hi-tech

decades ago, NASA needed a pen which could be used in space, coz pen we used on earth is useless at the loss of gravity. so NASA grabbed dozens of top scientists, gave them $250million, and finally they got a geeky high-tech stuff. meanwhile, the soviets were doing the same thing, but they didn't spend an extra penny, coz those comrades just used pencil

Sophie's choice

Ample make this bed .
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

Steve Job$

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt
In early January 1985, I got a phone call from Guy Kawasaki, one of Apple's third party evangelists, who told me that Apple was interested in buying Switcher, and that he was assigned to make that happen. The first step was arranging a demo for Steve Jobs. I entered Steve's office with a bit of trepidation, because I thought that Switcher was worth at least a quarter of a million dollars to Apple, but I was sure that Steve would never want to pay me that much. But I was also proud of Switcher, and was interested in seeing how Steve would react to it. I booted up my by now standard demo of MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw and the Finder, as well as a little maze generating program written by Steve Capps. I configured Switcher with the scrolling animation initially turned off, so it would have more impact when I showed it later. I demoed cutting and pasting between MacWrite, MacPaint and MacDraw, in seconds instead of minutes, and then I turned on the scrolling animation, and starting switching rapidly between them, in both directions. "OK, I've seen enough, " Steve interrupted me. "It's great. Apple is going to bundle it with the Mac. Congratulations." But then he paused, and stared at me for a moment with an incredibly intense gaze, as if he was sizing me up or maybe just trying to scare me. "But I don't want you taking advantage of this situation. I'm not going to allow you to take advantage of Apple." "What do you mean?" I asked him, genuinely puzzled. "There's no way that you could have written that program without confidential information that you learned by working at Apple. You don't have the right to charge whatever you like for it." I started to get angry. "The program is only half finished, and if I don't think you're paying me fairly, I won't be motivated to finish it." Steve gave me another intense stare as he paused for a few seconds. Then he stated a single number, without explanation. "One hundred thousand dollars." "I don't know," I told him, "I think it's probably worth a lot more than that." "Don't argue with me. $100,000 is fair, and you know it." I didn't seem to have any alternative but to capitulate to Steve's price setting, since he's difficult to argue with and I really wanted Switcher bundled with the Mac. I eventually negotiated the final agreement with Guy Kawasaki, where, in addition to the $100,000, I managed to get a 10% royalty of the wholesale price if Apple sold Switcher separately, which Steve swore they would never do, but eventually the royalty delivered another $50,000.
-
hehe, Steve is no better than Bill.

Bill Gate$

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt

Finally, my afternoon at Microsoft culminated in a private meeting with their CEO, Bill Gates. Jeff ushered me into Bill's office and reviewed the afternoon's discussions for him, before excusing himself to leave us alone to negotiate a development deal. I had met Bill a few times during the course of Macintosh development, and while I respected his understanding of technology, I was wary of his burgeoning reputation as a conniving businessman. After exchanging a few pleasantries, and telling me how much the Macintosh mattered to Microsoft, he looked me in the eye and said, "You're a really good programmer, right? I think you must be a really good programmer." "I guess so," I responded, not understanding why he was attempting to flatter me. "Well, I think you are. How long do you think it will take to do this project? A month or two? I think a really good programmer like you could get it done in less than two months." "I really have no idea," I replied, "I'm not far enough along to know if it's even feasible yet." "Well, let's figure it out," he said in a slightly condescending tone. "I don't think it could be more than 10,000 lines of code, and a really good programmer like you should be able to write at least a thousand lines of code per week, so I think it will take you less than 10 weeks to write it, if you're as good as I think you are." I didn't know how to respond, so I kept quiet and let him continue. "And how much do you think a really good programmer should get paid? Around here we pay our best programmers around two thousand dollars per week. Do you think you should be paid more than that?" "I don't know," I replied. I was finally beginning to see where he was coming from. Bill was trying to get me to brag that I could write the application switcher really quickly, so he could justify paying me a lower price for it.

hehe, Bill Gate$, Beer Cap$.

How Adobe's Photoshop Was Born

http://web.archive.org/web/20070717193315/http://siliconuser.com/?q=node/10

A really interesting reading. found via the discussion of cowboy programming seeded by Wood.

Moondance

Well, it's a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
'Neath the cover of October skies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_envelopes_problem
http://www.mit.edu/~emin/writings/envelopes.html
interesting things to look at.

discussion on continuous case:  http://mysite.verizon.net/randoob/puzzle/continuous.pdf

'The Eulogy' - A good one

And only about 6 months from his 20th birthday.
But we should remember the good times.
He was born with a fairly short and energetic labor. Born back in the simple days of a 386s chip with 512K memory. He was a very skinny baby, fitting on a 360K floppy, and a little shy always hiding away in the upper part of memory where no one could find him. Although shy he started to getting around quickly. Moving from DOS to Win 3.0 then a big date in ‘Chicago’. His popularity grew to the point that even songs where written about him, ‘The Soft-ICE blues’. And finally showing up in a ‘New Technology’ where no one thought he could live. He was fickle at times, dating a lot of different symbol engines along the way and picking up friends wearing strange ‘Underware’. He became a little confused as he left the nest; trying to be hip, doing the 64bit thing and was even seen cross dressing in a GUI.
But as his parents;
SI = ‘JM’
DI = ‘FG’
We will always be proud of him and what he accomplished for the world, in a time when the OS changed every 2 years and drivers were a combination of science and art.
We would like to thank all those who helped him along during his life!
In his memory we ask that you always keep CTRL-D unassigned on your keyboard.
Frank & Jim