Author here. I wasn't going to mention Radsoft's involvement, but since you guys chose to poke your noses in (Rick? John?), I feel it incumbent to reply.
First off, you boys went psycho on me during the writing of this article. We started off on a very friendly basis. As I remember it, Rick, (and I kept the e-mails) you LOVED the little "caveman" set piece. Thought it was hysterical. You liked the idea of a lighter, wryly presented piece on computing history. I sent you the early, early rough drafts, and initially you responded with some very helpful suggestions, many of which I followed up on in the final version. We were even kicking around the idea of making this article the first of an entire series. Your characterization of "refusing this article" is misleading. I didn't come sniffing around Radsoft with hat in hand, looking for a home for my work. The whole idea was generated between you, Rick, and myself. You should also note that you first initiated contact with me, from my positive mention of your Extreme Power Tools utility suite in my site. If anyone came sniffing around, it was you, not me.
We continued in this vein for a while, then you guys pulled a 180 on me and sent a truly ugly message -- the whole piece was worthless, the research was lame, etc. I was surprised, to say the least. A few more unpleasantries were exchanged, and that was that. A while later, I noted that you guys even yanked all links and mentions of my Windows site from your pages -- it went from "...perhaps the most comprehensive Windows survival guide out there. This site has everything, literally everything" to being unworthy of mention. Vengeful and petty, I thought. It's also worth noting that until you saw the SitePoint article, you never saw anything remotely approaching a finished product. I sent you rough drafts specifically for the purpose of getting your feedback and letting you see the progress of the piece as it developed. Someone reading your post could easily draw the conclusion that I submitted the article to you, was refused, and continued to try to gain your approval with rewritten versions. That is exactly wrong.
I never claimed that Steve Jobs invented the GUI in any of the drafts (I have the old ones), and if you'll actually read the article, you'll see that that ridiculous claim is never made. As for "getting back your own quotes," the only thing I can think of that may fit that particular bill is a couple of minor bits about Win NT that you specifically tagged as worthy of mention. For the rest of it, I readily admitted that there were some errors that needed fixing, and those errors were corrected. I'm in the process of revising the article to incorporate the corrections and fixes, thus eliminating the "errata" section. Many of the links and info you sent me were useful, and I used them in the original version. Many others were either out of date, not germane, or gone from the Web. And most notably, every single erroneous "fact" I featured was sourced somewhere, often from sources that one would think are unimpeachable. I've learned that you can't trust any one source, no matter how authoritative it may seem. I've been in contact with numerous direct sources over the piece, and as one, Jef Raskin, told me, "You have now put the history more accurately than most sources on the subject." I think I take his judgement a bit more seriously than I take yours.
I've noted that Radsoft has metamorphosed into a site that takes great joy in savaging other people's work for the sheer pleasure of doing so. I don't say that's wrong, or not of use, but you guys seem to enjoy ripping people open for the sheer pleasure of the act. (I recall one series of exchanges where I gave you some solid advice on keeping your asses out of an international lawsuit over your libelous characterizations of some guy's shareware offerings. Had you not taken my advice and backed off, the guy could well have sued you for every dime you had.) I'm not surprised to see that you couldn't resist disparaging me on these forums. It fits your profile. I could care less about your opinion of me, Rick, but if you're going to disparage me in any public forums, then do it honestly. Don't mischaracterize the events, and don't rewrite history to make yourselves look good at my expense.
I have refrained from making any contact with Radsoft since you boys blew a fuse. Please do me the same favor and cease all contact, direct and indirect, with me. Until now, I have not discussed my former involvement with Radsoft with anyone. I would not have done so now had I not noted your posting in these forums.
I wish no further involvement with you and your petty attacks on anyone that comes within your circle. Keep on "bloatbusting" and ranting about anything and everything that draws your ire; that's your prerogative. But leave me out of it.
Thanks for the clarifications. I'll add the "Smalltalk" spelling to the addendum, along with the DEC/Digital distinction. I didn't mention Starfire because, as you said, it isn't a full-blown GUI. If you dig around the Sun site you should find some info on Starfire.
Thanks. I'll hunt up info on PCS. As for GEOS, I made mention of it in the rough draft, but gremlins erased it before I finished it. It's an omission that needs correcting.
The "640K" quote is definitely a source of debate. I'll acknowledge that it may be apocryphal.
Author here. There's an errata/addendum being produced. In it I clarify the misstatement that X is an OS. Of course it isn't, and if you read the article closely, it doesn't say that it is. To quote myself, "But some UNIX users decided to see if they could overlay a GUI on UNIX in the same fashion as Microsoft overlaid Windows atop DOS, and thus X was born....X became the main graphics system for most RISC-based UNIX operating systems." The problem comes in with the comparison between Windows/DOS and X/UNIX. The comparison is erroneous and misleading.
I am not a Mac user, but gee, some of my best friends are....
You wouldn't believe how many sources list Jef Raskin as Jeff. I saw both, had no idea which was which, and went with Jeff because I figured
"Jef" was a misprint. Wrong again. Had I found http://www.jefraskin.com before writing the article, I would have known better.
Hi all,
I wrote that article. Thanks for your replies -- many of you have written me personally to correct me on one point or another. I'm in the process of writing an errata/addendum to the original article to make corrections, clarify hazy statements, etc. etc. etc. Hopefully SitePoint/Webmasterbase will print the addendum soon.
Some of what will be fixed include:
-- the fact that X is not an OS, but merely an interface (I knew that, but I didn't state it very clearly)
-- the non-Xerox origin of Simula-67
-- Q-DOS is not, of course, a programming language, but an operating system. Major typographical goof
-- lots of info on Jef Raskin, including his claim that he came up with the idea of an all-graphical interface as early as 1967
By the way, the whole "caveman" motif, and the tone of the article in general, comes from my predisposition for presenting technical information in a way that non-technical readers can understand and enjoy. I do the same thing on my Windows resource site. I could have easily dumped the whole Ugh and Glug (or Ugh and Slug, LOL) bit and written the article in a much more technical fashion, but while that would have made the cognoscenti happier, it would have left the rest of the readership in the dust. Also, I am not a Mac fan (I'm strictly Wintel, for better or worse), and though I did see "Pirates of Silicon Valley," I could see plenty of errors and sensationalism in the piece, and did not refer to it in any way for the article.
Again, thanks for all the input.
Slashdot Mirror
Author here. I wasn't going to mention Radsoft's involvement, but since you guys chose to poke your noses in (Rick? John?), I feel it incumbent to reply.
First off, you boys went psycho on me during the writing of this article. We started off on a very friendly basis. As I remember it, Rick, (and I kept the e-mails) you LOVED the little "caveman" set piece. Thought it was hysterical. You liked the idea of a lighter, wryly presented piece on computing history. I sent you the early, early rough drafts, and initially you responded with some very helpful suggestions, many of which I followed up on in the final version. We were even kicking around the idea of making this article the first of an entire series. Your characterization of "refusing this article" is misleading. I didn't come sniffing around Radsoft with hat in hand, looking for a home for my work. The whole idea was generated between you, Rick, and myself. You should also note that you first initiated contact with me, from my positive mention of your Extreme Power Tools utility suite in my site. If anyone came sniffing around, it was you, not me.
We continued in this vein for a while, then you guys pulled a 180 on me and sent a truly ugly message -- the whole piece was worthless, the research was lame, etc. I was surprised, to say the least. A few more unpleasantries were exchanged, and that was that. A while later, I noted that you guys even yanked all links and mentions of my Windows site from your pages -- it went from "...perhaps the most comprehensive Windows survival guide out there. This site has everything, literally everything" to being unworthy of mention. Vengeful and petty, I thought. It's also worth noting that until you saw the SitePoint article, you never saw anything remotely approaching a finished product. I sent you rough drafts specifically for the purpose of getting your feedback and letting you see the progress of the piece as it developed. Someone reading your post could easily draw the conclusion that I submitted the article to you, was refused, and continued to try to gain your approval with rewritten versions. That is exactly wrong.
I never claimed that Steve Jobs invented the GUI in any of the drafts (I have the old ones), and if you'll actually read the article, you'll see that that ridiculous claim is never made. As for "getting back your own quotes," the only thing I can think of that may fit that particular bill is a couple of minor bits about Win NT that you specifically tagged as worthy of mention. For the rest of it, I readily admitted that there were some errors that needed fixing, and those errors were corrected. I'm in the process of revising the article to incorporate the corrections and fixes, thus eliminating the "errata" section. Many of the links and info you sent me were useful, and I used them in the original version. Many others were either out of date, not germane, or gone from the Web. And most notably, every single erroneous "fact" I featured was sourced somewhere, often from sources that one would think are unimpeachable. I've learned that you can't trust any one source, no matter how authoritative it may seem. I've been in contact with numerous direct sources over the piece, and as one, Jef Raskin, told me, "You have now put the history more accurately than most sources on the subject." I think I take his judgement a bit more seriously than I take yours.
I've noted that Radsoft has metamorphosed into a site that takes great joy in savaging other people's work for the sheer pleasure of doing so. I don't say that's wrong, or not of use, but you guys seem to enjoy ripping people open for the sheer pleasure of the act. (I recall one series of exchanges where I gave you some solid advice on keeping your asses out of an international lawsuit over your libelous characterizations of some guy's shareware offerings. Had you not taken my advice and backed off, the guy could well have sued you for every dime you had.) I'm not surprised to see that you couldn't resist disparaging me on these forums. It fits your profile. I could care less about your opinion of me, Rick, but if you're going to disparage me in any public forums, then do it honestly. Don't mischaracterize the events, and don't rewrite history to make yourselves look good at my expense.
I have refrained from making any contact with Radsoft since you boys blew a fuse. Please do me the same favor and cease all contact, direct and indirect, with me. Until now, I have not discussed my former involvement with Radsoft with anyone. I would not have done so now had I not noted your posting in these forums.
I wish no further involvement with you and your petty attacks on anyone that comes within your circle. Keep on "bloatbusting" and ranting about anything and everything that draws your ire; that's your prerogative. But leave me out of it.
Thanks for the clarifications. I'll add the "Smalltalk" spelling to the addendum, along with the DEC/Digital distinction. I didn't mention Starfire because, as you said, it isn't a full-blown GUI. If you dig around the Sun site you should find some info on Starfire.
The "640K" quote is definitely a source of debate. I'll acknowledge that it may be apocryphal.
I am not a Mac user, but gee, some of my best friends are....
You wouldn't believe how many sources list Jef Raskin as Jeff. I saw both, had no idea which was which, and went with Jeff because I figured "Jef" was a misprint. Wrong again. Had I found http://www.jefraskin.com before writing the article, I would have known better.
Author here. Yurgh. I don't know about anyone else, but I always do my writing, and coding, with two hands.
Hi all,
I wrote that article. Thanks for your replies -- many of you have written me personally to correct me on one point or another. I'm in the process of writing an errata/addendum to the original article to make corrections, clarify hazy statements, etc. etc. etc. Hopefully SitePoint/Webmasterbase will print the addendum soon.
Some of what will be fixed include:
-- the fact that X is not an OS, but merely an interface (I knew that, but I didn't state it very clearly)
-- the non-Xerox origin of Simula-67
-- Q-DOS is not, of course, a programming language, but an operating system. Major typographical goof
-- lots of info on Jef Raskin, including his claim that he came up with the idea of an all-graphical interface as early as 1967
By the way, the whole "caveman" motif, and the tone of the article in general, comes from my predisposition for presenting technical information in a way that non-technical readers can understand and enjoy. I do the same thing on my Windows resource site. I could have easily dumped the whole Ugh and Glug (or Ugh and Slug, LOL) bit and written the article in a much more technical fashion, but while that would have made the cognoscenti happier, it would have left the rest of the readership in the dust. Also, I am not a Mac fan (I'm strictly Wintel, for better or worse), and though I did see "Pirates of Silicon Valley," I could see plenty of errors and sensationalism in the piece, and did not refer to it in any way for the article.
Again, thanks for all the input.