"I really didn't foresee the Internet."

[Sophree]

"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much, of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end." - Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams, one of my favorite authors, came up in a thread over in GD and I searched his name and found this quote. lol :D What a brilliantly hilarious mind.

[Gman]

1. Bill Gates didn't see the Internet coming

and had to scramble to catch up in the late 90's.

[Sophree]

4. Here's a quote of D. Adams on Bill Gates:

"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place." ha ha

[Deja Q]

5. And given his position in the industry,

it's frightning, NOT BRILLIANCE WHATSOEVER, that caused IE to spread like a plague.

While I found IE at the time to be more stable and less headache-inducing than netscrape 4.xx, Netscape has changed since... and IE has too many security issues. :-(

MS shouldn't have any say in server issues given their history of bad security either, let alone that registry that's so poorly designed... yet people still flock to that crap. x(

[burythehatchet]

12. ...and then there's Apple

[MrSlayer]

2. R.I.P. to Doug Adams. He was brilliant.

The Hitchhikers "trilogy" is one of my favorites of all time. Hilarious.

[Sophree]

3. Isn't he great?

I truly never thought I'd find a writer who was more "out there" than Tom Robbins, and DA is certainly that. To say the least.

[kalian]

6. WASN'T he great....YES!

Ahead of his time...brilliant!

[Sophree]

7. Sorry

Yes he WAS great. His books are fabulous.

Great sig., by the way! :-)

[Aristus]

8. There is a theory which states that

if anyone ever figures out how the Universe got here and what it is for, it will immediately be destroyed and replaced with something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another which states that this has already happened.

B-)

[Fight_n_back]

9. Al Gore did

When the internet was just a way for scientists and college professors to share information Al Gore gave it extra funding so it could become bigger and more accessible.

Its one of the reasons he got more votes for President than anyone in hiostory.

[TacticalPeek]

11. So true about Al, but

(whisper) it wasn't 'just a way for scientists and college professors to share information':



Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums

by Stewart Brand

· ROLLING STONE · 7 DECEMBER 1972 ·
snip

Reliably, at any nighttime moment (i.e. non-business hours) in North America hundreds of computer technicians are effectively out of their bodies, locked in life-or-Death space combat computer-projected onto cathode ray tube display screens, for hours at a time, ruining their eyes, numbing their fingers in frenzied mashing of control buttons, joyously slaying their friend and wasting their employers' valuable computer time. Something basic is going on.

snip

Rudimentary Spacewar consists of two humans, two sets of control buttons or joysticks, one TV-like display and one computer. Two spaceships are displayed in motion on the screen, controllable for thrust, yaw, pitch and the firing of torpedoes. Whenever a spaceship and torpedo meet, they disappear in an attractive explosion. That's the original version invented in 1962 at MIT by Steve Russell. (More on him in a moment.)

October, 1972, 8 PM, at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory, moonlit and remote in the foothills above Palo Alto, California. Two dozen of us are jammed in a semi-dark console room just off the main hall containing AI's PDP-10 computer. AI's Head System Programmer and most avid Spacewar nut, Ralph Gorin, faces a display screen which says only:

THIS CONSOLE AVAILABLE.
He logs in on the keyboard with his initials: Click clickclickclick click.
L1,REG
CSD FALL PICNIC. SATURDAY 11 AM IN FLOOD PARK . . .
He interrupts further announcements, including one about the "First Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics" at 8 PM, with: CLick ("run") clickclickclick ("Space War Ralph") click ("do it")

R SWR.

WELCOME TO SPACEWAR.
HOW MANY SHIPS? MAXIMUM IS 5.

Click: 5 (Five players. This is for the first familiarization battles in the Spacewar Olympics, initiated by me and sponsored (beer & prizes) by Rolling Stone. Friends, I won't be able to explain every computer-technical term that comes by. Fortunately you don't need them to get the gist of what's happening.)


KEYBOARD BUTTONS? (ELSE REGULAR). TYPE Y OR N.

"Yes" Click Y

THE STANDARD GAME IS:

1 CONSOLE, 2 TORPEDO TUBES, (NORMAL) SCORING, NO PARTIAL DAMAGE,
NO HYPERSPACE, KILLER SUN, SHIPS START IN STANDARD POSITIONS.
TYPE Y TO GET A STANDARD GAME.

Ralph wants other features. "No."

Click: N

snip (picks options)

Immediately the screen goes dark and then displays: Five different space ships, each with a dot indicating torpedo tubes are loaded, five scores, each at zero, a convincing starfield, and four space mines orbiting around a central sun, toward which the spaceships are starting to fall at a correctly accelerating rate.

Players seize the five sets of control buttons, find their spaceship persona on the screen, and simultaneously turn and fire toward any nearby still-help-less spaceships, hit the thrust button to initiate orbit before being slurped by the killer sun, and evade or shoot down any incoming enemy torpedoes or orbiting mines. After two torpedoee are fired, each ship has a three second unarmed "reloading" time. Fired torpedoes last nine seconds and then disappear.

The games progress. A tape recorder kibitzes on the first round of Team Competition, four ships twisting, converging, evading, exploding:

Where am P. Where am I?
Clickclickclickclick
Agh! Clickclickclick clickclick
Glitch. Clickclick
OK, I won't shoot. Clickclickclick

Good work Tovar.
Revenge. Clickclick clickclick
Cease fire. Click
clickclick.

Ohhhhhh NO! You killed me, Tovar.

I'm sorry. Clickclickclick
Being purtners means never having to say you're
sorry. Clickclickclick

Get him! Get the mother
Clickclick-clickclickclick

Sacrifice. Clickclick click

Lemme get in orbit. Clickclick
8'ay to dodge. Click clickclickclick

Awshit. Get tough now.

Clickclickclick
The other guy was out of torps.
I knew it and waited till I got a good
shot. Clickclick.

A beaut. O lord. Clickclclick
I shot him but then I slurped.
Click click clickclick
Oooo!
We win! Tovar and REM!

snip
I asked Alan Kay if Spacewar had been played over the Net. He said it's possible. snip (heehee)

http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html

Sorry to quote at such length, but this is a GREAT aricle. 1972, ARPANet is 2 years old.

[gristy]

10. Thank you for for this thread

I just ordered some of his books. Reviews on Amazon were outstanding.

[never cry wolf]

13. Anybody ever read "the Last Chance to See" ?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0345371984/ref=sib_vae_pg_195/002-8194323-4730424?%5Fencoding=UTF8&keywords=architects&p=S068&twc=1&checkSum=9ECcKkXJ9FZIWt%2B6zo2GOZxpe%2FW%2FNlWijS5yeKxYKqU%3D#reader-link

"It may look like a tree to an architect, but architects are alot more stupid than monkeys."

I have that quote framed here in my architectural office. Great book, as are all of his books!

[Dob Bole]

14. Linux User...

woot Linux.