For those of you who don't know Intercal, it is a Turing-complete programming language deliberately designed to be unlike any other programming language in any form.
When I'm on a vacation, I deliberately leave behind cell phones, pagers, or any communication devices, including radios and televisions.
My ideal is to spend a couple of weeks every year somewhere in the mountains in a little campsite where you don't know or even care if armegeddon has occured. As long as the fishing is great and you can see the stars at night, everything is OK. Doing this allows you to get a stronger perspective about what is really important in life, and try to actually live.
BTW, some of my former supervisors tended to get rather upset when something breaks and they couldn't seem to get ahold of me. The truth is if it is broke, it doesn't really matter if it gets fixed now or later, and if I get fired, so what! There are other employers as well, so just don't plan on me helping out when I'm on vacation. When I get back I'll put the effort and time in to fixing the problems. Otherwise leave me alone.
An interesting e-mail came my way I'd like to post with this is as follows. Somewhat related to this topic, and although I don't totally agree with it, it does give you something to think about. It it attributed to George Carlin but I'm really not sure who wrote it:
The Paradox of our Time by George Carlin
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgement; more experts, yet more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the times of world "peace" but constant conflict, more leisure but less enjoyment, more kinds of food but less nutrition.
These are days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill.
It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom, a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
I remember a few years back that somebody had successfully patented the concept of an integrated circuit (IE using silicon to make semi-conductor circuits). This was something like the LZW thing, but in this case the guy was just somebody who had apparently done some electronics research in the 50's and 60's and somehow got the patent in.
What he wanted to so was sue all manufacturers of electronic equipment that used integrated circuit technology (just about everybody) and charge a royalty on the technology.
I'm kinda curious about what happened to this lawsuit. If my memory serves me correctly, a number of people said that his patent was invalid because it didn't cover the details of manufacturing an IC sufficiently to actually make them. That and he was suing people who could afford to tie him up with lawyers for years just to shut him up.
From what I understand, IBM has a compeating claim to the Unisys patent, and there are a couple of other people who also claim patents to the LZW compression algorithm. It is just a nasty minefield, and even paying off Unisys won't help to hold off other potential lawsuits.
And for the folks concerned about this only affecting people in the United States, these patents are protected under the Berne convention and can be prosecuted in Europe as well.
It sounds like they are about as far along as the folks at Trumpet doing with PetrOS, and is 100% open source and GPL. ReactOS is also borrowing quite a bit from WINE, but trying to make a full operating system rather than just a LINUX shell.
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For those of you who don't know Intercal, it is a Turing-complete programming language deliberately designed to be unlike any other programming language in any form.
Check The Intercal Resources Page for more information.
What possibly possessed you to ever come up with this programming language (Intercal)?
Are you still doing anything with the language and what kind of support for it is happening with Linux?
I would have to agree.
When I'm on a vacation, I deliberately leave behind cell phones, pagers, or any communication devices, including radios and televisions.
My ideal is to spend a couple of weeks every year somewhere in the mountains in a little campsite where you don't know or even care if armegeddon has occured. As long as the fishing is great and you can see the stars at night, everything is OK. Doing this allows you to get a stronger perspective about what is really important in life, and try to actually live.
BTW, some of my former supervisors tended to get rather upset when something breaks and they couldn't seem to get ahold of me. The truth is if it is broke, it doesn't really matter if it gets fixed now or later, and if I get fired, so what! There are other employers as well, so just don't plan on me helping out when I'm on vacation. When I get back I'll put the effort and time in to fixing the problems. Otherwise leave me alone.
An interesting e-mail came my way I'd like to post with this is as follows. Somewhat related to this topic, and although I don't totally agree with it, it does give you something to think about. It it attributed to George Carlin but I'm really not sure who wrote it:
The Paradox of our Time
by George Carlin
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgement; more experts, yet more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the times of world "peace" but constant conflict, more leisure but less enjoyment, more kinds of food but less nutrition.
These are days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill.
It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom, a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
I remember a few years back that somebody had successfully patented the concept of an integrated circuit (IE using silicon to make semi-conductor circuits). This was something like the LZW thing, but in this case the guy was just somebody who had apparently done some electronics research in the 50's and 60's and somehow got the patent in.
What he wanted to so was sue all manufacturers of electronic equipment that used integrated circuit technology (just about everybody) and charge a royalty on the technology.
I'm kinda curious about what happened to this lawsuit. If my memory serves me correctly, a number of people said that his patent was invalid because it didn't cover the details of manufacturing an IC sufficiently to actually make them. That and he was suing people who could afford to tie him up with lawyers for years just to shut him up.
From what I understand, IBM has a compeating claim to the Unisys patent, and there are a couple of other people who also claim patents to the LZW compression algorithm. It is just a nasty minefield, and even paying off Unisys won't help to hold off other potential lawsuits.
And for the folks concerned about this only affecting people in the United States, these patents are protected under the Berne convention and can be prosecuted in Europe as well.
If you are looking for a good start on an NT Clone which is open source, look at ReactOS:
www.reactos.com
It sounds like they are about as far along as the folks at Trumpet doing with PetrOS, and is 100% open source and GPL. ReactOS is also borrowing quite a bit from WINE, but trying to make a full operating system rather than just a LINUX shell.