268 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
268 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
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Subject: Repost: Future of NeXTSTEP
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From: paulk (Paul Kerrios)
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Message-ID: <DJJiBc1w165w@mindvox.phantom.com>
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Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 08:36:24 EDT
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Organization: [MindVox] / Phantom Access Technologies / (+1 800-MindVox)
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> Telling me that a Chevette is a better car than a Lexus 400 because the
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> Chevette sold more is not an argument I want to take up. Sure the former has
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> better gas mileage, is cheaper to buy, service, and insure, and has more
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> places that can service it (and probably more customizing vendors supporting
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> it) - but does that make it "better".
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>
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> [Captain & Tenille vs Coltrane example omitted.]
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This is one of the better points I've seen during this whole "Is NeXTstep The
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Best Thing You've Ever Seen, Or Is It Just a Brief Ray Of Light Which Is About
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To Accidentally Ram a Large Pointy Stick Through Its Own Skull?" debate.
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Luxury cars definitely have their place. Rolls-Royces, Lexii, and Lamborghinis
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wouldn't exist without that niche.
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But it does mean that it's a niche product, and will remain that way.
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It's hard to stretch the car analogy very far, because cars are, by and large,
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compatible with each other. They all take the same kind of input (gasoline)
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and produce the same kind of output (heat, noise, and most of the time,
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movement). They even take the same accessories---there's nothing stopping you
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from carrying Grey Poupon in your Pinto hatchback, or putting dangle-dice in a
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Maserati. I have even seen a Ford LTD with a full wet-bar in it.
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Sure, there are differences. It's hard to find someone to repair a Rolls
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engine. But Rolls goes out of its way to help its customers---sometimes to
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great lengths. But just about anyone can fix a VW Beetle with enough duct tape
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and/or explosives.
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To actually make the car analogy work with computers, you would have to
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recognize a few basic differences.
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First of all, the current push on user-interface copyrights and patented
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software means that each brand of car is driven differently:
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* Rolls-Royce: Comes with a chauffeur.
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* Lamborghini: Stylized aircraft-style stick for throttle and turning,
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plus pedals for brakes.
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* VW Beetle: A helm for steering, and a lever to control acceleration.
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* Ford Pinto: Steering is controlled by a small gerbil under the hood.
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Then there's the matter of the programs. Programs are the fuel of the
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computer, so let's consider:
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* Rolls-Royce: High-grade kerosene laced with gold oxides.
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* Lamborghini: Plutonium.
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* VW Beetle: Hay.
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* Ford Pinto: Anything sufficiently explosive.
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If cars were built like this, I guarantee you that Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini
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would be out of business pronto. The reason they aren't is because there are
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standards which they can adhere to. If you can drive a stick-shift Pinto, you
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can drive a Rolls. There are some differences, but the point is, within three
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minutes, you can be driving it, and if it breaks down, you have a better chance
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of being able to get it fixed.
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But where this analogy really breaks down, I think, is that I don't consider
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this a debate of luxury.
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POSIX, ANSI C, and X are as much of a standard as gasoline, steering wheels and
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tires are in the car industry.
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But the NeXT---well, it's weird. The NeXT is like a converted 1985 compact
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truck with air-foil and dual spoilers, that now runs on hydrogen, uses a
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tofu-based polymer for its tires, and has a teleport feature which works
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reliably most of the time, except that once in a while, you inexplicably wind
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up in Toledo, whether you were teleporting or not. It comes in a choice of
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65,000 psychedelic colors, but the left windshield wiper is broken on every
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model. And it sells for the same price as a Lamborghini.
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It wouldn't be so bad, except that the company you bought it from seems to be
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more interested in marketing the car rather than supporting those who already
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bought one.
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NeXTstep is good. Certainly. It's not perfect, but it has some great ideas.
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The problem is that if I use all those cool NeXTstep features, I'm pretty much
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stuck with NeXTstep. I can't write a program that will run on someone's Sun,
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much less one that will run on my parents' Windows box. So even if I *can*
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write a program in 20 minutes flat, it does no good except to other NeXTstep
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users. Who, by and large, are mostly high-stress, get-it-done-last-week MIS
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people in Fortune 1000 firms, pro-drug, libertarian, stand on a soapbox and
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talk about invidualism and how it sets the soul free, I used to be crazy
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before I become wealthy and now I'm just eccentric people, and college students
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who pay $2.50 for every $500 NeXT wants from everyone else.
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This does not tend to produce a widely-used system. And because the market is
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so small, it tends to drive software prices 'way up. Which also tends to
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reduce the use of the system. The less a system is used, the less influential
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it is, and the less likely it will survive in the long run.
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Think about what would happen if someone came out with an integrated IB-like
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program for C++ and Windows SDK, or for C++ and X. Think about what would
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happen if someone came up with an auxiliary server that translated PostScript
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to X calls. NeXT's niche market would be eaten away, and its piece of the pie
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will get smaller and smaller.
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I don't want to see that. But I'm at a loss to see how anything else is going
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to happen. NeXT is a big black hole of information which occasionally emits
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self-aggrandizing press releases. They don't seem to give a damn about the
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people who actually bought their software. They're vague on when updates are
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coming out, vague on whether bugs are fixed, vague on *what* bugs *have* been
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fixed. . . . The list goes on.
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I like NeXTstep, but I fear for NeXT's future. I'm not especially bitter about
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it, like Mark seems to be from time to time. I'm not especially rabid about
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it, like zmonster. But I like it. I just hate the idea that I'm going to buy
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into the Edsel of the computer world. After all, the last system I really
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genuinely liked was the Amiga.
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//=======================================\\
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Paul Kerrios /=/ Society has made me what I am today. \=\
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\=\ Ok so maybe I just watch too much TV! /=/
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\\=======paulk@mindvox.phantom.com=======//
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- - - - - - - - -
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Subject: nextstep
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From: abzero (Nick O'Conner)
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Message-ID: <LH2JBc1w165w@mindvox.phantom.com>
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Date: Sun, 17 Oct 93 04:01:44 EDT
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Organization: [MindVox] / Phantom Access Technologies / (+1 800-MindVox)
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Paul that was great :)
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A minor point of disagreement with the copyright and interface issues, since
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MicroSoft won their lawsuit with Apple, it is not likely that look and feel
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copyrights will be enforceable. From a glance at the old windows desktop
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which I can't believe can possibly be anything other then Gates afraid of
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being sued by Apple, which he of course was anyway, to the new Windows
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4.0 deskset which was published in the trade publications and PC Week and
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looks nearly identical to a Mac interface. I don't think there is anything
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preventing Apple and MS from becoming nearly indistinuishable as time goes by,
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Apple may spend 50 million in R&D, MS may sit back, wait 6 months and copy
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Apple, IBM may throw 20 companies at the project to analyze the situation and
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then decide that the 5 companies on the left should buy the 5 companies on the
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right, while the other 10 gestate for 10 years and sit on their research and
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ultimately do nothing, and Steve Jobs may just wave his hands around and KNOW
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that it HAS TO LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THIS OR HE'LL CRY, but it all comes down to
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being very very similar, some just have prettier icons and interfaces then
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others :)
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NeXT always was and still is, a giant monument to Job's ego, which he's
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strapped himself to and lit his hair on fire while screaming I'M RIGHT.
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What's particularily sad is that he is right a lot of the time, but unable
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to listen to others when he's wrong without first hitting his head against
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the pavement so many times without learning anything.
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Back in 1985 which is almost 10 years, NeXT, Sun and SGI were all making
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their state of the art machines on a 68020 chip. NeXT was also busy putting
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together NeXTSTEP which niether Sun or SGI thought about, and nearly 10 years
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later, Sun has junk which is gradually becoming useable, and SGI has a lot of
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great graphics tools pasted on a bad System 5 unix.
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Sun got Sparc, SGI got MIPS, then later brought MIPS, NeXT installed a 68030
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removed the hard drive, floppy drive, made it look like a cube and forced
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users to swap to a optical, then raised the price by 100% and announced they
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were ready.
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Most of NeXT's hardware enhancements, were nothing more then removing the
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crippling limitations Jobs decreed the hardware must have (for examples 1-500
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see Apple, The Mac, the early days with no slots, ram, hard drives, or
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useability). Since Jobs has always BEEN NeXT there wasn't anyone there to
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clean up after him or force him to make concessions to reailty and how some
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people might need a computer to work.
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That's all it comes down to. Jobs is brilliant at making leaps of vision and
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coming up with great things. He is totally blind to any practical use these
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things might have, to summarize the book coming out next month, Steve Jobs
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and the NeXT Big Thing, nobody at Next had any clue about why they were
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builing the machine or what use it had, they were just doing it to make the
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ultimate system. Which is fantastic. That Jobs had complete control and the
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ability to kill off any reason that might have conflicted with his desires,
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has made NeXT a strange and beautiful fluke that may or may not die, instead
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of the GUI that predated COSE by 7 years and supplaneted the commercial
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adaption of X, relegating that model to the educational and experimental
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field while NS ran on all RISC workstations.
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It is amazing to look at how many chances NeXT had to become the next microsoft
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who have GREAT products instead of shit and see how many times Jobs has shot
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himself in both feet, hands, and head, then rushed to the emergency room and
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written out another $10 million check from his personal bank account,
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convinced somebody who hasn't yet been burnt by him that they should give him
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$50 million, and went right back to doing the same stupid thing.
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Even now the Next has so many pieces of innovation and ability in it, that it
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is mind boggling to think they had nearly the same model 7 years ago and did
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nothing iwth it. It makes the IBM OS/2 vs. MS Windows debacle look
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intelligent.
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- - - - - - - - -
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Subject: Re: Repost: Future of NeXTSTEP
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From: hubbert (Bruce Hubbert)
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Message-ID: <wwDJBc1w165w@mindvox.phantom.com>
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Date: Sat, 16 Oct 93 19:32:31 EDT
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In-Reply-To: <DJJiBc1w165w@mindvox.phantom.com>
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Organization: [MindVox] / Phantom Access Technologies / (+1 800-MindVox)
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Bravo For that clarification. Best Yet, By FAR!
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hubbert@mindvox.phantom.com
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"Enlightenment, don't know what it is." - - - Van Morrison
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- - - - - - - - -
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Subject: THE TRUTH ABOUT NEXT
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From: alibaba (Nick Mordanzo)
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Message-ID: <8JyLBc1w165w@mindvox.phantom.com>
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Date: Mon, 18 Oct 93 04:53:42 EDT
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Organization: [MindVox] / Phantom Access Technologies / (+1 800-MindVox)
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Redwood City, CA (API) -- A tense stand-off entered its third week
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today as authorities reported no progress in negotiations with
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charismatic cult leader Steve Jobs.
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Negotiators are uncertain of the situation inside the compound, but
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some reports suggest that half of the hundreds of followers inside
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have been terminated. Others claim to be staying of their own free
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will, but Jobs' persuasive manner makes this hard to confirm.
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In conversations with authorities, Jobs has given conflicting
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information on how heavily prepared the group is for war with the
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industry. At times, he has claimed to "have hardware which will blow
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anything else away", while more recently he claims they have stopped
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manufacturing their own.
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Agents from the ATF (Apple-Taligent Forces) believe that the group is
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equipped with serious hardware, including 486-caliber pieces and
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possibly Canon equipment.
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The siege has attracted a variety of spectators, from the curious to
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other cultists. Some have offered to intercede in negotiations,
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including a young man who will identify himself only as "Bill" and
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claims to be the "MS-iah".
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Former members of the cult, some only recently deprogrammed, speak
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hesitantly of their former lives, including being forced to work
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20-hour days, and subsisting on Jolt and Twinkies. There were
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frequent lectures in which they were indoctrinated into a theory of
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"interpersonal computing" which rejects traditional roles.
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Late-night vigils on Chesapeake Drive are taking their toll on
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federal marshals. Loud rock and roll, mostly Talking Heads, blares
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throughout the night. Some fear that Jobs will fulfill his own
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apocalyptic prophecies, a worry reinforced when the loudspeakers
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carry Jobs' own speeches -- typically beginning with a chilling "I
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want to welcome you to the 'Next World' ".
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$%$%$%$%$%$%$%
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($) Ali Baba ($)
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%$%$%$%$%$%$%$
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