I think an unfortunate result of this overreaction is that concerned citizens may now want to think twice before calling anything in to the police. If you call something suspicious in, the police WILL call in the bomb squad, and shut down the city.
Of course the real blame should be on whoever in the police department decided to go all 9/11 rather than just taking a look at it and figuring out it was harmless.
At least it wasn't a Mooninite. No telling what they would have done then.
So this "credible" threat is some random post on fucking TWITTER?
Whoever thought this was a credible threat should be fired and forced to pay for all the expenses involved.
Ah, right, but we let this become an insane world. Where the above person will get a huge promotion and the 5-year old idiot posting to twatter will wind up locked away as some evil terrorist.
OK, a couple of questions TFA doesn't really detail enough:
When they talk about a different rendering engine, they make it sound like a completely seperate program. Historically MS has just tacked on compatiblity layers as a sort of "personality" to their existing rendering engine, and TFA indicates they are not doing this here. But how then? Which are they really doing? What is it based on?
They make it sound like they aren't even going to keep the Internet Explorer brand. Is that actually what is happening? I would find that very hard to believe. On the one hand TFA is probably just spewing BS speculation, on the other hand this is the modern Microsoft that REMOVED THE FUCKING START MENU!
Not that it impacts me any, of course. But I can imagine these changes creating customer, developer, and support confusion at many levels. Well, perhaps not as much as they did with Windows 8.
Isn't this already the business model for most "apps" these days? The only thing surprising here is they aren't sugar coating it with pleasant sounding euphemisms.
Yea, some of us used computers with only 4K of RAM and remember a day when this kind of shit would have been unthinkable even if it were possible.
But it isn't expressly illegal, so expect more of this. Don't buy something that does this? Sure, enjoy that option while it lasts.
If this is part of the crap they changed a couple days ago, it also messed up viewing in some other browsers. I wish they would just go back to simple HTML 3, which used to view fine in everything.
They couldn't get rid of enough of us with that awful "beta", so instead now they are breaking it one bit at a time.
Archive.org seems like the kind of place that should have the resources to scan and host all kinds of serious material. There are many, many, "boring" vintage applications, application manuals, and other computer system manuals, that have not yet been archived.
Give me R:Base 4000, UCSD p-system for IBM PC, the Kaypro 2000 utility disk (with color utility), Digital Research DR Logo for IBM PC, or how how about the impossible to Google for 1980s telecommunications program from Microsoft called "Access". Given time I could list hundreds more that need archiving. And even when some messy partial copy surfaces, many of these are useless without their manuals.
Chances are archive.org are just up for the attention grab, and I do hope that in the long run perhaps it benefits all media that needs archiving.
Someone at MS is just pulling this out of their asses to try and cover that Microsoft has no clue what they are doing.
So they were able to easily query the code for a few thousand applications online that made this version check mistake. Big deal.
Compare this to how many applications out that that have broken because of other minor OS changes combined with bad programming. I've seen piles of that myself, and Microsoft never bothered this hard to keep compatibility for any of those.
the ease with which projects can be allowed to die â" often without any clear cut time of death.
And that doesn't happen with closed source projects? Sure it does, you just don't hear about it when some PHB slowly takes a group of developers and has them put everything on the back burner for some pet project. Then years pass, the old project isn't officially dead, but nothing has gotten done. On and off new business requirements are analyzed, and eventually a mysterious mandate from far higher up comes down to re-write everything in "HTML5" or whatever the current buzzword is.
consider that in the future they may be wanting to wire you up just to make sure you aren't a source of bugs
While completely ignoring that the specs handed down from the higher-ups are gibberish, contradictory, and physically impossible garbage. But, you know, that is not a possible source of bugs now is it?
Someone should first wire up management to zap them every time they get an idea for a "brilliant" addition.
Ebola, while a horrible deadly disease is not the doom and gloom its being made out to be
You wouldn't know that listening to the idiotic TV news. They seriously have been playing it as if everyone in the US is at grave risk of dropping dead from this.
The threats made against that second infected doctor being brought back to the US were almost certainly a direct result of the media's irresponsible reporting.
Despite all their condescending scaremongering, there is simply zero realistic risk to the US general public.
Here is how their new compression method works. It reduces all images down to a single one or zero. If the bit read in is one, it display a picture of a cat. If it is zero, it displays a picture of Peter Griffin farting. And as a bonus, if no bit can be read, it displays the goatsex guy.
Can they also put a switch in this to make Office usable? I can't stand that fucking ribbon interface that makes everything I used to do the most often 5 times more difficult.
I'll second that. (They could just offer an additional normal menu bar like the Mac version) It is their reluctance to back off of this and several other past design mistakes that makes me surprised they would even consider backing down from their Windows 8 Metro stuff.
While it is nice to see Microsoft undo a horrific mistake for once, lets not be too quick to forgive and forget. (And don't even start until the gold release of Windows 9 is sitting on user's desktops)
The fact that Microsoft created this monster in the first place should tell you something about the remaining competence level there. You should be worried about their long-term stability. What is to keep them from pulling a similar stunt on you in Windows 10?
It is great to see more of ID's early work opened up.
A while back there was even some talk about releasing the hard drive images from some of their NeXT computers used to create DOOM. http://serverfault.com/questio...
I wonder if anything will come of that? It would be doubly awesome right about now because the NeXT emulator "Previous" has gotten far along enough where it can actually boot to a 68K NeXTSTEP desktop!
That is a nice story, and if true you got lucky that it was a small company and your boss probably knew your actual competency level.
In most places when stuff like this happens, your bosses' bosses' boss will want blood, and a nice firing will happen no matter what.
Protip: if anyone ever find themselves on the short end of this stick, don't grovel to keep your job. If possible, don't even discuss what happened. Remind them of your strengths, experience, what you can continue to contribute, and why they hired you in the first place. It won't make any difference if they already have their minds made up they want blood, but you will feel better about it.
I've recently read a number of floppies that are older than the ones in the TFA, and none of them have magically fallen apart.
Technically reading a disk will put some wear on it because the heads touch the surface, but if the disk was properly stored and was of a good brand (not Wabash), that wear is negligible.
Most serious software archivists would simply plop the disks in a floppy drive connected to a Kryoflux, or similar device, and be done with it.
Magnetic imaging is an overkill unless the disk is from a system where no compatible form drive exists any more.
The really interesting thing about DOS 1.1 (or actually very slightly later revisions) is that it was the first to be released to OEMs other than IBM. Early clone makers such as Zenith, Corona, Columbia Data Products, Eagle Computers, or Compaq (you might have heard of that last one), never would have gotten off the ground if Microsoft had not licensed it out to them.
Some of the early "MS-DOS" compatibles were not even hardware compatible with the IBM PC. All you could rely on was the presence of an 8088/8086 and MS-DOS provided I/O calls. And those OEMs had to customize MS-DOS to recognize their proprietary hardware.
I'm not so sure about the value of Word for Windows 1.x. It wasn't even the first word processor for Windows (Beaten by AMI and PageMaker).
Now, on the other hand I have heard some interesting things about the internals of Word 1.00 for DOS.
Slashdot Mirror
I think an unfortunate result of this overreaction is that concerned citizens may now want to think twice before calling anything in to the police. If you call something suspicious in, the police WILL call in the bomb squad, and shut down the city.
Of course the real blame should be on whoever in the police department decided to go all 9/11 rather than just taking a look at it and figuring out it was harmless.
At least it wasn't a Mooninite. No telling what they would have done then.
But did they post about it on Twitter? It's not a credible threat unless someone posted about it on Twitter. Everybody knows this.
So this "credible" threat is some random post on fucking TWITTER?
Whoever thought this was a credible threat should be fired and forced to pay for all the expenses involved.
Ah, right, but we let this become an insane world. Where the above person will get a huge promotion and the 5-year old idiot posting to twatter will wind up locked away as some evil terrorist.
OK, a couple of questions TFA doesn't really detail enough:
When they talk about a different rendering engine, they make it sound like a completely seperate program. Historically MS has just tacked on compatiblity layers as a sort of "personality" to their existing rendering engine, and TFA indicates they are not doing this here. But how then? Which are they really doing? What is it based on?
They make it sound like they aren't even going to keep the Internet Explorer brand. Is that actually what is happening? I would find that very hard to believe. On the one hand TFA is probably just spewing BS speculation, on the other hand this is the modern Microsoft that REMOVED THE FUCKING START MENU!
Not that it impacts me any, of course. But I can imagine these changes creating customer, developer, and support confusion at many levels. Well, perhaps not as much as they did with Windows 8.
Isn't this already the business model for most "apps" these days? The only thing surprising here is they aren't sugar coating it with pleasant sounding euphemisms.
Yea, some of us used computers with only 4K of RAM and remember a day when this kind of shit would have been unthinkable even if it were possible.
But it isn't expressly illegal, so expect more of this. Don't buy something that does this? Sure, enjoy that option while it lasts.
If this is part of the crap they changed a couple days ago, it also messed up viewing in some other browsers. I wish they would just go back to simple HTML 3, which used to view fine in everything.
They couldn't get rid of enough of us with that awful "beta", so instead now they are breaking it one bit at a time.
So now he gets to watch the whole thing stuffed between a couple of robotic instruments...
"it just dawned on me how weird this movie is"
A pile of just games, really? Not even manuals?
Archive.org seems like the kind of place that should have the resources to scan and host all kinds of serious material. There are many, many, "boring" vintage applications, application manuals, and other computer system manuals, that have not yet been archived.
Give me R:Base 4000, UCSD p-system for IBM PC, the Kaypro 2000 utility disk (with color utility), Digital Research DR Logo for IBM PC, or how how about the impossible to Google for 1980s telecommunications program from Microsoft called "Access". Given time I could list hundreds more that need archiving. And even when some messy partial copy surfaces, many of these are useless without their manuals.
Chances are archive.org are just up for the attention grab, and I do hope that in the long run perhaps it benefits all media that needs archiving.
Why bother trying to create an open home brew environment around a closed platform?
I suspect the so-called leaker is really working for Microsoft.
BTW, "leaking" is something you do in to a toilet. :P
Someone at MS is just pulling this out of their asses to try and cover that Microsoft has no clue what they are doing.
So they were able to easily query the code for a few thousand applications online that made this version check mistake. Big deal.
Compare this to how many applications out that that have broken because of other minor OS changes combined with bad programming. I've seen piles of that myself, and Microsoft never bothered this hard to keep compatibility for any of those.
And that doesn't happen with closed source projects? Sure it does, you just don't hear about it when some PHB slowly takes a group of developers and has them put everything on the back burner for some pet project. Then years pass, the old project isn't officially dead, but nothing has gotten done. On and off new business requirements are analyzed, and eventually a mysterious mandate from far higher up comes down to re-write everything in "HTML5" or whatever the current buzzword is.
While completely ignoring that the specs handed down from the higher-ups are gibberish, contradictory, and physically impossible garbage. But, you know, that is not a possible source of bugs now is it?
Someone should first wire up management to zap them every time they get an idea for a "brilliant" addition.
You wouldn't know that listening to the idiotic TV news. They seriously have been playing it as if everyone in the US is at grave risk of dropping dead from this.
The threats made against that second infected doctor being brought back to the US were almost certainly a direct result of the media's irresponsible reporting.
Despite all their condescending scaremongering, there is simply zero realistic risk to the US general public.
Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...
Here is how their new compression method works. It reduces all images down to a single one or zero. If the bit read in is one, it display a picture of a cat. If it is zero, it displays a picture of Peter Griffin farting. And as a bonus, if no bit can be read, it displays the goatsex guy.
I'll second that. (They could just offer an additional normal menu bar like the Mac version) It is their reluctance to back off of this and several other past design mistakes that makes me surprised they would even consider backing down from their Windows 8 Metro stuff.
While it is nice to see Microsoft undo a horrific mistake for once, lets not be too quick to forgive and forget. (And don't even start until the gold release of Windows 9 is sitting on user's desktops)
The fact that Microsoft created this monster in the first place should tell you something about the remaining competence level there. You should be worried about their long-term stability. What is to keep them from pulling a similar stunt on you in Windows 10?
I think the real story here is that someone in Atlanta figured out how to use a computer. :P
It is great to see more of ID's early work opened up.
A while back there was even some talk about releasing the hard drive images from some of their NeXT computers used to create DOOM. http://serverfault.com/questio...
I wonder if anything will come of that? It would be doubly awesome right about now because the NeXT emulator "Previous" has gotten far along enough where it can actually boot to a 68K NeXTSTEP desktop!
That is a nice story, and if true you got lucky that it was a small company and your boss probably knew your actual competency level.
In most places when stuff like this happens, your bosses' bosses' boss will want blood, and a nice firing will happen no matter what.
Protip: if anyone ever find themselves on the short end of this stick, don't grovel to keep your job. If possible, don't even discuss what happened. Remind them of your strengths, experience, what you can continue to contribute, and why they hired you in the first place. It won't make any difference if they already have their minds made up they want blood, but you will feel better about it.
What you won't see in their documentary is the part where after digging the big hole, they accidentally fall in, and can't get the heck out!
Mod parent up. TFA made it sound like they did raw complex magnetic imaging similar to that Cray disk that was recovered while back.
Compared to that, using a Kryoflux is little more than "throwing it in a floppy drive".
> Then you'd miss stuff like 1-2-3 diskettes and unformatted blocks.
And that is why, like I said, you attach your floppy drive to a Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, or Deluxe Option Board device.
I've recently read a number of floppies that are older than the ones in the TFA, and none of them have magically fallen apart.
Technically reading a disk will put some wear on it because the heads touch the surface, but if the disk was properly stored and was of a good brand (not Wabash), that wear is negligible.
Most serious software archivists would simply plop the disks in a floppy drive connected to a Kryoflux, or similar device, and be done with it.
Magnetic imaging is an overkill unless the disk is from a system where no compatible form drive exists any more.
The really interesting thing about DOS 1.1 (or actually very slightly later revisions) is that it was the first to be released to OEMs other than IBM. Early clone makers such as Zenith, Corona, Columbia Data Products, Eagle Computers, or Compaq (you might have heard of that last one), never would have gotten off the ground if Microsoft had not licensed it out to them.
Some of the early "MS-DOS" compatibles were not even hardware compatible with the IBM PC. All you could rely on was the presence of an 8088/8086 and MS-DOS provided I/O calls. And those OEMs had to customize MS-DOS to recognize their proprietary hardware.
I'm not so sure about the value of Word for Windows 1.x. It wasn't even the first word processor for Windows (Beaten by AMI and PageMaker).
Now, on the other hand I have heard some interesting things about the internals of Word 1.00 for DOS.