langreiter.com plain, simple: 2002-02-08

LANGREITER.COM plain, simple

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2002-02-08

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 8322 days AGO

Sad, sad, news: "ArsDigita, a privately held software company in Cambridge, was shut down on Tuesday. At least some of the company’s assets, primarily from its professional services division, will be sold to [create Red Hat] Inc., an open-source Linux software company in Durham, NC, according to sources close to the company."

Philip Greenspun: "I've spent most of the past two months taking flying lessons and preparing for my class at MIT. So I'm not an expert on things ArsDigitan.

"Spending time in the aviation world has given rise to some thoughts about why there are so few plane crashes and so many business failures. The FAA establishes strict guidelines on what training and experience is required before someone can be pilot-in-command in various situations (daytime, nighttime, instrument conditions, single engine, multiengine, turbine, all alone, one passenger, lots of passengers, etc.). The president of United Airlines can't hire his old college buddy and put him behind the yoke of a 747 because he has a good gut feeling that Biff can handle the job. Very seldom is a pilot legally able to get into a situation that is beyond his or her capabilities, training, and experience (JFK, Jr., for example, was flying in instrument meteorological conditions with only a visual flight rules rating; he was legally required to make an immediate U-turn and fly back into the clear). But in the business world the Peter Principle rules: people are promoted until they reach a job at their level of incompetence. Because there are no standards, it really isn't possible to say whether a person is unfit for a business job until and unless you give him or her the job. Afterwards it is tough to admit that you made a mistake and demote or fire the incompetent-at-that-level person."

2002-02-08-arsdigitaFinale

"Macromedia plans to make Flash a platform for building applications rather than just animations—and to make the Flash player—rather than the browser itself—the primary target for robust Web application development. [...] [Jeremy Allaire] says that the next-generation Flash player will be able to run fully connected, intermittently connected, or as a standalone application platform, increasing its utility and flexibility. The player runs in a "sandbox" [...]" — Finally full throttle towards Platform Heaven!

2002-02-08-hotFlashFuture

www.jaggersoft.com/csharp_course/index.html

2002-02-08-misc

David Weinberger: "I've frankly had trouble getting engaged by what Dr. Gräper wrote, but, then, it's not the 1970s, his writings aren't being published in a semi-subversive way on a mainstream platform, I'm not a college student, and Richard Brautigan no longer seems like such a way cool author. But so what? Graper invented a type of weblogging appropriate to his medium [Anm. d. Red.: [create PLATO]]. And that is cool."

[create David R. Woolley]: "How I Invented Computer Conferencing"

2002-02-08-bloggingPrehistory

Miguel de Icaza: "Microsoft has terrible APIs to code against. Anyone who has used Win32 and any combination of the various layered cakes that have been built on top of it has stuck to that platform only because of the size of the market, but it is one of the most horrible APIs ever built.

"To make things worse, an evolution of APIs, components, memory management contracts and patched up versions of COM have made the platform horrible.

"Microsoft has injected fresh air into their platform by building and designing a new programming platform that addresses all these pains. They have incorporated many ideas from Java, and they have extended it to address new needs that developers had. They took where Java left off."

He's so right. Warum, kommt .NET zur Sprache, immer diese fscking "Web Services" ins Rampenlicht gepeitscht werden müssen ist mir bis auf Weiteres ein Rätsel — gehen tut es primär um das Upgrade der Win32-C-API auf die .NET-AnyLanguage-Bibliothek, wahrscheinlich werden in einenhalb Jahren 80% der ".NET-Applikationen" hundsnormale Desktop-Apps sein. Ebenso unklar ist mir, warum es so vielen Leuten so schwer fällt zu begreifen, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit, lässt man denn einige der besten, erfahrendsten und nicht zuletzt erfolgreichsten Sprach- und Environmentdesigner der Welt ein paar Jahre in Ruhe werkeln, der Welt ein exzellentes Endergebnis präsentieren zu können nicht gerade gering ist ... Vollends dem Wahn verfallen muss ein RMS sein, der das Clonen der Plattform mit dem Verkauf der Seele an das Heissbad in Redmond gleichsetzt (ausgerechnet Mr. Not Unix, ein Mensch, der wohlgemerkt einen Gutteil seines Lebens mit dem Clonen einer Plattform zugebracht hat) und den erfolgsversprechendsten Versuch ever, auf Desktopapplikationsseite Microsoft tatsächlich Paroli bieten zu können zu torpedieren beginnt. Ein gut funktionierendes und v.a. weit verbreitetes .NET-Äquivalent auf Unix-Systemen (zum Beispiel eben Mono) ist keine Option, sondern ein Necessaire.

Nebenbei: So viele schlechte, an ~~RMS'~~ den Haaren herbeigezogene Artikel auf dem Register innerhalb so kurzer Zeit sind mir noch nie untergekommen ...

2002-02-08-goMono

Die Logformatexperimente hier sorgen ja durchaus für landesweite Beachtung und Erstaunen ... ;-)

Hat man Karten, baut man Städte anders ...

2002-02-08-loxperimental