Don't just cover the PDPs. They were great machines, but there was a lot more stuff going on in the 60s than them. Big, BIG machines by IBM and the Seven Dwarves (read up about this).
Also, it might be fun to find a collector who has some classic systems and have the class meet at his house once. Just get his permission first.
I bet most the scientists drive cars (or use public transportation) between their place of residence and their place of work. In fact, many important discoveries would not have been possible if they had no way to transport themselves to the lab. Does this make them car designers or mechanics?
There are tons of grave yards that have been dug up and the tombstones placed on a wall somewhere because the land was needed for something else. And the pressure on land is only growing. I wouldn't give current grave yards a snowball's chance in hell of surviving out the next century without being paved over.
It's obvious you never get out of whatever big megalopolis you live in. There's lots of land out there. Next time you're flying somewhere more than an hour or two away, look down and you'll understand. Sure, graveyards in
the middle of Manhattan might be in danger of being removed, but not the one in, say, Wallville, Oklahoma.
I have to disagree with you vehemently. It is obvious you don't write code, or at least if you do, you can only write in COBOL or Visual Basic.
We're all artists, and art does not entail appeal to non-artists -- at least, not in the same manner as the artists' community. Take music, for instance. I think we can all agree that music is an art. However, when the musician hears music being performed, what he hears and perceives is very different from what the layman hears and perceives. The practitioners of the art, who alone are privy to its techniques and possibilities, exist in a transcendent awareness of qualities of the art -- almost as if the art speaks to them in a language invisible to the layman. Parallels can be drawn in any other field that dares call itself art.
(The previous is probably the reason that, when I was in the all-state band in 1997, the CD players in many of our hotel rooms played Dream Theater instead of the current pop artist of the week.)
Programming is an art all the same, with the added quality that the "invisible language" is not imagined, but real (our programming languages). And not only does the language speak to us and make us to appreciate a program in a way the layman could not, but the language is also the primary tool of the art's creation!
The layman can still appreciate software in his own way; why is Windows and its software so popular? Because it's made with the layman in mind. Think of it as the Britney Spears of software.
What's the story on the moderation here? I expressed my willingness to restore and preserve these machines that are important parts of the history of computing. I'm sorry, but I don't see this as trolling of any kind.
Now that we have documentation for these systems, where can we find people or organizations that would be willing to donate these types of systems to us for education and historical preservation? I for one would love to have a PDP-8, PDP-11, or a VAX of my own.
Yeah, I'm not fully developed as a Unix programmer, but I'm working on it. I've done most of my learning by writing code, but I really need to read a few more books before I can call myself adequate. My goal is to achieve wizard status by the time I finish grad school in 2 to 3 years.
There is, indeed, probably some easier way of doing the CLI/GUI thing that I've looked over.
No. The GUI things that most CLI programs would do would be quite similar, which would suggest a higher-level library that the CLI programs can link to. The library would abstract the windowing system and GUI toolkit away from the CLI programs (which would then not care about the actual windowing system used) So, to address your concern: if you want no graphical stuff of any kind, just add the version of the said higher-level library that has all its functions empty. There ya go, no graphical bells and whistles, and no X libraries (or other GUI libraries).
Provide a switch to make the GUI stuff not happen.
linking in GUI routines to CLI tools would make these programs many times larger
That what shared libraries are for. Presumably, most CLI tools would need similar things from a GUI toolkit, so it would be prudent to have a higher-level library of routines for providing GUI feedback in CLI tools. That way, only a few more lines of code need to be added to the CLI tools.
which GUI toolkit do you standardize your CLI tools on?
You don't. The aforementioned higher-level library wouild abstract the actual GUI toolkit from the CLI tools, so CLI tools would not need to know (or care) what GUI toolkit is underneath.
Actaully, I had this idea a year or two ago, and I put it on my I'll-do-it-when-I-get-out-of-college-and-write-my- utopian-operating-system list. I think it's wonderful! In my opinion, command lines are the fastest human->computer interface, while graphics make the best computer->human interface. Things like this represent what I think is the best way of combining the two paradigms (which are not opposites, as many would have us think). Most of the objections I saw were like these:
What if I'm logged in remotely? Doesn't this assume I have a graphic terminal?
Won't this cause random stuff popping up when, say, cron scripts run?
No, boneheads! Just provide a standard switch that means "don't do that GUI shit". That may be a problem for our current set of Unix tools, since it is probably impossible to find a switch that is unused in all Unix tools. But that doesn't preclude someone from implementing this idea in their new operating system, where the switch meanings aren't set largely by tradition.
you want people to try your OS, guess what jackass, they have to atleast get in installed
Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point, jackass. If getting into the mainstream (whatever that is, and assuming FreeBSD's not already there) means that we have to endlessly pacify all the clueless wannabes who don't know PCI from AIDS but want to be 1337 and run our OS, then by all means you can have your mainstreamity.
My point was that FreeBSD is a tool by smart people for smart people -- what Unix is supposed to be. The FreeBSD community expects you to either be intelligent enough to learn from the (quite good, but not for dumbasses) pre-existing newbie material, or to have learned Unix from somewhere else (I used Linux for a few years first). That is to say, we're more into making high quality software than holding the hands of people that really shouldn't be associating with us in the first place. You can have all the Linux for Dummies books you want -- FreeBSD however is not for dummies.
As for installs: to anyone who knows anything about computers and especially those who have installed some OS before, the FreeBSD install is dirt-simple. Minus file copying time, it takes as little as 2 minutes to install FreeBSD if you've done it a few times before.
On the daemon front, I've seen books available by mail, none in the bookstores
Look in other bookstores. I've seen "The Complete FreeBSD", by Greg Lehey, which is quite a resourceful tome for anyone new to FreeBSD, in two of the three major bookstores here. And this is in Oklahoma, even.
What you do get is the suggestion to take the drivers... and port them yourself. Of course you can do that, because you're a g0d l337 ha>0r d00d, right? Otherwise you'd be running Windows
This isn't just a BSD phenomena. What is one of Linus's more recent famous sayings? "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
No. Freebsd is just another free Unix. It may be used more as a server OS (IMHO because there is less hand-holding for newbies), but it's range of applications is more or less the same as that of Linux. A great majority of the software that compiles and runs on Linux will also compile and run on FreeBSD, equally well.
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows
I beg to differ. IMNSHO, most open source developers (myself included) care less about who is percieved to be 'good' or 'evil' at the time and more about getting quality code out into the world. We wish to improve the state of the art of software and make our improvements available to anyone who wants to use them. So what if Microsoft uses my elegant, high-quality, BSD-licensed Foo Protocol code? The code still performs the same function for me and my community of developers; it has not been damaged by commercial use. In fact, many more people out there are benefitting from something that I wrote instead of suffering from some other, possibly dismal, implementation.
The rule is "You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material.". Selling your time is not prohibited in the license agreement. There really isn't anything difficult to understand here.
Sony can (without legal repercussions) make a rule that says "no selling characters/eq/your time involved in geting eq/whatever silly rationale you want to apply
Quite true. But there currently is no such rule. The EULA states:
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
Thus, EQ users have not agreed to not sell their time, and can expect to win their suit on that argument. Until the EULA is amended to prohibit the selling of time spent playing the game, stopping the auctioning of such time does legally infringe upon the sellers.
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Don't just cover the PDPs. They were great machines, but there was a lot more stuff going on in the 60s than them. Big, BIG machines by IBM and the Seven Dwarves (read up about this).
Also, it might be fun to find a collector who has some classic systems and have the class meet at his house once. Just get his permission first.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
It should go without saying that the Jargon File should be required reading. Not only is it informative, but it is also extremely funny.
I second that motion. Follow that link now.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I bet most the scientists drive cars (or use public transportation) between their place of residence and their place of work. In fact, many important discoveries would not have been possible if they had no way to transport themselves to the lab. Does this make them car designers or mechanics?
I didn't think so.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
There are tons of grave yards that have been dug up and the tombstones placed on a wall somewhere because the land was needed for something else. And the pressure on land is only growing. I wouldn't give current grave yards a snowball's chance in hell of surviving out the next century without being paved over.
It's obvious you never get out of whatever big megalopolis you live in. There's lots of land out there. Next time you're flying somewhere more than an hour or two away, look down and you'll understand. Sure, graveyards in the middle of Manhattan might be in danger of being removed, but not the one in, say, Wallville, Oklahoma.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I don't know about anyone else here, but I could not dare to think of what my childhood would have been like without Robotech.
Mod me down, I don't care. I feel like rejoicing!
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
real art appeals to people who aren't artists
I have to disagree with you vehemently. It is obvious you don't write code, or at least if you do, you can only write in COBOL or Visual Basic.
We're all artists, and art does not entail appeal to non-artists -- at least, not in the same manner as the artists' community. Take music, for instance. I think we can all agree that music is an art. However, when the musician hears music being performed, what he hears and perceives is very different from what the layman hears and perceives. The practitioners of the art, who alone are privy to its techniques and possibilities, exist in a transcendent awareness of qualities of the art -- almost as if the art speaks to them in a language invisible to the layman. Parallels can be drawn in any other field that dares call itself art.
(The previous is probably the reason that, when I was in the all-state band in 1997, the CD players in many of our hotel rooms played Dream Theater instead of the current pop artist of the week.)
Programming is an art all the same, with the added quality that the "invisible language" is not imagined, but real (our programming languages). And not only does the language speak to us and make us to appreciate a program in a way the layman could not, but the language is also the primary tool of the art's creation!
The layman can still appreciate software in his own way; why is Windows and its software so popular? Because it's made with the layman in mind. Think of it as the Britney Spears of software.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
What's the story on the moderation here? I expressed my willingness to restore and preserve these machines that are important parts of the history of computing. I'm sorry, but I don't see this as trolling of any kind.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Now that we have documentation for these systems, where can we find people or organizations that would be willing to donate these types of systems to us for education and historical preservation? I for one would love to have a PDP-8, PDP-11, or a VAX of my own.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
And not all pedophiles are murderers -- or child molesters for that matter.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Where can I get one of these? I would like to collect things like that.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Yeah, I'm not fully developed as a Unix programmer, but I'm working on it. I've done most of my learning by writing code, but I really need to read a few more books before I can call myself adequate. My goal is to achieve wizard status by the time I finish grad school in 2 to 3 years.
There is, indeed, probably some easier way of doing the CLI/GUI thing that I've looked over.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Microsoft is not evil nor ruthless
Yes they are.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
No. The GUI things that most CLI programs would do would be quite similar, which would suggest a higher-level library that the CLI programs can link to. The library would abstract the windowing system and GUI toolkit away from the CLI programs (which would then not care about the actual windowing system used) So, to address your concern: if you want no graphical stuff of any kind, just add the version of the said higher-level library that has all its functions empty. There ya go, no graphical bells and whistles, and no X libraries (or other GUI libraries).
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Ouch, that is way better than my suggestion.
Way better. I like it.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
What, is he gonna teach us to leverage our synergy to create dynamic paradigm shifts for prosumers?
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
I can solve your problems:
ability to pipe/redirect output
Provide a switch to make the GUI stuff not happen.
linking in GUI routines to CLI tools would make these programs many times larger
That what shared libraries are for. Presumably, most CLI tools would need similar things from a GUI toolkit, so it would be prudent to have a higher-level library of routines for providing GUI feedback in CLI tools. That way, only a few more lines of code need to be added to the CLI tools.
which GUI toolkit do you standardize your CLI tools on?
You don't. The aforementioned higher-level library wouild abstract the actual GUI toolkit from the CLI tools, so CLI tools would not need to know (or care) what GUI toolkit is underneath.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
- What if I'm logged in remotely? Doesn't this assume I have a graphic terminal?
- Won't this cause random stuff popping up when, say, cron scripts run?
No, boneheads! Just provide a standard switch that means "don't do that GUI shit". That may be a problem for our current set of Unix tools, since it is probably impossible to find a switch that is unused in all Unix tools. But that doesn't preclude someone from implementing this idea in their new operating system, where the switch meanings aren't set largely by tradition.--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
you want people to try your OS, guess what jackass, they have to atleast get in installed
Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point, jackass. If getting into the mainstream (whatever that is, and assuming FreeBSD's not already there) means that we have to endlessly pacify all the clueless wannabes who don't know PCI from AIDS but want to be 1337 and run our OS, then by all means you can have your mainstreamity.
My point was that FreeBSD is a tool by smart people for smart people -- what Unix is supposed to be. The FreeBSD community expects you to either be intelligent enough to learn from the (quite good, but not for dumbasses) pre-existing newbie material, or to have learned Unix from somewhere else (I used Linux for a few years first). That is to say, we're more into making high quality software than holding the hands of people that really shouldn't be associating with us in the first place. You can have all the Linux for Dummies books you want -- FreeBSD however is not for dummies.
As for installs: to anyone who knows anything about computers and especially those who have installed some OS before, the FreeBSD install is dirt-simple. Minus file copying time, it takes as little as 2 minutes to install FreeBSD if you've done it a few times before.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
On the daemon front, I've seen books available by mail, none in the bookstores
... and port them yourself. Of course you can do that, because you're a g0d l337 ha>0r d00d, right? Otherwise you'd be running Windows
Look in other bookstores. I've seen "The Complete FreeBSD", by Greg Lehey, which is quite a resourceful tome for anyone new to FreeBSD, in two of the three major bookstores here. And this is in Oklahoma, even.
What you do get is the suggestion to take the drivers
This isn't just a BSD phenomena. What is one of Linus's more recent famous sayings? "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
GNU/BSD? Would Debian dump the BSD userland (which is part of what BSD is) and replace it with a totally GNU userland?
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
FreeBSD is a pure server OS
No. Freebsd is just another free Unix. It may be used more as a server OS (IMHO because there is less hand-holding for newbies), but it's range of applications is more or less the same as that of Linux. A great majority of the software that compiles and runs on Linux will also compile and run on FreeBSD, equally well.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows
I beg to differ. IMNSHO, most open source developers (myself included) care less about who is percieved to be 'good' or 'evil' at the time and more about getting quality code out into the world. We wish to improve the state of the art of software and make our improvements available to anyone who wants to use them. So what if Microsoft uses my elegant, high-quality, BSD-licensed Foo Protocol code? The code still performs the same function for me and my community of developers; it has not been damaged by commercial use. In fact, many more people out there are benefitting from something that I wrote instead of suffering from some other, possibly dismal, implementation.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Linux is the only thing out there that scales down well enough with enough features to run on embedded systems and that you do not have to pay for
No it's not. Linux There are several freely-available embedded OSes. One of them is eCos. Hell, another is FreeBSD. Et cetera, et cetera...
You really need to step outside of your FUD-lined linux cage every once and a while.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
The rule is "You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material.". Selling your time is not prohibited in the license agreement. There really isn't anything difficult to understand here.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Quite true. But there currently is no such rule. The EULA states:
Thus, EQ users have not agreed to not sell their time, and can expect to win their suit on that argument. Until the EULA is amended to prohibit the selling of time spent playing the game, stopping the auctioning of such time does legally infringe upon the sellers.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)