http://www.osnews.com/story/2621/Umberto_Eco_s_Pendulum_and_Conceptual_Software_Innovation Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:18:57 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? is it just me or did that article make no sense? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I read it and I'm still not sure what the author was trying to say...? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sorry, but: What the hell is this article about? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i think it's an attempt at "bad writing." Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? English, right? and why is he doing this to his mother tongue? amazing, really amazing .... Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's not just an attempt, it's a successful attempt at bad writing.

I gather that the ``author'' has swallowed a thesarus, and is burping it up bit by bit. It may be, also, that he is disgusted with businessmen and operating systems, but that conclusion is more tenuous than the first.

It's a pity that it's so badly written: judging by the bio at the bottom, he might have something interesting to say, if only he could communicate. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...is that he simply is trying to make some advertising for his project. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Otherwise it's just another mindless rant on why 'my ideas are great but never got accepted because they were ahead of their time'. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There seems to be little or no information about this "palos". here's its website: http://members.aol.com/marlinsmeadow/
yes, members.aol.com
...
and all the documents on the website are generated with office, including the website itself.
why is someone developing a kernel/os using microsoft office again? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well ok, I'll venture a guess at a summary: businesses hire stupid people, modern day OSes have very infantile designs, but Palos is their new found saviour, Microsoft is evil, and integrated systems is where the next big money maker is.
So is this what happens when you run an English to English translation through babelfish? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Now I know why the tech bubble burst. Too many people like this running around Silicon Valley collecting VC money. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? No, it's a successfull attempt at really bad writing, combined with a wholesale "blendering" of every fruitcake idea out there from the past 20 years. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? by engaging in foucauldian ideas of essentialism, we have indeed entered into a new phase of the paradigm shift that kuhnians among you will know about. i believe that the author indeed recognises the limitism that the current mythos provides, but by realising the faultline apparant in the microsoft/linux hegemony, sees the space by which the 'palos' will thrive.

i think it's quite clear really. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i want my 10 minutes back (most spent trying to understand wtf i was reading).

i'll hire david boies as my lawyer to get it back. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Here I was thinking this was a tech site, and someone goes all sokal on me (http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/). Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I actually offered to raise funds for him, provided I get detailed description, he did not even reply. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? he just wanted to impress us with the fact that he read Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. The rest of the article kinda/not really makes sense, but regardless of that, there wasn't much point to the whole thing. Sort of like my post. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have saved it as a test file for grammar checking software. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The author is from Belfast, UK so his native language is Georgian or some dialect of Irish. He probably used a translater to convert this to English from Russian because he probably also speaks Russian. Speaking of which, has anyone ever been on the singles matchmaking sites & read all the Russian translated ads. They have great looking pictures wearing very little & bending over so you can see what they have to offer but their message is like "You can come here Russia and I will marry you and be your candle on a cold night. My Curtains are open so we can feel the stars in the cold cold cold black sky." or whatever.. whatever amen... & btw.. I think this author is on to something. I'll bet his new OS will rock our worlds & then I pity the fools who mock his clever arse. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? David, you must also start reading Arturo Perez-Reverte. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Makes you appreciate that teenager who wrote the Linux article, huh? Compared to this its Pulitizer material. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? That is a brilliant idea!

I am glad I am not the only who thought the article was Amazing..........................ly BAD! Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's a good thing we still are able to read/judge articles and tell if they make sense or not. In physics that seems to be much harder... Wed, 22 Jan 2003 18:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I feel bad for the author of this article. If he indeed is native to another language other than English, he probably does not know how we are reading it. It would be nice if OSNews.com would provide some kind of "not to make a fool of yourself" assistance with English. Maybe as far as he knows, he was just sharing his perspective on the computer industry, his frustrations and his ideas in a language that he feels somewhat sucessful and accomplished in and we've all ripped him apart for it. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 19:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't think his problem is with English. He just does not tell us anything. What is his project? Maybe I need to read it again but I read it word for word and missed detail on what his project is/was.

Also he seems to have just finished reading Hawkings, "A brief history of time" and now feels like he needs to throw around a few outdated physics ideas e.g. "ether" and some other material covered in the early chapters of the book. That combined with a complete disregard for the audience and the need to prove his intellect by showing us how many largely unused words he knows defeats the article in just about every sense.

To me it should be a case study for how someone with intelligence can completely fail in his/her primary goal of communication.

Let me say I am not against a good vocabulary but obscure words should only be used if they are accurately descriptive. He uses them for show! Wed, 22 Jan 2003 19:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Please take note of this writing style. This writing style is similar to the French, or Pot-head writing style. The French like to use paragraph-long sentences with references that, although aren't relevent the the author's argument, attempt to show how well-read and intelligent the author is.

dude, it's like soooooo deeeeeeep.... Like, I totally can understand, like about the whole concept man, we're all like totally connected, it's all like one big chain,

hey man, I'm starving, let's go get some peanut butter.

--Lobelt The Bluce. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 20:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I come from England & I can't understand his ramblings either.

I think he's a Raelian but living in N Ireland which is not English. N Ireland is just a bunch of Scots living in Ireland wishing it was British. Now I've offended someone.

We'll see this superior OS when we see the proof of cloning! Wed, 22 Jan 2003 20:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Ok his website is more interesting, he has worked for some pretty good companies. I never heard of U of Ulster, must be one of those recent upgraded polys. He doesn't stick around very long, ST should have been a good place to stick around as long as possible.

Maybe been watching too much boobies on The Charmed and making his own incantations on himself bound to go loony. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I like expensivelesbian's explanation best.

Either way, I wish he had actually explained what in the names of Kernighan & Ritchie is so special about Palos.

Also, I do disagree with him about OS design innovation being dead. What I will agree with him on is that the implementation of those ideas doesn't happen very quickly. Mind you, he only implied this, but it's true nonetheless.

Also, if the ideas are too far out there (like Plan 9/Inferno, LISP machines, and OpenDoc), then they won't work with everything else, and they'll disappear.

--JM. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This is the most brilliant article on the internet. Ever. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? His office is basically where they built the Titanic. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? http://www.cens.ucla.edu/Project-Descriptions/Sensor%20Platform...

Would that be related? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? A Shorter version:

He belives OS development is stagnant.
He decides to write his own.
He doesn't.
(Although according to his website he does).

I think this article is trying to be far too clever, it's difficult to read and rassumes the readership here has read books I suspect many (including myself) have never heard of. I can only assume he's got one of those word processors which gives you a grammar score which soars upwards when you give it a load of really long sentences.

--

From someone who spent 28 years living down the road from Belfast and went to Jordanstown at the same time :

Bout ye big lad,
So, are you gonna give us the craic on this Palos or what? Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? re: N Ireland is just a bunch of Scots living in Ireland wishing it was British. Now I've offended someone.


Let's try to keep the national politics out of it. OSNews has always been happily free of this sort of thing. This is certainly a badly written article, but to keep the comments friendly place for everybody, it's probably best to avoid the political/ethnic remarks. Wed, 22 Jan 2003 21:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ...Hunter S Thompson writes about software.

~Fear and Linux in Las Vegas Wed, 22 Jan 2003 23:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You're totally right about the word usage being pompass and pretentious. I just couldn't be sure in one reading if it was the overall style or the side-effect of non-native use of English. Different groups of people use different vocabulary. I have been picked-on by many for using a wider, more complex vocabulary. Most folks walking around here in PA are rather ignorant and don't like reading more than a sentence or two a day, so they are easilly made to feel stupid when you use a word like "overzealous" or "inane."

Granted, I use the words correctly most of the time while this guy ... well... heck, I don't know what he's trying to say. Thu, 23 Jan 2003 00:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Heck, so it wasn't because I'm not a native English speaker that I didn't understand a thing! Thu, 23 Jan 2003 01:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? aaaaha-ahaha-ha!!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha!!!!

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ha ha ha ha aha haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 01:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments