A few days ago I found a specimen of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation which I had bought years ago ( I don't even remember when anymore ) still preversed in its entire virginity. : The shrink wrap around it is still intact.
Disturbingly, I recently read a "letter to the editor" with a person claiming that something similar is currently going on with "stock photos". They are free, until they reach a considerable amount of uses (read : downloads), and then they switch license from "free" to "it costs you something" ...Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab
First, they build programs with open source. Then they build their business with open source. Then they abandon it and cash out.www.computerworld.com
pibbuR who promises that all his software will forever be free, but inaccessible outside his den.
Well it isn't quite as bad as the article makes it sound; as you can still use older versions under the old license and you can also develop it as needed per the old license. I havent' read the old license but if it allows redistribution of changes then a new branch can be created that is still totally free. What these branches usually result in companies buying the no longer free version while small companies and individual use the free version.Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab
First, they build programs with open source. Then they build their business with open source. Then they abandon it and cash out.
pibbuR who promises that all his software will forever be free, but inaccessible outside his den.
spectrum.ieee.org
www.windowslatest.com
www.windowslatest.com
A quiz question, why were they 3.5? (I heard the designer tell the story at a storage conference in San Jose in late 1989.)The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk
The high-profile creator of magnetic media gave it up nearly three decades ago
"because the groundbreaking work that the company had done to develop pressure-sensitive adhesive tape was an essential element of making magnetic tape effective."
pibbuR who still has a 3.5" floppy drive ... somewhere. And and a couple of 45 year old 5.25" floppies.
PS. Just checked the cost of 1.44MB floppies at a vendor that still sells them Expensive: 7 USD for 1 thingy. 5.25's are available on eBay. DS
It's apparently the Norwegian counterpart of the UK's BBC, but driven by the government. Our government and national broadcast company never really cared about computer literacy...
So -- back a long time ago our uni had gotten its first laser printer - it was actually a drum printer with a spool of paper. A fellow a few years older than myself wrote a drive for this monstrosity because back in those days when you purchased a (i think) $20,000 'laser' printer it didn't come with drivers. The driver had one tiny flaw if you drew a straight (vertical line) it got confused and would never stop drawing the line making your scientific paper (which back in those days were 'expressed' in tex - later made easier by a set of macros called latex which is still available); the graph would look really wonky if you had a straight line. So - my boss dumped in my lap a 400 (i think) page printout of the driver and said find this bug. The printer used either a 6502 or z80 i forget which - and i had to look at this printout having never seen a line of assembly language in either language and find the bug. My boss goes to lunch and comes back and ask me if i found the problem. I take a glance at a random page of the printout and said yea it is this line - and you know what it was that line.Sad. I had no idea this CPU was still sold, though. But don't panic! If necessary, we'll still be able to use soft cores (like this one).
I liked the Z80 despite its poor performances; it was in my first computer, so that's the first assembly language I learned (might be a case of Stockholm syndrome).
That's the first time I hear about the Tiki-100. It looks nice, except a few strange words here and there.
Sad. I had no idea this CPU was still sold, though. But don't panic! If necessary, we'll still be able to use soft cores (like this one).
I liked the Z80 despite its poor performances; it was in my first computer, so that's the first assembly language I learned (might be a case of Stockholm syndrome).
That's the first time I hear about the Tiki-100. It looks nice, except a few strange words here and there.
I think the Z80 is mostly adding some instructions to the 8080 set, with a few incompatibilities. But I agree, preferences can also depends on the assembler's syntax (and the tools!). For example, I can't stand the GNU assembly language because of all the % gibberish and inverted operands vs the official Intel syntax, but it's just a matter of habit.
The fact there were Pascal compilers on CPUs like Z80 and 6502 always amazes me.
