DrTung

If you're an old geezer like me, doesn't this "AI revolution" remind you of the "BASIC revolution" in the 70s and 80s, i.e. when the BASIC language was new and hot.

BASIC at that time was heralded as a much simpler and faster way to program. Rings a bell?

A remnant of the old GitHub still remains, try surfing to a non-existing repositor like https://github.com/NowIsTheTimeForAllGoodMenToComeToTheAidOf...

(however the parallax scrolling of the background is gone, maybe when Microsoft arrived)

I've heard the next version will be called "Visual Active NET Copilot".

Reminds me of the push of U2's 'Songs Of Innocence" into everyone's iPhones maybe 10 years ago.

I still have my copy of Lego Universe, hope this new initiative will fare better.

Sometime in the late 80's I was working in MSDOS and needed more working RAM for an app, so we bought the Phar Lap DOS extender.

Got the box and started reading the manual when someone stopped and asked "Why are you reading about horses?" What horse? "The mighty Phar Lap of course."

I had no idea it was the name of a horse, but I guess since their logo had a black horse I should have known :-)

In one of the stories of Sherlock Holmes he asks Dr. Watson how many steps there are in the stairs leading up to their door. Watson replies he doesn't know and Sherlock gives the exact number and says "You see but you do not observe".

Sherlock Holmes seems to have read this article as well :-)

I think PowerShell is a bit scary, for example I could never get curl to work in it, say a simple POST command: curl -X "POST" google.com should return Error 411 (Length required) from google (as it does in CMD.EXE)

When I try it in PowerShell I get: Invoke-WebRequest : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'X'. and some more error messages

even curl -X "GET" doesn't work :-(

Since they would have "their pick of the litter" why did they then include kill switches? A scary scenario is a rerun of the Viasat hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_hack I.e. wipe all servers worldwide at the morning of an attack, but before that you install the kill switches on your servers and those of your allies.

If the RCE is Russian, it could be used a communication kill-switch on the morning of an attack outside Ukraine, similar to the Viasat hack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_hack

Also read that book when it came out, among other things it taught me about "mushroom management" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management

The sidesweep you do on your iPhone to change the page of app icons or when you switch fullscreens on your Mac I am sure is inspired by the Switcher.

I remember as a kid reading Foundation by Asimov, when you arrived in Trantor, you had a boarding pass with a glowing arrow pointing which way to go. Almost there now.

Long time ago I read a novel called Brain Wave by Paul Anderson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave (it predates Flowers for Algernon by about 10 years).

It has a similar theme of suddenly acquired intelligence but for the whole planet. I you like Flowers for Algernon you'll like Brain Wave.

Also forgotten: Microsoft Popfly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Popfly

It seems incomplete, I don't see .io

Microsoft should change their BSOD screen background color to this.

My escape plan is to use Wine for the apps that exist on Windows only. Wine can be a bit lacking though :-(

But there's hope on the horizon: Valve's SteamDeck is aiming to make available all Valve's games, even the Windows-only ones, on their custom Arch Linux. using Proton (which is a fork of Wine). As far as I know, this might be the first commercial product that's based on (a fork of) Wine.

If they can make all tripleA Windows games with DRM work on their SteamDeck, this will make a serious dent in Windows' monopoly on gaming. And in the process hopefully Wine will get a boost as well...

Yes the data bits were 2-way toggles, but one important switch was a 3-way toggle: the Examine (press down) and Deposit (press up) switch.

PDP 11/34 had a bootrom and an octal keyboard, which is kind of cheating.

I grew up using the older PDP 11/45 where you had to key in (using binary toggles) a boot program. Or, the way I did it, manually enter write address and byte count to the RK05 disk controller (memory mapped I/O) then writing a "01" Go command to RK05's command register and watch the RK05 disk activity light flicker briefly. Voila, RT11 was loaded. (This worked because on the PDP 11/45 DMA transfers from disk to memory worked also in CPU Halt mode.)

Born i Stockholm, I remember taking the ferry to Finland as a young boy for some cheap vodka (and you only had to be 18 years old, not 20).

This was in the late 70's and my first visit to Helsinki, I tried to order a drink in a bar. But no service until I discovered my mistake: I had spoken in Swedish.

Switching to English got me a nice Finnish beer. That was my first glimpse of Finland's "complicated" history.

This was the movie that finally cured me out of the bad habit of reading the Swedish subtitles instead of actually listening to the spoken English.

I remember watching it in Stockholm's most renowned theater at that time, all seats taken.

When Brody and Indy discuss what would happen if the Nazis got hold of the ark, Brody says: "Any army carrying it would be invincible" the Swedish subtitle read (translated back to English): "Any army carrying it would be invisible".

Hmmm one reason for Google stumbling re. GitLab might be: I was on GitHub for over 10 years (and GeezerEdit was there too) but when Microsoft bought it I fled to GitLab.

Long live WordStar and it's many brethren!

I got addicted to it when coding Z80 assembler on CP/M in the late 70's and my life since then has been on a constant lookout for an equally good program in other OS's.

In Linux and MacOS terminals there's Joe, a godsend. But since I use Qt a lot, of course the first thing I wrote was a Wordstar clone plugin for Qt Creator. Not possible to survive otherwise :-)

There's a Doom cartridge/game for Nintendo 64, I remember playing it say 20 years ago. Think it's still around here somewhere, I can take a photo if you want...

Edit: found it here https://store.steampowered.com/app/1148590/DOOM_64/

I've used the ImportExportTools NG Thunderbird addon to do the migration. I.e. right-click on all folders I want to download, start a new Thunderbird for the new mail provider, right-click on the new, empty folders and upload to them.

Every time I opened a network share or similar "slow" device on Windows XP's File Explorer (alas not in Windows 7 or 10) I'm reminded of After Dark, since that sweeping flashlight (that goes left/right) is more or less exactly copied from Disney Mickey Mouse something/screensaver which was a clone of After Dark.

The article just briefly mentions it, but the game I remember most from my AppleII days was RobotWar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar

We were a couple of guys (and one AppleII) staying up all night designing robots, I still remember the names of some of my robots.

Like M.U.L.E. it was a good multiplayer game way ahead of its time.

Does this mean Bluetooth is dead, if UWB can do all the stuff that Bluetooth did?