Well, i was thinking more in the line of Linux/Unix. With X-Terminal i mean that it kind of acts like a second screen where all the programs run on the big machine while getting displayed on the old one (X11-Server/Client)
Most of my old computers (have plenty of them) are running NetBSD at the moment, playing various servers (fileservers, printing, blinkenlights-server)...
As for running Win95: Download WinAMP! Ok, it may not be as small as that iPod-Thingy, but with a WLAN card and the right software you can *download* music nearly everywhere:-)
If it has got network, why not run it as X-Terminal (should work quite ok) or use it to run all that classic DOS games like elite, Doom and things like that.
I still use an old 486 Thinkpad (12.28 mflops/12 MB Ram/250MB HD:-) running DOS and Win3.11 with Calmira Desktop that looks like a *fast* Version of Win95. But mostly i use it to play Elite2in DOS, because that game runs faster on the old Laptop than on my 1.1GHz Desktop running dosemu.
And Elite2 even looks better on that old greyscale LCD - perhaphs because the poor response time makes the graphics very smooth looking.
I also have been running NetBSD with a 16Bit WLan card, but running something that complicated makes the Laptop rather slow - so i'll stick to my DOS games and the fastest M$ OS available - and i have still much space left on the drive for more of the game classics i own.
Given the current advances in Voice-Recognition and Text2Voice, why not program an Eliza-Bot to talk to sales scum on the phone? Maybe give it a heavy foreign accent to somewhat hide obvious problems with the voice recognition and A.I.?
An Eliza-like bot should do the trick - just responds to a bunch of key-phrases whenever the sales-guy stops talking and for the rest: the good old "Tell me more" should work just fine.
Just make sure the bot never responds with a definit "yes" or "no" but stays vague enough so "Mr. Sales" doesn't get his contract...
It would be fine to send the money packed up nicely (maybe a sphere), but use small coins - in order to make sure the winner spacecraft also has enough payload capacity to be commercially usefull.
Well, pulling off something a bit more usefull than sub-orbitals flights requires a much greater team of engineers and scientists.
I mean, sending probes - not even think of human beeings - is a problem much greater than a flight to "technically in space". Let's see: First, you need a global communication network that can talk to probes on Mars. Expensive, but feasable. You need a special propulsion and a special landing system. VERY expensive but still feaseable. Doing the science on Mars needs more money for instruments, ground-team and scientists. But getting the probe on it's trajectory needs a VERY accurate tracking system, a very experienced team and a bunch of top scientists. You could still get that for a vast amount of more money...but i doubt you would be doing the mission that much cheaper than NASA that leading science organisations would dump NASA's 40 year experience for flying with your yet un-proved, never-tested we-don't-need-quality-because-we-are-cheaper space agency.
Just my 2 cents...
...was technically first in achieving first privately funded spaceflights: As their government is more or less bankrupt, there already have been "space tourists".
If we now compare the money that tourists payed to the money that spaceflights had cost, we may come up with zero difference...
Remember the stories about that big bad software company (let's call it "SUCKS") lawsuiting the hell out of everybody for the last year or so?
Apple Music is in quite the same position: Nobody knows them, nobody buys their products, they haven't done any creative work for 3 decades, they may have to close down in the near future.
So they look out for the biggest possible cash-cow and sue them; hoping the out-of-court setlement will result in a buy-out of their company. Like SUCKS did with a big opponent (which we call hereby "Big-I").
Although i must say, that Apple Music actually seem to have some points to stand on (which we may call "proof") and they even really own the rights they claim.
...that they seemed to run only processor-native code. Even Linux-Quake: Linux IS ported to the Mac;-)
And the example of the XBox: Xbox is essentially a PC anyway.
This looks more like the technique the WINE project is using: Run a program on it's native hardware platform on another OS by making library- and systemcall-wrappers.
If that is indeed the case, "translating the code page-wise" can be translated to "re-linking dynamically loadable code page-wise".
The packeters deserve whatever they get, because frankly, I know how much of a pain in the ass it is to get DDoSed
But that does raise a question: Is Slashdot already in the grey zone of legality? Featuring a front page story often results in the site beeing referenced to going down. See Google and especially "Slashdotted: Surviving The Slashdot Effect" on a neat discussion of the problem.
This is great. Just as stupid as this forms you have to fill in on the plane when coming from europe and you're not an US citizen.
There are actual questions in the form of "Are you a terrorist?". Yeah, sure, if i were a terrorist i'd check the "Yes" box? And i would check in with my real name at the airport?
Dear security guys: How stupid do you think your average terrorist is?
..as i can't even make out distant objects like the the text in a newspaper without my glasses (because my nose is in the way when i try to bring the newspaper closer to the eyes).
I have about 11 dipoter (hope i hit the right translation there).
Glasses that strength always refract the colors at the sides, so although i can read text fairly well, i always have to turn my head so it's really in the center of my vision e.g. centered over the center of my glasses.
Also there is the problem of finding the glasses, if i put them not on the usual place before going to bed (like when coming home drunk or when sleeping in a hotel). Driving at night is problematic too, because my glasses refract light on the edges into colors, so when i pass a light i always get a colorfull show at the edges instead of the objects i need to see (i tried many glasses, but the law of optics aren't going to change any soon).
So far, that is my pre-lasik status. I'm currently lookign for a good clinic here in europe (preferably austria).
Only we came to this lousy planet (great oceans, though) the first time, did we realize that humans weren't that evolved after all.
So the the current plans are to make official contact around 2350.
But if you're in a real hurry to leave the planet - e.g. before your phone bill arrives - i may help you to get a ride in a Antarian freighter that does regular deliveries for our staff here.
We have wars against each other all over the place, a third of the earth population is starving, the rest is threatened by their governments and/or major companies to stop having free speech.
If you think of it, even ants and bees are better organised, therefore must also be more intelligent.
Be fair. The US is bombing everyone in range - most times without adequate reason.
Europeans are just trying to make world peace. As talking the your (mostly) braindead politicians doesn't seem to help, we do it by taking away the money you need to fund weapons.
Isn't that a noble goal? We mostly spend that money in undoing the economical devastation you did too those countries, anyway...
In an 1980 article about Bulletin Board systems (which are more or less "menu driven" by selecting from the few commands available, displayed at start-up), there was already the idea of swapping files - a way to do software updates: "We also are considering a function that would allow swapping complete programs."
As even some of the earliest implementations of XModem-capable programs showed you a list of downloadable files that you could select with your cursor keys and download by pressing a key - presumable "d" - you could speak of speak of "menu driven downloads". And as this was used by developers to share patches and updated programs it was certainly "menu driven updates over a network".
Given the above facts, they can put their patent where the sun doesn't shine - if there's still space left, that is.
aaxine is the aalib (Ascii-Art) version of xine. Although not THAT cool on 80x25, it makes quite an impression on a video beamer with 200x100 chars (run in an xterm, of course).
And there's of course my trusted and heavely customized vim and my beloved perl:-)
See it from the commercial side: You are running a software on behalf (and for the profit) of someone else. You therefore have the right to charge for your services.
THAT can hurt a spyware company...
I know, there are already some Anti-Spyware proxies out there, but.....why not write a proxy that mangles the data before sending it out, anyway - that is, it is sending nicely formated random junk.
For the usual stuff like doubleclick it could for example generate nice, useless cookies with random ID's. For all the install-stuff it could just screw up the content a bit.
This would give those bastards the traffic they asked for but without the option to put it to commercial use:-)
...i just usually start making fun of people using their cell phones in areas where it's not wanted.
So far, it worked best at the times i had a banana at hand. Most people get the idea pretty fast when you are demonstratively holding a banana to your ear and mouth, repeating sentences the guilty party says to his/her cell phone while showing off a really stupid face:-)
Actually, hacking a working and reliable backdoor is much harder than just deleting all files, because traversing directories and deleting files are standard functions in almost any programming language. Backdoors aren't.
Considering the age of the technology, it plays a vital part of our economy. It's probably much more important for mainframe customers to have live backups, disaster recovery plans, etc. compared to most computer users.
I think it's equally important to never move your office unless you own your own heavy load transport service and your own construction company or you won't be able to pay for it.
Some companies had their buildings constructed around their mainframes and/or supporting devices. I know a company that still has their old high-speed (and now defunct) industrial strength punch card puncher/reader combo in their office. The only ways to get that beast out of the building is either to break through a floor and multiple walls or to pay someone a months worth of cutting that solid steel beast into parts that would fit through the doors.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, i was thinking more in the line of Linux/Unix. With X-Terminal i mean that it kind of acts like a second screen where all the programs run on the big machine while getting displayed on the old one (X11-Server/Client)
:-)
Most of my old computers (have plenty of them) are running NetBSD at the moment, playing various servers (fileservers, printing, blinkenlights-server)...
As for running Win95: Download WinAMP! Ok, it may not be as small as that iPod-Thingy, but with a WLAN card and the right software you can *download* music nearly everywhere
If it has got network, why not run it as X-Terminal (should work quite ok) or use it to run all that classic DOS games like elite, Doom and things like that.
I still use an old 486 Thinkpad (12.28 mflops/12 MB Ram/250MB HD :-) running DOS and Win3.11 with Calmira Desktop that looks like a *fast* Version of Win95. But mostly i use it to play Elite2in DOS, because that game runs faster on the old Laptop than on my 1.1GHz Desktop running dosemu.
And Elite2 even looks better on that old greyscale LCD - perhaphs because the poor response time makes the graphics very smooth looking.
I also have been running NetBSD with a 16Bit WLan card, but running something that complicated makes the Laptop rather slow - so i'll stick to my DOS games and the fastest M$ OS available - and i have still much space left on the drive for more of the game classics i own.
Given the current advances in Voice-Recognition and Text2Voice, why not program an Eliza-Bot to talk to sales scum on the phone? Maybe give it a heavy foreign accent to somewhat hide obvious problems with the voice recognition and A.I.?
An Eliza-like bot should do the trick - just responds to a bunch of key-phrases whenever the sales-guy stops talking and for the rest: the good old "Tell me more" should work just fine.
Just make sure the bot never responds with a definit "yes" or "no" but stays vague enough so "Mr. Sales" doesn't get his contract...
It would be fine to send the money packed up nicely (maybe a sphere), but use small coins - in order to make sure the winner spacecraft also has enough payload capacity to be commercially usefull.
Well, pulling off something a bit more usefull than sub-orbitals flights requires a much greater team of engineers and scientists. I mean, sending probes - not even think of human beeings - is a problem much greater than a flight to "technically in space". Let's see: First, you need a global communication network that can talk to probes on Mars. Expensive, but feasable. You need a special propulsion and a special landing system. VERY expensive but still feaseable. Doing the science on Mars needs more money for instruments, ground-team and scientists. But getting the probe on it's trajectory needs a VERY accurate tracking system, a very experienced team and a bunch of top scientists. You could still get that for a vast amount of more money...but i doubt you would be doing the mission that much cheaper than NASA that leading science organisations would dump NASA's 40 year experience for flying with your yet un-proved, never-tested we-don't-need-quality-because-we-are-cheaper space agency. Just my 2 cents...
...was technically first in achieving first privately funded spaceflights: As their government is more or less bankrupt, there already have been "space tourists".
If we now compare the money that tourists payed to the money that spaceflights had cost, we may come up with zero difference...
Even if they have to release the information to the public, aren't they still the copyright-holders?
A "for-noncommercial-use-only" tag should do the trick, maybe with the option for a commercial license?
Remember the stories about that big bad software company (let's call it "SUCKS") lawsuiting the hell out of everybody for the last year or so? Apple Music is in quite the same position: Nobody knows them, nobody buys their products, they haven't done any creative work for 3 decades, they may have to close down in the near future. So they look out for the biggest possible cash-cow and sue them; hoping the out-of-court setlement will result in a buy-out of their company. Like SUCKS did with a big opponent (which we call hereby "Big-I"). Although i must say, that Apple Music actually seem to have some points to stand on (which we may call "proof") and they even really own the rights they claim.
What i did forget to mention: If they show me a Windows DOOM3 running on an Apple (at whatever framerate) THEN i start believing.
/. to post dot-com jokes on the frontpage.[1]
Anyway, isn't it a little late for
[1] No, SCO doesn't count. That would be called "tragedy".
...that they seemed to run only processor-native code. Even Linux-Quake: Linux IS ported to the Mac ;-)
And the example of the XBox: Xbox is essentially a PC anyway.
This looks more like the technique the WINE project is using: Run a program on it's native hardware platform on another OS by making library- and systemcall-wrappers.
If that is indeed the case, "translating the code page-wise" can be translated to "re-linking dynamically loadable code page-wise".
Just my 2 cents
The packeters deserve whatever they get, because frankly, I know how much of a pain in the ass it is to get DDoSed
But that does raise a question: Is Slashdot already in the grey zone of legality? Featuring a front page story often results in the site beeing referenced to going down. See Google and especially "Slashdotted: Surviving The Slashdot Effect" on a neat discussion of the problem.
This is great. Just as stupid as this forms you have to fill in on the plane when coming from europe and you're not an US citizen.
There are actual questions in the form of "Are you a terrorist?". Yeah, sure, if i were a terrorist i'd check the "Yes" box? And i would check in with my real name at the airport?
Dear security guys: How stupid do you think your average terrorist is?
...please warn us in BIG LETTERS on the FRON PAGE a few days ahead before taking the side down.
;-)
I spent ten terrifying minutes in the router configuration (again, sigh) until i noticed, that it WASN'T the router that was down (again, sigh^2).
Seeing slashdot down is as shocking as seeing M$ filing for bankruptcy - although not that quite funny
..as i can't even make out distant objects like the the text in a newspaper without my glasses (because my nose is in the way when i try to bring the newspaper closer to the eyes).
I have about 11 dipoter (hope i hit the right translation there).
Glasses that strength always refract the colors at the sides, so although i can read text fairly well, i always have to turn my head so it's really in the center of my vision e.g. centered over the center of my glasses.
Also there is the problem of finding the glasses, if i put them not on the usual place before going to bed (like when coming home drunk or when sleeping in a hotel). Driving at night is problematic too, because my glasses refract light on the edges into colors, so when i pass a light i always get a colorfull show at the edges instead of the objects i need to see (i tried many glasses, but the law of optics aren't going to change any soon).
So far, that is my pre-lasik status. I'm currently lookign for a good clinic here in europe (preferably austria).
Originally yes. But we changed that.
Only we came to this lousy planet (great oceans, though) the first time, did we realize that humans weren't that evolved after all.
So the the current plans are to make official contact around 2350.
But if you're in a real hurry to leave the planet - e.g. before your phone bill arrives - i may help you to get a ride in a Antarian freighter that does regular deliveries for our staff here.
So why do you call humans intelligent?
We have wars against each other all over the place, a third of the earth population is starving, the rest is threatened by their governments and/or major companies to stop having free speech.
If you think of it, even ants and bees are better organised, therefore must also be more intelligent.
Be fair. The US is bombing everyone in range - most times without adequate reason.
Europeans are just trying to make world peace. As talking the your (mostly) braindead politicians doesn't seem to help, we do it by taking away the money you need to fund weapons.
Isn't that a noble goal?
We mostly spend that money in undoing the economical devastation you did too those countries, anyway...
...here is it.
t ml
t .html
In an 1980 article about Bulletin Board systems (which are more or less "menu driven" by selecting from the few commands available, displayed at start-up), there was already the idea of swapping files - a way to do software updates: "We also are considering a function that would allow swapping complete programs."
Here's the full article:
http://www.portcommodore.com/commodore/bbs/cbbs.h
Here's even more information on early BBS and even the invention of the XModem-Protocol:
http://www.portcommodore.com/commodore/bbs/bbshis
As even some of the earliest implementations of XModem-capable programs showed you a list of downloadable files that you could select with your cursor keys and download by pressing a key - presumable "d" - you could speak of speak of "menu driven downloads". And as this was used by developers to share patches and updated programs it was certainly "menu driven updates over a network".
Given the above facts, they can put their patent where the sun doesn't shine - if there's still space left, that is.
aaxine is the aalib (Ascii-Art) version of xine. Although not THAT cool on 80x25, it makes quite an impression on a video beamer with 200x100 chars (run in an xterm, of course).
:-)
And there's of course my trusted and heavely customized vim and my beloved perl
See it from the commercial side: You are running a software on behalf (and for the profit) of someone else. You therefore have the right to charge for your services. THAT can hurt a spyware company...
I know, there are already some Anti-Spyware proxies out there, but... ..why not write a proxy that mangles the data before sending it out, anyway - that is, it is sending nicely formated random junk.
:-)
For the usual stuff like doubleclick it could for example generate nice, useless cookies with random ID's. For all the install-stuff it could just screw up the content a bit.
This would give those bastards the traffic they asked for but without the option to put it to commercial use
...i just usually start making fun of people using their cell phones in areas where it's not wanted.
:-)
So far, it worked best at the times i had a banana at hand. Most people get the idea pretty fast when you are demonstratively holding a banana to your ear and mouth, repeating sentences the guilty party says to his/her cell phone while showing off a really stupid face
Actually, hacking a working and reliable backdoor is much harder than just deleting all files, because traversing directories and deleting files are standard functions in almost any programming language. Backdoors aren't.
Considering the age of the technology, it plays a vital part of our economy. It's probably much more important for mainframe customers to have live backups, disaster recovery plans, etc. compared to most computer users.
I think it's equally important to never move your office unless you own your own heavy load transport service and your own construction company or you won't be able to pay for it.
Some companies had their buildings constructed around their mainframes and/or supporting devices. I know a company that still has their old high-speed (and now defunct) industrial strength punch card puncher/reader combo in their office. The only ways to get that beast out of the building is either to break through a floor and multiple walls or to pay someone a months worth of cutting that solid steel beast into parts that would fit through the doors.