As for comments to the effect that the video is “amateurish,” guess what, folks? Dan *IS* an “amateur” at video. So? It was fun for us and surely for Dan & Khara.

As far as the video with KaraChara goes, I enjoyed it but it seemed a little unrehearsed and clumsy. You two have great chemistry and your dry delivery really sets up a lot of comedic possibilities, but the entire video was one long “joke” without the rise and fall we normally associate with comedy performances. Enjoyed it overall, but think it would work better comedy-wise if it were a little shorter, Khara’s performances were a little more understated and you turned up the “dry” a little bit.

Fantastic site, thanks for all the great reports. Looking forward to your updates.

Winging a discussion without source material to back up assertions usually ends in big ‘oops’ moments. Been there done that myself plenty of times. Going back to the source for information verification is a basic concept of General Semantics, the study of how to force sanity into verbal discussions. Wikipedia covers that subject adequately as well.

Dan and I have won many the computer warz shoot out by simply posting verifiable facts to counter troll drivel. There’s nothing like it.

Cheers

Clearly you don’t understand what you’re talking about here. A command line is just a UI (user interface); a method for user interaction with a computer. An operating system doesn’t have to have a command line at all. The original Mac OS never had one.

Windows, which originally ran on top of DOS, was just an application environment it was not a separate operating system. However, DOS was not a “command line OS,” DOS ran a program called COMMAND.COM that allowed a user to enter commands. DOS could run just fine without COMMAND.COM and could even be replaced with something that was not a command line.

OS X doesn’t run on top of anything, it is a complete OS. Yes, it does have a terminal for entering commands, but it is mainly used to interface with the BSD sub-system and other Unix/text based programs.

“Engine”

(MAC and IPAD standing side-by-side.)

MAC: Hi, I’m a Mac.
IPAD: And I’m the new iPad.
MAC: Say, I was wondering — you’re running the same kind of software as the iPhone, right? Why didn’t you go for full-blown Mac OS X like I did?
IPAD: Ehh, that might be a bit…overkill.

(Cut to hypothetical scenario: MAC is standing beside IPAD, who is sitting in a kiddie car which has a gigantic car engine attached. The engine is roaring.)

IPAD (looking at car’s dashboard in near-panic, yelling to be heard over engine noise): I think this is more than I needed! How do I turn it off?!
MAC (also struggling to be heard): Go to the “Engine” menu and press “Shut Down”!
IPAD (poking at dashboard): I…it’s too small, I can’t do it with my finger!
(IPAD pokes the dashboard again; the car suddenly revs and shoots off-screen.)
IPAD: Aaagh!
(A distant crash is heard. MAC is dumbstruck. Cut back to reality, where the two are again standing side-by-side.)

MAC (bemused): Huh. You might have a point there.

(Music finishes; cut to logo.)

“Touch-Enabled”

(IPAD and PC standing side-by-side. PC has a dark, shiny panel messily duct-taped to his front.)

IPAD: Hi, I’m the new iPad.
PC (very pleased with himself): And I’m a new, *touch-enabled* PC. (pops eyebrows for effect, gesturing to his touch panel)
IPAD: Oh, cool! That must’ve been a huge job, making everything work with your fingers instead of a mouse.
PC: Not really. I just took one of those taskbar enlargement pills I keep getting emails about.
IPAD (a bit puzzled): …Oh. But…what about all your apps and games? Don’t the controls need to be changed a bit to work better with fingers?
PC: Oh, those? You just use the mouse for those.
IPAD: But you just said you’re…a…
PC (feeling quite uncomfortable): A touch-enabled PC, yup. (pause) Man, aren’t buzzwords the coolest thing ever?

(Music finishes; cut to logo.)

Obviously, that’s probably not in the same league as TBWA/Chiat/Day’s work (and Apple would only run “Get a Mac” ads about Macs, not iPads), but you get the picture. I think doing skits that drive your points home is a cool idea, but you need to hold off until you’ve had a chance to really refine it.

I gradually began to notice that Neil would often ask questions about implementation details that he didn’t really need to know about. In particular, he was really curious about how regions were represented and implemented, and would often detail his theories about them to me, hoping for confirmation.

Aside from intellectual curiosity, there was no reason to care about the system internals unless you were trying to implement your own version of it. I told Steve that I suspected that Microsoft was going to clone the Mac, but he wasn’t that worried because he didn’t think they were capable of doing a decent implementation… Microsoft didn’t manage to ship a version of Windows until almost two years later, releasing Windows 1.0 in the fall of 1985. It was pretty crude, just as Steve had predicted, with little of the Mac’s thoughtful elegance. It didn’t even have overlapping windows, preferring a simpler technique called “tiling”. When its utter rejection became apparent a few months later, Bill Gates fired the implementation team and started a new version from scratch, led by none other than Neil Konzen.”

– Andy Herzfeld

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt

Sorry to get your hopes up.

“In exchange for the opportunity to invest in a hot new pre-IPO start-up called “Apple,” the Xerox PARC commandos were forced — under protest — to give Apple’s engineers a tour and a demonstration of their work. The result was the Apple Macintosh, which Microsoft later copied to create Windows.”
http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000918.htm

As to Xerox copyright case against Apple, Xerox lost.

Got any more fantasies you want to post as fact? Thanks for saving us the trouble of going to failblog.

By the way, there is no tooth fairy.