Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?

Years ago, kids could be gradually introduced to computers through learning languages like LOGO and educational computer games. Many of us started our computing careers at our parent's workplace, logged in to a word processor to type away, only to become fascinated with the whole computing thing. So Slashdot, let's hear how you were lured into the digital life. What was it that drew you to a life of programming? How old were you when you first used a computer? What pieces of modern software do you think would be a good way to introduce today's kids to the world of computing?

tomschuring asks: "A friend of mine has Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and because of it, he is using a Voice Output Communication Aid (VOCA). When I heard the quality speech of the portable device I was less than impressed. My Mac is much better at it and at least has a few different voices (like one with an English accent) to choose from. Has anybody used a laptop for this purpose? What text to speech engine are you using and what are our impressions? Is there predictive text software available for this purpose? Is the startup time and battery time acceptable for this sort of application?"

uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."

phoric writes "According to eWeek, Apple has released security patches to fix 16 'highly critical' holes, one-third of which deal with the open-source Apache web server. Several of the fixes address exploits such as the bypassing of security restrictions, spoofing, and potential DoS attacks."

Carlos Camacho writes "Programmers new to the Mac platform, as well as newbie Mac coders often ask (or complain) about available development tools. Most often, Apple's Xcode is recommended since it is free, and a pretty slick package. For cross-platform work, Metrowerks CodeWarrior series has been with us since the early PowerPC days, and is very flexible in its support for multi-platforms. But with if you want to work in a language other than Objective-C,C, C++ or Java? Or learn an entirely new language? How does the Macintosh fare? iDevGames, a site devoted to Mac game developers, has put together a list of "alternative" development tools for Mac OS X. A good number of the tools listed are either free, or low-cost. So, if you're interested in playing around with Lua, Ruby, something similar to HyperCard, or one of the many BASICs, check out "Alternative Development Systems for the Mac.""

Ton writes "Apple has published a discussion of Spotlight, the radical systemwide search technology that will be part of Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger'. The really interesting part is that metadata will be playing a big role in Spotlight while just a few years ago people were afraid metadata in Mac OS X was going the way of the dodo."

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has released the Mac OS X 10.3.6 update via Software Update as well as their downloads page. List of improvements is available. In short, the improvements are in remote file server issues (AFP, NFS, SMB/CIFS), OpenGL, ATi and NVidia drivers, Safari, Calculator, DVD Player, Image Capture, and also previous stand-alone Security Updates. Hurry up and get the update! ... and tell us if I should go to get it, too. ;)" A Mac OS X Server update is available as well.

the_webmaestro writes "Macintouch.com is covering the "opener" malware, a new and potential vulnerability which affects Mac OS X. If true (it's not on HoaxBusters yet), this could become a Mac user's worst nightmare... Worse even than Microsoft Word macro viruses (heretofore the only real 'viruses' which threatened Mac users)! Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune (except for the slow-down of the net, the loss in productivity of my colleagues, and the increase in SPAM--often coming from my friends and colleagues). [Sigh] Perhaps, my days of telling friends and family that there are no viruses for Macs may be coming to an end. There have been stories."

EccentricAnomaly writes "If you can't wait until next spring for the official release of next version of Mac OS X, Apple is offering a Tiger Early Start Kit to those willing to pay $500 for an Apple Developer Select Membership. And if you don't want to spend the money, they've also added a developer overview page describing some of the guts of Mac OS X v10.4."

SeaFox writes "A couple of stories about new features in the next version of Mac OS X have revealed that the new iChat 3.0 will include support for Jabber. With businesses able to host their own messaging servers behind the firewall and use it with Apple's included IM client, will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?"

An anonymous reader writes "The author of the Echelon decided to take his fight against software piracy to the next level and then threw in the towel. After someone began posting new serial numbers on a well known hacking site, the author took matters into his own hands. With version 1.0, entering a hacked serial number causes the software deleted the user's Home directory. Yes, you read it right, the software completely erases it (aka rm -rf ~). A variety of people have voiced some some strong opinions on this. While some argue that piracy is good for established companies, a few large companies are battling piracy and having limited success. Small, independent developers, however, are recognising this is a serious problem and are generally stumped by what to do about it."

ozy writes "With all the fuss about searching and Spotlight and WinFS, check out the Database File System a completely different interface for your files, implemented in KDE. There is actually a request for developers to join a project to implement this under GNOME and leave how we use the desktop today behind."

Blano writes "Marc Liyanage recently posted a great article on getting up and running and optimizing OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X. He includes some tweaks and helpful configuration tips." Another option is getting the software on CD.

Jason0x21 writes "Wired News has an article about UNC Comp. Sci. researchers developing a transparent desktop overlay for video conferencing, allowing remote coworkers to literally point and interact with things on your screen. The researchers say that Apple's Quartz graphics engine let them go from idea to prototype in 'about 45 minutes'. Windows versions predicted in the future."

J. Hobbs writes "Recent posts on David Hyatt's site describing the new technology he's working on for Dashboard, coupled with recent announcements from the newly formed WHAT-WG alliance (Apple, Mozilla, and Opera) could add up to a potentially new kind of application development and deployment that I explore in this highly speculative essay. See if you don't agree..."

MacManX writes "Does the director of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X feature, Dashboard, have something to hide? Or does he wish to remain hidden? Or are we just reading into this way too much? Rick has an excellent observation over at MacMerc. The evidence will astound you."

Dozix007 writes "Sitepoint reports an interesting article on the increasing interconnection between Apple's recently released Tiger, and the open source community. Tiger includes improved releases of Apple's directory services (LDAP), secure authentication (Kerberos), mail server (Postfix), web server (Apache) and many more features, nearly all based on existing open source software. Most significant may be the release of Rendezvous for Java, Linux/Unix and Windows. This is a zero-configuration tool for networking that includes network protocols, identification and configuration of devices and services such as printers and local/remote servers, and was based on open source technology."

RAMMS+EIN writes with a good followup to the recent WWDC preview of Tiger, the next version of OS X. "eWeek has a slideshow illustrating some of Tiger's new features with screenshots. For a textual description, you can visit Apple's Tiger page."

mblase writes "Apple released yesterday a developers preview of their Rendezvous technology for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Java. Rendezvous is an open protocol which uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically find each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers." Reader xxdarkxxmatterxx adds a link to a story at Macworld about the release."