Hypercard has been (sort of) given a second life as Applescript Studio, since Applescript is basically Hypertalk in the first place. The difference being that now you can write real applications instead of "stacks."
Having taken the CS route, I recommend it. It really depends on whether you're more interested in computers or business. The IT route is more geared toward making good business decisions, not good computing decisions, which are sometimes mutually exclusive.
Ihbtubajon wrote: If I write a piece of code that helps my employer do something, I get paid for the amount of time I worked on it. I don't get paid every time my company sells the software, and every time they re-use the code, forever and ever amen.
Maybe what that says is that programmers need a union. Look, personally I'm for open source coding, but perhaps if coders got organized, the larger software houses wouldn't take what you write, patent it, and then use that against the open source community. Perhaps the solution is for everyone to retain the rights to what they code.
I see this as simply history repeating itself. The war in Iraq is Vietnam II and this whole Gonzales/US Attorney issue is just Watergate II. I can't believe that the Republican voters intended this when they voted for Bush/Cheney.
Bush has tried to remake the Executive branch in ways that the Founding Fathers would find reprehensible and vile. He should be impeachable for that, if nothing else. He swore to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights and has done nothing but weaken them.
He's also weakened the country militarily by maintaining this stupid Iraq war. What if we had to defend ourselves on our own soil? How much troop strength could we muster?
Whether we should have voted for Kerry last election isn't the issue. The real issue is why, when Gore won the popular vote in 2000, did we end up with Bush stealing the White House RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES.
He stole the election and we've been paying for it ever since. I'm going to be glad to vote him out next year. Assuming he doesn't declare himself "dictator for life."
Great now we can blow up laptops by remote control! What a great joke to play on your friends! Wait until they *THINK* their laptop battery is low, then refill it wirelessly and watch the fun (and flames) begin!
..I'd sleep pretty well tonight, after reading this. It's apparent that this guy is a shill for the RIAA (wonder what size kickback he's getting?) who hasn't got the ability to b*llsh*t effectively.
The RIAA is making Eugene McCarthy look like an amateur..."I have here a list of 200 P2P users..."
DingerX wrote, "But hold on: that technology is itself "High-value content", and as such needs protection through trade secrets, patents, and proprietary deals, and the resulting product is subject to the same market forces as the content it is supposed to protect. Dammit! The same logic we use to defend DRM shows us that DRM cannot work!" Beautiful! A recursive argument that shows that DRM is a logical fallacy that will never lead anywhere. Because to protect the content, we have to protect the DRM mechanism which means we have to protect the software that uses it which means we have to protect the OS that runs the software which means we have to protect the source code which means we have protect against our employees....etc.
Obviously DRM proponents never learned "This is the House that Jack Built" or "There was an Old Lady that Swallowed a Spider" when they were kids.
Oddly enough, I just re-read "Flowers for Algernon." I've been re-reading "The Hugo Winners, Vol 1 & 2" and it's in there, if anyone is looking for it.
Remembering when Steve left the first time and what Microsoft has been like without Bill Gates, I would say that Apple HAS a future without Jobs, but it will be an "alternate" future.
Unless Steve hand-picks a protege who has vision and isn't afraid to express it, Apple will lose its will to live when Steve leaves/dies.
Personally, I'd prefer to see Steve hire someone from the Open Source community when the time comes, not because I think Apple needs to open source more software, but because what Apple will need in those straits is the kind of maverick independence and free-thinking that is the life's blood of the OSFS movement.
What's differentiated Apple from other companies is the hacker spirit and vision, the ability to say "we're small and maneuverable, and we CAN do some amazing stuff where other companies would be hamstrung by bureaucracy," and then going ahead and DOING it.
Lets face it, most cell phones are terrible attempts to do more than they're really good at. What I saw today with the iPhone was a 21st Century device for the first time. It seems they've redesigned and rethought almost everything about the iPod, the PDA, and the cell phone and built it from the ground up as a new device. I'm not sure the iPhone name is a very good name, despite the fact that everyone's called it that for months and even if Apple called it something else folks would still call it "iPhone." It seems to be much more than a mere phone or smartphone.
Clearly, it's the best iPod they've ever made, given the complete integration of album art, wide screen video, and a touch screen interface. It also is a stunning restatement of the PDA (which they invented with the Newton). The gesture-based interface is elegant and the thing seems to have great built-in intelligence when switching screen rotation, cutting off the touch screen to talk on the phone, etc. Building it on OS X was brilliant, too, since it's clearly going to be a software platform (whether it gets used as a game device or a personal organizer remains to be seen, but I'm betting on both).
Price-wise, it costs the same as the original 5GB iPod, yet does so much more. It's half the price of the original Newton, and beats it hands down. And it's price-competitive with other smartphones.
I predict it will be a runaway smash, just like the original iPod and unlike the original Newton. This is the device I have wanted ever since I saw Spock's tricorder for the first time. I'm just sorry they didn't call it a tricorder, as it clearly has three functions!
I predict the use of bootcamp to boot winXP on a mac will kill the Mac OS in one year.
Much smarter people than you have been predicting Apple's (or the Mac's) demise for 30 years. And I doubt seriously that you are any more correc than they were.
However, I'm willing to throw in a prediction of my own: We're seeing the beginning of the end for Microsoft's dominance of the industry. In 5 years their market share will have dropped 50%.
We were born around 1987-88 - The big thing that happened when we were kids was the Internet exploding to power.
Actually, I'm 46 next month, born in 1961. I just happen to be one of the "first wave" that "get it." Some of us were surfing bulletin boards before the 'net was opened to the general public.
But you're right, of course, re: DMCA. Both sides of the aisle are trying to lock us up (digitally speaking). I guess we just have to be smart enough to stay one step ahead of them. (Shouldn't be hard)
When they figure out Napster, we invent Gnutella. When they figure that out, we move to torrents. They are doomed to always play catch-up because WE'RE THE ONES DESIGNING THIS SHIT.
On the contrary - Hitchcock would disagree with your view. He knew that the way you build suspense is by KNOWING that there is little time and the heroine (or hero) still has to wade through all the same everyday steps that the rest of us do.
If Hitch were still making movies, I bet they would use computers accurately, if they were central to the plot. He'd have the suspense build and build as the hero has to wade through all the screens, then showing the clock in the task bar as the time ticks away and the sweat trickles down the hero's forehead. He's running out of time and he knows it. He finally gets to the right file, tries to open it, but it's password protected. He has to remember some inane word that is central to the plot to get the file unlocked! He finally gets the file open, but just as he's copying what he needs to his own disk, the guard tries the door and he is discovered!
See what I mean? You CAN plot something realistically and still tell a good story.
The true ugliness of this DRM debate is this: (warning, DMCA example follows!)
The media companies got the DMCA pushed through and now we are prohibited, say, from snipping a portion of a DVD movie for a film class review of said movie. We can't review the movie and use portions to support our position that the plot sucks or is derivative, or the film is poorly acted. We can't use it in a review classroom to show what TO do or what NOT to do except by showing the actual work (and don't show the WHOLE thing to a classroom or you're violating the copyrights).
However, the media companies PROVIDE clips to "official" journalists/reviewers (Ebert & Roper, et al) in order to drive traffic to the movie. And they show us clips on our cable systems' "on demand" menu, or on the internet or before ANOTHER film to drive traffic to the movie.
Folks, I'm hoping that now that the Congress has changed hands, we can get this stupid law repealed or majorly revised. We're nothing but "traffic" to these media giants, we're the Eloi for them to feed on. We're nothing but cattle and they treat us with all the respect we'd give to a cow.
I'm NOT for flagrantly disregarding copyright. I AM for fair use. Would Shakespeare, John Milton, or Arthur Miller have been as popular as they were if their publishers had prohibited the study and review of their works by pointing the finger of theft at English professors and students?
Rather than gripe here, write your elected officials and let them know that you object to the provisions of the DMCA. Read the DMCA and quote specifics to your representatives. Give examples pulled from reality.
The way to fight this isn't to just gripe and then copy music or movies as you like. It's to attack this thing legally.
I was lucky enough to meet Commodore Hopper at an ACM event in Kansas City back in the 80's. She's a wonderful speaker and told stories about the creation of COBOL and other early computing tales. I wasn't aware she was still with us.
You shouldn't want to run that stuff anyways. If you wanna run proprietary software, go run Windows, or buy a Mac.
I run both a Mac and an Ubuntu box. For me it's a "unix is better than Windows" issue, not a "proprietary vs. free software issue"
That said, I agree that the linux community is under threat, and that this latest blunder by Novell is going to wind up being something they (and we) regret.
However, since we're all pretty sure that there isn't any infringement, I'm not all that worried. Even (worst case) if there IS some code cross-over, the OSF community will remove the offending code and re-code it. While I understand what Microsoft and SCO are trying to do, I believe that linux (and FreeBSD etc.) have way too much momentum behind them at this point to be stopped.
Am I the only one that thinks he's an idiot for trying to construct ANY fusion device under his parent's house? Geez, what if he'd created a fusion reaction that was larger than he could contain?
Amen, brother. I got so tired of fixing my Dad's Windows machine from all the spyware and viruses (despite having both AdAware, Spybot, and McAfee Anti-virus) that I switched him to Linux (Ubuntu, to be precise).
He loves it. He's had fewer crashes and problems ever since and is amazed at the amount of FREE software that's available.
As for myself, I use a Mac for the same reason: It just works. I am one of the rare minority that used Windows at work for years (from V 2.1 to Win2k) and went home every night to my Mac. And I'm not a dummy, I designed web sites and used ColdFusion and SQL for the backend.
I just found that at home, I didn't want to continously do tech support. So I own a Mac.
This isn't a new idea, but I like the expansion of the concept into a full, on-going "melody". The Mac's startup tone is actually a diagnositic tone. If all is well, it plays a Middle C chord, but if anything doesn't pass the self test, the tone reflects a problem. ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chime_(Macintos h)rel=url2html-32130http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C hime_(Macintosh)>When this happens, it's called "Chimes of death" or "chimes of doom."
Slashdot Mirror
If Wil himself replying to a review of his book on \. doesn't PROVE he's just like us, I don't know what does.
Hypercard has been (sort of) given a second life as Applescript Studio, since Applescript is basically Hypertalk in the first place. The difference being that now you can write real applications instead of "stacks."
- dead-at-23.html
I mourn the loss of AW. It's been a good friend and true for 20+ years. It deserved a better obituary than what Apple gave it after all those years of service: http://nitewing98.blogspot.com/2007/08/appleworks
Having taken the CS route, I recommend it. It really depends on whether you're more interested in computers or business. The IT route is more geared toward making good business decisions, not good computing decisions, which are sometimes mutually exclusive.
It's mostly a matter of personal preference.
Ihbtubajon wrote:
If I write a piece of code that helps my employer do something, I get paid for the amount of time I worked on it. I don't get paid every time my company sells the software, and every time they re-use the code, forever and ever amen.
Maybe what that says is that programmers need a union. Look, personally I'm for open source coding, but perhaps if coders got organized, the larger software houses wouldn't take what you write, patent it, and then use that against the open source community. Perhaps the solution is for everyone to retain the rights to what they code.
I see this as simply history repeating itself. The war in Iraq is Vietnam II and this whole Gonzales/US Attorney issue is just Watergate II. I can't believe that the Republican voters intended this when they voted for Bush/Cheney.
Bush has tried to remake the Executive branch in ways that the Founding Fathers would find reprehensible and vile. He should be impeachable for that, if nothing else. He swore to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights and has done nothing but weaken them.
He's also weakened the country militarily by maintaining this stupid Iraq war. What if we had to defend ourselves on our own soil? How much troop strength could we muster?
Bush has done more to hurt than help America.
Whether we should have voted for Kerry last election isn't the issue. The real issue is why, when Gore won the popular vote in 2000, did we end up with Bush stealing the White House RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES.
He stole the election and we've been paying for it ever since. I'm going to be glad to vote him out next year. Assuming he doesn't declare himself "dictator for life."
Great now we can blow up laptops by remote control! What a great joke to play on your friends! Wait until they *THINK* their laptop battery is low, then refill it wirelessly and watch the fun (and flames) begin!
Oops, I meant Joseph McCarthy...I always do that...I guess I just like the name "Eugene" better for a villian.
..I'd sleep pretty well tonight, after reading this. It's apparent that this guy is a shill for the RIAA (wonder what size kickback he's getting?) who hasn't got the ability to b*llsh*t effectively.
The RIAA is making Eugene McCarthy look like an amateur..."I have here a list of 200 P2P users..."
"What a ma-ROON!"
-- Bugs Bunny
Obviously DRM proponents never learned "This is the House that Jack Built" or "There was an Old Lady that Swallowed a Spider" when they were kids.
I'm a diabetic, and there's been suspicion for some time that potatoes may have a link to pancreas problems and type II diabetes.
Maybe we shouldn't eat so many french fries (oh, excuse me, "freedom" fries...)
Oddly enough, I just re-read "Flowers for Algernon." I've been re-reading "The Hugo Winners, Vol 1 & 2" and it's in there, if anyone is looking for it.
Remembering when Steve left the first time and what Microsoft has been like without Bill Gates, I would say that Apple HAS a future without Jobs, but it will be an "alternate" future.
Unless Steve hand-picks a protege who has vision and isn't afraid to express it, Apple will lose its will to live when Steve leaves/dies.
Personally, I'd prefer to see Steve hire someone from the Open Source community when the time comes, not because I think Apple needs to open source more software, but because what Apple will need in those straits is the kind of maverick independence and free-thinking that is the life's blood of the OSFS movement.
What's differentiated Apple from other companies is the hacker spirit and vision, the ability to say "we're small and maneuverable, and we CAN do some amazing stuff where other companies would be hamstrung by bureaucracy," and then going ahead and DOING it.
Lets face it, most cell phones are terrible attempts to do more than they're really good at. What I saw today with the iPhone was a 21st Century device for the first time. It seems they've redesigned and rethought almost everything about the iPod, the PDA, and the cell phone and built it from the ground up as a new device. I'm not sure the iPhone name is a very good name, despite the fact that everyone's called it that for months and even if Apple called it something else folks would still call it "iPhone." It seems to be much more than a mere phone or smartphone.
Clearly, it's the best iPod they've ever made, given the complete integration of album art, wide screen video, and a touch screen interface. It also is a stunning restatement of the PDA (which they invented with the Newton). The gesture-based interface is elegant and the thing seems to have great built-in intelligence when switching screen rotation, cutting off the touch screen to talk on the phone, etc. Building it on OS X was brilliant, too, since it's clearly going to be a software platform (whether it gets used as a game device or a personal organizer remains to be seen, but I'm betting on both).
Price-wise, it costs the same as the original 5GB iPod, yet does so much more. It's half the price of the original Newton, and beats it hands down. And it's price-competitive with other smartphones.
I predict it will be a runaway smash, just like the original iPod and unlike the original Newton. This is the device I have wanted ever since I saw Spock's tricorder for the first time. I'm just sorry they didn't call it a tricorder, as it clearly has three functions!
I predict the use of bootcamp to boot winXP on a mac will kill the Mac OS in one year.
Much smarter people than you have been predicting Apple's (or the Mac's) demise for 30 years. And I doubt seriously that you are any more correc than they were.
However, I'm willing to throw in a prediction of my own: We're seeing the beginning of the end for Microsoft's dominance of the industry. In 5 years their market share will have dropped 50%.
We were born around 1987-88 - The big thing that happened when we were kids was the Internet exploding to power.
Actually, I'm 46 next month, born in 1961. I just happen to be one of the "first wave" that "get it." Some of us were surfing bulletin boards before the 'net was opened to the general public.
But you're right, of course, re: DMCA. Both sides of the aisle are trying to lock us up (digitally speaking). I guess we just have to be smart enough to stay one step ahead of them. (Shouldn't be hard)
When they figure out Napster, we invent Gnutella. When they figure that out, we move to torrents. They are doomed to always play catch-up because WE'RE THE ONES DESIGNING THIS SHIT.
(heh heh).
On the contrary - Hitchcock would disagree with your view. He knew that the way you build suspense is by KNOWING that there is little time and the heroine (or hero) still has to wade through all the same everyday steps that the rest of us do.
If Hitch were still making movies, I bet they would use computers accurately, if they were central to the plot. He'd have the suspense build and build as the hero has to wade through all the screens, then showing the clock in the task bar as the time ticks away and the sweat trickles down the hero's forehead. He's running out of time and he knows it. He finally gets to the right file, tries to open it, but it's password protected. He has to remember some inane word that is central to the plot to get the file unlocked! He finally gets the file open, but just as he's copying what he needs to his own disk, the guard tries the door and he is discovered!
See what I mean? You CAN plot something realistically and still tell a good story.
The true ugliness of this DRM debate is this: (warning, DMCA example follows!)
The media companies got the DMCA pushed through and now we are prohibited, say, from snipping a portion of a DVD movie for a film class review of said movie. We can't review the movie and use portions to support our position that the plot sucks or is derivative, or the film is poorly acted. We can't use it in a review classroom to show what TO do or what NOT to do except by showing the actual work (and don't show the WHOLE thing to a classroom or you're violating the copyrights).
However, the media companies PROVIDE clips to "official" journalists/reviewers (Ebert & Roper, et al) in order to drive traffic to the movie. And they show us clips on our cable systems' "on demand" menu, or on the internet or before ANOTHER film to drive traffic to the movie.
Folks, I'm hoping that now that the Congress has changed hands, we can get this stupid law repealed or majorly revised. We're nothing but "traffic" to these media giants, we're the Eloi for them to feed on. We're nothing but cattle and they treat us with all the respect we'd give to a cow.
I'm NOT for flagrantly disregarding copyright. I AM for fair use. Would Shakespeare, John Milton, or Arthur Miller have been as popular as they were if their publishers had prohibited the study and review of their works by pointing the finger of theft at English professors and students?
Rather than gripe here, write your elected officials and let them know that you object to the provisions of the DMCA. Read the DMCA and quote specifics to your representatives. Give examples pulled from reality.
The way to fight this isn't to just gripe and then copy music or movies as you like. It's to attack this thing legally.
Where have YOU been? Hal hasn't been a GL for some time. In fact, last I checked, he was the new Spectre, replacing Jim Corrigan.
(sigh) I miss the old GL corps...and the Guardians...
I was lucky enough to meet Commodore Hopper at an ACM event in Kansas City back in the 80's. She's a wonderful speaker and told stories about the creation of COBOL and other early computing tales. I wasn't aware she was still with us.
Happy Birthday, Grace!
You shouldn't want to run that stuff anyways. If you wanna run proprietary software, go run Windows, or buy a Mac.
I run both a Mac and an Ubuntu box. For me it's a "unix is better than Windows" issue, not a "proprietary vs. free software issue"
That said, I agree that the linux community is under threat, and that this latest blunder by Novell is going to wind up being something they (and we) regret.
However, since we're all pretty sure that there isn't any infringement, I'm not all that worried. Even (worst case) if there IS some code cross-over, the OSF community will remove the offending code and re-code it. While I understand what Microsoft and SCO are trying to do, I believe that linux (and FreeBSD etc.) have way too much momentum behind them at this point to be stopped.
Am I the only one that thinks he's an idiot for trying to construct ANY fusion device under his parent's house? Geez, what if he'd created a fusion reaction that was larger than he could contain?
Who does he think he is, Elroy Jetson?
Amen, brother. I got so tired of fixing my Dad's Windows machine from all the spyware and viruses (despite having both AdAware, Spybot, and McAfee Anti-virus) that I switched him to Linux (Ubuntu, to be precise).
He loves it. He's had fewer crashes and problems ever since and is amazed at the amount of FREE software that's available.
As for myself, I use a Mac for the same reason: It just works. I am one of the rare minority that used Windows at work for years (from V 2.1 to Win2k) and went home every night to my Mac. And I'm not a dummy, I designed web sites and used ColdFusion and SQL for the backend.
I just found that at home, I didn't want to continously do tech support. So I own a Mac.
This isn't a new idea, but I like the expansion of the concept into a full, on-going "melody". The Mac's startup tone is actually a diagnositic tone. If all is well, it plays a Middle C chord, but if anything doesn't pass the self test, the tone reflects a problem. ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chime_(Macintos h)rel=url2html-32130http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C hime_(Macintosh)>When this happens, it's called "Chimes of death" or "chimes of doom."