I've read various attempts at justifying the McDonalds coffee lawsuit--and I remain unconvinced. Anyone who would hold a styrofoam cup of hot coffee between his or her legs and removed the lid, the main support against the inward pressure of said legs, to add cream, should have constant supervision. Companies shouldn't be held liable for the actions of idiots.
While I think that there is such thing as "too much taxes", I don't think we're there yet.
Are you serious?! We're taxed at least as much as serfs were in the Middle Ages. If the Founding Fathers were around today, they'd be disgusted at our acquiescence in the "eat[ing] out [of our] substance."
Anyways it seems to me like sometime in the early seventies, they started making them more kid-oriented (hence Scoobie-Doo, Flinstones, Jetsons, et.al.) and therefore not as all around entertaining.
I agree with your thesis, but not with some of your examples. The Flintstones were a cartoon version of The Honeymooners, with Fred mapping to Ralph Kramden and Barney to Ed Norton etc. It originally aired from 1960 to 1966, in prime time if I remember rightly. The Jetsons started in 1962.
Fundamentally, though, you're right. When you write for, bud don't pander to, children, the results are things such as Tom Sawyer, Watership Down, and A Wrinkle in Time. When you pander to children, you get Barney--the mind-sucking Purple Hellwyrm.
Anyone who knows the joy of programming machine language for the 6502 knows the answer.
Programming for a CPU with an eight-bit stack pointer?! Thanks, but give me the Motorola 6809 or the Hitachi 6309 any day. BTW, the Glenside Color Computer Club will be holding the Twelfth Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest on May 17th and 18th this year in Elgin, Illinois. There are SCSI cards, IDE cards, and RAM expansions for the CoCo, and more stuff is under development (see the Cloud-9 and other pages linked from the Glenside site for details).
Re:Computer religion sucks
on
SCO DOS'ed
·
· Score: 1
When I started out writing software back around 1980, computers were just cool. Nobody really cared which OS you ran and we were as excited by the Amiga as we were by Atari, Apple, or whatever else computer. It never seemed to matter that much what OS they were running. Now it seems as bad as any religion.
With all due respect, the past seems to have acquired a fuzzy nostalgic haze in this account. I recall the name-calling of the time: "Trash-80," "Commode-Door," etc.
Admittedly, it was somewhat more innocuous back then--on the order of Ford vs. Chrysler etc. Now, it's a much more serious matter. If Chrysler acquired the power to force all gasoline, tires, and roads to only work with Chryslers, the arguments among car owners would turns just as serious as the OS wars are now.
The inward pressure that the Des Moines Metro exerts is lower than it used to be--the buses run until something like 11 at night now. (Before, they folded up shop around 6:30-7:00 p.m.) Still no buses on Sunday, though. (Woof.)
Well...I still live in Des Moines. (I moved here in 1986 to do compiler work, which I did until I was laid off in 2001.)
I moved here from central Oklahoma. Back when I was there, I felt culturally deprived--then I came to Iowa. Both states have interesting places to visit and beautiful landscapes, are good places to live, and have good people, and Iowa has some very good musicians indeed (such as, say, Bob Cook and Gary Audsley, Ashanti, Bob Black, Mike and Amy Finders, the Blue Band, and many others--and I presume most here have heard of a group from Des Moines called Slipknot...), BUT... just pick up a copy of the Oklahoma Gazette (the OKC area weekly "alternative" paper) and compare it with the pathetic Cityview and pointblank in Des Moines, and there is no comparison. (I will admit that I've not been to the Quad Cities area, or the various college towns in Iowa.)
(That said, I second the recommendation of Java Joe's, and also want to point people at the fun and quirky Vaudeville Mews, right next door.)
Re Nebraska: I can't agree. I wound up in downtown Omaha helping to publicize a small nearby Renaissance fair, and had a heck of a time. Beat the heck out of the oppressive thumpa-thumpa dance places on Court Avenue. (I don't need no fascist groove thang...)
Not GNOME-related
on
GnomeDex 3.0
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's run by a guy named Chris Pirillo (who's from Des Moines, but since moved to California), who has a web site called lockergnome.com because someone tagged him with the nickname "Locker Gnome" in high school. It's nothing to do with GNOME, and when I was at GNOMEDEX last year about all there was to do with Linux period was a good talk by Doc Searls; aside from that it was M$ all the way. I can't vouch for this year, though.
Examples of visual effects that will be enabled in Windows Longhorn include:
Windows tumbling onto the screen.
Rotating windows.
Warped windows.
Alpha blending between windows.
Threads.
Events and other synchronization objects.
OK, the first four I think I understand. If someone could tell me what a thread, an event, or any of those other synchronization objects look like I'd appreciate it.
I think that people have already mentioned in earlier threads on slimy printer maker tactics that low end inkjets are, while not being given away, going for cheap enough that they're better off buying a new printer than replacement cartridges.
But is Canon evil in the sense of not revealing information needed to write open source device drivers for their inkjet printers? linuxprinting.org only grades Canon a C-.
In that case, we need to educate the consumers. Give them an analogy they can understand: "How would you like it if your car kept track of when you filled the gas tank, and refused to start if it had been too long since you filled up, even if the tank was 3/4 full? Well, that's what printer makers are doing to you with ink cartridges, so you have to buy more overpriced ink cartridges than you really need..."
Medical science is a zero-sum game. Every dollar or minute spent trying to find a cure for disease X cannot be spent on disease Y. There's only so much money and effort to go around.
Well...there's always the possibility that sufficiently basic research into disease X might find results useful for other diseases. On the whole, though, I have to agree with the main point. As Damon Runyon put it, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that's the way to bet."
Second, the Macintosh operating systems after 7.x were always called, not Mac OS9, but 'MacOS 9'. The dramatic majority of sites, based on a little check I just did via Google, do indeed call it that way. In fact, if you run a search for the following on Google, the top 8 sites you get are sites that talk about the OS-9 operating system, not the Macintosh in any way, shape, or form.
I just did some searching on Google.
"mac os9" finds 17,700 sites
"macos 9" finds 39,500 sites
"mac os 9" finds 265,000 sites
So it looks like there's a third form that really has the vast majority (85%) of the hits. Apple sites do appear to be careful to always say "Mac OS 9", but the first non-Apple site Google lists when told to look for "Mac OS 9" elides the "Mac," as does a c|net news.com article titled "Mac OS 9, rest in peace" and a page titled "Mac OS 9 Cross-Platform Issues." A Library Journal review of Mac OS 9 for Dummies does the same. So, it appears that the truth lies somewhere in between.
Interesting that Ms. Harrison says that people will inevitably shorten "Mozilla Firebird" to just "Firebird," but doesn't bring up the question of whether people scrupulously always add "BBS" to the name of the Firebird BBS software. Quite the convenient oversight, that.
Well, yes...but now that I've found out about it because its proponents felt the need to spam people heavily, despite knowing about it, I'll never use it or recommend it to anyone, just as I'll never use any other product I hear of via spamming.
Ironic that the thread has "Apples" in the title...
Some years back (I think around 1999), Apple decided to name the ninth version of its operating system for the Macintosh "Mac OS9". Microware Systems Corporation went to court, as it had used the name "OS-9" for a family of soft real-time operating systems since 1980 and had trademarked the name (it still does, or rather RadiSys Corporation, which bought Microware in 2001, does)--and lost. The case was thrown out of court (both originally and on appeal), because the judge claimed there would be no confusion--even though
Both are operating systems.
A company called Ultrascience at one time sold OS-9/68000 for 68000-based Macintoshes.
If you look around on the net, just about everybody always calls "Mac OS9" "OS9," just as Ms. Harrison asserts people will call "Mozilla Firebird" just plain "Firebird."
To this day, Macintosh users still post questions on comp.os.os9.
I hasten to add that I am not a lawyer, and don't play one on TV, and that all opinions and errors herein are my own and not necessarily those of any organization.
...a Google search turns up Firebird Software Ltd., Firebird Web Design, Financial Firebird, Gravis's Firebird joystick, Firebird Networks, the Firebird BBS, and the Firebird Jr. video editing package. (I stopped looking at that point.) Have the IBPhoenix people run spamming campaigns against them?
He's referring to the hypothetical person who deletes the wrong package that you brought up, not to you.
There should be a special place in hell...
on
Are Rebates Scandalous?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...for the inventor of rebates.
Basically it's an interest-free loan to the vendor. You get to pay sales tax on the pre-rebate price, and then have to jump through hoops to maybe get the rebate months later.
The store ought to be required to hand you the rebate at the time of purchase, or submit the information electronically at the time of purchase...but then they'd actually have to give you the money, wouldn't they? Stores can take rebates and use them for reaction mass, as far as I'm concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
A more accurate phrase would be "funds seized by the government," but I wouldn't go so far as to call the phrase an oxymoron.
I've read various attempts at justifying the McDonalds coffee lawsuit--and I remain unconvinced. Anyone who would hold a styrofoam cup of hot coffee between his or her legs and removed the lid, the main support against the inward pressure of said legs, to add cream, should have constant supervision. Companies shouldn't be held liable for the actions of idiots.
Perhaps it's time to head over to ipetitions.com and collect signatures of like-minded people. (I'll sign it in a heartbeat.)
"Legitimate taxes"...sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Are you serious?! We're taxed at least as much as serfs were in the Middle Ages. If the Founding Fathers were around today, they'd be disgusted at our acquiescence in the "eat[ing] out [of our] substance."
I agree with your thesis, but not with some of your examples. The Flintstones were a cartoon version of The Honeymooners, with Fred mapping to Ralph Kramden and Barney to Ed Norton etc. It originally aired from 1960 to 1966, in prime time if I remember rightly. The Jetsons started in 1962.
Fundamentally, though, you're right. When you write for, bud don't pander to, children, the results are things such as Tom Sawyer, Watership Down, and A Wrinkle in Time. When you pander to children, you get Barney--the mind-sucking Purple Hellwyrm.
Programming for a CPU with an eight-bit stack pointer?! Thanks, but give me the Motorola 6809 or the Hitachi 6309 any day. BTW, the Glenside Color Computer Club will be holding the Twelfth Annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest on May 17th and 18th this year in Elgin, Illinois. There are SCSI cards, IDE cards, and RAM expansions for the CoCo, and more stuff is under development (see the Cloud-9 and other pages linked from the Glenside site for details).
With all due respect, the past seems to have acquired a fuzzy nostalgic haze in this account. I recall the name-calling of the time: "Trash-80," "Commode-Door," etc.
Admittedly, it was somewhat more innocuous back then--on the order of Ford vs. Chrysler etc. Now, it's a much more serious matter. If Chrysler acquired the power to force all gasoline, tires, and roads to only work with Chryslers, the arguments among car owners would turns just as serious as the OS wars are now.
The inward pressure that the Des Moines Metro exerts is lower than it used to be--the buses run until something like 11 at night now. (Before, they folded up shop around 6:30-7:00 p.m.) Still no buses on Sunday, though. (Woof.)
Well...I still live in Des Moines. (I moved here in 1986 to do compiler work, which I did until I was laid off in 2001.)
I moved here from central Oklahoma. Back when I was there, I felt culturally deprived--then I came to Iowa. Both states have interesting places to visit and beautiful landscapes, are good places to live, and have good people, and Iowa has some very good musicians indeed (such as, say, Bob Cook and Gary Audsley, Ashanti, Bob Black, Mike and Amy Finders, the Blue Band, and many others--and I presume most here have heard of a group from Des Moines called Slipknot...), BUT... just pick up a copy of the Oklahoma Gazette (the OKC area weekly "alternative" paper) and compare it with the pathetic Cityview and pointblank in Des Moines, and there is no comparison. (I will admit that I've not been to the Quad Cities area, or the various college towns in Iowa.)
(That said, I second the recommendation of Java Joe's, and also want to point people at the fun and quirky Vaudeville Mews, right next door.)
Re Nebraska: I can't agree. I wound up in downtown Omaha helping to publicize a small nearby Renaissance fair, and had a heck of a time. Beat the heck out of the oppressive thumpa-thumpa dance places on Court Avenue. (I don't need no fascist groove thang...)
It's run by a guy named Chris Pirillo (who's from Des Moines, but since moved to California), who has a web site called lockergnome.com because someone tagged him with the nickname "Locker Gnome" in high school. It's nothing to do with GNOME, and when I was at GNOMEDEX last year about all there was to do with Linux period was a good talk by Doc Searls; aside from that it was M$ all the way. I can't vouch for this year, though.
OK, the first four I think I understand. If someone could tell me what a thread, an event, or any of those other synchronization objects look like I'd appreciate it.
I think that people have already mentioned in earlier threads on slimy printer maker tactics that low end inkjets are, while not being given away, going for cheap enough that they're better off buying a new printer than replacement cartridges.
But is Canon evil in the sense of not revealing information needed to write open source device drivers for their inkjet printers? linuxprinting.org only grades Canon a C-.
In that case, we need to educate the consumers. Give them an analogy they can understand: "How would you like it if your car kept track of when you filled the gas tank, and refused to start if it had been too long since you filled up, even if the tank was 3/4 full? Well, that's what printer makers are doing to you with ink cartridges, so you have to buy more overpriced ink cartridges than you really need..."
Well...there's always the possibility that sufficiently basic research into disease X might find results useful for other diseases. On the whole, though, I have to agree with the main point. As Damon Runyon put it, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that's the way to bet."
I just did some searching on Google.
- "mac os9" finds 17,700 sites
- "macos 9" finds 39,500 sites
- "mac os 9" finds 265,000 sites
So it looks like there's a third form that really has the vast majority (85%) of the hits. Apple sites do appear to be careful to always say "Mac OS 9", but the first non-Apple site Google lists when told to look for "Mac OS 9" elides the "Mac," as does a c|net news.com article titled "Mac OS 9, rest in peace" and a page titled "Mac OS 9 Cross-Platform Issues." A Library Journal review of Mac OS 9 for Dummies does the same. So, it appears that the truth lies somewhere in between.Interesting that Ms. Harrison says that people will inevitably shorten "Mozilla Firebird" to just "Firebird," but doesn't bring up the question of whether people scrupulously always add "BBS" to the name of the Firebird BBS software. Quite the convenient oversight, that.
Well, yes...but now that I've found out about it because its proponents felt the need to spam people heavily, despite knowing about it, I'll never use it or recommend it to anyone, just as I'll never use any other product I hear of via spamming.
Some years back (I think around 1999), Apple decided to name the ninth version of its operating system for the Macintosh "Mac OS9". Microware Systems Corporation went to court, as it had used the name "OS-9" for a family of soft real-time operating systems since 1980 and had trademarked the name (it still does, or rather RadiSys Corporation, which bought Microware in 2001, does)--and lost. The case was thrown out of court (both originally and on appeal), because the judge claimed there would be no confusion--even though
- Both are operating systems.
- A company called Ultrascience at one time sold OS-9/68000 for 68000-based Macintoshes.
- If you look around on the net, just about everybody always calls "Mac OS9" "OS9," just as Ms. Harrison asserts people will call "Mozilla Firebird" just plain "Firebird."
- To this day, Macintosh users still post questions on comp.os.os9.
I hasten to add that I am not a lawyer, and don't play one on TV, and that all opinions and errors herein are my own and not necessarily those of any organization.This is almost an attempt to overturn the Carterfone decision!
...a Google search turns up Firebird Software Ltd., Firebird Web Design, Financial Firebird, Gravis's Firebird joystick, Firebird Networks, the Firebird BBS, and the Firebird Jr. video editing package. (I stopped looking at that point.) Have the IBPhoenix people run spamming campaigns against them?
Automobiles aren't technological?!
He's referring to the hypothetical person who deletes the wrong package that you brought up, not to you.
...for the inventor of rebates.
Basically it's an interest-free loan to the vendor. You get to pay sales tax on the pre-rebate price, and then have to jump through hoops to maybe get the rebate months later.
The store ought to be required to hand you the rebate at the time of purchase, or submit the information electronically at the time of purchase...but then they'd actually have to give you the money, wouldn't they? Stores can take rebates and use them for reaction mass, as far as I'm concerned.