Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Emularity

ascii.textfiles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 107 posts

Re: The Emularity

#51

Post by bai0 »

vegabook wrote: post #40

K so JS is the new de-facto interpreted machine-Latin. The lingua franca. Is there something else I'm missing here? We've known that there is a decent mapping from X86 assembly to a subset of javascript for a number of years now. You can even run the entire OCaml stack in the browser, or Doom, or Quake... etc. What's next? Wordperfect in the browser? Visicalc? This is clever and kudos to the guys, but how is this adv…

WordPerfect in the browser? Please, that was so two weeks ago: https://archive.org/details/msdos_wordperfect6

Might need to print this and tape it to your keyboard though http://bit.ly/1zDZrjk

Re: The Emularity

#52

Post by lione »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #39
slg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia might be a consistent phenomenon, but surely what we are nostalgia about changes. A 20 year old likely never experienced Windows 3.11 in the first place. That would likely make them view emulating it more of a novelty exercise than a nostalgic one, which anecdotally is a weaker and shorter lived motivator.

On the other hand, a 20-year-old probably didn't grow up with a record player but suddenly vinyl is in a huge renaissance.

On the other other hand, Vinyl at least has some upsides. Listening to a Vinyl is an experience, plus it's lossless, and physically owning a record is cool/makes good art/conversation pieces. Windows3.11 would be interesting to check out, but it'd be more like something you'd check out for 20 minutes to see how it used to be done, then you'd go back to your modern OS. Vinyl is an experience, most older software is a novelty.

Re: The Emularity

#53

Post by vegabook »

bai0 wrote: post #51
vegabook wrote: post #40

K so JS is the new de-facto interpreted machine-Latin. The lingua franca. Is there something else I'm missing here? We've known that there is a decent mapping from X86 assembly to a subset of javascript for a number of years now. You can even run the entire OCaml stack in the browser, or Doom, or Quake... etc. What's next? Wordperfect in the browser? Visicalc? This is clever and kudos to the guys, but how is this adv…

WordPerfect in the browser? Please, that was so two weeks ago: https://archive.org/details/msdos_wordperfect6 Might need to print this and tape it to your keyboard though http://bit.ly/1zDZrjk

I'm waiting for vim in the browser... oh wait...

http://dailyjs.com/2013/12/13/vimjs/

Still - I'll take it all back when someone shows me Wordstar.js. Who needs Indesign??

Re: The Emularity

#54

Post by [deleted] »

bai0 wrote: post #51
vegabook wrote: post #40

K so JS is the new de-facto interpreted machine-Latin. The lingua franca. Is there something else I'm missing here? We've known that there is a decent mapping from X86 assembly to a subset of javascript for a number of years now. You can even run the entire OCaml stack in the browser, or Doom, or Quake... etc. What's next? Wordperfect in the browser? Visicalc? This is clever and kudos to the guys, but how is this adv…

WordPerfect in the browser? Please, that was so two weeks ago: https://archive.org/details/msdos_wordperfect6 Might need to print this and tape it to your keyboard though http://bit.ly/1zDZrjk

[deleted]

Re: The Emularity

#55

Post by tedks »

lione wrote: post #52
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a 20-year-old probably didn't grow up with a record player but suddenly vinyl is in a huge renaissance.

On the other other hand, Vinyl at least has some upsides. Listening to a Vinyl is an experience, plus it's lossless, and physically owning a record is cool/makes good art/conversation pieces. Windows3.11 would be interesting to check out, but it'd be more like something you'd check out for 20 minutes to see how it used to be done, then you'd go back to your modern OS. Vinyl is an experience, most older software is a…

On the other other hand, Windows 3.1 has some upsides. Running Windows 3.1 is an experience, plus it's on DOS, and having a Windows 3.1 install on your laptop is cool/makes good art/conversations pieces. Vinyl would be interesting to listen to once or twice to show off to your friends, but it'd be more like something you'd set up once to see how it used to be done, then you'd go back to an iPod. Windows 3.1 is an experience, vinyl is a novelty.

Re: The Emularity

#56

Post by noobermin »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #39
slg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia might be a consistent phenomenon, but surely what we are nostalgia about changes. A 20 year old likely never experienced Windows 3.11 in the first place. That would likely make them view emulating it more of a novelty exercise than a nostalgic one, which anecdotally is a weaker and shorter lived motivator.

On the other hand, a 20-year-old probably didn't grow up with a record player but suddenly vinyl is in a huge renaissance.

As a 25 year old who did manage to experience Windows 3.1 (although I wasn't allowed on the Internet back then) but also once had turntable[0], I think it's far to say that "nostalgia" isn't really the word for it. I guess it's sort of like for gen-Xer's who like to swing dance, they find a certain quality in it although it certainly is much before their time.

May be it is rather superficial, but you can say that about fashion, art, music, choice of programming paradigm (in some cases at least).

[0]I should note the records I bought were recorded by people about my age, and they played psychedelic rock that emulated 60's rock and claimed to use "vintage" equipment from their effects pedals to their recording equipment...and they certainly weren't alive in the 60's.

Re: The Emularity

#57

Post by jerf »

tedks wrote: post #55
lione wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other other hand, Vinyl at least has some upsides. Listening to a Vinyl is an experience, plus it's lossless, and physically owning a record is cool/makes good art/conversation pieces. Windows3.11 would be interesting to check out, but it'd be more like something you'd check out for 20 minutes to see how it used to be done, then you'd go back to your modern OS. Vinyl is an experience, most older software is a…

On the other other hand, Windows 3.1 has some upsides. Running Windows 3.1 is an experience, plus it's on DOS, and having a Windows 3.1 install on your laptop is cool/makes good art/conversations pieces. Vinyl would be interesting to listen to once or twice to show off to your friends, but it'd be more like something you'd set up once to see how it used to be done, then you'd go back to an iPod. Windows 3.1 is an exp…

I think the closest equivalent to the claim that vinyl is lossless would be that Windows 3.1 is efficient. Well... sure... if you squint hard enough and tune the definition of lossless/efficient properly, sure... but not in an actually relevant manner.

Re: The Emularity

#58

Post by sehugg »

code_duck wrote: post #44

I went through the period of nostalgia and fascination the author exhibits years ago with Amiga, c64 and dos emulation and virtual machines. It's impressive and convenient that this runs in a browser, but does itreally change anything about emulation? We've had this capability for windows, mac and Linux for years which covers about every platform with a browser. I suppose it's convenient if you wanted to emulate wind…

Emulators suffer from bitrot just like the software they're emulating. I've seen several fall into disrepair in recent years -- eventually we'll lose the people that remember how the the old systems worked. Centralizing the development and publishing it on the web seems a good way to keep the preservation effort humming.

(And as pointed out in the OP, getting something like Trumpet Winsock to work against a 21st century internet is non-trivial)

Re: The Emularity

#59

Post by tedks »

jerf wrote: post #57
tedks wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other other hand, Windows 3.1 has some upsides. Running Windows 3.1 is an experience, plus it's on DOS, and having a Windows 3.1 install on your laptop is cool/makes good art/conversations pieces. Vinyl would be interesting to listen to once or twice to show off to your friends, but it'd be more like something you'd set up once to see how it used to be done, then you'd go back to an iPod. Windows 3.1 is an exp…

I think the closest equivalent to the claim that vinyl is lossless would be that Windows 3.1 is efficient. Well... sure... if you squint hard enough and tune the definition of lossless/efficient properly, sure... but not in an actually relevant manner.

Windows 3.1 is on DOS, so it is lossless. There's no intermediary between any program and any other program. Everything runs in pure, unadulterated Ring 0, raw, unprocessed 16 bits.

Re: The Emularity

#60

Post by zokier »

smacktoward wrote: post #48
code_duck wrote: post #44

I went through the period of nostalgia and fascination the author exhibits years ago with Amiga, c64 and dos emulation and virtual machines. It's impressive and convenient that this runs in a browser, but does itreally change anything about emulation? We've had this capability for windows, mac and Linux for years which covers about every platform with a browser. I suppose it's convenient if you wanted to emulate wind…

> We've had this capability for windows, mac and Linux for years which covers about every platform with a browser Yes, but that always required installing emulation software, tracking down the necessary ROMs/disk images, etc. If it's running in the browser, the site admin can do all that once for everybody rather than every user having to do it for him/herself. All the user has to do is open a URL.

> All the user has to do is open a URL.

I think it is a shame that Java Web Start style tech never got anywhere. It pretty much delivered such experience (click url and app launches) without actually binding the application to the browser.

Post reply on HN