Some others have commented on brain damage. I don't think such speculation is warranted. I'm sure his neurotransmitter levels aren't quite normal, and that may be all it takes for now. After all, he's healing and that's very stressing for the body -- because it takes a lot of brain activity to assess and repair the damage.
Like Unix, our bodies have various processes that have various priorities. A fairly high-priority high-energy (aka high CPU) process is maintaining temperature. At times of great stress, we block out (not a matter of consciousness so much as a matter of priority) stuff. For example, if I'm so tired that I'm getting cold, carrying on a conversation with me is futile.
Just think of Jason's processes as having been reniced. There's no indication that they won't be back to normal.
It may be a while to recovery, but the brain is pretty amazing. Having watched someone (my husband) die of a stroke, I really got an education (later supplemented by a class in neurology) that helped me understand more.
While it's a trying time for Cassie (you hang in there girlfriend, let me know if you need help), she seems to be holding up well. Then again, I remember from that time that one finds reserves of strength one never knew existed.
I do a lot of financial work, so I've really felt the incompleteness of spreadsheets like Gnumeric (which I do like -- but it doesn't do enough).
So far, my favorite of the commercial (proprietary) spreadsheets is xess. My second favorite is StarOffice.
Neither of them has really good UI. For example, (in xess) if I copy four cols by one row and paste it into something eight rows by four cols, I get one row copied. That's a real pain.
That said, it has what I really need, so it's less painful -- for now -- than the others.
> LinuxCare: I know you guys have a tremendous > amount of Linux talent and a lot of understanding > of the community in general. Please, please > start acting like grown-ups so you can get the > respect you deserve!
Linuxcare has had some community relations problems in the bay area. For one thing, there's something inherenly alienating about working for a Linux support company. Most of the people active in the community *stop* attending community events. It's almost like a black hole (well, a grey one, because people DO get spat out) of Linux talent.
Many of the linux geeks who were early hires at Linuxcare have long gone: five community members (out of 11 total who left) as of mid-November. Given the growth rate of the company, that's a lot of turnover. Most of the people who resigned did so to take higher paying jobs elsewhere. Within 24 hours, I had a job making $20k more a year.
Let's say that the local community relations is bad enough that some bay area Linux geek (who never worked for the company) had bumper stickers printed up that say: "Linuxcare doesn't."
Let's forget all the political rhetoric about Windows and Linux for a while.
Let's remember that the ultimate responsibility of Microsoft is to INCREASE SHAREHOLDER VALUE.
Lately, they haven't been doing so well: the stock is off 20ish% from a high of 119 late last December, and off 18% from a high of 109 earlier this month.
We've all noticed that when companies mention "The L word" (as my former boss used to call it), stock value increases.
Also remember that Office is the core of Microsoft's profit. They make their money from Office (and investments), not so much of it on Windows. Thus, making Office more available would be a good idea from a profitability standpoint.
In other words:
a) From a PR and shareholder standpoint, announcing Office for Linux would be a good idea;
b) From a profitability standpoint, it would be a good idea.
Thus, I think it's inevitable. It may also be that they can't stomach Sun's market share in StarOffice.:)
One thing people forget about newspapers: they're hard on people who have vision impairments (like me) or are allergic to the ink used (like me). I also DO NOT miss soggy newspapers!
Count me as someone who wants to read the paper in my typeface and size of choice.
_Deirdre
Re:I've been waiting for YEARS
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 1
The point of having GnuStep was so that there would be a way of writing a GnuStep app that would also conform to the NeXT/Openstep library calls.
In other words, you'd get a 2-for-1.
You're right as far as you go: it won't make it easier to port X apps. But the concept was to give a common set of GUI libraries.
_Deirdre
Re:I've been waiting for YEARS
on
MacOS X DP3
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· Score: 1
BeOS is fundamentally unix-like except for being single-user. Then again, I've seen single-user implementations of Linux (mostly for embedded systems), so that's not as weird as it sounds.
_Deirdre
Re:But how stable is it?
on
MacOS X DP3
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· Score: 3
I can't speak for this version (I'm not seeded), but I can say that MacOS X Server (upon which MacOS X is built) is way way way more stable than MacOS 8 or 9. It's also much faster as they STILL haven't managed to make MacOS (as of 8) fully PowerPC happy. Fortunately, MacOS X Server (and Mac OS X no adjective) have really been optimised for the PowerPC.
It will rival Linux for uptime *as long as* you have allocated enough virtual memory. It gets really really cranky when it starts running out of VM (which is implemented as a physical file). All failures I had of MacOS X Server in more than a year of daily use were related to vm issues and most of those because of browser caching.
Sometimes I'd reboot just to resize the VM down (the VM file will grow in size but not shrink). One of the ways around this of course is to implement the vm as its own partition. Unlike Linux, I have seen MacOS X Server eat up *hundreds* of megabytes of disk space as vm for a desktop machine.
Again, my experience is with MacOS X Server, which may vary somewhat from the consumer version.
_Deirdre
Re:Compatible with X windows
on
MacOS X DP3
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· Score: 2
Nope, nope and I suppose.
MacOS X is not X-based. While that might seem strange for a new OS coming out, remember this is NeXTStep revamped. At the time NeXT was being developed, X was very very rudimentary and NeXT wanted something more flashy.
So, no, they're not at all the same. NeXT was built on Display Postscript, which, because of Adobe's greed, has been yanked from MacOS X. I don't think that's entirely a Bad Thing, but I don't know how much better MacOS X's display system is than the earlier QuickDraw. I hope one can at least do text sideways.:)
_Deirdre
Re:Biggest question for older Mac owners...
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 1
I've been waiting for YEARS
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 2
When I first saw Rhapsody DR2 (as the developer releases for MacOS X Server were called), I knew I wanted THAT integrated with the MacOS. As I've said before, it's what made me a Unix fan.
I really really hope that it lives up to its promise.
The one downside is that X applications will not readily port, though I'm sure there will be various libraries to make this easier (thus the GNUstep project).
The really interesting upside to this is that, after MacOS X ships, all shipping consumer OSes except Windows (and OS/2, which I don't really count as it's no longer being developed) will be based on Unix.
What most confirmed why Microsoft writes bloat-ware was the bottom-up design of features. Rather than agree on a product vision, they start with the features and work from there. This is inherently bottom-up design (not just from a personnel perspective either).
This is the most likely approach to get feature creep and all the other cruft that Office has become. Rather than starting with a vision and deciding whether or not features add to or detract from that, each feature is decided without a vision. Not surprising given the results.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter who comes up with the features, though letting engineers do it increases their job satisfaction. But listen to Fallows' underlying point: a good many of his features, as a writer, were shot down. Who knows more about what a writer needs from a word processor than a writer? Who shot down the ideas? Engineers.
I also don't think the face-to-face culture is sustainable in software design past a certain point and I think Microsoft has passed that point long ago.
_Deirdre
Re:Hate to say this, but...
on
A New DeCSS
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· Score: 1
"DeCSS" == "Deirdre's Checksum & Size Satisfier"
Motto of the project: "It's always just the right size"::snort::
OK, where's the lurid graphics? I'm ready to print t-shirts!
_Deirdre
Re:Hate to say this, but...
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 2
For this reason, I suggested to Mr. Bad that he add some cruft so that it would have the same file size and checksum.
I think that would be a lovely program to write (make arbitrary size and checksum cruft).
I gotta admit. I liked the Magic Link because it was *cute.* It wasn't economical and it wasn't viable. My Palm Pilot is certainly more useful in the raw sense of the term. But not as endearing.
But then again, I own a blue G3 and an iBook.:) I run Linux on the blue G3, but the iBook hasn't been indoctrinated yet.
I use Linux almost all the time now, but I still think of the MacOS as "comfort food." Then again, if I use it for any length of time, I feel constrained by the interface and limitations. I much prefer that of MacOS X Server (i.e. NeXT).
I think, like most other people, I have patterns of net use. For instance, when I was recently widowed, I was on the net A LOT. It was my support. At the time, I lived in rural Vermont and who was I gonna call at 3 am when I couldn't sleep?
Then, when I got more of an "analog life," my use of the net dropped dramatically. Thus, I think they're looking at the wrong end of the equation.
Seriously, I think a lot of "face-to-face" time is WAY overrated. If being on the net means I'm at singles night at the local pub less, isn't that a good thing?
I also think introverts are more likely to be really heavy net users and may find *increased* socialisation. One of the problems of these studies is that they tend to use extrovert norms. For a lot of people, accolades are worth as much "warm fuzzies" as a hug, if not more. And yes, you CAN get a warm voice over the internet. Evidently they haven't heard of voice-over-IP.:)
That said, I think some people are probably overdoing it and harming themselves in the long run.
Andy Hertzfeld is a good prototype programmer. He wrote Switcher on a dare: how can we make the Mac pseudo-multitask without changing anything underneath?
The problem is that it's still legacy cruft because, as you say, it's all kludge.
They should never let the guy write production code. Around about the time of General Magic, people stopped letting him do that and the products got better (Magic Links *rocked*).
No, not so much a flame as a caveat. One Eazel employee told, at a recent bay area Linux gathering, of how harsh the management is about prospective employees.
And several prominent Bay Area Linux people with heavy GUI backgrounds (like myself) were snubbed by Eazel to hire much less expensive neophyte programmers. Yeah, I was one of them, but I don't care as I found a great-paying and good job elsewhere. I was much more surprised when several other friends with good credentials were ALSO snubbed.
Basically, they'd be willing to pay a premium for a big name, but I sincerely doubt the employees will be treated well.
Well, I too am in the category of "does not trust binaries from the FBI." It doesn't matter what the intent is of the FBI programmers. I tend to think that the guys who coded it were probably on the up-and-up.
That said, I still think the leading candidate for the attacks is the NSA....
...which, if you think about it, increases the likelihood that the FBI code is exactly what they represent. While I might believe that the DDoS attacks might have been NSA, I consider it considerably less likely that the NSA and FBI would cooperate.:)
Deirdre's rule of management: "Bad managers outlast good employees." More than any single other cause, bad managers drive away good people. I have had two bad managers in the last year alone. In one case, I survived but the manager didn't; in the latter case (at the same company), the bad manager survived.
In no case can you afford a bad manager. Because information to other managers is filtered by the bad manager, it all seems rational at the time.
Another thing I learned in Finance...by all means, TAKE microeconomics, business law and corporate finance! I have used my business law class more than any single other subject I took in college. Getting back to finance, the long-term assets make or break the company. Enter into those very carefully.
Cash flow, or liquidity management, is crucial for short-term survival. Long-term asset management is crucial for long-term survival.
Getting back to the point, I predict that said manager's future downfall at The Firm (all hail the firm) will be the abysmal choices in the capital budget...the same mistakes he'd made in the past at another company.::sigh::
I really like Ambrosia Software's games, especially Harry the Handsome Executive. But I also love Nanosaur (from PangaeaSoft) and Barrack (from Ambrosia). Twisted stuff!
Slashdot Mirror
Some others have commented on brain damage. I don't think such speculation is warranted. I'm sure his neurotransmitter levels aren't quite normal, and that may be all it takes for now. After all, he's healing and that's very stressing for the body -- because it takes a lot of brain activity to assess and repair the damage.
Like Unix, our bodies have various processes that have various priorities. A fairly high-priority high-energy (aka high CPU) process is maintaining temperature. At times of great stress, we block out (not a matter of consciousness so much as a matter of priority) stuff. For example, if I'm so tired that I'm getting cold, carrying on a conversation with me is futile.
Just think of Jason's processes as having been reniced. There's no indication that they won't be back to normal.
It may be a while to recovery, but the brain is pretty amazing. Having watched someone (my husband) die of a stroke, I really got an education (later supplemented by a class in neurology) that helped me understand more.
While it's a trying time for Cassie (you hang in there girlfriend, let me know if you need help), she seems to be holding up well. Then again, I remember from that time that one finds reserves of strength one never knew existed.
_Deirdre
Doh, that's what *I* get for not paying attention. I remembered the Thawte acquisition was on hold for a while. Bummer that it went through. :(
I'm going to go be depressed for the rest of the day.
_Deirdre
I remember being very depressed when Verisign was going to buy Thawte because Thawte had always been so much better a company.
:)
When I read this about Verisign and Network Solutions, my first reaction was "they deserve each other."
Now I suppose we can wait for AOL to buy the pair of them....
_Deirdre
A lot of people who have seven figures can't possibly afford having an accountant or minions. Besides, you missed the point:
1) Accounting is about the PAST.
2) Finance is about the FUTURE.
Personal finance software isn't just a checkbook record. It's about planning for the FUTURE. This is something an accountant is NOT trained for.
This is the difference between a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and an accountant; a financial manager and an accounting manager.
_Deirdre
I do a lot of financial work, so I've really felt the incompleteness of spreadsheets like Gnumeric (which I do like -- but it doesn't do enough).
So far, my favorite of the commercial (proprietary) spreadsheets is xess. My second favorite is StarOffice.
Neither of them has really good UI. For example, (in xess) if I copy four cols by one row and paste it into something eight rows by four cols, I get one row copied. That's a real pain.
That said, it has what I really need, so it's less painful -- for now -- than the others.
_Deirdre
> LinuxCare: I know you guys have a tremendous
> amount of Linux talent and a lot of understanding
> of the community in general. Please, please
> start acting like grown-ups so you can get the
> respect you deserve!
Linuxcare has had some community relations problems in the bay area. For one thing, there's something inherenly alienating about working for a Linux support company. Most of the people active in the community *stop* attending community events. It's almost like a black hole (well, a grey one, because people DO get spat out) of Linux talent.
Many of the linux geeks who were early hires at Linuxcare have long gone: five community members (out of 11 total who left) as of mid-November. Given the growth rate of the company, that's a lot of turnover. Most of the people who resigned did so to take higher paying jobs elsewhere. Within 24 hours, I had a job making $20k more a year.
Let's say that the local community relations is bad enough that some bay area Linux geek (who never worked for the company) had bumper stickers printed up that say: "Linuxcare doesn't."
_Deirdre
Let's forget all the political rhetoric about Windows and Linux for a while.
:)
Let's remember that the ultimate responsibility of Microsoft is to INCREASE SHAREHOLDER VALUE.
Lately, they haven't been doing so well: the stock is off 20ish% from a high of 119 late last December, and off 18% from a high of 109 earlier this month.
We've all noticed that when companies mention "The L word" (as my former boss used to call it), stock value increases.
Also remember that Office is the core of Microsoft's profit. They make their money from Office (and investments), not so much of it on Windows. Thus, making Office more available would be a good idea from a profitability standpoint.
In other words:
a) From a PR and shareholder standpoint, announcing Office for Linux would be a good idea;
b) From a profitability standpoint, it would be a good idea.
Thus, I think it's inevitable. It may also be that they can't stomach Sun's market share in StarOffice.
_Deirdre
One thing people forget about newspapers: they're hard on people who have vision impairments (like me) or are allergic to the ink used (like me). I also DO NOT miss soggy newspapers!
Count me as someone who wants to read the paper in my typeface and size of choice.
_Deirdre
The point of having GnuStep was so that there would be a way of writing a GnuStep app that would also conform to the NeXT/Openstep library calls.
In other words, you'd get a 2-for-1.
You're right as far as you go: it won't make it easier to port X apps. But the concept was to give a common set of GUI libraries.
_Deirdre
BeOS is fundamentally unix-like except for being single-user. Then again, I've seen single-user implementations of Linux (mostly for embedded systems), so that's not as weird as it sounds.
_Deirdre
I can't speak for this version (I'm not seeded), but I can say that MacOS X Server (upon which MacOS X is built) is way way way more stable than MacOS 8 or 9. It's also much faster as they STILL haven't managed to make MacOS (as of 8) fully PowerPC happy. Fortunately, MacOS X Server (and Mac OS X no adjective) have really been optimised for the PowerPC.
It will rival Linux for uptime *as long as* you have allocated enough virtual memory. It gets really really cranky when it starts running out of VM (which is implemented as a physical file). All failures I had of MacOS X Server in more than a year of daily use were related to vm issues and most of those because of browser caching.
Sometimes I'd reboot just to resize the VM down (the VM file will grow in size but not shrink). One of the ways around this of course is to implement the vm as its own partition. Unlike Linux, I have seen MacOS X Server eat up *hundreds* of megabytes of disk space as vm for a desktop machine.
Again, my experience is with MacOS X Server, which may vary somewhat from the consumer version.
_Deirdre
Nope, nope and I suppose.
:)
MacOS X is not X-based. While that might seem strange for a new OS coming out, remember this is NeXTStep revamped. At the time NeXT was being developed, X was very very rudimentary and NeXT wanted something more flashy.
So, no, they're not at all the same. NeXT was built on Display Postscript, which, because of Adobe's greed, has been yanked from MacOS X. I don't think that's entirely a Bad Thing, but I don't know how much better MacOS X's display system is than the earlier QuickDraw. I hope one can at least do text sideways.
_Deirdre
You forgot SuSE
When I first saw Rhapsody DR2 (as the developer releases for MacOS X Server were called), I knew I wanted THAT integrated with the MacOS. As I've said before, it's what made me a Unix fan.
I really really hope that it lives up to its promise.
The one downside is that X applications will not readily port, though I'm sure there will be various libraries to make this easier (thus the GNUstep project).
The really interesting upside to this is that, after MacOS X ships, all shipping consumer OSes except Windows (and OS/2, which I don't really count as it's no longer being developed) will be based on Unix.
_Deirdre
What most confirmed why Microsoft writes bloat-ware was the bottom-up design of features. Rather than agree on a product vision, they start with the features and work from there. This is inherently bottom-up design (not just from a personnel perspective either).
This is the most likely approach to get feature creep and all the other cruft that Office has become. Rather than starting with a vision and deciding whether or not features add to or detract from that, each feature is decided without a vision. Not surprising given the results.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter who comes up with the features, though letting engineers do it increases their job satisfaction. But listen to Fallows' underlying point: a good many of his features, as a writer, were shot down. Who knows more about what a writer needs from a word processor than a writer? Who shot down the ideas? Engineers.
I also don't think the face-to-face culture is sustainable in software design past a certain point and I think Microsoft has passed that point long ago.
_Deirdre
"DeCSS" == "Deirdre's Checksum & Size Satisfier"
::snort::
Motto of the project: "It's always just the right size"
OK, where's the lurid graphics? I'm ready to print t-shirts!
_Deirdre
For this reason, I suggested to Mr. Bad that he add some cruft so that it would have the same file size and checksum.
:)
I think that would be a lovely program to write (make arbitrary size and checksum cruft).
Maybe I'll call it DeCSS.
_Deirdre
I gotta admit. I liked the Magic Link because it was *cute.* It wasn't economical and it wasn't viable. My Palm Pilot is certainly more useful in the raw sense of the term. But not as endearing.
:) I run Linux on the blue G3, but the iBook hasn't been indoctrinated yet.
But then again, I own a blue G3 and an iBook.
I use Linux almost all the time now, but I still think of the MacOS as "comfort food." Then again, if I use it for any length of time, I feel constrained by the interface and limitations. I much prefer that of MacOS X Server (i.e. NeXT).
_Deirdre
Speaking of Lusers, a private email from Andy Hertzfeld, in response to my post here, threatened that I was "subject to legal remedy."
This makes it REALLY REALLY clear that Eazel Does Not Get It.
Go ahead Andy, feel free. My address for service of process:
Deirdre Saoirse
2033 Sharon Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
_Deirdre
I think, like most other people, I have patterns of net use. For instance, when I was recently widowed, I was on the net A LOT. It was my support. At the time, I lived in rural Vermont and who was I gonna call at 3 am when I couldn't sleep?
:)
Then, when I got more of an "analog life," my use of the net dropped dramatically. Thus, I think they're looking at the wrong end of the equation.
Seriously, I think a lot of "face-to-face" time is WAY overrated. If being on the net means I'm at singles night at the local pub less, isn't that a good thing?
I also think introverts are more likely to be really heavy net users and may find *increased* socialisation. One of the problems of these studies is that they tend to use extrovert norms. For a lot of people, accolades are worth as much "warm fuzzies" as a hug, if not more. And yes, you CAN get a warm voice over the internet. Evidently they haven't heard of voice-over-IP.
That said, I think some people are probably overdoing it and harming themselves in the long run.
_Deirdre
Andy Hertzfeld is a good prototype programmer. He wrote Switcher on a dare: how can we make the Mac pseudo-multitask without changing anything underneath?
The problem is that it's still legacy cruft because, as you say, it's all kludge.
They should never let the guy write production code. Around about the time of General Magic, people stopped letting him do that and the products got better (Magic Links *rocked*).
_Deirdre
No, not so much a flame as a caveat. One Eazel employee told, at a recent bay area Linux gathering, of how harsh the management is about prospective employees.
And several prominent Bay Area Linux people with heavy GUI backgrounds (like myself) were snubbed by Eazel to hire much less expensive neophyte programmers. Yeah, I was one of them, but I don't care as I found a great-paying and good job elsewhere. I was much more surprised when several other friends with good credentials were ALSO snubbed.
Basically, they'd be willing to pay a premium for a big name, but I sincerely doubt the employees will be treated well.
My vote on Eazel: nice concept, wrong company.
_Deirdre
Well, I too am in the category of "does not trust binaries from the FBI." It doesn't matter what the intent is of the FBI programmers. I tend to think that the guys who coded it were probably on the up-and-up.
:)
That said, I still think the leading candidate for the attacks is the NSA....
...which, if you think about it, increases the likelihood that the FBI code is exactly what they represent. While I might believe that the DDoS attacks might have been NSA, I consider it considerably less likely that the NSA and FBI would cooperate.
_Deirdre
Deirdre's rule of management: "Bad managers outlast good employees." More than any
::sigh::
single other cause, bad managers drive away good people. I have had two bad managers in the last year alone. In one case, I survived but the manager didn't; in the latter case (at the same company), the bad manager survived.
In no case can you afford a bad manager. Because information to other managers is filtered by the bad manager, it all seems rational at the time.
Another thing I learned in Finance...by all means, TAKE microeconomics, business law and corporate finance! I have used my business law class more than any single other subject I took in college. Getting back to finance, the long-term assets make or break the company. Enter into those very carefully.
Cash flow, or liquidity management, is crucial for short-term survival. Long-term asset management is crucial for long-term survival.
Getting back to the point, I predict that said manager's future downfall at The Firm (all hail the firm) will be the abysmal choices in the capital budget...the same mistakes he'd made in the past at another company.
_Deirdre
Let's also hear it for Marathon! _Deirdre