6 Nov
2006
6 Nov
'06
8:43 p.m.
" If I had to make the statement, I would say that today's code is a lot
more like the Lisa's than the Mac's."
--
We are living in a very different world. No one but embedded systems people
(and very few of them..) code the way it was done on the original Mac.
Today, you have a product that often has a sub-year lifetime. You put things
out that are just good enough to sell, and move on to the next generation.
No one would buy a PC with the features that could be built with a team the
size of the original Mac team today, using their methodology. The only way
to get a competitive product is to use a lot of other people's code, because
no one is willing to pay for foundation development, only product
differentiation.
I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one of the reasons I'm at the
Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are built today.
7 Nov
7 Nov
4:03 a.m.
Al Kossow wrote:
No one would buy a PC with the features that could be
built with a team the
size of the original Mac team today, using their methodology. The only way
to get a competitive product is to use a lot of other people's code, because
no one is willing to pay for foundation development, only product
differentiation.
I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one of the reasons I'm at the
Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are built today.
It's a very bad thing - it's why most apps (and OSes too) are very
resource-hungry and buggy. Taking someone else's module might speed up time to
market, but that module always comes with a few extra features which you don't
really need, and patching in stuff from all over the place makes it really
hard to keep on top of the bugfixing.
Seems like a shame to me - I'm sure a lot of people would much rather have a
rock-solid app/OS which ran at warp speed, even if they had to wait a little
longer for it.
1:07 p.m.
In article <45504BE9.2030803 at yahoo.co.uk>,
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
It's a very bad thing - it's why most apps
(and OSes too) are very
resource-hungry and buggy.
Only if you pick 3rd-party code that is resource-hungry and buggy.
Open source code, IMO, is often like this unless it is one of the
heavily used apps. Stirling's law still applies, even to open source
code, 95% of everything is crap.
Seems like a shame to me - I'm sure a lot of
people would much rather have a
rock-solid app/OS which ran at warp speed, even if they had to wait a little
longer for it.
They wouldn't be willing to pay that much in wait time, in dollars, or
both. Doing things from scratch and optimizing everything everywhere
as used to be done when machines were expensive and people were
relatively cheap would result in a software product that was
inordinately expensive compared to competing wares. In short, you'd
be so late and so expensive that very few people would buy your
product based on technical superiority.
Users get the quality of software that they demand. The bottom line
is that the average consumer is more sensitive to price than quality.
Commercial software companies have done nothing but satisfy that
preference, just as they should.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
4:52 p.m.
On 7 Nov 2006 at 3:03, Jules Richardson wrote:
It's a very bad thing - it's why most apps
(and OSes too) are very
resource-hungry and buggy. Taking someone else's module might speed up time to
market, but that module always comes with a few extra features which you don't
really need, and patching in stuff from all over the place makes it really
hard to keep on top of the bugfixing.
I don't know--I'm kind of ambivalent on the subject. Old hardware
was generally much less reliable than the humblest modern PeeCee.
And while it seems to be a rule of thumb that doing the same task
requires ever-increasing amounts of hardware resources, consider what
we CAN do with modern systems.
I was reminded of this ever-increasing resources business yesterday
when I was getting a couple of extra systems ready for the Freecycle
crowd. One system happened to be a Cyrix PR233+ Socket 7 Mobo with
32MB of memory and an old 1GB hard drive (a very shaky MTS Champ).
The first surprise was that the installation program informed me that
32MB was insufficient to run installation without first activating
swapping. The second was that 32MB is insufficient to run the
graphical installation script. And the default install required
almost the full GB.
Step back and think about it for awhile--put yourself back 20 years
to 1986 and consider what you could have done with a gig of disk
space and 32 megs of RAM. Think about where such resources would put
you 30 years ago...
So, bloat is everywhere. Probably in 10 years, if I live that long,
I'll be mumbling the same thing about OSes that require 1TB of disk
and 32GB of RAM. :)
Cheers,
Chuck
6:36 p.m.
Old hardware was generally much less reliable than the
humblest
modern PeeCee.
That runs directly counter to my experience.
I run two "peecee" machines and at least a half-dozen Suns (old Suns,
back when Sun still used SBus, and one that goes back to the 68k era).
The two peecees have given me more hardware trouble than all the rest
of the machines put together.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
7:57 p.m.
--- der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:
Who made the peecees? And please describe the
hardware troubles.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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Old hardware
was generally much less reliable than
the humblest
modern PeeCee.
That runs directly counter to my experience.
I run two "peecee" machines and at least a
half-dozen Suns (old Suns,
back when Sun still used SBus, and one that goes
back to the 68k era).
The two peecees have given me more hardware trouble
than all the rest
of the machines put together.
6:48 p.m.
In article <45508F8D.4604.11FBBD2 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
And while it seems to be a rule of thumb that doing
the same task
requires ever-increasing amounts of hardware resources, [...]
I'll dispute that rule of thumb. We are *not* doing the same task we
used to do at all. With increased processing power came increased
expectations. There isn't a single user these days that would put up
with what we called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text,
interview style.
Step back and think about it for awhile--put yourself
back 20 years
to 1986 and consider what you could have done with a gig of disk
space and 32 megs of RAM.
...and no virtual memory, no GPU, no windowing system, not even 256
color graphics much less 24-bit per-pixel graphics. Hell, in 1986
you'd be lucky to have floating-point in hardware.
So, bloat is everywhere.
The biggest bloat is in expectations, not the hardware or software
designed and built to meet those expectations. Just as it should be.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
7:04 p.m.
There isn't a single user these days that would
put up with what we
called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text, interview style.
False, actually; I'm a counterexample. I can and do put up with a
glass-tty interface on occasion. (Add cursor addressing - which I for
one had in 1980 - and I would even call it common for me to use such an
interface.)
Step back and
think about it for awhile--put yourself back 20 years
to 1986 and consider what you could have done with a gig of disk
space and 32 megs of RAM.
...and no virtual memory, no GPU, no windowing system,
not even 256
color graphics much less 24-bit per-pixel graphics. Hell, in 1986
you'd be lucky to have floating-point in hardware. So, bloat is
everywhere.
The biggest bloat is in expectations,
8:20 p.m.
In article <200611080009.TAA11069 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>,
der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> writes:
You're not a user. You're a geek. You don't count! ;-)
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
There
isn't a single user these days that would put up with what we
called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text, interview style.
False, actually; I'm a counterexample.
8:32 p.m.
--- Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
In article
<200611080009.TAA11069 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>,
der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca>
writes:
Not so much so that he bid on Chuck's auction. But
then again he's probably already got a few stashed
away ;)
__________________________________________________________________________________________
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> There isn't a single user these days
that would
put up with what we
> called a "user interface" in 1979
-- scrolling
text, interview style.
False, actually; I'm a counterexample.
You're not a user. You're a geek. You don't count!
;-)
8 Nov
8 Nov
12:46 a.m.
Not so much so that he bid on Chuck's auction.
I don't bid on auctions at all; on the few occasions when I've had
anything to do with auctions, someone else has dealt with the auction
interfacing. (The reasons I don't ebay are legion; I can go through
them if someone really cares, but since I don't expect any significant
number of people to care, I'd rather do that off-list if at all. Some
of them apply to other auction "sites" as well.)
But then again he's probably already got a few
stashed away ;)
I might be able to say, if someone would tell me what's under
discussion. Based on the subject, I'd guess Lisas, in which case no, I
don't think I've ever even used one, much less owned one.
Talk more and pay less. Vonage can save you up to $300
a year on your
phone bill.
Sign up now. http://www.vonage.com/startsavingnow/
No thanks. I am not willing to make my phone service dependent on
house mains power, much less my netlink too.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
1:06 a.m.
On 8 Nov 2006 at 0:46, der Mouse wrote:
I might be able to say, if someone would tell me
what's under
discussion. Based on the subject, I'd guess Lisas, in which case no, I
don't think I've ever even used one, much less owned one.
The auction in question is for a Micro Solutions Compaticard IV.
Cheers,
Chuck
6:57 p.m.
--- der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:
It was really a joke. And a comparison of the type of
people (uber-nerds) that are actually willing to pay
considerable cash for some piece of vintage gear. Yet
I'm of the persuasion that very few of them
participate in a list like this, or any of the other
vintage related discussion boards. Yer darn tootin I'm
thrifty, but to date (except for the few replies as of
yesterday) I'm the person who has spent more on
vintage stuph then anyone I personally know of.
No, Lisas generally have moved beyond the ~$300 mark
these days (working ones anyway). That was a floppy
controller. The auctioneer specified it's operable
w/8" drives. My guess as to why the bidding went that
high - and in reality what other reason could there
have been.
Was that tacked onto the end of my post? Sorry, yahoo
is to blame. I'm getting progressively sick of them,
and in fact want to obtain my own domain and such. If
anyone's got any pointers, please feel free to e-wail
me offlist.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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Not so much so
that he bid on Chuck's auction.
I don't bid on auctions at all; on the few occasions
when I've had
anything to do with auctions, someone else has dealt
with the auction
interfacing. (The reasons I don't ebay are legion;
I can go through
them if someone really cares, but since I don't
expect any significant
number of people to care, I'd rather do that
off-list if at all. Some
of them apply to other auction "sites" as well.) But then again
he's probably already got a few
stashed away ;)
I might be able to say, if someone would tell me
what's under
discussion. Based on the subject, I'd guess Lisas,
in which case no, I
don't think I've ever even used one, much less owned
one. Talk more and
pay less. Vonage can save you up to
$300 a year on your
phone bill.
Sign up now. http://www.vonage.com/startsavingnow/
No thanks. I am not willing to make my phone
service dependent on
house mains power, much less my netlink too. 
2:47 a.m.
On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 22:18 -0700, woodelf wrote:
Richard wrote:
Speaking of which... People used to be amazed that I could count in
hex on my fingers. Remember that? 0... 1... 2 (pardon me, no offense
intended)... 3... 4... 5, and so on.
Peace,
Warren E. Wolfe
wizard at voyager.net
You're not a user. You're a geek. You
don't count! ;-)
Umm... Just in HEX do they count! Nerds are binary!
6:50 p.m.
--- woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
Richard wrote:
? 2 fingers on each hand? 2...excuse me...00000010
piggies on each foot?
____________________________________________________________________________________
Cheap talk?
Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.
http://voice.yahoo.com
You're not a user. You're a geek. You
don't
count! ;-)
Umm... Just in HEX do they count! Nerds are binary! 
7 Nov
7 Nov
7:11 p.m.
On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
expectations. There isn't a single user these
days that would put up
with what we called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text,
interview style.
I'm single;
I'm a user;
I miss the "good old days".
But, other than that, you are right.
8:21 p.m.
In article <20061107160941.X36720 at shell.lmi.net>,
Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> writes:
On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
Nah, by definition noone on this list falls into the noun category of
"user" as I was stating things. Not even me.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
expectations. There isn't a single user
these days that would put up
with what we called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text,
interview style.
I'm single;
I'm a user;
8:37 p.m.
--- Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
In article <20061107160941.X36720 at shell.lmi.net>,
Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> writes:
Nah, by definition noone on this list falls into the
noun category of
"user" as I was stating things. Not even me.
Fine, but how many qualify for the uber-nerd category
(I mean how much more of a nerd is there then someone
who didn't get enough of this crappola when it was
current LOL LOL).
Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200 for a
piece of equipment, software, hardware, paraphenalia,
whatever, that was at least 15 years old? I want to
say 20+, but let's make it easy. And not for
work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one
qualify. oi
____________________________________________________________________________________
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On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Richard wrote:
> expectations. There isn't a single user these
days that would put up
> with what we called a "user
interface" in 1979
-- scrolling text,
interview
style.
I'm single;
I'm a user;
9:04 p.m.
In article <20061108013721.70079.qmail at web61023.mail.yahoo.com>,
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> writes:
Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200
for a
piece of equipment, software, hardware, paraphenalia,
whatever, that was at least 15 years old? I want to
say 20+, but let's make it easy. And not for
work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one
qualify. oi
Guilty as charged, Sir! And by definition, that takes me out of the
category of the lowly user :-).
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
9:29 p.m.
--- Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
Guilty as charged, Sir! And by definition, that
takes me out of the
category of the lowly user :-).
A full confession is in order. Only then can you
receive absolution (but to be honest I'm not really
sure what absolution is LOL. No offence :)...my son :)
Me, I payed nearly $250 w/shipping for a Televideo
Personal Mini PM/16T (I think I got that right). And
I've hardly touched it in probably 1 1/2 years...
Needs an OEM version of Netware 1.0 (I believe) a.k.a
Infoshare. The hard drive may be operational, though
I'm not counting on it. But the floppies are
definately badd :(
____________________________________________________________________________________
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8 Nov
8 Nov
10:58 a.m.
In article <20061108022926.45215.qmail at web61017.mail.yahoo.com>,
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> writes:
--- Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
Um, let's see... $350 for a Beehive terminal.
$1200 for a lot of Tektronix terminals :-)
$500 for a PDP-11/03 w/peripherals
I think those are the only ones where I broke the $200 barrier.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Guilty as charged, Sir! And by definition, that
takes me out of the
category of the lowly user :-).
A full confession is in order. 
7 Nov
7 Nov
9:28 p.m.
Chris M wrote:
Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200 for a
piece of equipment, software, hardware, paraphenalia,
whatever, that was at least 15 years old? I want to
say 20+, but let's make it easy. And not for
work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one
qualify. oi
Not recently, but did so early and often, like a Chicago voter. :-D
Biggest thing I bought expense wise was a Xerox Star for about $3K.
Wife still brings it up whenever I complain she wasted money on yet
another pair of brand new shoes. (She complains that they're not comfy,
I ask her why did she buy uncomfortable shoes, and off we go repeat the
Star discussion.) :-)
8 Nov
8 Nov
3:54 a.m.
On 8/11/06 01:37, "Chris M" <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200
for a
piece of equipment, software, hardware, paraphenalia,
whatever, that was at least 15 years old? I want to
say 20+, but let's make it easy. And not for
work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one
qualify. oi
*raises hand*
I paid a bit more than I was comfortable with for an Acorn BBC Master Turbo,
but it WAS a machine owned by the BBC and used for the creation of titles
and suchlike for the famed BBC Domesday Project in 1985 and therefore one of
less than 20 produced in that format. Sadly I haven't found anyone yet who
can remember what software it used to run its genlock....
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
10 Nov
10 Nov
7:15 p.m.
Chris M wrote:
Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200 for a
piece of equipment, software, hardware, paraphenalia,
whatever, that was at least 15 years old? I want to
say 20+, but let's make it easy. And not for
work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one
qualify. oi
I barely qualify; I spent $440 for an Amiga 4000 Rev B. motherboard in
perfect working order. However, the usage was mostly for "work" (making
a DVD) and not so much "play" (the A500s are for that).
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
11 Nov
11 Nov
8:13 p.m.
--- Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
I barely qualify; I spent $440 for an Amiga 4000 Rev
B. motherboard in
perfect working order. However, the usage was
mostly for "work" (making
a DVD) and not so much "play" (the A500s are for
that).
Being large ignorant of the Amiga and it's
capabilities, I'm wondering why you decided on that
for, presumably, an editing job. Was it the expansion
needed that only a 2000 could offer (as opposed to a
500)? Was a toaster in on the trick?
Again, couldn't a Mac, or some SGI machine have done
the job, or heck even a peecee? I guess it depends on
when you bought this mobo, but $440 could afford alot
in terms of add-on hardware/software, even a possibly
completely different system to do it with.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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8:41 p.m.
--- Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Being large ignorant of the Amiga...
I hate wasting a post for simply a correction, but
that should have read "largely ignorant". But large
and ignorant might work too ( > nearly 6'4")
____________________________________________________________________________________
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12 Nov
12 Nov
2:28 a.m.
Chris M wrote:
--- Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
It wasn't for an editing job, but if it was, your guess at the Toaster
was a good guess but wrong model; the Toaster was usually paired with a
2000 or 3000.
My purpose was to generate realtime multimedia video with the Amiga and
capture it for editing. See www.mindcandydvd.com for details on the
previous incarnation of the project (used PCs); this incarnation is 100%
Amiga output and should be for sale in about 6 weeks.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
I barely qualify; I spent $440 for an Amiga 4000
Rev
B. motherboard in
perfect working order. However, the usage was
mostly for "work" (making
a DVD) and not so much "play" (the A500s are for
that).
Being large ignorant of the Amiga and it's
capabilities, I'm wondering why you decided on that
for, presumably, an editing job. Was it the expansion
needed that only a 2000 could offer (as opposed to a
500)? Was a toaster in on the trick?
7 Nov
7 Nov
7:47 p.m.
On 7 Nov 2006 at 16:48, Richard wrote:
I'll dispute that rule of thumb. We are *not*
doing the same task we
used to do at all. With increased processing power came increased
expectations.
The best thing I can say about Vista is that it's ALMOST as fast as
XP, which is ALMOST as fast as 2000 which seemed to be significantly
slower than NT 4.0, which was lots slower than NT 3.51. Win95 on
the same hardware is a speed demon, even in Win32 mode. Never mind
that 95 doesn't know what to do with much more than 64MB of RAM.
Mind you, Vista wants half a gig minimum of RAM to do its "almost"
job...
User interface to programs is largely the same. Look is a little
different.
Cheers,
Chuck
.
8 Nov
8 Nov
5:20 p.m.
I'll dispute that rule of thumb. We are *not*
doing the same task we
used to do at all. With increased processing power came increased
expectations. There isn't a single user these days that would put up
with what we called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text,
interview style.
COuld you explain why you don't consider me to be 'a single user'?
Because I am using essentially that interface right now (OK, I've got
cursor addressing, what I don't have is windows, icons, or any of that
stuff). And yes, I've used a plain terminal without cursor addressing
(which was around long before 1979 I can assure you).
Incidentally, it's odd you picked that date. It was the year the PERQ was
announced, one of the first machines to haev only a bitmapped graphical
display with no text mode at all.
The biggest bloat is in expectations, not the hardware
or software
designed and built to meet those expectations. Just as it should be.
It's a pity the main expectations that I have -- that the machine should
work, that it shouldn't randomly crash, and that it should be able to be
kept working for as long as I want to use it -- have been totally lost.
-tony
9 Nov
9 Nov
12:56 p.m.
In article <m1GhvmP-000IynC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
COuld you explain why you don't consider me to be
'a single user'?
Already did, generally speaking. For the class of people I called
'users' in that post, noone on this mailing list fits the selection
criteria. Everyone here knows too much. The people here aren't
users, they are experts.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
6:27 p.m.
In article <m1GhvmP-000IynC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
Ah, OK, you're redefining the terms...
To me a 'user' is 'sombody who uses', in this case somebody who uses a
computer. I use computers, I even sometimes use them as the designer
iotended. Theredore I am a user by my drfinition.
And I am certainly not an expert...
-tony
COuld you explain why you don't consider me
to be 'a single user'?
Already did, generally speaking. For the class of people I called
'users' in that post, noone on this mailing list fits the selection
criteria. Everyone here knows too much. The people here aren't
users, they are experts.
7:24 p.m.
In article <m1GiJIf-000IywC at p850ug1>,
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes:
Ah, OK, you're redefining the terms...
Not really. I'm using them in the generally accepted sense. You can
be pedantic and nitpicky if you want, but when anyone in the industry
refers to users, they are not referring to experts, software
engineers, people with computer science degrees, people who collect
old weird hardware, etc.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
10 Nov
10 Nov
2:40 a.m.
[W]hen anyone in the industry refers to users, they
are not referring
to experts, software engineers, people with computer science degrees,
people who collect old weird hardware, etc.
That runs counter to my own experience, which is that a user refers to
one who uses the thing (software, webpage, keyboard, whatever) as its
intended consumers would - whether or not the (putative) user is
capable of dealing with the thing on other levels. Indeed, the phrase
"expert user" is used, while by your definition that would be an
oxymoron.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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12:36 p.m.
In article <200611100743.CAA17214 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>,
der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> writes:
That runs counter to my own experience, [...]
How many times do I have to say it....
YOU'RE NOT NORMAL.
Generalizing to the rest of the world based on your own personal
experience is always hazardous.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
1:05 p.m.
That runs
counter to my own experience, [...]
How many times do I have to say it....
YOU'RE NOT NORMAL.
8 Nov
8 Nov
5:57 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 7 Nov 2006 at 3:03, Jules Richardson wrote:
Step back and think about it for awhile--put yourself back 20 years
to 1986 and consider what you could have done with a gig of disk
space and 32 megs of RAM. Think about where such resources would put
you 30 years ago...
So, bloat is everywhere. Probably in 10 years, if I live that long,
I'll be mumbling the same thing about OSes that require 1TB of disk
and 32GB of RAM. :)
But there's a different between bloat and features that a particular user
*needs*, though. I don't mind vendors piling in features so much - providing
that I get to choose which ones I want installed on *my* system. It's only
bloat when it's unwanted.
Sadly UNIX is going the way of Windows - you get given what comes with an app,
and never mind if you never use 90% of the functionality. OK, that's an unfair
percentage - but I bet that 30% of my most-used apps consist of junk code
which I don't actually need. And that's just the visual cruft that I know
about; I bet there's a lot more under the covers because my apps either
contain functionality also provided by some of the libraries which they
reference, or they require a library which provides extra services not needed
by my system.
Then of course there's all the zillion utilities which I never need - except
that they're there because I have zero idea which ones get used behind the
scenes and there's no tracking of what gets called when, so I don't know which
ones I can safely remove.
So what, broadly speaking 50% or so of stuff installed on my machine is
probably unwanted or unnecessary, but I'm pretty much stuck with it. That's
the Linux picture too - it must be worse for the Windows guys.
cheers
Jules
9 Nov
9 Nov
3:06 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Jules Richardson once stated:
Sadly UNIX is going the way of Windows - you get given what comes with an
app, and never mind if you never use 90% of the functionality. OK, that's
an unfair percentage - but I bet that 30% of my most-used apps consist of
junk code which I don't actually need. And that's just the visual cruft
that I know about; I bet there's a lot more under the covers because my
apps either contain functionality also provided by some of the libraries
which they reference, or they require a library which provides extra
services not needed by my system.
Just try figuring out the absolute minimum dependencies of a modern
application though. For instance, I use Cacti [1] and I *have* installed
that by hand but man, it's a real pain. Cacti requires the use of RRDTool
[2] which itself required a few libraries for manipulating JPEGs, PNGs, and
GIFs, along with a free font support system. Cacti also requires MySQL [3]
so there's *that* app, and SNMP so you can't forget that base of
utilties/library. Cacti, being written in PHP, requires *that* along
with a number of PHP modules (for talking with MySQL, integration with GD,
integration with SNMP and to see the results, you need Apache with PHP
support.
Oh, and cron. Can't forget cron, which runs a PHP script every five
minutes to poll the devices being monitored.
And I've yet to figure out what's required to get USB block storage
devices supported under Linux [4].
-spc (Who has more experience with Cobalt RaQs than he cares to admit)
[1] Network monitoring tool that uses SNMP to make pretty graphs.
[2] A suit of programs/library that is used to store data from a time
series in a fixed-length file (as the data gets older, it gets
resampled into larger time slices).
[3] A monster of a program, but while huge, it's pretty easy to compile
and install (and yes, I've done that too, since pre-built binaries
for one of the architectures we have are hard to come by).
[4] I found it easier to reinstall Linux to get that support than to try
to figure out how to get it working myself. When I first installed
the system, I didn't include USB support since I didn't need it on
the server. A couple of years later though, and our backups are
done to an external harddrive connected via USB. It was quicker for
me to reinstall the OS than to divine the arcane incantations.
13 Nov
13 Nov
6:34 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
That's the Linux picture too - it must be worse
for the Windows guys.
Not my Linux picture. My fileserver has been a 400MB installation of a
commercial distro because I never bothered to install all the graphical
stuff (not needed on a fileserver). And distributions like gentoo let
you easily build your own. Gentoo comes as a <32MB image that boots and
then starts compiling itself, sucking down sources as necessary.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
7 Nov
7 Nov
1:01 p.m.
In article <C17524C0.9D71%aek at bitsavers.org>,
Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> writes:
I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one
of the reasons I'm at the
Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are built today.
I'll say its a good thing, otherwise a PC with an operating system
would still cost $10K, instead of $300.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
2:19 p.m.
I'm not
saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one of the reasons I'm
at the Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are
built today.
I'll say its a good thing, otherwise a PC with an operating
system
would still cost $10K, instead of $300.
4:39 p.m.
In article <200611071921.OAA07952 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>,
der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> writes:
There are at least two PC operating systems that cost
$0 and work
perfectly well [...]
Assuming all I care about with my PC is clone-ware of commercial
software and xterm, yeah, that's useful. Otherwise, its a turd
wrapped in silver foil.
At any rate, you miss my point. Even those "free" operating systems
aren't written in hand-crafted assembly. They are written with
exactly the same techniques and tools used by commercial operating
systems.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
8 Nov
8 Nov
4:51 a.m.
der Mouse wrote:
There are at least two PC operating systems that cost $0 and work
perfectly well on hardware that's available for $0 because the latest
bloatware no logner runs tolerably on it.
To be honest, I think Richard's comment about OSS is pretty fair in general -
there's a *huge* amount of bloat in a lot of OSS. It's nowhere near as bad as
the Windows world, but it's getting worse all the time.
I'm tempted to say that things went bad 2 or 3 years ago when Linux started
really being talked about in the media. Before then, people bought into the
UNIX philosophy of small apps doing one job only (but doing it well) - then
some kind of change happened and we got dragged down the Windows route of
monolithic monsters which were all about features and integration rather than
stability and performance. Prior to that, things were ticking along pretty nicely.
Actually, I don't really mind features so much - but it's *my* system, so *I*
should be the one who gets to choose which ones are installed - it doesn't
matter so much if it's lots of separate programs or not, so long as it's
'tunable'. Maybe what's lacking is that there's no common standard for
communication between 'modules' (whether they be applications, utilities, or
'features') such that users can pick and choose what they want (which sounds
scarily like the distributed systems of old!)
cheers
Jules
I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one
of the reasons I'm
at the Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are
built today.
I'll say its a good thing, otherwise a PC with an operating
system
would still cost $10K, instead of $300. 
9:06 a.m.
At 01:19 PM 11/7/2006, der Mouse wrote:
There are at least two PC operating systems that cost
$0 and work
perfectly well on hardware that's available for $0 because the latest
bloatware no longer runs tolerably on it.
I don't know what's with you retro kids these days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. Now that
the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster.
Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU.
- John
6:40 a.m.
John Foust wrote:
At 01:19 PM 11/7/2006, der Mouse wrote:
I suspect we wised up to the fact that, at least in the PC world, every
upgrade has a shelf life of about six months before it's considered obsolete.
Some of us have better things to spend our money on (like trips to the
dumpster and back ;)
cheers
J.
There are at least two PC operating systems that
cost $0 and work
perfectly well on hardware that's available for $0 because the latest
bloatware no longer runs tolerably on it.
I don't know what's with you retro kids these days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine.
2:54 p.m.
On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, John Foust wrote:
I don't know what's with you retro kids these
days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. Now that
the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster.
Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU.
example:
I want to type a grocery list
start a RS M100, Coco, M1, Apple][, Osborn, N*, and a "modern" machine.
I can be finished typing, and printing before the "modern" machine has
finished booting.
4:34 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 2:54 PM
Subject: Re: lisadraw
On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, John Foust wrote:
And I would have grabbed my pencil and a pad of paper before you could
figure out which surge strip powered which computer and printer. Do people
really need a computer for a grocery list? I find looking through the fridge
and cupboards with a notepad in hand to much faster.
TZ
I don't know what's with you retro kids
these days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. Now that
the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster.
Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU.
example:
I want to type a grocery list
start a RS M100, Coco, M1, Apple][, Osborn, N*, and a "modern" machine.
I can be finished typing, and printing before the "modern" machine has
finished booting.
4:47 p.m.
On Wednesday 08 November 2006 16:34, Teo Zenios wrote:
And I would have grabbed my pencil and a pad of paper
before you
could figure out which surge strip powered which computer and
printer. Do people really need a computer for a grocery list?
Yes.
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
4:48 p.m.
Same here..., If I want a sine table, an M102 can produce it before my PC
is booted..., *long* before, AND, I could do while I'm walking around, If I
wanted to..
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 2:54 PM
Subject: Re: lisadraw
On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, John Foust wrote:
I don't know what's with you retro kids
these days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. Now that
the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster.
Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU.
example:
I want to type a grocery list
start a RS M100, Coco, M1, Apple][, Osborn, N*, and a "modern" machine.
I can be finished typing, and printing before the "modern" machine has
finished booting.
9 Nov
9 Nov
12:54 p.m.
In article <20061108115207.N80072 at shell.lmi.net>,
Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> writes:
example:
I want to type a grocery list
start a RS M100, Coco, M1, Apple][, Osborn, N*, and a "modern" machine.
I can be finished typing, and printing before the "modern" machine has
finished booting.
This isn't even an example that requires an electronic devices. Get
out a pad of paper and a pencil and I can be done faster, too.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
10 Nov
10 Nov
7:19 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, John Foust wrote:
Well, take the Apple ][ off the list and I'd agree with you. It takes
at least a full minute to boot any useful word processor on an Apple.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
I don't know what's with you retro kids
these days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. Now that
the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster.
Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU.
example:
I want to type a grocery list
start a RS M100, Coco, M1, Apple][, Osborn, N*, and a "modern" machine.
I can be finished typing, and printing before the "modern" machine has
finished booting. 
8 Nov
8 Nov
4:09 p.m.
Rumor has it that John Foust may have mentioned these words:
At 01:19 PM 11/7/2006, der Mouse wrote:
Because back then, we could actually *use* the speed!
There are at least two PC operating systems that
cost $0 and work
perfectly well on hardware that's available for $0 because the latest
bloatware no longer runs tolerably on it.
I don't know what's with you retro kids these days. Back in the
old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. Now that
the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in inflation-adjusted
dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster.
Because it's *kewl.* ;-)
Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU.
Bzzzt. Wrong answer.
TEXT on my Tandy 200 starts one heckuva lot faster at 2.4Mhz than
OpenOffice on my 2.4 GHz.
OK, now you're gonna start crying "Straw-man argument."
a) I don't care ;-) ;-) and...
b) Don't you mean "programs of roughly equal size will start more quickly
on systems with a faster *hard drive* and more memory?" CPU speed means
very little nowadays...
Even then, I'd much rather have access to a stripped-down text-only 256K OS
that can boot from the flash rom instantly instead of the rigamarole that
exists currently. Why don't I shut up and write it? x86 assembly sucks. ;-)
That translates back to the first sentence I wrote: Nowadays, you really
can't *access* the speed of the CPU; too many other bottlenecks get in the
way... and reducing those bottlenecks (low latency RAM, 15K RPM hard
drives) *does* cost a ton of money...
IMHO & all that jazz....
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com |
7:03 p.m.
TEXT on my Tandy 200 starts one heckuva lot faster at
2.4Mhz than
OpenOffice on my 2.4 GHz.
"Wordstar on an 4.077 MHz 8088 could keep up with my typing; WinWord
under Windoze on a 300 MHz PII can't." --Seth Breidbart
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
11 Nov
11 Nov
12:29 a.m.
der Mouse wrote:
While the point is taken, his windows configuration must have been
seriously broken for the word processor to not be able to keep up with
him. That sounds like he was shoehorning windows 2000 into 64MB of ram
or something.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
TEXT on my
Tandy 200 starts one heckuva lot faster at 2.4Mhz than
OpenOffice on my 2.4 GHz.
"Wordstar on an 4.077 MHz 8088 could keep up with my typing; WinWord
under Windoze on a 300 MHz PII can't." --Seth Breidbart
8:13 a.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
der Mouse wrote:
While the point is taken, his windows configuration must have been
seriously broken for the word processor to not be able to keep up with
him. That sounds like he was shoehorning windows 2000 into 64MB of ram
or something.
Hmm, not so sure. This laptop's running at 266MHz with 192MB of memory and
Openoffice under Linux really struggles[1]; I could believe that a 300MHz
machine saddled with the extra baggage of Windows could have problems.
[1] It copes if I don't run anything else other than the desktop environment -
but for 'typical' usage where I might have a usenet client or web browser or
Thunderbird open it has real issues.
cheers
J.
--
And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas
Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd?
TEXT on
my Tandy 200 starts one heckuva lot faster at 2.4Mhz than
OpenOffice on my 2.4 GHz.
"Wordstar on an 4.077 MHz 8088 could keep up with my typing; WinWord
under Windoze on a 300 MHz PII can't." --Seth Breidbart
12 Nov
12 Nov
2:25 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Hmm, not so sure. This laptop's running at 266MHz
with 192MB of memory
and Openoffice under Linux really struggles[1]; I could believe that a
Stop right there. Openoffice is the source of that bloat; not a good
example for blaming the OS in the previous example. Run ps to see how
bad the damage is.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
13 Nov
13 Nov
6:55 a.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
Jules Richardson wrote:
Oh, I know it is - but so is MS Word, so it seems fair to compare one bloated
word processor with another :-) My point was really that I can believe that a
'modern' word processor could bring a circa-300MHz machine to its knees easily
enough.
So I'm not really blaming the OS at all, just the wp software (except that in
the Word case, it's still Microsoft's fault :-)
cheers
Jules
--
And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas
Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd?
Hmm, not so sure. This laptop's running at
266MHz with 192MB of memory
and Openoffice under Linux really struggles[1]; I could believe that a
Stop right there. Openoffice is the source of that bloat; not a good
example for blaming the OS in the previous example. Run ps to see how
bad the damage is.
5:48 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Oh, I know it is - but so is MS Word, so it seems fair
to compare one
That's a misconception. I am not a Microsoft sympathizer :-) but I
don't like incorrect information perpetuated. On my Office 2003, firing
up Office and loading a 30-page document, I can see it is currently
using 32MB resident with 16MB stored in virutal. 48MB is pretty darn
good considering the features I'm getting, and it's less than OpenOffice
uses.
bloated word processor with another :-) My point was
really that I can
believe that a 'modern' word processor could bring a circa-300MHz
machine to its knees easily enough.
All my 300MHz-era machines have at least 192MB of RAM, so I can't see
that happening :)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
8 Nov
8 Nov
4:30 a.m.
Richard wrote:
In article <C17524C0.9D71%aek at
bitsavers.org>,
Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> writes:
Of course if every PC cost 10k then buyers would make darn sure they learned
how to use it properly, rather than the current situation of buying one and
sticking it on the 'net with no kind of firewall or virus protection.
Giving complex tools to the masses when they expect to be able to just jump
right in and use them with no training whatsoever seems like a pretty insane
plan.
I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is
one of the reasons I'm at the
Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are built today.
I'll say its a good thing, otherwise a PC with an operating system
would still cost $10K, instead of $300.
11:01 a.m.
In article <4551A3B1.4050706 at yahoo.co.uk>,
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
Of course if every PC cost 10k then buyers would make
darn sure they learned
how to use it properly, rather than the current situation of buying one and
sticking it on the 'net with no kind of firewall or virus protection.
Based on my experiences with users in 1979, I would disagree. Cost
and intelligence have no correlation at all. I know plenty of stupid
people with lots of money to spend.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
2:42 p.m.
On 8/11/06 09:30, "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
Of course if every PC cost 10k then buyers would make
darn sure they learned
how to use it properly, rather than the current situation of buying one and
sticking it on the 'net with no kind of firewall or virus protection.
Then I'd only have half a job to do :) Lets face it, people's ignorance
keeps a lot of us employed as specialists!
Giving complex tools to the masses when they expect to
be able to just jump
right in and use them with no training whatsoever seems like a pretty insane
plan.
Thanks billg!
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
4:40 p.m.
Giving complex tools to the masses when they expect to
be able to just jump
right in and use them with no training whatsoever seems like a pretty insane
plan.
The public considers it to be a defect if operation is more complicated
than a toaster.
remember what Strousstrup said about phones.
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