Posts by Peter Simpson 1 1443 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Motif window manager was my favorite. I think I even *purchased* a copy to run on an early Linux release.
I'm pretty sure that was pre-Win95. Before that I had run it on my Sun workstation.
I notice nobody has brought up the window managers or "root menu" on Unix systems. Linux didn't (necessarily) want to look like Win95, it wanted to look like Unix. At least, that's why I started using it.
"Intelligence was more use to bomb the launch sites in Northern France etc"
For which I happen to have copies of aerial reconnaissance photos. I give those photointerpreters credit: I can't find the damn sites. "No Ball" missions, I believe they were called.
Those WWII bomber crews must have had trouble getting into the air, what with the weight of their big brass ones and all.
//The beer's for them (and all the others) on Memorial Day, and especially for my friend Louis Paltrineri, radio operator on a B17, shot down and ended the war as a POW...thank you.
Sure sounds like it, but here's the scoop, from the "Hawk" himself:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html
"Speech Synthesizers (3 copies):
Manufacturer - Speech Plus (Incorporated 1988, Mountain View, CA)
Model - CallText 5010"
and more, from that unimpeachable source, Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADECtalk
Commercial users want stability and reliability. They don't want the latest whizz-bang UI, or tiles, or widgets. They want computers on the desks of their employees to run whatever software they need to run to do their jobs, with minimal support requirements. Don't go changing things, just for the sake of changing them. That just costs us more money in lower productivity, while our employees learn how to use the new features at our expense.
Is this so hard for Microsoft to understand? Just give us something that works and will be supported for "a while", the longer the better. Of course, if it's robust and resistant to malware, all the better, but perhaps that's a bridge too far...
I'm from the school that says:
"If it works, DON'T FIX IT!"
The UI used on XP has been my interface to Windows for many years. I have grown used to it, and I use it to efficiently do what I need to do on my Windows machine. Now, in the name of "delivering what users want", Microsoft feels they must radically alter the UI I have grown used to. Not once (ribbon), not twice (Win 7), but THREE separate times (Win 8). What was initially an annoyance that could be handled, has become a constant barrage of UI changes, some minor (Win 7 has the "show desktop" button on the far right, as opposed to the far left in XP), some major (the ribbon -- no, I don't like it), but all without the option of going back to what was working fine for me in the first place.
It's enough to make one wonder if Microsoft is TRYING to alienate their customers.
The real question is: "Why can't we have both ribbon AND traditional menus?"
Given that there are different types of users and strong feelings on both sides, why do Microsoft (and Canonical -- sadly, Linux isn't free of this silliness either) feel that it must be "their way or the highway"?
And, as long as we're bitching, go ahead and move the "show desktop" button from the far left (XP) to the far right (Win7), if you feel the aesthetics of your new OS demand it, but for heaven's sake, make it so I can move it back to where it has been for the past umpty-ump years I have been using XP, if that's what I want to do!
Honestly, this change of UI for the sake of change, with no possibility of user configuration is beginning to annoy me!
He's not just a Republican, he's the poster child for the "party of stupid"
There are signs that the Republicans are starting to believe that there might not be an inexhaustable supply of older wealthy white guys. One by one, they are beginning to understand that the conservative wing of the party isn't resonating with the majority of US voters.
But Lamar Smith stands proudly for the old ways.
"The date was for the Unix version but I couldn't find that one easily..."
Funny you should mention that. I went through this same experiment about a year ago, when I found and resurrected an SGI Indigo here at work. It had Netscape Navigator, and my results were pretty much the same as yours: very few sites opened, many caused the browser to go down in (virtual) flames.
Old UNIX systems are cool...this one was being used as a footrest until I spent close to $200 on adapters to allow use of PS2 keyboard and mouse, VGA display and twisted pair Ethernet. The payoff was a classic /etc/passwd file with usernames of people long gone from the company (but who I knew, either personally, or by reputation) and lovely graphics demos. Loads of un for the idle mind.
"The FAT file system for one is a native part of Android."
Do you want to know how I know you are completely ignorant of how an operating system works?
No file system is "native" to any OS - they're bolt-on appendages, and Android can support many, of which FAT is but one.
FAT is a file system structure, of which there is a dazzling variety. Android and all other operating systems support FAT simply because it is a defacto standard, having been the original MS-DOS file system. So if you want to read and write files to a storage device, FAT is the "common denominator" format. It is in no way innovative or patentable, as there were many, similar file systems being used at the time it was chosen for MSDOS.
"And you think your mac isn't already being broadcast over the net? along with your IP address????"
Not necessarily. The MAC address of the transmitter is going out, but that may not be your MAC address (if your transmission is being repeated, for example).
MAC addresses aren't usually passed beyond the first router. So if you're going through some kind of access point, the MAC that goes out is that of the access point, not the one of your computer. Of course, you may own the access point or router, so in that case, it would be "your" MAC address, but it would be lost (actually, replaced) as the packet goes through the cable company's router.
"It was a lot easier to get on with than the CDC-6600 (aka Cyber 74) on which I did my first computer practicals."
My (required) assembly language course would normally have been on PDP-11s in the Computer Science lab. As EE students, we were guests, which meant we would get secondary access (i.e.: early morning) to the machines. But the semester I was to take the course, we had a one-time opportunity to use the newly installed Cyber-74. The course was taught by a guest lecturer, a CDC software engineer we got as part of the machine purchase (actually, I think we go it used when someone else upgraded).
Anyhow, I learned assembly programming on a machine with a 60 bit word, hardware floating point and was introduced to the "count bits" instruction. Totally useless to me in my future career, but fun, nonetheless. As was watching the vector graphics operator's console and distributing the contents of the card punch chad box among the underwear of a particularly obnoxious neighbour in my residence hall.
As a graduate student, I was able to take the PDP-11 assembly language course during a summer job at Digital, so I didn't miss out.
Worse....the GPS automatically detects your location and transmits anything interesting you see straight to the People's Committee for Industrial Espionage in Beijing. No more having to send "students" who get caught trying to board planes with one-way tickets and briefcases full of documents.
This looks like a good read.
There is another, similar book. I have a PDF at home and will post the details. The author was somewhat of a "cowboy chemist". He started a chemical company when there were no regulations and left behind him a trail of Superfund sites. It's an interesting and exciting read...you come away from it wondering how he lived long enough to write the book.
Didn't get the point of the video in the article. I find I'm totally unable to mentall construct a sequnce of events when those events are presented to me in random order, like they are in the video.
Maybe I'm just not the target market...or maybe I just don't feel like trying to pass a Google employment test when I'm watching a video...
I recommend to my "clients" that they go to geeks.com or someplace like that, and buy a refurb Dell office machine (but NOT the ultra-small form factor ones!). When they say something about the Dell Inspiron they saw on sale at Best Buy for only $399, I bring up the page with Latitude laptops for $250 and tell them they're older but they will have far fewer problems with them. No complaints yet.
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