Perhaps not serious, but I think people gravitate towards older systems these days because they are easier to conceptualize. It's not unrealistic for a single person to have a complete grasp of e.g. the C64 and it's programming environment. DOS is similarly constraint, but also easier for you to form a more or less complete mental model around.
Some people love computers and making them do weird stuff, older computers make certain tasks feel more manageable.
Most computers in Turkey come with FreeDOS preinstalled because there's a law that states all computers must be sold with an operating system. FreeDOS turns out to be the cheapest and easiest.
That's why you don't let people who have never touched a computer write tech laws. You get results like this.
The computer is not very usable without an operating system. I think it would be reasonable for the computer to have Forth or BASIC or something like that in ROM, like many older computers do, so that the computer is usable without an operating system (but that you could also install an operating system if you wanted it).
Russia has a similar law and yes computers with FreeDOS are also a thing. Alternatively, you're entitled to get a refund for the Windows license by having your hard drive wiped and license sticker removed.
Linux drivers and certification is a whole lot of extra work and complexity compared to FreeDOS. Years ago, Nettops were sold with FreeDOS where the components didn't support Linux that well.
(FWIW: I suspect there are more than a few old industrial control systems and such out there that are still running DOS, just because of an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude)
My brother is in manufacturing. DOS is everywhere. Older things too (PDP-11? DG Nova? Seen both, semi-recently). Not just because "ain't broke, don't fix", but because when you have a cloth dying machine or brick forming machine you spent >US$5M for, that is often a bespoke install for your plant, you don't replace it because some guy who prolly slings Javascript all day sez "DOS is oooold, boomer".
These DOS machines for industrial control could probably be replaced by an Arduino or a far more reliable MCU, whereas running an actual legacy PC as a business-critical component in manufacturing has to be a bit of a nightmare by now. AI could probably do a good enough job of working out how the legacy DOS executables were intended to work.
You might notice that I never once claimed that the replacement I described would be "easy" or, for that matter, even advisable given the broader real-world constraints involved; just technically feasible in the barest sense. I don't think many people would want to use DOS to design a greenfield system of that kind today, and there's a reason for that. Yes, you can buy newly made "DOS PCs" today, but can you really ensure that today's brand new DOS PC will behave in every way that matters like the actual 30 years old DOS PC that used to control the machinery? That's not a trivial question to answer.
If you design the system from the outset to work with an actual PLC/SCADA or similar (the typical solution for hooking up to big industrial machinery of that sort) that's a bit less likely to come up as an issue, and the hardware will actually be designed for that kind of environment.
Yes, if you ignore everything that was discussed, invent time travel do you can "design the system from the outset" as the prescient you are, and pretend anyone was talking about greenfield, you get to be right. Good for you...some people just need the 'win'.
Yeah...this is "if you screw around with it enough, you void the warranty and we will no longer support it" for a potentially multimillion dollar machine.
I think this PR is awesome, and I can totally see myself playing around with this at some point. Being able to create DOS executables of SDL projects is just ... cool!
But I do wonder about the practicality. This would, I presume (never done DOS development, never touched a memory extender) only run on 386+ CPUs, and maybe more importantly, probably require a newer CPU than that to run anything non-trivial at acceptable performance. So I wonder how many "real DOS machines" this can practically target.
> "real DOS machines" this can practically target.
Define "real DOS machine".
But I would give you my definition: something with ISA slot so you can hear that awful 2.0 stereo SB Pro-compatible with a hiss what could be almost parseltongue. Video card of choice.
So basically anything between 386sx to P3 Tualatin and some rare and weird cases even P4 and AMD Athlon.
I did testing on a K6-2 300Mhz, and yes it has 2 ISA slot, one of which is where I put the Sound Blaster 16.
Compiling an SDL port of Quake quake gives you 90% performance at 320x200 and 97% at 640x480 compared to the original. That's about 45fps which isn't bad I think.
SDL3 should now work with any i386+ with a VGA and 4MB of RAM which is roughly the requirements of Doom.
It's a simple enough implementation that implicitly helps document how SDL is supposed to work (DOS being a well understood platform by now). Plenty of reasons to maintain it based on that alone.
There's a lot of interesting projects and even innovation going on making new games for old PCs/consoles. James Lambert and Kaze are doing fantastic work in the N64 space as one example (watch their videos on Youtube)
SDL is written in C. So it can support it without too much trouble. And some people are compiling stuff to run on DOS. So it makes sense. And your objection doesn't hold any water.
I suppose it's an issue of ignorance; even IT veterans often don't know that DOS was, and still is, the driver of many highly specialized industry applications, or an OS running the software of individuals as well as small business owners around the world.
The same could be said for software from the US. Could be a vector of CIA. For average US citizens, it might even be safer to use Russian software because FSB can't come after them.
It is not a bad rule, to use online services / software where you know that the malicious owners are likely not after you nor in cahoots with the government where you live. Or you can take the Swiss option with stuff like ProtonVPN, Signal etc. :-)
The current icons really aren't that good. Looking at apple specifically: The facetime and messages icons are almost completely indistinguishable. Get angry and say I'm blind, but so is a lot of the userbase - like legitimately, legally blind people.
The camera icon on iOS is just a fucking camera lens with a grey background. No context.
Sure, but it's not clear they're unrelated. Maybe interesting is necessary (but not sufficient) for usability?
Also, the newer icons don't really indicate a word processing application. If anything, they're look like they might be for a drawing program. So regardless of interesting/abstract/whatever, it seems like a poor icon choice.
Usable icons _are_ a bit interesting. A bunch of same shapes with same-ish colors on a grid is NOT prioritizing usablity. It's prioritizing minimalism. The middle icons in that list are interesting enough that your visual cortex can pattern-match to your previous experience selecting that app without much conscious effort. The oldest is a bit much but at least still recognizable (not necessarily "well known", that's different), but the new ones are worse: so boring and generic that it takes actual conscious effort to select them from a sea of sameness.
If the publish the API for the server, as well as allow the device to specify the API hostname to connect to, that's all I need. We can write our own server implementation fairly easily, and this saves us the hassle of having to reverse-engineer the API, plus makes setup much easier if we can just tell the device where to connect.
I wish more manufacturers would unlock their devices for local use when they don't want to support them any more. Or maybe even, hear me out, before support ends! Maybe we could even vote with our wallets and buy open stuff instead of walled gardens.
Exactly. Open source is great and all, but all 99% of these devices need is simply a way to configure them to connect to a different server, when the manufacturer inevitably turns their own server down (usually) bricking devices.
The open source community will happily reverse-engineer the protocol and clean-room develop their own server code.
> 99% of these devices need is simply a way to configure them to connect to a different server, when the manufacturer inevitably turns their own server down (usually) bricking devices.
The same can be said about a lot of games, and should be the case with them as well. Big MMOs for example. See the plethora of WoW private servers as an example of how it can be done.
I think the stop killing games initiative in the EU was pushing for it but not sure how far they've gotten, but like with hardware, once a game studio no longer wants to run the servers for their game, they should be forced to turn it over to the community so the players can continue playing long after the studio is gone.
Bose's brand is built on audio quality. There is close to little negative impact open sourcing the API (server) in this case will bring to their brand.
For a game, open sourcing the server generally means anyone can basically mess it up and with the internet make it available to everyone to see. Then the responsibility is on the developer to protect their "brand".
The plethora of WoW private servers is not a good example. These are from individuals, or groups of people who willfully reverse engineered it on their own. This is different from a company expressly permissing and implicitly giving a grant on allowing a similar product to exist - the difference is that one gives credibility, which the other does not.
That's exactly what the "NoLongerEvil" Nest thermostat server did[0]. They just injected their own CA bundle and modified the /etc/hosts file to "free" the devices.
The game's name reminds me of the Russian word for state/district/region. I was right. It's an intended pun. The game's title screen on the screenshot in the article has Russian on it.
Would be nice to have the AI visualize all those words to their pre-zodiacal origin on a landscape wireframe diagram with popup points of interest and water surface tension effects showing affinity and uses among various cultures.
That's a bad idea. It isn't deterministic. How do you even make documentation for users for your generative UI? It looks different for every single user.
reply