If a U. S. company is selling for substantially less than the cost of goods, and keeps doing it for an extended period of time (so it's obvious that it's a strategy and not just a mistake or a fluke)... and the U. S. doesn't stop Microsoft from doing it... doesn't this give Sony a totally legitimate grievance against the United States?
Going to make it harder to complain when Japan does the same thing to us, isn't it?
IMHO, the real crux of the privacy debate never gets stated clearly.
It is this: there are many people who believe that invasion of privacy is perfectly OK as long as it is done only in pursuit of commerce.
In other words, if they have a dossier on you and they use it to blacklist you and prevent you from getting work, that's wrong; but as long as all they do with it is use it to sell you things, that's OK.
I happen to believe myself that it is definitely not OK. But I think it would clarify the debate if it clear that, currently, that's at the core of what the debate is about.
By the way, don't you wonder whether companies really use all that marketing information in the positive ways they suggest ("If you just bought a recumbent bike, wouldn't you actually LIKE to get catalogs of gear for recumbent bikes?") or whether it's really being used for electronic redlining?
Obligatory complaint: why, this is barely news at all; a very similar story was reported in Slashdot just a few decades ago, in 1961.
The PDP-1 used eight-channel punched paper tape as the predominant storage medium, punching at a speedy 60 characters per second and reading at an ungodly-fast 200 characters per second.
On program tapes, prior to the start of the actual binary program data, the assembler would punch a human-readable label in which the title was spelled out in human-readable format in the block letters made out of patterns of holes. IIRC a 5x7 matrix, a little ugly because a horizontal line of little feed holes ran through the center of the character which meant that not only did the characters look "overstruck," but the spacing between rows 3 and 4 was a little wider than the spacing between other rows.
I wonder what the earliest use of "kludging directly human-readable data into a medium that was intended only to be machine-readable?"
I seem to recall that IBM card decks had a couple of preamble cards in which the punches spelled out a code number in block letters.
Genuinely useful, genuinely innovative, not just some more "we're 8% faster using our own benchmarks on a good day with the wind behind us, and really almost pretty much compatible" nonsense.
Partial solution to a perfectly real problem.
The computer industry has gotten ossified... there are so many problems that have now been around for so long that nobody sees them as problems any more.
Of course, I know all of YOU are religious about labelling your media and are neat and tidy, so I'm sure none of YOU have ever been guilty of saying "You can recognize that diskette, it's the one with no label on it..."
I agree. Mossberg is always good. His observations are useful. Other reporters just parrot the industry buzz. Mossberg tells you whether he things the stuff works.
Mossberg is what Jerry Pournelle SHOULD have been....
And, I agree, he seems to be the only person in the industry who can compare Macs and PCs dispassionately and accurately.
... well, maybe not always, and 45% is even higher than it used to be, but I remember in the early nineties a study showed that at that time screwdriver shops accounted for 30% of all PC's, making them collectively bigger than any single computer company.
This is a systemic problem with the trade press, which has blinkers in a number of ways. Some are related to who buys advertising (Dell was a slightly iffy outfit back in the days when they called themselves PCs Limited; they basically bought their way into respectibility via advertising). Some are related to the mystique of bigness (reporters would rather rub shoulders with a captain of industry than with a little storefront operator).
I live in a town of 40,000. It has about three screwdriver shops within the town itself. The closest other places where you can buy computers are: one Staples within the town; an OfficeMax nearby; and a number of electronics retailers nearby (Best Buy, Circuit City, some department stores).
ALL the screwdriver shops have been in business, same location, same management, for over ten years. Common sense says they must be reasonably successful, and a reasonable important element in local computer sales.
(And, no, I don't work for any of them--and, as a Mac user, I've never bought from any of them...)
A couple of years ago, Apple started offering it as an option. At exactly the same time, a number of PC vendors did. One of my colleagues at work ordered a new PC and it just "came with" DVD-RAM. So, I figured it was going to be standard and I ordered it on my own Mac.
The media started out being very expensive--$40 for 2.6 gig. Now the price of the media is reasonable, but the format is all but orphaned.
I'm using DVD-RAM as my backup medium, but I have to wonder whether any future machine I buy will actually be able to read the things.
So, I jumped in too soon and I'm sorry.
Is it time for DVD-R, or DVD+R? Don't ask me. I thought it was time for DVD-RAM and I was wrong.
Oh, well, at least I bought a ZIP drive when a colleague was buying some kind of magneto-optical 135-megabyte device that was faster/cheaper/better/orphaned...
"Well... no, I don't. I've never had any dealings with Fair Witnesses."
"So? Perhaps you weren't aware of it. Anne!"
Anne was seated on the springboard; she turned her head. Jubal called out, "That new house on the far hilltop-can you see what color they've painted it?"
Anne looked in the direction in which Jubal was pointing and answered, "It's white on this side." She did not inquire why Jubal had asked, nor make any comment.
Jubal went on to Jill in normal tones, "You see? Anne is so thoroughly indoctrinated that it doesn't even occur to her to infer that the other side is probably white, too. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't force her to commit herself as to the far side - . . unless she herself went around to the other side and looked-and even then she wouldn't assume that it stayed whatever color it might be after she left because they might repaint it as soon as she turned her back,"
"Anne is a Fair Witness?"
"Graduate, unlimited license, and admitted to testify before the High Court. Sometime ask her why she decided to give up public practice. But don't plan on anything else that day-the wench will recite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that takes time."
--Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Further OT: A quicker & dirtier transmitter...
on
Field Day 2002
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· Score: 2
In the late fifties, I had about 100 feet of wire strung out my window over a tree, for listening to shortwave on the regenerative receiver I'd built with a kit from Allied radio.
I also had a Ford spark coil... the kind with a vibrator (don't snicker) which generates a continuous voltage--I don't know how high, but capable of producing at least a 1 cm. spark.
One day, I clipped the Ford coil to the antenna, and called a friend of mine who lived about half a mile a way, and asked him to turn on his shortwave receiver. I keyed in "DE WQRM". He reported receiving it 5x5 on his shortwave radio--and also, subsequent short tests showed, AM, FM, and television.
I wisely decided to discontinue the experiment after a grand total of about thirty seconds on the air.
We don't need no steenkin' function generators!
Hey, come to think of it, what's so off-topic? It _was_ amateur and it _was_ radio, right?
In the U.S: there IS a built-in royalty payment, but only in the blank media that are designated "music" or "audio" CD-Rs and CD-RWs.
These the kind of media that must be used in "home audio CD recorders." Technologically, the media are the same as ordinary CD-R's, but they contain an encoding that the recorder looks for. The recorder contains technology that enforces recording only to "music CD-R" media, and "serial copy control" protection (it will copy a commercial CD, but will NOT make a digital copy of a copy made in a home audio recorders.)
Interestingly enough, the first copy of "The Fast and the Furious" that I bought was encoded in such a way that it would NOT copy in my CD recorder. It gave a false SCCS error.
I believe that making personal copies, backups, RIPping for download into MP3 players, etc. is fair use.
However, the ability to make copies on a home audio CD recorder is more than just fair use. Under the 1992 AHRA act. We PAY for every copy that we make, in exchange for the RIGHT to make those copies.
I ask, since some news stories have asserted that the protected version of Celine Dion's "A New Day Has Come" have NOT been released in the U.S.... It would be nice to have a data point on this. Also, did the disk bear any warning... AND (this could be significant) did it, or did it not bear the CD logo--the little gizmo that says "Compact Disc Digital Audio" on it? Supposedly Philips has insisted that since copy-protected disks do not comply with the CD standard they are not allowed to use the CD logo on it.
"Solidized" won't be any better than "colorized."
on
3D TV For The Masses?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I just plain don't believe it. If the information isn't there to begin with, nothing's going to put it there. The "graphic artist" isn't going to be any better than the artists that tint pictures. Splodging an even flesh tint onto a black-and-white face doesn't reproduce the color variations of a real face,and nobody working at commercial pace is going to do more than a slapdash job of "painting" depth into a 2D picture.
Colorized movies look impressive for about five minutes, then you gradually become aware of a sense of dissatisfaction. Your brain knows you're not getting much color information. These "solidized" movies will just as unsatisfying.
In my humble opinion, of course... and not having seen any of the actual product.
http://www.iccp.org/iccpnew/ethics%20practice%20 co nduct.html
full text below, doesn't address this issue directly. However, it states clearly that a computer professional has an "obligation to the public at large," must "Serve the interests of their employers and clients' loyally," and "shall have special regard for the potential effects of computer-based systems on the right of privacy of individuals whether this is within one's own organization, among customers or suppliers, or in relation to the general public".
This would seem to me to require disclosure of privacy breaches to members of the public who might be affected.
However, the ICCP has never emphasized the code of ethics much and I've always suspected they just did it because (some) definitions of a "professional" requires adherence to a code of ethics.
I once told my employer that I couldn't do something because I hold a CDP and was bound by the CDP code of ethics. To say he was shocked was putting it mildly. He knew I was a CDP but didn't believe it meant anything. He was not happy with the notion that I had obligations to anyone but my employer, but fortunately it wasn't an important matter and he "let me get away with it, this time."
Code of Ethics
ICCP Code of Ethics
Certified computing professionals, consistent with their obligation to the public at large, should promote the understanding of information processing methods and procedures using every resource at their command.
Certified computing professionals have an obligation to their profession to uphold the high ideals and level of personal knowledge as evidenced by the Certificate held. They should also encourage the dissemination of knowledge pertaining to the development of the computing profession.
Certified computing professionals have an obligation to serve the interests of their employers and clients loyally, diligently and honestly.
Certified computing professionals must not engage in any conduct or commit any act which is a discredit to the reputation or integrity of the information processing profession.
Certified computing professionals must not imply that the Certificates which they hold are their sole claim to professional competence.
Code of Conduct and Good Practice for certified computing professionals
The essential elements relating to conduct that identify a professional activity are:
A high standard of skill and knowledge.
A confidential relationship with people served.
Public reliance upon the standards of conduct and established practice.
The observance of an ethical code.
Therefore, these Codes have been formulated to strengthen the professional status of certified computing professionals.
1. Preamble
1.1: The basic issue, which may arise in connection with any ethical proceedings before a Certification Council, is whether a holder of a Certificate administered by that Council has acted in a manner which violates the Code of Ethics for certified computing professionals.
1.2: Therefore, the ICCP has elaborated the existing Code of Conduct, which defines more specifically an individual's professional responsibility. This step was taken in recognition of questions and concerns as to what constitutes professional and ethical conduct in the computing profession.
1.3: The ICCP has reserved for and delegated to each Certification Council the right to revoke any Certificate which has been issued under its administration in the event that the recipient violates the Codes of Ethics, as amplified by the Code of Conduct. The revocation proceedings are specified by rules governing the business of the Certification Council and provide protection of the rights of any individual who may be subject to revocation of a certificate held. The ICCP may bypass revocation proceedings and automatically revoke any Certificate for non-compliance with mandatory recertification processes, providing the certificate was awarded subject to mandatory recertification requirements.
1.4: Insofar as violation of the Code of Conduct may be difficult to adjudicate, the ICCP has also promulgated a Code of Good Practice, the violation of which does not in itself constitute a reason to revoke a Certificate. However, any evidence concerning a serious and consistent breach of the Code of Good Practice may be considered as additional circumstantial evidence in any ethical proceedings before a Certification Council.
1.5: Whereas the Code of Conduct is of a fundamental nature, the Code of Good Practice is expected to be amended from time to time to accommodate changes in the social environment and to keep up with the development of the information processing profession.
1.6: A Certification Council will not consider a complaint where the holder's conduct is already subject to legal proceedings. Any complaint will only be considered when the legal action is completed, or it is established that no legal proceedings will take place.
1.7: Recognizing that the language contained in all sections of either the Code of Conduct or Code of Good Practice is subject to interpretations beyond those intended, the ICCP intends to confine all Codes to the matters pertaining to personal actions of individual certified computing professionals in situations for which they can be held directly accountable without reasonable doubt.
1.8: Certified computing professionals have a responsibility to respect intellectual property rights, including copyrights, patents and trademarks. Violation of copyrights, patents and terms of license agreements is prohibited by law in most circumstances. Even when not so protected, such violations are contrary to professional behavior. Software should be copied only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of both printed and electronic materials must be discouraged including those cases where the work has not been explicitly protected by any means. Credit should not be taken for the work of others. The work of others should not be used without specific acknowledgment and authorization.
2. Code of Conduct
2.1: Disclosure: Subject to the confidential relationships between oneself and one's employer or client one is expected not to transmit information which one acquires during the practice of one's profession in any situation which may seriously affect a third party.
2.2: Social Responsibility: One is expected to accept a responsibility to the public to diminish, through a continuing educational process, confusion and misconceptions surrounding the information processing industry. One is expected to be cognizant of and act in accordance with all procedures and regulations to improve public safety through the protection of information vital to the security of the nation and its people, both collectively and individually.
2.3: Conclusions and Opinions: One is expected to state a conclusion on a subject in one's field only when it can be demonstrated that it has been founded on adequate knowledge. One will state a qualified opinion when expressing a view in an area within one's professional competence but not supported by relevant facts.
2.4: Identification: One shall properly qualify oneself when expressing an opinion outside one's professional competence in the event that such an opinion could be identified by a third party as expert testimony, or if by inference the opinion can be expected to be used improperly.
2.5: Integrity: One will not knowingly lay claims to competence one does not demonstrably possess. One shall not take advantage of the lack of knowledge or inexperience of others.
2.6: Conflict of Interest: One shall act with strict impartiality when purporting to give independent advice. In the event that the advice given is currently or potentially influential to one's personal benefit, full and detailed disclosure to all relevant interested parties will be made at the time the advice is provided. One's employer especially should be made aware of any potential conflicts of interest. One will not denigrate the honesty or competence of a fellow professional or a competitor, with the intent to gain an unfair advantage.
2.7: Accountability: The degree of professional accountability for results will be dependent on the position held and type of work performed. For instance: A senior executive is accountable for the quality of work performed by all individuals the person supervises and for ensuring that recipients of information are fully aware of known limitations in the results provided. The personal accountability of consultants and technical experts is especially important because of the positions of unique trust inherent in their advisory roles. Consequently, they are accountable for seeing to it that known limitations of their work are fully disclosed, documented and explained. Furthermore, information processing professionals have a responsibility to take appropriate action regarding any illegal or unethical practices that come to their attention. Charges should be brought against a person only when a reasonable basis for the allegations has been established, without regard to personal interest.
2.8: Protection of Privacy: One shall protect the privacy and confidentiality of all entrusted information. One shall have special regard for the potential effects of computer-based systems on the right of privacy of individuals whether this is within one's own organization, among customers or suppliers, or in relation to the general public. Because of the privileged capability of computing professionals to gain access to computerized files, especially strong strictures will be applied to those who have used their position of trust to obtain information from computerized files for their personal gain.
Where it is possible that decisions can be made within a computer-based system could adversely affect the personal security, work or career of an individual, the system design shall specifically provide for decision review by a responsible executive who will thus remain accountable and identifiable for that decision.
3. Code of Good Practice
3.1: Education: One has a special responsibility to keep oneself fully aware of developments in information processing technology relevant to one's current professional occupation. One will contribute to the interchange of technical and professional information by encouraging and participating in educational activities directed to both fellow professionals and to the public at large. One will do all in one's power to further public understanding of computer systems. One will contribute to the growth of knowledge in the field to the extent that one's expertise, and ability allow.
3.2: Personal Conduct: Insofar as one's personal and professional activities interact visibly to the same public, one is expected to support, respect and abide by the appropriate laws and in general to apply the same high standards of behavior in one's personal life as are demanded in one's professional activities.
3.3: Competence: One shall at all times exercise technical and professional competence at least to the level one claims. One shall not deliberately withhold information in one's possession unless disclosure of that information could harm or seriously affect another party, or unless one is bound by a proper, clearly defined confidential relationship. One shall not deliberately destroy or diminish the value or effectiveness of a computer? based system through acts of commission or omission.
3.4: Statements: One shall not make false or exaggerated statements as to the state of affairs existing or expected regarding any aspect of information technology or the use of computers. In communicating with lay persons, one shall use general language wherever possible and shall not use technical terms or expressions unless there exist no adequate equivalents in the general language.
3.5: Discretion: One shall exercise maximum discretion in disclosing, or permitting to be disclosed, or using to one's own advantage, any information relating the affairs of one's present or previous employers or clients.
3.6: Conflict of interest: One shall not knowingly hold, assume, or accept a position or a client with which one's interests conflict or are likely to conflict with one's current duties or clients unless that interest has been disclosed in advance to all parties involved.
3.7: Public Safety: One has a responsibility to protect fundamental human rights and dignity and to respect cultural diversity. Those who design, develop and maintain computer systems shall be alert to and make others aware of any potential damage to the local and global environment. When developing information systems, computing professionals must ensure that their efforts are used to benefit humanity. Harmful effects to general health and welfare of the public shall be avoided.
3.8: Violations: One is expected to report violations of the Code, testify in ethical proceedings where one has expert or firsthand knowledge, and serve on panels to judge complaints of violations of ethical conduct.
4. Procedural requirements for revocation of certificate awarded
4.1: The ICCP may automatically revoke Certificates for non?compliance with mandatory recertification processes, providing the certificate was awarded subject to mandatory recertification requirements.
4.2: A Certification Council, on behalf of the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals, has the right to revoke any Certificate which has been awarded by it in the event that the recipient violates the Codes, or engages in conduct which is a discredit or disgrace to the computing profession.
4.3: The grounds for revocation, except for failure to comply with mandatory recertification requirements, will be based upon the opinion of at least two-thirds of the members of the Council.
4.4: Procedure for handling revocation:
1. A formal written statement of charges alleging facts which constitute the grounds for revocation will be prepared.
2. A copy of said charges will be forwarded to the person accused, fixing a time within which such person may file with the Council answers to the charges.
3. If the charges are denied in the answer, the Council will fix a time for the hearing and give notice of the time and place of the hearing to the person accused.
4. Presentation of evidence in support of the charges will be made by the secretary (a nonvoting member) of the Certification Council.
5. Presentation of the evidence in defense of the charges will be made by the accused or the designated representative of the accused.
6. Ample opportunity for both sides to present facts and arguments will be allowed at the hearing.
7. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Council will determine whether or not the charges have been sufficiently established by the evidence and whether the Certificate should be revoked or should not be revoked.
8. The accused will be notified of the decision by registered mail.
9. The accused has the right to request review of the decision by the Executive Committee of ICCP, provided an appeal in writing is submitted to the President of ICCP within 30 days of the accused's receipt of the Council's decision.
About ten years ago I worked at a Fortune 500 company that made minicomputers with a proprietary OS and was starting to move into PC products hosted on XENIX.
The extent of UNIX penetration into the desktop mainstream was a topic of constant discussion
One day, Radio Shack announced that they would be selling UNIX-based systems. The announcement was widely carried as a news item in the trade press, often with deep-think commentary. Highly placed UNIX advocates within the company started circulating memos mentioning it, and in almost any conference-room discussion someone would say "It's all changed, haven't you heard, why even Radio Shack is selling UNIX now."
So I did a reality check.
About three months after the announcement, I walked into a Radio Shack. Not one of your mall stores, but one of the big Radio Shack Computer Centers or whatever they were called. I said I wanted to try out one of their UNIX systems hands-on, and I wanted a catalog showing what software they had for it.
After glad-handing me and assuring me that, yes, indeed, Radio Shack was backing UNIX to the hilt, they showed me their UNIX system.
Yes, they did have one.
It was a PC running XENIX. It was not turned on. They would not turn it on for me, because the only person who knew how to use it was a consultant who came in one day a week. There were no brochures, no sales material.
The only software catalog was their general PC software catalog, which had about 32 densely packed pages of (mostly) DOS-based software, several pages of Windows-based packages, and finally about four column-inches of UNIX offerings, most of which were UNIX itself. There were, I think, one or two Accounts Receivables packages and so forth.
It wasn't exactly untrue that Radio Shack was selling UNIX, but it certainly didn't mean what people thought it meant.
OK, I understand the researchers were doing very cool things that might have a whole range of interesting uses, but...
I thought the whole lesson of the Internet was that the network should provide connectivity only, with a bare minimum of built-in processing...
because, if you put processing into the network you are making fundamental assumptions about how the network is going to be used. In other words, processing within the network = optimizing for predetermined uses = locking out future evolution and outside innovation.
Shades of the old Bell Labs that were committed to circuit-switching and opposed to packet-switching!
Oh, I think cars are a lot better than they were fifty years ago. But I think it's all incremental. For example, your own estimates, which I think are reasonable, is that in about fifty years there's been a 5-times improvement in tuneup time, a 2-times improvement in tire life, a 2-times improvement in gas mileage. I'm not sure how to quantify the improvement in safety.
Note that a 5-fold improvement in 50 years represents about an improvement of about 3.3% per year. I think that's about the rate of improvement we're going to see in PDA's... now that they've been perfected.
How do you moderate an ITEM ITSELF as trollbait?
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PC Users Switch to Apple
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· Score: 0, Troll
I don't know why so many businesses these days are going out of their way to punish their existing customers. It seems as if practically every business now offers deals to new customers that are not available to their loyal customers.
I wonder what management text or B-school case study they get THAT advice out of?
To avoid getting shafted, you practically have to PLAN on switching credit cards, banks, phone companies, etc. annually.
A lot of credit belongs to Kees Boeke
on
Java Powers of Ten
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· Score: 3, Informative
OK, but let's credit the person who, I think, really originated the idea. When I was a kid, I was given a wonderful book called "Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps," by a Dutch schoolteacher named Kees Boeke. It was all drawings, with that wonderful Dutch surrealistic sense of humor--it is centered on a school courtyard in The Netherlands, which just happens to have a dead whale lying in it.
It came out in 1957.
There's really no question, the Eames movie and Morrison book are a "remake" of "Cosmic View." The film and book explicitly give credit to Boeke.
To my astonishment, I find that the book is available online at
Most pieces of technology reach a stage where they're "about right," become commodity items, and stagnate. OK, they never stagnate completely, but the differences between a 1957 Chevy and a 2002 Toyota Corolla--heck, even a Prius--are pretty darn incremental. They both have automatic transmission, you put gas in 'em, turn the key to start them, and drive 70 mph on the Interstate with them. You did it in 1957 just the way you do it now. Sure, now you fasten your seatbelt, get 35 mpg, and you never need to replace the vibrator in the car radio. (Don't snicker at that, you ignorant young whippersnapper. How ELSE did you think you'd generate the B voltage for the vacuum tubes?).
Same thing with a PDA. What things do I want that I don't have already? Boring things. Incremental things. Cheaper, clearer, better screen, yadda yadda yadda. My personal shtick is a good eBook reader... but what I'm saying is, PDA's are OK. They've figured it out. A Palm is great for addresses, phone numbers, etc. Just like a four-function calculator is great for adding up a few numbers.
Yes, I've seen calculators built into pens, into watches, calculators that graph equations, etc. but the classic four-function calculator is FINISHED--not in the sense of "dead," in the sense of COMPLETE.
And the PDA is "finished," too. It has a pretty high gloss on it already, in fact, although I'm sure they'll manage to polish it some more in the coming decades.
But the future is a $10 PDA that's about the same size, the same weight, and has about the same feature set as today's $100 Palm (or yesterday's $400 Palm)--or today's $30 cheapo PDA knockoff.
The $400 Palm that makes coffee, walks the dog, is woven into your handkerchief, and plays realtime multiplayer Internet games ain't gonna happen.
Re:Why don't they use Smalltalk and stop F#$% arou
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F# - A New .Net language
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Amen, brother.
I wouldn't mind it so much if someone would IMPROVE on Smalltalk, but why do we have to spend twenty years devising languages that are not quite as good as Smalltalk (in the name of efficiency, or compatibility, or ease of learning for people that have never learned more than one computer language...)
Smalltalk is the only language I've ever used that I felt truly extended my reach as a programmer and truly enabled me to do easily things that would have been difficult in other languages.
It is also the only language in which I have truly taken big, complicated, rich pieces of code that did ALMOST what I wanted and spent very small amounts of time subclassing them and making them do EXACTLY what I wanted--and without having to spend hours reverse-engineering and understanding what the original code was doing.
Yes, Apple finally got it right on the third try. Too bad there were other issues with the Cube.
The original Apple ][, ][+, ][e were convection-cooled and silent. I was used to PDP-11's and such and when I saw my first Apple, I said, "Wow, they must have brilliant thermal engineering." Turned out they had NO thermal engineering. If you put expansion cards in it, it would overheat.
The original 1984 Macintosh was silent, and I loved it. There were no expansion cards, so no expansion card issues. I'm not sure whether the issues related to overheating or not, but there were a LOT of issues relating to the power supply on those early Macs and I'm inclined to think thermal design MAY have been part of the problem.
It's too bad other issues with the Cube (pricing, mostly) may have discredited it. I bought a standard-style G4 instead of a Cube at the time, figuring that, as with laptops, a design with lots of components crammed into a tiny space might be less dependable and more defect-prone than the spacious G4 tower.
But I really miss the silent (not just low-noise) operation of the 1984 Mac and Mac Plus. (All the Apple ]['s I ever worked with had aftermarket fans on them...)
...why do they have to find and fix them one by one? Can't they switch to a programming language, or debugging tool, or run-time library, that would find and fix all of them?
Indeed, about the time Windows 2000 was released with 65536 known bugs (or whatever the exact number was), didn't Jim Allchin say that they had such a tool and were using it?
Should buffer overflows be as outdated as Gopher itself?
Slashdot Mirror
If a U. S. company is selling for substantially less than the cost of goods, and keeps doing it for an extended period of time (so it's obvious that it's a strategy and not just a mistake or a fluke)... and the U. S. doesn't stop Microsoft from doing it... doesn't this give Sony a totally legitimate grievance against the United States?
Going to make it harder to complain when Japan does the same thing to us, isn't it?
IMHO, the real crux of the privacy debate never gets stated clearly.
It is this: there are many people who believe that invasion of privacy is perfectly OK as long as it is done only in pursuit of commerce.
In other words, if they have a dossier on you and they use it to blacklist you and prevent you from getting work, that's wrong; but as long as all they do with it is use it to sell you things, that's OK.
I happen to believe myself that it is definitely not OK. But I think it would clarify the debate if it clear that, currently, that's at the core of what the debate is about.
By the way, don't you wonder whether companies really use all that marketing information in the positive ways they suggest ("If you just bought a recumbent bike, wouldn't you actually LIKE to get catalogs of gear for recumbent bikes?") or whether it's really being used for electronic redlining?
Obligatory complaint: why, this is barely news at all; a very similar story was reported in Slashdot just a few decades ago, in 1961.
The PDP-1 used eight-channel punched paper tape as the predominant storage medium, punching at a speedy 60 characters per second and reading at an ungodly-fast 200 characters per second.
On program tapes, prior to the start of the actual binary program data, the assembler would punch a human-readable label in which the title was spelled out in human-readable format in the block letters made out of patterns of holes. IIRC a 5x7 matrix, a little ugly because a horizontal line of little feed holes ran through the center of the character which meant that not only did the characters look "overstruck," but the spacing between rows 3 and 4 was a little wider than the spacing between other rows.
I wonder what the earliest use of "kludging directly human-readable data into a medium that was intended only to be machine-readable?"
I seem to recall that IBM card decks had a couple of preamble cards in which the punches spelled out a code number in block letters.
Genuinely useful, genuinely innovative, not just some more "we're 8% faster using our own benchmarks on a good day with the wind behind us, and really almost pretty much compatible" nonsense.
Partial solution to a perfectly real problem.
The computer industry has gotten ossified... there are so many problems that have now been around for so long that nobody sees them as problems any more.
Of course, I know all of YOU are religious about labelling your media and are neat and tidy, so I'm sure none of YOU have ever been guilty of saying "You can recognize that diskette, it's the one with no label on it..."
I agree. Mossberg is always good. His observations are useful. Other reporters just parrot the industry buzz. Mossberg tells you whether he things the stuff works.
Mossberg is what Jerry Pournelle SHOULD have been....
And, I agree, he seems to be the only person in the industry who can compare Macs and PCs dispassionately and accurately.
... well, maybe not always, and 45% is even higher than it used to be, but I remember in the early nineties a study showed that at that time screwdriver shops accounted for 30% of all PC's, making them collectively bigger than any single computer company.
This is a systemic problem with the trade press, which has blinkers in a number of ways. Some are related to who buys advertising (Dell was a slightly iffy outfit back in the days when they called themselves PCs Limited; they basically bought their way into respectibility via advertising). Some are related to the mystique of bigness (reporters would rather rub shoulders with a captain of industry than with a little storefront operator).
I live in a town of 40,000. It has about three screwdriver shops within the town itself. The closest other places where you can buy computers are: one Staples within the town; an OfficeMax nearby; and a number of electronics retailers nearby (Best Buy, Circuit City, some department stores).
ALL the screwdriver shops have been in business, same location, same management, for over ten years. Common sense says they must be reasonably successful, and a reasonable important element in local computer sales.
(And, no, I don't work for any of them--and, as a Mac user, I've never bought from any of them...)
A couple of years ago, Apple started offering it as an option. At exactly the same time, a number of PC vendors did. One of my colleagues at work ordered a new PC and it just "came with" DVD-RAM. So, I figured it was going to be standard and I ordered it on my own Mac.
The media started out being very expensive--$40 for 2.6 gig. Now the price of the media is reasonable, but the format is all but orphaned.
I'm using DVD-RAM as my backup medium, but I have to wonder whether any future machine I buy will actually be able to read the things.
So, I jumped in too soon and I'm sorry.
Is it time for DVD-R, or DVD+R? Don't ask me. I thought it was time for DVD-RAM and I was wrong.
Oh, well, at least I bought a ZIP drive when a colleague was buying some kind of magneto-optical 135-megabyte device that was faster/cheaper/better/orphaned...
"Well ... no, I don't. I've never had any dealings with Fair Witnesses."
"So? Perhaps you weren't aware of it. Anne!"
Anne was seated on the springboard; she turned her head. Jubal called out, "That new house on the far hilltop-can you see what color they've painted it?"
Anne looked in the direction in which Jubal was pointing and answered, "It's white on this side." She did not inquire why Jubal had asked, nor make any comment.
Jubal went on to Jill in normal tones, "You see? Anne is so thoroughly indoctrinated that it doesn't even occur to her to infer that the other side is probably white, too. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't force her to commit herself as to the far side - . . unless she herself went around to the other side and looked-and even then she wouldn't assume that it stayed whatever color it might be after she left because they might repaint it as soon as she turned her back,"
"Anne is a Fair Witness?"
"Graduate, unlimited license, and admitted to testify before the High Court. Sometime ask her why she decided to give up public practice. But don't plan on anything else that day-the wench will recite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that takes time."
--Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
In the late fifties, I had about 100 feet of wire strung out my window over a tree, for listening to shortwave on the regenerative receiver I'd built with a kit from Allied radio.
I also had a Ford spark coil... the kind with a vibrator (don't snicker) which generates a continuous voltage--I don't know how high, but capable of producing at least a 1 cm. spark.
One day, I clipped the Ford coil to the antenna, and called a friend of mine who lived about half a mile a way, and asked him to turn on his shortwave receiver. I keyed in "DE WQRM". He reported receiving it 5x5 on his shortwave radio--and also, subsequent short tests showed, AM, FM, and television.
I wisely decided to discontinue the experiment after a grand total of about thirty seconds on the air.
We don't need no steenkin' function generators!
Hey, come to think of it, what's so off-topic? It _was_ amateur and it _was_ radio, right?
In the U.S: there IS a built-in royalty payment, but only in the blank media that are designated "music" or "audio" CD-Rs and CD-RWs.
These the kind of media that must be used in "home audio CD recorders." Technologically, the media are the same as ordinary CD-R's, but they contain an encoding that the recorder looks for. The recorder contains technology that enforces recording only to "music CD-R" media, and "serial copy control" protection (it will copy a commercial CD, but will NOT make a digital copy of a copy made in a home audio recorders.)
Interestingly enough, the first copy of "The Fast and the Furious" that I bought was encoded in such a way that it would NOT copy in my CD recorder. It gave a false SCCS error.
I believe that making personal copies, backups, RIPping for download into MP3 players, etc. is fair use.
However, the ability to make copies on a home audio CD recorder is more than just fair use. Under the 1992 AHRA act. We PAY for every copy that we make, in exchange for the RIGHT to make those copies.
I ask, since some news stories have asserted that the protected version of Celine Dion's "A New Day Has Come" have NOT been released in the U.S.... It would be nice to have a data point on this. Also, did the disk bear any warning... AND (this could be significant) did it, or did it not bear the CD logo--the little gizmo that says "Compact Disc Digital Audio" on it? Supposedly Philips has insisted that since copy-protected disks do not comply with the CD standard they are not allowed to use the CD logo on it.
I just plain don't believe it. If the information isn't there to begin with, nothing's going to put it there. The "graphic artist" isn't going to be any better than the artists that tint pictures. Splodging an even flesh tint onto a black-and-white face doesn't reproduce the color variations of a real face,and nobody working at commercial pace is going to do more than a slapdash job of "painting" depth into a 2D picture.
Colorized movies look impressive for about five minutes, then you gradually become aware of a sense of dissatisfaction. Your brain knows you're not getting much color information. These "solidized" movies will just as unsatisfying.
In my humble opinion, of course... and not having seen any of the actual product.
http://www.iccp.org/iccpnew/ethics%20practice%2
full text below, doesn't address this issue directly. However, it states clearly that a computer professional has an "obligation to the public at large," must "Serve the interests of their employers and clients' loyally," and "shall have special regard for the potential effects of computer-based systems on the right of privacy of individuals whether this is within one's own organization, among customers or suppliers, or in relation to the general public".
This would seem to me to require disclosure of privacy breaches to members of the public who might be affected.
However, the ICCP has never emphasized the code of ethics much and I've always suspected they just did it because (some) definitions of a "professional" requires adherence to a code of ethics.
I once told my employer that I couldn't do something because I hold a CDP and was bound by the CDP code of ethics. To say he was shocked was putting it mildly. He knew I was a CDP but didn't believe it meant anything. He was not happy with the notion that I had obligations to anyone but my employer, but fortunately it wasn't an important matter and he "let me get away with it, this time."
Code of Ethics
ICCP Code of Ethics
Certified computing professionals, consistent with their obligation to the public at large, should promote the understanding of information processing methods and procedures using every resource at their command.
Certified computing professionals have an obligation to their profession to uphold the high ideals and level of personal knowledge as evidenced by the Certificate held. They should also encourage the dissemination of knowledge pertaining to the development of the computing profession.
Certified computing professionals have an obligation to serve the interests of their employers and clients loyally, diligently and honestly.
Certified computing professionals must not engage in any conduct or commit any act which is a discredit to the reputation or integrity of the information processing profession.
Certified computing professionals must not imply that the Certificates which they hold are their sole claim to professional competence.
Code of Conduct and Good Practice for certified computing professionals
The essential elements relating to conduct that identify a professional activity are:
A high standard of skill and knowledge.
A confidential relationship with people served.
Public reliance upon the standards of conduct and established practice.
The observance of an ethical code.
Therefore, these Codes have been formulated to strengthen the professional status of certified computing professionals.
1. Preamble
1.1: The basic issue, which may arise in connection with any ethical proceedings before a Certification Council, is whether a holder of a Certificate administered by that Council has acted in a manner which violates the Code of Ethics for certified computing professionals.
1.2: Therefore, the ICCP has elaborated the existing Code of Conduct, which defines more specifically an individual's professional responsibility. This step was taken in recognition of questions and concerns as to what constitutes professional and ethical conduct in the computing profession.
1.3: The ICCP has reserved for and delegated to each Certification Council the right to revoke any Certificate which has been issued under its administration in the event that the recipient violates the Codes of Ethics, as amplified by the Code of Conduct. The revocation proceedings are specified by rules governing the business of the Certification Council and provide protection of the rights of any individual who may be subject to revocation of a certificate held. The ICCP may bypass revocation proceedings and automatically revoke any Certificate for non-compliance with mandatory recertification processes, providing the certificate was awarded subject to mandatory recertification requirements.
1.4: Insofar as violation of the Code of Conduct may be difficult to adjudicate, the ICCP has also promulgated a Code of Good Practice, the violation of which does not in itself constitute a reason to revoke a Certificate. However, any evidence concerning a serious and consistent breach of the Code of Good Practice may be considered as additional circumstantial evidence in any ethical proceedings before a Certification Council.
1.5: Whereas the Code of Conduct is of a fundamental nature, the Code of Good Practice is expected to be amended from time to time to accommodate changes in the social environment and to keep up with the development of the information processing profession.
1.6: A Certification Council will not consider a complaint where the holder's conduct is already subject to legal proceedings. Any complaint will only be considered when the legal action is completed, or it is established that no legal proceedings will take place.
1.7: Recognizing that the language contained in all sections of either the Code of Conduct or Code of Good Practice is subject to interpretations beyond those intended, the ICCP intends to confine all Codes to the matters pertaining to personal actions of individual certified computing professionals in situations for which they can be held directly accountable without reasonable doubt.
1.8: Certified computing professionals have a responsibility to respect intellectual property rights, including copyrights, patents and trademarks. Violation of copyrights, patents and terms of license agreements is prohibited by law in most circumstances. Even when not so protected, such violations are contrary to professional behavior. Software should be copied only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of both printed and electronic materials must be discouraged including those cases where the work has not been explicitly protected by any means. Credit should not be taken for the work of others. The work of others should not be used without specific acknowledgment and authorization.
2. Code of Conduct
2.1: Disclosure: Subject to the confidential relationships between oneself and one's employer or client one is expected not to transmit information which one acquires during the practice of one's profession in any situation which may seriously affect a third party.
2.2: Social Responsibility: One is expected to accept a responsibility to the public to diminish, through a continuing educational process, confusion and misconceptions surrounding the information processing industry. One is expected to be cognizant of and act in accordance with all procedures and regulations to improve public safety through the protection of information vital to the security of the nation and its people, both collectively and individually.
2.3: Conclusions and Opinions: One is expected to state a conclusion on a subject in one's field only when it can be demonstrated that it has been founded on adequate knowledge. One will state a qualified opinion when expressing a view in an area within one's professional competence but not supported by relevant facts.
2.4: Identification: One shall properly qualify oneself when expressing an opinion outside one's professional competence in the event that such an opinion could be identified by a third party as expert testimony, or if by inference the opinion can be expected to be used improperly.
2.5: Integrity: One will not knowingly lay claims to competence one does not demonstrably possess. One shall not take advantage of the lack of knowledge or inexperience of others.
2.6: Conflict of Interest: One shall act with strict impartiality when purporting to give independent advice. In the event that the advice given is currently or potentially influential to one's personal benefit, full and detailed disclosure to all relevant interested parties will be made at the time the advice is provided. One's employer especially should be made aware of any potential conflicts of interest. One will not denigrate the honesty or competence of a fellow professional or a competitor, with the intent to gain an unfair advantage.
2.7: Accountability: The degree of professional accountability for results will be dependent on the position held and type of work performed. For instance: A senior executive is accountable for the quality of work performed by all individuals the person supervises and for ensuring that recipients of information are fully aware of known limitations in the results provided. The personal accountability of consultants and technical experts is especially important because of the positions of unique trust inherent in their advisory roles. Consequently, they are accountable for seeing to it that known limitations of their work are fully disclosed, documented and explained. Furthermore, information processing professionals have a responsibility to take appropriate action regarding any illegal or unethical practices that come to their attention. Charges should be brought against a person only when a reasonable basis for the allegations has been established, without regard to personal interest.
2.8: Protection of Privacy: One shall protect the privacy and confidentiality of all entrusted information. One shall have special regard for the potential effects of computer-based systems on the right of privacy of individuals whether this is within one's own organization, among customers or suppliers, or in relation to the general public. Because of the privileged capability of computing professionals to gain access to computerized files, especially strong strictures will be applied to those who have used their position of trust to obtain information from computerized files for their personal gain.
Where it is possible that decisions can be made within a computer-based system could adversely affect the personal security, work or career of an individual, the system design shall specifically provide for decision review by a responsible executive who will thus remain accountable and identifiable for that decision.
3. Code of Good Practice
3.1: Education: One has a special responsibility to keep oneself fully aware of developments in information processing technology relevant to one's current professional occupation. One will contribute to the interchange of technical and professional information by encouraging and participating in educational activities directed to both fellow professionals and to the public at large. One will do all in one's power to further public understanding of computer systems. One will contribute to the growth of knowledge in the field to the extent that one's expertise, and ability allow.
3.2: Personal Conduct: Insofar as one's personal and professional activities interact visibly to the same public, one is expected to support, respect and abide by the appropriate laws and in general to apply the same high standards of behavior in one's personal life as are demanded in one's professional activities.
3.3: Competence: One shall at all times exercise technical and professional competence at least to the level one claims. One shall not deliberately withhold information in one's possession unless disclosure of that information could harm or seriously affect another party, or unless one is bound by a proper, clearly defined confidential relationship. One shall not deliberately destroy or diminish the value or effectiveness of a computer? based system through acts of commission or omission.
3.4: Statements: One shall not make false or exaggerated statements as to the state of affairs existing or expected regarding any aspect of information technology or the use of computers. In communicating with lay persons, one shall use general language wherever possible and shall not use technical terms or expressions unless there exist no adequate equivalents in the general language.
3.5: Discretion: One shall exercise maximum discretion in disclosing, or permitting to be disclosed, or using to one's own advantage, any information relating the affairs of one's present or previous employers or clients.
3.6: Conflict of interest: One shall not knowingly hold, assume, or accept a position or a client with which one's interests conflict or are likely to conflict with one's current duties or clients unless that interest has been disclosed in advance to all parties involved.
3.7: Public Safety: One has a responsibility to protect fundamental human rights and dignity and to respect cultural diversity. Those who design, develop and maintain computer systems shall be alert to and make others aware of any potential damage to the local and global environment. When developing information systems, computing professionals must ensure that their efforts are used to benefit humanity. Harmful effects to general health and welfare of the public shall be avoided.
3.8: Violations: One is expected to report violations of the Code, testify in ethical proceedings where one has expert or firsthand knowledge, and serve on panels to judge complaints of violations of ethical conduct.
4. Procedural requirements for revocation of certificate awarded
4.1: The ICCP may automatically revoke Certificates for non?compliance with mandatory recertification processes, providing the certificate was awarded subject to mandatory recertification requirements.
4.2: A Certification Council, on behalf of the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals, has the right to revoke any Certificate which has been awarded by it in the event that the recipient violates the Codes, or engages in conduct which is a discredit or disgrace to the computing profession.
4.3: The grounds for revocation, except for failure to comply with mandatory recertification requirements, will be based upon the opinion of at least two-thirds of the members of the Council.
4.4: Procedure for handling revocation:
1. A formal written statement of charges alleging facts which constitute the grounds for revocation will be prepared.
2. A copy of said charges will be forwarded to the person accused, fixing a time within which such person may file with the Council answers to the charges.
3. If the charges are denied in the answer, the Council will fix a time for the hearing and give notice of the time and place of the hearing to the person accused.
4. Presentation of evidence in support of the charges will be made by the secretary (a nonvoting member) of the Certification Council.
5. Presentation of the evidence in defense of the charges will be made by the accused or the designated representative of the accused.
6. Ample opportunity for both sides to present facts and arguments will be allowed at the hearing.
7. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Council will determine whether or not the charges have been sufficiently established by the evidence and whether the Certificate should be revoked or should not be revoked.
8. The accused will be notified of the decision by registered mail.
9. The accused has the right to request review of the decision by the Executive Committee of ICCP, provided an appeal in writing is submitted to the President of ICCP within 30 days of the accused's receipt of the Council's decision.
About ten years ago I worked at a Fortune 500 company that made minicomputers with a proprietary OS and was starting to move into PC products hosted on XENIX.
The extent of UNIX penetration into the desktop mainstream was a topic of constant discussion
One day, Radio Shack announced that they would be selling UNIX-based systems. The announcement was widely carried as a news item in the trade press, often with deep-think commentary. Highly placed UNIX advocates within the company started circulating memos mentioning it, and in almost any conference-room discussion someone would say "It's all changed, haven't you heard, why even Radio Shack is selling UNIX now."
So I did a reality check.
About three months after the announcement, I walked into a Radio Shack. Not one of your mall stores, but one of the big Radio Shack Computer Centers or whatever they were called. I said I wanted to try out one of their UNIX systems hands-on, and I wanted a catalog showing what software they had for it.
After glad-handing me and assuring me that, yes, indeed, Radio Shack was backing UNIX to the hilt, they showed me their UNIX system.
Yes, they did have one.
It was a PC running XENIX. It was not turned on. They would not turn it on for me, because the only person who knew how to use it was a consultant who came in one day a week. There were no brochures, no sales material.
The only software catalog was their general PC software catalog, which had about 32 densely packed pages of (mostly) DOS-based software, several pages of Windows-based packages, and finally about four column-inches of UNIX offerings, most of which were UNIX itself. There were, I think, one or two Accounts Receivables packages and so forth.
It wasn't exactly untrue that Radio Shack was selling UNIX, but it certainly didn't mean what people thought it meant.
Ephemeral? Ephesians? Ephedrine? Dophpe spelled backwards?
:CueCat...
And what's with the colon in front, shades of
OK, I understand the researchers were doing very cool things that might have a whole range of interesting uses, but...
I thought the whole lesson of the Internet was that the network should provide connectivity only, with a bare minimum of built-in processing...
because, if you put processing into the network you are making fundamental assumptions about how the network is going to be used. In other words, processing within the network = optimizing for predetermined uses = locking out future evolution and outside innovation.
Shades of the old Bell Labs that were committed to circuit-switching and opposed to packet-switching!
Oh, I think cars are a lot better than they were fifty years ago. But I think it's all incremental. For example, your own estimates, which I think are reasonable, is that in about fifty years there's been a 5-times improvement in tuneup time, a 2-times improvement in tire life, a 2-times improvement in gas mileage. I'm not sure how to quantify the improvement in safety.
Note that a 5-fold improvement in 50 years represents about an improvement of about 3.3% per year. I think that's about the rate of improvement we're going to see in PDA's... now that they've been perfected.
...Because IMHO that's what this one is.
I don't know why so many businesses these days are going out of their way to punish their existing customers. It seems as if practically every business now offers deals to new customers that are not available to their loyal customers.
I wonder what management text or B-school case study they get THAT advice out of?
To avoid getting shafted, you practically have to PLAN on switching credit cards, banks, phone companies, etc. annually.
OK, but let's credit the person who, I think, really originated the idea. When I was a kid, I was given a wonderful book called "Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps," by a Dutch schoolteacher named Kees Boeke. It was all drawings, with that wonderful Dutch surrealistic sense of humor--it is centered on a school courtyard in The Netherlands, which just happens to have a dead whale lying in it.
It came out in 1957.
There's really no question, the Eames movie and Morrison book are a "remake" of "Cosmic View." The film and book explicitly give credit to Boeke.
To my astonishment, I find that the book is available online at
http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/
Most pieces of technology reach a stage where they're "about right," become commodity items, and stagnate. OK, they never stagnate completely, but the differences between a 1957 Chevy and a 2002 Toyota Corolla--heck, even a Prius--are pretty darn incremental. They both have automatic transmission, you put gas in 'em, turn the key to start them, and drive 70 mph on the Interstate with them. You did it in 1957 just the way you do it now. Sure, now you fasten your seatbelt, get 35 mpg, and you never need to replace the vibrator in the car radio. (Don't snicker at that, you ignorant young whippersnapper. How ELSE did you think you'd generate the B voltage for the vacuum tubes?).
Same thing with a PDA. What things do I want that I don't have already? Boring things. Incremental things. Cheaper, clearer, better screen, yadda yadda yadda. My personal shtick is a good eBook reader... but what I'm saying is, PDA's are OK. They've figured it out. A Palm is great for addresses, phone numbers, etc. Just like a four-function calculator is great for adding up a few numbers.
Yes, I've seen calculators built into pens, into watches, calculators that graph equations, etc. but the classic four-function calculator is FINISHED--not in the sense of "dead," in the sense of COMPLETE.
And the PDA is "finished," too. It has a pretty high gloss on it already, in fact, although I'm sure they'll manage to polish it some more in the coming decades.
But the future is a $10 PDA that's about the same size, the same weight, and has about the same feature set as today's $100 Palm (or yesterday's $400 Palm)--or today's $30 cheapo PDA knockoff.
The $400 Palm that makes coffee, walks the dog, is woven into your handkerchief, and plays realtime multiplayer Internet games ain't gonna happen.
Amen, brother.
I wouldn't mind it so much if someone would IMPROVE on Smalltalk, but why do we have to spend twenty years devising languages that are not quite as good as Smalltalk (in the name of efficiency, or compatibility, or ease of learning for people that have never learned more than one computer language...)
Smalltalk is the only language I've ever used that I felt truly extended my reach as a programmer and truly enabled me to do easily things that would have been difficult in other languages.
It is also the only language in which I have truly taken big, complicated, rich pieces of code that did ALMOST what I wanted and spent very small amounts of time subclassing them and making them do EXACTLY what I wanted--and without having to spend hours reverse-engineering and understanding what the original code was doing.
That's the aspect of eBay I'm most curious about.
Does the book explain it?
Yes, Apple finally got it right on the third try. Too bad there were other issues with the Cube.
The original Apple ][, ][+, ][e were convection-cooled and silent. I was used to PDP-11's and such and when I saw my first Apple, I said, "Wow, they must have brilliant thermal engineering." Turned out they had NO thermal engineering. If you put expansion cards in it, it would overheat.
The original 1984 Macintosh was silent, and I loved it. There were no expansion cards, so no expansion card issues. I'm not sure whether the issues related to overheating or not, but there were a LOT of issues relating to the power supply on those early Macs and I'm inclined to think thermal design MAY have been part of the problem.
It's too bad other issues with the Cube (pricing, mostly) may have discredited it. I bought a standard-style G4 instead of a Cube at the time, figuring that, as with laptops, a design with lots of components crammed into a tiny space might be less dependable and more defect-prone than the spacious G4 tower.
But I really miss the silent (not just low-noise) operation of the 1984 Mac and Mac Plus. (All the Apple ]['s I ever worked with had aftermarket fans on them...)
...why do they have to find and fix them one by one? Can't they switch to a programming language, or debugging tool, or run-time library, that would find and fix all of them?
Indeed, about the time Windows 2000 was released with 65536 known bugs (or whatever the exact number was), didn't Jim Allchin say that they had such a tool and were using it?
Should buffer overflows be as outdated as Gopher itself?