Published papers in open access journals. Why read the interpretation of a third-rate academic (the type who actually have the time to write textbooks because they don't have grants funding research that needs to be done) when you can you can read the real cutting-edge stuff th

You can't claim that a group is both a neocon propaganda group *and* funded by George Soros. Soros gave millions of dollars to the Democratic party during the 2004 election and stated that removing Bush from office was his central focus in life.

It is entirely possible and fair for a class to get all A's if they all meet the criterion (>90% on exams and so on). Yes, you might then argue that the tests were too easy, but if the tests covered the material you want the students to learn, what's the problem? Maybe the students were all very smart. Maybe the teacher is excellent.

Pretty much *all* of the classic Mac software was written in Pascal -- it was Apple's premier development system. C didn't really catch on outside the UNIX world until the mid to late 1980s.

For "The Art of Computer Programming", according to the article. What was he planning on doing? Converting it to his pseudo-assembly language MIX? As far as I know, Knuth has never used a high level language in his AoCP, although obviously he knows how to program in them (early versions of TeX were in Pascal, and now they are in C)

'Lost' requires the viewers to *infer* what is a flashback, flashforward, or alternative universe. Typically, these things are labeled in other movies or fiction. For example, they'll say "Twenty Years ago..." or in a movie, making the screen go all wavy or something similar. 'Lost' just jumps in and hopes the fans figure it out. About the only earlier example that I can think of is Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" , which obviously the scriptwriters of 'Lost' have read

Nobody is denying that during the 1990s Bill Gates and Microsoft were seen as evil monopolists. The point was this wasn't the case in the early 1980s. Microsoft was a successful company, but not a very large or high profile one -- Gates was just another successful tech guy like Jobs and Wozniak -- probably less famous, actually, as Gates was known as just the guy who wrote BASIC interpreters, rather than the more sexy design of computer systems. Again, read the book -- it gives a good feeling for the time.

The point isn't whether Gates is a nice guy or not; the point is how he was *perceived* at different points in time. In _Hackers_, as was common at the time, he was portrayed in a positive light. If you were around back then, it was IBM that was the "big evil" back then. Microsoft just wasn't seen that way. This isn't "whitewashing" his reputation, it is just reminding us that corporate image changes over time.

We are seeing this today with Apple and Jobs. While Apple was (at least during the last 20 years) seen as the plucky underdog fighting against Microsoft, now that the iPhone is so popular they are beginning to throw their weight around, rejecting apps for seemingly arbitrary reasons and banning cross-platform tools for iPhone development to hinder the growth of competitors like Android, Apple will be seen as the new devil -- and I say that as a Mac and iPhone user.

What was interesting about the book was that it was written at a time when microcomputers were just beginning to be big business and not just geek toys. Bill Gates was seen as a geek who made it big -- sort of like Sergey Brin today -- not the "villain" that he was seen as being in the 1990s. And RMS was seen as a hopeless romantic, trying to recapture the spirit of 1970s MIT -- while Levy respected RMS, it was clear that he thought that the idea of Free Software and the GNU project were just hippie fantasies that were going nowhere.

Nobody ever made me use a Scientology product for work though. Maybe the FSF doesn't use Microsoft products, but everybody else does. Try to send a non-geek a LaTeX or Open Office document and they'll just complain "I can't open this". On the other hand it is easy to avoid Scientology.

I mean, really -- they *sell* you swords. They aren't really interested in helping you or the side of good in general. And the few people who *don't* charge you want you to rescue their lost kitten or something before they give you the Gem of Shining Awesomeness or what not. So loot away, adventurer -- villagers are jerks.

Except those with monarchs. Even North Korea is a republic even though the Kim dynasty basically is a royal line. Being a republic and being a democracy are orthogonal. The UK is a good example of a monarchy that is also a democracy, just like the US is a republic that is also a democracy, and North Korea is a republic that is also a dictatorship. Yes, neither the US nor the UK are *direct* democracies like in ancient Athens.

History is about events that happened. "God" never did *anything* that has evidence of actually happening. So why should "he" be mentioned in a book of history? Sure talk about religion. Priests and equivalent clerics had a major influence on history. But priests are human.

It's true that Gates may not have been a real leader of Microsoft since the 1980s, but like Jobs he was the charismatic symbol of his company. The media ate up his "The Road Ahead" stuff just like they fawn over Jobs' keynotes. Ballmer, despite his sometimes amusing antics, is basically a generic CEO of no real consequence or media appeal.

An API is not an OS. Nor is a command loop. Yes, it is obvious that the iPhone has an API and some sort of command loop, but there is no reason to assume there was an actual operating system behind that. Again, many consumer electronics products get by without anything analogous to an OS, and they don't have processors with "instructions for every function" either.