back
user profile
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)
comment
That's OS-9, with a hyphen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9 Not to be confused with the IBM family of OSes with a slash, notably OS/2 but also including OS/39…
comment
It is _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and the interplanetary Usenet is a core plot point, IMHO.
comment
You do you. A decade or so back, I finally got a machine powerful enough to usefully run a VM or 2 without killing foreground performance. I figured I wanted the lightest-weight version of Windows tha…
comment
> I use Wine too, for things like Netscape, Mosaic, etc. OK. I used to do that for IE but I haven't needed it in about a decade. > Microsoft apps run much better in a VM in my experience, b…
comment
It was a genuinely great OS in its time. OS/2 2.0 was released in the same month as Windows 3.1. In that era, it was so much better, it was embarrassing. (Linux 1.0 would not be released for an…
comment
Contrast with Word 6:
https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c3a2c2b3-c2a2-c692-2615-11... …
comment
It was slow then. It's not now, not on even a decade-old PC. But TBH, the text mode just works, and you can readily tweak DOS on a modern SVGA screen to display 132*50 text or something like that…
comment
Do you know, I believe I have a copy in a box somewhere, never installed. I've never managed to get eComStation onto real hardware yet, and I don't really fancy trying to get Warp Server 4.5…
comment
I hear this justification a lot. It's not really true: it's generalising a simple point until it no longer holds. Yes, all software is complex and fallible. But not all software is equal. If…
comment
It really wouldn't. The entire point of this exercise is that it is tiny and blindingly fast. Running it inside a bloated whole-system emulator, in a bloated failure-prone semi-interpreted langua…
comment
What? You couldn't, you know. Look at existing cloning efforts, like WordTsar. Years of work and they're not even really close yet. Secondly, its virtues are its blinding speed, small size a…
comment
Who needs a VM? I run it on WINE on Ubuntu. It works perfectly, including installing the service releases. Formatted cut/paste works, I can directly browse my Linux filesystem, it launches in sec…
comment
Yes. It was an option: it had the classic text mode, same as ever and very fast, or an optional WYSIWYG graphical mode. I have it running on bare metal on PC DOS 7.1 (not 7.01, 7.1, the last ever vers…
comment
There is a case for it in this article, by the author of the site in the root post. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/10/21/escape-microsoft-wo... …
comment
The keyboard template itself was a physical copy-protection measure. So people photocopied them... but they were colour-coded, and you had to faff around cutting it out, sellotaping it together, stick…
comment
This is why Sir Clive Sinclair's second computer company invented the Z88: https://oldcomputers.net/cambridge-z88.html https://www.old-computers.com/museum/…
comment
Actually came here to post that verse, and found threads * about Vernor Vinge instead, then that someone else beat me to it. Score. -----
* threads... silk... web... SWIDT?
comment
:-) You're welcome. I left a comment on your project a year or 2 ago, seeking clarification what it was or did -- I did not understand from your original description. I hope that this was more he…
comment
It figures that this has got little attention. Nobody remembers their history now. This is the first direct linear ancestor of all of x86...
comment
I was commissioned to write an admin guide to Ubuntu Server a decade or so back. It didn't happen in the end, for various reasons, but it taught me one thing -- books don't make a lot of mon…
comment
Yes, that's all fair. I know why the WinPhone fiasco happened: they, very reasonably, wanted to get everything on an NT base. WinPhone 7 was WinCE, WinPhone 8 was NT. I don't think they real…
comment
The reason MS didn't have to do this stuff in the last decade or 2 is because it has already killed all its opponents. Name another big desktop app vendor will hundreds of millions of seats. Name…
comment
Do you genuinely believe that you are refuting my arguments here? My points are not complicated or difficult, and your responses are facile. Linux is strong on servers and phones. This is, in part, be…
comment
Well done for signally failing to get a single point I made. Well up to HN commenter standards -- perhaps you'll make it on to https://twitter.com/hn_commenter I am typing on Lin…
comment
This is the motive, as someone cited before me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... I was merely agreeing. Look at MS' history. It used this tact…