Re: Hofstadter Symposium

From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Wed Apr 05 2000 - 14:24:24 MDT


Damien asks:

>>"The size seems to be Moores Law. Its function is fixed," Joy said at one
>>point, drawing howls from the crowd.
>
>The size? I.e., the available grunt to run an OS? Why crowd howls? Why
>comic? Am I missing something, or was the reporter?

The reporter didn't describe the moment in sufficient detail.

Bill Joy was in something of a funk. He wasn't the center of attention,
and his gloom-and-doom message was forgotten the instant he finished
speaking, in favor of the much more up-beat, "We love wondertech, Daddy.
Tell us more wondertech stories!" Which was what made it the Nerdstock, so
aptly coined by the Spikester.

Well, Doug H, perhaps in an attempt to rouse Bill from his pout and get him
to play happy with the other techsters, tosses the question of the adequacy
of software for machine intelligence to Bill, saying something like, "
Well, let's ask Bill, since he knows operating systems." Whereupon, Bill
looks ups, almost smiles at the invitation to play with the other boys, and
says, in an obvious (to me anyway) dig at the evil microsoft (and I'm
paraphrasing here, obviously) "A bigger pile of the same crap."

Thus the howls from the crowd.

Then he settled back into his funk.

                        Best, Jeff Davis

           "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                                        Ray Charles



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