As it happens I taught my 70 year old mother how to use a mouse just a few months ago.
"Ok, so I move the mouse and the pointer on the screen moves and when I click the button on the mouse the "logical" button on the desktop gets clicked. Cool, what's next?"
I think the entire exercise took less than a minute.
Neither is Ford, Cheverolet or R.J. Reynolds. These are all just people's names.
General Electric isn't a "custom" name in the tradition of Exxon and Acura either and both words are dictionary words.
"Bob's Hoover Repair Shop" wouldn't be a custom name either, being a combination of a common proper noun and ordinary dictionary words.
Perhaps more to the point would be the name of an actual veterinary clinic not far from my home: "Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop."
I'd wager there isn't another Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop anywhere in the world. This phrase, made up of nothing more than a common name and common dictionary words is a legitimate trademark.
Historically there has been no problem with this concept. The problem has only arisen recently when rich and litigously agressive companies seek to claim *ownership* of a word due the their holding of a trademark.
This is pure bunk. Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop does NOT have the exclusive right to the use of the word "pet" or "shop" or "Bob's," even with regard to other veterinary clinics. Nothing in either trademark law itself or the history of litigation over trademarks implies that right.
The trademark is for "Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop" * as a whole.* As a whole it is a "custom" name.
To complicate matters using particular art may be a mark. That is, in fact, why it's called a trade*mark* rather than tradename. A common lawyer trick is to trademark a particular word displayed in a particular *way.* This appears to be what Phoenix Technologies has done. They have invented a "custom" font for the word Phoenix and trademarked it. Such a mark does *NOT* confer exclusive rights to the *word,* only the graphic in the abstract sense.
That doesn't stop the lawyers from waving around their trademark registration on the graphic and claiming exclusive rights to the word the graphic contains. Have YOU got the $20,000 and 5 years it would take to fight them? They do. In their case it's their job.
In your case it's your life ruined. Guess who wins?
Trust me, the lawyers ( at least the good ones, there are crappy lawyers who actually haven't a clue about legal philosophy. Go figure) are perfectly aware of all of this. They know they don't necessarily have a case ( in this instance they might because both companies deal with computer software) but take these threatening tactics anyway. Their company hired them to trample the opposition and that's what they do.
It isn't the fault of trademark law.
If anything it's the fault of the damned Judges, part of whose job is to throw out obviously bullshit complaints, or at least deal with them in a fairly summary fashion. Nowadays pretty much every doofey complaint gets the full dog and pony show and just the pretrial fillings alone in such a case are enough to break the average Joe.
who only got her first computer this year uses my Mandrake/KDE box right alongside her own Mac without any problems. In fact she prefers it because of the wide range of software freely available for her to use and she's asked me to build her one.
It's got all the pretty icons, buttons, clicky things the Mac does. They work just as well. They're just as "intuitive" to her and the Linux box actually crashes a bit less often than her Mac.
It lacks a bit of "fit and finish." Geeks seem to always leave off at the "rubbing out the finish endlessly" stage, but KDE has made particular strides along that line recently and don't look to be slowing down.
Open Source software is already perfectly acceptable to "Joe User." There's nothing "geekier" about Kword than there is about MS Word.
This is not the same thing as being accepted however. Although the press still seems to take cracks at the "geekiness" of OSS those cracks are almost always a couple years out of date and tends to harp on the CLI even though that's a none issue ( and the same press praises Apple for putting the command line back. Go figure). They effect the perceptions of said "Joe User" though.
Given time though I'll bet you anything that in the future the idea of a propriatary OS or WP will seem just plain doofey to the average Joe. Times change and perceptions change and OSS just keeps getting better and better without ever "forcing" expensive and pointless updates. Schools are starting to use it and as Apple proved getting it into the schools creates a user base. That's why Bill will send Steve to "Joe Blow Elementary School," or even go himself.
You never saw Jack Welch going there because they used Phillips lightbulbs instead of GE.
Here's a test you can do if you're so inclined. Take two Windows boxen and a KDE box and load up Word/Kword/OOWord in one of each. Take an average Joe and set them down to play with each. After he's played around for an hour or so ask him which one he wants, this one for $400 or one of the other two for free? Bet you the only functional difference he sees between the three is the price.
Ok, what's the catch with my mom? *I* installed the Linux. Not her.
at least in the whole, with the author's premise, although I do believe the background philosophy to be sound. There are certainly cases where it is not to the advantage of the code *producer* to open their code.
However, those that claim the availability of code is worthless to 99% of the users are missing a key point. It isn't important, per se, that certain code is available to *me.* It is of great importance, however, in certain cases, that source *be* available to all comers.
I've never hacked a kernel and have given the code nothing more than a cursory glance out of pure curiosity. However, I *personally* benifit from the code being openly available nonetheless.
The same goes for emacs and vi. I use both. I've never so much as glanced at the code for either, even out of curiostiy, but I *personally* benifit from all the people who *have* looked at the code and contributed. I benfit from the features they add, from the bugs they squash and the support they provide.
What's more it *is* a benifit just to know that if the projects are ever abandoned I *can* get the code myself and learn my way about it.
You may not fix your own car, may in fact be mechanically "all thumbs," and yet *you* derive great benifit from the fact the Chilton publishes freely available workshop manuals.
Open Source is just such a workshop manual and its availability always benifits the greater populace of users.
A dyslexic typing without the benifit of a spell checker is like a highwire walker performing without the benifit of a net.
You get brownie points for being the only one to catch that one. Everyone else "piled on" my incorrect typing of "it's," which since I'm well aware of the differences was a mistake merely on the order of using the wrong form of brace accidentally.
Oddly enough, I did look it up first. In the context of performing *a service*, which was the issue at hand, for remuneration I was correct, although I could have formed my sentence better to make that clear. ( To be obliging is to gift one's services. Same verb, different declention)
As for the history of the meaning of money the page you refer to is indeed the consensus, at least as far as it goes. There are those that feel that other factors played a roll however, including the fact that words with similar sounds were already in use to denote exchange thus reinforcing the usage. Thus moneta is the true root of the word money, but munus influenced it to become so. This often happens with sound alikes, particularly in polyglot languages like English. Ass and Arse come to mind.
As the long line of people pointing that out ( as I predicted) attests too.
I've also been known to mistype all sorts of other things in my C code. Just because you miss a curely brace doesn't mean you don't know it's not supposed to be there and even with full time professional editors and proof readers like mistakes make it into every book.
By the way, I did look up ellipsis. Mine contain the proper spaces and if you refer to your Strunk and White you'll find that three is the proper number.
Also, as in an above post, the ellipsis is used to replace letters not actually printed, such as "F***". It is typographically incorrect to include spaces in such use.
is a form of theft, just for the sake of argument, the term 'piracy' would still not apply. The correct term would be, oddly enough: theft.
Nobody has jumped aboard your property, not even your landbound property, cutlass firmly clasped in gnashing teeth, and robbed, burned, pillaged, raped, or otherwise commited various violent felonius acts.
Nobody 'pirates' an apple from a street vendor. They steal it. Period.
Of course that's just for the sake of argument. There is a difference between a crime and a tort. That's why most countries have a distinct division in the courts between wrongs that are criminal and wrongs that are civil.
For wrongs that are criminal you owe the state a penalty, most often taken as incarceration. For wrongs that are civil you owe the wronged party money. You owe the state nothing. Note that Danish party feeling they have been wronged threaten a civil suit, not arrest. The simple reason for this is that *nothing was stolen.*
They may well have been deprived of a right, but they were NOT robbed.
Why, because in any civilized society such wrongs are not criminal.
When you infringe on a copyright you invoke a debt to the copyright holder. That's all, just a debt. You have taken nothing from them, you have deprived them of nothing other than monies which *should* have been due to them. You did not raid their cash box and remove funds from it.
Ethically, morally and legally you have done nothing worse than not pay your phone bill. At least by the legal tradition prevailing in most countries.
When you take the services of the phone company and do not pay they have the right to seek redress. That redress is generally limited to the *actual debt* and perhaps a bit for expenses. The offense isn't even a tort ( such as wrongful death). It's just an unpaid debt. Period. There are legal limitations on the collection of unpaid debts, as there should be.
Of course in their current religous zeal to protect certain special interests who, by law, don't actually deserve such protection, the American Congress had recently made various aspects of copyright and patent violation actual crimes. This turns all of legal history and philosophy on its head and is, well, criminal.
the very source you cite, which is also my default source, actually does define Open Source. Go figure.
I use the ellipsis quite apppropriately in my header, but perhaps less so in the body. A hyphen may be more appropriate in these instances, although it implies a bit more emphasis than I intend, aiming for mere dramatic pause as an orator might. I can see where that might prove annoying in a world that seems to have abandoned the comma.
But then I'm also one of those weird people who thinks that Python's use of whitespace is the proper way to go about things.
of "Open Source" in a dictionary, making the exercise pointless, he is likely to find many other words in there.
For instance, after modifying the code his firm is indeed likely to renumerate it, i.e., give it a different version number.
For doing this his firm will expect to be *remunerated.* It's from the Latin remuneratus, derived from munis, from which we also derive the English words "munificent" and even "money."
( Munis is a gift, to remunerate is to *re*gift, i.e., effect an exchange)
This note brought to you by the ever hated Slashdot Lexical Patrol ( also known as SLaP), who believes that language is form of code and believes code should be well formed, it's terminology and functions properly called and invoked and even. ..gasp, beautiful.
Our patron saint is William Strunk, Jr., along with his acolyte E.B. White and our Demigods include such figures as Gibbon, Thoreau, Conrad ( who managed in a "foriegn" language no less), Yeats, Voltaire and Kipling ( The OS booted up like thunder!).
Just as Knuth is ( and should be) venerated, so should geeks venerate and study the "code" of these honored figures.
We all write faulty code at times. It's no shame to have to debug and reversion. ..or even have our code corrected by an outside party if that's what it takes to make beautiful code.
In fact, I rather imagine that some of the more ironically inclined are about to take a hearty whack at this missive itself.
A lexical Nazi. Grammar is the art of *combining* multiple words into meaningful sentences. It has nothing at all to do with the meaning of indivdual words.
Get it right you illiterate clod.
(Note for the humor impaired, or those with an intellect of the lower sort that can rust irony at 100 paces, this post *is* ironic)
A lexical Nazi. Grammar is the art of *combining* words to form meaningful sentences and has nothing to do with the definitions and meanings of individual words.
What makes the "Homeland Security Bill" particularly offensive, *particularly* to those who are not either American citizens and/or American residents, is that it, in essence, claims jurisdiction over everyone in the world, without warrant or any sort of due process. "Suspicion" is now worse than actually and overtly commiting a crime.
Merely being a foriegn citizen inside the borders of your own country and obeying it's laws is no excuse.
I termed FORTRAN "native" to the PDP-8 ( and I suppose it would only be correct to term the appropriate assembler "native").
It would be more correct to merely note that FORTRAN was the first 'higher' language for which a compliler was available.
I've at least seen FOCAL. I've *never* seen BASIC on a PDP-8 ( thank God), but my experinece with the machine was strictly in a hard science academic setting where FORTRAN was King.
Don't get me wrong though. I'm no FORTRAN zealot. I'm an APL zealot who always resented the forced move from one to the other.
KFG
Re:Because, as Tom Lehrer, formerly of Harvard, no
on
Bringing Back the PDP8
·
· Score: 2
Yes, but he's bicoastal, just as in his UCB days. His home remains in Mass. and last I knew he still maintained "ties" with Harvard ( but then one of the problems with becoming an old fart is that "last I knew" turns out to be about 1980 which you think of as "just a while ago").
I could recall this wrong, but I think at one point he was, at least officially, teaching at Harvard, MIT and UCB all at the same time.
( And note that I make no claims to know the man, I just know several people who know/knew him)
an object may have a proper noun all to itself and still retain membership in a larger general class.
Just as a "Seacock" and a "Butterfly," despite having proper nouns of their own are, nonetheless, still just valves.
Draw the Venn diagram, you'll figure out the set/subset relationship eventually.
In short, I have just as many thumbs as I have "pinkies."
KFG
Re:Because, as Tom Lehrer, formerly of Harvard, no
on
Bringing Back the PDP8
·
· Score: 2
Tom has always been a *student* of Ha'vard, Tom's spelling, ( as has been most of my family, I'm the "black sheep" and went to Bard), but he spent some years teaching at MIT. He also spent some time teaching at UC Berkeley, where he not only taught math but. ..musical theater.
I chose to highlight the MIT link because of their infamous connection to the PDP line of computers.
And yes, he's still at Ha'vard.
KFG
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but . . .
on
Bringing Back the PDP8
·
· Score: 2
the upgraded CoCo was called. . . a Mac. You can still buy 6800 series chips, although you have to hunt around a bit. They're still very usful for a lot of things.
On the other hand the venerable Z80 not only has never gone out of production but is being updated just as you suggest:
why disdain the past? Who knows, maybe your grandma knew something about sucking eggs that you don't.
If nothing else the guy is obviously having fun. Believe it or not when you get to be Eleventy years old your own hobby just might turn out to be keeping 16 bit Intel stuff alive.
I mean like, why ride skateboards when we have bicycles now? Why, because you *want* to.
KFG
W95 and DOS will not expire at the end of the year
on
Bringing Back the PDP8
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Only official support for them will. DOS will never 'expire.' It's done. Of course you can't buy MS-DOS anymore, but there's always DR-DOS and FreeD0S, both still supported.
W95/98, on the other hand, will actually expire some years in the future. I discovered this on a reinstall that went bad. Windows simply refused to install. Having a Gateway at the time I called tech support and the issue was tracked down to a buggy BIOS (gotta watch for those updates) that had reset my system clock to a future time.
"Ah, there's your problem. Windows has a 30 year time bomb built in so it thinks it's expired."
Ummmmmm, good to know. I guess that's how long we've got to port all our favorite W95/98 games to Linux ( or maybe Plan 9).
Slashdot Mirror
As it happens I taught my 70 year old mother how to use a mouse just a few months ago.
"Ok, so I move the mouse and the pointer on the screen moves and when I click the button on the mouse the "logical" button on the desktop gets clicked. Cool, what's next?"
I think the entire exercise took less than a minute.
Perhaps *your* mom is a little slow?
KFG
Neither is Ford, Cheverolet or R.J. Reynolds. These are all just people's names.
General Electric isn't a "custom" name in the tradition of Exxon and Acura either and both words are dictionary words.
"Bob's Hoover Repair Shop" wouldn't be a custom name either, being a combination of a common proper noun and ordinary dictionary words.
Perhaps more to the point would be the name of an actual veterinary clinic not far from my home: "Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop."
I'd wager there isn't another Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop anywhere in the world. This phrase, made up of nothing more than a common name and common dictionary words is a legitimate trademark.
Historically there has been no problem with this concept. The problem has only arisen recently when rich and litigously agressive companies seek to claim *ownership* of a word due the their holding of a trademark.
This is pure bunk. Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop does NOT have the exclusive right to the use of the word "pet" or "shop" or "Bob's," even with regard to other veterinary clinics. Nothing in either trademark law itself or the history of litigation over trademarks implies that right.
The trademark is for "Honest Bob's Pet Repair Shop" * as a whole.* As a whole it is a "custom" name.
To complicate matters using particular art may be a mark. That is, in fact, why it's called a trade*mark* rather than tradename. A common lawyer trick is to trademark a particular word displayed in a particular *way.* This appears to be what Phoenix Technologies has done. They have invented a "custom" font for the word Phoenix and trademarked it. Such a mark does *NOT* confer exclusive rights to the *word,* only the graphic in the abstract sense.
That doesn't stop the lawyers from waving around their trademark registration on the graphic and claiming exclusive rights to the word the graphic contains. Have YOU got the $20,000 and 5 years it would take to fight them? They do. In their case it's their job.
In your case it's your life ruined. Guess who wins?
Trust me, the lawyers ( at least the good ones, there are crappy lawyers who actually haven't a clue about legal philosophy. Go figure) are perfectly aware of all of this. They know they don't necessarily have a case ( in this instance they might because both companies deal with computer software) but take these threatening tactics anyway. Their company hired them to trample the opposition and that's what they do.
It isn't the fault of trademark law.
If anything it's the fault of the damned Judges, part of whose job is to throw out obviously bullshit complaints, or at least deal with them in a fairly summary fashion. Nowadays pretty much every doofey complaint gets the full dog and pony show and just the pretrial fillings alone in such a case are enough to break the average Joe.
KFG
who only got her first computer this year uses my Mandrake/KDE box right alongside her own Mac without any problems. In fact she prefers it because of the wide range of software freely available for her to use and she's asked me to build her one.
It's got all the pretty icons, buttons, clicky things the Mac does. They work just as well. They're just as "intuitive" to her and the Linux box actually crashes a bit less often than her Mac.
It lacks a bit of "fit and finish." Geeks seem to always leave off at the "rubbing out the finish endlessly" stage, but KDE has made particular strides along that line recently and don't look to be slowing down.
Open Source software is already perfectly acceptable to "Joe User." There's nothing "geekier" about Kword than there is about MS Word.
This is not the same thing as being accepted however. Although the press still seems to take cracks at the "geekiness" of OSS those cracks are almost always a couple years out of date and tends to harp on the CLI even though that's a none issue ( and the same press praises Apple for putting the command line back. Go figure). They effect the perceptions of said "Joe User" though.
Given time though I'll bet you anything that in the future the idea of a propriatary OS or WP will seem just plain doofey to the average Joe. Times change and perceptions change and OSS just keeps getting better and better without ever "forcing" expensive and pointless updates. Schools are starting to use it and as Apple proved getting it into the schools creates a user base. That's why Bill will send Steve to "Joe Blow Elementary School," or even go himself.
You never saw Jack Welch going there because they used Phillips lightbulbs instead of GE.
Here's a test you can do if you're so inclined. Take two Windows boxen and a KDE box and load up Word/Kword/OOWord in one of each. Take an average Joe and set them down to play with each. After he's played around for an hour or so ask him which one he wants, this one for $400 or one of the other two for free? Bet you the only functional difference he sees between the three is the price.
Ok, what's the catch with my mom? *I* installed the Linux. Not her.
But then she didn't install her Mac OS either.
KFG
at least in the whole, with the author's premise, although I do believe the background philosophy to be sound. There are certainly cases where it is not to the advantage of the code *producer* to open their code.
However, those that claim the availability of code is worthless to 99% of the users are missing a key point. It isn't important, per se, that certain code is available to *me.* It is of great importance, however, in certain cases, that source *be* available to all comers.
I've never hacked a kernel and have given the code nothing more than a cursory glance out of pure curiosity. However, I *personally* benifit from the code being openly available nonetheless.
The same goes for emacs and vi. I use both. I've never so much as glanced at the code for either, even out of curiostiy, but I *personally* benifit from all the people who *have* looked at the code and contributed. I benfit from the features they add, from the bugs they squash and the support they provide.
What's more it *is* a benifit just to know that if the projects are ever abandoned I *can* get the code myself and learn my way about it.
You may not fix your own car, may in fact be mechanically "all thumbs," and yet *you* derive great benifit from the fact the Chilton publishes freely available workshop manuals.
Open Source is just such a workshop manual and its availability always benifits the greater populace of users.
The code producer is another story.
KFG
A dyslexic typing without the benifit of a spell checker is like a highwire walker performing without the benifit of a net.
You get brownie points for being the only one to catch that one. Everyone else "piled on" my incorrect typing of "it's," which since I'm well aware of the differences was a mistake merely on the order of using the wrong form of brace accidentally.
KFG
Oddly enough, I did look it up first. In the context of performing *a service*, which was the issue at hand, for remuneration I was correct, although I could have formed my sentence better to make that clear. ( To be obliging is to gift one's services. Same verb, different declention)
As for the history of the meaning of money the page you refer to is indeed the consensus, at least as far as it goes. There are those that feel that other factors played a roll however, including the fact that words with similar sounds were already in use to denote exchange thus reinforcing the usage. Thus moneta is the true root of the word money, but munus influenced it to become so. This often happens with sound alikes, particularly in polyglot languages like English. Ass and Arse come to mind.
KFG
As the long line of people pointing that out ( as I predicted) attests too.
I've also been known to mistype all sorts of other things in my C code. Just because you miss a curely brace doesn't mean you don't know it's not supposed to be there and even with full time professional editors and proof readers like mistakes make it into every book.
By the way, I did look up ellipsis. Mine contain the proper spaces and if you refer to your Strunk and White you'll find that three is the proper number.
Also, as in an above post, the ellipsis is used to replace letters not actually printed, such as "F***". It is typographically incorrect to include spaces in such use.
KFG
is a form of theft, just for the sake of argument, the term 'piracy' would still not apply. The correct term would be, oddly enough: theft.
Nobody has jumped aboard your property, not even your landbound property, cutlass firmly clasped in gnashing teeth, and robbed, burned, pillaged, raped, or otherwise commited various violent felonius acts.
Nobody 'pirates' an apple from a street vendor. They steal it. Period.
Of course that's just for the sake of argument. There is a difference between a crime and a tort. That's why most countries have a distinct division in the courts between wrongs that are criminal and wrongs that are civil.
For wrongs that are criminal you owe the state a penalty, most often taken as incarceration. For wrongs that are civil you owe the wronged party money. You owe the state nothing. Note that Danish party feeling they have been wronged threaten a civil suit, not arrest. The simple reason for this is that *nothing was stolen.*
They may well have been deprived of a right, but they were NOT robbed.
Why, because in any civilized society such wrongs are not criminal.
When you infringe on a copyright you invoke a debt to the copyright holder. That's all, just a debt. You have taken nothing from them, you have deprived them of nothing other than monies which *should* have been due to them. You did not raid their cash box and remove funds from it.
Ethically, morally and legally you have done nothing worse than not pay your phone bill. At least by the legal tradition prevailing in most countries.
When you take the services of the phone company and do not pay they have the right to seek redress. That redress is generally limited to the *actual debt* and perhaps a bit for expenses. The offense isn't even a tort ( such as wrongful death). It's just an unpaid debt. Period. There are legal limitations on the collection of unpaid debts, as there should be.
Of course in their current religous zeal to protect certain special interests who, by law, don't actually deserve such protection, the American Congress had recently made various aspects of copyright and patent violation actual crimes. This turns all of legal history and philosophy on its head and is, well, criminal.
KFG
Or debugger, as the case may be.
KFG
the correct term for the collection of asterisks replacing letters is: ellipsis.
i s
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ellips
KFG
the very source you cite, which is also my default source, actually does define Open Source. Go figure.
I use the ellipsis quite apppropriately in my header, but perhaps less so in the body. A hyphen may be more appropriate in these instances, although it implies a bit more emphasis than I intend, aiming for mere dramatic pause as an orator might. I can see where that might prove annoying in a world that seems to have abandoned the comma.
But then I'm also one of those weird people who thinks that Python's use of whitespace is the proper way to go about things.
I'll try to restrain myself in future.
KFG
of "Open Source" in a dictionary, making the exercise pointless, he is likely to find many other words in there.
.gasp, beautiful.
.or even have our code corrected by an outside party if that's what it takes to make beautiful code.
For instance, after modifying the code his firm is indeed likely to renumerate it, i.e., give it a different version number.
For doing this his firm will expect to be *remunerated.* It's from the Latin remuneratus, derived from munis, from which we also derive the English words "munificent" and even "money."
( Munis is a gift, to remunerate is to *re*gift, i.e., effect an exchange)
This note brought to you by the ever hated Slashdot Lexical Patrol ( also known as SLaP), who believes that language is form of code and believes code should be well formed, it's terminology and functions properly called and invoked and even. .
Our patron saint is William Strunk, Jr., along with his acolyte E.B. White and our Demigods include such figures as Gibbon, Thoreau, Conrad ( who managed in a "foriegn" language no less), Yeats, Voltaire and Kipling ( The OS booted up like thunder!).
Just as Knuth is ( and should be) venerated, so should geeks venerate and study the "code" of these honored figures.
We all write faulty code at times. It's no shame to have to debug and reversion. .
In fact, I rather imagine that some of the more ironically inclined are about to take a hearty whack at this missive itself.
KFG
A lexical Nazi. Grammar is the art of *combining* multiple words into meaningful sentences. It has nothing at all to do with the meaning of indivdual words.
Get it right you illiterate clod.
(Note for the humor impaired, or those with an intellect of the lower sort that can rust irony at 100 paces, this post *is* ironic)
A lexical Nazi. Grammar is the art of *combining* words to form meaningful sentences and has nothing to do with the definitions and meanings of individual words.
Get it right you illiterate clod.
KFG
listening to that stupid song, haven't you?
KFG
What makes the "Homeland Security Bill" particularly offensive, *particularly* to those who are not either American citizens and/or American residents, is that it, in essence, claims jurisdiction over everyone in the world, without warrant or any sort of due process. "Suspicion" is now worse than actually and overtly commiting a crime.
Merely being a foriegn citizen inside the borders of your own country and obeying it's laws is no excuse.
It's a Brave New World.
KFG
I termed FORTRAN "native" to the PDP-8 ( and I suppose it would only be correct to term the appropriate assembler "native").
It would be more correct to merely note that FORTRAN was the first 'higher' language for which a compliler was available.
I've at least seen FOCAL. I've *never* seen BASIC on a PDP-8 ( thank God), but my experinece with the machine was strictly in a hard science academic setting where FORTRAN was King.
Don't get me wrong though. I'm no FORTRAN zealot. I'm an APL zealot who always resented the forced move from one to the other.
KFG
Yes, but he's bicoastal, just as in his UCB days. His home remains in Mass. and last I knew he still maintained "ties" with Harvard ( but then one of the problems with becoming an old fart is that "last I knew" turns out to be about 1980 which you think of as "just a while ago").
I could recall this wrong, but I think at one point he was, at least officially, teaching at Harvard, MIT and UCB all at the same time.
( And note that I make no claims to know the man, I just know several people who know/knew him)
KFG
Chess, Checkers and Go, even though "better" games have been available for thousands of years.
And by the way, Infocom rulz d00d!
KFG
an object may have a proper noun all to itself and still retain membership in a larger general class.
Just as a "Seacock" and a "Butterfly," despite having proper nouns of their own are, nonetheless, still just valves.
Draw the Venn diagram, you'll figure out the set/subset relationship eventually.
In short, I have just as many thumbs as I have "pinkies."
KFG
Tom has always been a *student* of Ha'vard, Tom's spelling, ( as has been most of my family, I'm the "black sheep" and went to Bard), but he spent some years teaching at MIT. He also spent some time teaching at UC Berkeley, where he not only taught math but. . .musical theater.
I chose to highlight the MIT link because of their infamous connection to the PDP line of computers.
And yes, he's still at Ha'vard.
KFG
the upgraded CoCo was called. . . a Mac. You can still buy 6800 series chips, although you have to hunt around a bit. They're still very usful for a lot of things.
A C: www.ebnonline.com/story/chipwire/OEG20000927S0018+ z80+chips&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
On the other hand the venerable Z80 not only has never gone out of production but is being updated just as you suggest:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:vPeP4Ne7p1
There are an awful lot of uses for small, fast, cool running, general purpose and cheap as penny candy chips.
"Charles Luther" in "Runaway" understood this full well when he used 8088's to power his nefarious robotic killing machines.
KFG
why disdain the past? Who knows, maybe your grandma knew something about sucking eggs that you don't.
If nothing else the guy is obviously having fun. Believe it or not when you get to be Eleventy years old your own hobby just might turn out to be keeping 16 bit Intel stuff alive.
I mean like, why ride skateboards when we have bicycles now? Why, because you *want* to.
KFG
Only official support for them will. DOS will never 'expire.' It's done. Of course you can't buy MS-DOS anymore, but there's always DR-DOS and FreeD0S, both still supported.
W95/98, on the other hand, will actually expire some years in the future. I discovered this on a reinstall that went bad. Windows simply refused to install. Having a Gateway at the time I called tech support and the issue was tracked down to a buggy BIOS (gotta watch for those updates) that had reset my system clock to a future time.
"Ah, there's your problem. Windows has a 30 year time bomb built in so it thinks it's expired."
Ummmmmm, good to know. I guess that's how long we've got to port all our favorite W95/98 games to Linux ( or maybe Plan 9).
KFG
C compiler indeed.The PDP-8 was natively a FORTRAN machine. Apps can be developed perfectly well in FORTRAN. . . and the coolness factor is higher.
.
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u se um.html
King Arthur: Noble FORTRAN compiler, although you are a dead language. .
FORTRAN compiler: I'm not dead yet sire.
King Arthur: Although you are a mortally wounded language. . .
FORTRAN compiler: Actually sire I'm feeling a bit of all right.
Again, C compiler indeed. Gag my PDP-8 with a spoon. ( Actually, that would be 'anatomically' possible)
Here's an interesting little page on the history of the PDP-8 OS's and languages:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/history.htm
And here's an interesting computer history page with several FORTRAN links ( as well as UNIX and C links):
http://www.fortran-2000.com/ArnaudRecipes/CompM
C compiler. . . phbbbbbt!
KFG