That old Vax might still be pumping transactions out for a very long time; replace it with something new, and the same might not be said.
By the time the new thing breaks you'll be able to run a VAX emulator on something that costs $100 (and it will run faster on a tiny fraction of the power and fit on a shelf...)
In high sulfur environments, ROHS stuff can wisker itself to death within 3 months, while the VAX will continue to plug away.
What I find amazing is in a very short period of time Fiat gave a mid-cycle refresh to a lot of models to hold them over to the new models and it's been very well received by customers. Sales are up a ridiculous percentage. For essentially the same cars.
I don't know what in particular I find amazing. Whether it's just marketing from Fiat managed to move these units, or whether it's the relatively low investment required to make saleable models which Daimler didn't see fit to do while they were driving Chrysler into the ground.
Take the poor Sebring/Avenger. A favorite target of automotive journalists it was always ranked at the bottom of the midsize market. I think it was worse than the Sebring/Stratus it replaced, which itself was "more refined" but not as reliable as the basic but durable Acclaim.
Anyways the Sebring/Avenger was a competent car. Good safety ratings/safety features, reasonable fuel economy, reasonably powerful powertrains, reasonable prices (particularly used *). The driving dynamics, though not sporty, or close to class leading, were competent. It is just a bread and butter family sedan. By far the worst thing about the car is the absolutely crappy interior materials. What did Chrysler do about it? Absolutely nothing! So year after year they were lambasted about the crappy interiors. So they put the same shitty plastic in all their cars.
Fiat comes along, takes the existing car, puts normal plastics in them, tweaks the styling, changes the name(200), offers a Pentastar V-6 and voila it's well rated and sells like hotcakes *. Even all reliability / durability ratings have shot up on it (Though I didn't know of the Sebring/Avenger having any particularly problematic parts).
* The Sebring and even the newer 200 have abysmal resale value, in part because Rental companies are their biggest buyers, but this makes it (particularly the 200) a good buy on the used market. I recently test drove a used 200. The price was ridiculously low and it came with the Pentastar (which is ridiculously powerful, and surprisingly fuel efficient), sun roof, spoiler, etc.
As far as the Sprinter, my understanding was the Ram van it replaced was a POS compared to Econoline and whatever the fuck GM calls their shaggin' wagon. It's not that the Ram was always bad, just that they stopped doing anything to the platform a while ago.
Tubes have their place, but I will gladly sacrifice all of their benefits for something that doesn't weigh more than an NFL linebacker.
That's a feature, not a bug. My house was burglarized last year, and if I'd had a lightweight flat screen instead of a 42 inch Trinitron they would have taken it, too. The weight is an anti-theft device.
If you had it in the driveway on wheels they probably wouldn't have taken it.
No, they're not. While OSX will put files like.DS_Store on flash drives, those aren't the files I'm talking about. I'm talking about files pointed to in the autorun.inf. Half the time they're hidden in a "Recycler" folder. Recycle bin doesn't exist on removable drives. Files that while overpriced McAfee and Symantec don't pick them up, submitting them to virustotal comes back with some hits.
Ask any enterprise who migrated from XP to Windows 7 and they all say a drop in malware and virus infections is the first thing they notice.
Flash drive Autorun viruses!
By default XP SP1 and newer (IIRC) while not automatically running autorun.inf files from flash drives, will give you the "What do you want to do" prompt including the autorun option. If you decline that, but double click the drive in my computer it will go ahead and run the autorun with no warning or indication. The default action on Windows 7 is to not even try to run autorun from flash drives.
On any computer I have control over (personal or for work) I completely disable autorun because: a) It's annoying b) It's dangerous.
Two large corporations I've worked for recently (still using XP) did not disable autorun! It's amazing how much autorun malware runs rampant. Crappy overpriced Symantec or McAfee don't pick them up either. I alert people when I stick their flash drive in my computer and notice hidden autorun.inf files, and hidden mischievous folders with random file names. I usually get stunned looks from them.
I also get stunned looks from IT when I point out the gaping, tractor-trailer sized hole in their security.
Generally I like MS Office. I can't comment on LO-Writer, but recently in MS Word 2010 I created a document with inline images. Fragile at best is how I describe it. After creating the document and previewing it on screen I printed it out and gave it to a co-worker for review. One of the graphics moved down 6" on the page and was cut off. The electronic copy didn't have that at all.
My boss looked at the electronic copy. He changed one word and highlighted it. The entire document fell apart at that point. Line lengths inexplicably changed, moving page breaks, and even after hard page breaks (which should realign everything) inline graphics randomly moved around. I've decided I'm going to have to declare bankruptcy and start the document from scratch (export the text to plain text and rebuild it).
I have memories of working on document in Word 2003 many years back. I remember adding an inline graphic. I click to drag it up an inch. Suddenly it flew DOWN 6 pages in the document. Undoing and trying again resulted in the same thing.
All this said I know Excel is generally robust (though I've had problems interacting with charts from different versions, and cell colouring in different versions). In my experience it is a lot faster and stable than Open Office / Libre Office.
As far as alternatives, generally I've found Softmaker office works well. Better than Open Office / Libre Office http://www.softmaker.com/english/
After nVidia caused thousands of users to pay to repair their laptops or replace the computer, I'm happy that they're pretty much pushed out of the mainstream market with AMD/ATI and Intel offering solutions integrated in the CPU.
I'm amazed at how nVidia tried pawning this one on the OEMs, insisting nothing is wrong when thousands of HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Apple Laptops were having GPU blowouts.
The 8800 also gets lots of attention, but the Geforce Go 6150 and 7200 chips delaminate in huge quantities as well. My HP laptop was sent away once on warranty work when the wireless card dropped out (first sign of a failure). It's now dissapeared again and out of warranty. Surprising the lazy-man reflow actually works: -Remove battery and HDD -Turn machine on and wrap in blankets -Allow to cook for a couple hours. -Replace battery and HDD.
They are still one of the most economical ways to receive online purchases. Especially the $0.99 shipping included cables from Hong Kong.
And unlike UPS, Fedex, etc. if you aren't home for delivery of a parcel, picking it up at the local pharmacy is a lot more convenient than: -Going to the depot in the industrial park 45 minutes away before 5PM -Or allowing them to leave a computer on your front doorstep in the rain while you're at work.
I read the headline for this story and laughed - it doesn't matter how much faster my computers or networks get - Our IT department just installs more and more virus scanners, software maintenance tools, firewalls, monitoring tools,etc.... Each computer I get has more CPU cores and memory and faster graphics and they are able to do less and less and take longer and longer to boot. I figure before too long I'll have to go back to my old TI-30 calculator and some engineering graph paper and I'll be equal in efficiency to my computer once I factor in all the time I spend waiting for it to get around to sparing.5% of the 12 CPU cores to run the actual software I need to use....
My work computer is a new Corei5, 4GB RAM, running a 10 year old OS (XP). The thing should fly. Yet it's much slower than my home PC which is a 4 year old AMD Dual core, 2GB RAM, running Windows 7.
A few years ago I bought a surplus PIII from work. At work with XP these machines would crawl (5+ minutes till usable). When I got it home and loaded a clean XP install, the machine flew (relatively speaking).
I'm amazed at how much crap IT departments manage to put on computers to slow them down. And how all software assumes that the first thing the users wants to do when they boot their computer is: -Update everything at once as quick as possible -Scan everything while that's going on as quick as possible.
And not do something like check their email, and let the other things trickle away in the background.
Another company I know migrated from XP to Windows 7. There are a lot of older computers (4 years) and everything crawls under the new IT-bloated image.
Park is just Neutral with a separate mechanical "park pawl" engaged. It's a mechanical system and separate from the hydraulic gear change system. You can engage and disengage park with the engine off.
Forgetting to shift into park before turning the car off isn't a big deal. Move into park, release the key, and the vehicle is secured (even though they tell you not to rely on park alone;)
Manually turning the steering wheel will require a lot of effort when the car is stopped, but with any amount of speed it's not that bad.
I've also noticed with many modern cars, in neutral (or park) the rev limiter is lower than the redline (around 4000RPM vs 6000RPM). I think "shifting to neutral" is the best advice for a runaway car, but killing the ignition is better than nothing.
A properly functioning brake system will be able to overcome any force the engine can can produce. If you stand on both pedals, your car should go nowhere.
Technically true with brakes with full power assist available.
Most (all?) power brake systems work off engine vacuum. There's more vacuum at idle than wide open. The booster will store enough assist for one or two assisted brakes without engine vacuum. After that it's non-assisted braking. Old cars with manual drum brakes on the front are somewhat self-energizing. Disk brakes in modern cars require a lot more effort to actuate without assist. You literally have to stand on the pedal to get more than a moderate braking effort.
It's not an unlikely scenario for: -Accelerator to get caught under the mat or whatever giving you WOT. -Instinctively press the brake to try and stop -Think the braking wasn't particularly effective, release and apply again (now without vacuum assist) -Now you're left with very weak brakes which may not overpower the engine unless you STAND on the pedal with both feet. If you're a petite woman or a senior this might not be enough.
Try this: Stop your car at the top of a downhill and shut the engine down while in Neutral. Turn the ignition back to "ON" (not start) so you can restart quickly if needed (most autos will only let you restart the engine in park or neutral). Pump the brakes several times to deplete the assist. Now observe how much brake power you have going downhill with no power-assist.
Hydraulic automatic transmissions (like your Sunbird probably has) requires no electrical power to engage gears, but hydraulic power comes from a rotating input shaft. I had a car like this, you could turn the ignition off while rolling (but in gear), the wheels rolling keeps the engine turning, which keeps hydraulic pressure in the transmission, which keeps the gear engaged. If you floored the accelerator it would even downshift (though you wouldn't get any power). However if you shifted the car into neutral, the input shaft to the transmission slows down, and the engine stops. If you then try to shift the car back into gear nothing will happen because you don't have hydraulic pressure on the input shaft.
A modern electronic transmission, once power is cut the solenoids disengage, the transmission goes to neutral and the engine stops.
Power steering isn't needed if the car is moving, and with the car in gear, you can't typically turn the key to a point that the wheel will lock.
Ignitions sequenced ACC-LOCK(where you can remove key)-OFF-ON-START won't let you turn the key past OFF if the car is in gear.
Ignitions sequenced OFF/LOCK-ACC-ON-START won't let you turn the key past ACC if the car is in gear.
Seriously, try it. With the car running and not in park, turn the key toward off as much as you can. Now turn the wheel and see if it locks.
I've always hated ATX power supplies because the default behaviour requires you to hold the power button for what feels like forever to do a hard power off. If I'm not issuing a shutdown command from the OS, chances are I'm hitting the power button to do a hard power off. Apparently these keyless ignitions are the same. With the car in gear you have to hold the power button for a couple seconds to shut the car off. A runaway car is far more frightening than a locked OS.
With the car in gear, most automatic cars won't let you turn the key all the way to the point the steering wheel will lock.
Many manuals have some extra detent or release button to make it easy to turn it one click to kill the engine, but extra effort is required to make the wheel lock.
Horizontal resolution is entirely irrelevant. Your ability to read lines peaks at about 80 characters. There's no limit to how long a column of text can be. Therefore, vertical resolution is the important issue.
Sorry, can you break your post up into a couple different lines for me? I was only able to read what I put in bold, because I'm apparently incapable of reading more than 80 characters in a line. I'm sure you had something wonderfully insightful to add, so I definitely don't want to miss anything.
Office XP is the first mainstream product requiring activation that has left the extended support phase of the lifecycle. The activation and update servers for it are still live.
I believe Microsoft has on several occasions said they will provide "golden key", patch, or whatever to work around Activation if they deem keeping the servers online not feasible. Probably once market share is negligible which will likely be past 2014 (maybe closer to 2020?)
I believe Windows update servers are still online for Windows 98.
As far as a patch, in the seedy underworld, WinXP workarounds that aren't VL or SLP based are based on loading a tiny driver that tricks the Activation bits into thinking the OS was booted into safe mode (Activation checks aren't done in safe mode).
I was thinking of my proprietary closed sourced systems. Anything from the past 12-14 years can run WindowsXP, and things from the past 8 years can run Windows 7.
Technology, as it is today, is all too fleeting. New technology is being pushed out at an ever increasing rate with the new products quickly supplanting the old. The old is then quickly forgotten. I applaud the effort of this group in its work to keep a living record of the heart of the machines that have been the core of most of lives for almost half a century.
In some ways, yes, in other ways no. A PC I bought in 1991 was horribly obsolete by 1995. A PC I bought in 2003 is still useful today, running Windows 7, etc. A PC I bought in 2006 is still useful today, without doing any upgrades. Crysis? No. But they're still more than adequate for surfing, word processing, Youtube, etc.
What I'm amazed at is the increase in complexity. In the 80s you'd see systems designed by one or two people (I'm thinking Woz and the Apple I and Apple II). Now you're seeing new systems (hardware and software) rolled out in short timeframes with thousands of people working on them, where no one person actually knows how the whole thing works.
On a slightly note, I believe we need better cataloging of technology in general as many old file are effectively being lost due the technology require to read them no long exist. Of course this raises further questions of how to maintain such cataloging as the cataloging infrastructure ages so that the data doesn't get lost. Oh what a vicious cycle it is.
Through the course of history, you've never been able to save everything.
Or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
Slashdot Mirror
You can buy brand new 486 motherboards, and processors, with ISA and PCI slots
http://www.esapcsolutions.com/industrial-motherboards-motherboards-c-45_109.html
SIMH. I'm reasonably sure it will run on a $100 used computer right now, or on a new piece of equipment that's not much more and power-efficient.
$200 netbook will probably do. Plus it has a built in UPS, good for 6 hours!
That old Vax might still be pumping transactions out for a very long time; replace it with something new, and the same might not be said.
By the time the new thing breaks you'll be able to run a VAX emulator on something that costs $100 (and it will run faster on a tiny fraction of the power and fit on a shelf...)
In high sulfur environments, ROHS stuff can wisker itself to death within 3 months, while the VAX will continue to plug away.
What I find amazing is in a very short period of time Fiat gave a mid-cycle refresh to a lot of models to hold them over to the new models and it's been very well received by customers. Sales are up a ridiculous percentage. For essentially the same cars.
I don't know what in particular I find amazing. Whether it's just marketing from Fiat managed to move these units, or whether it's the relatively low investment required to make saleable models which Daimler didn't see fit to do while they were driving Chrysler into the ground.
Take the poor Sebring/Avenger. A favorite target of automotive journalists it was always ranked at the bottom of the midsize market. I think it was worse than the Sebring/Stratus it replaced, which itself was "more refined" but not as reliable as the basic but durable Acclaim.
Anyways the Sebring/Avenger was a competent car. Good safety ratings/safety features, reasonable fuel economy, reasonably powerful powertrains, reasonable prices (particularly used *). The driving dynamics, though not sporty, or close to class leading, were competent. It is just a bread and butter family sedan. By far the worst thing about the car is the absolutely crappy interior materials. What did Chrysler do about it? Absolutely nothing! So year after year they were lambasted about the crappy interiors. So they put the same shitty plastic in all their cars.
Fiat comes along, takes the existing car, puts normal plastics in them, tweaks the styling, changes the name(200), offers a Pentastar V-6 and voila it's well rated and sells like hotcakes *. Even all reliability / durability ratings have shot up on it (Though I didn't know of the Sebring/Avenger having any particularly problematic parts).
* The Sebring and even the newer 200 have abysmal resale value, in part because Rental companies are their biggest buyers, but this makes it (particularly the 200) a good buy on the used market. I recently test drove a used 200. The price was ridiculously low and it came with the Pentastar (which is ridiculously powerful, and surprisingly fuel efficient), sun roof, spoiler, etc.
As far as the Sprinter, my understanding was the Ram van it replaced was a POS compared to Econoline and whatever the fuck GM calls their shaggin' wagon. It's not that the Ram was always bad, just that they stopped doing anything to the platform a while ago.
Tubes have their place, but I will gladly sacrifice all of their benefits for something that doesn't weigh more than an NFL linebacker.
That's a feature, not a bug. My house was burglarized last year, and if I'd had a lightweight flat screen instead of a 42 inch Trinitron they would have taken it, too. The weight is an anti-theft device.
If you had it in the driveway on wheels they probably wouldn't have taken it.
No, they're not. While OSX will put files like .DS_Store on flash drives, those aren't the files I'm talking about. I'm talking about files pointed to in the autorun.inf. Half the time they're hidden in a "Recycler" folder. Recycle bin doesn't exist on removable drives. Files that while overpriced McAfee and Symantec don't pick them up, submitting them to virustotal comes back with some hits.
Ask any enterprise who migrated from XP to Windows 7 and they all say a drop in malware and virus infections is the first thing they notice.
Flash drive Autorun viruses!
By default XP SP1 and newer (IIRC) while not automatically running autorun.inf files from flash drives, will give you the "What do you want to do" prompt including the autorun option. If you decline that, but double click the drive in my computer it will go ahead and run the autorun with no warning or indication. The default action on Windows 7 is to not even try to run autorun from flash drives.
On any computer I have control over (personal or for work) I completely disable autorun because:
a) It's annoying
b) It's dangerous.
Two large corporations I've worked for recently (still using XP) did not disable autorun! It's amazing how much autorun malware runs rampant. Crappy overpriced Symantec or McAfee don't pick them up either. I alert people when I stick their flash drive in my computer and notice hidden autorun.inf files, and hidden mischievous folders with random file names. I usually get stunned looks from them.
I also get stunned looks from IT when I point out the gaping, tractor-trailer sized hole in their security.
Generally I like MS Office. I can't comment on LO-Writer, but recently in MS Word 2010 I created a document with inline images. Fragile at best is how I describe it. After creating the document and previewing it on screen I printed it out and gave it to a co-worker for review. One of the graphics moved down 6" on the page and was cut off. The electronic copy didn't have that at all.
My boss looked at the electronic copy. He changed one word and highlighted it. The entire document fell apart at that point. Line lengths inexplicably changed, moving page breaks, and even after hard page breaks (which should realign everything) inline graphics randomly moved around. I've decided I'm going to have to declare bankruptcy and start the document from scratch (export the text to plain text and rebuild it).
I have memories of working on document in Word 2003 many years back. I remember adding an inline graphic. I click to drag it up an inch. Suddenly it flew DOWN 6 pages in the document. Undoing and trying again resulted in the same thing.
All this said I know Excel is generally robust (though I've had problems interacting with charts from different versions, and cell colouring in different versions). In my experience it is a lot faster and stable than Open Office / Libre Office.
As far as alternatives, generally I've found Softmaker office works well. Better than Open Office / Libre Office
http://www.softmaker.com/english/
2008 Old version is free:
http://www.softmakeroffice.com/
After nVidia caused thousands of users to pay to repair their laptops or replace the computer, I'm happy that they're pretty much pushed out of the mainstream market with AMD/ATI and Intel offering solutions integrated in the CPU.
I'm amazed at how nVidia tried pawning this one on the OEMs, insisting nothing is wrong when thousands of HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Apple Laptops were having GPU blowouts.
The 8800 also gets lots of attention, but the Geforce Go 6150 and 7200 chips delaminate in huge quantities as well. My HP laptop was sent away once on warranty work when the wireless card dropped out (first sign of a failure). It's now dissapeared again and out of warranty. Surprising the lazy-man reflow actually works:
-Remove battery and HDD
-Turn machine on and wrap in blankets
-Allow to cook for a couple hours.
-Replace battery and HDD.
They are still one of the most economical ways to receive online purchases. Especially the $0.99 shipping included cables from Hong Kong.
And unlike UPS, Fedex, etc. if you aren't home for delivery of a parcel, picking it up at the local pharmacy is a lot more convenient than:
-Going to the depot in the industrial park 45 minutes away before 5PM
-Or allowing them to leave a computer on your front doorstep in the rain while you're at work.
I read the headline for this story and laughed - it doesn't matter how much faster my computers or networks get - Our IT department just installs more and more virus scanners, software maintenance tools, firewalls, monitoring tools ,etc.... Each computer I get has more CPU cores and memory and faster graphics and they are able to do less and less and take longer and longer to boot. I figure before too long I'll have to go back to my old TI-30 calculator and some engineering graph paper and I'll be equal in efficiency to my computer once I factor in all the time I spend waiting for it to get around to sparing .5% of the 12 CPU cores to run the actual software I need to use....
My work computer is a new Corei5, 4GB RAM, running a 10 year old OS (XP). The thing should fly. Yet it's much slower than my home PC which is a 4 year old AMD Dual core, 2GB RAM, running Windows 7.
A few years ago I bought a surplus PIII from work. At work with XP these machines would crawl (5+ minutes till usable). When I got it home and loaded a clean XP install, the machine flew (relatively speaking).
I'm amazed at how much crap IT departments manage to put on computers to slow them down. And how all software assumes that the first thing the users wants to do when they boot their computer is:
-Update everything at once as quick as possible
-Scan everything while that's going on as quick as possible.
And not do something like check their email, and let the other things trickle away in the background.
Another company I know migrated from XP to Windows 7. There are a lot of older computers (4 years) and everything crawls under the new IT-bloated image.
Park is just Neutral with a separate mechanical "park pawl" engaged. It's a mechanical system and separate from the hydraulic gear change system. You can engage and disengage park with the engine off.
Forgetting to shift into park before turning the car off isn't a big deal. Move into park, release the key, and the vehicle is secured (even though they tell you not to rely on park alone ;)
Manually turning the steering wheel will require a lot of effort when the car is stopped, but with any amount of speed it's not that bad.
I've also noticed with many modern cars, in neutral (or park) the rev limiter is lower than the redline (around 4000RPM vs 6000RPM). I think "shifting to neutral" is the best advice for a runaway car, but killing the ignition is better than nothing.
A properly functioning brake system will be able to overcome any force the engine can can produce. If you stand on both pedals, your car should go nowhere.
Technically true with brakes with full power assist available.
Most (all?) power brake systems work off engine vacuum. There's more vacuum at idle than wide open. The booster will store enough assist for one or two assisted brakes without engine vacuum. After that it's non-assisted braking. Old cars with manual drum brakes on the front are somewhat self-energizing. Disk brakes in modern cars require a lot more effort to actuate without assist. You literally have to stand on the pedal to get more than a moderate braking effort.
It's not an unlikely scenario for:
-Accelerator to get caught under the mat or whatever giving you WOT.
-Instinctively press the brake to try and stop
-Think the braking wasn't particularly effective, release and apply again (now without vacuum assist)
-Now you're left with very weak brakes which may not overpower the engine unless you STAND on the pedal with both feet. If you're a petite woman or a senior this might not be enough.
Try this:
Stop your car at the top of a downhill and shut the engine down while in Neutral. Turn the ignition back to "ON" (not start) so you can restart quickly if needed (most autos will only let you restart the engine in park or neutral). Pump the brakes several times to deplete the assist. Now observe how much brake power you have going downhill with no power-assist.
Hydraulic automatic transmissions (like your Sunbird probably has) requires no electrical power to engage gears, but hydraulic power comes from a rotating input shaft. I had a car like this, you could turn the ignition off while rolling (but in gear), the wheels rolling keeps the engine turning, which keeps hydraulic pressure in the transmission, which keeps the gear engaged. If you floored the accelerator it would even downshift (though you wouldn't get any power). However if you shifted the car into neutral, the input shaft to the transmission slows down, and the engine stops. If you then try to shift the car back into gear nothing will happen because you don't have hydraulic pressure on the input shaft.
A modern electronic transmission, once power is cut the solenoids disengage, the transmission goes to neutral and the engine stops.
Power steering isn't needed if the car is moving, and with the car in gear, you can't typically turn the key to a point that the wheel will lock.
Ignitions sequenced ACC-LOCK(where you can remove key)-OFF-ON-START
won't let you turn the key past OFF if the car is in gear.
Ignitions sequenced OFF/LOCK-ACC-ON-START won't let you turn the key past ACC if the car is in gear.
Seriously, try it. With the car running and not in park, turn the key toward off as much as you can. Now turn the wheel and see if it locks.
I've always hated ATX power supplies because the default behaviour requires you to hold the power button for what feels like forever to do a hard power off. If I'm not issuing a shutdown command from the OS, chances are I'm hitting the power button to do a hard power off. Apparently these keyless ignitions are the same. With the car in gear you have to hold the power button for a couple seconds to shut the car off. A runaway car is far more frightening than a locked OS.
With the car in gear, most automatic cars won't let you turn the key all the way to the point the steering wheel will lock.
Many manuals have some extra detent or release button to make it easy to turn it one click to kill the engine, but extra effort is required to make the wheel lock.
Horizontal resolution is entirely irrelevant. Your ability to read lines peaks at about 80 characters. There's no limit to how long a column of text can be. Therefore, vertical resolution is the important issue.
Sorry, can you break your post up into a couple different lines for me? I was only able to read what I put in bold, because I'm apparently incapable of reading more than 80 characters in a line. I'm sure you had something wonderfully insightful to add, so I definitely don't want to miss anything.
Not a problem if you use lynx!
http://i43.tinypic.com/wmgkt5.png
As a bonus you don't have to deal with the shitty javascript comment system.
I think you could even keep a Windows 95 machine running for a month.
But certainly not 49.8 days!
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216641
As a case study, at the end of it's life "Money Plus" had activation bits removed and Microsoft released a "Sunset" version which did not require activation:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20738
Office XP is the first mainstream product requiring activation that has left the extended support phase of the lifecycle. The activation and update servers for it are still live.
I believe Microsoft has on several occasions said they will provide "golden key", patch, or whatever to work around Activation if they deem keeping the servers online not feasible. Probably once market share is negligible which will likely be past 2014 (maybe closer to 2020?)
I believe Windows update servers are still online for Windows 98.
As far as a patch, in the seedy underworld, WinXP workarounds that aren't VL or SLP based are based on loading a tiny driver that tricks the Activation bits into thinking the OS was booted into safe mode (Activation checks aren't done in safe mode).
Not open source, but free (as in Beer) is Studio Tax http://www.studiotax.com/ which is netfile certified
I was thinking of my proprietary closed sourced systems. Anything from the past 12-14 years can run WindowsXP, and things from the past 8 years can run Windows 7.
Doesn't the existence of Android prove that Linux is more than a "component" of some "GNU OS"?
Yup. It shows why we need to make a distinction between GNU/Linux and Android/Linux.
Technology, as it is today, is all too fleeting. New technology is being pushed out at an ever increasing rate with the new products quickly supplanting the old. The old is then quickly forgotten. I applaud the effort of this group in its work to keep a living record of the heart of the machines that have been the core of most of lives for almost half a century.
In some ways, yes, in other ways no. A PC I bought in 1991 was horribly obsolete by 1995. A PC I bought in 2003 is still useful today, running Windows 7, etc. A PC I bought in 2006 is still useful today, without doing any upgrades. Crysis? No. But they're still more than adequate for surfing, word processing, Youtube, etc.
What I'm amazed at is the increase in complexity. In the 80s you'd see systems designed by one or two people (I'm thinking Woz and the Apple I and Apple II). Now you're seeing new systems (hardware and software) rolled out in short timeframes with thousands of people working on them, where no one person actually knows how the whole thing works.
On a slightly note, I believe we need better cataloging of technology in general as many old file are effectively being lost due the technology require to read them no long exist. Of course this raises further questions of how to maintain such cataloging as the cataloging infrastructure ages so that the data doesn't get lost. Oh what a vicious cycle it is.
Through the course of history, you've never been able to save everything.
It's certainly Linux, but not GNU/Linux
Or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.