And OS X stole from NeXT and NeXT stole from Mac and Mac stole from Smalltalk.
Apple bought NeXT and NeXT was founded by Steve Jobs, so I don't think theft is an issue in those. A popular joke amongst those of us who still play around on NeXTSTEP (I have a cube), joke that with the itroduction of the G4 cube and OSX NeXT's takeover of apple is complete.
On the topic of Doug Miller's Responses (hey no one wants a post that's completely off topic). It appears that microsoft is still on the "dumb down the computers instead of up the intelligence of the users" philosiphy. This is a common philosiphy throught all industry. As much as my idealism wants to see intelligent users using Linux and never bothering me with questions. I don't see this as the case anytime soon. However, the continued "ease of use" tools implemented by microsoft (and apple) keeps users from needing to know how their machines operate.
Great for the tech support industry, great for the sales of computer systems. The real loser in the equation is the user.
Do you buy a car when you don't know how to drive?
A couple years ago I was offered a job in Salt Lake, it took me about 5 minutes to decide with a resounding "NO". The liquor laws of Salt Lake City are reflective of the dominant moral culture of the area. I think it's more that culture as a whole that harms Salt Lake when trying to draw prospective recruits.
I live in a fairly liberal community, and that my color this opinion a bit (it's always bad to make generalizations), but techies on broad scope tend toward liberal viewpoints. Living in a conservitive community isn't appealing (it never is to have to hide ones beliefs in order to avoid ridicule). Also the view of Salt Lake (held by many outside the community) is one of almost Mormonistic Nepitism. We hear horror stories of people being passed up for promotions and raises while their mormon co workers climb the ladder with ease. I am sure that stories like this have an effect on migration (despite wether or not they are true).
I started in tech support and quickly made my way to sysadmin. Since then I've learned that most jobs in the tech sector have a high degree of repetitiva and dull tasks. It's the reality. As a sysadmin I pictured spending my days dealing with complex problems and interesting projects, but most of my time is spent applying patches, cancelling run away print jobs, and adding/deleting user accounts. Sure this is broken by the occassional "We're replacing all the printers in the building and implementiong a central print server, GO!", or "Write a perl script to automate this new process implemented by the developemtn team", but this is the exception. I'm sure developers wish they could spend a lot more time writing killer code than meticulously debugging lines of someone elses code (or their own), but that's the nature of the bussiness. However, just keep in mind that system testing and upgrading is an important part of the operations of many tech companies. Someone has to do them, and when tech workers can usually (and easily) change companies at a whim if they don't like their work environment, who do you think is going to be doing the menial work?
MOO was the game that got me into Strategy/Galactic Conquest games. I spend most of my off time in the military playing MOO2. My friends and I used to talk about what kind of features we'd add if we were on the dev team for MOO3.
Creative, +2 research, +1 Production -20% down the middle... the standard Custom race.
This is also the game that truly threw me into network gaming. I am glad that there is going to be a sequel and I am anxious to hear about added features. The "official site" is dismally slow right now (No doubt the impact of slashdot readers). But I personally am hoping for:
Detailed ground combat
More options for custom races
More races
More Ship types/mods
3-dimetional glaxy map and space combat
That things stay turn based.
In this age of RTS games I think we need new, good turn based strategy game. Something I haven't seen since Alpha Centauri.
I got into this discussion with a friend some time ago, about How gnutella could be touted as a legit peice of bussiness software because it does not *exclusivley* restrict itself to mp3's and that by Napster pandering to the music crowd has brought itself under fire... Of course we both have knowledge of neumerous FTP servers from where we can get just about anything we want. The issue is this, Napster (and even guntella) are high visibility, there have been prominent news stories and articles about these programs, and once the public becomes aware (at large) of something like this, sure as hell, someone is not going to like it. FTP has been around longer then I've been working with cmputers, but it doesn't have the publicity that Napster does (maybe it's needs a better publicity agent..), it also is used legitimatley by as many people who use it for nefarious purposes..(if not more). Those who NEED an "idiot box" client such as napster or gnutella to get what they are looking for will lose out, but to the literate computer users, well, we won't be very inconvenienced at all.
As gfor shutting down the internet... well microsoft claims it would hurt the economy if we just broke them up...
peanuts compared to the damage that would be done by shutting down the internet...now where'd I put that copy of Wildcat BBS...
I loved this write up when it was called Gattica, but that's truly beside the point (although the world depicted in that film is exactly the type of world Mr. Katz is describing, there are other considerations to take into consideration. The Human Race itself has trived on it's diversity and the ability to "have" the right person for the right job. If one starts removing the genes for (say) agressive behavior (an ideal situation for a parent in "the perfect baby", but a quality which is responsible for more than some assume in our adult lives) who's going to be there when the "aliens (or rebels or mutants, or whatever you want to call them) decide to stage a forceful take over, and the geneticly pliant population merely shrugs, says "oh, he/she/it's in charge now", and goes back to work. The iradication of genetic disease is one thing (and I think the original intent of many scientists involved in the project), the alteration of essential elements of our genetic make-up is another. I just envision short sighted parents who want the "perfect child" ordering up thier genetic soup (so to speak) and realize 18 years later that often the "perfect child" is an ineffectual adult.
My father always said to his fellow parents that he wasn't trying to raise good children, he was trying to raise good adults.
I look at things this way. As long as there is a signifigant user base for a peice of softwear then it should be covered. I would gamble that there are more than enough Red Hat 6.X users out there running GNOME who would find a little more infomration about thier Window Manager helpful. More people use Windows than Linux, but I can find more books on Linux (and related Linux/Unix based softwear) than I find for windows. The reason? The documentation is needed to fully use Linux to it's optimal potential. Documentation should work on a "how much information is needed" basis, not a "how many people need the information".
I remeber sometime last year I was pricing Ulta 5's and 10's as was a friend of mine from england. I think we were both in "wishful thinking" mode. ALthough it looks as though now that wish may come true. I work with so much sun hardware at work that I'd love to have a bit of it in my home (I could place it right next to that Amiga 500 I picked up this weekend at a garage sale). They state that they are targeting the developer market. I think that us Sys Admins need to stand up and be recognized as a market segment, we like our toys too, and can probably get more out of them than some (note to potential flamers I said SOME) developers (sorry on a little "sys-admin unsung hero" rant). To the point, however I was building an little linux server for my home (AMD K62-400Mhz)... hurm, may go with a Sun box for the primary server now...
I picked this book up last week, and have really found it useful. It was even a great help fixing a friend of mines networking problems. I really have to credit O'Reilly for thier good work, but I think that there was a certain bias to KDE (a big, "DUH" on the reasons why). I've been neutral on the Window Manager war and plan to stay that way, but it would have been wise for O'Reilly to include on of the team members in the book's production as a whole. The additional GNOME material was nice but something about it to me seemed "too little, too late", I'd like to see some definitive guides to Window Managers published by O'Reilly very soon as this is one area of expertise that I seriously lack in (usually sticking to straight text and only using x-windows in order to have multiple sessions running easily), hurm, I should check thier upcoming releases section of thier web page.
I have an interesting view point on the nature of science/religion. Being a VERY reformed jew I have always taken a very loose interpretation of the scriptures. It seems that the high level of beurocracy in the church today has really cause a cessation in religious progress over the past few hundred years. At one time religion and science were pretty much the same, although the scchism between them happened long ago. I guess I follow a somewhat science-as-religion view of the world. The church has never even considered the possibility of a higher power guiding man on the path of scientific discivery. I believe that "god" isn't finnished creating yet, that the higher power (whatever name you choose to use for it) still sees us as a work in progress and set us on the scientific path so that we could finish the job on our own...
We need more of these products commercially aavailable, I'd also like oil slicks and the like. Ohh, I harken back to the days of Spy Hunter, now where'd I put my CD of the Peter Gunn Theme??
I was discussing this trend with a friend of mine who lives in Japan. He does nearly all of his work through his PDA and Laptop. I think part of the problem here is PDA stadardiazation and affordability. Paper is easily transferred from one hand to the other for a very low cost, and, (let's face it) it's just convenient. Until PDA's become more common and can all talk to one another I think that we'll still be seeing a lot of papers around the office. Besides a binder is a lot easier for me to lug aroun then my laptop, palm-V, docking port and cell phone. Give me convenience or give me death.
Slashdot Mirror
And OS X stole from NeXT and NeXT stole from Mac and Mac stole from Smalltalk.
Apple bought NeXT and NeXT was founded by Steve Jobs, so I don't think theft is an issue in those. A popular joke amongst those of us who still play around on NeXTSTEP (I have a cube), joke that with the itroduction of the G4 cube and OSX NeXT's takeover of apple is complete.
On the topic of Doug Miller's Responses (hey no one wants a post that's completely off topic). It appears that microsoft is still on the "dumb down the computers instead of up the intelligence of the users" philosiphy. This is a common philosiphy throught all industry. As much as my idealism wants to see intelligent users using Linux and never bothering me with questions. I don't see this as the case anytime soon. However, the continued "ease of use" tools implemented by microsoft (and apple) keeps users from needing to know how their machines operate.
Great for the tech support industry, great for the sales of computer systems. The real loser in the equation is the user.
Do you buy a car when you don't know how to drive?
A couple years ago I was offered a job in Salt Lake, it took me about 5 minutes to decide with a resounding "NO". The liquor laws of Salt Lake City are reflective of the dominant moral culture of the area. I think it's more that culture as a whole that harms Salt Lake when trying to draw prospective recruits.
I live in a fairly liberal community, and that my color this opinion a bit (it's always bad to make generalizations), but techies on broad scope tend toward liberal viewpoints. Living in a conservitive community isn't appealing (it never is to have to hide ones beliefs in order to avoid ridicule). Also the view of Salt Lake (held by many outside the community) is one of almost Mormonistic Nepitism. We hear horror stories of people being passed up for promotions and raises while their mormon co workers climb the ladder with ease. I am sure that stories like this have an effect on migration (despite wether or not they are true).
I started in tech support and quickly made my way to sysadmin. Since then I've learned that most jobs in the tech sector have a high degree of repetitiva and dull tasks. It's the reality. As a sysadmin I pictured spending my days dealing with complex problems and interesting projects, but most of my time is spent applying patches, cancelling run away print jobs, and adding/deleting user accounts. Sure this is broken by the occassional "We're replacing all the printers in the building and implementiong a central print server, GO!", or "Write a perl script to automate this new process implemented by the developemtn team", but this is the exception. I'm sure developers wish they could spend a lot more time writing killer code than meticulously debugging lines of someone elses code (or their own), but that's the nature of the bussiness. However, just keep in mind that system testing and upgrading is an important part of the operations of many tech companies. Someone has to do them, and when tech workers can usually (and easily) change companies at a whim if they don't like their work environment, who do you think is going to be doing the menial work?
MOO was the game that got me into Strategy/Galactic Conquest games. I spend most of my off time in the military playing MOO2. My friends and I used to talk about what kind of features we'd add if we were on the dev team for MOO3.
Creative, +2 research, +1 Production -20% down the middle... the standard Custom race.
This is also the game that truly threw me into network gaming. I am glad that there is going to be a sequel and I am anxious to hear about added features. The "official site" is dismally slow right now (No doubt the impact of slashdot readers). But I personally am hoping for:
Detailed ground combat
More options for custom races
More races
More Ship types/mods
3-dimetional glaxy map and space combat
That things stay turn based.
In this age of RTS games I think we need new, good turn based strategy game. Something I haven't seen since Alpha Centauri.
I got into this discussion with a friend some time ago, about How gnutella could be touted as a legit peice of bussiness software because it does not *exclusivley* restrict itself to mp3's and that by Napster pandering to the music crowd has brought itself under fire... Of course we both have knowledge of neumerous FTP servers from where we can get just about anything we want. The issue is this, Napster (and even guntella) are high visibility, there have been prominent news stories and articles about these programs, and once the public becomes aware (at large) of something like this, sure as hell, someone is not going to like it. FTP has been around longer then I've been working with cmputers, but it doesn't have the publicity that Napster does (maybe it's needs a better publicity agent..), it also is used legitimatley by as many people who use it for nefarious purposes..(if not more). Those who NEED an "idiot box" client such as napster or gnutella to get what they are looking for will lose out, but to the literate computer users, well, we won't be very inconvenienced at all.
As gfor shutting down the internet... well microsoft claims it would hurt the economy if we just broke them up...
peanuts compared to the damage that would be done by shutting down the internet...now where'd I put that copy of Wildcat BBS...
I loved this write up when it was called Gattica, but that's truly beside the point (although the world depicted in that film is exactly the type of world Mr. Katz is describing, there are other considerations to take into consideration. The Human Race itself has trived on it's diversity and the ability to "have" the right person for the right job. If one starts removing the genes for (say) agressive behavior (an ideal situation for a parent in "the perfect baby", but a quality which is responsible for more than some assume in our adult lives) who's going to be there when the "aliens (or rebels or mutants, or whatever you want to call them) decide to stage a forceful take over, and the geneticly pliant population merely shrugs, says "oh, he/she/it's in charge now", and goes back to work. The iradication of genetic disease is one thing (and I think the original intent of many scientists involved in the project), the alteration of essential elements of our genetic make-up is another.
I just envision short sighted parents who want the "perfect child" ordering up thier genetic soup (so to speak) and realize 18 years later that often the "perfect child" is an ineffectual adult.
My father always said to his fellow parents that he wasn't trying to raise good children, he was trying to raise good adults.
I think there's a certain wisdom in those words.
I look at things this way. As long as there is a signifigant user base for a peice of softwear then it should be covered. I would gamble that there are more than enough Red Hat 6.X users out there running GNOME who would find a little more infomration about thier Window Manager helpful. More people use Windows than Linux, but I can find more books on Linux (and related Linux/Unix based softwear) than I find for windows. The reason? The documentation is needed to fully use Linux to it's optimal potential. Documentation should work on a "how much information is needed" basis, not a "how many people need the information".
I remeber sometime last year I was pricing Ulta 5's and 10's as was a friend of mine from england. I think we were both in "wishful thinking" mode. ALthough it looks as though now that wish may come true. I work with so much sun hardware at work that I'd love to have a bit of it in my home (I could place it right next to that Amiga 500 I picked up this weekend at a garage sale). They state that they are targeting the developer market. I think that us Sys Admins need to stand up and be recognized as a market segment, we like our toys too, and can probably get more out of them than some (note to potential flamers I said SOME) developers (sorry on a little "sys-admin unsung hero" rant). To the point, however I was building an little linux server for my home (AMD K62-400Mhz)... hurm, may go with a Sun box for the primary server now...
Apologies for the rambling
LO
I picked this book up last week, and have really found it useful. It was even a great help fixing a friend of mines networking problems. I really have to credit O'Reilly for thier good work, but I think that there was a certain bias to KDE (a big, "DUH" on the reasons why). I've been neutral on the Window Manager war and plan to stay that way, but it would have been wise for O'Reilly to include on of the team members in the book's production as a whole. The additional GNOME material was nice but something about it to me seemed "too little, too late", I'd like to see some definitive guides to Window Managers published by O'Reilly very soon as this is one area of expertise that I seriously lack in (usually sticking to straight text and only using x-windows in order to have multiple sessions running easily), hurm, I should check thier upcoming releases section of thier web page.
LO
I have an interesting view point on the nature of science/religion. Being a VERY reformed jew I have always taken a very loose interpretation of the scriptures. It seems that the high level of beurocracy in the church today has really cause a cessation in religious progress over the past few hundred years. At one time religion and science were pretty much the same, although the scchism between them happened long ago. I guess I follow a somewhat science-as-religion view of the world. The church has never even considered the possibility of a higher power guiding man on the path of scientific discivery. I believe that "god" isn't finnished creating yet, that the higher power (whatever name you choose to use for it) still sees us as a work in progress and set us on the scientific path so that we could finish the job on our own...
Just a thought.
We need more of these products commercially aavailable, I'd also like oil slicks and the like. Ohh, I harken back to the days of Spy Hunter, now where'd I put my CD of the Peter Gunn Theme??
I was discussing this trend with a friend of mine who lives in Japan. He does nearly all of his work through his PDA and Laptop. I think part of the problem here is PDA stadardiazation and affordability. Paper is easily transferred from one hand to the other for a very low cost, and, (let's face it) it's just convenient. Until PDA's become more common and can all talk to one another I think that we'll still be seeing a lot of papers around the office. Besides a binder is a lot easier for me to lug aroun then my laptop, palm-V, docking port and cell phone. Give me convenience or give me death.