Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

This is pretty cool:

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/07/28/tim-berners-lee-and-a-next-computer-in-olympics-openingceremony/

Woaah!

That's pretty cool to see.

Too bad you can't tell from the screen if it's just a prop or actually running. But we hope Tim asked for The Real Thing.

frankblues wrote: This is pretty cool:

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/07/28/tim-berners-lee-and-a-next-computer-in-olympics-openingceremony/

No, it's not cool. It's stupid fucking shit. Maybe they should all stand around in a circle and play with their dicks, it would be about as useful and more entertaining. Morons.

Nice to see you are in a happy mood today.

pentium wrote: Nice to see you are in a happy mood today.

Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts.

If you can point out any significant differences between chimpanzees Twittering away in the trees four million years ago and "social networking" I'll happily kiss your hairy black treeborne ass.

hamei wrote: If you can point out any significant differences between chimpanzees Twittering away in the trees four million years ago and "social networking" I'll happily kiss your hairy black treeborne ass.

Does society want/need anything different?

guardian452 wrote: Does society want/need anything different?

Exactly ! It's the same damn thing we've been doing for four million years or more. Over the back fence with the washing, down at the bar on Friday night, chattering in the trees about where the best fruit is. There's nothing new or innovative or world-shattering about any of this crap. It's nothing but gossip.

Global climate change is not an Algore hoax, there are five million too many people for the amount of food, the coral reefs will be gone, kaput, out of existence in one more generation, the rich bastards have stolen all the resources of the US but what are these dorks blathering about ? "Oh it's so cool ! Timmy revolutionized the Human Experience !"

What a pile of crap.

I should be clearer. I think Tim Berners Lee and a NeXT box (rumored to be the one he wrote the WWW browser on) at the Olympics is inherently cool. That the American commentators didn't know who he was is pretty lousy.

Social networking for the most part is crap. I think the signal to noise ratio in my twitter feed is maybe 0.5%. Same with my RSS reader. The inherent difference between the monkeys and the twitters is distance. I can read what the concerns are from someone half way around the world... that ease of access (relatively speaking) is new.

I grew up around Ham Radio - back in the day when talking to someone on the other side of the world (or in outer space) was unique and pretty amazing. Now, that's commonplace. We can (but often don't) discuss and think about things on a global scale.

I guess I have hope that we can think our way out of our problems. I also have a realistic streak that says things will have to get a whole lot worse for people to get off of our facebook-reading lazy behinds and actually do something about the problems hamei describes.

frankblues wrote: Social networking for the most part is crap. I think the signal to noise ratio in my twitter feed is maybe 0.5%. Same with my RSS reader. The inherent difference between the monkeys and the twitters is distance. I can read what the concerns are from someone half way around the world... that ease of access (relatively speaking) is new.

...and filters. Using search tools and feed filters, you can bump up the S/N fairly significantly. There is something universal in this. I'm in the healthcare/life sciences field, and the early days of twitter were pretty great. Very high signal to noise; direct access to very smart people who are thinking interesting thoughts - and real conversations with such people. Kind of like the early days of email and Usenet. In the same way, the channel eventually became swamped with spam and other marketing bs, along with superficialities about celebrities and hormonally-driven phenomena.

No doubt that a few hundred years from now, we will be paying for tools to filter out messages like "Xoraxia392's Scandalous Mind Meld with the Cynerian Ambassador Exposes Her Surgically Enhanced Insectoid Ovipositor!" from the subspace feed into our cranial implants.

The opening ceremony of any Olympic session is a chance for the host country to brag about how swell they are. They typically highlight the achievements they feel good about - Industrial Revolution, spy thrillers (Mary Popp- er, James Bond) - and ignore the ones they don't - Luddites, cesspool journalism, globe-spanning colonialism, etc. So I'm mildly surprised they remembered TB-L, but it's completely in line with the event. And as for participating - come on, the guy's human, who's going to walk away from that kind of ego boost?

It's all a marketing exercise. 'Nuff said.

"Xoraxia392's Scandalous Mind Meld with the Cynerian Ambassador Exposes Her Surgically Enhanced Insectoid Ovipositor!"

I, for one, welcome our surgically enhanced insectoid overlords! Like the man said, "we'll make great pets."

josehill wrote: No doubt that a few hundred years from now, we will be paying for tools to filter out messages like "Xoraxia392's Scandalous Mind Meld with the Cynerian Ambassador Exposes Her Surgically Enhanced Insectoid Ovipositor!" from the subspace feed into our cranial implants.

Jose : there won't be humans in a few hundred years. We are too stupid and greedy. Humanity is not going to suddenly see the light.

It's over. The fat lady is standing in the wings.

frankblues wrote: I should be clearer. I think Tim Berners Lee and a NeXT box (rumored to be the one he wrote the WWW browser on) at the Olympics is inherently cool. That the American commentators didn't know who he was is pretty lousy.

But the American commentators are historically always lousy and kudos to Hope Solo (ex. especially football commentary) for finally saying something* about it. I haven't watched the 2012 ceremony (yet) but I remember for the Beijing ceremony in 2008 I simply seeked out a bittorrent from a network without commentary because the broadcast commentary where I was, was nails-on-chalkboard annoying.

Anyways, I will be for-sure looking for the cube when I watch it because that is totally awesomesauce IMO.


*added:

guardian452 wrote: But the American commentators are historically always lousy ...

Doing anything but "rah ! rah ! rah ! for Our Team !" is not acceptable. Joe Namath was a color commentator for about three games : he was great and of course really knew his way around. But after he said, "Well that was sure stupid. It's third down. He needed eleven yards and threw for six. What's the point of that ?" it was over. Next week he was gone. Kenny Stabler, same deal.

Anything that interferes with the business of televison advertising is forbidden. And people talk about censorship in China ....

ClassicHasClass wrote: Too bad you can't tell from the screen if it's just a prop or actually running. But we hope Tim asked for The Real Thing.

... from NeXT specialists http://www.blackholeinc.com/

Tim Berners Lee using a NeXT we integrated for him at the 2012 opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games!

kramlq wrote: ... from NeXT specialists http://www.blackholeinc.com/

With worst webmasters I've ever seen. Their HTML/Webdesign skills are an insult to NeXT...

NeXT specialists http://www.blackholeinc.com/ wrote: Tim Berners Lee using a NeXT we integrated for him ...

What, they bussed it to London ?

hamei wrote:

NeXT specialists http://www.blackholeinc.com/ wrote: Tim Berners Lee using a NeXT we integrated for him ...

What, they bussed it to London ?

Its great attention to detail I think. As mentioned by others, most of the people watching probably don't even know the significance of the person who is at the computer, and I'd say 99% don't realise the significance of having him sitting at that particular type of computer. Yet they still seem to have gone to the effort of sourcing a NeXT to use.

GL1zdA wrote:

kramlq wrote: ... from NeXT specialists http://www.blackholeinc.com/

With worst webmasters I've ever seen. Their HTML/Webdesign skills are an insult to NeXT...

Keep in mind that their target users are NeXT enthusiasts. The current web browser situation on NeXT is even worse than it is on IRIX! Black Hole's website is pushing the limits of what a NeXT web browser can handle.

Excellent that it was working!