Comment Re:DOS? (Score 1) 763
Of course, "DOS" stands for "Disk Operating System", and was called such because it was loaded from a disk.
Contrast that with "TOS", which was loaded from, you guessed it, a tape.
Comment Re:Taligent (Score 1) 763
Much as I love my postgres and OpenBSD, if it truly mattered, I would say the data MUST live on OS/400. There is no substitute.
Comment Re:IBM i (Score 1) 763
I believe the name you are looking for is CPF (Control Program Facility), running on the IBM System/38.
RIP, SunSolve 100
Kymermosst writes "Today marks the last day that SunSolve will be available. Oracle sent the final pre-deployment details today for the retirement of SunSolve and the transition to its replacement, My Oracle Support Release 5.2, which begins tomorrow. People who work with Sun's hardware and software have long used SunSolve as a central location for specifications, patches, and documentation."
Comment Re:test results are largely irrelevant anyway (Score 1) 203
When has Microsoft ever forced someone to upgrade their browser?
This really happened, in about 1996.
I'm too lazy to recall the details, but my computer was unusable until I allowed the upgrade to complete. Multiple reboots, cancels, retries, etc.; I even pulled the power cord during the process at one point, to no avail. My work depended on using the currently installed version, so it mattered.
It was the thing that pushed me over the edge with Microsoft. I have recently eased off (I'm typing this on a Windows media center PC), but I STILL have a Microsoft-free server room.
(Actually, it's also Linux-free; go OpenBSD. And there's an AS/400 in there too.)
Doctor Slams Hospital's "Please" Policy 572
Administrators at England's Worthing Hospital are insisting that doctors say the magic word when writing orders for blood tests on weekends. If a doctor refuses to write "please" on the order, the test will be refused. From the article: "However, a doctor at the hospital said on condition of anonymity that he sees the policy as a money-saving measure that could prove dangerous for patients. 'I was shocked to come in on Sunday and find none of my bloods had been done from the night before because I'd not written "please,"' the doctor said. 'I had no results to guide treatment of patients. Myself and a senior nurse had to take the bloods ourselves, which added hours to our 12-hour shifts. This system puts patients' lives at risk. Doctors are wasting time doing the job of the technicians.'"
Comment Re:What might this look like? (Score 2, Informative) 158
I want to log in and instantly know how much money I have, while still being able to drill down into individual accounts to access the transaction history.
CIBC offers this in Canada.
I want to be able to transfer money between my accounts quickly and easily, without fees or limits.
This too.
I want to be able to pay bills on line,
This too.
have checks cut and then mailed to me, I want to deposit checks by scanning them at home and I want to generate disposable credit card numbers for online purchases.
No luck on this stuff. The disposable credit card numbers would be nice.
Comment Re:What might this look like? (Score 1) 158
A few years ago I ran a service business with a monthly fee.
I was able to generate a transaction file (in the service's operational software) to send to my credit union to debit this fee from my customers' accounts and credit mine, but the file had to be manually uploaded to the credit union's secure web site.
My billing was completely automated except for that one manual intervention. It would have been really nice to automate that step as well, via upload to an internet-accessible endpoint.
Aral Sea May Recover; Dead Sea Needs a Lifeline 131
An anonymous reader writes "It's a tale of two seas. The drying up of the Aral Sea is considered one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history, but the northern sector of the sea, at least, is showing signs of life. A dam completed in 2005 has increased the North Aral's span by 20 percent, and birds, fish, and people are all returning to the area. Meanwhile, the Dead Sea is still in the midst of precipitous decline, since too much water is being drawn out of the Jordan River for thirsty populations and crops. To keep the sea from shrinking more, scientists are pushing an ambitious scheme called the 'Red-Dead conduit,' which would channel huge amounts of water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. However, the environmental consequences of such a project may be troubling."
Comment Re:Meh... (Score 1) 223
Some "staggering" would make sense due to timezone differences, but this is measured in hours rather than days, weeks, months (even years).
There is a companion "Live Timing" internet feed, where you can see the same lap/sector time info for all cars that the teams in the pit lane do. To benefit from that, you need to be watching in real time.
Comment Re:Meh... (Score 1) 223
You can keep your games, the library has the books I don't buy, and I buy my music.
However, money can't buy the BBC Formula 1 television coverage over here in Canada, and the TSN excerpts are abysmal.
North American Formula 1 fans NEED torrents to get what the people of Great Britain get as a matter of course.
And to you wonderful people who record the BBC coverage and upload the torrents, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
Comment Much illness is self-inflicted (Score 1) 804
A large proportion of all Western disease is self-inflicted through what we ingest: rheumatism, arthritis, psoriasis, Type II diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer.
A second problem is that we tend to have "disease care" rather than "health care". True "health care" would remove the disease-causing agents from our menu to keep us more disease-free, rather than slicing, irradiating, and drugging us once things have gone wrong.
Think about it: that hunch-backed, fat, rashy-skinned crone that you see hobbling around the retirement center was quite likely a hot babe when she was 17 or so. What the hell happened to her?
It was the "food" she ate.
Comment Re:Mission Option: It already isn't.... (Score 1) 804
Lawns will need to be mowed, floors will need to be swept... and whoever does this work should know that they won't be bankrupted by a medical emergency.
Comment Re:Perfection Has a Price (Score 1) 726
I've never been a user of a mainframe system, and I understand they were coded to be a lot more reliable than desktop class microcomputers. But having started using computers in the early 80's as a small child, and seeing where we are now, there's just no comparison.
I was programming the IBM System/34 in 1981.
If my program produced incorrect output, or failed to compile, the first thing I did was check my code for errors. Why? Because it was always my own coding error that caused the problem.
If there were any errors in the implementation of either the hardware or the software of that System/34, I never found any of them. I didn't find my first platform bug (an issue in SEU on an AS/400, if I recall correctly) until about 1988 or 1989.
I'm not coding for those platforms any more. Today when I experience incorrect output from my programs, I immediately suspect the platform implementation. And often, it is the platform implementation, not my source code. That was to me utterly unthinkable on any mainstream platform before about 1985.
(Actually, in my experience there is an exception to this miserable situation. OpenBSD is like a 1980's IBM System/38: everything is documented; the documentation is findable, complete, correct, and matches the behaviour of the documented system; and, with very,very few exceptions, everything works exactly as intended. That's why I use it, and that's why my name is on the donations page.)
