Yes, but can you actually use Linux if your computer only has 640 kB of RAM installed? To run useful programs, you'd probably need around 500 kB free, so can the Linux kernel fit itself into less than 140 kB of RAM (as DOS's does)?
Opera fits on a floppy, at least zipped. If you play around with its settings (no disk cache, no optional anything, etc.), you might be able to get a semi-old (one or two years old) version to work from a floppy.
Here's the newest zipfile (about 100kb bigger than v3.5, but still fairly small):
Sure, people dislike crashes, but they're willing to put up with them compared to the alternatives. Most non-tech-savvy people I know would rather be mildly annoyed and waste a minute rebooting than spending a few hours (possibly over several weeks) trying to get a Linux box working properly, and learning a new environment.
If you offered them a version of Win98 that didn't crash, I'm sure they'd take it. What they don't want is an OS that doesn't crash but with the caveat that everything is harder to set up, and even the things that aren't harder are still different, so they have to relearn how to do things that in windows they already knew how to do.
Is this really possible? Everything I've seen on the subject suggests 1 MB as an absolute bare minimum needed to get Linux running. If it can run on 640KB, how much of that does the kernel take?
The only OS I've used that's efficient and tightly written enough to be able to boot and run useful apps, all in 640KB, is DOS. CP/M probably could too.
Yeah, I've been following that story for a while, and submitted it to/. a week or so ago. Apparently, despite its repeated protestations that/. is not a Linux-only site, "Bill Gates makes fun of Linux" is somehow more nerd-news-worthy than spamming through amateur radio satellites. I also haven't seen anything here about the recent FCC rule changes making it a crime to scan cell-phone frequencies (instead of making cell phone manufacturers implement secure communications).
I don't see this as a big deal. Searches which return 100,000 or more results are pretty much unordered anyway - the top 1,000 or so matches are virtually random, and partially determined by how well the pages try to cheat altavista's bots by stuffing their page with keywords. There's already really no correlation between usefulness or topicality of the page and your search for such vague searches, so I don't see selling the top spot as being any worse than giving it to whoever stuffs their page with the most keywords.
1) AFAIK, slashdot gets no money from people clicking on the links. They do get a (small) percentage of any books sold as a result of the link, but if you click on the link and buy nothing, slashdot gets no money.
2) I think the fact that "slashdot" is in the URL of the link to Amazon should be enough of a disclaimer.
I wouldn't call it promoting the book. Slashdot posts links to amazon to buy the book whether it was a positive or negative review. There was a link to buy Bill Gates's book from amazon.com when Jon Katz reviewed it, and I somehow doubt, after reading his scathing review, that he was trying to promote the book.
and while he's at it, he should fix his Apple logo. For some odd reason, rather than using the over-20-year-old striped Apple logo, which is still the official logo, he's using that ugly translucent blue thing from the G3 cases. It's not even the "new" corporate logo, just the logo on the G3 cases, so it should be linked to "G3," not to "Apple." the "Apple" link should still use the striped logo, which looks cooler anyway.
Running an Alpha has nothing to do with it. x86 CPUs can have 64-bit integral types just as well as Alpha CPUs can. After all, the original 32-bit time_t ran on 16-bit CPUs (and even some 8-bit ones). So, theoretically, there could be Alphas with a 32-bit time_t (with old libraries) or 486s with a 64-bit time_t (with new libraries).
FWIW that's the pledge of allegiance, not the national anthem. Either way, I agree with your point. The founding fathers of the country saw no reason to put "under God" in the anthem, so I don't see why some later people second-guessed them and decided to add the phrase in. BTW does anybody know exactly when the words "under God" were added to the pledge? Is it yet another stupid thing we have to thank Mr. McCarthy (the 1950s Red Scare one, not the anti-vietnam-war one) for?
Well, I happen to like both their new and old stuff. Their old stuff is a lot faster and heavier, but the late-80s and early-90s stuff is good. I agree their really new stuff (post-1994 when Brett Gurewitz left) isn't that great, but No Control, Against the Grain, and Generator are great albums.
This has everything to do with religious fundamentalism. From the beginning, the parents of the victims tried to paint it as a work of evil godless atheists trying to destroy Christianity by shooting at a prayer meeting. Then they found out the shooter was Christian. I guess that sort of ruined things, so they're looking for a different scapegoat. Instead of the evil atheists, it's now the evil game, movie, and porn industries.
In case you have any doubts as to their motives, take a look at a quote from this article:
Neither attorney was available for comment prior to going to press, though the Adrenaline Vault learned one of them has a history of being associated with cases supported by conservative Christian organizations.
Neither attorney was available for comment prior to going to press, though the Adrenaline Vault learned one of them has a history of being associated with cases supported by conservative Christian organizations.
Why am I not surprised? They should go back to church and stop trying to tell me what games I can play, what movies I should watch, and what music I should listen to.
"Please give a 10, 25, or 50 dollar tax-deductible donation, and I assure you, your modest pledge will be used to censor TV and radio, ban questionable books, and contribute to many other Godly services. No longer will young Christian Americans hedonistically indulge in masochistic submission to rhythmic music, for with your monetary support, there is no end to what we can achieve in this country!" -Bad Religion, "The Voice of God is Government", 1982.
The following is an incomplete list of the negligent people responsible for this tragedy, who should promptly be sued:
ID Software, for making violent games Intel and/or AMD, for providing the processor to play aforementioned games on Any other hardware manufacturers whose product was used in the playing of said violent game the store from which the game was purchased The school district The school administrators The kid's parents The gun manufacturer the bullet manufacturer the store from which the gun was purchased the distributor of the firearms all movie theaters responsible for violent movie production all the actors the movie theaters the television stations which advertise the movies the newspapers which advertise the movies the porn sites the US Government for creating the internet on which the porn sites are located CERN laboratories for creating the www
The scary thing is that they actually have sued a large number of the above listed entities.
Sure, today's compilers are fairly good, but they still aren't that close to the level of assembler hand-coded by a talented programmer. Can you write an 150-byte full-featured Tetris game in C? Didn't think so.
It would appear that banning a standing army was the intent of that article, but we all know that politicians care little for the principles contained in the constitution. Reagan and his predecessors probably used some sleazy loophole to do it, most likely by claiming that they were only appropriating the money two years at a time - they just happened to be doing it every two years.
I believe Bruce's paper advocated having around ten spokespeople for the Free Software community. Currently, OSI seems to have several board members, but only one spokesman. The rest of the Free Software spokespeople (Perens, Stallman, etc.) are not connected with OSI, and there aren't a whole lot of them either.
"If you ever again behave like that kind of disruptive asshole in public, insult me, and jeopardize the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally -- and I will find a way to make you regret it," wrote Raymond. "Watch your step."
Is that the type of tactful person we want trying to market Free Software/Open Source for us? Not only is he implicitly comdemning public debate, which is bad enough, but the method by which he does it is not very tactful.
Parodies are indeed protected, but only to a point. Using a parody of a trademarked advertising slogan as your own advertising slogan may be a bit too far. I suppose that's for the courts to decide.
Giving credit to Reagan-era policies for the collapse of the Soviet Union is debatable. Historians disagree over whether the United States military buildup was too much for the Soviet economy (as conservatives claim), or whether increasing openness, especially with Mr. Gorbechov (sp?), opened up chinks in the Soviet totalitarian system, and was the cause of its downfall (as liberals claim).
Either way, one might also consider whether the fall of the Soviet Union is even a good thing. Then, there was a big country with nuclear missles pointed at us. Now, there are lots of nuclear missles being sold off to random people we don't know anything about. Is having a nuclear missile in the hands of terrorists supposed to be better than having the USSR pointing it at us?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but can you actually use Linux if your computer only has 640 kB of RAM installed? To run useful programs, you'd probably need around 500 kB free, so can the Linux kernel fit itself into less than 140 kB of RAM (as DOS's does)?
Opera fits on a floppy, at least zipped. If you play around with its settings (no disk cache, no optional anything, etc.), you might be able to get a semi-old (one or two years old) version to work from a floppy.
Here's the newest zipfile (about 100kb bigger than v3.5, but still fairly small):
O360E32 EXE 1,307,250 04-02-99 12:13a
Compare *that* to IE or Netscape.
Sure, people dislike crashes, but they're willing to put up with them compared to the alternatives. Most non-tech-savvy people I know would rather be mildly annoyed and waste a minute rebooting than spending a few hours (possibly over several weeks) trying to get a Linux box working properly, and learning a new environment.
If you offered them a version of Win98 that didn't crash, I'm sure they'd take it. What they don't want is an OS that doesn't crash but with the caveat that everything is harder to set up, and even the things that aren't harder are still different, so they have to relearn how to do things that in windows they already knew how to do.
Is this really possible? Everything I've seen on the subject suggests 1 MB as an absolute bare minimum needed to get Linux running. If it can run on 640KB, how much of that does the kernel take?
The only OS I've used that's efficient and tightly written enough to be able to boot and run useful apps, all in 640KB, is DOS. CP/M probably could too.
Yeah, I've been following that story for a while, and submitted it to /. a week or so ago. Apparently, despite its repeated protestations that /. is not a Linux-only site, "Bill Gates makes fun of Linux" is somehow more nerd-news-worthy than spamming through amateur radio satellites. I also haven't seen anything here about the recent FCC rule changes making it a crime to scan cell-phone frequencies (instead of making cell phone manufacturers implement secure communications).
Well, you'd probably be the only person not watching the movie, but a one-person boycott is better than no boycott isn't it?
I don't see this as a big deal. Searches which return 100,000 or more results are pretty much unordered anyway - the top 1,000 or so matches are virtually random, and partially determined by how well the pages try to cheat altavista's bots by stuffing their page with keywords. There's already really no correlation between usefulness or topicality of the page and your search for such vague searches, so I don't see selling the top spot as being any worse than giving it to whoever stuffs their page with the most keywords.
1) AFAIK, slashdot gets no money from people clicking on the links. They do get a (small) percentage of any books sold as a result of the link, but if you click on the link and buy nothing, slashdot gets no money.
2) I think the fact that "slashdot" is in the URL of the link to Amazon should be enough of a disclaimer.
I wouldn't call it promoting the book. Slashdot posts links to amazon to buy the book whether it was a positive or negative review. There was a link to buy Bill Gates's book from amazon.com when Jon Katz reviewed it, and I somehow doubt, after reading his scathing review, that he was trying to promote the book.
and while he's at it, he should fix his Apple logo. For some odd reason, rather than using the over-20-year-old striped Apple logo, which is still the official logo, he's using that ugly translucent blue thing from the G3 cases. It's not even the "new" corporate logo, just the logo on the G3 cases, so it should be linked to "G3," not to "Apple." the "Apple" link should still use the striped logo, which looks cooler anyway.
Fine, go right on ahead calling yourself "gay" and expect everybody else to know that you mean happy.
Running an Alpha has nothing to do with it. x86 CPUs can have 64-bit integral types just as well as Alpha CPUs can. After all, the original 32-bit time_t ran on 16-bit CPUs (and even some 8-bit ones). So, theoretically, there could be Alphas with a 32-bit time_t (with old libraries) or 486s with a 64-bit time_t (with new libraries).
FWIW that's the pledge of allegiance, not the national anthem. Either way, I agree with your point. The founding fathers of the country saw no reason to put "under God" in the anthem, so I don't see why some later people second-guessed them and decided to add the phrase in. BTW does anybody know exactly when the words "under God" were added to the pledge? Is it yet another stupid thing we have to thank Mr. McCarthy (the 1950s Red Scare one, not the anti-vietnam-war one) for?
Well, I happen to like both their new and old stuff. Their old stuff is a lot faster and heavier, but the late-80s and early-90s stuff is good. I agree their really new stuff (post-1994 when Brett Gurewitz left) isn't that great, but No Control, Against the Grain, and Generator are great albums.
Quite bizarre.
This has everything to do with religious fundamentalism. From the beginning, the parents of the victims tried to paint it as a work of evil godless atheists trying to destroy Christianity by shooting at a prayer meeting. Then they found out the shooter was Christian. I guess that sort of ruined things, so they're looking for a different scapegoat. Instead of the evil atheists, it's now the evil game, movie, and porn industries.
In case you have any doubts as to their motives, take a look at a quote from this article:
Neither attorney was available for comment prior to going to press, though the Adrenaline Vault learned one of them has a history of being associated with cases supported by conservative Christian organizations.
Neither attorney was available for comment prior to going to press, though the Adrenaline Vault learned one of them has a history of being associated with cases supported by conservative Christian organizations.
Why am I not surprised? They should go back to church and stop trying to tell me what games I can play, what movies I should watch, and what music I should listen to.
"Please give a 10, 25, or 50 dollar tax-deductible donation, and I assure you, your modest pledge will be used to censor TV and radio, ban questionable books, and contribute to many other Godly services. No longer will young Christian Americans hedonistically indulge in masochistic submission to rhythmic music, for with your monetary support, there is no end to what we can achieve in this country!" -Bad Religion, "The Voice of God is Government", 1982.
The following is an incomplete list of the negligent people responsible for this tragedy, who should promptly be sued:
ID Software, for making violent games
Intel and/or AMD, for providing the processor to play aforementioned games on
Any other hardware manufacturers whose product was used in the playing of said violent game
the store from which the game was purchased
The school district
The school administrators
The kid's parents
The gun manufacturer
the bullet manufacturer
the store from which the gun was purchased
the distributor of the firearms
all movie theaters responsible for violent movie production
all the actors
the movie theaters
the television stations which advertise the movies
the newspapers which advertise the movies
the porn sites
the US Government for creating the internet on which the porn sites are located
CERN laboratories for creating the www
The scary thing is that they actually have sued a large number of the above listed entities.
Yeah, because they can trademark "Mortal Kombat" much more easily than the common english phrase "mortal combat."
Sure, today's compilers are fairly good, but they still aren't that close to the level of assembler hand-coded by a talented programmer. Can you write an 150-byte full-featured Tetris game in C? Didn't think so.
It would appear that banning a standing army was the intent of that article, but we all know that politicians care little for the principles contained in the constitution. Reagan and his predecessors probably used some sleazy loophole to do it, most likely by claiming that they were only appropriating the money two years at a time - they just happened to be doing it every two years.
I believe Bruce's paper advocated having around ten spokespeople for the Free Software community. Currently, OSI seems to have several board members, but only one spokesman. The rest of the Free Software spokespeople (Perens, Stallman, etc.) are not connected with OSI, and there aren't a whole lot of them either.
"If you ever again behave like that kind of disruptive asshole in public, insult me, and jeopardize the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally -- and I will find a way to make you regret it," wrote Raymond. "Watch your step."
Is that the type of tactful person we want trying to market Free Software/Open Source for us? Not only is he implicitly comdemning public debate, which is bad enough, but the method by which he does it is not very tactful.
I think I've had enough of ESR.
Parodies are indeed protected, but only to a point. Using a parody of a trademarked advertising slogan as your own advertising slogan may be a bit too far. I suppose that's for the courts to decide.
Giving credit to Reagan-era policies for the collapse of the Soviet Union is debatable. Historians disagree over whether the United States military buildup was too much for the Soviet economy (as conservatives claim), or whether increasing openness, especially with Mr. Gorbechov (sp?), opened up chinks in the Soviet totalitarian system, and was the cause of its downfall (as liberals claim).
Either way, one might also consider whether the fall of the Soviet Union is even a good thing. Then, there was a big country with nuclear missles pointed at us. Now, there are lots of nuclear missles being sold off to random people we don't know anything about. Is having a nuclear missile in the hands of terrorists supposed to be better than having the USSR pointing it at us?