But maybe we were wrong and it was an Amiga after all.
Re:Jon Katz, is that you?
on
Window Pain
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
He got into dogs and started writing books about them instead. Unfortunately, knowledgeable people in the "dog community" or whatever you call it have criticised him for killing his dogs at the first signs of illness, and for generally being a bad trainer. It's a familiar pattern - gain passing familiarity with something, pretend to be some deeply insightful authority and write about it, then retreat when things go pear-shaped (ie the Commodore 64 in Afghanistan, remember that?)
The anti-Katz flaming was hilarious though. That was also the era of page-widening, Slashdot editor fan fiction, etc.
It's important to note that while Scandinavia has an awesome social safety net, it does so by maintaining pretty much the lowest corporate tax rates in the Western world (personal taxes pay those bills). Low corporate tax rates don't sit well with many American socialists, who I find see corporations as enemies rather than partners.
Also, I can state from experience that there is a definite nanny-state feel to life in northern Europe. People who like a lot of freedom in life, whether it's home schooling of children, lower taxes, personal privacy, or whatever, won't like it there much.
Canada has a good balance - a decent safety net but lower taxes than the OECD average and tremendous personal privacy protection and personal freedom. It's not really a socialist country other than healthcare though, and even then, there is a parallel for-pay system. Union memberships are at an all-time low too.
Do you belong to a union? It sure doesn't sound like it to me. I grew up in a mining town that was strongly unionised, and I can tell you that the workers had very little control over anything, including the "elected" officials. Massive corruption and self-interest ruled the day.
What about unions that artificially restrict labour supply? I have a friend who is a movie cameraman. He had to join the union or else he could get no work - no studio was allowed to hire him, even if he was the best cameraman in the whole world. Nor could the studios fire bad or lazy cameramen and hire him instead. That sort of lock on labour mobility is just plain wrong.
Well, like I said, OS X uses a similar system already. Unfortunately, similar efforts on Linux never went anywhere, so users are locked into the vendors' repositories, unless they are knowledgable/brave and use third party ones.
Weirdly, it's these same people who often complain about iPhone lock-in with the app store...just saying.
XNU features a POSIX api, a process model, networking, and various other bits from FreeBSD, although of course much altered from the original. It sort of wraps Mach.
One of the nicest things about PC-BSD is the whole PBI idea, which are basically like.pkg files on OS X. When installing apps via PBIs, you get all the dependencies in one shot, which means you don't destabilise your whole system when installing from a central repository where app A requires a library version that breaks apps B, C, D.... This is particularly true when you want to use third party repositories.
PBIs are simply downloaded and installed from places like http://www.pbidir.com/, the process is graphical, and they are easily uninstalled without fuss.
You are right, how could I forget. I really love Smalltalk the language, but I'm less keen on the whole "modify the image" thing. I'm sure it would have been a lot more successful if it were file-based.
Xerox is notable for failing to commercialise or profit from PARC's accomplishments, including the invention of the gui, laser printing, bit-mapped graphics, the mouse, and Ethernet. It is the most monumental example of dropping the ball that I can think of.
Macs give us deploy-to-corporate-Unix programmers the stuff we need for both worlds, and as such are invaluable. It's just a practical preference. Computers and operating systems are tools.
Since you are an expert in system fragility, on my Debian desktop, the latest version of Eclipse won't install - some kind of GTK+ conflict. Of course, trying to resolve it breaks about a million other things. I wouldn't call installing a regular old IDE "remotely interesting", just day to day stuff, but it still broke the system anyway.
I'm pretty sure this is Diamond's fault. They have the distribution locked down, unfortunately. I'm sure Marvel, DC, Image, etc. would love it if you could go to Amazon and subscribe to Wolverine, Detective, Cowboy Ninja Viking, or whatever, but their exclusive deal with Diamond won't allow it. And no Diamond, no direct market.
My hope is that eventually there will be a rebellion of sorts, kind of like what happened with creator-owned characters, and the distribution model will open up. Smaller publishers that Diamond refused to carry, like Dave Sim of Cerebus fame, managed to get distribution without them.
Note that Diamond was investigated by the US Justice Dept. for antitrust litigation in the late '90s, but nothing came of it, unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
Well if that's the case, there's clearly nothing of interest here.
Your entire post is crazy bullshit. Are you Chinese, by chance?
Check out Heavy Rain sometime.
Apple's fondness for Quentin Tarantino, deep as it may be, won't surpass cold, hard business reality.
Hope you like high-level because the day is coming that it will be illegal to be low-level without a government (or more likely Apple) license.
Kook alert
Peed in my muesli is more like it! I hate it when that happens.
Apple has a web service ecosystem? That is news to me. How about a link?
This Google web app store bears no relation or similarity to the iPhone app store, just so you know.
Well call me crazy, but I prefer the dual presentation modes of mime and interpretive dance, myself.
1. Actually, The Trial is what gave birth to the term "Kafkaesque" and definitely has to do with an organisation. It is a very famous book.
2. The movie The Fly has nothing to do with Kafka. It's about a guy and a teleportation device.
You are correct, though at the time everyone assumed it was a C64, as I recall. Wikipedia confirms that possibly mistaken assumption: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Katz#On_Slashdot
But maybe we were wrong and it was an Amiga after all.
He got into dogs and started writing books about them instead. Unfortunately, knowledgeable people in the "dog community" or whatever you call it have criticised him for killing his dogs at the first signs of illness, and for generally being a bad trainer. It's a familiar pattern - gain passing familiarity with something, pretend to be some deeply insightful authority and write about it, then retreat when things go pear-shaped (ie the Commodore 64 in Afghanistan, remember that?)
The anti-Katz flaming was hilarious though. That was also the era of page-widening, Slashdot editor fan fiction, etc.
It's important to note that while Scandinavia has an awesome social safety net, it does so by maintaining pretty much the lowest corporate tax rates in the Western world (personal taxes pay those bills). Low corporate tax rates don't sit well with many American socialists, who I find see corporations as enemies rather than partners.
Also, I can state from experience that there is a definite nanny-state feel to life in northern Europe. People who like a lot of freedom in life, whether it's home schooling of children, lower taxes, personal privacy, or whatever, won't like it there much.
Canada has a good balance - a decent safety net but lower taxes than the OECD average and tremendous personal privacy protection and personal freedom. It's not really a socialist country other than healthcare though, and even then, there is a parallel for-pay system. Union memberships are at an all-time low too.
Do you belong to a union? It sure doesn't sound like it to me. I grew up in a mining town that was strongly unionised, and I can tell you that the workers had very little control over anything, including the "elected" officials. Massive corruption and self-interest ruled the day.
What about unions that artificially restrict labour supply? I have a friend who is a movie cameraman. He had to join the union or else he could get no work - no studio was allowed to hire him, even if he was the best cameraman in the whole world. Nor could the studios fire bad or lazy cameramen and hire him instead. That sort of lock on labour mobility is just plain wrong.
No, of course not. What's sad is that the Americans who started this rumour weren't joking around, as those were the thinnest women they'd ever seen.
Ports does dependency resolution, etc. PBIs do not, because they don't have to.
Well, like I said, OS X uses a similar system already. Unfortunately, similar efforts on Linux never went anywhere, so users are locked into the vendors' repositories, unless they are knowledgable/brave and use third party ones.
Weirdly, it's these same people who often complain about iPhone lock-in with the app store...just saying.
XNU features a POSIX api, a process model, networking, and various other bits from FreeBSD, although of course much altered from the original. It sort of wraps Mach.
One of the nicest things about PC-BSD is the whole PBI idea, which are basically like .pkg files on OS X. When installing apps via PBIs, you get all the dependencies in one shot, which means you don't destabilise your whole system when installing from a central repository where app A requires a library version that breaks apps B, C, D.... This is particularly true when you want to use third party repositories.
PBIs are simply downloaded and installed from places like http://www.pbidir.com/, the process is graphical, and they are easily uninstalled without fuss.
He just waited until their backs were turned.
Also, Xerox did not invent the mouse, and has never claimed to have done so.
You are correct. My apologies to you and to Douglas Engelbart.
You are right, how could I forget. I really love Smalltalk the language, but I'm less keen on the whole "modify the image" thing. I'm sure it would have been a lot more successful if it were file-based.
Xerox is notable for failing to commercialise or profit from PARC's accomplishments, including the invention of the gui, laser printing, bit-mapped graphics, the mouse, and Ethernet. It is the most monumental example of dropping the ball that I can think of.
This is laughably incorrect, and really comes across as twitter-like zealotry. App bundles have been around since NEXTStep - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Bundle
Macs give us deploy-to-corporate-Unix programmers the stuff we need for both worlds, and as such are invaluable. It's just a practical preference. Computers and operating systems are tools.
Since you are an expert in system fragility, on my Debian desktop, the latest version of Eclipse won't install - some kind of GTK+ conflict. Of course, trying to resolve it breaks about a million other things. I wouldn't call installing a regular old IDE "remotely interesting", just day to day stuff, but it still broke the system anyway.
I'm pretty sure this is Diamond's fault. They have the distribution locked down, unfortunately. I'm sure Marvel, DC, Image, etc. would love it if you could go to Amazon and subscribe to Wolverine, Detective, Cowboy Ninja Viking, or whatever, but their exclusive deal with Diamond won't allow it. And no Diamond, no direct market.
My hope is that eventually there will be a rebellion of sorts, kind of like what happened with creator-owned characters, and the distribution model will open up. Smaller publishers that Diamond refused to carry, like Dave Sim of Cerebus fame, managed to get distribution without them.
Note that Diamond was investigated by the US Justice Dept. for antitrust litigation in the late '90s, but nothing came of it, unfortunately.