Building the IBM PC out of off-the-shelf components was a key part of their strategy in designing it, because they knew they were entering into an existing market with it. They wanted a CPU that programmers already knew how to write assembly language code for. They wanted a floppy controller that some geek in Seattle had probably already figured out how to write (or steal) the code to read and write to it. They gave it an 8-bit expansion bus (instead of 16, which Intel's 8086 would have supported) because they wanted to make it easier for manufacturers of existing 8-bit peripherals to refit them for their machine. The guys designing it knew that they were behind a bunch of other people on bringing a personal computer to the market, and they didn't have the years it'd take for Big Blue to go through the process of designing "proper" IBM-proprietary parts.
That was the basis of IBM's marketing strategy for their PC: It was a personal computer that could be brought in through the front door by Data Processing and approved by Finance as a capital expenditure, rather than having to be purchased by Accounting out of the department's budget for "office supplies" and sneaked in through the back door of the building.
One can certainly debate whether the TRS-80, Apple ][, PET, or some other device was the first “personal computer”, but anyone who was paying attention to computers at the time knows that the IBM PC was not.
The headline on articles about IBM’s new PC was “The Empire Strikes Back“, and the text was all about whether this response from Big Blue would succeed against the upstart Rebels that were already sneaking into the workplace, against the wishes of the guys in Data Processing. I remember reading one of those press releases for the IBM Personal Computer, comparing the capabilities to an Apple ][, and (teenager that I was) thinking that it sucked rotten eggs because it didn’t even do graphics!
The IBM PC was a highly influential and successful product, and it successfully drove most earlier lines of personal computers off the market (the Apple ][ being the obvious exception, which pre-dated the IBM PC by 4 years and then co-existed with it for over a decade). But the only sense in which it was the first "personal computer" is that it was the fist one that had those words stenciled on the case.
Fortunately we live in a representative democracy, where I can write to my legislator and object to this action by the agency that governs the internet.
But I'm trying to remember... which level of the government has authority over ICANN? I know it's isn't the state or provincial government, and it isn't the federal or national government.... Surely someone must have authority over them?
Anyone else here old enough to remember the Great Renaming on Usenet? It was just before my time there, actually, but this sounds like the exact same thing... in reverse. They took a whole bunch of newsgroups which were turning into an unwieldy flat file (under the net.* prefix), and sorted them into a hierarchy with a small batch of broad top-level nodes: (comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*) which could be further subdivided, etc. In the process net.comics became rec.arts.comics, and so on. What it built was a lot like the internet domain name hierarchy (but opposite-endian). It added structure and organization, which are Very Useful Things to have when dealing with Something Very Large. (Such as the Internet.) All this move by ICANN would do is to chop the last four characters off every.com in the database, and move that whole damn thing to the root level. If I can think of a business name that hasn't already been squatted, I can still register ____.COM for a few bucks, but I have to write up a proposal and take it to ICANN if I want to also claim.____? Bad policy, bad engineering, bad idea.
As a matter of fact I don't remember those bands, aside from recognizing the names. I couldn't name a single song by any of them (with the obvious exception of Jackson, who transcends the 1990s). That's because I had stopped listening to whatever's-in-fashion music by the 90s, and since then I've just followed my own interests and that of people around me (e.g. on community radio). Complaining about crappy pop music is like complaining about crappy fast food: no one's forcing you to eat it.
Of course it's parents' job to supervise and make decisions for their kids, but they do delegate that to people they trust. But I'm back to: why Google?
My idea of what's appropriate for kids is very different from John Boehner's, which is different from that of Sheik Sadeq Abdallah bin Al-Majed, who would differ from the standards of that nice hippie commune on the other side of town. Google is not in a position to accommodate all of them (and the many other standards); no one would be happy with the results.
If a group of like-minded people want to idetify a subset of the internet that they feel is appropriate for children of a particular age, they should make that happen themselves. Many of them are. Don't just wish for some government or some authority-by-default (like Google) to do it for you, free of charge. D.I.Y.
That click-image-once-to-play behavior is the single biggest and stupidest mistake of this UI design. I'm really not the kind of person who calls for people to be fired, but I sincerely hope that the person who suggested it and the person who approved it both do some soul-searching and consider going into real estate or social work or construction, or some other career choice that they have a better aptitude for.
No, there's an actual story here, and someday when some business major is assigned "Netflix" as the topic for a research paper, I'm pretty sure they'll reach the same conclusion I'm about to predict: Netflix was already doomed at this point.
This new UI has a dozen things wrong with it. Nothing bad enough to sink the company, nothing that can't be fixed. But it's poorly designed and poorly implemented. I can pick them out, and I don't even do this for a living. What this tells you is that Netflix isn't hiring people who really grok User Interfaces. They aren't incompetent; they just aren't very good. That by itself is a warning sign.
But the clincher comes from the PR hack's response, saying that they tested this new UI and got really good reception to it, etc. First, there's the fact that they have a PR hack who thinks that this is a good way to to damage control: by telling the customers that what they're thinking and feeling is wrong. Again, just not very good at his job. Second, let's take him at his word and accept that their testing didn't anticipate this negative reaction. What that tells you is that they don't know how to do testing either. If there are enough users who dislike it this much, professionals who know how to do testing (hint: the testing team should include none of the people who did the design or coding) would have turned it up. Finally, we have someone in management whose reaction to these mistakes is not to 1) hire better UI people, 2) do UI testing better, but to circle the wagons and refuse to even admit that "mistakes were made". Probably the Director of Web Site Experience or some title like that needs to be sacked, but they aren't going to do that. Because that would mean admitting that hiring said person was a mistake.
Netflix is doing great right now, because they're riding the wave of a new entertainment delivery model. They are making enough money that even people who are not very good at their jobs (see current company roster) can continue operating the company profitably. But that won't last forever. Which means that, when the competition gets rough, when another business model challenges the company, or whatever else happens that requires Netflix to start doing things smarter and better.... the people in charge at every level of the company will be the people who brought you (and defended) this rather crappy UI change.
Perhaps they could add these weight loss drugs to cannabis cigarettes, as a counter-agent to the THC side effects rather than as a co-agent to nicotine's.
I've never seen an article published by the AP that reflected the view that Earth really should just be used up and thrown away as quickly as possible, and it's been a long time since any of these services have produced articles in support of human slavery. These may be biases that you and I and most reasonable people on the planet agree with, but they are biases nonetheless.
Disregard the sexual requirement (it's optional, actually), and the AC has a point. The Renaissance Man of the Renaissance was not just a general scientist but also an artist and probably a philosopher.
As someone who holds both a BS in Computer Science (minor in Philosophy) and a BFA in Illustration (minor in Digital Media), I have a rather obvious personal bias that tells me that such people are highly valuable. Not that the employers I encounter seem to share that opinion.
Don't confuse the Talent side of the news/entertainment industry with the Business side. It's the Business side that which is ultimately in charge of that industry, and they are in bed with the Republican party. You'll find a similar dichotomy in many industries, where labor leans Democrat and management leans hard toward Republican.
I'm a recent Apple retail employee, and based on what I saw in the stores, I can tell you that Apple still makes plenty of money selling a whole lot of MacBooks and iMacs. To describe that OS-X-based product line as "kind of muddling along" is completely inaccurate. The iOS devices sell a lot too, but the 10-year-old expectation that people were going into those glass-and-white stores at the mall mostly to buy iPods is very out of date, and the new assumption that the only thing those stores are selling in quantity are iPhones and iPads, is equally mistaken. Sit outside an Apple store and count how many boxes with the word "Mac" on them are carried/trolleyed out the door in an afternoon. It's a lot.
What could happen is for OS X and iOS to blend into a single OS. They have enough code in common for that to be possible, but it would still require them to have distinct user interfaces, for the simple reason that the physical interface is different. A computer with a keyboard does not work the same as a computer with a touch screen, and a screen that fits in your pocket requires different interaction methods than one one your wall, and Apple has demonstrated that they understand that (just like Microsoft demonstrated that they did not, when they introduced Windows Tablet Edition and earlier versions of Windows Mobile to work just like standard Windows).
OS X could be (and eventually will be) terminated, but not until a successor has been developed that fulfills the needs that OS X currently fills. iOS (at least as we know it today) is not that OS. If Apple is testing MacBooks based on the A5, that's far more likely an indicator that they're thinking of porting OS X to run on that chip for hardware/architectural reasons, not that they're thinking of turning the MacBook into an iPad with a built-in keyboard as a strategic software move. At Apple the hardware serves the software, not the other way around.
Slashdot Mirror
Building the IBM PC out of off-the-shelf components was a key part of their strategy in designing it, because they knew they were entering into an existing market with it. They wanted a CPU that programmers already knew how to write assembly language code for. They wanted a floppy controller that some geek in Seattle had probably already figured out how to write (or steal) the code to read and write to it. They gave it an 8-bit expansion bus (instead of 16, which Intel's 8086 would have supported) because they wanted to make it easier for manufacturers of existing 8-bit peripherals to refit them for their machine. The guys designing it knew that they were behind a bunch of other people on bringing a personal computer to the market, and they didn't have the years it'd take for Big Blue to go through the process of designing "proper" IBM-proprietary parts.
That was the basis of IBM's marketing strategy for their PC: It was a personal computer that could be brought in through the front door by Data Processing and approved by Finance as a capital expenditure, rather than having to be purchased by Accounting out of the department's budget for "office supplies" and sneaked in through the back door of the building.
One can certainly debate whether the TRS-80, Apple ][, PET, or some other device was the first “personal computer”, but anyone who was paying attention to computers at the time knows that the IBM PC was not.
The headline on articles about IBM’s new PC was “The Empire Strikes Back“, and the text was all about whether this response from Big Blue would succeed against the upstart Rebels that were already sneaking into the workplace, against the wishes of the guys in Data Processing. I remember reading one of those press releases for the IBM Personal Computer, comparing the capabilities to an Apple ][, and (teenager that I was) thinking that it sucked rotten eggs because it didn’t even do graphics!
The IBM PC was a highly influential and successful product, and it successfully drove most earlier lines of personal computers off the market (the Apple ][ being the obvious exception, which pre-dated the IBM PC by 4 years and then co-existed with it for over a decade). But the only sense in which it was the first "personal computer" is that it was the fist one that had those words stenciled on the case.
"Speaking of alt, this also applied to dns..."
If you're suggesting that that be done in response to this .nonsense, it's a far different net than it was back then. Wouldn't work.
Fortunately we live in a representative democracy, where I can write to my legislator and object to this action by the agency that governs the internet.
But I'm trying to remember... which level of the government has authority over ICANN? I know it's isn't the state or provincial government, and it isn't the federal or national government.... Surely someone must have authority over them?
Anyone else here old enough to remember the Great Renaming on Usenet? It was just before my time there, actually, but this sounds like the exact same thing... in reverse. They took a whole bunch of newsgroups which were turning into an unwieldy flat file (under the net.* prefix), and sorted them into a hierarchy with a small batch of broad top-level nodes: (comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*) which could be further subdivided, etc. In the process net.comics became rec.arts.comics, and so on. What it built was a lot like the internet domain name hierarchy (but opposite-endian). It added structure and organization, which are Very Useful Things to have when dealing with Something Very Large. (Such as the Internet.) All this move by ICANN would do is to chop the last four characters off every .com in the database, and move that whole damn thing to the root level. If I can think of a business name that hasn't already been squatted, I can still register ____.COM for a few bucks, but I have to write up a proposal and take it to ICANN if I want to also claim .____? Bad policy, bad engineering, bad idea.
One of the perps has already been positively identified. Apprehension may be difficult, however.
As a matter of fact I don't remember those bands, aside from recognizing the names. I couldn't name a single song by any of them (with the obvious exception of Jackson, who transcends the 1990s). That's because I had stopped listening to whatever's-in-fashion music by the 90s, and since then I've just followed my own interests and that of people around me (e.g. on community radio). Complaining about crappy pop music is like complaining about crappy fast food: no one's forcing you to eat it.
And the kids stayed offa my lawn!
I figured that 5-5-5-5 would be too obvious, so on mine phone I reversed the order.
I respectfully disagree with the Catholic church's point of view about the morality of suicide.
I consider the above-linked jeremiad about the social implications of legalized suicide... rather paranoid and illogical.
Mod parent -1, Irrational.
Congratulations! That's the most twisted "logic" I've read on the internet in weeks.
Actually, I'm just amused by it. The irony of someone with this mindset denigrating other people as "asocial nerds"? Priceless.
Why should it be Google to do this?
Of course it's parents' job to supervise and make decisions for their kids, but they do delegate that to people they trust. But I'm back to: why Google?
My idea of what's appropriate for kids is very different from John Boehner's, which is different from that of Sheik Sadeq Abdallah bin Al-Majed, who would differ from the standards of that nice hippie commune on the other side of town. Google is not in a position to accommodate all of them (and the many other standards); no one would be happy with the results.
If a group of like-minded people want to idetify a subset of the internet that they feel is appropriate for children of a particular age, they should make that happen themselves. Many of them are. Don't just wish for some government or some authority-by-default (like Google) to do it for you, free of charge. D.I.Y.
That click-image-once-to-play behavior is the single biggest and stupidest mistake of this UI design. I'm really not the kind of person who calls for people to be fired, but I sincerely hope that the person who suggested it and the person who approved it both do some soul-searching and consider going into real estate or social work or construction, or some other career choice that they have a better aptitude for.
No, there's an actual story here, and someday when some business major is assigned "Netflix" as the topic for a research paper, I'm pretty sure they'll reach the same conclusion I'm about to predict: Netflix was already doomed at this point.
This new UI has a dozen things wrong with it. Nothing bad enough to sink the company, nothing that can't be fixed. But it's poorly designed and poorly implemented. I can pick them out, and I don't even do this for a living. What this tells you is that Netflix isn't hiring people who really grok User Interfaces. They aren't incompetent; they just aren't very good. That by itself is a warning sign.
But the clincher comes from the PR hack's response, saying that they tested this new UI and got really good reception to it, etc. First, there's the fact that they have a PR hack who thinks that this is a good way to to damage control: by telling the customers that what they're thinking and feeling is wrong. Again, just not very good at his job. Second, let's take him at his word and accept that their testing didn't anticipate this negative reaction. What that tells you is that they don't know how to do testing either. If there are enough users who dislike it this much, professionals who know how to do testing (hint: the testing team should include none of the people who did the design or coding) would have turned it up. Finally, we have someone in management whose reaction to these mistakes is not to 1) hire better UI people, 2) do UI testing better, but to circle the wagons and refuse to even admit that "mistakes were made". Probably the Director of Web Site Experience or some title like that needs to be sacked, but they aren't going to do that. Because that would mean admitting that hiring said person was a mistake.
Netflix is doing great right now, because they're riding the wave of a new entertainment delivery model. They are making enough money that even people who are not very good at their jobs (see current company roster) can continue operating the company profitably. But that won't last forever. Which means that, when the competition gets rough, when another business model challenges the company, or whatever else happens that requires Netflix to start doing things smarter and better.... the people in charge at every level of the company will be the people who brought you (and defended) this rather crappy UI change.
And they're gonna get clobbered.
Perhaps they could add these weight loss drugs to cannabis cigarettes, as a counter-agent to the THC side effects rather than as a co-agent to nicotine's.
I've never seen an article published by the AP that reflected the view that Earth really should just be used up and thrown away as quickly as possible, and it's been a long time since any of these services have produced articles in support of human slavery. These may be biases that you and I and most reasonable people on the planet agree with, but they are biases nonetheless.
Disregard the sexual requirement (it's optional, actually), and the AC has a point. The Renaissance Man of the Renaissance was not just a general scientist but also an artist and probably a philosopher.
As someone who holds both a BS in Computer Science (minor in Philosophy) and a BFA in Illustration (minor in Digital Media), I have a rather obvious personal bias that tells me that such people are highly valuable. Not that the employers I encounter seem to share that opinion.
Fixed that for you.
Don't confuse the Talent side of the news/entertainment industry with the Business side. It's the Business side that which is ultimately in charge of that industry, and they are in bed with the Republican party. You'll find a similar dichotomy in many industries, where labor leans Democrat and management leans hard toward Republican.
I'm a recent Apple retail employee, and based on what I saw in the stores, I can tell you that Apple still makes plenty of money selling a whole lot of MacBooks and iMacs. To describe that OS-X-based product line as "kind of muddling along" is completely inaccurate. The iOS devices sell a lot too, but the 10-year-old expectation that people were going into those glass-and-white stores at the mall mostly to buy iPods is very out of date, and the new assumption that the only thing those stores are selling in quantity are iPhones and iPads, is equally mistaken. Sit outside an Apple store and count how many boxes with the word "Mac" on them are carried/trolleyed out the door in an afternoon. It's a lot.
What could happen is for OS X and iOS to blend into a single OS. They have enough code in common for that to be possible, but it would still require them to have distinct user interfaces, for the simple reason that the physical interface is different. A computer with a keyboard does not work the same as a computer with a touch screen, and a screen that fits in your pocket requires different interaction methods than one one your wall, and Apple has demonstrated that they understand that (just like Microsoft demonstrated that they did not, when they introduced Windows Tablet Edition and earlier versions of Windows Mobile to work just like standard Windows).
OS X could be (and eventually will be) terminated, but not until a successor has been developed that fulfills the needs that OS X currently fills. iOS (at least as we know it today) is not that OS. If Apple is testing MacBooks based on the A5, that's far more likely an indicator that they're thinking of porting OS X to run on that chip for hardware/architectural reasons, not that they're thinking of turning the MacBook into an iPad with a built-in keyboard as a strategic software move. At Apple the hardware serves the software, not the other way around.
It's getting to the point these days where you just aren't sure which criminals you can trust.
I can't possibly be the first to comment on "gas mines of your anus" can I?