Wow. I remember that old printer, at the MIT AI lab, which was my major teenage haunt when I was a kid. It printed about a page a minute and it put giant streaks in the middle of the paper. It was ancient.
The new printer was gorgeous and shiny and was supposed to spit out a two pages every second. It was more like a page every two seconds, but it was still a magnificient beast. Its software ran on a Xerox Alto, a computer so marginal in performance that it blanked its display whenever it did any processing, because there wasn't enough CPU power to both display and process.
It was a pretty thing, though - first computer I ever saw capable of displaying fonts.
Oddly enough, even though I'd met RMS and my then-girlfriend and I even had him over for a party or two, I never heard him complain about the printer. At that time, he was truly vehement about letting people have free access to the AI computer system over the net ("Tourists", they were called). He had a crusade to make all passwords blank, so that anyone could get in to the new-fangled login program administrators hastily added to his beloved ITS.
The old tourist policy worked well when anyone who had even heard of the AI Lab's computers had to have at least a modicum of clues, but I fear it would be a disaster today. Pity.
Emacs was originally developed under the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS). I'm not sure what relationship RMS has with ITS, but I'd be surprised if he didn't play a major role in its development.
When I was playing around at MIT (my father was a professor there and was able to get me access to the AI Lab systems), I met RMS several times. He was a fascinating character; interesting but a shade intense. (That is, of course, an enormous understatement).
His main legacies are EMACS and GCC. I would think, though, that if GNU had not existed, Linux would be based on utilities from BSD Unix. However, let's not take too much away from RMS and GNU; the GNU utilities/shells do offer significantly superior functionality to their proprietary software ancestors.
Did Berkeley do any kind of C compiler as part of BSD? What happened to it?
I recommended StarOffice to her in my letter to the Weekly mainly because she likes the squiggles when spelling errors come up in Word. But she's right; it is frustratingly bloated, but any modern computer should be able to handle it just fine. I would think, anyway.
I just got a demo of Applixware, and it certainly is a lot faster and less bloated than StarOffice; maybe I'll send them some money for the full version.
Now, if someone, somewhere, would only do something about our hideous fonts, I'd be happy.
Judith Lewis strikes me as a fine and intelligent woman, but I think she's missed the mark on the cultural aspects of computing.
My soul rebels against the idea that if you are an American, you must eat at McDonald's, watch trash TV shows, and use Microsoft Windows. To me, if you do those things, you are supporting mediocrity and low quality; you are giving your money - which is another way of saying your votes and support - to institutions that quite deliberately produce bad products.
You see, the excuse producers of terrible things give is that it's what the customer wants; customers want lousy hamburgers and cardboard chicken nuggets, so that's what they get; customers want Windows, in all its glitzy, crashy glory, so that's what they get.
If you don't want a computer that crashes all the time, that loses your work, that drops it on the floor so you never see it again, you want something other than Windows.
In a word, you want Linux.
And, incidentally, not only can StarOffice for Windows read and write Office 97 files, it can even put that little squiggly line under the misspelled words you like so much. Add the KDE desktop environment, and you have something that looks a lot like Windows, is as easy to use as Windows, but - as a nice bonus - is fast and reliable. Give it a shot. http://www.stardivision.com/ and http://www.kde.org/ give details.
David H Dennis Marina del Rey, California david@amazing.com (310) 827-7153
PS to Judith [not for publication]: My sympathies. Your article has been slashdotted. If nobody's pointed you to it yet, read http://www.slashdot.org/articles/99/03/05/075823 3.shtml and see what all the fuss is about.
I use HTML myself - but since I use emacs HTML mode and auto-fill mode, I don't have to press enter after 80 characters, either.
I've never lost a single byte in over 20 years of using Emacs and Emacs clones (Epsilon, MicroEMACS, joe) on a daily basis to do editing. Word's record is many fewer characters typed, disasterously more bytes lost.
I've done some projects in Visual Basic for Applications/Word, but other than programming in it I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the thing. All the documents I create for myself or others are in plain text or HTML, and nobody has ever told me I can't continue using them.
I have five actively-used computers. Two run Linux exclusively, one runs NT, one runs dual boot W95/Linux, and the other runs MacOS. Computers are so cheap nowadays that there's no reason not to have a system devoted to Windows if you deal with people who insist you use it:-(.
Anyone else notice the sudden break in VA Research's virtual monopoly on sponsoring Linux-related sites?
I feel bad for VA, since they've put so much more work into Linux. I visited the IBM Netfinity pages and didn't see a thing about Linux other than the official announcement - if you try building your own Netfinity, Linux isn't even an option.
The Netfinity is also/much/ more expensive than an equivalent VA sever, at least as far as I can tell. What are you getting for about double the price? Or am I just reading things wrong over there?
Incidentally, I agree with the consensus that Redhat's site is lousy. I didn't mind the colours, but if I want to read Slashdot, Fresh Meat or User Friendly, well, I'll visit them myself.
It does have one definite advantage over the PC boxen - or mine did, anyway.
I own a Tatung SPARC 5 running SunOS 4.x and it's the most reliable machine I've ever owned - by far. It cost me around $4,300 (without monitor) and ran amazing.com from mid-1994 to mid-1998. It would only go down on the building's occasional power failures. Finally, it apparently crashed - I later found someone had just pulled the ethernet cable by accident, but that made me pull the machine and replace it with the SGI O2 I had here. The O2's a lot more fun to use, but, sadly, have about 1/10th the reliability. So I still have the SunOS box and may put it back to use someday, as a name server/spare web server/etc.
Incidentally, does anyone know details about the Sparc's year 2000 status? I seem to remember reading SunOS 4.x is totally non-compliant, and would be curious to learn what breaks. I understand Solaris decreases performance significantly on these old machines.
Mine finally bit the dust after many years of heartless pounding. Best keyboard ever made -- you're not crazy.
The later IBM keyboards are not as good, but they're still better than anything else out there. Unfortunately, the IBM Aptiva I have has a typical cheap keyboard.
Has anyone tried the IBM keyboard with the built-in trackpoint? I'd like to check one out, but they're pretty expensive to buy sight unseen.
Per the Wall Street Journal, the answer is no, the price will "most likely" be lower.
However, the systems will apparently be sold and supported by resellers, not IBM directly. This makes me a bit confused - it's unclear whether the systems will be shipped with Windows preloaded and then erased, or if there will be a special "no OS" order.
I hope VA or some other Linux company will buy and resell these systems - I'd love to have a ThinkPad with supported Linux, particularly if it was a 3xx series (since I, sadly, can't justify $ 4-5k for the 770s, more's the pity:-( ).
A question for IBMers in the audience: Where does ValueAmerica get ThinkPad 770s to sell for $ 1,799.00? I thought IBM sold every one they could make at a high price, and then went straight to the next model. Seems like you'd have to find a massive glitch in IBM's systems to still have 233mhz 770s lying around, but I notice this has happened several times. What's the real story?
(Memo to anyone seriously considering ValueAmerica: Their price for a contemporary ThinkPad (770X) is higher than IBM's "suggested price". Caveat Emptor).
I was thinking of getting one - sure, I'd rather have 1280x1024 on a 7xx series, but that's almost $5,000, while I can get an i-series for about half the price with a pretty decent spec.
I have a NEC 21" and a Sony 19", and the picture of the Sony is actually sharper (since it's newer), and I have no trouble reading text at 1280x1024 (the same resolution I have the NEC at).
The Sony's $ 799 and worth every penny.
I used to agree with you, but the 19" technology really won me over. I wouldn't recommend 17" or below, though.
I bought my system (and attended Refund Day) because my old one was ailing, and I needed a new web server fast - not hours or days from now.
I'm also - painful as this is to admit - mechanically inept and would probably destroy the components in the process of building them!
The real problem with buying from a company like VA Research is that you can't just go into your car, drive to the store and pick the system up. If I'd been able to do that, I probably would have gotten a VA (or equivalent) system.
As far as I remember, Digital Research never did sell PCs. I think you're mixing up Digital Equipment, a hardware company, with Digital Research, a software concern.
I remember the Commodore 64, one of the ghastliest computers made. Not exactly known for quality:-(. Anyone buying a Jack T product would know exactly what he was in for. I suspect that's one reason for the companies' fates.
I find the results of the Bay Area protest interesting in contrast with the Irvine event. Here, about ten people showed up, half of who had OSs to refund (myself included) and half of who were curious. In Irvine, we were ushered onto the elevator by an ultra-efficient security detail and sped to the 18th floor of the plush high rise.
We were given free snacks and sodas and presented with a piece of paper with Microsoft's well-known position: It's between you and the OEM. A couple of Microsoft folks who were borderline-friendly stuck around to answer questions. There was no statement made other than the handout.
The Irvine Company, who is Microsoft's landlord, handled the protest with the smooth competence for which Donald Bren and friends are known. They had only one request: No pictures on their grounds. Fortunately, I was able to sneak in a few. The Microsoft folks must have been listening, since they initially allowed pictures in their offices, but later prohibited them. My camera is a Canon XL1 MiniDV camcorder; it looks a great deal like units used by professional newspeople. I think I scared them, but I would have rather gotten better pictures.
Unfortunately, I'm having some unexpected technical problems; pictures will be posted tomorrow morning. I'll post the URL in the appropriate thread.
I'm about to leave for Irvine with my MiniDV camcorder - I'll have some pictures up when the event's over and I've had a bite to eat down there, probably around 4-5 PST.
Note that most of the action is on the West Coast - it's only 10:41 here, and the Irvine event is for noon.
It didn't say what those nice people should adopt.
If I were type C risk as they seem to be interpreting it, I'd put an IBM mainframe terminal on everyone's desk. It's solid, it keeps running even if you drop it, and it won't crash. I wouldn't even dream of adapting Windows!
If something goes wrong with Microsoft(tm) or Oracle(tm) or any other commercial software, do you actually have a realistic chance of prevailing in a lawsuit claiming the products are shoddy?
If so, I would think Microsoft would be filing for bankruptcy any day now.
I mean, it's a nice theory and all, but I think all you could ever get back is the price of the software, and that's not going to help if your whole business went south.
True, you can talk to a Support Robot, but I haven't found support robots of any stripe to be particularly helpful.:-(
Have a cron job do a mysqldump of the database every hour - that way you at least won't lose as many articles. You could write a quick program to integrate in any newer comments using the unique IDs.
I hope you've paid the $ 200 for support and asked the mySQL folks about this. I run a much lower volume web site with mySQL, and I've never had any problems. But in case my sites become higher volume, I'd sleep a lot better at night if I saw a resolution of some sort to these problems.
I've used KDE, and I don't see how anyone could describe it as harder to use then Windows - it's a virtual Windows clone!
Now, if you were to say that the applications aren't there, I'd be forced to agree with you - but that doesn't seem to be your argument.
Incidentally, I now use Enlightenment because I can't resist the cool look. One day, one day, I promise myself, I'll do a Theme of my very own, or at least figure out how to get one of the non-default ones to work.
But I would cheerfully recommend KDE to anyone who wants a Windows-like experience.
I guess you could say I'm one of the few agnostics in the KDE vs Gnome wars.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. I remember that old printer, at the MIT AI lab, which was my major teenage haunt when I was a kid. It printed about a page a minute and it put giant streaks in the middle of the paper. It was ancient.
The new printer was gorgeous and shiny and was supposed to spit out a two pages every second. It was more like a page every two seconds, but it was still a magnificient beast. Its software ran on a Xerox Alto, a computer so marginal in performance that it blanked its display whenever it did any processing, because there wasn't enough CPU power to both display and process.
It was a pretty thing, though - first computer I ever saw capable of displaying fonts.
Oddly enough, even though I'd met RMS and my then-girlfriend and I even had him over for a party or two, I never heard him complain about the printer. At that time, he was truly vehement about letting people have free access to the AI computer system over the net ("Tourists", they were called). He had a crusade to make all passwords blank, so that anyone could get in to the new-fangled login program administrators hastily added to his beloved ITS.
The old tourist policy worked well when anyone who had even heard of the AI Lab's computers had to have at least a modicum of clues, but I fear it would be a disaster today. Pity.
D
----
Emacs was originally developed under the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS). I'm not sure what relationship RMS has with ITS, but I'd be surprised if he didn't play a major role in its development.
When I was playing around at MIT (my father was a professor there and was able to get me access to the AI Lab systems), I met RMS several times. He was a fascinating character; interesting but a shade intense. (That is, of course, an enormous understatement).
His main legacies are EMACS and GCC. I would think, though, that if GNU had not existed, Linux would be based on utilities from BSD Unix. However, let's not take too much away from RMS and GNU; the GNU utilities/shells do offer significantly superior functionality to their proprietary software ancestors.
Did Berkeley do any kind of C compiler as part of BSD? What happened to it?
D
----
I recommended StarOffice to her in my letter to the Weekly mainly because she likes the squiggles when spelling errors come up in Word. But she's right; it is frustratingly bloated, but any modern computer should be able to handle it just fine. I would think, anyway.
I just got a demo of Applixware, and it certainly is a lot faster and less bloated than StarOffice; maybe I'll send them some money for the full version.
Now, if someone, somewhere, would only do something about our hideous fonts, I'd be happy.
D
----
Judith Lewis strikes me as a fine and intelligent woman, but I think she's missed the mark on the cultural aspects of computing.
- ------------------------------------
3 3.shtml and see what all the fuss is about.
My soul rebels against the idea that if you are an American, you must eat at McDonald's, watch trash TV shows, and use Microsoft Windows. To me, if you do those things, you are supporting mediocrity and low quality; you are giving your money - which is another way of saying your votes and support - to institutions that quite deliberately produce bad products.
You see, the excuse producers of terrible things give is that it's what the customer wants; customers want lousy hamburgers and cardboard chicken nuggets, so that's what they get; customers want Windows, in all its glitzy, crashy glory, so that's what they get.
If you don't want a computer that crashes all the time, that loses your work, that drops it on the floor so you never see it again, you want something other than Windows.
In a word, you want Linux.
And, incidentally, not only can StarOffice for Windows read and write Office 97 files, it can even put that little squiggly line under the misspelled words you like so much. Add the KDE desktop environment, and you have something that looks a lot like Windows, is as easy to use as Windows, but - as a nice bonus - is fast and reliable. Give it a shot. http://www.stardivision.com/ and http://www.kde.org/ give details.
David H Dennis
Marina del Rey, California
david@amazing.com
(310) 827-7153
-----------------------------------------------
PS to Judith [not for publication]: My sympathies. Your article has been slashdotted. If nobody's pointed you to it yet, read
http://www.slashdot.org/articles/99/03/05/07582
Best
D
----
I use HTML myself - but since I use emacs HTML mode and auto-fill mode, I don't have to press enter after 80 characters, either.
I've never lost a single byte in over 20 years of using Emacs and Emacs clones (Epsilon, MicroEMACS, joe) on a daily basis to do editing. Word's record is many fewer characters typed, disasterously more bytes lost.
D
----
There's even - of all things! - a Smooth Jazz song title:
Did I save?
Curiously enough, this tune has no words. Bouncy and cheerful, which doesn't quite describe my mood when Word crashes on me.
D
----
I've done some projects in Visual Basic for Applications/Word, but other than programming in it I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the thing. All the documents I create for myself or others are in plain text or HTML, and nobody has ever told me I can't continue using them.
:-(.
I have five actively-used computers. Two run Linux exclusively, one runs NT, one runs dual boot W95/Linux, and the other runs MacOS. Computers are so cheap nowadays that there's no reason not to have a system devoted to Windows if you deal with people who insist you use it
D
----
Anyone else notice the sudden break in VA Research's virtual monopoly on sponsoring Linux-related sites?
/much/ more expensive than an equivalent VA sever, at least as far as I can tell. What are you getting for about double the price? Or am I just reading things wrong over there?
I feel bad for VA, since they've put so much more work into Linux. I visited the IBM Netfinity pages and didn't see a thing about Linux other than the official announcement - if you try building your own Netfinity, Linux isn't even an option.
The Netfinity is also
Incidentally, I agree with the consensus that Redhat's site is lousy. I didn't mind the colours, but if I want to read Slashdot, Fresh Meat or User Friendly, well, I'll visit them myself.
D
----
Think of it as giving other people more options, and giving you more opportunities.
After all, there's nothing saying you can't continue using Linux exactly as you have it on your machine right now.
D
That's exactly what I was thinking! One column he comes foresquare on the side of Linux ... the next he treats it like rat poison!
D
It does have one definite advantage over the PC boxen - or mine did, anyway.
I own a Tatung SPARC 5 running SunOS 4.x and it's the most reliable machine I've ever owned - by far. It cost me around $4,300 (without monitor) and ran amazing.com from mid-1994 to mid-1998. It would only go down on the building's occasional power failures. Finally, it apparently crashed - I later found someone had just pulled the ethernet cable by accident, but that made me pull the machine and replace it with the SGI O2 I had here. The O2's a lot more fun to use, but, sadly, have about 1/10th the reliability. So I still have the SunOS box and may put it back to use someday, as a name server/spare web server/etc.
Incidentally, does anyone know details about the Sparc's year 2000 status? I seem to remember reading SunOS 4.x is totally non-compliant, and would be curious to learn what breaks. I understand Solaris decreases performance significantly on these old machines.
D
Mine finally bit the dust after many years of heartless pounding. Best keyboard ever made -- you're not crazy.
The later IBM keyboards are not as good, but they're still better than anything else out there. Unfortunately, the IBM Aptiva I have has a typical cheap keyboard.
Has anyone tried the IBM keyboard with the built-in trackpoint? I'd like to check one out, but they're pretty expensive to buy sight unseen.
D
Per the Wall Street Journal, the answer is no, the price will "most likely" be lower.
:-( ).
However, the systems will apparently be sold and supported by resellers, not IBM directly. This makes me a bit confused - it's unclear whether the systems will be shipped with Windows preloaded and then erased, or if there will be a special "no OS" order.
I hope VA or some other Linux company will buy and resell these systems - I'd love to have a ThinkPad with supported Linux, particularly if it was a 3xx series (since I, sadly, can't justify $ 4-5k for the 770s, more's the pity
A question for IBMers in the audience: Where does ValueAmerica get ThinkPad 770s to sell for $ 1,799.00? I thought IBM sold every one they could make at a high price, and then went straight to the next model. Seems like you'd have to find a massive glitch in IBM's systems to still have 233mhz 770s lying around, but I notice this has happened several times. What's the real story?
(Memo to anyone seriously considering ValueAmerica: Their price for a contemporary ThinkPad (770X) is higher than IBM's "suggested price". Caveat Emptor).
D
I was thinking of getting one - sure, I'd rather have 1280x1024 on a 7xx series, but that's almost $5,000, while I can get an i-series for about half the price with a pretty decent spec.
D
I have a NEC 21" and a Sony 19", and the picture of the Sony is actually sharper (since it's newer), and I have no trouble reading text at 1280x1024 (the same resolution I have the NEC at).
The Sony's $ 799 and worth every penny.
I used to agree with you, but the 19" technology really won me over. I wouldn't recommend 17" or below, though.
D
I bought my system (and attended Refund Day) because my old one was ailing, and I needed a new web server fast - not hours or days from now.
I'm also - painful as this is to admit - mechanically inept and would probably destroy the components in the process of building them!
The real problem with buying from a company like VA Research is that you can't just go into your car, drive to the store and pick the system up. If I'd been able to do that, I probably would have gotten a VA (or equivalent) system.
D
As far as I remember, Digital Research never did sell PCs. I think you're mixing up Digital Equipment, a hardware company, with Digital Research, a software concern.
:-(. Anyone buying a Jack T product would know exactly what he was in for. I suspect that's one reason for the companies' fates.
I remember the Commodore 64, one of the ghastliest computers made. Not exactly known for quality
D
Yes, Virginia, there was an event outside the Bay Area, although it was a lot lower key.
Here's my page of photographs and commentary
D
I find the results of the Bay Area protest interesting in contrast with the Irvine event. Here, about ten people showed up, half of who had OSs to refund (myself included) and half of who were curious. In Irvine, we were ushered onto the elevator by an ultra-efficient security detail and sped to the 18th floor of the plush high rise.
We were given free snacks and sodas and presented with a piece of paper with Microsoft's well-known position: It's between you and the OEM. A couple of Microsoft folks who were borderline-friendly stuck around to answer questions. There was no statement made other than the handout.
The Irvine Company, who is Microsoft's landlord, handled the protest with the smooth competence for which Donald Bren and friends are known. They had only one request: No pictures on their grounds. Fortunately, I was able to sneak in a few. The Microsoft folks must have been listening, since they initially allowed pictures in their offices, but later prohibited them. My camera is a Canon XL1 MiniDV camcorder; it looks a great deal like units used by professional newspeople. I think I scared them, but I would have rather gotten better pictures.
Unfortunately, I'm having some unexpected technical problems; pictures will be posted tomorrow morning. I'll post the URL in the appropriate thread.
D
I'm about to leave for Irvine with my MiniDV camcorder - I'll have some pictures up when the event's over and I've had a bite to eat down there, probably around 4-5 PST.
Note that most of the action is on the West Coast - it's only 10:41 here, and the Irvine event is for noon.
D
He ran the Inet-Access mailing list for years and years until Avi Freedman took it over, I think in mid-1998.
He was an excellent list administrator - always did a fine job. My ISP FAQ is/was based on messages on that list.
D
It didn't say what those nice people should adopt.
If I were type C risk as they seem to be interpreting it, I'd put an IBM mainframe terminal on everyone's desk. It's solid, it keeps running even if you drop it, and it won't crash. I wouldn't even dream of adapting Windows!
D
Honest question:
:-(
If something goes wrong with Microsoft(tm) or Oracle(tm) or any other commercial software, do you actually have a realistic chance of prevailing in a lawsuit claiming the products are shoddy?
If so, I would think Microsoft would be filing for bankruptcy any day now.
I mean, it's a nice theory and all, but I think all you could ever get back is the price of the software, and that's not going to help if your whole business went south.
True, you can talk to a Support Robot, but I haven't found support robots of any stripe to be particularly helpful.
D
Have a cron job do a mysqldump of the database every hour - that way you at least won't lose as many articles. You could write a quick program to integrate in any newer comments using the unique IDs.
I hope you've paid the $ 200 for support and asked the mySQL folks about this. I run a much lower volume web site with mySQL, and I've never had any problems. But in case my sites become higher volume, I'd sleep a lot better at night if I saw a resolution of some sort to these problems.
D
I've used KDE, and I don't see how anyone could describe it as harder to use then Windows - it's a virtual Windows clone!
:-)
Now, if you were to say that the applications aren't there, I'd be forced to agree with you - but that doesn't seem to be your argument.
Incidentally, I now use Enlightenment because I can't resist the cool look. One day, one day, I promise myself, I'll do a Theme of my very own, or at least figure out how to get one of the non-default ones to work.
But I would cheerfully recommend KDE to anyone who wants a Windows-like experience.
I guess you could say I'm one of the few agnostics in the KDE vs Gnome wars.
D