The essential facts are preserved. Namely that
a) Galileo made objective scientific observations
Trouble is the only observation that could have saved his ass was a star paralax beyond the reach of his days observations technics. So he dismissed it, made up a "proof" based on tidal waves that stated that there was one tide per day (while everyone already knew there was two), at 12 (while everyone knew the hour is moving). Talk about "objective scientific observation" !
b) Galileo published these observations and his theories on their meaning
Galileo differed publication by 30 years because he knew he had no proof ; instead, before the publication, he entered in written and oral controversies, basicaly making fool of others without publicaly stating what his true views were. When he finally clashed on a theological point, he was forced to publish to explain himself, and sealed his fate.
c) The Catholic church considered his views to be heretical
Not exactly. What was considered heretical was to write it was the truth without proving it, as Bellarmine's writings of the time clearly show it. Had he brought a solid poof forward, the Church was ready to change the scriptures' interpretation.
d) The church used its political influence to force Galileo, under threat, to publically retract his theories.
e) Galileo publicly retracted his theories.
True, and he did so because he had no -none- scientific proof on which to stand, as he was requested to give. So it was a public humiliation, much like the "water memory" story has been a worldwide humiliation for its proponents. No proof : you make a fool of yourself.
Galileo was the Kevin Mitnick of its days. He stole others' discoveries, seeked peer reviews when in need otherwise being a complete moron (when he asked keppler a confirmation for Jupiter's moons, keppler supported him and then asked him a spyglass to confirm, but the support was what he needed, so he never sent keppler a spyglass. Keppler had to borrow one -sent by Galileo to a powerful duke- to save his own reputation).
Really, Galileo had troubles because he took positions out of his field. He was obviously brilliant in physics and technics, but he ventured into astronomy where he was talking from his ass. But being an arrogant moron, instead of taking a low profile, he stepped forward, and sided with a bad theory. He had about everything wrong except for the Sun place. Otherwise, he clinched to Ptolemus circles, epycicles, unifrom circular motion, which was already proven wrong by Keppler. And he should have known it was wrong, because Keppler had sent him his books, a favor he never returned, of course.
But Galileo did have the threat of being persecuted like Bruno and Copernicus though...
Copernicus was never persecuted, except if you think that having to part with his common law wife (he was ordered so by his bishop at a late age) because he was a member of the church was a persecution. Otherwise, he died a peaceful death in his bed, holding the first print of his book in his hands.
Bruno on the other hand was burned at the stake, but not for scientific reasons (he wasn't a scientist at all) but because as a monk he had professed really heretical points of view on the nature of God and mankind. Something that was totaly alien to Galileo Galilei work.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Galileo Galilei, who was a pompous ass that clinched to Copernicus' epicycles like there was no tomorrow, and tried to defend his system with a "proof" based on tidal waves that was known for centuries to be completely wrong. If it wasn't for dynamic physic, he would be certainly completely forgotten. Trying him was really far fetched, cardinals of the time should probably have harnessed the work of their cosmologists to prove him wrong and his theory flawed beyond repair ; erecting a statue is pushing the pendulum too far on the opposite side.
The one really a desserving a statue for solely lifting humanity out of the dark ages is Keppler.
Most debian based distros, ubuntu included, do it out of the box (I believe binfmt-misc is a dependency of wine on those). What you need is to chmod +x the.exe you want to run.
So true. It's my experience Linux is really spreading into mainstream at the moment. It feels like we're at the highest point of the windows tide, and there are hints the flow is going backward. I've been advocating linux for more than 10 years now, with mixed results (to put it mildly), but the seeds I planted years ago are growing. I met with people I exposed to linux and who went back to windows at the time, who have recently switched at home to Ubuntu. I learn it sideways, when they ask me 'strange' questions like "hum... do you still use linux ? Because I'd like to know how you... ? ". And when I scratch the surface, they admit they're trying, "you know, just to see what the buzz is about". So there's a buzz, many people are listening, and even if they do not want to be considered loons for using linux, well, they keep informed. Most are testing on an old computer, because they feel robbed of their new, shinny PC by the ressource hungry vista, and consider claiming their harware back and want to be sure they can live with linux. Those people are under 40 and part of the non-technical crowd. I see less switching in businesses, but it's my belief once those in power, in their 50s and unwilling to take risks at the end of their professionnal life, retire, there will be a new generation ready to switch.
Sensible (french) != sensible (english), it's a faux ami. The word you want is "sensitive". Of course. I knew it, but it somehow slipped from my mind. Thank you.
I couldn't be the only person who can hear a 25,000Hz tone at my age. I could see how this device could backfire big time. I certainly wouldn't stick around a store where my ears were so assaulted. I hope this never catches on in the US.
A bit younger than you (36), I can vouch for it. When I lived in a suburb, I had a neighbour so equiped (mosquitoes or moles repelent device as they are sold here, in France), and it was a nightmare, because I seemed to be the only adult around able to hear that piercing sound. I have a very good hearing, I was tested for a job and the doc told me I was out of scale for my age, with the hearing ability of a 12 yo. But what I dislike most are very low-Hz sounds. High pitched sounds are simply annoying, but I found that low-Hz sounds create a feeling of true fear for those sensible enough to hear them. I had the chance to ask the aforementionned doc about it, and he told me that for some people it works as an early earthquake warning, switching on the 'time to panic' switch, as it seems to do with me. The bothering thing with low-Hz is I can't tell where they come from. High-Hz are easy to find, but low-Hz just creep in travelling in building structures. As there are no eartquake to fear where I live now (Paris town), I find this genetic favor a bit of a curse as it wakes me up at night should the guy on the street floor decide to program his washing machine at 2 o'clock to benefit from a low rate energy. The sound travels up to the 4th floor where I live following structural beams, and again, I am the only one to complain.
Even if I am careful, I live and/or work with people who are not. Is there a short list of good manufacturers that I can provide to people who plan to buy hardware as a gift? Which online retailer or brick-and-mortar retail chain in the United States is good at letting buyers know whether or not products work with free operating systems? Somebody else asked this question on Ubuntu Forums but got no response.
There are many well known manufacturers who are at least agnostics about linux, opposed to a quite short list of really bad players in the game. Your best bet is to ask the retailer to let you slip a ubuntu live CD in the demo computer. Otherwise, googling <name of product> + <linux distribution name> gives a good hint as what to be expected from the device. Another option is to setup a gift whishlist for your friends and family ; you have the burden to check compatibility by yourself with your favorite distribution list. Ultimately, many retailers will have an exchange program to let you pick what you want instead of what you were given.
In my experience, the only brands you really need to steer clear of are Sony and Canon. On the opposite, most korean makers are extremely linux friendly (Brother comes from the top of my mind). Most of the time, for the vast majority of HW vendors, you just need to wait a couple of months before the support comes in a new kernel version. It may be a bit frustrating, but that's not life threatening either.
I also found out that every program that I use is Open Source except OS. And your hardware drivers, I take it.
Then it was quite natural to start using Linux instead of Windows. How often do you reboot back to your Windows partition to use, say, a flatbed scanner that SANE still doesn't support and whose manufacturer hasn't replied to e-mails?
All in all, linux has far more support for HW than windows to boot (don't forget the huge amount of non-i386 HW like sbus cards for Sun and such), plus you have to factor in the equation that a lot of so called "legacy" HW lose support with new windows release (perhaps because the manufacturer doesn't want to pay the MS tax for a certified driver on an eol'ed product ; even for a last year product, like Canon does routinely with printers). Linux really seldom lose HW support even for extremely outdated cards. So if you have the decent taste to carefully pick your HW from a reputable source (as in 'has provided specs to the FOSS people free of anal NDA'), your investment will be much better protected by linux than by windows. First point.
Second point, when you're carefull (as everybody should be, caveat empteor) to pick only linux supported hardware, you've no need to reboot into windows for a hardware issue ; from scanners to dvb-t usb 'sticks', I've never run into an area of comptuer expansion totaly forgotten by linux.
So what?! Hell, I doubt that the graphics or game play could meet the expectations of todays typical shooters! The DN franchise is not really that about superior gameplay (but this said, the original DN3D was a major milestone in 3D games, first engine I know of allowing interaction with static objects such as mirrors and other items). DN is about intelligent storytelling. Before DN3D, 3D games had a "wow" effect (doom I), but basically you moved on shooting bigger and bigger monsters, and then you were out, ready for next level. DN3D was interesting to play because it had a plot and huge maps. Even half-life turns boring after you escape the underground facility. You hop from small planets to small planets, killing again and again. No relief. DN is all about *fun*. If DNF is half as good as DN3D, it will still be a good step forward to escape the dull landscape of look-alike games.
This is absolutely true. When I was a kid we had a female wire hair fox terrier (well fed, may I add). This dog was very friendly, never bit anyone and let young children use her as a horse subsitute. But she had the nasty habit to dig holes about everywhere (that's where the 'terrier' part comes from, I guess), and once her hole led her to our neighbour's chicken encolusre. She killed 30 of them in less than 5 minutes. Extremely effective. We had to buy all the chicken;-)
This reminds me of a retrospective fear that nearly made me collapse when I fully realised how close I came to actually die by fire. The previous tenant of the appartement I rent now had thought no better than to hook a 300 liters electrical water heater with *speakers cables* to the mains. I had noticed the wires coiled at the bottom of the fuse box, but I thought it could only be the outside doorbell wiring (honest mistake, I only looked by day and the heater works only at night, plus the only thing I know about electricity is the phone number of a knowledgeable handyman). But some months after moving in, I had to change a fuse by night and touched the wires. They were boilling hot. I'm still shaking.
Some of the humor relies on know about both the art-historical and geek references, though.
I agree. I especially loved the pun on Duchamp's monalisa, originaly titled 'LHOOQ' ; in french, this reads "elle a chaud au cul" ("she's horny"). To be dubbed "d3fac3d" is somewhat the icing on the cake.
Unless looking at breasts is ok where you work, that is.
Because a decapitated guy is perectly OK, of course. I'd really like to have an explanation about that : half of the humanity have a vagina an breasts, which is perfectly natural, why is it less acceptable to display than a mutilated body (which is not obviously un-ntural) ? I really can't get it.
At least, if you had rated this NSFW because self-entertainement isn't of the essence of working, I might have agreed, but all this BS about the human body is really the product of sick minds.
I won't go as far as saying "better than originals", but there's something inside that work that desserves a good mention. Like you, I found the wikipedia one extremely to the point. Most have a "punch line" quality. The/. summary is misleading ; it's not art for the geeks, but it's definitely a work from an arty geek.
It seems we are both telling the same thing, but our conclusions diverge. Maybe because I had to shell out the money from my own pocket (I was a student in those days), I have fond memories of the system itself but not from the hardware bills. May I remind you the price of hard drives before seagate dumped the market of big (2+ Gb) disks with the bigfoot line ? I fail to see how buying a second one just to put the swap instead of adding more memory helped keeping the budget in line.
During holidays, to earn money, I was writing filling stories for a local newspaper (you know, historical topics, things like that). In 1994, the computers used by reporters were ATARI 520ST. Yes, it was already obsolete, but a complete daily edition went out of them day after day. Reporters were craving for PCs with windows. In truth, even if some of them were aware of OS/2 (which I doubt), they wouldn't have dreamed the management could buy them the necessary hardware.
I hear you when you say that OS/2 is sounder than Windows engineering wise. But it needed the same hardware to properly run win 3.1 than win 95 needed natively. So in effect, as soon as win 95 was out, I switched. Not long, though, because after a year I couldn't stand windows quirks anymore and settled for Linux. I owe OS/2 for learning that a computer is not supposed to crash every other day for no reason. It helped me build high expectations from my machine, and it made me realise that Microsft could be outbested by others in the operating system realm. I'm grateful for that.
[OS/2 had the] ability to boot and run under *incredibly* tight hardware constraints (Warp 3 only required **4MB** if using TSHELL, or 8MB if using the WPS)
Don't get me wrong, I was (and still am, albeit non-practising) a huge OS/2 fan. But please. OS/2 indeed could *boot* with those figures, but to *run* was another thing ; *crawl* would be a far better description. And to put things in perspective for the youngest part of the audience, win 3.1 could boot in 1 Mb, and run fine between 2 and 4. 8 Mb was a hefty sum of money to spend back then for the casual hacker. 16 Mb (what warp really needed) would become standard only around 1996, way too late for that poor OS/2. Again, for the benefit of the youngers among us, remember that the vast majority of available software was indeed DOS or Win programs ; why spend roughly twice the price needed to run those same programs under a (superlative, granted) emulator, when you could spare cash by running them under their native environnement ? Just to save the pain of rebooting between crashes ?
Even if you could, you'd certainly enter a world of pain. Plain OS/2 has always been very tricky to install on "everyday" hardware. It doesn't run very well in emulators either because of extensive use of x86 features (ring 2 for instance) that no other OS makes use of. To have a good experience of OS/2 requires in fact a true IBM PS/2 computer, with a lot of memory (a lot means "more than 32 Mb", but we're speaking legacy here, and at the time it was a huge quantity of RAM, and it's unlikely you'd find that much installed in a system of that era - good luck finding more).
This said, OS/2 is a pretty snappy system (given enough RAM), with a good connectivity, and a wonderful true object oriented window manager. DOS compatibility is 'apt' (lots of tweaking ahead), win16 support is better than original ; there is a rare win32 (windows 95) beta layer, never officialy released, don't know if it ever escaped IBM.
I still keep a system with warp 4, but I feel less and less the need to boot it ; as some others mentionned, Linux+KDE makes a good enough OO desktop today.
In the UK we are 30 miles from France, but I know nothing about their departments, post codes, etc.
It might seem confusing from the outside, but there's at least some logic in the system. When the post system was created, the main administrative division of France was the departement. You need a map to see those. Departements have a name, and the associated number is the alphabetical rank. There are a couple of exceptions because some departements changed their name later in history but kept the original number (Paris, 75, because the original departement was named "Seine" after the river, now simply Paris because the main town has swallowed evry other town in the departement), some departements were split (corsica was once the single department number 20, but has since become north corsica, 2A, and south corsica, 2B), and overseas departements have their own numbering scheme.
A french zip code (5 digits) begins by the departement number (2 digits), and the next digit stands for the closest administrative town ; the main administrative town (péfecture), always close to the geographical center of the departement, is '0', and 'sous-préfectures' (acting prefectures ?) are 1, 2 , 3... ; the last 2 digits are for all the towns within a (sous-)préfecture range. '00' is a special case meaning 'myself', therefore any main administrative center town (prefecture) is 'departement : XX, 0, 00. Again Paris is an exception the town being so big the last 2 digits are used for the 'arrondissement number', and therefore 75000 is never used.
Thus, any administrative center town of any departement is normally '000' prefixed by the departement number. ie, the main town of Aisne (02) being Laon, Laon has a zip code of '02000'.
Eventualy, you end your life dying. Face it, that's life. But what you're never told is you die *twice*, because save a handfull of really important people for their contribution to History (with capital 'H'), after 50 years everybody will totally forget you.
But if your exit is at least newsworthy there's still a slim chance it won't be forgotten in your own family. The grand father of my grand-grand father (5 generations above me) was the only one we knew by tradition before my mother did some genealogical research. All others above him, at his level, and some under him, were completely lost. But he was remembered because he died kicked by a horse in the head. Not especially funny, but newsworthy.
The Darwin winners of today will have their memories cherished *longer* by *many more people* than those dying a peaceful and natural death.
Think about it. Now, where's my axe, I have a barn to bring down.
I really think it's now good enough for most people for most tasks. My wife's new laptop has OO rather than office, and it's fine.
That's what I do routinely for relatives ; want a word processor ? Sure, here is my OO.o CD, I'll install it no problem, my pleasure. Oh, you meant MS Office ? I can install it for sure, but you hand me the money first so I can go and buy the boxed version. Find a WHAT ? Nope, sorry, no way, I'm not breaking laws for you. OO.o will do ? Fine, let's go.
So far, all the persons I equiped with OO.o have stuck with it. None have reverted to MS-Office. Maybe they resent me, but that's a proof that they didn't really needed the real thing. And if you ask me, most weren't even needing a full Office suite in the first place. But somehow after a while they grow accustomed to OO.o and wouldn't change for fear of losing documents. And they really get quickly the 'export to PDF' because they're sure that all their contacts will at least read what they typed, with no final-line-jumping-on-a-new-page-depending-on-the-default-printer-driver-choice quirk.
What if someone wrote a super small bootable virus, then the virus' initial form used Partition Magic-like functionality to write its own partition and stick the virus on it then tell the computer before restarting to boot from that one. Then the virus can do whatever it wants to the MBR or basically anything else on the drive cuz no files or anything would be open.
No need to create a new partition. On a traditional disk, the first cylinder is reserved to the mbr, but the mbr lives on a single sector. The cyclinder on today's drives is much bigger, well enough for a nasty bug. That's how lilo works, by the way, and such a virus would nuke it on the spot.
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a) Galileo made objective scientific observations
Trouble is the only observation that could have saved his ass was a star paralax beyond the reach of his days observations technics. So he dismissed it, made up a "proof" based on tidal waves that stated that there was one tide per day (while everyone already knew there was two), at 12 (while everyone knew the hour is moving). Talk about "objective scientific observation" !
b) Galileo published these observations and his theories on their meaningGalileo differed publication by 30 years because he knew he had no proof ; instead, before the publication, he entered in written and oral controversies, basicaly making fool of others without publicaly stating what his true views were. When he finally clashed on a theological point, he was forced to publish to explain himself, and sealed his fate.
c) The Catholic church considered his views to be hereticalNot exactly. What was considered heretical was to write it was the truth without proving it, as Bellarmine's writings of the time clearly show it. Had he brought a solid poof forward, the Church was ready to change the scriptures' interpretation.
d) The church used its political influence to force Galileo, under threat, to publically retract his theories.e) Galileo publicly retracted his theories.
True, and he did so because he had no -none- scientific proof on which to stand, as he was requested to give. So it was a public humiliation, much like the "water memory" story has been a worldwide humiliation for its proponents. No proof : you make a fool of yourself.
Galileo was the Kevin Mitnick of its days. He stole others' discoveries, seeked peer reviews when in need otherwise being a complete moron (when he asked keppler a confirmation for Jupiter's moons, keppler supported him and then asked him a spyglass to confirm, but the support was what he needed, so he never sent keppler a spyglass. Keppler had to borrow one -sent by Galileo to a powerful duke- to save his own reputation).
Really, Galileo had troubles because he took positions out of his field. He was obviously brilliant in physics and technics, but he ventured into astronomy where he was talking from his ass. But being an arrogant moron, instead of taking a low profile, he stepped forward, and sided with a bad theory. He had about everything wrong except for the Sun place. Otherwise, he clinched to Ptolemus circles, epycicles, unifrom circular motion, which was already proven wrong by Keppler. And he should have known it was wrong, because Keppler had sent him his books, a favor he never returned, of course.
... and read Koestler's Sleepwalkers !
Copernicus was never persecuted, except if you think that having to part with his common law wife (he was ordered so by his bishop at a late age) because he was a member of the church was a persecution. Otherwise, he died a peaceful death in his bed, holding the first print of his book in his hands.
Bruno on the other hand was burned at the stake, but not for scientific reasons (he wasn't a scientist at all) but because as a monk he had professed really heretical points of view on the nature of God and mankind. Something that was totaly alien to Galileo Galilei work.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Galileo Galilei, who was a pompous ass that clinched to Copernicus' epicycles like there was no tomorrow, and tried to defend his system with a "proof" based on tidal waves that was known for centuries to be completely wrong. If it wasn't for dynamic physic, he would be certainly completely forgotten. Trying him was really far fetched, cardinals of the time should probably have harnessed the work of their cosmologists to prove him wrong and his theory flawed beyond repair ; erecting a statue is pushing the pendulum too far on the opposite side.
The one really a desserving a statue for solely lifting humanity out of the dark ages is Keppler.
Source : A. Koestler, the sleepwalkers.
Most debian based distros, ubuntu included, do it out of the box (I believe binfmt-misc is a dependency of wine on those). What you need is to chmod +x the .exe you want to run.
...is what you were looking for. It's been in the kernel for ages (at least since v. 1.2.x)
So true. It's my experience Linux is really spreading into mainstream at the moment. It feels like we're at the highest point of the windows tide, and there are hints the flow is going backward. I've been advocating linux for more than 10 years now, with mixed results (to put it mildly), but the seeds I planted years ago are growing. I met with people I exposed to linux and who went back to windows at the time, who have recently switched at home to Ubuntu. I learn it sideways, when they ask me 'strange' questions like "hum... do you still use linux ? Because I'd like to know how you ... ? ". And when I scratch the surface, they admit they're trying, "you know, just to see what the buzz is about". So there's a buzz, many people are listening, and even if they do not want to be considered loons for using linux, well, they keep informed. Most are testing on an old computer, because they feel robbed of their new, shinny PC by the ressource hungry vista, and consider claiming their harware back and want to be sure they can live with linux. Those people are under 40 and part of the non-technical crowd. I see less switching in businesses, but it's my belief once those in power, in their 50s and unwilling to take risks at the end of their professionnal life, retire, there will be a new generation ready to switch.
A bit younger than you (36), I can vouch for it. When I lived in a suburb, I had a neighbour so equiped (mosquitoes or moles repelent device as they are sold here, in France), and it was a nightmare, because I seemed to be the only adult around able to hear that piercing sound. I have a very good hearing, I was tested for a job and the doc told me I was out of scale for my age, with the hearing ability of a 12 yo. But what I dislike most are very low-Hz sounds. High pitched sounds are simply annoying, but I found that low-Hz sounds create a feeling of true fear for those sensible enough to hear them. I had the chance to ask the aforementionned doc about it, and he told me that for some people it works as an early earthquake warning, switching on the 'time to panic' switch, as it seems to do with me. The bothering thing with low-Hz is I can't tell where they come from. High-Hz are easy to find, but low-Hz just creep in travelling in building structures. As there are no eartquake to fear where I live now (Paris town), I find this genetic favor a bit of a curse as it wakes me up at night should the guy on the street floor decide to program his washing machine at 2 o'clock to benefit from a low rate energy. The sound travels up to the 4th floor where I live following structural beams, and again, I am the only one to complain.
There are many well known manufacturers who are at least agnostics about linux, opposed to a quite short list of really bad players in the game. Your best bet is to ask the retailer to let you slip a ubuntu live CD in the demo computer. Otherwise, googling <name of product> + <linux distribution name> gives a good hint as what to be expected from the device. Another option is to setup a gift whishlist for your friends and family ; you have the burden to check compatibility by yourself with your favorite distribution list. Ultimately, many retailers will have an exchange program to let you pick what you want instead of what you were given.
In my experience, the only brands you really need to steer clear of are Sony and Canon. On the opposite, most korean makers are extremely linux friendly (Brother comes from the top of my mind). Most of the time, for the vast majority of HW vendors, you just need to wait a couple of months before the support comes in a new kernel version. It may be a bit frustrating, but that's not life threatening either.
All in all, linux has far more support for HW than windows to boot (don't forget the huge amount of non-i386 HW like sbus cards for Sun and such), plus you have to factor in the equation that a lot of so called "legacy" HW lose support with new windows release (perhaps because the manufacturer doesn't want to pay the MS tax for a certified driver on an eol'ed product ; even for a last year product, like Canon does routinely with printers). Linux really seldom lose HW support even for extremely outdated cards. So if you have the decent taste to carefully pick your HW from a reputable source (as in 'has provided specs to the FOSS people free of anal NDA'), your investment will be much better protected by linux than by windows. First point.
Second point, when you're carefull (as everybody should be, caveat empteor) to pick only linux supported hardware, you've no need to reboot into windows for a hardware issue ; from scanners to dvb-t usb 'sticks', I've never run into an area of comptuer expansion totaly forgotten by linux.
This is absolutely true. When I was a kid we had a female wire hair fox terrier (well fed, may I add). This dog was very friendly, never bit anyone and let young children use her as a horse subsitute. But she had the nasty habit to dig holes about everywhere (that's where the 'terrier' part comes from, I guess), and once her hole led her to our neighbour's chicken encolusre. She killed 30 of them in less than 5 minutes. Extremely effective. We had to buy all the chicken ;-)
This reminds me of a retrospective fear that nearly made me collapse when I fully realised how close I came to actually die by fire. The previous tenant of the appartement I rent now had thought no better than to hook a 300 liters electrical water heater with *speakers cables* to the mains. I had noticed the wires coiled at the bottom of the fuse box, but I thought it could only be the outside doorbell wiring (honest mistake, I only looked by day and the heater works only at night, plus the only thing I know about electricity is the phone number of a knowledgeable handyman). But some months after moving in, I had to change a fuse by night and touched the wires. They were boilling hot. I'm still shaking.
I agree. I especially loved the pun on Duchamp's monalisa, originaly titled 'LHOOQ' ; in french, this reads "elle a chaud au cul" ("she's horny"). To be dubbed "d3fac3d" is somewhat the icing on the cake.
Because a decapitated guy is perectly OK, of course. I'd really like to have an explanation about that : half of the humanity have a vagina an breasts, which is perfectly natural, why is it less acceptable to display than a mutilated body (which is not obviously un-ntural) ? I really can't get it.
At least, if you had rated this NSFW because self-entertainement isn't of the essence of working, I might have agreed, but all this BS about the human body is really the product of sick minds.
I won't go as far as saying "better than originals", but there's something inside that work that desserves a good mention. Like you, I found the wikipedia one extremely to the point. Most have a "punch line" quality. The /. summary is misleading ; it's not art for the geeks, but it's definitely a work from an arty geek.
It seems we are both telling the same thing, but our conclusions diverge. Maybe because I had to shell out the money from my own pocket (I was a student in those days), I have fond memories of the system itself but not from the hardware bills. May I remind you the price of hard drives before seagate dumped the market of big (2+ Gb) disks with the bigfoot line ? I fail to see how buying a second one just to put the swap instead of adding more memory helped keeping the budget in line.
During holidays, to earn money, I was writing filling stories for a local newspaper (you know, historical topics, things like that). In 1994, the computers used by reporters were ATARI 520ST. Yes, it was already obsolete, but a complete daily edition went out of them day after day. Reporters were craving for PCs with windows. In truth, even if some of them were aware of OS/2 (which I doubt), they wouldn't have dreamed the management could buy them the necessary hardware.
I hear you when you say that OS/2 is sounder than Windows engineering wise. But it needed the same hardware to properly run win 3.1 than win 95 needed natively. So in effect, as soon as win 95 was out, I switched. Not long, though, because after a year I couldn't stand windows quirks anymore and settled for Linux. I owe OS/2 for learning that a computer is not supposed to crash every other day for no reason. It helped me build high expectations from my machine, and it made me realise that Microsft could be outbested by others in the operating system realm. I'm grateful for that.
Don't get me wrong, I was (and still am, albeit non-practising) a huge OS/2 fan. But please. OS/2 indeed could *boot* with those figures, but to *run* was another thing ; *crawl* would be a far better description. And to put things in perspective for the youngest part of the audience, win 3.1 could boot in 1 Mb, and run fine between 2 and 4. 8 Mb was a hefty sum of money to spend back then for the casual hacker. 16 Mb (what warp really needed) would become standard only around 1996, way too late for that poor OS/2. Again, for the benefit of the youngers among us, remember that the vast majority of available software was indeed DOS or Win programs ; why spend roughly twice the price needed to run those same programs under a (superlative, granted) emulator, when you could spare cash by running them under their native environnement ? Just to save the pain of rebooting between crashes ?
Even if you could, you'd certainly enter a world of pain. Plain OS/2 has always been very tricky to install on "everyday" hardware. It doesn't run very well in emulators either because of extensive use of x86 features (ring 2 for instance) that no other OS makes use of. To have a good experience of OS/2 requires in fact a true IBM PS/2 computer, with a lot of memory (a lot means "more than 32 Mb", but we're speaking legacy here, and at the time it was a huge quantity of RAM, and it's unlikely you'd find that much installed in a system of that era - good luck finding more).
This said, OS/2 is a pretty snappy system (given enough RAM), with a good connectivity, and a wonderful true object oriented window manager. DOS compatibility is 'apt' (lots of tweaking ahead), win16 support is better than original ; there is a rare win32 (windows 95) beta layer, never officialy released, don't know if it ever escaped IBM.
I still keep a system with warp 4, but I feel less and less the need to boot it ; as some others mentionned, Linux+KDE makes a good enough OO desktop today.
... Lucifer has announced the launch of a massive advertisement campaign to promote the opening of his new snow park under the brand "Hell Inc."
Easy : quit putting things up there now ;-)
It might seem confusing from the outside, but there's at least some logic in the system. When the post system was created, the main administrative division of France was the departement. You need a map to see those. Departements have a name, and the associated number is the alphabetical rank. There are a couple of exceptions because some departements changed their name later in history but kept the original number (Paris, 75, because the original departement was named "Seine" after the river, now simply Paris because the main town has swallowed evry other town in the departement), some departements were split (corsica was once the single department number 20, but has since become north corsica, 2A, and south corsica, 2B), and overseas departements have their own numbering scheme.
A french zip code (5 digits) begins by the departement number (2 digits), and the next digit stands for the closest administrative town ; the main administrative town (péfecture), always close to the geographical center of the departement, is '0', and 'sous-préfectures' (acting prefectures ?) are 1, 2 , 3... ; the last 2 digits are for all the towns within a (sous-)préfecture range. '00' is a special case meaning 'myself', therefore any main administrative center town (prefecture) is 'departement : XX, 0, 00. Again Paris is an exception the town being so big the last 2 digits are used for the 'arrondissement number', and therefore 75000 is never used.
Thus, any administrative center town of any departement is normally '000' prefixed by the departement number. ie, the main town of Aisne (02) being Laon, Laon has a zip code of '02000'.
Granted, it's not absolutely easy.
Eventualy, you end your life dying. Face it, that's life. But what you're never told is you die *twice*, because save a handfull of really important people for their contribution to History (with capital 'H'), after 50 years everybody will totally forget you.
But if your exit is at least newsworthy there's still a slim chance it won't be forgotten in your own family. The grand father of my grand-grand father (5 generations above me) was the only one we knew by tradition before my mother did some genealogical research. All others above him, at his level, and some under him, were completely lost. But he was remembered because he died kicked by a horse in the head. Not especially funny, but newsworthy.
The Darwin winners of today will have their memories cherished *longer* by *many more people* than those dying a peaceful and natural death.
Think about it. Now, where's my axe, I have a barn to bring down.
That's what I do routinely for relatives ; want a word processor ? Sure, here is my OO.o CD, I'll install it no problem, my pleasure. Oh, you meant MS Office ? I can install it for sure, but you hand me the money first so I can go and buy the boxed version. Find a WHAT ? Nope, sorry, no way, I'm not breaking laws for you. OO.o will do ? Fine, let's go.
So far, all the persons I equiped with OO.o have stuck with it. None have reverted to MS-Office. Maybe they resent me, but that's a proof that they didn't really needed the real thing. And if you ask me, most weren't even needing a full Office suite in the first place. But somehow after a while they grow accustomed to OO.o and wouldn't change for fear of losing documents. And they really get quickly the 'export to PDF' because they're sure that all their contacts will at least read what they typed, with no final-line-jumping-on-a-new-page-depending-on-the-default-printer-driver-choice quirk.
No need to create a new partition. On a traditional disk, the first cylinder is reserved to the mbr, but the mbr lives on a single sector. The cyclinder on today's drives is much bigger, well enough for a nasty bug. That's how lilo works, by the way, and such a virus would nuke it on the spot.