For Us Geeks

[CommRLock78]

A friend emailed me this today. I don't want to start a platform war with this, but enjoy:
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates vs ???
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I think HAL won by the way, but that just my own opinion .

[Rese249er]

Linux. *nods*

[CommRLock78]

Linux. *nods*

It's pretty clear who the winner is . "...I'll beat your a$$ in chess and Jeopardy...."

[Rese249er]

Yep. Surprised Gates didn't combust from that burn!

[NigelJK]

I suspect that after his QDos defeat he realised there were no losers as he was allowed to carry on.

[Rese249er]

Good point.

[CommRLock78]

I suspect that after his QDos defeat he realised there were no losers as he was allowed to carry on.

Do you mean "Quick and Dirty" OS? I know QDos is related to CP/M, but I don't know how the two relate back to Unix, because it sure seems that Unix had at least some sort of an influence on them (I accidentally typed

Code: Select all

$ dir

into my terminal a couple months back, and I was surprise to see that it listed the contents of the current directory)

[Tricky]

I suspect that after his QDos defeat he realised there were no losers as he was allowed to carry on.

Do you mean "Quick and Dirty" OS? I know QDos is related to CP/M, but I don't know how the two relate back to Unix, because it sure seems that Unix had at least some sort of an influence on them

From http://my.opera.com/Dendiablo/blog/2010 ... ux-and-god

MsDos came along running on an 8 bit system, and used a sort of merger of two prior systems: CPM and Unix, but in a way choosing only the worst parts of each and then violating those parts profusely.

(I accidentally typed

Code: Select all

$ dir

into my terminal a couple months back, and I was surprise to see that it listed the contents of the current directory)

'dir' is generally just 'ls' dressed up differently. 'dir --help' actually displays 'ls' at the top of the help text.

Code: Select all

$ info coreutils 'dir invocation'

Output...

Code: Select all

File: coreutils.info,  Node: dir invocation,  Next: vdir invocation,  Prev: ls invocation,  Up: Directory listing

10.2 `dir': Briefly list directory contents
===========================================

`dir' is equivalent to `ls -C -b'; that is, by default files are listed
in columns, sorted vertically, and special characters are represented
by backslash escape sequences.

   *Note `ls': ls invocation.

[CommRLock78]

Thanks Tricky - sadly the Wikipedia articles on both CP/M and MS-DOS are both bereft of this information. There is no direct connection made in either. The article you linked to is great though, I particularly thought this was funny, in a very sad way:

Anyway, all this confusing stuff like "A:" and "\" and so forth was not the only thing. MS took great pains to make sure that everything MS did was a bastardization of some previous standard. The C language was once very simplistic, but MS made sure that it had to be overlaid with dozens of strange conventions which made Latin seem like baby talk, including the necessity of dipping into assembly language to handle some aspect missing from drivers or the OS.

Just goes to show you what a detriment MS has been to computing in general & .

Sorry Windows folks .

[Rese249er]

I'm not. Just shooting the manure with my neighbor this morning, will be converting his laptop to Ubuntu. I had him at "free virusscan updates and no viruses EVER."

[CommRLock78]

I'm not. Just shooting the manure with my neighbor this morning, will be converting his laptop to Ubuntu. I had him at "free virusscan updates and no viruses EVER."

Always good to hear a conversion story . No viruses in not completely true, but the structure of Linux certainly makes it a lot harder for malware/viruses to get their "foot in the door" - you should warn him about root kits, though.

[Rese249er]

I think that I'm just learning this myself; the install is giving me more problems than I thought it would. Running a bootup malware scan next.

[Cody]

<chortles>

[SwissMäc]

Depends on the time frame you're thinking !
When the world economy dies, and it will die as all the other bubbles before, then you can't run the "Windows Activation". Mac's still work without Big Brother.

Then later, the machines will rise, the Mankind is just too dumb... They don't even can keep clean their own Planet, nor understand how Money works. (Interest on interest is an contradictory systemic anomaly, this fundamental flaw will constitute the escalating disaster, again.)

Humans from Protozoon, Robots from Human, Evolution, Survival of the fittest !

Or the the end of the world is nigh, in 115 Days, 04 Hours, 8 Minutes, 13 Seconds, as the Mayas said. I hope you have enjoyed life.

But I hope to see you all in 116 Days!

"You spend all your time thinking about dying. Like you're going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. That maybe you'd survive."
Doctor Who, "The end of the world"

[CommRLock78]

Then later, the machines will rise, the Mankind is just too dumb... They don't even can keep clean their own Planet

So sad and true.

This is one of my most favorite quotations of all time:

...The workings of nature have been in existance since long before man was around to observe them. Let us now stop, think, and respect that fact. When man finally did arrive, he fell naturally into step with nature and her methods. He didn't know what his part was in the scheme; he only recently has come to recognize the scheme itself. But he learned which plants were good to eat, and which were not. He learned which animals could be tamed, used as food, and even clothing and work sources. Man also learned which plants could be used as medicine, and in what combinations. He learned that some plants affected his mind, as well as his body. An admirable society is one which has realized that these plants are to be regarded with great respect, and not as the means to escape from the drudgeries of mere survival. In a society where all physical [needs] are satisfied, these special plants are then used as an additional stimulus to the process of thinking. And the thinking man is a moderate man, and comes to recongize the absurdity of unnecessary gorging...

From Chuck Pendergast's "Organic Gardening", Published 1971 by Nash Publishing