__
For some reason (she said), this song reminds me of John G. Cole, Master of Balloon-Juice.
__
Also, from the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell finds an anecdote in the new Jobs biography that actually made me laugh:
In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”
__
Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”
Greg
No one ever seems to mention the part where Apple offered, and Xerox management accepted, a stock deal in exchange for use of those ideas.
In other words, one was a purchase, and the other was a theft.
Yutsano
YAY NEW THREAD!!
I’m eating chocolate doughnuts for dessert. And I’m not apologizing for it.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
Did you know that Seattle Chocolates now has a factory store? Tis a truly dangerous place.
suzanne
I love how his defense is, “Well, you did it, too.” I mean, who can argue in the face of logic like that?
Going to hike Camelback with the puppet tomorrow. Much more fun than today’s activities, which involved going to Ikea. Hate Ikea.
piratedan
@Yutsano: ty for the Morabito lead… enjoyed episode 1, hope for the same quality for the other ones to follow.
TooManyJens
@Yutsano: I’m eating this for dessert. With a spoon.
suzanne
Kitteh just punched me in the ponytail. Fuck you, kitteh.
superfly
@Greg:
Yep.
Yutsano
@piratedan: Strap in. The first episode is just setting the tone. It gets MUCH more epic from here. IIRC it’s based on a novel, and those tend to lead to better structured anime.
@TooManyJens: You just reminded me I have nutella too!
Royston Vasey
Just watched 10 episodes of Sanctuary Series 1. Cool show.
RV in NZ
burnspbesq
The Guardian is clearly serious about staking out a position in the US media landscape. It’s live-blogging the MLS final tomorrow night.
burnspbesq
Question for ya, RV: has the new film version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” opened down there? And if so, what has been the reaction?
Mark S.
@suzanne:
I find Ikea confusing and frightening.
Suffern ACE
@Mark S.: It’s not too bad once you’ve been there a few times and learn the short cuts so you don’t have to walk the entire store to get to the hot dogs and ice cream cones.
Yutsano
@Suffern ACE: Meatballs. Also. Too.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Had this one a few nights ago. Fantastic little anti-oxidant bomb. You might as well tithe to them, they’re seriously addictive.
Suffern ACE
@Yutsano: The key is to not buy anything else. Saves the hassle of looking through the warehouse, standing in the checkout line, and putting furniture together.
Mark S.
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah, I didn’t know that, so after walking through the entire store (which seemed like it took four or five hours), I learned that I was supposed to be taking notes the whole time on what parts I would need to assemble some bookshelf. I think I ended up just buying a wooden spoon or something.
suzanne
I have said that I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea. The hate part includes, but is not limited to, how damn long it takes to get through the store (even though I know the shortcuts), the crowds of idiots, hauling crap out to the car, and assembling shit. But I love my bookshelves and the $1 frozen yogurt cones.
MikeJ
@Greg: Funny that Xerox wound up suing Apple for stealing the GUI after Apple tried to patent it.
The only thing Microsoft ever stole from Apple (instead of stealing from Xerox) was the trash can on the desktop. That’s why it was changed to a recycle bin.
MonkeyBoy
I bought an 8-lb Honeysuckle breasts for $1.75/lb which is thawing in my fridge. I’m going to do some sort of Mexican or Indian type stew with it. I’ve already fried up a pant-load of onions and peppers and am currently simmering a package of New Mexico chilies so tomorrow I can force their re-hydrated pulp through a sieve and strain out the hard plastic like skins.
I’m not sure if I should go just chili or whether I should once again try for the fake Indian dish Tiki Masala. I’ve got 2 jars of commercial Tiki Masala base and containers of plain yoghurt, however my favorite version I think also contains coconut milk and cashew paste – which would mean another trip to the store.
I think it was last Christmas that I picked up a biggish amount of cheap turkey to make a big batch of chili. The white meat version was easy and came out tasty. The legs and thighs were full of tendons and even after separating the meat from them and long cooking they came out stringy and tasting of urine. So for now I guess I am a a “white meat” guy.
Yutsano
@MonkeyBoy: This doesn’t look too terribly complicated. And you might still need a trip to the store, but it should be easy enough.
RareSanity
@MikeJ:
This.
One of Steve Jobs’ most famous quotes is one were he talks about stealing.
He’s just like the cheating spouse, that constantly acuses their faithful partner, of doing the same.
MonkeyBoy
@suzanne:
If you have an electric drill or screwdriver you may have a hex-bit of the right size. If not you can use a hacksaw to cut down one of their provided hex L-wrenches to make a hex bit. If you don’t have a hacksaw … .
[ I am not responsible if your power tool over-torques a bolt and drives it all the way through the flimsy particle board ]
suzanne
@MonkeyBoy: I have a hex bit, and I know that trick. :)
When Da Baby is done Occupying The Crib and needs real furniture, I’m gonna have to do it again. Blah.
RareSanity
@MonkeyBoy:
Hacksaw? Hacksaw?
I highly disapprove of your non-use of the word “Dremel”…
Where is the fun in using a hacksaw? There’s no whirring electric motor and, more importantly, no sparks!
S. cerevisiae
@suzanne:
Do they have a little sign?
suzanne
@S. cerevisiae: No sign, but they wave a flag made of a diaper.
jurassicpork
Please help prevent an eviction before the holidays.
Uriel
@Greg:
The fact so many people seem incapaple of appreciating the difference is without a doubt the most irritating aspect of the OS wars.
MonkeyBoy
@Yutsano:
I’ve enjoyed some versions of Tikka Masala in England. As a fake Indian dish there are hundreds of recipes for it all claiming that they are authentic.
One of the best version I’ve experienced in the US came from my grocer’s frozen food section. The package seemed to say it was meat sauce and rice (and was priced at that level) but it contained no rice. Somewhere I have saved a package with its ingredient list containing cocoanut and cashews (which your recipe does not). Maybe I can stumble upon or make up a recipe of what I really think it should taste like.
Yutsano
@MonkeyBoy: Apparently there is no one “right” recipe for it. Which is as it should be. Recipes are just guidelines anyway.
JGabriel
Ah, the old classics never die. I think that story first got wide-spread exposure from Robert X. Cringely (or maybe Spencer Katt, but I’m pretty sure it was Cringely). It’s usually told more as a tribute to Xerox PARC rather than Jobs or Gates.
.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
Not sure if anyone else has posted this, but Berkeley continues to show its stuff:
They didn’t say anything about pink dinosaurs
MonkeyBoy
@Yutsano:
No, recipes should try to capture the “authentic taste”.
Several decades ago I went a a Vietnamese restaurant run by recent immigrants. Their actual Vietnamese food was great however I made the mistake of ordering “Chinese hot and sour soup”. I wound up with a refugee camp version that seemed to be made up mostly with ketchup and Tabasco.
I think I can legitimize criticize that restaurant for not sticking to the recipe. However if their H&S was different and great tasting then my taste buds would have bifurcated.
PurpleGirl
@Yutsano: Yes, their Swedish meatballs are very good. I live in Queens and have taken the bus to the Ikea in Brooklyn just to have lunch. That’s three buses now. (Subway wouldn’t be much shorter or easier, even if I could take the subway.)
RSA
Xerox PARC (now PARC) was an amazing place. It’s not just windows and icons, but the ideas behind the interface and even entire software systems. High-quality (for the time) bit-mapped graphics. What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) text editing, which led to what used to be called desktop publishing. Perhaps the earliest spell-checker that worked within an application, the Do What I Mean (DWIM) facility for Interlisp. Later there was object-oriented programming (and the programming language Smalltalk) and ubiquitous computing. And then there’s all the hardware and lower-level computing infrastructure they developed.
Samara Morgan
@RSA: doors AND windows lol.
in my comparative theory of (defunct) software religions class….i luffed lisp the best– lambda calculus made flesh.
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: heres the counter.
In a world without walls or borders, who needs Windows and Gates?
Samara Morgan
FYI
i have brutal insomnia.
i wake with night terrors and surf the web and lissen to music.
these nights go on and on and on.
Samara Morgan
i usta play wow…..i disbanded my all worgen guild the Tines after REAMDE.
maybe when Tigoles new game comes out……….i can play agin…
RSA
@Samara Morgan: I still program in Lisp, which makes me something of a dinosaur (though there are still several active Lisp communities today, roughly divided into those who use Common Lisp, those who hack Emacs, and those who program AutoDesk.)
Sadly, John McCarthy, who invented Lisp, died last month. McCarthy, Ritchie, Jobs… October was a bad month for computing.
Samara Morgan
@RSA: strike us down and we will become more powerful than you can imagine.
cant stop the signal.
;)
i still think lisp may come back.
what is more natural than the language of recursion?
ornery
Microsoft was built on a series of intellectual property crimes … but since people like their computers, they are fine with it.
Sorta set the stage for our current comfort-level with civilization-wide crimes, as long as we don’t see ourselves paying.
Should I mention I’m not a fan of either Jobs or Gates … the tech revolution would not only have happened without them, it likely would have been better.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
I could speculate:
You are suffering from a form of post traumatic stress. I have seen it before. You think all these interpersonal conflicts are fine and you are handling them really well.
But you are wrong. It takes its toll.
I would advise you to soften, soften, soften.
You could also try meditation, relaxation audio tapes or mp3s.
I found they helped a lot when I had problems in my past.
I learned meditation as a Buddhism enthusiast in my 20s but I think modern relaxation techniques are very clever and almost as good. Ideally from a real psychologist.
At a pinch I could send you a file of some old ones of mine. Contact me. I’ll see what I can do.
RSA
Tech marches forward, but I think it’s hard to say that it would have been better for everyday computer users without Jobs or Gates. There were (and still are) lots of great ideas floating around in computing that hadn’t been commercialized and targeted at ordinary, non-technical people. Someone has to do it.
Samara Morgan
@RSA: Gates capitalized on the “freed” market.
There can be only one turned out to be the best ADVERTIZED one.
Once a human invests in the cheapest they dont complain because its not the best.
But evolution rules.
even in softwares.
eventually software will catch up to hardware.
Samara Morgan
@THE: lol, i dont need repair spock…i follow the caravan of Love.
my path to faana is straight and true….except for my nafs.
do you know what im thinking about right now with Strong AI and embodiment principle?
Great Danes.
one of my relatives has two danes…….the physical size of them….125 and 150 pounds makes them so human.
Did you know dogs have 86 chromosomes?
Spock, im just a ghost on your dance floor.
JasonF
I’m not a fan of IP protection for ideas. Implementation of ideas, sure, and if Microsoft plagiarized Apple’s code, then that’s one thing. But to see a competitor has a great idea (a GUI in this case) and then to independently work to build a competitive GUI? That’s not stealing — it’s innovation working the way we want it to work.
Samara Morgan
ghost on the dance floor.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Too noisy Samara – Your music.
Try this. Be patient with it.
Listen at least twice because it is a demanding piece of music of considerable intricacy.
Your mind needs to learn its patterns.
Samara Morgan
@THE: shoo pygmalian.
;)
or do you prefer Phantom Erik?
I shall sing what i please.
RSA
@JasonF:
I agree. The systems for copyrighting and patenting software are largely broken, with lots of court cases to demonstrate. One-click ordering, for example. Give me a break.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: I don’t know, kid; when, out of nowhere, you tell people that you have night terrors and insomnia, you should be surprised if someone tries to help.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
So close-minded you are.
It shows in every aspect of your thinking.
Your incredible rigidity of mind.
I thought someone as intelligent as you claim to be, would find the pattern intriguing at least. I was wrong.
About your intelligence, and a lot more besides.
You respond with suspicion and fear of manipulation, when what is intended is, “look at this clever subtle thing”.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: he cant help me lol…he wants to control me– just ask him.
my night terrors are a refinement…..like my aspergers.
its focusing the lens.
THE
No, Samara. It is you who is obsessively controlling. Everything must fit into your rigid patterns 2 millimeters square. You are like a person living in a cupboard. I sometimes try to point you to the wider world of at least the living room, the kitchen.
No the cupboard is all you want.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: I see, you are a tortured genius. Night terrors are simply the price you pay. Got it. I am going to go laugh now.
Spike
Just to veer horribly on-topic here, I saw John Hiatt play this song (and several others) during my trip to New York last week. Great show, and an equally-great venue (City Winery in SoHo). Though it did make me feel old to learn that the opening act was his daughter, who was probably in diapers the last time I saw him.
Woodrowfan
@suzanne: Sometimes “you did it to” is fair if it relates to hypocrisy.
xian
@RSA: didn’t they also pioneer RFID tags and tablets?
I co-host a monthly BayCHI speaker’s program at PARC and the history of the place is a great draw for speakers, a chance to be part of the legacy.
xian
@THE: there are sufi equivalents to meditation, too, and not just the spinning/darwish stuff
xian
@THE: the cupboard is a lens!
Nutella
@RSA:
Companies are patenting business processes, too. Amazon has a patent on one-click ordering and another one on their brilliantly original plan to pay commissions to pages that link to their products.
They have patented paying commissions which has been done since long before Jeff Bezos was born.
So far Amazon hasn’t sued anybody over the commission patent but patent trolls are suing people for other things, including in-app ordering: The brilliantly original idea that payments for additional products can be done inside the original paid product rather than in a separate order entry screen.
The effect of all this is that good software developers and good software products are being driven out of the US market.
RSA
@xian:
Excellent! I sometimes see the announcements go by. BAYCHI is one of the most prominent SIG chapters in the country, I think. I sometimes talk to our local UX group, but TRICHI as been defunct for a decade, sadly.
xian
@RSA: yep, BayCHI has a long and impressive tradition that predates my involvement (I’ve been booking the speaker at every other monthly program meeting for about 2-3 years now). I love doing it. It’s like organizing a very slow, never ending conference.
If you’re ever in the Bay Area around the second Tuesday of the month, consider coming on down! If it’s one of my months, come on up and introduce yourself with the seekrit Balloon-Juice handshake.
Samara Morgan
@THE: think of me
RSA
Hey, thanks! It’s been a while since I’ve been out to the Bay Area (though I was born there and have relatives in the area), but next time I travel in the region I’ll drop you a line. (And I’ll bring my BJ decoder ring.)
xian
@RSA: I had to look up TriCHI and saw (should have figured) that it’s the research triangle. My mom now lives in the vicinity (in fact that’s where I am at this moment). Maybe on future visits I’ll see if there’s anything going on.
RSA
@xian: Oops, sorry about that. There’s some CHI activity in the area, but there should be much more, given the presence of all the gaming companies and software houses (including Red Hat). If you visit, google HCI and my university, NCSU, and I’m the top hit. I’d be happy to chat and show you around, if you’re interested.
xian
@RSA: will do, chief
THE
@xian:
I think not xian.
I recognize that — it is a gnostic in origin.
Focusing on emotions like love.
These are ecstatic systems. Buddhism is not.
The cupboard is a cupboard. This is a lens.
xian
@THE: actually, unless you want to redefine meditation in a narrow, selective sense, then take a look at these discussions of sufi concepts of meditation.
To avoid further confusion, I am not disputing your commentary about emotions and ecstasy and key differences between sufism and buddhism. I am merely saying that meditation as commonly understood is accessible in several form within sufism.
To help further with some of the affect/tone issues that may not be apparent in writing, my “the cupboard is a lens” was sarcasm.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Better. You need calm.
And of course, I will think of you as I have always done.
The song was nice, but for myself, I have mostly been drawn to the intricate in music.
But I never expected your taste to be mine. LOL.
FWIW: Your terrors are a sign of stress.
I can read dreams sometimes, like I can read myths. They are written in the same language. Something well-known to Jungian psychology.
Of course you confuse myth with reality.
I take it as archetypal symbol. But then I always had a soft spot for Carl Jung.
The only one of the classical psychoanalysts that ever had anything to say to me.
THE
@xian:
I did Google it — that’s what I meant. After Googling it I wrote my comment.
Yes I do want to distinguish between eastern and western systems of meditation.
Just like I would sharply distinguish between Abrahamic and Dharmic religion.
For me the difference is a chasm and always has been.
Sufiism is well and truly on the Western side. JMHO & YMMV
Samara Morgan
@THE: all the time we have known each other….and you dont even know my favorite ballet……its Coppelia.
that was for the juicitariat too….
Once upon a time i thot John Cole was a liberal hero…
he is a goat.
and im just a stalkerfreak.
THE
Umm. I cherish every moment Samara. Truly. Deeply. ;)
I haven’t seen it. Perhaps I will now that I know you like it.
You see. I have no problem with letting your cultural tastes influence me.
e.g. GitS SAC changed my life.
FireFly/Serenity I loved; even though I didn’t feel it was profound. But it was fun.
Both were your suggestions.
But then Akira I didn’t like and NIN I found unoriginal.
But I don’t feel your influence is threatening.
Samara Morgan
@THE: i learned a lot from you.
shukran jazeelyakan
but its time for me to go on.
fiamanullah.
THE
I understand that Samara. That is why I have built my own space on the Web now.
I work on it every day. It has become quite huge now, and it is my precious.