Or just run it in DOSBox on any OS. For most software that's the obvious thing to do.
Actually, it's better to run legacy business applications on an actual DOS system like FreeDOS. DOSBox is meant only for games. They don't have great compatibility with business software.
FreeDOS runs very well in PC emulators and virtual machines like QEMU, VirtualPC, VMWare, VirtualBox, and others. At home, I run QEMU and DOSemu to boot FreeDOS. (When I'm developing, I use DOSemu so I can share files easily between Linux and FreeDOS. When I want to test FreeDOS in a more traditional virtual machine, I run QEMU.) It runs great!
Yeah, the problem is that the Internet is dominated by the voices of the PC generation, who somehow never learned that there actually was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS.
CP/M and other precursor OSes are really only of interest to historians and nostalgic geeks, but DOS actually has some real relevance to many people and projects even today, thanks to FreeDOS and the fact that we're still running x86-compatible machines... which is sort of astounding, actually.
Sure, there was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS, but it was constrained to very few people for the most part - specialists, hobbyists, professionals, academics, and so on. But it was really the PC, running MS-DOS for the most part, when the vast majority of people were introduced to computers for the first time. So, it's not all that surprising that DOS is seen - rightly, I think - as the OS most used at the beginning of the personal computer revolution.
Even so, I don't think that many people mistake that for the beginning of computing in general. If nothing else, they saw computers on TV, with walls of reel-to-reel tapes and flashing lights.
The interview was about DOS, so I didn't talk about the other stuff before DOS (and after).
Our first "computer" was a mainframe acoustic coupler dial-up terminal my mom brought home for a week, so she could do some work at home. I wasn't very excited about it at the time; it was all business software and I was like eight years old.
I seem to remember we had another computer in the house at one point. Not a TRS-80 but something along those lines.
In 1982, my family bought an Apple clone (Franklin ACE 1000) and that was where my brother and I taught ourselves to write programs in AppleBASIC. I was fascinated by computer interfaces that we saw on TV and in the movies, so I wrote programs that emulated those, including the thermonuclear war simulator from the Wargames(1983) movie.
Some time after that, we bought an IBM (I think the XT). And that's what got me started with MS-DOS.
We used MS-DOS at home (upgrading to the '286 and '386 and '486) until I went to college with the family's old '386. During my university days, I had an account on the VAX and the Unix systems. I discovered Linux, and switched to that on my own computer (dual-boot with MS-DOS). I mostly avoided Windows at home, although I did run Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 for a short time - mostly for games. At work, I ran Apollo AEGIS/DomainOS, HP-UX, AIX, SunOS/Solaris, and Linux (RedHat 3.0.3 and later). Work also put me on a Windows NT4 desktop, which I ran for a while until they let me run Linux at work full-time. In the office, I've run either Windows (whatever was current) or Linux. At home, I just run Linux (I'm running Fedora Linux now) and use DOSemu or QEMU to run FreeDOS.
For shareware we relied on floppy disks and CDs. Most of them came attached to some magazine.
I wonder how many new devs know what "shareware" was? For those wondering: shareware was a concept where devs created something and gave away a limited version of it for free. And you could share that limited version with anyone. Shareware games usually were the first "chapter" or first few levels. Shareware DOS applications usually just nagged you to buy them after 30 days - but I don't remember many that actually stopped working if they weren't registered.
I mentioned some shareware in the interview, but I played a lot of Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad, Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, and Duke Nukem back then. These are all DOS shareware games.
I used a lot of DOS shareware applications for other things. AsEasyAs and GalaxyWrite got me through a lot of my university physics program. I analyzed lab data in AsEasyAs (because the old saying is "as easy as 1-2-3"... and Lotus 1-2-3 was a popular commercial spreadsheet... get it?) and wrote class papers in GalaxyWrite (not as powerful as WordPerfect, but great for papers). I also remember a bunch of other DOS shareware applications but can't remember their names anymore: a modem-terminal program, an equation solver, etc.
I am seizing Control of this article and asking Hey, Slashdot, if there were a modern DOS, what would it be like?
I know you're posting as an AC so probably won't get seen, but I'll reply anyway because it's an interesting question.
In short, you get Linux.
We discussed this in great depth in various places, and if you try to project a "modern" DOS to today, you end up with a 32-bit multitasking kernel that provides native networking and hardware abstraction. You lose binary compatibility; applications written for the newer "modern" DOS won't run on, say, MS-DOS 6. But that wouldn't be surprising; many programs written for MS-DOS 6 wouldn't run on MS-DOS 3, either. You need to provide some method of forward compatibility, of course. To run a "classic" DOS application on the "modern" DOS would require some kind of emulation environment.
And if you want that, run Linux. Because Linux is a 32-bit multitasking kernel that provides native networking and hardware abstraction. You don't have binary compatibility; applications written for Linux won't run on MS-DOS 6. To run "classic" DOS applications on Linux requires an emulation environment like DOSemu (which requires FreeDOS, by the way).
Once you break binary compatibility, a "modern" DOS isn't really DOS anymore. What's the point in a "modern" DOS if you can't run classic DOS programs on it? Because that's not DOS, it's something else.
I expect this will use a model similar to Amazon Video, where you can download Amazon Prime videos for offline viewing using the Amazon Video app (such as iPad) and they automatically expire in a few weeks. For movies and shows you've purchased via Amazon Video, you can also download for later viewing and those don't go away. But I think the "Amazon Prime" model applies to Netflix here.
So I wouldn't expect you to be able to download a movie to your home media server and watch it for free forever. You're likely going to be stuck watching it from whatever device you downloaded it on, using the Netflix app.
This seems to be a trend in the industry. I was part of a focus group from HBO where they asked a bunch of questions about "What if we allowed you to download 'n' movies and shows using the HBO Now app on your phone or iPad, and gave you 'x' amount of time to watch them? How long should 'x' be? How many should 'n' be?" I got the impression from the interviews that HBO is thinking about doing this too. HBO even cited the Amazon model, and asked if I used this feature {I do, on iPad} and how many shows and movies I usually download at a time {about 4 shows} and if I can watch them in two weeks {yes}.
But I rarely stream music anymore. If I want to listen to something, I buy it as an MP3. I avoid the Apple Music Store and look for alternative places that sell unlocked MP3s and don't require me to use iTunes to buy it.
Most of the time, I don't listen to music but instead to audiobooks or audio plays. This makes my drive to/from work go a lot faster. I got addicted to audiobooks when I had a regular three hour drive (I worked that far away from home) and just kept at them. If you like audiobooks and you like Doctor Who, I highly recommend Big Finish Productions which has the license for Doctor Who (new and classic series), Blake's 7, Survivors, Torchwood, and a bunch of other great stuff, including spinoffs (Dalek Empire, UNIT, Counter-Measures, Jago and Litefoot, etc). Even better, they do their audio plays with the original cast!
I have spent several years as an IT guy in school districts. Chromebooks make sense for IT for several reasons:
If I had mod points, I would +1 you.
I worked in higher ed for 17 years (I recently moved to a new career path) and over the last several years we were starting to deploy more Chromebooks to users. We were a Google Apps for Education campus. Chromebooks just made a lot of sense. I didn't have to worry about the device getting lost or stolen. The device is encrypted by user - but there's a limited opportunity to download stuff to the Chromebook anyway. By default, everything runs in "The Cloud."
Most of our students, staff, and faculty didn't need a very powerful machine. They mostly just booted their computer and opened a web browser to Google Apps (Gmail, Docs, etc.) The Chromebook makes a lot of sense for these users.
Deploying Chromebooks comes with the assumption that you have wifi everywhere. But as a university campus, you have to do that anyway because you never know where students will want to use a laptop.
Before I left the campus, I was pushing to move our meeting rooms, general computer labs, and classroom PCs to Chromeboxes (basically the same as a Chromebook but in desktop form) as a way to reduce cost.
I was under the impression thst it stops saving new pages, and stops *displaying* old pages, but does not nuke the old pages from storage. If your robots.txt goes away in the future, the old pages come back.... Ay least, that was my understanding from long ago...
I requested a site be deleted from Wayback a number of years ago. It was a test site, and I stupidly didn't put a "Disallow" robots.txt file on it.
I recall that the overview you describe is correct: adding a "Disallow" robots.txt file removes the site from display. But to remove the site from their storage, I had to contact an admin. They asked me to demonstrate that I was the owner of the site (by copying my email message to them as a comment on the website's front page) then they deleted my website from their Wayback archive.
However, that was when everyone used spinning disk to store data, and before write-only media became popular in the data center. Facebook stores photos on BluRays these days.. maybe Wayback does now too. If Wayback does something like this, it would be impossible to completely delete the data, although they would (theoretically) be able to remove references from their database.
For those of you wondering if the Beta is okay to use, I'll share that I've been running Fedora 24 Alpha since it was released at the end of March, and the Alpha has been stable for me. I'm looking forward to installing the Beta this weekend.
(My Linux system is a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, 1st gen.)
My wife and I do this all the time - when we text each other, we use a single emoji to represent a phrase or expression. Usually it's just the "happy face" emoji to represent "Ok, that's fine." Like to acknowledge a conversation and it's now over, whatever you just said sounds fine to me: "happy face."
We use other emoji too. We have a cat who is afraid of the rain, so if my wife texts me the "rain" emoji and the "sad kitty" emoji, I know it's raining at the house and my cat is hiding in the basement.
But use emoji in work communication or business email or website posts? No.
PS4 has only been out for 3 years, and you are comparing units moved to systems that had a decade or more sales lifetime and drawing conclusions based on those being equivalent things to compare?
The numbers in the article are difficult to understand, but I think their presentation allowed them to talk about a "decline" because gosh, the chart goes down after the Sony PlayStation 2 (2000).
So I took their numbers and actually crunched some data. I temporarily published it via Google: Best-selling videogame consoles. The generated chart doesn't show labels for all the bars, but you can hover your mouse over the bar to see missing labels.
This chart borrows the sales numbers provided from the Quartz article "The golden era of video-game console sales is over" and uses year introduced v year discontinued dates from Wikipedia. In all cases, I used the earliest available date introduced and the latest date discontinued. From there, it's simple math to figure out the average number of units sold per year. Quartz used millions, so my chart displays millions of units sold per year available. The chart is sorted by year introduced (most recent at top).
While not perfect, this is a better comparison because it allows you to compare per year averages rather than total units. (Ravaldy says that the 10 million Xbox One number is wrong, it should be 20 million, so you might double the value in my chart, about on par with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.)
This shows that the "golden era of videogame consoles" is not over. Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 4 both sold/sell almost 15 million per year, a bit more than PlayStation 2 (12 million/year) and a bit less than the original PlayStation (17.5 million/year). From my interpretation of the data, I think the "golden era" started with the original PlayStation and is still going strong.
I can speak to this. I focus a lot of my free time on the usability of free/open source software, and a few years ago, I looked into the usability of GIMP. I didn't do a full usability test, but conducted surveys of different people who used GIMP, versus Photoshop. What I found is that a person's perception of GIMP's usability depends on their familiarity with Photoshop:
People who used Photoshop all the time complained that GIMP had poor usability. This seemed to be because people knew they way around Photoshop very well, and were put off when the same functions were not accessed via the same menu path, or were called something slightly different. So they felt lost, like GIMP was broken even though they recognized it was very powerful.
People who used Photoshop occasionally, but not all the time commented that GIMP had good usability. These users understood the basic concepts behind Photoshop, such as layers and channels and plugins and tools, and could transfer that knowledge easily to GIMP. Because they didn't have a "muscle memory" of Photoshop, these users weren't put off by having the same functionality located elsewhere or with a slightly different name, because they probably didn't remember exactly what the feature was called in Photoshop, or in what exact menu it was located.
People who did not use Photoshop said that GIMP had poor usability. That seemed to be because these users didn't understand the basic concepts of Photoshop, about layers or tools or filters or what a "raster" image was, and felt overwhelmed by GIMP. If these users did any image manipulation at all, they used a simple "Paint" program like Microsoft Paint.
From your comment, it sounds like you use Photoshop quite often. So I'm not surprised you find GIMP has poor usability.
So it looks like he was already a control freak back in 2011, and was attempting to reserve the right to impose retrospectively whatever licence he felt like issuing in the future. I suspect this wouldn't stand up to serious legal scrutiny, but it was already a big red flag before he went off the rails completely.
Correct. You can only change the license for future versions of software. You cannot retroactively change the license for previously released versions.
My understanding of the legal principle at work is called estoppel. (IANAL)
Basically, you cannot prohibit someone from doing something that you already permitted them to do. If you allowed them to use your software before (the previous or current versions) you cannot later go back and say "I changed the license on you." Sure, you can change the license for future versions of the software. From my reading of his website, he is the sole author of the program, so he holds the copyright. He can choose to release the next version under a different license. But you are not allowed to retroactively change the license for previous versions.
From my reading of this article, I think the ruling could be problematic for other makers of props that are meant to be similar to film props. Park Sabers leaps to mind.
They explain in their FAQ "Q. Are you associated with Lucasfilm Ltd.? A. No. We are not associated with any Lucasfilm Ltd. Film or frachise. All of our designs are the property of Parks Sabers, Inc." However, I think it's pretty obvious that the designs for many of these sabers are lifted from the movies: Luke's first lightsaber and Luke's second lightsaber?
I have the Graflex ESB (bought it the month before Episode I came out, but it was called something else then) and it's a dead ringer for Luke's first lightsaber in Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. The "ESB" name is a big hint.
This ruling should concern makers like these. As others have pointed out, the key factor is these are made to be sold. Looks like the ruling doesn't affect people who make their own props for their own use.
I have the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. Mine was the first-gen model, and I still use it. I can't speak to following generations. Works great with Fedora Linux (GNOME desktop).
And before anyone asks: Yes, I completely wiped the hard drive and re-installed with Linux. It's a total "start from scratch" so I didn't inherit any spyware (that I know of).
That said, I'm thinking that my next Linux laptop will be a Purism Librem. I've read very good reviews, and I kind of want to support someone who built a Linux-only laptop.
Gimp eventually did become decent feature-wise, but of course it can't replace Photoshop for people who want Photoshop. [..] For me, I never learned photoshop, I tried to, several times, but just couldn't do basic stuff. Gimp was very easy for me to learn, I use it only for very simple stuff [..]
I think that's the important point, and something that I found a few years ago when examining the usability of several free/open source software packages. Does GIMP have good or bad usability? There were some strong statements on either side: About half said it had good usability, and about half said it had bad usability. However, I decided to skip GIMP in my usability study, as it is intended for people who do need/want to do graphics work, and my usability test targeted the general user. But I didn't discuss the split opinions in the usability of GIMP.
In following up, it seemed that two types of users thought GIMP had poor usability:
Those who used Photoshop a lot, such as professional graphics editors or photographers
Those who never used Photoshop, and only tried GIMP because they needed a graphics program
Users who thought GIMP had good usability used Photoshop occasionally, such as hobbyist photographers or casual web designers. Digging further, I believe this is because:
Those who only occasionally use Photoshop understand the concepts and terminology used in Photoshop and so are easily able to transfer their knowledge from Photoshop to GIMP.
But those who never used Photoshop were completely lost in the terminology and concepts. GIMP relies on layers for image construction (so does Photoshop). "Layers" are a difficult concept for someone who has never worked with them before. A simple paint program like MS Paint usually suffices for these users.
And those who use Photoshop all the time were confused that functionality and features differed slightly from Photoshop v GIMP, or was accessed differently, or used different terminology; these users were stymied by what they perceived as a dramatic change from Photoshop to GIMP.
So GIMP is an interesting case. It's an example of mimicking another program perhaps too well, but (necessarily) not perfectly. GIMP has good usability if you have used Photoshop occasionally, but not if you are an expert in Photoshop, and not if you are a complete Photoshop novice.
I've said it before, but I'll repeat it here: Google didn't know how to capture public interest at the time.
I remember when Google+ first appeared as an "invite only" service. That was just before Facebook made the huge blunder of putting members' profile photos in ads for any pages they "Liked," suggesting an endorsement. A lot of people everywhere got really angry at Facebook about "faces on ads," and even threatened to leave Facebook because of it.
That would have been a great opportunity to open up the Google+ service to everyone, seize the opportunity when people wanted to abandon Facebook. But Google+ remained invite-only. Only a few people could get new accounts.
Over the next week, pretty much all you saw in the news was how people wanted to leave Facebook because of the "faces on ads" thing. What an abuse of privacy! You're stealing my image to sell products! There were a bunch of petitions for Facebook to undo the new "faces on ads," or else they would delete their Facebook accounts. The only problem was that there wasn't a viable alternate social network out there. Twitter wasn't really a replacement for how most people used Facebook.
And Google+ still remained invite-only. By then, a few people I knew had accounts, but had run out of invites to share. So few others could get in.
After a few weeks, Facebook decided to calm the storm, and undid "faces on ads." And as expected, people stopped freaking out about Facebook. After another week, even the tech websites stopped writing about "faces on ads."
And finally, Google+ went "live." Anyone could join. I had an account, but few of my other friends bothered to sign up. Why? Because they were still using Facebook, they got over the "faces on ads" fiasco. Without other people to share with, Google+ failed to gain critical mass.
Google+ failed because they didn't know how to respond to the opportunity that Facebook gave them.
I remember when Google+ first appeared as an "invite only" service. That was just before Facebook made the huge blunder of putting members' faces in ads for any pages they "Liked," suggesting an endorsement. I remember a lot of people everywhere got really angry at Facebook about "faces on ads," and even threatened to leave because of it.
And Google+ remained invite-only. Pretty much no one I knew had an account.
Over the next week, pretty much all you saw in the news was how people wanted to leave Facebook because of the "faces on ads" thing. What an abuse of privacy! You're stealing my image to sell products! There were a bunch of petitions for Facebook to undo the new "faces on ads," or else they would delete their Facebook accounts. The only problem was that there wasn't a viable alternate social network out there. Twitter wasn't really a replacement for how most people used Facebook.
And Google+ still remained invite-only. By then, a few people I knew had accounts, but had run out of invites to share. So few others could get in.
After a few weeks, Facebook decided to calm the storm, and undid "faces on ads." And as expected, people stopped freaking out about Facebook. After another week, even the tech websites stopped writing about "faces on ads."
And finally, Google+ went "live." Anyone could join. I had an account, but few of my other friends bothered to sign up. Why? Because they were still using Facebook, they got over the "faces on ads" fiasco. Without other people to share with, Google+ failed to gain critical mass.
Google+ failed because they didn't know how to respond to the opportunity that Facebook gave them.
Your best bet is buy an IBM Model M keyboard from Unicomp. That's where I bought mine. It is a really nice keyboard, solidly built, good travel on the keys. Yes, it's a mechanical buckling spring keyboard, so it does make noise. But my fingers just don't get tired. It's great. I ordered mine as a USB keyboard.
Unicomp also seems to sell a few keyboards in the more common "rubberdome" format, so maybe that's more your style.
I'll admit that sometimes my carpal tunnel flares up and I need to switch back to an ergonomic keyboard. I still have my Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite from a few years back. It's a rubberdome keyboard, just like any keyboard you'll find, but it lets me keep my wrists and forearms in a relaxed position. It's a PS2 connector with a USB adapter.
FreeDOS gets used in several pre-built computers. HP is one example - HP EliteBook comes with a FreeDOS option. And Dell used to do this, don't know if they still do. There are a bunch of vendors (especially in Europe and Asia) that pre-install FreeDOS, too.
Alas, these pre-built computers have FreeDOS on them mainly as a clever way to get around a licensing agreement with Microsoft. I understand that Microsoft put a term in their Windows OEM license that prohibits system builders from selling "naked" computers - systems without operating systems. If you want to get the huge discount on Windows OEM licenses, so you can sell pre-built computers with Windows already installed, you may not also sell these "naked" computers.
But there are plenty of people out there who don't want an operating system pre-installed (I presume these people are like me who prefer free software, and who would install a Linux distribution on their new computer) so system builders started shipping computers with FreeDOS pre-installed. I think the premise is that customers will reformat the drive and install Linux anyway, but the system builder didn't technically sell a "naked" computer.
I actually think this is very clever and I like the idea. A few users do keep FreeDOS installed on their system; occasionally I get emails from people who decided to keep FreeDOS installed (and probably dual-boot into Linux) so they could use FreeDOS to play old DOS games.
I wonder if FreeDOS can run in virtual machine. Oh Google...
Yes, you can run FreeDOS in a VM! I usually recommend installing FreeDOS in a VM, especially if you don't plan to commit that computer to FreeDOS full-time. For Windows, I think most people prefer QEMU or VMWare or VirtualPC. On my Linux laptop, I run DOSemu.
It's not too early for job hunting, although you are shooting a little too high for your experience level.
What you should be looking for now is an internship somewhere. Many companies are looking for students to do basic coding for them over the summers. Yes, you can even do the Web development you were looking for. When I was in intern, I worked on several things: Code cleanup, a program to audit a database and report stats, experimenting with new methods and writing & documenting a sample program, etc. It can be good summer employment while you are on summer break. And when you graduate, you'll have a ton of experience for your resume.
Finding internships may be challenging. Check with your job placement office at your university. They likely have a list of places that are looking to hire paid interns. Start with that.
You might also call around to places that you like and ask to speak to a manager in the software (or web) development group. Then just ask if they are hiring interns, introduce yourself, tell them what you are interested in. You might get lucky and find someone to hire you, even if they weren't planning on hiring an intern.
Remember, even if they aren't hiring interns or don't have a slot for you, they might be able to point you to someone who does. Often, IT managers know other IT managers at other companies, so they might at least be able to recommend somewhere to call where you'd have more luck.
Focus on getting the experience through summer internships, and you'll be able to find a great job when you graduate. I did that when I was at university, and it led to a job at a company I interned for, after I graduated, and I didn't even have a CS degree (I was physics).
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Or just run it in DOSBox on any OS. For most software that's the obvious thing to do.
Actually, it's better to run legacy business applications on an actual DOS system like FreeDOS. DOSBox is meant only for games. They don't have great compatibility with business software.
FreeDOS runs very well in PC emulators and virtual machines like QEMU, VirtualPC, VMWare, VirtualBox, and others. At home, I run QEMU and DOSemu to boot FreeDOS. (When I'm developing, I use DOSemu so I can share files easily between Linux and FreeDOS. When I want to test FreeDOS in a more traditional virtual machine, I run QEMU.) It runs great!
I'm commenting elsewhere on this article, so I don't have mod points. But if I did, I would mod you up. Thanks.
Yeah, the problem is that the Internet is dominated by the voices of the PC generation, who somehow never learned that there actually was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS.
CP/M and other precursor OSes are really only of interest to historians and nostalgic geeks, but DOS actually has some real relevance to many people and projects even today, thanks to FreeDOS and the fact that we're still running x86-compatible machines... which is sort of astounding, actually.
Sure, there was a long history of computing before the PC and MS-DOS, but it was constrained to very few people for the most part - specialists, hobbyists, professionals, academics, and so on. But it was really the PC, running MS-DOS for the most part, when the vast majority of people were introduced to computers for the first time. So, it's not all that surprising that DOS is seen - rightly, I think - as the OS most used at the beginning of the personal computer revolution.
Even so, I don't think that many people mistake that for the beginning of computing in general. If nothing else, they saw computers on TV, with walls of reel-to-reel tapes and flashing lights.
The interview was about DOS, so I didn't talk about the other stuff before DOS (and after).
Our first "computer" was a mainframe acoustic coupler dial-up terminal my mom brought home for a week, so she could do some work at home. I wasn't very excited about it at the time; it was all business software and I was like eight years old.
I seem to remember we had another computer in the house at one point. Not a TRS-80 but something along those lines.
In 1982, my family bought an Apple clone (Franklin ACE 1000) and that was where my brother and I taught ourselves to write programs in AppleBASIC. I was fascinated by computer interfaces that we saw on TV and in the movies, so I wrote programs that emulated those, including the thermonuclear war simulator from the Wargames(1983) movie.
Some time after that, we bought an IBM (I think the XT). And that's what got me started with MS-DOS.
We used MS-DOS at home (upgrading to the '286 and '386 and '486) until I went to college with the family's old '386. During my university days, I had an account on the VAX and the Unix systems. I discovered Linux, and switched to that on my own computer (dual-boot with MS-DOS). I mostly avoided Windows at home, although I did run Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 for a short time - mostly for games. At work, I ran Apollo AEGIS/DomainOS, HP-UX, AIX, SunOS/Solaris, and Linux (RedHat 3.0.3 and later). Work also put me on a Windows NT4 desktop, which I ran for a while until they let me run Linux at work full-time. In the office, I've run either Windows (whatever was current) or Linux. At home, I just run Linux (I'm running Fedora Linux now) and use DOSemu or QEMU to run FreeDOS.
For shareware we relied on floppy disks and CDs. Most of them came attached to some magazine.
I wonder how many new devs know what "shareware" was? For those wondering: shareware was a concept where devs created something and gave away a limited version of it for free. And you could share that limited version with anyone. Shareware games usually were the first "chapter" or first few levels. Shareware DOS applications usually just nagged you to buy them after 30 days - but I don't remember many that actually stopped working if they weren't registered.
I mentioned some shareware in the interview, but I played a lot of Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Commander Keen, Rise of the Triad, Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, and Duke Nukem back then. These are all DOS shareware games.
I used a lot of DOS shareware applications for other things. AsEasyAs and GalaxyWrite got me through a lot of my university physics program. I analyzed lab data in AsEasyAs (because the old saying is "as easy as 1-2-3" ... and Lotus 1-2-3 was a popular commercial spreadsheet ... get it?) and wrote class papers in GalaxyWrite (not as powerful as WordPerfect, but great for papers). I also remember a bunch of other DOS shareware applications but can't remember their names anymore: a modem-terminal program, an equation solver, etc.
I am seizing Control of this article and asking Hey, Slashdot, if there were a modern DOS, what would it be like?
I know you're posting as an AC so probably won't get seen, but I'll reply anyway because it's an interesting question.
In short, you get Linux.
We discussed this in great depth in various places, and if you try to project a "modern" DOS to today, you end up with a 32-bit multitasking kernel that provides native networking and hardware abstraction. You lose binary compatibility; applications written for the newer "modern" DOS won't run on, say, MS-DOS 6. But that wouldn't be surprising; many programs written for MS-DOS 6 wouldn't run on MS-DOS 3, either. You need to provide some method of forward compatibility, of course. To run a "classic" DOS application on the "modern" DOS would require some kind of emulation environment.
And if you want that, run Linux. Because Linux is a 32-bit multitasking kernel that provides native networking and hardware abstraction. You don't have binary compatibility; applications written for Linux won't run on MS-DOS 6. To run "classic" DOS applications on Linux requires an emulation environment like DOSemu (which requires FreeDOS, by the way).
Once you break binary compatibility, a "modern" DOS isn't really DOS anymore. What's the point in a "modern" DOS if you can't run classic DOS programs on it? Because that's not DOS, it's something else.
He's a loud mouth idiot who was screaming right up until last week
If they want to stick with the formula, I believe Nigel Farage is now available.
He wasn't always screaming - sometimes he was throwing up due to motion sickness after driving around in a fast car. That doesn't seem like someone who should host a show about fast cars.
Disclaimer: I haven't watched the show. Not interested.
The article doesn't say, but here's my thought:
I expect this will use a model similar to Amazon Video, where you can download Amazon Prime videos for offline viewing using the Amazon Video app (such as iPad) and they automatically expire in a few weeks. For movies and shows you've purchased via Amazon Video, you can also download for later viewing and those don't go away. But I think the "Amazon Prime" model applies to Netflix here.
So I wouldn't expect you to be able to download a movie to your home media server and watch it for free forever. You're likely going to be stuck watching it from whatever device you downloaded it on, using the Netflix app.
This seems to be a trend in the industry. I was part of a focus group from HBO where they asked a bunch of questions about "What if we allowed you to download 'n' movies and shows using the HBO Now app on your phone or iPad, and gave you 'x' amount of time to watch them? How long should 'x' be? How many should 'n' be?" I got the impression from the interviews that HBO is thinking about doing this too. HBO even cited the Amazon model, and asked if I used this feature {I do, on iPad} and how many shows and movies I usually download at a time {about 4 shows} and if I can watch them in two weeks {yes}.
It's not a bad compromise.
When I want to stream music, I use Tunein.
But I rarely stream music anymore. If I want to listen to something, I buy it as an MP3. I avoid the Apple Music Store and look for alternative places that sell unlocked MP3s and don't require me to use iTunes to buy it.
Most of the time, I don't listen to music but instead to audiobooks or audio plays. This makes my drive to/from work go a lot faster. I got addicted to audiobooks when I had a regular three hour drive (I worked that far away from home) and just kept at them. If you like audiobooks and you like Doctor Who, I highly recommend Big Finish Productions which has the license for Doctor Who (new and classic series), Blake's 7, Survivors, Torchwood, and a bunch of other great stuff, including spinoffs (Dalek Empire, UNIT, Counter-Measures, Jago and Litefoot, etc). Even better, they do their audio plays with the original cast!
Your ID is UNDER 9000!!!
Under 9000 is nothing. His ID is under 1000!
I have spent several years as an IT guy in school districts. Chromebooks make sense for IT for several reasons:
If I had mod points, I would +1 you.
I worked in higher ed for 17 years (I recently moved to a new career path) and over the last several years we were starting to deploy more Chromebooks to users. We were a Google Apps for Education campus. Chromebooks just made a lot of sense. I didn't have to worry about the device getting lost or stolen. The device is encrypted by user - but there's a limited opportunity to download stuff to the Chromebook anyway. By default, everything runs in "The Cloud."
Most of our students, staff, and faculty didn't need a very powerful machine. They mostly just booted their computer and opened a web browser to Google Apps (Gmail, Docs, etc.) The Chromebook makes a lot of sense for these users.
Deploying Chromebooks comes with the assumption that you have wifi everywhere. But as a university campus, you have to do that anyway because you never know where students will want to use a laptop.
Before I left the campus, I was pushing to move our meeting rooms, general computer labs, and classroom PCs to Chromeboxes (basically the same as a Chromebook but in desktop form) as a way to reduce cost.
I was under the impression thst it stops saving new pages, and stops *displaying* old pages, but does not nuke the old pages from storage. If your robots.txt goes away in the future, the old pages come back.... Ay least, that was my understanding from long ago...
I requested a site be deleted from Wayback a number of years ago. It was a test site, and I stupidly didn't put a "Disallow" robots.txt file on it. I recall that the overview you describe is correct: adding a "Disallow" robots.txt file removes the site from display. But to remove the site from their storage, I had to contact an admin. They asked me to demonstrate that I was the owner of the site (by copying my email message to them as a comment on the website's front page) then they deleted my website from their Wayback archive. However, that was when everyone used spinning disk to store data, and before write-only media became popular in the data center. Facebook stores photos on BluRays these days .. maybe Wayback does now too. If Wayback does something like this, it would be impossible to completely delete the data, although they would (theoretically) be able to remove references from their database.
For those of you wondering if the Beta is okay to use, I'll share that I've been running Fedora 24 Alpha since it was released at the end of March, and the Alpha has been stable for me. I'm looking forward to installing the Beta this weekend.
(My Linux system is a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, 1st gen.)
My wife and I do this all the time - when we text each other, we use a single emoji to represent a phrase or expression. Usually it's just the "happy face" emoji to represent "Ok, that's fine." Like to acknowledge a conversation and it's now over, whatever you just said sounds fine to me: "happy face."
We use other emoji too. We have a cat who is afraid of the rain, so if my wife texts me the "rain" emoji and the "sad kitty" emoji, I know it's raining at the house and my cat is hiding in the basement.
But use emoji in work communication or business email or website posts? No.
PS4 has only been out for 3 years, and you are comparing units moved to systems that had a decade or more sales lifetime and drawing conclusions based on those being equivalent things to compare?
The numbers in the article are difficult to understand, but I think their presentation allowed them to talk about a "decline" because gosh, the chart goes down after the Sony PlayStation 2 (2000).
So I took their numbers and actually crunched some data. I temporarily published it via Google: Best-selling videogame consoles. The generated chart doesn't show labels for all the bars, but you can hover your mouse over the bar to see missing labels.
This chart borrows the sales numbers provided from the Quartz article "The golden era of video-game console sales is over" and uses year introduced v year discontinued dates from Wikipedia. In all cases, I used the earliest available date introduced and the latest date discontinued. From there, it's simple math to figure out the average number of units sold per year. Quartz used millions, so my chart displays millions of units sold per year available. The chart is sorted by year introduced (most recent at top).
While not perfect, this is a better comparison because it allows you to compare per year averages rather than total units. (Ravaldy says that the 10 million Xbox One number is wrong, it should be 20 million, so you might double the value in my chart, about on par with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.)
This shows that the "golden era of videogame consoles" is not over. Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 4 both sold/sell almost 15 million per year, a bit more than PlayStation 2 (12 million/year) and a bit less than the original PlayStation (17.5 million/year). From my interpretation of the data, I think the "golden era" started with the original PlayStation and is still going strong.
I can speak to this. I focus a lot of my free time on the usability of free/open source software, and a few years ago, I looked into the usability of GIMP. I didn't do a full usability test, but conducted surveys of different people who used GIMP, versus Photoshop. What I found is that a person's perception of GIMP's usability depends on their familiarity with Photoshop:
People who used Photoshop all the time complained that GIMP had poor usability. This seemed to be because people knew they way around Photoshop very well, and were put off when the same functions were not accessed via the same menu path, or were called something slightly different. So they felt lost, like GIMP was broken even though they recognized it was very powerful.
People who used Photoshop occasionally, but not all the time commented that GIMP had good usability. These users understood the basic concepts behind Photoshop, such as layers and channels and plugins and tools, and could transfer that knowledge easily to GIMP. Because they didn't have a "muscle memory" of Photoshop, these users weren't put off by having the same functionality located elsewhere or with a slightly different name, because they probably didn't remember exactly what the feature was called in Photoshop, or in what exact menu it was located.
People who did not use Photoshop said that GIMP had poor usability. That seemed to be because these users didn't understand the basic concepts of Photoshop, about layers or tools or filters or what a "raster" image was, and felt overwhelmed by GIMP. If these users did any image manipulation at all, they used a simple "Paint" program like Microsoft Paint.
From your comment, it sounds like you use Photoshop quite often. So I'm not surprised you find GIMP has poor usability.
So it looks like he was already a control freak back in 2011, and was attempting to reserve the right to impose retrospectively whatever licence he felt like issuing in the future. I suspect this wouldn't stand up to serious legal scrutiny, but it was already a big red flag before he went off the rails completely.
Correct. You can only change the license for future versions of software. You cannot retroactively change the license for previously released versions.
My understanding of the legal principle at work is called estoppel. (IANAL)
Basically, you cannot prohibit someone from doing something that you already permitted them to do. If you allowed them to use your software before (the previous or current versions) you cannot later go back and say "I changed the license on you." Sure, you can change the license for future versions of the software. From my reading of his website, he is the sole author of the program, so he holds the copyright. He can choose to release the next version under a different license. But you are not allowed to retroactively change the license for previous versions.
From my reading of this article, I think the ruling could be problematic for other makers of props that are meant to be similar to film props. Park Sabers leaps to mind.
They explain in their FAQ "Q. Are you associated with Lucasfilm Ltd.? A. No. We are not associated with any Lucasfilm Ltd. Film or frachise. All of our designs are the property of Parks Sabers, Inc." However, I think it's pretty obvious that the designs for many of these sabers are lifted from the movies: Luke's first lightsaber and Luke's second lightsaber?
I have the Graflex ESB (bought it the month before Episode I came out, but it was called something else then) and it's a dead ringer for Luke's first lightsaber in Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. The "ESB" name is a big hint.
This ruling should concern makers like these. As others have pointed out, the key factor is these are made to be sold. Looks like the ruling doesn't affect people who make their own props for their own use.
I have the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. Mine was the first-gen model, and I still use it. I can't speak to following generations. Works great with Fedora Linux (GNOME desktop).
And before anyone asks: Yes, I completely wiped the hard drive and re-installed with Linux. It's a total "start from scratch" so I didn't inherit any spyware (that I know of).
That said, I'm thinking that my next Linux laptop will be a Purism Librem. I've read very good reviews, and I kind of want to support someone who built a Linux-only laptop.
Gimp eventually did become decent feature-wise, but of course it can't replace Photoshop for people who want Photoshop. [..] For me, I never learned photoshop, I tried to, several times, but just couldn't do basic stuff. Gimp was very easy for me to learn, I use it only for very simple stuff [..]
I think that's the important point, and something that I found a few years ago when examining the usability of several free/open source software packages. Does GIMP have good or bad usability? There were some strong statements on either side: About half said it had good usability, and about half said it had bad usability. However, I decided to skip GIMP in my usability study, as it is intended for people who do need/want to do graphics work, and my usability test targeted the general user. But I didn't discuss the split opinions in the usability of GIMP.
In following up, it seemed that two types of users thought GIMP had poor usability:
Users who thought GIMP had good usability used Photoshop occasionally, such as hobbyist photographers or casual web designers. Digging further, I believe this is because:
So GIMP is an interesting case. It's an example of mimicking another program perhaps too well, but (necessarily) not perfectly. GIMP has good usability if you have used Photoshop occasionally, but not if you are an expert in Photoshop, and not if you are a complete Photoshop novice.
I've said it before, but I'll repeat it here: Google didn't know how to capture public interest at the time.
I remember when Google+ first appeared as an "invite only" service. That was just before Facebook made the huge blunder of putting members' profile photos in ads for any pages they "Liked," suggesting an endorsement. A lot of people everywhere got really angry at Facebook about "faces on ads," and even threatened to leave Facebook because of it.
That would have been a great opportunity to open up the Google+ service to everyone, seize the opportunity when people wanted to abandon Facebook. But Google+ remained invite-only. Only a few people could get new accounts.
Over the next week, pretty much all you saw in the news was how people wanted to leave Facebook because of the "faces on ads" thing. What an abuse of privacy! You're stealing my image to sell products! There were a bunch of petitions for Facebook to undo the new "faces on ads," or else they would delete their Facebook accounts. The only problem was that there wasn't a viable alternate social network out there. Twitter wasn't really a replacement for how most people used Facebook.
And Google+ still remained invite-only. By then, a few people I knew had accounts, but had run out of invites to share. So few others could get in.
After a few weeks, Facebook decided to calm the storm, and undid "faces on ads." And as expected, people stopped freaking out about Facebook. After another week, even the tech websites stopped writing about "faces on ads."
And finally, Google+ went "live." Anyone could join. I had an account, but few of my other friends bothered to sign up. Why? Because they were still using Facebook, they got over the "faces on ads" fiasco. Without other people to share with, Google+ failed to gain critical mass.
Google+ failed because they didn't know how to respond to the opportunity that Facebook gave them.
I remember when Google+ first appeared as an "invite only" service. That was just before Facebook made the huge blunder of putting members' faces in ads for any pages they "Liked," suggesting an endorsement. I remember a lot of people everywhere got really angry at Facebook about "faces on ads," and even threatened to leave because of it.
And Google+ remained invite-only. Pretty much no one I knew had an account.
Over the next week, pretty much all you saw in the news was how people wanted to leave Facebook because of the "faces on ads" thing. What an abuse of privacy! You're stealing my image to sell products! There were a bunch of petitions for Facebook to undo the new "faces on ads," or else they would delete their Facebook accounts. The only problem was that there wasn't a viable alternate social network out there. Twitter wasn't really a replacement for how most people used Facebook.
And Google+ still remained invite-only. By then, a few people I knew had accounts, but had run out of invites to share. So few others could get in.
After a few weeks, Facebook decided to calm the storm, and undid "faces on ads." And as expected, people stopped freaking out about Facebook. After another week, even the tech websites stopped writing about "faces on ads."
And finally, Google+ went "live." Anyone could join. I had an account, but few of my other friends bothered to sign up. Why? Because they were still using Facebook, they got over the "faces on ads" fiasco. Without other people to share with, Google+ failed to gain critical mass.
Google+ failed because they didn't know how to respond to the opportunity that Facebook gave them.
Your best bet is buy an IBM Model M keyboard from Unicomp. That's where I bought mine. It is a really nice keyboard, solidly built, good travel on the keys. Yes, it's a mechanical buckling spring keyboard, so it does make noise. But my fingers just don't get tired. It's great. I ordered mine as a USB keyboard.
Unicomp also seems to sell a few keyboards in the more common "rubberdome" format, so maybe that's more your style.
I'll admit that sometimes my carpal tunnel flares up and I need to switch back to an ergonomic keyboard. I still have my Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite from a few years back. It's a rubberdome keyboard, just like any keyboard you'll find, but it lets me keep my wrists and forearms in a relaxed position. It's a PS2 connector with a USB adapter.
FreeDOS gets used in several pre-built computers. HP is one example - HP EliteBook comes with a FreeDOS option. And Dell used to do this, don't know if they still do. There are a bunch of vendors (especially in Europe and Asia) that pre-install FreeDOS, too.
Alas, these pre-built computers have FreeDOS on them mainly as a clever way to get around a licensing agreement with Microsoft. I understand that Microsoft put a term in their Windows OEM license that prohibits system builders from selling "naked" computers - systems without operating systems. If you want to get the huge discount on Windows OEM licenses, so you can sell pre-built computers with Windows already installed, you may not also sell these "naked" computers.
But there are plenty of people out there who don't want an operating system pre-installed (I presume these people are like me who prefer free software, and who would install a Linux distribution on their new computer) so system builders started shipping computers with FreeDOS pre-installed. I think the premise is that customers will reformat the drive and install Linux anyway, but the system builder didn't technically sell a "naked" computer.
I actually think this is very clever and I like the idea. A few users do keep FreeDOS installed on their system; occasionally I get emails from people who decided to keep FreeDOS installed (and probably dual-boot into Linux) so they could use FreeDOS to play old DOS games.
I wonder if FreeDOS can run in virtual machine. Oh Google...
Yes, you can run FreeDOS in a VM! I usually recommend installing FreeDOS in a VM, especially if you don't plan to commit that computer to FreeDOS full-time. For Windows, I think most people prefer QEMU or VMWare or VirtualPC. On my Linux laptop, I run DOSemu.
It's not too early for job hunting, although you are shooting a little too high for your experience level. What you should be looking for now is an internship somewhere. Many companies are looking for students to do basic coding for them over the summers. Yes, you can even do the Web development you were looking for. When I was in intern, I worked on several things: Code cleanup, a program to audit a database and report stats, experimenting with new methods and writing & documenting a sample program, etc. It can be good summer employment while you are on summer break. And when you graduate, you'll have a ton of experience for your resume. Finding internships may be challenging. Check with your job placement office at your university. They likely have a list of places that are looking to hire paid interns. Start with that. You might also call around to places that you like and ask to speak to a manager in the software (or web) development group. Then just ask if they are hiring interns, introduce yourself, tell them what you are interested in. You might get lucky and find someone to hire you, even if they weren't planning on hiring an intern. Remember, even if they aren't hiring interns or don't have a slot for you, they might be able to point you to someone who does. Often, IT managers know other IT managers at other companies, so they might at least be able to recommend somewhere to call where you'd have more luck. Focus on getting the experience through summer internships, and you'll be able to find a great job when you graduate. I did that when I was at university, and it led to a job at a company I interned for, after I graduated, and I didn't even have a CS degree (I was physics).