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Slashback: Tenacity, Freedomware, Lem
Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."
Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."
They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."
A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."
Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."
But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."
story
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I think that you may have misinterpereted his "Almost dead" remark. I think it was referring to the recent /. article that IBM would be discontinuing OS/2. He wasn't trying to pick a fight with you.
From his offical website
Maybe it has to do with their decision to choose Microsoft for POS instead of Linux?
_-_-_
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Well, now we have proof that the Slashdot editor's don't even read the damn articles.
The DirecTV deal has nothing to do with rural customers. Rural customers couldn't get DSL from them before they went out of business, either.
The DirecTV story does not apply to their satelite-based system (DirecWay/DirecPC). This is what the people in the boonies use. The article clearly states this.
Just some fun facts.. OS/2 acp2 was released in jan.2002. It can run a complete gnu enviromnent (gcc, shell/text/file utilities, latest XFree..etc), its got VirtualPC 5.1 so you can run a virtual Linux or Win9x/nt/xp on your OS/2 desktop, a sweet textmode mp3 player that can search through all the online mp3-streams for streams that interest you (theres also gui players...). OS/2 acp2 and VirtualPC are the only thing you have to buy, everything else is free.. although, if you hang out in the right places, you can get it all for free. oh yea, kernel updates are being released every month or so... its really a nice alternative OS.
won't happen. too much of the code was shared with Microsoft and is held in joint copyright.
Here we have an excellent example of somebody doing something because they were not sure about what they were talking about. Hence take the "safe" bet and use Windows.
The problem with the statement she makes is that they would have a lack of drivers if they went cross-platform. So that means they have all the drivers on the i386 platform. Hence right now they are locked into i386. So since they were "locked" they might as well get locked totally and use Windows. Why, because at least it is supported!
To Jill Taylor this logic makes sense. However, to people outside it makes little sense since either route would end up at the same destination. The problem with her logic is that she is associating Linux with cross-platform and failure to do so as a strike against the platform. In other words in her mind Linux 1 Windows 2, when in fact the score is Linux 2 Windows 2.
It is funny when I am on panels and I make these comments on the bad logic within corporations many people take a hissy fit. The reality is that most people decide on funny logic like this.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Stewey, I have to agree about OS/2 being a remarkable OS. As an ex-IBMer, I guess I'm biased, but I truly believe that the VDM in OS/2 was a better DOS than DOS. The fine tuning you could do on the behaviour of DOS apps was incredible.
An example of this would be an app written using Borland's Turbo Vision framework. These apps poll for keyboard input like no tomorrow. Under any flavour of Windows, you can get the CPU useage down to about 50%, but no better. On OS/2, you could get CPU useage down to 1% and still have a nice, snappy response.
I ran a 3-node DOS-based BBS package (RemoteAccess) for several years and enjoyed it most when running under OS/2. Most of my apps were DOS apps and running them there was a far better experience than using DOS and DESQview.
So I had a look at the screen, and was suprised to find a Red Hat icon instead of a Start button in the lower left hand corner.
This turns out to be old news, but still a pleasant surprise.
They have all their Windows cd key labels taped to the side of their PCs throughout their store for anyone to read or record.
On the labels it specifically tells them not to remove the label either.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Eum...
How on earth do you dualboot Windows with OS X? =-/
OS X can't run on x86 hardware.
Windows can't run on Mac hardware.
Unless you're speaking about dualbooting Windows with a Gnu/Darwin system.
But that's something completly different from OS X.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I'm not sure how far on or off topic this is, but I happen to work for Home Depot's biggest competitor, Lowe's. All of the POS registers in the stores built in the last few years are running Red Hat, and all of the ASCII terminals are being replaced with thin clients that - surprise! - are running Red Hat as well. All of the programs we use for special order sales, project design, and such are all being ported to the new thin clients. The basic trend is to move away from Windows (Design and Special Order tools) and AIX (POS and terminals throughout the store) to Linux.
This article illustrates the biggest rift in ideas between the former Soviet Union and Eastern Block science fiction and Western and in particular science fiction. Soviet sci-fi was the only medium for a somewhat freer expression of ideas and critisizm then most other literary channels and so veiled in otherworldly travels the reader in fact finds very deep commentary on society and technology. Unlike American sci-fi classic Soviet sci-fi rarely goes into the technology or alien biology but instead is much more preocuppied by its effect on people and it's representation of other types of societal order. I would suggest to anyone who would care about this to read Arkady and Boris Strugatski's books such as "Inhabitted Island", "Hard to be a god" and "Picnic by the roadside" the last of which was filmed by Tarkovsky as "Stalker". These are the books which are the most understandable by Western readers and with a good translation are incredibly interesting to read.
I don't have my copy handy, but I must say that the translation is the best I have ever seen. The original text is (as you can imagine) extremely difficult to convey consistently and well, especially in a language as different as English.
The Cyberiad is also a testament to the breadth of Lem's talent. I would love to see more work in this vein, but alas, there is no more...
A few more stories appeared here and there in Polish compendiums, but as far as I know they have not been translated into English (yet).
In case you were curious, these new stories do not expand on the Trurl and Klaupacius per se.
Jan
There have been two additional releases of OS/2 since Warp 4 in 1996. Known as convenience packs. I run Merlin Convenience Pack 2 which is OS/2 4.52 which, as I said, was released in 2002. OS/2 isn't dead... but IBM's heart hasn't been been in it for a long time.
pigfukr
At the official Stanislaw Lem Web site, they have the entire statement made by Lem about the new movie version of Solaris , written on December 8th.
He seems to have a negative view of the typical Hollywood ending, saying that
Home Depot will never be a leader in the industry if it continues to view IT as an expense rather than an investment.
Agreed! To view IT as a cost center only is to blind oneself to the advances that we can make to "mere retail."
In fact, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are even compared here
You have no idea! The Home Depot concept IS the Wal-Mart concept (mostly). The common managerial question at HD upon considering a new idea was, "Has Wal-Mart done it?" The Home Depot cheer was a carbon copy of the Wal-Mart cheer. Giving stock to all company employees was an idea HD copied from Wal-Mart as well. So was the "Inverted Pyramid" idea (read: lie).
The differences between Home Depot and Wal-Mart are why HD will shrink and Wal-Mart will grow. 1. Home Depot has a service element which is much, much more difficult to quality and inventory control. 2. HD is much more limited in what they can sell than Wal-Mart is. Many Wal-Marts now have grocery stores.
If what you're saying really is true of Home Depot, expect Wal-Mart to keep swallowing Home Depot's business.
It's inevitable. Wal-Mart and Home Depot will eventually be competitors, and HD will lose that battle.
I expect that Wal-mart will remain a leader for some time to come in the retail space.
I expect that Wal-Mart will be the defining force behind retail until the retail concept becomes obsolete.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
"Look, old boy," said the machine, "if I could do everything starting with n in every possible language, I'd be a Machine That Could Do Everything in the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts with n in one foreign language or another. It's not that easy. I can't go beyond what you programmed. So no sodium." There's your answer, hehe. What a great story.
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have a sig.
When you launch a Windows app in OS/2, it launches Windows inside a virtual DOS box, then runs your app. It's real Windows 3.1 code, not an emulation.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Translation is an interesting problem.
Douglas Hofstadter , of Goedel Escher Bach fame, wrote an entire book about the nuances of translation, using many, many translations of an obscure one stanza poem to illustrate his theme.
It is somewhat surprising how well translation of poems or other word play works, and even more surprising is how wildly differant translations can convey the same feel, and somehow capture the feel of the original work.
Of course, it isn't too hard to screw it up completely either.
What the heck - follow the OT thread and provide useful information. Anonymous for a reason on this thread.
I actually used to work at the company that probably made the ATM - since the name probably includes three nice capital letters. What you probably saw was actually Windows NT (although when I left they were working with MS to deploy 2k because it was cheaper per unit and it might be deployed already). In fact, if this was 7/11 specific ATM (as opposed to a bank placing their own in-store) then I know a lot more about the system. It is actually a VB app with HTML front interface running on top of WinNT. It uses the IE app specifically tweaked to the needs of the company.
The reason for the switch was that there are several custom, but mostly off-the-shelf boards in the system (which is just a basic bare-bones PC). It was getting impossible to find drivers for the new cards (MPEG hardware is a growing field for ATMs) with the old OS (which was OS/2). So, with the next generation of systems it was decided that a new OS was needed and some group settled on NT. Nothing really that sinister - it was more a matter of what drivers they had for the hardware they wanted. Since it generally takes many years for hardware and software to be certified for an ATM (making on-the-fly replacements difficult since its hard to find a specific 6G Seagate drive at your local store).
Amusingly enough a large number of ATM's in operation actually use OS/2. This may be part of IBM's backpedaling regarding not supporting that OS anymore.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
I'm familiar with the Kit that HD rolled out last Thursday and Friday. I spent 13.5 hours last week From the night of the 12th to the morning of the 13th breaking down terminals, and replacing them with Compaq PC's running Windows 2000 Professional. I also helped in reconfiguring the WAPs that are used by the mobile carts. Lots of new Cat5e was run all over the place.
The hardware is the Compaq Evo D510 series, including the Small Form Factor, and the Convertible Minitower variants. The majority of these sytems are of the SFF variety runnig Intel 1.7Ghz Celeron (P4 Willamette w/128KB L2 cahce) processors. The machines in the paint department were the CM variant running 2.0Ghz (P4 Northwood w/ 512KB L2 cache. I believe that all of these systems were equipped with 128MB of DDR SDRAM.
This hardware wasn't cheap. The software.....may have been discounted but may not have been. Who knows... I was just a rented "Tech Monkey" to deploy this Kit... Personally, I think that it was a "bad move".
The overtime should be nice though... It really sucks to have been unemployed for the past six months... Jacksonville FL sucks.
yes, Lem doesn't have the incredibly well developed characters of someone like Dick, the silly alien interactions of Asimov, the wars and battles of Pournelle, or the geekness vindication of Stephensen or Gibson.
he doesn't try to make fantasy out of sci-fi, he doesn't try to give us a warm fuzzy about technology or society, or excite us with explosive plots. his books provide a mental challenge, paradoxes, psychology, and stark reality that most popular science fiction completely ignores. there are tons of people who used to say j.r.r. tolkien is boring. they don't anymore because JRRT is in the mainstream now, but c'mon, reading LOTR and the Silmarillion was a lot like reading history books with an occasional plot! (btw, i'm not knocking JRRT, i've always loved his work)
now, i'm a native Polish speaker (and reader) so of course i've read Lem in Polish and maybe a lot is lost in translation (actually, i think Solaris' translation isn't all that bad, i've read it in both Polish and English). give his other works a chance: Return from the Stars, Eden, Fiasco, the short stories of Ion Tichy (Star Diaries), the essays of One Human Minute...
read my epinions review of Lem for more, if you're interested.
frankly, i'm really disappointed that slashdotters would be so ignorant of Lem's amazing insights in the rest of his works...
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through