Its even not that bad to prefer an old DOS-based word processor or even something like AppleWorks over the modern MS Word...
But a classic browser? Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of nostalgia just as much as the next hacker, but the only thing that these old browsers show us is how few features we had and how non-compliant the code was. Yes, this is part of the attraction I guess, but I wouldn't go to anything before Netscape 3.0 simply because the earlier versions were just as good as Gopher, with the few exceptions of images.
For anyone who browsed the internet in 1993 using NCSA Mosaic (gawd that thing crashed if you sneezed!), the experience is historical but hardly could hold a candle to what the minimum was three years ago.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm all about MAME/MESS and experiencing old software for the nostalgia value, but old browsers just don't seem to fit into the category.
And just after I spent 6 hours downloading Tubular Bells on my modem!
(For those who don't know what Tubular Bells is, it is a music score used in some horror movie [friday the 13th?] and it runs about 35MB in MP3 format)
Just to clear things up, you're probably referring to Windows 3.1 when thinking about the 'single user, non-multitasking OS'. ENTIRELY DIFFERENT code base here; NT was built from the ground up (at least the important parts) separately from the Windows 3.1/95/98/ME family.
My point is: who needs those improvements? 14.4 to 28.8 gave you a factor of two. V.90 to V.92 gives you almost nothing (add teh fact that the line noise will likely eliminate all this gain). It's like upgrading from a 700 MHz CPU to a 750 MHz. Except for marketing, I really don't see the idea.
Why? Because every little ounce of speed that I can get out of my modem cool, and especially since I made a wise decision back in 1994, I haven't bought a new modem in years. What I'm referring to is my USRobotics Courier v.Everything modem. I bought it in September of 1994 (it still has v.FAST markings on it) and back then it only did v.34, v.32 and v.FAST/FC (beta). Since then it's been upgraded several times and now does v.90, x2, etc. The cool part is I never paid a nickel for an upgrade (yes, publically legitimate, BTW).
As an FYI, neither did Sun Microsystems or Dell Computer. Heck, you'd figure that Sun would be there (they usually are) and that Dell is a big enough "PC Company"...
Maybe its because there was no room left after Microsoft took up 1/3 of the main room.
The funniest thing I found at the PC Expo was the gift that AMD was giving out. By definition, it is a 'note holder' of sorts, basically a little cube that has a wire and a gator clip on the end that you are supposed to put notes/cards/etc in and have it stand on your desk. However, the concept is almost unusable with this item, so I prefer to call it the Offical AMD Roach Clip. Besides, people think its a lot cooler when you present it that way to them.
Something that has been bothering me as of late is the speed of computers and how the companies are showing this off.
I'd like to take into example how I was just at the PC Expo in NYC the other day and was looking at the 1GHz Athlon chips from AMD. Now, it's certainly quite impressive that these chips are running that fast, but how are they showing it off? A TV tuner card showing a video, a windows machine doing nothing special and someone playing a 3D car racing game. What does this show? a) how well your video card works with the TV tuner card, b) nothing and c) how fast your 3D rendering card is.
What I WOULD like to see in future tests is how fast the Linux kernel compiles. That is, at least , how I test how fast a machine is. Of course, it also then takes into account how fast your disk is (interface and drive), but there is still the raw processing power. Granted, you could argue Gaussian algorithms, but that is FPU speed. I want to see the processor as a whole.
So, my proposition is: The new benchmark for Slashdot readers should be how fast it compiles the kernel with the default options:)
I was at PC Expo yesterday and got a chance to see one of the IBM laptops running on the Crusoe chip. It seemed pretty good; the speed varied from 333MHz to around 600 or so (of course, depends on what you're doing). The part that I was really interested in is that the laptop is as light and "sexy" as the chip - they claimed that one of the laptops was going on about 7 hours, though the IBM representative claimed that 8 hours was the holy grail so to speak. Heck, it beats the 2 hours MAX that my current laptop provides. Remember, that the chip is low power, but that is only a fraction of the equation for battery life, so while the IBM laptop might get 7 or 8 hours, someone else could build something far more efficient.
Oh, and speaking of fans, Transmeta had by far the "coolest" expo gift at the show: portable mini-fans for cooling yourself while walking around the Expo (which didn't seem to have very good air conditioning for some reason).
Hmm, let me turn around my Sun Enterprise 3000 for a sec.. unclip one of the slots, pull and hey! look at that! A processor card!
Nothing new. Machines have been doing this for YEARS. The E3000 I mention has 8 slots of which I have 4 filled with CPU boards, the others are I/O boards or empty. And this concept doesn't exist simply for server class machines, oh no - the Amiga 4000 has its CPU on a separate daughter card; you could get an '030 or '040 at purchase time and the only difference would be what card was in there.
This is a neat card, but I would imagine that you need a PowerPC machine to begin with that could support it (say.. Yellow Dog Linux on a BeBox? >drool --
Sure, moderate the parent post as Flamebait; it's actually fairly insightful, however.
I was/am one of those Amiga fanatics. My old A2500/30 is still partially in comission. I used t o be one of those people, who preached about the Amiga to people who cared. I still do when I get the rare opportunity. I have a real affection for that machine.
Now the idea of the eerie calmness and "nobody gives a shit" is far too realistic. Hey, I give a damn, but I don't search it out anymore. So that is, in a way, not really giving a flying fsck anymore.
I think the parent post is correct. I really don't give a damn anymore. I've read far too many articles on the Amiga over the last several years about how it is going to come back and change our lives. Hogwash. Not ONE has followed through with a product that I've actually seen. Not that I don't want to see something come out from whoever owns the Amiga now, but hey. It's not the same machine anymore and the only thing that will live on is the name.
Why do I get the feeling I have to post one of these messages every few months? Sheesh..
Ok, the IDE might be nice, but don't put the underlying compilers in the same boat. I've been using MSVC++ for some time now, and I think the standard libraries are pieces of garbage. For example, the STL libraries barely work (see String library) and namespace is partially implemented too (see namespace 'std' and things like cout and strcpy).
Uhh, have you noticed that you could decrease the size of the main window and then maximize the child window? If you haven't noticed, MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint/etc all do the same thing. If it's about the 'start button', just ignore it; I think its actually better that in an MDI interface such as that you have the task bar at the bottom (I wish Opera had that). Additionally, who ever was complaining about the Windows style interface, I'm sure you've seen that the display options allow you to make it look like Windows, OS/2, MacOS and Motif.
Man, back in 1986 I used to run a BBS on my old Apple ][ 24/7. That darn thing had a Kensington System Saver (read: surge protector and fan) and was attached to a Sider 20MB hard drive (read: loud noisy thing that was external and the size of most computers of today). I slept 10 feet away from that thing and I'm a better person for it today. Granted I'm a little edgy these days, but HECK! Who's keeping track anyway..
I'm tired of the fact that I use AIM all the time on Win32 boxen, but the Linux and Solaris AIM clients suck. Not that they're bad programs, don't get me wrong; it's simply that they don't support the cool features that you'll find in modern releases of AIM.
Its a shame that AOL stopped development of the Java version of the AIM client. I guess its been about two years now, but it used to be a viable solution to us non-Win32 folk.
While easter eggs are cool things, when they're from open source projects I think someone is going to complain.
When you find something in a closed source product (say Excel 97) its a neat thing. However, you have no control over the decisions made at Microsoft, so you accepted it with a smile.
With open source, however, its another story. One of the goals of programming is to develop small, fast, and tight code that leaves as small a footprint as possible. Of course there are numerous examples of bloat ware out there (how many times have you heard "Damn, excel 97 is enormous.. must be because of the flight simulator they included!"), in open source there is no reason why someone should make more bloat than necessary. In other words, with all the talent that is developing open source projects, why should a space-waster make its way in?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I enjoy eggs and I like to see them, with open source projects, you're only going to increase the size of the code (and possibly the complexity too, in hiding it) to add the eggs. If we're trying to prove to the world that open source is a better alternative, then why not try to streamline it as much as possible?
Still, I'm waiting to find that egg in KOffice that lets me play pac-man in my spreadsheet.
I was just talking about this topic with someone over the weekend and we were laughing how ridiculous it is for games to be on cell phones. I guess more towards the argument is that we were wondering who plays games on cell phones and how this is one of the social downfalls right now. Seriously, a cell phone is a convenience and is a tool for coordinating events/people/tasks when a phone is not readily available. The fact that my Nokia 6120 has 'Memory' on it is pure silly; it is one of three things:
The developer had too much time on his hands (and too much available resources)
The marketing department figured that they could sell more phones by having 'Memory' on the phone
Someone thinks I have too much time on my hands
I'm not against devices having games in them (I've got a PalmPilot with Chess loaded), but a phone is not meant to be a game machine. Having games on my phone is, in my view, stupid. I'd rather spend my battery time on phone calls, for which the phone was intended, rather than dumb little games. Oh, and don't tell me that navigating through a text adventure on a phone is not going to be a) hard to read and b) hard to control.
My two cents. You may now return to your regularly scheduled rants and flames.
To me, a bar (or Pub or Watering Hole or place-where-you-get-liquored) is only good if it has at least one of three things:
A Pool Table
A Dart Board
A Pinball Machine
Of course, if a bar has more than one of the above items, it gives them serious points. Now if they're going to take away #3, then we have a problem in the rating system.
Please stop this insanity and hug your local pinball machine!
"Since it is an appliance [...] there is no need for Windows". How true. However, no need for Linux, either. Could'a use QNX. Could have used AmigaOS. I guess the idea is that they want something solid and stable on the back end, but don't want all the Microsoft-isms that would make their way into the appliance. I guess the only question is if they're going to just slap the AOL 'desktop' on the device or have a simplified/different interface?
Dammit! And just when I thought my conflict with watching The Sopranos was going to be over! At least with the Sopranos, I'm able to watch it during the week.. X-Files offers no such convenience.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I have no problems with RealPlayer format. Its the sites that ONLY have Windows Media Player format.. uugghhhh...
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Wow.. imagine a bunch of individual nodes of this one...
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Its another things to have classic video games...
Its even not that bad to prefer an old DOS-based word processor or even something like AppleWorks over the modern MS Word...
But a classic browser? Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of nostalgia just as much as the next hacker, but the only thing that these old browsers show us is how few features we had and how non-compliant the code was. Yes, this is part of the attraction I guess, but I wouldn't go to anything before Netscape 3.0 simply because the earlier versions were just as good as Gopher, with the few exceptions of images.
For anyone who browsed the internet in 1993 using NCSA Mosaic (gawd that thing crashed if you sneezed!), the experience is historical but hardly could hold a candle to what the minimum was three years ago.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm all about MAME/MESS and experiencing old software for the nostalgia value, but old browsers just don't seem to fit into the category.
--
Anyone happen to notice that October 13th is a Friday? I wonder if they picked this date to appear as "Bad Luck" to Microsoft...
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(For those who don't know what Tubular Bells is, it is a music score used in some horror movie [friday the 13th?] and it runs about 35MB in MP3 format)
--
Just to clear things up, you're probably referring to Windows 3.1 when thinking about the 'single user, non-multitasking OS'. ENTIRELY DIFFERENT code base here; NT was built from the ground up (at least the important parts) separately from the Windows 3.1/95/98/ME family.
--
Why? Because every little ounce of speed that I can get out of my modem cool, and especially since I made a wise decision back in 1994, I haven't bought a new modem in years. What I'm referring to is my USRobotics Courier v.Everything modem. I bought it in September of 1994 (it still has v.FAST markings on it) and back then it only did v.34, v.32 and v.FAST/FC (beta). Since then it's been upgraded several times and now does v.90, x2, etc. The cool part is I never paid a nickel for an upgrade (yes, publically legitimate, BTW).
If its coming out, I'll take it!
--
Maybe its because there was no room left after Microsoft took up 1/3 of the main room.
--
The funniest thing I found at the PC Expo was the gift that AMD was giving out. By definition, it is a 'note holder' of sorts, basically a little cube that has a wire and a gator clip on the end that you are supposed to put notes/cards/etc in and have it stand on your desk. However, the concept is almost unusable with this item, so I prefer to call it the Offical AMD Roach Clip. Besides, people think its a lot cooler when you present it that way to them.
--
I'd like to take into example how I was just at the PC Expo in NYC the other day and was looking at the 1GHz Athlon chips from AMD. Now, it's certainly quite impressive that these chips are running that fast, but how are they showing it off? A TV tuner card showing a video, a windows machine doing nothing special and someone playing a 3D car racing game. What does this show? a) how well your video card works with the TV tuner card, b) nothing and c) how fast your 3D rendering card is.
What I WOULD like to see in future tests is how fast the Linux kernel compiles. That is, at least , how I test how fast a machine is. Of course, it also then takes into account how fast your disk is (interface and drive), but there is still the raw processing power. Granted, you could argue Gaussian algorithms, but that is FPU speed. I want to see the processor as a whole.
So, my proposition is: The new benchmark for Slashdot readers should be how fast it compiles the kernel with the default options :)
My two cents; no refunds.
--
Oh, and speaking of fans, Transmeta had by far the "coolest" expo gift at the show: portable mini-fans for cooling yourself while walking around the Expo (which didn't seem to have very good air conditioning for some reason).
--
I bet it was under the advice of Bill's legal staff to "keep the non-monopoly image". Regardless, it is a step closer to what we need. br
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Nothing new. Machines have been doing this for YEARS. The E3000 I mention has 8 slots of which I have 4 filled with CPU boards, the others are I/O boards or empty. And this concept doesn't exist simply for server class machines, oh no - the Amiga 4000 has its CPU on a separate daughter card; you could get an '030 or '040 at purchase time and the only difference would be what card was in there.
This is a neat card, but I would imagine that you need a PowerPC machine to begin with that could support it (say.. Yellow Dog Linux on a BeBox? >drool
--
I was/am one of those Amiga fanatics. My old A2500/30 is still partially in comission. I used t o be one of those people, who preached about the Amiga to people who cared. I still do when I get the rare opportunity. I have a real affection for that machine.
Now the idea of the eerie calmness and "nobody gives a shit" is far too realistic. Hey, I give a damn, but I don't search it out anymore. So that is, in a way, not really giving a flying fsck anymore.
I think the parent post is correct. I really don't give a damn anymore. I've read far too many articles on the Amiga over the last several years about how it is going to come back and change our lives. Hogwash. Not ONE has followed through with a product that I've actually seen. Not that I don't want to see something come out from whoever owns the Amiga now, but hey. It's not the same machine anymore and the only thing that will live on is the name.
Why do I get the feeling I have to post one of these messages every few months? Sheesh..
--
My two cents.
--
Uhh, have you noticed that you could decrease the size of the main window and then maximize the child window? If you haven't noticed, MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint/etc all do the same thing. If it's about the 'start button', just ignore it; I think its actually better that in an MDI interface such as that you have the task bar at the bottom (I wish Opera had that). Additionally, who ever was complaining about the Windows style interface, I'm sure you've seen that the display options allow you to make it look like Windows, OS/2, MacOS and Motif.
--
Man, back in 1986 I used to run a BBS on my old Apple ][ 24/7. That darn thing had a Kensington System Saver (read: surge protector and fan) and was attached to a Sider 20MB hard drive (read: loud noisy thing that was external and the size of most computers of today). I slept 10 feet away from that thing and I'm a better person for it today. Granted I'm a little edgy these days, but HECK! Who's keeping track anyway..
--
Its a shame that AOL stopped development of the Java version of the AIM client. I guess its been about two years now, but it used to be a viable solution to us non-Win32 folk.
--
Next we had the Sears Telegames Super Arcade System (licensed Intellivision technology)
Now we have the Sears Telegames Super-Elite Arcade System?
Hmm...
--
When you find something in a closed source product (say Excel 97) its a neat thing. However, you have no control over the decisions made at Microsoft, so you accepted it with a smile.
With open source, however, its another story. One of the goals of programming is to develop small, fast, and tight code that leaves as small a footprint as possible. Of course there are numerous examples of bloat ware out there (how many times have you heard "Damn, excel 97 is enormous.. must be because of the flight simulator they included!"), in open source there is no reason why someone should make more bloat than necessary. In other words, with all the talent that is developing open source projects, why should a space-waster make its way in?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I enjoy eggs and I like to see them, with open source projects, you're only going to increase the size of the code (and possibly the complexity too, in hiding it) to add the eggs. If we're trying to prove to the world that open source is a better alternative, then why not try to streamline it as much as possible?
Still, I'm waiting to find that egg in KOffice that lets me play pac-man in my spreadsheet.
--
- The developer had too much time on his hands (and too much available resources)
- The marketing department figured that they could sell more phones by having 'Memory' on the phone
- Someone thinks I have too much time on my hands
I'm not against devices having games in them (I've got a PalmPilot with Chess loaded), but a phone is not meant to be a game machine. Having games on my phone is, in my view, stupid. I'd rather spend my battery time on phone calls, for which the phone was intended, rather than dumb little games. Oh, and don't tell me that navigating through a text adventure on a phone is not going to be a) hard to read and b) hard to control.My two cents. You may now return to your regularly scheduled rants and flames.
--
- A Pool Table
- A Dart Board
- A Pinball Machine
Of course, if a bar has more than one of the above items, it gives them serious points. Now if they're going to take away #3, then we have a problem in the rating system.Please stop this insanity and hug your local pinball machine!
--
So will these have 'Designed for Linux' stickers over the Windows 98/NT stickers?
--
My two cents...
--
Dammit! And just when I thought my conflict with watching The Sopranos was going to be over! At least with the Sopranos, I'm able to watch it during the week.. X-Files offers no such convenience.
--