into HTML, or avail yourself of the "Save as HTML" features in newer versions of Office applications, these incompatible, Microsoft-specific characters remain in place. When viewed by a user on a non-Microsoft platform, they will not be displayed properly--most browsers seem to just drop them, as opposed to including a symbol indicating an undisplayable character. Hence, the apparently ungrammatical text, which the author of the page, editing on a Microsoft platform, will never be aware of.

Having no desire to hand-edit the HTML for a long presentation to correct a raft of Microsoft-induced incompatibilities, I wrote a Perl program, the demoroniser, to transform Microsoft's "junk HTML" into at least a starting point for something I'd consider presentable on my site. In addition to replacing the incompatible characters with HTML-compliant equivalents wherever possible (a few rarely-encountered characters which can't be translated result in warning messages if encountered), the following sloppy or downright wrong HTML is corrected.

• The missing semicolon at the end of numeric character escapes (=) is supplied.
• Numeric renderings of special characters (< > &) are replaced with readable equivalents.
• Unquoted <table> tags containing non-alphanumeric characters are quoted.
• PowerPoint's mis-nesting of <font> and <strong> tags is corrected.
• PowerPoint's boneheaded use of <ul> and </ul> tags to accomplish paragraph breaks is corrected and the proper <p> tags inserted.
• Missing <tr> tags in text-only slides are inserted.
• Nugatory </p> tags are removed.
• Unmatched <li> tags in headings are removed.
• Idiot "paragraph-long lines" are broken into something suitable for editing with a normal text editor.

OPTIONS -u Print how-to-call information and a summary of options.

-w cols Wrap output lines at column cols. By default, lines are wrapped at column 72. A cols specification of 0 disables line wrapping. demoroniser attempts to wrap lines so as to preserve their meaning. Lines are broken at white space whenever possible. If this cannot be done, a line longer than the cols specification will remain in the output HTML. BUGS demoroniser is a Perl script. In order to use it, you must have Perl installed on your system. demoroniser was developed using Perl 4.0, patch level 36. FILES If no outfile is specified, output is written to standard output. If no infile is specified, input is read from standard input. SEE ALSO perl(1) Download demoroniser.zip AUTHOR John Walker
http://www.fourmilab.ch/

This software is in the public domain. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, without any conditions or restrictions. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

by John Walker
January 16th, 1998

Re:Say it ain't so!

[nutsy]

Because people are lazy and careless and use Microsoft's nonstandard high ASCII characters instead of the proper character entities (the &foo; stuff), or just forget to turn off the accursed "auto-correction", that's why.

Re:Say it ain't so!

[MrBogus]

The problem is not that their not straight ASCII -- they are not straight ISO 8859-1. Windows uses several reserved characters for things like curly quotes, and these characters are not implemented in Unix character sets.

I would imagine if you had a MS True Type font, it would look OK. (Or, Slashdot could shut everyone up by implementing a curly quote to HTML & code replacer in it's submit processor.)

Re:Say it ain't so!

[rodgerd]

Because Microsoft products use a different encoding to iso-8859-1, which is standard in the UNIX world - and, indeed the standard to which most moders specs are written. Windows encoding has several extra characters encoded in undefined areas, which contain not-so-smart quotes (the typeographers' quotes).

The shouldn't be a problem, because when translating to HTML, one should either use non-smart quotes (' and "), or one of the HTML entities (&ldquo;, &lsquo;, <q>) that deal with this problem. Instead, MS products use &# entities, specifying numbers which are meaningless on non-Windows encoded systems.

Of course, it isn't all Microsoft's fault. While Lynx and IE 4 & 5 both recognise and render the various quoting entities and markup correctly, stupid old Netscape, and worse yet, Mozilla don't, even in their latest incarnations. (Netscape 4.72 not doing so is bad enough, IMO, but mozilla has no excuse, since the extneded entities are part of the HTML 4 standard. So much for claims gecko is a standards-compliant rendering engine).

At any rate, the most correct thing to do would be to use dumb old typewriter style quoting in HTML. But Microsoft products don't do that, sadly.

Re:Say it ain't so!

[Delphis]

Slashdot's HTML on their site is just crap anyway.. ever had a look at the source?

Try this link to run the main page through the W3C's HTML validator.

Fixing their quotes problem is one on a very long list of things to solve the problems with the HTML on /. .. and on many other sites too.

--

First Computer!

[AtariDatacenter]

Can you possibly guess without looking at my alias? An Atari 400 with 16k RAM, BASIC cartridge, and an Atari 410 "program recorder" which loaded programs at an outrageous 600 baud. I've been addicted ever since. Can I sue Atari for the carpal tunnel caused by a membrane keyboard?

First... COMPUTER!

[toofast]

We got an ATARI Pong game sometime in 1979-1980. That was cool.

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair with 2KB RAM. We had the damn crash-prone 16KB expansion pack and the (I believe) 300 baud cassette recorder to save our shit.

We got this during the winter of 1981. I was only 9. I was king of computing, with all that BASIC programming I did. Back then (remember?) we ad to program a freekin game out of a magazine in order to play. After punching in HEX Assembly language for hours on end (I had nothing else to do), yo get to appreciate applications, games and programming a lot more.

But I realize today how important that computer was, as today I earn $76,000/year working in IT. Most kids today only consider computers as expensive video game machines and/or pr0n fetchers. Such a shame.

Re:First... COMPUTER!

[Kailden]

I remember spending hours copying the code out of back issues of Byte! magazine (i think that was it) to get a silly chain reaction game up on my computer. It was pretty neat when it was done, but I couldn't tell you how it worked.....

Re:First... COMPUTER!

[Kailden]

I also remember when you could buy a special handheld scanner to scan the program in, if you were to lazy to type it.

Re:First... COMPUTER!

[toofast]

Wow, such luxury hehehe

Re:First... COMPUTER!

[Russ Steffen]

Been there. The first computer I owned was a C64 (the first one I used was a Commodore PET). I can't tell you ow many of those programs from Compute!'s Gazette I've typed in. Ahh, memories of MLX and SpeedCheck (or whatever that BASIC checksum program was called).

first computer?

[nomadic]

PC Junior! 128k memory, a floppy drive, a CGA display, and a cartridge port! (I still think they should include the latter on PCs today)

What's wrong with Linux sucks?

[taniwha]

why after I turned my monitor upside down the web page look just like any other Linux web page ....

Re:What's wrong with Linux sucks?

[Cable]

You guys ought to duke it out on that Yahoo club at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/linuxsucks because they use the same mentality there. Just keep it off Slashdot, ok?

Re:What's wrong with Linux sucks?

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

What's wrong with a little color? Can't your nerdy eyes handle it? Tell me what specifically you are talking about and what colors exactly you would use in their place, and MAYBE I will change it just for you.

Wasn't the traffic stuff already on Slashdot?

[rkmath]

I think this is similar to an earlier story on Slashdot - about studies at Los Alamos that used phase-change stuff from physics to model traffic flow.

Here is the Slashdot story link, but the original article link seems to be dead.

http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/05/1656256.sh tml

PS: And would someone add the site referred to in the quickies to the list of sites which disable the "back" button" ...

Re:Wasn't the traffic stuff already on Slashdot?

[KnightStalker]

Here it is... they want to charge you a buck fifty for it though.
--

Re:Wasn't the traffic stuff already on Slashdot?

[bowb]

There was a story a few years ago, in New Scientist I think, about some experiments in England, where they had some electronic signs spaced along some highway. Each sign displayed a recommended speed, which was calculated to even out traffic flow.

PCjr

[toofast]

Did it have that stupid Chicklet Infrared keyboard? Man did that puppy ever suck!

Re:PCjr

[nomadic]

It wasn't THAT bad. Well maybe it was.

Thoughts

[Shaheen]

My first thought is that the Traffic Waves site has been posted to Slashdot before. After an initial search, I couldn't find it. Anyone else want to try?

My second thought is this: My first computer was an IBM PS/2. Wow did that thing kick ass - 386 SX @ 25 MHz, 2 MB RAM (I upgraded to 10 YEAH!), 130 Meg HD, and a 12" monitor that you'd swear was frying your brain.

One of the first things I learned how to do was start the example BASIC games that came with that thing - SNAKE being one of them. Ahh, snake. It ruled yesterday's computers, and it rules today's cell phones.

Another thing, that computer came with the most documentation I've seen for any personal system. It came with the ENTIRE IBM DOS manual! It had every utility's switch, option, and description right there! If only modern computers came with such things. But then again, not much you could do in the way of a manual for a GUI driven system.

Ah well, rant mode off..

Where did I see this before?

[Phroggy]

I first saw the x86 still as a link from badtech.com, but then I saw a link to it from somewhere else, and I was pretty sure it was Slashdot. However, I can't find it by searching Slashdot's archives, so maybe it's not a repeat post?

--

Re:Where did I see this before?

[byoon]

It was on www.kuro5hin.org a couple of weeks ago.

Wristwatch radar

[DustyHodges]

Great... Another excuse for parents to not watch their screaming fucking kids when I go to a theme park, so that I have to deal with them instead. It will tell you where they are, but not what their doing, after all.

Just what we need in America. One more excuse for lazy fucking mothers to let their children run wild and be disrespectful.

Dusty Hodges

Re:Wristwatch radar

[SirGeek]

I soooo agree with you. My mother had my 3 older bother^H^H^H^H^H^Hbrothers... ages 4,3, and 2.. She had LEASHES so that they could only SO far but no more..

Nowadays, the civil rights twits would be screaming "abuse".. Hell no.. They are trying to prevent abuse (basically keeping the kids where they belong so you don't have to beat them).. I mean.. come on.. Have any of you seen how scool is taught now ? With the touchey feely was to make kids feel better (so they no longer grade A, B, C, etc. ).. No wonder kids can't spell..

And what's to keep "lil johnny" from tying his bracelet to a dog and letting the dog run wild ? If anyone can figure out ways to get around their parents, the kids can..

The parents are no longer parents, they are the kids "friends"... Screw That ! Kids need parents who will TEACH them right from wrong. If the lazy parents don't pay attention to their kids and TEACH THEM and LISTEN TO THEM, we will have worse indicdents than Columbine...

Re: Older traffic story ...

[rkmath]

You are right - something related to the traffic thing was on Slashdot earlier.

http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/05/1656256.sh tml

First Computer

[Transition Cat]

Atari 2600, baby! Oh, man, Asteroids ruled - I was so pissed when some bastard stole my cartridge in college; thank God for flea markets. Just not the same on an emulator. Fortunately, my 2600 still works.

Learned BASIC at school on an Apple //+. Still can't shake my addiction to "Super Artillery." Does anyone know where I can find a PC/java/emulator/whatever version?

....

Rubber Banner Ad Bandit

[quonsar]

Didja check out the way that Rubber Bandit page kept going back and reloading banners every few seconds? Weird. Must suck on a modem connection.

"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

This is sooooo wrong...

[MostlyHarmless]

A wristband company called Vertex RSI... that is just NOT RIGHT in the slightest.

That's like calling a cruise ship the Titanic; you can if you want, but it's something you just DON'T DO...

Re:This is sooooo wrong...

[MrScience]

Um, why?


You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.

Re:This is sooooo wrong...

[J. J. Ramsey]

RSI stands for "Repetitive Stress Injury." Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common example of RSI, and the one the above poster was probably thinking about.

My first computer

[j-pimp]

My first computer was a super-charges XT clone. Featuring the 8088 proccessor, 640k of ram(hey thats all well ever need, right Gates?), a whopping 10 meg hard drive, an external 2400bps modem, and of course double density 3.5 and 5.25 floppies.The 3.5 was the B: drive and was attached to a 5.25" slot adapter which was secured to the top of the modem via electric tape. One of the expansion slot covers was removed to allow for the floppy ribon cable and power cord to connect to the 3.5' floppy/

Re:My first computer

[Ranger Rick]

Hell yeah! I can't imagine how much time I wasted playing that game as a kid...

:wq!

Re:My first computer

[j-pimp]

My high schools video editing club had an Amige 500 running the video toaster. They don't use it anymore. I want to see if I can go back and "appropiate" it.

Traffic waves

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Interesting site. I haven't thought about it to the depth he obviously has, but I do something similar when I'm driving (even short distances). Try to keep a constant pace and put on your brakes only if you MUST (and do it as late as possible). One effect he left out was the psychological one of seeing brake lights ahead of you. When people see brake lights, they put on their brakes (often causing the stop waves). So if you don't use your brakes unless you absolutely must, the people behind you are less likely to, leading to fewer traffic waves.

As soon as he mentioned his hypothetical friends helping him out, I thought of the state trooper idea that he mentions two paragraphs later. But I may have a twist on that: Don't get a "rolling barrier" of cops, just put one or two a few miles out from the slowdown/jam. Have them drive 5 miles below the speed limit. Everyone else will slow down to keep from passing the cop and the effect will be achieved. Experiments will be necessary to determine real distances and speeds for specific cases, of course.

Another idea is to have continuously updated speed limit signs. When there is a jam ahead, the previous 5 miles of signs can say "65 MPH" instead of "70 MPH".
--

Re:Traffic waves

[jedwards]

The M25 (Motorway around London) has a variable speedlimit in the worst spots. It works quite well apparently.

Re:Traffic waves

[Anonymous Coward]

Another idea is to have continuously updated speed limit signs. When there is a jam ahead, the previous 5 miles of signs can say "65 MPH" instead of "70 MPH".

That's a fine idea, but what is really needed is a intelligent sign that flashes SPEED THE FUCK UP LOSERS! to the sluglike columns of traffic rubbernecking at the fatal accident in the opposite lanes.

Re:Traffic waves

[anticypher]

It works quite well apparently.

Apparently, you haven't been stuck on the M25.

Theory has it the variable speed limits are more for regulating the flow heading towards the main spoke roads like the M1 and M4. Practice has it the rapidly changing speed limits are for revenue generation. When you see the limit change, you will see a dozen cops sitting on the side of the road after the next exit. Worse than those damnable cameras.

the AC

Re:Traffic waves

[fcw]

I regularly drive on the section of the M25 where the variable speed limits are imposed, and I've never seen 'a dozen cops sitting on the side of the road'. I can't see why they'd bother, since the gantries above the lanes that display the speed limits have digital speed cameras built into them. Last I heard, they're set to trigger if you're doing 10mph above the posted limit (and at 90 when there's no limit posted).

Re:Traffic waves

[CunningPike]

For information about the M25 automatic speed-limit have a look at this page. Apparently, they called it MIDAS!

| What? you were expecting

first computer

[fence]

The first computer that I programmed was a PDP-8e.
paper tape bootstrap, 8 inch floppies that clicked and clacked REALLY LOUD.
It ran the console CRT and three teletypes using only 4K of RAM.

The first computer that I purchased was a TRS-80 Color Computer in late 1981, I believe. It had 4K of memory that I later upgraded to 16K by replacing the chips, then finally 64K by piggybacking four chips together per socket.
I went for the TRS-80 CoCo over the other home machines available at the time because of the 6809 processor. A buddy (thanks, Rocky) gave me an assembler/disassembler toolset and then things got really interesting!
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?

Scientific American re: ALT-711, the age breaker

[Zoyd]

From the a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/2000/0700i ssue/0700scicit2.html">SA article:

Perhaps more exciting is [Anthony] Cerami's recent discovery of a molecular "breaker"--a drug that may actually reverse the aging process by cracking sugar-protein links once they form. "Instead of looking for prevention, we can now administer a compound to reduce the stiffness we see in diabetes and aging," Cerami reported at a recent Novartis Foundation symposium in London. The breaker, dimethyl-3-phenacylthiazolium chloride, or ALT-711, can tear tough AGE bonds apart. Diabetic animals, old dogs and elderly rhesus monkeys given the compound daily for three weeks yielded spectacular results. "The heart and major arteries, which were quite stiff, became more pliable and elastic. So the heart could pump more blood--similar to what you'd see in a young animal," Cerami stated.

This is pretty exciting stuff. Anyone with access to Medline should check out the ALT-711 research being done. Here are the abstracts from the latest two studies:

An advanced glycation endproduct cross-link breaker can reverse age-related increases in myocardial stiffness. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A (PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) 2000 Mar 14; 97 (6): 2809-13

Decreased elasticity of the cardiovascular system is one of the hallmarks of the normal aging process of mammals. A potential explanation for this decreased elasticity is that glucose can react nonenzymatically with long-lived proteins, such as collagen and lens crystallin, and link them together, producing advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs). Previous studies have shown that aminoguanidine, an AGE inhibitor, can prevent glucose cross-linking of proteins and the loss of elasticity associated with aging and diabetes. Recently, an AGE cross-link breaker (ALT-711) has been described, which we have evaluated in aged dogs. After 1 month of administration of ALT-711, a significant reduction ( approximately 40%) in age-related left ventricular stiffness was observed [(57.1 +/- 6.8 mmHg x m(2)/ml pretreatment and 33.1 +/- 4.6 mmHg x m(2)/ml posttreatment (1 mmHg = 133 Pa)]. This decrease was accompanied by improvement in cardiac function.

Improvement by aminoguanidine of insulin secretion from pancreatic islets grafted to syngeneic diabetic rats. Biochem Pharmacol (BIOCHEMICAL PHARMACOLOGY) 2000 Jul 15; 60 (2): 263-8

Prolonged hyperglycemia inhibits B-cell function by mechanisms that are largely unclarified. We investigated the involvement of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), using aminoguanidine as well as the AGE-breaking compound ALT-711 in a transplantation model. Islets from Wistar-Furth rats were transplanted under the kidney capsule of syngeneic streptozocin-diabetic recipients. Aminoguanidine was administered as 1 g/L in the drinking water. Graft-bearing kidneys were isolated and perfused to investigate insulin secretion, and grafts were excised to measure preproinsulin mRNA contents. In all transplants to diabetic rats, insulin responses to 27.8 mM glucose were abolished and aminoguanidine failed to correct this abnormality. However, aminoguanidine treatment for 8 weeks following transplantation increased preproinsulin mRNA contents of the grafts (P less than 0.05). In addition, treatment with aminoguanidine enhanced the insulin secretory response to arginine (P less than 0.05). Arginine-induced insulin secretion was also enhanced when aminoguanidine treatment was started after an initial 2-week implantation period rather than immediately after transplantation. On the other hand, treatment with ALT-711 (0.1 mg/kg by gavage) for 8 weeks completely failed to affect B-cell function of grafts, and ALT-711 was also ineffective under in vitro conditions. Our findings indicate that aminoguanidine effects in vivo are to a major extent not coupled to AGEs or nitric oxide synthetase inhibition, but possibly to oxidative modifications accomplished by the guanidine compound.

Death and dying and stuff

[truelight]

Hey, about that anti aging article... I recently e-mailed the about.com biology guide on this, and she responded with this extremely interesting response:

"Hello Mattias,

Death is a part of life. In fact one of the characteristics of living things is that all living things die. Sleep would not prevent death from occurring.

As scientists find out more and more about the body, they have discovered that our cells are genetically programmed to die. Cells have structures called telomeres that shorten as the cell ages.

Studies have been performed to see if researchers can prevent the telomeres from shortening and thus prolong the cell's life. See:

The Real Fountain of Youth http://biology.about.com/library/weekly/aa012298.h tm

-- Regina" /Mattias

My Computer Firsts

[Kris_J]

The first computer I used (that I remember) was a DEC 10.

The first computer I had at home was a Kaypro II

The first computer I owned was a 19MHz XT with 1MB of EMS that I used as a drive cache so I could run Windows 3.0 on it. Only took 2 minutes to start windows from a DOS prompt.

Re:My Computer Firsts

[batmn42]

First computer was a Radio shack (TM) Tandy Color Computer-- hooked up to a tv and had 10 colors (0-9)... Learned to program in E x t e n d e d Color Basic (TM). Ah, those were the days, not like the superfangled *monitors* and *internal* floppy drives you kids have now! We didn't overclock!! We didn't need it!

Re:My Computer Firsts

[ncc74656]

First computer was a Radio shack (TM) Tandy Color Computer...We didn't overclock!! We didn't need it!

IIRC, there was a POKE that would double the execution speed of your programs. The disk controller didn't like it much, though...as soon as you used it while the disk controller was plugged in, it either locked up or rebooted.

(The first computer I had at home was a TI-99/4A. Before that, there was my grandfather's CoCo, and before that, a TAG program I was in had some TRS-80 Model Is and an Apple II+. My current collection of old computers consists of three Apple IIs (IIGS, IIe, II+), an IBM PC/XT (it talks to my Samba servers through a 8-bit Ethernet NIC I tracked down in a used-parts store), a Tandy Color Computer 2, and a Commodore VIC-20. The one I've had longest is the IIGS, which started life back in '85 as a IIe (with 128K, a DuoDisk, and an Imagewriter).)

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

Flame Them? Why bother (no screwups this time :)

[emgeemg]

Who needs to flame the linuxsucks.com people? They're in for a far more vile fate, a good ole slashdot effect.

I'm fighting the urge to go crazy....

[TheSimon]

About that LinuxSucks.com....If that's not twisted reasonging, then maybe I'll have to go read up on what twisted actually means.

Just a few things before I lose it:

How is freebsd.org a site which tries to convince you that linux sucks?

How does that fact that linux can run under windows using vmware make it suck?

My TV doesn't crash. My microwave doesn't crash. - nuff said

Allows older hardware to be useful again - this makes it suck?

Why can't those people speak proper (or even close to proper) English?

I think I'll stop now

Re:I'm fighting the urge to go crazy....

[Ig0r]

Speaking of going crazy, he mentions that his TI-82 never crashes. Well, apparently he has never actually installed any programs on it, because badly designed assembly programs can and do crash calcs all the time. When I upgraded the OS on my TI-89, all of the older programs crashed, and I managed to have to reset the calc about 50 times that day :)

--

Daryl Hall and John Oates

[snarf_snarf]

any takers? There is a flash from the past or is that .gov | .mil /fbi /cia /echelon meta-analyzing my psychographic tendecies. Does the real Echelon have a domain. Mindwatch should link to it. My first system was the Apple //c with 13 inch composite moniter (thats 65000 colors in 1985) for BASIC. I plugged it into an rf switch so I could play nintendo on it too. I was ten years old. I rocked! P.S. whatever happened to the drudge report. too bad.

JeffK's version of "Survivor"

[pnevares]

The quickies seem the best place for something like this. =)

SMARTY MAN GAEM DESIGNEAR "SURVIROR"
(be sure not to miss John Carmack's profile!)

Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".

sucking

[slakhead]

things look very ugly when emotions run high.

they get even worse when people start to mix sarcasm, anger, and misinformation into multi-page rants.

but i suppose that is what the net is about.

:)

Linuxsucks.com

[pheonix]

Actually, just briefly reviewing the site, I would recommend that EVERY SINGLE linux developer spend some time there.

Many of the complaints listed are the same complaints I have, and the same complaints of anyone that I've exposed to linux. It would be nice if the list of "why linux sucks" was done in a more easily followed manner, but the raw language of it tends to help get the point across.

Oh, and my first computer was a Tandy TRS-80 with the analog tape system...I still have it, although I haven't had it out of it's box in nearly 2 years.

-Jer

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

www.linuxsucks.com www.linuxsucks.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on BSD/OS

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[Azog]

Another book that Unix developers should all read is the Unix Haters Handbook. It comes with the Unix Barf Bag, a cool desktop accessory for the budding Unix guru!

It has a lot of well reasoned, well documented complaints about the suckage of various Unix flavors. It is mostly pre-Linux, (and Linux and friends have fixed a lot of the problems) but many of their complaints are applicable.

Top Unix problems, IMHO:

• X Windows. bleah. Too many sacrifices were made for the network transparency. Still no anti-aliased fonts! Font handling in general sucks, because the client and the server have no standard way of communicating font metrics.
  
  
• Printing, and What You See Is What You Get. This was the most significant improvement of Windows 3.x over DOS. The driver of the desktop publishing revolution was Macs and the LaserWriter. In comparasion, printing sucks on Linux. Don't tell me about TeX, or troff - I know. (shudder).
  
  
• Basic local area networking and file sharing. This is sooo simple in Windows. You right click a folder... share as... change the default permissions... and a few seconds later all the other windows machines can see it. On Linux I'm often reduced to using ftp. What about NFS you say? Not a File System. NFS is fundamentally broken. The idea behind it was a stateless protocol - the problem is, a file system is nothing BUT state. Plus you have to edit configuration files... groan.
  
  
• Web Browser. Mozilla is getting there... slowly... please...
  
  
• The "Everything is A Text File" attitude. This is great for quick hacks, but a lousy way to build software. Think I'm wrong? Read the book. At least Gnome and KDE are abandoning this for actual component systems.
  

But hey. For a lot of things, Unix is great! I run my home server with Mandrake 7.1, but my workstation usually runs Windows 2000. At work I use FreeBSD, and my firewall is OpenBSD.

And, free software is slowly but surely fixing most of those problems. Just don't forget: it isn't there yet. For some people, and some things, Linux still sucks.


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. What else is there to say? It's amazing to me that nearly every *sentient* being understands that Linux sucks in the ways you list--with quibbles about the order-- but you never hear about crowds of people signing up TO DO SOMETHING about those problems.

X still sucks--and still they have a hard time getting enough people to work on it. Incredible, i mean you'd think there'd be a line of smart people waiting to sign on to the project. X will probably always suck for architectural reasons and the completely insane backwards compatibility requirements.

Printing in Linux is a festering sore. The technology that most people still use does not free the OS from having to dealw/ control printers, and in fact more people are using non-postscript printers than before--but this doesn't seem to ever register with Linux people. (Hey we just output postscript--no problems here! Right and Linux will never really need to support USB either) Where are the "million eyeballs" envisioning a printing system that every printer manufacturer can release drivers for and every program can use?

Where is the leadership of the companies? Where the fuck is Redhat ?

Mozilla ? Why does (did) Mozilla have to be yet another toolkit and extensible and configurable into the fourth dimension and back again? Why couldn't they just put out a nice, fast browser, quickly?
Dreamers --almost all the shortcomings and chronic deficiencies in **nix systems comes down to this: somebody left academics and dreamers in charge and they scuttled the ship with their endless ooh, but it could also do this! and well, the ideal way to accomplish task X (to be completed years later). Anybody who uses X has a lot of damn gall accusing Microsoft of "bloatware". Ditto Mozilla.

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[matman]

I love textual conf files! It makes backups of my configuration quick and simple and is especially helluh for playing around with the configs. Thats the thing that i hate with windows, configuration is scattered between files with proprietary layouts, the registry, and ini files - who knows what to backup?! How would I backup the entire system config? its hard! Linux lets me do this modularily. Now, the registry isnt a bad idea, and I think that a central configuration registry would be a cool thing for linux - even just a few SQL databases even?

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[Azog]

Yes, that would be nice. Now that MySQL is GPL, it would be possible to do something like the Windows Registry, but properly.

I like text config files too... sometimes... but it can be so damn confusing finding the file you need. Especially when you go back and forth between several flavors of Unix. On FreeBSD, the Apache config file is... um... I think /usr/local/etc/apache/apache.conf. But under Linux it's... um... /usr/etc/apache.conf. Or is it? Damn! time to run find again...

And where was that php3.ini again? ARRRGH!

Unfortunately, it's too late to change things. Although it would be possible to make a distribution of Linux with all the settings and configurations stored in a nice MySQL database, with a nice text mode tool for editing it (or just run mysql -u root -p config if you are the command-line type...)

it's too late. It would be incompatible with all the other stuff out there, and as soon as Apache, or PHP, or Bind, or ifconfig, or ANYTHING was revised, you would be in a race to keep up.

No, Unix is stuck with a zillion text mode files, all with incompatible syntax, different naming conventions, and poor documentation.

The only glimmer of light is the File System Standard. Maybe, eventually, all the Free Unixes of the world will agree on it, and at least I will know WHERE to find the file I want.

(not that NT is always an improvement... who can remember where the hosts file lives on an NT system? Somewhere under \system32\drivers, I think?)


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[matman]

maybe it could be used in the hurd or something? hehe.

the big issue would be that not all conf files work like 'key = value'. otherwise, you could have some daemon keep some sort of flat file/database equivilance.

the idea is that once such a system exists, people may be inclined to use it. hehe. it could be something like the proc filesystem. where you have files, which arent really files. you can change them, but the changes really get made in the database. I'd go for that :)

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[Black Parrot]

• X Windows. bleah. Too many sacrifices were made for the network transparency. Still no anti-aliased fonts! Font handling in general sucks, because the client and the server have no standard way of communicating font metrics.

Yeah, there's always room for improvement. But network transparency is incredibly important for some of us. Moreover, "no AA fonts" is not such a big problem as certain people like to portray it. Right now, for example, I can spot exactly two cases of the jaggies on my desktop (the "AM" in my clock).

All in all I appreciate X a lot, in spite of several years of using Win 9x exclusively.

• Printing, and What You See Is What You Get. This was the most significant improvement of Windows 3.x over DOS. The driver of the desktop publishing revolution was Macs and the LaserWriter. In comparasion, printing sucks on Linux. Don't tell me about TeX, or troff - I know. (shudder).

Again, not so big a problem as often protrayed. For nicety-nicety documents, I whip them out in LyX, gen them up as PostScript, inspect them in the previewer, click a button to print them, and - presto! - what I saw is what comes out on my printer. (Not even a PostScript printer, thanks to the wonders of GhostScript.)

• Basic local area networking and file sharing. This is sooo simple in Windows. You right click a folder... share as... change the default permissions... and a few seconds later all the other windows machines can see it. On Linux I'm often reduced to using ftp. What about NFS you say? Not a File System. NFS is fundamentally broken. The idea behind it was a stateless protocol - the problem is, a file system is nothing BUT state. Plus you have to edit configuration files... groan.

NFS works fine by me. If I want others to see a file, chmod fixes it in an eyeblink.

I admit that ACLs would be nice in certain circumstances, though as a former VAX admin I can testify that in business environments they can be an enormous amount of headache for little tangible gain. (Think "office politics".)

• Web Browser. Mozilla is getting there... slowly... please...

This is a favorite thing for trolls and astroturfors to bring up. No, I don't think you fit into either category, but you still get the same answer they do: this is not a problem with Unix. So long as 90% of the desktop belongs to a single platform, 99.99% of the for-profit programming work is going to go toward perfecting products for that platform.

• The "Everything is A Text File" attitude. This is great for quick hacks, but a lousy way to build software. Think I'm wrong? Read the book. At least Gnome and KDE are abandoning this for actual component systems.

And making a very big mistake, IMO. One of the few things that ticks me off about GNOME is that they are GNOMEifying things rather than having GNOME pick up what you already have installed on your system. I haven't looked at 1.2 yet, but under October... if you upgrade xscreensaver, GNOME doesn't get the new goodies. Also, some menu items are actually easier to fix with an editor than by clicking 100 times on the panel (e.g., ssh terminals to all your other machines/accounts), but when you go to do it the easy way, you find that you have to edit separate files in separate directories rather than a single flat file like FVWM offers. Grrr.

> Just don't forget: it isn't there yet. For some people, and some things, Linux still sucks.

I can deal with that. If Linux isn't "there" yet for someone, that someone simply shouldn't use Linux. Or should dive in and fix it.

But for the rest of us, it's absurd to hear a blanket condemnation that "Linux sux" when we are able to use it to do so many fine things that we were not able to do with our previous systems.

--

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Thanks, I am working on making it more readable.

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Wow, I feel so naked.

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Torrey please post this at my site. Thanks.

Re:Linuxsucks.com

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Please post your fine comments at my site. I look for intelligent comments, not JUST angry hackers shooting their mouths off.

Fix the link to HandHeldCrime

[imac.usr]

it's showing as "http://slashdot.org/www.handheldcrime.com".

Re:Anti-aging = Overpopulation!

[ucblockhead]

Most religions allow sorts of unnatural things, like antibiotics, contraceptives, etc.

But anyway, I'd just like to point out that in the rich countries where anti-aging treatments are most likely to occur, the birth rate is at, or below, replacement value and falling.

(Even if we could stop aging and all disease, your life expectency would still be in the ~250 range, because of accidents, etc.)

Linux sucks - a reply

[Greeno]

Well, having read through the comments (both of them!) on the linux sucks site, it seems to boil down to 2 things.

1) We can't run office
2) Its too difficult

Personally I'm glad that linux takes some level of knowledge to be able to operate. Its not really designed to fuction as a desktop OS for Joe Public - just for Jim Geek (like me).

The fact that you can turn linux into a OS which can do pretty much everything you need (lets not talk about DVD's etc though!) means that it is powerful. If you don't know how to use it - maybe you shouldn't be. I know that this is most likely going against the standard - "Lets make linux take over the world" - but I think its true.

There are correct tools for the job, for me that is linux - but for my parents to send email..... Windows wins.

I have flame proof underwear and a level 12 necromancer ready to defend me! Do your worst!

This is much more interesting than Linux Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Unixux

First computer: TRS-80 Model 4

[Claudius]

Man did that thing ever rock! Two, count em, two floppy disk drives, a whopping 64k of ram, and a great big red power button on the keyboard. Sure it had sucky games, but then again it helped me learn assembly language programming (Z-80) in 6th grade. I didn't own an assembler (couldn't talk the parents into springing for one) so I hand-assembled everything with a hex calculator and entered it directly into memory with the debugger.... Ah, the good old days. I loved the thing--a throwback to when computers cost about as much as an automobile and weighed about the same too.

Btw., whatever happened to Scripsit, the greatest word processor of all time?

My First Computer

[TheSimon]

was an Amiga 1000 (ok im pretty young, so what?) with 256k ram, later upgraded to 512k, I don't really remember too much about it. I guess I'll have to go dig it up.

Re:FINALLY, SOMEONE I DON'T HAVE TO FLAME

[DustyHodges]

Damn it, I'm tired, and I'm at work. Allow me a typo every now and again. Dick.

VAG Fan Club - where do I send my check?

[jcapell]

I want a VAG T-Shirt!

-----------------

Linuxsucks...

[LongShip]

No flames please...

But I kind of like the linuxsucks site.

The guy has a sense of humor. I dropped in and had a good laugh at myself and many other Linux advocates.

We need to laugh more at ourselves. Kudos to the linuxsucks webmaster.

Re: Older traffic story ...

[stripes]

You are right - something related to the traffic thing was on Slashdot earlier.

And if you search in it for "waves" about the forth one has a link to the same page the quickies article talks about. I knew I had seen it on slashdot before :-)

Take some Vallium

[kdgarris]

Actually, I find the first computer stories to be entertaining; brings back some fond memories of all the old computers from the 80's that have gone by the wayside...

IBM convertable laptop

[ostiguy]

My father works for Prudential, and they naturally were all over Big Blue. I donno how close it was to being the first laptop, it had a blue tinted monochrome screen, and must have weighed 15 lbs. To expand it, one added 4inch/3inch/15 inch units to the back; I think this is how it got extra comm ports. You could keep adding units until the thing was aboutthe size of a surfboard (there was a printer module).

My first real computer was a PS/2 model 80, which was a 386 with I think 4 mb ram standard, but I had that sonuvabitch rocking with a Kingston 486 upgrade and a Kingston memory MCA board, fully populated with 16mb of ram. It was on this I ran WFW 3.11 and used Prodigy, so I was on the net relatively early, when I was 16 or so (5.5 yrs ago). True geekdom didn't come until I had worked for Pru a couple summer, and got interested in networking.

I still have a *^%#load of various MCA NICs in my basement, the Model 80 is still down there. I should really put Linux on it, or something, just for the memories. I have had Model 77, 56, 57, 60, etc all flow thru, but just that one original PS/2 remains.

matt

Re:IBM convertable laptop

[Kris_J]

rocking with a Kingston 486 upgrade and a Kingston memory MCA board, fully populated with 16mb of ram

Hardware upgrades really used to rock. Systems didn't dead-end back in the day anywhere near as frequently as they do now. Thank std_deity.h for companies like Powerleap and Evergreen still keeping the innovative hardware upgrade alive. I've already turned my Pentium75 into a K6-2 300. Soon I'll be upgrading my company's old NT server from a PPro 200 to a Celeron 600 without having to take it down for a week.

Does anyone else know any other companies with a flare for such upgrades?

Linuxsucks sucks

[niccodicco]

Yeah but did you check the 'Music' link (the first one)? The site links to AMAZON for Christ's sake.

I agree on everything else in your post though.

Ant's first computer... TI-99/4A

[antdude]

More information right here: here.

Now, if I could just get game ROMs for the emulators :(.

Re:Ant's first computer... TI-99/4A

[kawlyn]

I still have my extended basic cartridge and cable s for the tape drive.

Re:Ant's first computer... TI-99/4A

[KnightStalker]

Or maybe Parsec exists for other platforms...? Here's hoping ;-)
--

existing program suitable for simulating traffic?

[orpheus]

[BTW, Driver Psychology is a useful link for those who are interested in the other major component of traffic -- or simply have a friend they want to keep from killing themselves on the highway]

I used to take my friends to a cabin in Laconia, NH for Thanksgiving each year. One year, (early 80's) we brought several (Apple II) computers with us and attacked this problem, coding and discussing it as we conducted our usual festivities. The joke was that we'd win a Nobel Prize (The Peace Prize, we decided) and the undying gratitude of the Billions in the Next Millenium.

Alas, coding/modifying the digital automata took most of our time , and none of us had more than a couple of years driving experience. (Yikes, I can't believe it even ran in something like real time on a 64K machine with 191K floppies (this was before hard drives for personal computers) running on a 8/16 bit CPU at a true speed of 1/2 MHz) We never made our breakthrough -- and the hangovers on the last day of that trip made several of us repress the memory of the entire weekend.

Well, here we are, hard upon the next millenium, and I was wondering what software is out there that could implement a digital automata traffic simulator. We had notebooks full of elaborate scenarios - traffic light synchronization, types of accidents, ambulances, cars going in/out os various types of commercial parking lot entryways, etc. It was a low-res SimCity of traffic. -- much more fascinating than it sounds. (And hey, if a million late night hackers can't solve traffic, then we should go back to the single wheel and start over)

Can anyone suggest a program - perhaps Object Oriented - that would let me repeat and expand on my original experiments? I *still* drive differently because of what I learned (At last! Driver's Ed that means something!)

HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[SvnLyrBrto]

That's particularly ironic, because pretty much EVERY complaint that guy has about Linux applies equally to BSD!

So whaddya think... start a betting pool...

Is he:

An "anti GPL RMS is a dirty hippie commie BSD license is "more free"" type?

A Berkeley student/alum who is disgruntled that Linux gets so much mindshare?

A hipocrite, plain and simple?

john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!

Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if

Re:HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[pheonix]

He could actually be simply someone like me; someone who uses Linux/BSD but still sees that there is a great deal that is NOT good about it and a great deal that Windows/MacOS still have over linux (ouch, that's going to hurt my Karma). He might just be using a humorous "linux sucks" forum to get his point across.

With all that having been said, I still vote for "hypocrite" with my $5 of pay-pal cash :P
-Jer

Re:HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Hey, bet on this: Did "that guy" post a single one of those messages on linuxsucks? No, I did'nt. I won the bet. Pay up.

Re:HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

hypocrite? LOL. I was probably programming in assembler when you were in diapers young man. "I've seen it all" applies.

Re:HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[pheonix]

I'd tend to doubt it. At any rate, rather than your above worthless post, perhaps you could clarify? Thus far, all you've done is indicate that you're immature (regardless of age), a braggart, likely full of shit, and still prolly a hypocrite. *shrug*
-Jer

Re:HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Well Jer I just assumed your age from looking at your profile: All work and no play makes Jer a dull boy!!All work and no play makes Jer a dull boy!!All work and no play makes Jer a dull boy!!All work and no play makes Jer a dull boy!!All work and no play makes Jer a dull boy!!All work and no play makes Jer a dull boy!!All ....etc.... And your web site: http://www.qix.net/~pheonix Which of course is broken. :-) Wanna laugh? Go visit us at http://www.linuxsucks.com and don't take yourself or computers so seriously in the future.

Re:HeHe... wanna start a betting pool?

[pheonix]

Lesse, where to start:

• The "All work and no play makes xxx a dull boy" is a reference from an amusing scene in a movie. Infer from it what you will.
• The web site was added to my profile about a year and a half ago, give or take some. I've since changed ISPs to one that provides DSL, and frankly forgot that I had the site listed here. Thanks for the heads-up. I don't understand how that indicates age, but, I suppose we can't all be Sherlock Holmes.
• I have visited and read through much of your site. I find it amusing. If you read my original post, I personally think the site is a must-read for Linux developers. I don't take myself (or computers for that matter) all that seriously.

• The "hypocrite" remark was a sarcastic attempt at humor. Whether it was vague, beyond your comprehension, or just plain not funny I couldn't tell ya', but if you'd take the time, my guess is you'd see it.

  Hint: He could actually be simply someone like me; someone who uses Linux/BSD but still sees that there is a great deal that is NOT good about it and a great deal that Windows/MacOS still have over linux (ouch, that's going to hurt my Karma). He might just be using a humorous "linux sucks" forum to get his point across. Sound like a defense of your position at all?

  Your indication that "you've seen it all" is unfounded and currently unbacked. Just for fun, lemme point out the hypocracy in your latest post:

  don't take yourself or computers so seriously in the future.

  This statement, spoken by someone who made a flying LEAP to defend his "honor" and that of his web site. You certainly haven't impressed anyone on THIS side of the fence with your worldly ways and maturity.

-Jer

First Computer: What ever happened to Logo???

[cryoboy]

Just read some of the stories about peoples 1st computers and noted that many C64 users mentioned using Logo. Just wondering what ever happened to Logo? Is it being maintained, has it developed? Just curious.

ihatewindows98.com

[cacheMan]

There was a link to ihatewindows98.com from that linux sucks page. It strikes me as funny that they made the ihatewindows98.com page using Frontpage. They must not hate other microsoft products as much as the OS. Maybe they'll like one of the companies to come out of the split.

First Computer - RCA CDP1802

[Turing Machine]

An IBM OS/360 mainframe when I was twelve. It had BASIC and PL/I in interactive mode, IIRC, and FORTRAN and COBOL for batch use.

The first one I owned was a COSMAC ELF built from the plans in the August 1976 in Popular Electronics (yeah, I'm an old bastard. Sue me.) It ate up the money saved from a whole summer's worth of part-time employment. At that, I couldn't afford the two digit hex display, and had to make do with 8 LEDs tied directly to the data bus. The 1802 was actually quite a nice chip for the time.... 16 bit registers (vs. 8 bit for competitors such as the 6502 and 8080), CMOS technology, and it came in a nice rad-hardened ceramic package. I understand that RCA sold a buttload of these to the military for satellite applications, but it never really caught on in the PC world. A cursory examination of parts suppliers indicates that most of the parts from the above schematic are still available. Might make a nice retrocomputing project....hmmm.
--
WordSocket Voice BBS Software

The hound says I'm ranting

[h2odragon]

...so I'll rant to a more receptive audience. Warning, partially coherent frothing follows, just skip to the next if yer easily offinded.

Read linuxsucks. the top reasons especially; specifically, the last comment on the page (as I write this, "Luke from [IP address]).

OK. The PhD in AI. I've done x86 assembler, bare metal stuff, and I've done and read quite a bit of AI... informal but I have some knowledge. I've done and am doing some AI-ish stuff. The two DO NOT mix. There's brains in AI work, there's brains in OS work; I don't think the two can co-exist. If you think they can, please tell me your brand, I could use a shot. In short, I laugh. VMS bigot anyway.

Next up, Chris 2/17. Damn. Anybody know a "chris" at microsloth? Perhaps a high-up in marketing? The editor's note helps confirm my suspicion that I wants a shot of his brand.

The screed above that, well, that's sorta suspiciosly like my (semi-illiterate) 14yr old nephew would write after an evening of stoking up on, say, Ziff Davis publications. Really, the shameless propaganda with no redeeming social value has got to stop. Will no one think of the children?

And I'd love to rant a bit more about that page, but that's it. How long has this been up? Granted I'll say these comments are probably worth reading, but 3? That's it? What kind of criticism is that? Any propaganda meister worth his salt ought to know that the key principle is REPITION... I'm sure you've got it in you somewhere.

... Ahh, that feels better. But really, ya'll, is bombing the form gonna do any good? Lookit this forum; we knows there's dipshits abounding who happen to be around, do we need to prove it yet again?

My first computer

[rograndom]

An Apple ][c was my first computer too. Shoot I still have the damn thing plugged in. Lemonade Stand rules!

andy j.

Re:Some History

[Schnedt McWapt]

Cool hack.

I remember back in the old times when I got deleted from a large multi-line BBS. It was an Oracomm board, and if you were the one who originated a discussion thread you had the ability to also delete it completely. So one night for fun I spooled the whole thread into a text file, ran the textfile through the Jive filter, deleted the thread, and posted the new 'jive' version as if it were the original thread.

Boy were people pissed.

x86still

[hackman]

Love the idea! Next time start with the basics and see if you can make whiskey. =) I'm imagining after half a day of work on the computer - picking up the whiskey that drained into a shot glass beside my computer.. the harder you work the more you drink.

So the little copper box is cool, but he said he 'soldered' it together.. depending on the type of solder you use - it has quite a high percentage of lead in it. I'm not sure I'd drink much out of that particular design of still...

Brett

WVWare

[zigzag]

On the Linux Sucks site,
through the Linux Slogans link,
in the Why Linux Sucks column,
at the fourth bullet

there is mention of a tool for viewing MS Word docs. Looks cool. Thought you should know.

http://www.wvware.com

Re:WVWare

[Chris Brewer]

I thought it was called StarOffice...
--

Linux Sucks?

[Rinikusu]

Okay, this is pretty funny.

First off, Let me start off by saying that I'm a Win2K user. I used to run NT 4.0, but replaced it with an errant install of Redhat 6.2 (see some of my previous postings for that). So, I more or less tried to use Redhat 6.2 for about a month.

Now, why am I back to Win"blows"?

Simple:

1) The applications I use are here today, not tomorrow, not next year. I got tired of trying out really beta software for Linux for the stuff I use, and the stuff that wasn't beta was very unpolished, very cluttered, very unfocused. Think GNUCash vs. Quicken or even Money and you'll see what I mean.

2) X is slow and crappy and unresponsive. I run a dual CPU system and it annoys the hell out of me. X likes to crash, taking my whole system with it, usually. It just sucks balls. I stated before that the client-server architecture inherent in X is NOT NEEDED for typical home/end users. BeOS does the GUI right. You want to beat the GUI experience that Win2K gives? Ditch X and come up with something new.

3) I've not *touched* my registry since installing Win2k. I had to "touch" all kinds of config files weekly under Linux, just to install stuff.

4) Who cares about freedom to do with the software? Can't you see that RMS wants you to be paid MINIMUM WAGE for your work? How dare you code for money! nono, that was a rant, sorry. Rather, most users don't give a rat's ass about GPL or whatever. They want to install a software package and then use it. They don't want to have to search freshmeat.net for some obscure graphics lib or a specific version or whatever. Win2K at least halfway has this right. how many updates have I done to Win2K? Two or Three, the security update patch, couple drivers. And they installed *smoothly* with a double click. Every week I was scouring for the latest glibc or whatever to get whatever to work. Too much of a hassle.

4. Linux just felt too beta to do anything that I would want to do. The feel is not right on the OS. I don't care how smooth the architecture is or how stable it is (to an extent). Think of it this way: My Ti Graphing Calculator I had for engineering never crashed on me, but you don't hear me extolling it's stability virtues. Win2K didn't crash on me until I installed EverCrack.

5. i won't go into the games rant, because games are not important to me.

Does Linux suck? Hell fuck no. I've got two linux machines in my living room routing mail, etc. They are *great* for that. But for everyday using, Win2K provides me with the best experience, freedom be damned. BeOS has a better "experience" than linux, and I'd really like to see it take off. Will I ever use Linux as my everday OS again? If they can fix X so it doesn't run so slow and get some real apps that don't require 3 hours of searching to find that obscure library (hey, freedom has its price), then maybe. Until then, I'm sticking with something I know and somewhat trust. Fuck, guys, it's just a goddamned OS. Go outside and see the real world every once and awhile.

Re:Linux Sucks?

[Alan]

Disclaimer: I'm a Linux user for about 5 years...

1) The applications I use are here today, not tomorrow, not next year. I got tired of trying out really beta software for Linux for the stuff I use, and the stuff that wasn't beta was very unpolished, very cluttered, very unfocused. Think GNUCash vs. Quicken or even Money and you'll see what I mean.

I can't argue with this. The apps are coming, and in reality I doubt any of them (minus the GIMP perhaps) would really stand up on a feature to feature, bug to bug competition.

2) X is slow and crappy and unresponsive. I run a dual CPU system and it annoys the hell out of me. X likes to crash, taking my whole system with it, usually. It just sucks balls. I stated before that the client-server architecture inherent in X is NOT NEEDED for typical home/end users. BeOS does the GUI right. You want to beat the GUI experience that Win2K gives? Ditch X and come up with something new.

I've never had this problem. Before I upgraded I was on a Cel-300 on a matrox millenium and I found no difference between windows and linux performace. Now this also depends a lot on your X setup and window manager, but I've never had issues with X.

3) I've not *touched* my registry since installing Win2k. I had to "touch" all kinds of config files weekly under Linux, just to install stuff.

I don't touch my windows registry either, but for a different reason :). You can have a stock linux system up and going without any realy system config file touching, but yes, sometimes you have to "touch" things. If you're running a server you have to configure all sorts of things. This configuration is done by editing files, just as setting up IIS requires you to configure settings within IIS. Sure there is no editing of those old archane text files, but there is "touching".

4) Who cares about freedom to do with the software? Can't you see that RMS wants you to be paid MINIMUM WAGE for your work? How dare you code for money! nono, that was a rant, sorry. Rather, most users don't give a rat's ass about GPL or whatever. They want to install a software package and then use it. They don't want to have to search freshmeat.net for some obscure graphics lib or a specific version or whatever. Win2K at least halfway has this right. how many updates have I done to Win2K? Two or Three, the security update patch, couple drivers. And they installed *smoothly* with a double click. Every week I was scouring for the latest glibc or whatever to get whatever to work. Too much of a hassle.

I work as a programmer for a linux company so the GPL is quite important. If anything it allows us to use "free" linux software and modify it to our hearts desire and build new linux solutions and sell them. Yes, we contribute back. No, I don't really belive that all software should be free, no one should get paid for any coding and all profits in a company should be from support or what have you.

4. Linux just felt too beta to do anything that I would want to do. The feel is not right on the OS. I don't care how smooth the architecture is or how stable it is (to an extent). Think of it this way: My Ti Graphing Calculator I had for engineering never crashed on me, but you don't hear me extolling it's stability virtues. Win2K didn't crash on me until I installed EverCrack.

That's how you feel. Linux has crashed on my way less than windows has, and it feels far more solid for me.

Like I said though, I'm a coder who does perl, C, cgi and web like stuff and because of my occupation Linux is a far more natural choice than windows.

It is personal choice though... which is what I hope we all realize this... I choose linux, someone else chooses windows, someone else chooses BeOS.... different tools for different jobs.

Re:Linux Sucks?

[Black Parrot]

> The applications I use are here today, not tomorrow, not next year.

Yep, applications are an issue. But you should blame the vendors, not Linux.

> X is slow and crappy and unresponsive. I run a dual CPU system and it annoys the hell out of me. X likes to crash, taking my whole system with it, usually.

This makes me wonder whether you've actually used it. I find it faster and more responsive than the Win9x GUI on the same machine (though the WinGUI is probably being dragged down by that boat-anchor excuse for an operating system that it's integrated with).

I also find that recent versions of X crash only extremely rarely, and even if you include older versions of X, I have never seen it take down the whole system.

> I stated before that the client-server architecture inherent in X is NOT NEEDED for typical home/end users. ... You want to beat the GUI experience that Win2K gives?

So. Is W2K what home/end users should be running?

> I've not *touched* my registry since installing Win2k.

Oh, boy. Wait until it gets corrupted, and then see what you get to touch.

> I had to "touch" all kinds of config files weekly under Linux, just to install stuff.

OK, but under Windows you "touch" a bunch of clickies to configure your new software. Some of us find text files more user friendly.

> Who cares about freedom to do with the software? Can't you see that RMS wants you to be paid MINIMUM WAGE for your work? How dare you code for money! nono, that was a rant, sorry.

Even in the unlikely event that RMS actually wants that, what has it got to do with using Linux? Sorry, but you have revealed yourself as a troll by including this one.

> Rather, most users don't give a rat's ass about GPL or whatever. They want to install a software package and then use it. They don't want to have to search freshmeat.net for some obscure graphics lib or a specific version or whatever. Win2K at least halfway has this right. how many updates have I done to Win2K? Two or Three, the security update patch, couple drivers. And they installed *smoothly* with a double click. Every week I was scouring for the latest glibc or whatever to get whatever to work. Too much of a hassle.

I don't find this much of a hastle at all. Particularly compared to dll hell. When a program needs a particular version of something, you can at least find out which version it needs. Then just visit the appropriate site and download it. (I get mine as RPMs from rufus.www.org, where you can list them by name, distro, etc.)

At least with Linux kits you can see what they are going to change before you install them, and most of them can be installed beside older versions as well. Yeah, you have to look at it before you install, but IMO that's much better than trying to clean up the mess after one of those two click installs you're bragging about.

> Linux just felt too beta to do anything that I would want to do. The feel is not right on the OS.

That's a perfectly reasonable opinion. So why did you have to bring up all the other fluff arguments? If it's not for you, don't use it. Unlike a certain other OS I could name, no one is trying to make you use Linux.

> I don't care how smooth the architecture is or how stable it is (to an extent). Think of it this way: My Ti Graphing Calculator I had for engineering never crashed on me, but you don't hear me extolling it's stability virtues.

Ah, but unlike Windows, calculators are not in the habit of crashing. Think of it this way: if other calculators crashed in the middle of exams, wouldn't the engineering students be extolling the virtues of one that didn't?

For some installations, crashing computers simply are not an option. And even for the rest of us, there's no reason to put up with it. I've got better things to do than wait for my system to reboot so I can see how much work I've lost. The pity about the "desktop revolution" is that it has trained people to think losing time and work is normal.

> Win2K didn't crash on me until I installed EverCrack.

Wow. Looks like you're doing better than lots of other W2K owners.

> Fuck, guys, it's just a goddamned OS.

Increasingly, the favorite way of justifying settling for something that's overpriced and second rate.

If your calculator habitually crashed during an exam, would you shrug it off with "fuck, it's just a goddamned calculator"? If your car frequently broke down on the way to a job interview or hot date, would you shrug it off with "fuck, it's just a goddamned automobile"? When an airplane falls out of the sky, does the FAA shrug it off with "fuck, it's just a goddamned airplane"?

No, whether at work or at play, quality matters. Lots of people want to spread the myth that this shouldn't apply to OSes, just like they want to spread the myth that anti-trust law and consumer protection law shouldn't. But I don't buy it.

--

Re:Linux Sucks?

[pwhysall]

1) The applications I use are here today, not tomorrow, not next year. I got tired of trying out really beta software for Linux for the stuff I use, and the stuff that wasn't beta was very unpolished, very cluttered, very unfocused. Think GNUCash vs. Quicken or even Money and you'll see what I mean.

I'll give you that. But remember that Windows has a six or eight year head start in the applications market; more, if you count the apps that started life in DOS.

2) X is slow and crappy and unresponsive. I run a dual CPU system and it annoys the hell out of me. X likes to crash, taking my whole system with it, usually. It just sucks balls. I stated before that the client-server architecture inherent in X is NOT NEEDED for typical home/end users. BeOS does the GUI right. You want to beat the GUI experience that Win2K gives? Ditch X and come up with something new.

This paragraph is unmitigated shite. Wrong, wrong, wrong. XF864.0 (comparing like for like) is *as* fast, if not *faster* than the wretched excuse for a GUI that W2K has. (Look at the pretty fading menus! Never mind that all the UI stuff that was fucked in W95 (shortcuts [this one "feature" alone makes Explorer blow goats], what happens when you copy a .EXE file, Start menu) is STILL fucked now. Never mind that the UI is tied into the kernel, and so crappy display drivers can blow away your PC. Oopsie. X blows, but the Windows Way blows a whole lot more.

3) I've not *touched* my registry since installing Win2k. I had to "touch" all kinds of config files weekly under Linux, just to install stuff.

Not yet you haven't... You will. There's STILL stuff in W2K that you have to fiddle with the registry to fix. The registry sucks planetary masses through garden hoses and everyone with half a brain about OS design knows this. It's a friggin' Jet database, fergawdsake. And Jet is well regarded, right? Hell, we all know what's wrong with the registry. Single point of failure, binary, crap tools for fixing... same ol', same ol', nothing's changed here since W95.

4) Who cares about freedom to do with the software? Can't you see that RMS wants you to be paid MINIMUM WAGE for your work? How dare you code for money! nono, that was a rant, sorry. Rather, most users don't give a rat's ass about GPL or whatever. They want to install a software package and then use it. They don't want to have to search freshmeat.net for some obscure graphics lib or a specific version or whatever. Win2K at least halfway has this right. how many updates have I done to Win2K? Two or Three, the security update patch, couple drivers. And they installed *smoothly* with a double click. Every week I was scouring for the latest glibc or whatever to get whatever to work. Too much of a hassle.

You're just trolling with that second sentence, so we'll skip over that. Users don't care about the licence right up until the point at which I (as Software Vendor) say to you (as User) "Your licenced usage time is up. More money or no more MyWinApp for you". Myth : you don't "have to search freshmeat.net for some obscure graphics lib". You just use a tool like apt or rpmfind and the dependencies (which you don't care about) get fetched automatically for the thing you're focussing on - like the app. Sure, updates to W2K install with a double click. The Windows Installer ensures that you can fuck your machine with the minimum of effort - see Office 2000 SR1 for evidence. And MS don't have a good track record on updates - remember NT SP2? SP4? SP6? Each of these caused major headaches, because MS don't seem able to either produce pure fixes (SP 4 and 5 both introduced new functionality while at least one fix - a major bug in the SNMP stack - introduced in SP4 was backed out of SP5). Nah, software installation on Windows still sucks rocks. You still can't uninstall things properly. Windows Installer may help this, but it's too early to tell.

4. Linux just felt too beta to do anything that I would want to do. The feel is not right on the OS. I don't care how smooth the architecture is or how stable it is (to an extent). Think of it this way: My Ti Graphing Calculator I had for engineering never crashed on me, but you don't hear me extolling it's stability virtues. Win2K didn't crash on me until I installed EverCrack.

You're confusing flashy UI with stable UI. Don't be confusing alpha blending menus and sliding menus with stability. I blew away W2K within a week of installing it, just by daring to play Quake III. (FWIW, I bluescreened it after about 30 minutes of play. It appears that W2K was trying to resize the swap file on a disk with 2GB free, and failing. Maybe something with the display drivers fucked up when memory moved around.)

--

Re:Linux Sucks?

[jallen02]

Nice troll, I mean.. Trolling with a Score:5 you even had some partially supported ideas :P.

Anyways.. I could refute all of your claims etc but why its a troll


If you think education is expensive, try ignornace

Re:Linux Sucks?

[ebh]

Think GNUCash vs. Quicken or even Money and you'll see what I mean.

Someone around here, whom I wish I could have moderated to the moon and back, recently said something like, "My mother doesn't want to use the computer, she wants to read her email."

This was the best one-sentence summary I've ever seen of why Linux doesn't work for the general public. I have bunches of boxen running half a dozen OSes, but I have to have a Wintel or Mac machine to use as an appliance. I can program all day and all night, futz around with my Basement Area Network, and have all sorts of geeky fun, but at some point I have to balance my damn checkbook, and for that I need Quicken.

I need Quicken because the data is too critical. If the Gimp blammos a picture I'm working on, I might be tempted to take a deep breath and dive into the source. But Quicken is rock-stable, and I have to have that because it's information the IRS will hold me accountable for. Besides, part of why I balance my checkbook on the computer at all is to save time, which it does. I'm not going to save much time if every month's checkbook balancing might turn into an all-night debugging session.

Rubber Bandit merchandise

[CroJo]

Yeah, yeah, mousepads, shirts, hats, whatever. They're missing out on an incredibly lucrative line of products -

picture, if you will, the Rubber Bandit (tm) condom, proudly adorning the genitalia of engineer/criminal men worldwide.

I love it.



------------------------

Please beat me senseless

[andy@petdance.com]

If there is anything more boring than listening to fellow computer geeks blather about computer history and nostalgia, I've yet to hear it. Y'know that way that real DORKY geeks get? When they talk about things that are supposedly REALLY interesting, but are only inflated in their own minds? This computer nostalgia topic boils it down to its very essence.

"Oh yeah, I remember that! I once programmed SpaceWar by soldering traces right onto the motherboard! And we only had 73 bytes of core!"

Surfing on a wave of nostalgia for an age yet to come...

sadsa

[OOG-FATHER]

asdasdsadsadas

Traffic dynamics

[Dracos]

In my experience, all traffic problems can be attributed to one or more of the following:

• Old people
• Stupid people
• Truck drivers
• Cops
• Taxis
• Cell phones

So, if a mentally deficient retired-cop-now-truck-driver happens to be following an elderly taxi diver talking on a cell phone, all traffic in the surrounding 10 state area would simultaneously come to a halt. Any combination of the above would yield the same results.

And remember, cell phones are the root of all road rage.

Dracos
"Integer: a number that represents any valid floating-point value"

Dont overwind

[dynamitehack]

You know how those rubber bands snap if you overwind them and how it hurts your fingers? Wonder what a 100lb rubber band would do to your fingers.

MindGuard Public License

[waynem77]

Wow. I actually thought the MindGuard people were serious, until I read their license. Funny.

Re:MindGuard Public License

[joetee]

Thank god "you people" will now be finally spared! (good luck running >two copies "nice" with unix!)
I've been running this program on 3 Amigas and you'd be surprised the vector tactics employed:
I can see different incomming techniques on the 1084 monitors I've faced toward the centroid (me).
I suspect possible vertical holes and need to get another Amiga running it in the attic...
Fortunately an A1200 can multitask several MindGuards evenly.
Once I feel safe running the half a dozen programs on them I usually leave the monitors off
since the Amiga never crashs (even running for months and months.). Between attacks they crack RC5 for Team Amiga!
(Make sure you get the latest protection modules from www.aminet.org )

Linuxsucks runs Linux/Apache

[Hollins]

Actually, their webhosting provider (hypermart.net) runs Linux/apache (guess they're not up to setting up their own server).

hypermart.net is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) secured_by_Raven/1.4.2-dev ApacheJServ/1.0 g2am/1.36 adutil/1.7 g2ad/1.63 on Linux

Re:Linuxsucks runs Linux/Apache

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Who do you think you are? I AM THE OWNER OF http://www.linuxsucks.com not you! Coward come forth!

Now we know who this ANONYMOUS COWARD guy is

[qqaz]

Did anyone follow the link labeled "Anonymous Coward" that went to http://www.thrall.net? Is that guy in that picture the infamous AC?

DIGI-COMP 1

[Detritus]

My first computer was a DIGI-COMP 1, a 3-bit mechanical computer. It was built out of pieces of plastic and wire.

In high school, I learned how to program on the school district's RCA Spectra 70 mainframe that was connected to a 110 bps KSR-35 teletype in each high school via modem. The RCA Spectra 70 was a clone of the IBM 360, except for the reliability bits. It crashed all the time. It offered Dartmouth BASIC, COBOL, WATFOR FORTRAN and RPG.

My first electronic computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 (AKA Trash-80) with 4K of DRAM. I really wanted an Apple II but I couldn't afford one.

Slashdot == Windows Kiddies?

[rwm311]

From the article: "As if you couldn?t tell..." (Note the ? where the ' belongs) This is a trait os MS... maybe y'all should demoronize before you post...

~rwm

Re:FINALLY, SOMEONE I DON'T HAVE TO FLAME

[heywood_jablowme]

You want a dick every now and again?
I didn't think you were like that.
_________________________

Re:BSD Press Release on GPL

[heywood_jablowme]

Opening the HTML tags help, you stupid fuck.
_________________________

Traffic Jam Simulator

[markfive]

A Traffic Simulator Applet written by Cay Horstmann

now I know you all probably read linuxsux.com...

[vyesue]

...but I have nothign to say about that.

Instead, I thought I'd comment on the nonlinear emergent whatevers - if you did not take the time to read that because it looked like some wierd math thing you couldnt understand, I urge you to read it. In fact, shame on the /. crew for not giving this the big, bold, badass headline that it deserves. this is probably one of the most important things that you will ever read on /., and it's somethign that every human over 16 in the US sould be forced to read.

I suffered through weeks of drivers education classes and learned nothing. if driver's education taught you NOTHING other than the contents of this link, america would be reshaped permanently, forever.

Go read the link. now. seriously. do it.

99% of traffic problems in this country can be SOLVED by following one simple rule - LEAVE SOME FUCKING ROOM BETWEEN YOU AND THE GUY IN FRONT OF YOU. enough room for some jackass to jump in between without you getting all hot an bothered about it. traffic sucks in this country for the simple fact that people ride each others' asses everywhere they drive. well, that and retards driving slow in the fastlane, but tailgating is a far more terrible problem.

go read this link. learn to drive like this. spread the word; spread this link. let's use the slashdoteffect for the powers of good just once, mmkay?

Ah...my first computer...

[pandich]

1981 - My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (the 1K version). My father had purchased it after becoming frustrated with is primitive and difficult to operate HeathKit computer. Its two red LED lights and hex keypad were just too much for the poor guy.

After delving into the Sinclair s BASIC interpreter for a year orso, he decided that what he really wanted to do was fly. As an accomplished amateur aviator, he longed to be able to do flight simulation in his non-flying spare time.

Surprisingly for 1982, such a program was available. He quickly ran out and purchased the necessary tape player, and the flight simulation software. Too his chagrin, he discovered that he needed the 16K expansion pack to actually run the program. After forking out a substantial sum, his dream became reality as he took off from the runway and flew through the night.

Throughout all this time, I had been teaching myself BASIC on this baby. One day, while in mid-flight, the BASIC program aborted with an error. Much to my father s surprise, I debuggedthe problem (a value had gone to zero and caused a divide-by-zero error). I set the value to one (which seemed sensible) and told the program to resume. It did, and actually seemed to work. At that point, my father did something that would shape the rest of my life. He gave me the computer, and with his normal eloquence and kind manner said: "Here, you figure the damn thing out."

ZX-81 the true personal computer

[andrewmuck]

Well the first computer I got to play on was a DEC-10, the first one I owned was the good old Sinclair ZX-81 ! Since they can't seem to take any more entries, I thought I would throw this in here for everyone.
I think the world would be a better place if every kid got one of these to learn on in stead of these bloated appliances that do word processing, email and entertainment.
The ZX-81 was a * personal computer * that let you really see what it was all about.
to that end I am designing an easy to build clone, check out here for details.

cya, Andrew...

emmett, you need this

[jcs]

http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demo roniser/

The First Computer Site

[dolanh]

Sorry it isn't working - it's not the /. effect - I don't own the URL and the owner nuked the script. If anyone is interested in hosting the site, please let me know, or expanding on the idea.

At least I thought some of the stories might be interesting to read -- the one about the heavyweight "portable" system was a riot.

All the best. --dolan

Linux and ... Yanni?

[icqqm]

What does Yanni have to do with linux? For that matter, songs from a secret garden sounds way too closed-source to me. Shouldn't linux be about non-secretive music? It's not even opsn-sourcely encrypted.

Yeah, over 30 years ago... Wait! It wasn't /.!

[joel.neely]

I ran across this idea over 30 years ago. Some guys at IBM were working on simulating traffic flow thru city streets and came to the conclusion that the best description of the available data had the same mathematical form as that of fluid flow in pipes. From that key observation, many interesting analogies followed directly: standing waves, shock waves, the congestion resulting from an abrupt narrowing (lane closure or step down to a smaller diameter pipe), etc.

Fascinating to contemplate how often a new discovery could be found by going back and looking at some of those outdated materials in the dusty old dead tree libraries!

A couple of years back there was a flurry of excitement about a couple of high-school kids who used some math software to come up with a "new" geometric construction for dividing a line into an arbitrary number of equal divisions. Their teacher had them present a paper at a math teaching conference, and they were even written up in the Wall St. Journal. Meanwhile, I found exactly the same bit of geometry in an old book on typography and book design, and a newer one (but older than their "discovery") on Fontographer. Seems this same construction had simply been a well-known tool in the printing and book layout field even though the math teachers had forgotten it.

All of this raises the question... In our rush to assume that anything not on line (and easily found by a search engine) is no longer relevant, how much real information are we in danger of losing? (And the problem itself isn't new -- remember the Venetian stained glass that nobody knows how to make any more?)

haiku boy's first computer

[haiku boy]

my first computer
which i still have to this day
was an abacus.

I had a TRS-80, but...

[SecretAsianMan]

...I really got my big programming impetus when I met an old lady in the hospital who knew and had worked with Grace Hopper! Sadly, though, I didn't get her name; when I went back to see her the next day, she had already been discharged from the hospital. I'm not the religious type by any means, but I cannot attribute that magical encounter to chance alone...

My First Computer??

[Port Forlorn]

My first "computer" was an IBM 407 Calculating Punch, programmed by placing jumper wires on a board about twice the size of today's mobos. By the time I went to college, I found they had a Clary DE-60, also programmed with jumper wires and a General Precision LGP-30. Back in '65, this computer had 64K bytes - of rotating drum memory, no RAM, not even "core" memory. I/O was only through the Freiden Flexowriter, a huge typewriter (85 lbs.) with a paper tape punch. And it was programmed in hex machine language. I'll never forget debugging hex where the codes were 0-9,F,G,J,K,Q and W. (They represented the codes from the Flexowriter for 10-15.) Finally, the school got an advanced computer, a CDC-8090 with 4K 12 bit words of core memory. But it came with tape drives, a punched card reader and a FORTRAN compiler! So we really coded up a storm!!

My first operating system was tape based because there wasn't any room left in memory after that compiler loaded its run time libraries for the execution. (It took two of us three weeks to write.) And it was reloaded after every job! The OS was really just a job control system but it was designed to interpret only the first two characters of each word on the job control card so we had contest to come up with the weirdest sentences that would still specify the right job parameters.

After graduation, I got to work on an IBM 1401 and one of the custom machines (AN/FSQ-31) IBM built for the military just before they designed the 360. By the time I bought my own home computer (a Commodore 64), I'd already been programming for over 15 years. But that C-64 was capable of graphics and sprites that the mainframe at work couldn't touch. When the C-128 came out and offered CPM, I though it was a wonderful alternative to OS/360.

My favorite magazine was Dr. Dobb's Journal but that was back when it was titled "Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia; Running Light Without Overbyte". Things have changed a bit since. I'm playing with Beowolf clusters at home and designing distributed comm networks for world wide deployment now but thanks for the opportunity to stroll down Memory Lane!
----
VP Unmarketing, Product Confusion and Linux Distributions

They run a Linux like OS!

[steveargonman]

www.linuxsucks.com

www.linuxsucks.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on BSD/OS

First Computer site back online

[dolanh]

I fixed the form, so feel free to put down a little history :)

The older responses have been moved to a link at the bottom of the page.

Enjoy, dolanh

Re:Anti-aging = Overpopulation!

[Greyfox]

Death is the price we pay for the orgasm.

Re:Scientific American re: ALT-711, the age breake

[CmdrPinkTaco]

some of the things in this artivle actually have other applications to people who aren't necessarily concerned with prolongint their lives also. Myself being a diabetic, hearing that they have found new ways to attach islet cells to the pancrease is personally VERY exciting to me.

It means many things, no more injections, no more monitoring of diet, no more blood tests....even if these events aren't applied to prolonging the lives of the rich, the research could help the lives of those like me who weren't born with good parts.
--------------------------------------------

Re:FINALLY, SOMEONE I DON'T HAVE TO FLAME

[GRAMMERSoft]

Hey, what kind of name is Jablowme? It sounds kind of Polish to me...

Just curious.

Re:now I know you all probably read linuxsux.com..

[bowb]

Here in Australia, one of the rules we learn when studying for the multiple-choice part of our driving test, is to maintain a 2 second following time between you and the car in front (which is intended to account for reaction time and braking time in an emergency). It's almost universally ignored. Tailgating is endemic where I live.

But you are right, the point needs to be emphasized. Apart from improving traffic dynamics, it would make for fewer accidents. (I was driving along a freeway yesterday, and there was wreckage and police taking up two of the three lanes, from a rear end collision. Fucked the traffic dynamics up completely, needless to say).

My favourite bit of linuxsucks.com

[Skinny Rob]

"Get some books about Linux... You'll need several!" Oh how true.

demoronizer?

[PhilLong]

Why am I seeing "?" when I should see "'", and on on /. no less? I may give up my quest to fight the "?" little cyber kid-leashing, and while you?re making s http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/

x86 still could kill you!

[wowbagger]

I don't know what the guy who built the x86 still used to solder the still shut, but if he used standard Drat Shack solder, the result of the still could kill you with lead poisoning. Use lead free solder, like plumbers use.

A Boy's First Computer

[Darguz]

The first computer I ever worked on was a DEC PDP 11/70, in 1975. Then our school sprung for a state-of-the-art TRS-80. The first computer I owned myself was a 286 clone from American Semiconductor.


--

VMS ACLs

[pwhysall]

"I admit that ACLs would be nice in certain circumstances, though as a former VAX admin I can testify that in business environments they can be an enormous amount of headache for little tangible gain. (Think "office politics".) "

I admin VMS for a living and I detest ACLs - they just generate work and complication. Thankfully, here they are verboten unless there is No Other Way. And there is ALWAYS Another Way.
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Re:VMS ACLs

[Black Parrot]

> I admin VMS for a living and I detest ACLs - they just generate work and complication. Thankfully, here they are verboten unless there is No Other Way. And there is ALWAYS Another Way.

Yeah, I used to work in a shop where the secretaries wanted to use ACLs to share their files with specific other secretaries. Problems, problems.

They would request an ACL, we would set it up, they would forget they requested it, and then get pissed off when someone read something they weren't supposed to know.

Or they would come around when someone was out of town, wanting us to set up ACLs to let them see the absent party's files. And we had no guidelines whatsoever as to who was actually supposed to be able to see what.

Or two would disagre on how an ACL should be set up, and we'd have to go to the boss to see which secretary had more clout that week, so that one could have her way... until the next round.

Then there were the technically clueless secretaries who convinced some manager that they should be given system privileges so they could manage the ACLs, after which things got really screwed up, both technically and in terms of legitimacy of access.

All in all, the problem was more political than technical. We tried scripts to let them manage their own and leave us out of the loop, but that didn't work because they were so clueless about what they wanted and so forgetful about what they had actually granted.

And in addition to the politics, you could hardly get anything done for the phone ringing with someone demanding access to someone else's files.

I'm glad I'm out of that game.

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Preview

[Refrag]

Why does the preview button exist, if not even the /. employees use it?

"while you?re making sure the kids"

Is it just there to keep the submit button company?

Refrag

Re:Scientific American re: ALT-711, the age breake

[The Apocalyptic Lawn]

They mention that high sugar levels are bad. THC drops your sugar levels - would this mean that stoners stay younger?

Re:old info

[jfessler]

I used to work for a little applied R&D outfit in Kansas City MO - Midwest Research Institute - and their traffic engineers have been preaching this stuff since 1981. I helped them complete/operate some traffic simulation software (FORTRAN) and the fluid dynamic aspects became pretty obvious.

I guess 20 years for rediscovery is an improvement over that required for Mendle's genetics.

nonlinear emergent phenomena

[rebill]

Watch the local Semi-tractor trailer drivers when they approach traffic jams, som day. They do precisely what this guy suggests the Police should do - form a side-by-side slow-moving rolling barrier that consumes the traffic jam.

I've seen it in the midwest so often that I have started assisting them.

Re:old info

[slickwillie]

Don't get me started. Oh, too late. I remember posting something about 15 years ago to a newsgroup (ba.traffic.sux.or.something) about treating traffic as a fluid dynamics problem. Several replies were "Huh? What in the world are you talking about?"

I've always wanted to try an experiment: Get several thousand trained drivers to simulate a rush hour environment, but they will do things like 1) always leave ample space in front; 2) allow merging traffic to enter the freeway; 3) merging traffic will smoothly enter, without stopping at the end of the on-ramp; 4) lose the territorial attitude; etc, etc. I'll bet that,even though they never exceed about 35-45 mph, the commute time will be drastically reduced.

Re:FINALLY, SOMEONE I DON'T HAVE TO FLAME

[heywood_jablowme]

Think about it. "Heywood Jablowme". Say it out loud a few times.

*thwop*
_________________________

Re:now I know you all probably read linuxsux.com..

[XScott]

LEAVE SOME FsCKING ROOM BETWEEN YOU AND THE GUY IN FRONT OF YOU.

That's fine and dandy for freeway traffic, but the problem I face day to day is traffic at lots of stop lights. Then you want the exact opposite: Slowly start to accelerate when you see the car two or three cars in front of you. It kills me when some ass in front of you pulls away slowly at a stop light because they know they can make it. What about everyone behind you?

Re:Flame Them? Why bother (no screwups this time :

[linuxsucks_dot_com]

Yeah I love that effect... thanks.

my 1st computer was....

[gelfling]

a pencil. No really it was. Then I got a slide rule. Eventually - - aeons later I got unrestricted use of a PDP-8, paper tape and all. Then the big time - - a Univac 1180/82E. Does anybody remember coding in octal?

Re:FINALLY, SOMEONE I DON'T HAVE TO FLAME

[GRAMMERSoft]

Yep. You can read the timestamps as well as anyone. So you know that I'm either some kind of insane masochist who enjoys waking up at 4 AM to post on Slashdot, or I'm not in America. Yet you expect me to know and adhere to every rule of political correctness of your language. Seems like a form of cultural imperialism to me.

What's more, you don't mention any of this before. Instead, you decide that you will make various references to anal sex in response to my posts.

So, now that you have finally informed me of why, exactly, you are so pissed off, I think I will stop making references to baboons. Is it acceptable, in your Ameri-centric viewpoint, to refer to people as dik-diks?

Your friend,

GRAMMERSoft

Re:FINALLY, SOMEONE I DON'T HAVE TO FLAME

[GRAMMERSoft]

Oh yeah, and your moderation notwithstanding, I still do not consider myself a troll. Yeah, I've had a few troll moderations, along with every other type of moderation (except insightful, *sigh*). And my karma is always around zero. If I was trying to be a troll, I could easily do a lot better than that...