I recently got an older Dell Optiplex from IT at work because I needed another Data Logger in the lab. The data logging application had been running on an IBM-XT and I was getting tired of running on such aging old hardware. Even though it was kinda neat to still make use of a dual-floppy disk system in a modern product development lab (it had a 5-1/4" DSDD boot drive and a 3-1/2" HD B: drive where the logged data was stuck. It had one of those now-rare High Density 8 bit diskette controller cards with a BIOS extension on board)
When I got the new Optiplex (a PII box) it had a 128M SDRAM and an 8 gig hard drive. I booted up DOS 5 on it, ran FDISK to clobber the old partitioning and stuck just a 200MB partition on it. I don't need more space than that, and why waste the extra 20 minutes formatting a 2048M partition?
So it happily now runs DOS 5 and probably will until *IT* is so obsolete that it is falling apart. The only requirement is that it has an ISA card slot for the data acquisition card needed, so it is probably the newest hardware that will ever sit in that spot in the lab.
I recently created a DOS boot diskette with PCMCIA card services installed on it. It's useful for installing a system on old laptops that have no CDROM drive. Put all your installers on a compact flash, stick it in a PCMCIA converter and boot the diskette. The Card Services installer is still downloadable if you dig around enough. I believe I found it on Toshiba's Canadian tech support download site.
The PC-DOS 4.0 diskettes I once possessed are one of the things I regret no longer having. I believe I had two complete different sets, the original disaster version and the 'update' version which wasn't any better, really.
We all hung on waiting for 5.0 to come along. I still use PC-DOS 3.3 on a few machines at work.
Recently I came across the source archive for DR-DOS, which they released for a while, quite awhile ago. Back in the good old 'Caldera' days. It's a much more convoluted build than FreeDOS today.
But if you're serious about Digital Research, you want to run CP/M-86. Or CP/M-80 if you're also a vintage hardware enthusiast.
I have had four, five, six and seven digit Slashdot IDs. If you don't get disgusted and throw away an account once in awhile, it just shows you have bad taste.
I have never abandoned an account that didn't have it's +1 posting ability.
I have registered a lot of shareware over the past decade and more. In fact, I have ended up with a whole CD-R that I label 'registered shareware' that has folders with all the shareware installers and the cd keys, license files, etc. that are collected with them.
One of the things I will not do, and it's something that causes me to no longer consider registering or paying for a piece of software, is if it has one of the complicated 'validation' schemes like you describe. I will NOT run a piece of software where I have to pass numbers back and forth from a live server somewhere to generate a 'key' and 'validate' the software. When I see that's how a piece of software works I drop it and move on to consider other packages. I've did so in several instances and it's always turned into money sunk down a hole that was a waste.
Don't tie my use of your software to your ability to stay in business. I can and will send you money for to register a piece of software. After doing so, I do not want to lose use of it because you happened to go out of business or changed your business plan.
When Microsoft started using this scheme for 'validating' software is when I decided Microsoft had ceased being an entity I wanted to do business with.
and no other OS meets all of those criteria as well as Windows.
I agree with a significant part of what you said there, except the cutoff for me is Windows 2000. Microsoft hasn't done a thing since that encourages me, let along compels me, to upgrade past Windows 2000. I don't use the W2K box for anything more important than Office and multimedia fooling around. All the good new stuff that I want is on NetBSD in pkgsrc.
And I used to be the guy who always upgraded his Windows and Microsoft stuff. I bought a retail box copy of W2K like I did Windows 98, because I wanted a 'legitimate' copy that I would be able to run and install, forever, on any machine that I chose. It isn't hard to guess why I have never even tried XP. MS doesn't sell a version that is equivalent. I'll never 'phone home' to use a Microsoft Product. It goes against any reason I would ever have for giving them money.
Maybe it will be 'Microsoft Desktop for Linux' after some good hard ass kicking. I can imagine that a good hardened Linux core running beneath Microsofts crumbly gooie 'goodness' would keep Microsoft in line better than the DOJ or any other non-software disciplinary force could. They should be competing with KDE and Gnome, and leaving the real underlying OS work to capable forces. The way Apple did when they dropped out of the OS business and let the NeXT folk do that for them.
I am talking about ill maintained cars that stink because they're billowing blue smoke. Not over maintained cars that are tuned up for performance. When you mod your car for performance, it isn't so you can billow out 1/3 of the fuel un-ignited as carcinogenic fumes. That's what I am talking about.
There was never a time when Windows 98 was better than Windows 2000. Just like there will never be a time when Windows XP is better than Windows 2000. W2K is that rare instance of a good Microsoft product. They reached a plateau with W2K. It is similar in that regard to Windows 3.11 with Office 4.3 or NT 3.51. Anybody who has had to cope with Microsoft products knows that after they produce something really good, they pack it down with shit for awhile (i.e. XP) then introduce something new and really terrible to replace it (i.e. Windows 95, NT 4.0, Vista)
Circuit City and CompUSA won't be the OEMs selling the boxes with shady OEM licenses. It will be Ahimd's PakiComp and other mom&pop small operators. You know, whitebox sellers. Who need to straighten up if they want to remain Microsoft OEM resellers. That is the message Microsoft wants to send.
I wish MORE states did 'sniff' tests for emissions. You can tell when you're driving behind an ill-maintained car. They STINK, and there aren't that many cars out there with the problem. It is an obvious maintenance problem that could be brought to the car owner's attention and taken care of. What I advocate is emissions sensors built right into squad cars and tickets just like the tickets for broken headlights.
Most of the trees we cut down are trees planted for that purpose. If some other plant displaces pulpwood, less forest will be mantained. The landowners won't just 'let the trees stand' out of the goodness of their hearts.
Well, now they enabled the criminal elements to hold companies, countries and whole regions hostage.
Well, not really. It only seems like whole regions are held hostage to people whose entire life focus is on the 'net.
It could turn out like that Simpsons episode where TV ceased being broadcast.
Re:No technical knowledge? Don't work in tech comp
on
AMD NDA Scandal
·
· Score: 1
It seems quite common that executives of technical companies have no understanding of their company's products, and because of that they sometimes have sink-the-company ideas.
Are you implying that AMD has executives who don't understand that what AMD produces is a bunch of fluff for Fanboyz to toot about? And that because of this they don't recognize that they blow it bigtime with said Fanboyz when they don't run a squeaky-clean operation? Because I don't get your comment otherwise. I strongly suspect that AMD management has other priorities.
You think journalists should be allowed to walk through AMDs new plant without signing an NDA? Why do they even need to make the plant visit to report on the AMD product? That's specifically what the 'second day' NDA agreement seems to address: the plant visit.
This is a PR issue for AMD and that's what they should be handling better. Nothing more.
People with no technical knowledge, and little or no interest in learning about their company's products, should be encouraged to get a job somewhere else, or retire. They are dinosaurs from a pre-tech world.
Most businesses aren't run by Engineers. I have worked in Engineer-run and founded companies, and it's a GREAT place to work in product development. But those aren't necessarily the best companies overall, because nerds don't necessarily do business well.
Well, there's sort of a difference. The difference is that the employees are 'inside the group.' Just as a signer of this NDA is 'inside the group.' Same difference. This guy is just howling because he intends to remain an independent journalist. What AMD is doing is not wrong, but he's in the right to point out loudly that they're doing it, to help identify any other journalists who sign the NDA.
The only parties acting 'unethically' are any other journalists who sign the NDA. And AMD is a shade grayer for asking them to sign it. But they're still just a business like they were yesterday, and NDAs are part of business.
Well, they could do that, too, but a lot of people in that area are making a lot of noise to oppose the proposed off-shore windfarms. Perhaps eminent domain should just be declared and the island depopulated.
That 'DoD' spec is just something written down and specified in one instance, for one category of data. It's just something Symantec or one of the other marketing outfits has dubbed 'The DoD Spec' to impress customers. There are different levels of security, and in many instances the drive just has to be shredded to be considered secure. This isn't even a DoD level precaution. Many of the computers put up for auction at a local university have had their drives shredded, and they are just ordinary 'doze machines on an open campus. There's even a 'drive shredding form' that can be downloaded from the same website that announces their auctions.
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I don't want OpenBSD forked, I want the possibility out there,
Now you're just being weird. How is the possibility NOT out there??
I recently got an older Dell Optiplex from IT at work because I needed another Data Logger in the lab. The data logging application had been running on an IBM-XT and I was getting tired of running on such aging old hardware. Even though it was kinda neat to still make use of a dual-floppy disk system in a modern product development lab (it had a 5-1/4" DSDD boot drive and a 3-1/2" HD B: drive where the logged data was stuck. It had one of those now-rare High Density 8 bit diskette controller cards with a BIOS extension on board)
When I got the new Optiplex (a PII box) it had a 128M SDRAM and an 8 gig hard drive. I booted up DOS 5 on it, ran FDISK to clobber the old partitioning and stuck just a 200MB partition on it. I don't need more space than that, and why waste the extra 20 minutes formatting a 2048M partition?
So it happily now runs DOS 5 and probably will until *IT* is so obsolete that it is falling apart. The only requirement is that it has an ISA card slot for the data acquisition card needed, so it is probably the newest hardware that will ever sit in that spot in the lab.
I have an 8" floppy drive within five feet of me. A newish one, even (half-height).
I recently created a DOS boot diskette with PCMCIA card services installed on it. It's useful for installing a system on old laptops that have no CDROM drive. Put all your installers on a compact flash, stick it in a PCMCIA converter and boot the diskette. The Card Services installer is still downloadable if you dig around enough. I believe I found it on Toshiba's Canadian tech support download site.
The PC-DOS 4.0 diskettes I once possessed are one of the things I regret no longer having. I believe I had two complete different sets, the original disaster version and the 'update' version which wasn't any better, really.
We all hung on waiting for 5.0 to come along. I still use PC-DOS 3.3 on a few machines at work.
Recently I came across the source archive for DR-DOS, which they released for a while, quite awhile ago. Back in the good old 'Caldera' days. It's a much more convoluted build than FreeDOS today.
But if you're serious about Digital Research, you want to run CP/M-86. Or CP/M-80 if you're also a vintage hardware enthusiast.
I have had four, five, six and seven digit Slashdot IDs. If you don't get disgusted and throw away an account once in awhile, it just shows you have bad taste.
I have never abandoned an account that didn't have it's +1 posting ability.
Do you remember old days?
Who cares.
The thing is, I despised Stak Electronics and especially despised having to help people who allowed their software to screw up their systems.
It isn't enough reason to say it was okay for Microsoft to steal their I.P. but it is enough to say 'meh, who cares' that they failed as a company.
I have registered a lot of shareware over the past decade and more. In fact, I have ended up with a whole CD-R that I label 'registered shareware' that has folders with all the shareware installers and the cd keys, license files, etc. that are collected with them.
One of the things I will not do, and it's something that causes me to no longer consider registering or paying for a piece of software, is if it has one of the complicated 'validation' schemes like you describe. I will NOT run a piece of software where I have to pass numbers back and forth from a live server somewhere to generate a 'key' and 'validate' the software. When I see that's how a piece of software works I drop it and move on to consider other packages. I've did so in several instances and it's always turned into money sunk down a hole that was a waste.
Don't tie my use of your software to your ability to stay in business. I can and will send you money for to register a piece of software. After doing so, I do not want to lose use of it because you happened to go out of business or changed your business plan.
When Microsoft started using this scheme for 'validating' software is when I decided Microsoft had ceased being an entity I wanted to do business with.
and no other OS meets all of those criteria as well as Windows.
I agree with a significant part of what you said there, except the cutoff for me is Windows 2000. Microsoft hasn't done a thing since that encourages me, let along compels me, to upgrade past Windows 2000. I don't use the W2K box for anything more important than Office and multimedia fooling around. All the good new stuff that I want is on NetBSD in pkgsrc.
And I used to be the guy who always upgraded his Windows and Microsoft stuff. I bought a retail box copy of W2K like I did Windows 98, because I wanted a 'legitimate' copy that I would be able to run and install, forever, on any machine that I chose. It isn't hard to guess why I have never even tried XP. MS doesn't sell a version that is equivalent. I'll never 'phone home' to use a Microsoft Product. It goes against any reason I would ever have for giving them money.
I collect old Apple hardware, which I seldom use as my regular 'desktop' machine. I would never pay 70 cents on the dollar for used Apple hardware.
Maybe it will be 'Microsoft Desktop for Linux' after some good hard ass kicking. I can imagine that a good hardened Linux core running beneath Microsofts crumbly gooie 'goodness' would keep Microsoft in line better than the DOJ or any other non-software disciplinary force could. They should be competing with KDE and Gnome, and leaving the real underlying OS work to capable forces. The way Apple did when they dropped out of the OS business and let the NeXT folk do that for them.
I am talking about ill maintained cars that stink because they're billowing blue smoke. Not over maintained cars that are tuned up for performance. When you mod your car for performance, it isn't so you can billow out 1/3 of the fuel un-ignited as carcinogenic fumes. That's what I am talking about.
There was never a time when Windows 98 was better than Windows 2000. Just like there will never be a time when Windows XP is better than Windows 2000. W2K is that rare instance of a good Microsoft product. They reached a plateau with W2K. It is similar in that regard to Windows 3.11 with Office 4.3 or NT 3.51. Anybody who has had to cope with Microsoft products knows that after they produce something really good, they pack it down with shit for awhile (i.e. XP) then introduce something new and really terrible to replace it (i.e. Windows 95, NT 4.0, Vista)
Circuit City and CompUSA won't be the OEMs selling the boxes with shady OEM licenses. It will be Ahimd's PakiComp and other mom&pop small operators. You know, whitebox sellers. Who need to straighten up if they want to remain Microsoft OEM resellers. That is the message Microsoft wants to send.
I wish MORE states did 'sniff' tests for emissions. You can tell when you're driving behind an ill-maintained car. They STINK, and there aren't that many cars out there with the problem. It is an obvious maintenance problem that could be brought to the car owner's attention and taken care of. What I advocate is emissions sensors built right into squad cars and tickets just like the tickets for broken headlights.
So the corn farmers in the USA are safe unless the USA market diseasel car engine share start approaching that in other countries.
Cummins, in Columbus Indiana, is gearing up bigtime for small diesel engine production.
Most of the trees we cut down are trees planted for that purpose. If some other plant displaces pulpwood, less forest will be mantained. The landowners won't just 'let the trees stand' out of the goodness of their hearts.
We only need look back in history to, say, the year 1980 to see that companies rapidly fall out of business if their employees don't have email.
Well, now they enabled the criminal elements to hold companies, countries and whole regions hostage.
Well, not really. It only seems like whole regions are held hostage to people whose entire life focus is on the 'net.
It could turn out like that Simpsons episode where TV ceased being broadcast.
Are you implying that AMD has executives who don't understand that what AMD produces is a bunch of fluff for Fanboyz to toot about? And that because of this they don't recognize that they blow it bigtime with said Fanboyz when they don't run a squeaky-clean operation?
Because I don't get your comment otherwise. I strongly suspect that AMD management has other priorities.
You think journalists should be allowed to walk through AMDs new plant without signing an NDA? Why do they even need to make the plant visit to report on the AMD product? That's specifically what the 'second day' NDA agreement seems to address: the plant visit.
This is a PR issue for AMD and that's what they should be handling better. Nothing more.
Most businesses aren't run by Engineers. I have worked in Engineer-run and founded companies, and it's a GREAT place to work in product development. But those aren't necessarily the best companies overall, because nerds don't necessarily do business well.
Well, there's sort of a difference. The difference is that the employees are 'inside the group.' Just as a signer of this NDA is 'inside the group.' Same difference. This guy is just howling because he intends to remain an independent journalist. What AMD is doing is not wrong, but he's in the right to point out loudly that they're doing it, to help identify any other journalists who sign the NDA.
The only parties acting 'unethically' are any other journalists who sign the NDA. And AMD is a shade grayer for asking them to sign it. But they're still just a business like they were yesterday, and NDAs are part of business.
Norton Ghost will do that for many systems. There's a 'Ghost for Unix' utility that should work, also.
Well, they could do that, too, but a lot of people in that area are making a lot of noise to oppose the proposed off-shore windfarms. Perhaps eminent domain should just be declared and the island depopulated.
That 'DoD' spec is just something written down and specified in one instance, for one category of data. It's just something Symantec or one of the other marketing outfits has dubbed 'The DoD Spec' to impress customers. There are different levels of security, and in many instances the drive just has to be shredded to be considered secure. This isn't even a DoD level precaution. Many of the computers put up for auction at a local university have had their drives shredded, and they are just ordinary 'doze machines on an open campus. There's even a 'drive shredding form' that can be downloaded from the same website that announces their auctions.