There was a loud bang, a nasty smell (think burnt cabbage) and a lot of smoke billowed out from the hole where the CD-ROM used to be. Then Nothing. At this point, the idea occurred to me that maybe my computer was broken. "Why not use this opportunity to try this 'Windows XP' I keep hearing so much about."
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I grew up on a Unix command-line. BSD, I believe. I have dim memories of dialing up on a black and green Wyse50 terminal, sending e-mail with 'mail', reading newsgroups and playing Nethack in all its ASCII glory. I even became rather adept at vi. I was happy, ecstatic even, wrapped all snug and safe in my warm, green world of text and terminal beeps. But my friends all had 'IBM clones', and as I grew, so too did the technology. My early youth was tinged in the stark, cyan tones of CGA. My preteens were illustrated in glorious EGA, and as I came of age, so too did the startling, varied hues of SVGA. But I get ahead of myself. As a child, we did play games, primitive games, on these 'IBM clones'. Bolderdash, Centipede, Double-Dragon, Golden Axe. But no computer game could compare to the imagination of a ten-year-old boy! And so for the better part of my youth I remained shrouded by the eerie, flickering glow of scrolling text. My first experience with a 'Graphical User Interface' was an X-terminal. Then it was Red Hat Linux all the way, until Ubuntu walked itself onto my desktop nearly a year ago... and there things should have ended. Full Story |