What we need are national or international standards for durability and longevity. Then a manufacturer could have their product tested, and if it passed, put a "Meets ISO Standard XYZ" on the packaging.
I have some Kodak Gold CD-Rs stashed away for archival masters. I have no idea how long the DVD+Rs and DVD+RWs will last.
IBM had promised OS/2 support to their PC/AT customers. They couldn't ignore the 80286.
The 16-bit version of OS/2 wasn't a bad system. It was used in ATMs for many years. IBM had a bit of bad luck in that memory prices had spiked at about the same time as OS/2 was released. OS/2 was considered a memory hog for using 4MB of RAM.
When I bought Volume 3, about 20 years ago, it included a postcard that the buyer could mail to the publisher, to be added to a mailing list for notification when Volume 4 was published. I sent in the postcard.
Not all of those attachments are "clearly malicious". I've emailed COM, EXE and BAT files to people when they needed a quick bug fix or a new feature. I can think of situations where I might need to send someone other files that are on your "clearly malicious" list.
It isn't practical. The Saturn V was designed to be manufactured, prepped, and launched with an extensive infrastructure that was discarded in the 1970s. It's like saying "let's build a batch of 747s", when Boeing, its employees and suppliers haven't existed for years. Plus, you have to build the airports from scratch.
I've read about that. I believe that was their kludge to work around the broken instruction restart/continuation in the 68000. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000 under "Interrupts" for a description.
Vendors used to try to subvert standards, for example, EBCDIC, for character encoding, but who uses that these days?
Probably the dweebs who generate and print your paycheck.
How do you spell your name? (clickety-clack)
Standards often get bogged down in politics. For EBCDIC, it was IBM vs. the competition, who pushed ASCII. Everyone could have standardized on EBCDIC, but that wouldn't have served the interests of IBM's competitors. It's the same logic that led the Europeans to create a whole library of communications standards that were similar, but incompatible, with the Bell System's standards. They were trying to protect their domestic markets and telecommunications companies.
I used to run V7 UNIX on a PDP-11/23. It may have been a 16-bit CPU but it had an MMU and proper support for supervisor and user modes. It did not support VM, neither did the PDP-11 version of BSD UNIX.
A bare 68000 did not have the hardware to support a modern operating system. At a minimum, you had to add an MMU, and Motorola was slow in producing add-on chips for the 68000.
I used to use some 68000 UNIX systems. They did include an MMU chip. Due to deficiencies in the 68000 regarding instruction continuation and restart, they did not support VM. The C compiler automatically inserted a TST instruction in the function prolog to force a recoverable fault if the stack needed more memory.
MS had full virtualization, memory protection and preemptive multitasking in the late 80's with Windows 386.
Windows 386 ran on the Intel 80386, which had hardware support for those features. Apple didn't have that option with the 68000. They would have had to wait five years for the 68010 and would also had to add a MMU chip. It would have broken all the software written for the 68000 and eliminated backwards compatibility.
Re:Apple's biggest failure
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Top 10 Apple Flops
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And Henry Ford was a jerk for not putting gas turbine engines in the Model T.
The original Mac ran on a 68000. A slow 16/32-bit processor with no MMU or support for VM. It also had limited memory.
There is nothing wrong with assembly language or cooperative scheduling, if you are willing to take the time to do it well and in a disciplined manner.
The Mac team did their best with what was available at a reasonable cost. I'm not going to blame them for decisions that were suboptimal on processors that would not exist for many years.
If you wanted a Xerox workstation, they were available, at stratospheric prices.
Of course the problem in Iraq is that they don't use the English alphabet or language. The frequency analysis we depend on for the shift cipher or Vigenere cipher doesn't work for Arabic.
The techniques still work. You just have to use a different set of language statistics. You don't even have to understand the language, although it helps. There are precomputed lists of letter frequencies, initial and final letters, digraphs, trigraphs, etc. for all common languages.
Prisons are progress. In the (really) old days, they would either execute you, flog you, brand you, chop off bits, or send you to the mines as a slave. Prisons cost money. It's cheaper to use instant punishment.
There may be a lot of great games available for the xbox, but do they appeal to a wide audience? When I look at a wall full of xbox games at the local store, I get the impression that they are targeted at a specific audience, which I must not belong to, given their lack of appeal to me.
I have an xbox. I like the hardware and graphics quality. I just can't find many xbox games that I like. The last one that I really liked was Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey.
If I had to rank the consoles by the number of quality games (by my weird standards), it would be ps2, gamecube, and xbox (distant third).
That would be a nightmare. Even with the time limits in existing copyright law, it can be difficult or impossible to reprint old works because the ownership of the copyright is unknown.
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Try exposing them to UV light (sunlight). It will kill cheap CD-Rs very quickly (days to weeks).
I have some Kodak Gold CD-Rs stashed away for archival masters. I have no idea how long the DVD+Rs and DVD+RWs will last.
Holographic storage has been "almost here" for decades.
The 16-bit version of OS/2 wasn't a bad system. It was used in ATMs for many years. IBM had a bit of bad luck in that memory prices had spiked at about the same time as OS/2 was released. OS/2 was considered a memory hog for using 4MB of RAM.
TAOCP Volume 2, First Edition, 1969
TAOCP Volume 3, First Edition, 1973
Introduction to Algorithms, First Edition, 1990
Notice the slight gap in publication dates?
I'm still waiting.
I'm waiting for the filters to start nuking zip files with "malicious" content.
Not all of those attachments are "clearly malicious". I've emailed COM, EXE and BAT files to people when they needed a quick bug fix or a new feature. I can think of situations where I might need to send someone other files that are on your "clearly malicious" list.
It isn't practical. The Saturn V was designed to be manufactured, prepped, and launched with an extensive infrastructure that was discarded in the 1970s. It's like saying "let's build a batch of 747s", when Boeing, its employees and suppliers haven't existed for years. Plus, you have to build the airports from scratch.
See http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts -newsref/sts-apu.html.
I find that conversations with passengers are distracting and can be dangerous. I prefer that they keep quiet.
It's about control. Microsoft owns WMA and can use it as a strategic weapon. Microsoft has no control over the technology in the iPod.
I've read about that. I believe that was their kludge to work around the broken instruction restart/continuation in the 68000. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000 under "Interrupts" for a description.
It's owned by Monotype. You can't distribute it without buying/having a license. That's what Microsoft did for Windows and Office.
Probably the dweebs who generate and print your paycheck.
How do you spell your name? (clickety-clack)
Standards often get bogged down in politics. For EBCDIC, it was IBM vs. the competition, who pushed ASCII. Everyone could have standardized on EBCDIC, but that wouldn't have served the interests of IBM's competitors. It's the same logic that led the Europeans to create a whole library of communications standards that were similar, but incompatible, with the Bell System's standards. They were trying to protect their domestic markets and telecommunications companies.
A bare 68000 did not have the hardware to support a modern operating system. At a minimum, you had to add an MMU, and Motorola was slow in producing add-on chips for the 68000. I used to use some 68000 UNIX systems. They did include an MMU chip. Due to deficiencies in the 68000 regarding instruction continuation and restart, they did not support VM. The C compiler automatically inserted a TST instruction in the function prolog to force a recoverable fault if the stack needed more memory.
Windows 386 ran on the Intel 80386, which had hardware support for those features. Apple didn't have that option with the 68000. They would have had to wait five years for the 68010 and would also had to add a MMU chip. It would have broken all the software written for the 68000 and eliminated backwards compatibility.
The original Mac ran on a 68000. A slow 16/32-bit processor with no MMU or support for VM. It also had limited memory.
There is nothing wrong with assembly language or cooperative scheduling, if you are willing to take the time to do it well and in a disciplined manner.
The Mac team did their best with what was available at a reasonable cost. I'm not going to blame them for decisions that were suboptimal on processors that would not exist for many years.
If you wanted a Xerox workstation, they were available, at stratospheric prices.
How many hoplophobes understand the 18th century meaning and usage of "well regulated"?
The blue states are not any different, only the orthodoxies change.
The techniques still work. You just have to use a different set of language statistics. You don't even have to understand the language, although it helps. There are precomputed lists of letter frequencies, initial and final letters, digraphs, trigraphs, etc. for all common languages.
Prisons are progress. In the (really) old days, they would either execute you, flog you, brand you, chop off bits, or send you to the mines as a slave. Prisons cost money. It's cheaper to use instant punishment.
I have an xbox. I like the hardware and graphics quality. I just can't find many xbox games that I like. The last one that I really liked was Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey.
If I had to rank the consoles by the number of quality games (by my weird standards), it would be ps2, gamecube, and xbox (distant third).
They had a bunch of stuff that used the prefix "iAPX", at least in the data books they gave to engineers.
That would be a nightmare. Even with the time limits in existing copyright law, it can be difficult or impossible to reprint old works because the ownership of the copyright is unknown.