You can indeed write very reliable software. The code that runs the space shuttle, for instance, is regarded as having one of the lowest bug rates in the world. It cost hundreds of dollars per line of code to get there, and it took a long time.
Want reliability? Pony up. See you in ten years.
(Don't get me started on government intervention, or initially well-meant licensing legislation. It'll be your worst nightmare, you'll remember the days of BillG and Windows fondly, if the governments ever get serious about that kind of control).
Over night, one of my hard disks had developed about 10,000 bad sectors. I called Gateway support.
"Sir, do you know how many sectors are on that hard disk?"
"500,000 or so," I said. This was 1994, and it was a 1G disk.
"So you've got a lot of GOOD sectors left, right?"
Uh . . . BWING! Head hurts! Owwww!
After an additional 20 minutes of idiocy, they finally decided to replace the disk under warranty. After which, I decided the best course of action if I ever had to call back with the same (or similar) problem would be -
"Hello, Gateway support? My hard disk is on FIRE."
"What??"
"My disk is on fire and Windows won't boot any more. What should I do?"
Ding. Joined in 1982 (just before all the layoffs). Worked for Tramiel on the ST. Left in 1987. Wild fucking ride: When I joined there were well over 10,000 people working for Atari, when I left, there were maybe 300 in both "Atari" companies.
All those stories about Stupid Marketing Tricks (like making several million more ET Phone Home cartridges than there were consoles to run them) are TRUE!:-)
Yah, the Newtons were ARM610/StrongArm based. This is ironic as hell. (I definitely preferred ARM assembly and C++ hacking over 68K, any day).
I guess that Palm is going to seriously screw with their user base in terms of compiled code, unless they do a DragonBall emulator (I guess that for most applications, you don't need balls-out performance for this to work just fine).
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You can indeed write very reliable software. The code that runs the space shuttle, for instance, is regarded as having one of the lowest bug rates in the world. It cost hundreds of dollars per line of code to get there, and it took a long time.
Want reliability? Pony up. See you in ten years.
(Don't get me started on government intervention, or initially well-meant licensing legislation. It'll be your worst nightmare, you'll remember the days of BillG and Windows fondly, if the governments ever get serious about that kind of control).
Over night, one of my hard disks had developed about 10,000 bad sectors. I called Gateway support.
"Sir, do you know how many sectors are on that hard disk?"
"500,000 or so," I said. This was 1994, and it was a 1G disk.
"So you've got a lot of GOOD sectors left, right?"
Uh . . . BWING! Head hurts! Owwww!
After an additional 20 minutes of idiocy, they finally decided to replace the disk under warranty. After which, I decided the best course of action if I ever had to call back with the same (or similar) problem would be -
"Hello, Gateway support? My hard disk is on FIRE."
"What??"
"My disk is on fire and Windows won't boot any more. What should I do?"
All computer applications fall into one of three baskets: information retrieval, database interaction, and content creation...
Huh. So, when I'm fragging bad guys in Quake, is that "database interaction" or "content creation?"
Browsers are more usable because they're less flexible.
"Gosh, this ball and chain is great! I don't have to run anywhere near as fast as I used to in order to get the same amount of exercise!"
Ding. Joined in 1982 (just before all the layoffs). Worked for Tramiel on the ST. Left in 1987. Wild fucking ride: When I joined there were well over 10,000 people working for Atari, when I left, there were maybe 300 in both "Atari" companies.
:-)
All those stories about Stupid Marketing Tricks (like making several million more ET Phone Home cartridges than there were consoles to run them) are TRUE!
"right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit" looks pretty clearly like blanket permission to reverse engineer the thing
very nice
Yah, the Newtons were ARM610/StrongArm based. This is ironic as hell. (I definitely preferred ARM assembly and C++ hacking over 68K, any day).
I guess that Palm is going to seriously screw with their user base in terms of compiled code, unless they do a DragonBall emulator (I guess that for most applications, you don't need balls-out performance for this to work just fine).
It's ironic that you can say it either letter-by-letter, "Ess-Dee-Emm-Eye", or all-at-once as: "Sodomy" :-)