My experience with USB is that about half of the devices work out of the box. Of the other half, only about 80% work *ever* for a random flavor of windows, let alone Linux. So, you have to be very very careful what you buy.
As for serial ports... there are usually only a few of them, and less than 50% of devices work out of the box, but the advantage is 99% of everything that doesn't work right away can be made to work in some fashion.
So, I'm still left wondering which one I prefer in many cases. USB: Fairly likely to work, but if it doesn't work I'm screwed (Lots of crappy vendor drivers, and closed attitudes out there make this worse). -or- Serial: Fairly likely to be a headache, but nearly gauranteed I can make it work given some time.
Maybe a decent USB sniffer would help my attitude about the whole mess...
Well... This is all getting a bit off topic. My point was every piece of software is subject to testing, debugging and "validation" of some form or another. Semi-random and irreproducable behaviour is most often a mistake rather than something useful.
Even random number generators can be tested to be sure they behave properly. In their case checking a statistically significant sampling of inputs and outputs to see just how "good" the randomness is would probably be adequate. Of course, this type of statistical or partial testing has also gotten vendors into trouble. As an example consider the case of floating point co-processors in early Pentium chips.
Actually... according to the more complete scientific article posted earlier, the balls were charged and left in electrostatic equilibrium. So, no current and no magnetic field.
It was the attraction and repulsion of the electric charges themselves that was blamed for the rotation induced...
That seems to make more sense... sounds like these boys have found a new way to make a (potentially) really small motor using scientific laws that are about 200 years old. Kudos to them, and great engineering work!
But hardly the makings of a scientific revolution...
Serial ports were pretty darned easy to use in their day, albiet a bit slow at times. Is USB really bringing anything new to the table, or are we going to continue to see difficult to use software and hardware manufactured and sold because no one really cares about quality or ease of use?
Personally my experience with USB is that less than 50% of the devices work the first time you try them. Some you have to install the drivers before the first time you plug in the device, others you have to run screaming from the drivers because they will eat your soul...
Actually... considering Extreme Programming uses "partner" editing with two guys working together at a single keyboard, this just seems like a logical extension. 2 computers that are part of the same hacking session.
Of course, the idea of someone trying to "fix bugs" and "optimize" another persons code while they are writing it seems a bit counter to how I'd envisioned partner coding and EP to work. For one thing, I thought optimization was supposed to wait until there was test evidence to support the need for it...
Ah well, not like I'd know. I'm still living in the dark ages of structured design and object oriented programming practices. Why even when I'm given an assistant to work closely with, I use him to gather test data and brush up the "friendly" portions of my code rather than expecting him to muck around in the guts of stuff...
If google is begining to provide results where all but 3 of the top 30 spots in a search for anything are a single page, then I doubt I'll be using it much longer.
I mean, google worked great when it first came out, but the rankings seem to have gotten steadily worse since then. How much longer before it's not worth using?
Random number generator state... Couldn't I just keep a copy of data fed into the machine instead? Presumably then I could "re-run" with the same result.
Of course, I'm curious why the random generator "state" would be so infeasible to store. Isn't this a big part of what "seed" values and the like are all about?
Myself, I'm more of a command line junkie... I tend to fit in wherever I can and inconvenience myself before inconveniencing my system. This grows out of the idea that I can generally do things quicker by hand than write a tool to do them. For some reason, my own brain is still easier to program than a computer no matter how much I practice on the computer.
So, I'm always on the lookout for good and useful tools, but I seldom write them myself, unless dire need arises (or I can't squelsh the desire!).
Then you can't possibly have worked on a large project...
I realized shortly after I wrote this line: I have yet to see humans create something completely new that they cannot understand. That it wasn't entirely accurate... The internet itself is probably the best example of a human creation humans don't fully understand.
Of course, with most of your examples I'd have to disagree. An airplane, modern weapon system, medical instrument. All of these can be understood by individual humans or groups thereof. It might be difficult for one human to grasp everything all at once, but ultimately the behaviour designed into these systems by humans is predictable and understandable. In fact, predictibility and understandability are a big part of "good design" especially on large projects. Of course, the "big picture" may only be apparent to the chief architect. However, if the big picture is weak or missing, that usually becomes painfully apparent.
The difference between mostly understanding, but leaving out detail due to sheer size and not being able to even approach an understanding is the difference between understanding a computer and understanding a human being.
For the record, I consider acurate prediction to be a requirement for understanding, many modern thinkers seem to disagree on this point.
We have a very strong inductive evidence leading us to believe that if a computer problem really is at issue, it can be understood, because every other problem has been understandable.
With Psychiatry we have strong inductive reasons to believe quite the opposite. Human behaviour if studied further will just raise more questions.
we will not be able to predict exactly how it is behaving
In my experience bad software is usually categorized by unpredectible behaviour while good software generally coincides with the opposite. So, while the rules of how software behaves becomes more complex, you can bet your bippy that there is someone out there categorizing that behaviour and making sure there is one output for every set of inputs.
The last thing I want in a word-processor is something that takes 2 hours to load when I accidentally double click an associated file and then decides to go off and pick daisies when I tell it to get lost.
Microsoft Word 21XX will clearly not need us to search menus if we want to change the formatting of the text.
Oooh! Does this mean I can hope for the return of the command line?! Wait, maybe you're just talking about hot keys?
am I the only one out here who thinks that you should be able to have a million items in your system tray without any hitches.
Um, it isn't quantity that's the problem here: Gator, Bonzi buddy, and friends are all basically malware designed with someone else's best interests at heart.
I believe the old saying was "Garbage in garbage out."
I find myself more and more of a liability on older systems, I just make them crash too much, does anybody else have this problem?
Bah, I have a friend like you, just make sure you always have 4 times as much memory as the next guy. More than likely you're always opening more apps at once than you need and ignoring system resource limitations... Personally I wouldn't let you close to one of my computers! (well, maybe my wife's. It needs re-installed anyways)
You're right that certain complex behaviours exhibited by complex systems can seem an awful lot like neurosis. Of course computers still have a long ways to go if they're ever to become nearly as complex or "interesting" as human beings.
This line from the original article makes me uneasy however:
Since the causes and remedies of "crazy" machine behavior will eventually lie beyond the understanding of humans, the solution to Douglas Adams's dilemma posed at the beginning of this chapter may well require built-in mechanical psychologists and psychiatrists.
I think this over-estimates the use of much of psychology and under-estimates the ability of humans to understand what they have created. At least in the modern technological scene. It also seems to under-estimate human intelligence while at the same time over-estimating the artifacts created by that intelligence...
I have yet to see humans create something completely new that they cannot understand. In fact, the question has existed for quite some time whether this is even possible. To create something that *cannot* be understood by the creator. A similar long standing question, whether a thing can fully "understand" itself, would seem important in this discussion.
I think it is quite obvious from digicaf's post that he is not a luddite... Subtle knowledge about data throughput and thermal radiation doesn't come from ignoring technology.
Are there any self aware computers around today? Certainly none I've ever seen. Does this mean they are impossible, or even highly unlikely? I think the answer is most acurately "no one knows". Can computers "change" or "reprogram" themselves? Most certainly! In fact, modern compilers and interpreters are programs that do quite a bit of the work in writing programs for humans.
Further, the behaviour that can occur when a few minor variances are introduced at the compiler level, say by not re-combiling an old binary linked to a new one, can often exhibit behaviour that seems very neurotic. The resultant program can behave much like the source would lead one to expect, only exhibiting strange behaviour in certain isolated circumstances... As a developer it is very easy to simply explain the whole gamut of a failed test run as simply a "dirty build". Trying to understand and catalogue that behavior, by contrast, would be much more difficult. In fact, forget miscompiles, many programs can exhibit strange behaviour just running on different computers if certain strict rules and guidelines are not followed.
The behaviour exhibited by computers can be strange, unusual and unpredictable and often feels worthy of the term "neurotic". Of course, the breadth and depth of such neurosis, is not as great for computers as humans, and understanding is much more accessible on a computer. So, computers are a long ways from being as "complex" or "interesting" as human beings, however dismissing complex computer behaviour using simple "labels" and similar expalanations without a full understanding can be a problem just as it can be when dismissing human behaviour. The difference is only by degree.
just like humans are incapable of changing or analyzing much of how their own brain works
I suppose this would make education and philosophy hopeless and useless persuits?
What ever happened simply to static web pages that are nice and simple, and dish out the data without all that overhead?
Or better yet a set of simple, concise data files and a batch method for converting it to static HTML after updates for display on the web. What's this internet coming to?
"ignoring the problems of today" is a misquote from ebyrob that shows he missed the fundamental point at hand.
Well... this wasn't meant to be a quote, if it had, I'd have used copy and paste. As to missing the point, I'd like to think I understood it (at least mostly), but was rather disturbed with the form in which it came. You've certainly stated the idealized gist of the original post with more eloquance than I could have mustered.
The words ultimate solution and because it's one step closer to a Replicator combined with the overall tone of the post and my experience with overly optimistic software and the developers who write it seemed to set off a warning light in my head. Play, imagination, really big dreams... These can all be good things, and can have unimaginable benefits, but it is important (and often not easy) to tell the difference between what is real (or useful) and what is not. Those without a clue in this area tend to become very good at showing it. I suppose I simply need to learn to let them.
There is another name for what you descrige as ways to 'inspire': Parroting.
It's funny. Parroting is exactly what I thought this statement described:
I can't think of a better way to inspire it than to give the designer several examples of near ideal systems, and the consequences that come from them.
To recap your list of inspirations: Philo Farnsworth - A brilliant man, whose inspiration for the television was, purported to be, plowing a field. No "near ideal examples" there.
The Wright Brothers - A couple of bicycle builders who managed to get a plane to fly a bit further than other US citizens at a critical time in history, and spent the next few years squeezing the patent they received, on an idea dating from Greek mythology, for all it was worth. Come to think of it, powered flight was definitely a "problem of their day".
Apple Computer - A few guys who made substatial but incremental improvements to a platform, then made it as accessible as possible to the general public. Certainly interesting stuff, but not that impressive compared with true scientific or mathematical "greatness". Once again, considering how many others worked on similar projects, they seem to have tackled, rather than ignored, a problem of their day.
Doug Engelbart - Another truly bright guy. Seems, at least partly, responsible for many things we take for granted in computing today. Like Mr. Farnsworth, he seems to be more a self-starter, than one who relies on present exampes for inspiration.
So, yes, it seems that truly great inspiration is something that comes from inside. However, I wasn't responding to a post about that type of inspiration. I was responding to the idea that the best way to inspire others is to show them an existing solution. There are more fundamental issues, in any problem set than that, and a more fundamental way to get people into the right mode of thinking about a particular problem...
The kinds of thinking that bother me in the original post are twofold:
1) The idea that a microwave with a bar-code reader is in any way shape or form a substitute for a matter replicator.
2) The idea that creating systems and/or solutions starts with looking at existing solutions, rather than a rigorous analysis of the problem space.
If I didn't live in a country where microwaves with cue-cats are often passed off as matter replicators. Or if I'd never seen a software project where the requirements were the code listing for the last version of the project and the "higher ups" seemed to consider this just peachy, I might not worry so much about those ideas being passed off as useful.
Looking at existing solutions can certainly be a useful step along the way to newer and better solutions, but it is certainly not the first step along the way. An existing solution might inspire you to create a better user interface, but it isn't going to inspire you to create a user interface in the first place, or even help you (much) in understanding what a user inteface is.
From my last comment: Put the designer in a room with an existing implementation and let them watch the process to be improved unfold before them.
Perhaps this wasn't as clear as I'd hoped. As an example, if you'd like to create something useful for food preparation, spend some time in the kitchen watching people cook and learning to cook yourself. This is a much better way to begin understanding the problem than watching Star Trek re-runs.
let me guess, you don't need to learn programming methodology, you can just 'pick it up' as you go?
I fail to see what any of this has to do with methodology. Last I checked, many good engineering practices applied equally as well to software development as they did to more classical disciplines. Starting a solution by properly defining the problem being very high on the list of "equally useful" techniques.
In a more practical mode, there is a great deal in software that is done by ignoring, "what will get the job done today" and paying attention to "what will bring me closer to an ultimate solution."
In your pursuit of the "big picture", don't forget: It's still just a picture, and not the only one at that. In fact, "ignoring the problems of today" is a great way to write some truly useless software, or design some truly useless junk.
give the designer several examples of near ideal systems
"examples" of "ideal" systems? Is this a contradiction in terms or just an oxymoron? Oh wait, you said "near ideal". Well. Who's definition of near? And what ideal? It gets very difficult to quantify such a qualifier when parties often can't even agree on which problems are important today, let alone what the direction should be in the future. Good examples are very useful, but a rigorous analysis of a poor system can often lead to better insight than a poor analysis of a good system.
I can't think of a better way to inspire
Put the designer in a room with an existing implementation and let them watch the process to be improved unfold before them. *thats* a better way to inspire. The focus, initially at least, should be on the problem to be solved, not the method of solution, and particularly not on "how good" the last solution was.
Just last Saturday night (oke, the one before this last weekend) I was visiting my in-laws for my father in-law's birthday party. Towards the middle of the party his sister called hoping to get help with a computer problem. She'd had a power outage and couldn't get her computer to boot. So, my father in-law asks me to take a swing at it...
Assuming she had some fried memory or other goodies in there, my immediate response was to find out what her local support options were, and start pointing her down that road. To be nice (What can I do, it's a birthday party!) I spent 1/2 hour walking her through resetting the bios to see if that would shed light on the situation. Wouldn't you know the silly thing starts working as soon as she reboots with cleared settings.
Oh well, at least I avoided giving out my phone number.
3: Allow total restriction for the duration of the copyright term including any DRM and overriding first sale.
I think it's important to be very careful here. 28 years is still a pretty long while to live in a "pay per view" world. Especially considering I've never touched anything on the "pay per view" model and never will. Where does that leave me for anything under 28 years old?
Reducing copyright terms would perhaps work for a while, but how can we gaurantee that someone won't just try to jack them up again? Further, once that 28 years becomes up, how can we be sure that the law hasn't been changed to rescind our ability to aquire the available works?
Bottom line. I have an idea of what's fair in copyright and it is everything you said with policing of the copyright as it stood pre-DMCA rather than any DRM at all. Perhaps I'll think about swaying from this hard-line when there's a meaningful compromise on the table.
Slashdot Mirror
My experience with USB is that about half of the devices work out of the box. Of the other half, only about 80% work *ever* for a random flavor of windows, let alone Linux. So, you have to be very very careful what you buy.
As for serial ports... there are usually only a few of them, and less than 50% of devices work out of the box, but the advantage is 99% of everything that doesn't work right away can be made to work in some fashion.
So, I'm still left wondering which one I prefer in many cases. USB: Fairly likely to work, but if it doesn't work I'm screwed (Lots of crappy vendor drivers, and closed attitudes out there make this worse). -or- Serial: Fairly likely to be a headache, but nearly gauranteed I can make it work given some time.
Maybe a decent USB sniffer would help my attitude about the whole mess...
Well... This is all getting a bit off topic. My point was every piece of software is subject to testing, debugging and "validation" of some form or another. Semi-random and irreproducable behaviour is most often a mistake rather than something useful.
Even random number generators can be tested to be sure they behave properly. In their case checking a statistically significant sampling of inputs and outputs to see just how "good" the randomness is would probably be adequate. Of course, this type of statistical or partial testing has also gotten vendors into trouble. As an example consider the case of floating point co-processors in early Pentium chips.
Actually... according to the more complete scientific article posted earlier, the balls were charged and left in electrostatic equilibrium. So, no current and no magnetic field.
It was the attraction and repulsion of the electric charges themselves that was blamed for the rotation induced...
That seems to make more sense... sounds like these boys have found a new way to make a (potentially) really small motor using scientific laws that are about 200 years old. Kudos to them, and great engineering work!
But hardly the makings of a scientific revolution...
However, USB makes it easier.
I think that's a question more than the answer...
Serial ports were pretty darned easy to use in their day, albiet a bit slow at times. Is USB really bringing anything new to the table, or are we going to continue to see difficult to use software and hardware manufactured and sold because no one really cares about quality or ease of use?
Personally my experience with USB is that less than 50% of the devices work the first time you try them. Some you have to install the drivers before the first time you plug in the device, others you have to run screaming from the drivers because they will eat your soul...
Developers who are that possessive of code they write are a bloody pain in the ass to work with.
Ya, they're almost as bad as the ones who don't take possesion (or the responsibilities that go along with it) for anything...
Actually... considering Extreme Programming uses "partner" editing with two guys working together at a single keyboard, this just seems like a logical extension. 2 computers that are part of the same hacking session.
Of course, the idea of someone trying to "fix bugs" and "optimize" another persons code while they are writing it seems a bit counter to how I'd envisioned partner coding and EP to work. For one thing, I thought optimization was supposed to wait until there was test evidence to support the need for it...
Ah well, not like I'd know. I'm still living in the dark ages of structured design and object oriented programming practices. Why even when I'm given an assistant to work closely with, I use him to gather test data and brush up the "friendly" portions of my code rather than expecting him to muck around in the guts of stuff...
If google is begining to provide results where all but 3 of the top 30 spots in a search for anything are a single page, then I doubt I'll be using it much longer.
I mean, google worked great when it first came out, but the rankings seem to have gotten steadily worse since then. How much longer before it's not worth using?
Random number generator state... Couldn't I just keep a copy of data fed into the machine instead? Presumably then I could "re-run" with the same result.
Of course, I'm curious why the random generator "state" would be so infeasible to store. Isn't this a big part of what "seed" values and the like are all about?
I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back.
;-)
I don't know why you'd want to
Myself, I'm more of a command line junkie... I tend to fit in wherever I can and inconvenience myself before inconveniencing my system. This grows out of the idea that I can generally do things quicker by hand than write a tool to do them. For some reason, my own brain is still easier to program than a computer no matter how much I practice on the computer.
So, I'm always on the lookout for good and useful tools, but I seldom write them myself, unless dire need arises (or I can't squelsh the desire!).
Then you can't possibly have worked on a large project...
I realized shortly after I wrote this line:
I have yet to see humans create something completely new that they cannot understand.
That it wasn't entirely accurate... The internet itself is probably the best example of a human creation humans don't fully understand.
Of course, with most of your examples I'd have to disagree. An airplane, modern weapon system, medical instrument. All of these can be understood by individual humans or groups thereof. It might be difficult for one human to grasp everything all at once, but ultimately the behaviour designed into these systems by humans is predictable and understandable. In fact, predictibility and understandability are a big part of "good design" especially on large projects. Of course, the "big picture" may only be apparent to the chief architect. However, if the big picture is weak or missing, that usually becomes painfully apparent.
The difference between mostly understanding, but leaving out detail due to sheer size and not being able to even approach an understanding is the difference between understanding a computer and understanding a human being.
For the record, I consider acurate prediction to be a requirement for understanding, many modern thinkers seem to disagree on this point.
Sounds like you're talking about Bloxsom [raelity.org].
I wasn't... but I will be next time!
Unfortuneately very little...
We have a very strong inductive evidence leading us to believe that if a computer problem really is at issue, it can be understood, because every other problem has been understandable.
With Psychiatry we have strong inductive reasons to believe quite the opposite. Human behaviour if studied further will just raise more questions.
we will not be able to predict exactly how it is behaving
In my experience bad software is usually categorized by unpredectible behaviour while good software generally coincides with the opposite. So, while the rules of how software behaves becomes more complex, you can bet your bippy that there is someone out there categorizing that behaviour and making sure there is one output for every set of inputs.
The last thing I want in a word-processor is something that takes 2 hours to load when I accidentally double click an associated file and then decides to go off and pick daisies when I tell it to get lost.
Microsoft Word 21XX will clearly not need us to search menus if we want to change the formatting of the text.
Oooh! Does this mean I can hope for the return of the command line?! Wait, maybe you're just talking about hot keys?
am I the only one out here who thinks that you should be able to have a million items in your system tray without any hitches.
Um, it isn't quantity that's the problem here: Gator, Bonzi buddy, and friends are all basically malware designed with someone else's best interests at heart.
I believe the old saying was "Garbage in garbage out."
I find myself more and more of a liability on older systems, I just make them crash too much, does anybody else have this problem?
Bah, I have a friend like you, just make sure you always have 4 times as much memory as the next guy. More than likely you're always opening more apps at once than you need and ignoring system resource limitations... Personally I wouldn't let you close to one of my computers! (well, maybe my wife's. It needs re-installed anyways)
You're right that certain complex behaviours exhibited by complex systems can seem an awful lot like neurosis. Of course computers still have a long ways to go if they're ever to become nearly as complex or "interesting" as human beings.
This line from the original article makes me uneasy however:
Since the causes and remedies of "crazy" machine behavior will eventually lie beyond the understanding of humans, the solution to Douglas Adams's dilemma posed at the beginning of this chapter may well require built-in mechanical psychologists and psychiatrists.
I think this over-estimates the use of much of psychology and under-estimates the ability of humans to understand what they have created. At least in the modern technological scene. It also seems to under-estimate human intelligence while at the same time over-estimating the artifacts created by that intelligence...
I have yet to see humans create something completely new that they cannot understand. In fact, the question has existed for quite some time whether this is even possible. To create something that *cannot* be understood by the creator. A similar long standing question, whether a thing can fully "understand" itself, would seem important in this discussion.
Have you ever even programmed a computer?
I think it is quite obvious from digicaf's post that he is not a luddite... Subtle knowledge about data throughput and thermal radiation doesn't come from ignoring technology.
Are there any self aware computers around today? Certainly none I've ever seen. Does this mean they are impossible, or even highly unlikely? I think the answer is most acurately "no one knows". Can computers "change" or "reprogram" themselves? Most certainly! In fact, modern compilers and interpreters are programs that do quite a bit of the work in writing programs for humans.
Further, the behaviour that can occur when a few minor variances are introduced at the compiler level, say by not re-combiling an old binary linked to a new one, can often exhibit behaviour that seems very neurotic. The resultant program can behave much like the source would lead one to expect, only exhibiting strange behaviour in certain isolated circumstances... As a developer it is very easy to simply explain the whole gamut of a failed test run as simply a "dirty build". Trying to understand and catalogue that behavior, by contrast, would be much more difficult. In fact, forget miscompiles, many programs can exhibit strange behaviour just running on different computers if certain strict rules and guidelines are not followed.
The behaviour exhibited by computers can be strange, unusual and unpredictable and often feels worthy of the term "neurotic". Of course, the breadth and depth of such neurosis, is not as great for computers as humans, and understanding is much more accessible on a computer. So, computers are a long ways from being as "complex" or "interesting" as human beings, however dismissing complex computer behaviour using simple "labels" and similar expalanations without a full understanding can be a problem just as it can be when dismissing human behaviour. The difference is only by degree.
just like humans are incapable of changing or analyzing much of how their own brain works
I suppose this would make education and philosophy hopeless and useless persuits?
What ever happened simply to static web pages that are nice and simple, and dish out the data without all that overhead?
Or better yet a set of simple, concise data files and a batch method for converting it to static HTML after updates for display on the web. What's this internet coming to?
"ignoring the problems of today" is a misquote from ebyrob that shows he missed the fundamental point at hand.
Well... this wasn't meant to be a quote, if it had, I'd have used copy and paste. As to missing the point, I'd like to think I understood it (at least mostly), but was rather disturbed with the form in which it came. You've certainly stated the idealized gist of the original post with more eloquance than I could have mustered.
The words ultimate solution and because it's one step closer to a Replicator combined with the overall tone of the post and my experience with overly optimistic software and the developers who write it seemed to set off a warning light in my head. Play, imagination, really big dreams... These can all be good things, and can have unimaginable benefits, but it is important (and often not easy) to tell the difference between what is real (or useful) and what is not. Those without a clue in this area tend to become very good at showing it. I suppose I simply need to learn to let them.
Good points. Perhaps I'm turning into a "dull boy".
There is another name for what you descrige as ways to 'inspire': Parroting.
It's funny. Parroting is exactly what I thought this statement described:
I can't think of a better way to inspire it than to give the designer several examples of near ideal systems, and the consequences that come from them.
To recap your list of inspirations:
Philo Farnsworth - A brilliant man, whose inspiration for the television was, purported to be, plowing a field. No "near ideal examples" there.
The Wright Brothers - A couple of bicycle builders who managed to get a plane to fly a bit further than other US citizens at a critical time in history, and spent the next few years squeezing the patent they received, on an idea dating from Greek mythology, for all it was worth. Come to think of it, powered flight was definitely a "problem of their day".
Apple Computer - A few guys who made substatial but incremental improvements to a platform, then made it as accessible as possible to the general public. Certainly interesting stuff, but not that impressive compared with true scientific or mathematical "greatness". Once again, considering how many others worked on similar projects, they seem to have tackled, rather than ignored, a problem of their day.
Doug Engelbart - Another truly bright guy. Seems, at least partly, responsible for many things we take for granted in computing today. Like Mr. Farnsworth, he seems to be more a self-starter, than one who relies on present exampes for inspiration.
So, yes, it seems that truly great inspiration is something that comes from inside. However, I wasn't responding to a post about that type of inspiration. I was responding to the idea that the best way to inspire others is to show them an existing solution. There are more fundamental issues, in any problem set than that, and a more fundamental way to get people into the right mode of thinking about a particular problem...
The kinds of thinking that bother me in the original post are twofold:
1) The idea that a microwave with a bar-code reader is in any way shape or form a substitute for a matter replicator.
2) The idea that creating systems and/or solutions starts with looking at existing solutions, rather than a rigorous analysis of the problem space.
If I didn't live in a country where microwaves with cue-cats are often passed off as matter replicators. Or if I'd never seen a software project where the requirements were the code listing for the last version of the project and the "higher ups" seemed to consider this just peachy, I might not worry so much about those ideas being passed off as useful.
Looking at existing solutions can certainly be a useful step along the way to newer and better solutions, but it is certainly not the first step along the way. An existing solution might inspire you to create a better user interface, but it isn't going to inspire you to create a user interface in the first place, or even help you (much) in understanding what a user inteface is.
From my last comment:
Put the designer in a room with an existing implementation and let them watch the process to be improved unfold before them.
Perhaps this wasn't as clear as I'd hoped. As an example, if you'd like to create something useful for food preparation, spend some time in the kitchen watching people cook and learning to cook yourself. This is a much better way to begin understanding the problem than watching Star Trek re-runs.
let me guess, you don't need to learn programming methodology, you can just 'pick it up' as you go?
I fail to see what any of this has to do with methodology. Last I checked, many good engineering practices applied equally as well to software development as they did to more classical disciplines. Starting a solution by properly defining the problem being very high on the list of "equally useful" techniques.
In a more practical mode, there is a great deal in software that is done by ignoring, "what will get the job done today" and paying attention to "what will bring me closer to an ultimate solution."
In your pursuit of the "big picture", don't forget: It's still just a picture, and not the only one at that. In fact, "ignoring the problems of today" is a great way to write some truly useless software, or design some truly useless junk.
give the designer several examples of near ideal systems
"examples" of "ideal" systems? Is this a contradiction in terms or just an oxymoron? Oh wait, you said "near ideal". Well. Who's definition of near? And what ideal? It gets very difficult to quantify such a qualifier when parties often can't even agree on which problems are important today, let alone what the direction should be in the future. Good examples are very useful, but a rigorous analysis of a poor system can often lead to better insight than a poor analysis of a good system.
I can't think of a better way to inspire
Put the designer in a room with an existing implementation and let them watch the process to be improved unfold before them. *thats* a better way to inspire. The focus, initially at least, should be on the problem to be solved, not the method of solution, and particularly not on "how good" the last solution was.
Just last Saturday night (oke, the one before this last weekend) I was visiting my in-laws for my father in-law's birthday party. Towards the middle of the party his sister called hoping to get help with a computer problem. She'd had a power outage and couldn't get her computer to boot. So, my father in-law asks me to take a swing at it...
Assuming she had some fried memory or other goodies in there, my immediate response was to find out what her local support options were, and start pointing her down that road. To be nice (What can I do, it's a birthday party!) I spent 1/2 hour walking her through resetting the bios to see if that would shed light on the situation. Wouldn't you know the silly thing starts working as soon as she reboots with cleared settings.
Oh well, at least I avoided giving out my phone number.
3: Allow total restriction for the duration of the copyright term including any DRM and overriding first sale.
I think it's important to be very careful here. 28 years is still a pretty long while to live in a "pay per view" world. Especially considering I've never touched anything on the "pay per view" model and never will. Where does that leave me for anything under 28 years old?
Reducing copyright terms would perhaps work for a while, but how can we gaurantee that someone won't just try to jack them up again? Further, once that 28 years becomes up, how can we be sure that the law hasn't been changed to rescind our ability to aquire the available works?
Bottom line. I have an idea of what's fair in copyright and it is everything you said with policing of the copyright as it stood pre-DMCA rather than any DRM at all. Perhaps I'll think about swaying from this hard-line when there's a meaningful compromise on the table.