Uh, no other company would be stupid enough to try to use the name "TiVO" without paying for it,
Maybe the cases of companies ripping off intellectual propery rights are very few and far between, indeed, but that is not to say that it doesn't happen.One case that comes to mind is that of a band called The Squirrel Nut Zippers in which Wrigley's Gum used their song in a television commercial without paying the band or acknowleging their rights to the band's own music. To add insult to injury, Wrigley didn't even bother recreating the song with a sound alike band...they just lifted the track directly from the album . Of course the band sued, as I understand it, and the company settled out of court.
I don't think this sort of monumental stupidity is what you would call commonplace. But it does occasionally happen.
Finally, tech-based legal advice that doesn't begin with "IANAL".
Dammit!~ I don't know if I'm confortable seeing legal advice without that acryonym in place. Think he'd be willing to mollify my need for acronyms by preceding his advice with "JCIAAL"? Or how about "JCDWSMIAAFL" (as in Jesus Christ! Don't Worry So Much! I am a friggin' lawyer!)?
though, I should point out that the edition that I read of Computer Lib was the 1987 Microsoft Press reissue. How else could Ted Nelson known of Macintoshes when the original edition (that I linked to above) was written in 1972!
On a side note, according to Raskin the main reason he decided to call the new computer he was designing the "McIntosh" was that this was supposedly "America's favorite Apple".
Jeff was a little more than one of the early macintosh engineers. He was the originator of the Macintosh project. The guy who decided to call the Mac a "Mac". Though he originally wanted to call it the McIntosh, there was a high level audio component manufacturer of the same name and Apple's lawyers decided to change the spelling of the name to "Macintosh". Though as Theodore Nelson pointed out in his classic geek opus Computer Lib/Dream Machines, the name "Macintosh" if you actually followed the rules of English syntax would be pronounced "Mah-Sin-Tosh".
I'm on a reading tear at the moment of old computer books where they are talking about the design of the interfaces that we have all come to know and love (books from a time when these were all new ideas). I plan on topping it off with Jeff Raskin's new book.
As far as actually designing interfaces goes, several of my friends who actually design interfaces for a living have claimed that this book has been a tremendous help in providing a direction and design philosophy. Most people who design interfaces for the web, for instance, don't seem to ask themselves questions like "How would I design a telephone if I had never seen, never heard of what this device was or was supposed to do".
So, we're just supposed to take your word that you're smart? All you have on that site is a picture! Is that supposed to be your proof? When were you planning to post something a little more substantive?
I (as a TiVo subscriber) just recently got a letter in the mail stating that TiVo is doing away with the $250 lifetime-membership sometime soon. However, they also claimed that they were lowering the fee from $13 a month to $5 a month! Hopefully this new pricepoint will help it reach a larger marketshare. I'm not sure if this is a deal for DirecTV owners exclusively however (I hope not).
I myself am also a "movie guy" and not much into "Everybody loves Raymond". But the Starz Network has something called "Starz on Demand" which works with TiVo to automatically TiVo the latest releases for you. That's pretty cool. Mainly I use Tivo for BBC World News, BookTV on CSpan, The Daily Show, and some TechTV stuff. Also, owning the Tivo is the only way I can reliably catch Farscape on a regular basis.
One thing I think Tivo may have going for it is "mindshare". You may have noticed that I use Tivo as a verb. That seems a ubiquitous term for DVRing. I notice my friends who own DVRs from other manufacturers (like ReplayTV) still say that they "Tivo" this or that. Kind of the way people used to say they were going to "Xerox" something when they wanted make a photocopy. Even if they were using an HP copier!
at our annual non-denominational pan-conreatational winter solstice festival on December 22nd! As long as it doesn't have any specific references to the symbols/ideas of any one religion...
[basso rumble]"Happy happy happy...everyone is happy"...
"Their problem, I think, is a frequent but misguided idea that one's countrymen are better than those who happen to live elsewhere."
Not to be too objectivist about that statement, but of course the flipside to that argument is "are one's countrymen any less worthy of charity" because of their proximity?
I definitely to NOT think that the altruistic efforts of this organization should be quelched/criticized/redirected towards benifitting the U>S>A.They are doing something that is very important and they, of course, are free to direct their efforts where they wish.
But, seriously, there is a valid argument to be made about someone else (if I had no bills to pay and didn't work as much as I do, it would be me. I know, excuse, excuse) to do this very same thing here domestically.
All of us here live very wired lives. Could you imagine working in a workplace that did NOT have one computer per user? That is the reality of the American school system, only the work being done there is much more important than the work being done in any office building. Yet it is being done with a shocking paucity of resources. This is right here in the US.
You don't need to be born in a foreign land to suffer from a learning disability. And is the domestic child who suffers from such a disablility any less worthy of all the advantages we could provide him or her? With a wired school system and some fierce coding we could build a wired infrasctructure that would provide an adaptive learning environment that would serve the needs of every child (learning disabled or not). Everyone responds to different cues when learning and think of the power of a completely computerized educational system that would adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual user! It could completely revolutionize the way kids are taught. But are we anywhere near such a noble and valid goal? Hardly. In fact, it is easy to say that the way teachers teach mathematics today is the nearly (with minor changes in teaching philosophies) the same as it was taught in the Victorian era! The mindset in the classroom is (in some ways) as Victorian as the pencil sharpener in every schoolroom!
As Nicholas Nergoponte points out, adaptive learning techologies could elevate the lives of every child who has access to these new methods.
Frankly, it amazes me how many of the posts on this board seem to indicate a tacit disapproval for benefitting the children of America with this approach. I can't imagine any enlightened person criticizing strenthening its own society by educating its young.
It need not even be at the expense of any other nation. There are enough old intel boxes being tossed on a daily basis to put a computer in front of nearly every student in the US. With a coordinated effort of salvaging old workstations and writing educational software for these older boxes we could change the way kids are taught.
"The touch pad is by far the worst input device on the market today."
Totally subjective, dude. I hear this complaint a lot from people I know. But I have been using Apple trackpads since the mid-90s and to this particular carbon-based life form the trackpad feels so natural to use it feels like its part of my hand.
I'll just tell you what I tell all trackpad naysayers. If you hop on a skateboard, and fall off of it and break y'r arse what do you feel is to blame? The poorly designed piece of wood with wheels attached that slides around unpredictably when you try to stand on it? Or the fact that you haven't become familiar with how to stand on one and make it roll around?
Just got round to rechecking the comments on this one, sorry for the late reply. I'm glad you got tomeet those guys on a personal level, I also find that incredibly and highly impressive! You are very lucky for having gotten to witess that highly important patch of history on a personal level.
I can't honestly say that those people were strange/normal based on personal interaction. But the story that is portrayed of daily life there does indeed illustrate very strong characters that were also highly eccentric. The info in that book is all I have to go on, however, and I will certainly not try to refute your personal experiences there.
As far as specific eccentricities, it's a little hard for me to remember particular instances since I read the book about 2-3 years ago.
But one thing that sticks out in my mind from that particular read was the so-caled "dealer sessions". Those were the sessions where they all sat together in a room on bean-bag chairs whilst one of their number stands at a blackboard at the head of the room and "pitches" their (usually revolunary, abstruse and highly technical) idea. If the idea was well received those assembled would respond with high enthusiasm. If it was negative, they would rip it mercilessly to shreds!
If Butler Lampson (portrayed as the most eminent, but also the most elitest and arrogant of a highly elitest and arrogant bunch...again, I wasn't there, this is how it was portrayed)disagreed with your ideas he was particularly fond of hitting you with a basso-profundo "BULLSHIT" with such force it actually hit you in the chest like a bass drum in a marching band (again, as described). This was usually enough to send enough wind out of the sails of the person onstage, they would usually just apologize for wasting everyone's time and slink off the stage. NO one seemed interested in challenging Lampson, one of the most respected and revered of the PARCians.
Until one day (and I wish I could remember who this was) someone decided to stick to his guns and asky "Why? Why is this idea bullshit?" Butler's reply? Was to hurl a glass ashtray at the guys head with such velocity it actually left a divit in the chalkboard behind the speaker. Said divit would no doubt have been in the speaker's head instead of the chalk-board if he hadn't had his adrenaline charged lighting qiuck reflexes to thank!
I'm pretty sure that no one in their right mind would have wanted to challenge the 800lb Gorilla that was Lampson! However, if true, this portays an extremely eccentric and egotistical 800lb gorilla.
Again, I find it extremely impressive that you got to tour the place in '75. But do you honestly feel that that tour gave you enough of a feel for daily life at PARC? For instance, were you lucky enough to sit on on a "dealer" session? Did you get to present any ideas at such a session?
Also, I agree with your statement that they were basically showing what could be done in the future with a mucho-expensivissimo personal computer. But, until PARC happened, this was not an obvious concept in the least due to the economics of information processing equipment of those days. As the author of that book points out, having a "personal" computer was about as absurd an idea as having a "personal" Boeing 747!
I wasn't lucky enough to have been around in those days, but in my book those people not only changed the world, they ultimately created the one in which we now live in so many ways.
Again, let me restate my admiration for your trip to PARC at this important time.
For more on Chuck Simonyi's invaluable contributions to computing, and to be reminded of how what is now mundane was at one point incredible and revolutionary (thinking of Bravo, here) this book is an excellent, highly readable and entertaining rendition of those days. I'd probably enjoy a second read of it, myself....
..well, duh. i caught that error too, after I posted. I type at well over 95wpm, and therefore typos seem to shoot past I just meant to say s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g ability!;) Now go out and get some son goddamit! Woops! I meant "sun", and could not have meant "son" because that would require procreation and we all now that spelling and grammer nazis like you never have the slightest hope over ever getting layed - WOOPS! I meant l-a-i-d...
I'd love to see a film showing the madness of the inventors at PARC inventing the future in which we now live. As far as characters you've got 'em in spades telling that story ! Butler Lampson, Bob Metcalf, Alan Kay, Gary Starkwheather...there's probably be a number of movies and stories you could tell. Not sure how compelling it might be a lay populace, but with characters that strong a writer might should (I would suppose) be able to taylor a story with commercial appeal...
Fucked up? erm. Maybe not. p0rbably a cynical biz decision on their part. Of course, if they did include the original ep on the dvd what incentive would you have for 5helling out $18 bux0rz to own it separately? Guranteed that'll kick a little more revenue their way. I'm sure Amazon wouldn't mind racking up a couple more sales units from curious viewers.
Trekkers whined and moaned about the limitations of the DVD versions of their fave films UNTIL it became clear that this was just a buisness tactic to sell the crappy version (only in terms of extra "bells and whistles" not the film itself before y'all git y'r panties wadded)* first only to hit a portion of the same audience up further on down the road for more money with a sooper DE-luxe version (bells and whistles included). I wouldn't be at all shocked if they worked their way back down the chain to a "special release" of Insurcraption . Dollar dollar bill,y'all...
*speaking in general terms, here. some releases were better than others, such as the dvd release for Trek IV, which included a nice infomentary on the making of...
If one of the Aussie's gov't main points is that "certain facilities will not be built", maybe they should just get over their prejudice against the Jedi and build them a temple! Hell! I'd start attending service if there were a Jedi temple in Jersey! And there is little doubt in my mind that The Way of the Force is a more spiritually enlightening path than that of the Chrurch Scientology!
...OKay, so I realize that Mhz aint the whole ball o' wax but it 5eems that the mhz gulf between the PPC and x86 is just getting way out of hand. Even with the supposed architectural efficiencies of the RISC, it seems that those benefits are being occluded by this widening gap in clockcycles.
I have read in various places that Mot0 has suffered some tremendous "braindrain" in their design teams, which badly affected their ability to bust out fastr ch1ps....But I first heard this tale of woe like 2 years ago! Could it be that they have yet to recover from this unfortunate ph3nomenon?
I'm beginning to wonder if Apple should just abandon the RISC platform altogether and let loose with the Intel version of OS X that they undoubtedly have (X being based on openstep).
Also, I once read an article on ARS a couple years back about the whole RISC vs. CISC debate being largely erroneous. That some of the x86 registers (I think they were actually using an AMD for comparison) actually had reduced instruction sets and that some of the registers on the (then current) G3 had some complex instructions embedded into its architecture. It said that a more accurate term to describe CPU architecture for b0th x86 and PPC would be FISC standing for FAST Instruction Set...
at any rate, I would like to see the PPC brought to the point where they could start putting out wafers of chips that clocked somewhere in the neighborhood of the x86 product line. Especially since at similar clockspeeds they would outperform their conterparts, but also because in the minds of the publix, Mhz is highly marketable. Most people equate Mhz with Mph...
Woops! I think that I heard that Sam Jackson told a similar story in an interview I once saw, I realize that the story references Lawrence Fishburn. My bad.
As annoying as I find people are solipsistic enough to pick up a cell phone in the middle of a performance and sit there saying "Yeah, yeah...uh-huh. No. No, I don't think she likes to eat that.Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll be done in..." (Stands up to ask the actor onstage) "... I think we should be done in about 20 minutes"....
Makes me want to legalize murder as long as its done with your bare hands...I realize this is just my problem and there are far more serious concerns in the world. "Hmm I wonder why that Al Qaeda operative was casing out the Port Authority building with a camera and surveyors euipment last Wednsesday".
And the fact of the matter is, we really shouldn't be clogging up the court system with people accused of sheer-idiocy. Sidestepping for a moment how overcrowded our court systems in NYC are at the moment, let me just say that laws really should be geared more towards protecting people from actual harm as opposed to annoyance and inconvenience.
Before I start on another "Where does it all end" tirade, let me just say I like Kevin Spacey's approach a little better.
While Sam Jackson gets points for justifiable indignation, Spacey gets points in my book for finessing the situation. He too stopped the play but just said "Tell them we're busy". Ouch! Wonder if that idiot with the cell phone had the common decency to feel stupid...
I think it depends on the type of user you are targeting. Most business people still suffer from cases of severe "metaphor-shear" and naivete when it comes to computers. I see it every day in my line of work. Digital artists tend to usually be the most savvy members of the workforce, but they on the whole are a very small segment of the working population.
But I continue to be amazed at the silliness of the average worker. I just freelanced a few weeks ago at a company of 150 employees that had NO FIREWALL. I was dumbfounded. The "IT" guys there were a bunch of stoner-LuZ|2$ whose ratioanle was that "Oh...we only have 125 macs and 25 Win9x machines. You can't hack a Macintosh and we don't have enough Windoze machines to interest any hacker!" No amount of reasoning could convince them and this was only WEEKS ago not YEARS. And this was a multi-million dollar company on 5th Ave in NYC! So please, don't try to convince me that people are more savvy about computers today than in the past.
It takes a LOT more than a few decades, apparently, for these semi-evolved hairless apes (i.e. us) to come to grips with this new technology!
If I wasn't suffieciently convinced by these experiences the clincher was the demo of Social Engineering put on at h2k2 this year in NYC. Where I saw Emmanual Goldstein (no not the fictional character from 1984;) call up a Starbucks in Manhattan with the cHeEzY line of "Hi, uhm, this is Carl in tech. You guys having a problem with your modem? You know the one you use to authenticate credit card numbers"? He then proceeded to get the hairless ape on the other end of the line to give out somebody's AMEX number and experiation date.(!!!)
For a follow up, he then called the Russian Tea Room (it was still open at that point) and with the line "I think my wife made a reservation for tomorrow night. I am a writer and I use a lot of pen-names, could you please tell me who has a res for 8pm". He then proceeds to get the name and PHONE NUMBER for the person with a reservation at that time. He said thank you and changed the reservation. And for a finishing touch he called that number (in the guise of a Tea Room employee) and changed the res on that end (citing "Health inspections" as the reason. You don't think that had anything to do with them closing, do you?;).
So what can you say? If you choose your targets carefully enough you can have ASTOUNDING successes. And, given the numbskulls I see who are members of the "Business elite of Manhattan" I can't say that I'd beleive them to be canny enough to rebuff such common-sense defying attacks.
In short, in order for social engineering to cease in its effectiveness, people have to be something resembling common-sensical and savvy.
You've got to be kidding me! There's no way you could seriously believe that to be a flame-retardent post! Even Shatner concedes that V was not a good movie and it was his baby! And there's no denying that V is the most embarassingly bad of the lot! I mean, c'mon...an aged Uhura dancing around in her underwear like she was some 20 year old stripper...*cringe*
It is popularly conceded that TWoK is the *BEST* Trek made, and for once I agree with the majority. It was the film they used as the standard to live up to in the soon to be released Trek : Nemesis. (time will tell if they got it right.)
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, no other company would be stupid enough to try to use the name "TiVO" without paying for it,
Maybe the cases of companies ripping off intellectual propery rights are very few and far between, indeed, but that is not to say that it doesn't happen.One case that comes to mind is that of a band called The Squirrel Nut Zippers in which Wrigley's Gum used their song in a television commercial without paying the band or acknowleging their rights to the band's own music. To add insult to injury, Wrigley didn't even bother recreating the song with a sound alike band...they just lifted the track directly from the album . Of course the band sued, as I understand it, and the company settled out of court.
I don't think this sort of monumental stupidity is what you would call commonplace. But it does occasionally happen.
Finally, tech-based legal advice that doesn't begin with "IANAL".
Dammit!~ I don't know if I'm confortable seeing legal advice without that acryonym in place. Think he'd be willing to mollify my need for acronyms by preceding his advice with "JCIAAL"? Or how about "JCDWSMIAAFL" (as in Jesus Christ! Don't Worry So Much! I am a friggin' lawyer!)?
Too bad they missed this. Oh well...maybe it'll be on the director's cut for TT....
though, I should point out that the edition that I read of Computer Lib was the 1987 Microsoft Press reissue. How else could Ted Nelson known of Macintoshes when the original edition (that I linked to above) was written in 1972!
On a side note, according to Raskin the main reason he decided to call the new computer he was designing the "McIntosh" was that this was supposedly "America's favorite Apple".
Jeff was a little more than one of the early macintosh engineers. He was the originator of the Macintosh project. The guy who decided to call the Mac a "Mac". Though he originally wanted to call it the McIntosh, there was a high level audio component manufacturer of the same name and Apple's lawyers decided to change the spelling of the name to "Macintosh". Though as Theodore Nelson pointed out in his classic geek opus Computer Lib/Dream Machines, the name "Macintosh" if you actually followed the rules of English syntax would be pronounced "Mah-Sin-Tosh".
I'm on a reading tear at the moment of old computer books where they are talking about the design of the interfaces that we have all come to know and love (books from a time when these were all new ideas). I plan on topping it off with Jeff Raskin's new book.
As far as actually designing interfaces goes, several of my friends who actually design interfaces for a living have claimed that this book has been a tremendous help in providing a direction and design philosophy. Most people who design interfaces for the web, for instance, don't seem to ask themselves questions like "How would I design a telephone if I had never seen, never heard of what this device was or was supposed to do".
So, we're just supposed to take your word that you're smart? All you have on that site is a picture! Is that supposed to be your proof? When were you planning to post something a little more substantive?
I'm gonna go find a story about OS/2. It will surely get accepted today!
Roger! Okay, I'll grab one about VMS. Then can we call it teh day?
I (as a TiVo subscriber) just recently got a letter in the mail stating that TiVo is doing away with the $250 lifetime-membership sometime soon. However, they also claimed that they were lowering the fee from $13 a month to $5 a month! Hopefully this new pricepoint will help it reach a larger marketshare. I'm not sure if this is a deal for DirecTV owners exclusively however (I hope not).
I myself am also a "movie guy" and not much into "Everybody loves Raymond". But the Starz Network has something called "Starz on Demand" which works with TiVo to automatically TiVo the latest releases for you. That's pretty cool. Mainly I use Tivo for BBC World News, BookTV on CSpan, The Daily Show, and some TechTV stuff. Also, owning the Tivo is the only way I can reliably catch Farscape on a regular basis.
One thing I think Tivo may have going for it is "mindshare". You may have noticed that I use Tivo as a verb. That seems a ubiquitous term for DVRing. I notice my friends who own DVRs from other manufacturers (like ReplayTV) still say that they "Tivo" this or that. Kind of the way people used to say they were going to "Xerox" something when they wanted make a photocopy. Even if they were using an HP copier!
Even more astonishing than the planet itself is the fact that the only thing on it is a little French boy with a rose...
at our annual non-denominational pan-conreatational winter solstice festival on December 22nd! As long as it doesn't have any specific references to the symbols/ideas of any one religion...
[basso rumble]"Happy happy happy...everyone is happy"...
"Their problem, I think, is a frequent but misguided idea that one's countrymen are better than those who happen to live elsewhere."
Not to be too objectivist about that statement, but of course the flipside to that argument is "are one's countrymen any less worthy of charity" because of their proximity?
I definitely to NOT think that the altruistic efforts of this organization should be quelched/criticized/redirected towards benifitting the U>S>A.They are doing something that is very important and they, of course, are free to direct their efforts where they wish.
But, seriously, there is a valid argument to be made about someone else (if I had no bills to pay and didn't work as much as I do, it would be me. I know, excuse, excuse) to do this very same thing here domestically.
All of us here live very wired lives. Could you imagine working in a workplace that did NOT have one computer per user? That is the reality of the American school system, only the work being done there is much more important than the work being done in any office building. Yet it is being done with a shocking paucity of resources. This is right here in the US.
You don't need to be born in a foreign land to suffer from a learning disability. And is the domestic child who suffers from such a disablility any less worthy of all the advantages we could provide him or her? With a wired school system and some fierce coding we could build a wired infrasctructure that would provide an adaptive learning environment that would serve the needs of every child (learning disabled or not). Everyone responds to different cues when learning and think of the power of a completely computerized educational system that would adapt to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual user! It could completely revolutionize the way kids are taught. But are we anywhere near such a noble and valid goal? Hardly. In fact, it is easy to say that the way teachers teach mathematics today is the nearly (with minor changes in teaching philosophies) the same as it was taught in the Victorian era! The mindset in the classroom is (in some ways) as Victorian as the pencil sharpener in every schoolroom!
As Nicholas Nergoponte points out, adaptive learning techologies could elevate the lives of every child who has access to these new methods.
Frankly, it amazes me how many of the posts on this board seem to indicate a tacit disapproval for benefitting the children of America with this approach. I can't imagine any enlightened person criticizing strenthening its own society by educating its young.
It need not even be at the expense of any other nation. There are enough old intel boxes being tossed on a daily basis to put a computer in front of nearly every student in the US. With a coordinated effort of salvaging old workstations and writing educational software for these older boxes we could change the way kids are taught.
"The touch pad is by far the worst input device on the market today."
Totally subjective, dude. I hear this complaint a lot from people I know. But I have been using Apple trackpads since the mid-90s and to this particular carbon-based life form the trackpad feels so natural to use it feels like its part of my hand.
I'll just tell you what I tell all trackpad naysayers. If you hop on a skateboard, and fall off of it and break y'r arse what do you feel is to blame? The poorly designed piece of wood with wheels attached that slides around unpredictably when you try to stand on it? Or the fact that you haven't become familiar with how to stand on one and make it roll around?
Just got round to rechecking the comments on this one, sorry for the late reply. I'm glad you got tomeet those guys on a personal level, I also find that incredibly and highly impressive! You are very lucky for having gotten to witess that highly important patch of history on a personal level.
I can't honestly say that those people were strange/normal based on personal interaction. But the story that is portrayed of daily life there does indeed illustrate very strong characters that were also highly eccentric. The info in that book is all I have to go on, however, and I will certainly not try to refute your personal experiences there.
As far as specific eccentricities, it's a little hard for me to remember particular instances since I read the book about 2-3 years ago.
But one thing that sticks out in my mind from that particular read was the so-caled "dealer sessions". Those were the sessions where they all sat together in a room on bean-bag chairs whilst one of their number stands at a blackboard at the head of the room and "pitches" their (usually revolunary, abstruse and highly technical) idea. If the idea was well received those assembled would respond with high enthusiasm. If it was negative, they would rip it mercilessly to shreds!
If Butler Lampson (portrayed as the most eminent, but also the most elitest and arrogant of a highly elitest and arrogant bunch...again, I wasn't there, this is how it was portrayed)disagreed with your ideas he was particularly fond of hitting you with a basso-profundo "BULLSHIT" with such force it actually hit you in the chest like a bass drum in a marching band (again, as described). This was usually enough to send enough wind out of the sails of the person onstage, they would usually just apologize for wasting everyone's time and slink off the stage. NO one seemed interested in challenging Lampson, one of the most respected and revered of the PARCians.
Until one day (and I wish I could remember who this was) someone decided to stick to his guns and asky "Why? Why is this idea bullshit?" Butler's reply? Was to hurl a glass ashtray at the guys head with such velocity it actually left a divit in the chalkboard behind the speaker. Said divit would no doubt have been in the speaker's head instead of the chalk-board if he hadn't had his adrenaline charged lighting qiuck reflexes to thank!
I'm pretty sure that no one in their right mind would have wanted to challenge the 800lb Gorilla that was Lampson! However, if true, this portays an extremely eccentric and egotistical 800lb gorilla.
Again, I find it extremely impressive that you got to tour the place in '75. But do you honestly feel that that tour gave you enough of a feel for daily life at PARC? For instance, were you lucky enough to sit on on a "dealer" session? Did you get to present any ideas at such a session?
Also, I agree with your statement that they were basically showing what could be done in the future with a mucho-expensivissimo personal computer. But, until PARC happened, this was not an obvious concept in the least due to the economics of information processing equipment of those days. As the author of that book points out, having a "personal" computer was about as absurd an idea as having a "personal" Boeing 747!
I wasn't lucky enough to have been around in those days, but in my book those people not only changed the world, they ultimately created the one in which we now live in so many ways.
Again, let me restate my admiration for your trip to PARC at this important time.
For more on Chuck Simonyi's invaluable contributions to computing, and to be reminded of how what is now mundane was at one point incredible and revolutionary (thinking of Bravo, here) this book is an excellent, highly readable and entertaining rendition of those days. I'd probably enjoy a second read of it, myself....
..well, duh. i caught that error too, after I posted. I type at well over 95wpm, and therefore typos seem to shoot past I just meant to say s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g ability! ;) Now go out and get some son goddamit! Woops! I meant "sun", and could not have meant "son" because that would require procreation and we all now that spelling and grammer nazis like you never have the slightest hope over ever getting layed - WOOPS! I meant l-a-i-d...
I'd love to see a film showing the madness of the inventors at PARC inventing the future in which we now live. As far as characters you've got 'em in spades telling that story ! Butler Lampson, Bob Metcalf, Alan Kay, Gary Starkwheather...there's probably be a number of movies and stories you could tell. Not sure how compelling it might be a lay populace, but with characters that strong a writer might should (I would suppose) be able to taylor a story with commercial appeal...
Fucked up? erm. Maybe not. p0rbably a cynical biz decision on their part. Of course, if they did include the original ep on the dvd what incentive would you have for 5helling out $18 bux0rz to own it separately? Guranteed that'll kick a little more revenue their way. I'm sure Amazon wouldn't mind racking up a couple more sales units from curious viewers.
,y'all...
Trekkers whined and moaned about the limitations of the DVD versions of their fave films UNTIL it became clear that this was just a buisness tactic to sell the crappy version (only in terms of extra "bells and whistles" not the film itself before y'all git y'r panties wadded)* first only to hit a portion of the same audience up further on down the road for more money with a sooper DE-luxe version (bells and whistles included). I wouldn't be at all shocked if they worked their way back down the chain to a "special release" of Insurcraption . Dollar dollar bill
*speaking in general terms, here. some releases were better than others, such as the dvd release for Trek IV, which included a nice infomentary on the making of...
If one of the Aussie's gov't main points is that "certain facilities will not be built", maybe they should just get over their prejudice against the Jedi and build them a temple! Hell! I'd start attending service if there were a Jedi temple in Jersey! And there is little doubt in my mind that The Way of the Force is a more spiritually enlightening path than that of the Chrurch Scientology!
...OKay, so I realize that Mhz aint the whole ball o' wax but it 5eems that the mhz gulf between the PPC and x86 is just getting way out of hand. Even with the supposed architectural efficiencies of the RISC, it seems that those benefits are being occluded by this widening gap in clockcycles.
I have read in various places that Mot0 has suffered some tremendous "braindrain" in their design teams, which badly affected their ability to bust out fastr ch1ps....But I first heard this tale of woe like 2 years ago! Could it be that they have yet to recover from this unfortunate ph3nomenon?
I'm beginning to wonder if Apple should just abandon the RISC platform altogether and let loose with the Intel version of OS X that they undoubtedly have (X being based on openstep).
Also, I once read an article on ARS a couple years back about the whole RISC vs. CISC debate being largely erroneous. That some of the x86 registers (I think they were actually using an AMD for comparison) actually had reduced instruction sets and that some of the registers on the (then current) G3 had some complex instructions embedded into its architecture. It said that a more accurate term to describe CPU architecture for b0th x86 and PPC would be FISC standing for FAST Instruction Set...
at any rate, I would like to see the PPC brought to the point where they could start putting out wafers of chips that clocked somewhere in the neighborhood of the x86 product line. Especially since at similar clockspeeds they would outperform their conterparts, but also because in the minds of the publix, Mhz is highly marketable. Most people equate Mhz with Mph...
1 60tz 0|\|3zt |*05T~###~~~^^^!!!!
kUz 1 83 133t and y0u b3 r33t
Woops! I think that I heard that Sam Jackson told a similar story in an interview I once saw, I realize that the story references Lawrence Fishburn. My bad.
As annoying as I find people are solipsistic enough to pick up a cell phone in the middle of a performance and sit there saying "Yeah, yeah...uh-huh. No. No, I don't think she likes to eat that.Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll be done in..." (Stands up to ask the actor onstage) "... I think we should be done in about 20 minutes"....
Makes me want to legalize murder as long as its done with your bare hands...I realize this is just my problem and there are far more serious concerns in the world. "Hmm I wonder why that Al Qaeda operative was casing out the Port Authority building with a camera and surveyors euipment last Wednsesday".
And the fact of the matter is, we really shouldn't be clogging up the court system with people accused of sheer-idiocy. Sidestepping for a moment how overcrowded our court systems in NYC are at the moment, let me just say that laws really should be geared more towards protecting people from actual harm as opposed to annoyance and inconvenience. Before I start on another "Where does it all end" tirade, let me just say I like Kevin Spacey's approach a little better.
While Sam Jackson gets points for justifiable indignation, Spacey gets points in my book for finessing the situation. He too stopped the play but just said "Tell them we're busy". Ouch! Wonder if that idiot with the cell phone had the common decency to feel stupid...
when it can figure out that the words h@x0r5 = |-|4xX0rZ=h4x0r5=hAxX0|2z=...ah screw it. 'l33t' folk ain't usually that bright, so why bother? ;)
I think it depends on the type of user you are targeting. Most business people still suffer from cases of severe "metaphor-shear" and naivete when it comes to computers. I see it every day in my line of work. Digital artists tend to usually be the most savvy members of the workforce, but they on the whole are a very small segment of the working population.
;) call up a Starbucks in Manhattan with the cHeEzY line of "Hi, uhm, this is Carl in tech. You guys having a problem with your modem? You know the one you use to authenticate credit card numbers"? He then proceeded to get the hairless ape on the other end of the line to give out somebody's AMEX number and experiation date.(!!!)
;).
But I continue to be amazed at the silliness of the average worker. I just freelanced a few weeks ago at a company of 150 employees that had NO FIREWALL. I was dumbfounded. The "IT" guys there were a bunch of stoner-LuZ|2$ whose ratioanle was that "Oh...we only have 125 macs and 25 Win9x machines. You can't hack a Macintosh and we don't have enough Windoze machines to interest any hacker!" No amount of reasoning could convince them and this was only WEEKS ago not YEARS. And this was a multi-million dollar company on 5th Ave in NYC! So please, don't try to convince me that people are more savvy about computers today than in the past.
It takes a LOT more than a few decades, apparently, for these semi-evolved hairless apes (i.e. us) to come to grips with this new technology!
If I wasn't suffieciently convinced by these experiences the clincher was the demo of Social Engineering put on at h2k2 this year in NYC. Where I saw Emmanual Goldstein (no not the fictional character from 1984
For a follow up, he then called the Russian Tea Room (it was still open at that point) and with the line "I think my wife made a reservation for tomorrow night. I am a writer and I use a lot of pen-names, could you please tell me who has a res for 8pm". He then proceeds to get the name and PHONE NUMBER for the person with a reservation at that time. He said thank you and changed the reservation. And for a finishing touch he called that number (in the guise of a Tea Room employee) and changed the res on that end (citing "Health inspections" as the reason. You don't think that had anything to do with them closing, do you?
So what can you say? If you choose your targets carefully enough you can have ASTOUNDING successes. And, given the numbskulls I see who are members of the "Business elite of Manhattan" I can't say that I'd beleive them to be canny enough to rebuff such common-sense defying attacks.
In short, in order for social engineering to cease in its effectiveness, people have to be something resembling common-sensical and savvy.
Social engineering obsolete? Bunk!
You've got to be kidding me! There's no way you could seriously believe that to be a flame-retardent post! Even Shatner concedes that V was not a good movie and it was his baby! And there's no denying that V is the most embarassingly bad of the lot! I mean, c'mon...an aged Uhura dancing around in her underwear like she was some 20 year old stripper...*cringe*
It is popularly conceded that TWoK is the *BEST* Trek made, and for once I agree with the majority. It was the film they used as the standard to live up to in the soon to be released Trek : Nemesis. (time will tell if they got it right.)
Gimme a freakin' break already...