Microsoft fielded IE, and charged money for it, too....... MS never charged for IE.
I have seen this on the shelves, IE in a retail box, and all. At the time was tossing up whether to buy netscape or ie. The pricetag was in the order of $25 us.
It just shows that the ties are artefacial, not technical....... Wrong again. All of 2K and 98 - the brunt of the efforts I was actually talking about Win95b, and yes, I did remove IE from it in an afternoon. IE in win98 can be removed, partly by patching a number of files, including notepad, write, explorer. 98lite does this nicely.
I'm not sure what 'artefacial' is. It means to claim some feature is essential, when it really is a separate product lightly hacked into it. I mean, the fax software in Win95 is actually a separate product very lightly hacked in.
OS/2 has "bundled" features, not "integrated" ones. You can replace features, or uninstall the features. It comes with two browsers, you don't have to install either. Unfortunately, both of them require some sort of network protocol, and not just the rendering engine. You can't set it up to use a browser with a locally set-up html pages. WebExplorer does not need the underlying protocol.
Certianly, IBM never stopped alternate vendors competing on the desktop. What happened here is that the utilities bundled with the OS is more
OS/2 can boot to a command prompt, without the WPS loaded. You can boot it off diskettes. In this form, it still supports long-file names.
There are several different shells available that do not have the resource load that PMShell does, even when the GUI is loaded.
10 REM MSLEGAL.BAS 20 WINCASE=0 30 IF WINCASE=1 THEN 100 40 CALL APPEAL("LODGE"): APPEAL=0 50 CALL STRANGLE("MARKET") 60 CALL GETMORE("MONEY") 70 CALL GETMORE("POWER") 80 CALL APPEAL("DELAY"): IF APPEAL=0 THEN 80 90 IF WINCASE=0 THEN GOTO 30 100 SYSTEM 110 LABEL APPEAL 110 IF HEARING=1 THEN APPEAL=1 120 RETURN
This product was intended to be installed on a system that has an existing Windows installation. What it did was add a few files to an existing Win31 setup, so that it could run under OS/2. This means that you did not have to migrate your Win16 apps to the os/2 install as well as the windows install.
Netscape
Anyone who was familiar with pre-netscape internet would probably know that browsers supported http:, and for other sessions like ftp: or gopher:, you needed other applications. Netscape integrated this into a user-friendly browser, and charged money for their bit.
Microsoft fielded IE, and charged money for it, too. But when MS did not get the market share they wanted, they first dropped the price, and then bounded it to the OS.
It's not difficult to make a Windows 95b install that has no internet browser on install. It took me an afternoon to patch the install to do it. It works quite well. It just shows that the ties are artefacial, not technical.
On the other hand, hun, how much of their system depends on Y2K stock. That is, word processors and spreadsheets continue after 2000, as does DOS or Windows. Some of these may show 19100 or 19:0, but these do not stop shows.
Y2K does not stop computers per se, what happens is that dates that are really after are read as before, and code that depends on this throws out the transaction.
Having dealt with y2k, and with mgt in general, the hype was still worth it.
It appears to be "overhyped nonsence", because the outcry got people out there fixing code before it happened. In fact, the mass hysteria was needed to get the dollars to flow to get the fixes in place on time.
Unfortunately, it took the "your blood will boil" and "escallators will shoot you through the roof", and "horde bake beans in the basement" type hysteria to get mgt to realise it was more than just something else. It's not a buffer overflow, type disaster.
To run around and say "it will never happen" is clearly wrong. I often used programs which would not allow data entry of events spanning 2000.01.01. I had to deal with the 1999 bug, where, where the program rejected 1999 as invalid.
Mind you, it's nice to see MSFT with their fingures on the pulse: win98 had y2k fixes released for it. According to file manager, the year after 1999 is 19:0. It was kind of interesting to see what sort of years followed 1999, by different programs. 1900, 19:0, and 19100 all appeared beside 2000.
When 2000 came and went, and no-one saw hoodlums roaming the diserted streets, and power-outages as power networks were brought to a screaming halt, it's as much due to the unremitting efforts to get fixes in place as to the robustness of the system.
There was a disaster in the dispatcher software that was written for London Ambulance. This was documented in a book on computer disasters.
The system did not collapse per se but progressively became bogged down by a series of poor design issues and implementation issues.
What happened was there was a memory leak, in that not all the memory used when a call was processed was released. This meant that each call chewed up a small part of core.
As the day wore on, this loss of memory started to make the system run slower, and created more calls as users started to worry about the non-show of the ambulance.
Meanwhile, back at the control centre, the operators started getting blasted by messages about over-due ambulances, and other system warnings. They were spending time simply dismissing Error dialogues.
By the end of the day, they were still dealing with the emergency issues notified at 12.00.
Of course, in the inquiry, there were many different management and design issues to be addressed, including the reliability and scalability of the software. [It was a Visual Basic program.]
I have seen a number of instances personally, most of these tend to be ignored by management keen to see the system up and running. The most often case for dismissal of problems is "teething problems", and "Luditism".
In practice, the real issue here is the UI. Not so much "flash chrome", but that the buttons and so forth will actually do what the user expects them to do. The user must be able to understand how to process and correct errors in relation to the application data itself. That is, if I enter 1200, and I mean 1130, I should be able to correct that.
The other disaster happening out there is that the program must be useful to the operator. So apart from entering data, the operator must be able to extract useful information from it. What the back end does does not really matter.
For example, a clerk who has to enter data on the screen each sale, in addition to operating the till, would be reluctant to use it. On the other hande, if the program is part of the till operation, and it provides information on how much stock is left, the clerk is more accepting of the change.
Implementing a system is not about plonking a pc with a program on a user's desk. It's about a user process. Users are looking for outcomes, not process. So if you want to go to a shop, you want to buy something, and the clerk wants to sell it to you. All the rest is administrivia.
Software design is important. So is user training.
I did 19 different operating systems on the 486. It's actually quite useful to fire up some specific version of dos to twinkle some version-specific bug. Here's my list.
The installations of these were heavily stripped, because both msdos and pcdos will run the pcdos 7.0 utilities, along with a scattering of other utilities.
OS/2 did a whole lot better running on a 486 with 20 MB than Windows NT. [yes, I did this:)] It also runs quite nicely without having a paging file greater than installed memory. That is, you can run OS/2 quite nicely with a 10M swapper.dat.
It's fairly easy to optimise: I burnt cdroms under OS/2 on my 486, using a specially modified (ie thinned out) version of OS/2 3.0,
Also, there is a neat little program called allocmem, which unloads unused dlls in core to the swap file, giving heaps more usable ram..
digital noise, while not audible, provides a harsh overtone when compared to the vinyl
I make this based on my experience, not as a way of spreading analog-favouring rumours. I was unaware that some people can not hear it. Yes, I do hear it. It took me many months to get used to it. And yes, it is a harsh tone.
Well, one could perceive quantization noise in a CD, if listening in an anechoic chamber with the best headphones available at current technology levels, but not using even the best commercial equipment in the quietest room.
Digital noise is not audible per se, but it affects the other noise being played. No, it's not a howl that overpowers the song, it's more of a harsh overtone. The annoyance factor is something akin to someone starting up a remote power-tool everytime you play the song.
This "harsh overtone" thing is just a myth some people like to spread around, just to brag they have such good ears that they perceive sounds no one else does.
Case in point. Hi-tech audio stuff is going back to valve technology, simply because people can hear the quantum noise produced by transistors. With valvues, the noise is present, but because of the larger volume of the valve, considerably less. Music through valves sounds sweeter than transistor music.
Case in point: one can see colours of remote things, where the best cameras reveal only grey. Given that we can build cameras that can see in what we call the dark, it's simply not the raw signal strength that is being read. It's just that the brain has powerful preprocessors that can highlight or disgard things.
On the other hand, the cd is a more robust form that allows easier access to inner tracks of the record.
A vinyl record has a label of typically 3 to 4 inches, and it is safe to assume the groves are 4 inches on either side. At 1200 dpi, this corresponds to 4800 dpi. A record that runs for 22 minutes has 720 groves across a given radius, and therefore a grove is 4800/720 or 6.66 pixels per grove.
In the course of a minute, the record rotates 33 1/3 revolutions, or 12,000 degrees. This is 200 revolutions per second, or 12' per millisecond.
On a circle of radius 2400 dots, one millisecond corresponds to 8.375 pixels. Typically, it's closer to 24 pixels.
So, what you are essentially looking at is 24*6.66 = 160 pixels per millisecond at the minimum, and an average closer to twice this.
While one can not expect to get cd-quality audio from such a processing, it is well within the realm of possibility to produce something at 9kHz, similar to the old AM radio quality.
Certianly LP manufacturing has come a long way. The technology to make high quality 33 1/3 appeared around 1947. Before that the 45 and 78 dominated, and low quality 16 2/3 rpm. Microgrove stereo technologies appeared around the 1960s, and towards the end of the seventies and early eighties, there was some optical pickups.
Dollar for dollar, the LP still sounds better than the cdrom, purely because the digital noise, while not audible, provides a harsh overtone when compared to the vinyl.
On the other hand, with a bit of practice, one can follow the music by looking at the wriggles on the grove. I know I could identify music from the grooves.
The other trouble is that shading and colour carries information as well. So while there are 160 pixels per second, there may well be more information when colour is added into the picture.
Given that his audio samples are consistant with the calculated data information to be found.
So the stuff lines up pretty well, I should imagine.
Originally, weight stood indifferently for what we call mass and force. The equation F=mg actually defines the constant g, which separates Force from Mass.
That g varies from place to place can be demonstrated by a spring balance.
That m is constant, at least to 1e-14, has been demonstrated inertially.
Therefore, units from the group "weight" are understood to be units of mass.
How many of you guys have put something like a product name (as opposed to a company name), and expected a hit?
With the failure of any reliable default search, what we have is search through urls... If we had some sort of alternate commonly used search, the search-by-url may not have been needed.
An alternate would be to set up some default alias where people who wanted names could buy it, and forward it onto their URL.
But then that's just another domain, a la.com,.org.
One does not need a formal education to read the papers on the subject, or to write to their authors. All the same, I can more or less make out the mathematics, and the pictures inspire me. Whether I could *write* maths like that is unlikely.
On the other hand, I am not restricted to their pictures. I can see other things in my mind, and my maths, although not rigourously proven, is as good for producing results as any other. It's just home-grown on a different soil, that's all.
Maths, unlike Linux or French, can be done without any contact with the products of the existing structure. You can not participate in Linux or French without access to an existing source of Linux or French (including source and read-only material).
If your whole experience is with Arabic and DOS, then you will not be able to invent French or Linux yourself. On the other hand, you may derive the whole body of mathematics without access to any mathematical work or mathematician. If you develop like this, and then come in contact with the established body, you can compare notes, and see if you are in front of them or behind them.
The point is, that you can perfectly see the sort of space that Escher draws, or that I dabble in, without too much mathematics.
I quite often see the curves that Escher drew in his pictures.
Also, one can even understand hyperbolic geometry without any great understanding of the mathematics. I have even made new discoveries out there.
The thing is, that the relations that describe these things can be found quite intuitively. In this light, one does not need a "formal education" to see them.
His circle-limits, for example, were gleaned from a drawing in H.S.M. Coxeters' book, of the symmetry group of a {6,4}. My understanding comes from a similar drawing of a {7,3}.
Also, there are some of Escher's drawings where he assembled ideas into distinctly non-mathematical drawings, such as his final lithograph, Snakes [which is a poincine projection, coupled with one that bends inwards as well].
The fact is, that Escher understood certian constructs of absolute geometry, and was also an artist. Having read a number of his notes, I can understand how he came to devise his drawings.
I can draw reasonably accurate projections in hyperbolic geometry even without any understanding of hyperbolic trig, etc...
Team OS/2 went down bad because for reasons other than the team. It still runs.
It was the first real mainstream hacker group to come in major contact wit Windows, largely because, unlike Amiga and Apple, OS/2 runs on the same hardware as Windows, and many OS/2 users were fairly familiar with Windows as well.
Unlike Linux, the thing is more dependant on the whims of the vendor - IBM. None the same, the world (even the Windows world) is better for OS/2 and teamOS/2.
On the other hand, there was no "TeamBe" that I saw.
Linux zealots does well to learn the way some of the more aggressive OS/2 zealots behave, if only to avoid this issue.
Is that people tend to live the symtoms that their medical complaint suggests. That's why you have to run blind and double blind tests, to weed out people who unconciously fake what they know to be the symptoms.
Something like this could comprimise the blind tests.
[On the other hand, a lot of subtle bugs in software come from analysing the blind elements. Ie, trying to understand subtle behaviour.]
On the other extreme, you could go for a base-120 system like this.
second = 20 thirds (day = 120^3 thirds)
metre = 40.8 inches (so g = 1 in/th/th)
kilogram = 68 ounces (so 1 cu in water = 1 oz)
kelvin = 17424 seconds, so 100dC = 121*120^s sec
In this system
1 ozf = 1 oz in/th^2
1 'cal' = 1 oz in^2 / th^2
g = 1 in/th/th = 9.80392156 m/s
d = 1 oz/cu in = 998.784 kg/m3
j = 1 erg/oz t = 4186.8512 J/kg K
The thermal, gravitational and absolute systems coinside, and the units are much better than the CGS: 1 W = 14.14944 power units. 1 KW = 0.9826 * 120^2 power units.
The metric system was designed using the leading metrological thinking of the day, with decimals applied. It was not the only system around, there were more logical ones available. The two systems I show in parallel.
ANGLE
m circle -> 400 degrees -> 100 min -> 100 s
g circle -> 360 degrees -> 60 min -> 60 s
LENGTH. The nautical and itenery length are the same, based on a minute arc on some circle of the earth.
m minute = kilometre = 1000 metres
g minute = mile = 1000 fathoms -> 6 feet -> 12 in & c An ell of 20 inches makes 1 mph = 1 ell/s
The km is too short, this from selecting the smallest value and underestimating it. The mile of 6080 ft Imperial, is closer to the mean.
AREA For the sale of land, a unit of area is named. Normally square measure is used.
m are = 100 sq metres. 1 sq km = 10,000 are
g acre = 1000 sq fathoms. 1 sq mile = 1,000 acres.
The unit suggested here is a comma-unit: ie 12,345 sq fathoms = 12.345 acres.
VOLUME Cubic measure is used to express volume measured by linear extent.
m stere = 1 cu m
g acre-foot = 1000 tuns = 36000 cu ft
tun = 36 cu ft
CAPACITY For volume measured by bulk comparison (eg pouring), a more accurate system is used.
m litre = 0.001 cu m
g tun = 240 gallons, etc
WEIGHT (Mass) For this, the basic weight is intended to be a capacity of water, under some conditions. In practice, a prototype is manufactured to fall in the range.
m 1 litre = 1 kg [This had a name "grave"]
g 1 tun = 2400 lb of 16 oz etc... = 0.972 lb
FINE WEIGHTS This is a combination of the apothecaries, troy and other small measures. The pound is divided into 15 troy oz, and then according to the troy and apothecaries ounces respectively.
Standards were originally defined in terms of the jewellers weights, as jewellers often crafted the system. A grain is 1/480 of the matching ounce. The avoirdepoise oz is 437.5 troy grains, but 480 grains avoirdepoise.
The weights ran in France in the first stage of conversion is the 'system usualle', feet and pounds defined on round metric. The fine-weight usage was converted to metric. By the time that they came to drop the transitional system, the idea of dual weights had largely disappeared, and the fineweight was extended up to myriagrams, quintals, and tonnes.
MONEY The value of a weight of silver or gold. Bullion-money has since gone out of fashion, but the franc was originally 0.1 grams of silver. cf pound, ounce, talent, mina, shekel, dram [weights that became money] vs mark, dram [money that became weight]
Converting money is the first step of introducing decimal, etc. In australia, currency decimalisation (1966) preceded metrification (1975).
Metric added some ambitious reforms that never took root, and were mercifully tapped on the head.
TIME Division of the day, decimally. Unfortunately, the time units were already constant in Europe.
CALANDER Grouping of days into weeks and years. This was a very localised affair. Attack on the calendar was seen, and is seen as, an attack on the core principles of society. Making a system dependant on the calender is now recognised as a folly.
Such a system is easy to set up, and produces practical sized units. The nifty thing about this is that one could convert pounds and coulombs with a foot ruler, since the size of the foot, pound, and charge unit directly is in proportion to time. So a mars-ruler laid up against an earth-ruler converts pounds etc. The replacement for Volts, Ohms Watts, and Amperes are not changed from planet to planet. The only trouble is that the thing's hard to set up for practical use.
On the other hand, I did try to look for a 'better' system. I did manage to get eight constants working in a google-system. In essence, the process of dimensional analysis is to let things like L, M, T and I have numeric values, being powers of 10^100. The set I used after much study is L=1E1100, M=1E73300, T=1E100, Q=1E32200. So a kilowatt is 1E75203. One can then work with a wide range of units, eg tonne = E73303 becomes coherent.
You can do the same thing with the fine structure constant, and an assortment of natural constants as well. Instead of powers of 10, you use powers of 137.0359895, or its square root. The relevant units are:
L 1K1100 = 137.036 bohr radii
M 1K73300 = 137.036^2 electron mass
T 1K100 so that c = 1K137.036^3
Q 1K32200 = 137.036 electron charge
t 1 th so that m_e c^2 / k = 137^4
These units refers to one boron-sized molecule at atmospheric pressue, ~ 10 K. Most of the numbers come out as they should: avagadro's number in this system is 10.3 (ie 137.036/1868).
It still does won't be used in science because of the way scientists works. Something like "cgs units" or "atomic units" is of their name.
You run command.com if you want to use a DOS program that relies on DOS calls to other DOS programs, eg TSR's. command.com is also used to run batches. In terms of DOS support, this may make the prompt show short file names.
You run cmd.exe and.cmd files if you want 32 bit stuff. They will also run in.bat files, but command.com isn't loaded in the process.
All versions of NTVMDOS.EXE have some sort of bug that makes it look like the system is about to crash. It adds an un-needed latency to the processing of keystrokes. Both OS/2 and Win9x process DOS in the same way as NT, but this latency is not there. I mean, it's only the keyboard input. The programs run quite fast, and you can use a DOS program as a cycle-soaker, if you want to: I use UBASIC in this way.
Many of the bugs that I gather are in NT have been in Windows NT 3.1 code. I have not seen a version of Windows that can run a pipe of several commands, and keep the windows command window open. I found documentation on these bugs, and a whole neat range of tricks, under the Microsoft TechNet thingie under NT v 3.1. Windows 2k will run the OS/2 1.3 cmd.exe, complete with rexx support!
I would have thought they would had fixed these bugs up before NT went prime time, but no.
Windows NT has two different command prompts with a different set of bugs. You run the one that has the bug fixed in it, and hope for the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft fielded IE, and charged money for it, too....... MS never charged for IE. I have seen this on the shelves, IE in a retail box, and all. At the time was tossing up whether to buy netscape or ie. The pricetag was in the order of $25 us.
It just shows that the ties are artefacial, not technical. ...... Wrong again. All of 2K and 98 - the brunt of the efforts I was actually talking about Win95b, and yes, I did remove IE from it in an afternoon. IE in win98 can be removed, partly by patching a number of files, including notepad, write, explorer. 98lite does this nicely.
I'm not sure what 'artefacial' is. It means to claim some feature is essential, when it really is a separate product lightly hacked into it. I mean, the fax software in Win95 is actually a separate product very lightly hacked in.
OS/2 has "bundled" features, not "integrated" ones. You can replace features, or uninstall the features. It comes with two browsers, you don't have to install either. Unfortunately, both of them require some sort of network protocol, and not just the rendering engine. You can't set it up to use a browser with a locally set-up html pages. WebExplorer does not need the underlying protocol.
Certianly, IBM never stopped alternate vendors competing on the desktop. What happened here is that the utilities bundled with the OS is more OS/2 can boot to a command prompt, without the WPS loaded. You can boot it off diskettes. In this form, it still supports long-file names.
There are several different shells available that do not have the resource load that PMShell does, even when the GUI is loaded.
Get with it....
10 REM MSLEGAL.BAS
20 WINCASE=0
30 IF WINCASE=1 THEN 100
40 CALL APPEAL("LODGE"): APPEAL=0
50 CALL STRANGLE("MARKET")
60 CALL GETMORE("MONEY")
70 CALL GETMORE("POWER")
80 CALL APPEAL("DELAY"): IF APPEAL=0 THEN 80
90 IF WINCASE=0 THEN GOTO 30
100 SYSTEM
110 LABEL APPEAL
110 IF HEARING=1 THEN APPEAL=1
120 RETURN
This product was intended to be installed on a system that has an existing Windows installation. What it did was add a few files to an existing Win31 setup, so that it could run under OS/2. This means that you did not have to migrate your Win16 apps to the os/2 install as well as the windows install.
Netscape
Anyone who was familiar with pre-netscape internet would probably know that browsers supported http:, and for other sessions like ftp: or gopher:, you needed other applications. Netscape integrated this into a user-friendly browser, and charged money for their bit.
Microsoft fielded IE, and charged money for it, too. But when MS did not get the market share they wanted, they first dropped the price, and then bounded it to the OS.
It's not difficult to make a Windows 95b install that has no internet browser on install. It took me an afternoon to patch the install to do it. It works quite well. It just shows that the ties are artefacial, not technical.
Y2K does not stop computers per se, what happens is that dates that are really after are read as before, and code that depends on this throws out the transaction.
Having dealt with y2k, and with mgt in general, the hype was still worth it.
Unfortunately, it took the "your blood will boil" and "escallators will shoot you through the roof", and "horde bake beans in the basement" type hysteria to get mgt to realise it was more than just something else. It's not a buffer overflow, type disaster.
To run around and say "it will never happen" is clearly wrong. I often used programs which would not allow data entry of events spanning 2000.01.01. I had to deal with the 1999 bug, where, where the program rejected 1999 as invalid.
Mind you, it's nice to see MSFT with their fingures on the pulse: win98 had y2k fixes released for it. According to file manager, the year after 1999 is 19:0. It was kind of interesting to see what sort of years followed 1999, by different programs. 1900, 19:0, and 19100 all appeared beside 2000.
When 2000 came and went, and no-one saw hoodlums roaming the diserted streets, and power-outages as power networks were brought to a screaming halt, it's as much due to the unremitting efforts to get fixes in place as to the robustness of the system.
The system did not collapse per se but progressively became bogged down by a series of poor design issues and implementation issues.
What happened was there was a memory leak, in that not all the memory used when a call was processed was released. This meant that each call chewed up a small part of core.
As the day wore on, this loss of memory started to make the system run slower, and created more calls as users started to worry about the non-show of the ambulance.
Meanwhile, back at the control centre, the operators started getting blasted by messages about over-due ambulances, and other system warnings. They were spending time simply dismissing Error dialogues.
By the end of the day, they were still dealing with the emergency issues notified at 12.00.
Of course, in the inquiry, there were many different management and design issues to be addressed, including the reliability and scalability of the software. [It was a Visual Basic program.]
I have seen a number of instances personally, most of these tend to be ignored by management keen to see the system up and running. The most often case for dismissal of problems is "teething problems", and "Luditism".
In practice, the real issue here is the UI. Not so much "flash chrome", but that the buttons and so forth will actually do what the user expects them to do. The user must be able to understand how to process and correct errors in relation to the application data itself. That is, if I enter 1200, and I mean 1130, I should be able to correct that.
The other disaster happening out there is that the program must be useful to the operator. So apart from entering data, the operator must be able to extract useful information from it. What the back end does does not really matter.
For example, a clerk who has to enter data on the screen each sale, in addition to operating the till, would be reluctant to use it. On the other hande, if the program is part of the till operation, and it provides information on how much stock is left, the clerk is more accepting of the change.
Implementing a system is not about plonking a pc with a program on a user's desk. It's about a user process. Users are looking for outcomes, not process. So if you want to go to a shop, you want to buy something, and the clerk wants to sell it to you. All the rest is administrivia.
Software design is important. So is user training.
You forget:
OS/2 3.0 for Windows
OS/2 3.1 [Warp connect]
I did 19 different operating systems on the 486. It's actually quite useful to fire up some specific version of dos to twinkle some version-specific bug. Here's my list.
The installations of these were heavily stripped, because both msdos and pcdos will run the pcdos 7.0 utilities, along with a scattering of other utilities.
System commander provided the menu.
msdos 5.00 6.00 6.20 6.21 6.22 7.00b
pcdos 5.00 5.02 6.00 6.10 6.30 7.00 2000
drdos 6.00b 7.00
mswin 95a
os/2 3.00 4.00
nt 4.00
OS/2 3.0 was heavily stripped to 9MB total, it was used for burning cdroms.
On top of these, I ran different operating system extenders: These
dosshell [a hacked win30 standard mode]
win30
win31
win311
deskView
qemm
The other configurations were the main work client (pcdos 2000), a guest system for my mother (pcdos 2000 + win3.11 running a network install.
Yes, I have seen OS/2 GPF screens too.
:)] It also runs quite nicely without having a paging file greater than installed memory. That is, you can run OS/2 quite nicely with a 10M swapper.dat.
OS/2 did a whole lot better running on a 486 with 20 MB than Windows NT. [yes, I did this
It's fairly easy to optimise: I burnt cdroms under OS/2 on my 486, using a specially modified (ie thinned out) version of OS/2 3.0,
Also, there is a neat little program called allocmem, which unloads unused dlls in core to the swap file, giving heaps more usable ram..
I make this based on my experience, not as a way of spreading analog-favouring rumours. I was unaware that some people can not hear it. Yes, I do hear it. It took me many months to get used to it. And yes, it is a harsh tone.
Well, one could perceive quantization noise in a CD, if listening in an anechoic chamber with the best headphones available at current technology levels, but not using even the best commercial equipment in the quietest room.
Digital noise is not audible per se, but it affects the other noise being played. No, it's not a howl that overpowers the song, it's more of a harsh overtone. The annoyance factor is something akin to someone starting up a remote power-tool everytime you play the song.
This "harsh overtone" thing is just a myth some people like to spread around, just to brag they have such good ears that they perceive sounds no one else does.
Case in point. Hi-tech audio stuff is going back to valve technology, simply because people can hear the quantum noise produced by transistors. With valvues, the noise is present, but because of the larger volume of the valve, considerably less. Music through valves sounds sweeter than transistor music.
Case in point: one can see colours of remote things, where the best cameras reveal only grey. Given that we can build cameras that can see in what we call the dark, it's simply not the raw signal strength that is being read. It's just that the brain has powerful preprocessors that can highlight or disgard things.
On the other hand, the cd is a more robust form that allows easier access to inner tracks of the record.
A vinyl record has a label of typically 3 to 4 inches, and it is safe to assume the groves are 4 inches on either side. At 1200 dpi, this corresponds to 4800 dpi. A record that runs for 22 minutes has 720 groves across a given radius, and therefore a grove is 4800/720 or 6.66 pixels per grove.
In the course of a minute, the record rotates 33 1/3 revolutions, or 12,000 degrees. This is 200 revolutions per second, or 12' per millisecond.
On a circle of radius 2400 dots, one millisecond corresponds to 8.375 pixels. Typically, it's closer to 24 pixels.
So, what you are essentially looking at is 24*6.66 = 160 pixels per millisecond at the minimum, and an average closer to twice this.
While one can not expect to get cd-quality audio from such a processing, it is well within the realm of possibility to produce something at 9kHz, similar to the old AM radio quality.
Certianly LP manufacturing has come a long way. The technology to make high quality 33 1/3 appeared around 1947. Before that the 45 and 78 dominated, and low quality 16 2/3 rpm. Microgrove stereo technologies appeared around the 1960s, and towards the end of the seventies and early eighties, there was some optical pickups.
Dollar for dollar, the LP still sounds better than the cdrom, purely because the digital noise, while not audible, provides a harsh overtone when compared to the vinyl.
On the other hand, with a bit of practice, one can follow the music by looking at the wriggles on the grove. I know I could identify music from the grooves.
The other trouble is that shading and colour carries information as well. So while there are 160 pixels per second, there may well be more information when colour is added into the picture.
Given that his audio samples are consistant with the calculated data information to be found.
So the stuff lines up pretty well, I should imagine.
1 lb = 0.45359237 kg by definition.
Originally, weight stood indifferently for what we call mass and force. The equation F=mg actually defines the constant g, which separates Force from Mass.
That g varies from place to place can be demonstrated by a spring balance.
That m is constant, at least to 1e-14, has been demonstrated inertially.
Therefore, units from the group "weight" are understood to be units of mass.
1 G is 9.8 m/s/s, and yes, you can exert a force per mass of 1000G This works out to be something like 2.3427 calories per gram-metre.
:)
Gravity may be pretty weak, but the earth is pretty big
BTW 1 gravity = 1 force, eg 1 lb * gravity = 1 lb force.
With the failure of any reliable default search, what we have is search through urls... If we had some sort of alternate commonly used search, the search-by-url may not have been needed.
An alternate would be to set up some default alias where people who wanted names could buy it, and forward it onto their URL.
But then that's just another domain, a la .com, .org.
One does not need a formal education to read the papers on the subject, or to write to their authors. All the same, I can more or less make out the mathematics, and the pictures inspire me. Whether I could *write* maths like that is unlikely.
On the other hand, I am not restricted to their pictures. I can see other things in my mind, and my maths, although not rigourously proven, is as good for producing results as any other. It's just home-grown on a different soil, that's all.
Maths, unlike Linux or French, can be done without any contact with the products of the existing structure. You can not participate in Linux or French without access to an existing source of Linux or French (including source and read-only material).
If your whole experience is with Arabic and DOS, then you will not be able to invent French or Linux yourself. On the other hand, you may derive the whole body of mathematics without access to any mathematical work or mathematician. If you develop like this, and then come in contact with the established body, you can compare notes, and see if you are in front of them or behind them.
Seriously.
The point is, that you can perfectly see the sort of space that Escher draws, or that I dabble in, without too much mathematics.
I quite often see the curves that Escher drew in his pictures.
Also, one can even understand hyperbolic geometry without any great understanding of the mathematics. I have even made new discoveries out there.
The thing is, that the relations that describe these things can be found quite intuitively. In this light, one does not need a "formal education" to see them.
His circle-limits, for example, were gleaned from a drawing in H.S.M. Coxeters' book, of the symmetry group of a {6,4}. My understanding comes from a similar drawing of a {7,3}.
Also, there are some of Escher's drawings where he assembled ideas into distinctly non-mathematical drawings, such as his final lithograph, Snakes [which is a poincine projection, coupled with one that bends inwards as well].
The fact is, that Escher understood certian constructs of absolute geometry, and was also an artist. Having read a number of his notes, I can understand how he came to devise his drawings.
I can draw reasonably accurate projections in hyperbolic geometry even without any understanding of hyperbolic trig, etc...
It was the first real mainstream hacker group to come in major contact wit Windows, largely because, unlike Amiga and Apple, OS/2 runs on the same hardware as Windows, and many OS/2 users were fairly familiar with Windows as well.
Unlike Linux, the thing is more dependant on the whims of the vendor - IBM. None the same, the world (even the Windows world) is better for OS/2 and teamOS/2.
On the other hand, there was no "TeamBe" that I saw.
Linux zealots does well to learn the way some of the more aggressive OS/2 zealots behave, if only to avoid this issue.
Is that people tend to live the symtoms that their medical complaint suggests. That's why you have to run blind and double blind tests, to weed out people who unconciously fake what they know to be the symptoms.
Something like this could comprimise the blind tests.
[On the other hand, a lot of subtle bugs in software come from analysing the blind elements. Ie, trying to understand subtle behaviour.]
On the other extreme, you could go for a base-120 system like this.
second = 20 thirds (day = 120^3 thirds)
metre = 40.8 inches (so g = 1 in/th/th)
kilogram = 68 ounces (so 1 cu in water = 1 oz)
kelvin = 17424 seconds, so 100dC = 121*120^s sec
In this system
1 ozf = 1 oz in/th^2
1 'cal' = 1 oz in^2 / th^2
g = 1 in/th/th = 9.80392156 m/s
d = 1 oz/cu in = 998.784 kg/m3
j = 1 erg/oz t = 4186.8512 J/kg K
The thermal, gravitational and absolute systems coinside, and the units are much better than the CGS: 1 W = 14.14944 power units. 1 KW = 0.9826 * 120^2 power units.
The metric system was designed using the leading metrological thinking of the day, with decimals applied. It was not the only system around, there were more logical ones available. The two systems I show in parallel.
ANGLE
m circle -> 400 degrees -> 100 min -> 100 s
g circle -> 360 degrees -> 60 min -> 60 s
LENGTH.
The nautical and itenery length are the same, based on a minute arc on some circle of the earth.
m minute = kilometre = 1000 metres
g minute = mile = 1000 fathoms -> 6 feet -> 12 in & c An ell of 20 inches makes 1 mph = 1 ell/s
The km is too short, this from selecting the smallest value and underestimating it. The mile of 6080 ft Imperial, is closer to the mean.
AREA
For the sale of land, a unit of area is named. Normally square measure is used.
m are = 100 sq metres. 1 sq km = 10,000 are
g acre = 1000 sq fathoms. 1 sq mile = 1,000 acres.
The unit suggested here is a comma-unit: ie 12,345 sq fathoms = 12.345 acres.
VOLUME
Cubic measure is used to express volume measured by linear extent.
m stere = 1 cu m
g acre-foot = 1000 tuns = 36000 cu ft
tun = 36 cu ft
CAPACITY
For volume measured by bulk comparison (eg pouring), a more accurate system is used.
m litre = 0.001 cu m
g tun = 240 gallons, etc
WEIGHT (Mass)
For this, the basic weight is intended to be a capacity of water, under some conditions. In practice, a prototype is manufactured to fall in the range.
m 1 litre = 1 kg [This had a name "grave"]
g 1 tun = 2400 lb of 16 oz etc... = 0.972 lb
FINE WEIGHTS
This is a combination of the apothecaries, troy and other small measures. The pound is divided into 15 troy oz, and then according to the troy and apothecaries ounces respectively.
Standards were originally defined in terms of the jewellers weights, as jewellers often crafted the system. A grain is 1/480 of the matching ounce. The avoirdepoise oz is 437.5 troy grains, but 480 grains avoirdepoise.
The weights ran in France in the first stage of conversion is the 'system usualle', feet and pounds defined on round metric. The fine-weight usage was converted to metric. By the time that they came to drop the transitional system, the idea of dual weights had largely disappeared, and the fineweight was extended up to myriagrams, quintals, and tonnes.
MONEY
The value of a weight of silver or gold. Bullion-money has since gone out of fashion, but the franc was originally 0.1 grams of silver. cf pound, ounce, talent, mina, shekel, dram [weights that became money] vs mark, dram [money that became weight]
Converting money is the first step of introducing decimal, etc. In australia, currency decimalisation (1966) preceded metrification (1975).
Metric added some ambitious reforms that never took root, and were mercifully tapped on the head.
TIME
Division of the day, decimally. Unfortunately, the time units were already constant in Europe.
CALANDER
Grouping of days into weeks and years. This was a very localised affair. Attack on the calendar was seen, and is seen as, an attack on the core principles of society. Making a system dependant on the calender is now recognised as a folly.
Back in the seventies, I played around with a system where the principle fundemental constants were powers of 10, eg
light speed = 1,000,000,000 ft/s
elect const = 0.000 000 001 'F' / ft
magnt const = 0.000 000 001 'H' / ft
gravitation = 0.000 000 001 lb s^2 / ft^3
Such a system is easy to set up, and produces practical sized units. The nifty thing about this is that one could convert pounds and coulombs with a foot ruler, since the size of the foot, pound, and charge unit directly is in proportion to time. So a mars-ruler laid up against an earth-ruler converts pounds etc. The replacement for Volts, Ohms Watts, and Amperes are not changed from planet to planet. The only trouble is that the thing's hard to set up for practical use.
On the other hand, I did try to look for a 'better' system. I did manage to get eight constants working in a google-system. In essence, the process of dimensional analysis is to let things like L, M, T and I have numeric values, being powers of 10^100. The set I used after much study is L=1E1100, M=1E73300, T=1E100, Q=1E32200. So a kilowatt is 1E75203. One can then work with a wide range of units, eg tonne = E73303 becomes coherent.
You can do the same thing with the fine structure constant, and an assortment of natural constants as well. Instead of powers of 10, you use powers of 137.0359895, or its square root. The relevant units are:
L 1K1100 = 137.036 bohr radii
M 1K73300 = 137.036^2 electron mass
T 1K100 so that c = 1K137.036^3
Q 1K32200 = 137.036 electron charge
t 1 th so that m_e c^2 / k = 137^4
These units refers to one boron-sized molecule at atmospheric pressue, ~ 10 K. Most of the numbers come out as they should: avagadro's number in this system is 10.3 (ie 137.036/1868).
It still does won't be used in science because of the way scientists works. Something like "cgs units" or "atomic units" is of their name.
You run command.com if you want to use a DOS program that relies on DOS calls to other DOS programs, eg TSR's. command.com is also used to run batches. In terms of DOS support, this may make the prompt show short file names.
You run cmd.exe and .cmd files if you want 32 bit stuff. They will also run in .bat files, but command.com isn't loaded in the process.
All versions of NTVMDOS.EXE have some sort of bug that makes it look like the system is about to crash. It adds an un-needed latency to the processing of keystrokes. Both OS/2 and Win9x process DOS in the same way as NT, but this latency is not there. I mean, it's only the keyboard input. The programs run quite fast, and you can use a DOS program as a cycle-soaker, if you want to: I use UBASIC in this way.
Many of the bugs that I gather are in NT have been in Windows NT 3.1 code. I have not seen a version of Windows that can run a pipe of several commands, and keep the windows command window open. I found documentation on these bugs, and a whole neat range of tricks, under the Microsoft TechNet thingie under NT v 3.1. Windows 2k will run the OS/2 1.3 cmd.exe, complete with rexx support!
I would have thought they would had fixed these bugs up before NT went prime time, but no.
Windows NT has two different command prompts with a different set of bugs. You run the one that has the bug fixed in it, and hope for the best.
Generally, the design runs:
Hours = ab
Minutes and seconds = bc
a = number of times the hour hand goes around
in a day (eg 2)
b = division of the main clock-face (eg 12)
c = fine divisions. eg (5)
Generally, you want the base to fall on a 'b' division, so 'c' is something like a half or a third of the base.
A day consists of ab hours, or abbc minutes or
abcbc seconds.
Sumerians divided the day directly into powers of 60.
Greeks used the sumerian fractions on regularised Egyptian hours.
Romans used hour units, which were devided by any fraction, eg weight-fractions (ounce = 5 min, scruple = 12.5 sec).