Re:Not only does XP have the command prompt
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 2
I started using MS-DOS with version 3.3, where edlin was the only editor available. But it was so yucky I never learned to use it, preferring 'copy con filename' to create a file and 'copy con +filename' to append. I think I used the editor built into XTree for other stuff.
Then last year I wanted an automated way to reboot some NT machines into Linux, by changing NT's boot menu. This is a text file boot.ini which you edit. How can this be done automatically?
Well you can guess the answer: good old edlin is still included with NT to this day (though I expect it's a 32-bit rewrite rather than the DOS assembler version). So I dug out an IBM manual for MS-DOS 2.0 and worked out how to change the boot.ini file using the One True Editor. For extra perversity, I wasn't running it myself but rather writing a Perl script which uses the Expect module to telnet to an NT box, run edlin and then reboot it.
So I never needed to learn edlin for MS-DOS, but it still comes in handy for Windows systems two decades later...
Doesn't Windows XP still have the cmd.exe command prompt?
Re:Educated people don't need spelling checkers.
on
Mozilla Bug Week
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· Score: 1
I learned French at school (to a reasonably high level) and I didn't find its spelling to be a problem. It took about two minutes to learn that the -ent ending in prennent (for example) is not pronounced, and it hasn't been a problem since. You learn pronunciation by listening to native speakers, not by any other system and certainly not from reading. I didn't find the various unpronounced consonants to be a hindrance when learning or writing the language; in fact they were helpful because they show the *meaning* (often indicating similarities with English).
I've also learnt German and Italian and I have to say that the phonetic spelling you are keen on was not really a big deal. It didn't make much difference to the ease of learning to read, speak and write those languages.
Most days I read and write a lot more than I speak or listen. So there's no reason to think that pronunciation should be primary and everything else should follow from that. OTOH, if you were starting from scratch developing an alphabet for a previously not-written language then phonetic encoding is the simplest way to start.
I think I should make a counter-plug for lclint (which I haven't worked on, only used), a kind of lint-on-steroids that lets you annotate your program with various kinds of assertions and have them statically checked - those most common being 'this pointer may not be null'. I haven't tried BetterC but I'll have a look. I wonder how well lclint and BetterC interoperate.
In principle, the Open Source Definition is the same as the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which are the same as the criteria the FSF use, which are more or less the same as what everyone else uses to decide whether a program is 'free'. So in principle, free software == open source software.
However, the Open Source Initiative people have been a bit slack in approving some software licences as Open Source even when they contain pretty horrifying restrictions - like the original APSL which allowed Apple to revoke your rights to use the software at any time (if they didn't feel like fighting a patent lawsuit). So that's why some people feel that free software is a stricter definition than open source: because it gets interpreted by stricter people:-P.
Free software doesn't mean free beer, it means freedom to use, modify and redistribute. This is the same as the commonly accepted meaning of 'open source'.
I wasn't aware of that. Early 1998 was the first I heard of the phrase 'open source', and that's probably true for most people. There was a Slashdot poll to choose between the old description 'free software' and the re-branded version, which indicates that most people considered the two equivalent. (I voted for 'free software', but 'Open Source' won with about two thirds of the vote.)
Anyway, I think you'll find that when most people talk about something being 'released as open source' or 'qualifying as open source', they mean something that fits the Open Source Definition, and not just 'you can look at the source code'.
Sweden == bork bork bork
Switzerland == clock clock clock
Re:Transgaming patches are NOT closed source
on
"Lindows" Coming Soon?
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· Score: 1, Informative
They're not Open Source (because the definition of that is the same as the definition of free software). OTOH they are not completely without source code. You can get source code, it's just not fully open in what you can do with it. So I think that Closed Source is a reasonable name. YMMV:-).
I think there was a Simpsons episode where Homer hooks up cable TV and Lisa reminds him of the fifth commandment (thou shalt not steal) - completely missing the point that Homer's use of the TV does not deprive anyone else of it and so is difficult to describe as 'stealing'. I haven't seen this episode, so I could just be making it up.
What we need is an "anonymous" checkbox, and then an "I'm an idiot" checkbox.
IMHO the way to do this is to generalize the 'No Score +1 Bonus' checkbox. When submitting a comment there should be a drop-down list of initial scores.
ACs get the choice of 0 or -1.
Registered users can choose 1, 0 or -1.
Registered users with bonus can choose 2, 1, 0 or -1.
That would also solve the problem of having to be anonymous when posting something controversial or trolling (although myself I don't bother with that). If you are posting a blatant troll, but you just couldn't resist, then you could mark the score as 0 or -1 to start with. There would need to be some anti-whoring provision to stop people posting at -1 and picking up points from being modded up to a more sensible score.
It's not saying that ACs shouldn't be allowed to post. It's just a way of choosing not to read the AC posts if you don't want to. What's wrong with having that choice?
Last time I checked, Alan Cox didn't live in the US. And he has been vocal about not holding conferences in that country - because of what happened to the eBook fair use guy - so I imagine he's not intending to travel there either. Is he trying to establish a precedent that restrictive laws passed in one country apply worldwide?
The idea of data interspersed with TV broadcasts was done before. From 1981 to 1986 the BBC did 'telesoftware' where programs for the BBC Micro were transmitted on certain Teletext pages. (The teletext system uses the gap between frames (the flyback period) rather than bursts of static interrupting the picture and sound itself.)
I might pay for a hardcopy version (with some of the mailing list snippets and other stuff they quote included as well). Might pay, in some conceivable universe:-).
They should just install Slash and set up a site. Papers will be submitted as comments. Instead of anonymous peer review, we have moderation. The only trouble will be getting all that LaTeX past the lameness filter.
Why do all government projects seem to involve S/MIME and X.509? What's wrong with PGP and PGP certificates? They actually have some users and software support.
One successful project that wasn't mentioned is FreeDOS, a free reimplementation of DOS. Unlike the others it already has a huge amount of software written for it. Still beta though.
Slashdot Mirror
I started using MS-DOS with version 3.3, where edlin was the only editor available. But it was so yucky I never learned to use it, preferring 'copy con filename' to create a file and 'copy con +filename' to append. I think I used the editor built into XTree for other stuff.
Then last year I wanted an automated way to reboot some NT machines into Linux, by changing NT's boot menu. This is a text file boot.ini which you edit. How can this be done automatically?
Well you can guess the answer: good old edlin is still included with NT to this day (though I expect it's a 32-bit rewrite rather than the DOS assembler version). So I dug out an IBM manual for MS-DOS 2.0 and worked out how to change the boot.ini file using the One True Editor. For extra perversity, I wasn't running it myself but rather writing a Perl script which uses the Expect module to telnet to an NT box, run edlin and then reboot it.
So I never needed to learn edlin for MS-DOS, but it still comes in handy for Windows systems two decades later...
Doesn't Windows XP still have the cmd.exe command prompt?
I learned French at school (to a reasonably high level) and I didn't find its spelling to be a problem. It took about two minutes to learn that the -ent ending in prennent (for example) is not pronounced, and it hasn't been a problem since. You learn pronunciation by listening to native speakers, not by any other system and certainly not from reading. I didn't find the various unpronounced consonants to be a hindrance when learning or writing the language; in fact they were helpful because they show the *meaning* (often indicating similarities with English).
I've also learnt German and Italian and I have to say that the phonetic spelling you are keen on was not really a big deal. It didn't make much difference to the ease of learning to read, speak and write those languages.
Most days I read and write a lot more than I speak or listen. So there's no reason to think that pronunciation should be primary and everything else should follow from that. OTOH, if you were starting from scratch developing an alphabet for a previously not-written language then phonetic encoding is the simplest way to start.
I think I should make a counter-plug for lclint (which I haven't worked on, only used), a kind of lint-on-steroids that lets you annotate your program with various kinds of assertions and have them statically checked - those most common being 'this pointer may not be null'. I haven't tried BetterC but I'll have a look. I wonder how well lclint and BetterC interoperate.
In principle, the Open Source Definition is the same as the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which are the same as the criteria the FSF use, which are more or less the same as what everyone else uses to decide whether a program is 'free'. So in principle, free software == open source software.
:-P.
However, the Open Source Initiative people have been a bit slack in approving some software licences as Open Source even when they contain pretty horrifying restrictions - like the original APSL which allowed Apple to revoke your rights to use the software at any time (if they didn't feel like fighting a patent lawsuit). So that's why some people feel that free software is a stricter definition than open source: because it gets interpreted by stricter people
Free software doesn't mean free beer, it means freedom to use, modify and redistribute. This is the same as the commonly accepted meaning of 'open source'.
I wasn't aware of that. Early 1998 was the first I heard of the phrase 'open source', and that's probably true for most people. There was a Slashdot poll to choose between the old description 'free software' and the re-branded version, which indicates that most people considered the two equivalent. (I voted for 'free software', but 'Open Source' won with about two thirds of the vote.)
Anyway, I think you'll find that when most people talk about something being 'released as open source' or 'qualifying as open source', they mean something that fits the Open Source Definition, and not just 'you can look at the source code'.
Check the Open Source Definition. (And yes, it does define Open Source: the definition came first, then the marketing buzzword.)
Sweden == bork bork bork
Switzerland == clock clock clock
They're not Open Source (because the definition of that is the same as the definition of free software). OTOH they are not completely without source code. You can get source code, it's just not fully open in what you can do with it. So I think that Closed Source is a reasonable name. YMMV :-).
I think there was a Simpsons episode where Homer hooks up cable TV and Lisa reminds him of the fifth commandment (thou shalt not steal) - completely missing the point that Homer's use of the TV does not deprive anyone else of it and so is difficult to describe as 'stealing'. I haven't seen this episode, so I could just be making it up.
IMHO the way to do this is to generalize the 'No Score +1 Bonus' checkbox. When submitting a comment there should be a drop-down list of initial scores.
ACs get the choice of 0 or -1.
Registered users can choose 1, 0 or -1.
Registered users with bonus can choose 2, 1, 0 or -1.
That would also solve the problem of having to be anonymous when posting something controversial or trolling (although myself I don't bother with that). If you are posting a blatant troll, but you just couldn't resist, then you could mark the score as 0 or -1 to start with. There would need to be some anti-whoring provision to stop people posting at -1 and picking up points from being modded up to a more sensible score.
It's not saying that ACs shouldn't be allowed to post. It's just a way of choosing not to read the AC posts if you don't want to. What's wrong with having that choice?
Last time I checked, Alan Cox didn't live in the US. And he has been vocal about not holding conferences in that country - because of what happened to the eBook fair use guy - so I imagine he's not intending to travel there either. Is he trying to establish a precedent that restrictive laws passed in one country apply worldwide?
With hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to choose a company name only two letters away from Edsel.
(Or Etzel which is German for Edsel... == Attila, BTW.)
D'oh!
The idea of data interspersed with TV broadcasts was done before. From 1981 to 1986 the BBC did 'telesoftware' where programs for the BBC Micro were transmitted on certain Teletext pages. (The teletext system uses the gap between frames (the flyback period) rather than bursts of static interrupting the picture and sound itself.)
From the changelog: 'Removed all Gemini hooks from MySQL.' What is going on here?
Do we have any colourful drawings or animations of trolls enjoying a trollfest?
I might pay for a hardcopy version (with some of the mailing list snippets and other stuff they quote included as well). Might pay, in some conceivable universe :-).
You say gcc 2.95.3 is needed for kernel 2.4.10 - do you mean that exact version, or will 3.0.x work?
They should just install Slash and set up a site. Papers will be submitted as comments. Instead of anonymous peer review, we have moderation. The only trouble will be getting all that LaTeX past the lameness filter.
Where's sengan when you need him?
Why do all government projects seem to involve S/MIME and X.509? What's wrong with PGP and PGP certificates? They actually have some users and software support.
One successful project that wasn't mentioned is FreeDOS, a free reimplementation of DOS. Unlike the others it already has a huge amount of software written for it. Still beta though.