tallship @tallship@mastodon.sdf.org

No, not at all. I mean I do, but it was always complete and udder (sic) bullshit (See what I did there? In the middle of a baby formula shortage?).

Anyway, Here's what I remember. Apple was always a closed and proprietary platform, while the IBM PC compatible world was always open (once a couple of guys took it upon themselves to reverse engineer the BIOS).

So we went from S-100 to Apple's proprietary, vendor lock-in platforms to the IBM 5150 PC, which you had a choice of operating systems to run it on:

1.) IBM ROM BASIC - also called "Cassette BASIC". These machines had 64K motherboards, of which I have a few, and there was a DIN connector in the back of the chassis which you could plug in a cassette deck to LOAD and SAVE your programs. The IBM XT 8088 also included IBM Cassette BASIC.

2.) Digital Research CP/M - written almost entirely by Dr. Gary Kildall, the guy who actually made the personal computer possible in the first place, so that "The WOZ" could even create the Apple computer.

3.) IBM PC DOS 1.01 - written entirely by Tim Paterson, on loan to Microsoft by Rod Brock, the owner of SCP (Seattle Computer Works) where Paterson was employed.

There have been a few other operating systems since those initial three, such as MP/M, GEM, Coherent, Venix, SCO XENIX System V, PC/IX, Idris, and a few others. All of these will run on an 8086, with most capable (technically) of running on an 8088.

Later hardware opened the door to a plethora of options including Netware (80286 based systems), and for the i386 class of machines came the 4.2 BSD port affectionately called Jolix (386BSD), followed by NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux.

As you might have already guessed, I have many of these historic operating systems ready to run on old PC compatible hardware that I own.

Windows isn't an actual operating system until NT 3.50 was released (LanManager technology thanks to James Allchin of Banyan Vines fame). Prior to that it was an effective Window manager on top of MS-DOS, DR-DOS, etc., with Windows being the actual alternative task switching windowing environment to its predecessors IBM TopView and Quarterdeck DESQview, respectively, the latter of which eventually evolving into DESQview/X - a complete Motif based X-Windows environment that could run UNIX applications with nothing but an IP Address and NetBIOS (on top of DOS, of course, like Digital Research DOS and QEMM386 for memory management).

NT 3.50 and NT 3.51 were based on the WFW desktop design, while NT 4.0 and later were based on the Win95 style of desktop.

If you want to know if any particular version of MS-Windows is an actual OS, and not just window dressing, then simply look and see if it's running on DOS or Ntoskernl.

It was thought, or at least inferred by Linus Torvalds at one time, that Linux couldn't be ported to the 286 w/o a lot of pain and suffering. I do believe there was a successful independent effort to achieve this, but obviously, the 286 lacks a lot of internals that could make Linux what it is on the >= 386 class system.

Apple, on the other hand, or at least Apple clones, could at one time run the MS Windows desktop, but I've always been proudly MAC Stupid, so I can't really delve authoritatively into that subject matter :) For the most part, Apple has always been a closed system at that asshole Steve Jobs' insistence, even though this was not the vision of The WOZ (who is a great hero - Jobs was a marketing genius, but nevertheless a piece of shit).

I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes of all time :)

"IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up."

- Tim Paterson

and...

"Ask Bill why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated by a
dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that."

- Dr. Gary Kildall.

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1871: A clockwork creeping doll toy. Enjoy your nightmares.

I'm almost at a loss for words...

In a nutshell, Russian artillery batteries have been firing in Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the fires are out of control, and it's expected that the resulting meltdown will be at least ten times worse than Chernobyl.

WWIII ended on Christmas day 1991.
WWIV has begun.

I'm less than 24hrs, a #Chinese_rocket will crash into the moon.

This will occur tomorrow at exactly 4:25am, Pacific Standard Time - give or take a few seconds.

You can watch this live... Actually, lolz, you can't. Unlike the metaphor of a tree that falls in the forest when no one is around, there's plenty to be learned even though nothing will actually witness the impact, because it's on the far (not dark) side of the moon.

Just to be clear, this is the Chinese second stage booster of the Chang'e 5-T1 lunar mission's rocket, and NOT the SpaceX rocket everyone was telling you that it is - SpaceX had absolutely nothing to do with this.

Soon after, several monitoring spacecraft will eventually be able to observe the aftermath abd begin gathering important data when their orbits bring them over the impact area. The most intriguing discoveries will likely be more about the water that we know exists on the moon.

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-rocket-moon-accidental-physics-impacts.html

The furthest object made by human hands is NASA's Voyager 1 (V'Ger - for those who are familar with Star Trek - The Motion Picture).

It is about 15 billion miles away from earth and is still doing "science" every single day. You can track V'Ger in real time here:

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/sc_voyager_1
voyager_1-nasa.gov-003.jpg

https://discord.gg/WsnRQxa3aT
solar_systems-pixelinvaderz.jpg…

Fifteen years ago today, after speeding past #Jupiter while en route to #Pluto, the #New_Horizons spacecraft caught a look at Jupiter's moons #Europa and #Io (right). Today, the #JunoMission is exploring Jupiter, and #EuropaClipper is slated for launch in 2024.
jupiter.jpg

An outside independent perspective from a third party industry insider enamored of the Pixel Invaderz Metaverse, and especially the game itself:

https://gary.vger.cloud/videos/watch/aff75815-ab8f-4f81-8417-82ee4b472544

Crypto, #freenode, ExpressVPN, Search Engines, and the Crown Prince of Korea - The Spaghetti Code Chronicles: Episode #1

Freenode has, after dying, disappeared - sort of... [You may want to boost this if you're a #FOSSie or Crypto Enthusiast]

https://freenode.net/n/freenode/80/freenode-belongs-to-you

This is really hard to explain, unless you understand the blow by blow chain of events because you lived through them. Maybe you are a large FOSS project whose #IRC chans on freenode were hijacked by the #Crown_Prince_of_Korea - Andrew Lee, or woke up one morning to realize that there were now two major #IRC_networks - one growing faster than any other before, and one shrinking even faster as users and #FOSS projects jumped ship for other IRC networks and communication protocols like fleas jumping off of a cat being eaten by a reticulated python.

It's waaaay too complicated to go into the [recent] history of what happened just a few months ago, and I'm going to paste a blob below of part of the monolog by #Andrew_Lee explaining it from his point of view - specifically, where he's at now and where he's trying to go. It at least attempts to gesso over the top of the previously painted picture, trying to recast and depict him as the altruistic philanthropist that he claims to have been all along.

Okay, from my perspective, what he did was, well I won't say unforgivable, but the enormity of damage he instigated when setting alight what he refers to as, "#The_IRC_Wars", has indeed been enormous.

Most of us would simply characterize the mass exodus from freenode to #Libera in an almost parallel manner to how General Chiang Kai-shek and the government of the Republic of China fled the mainland and re-established themselves on the island of Formosa (Taiwan) - in that scenario, I suppose you could draw the inference that the Crown Prince of Korea, Andrew Lee, in that screenplay, has been cast as Mao Tse-tung.

Comparisons aside, Mr. Lee has not murdered anyone (certainly not 101 million of his own people like Chairman Mao did), and IRC is just a protocol, and freenode (the legal entity) is/was simply a property of "Private Internet Access" - but this is only the very beginning of the story, and only scratching the surface... This goes really, really fricken' deep buoys and gulls.

For the very brave, read on, I can't do this topic justice in only 10,000 characters, but I can show you where many of the burrows are in the plains for all of the rodents tunneling underneath - and it may actually freak you out to discover who some of these players are....

I promise this is a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly - without the flute or cigar.

Okay, first, let's give out some kudos to Andrew Lee for finding a way to, at least from his perspective, recover from the bruising he received, and that the #Libera_Chat IRC network could care less about - they've moved on, along with any FOSS projects that where either voluntarily migrated or forcefully expelled when their freenode channels and projects were hijacked by Andrew Lee.

When you first visit Freenode's .net website you'll notice that it's gone - no mention of an IRC network. It looks likes a cheap version of #Lotide or #Lemmy, but it's actually a non-Fediverse link aggregator called #Throat.

If you start poking around because you already know that there used to be an IRC network called freenode, you can find links to it in a sidebar after clicking around for a bit. Everything is, sort of, still there (they did change the Authentication methods). Okay so freenode's website was never very good at navigating or branding the #IRC_network itself, but now it's virtually hidden.

We all know that what precipitated the downfall of freenode was the transfer of ownership to Andrew Lee's company, #Private_Internet_Access, but what you most probably are not aware of is the web of companies involved.

If you visit the #privateinternetaccess site today they'e selling subscriptions to what they claim is the most secure VPN service available - just like every other company that provides these types of services. But when digging around on the freenode domain, I found an amazing dissertation by #Crown_Prince_Lee that actually softened my position on him in a very significant way - I still think he's a bonehead, yet I can see that at least in his own mind, he felt that he was saving the Internet in the name of freedom, or some shit like that.

So I got his with a webchat offer, you know, when the company of a brand is trying to capture your business without letting you escape? I bit down on the bait and figured we'd go for a little ride.

I first checked to make sure I wasn't being serviced by a bot, then I asked about freenode (I'll post my chat log screenies), I was told that #PIA does NOT own freenode, but that both are owned by another company. When I asked, I was told that this company is #Kape_Technologies.

Now I landed here trying to find out what's up with #Gigablast one of my longstanding fav search engines for about 20 years now. about six months or so ago, they stated that they had partnered with "freenode" to power the #private_dot_sh privacy based search engine.

So.... #Kape... a company that owns freenode, and private_sh, and PIA (a VPN service), and a shitload of other companies - none of which have any information linking their associations to others - except for Kape itself, but freenode is noticably absent there - you'll see why in a bit.

So the private-dot-sh search engine does not mention Gigablast in the least. Gigablast is still privately owned and operated by #Matt_Wells , and has been for over twenty years since he left #InfoSeek, and it also provides search results to #ixquick's #StartPage, and the #Internet_Archive, among others. It's one of the biggest deals in web indexing you may never have heard of...

But no mention of Gigablast at #private_sh.

If you visit Kape's website, you'll notice that there is around a dozen or more brands it owns (Andrew Lee owns, unbeknownst to most folks), including #ExpressVPN, which most folks have heard of through radio, television, and Internet ads.

Okay let's turn now to freenode specifically, Lee states that according to legislation passed last year in the state of #Wyoming, he has, or is planning on incorporating an algorithmically managed company, because these new laws allow them to own other corporations.

What's that you say? It's a #DAO - an #Distributed_Autonomous_Organization.

Lee has basically, (or says he intends to), incorporated a DAO, which will own freenode, which itself already owns https://IRC.com - which appears to be both an #Android client AND an IRC network - but the client is not available at #F_Droid (F-Droid).

The IRC.com client is apparently based on or supporting of #Kiwi and #inspIRCd.

The page where Lee lays all of this out is listed near the top of this post. Lee states that he wants to turn freenode over to "the people", as a completely distributed network, under the custodianship of a DAO.

The problem here, is that, unlike #XMPP or #Matrix, and other decentralized communication protocols, IRC doesn't have any way to really federate across domains (not really, individual servers can have hostnames from different domains, but it's a single network that you're just throwing more horsepower at to keep it running), It can only scale vertically by having more #ircd servers join a particular, monolithic network.

But anyway, here is his interesting take on how he has begun to give over freenode (The brand? The network? It's properties like IRC.com and that client/network?) to #The_People, or claims to do so very soon.

The most interesting thing is that he really appears to harbor no ill will towards those who he feels stabbed him in the back, which may be lip service, or it may be a noble gesture, after all, he did lay himself out prostrate, defending his actions and intentions at #hackernews in the days following the calamity that started all of this, which is something I've never seen any other billionaire bother to do. So my feelings toward him are rather ambiguous at this point, quite an improvement over how I used to feel about him....

He makes no mention of which #blockchain he intends to issue #tokens for with respect to the DAO - Let's hope it's based on the blockchains of #XLM or #SOL or #ADA and not #ETH.

He's actually planning on giving ownership of freenode to the users of Libera as well as whomever is left at freenode, and that is some rather visionary forward thinking in and of itself - but we'll see what really happens.

Here's what Lee envisions:

1.) A DAO, all token holders participate in corporate management and decision-making.

2.) The allocations are as follows:

The freenode userbase will be 25% of all tokens.

The freenode channels will be 10% of all tokens.

The Libera userbase will be 25% of all tokens.

The Libera channel base will be 10% of all tokens.

For the Libera team, in continuing to recognize their importance in the ecosystem of the FOSS community. Their allocation is 15% of all tokens.

Operators who helped to protect freenode, 2.5% of all tokens, and for the current freenode staff 5%,

freenode owns IRC.com and 2.5% of all tokens have been allocated for this partner.

Lee, as the owner of freenode allocates himself 5% of all tokens.

Note: This news is two months old. There were six comments made to the blog article, all of which were deleted by Lee.

Okay, I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts. This is still apparently a fluid situation whether the concept of a freenode is at all relevant or not.

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expressvpn-kape-freenode-pia-pr…

They're prolly regretting firing those #nurses who refused to disclose their personal medical information (vax status) right about now.

BTW, this is how the truckers can end, once and for all, the #mandates in #Canada - general strike, leaving all the produce and meat rotting on the loading dock.

#Wuhan #martial_law #freedom_convoy #Australia #strike

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-60256146

A quick pre-alpha sneak peak of #Pixel_Invaderz gameplay aspects

https://gary.vger.cloud/videos/watch/7f454838-a9ed-4cd0-aeb2-de3321fa1732

#metaverse #Solana #DAO #tokenomics #gaming #NFT

Pixel Invaderz Metaverse:

https://discord.gg/WsnRQxa3aT
pixel_GIF.gif

Trudeau sure is a communist piece of shit isn't he?

Lying like that to his nation while his nation watches and is all too aware of the actual truth.

https://nsfw.vger.cloud/videos/watch/1eb36fec-907c-40a0-9f6b-1e0b6e10b1c4

In honor of tomorrow being national Iron Maiden day, the Biden administration announced earlier today that everyone must wear #Iron_Maiden t-shirts tomorrow.

Anyone found violating this executive order by the President will be declared a #Dog_Faced_Pony_Soldier and summarily executed.

Further, they've installed tailgunners into #Ed_Force_One to mop up any stragglers found scurrying away, and President Biden has promised that all those subversives will be hosed down, rock and roll style, like his wet, hairy lifeguard legs.

Wait! Scratch that last part. I made it up. The rest is true.
randomTemp17784555130222245859.…

#DRM isn't just an annoyance -- it's a violation of your right to use the items you own as you see fit. Learn more about our Defective by Design campaign at http://defectivebydesign.org, and follow our campaign account at @endDRM

The beginning of the end of the #monolithic_silo mentality in software development.

I I'm to be so bold as to make a prediction, this is the roadhead into a world where places like Microsoft's #GitHub is merely used as a directory, much like Yahoo, DMOZ, and google, to locate project repos hosted elsewhere by virtue of those projects only being mirrored at silos like Github.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29830061

#tallship #Vger #FOSS #git #repo #federation #Gitea #silo #decentralization

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#FOSS Breaking News:

At this very moment we're having a #NextCloud Livestream via YouTube.

I've asked the question about the possibility for Matrix as a plugin capability. It has received several +1's from other prominent members in the community but so far they have chosen not to address the question.

#Talk is *just* okay, as it's not the most performant, yet it does provide a good level of security.

More universal, however, is #Matrix, hence, my question to the team.

Yes I know, I encourage everyone to use Invidious to sanitize YouTube VoDs, or choose another platform entirely. This is however, live, so in order to get in and have these questions considered by the team there's really no other option during this premeire (perhaps in the future, they'll multi-stream with #OBS across several platforms like #OwnCast and #PeerTube ;)

#tallship #Vger #privacy #dev
nextcloud-livestream-20211130.j…

@tomosaigon

It is my friend, it is.... at least the largest part of it is.

Woe be to all of those who think they own BTC in their #CashApp, #PayPal, #Coinbase, #Crypto_dot_com, and other so-called #Exchange_based_wallets - ask yourselves this: "Why do you suppose that you have to include a **memo** when you give someone your key (aka: your public key is colloquially referred to as your "Bitcoin address")?

Answer, because you don't actually have a wallet! because you're not your own bank, people. But it is so easy for you to be your own bank.

How many people have actually asked themselves why, that along with your bank account number you also need a routing number? Think about that folks ;) Why, when you have a BTC address, do you also need to give your customer a memo to include in the transaction? It's not completely analogous, but It's #kinda_sorta the same thing lolz.

I highly recommend XLM and shielded ZEC for banking purposes, and further, giving a quick listen to Zooko Wilcox explaining how to actually protect your private assets, and keeping them private:

https://gary.vger.cloud/videos/watch/8662a281-8f61-4df7-b6e7-5af63c1f2caa

Now, as people (smart people, informed people, literate people - not ignorant people) begin to affect the mass exodus away from the privacy disrespecting monolithic silos of the secretive, data mining social media monopolies, they should also be looking towards the less volatile, less speculative crypto blockchains (i.e., NOT Bitcoin, which has little to no use case) as a place where their assets are safe from the dystopian lords who insist upon the fealty of their serfs in their structurally feudal empires.

We can all start by encouraging people to pay you in the crypto of your choice, and when ask to send money to someone always responding with, "What's your public key for your favored cryptocurrency?".

Just like anything else (especially in marketing 101), when someone hears this enough they'll actually go out and either setup a hot or offline wallet for themselves or ask someone to show them how - each and every time that happens, you have saved a soul.

Remember folks.... You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

All the best! :)

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#Dutch parents: "We're not fucking around here bitches!"

Sang to the tune of 6 Billion Euros!

€1500 for each child who was under 13 when they started using the service
€1250 for each child who was 13, 14, or 15 when they started using the service
€1000 for each child who was 16 or 17 when they started using the service.

You would think that after getting an enema for three quarters of a billion euro a couple of months back that they would have #fingered it out, but NOOooo! That Chinese government data mining company apparently has a serious ear #infucktion.

Fuck you #TakToe!

https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/09/tiktok-faces-e6b-lawsuit-in-netherlands-court/

#tallship #Vger #privacy #The_Netherlands #identity_theft #chinese_espionage #child_exploitation #data_harvesting

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