An Operating System for Songs from God.

August 29, 2012 6:56 AM

LoseThos is an operating system written by a schizophrenic programmer.

A narrated demo and many "songs by God and me" (the apparently primary use of the OS) are available to view.

posted by dmd (255 comments total)

there was a really weird SA thread with this guy but i think it's lost to the archives
posted by p3on at 7:02 AM on August 29, 2012

Interesting.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:05 AM on August 29, 2012

Runs on a Time Cube.
posted by bpm140 at 7:09 AM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

This is truly interesting.

However, I could only stand about a minute of the demo video.
posted by odinsdream at 7:13 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

There was a hacker news post about this a while back, but it got killed (can't remember why).

Article | Comments
posted by symbollocks at 7:13 AM on August 29, 2012

Surprised you didn't mention his HackerNews submissions, comments, and profile.

I actually went down the rabbit hole with this a couple years ago, and was surprised there wasn't more discussion of the technical aspects, of what he was trying to do / talk about, since it is largely indistinguishable from a million other crazy geek projects.

Sadly, he barges into discussions with incoherent conspiracy theories and long-winded tirades unrelated to the main thread.

I feel sad for him, I have family and friends who act ... similarly. Whatever he's done merits some discussion, but when he derails into crazy conspiracy theories and personal attacks, its hard to move forward.

The guy has been hellbanned on HN for years, but so are a few people who have dared criticize Paul Graham, so I end up stumbling across his comments occasionally, reading dead links/comments, and ultimately feel sad that he doesn't have a more receptive outlet for his lunacy.
posted by lkc at 7:14 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

As you listen to the narration, imagine Lazlo Hollyfeld. It's uncanny.
posted by hanoixan at 7:18 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Surprised you didn't mention his HackerNews submissions, comments, and profile.

Note that you must be logged in to HN and switch showdead to yes on your profile page to see them.
posted by dmd at 7:24 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm planning to use the operating system to enter the Frito Lay sweepstakes a million times.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 7:25 AM on August 29, 2012 [32 favorites]

That is not the worst or most bewildering user interface I've encountered.

Just let that sink in for a minute....
posted by schmod at 7:27 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

If you've seen the obfuscation and sabotage I've seen on http://www.osdev.org and elsewhere, you would know that no-way-in-hell does the CIA want other operating systems. Ones without backdoors and tracking! Duh. Smack your head and say "Duh!"

Secure boot is the end for all the alternative OSes. I missed my chance, thanks to the CIA.
posted by losethos at 7:27 AM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

dmd: Thanks, I totally forgot those were settings!
posted by lkc at 7:29 AM on August 29, 2012

This is unsettling but interesting.

Are there any other hacker equivalents of "outsider art"?
posted by Egg Shen at 7:30 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

This is deeply weird and unsettling, but interesting. And if someone were to find evidence of a god in the fabric of the universe, why not in the streaming digits of a pseudorandom number generator and the binary heaven/hell of a digital computer?
posted by loquacious at 7:30 AM on August 29, 2012

I'm planning to use the operating system to enter the Frito Lay sweepstakes a million times.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld

you've been waiting 8 years for this post, eh?
posted by HuronBob at 7:32 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is unsettling but interesting.
posted by Egg Shen at 7:30 AM

This is deeply weird and unsettling, but interesting.
posted by loquacious at 7:30 AM

So is this!
posted by drlith at 7:33 AM on August 29, 2012 [11 favorites]

And a loop becomes time.
posted by loquacious at 7:35 AM on August 29, 2012 [5 favorites]

OSDev tells people to use CHS disk calls and not to use INT 13:AH=42 . They tell people how to reinvent Unix, vehemently discouraging any ideas other than Unix. They force people into the Bochs emulator. Where do I begin with how evil that site is? I treat it as entertainment -- been banned since 2007. They brainwash people into supporting 286 processors and say nothing of x86_64. They say nothing of developing compilers, though, that's what any new OS should do first thing for its command line.
posted by losethos at 7:35 AM on August 29, 2012 [20 favorites]

> Sadly, he barges into discussions with incoherent conspiracy theories and long-winded tirades unrelated to the main thread.

Many of his "long-winded tirades" are actually the output of LoseThos' inbuilt Markov chain based text randomiser running on BIBLE.TXT.
posted by public at 7:36 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

This thread just got awesome. Glad you're still alive and kicking Terry.
posted by public at 7:37 AM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

God says...
70:1 MAKE HASTE, O GOD, TO DELIVER ME; MAKE HASTE TO HELP ME, O LORD.
70:2 Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let
them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.
70:3 Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say,
Aha, aha.
70:4 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let
such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.
70:5 But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my
help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.
posted by losethos at 7:37 AM on August 29, 2012 [5 favorites]

This is really cool. Thanks for your awesome work, Terry.
posted by koeselitz at 7:39 AM on August 29, 2012

(And Psalm 70 is always good.)
posted by koeselitz at 7:39 AM on August 29, 2012

It looks like more of an environment for experimenting with assembler code and low-level stuff, hearkening back to the days of BASIC and the Apple ][ monitor. Cool.

And yeah, it's not the most horrible UI. Ever used WordPerfect?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:41 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Pick a quantum random number from 1 to 100,000 using your favorite site. Then go to the Bible and go to that line number. Report what it says.
posted by losethos at 7:43 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Coincidentally, I just closed a tab on osdev.org. I was looking at the x86_64 page.
posted by DU at 7:44 AM on August 29, 2012

Random thoughts:

Is losthos a posting script? He hasn't actually replied to or acknowledged any input from this thread in his output yet.

And what does a schizophrenic OS/program due to the Turing Test? Because it's totally breaking my Turing Test organs.
posted by loquacious at 7:47 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

OSDev spies on me -- CIA or something. They forever complain about my bootloader. My bootloader must be installed by my install script because it patches absoluet block numbers into my boot sector. They also want to cross compile it. It only compiles with my compiler which you can get if you boot the CD. It installs with the >InstallBoot('D'); command and it even has a master boot loader >InstallMasterBoot('D');
posted by losethos at 7:48 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

It has no path. Demons.
posted by losethos at 7:49 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

"The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of
righteousness."
posted by loquacious at 7:50 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

You want God talk? God says, "Either grieves confidentially question ashamed seducers
thirsted unfriendly downward Proceed stead sermons recognising
sky remembrances defined severer defilements liar upbraided
taunt smell "
posted by losethos at 7:51 AM on August 29, 2012

[Heya, losethos, it's great that you signed up and if you want to have a conversation with folks here about your work or what people have brought up in the thread that'd be really neat. That said, threads here are more of a conversation and less of a posting free-for-all in general, so, yeah, slowing down a little and nixing the "and here's a random thing I'm thinking stuff" in favor of something a little more focused would work better.]
posted by cortex at 7:51 AM on August 29, 2012 [9 favorites]

God can talk to you, if you hold-up your end of the conversation. Download TSGod. You can just randomly crack-open books. LoseThos will make melodies from God... like muses of old.
posted by losethos at 7:53 AM on August 29, 2012

That is not the worst or most bewildering user interface I've encountered.

Just let that sink in for a minute....

Yeah. This bears a striking resemblance to the actual, no-seriously the real, interface to the system holding parole information for our state.
posted by odinsdream at 7:54 AM on August 29, 2012

Random thoughts:

Is losthos a posting script? He hasn't actually replied to or acknowledged any input from this thread in his output yet.

And what does a schizophrenic OS/program due to the Turing Test? Because it's totally breaking my Turing Test organs.

It's interesting that you say that. Tell me more about He hasn't actually replied to or acknowledged. How does that make you feel?
posted by odinsdream at 7:55 AM on August 29, 2012 [33 favorites]

Read about Tongues from the Bible. Also here. You've heard of the writing on the wall? It's mean to tickle the president or a person.
posted by losethos at 7:55 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

You are an ass-hole "not the most bewildering" is an wise-ass way to criticise.
posted by losethos at 7:57 AM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

Those who know propaganda, like politicians, play games with speech.
posted by losethos at 7:58 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

losethos: Cortex sent you a message above - read it.

He's a mod. You'll be banned or put on time out if you keep spamming and not conversing.

There are people here willing and interested to have a conversation with you about your OS, but spamming bible quotes and random interjections isn't going to fly here.
posted by loquacious at 7:58 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

It always seems like I'm talking to Ken, the weasel from Graphic Technologies. Fucker.
posted by losethos at 7:58 AM on August 29, 2012 [20 favorites]

I try to avoid tickling presidents. It sometimes provokes chortles and the occasional moist gusset. Not very statesmanlike!
posted by h00py at 7:59 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

You are an ass-hole "not the most bewildering" is an wise-ass way to criticise.

I believe that was a compliment.

Personally I liked Desqview and I like fast, clean text/windowing UIs.
posted by loquacious at 7:59 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

They asked for random stuff. I didn't start it.

I will not be mocked, mod or not.
posted by losethos at 7:59 AM on August 29, 2012

For real, losethos, I'd love you to be part of the conversation here but right now it just feels like you're free-associating and declining to interact with anyone else here. Please throttle way back pronto if you want to participate here.
posted by cortex at 8:00 AM on August 29, 2012

It's a weasel politician way to say it.
posted by losethos at 8:00 AM on August 29, 2012

I need to incorporate LoseThos into my collection of virtual-machines-in-virtual-machines, which currently includes Amiga, BeOS, OpenVMS, Contiki, Minix, and Hercules.
posted by dmd at 8:01 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's like saying, "You're not gay, Obama, but..." Out of the blue, now, everybody wonders if Obama is gay.
posted by losethos at 8:01 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Tried installing but couldn't figure out how to get past the aquifer.
posted by fleacircus at 8:02 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

You don't understand the way things work around here, losethos, but...
posted by emelenjr at 8:04 AM on August 29, 2012

That may be just you. I like to think we're all just a little bit gay, in our hearts.
posted by h00py at 8:04 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Many of his "long-winded tirades" are actually the output of LoseThos' inbuilt Markov chain based text randomiser running on BIBLE.TXT.
posted by public at 12:36 AM on August 30 [1 favorite +] [!]


I'm not sure what to make of this.
Ill be interested to see how long this thread lasts
(and hope I don't get spammed for posting in it).
posted by lkc at 8:05 AM on August 29, 2012

I wonder what the power efficiency of LoseThos is compared to something more complicated like Linux. Does it even support CPU sleep states?
posted by public at 8:05 AM on August 29, 2012

I would actually like to hear more about the creation or technical details of this OS.
posted by loquacious at 8:05 AM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

I don't know much about OS development, but I'm actually really thrilled to learn that some people are still working on building things from the ground up. When I think of a future, say a hundred or two hundred years from now, where there computer systems on the starships are cruising between the moon and Mars are running on Windows 28...well, that just seems extremely not cool.

So bring on more new OS's! I want to see some more paradigm shifts before I die.
posted by jet_manifesto at 8:05 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

>PrtDsk is what you need to run once you get to the command prompt. Slow down and read. ROFLMAO.

>CopyTree("T:/","C:/");

>InstallBoot('C');

>InstalllMatserBoot('C');
posted by losethos at 8:06 AM on August 29, 2012

Ring-0-Only, Single-Address-Map (Identity), Non-networked, Shell is C in the same way C64 had BASIC as its shell. Source code is not ASCII. Has file compression on a perfile basis.
posted by losethos at 8:08 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Absoluetly nothing like anything else in existence. 64-bit
posted by losethos at 8:09 AM on August 29, 2012

losethos: Have you played with 0x10c at all? Seems like you might enjoy it.
posted by odinsdream at 8:09 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

losthos: How did you show up here so fast, anyway? I think you now hold the record for shortest time between a front page post and the subject of the post showing up.
posted by loquacious at 8:10 AM on August 29, 2012

Shell is C in the same way C64 had BASIC as its shell

Woah, cool.
posted by loquacious at 8:11 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ring-0-Only, Single-Address-Map (Identity),

It sounds like these are to do with the file system?

advice: see how I quoted you there? if you do that when you respond to someone, it makes more sense
posted by LogicalDash at 8:11 AM on August 29, 2012

Hey Losethos, I just wanted to say that I'm impressed with what you've built. It's strange and unique -- but undeniably awesome. That's all, carry on :)
posted by wrok at 8:13 AM on August 29, 2012

LogicalDash: I believe he means that there is no process isolation. Every bit of code that's running can access the memory of all the rest of the code. Even the OS it's self.
posted by public at 8:14 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Seriously, do live C shell interpreters exist anywhere else? This is the first one I've ever heard of.
posted by loquacious at 8:14 AM on August 29, 2012

"It sounds like these are to do with the file system?"

Not file system, are you obfuscating, Ken?

The only use I have for it is songs. I'm not a teenager who enjoys screwing around without a network for fun. When I was a teenager, I would have loved it.
posted by losethos at 8:14 AM on August 29, 2012

I'm curious to know how the windowing/graphics stuff works - is there an abstract canvas that's being drawn on, or does the program just know where to draw on the screen (and thus could draw outside of its area if it wanted t0?)
posted by dmd at 8:15 AM on August 29, 2012

FUD is what I meant.
posted by losethos at 8:15 AM on August 29, 2012

loquacious: Seriously, do live C shell interpreters exist anywhere else? This is the first one I've ever heard of.

Yep. e.g. http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/cint
posted by public at 8:15 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ch is a proprietary cross-platform C and C++ interpreter originally designed by Harry H
posted by LogicalDash at 8:15 AM on August 29, 2012

Tell us of your home path, Usul.
posted by loquacious at 8:16 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

There are two techniques for graphics -- one layer is refreshed 60Hz, another is persistent. It combines them with transparency and updates everything at 60Hz. Like an apple, beginners can put graphics on the screen in 3 lines of code.
posted by losethos at 8:17 AM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

Something like this would be fun for kernel-bending for abstract music or graphics art experiments.
posted by loquacious at 8:19 AM on August 29, 2012

My language is vetter than C. Statements/Expressions outside functions are called immediately like Main(). Strings alone are sent to PrintF/PutS. It has exceptions with a throw(...) instead of classes. It has 3+ part conditionals. >if (13<=age<20) "Teenager";
posted by losethos at 8:20 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

It always seems like I'm talking to Ken, the weasel from Graphic Technologies. Fucker.

I hear ya, man.
posted by Greg Nog at 8:20 AM on August 29, 2012 [11 favorites]

Ah, so there are no off-screen layers?

There's no file system at all, you say? Just a LiveCD? Well, I suppose you'd still have to implement CDFS.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:20 AM on August 29, 2012

I changed operator precedence rules. Bit Shift is like exponential. I added exponential back single quote.
posted by losethos at 8:21 AM on August 29, 2012

Yeah, it has offscreen layers.
posted by losethos at 8:22 AM on August 29, 2012

LoseThos, can you tell us a little bit about what your typical programming routine is like? What do you spend your time most on? Do you keep notes? Documentation? Do you (or did you, when you were writing the bulk of the OS) do any long-term planning for future features?
posted by dmd at 8:23 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

It has master/slave multicore. Don't worry -- locks on structures to keep it safe. You do MPJob() or MPSpawn() to assign work to other cores without a scheduler shifting between cores.
posted by losethos at 8:24 AM on August 29, 2012

I worked hard for 8 years. Now, there is no more practical to do. It all dies with secure boot.
posted by losethos at 8:25 AM on August 29, 2012

So, the cores are all synchronized until you tell them not to be
posted by LogicalDash at 8:25 AM on August 29, 2012

I read that secure boot will be easily disabled, at least on the first PCs to have it, and there's nothing to stop you from changing the private key used to authenticate bootable partitions.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:26 AM on August 29, 2012

losethos, what kind of hardware do you run this on?
posted by cellphone at 8:29 AM on August 29, 2012

Cores have a management task that waits for jobs HALTED. They are called "Seth". Core zero has "Adam". They either run a job or spawn a task on that core. You can access a global variable telling how busy the core is so you can decide what to assign it. This is good for degrading game graphics by hand.
posted by losethos at 8:29 AM on August 29, 2012

I have a Dell corei7. It's very depressing talking about compatibility. All I might ever hear is "Doesn't boot" with nobody saying "Runs awesome."
posted by losethos at 8:31 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

It seems to run for me in a VirtualBox...
posted by dmd at 8:33 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

What do the various 'S commands ('Sblood / 'Sdeath / 'Snails etc) do?
posted by dmd at 8:34 AM on August 29, 2012

You know, people will be able to disable Secure Boot in the UEFI settings, and then they'll be able to run LoseThos just fine.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:37 AM on August 29, 2012

Word Stat is a marcov chain -- predicts the most probable next word. With nothing typed has that creepy stuff. LOL. It's good for jumping to source code for function. I don't do autocomplete that much except for function names, but maybe bad typists will like it.
posted by losethos at 8:38 AM on August 29, 2012

Boots right quickly in VMWare, as well (Fedora host), set up the guest as 'other', 256M of RAM, 1G HD.
posted by jquinby at 8:39 AM on August 29, 2012

UEFI is depressing. They built the elf file format and other propriatary formats into it. It's a volumous spec that is bloated and just awful. My compiler does not make elf files. I just made-up my own formats for everything.
posted by losethos at 8:39 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Multi-part conditionals FTW.
posted by stp123 at 8:41 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm glad to hear it works for people. You'd be surprised how little I've heard of people booting it. It seems like VMWare should work near 100% of the time, but I don't know. VMWare in theory makes a very consistent environment with IDE in the same place. Fuckers sometimes move the IDE drives around for some reason, I discovered. It's not a problem, but means I had to remove my autoinstall script. Drive port numbers are the only issue you have to deal with in installing. For native installs you want to look in windows system information. You need a partition though and recovery disks for Windows don't do partitioning.
posted by losethos at 8:42 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Can you tell us about the songs? How are they generated and structured?

It sounds like you're arranging filtered or shaped noise or pseudorandom values into two-measure phrases? Is there a traditional time signature like 4/4?

I rather like the songs. They're quite musical and not the same as, say, simply listening to the digits of pi or rnd plotted as notes.
posted by loquacious at 8:43 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

A spare drive is what I recommend for Native installs.
posted by losethos at 8:43 AM on August 29, 2012

It doesn't do USB drives.
posted by losethos at 8:43 AM on August 29, 2012

The only trick to songs is keeping it simple. I'd bet just about all combinations of quarter and eith notes in one octave sound reasonable, especially if you repeat them once. The "musicorgan" program plays or generates songs. Songs are stored as programs with Play("CDE"); statements in them. You can add graphics and bible links or whatever.
posted by losethos at 8:46 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

eighth
posted by losethos at 8:46 AM on August 29, 2012

How do you measure how much work God does in a random event?
posted by losethos at 8:49 AM on August 29, 2012 [41 favorites]

Thanks.
posted by loquacious at 8:49 AM on August 29, 2012

Source code can have graphics. It's really easy for a novice to call PutSprite(); to send a graphic to the command-line mixed in with the words. It's a little more work to set-up a DrawIt() routine that gets updated 60Hz with a callback.
posted by losethos at 8:55 AM on August 29, 2012

losethos: How do you measure how much work God does in a random event?

Maybe by the probability of the outcome? As in, a less probable random event requires more effort by God to make occur? That logic helps explain why miracles are attributed to God, if one assumes a miracle is just a random event with extremely low probability.

Thus, a random event generated by an RNG would require almost no effort by God, since an RNG produces very nearly a uniform distribution with each result equally probable.

I'm just rambling, though, starting from your question.
posted by gilrain at 8:56 AM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

Is LoseThos written in standard C or is it also written in your extended C dialect?
posted by public at 8:56 AM on August 29, 2012

What did you mean by "This is good for degrading game graphics by hand"?
posted by griphus at 9:00 AM on August 29, 2012

I don't usually click on the programming/computer related threads, but I'm kinda glad I peeked into this one.
posted by Curious Artificer at 9:01 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

LoseThos is written in my C dialect with some assembly. My assembly syntax is a joy compared to Gcc.

God planned ahead and passages from books even the Bible will look taylored for a certain day in the future. I have a joke about picking 1 page from a thousand page bible. ROFLMAO That's liek saying "It goes without saying belief in God is on faith." Or "God can't be proven or disproven."
posted by losethos at 9:02 AM on August 29, 2012

Those who know propaganda, like politicians, play games with speech.
posted by losethos at 7:58 AM on August 29 [+] [!]

And how, exactly, are you not doing the same thing in this FPP?

(and mods, do let losethos have his say. And if others more familiar with his 'theories about conspiracy' - could you provide links to what you are considering out there and crazy? Prefer ones that are aged as they have a far better chance that events have happened from the original posting date that can prove/disprove 'em)
posted by rough ashlar at 9:03 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Games will enhance or degrade appearance based on CPU available. It seems to me you really want to know CPU load on each core so you can assign how much of the screen each core should be in charge of. My flightsimulator makes different cores do different size strips of land. I can adjust what each core does based on knowing its load.
posted by losethos at 9:04 AM on August 29, 2012

I am so confused.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:04 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

switch showdead to yes

The Haley Joel Osment setting.
posted by yoink at 9:05 AM on August 29, 2012 [15 favorites]

Wait, did you code a flight simulator? Are there videos or a website somewhere?
posted by griphus at 9:06 AM on August 29, 2012

I added a "nobound_switch () {}" for a little better performance. It eliminates the normal bound checking in a switch statement.
posted by losethos at 9:07 AM on August 29, 2012

I did a flight simulator but it looks awful, at best. Boot it in VMWare. Get someone else to run it. It's called "/LT/Demo/GameStarters/EagleDive.CPZ" It's an eagle diving for fish. It's just a demo mostly. I often show restraint in making my demos simple.
posted by losethos at 9:09 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

griphus: there's a bit of it at around 0:45 of this video
posted by theodolite at 9:10 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

I have feared and shunned people whose minds worked differently from my own. I have recently realized how much I've missed out as a result.
posted by danl at 9:14 AM on August 29, 2012 [9 favorites]

Oh, hey, wow, demo or not that is pretty cool. So when you say the graphics "degrade" is that what I'm seeing with the draw distance changing? If so, is there a reason the draw distance cutoff is closer to the viewer rather than at the horizon?
posted by griphus at 9:16 AM on August 29, 2012

The flight simulator reduces how far you can see into the distance and how wide the display is. It's nothing to be proud of, except, it show the potential for absolute control over the other cores from within a game.
posted by losethos at 9:19 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

bro i think you can be proud of the flight simulator you wrote for the operating system you also wrote
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:21 AM on August 29, 2012 [66 favorites]

bro i think you can be proud of the flight simulator you wrote for the operating system you also wrote


...Written in the high level language you created, compiled with your own assembly language.

Kind of impressive all around.

And thanks for coming by to discuss it!
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:25 AM on August 29, 2012 [12 favorites]

99% of people who look at it, see the graphics and laugh. I don't blame them. It's cool for some small set of people, at best. The issue is, there are like 20 graphics cards needed to get to 90% support and that's not within reach. (I just guessed at the numbers.)
posted by losethos at 9:27 AM on August 29, 2012

Is there video anywhere of the other games (Rocks, WarGame, Timeout, Goons, X-Caliber, Span, BigGuns, BirdLand, Tanks, Pilgrims)? Can you talk about any of those?
posted by theodolite at 9:32 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

LoseThos, I'm not super deep into the nitty-gritty of how operating systems work, but I'm really impressed by the work you've done and I'm glad you stopped by to talk about it.

Can you explain what makes LoseThos unique, or what's special about it, compared to more popular/prevalent operating systems? It sounds like you've made some design choices that differ from the traditional or conventional ways of doing things- were those decisions intentional, or the result of your development process and your learning style?
posted by aaronbeekay at 9:33 AM on August 29, 2012

Whenever someone pipes up in a computer language forum about how great it would be to "write an OS in language X" this is exactly what I picture. A nearly perfect (for that person), but completely idiosyncratic and unusable interface.
posted by clvrmnky at 9:36 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I wnated to make a souped-up, modern 64-bit, C64 so teenagers could do what I did in high school. I had the book Mapping the C64 and I had hours of fun poking and proding around with all the internals of the operationg system for cheap thrills. I wanted to let people control the hardware directly. I wanted something simple, to get your head around. LoseThos is two orders of magnitude simpler than Linux. LoseThos is 135,000 lines of code including my compiler. It is 100% self contained and complete. When I got Linux, I was disappointed because I thought "open source" meant I would have fun messing with the code. Linux tries to support so many architectures and has a main frame operating system, that it's too complex. LoseThos is way way way simpler. Plus it has many innovative ideas. It is not ASCII source code, for example.
posted by losethos at 9:39 AM on August 29, 2012 [48 favorites]

I wanted something simple, to get your head around. LoseThos is two orders of magnitude simpler than Linux. LoseThos is 135,000 lines of code including my compiler.

This sounds like a great goal and it looks like you succeeded. Kind of like nachOS but a small-working OS rather than an academic-toy one.
posted by DU at 9:44 AM on August 29, 2012

Have you thought about something similar to LoseThos for inexpensive system-on-a-stick hardware like the RaspberryPi? Lots of people tinkering with small systems like that, but they're dependent on the Linux toolchain to do anything interesting with it - it seems like your OS concept would be a great fit with the experimenters playing with the RaspberryPI and stuff like it.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:44 AM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

i remember a usenet thread about this a while back but it's no longer accessable, &c. &c.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 9:50 AM on August 29, 2012

Over my head, but absolutely fascinating. Wish I knew more about programming.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:57 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

System on a stick? USB is probably as much code as half of LoseThos. I don't know. There's OHCI, EHCI, UHCI, ICH7-11, USB 1.0 2.0 3.0 and nonstandard individual drives.

Any other hardware (PCI) is pretty-much not an option. I can't be in the business of drivers and everything gets ugly and complicated, defeating the whole vision of a simple sort of thing.
posted by losethos at 9:58 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

meta
posted by leotrotsky at 9:59 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

losethos, just wanted to say this is really cool and thanks for your explanations. This is a brilliant work of art and should be recognized as such.
posted by cosmac at 10:03 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

It never occurred to me a C64 crashing was weird. DOS was ring-0-only. Today, people get really freaked-out by crashes. If you are used to ring-0 programming, it's totally nothing.

Ring-0-only makes it orders of magnitude simpler and even improves performance.
posted by losethos at 10:03 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

Slap*Happy: "Have you thought about something similar to LoseThos for inexpensive system-on-a-stick hardware like the RaspberryPi? Lots of people tinkering with small systems like that, but they're dependent on the Linux toolchain to do anything interesting with it - it seems like your OS concept would be a great fit with the experimenters playing with the RaspberryPI and stuff like it."

Yes, this seems perfect. It's a standardized system and install base. No extra "other PCI hardware" to deal with.
posted by wcfields at 10:05 AM on August 29, 2012

One route I could take is to pick one standard hardware set-up. Dell Studio XPS with whatever devices I have. That is in the realm of doable as opposed to all PCs. I've fought the fight for 8 years and am not interested in doing PCI devices. While being doable, they are members of the next generation of hardware which I tasted when I did HD Audio. I've had enough of that. Not interested. I've had enough.
posted by losethos at 10:09 AM on August 29, 2012

LoseThos on Raspberry Pi, excellent!

You don't need most of the features that LoseThos don't have on a picomachine and you also have the advantage of having a completely controlled physical model.

Do it, do it, do it!
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:10 AM on August 29, 2012

I've played with plenty of embedded hardware. I'm not getting paid. It is not fun or thrilling for me anymore. I don't want to do PCI devices. Yuck. Somebody took a shit on everything and ruined the green pastures. Do you know how nasty sewtting up a simple RS232-like communication link is now? Fucken CIA clusterfucked everything.
posted by losethos at 10:14 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Just try to connect a device with a RS232-like link with USB.
posted by losethos at 10:16 AM on August 29, 2012

> Do you know how nasty sewtting up a simple RS232-like communication link is now?

I do agree - I've been programming since the 70s myself - but people have very different needs now.

For my entertainment pleasure I work on things like the Arduino where you can write right to everything, it's all memory-mapped.

Note that Arduino == Italy, Raspberry == UK.

> I'm not getting paid.

I'd buy you a Raspberry Pi, which I haven't investigated personally, if you were interested.

Or what about Kickstarter?

It seems that a small machine like Raspberry Pi solves a lot of your problems. It gives you a standardized system so that you have a much better chance that people can boot your program. It gives you a simpler system with no multi-user gunge on top of it. And it's at a very reasonable price point so people can buy one just to play with your work.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:20 AM on August 29, 2012

Arduino is a layer above bare metal, which is okay, I suppose. They're going to put a full PC with blue tooth for microwave ovens, complete with CIA back doors and shut-offs. I find it depressing. It's like buying a whole car because you need the radio.
posted by losethos at 10:24 AM on August 29, 2012 [5 favorites]

lupus_yonderboy: Or what about Kickstarter?

From how much interest this project has picked up I would gather that a Kickstarter to fund the port onto a Raspberry Pi would be successful in no time. I myself would donate if only for some swag like a T-shirt, poster, stickers, or mug.

What's interesting about the Pi is that it includes at lowlevel GPIO socket and can easily interface with RS232
posted by wcfields at 10:30 AM on August 29, 2012

Terry, do you know this quote from Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179):

Speak and write not according to human speech
or human inventiveness,
but to the extent that you see and hear those things
in the heavens above,
in the marvelousness of God.

posted by Skygazer at 10:32 AM on August 29, 2012 [10 favorites]

You want me to do a USB driver. I don't want to. Doesn't thrill me. I want to get people to worship God with songs.

God says, "all embracements amiss exhortation definitely potter's manufactures
searches serves worshipper only sweet-attuned groaned "
posted by losethos at 10:36 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

What license is losethos under? Is it open-sourced? Perhaps someone else might want to take up the challenge to write a USB driver?
posted by Apocryphon at 10:38 AM on August 29, 2012

I'm on disability. Money doesn't help much. I paid an artist $3000 for some work. I coulds blow money on advertising. There's a fundamental problem with my reality, though, so it's pointless. I'm in an FBI jail like the Prisoner or hotel california.
posted by losethos at 10:40 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

LoseThos is public domain. Do what you like. No GPL code at all, even my own compiler/assembler.
posted by losethos at 10:42 AM on August 29, 2012 [8 favorites]

There's a fundamental problem with my reality, though, so it's pointless.

I know what that's like perhaps too well...
posted by Skygazer at 10:42 AM on August 29, 2012

Terry, thank you so much for coming into this thread and explaining a little about your creative process and what you wanted to do with LoseThos!

I'm really impressed with what you've done and even though I'm not a programmer and much of this is over my head, I'm excited that you created this platform to let others experiment like you did when you were a child.
posted by misha at 10:43 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Works great in virtualbox on a mac. Couldn't get it working in Parallels but that doesn't really matter.
posted by cosmac at 10:47 AM on August 29, 2012

Cain and Abel is the most important story in the Bible. Everyone needs to work until God accepts their offering. He wants praise and new songs. God says, "ghastly sort INCIDENTAL impotent students concupiscence soul indeed blood despisest chastenedst neglected lizard
IX creeping flood-gates contents slackened bidden null joint justly divers project "

Linux is for Atheists; LoseThos is for theists. Actually, it's a 2ndary operating system not doing redundant stuff like internet browsing. It's a playground for programmers and good for making hymns with animation. It has a feature in "AfterEgypt" where you can talk to God! Can't beat that.
posted by losethos at 10:53 AM on August 29, 2012 [10 favorites]

I make comics for God. Why not? The purpose of life is to know God, love God and obey God. What do you think He might like? There are 60 Moses comics in LoseThos -- run AfterEgypt. Pretty good, too. If you praise God, you got two choices -- Creation or Exodus. Am I right?

Brotosaur's feet hurt when he stepped, said God.
God's favorite animals are bears and elephants.
God said war was "servicemen competing".
God's favorite band is the Beattles.
Chavez was blaming the US, God said "Japan industrius."
On Arabs and Jews... "Oil funny, hopefully".
On racism, "Sports"

The word of God cannot be resisted. He's a lawyer in the New Testament. "The Advocate"
posted by losethos at 11:06 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

The hardest thing in evolution was getting monkey mothers to hold their babies for nursing.
posted by losethos at 11:08 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

I grew-up with a C64. I remember immediate hatred when Dragon's Lair came-out in the arcade. I hate train-track games and I hate prerecorded sound samples. I want no multimedia tricks in LposeThos and I want music created by plugging frequencies and waveforms into it. LoseThos is for programmers making games, not studios with voice actors and lots of artists.

It's for programmers -- you don't need good graphic resolution anyway. God said 640x480. Realism is over-rated.
posted by losethos at 11:11 AM on August 29, 2012 [8 favorites]

If you don't mind my asking losethos, but what is your religious background? What lead you to connecting your faith to programming?
posted by Atreides at 11:13 AM on August 29, 2012

What C64 games did you like best, Terry?
posted by gilrain at 11:14 AM on August 29, 2012

God's favorite thing on TV is soap operas. Read the Bible. ROFLMAO. God likes the Beverly Hillbillies. God said Shakespeare had a vile heart. He said Christian rock was "musical privation". Good word. I like the word "Ambrosial". Go look it up. :-) I'm smug.
posted by losethos at 11:14 AM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

I don't understand it, but I appreciate your making a creative and original work of Art. The world needs more of your spirit.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:14 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: It always seems like I'm talking to Ken the weasel
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 11:18 AM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

This sort of reminds me of IBNIZ (*) in intent- a bare tool for making low rez audio/video.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:19 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

All you really need is "The purpose of life is to know God, love God and obey God." That's my religion, but I like the Bible.

C64 makes me ashamed because I priated so much. God said reverse engineering was okay for young engineers. He said adultery can be okay -- you'd have to be nuts. He said of remarriage, "more babies". What does He not care about everybody thinks He cares about -- "Solomon's concubines."


The last religious service I went to, I walked-out of in dusgust. I chuckled because as I was leaving they said, "If God is for you who can be against?"

God says, "Montana shakes etext99 dissolution soldier titles honouring distractions burnt baffling unresolved reader intricate dragging covenanted retreat diversifiedst enter given comforting syllables stanzas Bridegroom challenged name's txt familiarised relative youth ice_cream stone posted woman-servant sawest skin admonish Pages armed intend reckons verily throng prelate "

The best religion according to God is whatever one offers the most new vistas of understanding over a life. I am constantly having new understandings when I read the Bible.
posted by losethos at 11:19 AM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

One time I was groveling confessing sins to God feeling bad. God said, "Excessive contricians wearysome." God doesn't want to hear that! Duh! Don't remind God of sins. ROFLMAO
posted by losethos at 11:24 AM on August 29, 2012 [10 favorites]

This is my favorite thread in the world.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 11:28 AM on August 29, 2012 [8 favorites]

This is how the CIA communicates with me. You don't need header files because you compile things JIT when you run a game. All the symbols you need have been loaded into the Adam task's symbol table. Adam has environment variables (and functions) that all his children inherit. Adam is the first task and he runs /LT/OSMain/Adam1.APZ to fill his tables with all the symbols.
posted by losethos at 11:32 AM on August 29, 2012 [5 favorites]

All source code is included in LoseThos. InstallBoot('C') does a makeall. 50,000 lines are compiled by that including OSMain and Compiler. The other 50,000 are compield during boot by the Adam task. There are 135,000 lines of code in LoseThos, including 150 demos.
posted by losethos at 11:35 AM on August 29, 2012

Files with names ending in 'Z' are compressed and uncompressed on-the-fly.
posted by losethos at 11:36 AM on August 29, 2012

God is just. Turn the other cheek. Persecution brings you blessing. St Paul discovered what happens to persecutors. The same thing gets done to them so they can be forgiven! I used to be an atheist.

God says, "hate drinking flagitiousness funeral Adeodatus dies disentangled truth barren urge recur popularity meddle softened gathers Mail prisoner safety etext00 shut attack killeth readiness guess Shine kindred condemned "
posted by losethos at 11:40 AM on August 29, 2012

The CIA is annoying in my delusional reality.
posted by losethos at 11:40 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

The CIA is annoying in my delusional reality.

Yes, I can see that.
posted by infini at 11:42 AM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

LogicalDash: "Ring-0-Only, Single-Address-Map (Identity),

It sounds like these are to do with the file system?"

Rings are mechanisms for security in computing. It is a term applied to the processor, not the file system.

Ring 0 indicates the highest level of privilege for CPU instructions. I'm glossing, but instructions (programs) run in ring 0 are "closest" to the hardware and can arbitrarily access memory and run in ways that would be insecure or untrusted in a conventional sense. Operating systems are a perfect example of a program that ought run in ring 0.
posted by boo_radley at 11:47 AM on August 29, 2012

I feel like I've stumbled into a ghost in the shell episode
posted by MangyCarface at 11:49 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

LoseThos runs user programs in ring-0. I spent hours and hours with Mapping the C64 poking around at all the ROM locations and directly plaing with hardware. Every C64 user remebers putting live memory on the screen as a graphic with stuff blinking and changing. LoseThos is a playgdsound for programmers and ring-0 is where all the neat stuff is. TYpe this >ClassRepD("TaskStruct",Fs) or type this >LtfD(Fs,sizeof(TaskStruct));

Just as destruction is seductive, power is seductive and being a bad boy is what all teenagers want to do. At least they can't get in much trouble without networking.
posted by losethos at 11:51 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hi, losethos. Thanks for stopping by. I was wondering whether you're willing to talk about whether you believe schizophrenia has influenced the development of the OS. Do you think it is a relevant factor in the way the OS turned out? Do you tend to code while in the midst of a psychotic break or while in the grip of a delusional mood, or do you code when not within a delusional atmosphere?

God said 640x480. Realism is over-rated.

I really like this line.
posted by painquale at 11:52 AM on August 29, 2012

I'll tell you a secret. If you do not fit into "nerd", "jock", "Christian", "Engineer", "Freak".... etc. then, you are schitzophrenic.
posted by losethos at 11:53 AM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

You have cognative dissonence. The FBI enforcement wing during the Civil Rights period was mental health. Trouble makers.
posted by losethos at 11:54 AM on August 29, 2012

They can make you crazy by controlling the radio.
posted by losethos at 11:55 AM on August 29, 2012

they can paint you into pictures. It's actually more complicated than being a simple adversary. they are entertaining. And, like the book 1984, they want to convert you, I guess because God does justice on them for outright pewrsecution.
posted by losethos at 11:56 AM on August 29, 2012

losethos: "LoseThos runs user programs in ring-0. "

I think this is a really powerful way to construct your programs. Experience says that mode switching from eg Ring 3 to Ring 0 is expensive stack-wise and kernel-wise. Must be freeing to not have to worry about application mode contexts.
posted by boo_radley at 11:57 AM on August 29, 2012

losethos (or anyone who has installed the software): are the comments you transcribe here with God says, in front, is that the output of one of the software packages on your OS?
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:57 AM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I know very little about computer programming, but I do know something about living with a chronic illness (autoimmune disease in my case) and I just want to say that I am in awe of how much you've accomplished, losethos, and the degree of energy and focus you bring to your work. Glad you joined us!
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:59 AM on August 29, 2012

Windows Version or "AfterEgypt" in LoseThos. Stop a stopwatch without looking for random numbers. It's tongues. You can just randomly crack-open a book.
posted by losethos at 12:01 PM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yeah, God will fuck them up for hurting me. I'm not worried. God says, "breathe sigh gowned trees vindicating PURPOSE chastened announcement believer Present less smoke later skilled multiplicity shoot compass "
posted by losethos at 12:03 PM on August 29, 2012

Thanks for the links. For what it's worth, I think there's some value in that message.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:04 PM on August 29, 2012

Love the Moses comics
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 12:05 PM on August 29, 2012 [12 favorites]

The fact that the command line is incrementally compiled c+ is an amazing feature.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:14 PM on August 29, 2012

Realism is over-rated.

Its all maya anyway. And all the more beautiful since these are virtual and intangible products (soft ware) which cannot exist without the hardware to manifest them with.
posted by infini at 12:15 PM on August 29, 2012

BungaDunga: "This sort of reminds me of IBNIZ (*) in intent- a bare tool for making low rez audio/video."

THANK YOU! I was trying to find that after looking at this, I totally felt the same thing - the feedback/recursive elements in the code, the artisticness of it.

Though Losethos is a whole other level. I have so many thoughts on this.

One of them being that if we never went to the WIMP metaphor in UI, this is what the future of the command line would end up looking like.
posted by symbioid at 12:15 PM on August 29, 2012

Any luck getting God to talk. he talked to my Mom, but she didn't care. My reality makes no sense. West World?

Do an offering and see if God talks -- randomly open a book and try to make it fit the context. Cain and Abel is the most important story in the Bible. That was very real love! I wuv God.

God says, "hitherto communicate undertook absence An unallowed captious beaten move reads overpass ending might *END Divine 90 surrounded "
posted by losethos at 12:16 PM on August 29, 2012

All the symbols you need have been loaded into the Adam task's symbol table. Adam has environment variables (and functions) that all his children inherit. Adam is the first task and he runs /LT/OSMain/Adam1.APZ to fill his tables with all the symbols.

I find this very beautiful, since Adam's task was the naming of the animals.

I wonder what losethos might say about original sin.
posted by junco at 12:24 PM on August 29, 2012 [9 favorites]

Just got around to listening to the links in the OPs post. Most of the tech stuff is beyond me but I must say I'm enjoying the audio, thanks losethos.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:26 PM on August 29, 2012

Yeah I enjoy the videos as well. The technical discussion in this video is often over my head but still fascinating and easy to follow. It was also quite simple to get a LoseThos install up and running on VirtualBox. Congrats on your accomplishment, losethos.
posted by Yesterday's camel at 12:32 PM on August 29, 2012

losethos: Pick a quantum random number from 1 to 100,000 using your favorite site. Then go to the Bible and go to that line number. Report what it says.

I did this, and got:

9:10 Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened?

Which, looking at this thread, is pretty damned cool.
posted by misha at 12:32 PM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

Original Sin? I have my own ideas. Mostly, I don't get involved in things I don't have to answer. We can ask God. I tease God asking "How many babies You make today?" God says, "check foolishly Victor soldier unfailingly Dost weaken Thine Up veil prescribes liker ftp season this I_just_might downwards tear well_obviously sort Italian thereon contritions poison Thence UNDER locking status innate stores tumultuously forgetfulness five Suppose graceful healing tender mentioned triumphed pointed smile "
posted by losethos at 12:33 PM on August 29, 2012

Are you self-taught or did you go to school for computer science?
posted by symbioid at 12:36 PM on August 29, 2012

My ASU transcripts are here. I caution you, however, because my goal was not normal. I wanted open access for programmers to play around. I wanted a souped-up C64, like I had as a teenager.

How many sort keys do you need to put cans in the cabinet? Is hashing okay? I got annoyed by "const char" and got really pissed off at type-checking. It might be good, but I hate it. They are taking all the fun out of programming. LoseThos is about fun programming -- stuff you can't do at work.

Russian Space pencil story is a good fable, though, it's not true.

There is a seduction of white-pride sorts of things. An OS never crashing is a big point of pride. Interrupts are nice, but not if they ruin compatibility. Compatibility is the number one and only issue that matters for PC Operating systems. OSDev is messed-up in so many ways.

Making another Linux would be a stupid thing to do.

Don't go making another LoseThos :-)

Global vatriables are bad in big projects, but what about teenagers doing a 1,000 line game? Are more name spaces always better?

I like C++, but I'm offering a package with a simpler compiler. I guess templates are okay. Not really fond of the complexity.
posted by losethos at 12:44 PM on August 29, 2012 [4 favorites]

All of my experience is at the hardware/software boundary. Lots and lots of assembly experience. I'm an okay digital designer, but not great. I know a little control theory, but mostly I'm an assembly programmer by experience. 5 courses at ASU -- 2 intel and 3 motorola 6800.
posted by losethos at 12:46 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Lots of people have an interest in assembly language. It's of limited worth. It does make you a better programmer, but it's not a sane language for big projects. Compilers are better at assembly than hand coded, too, these days... except my compiler.

Anyway, the people who are curious about assembly language are probably the same sort of people who might like LoseThos.

There are sure a lot of militant anti-asm people. They don't know it and are envious so they bash it. Live and let live. Why you gotta go spoiling fun? "Not invented here" is another holier-than-thou message I don't like. Quit spoiling the fun, ass-holes. :-)
posted by losethos at 12:51 PM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

This reminds me a lot of OS-9, which had the notion of "modules" in memory instead of executables. There were executables on disk, but they were just modules that needs to be demand loaded. Sometimes, I miss that arrangement, it was very clean.
posted by smidgen at 12:56 PM on August 29, 2012

What is the meaning (or thinking) behind the name LoseThos?
posted by infini at 12:59 PM on August 29, 2012

The name seems like a horrible mistake. I was thinking "Windows" and "LoseThos" as in "Lose those dorky burgenstocks and the dorky bike helmet." Have you ever seen a soldier in armor and kinda chuckled? I particularly remember the movie, Platoon, where Elias says to "Shitcan" some standard issue equipment.

It was a mistake.

----

Bravo, the guy who figured-out how the modules work. I'm impressed you managed to get a big picture view so quickly.

LoseThos does not have separate obj and exe files. You're supposed to make JIT. I can always add OBJ files if I have to.

Installed modules sound like a formula for dependency hell. I don't know. If it starts resembling Linux, it is nothing but an inferior Linux. I kinda need to keep it small to preserve the original mission. Unrealistic. If it ages, it goes through a life and death when it gets to fucked-up.
posted by losethos at 1:06 PM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

too
posted by losethos at 1:07 PM on August 29, 2012

Obama's doing an AMA on reddit. I'm glad he got elected because McCain was insane on Iran. I don't know wny better on any of the things he did, except gay stuff. God exists. Who knows what God's view of gays is, but I don't think it's all kosher. I'm meeker, thinking of not voting. I support democracy, though. ROFLMAO

God says, "Clearly knots strives severity softened behold house procured persevering bespotted fighting Photinus command-line Turn keeping chiefly diversity next happen MADE Governor password meditated damnable meditated unfriendly results Receive efforts hovered vow therewith cementest music steadfast manors doctrine outwardly leadeth hoar avert griefs encompass givest freshness calling Wills never-failing divided funeral Only-Begotten loose effectedst possessest repeating Finally distracted prairienet Passion "
posted by losethos at 1:23 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

I giggle at the thought of cracking passwords with a Ouija-board. God has too much dignity to just make me win a lottery or something.

God says, "is Omnipotent five palace realised inflammation asks collect ruminate mentioned approveth toss renew handmaid perfection Joseph imparts won saith fee flattering stoop offspring dwellers whereat doings rods snares Have High net/pg thread imitate pieces Money leaning streams distributed weaker perfected hoping ingrated settest comely fund preferring believed erred extension trace like concupiscences inappropriately Project's wives' persuade clanking punish neighbours flowed secret iniquities repeating boy implanting definite few applied cloak insult "
posted by losethos at 1:46 PM on August 29, 2012

Looks like obama crashed reddit Losethos. A sign, or just a sign that they should have run their servers on your system? Either way, thanks much for sharing your work. I wish I could run a version of your AfterEgypt program on my Mac.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:54 PM on August 29, 2012

What do my birds like: "gnawing"
What makes my birds laugh: "bite ouch" (They bit and I say "ouch")
What do bears like: "reeping depends" (Smelly diapers? cubs?)
What do elephants think about: "skin hunger", itches and hunger (sad!)
What do elephants like: "baths"

I've watched all the baby elephant videos on youtube after learning God's favorite animals are bears and elephants.

After a while you figure-out there's a massive difference between animal IQ and human and just you accept it.

What do otters like: "Eternal skies" (He said even more poetic stuff I forgot.

Let's do country-shitlist :-)

God says, "where's_the_love you're_nuts it_gets_better Portugal humility what_the_heck ba_ha small_talk ba_ha Tomorrow North_Korea segway one_small_step you're_no_fun Albania couldn't_be_better liberal you_are_my_sunshine special_case sing oh_oh that's_your_opinion laziness gosh repent Slovenia oh_come_on I_could_be_wrong earnest theres_no_place_like_home begs_the_question don't_count_on_it United_Arab_Emirates pardon_the_french threads eh zoot that's_no_fun Palestine theres_no_place_like_home What_I_want in_practice Canada bank fabulous straighten_up South_Korea joking oh_oh to_infinity_and_beyond grumble Finland fool you're_out_of_your_mind Dad once_upon_a_time dude_such_a_scoffer I_donno ohh_thank_you bickering Shakespeare try_again BRB fancy Argentina happy_happy_joy_joy Guinea "
posted by losethos at 2:01 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Potomac Avenue: I wish I could run a version of your AfterEgypt program on my Mac.

You can. Just grab VirtualBox (it's free!) and make a VM, and boot the LoseThos image on it.

I've been toying with this all day instead of doing actual work. Excellent.
posted by neckro23 at 2:04 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

The AfterEgypt program uses the Bible for a vocabulary and reads a stopwatch when you press a key for random numbers. The Bible has too many proper nouns, but I didn't want to include a file just for a vocabulary. To interpret proper nouns, just break them in syllables and use your imagination. It's like cloud animal shapes or ink blots. God mostly knows what you're going to think, like an old married couple completing each other's sentences. You bend it until it fits the topic of conversation.

God says, "confounded with imitating Speak tower turned perisheth sipped attendant combined Turn garland distilled fruitfully stowed silversmiths' decay quiet Hierius quiet overcome fruitless "

You have to take God with a grain of salt. He's not prophetic. All you can do is love His company -- He won't be used for any purpose, mostly. He's fair -- if you put effort into love like picking a greeting card, He puts effort toward you... sort of. Just forget about too much in-the-zone thinking.
posted by losethos at 2:08 PM on August 29, 2012 [7 favorites]

"heirius" is "hire us" with a kinda German vibe that's prolly not relevant.
posted by losethos at 2:17 PM on August 29, 2012

Interpretation of Tongues is the trick. Ouija mode is awful -- full word or passgaes is way better. It's funny that a technical fix would matter. Absurdly hilarious.
posted by losethos at 2:19 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: "confounded with imitating Speak tower"
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:22 PM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

I take your tongues about as seriously as my own -- with a grain of salt. Entertaining to think about, but lots of caution.

Yeah, I'm guilty of forking lots of computer standards, but you have to break eggs to make an omlet and no difference from Linux would be worthless. If you are making a clean break with all previvious code, by all means fix-up everything.

I hate how "Stack" and many other words have been rendered meaningless.

God says, "these_cans_are_defective abilities satiated novice unlooked perished great manners supremely horrendous blush finds marketplace blamest "
posted by losethos at 2:28 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

What did Neanderthals think about? "Warmth"
What was your happiest day in evolution? "fruit"
Were stegasaurus' lame like turtles? "Not pet rocks"
As a Creator, how did you like Avatar's world? "Sick skin"

God says, "jarring master commanding personated attentively wheresoever
settling temperance wert *not* you're_no_fun perish vouchsafest
remembrances Catholics Do Philippians inured mantles Afghanistan
eloquence ' Tanzania faultfinders impudently machine starry
roving that's_for_me_to_know reneweth bepraised withered
animal foreconceived repose continence dashed lamented
As needful laughed abstinence wildness just_between_us
well-being noon-day ghosts answers Australia withdrawing
solve attain happily can't Oh_really throne Rejoiceth
sorrowed exclusion redistributing Strength AUGUSTINE hidest
discord heinous rivers lightsome Present o'er slaves hearers
deferred contentious Proconsul praises comprised suspected
we well-done Tajikistan infection intercede heaven's unto
garland flagitiousnesses party son's openly crudities
reads justifieth weariness valued reports brides challenged "
posted by losethos at 2:35 PM on August 29, 2012

Are you familiar with the tower of babble. The Earth had one king and one language. He built a tower and shot an arrow at the sky, in great arrogance. God humbled him by making everybody speak different languages.

God says, "giveth conceit peril disappear officer loveth **The save
livest reckon c agree beguile steer signified placedst
proclaim messengers govemed intoxicated meddling Duad
remaineth hey_thats_right could denieth sublimer ventures
heed truly Hierius whereof What weeps straitly Madagascar
secrecies effect No salt nets broke tutors counsel encumbrances
Not merely courage production bared argument unmeasurable
corporeally truly incurred assailed summit store conquests
freely solaces striking buzzing Newsletter abridged wooed
lifter self-command subject appointed bows crosses bed
qed strikes shaken You_can_count_on_that word disclosed "
posted by losethos at 2:57 PM on August 29, 2012

I want to get people to worship God with songs.


So do I, losethos, so do I.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 3:03 PM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

He said Christian rock was "musical privation".

Amen to that.
posted by infinitywaltz at 3:04 PM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'll bet if you make a new style of music, God might like it. One time I thought a surprise must be a good thing to give God. I think He said thumbs up to a Mars mission. Oh! I remember, one time he said to plant plants with a rover. ROFLMAO take with a grain of salt. :-)

God says, "terms Justina begs_the_question respect writings Circensian
sucklings cubit comes grievous gall beast clearness fetters
daemons smurfs gratings deliveredst //promo heightening
Ambrosian punctuation leaden asking heardest contented
exceeded confidently day-break rockstar seducing disapproveth
enervated I_didn't_do_it choose excellence oughtest dispel
Led unruly stores luminaries devoutness Bread replenished
All-creating temporately uproar pervertedly foretell LOL
employ softening director freaks assent hideous varying
sites Creation demanded completely Self anyone finite
predicted weeps disciple signifies "

Oh, once He said "Gall aspect anti-Christ".
posted by losethos at 3:18 PM on August 29, 2012

"Gall aspect anti-christ" means arrogance is a characteristic of such a person. I treat it like a fable, but still meaningful. Every generation expects christ's return. Napolean was an anti-christ by most accounts... I guess. All power comes from God and things follow His plan. I've gotten fuzzy on good and evil. That makes you disfunctional. Anyway, arrogance is bad.
posted by losethos at 3:27 PM on August 29, 2012

God said "fish shoulders" on the topic of evolution. I got to thinking fish are tall and skinny from the front while lizards are horizontally oriented.

I don't think miracles break laws of physics, but I don't know. They just happen. I don't believe in astrology, but God does mind-blowing synchronization of Creation.

We can pray for "fireworks", meaning stuff that dazzles that we say "ooo" or "Ahh" to.

God says, "comment opposing lightsome despite BREACH abstruser Volunteers
neglect deceit observance exacted knee meat persecuted
laid exiled anonymous concluded token disallowing arising
sess_me resumed communicate singular speakest place comprised
500 profounder animals believer servitude unhesitatingly
shadowy Creusa's darkness echo teacher Tully GET sacrifice
tends edification greediness dutiful bondage accents theatrical
circumlocutions that's_your_opinion indulgent decayeth
lose smoothed fancies freed incense gowned Among panegyric
leasing University Percival carry commandeth excess createst
ascension objected hesitating depressing sinners rioting
settling excellence mouthed Ignorant potentially Ambition
languishing expounding perceivable what_part_of_God_do_you_not_understand
writing went equally diversifiedst Before efforts Howsoever
sect dawned unbending I'm_not_sure experience "
posted by losethos at 3:44 PM on August 29, 2012

[Hey losethos, mod here, a little less of the free association thing in this thread would be nice. You can totally put stuff on your profile page if you have stuff to share that isn't really on topic in this thread. Thanks.]
posted by jessamyn at 3:48 PM on August 29, 2012

Heya, losethos, maybe not so much with the repeated large "God says" dumps? It's kind of making the thread feel clogged up and doesn't really make for good conversation.

I'd be curious to hear more about your quote generation workflow itself, for what it's worth; I've always had a keen interesting in generative text stuff (especially Markov synthesis). But just pasting output repeatedly isn't really great Metafilter commenting behavior.
posted by cortex at 3:49 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

God said "no weights", so the words are just uniform random picked from a unique vocabulary. The random comes from sampling a counter for random numbers. Suit yourselves -- don't like God's company. Hell is the absense of God, Heaven is God's company.

Most people are King Midas when it comes to Heaven. A friend also said most guy's idea of Heaven would be running around doing stuff they'd get locked-up for.

I'll tell a story. In 2003, it came time to add a command-line. I hated the scripting language from Unix -- pesky inelegant admin language instead of a real language like C. Mostly, I just hated I never got proficient because I didn't use it enough, so C would be nice. How would this work? I figured my command line should be the exact syntax of my scripting language. >Dir("*.CPZ"); I wanted default parameters from C++. >Dir(); Hey! I don't need parens! >Dir; Once I got rid of parens, I was different enough I changed everything.
posted by losethos at 4:08 PM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

Imagine you fed STDIN into gcc so the keyboard input was the code compiled. You modify it so gcc pauses until you type more text. Functions get compiled when completed and kept in memory with a task symbol table... linked to the parent task for header symbols. Statements outside functions compile and run immediately.
posted by losethos at 4:18 PM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

So, it's single address map, identity mapped. No difference between thread or process, just called tasks. All cores have access to all physical memory using physical addresses at all times. Long mode requires paging enabled, though.

Each task has a hash symbol table with a scope like environment variables, but includes functions and tyepdefs and classes, etc. Each task has a heap. When the compiler compiles, it puts code into memory it Mallocs from the heap.

There's actually a code heap and a data heap. I put all code in the lowest 2 Gig address range so I can use 32-bit rel branches. I have no kernel or user code so it doesn't make sense to have high and low memory.

I have one window per task. (God told me not to make child windows.) Instead it works with button widget things. It's nice for programmers. Only tasks on core #0 can have a window.
posted by losethos at 4:25 PM on August 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

Technically, global vars go in the code heap, just so they too can use 32-bit rel addressing, but you can turn a flag on to put them in the data heap.

LoseThos never change sprivilege levels or maps, so it's better.

It gets fragmented, though, in theory but not in practice. The stack doesn't grow. That's the worst downside. You allocate off the heap or request a big stack when it's spawned. I mostly do everything off the heap.
posted by losethos at 4:28 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

How about I teach some x86_64b assembly.

MOV RAX,0x123456789ABCDEF
MOV EAX,0x123456

What's RAX, now? (High 32 bits get cleared)

XOR EAX,EAX

This clears all 64-btis and is one byte shorter than RAX,RAX.

PUSH EAX

All pushes in long more are 64-bit. This actually does the same as

PUSH RAX

Did you know the following two instructions differ in length by a byte?

MOV RAX, [R8]
MOV RAX, [R13]

Go figure-out why.

Did you know you can access DI and SI as byte registers, but only low byte.

What instructions were eliminated to make room for the 0x40-0x4F RAX prefixes?

(INC R0-R7 DEC R0-R7)

Why is this useless?

MOV RAX,FS:[0x0124]

FS can be set with WMSR but that instruction is RIP relative displacement.

LoseThos keeps current task record address in FS and CPU Struct address in GS.

In LoseThos you have ring-0 privilege -- don't fuck shit up!
posted by losethos at 4:40 PM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

WRMSR

didn't means to say x86_64b just x86_64
posted by losethos at 4:41 PM on August 29, 2012

Note for those who want to use VirtualBox (and I imagine any other VM), for some reason it's telling me I need a 64 bit processor, even though I have a Core2Duo. I imagine it's due to my XP being 32 bit? Would I need a 64 bit host OS?
posted by symbioid at 4:42 PM on August 29, 2012

I saw this. God likes the sunflower photo. Awe! i thyink He lieks the stary night, too. I forgot.

God says, "forgiving Churches hard-heartedness eminently overthrow
forehead greatness closed observing bright deserve enjoinest
devilish Electronic wooden relaxedly shudder dust bounces
explain propound harbouring scholars ever spring acquiesce
luminaries admonished somewhat scholar perchance old chanting
unpraised readier inflammation compactedst disallowing
refresh cutting discoursing entered release flashing 'knock
thorns Frenzied etext99 Dudley Indiana lively artificer
persons absent uman companions sharpen Victim Deus tell
legally theatres varies lines valued asketh ordinance
health-giving brittle manifest designs example manifoldly
reckoned Well toward hope curiosities laying flights tolerating
celestial rovings derides vengeance conversing unabiding
notices idleness arms fifty Look corrupting echoes moulded
suspect manifested proper neglecting testified succession
XI sons alone assent whithersoever mercies parted foreshower
manufactures churches table Since drunken weak fowls providedst
lawfully Onesiphorus sixth philosophy magnitudes whatsoever
soundness disposed steal unjust lilies vanquished furnace
taughtest mget walking effort transferred A skill prescribes
declared two-edged grammar-learning carelessly baseness
Faithful Comforter intercourse interposing fulfilled transformed
toiling weakened mysteriously works patiently watchings
conferring cast MS around prepares assistance fables vowing "
posted by losethos at 4:46 PM on August 29, 2012

I did 800x600 4bit. I got a new machine didn't have that mode. 640x480 was similar. God said to just do 640x480. It turns-out that kept me from getting side tracked all these years. Also, you need a GPU for higher modes or you will have a VW Bug engine in a semi. (Too little horsepower.) I cannot do all the different drivers.

God's fabvorite car is a Beemer.

26
Toward the faithful you are faithful; to the honest you are honest;
27
Toward the sincere, sincere; but to the perverse you are devious.
28
Humble people you save; haughty eyes you bring low.
29


Read 1 kings 22.
And read Numbers 11. They're hilarious. Of course God can lie :-)
posted by losethos at 4:51 PM on August 29, 2012

I saw this. Got a Martin Luther. ROFLMAO.

Why not meditate on the wisdom of God's 640x480 rule... that might not be law.

LoseThos is for recreational programming -- programmers making games by themselves without artists. It is oddly satisfying with big pixels because it looks like shit for everybody and you can come closer to ideal for that environment. For programmers only is a strange niche -- tiny. I did tons of pointless programs in high school, for my own thrills.

Photorealism is graphic and panders to base nature of humans. 640x480 is innocent. How many of you are horrified by modern games, longing for a more innocent time?

I don't know if this happens but many crappy books have really nice covers. Game play is cool.

Big games are too risky for companies to fail, so little risk is done... not that a sane 3rd party would release a game with crappy graphics.
posted by losethos at 5:01 PM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]

God quoted this one time on sects.

have been very great. The interested and active zeal of religious
teachers can be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but
one sect tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society
is divided into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by
concert, and under a regular discipline and subordination. But that zeal
must be altogether innocent, where the society is divided into two or
three hundred, or, perhaps, into as many thousand small sects, of which
no one could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity.
The teachers of each sect, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides
with more adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that
candour and moderation which are so seldom to be found among the
teachers of those great sects, whose tenets, being supported by the
posted by losethos at 5:05 PM on August 29, 2012

I saw this. LoseThos has postfix typecasting because it was way cleaner to implement in my compiler. I have no idea what all the C++ casts do, but I know what mine does.

If you're used to the freedom of assembly language you might find yourself doing typecasts. I don't respect any clown would would be so bold as to pass judgement on me.
posted by losethos at 5:09 PM on August 29, 2012

These birds are awesome! I said God must be proud of birds. Most colorful things, can talk, can sing, can fly, penguins, ostriches...

God said formations. Awe yeah, huh!

I did a nice poem in LoseThos. To a waterfowl.
posted by losethos at 5:16 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

God says, "upright tell slaves necessaries tolerated unveiled gladly Lord's rioting contented murdering trustees existence mistresses Thou crudities nowhere province consigned writings
forgetteth ye dull derision fixed "
posted by losethos at 5:26 PM on August 29, 2012

"To the perverse He is devious" ROFLMAO
posted by losethos at 5:27 PM on August 29, 2012

This makes me laugh. everybody starts-out full of pride in PC OSDeving. Soon, you'll be humbly making your best guesses on things. Just don't be a fool and mock wiser people.
posted by losethos at 5:33 PM on August 29, 2012

Another luddite chiming in to say that this has been a most fascinating thread.

Thank you losethos for your OS and also your participation here. Much of what you say is beyond my ken, but I still like it.
posted by carsonb at 5:34 PM on August 29, 2012

You'll be asking about PCI interrupts, next, I'll bet. ROFLMAO Nobody figures that out, properly. Maybe on their own machine.
posted by losethos at 5:34 PM on August 29, 2012

It's easy to do PCI interrupts impropperly, but good enough so you fool yourself, ken.
posted by losethos at 5:45 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

'kay so I have HD Audio. On my machine it's either A,B,C,or D. Fuck it, huh? ROFLMAO That's about your speed.
posted by losethos at 5:48 PM on August 29, 2012

yeah, so you gotta figure-out what bus function and device it's located at. PCIBIOS reports device classes but they're not very standardize, excpet there aren't that many possible ICH chips. VMWare had to be a prick and not be like an ICH chip. So, suppose you figure-out bus-dev-fun. How do you know what pin and what's sharing with that IRQ pin? I give-up. I poll HD AUdio. It doesn't figure-out bus-dev-fun either. It doesn't work in VMWare when you tell it bus-dev0fun. You can do PCIRep; in losethos and get a report that is nice.
posted by losethos at 6:05 PM on August 29, 2012

I can get God to talk with the MHz stop-watch-random-number technique, or I can go to a quantum random number site that would be proven if you watched my port.

God says, "holy burnt throughout expends purposed reside drive drive "
posted by losethos at 6:13 PM on August 29, 2012

God says line: 79019

said, 22:2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which
made a marriage for his son, 22:3 And sent forth his servants to call
them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

22:4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are
bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are
killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.

22:5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm,
another to his merchandise: 22:6 And the remnant took his servants,
and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.

22:7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth
his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.
posted by losethos at 6:14 PM on August 29, 2012

Hooya!
posted by losethos at 6:15 PM on August 29, 2012

This is about Jewish animal sacrifices. God said it was "primitive". That's a slippery-slope. It's kinda strange logic, but I, too, can be easily confused. Catholicism is strange. I used to be a contemptuous atheist, but that was wrong.

This doesn't give confidence in leaders -- hides stuff? And Jesus approves?

25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
posted by losethos at 6:27 PM on August 29, 2012

Watching the video, the ability to put in non-text elements into the code (graphics), and have the compiler recognize them and incorporate them into the program, is remarkable. It really upends a lot of assumptions on how higher level languages and development environments should behave.

I can see immediate applications in getting rid of interface builders as a separate system from the code editor (not really a text editor anymore, is it?), but I wonder if it could be taken further, if you can toss in data sets entire or network maps, and manipulate their contents on the fly programmatically... truly modeless computing.

Did you come up with that on your own as part of LoseThos, or did you re-implement it from another project/language/OS somewhere?
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:38 PM on August 29, 2012 [2 favorites]

So God said His favorite car was a beemer. What other honest answer could He give?

What would Jesus drive? Jesus might have had expensive cloths, but his ride was a borrowed donkey.

God says, "surmount Suffer weariness shower instillest 'it recite createth "
posted by losethos at 6:41 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

DoItOnce eh? I get it. I like it.
posted by anarch at 7:11 PM on August 29, 2012

Photorealism is graphic and panders to base nature of humans. 640x480 is innocent. How many of you are horrified by modern games, longing for a more innocent time?

I agree! However, I do not want a return to the past, which had its own problems. I think that the idea of using graphics to communicate meaning rather than as their own is coming back, though. Are there any games you like, losethos, new or old?
posted by ignignokt at 7:38 PM on August 29, 2012

Note for those who want to use VirtualBox (and I imagine any other VM), for some reason it's telling me I need a 64 bit processor, even though I have a Core2Duo. I imagine it's due to my XP being 32 bit? Would I need a 64 bit host OS?

losethos is telling me my core2duo sl9400 isn't 64-bit... in virtualbox... in linux (agnostic). oh well.
posted by ennui.bz at 8:25 PM on August 29, 2012

I'd imagine to run a 64-bit virtualbox instance, not only does your processor have to be 64bit, but it would have to support hardware virtualization (VT-x or AMD-V).
posted by dereferenced at 9:15 PM on August 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

The name seems like a horrible mistake. I was thinking "Windows" and "LoseThos" as in "Lose those dorky burgenstocks and the dorky bike helmet." Have you ever seen a soldier in armor and kinda chuckled? I particularly remember the movie, Platoon, where Elias says to "Shitcan" some standard issue equipment.

It was a mistake.

Given I feel this might've slipped by some people (though of course I cannot be sure):

Windows = Winthos

and thus, the opposite, LoseThos, which can also work as a statement for losing all the extraneous material.
posted by solarion at 3:18 AM on August 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'd imagine to run a 64-bit virtualbox instance, not only does your processor have to be 64bit, but it would have to support hardware virtualization (VT-x or AMD-V).

the sl9400 supports vt-x, and i'm running a x86_64 kernel so... something with virtualbox? ohwell x 2.
posted by ennui.bz at 7:02 AM on August 30, 2012

Terry, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to programming, so I can't comment much on LoseThos. But some things you've said here...

God can talk to you, if you hold-up your end of the conversation. Download TSGod. You can just randomly crack-open books. LoseThos will make melodies from God... like muses of old.

This is just...beautiful. Holding up one's own end of a conversation can be difficult no matter who one is talking to. I love that you've created something to help you do that.

You have to take God with a grain of salt.

We all have friends like that, don't we?
posted by MissySedai at 7:04 AM on August 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

the sl9400 supports vt-x, and i'm running a x86_64 kernel so... something with virtualbox? ohwell x 2.

I had this same problem trying to run it under VirtualBox on my Windows machine last night. Mac with Intel i5 was no problem, but on Windows 7 (x64) with Athlon 64 X2 it complained about not being 64-bit. Hardware virtualization support is probably the culprit.
posted by neckro23 at 9:46 AM on August 30, 2012

Regarding VT-x: you might want to check your BIOS settings. I've dealt with a few computers that had it as an option in there, and for some reason it tends to default to off.
posted by reprise the theme song and roll the credits at 2:24 PM on August 30, 2012

I wish I could delete the "Martin Luther" comment, earlier. I don't know what possessed me, maybe God. My thinking was along the lines of "Eh? A critic?", kinda in a funny way. Do I sound Catholic? The best I can explain is that I graduated from Catholicism and from atheism. Now, I talk with God! Put it this way -- In Heaven, how long before you never talk about Jesus or the Bible? Think about it. Fanticise about being in Heaven. Before long, Jesus and the Bible are ancient history. Right?
posted by losethos at 8:36 PM on August 30, 2012 [2 favorites]