RM: SiracusaBlog
You really seem obsessed with this guy! Though you pay him out, it comes across like you have a crush on him. :)Steve W.
This thing has gotten a little comical, and I guess its worth clearing up. The thing you have to realize about my Siracusa comments is that I sorta know him, or rather he found my IM awhile back and we talk from time to time. I knew I was in trouble when he demanded my last name, not because he was curious so much as he hated the idea of having an incomplete address book card on his system. Talk may also be a poor choice of words, because I'm not sure one can talk to Siracusa, rather one is subjected to Siracusa.
The other thing you have to realize: Oh my god is he fun to poke.
I know if given two ways to say something -- the high road versus working in a Siracusa comment -- only one will engender him getting all worked up and firing off IM after IM explaining the nuances of how I'm wrong while working in things like the "But the unwashed masses will misinterpret..." It's so predictable as to be a law of nature. He knows he shouldn't, but he just can't help himself, and I know I'm not supposed to poke the bear but usually can't help myself either. The site is full of little things like that, and I don't ask everyone to get everything.
Still, it's not all an in-joke, but rather came about due to...
- At the time, I was just looking for a word that would sum up how some people care to an excessive degree about things others just don't really care that much about or notice. I often refer to lay-people as Casuals, and needed a counterpart.
I could have used any term, or just made one up, but the question I was answering referenced him, and he happened to be fresh in my mind due to his penchant for trying to use me as a proxy instead of getting his own blog (I'm assuming I'm not the only one), and I knew it would drive him batty.
- At the time, I split people out into Normals and Siracusas, which might seem unfair until you know that one of the biggest reasons he doesn't have his own site is because he wants teh perfect domain name. The one he wants was already taken, so for the better part of a decade he's been trying to come up with something else that's suitably perfect. That's fine, but it ain't normal.
- Siracusa does... like one thing a year, his Tiger reviews for Ars. A bunch of people look forward to those, including myself, but I think he could be doing more, because I know he has more to say. Glossing over his beliefs is maddening to him, especially since he can't go in and change them himself, so it's hopefully gotten him a little closer to doing his own thing.
- I was a little tickled at the idea of helping to create a sort of mindshare about Siracusa, which is why I don't feel guilty about it whatsoever. It may be maddening to him, but I'm pretty sure it's been a net positive.
I don't always agree with Mr. Siracusa, I just think he has a lot of good things to say that are worth looking at.
I.E., when I read his Tiger review, I got annoyed when he acted as though the funnel situation was improved primarily due to Apple adding KPI's to the kernel, while completely ignoring that KPI's were basically how Apple was allowing Mach to take advantage of the changes in FreeBSD that allowed better threading. Without either, there'd have been little improvement, as it's a chicken and egg situation.
However, this is one part out of the most thorough Tiger review that exists by an order of magnitude, someone would still pick up a ton reading just that section, and just shows I have my own Siracusa side. It's been that way since OS X was released, and no one on the Mac side has stepped up, and he's added a lot of value and understanding to the community. I don't have to agree with everything Siracusa thinks in order to want to see him doing more.
Personally, I'd like to see him posting his Monaco text bug on Fridays instead of myself if he can be goaded to settle upon a domain name, so do keep in mind I'm poking fun at Siracusa, I'm not making fun of Siracusa.
Posted by drunkenbatmanSeptember 03, 2005, at 05:16 PM
Comments (11)
Posted by: Pascale Soleil at September 3, 2005 09:45 PM
If I added up all the time I've spent (wasted) dreaming up fab domains name, I'd have to go to a quiet corner and meekly commit seppuku.
Thank god the dot com bubble burst. Took some of the silly wind out of those sails.
Posted by: 2.STL-DX.B11 at September 4, 2005 05:35 AM
I don't understand half of the technical shit you talk about on here (KPI's, Funneling,pummeling, rimming - Whatever) but the bits I do get make me laugh and often I do actually pick up something which adds to the grey matter. I'm truly heathen.
I tried Gyazmail and I thought it was "OK" but it didn't do much for me. I used Entourage until Tiger and then moved to Mail as I REALLY needed the address book integration to preserve my sanity. I like the "Smart" folders etc. (except when you click them and they're not smart enough to know that there's hundreds of messages which they should display but they show you none - That requires qutting and re-launching the app). When I swap the mail folder to my PB to go away the whole .Mac thing sometimes cocks things up, so I too would love something tasty in the Mac e-mail arena. Frankly, I'd be happy though if Entourage just used the Apple Address book so I didn't need to dick about with apps that supposedly sync it to Entourage, but end up making me spend 2 hours sifting through duplicate contacts etc.
Whenever I read Siracusa's OS X reviews (I don actually enjoy them) I gloss over chunks of it that I initially try to read and understand but just don't get, since I'm not into code and the finer points of hardware design etc. - I'm just a long time obsessive Mac user and I'll let you guys handle all the stuff in the back that (is supposed to make) my life easier. He does seem a thoroughly precise kind of fellow, and for that I applaud him; I wish I could be, but I'm just a mess.
Did I mistakenly read that he has a child? I can only envisage the precision with which "the process" was undertaken. Oh, wait. That's overshare.
Posted by: Andrew D A at September 4, 2005 12:25 PM
I can sympathize with Siracusa on the whole knowing-I-shouldn't-respond-to-poking,-but-doing-it-anyway thing. Whenever the PC tech at my place of employment says something blatantly false about Macs, I assail him with the full force of my knowledge. I'd say about 75% of the time, he's doing it just to set me off because he thinks its fun to watch me go apoplectic.
Posted by: Steve at September 4, 2005 02:01 PM
Way to go, Drunken Batman.
... explaining the nuances of how I'm wrong ...
Which, from your POV, as he doesn't see, is exactly the point of the exercise.
"But the unwashed masses will misinterpret..."
Oh, that is just so good! It was worth it for that alone. It's a 19th century British term for what used to be known as "the working class", isn't it? What a snob! As if "the working classes" keep coal in the bath, instead of using it to wash in 2005. And as if you could predict someone's socio-economic class by whether he agrees with Siracusa or not. That is just so precious.
The amusing thing is that this third-rate journalist has the arrogance to cross swords with programmers - with the like of Yacktman and Gehrman. Keep poking: it's a laugh a minute.
Posted by: plectrum at September 5, 2005 10:25 AM
New Domain Name for Siracusa
After reading the article I just had to look at his review and inform myself of the tragedy in the terminal. Reading his technical whine of the font massacre made it clear to me that his fitting domainname is www.monaco9.com
Oddly enough I see parallels between him and Steve Jobs. Although I wouldn't want to read Siracusa's blog, I would read the blog of what Steve ate for lunch.
Posted by: John Siracusa at September 6, 2005 07:45 PM
When I discovered the Monaco 9 bug several years ago, I brought it to Apple's attention and was told that "Apple is aware of the problem." I'm not sure filing a bug this Friday and getting it marked as a duplicate will help matters.
Posted by: John Siracusa at September 7, 2005 07:40 AM
I got annoyed when he acted as though the funnel situation was improved primarily due to Apple adding KPI's to the kernel, while completely ignoring that KPI's were basically how Apple was allowing Mach to take advantage of the changes in FreeBSD that allowed better threading.
What I said in the summary of the kernel section of the article was:
"With sexy dual-core CPUs on the way, the removal of the split funnel may seem like the most important kernel change in Tiger. But the introduction of stable kernel programming interfaces is the real hero here. Without KPIs, none of the radical kernel changes in Tiger would have been possible. The KPIs finally set Apple's kernel development team free to do all the things they've always wanted to do."
You're right that Apple pulled from the fine-grained locking work of the FreeBSD team to make one particular, very important change, and I should have mentioned that in the article. But my main point was that Apple couldn't do much of anything until it got its own house in order when it comes to kernel binary and API compatibility issues.
So yes, I think Apple's ability to add fine-grained locking is "primarily due to Apple adding KPIs," but it's not because the fine-grained locking code was created by Apple as part of the KPI development effort.
As far as Apple and Mac OS X are concerned, KPIs were the most important change in the Tiger kernel. Had FreeBSD not done any fine-grained locking work, KPIs would have still been developed by Apple for the sake of long-term driver development support alone. So while I should have credited FreeBSD's contributions, I think the concentration on the importance of KPIs in that section of the article is appropriate (but should not be misconstrued as as a blanket-credit to Apple for all important kernel improvements).
Posted by: Skatch at September 11, 2005 04:10 PM
Siracusa, here's one voice hoping you start your own blog. The once-a-year OS X reviews whet my appetite for more insight from you.
Posted by: John Siracusa at September 13, 2005 09:37 AM
Posted by: at October 12, 2005 02:06 AM
he is trying too hard, and his "blog" is nothing but a disappointment so far. nice of you to give him a mindshare boost but he isnt living up to it yet
For me, at least, the monaco bug fixes itself if I choose a classic system folder in the classic prefpane. Seems the OS 9 version of Monaco isn't whacked out on goofballs.