Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
We posted a badge in our sidebar to honor Steve Jobs when he passed away a few days ago; don’t everybody line up to give me a whallopin’ over this, but I think this obituary, today, is more worthy of our notice. At least, as a technologically advanced society seeking out its own roots and looking to offer credit where it is due. Dennis M. Ritchie, creator of Unix and the C programming language:
After a long illness, Dennis Ritchie, father of Unix and an esteemed computer scientist, died last weekend at the age of 70.
Ritchie, also known as “dmr”, is best know for creating the C programming language as well as being instrumental in the development of UNIX along with Ken Thompson. Ritchie spent most of his career at Bell Labs, which at the time of his joining in 1967, was one of the largest phone providers in the U.S. and had one of the most well-known research labs in operation.
Working alongside Thompson (who had written B) at Bell in the late sixties, the two men set out to develop a more efficient operating system for the up-and-coming minicomputer, resulting in the release of Unix (running on a DEC PDP-1) in 1971.
The thing I think people are missing is this: Under the tutelage of Jobs, Apple released generations of high quality products that “just plain worked” and so forth. But you generally can’t build something else with those. So Apple products get credit as the gunpowder in the bullet cartridge, not as the “primer cap” that sets off the chain reaction.
Now to be clear about it: That is something. User interface is tricky; Steve Jobs made it his life’s work to wrestle with something that people like me would just as soon avoid. But there is another talent involved in building the building block itself. That is the skill upon which we truly rely. And so I have a hope that Ritchie’s passing will attract as much notice and attention as Steve Jobs’. I know that’s a futile hope, but I’ll entertain it nevertheless.
You could also a good case that this is all a red herring, it ain’t no competition. Well, of course it isn’t a competition. But it’s a decent counterpoint: What does it good to take notice and show proper reverence to the passing of a designer of user interfaces, and all-but-entirely ignore the passing of the designer of the tools that are used to build stuff? It’s like lining up for the funeral of the guy who trimmed the tree, and taking a pass on the funeral of the guy who planted the seed. And so I offer that this passing is just as worthy of our notice; dare I say even moreso.
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With all dure respect to Steve Jobs, who saw someting incredibale, ran with it, and turned it into the Apple empire, I must take exception to him being the “designer” of the graphical user interface. The gui was developed at Xerox’ PARC facility in Palo Alto, CA. Jobs saw it on a tour of the facility and managed to lure some of the original designers away to create the Apple version of it. Originally written in the Mesa programming language, and running on the Pilot operating system on proprietary hardware, Xerox executives never really knew wat to do with the gui because it didn’t involve putting toner on paper. At the time, the only thing the tonerheads running Xerox from Rochester, NY didn’t know anything else, and they had no idea what to do with serious computer stuff or how to sell it. Thus, we now have the Mac. I agree that Jobs did amazing things, but he didn’t create or design the original gui.
- jamesw | 10/16/2011 @ 20:32