That is one of the most interesting theories I've heard in a long time. I really wish I had mod points so I could lift your comment up into more visible rankings.
It's too bad GAIM hasn't taken from some of Adium (OS X Client based off of the GAIM source) design:
Highly customizable UI and sounds.
Extensive system of action-responses, per individual contact.
Simple plugin architecture (more of an OS X thing, perhaps).
Scriptability (via AppleScript but I can't see why this would be too difficult to do in a *nix environment).
Tight integration with other applications, such as the address book.
Font, user icon and alias (buddy name) overrides. The last being good for people who really think it's clever to have a paragraph for an MSN name. (By the way, is it just me or is it only Emo-personalitied types who seem to use the long names?)
Services menu integration. Hm. But that's really an OS X feature. Still, it's cool being able to use the functionality of one App inside of another. I really wish other OS's would implement something similar.
More . . . too lazy to name.
Is there some kind of unified contact architecture for Linux, by the way? A database of all of a person's information, like an address book that could be read from any program that needs it.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a Dune reference yet. Military applications of inter and intra-dental devices, you know. Anyways, wouldn't the inner shape of the mouth, combined with a lot of liquids and the constant need to breathe, plus the clicking of teeth and tongue during certain words, make this impractical?
I do tech support for a well-known security company and I can count on both hands and feet (and any other available appendage for that matter) the number of times people have asked me if, by click I mean left or right. I'm constantly having to tell people, "Unless I say otherwise, assume click means to press the left button down."
And that's the soiled masses of Windows users. I like the approach of the Mighty Mouse. I think I'll wait for it to go to blue tooth and some of the initial design specs to be revised (for one I think the Apple Pro mouse is too small, and same goes for the Mighty Mouse). But the idea of having, by default, the functionality that one expects from a Mac (single button mouse paradigm) with the ability to customize to power user's needs is a masterstroke.
Also, how unintuitive is it to click with your middle finger? THIS IS THE REASON THE RIGHT CLICK IS ON THAT FINGER.
My ring finger falls naturally on the right mouse button, with my middle finger on the scroll wheel. I'd bet you 100 dollars that, at least, 95% of users with mice that have scroll wheels operate them in a similar manner.
Why would any sensible person want a mouse set up so that they could have all the buttons on it immediately accessible without having to reposition their fingers?
Then it sounds like the right click is exactly what you needed, thats the reason for the context menu, so you can do all the most common commands without having to hunt for them.
Don't tell me you have this much trouble "getting it". The context menu itself was what wasn't wanted.
Does the browser support Java? If so, how hard would re-implementing the emulators as some kind of browser hack / page be? You know, you go to a site, it asks for you to select a rom from your memory stick and you're good to go? Possible, idiotic? You tell me.
Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring arrived soon after, and when they were shown Van der Lubbe, a known Communist agitator, Göring immediately declared the fire was set by the Communists and had the party leaders arrested. Hitler took advantage of the situation to declare a state of emergency and encouraged aging president Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolishing most of the human rights provisions of the 1919 Weimar Republic constitution.
I think this strangely appropriate. Ideologies, not countries, always seems to be the common threat under which liberties are stolen by states.
There's one thing I don't get. It seems like the aim here is to dominate, not coexist. For instance, Linux vs. OS X.
I don't perceive Apple as being an enemy to open source development and yet there's this perceived duality. Could someone explain what necessitates that view?
I'd like to add my voice to those advocating Tim Berners-Lee's unsung role in all of this. And perhaps, NeXT's as well.
NeXT seems to have really given the framework which allowed for this sort of thing to happen. Rapid development times (in that era) easy-to-build GUIs, object oriented centric focus.
(I designed HTML by simply sub-classing the text object.)
Anyways, could Steve Jobs . . . in a way, be an unsung hero of the web, too?
I remember reading Moore's Utopia a while ago, and one of the more interesting ideas in it went something like this:
If all crimes, regardless of severity, were punished equally, there would be no incentive not to commit more serious crimes.
In other words, if a "hacker" knows the death penalty is the consequence, what's to stop them from using deadly force in their defense? Murder usually equals the death sentence, and since death is already a given for being a hacker, there is no loss for choosing to kill.
For getting a reaction, I commend the author. I commend them in the same way I'd commend John C. Dvorak. Well done, good troll, but your opinion is ultimately moronic.
. . . is a great example of a more modern game that's fun and going in new directions. For me, I've noticed that limitations are what make games fun. The more modern games progressively try to find ways to remove them, which is the wrong approach.
Take Chess. Chess is popular because, in my opinion, you have very rigid limitations. Pawns can only move two spaces on the first movement. Rooks only horizontally and vertically, etc. It's creative exploitation of combinations of limitations that make the game fun.
Or Tetris. The standard tetris is nearly ubiquitous. It's not that complex of a game. You have maybe 8 blocks total. You can rotate them and you can speed them up towards the bottom. A very, very rigid system. But in concert with other blocks, you have the most cloned game of all time.
Darwinia is much the same way. You don't command a huge army, like most RTSes. (Uhm . . . that's the closest genre I can place it in.) You command very small groups of squads towards complex goals. The gameplay is very much about smaller elements working to a larger whole.
Actually, you know if this also had a text-to-speech feature that'd read things in a voice somewhat reminiscent of Majel Barrett and have integrated speech recognition for queries you'd have the nerd's ultimate dream.
I'd heard of Dvorak and found some pictures of the layout and took the time to build my own Dvorak setup on System (Mac OS) 7.5
At first, it was quite a pain to type in. I started out mainly in the home row, typing words that really take advantage of Dvorak's setup, like "the", "then", "this", etc. At the time I did most of my thinking in Qwerty, still.
To type "the" for example, I'd think type "kjd". And, you know, that's not really much harder than the nonsense that touch typing programs have us spout. Only, even from the start, it was more likely I'd be typing something sensible with only the home row.
I'd say proficiency took about two or three weeks to obtain. The next stage came when I went back to school and started taking some programing courses.
The machines were running 98, and I wasn't really versed in how to change the layout to Dvorak. Going back to Qwerty was, initially a hunt and peck affair. I'd say it took a week to relearn that skill and now I type at least 65 WPM on either layout, and can switch at will.
As for comfort, Dvorak is far and away the most comfortable layout for me. It, in combination with an ergonomic keyboard make for a very nice experience. And, really, most operating systems make the switch as easy as going to a preference pane, control panel or a text file and changing the layout variable.
It's not a matter of drivers. And it's worth trying out. Give it three weeks, and if you don't like it, well, no one's going to care. We'll use Dvorak when we can and you can stick with Qwerty.
When I say intellectual, I'm going back before the myths, which I reject, to the practical application of the ideas.
I don't believe any chanting or praying will earn some sort of salvation. But I do believe that Buddhism teaches salvation and happiness come from within. I find that to be psychologically sound.
With greater focus, I'd suspect these techniques could improve one's clarity of thought. My view has always been that Buddhism is more a religion of the intellect than of faith. I admire that.
This reminds me of Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps by Marshall T. Savage. He proposed using off-shore OTECs (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) to power a floating island of sorts. The process would purify/desalinate drinking water and would provide conditioning. As for corp growth, well, Savage's plan is more aquaculture-based, but it would increase food production - cultivate spirulina which has numerous health effects.
I quite remember an interesting interpretation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The first truly memorably scene from the film is that of an ape learning to use a tool: a bone used to smash things. This symbolizes man's first evolution. We progressed because of our technology. Then, as the ape is triumphantly bashing the life out of things, the scene transitions to a white space station - symbolizing that we are still reliant upon tools. And now, the symbolism starts to change. Instead of tools being the vehicle for our evolution, Clarke portrays them as hindrances to it. At the ending of the film, we see the main character in a white room, surrounded by decreasing levels of technological sophistication. At first, he's in a space pod. Next, his suit. Next, I believe at a table with some simple tools like a fork and knife. Then in a bed. And then we see the space baby. This represents the idea that the further away man gets from technology, the more likely biological evolution shall occur. Simply put, as long as we have tools that will do the adapting that natural selection normally would have done, how is it possible for true biological evolution to happen naturally? And secondly, mankind seeks normality. There have been genetic mutations, but the effort has been to label people possessing them as freaks and somehow (at least physically) revert such person back to a state of conformity.
1) I'm not liking this trend in the console space. By "trend" I mean the tendency to come out with new systems faster and faster. In the old days, the Nintendo Entertainment system had a (I'm guessing) eight year or so lifespan. And nobody really ever saw that as a bad thing. It had a nice library of games, and people still remember it fondly.
Now we get maybe two or three years before the upgrade cycle begins anew. I'm in favor of longevity and building a nice library of games rather than always trying to do something new, at least in the console space. For computers, well I don't mind that so much.
2) Because it's based on the PowerPC architecture, what's the likelihood we'll see Macs able to emulate the games made for it? Assuming Apple gets its ass in gear with the GhZ gap that this'll present. If not emulation, how about porting? It seems that it'll be made vastly more easy to port games to the Mac now.
In which case, one wonders what Microsoft was thinking. You don't make it easier to move games to your most visible competitor without some reason behind it. Contracts and licenses I guess will secure that.
3) Again, noting the PowerPC based architecture and the fact that the other two console vendors are also expected to be using some variant of it, is there a chance we could see a drop in price in all PPC products (namely Macs)? I'd hope so.
It's funny. If you look at two well-known computer companies, Apple Computer and Dell Computer you see a very scary trend. You see the innovator, Apple, with around 5% of today's market. And Dell holds about 45%? ++, I'm not sure. Their innovation is in reducing manufacturing costs.
This tells us something. It's more important to make your product cheaply, than better. Okay, so once you've taken all other expenses out (we're in an advanced stage of competition here) you get only one thing left. Employees. You can either reduce the work force, or the pay each unit receives (either pay cuts or outsourcing).
Now, eventually, you come to a point where the only pay necessary to give to an employee is the amount necessary to keep that worker alive. And so the standard of living decreases. What you're left with is a very poor class making goods for the upper class, and virtually no middle group.
This is the imperialistic situation that the early communists saw as triggering a revolution. And what's the nature of that revolution? A bunch of disgruntled workers, sick of unfair compensation and an essentially slave economy, take over the company by forming unions. Huge ones. And they make all the profits as they see fit.
Of course, that's speculation. But if the only way to stay competitive is to pay your employees less, what else is there?
Slashdot Mirror
That is one of the most interesting theories I've heard in a long time. I really wish I had mod points so I could lift your comment up into more visible rankings.
It's too bad GAIM hasn't taken from some of Adium (OS X Client based off of the GAIM source) design:
Highly customizable UI and sounds.
Extensive system of action-responses, per individual contact.
Simple plugin architecture (more of an OS X thing, perhaps).
Scriptability (via AppleScript but I can't see why this would be too difficult to do in a *nix environment).
Tight integration with other applications, such as the address book.
Font, user icon and alias (buddy name) overrides. The last being good for people who really think it's clever to have a paragraph for an MSN name. (By the way, is it just me or is it only Emo-personalitied types who seem to use the long names?)
Services menu integration. Hm. But that's really an OS X feature. Still, it's cool being able to use the functionality of one App inside of another. I really wish other OS's would implement something similar.
More . . . too lazy to name.
Is there some kind of unified contact architecture for Linux, by the way? A database of all of a person's information, like an address book that could be read from any program that needs it.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a Dune reference yet. Military applications of inter and intra-dental devices, you know. Anyways, wouldn't the inner shape of the mouth, combined with a lot of liquids and the constant need to breathe, plus the clicking of teeth and tongue during certain words, make this impractical?
. . . is hereby proven to not always be a bad thing. Historic biases not withstanding.
. . . as one's actions do not affect another individual can said privacy be allowed.
I don't trust secrecy (collective privacy) in most instances.
I do tech support for a well-known security company and I can count on both hands and feet (and any other available appendage for that matter) the number of times people have asked me if, by click I mean left or right. I'm constantly having to tell people,
"Unless I say otherwise, assume click means to press the left button down."
And that's the soiled masses of Windows users. I like the approach of the Mighty Mouse. I think I'll wait for it to go to blue tooth and some of the initial design specs to be revised (for one I think the Apple Pro mouse is too small, and same goes for the Mighty Mouse). But the idea of having, by default, the functionality that one expects from a Mac (single button mouse paradigm) with the ability to customize to power user's needs is a masterstroke.
Also, how unintuitive is it to click with your middle finger? THIS IS THE REASON THE RIGHT CLICK IS ON THAT FINGER.
My ring finger falls naturally on the right mouse button, with my middle finger on the scroll wheel. I'd bet you 100 dollars that, at least, 95% of users with mice that have scroll wheels operate them in a similar manner.
Why would any sensible person want a mouse set up so that they could have all the buttons on it immediately accessible without having to reposition their fingers?
Then it sounds like the right click is exactly what you needed, thats the reason for the context menu, so you can do all the most common commands without having to hunt for them.
Don't tell me you have this much trouble "getting it". The context menu itself was what wasn't wanted.
Well, there's your food for trolling.
Does the browser support Java? If so, how hard would re-implementing the emulators as some kind of browser hack / page be? You know, you go to a site, it asks for you to select a rom from your memory stick and you're good to go? Possible, idiotic? You tell me.
Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring arrived soon after, and when they were shown Van der Lubbe, a known Communist agitator, Göring immediately declared the fire was set by the Communists and had the party leaders arrested. Hitler took advantage of the situation to declare a state of emergency and encouraged aging president Paul von Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolishing most of the human rights provisions of the 1919 Weimar Republic constitution.
I think this strangely appropriate. Ideologies, not countries, always seems to be the common threat under which liberties are stolen by states.
There's one thing I don't get. It seems like the aim here is to dominate, not coexist. For instance, Linux vs. OS X.
I don't perceive Apple as being an enemy to open source development and yet there's this perceived duality. Could someone explain what necessitates that view?
You can see that the PC-looking cludge is off and she is now using a PowerBook or iBook. The image says it all.
[/amused]
I'd like to add my voice to those advocating Tim Berners-Lee's unsung role in all of this. And perhaps, NeXT's as well.
NeXT seems to have really given the framework which allowed for this sort of thing to happen. Rapid development times (in that era) easy-to-build GUIs, object oriented centric focus.
(I designed HTML by simply sub-classing the text object.)
Anyways, could Steve Jobs . . . in a way, be an unsung hero of the web, too?
I remember reading Moore's Utopia a while ago, and one of the more interesting ideas in it went something like this:
If all crimes, regardless of severity, were punished equally, there would be no incentive not to commit more serious crimes.
In other words, if a "hacker" knows the death penalty is the consequence, what's to stop them from using deadly force in their defense? Murder usually equals the death sentence, and since death is already a given for being a hacker, there is no loss for choosing to kill.
For getting a reaction, I commend the author. I commend them in the same way I'd commend John C. Dvorak. Well done, good troll, but your opinion is ultimately moronic.
. . . is a great example of a more modern game that's fun and going in new directions. For me, I've noticed that limitations are what make games fun. The more modern games progressively try to find ways to remove them, which is the wrong approach.
Take Chess. Chess is popular because, in my opinion, you have very rigid limitations. Pawns can only move two spaces on the first movement. Rooks only horizontally and vertically, etc. It's creative exploitation of combinations of limitations that make the game fun.
Or Tetris. The standard tetris is nearly ubiquitous. It's not that complex of a game. You have maybe 8 blocks total. You can rotate them and you can speed them up towards the bottom. A very, very rigid system. But in concert with other blocks, you have the most cloned game of all time.
Darwinia is much the same way. You don't command a huge army, like most RTSes. (Uhm . . . that's the closest genre I can place it in.) You command very small groups of squads towards complex goals. The gameplay is very much about smaller elements working to a larger whole.
Actually, you know if this also had a text-to-speech feature that'd read things in a voice somewhat reminiscent of Majel Barrett and have integrated speech recognition for queries you'd have the nerd's ultimate dream.
I'd heard of Dvorak and found some pictures of the layout and took the time to build my own Dvorak setup on System (Mac OS) 7.5
At first, it was quite a pain to type in. I started out mainly in the home row, typing words that really take advantage of Dvorak's setup, like "the", "then", "this", etc. At the time I did most of my thinking in Qwerty, still.
To type "the" for example, I'd think type "kjd". And, you know, that's not really much harder than the nonsense that touch typing programs have us spout. Only, even from the start, it was more likely I'd be typing something sensible with only the home row.
I'd say proficiency took about two or three weeks to obtain. The next stage came when I went back to school and started taking some programing courses.
The machines were running 98, and I wasn't really versed in how to change the layout to Dvorak. Going back to Qwerty was, initially a hunt and peck affair. I'd say it took a week to relearn that skill and now I type at least 65 WPM on either layout, and can switch at will.
As for comfort, Dvorak is far and away the most comfortable layout for me. It, in combination with an ergonomic keyboard make for a very nice experience. And, really, most operating systems make the switch as easy as going to a preference pane, control panel or a text file and changing the layout variable.
It's not a matter of drivers. And it's worth trying out. Give it three weeks, and if you don't like it, well, no one's going to care. We'll use Dvorak when we can and you can stick with Qwerty.
When I say intellectual, I'm going back before the myths, which I reject, to the practical application of the ideas.
I don't believe any chanting or praying will earn some sort of salvation. But I do believe that Buddhism teaches salvation and happiness come from within. I find that to be psychologically sound.
With greater focus, I'd suspect these techniques could improve one's clarity of thought. My view has always been that Buddhism is more a religion of the intellect than of faith. I admire that.
Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps
This reminds me of Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps by Marshall T. Savage. He proposed using off-shore OTECs (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) to power a floating island of sorts.
The process would purify/desalinate drinking water and would provide conditioning. As for corp growth, well, Savage's plan is more aquaculture-based, but it would increase food production - cultivate spirulina which has numerous health effects.
In the olden days, a lot of browsers stole their ideas from this guy . Here's wondering if it'll happen again.
I quite remember an interesting interpretation of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The first truly memorably scene from the film is that of an ape learning to use a tool: a bone used to smash things. This symbolizes man's first evolution. We progressed because of our technology.
Then, as the ape is triumphantly bashing the life out of things, the scene transitions to a white space station - symbolizing that we are still reliant upon tools. And now, the symbolism starts to change.
Instead of tools being the vehicle for our evolution, Clarke portrays them as hindrances to it. At the ending of the film, we see the main character in a white room, surrounded by decreasing levels of technological sophistication.
At first, he's in a space pod.
Next, his suit.
Next, I believe at a table with some simple tools like a fork and knife.
Then in a bed.
And then we see the space baby.
This represents the idea that the further away man gets from technology, the more likely biological evolution shall occur.
Simply put, as long as we have tools that will do the adapting that natural selection normally would have done, how is it possible for true biological evolution to happen naturally?
And secondly, mankind seeks normality. There have been genetic mutations, but the effort has been to label people possessing them as freaks and somehow (at least physically) revert such person back to a state of conformity.
Where's the obligatory 1984 references? If ever there were more explicit a case to make jokes about it, here's one.
Here's a few thoughts and questions.
1) I'm not liking this trend in the console space. By "trend" I mean the tendency to come out with new systems faster and faster. In the old days, the Nintendo Entertainment system had a (I'm guessing) eight year or so lifespan. And nobody really ever saw that as a bad thing. It had a nice library of games, and people still remember it fondly.
Now we get maybe two or three years before the upgrade cycle begins anew. I'm in favor of longevity and building a nice library of games rather than always trying to do something new, at least in the console space. For computers, well I don't mind that so much.
2) Because it's based on the PowerPC architecture, what's the likelihood we'll see Macs able to emulate the games made for it? Assuming Apple gets its ass in gear with the GhZ gap that this'll present. If not emulation, how about porting? It seems that it'll be made vastly more easy to port games to the Mac now.
In which case, one wonders what Microsoft was thinking. You don't make it easier to move games to your most visible competitor without some reason behind it. Contracts and licenses I guess will secure that.
3) Again, noting the PowerPC based architecture and the fact that the other two console vendors are also expected to be using some variant of it, is there a chance we could see a drop in price in all PPC products (namely Macs)? I'd hope so.
It's funny. If you look at two well-known computer companies, Apple Computer and Dell Computer you see a very scary trend. You see the innovator, Apple, with around 5% of today's market. And Dell holds about 45%? ++, I'm not sure. Their innovation is in reducing manufacturing costs.
This tells us something. It's more important to make your product cheaply, than better. Okay, so once you've taken all other expenses out (we're in an advanced stage of competition here) you get only one thing left. Employees. You can either reduce the work force, or the pay each unit receives (either pay cuts or outsourcing).
Now, eventually, you come to a point where the only pay necessary to give to an employee is the amount necessary to keep that worker alive. And so the standard of living decreases. What you're left with is a very poor class making goods for the upper class, and virtually no middle group.
This is the imperialistic situation that the early communists saw as triggering a revolution. And what's the nature of that revolution? A bunch of disgruntled workers, sick of unfair compensation and an essentially slave economy, take over the company by forming unions. Huge ones. And they make all the profits as they see fit.
Of course, that's speculation. But if the only way to stay competitive is to pay your employees less, what else is there?