Although I agree with you on technical grounds, that is, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) should not be considered the first computer because it was not generally programmable, a judge agreed with Iowa State University in the '70s that the ABC was the first electronic digital computer, which Iowa State now trumpets with much fanfare. I was a CS student there, so I know. Is it any wonder why I transferred?:-)
The ABC was, however, the first machine to use binary arithmetic and to use drum memory (I think). So it's a significant development in its own right, but it wasn't a real computer, even if that's what the legal documents say.
Go browse the web for papers by Edsger Dijkstra, Donald Knuth, C.A.R. Hoare, etc.
In particular, see if you can't find Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful". It's a classic.
The writings of these people, and others like them, are more useful and inspiring than those of even ESR or Richard Stallman, and all science fiction pales in comparison.
The ARD also has a form page for submitting comments to the FCC concerning this issue -- it's kind of one giant petition. You can check it out here: http://www.radiodiversity.com/letter.html
Sign it and get rid of all those damn morning shows!
Avid didn't drop Mac. They're just not bringing over ONE NT app over to the Mac. Avid was really dumb with their PR and everybody thought they'd dumped them, but last week or so their CEO put out a public letter apologizing to their Mac customers and announcing nice price cuts for Mac users as penance. And pledging to continue development of existing Mac products.
You seem to be having a problem understanding the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Just because you say something sucks, doesn't mean that it does, in fact, suck. Usually when arguing -- at least, I mean, traditionally, back before they let kindergardeners have internet access -- people supply so-called "justifications", that is, reasoning and evidence to help show that their subjective opinion is indeed objectively correct (although if you get into epistemology, you'll find that objectivity is an elusive goal). Next thing you know, you'll be making an ad hominen attack against Steve Jobs.
Compose a brief email. Use proper grammar and correct spelling. Make good arguments. Tell Steve that MP3s are successful; he'll know this. Tell Steve that MP3s are successful because the CODEC is pretty open (despite its growing pains). Tell Steve that the more open the CODECs that QT uses, the greater the likelihood that QT will catch on, and that this means there's no way in hell that Microsoft will be able to "knife the baby" (read Avie Tevanian's MS v DOJ testimony). Tell Steve that open standards work (he probably knows this by now, hopefully). Tell Steve that it wouldn't be too hard for Apple's programmers to do, since Linux and MacOS X are quite a bit alike. And tell Steve that you'd very much like to work with QT media (it's movies, sure, but it's so much more) on your platform. Because Steve knows that he sells hardware to the people that create the media and that the more people who use QT means that more content producers will create QT media and that means Apple sells more fully-loaded workstations.
When you've proofread your email, you can then send it to: leadership@apple.com
You may not believe it, but when a lot of people write to that email address, Apple responds appropriately. Just don't expect Apple to get QT working on Linux before January; I hear they're pretty busy these days...
Anyone that's ever read Applied Cryptography knows that Bruce Schneier is a smart guy. I have no doubt that Counterpane Systems could work out a secure system for getting donations to the right people.
Right now, I'm listening to Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. I don't really care if I'm listening to a CD or an MP3 or a tape or a record or something new being streamed off a server in Brazil; what I care about is that I can listen to Miles Davis. I'm somewhat concerned that this new protocol forgets that we're talking about art and artists here.
Giving artists money and then having artists produce seems somewhat backward. Now, I know, perhaps this is how Stephen King works; publishers know that Stephen King will write a guaranteed best-seller. But whether Stephen King's novels qualify as art is debatable. Artists pretty much produce what they want, they take risks. And the only way we can figure out if we like their art is if we first experience it. Perhaps, and only perhaps, we'd be willing to pay money in advance for new work by the most established and respected artists, since we're pretty sure we'll like what they produce. There's not much risk to that.
But any new art is a risk. If I asked you to give me $100,000 so I could write my first novel, would you contribute money? I doubt it. But if I wrote it, gave you a copy, and you loved it, would you then be willing to give me a dollar? Probably.
What this protocol seems to imply is that new artists should first give the public a taste of what they've developed so far, and then withhold any more art until s/he has been paid a certain amount. Perhaps this protocol should be called "The Street Pusher Protocol" instead. I think this implies a contract: pay me money and I'll give you more of the same.
Stephen King would survive with such a system, since, and this is probably flamebait but oh well, he writes the same bad novel over and over and over again. But would the ever-restless Miles Davis survive? If Miles Davis had been paid to be a young Dizzy Gillespie, would he have produced the Cool sessions? But let's suppose he did... we gave him money to play the Parker/Gillespie stuff we first heard him play and instead he produced Birth of the Cool. Wouldn't we be kind of pissed off because he didn't fulfill his contract? Would we continue to support him? I don't think so. And that means we'd be without Porgy and Bess, Walkin', Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, and Bitches Brew, all of which were quite different from each other. How supportive of new art is this protocol? What do you think? I'm not too sure it would do the job.
Couple things about NeXT (from what I understand about them):
1. Their Unix is pretty much just NetBSD without X-windows. 2. Their software was/is highly portable. So, to a certain extent, one could argue that Jobs maybe understands that hardware dependence is a bad thing. Still, don't expect Apple to move towards "open" hardware anytime soon (why is x86 hardware more "open"? Just because there are more parts available? It's something I've never understood); Rome wasn't built in a day. 3. While everyone else talked about how high level OOP libraries would change the world, NeXT built 'em. NeXT didn't exactly set the world on fire, but NeXT's customers (eg. USPS) seem satisfied, and most seem like tough customers to please.
The iMac - So you want a workstation. Great. I do, too. I want to be able to put on a bigger monitor and play around with the motherboard and other such things. But most people don't. Most people != Slashdot computer geeks. And if you've ever been a computer lab monitor at a school, you'll know that floppies are a scourge sent from Satan... The iMac makes you start thinking in terms of data centralization, always a good thing.
Jobs is ruthless, yes. Jobs is probably not someone I would want to go mountain climbing with. And Jobs is a visionary. He comes pretty close to being a Romantic Hero (like Young Werther), and no one ever said that's a great thing in and of itself.
Really? I coulda' sworn it was over the HP calculator. But you've got a paper source and a direct quote and I can't remember where I saw the interview, so I'll trust you over my cobwebbed brain. Dankesch:on.
Actually, that kind of annoyed me a little, too. Still, it's mind-boggling when you think of everything he's done, and he's mostly written off. And although the movie made him out to be a good guy, they didn't really say much of anything about his technical innovations. I think that maybe peeved him a little. Credit's due where credit's due.
Ruthless exploiter and brilliant visionary are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm not arguing that Jobs was more than a mediocre techie (although, he was hireable by Atari...). But consider:
Apple - graphics, keyboard, and BASIC PARC - limited GUI, mouse, computing by metaphor NeXT - microkernel, advanced OOP libraries Pixar - digital media done well Apple - iMac - the first viable step towards a network computer
Jobs seems to have a pretty good knack for seeing something cool and then imagining how it could be even cooler, and exploited more fully. He's tried to articulate his ideas and sell people on them. That's what a visionary does, and it's hard to think of anyone else in the computer industry who does it better than Jobs. Contrast Jobs' ventures with Microsoft, which has shown itself to be a purely reactive, paranoid corporation.
To a certain extent, Jobs reminds me of Miles Davis. He's restless, demanding, smart, and temperamental. I love Davis' music but I'm not sure it'd've been easy to be friends with him.
Btw, he's only come of his business skills of late. He's learned those the hard way and I think he's still probably learning. And if he cared so much about business, he'd be worth a lot more than he is now (ie. he gets paid $1/yr. by Apple and he dumped off all but one of his shares of Apple stock long before they rebounded; not that he isn't a billionaire...).
So, y'know, don't want this to be a stereotypical "Macs suck!" thread or anything; this is just how I see things.
Yes, the story is true, although I think you got it mixed up a bit. The deal is that Jobs sold his VW minibus and Woz sold his HP calculator and they used the money to start Apple. Jobs sold Woz's calculator, lied about how much he got for it, and pocketed the difference. I read an interview with Woz last year somewhere on the web where he confirmed this story.
I think that Steve Jobs is a brilliant visionary who honestly wants to create cool stuff (as opposed to Bill Gates who just wants to be rich), but I lost quite a bit of respect for Jobs as a person when I heard about this story.
Bill Gates has said that he's going to give away most of his fortune. $90 billion is a pretty good chunk of change and should be able to affect some change for the better in our world (NOT stuff like giving away Wintels to libraries; more like his donations to those immunization efforts).
Still... It's hard to think of a high profile person who embodies the word "charitable" more than Woz. He's like the Giving Tree.
Also, some people kind of pooh-pooh his technical innovations. Well, last year Microsoft unveiled an imaging technology that was supposed to increase the readability of text on LCD screens dramatically. Believe it or not, Woz invented the same technique just a few years before them. Read it and you will understand why Woz is a genuine wizard.
Anyone who's used it knows that the Metrowerks guys (& gals) are full-blown Gurus. It is not even close to being like Visual Crap++.
Funny that you should bring up the etymology of computer. Mr. Turing used the word in the old "human" sense in his famous paper. Now, computer has come to mean something that's very close to a Universal Turing Machine.
IMHO, hacker is too good of a word to give up. As the computer culture becomes more ubiquitous, the word may yet resume its less notorious meaning among the commoners. The best way to keep it going is to keep using it.
The late mythologist Joseph Campbell, who inspired much of the Star Wars mythology, thought that Star Wars was about two of the oldest and most potent myths in the world: the inherent conflict between man and his machines, and the humanity (or lack) it behind the masks.
"humanity (or lack) it behind the masks"? What does that mean? If you want to understand hack-mode, learn the value of syntax. You throw in names of famous authors, but, judging from your disjointed writing, I find it hard to believe that you've read their work.
Don't you edit? Your article rambled, switching from a standard "compare&contrast" to largely unsupported musings about geeks, virtual reality, and "weblogs" -- a name which has already been taken, by the way.
The Truman Show was obviously based upon Plato's Cave. In the same manner, the premise for The Matrix is really a high-tech version of Descartes' dream argument. Read some of Meditations on a First Philosophy by Mr. Descartes and then maybe write an article about how ancient arguments and ideas are being incorporated into the fabric of contemporary technological life.
And remember, Polonius, that brevity is the sole of wit.
But the point I'm trying to make is that chances are, unless your a nerd, or a geek, or a computer aficionado (oooh, did I spell that right?)
Yes, you did, but "your" is solely a possessive pronoun. You want "you're", the contraction for "you are". Your sentence will compile, but it results in a nasty logic error.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Although I agree with you on technical grounds, that is, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) should not be considered the first computer because it was not generally programmable, a judge agreed with Iowa State University in the '70s that the ABC was the first electronic digital computer, which Iowa State now trumpets with much fanfare. I was a CS student there, so I know. Is it any wonder why I transferred? :-)
The ABC was, however, the first machine to use binary arithmetic and to use drum memory (I think). So it's a significant development in its own right, but it wasn't a real computer, even if that's what the legal documents say.
Jon
Go browse the web for papers by Edsger Dijkstra, Donald Knuth, C.A.R. Hoare, etc.
In particular, see if you can't find Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful". It's a classic.
The writings of these people, and others like them, are more useful and inspiring than those of even ESR or Richard Stallman, and all science fiction pales in comparison.
Jon
The ARD also has a form page for submitting comments to the FCC concerning this issue -- it's kind of one giant petition. You can check it out here:
http://www.radiodiversity.com/letter.html
Sign it and get rid of all those damn morning shows!
Jon
Avid didn't drop Mac. They're just not bringing over ONE NT app over to the Mac. Avid was really dumb with their PR and everybody thought they'd dumped them, but last week or so their CEO put out a public letter apologizing to their Mac customers and announcing nice price cuts for Mac users as penance. And pledging to continue development of existing Mac products.
Jon
You seem to be having a problem understanding the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Just because you say something sucks, doesn't mean that it does, in fact, suck. Usually when arguing -- at least, I mean, traditionally, back before they let kindergardeners have internet access -- people supply so-called "justifications", that is, reasoning and evidence to help show that their subjective opinion is indeed objectively correct (although if you get into epistemology, you'll find that objectivity is an elusive goal). Next thing you know, you'll be making an ad hominen attack against Steve Jobs.
In shorter words, you suck, dumbass.
Jon
Compose a brief email. Use proper grammar and correct spelling. Make good arguments. Tell Steve that MP3s are successful; he'll know this. Tell Steve that MP3s are successful because the CODEC is pretty open (despite its growing pains). Tell Steve that the more open the CODECs that QT uses, the greater the likelihood that QT will catch on, and that this means there's no way in hell that Microsoft will be able to "knife the baby" (read Avie Tevanian's MS v DOJ testimony). Tell Steve that open standards work (he probably knows this by now, hopefully). Tell Steve that it wouldn't be too hard for Apple's programmers to do, since Linux and MacOS X are quite a bit alike. And tell Steve that you'd very much like to work with QT media (it's movies, sure, but it's so much more) on your platform. Because Steve knows that he sells hardware to the people that create the media and that the more people who use QT means that more content producers will create QT media and that means Apple sells more fully-loaded workstations.
When you've proofread your email, you can then send it to: leadership@apple.com
You may not believe it, but when a lot of people write to that email address, Apple responds appropriately. Just don't expect Apple to get QT working on Linux before January; I hear they're pretty busy these days...
Jon
Anyone that's ever read Applied Cryptography knows that Bruce Schneier is a smart guy. I have no doubt that Counterpane Systems could work out a secure system for getting donations to the right people.
Right now, I'm listening to Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. I don't really care if I'm listening to a CD or an MP3 or a tape or a record or something new being streamed off a server in Brazil; what I care about is that I can listen to Miles Davis. I'm somewhat concerned that this new protocol forgets that we're talking about art and artists here.
Giving artists money and then having artists produce seems somewhat backward. Now, I know, perhaps this is how Stephen King works; publishers know that Stephen King will write a guaranteed best-seller. But whether Stephen King's novels qualify as art is debatable. Artists pretty much produce what they want, they take risks. And the only way we can figure out if we like their art is if we first experience it. Perhaps, and only perhaps, we'd be willing to pay money in advance for new work by the most established and respected artists, since we're pretty sure we'll like what they produce. There's not much risk to that.
But any new art is a risk. If I asked you to give me $100,000 so I could write my first novel, would you contribute money? I doubt it. But if I wrote it, gave you a copy, and you loved it, would you then be willing to give me a dollar? Probably.
What this protocol seems to imply is that new artists should first give the public a taste of what they've developed so far, and then withhold any more art until s/he has been paid a certain amount. Perhaps this protocol should be called "The Street Pusher Protocol" instead. I think this implies a contract: pay me money and I'll give you more of the same.
Stephen King would survive with such a system, since, and this is probably flamebait but oh well, he writes the same bad novel over and over and over again. But would the ever-restless Miles Davis survive? If Miles Davis had been paid to be a young Dizzy Gillespie, would he have produced the Cool sessions? But let's suppose he did... we gave him money to play the Parker/Gillespie stuff we first heard him play and instead he produced Birth of the Cool. Wouldn't we be kind of pissed off because he didn't fulfill his contract? Would we continue to support him? I don't think so. And that means we'd be without Porgy and Bess, Walkin', Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, and Bitches Brew, all of which were quite different from each other. How supportive of new art is this protocol? What do you think? I'm not too sure it would do the job.
Jon
How ya' like that mutton there?
Better make sure you're in your cave by dawn. Wouldn't want ya' to turn to stone, you TROLL!
Couple things about NeXT (from what I understand about them):
1. Their Unix is pretty much just NetBSD without X-windows.
2. Their software was/is highly portable. So, to a certain extent, one could argue that Jobs maybe understands that hardware dependence is a bad thing. Still, don't expect Apple to move towards "open" hardware anytime soon (why is x86 hardware more "open"? Just because there are more parts available? It's something I've never understood); Rome wasn't built in a day.
3. While everyone else talked about how high level OOP libraries would change the world, NeXT built 'em. NeXT didn't exactly set the world on fire, but NeXT's customers (eg. USPS) seem satisfied, and most seem like tough customers to please.
The iMac - So you want a workstation. Great. I do, too. I want to be able to put on a bigger monitor and play around with the motherboard and other such things. But most people don't. Most people != Slashdot computer geeks. And if you've ever been a computer lab monitor at a school, you'll know that floppies are a scourge sent from Satan... The iMac makes you start thinking in terms of data centralization, always a good thing.
Jobs is ruthless, yes. Jobs is probably not someone I would want to go mountain climbing with. And Jobs is a visionary. He comes pretty close to being a Romantic Hero (like Young Werther), and no one ever said that's a great thing in and of itself.
Jon
Really? I coulda' sworn it was over the HP calculator. But you've got a paper source and a direct quote and I can't remember where I saw the interview, so I'll trust you over my cobwebbed brain. Dankesch:on.
Jon
Actually, that kind of annoyed me a little, too. Still, it's mind-boggling when you think of everything he's done, and he's mostly written off. And although the movie made him out to be a good guy, they didn't really say much of anything about his technical innovations. I think that maybe peeved him a little. Credit's due where credit's due.
Jon
Ruthless exploiter and brilliant visionary are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm not arguing that Jobs was more than a mediocre techie (although, he was hireable by Atari...). But consider:
Apple - graphics, keyboard, and BASIC
PARC - limited GUI, mouse, computing by metaphor
NeXT - microkernel, advanced OOP libraries
Pixar - digital media done well
Apple - iMac - the first viable step towards a network computer
Jobs seems to have a pretty good knack for seeing something cool and then imagining how it could be even cooler, and exploited more fully. He's tried to articulate his ideas and sell people on them. That's what a visionary does, and it's hard to think of anyone else in the computer industry who does it better than Jobs. Contrast Jobs' ventures with Microsoft, which has shown itself to be a purely reactive, paranoid corporation.
To a certain extent, Jobs reminds me of Miles Davis. He's restless, demanding, smart, and temperamental. I love Davis' music but I'm not sure it'd've been easy to be friends with him.
Btw, he's only come of his business skills of late. He's learned those the hard way and I think he's still probably learning. And if he cared so much about business, he'd be worth a lot more than he is now (ie. he gets paid $1/yr. by Apple and he dumped off all but one of his shares of Apple stock long before they rebounded; not that he isn't a billionaire...).
So, y'know, don't want this to be a stereotypical "Macs suck!" thread or anything; this is just how I see things.
Jon
Yes, the story is true, although I think you got it mixed up a bit. The deal is that Jobs sold his VW minibus and Woz sold his HP calculator and they used the money to start Apple. Jobs sold Woz's calculator, lied about how much he got for it, and pocketed the difference. I read an interview with Woz last year somewhere on the web where he confirmed this story.
I think that Steve Jobs is a brilliant visionary who honestly wants to create cool stuff (as opposed to Bill Gates who just wants to be rich), but I lost quite a bit of respect for Jobs as a person when I heard about this story.
Jon
Bill Gates has said that he's going to give away most of his fortune. $90 billion is a pretty good chunk of change and should be able to affect some change for the better in our world (NOT stuff like giving away Wintels to libraries; more like his donations to those immunization efforts).
Still... It's hard to think of a high profile person who embodies the word "charitable" more than Woz. He's like the Giving Tree.
Also, some people kind of pooh-pooh his technical innovations. Well, last year Microsoft unveiled an imaging technology that was supposed to increase the readability of text on LCD screens dramatically. Believe it or not, Woz invented the same technique just a few years before them. Read it and you will understand why Woz is a genuine wizard.
http://grc.com/cleartype.htm
Jon
CodeWarrior was ported to Windows from the Mac.
Anyone who's used it knows that the Metrowerks guys (& gals) are full-blown Gurus. It is not even close to being like Visual Crap++.
Funny that you should bring up the etymology of computer. Mr. Turing used the word in the old "human" sense in his famous paper. Now, computer has come to mean something that's very close to a Universal Turing Machine.
IMHO, hacker is too good of a word to give up. As the computer culture becomes more ubiquitous, the word may yet resume its less notorious meaning among the commoners. The best way to keep it going is to keep using it.
Jon
The late mythologist Joseph Campbell, who inspired much of the Star Wars mythology, thought that Star Wars was about two of the oldest and most potent myths in the world: the inherent conflict between man and his machines, and the humanity (or lack) it behind the masks.
"humanity (or lack) it behind the masks"? What does that mean? If you want to understand hack-mode, learn the value of syntax. You throw in names of famous authors, but, judging from your disjointed writing, I find it hard to believe that you've read their work.
Don't you edit? Your article rambled, switching from a standard "compare&contrast" to largely unsupported musings about geeks, virtual reality, and "weblogs" -- a name which has already been taken, by the way.
The Truman Show was obviously based upon Plato's Cave. In the same manner, the premise for The Matrix is really a high-tech version of Descartes' dream argument. Read some of Meditations on a First Philosophy by Mr. Descartes and then maybe write an article about how ancient arguments and ideas are being incorporated into the fabric of contemporary technological life.
And remember, Polonius, that brevity is the sole of wit.
Jon
But the point I'm trying to make is that chances are, unless your a nerd, or a geek, or a computer aficionado (oooh, did I spell that right?)
:-)
Yes, you did, but "your" is solely a possessive pronoun. You want "you're", the contraction for "you are". Your sentence will compile, but it results in a nasty logic error.