On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 08:44:51AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 03:41:48PM -0600, Chad Perrin
wrote:
After all, the version numbers are largely targeted at technically
oriented people who just want a sense of continuity to the versioning.
Ah... someone who likes my addition to [[Version number]]. :-)
Actually . . . I haven't read it. I should.
I guess I will, as soon as I get off hold with tech support for my
webhost.
The reason there's a 10.x anything is that
MacOS X followed MacOS 9.
They're dragging out the 10.x because of the association of 10 with X.
Indeed. And it's worth noting, too, that Elliot is apparently missing
the fact that 7, 8, and 9 all had sub-version numbers, as well. So,
no, 10.2 != 11.
I didn't follow the doings of Apple as much before MacOS X. Their OS
simply didn't provide the general functionality domain I needed -- it
didn't intersect at all with the purposes to which I put computers,
basically. As such, I didn't know they released minor versions that
were numbered in that fashion.
In fact, they may well end up going to 10.x.x if
this gets dragged out
long enough to make it necessary to avoid a 10.247 version number. I
think it's a lot more likely they'll go the Emacs/Java route, though,
and drop the 10. part of the version numbering, if they don't toss out
their current numbering system entirely and do another significant
paradigm shift in the way they present their OS to the world instead.
Well, one can *hope* the engineers will win out over the marketers;
look what happened to Motorola when that stopped being the case. Or HP.
I don't think there's really a "marketers have won now" cut-off point
at
either company. In each case, some significant battles have been won in
a way that makes it painfully obvious to we outsiders, but there are
still occasional signs that the engineers get to make decisions that
make it out to the real world now and then. This might be especially
notable to me because I'm currently living in an area littered with HP
research centers.
By the way, the fact that the engineers still make about 98% of the
decisions related to Linux, outside of companies like Mandriva and
Canonical (where the decisions are somewhat closer to 50%, from what
I've seen so far), is probably a significant contributing factor to the
condition of low market and mindshare penetration for desktops and even
servers in certain market niches. Engineers have an even greater hold
on decision making for *BSD, which is (I think) why the various BSDs are
even less widely known and implemented than Linux distributions.
. . . but I digress.
Thank ghod it hasn't happened to state Departments of Transportation.
Would you want to drive on Interstates that were designed for looks?
Unfortunately, the bureaucrats are in charge, rather than either
marketing or engineers.
There's a freeway interchange in Southern California that bears a
passing resemblance to a cloverleaf interchange, but as designed by
someone with a sick, diabolical sense of humor. This is perhaps the
worst-designed interchange I have ever seen in my life, and worse than
any I expect to see any time soon. Ironically, the man who designed it
is rumored to have died there.
That sounds a little like poetic justice.
--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite |
http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.