Consider the High School curricula from the 1880s/90s and the early decades of the 1900s in regards to the freshman classes of most colleges and universites of the same era.
There were NO remedial classes. You were taught what was essentially college entry level english, math, sciences, etc in high school. You probably learned Greek and/or Latin, too.
And these students from the late 1800s/early 1900s, with little more than slide rules and log tables, built Boulder Dam, the Empire State Building, The Grand Coulee Dam, the Atomic Bomb, aircraft of amazing sophistication (for the time), suspension bridges such as the Golden Gate and other marvels of engineering that have lasted to this day.
Their fellows in college went on to do things like discover the double helix of DNA, create vaccines against polio, develop FM radio technology, radar, television, the transistor.
There is much to recommend a curricula that seriously challanges a student to learn and compete for high grades, to insure admittance to a good college or university.
Frankly, I think that there really should be a return to an educational model of the 20s or 30s. College is NOT the place to learn the basics of english and mathematics.
12 years ago, peaceful, pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square were crushed beneath the tanks of the People's Liberation Army.
Hundreds, possibly as many as a thousand people were killed in Tiananmen Square.
Even today, dissidents are "disappeared" by the Chinese government.
It was not Steve Jobs who went to China and embraced the Butchers of Bejing.
It was not Linus Torvalds who publicaly shook the bloodied hands of Deng XaoPing, the man who gave the order that launched the masscre in Tiananmen Square.
It was Bill Gates who went to China. And it was Bill Gates who said that buisness practices and human rights should have no connection to one another.
This is why I have NO MS code whatsoever on my Macs.
This is why I spend far too much time and money to not buy products made in China. And if I MUST buy something made in China, I atone by donating an equal amont of money to pro-democracy and human rights for China organizations.
Bill Gates IS evil.
He has embraced evil men and called them partners. His business practices are evil.
How any person of conscience can buy MS products or own MS stock mystifies me.
"a game with speech (yes! beach head is the first example that springs to mind) ----> Impossible Mission! That's the best one! "Another visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!" "
OMG! That reminded me of THE wackiest demo I ever saw/heard for the C64 AND the 1541 disk drive.
!541 Music Machine.
When you ran this thing, the disk drive, YES, the 1541 Disk Drive, would sit there buzzing and humming and playing "Bicycle Built for Two."
Someone asked me why the hell anyone would do something like that.
"Well, when you have a disk drive with 2k of RAM and a 6502 CPU in it, you have to expect this sort of thing."
I still use the 128 for all my letters, game playing, label printing and even, via the HandyScanner 64 and PageFox, desktop publishing.
Chris, you are a true believer. I admire your loyalty to the past. It was fun to write 6502 assembly code for those puppies, wasn't it?
and there is nothing today like the feeling one gets of stoping a running program on the 64 via the interrupt button on the Snapshot cartridge, entering the ML monitor, messing with the code, exiting the monitor, and re-entering the running program where it was stopped and watching it run with the new changes.
Now that's REAL power!
It's not so much "loyalty to the past", it's really more that it suits my needs perfectly.
The 128 is booted, with my text editor loaded and running before the Macintosh has even loaded it's first line of Extension and Control Panel icons. To print labels on the Mac, I have to load a relatively huge program. On the 64 side of the 128, I load a minescule program that has all my regularly used labels already as part of the code. (Thanks to SuperSnapshot, which allowed me to make a RAM image of the program with the address file already loaded. That RAM image was then converted by Snapshot into a program. I load the program, and there's the label maker, with addresses and configured exactly to my printer output specifications )
For my needs, the 128 and the software I regularly use are ideal. For someone else, I'm sure that their hardware and software are ideal for their needs.
Now, if you really want to talk about devotion to the past, let me tell you about my slide rule... (A bright yellow Pickett Microline 120)
Yes, I still use a slide rule, except for those problems that require more than three decimal place answers. Then I use my Texas Instruments SR-40, the "upscale" version of the classic TI-30 "Electronic Slide Rule" calculator. Nothing says "MATHEMATICS" quite like a red LED display.
So then bruceg sez:
"Man, what a waste of time. Why bother?"
Because it's a neat hack. Because it shows what REAL programmers can do in a limited amount of RAM with a modest command set and somewhat primative hardware. As opposed to the codemonkeys who don't worry about code bloat because RAM is cheap and the user can always upgrade.
The nackers at MIT long ago, even before Bill Gates had been accepted at Harvard, had a slogan:
Bummed to the minimum, hacked to the max.
Which means. the fewest possible lines of code, doing the most work.
Why create a web browser for the 64?
Because it can be done, there are some folks who will happliy use it and because, it's a damn cool hack and a fine example of fast, tight coding.
"Bummed to the minimum, hacked to the max!"
"If Jack Tramiel (Commodore's CEO) had given a little bit more attention to improving the C-64 (by adding good disk drives and slots)"
Actually, the C64 and C128 DO have slots. Virtual slots. Depending on which memory location a cartridge used, one could have two cartridges in use on the C64 and three on the C128, by using a cartridge slot daughterboard in the Expansion Slot of the computer. This is why I can use my SwiftLink high speed modem interface with my 1megabyte RAM Expanison Unit or my REU with my SuperSnapshot utility cartridge.
As for drives, that's what JiffyDOS from CMD is for. Replace a ROM in the computer and each disk drive and the I/O times decrease by an order of magnitude.
And if one has a 1571 or 1581 Commodore drive, Big Blue Reader is an utility that will read/write/format DD DOS disks.
If I could find a local ISP that offered dialup shell accounts, I'd be using my C128 in place of this PowerMac for virtually all of my Internent needs.
I still use the 128 for all my letters, game playing, label printing and even, via the HandyScanner 64 and PageFox, desktop publishing.
Speaking of the "tarnishment" of the Ford Name...
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 1
Anyone else remember the 'explode upon impact and incinerate everyone inside' Ford Pinto?
I can't see how Eric and 2600 could do any worse to Ford than what Ford did to themselves with that little fiasco.
"Sure, the functionality it provides IS useful, but you can't call a program which DELIBERATLY hides itself from users a "legit admin tool". It's a trojan, and it was meant to be a trojan."
BO2K does everything that MS System Management Server does, including the "stealth" option.
BO2K costs nothing and is Open Source. MS SMS costs about US$1500 or thereabouts, and is, of course, closed and propriatary.
SMS can be trojaned just as easily as BO2K.
Does that therefore make SMS a trojan or a legit administration tool?
Beleive me, if BO2K was released by Symantec or MacAfee or even MS, there would be none of this BS about BO2K being a trojan.
"a cpu, a few simple sensors, and my toast never burns and my frozen waffles come out just right. Try doing that with a simple thermocouple.
You don't need any OS for that. You can do it with a PIC."
I would love to have a toaster with a display and some kind of input. Let it know what's in the slots and exactly how I want them done. This does imply some kind of embedded OS.
"Unless your watch is full of gears and springs, it has an OS.
No it doesn't. Unless it is a very fancy nerd watch it likely doesn't even have a CPU, just an oscillator and a bunch of counters."
Is there any other kind of watch worth wearing?
"Someone calling themself "Ayn Rand" from aynrand.org is scarcely in a position to pontificate upon what is sane and rational.
C'mon, you can do better than this ad hominem response."
Nah, it's not ad hominem. Every Ayn Rand footkisser I've ever met has been a lunatic of some kind, usually with an undeservered superiority complex. Based upon my previous experiences with that sort, it's a safe assumption to make.
" The guy is right -- when you make things more complicated than they need to be you make them fail more."
Sorry, that's just not true any more. Unless you're Microsoft, of course. (ObMS Bash)
A modern automobile is infinitely more complex than a Model T. I submit that the modern automobile runs better with far fewer problems than the Model T.
My Commodore 128 runs better than my ancient Altair ever did and my old PowerMac runs better than any 286 or my old Mac Plus.
If you pay attention to the details, you can indeed have a complex and highly reliable system.
" When you make them more capable you depend on them more. Thus, you end up depending more on stuff that is less dependable. What happens when the only user interface is through your kitchen master console (after all, everything intercommunicates so why spend a few bucks on buttons? Just ask printer manufacturers), and one day that interoperability fails? Then your toaster not only doesn't brown your toast right, it doesn't toast them at all; your fridge inexplicably shuts down and ruins all your food, none of the lights will come on, and the phone won't even work so you can call the service guy. Yeah, I really want a house that works like that."
Which is why you want a system and OS that is robust and can route around a failed appliance. If my toaster craps out, it should not affect the operation of the refrigerator. Much in the fashion of if the toilet stops working, the Shuttle does not fall out of the sky.
a cpu, a few simple sensors, and my toast never burns and my frozen waffles come out just right. Try doing that with a simple thermocouple.
" Why should a watch concern itself with anything but the time of day?"
Unless your watch is full of gears and springs, it has an OS.
"This is simply technology for the sake of technology: dangerous, and not in the best interests of the people that MIT claims to serve. It is not sane, rational, or in the best interests of mankind, and as such, is a shame to their long University tradition of developing and promoting new and useful technology."
Someone calling themself "Ayn Rand" from aynrand.org is scarcely in a position to pontificate upon what is sane and rational.
In my selfish, objectivist, superior rational opinion, of course!
"Sure, pages like a nitpicker's guide to ID4, say that Levinson could not have created the virus and the VUU v0.9 in the 4 hours 30 minutes the movie plot allots him, but Levinson is smart and knows how to program."
Hey, the guy was an MIT grad. If anyone on this planet could pull off interfacing with an alien OS and infecting it with a virus while hungover, it's a Tech graduate.
You should see what these boys and girls do when they're sober.
"heh, I'm actually old enough to remember those old acoustic couplers. 300 baud? Man those were the days!"
300 baud! Oh, what I would have given for a 300 baud acoustic modem! I had to settle for 110 baud and I had to build the modem myself from a kit I ordered from Popular Electronics magazine!
...he embraced the dictators, he shook the bloody hand of the man who ordered the massacre of Tiananmen Square.
Bill has stated that big business and human rights should have no connection with each other.
In all honesty, how can you take his money? How can you work for such a man?
I'm almost 50. I am one of the babyboom generation that was raised with a TV in the house.
I grew up watching all the "violent" Warner Bros. cartoons, not to mention running home after school to watch the Three Stooges in the afternoon.
I am like many of my peers who were born in that postwar generation, a generation that loved watching Elmer blast Daffy Duck and Moe clobbering Curly with a great big monkey wrench.
We grew up to be called the "Peace" generation. You know. Hippies. Anti-war protestors. That lot.
But when cartoons and kids programming became, for lack of a better word, wimpified, that is, no violence at all, everybody was all lovey dovey and worked out all their problems by consensus, et al, ad nauseum, it was then we began to see a rise in juvenile violence in the 70s and 80s.
Now, I am not positing a direct correlation between these two events. Nor am I positing a correlation between the decrease in juvenile violence since the advent of "realistic" (Quake, realistic? AHEM!) video & computer games.
Still, it's an intriguing datapoint and there's probably a couple of Ph.Ds that could be earned via a study of the correlation between "violent" media influences and people born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
"Even Palm Pilots are too cramped for "real" use (both screen and input)"
I beg to differ. My Palm IIIx is used daily for text input (notes, appointments, et al) and for reading. I download news into it and have several books in it. Makes the subway ride go faster.
And while flying to Las Vegas last year for Defcon last year, I spent most of the flight writing on the Palm.
As for the Linux watch, it is a concept device, just like the 'Cars of the Future" that Detroit would showcase every year. They'll never go into production (for the most part) but are intended to show off new technologies and techniques.
The Linux watch is the same thing.
Myself, I'm more interested in the OLED display than the OS.
"Actually the very purpose of legalese is to make ordinary people unable to understand it. If people can't understand the laws they won't notice when their freedom is taken from them. So the powers that be want laws to become even more impossible to understand."
I am not a lawyer. I am not a college graduate. I am not even an anarchist.
I had no trouble whatsoever reading and understanding the arguments and points put forth by the brief.
So what's your problem that you can't read and understand a document written in english that so clearly argues the point that 2600 had the right to publish links to DeCSS on it's website as an exercise of its rights under the First Amendment?
So Kishar (zvguevy@gnzcnonl.ee.pbz) on 2001-02-26 4:56 EST sez:
"Actually, I've more often bumped the case and had the rear of the desk hit the PSU's switch. I want a mollyguard for that badly. "
I was recently in the main branch of the Boston Public Library, and while waiting my turn on one of their Internet computers, I watched as someone else sat down in front of one and as she pulled her chair a bit closer to the desk, hit the power switch on the front of the towercase under the desk with her knee.
POOF!
There is much to recommend the old AT-style keyswitches in some environments.
So Goodchild sez, he sez:
"All these care-free hippy children who can do whatever they please is a very bad trend in today's society. Kids need stern discpline from their parents, not friendship! To treat your child as an equal is to guarantee that they will become dysfunctional adults with no real understanding of how to properly behave in society."
And the proof of his thesis is that awful, un-American Open Source software movement. All those Linux programmers who give Jim Allchin sleepless nights full of worry about the fate of our Beloved Republic, are obviously the spawn of all those commune-living, free-love-sharing, pot smoking hippes from the late 60s.
If Stallman's parents had whupped that boy like he no doubt deserved, we wouldn't have to worry about people giving away software to the detrement of major American software corporations.
Encouraging your children to think will just cause problems for everybody later in life. Next time the kids ask why, just tell 'em, "Because I said so, that's why!" and beat them mecilessly for their impudence.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider the High School curricula from the 1880s/90s and the early decades of the 1900s in regards to the freshman classes of most colleges and universites of the same era.
There were NO remedial classes. You were taught what was essentially college entry level english, math, sciences, etc in high school. You probably learned Greek and/or Latin, too.
And these students from the late 1800s/early 1900s, with little more than slide rules and log tables, built Boulder Dam, the Empire State Building, The Grand Coulee Dam, the Atomic Bomb, aircraft of amazing sophistication (for the time), suspension bridges such as the Golden Gate and other marvels of engineering that have lasted to this day.
Their fellows in college went on to do things like discover the double helix of DNA, create vaccines against polio, develop FM radio technology, radar, television, the transistor.
There is much to recommend a curricula that seriously challanges a student to learn and compete for high grades, to insure admittance to a good college or university.
Frankly, I think that there really should be a return to an educational model of the 20s or 30s. College is NOT the place to learn the basics of english and mathematics.
12 years ago, peaceful, pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square were crushed beneath the tanks of the People's Liberation Army.
Hundreds, possibly as many as a thousand people were killed in Tiananmen Square.
Even today, dissidents are "disappeared" by the Chinese government.
It was not Steve Jobs who went to China and embraced the Butchers of Bejing.
It was not Linus Torvalds who publicaly shook the bloodied hands of Deng XaoPing, the man who gave the order that launched the masscre in Tiananmen Square.
It was Bill Gates who went to China. And it was Bill Gates who said that buisness practices and human rights should have no connection to one another.
This is why I have NO MS code whatsoever on my Macs.
This is why I spend far too much time and money to not buy products made in China. And if I MUST buy something made in China, I atone by donating an equal amont of money to pro-democracy and human rights for China organizations.
Bill Gates IS evil.
He has embraced evil men and called them partners. His business practices are evil.
How any person of conscience can buy MS products or own MS stock mystifies me.
So innocent_white_lamb sez:
"a game with speech (yes! beach head is the first example that springs to mind) ----> Impossible Mission! That's the best one! "Another visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!" "
OMG! That reminded me of THE wackiest demo I ever saw/heard for the C64 AND the 1541 disk drive.
!541 Music Machine.
When you ran this thing, the disk drive, YES, the 1541 Disk Drive, would sit there buzzing and humming and playing "Bicycle Built for Two."
Someone asked me why the hell anyone would do something like that.
"Well, when you have a disk drive with 2k of RAM and a 6502 CPU in it, you have to expect this sort of thing."
So then Louis Savain sez:
I still use the 128 for all my letters, game playing, label printing and even, via the HandyScanner 64 and PageFox, desktop publishing.
Chris, you are a true believer. I admire your loyalty to the past. It was fun to write 6502 assembly code for those puppies, wasn't it?
and there is nothing today like the feeling one gets of stoping a running program on the 64 via the interrupt button on the Snapshot cartridge, entering the ML monitor, messing with the code, exiting the monitor, and re-entering the running program where it was stopped and watching it run with the new changes.
Now that's REAL power!
It's not so much "loyalty to the past", it's really more that it suits my needs perfectly.
The 128 is booted, with my text editor loaded and running before the Macintosh has even loaded it's first line of Extension and Control Panel icons. To print labels on the Mac, I have to load a relatively huge program. On the 64 side of the 128, I load a minescule program that has all my regularly used labels already as part of the code. (Thanks to SuperSnapshot, which allowed me to make a RAM image of the program with the address file already loaded. That RAM image was then converted by Snapshot into a program. I load the program, and there's the label maker, with addresses and configured exactly to my printer output specifications )
For my needs, the 128 and the software I regularly use are ideal. For someone else, I'm sure that their hardware and software are ideal for their needs.
Now, if you really want to talk about devotion to the past, let me tell you about my slide rule... (A bright yellow Pickett Microline 120)
Yes, I still use a slide rule, except for those problems that require more than three decimal place answers. Then I use my Texas Instruments SR-40, the "upscale" version of the classic TI-30 "Electronic Slide Rule" calculator. Nothing says "MATHEMATICS" quite like a red LED display.
So then bruceg sez: "Man, what a waste of time. Why bother?" Because it's a neat hack. Because it shows what REAL programmers can do in a limited amount of RAM with a modest command set and somewhat primative hardware. As opposed to the codemonkeys who don't worry about code bloat because RAM is cheap and the user can always upgrade. The nackers at MIT long ago, even before Bill Gates had been accepted at Harvard, had a slogan: Bummed to the minimum, hacked to the max. Which means. the fewest possible lines of code, doing the most work. Why create a web browser for the 64? Because it can be done, there are some folks who will happliy use it and because, it's a damn cool hack and a fine example of fast, tight coding. "Bummed to the minimum, hacked to the max!"
So then Louis Savain sez:
"If Jack Tramiel (Commodore's CEO) had given a little bit more attention to improving the C-64 (by adding good disk drives and slots)"
Actually, the C64 and C128 DO have slots. Virtual slots. Depending on which memory location a cartridge used, one could have two cartridges in use on the C64 and three on the C128, by using a cartridge slot daughterboard in the Expansion Slot of the computer. This is why I can use my SwiftLink high speed modem interface with my 1megabyte RAM Expanison Unit or my REU with my SuperSnapshot utility cartridge.
As for drives, that's what JiffyDOS from CMD is for. Replace a ROM in the computer and each disk drive and the I/O times decrease by an order of magnitude.
And if one has a 1571 or 1581 Commodore drive, Big Blue Reader is an utility that will read/write/format DD DOS disks.
If I could find a local ISP that offered dialup shell accounts, I'd be using my C128 in place of this PowerMac for virtually all of my Internent needs.
I still use the 128 for all my letters, game playing, label printing and even, via the HandyScanner 64 and PageFox, desktop publishing.
Anyone else remember the 'explode upon impact and incinerate everyone inside' Ford Pinto?
I can't see how Eric and 2600 could do any worse to Ford than what Ford did to themselves with that little fiasco.
So XMYTH sez:
"Sure, the functionality it provides IS useful, but you can't call a program which DELIBERATLY hides itself from users a "legit admin tool". It's a trojan, and it was meant to be a trojan."
BO2K does everything that MS System Management Server does, including the "stealth" option.
BO2K costs nothing and is Open Source. MS SMS costs about US$1500 or thereabouts, and is, of course, closed and propriatary.
SMS can be trojaned just as easily as BO2K.
Does that therefore make SMS a trojan or a legit administration tool?
Beleive me, if BO2K was released by Symantec or MacAfee or even MS, there would be none of this BS about BO2K being a trojan.
So localroger sez:
"a cpu, a few simple sensors, and my toast never burns and my frozen waffles come out just right. Try doing that with a simple thermocouple.
You don't need any OS for that. You can do it with a PIC."
I would love to have a toaster with a display and some kind of input. Let it know what's in the slots and exactly how I want them done. This does imply some kind of embedded OS.
"Unless your watch is full of gears and springs, it has an OS.
No it doesn't. Unless it is a very fancy nerd watch it likely doesn't even have a CPU, just an oscillator and a bunch of counters."
Is there any other kind of watch worth wearing?
"Someone calling themself "Ayn Rand" from aynrand.org is scarcely in a position to pontificate upon what is sane and rational.
C'mon, you can do better than this ad hominem response."
Nah, it's not ad hominem. Every Ayn Rand footkisser I've ever met has been a lunatic of some kind, usually with an undeservered superiority complex. Based upon my previous experiences with that sort, it's a safe assumption to make.
" The guy is right -- when you make things more complicated than they need to be you make them fail more."
Sorry, that's just not true any more. Unless you're Microsoft, of course. (ObMS Bash)
A modern automobile is infinitely more complex than a Model T. I submit that the modern automobile runs better with far fewer problems than the Model T.
My Commodore 128 runs better than my ancient Altair ever did and my old PowerMac runs better than any 286 or my old Mac Plus.
If you pay attention to the details, you can indeed have a complex and highly reliable system.
" When you make them more capable you depend on them more. Thus, you end up depending more on stuff that is less dependable. What happens when the only user interface is through your kitchen master console (after all, everything intercommunicates so why spend a few bucks on buttons? Just ask printer manufacturers), and one day that interoperability fails? Then your toaster not only doesn't brown your toast right, it doesn't toast them at all; your fridge inexplicably shuts down and ruins all your food, none of the lights will come on, and the phone won't even work so you can call the service guy. Yeah, I really want a house that works like that."
Which is why you want a system and OS that is robust and can route around a failed appliance. If my toaster craps out, it should not affect the operation of the refrigerator. Much in the fashion of if the toilet stops working, the Shuttle does not fall out of the sky.
So PD sez:
"You need to look here to find a whole lot more. "
Ah, but the Hubble Heritage site chooses images based upon beauty and esthetics.
And, they also take requests as to where to point the Hubble.
These pictures also make wonderful desktop images or wallpaper.
So Ayn Rand sez:
"Indeed, what should a toaster do besides toast?"
a cpu, a few simple sensors, and my toast never burns and my frozen waffles come out just right. Try doing that with a simple thermocouple.
" Why should a watch concern itself with anything but the time of day?"
Unless your watch is full of gears and springs, it has an OS.
"This is simply technology for the sake of technology: dangerous, and not in the best interests of the people that MIT claims to serve. It is not sane, rational, or in the best interests of mankind, and as such, is a shame to their long University tradition of developing and promoting new and useful technology."
Someone calling themself "Ayn Rand" from aynrand.org is scarcely in a position to pontificate upon what is sane and rational.
In my selfish, objectivist, superior rational opinion, of course!
So s390 sez:
"I use LINUX (wank wank wank) I can't see QuickTime (wank wank wank) The army sux 'cause they don't use Linux (wank wank wank)"
And the Universe cares about this horrible affront to your Human Rights and DIginity because...?
The Army is using Windows and Macs because of arcane and byzantine purchasing requirements.
OK, you can't see QT on your Linux box. Buy a c++ compiler and get to hacking code.
I mean, that IS the Linux way, isn't it?
So then Fijord sez:
"Sure, pages like a nitpicker's guide to ID4, say that Levinson could not have created the virus and the VUU v0.9 in the 4 hours 30 minutes the movie plot allots him, but Levinson is smart and knows how to program."
Hey, the guy was an MIT grad. If anyone on this planet could pull off interfacing with an alien OS and infecting it with a virus while hungover, it's a Tech graduate.
You should see what these boys and girls do when they're sober.
So then Fishstick sez:
"heh, I'm actually old enough to remember those old acoustic couplers. 300 baud? Man those were the days!"
300 baud! Oh, what I would have given for a 300 baud acoustic modem! I had to settle for 110 baud and I had to build the modem myself from a kit I ordered from Popular Electronics magazine!
Hung it off my homebrew TV Typewriter
...and embraced the dictators, he shook the bloody hand of the man who ordered the massacre of Tiananmen Square.
He has stated that there should be no connection between business practices and human rights.
My question is: how can you, in good conscience, work for him? How can you take his money?
...he embraced the dictators, he shook the bloody hand of the man who ordered the massacre of Tiananmen Square. Bill has stated that big business and human rights should have no connection with each other. In all honesty, how can you take his money? How can you work for such a man?
I'm almost 50. I am one of the babyboom generation that was raised with a TV in the house.
I grew up watching all the "violent" Warner Bros. cartoons, not to mention running home after school to watch the Three Stooges in the afternoon.
I am like many of my peers who were born in that postwar generation, a generation that loved watching Elmer blast Daffy Duck and Moe clobbering Curly with a great big monkey wrench.
We grew up to be called the "Peace" generation. You know. Hippies. Anti-war protestors. That lot.
But when cartoons and kids programming became, for lack of a better word, wimpified, that is, no violence at all, everybody was all lovey dovey and worked out all their problems by consensus, et al, ad nauseum, it was then we began to see a rise in juvenile violence in the 70s and 80s.
Now, I am not positing a direct correlation between these two events. Nor am I positing a correlation between the decrease in juvenile violence since the advent of "realistic" (Quake, realistic? AHEM!) video & computer games.
Still, it's an intriguing datapoint and there's probably a couple of Ph.Ds that could be earned via a study of the correlation between "violent" media influences and people born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
"Even Palm Pilots are too cramped for "real" use (both screen and input)"
I beg to differ. My Palm IIIx is used daily for text input (notes, appointments, et al) and for reading. I download news into it and have several books in it. Makes the subway ride go faster.
And while flying to Las Vegas last year for Defcon last year, I spent most of the flight writing on the Palm.
As for the Linux watch, it is a concept device, just like the 'Cars of the Future" that Detroit would showcase every year. They'll never go into production (for the most part) but are intended to show off new technologies and techniques.
The Linux watch is the same thing.
Myself, I'm more interested in the OLED display than the OS.
Dervak said on 2001-03-23 10:02 EST
"Actually the very purpose of legalese is to make ordinary people unable to understand it. If people can't understand the laws they won't notice when their freedom is taken from them. So the powers that be want laws to become even more impossible to understand."
I am not a lawyer. I am not a college graduate. I am not even an anarchist.
I had no trouble whatsoever reading and understanding the arguments and points put forth by the brief.
So what's your problem that you can't read and understand a document written in english that so clearly argues the point that 2600 had the right to publish links to DeCSS on it's website as an exercise of its rights under the First Amendment?
So Kishar (zvguevy@gnzcnonl.ee.pbz) on 2001-02-26 4:56 EST sez:
"Actually, I've more often bumped the case and had the rear of the desk hit the PSU's switch. I want a mollyguard for that badly. "
I was recently in the main branch of the Boston Public Library, and while waiting my turn on one of their Internet computers, I watched as someone else sat down in front of one and as she pulled her chair a bit closer to the desk, hit the power switch on the front of the towercase under the desk with her knee.
POOF!
There is much to recommend the old AT-style keyswitches in some environments.
So Goodchild sez, he sez:
"All these care-free hippy children who can do whatever they please is a very bad trend in today's society. Kids need stern discpline from their parents, not friendship! To treat your child as an equal is to guarantee that they will become dysfunctional adults with no real understanding of how to properly behave in society."
And the proof of his thesis is that awful, un-American Open Source software movement. All those Linux programmers who give Jim Allchin sleepless nights full of worry about the fate of our Beloved Republic, are obviously the spawn of all those commune-living, free-love-sharing, pot smoking hippes from the late 60s.
If Stallman's parents had whupped that boy like he no doubt deserved, we wouldn't have to worry about people giving away software to the detrement of major American software corporations.
Encouraging your children to think will just cause problems for everybody later in life. Next time the kids ask why, just tell 'em, "Because I said so, that's why!" and beat them mecilessly for their impudence.
That'll learn 'em!