asciilifeform: 'coinbase' will be kept alive via whatever means, while it does its job (rat our folks who cash out to usd; keep price fire-extinguished a la gold)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i have written on many occasions, that this (the froth) is why the very youngest of the folks worth anything in computerdom are circa early 1980s
asciilifeform: can mircea_popescu or anyone else remind me, what was supposed to be the upside of being a glass bott^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husing monero ?
asciilifeform: it is 'interesting' in the same sense as denizen of insane asylum who thinks he is a glass bottle is more interesting than the fella who thinks he is ordinary napoleon ?
asciilifeform: gernika: what would you have done, snuck dos box into exam ?
asciilifeform: gernika: they sold the rights to texas instruments
asciilifeform: reversing 'derive' is this thing that i come back to for a week or two every other year or so.
asciilifeform: it was written in 'mulisp', which is compiled in such a way as to make this theoretically feasible.
asciilifeform: btw i've always thought it would be interesting to get the lisp src of derive (yes) out of the exe
asciilifeform: never know when a WORKING computeralgebratron will come in handy
asciilifeform: i encourage folks here to mirror it, somewhere.
asciilifeform: at any rate, the fdd image is here for n00bz as well
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: naturally. in the mental universe various folks inhabit, nothing mircea_popescuine could even begin to contemplate happening.
asciilifeform: boots cleanly on actual dos box, tested.
asciilifeform: gernika: it's a straight floppy image with the real thing in it, created strictly with actual msdos running on emulated hardware
asciilifeform: such as having conscious peopl ein it, aha
asciilifeform: ;;later tell gernika it will boot in 'qemu' too.
asciilifeform: there are some very serious folks who are working on having it be forgotten that a 486 was an entirely usable thing, and in many ways a superior cultural artifact, all things considered, than the computer you and i are sitting in front of today
asciilifeform: and when it happens, it is normally for commercial reasons and in secret
asciilifeform: yes, it can. but it is rare for anyone to give the megatonne of shit that must be given, for it to actually happen;
asciilifeform: gernika: no argument. my point concerned the traditional argument 'oh but anything can be reverse-engineered perfectly'
asciilifeform: (freedos folks make a show of refusing to look at it)☟︎
asciilifeform: and this despite the fact that msdos 6.2 source leaked in late '90s
asciilifeform: to the point that 'freedos' still won't run certain gamez
asciilifeform: or think of even something so humble as msdos. despite the fact that you could fill several bookcases with material like 'norton's guide', 'undocumented dos', etc. the thing was never fully reverse-engineered by anyone
asciilifeform: so he was 'spread but not entered yet'
asciilifeform: but more practically, user hasn't had true grasp of his hardware for a very long time. at least since mid-80s.
