I think the point being that it's bad enough now that some utilities ship as MS-DOS programs. I've met quite a few NIC's with a DOS program to set the IRQ & DMA & Address or flashing the BIOS of your motherboard.
Can't do these things in XP/NT because of the way userland & kernel are separated i.e. the HAL (well I'm guessing that's the case).
Up until now this has been kind of okay because when MS-DOS shipped, one could always make MS-DOS boot disks using format a:/s
but NT, 2K & XP don't have format/s for floppy disks so When 98/ME die there will be no "standard" way of booting to do this.
Solutions such as FreeDOS or Linux floppies or FreeBSD floppies or QNX or whatever but the point being that manufacturers will have to individually choose, maintain and invest in their own methodology and can't rely on MS any more.
> a new person arrives
all the songs a rated already so how does the new person's choice make much difference
> tastes change
that new limp biskit tune was popular last month but now everyone is sick of hearing it. in three months though ppl will say "yeah, that ch00n r0x0r5" when they hear it (or at least they would in my irc channel:)
personally I'd go for a web server interface and mpg123 as the engine and cobble together some scripts
tbh so long as there aren't loads of tunes ppl hate then your probably just as well off running it in shuffle mode and tweak the playlist as you go along.
if you use a webserver for your mp3's then users can use xmms and winamp to play a tune that's not on the playlist
Also I use a piece of kitchen work surface across the top of the shelves, it's a bit shallower than the door and meakes a great big shelf. There's not much out of reach in here and the claustrophilia I feel is nice. Great for gaming and all round general concentration.
Mouse mat - get yourself a printers cutting board, nice firm rubber surface and available in big rolls, it's cheap enough to do the whole surface of your desk. heck even linoleum is cool and you can get a funky pattern instead of that drab wood veneer
put the shelves "facing" each other
put the door on the shelf at the height you want it and make sure the shelves are strong enough
viola
even brand new desk with shelves
all for under $100 even if you buy the stuff brand new
Acme does take a bit of getting used to, particularly if you come from vi or somesuch where *everything* is keypressing. plan9 does some interesting things, mousewise.
For instance buttons 1 and 2 for cut
2 and 3 for paste
"terminal" windows are interesting in that you can click and type anywhere and then send the resulting text to rc (the shell) or the plumber (a regular expression based program launcher [as best I can describe it in a few words!]).
The window system has changed to rio rather thab 81/2. I never used 81/2 so I can't comment. rio is fast too though, but then again we have no cruft like title bars and a stupid desktop to cope with. A unique (i think) feature of rio is that you can run it inside itself! Why? well plan9 builds a filesystem view on a per process basis. So bind in your directories for this session (for instance run ftpfs and bind in your favourite ftp site to/n/ftp) and type rio and then all child sessions will inherit that namespace. ftpfs presents remote ftp sites as part of the local file system.
Another nice surprise I had was the day I decided to compile a custom kernel. I set it all up and got ready to go downstairs and boil the kettle and have a cup of tea while I waited. I hit return and waited to make sure no mistakes showed up in the config file and pop! the prompt came back and it had finished, new kernel. The kettle wouldn't have even had time to boil!
acme is the primary text editing / programmers tool on plan9 and inferno
It doesn't use overlapping windows but uses rows and columns for text areas. One can maximise to size of the column.
there are no dialog boxes, turns out you don't actually need them. File/directory interaction is just in place (click on a filename in the current directory and ti gets opened [very useful for opening include files etc.]).
this also works for running programs. middle click on the command anywhere in any window and it's stdout gets opened in a new window.
try it and you'll see how simple and innovative such an approach can be. These plan9 guys are really on to something.
Linux will likely never die, [people] will always choose Linux-like systems.
is that it then for OS's. Do we have nothing new to look forward to. That's depressing.
Fortunately I know that a new paradigm will emerge, like so many times before, and we will all end up with fond memories of the penguin
Re:think globally, act locally
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 1
you are right in that I'm not a biblical scholar and never will be.
My use of driving figures & animal killing are for reflection. To respect life is to respect life. If we are only angered by the methods of death then why bother. The murder of 5000+ people and the destruction of some buildings has started a pseudo war. Convenient for the western powers. They get to take the moral high ground and by perpetuating the conflict they can channel investment into swords and not ploughshares. Israel can get on with the eradication of Palestine (convenient for the UK & the US).
You know, it would come as little surprise to find out that the western powers organised the whole thing. Remember that only 30 years ago the UK govt. set bombs off in Dublin pubs to discredit the IRA. The US sells arms and trains all sorts of unsavoury murderers, selling cocaine to US citizens to finance arms sales to terrorists.
think about that the next time you open those love letters.
think globally, act locally
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 1
has already been the motto of many of us for a long time.
What makes Katz think that the US is cosmopolitan? How is George W Bush saying that athiests are not patriots that far from the rally call of Islamic fundamentalism.
It's the recourse of the fundamentalist to ignore the doctrines of his chosen cloak when it suits him. "Thou shalt not kill" is pretty unequivicable.
To be global means to be respectful of diversity as much as anything yet nation states promote secular culture. Liberals wish for some sort of Eden, capitalists dream of a global market and religious types dream of a homogenous homeland of the righteous. There is almost no common ground.
It's only the liberals, who probably eschew some sort of higher power, that think twice about the killing part.
Want to save lives? Try not killing animals for food, billions of deaths per year. Try not driving your car so fast. the Sept. 11th death toll was two weeks of US automobile deaths yet I see no "war" on reckless driving.
We try to teach our children to be forgiving (turning the other cheek I believe Christians call it [ha!]) and yet the response to events is to kill more people either through bombs and rockets or starve them out in refugee camps.
The source of current Islamic anger, of course, is the US occupation of the holy lands following the, er, cosmopolitan Operation Desert Storm. The world pays the price for US/UK interventionalism in Middle Eastern politics. Saddam, Osama, Pol Pot, Pinochet and numerous others all financed and encouraged by US/UK foreign policy and then demonised once their usefulness expires. Here's an idea, if you want to get your hands dirty send in your own troops, not arm a bunch of locals who will want a payback for the sacrifice of them and their brothers.
If the powerful wanted peace there would be peace.
If the powerful wanted no poverty there would be no poverty.
If the powerful wanted less crime there would be less crime.
Feel free to go on dreaming that might is right but get ready for your come uppance because there is always someone mightier than you, if not today then tomorrow.
i think one of the big hurdles for people is not seeing the flow with a lack of if..else constructs
even at it's lowest application functional programming techniques are worth knowing. ptyhon has function programming features map, filter, reduce and it's lambda notation.
Since studying haskell I've been applying functional techniques in my python code. It leads to some very elegant solutions that don't lost in their symatics. The code can become elegant to read as well as execute.
i find python's mix and match approach very useful.
i'm not much into perl but it has a map function too and no doubt other function features
we already have many forms of ID
Passport, Social Security Number, Driving Licence etc. etc.
There's not much more security for anyone by introducing another sort but it does introduce an excuse for cops to run you in or generally hassle you for "ID please" as no doubt you'll be obliged to carry it at all times. Imagine that. An object you have to carry everywhere on penalty of criminal punishment.
One step away from chip implants or an iButton welded to you at birth.
One thing I'd like to say is that Open Source software helps you develop the tools you need as well as making a product you can sell.
especially for the scripted languages
By producing an ever increasingly complex domain for us to work in benefits the whole human race. It's a very political position to be in.
It doesn't depress the job market, it creates niche and opportunity within businesses.
The future is rosy for IT save for no electricity!
don't close the source and hold me to ransom, that isn't nice.
I heard someone say that you should expect government ministers lie because "that's the way the world works". bleh, it doesn't have to.
other crops make good paper but for some reason the US decided that fast growing cannabis for paper, rope, cloth and cardboard wasn't good enough. Instead we cut down the forests!
er, you don't
well I didn't (kinda but no ID cards and therefore no official identity has certain advantages - the DNA database has sewn that particular niche closed but I'm not sure if they do a mandatory search for small time stuff. One day but not yet methinks. Things may come home to roost once there's a dna analyser in every station).
Poverty is your friend really.
in my day it was a three strike system before porridge kicks in
1. caution
2. conditional discharge / fine
3. short spell in chokey
and then increasingly larger spells.
if you embark on a spree you will probably get caught one day, be ready for it.
I'm constantly on cctv cameras because they are PLASTERED every fucking where.
They are actually a cheap replacement for a police presence. They are not much use for reducing crime but they potentially help save money apprehending the perps.
There are those of us that still like to think "People, not profit".
Our collective well being has been hijacked and is on a suicide mission for capitalism.
But I call not for the distribution of wealth but for the distribution of leisure.
Our species leisure time has increased but it's distribution is polarising.
Want to create some jobs?
Give people more holidays!
The excuse you'll hear is "but we'll be less profitable if we reduce output caused by doing less work".
Well we get nothing without investment.
Invest in people not in cctv.
Slashdot Mirror
it's one day for each inch in this piece of string I have here in my desk drawer!
ah, I stand corrected on that one then, can't say I'm planning to run XP in this lifetime
I think the point being that it's bad enough now that some utilities ship as MS-DOS programs. I've met quite a few NIC's with a DOS program to set the IRQ & DMA & Address or flashing the BIOS of your motherboard.
/s
/s for floppy disks so When 98/ME die there will be no "standard" way of booting to do this.
Can't do these things in XP/NT because of the way userland & kernel are separated i.e. the HAL (well I'm guessing that's the case).
Up until now this has been kind of okay because when MS-DOS shipped, one could always make MS-DOS boot disks using format a:
but NT, 2K & XP don't have format
Solutions such as FreeDOS or Linux floppies or FreeBSD floppies or QNX or whatever but the point being that manufacturers will have to individually choose, maintain and invest in their own methodology and can't rely on MS any more.
> a new person arrives
:)
all the songs a rated already so how does the new person's choice make much difference
> tastes change
that new limp biskit tune was popular last month but now everyone is sick of hearing it. in three months though ppl will say "yeah, that ch00n r0x0r5" when they hear it (or at least they would in my irc channel
personally I'd go for a web server interface and mpg123 as the engine and cobble together some scripts
tbh so long as there aren't loads of tunes ppl hate then your probably just as well off running it in shuffle mode and tweak the playlist as you go along.
if you use a webserver for your mp3's then users can use xmms and winamp to play a tune that's not on the playlist
ABM forgot to mention that the gameboy camera has a ccd that is infra-red sensitive
the guy had to buy an infra-red filter to put over the ccd in combination with the rgb filters
well played I say rather than "pah, any fool could've done that"
All he needs now is three gameboy & camera combinations and some fancy alignment tool and he's away!
try plan9 then
the filesystem is all synthetic, processes on different machine transparently appearing in your filesystem etc.
plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9
hmm,
plan9 is a distributed architecture.
you don't need one pid space, that all sounds terribly over complicated
On plan9 you can happily debug code running on any of MIPS, SPARC, Motorola 68020, Intel 386 on any other plan9 box (permissions granted of course).
Multi-threading isn't the only way to build a big application.
Also I use a piece of kitchen work surface across the top of the shelves, it's a bit shallower than the door and meakes a great big shelf. There's not much out of reach in here and the claustrophilia I feel is nice. Great for gaming and all round general concentration.
Mouse mat - get yourself a printers cutting board, nice firm rubber surface and available in big rolls, it's cheap enough to do the whole surface of your desk. heck even linoleum is cool and you can get a funky pattern instead of that drab wood veneer
put the shelves "facing" each other
put the door on the shelf at the height you want it and make sure the shelves are strong enough
viola
even brand new desk with shelves
all for under $100 even if you buy the stuff brand new
30 years, either time to bow out gracefully or time to do a Logan's Run and go for it!
:)
I loved that show
plan9 is your progeny and I thank you for that.
Acme does take a bit of getting used to, particularly if you come from vi or somesuch where *everything* is keypressing. plan9 does some interesting things, mousewise.
/n/ftp) and type rio and then all child sessions will inherit that namespace. ftpfs presents remote ftp sites as part of the local file system.
For instance buttons 1 and 2 for cut
2 and 3 for paste
"terminal" windows are interesting in that you can click and type anywhere and then send the resulting text to rc (the shell) or the plumber (a regular expression based program launcher [as best I can describe it in a few words!]).
The window system has changed to rio rather thab 81/2. I never used 81/2 so I can't comment. rio is fast too though, but then again we have no cruft like title bars and a stupid desktop to cope with. A unique (i think) feature of rio is that you can run it inside itself! Why? well plan9 builds a filesystem view on a per process basis. So bind in your directories for this session (for instance run ftpfs and bind in your favourite ftp site to
Another nice surprise I had was the day I decided to compile a custom kernel. I set it all up and got ready to go downstairs and boil the kettle and have a cup of tea while I waited. I hit return and waited to make sure no mistakes showed up in the config file and pop! the prompt came back and it had finished, new kernel. The kettle wouldn't have even had time to boil!
i forgot to mention that Wily is available now for a unix or unix clone near you
here's it's homepage
http://www.cs.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/
plan9 is http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9
acme is the primary text editing / programmers tool on plan9 and inferno
It doesn't use overlapping windows but uses rows and columns for text areas. One can maximise to size of the column.
there are no dialog boxes, turns out you don't actually need them. File/directory interaction is just in place (click on a filename in the current directory and ti gets opened [very useful for opening include files etc.]).
this also works for running programs. middle click on the command anywhere in any window and it's stdout gets opened in a new window.
try it and you'll see how simple and innovative such an approach can be. These plan9 guys are really on to something.
Linux will likely never die, [people] will always choose Linux-like systems.
is that it then for OS's. Do we have nothing new to look forward to. That's depressing.
Fortunately I know that a new paradigm will emerge, like so many times before, and we will all end up with fond memories of the penguin
you are right in that I'm not a biblical scholar and never will be.
My use of driving figures & animal killing are for reflection. To respect life is to respect life. If we are only angered by the methods of death then why bother. The murder of 5000+ people and the destruction of some buildings has started a pseudo war. Convenient for the western powers. They get to take the moral high ground and by perpetuating the conflict they can channel investment into swords and not ploughshares. Israel can get on with the eradication of Palestine (convenient for the UK & the US).
You know, it would come as little surprise to find out that the western powers organised the whole thing. Remember that only 30 years ago the UK govt. set bombs off in Dublin pubs to discredit the IRA. The US sells arms and trains all sorts of unsavoury murderers, selling cocaine to US citizens to finance arms sales to terrorists.
think about that the next time you open those love letters.
has already been the motto of many of us for a long time.
What makes Katz think that the US is cosmopolitan? How is George W Bush saying that athiests are not patriots that far from the rally call of Islamic fundamentalism.
It's the recourse of the fundamentalist to ignore the doctrines of his chosen cloak when it suits him. "Thou shalt not kill" is pretty unequivicable.
To be global means to be respectful of diversity as much as anything yet nation states promote secular culture. Liberals wish for some sort of Eden, capitalists dream of a global market and religious types dream of a homogenous homeland of the righteous. There is almost no common ground.
It's only the liberals, who probably eschew some sort of higher power, that think twice about the killing part.
Want to save lives? Try not killing animals for food, billions of deaths per year. Try not driving your car so fast. the Sept. 11th death toll was two weeks of US automobile deaths yet I see no "war" on reckless driving.
We try to teach our children to be forgiving (turning the other cheek I believe Christians call it [ha!]) and yet the response to events is to kill more people either through bombs and rockets or starve them out in refugee camps.
The source of current Islamic anger, of course, is the US occupation of the holy lands following the, er, cosmopolitan Operation Desert Storm. The world pays the price for US/UK interventionalism in Middle Eastern politics. Saddam, Osama, Pol Pot, Pinochet and numerous others all financed and encouraged by US/UK foreign policy and then demonised once their usefulness expires. Here's an idea, if you want to get your hands dirty send in your own troops, not arm a bunch of locals who will want a payback for the sacrifice of them and their brothers.
If the powerful wanted peace there would be peace.
If the powerful wanted no poverty there would be no poverty.
If the powerful wanted less crime there would be less crime.
Feel free to go on dreaming that might is right but get ready for your come uppance because there is always someone mightier than you, if not today then tomorrow.
Only a fool thinks he isn't one.
that only adult orphans should take drugs
In the UK it would be illegal to buy/sell said sugar if you beleived it to be cocaine.
you don't read very closely
try Microsoft Research Turns 10 on 5th September
i think one of the big hurdles for people is not seeing the flow with a lack of if..else constructs
even at it's lowest application functional programming techniques are worth knowing. ptyhon has function programming features map, filter, reduce and it's lambda notation.
Since studying haskell I've been applying functional techniques in my python code. It leads to some very elegant solutions that don't lost in their symatics. The code can become elegant to read as well as execute.
i find python's mix and match approach very useful.
i'm not much into perl but it has a map function too and no doubt other function features
crime isn't prevented by positive identification
we already have many forms of ID
Passport, Social Security Number, Driving Licence etc. etc.
There's not much more security for anyone by introducing another sort but it does introduce an excuse for cops to run you in or generally hassle you for "ID please" as no doubt you'll be obliged to carry it at all times. Imagine that. An object you have to carry everywhere on penalty of criminal punishment.
One step away from chip implants or an iButton welded to you at birth.
One thing I'd like to say is that Open Source software helps you develop the tools you need as well as making a product you can sell.
especially for the scripted languages
By producing an ever increasingly complex domain for us to work in benefits the whole human race. It's a very political position to be in.
It doesn't depress the job market, it creates niche and opportunity within businesses.
The future is rosy for IT save for no electricity!
don't close the source and hold me to ransom, that isn't nice.
I heard someone say that you should expect government ministers lie because "that's the way the world works". bleh, it doesn't have to.
doesn't have to be trees
other crops make good paper but for some reason the US decided that fast growing cannabis for paper, rope, cloth and cardboard wasn't good enough. Instead we cut down the forests!
free the weed
er, you don't
well I didn't (kinda but no ID cards and therefore no official identity has certain advantages - the DNA database has sewn that particular niche closed but I'm not sure if they do a mandatory search for small time stuff. One day but not yet methinks. Things may come home to roost once there's a dna analyser in every station).
Poverty is your friend really.
in my day it was a three strike system before porridge kicks in
1. caution
2. conditional discharge / fine
3. short spell in chokey
and then increasingly larger spells.
if you embark on a spree you will probably get caught one day, be ready for it.
I'm constantly on cctv cameras because they are PLASTERED every fucking where.
They are actually a cheap replacement for a police presence. They are not much use for reducing crime but they potentially help save money apprehending the perps.
There are those of us that still like to think "People, not profit".
Our collective well being has been hijacked and is on a suicide mission for capitalism.
But I call not for the distribution of wealth but for the distribution of leisure.
Our species leisure time has increased but it's distribution is polarising.
Want to create some jobs?
Give people more holidays!
The excuse you'll hear is "but we'll be less profitable if we reduce output caused by doing less work".
Well we get nothing without investment.
Invest in people not in cctv.
It's a sugar dummy. Nice but your teeth will rot!