Re:Resolved: NeXTStep was More Advanced than BeOS.
on
Zeta Goes Gold
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· Score: 3, Interesting
BeOS was also (iirc, I'm not a coder so these things slip) a monolithic API, which has proven difficult to reverse engineer. NeXT rode the UNIX virus, got a candy-coating and MacOS compatability layer in the modern era and is still running loose... and heading back to Intel like a pack of X-wings for the Death Star.
BeOS was founded by Jean-Louis Gasse, an ex Apple employee (who had something to do with marketing in Europe, iirc - someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
NeXT, well. Yeah. We know what's up with NeXT. Founded by Jobs, financed by Ross Perot, and it GAVE BIRTH TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB!!!!!!! *squirt*.
What Killer App rode BeOS to fame? Anything? Last I checked, it kind of floundered about due to a lack thereof.
Not to sound like one of the other kool-aid drinkers, but Steve's an Innovator and Gasse's a suit. An innovator wouldn't have bitched, pissed and moaned about how it was Apple keeping them from running on the PPC 750 - it didn't stop linux!
The Matias Tactile Pro uses Alps mechanical keyswitches, which are either the same or a variant of the mechanical switches used in the Apple Extended II keyboards.
I'm extremely pleased with this keyboard, though the | key was odd for about a week (which made it hard to:| on IRC). Now that it's broken in, it's all kind of love.
Apple *book keyboards are nice, and the keyboards they're shipping with current desktops are okay... they're still squishier than a six dollar PS/2 keyboard, though.:|
The only USB peripherals I've ever seen from Apple are squishy keyboards and mice that make my hand cramp (consequently I use a Kensington trackball and a Matias keyboard and I'm vastly happier with those than I was with Apple kit).
And yeah, paying ~50$ for a yooesbee froppy was pretty damned gay. I moved to a CD burner around that time and haven't been back.:)
Six thousand obfuscated methods for configuring KDE doesn't make the defaults suck any less. (for example)
Choice and flexibility are great, but they're better as things that are there for the so-called Power Users who want or need the extra functionality... if your soft requires configuration and isn't an RSS reader or a web server or an email client, something's off.
IIRC, USB was an Intel spec. And intel shipped it, and it worked, and nobody - I do mean NOBODY - gave a shit. Good luck finding hardware, etceteras.
Then in late '98, Apple dropped the iMac bomb.
Not only were they using Intel's USB, they'd dropped everything else. You either got on the boat or you stayed behind. Now EVERYTHING ships with USB - a spec everybody refused to touch until Apple made it trendy and sexy to do so.
Apple + Intel == a very, very good thing. Both companies will get to bust ass doing what they're best at.
Neither is OS X or Windows. MacOS 9 is, and nobody's using it. OSsen are moving targets.
That said, "IT'S NOT FINSIHED!!!!" is no excuse, and the FOSS community's inability to take completely valid criticism and do something about it is one of the reasons it isn't "finished".
The real problem for Linux is that it has to be not just as good as Windows, but better than Windows and its other competitors.
How's Linux better than OS X? DOOD OMG U HAVE CHOICE!!! CHOICE! CHOICE!!!!! *squirt*.
Yeah, I can choose between a handful of Win95-wannabes, a handful of NeXTStep wannabes, a couple of CDE wannabes, a 4dwm wannabe and a whole bunch of "window managers" that make the titlebar on my xterm a slightly different color.
Current desktop options in computing : WinXP (crapgasmic tonka toy), several "desktop environments" that WANT to be WinXP, and OS X.
Most of us dont' want CHOICE, we want software that DOESN'T suck shit through a STRAW. And if you need it to Just Work, well... that knocks you down to OS X.
Linux doesn't need to be "as good as windows" on the desktop, it needs to be better than OS X.
But that's HARD, and FOSS developers aren't interested in HARD- if they were, there'd be six hundred Paintshop Pro and Photoshop imitations with working color management and full document compatability, as opposed to six hundred IRC clients.
If you define a "blog" as somebody being all DOOD OMFG LOOK HOW COOL [link] IS!!!!! and people then talking about it (see ANY Livejournal), then/. isn't just a blog, it's the Death Star of blogs.
I don't understand why Slashdot (a place I like to think of being pretty well grounded in approaches to technology reviews) has gotten caught up in this blog nonsense.
Uh....
Slashdot IS a blog. Run by Rob Malda and friends. It just happens to have Weapons Grade commenting capabilities.:P
So, US government is either too dumb for words or wants to be like Big Brother.
Well, only an Absolute Retard believes that Absolute Power or Absolute Control is even possible. I'd say that the tendencies go hand-in-hand.
Fucking populace still can't get a grip. The Opposition (re: democrats, anyone else) was so spectacularly incompetent last election that the post-Reaganites have gotten a clear signal they can do anything they want until someone with a spine shows up - shit like this just makes it easier to clear out the competition.
For every one guy who gives a shit, you've got about a thousand overweight blobs of genetic waste who only care to the extent that the news is interrupting Survivor reruns. As long as they've got football and NASCAR and beer, fuck you.
This would be how the Party In Power has obtained power and is now working overtime to secure it permanently - they give a shit, and their "values" key to their consituencies fear and hatred of all things "un american" (read : non-white, non-Christian, etc.) - so re-election isn't something the bastards have to worry about.
The Judicial deck has been stacked for years. That's the point of the Senate filibuster thingy- the Party In Power is trying to ram more sympathetic judges into federal courts.
Reaganites control the horizontal AND the vertical.
It isn't a threat so much as a big huge neon sign as to how Linux On The Desktop is a complete failure (or just plain incomplete) for the vast majority of non-hobbyists.
Everybody I know who's a linux user but wants a useable desktop they don't have to mess with has already bought a Mac and "switched" to OS X. They still use linux, but the machines are either console-only or headless.
Of the dozen or so people I know who've "switched", they've all been linux or *bsd users, and they switched because Apple provides a useable desktop experience that Just Works Out Of The Box.
Of course, these are people with lives who don't like plinking around with their computers just for the hell of it - they use the things to Do Work.
Society as a whole is still completely unable to accept the fact that people have limits, that they're different for everybody, etceteras. The public education system is a square hole and they spend a dozen years hammering square pegs, round pegs, star-shaped pegs, oval pegs, triangular pegs, etceteras into it. If you're "lucky" you're a square peg and the system fits your needs as well as you fit it.
Not everybody can draw. Not everybody has the kind of grasp of physics that leads them to a PHD. For some people, McDonalds Manager is the pinnacle of existance. This is about as obvious as the nose on your face but just try making noise about it to teachers and parents - you'll be smacked down so damned fast your head will spin.
There are SO MANY UNFUNNY WEBCOMICS. Good indicators you're about to load the comics equivalent of a turd can be found in the advertising - use of words like "hilarious" or "random" or "insane" - suggest that whatever you're about to read will be none of these things.
I'm not in it for the funny - if I want funny, I have Transmetropolitan and Bloom County trade paperbacks. I'm looking for non-strip long-format comics that aren't full of themselves, and that actually key into things I'm interested in reading about. This general dissatisfaction is probably why I'm working on my own project, and why I favor other long-form work of similar scale and focus.
Everything on your list still spanks the shit out of Marvel, Image, and DC's offerings in terms of signal to noise. The same could be said of record labels - I liked Front Line Assembly before they turned into Just Another Haujobb Wannabe, but I'd be hard pressed to wipe my ass with the majority of the Metropolis catalogue.
Signal to noise aside, the biggest issue facing webcomics isn't the quality of the work but the quality of the presentation. Horrible site aesthetics, whiny or distracting ad placement, bad standards compliance... worst of all, bad archive interface... comic artists obviously aren't web designers and it shows.
Hell, my own project went through several layout revisions before my friends stopped browbeating me about the navigation, so I'm not the only one who takes issue with information design.
Just in terms of webcomics, fleen was one of the earlier "networks"... and there's also dayfree press. The bit of Major News, as it were, is that it's a bunch of comics that were previously keenspace "titles" peeling off- ugly hill is the only newcomer to the batch. Keen isn't the Mount Awesome some people have made it out to be - if anything, it is to webcomics what livejournal is to drama... and these guys have all apparently realized it's time to move on.
Personally, it's nice to see shortpacked free of keenspace advertising feces- bullshit reduction is something I can always get behind. Joining a network looks like it's a good thing for all parties concerned, if it's something you're comfortable doing.
My own comic is going into its third year without being a member of a network, without having run a single ad. I might get shit for traffic but I know exactly what I'm displaying on my site- display and control of presentation is a huge concern of mine, at least for the time being. I'm sure one of these days I'll get sick of obscurity and spend more effort on increasing project awareness than I currently am on project production. Maybe eventually, like these guys, I'll find some like-minded media creators who want to conjoin into some sort of co-prosperity sphere.
Like SW isn't predictable.:P If anything, Ep3 is the most hyped pile of shit to see the light of day since Return of the King.
And it's still a shitload better than, say, Episode I. The dialogue, while campy, was bearable. "meat popsicle" versus midichlorians? Not much of a choice.
Say what you will about 5th Element, but I enjoyed it. It's fulfilling in many ways that Eps I-III fail to deliver on.
Eps IV-VI pushed the technology. Sound, motion control, matte work, etceteras. Used with skill and moderation for budgetary reasons.
I-III don't do anything that anything else on the market hasn't already done, and in most cases done better (Fifth Element and Galaxy Quest had vastly better non-humans, imo). Not only that, the effects work is so totally OVERKILL that it stops being "special", rockets right past "obvious" and settles down into "boring as hell."
Late in my academic career (3d effects and animation), I saw Episode I and Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas around the same time. Fear And Loathing was a vastly superior movie in every sense of the term - it ripped through my fanboi sensibilities like a nuclear test and left me wondering what, exactly, it was that I liked about movies.
Didn't take much for me to realize that what I like and what Lucas (and the Wachowskis, but that's another story) delivers is well below the level of what I'm looking for. "OOOH! PRETTY!" was great when I was eight, but I'm not eight anymore.
Users do NOT WANT CHOICE. Users want a widget that Just Fucking Works Already Goddammit.
It doesn't matter if you can turn a freenix desktop INTO something like that - the vast majority of users (and I do mean USERS, not "friends of nerds") never change defaults because they have no idea that the system can be changed to begin with.
The failing of FOSS for graphical soft is that the developers invariably fail to think at the level of a second grader diagnosed with a learning disability, which is about the lowest common demoninator you can get in software.
Said.sig makes just as much sense as software EULAs printed on the back of the manual in the box... which you explicitly agreed to implicitly in full by opening the shrinkwrap on the box.
Slashdot Mirror
BeOS was also (iirc, I'm not a coder so these things slip) a monolithic API, which has proven difficult to reverse engineer. NeXT rode the UNIX virus, got a candy-coating and MacOS compatability layer in the modern era and is still running loose... and heading back to Intel like a pack of X-wings for the Death Star.
BeOS was founded by Jean-Louis Gasse, an ex Apple employee (who had something to do with marketing in Europe, iirc - someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
NeXT, well. Yeah. We know what's up with NeXT. Founded by Jobs, financed by Ross Perot, and it GAVE BIRTH TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB!!!!!!! *squirt*.
What Killer App rode BeOS to fame? Anything? Last I checked, it kind of floundered about due to a lack thereof.
Not to sound like one of the other kool-aid drinkers, but Steve's an Innovator and Gasse's a suit. An innovator wouldn't have bitched, pissed and moaned about how it was Apple keeping them from running on the PPC 750 - it didn't stop linux!
The Matias Tactile Pro uses Alps mechanical keyswitches, which are either the same or a variant of the mechanical switches used in the Apple Extended II keyboards.
:| on IRC). Now that it's broken in, it's all kind of love.
:|
The Extended Pro II was a beautiful keyboard - I still have two of them (I had more but gave a few away). The Tactile Pro is a little "clickier", USB (with USB hub ports and the "media keys"), and better still, it actually has all the little Mac meta-characters printed on the keys (the apple, the ©, the curly "f", etceteras).
I'm extremely pleased with this keyboard, though the | key was odd for about a week (which made it hard to
Apple *book keyboards are nice, and the keyboards they're shipping with current desktops are okay... they're still squishier than a six dollar PS/2 keyboard, though.
Someone else.
:)
The only USB peripherals I've ever seen from Apple are squishy keyboards and mice that make my hand cramp (consequently I use a Kensington trackball and a Matias keyboard and I'm vastly happier with those than I was with Apple kit).
And yeah, paying ~50$ for a yooesbee froppy was pretty damned gay. I moved to a CD burner around that time and haven't been back.
Six thousand obfuscated methods for configuring KDE doesn't make the defaults suck any less. (for example)
Choice and flexibility are great, but they're better as things that are there for the so-called Power Users who want or need the extra functionality... if your soft requires configuration and isn't an RSS reader or a web server or an email client, something's off.
Which was actually pretty damned devious of them, as one of the first products out the gate was a USB floppy drive. :)
IIRC, USB was an Intel spec. And intel shipped it, and it worked, and nobody - I do mean NOBODY - gave a shit. Good luck finding hardware, etceteras.
Then in late '98, Apple dropped the iMac bomb.
Not only were they using Intel's USB, they'd dropped everything else. You either got on the boat or you stayed behind. Now EVERYTHING ships with USB - a spec everybody refused to touch until Apple made it trendy and sexy to do so.
Apple + Intel == a very, very good thing. Both companies will get to bust ass doing what they're best at.
Feel the love.
Earth to Jamie - Linux is NOT FINISHED
Neither is OS X or Windows. MacOS 9 is, and nobody's using it. OSsen are moving targets.
That said, "IT'S NOT FINSIHED!!!!" is no excuse, and the FOSS community's inability to take completely valid criticism and do something about it is one of the reasons it isn't "finished".
The real problem for Linux is that it has to be not just as good as Windows, but better than Windows and its other competitors.
How's Linux better than OS X? DOOD OMG U HAVE CHOICE!!! CHOICE! CHOICE!!!!! *squirt*.
Yeah, I can choose between a handful of Win95-wannabes, a handful of NeXTStep wannabes, a couple of CDE wannabes, a 4dwm wannabe and a whole bunch of "window managers" that make the titlebar on my xterm a slightly different color.
Current desktop options in computing : WinXP (crapgasmic tonka toy), several "desktop environments" that WANT to be WinXP, and OS X.
Most of us dont' want CHOICE, we want software that DOESN'T suck shit through a STRAW. And if you need it to Just Work, well... that knocks you down to OS X.
Linux doesn't need to be "as good as windows" on the desktop, it needs to be better than OS X.
But that's HARD, and FOSS developers aren't interested in HARD- if they were, there'd be six hundred Paintshop Pro and Photoshop imitations with working color management and full document compatability, as opposed to six hundred IRC clients.
If you define a "blog" as somebody being all DOOD OMFG LOOK HOW COOL [link] IS!!!!! and people then talking about it (see ANY Livejournal), then /. isn't just a blog, it's the Death Star of blogs.
I needed more disk on my G5 at work, so I did the unthinkable : I PLUGGED A PAIR OF FIREWIRE DISKS INTO IT.
:P
OH MY FUCKING GOD SO HARD.
Not only that, they're portable, non-ugly, and don't screw with the air flow.
I don't understand why Slashdot (a place I like to think of being pretty well grounded in approaches to technology reviews) has gotten caught up in this blog nonsense.
:P
Uh....
Slashdot IS a blog. Run by Rob Malda and friends. It just happens to have Weapons Grade commenting capabilities.
So, US government is either too dumb for words or wants to be like Big Brother.
Well, only an Absolute Retard believes that Absolute Power or Absolute Control is even possible. I'd say that the tendencies go hand-in-hand.
Fucking populace still can't get a grip. The Opposition (re: democrats, anyone else) was so spectacularly incompetent last election that the post-Reaganites have gotten a clear signal they can do anything they want until someone with a spine shows up - shit like this just makes it easier to clear out the competition.
For every one guy who gives a shit, you've got about a thousand overweight blobs of genetic waste who only care to the extent that the news is interrupting Survivor reruns. As long as they've got football and NASCAR and beer, fuck you.
This would be how the Party In Power has obtained power and is now working overtime to secure it permanently - they give a shit, and their "values" key to their consituencies fear and hatred of all things "un american" (read : non-white, non-Christian, etc.) - so re-election isn't something the bastards have to worry about.
The Judicial deck has been stacked for years. That's the point of the Senate filibuster thingy- the Party In Power is trying to ram more sympathetic judges into federal courts.
Reaganites control the horizontal AND the vertical.
It isn't a threat so much as a big huge neon sign as to how Linux On The Desktop is a complete failure (or just plain incomplete) for the vast majority of non-hobbyists.
Everybody I know who's a linux user but wants a useable desktop they don't have to mess with has already bought a Mac and "switched" to OS X. They still use linux, but the machines are either console-only or headless.
Of the dozen or so people I know who've "switched", they've all been linux or *bsd users, and they switched because Apple provides a useable desktop experience that Just Works Out Of The Box.
Of course, these are people with lives who don't like plinking around with their computers just for the hell of it - they use the things to Do Work.
Society as a whole is still completely unable to accept the fact that people have limits, that they're different for everybody, etceteras. The public education system is a square hole and they spend a dozen years hammering square pegs, round pegs, star-shaped pegs, oval pegs, triangular pegs, etceteras into it. If you're "lucky" you're a square peg and the system fits your needs as well as you fit it.
Not everybody can draw. Not everybody has the kind of grasp of physics that leads them to a PHD. For some people, McDonalds Manager is the pinnacle of existance. This is about as obvious as the nose on your face but just try making noise about it to teachers and parents - you'll be smacked down so damned fast your head will spin.
There are SO MANY UNFUNNY WEBCOMICS. Good indicators you're about to load the comics equivalent of a turd can be found in the advertising - use of words like "hilarious" or "random" or "insane" - suggest that whatever you're about to read will be none of these things.
I'm not in it for the funny - if I want funny, I have Transmetropolitan and Bloom County trade paperbacks. I'm looking for non-strip long-format comics that aren't full of themselves, and that actually key into things I'm interested in reading about. This general dissatisfaction is probably why I'm working on my own project, and why I favor other long-form work of similar scale and focus.
Everything on your list still spanks the shit out of Marvel, Image, and DC's offerings in terms of signal to noise. The same could be said of record labels - I liked Front Line Assembly before they turned into Just Another Haujobb Wannabe, but I'd be hard pressed to wipe my ass with the majority of the Metropolis catalogue.
Signal to noise aside, the biggest issue facing webcomics isn't the quality of the work but the quality of the presentation. Horrible site aesthetics, whiny or distracting ad placement, bad standards compliance... worst of all, bad archive interface... comic artists obviously aren't web designers and it shows.
Hell, my own project went through several layout revisions before my friends stopped browbeating me about the navigation, so I'm not the only one who takes issue with information design.
Groups like this are all over the place.
Just in terms of webcomics, fleen was one of the earlier "networks"... and there's also dayfree press. The bit of Major News, as it were, is that it's a bunch of comics that were previously keenspace "titles" peeling off- ugly hill is the only newcomer to the batch. Keen isn't the Mount Awesome some people have made it out to be - if anything, it is to webcomics what livejournal is to drama... and these guys have all apparently realized it's time to move on.
Personally, it's nice to see shortpacked free of keenspace advertising feces- bullshit reduction is something I can always get behind. Joining a network looks like it's a good thing for all parties concerned, if it's something you're comfortable doing.
My own comic is going into its third year without being a member of a network, without having run a single ad. I might get shit for traffic but I know exactly what I'm displaying on my site- display and control of presentation is a huge concern of mine, at least for the time being. I'm sure one of these days I'll get sick of obscurity and spend more effort on increasing project awareness than I currently am on project production. Maybe eventually, like these guys, I'll find some like-minded media creators who want to conjoin into some sort of co-prosperity sphere.
Like SW isn't predictable. :P If anything, Ep3 is the most hyped pile of shit to see the light of day since Return of the King.
And it's still a shitload better than, say, Episode I. The dialogue, while campy, was bearable. "meat popsicle" versus midichlorians? Not much of a choice.
Say what you will about 5th Element, but I enjoyed it. It's fulfilling in many ways that Eps I-III fail to deliver on.
There's a loading dock immediately outside of my office.
There's a shitload of crates out there.
And they're ALL. ON. PALETTES!
I wouldn't mind all the crates in FPS, etc, if they'd actually bother to model a palette or two but dear gods, the laziness.
Eps IV-VI pushed the technology. Sound, motion control, matte work, etceteras. Used with skill and moderation for budgetary reasons.
I-III don't do anything that anything else on the market hasn't already done, and in most cases done better (Fifth Element and Galaxy Quest had vastly better non-humans, imo). Not only that, the effects work is so totally OVERKILL that it stops being "special", rockets right past "obvious" and settles down into "boring as hell."
Late in my academic career (3d effects and animation), I saw Episode I and Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas around the same time. Fear And Loathing was a vastly superior movie in every sense of the term - it ripped through my fanboi sensibilities like a nuclear test and left me wondering what, exactly, it was that I liked about movies.
Didn't take much for me to realize that what I like and what Lucas (and the Wachowskis, but that's another story) delivers is well below the level of what I'm looking for. "OOOH! PRETTY!" was great when I was eight, but I'm not eight anymore.
Specifically, this is how FOSS fails the desktop.
Geeks WANT choice. For whatever reason.
Users do NOT WANT CHOICE. Users want a widget that Just Fucking Works Already Goddammit.
It doesn't matter if you can turn a freenix desktop INTO something like that - the vast majority of users (and I do mean USERS, not "friends of nerds") never change defaults because they have no idea that the system can be changed to begin with.
The failing of FOSS for graphical soft is that the developers invariably fail to think at the level of a second grader diagnosed with a learning disability, which is about the lowest common demoninator you can get in software.
Said .sig makes just as much sense as software EULAs printed on the back of the manual in the box... which you explicitly agreed to implicitly in full by opening the shrinkwrap on the box.