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lproven
8,777karma·4,928submissions·December 30, 2013
about
Tall dark black-clad atheist skeptic biker SF fan; writes, mainly about computers, for a living.
# Work
Currently the FOSS & cloud correspondent for the Register.
https://www.theregister.com/Author/Liam-Proven
Work email: lproven+hn@sitpub.com
# Personal
Comments here (or anywhere else, unless otherwise stated) are personal opinion and not on behalf of any employer.
Based in Douglas, Isle of Man.
Quick info:
https://about.me/liamproven/
Personal blog:
http://lproven.dreamwidth.org/profile
Tech blog:
http://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/profile/
Socials:
https://social.vivaldi.net/@lproven
https://bsky.app/profile/lproven.bsky.social
https://x.com/lproven
https://meet.hn/city/im-Douglas
recent activity (4,928 total)
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:-) I know what you mean about CP/M. I am not sure I've ever touched a Kaypro, though. There are or were some alternative Z80 OSes: SymbOS, Cromix, Uzi/Fuzix, S-OS, DR's own MP…
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Yes, agreed. We sold a lot of QEMM but not many copies of DESQview, but I lived in a small community then -- the Isle of Man. I have blogged about it in the past (
https://liam-on-linux.liv…
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They are accepting PRs... https://github.com/oberon-org/site
5 pts
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This. I came in at the end of the CP/M era, with an Amstrad PCW9512. I loved it. Sadly a long-ago ex-G/F gave it away. :'( I have 2 replacements, mind you. But CP/M is kinda dry.…
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Fair enough. Most of the books aren't really comedies, as such. _Good Omens_ definitely is, though, and for me, it remains hilarious after 31 years. One of my very favourite novels after THHGTTG …
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No more do I. In fact, I live in a country where I do not speak the local language well enough to even _understand_ broadcast TV. This is more a matter of general cultural awareness, I would say. Gaim…
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What? Really? Well, for a start, the hilarious _Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch._ Co-written with Terry Pratchett, also a great radio serial and a wonderful TV seri…
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This is not true. Adams only co-wrote 2 adventure games (THHGTTG and Bureaucracy), and arguably a graphical adventure (Starship Titanic) much later. It is not really possible to generalise about "…
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I have never played with one, only studied the videos (e.g. https://youtu.be/o_TlE_U_X3c ) and documentation. It was a very radical UI. If you added programs, they just added new fun…
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No, but they do turn up on eBay occasionally.
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Since everyone followed the IBM keyboard layout, the templates fitted virtually every keyboard. Right now I'm typing on an Apple Extended keyboard from about 1987 and it has little pegs at top ri…
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This is true. I was doing PC tech support in 1988-1992 -- the era when the PC world went from MS-DOS to Windows 3.0 to Windows 3.1. (And a few weirdos, like me, ran OS/2 2, because Linux wasn…
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Vi was 1976. The Canon Cat was 1987, and Raskin's work on the Macintosh was before it was launched in 1984. This work was a _response_ to vi and modal editing. And it was _right_ because it'…
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AUIU, as someone who's very peripherally connected to both. (I'm an active-ish member of the GNUstep list & in my spare time I've been working on a remix of openSUSE with GNUstep …
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Ahahaha! OK, it's a fair cop, but the industry's to blame. :-D
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OK, yes, fair points. :-) I discovered something that I didn't know in the Q&A afterwards: that flash SSDs can be permanently damaged if the power goes out unexpectedly. https://ww…
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I am aware that it does not come close to DRAM, but it is faster than Flash, can be rewritten between thousands and tens of thousands of times more than Flash, and it is also byte-rewritable, unlike f…
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[Author of the piece here] I suggest reading the script.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wM1-c7euvQaRaCL4hKCaE8VR... There is a lot of history in it, and that is entir…
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[Author of the piece here] Up to a point, yes. Also, Multics. But this is a different take.
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[Author of the piece here] No, they did not. They discontinued the SSDs. The NVDIMMs are not affected.
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[Author of the piece here] Thanks! I should have expected that so many people wouldn't listen or read it, just look at the pictures... >_<
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[Author of the piece here] Ignore the slides. The slides are decoration. Read the script, or listen to the talk.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wM1-c7euvQaRaCL4hKCaE8VR.…
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[Author of the piece here] This is technologically out of date, I'm afraid. You appear not to have read about Intel 3D Xpoint and related tech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
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[Author of the piece here] I did actually consider this. When your memory contents are persistent, there is no "boot process". Booting means loading OS code from secondary storage into RAM a…
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[Author of the piece here] Back patting? Whose? This is entirely orthogonal to stuff like von Neumann architectures. The core change is eliminating the distinction between primary and secondary or aux…
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[Author of the piece here] Yes, indeed - I specifically discussed that in the talk. The Palm platform sold over 50 million units, with no filesystem at all. This shows the tech is valid for end-user d…