What? What? WHAT?
I know I'm supposed to have something intelligent to say here, but the idea of Sun Microsystems being bought out by IBM is so bizzare, I don't.
(Subtitled for the non-nerds in the audience: Sun and IBM are essentially competors down the line. They make and sell exactly the same stuff. This is, in many ways, the tech equivalent of McDonalds buying Burger King. It may be great for the stockholders, but you can be pretty sure that the new restaraunt won't be selling both Whoppers and Big Macs.)
I've been a Sun fan for a long, long time. I think Solaris is probably the best operating system on the planet, those SPARC pizza-boxes are incredible machines, and Java, all things considered, is probably the biggest thing to hit programming in the last 30 years.
Sun's problem, of course, is that they can't manage to get anything over that hill and into "fully functional."
Let me give you an example. Sun makes an operating system called Solaris. It's a UNIX derivative, and came out of a project in the late '80s to fold all the then-existing Unicies into one system. It's spectacular, and chock full of kick-ass nerd features. You really couldn't ask for a better "enterprise-grade" server OS.
So. Being a Unix, it's very command-line based. It's got a cool windows-esque desktop and all, but really, you end up back at the old DOS-style commandline sooner or later. When you drop to the command line, the backspace key doesn't work.
Let that roll around in your mind a little. Solaris, arguably the most advanced server OS on the market, and it's been in existance for over 20 years. Sun Microsystems, a multi-million dollar company. At no point, did anyone say, "you know, maybe we should have a guy spend a week and wire up the backspace key?"
And really, that's every Sun product. Absolutely fantastic feature set until you get right down to the wire, and they go "nah. Who uses backspace?"
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Book Review: Henry IV, Part 1
Consistent and alert readers of this space will recall that back in September I declared a “sci-fi free fourth quarter,” intending to use the last three months of 2008 to catch up on some books without robots in them that I had meant to read but never actually had. While this ended up as a total success, I never actually got around to writing reviews for the blog, like I intended. But, under the basic aegis of "better late than never,", here we are.
Never one to start slow, I opened up with Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 1. (I’ll leave the plot summary to wikipedia.)
Look, am I going to loose my English Minor street cred if I say I didn’t think Falstaff was funny? Great character, well written, interesting actions – but not funny. I could see how a talented comic actor could really milk the character for some humor, but the lines as written – not funny. Whoever played Falstaff on the stage for the first time must have really made an impression because I can’t believe anyone could read the script and say “comic genius!”
Other than a vague sense of disappointment at the comic stylings of Sir John Falstaff, the play is excellent. The plot rocks along towards the Battle of Shewsbury, the characters are all interesting and well written – in short, everything one would expect from one of The Bard’s most popular and successful plays. It’s hard to come up with something intelligent to say about a play that’s been chewed over for 400 years, so I’ll more or less leave it at that.
One other thing did surprise me, however; how sympathetic the play was towards the rebels in general, and Hotspur in specific. While Prince Hal is certainly “the good guy,” and the main protagonist, his father Henry IV is in many ways the closest the play has to an antagonist. Hotspur and the rest of the rebels have a point, which the play goes to some length to support – they have been treated abominably by the King – the king whom they placed on the throne as part of a coup, and when he fails to live up to the bargain they decide to remove him. The play presents the rebels as being in the moral right – they just loose, and Prince Hal grows up. The amount of gray in the delineation of which characters are good guys versus bad guys surprised me – in a good way.
Never one to start slow, I opened up with Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 1. (I’ll leave the plot summary to wikipedia.)
Look, am I going to loose my English Minor street cred if I say I didn’t think Falstaff was funny? Great character, well written, interesting actions – but not funny. I could see how a talented comic actor could really milk the character for some humor, but the lines as written – not funny. Whoever played Falstaff on the stage for the first time must have really made an impression because I can’t believe anyone could read the script and say “comic genius!”
Other than a vague sense of disappointment at the comic stylings of Sir John Falstaff, the play is excellent. The plot rocks along towards the Battle of Shewsbury, the characters are all interesting and well written – in short, everything one would expect from one of The Bard’s most popular and successful plays. It’s hard to come up with something intelligent to say about a play that’s been chewed over for 400 years, so I’ll more or less leave it at that.
One other thing did surprise me, however; how sympathetic the play was towards the rebels in general, and Hotspur in specific. While Prince Hal is certainly “the good guy,” and the main protagonist, his father Henry IV is in many ways the closest the play has to an antagonist. Hotspur and the rest of the rebels have a point, which the play goes to some length to support – they have been treated abominably by the King – the king whom they placed on the throne as part of a coup, and when he fails to live up to the bargain they decide to remove him. The play presents the rebels as being in the moral right – they just loose, and Prince Hal grows up. The amount of gray in the delineation of which characters are good guys versus bad guys surprised me – in a good way.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Do I do anything besides post links to Boing Boing?
In Short: no.
First up: a link to Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report. While that's just awesome in its own right, Stephen takes a dramatic left turn into full-frontal nerdiness at about the half-way point that is well worth five minutes of your time.
Also: Times online lists of "10 Spectacular second novels," "10 Cursed second novels," and "10 Literary one-hit wonders.
First up: a link to Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report. While that's just awesome in its own right, Stephen takes a dramatic left turn into full-frontal nerdiness at about the half-way point that is well worth five minutes of your time.
Also: Times online lists of "10 Spectacular second novels," "10 Cursed second novels," and "10 Literary one-hit wonders.
K-9 and Company?
They're making a K-9 spinoff show.
Some background, to get everyone up to speed. K-9, of course, was the robot dog on the original Doctor Who, and who's had the occasional cameo shot on the New Who and The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures. Thanks to the wild and wonderful carnival that is British IP law, the writers of the script that K-9 originated in own the rights to the character (while the BBC owns the physical design.)
What that means is that Bob Baker gets to make his own K-9 show whether the BBC wants him to or not. Which, really, is pretty cool, all things considered.
Where am I going with this? I'll tell you: they've released an image of what the new K-9 prop will look like. And I'll just say this: I'm no great fan of the old look, but man, how did they manage to find something that looks worse?
Some background, to get everyone up to speed. K-9, of course, was the robot dog on the original Doctor Who, and who's had the occasional cameo shot on the New Who and The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures. Thanks to the wild and wonderful carnival that is British IP law, the writers of the script that K-9 originated in own the rights to the character (while the BBC owns the physical design.)
What that means is that Bob Baker gets to make his own K-9 show whether the BBC wants him to or not. Which, really, is pretty cool, all things considered.
Where am I going with this? I'll tell you: they've released an image of what the new K-9 prop will look like. And I'll just say this: I'm no great fan of the old look, but man, how did they manage to find something that looks worse?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Alien Versus Predator
Monday, March 16, 2009
In case anyone missed it
Everyone caught the Jim Cramer / Jon Stewart... thing last week, right?
In case you did, boingboing did the usual bang-up job of summing up the setup, and then Comedy Central posted the full & unedited version of the interview on the web. It's good stuff.
In case you did, boingboing did the usual bang-up job of summing up the setup, and then Comedy Central posted the full & unedited version of the interview on the web. It's good stuff.
"lately there's been a lot of activity from a group that's secretly invading the Earth"
Look, there really isn't any way to do this link justice. Just click.
Okay, I'll say one thing. That dude with the eyepiece is named "Professor Monster." No, really.
Okay, I'll say one thing. That dude with the eyepiece is named "Professor Monster." No, really.
The internet's current belle of the ball
(I love how all stories about the Internet start with the phrase, "so, there's this guy...")
So, there's this guy. He did a super-cool thing that we don't seem to have any vocabulary for.
He wandered around youTube, and found a whole stack of random clips of people playing instruments. Dudes giving guitar lessons, little kids showing off trumpets, mullet-equipped gentlemen jamming on theramins. They all have that grainy, home-made quality that makes the half of youTube that I don't use to watch Battlestar Galactica clips so much fun (and / or terrifying. YMMV, and with youTube even more so.)
Anyway. He took all these clips he found, and mixed them all together into new songs. On paper (or the metaphorical blog equivalent) this sounds like a TERRIBLE idea - like all those kids cutting together Star Trek versus Stargate SG1 combat movies with an iMac, enthusiasm, and not much else.
The really surprising thing is how good it is. No, scratch that - it's not good. It's phenomenal. They sound professional - and I mean that in the best way possible. You keep having to remind yourself that this is 100% amateur work, and at just about every level of abstraction.
Go check it out if you haven't already.
It's pretty easy to be down on "the future" for more or less failing to deliver the classic list of future props we were "supposed" to have by now - jetpacks, hoverboards, PanAm flights to the space station, robot maids, that show from Running Man, etc. But this is one of those things that makes you step back and smile at the fact that the future we're getting is actually so much better than the one on the cover of Omni in 1985.
So, there's this guy. He did a super-cool thing that we don't seem to have any vocabulary for.
He wandered around youTube, and found a whole stack of random clips of people playing instruments. Dudes giving guitar lessons, little kids showing off trumpets, mullet-equipped gentlemen jamming on theramins. They all have that grainy, home-made quality that makes the half of youTube that I don't use to watch Battlestar Galactica clips so much fun (and / or terrifying. YMMV, and with youTube even more so.)
Anyway. He took all these clips he found, and mixed them all together into new songs. On paper (or the metaphorical blog equivalent) this sounds like a TERRIBLE idea - like all those kids cutting together Star Trek versus Stargate SG1 combat movies with an iMac, enthusiasm, and not much else.
The really surprising thing is how good it is. No, scratch that - it's not good. It's phenomenal. They sound professional - and I mean that in the best way possible. You keep having to remind yourself that this is 100% amateur work, and at just about every level of abstraction.
Go check it out if you haven't already.
It's pretty easy to be down on "the future" for more or less failing to deliver the classic list of future props we were "supposed" to have by now - jetpacks, hoverboards, PanAm flights to the space station, robot maids, that show from Running Man, etc. But this is one of those things that makes you step back and smile at the fact that the future we're getting is actually so much better than the one on the cover of Omni in 1985.
“When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”
It's been making the rounds on the internet lately, but in case you missed it: Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.
Well worth a read if you have any interest in the current (fully justified) hand-wringing about the future of newspapers.
The money quote: "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."
Well worth a read if you have any interest in the current (fully justified) hand-wringing about the future of newspapers.
The money quote: "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
