Right, there is a long tradition in it taking centuries to build great cathedrals, Chartres, Notre Dame, etc.
I've little issue with that, however taking so long to build something such as an O/S that it's obsoleted itself many times over before being finished is another matter altogether.
"Or perhaps a specialized variant of ReactOS with that focus in mind."
Trouble is there's never been enough interest in ReactOS to get it to the point where it's stable let alone warrant fancy extras. (After three decades of trying to clone the basics and failing is proof enough.)
In short, developers see it as a dead end. Why there's so little interest I've never fully understood, but it's fact.
If it were actually stable and usable as a basic operating system it could be used for lots of offline stuff but it's not—even at this point. If it were useable I'd readily adopt it to use offline (I've tried many times and failed).
Another point, this lack of interest shows up on ReactOS's website; there's so little new news and info the site may as well be dead.
I've not scanned them, I'd have to find them first and that's not easy at moment because they're among tens of thousands of docs that need sorting (I rarely chuck out docs like that).
How I came by them was by accident when I was helping a guy who was a worse (indiscriminate) hoarder than I am move his tooling and machining factory. He hoarded anything technical, especially electronics stuff.
He didn't know what the circuits were but I did. Despite having little interest in either the modules or circuits instinct made me rescue them (it's a fluke they weren't scrapped). Reason: I once recall hundreds of these modules flooding onto the auction market and no one wanting them except for the tubes so I assumed everyone who'd be interested was already in the know.
The circuits (if I recall correctly—the factory move was in 2012) were together in a big folder a bit too big to scan on a quarto/A4 scanner.
Incidentally, there were stacks of old IBM computer racks that IBM historical people had rescued earlier (presumably the modules were from the same computer) but the modules and circuits surfaced later and never ended up with the rest of the hardware.
I'd be very surprised if others don't possess copies of those folders of circuits (computer historical societies etc.) as at one time those modules were so ubiquitous.
Seeing there's interest I'll hone in on them as I sort through the files (I know roughly what room they're in). The moment I find them I'll put them on line.
In the meantime I'd urge you to seek out copies of those circuit folders. IBM documented everything so well, their manuals were masterpieces of documentation in their own right (unlike the terrible situation of today where tech info on products is as scarce as hen's teeth).
Re museum, I'm in Australia so I'll seek out the mob who took the racks and try to mate the modules with the rest of the H/W. Thanks for the offer.
I still have well over a dozen of those IBM modules together with their paperwork and circuit diagrams (somewhere in my miles of files).
They've been getting in the way and I've been meaning to chuck them away on many an occasion but something inside me has stopped me doing so because of their possible historical value.
Shirriff's blog has reinforced my thinking, they'll just have to clutter up my place for a little longer methinks.
For the cognoscenti it is—like Linux, but for the vast majority it's not. If you've ever run an IT department in a large operation (which I have) then you'd never say that.
People insist on Windows at work because it's so ubiquitous, when they go home their modus operandi doesn't have to change.
Forcing workers to change OSes against their will only puts one's job on the line (management will side with workers as it's the path of least resistance). QED.
Microsoft is effectively a monopoly, to say it's anything else and that other browsers are available is a nonsense for reasons that everyone knows.
Appealing to reason is a waste of time as no big monopolistic corporation will willingly forfeit money. The only realistic (effective) solution is legislative. I don't see that happening anytime soon in the US but perhaps it's possible in other jurisdictions (more likely now that the US is no longer the flavor of the month with many).
Increasing taxes on exploitive mining multinationals that get minerals, coal and gas for a fraction of its worth and make a financial killing at the expense of the Australian public would have been much more popular but the timid Government wouldn't have dared fearing the backlash.
Simply, this shows who's actually in charge of the Country and it's not the Government.
I can play Bach to some extent with practice. I'd qualify that though by saying a multi-part fugue from say The Musical Offering would be a tall order.
I've never had any pretense at being good enough to entertain people with those works as everyone knows them so well (from professional recordings). Even Mozart's a problem here. For example the Romance in the D Minor Concerto, K.466 looks deceptively simple (at least in parts) but it's anything but after hearing someone like Brendel play it. Everyone knows it so well it's not worth the embarrassment of even trying (except perhaps in secret).
(Mozart has a habit of looking simple until one tries to play it, Bach is none of that—one knows what one's in for at pretty much first glance.)
I'm left-handed too and frankly a left-handed mouse is a nuisance and awkward to use (I never use one), same with other peripherals.
Still I prefer to use scissors with the left hand and most are right-handed. It's a damn nuisance as the loop handles are the wrong way around/wrong size for a leftie.
It's interesting that the piano is essentially a right handed instrument in that melody/the main theme is mostly played by the right hand.
As a left-hander, it's very obvious to me. That said—because of the above point—my right hand is much stronger and more adept at playing. In short, I'm right handed when playing the piano.
No sarcastic comments please, I well know more practice and playing those damn Czerny scales ad nauseam would have restored proper balance. :-)
Seems to me we're going to have to let the anti-encryption mob have their way until things go wrong—bigtime. No amount of expert advice will convince them until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption.
It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly
newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light that the lay public will get the message that weak encryption is effectively no encryption.
In the meantime criminals will be early adopters of more sophisticated messaging such as steganography.
Fascinating development. That means much, much greater control over ink deposition.
No doubt a potential worry for currency producers. Inkjets that have control over the physical build up of ink structure would pose an even greater threat of counterfeiting.
No doubt mints can introduce countermeasures to detect such threats but I'd suggest this tech (if perfected) will likely be too good for humans to detect a forgery at a glance. Reckon machine readers will become the order of the day, that's if physical paper/plastic currency continues to exist.
Stats—the number killed per annum through failure—will determine the true effectiveness of this change.
In the meantime, I'll continue to rely on the physical movement of full atoms for my braking. Electrons without an accompanying nucleus tend to be more fickle.
I'd agree with this assessment. Moreover, if developers were to stick with the eminently satisfactory CUA (IBM's Common User Access) interface standard and further regularize that then things would be much easier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
If developers want to experiment with various UI configs then let them but keep a CUA in the background that can be called upon by machines and humans alike. (Unfortunately, ergonomics has never been a strong point for developers.)
More importantly, as I've mentioned, ReactOS is not stable nor reliable enough to even use as an offline O/S sans the Win 11 dross.
If these stability/compatibility issues were fixed then it'd develop a reputation for being reliable which would lead to further development work.
Unfortunately for everyone except Microsoft this is not the case.