Posts by Lars

@ 1980s_coder

Those phones (long ago) with the disk you turned with your finger where different in the Anglo-American world and Europe. The shortest distance to turn the disk was 9 in the Anglo-American world and 0 in Europe. Fast and easy to find even in the dark. Or was it the oppiset way, damn if I can remember. The reason for silly differences like these I think is in inflated egos.

The US date format is dumb as hell, at least for a programmer who has to sort dates. Some dumb programming tasks come to my mind around the year 00 with systems that had only two digits for the year.

Re: Economy of France

"Socialism does not work". It's the word socialism that does not work, nor does the word capitalism.

Re: What about the noise

Sorry to spoil this article but the Concorde flew faster than sound and there was complete silece inside. Science is difficult indeed.

Re: Agree. (NOT english???)

@ Lost all faith...Please don't, but you are the first to "swallow hook, line, and sinker" regarding that one sentence. Stuff was built for the love of God and the Farao. Still I have a slight feeling it might have been more about the fear of God, the priests and the Farao.

In the Nordic countries the kings decided the peasants had to build roads for free for the love of the king.

So one can assume they went to work happily singing, praising God and the king. One of those roads went from Stockholm to Saint Petersburg in Russia. It's called the Kings road for some odd reason, However those ungrateful bastards where able to write and it turned out it was all a great pain in the arse, surprise, surprise.

Then there are those who look at all those splendid building, steam engines and such and "sort of" claim we can't build stuff like that any more. In reality there is nothing in the past we could not build to day.

Every Mall every Mac Donald could be built like Taj Mahal, every train station like the Buckingham Palace. We could build much bigger pyramids and steam engines a longer wall than the wall of China, (insert country to surround here).

But we don't and that is because nobody is prepared to pay for that amount of labour.

It's very nice that things from the past are restored and kept for us to enjoy.

Every time there is a vid about London it starts with the glass dick in the sky. What would Joseph Bazalgette or Isambard Brunel think about that building, we don't know but would it not be possible that they might have gone something like - "that's fantastic, I want to build something even bigger".

But the thing is. they wouldn't be able to build it then. The type of steel and glass did not exist in those days, just to mention two problems.

We use modern materials and methods, concrete, steel and glass. Some of it looks like shit but take the Sidney Opera it's built with modern materials and looks OK to me.

As for the "looting" hook, I actually thought it was one of the many Norse words like Law the jury system and things like that but it seems to be much older. Very very old.

Before cotinuing, I belive my kids don't have to answear for my sins, poor kids, I think they belive it too, if you get my drift.

One story that comes to my mind is about a Brittish woman who went to Africa to study Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. To her mild horror those lovely chimps looted foreign families and ate their babies. I used to tell hardcore vegetarians that perhaps our history tells us we might actually need some meat once in a while. But I gave up, there was all that cabbage thrown at me. Looting is old indeed.

As for the comment "I'm also unsure that at the period in question Britain was living on "looted wealth". The height of the Empire was some way in the future."

Sure, I am no expert on that and I don't have a clue about how much foreign aid was sent to India after they had their referendum and decided to join the Empire.

Ah shut up Lars, and no more fishing for some time.

Re: Agree.

Please Flatpackhamster, you have to remember that workers where paid hardly nothing in those days and Britain was living on looted welth. There is another thing I find rather amusing with articles like these.

Soon as guy of inportance is English that will be mentioned but for some odd reason, take Brunel, for instance, not a word about the fact he was French, went to the USA and then came to England.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/04/geeks_guide_brunel_museum/

Joseph Bazalgette was the grandson of a French Protestant immigrant.

No reason to commit suicide, but when we look at all those fantastic things like pyramids and huge chatedrals lets not forget that most of it was built by "slave" labor.

Re: Luvverly

Cheer up creationists with this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6omFJhKr6o

Re: Evidence. - @sisk

"It isn't incorrect history or incomplete science; it is something else entirely." Very much like the tooh fairy.

Re: Shut it you tedious old windbag

@thames

Here is that origial Linux birth sertificate, long format (Finnish standard).

"1991-08-25

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and

professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing

since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on

things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat

(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)

among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.

This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and

I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions

are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

Linus (torv...@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.

It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never

will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. "

And there is more here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.minix/4995SivOl9o/GwqLJlPSlCEJ

As for micro-kernels, start your engines, boys and girls, some day you might have a super computer running a micro-kernel.

Re: So what did YOU do then ?

It's up to you if you use GPL2 or GPL3 or whatever license. Linux is GPL2.

Years ago Linus wrote something like this - it's amazing how many words are needed just to express such a simple thing as - "use this code but if you distribute it tell the version number and if you change the code then show the changes (and let us see if we could use them).

Still more surprising is how much intentional shit and FUD there is regarding the GPL.

Perhaps even more surprising is the amount of companies and people involved in FOSS.

As for Linux on the desktop. Jobs knew very well that he had to build his own shops to compete with Windows. Computer shops gain nothing from selling Linux desktops. It's much easier with Windows, people expect problems (acts of God), reboot, format the damned thing, by a new sound card, anything goes.

If you want Linux on the desktop just install it, it's very easy to day, it was more "fun" years ago.

Re: ingenuity

"will the Cuban government allow free software in?".

I wonder where you got that from?. As far as I remember Cuban hospitals started to use Linux about 15 years ago. I am more concerned about Cuba when they let Microsoft in.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2409808/microsoft-bullied-mps-over-government-switch-to-open-source-standards

Will the USA transform (again) Cuba into a brothel run by gangsters. Look out Cubans.

As for Stallman I have a slight feeling that Darren Pauli is not a great admirer of him as I think it would be hard to find anything more appalling a pic or video to represent him.

He deserves credit for things he did and has worked for, GPL, GNU and things like that, no reason to downplay his part.

It's an other thing that he's probably a bit bitter and perhaps the "looks" are not quite whatever.

But he is often right all the same.

The TTIP is worse than people understand. Companies have always been able to take governments to court but now the Americans want the court to be private, (run by very expensive lawyers) and in the USA.

A government that accepts TTIP hands it's laws and rights to a private court to do what ever money decides.

"They" will also tell you TTIP is old and normal in every trade agreement. But the background is old trade agreements made with "rough" third world countries where companies felt the legal system was non existing.

Now when this is demanded between the EU and the USA one has to assume the EU is considered a rough country (the way Sarah Palin considers Africa a country) or the USA considers itself a rough country, then again there are all those lawyers and perhaps some good businessmen who want to kill all stupid regulations in the EU or/and get some extra money for the effort. Oh, did I forget the money lobby.