GEOS now Breadbasket
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Continuing the discussion from TIL （ａｂｏｕｔ ｔｈｅ Ｄａｒｋ Ａｒｔｓ ｏｆ ＨＴＭＬ）:
TIL that GEOS is still being developed and sold commercially. I guess it really is true that nothing ever truly dies in the software market. It seems to be aimed at being an operating system (an actual OS, rather than on top of something else like it used to be) and office suite that schools can use on older hardware that isn't up to running later versions of Windows.
Never used it, personally, so I have no idea if it is good or not.
OK, I get that it could be cool to stick it on some ancient stuff, but:
http://www.breadbox.com/products-ensemble.php
Clock includes these exciting features: 4 different looks for clock face Show seconds Set the color of text Set the size of text 12 or 24 hour format Move anywhere on the screen
Oooh....exciting! Well, I guess it's technically more exciting than what's-his-name's clock.
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Isn't GEOS Operating System redundant?
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I hope the person who wrote the word "exciting" in that copy felt bad about it.
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You know, there just isn't enough of that sort of sarcasm in ad copy these days...
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640k minimum RAM (2-4Mb or more recommended) 15Mb free hard disk space
It is impressive that they can run anything with those specs.Isn't the image in this document itself bigger than 640kB?
http://www.breadbox.com/screenshots/en/WriterSS.PNG
Also, do you see the android battery and WIFI icons at the bottom?
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Also, do you see the android battery and WIFI icons at the bottom?
"SCHOOL SUITE RUNNING ON ANDROID TABLET"
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Ensemble includes all of our internet clients: Web Browser, Email, FTP, IRC Chat, Newsreader, Instant Messenger, HTML Editor and our Dial-up configure utility. However, we offer "dial-up" only and do not include or support any broadband capabilities at this time
They actually sell this product. For $70. In 2015.
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an actual OS, rather than on top of something else like it used to be
Unfortunately not:
@http://www.breadbox.com/products-ensemble.php said:Software requirements:
MS-DOS 3.3 or later
PC-DOS 3.3 or later
DR-DOS 5.0 or later
Caldera Open DOS
Novell DOS 7
Datalight ROM DOS 5.0 or later
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT*, Windows 2000*, or Windows XP*
Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 8.1 (requires use of DosBox emulator)
OS/2 version 3 or later*
Linux with a DOS emulator (for example,DosEMU)*
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It requires 10 DIFFERENT implementations of DOS on the same machine to run?
Efficient.
Also: the machine has to simultaneously be running Win32, WinNT, OS/2 and Linux. That's quite a setup.
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Now we know why it costs $69.95.
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Ah, I'd missed that. Blech.
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Linux with a DOS emulator (for example,DosEMU)*
I can just imagine someone installing Ubuntu on a bunch of PCs, getting all the hardware to work right, then running this crap on it in full screen.
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Quick, someone get in touch with the developer of this thing. They probably have lots of stories to share here.
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Clock includes these exciting features:
Aw damn, Windows Clock lost almost all of these features after Windows 2.0 came out...
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And here is my earlier thread about the same topic.
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I bet Linux has some "xclock" program with at least 20 different looks for clock face, can show the time in 10 different formats, including at least 3 from sci-fi universes, and customizable color and sizes.
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including at least 3 from sci-fi universes,
Ah, now I remember where that toys went!
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Also, do you see the android battery and WIFI icons at the bottom?
TRWTF is that they run Android on that tablet that has like 100 times the resource requirements if you're careful about it, then (probably) emulate a stoneage Intel CPU on an ARM-or-something to finally run their 80s OS on it, and they have the gall to call this "efficient".Unfortunately this is the same kind of thinking that leads to many "solutions" for third-world problems from people who have don't have the slightest idea about what the problem actually is and refuse to think it through because of cognitive dissonance. Bill Gates sees malaria is a problem and he knows a thing or two about technology so he comes up with these "mosquito SDI" devices that are technologically really cool but a completely ludicrous idea for the African bush. This breadbox guy just got stuck with 80s technoogy because he never learned anything else and now he's too old, so he imagines some situation where poor people could be stuck with a letftover 386 but just happen to have $70, a credit card and a working postal service to get his software
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Bill Gates sees malaria is a problem and he knows a thing or two about technology so he comes up with these "mosquito SDI" devices
FIRST. FUCKING. SENTENCE.
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From the Wikipedia Article:
...The device works by using infra-red light-emitting diode (LED) lamps on a fence post to create a field of light. This field of light reflects from retroreflective material on another fence post, much like that used on roads and highway signs, and bounces back to its source. This field of light is monitored by charge-coupled devices (CCDs) similar to the ones used in consumer digital cameras. These cameras are situated on both fence posts and detect shadows in the light between the posts. Once an insect is detected, a non-lethal laser is fired at it. This non-lethal laser is used to determine the size of the insect... ...these determining calculations are done using a custom image processing board using software written specifically for this application [Ed. This is a Bill Gates thing]. Once the software confirms that the insect is of the targeted species and gender, a safety check makes sure that nothing is in the way [Ed. LOL] of the laser and the mosquito. Once this safety check is completed, the lethal laser is given permission to shoot...
What could possibly go wrong?
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This breadbox guy just got stuck with 80s technoogy because he never learned anything else and now he's too old, so he imagines some situation where poor people could be stuck with a letftover 386 but just happen to have $70, a credit card and a working postal service to get his software
Yes, but can it run SSDS from a CD? If not, it's useless to me!
Filed under: Does anyone else want to start a repo for SwampyOS on GitHub?
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xclock --help Usage: xclock [-analog] [-bw <pixels>] [-digital] [-brief] [-utime] [-strftime <fmt-str>] [-fg <color>] [-bg <color>] [-hd <color>] [-hl <color>] [-bd <color>] [-fn <font_name>] [-help] [-padding <pixels>] [-rv] [-update <seconds>] [-display displayname] [-[no]render] [-face <face name>] [-sharp] [-geometry geom] [-twelve] [-twentyfour]Funny, xclock is still shipped on the base install of Ubuntu... in 2015... wonder who maintains that.
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so he imagines some situation where poor people could be stuck with a letftover 386 but just happen to have $70, a credit card and a working postal service to get his software
The particularly ludicrous part? For desktop systems, simply as a matter of numbers (i.e., without considering the number of systems that are still in working order), in 2015 it is easier to find equipment from 2005 and later than it is to find equipment from prior to that, since up to that point the number of systems sold in each hardware development cycle doubled.
Once you take into account the loss of equipment to failure, damage, disposal, etc., you quickly get to a point where your chances of finding a working 25-year-old computer are vanishingly small. You would be better off selling that 386 to a collector on eBay (remember, we're assuming that you have a network connection and can afford shipping) and using the inordinately high sale price to purchase three newer computers.
As for mobile hardware... yeah. The funny - in the sense of 'haha, this world is a fucking joke' - thing is, there are parts of the world where it is easier to get an iPhone 6 than to get clean water. In countries like Ecuador and Kenya, smartphones have become some common that they are moving to digital currency because it is easier for them to get money from place to place by the network than in person - as in, actually delivering cash money to some remote village would be problematic, but the local people already have phones and electrical generators to keep them going for at least part of the day.
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Same with xeyes, I think?
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Oh yeah, the whole package is there:
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Confirming it upstream on Debian.
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That totally convinces me to switch!
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Thanks now I'm hungry.
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I clicked around the find the "this site is preserved for historical research" blurb. Instead, I found
Note: This SDK has been tested on Windows NT with Borland C++ 4.5 on older PCs running at less than approximately 1 GHz. We have heard that some developers have made some modifications to allow it to work on Windows XP, but we have not tested this configuration.
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Funny, xclock is still shipped on the base install of Ubuntu... in 2015... wonder who maintains that.
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2012-08-23 Don't rely on being able to set tab stops. Eric S. RaymondDamn it! Gamergate again! Discriminating against tabs this time!
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Wow, it's actively maintained indeed.
I think this just sums up a lot of things about open source.
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THIS IS THE MOST SATISFYING THING EVER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw
So what if a baby or two get blinded?
FUCK MOSQUITOES! I WANT TO SEE THE FUCKERS BURN!
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"Malaria, a disease spread through tropical regions."
Like North Korea!
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Bill Gates sees malaria is a problem and he knows a thing or two about technology so he comes up with these "mosquito SDI" devices
Bill Gates didn't come up with that.
that are technologically really cool but a completely ludicrous idea for the African bush.
Yeah well they were revealed at a TED Talk, so of course they're useless.
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FIRST. FUCKING. SENTENCE.
What's your point? That the idea wasn't Gates'? Big fucking deal, in fact it would have surprised me if it had been his. My point was that he thought this was an idea with practical potential, whoever had it first.
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I use twm without a desktop environment so xclock is a necessity for me
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@LaoC said:
that are technologically really cool but a completely ludicrous idea for the African bush.
Yeah well they were revealed at a TED Talk, so of course they're useless.
I disagree that they are useless. You don't need to catch every last mosquito to eradicate Malaria. Mosquitoes are born Malaria-free and must first ingest it to transmit it to another human host. Lowering the life-span of mosquitoes will prevent Malaria from spreading, statistically speaking. It is qualitatively different from netting which doesn't kill the parasite.
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Once you take into account the loss of equipment to failure, damage, disposal, etc., you quickly get to a point where your chances of finding a working 25-year-old computer are vanishingly small. You would be better off selling that 386 to a collector on eBay (remember, we're assuming that you have a network connection and can afford shipping) and using the inordinately high sale price to purchase three newer computers.
Definitely. And the stuff is ubiquitous. I have a hard disk cable in my desktop that I found in a P4 box someone had thrown away—in the fucking Galapagos islands. These days my son wanted to build a robot. He probably imagines whipping up an Iron Giant from trash but I wanted to show him something anyway, so I got an Arduino and a stepper module. After spending a while trying to find someone who would sell me a stepper motor in Laos, I found one in an old laser printer literally in the curb. If you want something like a Core 2 Duo or so here, working hardware is a lot more expensive than in Europe, but even P4s are virtually free.
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I disagree that they are useless. You don't need to catch every last mosquito to eradicate Malaria. Mosquitoes are born Malaria-free and must first ingest it to transmit it to another human host. Lowering the life-span of mosquitoes will prevent Malaria from spreading, statistically speaking. It is qualitatively different from netting which doesn't kill the parasite.
Some estimate of the number of mosquitoes on earth I read was in the range of 1016; even if you only had to deal with 1% of those because they are near enough to inhabited areas, that's quite a few. Assuming the systems were up to that job: the argument they brought forward in that TED talk was that you couldn't just hand out cheap mosquito nets was that poor people would misuse them for fishing or something. If we're talking this level of poverty and ignorance, I see many ways to misuse a high-tech device like this. From selling it as-is to China to ripping out the solar cells (I hope it runs of those, otherwise it's doomed from the start in places where it's most necessary) and running your radio on them, people are very creative.
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It was more a dig at TED Talks than that specific technology, but sure why not take it dead-seriously.
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Sometimes a very small change can turn an epidemic into a rare disease. As far as I understood Malaria needs to develop before a mosquito can transmit it. This means that only those mosquitoes who make it to a second human after laying their first batch of eggs will potentially infect anybody. That means at most one out of ten mosquitoes is dangerous, the number is probably not even one in a hundred even in areas where Malaria is endemic.
Malaria needs their carriers to live long and the devices work against that. In areas where Malaria is barely endemic running a few of those devices could be just enough to get rid of the disease even if the impact on the mosquito population is negligible.
Of course the problem might still be too large to tackle. I just think that given the prevalence of cell phones, if the device can be deployed on a comparable scale, it could swap the odds in a lot of places. And that's a huge if, because if we could do anything on the scale of mobile deployment, the impact would be huge
so meh?but sure why not take it dead-seriously.
Hey my job requires me to be very pessimistic about the future, that's just part of programming. For recreation I prefer to be optimistic
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twm
Old School! Yay!
Mind you, I've not used twm for a long time now. It was a nice little WM blighted by asinine default bindings…
Mosquito laser - Wikipedia
