Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the back-in-my-day-all-we-had-were-zeroes dept.
Motor writes: "The Register has an interview with Monte Davidoff, one of the men responsible (along with Gates and Allen) for the original Microsoft BASIC. So what does he think of Linux... CPRM... Python... RMS and GNU software? Great stuff."
It is interesting that he recognizes GNU
by
Andy+Tai
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· Score: 4
For someone who was in the dark side at the very beginning, it is nice that he actually recognizes the contribution of GNU. The contrast between Bill Gates and Richard Stallman is worth noting, for this contrast is shaping what's to come in the software world.
----
"Most of you steal your software... What hobbyist can put years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"----An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates, Micro-soft, 1976
"GNU... is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free... Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."----The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation, 1985
Microsoft Windows vs. GNU/Linux, 2000
-- Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Re:Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous BASIC quote
by
sheldon
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· Score: 2
VB supports interface inheritance which is a feature of COM.
As one example virtually every MTS component you write implements Objectcontrol methods Activate, Deactivate and CanBePooled
We also usually write our external component interfaces using IDL and then implementing them in VB code.
It's pretty standard. I honestly use inheritance all the time in VB.
You could do some simple functions in MSBASIC, it supported a function definition which was really more of an inline macro.
Other than that, yeah it pretty much sucked for trying to do anything structured.
That all changed towards the mid 80's. There were a lot of more advanced BASIC compilers available for the Amiga, ST, PC, etc. that supported functions, subroutines, etc. without line numbers.:)
Was he in the famous Microsoft team photo from 1978 - the scary one where almost everyone has terrifying arrangements of facial except for the young CEO - and could he please identify himself? As it happens, he wasn't there, but he does shed light on its origins:-
"That was taken after my second summer, working on the second BASIC for Microsoft. The story there is that Bob Greenberg (center right) had won a prize from a photo lab, which was a free photo shoot." So the first corporate publicity shot came about completely by chance.
The stories of these people can be found
here for example.
Re:I worked with Monte in a previous life.
by
stevew
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· Score: 2
Indeed - Monte is a cool guy. I know him through his Harvard room-mate that I worked with 15 years or so ago. It's funny that the guy didn't ask the most obvious question, ie.e is Monte steemed about not being a Billionaire too? Well - let's just say he's gotten over it;-)
It's kinda neat to see a friend actually show up on Slashdot!;-)
-- Have you compiled your kernel today??
Re:Nice concept, what have you in mind re: executi
by
FFFish
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· Score: 2
You're incorrect, Daisy. The brain is enormously pre-wired. Who you are is, on the whole, by nature, not nurture. Shyness, for instance, can be predicted with startling accuracy *before* the baby is born, by monitoring its reaction to stimulus. Baby pre-speech gurgles and noises are wired-in, and the brain is already configured to learn language.
It's not a blank slate. There's quite a bit of structure built-in, and the entire thing is primed for learning and pattern recognition.
>Get over it. THere will never be another Bill
>Gates in the software industry.
Or another rockefeller in the oil industry. Or Henry Ford in the automobile industry. And (switching from money to fame), it'd be a touch hard to get another Linus Torvalds in the operating system space.
Hands up everybody who's suprised it's easier to get a 50% share of an industry when it's really really tiny, and then hang on for the ride as it grows, than try to de-commoditize established one.
Except that version 2 of BASIC was "more efficient". THAT'S certainly changed.
--
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Re:Bill Gates Interview Pretty Good Too
by
mav[LAG]
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· Score: 2
It is. My favourite quote from billg:
In fact, they thought there wasn't enough work to go around, so they kicked me off. I said, "Look, if you want me to come back you have to let me be in charge. But this is a dangerous thing, because if you put me in charge this time, I'm going to want to be in charge forever after."
I don't think that desire has diminished one smidgen with time...
That wasn't nearly as fun as changing a single variable to make Nuclear Gorilla!
In my mind, having a language, even BASIC, plus example source code in the OS distribution was a very good thing and I was sad to see it disappear. It wasn't long before I was exclusively Linux.
You can't even script in Windows without third-party tools. That's pretty pathetic.
Re:All Programming Languages Suck!
by
James+Lanfear
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· Score: 3
The algorithmic approach to software construction is the primary reason why software sucks.
Which is unfortunate, since algorithms are one of the fundamental concepts in computing. I'd love to hear how you intend to replace the whole of computer science with an algorithm-free alternative.
And it's all because of the algorithm.
And physics. If we could get rid of physics it would be a lot easier to keep planes in the air. Actually, the common element seems to be time -- physics supplies it and algorithms consume it. I suggest we stop using time immediately.
Well consider this: The reliability of software is inversely proportional to its complexity while the reliability of the human brain improves as it gets more complex.
When was the last time you found a worm with Alzheimer's, or schizophrenia, Tourette Syndrome? I have yet to a bug so depressed as to leap beneath a shoe to to be squished. (You could -- and I might -- argue that those don't count a defects, since, e.g., schizophrenia could very well be the correct state for some people's brains, given their genetics composition, but I could just as easily say that Windows should crash given the crappy code that goes into it.)
The most obvious difference between software and the brain is that the former uses sequential algorithms whereas the latter is based on parallel streams of signals.
Which are provably equivalent to sequential and parallel algorithms, barring a gross violation of the laws of physics. In fact, if you accept ANNs as reasonable abstractions of real neural networks, I have a book on the topic right here.
A signal-based system is more reliable because it makes it possible to have strict control over the timing of events. By contrast, one can never be sure when an algorithm will be done, and this creates all sorts of timing problems.
I'm sure this would come as a surprise to hard realtime systems and neurons alike.
It is no secret that hardware is inherently parallel and driven by signals.
Try directly implementing an algorithm in your choice of fundamental fields. Note the reasons why this doesn't work.
I just remembered who you are, and grew very tired, so I'm going to watch TV. Have fun changing the world.
Re:William betrayed and murdered Bill.
by
Zurk
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· Score: 2
clued in ones usually :
[1] get bored easily.
[2] dont care about the business aspect.
[3] dont like to support the same product for n years after they write it.
[4] detest marketing deadlines and budgets.
[5] prefer working in small groups or alone
[6] move on to more interesting things. raking in money doing nothing is really boring. trust me on this one.
Re:Is he a billionaire?
by
jazman_777
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· Score: 2
Guess what sparky, money isn't everything.:) I would rather make my salary of ~$15,000/year and be very happy with what I do. Then make insaine ammounts of money and not be happy. I am pretty sure he likes what he does.
Why do we always assume that rich people are unhappy? Is it a way of expressing our envy, and since we aren't that rich, well, at least _I_ am happy, because he surely can't be! But then, you did mention you had the chance, and turned it down.
Maybe rich people are happy making money, just in the pure pursuit of it. Having it doesn't do it, because these guys just keep making more, it seems. Maybe I'm not rich because making money doesn't make me happy, so I don't pursue it with gusto. And I can't imagine lots of money making me happy. I've seen lots of miserable poor folk, too. I can tell you one thing: I sure do like being comfortable a whole lot more than being poor, which I've been.
--
-- Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"It had to run in 4k. In fact the 8k version had algorithms that were more efficient but that took up more space. By the time the 4k BASIC was done, the 8k version was out."
So, they began doubling memory requirements starting with their second ever software release, and they've continued until this very day!!
Exactly. It's possible. Maybe not in the valley or some other all-around-incredibly-expensive place. I make about $11k/year (including school loans as simulated income- just humor me) and I pay for school + a new computer a year + all food + all rent (over priced place too). That's including school. Take that out of the equation, and I live pretty comfortably on $7k/year. If I was making $10/yr (no school included), i could also be paying for health insurance (if my pt job didn't offer it) and a fat retirement fund.
--
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Ahhh, yes, Microsoft's innovative version of Moore's Law.
Re:Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous BASIC quote
by
joto
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· Score: 2
I know of lot's of good programmers that started with Basic. If you can't learn to program after having learned Basic, you weren't cut out to be a good programmer anyway.
A much more likely explanation for the phenomenon would probably be that stupid people are attracted towards Basic, while clever people soon realizes they need to learn something else, and doesn't remain in the Basic camp for very long.
Anyway, the Basic Djikstra talked about has almost nothing in common with e.g. Visual Basic that would, well, probably not make Djikstra happy, but at least not make him physically ill (oh wait, that was another language).
Edsger Djikstra is a person that deserves respect. It is just too bad that this stupid quote is what people remember of him!
Bill Gates Endorses "Open Source" - sorta
by
The+Breeze
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· Score: 2
The funniest thing is the very well-written Bill Gates interview that is linked to at the end -
Have lots of people read the code so that you don't end up with one person who is kind of hiding the fact that they can't solve a problem. Design speed in from the beginning. A lot of things that have helped us, even as the project teams have become larger, and the company has become a lot larger than it was. It is not some methodology where there is a lot of funny documentation. Source code itself is where you should put all your thoughts, not in any other thing. So, our source codes, all though there are a few exceptions, tend to be very well commented in a very structured way.
- Bill Gates, Interview with David Allison of the Smithsonian.
He's a zealot, and sometimes I think we need guys like him in order to change our perspectives every now and then. Slashdot is full of free software softies. And when a Mozilla story runs, half of 'em talk about how they boot IE in VMware 'cause it's the only decent browser anymore...
Re:Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous BASIC quote
by
connorbd
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· Score: 2
You want to have some real fun, try Ron Nicholson's Chipmunk Basic. It has OO features; I even tried to build a class library with it once.
/Brian
Re:Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous BASIC quote
by
Pinball+Wizard
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· Score: 2
yeah, well I just got done looking at a book - Interactive UML Developent with VB 6.0(sorry, no link) The forward was written by Grady Booch, who actually praised VB as a language.
Yes, in 1982 BASIC was pretty crippled, however its current incarnation only lacks inheritance to be a full OO language(this can be worked around from what I understand, however in my 7 years as a programmer I still haven't seen a truly valid reason to use inheritance). Inheritance will be a feature of the next version of VB.
So the next time you decide to put down VB, remember that you are deriding a compiled, object-oriented language. Java can't even claim to be that.
--
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
He mentions how Microsoft is spending a lot of money trying to fight opensource ideas. This is funny, because I just read the Halloween documents for the first time yesterday, and I would like to point out a peice of it from section one. I think it is a perfect indication of what Microsoft is doing, from the words of Microsoft themselves.
Open Source Process
Commercial software development processes are hallmarked by organization around economic goals. However, since money is often not the (primary) motivation behind Open Source Software, understanding the nature of the threat posed requires a deep understanding of the process and motivation of Open Source development teams.
In other words, to understand how to compete against OSS, we must target a process rather than a company.
{ This is a very important insight, one I wish Microsoft had missed. The real battle isn't NT vs. Linux, or Microsoft vs. Red Hat/Caldera/S.u.S.E. -- it's closed-source development versus open-source. The cathedral versus the bazaar.
This applies in reverse as well, which is why bashing Microsoft qua Microsoft misses the point -- they're a symptom, not the disease itself. I wish more Linux hackers understood this.
On a practical level, this insight means we can expect Microsoft's propaganda machine to be directed against the process and culture of open source, rather than specific competitors. Brace for it... }
Re:Halloween Documents
by
daniel_isaacs
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· Score: 2
..it's closed-source development versus open-source. The cathedral versus the bazaar.
It is that point which RMS seems to get, and hammer (and hammer, and hammer..) into our thick skulls every time he opens his mouth/text editor.
-- - Dan I.
Re:Is he a billionaire?
by
SnapperHead
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· Score: 2
Guess what sparky, money isn't everything.:) I would rather make my salary of ~$15,000/year and be very happy with what I do. Then make insaine ammounts of money and not be happy. I am pretty sure he likes what he does.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
-- until (succeed) try { again(); }
Re:Is he a billionaire?
by
SnapperHead
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· Score: 2
Also, another thing to look at is that money changes people and the orginal ideas seem to get lost. I have witness this many times in the past.
To be completly honest, my family owns the largest wood working shop on the east coast. I had the option to take over the business, I declined. My reasons where that my family is very Cut Throat, very gready, and will do anything to screaw over another family member. This is not a joke, its very serious. Sure, I could have made boat loads of money, but I would have suffered every single day.
I have had many people in the past disagree and say, "Man I would have just done it!". You can't even begin to understand it unless your put in that postion. So, all in all, money isn't everything. Yet, its nice to have.
Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous BASIC quote
by
Delirium+Tremens
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· Score: 5
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as
potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
Remarkable guy. He didn't try to sell us anything. Considering he was involved in a project that still exists in a rapidly enhanced form (BASIC), it was neat to see him treat his accomplishment there as historical, and get with the times in terms of modern day alternatives to learning languages (regardless of whether he's right or wrong in his choice of Python...).
--
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Re:Interview (and technology / society comentary)
by
hillct
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· Score: 5
Agreed. Interesting interview but I would be interested to hear more about Davidoff's take on CPRM. CPRM is frightening as a technology, but I'm not suprised at it's introduction.
Davidoff touches on this only periferally, but CPRM is another example of a society responding to technology, rather than adapting to it or making efficient use of it.
Please bear with me as I rant for a moment:
It's vary interesting to watch as society (as seen threough legislation that defines that society) scrambles to catch up with technology, where a half century ago, we drempt of what it would be like in the 21st century where we'd have flying cars and other astonishing technologies. I whonder if anyone - as part of the dream - envisioned tire manufacturers joining the enviromental lobby to put together legislation to prevent the introductions of cars that didn't roll along on tires.
The MPAA isn't the only industry association to be staunchly protecting a business model that doesn't apply in a new milenium. Look at how long it has taken for gasoline-electric cars to be introduced. Even today, there are only a few out there. The technology exists, and it works but hasn't been widely adopted. What oil company would be in favor of such a technology?
According to Davidoff:
CPRM, is just the most notorious, or the most emblematic of a number of schemes that make the open personal computer into an limited and tightly-controlled playback device. Controlled, effectively, by the entertainment industry
...
"I don't think people are aware of it, in spite of what you and others are writing about. It hasn't made it into the public consciousness," he says. "I didn't hear about the DMCA until after it had been passed."
This is yet another eample of the same phenomenon. Most disturbind, is that he's completely correct, the public is simply unaware of many of these issues.
In the 1950s we were dreaming of new technologies, without concern for how sociaty would react. Now, we have - then unimaginable - new technologies (although no flying cars yet) but society is fighting introduction of those technologies. New areas of law are created efery day as new problems are created, adressed, then others created.
We need progressive lawmakers with insight into these technologies to make far more informed decisions. This, however is the catch-22. There will not be lawmakers who can make informed decisions with regard to a technology, unless that technology is widely available, such thet they are familiar with it, and yet, if archaic law is what is preventing the technology from proliferating through society, we will have created for ourselves a techno-evolutionary cul-de-sac from which itwill become increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves.
Support Open Source, remain a lowly software contractor. Demand payment for your product, become the world's richest man.
We shall see how sustainable the software licensing model is-- apparently Microsoft must have some doubts about this because of their move towards a service oriented model.
I think that this interview was interesting... I always admire mathematics coders because of the absolute beauty of mathematical computation (I use math functions whenever I can to solve seemingly non-mathematical tasks because I have cfound these solutions to be more efficent and extensible).
I think his comments also about the impact of the GCC are also interesting. I had know it was influential but I was not familar with its impact on the embeded impact.
Re:IE using posers on Slashdot
by
einhverfr
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· Score: 2
My Star Office 5.1 pretends to be IE 5....
OTOH, most of my Linux boxes are not convenient to hook up to the internet right now, so mostly I read Slashdot at my place of emplyment using IE. That being said, I still use Linux as a PDC (with Samba), and my primary workstation at my secondary job.
After 20+ years, who cares how sustainable it is? Gates & company now have enough dough to get into any business they want.
Sure. However, if you want to get into the industry now or in a couple of years, this is an issue. How can you build a stable company in an ever changing industry on non-sustainable business practices?
Where does Microsoft make most of their money? OEM sales and upgrade cycles (both the same, mostly-- people upgrade their machines by buying a new one all too often). As hardware becomes more powerful, the upgrade cycle becomes longer. Can they sustain their profits?
Obviously not-- hence the service oriented model they keep saying they are moving towards.
Get over it. THere will never be another Bill Gates in the software industry. You cannot be like him, nor can anyone else. THe opertunity is over for that kind of success.
I think that proprietary software will always be around but will probably be relegated to niche roles (don't expect an open-source version of OrCAD any time soon).
Also note the emphasis in the interview on RMS's academic background. It doesn't suprise me that an obviously intelligent programmer here is supporting free software.
Also note that the essnece of making a fortune is not "licensing fees" it is "other people's work." This is true regardless of what one sells. So yes, I think that it is possible to make a lot of money in the OSS market, and that oportunity is slowly beginning to surface, but it will be a little whil before anyone does so.
I thought this Comment from Bill Gates regarding the future of computing to the DA's question was VERY ACCURATE and ahead of his time. I was impressed!!!
The Future of Computing
DA: You mentioned your vision of where the PC will be on every desk and in every home. You clearly have had a vision about the kinds of products that would come out and yet you said a minute ago, "This is just the beginning." What do you see as lying ahead in terms of further unfolding of the vision that you have held onto so continuously over the last 20 years?
BG: Well, the PC will continue to evolve. In fact, you'll think of it simply as a flat screen that will range from a wallet size device to a notebook, to a desktop, to a wall. And besides the size of the screen, the only other characteristic will be whether it is wired to an optic fiber or operating over a wireless connection. And those computers will be everywhere. You can find other people who have things that are in common. You can post messages. You can watch shows. The flexibility that this will provide is really quite incredible. And already there is the mania in discussing this so called "Information Highway" which is the idea of connecting up these devices not only in business, but in home, and making sure that video feeds work very well across these new networks. So we've only come a small way. We haven't changed the way that markets are organized. We haven't changed the way people educate themselves, or socialize, or express their political opinions, in nearly the way that we will over the next ten years. And so the software is going to have to lead the way and provide the kind of ease of use, security, and richness that those applications demand.
This is a compelling argument and one which can partly be addressed by supporting open source gpl technologies like ogg vorbis, which effect both Windows and non windows users. It's interesting to me that now sonic foundry is supporting vorbis in their music creation suite acid 3.0. Probably because it dosen't cost them anything to do but it will aid in the proliferation of ogg vorbis as a viable replacement to proprietary patented file formats (mp3). CPRM scares me deeply at the hardware level, I can only do what's in my power to not advise the purchase of anything that comes close to CPRM in hard disks etc.
Re:Is he a billionaire?
by
mikethegeek
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· Score: 2
"Guess what sparky, money isn't everything.:) I would rather make my salary of ~$15,000/year and be very happy with what I do. Then make insaine ammounts of money and not be happy. I am pretty sure he likes what he does."
Know what you mean... I'm working as a R&D tester for a company that is a BIG Linux supporter, in an area (Raleigh, NC) where there are TONS of high paying IT jobs. I make less than I could, but I get to work with 4 different Linuxes (and both SCO Unixes), and it's really satisfying.
By the end of summer, I hope to achieve my RHCE and take a purely Liunux position as a network engineer/BOFH for someone.
-- ===
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Re:Nice concept, what have you in mind re: executi
by
localroger
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· Score: 2
You're incorrect, Daisy. The brain is enormously pre-wired.
Since you are so knowledgeable on the subject, perhaps you can supply me with the wiring diagram?
I thought not. Your attitude is symptomatic of why no progress is being made in the field. While there are a few tendencies which may be pre-programmed, which act as relatively poor predictors of future behavior, the vast array of data structures which make up our personalities are acquired through life. It's the only place they can come from -- regardless of your religious views on the subject (and IME most believers in social darwinism have a nearly religious fixation on the idea), there is simply no room in the genetic code for those properties to be coded in a non-emergent way.
(P.S. Emergent means they emerge like the features of a fractal; small changes in the code result in large, often crippling, changes in the result, making them non-evolvable.)
-- Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Re:Nice concept, what have you in mind re: executi
by
localroger
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· Score: 2
Take vision for example.
Nice starting point, actually everyone's starting point because it's the most easily studied via ablation and point-scan type studies.
When you were born as a blank IBM RAM chip, who taught your eyes to differeniate a luminosity function and form egdes?
You get to the gist: I didn't.. I learned those things in the first hours/days after my eyes opened, or (alternately) after the wiring to my cerebral cortex became myelinized enough to permit the learning. How did I learn it? By looking at stuff..
We are not born knowing how to, for example, detect short line segments or connect them into shapes or detect luminosity variations and do derivatives on them. This is the fundamental error of current AI research. How do I (O great swami, I hear you say)) arrive at this startling conclusion?
It's simple, but important. THERE IS NO PLACE IN THE GENETIC CODE FOR THE INFORMATION TO GUIDE SUCH WIRING.
Please go back to CSCI 100, re-read Knuth or whatever, until you grok that last statement, because it is really, really important.
-- Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Nice concept, what have you in mind re: execution?
by
localroger
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· Score: 3
The problem with "signal-based systems" like the brain is their inherent chaos -- which I mean in the strict mathematical sense, as in Mandelbrot et al. While this can make them very useful it also makes them fundamentally unpredictable, a characteristic which bean counters don't like.
One reason AI research isn't going anywhere is that we are failing to face up to an important truth about how brains develop. Since they program themselves, starting with really very little seed information, most of their observable properties are emergent. The same would be true of any artificial system that really mimics the brain. The reason we don't have good AI isn't that the hardware isn't good enough -- I think it is, at this point -- it's that nobody wants such a system. Imagine educating your self-driving car for six years only to find out it's become a chance-taking rebellious delinquent!
You mention "message-based communication between objects" as if those objects will somehow know how to talk to one another. Clue time: They don't know how to talk to one another until they learn. And they learn through experience. Sometimes their learning is imperfect, and it can be very difficult to recognize the holes in that learning. We don't even know how to reliably program our own children, much less an air traffic control system that will differ significantly from all known types of brain, animal and human.
The newly formed brain is every bit as blank as the newly powered-up dynamic RAM chip -- anybody with an ounce of objectivity can look at the 7 Gb genome vs. the 10 ex 14 connectivity of the cerebral cortex and figure that out. Do you really want to go into the cyber day-care business, teaching your machine to speak english and habla the espanol and so forth the same way human babies learn it? Of course not. Since that's what it takes to do it the way you mention, it won't be done that way.
At least, not by most people (sly grin).
-- Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
All Programming Languages Suck!
by
MOBE2001
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· Score: 2
It's not just BASIC. All programming languages are based on 200 year-old ideas pioneered by Lady Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. They all have one thing in common: the algorithm.
The algorithmic approach to software construction is the primary reason why software sucks. Software sucks because it is unreliable and takes too long to develop. The invention (again by Lady Ada) of the subroutine, although a great contribution when it was introduced to digital computers in the last century, did not prevent the current software crisis. Planes loaded with people are crashing, airports are shut down and Mars probes costing hundreds of millions of dollars are being lost. And it's all because of the algorithm.
Why the algorithm you ask? Well consider this: The reliability of software is inversely proportional to its complexity while the reliability of the human brain improves as it gets more complex. There is an important lesson to be learned from this. The most obvious difference between software and the brain is that the former uses sequential algorithms whereas the latter is based on parallel streams of signals.
A signal-based system is more reliable because it makes it possible to have strict control over the timing of events. By contrast, one can never be sure when an algorithm will be done, and this creates all sorts of timing problems. It is instructive to note that hardware is orders of magnitude more reliable than software. It is no secret that hardware is inherently parallel and driven by signals. I an convinced that a similar approach to software construction can improve reliability by several orders of magnitude.
So there you have it. I call for the elimination of the algorithm as the basis of software construction. I call for a worldwide effort by geeks everywhere to contribute ideas for the establishment of signal-based software construction methods (GPLed, of course). We need plug-compatible components and message-based communication between objects. We need reliable, downloadble components that can snap together at the click of a mouse. No more function calls! No more languages!
It is about time that software is changed from the cottage industry that it is today and moved into the 21st century. Let's face it, Lady Ada and Charles Babbage were true geniuses and we owe them a great deal, but they did not have to write code for interplanetary probes and air traffic control systems.
Support Open Source, remain a lowly software contractor. Demand payment for your product, become the world's richest man.
Decisions, decisions.
Dancin Santa
I worked with Monte in a previous life.
by
tuxlove
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· Score: 5
I worked with Monte in a previous life. We were never on a project together, but had lots of water cooler interaction and that sort of thing. Played him at checkers once and won, which is surprising because I suck.
There were rumors about his past with good ol' Bill, but I never bothered to ask. It's funny, now that I haven't seen him for several years, to see his past highlighted in the article. The stories I heard about his past seemed unlikely for someone like him (i.e. a reasonably normal guy without obvious riches).
Don't get me wrong. Monte is a cool guy. Nice, friendly, smart and all of that. But to imagine him as one of the first 10 or less at MS is weird to say the least. Obviously he never got the riches out of it that the rest of them did. He always drove around in an ancient Honda Civic with faded and peeling paint. He had a relatively isolated position (in charge of development tools) in our relatively obscure company. Don't know much about his personal life, but I think he took Karate lessons. You could always count on him to ask the pointed, annoying question of the speaker at company meetings. It was inevitable, and they would always look for him in the crowd to get the questions out of the way.
Not the mover and shaker one would associate with
the other founders of MS. I wonder if he's sorry he didn't stick around long enough to become a billionaire. If you're reading this Monte, "Hey."
We did that paper-tape-storage programming back when I was in High School. In about 1975. I don't remember there being any expensive time limits, but each job run did report how much CPU time it had consumed, and you COULD run your account out of time. The big expense in our terminal room (we had two teletypes, a CRT display and a 'fast' 300 baud Texas Instruments thermal paper terminal) was the termial paper for the fast terminal. I can remember the instructor saying 'ten cents a foot! don't waste paper!' So we mostly settled for the 110 baud teletypes and fought over the CRT display (also 300 baud).
There is a link in the article that is even scarier - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15718.html - everyone should see this and take note. It discuss "the end of the PC" although a little pessimistic and morbid it has alot of relevnt points especially from who it is coming from. Something needs to be done please if anyone has any ideas of how this could be prevented please something needs to be done so this Does not happen
-- My little Universe is cool for the people who can fit inside it (being 250 6'4" there aren't that many who can)
I though that this was an excellent interview. It brough to light some scary stuffas far as PC's go. One of the questions i had on it was how will CPRM effect people who dont run windows? Is really going to end up being ignoredable by programs? After all the entertainment industry has gone to trouble to get it in the door. The next step if it was ignored by programs would be enforcing it in hardware instead of software. Digital fingerprints are all ready being implemented by Napster, it isnt that hard to take advantage of that at all. Really scary stuff.
-- My little Universe is cool for the people who can fit inside it (being 250 6'4" there aren't that many who can)
Slashdot Mirror
----
"Most of you steal your software... What hobbyist can put years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"----An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates, Micro-soft, 1976
"GNU... is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free... Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."----The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation, 1985
Microsoft Windows vs. GNU/Linux, 2000
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
VB supports interface inheritance which is a feature of COM.
As one example virtually every MTS component you write implements Objectcontrol methods Activate, Deactivate and CanBePooled
We also usually write our external component interfaces using IDL and then implementing them in VB code.
It's pretty standard. I honestly use inheritance all the time in VB.
I and most other geeks I know cut our teeth on BASIC back in 1982. Microsoft BASIC, Applesoft, Atari, Commodore, etc.
:)
10 print "stuff"
20 gosub 50
30 goto 10
50 print "more stuff"
60 return
You could do some simple functions in MSBASIC, it supported a function definition which was really more of an inline macro.
Other than that, yeah it pretty much sucked for trying to do anything structured.
That all changed towards the mid 80's. There were a lot of more advanced BASIC compilers available for the Amiga, ST, PC, etc. that supported functions, subroutines, etc. without line numbers.
"That was taken after my second summer, working on the second BASIC for Microsoft. The story there is that Bob Greenberg (center right) had won a prize from a photo lab, which was a free photo shoot." So the first corporate publicity shot came about completely by chance.
The stories of these people can be found here for example.
Indeed - Monte is a cool guy. I know him through his Harvard room-mate that I worked with 15 years or so ago. It's funny that the guy didn't ask the most obvious question, ie.e is Monte steemed about not being a Billionaire too? Well - let's just say he's gotten over it ;-)
;-)
It's kinda neat to see a friend actually show up on Slashdot!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
You're incorrect, Daisy. The brain is enormously pre-wired. Who you are is, on the whole, by nature, not nurture. Shyness, for instance, can be predicted with startling accuracy *before* the baby is born, by monitoring its reaction to stimulus. Baby pre-speech gurgles and noises are wired-in, and the brain is already configured to learn language.
It's not a blank slate. There's quite a bit of structure built-in, and the entire thing is primed for learning and pattern recognition.
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
>Gates in the software industry.
Or another rockefeller in the oil industry. Or Henry Ford in the automobile industry. And (switching from money to fame), it'd be a touch hard to get another Linus Torvalds in the operating system space.
Hands up everybody who's suprised it's easier to get a 50% share of an industry when it's really really tiny, and then hang on for the ride as it grows, than try to de-commoditize established one.
Rob
Except that version 2 of BASIC was "more efficient". THAT'S certainly changed.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
In fact, they thought there wasn't enough work to go around, so they kicked me off. I said, "Look, if you want me to come back you have to let me be in charge. But this is a dangerous thing, because if you put me in charge this time, I'm going to want to be in charge forever after."
I don't think that desire has diminished one smidgen with time...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I really don't think that's the point. It appears that he was just a part time employee working on a project during two summers.
We aren't told that he decided to take the high road with his career and not try to become filthy rich.
He did his job and went on with his life.
load "linux",8,1
That wasn't nearly as fun as changing a single variable to make Nuclear Gorilla!
In my mind, having a language, even BASIC, plus example source code in the OS distribution was a very good thing and I was sad to see it disappear. It wasn't long before I was exclusively Linux.
You can't even script in Windows without third-party tools. That's pretty pathetic.
Which is unfortunate, since algorithms are one of the fundamental concepts in computing. I'd love to hear how you intend to replace the whole of computer science with an algorithm-free alternative.
And it's all because of the algorithm.
And physics. If we could get rid of physics it would be a lot easier to keep planes in the air. Actually, the common element seems to be time -- physics supplies it and algorithms consume it. I suggest we stop using time immediately.
Well consider this: The reliability of software is inversely proportional to its complexity while the reliability of the human brain improves as it gets more complex.
When was the last time you found a worm with Alzheimer's, or schizophrenia, Tourette Syndrome? I have yet to a bug so depressed as to leap beneath a shoe to to be squished. (You could -- and I might -- argue that those don't count a defects, since, e.g., schizophrenia could very well be the correct state for some people's brains, given their genetics composition, but I could just as easily say that Windows should crash given the crappy code that goes into it.)
The most obvious difference between software and the brain is that the former uses sequential algorithms whereas the latter is based on parallel streams of signals.
Which are provably equivalent to sequential and parallel algorithms, barring a gross violation of the laws of physics. In fact, if you accept ANNs as reasonable abstractions of real neural networks, I have a book on the topic right here.
A signal-based system is more reliable because it makes it possible to have strict control over the timing of events. By contrast, one can never be sure when an algorithm will be done, and this creates all sorts of timing problems.
I'm sure this would come as a surprise to hard realtime systems and neurons alike.
It is no secret that hardware is inherently parallel and driven by signals.
Try directly implementing an algorithm in your choice of fundamental fields. Note the reasons why this doesn't work.
I just remembered who you are, and grew very tired, so I'm going to watch TV. Have fun changing the world.
clued in ones usually :
[1] get bored easily.
[2] dont care about the business aspect.
[3] dont like to support the same product for n years after they write it.
[4] detest marketing deadlines and budgets.
[5] prefer working in small groups or alone
[6] move on to more interesting things. raking in money doing nothing is really boring. trust me on this one.
Why do we always assume that rich people are unhappy? Is it a way of expressing our envy, and since we aren't that rich, well, at least _I_ am happy, because he surely can't be! But then, you did mention you had the chance, and turned it down.
Maybe rich people are happy making money, just in the pure pursuit of it. Having it doesn't do it, because these guys just keep making more, it seems. Maybe I'm not rich because making money doesn't make me happy, so I don't pursue it with gusto. And I can't imagine lots of money making me happy. I've seen lots of miserable poor folk, too. I can tell you one thing: I sure do like being comfortable a whole lot more than being poor, which I've been.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
So, you traded one of these for your ideals and integrity? Ludicrous!!
Why didn't you just take over the family company, and promise you'd change it within 5 years, sort of like Al Pacino in the Godfather's? Oh wait...
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"It had to run in 4k. In fact the 8k version had algorithms that were more efficient but that took up more space. By the time the 4k BASIC was done, the 8k version was out."
So, they began doubling memory requirements starting with their second ever software release, and they've continued until this very day!!
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
That was supposed to be a 4004.
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
> Why do we always assume that rich people are
> unhappy?
On the contrary. I think that money can make people happy. However it seems it cannot make them satisfied.
(I have heard this too: money cannot buy love but
it can rent a lot of sex.)
Matyas
Exactly. It's possible. Maybe not in the valley or some other all-around-incredibly-expensive place. I make about $11k/year (including school loans as simulated income- just humor me) and I pay for school + a new computer a year + all food + all rent (over priced place too). That's including school. Take that out of the equation, and I live pretty comfortably on $7k/year. If I was making $10/yr (no school included), i could also be paying for health insurance (if my pt job didn't offer it) and a fat retirement fund.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Ahhh, yes, Microsoft's innovative version of Moore's Law.
A much more likely explanation for the phenomenon would probably be that stupid people are attracted towards Basic, while clever people soon realizes they need to learn something else, and doesn't remain in the Basic camp for very long.
Anyway, the Basic Djikstra talked about has almost nothing in common with e.g. Visual Basic that would, well, probably not make Djikstra happy, but at least not make him physically ill (oh wait, that was another language).
Edsger Djikstra is a person that deserves respect. It is just too bad that this stupid quote is what people remember of him!
The funniest thing is the very well-written Bill Gates interview that is linked to at the end -
Have lots of people read the code so that you don't end up with one person who is kind of hiding the fact that they can't solve a problem. Design speed in from the beginning. A lot of things that have helped us, even as the project teams have become larger, and the company has become a lot larger than it was. It is not some methodology where there is a lot of funny documentation. Source code itself is where you should put all your thoughts, not in any other thing. So, our source codes, all though there are a few exceptions, tend to be very well commented in a very structured way.
- Bill Gates, Interview with David Allison of the Smithsonian.
He's a zealot, and sometimes I think we need guys like him in order to change our perspectives every now and then. Slashdot is full of free software softies. And when a Mozilla story runs, half of 'em talk about how they boot IE in VMware 'cause it's the only decent browser anymore...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Become a better stock trader with PeakTrader
You want to have some real fun, try Ron Nicholson's Chipmunk Basic. It has OO features; I even tried to build a class library with it once.
/Brian
Yes, in 1982 BASIC was pretty crippled, however its current incarnation only lacks inheritance to be a full OO language(this can be worked around from what I understand, however in my 7 years as a programmer I still haven't seen a truly valid reason to use inheritance). Inheritance will be a feature of the next version of VB.
So the next time you decide to put down VB, remember that you are deriding a compiled, object-oriented language. Java can't even claim to be that.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Also, another thing to look at is that money changes people and the orginal ideas seem to get lost. I have witness this many times in the past.
To be completly honest, my family owns the largest wood working shop on the east coast. I had the option to take over the business, I declined. My reasons where that my family is very Cut Throat, very gready, and will do anything to screaw over another family member. This is not a joke, its very serious. Sure, I could have made boat loads of money, but I would have suffered every single day.
I have had many people in the past disagree and say, "Man I would have just done it!". You can't even begin to understand it unless your put in that postion. So, all in all, money isn't everything. Yet, its nice to have.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Monte on Python
Remarkable guy. He didn't try to sell us anything. Considering he was involved in a project that still exists in a rapidly enhanced form (BASIC), it was neat to see him treat his accomplishment there as historical, and get with the times in terms of modern day alternatives to learning languages (regardless of whether he's right or wrong in his choice of Python...).
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Davidoff touches on this only periferally, but CPRM is another example of a society responding to technology, rather than adapting to it or making efficient use of it.
Please bear with me as I rant for a moment:
It's vary interesting to watch as society (as seen threough legislation that defines that society) scrambles to catch up with technology, where a half century ago, we drempt of what it would be like in the 21st century where we'd have flying cars and other astonishing technologies. I whonder if anyone - as part of the dream - envisioned tire manufacturers joining the enviromental lobby to put together legislation to prevent the introductions of cars that didn't roll along on tires.
The MPAA isn't the only industry association to be staunchly protecting a business model that doesn't apply in a new milenium. Look at how long it has taken for gasoline-electric cars to be introduced. Even today, there are only a few out there. The technology exists, and it works but hasn't been widely adopted. What oil company would be in favor of such a technology?
According to Davidoff: This is yet another eample of the same phenomenon. Most disturbind, is that he's completely correct, the public is simply unaware of many of these issues.
In the 1950s we were dreaming of new technologies, without concern for how sociaty would react. Now, we have - then unimaginable - new technologies (although no flying cars yet) but society is fighting introduction of those technologies. New areas of law are created efery day as new problems are created, adressed, then others created. We need progressive lawmakers with insight into these technologies to make far more informed decisions. This, however is the catch-22. There will not be lawmakers who can make informed decisions with regard to a technology, unless that technology is widely available, such thet they are familiar with it, and yet, if archaic law is what is preventing the technology from proliferating through society, we will have created for ourselves a techno-evolutionary cul-de-sac from which itwill become increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
We shall see how sustainable the software licensing model is-- apparently Microsoft must have some doubts about this because of their move towards a service oriented model.
I think that this interview was interesting... I always admire mathematics coders because of the absolute beauty of mathematical computation (I use math functions whenever I can to solve seemingly non-mathematical tasks because I have cfound these solutions to be more efficent and extensible).
I think his comments also about the impact of the GCC are also interesting. I had know it was influential but I was not familar with its impact on the embeded impact.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
My Star Office 5.1 pretends to be IE 5.... OTOH, most of my Linux boxes are not convenient to hook up to the internet right now, so mostly I read Slashdot at my place of emplyment using IE. That being said, I still use Linux as a PDC (with Samba), and my primary workstation at my secondary job.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Sure. However, if you want to get into the industry now or in a couple of years, this is an issue. How can you build a stable company in an ever changing industry on non-sustainable business practices?
Where does Microsoft make most of their money? OEM sales and upgrade cycles (both the same, mostly-- people upgrade their machines by buying a new one all too often). As hardware becomes more powerful, the upgrade cycle becomes longer. Can they sustain their profits?
Obviously not-- hence the service oriented model they keep saying they are moving towards.
Get over it. THere will never be another Bill Gates in the software industry. You cannot be like him, nor can anyone else. THe opertunity is over for that kind of success.
I think that proprietary software will always be around but will probably be relegated to niche roles (don't expect an open-source version of OrCAD any time soon).
Also note the emphasis in the interview on RMS's academic background. It doesn't suprise me that an obviously intelligent programmer here is supporting free software.
Also note that the essnece of making a fortune is not "licensing fees" it is "other people's work." This is true regardless of what one sells. So yes, I think that it is possible to make a lot of money in the OSS market, and that oportunity is slowly beginning to surface, but it will be a little whil before anyone does so.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I thought this Comment from Bill Gates regarding the future of computing to the DA's question was VERY ACCURATE and ahead of his time. I was impressed!!!
The Future of Computing
DA: You mentioned your vision of where the PC will be on every desk and in every home. You clearly have had a vision about the kinds of products that would come out and yet you said a minute ago, "This is just the beginning." What do you see as lying ahead in terms of further unfolding of the vision that you have held onto so continuously over the last 20 years?
BG: Well, the PC will continue to evolve. In fact, you'll think of it simply as a flat screen that will range from a wallet size device to a notebook, to a desktop, to a wall. And besides the size of the screen, the only other characteristic will be whether it is wired to an optic fiber or operating over a wireless connection. And those computers will be everywhere. You can find other people who have things that are in common. You can post messages. You can watch shows. The flexibility that this will provide is really quite incredible. And already there is the mania in discussing this so called "Information Highway" which is the idea of connecting up these devices not only in business, but in home, and making sure that video feeds work very well across these new networks. So we've only come a small way. We haven't changed the way that markets are organized. We haven't changed the way people educate themselves, or socialize, or express their political opinions, in nearly the way that we will over the next ten years. And so the software is going to have to lead the way and provide the kind of ease of use, security, and richness that those applications demand.
This is a compelling argument and one which can partly be addressed by supporting open source gpl technologies like ogg vorbis, which effect both Windows and non windows users. It's interesting to me that now sonic foundry is supporting vorbis in their music creation suite acid 3.0. Probably because it dosen't cost them anything to do but it will aid in the proliferation of ogg vorbis as a viable replacement to proprietary patented file formats (mp3). CPRM scares me deeply at the hardware level, I can only do what's in my power to not advise the purchase of anything that comes close to CPRM in hard disks etc.
"Guess what sparky, money isn't everything. :) I would rather make my salary of ~$15,000/year and be very happy with what I do. Then make insaine ammounts of money and not be happy. I am pretty sure he likes what he does."
Know what you mean... I'm working as a R&D tester for a company that is a BIG Linux supporter, in an area (Raleigh, NC) where there are TONS of high paying IT jobs. I make less than I could, but I get to work with 4 different Linuxes (and both SCO Unixes), and it's really satisfying.
By the end of summer, I hope to achieve my RHCE and take a purely Liunux position as a network engineer/BOFH for someone.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Since you are so knowledgeable on the subject, perhaps you can supply me with the wiring diagram?
I thought not. Your attitude is symptomatic of why no progress is being made in the field. While there are a few tendencies which may be pre-programmed, which act as relatively poor predictors of future behavior, the vast array of data structures which make up our personalities are acquired through life. It's the only place they can come from -- regardless of your religious views on the subject (and IME most believers in social darwinism have a nearly religious fixation on the idea), there is simply no room in the genetic code for those properties to be coded in a non-emergent way.
(P.S. Emergent means they emerge like the features of a fractal; small changes in the code result in large, often crippling, changes in the result, making them non-evolvable.)
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Nice starting point, actually everyone's starting point because it's the most easily studied via ablation and point-scan type studies.
When you were born as a blank IBM RAM chip, who taught your eyes to differeniate a luminosity function and form egdes?
You get to the gist: I didn't.. I learned those things in the first hours/days after my eyes opened, or (alternately) after the wiring to my cerebral cortex became myelinized enough to permit the learning. How did I learn it? By looking at stuff..
We are not born knowing how to, for example, detect short line segments or connect them into shapes or detect luminosity variations and do derivatives on them. This is the fundamental error of current AI research. How do I (O great swami, I hear you say)) arrive at this startling conclusion?
It's simple, but important. THERE IS NO PLACE IN THE GENETIC CODE FOR THE INFORMATION TO GUIDE SUCH WIRING.
Please go back to CSCI 100, re-read Knuth or whatever, until you grok that last statement, because it is really, really important.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
One reason AI research isn't going anywhere is that we are failing to face up to an important truth about how brains develop. Since they program themselves, starting with really very little seed information, most of their observable properties are emergent. The same would be true of any artificial system that really mimics the brain. The reason we don't have good AI isn't that the hardware isn't good enough -- I think it is, at this point -- it's that nobody wants such a system. Imagine educating your self-driving car for six years only to find out it's become a chance-taking rebellious delinquent!
You mention "message-based communication between objects" as if those objects will somehow know how to talk to one another. Clue time: They don't know how to talk to one another until they learn. And they learn through experience. Sometimes their learning is imperfect, and it can be very difficult to recognize the holes in that learning. We don't even know how to reliably program our own children, much less an air traffic control system that will differ significantly from all known types of brain, animal and human.
The newly formed brain is every bit as blank as the newly powered-up dynamic RAM chip -- anybody with an ounce of objectivity can look at the 7 Gb genome vs. the 10 ex 14 connectivity of the cerebral cortex and figure that out. Do you really want to go into the cyber day-care business, teaching your machine to speak english and habla the espanol and so forth the same way human babies learn it? Of course not. Since that's what it takes to do it the way you mention, it won't be done that way.
At least, not by most people (sly grin).
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
It's not just BASIC. All programming languages are based on 200 year-old ideas pioneered by Lady Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. They all have one thing in common: the algorithm.
The algorithmic approach to software construction is the primary reason why software sucks. Software sucks because it is unreliable and takes too long to develop. The invention (again by Lady Ada) of the subroutine, although a great contribution when it was introduced to digital computers in the last century, did not prevent the current software crisis. Planes loaded with people are crashing, airports are shut down and Mars probes costing hundreds of millions of dollars are being lost. And it's all because of the algorithm.
Why the algorithm you ask? Well consider this: The reliability of software is inversely proportional to its complexity while the reliability of the human brain improves as it gets more complex. There is an important lesson to be learned from this. The most obvious difference between software and the brain is that the former uses sequential algorithms whereas the latter is based on parallel streams of signals.
A signal-based system is more reliable because it makes it possible to have strict control over the timing of events. By contrast, one can never be sure when an algorithm will be done, and this creates all sorts of timing problems. It is instructive to note that hardware is orders of magnitude more reliable than software. It is no secret that hardware is inherently parallel and driven by signals. I an convinced that a similar approach to software construction can improve reliability by several orders of magnitude.
So there you have it. I call for the elimination of the algorithm as the basis of software construction. I call for a worldwide effort by geeks everywhere to contribute ideas for the establishment of signal-based software construction methods (GPLed, of course). We need plug-compatible components and message-based communication between objects. We need reliable, downloadble components that can snap together at the click of a mouse. No more function calls! No more languages!
It is about time that software is changed from the cottage industry that it is today and moved into the 21st century. Let's face it, Lady Ada and Charles Babbage were true geniuses and we owe them a great deal, but they did not have to write code for interplanetary probes and air traffic control systems.
Support Open Source, remain a lowly software contractor. Demand payment for your product, become the world's richest man.
Decisions, decisions.
Dancin Santa
I worked with Monte in a previous life. We were never on a project together, but had lots of water cooler interaction and that sort of thing. Played him at checkers once and won, which is surprising because I suck.
There were rumors about his past with good ol' Bill, but I never bothered to ask. It's funny, now that I haven't seen him for several years, to see his past highlighted in the article. The stories I heard about his past seemed unlikely for someone like him (i.e. a reasonably normal guy without obvious riches).
Don't get me wrong. Monte is a cool guy. Nice, friendly, smart and all of that. But to imagine him as one of the first 10 or less at MS is weird to say the least. Obviously he never got the riches out of it that the rest of them did. He always drove around in an ancient Honda Civic with faded and peeling paint. He had a relatively isolated position (in charge of development tools) in our relatively obscure company. Don't know much about his personal life, but I think he took Karate lessons. You could always count on him to ask the pointed, annoying question of the speaker at company meetings. It was inevitable, and they would always look for him in the crowd to get the questions out of the way.
Not the mover and shaker one would associate with the other founders of MS. I wonder if he's sorry he didn't stick around long enough to become a billionaire. If you're reading this Monte, "Hey."
We did that paper-tape-storage programming back when I was in High School. In about 1975. I don't remember there being any expensive time limits, but each job run did report how much CPU time it had consumed, and you COULD run your account out of time. The big expense in our terminal room (we had two teletypes, a CRT display and a 'fast' 300 baud Texas Instruments thermal paper terminal) was the termial paper for the fast terminal. I can remember the instructor saying 'ten cents a foot! don't waste paper!' So we mostly settled for the 110 baud teletypes and fought over the CRT display (also 300 baud).
There is a link in the article that is even scarier - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15718.html - everyone should see this and take note. It discuss "the end of the PC" although a little pessimistic and morbid it has alot of relevnt points especially from who it is coming from. Something needs to be done please if anyone has any ideas of how this could be prevented please something needs to be done so this Does not happen
My little Universe is cool for the people who can fit inside it (being 250 6'4" there aren't that many who can)
I though that this was an excellent interview. It brough to light some scary stuffas far as PC's go. One of the questions i had on it was how will CPRM effect people who dont run windows? Is really going to end up being ignoredable by programs? After all the entertainment industry has gone to trouble to get it in the door. The next step if it was ignored by programs would be enforcing it in hardware instead of software. Digital fingerprints are all ready being implemented by Napster, it isnt that hard to take advantage of that at all. Really scary stuff.
My little Universe is cool for the people who can fit inside it (being 250 6'4" there aren't that many who can)