There were a few things (GDI handles and suchlike) that had very small limits. Once you exhausted them, the system was basically unusable. There was a little program you could run that would show the number allocated vs allowed. By the time you'd launched one program, they were normally 60-90% gone.

These two are related. OS/2 needed 16MB of RAM to be useable back when I had a 386 that couldn't take more than 5MB (1MB soldered onto the board, 4x1MB matched SIMMs). Windows NT had the same problem - NT4 needed 32MB as an absolute minimum when Windows 95 could happily run in 16 and unhappily run in 8 (and allegedly run in 4MB, but I tried that once and it really wasn't a good idea). The advantage that Windows NT had was that it used pretty much the same APIs as Windows 95 (except DirectX, until later), so the kinds of users who were willing to pay the extra costs could still run the same programs as the ones that weren't.

I never ran 3.0 on a 386 to try that. On Windows 3.1 it wouldn't work, because the OS required either (286) protected mode or (386) enhanced mode. Running 3.0 on a 386, the DOS prompt would use VM86 mode (yes, x86 has had virtualisation support for a long time, but only for 16-bit programs). Windows 3.0 could run in real mode, so would work inside VM86 mode. In real mode, it didn't have access to VM86 mode (no nested virtualisation), so probably couldn't start again.

I'm not sure if it ever became a real product, but the Novell guys did have Netware running as a paravirtualised Xen guest. Apparently it was quite an interesting challenge, as Netware was one of the few operating systems to use rings 1 and 2 on i386.

And, as expected, this wasn't a mental health issue. This was a pre-planned extortion exercise involving more than one person in holding the victims captive, torturing their son, and arranging for a pile of cash to be delivered. Accomplices, helping out this trained welder who new the family in question would be good targets because he used to work for the victim's company.

What are you talking about? The police say this was a planned event carried about by more than one person. He didn't "snap," he set up a captivity/torture scenario in order to try to extort $40K in cash from a former employer, and had help from accomplices. You're going to have to find another way to feel sorry for the crew that did this.

People tired of other people apologizing on behalf of the Obama administration, and those already tired of Hillary weasel-wording on the subject.

No, I'm saying that the Obama administration, with the direct involvement of Hillary Clinton, was lying - deliberately, repeatedly, for weeks - about what happened. In order to influence the imminent election.

And Windows 3.1 lost real mode support. You could run Windows 3.0 on an 8086 with an EGA screen and 640KB of RAM (I did - the machine originally shipped with GEM). I think 3.1 still have 286 protected mode support, but didn't work very well unless you ran it in 386 enhanced mode. It was a bit sad that the version of Windows that required an MMU didn't use it to implement memory protection...

Sort of. The desire not to cannibalise sales was a key factor in the design of the PC, but these were also features that IBM didn't think would be missed.

IBM knew what multitasking was for: it was to allow multiple users to use the same computer with administrator-controled priorities. Protected memory was for the same things. Why would you need these on a computer that was intended for a single user to use? A single user can obviously only run one program at a time (they only have one set of eyes and hands) and you can save a lot in hardware (and software) if you remove the ability to do more. And, of course, then no one will start buying the cheap PCs and hooking them up to a load of terminals rather than buying a minicomputer or mainframe.

My father's company got their first Windows 3.0 install because they bought a diagram tool (Meta Design, I think), that came with a free copy. The company that made it had decided that bundling a copy of Windows 3.0 was cheaper than writing (or licensing) a graphical toolkit for DOS and an associated set of printer drivers. I don't know if they were the only company to do this, but after a year or so they stopped bundling Windows and just expected their customers to either have a copy already or go and buy one.

Here's an idea: how about you tell us which things the administration said about the US deaths in Libya were actually true. Because that will take less time.

Let's just keep it simple: the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true, and that's been obvious since the day it happened. Today's email dump makes it even more clear. Purposeful, deliberate lying about the death of an ambassador and other Americans, all in the name of tamping down some prospectively unpleasant buzz that wouldn't resonate with the "Al Qeda is on the run!" narrative. Of course you, just like everyone else, already know this. Have fun being a part of theatrics, but just remember that pretending it's not so doesn't make you come across as any more credible. It's kind of embarrassing, actually.

Except for people who care that Obama and his administration blatantly lied about what happened in the period right before an election. And we see that Hillary Clinton knew very well that what was being said by both State and White House spokesdroids (and by her, and the president himself) was pure fabricated BS meant to placate prospective voters. They deliberately lied about what happened so that those events wouldn't contradict the narrative that Obama was trying to sell in his re-election bid. The people who actually know this, and who claim they don't care, are desperately hoping that Clinton's complicity in spreading that lie won't remain on people's minds during this upcoming election.

Not at all. It summarizes a causal relationship. The disingenuous GP is the one that says, "Having little money is a case of having little money." He doesn't address the why, whereas I'm pointing out that it's the lack of specific action that causes the lack of desired results.

There are plenty of poor white people who are poor for their own cultural reasons. The fact that you think culture is the same as skin color shows what a confused person you are. Culture is about behavior, not pigment. Avoiding that reality is just more PC deflection on your part. Nice try. Well, not really.

No, it's not. Poverty is caused by not doing the things that make you prosperous. Certainly a kid born into a household where nobody does the things necessary to provide a prosperous environment is a victim indeed. The parents are the only ones responsible for that, period (yeah, yeah, we can make exceptions to that ... women who are raped and never the less bear the child, and don't take advantage of endless opportunities to allow the child to be adopted into better circumstances, etc).

A kid born into a family where there is no culture of learning, or creativity, of movement towards the things that have lifted untold millions out of poverty ... that kid is poor because of the culture into which she was born. Not because there is no prospect for a comfortable life in the world, but because those prospects are being squashed by the local culture. In some cases, that culture is no larger than the single parent. Or it might be the size of a multi-generational household. Or a whole city block. Or an entire nation-state. But it's cultural, pure and simple.

In order to avoid having to give up on your moral relativism and turn in your PC/SJW card, you'll pretend that you just read someone talking about skin color. The fact that you so reflexively resort to that perspective in order to avoid talking about the real problem is, ironically, a stellar display of either disingenuous, craven intellectual dishonesty (or just a juvenile lack of rhetorical skills) on your part, or the sign of someone who really hasn't thought this through.

Ah, an "addressor" in our midst. Say what you, mean. Tear down people who have something so you can spread it around, right? No. Places like west Baltimore are saturated in lavish education spending, free or heavily subsidized transportation (and walkable blocks from places without even needing it), awash in grant money that's just looking for ways to turn abandoned properties into livable homes and viable businesses, and it's been run by people at the legislative and executive levels (since you're so obsessed with this) roughly the same color as those who live there. Health and legal expenses? Covered by taxpayer-funded medical care and legal clinics where you can hear the crickets chirping for lack of interest in use other than when someone's arrested for street crime.

We've been "addressing" those issues, lavishly, for decades. Miles away, there's prosperity. In that spot? People living in fear of the local street gangs and those squatting in abandoned homes and businesses. Why? Because the members of those gangs, the thugs who make that area intolerable as a place to live or run a business, have safe haven, culturally, in the households in which they were so passively raised. Ask the people who live there, and they'll tell you that's exactly the problem. "Addressing" that problem means (ready?) not tolerating the crime. And that means police presence and activity. But we're being told, by the president no less, that what's really needed is a less visible and active police force. And indeed, the police in that area have dialed it way back in the last few weeks ... and surprise! The violence level, including murder on the street, has surged hugely.

Just what you look for when deciding where to build your next fire-proof retail store, right?