Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

Maybe not, but it would qualify as *n*x.

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On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 08:57:12 +1100, "Rod Speed" sprachen:

Yes but they'd had 20 years! Prior to that, there was a lot less.

And it's not "a lie". If it is indeed wrong, it's "a mistake", or "an error". Or in fact "an opinion". Switch your brain over from pejorative mode.

Trumpet Winsock wasn't much of a challenge to use, but it was still the days when you had to know what you were doing. Back on good ol'

3.1, where one program going wrong totalled the system. Anyway there's more to networking than it's user interface. In fact they're completely separate.

Windows networking evolved from people using Novell under DOS, and Windows 3.1 would use those same DOS calls. It evolved from there, but isn't particularly revolutionary. And if Novell still existed, they might well have done it better.

Anyway now the entire Internet and most internal networks use IP anyway. Finally, something wins because it's better. That, and the idea of mass-to-mass communication turned out more popular than The Microsoft Network, their version of Compuserve just as Compuserve was breathing it's last.

Apart from renaming "Bookmarks", oh, and bastardising HTML (admittedly started by Netscape for similar reasons), what?

That's because they want to attract new users, who can move over much easily if things work the way they're used to. Not necessarily the best way, and that itself's another plague, locking people into specific UI mindsets. Until recently it had a very different interface, evolved directly from Xerox.

Linux is still a bit too complicated. Not as much as the nightmare of Slackware years gone by, where I was expected to work out the timing in milliseconds of my monitor's electron gun, then edit it into a text file, just to get a frigging picture. Which I never got to work.

The Linux problem is it's written by people who use it, and obviously being the system programmers, know every inch of it. They need to get a bunch of newbies and old ladies in to user-test it, then take some notes. Obviously this doesn't fit in well with their model of not being a corporate behemoth.

I once read that computers crash less the longer you've used them. Basically software is "training" it's users to subconsciously avoid the things that make it go wrong, in the case of more adept users, they barely notice they're doing it. Simpler users keep a notepad.

I think this is related to Linux's main problem. They speak the lingo too fluently, confusing it with English for normal people.

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On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:11:46 +1100, "Rod Speed" sprachen:

It's true, that 95 only used DOS as a bootloader. But in 3.1, drivers for sound, networking, file access and pretty much everything else, were loaded in DOS, and used by Windows through the usual DOS interrupts.

There was the late addition of "32-bit disk access", which stopped the processor needing to flick in and out of Protected Mode dozens of times a second, whenever you needed to access the disk.

The exceptions are perhaps just printers and video.

Talking of protected mode, what was the thing where the PC had some sort of hack to reset the CPU to get back into Real Mode from Protected, and back again? Sounds a pain in the arse to program and keep everything consistent. Especially lots of times a second, flicking the reset line at audio frequencies. Is it still present now, or did Intel do something to the processors?

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"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway, just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts, sorted." #

The 80286 could enter protected mode but not exit it, so the keyboard controller was used to yank on it's reset pin to drop it out of protected mode. The reset code checked some location fr a magic number to distinguish a real power on reset from being dropped into real mode.

It was only the 80286 that had this problem.

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On 22 Jan 2011 23:24:52 GMT, Huge sprachen:

Disappointing lack of source-code comparison, in modern pubs.

Mind I once knocked-up a Roman Arabic numeral converter in C for a student I met in one once. Tried to explain it to her with plentiful notes, no idea. I did quite a nice job for a couple of hours' work. Perhaps it dragged her average up, to compensate for her utter ignorance of what she was doing.

No, I've no idea why there were teaching programming to people who weren't interested.

My mate got to go to a party with her mate, and possibly got off with her. OTOH mine was the better looking, which doesn't really matter when nothing happens. Chicks just don't dig programming skills. I get better results with offers of perversion, or with booze.

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"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway, just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts, sorted." #

Oh, Rod, Rod, Rod, how did someone as dumb as you ever get onto the Internet? I thought most anencephalics died at birth.

Windows *still* hasn't caught up with Xerox. Clearinghouse had capabilities that AD still doesn't. The Windows UI is full of logical inconsistencies (*) that would have had you thrown off the roof at PARC.

(* Why is an LPD printer treated as a local printer?)

Wrong. Previously done by Xerox with XFS. And I imagine there are earlier examples than that.

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greenaum wrote

So your claim is just plain wrong with the most important driver.

No perhaps about it.

Nope. And it never was that bad either.

Didnt need to.

greenaum wrote

For the same reason they teach math and latin to those who arent interested.

greenaum wrote

Nope.

Irrelevant to whether it costs you any MORE to use Linux instead.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt.

Plenty dont.

Nope, I havent paid a cent for it for any PC I have.

Not from me it aint.

Been having these pathetic little fantasys long ?

Huge wrote

And Xerox has been so stunningly successful with the PC that we all swoon at the mear mention of its name.

And Xerox has been so stunningly successful with the PC that we all swoon at the mear mention of its name.

When intel made the 80286 they made the first x86 protected mode, and the egineers were so in awe of its power and utility that they were sure noone would ever want to leave it.

Then IBM made the PC/XT-286 ... and there was a problem.

by the time the 80386 came out it was understood that an exit strategy could be useful.

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On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:55:35 +1100, "Rod Speed" sprachen:

I know. I wasn't aware, for the first couple of months I used it, but now I keep it that way on purpose to annoy pedants. Works great!

Your flaming skillz are rubbish, btw.

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"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway, just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts, sorted." #

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 04:40:19 +1100, "Rod Speed" sprachen:

But more importantly, why ARE you such a douchebag?

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On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:38:46 +0000 (UTC), Roland Hutchinson sprachen:

Still, the ISO have lots of standards, they don't all stick. That's the great thing about standards etc.

Can you have an ISO standard that only one company would be allowed to implement? Or does this mean they're publishing their hidden APIs and file specifications?

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"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway, just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts, sorted." #

On Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:04:28 -0500, Peter Flass sprachen:

They tried to read it but it was in a language noone understands. It isn't really 6000 pages long, just 5 when you actually read it. And it contains 7 previous versions, bits of other standards, and the credit card details of most of the committee.

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"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway, just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts, sorted." #

greenaum wrote

You wouldnt know what a real flame was if your lard arse was on fire.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no requirement that an ISO standard not rely on patented technologies, nor any requirement that a company with patented technologies make them available to implementers. So yes, it's possible to have an ISO standard that only one company can implement.

Of course, OOXML serves as an example of an ISO standard that *no* company has been able to implement at present.

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be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

Dark tendrils are a part of the Windows philosophy, from overly-complex installation procedures to the Registry.

Let's just hope that its name isn't Skynet.

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Is that an ISO standard? I thought it was ECMA...

scott