$300 is far beyond anything I can spend on a single piece of software at home. I use such software at work where we have a large software budget, but unless people at home are running home businesses, I doubt they're very willing to spend that kind of money on software, either. Especially these days.
Guess why I tend to use free software or older version of software I find on eBay? Answer: cost.
Unisys OS2200 is better -- it supports file and directory "cycling" which is roughly similar to versioning, but you can also use a directory file ("program file") to store files ("elements") that are never actually delated (only marked as such) until the directory is packed. That means you can have dozens of older versions saved, but they don't clutter up your directory displays unless you choose to see them.:-)
(1) Autosave changes the original source file. Editors which save their internal editing context don't -- they maintain their own working copy of the editing workspace(s) independently of the target source files. That way, a user doesn't have to actually modify their original file in order to maintain the integrity of the editing environment in case of a power outage.
Autosave is a simplistic alternative. An editor like @UEDIT maintains all edited files, search strings, change strings, and other internal environment variables including command history. When you recover, you get it *ALL* back.
Real text editors will recover gracefully from such situations.:-)
(I'm think along the lines of @UEDIT on OS2200 which saves its entire virtual memory state to disk periodically and can recover it with ease at the next startup, or the old EDT editor on VMS which saved the commands one entered and could replay them when a recovery was specified).
I'm surprised more text editors don't have a similar feature. I think vim does, tho...?
I have a WRT54G v8 here as well, and I don't think I've had to reboot the thing since around the first of the year (2008). Very stable, works just fine with Linux, WinXP, Win2k, Win95 OSR2, OS/2 Warp 4, eCS, and my Nokia 770's running OS2006. w00t!:-)
Something along the lines of XXyyy01, XXyyy02, where XX is a two-character code for the computer center in which the box physically resides, yyy is the basic function of the box, and 01, 02 are numbers to describe each unique server in each location/category. Zones on Solaris servers are indicated with -Zn where n is the zone number.
Just FWIW: Palmname works in the latest version of the GVM on my 770 running stock OS2006, but you have to put a few spaces in front of the name to "center" the name properly (there's something funky in the way GVM stores it).
It worked well enough to allow my copy of DateBk3 to be registered in GVM under my name.
Depends on the context. It isn't that uncommon for me to add a comment like the following to your example:
{ } i++;// Increment status line counter
which can really be helpful if the amount of code in brackets is somewhat large. It might not always be obvious what "i" is to a support programmer not familiar with that portion of the codebase.
I've worked on code that was written 30 years in the past (no, I'm not kidding -- FIELDATA FORTRAN V is still in use here as well as at one of my former places of employment), and when code is that old the original designers are often retired or dead. You're on your own, and if the project doesn't have a good set of programmer docs for each source module, the source code might be all the documentation you have.
It isn't uncommon for me to spend a paragraph at the start of a complex routine explaining WHAT the routine is doing and (in some cases) WHY the routine does it that way if it's using a novel or nonstandard approach to the problem. Such comments can save you and your teammates (or successors) a lot of headaches in the long run, and I can think of several occasions where such comments have been a lifesaver at three in the morning when I'm on coverage trying to walk my way through a production issue...
Sure, but Amazon can keep on using the technique regardless, so it's not like the way they run their site is at risk here. This doesn't impact Amazon's core business either way.
It's the (in)ability for OTHER sites to use the patented methods and tech that's at risk.
I beg to differ. Piracy didn't kill music. The large distribution conglomerates who dominate the Top 40 playlists and who promote the current popular tripe over actual original musical art killed music.
There are always exceptions, but the internet and the free passing of music is perhaps it's only hope for the future, NOT its undoing.
The music industry is very similar to the software industry in that the creation of a few dominant distributors tends to create crap, not quality. Such distributors are far more interested in profits than the end product.:-(
When Dave Cutler and others were hired by Microsoft from DEC, they effectively rewrote the NT kernel based on things they'd learned with VMS.
When IBM took control of the 16-bit OS/2 after the split, they rewrote the 32-bit kernel from scratch and created the WPS, the MVDM subsystem, and other elements that make OS/2 2.x and later unique on their own.
One of the few things from Microsoft which survives in OS/2 to this day is HPFS, a decent enough filesystem for its time, as well as various DOSlike artifacts like drive letters and so on.
And one of the nails in OS/2's coffin was that there was no TCP/IP in the base version of Warp; a user had to spend $100 extra on "Warp Connect" to get a net connection.
Not really.
OS/2 Warp 3 had dial-up networking (SLIP and PPP) in the base version. If you connected to the internet with a modem, as most people did at the time, you were just fine with the base version.
OS/2 Warp Connect was indeed needed for ethernet connectivity, but that was something which was *quite* rare for a home user at the time (DSL modems and other similar things didn't arrive until after the release of Warp 4 which had ethernet support out of the box, and very few home users had multi-box LANs in the early 1990's).
Please explain. Windows 95 OSR2 was already being bundled with FAT32 support on most x86 machines by late 1996, Windows 95 OSR2.1 added USB support in early 1997, and Windows 95 OSR2.5 added Internet Explorer 4.01 integration in 1998 before Win98's release.
Yes, Win98 came with all of those things, but most of those features (including the best one, FAT32) had already been available on any PC running OEM Windows 95 (which meant most Win95 PCs) for quite a while...
OS/2 Warp 3 was released in 1994 with IBM's Internet Explorer and SLIP dial-up networking (later updated to PPP), so there were other nice ways of getting on the internet. I was doing it quite often at the time.:-)
Better backwards compatibility? I know OS2 ran DOS/Windows in a VM (which is rather heavy handed) but it did diddely squat for hardware drivers.
You forget about Dual Booting in a FAT partition, and also about using IBM's Boot Manager to create a multi-OS environment, something Windows amde no provision for whatsoever. OS/2 was very well behaved in that regard, and even OS/2 2.0 could be configured to boot from a logical drive in an extended partition if need be.
Never thought much of Program Manager but I would hardly call what OS/2 and UNIX had back then better. REXX was sort of cool and the Unix command line was better thought out, but that was about it.
Remember that IBM's WorkPlace Shell was released before NT came out, so NT's Program Manager was competing against the WPS. OS/2 1.x's interface was nothing to write home about, but even the early WPS incarnations in OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 were pretty slick once you got used to them.
Using separate mouse buttons for icon selection and drag-and-drop action weren't even unique to the WPS -- GeoManager did a similar thing in GeoWorks Emsemble somewhat earlier.
So Windows '95 was indeed a high point for Microsoft. They were the first to deliver a stable 32-bit-ish graphical OS to Intel PCs. And it was the first OS to integrate well enough with DOS to replace it. Windows 3.1 was more of a graphical shell than an operating system. Windows '95 is why we use the term "wintel" and it is why IBM and OS/2 did not win the operating system wars.
OS/2 2.0 was released in 1992, had better support for juggling DOS programs inside VDMs than Windows 95 did, and also came with a Dual Boot installation option so you could install on a FAT partition and boot to DOS if you needed 100% compatibility (which is what Windows 95 does in compatibility mode). Note that this Dual Boot mode is different from multibooting using IBM's Boot Manager -- a Dual Boot machine literally rewrote the boot sector on the fly when switching back and forth, and it hibernated the OS/2 environment while the DOS program was running. Just like Windows 95 did.
IBM's 32-bit Graphical OS/2 offering predated Win95 by over three years.:-)
I agree that Win95 drove many nails in OS/2's coffin, but mainly because of Microsoft's ability to market Chicago as vaporware and NOT because it was released earlier than other viable solutions.
W.r.t. the PPro -- PC companies like Micron were offering PPro systems as high-end consumer desktops bundled with Win95 OSR2 in late 1996 -- see their Millenia Pro and Pro2 lines. I still have one.
Also, the 6000-series Compaq Deskpro line started out as a PPro line running Windows 95, not NT. PPros were not quite as server-bound as people today would have us believe. Even IBM's IntelliStation line had PPro offerings (model 6899), although those came with NT in their stock configuration instead of Win9x.
None of the new languages are useful in legacy environments unless someone ports compilers for those languages, so programmers in those environments tend to have a different definition of "useful" than Linux developers.:-)
However, it all comes down to the same things: Will the language do what I want? Do I already know it or can I easily learn it? If I end up leaving, is it supportable by someone else? Etc.
I built my main desktop box in November 1996 (Micron Millenia Pro2 Plus, a PPro/200 w/64MB since expanded to 192MB).
It runs Firefox 1.5.0.12 under Warp 4 FP15 just fine, and dual-boots to Win95 OSR2 which also runs Firefox 1.5.0.12 just fine. Multitasking under Warp is much snoother, of course, but both platforms are able to play music, handle javascript, handle most Firefox plugins, run Java programs, and even do Flash stuff as long as it isn't too CPU-intensive (YouTube is not an option, sadly). Thunderbird 1.5.0.xx also runs just fine, albeit a little slowly at startup time.
Such hardware is also easily to run lightweight Linux distros like Puppy 2/3/4, DSL, Austrami, Feather Linux, and others. Remember that Mandake 8.2 running KDE 2.2 was designed to run on such boxes, and it was hardly a light distro at the time.
The internet, useless on such hardware? Not really, as long as you don't do video.:-)
Nah, I was a Stereo Shell user back then. Of course, I've seen the light now thanks to Midnight Commander, but as I recall Norton's original didn't really do things like FTP very well.:-)
The decline of Norton is a sad story. I remember when Norton's Disk Doctor for DOS was cool, and when it was fun to watch Speedisk shuffle the clusters on your FAT filesystem all around. And it actually worked as advertised!:-)
What was the last good version? Norton Utilities for DOS 6.01?
Slashdot Mirror
$300 is far beyond anything I can spend on a single piece of software at home. I use such software at work where we have a large software budget, but unless people at home are running home businesses, I doubt they're very willing to spend that kind of money on software, either. Especially these days.
Guess why I tend to use free software or older version of software I find on eBay? Answer: cost.
Unisys OS2200 is better -- it supports file and directory "cycling" which is roughly similar to versioning, but you can also use a directory file ("program file") to store files ("elements") that are never actually delated (only marked as such) until the directory is packed. That means you can have dozens of older versions saved, but they don't clutter up your directory displays unless you choose to see them. :-)
To address your points one at a time:
(1) Autosave changes the original source file. Editors which save their internal editing context don't -- they maintain their own working copy of the editing workspace(s) independently of the target source files. That way, a user doesn't have to actually modify their original file in order to maintain the integrity of the editing environment in case of a power outage.
Autosave is a simplistic alternative. An editor like @UEDIT maintains all edited files, search strings, change strings, and other internal environment variables including command history. When you recover, you get it *ALL* back.
(2) Probably true. :-)
Real text editors will recover gracefully from such situations. :-)
(I'm think along the lines of @UEDIT on OS2200 which saves its entire virtual memory state to disk periodically and can recover it with ease at the next startup, or the old EDT editor on VMS which saved the commands one entered and could replay them when a recovery was specified).
I'm surprised more text editors don't have a similar feature. I think vim does, tho...?
I have a WRT54G v8 here as well, and I don't think I've had to reboot the thing since around the first of the year (2008). Very stable, works just fine with Linux, WinXP, Win2k, Win95 OSR2, OS/2 Warp 4, eCS, and my Nokia 770's running OS2006. w00t! :-)
The same thing has been happening in the general software development world for 20+ years. :-(
Not my choice -- the convention has been in place for some time, and there are hundreds of servers out there following it.
Something along the lines of XXyyy01, XXyyy02, where XX is a two-character code for the computer center in which the box physically resides, yyy is the basic function of the box, and 01, 02 are numbers to describe each unique server in each location/category. Zones on Solaris servers are indicated with -Zn where n is the zone number.
It worked well enough to allow my copy of DateBk3 to be registered in GVM under my name.
which can really be helpful if the amount of code in brackets is somewhat large. It might not always be obvious what "i" is to a support programmer not familiar with that portion of the codebase.
I've worked on code that was written 30 years in the past (no, I'm not kidding -- FIELDATA FORTRAN V is still in use here as well as at one of my former places of employment), and when code is that old the original designers are often retired or dead. You're on your own, and if the project doesn't have a good set of programmer docs for each source module, the source code might be all the documentation you have.
It isn't uncommon for me to spend a paragraph at the start of a complex routine explaining WHAT the routine is doing and (in some cases) WHY the routine does it that way if it's using a novel or nonstandard approach to the problem. Such comments can save you and your teammates (or successors) a lot of headaches in the long run, and I can think of several occasions where such comments have been a lifesaver at three in the morning when I'm on coverage trying to walk my way through a production issue...
Sure, but Amazon can keep on using the technique regardless, so it's not like the way they run their site is at risk here. This doesn't impact Amazon's core business either way.
It's the (in)ability for OTHER sites to use the patented methods and tech that's at risk.
I beg to differ. Piracy didn't kill music. The large distribution conglomerates who dominate the Top 40 playlists and who promote the current popular tripe over actual original musical art killed music.
:-(
There are always exceptions, but the internet and the free passing of music is perhaps it's only hope for the future, NOT its undoing.
The music industry is very similar to the software industry in that the creation of a few dominant distributors tends to create crap, not quality. Such distributors are far more interested in profits than the end product.
A common misperception.
When Dave Cutler and others were hired by Microsoft from DEC, they effectively rewrote the NT kernel based on things they'd learned with VMS.
When IBM took control of the 16-bit OS/2 after the split, they rewrote the 32-bit kernel from scratch and created the WPS, the MVDM subsystem, and other elements that make OS/2 2.x and later unique on their own.
One of the few things from Microsoft which survives in OS/2 to this day is HPFS, a decent enough filesystem for its time, as well as various DOSlike artifacts like drive letters and so on.
Not really.
OS/2 Warp 3 had dial-up networking (SLIP and PPP) in the base version. If you connected to the internet with a modem, as most people did at the time, you were just fine with the base version.
OS/2 Warp Connect was indeed needed for ethernet connectivity, but that was something which was *quite* rare for a home user at the time (DSL modems and other similar things didn't arrive until after the release of Warp 4 which had ethernet support out of the box, and very few home users had multi-box LANs in the early 1990's).
Please explain. Windows 95 OSR2 was already being bundled with FAT32 support on most x86 machines by late 1996, Windows 95 OSR2.1 added USB support in early 1997, and Windows 95 OSR2.5 added Internet Explorer 4.01 integration in 1998 before Win98's release.
Yes, Win98 came with all of those things, but most of those features (including the best one, FAT32) had already been available on any PC running OEM Windows 95 (which meant most Win95 PCs) for quite a while...
OS/2 Warp 3 was released in 1994 with IBM's Internet Explorer and SLIP dial-up networking (later updated to PPP), so there were other nice ways of getting on the internet. I was doing it quite often at the time. :-)
You forget about Dual Booting in a FAT partition, and also about using IBM's Boot Manager to create a multi-OS environment, something Windows amde no provision for whatsoever. OS/2 was very well behaved in that regard, and even OS/2 2.0 could be configured to boot from a logical drive in an extended partition if need be.
Remember that IBM's WorkPlace Shell was released before NT came out, so NT's Program Manager was competing against the WPS. OS/2 1.x's interface was nothing to write home about, but even the early WPS incarnations in OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 were pretty slick once you got used to them.
Using separate mouse buttons for icon selection and drag-and-drop action weren't even unique to the WPS -- GeoManager did a similar thing in GeoWorks Emsemble somewhat earlier.
OS/2 2.0 was released in 1992, had better support for juggling DOS programs inside VDMs than Windows 95 did, and also came with a Dual Boot installation option so you could install on a FAT partition and boot to DOS if you needed 100% compatibility (which is what Windows 95 does in compatibility mode). Note that this Dual Boot mode is different from multibooting using IBM's Boot Manager -- a Dual Boot machine literally rewrote the boot sector on the fly when switching back and forth, and it hibernated the OS/2 environment while the DOS program was running. Just like Windows 95 did.
IBM's 32-bit Graphical OS/2 offering predated Win95 by over three years. :-)
I agree that Win95 drove many nails in OS/2's coffin, but mainly because of Microsoft's ability to market Chicago as vaporware and NOT because it was released earlier than other viable solutions.
W.r.t. the PPro -- PC companies like Micron were offering PPro systems as high-end consumer desktops bundled with Win95 OSR2 in late 1996 -- see their Millenia Pro and Pro2 lines. I still have one.
Also, the 6000-series Compaq Deskpro line started out as a PPro line running Windows 95, not NT. PPros were not quite as server-bound as people today would have us believe. Even IBM's IntelliStation line had PPro offerings (model 6899), although those came with NT in their stock configuration instead of Win9x.
Just port a version of Spring and include a mouse+keyboard hardware bundle. :-)
None of the new languages are useful in legacy environments unless someone ports compilers for those languages, so programmers in those environments tend to have a different definition of "useful" than Linux developers. :-)
However, it all comes down to the same things: Will the language do what I want? Do I already know it or can I easily learn it? If I end up leaving, is it supportable by someone else? Etc.
I built my main desktop box in November 1996 (Micron Millenia Pro2 Plus, a PPro/200 w/64MB since expanded to 192MB).
:-)
It runs Firefox 1.5.0.12 under Warp 4 FP15 just fine, and dual-boots to Win95 OSR2 which also runs Firefox 1.5.0.12 just fine. Multitasking under Warp is much snoother, of course, but both platforms are able to play music, handle javascript, handle most Firefox plugins, run Java programs, and even do Flash stuff as long as it isn't too CPU-intensive (YouTube is not an option, sadly). Thunderbird 1.5.0.xx also runs just fine, albeit a little slowly at startup time.
Such hardware is also easily to run lightweight Linux distros like Puppy 2/3/4, DSL, Austrami, Feather Linux, and others. Remember that Mandake 8.2 running KDE 2.2 was designed to run on such boxes, and it was hardly a light distro at the time.
The internet, useless on such hardware? Not really, as long as you don't do video.
And do you really want to? Is mob rule really something you want?
Huh, wha?? Sorry ... I was watching the little blocks. They're so blue and pretty... :-D
Nah, I was a Stereo Shell user back then. Of course, I've seen the light now thanks to Midnight Commander, but as I recall Norton's original didn't really do things like FTP very well. :-)
The decline of Norton is a sad story. I remember when Norton's Disk Doctor for DOS was cool, and when it was fun to watch Speedisk shuffle the clusters on your FAT filesystem all around. And it actually worked as advertised! :-)
What was the last good version? Norton Utilities for DOS 6.01?