A History of Every GUI Ever

Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:03 · Score: 3, Funny

TOS was so kick ass... 15 years ago...

Re:Nice... by Doogly · 2004-03-23 04:13 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, TOS was the kernal....GEM was the GUI. I loved my GEM 520ST Black and White. The mushy, crunchy square keys on the keyboard....wow!
Re:Nice... by kabdib · 2004-03-23 04:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Nah, TOS sucked. (I was on the team that shipped it. TOS *definitely* sucked, even 15 years ago).

--
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Re:Nice... by hattig · 2004-03-23 04:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think that the Atari ST had nice styling for the time (it looked nicer than the A500 for example). Shame about the innards though. And these are what counted in the end.
Re:Nice... by AndroidCat · 2004-03-23 04:35 · Score: 1

Ironic .. I wrote a program to copy the TOS 1.0 ROMs to floppy so I could burn my own set, and called the program suckrom.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Nice... by LSD-OBS · 2004-03-23 04:40 · Score: 0, Troll

You'll find that's coincidental and/or anecdotal, but NOT ironic.

--
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:54 · Score: 0

Oh look, a word nazi.
Re:Nice... by CrazyTalk · 2004-03-23 05:21 · Score: 1

It may have sucked, but did have one big advantage - it could read regular old DOS 3.5 inch floppys (unlike the mac out of the box) AND had a GUI.
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:55 · Score: 0

You'll find that no one here gives a flying fuck.
Re:Nice... by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 06:00 · Score: 1

"Nah, TOS sucked. (I was on the team that shipped it. TOS *definitely* sucked, even 15 years ago)."

Kabdib, please clarify. Were you a member of the Atari Corp. team or a contracted employee at Digital Research at the time?

And if you were an employee of Atari Corp. (which I believe you were), did any of the Digital Research folk (and some had been former Atari, Inc. employees) ever casually mention that Atari, Inc. had developed more powerful computers (the Gaza and Phoenix) based upon the 68000 (I believe the Gaza was the parallel-processing 68000) running C/PM prior to the development on the ST? That's what has bugged me for some time. I remember the Tramiel's went to great lengths to squash the rumor the ST had been developed prior to their takeover (which it wasn't) but thanks to the www.atarihistory.com website, the Gaza and Phoenix - the machines that apparently sparked such rumors - have been "discovered".

And if such machines did exist, I find it hard to believe none of the DRI employees wouldn't have casually mentioned that, even if DRI specifically instructed them not to in the hopes of pocketing more money from an Atari company for basically duplicating work. Sounds like something EDS would do - and then charge extra for delays on top of that! :)

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:16 · Score: 0

I do. It pisses me off when I see people using words they clearly don't understand.
Re:Nice... by LizardKing · 2004-03-23 07:09 · Score: 1

TOS was so kick ass... 15 years ago...
I'm currently tinkering with a 1040 STe running TOS. It's a great machine for learning the fundamentals of computers - 68000 assembler, good documentation on the raw hardware and copious amounts of software on the net.
What let the ST down somewhat, was the poor quality mouse and keyboard. Despite this, it still compared favourably to the Amiga A500, which was a technically superior machine - but horrendously unstable.
Chris
Re: Nice... by gidds · 2004-03-23 07:10 · Score: 1

[fx: lines up behind Anonymous Coward] Me too. If people hereabouts took as little care over their code as their English, then, well, oh dear...

--
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:18 · Score: 0

I've got dozens of those Atari ST computers. How many do you want?
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:24 · Score: 0

And thats why the intellect of the average american is so well respected outside of these shores.

Don't be an effete pretentious asshole unless you know you are actually using the words correctly....
Re:Nice... by gklinger · 2004-03-23 09:51 · Score: 2, Informative

Yeah, he worked for Atari but I'm not going to give his real name as he has chosen not to do so. Any boy detective can find it if they make the slightest effort. I'll even give you a clue. He wrote Super Pac-Man for the Atari 5200 before going on to operating systems. He's mentioned in this article too. Sadly, he's right about TOS, or TOS-off as we disaffectionatelly called it. It sucked. Oh how I wish the Atari ST had shipped with OS 9. If it had, I might still have my hair.
I've been meaning to thank him for his object code converter. I just never thought today would be that day.
Re:Nice... by LWATCDR · 2004-03-23 09:54 · Score: 1

The Amiga 500 was horrendously unstable??? Sorry but I used the 1000, 500, 2000, and 3000t for years and would not declear them in away horrendously unstable. For a non memory protected multi-tasking OS it was pretty stable. Bet the daylights out of Windows 1-3.11

--
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Re:Nice... by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 10:21 · Score: 1

"Yeah, he worked for Atari but I'm not going to give his real name as he has chosen not to do so. Any boy detective can find it if they make the slightest effort. I'll even give you a clue. He wrote Super Pac-Man for the Atari 5200 before going on to operating systems. He's mentioned in this article too. Sadly, he's right about TOS, or TOS-off as we disaffectionatelly called it. It sucked. Oh how I wish the Atari ST had shipped with OS 9. If it had, I might still have my hair."

Gklinger, thanks for the info, but I wasn't asking for his name. I was merely inquiring about how weird it must've been dealing with former Atari Inc. staff working for Digital Research right along side the members of the ST development team and those DRI staff members failing to mention anything about the alledged prototype computers sitting at Atari that turned out to be more powerful than what the STs wound up being.

Strangely enough, www.atarimuseum.com is no longer mentioning anything about those prototypes. Perhaps they were frauds...of course, that's why I was posting about them.

As for OS9...maybe if Atari Corp. didn't waste time building a simulated version of National Semiconductor's competing chip and made the decision outright to stick with the Motorola platform, perhaps they would've settled on OS 9. Or not. I myself look back and wish out loud that Atari wouldn't have offered the single-sided disc drive (SF354) and would've standardized on the SF314 double sided drive. Then standard software would've always shipped on the higher capacity discs and not been hampered by a lower standard. It was bad enough the Amigans got to brag that their floppy drives handled 880k versus the 720k the Atarians had as the maximum for such a long time. That and had Atari went with the 68010 as the microprocessor of choice, everything would've been closer to fully 32-bit and applications wouldn't have broken so much moving up to the 68030 with the TT and the Falcon. Or including the 68881 math co-processor - that would've made up for the lack of the blitter chip... Granted, either one of those options probably would've raised the MSRP by $100 at the time... Alas, it was not meant to be...

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re:Nice... by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 10:26 · Score: 1

I take that back. The machines are still quoted on the Atari Museum website:

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/computers.h tm l

The two machines were known as "Sierra" and "Gaza." Both were based on the Motorola 68000, but the "Gaza" machine had two of them and ran in parallel.

Oh, the humanity.

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re: Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 11:21 · Score: 0

windows? anyone?
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 11:28 · Score: 0

I find it useful to have a tab open to:

- http://dictionary.reference.com/ or
- http://www.merriam-webster.com/

while I'm posting, writing email, or working on a school paper. I frequently think of using words which I question if I am using correctly. It takes 2 seconds to check definitions and spelling. 90+% of the time it confirms that I am using the words correctly. The funny thing is that even in my college level engrish course, I found bad spelling and bad grammer on the syllabus [case in point, I can't remember how to spell syllabus]...
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 11:40 · Score: 0

As an ex Atari ST/Mega/E/Falcon user, I do affectionately remember the TOS/GEM environment, sure maybe TOS did suck, but before then I used Apple ProDOS which was even worse, and the alternative of Amiga? I'd rather be productive rather than see my Guru Meditate constantly. I only used my Amiga 500 for games. I thought workbench was the biggest piece of crap.

I loved the Atari environment because it was quick, simple, and to the point. I still think I had the most computer hobbyist fun in my life on the Atari platform. I wish it had survived and matured. I'd still be using it today. I hate the PC.
Re:Nice... by Bush+Pig · 2004-03-23 13:51 · Score: 1

I think the irony lies in the name he gave it - suckrom.

--
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Re:Nice... by Carl+Lund · 2004-03-23 16:13 · Score: 1

I loved TOS and the ST. It was so smooth and fast. Something must be said to the fact that the ST was the last computer I owned that I didn't feel compelled to have a hard drive for.

Actually, I even loved the ST's keyboard. I know the function keys had many detractors, but I loved typing on that keyboard; I especially remember liking the ( ) on the numeric keypad. *sigh*

Carl
Re:Nice... by LSD-OBS · 2004-04-04 22:41 · Score: 1

Thanks, that's precisely the problem I was pointing out too.

--
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson

Scroll down memory lane by robolemon · 2004-03-23 04:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Or an interesting scroll down memory lane more like it!

--

I design user interfaces for a free network management application,

Re:Scroll down memory lane by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:11 · Score: 1, Funny

Since the site seems to be slashdotted, I thought I'd add an old favorite here (graphic modified to protect impressionable lameness filters):

o o o o o o o o * o o o o o o o o o K o o o o o o * o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o E o o o o o o o o o o * o

(My apologies if I haven't remembered this correctly, it's been a long time...)

Ignore: more text to make the lameness filter happy. Nope, not enough. Well, here's some more. Didn't work. Curse you damned lameness filter. Don't you know a classic game when you see one? Ahhh, now I get it, you're not code you're a Klingon in a bad mood. A very bad mood. You know, there's never a photon torpedo around when you need one. I guess Klingons don't like anonymous cowards. Well, today is a good day for my post to die.

You want more? Wow, that is one mean Klingon filter. 'Junk' characters? Bah! Abort my a__! Your mother wears army boots! You take that as a compliment? You would wouldn't you.

Mr Sulu, lock photon torpedoes, as well as some log winded redundant phrases, I'll be damned if I'm going to be beaten by some cybernetic artificial Klingon son of a PTOCKSDHFSHD! Close to point blank range. Wait for it...FIRE! Damnit, missed. Full power to the forward shields! Damage report! Seal off decks 3 to 8! Evasion pattern delta and come around to 21 mark 4, full impulse. Lock on phasers and fire. Scotty, I need more power, shut down life support if you have to, this is serious. Mr. Checkov, throw some trash out the shuttle bay, it almost worked for the Romulans, maybe it will almost work for us.

That does it, arm the corbomite device. Yes mister Spock, it is for real and we're going to use it. No, Klingons do not fear death and that is a subtle flaw in the logic of my plan. Yes, I'm obviously not captain Kirk, and yes he would find a way to get us out of this, just stop arguing with me an do what I say.

BOOM!
Re:Scroll down memory lane by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:17 · Score: 0

Oh yes, and the little saying at the bottom of the page as I posted this?

I will not forget you.

This is just not my day...

http://www.oldos.org/ by jmays · 2004-03-23 04:04 · Score: 5, Informative

Don't forget about Old OS. Also an interesting site!

Includes the tragedy that is Microsoft BOB!

--
KARMA TAG! You're it.

Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by MikeHunt69 · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 1

yeah, except it looks like it only lists MS OS's....
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:14 · Score: 0

yes, you're right, even Microsoft MacOS
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by RevDobbs · 2004-03-23 04:15 · Score: 1

They have screen shots in BITMAP format... I don't expect them to last very long in the midst of a good /.'ing...

Thought it was cool to see shots of MS BOB, which I first read about almost a decade ago...
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by minus_273 · 2004-03-23 04:23 · Score: 1

hmm you mean there is something worse than XP? good god!

--
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:30 · Score: 0

Yeah XP is so bad that KDE has a hard time trying to be exactly like it.
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by FatalTourist · 2004-03-23 04:52 · Score: 1

Any site that has its own theme song has to be good.... uh.

--

Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by nazsco · 2004-03-23 04:56 · Score: 1

Both seems to be runing on bandwidth from the day those OSes where to of the line
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by Mudcathi · 2004-03-23 04:59 · Score: 1

From the oldos link you jmays posted: MindReader is a type-ahead word processor. This software is a powerful text editor that uses patented artificial intelligence techniques to suggest completion of words and/or phrases. This is a fascinating program and is perfect for the slower typist as well as the busy professional.
So this is where those damn Microsoft paperclip demons originated from! Those things are perfect to the busy professional only in that they are perfectly evil!!

--
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by PedanticSpellingTrol · 2004-03-23 05:38 · Score: 1

I first discovered it only days before copyright lawsuits shut down the distribution of the actual operating systems... so sad, I was on dial up and never had a chance to grab the 30 floppy-images of AT&T SysV Unix or the Windows 96 prototype. I know the admin posts here on /., maybe we'll be seeing him somewhere in this thread.
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by minus_273 · 2004-03-23 06:17 · Score: 1

phew good thing i user OS X

--
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by RevAaron · 2004-03-23 12:20 · Score: 1

Or even worse, Microsoft Linux pre-1.0...

--

Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Re:http://www.oldos.org/ by chunkwhite86 · 2004-03-23 15:56 · Score: 1

Includes the tragedy that is Microsoft BOB!

Tragedy? This is Microsoft's only true achievement! Everything else they either acquired through a corporate buy-out, or they blatently ripped-off from someone else.

Bob is Microsoft innovation, in it's finest and most pure state.

--
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.

slashdotted at one comment. by teamhasnoi · 2004-03-23 04:05 · Score: 4, Funny

I guess I'll be using the command line today.

Re:slashdotted at one comment. by drinkypoo · 2004-03-23 04:24 · Score: 4, Funny

"You had me at HTTP 1.1 GET"

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:slashdotted at one comment. by frodo+from+middle+ea · 2004-03-23 04:38 · Score: 0, Offtopic

actually it is "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1"
Sigh , people these days just don't bother to read the RFCs.

--
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Re:slashdotted at one comment. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:56 · Score: 0

rolleyes
Re:slashdotted at one comment. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:01 · Score: 0

You forgot the Host: header. Also if you want the top level document, it's best to use the entire URL. It should be
GET http://slashdot.org/ HTTP/1.1 Host: slashdot.org
Re:slashdotted at one comment. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 12:28 · Score: 0

You forgot the Host: header. Also if you want the top level document, it's best to use the entire URL. It should be GET http://slashdot.org/ HTTP/1.1 Host: slashdot.org
It's not "best", it's wrong! The host DOESN'T go in there unless you are talking to a web proxy. It's simply GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: slashdot.org

Good 'ole days by maximilln · 2004-03-23 04:06 · Score: 5, Funny

Finally, a /. article which doesn't immediately remind me of pyramid schemes, political graft, the extortion of the American people by their corporate executive overlords... (though all of these things combined contributed to the death of Commodore and the rise of the x86 architecture).

Crap. And the site is /.'ed.

--
+++ATHZ 99:5:80

Re:Good 'ole days by jellomizer · 2004-03-23 04:14 · Score: 0, Redundant

Well thats always the case.
Whenenver there is a cool PC Mod or a Scrool down memory lane or something technically cool it will get slasheddotted.
Partilly because these are usually on non comerical grade webservers and a bigger population of slashdotters find it interesting.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Good 'ole days by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:19 · Score: 0

> Crap. And the site is /.'ed.

So bookmark it and go back in a couple of hours.
Re:Good 'ole days by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:48 · Score: 0

Crap. And the site is /.'ed.

Probably because it's running on an old C64.
Re:Good 'ole days by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:52 · Score: 0

Yeah, but everytime I think of the Amiga (my absolute favorite computer ever was an A1200), I can't help but remember those two assholes who ran the company into the ground, went south (litterally fled to some islands with millions of $$) and left the company high and dry and on an unrecoverable path to destruction.
Now I'm jaded and don't find any new hardware very interesting. PCs are nothing but hack-upon-hack (with an utterly disgusting machine language), and Macs don't have that gee-whiz factor that the Amiga was symbolic of. Macs are very pretty, but booooring!
The only reason I'm still in computing is because of Unix/Linux.
Re:Good 'ole days by SCHecklerX · 2004-03-23 05:23 · Score: 1

Linux Torvalds's autobiography is a great look into the past too. Funny how a lot of what he did early on is the same type of stuff that many of us did. He just took it a step further :)
Re:Good 'ole days by Paul+d'Aoust · 2004-03-23 06:43 · Score: 1

I've been trying the bloody site for a week or so now, having first seen the link on OSNews.com (which, to my knowledge, isn't exactly the most high-traffic site). Could they have been OSNews'd before they were Slashdotted? I have no idea. Maybe the silly site just doesn't exist anymore.

--
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Re:Good 'ole days by Frizzle+Fry · 2004-03-23 08:30 · Score: 1

Could they have been OSNews'd before they were Slashdotted?

I would hope that the /. editors wouldn't approve the story if they couldn't follow the link. But of course, you never know.

--
I'd rather be lucky than good.

what? by WormholeFiend · 2004-03-23 04:06 · Score: 4, Funny

text interface counts as graphic interface?

as opposed to what... tactile interface?

Re:what? by J.+Jacques · 2004-03-23 04:08 · Score: 2, Informative

If it's displayed on a screen, couldn't it technically be called "graphical"?

--
http://www.questionablecontent.net
Re:what? by Dreadlord · 2004-03-23 04:09 · Score: 0, Redundant

You are right, it should be a list of user interfaces, not only graphical ones.

--
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Re:what? by WormholeFiend · 2004-03-23 04:12 · Score: 2, Informative

well, historically (which is the point here), the term "Graphic User Interface" served to describe the Mac and Windows mouse-icon-menu way of shielding users from internal computer processes and make the system easier to use than the command-line interface.
Re:what? by RetroGeek · 2004-03-23 04:12 · Score: 4, Informative

couldn't it technically be called "graphical"

Let's not start re-inventing technical meanings. Graphical is not Text.

A text system cannot by definition display graphics. The original IBM had two basic modes for the display, text and graphics. You had to switch them within your program. Text was MUCH faster, so you only went to graphical when you had to. It was also easier to code to the text mode.

--

- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Re:what? by Dreadlord · 2004-03-23 04:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Nope, there is a difference, a good discussion of the differences between text and graphical interfaces can be found here.

--
The IT section color scheme sucks.
Re:what? by Wonda · 2004-03-23 04:25 · Score: 1

I wish!

my IBM XT has an MDA card (for Monochrome Display Adapter, i think), it ONLY does text in green on black. full size ISA card too!
Re:what? by big_groo · 2004-03-23 04:25 · Score: 1

Shouldn't it be called a "planet"?
Re:what? by BrookHarty · 2004-03-23 04:30 · Score: 1

If it's displayed on a screen, couldn't it technically be called "graphical"?

Then what do you call Twin?
Re:what? by Minna+Kirai · 2004-03-23 04:30 · Score: 3, Informative

Let's not start re-inventing technical meanings.

It's not a reinvention, though. The word usage in the computer user-interface field has always been at odds with the English language. But computers became so popular that they've wiped-out the original meaning.

Graphical is not Text.

That's exactly what the word means, though. In fact to be pedantically correct, a photograph or diagram isn't graphical. Only written text is by-definition "graphic".

Use your dictionary: the very first definition listed is "Of or relating to a written representation". That's the oldest meaning of the word; the others are neologisms by comparison.

To be linguistically correct, modern computers would be said to employ PUIs (Pictoral User Interfaces)
Re:what? by TigerNut · 2004-03-23 04:30 · Score: 1

A tactile (output) interface would be kinda cool - like an interactive Braille display. Definitely better (as an alternative to the traditional visual output) than audio or smell output.

--
Less is more.
Re:what? by Charles+Dart · 2004-03-23 04:40 · Score: 1

But you can't see the text on your monitor without a graphics card. The last machines to be truly text only were the old teletype terminals. By the dictionary even those are graphical:

graphicPronunciation Key(grfk)

adj. also graphical (--kl)

1. Of or relating to written representation.

2. Of or relating to pictorial representation.

I don't mean to flame but if you are going to nit-pick you should check your facts.
Re:what? by OP_Boot · 2004-03-23 04:52 · Score: 1

It already exists.

You can get a strip that clips on to the edge of your keyboard and has little pins in it that push up.
http://www.deafblind.com/display.html
Re:what? by Malor · 2004-03-23 04:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

The advent of bitmap graphics at all was a big deal. In text mode, the smallest addressable unit is 'one character'. This means that an 80x24 screen takes 1920 bytes to represent. Processors are so fast these days that you could update that screen, sheesh, a hundred thousand times a second, probably. But in the days of kilohertz machines, that was quite a bit of data to push.
The early 8-bit home computers could do bitmap graphics, and in fact it was a big selling point.... "Game XYZ, fight monsters in actual bitmap graphics!' Check out Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple 2 emulators for an idea of what 'good graphics' once meant. I don't remember the resolution of those early screens anymore, but it was very low... certainly not higher than 320x200.
When the Mac shipped, computers really changed. Instead of a text OS with occasional, fully-focused graphical programs, the machine was so incredibly powerful (8mhz, 16 bit) that it could do graphics all the time...they could actually draw a user interface on a 512x384 screen and have time left over. That's 196,608 pixels. I don't know how many bits per pixel the first Mac used... I keep wanting to say "one", but I think I remember grays on those first Macs, so that might be wrong. If it WAS one bit per pixel, they could represent that screen in about 24k. That's still a lot of data to push around, compared with the 2k for a text screen, and could be as high as 196K if it was 8 bits/pixel. I'm pretty sure it wasn't that high... the first Mac had only 128k of RAM. Maybe it was just black/white.
They actually managed to get a fairly good GUI up on the 1Mhz C64 with GEOS, but it was the Mac that first showed the mainstream that it was even possible.
Everything after that has been about accelerating that basic idea. For a long time, neither the Mac nor the PC was really fast enough to animate the whole screen at once at a reasonable framerate. Games had to be very clever to work around this; even though they'd done a GUI on the 64, it was still very, very hard to animate a full screen on a PC. As I recall, that was mostly due to bus speed; the system simply couldn't shovel enough bits out to the graphics card over an ISA bus. The processor was more than capable, but the bus just wasn't up to it.
For the last 15 years, the whole evolution of computers has been about making graphics go faster. First there were Windows (2D) accelerators, then full motion video, which flopped as a concept, because it didn't make good games and didn't work very well. A number of years ago, we finally got to the point that pretty much every computer in the world can do very smooth full motion video, and nobody even noticed, the idea was that dead. Then 3D accelerators, then GPUs, then hardware T&L.... the driving force in PC development has been graphics.
Sometime in the last couple of years, PCs really hit a plateau; they've gotten fast enough to do practically anything we can think of, at least for now. We can generate, manipulate, and output graphics of unbelievable quality... and we're mostly pretty blase' about the whole thing.
I'll tell you, though, if I showed my desktop machine (Athlon 2800+, GeForce FX5950, dual 36gb Raptors in RAID-0, Audigy 2 Platinum, Klipsch 5.1 speakers) to my 15-year-old self, I'd fear for my life. In 1985, I'd have killed someone with a big smile on my face to own a machine like that.
Phew, I kinda went off on a tangent there. Getting back on track..... GUI means a very specific thing. If the OS can turn individual dots on and off, and draws the user interface that way, it's a GUI.
Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:06 · Score: 0

You can get a strip that clips on to the edge of your keyboard and has little pins in it that push up.

Braille display units are tactile. But considering that you have to move your hands to a (Perkins or Querty) keyboard, to change the response, I hardly call it interactive.

Showing my non-geekyness here, there was a power glove for one of the early game machines (?nintendo), that could be used (with an appropriate driver) in DOS machines, to provide a nominal sensory interactive device.
Re:what? by mdielmann · 2004-03-23 05:07 · Score: 4, Funny

If it's displayed on a screen, couldn't it technically be called "graphical"?

So a hardcopy of Playboy isn't graphical? Let me guess, you read the articles...

--
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Re:what? by bigman2003 · 2004-03-23 05:17 · Score: 3, Funny

Wow...I had one of those cards too- but I guess I got the amber version...I just couldn't get mine to switch to green no matter what I did.

--
No reason to lie.
Re:what? by erik_fredricks · 2004-03-23 05:27 · Score: 1

Sure. What about punched-cards? Nothing graphical about that. As long as it's displayed on a TTY (glass TELETYPE), it could count. Plus, all that goofy ASCI art could qualify...

--
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Re:what? by AndroidCat · 2004-03-23 05:28 · Score: 1

Doesn't someone make a mouse with a vibrating pin finger-pad area? (As you move the mouse, the pins allow you to feel what's under the mouse pointer.)

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:what? by 74nova · 2004-03-23 05:34 · Score: 1

the problem is that your (probably correct) linguistic definitions precisely contradict (perhaps defacto-) standard definitions in computer terms. the statement that graphic is not text is entirely correct in this field as most people would agree. based on exact definitions from a dictionary, this is apparently not correct. however, even tho the computer standard is apparently incorrect, i think it is a justified statement that your parent poster suggested it was a re-inventing of technical meanings in this context. just to be difficult, if a diagram isnt graphic and only text can be, is a graph graphic?

just my .02

--
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
Re:what? by Myen · 2004-03-23 05:53 · Score: 0, Redundant

Ummm...
I'm pretty sure it depended on the CRT used - plug into a green monitor, you get green text. Plug into a colour monitor (*), you get actual white text.

(*) Some old colour monitors had cables / sockets that would let you plug into monochrome video cards - I had one of those.
Re:what? by Hal-9001 · 2004-03-23 05:54 · Score: 1

Use your dictionary: the very first definition listed is "Of or relating to a written representation".
That depends on which dictionary you reference. The particular definition that you cite from that link is from American Heritage; further down the page the Webster's first definition of the word "graphical" is "Of or pertaining to the arts of painting and drawing." A true pedant consults the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), whose first definition for the word graphical is "Clearly traced," and is nonspecific as whether it is a word or pictoral representation that is being traced. The second definition refers the reader to the word "graphic", the first definition of which is "Drawn with a pencil or pen."

That's the oldest meaning of the word; the others are neologisms by comparison.
Again, consulting the OED reveals that the pictoral interpretation of the word "graphical" in the English predates the written word interpretation (1610 vs 1643).

Just as there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, I suppose that it's also true that there are liars, damn liars, and pedants. :-p

--
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:31 · Score: 0

To be linguistically correct, modern computers would be said to employ PUIs (Pictoral User Interfaces)

To be linguistically correct, we'd still use "syrup" to refer to an antidote to snake venom. Sorry, but the argumentum ex etymologia holds no water in professional linguistic circles.
Re:what? by flok · 2004-03-23 06:45 · Score: 1

Well, you have 2 types of those:
1. full screen (through (n)curses for example)
2. line mode (on your teletype device)
The first one can be seen as a gui more or less.

--

www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
Re:what? by Minna+Kirai · 2004-03-23 06:52 · Score: 1

The particular definition that you cite from that link is

Nope. You don't know which definition I meant, because there are 4 on that page, and 3 of them have "written" as the first meaning. The other has it as the second.

Thus they are unanimous that the claim "Graphical is not Text" is absolutely, completely false.

Again, consulting the OED reveals that the pictoral interpretation of the word "graphical" in the English predates the written word interpretation

I doubt that, as it contradicts other words with the "graph" base such as "graphology" and "digraph". The historical record clearly shows that although "graph" meant "visible shapes", it was first used to indicate the shapes of letters.

All that said, I am realistic, and see that "graphical" is a more useful word with the new definition than the old. Just chalk it up alongside "decimate", "tradegy", and "vagina" as terms whose meaning has completely flipped over the decades.
Re:what? by Minna+Kirai · 2004-03-23 06:56 · Score: 1

is a graph graphic?

In strict Computer Science terminology, no. A "graph" is a set theoretical relationship where each element in S contains a reference to 0 to |S|-1 others.

While graphs can be visualized or drawn as a picture, that picture is not the graph.
Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:03 · Score: 0

Not only that, there's one with a gyroscope inside which snags on window borders and buttons, improving the tactile feedback. Anybody remember this and have a link?
Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:11 · Score: 0

Check out Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple 2 emulators for an idea of what 'good graphics' once meant. I don't remember the resolution of those early screens anymore, but it was very low... certainly not higher than 320x200.
The Apple II (or 'Apple ][' as the in-crowd used to call it) had 'high resolution' graphics of 280x192, with 6 colors. And even then, you only had half the horizontal resolution if you wanted to draw an object in a single color.
It was pretty ingenious, really-- each pixel had 2 bits of depth, but the odd columns and even columns had separate color indices, so you could get six colors!
It's hard to believe there was a time when CGA was worth coveting, but it did offer 320x240 in 16 colors. :)
Re:what? by pragma_x · 2004-03-23 07:33 · Score: 1

But what about ANSI and ASCII graphical representations?

Seems to me that over 2 million hits seems to indicate that text is in fact very graphical in nature.

ASCII Art: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,850,000

ANSI Art: Results 1 - 10 of about 319,000
Re:what? by Chris+Burke · 2004-03-23 07:43 · Score: 2, Informative

It's hard to believe there was a time when CGA was worth coveting, but it did offer 320x240 in 16 colors. :)

Naw, that was EGA. CGA only offered four colors, and your choices were generally black, white, and either cyan and magenta or green and red. EGA made a big difference when playing Bard's Tale or Champions of Krynn. :)

--

The enemies of Democracy are
Re:what? by ezzewezza · 2004-03-23 08:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

To be linguistically correct, modern computers would be said to employ PUIs (Pictoral User Interfaces)

How is that linguistically correct? Linguistically speaking, words are, for the most part, completely arbitrary--onomatopoeia being the one near-exception. When we speak of what words mean, we speak of what they are generally accepted to mean. Language is by no means a stagnant entity; it evolves and changes over time. Thus, it is perfectly linguistically correct to refer to the user interfaces as graphical user interfaces.
Re:what? by Queer+Boy · 2004-03-23 09:41 · Score: 1

A text-based interface is still graphical. Remember the card punch computers? You are describing a WIMP interface (Windows Icons Menus Pointer).

--
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Re:what? by Jeremy+Erwin · 2004-03-23 09:56 · Score: 1

The Macintosh had a 512x384, 1 bit display.
Re:what? by Hal-9001 · 2004-03-23 10:13 · Score: 1

Nope. You don't know which definition I meant, because there are 4 on that page, and 3 of them have "written" as the first meaning. The other has it as the second.
Of the four sources on the page, the only two that I would consider authoritative in any way are American Heritage and Webster's, and both pale in comparison to the OED. I take issue with the fact that you neglect Webster's first definition of the word "graphical," which supports the pictoral interpretation over your written word interpretation. In any case, to assert that the written word interpretation is dominant in modern English usage is absurd.
Thus they are unanimous that the claim "Graphical is not Text" is absolutely, completely false.
I actually agree with you on this point. The point of contention for me this statement in your parent post:
In fact to be pedantically correct, a photograph or diagram isn't graphical. Only written text is by-definition "graphic".
To claim that "graphical" only describes written text is an untenable position, and that's the only reason I was compelled to respond to your comment. That claim contradicts both modern and not-so-modern English usage.
I doubt that, as it contradicts other words with the "graph" base such as "graphology" and "digraph". The historical record clearly shows that although "graph" meant "visible shapes", it was first used to indicate the shapes of letters.
Fine, however it does not follow that we should interpret all "graph" words pertain only to written text. As far as how the Greek root grafikos was first used, that is open to debate since we cannot proved when it was first used or what its intended meaning was. For all we know, the written word interpretation could be a bastardization of the pictoral interpretation.

--
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Re:what? by iantri · 2004-03-23 11:34 · Score: 1

640x400x16.
Just for accuracy's sake.
Re:what? by bgspence · 2004-03-23 14:06 · Score: 1

The Mac did have the option of using two video buffers. You could compute into one then swap them to avoid screen flicker.

With only 128k of ram, it was an expensive programming luxury.
Re:what? by mdwh2 · 2004-03-23 14:30 · Score: 1

The Mac was 1 bit IIRC. A year later, the Amiga was doing 6 bits per pixel at 320x512 (or 4 bits per pixel at 640x512). It's not really clear that one machine was first to "the mainstream", but rather a gradual series of improvements.

For a long time, neither the Mac nor the PC was really fast enough to animate the whole screen at once at a reasonable framerate. [...] As I recall, that was mostly due to bus speed; the system simply couldn't shovel enough bits out to the graphics card over an ISA bus. The processor was more than capable, but the bus just wasn't up to it.

I believe the Amiga got round this by having memory which was shared by the CPU and graphics chips. Though tricks still had to be used (eg, using the blitter to do copying of screen areas which hadn't changed and only redrawing the bits which had).

A number of years ago, we finally got to the point that pretty much every computer in the world can do very smooth full motion video, and nobody even noticed, the idea was that dead.

I'd say that it's far from dead, but just that it's taken for granted. You don't hear the term "multimedia PC" either these days. It's true though that the hype of full motion video came several years before it really took off (eg, watching DVDs).

Sometime in the last couple of years, PCs really hit a plateau; they've gotten fast enough to do practically anything we can think of, at least for now. We can generate, manipulate, and output graphics of unbelievable quality... and we're mostly pretty blase' about the whole thing.

I think this quote is appropriate: "I suggest you close the book, go for a walk, and then return to your reading when you are done. Go out to a meadow, river, or a park and take a look around. You will soon discover how nature's complexity is far from being tamed by graphics programmers, and some doubt it will ever be mastered." [Core Techniques and Algorithms in Game Programming, Sanchez-Crespo Dalmau.] Admittedly this is referring more to algorithms, but the reason we need clever graphics algorithms is because we don't have anywhere near enough computational power to do rendering in a more brute-force fashion.
Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 14:40 · Score: 0

> it did offer 320x240 in 16 colors. :)
Naw, that was EGA. CGA only offered four colors, and your choices were generally black, white, and either cyan and magenta or green and red.
Right! My badness. My memory is failing me; there were no modes with 240 lines. I remember having to choose between palettes on the PC-XT, and desperately wishing I could use all 8 colors at once.
640x400x16. Just for accuracy's sake.
Nope. The EGA gave you up to 640x350x16. Here are the actual modes:
CGA: (8 colors in 2 palettes of 4) 640x200x2
320x200x4 (2 alternative palettes)
EGA: (16 colors out of 64 colors) 640x200x16
320x200x16
640x350x16 VGA: (16 or 256 colors out of 262,144) 320x200x16
640x400x16
640x480x16
320x200x256
There's also the 'Hercules mono' mode on some cards, which is similar to MDA resolution (720x350x2), and the undocumented 'Mode X' on the VGA, which is 320x240x256.
Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 15:41 · Score: 0

>> To be linguistically correct, we'd still use "syrup" to refer to an antidote to snake venom.

This is important: if you are bitten by a rattlesnake, the recommended first-aid treatment is NOT to cut open the wound and suck out the poison. Instead, head for the nearest IHOP. :)
Re:what? by chunkwhite86 · 2004-03-23 16:25 · Score: 1

text interface counts as graphic interface? as opposed to what... tactile interface?

Hey, at least it's better than a rectal interface.

--
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Re:what? by Reziac · 2004-03-23 17:46 · Score: 1

To cover both modes, you'd need a PTUI (Pictoral and Text User Interface). To reverse engineer this OS, you'd have to hack PTUI. [I'll go put myself away now...]

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Yes well done /. by Fisher99 · 2004-03-23 04:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

that website is definately a memory NOW! Funny though I started with fvwm wayback, went through windows UI, CDE, kde, gnome and I'm back with fvwm2 as my main GUI.

Re:Yes well done /. by renelicious · 2004-03-23 04:09 · Score: 2, Informative

Google Link

--
"Luke, I am your node.parent();"
Re:Yes well done /. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:13 · Score: 0

Same here. I've never really found anything that beats fvwm for usability, and after all, that's what I've got my computer for.
Re:Yes well done /. by nickos · 2004-03-23 09:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

I figure there's more open source window managers for X Windows then there are proprietary GUIs, and it's a shame that GUIdebook doesn't cover them. There's a good site here that does.

Unlike proprietary GUIs, some of the open source offerings are more innovative. I particularly like Ion, a tiled wm, and WindowLab, which seems pretty original.

In other news... by haxor.dk · 2004-03-23 04:07 · Score: 5, Funny

.... the internet backbone in European country Poland broke down today following a phenomenon known as "The slashdot effect". No people were harmed in the incident, but a lot of Slavic IT professionals were terribly inconvenienced.

Re:In other news... by J.+Jacques · 2004-03-23 04:22 · Score: 1

That's what they get for building a backbone with a screen door in it!

--
http://www.questionablecontent.net
Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:25 · Score: 0

lol terrible
Re:In other news... by jackalski · 2004-03-23 22:11 · Score: 1

Riiiight... you have .dk in your nickname, yet you sound soooo american :P

--
jackal

Slashdotted by LGagnon · 2004-03-23 04:07 · Score: 3, Informative

Here's the Google cache.

Re:Slashdotted by 0x0d0a · 2004-03-23 04:12 · Score: 4, Informative

Google doesn't store images. Right back at square one.

The Wayback Machine doesn't have it, and it's probably too late for anyone to mirror it.

--
May we never see th
Re:Slashdotted by BrookHarty · 2004-03-23 04:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Here's the Google cache.

Since google cache doesnt show gfx, and you want to see some pictures, go check out xwinman, a nice list of different types of xwindow managers and a history of each. Not everything has to be a GUI for a microsoft OS. http://www.plig.org/xwinman/

Correction? by mishehu · 2004-03-23 04:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

Shouldn't this be about the history of every UI, not GUI? CLI doesn't normally incorporate graphics. ;-)

Re:Correction? by dkh2 · 2004-03-23 04:14 · Score: 2, Funny

On top of that, it's not a walk down Memory Lane. It's a walk down GUI Lane.

A walk down Memory Lane would detail the history of [something]RAM and its precursors.

--
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Re:Correction? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:16 · Score: 0

> Code commentary is like sex. If it's good, it's VERY good. If it's bad, it's
> still better than nothing.

No - misleading comments waste a lot of time. You're obviously looking at it from a developer's - rather than a maintainer's - point of view.
Re:Correction? by old+man+of+the+c · 2004-03-23 04:16 · Score: 1

I wrote a few "command line" interfaces using character graphics. Really just displayed a numbered menu of options and a prompt. You entered the number of the option you wanted. Kind of like those telephone help systems you love to hate.
Re:Correction? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:39 · Score: 0

But have you ever driven a CLI Torus? *rimshot*

Great by lemonhed · 2004-03-23 04:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

The work by Engelbart (from PARC) directly led to the advances at Xerox PARC. Several people went from SRI to Xerox PARC in the early 1970's (where I worked).

The Xerox PARC team codified the WIMP (windows, icons, menus and pointers) paradigm, first pioneered on the Xerox Alto experimental computer, but which eventually appeared commercially in the Xerox 8010 ('Star') system in 1981

Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:13 · Score: 0

It's not really a GUI though, as gui means windows that you can move around and overlap, with menus at the top of the screen. The Xerox machine was less GUI than it was anything else. It took until Apple released the first MAC to get a GUI going.
Re:Great by socode · 2004-03-23 04:51 · Score: 1

So, according to your definition, even Windows isn't a GUI as the menus are generally at the top of their parent window. And plenty of GUIs exist without either movable or overlapping windows- take my phone, for example.

Has it occurred to you that your definition might be broken?
Re:Great by hak1du · 2004-03-23 04:53 · Score: 1

It's not really a GUI though, as gui means windows that you can move around and overlap, with menus at the top of the screen. The Xerox machine was less GUI than it was anything else. It took until Apple released the first MAC to get a GUI going.

"GUI" means "graphical user interface". Of course, PARC had those long before Apple.

PARC developed overlapping and movable windows years before Apple (and so did several other research labs). PARC also developed not one, but several different GUI-based systems, including the Alto and Smalltalk-80.

Menus at the top of the screen arrived long before the GUI. UCSD Pascal had them, as did many other systems.
Re:Great by mangastudent · 2004-03-23 04:54 · Score: 1

It's not really a GUI though, as gui means windows that you can move around and overlap, with menus at the top of the screen. The Xerox machine was less GUI than it was anything else. It took until Apple released the first MAC to get a GUI going.

Ehh? As I remember, Engelbart and co. at SRI put together everything but a bitmap monitor. They had all that was really important (since graphics was an obvious extension): (tiled) windows, mouse, chord keyboard (like a few piano keys), the whole paradigm.
Xerox added the graphical to it, and made Altos in small batches but in a total fairly large quantity. It was indeed Apple that had the first GUI to achieve commercial success (on their second try, after the Lisa), and for that they get credit, but they were implementing early '70s state of the art a decade later (about the usual lag from lab to industry).
I really don't know what you mean by "The Xerox machine was less GUI than it was anything else."; I'd say the GUI was the biggest thing it had going for it, given that it had a 16bit bit-slice processor with (argh) bank-switching of up to 4 64KB memory banks. (And it was probably a good price/performance PC for it's time, but preferred a PDP-11/45 with split I/D (65KB instructions, 56KB data, 8KB stack due to it's MMU) with a graphics system ... running UNIX (that was the choice I actually did make in 1980 :-)
As a side note, I've often thought that the relative granularity of objects in LISP and Smalltalk had to do in no small part with the fact that LISP was traditionally run on big address space machines (PDP-6/10/DEC 20, 1MB!!! :-), and Smalltalk on machines were it could be much more painful to access an object, encouraging larger objects.
Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:56 · Score: 0

The work by Engelbart (from PARC)..

I hope that's a typo. Englebart never worked at PARC, although some of his grad students went on to work on the Alto and Star there (as you know)
Re:Great by the_2nd_coming · 2004-03-23 05:09 · Score: 1

but you have to remember that... they all sucked until the mac came out... the mere fact that no one had seen a GUI before the mac shows you just how commercially successful the others were.

--

I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Re:Great by AndroidCat · 2004-03-23 06:01 · Score: 2, Funny

Shows how much the Lisa sucked too. But the Mac still sucked until it got a larger screen and colour. Of course, Every OS Sucks! (needs QuickTime, which sucks too.)

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Great by be-fan · 2004-03-23 13:58 · Score: 1

Commercial success isn't a very good measure of the quality of a system. Most of the commercially popular systems are greatly inferior to the ones that weren't very commercially successful.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Great by bgspence · 2004-03-23 14:28 · Score: 1

And of course there was Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad on the MIT TX-2 in 1963. It was the first GUI, not a WIMP. GUI's were very familiar to anyone in the industry years before PARC did their thing.
I used a vector based graphics storage tube at the Michigan Dept. of Highways back in the '60s. It was used like a pen plotter, but had a light pen for interacting with it. Light pens and track pads were common for years before the mouse was invented.
Re:Great by the_2nd_coming · 2004-03-23 18:09 · Score: 1

yeah...well I oubt that holds in terms of the Mac and the Star ;-)

--

I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Re:Great by hak1du · 2004-03-25 19:10 · Score: 1

but you have to remember that... they all sucked until the mac came out... the mere fact that no one had seen a GUI before the mac shows you just how commercially successful the others were.

Yeah, because we all know what a great indicator of quality commercial success is, right? After all, Windows is so much more of a commercial success than the Macintosh, so Windows must be even better, right?

In reality, Mac succeeded not because of quality or technology (where it was much worse than Xerox's developments in just about every respect), but because it was cheap, because it was packaged nicely, because it had cute graphics, and because it was heavily marketed.

Apple contributed pretty much nothing to GUIs with the original Macintosh. If anything, they took us backwards by cutting so many corners in their software architecture that the industry still hasn't even reached the level of technology represented by the original Smalltalk-80 system.

...like a C64 game loading /snore by netglen · 2004-03-23 04:09 · Score: 2, Funny

Too bad the sight was /.'ed so fast. I really wanted to read it. But my browser is sitting there forver....like GI Joe loading up on my old C64.

Re:dead already... by maximilln · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I know it's only your .sig but...

I've often wondered if present day Windows OS wasn't merely hacked together GPL code compiled with a custom compiler. The existence of etc/services and etc/protocols, the look and feel of the Windows windowmanager, some of the widgets, all have the feel of a frankenstein Linux. If that were true then perhaps the GPL is viral...

--
+++ATHZ 99:5:80

Another GUIde! by Krik+Johnson · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 5, Informative

Since this site is slashdotted, there is another GUide that I know about, which is also interesting.

Nathan's GUI gallery. It has every version of windows, many macs, Unixes, plain wierd ones and of course the infamous Microsoft Bob. The IE is evil section is hilarious as well!

--
I have a fetish for traffic cones

Re:Another GUIde! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:51 · Score: 0

Check out his amiga os 3.5 screenshots.. teh one with teh web browser.. slashdot!

Rather.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 0

"It's an interesting stroll down memory lane."

More like, "it was an interesting stroll."

Hey -Editors! by Erasmus · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

Shouldn't Slashdot's editors make at least a token effort to see if the pages they link to can stand the traffic they invariably direct to them?
Is a quick email to a webmaster really such an astoundingly difficult task or is effectively DoSing every interesting small webpage on the Internet the goal?

Re:Hey -Editors! by geoffspear · 2004-03-23 04:19 · Score: 4, Funny

Hey, be quiet... you're going to ruin my best excuse for not having anything remotely interesting on my webpage!

--
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Re:Hey -Editors! by WaterTroll · 2004-03-23 04:20 · Score: 1

Dear webmaster,
You are about to receive a huge amount of traffic and attention to your website. It will linked from an extremely popular website known as slashdot. Watch your hits rise from the hundreds to the thousands. Would you like this or would you rather remain ignored?

Sincerely, The Editors.

Duh!
Re:Hey -Editors! by PhuckH34D · 2004-03-23 04:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

they dont do that.
Read the FAQ
( and while your at it, this is the "coolest story Slashdot's ever had")

--
You're old school? I beta tested the motherf***ing abacus!
Re:Hey -Editors! by Politicus · 2004-03-23 04:26 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I don't even follow the main story links anymore, but look for a google cache post in the discussion section. Wouldn't it be easier to simply offer a google cache link in the story itself?
Would slashdot have the bandwidth to carry a cache of the pages they link to for at least the first 24hours that a story is out?

--
Politicus
Re:Hey -Editors! by OzPeter · 2004-03-23 04:30 · Score: 1

Yes, and Denial is a river in Egypt.

I have always considered this aspect of /. to be one huge cop-out. Not only does it affect the people whose sites are linked to, it also affects us people who want to actually see the site that goes with the story.

Slashdot .. All action .. no responsibility.

--
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Re:Hey -Editors! by .com+b4+.storm · 2004-03-23 04:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

Shouldn't Slashdot's editors make at least a token effort ...

This doesn't occur for much the same reason people are often jerks in traffic and don't give someone room to enter their lane. Despite the fact it would take a measly 5 seconds out of their precious day, they'd rather hog the lane and not let you in. The reason being, of course, that since nobody makes them exercise that courtesy, they generally will not. And so it is with Slashdot...

--
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Re:Hey -Editors! by Minna+Kirai · 2004-03-23 04:47 · Score: 1

it also affects us people who want to actually see the site

Right on. That's one causal factor for the unceasing series of /. posters who comment before reading the article- they're trying to be responsible and not hammer a crippled website.

The FAQ answer alludes to "implications". Well so what? There might be problems, so take 'em on! That answer is four years old. There's been enough time to "think it through in detail". None of the problems look insurmountable.

It would be fairly easy to script a webspider which auto-downloads a copy of submitted pages (to 2-3 levels of depth). Then, if the page is scheduled for the frontpage, it's owner could be given a few emails warning of the impending slashdotting. By responding, she could automatically permit slashdot.org to serve cached versions of the site for the next 24 hours.

Problem solved!
Re:Hey -Editors! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:50 · Score: 0

Your argument would apply as well to the slashdot readers as it does to the editors. Maybe slashdot readers should wait a few hours before clicking on the story, giving time for the slashdot effect to subside.
To make the readers exercise courtesy the editors could code slashdot to remove the links from stories at random times so that not everyone can follow them at once.
Re:Hey -Editors! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:55 · Score: 0

"I have always considered this aspect of /. to be one huge cop-out"
You're right.
But don't forget editoral abuse of moderation.
And having a dillweed like Michael as an editor.
And the fact that the editurs don't bother the EDIT. Or spellczech for that matter...
And the fact that they've pointedly not run a YRO story on the taking down of goatse.cx.
But yeah, the whole refusal to cache policy is just idiotically ignoring the reality of the situation.
Re:Hey -Editors! by jazmataz23 · 2004-03-23 05:06 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, the "reality of the situation" is that by caching the site, they are duplicating someone elses' IP. In these litigious times, that is NOT a smart Standard Operating Procedure. Offer to cache, sure, but why? when google already does it?

--
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
Re:Hey -Editors! by prisoner-of-enigma · 2004-03-23 05:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

This doesn't occur for much the same reason people are often jerks in traffic and don't give someone room to enter their lane.

Perhaps if people would try manipulating that funny stalk poking out of the steering column called a "blinker," then I'd consider letting them over. If they're too lazy to put on a blinker, they can try to get in front of someone else. I certainly don't want them in front of me.

--
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Re:Hey -Editors! by Sloppy · 2004-03-23 05:54 · Score: 3, Interesting

Even without caching/mirroring, they could still make the Slashdot Effect less spikey.
A story about old GUIs is hardly "breaking news." It's not like "Oh shit, the missiles are on the way and everyone has 10 minutes to read this story about how the nuclear holocaust started." (Heh, I can imagine Slashdot addicts trying to load the page instead of ducking and covering. (Then someone posts, "Is this really news for nerds?"))
Not everyone needs to see this type of article at once. For non-news articles on small sites, they could gradually reveal the article to viewers, over the period of a day or two. (e.g. If your IP address plus the article ID, mod 48, happens to be greater than the number of hours since the article was released, then it doesn't get included on your copy of front page.)

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Re:Hey -Editors! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:15 · Score: 0

Really? What's the URL?
Re:Hey -Editors! by nickos · 2004-03-23 10:13 · Score: 1

Why has this been modded as Offtopic - it sounds like a good idea.
Re:Hey -Editors! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-24 03:44 · Score: 0

A man without God is like a fish without a bicycle.
really? ive never seen a bicycle make a fish. that must be something to witness, for sure.
Re:Hey -Editors! by 74nova · 2004-03-24 04:16 · Score: 1

attitude while driving is important, too. if they act like they are just going to get in that space in front of me without signaling whether i like it or not, all 400hp of the ol nova like to close that gap quickly. i leave enough room to feel safe behind someone, not enough for one more car and still have that cushion.

also, see my sig:

--
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy

Kind of telling by Amiga+Lover · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

Don't you think it's kind of telling that GUIs have required so many iterations and versions and still people havent managed to learn how to use a computer properly, they're still difficult to use and still people end up not being able to get them to do what they want.

Yet the terminal console is almost unchanged in 30 years. Hmmmm?

Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:14 · Score: 0

And about 1% of the computer using population actually has any idea how to use the terminal console?
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:20 · Score: 0

What makes GUI suck is the mouse, and having to constantly change between keyboard and mouse (keyboard shortcuts only go so far). BTW, mice are a prime cause of RSI problems.
Re:Kind of telling by baryon351 · 2004-03-23 04:23 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I'm a solid guihead most of the time, and I agree.

Except when it comes to my photoshopping. 99% mousing and 1% keyboarding :)
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:28 · Score: 0

Actually it's not harder. A custom console setup can be just as easy, if it's done right. How do you think the secretaries and office workers were able to get things done back in the day? Either they knew some basic CLI commands (type "wordstar" to run Wordstar, heh) or they had a text menu system where you use arrow or function keys to choose items. Most console apps also had a menu at the top you coulud access with function keys or hitting escape or Alt-, sort of like keyboard shortcuts in GUI.
In fact, it could be argued that some of those interfaces were easier to use because the apps tended to be simpler! (and as a result, less buggy)
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:28 · Score: 0

If you're really a GUI head you should be happier with The GIMP. A far better interface than Photoslop, and free to boot!
Re:Kind of telling by mblase · 2004-03-23 05:34 · Score: 1

Don't you think it's kind of telling that GUIs have required so many iterations and versions and still people havent managed to learn how to use a computer properly, they're still difficult to use and still people end up not being able to get them to do what they want.

Yet the terminal console is almost unchanged in 30 years. Hmmmm?

Actually, I find it more telling that most people haven't learned how to use a terminal console properly. They're still difficult to use and people end up not being able to get them to do what they want.

Your comment is akin to an old farmer complaining that the real reason agriculture is suffering is because nobody's harvesting grain with a sickle anymore.
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:49 · Score: 1, Insightful

Your analogy--as most analogies that people make to try and prove a point--doesn't hold water.
The command line is more powerful than any GUI. It's also harder unless some kind of wrapper (menu system, Lynx shell, etc.) was setup as a front-end for non-programmers. Because, guess what, the shell is a programming language. And believe it or not, programming languages can do a lot more than a mouse pointer and a bunch of icons.
Which isn't to say you can't program in a GUI environment, but you'll never get away from typing text. That's what it's all about, in the end.
Re:Kind of telling by xdroop · 2004-03-23 06:59 · Score: 1

Yet the terminal console is almost unchanged in 30 years.

You are right, there's absolutely no difference between running sh on a VT100-over-serial terminal and running bash on a Multi-Gnome-Terminal.
Hang on, there's a huge difference -- what terminal are you using?

--
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Re:Kind of telling by a1englishman · 2004-03-23 06:59 · Score: 1

Even if computers had such advanced AI that they could understand human speach on the same level as humans, people would still have trouble. Anything remotely detailed is going to require its own jargon, which people are going to have to learn. Each application would have a layer of jargon on top of the OS/UI's jargon. Also, one never gets complicated things right the first time. If we did, then there wouldn't be any need for pointless meetings.
Re:Kind of telling by squiggleslash · 2004-03-23 07:24 · Score: 1

What makes GUI suck is the mouse, and having to constantly change between keyboard and mouse (keyboard shortcuts only go so far).
This is why I use a trackpoint keyboard (a keyboard with a nipple.) IBM sells 'em. They solve the entire problem.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:08 · Score: 0

That's right dude. I removed the keys from the intergrated numeric keypad and placed the mousepad on top to reduce mouse-keyboard distance.
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:18 · Score: 0

Windows Explorer and Mozilla Firefox can be operated completely with a keyboard. I hardly ever touch the mouse.
Re:Kind of telling by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 10:38 · Score: 0

Yet the terminal console is almost unchanged in 30 years. Hmmmm?
Right. It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that current applications are solving much more complex problems than older console-based ones were? And you think all current GUI users would actually be more productive using just shell windows, and CHUI apps?
Terminal console is simple since there's not much room to grow, functionality-wise. It's all done; nothing new to see. GUIs have still ways to go; as indicated by problems there still are.

Oh.. "GUI" by Mateito · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 5, Funny

I prefer a Gooey

--
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl

Re:Oh.. "GUI" by Moofie · 2004-03-23 05:06 · Score: 1

looks like a Mangia pizza. Or a nice Gino's East. Yum.

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Re:Oh.. "GUI" by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:56 · Score: 0

You have to be from Chicago! BTW I love Gino's East, much better then Uno's anytime!
Re:Oh.. "GUI" by Moofie · 2004-03-23 11:11 · Score: 1

Used to live in Wheaton. Now live in Dallas. For a while, we had a Pizzaria Uno's not too far from my place, and it was acceptable.

However, the best pizza I've eaten outside of Gino's is in Austin. Mangia Pizza is teh roolz.

Forget that nelly "new york style" crap. If I want to eat fax paper, I'll go eat fax paper. I want an inch and a half of cheese and meat and veggies, and the pizza must weigh ten pounds.

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!

Re:...like a C64 game loading /snore by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:10 · Score: 1, Insightful

It's 2004, I didn't think people STILL say 'sight' when referring to a SITE.

GEOS- Oh the memories by Perrin7 · 2004-03-23 04:11 · Score: 3, Funny

On my old C128 (I was sure it was going to be the greatest thing when I sold my C64) I had GEOS and thought the graphical waste basket was neat ... until I dropped an essay in it and then panicked. That lead me to the discovery the the SECOND time you write and essay you get much better results. But GEOS was still my first encounter with a graphical operating environment.

Re:GEOS- Oh the memories by Throtex · 2004-03-23 04:18 · Score: 1

GEOS was... interesting. I never could get used to the idea of having a mouse attached to my Commodore. It seemed so out of place. I'm sure the people here who have expanded the poor C128's memory a thousand-fold would disagree, but it was always my 1 button Epix joystick for me. :)
Re:GEOS- Oh the memories by Perrin7 · 2004-03-23 04:25 · Score: 1

I never had a mouse on my commodore machines. I did go through a number of joysticks though. Initially I used my Atari VCS joysticks, and after those I actually ran through a number of other joysticks. It seemed that the aftermarket joysticks couldn't handle the abuse I put them through.
Re:GEOS- Oh the memories by operagost · 2004-03-23 05:00 · Score: 2, Funny

One night, I dropped my essay into the wastebasket, when all of a sudden it went berserk, the screen started flashing, and the whole essay just disappeared. All of it. And it was a good essay!

--

Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.

GEOS.. by plams · 2004-03-23 04:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

I remember GEOS - it was actually a nice little Mac-style OS for C64. It's funny to see a complete package, with "paint", "wordpad" and so on run in less than 64k of memory.

HOTU has a PC version of it.

Re:GEOS.. by drinkypoo · 2004-03-23 04:27 · Score: 1

PC Geos is STILL for sale, it's bundled with a word processor which is OK. Geos' big lack is that it has no facility for networking. It does support file sharing sort of, you have to use DOS drivers, and then it can handle non-disk disks. GEOS on PC uses DOS for file access, but does everything else itself. They used GEOS for the Tandy/Casio/GRiD Zoomer/Z-PDA 7000/GRiDPad 2390, and for the "PALMConnect" software which you used on the PC to transfer data to and from the PDA - Incidentally this was Palm Computing's first gig before the Pilot. They developed Graffiti for it originally, too.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:GEOS.. by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 06:29 · Score: 1

"I remember GEOS - it was actually a nice little Mac-style OS for C64. It's funny to see a complete package, with "paint", "wordpad" and so on run in less than 64k of memory."

Did GeOS ever make it out for the XL/XE Atari 8bit computers? I remember they were talking about it, but I think Atari Corp. did its best to discourage the effort and instead "recommend" 8-bit Atari computer owners migrate up to the ST line instead...

However, it did make it to the 8-bit Apples and Commodores...

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re:GEOS.. by squiggleslash · 2004-03-23 07:27 · Score: 1

Kind of ironic, given Apple did the opposite and produced GS/OS (IIRC), a Mac OS clone for the Apple IIGS. And Apple wanted to phase out the II series, whereas Atari were still milking their eight-bitters in the early nineties.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:GEOS.. by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 09:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

"Kind of ironic, given Apple did the opposite and produced GS/OS (IIRC), a Mac OS clone for the Apple IIGS. And Apple wanted to phase out the II series, whereas Atari were still milking their eight-bitters in the early nineties."

Well, chaulk that up to internal politics at Apple for having two different platform groups in competition with one another. The Mac dept. and Apple execs didn't want to cut the prices on the Mac, yet they still had to respond to the threat at the lower price point that Atari and Commodore (Amiga) were hitting them upside their heads with - especially in the European Community *member states*. So alas, you had the Apple IIgs, which really had no hope of continuing with a long term future. Apple could've thrown in an accessory emulator card to coax Apple II diehards to move up to the Mac, but they didn't.

Atari, on the other hand, maintained the 8-bit computer line until the ST's dropped down to their price point. Software companies used the 8-bit computer line to demonstrate their resolve against computer piracy and decided to make the line and example and generally cut off support. At the time, the software companies could not afford to cut out the Commodore 64 end users despite rampant piracy because there was a larger active user base than the XL/XE line. Atari tried to beef up the 8-bit line by bringing out the XE Game System...the 65XE as a game system. It generally was not successful. I could go into how Atari Corp. staff didn't understand the 8-bit computer line since most of the old school Atari Inc. engineers were long gone, but that's best saved for a different discussion. I would not classify that as "milking" the line.

After all, one of Atari's great engineers went on to work for Intel, where he created the USB ports...a modernized version of what he created at Atari called the SIO port, way back in the late 1970s...

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re:GEOS.. by csirac · 2004-03-23 12:17 · Score: 1

Apple could've thrown in an accessory emulator card to coax Apple II diehards to move up to the Mac, but they didn't.

Macintosh LC Apple II emulator card:

http://apple2history.org/museum/screenshots/lc2e _c ontrol.html

We had one in one of the macs at primary school, since the admin needed to access old archives which were in some proprietry apple ii program.

- Paul
Re:GEOS.. by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 13:30 · Score: 1

"Macintosh LC Apple II emulator card:
http://apple2history.org/museum/screenshots /lc2e_c ontrol.html "

Ah. Thanks for the clarification. However, the Macintosh LC hit the market in 1990; the Mac first debuted in 1984. That's a six year gap from the release of the initial machine to the hardware emulator. Granted, Atari and Commodore didn't get serious about their emulator projects, although it could also be argued that they had less resources to devote to such endeavors since the ST and Amiga platforms had much less marketup and therefore both companies had to sell more machines per single sale of Apple products to generate the same amount of profit. Look how long the Apple IIe was being sold at commanding prices. My Atari 1040ST with a full megabyte in 1986 cost less than an 8-bit Apple IIe with what, 128k in 1986? Although I will fess up that the IIe had one leg up on the standard ST platform, expansion slots - and plenty of them. Granted, you'd have to waste several of them to bump up to basic level ST features, like extra memory, 80 column display, etc. :0 To think how much money America's schools wasted on such machines well beyond their obsolescence because of the Apple brand (and even with educational discounts back then). Then again, I really like OS X today! :)

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*

Obvious... by toupsie · 2004-03-23 04:12 · Score: 0, Troll

It's an interesting stroll down memory lane. Not for me, it's Slashdotted! Thanks again!

--
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

Re:Obvious... by Scorchio · 2004-03-23 07:33 · Score: 1

Yeah, but, do you remember those happy days when it wasn't?

Re:CLI is a GUI? by maximilln · 2004-03-23 04:13 · Score: 2, Informative

udeproject.sourceforge.net

The binary is 90kb. It supports multiple workspaces, raising/lowering/resizing/hiding windows, background pics, color schemes, and very simple window decorations which "stay out of the way".

My favorite...

--
+++ATHZ 99:5:80

Slashdotting in 5...4...3...2...1 by maroberts · 2004-03-23 04:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

Oh it's already gone.

Slashdot could do everyone us a favour by putting a mirror of the article/site on its own server temportarily just in case the inevitable happens.

--

Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon

Re:Slashdotting in 5...4...3...2...1 by slickepott · 2004-03-23 09:15 · Score: 1

There is an answer to this here.

Memories of GeoWorks Ensemble by netglen · 2004-03-23 04:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

Now there is a blast from the past. I have fond memories of using GeoWorks Ensemble while in graduate school. I was forced to pickup a used RadioShack B&W 286 laptop in order to attend a computer class. The class was full but they allowed a few additional students to sign in if they had laptops. So I had a copy of GeoWorks and I cranked out a ton of term papers with it. It was a pretty nifty program for it's time. It ran very quickly on that 286.

Re:...like a C64 game loading /snore by maximilln · 2004-03-23 04:17 · Score: 1

GI Joe was one of the first games on the C64 where one spent more time loading from module to module (character selection, terrain selection, fight, character selection, terrain selection, fight) than doing anything else. It was still a fun game. :)

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+++ATHZ 99:5:80

Re:dead already... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:18 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Still, it's not as bad as this slashdotting. Five days now and counting.

Missing OSes? by Gr8Apes · 2004-03-23 04:18 · Score: 1

I really wanted to RTFA, but even the google cache is mostly dead. I saw the Commodore GUI mentioned, but missed any mention of the following both in what little of the article I was able to get or previous comments:

Atari
Next
OS/2's PM

Maybe I can view it later in full detail.

--
The cesspool just got a check and balance.

Re:Missing OSes? by WaterTroll · 2004-03-23 04:47 · Score: 1

I got the main page to load. It's got a lot of stuff to look at. At the bottom of it is this: In the galleries there are currently 1973 pictures and 442 icons from 42 interfaces divided into 10 families. A few sections on the main page include the evolution of certain Windows icons (like the globe), a history of splash screens, and what looks to be a special on the QNX Momentics. Those are just on the main page. It even has seperate sections for interfaces, components, and icons
Re:Missing OSes? by netglen · 2004-03-23 05:27 · Score: 1

What about the Commodore PET computer? Did the Sinclair, TI95 and PCjr have unique OSs?
Re:Missing OSes? by The+Lynxpro · 2004-03-23 06:32 · Score: 1

"I really wanted to RTFA, but even the google cache is mostly dead. I saw the Commodore GUI mentioned, but missed any mention of the following both in what little of the article I was able to get or previous comments:

*Atari"

They probably did, but they (the website) seem to be suffering from "the Slashdot effect." Putting that in Atari ST terms, that would be the equivalent of a "TOS Error 44"... followed by four or five cherry bomb icons. My 1040ST used to suffer that after running it for too long. In one particular case, Mastertronic's "Ninja Master" (or whatever it was called) started allowing myself and my friends to decapitate and perform amputations to the enemy characters...and to this day, I never saw that happen again with the system...

Hmmm...where is that 1040ST of mine...hmmm....

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*

Oximorons.... by DR+SoB · 2004-03-23 04:21 · Score: 0, Redundant

"Command Line GUI" huh? Isn't that just a "UI", seeing as it's not Graphical? Or is it graphical as compared to say, punch cards??

--
Mod +5 Drunk

Re:Oximorons.... by hak1du · 2004-03-23 04:55 · Score: 1

Actually, there are graphical user interfaces (graphical output, mouse selection, etc.) that are primarily command-line driven. They are used a lot in scientific and engineering packages.

GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by kherr · 2004-03-23 04:21 · Score: 4, Informative

CHUI stands for CHaracter User Interface. Pronounced "chew-ee". I like the term for text-based interfaces, as a counterpart to the GUI. A CLI is a command-line interface, which is really somewhat different from a CHUI. Remember all those DOS apps with text-based windows and menus? Curses and Vermont Views are good examples of CHUI libraries.

Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:44 · Score: 1, Funny

No, CHUI stands for "Big Hairy Wookee".
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by AndroidCat · 2004-03-23 04:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

First I've heard of "CHUI", and I've got the Babirusa/Celebes pig deer book and used Vermont Views. TurboVision from Borland had to be the ultimate of that lost art.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Minna+Kirai · 2004-03-23 04:53 · Score: 1

CHUI stands for CHaracter User Interface.

Character Interface!?!

Oh no, Clippy is back! And here comes the searcher-dog. And Bonzi Buddy!
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by AndroidCat · 2004-03-23 05:03 · Score: 1

Got a problem with that? :^P

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by cybermace5 · 2004-03-23 05:15 · Score: 1

I was pretty sure that "TUI" for "(Text/Textual) User Interface" was the correct term...at least, I've seen it used many times, and never seen "CHUI" used.

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...
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by dupper · 2004-03-23 05:19 · Score: 1

And don't forget Nethack! That's an OS, right? Or have they not integrated it into Emacs, yet?
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by kherr · 2004-03-23 05:43 · Score: 1

I made it up (as far as I know); guess I wasn't clear on that. I like it better than anything else. Why shouldn't our interfaces be chewy and gooey?
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by micromoog · 2004-03-23 06:50 · Score: 1

It passes the Zawinski's Law test . . .
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Cro+Magnon · 2004-03-23 08:36 · Score: 1

CHUI? I dunno, that's a little hard to swallow.

--
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 15:50 · Score: 0

Well, if your CHUI was 7-bit ASCII-based, and you tried to display 8-bit characters on it, then you would have a "bit off more than you could CHUI."

(duck)
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 17:21 · Score: 0

mmmmmm chewy
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Wolfrider · 2004-03-23 20:00 · Score: 1

--Dude, Xtree Pro Gold was Da Bahmb back in the late 80's. ' mc ' is still my favorite sysadmin tool in Linux to this day. I absolutely do NOT need GUI tools to run my system - give me curses and commandline any day.

--
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Re:GUI is graphics, CHUI is text by Nameles · 2004-03-24 03:47 · Score: 1

I always reffered to it as a CLIT (Command Line Interfact/Terminal).

DOS Shell by joeware · 2004-03-23 04:22 · Score: 1

My first GUI. I still have fond memories of popping it open for the first time. There have been other GUI's since, but the first is always holds special memories.

Re:DOS Shell by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:45 · Score: 0

aka "DOS Special Hell"

Re:dead already... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:24 · Score: 0

It's more complete apathy and lack of imagination in linux developers, everyone copys windows... FVWM95 *screams*

Missing option by Gothmolly · 2004-03-23 04:24 · Score: 4, Funny

I use punchcards you insensitive clod!

--
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.

Re:Missing option by teklob · 2004-03-23 06:27 · Score: 1

Options are generally only included in polls you insensitive clod
Re: Missing option by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:53 · Score: 0

ah, but you forget:
In Soviet Russia...
punchcards use YOU!
Re:Missing option by iminplaya · 2004-03-23 08:06 · Score: 1

You can always draw pretty pictures on them. Just don't leave any hanging chads.

--
What?
Re:Missing option by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:11 · Score: 0

...or pregnant ones.

Three ways to do graphics in text mode by tepples · 2004-03-23 04:24 · Score: 5, Informative

A text system cannot by definition display graphics.

Redefinable font lets you display graphics in text mode. The Defrag utility in MS-DOS 6.22 used this.

The PC's codepages have a glyph consisting of the top half on and the bottom half off. Set each character cell's "on color" to one color and the "off color" to another and you can display graphics in text mode. Lots of ANSI BBS screens used this, and some business software packages used this for bar graphs and the like.

And now the most from-left-field solution: Reprogramming the text generator to show four scanlines per row of glyphs rather than 16 (assuming VGA) lets you use the glyph with the left half on and the right half off for a 160x100 pixel 16 color video mode. Tunneler, an old DOS game, used this.

Re:Three ways to do graphics in text mode by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:13 · Score: 0

Saving four high chars to replace with a 2x2 char block from the screen and graphical mouse pointer overlayed on top of them was the way Symantec first showed a "graphical" mouse that moved one pixel at a time in DOS. It was very slick, ~13 years ago.

Re:Slashdotted - Google cache too by joeware · 2004-03-23 04:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Holy smokes! Even the Google cache has been slashdotted!

TUIs, ASCII art by Kjella · 2004-03-23 04:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

You can definately make graphic interfaces in text mode. If you ask a completely non-computer person if that's a GUI, he'll probably think so. As opposed to what? A verbal interface a la Star Trek?

The CLI is simply the most minimalist GUI you can have on your screen. The whole GUI concept as used in computing was like "as opposed to text-based", but it doesn't really change the fact that "text" is nothing but a simple form of graphics.

Kjella

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

GUI=!UI by Chess_the_cat · 2004-03-23 04:27 · Score: 0, Redundant

I stumbled upon this site - GUIdebook, that offers a history of every GUI, from command prompts...

A command prompt isn't a graphical user interface. Come on.

--
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1

Re:GUI=!UI by z_gringo · 2004-03-23 04:33 · Score: 1

I think it means GUI's that are used from the command prompt, and GUIs that also have a command prompt, like dosshell.exe, and one of my favorites, XTREE.

--
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.

I wonder if they did... by ptomblin · 2004-03-23 04:28 · Score: 1

It's too bad the site is slashdotted. I wonder if they have one of my personal favourites, SPF (which was also called ISPF at some point in its lifetime). I kept my box of cards with my personalized SPF screens for years after I left the mainframe world in case I went back.

--
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!

Multi-Vue & Microware's OS-9 by fatboy · 2004-03-23 04:33 · Score: 1

Anyone remember the windows manager called "Multi-Vue" for the Tandy Color Computer 3?

--
--fatboy

Re:Multi-Vue & Microware's OS-9 by gordie · 2004-03-23 06:05 · Score: 1

Yes, still using it running OS9 Level II under emulation, using xmame/xmess on a Linux system. I understand they also have a port to Windows too.
Re:Multi-Vue & Microware's OS-9 by hb253 · 2004-03-23 07:21 · Score: 1

Absolutely. I cut my OS teeth first on OS-9 6809 then OS9-68000 on an MM1. Not many people know about THAT machine. Had a UUCP server, Internet email, USENET newsgroups, etc running out of my house back in the early 90's.

--
Self awareness - try it!

1 Q & 1 Obs by jpellino · 2004-03-23 04:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

Q: so exactly which of those historical OSs hosting this just got quick-fried?

Obs: I saw Doug Englebart a few years ago giving a large group presentation - he had the best interface I'd ever seen for a presentation - the current slide was displayed in a frame of thumbnails of the slides in the entire presentation - so you had random access to the whole show, you could see the flow, he could jump and reference other slides if needed without the typical bambi-on-ice powerpoint shuffle.

Oh yeah, the presentation was great, too - the analogy of introducing GUIs to telling horse riders how it was going to be driving cars, ("I have to lookk in a mirror to go the other way? I can't even shave in a mirror without hurting myself...") was original, funny and insightful.

--
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."

The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by pubjames · 2004-03-23 04:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

I really miss the days when screens were created from proportionally spaced fonts. When you would draw boxes on the screen with special table drawing fonts or by changing the background and foreground colours ("teletex style"). You very rarely see that these days, which is a real shame because not only is it very efficient and simple from a programming point of view, but a well designed screen in that style can be very pleasing on the eye.

It's a shame that the only proportionally spaced web font accessible to designers is courier, which sucks. Lucida Console is nicer but not available on all systems.

Anyone know of any web sites designed with proportionally spaced fonts?

Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:46 · Score: 3, Informative

Um... Proportionally spaced fonts are those like Times, Helvetica, Verdana etc al - ones where each character can be of a different width.
I think you mean monospaced fonts, kind of like this!
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by pubjames · 2004-03-23 04:59 · Score: 1, Informative

I think you mean monospaced fonts, kind of like this!

Damn it you're right! Now I feel dumb...
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Bambi+Dee · 2004-03-23 05:11 · Score: 1

It's a shame that the only proportionally spaced web font accessible to designers is courier, which sucks. Lucida Console is nicer but not available on all systems.
And Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is just lovely.
Anyone know of any web sites designed with proportionally spaced fonts?
Kinda (you mean "monospaced" or "fixed-width"). We found this by typing "wwwwwwwww" into Firebird's I'm-Feeling-Lucky-enabled address bar.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by digrieze · 2004-03-23 05:50 · Score: 1

It's not online anymore, but in the mid 80s I ran an ATARI board with both internet and dialup connections. (note: pre-HTML, CSS, etc.).

It was designed exclusively in ASCII, including graphics (there are a lot of characters between 128 and 256 that most people have forgotten about). We had online games, mazes, "graphical" adventures, online chat, and a FIDOnet messaging system. Not bad for an ATARI 8-bit system at 2.5mhz and 8 floppy drives.

I hooked up the old geezer (actually loaded it onto the laptop I'm using for "virtual" drives on the ATARI now) and let my kid log online a few months ago. The system was designed originally to work acceptably at 300 baud, I was shocked at the speed over my 100mb/s ethernet setup. Not as shocked as the kid though who's used to the online game world response time. Makes me wonder sometimes why we gave up the simple stuff when it worked so great.

--
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by KlomDark · 2004-03-23 05:59 · Score: 1

Then go here :) (Or if your *couch*windows*cough* telnet client doesn't intercept the port 2000 part, open a command prompt and type 'telnet klomdark.servebeer.com 2000'
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by taradfong · 2004-03-23 06:35 · Score: 1

Not bad for an ATARI 8-bit system at 2.5mhz and 8 floppy drives.

Wow, 2.5 Mhz? All the Atari 8 bit machines I had were 1.79 Mhz 6502's!

--
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by bonch · 2004-03-23 06:53 · Score: 1

You very rarely see that these days, which is a real shame because not only is it very efficient and simple from a programming point of view, but a well designed screen in that style can be very pleasing on the eye.

Please don't ever take a job as a visual designer. Monospace fonts are the opposite of readable. Proportional fonts flow and are not monotonous. The eye has an easier time following the text, picking up where it left off, and distinguishing capital letters and so forth.

Then you go and mention "it's great from a programming point of view," which illustrates my point all the more--you're again speaking as a *programmer* and not a user. THANK GOD programmers don't design everything--Linux desktop attempts are bad enough as it is.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by billimad · 2004-03-23 06:57 · Score: 2, Funny

I think you mean monospaced fonts, kind of like this!
Damn it! Now I feel pedantic...
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Crispy+Critters · 2004-03-23 07:03 · Score: 1

Then you go and mention "it's great from a programming point of view," which illustrates my point all the more--you're again speaking as a *programmer* and not a user.
As a user, I like being able to indent text and create small tables in ASCII files using the tab key and the space bar rather than having to invoke the overhead of using a markup language for trivial formatting.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:48 · Score: 0

Um, don't you mean fixed-width or monospaced fonts? Proportional fonts are the variable-width kind like Times and Helvetica. Part of the reason there are so few good monospaced fonts is that while they are easier to work with programatically, they are harder to design artistically.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:54 · Score: 0

Monospace fonts are the opposite of readable. Proportional fonts flow and are not monotonous. The eye has an easier time following the text, picking up where it left off, and distinguishing capital letters and so forth.

That depends on your application. Programmers are probably a bit biased towards monospaced fonts because they use them all the time. Monospaced fonts turn out to be very nice for programming. The ability to line up rows of raw text and account for every character is big.

But yeah, there's a reason books are all done with proportional type, as well as just about everything else. Monospace tends to look cold and mechanical, proportional looks more human.

If you really like monospace, learn japanese, chinese, or something. All those ideographic characters are fit onto a regular grid. Not hard on the eyes or odd looking at all. (except when you go to insert those foreign latin characters)

THANK GOD programmers don't design everything

gee, thanks... there are a few of us with aesthetic sense, ya know. And lots of other people lacking it...
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:06 · Score: 0

Those characters between 128 and 256 aren't ASCII, since ASCII is 128 characters, of which only 96 are printable. The remaining 128 characters on an ATARI are arbitrarily selected by the manufacturer, which is fine so long as you only let ATARI users see the results...

We didn't forget about them by the way, there are line drawing and other "graphics" characters in Unicode. Things like...

[I suspect Slashcode will eat them, because it's not properly Unicode-safe...]
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 10:43 · Score: 0

Actually, you are talking about NON-proportional (aka monospaced) fonts.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous+Froward · 2004-03-23 11:34 · Score: 1

If you really like monospace, learn japanese, chinese, or something. All those ideographic characters are fit onto a regular grid. Not hard on the eyes or odd looking at all. (except when you go to insert those foreign latin characters)
Go to Japan. Buy ANY of the newspapers. You'll immediately understand that the font for all of these latin characters is beautifully designed in such a way that the width of latin characters are either equal to or half of the width of Japanese domestic characters. They perfectly fit in the grid-like visual structure of traditional Japanese printing system. They don't look odd at all.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by zsau · 2004-03-23 12:20 · Score: 1

Are you aware that Times New Roman, Verdana etc. etc. are proportionally-spaced fonts, whereas Courier, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono etc. etc. are fixed-width ones? In the former, the space is in proportion to the width of the character; in the latter, the width is the same no matter whether it's an i or a W.

--
Look out!
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 13:20 · Score: 0

Rather, THANK DARWIN that there are still "programmers" who can design HTML and that the whole wide WWW ( invented by a programmer ) isn't Flash-only.

Yet.

It's our revolution. Now fuck off.
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by Reziac · 2004-03-23 18:05 · Score: 1

Odd.. first time I tried your "here" link, my browser somehow did http instead. Tried again and my telnet client came up in the usual way. But it never did connect. And now I can't get back to the http site that came up the first time. ???

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Re:The joys of proportionally spaced fonts by digrieze · 2004-03-24 01:04 · Score: 1

Actually you're right about the 65c02 main chip. The performance "boost" came from the way it used the auxilliary graphics and sound chips. Also, I had replaced the memory chips (faster ones than stock) and memory handler to bring it up to 512k, not useful for much but it did make the chat function possible as a read/write messeaging system on a RAMdisk. To the user it was streaming in memory, but it was actually an edit/write/read/display cycle. Back then the utilities to measure mhz were written with the assumption that the 65x02 series was the only processor on board, but no one did that except apple, so you often got effective speeds on measurements faster than the actual main processor chip rating (again, excepting most apples).

--
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs

Here's text GUI ;-) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:37 · Score: 0

Cursed GTK

DOS ./ style by Perl-Pusher · 2004-03-23 04:38 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I stumbled upon this site -

And figured I'd bring it down with a good old slashdot denial of service attack!

Always been old OSes by littlepill · 2004-03-23 04:46 · Score: 1

It's nice to see that...Windows 2000 and WinXP are reported as well...like to say: "hey, these oses are already old" ;)

Re:Always been old OSes by endrek · 2004-03-23 05:31 · Score: 1

hehe they kind of are. Windows XP is from like way back in 2002 :P Mean while I'm running a linux kernel that was released less than 2 weeks ago. :: shrug ::
Re:Always been old OSes by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:36 · Score: 0

Windows XP is from like way back in 2002
Actually its 2001. Most of the last-modified dates in a fresh install say August 23, 2001.

BitTorrent For Websites by technix4beos · 2004-03-23 04:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

Why isnt this being done?

A simple wget -m http://www.somesite.com, gzip, create a torrent, and share the .torrent file.

--
user@host$ diff /dev/urandom /dev/uspto

Re:BitTorrent For Websites by Stevyn · 2004-03-23 05:07 · Score: 1

The same reason they're not cached: Copyrights.
Re:BitTorrent For Websites by tolan-b · 2004-03-23 05:54 · Score: 1

So how do google get away with it?
Re:BitTorrent For Websites by CaptnMArk · 2004-03-23 06:17 · Score: 1

Something like P2P distributed browser cache would definately be very useful.
Re:BitTorrent For Websites by Mad+Bad+Rabbit · 2004-03-23 06:39 · Score: 1
Perhaps slashdot (and similar high-traffic portals) could check for a .slashdot-policy.txt file, with options like:
- cached (cache only, please!)
- direct (link straight 2 us, we can take it)
- denied (please do not cache or link our content)
Sites with no .slashdot-policy.txt will be treated like ones with denied ; editors will refrain from posting any front-page links to them until/unless the site owner can be contacted to set a policy.
--
>;k
Re:BitTorrent For Websites by polyp2000 · 2004-03-23 06:57 · Score: 1

to risky, its a lot of effort to go to when there is a fairly large chance your article might get rejected by the beastly editors

--
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Re:BitTorrent For Websites by burns210 · 2004-03-23 13:32 · Score: 1

I have heard of work being done to make a modtorrent for apache... any file that is requested enough automatically turns into a torrent. Also, why not have slashdot post a local cache of the site... and for those who say that the site might lose advertising: have a cache.txt file in the root directory like robots.txt to determine if you want to be cached or not, etc...

In the Beginning was the Command Line by ShinyBrowncoat · 2004-03-23 04:48 · Score: 4, Informative

I also recommend Neal Stephenson's excellent essay on the topic of GUIs, In the Beginning was the Command Line

--

"They've canceled the show but we're still here. What does that make us?" "Big Damn Junkies, Sir!" "Ain't we just"

definition GUI by delphin42 · 2004-03-23 04:49 · Score: 1, Funny

A command prompt isn't graphical and therefore not a GUI. Sure it's a user interface, but not a graphical one. Maybe the book should have been named UIdebook.

--
-- Adam

hey HEMOS... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 04:52 · Score: 0

"I stumbled upon this site"... dontcha think he meant *sight*???

Quotes... by AyeRoxor! · 2004-03-23 04:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Found these the other day on the PC Magazine website:

"The introduction of OS/2 1.0 marks the start of an exciting time for the PC and PC applications. The 'OS/2 decade' has begun."
- Charles Petzold, contributing editor, in "OS/2: A New Beginning for PC Applications," PC Magazine April 12, 1988.
"A funny thing's happening on the road to OS/2. Microsoft Windows has turned into the dazzling multitasking operating system that OS/2 is still struggling to become."
- Gus Venditto, executive editor, reviewing the brand-spanking-new Microsoft Windows 3.0, First Looks, PC Magazine July 1990.

/not trying to start a flamewar, just fascinating quotes...

An older gui by EssenceLumin · 2004-03-23 05:17 · Score: 2, Funny

I don't see etcb-a-sketch in there.

Re:An older gui by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:23 · Score: 0

"i don't see etch-a-sketch in there"

ya, thats because it s here

Re:GUI=!UI : Except when it is ... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:19 · Score: 0

A command prompt isn't a graphical user interface. Come on.

P-Sytem

Is that a Command Line Intergace, or a Graphical User Interface, or something else?

Is P-System even mentioned in that website? Being slashdotted, I couldn't read the original site. :-(

Seriously... by bonch · 2004-03-23 05:25 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Slashdot's not as fun as it used to be. Now it has an agenda to push, for "your rights online."

Used to just be an excellent place for tech news and fun articles like this. Now we have to sit through MP3 piracy justifications, DRM rants, anti-"M$" bullshit, GPL-dissertations (boooooring), etc.

Re:Seriously... by LinuxHam · 2004-03-23 06:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Linux and the Free software community has grown to achieve business acceptance. /. is like MTV, except the people who actually brought Linux to the corporate world don't realize that they're too old to keep coming back.

MTV doesn't have a single show aimed at 30 somethings (let alone 40ish and 50ish) so I can delete the channel from my favorites list. I can't quite do that with our beloved /. yet. Yet.

--
Intelligent Life on Earth
Re:Seriously... by TwistedGreen · 2004-03-23 08:31 · Score: 0, Flamebait

And don't forget your mindless Apple zealots!
"Nothing to see here. Apple did this 10 years ago... [but failed miserably]"
"You can get an Apple for only $1000 more..."
"OMG this has an Apple logo! It must be good!"
Heaven forbid anyone mention the One Holy Company's failures for once...
Re:Seriously... by jrockway · 2004-03-23 16:31 · Score: 1

Hey, look. A gun is being held to your head forcing you to read slashdot. Oh wait. No!

Bye bye :)

--
My other car is first.
Re:Seriously... by JuggleGeek · 2004-03-23 19:14 · Score: 1

Heaven forbid anyone mention the One Holy Company's failures for once...
What? Failures? None, never, ridiculous! Well, except maybe for the original Mac's, which didn't have cursor keys, since everyone wants to take their hands off the keyboard and use the mouse while doing word processing. And going from an open architecture that let geeks roll their own to a close system where you damn near can't program the thing without Approval From Apple(TM)!, which led to a major shortage of software. And... Oh, never mind.

ancient Commodore video hardware by Sloppy · 2004-03-23 05:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

A text system cannot by definition display graphics.

(Just to be pedantic... Actually, not really trying to 'correct' anything you said; I just wanna show off what an old geezer I am.)

Tell that to VIC20 programmers. Unlike the C64, the VIC20 didn't have a graphics mode. But you could display a 16x16 grid showing the whole character set, and then tell the video hardware to look up the character definitions somewhere in RAM instead of using the ROM. This effectively gave you a 128 pixel by 128 pixel bitmap display, on a "text-only" system.

... and we liked it! (Well, ok, not really.)

Oh, and speaking of the fact that text mode is faster than graphics, there was a "joke" later in the mid 80s, having to do with that. If you wrote a BASIC program on the C64 that, say, computed and printed the first 100 prime numbers, and then did the same thing on the Amiga, the C64 was faster. People would say, "Huh? How can that be? The Amiga's blazing 7 MHz 16-bit 68000 runs rings around the 6510!" But then you'd do it, and the C64 would really win. It had nothing to do with the how fast the processors could compute primes, though. It was just that the C64 could copy 2k of RAM (the amount of work to "scroll" the text display) faster than the Amiga blitter could copy several hundred k to "scroll" a graphic display. (The Amiga didn't have a text mode. ;-)

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:ancient Commodore video hardware by RetroGeek · 2004-03-23 07:36 · Score: 0

The trouble with making a sweeping statement is that someone will usually step up with excpetions.

I suppose ASCII art can also be said to show graphics.

And the early games also ran in text mode using re-mapped character sets.

Sigh.....

--

- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Re:ancient Commodore video hardware by Felinoid · 2004-03-23 15:34 · Score: 1

The Vic20 did have a "bit map" mode BUT it was generally preferable to use text graphics at the time.

Also Space Invaders uses text graphics. Each alien is a character but instead of being represented as a letter the characters are aliens.

When Epics copied (stold) Roage they just ported the old game to the lower end computers and changed the character maps. Otherwise it's the same game.

And two words: ANSI Graphics.

In computers: Graphics = Pictures, Text = Letters, numbers, etc.
Text graphics = Images represented in text.

Nothing new :)

--
I don't actually exist.

funny by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 05:35 · Score: 0

" remember GEOS - it was actually a nice little Mac-style OS for C64. It's funny to see a complete package, with "paint", "wordpad" and so on run in less than 64k of memory"

Run word or a browser on a friend's MSWindows box and point out the fact that it needs at least 64MB to do that and your [insert other system/OS] does that in less than 4 MB.
Now, THAT'S funny. Poor win users...

Anyone remember this? by acidrain69 · 2004-03-23 05:39 · Score: 1

While not an OS, there was a nice GUI with the original 286 IBM PS/1. It was split into 4 quadrants, it took you to a file explorer (I think it was Dos 4.0's explorer), a configurable list of programs, and I can't remember what the other 2 did. It was in gorgeous 256 colors when everything was still EGA. King's Quest 5 came out shortly after I got it, and though it ran like ass on a 10mhz 286, it looked awesome at the time. The entire PS/1 gui was stored on drive D:, which was a small (1M) ROM drive.

--
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship

Re:Anyone remember this? by Impeesa · 2004-03-23 07:04 · Score: 1

Ah, the crazy PS/1 DOS shell. I remember that... I think the other two quadrants were the tutorials and an early MS Works (go ASCII-art MDI).
Re:Anyone remember this? by afxgrin · 2004-03-23 09:14 · Score: 1

I have access to such a machine in working condition. Original hardware and software still on it.

Critical Missing GUI... by CrazyTalk · 2004-03-23 05:44 · Score: 1

The notice in a web browser

"The page cannot be displayed"

signifying that the site has already been slashdotted.

Re:Critical Missing GUI... by stateq2 · 2004-03-23 07:39 · Score: 1

that sucks....i wanted to see it :(

Just one point by bogie · 2004-03-23 05:50 · Score: 1

I just think its odd that /. has Zero problem with posters constantly copying and pasting entire articles here but would refuse to cache because of "IP". If they really were worried about IP they would delete every post where people just copy and paste without proper attribution to the author,date,source etc. Saying that they don't control what people post is a cop out. Every day with every article editors are selectively editing posts. They are very much aware of and encourge posters to copy and paste other site's IP. If they just let everyone post what they wanted and didn't do any editing you might have a point. I just think its shitty what /. does to some websites.

--
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch

Re:Just one point by RedWizzard · 2004-03-23 08:20 · Score: 1

I just think its odd that /. has Zero problem with posters constantly copying and pasting entire articles here but would refuse to cache because of "IP".
Think about who is responsible for the copyright violation in each case. Slashdot/OSDN will find it far easier to defend a lawsuit if a user posts an infringing comment than if they have systematically infringed themselves.
Every day with every article editors are selectively editing posts. They are very much aware of and encourge posters to copy and paste other site's IP.
I've been here four or five years and I've never heard of a comment being edited and I've never seen an editor encourage the "incase of Slashdotting" comments (I do remember the odd comment being deleted when a copyright owner requested it). You've been here a while longer, do you have any evidence to back up your claims?
Re:Just one point by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 11:15 · Score: 0

See my brother post. It's *systematic* IP breach that's where you can get in BIG BIG trouble. "Copping out" by saying they don't control it is legal and smart.
I agree with you; it would be smart or at least good nettiquite for them to not swamp sites without at least some warning.
I have been here longer even than you and to me, the idea that editors change or manipulate comments is tinfoil-hat talk. Any way to validate or at least illustrate your assertions?
jaz

Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by kwandar · 2004-03-23 05:55 · Score: 1

I loved how fast TOS booted up from Rom :)

I bought my Atari in 1985 (maybe it sucked 15 years ago, but 20 years ago it was great ;) solely because they were playing Sundog in the computer store - and dammit - I needed to play that game!

Still remember the FTL logo in Sundog coming up with a "swooshing" sound that scared the shit out of me - thought the computer was going to explode!! Up till that time I had only heard "beeps" out of computers.

Geos by Phanatik · 2004-03-23 05:59 · Score: 2, Funny

I loved Geos! Never had any problems like Win3.0 and 3.1 had.

Re:/.'d by jovlinger · 2004-03-23 06:01 · Score: 1

slashfilter!

Metafilter had this a few days ago.

Re:...like a C64 game loading /snore by ameoba · 2004-03-23 06:12 · Score: 1

So? There's also still people that talk about the browsing WEB on their MAC like the words are some sort of acronyms.

--
my sig's at the bottom of the page.

Re:Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:24 · Score: 0

Still remember the FTL logo in Sundog coming up with a "swooshing" sound that scared the shit out of me - thought the computer was going to explode!! Up till that time I had only heard "beeps" out of computers.

The zombies sneaking up behind me in FTL's Dungeon Keeper was the first time I was really scared by a computer game. Whatever happened to FTL?

To hell with GUIs by trailerparkcassanova · 2004-03-23 06:26 · Score: 1

I've gone back to my General Automation SPC-16/45 with its incandescent lamps for output and toggle switches for input. No pop-ups ever.

misses one of my favourites, PenPoint by WillAdams · 2004-03-23 06:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Also Atari's GEM as was noted previously.

The site apparently completely misses pen computing oriented UIs though.

No PenPoint, PenRight, Newton, Palm, WinCE

Rather a shame that, especially given that some pen programs have been _very_ innovative / influential.

FutureWave SmartSketch gave us Flash

Newton provides Mac OS X w/ InkWell

Go getting buried gave MS room for Windows for Pen Computing, and Taiwan a stick to beat them up w/ for licensing (Taiwan's MITI bought PenPoint)

Also misses HP's NewWave, which was note merely a shell on top of Windows, but also a UI in its own right (was to be the UI for Newtek's Mac clones)

William

--
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

Mod Parent Up by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:26 · Score: 0

Couldn't agree more.

GUIs for PDAs and Mobile Phones by wehe · 2004-03-23 06:28 · Score: 1

GUIs for small computers need sophisticated solutions. Here is a survey of GUIs dedicated to PDAs and mobile cell phones. BTW: many of them are available for Linux and under a free license.

No. by msimm · 2004-03-23 06:31 · Score: 1

You know the same people who use the console competently probably use the GUI with an equal measure of competence. The console was one of the earliest, but not necessarily the best, and more to the point, not nearly idiot proof. ;-)

--
Quack, quack.

"A History of Every GUI Ever"? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 06:31 · Score: 1, Insightful

*EVERY* GUI ever? I seriously doubt it...

A complete list of every GUI ever made would have to include every cell phone, PDA, GPS, and all the other random electronic devices that have ever had a GUI. And that's not even including the more esoteric devices. I'll give you an example. I used to work at a shop that had a big ass 3000W Mitsubishi LASER that we would used to cut out precision parts, and yes, it had a GUI.

I think "Every GUI ever" is stretching it just a bit...

Re:"A History of Every GUI Ever"? by fishbowl · 2004-03-23 14:14 · Score: 1

I think of things like telephone switch patch panels and modulation matrices on analog synths to be "graphic user interfaces" also. They are laid out on a cartesian grid. Who said a GUI has to be on a CRT or LCD screen?

--
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.

I know a Command Line GUI by Jussi+K.+Kojootti · 2004-03-23 06:34 · Score: 1

The original Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

Re:Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by kwandar · 2004-03-23 06:35 · Score: 1

Yes, Dungeon Master was definately a great game!! Definately creepy the first few times through!

Your question made me wonder too ... found this site that you might like as well.

Ahhh ... trip down memory lane!

Re:Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by Unoti · 2004-03-23 06:36 · Score: 1

Sundog, Dungeon Master, Oids... 3 of the best games ever made! FTL was awesome.

No DOSSHELL? by hackel · 2004-03-23 06:43 · Score: 0, Interesting

What about my favorite GUI of all time? Okay, my favorite was the DR-DOS SHELL ViewMAX, but still! All DOSSHELLs demand respect!

Re:CLI is a GUI? by bonch · 2004-03-23 06:45 · Score: 1

Wow, you're so modern, cutting-edge, and l33t by staying in the 1980s.

Still is by nurb432 · 2004-03-23 06:46 · Score: 1

TOS + Gem still beats out windows today. For stability and resource usage.

And with mint extensions and some 'dress-up' patches to GEM it beats everyone else hands down.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----

Hmmmm by bonch · 2004-03-23 06:49 · Score: 1

Yet the terminal console is almost unchanged in 30 years. Hmmmm?

You think most people have learned how to use a computer properly because of the terminal? The terminal makes things even more difficult than the GUI.

I know it's hip to like the CLI above all around here, but it really is an antiquated side feature that compliments the visual interface modern computing has taken on since the mid-80s. You don't enter command-line text to operate your CD player or watch your DVD menus, do you? How about your toaster or fridge? What about your car?

Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:26 · Score: 0

You don't enter command-line text to operate your CD player
/me raises hand. I do.
C:\>"\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe" D:
Winamp also has a nifty API that allows one to write a command line controller program.

A pile of UNIX GUI's missing by stox · 2004-03-23 06:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Off the top of my head:

Sun: Sunview, and NeWS

AT&T: BLIT, DMD5620. DMD620, DMD630, DMD730, UnixPC/3B1

DEC: DECwindows/Motif

And I am sure there are many more that I have forgotten.

--
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "

Re:A pile of UNIX GUI's missing by argent · 2004-03-23 09:57 · Score: 1

My 3b1 calls its user interface UW.

Don't forget 81/2.

Motif is just another X11 top end. If you're going to count every window manager and toolkit you'll be here until Feynman returns.

Intel had a hardware GUI for their multibus-II UNIX boxes that gave each window its own frame buffer, though they didn't do much more than have each slot open one window and run X11 or a dedicated graphing demo in each.

Don't forget Xerox: Smalltalk, Interlisp-D, the Star office system.
Re: A pile of UNIX GUI's missing by gidds · 2004-03-24 14:24 · Score: 1

Many others too. I couldn't find any Atari GUIs, for example -- TOS, MiNT, MultiTOS, nor MagiC. And it has no handheld GUIs at all -- SIBO and EPOC (later developed into Symbian OS) for starters.
In fact, I expect more GUIs are missing than included. Hardly 'Every GUI Ever'...

--
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.

Full Text MS BOB Article by aardwolf204 · 2004-03-23 07:09 · Score: 1

Just incase of /.ing

http://www.oldos.org/msbob.php

One of the weirdest Microsoft experiments was Microsoft BOB. Its purpose was to make it easier to use your computer and manage your files. In order to do that, Microsoft decided to replace the desktop and explorer by a house with different rooms which contain certain objects, which you click to start programs. This article, for instance, is written in the Letter Writer program (at least until I got freaked out by the dog).

In total there are nine different applications: Calendar, which lets you set important events. It also had tips for every day, one telling you that you should open windows in your car when it gets hot instead of turning the air conditioning on. Another one is Geosafari, a program which tests you on your geographical knowledge of the world. The last one is the Household manager. In this program the user can manage certain aspects of his household, such as the raising of children. Besides the one I've named already, BOB also includes an e-mail program, a financial guide, an address book, a checkbook and a clock.

When I first ran BOB, I noticed the childish interface that had been chosen. I guessed that at this point in time the Microsoft team came up with an idea that led to the XP interface. Besides that, the user has a constant help standing on the right bottom of the screen. This made me think of the help that is used in the search menu of Windows XP. They both are dogs by default and very annoying, not to mention unneeded. I myself get distracted from my work by the constant barking and moving of Rover Retriever.

Another thing that bugged me about BOB is the load of questions one must answer in order to be able to use a program. Before I could start typing this article, I had to select a title, a border, the purpose of the letter, and so on. I really don't see any improvement in usability here.

One advantage of MS BOB is that it doesn't require a very powerful computer. Eight megabytes of RAM is enough in order to run it properly. It basically has the same requirements as windows 3.11, the operating system it was built for. On the other hand, it does need about 30 mb on your hard drive. This could well be a problem on older systems with limited disk space.

In my opinion, Microsoft didn't make usage of your system easier, but actually more complicated by making BOB. I don't think anyone would need this program in order to be more productive with their windows 3.x system. But fortunately, Microsoft realized this also and didn't continue with the development of this program.

--
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the /.crowd.May ur days b merry & bright & may al

Re:Full Text MS BOB Article by nickos · 2004-03-23 09:27 · Score: 1

Never forget that the reason why Microsoft persists with Bob-like interactive assistants (Microsoft Agents), is that MS Bob's project manager was Melinda French, the woman who would later become BillG's wife.

They forgot one! by Xaroth · 2004-03-23 07:12 · Score: 1

What about punchcards with little pictures drawn on them?!

--
That green slime had it coming.

Re:The joys of monospace fonts by witch · 2004-03-23 07:14 · Score: 1

No insult intended, but I think you meant monospace fonts - i.e. fonts in which every character takes an equal amount of space. This includes Lucida Console, Courier, and a handful of others.

--
They're taking their dog to get its two shots before it's too late. You're taking your dog there too, right?

devil's advocate by Crag · 2004-03-23 07:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

One could have said something similiar about automative and horse-drawn carriage interfaces around 90 years ago. It's not a flawless analogy, but your point is far from unassailable.

* terminal consoles HAVE changed a great deal in 30 years (tab completion, screen, mouse daemons, curses, whiptail, multi-byte support, ...)

* Most GUI differences are superficial tweaks made to thwart lawsuits, or to convince potential customers that there's a difference between OS versions that's worth upgrading for.

* The people who are intimidated by either interface tend to just be intimidated by computers. The rest will use whatever is best for the job.

I prefer text interfaces because it suits the way I think, but my extremely intelligent girlfriend understands both and prefers GUIs because they match how she thinks.

It's about time we grow out of this kind of debate...

Monospace Converter... here ya go by aapold · 2004-03-23 07:26 · Score: 1

Here you go:

if(!isset($url)) { echo '<form action="monospacer.php">'; echo 'Enter URL: <input name="url" size=50>'; echo '<br><br><input type="submit" value="monospace it!">'; } else { $lines = file($url); foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) { $tokens = explode('<br>', $line); foreach($tokens as $token_num => $token) { echo '<font face="Courier New, Courier, mono">'.$token. '</font><br>'; } } }

http://www.agh2o.org/monospacer.php works marginal at best on heavily formatted sites. You can feed it http://www.slashdot.org/search.pl and get something monospaced though.

--
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ

Ah yes... by Chordonblue · 2004-03-23 07:43 · Score: 1

But that's what VH1 and VH2 are for!

--
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."

GEMugly by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 07:58 · Score: 0

This was the phrase we used to describe GEM... Interestingly, Microsoft decided to steal the look and feel of GEM for Windows up until roughly 3.0.

If they were going to steal, why didn't they steal the Mac GUI which was attractive, or the Amiga GUI which was at least more useful.

Oh well, GEM still has distinction of being the ugliest GUI ever.

Not really by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:02 · Score: 0

" Despite this, it still compared favourably to the Amiga A500, which was a technically superior machine - but horrendously unstable."

It was only unstable because it lacked an MMU. But the Amiga still was a better machine in every way.

Re:Not really by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 11:52 · Score: 0

Not to re-ignite old flamewars, but, uhm.... no, it wasn't, you must have meant the Atari was superior in every way :) I do remember I really loved playing moonstone on my A500 tho. I hated the load times on the Amiga, and most of the issues like color palatte, overscan, etc were hacked on the Atari so I don't really think the Amiga really had any advantages.

Deskmate by finkployd · 2004-03-23 08:02 · Score: 1

Anyone remember Deskmate? A kind of gui-ish/office suite-ish thing that came with old Tandy computers (like my first one, Tandy 1000sx)

It was kinda cool for its time.

Finkployd

Re:Deskmate by Cro+Magnon · 2004-03-23 08:41 · Score: 1

That brings back old memories. My first computer was a Tandy with Deskmate. IIRC, Radio Shack talked about making it a standard interface, but it fizzled pretty quickly.

--
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.

Re:...like a C64 game loading /snore by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:03 · Score: 0

Of course MAC is an acronym, but not for a Macintosh.

dude by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:16 · Score: 0

The 404 gui kicked ass.

OSBA by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:39 · Score: 0

I found this site ages ago, its creator posts at a windows beta trading forum, I um ... read.

My favorite GUI - Sun's NeWS by andrewz · 2004-03-23 08:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

This GUI was thie coolest thing going and was just amazing in its flexibility. It was based on windowed interpreted PostScript. What your widow did depended on what Postscript told it to do, each window was the execution of mobile code, the Java of 1989. You could have windows based on arbitrary, and I mean completely arbitrary, polygons.

My favorite feature was round menus. You could navigate these incredibly quickly.

Sadly X took off at about the same time and no one cared whether X was INFERIOR and SLOW as long as it was free and open source. Oh wait, NeWS was open source back then too. Well mostly.

What a lot of people also don't know is that NeWS really was a practice run for Java. It heavily influenced the java architecture team.

- Andrew

Re:Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by kippa · 2004-03-23 08:46 · Score: 1

SunDog dude was the shit...still makes SimCity look cheesy.

RISC OS by NoMercy · 2004-03-23 08:48 · Score: 1

Just because I don't like to see one of these threads without it mentioned :)

A beautiful OS, with a fantastic GUI, still going with a version 5... kinda it's just like 4, but made by a diferent company, so version 4 is better, but version 5 runs on faster hardware... the mind boggles :)

Re:My favorite GUI by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 08:55 · Score: 0

You mean Kathleen "Pipe fitter lips" Malda?

Shouldn't that be... by Trolling4Dollars · 2004-03-23 08:56 · Score: 1

...A Histroy of Evary GUI EVAR!!!!!1111!!!!!!

Jeff K ;P

--
Un-news

It's dead Jim... by Tatarize · 2004-03-23 09:01 · Score: 1

Somebody tell google to make a service to cache a webpage and keep that cache for a week or so, so we can lock some of these webpages in place by linking to the cache.

Couldn't even locate the google cache for this. And besides under my idea it would have all the picture too.

Not a hard idea, just run over have everything copied and call it a day. Readied for the slashdot.

I'm just annoyed not being able to see it.

--

It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.

Re:Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by kwandar · 2004-03-23 09:02 · Score: 1

As I stumbled down memory lane, I came across an open source project to resurrect Sundog, by its original author.

Woo Hooo!!!

BOS Okay! (Was: Re:http://www.oldos.org/) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 09:13 · Score: 0

> Includes the tragedy that is Microsoft BOB!

Actually, I think that BOB was and still is
a *good* interface and paradigm for its intended
audience which was the every day user. BOB wasn't
even close to being as bad as its detractors
would have you believe. The reasons BOB got
a bad rap had nothing to do with usability
issues, GUI interaction, or ergonomics. It had
everything to do with PC magazine editors who
saw themeselves as "l337" and "power" users.
They didn't just BOB on its merits, just by
their prejudices.

A troll down memory lane. by argent · 2004-03-23 09:59 · Score: 1

Oh man, it doesn't even begin to cover them all. It doesn't even cover that big a percentage of the personal computer systems like the Mac, Amiga, and of course Windows.

Re:...like a C64 game loading /snore by Anaphiel · 2004-03-23 10:10 · Score: 1

My friend and I used to prank the local Sears store using that game. They would have a C64 out running a demo loop, and we'd kick the demo, load up a copy of that game, turn up the volume and walk away briskly.

We'd be halfway across the store when that opening yell "Goooooooooooooooo Joe!" rang out and every employee in the department converged on the spot.

We were so easily amused back then.

how do you say that? by option8 · 2004-03-23 10:10 · Score: 1

so, how are we supposed to pronounce that?

gooey-debook?

gee you eyed book?

that's just silly...

--
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree

Or even the BBC Micro by rklrkl · 2004-03-23 11:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

The BBC Micro of the 80's (made by Acorn) had a "Mode 7" teletext mode which would give you not only a chunky colour TRS-80-style block graphics, but only used 1K (40 column by 25 lines) of memory mapped characters (at hex 7C00 if my "memory" serves me right). This meant you could refresh the entire screen of text in 6502 assembly code in a few milliseconds (it had a 2Mhz 6502 processor) and the scrolling speed was also phenomenal (I called it "the fruit machine effect"!) - probably still faster than any other machine out there I've seen to date.

Re:Atari TOS/GEM - and Sundog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-23 11:47 · Score: 0

NICE!!! That game ruled. I don't know how many hours of my life I sunk into it, but it was a ton. I totally forgot about that game.

Prior Art by Kevin+Burtch · 2004-03-23 14:55 · Score: 1

Am I the only one thinking this would be awesome for helping to debunk cheesy trademarks?

--
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -

/. Reputation proceads itself by Felinoid · 2004-03-23 16:08 · Score: 1

Based on some of the comments it appears the website was down before anyone got a chance to visit it (let alone mirror it)
It appears what happend is something like this:

Slashdot posts a story... Guy who runs website has a paid subscription to Slashdot.. and ohh his meager website is... OH CRUD.

shutdown -h now & exit

Hay a safe shutdown beats a crash any day.

So let's Slashdot The Internet Archive Horray...

--
I don't actually exist.

Missing by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-24 03:02 · Score: 0

What happened tto OS/9 for the TRS-80 Color Computer?

Nice site, but... by OhioJoe · 2004-03-24 09:49 · Score: 1

His dripping disgust for Windows shows through in his 'Obituary Posters' for Mac and windows components. The caption text on the posters for his Mac obituaries speaks highly of the learning process Apple/Mac went through, but the Windows one's speak condescendingly and negatively.

Look, I like the nostalgia I get when I see an old MSDOS icon, and so when I saw his poster, I was all "Cool! I want one" but then read the text on it, I was like, "Blah.. not the feeling I want to get while looking at a poster on my wall, trying to stroll down memory lane." The guy obviously never went to any marketing schools, or if he did, didn't learn anything. I suppose he could just be marketing to the Mac crowd, but then again, he didn't learn anything in marketing school. :)

--
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."

Atari ST? No? by ilikejam · 2004-03-24 09:49 · Score: 1

I see no mention of the GEM desktop for the Atari ST.
Now there was a desktop worth using.
IIRC you could only have 30 windows open at any time, the sick green desktop background couldn't be changed (not that any changes would have been saved with the OS in ROM...) and you had to wait somewhere in the region of a minute while all the drives were checked before it appeared.
Ahh, yes. Them were the days. Us Atari users were too busy drooling over the Amiga's sound chips to notice.

--
C-x C-s C-x k

You owe me $699!! by oldosadmin · 2004-03-24 15:33 · Score: 1

Hey! That's copyrighted!

old os 5.6 (C)2003 SLS Canada Network. Use of any graphics, text, or code from this website without the prior consent of Jason Faulkner and the SLS Canada Network is prohibited.

But for TODAY ONLY, I'm licensing it out to you for just $699.

Paypal it to me.
In reality, please do send me some jack -- my bandwidth bill is gonna be painful. I accept donations at jason@slscanada.com.

--
Jay | http://oldos.org

w00t! I've been /.'d by oldosadmin · 2004-03-24 15:36 · Score: 1

I was wondering why my entire month's worth of b/w had been taken up in one day. Also, I made some mad jack from google. :)

On a side note, damn, I've been meaning to un-BMP those screenies, for, eh, about 1 year. lol.

--
Jay | http://oldos.org

Re:w00t! I've been /.'d by insmod_ex · 2004-03-24 15:40 · Score: 1

I was going to do it, but my FTP client was fucked up.

DO IT NOW... by oldosadmin · 2004-03-24 15:41 · Score: 1

(FYI, insmod is staff at oldos)

You insensitive clod...

--
Jay | http://oldos.org

Re:Hey -Editors! (OT) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-24 17:54 · Score: 0

You've never seen a God make a man, either. You haven't. That's the truth, so admit it!

355 comments