digital_love

Wie Nolan Bushnell mit zwei Strichen und einem Punkt den Massenmarkt für Heimkonsolen schuf

Nolan Bushnells Job im Freizeitpark "Lagoon" nördlich von Salt Lake City bestand im wesentlichen darin, Besucher zu überreden mindestens einen Viertel Dollar dazulassen. Einen Viertel Dollar, um mit einem Baseball auf leere Milchflaschen werfen zu dürfen. Eines hat Bushnell dort in jenem Sommer 1963 bestimmt gelernt, obwohl er eigentlich nur sein beim Pokern verspieltes Geld für die Studiengebühren wieder verdienen musste: "Leute wollen keine Enzyklopädien lesen, um eine Spiel zu spielen. Es muss so einfach sein, dass ein Betrunkener in einer Bar es kapiert." Diese Erkenntnis hat Bushnell – obwohl er weder den Videospielautomaten noch die Konsole erfand – zum Vater der Computerspielindustrie gemacht.

Konrad Lischka 07.11.2001



-> http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/spiel/9959/1.html
-> http://www.dpunkt.de/buch/3-88229-193-1.html
-> http://www.emuunlim.com/doteaters/play1sta2.htm

What are all those OS Researchers doing at Google?

Rob Pike has gone to Google. Yes, that Rob Pike -- the OS researcher, the member of the original Unix team from Bell Labs. This guy isn't just some labs hood ornament; he writes code, lots of it. Big chunks of whole new operating systems like Plan 9.

Look at the depth of the research background of the Google employees in OS, networking, and distributed systems. Compiler Optimization. Thread migration. Distributed shared memory.

I'm a sucker for cool OS research. Browsing papers from Google employees about distributed systems, thread migration, network shared memory, GFS, makes me feel like a kid in Tomorrowland wondering when we're going to Mars. Wouldn't it be great, as an engineer, to have production versions of all this great research.

Google engineers do!

Competitive Advantage

Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It's running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It's looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.

While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.

This computer is running the world's top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine. What will they do next with the world's biggest computer and most advanced operating system?

-> http://blog.topix.net/archives/000016.html

The Short Answer (to "Why Bill Gates is Richer than You")

"Bill [Gates] is just smarter than everyone else," Mike Maples, an executive vice-president of Microsoft, says. "There are probably more smart people per square foot right here than anywhere else in the world, but Bill is just smarter."

The New Yorker, January 10, 1994

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."

Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995), page 265

-> http://philip.greenspun.com/humor/bill-gates
-> http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/46584/0

One day it was Anne's turn. This quiet midwestern girl studied the problem for a moment, walked over to the board, and gave a five minute presentation on how to solve it, mentioning all of the interesting pedagogical points of the problem and writing down every step of the solution in neat handwriting. Her impromptu talk was better prepared than any lecture I'd ever given in the class.

Afterwards we had a little chat.

"What did you do on Sunday?" she asked.

"Oh, let's see... Ate. Brushed the dog. Watched The Simpsons. And you?" I replied.

"My housemates and I decided to have a hacking party. We do this every month or so. Since we have a network of PCs at home, it is easy to get lots of people programming together. We couldn't decide what to build so I said ‘Well, we all like science fiction novels. So let's build a system where we type in the names of the books that we like and a rating. Then the system can grind over the database and figure out what books to suggest.'"

And?

"It took us the whole afternoon, but we got it to the point where it would notice that I liked Books A, B, and C but hadn't read Book D, which other people who liked A, B, and C had liked. So that was suggested for me. We also got it to notice if you and I had opposite tastes and suppress your recommendations."

This was back in 1994. Anne and her friends had, in one afternoon, completed virtually the entire annual research agenda of numerous American university professors and the development agenda of quite a few venture capital-backed companies.


-> http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/user-tracking.html
-> http://www.amazon.com

Last night I had a dream about you
In this dream I'm dancing right beside you
And it looked like everyone was having fun
the kind of feeling I've waited so long

Don't stop come a little closer
As we jam the rythm gets stronger
There's nothing wrong with just a little little fun
We were dancing all night long

The time is right to put my arms around you
You're feeling right
You wrap your arms around too
But suddenly I feel the shining sun
Before I knew it this dream was all gone

Ooh I don't know what to do
About this dream and you
I wish this dream comes true

Ooh I don't know what to do
About this dream and you
We'll make this dream come true

Why don't you play the game ?
Why don't you play the game ?

Digital Love Lyrics
by Daft Punk

-> http://www.lyricsdomain.com/4/daft_punk/digital_love.html

-> sample on amazon.com