When I worked at Microsoft in the early 90s, the role of Xenix was pretty much relegated to a glorified email terminal. A few old-timer people on the teams I worked with used it, and few of those people did anything but read their email remotely on the Xenix email servers. I don't recall anyone actually running Xenix on any box within their own office.
At no time did I get the impression that a developer at Microsoft felt that Xenix/UNIX was the future of the desktop. It was big, it was bloated, it couldn't run on then-current PCs well, nevermind the smaller machines of the mid-80s.
Sure, maybe there were some hold-outs in groups I didn't interact with, and I was only there long past Xenix heyday, but Xenix had no chance at the desktop, really.
... when Bill was pitchman for Jello, I always wanted him to have a great big Philco radio (with 675 knobs, of which only two worked) somewhere in the background of a scene. Just enough for the inside joke.
There is a sokoban puzzle in the middle of the text adventure game, Zork II. If you think Sokoban is challenging with a top-view graphical representation, try it in first-person prose. All you see is "a sandstone wall on your west, a sandstone wall on your south, and a marble wall on your east" and all you can try is "push the west wall."
Heck, when you first encounter it, you don't even know it's a Sokoban puzzle. You just find these goofy walls. It's only after carefully exploring and mapping the free and open areas and the wall materials that you might see your map as something else. Finally you can start working out on paper what you need to do.
I played this on an Apple II, and it's still available in the Infocom collection. Heck, play it on your Palm Pilot.
Re:I've written my representatives
on
SSSCA Editorials
·
· Score: 2
You've just guaranteed that none of your representatives will actually read your letter. Eight pages long??
Did you read the fucking page?
Up front, page one, for the staff who tallies feedback:
SUMMARY:
Regarding any bills such as the SSSCA proposed by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC). Do not pass legislation that erodes civil rights in exchange for corporate profiteering.
Do not pass legislation that disregards established fair use doctrine and stifles technical innovation.
Detailed reasoning for my position is included within. Please consider.
I then give enough details that other staff may flip through when (1) looking for "constituent sentiment" soundbites, and (2) looking for coherent industry voices in their district. I also say up front that it's an open letter which has gotten some press on other sites. If news percolates widely enough, it forms a feedback cycle, whereby the staff takes a second look, etc.
So now we know who reads and who doesn't. You may not feel like you can be bothered with someone's opinion, but you founded one assumption (that reps don't read) on another (that you thought I didn't know that). You came up short.
Re:I've written my representatives
on
SSSCA Editorials
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
My open letter to my representatives goes into quite a few separate objections to the SSSCA (and why the DMCA was broken). It's eight paper pages long, going into extra details and speaking plainly since it's also intended for a wider audience. It covers scope, civil, business, technical and motive objections to such legislation.
If you're writing to your representatives, you may want to read my letter for additional arguments on the topic. A couple of the court case mentions are slightly out of date now, as it was originally written last October.
"I bastun bor vi allihopa = we all live in the sauna (it's swedish)"
Damn. You mean it's not "I'm cuckoo for cocoa puffs"?
All my hopes for this release are dashed.
You're in luck. Beta 3 will be codenamed "Tous mes espoirs pour ce dégagement sont à tiret," which is pidgin French for "All my hopes for this release are dashed."
It would seem that the people on the ship would have a lot stronger sense of forward history. Say, generation two of ten, for a long voyage, they'd understand the critical nature of conservation, preservation, and making sure that their children's lives aren't for naught.
There are many science fiction stories about "people born on the way," in ark-like ships of this sort.
What strikes me is the sense of drama and tragedy if the on-ship culture panics or corrupts itself before it reaches the goal. Does anyone know of any stories that focus on that? Where generation eight of ten finds that they need to scrap the historic goal, due to some miscalculation or some unforeseen hardships, or merely a decadent generation five?
Hormel Foods has stated they don't mind the use of the word 'spam' to refer to U.C.E., or junk mail, as long as people don't use the term spelled in all-capitals. Hormel owns the trademark on the meat product, SPAM. Given their more-reasonable-than-average position on this, let's respect their request?
I know that watching people repeat the same dorky mistakes after thousands of strangers constantly correct them makes me cry. I mean, hell, why be competent at your primary language?
They did break some stuff with legacy code. If you ever named a class 'URI' your code will now fail to compile because they put this class in the java.net package which everyone imports anyway.
If you have a foo.bar.URI class, and the core has a java.net.URI class, you can still use yours.
You can:
specifically name the package at the usage (messy),
specifically include only the java.net classes you want, one by one, rather than including java.net.* (inconvenient),
or just clarify which URI class should be used in the imports specifically:
Existing code does not need to be recompiled, since bytecode always explicitly names classes always, but existing code does potentially need to be fixed if recompiled, as the default results of the imports will change. This is a pretty small and common occurrence with a new API set.
I was not suggesting that Microsoft's campaign funding and lobbying to this date has been illegal; in fact, it's quite legal but increasingly repugnant to the citizenry who wants fair elections in the future.
However, if a convict cannot vote, perhaps it is time to say that a convicted monopolist corporation cannot contribute money for some term.
For whatever reason, a corporation is in all senses an individual in our law. The punishments for breaking corporate laws should be such that they restrict the otherwise granted rights. No free speech campaigning, no lobbying, no tax break incentives in new properties, no sealed oem contracts, pick an appropriate level of restrictions for the conviction.
In this case, Microsoft had been challenged, but not yet convicted. Ever hear of a little concept known as "Innocent until PROVEN guilty"? Were this not the case, simply waging unfounded allegations against any person or company could (and likely would) impact that entity strongly for the worse.
Um, no, in the antitrust suit, Microsoft has been found guilty and that ruling has been upheld on appeal already. It is just the forms of remedy, the corporate equivalent of sentencing the convicted criminal, that is of question now.
Currently, Enron is the posterchild for the reason for campaign finance reform. If our politicians are swayed by the campaign contributions of Enron's scale, what corruption is seeded by a larger sum of money? If the advertising power of the campaigns is knocked askew by some soft money, isn't it knocked asunder by larger sums?
For a few stories linking Enron to campaign finance, you can look at this topic list on Salon.com. The topic is campaign finance. The headlines mostly discuss Enron in recent weeks.
These are at odds with each other. You said it yourself, middle management is balance. Another way of stating this is that it's your job to provide the right amount of slack in the system.
It may not teach you anything earth-startlingly new, but it has got some good notes and ideas on how to deal with your prima-donna types, your slacker types, and your micro-managing cohorts.
Yes, it's more accurate to quote, "Al Gore created the Internet" (not 'invented'). He helped to create the Internet as we know it through his legislative support in 1987 and later in 1994 bringing wide Internet awareness to the general non-technophile public in his national discussions about the Information Superhighway.
While I am glad to see someone setting the issue straight, or at least, less crooked, I cringe when someone resorts to ad hominem attacks to get their point across. This does no service to anybody.
You could have offered the links without the rhetoric, and it would have served just as well. Instead, you rant with emotional words, political slant and personal attacks.
A "reporter", politically a dogmatic Libertarian so extreme, a poster-boy for Libertarian ideologues, Libertarian joke-fodder, a Libertarian hit-piece, his hatchet-job, grudgingly retracted.
If you can't make your point on the merits of the discussion (a misquote and misrepresentation that was reinforced through the press quoting the press), but instead focus on the ideology and politics of a person, then you're fanning the flames of intolerance and empty rhetoric.
So, yes, Seth Finkelstein, I'd say your post was flamebait.
Re:Use his power for good, not evil (or less good:
on
Borking Outlook Express
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
From the email:
There are two ways, actually, that one can meet the
crackmonkey mailing list dress code. One is to simply use Free
Software, and not use a mailer that requires you to accept a license
that makes you promise not to share with your friends. Another is to
continue to use your Windows-based mailer, but hack the headers of
your message so as not to betray your use of the software.
[...]
First of all, I am not a member of the Open Source movement.
They seem only interested in how you can make money from free
software. I am actually (believe it or not) more concerned with the
ethical and moral issues involved in the subjugation of human beings
through restrictive copyright and patent law. I consider myself a
member of the Free Software movement.
Which is exactly the hypocrisy I can't stand about GNU-zealots.
He doesn't want to subjugate others' behavior, except by using software in the way he thinks is right. He wants to be ethical and respect people's rights, except where he feels he has the right to impose on others how they release technologies or extensions that rely in small part on his code.
This is why I prefer the Artistic License or the BSD licenses. They don't create stipulations, or only create stipulations on the original code. Code released under these licenses will always be available for everyone regardless of their creed.
If I build a project, and see some subroutine code that is GPL restricted, I know not to rely on it, because it limits my options on the code that I write. Why would I limit my options on my code, just to give someone else a woody? No thanks, GNU.
All that is possible is to release derived work without a Free license. It's not as if the original Free code would go away. You do not lose anything - you just do not get more. That's quite a difference.
The danger is always that the derived work becomes more extensively supported than the free parts of it.
So, why would badly supported source code deserve to win over well-supported binaries?
If in the marketplace, the code in the GPL is ignored in favor of completely closed original code, how does this benefit anyone? The GPL project then becomes an academic exercise while the closed original code becomes a market force.
Instead, if open BSD code is "stolen" (hah), closed, and even distorted, then this means that everyone has access to an implementation that is very similar to the de facto standard, and can even track or dismiss observable differences if the closed source dominates the market (as BSD TCP/IP has done). Everyone benefits.
The GPL is about rights and control. A patent tries to spur innovation by forcing people out of the copy-me-too rut. The GPL "spurs" innovation by forcing market leaders to ignore valuable code and write their own closed standards (or steal the valuable code and erase the fingerprints).
Personally, the BSD or Artistic licenses make more sense to me. If I write something cool, I want the massive market leaders to leverage it and turn my ideas into market standards. I let everyone else play with the source code, so everyone can play with the market standards.
I had owned and immediately given away the original, incredibly flawed, RCA Lyra because it simply stank so much I couldn't stand to own the thing. If RCA wants to send one of the new ones, I'd be pleased to check it out, but the shoddy original made me vow never to give RCA more MP3 player money.
It's one thing to state the problems, or even your dislike for a product, but why would RCA decide to ship a unit to a "journalist" (heh) who claims such bias as to pre-judge all future products because of one old first-generation product.
A reviewer's bread is buttered with free toys to review. Don't pander to the company, but don't snub them with prejudice either.
I see this as the real "Digital Divide," a recurring pattern using this new medium as a force to separate and distinguish the two classes, but in a new configuration. In the past, the producers were the paeons and the consumers were the elite.
This development shows how this is reversing: the producers are the elite who have licenses to clone costless data and the consumers are the powerless drones who pay their wages and freedoms away per every view.
Same class model we've had for centuries, and the digital realm is nothing new.
Scott McCloud discussed this phenomenon in his book, Understanding Comics.
Essentially, the more realistic the images, the less likely the viewer can really identify with or feel for the character in precisely the way that the artist wants. Too many distractions, too many subtle cues being converted into too many interpretations.
Whereas if the characters are rendered more abstractly, using simpler geometry, simpler facial expressions, fewer digressions from the message, then the viewer can empathize or identify with the characters very easily. The less it looks like someone else in particular, the more it could be you.
Meanwhile, Richard Smith notes that the Globally Unique Identifier in
every installation of Windows Media Player allows websites to universally
track users, and Microsoft does not consider it a security problem.
It's not a security problem. It's a privacy problem.
If it posted the user's passwords, executed arbitrary code, or removed
network firewall configurations, then it would be a security problem.
Patents are not about who is right, or who is first; patents are about
who will sue.
The US PTO is a money-making service for the government, and this
fact is why it operates as it does.
There is a misconception that it is the central duty of the PTO to
form a blockade against granting patents. The PTO can and will block
applications where there's heavy similarity with prior art or existing
patents, but that's really just a guideline to using the service, not
the core function.
The PTO's purpose is to grant patents for a fee, and it's wholly suited
to do so.
The application vetting process of the PTO is a cost center
for the operation of the PTO. This is akin to saying that customer service
is a cost center for the operation of AT&T. It is required,
but they'll cut costs as much as they can get away with.
To fix the patent application vetting process, two things must happen:
Congress must stop using the PTO's filing fees as a revenue source
for other pet interests instead of the PTO's own budget, and
The PTO needs to allow third parties to aid the vetting process
by challenging potential patents before they're granted.
As of 15 March 2001, the USPTO has changed their policies to partially solve
that second problem. They can now publish patent applications before
the patent itself is awarded to the applicant. Third parties may now
submit "helpful" arguments against controversial applications. The USPTO
can then weigh obviousness against challenges without incurring the
costs of doing all the searching themselves.
Breaking patents by finding simple prior art is not enough for most
cases. Patents already granted are almost never cracked, certainly not
by someone using an independent third party's prior art. In the famous
Heinlein/Waterbed case, the patent was denied before it was ever granted
by the Patent Office. Once a patent has been granted, the Patent Office
rarely will get involved in disputes; that is a matter for the courts.
I remember the 'Jonathan' design prototypes Apple developed in the 80's. Essentially the computer would consist of modules that plugged into a common backplane, extending the plane as it went.
Just like the IBM PCjr.
The PCjr's fatal flaw was not the chicklet keyboard (since that could be replaced or ignored), but the lack of a DMA controller to orchestrate quick I/O. In all other respects, it was a step up from the rest of the IBM PC designs at the time. Better sound, better color, extensible backplane through those sidecar "slices" you describe.
Of course, those who were looking at the cute toy-like box and the cute toy-like default keyboard, or those who now look at the ISA or Apple evolution post-1983, think the PCjr sucked.
Slashdot Mirror
When I worked at Microsoft in the early 90s, the role of Xenix was pretty much relegated to a glorified email terminal. A few old-timer people on the teams I worked with used it, and few of those people did anything but read their email remotely on the Xenix email servers. I don't recall anyone actually running Xenix on any box within their own office.
At no time did I get the impression that a developer at Microsoft felt that Xenix/UNIX was the future of the desktop. It was big, it was bloated, it couldn't run on then-current PCs well, nevermind the smaller machines of the mid-80s.
Sure, maybe there were some hold-outs in groups I didn't interact with, and I was only there long past Xenix heyday, but Xenix had no chance at the desktop, really.
Growing a chicken heart in a vat?
It's OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR.
And it's going to eat YOU up!
... when Bill was pitchman for Jello, I always wanted him to have a great big Philco radio (with 675 knobs, of which only two worked) somewhere in the background of a scene. Just enough for the inside joke.
The cross of two vectors, or more fully, the cross product of two vectors.
Heck, when you first encounter it, you don't even know it's a Sokoban puzzle. You just find these goofy walls. It's only after carefully exploring and mapping the free and open areas and the wall materials that you might see your map as something else. Finally you can start working out on paper what you need to do.
I played this on an Apple II, and it's still available in the Infocom collection. Heck, play it on your Palm Pilot.
You've just guaranteed that none of your representatives will actually read your letter. Eight pages long??
Did you read the fucking page?
Up front, page one, for the staff who tallies feedback:
Regarding any bills such as the SSSCA proposed by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC).
Do not pass legislation that erodes civil rights in exchange for corporate profiteering.
Do not pass legislation that disregards established fair use doctrine and stifles technical innovation.
Detailed reasoning for my position is included within. Please consider.
I then give enough details that other staff may flip through when (1) looking for "constituent sentiment" soundbites, and (2) looking for coherent industry voices in their district. I also say up front that it's an open letter which has gotten some press on other sites. If news percolates widely enough, it forms a feedback cycle, whereby the staff takes a second look, etc.
So now we know who reads and who doesn't. You may not feel like you can be bothered with someone's opinion, but you founded one assumption (that reps don't read) on another (that you thought I didn't know that). You came up short.
My open letter to my representatives goes into quite a few separate objections to the SSSCA (and why the DMCA was broken). It's eight paper pages long, going into extra details and speaking plainly since it's also intended for a wider audience. It covers scope, civil, business, technical and motive objections to such legislation.
If you're writing to your representatives, you may want to read my letter for additional arguments on the topic. A couple of the court case mentions are slightly out of date now, as it was originally written last October.
It is posted online at http://www.halley.cc/ed/politics/2001-10-22.conten t.control.html. Comments always appreciated.
- "I bastun bor vi allihopa = we all live in the sauna (it's swedish)"
You're in luck. Beta 3 will be codenamed "Tous mes espoirs pour ce dégagement sont à tiret," which is pidgin French for "All my hopes for this release are dashed."Damn. You mean it's not "I'm cuckoo for cocoa puffs"?
All my hopes for this release are dashed.
It would seem that the people on the ship would have a lot stronger sense of forward history. Say, generation two of ten, for a long voyage, they'd understand the critical nature of conservation, preservation, and making sure that their children's lives aren't for naught.
There are many science fiction stories about "people born on the way," in ark-like ships of this sort.
What strikes me is the sense of drama and tragedy if the on-ship culture panics or corrupts itself before it reaches the goal. Does anyone know of any stories that focus on that? Where generation eight of ten finds that they need to scrap the historic goal, due to some miscalculation or some unforeseen hardships, or merely a decadent generation five?
Hormel Foods has stated they don't mind the use of the word 'spam' to refer to U.C.E., or junk mail, as long as people don't use the term spelled in all-capitals. Hormel owns the trademark on the meat product, SPAM. Given their more-reasonable-than-average position on this, let's respect their request?
I almost read her update as:
I know that watching people repeat the same dorky mistakes after thousands of strangers constantly correct them makes me cry. I mean, hell, why be competent at your primary language?
They did break some stuff with legacy code. If you ever named a class 'URI' your code will now fail to compile because they put this class in the java.net package which everyone imports anyway.
If you have a foo.bar.URI class, and the core has a java.net.URI class, you can still use yours.
You can:
import java.net.*;
import foo.bar.URI;
Existing code does not need to be recompiled, since bytecode always explicitly names classes always, but existing code does potentially need to be fixed if recompiled, as the default results of the imports will change. This is a pretty small and common occurrence with a new API set.
I was not suggesting that Microsoft's campaign funding and lobbying to this date has been illegal; in fact, it's quite legal but increasingly repugnant to the citizenry who wants fair elections in the future.
However, if a convict cannot vote, perhaps it is time to say that a convicted monopolist corporation cannot contribute money for some term.
For whatever reason, a corporation is in all senses an individual in our law. The punishments for breaking corporate laws should be such that they restrict the otherwise granted rights. No free speech campaigning, no lobbying, no tax break incentives in new properties, no sealed oem contracts, pick an appropriate level of restrictions for the conviction.
In this case, Microsoft had been challenged, but not yet convicted. Ever hear of a little concept known as "Innocent until PROVEN guilty"? Were this not the case, simply waging unfounded allegations against any person or company could (and likely would) impact that entity strongly for the worse.
Um, no, in the antitrust suit, Microsoft has been found guilty and that ruling has been upheld on appeal already. It is just the forms of remedy, the corporate equivalent of sentencing the convicted criminal, that is of question now.
Currently, Enron is the posterchild for the reason for campaign finance reform. If our politicians are swayed by the campaign contributions of Enron's scale, what corruption is seeded by a larger sum of money? If the advertising power of the campaigns is knocked askew by some soft money, isn't it knocked asunder by larger sums?
For a few stories linking Enron to campaign finance, you can look at this topic list on Salon.com. The topic is campaign finance. The headlines mostly discuss Enron in recent weeks.
Upper managers want efficiency.
Creative line employees want effectiveness.
These are at odds with each other. You said it yourself, middle management is balance. Another way of stating this is that it's your job to provide the right amount of slack in the system.
Slack: the Myth of Total Efficiency by DiMarco seems to be a good modern, complementary companion to the ever-favored The Mythical Man-Month by Brooks.
It may not teach you anything earth-startlingly new, but it has got some good notes and ideas on how to deal with your prima-donna types, your slacker types, and your micro-managing cohorts.
Yes, it's more accurate to quote, "Al Gore created the Internet" (not 'invented'). He helped to create the Internet as we know it through his legislative support in 1987 and later in 1994 bringing wide Internet awareness to the general non-technophile public in his national discussions about the Information Superhighway.
While I am glad to see someone setting the issue straight, or at least, less crooked, I cringe when someone resorts to ad hominem attacks to get their point across. This does no service to anybody.
You could have offered the links without the rhetoric, and it would have served just as well. Instead, you rant with emotional words, political slant and personal attacks.
- A "reporter", politically a dogmatic Libertarian so extreme, a poster-boy for Libertarian ideologues, Libertarian joke-fodder, a Libertarian hit-piece, his hatchet-job, grudgingly retracted.
If you can't make your point on the merits of the discussion (a misquote and misrepresentation that was reinforced through the press quoting the press), but instead focus on the ideology and politics of a person, then you're fanning the flames of intolerance and empty rhetoric.So, yes, Seth Finkelstein, I'd say your post was flamebait.
- There are two ways, actually, that one can meet the
crackmonkey mailing list dress code. One is to simply use Free
Software, and not use a mailer that requires you to accept a license
that makes you promise not to share with your friends. Another is to
continue to use your Windows-based mailer, but hack the headers of
your message so as not to betray your use of the software.
Which is exactly the hypocrisy I can't stand about GNU-zealots.[...]
First of all, I am not a member of the Open Source movement. They seem only interested in how you can make money from free software. I am actually (believe it or not) more concerned with the ethical and moral issues involved in the subjugation of human beings through restrictive copyright and patent law. I consider myself a member of the Free Software movement.
He doesn't want to subjugate others' behavior, except by using software in the way he thinks is right. He wants to be ethical and respect people's rights, except where he feels he has the right to impose on others how they release technologies or extensions that rely in small part on his code.
This is why I prefer the Artistic License or the BSD licenses. They don't create stipulations, or only create stipulations on the original code. Code released under these licenses will always be available for everyone regardless of their creed.
If I build a project, and see some subroutine code that is GPL restricted, I know not to rely on it, because it limits my options on the code that I write. Why would I limit my options on my code, just to give someone else a woody? No thanks, GNU.
All that is possible is to release derived work without a Free license. It's not as if the original Free code would go away. You do not lose anything - you just do not get more. That's quite a difference.
The danger is always that the derived work becomes more extensively supported than the free parts of it.
So, why would badly supported source code deserve to win over well-supported binaries?
If in the marketplace, the code in the GPL is ignored in favor of completely closed original code, how does this benefit anyone? The GPL project then becomes an academic exercise while the closed original code becomes a market force.
Instead, if open BSD code is "stolen" (hah), closed, and even distorted, then this means that everyone has access to an implementation that is very similar to the de facto standard, and can even track or dismiss observable differences if the closed source dominates the market (as BSD TCP/IP has done). Everyone benefits.
The GPL is about rights and control. A patent tries to spur innovation by forcing people out of the copy-me-too rut. The GPL "spurs" innovation by forcing market leaders to ignore valuable code and write their own closed standards (or steal the valuable code and erase the fingerprints).
Personally, the BSD or Artistic licenses make more sense to me. If I write something cool, I want the massive market leaders to leverage it and turn my ideas into market standards. I let everyone else play with the source code, so everyone can play with the market standards.
So if Loki is going to shut down on 31 Jan 2002, which is six days from today, will they fully process any game orders made today?
I haven't seen any termination warnings on their site to dissuade customers from ordering products.
I figured I'd probably want two or three games over the next year, but this is making me think of buying some now before they're gone.
I had owned and immediately given away the original, incredibly flawed, RCA Lyra because it simply stank so much I couldn't stand to own the thing. If RCA wants to send one of the new ones, I'd be pleased to check it out, but the shoddy original made me vow never to give RCA more MP3 player money.
It's one thing to state the problems, or even your dislike for a product, but why would RCA decide to ship a unit to a "journalist" (heh) who claims such bias as to pre-judge all future products because of one old first-generation product.
A reviewer's bread is buttered with free toys to review. Don't pander to the company, but don't snub them with prejudice either.
I see this as the real "Digital Divide," a recurring pattern using this new medium as a force to separate and distinguish the two classes, but in a new configuration. In the past, the producers were the paeons and the consumers were the elite.
This development shows how this is reversing: the producers are the elite who have licenses to clone costless data and the consumers are the powerless drones who pay their wages and freedoms away per every view.
Same class model we've had for centuries, and the digital realm is nothing new.
Scott McCloud discussed this phenomenon in his book, Understanding Comics.
Essentially, the more realistic the images, the less likely the viewer can really identify with or feel for the character in precisely the way that the artist wants. Too many distractions, too many subtle cues being converted into too many interpretations.
Whereas if the characters are rendered more abstractly, using simpler geometry, simpler facial expressions, fewer digressions from the message, then the viewer can empathize or identify with the characters very easily. The less it looks like someone else in particular, the more it could be you.
Meanwhile, Richard Smith notes that the Globally Unique Identifier in every installation of Windows Media Player allows websites to universally track users, and Microsoft does not consider it a security problem.
It's not a security problem. It's a privacy problem.
If it posted the user's passwords, executed arbitrary code, or removed network firewall configurations, then it would be a security problem.
[stock rant on the subject]
Patents are not about who is right, or who is first; patents are about who will sue.
The US PTO is a money-making service for the government, and this fact is why it operates as it does.
There is a misconception that it is the central duty of the PTO to form a blockade against granting patents. The PTO can and will block applications where there's heavy similarity with prior art or existing patents, but that's really just a guideline to using the service, not the core function.
The PTO's purpose is to grant patents for a fee, and it's wholly suited to do so.
The application vetting process of the PTO is a cost center for the operation of the PTO. This is akin to saying that customer service is a cost center for the operation of AT&T. It is required, but they'll cut costs as much as they can get away with.
To fix the patent application vetting process, two things must happen:
As of 15 March 2001, the USPTO has changed their policies to partially solve that second problem. They can now publish patent applications before the patent itself is awarded to the applicant. Third parties may now submit "helpful" arguments against controversial applications. The USPTO can then weigh obviousness against challenges without incurring the costs of doing all the searching themselves.
Breaking patents by finding simple prior art is not enough for most cases. Patents already granted are almost never cracked, certainly not by someone using an independent third party's prior art. In the famous Heinlein/Waterbed case, the patent was denied before it was ever granted by the Patent Office. Once a patent has been granted, the Patent Office rarely will get involved in disputes; that is a matter for the courts.
[end of stock rant on the subject]
I remember the 'Jonathan' design prototypes Apple developed in the 80's. Essentially the computer would consist of modules that plugged into a common backplane, extending the plane as it went.
Just like the IBM PCjr.
The PCjr's fatal flaw was not the chicklet keyboard (since that could be replaced or ignored), but the lack of a DMA controller to orchestrate quick I/O. In all other respects, it was a step up from the rest of the IBM PC designs at the time. Better sound, better color, extensible backplane through those sidecar "slices" you describe.
Of course, those who were looking at the cute toy-like box and the cute toy-like default keyboard, or those who now look at the ISA or Apple evolution post-1983, think the PCjr sucked.