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Mozilla The Internet

Salon on JWZ/Emacs/Mozilla/AOL and Nightclubs 168

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can-I-be-known-by-my-initials-too? dept.
genehckr writes "Salon has an article about how JWZ has been spending his time since leaving Netscape/AOL/Mozilla -- he's working on buying a nightclub in San Francisco. The article also delves into JWZ's personality, and some of the history behind the JWZ/RMS Lucid Emacs/emacs split -- an interesting read. " Ok, I put it under the Mozilla icon because I don't have a 'San Francisco Nightclub Icon'. Interesting article covering stuff that we don't usually see around here.
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Salon on JWZ/Emacs/Mozilla/AOL and Nightclubs More

Salon on JWZ/Emacs/Mozilla/AOL and Nightclubs

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  • Given jwz's goth/industrial/angstcore leanings musicwise, a bat may be a good icon.
  • This is STRANGE! I mean, next thing you know, pop singers might be buying llamas and living in oxygen tents. Ooops! Already done. :)

    On the other hand, I'd love to know if the dance floor is Java 2 compatiable and supports XML.

    Personally, I think we might start to see more of this - people just getting fundamentally fed up and choosing whole new careers. I don't know any of the reasons JWZ has made the switch, beyond those reasons he's chosen to give, but I do know that if I had the resources, I'd get out of the politics, back-stabbing and paranoia that makes up so many companies.

  • The appearance of Java in Slashdot banners is *not* a welcome new feature! Not only does it add to the page load times, but it kills off a large proportion of the Netscapes currently in use on Linux.

    I have three different versions of Netscape running on RedHat 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1, and they *all* die during Java loads. (Yes, I *have* fixed the RH font path omission.)

    I know the problem is Netscape's and not Slashdot's, but since Netscape is the browser most used on Linux, the end effect worldwide of this introduction of Java really sucks for Slashdot fans.
  • I don't know what would be a bigger draw to me, going to an actively open nerd night club, or going to an actively open nerd night club owned by jwz...

    If only it were in Chicago...
  • No kidding... and it is a ugly thing on SGI's as well... NO JAVA BANNER ADS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • I had been wondering what jwz was going to do "after AOL."

    I had half expected that he might do something like buying Harlequin, and "open sourcing" Liquid Common Lisp. (Which would have been rather interesting...) Or perhaps seeking to build a Lisp Machine environment to run atop Linux. Or perhaps something more quixotic like building such atop FreeBSD.

    It's very interesting that he has instead proceeded to do "political system" hacking. I expect he'll get back to the computer variety at some point.

    After all, he appears to be a significant participant here; any time major discussions of Motif or Mozilla come up, he's quite visible in the discussions!

    I'm no "clubber," and I'm not entirely convinced he's after something that's unambiguously a good thing, but it's sort of nice to see some action oriented to a local community taking place.

  • Works nice and fast here. Oh whoops, I'm using IE5 :P

    Anyway, can't you just disable java in netscape?

  • The article spent a couple of paragraphs on generalities. Does there exist a good, non-judgmental (I should be so lucky) article about what really happened, focussing on the operational differences between emacs & Xemacs? If so, could some kind person post a pointer?

    TIA

  • hmmm (Score:1)

    by p0d ( 56980 )
    We have the same issue with afterhours on south beach as they do in san francisco. Maybe jwz can come out here and help us after he's done out there :)
  • I always thought JZW could make it as a Yanni impersonator. It seems that he is not involved with any big hacking project these days. Too bad, the free software community needs him.

  • jwz == altruistic nerd? (Score:4)

    by wavelet ( 17885 ) on Thursday February 10, 2000 @04:17AM (#1289179)
    Maybe altruistic is a bit too generous, but following jwz for a while it seems like he is very true to himself. Much like Linus he seems somewhat unchanged by his fame and money. Ok so he's got more money. His arrogance today seems to be no more than his arrogance several years back.

    Perhaps it's the malleability of code that makes some programmers, especially free software programmers, so optimistic that they can fix things, that problems are solvable, that a solution is always waiting to be found. Software can be fixed. Programmers live in a world where reality can be shaped according to their will -- all they have to do is write another line of code.

    A fairly interesting insite into why hackers are so powerful. Now only do they think they can fix things... in many instances they actually do. All the hub-bub about the freedom on information, ie the state of "the net" is all about hackers knowing they can change things. Shows like Triumph of the Nerds attempts to document this phenomenon. It also seems to celebrate the power and influence of nerddom as if nerds have something to prove.

  • I wonder if he needs a nightclub network admin. I'll have to find very sturdy Cat 5 jack mountings...Oh, and I'll need a half-dozen motor-aimed pin spots for marking net abusers.

    There's nothing like keeping a network clean with bouncers...

  • Before you leave, you will make an entry in Everything.

  • DNA (Score:2)

    by DarkClown ( 7673 )
    That will definitely be something to check out in San Fran when they transfer ownership and do whatever it is they're going to do to it. I picture an exploratorium on lsd with a bar.
    How have other clubs integrated technology into the environment to make it fun for hacker/tech types?
  • Ok, I put it under the Mozilla icon because I don't have a 'San Francisco Nightclub Icon'

    What? There isn't a jwz icon?

  • Trust me, you don't want him to... been there...
  • Remember 3 weeks ago when you were soundly trounced on this same topic? Do you want that to happen again?

    In case you do, here's the first taste: What conceivable claim would Stallman have on jwz's nightclub. Even as a joke this makes no sense.
    --
    Java banners:
    Bad for users because Java kills Netscape
  • XEmacs has a jwz icon (jwz.png). CT could use that.
  • His arrogance today seems to be no more than his arrogance several years back.

    Of course, that's still a heck of a lot of arrogance.

  • Talk about the only thing constant is change...

    This is really so 60s. Suddenly the young, rising rebels discover the changes they're fighting for are so easily done within the system. The ability to fight the establishment, USING the establishment becomes an accepted method and then suddenly they wake up and discover...

    My god, I've turned into my parents!
  • This is STRANGE! [...]

    Not all that strange, I meet loads of techys out clubbing, and loads of the techys I know are into clubbing (or metal).

    On the other hand, I'd love to know if the dance floor is Java 2 compatiable and supports XML.

    Its an escape from tech land, not and extension of it...

    Personally, I think we might start to see more of this - people just getting fundamentally fed up and choosing whole new careers.

    Too late, its already been happening for years. Why else is the industry full of young people? Computing is a burn out industry, most people give up and do something less stressfull instead - I've met plenty of people who used to be programmers (the carpenter that repaired the door after there was a break in where I used to work glanced at the computers we where working on and commented "computers eh? I used own a computer company, but I got sick of it, so I do this now." And go on with his work.

    Thad

  • jwz icon (Score:3)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Thursday February 10, 2000 @04:41AM (#1289201) Homepage
    What about the spinning-compass easter egg Netscape showed when pointed at jwz's page? Should be nicely obscure.
  • I'm using M13 as my main browser now. In a week of(fairly constant) use I've only noticed the following problems:

    -Multiple windows don't work independently after about 10 minutes. Refreshing in one window makes both windows unusable.
    -Copy and paste (internally OR externally) is totally non-functional.
    -No https
    -For some reason I couldn't load www.caldera.com
    -Occasionally some pages will have large blacked-out areas. Scrolling usually fixes this. However, I also note that the MetaMod /. page had the same problem under Netscape and that is fixed in Mozilla.
    -Minor editing nitpicks (like why can't I put in double spaces?)

    Other than these relatively minor issues, M13 is awesome. Very quick rendering (I much prefer the "render as you receive" algorigthm. I like it so much I entered a reminder on my Palm to download M14 as soon as it hits the wire (2/18).
    --
    Java banners:
    Bad for users because Java kills Netscape
  • I have three different versions of Netscape running on RedHat 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1, and they *all* die during Java loads.

    Must be a RH problem. Works fine from all of my Debian boxes running NS 4.5-4.7.
  • I was trounced? How? And on what grounds? I love when GNLUSERS like you claim victory when it is not there. Kinda like the cult leader claiming Linux when it is not his.

    Please, stop believing your own hype. You are not that bright. I have a strange feeling you listen to those Tony Robbins motivational tapes. Hmmmm. Sad really.
  • No problems here on Linux + netscape.

    Maybe there's something else wrong with your setup?
  • Does there exist a good, non-judgmental (I should be so lucky) article about what really happened, focussing on the operational differences between emacs & Xemacs?
    There can't, since the people with first hand knowledge have widely diverging stories. Read them [dina.kvl.dk] yourself, and form your own opinion, instead of getting them predigested from someone else.
  • Hmmm...I guess you really DON'T remember how I finally pinned you down on a claim and you refused to back it up. Search your user history to figure it out.

    As for your more ridiculous claims in the current post:

    -Stallman does not claim Linux is his. Instead of responding "he does too", why not provide a URL where this claim is made?
    -I've got no life? Counteracting FUD is constructive--producing it is not. Which are you doing?
    --
    Java banners:
    Bad for users because Java kills Netscape
  • Kinda OT, but...

    I've used (and I still have to use) Lisp in college courses. Most of my peers feel that, as a language, it's a waste of time. I always thought that if I'm going to do text-based programming in Unix, it might as well be with something interesting and natural, like Lisp is in ways. C++ for text based programming is an arduous chore, although it makes your life easier in many ways. On the opposite end, I've used Prolog and although I did get the hang of it eventually, I thought learning it was like trying to dry my hair on a frying pan...

    Sadly, I've yet to see anything really practical done with Lisp. I'm not saying that things HAVEN'T been done or CAN'T... they just haven't been called to my attention yet. Specifically, I know that Lisp ain't the fastest car in the garage when it comes to compiled speed, but I think that someone should really try to fancy it up and release a professional IDE/compiler/libraries set that is capable of making real-world appications. (not that you COULDN'T do that kind of stuff already if you really wanted to, but somehow I assume that no one is making any Winamp plugins or network games with it)

    It is kind of ludicrous to think of such an idea... anything called "Visual Lisp" might cause some crying and suicidal thoughts. But I would be SOOO curious to see what might come out of some project like that. After all, the way that information flows within Lisp might make certain applications much easier to code. Also, one of the very nice things about Lisp IMHO is that if you're a decent programmer, you'll save massive amounts of debugging time because generally you won't have to worry about broken functions down the line... I find it easier to debug Lisp functions out of the gate as opposed to C++. Of course, this comes at the expense of coding time, but I think the end tradeoff is worth it. (I hate debugging more than coding, so again this is IMHO) Finally, Lisp is somewhat ideal for AI and logic type stuff, so coding those type of elements into programs would probably be quicker and more natural.

    Of course, making it a bloated language might not have superb results. Specifically, just throwing something like MFC on top wouldn't improve the programming experience. Still, though, I'm very curious, and if anyone knows a direction in which to point me, I'll take a look. Otherwise, this is DIY country, but it might take a year or two before I would be able to accomplish anything like that. Right now my best talent on a computer is getting record times in Minesweeper...
  • ....that some of us geeks DO have lives!
  • I'd say going against the SFPD and moving local politics is a lot of hacking.
    Ok, so he doesn't hack code right now, but you could say he "hacks minds".
    Greetinx
    Aleks A.
    ---
    For a real millenial disaster, computer glitches cannot hold a candle to global warming.
  • glad you see it my way.
  • The article was good readage. Nothing that I didn't already know from visiting jwz home page though.
    BUT, anyone else notice the little blurb about a PBS documentary "Code Rush"? Seems like it's going to air March 30th according to the link.

    "The specific time period captured on film covers a crucial moment in the history of the "free-software movement" -- that frantic couple of months during which Netscape programmers scrambled to clean up the hitherto proprietary source code to the Navigator Web browser so that it could be released as publicly accessible open-source software."

    Hmmm....sounds pretty interesting. I wonder who's going to portray jwz :)

  • I don't know; I thought it was pretty funny.

    Stallman will think of a reason to take credit. Mozilla == Free Software == Related to source of JWZ's money == Stallman's nightclub. "Any Nightclub that has been built on the fruits of free software MUST BE called GNU/Nightclub!"

    P.S. For the humor impaired: Yes, I know his fortune was built on Netscape's proprietary software... IT'S A JOKE.


    --

  • > Personally, I think we might start to see more of this - people just
    > getting fundamentally fed up and choosing whole new careers.
    I'm doing that. It's not the computer field that I'm fed up with, it's corporations in general. They really really don't mesh with the way my mind goes. And, I've noticed, ever since I started programming professionally, I stopped programming as a hobby - it wasn't fun anymore. Very depressing.
    So, in order to get my Happiness rating back up, I'm going back to school and switching to the psychology field. Freaky, huh?

    Eric
  • it was a joke. Some people have no sense of humor, and take themselves WAY too seriously.

    Kinda like cult memebers.

  • <i>On the other hand, I'd love to know if the dance floor is Java 2 compatiable and supports XML.</i>

    Acutally, I've been there. Unless it closes for renovations, the floor as I danced on it was kinda uneven. I tripped over a few nails by the edges. The floor is kinda nailed down and a bit small compared to clubs here in Pittsburgh. They do have a balcony and a pretty big stage. Kinda like Graffiti, but without the smoke.
  • Just think, a place where we can congregate and apply the IRL /. effect on brick-and-mortar businesses. 50 people in line at the quik-e-mart to buy gum!

    CmdrTaco, this is your DESTINY!!!!!

  • [WARNING: THIS SLASHDOT POST WENT UP WITH LUDICROUSLY BAD TIMING FOR ME. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY BITTER RANT. I WILL REGRET POSTING THIS LATER. YA KNOW WHAT? FUCK IT AND ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE IT.]

    Dear Willie:

    Damnit! Are you guys ever going to let guys like me have a life?

    I'm tired of fighting, Mr. Mayor. I grew up in The City. I sat there at age 14, imagining that when 16 rolled around, gee, I'd finally have to stop asking for rides and start <i>going places</i>. But, whoops, 16 wasn't enough, everything was 18 and over. Fine. I waited. 18 rolled around...whoops again! Can't drink, can't party! Better wait 'til 21. Now I'm 21 and live in Santa Clara, and what do I hear but half the clubs in San Francisco are under attack.

    What the hell? Do you own Prozac futures or something? Have you ever stopped for a moment and considered exactly happens when the event economy can support fewer and fewer individuals?

    No, Willie, I bet you haven't. I've heard about your parties--you've thrown kinkfests that put a good chunk of the Castro parties to shame, if only because of the straight laced people you've dragged to them--and I've gotta say, I respect your cojones. But guess what--you go ahead and harass and subject and isolate as many people as possible...

    And you eliminate me, and people like me.

    Take a college town, or take a city spiting its culture to win some votes, and start cracking down. People like me, who used to be more fodder for the party, who might actually turn out to be decently cool, become risk, pure and simple.

    Don't invite the geeks. They'll call attention. Watch who you bring; too many and we'll get busted. Leave them to their toys; screw 'em if they want to look back at their youth without regret.

    And School Administrators wonder aloud where all these cliques are coming from, and why nobody has any school spirit anymore, and how it is that so many students just don't know eachother.

    Man cannot live on bread alone, and geeks cannot survive on mere technology. There's something called a well balanced life, and the systematic limitation of just how many people can enjoy theirs must end.

    If residents are complaining, then the failure is the City's and the Zoning Commissions, not people like me who don't Know Everyone like you do. I want to have fun, Mr. Mayor. Yes, I admit it. I want to look back at a month and say, wow, I met some great people. I let myself go. I stopped being stressed about...everything.

    I don't want drugs. I don't want pot. And I certainly don't want more f*cking technology. Give me loud music, new people, and an edge of unpredicatability without the constant and truly ridiculous fear and loathing of the police and the government and the city councils and the Self Appointed Fun Police and I'll be happy!

    I'll live in your city!

    I'll come home!

    You ruin my hometown as I just turn 21, and while your Prozac futures might skyrocket, I ain't ever going home, save maybe to campaign against your ass.

    Capiche?

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • I hope something is done to improve DNA. it is pretty plain (yet so perfect for a goth club -- it's completely black on the inside) some more vid-displays would be nice. and smart drinks at the bar.
  • I just looked over your recent posting history and you seem to have some single-minded hatred of Stallman. You bring him up whenever you can just to flame him. I know if you respond to this it will only be to add one more insult to Stallman. I feel sorry for you.

    Get over it, man! Seek professional help if you must, but don't let Stallman ruin you're life. It's not worth it. You accuse him of being obsessive about the GNU thing, but you appear far more obsessed with him. Maybe you should think of staying off line for a while and maybe getting a new hobby to keep your mind him.

    Here's a couple of links that may help you on your way to recovery:

    http://ocd.mentalhelp.net/ [mentalhelp.net]

    http://www.ocfoundation.org/ocf1030a.htm [ocfoundation.org]

  • Though this is obviously a troll, I'll respond: DNA is not a "gay" club currently. It is a venue for concerts (apparently not a much as it used to be) and dance music. It seems to me that the night I was there it was occupied by tourists. I can't be certain. 25 years ago it was a gay club known as "chaps" according to SFgate.
  • > I wonder who's going to portray jwz

    If it's a documentary, I assume jwz will be himself. I don't believe it will be a dramatic recreation. Maybe you knew that.
  • coming from someone named Col Klink.

    Seig Heil, eh?
  • Arent you? I could swear there was a German computer publication called C'T.
  • You probably think you are "blowing the mind" of a "straight", but actually you are not. I'm fully aware you are a troll who does not really believe the things you are saying. I'm also fully aware that if you were confronted in "the real world" you would turn out to be a spineless loser.

    There are two methods for dealing with trolls.

    1) Ignore them. This is usually the best route with trolls that make no sense, even superficially.
    2) Give them enough rope to hang themselves with. This works when the claim has a superficial plausibility but actually makes no sense underneath. That's what I've been doing with you and it worked twice.

    But it looks like you've finally caught on to that and have decided to short-circuit my process by reverted to normal, troll-like, nonsensical behavior. Go ahead, if that amuses you, but you will be losing a playmate when I switch back to strategy #1.
    --
    Java banners:
    Bad for users because Java kills Netscape
  • Please turn to Tony Robbins tape #4 on having a sense of humor.

    It is obvious that you really do not have any life or sense of humor.

    Nice job there chief. Big talk from a geek with a keyboard.
  • ...I wonder if he could get it open by June when the next JavaOne rolls around and 20,000+ geeks roll into town? Would they all attempt to show up at jwz's place simultaneously? Talk about a /. effect. ;)
  • Does there exist a good, non-judgmental (I should be so lucky) article about what really happened, focussing on the operational differences between emacs & Xemacs?

    I doubt if you can find an unbiased account of what happened back in those days; anyone who remembers those events clearly is probably a resident of one camp or another. I liked the other poster's suggestion of "read the accounts and decide for yourself." Unfortunately, I tried following the link and got an authorization failure.

    My camp was the Lucid/XEmacs camp. I had been using the vanilla "FSF Emacs 18", but when I discovered Lucid Emacs 19 I found I liked it much better for many reasons.

    Just one example was "font-lock": its ability to display a file using different typefaces -- like bold for keywords, italics for comments, etc. I seem to remember that this feature was in the works for FSF Emacs 19, but that Lucid Emacs 19 came out first.

    Stallman's version of Emacs 19 eventually caught up with XEmacs and added the font-lock ability, but the underlying mechanism for how to describe when and where the typeface changed was very different. JWZ had done it (correctly, in my opinion) so that typeface was an attribute of the text, so when you cut and pasted a region of text, the font attributes went with it. RMS had a different implementation, so that the text attributes were a feature of the buffer, and didn't get cut and pasted with the text.

    Or maybe it was the other way around, but the point is that the two implementations had different APIs, which made it difficult for any code written on the one Emacs to work on the other. I know, because at the time, I was working on a piece of code called ps-print that would take a fontified buffer and spit out PostScript code so I could pretty-print my code and the printout would look pretty much like it did in Emacs. I eventually worked out a means of supporting both Emacsen and ps-print is now a standard elisp package delivered with each.

    Would life have been a little easier if JWZ and RMS had been able to agree? Undoubtedly. Would I have JWZ back down, given that RMS was never going to agree with him? No way. What Jamie and the Lucid/XEmacs minions produced was simply better for my purposes, and I'd hate to have been without it all these years. Note that I'm not alone in this opinion, at least judging by the fact that XEmacs still has a significant following. Check it out at xemacs.org.

    --Jim

  • Re:DNA (Score:1)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    hmmmm, smart drinks....
  • Dave Taylor (formerly of id [idsoftware.com], founder of crack.com [crack.com], currently at Transmeta [transmeta.com])'s crack.com game Abuse [crack.com] (now open-sourced, I believe) uses LISP as its scripting/scenario engine... That was *really* cool, but couldn't survive the onslaught of the first-person shooters and real time clickfe^H^H^H^H^H^H^H strategy games during 1995 or so...
  • Harlequin went into receivership late last year and has been bought out by a firm called Global Graphics, who wanted the Scriptworks Postscript RIP (which I used to work on). GG aren't really interested in selling programming languages, so IIRC that arm of the company has been sold off as a different firm, whose name I forget.

    However, the really interesting story is Dylan. Harlequin put huge amounts of work into a high-quality Dylan implementation; it's one of the things that sunk the company. When GG took over, they decided that they'd have an impossible task selling the product either to end users or to a company - so they made a *gift* of the source to the developers. They've now set up a company, Functional Objects [functionalobjects.com], to develop it further.

    It seems they don't currently plan to open source their implementation; personally I think they're doomed unless they do...
    --
  • Yep - pretty annoying, and not a good way to start out an article that's obviously targeted towards the geek community.
  • If you've ever played Crash Bandicoot, that is an example of a video game where much of the code is written in Lisp.

    Abuse had at least the game sequencing written in Lisp.

    And a "bloated" Common Lisp implementation looks positively svelte when put beside either a Java or a C++ "IDE" environment.

  • Re:The Problem With Enforced Disassembly (Score:3)

    by kinesis ( 13238 ) on Thursday February 10, 2000 @06:14AM (#1289248)
    Compare San Francisco's night life to Manhattan's. It's pathetic.

    These New Money people move into the city so they can experience it's culture and then they kill it. Well, move the fuck out.

    It's the young crowd that's largely responsible for giving a city its personality. If you take away the outlets for the hipsters, they're going to stop moving in and start moving out. A San Francisco where every district feels like Pacific Heights is not a San Francisco people will be happy with.

    The party crowd can vote, Willie. Take care of us.
  • I feel a little silly getting in the middle of a 7-year-old flame war... I was able to read the discussions from the other poster, so I'd like to comment.

    The issue did not seem to be whether or not lucid/xemacs was "better". Rather, the battle seemed to be over who was harder to work with. RMS accused lucid of not listening and causing delays while lucid accused RMS of not wanting to "let go" of development and making unreasonable demands.

    So there's two camps:

    RMS claimed that emacs 19 was delayed *because* of lucid. If lucid/xemacs was better, it may have been because of troubles they caused at the FSF.

    ---OR---

    emacs 19 was going nowhere because RMS was difficult to work with and lucid/xemacs was better because they stopped working with RMS.

    It's worth noting that they did attempt to work together to merge the two but, by that time, it was too late because of early design decisions made at lucid (specifically the use of an X toolkit).

    Finally, RMS told everyone that it was OK by him if people continue to work and develop on lucid/xemacs because it was free software.
  • Even Pittsburgh's nitelife is excellent compared to SF. The only plus to SF is no smoking. It is also the biggest minus since smokers stay home. Not people == no night life. We have to put up with smoke here, but we pack to capacity at places like Metropol and Laga. We throw raves in a warehouse space that is 1/2 block by 3 blocks, and almost fill that! we have a very live party life.

    It was cool when we went to SF and went to DNA to get a look at what the scene is like. From an outsider: you are not alone. Your scene is dying.
  • > but I think that someone should really try to fancy it up and release a professional IDE/compiler/libraries set that is capable of making real-world appications.

    Why, isn't Emacs [emacs.org] good enough for you?


    Steve
  • <i>Condo builders donate money to mayor.

    Mayor finds loophole in industrial zoning, condos get built, computer yuppies move in. </i>

    Good point. Go south one block, and what do you see? Trendy warehouse-condos pop up left and right. I wouldn't want to live in SOMA or Tenderloin or even Market District west of 5th. Saw some naaasty hookers and too many p0rn0 shops over there. To the west of there, nearer 18th street, it's beautiful though. Very unusual city.
  • I know nothzing, I hear nothzing.
  • That would be fine if the club didn't have 25 years of prior art ;P
  • Netscape 4.7 navigator, on a rh-based box. NP here. Still, I don't like them either. First time I say them I thought: Cool. Second and later times: Argh.
  • The sawmill WM and most of the configuration tools for it (and the dotfiles!) are written in rep, which is Yet Another LISP. Architecturally, sawmill is much like Emacs; whether this is a good or bad thing is left to the reader.
  • Uneven with nails sticking out. Hmmm. So he's using J-Script and ASP. :)
  • There's a name for that and it's net.goth...

    BTW, I nominate JWZ for "the most handsome hacker" awards!

    --Hikari
  • Don't miss this - according to the story there's an upcoming documentary on the the who inside Netscape Mozilla coding scene from '98....

    PBS documentary [pbs.org]

  • Well, I guess that explains why Webmaker went into limbo. Now there's something that should be ripe for open-sourcing, since it grew out of CERN's original, but when I asked Harlequin about it, they said they had no plans to. :(

    Ob(Sub)Topic: I seem to remember hearing that AutoCAD is written in LISP. CACT?

    -Ed

  • Dude, I wish you didn't post these AC. It's hillarious and if I where moderator your Karma would be through the roof! :o))

    However, I don't know if it will work, because I'm even considering trolling now to get more of these out of ya. ;o)

    Thankx for making the best out of otherwise anoying crap.
  • Well, actually my inital approach to the question was, I'm curious, I don't know everything, and if it exists I haven't seen it yet but I'd like to.

    Actual quote: "Sadly, I've yet to see anything really practical done with Lisp. I'm not saying that things HAVEN'T been done or CAN'T... they just haven't been called to my attention yet." So I didn't say nothing like this had never existed...

    Either way, my question was well answered...
  • Does it strike anyone else that saving the SF club scene is kind of shallow? He can do whatever he wants I guess but geez, I wouldn't go around advertising it.
  • On the second page of the Salon article, it mentions that Lucid Emacs was a fork of the original Emacs written by Stallman. This is only partially true.

    Lucid Emacs was a fork of GNU Emacs. But GNU Emacs was not the original Emacs. Stallman did however, obtain large amounts of code from the original Emacs. But this was done illegally.

    The original author of Emacs was James Gosling. Yeah, Oak/Java, etc. He turned the code over to a software publisher called Unipress Software way back in the UUCP-only era (circa 1985). They sold distributions and full source distributions to tons of companies, gov orgs, and universities. They made flenty of feature enhancements, re-writes, etc. They paid Gosling a nice royalty for every sale.

    At some point Stallman picked up one of the source distributions and made some modifications. They were good modifications, IMHO. Some of them were lame (e.g.- simply removing the Copyright tags). And then he started giving it away for free. This is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. I believe at some point he did in-fact completely re-write the code. But this was far more recent than you'd expect.

    PS: What do you think GNU (as in GNU Emacs) stands for? GNU's Not Unix? Or GNU's Not Unipress?
  • Don't take this wrong, but your post cracked me up. I lived in and around Sacramento for a long time, and Willie Brown was a well known figure, both politically and otherwise. When he decided to run for mayor of SF, I knew he'd win (nobody who was familiar with him could doubt it), but I also had to wonder if SF knew what it was getting itself into. He's a consummate politician, with all the good and bad that implies. He can get anything done, but will only do things that benefit him (and, to be fair, his friends; in that sense, I guess he does 'share the wealth').
  • >Personally, I think we might start to see more of this - people just getting fundamentally fed
    >up and choosing whole new careers. I don't know any of the reasons JWZ has made the switch,

    You know, even when your career is in computers, you're allowed to get out once in a while. I'm sure JWZ has been into the clubbing scene for a while now. I have hobbies and interests not related to computers, and if I had the stock option millions, I'd find a non-computer use for it too.
  • You need to hang out more at 1015 Folsom!
  • I have very little respect for Jamie Zawinski. He seems to have a 'holier-than-thou' attitude about pretty much everything he touches. I'd guess that it was Zawinski's personality more than any technology or license issues that caused the Emacs split. Then his famous 'successful company' rant, which I read as 'anyone who joined Netscape after I did is a wannabe'.

    But my biggest problem is the now-infamous rant he published upon leaving Netscape. He seemed determined to damage the company on his way out. I think he single-handedly did more to hurt public perception of Mozilla than any delay, any change of plans, any setbacks that the project itself ever had. Zawinski set the stage for the trade press to prematurely declare Mozilla a failure.

    I truly hope that JWZ gets attacked by a rabid lizard. His personal vitriol is Mozilla's most significant liability, even though he's not involved anymore.
  • You need to hang out at 1015 Folsom! [1015.com]
  • I agree with your rant. I live in San Francisco and am greatly discouraged by the dwindling night life. It is pervasive through every club scene in the city.

    I was at the hearing in support of Jamie. Have you actually emailed [mailto] your rant to Mayor Willie Brown [sf.ca.us]? If not, then please do. I'm sure my email address has been blocked by now given how many rants I've sent him. ;)

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • We've got a vestigal rave scene. Very few places get to do the full-blown 10pm to 6am thing. Click here for a calendar of SF raves [hyperreal.org].

    I'm not much of a smoker, but when you ban smoking, you also ban toking. To have a really active club scene you need three things...

    1) Electronica till sun up
    2) Lots of sexy people in outrageous outfits
    3) Free flowing alcohol and available drugs

    Some will disagree, but whatever's on your list, resident's are probably objecting to it.

    A slightly off-topic rant... Why are all the gay clubs so much cooler than the straight clubs? Where's a hip breeder boy to go when the straight joints feel about as sterile as a cubicle maze?
  • We almost went there. I don't live in SF mind you. I was visiting on business, and since I paid $1780 for a business round-trip ticket, I stayed from Wednesday to Saturday (it was an open-ended return flight) only checking out clubs on Friday. Walked by it on the way to DNA. We were told to visit DNA as it was recommended. In retrospect, 1015 sounded a lot better when we left DNA. I commend 1015 for trying to stay open, and it seems they are still around. I just hate the fact that they have to be so cold with all the security now that they are being muscled by da man.

    Actually, if they just allowed smoking permits for clubs and bars, they'd have no problem packing them in. It's a very odd situation.

    Here in Pittsburgh, we have a good scene, but it is smoky.
  • Join the SFLNC [sflnc.com].

    Their agenda: Save what's left of San Francisco culture before yuppie dot-commers beat the life out of every remaining late night venue.
  • The issue did not seem to be whether or not lucid/xemacs was "better". Rather, the battle seemed to be over who was harder to work with.

    I seem to remember all sorts of technical issues too, including design, usability, appearance and even key bindings. But the issue of getting the two camps to work together was always present. It's worth noting that eventually the two did reconcile somewhat and produced a merged set of elisp code that would work in either Emacs.

    The point about one Emacs being better than the other is purely a personal observation, but it's important because a lot of people felt the same way. Enough people to continue to make XEmacs viable as a separate code base. Forking the code isn't always bad; if it provides enough benefit to enough people, then it not only should happen, it must happen.

    But I'm not trying to pour new fuel on old flames. I didn't get into the flaming then, and I won't now. Just a few observations from the nostalgia department.

    C-g

    --Jim
  • This quote from the article really gets me:
    Moral of the Emacs story? Programmers can be very stubborn -- Stallman, to be sure, is legendary for his intransigence. But Zawinski is equally difficult to deter -- indeed, it requires a special degree of chutzpah to write an entirely new version of one of the most famous programs in the free software arsenal.
    From what I understand, he didn't "write a whole new version" himself, he took the existing code and modified it. That's not the same as re-writing the whole thing.
  • Actually, Manhattan is having its own problems, nightlife-wise, which with the Quality of Life Regime enforcing antiquated cabaret laws and all.
  • From what I've heard, one of the things that has prevented Lisp and similar languages from going mainstream in business and other applications is that it is difficult to write a true optimizing compiler for it. When I say optimizing compiler, I mean a compiler that can produce code as fast as the best C or FORTRAN compilers, using similar optimizations.

    This is because:

    - Lisp is a higher-order language (functions as formal parameters and return values)

    - Many optimizations require the use of a control-flow graph to be effective (e.g. dead-code elimination, common subexpression elimination).

    - It is difficult to create a useful control-flow graph for a higher-order language because variables may contain functions that affect the direction of control flow, and the values of these variables can only be determined at run time.

    There are ways around these limitations, but it is still an area of active research and I don't know of any compilers out there yet that manage to get around the limitations.

    Once you can get a control flow graph, then you can use many more optimizations, and you can write a compiler that will produce very fast code.

    Anyway that's just my take on the situation.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I think jwz buying this club is one of the first of what I believe will be a lot of now rich geeks doing a lot of Big weird things with their money. There's only so many cars and houses you can buy before doing something Big becomes the only thing to do with all the money.

    Well, you could always save it but who wants to do that? :)

  • JWZ Chose Well (Score:3)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Thursday February 10, 2000 @11:48AM (#1289301) Homepage Journal

    I'm not what you'd call a club maven, but of all the SOMA clubs I've been to, DNA Lounge was one of the nicest. I was there for Club Slick one year, and was very favorably impressed.

    Frankly, I have very limited sympathy for the new area residents. There was a reason their precious, quaint SF loft was (relatively) affordable. They knew there was an all-hours club nearby when they bought the place; why are they suddenly acting all surprised?

    I've had the same dream as JWZ, except with me, it was a coffee shop [best.com] up in Marin. I lacked the money and business acumen to realize it. So I'm pleased to see JWZ pursuing the same goal: Preserving what he thinks is important.

    Schwab

  • The crux of the tragedy isn't the dwindling nightlife. That's sad enough, but the yups and the "silicon implants" (the silicon valley millionaires with delusions of hipness who buy half-million dollar so-called "live-work" spaces that were originally allowed to be built and purchased with reduced or no property taxes to help *artists*) will keep some sort of nightlife alive. I'm sure that JWZ can sustain DNA with the hordes of paper-millionaire goth-garbed tech-support staff that are now the closest thing SF has to a counter-culture.

    The real tragedy is that actual working artists, especially young ones, simply can't afford to live here. To sustain a true art scene, you need cheap rent paired with some sort of public space for artists to meet and work. End of story. And the growing wage inequities in the Bay Area make it impossible to find cheap rent in any area metropolitan enough to support an art community.

    The situation is escalating, fueled by the "irrational exuberance" and the loss of public funding for the arts, there are no mechanisms for changing it. Artists in the US now work primarily in design and advertising: the invisible hand of the marketplace won't sustain fine arts.

  • It's not so strage. I used to live in Austin Texas, home of Origin. Richard Garriot and Chris Roberts the owners of Origin Systems (makers of Wing Commander) bought one of the clubs there. It was cool because all of our product launches happened there at a invite-only party with a drink named after your game. You'd think it was male-only, but I happened to hook up with women at many of the events. I went to one of the Mozilla parties in SF and thought it was pretty happening, but it wasn't a balanced crowd.

    I think it is a smart marketing move by JWZ, if not for a company for his personal image. I'm cracking up trying to image Richard Stallman hanging out at a nightclub. Not so say he doesn't, but it's a funny image.

    Jonathan
  • I like it. I have Java off, so I don't have to see the banner ads anymore. The page looks so much cleaner without an ad sitting on top of it.
    --
  • Well said, and the point is well taken, but:
    The party crowd can vote, Willie. Take care of us.
    There's a flaw here. Willie Brown was just re-elected. San Francisco has a two term limit on the mayor's office. What does he care about your vote? (Digression: term limits are a really stupid idea.)

    The board of supervisor's on the other hand, they need to worry. They're coming up for re-election, and San Francisco has switched back to district elections, which is to say that neighborhoods in SF now choose their representation on the board much in the same way that States choose their representation in the US house & senate. It's expected that this will cause a shift in power from the downtown/big money crowd out into the neighborhoods, and sucking up to the housing developers isn't likely to play as well as it has in the past.

  • Re:Lucid Emacs and Open Source and Stallman (Score:3)

    by cburley ( 105664 ) on Thursday February 10, 2000 @01:51PM (#1289315) Homepage Journal
    The original author of Emacs was James Gosling.

    Gosling might have been the original author of a particular variant of Emacs, but he did not write the original Emacs.

    Richard M. Stallman wrote the original Emacs, in MIT TECO, for use on MIT's ITS operating system. I know, because I was probably one of the first few people to try it out. (Happened to be hacking in the AI building one night when I saw his "post" about this new set of Editor MACroS. Tried it, thought it was cute, but stuck with TECO.)

    He turned the code over to a software publisher called Unipress Software way back in the UUCP-only era (circa 1985). They sold distributions and full source distributions to tons of companies, gov orgs, and universities. They made flenty of feature enhancements, re-writes, etc. They paid Gosling a nice royalty for every sale.

    At some point Stallman picked up one of the source distributions and made some modifications. They were good modifications, IMHO. Some of them were lame (e.g.- simply removing the Copyright tags). And then he started giving it away for free.

    It's possible, from a historical point of view, that you're right. But I'd like to see a more definitive account from someone I trust -- someone who doesn't think Gosling wrote the original Emacs, for example.

    This is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. I believe at some point he did in-fact completely re-write the code. But this was far more recent than you'd expect.

    I recall hearing about some important rewriting of a disputed module (or set thereof) back in the late '80s or early '90s. The dispute might have been over whether RMS had actually copied from UniPress Emacs vs. an earlier (free?) Gosling Emacs version, the latter having been claimed to be "free" by some. (Perhaps Gosling once told, or was believed to have told, RMS or someone that it was okay for RMS to copy from his Emacs, since RMS invented it, after all, and this "tale" didn't get properly communicated through the UniPress aquisition. I'm really just speculating here, based on some probably-shaky memories of third-plus-hand info. I don't recall ever actually discussing these issues with RMS myself, because it's never seemed important enough to do so.)

    So I disagree entirely with your implicit assertion that RMS and Project GNU got started by illegally copying a proprietary product and then rewriting it to avoid legal hassles, even though some aspects of your story might have elements of truth to it.

    I've found RMS to be many things, but unprincipled about copying other peoples' software without permission is not one of them. And the sort of dispute I think occurred vis-a-vis Gosling's Emacs is exactly the sort of thing that one could reasonably agree could occur without either Gosling or RMS having knowingly done anything wrong, given the ad-hoc nature of communications over such matters (like copying software) back in those days.

    One thing for sure: without RMS, there'd have been no Gosling Emacs and no UniPress Emacs. But without Gosling Emacs and without UniPress Emacs, there'd have still been a GNU Emacs, for the same reason GNU CC was created: because it was so important to have one, it had to be done ASAP, one way or the other.

    (FWIW, ISTR that UniPress Emacs was pretty decent, in terms of speed on a VAX/VMS system, back when I demoed it circa 1986, compared to some other commercial variant -- CCA Emacs? -- and I think we chose UniPress as a result, despite what I recall was a non-full-featured extension facility. It was the second Emacs environment with which I became fairly familiar, the first being Pr1me's Emacs. I haven't yet gotten familiar with GNU Emacs to the same degree, despite having used it for some 10 years now.)

  • A nightclub with pulsating lights: the tag...
  • I don't know about you, but if I was to go to a nightclub I'd rather the gender ratios didn't resemble those of slashdot.
  • Tgg--

    Half of me wants to sent it to the mayor; half of me is just wayyyyy too cynical right now to do so.

    A large part of fighting the system is the feeling that it'd matter. I've read what politicians think of e-mail. I'd probably think that same damn thing.

    You want a bottom line? Fun has no value to government. Only taxes.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • I don't know about the rest of you, but even though times are good for unix gurus and even though I like my job and salary...

    I'd like to retire as soon as possible and maintain my current lifestyle or better

    I don't want to work 16 hour days 5 days a week when I have kids in highschool. I don't think I can.

    People don't complain about the high salaries that sports figures make, so I think **GOOD** IT people are *STILL* seriously undervalued. (NOTE: underqualified lackeys are IMHO currently waay OVERPAID)

    when I can afford to retire (which is the GOAL), I won't be working on computers anymore... I'll be doing what I choose to do.. I'll have an Aquarium shop that breeds endangered fish. I'll be racing cars at the local racetrack. I'll be diving in Palau.

    Computers are nice, but at some point, I'm going to want my life back!
  • Half of me wants to sent it to the mayor; half of me is just wayyyyy too cynical right now to do so.

    A large part of fighting the system is the feeling that it'd matter. I've read what politicians think of e-mail. I'd probably think that same damn thing.

    I don't have a sense of what politicians in general, or even city politicians in particular, think of email, but something I've learned recently is that you can approach these people. I mean, you can just call up a city supervisor, make an appointment, and talk to them. That's their job!

    If there's something about your city that you don't like, it is possible for you to go and do something about it. It can be a pain in the ass, but lots of things are.

    If you care about late night culture in particular, join the San Francisco Late Night Coalition [sflnc.com]. In this case ``join'' means ``come to the monthly meetings.'' There is strength in numbers, and this group has a lot of members who have been doing this for a while and know the things you need to do to get yourself heard.

    You want a bottom line? Fun has no value to government. Only taxes.

    ``Government'' is made up of people, specifically politicians and bureaucrats. To politicians, votes and image are also important. Those are the buttons you need to learn to push.

  • So, I've got lots of ideas for what I want to do with the club, but I'm always looking for more. And I could certainly use some help!

    If you or your company have expertise in audio and/or video webcasting, dealing with ASCAP/BMI, micro-radio, installing networks and computer systems in public places, computer-controlled video mixing and light shows, or anything along those lines, then send me mail! I'm at the stage of the game where I've got a lot of ideas, but I'm still trying to work out which ones are practical, which ones I can afford, and which ones I should do first.

    I want to blur the line between real-world and web communities: I want the physical space to be hooked in to the net in a way that hasn't been done before. Most nightclubs, even those that do webcasts, are still just a room, a bar, and a sound system. I want to go beyond that, and make something new.

    If you're interested in helping out, or even if you just have suggestions, let me know! What would you like to see? What do you think would move the concept of ``nightclub'' to a new level?

    Please don't think of this as an ``internet cafe'' kind of deal: in my experience internet cafes aren't even cafes, what they are is terminal rooms or photocopy stores that happen to sell espresso. What I'm building will definitely be a nightclub, with a lot of live music. But it will also be a web radio station, a web music zine, and a heavily wired physical space.

    Help me build it! I think it's going to be a lot of fun...

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