Here's something to work on for all you GUI designers...
There needs to be a GUI version of the Linux | (pipe) command, to set up a pipeline of data from one application to another.
There are various cumbersome ways to almost do this, from copy-to-clipboard-and-paste, to the Windows right-click "Send To" feature, to Windows drag-and-drop, to OLE, but they aren't good enough.
If only I could automate copy and paste -- something like this:
Launch my web browser and point it at a site (like Slashdot).
Draw a graphical connector from the browser app to a grep-like tool to match only certain lines from the web page. (I'd have to specify when I set up the connection: only transmit the text, not the graphics. This could be a "flavor" of connector.)
Draw another connector from the grep program to my word processor to automatically paste the output into the current document.
Then the GUI pipeline would stay active, so when I browsed to a new page in my browser, the new filtered output would appear in my word processor.
Finally, I could remove the pipeline (or only parts of it) whenever I wanted, but leave the applications active. I could also create forked pipes by drawing a connector from one source to more than one destination.
Wouldn't that be cool? If you create it, be sure and send me royalty checks;-)
A feature like this needs a good buzzword... how about Active Clipboard? It's really just a fancy, automated copy-and-paste with a GUI!
Open Media use new forms of information architecture to permit people to define, seek and use the information they want. Closed media operate by permitting a handful of individuals to select information and distribute it, in the hopes that people will want and buy it.
1. Do we always know what information we want? And is that a good thing? The danger of defining our own filters is that sometimes the most useful information is the kind I never would have put into a list of "what I want to hear about" because I don't grasp its importance until after I read it.
2. How many people are going to "select" to purposely view ads? Probably not many, so how do providers of Open Information make their money? By charging the consumer directly for the service? Are there any successful examples of this so far?
3. I'd like to hear a few specific examples of Open Media. If Closed Media allow a handful of individuals to pre-filter information, then that sounds like almost all media to me. What is Open Media then, just a search engine? Or is Open Media something that doesn't exist yet?
The book sounds worth reading. I'll have to look for it.
Telecommuting -- why hasn't telecommuting taken off like we thought it would? Where are the hordes of people working happily at home? Despite the myth of the lone hacker working away, we all know that our best tricks are usually gleaned from some keyboarding compatriot who shows us a thing or two.
Mainly because one of the biggest challenges on any team is communication: making sure everyone understands what they are supposed to do. Communication is somewhat easier in person that over the phone or through email, and it has a more dynamic quality: I can wander by someone's desk, glance at what's going on and either say "wow, show me how you did that!" or "wait a minute, are you sure that's a good idea?" When people work off site, you tend to get less frequent interactions: they go off and work for a long while then send something in.
"Parse the headlines and text, looking up the number of syllables of the words."
I realize you were joking, but you do understand this is not a trivial thing to do accurately.
I meant 'looking up' very literally, like in a giant lookup table that contains a syllable count for each of the 5,000 most common words. That table would be created by hand. It would be tedious to create, but the job could be farmed out to an army of interns. That would be much easier than trying to deduce syllable count with an algorithm:-)
Copying is no longer difficult. As each generation has developed better technologies, the ability of copyright holders to protect their intellectual property has eroded to the point where copyright either has to be re-defined or abandoned.
People who can download text, columns, games, ideas, music and software will do so, if for no other reason than because they can.
How easy or difficult something is to do does not necessarily influence whether society will choose to allow it. After all, it is quite "easy" to throw rocks through store windows, have sex with underage girls, or grow marijuana. And with the availability of guns in America, it is easy to go out and shoot someone. That has not resulted in society shrugging and deciding to allow those things. It has also not resulted in everyone who can do those things rushing out to do them merely because they can. If the social environment presents a strong disapproval of copying copyrighted materials, and a real threat of getting caught and prosecuted, people will not be as willing to do it, no matter what the technological issues.
Why is it that anyone who wishes to program anything still has to spend half of his time writing things like if ( retval == -1 ) { perror ("frobnicating"); exit (EXIT_FAILURE); }?
You don't need to write code like that any more. C++ supports exceptions, so do Java and Python and other languages.
Learning to use Python is well worth the time, and so is learning to use the STL and exceptions in C++.
Palm web browsing is not limited to "text-based web browsing only". Using AvantGo or other browsing software, you can view web pages including graphics, including color images on the Palm IIIc.
It's true that Palm users "must load" AvantGo "from CD or Internet". But since the whole point of AvantGo is to get content from the internet, why is it so horrible to have to download the program itself? And wouldn't you want to load an upgrade anyway when new versions were released?
It's simply a ridiculous lie to claim the Palm doesn't have "animated games". Any Palm site like Tucows has a ton of them. And Sim City in color for the Palm IIIc was recently released, for heaven's sake!
There may well be valid reasons why the Pocket PC is worth buying, but reading these weird claims makes me distrust the whole thing.
"programmers to simply install and go, whereas purchasing software for proprietary machines usually involves budget issues and delays while purchase orders are processed."
I've noticed the same thing at my company. When I show the CEO a list of GPL software my department will be using, and each one says "price = free", and the highest cost items on the budget list are a few printed manuals at $49.95, it is amazing how quickly things can be accomplished.
What we really need is export restrictions on virtual items. "Sorry, you can't ship that magic sword outside the U.S., it's a matter of National Security . . . "
porting games to Linux will work great for now, and be profitable.
Another advantage to porting (for now): having a high % of Linux games be high quality, "award winning" type games. One of the worst things that could happen would be to have a lot of 'original' games come out that are really bad or buggy. Because -- however irrational this is -- many people would tend to blame Linux for the problem: "Sure, there are games for Linux, but look how lame they are. Just goes to show it's not a real gaming platform..."
"The result is a feature that frees up as much as 80 to 90 percent of the space on a server."
At first I didn't believe that 90 percent of server space was taken up storing duplicate copies of files. But then I looked at my own machine, and sure enough, I have 121,378 copies of the exact same naughty GIF image. By making 121,377 of them into Shortcuts, I freed up an enormous amount of drive space! Thanks for the idea, Microsoft!
Slashdot Mirror
Here's something to work on for all you GUI designers...
There needs to be a GUI version of the Linux | (pipe) command, to set up a pipeline of data from one application to another.
There are various cumbersome ways to almost do this, from copy-to-clipboard-and-paste, to the Windows right-click "Send To" feature, to Windows drag-and-drop, to OLE, but they aren't good enough.
If only I could automate copy and paste -- something like this:
Wouldn't that be cool? If you create it, be sure and send me royalty checks ;-)
A feature like this needs a good buzzword... how about Active Clipboard? It's really just a fancy, automated copy-and-paste with a GUI!
Open Media use new forms of information architecture to permit people to define, seek and use the information they want. Closed media operate by permitting a handful of individuals to select information and distribute it, in the hopes that people will want and buy it.
1. Do we always know what information we want? And is that a good thing? The danger of defining our own filters is that sometimes the most useful information is the kind I never would have put into a list of "what I want to hear about" because I don't grasp its importance until after I read it.
2. How many people are going to "select" to purposely view ads? Probably not many, so how do providers of Open Information make their money? By charging the consumer directly for the service? Are there any successful examples of this so far?
3. I'd like to hear a few specific examples of Open Media. If Closed Media allow a handful of individuals to pre-filter information, then that sounds like almost all media to me. What is Open Media then, just a search engine? Or is Open Media something that doesn't exist yet?
The book sounds worth reading. I'll have to look for it.
Telecommuting -- why hasn't telecommuting taken off like we thought it would? Where are the hordes of people working happily at home? Despite the myth of the lone hacker working away, we all know that our best tricks are usually gleaned from some keyboarding compatriot who shows us a thing or two.
Mainly because one of the biggest challenges on any team is communication: making sure everyone understands what they are supposed to do. Communication is somewhat easier in person that over the phone or through email, and it has a more dynamic quality: I can wander by someone's desk, glance at what's going on and either say "wow, show me how you did that!" or "wait a minute, are you sure that's a good idea?" When people work off site, you tend to get less frequent interactions: they go off and work for a long while then send something in.
"Parse the headlines and text, looking up the number of syllables of the words."
I realize you were joking, but you do understand this is not a trivial thing to do accurately.
I meant 'looking up' very literally, like in a giant lookup table that contains a syllable count for each of the 5,000 most common words. That table would be created by hand. It would be tedious to create, but the job could be farmed out to an army of interns. That would be much easier than trying to deduce syllable count with an algorithm :-)
Here's the basic algorithm -- the only drawback is that it is slow.
Likes:
Dislikes:
Copying is no longer difficult. As each generation has developed better technologies, the ability of copyright holders to protect their intellectual property has eroded to the point where copyright either has to be re-defined or abandoned.
People who can download text, columns, games, ideas, music and software will do so, if for no other reason than because they can.
How easy or difficult something is to do does not necessarily influence whether society will choose to allow it. After all, it is quite "easy" to throw rocks through store windows, have sex with underage girls, or grow marijuana. And with the availability of guns in America, it is easy to go out and shoot someone. That has not resulted in society shrugging and deciding to allow those things. It has also not resulted in everyone who can do those things rushing out to do them merely because they can. If the social environment presents a strong disapproval of copying copyrighted materials, and a real threat of getting caught and prosecuted, people will not be as willing to do it, no matter what the technological issues.
Why is it that anyone who wishes to program anything still has to spend half of his time writing things like if ( retval == -1 ) { perror ("frobnicating"); exit (EXIT_FAILURE); }?
You don't need to write code like that any more. C++ supports exceptions, so do Java and Python and other languages.
Learning to use Python is well worth the time, and so is learning to use the STL and exceptions in C++.
- Palm web browsing is not limited to "text-based web browsing only". Using AvantGo or other browsing software, you can view web pages including graphics, including color images on the Palm IIIc.
- It's true that Palm users "must load" AvantGo "from CD or Internet". But since the whole point of AvantGo is to get content from the internet, why is it so horrible to have to download the program itself? And wouldn't you want to load an upgrade anyway when new versions were released?
- It's simply a ridiculous lie to claim the Palm doesn't have "animated games". Any Palm site like Tucows has a ton of them. And Sim City in color for the Palm IIIc was recently released, for heaven's sake!
There may well be valid reasons why the Pocket PC is worth buying, but reading these weird claims makes me distrust the whole thing."programmers to simply install and go, whereas purchasing software for proprietary machines usually involves budget issues and delays while purchase orders are processed."
I've noticed the same thing at my company. When I show the CEO a list of GPL software my department will be using, and each one says "price = free", and the highest cost items on the budget list are a few printed manuals at $49.95, it is amazing how quickly things can be accomplished.
What we really need is export restrictions on virtual items. "Sorry, you can't ship that magic sword outside the U.S., it's a matter of National Security . . . "
porting games to Linux will work great for now, and be profitable.
Another advantage to porting (for now): having a high % of Linux games be high quality, "award winning" type games. One of the worst things that could happen would be to have a lot of 'original' games come out that are really bad or buggy. Because -- however irrational this is -- many people would tend to blame Linux for the problem: "Sure, there are games for Linux, but look how lame they are. Just goes to show it's not a real gaming platform..."
"The result is a feature that frees up as much as 80 to 90 percent of the space on a server."
At first I didn't believe that 90 percent of server space was taken up storing duplicate copies of files. But then I looked at my own machine, and sure enough, I have 121,378 copies of the exact same naughty GIF image. By making 121,377 of them into Shortcuts, I freed up an enormous amount of drive space! Thanks for the idea, Microsoft!
Technique gets too much focus, if you want to be a better coder just code more!
Unfortunately, this is a bit like saying, "if you want a better understanding of nutrition, just eat more!"
Coding more, using the same habits and methods, will only reinforce those very habits (good ones and bad ones alike).