Interview: Mike Popovic
Stephen B. - January 1st, 2006
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Mike Popovic – the creator of BeDope and Be Inc’s former webmaster – sat down with Jason and I to talk about BeDope, his time at Be, and what he’s currently working on. “Sat down” in the virtual, courrier electronique sense, that is… Jason has posted his half of the interview over at BeDoper, read more to see the BeOSNews interview with the man behind the original BeOS humour site. Update: Mike has generously offered to sporadically answer follow-up questions in the comments area. So if you’d like to ask him something, get thee to the comments!
Mike Popovic: Be Dope ran from January 1998 to January 2001. Although some people assumed there was a staff or group of people, it was really just myself (with a handful of contributed stories over the years). What inspired you to create a humour site focused on BeOS? Mostly, just using/learning about BeOS. The first stories just sort of spilled out. They got a good reaction, so I kept it going. When did you start using BeOS? Were you an instant convert? I started using BeOS in the PR1 timeframe. I sort of set it aside for a bit, but then got a hold of a PR2 CD and started digging in a bit deeper. Do you still get a chance to use it today? I haven’t used it in quite some time. I still have a hard drive, somewhere, with BeOS on it. I might someday boot it up for fun, but don’t think I’d find it useful on a daily basis. You also worked at Be Inc. for close to three years as their webmaster, how did you get hired there? You started BeDope before you began working at Be, right? Did BeDope help with getting a job at Be? I started working at Be in August of 1998. Through Be Dope, I had been exchanging a few emails with some Be employees. They were coming to NY for PC Expo; I was thinking it might be nice to move to California. So, I suggested that if there were thinking I might be useful, it would be a convenient time to talk to me. I interviewed with a few folks, and we all felt like it would be a good fit. Did anyone ever get offended by something you wrote on BeDope, or take a satirical piece seriously? Sometimes when the topics of the story included something far from the world of BeOS/computers, I’d get email from someone confused or outraged – most times they had been sent a link only to that story and not looked around the rest of the site. I believe there was an email about Be engineers hunting okapi, and often when I mentioned Macs I’d get a barrage of mail. Once, someone came in person to the office and bypassed the receptionist to find me. They were offended by the “BeOS Bible Causes Heavenly Rift”. I think it was the picture that did it. They asked if I would stop with the blasphemous content, I countered that God probably has sense of humor and that was the end of it. Another time some tech writer took issue with me mocking some content in his article. He wanted me to take out references to his article. I was sorely tempted to have the next day’s story be: “Stop Quoting Me,” Author Demands. But that would have been funny to me and just about nobody else. Probably there were more people who were offended, but they never contacted me. Did BeDope ever get you in trouble at work? From the start, everyone at Be was very supportive of Be Dope continuing after I was hired, to the point that said encouragement was written into my employment agreement. I had to restrict myself a lot more, naturally, once I was “on the inside”. But all agreed that I walked the fine line very well. True, I was the first one to get a phone call from the Be lawyer department when the rumor about Red Hat buying Be came out and sent the stock price soaring, but I think that was to be expected. From the outside, it always looked like humour was pretty prevalent at Be, from the haiku error messages to the “we own paper stocks” comment in BootScript next to the line for starting the print_server. Was it as fun a place to work as it seemed from the outside? An article once referred to the folks at Be as “Burning Man pranksters,” I and always thought that it was an apt description. They were incredibly creative, they wanted to try creative things and they had all come together to this company that was willing to let them try. It’s only natural that this fun energy would spill out beyond actual coding. If anything, I’d say it was more fun than it looked from the outside. How did the BeDope easter egg end up in NetPositive? I don’t remember exactly – either Scott Barta decided to put it in, or I suggested it. What have you been up to since you left Be? On the technology side of things, I now play around with devices powered by Danger technology (a company where many ex-Be went to). I started a moblogging site for users of these devices a few years back. It’s a well-designed device, so users get to focus on having fun. On the writing side of things, I’ve been publishing some short stories for kids online at Media Are Alive (http://mediaarealive.com). It’s sort of an experiment – I’m just putting these stories out there and seeing where they go. It has led so far to a project I am working on with an illustrator from southern California. There’s also a blog there for grown-up readers. I’d be happy to hear from any publishers who like the stories :) Are you still in touch with any of the other former Be, Inc. employees? I’m on the other side of the country from many of them now, so not so much in person. But I still do trade email and IM with some and follow some blogs. Since this is an interview with a former Be Inc. employee, we’re obligated to try to get some juicy, scandalous comments from you on the current state of things. So here goes. One thing that hasn’t been discussed in relation to yellowTab and Zeta is humour. Do you think yellowTab has a sufficient sense of humour? Is Zeta funny enough to succeed? I’m going to have to disappoint you here and say I don’t really follow any of these projects, so I can’t judge them on humor. But I do hope that the folks involved are having fun, having a good sense of humor about things. Otherwise, what’s the point? Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions!
BeOSNews wishes everyone in the BeOS / Zeta community a Happy New Year, Bon Annee, ceid mille failte, and Felix sit annus novus (as a Canuck of Scottish descent who hangs around with Philologists, I think that covers it). Jason and I are planning a special surprise for tomorrow or shortly after. A late Christmas present, but I promise it will be worth the wait – an event of such import that it was probably prophecy’d* in the BeOS Bible or something. *Forgive the anachronism, I can’t remember the proper spelling, so I just stole Neal Stephenson’s as I’m finishing up reading The Baroque Cycle. Which is excellent by the way, and should be read by anyone who enjoys reading.
Your friend and mine, The Leander, has just posted an interview with Bernd of yellowTab. Heh. Burned Cores. The most hackeriffic name since Whitfield Diffie. Lots of juicy stuff in there. According to Bernd, they’ve sold 100,000 copies of Zeta so far… Impressive.
Talked a little about our bands, Talked a little of our future plans
Stephen B. - December 20th, 2005 As this site and most of our readers inhabit – to paraphrase BeDope’s Mike Popovic – a niche within several further sub-niches, (computer users who also have an interest in OSes and also happen to use one of the most obscure, least-installed OSes of all time), I feel compelled – nay, obligated to use dorky references to obscure song lyrics as post headlines from time-to-time. The runner-up was “Welcome… to the worrrrld of Tomorrow!” Now that I have that out of my system… Since there has been a small lull in news lately, being the Annual Gift Day season and all, I decided to post a few details on what’s coming down the pipe here at BeOSNews for anyone who’s interested. So read on for a quick preview of some of the stuff that’s planned for BeOSNews in the next few months and over the coming year. One thing that I think the BeOS/Zeta community can use more of are reviews – both to inform users, and provide feedback and encouragement to developers. To that end, I’m going to post reviews of some of the more popular/better-rated pieces of software on BeBits, some of the applications I use regularly, and some of the more obscure programs I’ve stumbled across. I particularly plan to focus on programs that I think stack up very well against their competition on other platforms, or have implemented particularly clever features. Two of the first reviews in the pipeline are: Part of my academic background is in media/graphic design and so far WonderBrush is the closest equivalent we have on BeOS to a program I use heavily, Adobe Illustrator. In my review of it, I plan to evaluate how well it handles some of the basic vector tasks that I commonly perform in Illustrator, look at some of WonderBrush’s unique features, and hopefully provide a few useful tips on using the program. Back when I first began using BeOS in the fall of ’99, the relative wealth of high-quality GUI mail clients was one of the reasons I gradually became a full-time user – in contrast, the Linux options at the time were limited to Netscape Communicator and text-mode applications like PINE and Mutt. Today, we’re lucky enough to have two featureful, modern, easy-to-use EMail clients: Beam and the (Haiku) Mail Daemon Replacement. I plan to compare and contrast (just like a ninth grade English assignment!) the different approaches they take to various features, some of the unique features that each program has, and also include tips on neat things they can do. E.g. the way MDR can give you a poor-man’s approximation of IMAP functionality with a POP3 server by combining “Partially download messages larger than…” with “Delete from server when deleted locally.” The tech news site Ars Technica used to have a feature called, I believe, “Ask Ars” where readers sent their computer problems/questions to the site’s editors, who would post them on the site with an open request for suggestions. In the following issue, they would collect the best answers and post a follow-up, typically with solutions and/or suggestions. I’d like to do something similar, focused on BeOS/Zeta and the type of questions that don’t really fit at BeTips – such as: “What WiFi card should I get for use with BeOS(es)?”, “How can I install BeOS on a sub-notebook with no removable media devices?”, “What are some good sources for BeOS-compatible hardware?”, “How can I use tools available on BeOS to speed up time-consuming tasks like complex text processing?”, etc. I’m not certain when this feature will first appear, but in the meantime I’d love to see any questions that readers would like – so send me your EMails or post in the comments area. Another feature that will hopefully involve reader input is called “True Tales of Surviving BeOS users.” One nice thing about the BeOS community is that, compared with other Alt. OS enthusiast communities, there seems to be a lower number of single-minded zealots relative to people who simply use BeOS for tasks they find it performs well and go about it with little fanfare. As a result, we are a little bit more of an introspective community and don’t tend to brag as much about some of the cool things that our members have done. So, I plan to solicit stories from community members about how they’ve managed to continue using BeOS in a computing environment where there an increasing number of obstacles, or just cool uses that people have found for BeOS – such as running it on an old Pentium to relay a shoutcast stream to a stereo from PC in a different room. Hopefully readers will gain some interesting ideas for BeOS-related projects, and inspiration from reading about neat things that their fellow community-members have accomplished. I’ve found that interviews are a nice, easy (read: lazy) way to get content that’s great-tasting, AND is more filling (that’s how we Canucks like our beer, eh). So Jason and I plan to be doing many more of them, including a really special one which I am eternally grateful to Monsieur um… Sandwich-Garcon (yes, my French is atrocious) for arranging. I can’t give any details, or he’ll likely hack my fingers off at the first knuckle, but I CAN say that it will be (to steal the words of Douglas Adams) the bee’s knees. The wasp’s nipples. In fact, it will be the entire set of errogenous zones of every major flying insect in the western hemisphere. In all seriousness, I think it’s the most entertaining BeOS-related interview I’ve read in recent memory, and that’s saying a great deal because I usually despise anything I had any part in writing. It’s going to be just that good. P.S. P.P.S.
I hope this is news. Apparently, BeFree has changed their name to Mockup. I can’t find evidence of their BeOS origins on their page, but you can verify this for yourself by going to BeFree, and see the redirect for yourself. Thankfully, they do adhere to the BeOS design principles, even if they don’t mention this explicitly. Good luck, guys. Your secret is safe with us! ; )
of 2005. I was going to hold off until some of the other BeNews sites published it, but to heck with it. Stephen is off doing serious journalism, and I’m nothing if not a self-promoter. This year end wrap up has articles from Mike S. and BS0, as well as some lesser contributions from myself. Four stories in all. I can also promise a new and interesting delight from both BeDoper AND BeOSNews on the first of January. Unless things go horribly wrong, as they often do. Here is is, my last effort at instigating trouble and causing a swirling maelstrom of controversy this year: BeDoper Year End Wrap Up Can you believe he gave me editorial access? ; )
Here’s a short round-up of some random tidbits of BeOS-related news and information that I’ve come across in the last week. Since the initial release of a test build about a week ago, Bryan Varner has released several new builds with various improvements and bugfixes. The latest release can be found at his blog, for both BONE/Zeta and net_server. The BeZilla folks have been busy lately, recently posting new builds of both FireFox and SeaMonkey (formerly the “Mozilla Suite”). This past week also saw the release of the HaikuMonkey theme, a BeOS style theme for SeaMonkey. BME, the in-development BeOS MSN client (not the Body Modification EZine), recently moved their website to a new location. There are also a few recent posts in their News section, detailing the current and some future plans.
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