The GL teapot on BeOS was cool, but nothing tops their Starchart app. I loved that starchart app.
I remember seeing that GL Teapot spinning around and around, while playing 5 different MP3s simultaneously - one of which was running backwards and the teapot never spilled a drop or dropped a frame. And that was on a 233 Pentium pro....
Interestingly enough - that super-duper starchart app for BeOS was the only app I ever saw on that system that caused anything close to a Blue Screen of Death. If you crank up the brightness real fast after setting contrast real high, the window goes blank and sits there for a while. Eventually it crashes and dies entirely. But unil then, even the mouse doesn't respond. Once the starchart windows goes away, things are fine, but until then, it's entirely unresponsive. The MP3s don't skip during this, but the mouse and keyboard are dead....
*shrug* I still loved BeOS...
software binge/purge
on
Tiny Apps
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Above someone posted about the C64/vic 20 and with that I agree. There were some truely AMAZING things a C64 game could do with the 170kb on a 5.25 floppy. back then it took some skill to create a computer program of any non-trivial size or function. You had to try and not make it run over the size that could fit on a single floppy side, so you didn't have to produce a nasty message that said "turn over the disk and press enter".
Now - *sigh* now because truely mind-bogglingly big storage is so undeniably cheap and computers are so mind-bogglingly FAST programmers have gotten sloppy. Instead of tweaking their code for size and speed, they expect Intel/AMD and Western Digital to take care of those problems for them. There are some notable exceptions - like John Carmack - but he's doing things that just plain shouldn't be possible on a computer.
Consider for example the massive, CPU choking monstrosity (that I am forced to use - at least once - because of my stupid thesis review board) known as "WORD" -it's the only word processor I've ever seen with a FRAMERATE! How in the HELL can I out-type an AMD 1.6GHz athlon CPU? How can I type faster than it can show the letters on the screen? Well, it's not AMDs fault, it's Word's fault. It's big, it's clunky, and it's wasteful.
Sometimes I wish software still came on cartridges, like the old Atari 2600 games. Plug it in, hit power and BAMMO! there was Demon Attack! I guess linux-on-bios is close, but it's still an uber-geek only kind of thing.
1) The problem isn't with the internet as it stands today, but with the application of the internet. It's not the anarchy on the internet that caused the dot-com.death -- it was stupid business practices.
2) "Businesses are growing so frustrated by the unreliability of the public Internet" (from the LA Times article) So What! Do I (meaning correct-thinking, techno-saavy america) want to turn every last scrap of online freedom over to corporate superpowers? The Government, austensibly, is supposed to be "of the people, for the people..." and like that. Corporations are "for the money, because of the money, and all about the money". They only answer to the ledger book (spread sheet, I guess). Do you want to put them in control?
3)"Thanks to people who had the foresight to keep the middle stupid, we've been able to discover new, totally unanticipated applications " (again from the times)
Damn Straight! Remember the scare the "Halloween Documents" put into the "anarchist hippies" (psssst - that means ME and YOU) with Microsoft wanting to control the protocols on the web, make them no longer a commodity (that means something that anyone can supply - in case you didn't know) So M$ would have control of web communications with their protocol. THIS IS WORSE!!! This is giving over the protocol, the router, the switch, and even the wire.
4)"Whether the open model and the business model can comfortably coexist is debatable" (Times again)
Screw THAT! They can coexist, as long as business doesn't try to bend over the public and cornhole them and expect the public to thank them for the innovation (See the history of AT&T). No - there won't be no mega-corps if the whole world followed the Open model, but....HEY! wait a minute!!! That's not a bad thing at all!
5) "Telecom executives say that without a major redesign of the Internet, such eagerly anticipated applications as video-on-demand, Internet Telephony and Webcasts of live entertainment events will never be economical." (again)
Uhm - this might be an unpopular view but...Do we really need that crap? Is it worth handing the keys to the internet over to the blackest pit-spawn of the nether-corporate planes?
6)"Companies Are Having to Pay for Reliability" (Times again, this is a bold-faced heading to a section)
Really? Oh those poor soulless bastards! They have to PAY for something? Like I do. OH the INJUSTICE OF IT ALL! Maybe we could get like....Prince and U2, and Micheal Jackson and a bunch of other musicians from the 80s to do a benefit concert for them...like a Billionaire-CEO-Aide benefit concert. Thos poor billion dollar corporations have to PAY for reliability like I do. damn. It just ain't right.
So, in closing, I'd like to ask that when you go to the polls this november, remember that honesty and integrity count, and that I promise to do the job....Oh wait, I'm not running for office....
But - if this hideousness happens in our dimension, or a nearby paralell plane, boycott the bastards. Don't use their crappy product.
1: Do you want the government to stand up and start smacking businesses? I don't like that idea. Sure we all hate M$, but they have small black hats compared to a government that can break down your door, storm your house and shoot you because you grew the wrong kind of plant in your garden.
2: Sure M$ has stomped competition (Netscape, Amiga, Apple, the list goes on and on....) unfairly - such as threatening software outlets (Electronics Botique and other mall software stores) for carrying competitors products.... But is there really an open source alternative to office? Koffice? Don't make me laugh, it wouldn't stay alive long enough for me to save a line or two of text. Not everyone uses a computer as a game machine or a "web TV" box. Some of us actually do productive shit on them.
3: More powerful than the government? Really? Really? Since when has Micro$oft sent tanks and guys wearing black ski masks and carrying automatic weapons into a person's home with all intent on murdering them? The government (US and otherwise) DOES this kind of thing from time to time. A couple wrong moves, and it could be Bill Gates house they knock down next. It takes ALOT of money to stop a teflon coated armor piercing bullet.
4: Will whining and shouting "Woe is me!" on the street corner actually do anything? The short answer is NO. What will accomplish the death of microsoft? It's competition getting off it's collective ass and making a good product, that's what. So - don't whine about M$ - go fix Koffice, The Gimp (it's good, but it's not photoshop), and all the linux configuration UIs and let's kill these bastards.
Yeah, I'm in class with the guy that did this already. I was one of his guinea pigs. Damn, I'll never "rocket jump" again.
And in the first version of the device, he didn't have it checking for the pentagram. so even if you were invulnerable, it hurt like a motherfucker.
we're trying to get him to build a cock-ring for the thing, but he's chicken.
there's something like 10,000 volts coming out of the mouse casing when you get shot, and 10K volts on the dick would just about kill anybody......
Mr. James O'Donnell at Robert P. Ulrich Elementary school in California City, CA. He taught me 6th grade. There was something about the man that made the kids shut up and listen. Of course, school was different 16 years ago - back then he got away with beaning kids with a chalk-board eraser.
He taught every subject as if it were the most important. Because of him, at the age of 11, I knew what a covalent bond was, I knew the atomic weight of Yttrium, I knew that it was George Washington Carver that invented peanut butter, I could spell "ubiquitous" and used the word in my reports on common California desert snakes, and because of him I went to middle-school able to compute the volume of a sphere and count to 1023 on my fingers (base 2).
He had a unique ability to get kids to sit down, shut up and pay attention. Once in high school, I noticed alot of familiar faces in the "geek" math and science classes - all the kids I went to sixth grade with.
So here's the point of this post: What was his "unique ability"? Magic. I don't know. I have no idea how he did it. A genuine love of children and a desire to see them do well is the only tangible quality I can say seperated him from the other teachers I've had. That, and a 50 MPH chalk-board eraser upside the head really made kids not want to act like little rude monkeys in Mr. O's class.
It sickens me, as computers get "easier to use" that a person, not knowing a DAMN thing about a computer would go out and sink anywhere from $1000 to $2000 dollars into one, and then be upset when they can't use it.
Why will people do this when
they won't sink money into a broken car if they don't think they can fix it?
they won't buy a home with a crumbling foundation?
they won't buy a television if they can't change the channels?
It sort of angers me when people buy a computer and then EXPECT it to be easy to use. It takes a little practice to use a standard transmission without lurching out of a stoplight. Why shouldn't computers be the same way?
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The GL teapot on BeOS was cool, but nothing tops their Starchart app. I loved that starchart app.
I remember seeing that GL Teapot spinning around and around, while playing 5 different MP3s simultaneously - one of which was running backwards and the teapot never spilled a drop or dropped a frame. And that was on a 233 Pentium pro....
Interestingly enough - that super-duper starchart app for BeOS was the only app I ever saw on that system that caused anything close to a Blue Screen of Death. If you crank up the brightness real fast after setting contrast real high, the window goes blank and sits there for a while. Eventually it crashes and dies entirely. But unil then, even the mouse doesn't respond. Once the starchart windows goes away, things are fine, but until then, it's entirely unresponsive. The MP3s don't skip during this, but the mouse and keyboard are dead....
*shrug* I still loved BeOS...
Above someone posted about the C64/vic 20 and with that I agree. There were some truely AMAZING things a C64 game could do with the 170kb on a 5.25 floppy. back then it took some skill to create a computer program of any non-trivial size or function. You had to try and not make it run over the size that could fit on a single floppy side, so you didn't have to produce a nasty message that said "turn over the disk and press enter".
Now - *sigh* now because truely mind-bogglingly big storage is so undeniably cheap and computers are so mind-bogglingly FAST programmers have gotten sloppy. Instead of tweaking their code for size and speed, they expect Intel/AMD and Western Digital to take care of those problems for them. There are some notable exceptions - like John Carmack - but he's doing things that just plain shouldn't be possible on a computer.
Consider for example the massive, CPU choking monstrosity (that I am forced to use - at least once - because of my stupid thesis review board) known as "WORD" -it's the only word processor I've ever seen with a FRAMERATE! How in the HELL can I out-type an AMD 1.6GHz athlon CPU? How can I type faster than it can show the letters on the screen? Well, it's not AMDs fault, it's Word's fault. It's big, it's clunky, and it's wasteful.
Sometimes I wish software still came on cartridges, like the old Atari 2600 games. Plug it in, hit power and BAMMO! there was Demon Attack! I guess linux-on-bios is close, but it's still an uber-geek only kind of thing.
Several points:
1) The problem isn't with the internet as it stands today, but with the application of the internet. It's not the anarchy on the internet that caused the dot-com.death -- it was stupid business practices.
2) "Businesses are growing so frustrated by the unreliability of the public Internet" (from the LA Times article) So What! Do I (meaning correct-thinking, techno-saavy america) want to turn every last scrap of online freedom over to corporate superpowers? The Government, austensibly, is supposed to be "of the people, for the people..." and like that. Corporations are "for the money, because of the money, and all about the money". They only answer to the ledger book (spread sheet, I guess). Do you want to put them in control?
3)"Thanks to people who had the foresight to keep the middle stupid, we've been able to discover new, totally unanticipated applications " (again from the times)
Damn Straight! Remember the scare the "Halloween Documents" put into the "anarchist hippies" (psssst - that means ME and YOU) with Microsoft wanting to control the protocols on the web, make them no longer a commodity (that means something that anyone can supply - in case you didn't know) So M$ would have control of web communications with their protocol. THIS IS WORSE!!! This is giving over the protocol, the router, the switch, and even the wire.
4)"Whether the open model and the business model can comfortably coexist is debatable" (Times again)
Screw THAT! They can coexist, as long as business doesn't try to bend over the public and cornhole them and expect the public to thank them for the innovation (See the history of AT&T). No - there won't be no mega-corps if the whole world followed the Open model, but....HEY! wait a minute!!! That's not a bad thing at all!
5) "Telecom executives say that without a major redesign of the Internet, such eagerly anticipated applications as video-on-demand, Internet Telephony and Webcasts of live entertainment events will never be economical." (again)
Uhm - this might be an unpopular view but...Do we really need that crap? Is it worth handing the keys to the internet over to the blackest pit-spawn of the nether-corporate planes?
6)"Companies Are Having to Pay for Reliability" (Times again, this is a bold-faced heading to a section)
Really? Oh those poor soulless bastards! They have to PAY for something? Like I do. OH the INJUSTICE OF IT ALL! Maybe we could get like....Prince and U2, and Micheal Jackson and a bunch of other musicians from the 80s to do a benefit concert for them...like a Billionaire-CEO-Aide benefit concert. Thos poor billion dollar corporations have to PAY for reliability like I do. damn. It just ain't right.
So, in closing, I'd like to ask that when you go to the polls this november, remember that honesty and integrity count, and that I promise to do the job....Oh wait, I'm not running for office....
But - if this hideousness happens in our dimension, or a nearby paralell plane, boycott the bastards. Don't use their crappy product.
1: Do you want the government to stand up and start smacking businesses? I don't like that idea. Sure we all hate M$, but they have small black hats compared to a government that can break down your door, storm your house and shoot you because you grew the wrong kind of plant in your garden.
2: Sure M$ has stomped competition (Netscape, Amiga, Apple, the list goes on and on....) unfairly - such as threatening software outlets (Electronics Botique and other mall software stores) for carrying competitors products.... But is there really an open source alternative to office? Koffice? Don't make me laugh, it wouldn't stay alive long enough for me to save a line or two of text. Not everyone uses a computer as a game machine or a "web TV" box. Some of us actually do productive shit on them.
3: More powerful than the government? Really? Really? Since when has Micro$oft sent tanks and guys wearing black ski masks and carrying automatic weapons into a person's home with all intent on murdering them? The government (US and otherwise) DOES this kind of thing from time to time. A couple wrong moves, and it could be Bill Gates house they knock down next. It takes ALOT of money to stop a teflon coated armor piercing bullet.
4: Will whining and shouting "Woe is me!" on the street corner actually do anything? The short answer is NO. What will accomplish the death of microsoft? It's competition getting off it's collective ass and making a good product, that's what. So - don't whine about M$ - go fix Koffice, The Gimp (it's good, but it's not photoshop), and all the linux configuration UIs and let's kill these bastards.
Yeah, I'm in class with the guy that did this already. I was one of his guinea pigs. Damn, I'll never "rocket jump" again. And in the first version of the device, he didn't have it checking for the pentagram. so even if you were invulnerable, it hurt like a motherfucker. we're trying to get him to build a cock-ring for the thing, but he's chicken. there's something like 10,000 volts coming out of the mouse casing when you get shot, and 10K volts on the dick would just about kill anybody......
Mr. James O'Donnell at Robert P. Ulrich Elementary school in California City, CA. He taught me 6th grade. There was something about the man that made the kids shut up and listen. Of course, school was different 16 years ago - back then he got away with beaning kids with a chalk-board eraser.
He taught every subject as if it were the most important. Because of him, at the age of 11, I knew what a covalent bond was, I knew the atomic weight of Yttrium, I knew that it was George Washington Carver that invented peanut butter, I could spell "ubiquitous" and used the word in my reports on common California desert snakes, and because of him I went to middle-school able to compute the volume of a sphere and count to 1023 on my fingers (base 2).
He had a unique ability to get kids to sit down, shut up and pay attention. Once in high school, I noticed alot of familiar faces in the "geek" math and science classes - all the kids I went to sixth grade with.
So here's the point of this post: What was his "unique ability"? Magic. I don't know. I have no idea how he did it. A genuine love of children and a desire to see them do well is the only tangible quality I can say seperated him from the other teachers I've had. That, and a 50 MPH chalk-board eraser upside the head really made kids not want to act like little rude monkeys in Mr. O's class.
Why will people do this when
they won't sink money into a broken car if they don't think they can fix it?
they won't buy a home with a crumbling foundation?
they won't buy a television if they can't change the channels?
It sort of angers me when people buy a computer and then EXPECT it to be easy to use. It takes a little practice to use a standard transmission without lurching out of a stoplight. Why shouldn't computers be the same way?