"Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software."
Sir: I have worked with and used computers for almost 40 years. I have seen time and time again proof of your statement.
The brittleness of the hardware is getting worse in some respects ( crappy power OEM power supplies and cable connections ), but getting more robust in others (USB and SATA ). but the most obsurd industry trend is the shipping of crappy half baked OS and productivity software, long before all the bugs have been worked out, hoping that the churning of sales will prop the development effort up enough to siphon off huge profits.
Security is an absolute afterthought joke. I reinstalled XP a few days ago and had to apply over 175 patches. If this was any other mission critical application it would be the laughing stock of the industry, instead of the standard.
(btw, I have also converted more than 25 vista users back to XP, and aside from one driver problem for a track pad, all the users have been estatic. )
When the problems get insurmountable, I tell the user to call a priest.... but always recommend that they get hardware service locally, so that they can see the face of the person repairing their computer:
"Hello, this is Christine...<male voice, with thick Indian accent>..." "Are you sure your name is Christine, and you don't want to pull another one out of the hat?" "Im not sure what you mean" "Ahh...forget it."
Beer and all that. BUYING beer, and drinking it are different things. This case could bode very well for the Vancouver isohunt.com. Lets hope the Supreme court in Ottawa see things in their best light.
Remember, there are less people in Canada that in Los Angles, and a lot friendlier.
98% of Canadians live within 120 miles of the boarder.
Eye of the Beholder is based on Dungeon Master, and was one of the first GUI inventory systems. This series Dungeon Master, Revenge of Chaos, Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II were all excellent. I am still playing Dungeon Master, and have played Eye in the last year...
Make the laptop minus its hard dusk, business. The hard disk, you replace with your own. I am working on such a laptop. If the company wants their laptop, and its data, they get the old HD with the pristine software install. NOT my hard disk, that I paid for. ( it was dirt cheap, and I can do the sway myself ).
If they suponea it, I drop my hard disks in battery acid. OPPS. Sorry, I lost all my data...( offsite back ups? I may know who has them, but certinally not where...)
And every time I have a valuable brain fart, on my time, I email myself, with a date stamp.
If I was working in such a nazi IP environment, Id start looking at the door, and how to get out. ( The last company I worked for that had this kind of envionment? Down to 2 employees from 175)
Comon..... Suponea me! Look! The machine is BRAND NEW? I never touched it, except for the high score on Solitare....
VMS => Yes, and Multics too. ( Your forkin A right )
Windows => "Worthless coagulated clot of speghetti." That would be a no. Windows should not be 'preserved' it should be "Castrated so it doesnt pass on its genes to future generations" -Hunter S Tompson
ReactOS => Mabye.
Plan9 => YES!
ONX => Possible.
Tron. => Insert Quarter for next game
zOS = Which one? Zos ZOS or zOS? This one is a little forkin crazy.
Old source code gives us ideas, like looking at the design philosophy behind the code, and the ultimate operation of the software. These are actually *priceless* artifacts, and since they are mostly digital ( reserive the right for first pun... they are 'Digital' ), the study and the disemination of the early code is of extrodinary value to coders and software architects.
Of course its also invaluable to have their nemisises Multics and VMS alos preserved. I personally got an enourmous amount of respect for K&R reading the source code for the kernel (the V4), and the proto compiler. K&R, and the linux/GNU write well, wereas their MS counterparts wirte pretty crappy stuff. I would also venture to guess that the code alone can serve as an example of how to write code.
I will look forward to taking a detailed 'History of the UNIX Kernel' class in the near future.
It is ABSOLUTE Horse rubbish. complete and utter balderdash. There are Sooo many examples of how this is completely false. $100,000,000? Get a superdome. Duh! It has a OC-48 plug on the back, and enough backend communication hardware ( at System bus speeds ) to get a lot of syncing of the shards.
Perfect example is Dungeon Siege. Seamless, can possibly have a lot of users, and developed for a lot less than $100,000,000.
This guy is just complaining about EVE. Get a LIFE!
But finally, what is your world going to look like, either they are going to trash the place like PYST, or they are going to be so far apart, it will be like walking in the desert.
"The team is hard at work building our first release..." Ahh this guy is just looking for venture capitol. Buy NCSoft and start with the code base for Tabula Rasa. Geez...seems like this guy has a petulance for NIH!( Not invented Here ) and MMR ( Make Me Rich! )
But what are all those business users to do who want to run their legacy Windows 2000 apps? Hmm. They will find a way to run legacy Windows 2000 apps that 1) rely on some over priced virutalization technology that will be buggy and late, while spending other peoples money, or 2) some tech will dream up a solution, will cost the company nothing, the CIO wont know how its done, they'll piss the techie off, by cutting off his free carrot juice, he'll leave, and they will switch to plan 1).
I have yet to see a legacy app ( with the important exception of the Oakland Dept of Justice ) that cannot run well or better under Windows 2000, and/or be supported unter its terminal services. It took Microsoft 9 years to get the software to be as good as it gets. Most of the third party virtulization products are good, and the free ones are great. The underlying OS is still Microsoft's and still not very secure, ( Just kicked a trojan off a companies server:), but it works well for the most part.
DasBox DosBox. Duke nukem and the text "Rogue" still runs under XP and vista with this. Thanks. ( OH and for those bean counters, Lotus 1-2-3 release 2 works too. )
Funny, Im supporting a user just that way. They just bought a IntelBox, and OS 9 works perfectly under an emulator. ( In fact, its more than twice as fast as the native system it replaced )
No more OS 9 <i>from apple</> and since when is a third party solution not an option...Ohhh your at the apple store talking to the geniuses...
Richard Stallman cares because he is committed to free ideas especially software, AND efforts to encroch on our freedoms.
Everything Richard Stallman says bothers me, and it bothers me a lot, not because its right or wrong, but he is so brilliant, that the underlying questions of why he says what he does. (I sent him a congratuationary email when he won the MacCarthur grant, but I wondered why they didnt give it to him years, even decades earler)
The GPL really botheres me a lot. because at a fundmental level, there is a tradeoff between academia and business. Should we get paid to write code in class? Should we give away the code we are paid to write? Should students get paid for work they produce?
Richard Stallman opens cans of worms, that pose a lot more qestions than answers. Personally, I care if non-free applitions run that I have not paid for. If it breaks, and you have to pay...its worse than blackmail, like the whole fiasco with GIF(tm) compression.
I cant believe what I read. Michael Swaine? I have been reading him for decades.
My algorythms paradidgm always starts with when in doubt, spawn, and let YOUR scheduler figure out wether its on your Core, your chip, FU, on your board or your network, or your local cluster/remote cluster...I remember reading Michael Swaine talk about budgeting and bargining processor units, to see which were faster, more efficent:
To whit: Both distrubuted web services, distCC image rendering and distrubuted database services, ALL can be set up on a "processing economy" to get a job divided, parelelled, and processed. Richard Feynman was able to do this with punched card jobs at Los Almos.
Its just with running with such gross schedulers as Windows has, no one is interested anymore in efficency, except as an academic excercise.
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that summarizes research from reliable secondary sources." Absolutly *SSH*T wrong. The number of articles that need some reference to reality is staggering. If even 1% of the articles had citations from reliable sources, it would improve wikipedia by an order of magnitude.
Guidelines for inclusion are: "I wrote this." Thats all.
The hardware articles are fair, but software and theory are factually correct but for the most part, are WORSE than 'The Highlight Childrens Encyclopedia' I worked on one in peticular for a few weeks, and had some *ssh*t argue with the 'Reliability' and 'viewpoint' of Intel's documentation. Hmm... Screw them...
This is how you test wikipeida. Click on 'Random Article' until you find something you actually know something about...see how freaking bad most of the articles actually are.
Mod Parent. +2 I used to work at a college. They had three networks. The campus network, the teachers, and the staff, the lab network, ( which was very insucure, and the Admin Network. ( Admissions/ Budget/grades ) ( Which I could not work on without direct supervision ).
Its interesting, that in the ensuing 14 years, the college has NEVER had ONE grade changing problem. The Admin network has NEVER been comprimised. ( even after a few surriptious attacks by me personally! ).
Another college in the district was comprimised, by Admissions office staff. Big scandal. But not the place I worked.
If I had 5 Mod points to put on anything I have read here in the last month, Id put them all on this:
"The fact is, war is the single most lucrative business for government to be in. If it wasn't for war, the US government would be half the size it is today, measured both in revenue and power over the people."
Your absolutly right. The Russians do not want a war, any more then we wanted a war with Iraq, but the GOVERNMENT went ahead, fabricated lies about WMDs and poof! Pissed away BILLIONS of dollars. You think Medelev woudnt do the same?
I did some research into the losses Russia sustained during WWII. 30 Million killed in the Siege on Stalingrad alone. I think that the figure of 67 million total dead is also conservative.
(btw, it is a good oberservation anyway, good point! )
A Neanderthal is a COMPLEX, i.e. very complex genetic structure. Best of luck even getting 98% of the genome right, vs 99.9999% needed for a vialble clone. ( for refrence a 99.9999% human, could carry every single gentic inherated disease, 100x over! ).
Is possible, yes, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to fly around the solar system, like walking to 7-11.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not called Information rage, for the culturally illerate,
its called Future Shock, and it was predicted. DUH!!!
"Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software."
Sir: I have worked with and used computers for almost 40 years. I have seen time and time again proof of your statement.
The brittleness of the hardware is getting worse in some respects ( crappy power OEM power supplies and cable connections ), but getting more robust in others (USB and SATA ).
but the most obsurd industry trend is the shipping of crappy half baked OS and productivity software, long before all the bugs have been worked out, hoping that the churning of sales will prop
the development effort up enough to siphon off huge profits.
Security is an absolute afterthought joke. I reinstalled XP a few days ago and had to apply over 175 patches. If this was any other mission critical application it would be the laughing stock
of the industry, instead of the standard.
(btw, I have also converted more than 25 vista users back to XP, and aside from one driver problem for a track pad, all the users have been estatic. )
When the problems get insurmountable, I tell the user to call a priest....
but always recommend that they get hardware service locally, so that they can see the face of the person repairing their computer:
"Hello, this is Christine...<male voice, with thick Indian accent>..."
"Are you sure your name is Christine, and you don't want to pull another one out of the hat?"
"Im not sure what you mean"
"Ahh...forget it."
Beer and all that. BUYING beer, and drinking it are different things. This case could bode very well for the Vancouver isohunt.com. Lets hope the Supreme court in Ottawa see things in their best light.
Remember, there are less people in Canada that in Los Angles, and a lot friendlier.
98% of Canadians live within 120 miles of the boarder.
Apple? Their lawyers are bigger than my lawyers. In fact, Apple has one of the largest IP legal teams on the planet. Best of luck. They will bury you.
Eye of the Beholder is based on Dungeon Master, and was one of the first GUI inventory systems. This series Dungeon Master, Revenge of Chaos, Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II were all excellent. I am still playing Dungeon Master, and have played Eye in the last year...
No, It doesnt come with a towel, Ford Perfect will hand you one. Pffffft.
Yea dont mix personal and business.
Make the laptop minus its hard dusk, business.
The hard disk, you replace with your own. I am working on such a laptop.
If the company wants their laptop, and its data, they get the old HD with the pristine
software install. NOT my hard disk, that I paid for.
( it was dirt cheap, and I can do the sway myself ).
If they suponea it, I drop my hard disks in battery acid.
OPPS. Sorry, I lost all my data...( offsite back ups? I may know who has them, but certinally not where...)
And every time I have a valuable brain fart, on my time,
I email myself, with a date stamp.
If I was working in such a nazi IP environment, Id start looking at the door,
and how to get out. ( The last company I worked for that had this kind of envionment? Down to 2 employees from 175)
Comon..... Suponea me! Look! The machine is BRAND NEW? I never touched it, except for the high score on Solitare....
VMS => Yes, and Multics too. ( Your forkin A right )
Windows => "Worthless coagulated clot of speghetti." That would be a no.
Windows should not be 'preserved' it should be "Castrated so it doesnt pass on its genes to future generations" -Hunter S Tompson
ReactOS => Mabye.
Plan9 => YES!
ONX => Possible.
Tron. => Insert Quarter for next game
zOS = Which one? Zos ZOS or zOS? This one is a little forkin crazy.
Fork off!
Overgeneralization.
Old source code gives us ideas, like looking at the design philosophy behind the code, and the ultimate operation of the software. These are actually *priceless* artifacts, and since they are mostly digital ( reserive the right for first pun... they are 'Digital' ), the study and the disemination of the early code is of extrodinary value to coders and software architects.
Of course its also invaluable to have their nemisises Multics and VMS alos preserved. I personally got an enourmous amount of respect for K&R reading the source code for the kernel (the V4), and the proto compiler. K&R, and the linux/GNU write well, wereas their MS counterparts wirte pretty crappy stuff. I would also venture to guess that the code alone can serve as an example of how to write code.
I will look forward to taking a detailed 'History of the UNIX Kernel' class in the near future.
It is ABSOLUTE Horse rubbish. complete and utter balderdash. There are Sooo many examples of how this is completely false. $100,000,000? Get a superdome. Duh! It has a OC-48 plug on the back, and enough backend communication hardware ( at System bus speeds ) to get a lot of syncing of the shards.
Perfect example is Dungeon Siege. Seamless, can possibly have a lot of users, and developed for a lot less than $100,000,000.
This guy is just complaining about EVE. Get a LIFE!
But finally, what is your world going to look like, either they are going to trash the place like PYST, or they are going to be so far apart, it will be like walking in the desert.
"The team is hard at work building our first release..." Ahh this guy is just looking for venture capitol. Buy NCSoft and start with the code base for Tabula Rasa. Geez...seems like this guy has a petulance for NIH!( Not invented Here ) and MMR ( Make Me Rich! )
Hey! When is the video game 'The Last Temptation of Christ' coming out? Before Starcraft?
But what are all those business users to do who want to run their legacy Windows 2000 apps? Hmm. They will find a way to run legacy Windows 2000 apps that 1) rely on some over priced virutalization technology that will be buggy and late, while spending other peoples money, or 2) some tech will dream up a solution, will cost the company nothing, the CIO wont know how its done, they'll piss the techie off, by cutting off his free carrot juice, he'll leave, and they will switch to plan 1).
:), but it works well for the most part.
I have yet to see a legacy app ( with the important exception of the Oakland Dept of Justice ) that cannot run well or better under Windows 2000, and/or be supported unter its terminal services. It took Microsoft 9 years to get the software to be as good as it gets. Most of the third party virtulization products are good, and the free ones are great. The underlying OS is still Microsoft's and still not very secure, ( Just kicked a trojan off a companies server
DasBox DosBox. Duke nukem and the text "Rogue" still runs under XP and vista with this. Thanks. ( OH and for those bean counters, Lotus 1-2-3 release 2 works too. )
Funny, Im supporting a user just that way. They just bought a IntelBox, and OS 9 works perfectly under an emulator. ( In fact, its more than twice as fast as the native system it replaced )
No more OS 9 <i>from apple</> and since when is a third party solution not an option...Ohhh your at the apple store talking to the geniuses...
sorry, my bad.
Richard Stallman cares because he is committed to free ideas especially software, AND efforts to encroch on our freedoms.
Everything Richard Stallman says bothers me, and it bothers me a lot, not because its right or wrong, but he is so brilliant, that the underlying questions of why he says what he does.
(I sent him a congratuationary email when he won the MacCarthur grant, but I wondered why they didnt give it to him years, even decades earler)
The GPL really botheres me a lot. because at a fundmental level, there is a tradeoff between academia and business. Should we get paid to write code in class? Should we give away the code we are paid to write? Should students get paid for work they produce?
Richard Stallman opens cans of worms, that pose a lot more qestions than answers. Personally, I care if non-free applitions run that I have not paid for. If it breaks, and you have to pay...its worse than blackmail, like the whole fiasco with GIF(tm) compression.
I cant believe what I read. Michael Swaine? I have been reading him for decades.
My algorythms paradidgm always starts with when in doubt, spawn, and let YOUR scheduler figure out wether its on your Core, your chip, FU, on your board or your network, or your local cluster/remote cluster...I remember reading Michael Swaine talk about budgeting and bargining processor units, to see which were faster, more efficent:
To whit: Both distrubuted web services, distCC image rendering and distrubuted database services, ALL can be set up on a "processing economy" to get a job divided, parelelled, and processed. Richard Feynman was able to do this with punched card jobs at Los Almos.
Its just with running with such gross schedulers as Windows has, no one is interested anymore in efficency, except as an academic excercise.
Mod parent +2 Informative.
"0 articles about mathematics, computer science, software, hardware, or any other topic with which I am significantly familiar"
See? Wadda I tell ya?!?
And YuGiOh chars! Dont forget those notable fiction chars!
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that summarizes research from reliable secondary sources." Absolutly *SSH*T wrong. The number of articles that need some reference to reality is staggering. If even 1% of the articles had citations from reliable sources, it would improve wikipedia by an order of magnitude.
Guidelines for inclusion are: "I wrote this." Thats all.
The hardware articles are fair, but software and theory are factually correct but for the most part, are WORSE than 'The Highlight Childrens Encyclopedia' I worked on one in peticular for a few weeks, and had some *ssh*t argue with the 'Reliability' and 'viewpoint' of Intel's documentation. Hmm... Screw them...
This is how you test wikipeida. Click on 'Random Article' until you find something you actually know something about...see how freaking bad most of the articles actually are.
Your girlfriend is named Russia? is she cute?
Mod Parent. +2 I used to work at a college. They had three networks. The campus network, the teachers, and the staff, the lab network, ( which was very insucure, and the Admin Network. ( Admissions/ Budget/grades ) ( Which I could not work on without direct supervision ).
Its interesting, that in the ensuing 14 years, the college has NEVER had ONE grade changing problem. The Admin network has NEVER been comprimised. ( even after a few surriptious attacks by me personally! ).
Another college in the district was comprimised, by Admissions office staff. Big scandal. But not the place I worked.
If I had 5 Mod points to put on anything I have read here in the last month, Id put them all on this:
"The fact is, war is the single most lucrative business for government to be in. If it wasn't for war, the US government would be half the size it is today, measured both in revenue and power over the people."
Brilliant. Simply Brilliant.
Your absolutly right. The Russians do not want a war, any more then we wanted a war with Iraq, but the GOVERNMENT went ahead, fabricated lies about WMDs and poof! Pissed away BILLIONS of dollars. You think Medelev woudnt do the same?
I did some research into the losses Russia sustained during WWII. 30 Million killed in the Siege on Stalingrad alone. I think that the figure of 67 million total dead is also conservative.
(btw, it is a good oberservation anyway, good point! )
A Neanderthal is a COMPLEX, i.e. very complex genetic structure. Best of luck even getting 98% of the genome right, vs 99.9999% needed for a vialble clone. ( for refrence a 99.9999% human, could carry every single gentic inherated disease, 100x over! ).
Is possible, yes, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to fly around the solar system, like walking to 7-11.