Round Rects Are Everywhere! The Grand Unified Model.

Just a while ago, lcom kindly pointed its readers to the story of Quickdraw's Rounded Rectangles which, while being read for its entertainment value, also quite nicely explains what Mr. Steven Jobs is or rather was really good at.

In this particular case comment reading is an absolute must to get the whole stuff right. And allthough we, subjectively and after a short discussion of the matter, are not sure about Mr. Raskin's claims, we think there is a lot to make them probable in the core. There are enough testimonials about Mr. Jobs doing what he did in all his visible years without giving credit where credit would have been due.

Chapter 13: Steven finds an ally and executes a big mistake that throws him back behind William for many long years.

In another part of the Mac corpus on Folklore.org Andy Hertzfeld provides us with deep insight on a particular execution of probably Mr. Jobs' badest imperfection , the one that really put him at a disadvantage against his pal Bill and his allies, the Texas Instruments Runaways: Greed and Control Addiction and his hope - quite obvious until this very day - closed proprietary systems will provide satisfaction for both addictions for his customers and for himself.

The last enlightening story about the folklore of consumerism driven personal computing we recommend for today's reading can be found under the title of The Grand Unified Model. In that story Bruce Horn claims that "the Lisa Filer was 360K, a significant application - much too large for the Mac Team to use, and that it wasn't based on the Grand Unified Model". He also states that "writing the Finder was not easy and that for of the tight memory requirements, most of the code was 68K assembly, like the Mac ROM Toolbox.". Such are the prices one pays for consumer benefits. Still, do not be lazy, do not be shy, read for yourself.

Do not get us wrong. In many ways we admire Mr. Jobs for being so good at being able to buy first class materials at competitive prices, to hire the best product designers and developers for himself and his companies and, most of all, for having been able to do all of this for as long as he did.

But, then again, we are not blind to his faults, deficencies and his unethical wrong doing. Neither are we blind to the many faults of his companies' otherwise sexy and desirable products.

Programming Ground Be Funny Still

It's an old hat but still once in a while it strikes me as funny that machines that provide us with cutting edge fast big hot expensive data processors (PCs, gaming consoles, graphix subsystems, linux servesr) still seem to attract a lot of "old school" speed oriented software written in "old school" strongly typed languages with basically early binding and tight coupling to TCA (target computing architecture) provided by rather agressive optimizing compilers provided by either the cpu manufacturer or nice but slightly deranged geeky speed measurbator guys. That software (browsers, games, word processors, grafic editors ...) Those Software Sets also use little to no AGC (automatic garbage collection).

CBCDs (computer based comsumer-oriented devices) on the other hand that enrich the world with small cheap slower cool running CPUs (set top boxes, lots of different mobile gadgets like phones, still and motion cameras, AV storeandplayers, PDAs ....) seem to be mostly inhabited by more modern OOP software running on VM platforms, heavily relying on AGC and lots of late binding.

It is clear I exaggerate here (mostly because of Java which is or at least tries to be the sort of compromising Jack of all trades), but still I sense some deep unbalance. And unbalance leads to fear, fear leads to anger .... and some of us definitely do not have the patience to wait for the chosen one, especially when we know beforehand, it's gonna be a pathetic 11 year old little asshole with not even a decent coiffeuse to hide that away.

With the first type the leading goal seems to be a maximum of functionality and flexibility on the enduser side of data processing. This in turn makes excessive demands on the behaviourial diversity and learning interest of said user nevertheless and works only because so many people adore the power user idol and will rather not think about where SuperOffice3000x gets in their way of working.

The second type is often disappointing and shallow. Mobile mail is working now, 30 years after its invention and will soon become terrible when version 2 will be a mighty social communityware client.

What Silicon and Glass also do

Typeradio's Audioblog.

Spiekerman says yes to radio debates on kerning.

Everything that is possible is possible. (For you scientific types out there. That sentence is an extension of: Everything that is computable is computable.)

Tech Tact

While flying back from Köbnhavn and a meeting with 3 algorithm researchers gone entrepreneur, my mind floated around and these little things came to my mind:

If you are a young and fast tech company these days your obstacles boil down to about 3 essential adversaries you must heed. Money industry, Pharma industry and, most important of all, yourself.

An advice now: Play all (and I mean all) well or go to a small and boring niche.

ANTS-CD (and now to something - completely different): For all who missed this and like nice fotografs: Tobi posted this wonderful piclink to offtopic to my pp story: beautiful china. he thought I might like it. So I did.

Combined Assymetry: Postel's Law

"Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others."

I seem to have it with laws these days. I was reminded of this one in Ed Dumbills post on Firebug (found on lngr) where he maintains, that Browsers follow only half of it. Guess which half!

In Wikipedia Postel's Law is called the Robustness Principle.

According to the JP Memorial Site at ISI the law or principle or whatever it is now, it originated in RFC 760 DOD STANDARD INTERNET PROTOCOL

RFC 1122 - Requirements for Internet Hosts - Communication Layers and RFC 1958 - Architectural Principles of the Internet treat the Principle in extension.

The former contains this: ... host software should be prepared, not just to survive other misbehaving hosts, but also to cooperate to limit the amount of disruption such hosts can cause to the shared communication facility.

The latter is said to be the latest RFC formulation of Postel's Law. §3.9 of it gives the following interpretation: Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. Implementations must follow specifications precisely when sending to the network, and tolerate faulty input from the network. When in doubt, discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification.

Our tech dept. ventured to put a reformulation of a smart observation by Alan Kay into this pool of robustness: Sharing's important - everybody is a communications junkie - just keep this in mind: Humans have large bandwidth disparity; they take in fast and easily but give out slow and arduously; luckily the bandwidth disparity of our devices is reciprocal to the human one; it's hard for them to take in but they can give out - what they have - very fast and very easily.

In our eyes this combination makes for a pretty robust system overall.