That's correct, but it was called OS-9 (note the dash). It was then ported to the Motorola 68000 and called 0S-9/68k, where it was a quite successful RTOS. It was then rewritten in C (the original 6809/68k versions were all hand coded assembly) and rechristened OS-9000. Sadly the company bet the farm on building the stack for Phillips ill-fated CD Interactive. OS-9000 also wasn't that popular in the 68000 world since it was just a fatter slower OS. They've since dropped the OS-9000 brand name, but the company still sort of exists and the OS is quite commonly used in small embedded systems. It is very easy to ROM, quite reliable, can run on anything from an 8-bit 64k machine all the way up to 64 bit 4+ gigabyte systems, though it generally lacks support for virtual memory. Its a good OS, is POSIX compliant and most modern GNU tools work on it and compile for it (though the OS is peculiar in the way it lays out address space, which means you can't just compile with gcc, you need to use a Microware supplied compiler as far as I know). OS-9 never quite beat out VxWorks in the mission-critical embedded space, but it was (and probably still is) an equally good RTOS. AFAIK there was never a port of any GUI to OS-9(000).

It was originally SASI, so 'sexy' was kinda a natural follow on.

Well, I agree that spread sheets can be pretty obscure and there's a point where they aren't the best solution, perhaps. Of course if you do it right you can migrate a lot of the logic to a backend database or into code modules that still provide inputs to the spread sheet. Sheets are great for presentation and organization of certain types of numerical data, and with the built-in charting features they can be pretty good general data visualization tools. You just have to understand at what point to offload onto some other tool at least part of the work.

LOOKING AT the code is not testing it, 90% of all issues won't show up when you look at a piece of code, unless you're so thorough that you might as well have written tests (which is always a better way). Spread sheets are IDEALLY testable, each cell has defined inputs and outputs and you have a built-in way to enter data into it. You can also build another spreadsheet of expected outputs (heck, maybe that's just a cut and paste of the values you got the first time you used the thing, but at least that lets you test regression). Once you have expected outputs you can check them AUTOMATICALLY with a third sheet (IE difference the actual vs the expected, you should get all zeros). This kind of thing is trivial.

Sheesh, the problem here is people are LAZY. They want things to just be correct magically without any work. I got news for you, it ain't ever so. My first job was validating that a critical part of the flight control system of the 747-400 actually worked as advertised under all circumstances. You think we LOOKED AT THE CODE???!!! lol. Likewise, if you're going to make very expensive business and economic decisions then you FRIGGING SPEND THE TIME TO TEST, and once you decide you're going to do that, spread sheets are eminently testable.

Well, what makes you think that Gates, Buffet, or Slim work harder than anyone else? Clearly there is plenty of luck involved, so R can be greater than G but there is a LOT of noise. As for expecting the richest man to be a Rockefeller, who says the Rockefellers aren't vastly more wealthy than Gates or any other one of these people that Forbes lists? Do you think they keep their money around in places where it can be counted? Nobody has EVEN THE SLIGHTEST IDEA how much money the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Fuggers, the Carnegies etc have. These great fortunes almost never die and entry into the top ranks of the world's wealthiest people is exceedingly difficult and rare.

I really don't know if Piketty's mistakes are all so dire as to erase his conclusions, or if they are warranted in the first place on the face of it, but I think you're very wrong about the nature of wealth and fortunes.

No they aren't, they're constraint based systems. flow of control isn't the focus. You could easily reduce a spreadsheet to a bunch of Prolog or to almost any functional language.

No kidding. Also, it MAY not be that easy to review the code in a spreadsheet, but it is VERY VERY EASY to test it. If you want reliable spreadsheets its PERFECTLY possible to test them to the Nth degree, far more so than with most other code. You have a place to put the tests, and a place to put the expected results, its all rather devilishly simple actually. For that matter you can document the bejeezus out of them too.

I think spreadsheets are like any sort of simple interpreted language. Idiots can easily blow their left foot off. Real software engineers can also do some very cool stuff. Most of the perl code I've seen is ugly as all hell and pretty worthless, but MY perl code is a thing of beauty that people maintain for years. Its all in how you use the tool.

Publisher? Distributor? Retailer? When you are talking about pure e-commerce of digital goods these are distinctions without differences. In the end the guy that has the PDF of Accelerondo gets to decide what it costs and where it gets sold. People will find it and buy it and there are plenty of places that can supply the finding and buying function besides Amazon. They have a viselike grip on nothing.

It doesn't matter. He only has to be the supplier of the market for Charles Stross, that's all. Amazon can't simply watch as every Charles Stross beats a path to some other distribution channel. Every author who does so is devaluing the entire platform that Amazon has built. As I said before the barriers to entry really are pretty low at this point, and getting lower all the time. Certainly to become a business of the size and scale of Amazon is a vast undertaking, but being able to sell novels online is not. Thus again, as I said before, the analogy is more like ESPN and Comcast. Sure, Comcast can try to play chicken and refuse to deal with ESPN, but sooner or later it will boomerang on them. Comcast is actually in a much STRONGER position than Amazon because its unlikely/impossible for customers to go elsewhere. Amazon has no such lock-in. They can lock up their little Kindle walled garden, but Android tables with e-reader software are a commodity. They're sub $100 now and will be a $20 item in a year or two. If Amazon gives people too much hassle they'll just go buy one that can work with generic publisher platforms and that will be it. Google will be happy to show their ads and help people find where to buy.

He's full of it. Charles Stross is an excellent writer, whom I will seek out and read. If he's not on Kindle/Amazon at some reasonable price THEN I WON'T BUY FROM AMAZON. Its just like you say here with buying a paperback, I will buy an iPad or whatever the heck it takes to get Charlie's books.

The TRUE analogy here would be ESPN and Comcast. Every so often ESPN TELLS COMCAST how much they're paying for their channel, AND COMCAST PAYS IT. So, Charles, this is what you do, you tell Amazon what you ARE GOING TO GET for a royalty, and they will pass it on to me, or someone else will. Its just that simple.

Honestly, I don't see how Amazon has more or less leverage than any other publisher has ever had. Publisher's have a good bit of weight in the market and they pretty well dictate what up-and-coming authors are going to get (and hint, it was always crap in case you forgot Chuck). However when you're Charles Stross or Steven King, etc then you pretty much have the shoe on your foot and do the kickin'. Just like Ace is going to suck it up and pay a nice advance and a good royalty or else you'll go to Tor, so Amazon will to or else you'll go to Apple.

As time goes on this becomes less and less of a problem as well because eReaders are now pretty much a generic hardware commodity and little private walled-gardens like Apple and Kindle are really fairly silly. The whole book technology stack just isn't that daunting, In a week a guy like me can have a publisher up and running with an app that will let their customers pay for and access ebooks over the net. Yes, Amazon is big and they are slick and they'll always be an attractive marketplace, but the barriers to entry are now too low to let them rake everyone over the coals and get high monopoly rents.

The difference between propanol and ethanol is trivial in this context. Actually the shorter chain molecule is going to be a slightly better drying agent by mass.

Fuel drying additive IS anhydrous ethyl/methyl alcohol. That's what alcohol does is dissolve the water. The problem is its also hygroscopic, so it will pull water right out of the air. The upshot is the ethyl in E10 can dry out the gas, but it can also attract more moisture. Adding drygas will do the same thing, you don't want either one to sit in your tank for a long time if you can help it.

Lots of factors are involved, but the fundamental weakness is when people haven't been taught how to THINK. Well, thinking is dangerous to the status quo so of course you can trace some things back to various parties. The truth is though, most of it is just human nature. Human society is flawed because human beings aren't well-adapted to participating in a globe-spanning civilization such as our own. Its failure seems almost inevitable really.

When half the people stopped voting and much of the other half got so poor an education that they can't distinguish between truth and bullshit.

And we all know it. Nobody gets to be head of the FCC and is so stupid they cannot understand how ANY PAID PRIORITY invalidates the whole concept of network neutrality. We need to keep hammering on these fuckers until we have (at least) retail ISPs under Title II and that's ALL there is to it.