Wednesday, January 26, 2005

 

Film without Film

Wired News reports the first projection of a commercial film by encrypted wireless streaming video. WOW! This is big. The receiver was an HP media center PC. Just needed the decryption key. eMail those babies out to every PC across the globe and think of the opening day a film could have! We just need to bring on 802.16.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

 

The Command Line in 2004

Those of us started using computers in the era of the DEC-10 and TRS-80 and later MS-DOS 1.0 (which was easy to learn because it was so similar to the DEC-10 operating system) were at home with the command line.

Then came the Macintosh (Amiga, Atari ST, etc.) with no command line. I remember wondering how I could use the Mac without a command line. On my old Amiga, I would just break down and launch the CLI (command line interface) so I could get everything just right.

Fast forward 25-30 years. I now (finally) have a Mac that runs OS X. And guess what? It has a little application that lets me open up a Unix window so I can issue command line instructions--not that I do, however.

Well Neal Stephenson (famous SciFi author) wrote an essay (In the beginning was the Command Line) that was passed around the internet a few years back. I printed off a copy and carried it around with me for about 2 years. When I was stuck in a waiting room or in a long line, I would pull it out and read several paragraphs. I eventually finished it. Boy, do I wish I could think and write like that.

Anyway, in the true spirit of standing the shoulders of giants, some guy has updated the essay. Check it out.

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