I'm not defending Apple's decisions on what apps can run and can't; if anything I'm really p*ssed that they would prevent any "competitive" product from running on the iPhone.
That said, Notes is something completely different than a straight email program. If anything, it's basically a database program, and email is just another schema in it. It's so completely unlike regular email programs that I could see Apple not having a problem with it, especially since you need to have a Notes server to get/put anything, unlike a regular SMTP/IMAP/POP server, and a Notes server, coming from IBM, is not free.
Basically this is like permitting Oracle's Financial app to be installed; it's only useful if you have the back end system (which also costs $$$$$$$$).
I have some legacy code that straight-up doesn't work; it makes references to non-existent proprietary libraries, uses classes that aren't defined anywhere, and just to make things more interesting, a lot of methods with a lot of code, and variables carefully instantiated, that are never used.
This is what is checked into source control; there is a binary that does, in fact, work, based on this code (or some better flavor of).
What to do then? There is some pretty involved financial algorithms in there that were designed by a mathematician and both the original developer and the mathematician have long since left the building. Yet, here I am, with a bug report that one of the models is wrong, and have absolutely no way to fix it.
An earlier comment suggested that the "real" way to was to decry the original author's skills, parentage, etc., and just re-write. Frankly, this seems to be my only option at this point.
The show was not about "nothing", as joked about in some episodes, it was about four *extremely* *unlikeable* people *doing* nothing.
The last episode was the clue-by-four to the head for all those viewers who didn't get it; they bring back all the people whose lives had been casually wrecked by the main characters, and in the end (SPOILER ALERT, if you care), they end up all locked in a cell, the ultimate punishment that they have to spend their time together.
And from this Microsoft thought they could improve their branding? If anything, it's somehow appropriate, Microsoft is the company that casually wrecks your (digital) life.
I've played with Xen, we use zones in Solaris, and I've used Microsoft's Virtual Server offering, but only VMware lets me do the one thing that no one else does: Put up a machine *fast*. I mean, from nothing to a fully working Linux/Windows/whatever machine whether it's a clone from an existing guest, or a brand new one.
I have a lot of projects that are ephemeral; we need a box to test something on and boom, we have a virtual machine that runs pretty darn fast and when the testing is done, we shut it down. No muss, no fuss. No other product on the market is so good about bringing up a machine, throwing additional "hardware" at it when necessary.
The other thing VMware rocks over everyone else is snapshots; I can create branches of branches of snapshots when my testing goes in all kinds of directions, and I can always roll back to any of them. I described it to a coworker as having the entire machine on top of a Subversion repository.
If Motorola and Samsung have the market sewn up, essentially, what are they doing it with? This is the first time I had even heard Motorola *had* a touch screen phone.
Also, why aren't they sold in the US, then? I read about Motorola wanting to spin off their phone division, all the problems they've had, then I'm told they have these phones that I might be interested in (I don't have AT&T so no iPhone for me) but don't seem to be available.
Specifically, the Sega that brought you Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Shenmue. Looking at the consoles I've had over the years, the Dreamcast was by far the one with the weirdest, and ultimately most enjoyable libraries out there. Yeah, Soul Calibur 4 looks sweet on the PS3, in high-def and all, but the magic of playing the original, arcade version, on the Dreamcast with no performance or graphics penalty was just amazing.
Sega was that crazy friend of yours who was funny as hell and had so many good times with, and is now happily filling out TPS reports and saying he can't go out because he's got to work Sunday too.
I understand that VirtualPC != HyperV, but my point was (something I think I worded badly) that you can do amazing things with all of VMware's products; they all share certain core tech that allows their Workstation product, analogous to VirtualPC, to have most of the features of their ESX version (similar to Hyper V). The difference is that VMware is, IMHO, much much more powerful across the board than Microsoft's offerings.
Agreed. VMware has Microsoft totally beat in terms of what you can do with virtualization. I was able to set up an environment of clustered machines for testing an Exchange Active-Active cluster and it worked flawlessly (though it did require some fiddling with the vmx files). I asked a Microsoft guy about doing something similar and they said that it wasn't possible. Frankly, VirtualPC is a joke (no unlimited snapshots? No private LAN segments? No thanks.) and without the flexibility of their server product, I can't believe Microsoft actually thinks its a contender in this space.
Basically, Microsoft is hoping to leverage their Windows monopoly to push a substandard product down everyone's throats (again).
Yes, but with a twist
on
Apple After Jobs
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I did a research project on Polaroid and came to the conclusion that, like Jobs and Apple, Polaroid was essentially Land's company and after he died, it spiraled rapidly downhill. They had some amazing stuff and once their "vision" had been lost, they were caught short by all the tech that came after.
With Jobs and Apple, I think the situation is the same only insofar as, pointed out in the article and elsewhere, Jobs and Apple are synonymous. The difference, I see, is that Land was the chief guy people expected all tech advances to come; once Land left there wasn't any one person to keep their eye on the industry. Jobs, however, is not the tech guy; he has a *lot* of good people who are clearly making great stuff, only to be held in check by Jobs until he's satisfied they "have a product".
Apple without Jobs would probably put out more products quicker, and that is the problem; Jobs is the "great floodgate" for a company that probably is literally bursting with cool, but unpolished, stuff that, if put out in the marketplace, would get a lot of buzz, but then probably sink under the weight of bugs.
Obviously Jobs can't be there forever, but unlike Microsoft that has been happy to throw everything and anything at the wall to see what sticks (and promise it'll stick better in the next version), Apple needs that special someone who can tell when a they "have a product", as well as be the human face to the company.
So yes, Apple can continue and prosper without Steve Jobs, so long as they find someone who is just like Steve Jobs.
I'm a huge proponent of *lots* of colors; I try very hard to never reuse a color, and over the years I've always stuck with certain colors for certain things (strings are always red, numbers always blue, etc) regardless of language. On top of that, the background is *always* black, no exceptions.
I've found that the multi-color aspect, combined with the black background, makes it very easy to work with as the colors create "patches" of code that makes it easy to scroll through and remember. For example, if some part of your code involves a lot of strings, there will be a blob of red (in my case) that makes it easy to zoom to when getting somewhere in the file. I also then use that as a "sign post" for other parts of the code ("The problem is in the function right below the red blob"). Basic pattern recognition, I guess.
Mr Slacker, you have made me unbelievably happy. The first one was it, as soon as I saw it, I remembered the whole thing, standing there, being given this by my folks. For a split second, I was 4 years old and it was like the happiest moment of my life, again.
The first toy I can remember was a small Lego police car set. I think it was comprised of a black "plane", two opaque, slanted pieces, two sets of wheels, and I believe it was labeled as police car because the pieces were black and white. I have never ever ever forgotten how much fun I had, and I can still see my parents now, giving it to me, in a little white box. I think I was maybe, maybe, 4 years old.
It's really nice to know that there is a place that has that exact set, and maybe, if I'm really lucky, I'll be able to see it again.
I remember the "Farm Exhibit" in the Museum of Science and Industry, in Chicago, used to have a dome that, if I recall correctly, was identified as being his. Inside was a continuous running movie of the origin and future of farming. They took it out sometime in the mid-90s, I guess, as last time I was at the museum the dome was gone. Since all it was used for was to show a movie, it wasn't ever really clear to me why the dome was there in the first place.
As I recall it was a great place to (potentially) make out if your SO didn't mind having their hearing destroyed by the unbelievably loud movie audio.
Kidding aside, anyone who can look at an enormous, overwhelming task of such mind-boggling complexity and think "I can do that." is deserved of high praise, regardless of whether he succeeded or failed.
Okay, I guess I implied too much in my comment about paying $20. What I meant to say was that I can't imagine that Apple would roll out the release bandwagon as they did for both Leopard and Tiger (t-shirts, closing the Apple store for a couple of hours, etc.) for this particular release as they've stated that there are no features that would inspire my mom to want to upgrade immediately.
That said, Apple has done amazing things with every release of OSX and I look forward to Snow Leopard as much as every other release. I simply didn't read it as something that anyone should treat as a Really Big Deal, even to the point that Jobs barely mentioned it in the keynote, unlike Leopard that got its coming out party twice.
Therefore, if a 10.6 box just appeared in the Apple stores, but didn't get much mention, it would probably be missed by most. Sure it would be pre-installed on new machines, but where would be the hype to get everyone on it as quickly as possible? This is why I was thinking about the 10.0->10.1 upgrade; if this is the first Intel-only release, how would they sell a version that offers no new features, and is unavailable to everyone who doesn't haven an Intel machine? I, personally, wouldn't want to be in the marketing department trying to sell 10.6; if they just make it available as a download, they might ultimately save a lot of $$$ that would have been spent trying to market it, then explain it, correct the marketing, etc.
...if this will be a free upgrade similarly to the upgrade from 10.0 to 10.1. It would seem hard to justify a purchase price of anything more than $20 that adds only additional stability and developer tools. If anything, this version seems more geared for developers than end-users.
...the fact that they say they're building on top of Vista does. It suggests to me that Microsoft truly has shifted over to protecting its installed base by any means necessary, and that any form of innovation that even hints at breaking backwards compatibility will eventually be thrown out.
It's clear that Microsoft is clearly rooted nowhere but in the here-and-now because innovation is full of risk, and Microsoft doesn't want to take any risks. They simply are incapable of turning their boat like Apple did with the move from OS9 to OSX, yes because their installed base is larger, but I also believe because they rightly or wrongly believe that the vast majority of users simply won't follow; Microsoft products are the thing that you're forced to use, not because you want to. To make sure people are never given a choice, Microsoft will simply increment Windows tiny step by tiny step; I think Vista shows that they're incapable (and their users are unwilling) to accept any bigger steps from them.
They should have done something similar with SoftImage for the time they actually *owned* the company. SoftImage on Windows was a terrible, horrible experience, they clearly simply got it compiled onto Windows and that was it.
I was at an animation shop for awhile where we had both the Windows and SGI version of 3.7 and the Windows version *ran* faster, but crashed a whole lot more. Finally the two guys begged for anything, even Indys, to get their work done.
Finally they sold SoftImage to, was it Avid? I can't remember now. It was clear to us, anyway, that Microsoft simply wanted to show that NT could compete with SGI in heavy-duty graphics work, but they did a terrible, terrible job of it.
That said, both Max and Maya work pretty well (I know, Max was always a Windows-only product), but neither were ever owned by the company who actually wrote the OS.
The question of the oldest code still running made me think of a job I had which was to write some client-server software that talked to a program written on a mainframe.
I knew the program had been running since around 1969, but what really surprised me was when I was in a meeting, and two of the older programmers, both getting ready to retire, mentioned that so-and-so had died, and everyone got quiet.
Naturally I had no idea who they were talking about and asked who this person was, and it turned out it was the last living original programmer of the program. Everyone else still alive had been brought in to maintain it.
So when thinking about old code, it's always made me wonder where those programmers are today...
So can we now be told...
on
iMac Turns 10
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...what the purpose of that "mezzanine" bus was for? As I recall the original iMac had this expansion bus that was called the "mezzanine" that apparently disappeared in subsequent models, never to be seen again.
I also seem to recall somebody actually released a product or something that used it, though I can't remember anything about it.
The great thing about the age of carts is just what the article touches on...here's a game that never made it to the store shelves but clearly a copy or two was made on actual hardware that somehow made it to this flea market.
But what happens to games today when they're cancelled? I read about games being put on "indefinite hiatus", or just being cancelled with the company essentially throwing their hands up in the air and saying "ain't gonna happen." What becomes of all that code? Since it just sits on the developer's machines, does it just get wiped when they start on a new project?
Maybe someday someone will find a hd in a flea market labeled "Shenmue 3 SVN Repo", but it doesn't seem likely, sadly.
So while we revel in the curios of the past, we ourselves have none to give to future generations.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not defending Apple's decisions on what apps can run and can't; if anything I'm really p*ssed that they would prevent any "competitive" product from running on the iPhone.
That said, Notes is something completely different than a straight email program. If anything, it's basically a database program, and email is just another schema in it. It's so completely unlike regular email programs that I could see Apple not having a problem with it, especially since you need to have a Notes server to get/put anything, unlike a regular SMTP/IMAP/POP server, and a Notes server, coming from IBM, is not free.
Basically this is like permitting Oracle's Financial app to be installed; it's only useful if you have the back end system (which also costs $$$$$$$$).
I have some legacy code that straight-up doesn't work; it makes references to non-existent proprietary libraries, uses classes that aren't defined anywhere, and just to make things more interesting, a lot of methods with a lot of code, and variables carefully instantiated, that are never used.
This is what is checked into source control; there is a binary that does, in fact, work, based on this code (or some better flavor of).
What to do then? There is some pretty involved financial algorithms in there that were designed by a mathematician and both the original developer and the mathematician have long since left the building. Yet, here I am, with a bug report that one of the models is wrong, and have absolutely no way to fix it.
An earlier comment suggested that the "real" way to was to decry the original author's skills, parentage, etc., and just re-write. Frankly, this seems to be my only option at this point.
The show was not about "nothing", as joked about in some episodes, it was about four *extremely* *unlikeable* people *doing* nothing.
The last episode was the clue-by-four to the head for all those viewers who didn't get it; they bring back all the people whose lives had been casually wrecked by the main characters, and in the end (SPOILER ALERT, if you care), they end up all locked in a cell, the ultimate punishment that they have to spend their time together.
And from this Microsoft thought they could improve their branding? If anything, it's somehow appropriate, Microsoft is the company that casually wrecks your (digital) life.
I've played with Xen, we use zones in Solaris, and I've used Microsoft's Virtual Server offering, but only VMware lets me do the one thing that no one else does: Put up a machine *fast*. I mean, from nothing to a fully working Linux/Windows/whatever machine whether it's a clone from an existing guest, or a brand new one.
I have a lot of projects that are ephemeral; we need a box to test something on and boom, we have a virtual machine that runs pretty darn fast and when the testing is done, we shut it down. No muss, no fuss. No other product on the market is so good about bringing up a machine, throwing additional "hardware" at it when necessary.
The other thing VMware rocks over everyone else is snapshots; I can create branches of branches of snapshots when my testing goes in all kinds of directions, and I can always roll back to any of them. I described it to a coworker as having the entire machine on top of a Subversion repository.
If Motorola and Samsung have the market sewn up, essentially, what are they doing it with? This is the first time I had even heard Motorola *had* a touch screen phone.
Also, why aren't they sold in the US, then? I read about Motorola wanting to spin off their phone division, all the problems they've had, then I'm told they have these phones that I might be interested in (I don't have AT&T so no iPhone for me) but don't seem to be available.
Specifically, the Sega that brought you Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Shenmue. Looking at the consoles I've had over the years, the Dreamcast was by far the one with the weirdest, and ultimately most enjoyable libraries out there. Yeah, Soul Calibur 4 looks sweet on the PS3, in high-def and all, but the magic of playing the original, arcade version, on the Dreamcast with no performance or graphics penalty was just amazing.
Sega was that crazy friend of yours who was funny as hell and had so many good times with, and is now happily filling out TPS reports and saying he can't go out because he's got to work Sunday too.
I understand that VirtualPC != HyperV, but my point was (something I think I worded badly) that you can do amazing things with all of VMware's products; they all share certain core tech that allows their Workstation product, analogous to VirtualPC, to have most of the features of their ESX version (similar to Hyper V). The difference is that VMware is, IMHO, much much more powerful across the board than Microsoft's offerings.
Agreed. VMware has Microsoft totally beat in terms of what you can do with virtualization. I was able to set up an environment of clustered machines for testing an Exchange Active-Active cluster and it worked flawlessly (though it did require some fiddling with the vmx files). I asked a Microsoft guy about doing something similar and they said that it wasn't possible. Frankly, VirtualPC is a joke (no unlimited snapshots? No private LAN segments? No thanks.) and without the flexibility of their server product, I can't believe Microsoft actually thinks its a contender in this space.
Basically, Microsoft is hoping to leverage their Windows monopoly to push a substandard product down everyone's throats (again).
I did a research project on Polaroid and came to the conclusion that, like Jobs and Apple, Polaroid was essentially Land's company and after he died, it spiraled rapidly downhill. They had some amazing stuff and once their "vision" had been lost, they were caught short by all the tech that came after.
With Jobs and Apple, I think the situation is the same only insofar as, pointed out in the article and elsewhere, Jobs and Apple are synonymous. The difference, I see, is that Land was the chief guy people expected all tech advances to come; once Land left there wasn't any one person to keep their eye on the industry. Jobs, however, is not the tech guy; he has a *lot* of good people who are clearly making great stuff, only to be held in check by Jobs until he's satisfied they "have a product".
Apple without Jobs would probably put out more products quicker, and that is the problem; Jobs is the "great floodgate" for a company that probably is literally bursting with cool, but unpolished, stuff that, if put out in the marketplace, would get a lot of buzz, but then probably sink under the weight of bugs.
Obviously Jobs can't be there forever, but unlike Microsoft that has been happy to throw everything and anything at the wall to see what sticks (and promise it'll stick better in the next version), Apple needs that special someone who can tell when a they "have a product", as well as be the human face to the company.
So yes, Apple can continue and prosper without Steve Jobs, so long as they find someone who is just like Steve Jobs.
Any takers?
I'm a huge proponent of *lots* of colors; I try very hard to never reuse a color, and over the years I've always stuck with certain colors for certain things (strings are always red, numbers always blue, etc) regardless of language. On top of that, the background is *always* black, no exceptions.
I've found that the multi-color aspect, combined with the black background, makes it very easy to work with as the colors create "patches" of code that makes it easy to scroll through and remember. For example, if some part of your code involves a lot of strings, there will be a blob of red (in my case) that makes it easy to zoom to when getting somewhere in the file. I also then use that as a "sign post" for other parts of the code ("The problem is in the function right below the red blob"). Basic pattern recognition, I guess.
...who helped him carry his boxes to the car. Steve? Ray?
...so he can get himself a better computer.
Mr Slacker, you have made me unbelievably happy. The first one was it, as soon as I saw it, I remembered the whole thing, standing there, being given this by my folks. For a split second, I was 4 years old and it was like the happiest moment of my life, again.
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
The first toy I can remember was a small Lego police car set. I think it was comprised of a black "plane", two opaque, slanted pieces, two sets of wheels, and I believe it was labeled as police car because the pieces were black and white. I have never ever ever forgotten how much fun I had, and I can still see my parents now, giving it to me, in a little white box. I think I was maybe, maybe, 4 years old.
It's really nice to know that there is a place that has that exact set, and maybe, if I'm really lucky, I'll be able to see it again.
I remember the "Farm Exhibit" in the Museum of Science and Industry, in Chicago, used to have a dome that, if I recall correctly, was identified as being his. Inside was a continuous running movie of the origin and future of farming. They took it out sometime in the mid-90s, I guess, as last time I was at the museum the dome was gone. Since all it was used for was to show a movie, it wasn't ever really clear to me why the dome was there in the first place.
As I recall it was a great place to (potentially) make out if your SO didn't mind having their hearing destroyed by the unbelievably loud movie audio.
...some surplus machines from Babbage & Co.?
Kidding aside, anyone who can look at an enormous, overwhelming task of such mind-boggling complexity and think "I can do that." is deserved of high praise, regardless of whether he succeeded or failed.
Okay, I guess I implied too much in my comment about paying $20. What I meant to say was that I can't imagine that Apple would roll out the release bandwagon as they did for both Leopard and Tiger (t-shirts, closing the Apple store for a couple of hours, etc.) for this particular release as they've stated that there are no features that would inspire my mom to want to upgrade immediately.
That said, Apple has done amazing things with every release of OSX and I look forward to Snow Leopard as much as every other release. I simply didn't read it as something that anyone should treat as a Really Big Deal, even to the point that Jobs barely mentioned it in the keynote, unlike Leopard that got its coming out party twice.
Therefore, if a 10.6 box just appeared in the Apple stores, but didn't get much mention, it would probably be missed by most. Sure it would be pre-installed on new machines, but where would be the hype to get everyone on it as quickly as possible? This is why I was thinking about the 10.0->10.1 upgrade; if this is the first Intel-only release, how would they sell a version that offers no new features, and is unavailable to everyone who doesn't haven an Intel machine? I, personally, wouldn't want to be in the marketing department trying to sell 10.6; if they just make it available as a download, they might ultimately save a lot of $$$ that would have been spent trying to market it, then explain it, correct the marketing, etc.
Only after posting did I realize it was the "first" and got swept up in the excitement of it all. I promise it won't happen again. :)
Let me get the rest out of my system, so I am not tempted:
o Does it run Linux?
o Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
o Profit!
o In Soviet Russia, post firsts you!
Oh, and, uh, first post!
...if this will be a free upgrade similarly to the upgrade from 10.0 to 10.1. It would seem hard to justify a purchase price of anything more than $20 that adds only additional stability and developer tools. If anything, this version seems more geared for developers than end-users.
...the fact that they say they're building on top of Vista does. It suggests to me that Microsoft truly has shifted over to protecting its installed base by any means necessary, and that any form of innovation that even hints at breaking backwards compatibility will eventually be thrown out.
It's clear that Microsoft is clearly rooted nowhere but in the here-and-now because innovation is full of risk, and Microsoft doesn't want to take any risks. They simply are incapable of turning their boat like Apple did with the move from OS9 to OSX, yes because their installed base is larger, but I also believe because they rightly or wrongly believe that the vast majority of users simply won't follow; Microsoft products are the thing that you're forced to use, not because you want to. To make sure people are never given a choice, Microsoft will simply increment Windows tiny step by tiny step; I think Vista shows that they're incapable (and their users are unwilling) to accept any bigger steps from them.
They should have done something similar with SoftImage for the time they actually *owned* the company. SoftImage on Windows was a terrible, horrible experience, they clearly simply got it compiled onto Windows and that was it.
I was at an animation shop for awhile where we had both the Windows and SGI version of 3.7 and the Windows version *ran* faster, but crashed a whole lot more. Finally the two guys begged for anything, even Indys, to get their work done.
Finally they sold SoftImage to, was it Avid? I can't remember now. It was clear to us, anyway, that Microsoft simply wanted to show that NT could compete with SGI in heavy-duty graphics work, but they did a terrible, terrible job of it.
That said, both Max and Maya work pretty well (I know, Max was always a Windows-only product), but neither were ever owned by the company who actually wrote the OS.
The question of the oldest code still running made me think of a job I had which was to write some client-server software that talked to a program written on a mainframe.
I knew the program had been running since around 1969, but what really surprised me was when I was in a meeting, and two of the older programmers, both getting ready to retire, mentioned that so-and-so had died, and everyone got quiet.
Naturally I had no idea who they were talking about and asked who this person was, and it turned out it was the last living original programmer of the program. Everyone else still alive had been brought in to maintain it.
So when thinking about old code, it's always made me wonder where those programmers are today...
...what the purpose of that "mezzanine" bus was for? As I recall the original iMac had this expansion bus that was called the "mezzanine" that apparently disappeared in subsequent models, never to be seen again.
I also seem to recall somebody actually released a product or something that used it, though I can't remember anything about it.
The great thing about the age of carts is just what the article touches on...here's a game that never made it to the store shelves but clearly a copy or two was made on actual hardware that somehow made it to this flea market.
But what happens to games today when they're cancelled? I read about games being put on "indefinite hiatus", or just being cancelled with the company essentially throwing their hands up in the air and saying "ain't gonna happen." What becomes of all that code? Since it just sits on the developer's machines, does it just get wiped when they start on a new project?
Maybe someday someone will find a hd in a flea market labeled "Shenmue 3 SVN Repo", but it doesn't seem likely, sadly.
So while we revel in the curios of the past, we ourselves have none to give to future generations.