Note the structure in each of these "dumb moments".
Person x starts company y. Blah blah blah. Then, n months later, company y dies horribly.
Actually, very few of the moments fit your simplistic generalization. Most of these are anecdotes about over-confident people making wild statements. Why not learn from their mistakes? The lesson here is don't blow your financing on lavish parties and pointless marketing campaigns.
I guess this list must have hit too close to home with you or something, but I found this blurb particularly amusing:
In October 1999, streaming-media company Pixelon launches with a legendary $16 million Las Vegas shindig -- eating up 80 percent of the company's latest round of financing -- featuring the Who, Tony Bennett, and the Dixie Chicks. Unbeknownst to the revelers, the company's CEO, Michael Fenne, is actually a fugitive con artist named David Kim Stanley; he is now serving an eight-year sentence in Virginia.
If you're only going to do "one teeny-tiny part" to help cure cancer, why bother?
Companies that make money are bad.
Closed-source is bad. (How are you going to hack the results?)
Licenses are bad. No further explanation necesary.
A program that purports to help find a cure for cancer is likely to download copious amounts of readily-available kiddie-porn instead. Isn't the Internet Evil?
Intel is bad. And their marketing people are stupid.
To clinch his point, Michael makes up a story about UD selling the research, though their Web site clearly states the opposite.
Serves them right, hiring all of those college grads, and then laying them off.
But I thought Slashdot was against people making money on the Web. Google's suddenly a bad company for "selling out." Baseball's not allowed to sell subscriptions to their game coverage. You get the picture...
And Zelda? Well, I heard the new ones were decent 3D remakes of the original, but that's it.
First you lament that there haven't been enough sequels for Metroid and Mario. Then you accuse the two excellent Zelda games of being remakes?
Actually, the two Zelda games are quite good. They certainly don't resemble the NES original, other than sharing a sense of adventure, and fun gameplay based on puzzle-solving.
There are a bunch of other good games for the Nintendo 64, including Paper Mario, Harvest Moon, Donkey Kong 64, Mario 64, and even Mario Kart 64, among others. Granted, it's a tough system to develop for, but I think you're just trolling if you think Nintendo is clueless about how to "function in the gaming industry." They've produced three successfuly home systems, and still make a ton of money on Gameboy.
Oh, and you can get Mega Man on N64--there's a port of Mega Man Legends.
Another reader suggested, "With this proposed ease-of-use system, one could start typing and the computer would open a word processor automatically." Sorry, that's not what I say should happen.--from "Raskin On 'Raskin On OS X'"
When I come to the machine to type a letter, I just sit down and type.... I don't have to launch the word processor. I just type; typing is enough of a clue for the interface to do the right thing.--from Down With GUIs
Okay, so the word processor isn't launched, it's built-in to the computer. Still, how does your computer know you want to write a letter, not create a spreadsheet? How does your computer know when you're typing a URL you want to go to?
Well, I just took Raskin's advice and read his article in WIRED, but to be honest, I'm still having trouble envisioning his proposal in practice. Perhaps he could mock up a demo of this new interface? Even a picture or diagram of some sort would help...
not Lucas Style "I meant to do that- greedo really fired first" sorta lame changes.
Are you saying Lucas isn't a genius to introduce scenes like these:
a Jawa takes a pratfall off a silly purple dinosaur
strange little robots that look out of place hover over the shoulders of storm troopers
Greedo foolishly shoots the wall over Han's head
Luke talks to some guy (Biggs) with a silly moustache
Han steps on a notorious gangster's tail, but the gangster's bodyguards (including the now not-as-mysterious Boba Fett) ignore him
Don't even get me started on Empire Strikes Back, where Lucas added footage of Darth Vader stumbling down a shuttle ramp. I guess I'm pretty offtopic now...
No, cops cannot do what they like. We have people called judges who are supposed to use their wisdom to determine whether police can enter and search people's quarters.
Actually, if they live on campus, they're on the university's private property, and the university can search their room at will.
Interactivity between the apps could be facilitated the same way they are now, with a GUI shell, but without the preponderance of icons, start menus and switchers, and without the tedious effort of installing apps via the GUI or customizing your environment.
So according to the author, to keep the OS from being "something standing between you and whatever you want to do" you have to prevent users from being able to customize it. Does that make any sense?
Work files could be stored in yet another "button."
Ah yes, I can see it now. I hit F9 and five-thousand documents suddenly pop open. I don't understand what Raskin's proposing. What interface should we use for dealing with a large number of documents?
The same thing's happened with WebRing. Since Yahoo! swallowed it last summer, it's been virtually unusable, and I've had to close mine to submissions. Yahoo!'s getting so large, its customer service is even worse than it used to be, and it's eating up companies with competing services, leading to beaucoup confusion. Yahoo! Clubs vs. Yahoo! Groups, anyone?
Apple has updated their Mac OS X page. There's screenshots of the final version there.
Those screenshots aren't necessarily from "the final version"--OS X hasn't even gone gold master yet. They're just from the version Steve Jobs showed off at MacWorld.
Slashdot Mirror
"if they wants hisprograms to have users" he'd better learn grammar...
I could give a flying f*ck how they look. I need cases that are well made. I want no sharp edges...
Yeah, those cases with the razor blades sticking out are a real drag!
Person x starts company y. Blah blah blah. Then, n months later, company y dies horribly.
Actually, very few of the moments fit your simplistic generalization. Most of these are anecdotes about over-confident people making wild statements. Why not learn from their mistakes? The lesson here is don't blow your financing on lavish parties and pointless marketing campaigns.
I guess this list must have hit too close to home with you or something, but I found this blurb particularly amusing:
In October 1999, streaming-media company Pixelon launches with a legendary $16 million Las Vegas shindig -- eating up 80 percent of the company's latest round of financing -- featuring the Who, Tony Bennett, and the Dixie Chicks. Unbeknownst to the revelers, the company's CEO, Michael Fenne, is actually a fugitive con artist named David Kim Stanley; he is now serving an eight-year sentence in Virginia.
http://members.tripod.com/~drosser/
So which is it, man?
But I thought Slashdot was against people making money on the Web. Google's suddenly a bad company for "selling out." Baseball's not allowed to sell subscriptions to their game coverage. You get the picture...
The article's trying to be a portrait of Peter, but it doesn't paint a very clear picture of him...
It sort of undermines the attorney's credibility when he flippantly writes "The sky will not fall."
First you lament that there haven't been enough sequels for Metroid and Mario. Then you accuse the two excellent Zelda games of being remakes?
Actually, the two Zelda games are quite good. They certainly don't resemble the NES original, other than sharing a sense of adventure, and fun gameplay based on puzzle-solving.
There are a bunch of other good games for the Nintendo 64, including Paper Mario, Harvest Moon, Donkey Kong 64, Mario 64, and even Mario Kart 64, among others. Granted, it's a tough system to develop for, but I think you're just trolling if you think Nintendo is clueless about how to "function in the gaming industry." They've produced three successfuly home systems, and still make a ton of money on Gameboy.
Oh, and you can get Mega Man on N64--there's a port of Mega Man Legends.
Umm, it won't be "vaporware" until they start missing deadlines. Just because it's in the works, doesn't mean it's vaporware...
When I come to the machine to type a letter, I just sit down and type.... I don't have to launch the word processor. I just type; typing is enough of a clue for the interface to do the right thing.--from Down With GUIs
Okay, so the word processor isn't launched, it's built-in to the computer. Still, how does your computer know you want to write a letter, not create a spreadsheet? How does your computer know when you're typing a URL you want to go to?
Well, I just took Raskin's advice and read his article in WIRED, but to be honest, I'm still having trouble envisioning his proposal in practice. Perhaps he could mock up a demo of this new interface? Even a picture or diagram of some sort would help...
Are you saying Lucas isn't a genius to introduce scenes like these:
Don't even get me started on Empire Strikes Back, where Lucas added footage of Darth Vader stumbling down a shuttle ramp. I guess I'm pretty offtopic now...
Actually, if they live on campus, they're on the university's private property, and the university can search their room at will.
Now, what's the payoff on three blue-screens in a row again?
Wow, even the stories are trolls now!
So according to the author, to keep the OS from being "something standing between you and whatever you want to do" you have to prevent users from being able to customize it. Does that make any sense?
Ah yes, I can see it now. I hit F9 and five-thousand documents suddenly pop open. I don't understand what Raskin's proposing. What interface should we use for dealing with a large number of documents?
The same thing's happened with WebRing. Since Yahoo! swallowed it last summer, it's been virtually unusable, and I've had to close mine to submissions. Yahoo!'s getting so large, its customer service is even worse than it used to be, and it's eating up companies with competing services, leading to beaucoup confusion. Yahoo! Clubs vs. Yahoo! Groups, anyone?
Here's the AP story.
Here's WIRED Digital's take.
What the hey? You need to stop reading John Grisham novels and pick up some actual literature.
I don't know, just the fact that it stars Haley Joel Osmene turns me right off...
BTW, here's some more screenshots (not my site) of the latest build.
Those screenshots aren't necessarily from "the final version"--OS X hasn't even gone gold master yet. They're just from the version Steve Jobs showed off at MacWorld.
Here's WIRED's blurb from July. The games were only $.80/piece then.