September 02, 2004

Source Code

I love the web because when I am looking up one thing I almost always find one or more other things that I find interesting. Today, the "other thing" was an essay by Dan Bricklin Software that lasts 200 years. The article is about how current software marketing models don't really make sense for what he calls "Societal Infrastructure Software".

The article made me think (yet again) about source code.

We have arrived at a world where there seem to be only two ways of dealing with source code: "need to know" - no one gets the source without NDAs and you get paid a lot of money for writing the code, versus "open source" - anyone gets the source and no one gets any money for writing code.

Why do these have to be our only choices?

Continue reading "Source Code"
Posted by Eryk at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2004

why Mac OS X has Unix

Lots of ordinary people seem to think that companies do things for good reasons. You know, they have people look at lots of alternatives and pick the best thing. Not!

Take a look at Mac OS X. Why does it have Unix in it? Is it so lots of freely able software can be easily ported to it? No.

Continue reading "why Mac OS X has Unix"
Posted by Eryk at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

August 04, 2004

Recent Reading

As is obvious, I rarely write in this blog. Today, I thought I'd write a little about a few books I've finished reading lately.

Sixpence House: lost in a town of books
Paul Collins
ISBN: 1-58234-404-3
Entertaining memoir of an American living in Hay-on-Wye. (If you are a bibliophile, as I am, then no trip to the UK is complete with a trip to Hay.) Amusing light reading. Continue reading "Recent Reading"

Posted by Eryk at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2004

Computer language books

Somebody asked me about the books I had. I realized I have quite a few books on a number of computer languages...

Continue reading "Computer language books"
Posted by Eryk at 02:37 PM | Comments (2)

December 04, 2003

Apple and Unix

Every once in a while I read some more bogus information on the web about the history of Apple and the Unix OS. I thought I would try to set the record straight in at least some respects.

I will try to mention how I know these things, so you can have some confidence that I'm not just some jerk yammering about stuff I heard fifth hand. Continue reading "Apple and Unix"

Posted by Eryk at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)