I don't think that Steve Jobs would nod to the PC even if it deserved it - and especially not back then. I mean - compare the XT to the mac of the day...
Because you can't trademark a generic word (like next) unless you fuck with the capitalization. Because then it's not just the word- it's YOUR(tm) word.
You say: Gosh, thanks, I've been doing OO programming in four or five different languages for more than a decade; I don't know how I missed this subclassing thing until now.
But you don't mention replacing parts or entire classes wholesale - which is very important, especially WRT not shipping source. The biggest complaint for C++ libraries not having source is that if part of it doesn't work [the way you want], you need source to change it. In Obj-C that just isn't so.
You also say Seriously, I agree that in some cases it was possible to eventually hack around some bugs or issues. But only some bugs are easily amenable to that, and even those are only overridable once you figure out exactly where the bug is. And that only applies to the parts where you're dealing with Objective C development; if it was an issue in their closed custom apps or their custom OS or, in the beginning, their custom hardware, you were yet more screwed. Which, on regular occasions, I was.
But also say I agree that some the technology lives on, but what NeXT was, including a cross-processor OS and a cross-platform development environment with Windows and Unix support
So why not run it on Solaris or Windows? Maybe you did, and that certainly got you around NeXT's "closed OS problems". (hah)
It seems you weren't a NeXT developer or NeXT owner.
NeXT owner since about '90. NeXT employee since about '95. Apple employee from the merger until 2001?
After the merger between Apple and NeXT in early 1997, they promised a release of the new merged OS in early 1998. It was actually the end of Q1 2001 before they got it out the door. In the meantime, NeXT and users developers were pretty much screwed.
The article from uakom isn't very good. "Next"? "First, Next is a major supplier of object-oriented development tools for the Solaris environment"? Well, that had been the hope.
The info from wikipedia is much better: "Apple released Mac OS X Server 1.0, in January 1999."
I agree that some the technology lives on, but what NeXT was, including a cross-processor OS and a cross-platform development environment with Windows and Unix support, died with the Apple merger.
As for x-platform and x-processor support, the existing users and developers being screwwed - yup, they pretty much were. But I'm pretty sure the writing on the wall was "You're Screwed" one way or another. The Solaris deal was going going... and nobody was buying for intel.
What emerged was the the standard Apple we'll-tell-you-what-you-like routine. That seems to work for some people and I'm glad they like it, but it's a small fraction of the potential that NeXT had.
Potential is a wonderful thing. End users and sales are wonderful, too. You have to balance the two of them. Apple has brought what I like to call "OpenStep 6.0" to more users than NeXT ever could.
As for the we'll-tell-you-what-you-like routine - I don't get it. Apple doesn't announce much of anything before it ships, and the flow of dollars seems to speak a lot louder than advertising (see also the/. article on 2000 superbowl commercials).
Well, actually, what the builders of trading systems wanted, at least the ones I worked with, was kits with source code that they could view and change. It was hugely frustrating to be bitten by some annoying bug or limitation, with the only recourse being to call up your sales rep, give him an earful, and hope, generally in vain, for a fix some months later. This was especially fun when the bug or limitation caused problems for traders, some of whom would express their displeasure by five or ten minutes of screaming verbal abuse.
That's what subclassing is all about. And if you can't (for some reason) fix it with subclassing, you can replace methods wholesale at runtime. This is not C++, where the black box can't really be touched - it is objective-c, where you can replace methods or even classes at runtime.
Of course, if you didn't like something, you could always write it yourself.
And really, the focus on high-dollar customers like financial traders was also part of what killed them.
I have to grin when read that statement. If you think NeXT is dead, you haven't looked at Apple recently.
Uh... what? Red Baron, Battlezone, Tempest... Need I go on?
I suspect that tempest was actually entirely 2D (angle and "depth"). I don't remember any object blocking (not seeing something "behind" an object). A matrix or 2 to derive the "height/width" and you're done. Certainly if I were coding something in that era, I would have tried to do it that way...
Worth noting that EQ2 was released just a few weeks before. An established brand that already did MMO, and that it was the most popular one for some time. So, yes, it is worth noting.
That's not the domain I was referring to. Sorry - probably should have said that up front. domeshots.com has no osx/apple refs at all, nor do I link to it from my homepage.
The problem arises when someone's not astute enough to convey their meaning in clear, grammatically correct form. I've a lot less trouble with with 'BRB' than '1337 5p34k', and less with '1337 5p34k' than with stupid grammatical errors, lazy spelling errors and syntactical miscues because someone is too lazy (or, submit lame excuse here) to have learned how to write a coherent passage.
That is an entirely different problem (IMHO). You're complaining that you're not cool enough to pick up on and parse 1337 5p34k. That is a different category of problem than people writing poorly because it is faster or they learned it from chatrooms. The problem you describe is that others are cooler than you are, and you can't keep up, so they should all slow down. It's only going to get worse as [we] get older.
I spend a lot of time with math and science. I have to be able to express myself to my peers, the public and to students. If I were to lapse into the mindset of the "changing, evolving language" and argue that errors were a form of expression, I'd not, generally, be able to do that. Just as we encourage our engineers to be precise in how they represent their designs and analyses, they have to be able to document what they're doing, or what they've done, or their work won't be usable.
If you're failing to understand 1337 5p34k, you are no longer amoung your peers, you're amoung your betters - that's the point. People don't use 1337 5p34k because they don't know better - they use it because they know better than you.
People write y r u lol @ me? because they're lazy - but mostly because computers suck. If computers sucked less, they'd translate that to Why are you laughing [out loud] at me? And if they sucked a lot less, we wouldn't be typing, we'd be talking to them and they'd transcribe the text for us.
My idea (and I'm completely serious, I think this would work if it caught on!) is to get people to use IM and chat room clients that check the grammar and spelling of anything they type, and then refuse to transmit anything that's incorrect. People will over time develop impeccable linguistic skills!
That's the lamest idea I've heard in a while. Computers are supposed to make things easier. Instead of failing
OMW 2 store, then BRB
the computer should expand it to be
I'm on my way to the store, then I'll be right back.
People don't (generally) type shortcuts because they don't know any better - they do it because it is faster and/or they're lazy (notice 3 contractions in that statement). Or they do it because they've learned it from chat rooms. If IRC servers (etc) expanded all these shortcuts, folks would learn correct forms by reading them - which is where they're learning the incorrect forms now.
In short: positive reinforcement is better than negative.
I *think* the problem is that stores still balk if you offer the game online and expect them to stock it on the shelves. Even worse if you sell it directly and hope that amazon, etc, will stock it, too.
Any big chain gamestore will be happy to mail you a box. Depending on your internet connection, it might be faster than it would be to download it...
Even if one just avoids people like that... you still end up playing in one overall league, and that's the power gaming munchkins who squeeze every bit of actual fun out of the gaming experience by very quickly reducing it all to cost/benefit ratios of weapon/spell damage outputs and multipliers, often to the point of converging on a single attack or combo. (Try playing UO without every other bark being "Corp Por")
You can choose to play with those folks or ignore them. There is very very little resource competition in WoW. Really, the best way to go is to find a guild of like-minded folks and stick with them.
To say nothing of the soviet-style queueing up (enough with the soviet russia jokes) at spawn points so that your character may have their standardized ration of fun... tho perhaps that's just EQ.
This is ALMOST never a problem because ALMOST all quest targets are either plentiful or are in an instance dungeon. When it does happen, it can be annoying - but it is the mark of the rarity of the problem in that it annoys me so much the few times it happens.
In those cases, I'd usually just wait until I was logged in at an unpopular time to do that particular quest.
You now have a gold penalty in the form of equipment wear when you die (at least that's how I read it in the forums). Not that it's much, mind you, but it's not nothing.
5. You can just add an SPF record for your IP address and you're set.
And a falsehood: SPF doesn't tag spam, and has nothing to do with it. It just makes it impossible to fake a sender address from a domain with proper SPF records.
You missed the part about millions/billions of people using it and making a boatload of money. While that may not be interesting to you, it is a key point of the argument.
You're a student. You've accumulated less than a decade? worth of useful data. Depending on what that data is (scientific data hard to reproduce, personal writing (books/plays), scientific data easy to reproduce, or highscores on minesweeper), that data may have a $ value from 0 to maybe 10s of thousands of dollars (which means time). Small companies that have been in business for just a few years can have data that is worth millions of dollars. Ask your nearest bio prof. how much their personal genetic testing database is worth in time, effort, and money.
Second, I quickly took the hard drives out of my two laptops (and the external drive I have), picked up a GSM roaming phone, any cash I had, a passport and two pairs of clothes... We were worried for our lives and whether we had water or not, data was not our concern.
The only time I'd really be tempted to issue the big FOAD is if I was leaving the area, and/or the profession. Even then, I'd make it real clear who the FOAD was for, who it was not for, why I was stating it, etc.
I have ALWAYS insisted on an exit interview, and one time I was not real nice - another time I was very clear to HR that I would never ever work for so and so ever again.
If you go for the FOAD, I suggest you do the exit interview first.
Every time they release a new beta (new patch set), the servers go wonky for days. That's the way it is with beta software - and is why they're testing it in beta.
I certainly hope they are planning on using the current beta as the stress test. The servers are now fairly stable.
Re:Myth: IT Journalists Never Run Out Of Ideas...
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, the parent article was almost total crap. Most of the "busted myths" were not backed up at all - the biggest exception being the "most projects are failures" one (which I have my doubts about).
I mean "80% of corporate data is held on mainframes" isn't true because of all the data in excel spreadsheets and email? Send one email message with one excel spreadsheet to everyone on the company, and that instantly dwarfs the storage of the database you got the spreadsheet data from - but I don't think that means you have more data off the server than on (never mind that all the email is actually stored on another server and just cached locally).
I remember when infoworld was somewhat interesting and useful. Is it all just crap now?
Re:No...the biggest myth is:
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
I give you 2 choices: 1. You're a moron for working for a moron. 2. You're a moron for not lying to your moron boss.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that Steve Jobs would nod to the PC even if it deserved it - and especially not back then. I mean - compare the XT to the mac of the day...
Because you can't trademark a generic word (like next) unless you fuck with the capitalization. Because then it's not just the word- it's YOUR(tm) word.
You say:
... and nobody was buying for intel.
/. article on 2000 superbowl commercials).
Gosh, thanks, I've been doing OO programming in four or five different languages for more than a decade; I don't know how I missed this subclassing thing until now.
But you don't mention replacing parts or entire classes wholesale - which is very important, especially WRT not shipping source. The biggest complaint for C++ libraries not having source is that if part of it doesn't work [the way you want], you need source to change it. In Obj-C that just isn't so.
You also say
Seriously, I agree that in some cases it was possible to eventually hack around some bugs or issues. But only some bugs are easily amenable to that, and even those are only overridable once you figure out exactly where the bug is. And that only applies to the parts where you're dealing with Objective C development; if it was an issue in their closed custom apps or their custom OS or, in the beginning, their custom hardware, you were yet more screwed. Which, on regular occasions, I was.
But also say
I agree that some the technology lives on, but what NeXT was, including a cross-processor OS and a cross-platform development environment with Windows and Unix support
So why not run it on Solaris or Windows? Maybe you did, and that certainly got you around NeXT's "closed OS problems". (hah)
It seems you weren't a NeXT developer or NeXT owner.
NeXT owner since about '90. NeXT employee since about '95. Apple employee from the merger until 2001?
After the merger between Apple and NeXT in early 1997, they promised a release of the new merged OS in early 1998. It was actually the end of Q1 2001 before they got it out the door. In the meantime, NeXT and users developers were pretty much screwed.
The article from uakom isn't very good. "Next"? "First, Next is a major supplier of object-oriented development tools for the Solaris environment"? Well, that had been the hope.
The info from wikipedia is much better: "Apple released Mac OS X Server 1.0, in January 1999."
I agree that some the technology lives on, but what NeXT was, including a cross-processor OS and a cross-platform development environment with Windows and Unix support, died with the Apple merger.
As for x-platform and x-processor support, the existing users and developers being screwwed - yup, they pretty much were. But I'm pretty sure the writing on the wall was "You're Screwed" one way or another. The Solaris deal was going going
What emerged was the the standard Apple we'll-tell-you-what-you-like routine. That seems to work for some people and I'm glad they like it, but it's a small fraction of the potential that NeXT had.
Potential is a wonderful thing. End users and sales are wonderful, too. You have to balance the two of them. Apple has brought what I like to call "OpenStep 6.0" to more users than NeXT ever could.
As for the we'll-tell-you-what-you-like routine - I don't get it. Apple doesn't announce much of anything before it ships, and the flow of dollars seems to speak a lot louder than advertising (see also the
Well, actually, what the builders of trading systems wanted, at least the ones I worked with, was kits with source code that they could view and change. It was hugely frustrating to be bitten by some annoying bug or limitation, with the only recourse being to call up your sales rep, give him an earful, and hope, generally in vain, for a fix some months later. This was especially fun when the bug or limitation caused problems for traders, some of whom would express their displeasure by five or ten minutes of screaming verbal abuse.
That's what subclassing is all about. And if you can't (for some reason) fix it with subclassing, you can replace methods wholesale at runtime. This is not C++, where the black box can't really be touched - it is objective-c, where you can replace methods or even classes at runtime.
Of course, if you didn't like something, you could always write it yourself.
And really, the focus on high-dollar customers like financial traders was also part of what killed them.
I have to grin when read that statement. If you think NeXT is dead, you haven't looked at Apple recently.
Uh... what? Red Baron, Battlezone, Tempest... Need I go on?
I suspect that tempest was actually entirely 2D (angle and "depth"). I don't remember any object blocking (not seeing something "behind" an object). A matrix or 2 to derive the "height/width" and you're done. Certainly if I were coding something in that era, I would have tried to do it that way...
Worth noting that EQ2 was released just a few weeks before. An established brand that already did MMO, and that it was the most popular one for some time. So, yes, it is worth noting.
Certainly worth noting that vtun works on OSX, *bsd, and there is always a vtun port to windows in the wings, but it never seems to arrive.
You name OSX and Apple all around your page.
That's not the domain I was referring to. Sorry - probably should have said that up front. domeshots.com has no osx/apple refs at all, nor do I link to it from my homepage.
I think the notion that there are more linux home users than OSX is bogus.
WARNING: totally unscientific (but better than "I think it is so").
The agents listing on my website hits shows the top 15. OSX comes in at about 2%. Linux doesn't even show up.
Home users surf. Home users play. Home users don't seem to use linux much at all.
(yes, I know that client IDs can be spoofed, etc, etc, but the evidence directly visible to me indicates...)
Out of curiosity - what on earth do you need Qpsmtpd attached to apache for?
The problem arises when someone's not astute enough to convey their meaning in clear, grammatically correct form. I've a lot less trouble with with 'BRB' than '1337 5p34k', and less with '1337 5p34k' than with stupid grammatical errors, lazy spelling errors and syntactical miscues because someone is too lazy (or, submit lame excuse here) to have learned how to write a coherent passage.
That is an entirely different problem (IMHO). You're complaining that you're not cool enough to pick up on and parse 1337 5p34k. That is a different category of problem than people writing poorly because it is faster or they learned it from chatrooms. The problem you describe is that others are cooler than you are, and you can't keep up, so they should all slow down. It's only going to get worse as [we] get older.
I spend a lot of time with math and science. I have to be able to express myself to my peers, the public and to students. If I were to lapse into the mindset of the "changing, evolving language" and argue that errors were a form of expression, I'd not, generally, be able to do that. Just as we encourage our engineers to be precise in how they represent their designs and analyses, they have to be able to document what they're doing, or what they've done, or their work won't be usable.
If you're failing to understand 1337 5p34k, you are no longer amoung your peers, you're amoung your betters - that's the point. People don't use 1337 5p34k because they don't know better - they use it because they know better than you.
People write
y r u lol @ me?
because they're lazy - but mostly because computers suck. If computers sucked less, they'd translate that to
Why are you laughing [out loud] at me?
And if they sucked a lot less, we wouldn't be typing, we'd be talking to them and they'd transcribe the text for us.
Doing simple math in your head isn't such a great sign of intelligence. Knowing how to do the math is more important than getting the answer.
Yes, doing math in your head is good brain excercise.
As for tech making the masses ignorant/lazy - I'm pretty sure that has been TV's job for ages.
My idea (and I'm completely serious, I think this would work if it caught on!) is to get people to use IM and chat room clients that check the grammar and spelling of anything they type, and then refuse to transmit anything that's incorrect. People will over time develop impeccable linguistic skills!
That's the lamest idea I've heard in a while. Computers are supposed to make things easier. Instead of failing
OMW 2 store, then BRB
the computer should expand it to be
I'm on my way to the store, then I'll be right back.
People don't (generally) type shortcuts because they don't know any better - they do it because it is faster and/or they're lazy (notice 3 contractions in that statement). Or they do it because they've learned it from chat rooms. If IRC servers (etc) expanded all these shortcuts, folks would learn correct forms by reading them - which is where they're learning the incorrect forms now.
In short: positive reinforcement is better than negative.
I *think* the problem is that stores still balk if you offer the game online and expect them to stock it on the shelves. Even worse if you sell it directly and hope that amazon, etc, will stock it, too.
Any big chain gamestore will be happy to mail you a box. Depending on your internet connection, it might be faster than it would be to download it...
OTOH, this game is a ton of fun, and play is rock-solid. So I guess they released it because they could charge for it and people enjoy playing it.
Even if one just avoids people like that ... you still end up playing in one overall league, and that's the power gaming munchkins who squeeze every bit of actual fun out of the gaming experience by very quickly reducing it all to cost/benefit ratios of weapon/spell damage outputs and multipliers, often to the point of converging on a single attack or combo. (Try playing UO without every other bark being "Corp Por")
... tho perhaps that's just EQ.
You can choose to play with those folks or ignore them. There is very very little resource competition in WoW. Really, the best way to go is to find a guild of like-minded folks and stick with them.
To say nothing of the soviet-style queueing up (enough with the soviet russia jokes) at spawn points so that your character may have their standardized ration of fun
This is ALMOST never a problem because ALMOST all quest targets are either plentiful or are in an instance dungeon. When it does happen, it can be annoying - but it is the mark of the rarity of the problem in that it annoys me so much the few times it happens.
In those cases, I'd usually just wait until I was logged in at an unpopular time to do that particular quest.
The game is rock solid, and has been for months. I've only heard stories about other launches, but they just don't apply.
You now have a gold penalty in the form of equipment wear when you die (at least that's how I read it in the forums). Not that it's much, mind you, but it's not nothing.
You forgot [at least] one:
5. You can just add an SPF record for your IP address and you're set.
And a falsehood:
SPF doesn't tag spam, and has nothing to do with it. It just makes it impossible to fake a sender address from a domain with proper SPF records.
You missed the part about millions/billions of people using it and making a boatload of money. While that may not be interesting to you, it is a key point of the argument.
OK, your life sucks right now, and I'm sorry.
You're a student. You've accumulated less than a decade? worth of useful data. Depending on what that data is (scientific data hard to reproduce, personal writing (books/plays), scientific data easy to reproduce, or highscores on minesweeper), that data may have a $ value from 0 to maybe 10s of thousands of dollars (which means time). Small companies that have been in business for just a few years can have data that is worth millions of dollars. Ask your nearest bio prof. how much their personal genetic testing database is worth in time, effort, and money.
Second,
I quickly took the hard drives out of my two laptops (and the external drive I have), picked up a GSM roaming phone, any cash I had, a passport and two pairs of clothes... We were worried for our lives and whether we had water or not, data was not our concern.
It seems that data was your concern.
The only time I'd really be tempted to issue the big FOAD is if I was leaving the area, and/or the profession. Even then, I'd make it real clear who the FOAD was for, who it was not for, why I was stating it, etc.
I have ALWAYS insisted on an exit interview, and one time I was not real nice - another time I was very clear to HR that I would never ever work for so and so ever again.
If you go for the FOAD, I suggest you do the exit interview first.
Every time they release a new beta (new patch set), the servers go wonky for days. That's the way it is with beta software - and is why they're testing it in beta.
I certainly hope they are planning on using the current beta as the stress test. The servers are now fairly stable.
Yeah, the parent article was almost total crap. Most of the "busted myths" were not backed up at all - the biggest exception being the "most projects are failures" one (which I have my doubts about).
I mean "80% of corporate data is held on mainframes" isn't true because of all the data in excel spreadsheets and email? Send one email message with one excel spreadsheet to everyone on the company, and that instantly dwarfs the storage of the database you got the spreadsheet data from - but I don't think that means you have more data off the server than on (never mind that all the email is actually stored on another server and just cached locally).
I remember when infoworld was somewhat interesting and useful. Is it all just crap now?
I give you 2 choices:
1. You're a moron for working for a moron.
2. You're a moron for not lying to your moron boss.