Yeah, you're better off playing Illuminati or GURPS or Car Wars or Traveller or Warhammer or any of the other games. 1st Edition AD&D was just my gateway drug.

I am not entirely in agreement with you, as the apps that were launched from the Apple menu from 1984 up until System 7 were actually special apps that were allowed to run on top of the main app, back before the Apple could multitask. This is a holdover from the pre-hard drive days, when applications were not actually installed but lived on their own 3.5" disks. With System 7, Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, you could manually add apps to the Apple menu but that was not a default. Some installers would do it for you, some not.

But yeah, Apple made it easier to create aliases, and was actually pretty good about following the original on HFS no matter where you moved or renamed it. They had a lot of better usability, but from 1990 to 1998 their OS development had stagnated, letting Microsoft catch up and even surpass them until Mac OS X managed to mature enough to make Classic Mac OS obsolete.

The Start menu emulation that you are referring to came from a popular third party system extension (remember those?) but was not part of Classic Mac OS. I cannot speak for NextStep, as I never used that. I was a Mac user when Apple was doomed, not a Next user.

Installing applications in one folder is the philosophy that won out, as we see in Mac OS X since it went on sale. There is even a further division that you have the root Applications folder, but also each user has an Applications folder —that no one really uses, but since it would hurt the few that do use it to remove it Apple has left it as it is.

But your closing point, I agree. Microsoft in (especially in the Ballmer era) was never really driven by the developers, but by the sales force. They did have lots of great developers (and still do), but programmers and engineers do not thrive in a Glengarry Glen Ross environment.

Ah, memories of my own pre-internet youth, where parents distrust any interactions their kids engage in that they don't fully understand. Back then it was this newfangled thing called Dungeons and Dragons, and it didn't take long for them to put out scary movies starring Tom Hanks to make our mothers think it was wrong.

And here's the thing you don't grasp: your son *is* interacting. He is using games as a medium to socialise. And those teens with their noses buried in their phones are socialising as well, but in their secret medium that you don't understand.

And that is the whole point: we have a burning desire to socialise, and at a certain age we want to socialise without Mum and Dad always peering over our shoulder and judging us. And if you try too hard, then you only give them some "outlaw chic", so that it becomes even more cool.

But if you are posting this on Slashdot, then you must have had some geek exposure to begin with. So are you merely blind to your own past and how your own parents thought you were being antisocial, or are you merely trolling the rest of us geeks?

Ah, but if you won't let your little angel out of the cocoon for fear of the Village, then how will your little angel learn how to interact? Somewhere I can hear Roger Waters singing about how of course Momma's gonna help build a wall.

I think the issue here can be boiled down to the gatekeepers convincing the lottery winners that it's the other acts that are at fault. The rise of cheaper tools that work just as well as the expensive studios has lowered the bar to entry, and people no longer trust the studios as curators, preferring acts from their own circles.

This is also playing out in things like live venues, with smaller venues and clubs experiencing a revival of sorts. And like you inadvertently reveal, it's the punk mentality of making your own that is catching on again, and pissing off the pampered stars and their retinues.

Copcams are part of the Google Glass experience, but what I think is overlooked is the HUD of Google Glass, with things like a Layar-style pin on the suspect being chased, or nav directions to a called-in emergency, info pulls from the db and so on. I can even imagine the software getting even better, and warning a cop off of saying anything that might jeopardise an investigation, automatically recording when jostled, things like that.

Charlie Stross wrote a good near-future story which dealt with this sort of ubiquitous glasses wearing in Halting State and Rule 34. I recommend both books.

Ahem. Sturgeon's Law. Fnord.

I think the main reason why Apple is not interested in competing in the business world is that the business world buyers are not those that actually use the device. Apple's strength has been its focus on the people actually using their devices, and they stumble hardest with things that need to be device-independent, such as with iCloud.

This is what drove Apple's success with the iPod, then the iPhone and the iPad: instead of chasing feature lists, they concentrated on how the device would actually be used. This is especially true of the iPhone, as Apple was selling them to the customers, whereas Nokia, Motorola and the established manufacturers were still selling to the telecoms.

I do see a lot more Macs and Mac OS X in the office, but that is because developers have been able to choose their own devices recently. Those that stick to non-Apple hardware prefer Ubuntu as their desktop OS, but I must add as a caveat that I work in web development, where Posix compatibility is important for backend development, and the Mac has multiple ways to run Windows with VM's and through Boot Camp.

I would just like to add to your analysis that by controlling your phone, they can use it to figure out even those details that you did not properly enter in your Facebook profile. If your phone is not moving from 8pm to 8am at a certain address, they can calculate that your home address is now the place you were, and "helpfully" update your info. Or tell the world that you are on a business trip and not at home. Or even figure out by where your phone is during the day where you work, and reveal to the world that you work for SleazeBucket without you approving it. And of course they could just keep these little insights hidden even from you, and just sell that info to advertisers, privacy be damned.

Note that they already are on record by stating that they cannot do this on the iOS devices because Apple will not let them have the needed level of access.

Ah, but the ratings for violence are different between, say, Germany and the USA. Something considered PG in the United States might get a FSK16 (similar to R) rating in Germany due to violence. On the other hand, a movie that was shown in Germany with a FSK12 (analogue to PG or PG13) would get an R in the States due to mild nudity. That was my point.

I have a problem with claiming that the Colonists were Christians, mostly because of the whole Pilgrims mythology that ignores the more profit-oriented attitudes in Virginia and the other plantation colonies. Most of those coming to the Americas were more interested in making a pile of cash, not in the vaunted religious freedoms. I would have to go do some research again, but IIRC this elevation of the New England colonists over the Virginians came with the US Civil War, bringing with it the reinvention of the Thanksgiving holiday.

The current power of the prudes is more based upon an aphorism that Ben Franklin once put in Poor Richard's Almanac: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. They might not be more than a vocal minority, but boy, are they vocal! No wonder they have gotten their way for so long.

Enough ranting for today. :)

Actually, this is more the standard in the USA, where violence is tolerated more than nudity. In most European countries, the standard seems to be reversed: American television shows are considered extremely violent and not suitable for children, but you can see billboard advertisements for soap featuring mild nudity (anything except genitals, really). Other parts of the world like Saudi Arabia forbid even showing females in print, which caused a kerfluffle when Ikea photoshopped all women out of the Saudi version of their catalog.

The biggest problem, really, is that obscenity filters are oriented only towards Americans, since the USA has the noisiest "church ladies" and Tipper Gore wannabes (man, I am dating myself here!). The rest of the world is either not big enough a market to filter for, or tolerant anyways so there is no need for more restrictions. So the techies just do enough filtering to cover their asses and can't be bothered to actually maintain said filters, since that isn't really a moneymaker.

I would say the proper term is "plagiarised". What Zynga did was not (as one poster said) adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa and calling it an original, but rather selling copies of a famous painting that is alike except for the signature and the colour of the flowers in the far background. Alike enough to dupe careless buyers, and just different enough to pretend that it is an original work of art.

Considering that most artist work on commission up front, your snark is kind of moot. We're letting a tiny elite control the dialogue, and have long since abandoned the "publish or perish" intent of the original copyright term limits for their benefit.

A lot of studio musicians actually do use this model. They get paid per recording session, or a fixed rate per gig. Composers also often get an upfront fee in lieu of royalties, so in reality we are talking about a very small minority of artists involved, and for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth there is not less money being spent on music, and the amount going to commercial bootleggers and so-called pirates has not increased.

What *is* true is that Apple and Amazon, with their bookkeeping of copied downloaded and/or sold have exposed how often studios and the RIAA would cheat those due royalties. What also is true is that the first copyright laws were not written to protect the authors, but to protect those with printing presses who wanted to cut exclusive deals to offset the cost of their equipment. It is a system that originates from an era when duplication was expensive, when duplication for personal use was unknown.