My recollection of telex machines is that they had a dial and a built-in modem, i believe, which probably wasn't compatible with a modern dialup modem. They also used baudot code, rather than ascii. It might be more complicated to hook one of them up to a modern computer.
If it was directly connected, though, and it communicates in ascii, it should be fairly trivial to connect it to a box with a serial port and running Linux/BSD/OSX - or even Windows with a terminal emulator (telix perhaps?). With Windows/DOS and telix, you wouldn't be able to do much other than type on the computer and get output on the tty, and vice versa. But with a *nix box, you could use it as a normal terminal.
Although i haven't tried anything like that for about 10 years (and then it was with Wyse CRT terminals), i'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a Linux distribution that would still have all the relevant bits in it, even if distros like Ubuntu don't (and they may have).
[......] rendering my FB home page cause my (fairly contemorary IBM/XP) laptop to just freeze for about 7 seconds while it's doing its JS and ajax goodness.
That's probably XP then, not FB - cos it doesn't do it on my (fairly contemporary Lenovo/Linux) laptop.
[......] a Wordpress install (which seems to go out of its way to tie content and design together) [......]
Huh??? How do you make that out? Wordpress is just a content management system that spits out mostly almost plain text wherever you put a relevant PHP command. There's not much of what it outputs that contains any serious formatting - apart from a few situations where there's no real alternative.
The same goes for the choice of operating systems. There's so little difference between the ways their controls work that it's insignificant. It's like the indicator lever being on a different side to what you're used to, or the handbrake being in a different place, or going from an automatic to a manual - all of which are normal experiences for car drivers.
As for the roads they travel on, the only "road" that really matters to most users is the internet - and all modern OSs drive on that one.
People prove every day that they do want 500 choices of virtually everything that's available to them - or at least, if they don't actively want it, having 500 choices doesn't prevent them from buying things.
There's no reason to believe that the possibility of having too many choices plays any part in the dynamics of operating system popularity.
Has it ever occured to you that maybe Microsoft has a monopoly because users don't want more variants of OS's?
By that, I mean, the market tends to a monopoly because end users don't want confusion.
Ha ha. Now you really are tripping! Part of the reason Microsoft got a monopoly in the first place was because end users wouldn't know an operating system if they fell over one.
I'm sure the very concept that users don't want 500 choices of something is hard for you to comprehend.
Yeah, right. That explains why they boycott supermarkets then. "All that choice! It makes my head hurt!" And look how many different flavours of Windows there are kicking around in common use at the moment. About the same number as the most commonly used Linux distros.
No doubt, but the interface is horrible - even with the improvements made recently. It doesn't feel intuitive and, more to the point, it is too different from Photoshop for people to use when they've already got some Photoshop experience.
I don't agree. I think it was better before those so-called "improvements". I think the improvements have buggered up some of the benefits of Gimp's approach to the user interface - in an attempt to get more like Photoshop. And it feels totally intuitive to me. Whatever "intuitive" means - and it probably just means "feels like what i'm used to" really.
I went from Photoshop to Gimp without any problems - however, that was over 10 years ago now!
Unless you're really lucky with the images, OCR requires a lot of work correcting errors. It would probably be less work to just be able to add searchable tags to whatever system is used to store the PDFs and leave them as images.
If it gets sold off. Politics and economics are currently undergoing a bit of a shift. Chances are that by the time it comes to sell it off governments will have woken up to the fact that it's a good idea to keep infrastructure government owned.
... and did the toady and his slack-jawed mates want to filter your broadband? No, they didn't.
Either they were too thick to think of it (most likely) or they just hadn't got round to it yet. They would have done, don't you worry - once they'd worked out what that internet thing actually did.
It would seem that Telstra will always be 'on a loser' with the current Labor government.
Since Telstra's been run by the American Sol Trujillo, it's done nothing but fight with the government over things that there was never any chance it could win.
They were even stupid enough to campaign politically against the Liberal party in the last Federal election - which was obviously going to seal their fate in the long run. If they thought they'd get Labor onside by doing that, they were very badly misguided. I dunno if it would be acceptable in the US, but it certainly isn't in Australia. There's no way any party would tolerate a company like that getting involved in election campaigns - particularly when the government is the biggest shareholder.
Mate, i pissed away my 20s, 30s, and 40s - although i did work as an assembler programmer for a couple of years at the start of the 80s and as a technical writer for a couple of years after that. I also built my first web site in 1995 and i've been using Linux since that time too.
I'm 50 now and getting back into IT. I'm currently stuck in a town with very little employment opportunities for anyone, and i'm scraping a living as a freelance web developer while i develop my skills. When i can leave here, in a year or two, maybe, i'll be fully up to speed and have a halfway decent portfolio of web sites i've built. And i'm tossing up the pros and cons of doing a CS degree myself.
35 isn't old. I wish i'd been smart enough to start getting my shit together when i was your age.
You've still got time for two or three totally different careers before you die, anyway - if you're that way inclined and you're lucky!
It's very rare nowadays that i want to install something and there isn't an rpm package kicking around somewhere. Occasionally i have to use a Mandriva or SuSE package - which will usually work - but mostly things are packaged for Fedora anyway.
The only things i've got on this system that i've had to build from source are Amarok (cos i don't like the version that's available for Fedora 10) and gamix (cos it doesn't seem to be available anywhere in an rpm package). Apart from that, i've got a wide range of software installed entirely from rpms.
I'd be interested in seeing some examples of software packages that are available in.deb packages but not.rpm...
Slashdot Mirror
My recollection of telex machines is that they had a dial and a built-in modem, i believe, which probably wasn't compatible with a modern dialup modem. They also used baudot code, rather than ascii. It might be more complicated to hook one of them up to a modern computer.
If it was directly connected, though, and it communicates in ascii, it should be fairly trivial to connect it to a box with a serial port and running Linux/BSD/OSX - or even Windows with a terminal emulator (telix perhaps?). With Windows/DOS and telix, you wouldn't be able to do much other than type on the computer and get output on the tty, and vice versa. But with a *nix box, you could use it as a normal terminal.
Although i haven't tried anything like that for about 10 years (and then it was with Wyse CRT terminals), i'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a Linux distribution that would still have all the relevant bits in it, even if distros like Ubuntu don't (and they may have).
You should be able to hook it up to the serial port on a Linux box or something, surely? But is it a teletype or a telex?
That's probably XP then, not FB - cos it doesn't do it on my (fairly contemporary Lenovo/Linux) laptop.
Huh??? How do you make that out? Wordpress is just a content management system that spits out mostly almost plain text wherever you put a relevant PHP command. There's not much of what it outputs that contains any serious formatting - apart from a few situations where there's no real alternative.
You mean you've got one, but you're not allowed to use it cos you're too young? They've got funny laws where you live!
Anyone reading slashdot who doesn't already know where "tty" comes from should hand their geek card in at the door on the way out.
Some of us have even used them!
The same goes for the choice of operating systems. There's so little difference between the ways their controls work that it's insignificant. It's like the indicator lever being on a different side to what you're used to, or the handbrake being in a different place, or going from an automatic to a manual - all of which are normal experiences for car drivers.
As for the roads they travel on, the only "road" that really matters to most users is the internet - and all modern OSs drive on that one.
The analogy is fundamentally flawed.
That's drifting a very long way from your point.
People prove every day that they do want 500 choices of virtually everything that's available to them - or at least, if they don't actively want it, having 500 choices doesn't prevent them from buying things.
There's no reason to believe that the possibility of having too many choices plays any part in the dynamics of operating system popularity.
Ha ha. Now you really are tripping! Part of the reason Microsoft got a monopoly in the first place was because end users wouldn't know an operating system if they fell over one.
Yeah, right. That explains why they boycott supermarkets then. "All that choice! It makes my head hurt!" And look how many different flavours of Windows there are kicking around in common use at the moment. About the same number as the most commonly used Linux distros.
The distro's got nothing to do with writing drivers. They all use the same kernel - and that's where drivers go.
I don't agree. I think it was better before those so-called "improvements". I think the improvements have buggered up some of the benefits of Gimp's approach to the user interface - in an attempt to get more like Photoshop. And it feels totally intuitive to me. Whatever "intuitive" means - and it probably just means "feels like what i'm used to" really.
I went from Photoshop to Gimp without any problems - however, that was over 10 years ago now!
It may be worth looking at Beagle: http://beagle-project.org/ - it's Linux only though.
Unless you're really lucky with the images, OCR requires a lot of work correcting errors. It would probably be less work to just be able to add searchable tags to whatever system is used to store the PDFs and leave them as images.
If it gets sold off. Politics and economics are currently undergoing a bit of a shift. Chances are that by the time it comes to sell it off governments will have woken up to the fact that it's a good idea to keep infrastructure government owned.
Yep, it's structural separation without the mess.
Kermit the frog crossed with Margaret Thatcher, more like!
Either they were too thick to think of it (most likely) or they just hadn't got round to it yet. They would have done, don't you worry - once they'd worked out what that internet thing actually did.
Since Telstra's been run by the American Sol Trujillo, it's done nothing but fight with the government over things that there was never any chance it could win.
They were even stupid enough to campaign politically against the Liberal party in the last Federal election - which was obviously going to seal their fate in the long run. If they thought they'd get Labor onside by doing that, they were very badly misguided. I dunno if it would be acceptable in the US, but it certainly isn't in Australia. There's no way any party would tolerate a company like that getting involved in election campaigns - particularly when the government is the biggest shareholder.
True enough. It will be a massive boost for the domestic porn industry too!
We're talking English, not Latin - and the plural of 'virus' in English is 'viruses'.
Mate, i pissed away my 20s, 30s, and 40s - although i did work as an assembler programmer for a couple of years at the start of the 80s and as a technical writer for a couple of years after that. I also built my first web site in 1995 and i've been using Linux since that time too.
I'm 50 now and getting back into IT. I'm currently stuck in a town with very little employment opportunities for anyone, and i'm scraping a living as a freelance web developer while i develop my skills. When i can leave here, in a year or two, maybe, i'll be fully up to speed and have a halfway decent portfolio of web sites i've built. And i'm tossing up the pros and cons of doing a CS degree myself.
35 isn't old. I wish i'd been smart enough to start getting my shit together when i was your age.
You've still got time for two or three totally different careers before you die, anyway - if you're that way inclined and you're lucky!
And you think you're the older generation, do you, you young whippersnapper?
[Shuffles off muttering] Kids nowadays, they don't know they're born, grumble, mutter...
It's very rare nowadays that i want to install something and there isn't an rpm package kicking around somewhere. Occasionally i have to use a Mandriva or SuSE package - which will usually work - but mostly things are packaged for Fedora anyway.
The only things i've got on this system that i've had to build from source are Amarok (cos i don't like the version that's available for Fedora 10) and gamix (cos it doesn't seem to be available anywhere in an rpm package). Apart from that, i've got a wide range of software installed entirely from rpms.
I'd be interested in seeing some examples of software packages that are available in .deb packages but not .rpm...
I'll resist the temptation... ;-)
It's been converted into whale farts.