Not having "view codes" makes it impossible do do your job? You can't be serious.
In the early 90s (when most word processing programs were still text-based), two of the best programmers I ever met used to argue over which was better: Word or WordPerfect. One of them pointed out that he liked "view codes", while the other insisted "view codes" was an example of a badly designed user interface. Interestingly, when they both came out with their Windows versions, both programmers agreed Word (for Windows) was better.
Given my experience, I think I'm going to have to disagree with you. At my office, we still have 3 or 4 people using WordPerfect, even though the rest of the 160+ users are using Word. According to them, WordPerfect has some features Word doesn't, and they "absolutely need them."
So blame Microsoft for the confusing use of virtual memory and paging file
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I don't think you can blame them for this, especially when "virtual memory" originally did mean what the OP thinks it does. I'd like to know when the definition changed.
I think I'm going to need to add a comment to that Wikipedia page. I'm not sure when the definition changed, but a long time ago (mid 80s), "virtual memory" did mean "making a program believe it had more memory than there was on the system". At least three different vendors defined it that way: Motorola, Data General, and DEC. I still have the Motorola and DG manuals that say so.
Interestingly, in my experience, a person's computer ability is nearly always inversely proportional to their level of education. I've worked with people who had Master's degrees (in something computer-related) who didn't understand the concept of a character, while the best programmer I've ever met didn't even graduate from high-school. I can only think of one exception to that rule, and I'm pretty sure it was because his BS and MS were from Cornell and Carnegie Mellon, respectively.
Speaking of "sort", does anyone know why the GNU people felt they needed to change the syntax? On Unix, the command would be:
du -s * | sort +0n
That seems like a pretty significant change, for very little - if any - improvement. I know you can set "_POSIX2_VERSION=199209", but that will break scripts written for the new syntax. It's a big pain for those of us who use both Linux and Unix systems.
Sorry, I've got to question the research on this one. I'd love to know when they took that picture, too. I lived in Pittsburgh most of my life, and I've never seen a day that looked even close to that.
Maybe, but the form factor of the machine is perfect for a lot of uses. I wonder how difficult it would be to develop a new motherboard, based on modern components. If you could put together an ultra-low-power ARM CPU, 128 meg, or so, of memory, and a CompactFlash slot for storage, you could run Linux on it. Replace the 25-pin serial port and the printer port with 9-pin serial and USB ports, replace the phone port with an actual modem jack, replace the bar code reader port with a 100Mb Ethernet jack, and you'll have a fully functional computer, perfect for troubleshooting computer hardware in remote places. I'd bet all that would fit into the same box. You might even be able to include wireless.
Of course, I doubt you'd get 20 hours out of 4 AA batteries, then. If you still want that, you'd need to stay reasonably old-school: the same ARM CPU with just a few megabytes of memory. You could probably keep the CompactFlash slot, but you'd almost certainly have to drop down to 10Mb Ethernet, and give up the wireless. You'd also have to write your own operating system (and TCP/IP stack, ouch). It would still be cool, though.
But, the IBM-compatible floppy controller might not be able to handle these Amstrad disks.
If that's a problem, get one of these controllers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CatWeasel. Unless they have a driver already, you'll need to know how to write a program to decode data, bit by bit, but these controllers will read and write nearly anything. I have a MK3, and I was able to get it to read the data on old Ohio Scientific disks.
Now if I could just find a working 8" disk drive...
"I am, and always will be, a pocket-protector wearing NERD!" - Niel Armstrong
I believe Neil Armstrong also said "I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises," so I question whether that's actually true. Interestingly, if you Google that saying, there are a few different versions. It would be nice to know the exact words he said, since many versions leave off the "running around doing exercises" part, completely changing the meaning.
I can't seem to find it now, but wasn't there an article on Slashdot, a few years ago, about some company who thought they could archive data for more than 1000 years on small stone disks? If I remember correctly, they'd etch microscopic pits onto the disks, then cover them over with clear plastic (or maybe glass). If you then put the disks in a sturdy box, they'd probably last forever.
I have a 64-bit laptop that runs Flash on Linux just fine. Admittedly, it uses the 32-bit version of Firefox, but does the 64-bit version really get you anything?
Like you, I believe this is a ploy by Microsoft to get some good publicity. Then it occurred to me: does it really matter? Do people really think that, if Microsoft fully documents all their protocols, open source developers will create tools to talk to them?
Take, for example, Exchange and Outlook. They've dominated the email market for close to ten years now. If you listen to people who say they'd like to switch their email to open source, but can't, the reason they usually give is they need Outlook's calendar capability. Open Source has all the necessary tools (Cyrus/Courier/IMAPd/Thunderbird/Pine/etc.) to perform all the same functions, *except* the calendar. Why is that still the case, after ten years? Does everyone think that, if Microsoft opens their file formats and protocols, that will all change?
Are you sure you belong on this site? Remember: Slashdot is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". If you were actually a nerd, you'd have access to all the porn you could ever want. Why would you want to see breasts that are covered up?
Besides Officemax's Rubberband Man is the most memorable superbowl ad.
While I'll agree Rubber Band Man should be on that list, and a few that are on the list shouldn't be (I mean, come on, what's funny or interesting about the SalesGenie.com or GoDaddy.com commercials?), there's no question the 1984 Macintosh ad is the best, so far, and will probably remain the best for a while. Seriously - the thing was directed by Ridley Scott. Of course, if you actually watched it when it originally aired, it was a lot more powerful.
Maybe if you could be placed in a true time-temporal state
Even if that were possible, think about what it would require. You'd have to record the state and location of every elementary particle in your body, then transmit that information somewhere, and reassemble your body, atom by atom. If you do the numbers, making the very generous assumption that the computer responsible for the process requires one cycle per particle, you'll find there haven't been enough computer cycles in the entire history of computers to transmit a single person. To make things more difficult, scientists don't even have the slightest idea how they might disassemble and reassemble and object composed of more than one elementary particle.
At least we're pretty sure wormholes exist and we know how to use them, once we can make one big enough: just step through.
Can I ask: am I the only person on Earth who thinks the "City on the Edge of Forever" episode of TOS sucked? That, alone, is enough to make me avoid this movie.
Give me "Balance of Terror" or "The Doomsday Machine", any day.
I think he would have taken the place by storm if he'd gone out of character when off his show and dealt with people as a regular person
I think I might agree with you there, but I'd go one step further. On his show, he should cover all the candidates on the campaign trail, just as he normally would, including his own campaign. However, when he's covering himself, he should talk about it like "he can't believe that moron can even run", and "he'll ruin ruin this country, if he ever gets elected." That would be hilarious.
I checked out the documentation on Lucene, and it appears to be designed for searching the documents on a few web servers.
In my situation, I've got a couple dozen servers (mostly Windows, but some Linux), and maybe 8TB of data, mostly in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc. Can Lucene (or Nutch) scale up to something like that? I'd also like it to search Windows network drives. Is that possible?
I thought Coupling (original UK version) was absolutely hilarious...
Holy... ! I was just about to say the exact same thing, word for word (your whole statement, not just the part I quoted). Are you sure you're not a clone of me?:-)
I always thought the whole fork/exec mechanism was a little goofy, but personally, I'd be happy if they made a version of exec() that didn't have any limitations on command-line length. The fact that I may or may not require xargs on a command like "ls a*" in this day and age is ridiculous.
Re:Round 1 over; Now for round 2
on
SCO Loses
·
· Score: 4, Informative
explain to me how Linux was "slowed down" by this?
I used to work for a VAR, and our customers were allowed to choose between several OSes: Windows, AIX, or Linux. Several of our potential customers refused to buy Linux systems and specifically mentioned the lawsuit as the reason. I'd call that slowing it down, a little.
Slashdot Mirror
Not having "view codes" makes it impossible do do your job? You can't be serious.
In the early 90s (when most word processing programs were still text-based), two of the best programmers I ever met used to argue over which was better: Word or WordPerfect. One of them pointed out that he liked "view codes", while the other insisted "view codes" was an example of a badly designed user interface. Interestingly, when they both came out with their Windows versions, both programmers agreed Word (for Windows) was better.
Given my experience, I think I'm going to have to disagree with you. At my office, we still have 3 or 4 people using WordPerfect, even though the rest of the 160+ users are using Word. According to them, WordPerfect has some features Word doesn't, and they "absolutely need them."
Sorry, but I don't believe it.
So blame Microsoft for the confusing use of virtual memory and paging file
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I don't think you can blame them for this, especially when "virtual memory" originally did mean what the OP thinks it does. I'd like to know when the definition changed.
I think I'm going to need to add a comment to that Wikipedia page. I'm not sure when the definition changed, but a long time ago (mid 80s), "virtual memory" did mean "making a program believe it had more memory than there was on the system". At least three different vendors defined it that way: Motorola, Data General, and DEC. I still have the Motorola and DG manuals that say so.
Interestingly, in my experience, a person's computer ability is nearly always inversely proportional to their level of education. I've worked with people who had Master's degrees (in something computer-related) who didn't understand the concept of a character, while the best programmer I've ever met didn't even graduate from high-school. I can only think of one exception to that rule, and I'm pretty sure it was because his BS and MS were from Cornell and Carnegie Mellon, respectively.
Speaking of "sort", does anyone know why the GNU people felt they needed to change the syntax? On Unix, the command would be:
du -s * | sort +0n
That seems like a pretty significant change, for very little - if any - improvement. I know you can set "_POSIX2_VERSION=199209", but that will break scripts written for the new syntax. It's a big pain for those of us who use both Linux and Unix systems.
While I'm sure you're trolling, I feel I should point out that, 1) I agree with you, and 2) this has apparently been fixed, on Linux:
http://agnimidhun.blogspot.com/2007/08/vi-editor-causes-brain-damage-ha-ha-ha.html
Sorry, I've got to question the research on this one. I'd love to know when they took that picture, too. I lived in Pittsburgh most of my life, and I've never seen a day that looked even close to that.
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Maybe, but the form factor of the machine is perfect for a lot of uses. I wonder how difficult it would be to develop a new motherboard, based on modern components. If you could put together an ultra-low-power ARM CPU, 128 meg, or so, of memory, and a CompactFlash slot for storage, you could run Linux on it. Replace the 25-pin serial port and the printer port with 9-pin serial and USB ports, replace the phone port with an actual modem jack, replace the bar code reader port with a 100Mb Ethernet jack, and you'll have a fully functional computer, perfect for troubleshooting computer hardware in remote places. I'd bet all that would fit into the same box. You might even be able to include wireless.
Of course, I doubt you'd get 20 hours out of 4 AA batteries, then. If you still want that, you'd need to stay reasonably old-school: the same ARM CPU with just a few megabytes of memory. You could probably keep the CompactFlash slot, but you'd almost certainly have to drop down to 10Mb Ethernet, and give up the wireless. You'd also have to write your own operating system (and TCP/IP stack, ouch). It would still be cool, though.
But, the IBM-compatible floppy controller might not be able to handle these Amstrad disks.
If that's a problem, get one of these controllers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CatWeasel. Unless they have a driver already, you'll need to know how to write a program to decode data, bit by bit, but these controllers will read and write nearly anything. I have a MK3, and I was able to get it to read the data on old Ohio Scientific disks.
Now if I could just find a working 8" disk drive...
"I am, and always will be, a pocket-protector wearing NERD!" - Niel Armstrong
I believe Neil Armstrong also said "I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises," so I question whether that's actually true. Interestingly, if you Google that saying, there are a few different versions. It would be nice to know the exact words he said, since many versions leave off the "running around doing exercises" part, completely changing the meaning.
I can't seem to find it now, but wasn't there an article on Slashdot, a few years ago, about some company who thought they could archive data for more than 1000 years on small stone disks? If I remember correctly, they'd etch microscopic pits onto the disks, then cover them over with clear plastic (or maybe glass). If you then put the disks in a sturdy box, they'd probably last forever.
Wouldn't you know it... I just lost my mod points. :-(
I have a 64-bit laptop that runs Flash on Linux just fine. Admittedly, it uses the 32-bit version of Firefox, but does the 64-bit version really get you anything?
...doesn't have a lot in common with the process of evolution.
Interesting you should say that. Here's a biologist (who you may have heard of) who disagrees with you):
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/15_misconceptions_about_evolut.php
I'm not a biologist, so I can't say, with authority, one way or another. Just wanted to point out that not all biologists agree.
Like you, I believe this is a ploy by Microsoft to get some good publicity. Then it occurred to me: does it really matter? Do people really think that, if Microsoft fully documents all their protocols, open source developers will create tools to talk to them?
Take, for example, Exchange and Outlook. They've dominated the email market for close to ten years now. If you listen to people who say they'd like to switch their email to open source, but can't, the reason they usually give is they need Outlook's calendar capability. Open Source has all the necessary tools (Cyrus/Courier/IMAPd/Thunderbird/Pine/etc.) to perform all the same functions, *except* the calendar. Why is that still the case, after ten years? Does everyone think that, if Microsoft opens their file formats and protocols, that will all change?
Just asking...
You're gay, aren't you?
Are you sure you belong on this site? Remember: Slashdot is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". If you were actually a nerd, you'd have access to all the porn you could ever want. Why would you want to see breasts that are covered up?
Besides Officemax's Rubberband Man is the most memorable superbowl ad.
While I'll agree Rubber Band Man should be on that list, and a few that are on the list shouldn't be (I mean, come on, what's funny or interesting about the SalesGenie.com or GoDaddy.com commercials?), there's no question the 1984 Macintosh ad is the best, so far, and will probably remain the best for a while. Seriously - the thing was directed by Ridley Scott. Of course, if you actually watched it when it originally aired, it was a lot more powerful.
Maybe if you could be placed in a true time-temporal state
Even if that were possible, think about what it would require. You'd have to record the state and location of every elementary particle in your body, then transmit that information somewhere, and reassemble your body, atom by atom. If you do the numbers, making the very generous assumption that the computer responsible for the process requires one cycle per particle, you'll find there haven't been enough computer cycles in the entire history of computers to transmit a single person. To make things more difficult, scientists don't even have the slightest idea how they might disassemble and reassemble and object composed of more than one elementary particle.
At least we're pretty sure wormholes exist and we know how to use them, once we can make one big enough: just step through.
Can I ask: am I the only person on Earth who thinks the "City on the Edge of Forever" episode of TOS sucked? That, alone, is enough to make me avoid this movie.
Give me "Balance of Terror" or "The Doomsday Machine", any day.
I think he would have taken the place by storm if he'd gone out of character when off his show and dealt with people as a regular person
I think I might agree with you there, but I'd go one step further. On his show, he should cover all the candidates on the campaign trail, just as he normally would, including his own campaign. However, when he's covering himself, he should talk about it like "he can't believe that moron can even run", and "he'll ruin ruin this country, if he ever gets elected." That would be hilarious.
I checked out the documentation on Lucene, and it appears to be designed for searching the documents on a few web servers.
In my situation, I've got a couple dozen servers (mostly Windows, but some Linux), and maybe 8TB of data, mostly in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc. Can Lucene (or Nutch) scale up to something like that? I'd also like it to search Windows network drives. Is that possible?
I thought Coupling (original UK version) was absolutely hilarious...
:-)
Holy... ! I was just about to say the exact same thing, word for word (your whole statement, not just the part I quoted). Are you sure you're not a clone of me?
Versions of fork() and exec()
I always thought the whole fork/exec mechanism was a little goofy, but personally, I'd be happy if they made a version of exec() that didn't have any limitations on command-line length. The fact that I may or may not require xargs on a command like "ls a*" in this day and age is ridiculous.
explain to me how Linux was "slowed down" by this?
I used to work for a VAR, and our customers were allowed to choose between several OSes: Windows, AIX, or Linux. Several of our potential customers refused to buy Linux systems and specifically mentioned the lawsuit as the reason. I'd call that slowing it down, a little.