Legacy-Free PCs

JeffM2001 writes "InformationWeek is running a story by Fred Langa which gives an overview of the ways to create a true-Legacy-free computer. Finally we can have a PC not based on twenty year old technology." Update: 04/07 17:34 GMT by T : Pages past the first one of this article seem just to loop; here's the printable version, which has the whole article in one go.

Comments

FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck these balls you fucking queers.

War is good. Let's bomb some faggoty ass brown people.

Fuck all anti-war homosexuals. They are losers without dicks and I hope they get diarrhea.

ACIDIC DIARRHEA!

Re:FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it would be nice if middle schools would disallow access to slashdot.

You could get a legacy-free PC before

[Anonymous Coward]

...they're called Macs.

Let Freedom Ring - unless you disagree with us!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, you fucknuts who think that censorship is patriotic!! (The Register)

Akamai issued a statement saying it had worked "briefly" last week with Al Jazeera, but that it had decided "not to continue a customer relationship" with the channel. No reason was given for the decision, but an Al Jazeera spokeswoman told the New York Times that companies were coming under "nonstop political pressure" to refuse to do business with the channel.

Al Jazeera launched an English-language web site at the end of last month, and this immediately came under fire on several fronts. It was hacked, DDoSed, Network Solutions was tricked into allowing the domain to be hijacked (which inspires confidence), and US host DataPipe gave it notice after what Al Jazeera claimed was pressure from other customers. The English language site was up at time of writing, but Al Jazeera clearly needs to find a robust, long-term solution, and this is equally clearly going to be very difficult indeed.

There are many ironies to the multi-decked 'get Al Jazeera' campaign; one attack suppressed the site with the slogan "Let Freedom Ring!" (only up to a point, presumably), while practically none of those busily denying themselves the right to access it can have had time to read it in the first place.

Al Jazeera's sins, it would seem to us, are as follows. First, it has been Osama bin Laden's propaganda outlet, taking delivery of his videotapes and broadcasting them. Second (and this is the one that has raised ire most recently), it has shown footage of the bodies of two dead British servicemen, and of captured troops paraded by the Iraqis. Third, it shows far more harrowing pictures of civilian casualties than western outlets are prepared to run, and fourth (a sum total of the first three) it is therefore peddling Iraqi propaganda. Which is also the accusation currently being levelled at many Western journalists, including recently-ex NBC staffer Peter Arnett, and the Independent's Robert Fisk, recently described as a "Saddamite buffoon" in the Telegraph.

So, one more big "FUCK YOU!!" to you who run denial of service attacks, null DNS routes and whip up "patriotic" mob hysteria against journalists who you deem to be unpatriotic for not conforming to the party line which means spouting the same predigested DoD propaganda, showing sanitized bloodless footage and self-censored reports by in-bedded "reporters".

I'm glad I get Al Jazeera, French channels and BBC who are not afraid of questioning the official truth and showing the true ugly face of war.

Reliability and Complexity.

[porkchop_d_clown]

People (including myself) constantly note that Macs and other non-PC designs are much more reliable than Wintel PCs.

All theology aside, there is a good reason for that; the other designs don't have to cope with the odd possibility that someone will try to install a twenty year old piece of hardware or a 15 year old piece of software on it - or more likely, a brand new piece of hardware that still uses twenty year old design guidelines.

The PC's ability to accept that vast array of cheap hardware is it's greatest strength but is also the biggest obstacle to reliability and performance the PC has.

Listen, don't worry about the UNIX thing

[TerryAtWork]

The OS reached a stage of perfection with UNIX.

Really, it is very hard to improve on it. I think the Starship Enterprise runs OpenBSD myself.

So - it is no big deal when the non-legacy computer runs the old OS.

Fred has always been a bit of a PHB...

[Brett Glass]

...and therefore does not, apparently, understand the reasons why not having a BIOS is an awful idea. Can you say, "machines that are locked into using only one OS?" "Microsoft Palladium inextricably inside?" "Machines crashing on boot due to crufty C code in ROM?" "Viruses that can make the hardware utterly useless... even more so than the Chernobyl virus?" Sure you can. The idea of a BIOS isn't a bad one just because it was invented many years ago. It's a classic concept that just works. And it's one of the reasons the PC architecture has been so successful and long-lived.

Almost all new motherboard now have no ISA slots?

[porkchop_d_clown]

Jeez, dude, couldn't you just say "Very few new motherboards have ISA slots"?