I am very displeased with Adobe's protectionist behavior with regard to fonts. Even though courts have ruled time and again that you cannoy copyright a given mathematical font description or a bitmap font description, Adobe maintains a large legal staff to harass anyone who exercises their rights as detailed in the Constitution to share descriptions of letters of the alphabyte (AKA typefaces). For this reason alone, I wish for Adobe's soon death.
I should add that I can't find anything to substantiate this takeover rumor. The only purpose for this rumor would be to boost Corel's stock price. This kind of rumors in the information-technology industry are getting rather boring. It seems there is a new one every week.
MAE east was dropping 30% of their packets during the daytime last year, and during peak intervals it was hitting 50%. Reaching a website that didn't peer somewhere else with yours was an absolute nightmare. It made traceroute fun, however: packets sent across the continental U.S. were sometimes routed through Europe, etc. I'm surprised there wasn't more media attention given to it.
Isn't MAE east the facility located in a parking garage?
In any case, this is old news. Yes, it's a risk, but so are neutron bombs. You can fit them in a grocery bag, and the charge is enough to end all life in a 40 meter radius. If you want to be safe from EMP, you'll need to use an all-optical system. An optical computer would also allow me to get rid of my thermonuclear Pentium.
The jewel of my heart.
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Love of Unix
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· Score: 1
Well, yes. Not my first OS by a long shot, but the first one (1) on _my_ system (as opposed to some mini) that (2) didn't suck.:-)
>> We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.)
My first axquaintance _was_ with 1.3 (the first stable version), but on a PS/2 mod 80:-(
We first met on a PS/2 Model 65 with 6MB of memory (85 nanosecond). There were a 60MB fixed disk and a 127MB fixed disk (on the PS/2 SCSI adapter).
I also had C Set/2. It was love at first sight. Using slower hardware to get to know your operating system really makes you appreciate her more—there isn't a veneer of fast hardware to keep you from really knowing everything about her.
(I won't get into long sessions late at night with the Kerneldebugger inspecting how OS/2 likes to arrange her page tables.)
And what does "unsupported" mean?
``Unsupported'' is probably the wrong adjective. What I meant to say is that it does not have the thriving user base of, say, GNU/Linux—which makes me love her all the more. She's my own special OS, not something everyone else uses.
what about a JFS?" (Want one!)
IBM had the mercy to send me OS/2 Version 4.5 (beta). When OS/2 replays her journal log, it makes a new sound. It's strangely comforintg—I think I've heard it before. (Perhaps from my old AIX PS/2 days? I don't think I had JFS back then, but I was 10 years old then and did not know which way was up.)
But we cling to our old loves...
There is absolutely nothing like first love, whether it be with your operating system or with a human. Ah, for the days of that first friendship... I do feel I should say my relationship with OS/2 is entirely platonic (as my first friendship was). I am wondering what the ``Human Interface'' driver in the OS/2 USB support is. Hmmm.
Cheers, Joshua.(Who wants to make sure no–one is taking this too seriously—we just like computers!)
Firstly, let me say that PixelWare appears to be very sour vaporware. I called them last year when I saw something about their product in InformationWeek. After pressing the question, they said ``yeah, it runs in Windows 95. Unix support will be out soon.'' That was six months ago. Read: it's not happening.
Virtual machine emulation is interesting, however. Freed software like GNU/Linux or opensource software like BSD is, quite obviously, the easiest to encapsulate on a new platform. I've already got Linux (kernel 2.2.1 <grin>) sort of working in OS/2; I junked things like the memory-manager, and created a special filesystem that just talks to OS/2, rather than actually accessing disks. It is absolutely not complete: things like networking are missing and direct hardware access does not work yet. I really want to get in touch with the Linux kernel people and work on a new architecture--perhaps a VM architecture, for running on other platforms.
I've also toyed with running Windows under other operating systems (in my case, it's Windows 95 under OS/2, but the same would apply for any OS under something like GNU/Linux or BSD). Here's what I've done so far:
I started with Bochs, and put it in tracing mode. Then I booted Windows 95 up to the point where it loads the GUI. I took the resultant 750MB trace file (it took hours to generate) and began analyzing it for things like privileged instructions. Specifically, I wanted to watch the call flow for calls to the memory manager.
Next, I tried hooking the memory manager calls (this was quite simple) and making some changes to Bochs
This stuff is nowhere near pre-alpha quality yet. I'm more actively working on XCLIENT for OS/2 and some other OS/2 software at the moment. However, if you're working on a VM and would like to chat, feel free to drop me a note. It's not as hard as you think, and I did get Windows 95 to boot with my special memory manager.
I also tried recoding Bochs to execute instructions natively, but that did not work. What looks like it might be promising is hooking the memory manager so that instructions that access memory (such as MOV EDX,[EAX]) can run natively. I haven't tested this, though. Emulating I/O hardware is silly, however--just write Windows 95 device drivers that place calls to the host operating system.
The love of my heart.
on
Love of Unix
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· Score: 1
I must say that the true love of my heart is OS/2. Why is that? I love things that have been cast off--I like the person who is not the most attractive and who has faults. That's OS/2. The Workplace Shell is buggy and there's no way to ``kill -9'' a process which is stuck in a kernel function.
But would I want to love something that was more perfect than I? Nay. I want something to which I can relate--something that, like me, has its faults, but also has the bright side. I truly do love OS/2.
We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.) I was 9 years old then, and OS/2 and I grew together. Now she's a bloated, slow-moving, unsupported system, but I love her regardless.
Yes, I do have relationships with other computers in my life, but it's strictly business. GNU/Linux and I are just friends; NT and I are not even that. And how could I abandon OS/2 and leave my dear children behind? We hvae produced many applications together--good, solid, 32-bit (and some 16-bit as well), and multithreaded software. No one else will accept these offspring--not even my dear friend GNU/Linux, or my acquaintance OpenBSD. (NT will play with some of my children, but snubs its nose at the 32-bit software. How could I leave my 32-bit children behind?)
Lest you think that I be mad, I have been somewhat hyperbolic in this description; I don't really love software like I would a human. Yes, it is something familiar, and I suppose I devise some security from using a ``familiar'' operating system, but I do have relationships with people.) This article did touch a chord of my heart, however small.
I will state in closing that that is no sound so sweet as the OS/2 HPFS bootloader loading OS2KRNL, or that of a periodic cache flush. They are familiar and comforting sounds to my ears. Indeed, even the CHKDSK (i.e. hpfsck), while not a sound I enjoy, is sweet because it is that of my beloved. Cheers, Joshua.
More experiments in refrigeration.
on
Mega Heat Sinks
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· Score: 1
This weubsite has some interesting writeups of a project to refrigerate a CPU. It has some Very Good Ideas like an alarm to sense if the temperature is suddenly skyrocketing, and if so, to underclock the CPU, and another mechanism to keep the temperature from going below 60 degrees Farenheit (that's around 15 degrees Celsius).
I personally am using sandwich bags filled with water to cool my PS/2 Model P75 486. It has 24MB of memory in the form of 2MB SIMMs <shudder>. Its 486DX/33mHz also has a habit of overheating, which makes these interesting displays like ``??? 111'' when the parity checker catches the error, or if it doesn't, I get ``data modification'', which is IBM speak for random bit changings. That causes neat things like diskette copyings to suddenly fail, DHCP requests to come back with funny IP addresses, and the mouse pointer to suddenly morph into a strange shape. These are all things that have happened before I was watercooling.
Sadly, Microsoft jointly owns much of the code of Presentation Manager with IBM, so they can't opensource it. They could, however, opensource the Workplace Shell. It's just not gonna happen with PM, although I personally am thinking about writing pmtk--an implementation of the Presentation Manager API (with binary-level compatibility) for X11.
Easy to use administration tool that is able to handle single PC up to entire network of PC.
IBM doesn't have this product unfortunately (at least not IMO.)
Productivity tools such as spread sheet, word processor etc. User friendly database front end to DB2 to compete with MSSQL.
OS/2 Query Manager (from OS/2 EE or DB2/2 1.2) would be a great thing. Opensource it please IBM!
Speech and hand writing recognition.
IBM needs to do this now. It is stupid to port this products to Windows when you could be gaining critical market share among those who will be making important changes in the information technology field over the next 20 years.
Device drivers for all IBM hardware.IBM is so stuck up about releasing hardware specs it isn't funny. Try getting databooks for the Mwave DSP and adapters--you have to sign this horrible NDA and pay all those ridiculous licence fees. We need some high-powered IBM execs to simply bring some sanity to those situations; the IBM 2780DSP is dead, and releasing the specs isn't going to reveal any top-secret information.
Great computer geniuses have beards. Look at my beloved friend --jon. Postel, RMS, and Alan Cox. There are some more whose names I do not remember right now.
Let us not criticize the facial appearance, but let us criticize the code. If you don't like the appearance of Alan Cox, then please seek your revenge by writing better code than he does. (I have not examine code written by him recently, so I am not making a statement of the quality or lack thereof of his code.)
Cheers, Joshua.
I need ritual cleansing. I spent the evening hooking up my brother's Thinkpad to the LAN here, and had to download all this Windows garbage. Have you ever installed Windows 95 Service Pack 1? <screams> As soon as I post this article, I'm going to go boot Zipslack. Anything is better than this Windows 95 prison.
You can still get pages that insist on using Arial to render correctly by editing your fonts.dir file (usually in/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi) and simply taking a font you like (such as Century Schoolbook or Helvetica), duplicating those lines, and changing the name to Arial.
xfstt also works nicely, and on Linux, it doesn't use very much memory, because it uses memory-mapped files efficiently.
My port of xfstt to OS/2 (which you can get from hobbes.nmsu.edu when my website is down) isn't as efficient because OS/2 has no easy mmap(4) facility.
TrueType fonts render so much more nicely than Adobe Type 1 fonts or Speedo fonts at low resolutions. Baskerville 8 point actually looks nice when done with TrueType. Of course, you only get this benefit if your TrueType fonts have hints in them--in other words, using a tool to convert from Type 1 to TrueType won't help. You can read more about ``hints'' on Microsoft's website; search for ``fonts''.
I have had to use ODBC in the past, and I found it quite inferior to more mature and sophisticated methods like static SQL or even dynamic SQL. It is just so much easier to write EXEC SQL SELECT * FROM MYTABLE than have to wrestle with the ODBC commands to do the same thing. In addition, I've found that ODBC programs are significantly slower than a bound static SQL program.
On the other hand, ODBC does adhere to the SQL standard in terms of the actual query language, which is nice for a change. I would have expected Microsoft to use something like FoxPro's old query language.
This codepage is also known as Windows-1004. I used it on my system because so many people send me email in Windows-1004 encoding, which mangles all the commas and quotes. (Actually, its set of quote symbols are something for which there is a need; while `` and '' are fine when using a proportional font, `` and '' don't like so nice when using a monospaced font.) I believe that Aldus came up with this scheme along with Microsoft for their Pagemaker for WIndows product.
Without further ado, here it is. If your system is using the Windows-1004 codepage, you should see the actual symbols. Otherwise, you'll see garbage.
é 130 - slightly shortened comma â 131 - forte (looks like an italic `f') ä 132 - double comma (like double quote; like `,,') à 133 - elipsis [spelling?] (like `...') å 134 - dagger (like a cross or a `t') ç 135 - double dagger (has two crosses in it) ê 136 - circumflex or caret (like `^') ë 137 - perthousand (like a `%' but two circles on bottom) è 138 - uppercase sh (an `S' with an upside down `^' on top of it) ï 139 - less than (like `î 140 - uppercase osh (ligature of `O' and `E'; looks like `OE') ì 141 - unused/unknown Ä 142 - uppercase zh (a 'Z' with an upside down `^' on top of it) Å 143 - unused/unknown É 144 - unused/unknown æ 145 - open single quote (like a ` on Unix systems) Æ 146 - close single quote (like a ' on Unix systems) ô 147 - open double quote (like a `` on Unix systems) ö 148 - close double quote (like a '' on Unix systems) ò 149 - dot; reminds me of 007 on IBM codepage 437 and friends@
Like my PS/2 Model P75. I have to watercool the silly thing because the CPU in it has too *high* a rating. It just won't run at 33 megahertz without cooling, and 25 megahertz is--well--unbearable. (I use this thing mostly for nostalgia's sake anyway.)
(The watercooling is ugly; it involves plastic sandwich bags filled with water and closed off with a rubbish bag tie (you know, the little metal wires embedded in papaer). I used several layers of saran wrap to protect the thin water filled bags against the sharp edges of the electronic componentry on the option adapters above the CPU. This should give you an idea of just how old these option adapters are; they still have soldered pins sticking through, unlike newer (i.e. almost anything made since 1988) PC boards where the pins don't reach through the whole plastic card.)
One disadvantage is that my IBM Portable PS/2 is no longer portable at all. It is rather a quivering mass of digital protoplasm on a lab shelf.
Cheers, Joshua (who is looking for an 80 megahertz oscillator. Gee, if I can ``underclock'' 33mHz, why not 40mHz?)
Hmm. So if, say, Sega designs an N64 clone machine, it will be a violation of the EULA to run some games on it? (Not to imply that Sega has any plans to do so.)
What about the fact that many of these video games are probably being bought by minors and then opened by minors without any adult's consent? Most of the kids I know who play video games wouldn't know the difference between an EULA and Europe. They probably assume that the sticker is there to keep dust out.
Finally, just what does the EULA on some new N64 games state about renting/sublicensing? Almost every commercial software EULA I've seen specifically does not permit such leasing of software. That will go over like a lead balloon with most of the people I know who play video games. They rent almost everything they play.
Cheers, Joshua (the only video game I play is Alleycat, and I play that on my 1981 IBM PC with C/GA and a TV--no emulation there!)
I wish I could change that signature. It's supposed to be a tribute to --jon. Postel, but I can't get my userpreferences-page to change the signature!<screams again>
If an EULA state that running the software under an emulator is illegal, how do they define an emulator? Let's say you have a copy of Accolade Ace of Aces for the IBM PC, and the EULA for that says emulation is illegal (I don't think it does, but let's say for the purpose of this discussion that it does). You also have an Alpha box running Windows NT. If you load Ace of Aces on your Alpha NT box, is it running in emulation?
For that matter, if you load on a machine with an Intel chip running in V86 mode, is it emulation?
Let's say that Syrix, a hypothetical company, makes an Intel x86 clone that uses microcode to do everything. Would running Intel software on that chip be emulation?
Emulation is difficult to define legally, and if it were defined strictly, it would make a lot of the normal use of software illegal.
Would running a program on a 386 or compatible chip with the DR[0-4] control registers set up for debugging mode be considered emulation?
Cheers, Joshua. (My website is down. Roadrunner only does password resets through postal mail..)
Did you know that if you post a comment to slashdot with the hostname in uppercase (i.e, http://SLASHDOT.ORG/comments.pl), it tells you that space aliens have eaten your data?
That was great reading! Thanks for putting that up, and thanks to the other guy for doing the writeup. I was very pleased.
It was especially nice to see Stallman standing up for principle. I would have loved to have been there to see the look on the politician's face as Stallman (indirectly) reprimanded him for his payback to the NY industries.
I also loved his comments about ``whom do you sue?''. I like Stallman's vision: moving to a society where we can trust each other rather than one where we each try to look out for our own interests only. And besides, when was the last time you sued Microsoft because NT crashed?
Cheers, Joshua. (I realize my website is down. xfsttos2 is on Hobbes if you want it. Roadrunner has decided to block *all* traffic except to their stupid proxy server.)
That was an excellent conclusion to the day, which was rather long and involved lots of unenjoyable labor. That bit of humor was just what I needed.
Thanks for the link! I feel motivated once again to continue my work. Hmm, I've got this idea in the back of my head... I want to support a weird audio adapter typically used in Microchannel machines. The only driver interface that will be easy runs in DOS. I'm thinking about running a "stub" program in DOSEMU and then having my Linux audio device driver talk to that...
Cheers Joshua (who is still laughing. I love that line about the fourth graders! I don't know why it struck me as so funny but it just did. I think watching the output of a compiler too many times does something to your brain.)
They should pass some resolutions (not that their resolutions do any good--back in the early eighties they passed a resolution that corporations should not market infant formula in Third World nations) that no member country shall tax, censor, or otherwise regulate Internet access.
Granted, it would be about as respect as their resolutions to (for example) Milosovec, the government of Rwanda, or the government of Libya. But, at least it would get a point across.
I always take comfort in the fact that in 150 years, none of the creeps around today will still be alive. That's not so long to wait. <grin>
Good to see support for the Hurd is coming. For those of you aren't familiar with the Hurd (definition below), it's a kernel that is designed to handle really heavy loads. It is entirely GPL'd. Hopefully Hurd will eventually be of Solaris quality (I know, I know, it can't be done with opensource, but we've all heard that before). It will probably fill the same niche FreeBSD fills now. Hmm, Hurd servers and Linux clients... sounds nice to me.
One great thing about Hurd is that if it do get very good features, that can be folded into Linux without a hitch.
The Hurd was originally started by GNU as part of their project to create a completely free Unix system. Linux did not exist back then, and Linus was still learning his multiplication tables. (Or maybe they are smarter in Finland by that age? I don't know.)
Linux came out of nowhere and was able to make good use of the GNU toolset. It was exactly the vision that GNU had. However, they had already started work on the Hurd, and the Hurd had (or was going to have) some features Linux didn't (and doesn't) have. I know it may seem stupid to have people working on different Unix kernels-- but this is about diversity, not one-size-fits-all. If we just wanted one nice huge kernel we would use NT.
Be warned that the Hurd is not for newbies. I tried it a few weeks ago. It was neat, although it crashed a few times (probably due to my hardware configuration). Interesting things are going to happen to it.
``Hurd: `Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons'. (definition of `Hird' below)''
``Hird: `Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth' (definition of `Hurd' above)''
...CICS for Linux. I use DB2/2 and CICS/2 (on OS/2). CICS is nice because it takes care of the transactions for you--it's quite trivial to design a nice site like Slashdot with DB2 and CICS (CICS is a transaction monitor).
For those of you who don't know what a transaction monitor is, it takes care of making stuff happen. So, you can define a procedure like "post comment". Then you can make your webscript for posting comments call that procedure via CICS, and CICS will make sure it gets executed. CICS takes care of errors occurring and it plugs into DB2.
Think of CICS as handling code the way DB2 handles data. Microsoft Transaction Server does the same thing but needs a lot more resources. CICS has been in use for 28 years. It's become quite popular as of late for building large websites that run on big iron.
There, I guess you know what company I like now. grin
CICS for Linux along with DB2 would almost be nirvana. (For nirvana, IBM would need to port their Java VM as well.)
I have no personal experience with a touchscreen specifically supported by X. However, I have used (for that matter, I'm using it right now-- the IBM 8516 is staring at me and the IBM TouchSelect panel (one of this clipon jobbies) is on the shelf five feet from me)) touchscreens with X. OS/2 has excellent touchscreen drivers (for IBM's touchscreen of course). I use the XFree86 for OS/2 Xserver, which runs just fine and uses the OSMOUSE mouse subsystem--in other words, OS/2 managers the mouse.
Thus, I get a touchscreen and then run Unix programs with it. I especially like using touchscreens while using the Web.
This isn't really using a touchscreen with Linux--it's using an Xserver that has a touchscreen. But, it works (and besides, I'm an OS/2 junkie. It's a love-hate thing with me but I keep using OS/2 anyways.)
SCSI use to be horribly expensive. It's a lot more reasonable now (I can remember not too long ago SCSI cards costing $500). There used to also be a significant premium for SCSI disks; that's gone, as you can find general parity in pricing for EIDE and SCSI disks (although some places insist on charing more). Used SCSI equipment is often cheaper than comparable IDE equipment.
If FireWire be a better technology, then I do hope it will take over SCSI. However, it needs to be free of choking patents and the specifications need to be very open if we ever want to use it with an opensource operating system.
``I belive OS/2 is destined to be the greatest operating system, and possibly program, of all time.''--Bill "The Visionary" Gates, 1988 (Microsoft Press)
Slashdot Mirror
I should add that I can't find anything to substantiate this takeover rumor. The only purpose for this rumor would be to boost Corel's stock price. This kind of rumors in the information-technology industry are getting rather boring. It seems there is a new one every week.
Cheers,
Joshua.
Isn't MAE east the facility located in a parking garage?
In any case, this is old news. Yes, it's a risk, but so are neutron bombs. You can fit them in a grocery bag, and the charge is enough to end all life in a 40 meter radius. If you want to be safe from EMP, you'll need to use an all-optical system. An optical computer would also allow me to get rid of my thermonuclear Pentium.
>> We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.)
My first axquaintance _was_ with 1.3 (the first stable version), but on a PS/2 mod 80 :-(
We first met on a PS/2 Model 65 with 6MB of memory (85 nanosecond). There were a 60MB fixed disk and a 127MB fixed disk (on the PS/2 SCSI adapter).
I also had C Set/2. It was love at first sight. Using slower hardware to get to know your operating system really makes you appreciate her more—there isn't a veneer of fast hardware to keep you from really knowing everything about her.
(I won't get into long sessions late at night with the Kerneldebugger inspecting how OS/2 likes to arrange her page tables.)
And what does "unsupported" mean?
``Unsupported'' is probably the wrong adjective. What I meant to say is that it does not have the thriving user base of, say, GNU/Linux—which makes me love her all the more. She's my own special OS, not something everyone else uses.
what about a JFS?" (Want one!)
IBM had the mercy to send me OS/2 Version 4.5 (beta). When OS/2 replays her journal log, it makes a new sound. It's strangely comforintg—I think I've heard it before. (Perhaps from my old AIX PS/2 days? I don't think I had JFS back then, but I was 10 years old then and did not know which way was up.)
But we cling to our old loves...
There is absolutely nothing like first love, whether it be with your operating system or with a human. Ah, for the days of that first friendship... I do feel I should say my relationship with OS/2 is entirely platonic (as my first friendship was). I am wondering what the ``Human Interface'' driver in the OS/2 USB support is. Hmmm.
Cheers,
Joshua.(Who wants to make sure no–one is taking this too seriously—we just like computers!)
Virtual machine emulation is interesting, however. Freed software like GNU/Linux or opensource software like BSD is, quite obviously, the easiest to encapsulate on a new platform. I've already got Linux (kernel 2.2.1 <grin>) sort of working in OS/2; I junked things like the memory-manager, and created a special filesystem that just talks to OS/2, rather than actually accessing disks. It is absolutely not complete: things like networking are missing and direct hardware access does not work yet. I really want to get in touch with the Linux kernel people and work on a new architecture--perhaps a VM architecture, for running on other platforms.
I've also toyed with running Windows under other operating systems (in my case, it's Windows 95 under OS/2, but the same would apply for any OS under something like GNU/Linux or BSD). Here's what I've done so far:
I started with Bochs, and put it in tracing mode. Then I booted Windows 95 up to the point where it loads the GUI. I took the resultant 750MB trace file (it took hours to generate) and began analyzing it for things like privileged instructions. Specifically, I wanted to watch the call flow for calls to the memory manager.
Next, I tried hooking the memory manager calls (this was quite simple) and making some changes to Bochs
This stuff is nowhere near pre-alpha quality yet. I'm more actively working on XCLIENT for OS/2 and some other OS/2 software at the moment. However, if you're working on a VM and would like to chat, feel free to drop me a note. It's not as hard as you think, and I did get Windows 95 to boot with my special memory manager.
I also tried recoding Bochs to execute instructions natively, but that did not work. What looks like it might be promising is hooking the memory manager so that instructions that access memory (such as MOV EDX,[EAX]) can run natively. I haven't tested this, though. Emulating I/O hardware is silly, however--just write Windows 95 device drivers that place calls to the host operating system.
Cheers,
Joshua.
You can see --jon. Postel here. Love that beard!
But would I want to love something that was more perfect than I? Nay. I want something to which I can relate--something that, like me, has its faults, but also has the bright side. I truly do love OS/2.
We were childhood sweethearts since 1992, back in the OS/2 2.0 days. (Sadly, I did not know OS/2 when she was still young--just a 16-bit operating system.) I was 9 years old then, and OS/2 and I grew together. Now she's a bloated, slow-moving, unsupported system, but I love her regardless.
Yes, I do have relationships with other computers in my life, but it's strictly business. GNU/Linux and I are just friends; NT and I are not even that. And how could I abandon OS/2 and leave my dear children behind?
We hvae produced many applications together--good, solid, 32-bit (and some 16-bit as well), and multithreaded software. No one else will accept these offspring--not even my dear friend GNU/Linux, or my acquaintance OpenBSD. (NT will play with some of my children, but snubs its nose at the 32-bit software. How could I leave my 32-bit children behind?)
Lest you think that I be mad, I have been somewhat hyperbolic in this description; I don't really love software like I would a human. Yes, it is something familiar, and I suppose I devise some security from using a ``familiar'' operating system, but I do have relationships with people.) This article did touch a chord of my heart, however small.
I will state in closing that that is no sound so sweet as the OS/2 HPFS bootloader loading OS2KRNL, or that of a periodic cache flush. They are familiar and comforting sounds to my ears. Indeed, even the CHKDSK (i.e. hpfsck), while not a sound I enjoy, is sweet because it is that of my beloved.
Cheers,
Joshua.
I personally am using sandwich bags filled with water to cool my PS/2 Model P75 486. It has 24MB of memory in the form of 2MB SIMMs <shudder>. Its 486DX/33mHz also has a habit of overheating, which makes these interesting displays like ``??? 111'' when the parity checker catches the error, or if it doesn't, I get ``data modification'', which is IBM speak for random bit changings. That causes neat things like diskette copyings to suddenly fail, DHCP requests to come back with funny IP addresses, and the mouse pointer to suddenly morph into a strange shape. These are all things that have happened before I was watercooling.
Cheers,
Joshua.
Sadly, Microsoft jointly owns much of the code of Presentation Manager with IBM, so they can't opensource it. They could, however, opensource the Workplace Shell. It's just not gonna happen with PM, although I personally am thinking about writing pmtk--an implementation of the Presentation Manager API (with binary-level compatibility) for X11.
Easy to use administration tool that is able to handle single PC up to entire network of PC.
IBM doesn't have this product unfortunately (at least not IMO.)
Productivity tools such as spread sheet, word processor etc. User friendly database front end to DB2 to compete with MSSQL.
OS/2 Query Manager (from OS/2 EE or DB2/2 1.2) would be a great thing. Opensource it please IBM!
Speech and hand writing recognition.
IBM needs to do this now. It is stupid to port this products to Windows when you could be gaining critical market share among those who will be making important changes in the information technology field over the next 20 years.
Device drivers for all IBM hardware.IBM is so stuck up about releasing hardware specs it isn't funny. Try getting databooks for the Mwave DSP and adapters--you have to sign this horrible NDA and pay all those ridiculous licence fees. We need some high-powered IBM execs to simply bring some sanity to those situations; the IBM 2780DSP is dead, and releasing the specs isn't going to reveal any top-secret information.
Cheers,
Joshua Rodd.
Let us not criticize the facial appearance, but let us criticize the code. If you don't like the appearance of Alan Cox, then please seek your revenge by writing better code than he does. (I have not examine code written by him recently, so I am not making a statement of the quality or lack thereof of his code.)
Cheers,
Joshua.
I need ritual cleansing. I spent the evening hooking up my brother's Thinkpad to the LAN here, and had to download all this Windows garbage. Have you ever installed Windows 95 Service Pack 1? <screams> As soon as I post this article, I'm going to go boot Zipslack. Anything is better than this Windows 95 prison.
xfstt also works nicely, and on Linux, it doesn't use very much memory, because it uses memory-mapped files efficiently.
My port of xfstt to OS/2 (which you can get from hobbes.nmsu.edu when my website is down) isn't as efficient because OS/2 has no easy mmap(4) facility.
TrueType fonts render so much more nicely than Adobe Type 1 fonts or Speedo fonts at low resolutions. Baskerville 8 point actually looks nice when done with TrueType. Of course, you only get this benefit if your TrueType fonts have hints in them--in other words, using a tool to convert from Type 1 to TrueType won't help. You can read more about ``hints'' on Microsoft's website; search for ``fonts''.
On the other hand, ODBC does adhere to the SQL standard in terms of the actual query language, which is nice for a change. I would have expected Microsoft to use something like FoxPro's old query language.
That said, I do not like ODBC.
Without further ado, here it is. If your system is using the Windows-1004 codepage, you should see the actual symbols. Otherwise, you'll see garbage.
é 130 - slightly shortened comma
â 131 - forte (looks like an italic `f')
ä 132 - double comma (like double quote; like `,,')
à 133 - elipsis [spelling?] (like `...')
å 134 - dagger (like a cross or a `t')
ç 135 - double dagger (has two crosses in it)
ê 136 - circumflex or caret (like `^')
ë 137 - perthousand (like a `%' but two circles on bottom)
è 138 - uppercase sh (an `S' with an upside down `^' on top of it)
ï 139 - less than (like `î 140 - uppercase osh (ligature of `O' and `E'; looks like `OE')
ì 141 - unused/unknown
Ä 142 - uppercase zh (a 'Z' with an upside down `^' on top of it)
Å 143 - unused/unknown
É 144 - unused/unknown
æ 145 - open single quote (like a ` on Unix systems)
Æ 146 - close single quote (like a ' on Unix systems)
ô 147 - open double quote (like a `` on Unix systems)
ö 148 - close double quote (like a '' on Unix systems)
ò 149 - dot; reminds me of 007 on IBM codepage 437 and friends@
(The watercooling is ugly; it involves plastic sandwich bags filled with water and closed off with a rubbish bag tie (you know, the little metal wires embedded in papaer). I used several layers of saran wrap to protect the thin water filled bags against the sharp edges of the electronic componentry on the option adapters above the CPU. This should give you an idea of just how old these option adapters are; they still have soldered pins sticking through, unlike newer (i.e. almost anything made since 1988) PC boards where the pins don't reach through the whole plastic card.)
One disadvantage is that my IBM Portable PS/2 is no longer portable at all. It is rather a quivering mass of digital protoplasm on a lab shelf.
Cheers,
Joshua (who is looking for an 80 megahertz oscillator. Gee, if I can ``underclock'' 33mHz, why not 40mHz?)
What about the fact that many of these video games are probably being bought by minors and then opened by minors without any adult's consent? Most of the kids I know who play video games wouldn't know the difference between an EULA and Europe. They probably assume that the sticker is there to keep dust out.
Finally, just what does the EULA on some new N64 games state about renting/sublicensing? Almost every commercial software EULA I've seen specifically does not permit such leasing of software. That will go over like a lead balloon with most of the people I know who play video games. They rent almost everything they play.
Cheers, Joshua (the only video game I play is Alleycat, and I play that on my 1981 IBM PC with C/GA and a TV--no emulation there!)
I wish I could change that signature. It's supposed to be a tribute to --jon. Postel, but I can't get my userpreferences-page to change the signature!<screams again>
For that matter, if you load on a machine with an Intel chip running in V86 mode, is it emulation?
Let's say that Syrix, a hypothetical company, makes an Intel x86 clone that uses microcode to do everything. Would running Intel software on that chip be emulation?
Emulation is difficult to define legally, and if it were defined strictly, it would make a lot of the normal use of software illegal.
Would running a program on a 386 or compatible chip with the DR[0-4] control registers set up for debugging mode be considered emulation?
Cheers, Joshua. (My website is down. Roadrunner only does password resets through postal mail. .)
Did you know that if you post a comment to slashdot with the hostname in uppercase (i.e, http://SLASHDOT.ORG/comments.pl), it tells you that space aliens have eaten your data?
It was especially nice to see Stallman standing up for principle. I would have loved to have been there to see the look on the politician's face as Stallman (indirectly) reprimanded him for his payback to the NY industries.
I also loved his comments about ``whom do you sue?''. I like Stallman's vision: moving to a society where we can trust each other rather than one where we each try to look out for our own interests only. And besides, when was the last time you sued Microsoft because NT crashed?
Cheers,
Joshua. (I realize my website is down. xfsttos2 is on Hobbes if you want it. Roadrunner has decided to block *all* traffic except to their stupid proxy server.)
Thanks for the link! I feel motivated once again to continue my work. Hmm, I've got this idea in the back of my head... I want to support a weird audio adapter typically used in Microchannel machines. The only driver interface that will be easy runs in DOS. I'm thinking about running a "stub" program in DOSEMU and then having my Linux audio device driver talk to that...
Cheers
Joshua (who is still laughing. I love that line about the fourth graders! I don't know why it struck me as so funny but it just did. I think watching the output of a compiler too many times does something to your brain.)
They should pass some resolutions (not that their resolutions do any good--back in the early eighties they passed a resolution that corporations should not market infant formula in Third World nations) that no member country shall tax, censor, or otherwise regulate Internet access.
Granted, it would be about as respect as their resolutions to (for example) Milosovec, the government of Rwanda, or the government of Libya. But, at least it would get a point across.
I always take comfort in the fact that in 150 years, none of the creeps around today will still be alive. That's not so long to wait. <grin>
The X TrueType fontserver for OS/2 is still there. Don't be discouraged by slow response times.
Good to see support for the Hurd is coming. For those of you aren't familiar with the Hurd (definition below), it's a kernel that is designed to handle really heavy loads. It is entirely GPL'd. Hopefully Hurd will eventually be of Solaris quality (I know, I know, it can't be done with opensource, but we've all heard that before). It will probably fill the same niche FreeBSD fills now. Hmm, Hurd servers and Linux clients... sounds nice to me.
One great thing about Hurd is that if it do get very good features, that can be folded into Linux without a hitch.
The Hurd was originally started by GNU as part of their project to create a completely free Unix system. Linux did not exist back then, and Linus was still learning his multiplication tables. (Or maybe they are smarter in Finland by that age? I don't know.)
Linux came out of nowhere and was able to make good use of the GNU toolset. It was exactly the vision that GNU had. However, they had already started work on the Hurd, and the Hurd had (or was going to have) some features Linux didn't (and doesn't) have. I know it may seem stupid to have people working on different Unix kernels-- but this is about diversity, not one-size-fits-all. If we just wanted one nice huge kernel we would use NT.
Be warned that the Hurd is not for newbies. I tried it a few weeks ago. It was neat, although it crashed a few times (probably due to my hardware configuration). Interesting things are going to happen to it.
``Hurd: `Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons'. (definition of `Hird' below)''
``Hird: `Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth' (definition of `Hurd' above)''
Yup, it's the X TrueType fontserver for OS/2 again. Just how many OS/2 users browse these forums, anyway? Happy xtruetyping!
For those of you who don't know what a transaction monitor is, it takes care of making stuff happen. So, you can define a procedure like "post comment". Then you can make your webscript for posting comments call that procedure via CICS, and CICS will make sure it gets executed. CICS takes care of errors occurring and it plugs into DB2.
Think of CICS as handling code the way DB2 handles data. Microsoft Transaction Server does the same thing but needs a lot more resources. CICS has been in use for 28 years. It's become quite popular as of late for building large websites that run on big iron.
There, I guess you know what company I like now. grin
CICS for Linux along with DB2 would almost be nirvana. (For nirvana, IBM would need to port their Java VM as well.)
My clumsy port of the X TrueType fontserver (xfstt) to OS/2
I have no personal experience with a touchscreen specifically supported by X. However, I have used (for that matter, I'm using it right now-- the IBM 8516 is staring at me and the IBM TouchSelect panel (one of this clipon jobbies) is on the shelf five feet from me)) touchscreens with X. OS/2 has excellent touchscreen drivers (for IBM's touchscreen of course). I use the XFree86 for OS/2 Xserver, which runs just fine and uses the OSMOUSE mouse subsystem--in other words, OS/2 managers the mouse.
Thus, I get a touchscreen and then run Unix programs with it. I especially like using touchscreens while using the Web.
This isn't really using a touchscreen with Linux--it's using an Xserver that has a touchscreen. But, it works (and besides, I'm an OS/2 junkie. It's a love-hate thing with me but I keep using OS/2 anyways.)
TrueType X fontserver ported to OS/2 (I told you I was an OS/2 junkie)
SCSI use to be horribly expensive. It's a lot more reasonable now (I can remember not too long ago SCSI cards costing $500). There used to also be a significant premium for SCSI disks; that's gone, as you can find general parity in pricing for EIDE and SCSI disks (although some places insist on charing more). Used SCSI equipment is often cheaper than comparable IDE equipment.
If FireWire be a better technology, then I do hope it will take over SCSI. However, it needs to be free of choking patents and the specifications need to be very open if we ever want to use it with an opensource operating system.