Hi, I used to be a big OS/2 user, but about 2 years ago,I switched to a mix of Unixes on my systems.. OS/2 had some really cool subsystems, the desktop probably being the most remarkable.. But it seems to me that IBM screwed up a lot more than in marketing with OS/2.. to point: 1) Lack of commitment -- IBM often released nice software for Windows first, and left OS/2 as an afterthought. 2) Lack of development -- most of the improvements to OS/2 were in the desktop area, whereas many serious 'under the hood' problems were present from 2.0 onwards. SIQ, inadequate process control, really sucky installer (that often failed to uninstall things properly), lack of ability to cleanly restart the WPS, etc. 3) Lack of documentation -- Admittedly, windows lacks this too, but having clear docs on how the system fits together would ease troubleshooting 4) Lack of debugging -- The workplace shell was plagued with bugs. 5) Binary ini files -- most of the ini files were binary, and even if you got one of the utilities to decompile them into text format, you didn't have documentation on them. I had to remake my ini files because of desktop corruption about every 2 months, losing countless customizations.
OS/2 was cool, but IBM dropped the ball in countless areas, not just marketing. If IBM had designed more of the 'under the hood' stuff right in the first place, or had not been afraid to break compatibility in some areas and possibly used emulation and/or a separate subsystem to handle old apps (like NT does w/ Win3.x or POSIX apps), OS/2 would probably be more widely used today..
Wouldn't there be some difficulty in getting the people to maintain and keep improving the software/whatever? If you're making something because you love it, you'll likely keep improving it if it's non-trivial. If you're just cranking it out to get some cash, wouldn't it usually be a write-once and forget it kind of thing?
Actually, I've been thinking about getting a digital camera, and have been worried about Linux compatibility... ideally, I'd hook it up to my Alpha over serial, parallel, or via something that hooks in via SCSI (although I doubt such things exist)... less ideally, I'd hook it into my PPro200 (also lacks USB) via the same means... Anyone know of the equiv of http://www.guug.de:8080/cgi-bin/winni/lsc.pl for digital cameras on Linux? Is anyone working on a Digital Camera HOWTO?
Mainly I'd like to question point 3 -- maintaining multiple flavors of the OS is only costly at certain levels, i.e. parts of the kernel, compiler, and drivers. A portion of the kernel and almost the entire rest of the OS, at least on Unixlike systems and several other OS's (like NT, BeOS, etc) tends to be portable.
So while the R&D budget may be somewhat higher, it should be a far cry from being double that of being single-platform. A good guess might be that it'd be an additional 10% of work..
1) fork() This implementation of fork() will clone the running interpreter and create a new interpreter with its own thread running in the same process. Goal is functional equivalence to fork() on UNIX systems without the performance hit of NT's process creation overhead.
2) Microsoft Installer Support
3) Globalization Extend Unicode support to all system calls in the core. This includes file names, environment variables, etc. Note that this functionality will only be available on Windows NT and Windows 2000 systems.
4) PerlScript performance
These look fairly harmless, no? Firstly, #1 looks like they're probably keeping the call on windows' being named fork. That's pretty good, as it isn't a great departure and would keep XP compat more likely than replacing fork w/ something else...
#2 probably won't change anything -- if they're talking about Perl itself (making a fancy installer), shouldn't change a thing. If not, whatever it is, it probably will be done in a module.
#3 this is probably the most cause for worry, but isn't Unicode supposed to be the big thing in 5.006? If so, the "only on windows" statement here is probably irrelivant, and all we're talking about is platform parity, which is a good thing.
#4 So long as this happens w/o changing the language, this isn't going to really hurt anyone.
We've seen embrace and extend from Microsoft, but this particular instance doesn't look too dangerous, as the extend part seems to be little more than optimizations which won't change the language...
Hey, at least one Ultima was released on a console -- I remember playing some version of Ultima on my old NES. It was pretty sweet, except it was too easy to run out of food, if I remember right. Reminds me a bit of ADOM in that respect.
Wrongness is a subjective quality. Why can I still object to it? Well, it's harmful to society to allow people to kill others without a good reason, and so it's rational for a society to protect its members from each other in this manner.
When it comes to literacy on moral philosophy, I *have* read quite a lot. Plato, Hegel, Hume, Marx, C.S. Lewis, etc. They arn't particularly convincing. I would suspect that the loss of influence of philosophy is probably a result of people finding the idea of an absolute morality less appealing. This in itself doesn't mean that it isn't valid, or at least it isn't sufficient, but the existance of a practice doesn't validate it automatically. There were once lots of astrologers and alchemists, and those are now pretty much dead pursuits.
I say no, because I have a distaste for killing people and because I don't want to think of myself as someone who would do things like that. It's true that with clever enough reasoning you can justify anything. However, society will do its best to protect itself, and you need to live with yourself even if you arn't caught.
Besides, if there's an absolute morality, how can you claim that we've found it? There's lots of other cultures with different associated moralities. What's your yardstick for finding which is "truer"?
I don't think that there is any absolute morality. Is religion your crutch to let you have one? In other words, something isn't true just b/c it has useful results.
I agree that science admits nothing can be proved, but a rational outlook is not to accept things into your worldview until you have strong evidence, and then if you come across evidence that points the other way, either correct or toss out your idea.
I must admit to not understanding how statistics point to very little science going on -- while that may be collection of data, and indeed faulty at that, I don't quite understand how most surveys are at all related to science.
I don't know if religion is hurt or helped by the internet, but it seems more likely that it would be helped, as the internet is a place where people can easily get together and share information, and presumably encourages science. Religion and Science are incompatible. Why? Well, for starters, the existance of a deity or set thereof hasn't been proved, and it's irrational to accept things into your worldview that are both unproven and make big changes. In other words, the onus of proof is on the proponent of a suggested model, and I claim that they don't have any proof at all. Why must the onus of proof be there? Consider the alternative:
People can propose as many things as they like, and you need to either believe them on every proposal or prove them wrong. This poses problems if they propose something not falsifiable, such as the proposal "everyone has an indetectable cat that follows them around for their whole life" . It also poses problems if you arn't keen on spending your whole life trying to falsify things. Thus, it's rational to insist on evidence for an assertion, and at least so far, I haven't seen a convincing case for god, allah, zeus, or any other deities' existance.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, I used to be a big OS/2 user, but about 2
years ago,I switched to a mix of Unixes on my
systems.. OS/2 had some really cool subsystems,
the desktop probably being the most remarkable..
But it seems to me that IBM screwed up a lot more
than in marketing with OS/2.. to point:
1) Lack of commitment -- IBM often released nice
software for Windows first, and left OS/2
as an afterthought.
2) Lack of development -- most of the improvements
to OS/2 were in the desktop area, whereas
many serious 'under the hood' problems
were present from 2.0 onwards. SIQ,
inadequate process control, really sucky
installer (that often failed to uninstall
things properly), lack of ability to
cleanly restart the WPS, etc.
3) Lack of documentation -- Admittedly, windows
lacks this too, but having clear docs on
how the system fits together would ease
troubleshooting
4) Lack of debugging -- The workplace shell was
plagued with bugs.
5) Binary ini files -- most of the ini files were
binary, and even if you got one of the
utilities to decompile them into text
format, you didn't have documentation on
them. I had to remake my ini files because
of desktop corruption about every 2
months, losing countless customizations.
OS/2 was cool, but IBM dropped the ball in
countless areas, not just marketing. If IBM had
designed more of the 'under the hood' stuff right
in the first place, or had not been afraid to
break compatibility in some areas and possibly
used emulation and/or a separate subsystem to
handle old apps (like NT does w/ Win3.x or POSIX
apps), OS/2 would probably be more widely used
today..
Wouldn't there be some difficulty in getting
the people to maintain and keep improving the
software/whatever? If you're making something
because you love it, you'll likely keep improving
it if it's non-trivial. If you're just cranking
it out to get some cash, wouldn't it usually be
a write-once and forget it kind of thing?
Actually, I've been thinking about getting a
digital camera, and have been worried about
Linux compatibility... ideally, I'd hook it
up to my Alpha over serial, parallel, or
via something that hooks in via SCSI (although
I doubt such things exist)... less ideally,
I'd hook it into my PPro200 (also lacks USB) via
the same means... Anyone know of the
equiv of
http://www.guug.de:8080/cgi-bin/winni/lsc.pl
for digital cameras on Linux? Is anyone working
on a Digital Camera HOWTO?
It's amusing to see them talk about filesystems
that arn't really filesystems....
It ran on x86, NeXT68k, SPARC, and some PA-RISC (HP) boxes.
Mainly I'd like to question point 3 --
maintaining multiple flavors of the OS
is only costly at certain levels, i.e.
parts of the kernel, compiler, and drivers. A portion of
the kernel and almost the entire rest of the OS,
at least on Unixlike systems and several other
OS's (like NT, BeOS, etc) tends to be portable.
So while the R&D budget may be somewhat higher, it
should be a far cry from being double that of
being single-platform. A good guess might be
that it'd be an additional 10% of work..
From the FAQ, the main changes are:
1) fork()
This implementation of fork() will clone the running interpreter and create a new interpreter with its own thread running in the same process. Goal is functional equivalence to fork() on UNIX systems without the performance hit of NT's process creation overhead.
2) Microsoft Installer Support
3) Globalization
Extend Unicode support to all system calls in the core. This includes file names, environment variables, etc. Note that this functionality will only be available on Windows NT and Windows 2000 systems.
4) PerlScript performance
These look fairly harmless, no? Firstly,
#1 looks like they're probably keeping the
call on windows' being named fork. That's
pretty good, as it isn't a great departure and
would keep XP compat more likely than replacing
fork w/ something else...
#2 probably won't change anything -- if they're
talking about Perl itself (making a fancy installer), shouldn't change a thing. If not,
whatever it is, it probably will be done in
a module.
#3 this is probably the most cause for worry, but
isn't Unicode supposed to be the big thing in
5.006? If so, the "only on windows" statement
here is probably irrelivant, and all we're talking
about is platform parity, which is a good thing.
#4 So long as this happens w/o changing the
language, this isn't going to really hurt
anyone.
We've seen embrace and extend from Microsoft, but
this particular instance doesn't look too
dangerous, as the extend part seems to be little
more than optimizations which won't change the
language...
Hey, at least one Ultima was released on a
console -- I remember playing some version
of Ultima on my old NES. It was pretty sweet,
except it was too easy to run out of food, if
I remember right. Reminds me a bit of ADOM in
that respect.
So.. you believe in a god because the idea of
morality being subjective repulses you?
Wrongness is a subjective quality. Why can
I still object to it? Well, it's harmful to
society to allow people to kill others without
a good reason, and so it's rational for a
society to protect its members from each other
in this manner.
When it comes to literacy on moral philosophy,
I *have* read quite a lot. Plato, Hegel, Hume,
Marx, C.S. Lewis, etc. They arn't particularly
convincing. I would suspect that the loss of
influence of philosophy is probably a result of
people finding the idea of an absolute morality
less appealing. This in itself doesn't mean that
it isn't valid, or at least it isn't sufficient,
but the existance of a practice doesn't validate
it automatically. There were once lots of
astrologers and alchemists, and those are now
pretty much dead pursuits.
I say no, because I have a distaste for killing
people and because I don't want to think of
myself as someone who would do things like that.
It's true that with clever enough
reasoning you can justify anything. However,
society will do its best to protect itself,
and you need to live with yourself even if you
arn't caught.
Besides, if there's an absolute morality, how can
you claim that we've found it? There's lots of
other cultures with different associated
moralities. What's your yardstick for finding
which is "truer"?
I don't think that there is any absolute morality.
Is religion your crutch to let you have one?
In other words, something isn't true just b/c
it has useful results.
I agree that science admits nothing can
be proved, but a rational outlook is not
to accept things into your worldview until
you have strong evidence, and then if you
come across evidence that points the other
way, either correct or toss out your idea.
I must admit to not understanding how statistics
point to very little science going on --
while that may be collection of data, and
indeed faulty at that, I don't quite understand
how most surveys are at all related to science.
I don't know if religion is hurt or helped by the
internet, but it seems more likely that it would
be helped, as the internet is a place where people
can easily get together and share information, and
presumably encourages science. Religion and
Science are incompatible. Why? Well, for starters,
the existance of a deity or set thereof hasn't
been proved, and it's irrational to accept things
into your worldview that are both unproven and
make big changes. In other words, the onus of
proof is on the proponent of a suggested model,
and I claim that they don't have any proof at all.
Why must the onus of proof be there? Consider the
alternative:
People can propose as many things as they like,
and you need to either believe them on every
proposal or prove them wrong. This poses problems
if they propose something not falsifiable, such
as the proposal "everyone has an indetectable
cat that follows them around for their whole life"
. It also poses problems if you arn't keen on
spending your whole life trying to falsify things.
Thus, it's rational to insist on evidence for
an assertion, and at least so far, I haven't seen
a convincing case for god, allah, zeus, or any
other deities' existance.
The thing is that you get more of a choice
what songs you want, and you can not get (or
pay for) the bad songs, and get all the good
ones.
I still want to choose my 2D card and use
the 3DFx for 3D only... *sigh*
http://www.swt.com/alpha_linux.html
I'm probably going to get myself one of
these within a month...
What's the point of reviewing a bad book? :)
There's tons of them...
Looks like I might eventually replace my Awe32PNP
with something more recent from CL...