I remember not getting Close Combat 2 (from 1997) running on Windows 10 some years ago but I did getting it running under Wine, albeit with some tweaks.
Whether that was a Windows compatibility issue or potentially some display driver thing, I'm not sure. (90's Windows games may have used some DirectDraw features that just don't get that much attention nowadays, which I think may have been the issue, but my memory's a bit spotty.)
> Im pretty sure I read in the past GoG still sells you a license to a game in perpetuity, rather than ownership
Just about every commercial software license says the software is licensed, not sold.
Of course the practical difference is in whether you can trust you'll be able to keep using the product indefinitely or have to rely on the publisher's goodwill.
(Also, whether the idea that a software product is only licensed and not sold is legally valid of course depends on the jurisdiction and legal interpretation. IIRC back in the day some people tried to argue that you couldn't resell a game or other piece of software you bought on physical media because the software was only licensed to you, not sold. That argument didn't necessarily fly.)
I'm guessing that was a 286. I think Intel parts topped out at 12.5 MHz but AMD and Harris eventually reached 20 or even 25 MHz. I still have my original PC with a 12.5 MHz one.
The difference with the 386, I think, is that AFAIK the second-sourced 8086 and 286 CPUs from non-Intel manufacturers still made use of licensed Intel designs. The 386 (and later) had to be reverse engineered again and AMD designed their own implementation. That also meant AMD was a bit late to the game (the Am386 came out in 1991 while the 80386 had already been released in 1985) but, on the other hand, they were able to achieve better performance.
AMD didnt clean room 386, nor even 486. AMD directly copied Intel microcode 100% 1:1 for 386, and later admitted to copying parts for 486 (smm? ice?). Sept. 4, 1993 LA Times article:
>AMD said Friday that its “independently derived” 486 microprocessor borrowed some microcode from Intel’s earlier 386 chip.
Borrowed hehe. Ended up in a 1995 settlement where AMD fully admitted copying and agreed to pay $58mil penalty in exchange for official license to 386 & 486 microcodes and infamous patent 338(mmu). Intel really wanted a legal win confirming validity of their patent 338 to threaten other competitors. 338 is what prevented sale of UMC Green 486 in USA. Cyrix bypassed the issue by manufacturing at SGS and TI who had full Intel license https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/8...
>were able to achieve better performance
Every single Am386 instruction executes at same cycle count as Intel counterpart, difference is only official ability to work at 40MHz.
> The 386 (and later) had to be reverse engineered … That also meant AMD was a bit late to the game
There were also legal matters that delayed the release of their chips. Intel tried to claim breach of copyright with the 80386 name¹ and so forth, to try stymie the competition.
> they were able to achieve better performance.
A lot of that came from clocking them faster. I had an SX running at 40Hz. IIRC they were lower power for the same clock then Intel parts, able to run at 3.3V, which made them popular in laptops of the time. That, and they were cheaper! Intel came out with a 3.3V model that had better support for cache to compete with this.
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[1] This failed, which is part of why the i386 (and later i486 and number-free names like Pentium) branding started (though only in part - starting to market direct to consumers rather than just EOMs was a significant factor in that too).
Probably the Underhanded C Contest (https://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html) but yeah. Obfuscated C Contest entries usually aren't underhanded, just intentionally obscure about what they do or how they do it.
That replaces number two and is the correct alternative in most cases.
There are cases where a password manager may not solve the problem, though. It doesn't help if I forget my disk encryption or work AD password and I need to be able to login before I can get to the password manager in the first place. Enterprise IT is also where you find some of those frustrating password policies, such as long and complex passwords with mandated changes every month or two, and where you usually can't choose your management tools.
Of course those particular passwords usually get typed so often that remembering them isn't much of a problem. And password managers work well for pretty much all secrets that aren't needed that often.
Yeah. I've been in the habit of keeping the (encrypted) password file in multiple places. So I can even get the password off my phone if I really need to.
For what it's worth, my computer science degree also had courses and projects that included requirements analysis, breaking down the problem, and elements of software engineering methodology and project management. (I believe we had a course titled "software engineering" even though the university doesn't award engineering degrees.)
I suppose in some schools computer science programmes might be fairly distinct from engineering ones. However, it seems that in lots of places a bachelor's in computer science is rather an generalist degree that covers lots of (mostly software) tech topics and some CS theory.
I'd still have trouble calling myself a software engineer, though, since I don't technically have an engineering degree, even though in lots of places my job might be described as such.
I also don't know a single programmer/developer whose job is distinct from field 2.
I haven't looked at leetcode in a long time but if the problems require e.g. rebalancing a tree, I honestly don't remember how to do it and might not be able to reason it out on the spot either. I have no problems with concepts like recursion or computational complexity though.
It sounds like leetcode problems require either memorization of a significant number of algorithm design patterns or seriously sharp algorithmic problem solving skills.
I can't think of any official documents I'd be getting in Office file formats. Forms are mostly web ones or in some cases PDF, read-only documents are PDF. Maybe you can submit some documents or attachments in the Word format as a citizen but I wouldn't be surprised if PDF is already required anyway, or an image format for scans.
I'd be more worried about document interoperability between government agencies and other organizations such as companies that do work for the government. The government could of course mandate contractors to use an open source office suite which would extend the need for training to those companies.
Also, I've seen some orgs make heavy use of Office formats in terms of e.g. surprisingly elaborate formatting, document history and comments, and although I haven't tried to use those in LibreOffice, I wouldn't be sure it supports all of those in the same extent some people have learned to use them in Office.
There are lots of ways of "just not working" but IME the problem with corporate Windows laptops is often the enterprise software crap on them rather than the hardware, necessarily.
My work laptop with a high(ish)-end AMD laptop CPU and reasonable hardware quality drains the battery in a couple of hours. It also doesn't feel any faster than my personal three-year-old more lightweight (also AMD, same brand) laptop. In some cases the private device is faster despite its lower specs. Its battery would also easily last 5 times longer than the work one, probably, if I used it on the road.
(Incidentally, the poor battery life isn't much of a practical concern with the work device either because I need to use it at the desk 98% of the time anyway. But I can certainly see how crappy software and configurations can make using those devices a pain.)
> Give me something solid that will last 5 -6 years with a serviceable (I don’t care if it’s glued or torx’ed or whatever in, just as long as it’s replaceable) battery, and I don’t care if the RAM and SSD is soldered to the chipset.
I'm okay with that, even if I'd personally prefer the serviceability. But I'm honestly not okay with the idea that it's fine to just toss a laptop after two years. I want people who do that to get their own planet.
Also, an 8 GB RAM upgrade makes little sense nowadays but a 16 -> 48 GB or 32 -> 64 GB or 32 -> 96 GB upgrade can actually make an otherwise reasonable device better if the amount of RAM becomes a bottleneck.
> IME the problem with corporate Windows laptops is often the enterprise software crap on them rather than the hardware, necessarily.
I work for a small org, the laptop was bought from Dell and shipped to me. It's running vanilla Windows 11 with OpenVPN and Windows Defender, with a decent sized dev drive. There are so many issues with it - keypresses being 10-20 seconds delayed, random window tearing/partial display updates, the machine deciding to ignore sleep and just dying while the lid is closed. These aren't things that will be solved by replacing the SSD, or the RAM, they're likely CPU (and as a result motherboard) replacements.
> Also, an 8 GB RAM upgrade makes little sense nowadays but a 16 -> 48 GB or 32 -> 64 GB or 32 -> 96 GB upgrade can actually make an otherwise reasonable device better if the amount of RAM becomes a bottleneck.
There's practically no devices (framework is the only one that comes to mind) that will ship with that little RAM and allow an upgrade by that much, even in the desktop space. My 2015 Macbook pro (the device before this) has 16GB RAM , giving it an extra 32GB isn't really going to help it much, the problem is that it's "i7" is an order of magnitude slower than a 3/4 year old replacement device (and ironically probably closer to the Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 258V which is in my work machine)
I think the difference is that if an autistic person learns to mask, that's probably useful as a coping mechanism but doesn't remove the autism in the sense of making the fundamental neurological difference go away. Anxiety (even in anxiety disorders) can be fundamentally reduced by exposure therapy, not only in the sense of finding more effective coping mechanisms but in the sense of the anxiety itself diminishing or ceasing to exist.
For what it's worth, exposure therapy is a real term and it's an actual part of cognitive behavioural therapy.
Whether that was a Windows compatibility issue or potentially some display driver thing, I'm not sure. (90's Windows games may have used some DirectDraw features that just don't get that much attention nowadays, which I think may have been the issue, but my memory's a bit spotty.)