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Chakotay's story about the scorpion and the fox crossing the river springs to mind. Though it's probably based on the Turtle and the Scorpion.

Ah, this is a repeat of a number of patent lawsuits. It's too bad that Alan Kay's group with Dan Ingalls et. al. invented overlapping windows in a GUI in the 1970's. Woops, forgot about the prior art. How about that.

http://news.squeak.org/2007/10/12/smalltalk-to-the-rescue-microsoft-ex-execs-sue-red-hat/

http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/byte_aug81/design_principles_behind_smalltalk.html
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141

What would really advance the state of the art is an "everything is an object" operating system.

Smalltalk-80 fits that description pretty well. See:
http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/byte_aug81 /design_principles_behind_smalltalk.html

Smalltalk-80's modern descendent is Squeak:
http://www.squeak.org/

Apple overlooked one thing however, and that's the SmallTalk language - if they had brought object-oriented programming to the Mac along with the GUI concepts right from the start then perhaps Apple's place in history might have been even greater....

SmallTalk wouldn't mature for quite some time. See http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/squeak/oopsla_squeak .html. The early Squeak VM ran painfully slow on my old mac, let alone trying to cram it in an early 68000 mac with small roms, little memory, and floppies. To be honest, back then I wouldn't want it taking up space on a 20 meg HD. Object-Orientated Programming was not pragmatic at the time, early development was assembler, then MPW pascal. Hypercard really brought SmallTalk's goal of programming to everyone (especially education). And it had a huge impact for Apple.

BTW, squeak was started by some of the above noted Xerox employees who migrated into Apple's ATG.

Keep in mind the taskbars and menu's were highly influenced from NextSTEP before MS added them into Windows. Same with using a graphical language like postscript and now pdf.

I don't know how the Dock (from NeXT/OpenStep) influenced the taskbar. And I have no idea what you mean by the menu's having been highly influenced from NeXT (I haven't seen too many people that use a floating menubar like NeXT did, but again I'm not sure if that's what you mean).

NeXT wasn't the only company at the time to use Display Postscript. Sun's NeWS system used it as well, and there are a few others that I can't recall right now. And NeWS came out before NeXTStep.

Also gnome is very macintosh like and one of the early macintosh developers wrote nautilus if I recall.

Members of the original Mac team (Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, etc) founded Eazel, who made Nautilus (and others). Many people worked on Nautilus, such as Pavel Cizler -- who wrote Tracker while at Be (and is now at Apple working on the Finder). I wouldn't say Gnome/Nautilus is very Macintosh like, both from a classic and OSX point of view. But, that's just my opinion.

No one is stealing anything. Even the menu bars on the top of the screen came from Xerox before Apple used them.

No. Smalltalk (Xerox) had no menu bar, either at the top of the screen, or at the top of the window. A right click (or 'yellow button', or whatever the hell they called it) in the window opened up a popup menu. You can see a picture of Smalltalk-76 in action at: http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/St76/st76f igure3.gif

Or, you can download Squeak, an open source Smalltalk implementation created by the people that created Smalltalk back at Xerox, and check it out for yourself. No menu bars at the top of the screen, or at the top of a Window. And Squeak was created in the mid-90's (so it's not like they didn't know about menubars).

But I believe(could be wrong) that Windowmaker,kde,gnome all use ghostscript which is a postscript clone. The original macos and nextstep used it. Windows has an equilivant but I do not remember the name since its been a long time since I admined Windows boxes.

I really don't understand this. If you're just talking about general use of Postscript, okay. If you're saying the original MacOS used Postscript as it's method of rendering to the screen (i.e. like Display Postscript, or whatnot) then you sir are on crack.

Daniel H. H. Ingalls
XEROX Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, California

Conference Record of the
FIFTH ANNUAL ACM SYMPOSIUM ON
PRINCIPLES OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Tucson, Arizona
January 23-25, 1978

Figure 1 shows a typical display screen from a Smalltalk system. Each of the rectangular areas is an instance of class Window which provides a basic protocol for user interaction:

• if the stylus is depressed within the window, the content is redisplayed, thus showing it "in front of" the other windows;
• once active, the window becomes the recipient of all user actions, such as depressing the stylus, typing on the keyboard, or entering sensitive areas around the window;
• if the stylus is depressed outside the window, control is given up so that another window may be awakened.

It's actually a very interesting paper and well worth a read.
Thanks be to Google.

Somebody, please tell Lindows about this.

Daniel H. H. Ingalls
XEROX Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, California

Conference Record of the
FIFTH ANNUAL ACM SYMPOSIUM ON
PRINCIPLES OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Tucson, Arizona
January 23-25, 1978

Figure 1 shows a typical display screen from a Smalltalk system. Each of the rectangular areas is an instance of class Window which provides a basic protocol for user interaction:

• if the stylus is depressed within the window, the content is redisplayed, thus showing it "in front of" the other windows;
• once active, the window becomes the recipient of all user actions, such as depressing the stylus, typing on the keyboard, or entering sensitive areas around the window;
• if the stylus is depressed outside the window, control is given up so that another window may be awakened.

It's actually a very interesting paper and well worth a read.
Thanks be to Google.

Somebody, please tell Lindows about this.

I read Python books/sites and they say with a straight face "the great thing about Python is there's only one way to do things" .. what they fail to mention is, one way *per Python version*. I first used Python at 1.5 when it was pushed as a "prototyping language". I'm not coming back until they finish figuring out their object model and scoping rules.

So you're saying Python evolves. Doesn't C, C++, Java, and ... Ruby do the same? It is easy to have many Python versions installed and usable at the same time. It is as easy to add packages to any of the installed versions. Is it easier to manage change in Ruby?

Someday, a bright Pythoner will get hit by lightning and realize, "hey, str(obj) just calls obj.__repr__() .. why the heck don't we all just call obj.__repr__() directly? And do we really need *four* underscores? And do we really need to type 'self' all the time???" At that moment, the Rubification will begin.

You're confusing 'str(obj)' with 'repr(obj)' but that's OK - you're Ruby Zealot. I think you're to picky and if I was as picky about Ruby, here's what I'm reading here : 'obj.__id__' is the same as 'obj#id' and 'obj.__send__' is the same as 'obj#send'. So not only that I see four underscores (was it borrowed from Python by any chance?) and two ways of doing the same (there are more examples on the web page) but there is another peculiarity: '#' has two meanings: you can use it as in 'obj#id' and you can use it to start comments!

Now about 'self'. It comes from Smalltalk and Matz (creator of Ruby) claims that Ruby borrows ideas from Smalltalk. So I don't see your point. On top of that, you don't have to use 'self'. You can use 'this', 'that', and 'other' or even 'S' if you aim at brevity.

Dennis Warren Mann
5022 N Oak Trfwy, Apt 325
Kansas City, MO 64118
warren@clusterlizard.org, opensourceman@yahoo.com

Gary L Davenport
264 Forest Hill Dr
Youngstown, OH 44515
(330) 793-8831
trollaxor@trollaxor.com

Craig Lee McPherson
2020 N Chestnut Ave
Fayetteville, AR 72702
(479) 251-1018, (479) 409-4407, fax: (206) 289-5888
craig@bcm-hog.org, cmcpher@ipa.net, CraigMcPherson@email.com

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Abba Lounge - Once a month, the BCM sponsors a coffee house featuring talented Christian bands and other entertainment. Abba Lounge is usually held at the BCM. Check back here later for a schedule, or call the BCM for more information.

Collaborated with remote State Farm technicians to troubleshoot and repair unexpected problems.

Skilled communicator, both written and verbal. Ability to interface with all levels of management, peers, and technical specialists.

Here is a paper describing Smalltalk 76, and here is what Jobs and Hertzfeld likely saw .

Here is a paper describing Smalltalk 76, and here is what Jobs and Hertzfeld likely saw .

heh, make sure to drop a line to one of the most prolific and yet pointless trolls ever to grace ./

Name: Craig McPherson

Age: 18

Current location: Fayetteville, Arkansas

Occuption: Student at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Hobbies: Computers in general, Linux

AIM: cmcpher476

ICQ: 10262746

IRC: nick Craig on SandNet - #ASFR, Craig476 on DalNET - #chabert, Craig476 on EFNet - #distributed or #romcoders


EMail:

bigmac@itookmyprozac.com

craig@laceyonline.com

cmcpher@ipa.net



check this to see why he is being fingered as the naked and petrified poster.

Trolls, flamebait, and spamming is on the rise here at Slapdash. However, the problem does not necessarily lie with the content of such posts , but rather the quantity. There are few trolls out there that are worth reading, because it takes a certain amount of intelligence and creativity - things the average troller lacks. No, the average troller is someone who barely knows anything about computers, and only seeks attention by trying to mimick the likes of MEEPT, 70%, 80md, opensourceman, and the naked and petrified guy.

In my sickness and irrationality, I am dedicating this post not to the bottom feeders or spammers, but the instigators. For this installment, I will be giving you some information about Craig McPherson , the young man responsible for starting the Naked and Petrified posts.

Craig McPherson has high karma (hence the +2 Bonus), that was earned not from posting quality comments, but through meta moderation. Somewhere along the way, he brought us an insight into his abnormal sexual fetishes - turning young girls into stone.

Glancing at his homepage , we can tell he is a sick puppy indeed. The time and effort wasted on dirty pleasure is only testament to how deep the sickness really is. To make matters worse, he is also an admin at Lacey Online, a page dedicated to the young actress Lacey Chabert who is not even eighteen. Sick indeed.

What is most disturbing, perhaps, is that Craig McPherson seems like an intelligent person who articulates himself well. But don't let that fool you, he is a very sick young man. Did I mention that he was sick? Anyway, here is some more information about him:

Name: Craig McPherson
Age: 18
Current location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Occuption: Student at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Hobbies: Computers in general, Linux
AIM: cmcpher476
ICQ: 10262746
IRC: nick Craig on SandNet - #ASFR, Craig476 on DalNET - #chabert, Craig476 on EFNet - #distributed or #romcoders
EMail:
bigmac@itookmyprozac.com
craig@laceyonline.com
cmcpher@ipa.net


Stay away from him, and don't mod up his sick posts.

Thank You.


-Trollin the trolls

Trolls, flamebait, and spamming is on the rise here at Slapdash. However, the problem does not necessarily lie with the content of such posts , but rather the quantity. There are few trolls out there that are worth reading, because it takes a certain amount of intelligence and creativity - things the average troller lacks. No, the average troller is someone who barely knows anything about computers, and only seeks attention by trying to mimick the likes of MEEPT, 70%, 80md, opensourceman, and the naked and petrified guy.

In my sickness and irrationality, I am dedicating this post not to the bottom feeders or spammers, but the instigators. For this installment, I will be giving you some information about Craig McPherson , the young man responsible for starting the Naked and Petrified posts.

Craig McPherson has high karma (hence the +2 Bonus), that was earned not from posting quality comments, but through meta moderation. Somewhere along the way, he brought us an insight into his abnormal sexual fetishes - turning young girls into stone.

Glancing at his homepage , we can tell he is a sick puppy indeed. The time and effort wasted on dirty pleasure is only testament to how deep the sickness really is. To make matters worse, he is also an admin at Lacey Online, a page dedicated to the young actress Lacey Chabert who is not even eighteen. Sick indeed.

What is most disturbing, perhaps, is that Craig McPherson seems like an intelligent person who articulates himself well. But don't let that fool you, he is a very sick young man. Did I mention that he was sick? Anyway, here is some more information about him:

Name: Craig McPherson
Age: 18
Current location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Occuption: Student at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Hobbies: Computers in general, Linux
AIM: cmcpher476
ICQ: 10262746
IRC: nick Craig on SandNet - #ASFR, Craig476 on DalNET - #chabert, Craig476 on EFNet - #distributed or #romcoders
EMail:
bigmac@itookmyprozac.com
craig@laceyonline.com
cmcpher@ipa.net


Stay away from him, and don't mod up his sick posts.

Thank You.


-Trollin the trolls

his homepage is funny, but did you see this picture?