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FreeDOS Is 20 Years Old
Jim Hall (2985) writes "In a June 29, 1994 post in comp.os.msdos.apps on USENET, a physics student announced an effort to create a completely free version of DOS that everyone could use. That project turned into FreeDOS, 20 years ago! Originally intended as a free replacement for MS-DOS, FreeDOS has since advanced what DOS could do, adding new functionality and making DOS easier to use. And today in 2014, people continue to use FreeDOS to support embedded systems, to run business software, and to play classic DOS games!"
I never really played doom back in the day, my cousin went to the last level, so two years ago I get freedoom, and finish that, (it takes a good few weeks of afterwork time and weekends,) in windows (the freedos I had had a rudimentary version of freedoom, and no sound on a dell C840 laptop, but the win32 version had sound and all that. I left 4 snakes alive through all the levels, 2 with their backs in early levels who never shoot unless you walk near them, and you have an alternate route around them, and 2 blind ones, each in a different level, that you could get really close and look at, in late levels, and they scratch you if you get too close, but they don't shoot to a distance, like they went blind. Even amidst blood and gore and hate and enemies there is time to stop and admire beauty of life, even if enemy life, & protect noncombatants as either civilians or POW's, You leave 4 of them alive. That's like Alexander marrying an enemy woman, which is like that Mad TV episode of OJ Simpson on a date, "dangerous fun," same with Atilla, marrying an enemy woman. As in I've accomplished my life's goals and I don't mind dying. Or even if I have the capacity to stay alive, I'm not gonna do everything and everything to survive, and sometimes let other people decide it for me. If you finish doom without leaving any snakes alive, you end up all alone in the end. With 2 blind ones, the world is not so empty. I don't know about the ones with their backs turned, but otherwise fully able, if you ever meet them they prolly just kill you. Hmm. Hopefully they've had time to meditate over why they weren't killed, and might become friends with you. Kinda like Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, in the end, after all the blood and gore, the native american waves to him from a distance. Blood and gore because someone walked through a sacred burial ground. Among other things. A native american has a lot of excuses to be angry at a white guy like Robert Redford. So, anyway, they say one of Solomon's faults was not exterminating his enemies fully, but, like letting the king go, or stuff like that. As in like that's a fault. As if that's agains't bible principles. True, stuff like that can later bite you in the ass bad. Not always though. There is a story about Thracians capturing an enemy king, and making him eat with his golden spoon when everyone else at the table ate with wooden spoons. To make a short story short, he ended up marrying his daughter to his enemies that didn't kill him, instead, told him, let's be friends. How nice and naive that is. Stuff like that is very much up in the air. Like, there is a nature video, I don't think I could find it, where a lion pride goes under when the males are exhausted from a fight with an invading pride, and an outsider lioness that joined the pride takes the 2 pups of the pride on a walk, and they turn up dead, and there goes the future, the hope of the pride, because they were not xenophobe enough. The story ends with the enemy pride moving in taking over the territory. Leaving noncombatant blind snakes alive in freedoom? Leaving combat able but with their backs turned snakes alive? How about leaving any POW alive in any war? Shouldn't you just kill any POW and exterminate the enemy, else they may bite you in the ass later? Like Richard the Lionheart executing the whole civilian population of Tyre. Making sure he don't get bitten in the ass later. Unlike Alexander or Attila, who are out of their freaking minds marrying and trusting enemy women. Well, it's like survival is important, but it's still an arbitrary rule. The Thracians could have killed the enemy king. Instead they lucked out by making a friend and a marriage of the princess into the tribe. But somehow it's not too hard to understand the natural tendency of racism and xenophobia that surrounds you every day. There is some good justifications behind it. Just don't trust your kids to an enemy babysitter, after all, your kids are your everything. Jesus said love your enemies. And that's what the Brits did at Trafalgar pulling any S