Totally agree, I have 40 years computing experience so I am used to technologies and operating systems coming and going.
I use my iPad maybe 5-6 hours per day, gave away my laptop, have PC dual head station in my office.
Slashdot just gets tedious when discussing Apple or tablets, and it all seems totally rooted in fear of loss of advantage through personal PC skills.
The part I find incredibly depressing is how people happily refer to millions of tablet buyers as fanboys, and totally fail to appreciate the fact that the vast majority of potential users out there are not in IT, don't care about rooting, jailbreaking etc etc. Slashdot these days seems like a board full of Ham Radio fanatics, bewildered at the idea that someone might simply want a radio that they just switch on and use - and patronising and insulting to those that express that view.
Windows Phone 7 offers a curated experience, which means Microsoft controls the quality of games appearing on the device.
Microsoft curates, whilst Apple stifles;-)
Jerry
Your glib use of concentration camp imagery denigrates the millions who died, this does NOT compare with some restrictions on developers. Please find another way to express yourself.
So am I,
when she was an ambassador for Digital/Dec , she would hand out sachets of ground black pepper, the diameter of each piece was approximately the distance a signal travelled in one nanosecond.
Well, when I am in a corporate meeting everyone is whipping them out. (too easy, leave it)
Think calendar, email, slides, web + 10 hour battery life.
That's all most people want except techies or specialists
The ibm pc, and thus DOS came about because IBM salesmen were complaining that personal computers were leaking into their client base without them having a response plan.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana.
"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" Julian Assange
I have used ICL, Burroughs, IBM, Univac, TI, DEC operating systems, VMS, nix, CP/M, MS DOS, win x, Apple OS etc etc
I have a wintel desktop which I use for devlopment activities, I carry an iPad, I have donated my laptops to nephews and nieces.
If I did not work in the IT 'space' I would happily use just my iPad.
If something better than that comes along I'll move on.
The world moves on, wintel was mainstream, it is becoming niche, I for one, have spent my career in technology because I love the excitement of new things and concepts coming along.
In my experience it is the wintel crowd who seem unable to look forward, and behave as though wintel has some sort of divine right to its previous dominance.
The most important development I have seen in my lifetime has been the internet, connectivity to it, html and the browser. For MOST people, that is how they do most of their computing, oh yes, and lightweight, non bloat, function specific 'apps'. Sadly, I will have to continue to use wintel on a daily basis as I have a server farm, rather than farmville.;-)
In 1973 I had a tobacco tin, a bent piece of foil and a strobe light, airgun and camera.
shutter open, fire airgun, shockwave completes circuit, strobe backlights pellet.
trial and error found the right spot.
The next one I did was a flicker photometer, but it was cool being allowed to bring an airgun into school.
Jerry
Life is not a journey to the grave, with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, totally used up, loudly proclaiming "Wow!, what a ride!"
I worked for a Data Warehousing company in the late nineties. We had a slew of deals near to close. We took space at a DW exhibition, and invited all those near to close prospects.
Microsoft took a stand, put an MS banner across the backdrop. They didn't send staff, they put no material on the stand.
All our deals went into 'suspend' as a result of that action.
If I were going to try to understand how to analyse Twitter in real-time, then I would want a 'planted story' (and this seems like a perfectly reasonable candidate), and then I can read the firehose (later, *I* don't have to do it realtime) and from that start to develop programs that can help me understand the stream (realtime) in later cases of distributed crises, e.g. 9/11.
I worked for Shell UK in the late 70s, using Univac 1108 and 1110 machines.
They had rows and rows of drum store, each a 1/4 ton cylinder, maybe 1m diameter, rotating at 20,000 rpm. Fixed heads running in a strip down the side, a form of memory somewhere between main and disk, allowing full memory dumps during crash.
They used to take 3 hrs to power up, and Univac engineers used to describe how, if they came off their bearings the outcome was called 'creaming'.
Apparently one came off on a site and 'walked' out of the machine room, pausing only to stroll through a CAU (command Arithmetic Unit - a device as big as a wardrobe), another drilled down through a building.
And in shock news today, a significant proportion of Manhattan traffic crosses the 118 year old Brooklyn Bridge each day, rumours, as yet unconfirmed, suggest it even uses (shhhh...) rivets. We expect a number of the rising city engineers to press for abandonment of this obviously obsolete technology on the grounds that anything this old must be useless and, worst sin of all, uncool.
I am cynical as to the government's motives in issuing the apology (timing, it's cheap to do etc)
However
as of today, as a result of the apology, there are two outcomes I am delighted with, firstly, Turing's family have seen his name cleared, and secondly, an enormous number more Britons since yesterday are aware of the great man who we were fortunate to have, and a few bigots will have had their prejudices challenged by their possible recognition of their need for gratitude to a gay man.
It would be good for Tommy Flowers name to get its recognition too though, the apology we should make to him is 'sorry we made you scrap Colossus and pretend you never built it'.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally agree, I have 40 years computing experience so I am used to technologies and operating systems coming and going. I use my iPad maybe 5-6 hours per day, gave away my laptop, have PC dual head station in my office.
Slashdot just gets tedious when discussing Apple or tablets, and it all seems totally rooted in fear of loss of advantage through personal PC skills.
The part I find incredibly depressing is how people happily refer to millions of tablet buyers as fanboys, and totally fail to appreciate the fact that the vast majority of potential users out there are not in IT, don't care about rooting, jailbreaking etc etc. Slashdot these days seems like a board full of Ham Radio fanatics, bewildered at the idea that someone might simply want a radio that they just switch on and use - and patronising and insulting to those that express that view.
Jerry
Moria on VAX/VMS I found to be a great start ;-)
These were around 30 years ago??? Jerry
Windows Phone 7 offers a curated experience, which means Microsoft controls the quality of games appearing on the device. Microsoft curates, whilst Apple stifles ;-)
Jerry
These are exactly the incidents which will give chromeos fertile territory to plant in.
Your glib use of concentration camp imagery denigrates the millions who died, this does NOT compare with some restrictions on developers. Please find another way to express yourself.
So am I, when she was an ambassador for Digital/Dec , she would hand out sachets of ground black pepper, the diameter of each piece was approximately the distance a signal travelled in one nanosecond.
Captain Grace Hopper (later Admiral) defined COBOL.
You are like the hideous bugblatter beast of Trall, who, if you couldn't see it thought it couldn't see you.
The iPad already is penetrating the corporate environment, big time, I suggest you find out why instead of spouting drivel.
Well, when I am in a corporate meeting everyone is whipping them out. (too easy, leave it)
Think calendar, email, slides, web + 10 hour battery life.
That's all most people want except techies or specialists
The ibm pc, and thus DOS came about because IBM salesmen were complaining that personal computers were leaking into their client base without them having a response plan.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana.
Ouch ;-)
Sorry, when I came across it it was attributed to JA.
Jerry
"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" Julian Assange
I wrote my first program in 1970
;-)
I have used ICL, Burroughs, IBM, Univac, TI, DEC operating systems, VMS, nix, CP/M, MS DOS, win x, Apple OS etc etc
I have a wintel desktop which I use for devlopment activities, I carry an iPad, I have donated my laptops to nephews and nieces.
If I did not work in the IT 'space' I would happily use just my iPad.
If something better than that comes along I'll move on.
The world moves on, wintel was mainstream, it is becoming niche, I for one, have spent my career in technology because I love the excitement of new things and concepts coming along.
In my experience it is the wintel crowd who seem unable to look forward, and behave as though wintel has some sort of divine right to its previous dominance.
The most important development I have seen in my lifetime has been the internet, connectivity to it, html and the browser. For MOST people, that is how they do most of their computing, oh yes, and lightweight, non bloat, function specific 'apps'. Sadly, I will have to continue to use wintel on a daily basis as I have a server farm, rather than farmville.
J
In 1973 I had a tobacco tin, a bent piece of foil and a strobe light, airgun and camera. shutter open, fire airgun, shockwave completes circuit, strobe backlights pellet. trial and error found the right spot. The next one I did was a flicker photometer, but it was cool being allowed to bring an airgun into school. Jerry
Life is not a journey to the grave, with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, totally used up, loudly proclaiming "Wow!, what a ride!"
Where did you get this 'defamation suit'? http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17874
If Benny from ABBA had been called Sven, then ABBA would have been called SAAB. Jerry
Anthill inside
After the next major event it will be the twitter stream which will be subject to such analysis
I worked for a Data Warehousing company in the late nineties. We had a slew of deals near to close. We took space at a DW exhibition, and invited all those near to close prospects.
Microsoft took a stand, put an MS banner across the backdrop. They didn't send staff, they put no material on the stand.
All our deals went into 'suspend' as a result of that action.
“Texting is the closest thing to pure profit ever invented” – Sir Chris Gent, founder of Vodafone.
If I were going to try to understand how to analyse Twitter in real-time, then I would want a 'planted story' (and this seems like a perfectly reasonable candidate), and then I can read the firehose (later, *I* don't have to do it realtime) and from that start to develop programs that can help me understand the stream (realtime) in later cases of distributed crises, e.g. 9/11.
I worked for Shell UK in the late 70s, using Univac 1108 and 1110 machines.
They had rows and rows of drum store, each a 1/4 ton cylinder, maybe 1m diameter, rotating at 20,000 rpm. Fixed heads running in a strip down the side, a form of memory somewhere between main and disk, allowing full memory dumps during crash.
They used to take 3 hrs to power up, and Univac engineers used to describe how, if they came off their bearings the outcome was called 'creaming'.
Apparently one came off on a site and 'walked' out of the machine room, pausing only to stroll through a CAU (command Arithmetic Unit - a device as big as a wardrobe), another drilled down through a building.
And in shock news today, a significant proportion of Manhattan traffic crosses the 118 year old Brooklyn Bridge each day, rumours, as yet unconfirmed, suggest it even uses (shhhh...) rivets. We expect a number of the rising city engineers to press for abandonment of this obviously obsolete technology on the grounds that anything this old must be useless and, worst sin of all, uncool.
I am cynical as to the government's motives in issuing the apology (timing, it's cheap to do etc)
However
as of today, as a result of the apology, there are two outcomes I am delighted with, firstly, Turing's family have seen his name cleared, and secondly, an enormous number more Britons since yesterday are aware of the great man who we were fortunate to have, and a few bigots will have had their prejudices challenged by their possible recognition of their need for gratitude to a gay man.
It would be good for Tommy Flowers name to get its recognition too though, the apology we should make to him is 'sorry we made you scrap Colossus and pretend you never built it'.