Why so generous? There were UI's that tried to strech real world metaphors as far as Bob did. They also crashed and burned is why you don't remember them. The UI for some *really* early IBM stuff (like late 70's early 80's) was basically like that. It never got far. Graphically simpler b/c of less advanced computers, but the same basic ideas. And let's not forget the much-touted but rather forgettable MagicCap UI that General Magic developed for PDAs a little before Bob. (Very similar, grey scale and somewhat better looking)
Also IE was (I've been told) originally just a licensed and rebranded copy of Spyglass Mosiac (which means that it was basically NCSA Mosaic). Rumor also has it that Spyglass got utterly shafted on the deal, not expecting MS to give it away for free.
Don't worry too much about that. To many Americans the idea is absolutely crazy too. Hell, the founding fathers probably would have thought that anyone who told them that was joking.
Now the trick is, to get things back the way they were, wrt to the status of corporations.
I saw a speech Kay (and Engelbart - woo hoo!) gave this winter. Kay said that what he had developed was actually this:
For people who were typing, there was a standard keyboard. When you needed to mouse, you also moved your non-mouse hand onto a chording keyboard so that you could continue to get some stuff done, but once you finished your mousing, both hands go back to the real keyboard.
Of course, he didn't USE the mouse as much as it gets used today - at least that was my impression. If he had, he might not have kept bothering with it.
You bet. Re: Ethernet, IIRC (it's been a long time since I read up on this last), it was developed largely from work that had been done on Hawaii's ALOHANET. There they were trying to network computers with radio while they were borrowing on work on the ARPANET, they just didn't think that it would work b/c of something to do with the packet collisions. Metcalfe took it a little further and it has eventually turned into a pretty damn good networking system.
I agree that Katz is out of line wrt his book, while the WP is not. HOWEVER, the comments are not Public Domain. Nothing, for better or worse, is p.d. unless the author explicitly says so - which is generally not the case on/. - or the copyright expires, which could be as soon as 2070 IIRC.
But this doesn't mean that it's good that the comments and lots of other content, are copyrighted at all, much less for such long lengths of time.
Of course it's also very likely that Time, which is owned by Time/Warner (soon to be owned by AOL, which will be one of the only 5 companies on the planet by 2012 at the rate we're going) has an interest in portraying Napster in a negative light: Time/Warner is one of the Big 5 record labels.
(Who, you'll remember, just settled with the FTC over illegally fixing the prices of CDs too high. So they are not inspiring confidence in me just now)
I don't believe that objective reporting is common. I *really* don't believe that it's possible for media that contain 3rd party ads or who are not independently owned 99.44% of the time
So I don't really trust Time to fairly report on Napster at all. Traditional or not.
I'd say it depends on your religious beliefs. If you're a pantheist and don't believe in or you don't show special favor to the Jewish/Christian/Moslem god, you probably wouldn't want to deliberately capitalize the g.
Or you might be lazy.
Or there might be other reasons.
But it's not a real rule of grammar that you have to do that. It's common, but it's fundementally a religious thing.
Not ending sentences with prepositions is another false grammar rule. Only insanely tight-assed people care. And they're not so important;)
(you can trust me - I was a (lazy) English major in college)
Just as a note re: your web page there, IIRC Mosaic was not the first graphical or GUI web browser. The first web browser, World Wide Web (written by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXT in '89). What was interesting about Mosaic was that it ran on generic Unix boxen, as well as Macs and Windows and that the graphics were inlined. (Before they had appeared in seperate windows from the regular page)
Netscape was written by most (?) of the NCSA Mosaic programmers. IE was based on Spyglass Mosaic in a business deal where MS royally screwed Spyglass.
From Seattle? Only if your library card is 'Bill Gates' I'm sure. But you might want to try the libraries in Scotland. I'm sure you've got one or two...
Alternatively, attend Boston University for a few years (The Big U is loosely based on BU, Stephenson's alma mater and a very urban school) and you can just live it.;)
On the other hand, if this is going to degenerate into Usenet, I'd like a copy of Neil Stephenson's The Big-U posted to a thread.
Aw, The Big U isn't _that_ good. And it follows the Neal formula (a whole bunch of crap happens, a lot of which is for atmosphere, some of which is based on one lone idea -- e.g. What if biotech could be used to clean the Harbor; What if there were viruses that could infect the mind; What if there were pervasive nanotech; What if there was Nazi gold still hanging around)
Although I was amused by the two roommates that constantly fight over music.
Anyway, if you're really interested take a tip from Neal: Use the Interlibrary Loan program. It worked great for me in the Seattle area.
What really sucks is that the street they're on is actually 156th Ave NE.
But it is rather telling. I used to support nuking them from orbit (the only way to be sure) but unfortunately I now live _way_ too close to MS HQ. All my stuff would get blown up.
The other really good computer company address that I know of is Apple: 1 Infinite Loop.
I agree with leaving links up. Additionally the pages that discuss how to remove the EULA from the document are also A-OK. There's no law that says that you have to agree to the license. If it's been published (I'd say it has) then you're bound by copyright law - anything else is optional. Information on how to read parts of it and avoid other parts is fine.
And IANAL but is it not eligable for significant copyright protections if it's not published? Which would have to be the case for the EULA to really stand up.
It's very disturbing to see people (well, almost always it's big corporations, not people at all) attempt to use copyrights to their benefit, but also skirt around the requirement that it be published and that they submit to the rule of first sale (where the copyright owner cannot control the sale, use or ownership of the material after selling a copy himself - it's what keeps used bookstores in business, and is generally a good idea)
As for the posts actually containg the document, I am undecided. Just my 2 cents
I dunno - I thought that the N64 controllers were awful until I actually used it. Then I discovered that while it's butt ugly and has too many usless buttons (no one uses the cross pad anymore, sniff...) it's comfortable as anything.
PSX controllers bug me - the cross is interrupted in the middle, I can never tell the difference between the first set of shoulder buttons and the second, and it's just not as comfortable.
Of course, I like the iMac mouse too, so it just goes to show YMMV.
How could NASA seriously expect a space probe made out of paper to get all the way to Mars and work? They could have at least used cardboard or foamcore or something a bit sturdier.
Sadly some of us get overriden because our wimpy coworkers absolutely MUST have flourescent lights, and complain to our bosses about it. (I've got two perfectly good halogens right here, but there's no point in using them as long as the damn f.l. is on)
And of course Clarke didn't quite get the satellite right either. IIRC he wrote about the idea for geosynchronous orbits before the invention of the transistor - his satellites would have to be manned because someone would have to change the tubes when they burned out;)
Well a lot of the crappiness of radio these days is due to the FCC permitting a handful of companies to own most of the music stations in the country. Thus, they all sound the same because they ARE the same - they play what the head office tells them to play.
While opening up the airwaves for low budget, low power locally owned and operated stations is a good start, it's important IMHO for the FCC to prohibit a single entity from owning more than one tv station and more than one radio station. For a rather scarce commodity (the EM spectrum) to be allocated fairly means giving everyone a chance. (let's not get into the overall crappiness of FM compared to AM though...)
The BBC further reports that due to the not-quite-complete nature of the DNA map, if the current information were to be used to create a human it would have a circular head, a rail-thin body and limbs, no joints, two small dot-like eyes and an irregular number of non-jointed fingers. Doubletwist scientists are unsure as to whether there would be 3 or 4 fingers, if there would be a thumb, and if so it is not expected to be opposable.
IIRC plastic is clear when it's made. It's little clear beads. (maybe the size of a couple grains of rice) The beads are then shipped to whoever is doing something with the plastic, where they are melted down and dyes mixed in if desired. Then the melted plastic is formed into useful stuff, like cartridges.
So clear is probably cheaper until you consider not impurities but the shape. Look closely at an Imac. How many seams do you see where the plastic molds came together? How about the circles left by the injection process? With opaque plastic, this stuff is generally concealed on the inside of the object, where you don't see it. Very hard to do with transparent/translucent plastic.
And you mustn't forget all of the ATMs out there which are called MACs. (I use Evil Bank of America myself, but I doubt there's a significant difference...)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather you didn't. I'm no Microsoftie, but I do live within the minimum safe distance ;)
Why so generous? There were UI's that tried to strech real world metaphors as far as Bob did. They also crashed and burned is why you don't remember them. The UI for some *really* early IBM stuff (like late 70's early 80's) was basically like that. It never got far. Graphically simpler b/c of less advanced computers, but the same basic ideas. And let's not forget the much-touted but rather forgettable MagicCap UI that General Magic developed for PDAs a little before Bob. (Very similar, grey scale and somewhat better looking)
Also IE was (I've been told) originally just a licensed and rebranded copy of Spyglass Mosiac (which means that it was basically NCSA Mosaic). Rumor also has it that Spyglass got utterly shafted on the deal, not expecting MS to give it away for free.
Don't worry too much about that. To many Americans the idea is absolutely crazy too. Hell, the founding fathers probably would have thought that anyone who told them that was joking.
Now the trick is, to get things back the way they were, wrt to the status of corporations.
I saw a speech Kay (and Engelbart - woo hoo!) gave this winter. Kay said that what he had developed was actually this:
For people who were typing, there was a standard keyboard. When you needed to mouse, you also moved your non-mouse hand onto a chording keyboard so that you could continue to get some stuff done, but once you finished your mousing, both hands go back to the real keyboard.
Of course, he didn't USE the mouse as much as it gets used today - at least that was my impression. If he had, he might not have kept bothering with it.
You bet. Re: Ethernet, IIRC (it's been a long time since I read up on this last), it was developed largely from work that had been done on Hawaii's ALOHANET. There they were trying to network computers with radio while they were borrowing on work on the ARPANET, they just didn't think that it would work b/c of something to do with the packet collisions. Metcalfe took it a little further and it has eventually turned into a pretty damn good networking system.
I agree that Katz is out of line wrt his book, while the WP is not. HOWEVER, the comments are not Public Domain. Nothing, for better or worse, is p.d. unless the author explicitly says so - which is generally not the case on /. - or the copyright expires, which could be as soon as 2070 IIRC.
But this doesn't mean that it's good that the comments and lots of other content, are copyrighted at all, much less for such long lengths of time.
Of course it's also very likely that Time, which is owned by Time/Warner (soon to be owned by AOL, which will be one of the only 5 companies on the planet by 2012 at the rate we're going) has an interest in portraying Napster in a negative light: Time/Warner is one of the Big 5 record labels.
(Who, you'll remember, just settled with the FTC over illegally fixing the prices of CDs too high. So they are not inspiring confidence in me just now)
I don't believe that objective reporting is common. I *really* don't believe that it's possible for media that contain 3rd party ads or who are not independently owned 99.44% of the time
So I don't really trust Time to fairly report on Napster at all. Traditional or not.
I'd say it depends on your religious beliefs. If you're a pantheist and don't believe in or you don't show special favor to the Jewish/Christian/Moslem god, you probably wouldn't want to deliberately capitalize the g.
;)
Or you might be lazy.
Or there might be other reasons.
But it's not a real rule of grammar that you have to do that. It's common, but it's fundementally a religious thing.
Not ending sentences with prepositions is another false grammar rule. Only insanely tight-assed people care. And they're not so important
(you can trust me - I was a (lazy) English major in college)
Just as a note re: your web page there, IIRC Mosaic was not the first graphical or GUI web browser. The first web browser, World Wide Web (written by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXT in '89). What was interesting about Mosaic was that it ran on generic Unix boxen, as well as Macs and Windows and that the graphics were inlined. (Before they had appeared in seperate windows from the regular page)
;)
Netscape was written by most (?) of the NCSA Mosaic programmers. IE was based on Spyglass Mosaic in a business deal where MS royally screwed Spyglass.
So there's really not much new under the sun
From Seattle? Only if your library card is 'Bill Gates' I'm sure. But you might want to try the libraries in Scotland. I'm sure you've got one or two...
;)
Alternatively, attend Boston University for a few years (The Big U is loosely based on BU, Stephenson's alma mater and a very urban school) and you can just live it.
Aw, The Big U isn't _that_ good. And it follows the Neal formula (a whole bunch of crap happens, a lot of which is for atmosphere, some of which is based on one lone idea -- e.g. What if biotech could be used to clean the Harbor; What if there were viruses that could infect the mind; What if there were pervasive nanotech; What if there was Nazi gold still hanging around)
Although I was amused by the two roommates that constantly fight over music.
Anyway, if you're really interested take a tip from Neal: Use the Interlibrary Loan program. It worked great for me in the Seattle area.
What really sucks is that the street they're on is actually 156th Ave NE.
But it is rather telling. I used to support nuking them from orbit (the only way to be sure) but unfortunately I now live _way_ too close to MS HQ. All my stuff would get blown up.
The other really good computer company address that I know of is Apple: 1 Infinite Loop.
I agree with leaving links up. Additionally the pages that discuss how to remove the EULA from the document are also A-OK. There's no law that says that you have to agree to the license. If it's been published (I'd say it has) then you're bound by copyright law - anything else is optional. Information on how to read parts of it and avoid other parts is fine.
And IANAL but is it not eligable for significant copyright protections if it's not published? Which would have to be the case for the EULA to really stand up.
It's very disturbing to see people (well, almost always it's big corporations, not people at all) attempt to use copyrights to their benefit, but also skirt around the requirement that it be published and that they submit to the rule of first sale (where the copyright owner cannot control the sale, use or ownership of the material after selling a copy himself - it's what keeps used bookstores in business, and is generally a good idea)
As for the posts actually containg the document, I am undecided. Just my 2 cents
I dunno - I thought that the N64 controllers were awful until I actually used it. Then I discovered that while it's butt ugly and has too many usless buttons (no one uses the cross pad anymore, sniff...) it's comfortable as anything.
PSX controllers bug me - the cross is interrupted in the middle, I can never tell the difference between the first set of shoulder buttons and the second, and it's just not as comfortable.
Of course, I like the iMac mouse too, so it just goes to show YMMV.
How could NASA seriously expect a space probe made out of paper to get all the way to Mars and work? They could have at least used cardboard or foamcore or something a bit sturdier.
Next up, Venus Origami Probe...
Sadly some of us get overriden because our wimpy coworkers absolutely MUST have flourescent lights, and complain to our bosses about it. (I've got two perfectly good halogens right here, but there's no point in using them as long as the damn f.l. is on)
;)
(Worst Quickies Ever
Of course once they destroy New York and LA, we'll all be subjected to living our lives in Kurt Russel movies. The horror!
what if it was so hot that it melted through the cup? (you should read up on the FACTS of the McDonald's coffee case)
And of course Clarke didn't quite get the satellite right either. IIRC he wrote about the idea for geosynchronous orbits before the invention of the transistor - his satellites would have to be manned because someone would have to change the tubes when they burned out ;)
(yes, yes, tubes rock and all that)
Well a lot of the crappiness of radio these days is due to the FCC permitting a handful of companies to own most of the music stations in the country. Thus, they all sound the same because they ARE the same - they play what the head office tells them to play.
While opening up the airwaves for low budget, low power locally owned and operated stations is a good start, it's important IMHO for the FCC to prohibit a single entity from owning more than one tv station and more than one radio station. For a rather scarce commodity (the EM spectrum) to be allocated fairly means giving everyone a chance. (let's not get into the overall crappiness of FM compared to AM though...)
LOL. I had been trying to describe a stick figure, as it's a rough draft of a human itself....
The BBC further reports that due to the not-quite-complete nature of the DNA map, if the current information were to be used to create a human it would have a circular head, a rail-thin body and limbs, no joints, two small dot-like eyes and an irregular number of non-jointed fingers. Doubletwist scientists are unsure as to whether there would be 3 or 4 fingers, if there would be a thumb, and if so it is not expected to be opposable.
IIRC plastic is clear when it's made. It's little clear beads. (maybe the size of a couple grains of rice) The beads are then shipped to whoever is doing something with the plastic, where they are melted down and dyes mixed in if desired. Then the melted plastic is formed into useful stuff, like cartridges.
So clear is probably cheaper until you consider not impurities but the shape. Look closely at an Imac. How many seams do you see where the plastic molds came together? How about the circles left by the injection process? With opaque plastic, this stuff is generally concealed on the inside of the object, where you don't see it. Very hard to do with transparent/translucent plastic.
And you mustn't forget all of the ATMs out there which are called MACs. (I use Evil Bank of America myself, but I doubt there's a significant difference...)
This is all well and good, but how long until someone maliciously puts out a translator that mistranslates.... ;)