In the December column, I announced an Emoticontest, in which I invented two emoticons, or smileys, and asked whom they might represent.Answers started coming in before the end of October, the first being from Scot Wingo, on October 26 at 5:09 p.m., PST. Scot's answer was "Siskel and Ebert," which was absolutely correct. To see the famed movie critics, rotate the page 90 degrees clockwise and think of thumbs. Scot's prize is the fame that comes from having your name printed in Dr. Dobb's Journal and an official DDJ T-shirt. When I say that Scot's answer was correct, I mean that it agreed with mine. Other good answers, like Laurel and Hardy, didn't, so they weren't.
&8-) 7 (:-\ L
Symbols mean what you make them mean. It's due to a quirk of print publishing that readers can respond to the December issue of a magazine in October of the same year. That I can respond to these responses in the very next issue is actually more impressive, given certain other quirks of print publishing. My ability to respond so quickly in the magazine is due to two things: the Internet and a recklessly tolerant deadline.
If I am any example, the Internet will be saturated with users when everyone on the planet has seven e-mail addresses. I realize that seven is not a lot; you probably have more, I have had more, or at least different, addresses. I guess it was about ten years ago that I got into this online stuff, when I announced plans for a Dr. Dobb's bulletin board in my first editorial for this magazine. (They made me write editorials back then. Same deadline.) Not long after that, I began writing this column, with a title that suggests that it has some connection with this online stuff. Until now, that has not been the case. Now I've started listing an e-mail address with the column, and I invite you to send me stuff so I don't have to write so much. Make it really funny.
While doing the research for this month's column--yes, I actually did research for this month's column; I had to find that reference to the Dr. Dobb's bulletin board--I reread issues of this publication from the early 1980s, and this sent me off to some history books, which, coincidentally, I was reading for another writing project. While doing all this research, I came across that famous 1976 Bill Gates letter to computer hobbyists. "Most of you steal your software," Bill tactlessly but accurately chastised the programming community. But being accurate doesn't make you right. If you weren't planning to read my "Programming Paradigms" column in this issue, just take a look at the end of it and read what Fortran inventor John Backus had to say about stealing software in the 1950s. Never mind; I'll quote it here: "An idea was the property of anyone who could use it." An interesting angle on intellectual property, no? In the 1950s, intellectual property didn't seem to apply to programming. There was no real software market; the technology had not stabilized to the point where a market made sense. This same situation held true in the hobby computer world of the late 1970s, the world that Bill Gates wrongly thought should function like a market. But being wrong didn't make his strategy incorrect.
So my question for you is, has the online world evolved to the point where a market makes sense? I invite your thoughts on the commercialization of the Internet.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal