I volunteer in the used book sale room of my local library... occasionally we get donations of old software, and being the only computer geek around, I often take home the DOS stuff to mess around with on my DOS machine. Ocassionally there's something cool (Walls of Rome, Wing Commander), but the other day we ended up with what appeared to be an unopened windows 2.0 box. I decided against it onthe grounds that win3.1's interface was clumsy enough; now, looking at those screenshots people provided, I'm really glad I did.:) -J
The underpinnings for life grow tantalizingly more evident as our vicarious observations grow in detail and scope.
Eh? Wassat? been hitting the thesaurus again, timothy?;) Sorry..just spent half an hour playing nethack online...my brain is too fried to handle big words. Um. Anyway. Life on Europa. Sounds good to me. I don't think I'll ever forget the guy in 2010 fading behind jupiter, saying, "There is life on Europa..." The effect is kind of lessensed by thefact that, if memory serves, it was a giant perambulatory cabbage, but never mind that. I worry, though: if there is life there, we might disturb it just by landing probes or the like. Especially if we're dealing with sentient life. The Prime Directive and all that. It's not that I object to exploration, but I think we should proceed with care, especially where extraterrestrial life is concerned. -J
I'm afraid I was being serious... though i cheerfully expected not to be entirely taken seriously.;) I was programming in qbasic essentially since i started using computers, and I've grown quite fond of it.
I'll look into rapidq; it sounds quite versatile. But I'm interested to hear why you think xbasic is limited. I've never used it, though I'm considering downloading a copy and messing around with it. -J
I do indeed get the picture, and what an interesting picture it is. I especially appreciate the fact that it's written for both win32 and X. It looks quite useful. Thanks! -J
Indeed... though I didn't realize that the source was available. I wonder how they pulled that off... anyway, the problem is that I don't have a computer running linux (not yet, I will soon, hopefully). i'd like to be able to write a program on my DOS machine and know that it's usable on linux. -J
I have to agree with you. NPR is amazing. I get the majority of news from it; the rest comes from the Post, or from Slashdot (like you said, tech news!). Maybe it's because they arne't under a [heavy] commercial pressure, but NPR is some of the best non-print journalism I've ever encountered. I can listen to an hour of npr programming (atc, morning edition, the World, or even CBC's As It Happens), and me informed and entertained, and know that at some point I'll get up-to-date headlines. Hmm. Do you listen to Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me? It's NPR's news quiz show... very funny, very informative. -J
[...]more importantly it will allow developers the freedom to concentrate on creativity without worrying about technical limitations
That suggests to me that devlopers will want to keep about the same tech level as current games, which is silly. Game companies always, in my experience, try to push the limits of their system's abilities. So it seems more likely that everyone will want to make games for this cube as graphically cool and polygon-pumped as possible. That didn't make much sense, did it? Oh well. It's early. -J
I think you're right about the DOS in win95...I msut've been delusional. In addition to removing the help files, they screwed up EDIT. Argh. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it's not actually DOS, but rather a "Win32 console" with a DOS-like interface. Whatever that means.;) At some point, I'm going to be coming into possession of a pentium in search of a use and I may just install linux. I'll keep 4dos in mind. -J
No, not the "DOS 6.22" that Win95 claims it has. I'm talking the real thing. Nothing between me and the kernel but COMMAND.COM. This is the case with "Livingston," my old 486. I use DOS (and occasionally Win 3.1) because I love the command-line interface and I'm too lazy to switch to linux (correction: I would, but I don't have a computer to spare - this one doesn't have enough hdd space).
Using DOS, in addition to being a regular nostalgia trip, is just plain fun in an indescribable way. Plus there are all those old DOS games which I drag out of my attic, pick up at yard sales, etc. Just the other day I found some old flight sim called..."Wing Commander," I think it was. Anyone heard of it?;) Tanj, but i wish my 5 1/4 (or whatever it is) drive was working...that would complete the experience (not to mention let me install WC).
Anyway. Drifting OT there. These "Perfect" apps sound like they might be predecessors to WordPerfect... -J
I think that might be problem...it works with fish, but that's a different amount of dimensions. With a human, it would probably look like a huge wavering blob rather than true invisibility. My resoning is thus: to accurately represent the space behind you from every perspective, you would need one camera for every pixel - which, as far as I know, is impossible. -J
...or however it's spelled... Keeping good geek help is tough, because geeks often feel underappreciated in environments that really don't understand them.
I've been interning this summer at a non-profit in DC. They were between webmasters, and needed someone to do website maintenance. Now they have a webmaster who is also the sysadmin, but I'm still doing a lot of web work (including ColdFusion programming...yum!). The organization has nothing to do with computers, but I don't feel at all underappreciated. If I have a burning desire to talk computers with anyone, the sysadmin is a nice guy. In fact, I enjoy the ability to work in an environment that is not totally computer oriented but where I can flex my computer skills and learn new ones. Granted, this is just my personal experience... -J
My thoughts exactly...specifically, I'm recalling Dibbler's sudden interest when he learns the wizards have found a way to record Music With Rocks In. Let's hope the Disc never gets an internet (though I suppose it's only a matter of time; Hex was getting spam in The Science of Discworld), because we've seen on our world what people like Dibbler want to do with the 'net. -J
...that the author essentially thinks that Unix isn't an OS because it isn't like the Windows9x package.
Er. OK. I use DOS 6.2 on a daily basis, and I'm pretty darn sure that it's an OS. It doesn't have a GUI (well, there's DOSSHELL, but that's not the standard UI) besides Win 3.1, and it doesn't have quicktime, a web browser, or a development environment (no, QBasic1.x doens't have a compiler), but I think most people would agree that DOS is an OS. especially considering what DOS stands for... -J
As for the downloadable Palm module, IIRC the Jargon File isn't much more than 5 MB total, so it's theoretically possible on a higher-end model. Is there any sort of text reader thingy that does on-the-fly compression/expansion, or is the Palm not powerful enough yet for such a program?
Harrumph. It most certainly is powerful enough; what you are referring to is the DOC format, which is a compressed text format for Palm use. There are tons of readers (CSpotRun is a good free one, and methinks it's open under the GNU GPL), and a few editors. I don't know what the compression rate is for DOC, so I'm not sure whether you could get the File down to a friendly size (my IIIxe has 8 megs of RAM, but a great deal of that is taken up with a ditionary and various documents, so no room for a 5 meg Jargon File). There are other formats as well (iSilo comes to mind), which might be more appropriate to the File's format. -J
Hmmm, not to mention the fact that a woman wielding a sword might [confuse|distract] the hell out of any invading male warrior unaccustomed to fighting women. Er. Pardon my ignorance, but what is a koshigatana? Or don't I want to know?;) -J
Slashdot Mirror
...PalmStation posted this article about Palm's future with the XScale technology... According to the article, "The XScale architecture offers performance roughly 20 times the Dragonball and uses less power..."
Maybe this will be foundation for PalmOS 4...
-J
I volunteer in the used book sale room of my local library... occasionally we get donations of old software, and being the only computer geek around, I often take home the DOS stuff to mess around with on my DOS machine. Ocassionally there's something cool (Walls of Rome, Wing Commander), but the other day we ended up with what appeared to be an unopened windows 2.0 box. I decided against it onthe grounds that win3.1's interface was clumsy enough; now, looking at those screenshots people provided, I'm really glad I did. :)
-J
The underpinnings for life grow tantalizingly more evident as our vicarious observations grow in detail and scope.
;)
Eh? Wassat? been hitting the thesaurus again, timothy?
Sorry..just spent half an hour playing nethack online...my brain is too fried to handle big words. Um. Anyway. Life on Europa. Sounds good to me. I don't think I'll ever forget the guy in 2010 fading behind jupiter, saying, "There is life on Europa..." The effect is kind of lessensed by thefact that, if memory serves, it was a giant perambulatory cabbage, but never mind that.
I worry, though: if there is life there, we might disturb it just by landing probes or the like. Especially if we're dealing with sentient life. The Prime Directive and all that. It's not that I object to exploration, but I think we should proceed with care, especially where extraterrestrial life is concerned.
-J
I'm afraid I was being serious... though i cheerfully expected not to be entirely taken seriously. ;)
I was programming in qbasic essentially since i started using computers, and I've grown quite fond of it.
I'll look into rapidq; it sounds quite versatile. But I'm interested to hear why you think xbasic is limited. I've never used it, though I'm considering downloading a copy and messing around with it.
-J
taking this to the next level would yield wine running a vb program
;)
I was thinking of asking about feasibility of running a vb program on linux, but I didn't think that would go over to well with this crowd.
-J
I do indeed get the picture, and what an interesting picture it is. I especially appreciate the fact that it's written for both win32 and X. It looks quite useful.
Thanks!
-J
Indeed... though I didn't realize that the source was available. I wonder how they pulled that off... anyway, the problem is that I don't have a computer running linux (not yet, I will soon, hopefully). i'd like to be able to write a program on my DOS machine and know that it's usable on linux.
-J
It is indeed rather liberally biased. but that's ok, because so am I. ;)
-J
Quick, all you Linux geeks out there, help a DOS fantic out: Is there a QBasic interpreter for Linux?
:)
-J
fun computer history that's also relevant for your pointy headed boss.
So...are we talking cone-heads here, or what?
;)
-J
I have to agree with you. NPR is amazing. I get the majority of news from it; the rest comes from the Post, or from Slashdot (like you said, tech news!).
Maybe it's because they arne't under a [heavy] commercial pressure, but NPR is some of the best non-print journalism I've ever encountered. I can listen to an hour of npr programming (atc, morning edition, the World, or even CBC's As It Happens), and me informed and entertained, and know that at some point I'll get up-to-date headlines.
Hmm. Do you listen to Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me? It's NPR's news quiz show... very funny, very informative.
-J
Perhaps "Screwed up" is a bad choice of words. They changed it. I do like the MDI feature...
-J
[...]more importantly it will allow developers the freedom to concentrate on creativity without worrying about technical limitations
That suggests to me that devlopers will want to keep about the same tech level as current games, which is silly. Game companies always, in my experience, try to push the limits of their system's abilities. So it seems more likely that everyone will want to make games for this cube as graphically cool and polygon-pumped as possible.
That didn't make much sense, did it? Oh well. It's early.
-J
I think you're right about the DOS in win95...I msut've been delusional. ;)
In addition to removing the help files, they screwed up EDIT. Argh.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that it's not actually DOS, but rather a "Win32 console" with a DOS-like interface. Whatever that means.
At some point, I'm going to be coming into possession of a pentium in search of a use and I may just install linux. I'll keep 4dos in mind.
-J
No, not the "DOS 6.22" that Win95 claims it has. I'm talking the real thing. Nothing between me and the kernel but COMMAND.COM. ;)
This is the case with "Livingston," my old 486. I use DOS (and occasionally Win 3.1) because I love the command-line interface and I'm too lazy to switch to linux (correction: I would, but I don't have a computer to spare - this one doesn't have enough hdd space).
Using DOS, in addition to being a regular nostalgia trip, is just plain fun in an indescribable way. Plus there are all those old DOS games which I drag out of my attic, pick up at yard sales, etc. Just the other day I found some old flight sim called..."Wing Commander," I think it was. Anyone heard of it?
Tanj, but i wish my 5 1/4 (or whatever it is) drive was working...that would complete the experience (not to mention let me install WC).
Anyway. Drifting OT there. These "Perfect" apps sound like they might be predecessors to WordPerfect...
-J
Yah...I posted that right after my lunch and then wished I hadn't. ;)
-J
I think that might be problem...it works with fish, but that's a different amount of dimensions. With a human, it would probably look like a huge wavering blob rather than true invisibility. My resoning is thus: to accurately represent the space behind you from every perspective, you would need one camera for every pixel - which, as far as I know, is impossible.
-J
Or at least, we'll be able to see what they had for lunch. ;)
-J
...or however it's spelled...
Keeping good geek help is tough, because geeks often feel underappreciated in environments that really don't understand them.
I've been interning this summer at a non-profit in DC. They were between webmasters, and needed someone to do website maintenance. Now they have a webmaster who is also the sysadmin, but I'm still doing a lot of web work (including ColdFusion programming...yum!). The organization has nothing to do with computers, but I don't feel at all underappreciated. If I have a burning desire to talk computers with anyone, the sysadmin is a nice guy. In fact, I enjoy the ability to work in an environment that is not totally computer oriented but where I can flex my computer skills and learn new ones.
Granted, this is just my personal experience...
-J
Ah, I see. But the "DOS prompt" (or, for exmaple, the linux kernel and command line shell of choice) would count as an OS under his theory?
-J
Hmm... you got a copy of that I could have? ;)
iSilo works with hypertext, right? Or am I delusional?
-J
My thoughts exactly...specifically, I'm recalling Dibbler's sudden interest when he learns the wizards have found a way to record Music With Rocks In. Let's hope the Disc never gets an internet (though I suppose it's only a matter of time; Hex was getting spam in The Science of Discworld), because we've seen on our world what people like Dibbler want to do with the 'net.
-J
...that the author essentially thinks that Unix isn't an OS because it isn't like the Windows9x package.
Er. OK. I use DOS 6.2 on a daily basis, and I'm pretty darn sure that it's an OS. It doesn't have a GUI (well, there's DOSSHELL, but that's not the standard UI) besides Win 3.1, and it doesn't have quicktime, a web browser, or a development environment (no, QBasic1.x doens't have a compiler), but I think most people would agree that DOS is an OS. especially considering what DOS stands for...
-J
As for the downloadable Palm module, IIRC the Jargon File isn't much more than 5 MB total, so it's theoretically possible on a higher-end model. Is there any sort of text reader thingy that does on-the-fly compression/expansion, or is the Palm not powerful enough yet for such a program?
Harrumph. It most certainly is powerful enough; what you are referring to is the DOC format, which is a compressed text format for Palm use. There are tons of readers (CSpotRun is a good free one, and methinks it's open under the GNU GPL), and a few editors.
I don't know what the compression rate is for DOC, so I'm not sure whether you could get the File down to a friendly size (my IIIxe has 8 megs of RAM, but a great deal of that is taken up with a ditionary and various documents, so no room for a 5 meg Jargon File). There are other formats as well (iSilo comes to mind), which might be more appropriate to the File's format.
-J
Hmmm, not to mention the fact that a woman wielding a sword might [confuse|distract] the hell out of any invading male warrior unaccustomed to fighting women. ;)
Er. Pardon my ignorance, but what is a koshigatana? Or don't I want to know?
-J