Re: [tlug] Re: [OT] Say _no_ to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 09/07/07, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:

> Josh Glover writes:
>
>  > > Worse, they are known for producing really nice betas,
>  >
>  > You must have tried out different betas than I did. ;)
>
> I'm with Ken.  The last Windows beta I tried was NT 3.1J.

OK, then you guys did try different betas than I did. I tried only the
Win98 and Win2000 betas, which were uniformly terrible. Win2000 was
actually a decent Windows in terms of stability, from what I hear. I
used it all of three times, to configure some lame Bay Networks WAP
that needed to be bootstrapped with some crazy shite before you could
access the HTTP interface.

> Well, of course not.  It wasn't until 1985 or so that Intel released a
> CPU (the 80386) that it made sense to port Unix to.  The 80286 could
> be done, but the 80286 Unices (IIRC SCO had the first) were hardly
> more than proof of concept.  I think Steve Baur had an AT&T 3B2 in the
> early 80s, though.

The killer CPU feature was protected mode, of course.

>  > Nor could they, really. Linux was, as anyone who tried it during that
>  > period will attest, for C hackers only.
>
> I think it was really more a matter of having a silicon thumb than
> actually being a hacker.

I will defer to your experience; my first Linux experience was in 1995
or so, with Red Hat 3.something-or-other. I got it installed after
much effort, then was like, "Great. Now what?"

I did not really start to grok Unix as a philosophy until 2000, when I
got a job at a startup staffed by the BSD Twins (BS-Dee and BS-Dum, as
they were known around the University of Virginia campus where they
were both sysadmins before we hired them away) and two badass Linux
kernel hackers, Kaj and Peff. Then I came to Japan and joined This
Very Mailing List, where wileyc and JB and this crazy Steve Turnbull
character converted me to the One True Religion.

--
Cheers,
Josh