My company recently implemented an 'idea bank' concept. There's a intranet website where you're supposed to submit your ideas. Then a 'board' reviews all the ideas and decides which ones to take to the next stage.
It is totally antithetical to the concept of creative individuals 'championing' their ideas. You're supposed to just post them to 'the board' and wait to see if any resources are allocated to implement it.
The Company is playing it up like it's some great way for them to solicit new ideas. It's such a horrible concept to anybody who harbors a creative spirit that I suspect it will never result in anything but third-rate design-by-committee junk projects. People want to carry the football to the goalpost, not hand it off to some middle management cretin to wreck.
That was the state of the term back in the days of 386s and Compuserv...
You're too young to remember shareware, apparently. It originated in the days of 300 baud modems and 8088-based PCs (even before the XT or the clones.)
No. Shareware means that the full version is distributed, and the program's author trusts that you will send in some money if you liked it.
The newer generation of 'crippleware' is not shareware. It's demo shovelware.
The Shareware concept is almost as old as the IBM PC. Jim Button originated it. Back then almost anything you could run on your PC was pretty expensive.
That's a pretty hostile comment about somebody who apparently has soured on iTunes. Is he picking on your hallowed shrine, or are you just an Apple employee?
How is it a loss of quality? I know some vinyl advocates will claim that vinyl records have a native quality higher than CD audio, but for most people's uses, recording your vinyl to WAV and burning them to CD results in an increase in 'quality' (overall quality, they are easier to play.)
The best one I can remember, and it's not a case of a virus, was the 'copy protected' music CD (I can't remember the publisher) that when inserted into the (at the time) current line of Macintoshes, would crash the OS. Not a 'mild' crash, a situation where the machine would crash again when reset, and since Apple hardware doesn't have a means to eject removable media unless MacOS says it's okay to do so.....
I remember that one with an amount of amusement. It's always fun to visualize some pudgy dude all flustered, standing in line at an Apple Repair facility with his Mac, waiting for someone to eject his CD.
Symantec used to make development products. Symantec C/C++ was a pretty good package. If Microsoft cleans up their shit, Symantec could, like, start making products that have productive uses.
I think we all (well, mostly, this is slashdot) want to see improved Windows security. I'm sorry that I don't feel bad if security improves to the degree that the people shilling antivirus/security suites are put out of business.
Further, the whole permise of this article is based on a false 'poor little Netscape' myth. Netscape wanted to OWN the webspace, and they set out to do so by pushing their proprietary server tags, mated to their proprietary browser tags. They wanted to sew up the whole business. The fact that they weren't able to do this is partially based on their strategy being flawed, and part on poor execution (the shitty Netscape 4 browser is nothing any of us want back!). They wanted to 0wn the web. They were NOT the little philanthropists. The whole company was founded on grabbing the Mosaic code base and taking it proprietary, anyway. Not anything we should admire on Slashdot. In fact, Netscape dying lead to Mozilla. I am kinda glad they failed as a commercial outfit, or we'd all still be running buggy Netscape binaries on our free OSes, and hoping they were still releasing them for our chosen platforms. (no, I do NOT want to run a Linux Netscape binary through a linux emulation layer on my NetBSD box.)
Wrong. My comment zoomed right over your head. Packard-Bell was an old vacuum-tube era radio company. That is the company that isn't here any longer. I wasn't aware that the 'Packard-Bell' computer operation had shut down. The computer company just adopted the name. I think it made old farts buying computers at WalMart comfortable seeing that old name again.
Today at an auction I bought a bakelite case table radio. It isn't a Packard-Bell, it's a Bendix. From the era I refer to. Nice old stuff.
You've just not been playing in the fun areas, then. The little 8-bitters from the 70's and 80's are still around, and people are still writing programs from them. Mostly in the embedded sphere, but that's cool stuff.
If you want to peek and poke and have fun with little machines, those still can be had, too. What bores you about the present situation? That kids aren't confined to stunted little 8-bit machines?
If you try to tell an american that he must now pay $20/month simply because he owns a television set and a stero, in order to support public channels, you will have the next civil war on your hands.
Naw. You'd just have the funds for Public Broadcasting quickly cut off by popular mandate. Which would just result in one-week-per-month of the Public Broadcating programming time being devoted to the paletic pleading of a pledge drive. And, believe me, there's nothing more pathetic than the way those radio announcers plead. They're not very good at it and it's pathetic witnessing the way their pride melts.
I am thinking that the 'fortunate incident' must have been an airplane crash that killed the entire senior software development staff, taking with it all the lead programmers for 'Copeland.' But I know it probabaly wasn't that.... (that they still sell single-button mice is enough indication)
Because the company slowly filled up with the kind of smug elitists who represented their userbase, replacing the 'skunkworks hackers' who started the Mac. Slowly, everything became 'process' and the company became steeped in political correctness. It became a matter of pride that employees were allowed to bring their dogs to work with them, rather than just common sense. The staff slowly was filled with people for whom fad practices (i.e. "Object Oriented Everything" took precedence over the old 'Get er' Done' mentality that made the Mac great.
(back in the early 90's lots of 'UNIX Programmers' were migrating to Windows NT.) There are still some good Win32 console apps out there ported in that era that work extremely well in W2000 or XP. They made NT 4.0 almost bearable.
MacOS X isn't UNIX, although you can run your UNIX environment beneath it. Just like you can on Microsoft's OSes. Interix/SFU is pretty darn good, though the way that POSIX processes are partitioned away from Win32 processes (running in completely separate subsystems on top of the NT Kernel) is somewhat annoying sometimes. And if you want a Win32 'kludge' POSIX, you can us Cygwin.
Me, I run an entire classic MacOS environment in emulation on my NetBSD box using Basilisk II. But that's only because I see that era of MacOS as a 'cute toy' to play with in little virtual machines. Kind of fun to poke around in Microsoft Word for Mac on my NetBSD box. Back in the mid 90's I once brought up Wine and Executor (another Macintosh emulator) simultaneously on a Linux box (a '486 33 if I am remembering correctly.) I ran the Windows and the Macintosh 'Neko' applications to see if the two cats would fight with each other.
The 'top of the screen' arrangement in MacOS is a sacred topic in Macintosh circles. It's considered more heretical to critcize it than even to propose additional mouse buttons.
I paid for some PIC controllers from a person selling them from the UK. I paid in Euros. Who knows why? Maybe it was a PayPal thing.
I am not an expert on the economics of the aerospace industry, just someone who has read enough about the disaster that Airbus now represents, shortly after being 'lauded' as a living example of the miracles of the collective EU economy. Is your broker recommending you invest in Airbus?
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My company recently implemented an 'idea bank' concept. There's a intranet website where you're supposed to submit your ideas. Then a 'board' reviews all the ideas and decides which ones to take to the next stage.
It is totally antithetical to the concept of creative individuals 'championing' their ideas. You're supposed to just post them to 'the board' and wait to see if any resources are allocated to implement it.
The Company is playing it up like it's some great way for them to solicit new ideas. It's such a horrible concept to anybody who harbors a creative spirit that I suspect it will never result in anything but third-rate design-by-committee junk projects. People want to carry the football to the goalpost, not hand it off to some middle management cretin to wreck.
That was the state of the term back in the days of 386s and Compuserv...
You're too young to remember shareware, apparently. It originated in the days of 300 baud modems and 8088-based PCs (even before the XT or the clones.)
No. Shareware means that the full version is distributed, and the program's author trusts that you will send in some money if you liked it.
The newer generation of 'crippleware' is not shareware. It's demo shovelware.
The Shareware concept is almost as old as the IBM PC. Jim Button originated it. Back then almost anything you could run on your PC was pretty expensive.
I have never understood iTunes users. The sound quality is terrible,
Bear in mind that the sound quality is probably (slightly) higher than FM radio. Lots of people listen to the radio.
I can't understand paying for that quality, either.
You can also check CDs out of the library and rip them.
That's a pretty hostile comment about somebody who apparently has soured on iTunes. Is he picking on your hallowed shrine, or are you just an Apple employee?
I find plenty of links and references on google, using 'packard-bell radio.' They appear to be rare birds, though.
One link with lots of photos of nice old radios says By 1933, Herb Bell had formed Packard-Bell in the frame about an earlier Jackson-Bell Company set.
Old radios are cool! I picked up a streamline-bakelite case 'Bendix Avionics Company' radio this past weekend at an estate auction.
How is it a loss of quality? I know some vinyl advocates will claim that vinyl records have a native quality higher than CD audio, but for most people's uses, recording your vinyl to WAV and burning them to CD results in an increase in 'quality' (overall quality, they are easier to play.)
Hardly anybody is a lawyer on Groklaw, either. It's founder is a mere legal clerk.
The best one I can remember, and it's not a case of a virus, was the 'copy protected' music CD (I can't remember the publisher) that when inserted into the (at the time) current line of Macintoshes, would crash the OS. Not a 'mild' crash, a situation where the machine would crash again when reset, and since Apple hardware doesn't have a means to eject removable media unless MacOS says it's okay to do so.....
I remember that one with an amount of amusement. It's always fun to visualize some pudgy dude all flustered, standing in line at an Apple Repair facility with his Mac, waiting for someone to eject his CD.
They can't. You can't operate a production line with Photoshop and a one button mouse.
The poor wear gold-plated jewelery.
The middle classes wear 14K gold jewelery.
The rich wear 24K gold jewelry.
The ultra-rich copper plated platinum jewelry.
I know where one is in Minneapolis. But that's a looooong drive these days.
The proper tactic is to say 'uh-huh' and suggest a 'better' hard drive brand for them to try next time.
Then offer them a few bucks for the old drive, saying you can pull the crystals off the logic board and get *some* use out of them.
Symantec used to make development products. Symantec C/C++ was a pretty good package. If Microsoft cleans up their shit, Symantec could, like, start making products that have productive uses.
I think we all (well, mostly, this is slashdot) want to see improved Windows security. I'm sorry that I don't feel bad if security improves to the degree that the people shilling antivirus/security suites are put out of business.
Further, the whole permise of this article is based on a false 'poor little Netscape' myth. Netscape wanted to OWN the webspace, and they set out to do so by pushing their proprietary server tags, mated to their proprietary browser tags. They wanted to sew up the whole business. The fact that they weren't able to do this is partially based on their strategy being flawed, and part on poor execution (the shitty Netscape 4 browser is nothing any of us want back!). They wanted to 0wn the web. They were NOT the little philanthropists. The whole company was founded on grabbing the Mosaic code base and taking it proprietary, anyway. Not anything we should admire on Slashdot. In fact, Netscape dying lead to Mozilla. I am kinda glad they failed as a commercial outfit, or we'd all still be running buggy Netscape binaries on our free OSes, and hoping they were still releasing them for our chosen platforms. (no, I do NOT want to run a Linux Netscape binary through a linux emulation layer on my NetBSD box.)
Wrong. My comment zoomed right over your head. Packard-Bell was an old vacuum-tube era radio company. That is the company that isn't here any longer. I wasn't aware that the 'Packard-Bell' computer operation had shut down. The computer company just adopted the name. I think it made old farts buying computers at WalMart comfortable seeing that old name again.
Today at an auction I bought a bakelite case table radio. It isn't a Packard-Bell, it's a Bendix. From the era I refer to. Nice old stuff.
You've just not been playing in the fun areas, then. The little 8-bitters from the 70's and 80's are still around, and people are still writing programs from them. Mostly in the embedded sphere, but that's cool stuff.
If you want to peek and poke and have fun with little machines, those still can be had, too. What bores you about the present situation? That kids aren't confined to stunted little 8-bit machines?
And you know these details about Richard Stallman's personality traits based on first-hand observations?
If you try to tell an american that he must now pay $20/month simply because he owns a television set and a stero, in order to support public channels, you will have the next civil war on your hands.
Naw. You'd just have the funds for Public Broadcasting quickly cut off by popular mandate. Which would just result in one-week-per-month of the Public Broadcating programming time being devoted to the paletic pleading of a pledge drive. And, believe me, there's nothing more pathetic than the way those radio announcers plead. They're not very good at it and it's pathetic witnessing the way their pride melts.
Yes, but 'Apple' is just a brand now used by the staff of NeXT who took over the company.
Similarly, there was an old American electronic company called 'Packard-Bell' that made good electronics in the past. Ain't here no more.
I am thinking that the 'fortunate incident' must have been an airplane crash that killed the entire senior software development staff, taking with it all the lead programmers for 'Copeland.' But I know it probabaly wasn't that.... (that they still sell single-button mice is enough indication)
Because the company slowly filled up with the kind of smug elitists who represented their userbase, replacing the 'skunkworks hackers' who started the Mac. Slowly, everything became 'process' and the company became steeped in political correctness. It became a matter of pride that employees were allowed to bring their dogs to work with them, rather than just common sense. The staff slowly was filled with people for whom fad practices (i.e. "Object Oriented Everything" took precedence over the old 'Get er' Done' mentality that made the Mac great.
(back in the early 90's lots of 'UNIX Programmers' were migrating to Windows NT.) There are still some good Win32 console apps out there ported in that era that work extremely well in W2000 or XP. They made NT 4.0 almost bearable.
MacOS X isn't UNIX, although you can run your UNIX environment beneath it. Just like you can on Microsoft's OSes. Interix/SFU is pretty darn good, though the way that POSIX processes are partitioned away from Win32 processes (running in completely separate subsystems on top of the NT Kernel) is somewhat annoying sometimes. And if you want a Win32 'kludge' POSIX, you can us Cygwin.
Me, I run an entire classic MacOS environment in emulation on my NetBSD box using Basilisk II. But that's only because I see that era of MacOS as a 'cute toy' to play with in little virtual machines. Kind of fun to poke around in Microsoft Word for Mac on my NetBSD box. Back in the mid 90's I once brought up Wine and Executor (another Macintosh emulator) simultaneously on a Linux box (a '486 33 if I am remembering correctly.) I ran the Windows and the Macintosh 'Neko' applications to see if the two cats would fight with each other.
The 'top of the screen' arrangement in MacOS is a sacred topic in Macintosh circles. It's considered more heretical to critcize it than even to propose additional mouse buttons.
I paid for some PIC controllers from a person selling them from the UK. I paid in Euros. Who knows why? Maybe it was a PayPal thing.
I am not an expert on the economics of the aerospace industry, just someone who has read enough about the disaster that Airbus now represents, shortly after being 'lauded' as a living example of the miracles of the collective EU economy. Is your broker recommending you invest in Airbus?