A strong number of the early BBSers (people who dialed up 'online services' before the dialup Internet existed) were rural folks. Farmers are/were small businessmen, and early adopters of the personal computer.
No, the ideal solution would be for your password to be tattoed in folds of the IT dude's face in such a way that you have to smack him one to read it.
Further, he'd have to be kept locked away in a cage to prevent outsiders from decking him themselves and reading it.
Anyhow, shouldn't the IT monkey be keeping the paper supply fresh at the Ljet on fourth floor? What's the data janitor doing messing around with passwords in the first place?
It's called progress. I'm not sure that more computers are really progress, but since I'm not an educator, I don't really get to decide -- that's up to the schools.
A lot of things get called 'progress.' Various people in the USSR called it 'progress' for millions of people in the Ukraine to starve to death.
'Progress' is one of those words where when somebody overuses it, it's time to look at them closely.
If geeks start running Solaris in larger numbers, geeks will start porting the drivers for 'shiney plastic shit bought in computer superstores' to Solaris. That's really what you're getting at, correct?
I don't know if it still happens, because I haven't run Linux with NFS for awhile. (NetBSD is where I reside now). With Linux, if your NFS Server goes down, it can cause the Clients with mounts to just fall over completely.
1. Mount an NFS share on your 'workstation' from your NFS Server.
2. Shut down the Server.
3. Try to access the mounted share on your 'workstation.'
Horrible unrecoverable lockups used to occur. They may still occur.
Anybody else have comments?
(the first time I installed NetBSD was on a laptop that had no CDROM. I used a Slackware box with an NFS share to install it on said laptop with a PCMCIA ethernet card. This was in aprox. 1996)
What else was there for x86 that was competition for Windows in terms of ease of use?
In the early days, there was the GEM Desktop. In the middle years, OS/2 was superior, and in many regards EASIER to use (for some definitions of the term 'use') than Windows. And there have been other good contenders like BeOS (which mainly lacked 'developer mindshare' and third party apps at it's peak).
If people would stop writing Windows code that depeneded upon undefined behaviour, then things would be a heck of a lot better!
While you and I might agree that MS should stop developing Microsoft Office (which depends on undefined behavior, i.e. undocumented system calls) there are people dependent on Word and Excel for their daily work who would disagree.
I was leery about installing the 'validate and verify' update at Windows Update, since I'm a holdout on Windows 2000 and won't ever update to a newer version that requires 'validation' to be considered legit.
But I did and so far nothing bad has happened.
I have a handy ghost image on hand if trouble does kick in. And the W2K machine isn't that important a machine here anymore in any case.
One of the ways of knowing we still have a healthy amount of press freedom in the U.S. is that both right wing and left wing nutcases (i.e. the frothers at Democratic Underground and Lucianne.com) think the mainstream media is a 'tool' of the other side.
Excuse me, but how does a decision to change suppliers of future purchases make currently owned equipment "of no use?"
Well, the previous purchase was of a proprietary brand of Laptop that won't run the OS that the new Laptops run. The school district just wanted to back out of the corner they found themselves boxed in with the Apple hardware.
If they were instead upgrading from Dell Pentium II laptops to new IBM thinkpads they probably wouldn't have pitched them out the way they did.
The Doom deathmatch took nearly all gaming enthusiasts away from the Mac platform, and "PC gaming" has pretty much meant "Windows PC gaming" ever since.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Doom was never a Windows program. In those days, we all ran DOS games. Windows was just around to suck resources in those days. As far as I can remember it NEVER was advantageous to run it under Windows.
The following Internet Threat Level meters are at level 2/4 because of Windows Plug and Play vulnerability's several exploit codes too: Symantec ThreatCon as a part of global DeepSight Threat Management System saying Increased alertness and Internet Security Systems X-Force with Increased vigilance at AlertCon.
That's sure a big block of horrendous writing there.
Sun Microsystems designs and sells the hardware as well as the OS. Just like Apple. And they have for a number of years given away their OS (Solaris) for free, not only on their 'chosen' hardware, but a version that runs on any old PC Clone hardware (or, most of it, anyways).
Of course, Sun's hardware makes Apple's product line look like plastic-cased screwdriver shop junk, and there are a LOT ways to compare OS X to Solaris that makes Apple's software look like a shiney plastic toy by comparison.
To address your last point: After market support is most expensive when a company tries to support ill-designed piece-of-shit software.
Well, since you're holding a triple-level conversation thread with yourself, I'll respond here that I was challanging his requirement that it be a non-electric typewriter.
I could have also challanged the idea that it has to be new (wtf?? there are GREAT manual typewriters readily available at low cost- why buy some new plastic POS for full price???)
Carry on with your three level discussion threads with yourself, now...
At a sucky temp job I had this spring, I took to using the lower case L instead of the 1 key part of the time while entering data. I mean, they had us spending half the day typing the data into Fricking Excel, instead of doing real testing.
It was a nice diversion to throw a little bit of an 'old school' wrench into that particular works.
I got a nice IBM Selectric at auction for $3 last month. Unless you're using it where there is no electricity (I got a hand-cranked portable gramaphone today at auction, BTW) you just turn it off when you step away and turn it back on.
The beauty of writing on a typewriter for those who've never done it, is the indelible immediacy of it. Writing on any kind of a word processor means any power outage can wipe it out, and that you can cursor all the heck over the place and spend a lot more time futzing around. Writing directly to paper means there's a permanent durable revision history. And it's refreshing to be able to just walk up to the typewriter table and type some more on the page. No distractions of a computer/internet terminal, etc.
Back in the mid 80's I ran an old CP/M machine as my main computer. It was a Xerox 820 clone. I used a bare keyboard that had no case (it was what I had that worked) and the monitor was a little 5" monochrome monitor with no case.
A friend of mine immediately commented when first seeing it that it was the computer from Brazil.
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.but when MS didn't give us what we wanted, we switched to Linux and Mac OS X.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire? No thanks!
A strong number of the early BBSers (people who dialed up 'online services' before the dialup Internet existed) were rural folks. Farmers are/were small businessmen, and early adopters of the personal computer.
No, the ideal solution would be for your password to be tattoed in folds of the IT dude's face in such a way that you have to smack him one to read it.
Further, he'd have to be kept locked away in a cage to prevent outsiders from decking him themselves and reading it.
Anyhow, shouldn't the IT monkey be keeping the paper supply fresh at the Ljet on fourth floor? What's the data janitor doing messing around with passwords in the first place?
You wonder why you bother what?
You wonder why you bother digging through their desk drawers??
It's called progress. I'm not sure that more computers are really progress, but since I'm not an educator, I don't really get to decide -- that's up to the schools.
A lot of things get called 'progress.' Various people in the USSR called it 'progress' for millions of people in the Ukraine to starve to death.
'Progress' is one of those words where when somebody overuses it, it's time to look at them closely.
How do you underclock it to 199MHz?
You have a little drawer full of 199MHz crystals, or does your crystal oscillator have a knob on it?
The 'old school' sorts call that being a sellout.
Feel free to worship 'success' if it suits you.
If geeks start running Solaris in larger numbers, geeks will start porting the drivers for 'shiney plastic shit bought in computer superstores' to Solaris. That's really what you're getting at, correct?
I don't know if it still happens, because I haven't run Linux with NFS for awhile. (NetBSD is where I reside now). With Linux, if your NFS Server goes down, it can cause the Clients with mounts to just fall over completely.
1. Mount an NFS share on your 'workstation' from your NFS Server.
2. Shut down the Server.
3. Try to access the mounted share on your 'workstation.'
Horrible unrecoverable lockups used to occur. They may still occur.
Anybody else have comments?
(the first time I installed NetBSD was on a laptop that had no CDROM. I used a Slackware box with an NFS share to install it on said laptop with a PCMCIA ethernet card. This was in aprox. 1996)
What else was there for x86 that was competition for Windows in terms of ease of use?
In the early days, there was the GEM Desktop. In the middle years, OS/2 was superior, and in many regards EASIER to use (for some definitions of the term 'use') than Windows. And there have been other good contenders like BeOS (which mainly lacked 'developer mindshare' and third party apps at it's peak).
In sufficient numbers it might even sink in to the ever-dense and deluded Steve Jobs.
Doubtful. Jobs would just kill the whole thing before he'd 'open' MacOS for common clone hardware.
Remember, he's the guy who killed Newton. Don't give him a lot of credit.
So you're going to buy a T-shirt and deface it to advertise for an event you ostensibly are protesting?
They will be very happy to see you stirring up free publicity.
If people would stop writing Windows code that depeneded upon undefined behaviour, then things would be a heck of a lot better!
While you and I might agree that MS should stop developing Microsoft Office (which depends on undefined behavior, i.e. undocumented system calls) there are people dependent on Word and Excel for their daily work who would disagree.
I was leery about installing the 'validate and verify' update at Windows Update, since I'm a holdout on Windows 2000 and won't ever update to a newer version that requires 'validation' to be considered legit.
But I did and so far nothing bad has happened.
I have a handy ghost image on hand if trouble does kick in. And the W2K machine isn't that important a machine here anymore in any case.
One of the ways of knowing we still have a healthy amount of press freedom in the U.S. is that both right wing and left wing nutcases (i.e. the frothers at Democratic Underground and Lucianne.com) think the mainstream media is a 'tool' of the other side.
Excuse me, but how does a decision to change suppliers of future purchases make currently owned equipment "of no use?"
Well, the previous purchase was of a proprietary brand of Laptop that won't run the OS that the new Laptops run. The school district just wanted to back out of the corner they found themselves boxed in with the Apple hardware.
If they were instead upgrading from Dell Pentium II laptops to new IBM thinkpads they probably wouldn't have pitched them out the way they did.
Isn't California now one of the states of Mexico?
The Doom deathmatch took nearly all gaming enthusiasts away from the Mac platform, and "PC gaming" has pretty much meant "Windows PC gaming" ever since.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Doom was never a Windows program. In those days, we all ran DOS games. Windows was just around to suck resources in those days. As far as I can remember it NEVER was advantageous to run it under Windows.
That's sure a big block of horrendous writing there.
Editors?
Sun Microsystems designs and sells the hardware as well as the OS. Just like Apple. And they have for a number of years given away their OS (Solaris) for free, not only on their 'chosen' hardware, but a version that runs on any old PC Clone hardware (or, most of it, anyways).
Of course, Sun's hardware makes Apple's product line look like plastic-cased screwdriver shop junk, and there are a LOT ways to compare OS X to Solaris that makes Apple's software look like a shiney plastic toy by comparison.
To address your last point: After market support is most expensive when a company tries to support ill-designed piece-of-shit software.
Is Apple's product support cost enormous?
Well, since you're holding a triple-level conversation thread with yourself, I'll respond here that I was challanging his requirement that it be a non-electric typewriter.
I could have also challanged the idea that it has to be new (wtf?? there are GREAT manual typewriters readily available at low cost- why buy some new plastic POS for full price???)
Carry on with your three level discussion threads with yourself, now...
Yes. That's a feature, not a bug. It means there is always a 'durable revision history' in the form of a (literal) paper trail.
I am convinced that a lot of good ideas are lost to the 'tyranny of the cursor' (the easy ability to wipe out what was previously written.)
At a sucky temp job I had this spring, I took to using the lower case L instead of the 1 key part of the time while entering data. I mean, they had us spending half the day typing the data into Fricking Excel, instead of doing real testing.
It was a nice diversion to throw a little bit of an 'old school' wrench into that particular works.
I got a nice IBM Selectric at auction for $3 last month. Unless you're using it where there is no electricity (I got a hand-cranked portable gramaphone today at auction, BTW) you just turn it off when you step away and turn it back on.
The beauty of writing on a typewriter for those who've never done it, is the indelible immediacy of it. Writing on any kind of a word processor means any power outage can wipe it out, and that you can cursor all the heck over the place and spend a lot more time futzing around. Writing directly to paper means there's a permanent durable revision history. And it's refreshing to be able to just walk up to the typewriter table and type some more on the page. No distractions of a computer/internet terminal, etc.
Back in the mid 80's I ran an old CP/M machine as my main computer. It was a Xerox 820 clone. I used a bare keyboard that had no case (it was what I had that worked) and the monitor was a little 5" monochrome monitor with no case.
A friend of mine immediately commented when first seeing it that it was the computer from Brazil.