As a general rule, the only people who say things like "A terminal is all any user needs, or should have" don't include themselves in the category of "any user" and think they and people they like "deserve" their own computers. It happened with every one of the numerous failed attempts to return information to the glass house. Funny thing.
The day users got personal computers was actually the day productivity increased, bureaucracy decreased and IT managers lost power. Usually the people who say this kind of thing don't care much about the first, are ambivalent about the second and really hate the third.
BTW: Apple's real success was when "users" started putting Apple ][ personal computers on their desks despite "Central IT" guidelines requiring all "computer purchases" to be cleared (usually a process where the IBM sales rep went out with the CEO for a round of golf and told him what the IT should be told to buy that quarter). "Users" got around it by calling the Apple ][ an "advanced desktop calculator".
It isn't RWVs (RICH WHITE VOTERS) that matter. It's RWDs (RICH WHITE DONORS). After all, counting the votes counts more than voting and counting the donations matters most of all.
OK. Now come up with six of each since it's a six year rotation. Oh, and better make that eight in case some get retired. Oh, and please make sure that four of those are men's names and four are women's names.
Actually, the Lisa was out for a year before the "Baby Lisa" (Macintosh) came out. As for why people would use Lisa rather than Macintosh? Well, for one thing, Lisa came with great software (in some ways better than what's available even today). Macintosh, on the other hand, had at best, MacWrite and MacPaint and little else that was available until a year later. There were no native dev tools so there were no in-house apps and no liklihood of them. There was no hard drive. The computers had 128K of TOTAL RAM. Basically, for 1983 and 1984 there was NO viable Macintosh.
It wasn't an "advance" new with the IBM AS/400. The AS/400 series inherited it from the relatively unpopular IBM System/38. The System/38 inherited it from the IBM Future Systems project done in the late '60s and early '70s but that IBM never quite managed to get quite ready enough to actually ship.
You can read more about it at the relevant Wikipedia article.
Not mentioned much these days was that the huge delays in getting the Denver Airport baggage handling system was a huge black eye to IBM who had been bragging loudly about how their OS/2 operating system was running it.
Actually, 80386 support in Windows started with Windows/386 2.10 in 1988 but why mess up a mythology with something as messy as facts.
Windows 3.0 users did NOT "need to upgrade" to intel 386 based machines (which were several years old by then - not NEW as you state) because Windows 3.0 in 1990 supported 3 modes.
Real mode (which ran on just about anything x86 available)
Standard mode (which required an 80286 or above processor)
386 Enhanced mode (which, obviously, needed a 386 to run) and took advantage of all those "Advanced CPU" features you claim weren't supported in Windows until five years and 3 versions later.
Really, if you're going to make it up as you go along, let people know it's just fictional ranting.
At OOPSLA '87 (back in the pre-history days) we pretty much all were astounded that we had all been strongly influenced by a single article in Scientific American in the late '70s that showed off future trends in computing including the work at PARC. You never know what will be the thing that really sets off an industry.
A fairly interesting group was there including Alan Kay (Smalltalk-72), Adele Goldberg (Smalltalk-80), Bjarne Stroustup (C++), Brad Cox (Objective C) - how much each of them inspired that article or was inspired by it is left to the reader.
No. Teraserver was written by Microsoft as a demonstration project for showing SQL Server scalability. Google, on the other hand, bought their aerial photo product. But, hey, why let the truth get in the way.
But in 1984, you needed about $20,000 to do anything like a 128K Mac.
Um. Sorry. You could buy the far, far superior Lisa for a lot less than $20,000. And, if you planned on writing any software for either one, you had to.
Here's a clue: backslashes are used to quote the next character in virtually every programming language, including ones supported directly by Microsoft.
Here's a clue: backslashes are used to quote the next character in virtually every programming language derived from C which was meant for Unix. Again, the world didn't begin and end with Bell Labs in the late '60s.
I have no idea what the previous text was but it wasn't the Monad Beta 1 shell. Actually, a real screenshot looks like the following and the concept of drive letters is not really used:
Microsoft Command Shell
Copyright (C) 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Let's see. You confirmed every thing I said as true: Microsoft got it right and pushed for standards. You did one of the most idiotic bugs in language history, renamed the product for deceptive marketing and fought for proprietary control and you're the one getting self-righteous. That says a lot.
Wow again. A person actually coming forward with pride to take credit for perhaps the last known new language implementation of Y2K violating date functions.
As for why I give credit to Microsoft, well, because JScript had the FullYear functions before they were submitted by Microsoft as part of the ECMA standards effort that Microsoft spearheaded.
That other companies were included in the process doesn't change the fact that it was Microsoft that fixed the bizarre choice of including 2-digit dates in a language written while the rest of the computer world was sweating date math and it doesn't change the fact that Microsoft was the one to push the standardization of LiveScript/JavaScript/JScript/ECMAScript.
Go ahead. The more torchbearers the better. (Hell, I'd even settle for informed, rational torchbearers on the other side - where they tend to make torchbearing a literal thing)
I agree totally that tools should help. What I don't see is why we should stay with conventions whose only advantage is that they're already in use but which have vast disadvantages.
Oh, I'm not sure about that. He's been pretty effective at making his, "this'd be a lot easier if it was a dictatorship - as long as I'm the dictator" quote come true. As a despot, that'd have to be considered a good thing.
He wrote these in salon.com back when Episode 1 came out in 1999.
It's worth noting that even though Lucas is quoted as saying, "But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot."
in a New York Times interview in March 1999, apparently even he can't stomach Bush and company's rise to power.
Slashdot Mirror
The day users got personal computers was actually the day productivity increased, bureaucracy decreased and IT managers lost power. Usually the people who say this kind of thing don't care much about the first, are ambivalent about the second and really hate the third.
BTW: Apple's real success was when "users" started putting Apple ][ personal computers on their desks despite "Central IT" guidelines requiring all "computer purchases" to be cleared (usually a process where the IBM sales rep went out with the CEO for a round of golf and told him what the IT should be told to buy that quarter). "Users" got around it by calling the Apple ][ an "advanced desktop calculator".
It isn't RWVs (RICH WHITE VOTERS) that matter. It's RWDs (RICH WHITE DONORS). After all, counting the votes counts more than voting and counting the donations matters most of all.
OK. Now come up with six of each since it's a six year rotation. Oh, and better make that eight in case some get retired. Oh, and please make sure that four of those are men's names and four are women's names.
Wow! Who knew the White House had an account here?
Actually, the Lisa was out for a year before the "Baby Lisa" (Macintosh) came out. As for why people would use Lisa rather than Macintosh? Well, for one thing, Lisa came with great software (in some ways better than what's available even today). Macintosh, on the other hand, had at best, MacWrite and MacPaint and little else that was available until a year later. There were no native dev tools so there were no in-house apps and no liklihood of them. There was no hard drive. The computers had 128K of TOTAL RAM. Basically, for 1983 and 1984 there was NO viable Macintosh.
It wasn't an "advance" new with the IBM AS/400. The AS/400 series inherited it from the relatively unpopular IBM System/38. The System/38 inherited it from the IBM Future Systems project done in the late '60s and early '70s but that IBM never quite managed to get quite ready enough to actually ship.
You can read more about it at the relevant Wikipedia article.
Not mentioned much these days was that the huge delays in getting the Denver Airport baggage handling system was a huge black eye to IBM who had been bragging loudly about how their OS/2 operating system was running it.
Windows 3.0 users did NOT "need to upgrade" to intel 386 based machines (which were several years old by then - not NEW as you state) because Windows 3.0 in 1990 supported 3 modes.
- Real mode (which ran on just about anything x86 available)
- Standard mode (which required an 80286 or above processor)
- 386 Enhanced mode (which, obviously, needed a 386 to run) and took advantage of all those "Advanced CPU" features you claim weren't supported in Windows until five years and 3 versions later.
Really, if you're going to make it up as you go along, let people know it's just fictional ranting.At OOPSLA '87 (back in the pre-history days) we pretty much all were astounded that we had all been strongly influenced by a single article in Scientific American in the late '70s that showed off future trends in computing including the work at PARC. You never know what will be the thing that really sets off an industry. A fairly interesting group was there including Alan Kay (Smalltalk-72), Adele Goldberg (Smalltalk-80), Bjarne Stroustup (C++), Brad Cox (Objective C) - how much each of them inspired that article or was inspired by it is left to the reader.
Wow, a six year newer product is better. What a shock.
No. Teraserver was written by Microsoft as a demonstration project for showing SQL Server scalability. Google, on the other hand, bought their aerial photo product. But, hey, why let the truth get in the way.
Let's see. Microsoft did Teraserver back in 1998. I guess, by your own definition, the tables have turned...
It's open source so millions of eyes have studied it to make sure it's secure...
Um. Sorry. You could buy the far, far superior Lisa for a lot less than $20,000. And, if you planned on writing any software for either one, you had to.
Here's a clue: backslashes are used to quote the next character in virtually every programming language, including ones supported directly by Microsoft. Here's a clue: backslashes are used to quote the next character in virtually every programming language derived from C which was meant for Unix. Again, the world didn't begin and end with Bell Labs in the late '60s.
And again, the Unix bigot's tunnel vision...
"So, what's a body to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses?"
Here's your turn for a clue, "Everyone else" =/= Unix advocates.
And yet another classic example of tunnel vision Unix bigotry. If it isn't exactly the way I learned it, it's broken.
Here's a clue, try learning something new once in a while...
Ah, yes. The classic conceit of those with tunnel vision: Anyone doing anything different is only making a bad attempt to do what I already know...
Grow up sheeple, the world really didn't begin and end with Unix.
I have no idea what the previous text was but it wasn't the Monad Beta 1 shell. Actually, a real screenshot looks like the following and the concept of drive letters is not really used:
Microsoft Command Shell
Copyright (C) 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
MSH>_
Let's see. You confirmed every thing I said as true: Microsoft got it right and pushed for standards. You did one of the most idiotic bugs in language history, renamed the product for deceptive marketing and fought for proprietary control and you're the one getting self-righteous. That says a lot.
Wow again. A person actually coming forward with pride to take credit for perhaps the last known new language implementation of Y2K violating date functions. As for why I give credit to Microsoft, well, because JScript had the FullYear functions before they were submitted by Microsoft as part of the ECMA standards effort that Microsoft spearheaded. That other companies were included in the process doesn't change the fact that it was Microsoft that fixed the bizarre choice of including 2-digit dates in a language written while the rest of the computer world was sweating date math and it doesn't change the fact that Microsoft was the one to push the standardization of LiveScript/JavaScript/JScript/ECMAScript.
Go ahead. The more torchbearers the better. (Hell, I'd even settle for informed, rational torchbearers on the other side - where they tend to make torchbearing a literal thing)
I agree totally that tools should help. What I don't see is why we should stay with conventions whose only advantage is that they're already in use but which have vast disadvantages.
Oh, I'm not sure about that. He's been pretty effective at making his, "this'd be a lot easier if it was a dictatorship - as long as I'm the dictator" quote come true. As a despot, that'd have to be considered a good thing.
- "Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/1
5 /brin_main/ - What's wrong (and right)with "The Phantom Menace" http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/1
5 /brin_side/index.html - A note on the Enlightenment, Romanticism and science fiction http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/1
5 /brin_note/index.html
He wrote these in salon.com back when Episode 1 came out in 1999.It's worth noting that even though Lucas is quoted as saying, "But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot." in a New York Times interview in March 1999, apparently even he can't stomach Bush and company's rise to power.