Love the biting satire there Mr. Hemos. But, why the heck should we worry? We live in a NAT world, keep up to date on everything under the sun (SpyBot, NAV etc. etc.) and have even *uploaded* new viruses to McAfee et al.
Shit, my friend, I even *MET* someone who wrote an early (and very crappy) virus. To his dishonor it was the very crummy "Pixel" virus (named after a forgotten mag here in Greece).
I collaborated with him on a project to do a sort of network dongle (shudders). Fun really, but the irony is what I didn't do. I could have turned our corporate network into a Beowulf long before our Brother At NASA did...
Chuckles. OK, I'll go and contemplate that *beautiful* white blimp again - more olympics here, this time for people who have real problems to deal with... Hope they have lots of fun.
Excuse me, but the whole point of OSS is that it makes clear what everyone who cares about software, knowledge , universities and meaningless stuff like that have known for years.
No locks on Books. No locks on thoughts. Be very careful. I'm an Angry Norfolkman (UK). One of my predescessors (Tom Paine) will come back and haunt you Mr. Gates if you dare to flash this crap in public. Sorry but internal spell check is on strike right now..
You see. We care. Make us mad enough and a galaxy away you'll still see the effect. (I would be more poetic but my brain is still readjusting from the Heineken overdose last night). (and yes we would welcome a calming thought from a microsoftie...)
Let me see, it's been in the sea a long time. It won't go critical but it's radioactive up the wazoo. It's also potentially an explosive risk.
You leave it in peace. and get on with your life. If you really care about other people you put up a big sign saying "danger: don't fuck with this" so everyone else leaves it in peace.
Any terrorist stupid enough to want to play with it is *welcome*. We'd like some idiot to try to play with it because that would be one less idiot we have to deal with...
Perhaps on another monday morning I'll get to chuckle about how Abdul Mohammed (blessings and peace) Smith managed to kill himself in a very creative way trying to recover it...
I for one don't care that's an H-bomb. Not like I don't understand this shit. Hey, we are/.ers people. Technology *burns* out of our arses (or is that the chili I ate laste night.)
Hey, just because I like my cute arse and you like to see the shuttle fly through yours, we live in the same universe.
What someone hasn't noticed is that for the poor person that has had part of their life on show it could get like a bad version of John Carpenter's nightmare visions.
You can't feel happy about this. Not ever. I could tell you about a strange murder at an old peoples home and some things I've lived indirectly through but we guess that with a little luck you'll be able to stay complacent somewhere in Hicksville good old USA...
If you get to live long enough you'll see some really awful things. Even without wars. But please god not on a monday morning!
I for one welcome our welsh overlords.. Yep, and the documentation rocked too. But don't *ever* try to write a buffer gap editor. Out by one is the least of your problems...
I always wonder what else happened to the guy who wrote that. I know he did a lot of MIDI music stuff on the Mac, but he's long disappeared off the radar.
OK, I'll start. But please understand that your'e listening to an evolving scene. My scenario is this:
Christos: Heavily dynamic, MS solution provider , heavy hacker.
Andy (that's me): Totally agnostic, 20+ years sys programming, firefighting and almost everything you care to mention. And yes, I like Linux.
Manos: 20+years running a hardware business which hosed a few months back. Old friend. Good friend. Not really (despite his protestations) a techie.
Manos has always done import export things as well as his "main" business. Hey, you have to pay the rent. I work for him in that as well as tech orientated things.
Christos is your classic firebrand techie. Not so different from me, but he still needs to learn when to slow down so he doesn't melt. A wee bit too religiously inclined to MS for my tastes...
Any one of us could potentially run a business (probably into the ground he says giggling) but herding cats would be easier...
Yes, Mr. Ego is alive and well and living in Athens. I have no problem with this (I'm no virgin). But, please note. These are not Greeks, but (gasps) Cretans. Oh yes. Don't think life is going to be easy to you. OK, I lie, Christos prob isn't, but the guy paying the bill is, and much meaner than I want to discuss on slashdot. It might frighten some of the weanies out there... (big hint: The guy paying the bill isn't Manos, but Manolis).
Ok, so far. No. Well stop eating that mushroom and listen! (hey it *is* that time of year isn't it) I always forget because we've had the darndest strangest long summer here in Athens. No rain since (uh I think May). Normally we get some by now. (Had to put that in to annoy my UK friends who have lived in misery all year)
I'm faced with info overload from a large number of directions. Worse still, it isn't just techie stuff (I know how to integrate that) but EU legislation on Food Law and god knows what.
I might be running an Internet Cafe or a factory manufacturing Extra Virgin Olive Oil tomorrow. Yeah. This is seriously fun (I am a chemist by training by the way so I'm not awfully scared by one of the threats)
I was thinking of putting up some sort of intranet web site as a repository of our shared info (well, it's mostly *me* doing the research).
The catch is that we have a DSL router that wants to be god and dish out IP addresses. OK, I can persuade it of the wrongness of it's ways and turn it into a relay agent, but that still won't allow me to put up a local web server on our ethernet ( address allocated dynamically by DHCP) and allow it to be world visible.
NAT is wonderful, but it is a double edged sword. The sort of collaboration I have with my colleagues is fiercely dynamic. Today Chris is in Dublin (ok, you guessed with who's company). Tomorrow he's in Thessaloniki.
I have even worse problems with Manos.
I guess that our problem is a common one. How to deal with this? Any help appreciated...
P.S: A quick report of what Athens is like today - our old friend that deliciously sexy (?) blimp is back in the sky (the Paralympics are here now). Wish all the athletes a truly great time.
??? Son. I ported CP/M 68K (yuk isn't the word) When I was doing it: Mince (if you don't know Mark of the Unicorn's excellent EMACS clone then you would have killed for it when I was losing my sight in front of a TeleVideo TV925 (still working until 2000)
Yeah. It is basic input output system. But that was too much for many developers (coughs and giggles). The "adaptable p-system" for the UCSD p-system made it even more simple. You still needed brains to do an SBIOS port - especially if the hardware was (as it was as a rule) flakey. I won't bore you with the details, but a very successful ISP in the North of England (who like me is a chemist) could relate tales which would make you curl up into the mandatory fetal position...).
Wintel deserves to die. Believe me. I really don't want this low grade crud corrupting future generations of programmers. It doesn't work. Nothing will make it work. When we finally get to understand that the letter "A" is a given then I'll be able to write words. Or even sentences. I started my life as a scientist and I plan to die as one - even if I spent the middle bit masturbating in the software industry!
Oh, and I was *hand* punching punch cards back in 74 or maybe 73. One mistake and that syntax error on line 320 bit you three weeks later.
I'm still learning about sucking eggs though...
I know the/. moderators have no taste. But I have a good one (of course). So, Never give up hope- you'd be surpised what get's marked up as insightful.. (very big grin).
Humph. You have something that works for you and you want to replace it with something that might not?
Why. Go take up pornogami or something more fruitful...
Seriously - be thankful your router complained and told you what was happening. A closed box from Cisco, LinkSys et al would sit there silently and let you burn half your brain power for the next milennium.
We use an intracom (local greek company) DSL router with no problems - but on the other hand you won't have the same flexibility that a PC + linux will give you - for instance, imagine that you want to make one machine internally an intranet web server (I collaborate with two other very mobile business people on lot's of things both software and food related).
Right now, I'm stuck because DHCP + DNS + NAT mix like oil and water.
If it was a linux box I *KNOW* I'd find a solution (anyone else who has one discuss this, I bet a lot of us would like to know...).
I have a schizoid view of this. On one hand, names matter. On the other they don't.
I don't think you ever (shudders) want to party with lawyers. My one experience in the early 80's advising a lawyer about concepts such as "compiler" made me very ill indeed. (I'm a techie as you'd guess).
If it doesn't hurt your project too much change the name. If it does, then there *are* legal entities watching slashdot (the groklaw clan) who maybe can help.
This is after all a community. Good luck. You might not think the unwashed (good guess huh?)/. community can help, but I bet your email server will melt... (I'll go and have another shower now. It's hot here in Athens and we haven't (chuckles) had any rain since about May... (sorry UK folks).
I'm puzzled. Yes you need to be able to emulate INT 10H but in real terms that's a *high* level interface. (may be a shock to virginal C++ programmers I guess).
When I first started programming (and that was in the
early 80's) most machines weren't anything like anyone elses machines. I was porting the UCSD p-system - a system based on an interpreted Pascal
(Borland's Pascal up to 5.x is very similar).
UCSD Pascal is best thought of as an early attempt
at the Sun/Java "write once execute everywhere" philosophy.
It didn't work out (sadly). But pre "PC's" no machine was even remotely similar to another machine. Developers couldn't target anything or
earn enough. I always call this the "Pre-Cambrian
explosion" because the machines and environments
were so weird that only a drug fiend could have
invented them.
To cut a long story short - all the bios (sic) needs to do is load sector zero off the winchester
(big grin for newbies) and let rip.
Real programmers can cut their own debug code.
(Now being a slower forty something I shudder when
I think about it, but it was fun at the time).
It would still be a good exercise to drop someone
expecting an IDE into such an environment for evaluation. Never mind "bastard operator from hell", some of you gals/guys come up with "bastard
sys programmer from hell".
Cough. Splutter. You want to install 2000 eh? *DONT DO THIS*. Win2000 is on the HCL for the HP Omnibook XE2, but they don't say which model. Naively (hey I've only been doing this 20+ years) I tried to upgrade. Big mistake. Ended up with 640x480 256 color no sound, no modem no nothing. Get the picture?
XP on the other hand managed to upgrade my (F1774W DD) XE2.
Not really an upgrade. UT classic clocks nothing useable. (Try saying 25 fps originally on win98se down to 15fps). Ugh.
It only lives that way because I don't have the energy to dustbin it and let SuSE linux have the whole machine. Real soon now Microsoft is *history* on that machine. Right now it's a slave seti@home (BOINC) machine.
I think you shouldnt trust *anyone* P2P for patches against mutleysoft software. You think that the word "sucker" stamped on your forehead in indian ink spells it out?
or those two unprintable guys beginning with B who have single handedly (?) mutilated star trek.
I find myself saddened that SCO, a company that in the old days was one of the few who genuinely believed in UNIX like systems has fallen to such lows.
Even if they won, they would lose.
They won't win. Ironically, in the 80's IBM was considered the evil demon of our industry. The worm sure turned. I actually *like* IBM now. No, No, it isn't all the substance abuse, it's real...
Someone persuade them to release AmiPro and some other things open source and I'll even enthuse about how nice they are to others (big hint).
C++. You want to Own C++. Good. That will set you on the path to insanity!
I have two experiences to relate, neither my own. You'll see why in a minute.
1. Home user (member of company). That's the same george as below... Everything ok, but seems a bit slower
2. The boss of the other company in this office XP Home. Not much other stuff except NAV, Winzip, WinRar. Installed in 35minutes, debugged in (when are we going to get it to work George?).
Like most oldsters I automatically go through the ritual of cleansing demons out of machines (so I checked and NAV said NO, you're a bad boy, you haven't checked the machine). OK. Go check the machine.
Oops. It frooze (new word for the 21st cent ok?) real good. Sigh. Three more attempts and yeah verily interrupts weren't. OK, time for memtest86 (nothing wrong with the RAM). When George arrived back from his meeting with the Dalai Lama yesterday we removed NAV, reinstalled and nope. Same problem. (Sigh). Scanned remotely over the internal net with several anti-vir packages and nope nothing. Checked with AdAware and nope nothing dirty.
In final desperation we decided to placate the Olympian Gods (this is Greece you know - I'm in Athens) and sacrifice another machine in the interests of true scientific experimentation.
Sadly my friend George is an IT virgin and believes in the concept of working from 10.a.m to 4p.m. (this is Greece), so I'll have to wait until monday to give the next installment of this Soap Opera. Your's truly on the other hand *lives* in this office...
SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM. There is a good reason why MS are regarded as the bastard offspring of Oedipus's incestous liasion with his mother.
With Linux, you can strip the thing down to boot loader + kernel + libs and work your way up.
With NT (XP) you are lost lost lost.
I started my programming career *porting* OS's. Nobody who valued their sanity would ever consider doing this with an MS product.
If you are foolish enough to consider putting SP2 on your machine, then consider how long it would take to reconstruct your work environment (you have backups of data don't you?).
Oh. About 4-5 days. Then I have to remember what patches to apply for everyone elses software, and remember that if you do X before Y, then Z software breaks if the moon is in sagittarius and (you get the drift?).
Hmm. This is *why* developers love FreeBSD, Linux etc. I'm going to go and caress my friends Vim, Emacs and co right now. I need to calm down.
Darned right. A lot of ST's lived on a long time thanks to the built in MIDI port. I wouldn't be surprised if a few live on in a dusty corner of a recording studio just in case...
My colleague (in the UK back in the 80's) Phil Camp did the (TDI) Modula-2 compiler. Cheshire cats wouldn't have grinned as much as he did when he returned from ETHZ (after meeting Nicky). But, compilers got forgotten and all hail the new coding project (play with the casio keyboards he'd just bought).
We spent a pleasant few days hacking around with it instead of (uh) doing productive things.
This is also how I got to see a very early (modern) word processor (Andra, also from ETH) if anyone is foolish enough to read any of my other posts.
But, let me get this right - an emulator for a mostly rusted machine (however worthy) running on a dead console (can't comment on worthiness).
Hmm. Seems a waste of brainpower to me...
The home computer market (at least in the UK and Europe) was *never* the percentages you mention. Mostly it was Sinclair Spectrums (marketted as Timex something or other in the US) and Amstrad CPC's with the odd Sinclair QL, C64, a few BBC model B's and archies (87 on).
Amiga's really found their niche in video apps (toaster?), although I would have *killed* for one (I had to settle for a second hand Sage II and TV925 terminal)).
Always hated the Tripos (Metacomco) derived AmigaDOS particularly for it's wonderful molasses slow file system...
I think that is the philosophy. When you bounce the idea of an alarm being the absence of constant noise or pattern off people they look at you as if you're weird, but the truth is that after a while you don't notice the Beep Bop. You would notice any change though. The only reason I noticed the clock ticking was writing this...
(Sucks on teeth, mutters something about electrodes cemented into cat skulls, 1960's animal norights psych studies)
Interestingly, the BBC (as usual for them) got this detail right in a rather excellent 1980's drama series about the nuclear industry called "Edge of Darkness" which is still one of my favourite Beeb things.
More scary (at least from my one and only visit to a nuclear facility (and I have a science background and have worked with 14-C biochem labelling a few times)) was the arrows on the pavement which indicated which direction you were supposed to run if things went horribly wrong, and the patch of green paint where you'd be picked up and lead casketted (grins)).
The truly nasty thing was that the "please wait here" area was *REALLY* close to the run like hell area.
To misquote C.J (no: don't ask if you aren't english) "I did get where I am today by questioning".
Seriously though, I couldn't find the darned building with the guy I was supposed to chat too, so I spent a good 20 minutes wandering around (see prev post in this thread) worried that I would er.. get the shoot first and ask questions later treatment from BNFL's police...
I don't know if you remember but this was during one of the IRA's mainland bombing campaigns so not being challenged was a real surprise...
Lot's of HF, (of course) (yucky stuff says the chemist in me), and mucho barrels (uranium oxide).
All of this for a bloody plotter and a project management package..
But, something strange *did* happen. Amazing how chatty people can be (even when they shouldn't be...). My contact let slip that something odd was happening with Soviet lorrys (trucks for you US people) and South Africa. Now, at the time SA was still embargoed and the evil empire was *OUR ENEMY*.
(yes I know I should have spelt it lorries (too lazy to correct it...)
yellowcake (SA) -> springfield -> uranium for reactors -> soviet lorry drivers -> USSR. ???
That amazed me at the time, but apparently -
Six months later, there was an intriguing article in the "Observer" (UK) re an illegal trade in Uranium approx as you might expect.
Hmm. I know I hadn't said anything. Could have been the same chatty worker who let slip to a sober(ish) journo type...
It *is* Springfields (not Sellafield - old name Windscale). I seriously regret not pushing for a tour...
We had the "Simpsons" here for a while but sadly, they lack the good taste to show us all of them (or indeed "Ab Fab", 5th series Bab5 or anything else worth watching).
Oh. I'm posting from Athens Greece. Nationality is bleeding obvious innit?
But, for anyone who wants to listen - check out the BBC's web site because real soon now Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide is *back* as slartibardfast intended it (a radio drama). Hopefully I've forgotten the books enough to enjoy cricketting encounters, although from what I've read we get to hear the dulcit tones of that one true english bowler Freddie Truman. Yorkshire men rejoice!
(although I'm from Norfolk which is about as low as you can get for cricket - with the exception of the Edritch clan)
Minus the Simpsons, Moes, etc (but *with* the nuclear plant!). Springfields (or is it Spring Fields) in Northern England (just outside Preston). They make nuclear fuel rods.
(At least they did when I visited to do some consultancy work c.a. 1986).
Interesting place. Particularly the signs with "Danger! you are now entering a criticality evacuation area" , and the constant beep bop of the alarm. You're supposed to panic if it changes from beep bop to god knows what...... and in 1986 at least it was one of the few places in England where the familiar "bobby" (policeman) carries serious fire power.
Cool. Hmm. Let me see , 200-300W per node * how many nodes. Hot . Very hot.
It's possible (given how powerful GPU's in graphics cards have become) that one day we will get to see *smaller* clusters as all of that "wasted" power in the GPU gets reused for crunching.
But, Don Becker didn't invent this stuff. If anything I'm more grateful that he was masochistic enough to practically be a one man code engine creating all of the ethernet support for linux...
The first "cluster" I read about was one in Byte a long long time ago which ironically used four Apple Mac classics tied together with (I'd guess) AppleTalk (yucky huh?) and at the time I happened to be "in a position of power" (cough - well really second only to the CTO) and the BOFH on our Novell network (re read last bit (I was the B))
I did think of hacking some TSR's to run on all of the client machines (c.a. 100) to turn our net into a cheapo cluster. Decided not to - 286's weren't exactly Crays (even if you had a boatload of them...).
Chuckles. Ok, you asked for this. It starts here! Nobody to my recollection has pointed out who might and should be the passenger (if any) on Rutans X-prize attempt.
I vote for Sir Arthur. Hey, he deserves it.
(stop giggling. It's bad for you)
As a nod to the dark side then he should be punished by having to carry with him some of the mortal remains of his old nemesis (but look at it this way Arthur - he hated flying when he was alive ).
How quickly do you think slashdotters could mount a petition on this one?
Nope, he'll take the hit. It's worth it for the following reasons:
1. You get the first pick of the smartest kids on the block.
2. You get asked by *engineers* for advice.
3. It's kool.
Go figure it. (As a side note there are other engineer's engineering outfits - notably Don Cameron's "Cameron Balloons" in Bristol UK. Much lower profile though...).
But I'm glad there's at least one place we can *dream* of running that doesn't have to pacify Brian Beancounter and friends...
Slashdot Mirror
Love the biting satire there Mr. Hemos. But, why
the heck should we worry? We live in a NAT world,
keep up to date on everything under the sun (SpyBot, NAV etc. etc.) and have even *uploaded* new viruses to McAfee et al.
Shit, my friend, I even *MET* someone who wrote an early (and very crappy) virus. To his dishonor it was
the very crummy "Pixel" virus (named after a
forgotten mag here in Greece).
I collaborated with him on a project to do a sort
of network dongle (shudders). Fun really, but
the irony is what I didn't do. I could have turned
our corporate network into a Beowulf long before
our Brother At NASA did...
Chuckles. OK, I'll go and contemplate that *beautiful* white blimp again - more olympics here, this time for people who have real problems
to deal with... Hope they have lots of fun.
Excuse me, but the whole point of OSS is that
it makes clear what everyone who cares about
software, knowledge , universities and meaningless
stuff like that have known for years.
No locks on Books. No locks on thoughts.
Be very careful. I'm an Angry Norfolkman (UK). One
of my predescessors (Tom Paine) will come back and
haunt you Mr. Gates if you dare to flash this crap
in public. Sorry but internal spell check is on
strike right now..
You see. We care. Make us mad enough and a galaxy
away you'll still see the effect.
(I would be more poetic but my brain is still
readjusting from the Heineken overdose last night).
(and yes we would welcome a calming thought from
a microsoftie...)
Let me see, it's been in the sea a long time.
...
/.ers people. Technology *burns* out of our arses (or is that the chili I ate laste night.)
It won't go critical but it's radioactive up the
wazoo. It's also potentially an explosive risk.
You leave it in peace. and get on with your life.
If you really care about other people you put up a
big sign saying "danger: don't fuck with this" so
everyone else leaves it in peace.
Any terrorist stupid enough to want to play with it
is *welcome*. We'd like some idiot to try to play
with it because that would be one less idiot we
have to deal with
Perhaps on another monday morning I'll get to chuckle about how Abdul Mohammed (blessings and peace) Smith managed to kill himself in a very
creative way trying to recover it...
I for one don't care that's an H-bomb. Not like I don't understand this shit. Hey, we are
Hey, just because I like my cute arse and you like
to see the shuttle fly through yours, we live in the
same universe.
What someone hasn't noticed is that for the poor person that has had part of their life on show it could get like a bad version of John Carpenter's nightmare visions.
You can't feel happy about this. Not ever. I could
tell you about a strange murder at an old peoples home and some things I've lived indirectly through but we guess that with a little luck you'll be able to stay complacent somewhere in Hicksville good old USA...
If you get to live long enough you'll see some really awful things. Even without wars. But please
god not on a monday morning!
(cue nice dancing disney animals or maybe not)
I for one welcome our welsh overlords..
Yep, and the documentation rocked too. But don't *ever* try to write a buffer gap editor. Out by one is the least of your problems...
I always wonder what else happened to the guy who wrote that. I know he did a lot of MIDI music stuff on the Mac, but he's long disappeared off the radar.
Anyone know what happened?
OK, I'll start. But please understand that your'e
.
listening to an evolving scene. My scenario is this:
Christos: Heavily dynamic, MS solution provider , heavy hacker.
Andy (that's me): Totally agnostic, 20+ years sys
programming, firefighting and almost everything you
care to mention. And yes, I like Linux.
Manos: 20+years running a hardware business which
hosed a few months back. Old friend. Good friend.
Not really (despite his protestations) a techie.
Manos has always done import export things as well
as his "main" business. Hey, you have to pay the rent. I work for him in that as well as tech orientated things.
Christos is your classic firebrand techie. Not so
different from me, but he still needs to learn when to slow down so he doesn't melt. A wee bit
too religiously inclined to MS for my tastes...
Any one of us could potentially run a business (probably into the ground he says giggling) but
herding cats would be easier...
Yes, Mr. Ego is alive and well and living in Athens. I have no problem with this (I'm no virgin). But, please note. These are not Greeks, but (gasps) Cretans. Oh yes. Don't think life is
going to be easy to you. OK, I lie, Christos prob
isn't, but the guy paying the bill is, and much
meaner than I want to discuss on slashdot. It might frighten some of the weanies out there...
(big hint: The guy paying the bill isn't Manos, but Manolis).
Ok, so far. No. Well stop eating that mushroom and listen!
(hey it *is* that time of year isn't it)
I always forget because we've had the darndest strangest long summer here in Athens. No rain since (uh I think May). Normally we get some by now. (Had to put that in to annoy my UK friends who have lived in misery all year)
I'm faced with info overload from a large number
of directions. Worse still, it isn't just techie
stuff (I know how to integrate that) but EU legislation on Food Law and god knows what.
I might be running an Internet Cafe or a factory
manufacturing Extra Virgin Olive Oil tomorrow.
Yeah. This is seriously fun (I am a chemist by training by the way so I'm not awfully scared by
one of the threats)
I was thinking of putting up some sort of intranet
web site as a repository of our shared info (well,
it's mostly *me* doing the research).
The catch is that we have a DSL router that wants to be god and dish out IP addresses. OK, I can
persuade it of the wrongness of it's ways and turn
it into a relay agent, but that still won't allow
me to put up a local web server on our ethernet (
address allocated dynamically by DHCP) and allow it to be world visible
NAT is wonderful, but it is a double edged sword.
The sort of collaboration I have with my colleagues is fiercely dynamic. Today Chris is in
Dublin (ok, you guessed with who's company). Tomorrow he's in Thessaloniki.
I have even worse problems with Manos.
I guess that our problem is a common one.
How to deal with this? Any help appreciated...
P.S: A quick report of what Athens is like today -
our old friend that deliciously sexy (?) blimp
is back in the sky (the Paralympics are here now).
Wish all the athletes a truly great time.
Rgds,
Andy
Say what. Somebody seems to have bounced a post I made to another thread. Heck it is saturday so I'm supping a wee bit of Metaxa (coughs).
Help. I'm being replicated here!
?? Say what? I'm sorry. Excuse me? Automated worm eh?
??? Son. I ported CP/M 68K (yuk isn't the word) :
/. moderators have no taste. But I have
When I was doing it
Mince (if you don't know Mark of the Unicorn's
excellent EMACS clone then you would have killed
for it when I was losing my sight in front of a
TeleVideo TV925 (still working until 2000)
Yeah. It is basic input output system. But that was
too much for many developers (coughs and giggles).
The "adaptable p-system" for the UCSD p-system
made it even more simple. You still needed brains
to do an SBIOS port - especially if the hardware
was (as it was as a rule) flakey. I won't bore you
with the details, but a very successful ISP in the
North of England (who like me is a chemist) could
relate tales which would make you curl up into
the mandatory fetal position...).
Wintel deserves to die. Believe me. I really don't
want this low grade crud corrupting future generations of programmers. It doesn't work. Nothing will make it work. When we finally get to understand that the letter "A" is a given then I'll be able to write words. Or even sentences.
I started my life as a scientist and I plan to die
as one - even if I spent the middle bit masturbating in the software industry!
Oh, and I was *hand* punching punch cards back in
74 or maybe 73. One mistake and that syntax error
on line 320 bit you three weeks later.
I'm still learning about sucking eggs though...
I know the
a good one (of course). So, Never give up hope- you'd be surpised what get's marked up as insightful.. (very big grin).
Humph. You have something that works for you and you
want to replace it with something that might not?
Why. Go take up pornogami or something more fruitful...
Seriously - be thankful your router complained and told you what was happening. A closed box from Cisco,
LinkSys et al would sit there silently and let you
burn half your brain power for the next milennium.
We use an intracom (local greek company) DSL router with no problems - but on the other hand
you won't have the same flexibility that a PC + linux will give you - for instance, imagine that
you want to make one machine internally an intranet web server (I collaborate with two other
very mobile business people on lot's of things both software and food related).
Right now, I'm stuck because DHCP + DNS + NAT mix
like oil and water.
If it was a linux box I *KNOW* I'd find a solution
(anyone else who has one discuss this, I bet a lot
of us would like to know...).
I have a schizoid view of this.
/. community can help, but I bet your email server
On one hand, names matter.
On the other they don't.
I don't think you ever (shudders) want to party with
lawyers. My one experience in the early 80's advising
a lawyer about concepts such as "compiler" made me
very ill indeed. (I'm a techie as you'd guess).
If it doesn't hurt your project too much change the
name. If it does, then there *are* legal entities
watching slashdot (the groklaw clan) who maybe can
help.
This is after all a community. Good luck. You might not think the unwashed (good guess huh?)
will melt...
(I'll go and have another shower now. It's hot here in Athens and we haven't (chuckles) had any
rain since about May... (sorry UK folks).
I'm puzzled. Yes you need to be able to emulate INT 10H but in real terms that's a *high* level interface. (may be a shock to virginal C++ programmers I guess). When I first started programming (and that was in the early 80's) most machines weren't anything like anyone elses machines. I was porting the UCSD p-system - a system based on an interpreted Pascal (Borland's Pascal up to 5.x is very similar). UCSD Pascal is best thought of as an early attempt at the Sun/Java "write once execute everywhere" philosophy. It didn't work out (sadly). But pre "PC's" no machine was even remotely similar to another machine. Developers couldn't target anything or earn enough. I always call this the "Pre-Cambrian explosion" because the machines and environments were so weird that only a drug fiend could have invented them. To cut a long story short - all the bios (sic) needs to do is load sector zero off the winchester (big grin for newbies) and let rip. Real programmers can cut their own debug code. (Now being a slower forty something I shudder when I think about it, but it was fun at the time). It would still be a good exercise to drop someone expecting an IDE into such an environment for evaluation. Never mind "bastard operator from hell", some of you gals/guys come up with "bastard sys programmer from hell".
Cough. Splutter. You want to install 2000 eh? *DONT DO THIS*. Win2000 is on the HCL for the HP Omnibook XE2, but they don't say which model. Naively (hey I've only been doing this 20+ years) I tried to upgrade. Big mistake. Ended up with 640x480 256 color
no sound, no modem no nothing. Get the picture?
XP on the other hand managed to upgrade my (F1774W DD) XE2.
Not really an upgrade. UT classic clocks nothing useable. (Try saying 25 fps originally on win98se
down to 15fps). Ugh.
It only lives that way because I don't have the energy to dustbin it and let SuSE linux have the
whole machine. Real soon now Microsoft is *history* on that machine. Right now it's a slave
seti@home (BOINC) machine.
I think you shouldnt trust *anyone* P2P for patches against mutleysoft software. You think that the word "sucker" stamped on your forehead in
indian ink spells it out?
or those two unprintable guys beginning with B who
have single handedly (?) mutilated star trek.
I find myself saddened that SCO, a company that in
the old days was one of the few who genuinely believed in UNIX like systems has fallen to such lows.
Even if they won, they would lose.
They won't win.
Ironically, in the 80's IBM was considered the evil demon of our industry. The worm sure turned.
I actually *like* IBM now. No, No, it isn't all the substance abuse, it's real...
Someone persuade them to release AmiPro and some other things open source and I'll even enthuse about how nice they are to others (big hint).
C++. You want to Own C++. Good. That will set you
on the path to insanity!
I have two experiences to relate, neither my own.
...
You'll see why in a minute.
1. Home user (member of company). That's the same
george as below...
Everything ok, but seems a bit slower
2. The boss of the other company in this office
XP Home. Not much other stuff except NAV, Winzip, WinRar. Installed in 35minutes, debugged in (when are
we going to get it to work George?).
Like most oldsters I automatically go through the ritual of cleansing demons out of machines (so I
checked and NAV said NO, you're a bad boy, you haven't checked the machine). OK. Go check the
machine.
Oops. It frooze (new word for the 21st cent ok?)
real good. Sigh. Three more attempts and yeah verily interrupts weren't. OK, time for memtest86
(nothing wrong with the RAM). When George arrived
back from his meeting with the Dalai Lama yesterday we removed NAV, reinstalled and nope. Same problem. (Sigh). Scanned remotely over the internal net with several anti-vir packages and nope nothing. Checked with AdAware and nope nothing dirty.
In final desperation we decided to placate the Olympian Gods (this is Greece you know - I'm in Athens) and sacrifice another machine in the interests of true scientific experimentation.
Sadly my friend George is an IT virgin and believes in the concept of working from 10.a.m to 4p.m. (this is Greece), so I'll have to wait until
monday to give the next installment of this Soap
Opera. Your's truly on the other hand *lives* in
this office
SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM. There is a good reason why
MS are regarded as the bastard offspring of Oedipus's incestous liasion with his mother.
With Linux, you can strip the thing down to boot
loader + kernel + libs and work your way up.
With NT (XP) you are lost lost lost.
I started my programming career *porting* OS's.
Nobody who valued their sanity would ever consider
doing this with an MS product.
If you are foolish enough to consider putting SP2
on your machine, then consider how long it would
take to reconstruct your work environment (you have backups of data don't you?).
Oh. About 4-5 days. Then I have to remember what
patches to apply for everyone elses software, and remember that if you do X before Y, then Z software breaks if the moon is in sagittarius and
(you get the drift?).
Hmm. This is *why* developers love FreeBSD, Linux
etc. I'm going to go and caress my friends Vim, Emacs and co right now. I need to calm down.
Particularly since the more famous pieces of software
from CMU (esp festival/flite stuff) are mostly developed on Linux.
It would be even better if Linus got truly rich and
they named a better building just opposite "The Linus
Torvalds Medical Center".
(Hey, all of those XP addicts will need it)
Yow. Still it might appeal to the tub girl goatse
fraternity...
(and don't forget you get 2G as well for free if it's
like NASA's KC-10...).
Darned right. A lot of ST's lived on a long time thanks to the built in MIDI port. I wouldn't be
surprised if a few live on in a dusty corner of
a recording studio just in case...
My colleague (in the UK back in the 80's) Phil Camp did the (TDI) Modula-2 compiler. Cheshire cats wouldn't have grinned as
much as he did when he returned from ETHZ (after
meeting Nicky). But, compilers got forgotten and
all hail the new coding project (play with the casio keyboards he'd just bought).
We spent a pleasant few days hacking around with it instead of (uh) doing productive things.
This is also how I got to see a very early (modern)
word processor (Andra, also from ETH) if anyone
is foolish enough to read any of my other posts.
But, let me get this right - an emulator for a mostly
rusted machine (however worthy) running on a dead
console (can't comment on worthiness).
Hmm. Seems a waste of brainpower to me...
The home computer market (at least in the UK
and Europe) was *never* the percentages you mention. Mostly it was Sinclair Spectrums (marketted as Timex something or other in the US)
and Amstrad CPC's with the odd Sinclair QL, C64,
a few BBC model B's and archies (87 on).
Amiga's really found their niche in video apps
(toaster?), although I would have *killed* for
one (I had to settle for a second hand Sage II
and TV925 terminal)).
Always hated the Tripos (Metacomco) derived AmigaDOS particularly for it's wonderful molasses
slow file system...
I think that is the philosophy. When you bounce the idea of an alarm being the absence of constant noise or pattern
off people they look at you as if you're weird, but
the truth is that after a while you don't notice the
Beep Bop. You would notice any change though. The
only reason I noticed the clock ticking was writing this...
(Sucks on teeth, mutters something about electrodes cemented into cat skulls, 1960's animal
norights psych studies)
Interestingly, the BBC (as usual for them) got this
detail right in a rather excellent 1980's drama series about
the nuclear industry called "Edge of Darkness" which
is still one of my favourite Beeb things.
More scary (at least from my one and only visit
to a nuclear facility (and I have a science background and have worked with 14-C biochem labelling a few times)) was the arrows on the pavement which indicated which direction you were supposed to run if things went horribly wrong, and
the patch of green paint where you'd be picked up
and lead casketted (grins)).
The truly nasty thing was that the "please wait here" area was *REALLY* close to the run like hell
area.
To misquote C.J (no: don't ask if you aren't english) "I did get where I am today by questioning".
OK, but no pretty blue glow right ..
Seriously though, I couldn't find the darned building with the guy I was supposed to chat too, so I spent a good 20 minutes wandering around (see prev post in this thread) worried that I would er.. get the shoot first and ask questions later treatment from BNFL's police...
I don't know if you remember but this was during one of the IRA's mainland bombing campaigns so
not being challenged was a real surprise...
Lot's of HF, (of course) (yucky stuff says the chemist in me), and mucho barrels (uranium oxide).
All of this for a bloody plotter and a project
management package..
But, something strange *did* happen. Amazing how
chatty people can be (even when they shouldn't
be...). My contact let slip that something odd
was happening with Soviet lorrys (trucks for you
US people) and South Africa. Now, at the time SA was still embargoed and the evil empire was *OUR ENEMY*.
(yes I know I should have spelt it lorries (too
lazy to correct it...)
yellowcake (SA) -> springfield -> uranium for reactors -> soviet lorry drivers -> USSR. ???
That amazed me at the time, but apparently -
Six months later, there was an intriguing article
in the "Observer" (UK) re an illegal trade in
Uranium approx as you might expect.
Hmm. I know I hadn't said anything. Could have
been the same chatty worker who let slip to
a sober(ish) journo type...
It *is* Springfields (not Sellafield - old name
Windscale). I seriously regret not pushing for
a tour...
We had the "Simpsons" here for a while but sadly,
they lack the good taste to show us all of them
(or indeed "Ab Fab", 5th series Bab5 or anything
else worth watching).
Oh. I'm posting from Athens Greece. Nationality
is bleeding obvious innit?
But, for anyone who wants to listen - check out
the BBC's web site because real soon now Douglas
Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide is *back* as slartibardfast intended it (a radio drama).
Hopefully I've forgotten the books enough to enjoy
cricketting encounters, although from what I've
read we get to hear the dulcit tones of that
one true english bowler Freddie Truman. Yorkshire men rejoice!
(although I'm from Norfolk which is about as low
as you can get for cricket - with the exception
of the Edritch clan)
Cheers.
Andy.
Minus the Simpsons, Moes, etc (but *with* the nuclear
... and in 1986 at least it was one of the few places in England where the familiar "bobby" (policeman) carries serious fire power.
plant!). Springfields (or is it Spring Fields) in
Northern England (just outside Preston). They make
nuclear fuel rods.
(At least they did when I visited to do some consultancy work c.a. 1986).
Interesting place. Particularly the signs with "Danger! you are now entering a criticality evacuation area" , and the constant beep bop
of the alarm. You're supposed to panic if it changes from beep bop to god knows what...
Cool. Hmm. Let me see , 200-300W per node * how many nodes. Hot . Very hot.
It's possible (given how powerful GPU's in graphics cards have become) that one day we will get to see
*smaller* clusters as all of that "wasted" power in the GPU gets reused for crunching.
But, Don Becker didn't invent this stuff. If anything
I'm more grateful that he was masochistic enough to practically be a one man code engine creating all of the ethernet support for linux...
The first "cluster" I read about was one in Byte
a long long time ago which ironically used four
Apple Mac classics tied together with (I'd guess)
AppleTalk (yucky huh?) and at the time I happened
to be "in a position of power" (cough - well really second only to the CTO) and the BOFH on
our Novell network (re read last bit (I was the B))
I did think of hacking some TSR's to run on all of
the client machines (c.a. 100) to turn our net into a cheapo cluster. Decided not to - 286's weren't exactly Crays (even if you had a boatload of them...).
No (but they'll wait for a competing product from Via before they launch it ).
If Intel isn't *really* really careful then AMD = Zilog. (Which would make Itanic = iAPX432 if my
history circuits still function huh?)
Oh wait. It was supposed to be an object orientated
processor - maybe when they fab at 13nm it will reappear...
Chuckles. Ok, you asked for this. It starts here!
Nobody to my recollection has pointed out who might
and should be the passenger (if any) on Rutans X-prize attempt.
I vote for Sir Arthur. Hey, he deserves it.
(stop giggling. It's bad for you)
As a nod to the dark side then he should be punished by having to carry with him some of the
mortal remains of his old nemesis (but look at it this way Arthur - he hated flying when he was
alive ).
How quickly do you think slashdotters could mount a petition on this one?
Nope, he'll take the hit. It's worth it for the following reasons:
...
1. You get the first pick of the smartest kids on the block.
2. You get asked by *engineers* for advice.
3. It's kool.
Go figure it.
(As a side note there are other engineer's engineering outfits - notably Don Cameron's "Cameron Balloons" in Bristol UK. Much lower profile though...).
But I'm glad there's at least one place we can *dream* of running that doesn't have to pacify
Brian Beancounter and friends