Microsoft was writing Windows 3.1, an important upgrade to the hugely popular Windows 3.0. In September 1991, a plan was hatched to use this upgrade to kill DR DOS. In an email discovered by the Dept. of Justice, the head of Windows development and Microsoft VP David Cole wrote, "aaronr had some pretty wild ideas after three or so beers--earleh has some too." The plan was to plant code into Windows which would "put competitors on a treadmill" and cause the system to "surely crash at some point shortly later." In order words, Windows would intentionally bomb if it detected DR DOS.
At this time, many computer vendors were considering switching from MS-DOS to the superior, cheaper DR DOS. Microsoft was especially concerned about IBM. Wooing these PC vendors was crucial to the future success of DR DOS, as was the good will of "early-adopters" (i.e., technically savvy users who drive new trends in the computer industry).
These vendors and early-adopters were also the same people who received a Christmas "beta" pre-release of Windows 3.1. They discovered--to their horror--that using DR DOS would cause vague system errors to pop up in Windows 3.1; they dumped DR DOS in droves. By the fourth quarter of 1992, sales of DR DOS had dropped from $15 million to only $1.4 million. The once mighty competitor became a has-been and was sold to Novell and later Caldera.
It's actually not as dastardly as you think. First it was disabled in the release code, it only warned people in the Beta. Secondly, Windows was really mixed up with Dos. For example, it called an undocumented function to get a pointer to the Dos data segment and modified that data segment. It also patched parts of the Dos code segment - it literally rewrite the code in memory. So most likely it would have issues running on any Dos that wasn't an exact binary copy of MSDos, and only a relatively recent Dos at that. I.e. Windows 3.x has code like this
code_ptr = NULL; data_ptr = NULL;
// get the code and data segments. Both functions are undocumented data_seg = GetDosDataSeg(); code_seg = GetDosCodeSeg();
However, I do have a question for you regarding your "laughing at vinyl fanatics"
My friend was a bit of an audiophile at university. Once he looked kind of pissed off. I asked him why and he said he was talking to one of his flatmate's friends and she had said that he was "the kind of guy who would get up during sex to turn over the record".
I read someone that Eunuchs live longer too. And there's evidence that male sex hormones are not exactly good for you, in terms of cancer and heart disease. People have done studies where insects are gradually bred to reproduce later, and their lifespan increases.
So it wouldn't surprise me if sex hormones were some sort of Nietzschean thing where you trade off long term health (=life) for a greater chance to reproduce in the short term (=power).
Hmm, maybe it's more Faustian actually. Mind you I think Nietzshe would be appalled by this bastardisation of his ideas, misogynist geek that he was. And that cheers me up for some reason.
2) Internet trolls by (current) definition do not see the faces so this doesn't apply.
You can tell when someone is getting angry though. They respond more quickly. They are also more likely to respond to inane jibes like slurs on their intellect or spelling skills. And they make more typos and logical errors, which can lead to a feedback loop if their opponent is skilled.
Some websites are not good sources. The KKK is one of them, as is the one you cited.
If you look at the content, it's a bunch of quotes from Islamic scholars and the Quran. I checked a few that were online and they are accurate. Admittedly, friendly translations seem to be more obfuscated than POD, but if you read the verses around them POD is an accurate critique.
As for the Banu Qurayza, the Jewish tribe I'm assuming you're referring to, they broke the treaty with the Medinan people and literally tried to open the city gates to the enemy. According to the story, which is contested as to whether or not it actually happened (it was in an account written a century later), they surrendered with the agreement their case would go to arbitration. The judge, Sa'd bin Mu'adh was an ally of their tribe, and ruled that according to Torah law (not Islamic law), the penalty for treason was death.
Sa'd was in Medina when the Meccan army sieged Medina with 10 000 men 5 AH (626627). During that event, he wsa was mortally wounded.
After the Meccan alliance left Medina unsuccessfully, the Muslims sieged Banu Qurayza, since they had plotted with the Meccans [2]. The Banu Qurayza surrendered unconditionally after several weeks of siege. Several members of the Banu Aus pleaded for their old allies and Sa'd as one of their chiefs was appointed judge in this matter. He decreed that all adult male members of the tribe should be killed and all women and children enslaved. Sa'd died shortly after his verdict.
Judging them according to the Torah rather than the Quran is a nice touch though. I wonder how Muslims would react if we started to judge Muslim traitors like the London bombers according to the Quran. Seems like we could kill all the men of military age, and enslave the women and children.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, did not "rave about Jews right up to his deathbed." They tried to assassinate him more than once, despite his granting them rights and protections. He criticized them for certain of their practices that conflicted with Jewish and Islamic monotheism, but he never gave any orders to wipe them out or anything. In an Islamic state, the government gives money to build and maintain churches and synagogues, as they are also citizens.
'Aisha said, "The Prophet said during his fatal illness, "Allah cursed the Jews for they took the graves of their prophets as places for worship."
Muslims think that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is as peaceful as Jesus, peace be upon him
But that's not true. As far as I can tell, Jesus never killed or enslaved anyone, and tried to restrain his followers from violence. Muhammad seems to have encouraged violence and barbarism. For example, when his minions brought a woman accused of adultery Muhammad said she should be stoned to death, whereas Jesus said 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone'.
which is why it upsets them so much when he is denigrated.
Islam seems to have evolved a defense mechanism against this sort of criticism BTW, if anyone points out that Muhammad was not actually a very good person, Muslims should kill them. Great.
You're completely right BTW. Geeks have poor self esteem or something and often make up for it by bragging. It's very noticable and annoying in hyper geek companies. Whereas I've literally never heard my non geek drinking buddies do it except ironically or sarcastically. Now I'm sure there are non geek braggarts, but I just never seem to run into them.
Those links from a millennium or so ago really tell us so much about modern Islam(!) I'm no historian, but that just sounds like the usual tribal squabbling that was probably going on more or less everywhere at the time. I suspect the only reason we heard about this one is that it became part of the history of a major world religion...
They're from when Muhammad was founding Islam. Muhammad is basically infallible if you're a Muslim and he said things like this
As far as I can see, he attacked small Jewish communities, killed all the men and took the women and children as slaves, mostly because they were a vulnerable minority. He used his religion to justify his actions, and that put a nasty genocidal anti semitism inside Islam.
Saying it's from a long time ago completely misses the point that these things were done by the founder of the religion. Imagine what Christianity would be like if Jesus had done this to some minority which still exists, and said the sort of things I quoted about it.
And it's not just me that thinks it's important. Hezbollah names it's rockets Khaibar 1 after the Battle of Khaibar. Muhammad raved especially about Jews right up to his deathbed, telling his followers to kill them all. In a very real sense Hezbollah are better Muslims, but worse human beings, than the moderates.
And that's the problem with religion in a nutshell. Some warlord a thousand years ago sins, and those sins become holy because he writes the holy books. Then for ever after, so long as you persecute the same minority he did, you're holy too. In the absence of religion, anyone can see that there's something deeply wrong with the way Muhammad treated Safiyya or her father or how the ancient Israelites treated other tribes, but with the moral distorting lens of religion it becomes a model which billions of people are taught to emulate.
This article is supported by WikiProject Scientology, a collaborative effort to help develop and improve Wikipedia's coverage of Scientology. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on Scientology-related topics. See WikiProject Scientology and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.
Which in practice means removing the picture, spoilers for his movies and for example from here changing
The next year, in November 1998, Clinton sent Madeleine Albright to urge German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel to grant Scientology the status of a registered religionwithout success.
to
The next year, in November 1998, Clinton sent Madeleine Albright to urge German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel to stop being intolerant toward Scientologists.
Note that this is actually worse from a less of a neutral point of view, and yet the WikiProject Scientology keeps putting it back when people change it.
Why is is anarchists like the Wikipedia crowd never seem to understand that anarchy is just another word for a power vacuum. Cults and tyrants like power vacuums and try expand into them. So anarchy is just a gateway stage between freedom and tyranny.
I love the geeky narcissist population here on slashdot (like you). It amuses me so much how you always so "subtley" try to sneak in some self-agrandizing bits into your posts to brag on yourselves.
I once met a guy who's company made life recorders for policecars. They had a hard disk and captured video. The idea was that they could be used to prove what happened in court, should the need arise. He wanted to use Flash memory instead of the hard disk since hard disks were a bit fragile, but needed to go from MJPEG to xvid to do it since flash was really expensive, and was trying to find a cheap way to encode real time xvid. This was a while back, and the MJPEG encoder was a cheap but rather underpowerd Arm.
PS - I'm am an Israeli and am living in the state of Israel. I'm Jewish by birth. I've been exposed to most of the dark and light sides of Islam. I've also heard every possible bit of anti-Islamic propaganda.
It's good that you're open minded. I hope the Muslims will be as open minded when they are in a majority in a few decades time.
the American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.
I quite agree with this. If you look at the Old Testament, or the Koran, or the Torah, homosexuality is bad and homosexuals should be killed. So if you're a liberal Christian, or Muslim or Jew you're not following that bit of the book. It seems like hypocrisy to me. If it's supposed to be revealed truth from God, you can't pick and choose about the bits you want to follow. But if it's just the morality of rather primitive, Taliban like tribe, why bother with it at all? Evolution equippped you with reason, why not use it to figure out what's right and wrong for yourself?
But if the extremists are willing to kill people, often in horrible ways, and the moderates stay silent, who will end up running things?
You can see the effect of this in Iraq. Before the invasion it was a viciously repressive place but fairly secular. Iraqi women could wear western clothes for example, and Iraqis could buy booze. Then Saddam was toppled and anarchy unleashed. But looking at Salam Pax's tragicomic reports on CNN, it seems that various Islamic militias are gradually turning the country into an Islamic state. It's not too hard either. Shoot a few people for trimming beards, or sellling alcohol. Pick up a few women who are too western and rape or kill them. Now people start to watch what they wear, stop drinking and start to encourage their wives and daughters to either stay in or wear veils. So suddenly the moderate majority is living in a state which is just as viciously repressive as before the invasion, but much less secular. It works because the extremist minority is willing to kill people to create the kind of state they want and the moderates aren't.
A vote and willingness to torture and kill people is worth much more than a vote alone in a place like Iraq.
John Sweeney writes about his "harassment" (supposedly at the hands of the Church of Scientology), but this pales in comparison to that experienced by dissenters or those who bad-mouth other religions. As we've discovered in the last year, even publishing a drawing of Mohammed can lead to death threats and street protests the world over. Even writing, performing, or publishing a poem about Jesus, a character from "The Bible", can lead to prosecution and snitchery in the UK, a supposedly developed country. Note that in the linked case, Bakewell was "reported to the DPP by the National Viewers and Listeners Association."
Tu Quoque is not a valid argument you know, even when it's true. Actually the case you linked to is the end of a centuries old battle by liberals against Christian limits on free speech. I can't prejudge it, but my guess is that the liberals will eventually win and blasphemy laws will at some point be abolished entirely or neutered to the point where they are no threat.
Nutty? So, Scientology is in fact a mental illness, which doesn't acknowledge mental illnesses. What a cosmic irony.
Makes you wonder what happened to L Ron Hubbard to make him so anti psychiatrist.
And actually, lots of religions seem to have a sense of who their enemies are that require that they know the world view they espouse is wrong. E.g. if you're inside scientology, they hatred of psychiatrists seems quirky. But if you're outside, you can see that psychiatrists can deconstruct brainwashing techniques and deprogram scientologists so it makes sense that the religion considers them a threat. Just like if you're outside a cult, you can see that the cult needs to cut people off from the outside world as much as possible to stop them seeing counter arguments to the cult's bizarre theories, but if you're inside the cult and you believe it to the the truth, why bother.
I suppose in this case you're right, we gotta be more PC to Scientologists and their "special condition".
Why? liberalism isn't a suicide pact - you don't have to hold off cricising people when they're out to destroy it.
Has Slashdot ever had a run in with Islam? Seems like people here are a lot more skeptical of the idea that Islam is a murderous cult than Scientology.
Whereas to me, as soon as the whole Satanic Verses controversy errupted, it was pretty clear that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with a modern liberal democracy, just like Scientology is. Hell, Christianity is incompatible if it's still based on the old testament, it's just that mainstream Christians seem to have deprecated those bits of the Bible since the Enlightenment.
I think it's kind of ironic that if you want to look at the downside of Scientology, you only need to look at their celebrity converts. E.g. Tom Cruise going increasingly off the rails now he's not allowed to see his shrink or take prescription drugs, or John Travolta forced to deny his homosexuality. If they weren't Scientologists, you get the impression they'd be happier. Richer too probably.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the famous AARD code, written by aaronr
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~geoffch@ozemail.co
It's actually not as dastardly as you think. First it was disabled in the release code, it only warned people in the Beta. Secondly, Windows was really mixed up with Dos. For example, it called an undocumented function to get a pointer to the Dos data segment and modified that data segment. It also patched parts of the Dos code segment - it literally rewrite the code in memory. So most likely it would have issues running on any Dos that wasn't an exact binary copy of MSDos, and only a relatively recent Dos at that. I.e. Windows 3.x has code like this
If Microsoft won't tell him the list of patents, he shouldn't make the email public.
However, I do have a question for you regarding your "laughing at vinyl fanatics"
My friend was a bit of an audiophile at university. Once he looked kind of pissed off. I asked him why and he said he was talking to one of his flatmate's friends and she had said that he was "the kind of guy who would get up during sex to turn over the record".
FLAC can coarsen the bit depth in some confluences of sound though. I prefer to keep the musicians locked up in my cellar, fed on rainwater and grain alcohol.
Interesting, given that Firefox has a 12% market share that 15% of the people that clicked use Firefox.
Guess Firefox users aren't smarter than IE users after all.
I read someone that Eunuchs live longer too. And there's evidence that male sex hormones are not exactly good for you, in terms of cancer and heart disease. People have done studies where insects are gradually bred to reproduce later, and their lifespan increases.
So it wouldn't surprise me if sex hormones were some sort of Nietzschean thing where you trade off long term health (=life) for a greater chance to reproduce in the short term (=power).
Hmm, maybe it's more Faustian actually. Mind you I think Nietzshe would be appalled by this bastardisation of his ideas, misogynist geek that he was. And that cheers me up for some reason.
2) Internet trolls by (current) definition do not see the faces so this doesn't apply.
You can tell when someone is getting angry though. They respond more quickly. They are also more likely to respond to inane jibes like slurs on their intellect or spelling skills. And they make more typos and logical errors, which can lead to a feedback loop if their opponent is skilled.
So Microsoft trolled the Unix world?
If you look at the content, it's a bunch of quotes from Islamic scholars and the Quran. I checked a few that were online and they are accurate. Admittedly, friendly translations seem to be more obfuscated than POD, but if you read the verses around them POD is an accurate critique.
As for the Banu Qurayza, the Jewish tribe I'm assuming you're referring to, they broke the treaty with the Medinan people and literally tried to open the city gates to the enemy. According to the story, which is contested as to whether or not it actually happened (it was in an account written a century later), they surrendered with the agreement their case would go to arbitration. The judge, Sa'd bin Mu'adh was an ally of their tribe, and ruled that according to Torah law (not Islamic law), the penalty for treason was death.
Well asking someone mortally wounded how to treat enemies is just a clever way to justify a massacre and enslavement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa'd_ibn_Mua'dh
Judging them according to the Torah rather than the Quran is a nice touch though. I wonder how Muslims would react if we started to judge Muslim traitors like the London bombers according to the Quran. Seems like we could kill all the men of military age, and enslave the women and children.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, did not "rave about Jews right up to his deathbed." They tried to assassinate him more than once, despite his granting them rights and protections. He criticized them for certain of their practices that conflicted with Jewish and Islamic monotheism, but he never gave any orders to wipe them out or anything. In an Islamic state, the government gives money to build and maintain churches and synagogues, as they are also citizens.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsu
Muslims think that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is as peaceful as Jesus, peace be upon him
But that's not true. As far as I can tell, Jesus never killed or enslaved anyone, and tried to restrain his followers from violence. Muhammad seems to have encouraged violence and barbarism. For example, when his minions brought a woman accused of adultery Muhammad said she should be stoned to death, whereas Jesus said 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone'.
which is why it upsets them so much when he is denigrated.
Islam seems to have evolved a defense mechanism against this sort of criticism BTW, if anyone points out that Muhammad was not actually a very good person, Muslims should kill them. Great.
Because it builds faster IF YOU SHOUT AT IT?
You're completely right BTW. Geeks have poor self esteem or something and often make up for it by bragging. It's very noticable and annoying in hyper geek companies. Whereas I've literally never heard my non geek drinking buddies do it except ironically or sarcastically. Now I'm sure there are non geek braggarts, but I just never seem to run into them.
Wrong. The difference between a cult and a religion is that you can leave a religion.
Did you know in Islam the punishment for Apostasy (abandoning Islam) is death?
Those links from a millennium or so ago really tell us so much about modern Islam(!) I'm no historian, but that just sounds like the usual tribal squabbling that was probably going on more or less everywhere at the time. I suspect the only reason we heard about this one is that it became part of the history of a major world religion...
I slam
They're from when Muhammad was founding Islam. Muhammad is basically infallible if you're a Muslim and he said things like this
http://www.prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Quotes_Jews.
As far as I can see, he attacked small Jewish communities, killed all the men and took the women and children as slaves, mostly because they were a vulnerable minority. He used his religion to justify his actions, and that put a nasty genocidal anti semitism inside Islam.
Saying it's from a long time ago completely misses the point that these things were done by the founder of the religion. Imagine what Christianity would be like if Jesus had done this to some minority which still exists, and said the sort of things I quoted about it.
And it's not just me that thinks it's important. Hezbollah names it's rockets Khaibar 1 after the Battle of Khaibar. Muhammad raved especially about Jews right up to his deathbed, telling his followers to kill them all. In a very real sense Hezbollah are better Muslims, but worse human beings, than the moderates.
And that's the problem with religion in a nutshell. Some warlord a thousand years ago sins, and those sins become holy because he writes the holy books. Then for ever after, so long as you persecute the same minority he did, you're holy too. In the absence of religion, anyone can see that there's something deeply wrong with the way Muhammad treated Safiyya or her father or how the ancient Israelites treated other tribes, but with the moral distorting lens of religion it becomes a model which billions of people are taught to emulate.
It used to be on Wikipedia, but his Scientology minions keep taking it away
e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:John_Travolta
Which in practice means removing the picture, spoilers for his movies and for example from here changing
to
Note that this is actually worse from a less of a neutral point of view, and yet the WikiProject Scientology keeps putting it back when people change it.
Why is is anarchists like the Wikipedia crowd never seem to understand that anarchy is just another word for a power vacuum. Cults and tyrants like power vacuums and try expand into them. So anarchy is just a gateway stage between freedom and tyranny.
I love the geeky narcissist population here on slashdot (like you). It amuses me so much how you always so "subtley" try to sneak in some self-agrandizing bits into your posts to brag on yourselves.
i rkpd5.jpg
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/4839/inspcaptk
I once met a guy who's company made life recorders for policecars. They had a hard disk and captured video. The idea was that they could be used to prove what happened in court, should the need arise. He wanted to use Flash memory instead of the hard disk since hard disks were a bit fragile, but needed to go from MJPEG to xvid to do it since flash was really expensive, and was trying to find a cheap way to encode real time xvid. This was a while back, and the MJPEG encoder was a cheap but rather underpowerd Arm.
I quite agree. However nasty the religion, it's important not to mod down its apologists. For one thing it makes the debate hard to follow.
PS - I'm am an Israeli and am living in the state of Israel. I'm Jewish by birth. I've been exposed to most of the dark and light sides of Islam. I've also heard every possible bit of anti-Islamic propaganda.
1 /124803.shtml
It's good that you're open minded. I hope the Muslims will be as open minded when they are in a majority in a few decades time.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/1
and that you don't end up like these guys here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Qurayza
or these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Nadir
Note what happened to poor Safiyya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
Wow, sexually frustated much?
I quite agree with this. If you look at the Old Testament, or the Koran, or the Torah, homosexuality is bad and homosexuals should be killed. So if you're a liberal Christian, or Muslim or Jew you're not following that bit of the book. It seems like hypocrisy to me. If it's supposed to be revealed truth from God, you can't pick and choose about the bits you want to follow. But if it's just the morality of rather primitive, Taliban like tribe, why bother with it at all? Evolution equippped you with reason, why not use it to figure out what's right and wrong for yourself?
But if the extremists are willing to kill people, often in horrible ways, and the moderates stay silent, who will end up running things?
You can see the effect of this in Iraq. Before the invasion it was a viciously repressive place but fairly secular. Iraqi women could wear western clothes for example, and Iraqis could buy booze. Then Saddam was toppled and anarchy unleashed. But looking at Salam Pax's tragicomic reports on CNN, it seems that various Islamic militias are gradually turning the country into an Islamic state. It's not too hard either. Shoot a few people for trimming beards, or sellling alcohol. Pick up a few women who are too western and rape or kill them. Now people start to watch what they wear, stop drinking and start to encourage their wives and daughters to either stay in or wear veils. So suddenly the moderate majority is living in a state which is just as viciously repressive as before the invasion, but much less secular. It works because the extremist minority is willing to kill people to create the kind of state they want and the moderates aren't.
A vote and willingness to torture and kill people is worth much more than a vote alone in a place like Iraq.
John Sweeney writes about his "harassment" (supposedly at the hands of the Church of Scientology), but this pales in comparison to that experienced by dissenters or those who bad-mouth other religions. As we've discovered in the last year, even publishing a drawing of Mohammed can lead to death threats and street protests the world over. Even writing, performing, or publishing a poem about Jesus, a character from "The Bible", can lead to prosecution and snitchery in the UK, a supposedly developed country. Note that in the linked case, Bakewell was "reported to the DPP by the National Viewers and Listeners Association."
Tu Quoque is not a valid argument you know, even when it's true. Actually the case you linked to is the end of a centuries old battle by liberals against Christian limits on free speech. I can't prejudge it, but my guess is that the liberals will eventually win and blasphemy laws will at some point be abolished entirely or neutered to the point where they are no threat.
Nutty? So, Scientology is in fact a mental illness, which doesn't acknowledge mental illnesses.
What a cosmic irony.
Makes you wonder what happened to L Ron Hubbard to make him so anti psychiatrist.
And actually, lots of religions seem to have a sense of who their enemies are that require that they know the world view they espouse is wrong. E.g. if you're inside scientology, they hatred of psychiatrists seems quirky. But if you're outside, you can see that psychiatrists can deconstruct brainwashing techniques and deprogram scientologists so it makes sense that the religion considers them a threat. Just like if you're outside a cult, you can see that the cult needs to cut people off from the outside world as much as possible to stop them seeing counter arguments to the cult's bizarre theories, but if you're inside the cult and you believe it to the the truth, why bother.
I suppose in this case you're right, we gotta be more PC to Scientologists and their "special condition".
Why? liberalism isn't a suicide pact - you don't have to hold off cricising people when they're out to destroy it.
Has Slashdot ever had a run in with Islam? Seems like people here are a lot more skeptical of the idea that Islam is a murderous cult than Scientology.
Whereas to me, as soon as the whole Satanic Verses controversy errupted, it was pretty clear that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with a modern liberal democracy, just like Scientology is. Hell, Christianity is incompatible if it's still based on the old testament, it's just that mainstream Christians seem to have deprecated those bits of the Bible since the Enlightenment.
I think it's kind of ironic that if you want to look at the downside of Scientology, you only need to look at their celebrity converts. E.g. Tom Cruise going increasingly off the rails now he's not allowed to see his shrink or take prescription drugs, or John Travolta forced to deny his homosexuality. If they weren't Scientologists, you get the impression they'd be happier. Richer too probably.