Towards Nelson 2.0

As you may be aware, the Pavlosky development team has recently reached release 1.1 of Nelson Pavlosky, the revolutionary free culture advocate and guitar-playing geek, and we are steaming at full speed towards the 2.0 release. These are exciting times! What new features can you expect as we race towards 2.0? Well, first let us look at what we have already achieved.

==Nelson 1.0==
With the 1.0 release, we certified Nelson as sane, sanitary, and sexy enough for normal women to date (for some values of “normal”). Features included:
* Eats well enough to have a sex drive
* Knows how to cook own food (with a rather limited but healthy menu)
* Showers/bathes daily
* Leaves room at least once a day
* Does not play computer or video games frequently

While the 1.0 release was groundbreaking in many ways, especially compared to the cringe-worthy beta releases, it left a great deal to be desired. Nevertheless, it made Nelson a contender in the marketplace!

Certain bug reports, among them the infamous “total disrespect for authority” and the “tendency to break into song at inopportune moments” bugs, were marked WON’T FIX. These are features, not bugs. Similarly, while we hope to make strides towards a healthier Nelson, he is not intended to be an athlete. We will stick to what we’re good at, which is producing geeks and dorks. Jock-lovers should look elsewhere.

==Nelson 1.1==
With our recent 1.1 release, we added important features such as:
* Flosses daily
* Cuts toenails every two weeks (whether they need it or not)
* Uses deodorant
* Keeps to-do lists
* Knows how to do own laundry

We continue to make progress on basic organization and personal hygiene issues. We expect to make many incremental improvements over the summer, so while there may not be earth-shattering developments, we hope that you will be pleased with our handiwork by the “Swarthmore Senior” release in the fall.

==The Road to 2.0==
The 2.0 release will include dramatic improvements, including:
* Gets to class/work on time on a regular basis
* Keeps all required tasks in centralized to-do lists, maintains/updates them
* Meets deadlines (with few or no extensions required)
* Exercises daily
* Eats enough calories to build muscles/fat

Stick around until 2.0, and you’ll discover the many other pleasant surprises that we will have in store for you! Please feel free to leave comments on this development blog if you have feature requests or bug reports, until we have an official bug-tracking system.

22 thoughts on “Towards Nelson 2.0

  1. Excellent roadmap, but we’re never going to hit our devel milestones (nevermind survive QA) unless we figure out the point-releases that will get us to 2.0 – so please, do break it up into 1.4, 1.5 releases, and then THOSE into 1.4.2 releases and suchlike.

    Only then can we dominate the market share with appopriate co-branding and paradigm-synergizing opportunities. (Also, Hawt Chix.)

    • Hm, I’ve just realized that I don’t know enough about software projects to fully understand your comment. How exactly do development milestones and QA (Quality Assurance?) work? Googling and searching Wikipedia aren’t returning adequate data.

      More importantly, how might we apply them to the Nelson development project? 😉

    • Despite our efforts to the contrary, Nelson becomes very unstable if you leave him running for more than 24 hours. We recommend that you reboot Nelson every night. We apologize that it usually takes 8 hours to reboot him properly, but without more sophisticated genetic engineering techniques I doubt we can do better.

      Given the absence of a user’s manual [because you can’t *use* me!], you may find it odd that there is no tech support line for Nelson. What can I say, we’re on a shoestring budget here… Please post any requests for help that you may have to the comments on this development blog, and we’ll try to get a technician to help you, when they’re not doing their homework.

    • Unfortunately, Nelson is a closed, proprietary product, and runs on Microsoft Windows “Embedded In Your Head” Edition (which explains why we have to reboot him every 24 hours). This was necessary in order to execute our evil plan to take over the world, since if Nelson were an open source product everyone would know our evil plans ahead of time.

      As you should know if you saw “The Incredibles”, if everyone takes over the world, then that means really nobody has taken over the world. While democratizing art and spreading freedom of speech throughout the world is a good thing, taking over the world is something that only one person can do at a time.

      • Wouldn’t it be possible to leave the code open-source if the “evil plan” instructions were encrypted or added after the fact? You could leave the underlying code open-source but keep the world-dominating code secret until release and delivered securely to the end user.

        • Well, although the possibility of leaking our evil plans is a significant barrier to open-sourcing Nelson, we also cannot allow anyone else to have access to our world-dominating technology. Sharing with people is good, and that means it is diametrically opposed to an evil plan. The point of taking over the world is for us to own everything ourselves, and for everyone else to own nothing. That includes the source code to Nelson.

          On the other hand, a Beowulf cluster of atomic supermen sounds pretty good… maybe there is something to this Linux/Open Source thing. I’ll have to check upstairs with our resident supervillain.

      • The Cult of the Dead Cow attempts world domination as a group. Besides, you need underlings/helpers to do all the grunt work.

  2. This entire thread has had me nearly waking everyone up in the house, because it’s so funny.

    With that source code question, I wonder if any of Nelson’s features are portable to other architectures? I could use some of the features in the 1.1 release in my own distribution.

    • Unfortunately, we’ve patented the idea of flossing, as well as the idea of cutting your toenails every two weeks. You will have to enter into a licensing deal with us if you want your product to floss, or you will face the wrath of our lawyers.

      • Hilarious Nelson! Legal question — what about cutting your toenails every 3 weeks, or having someone do it for you? Currently I’ve reverted to biting, which has been working out well.

        – Peter (still living in China, god knows why)

        • Hm, I guess our current patent doesn’t cover that… we’ll have to get our lawyers to the patent office quickly to cover those variations! Although I suspect that toenail biting won’t be a very lucrative patent…

          How’s China? I just had the sudden urge to revive my Chinese studies Saturday night for no reason, and spent like an hour practicing writing and saying the numbers one through ten… “yi er san si wu liu chi ba jiu…” good times, good times.

          • Work here is keeping me very busy — 6 days a week. Am going to be meeting with a vendor tonight for dinner and then probably drinks – is common to mix work with “fun” over here.

            My Chinese has definitely improved a lot since I got over here — just speaking / listening really — haven’t really been practicing reading / writing.

  3. Version 2.0

    Version 2.0 looks absolutely AWESOME!! Is there any way the “powers that be” could move up the release date? Does the new version come with any guarantees against manufacturing defects that could impair performance of the new features? Are the warranties expressed or implied?

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