For Konqueror at least it's not any extra code. Maybe some developers are used to having to develop everything from scratch, but here in GNU/Linux we have these lovely things called APIs.
Any KDE application can get spellchecking in forms with no effort. It comes with the KDE libraries. That's just a sensible way to do things, and one reason that Konqueror and applications like it will always require less effect to rock - they inherit improvements made across the platform.
Bang on the mark. There's also something to be said for unintuitive interfaces that are great once you learn them. Look at the disaster zone that is Blender, or any other 3D studio for that matter, and lots of audio software too. The idea is that, while they might be a royal pain in the arse to learn, they're supposed to be much easier to use once you get the hang of them.
I've used The GIMP for about five years now so I'm completely used to the interface, and it's really nice. I love having multiple windows, being able to easily minimise some or shove them on different virtual desktops (you poor Windows users!). I've been trying out Krita recently, which has a single window design, and I just don't like it, it feels to cluttered. I find The GIMP much easier to use than I did Photoshop back when I was a Windows user.
So there you go, not intuitive but completely familiar:)
Democracy preceded Plato, you know, and summing up his opinion of democracy as "mob rule" is a bit misleading particularly because his main concern was with the dictatorship of the orators, which has no parallel in Digg.
Also, the fact that "important users" with fans might cause lots of people to digg a story rather undermines your point. Why would they be deemed important? Perhaps because people trust them, because they have a good reputation, and so on? It's just a less transparent, unsystematic version of slashdot karma.
Free Software is motivated by the moral need to create a Free Way to use computers -- to free software users from their "masters".
Open Source software is motivated by the practical advantages of the Open Source development process.
Well, yes. But one can go further to point out that Open Source is simply a development methodology. If you distill Open Source according to the Open Source Institute and Eric Raymond down you get nothing really questioning the way we think of property, community and the place of information in society. If proprietary methodologies happened to create better software, Open Source advocates couldn't really complain. Free Software, by contrast, is the same development methodology as well as a radical (and thus far ill defined) philosophy with political, economic and social implications.
The point the author of the parent article misses is that to people outside the relatively small circle of programmers and tech managers, development methodologies are uninteresting and unimportant. To governments, NGOs and academics, Free Software is very interesting. To everyone else, both are dull;-) So long as each movement encapsulates something different, they'll be relevant. And I don't see that going away unless everyone ceases to care about freedom, community and property laws, or businesses and programmers find the radical implications and approach of Free Software palatable.
Or you could just point out that if a journalist ever makes a correction, the publication will include that prominently in the article, or publish a correction in a later edition.
If that really were the author posting that comment, she's either an idiot or LinuxWorld are an untrustworthy news source.
So you think that a litigious culture is the solution? America has to be one of the most litigious countries in the world, and yet companies continue to get away with astonishing acts of incompetence and negligence.
Without law prohibiting actions that could endanger society or the environment, you'd surely have to wait until after a problem to sue based on criminal damage, manslaughter or some such charge? Would you be so keen on your litigious solution after half of your house has been demolished, killing your wife or housemate?
Surely a more rational approach would be to prohibit these kinds of practices, regulate to stop them from happening in the first place, and litigate where companies fail to comply? At least that's the model that is generally accepted in Europe, and we are making great strides towards weaving corporate responsibility into our laws so that we aren't left with consumer associations and individuals trying to sue for malpractice after disasters.
Corporations shouldn't be able to shield their owners from liability
No, they shouldn't. But that's an argument against the absurd legal protections that the US Govt affords corporations. It's a separate issue to regulation.
the government shouldn't be allowed to impose laws not passed by any legislative body (which is what a regulation is)
I don't know the full details of this round of legislation & regulatory documents, but you seem to be disputing the operation of government in just about every democracy (AFAIK). You are suggesting that a national legislative body ought to not only pass the legislation defining what is to be regulated, but that it should then pass the implementation of that legislation - the regulation - as well!
If executive bodies aren't invested with the ability to create and implement regulation based upon previous legislation, you'd either need an enormous and even more beurocratic legislative body to check over the regulation, or you'd not have regulation at all. Why not trust the legislative and judicial branches of power to check on the executive?
Of course, as I said in another post, the US system may be an exceptional case due to its inability to adapt to various factors including corporate influence. So then you're onto the issue of how the US system deals with those factors, not of regulation in general.
Thank goodness someone can resist the kneejerk libertarian cry against Government involvement. Of course it's good that someone regulates this.
Why?
To ensure basic passenger safety; to ensure that they can cover themselves with insurance; to ensure that the vehicles don't destroy the environment more than they should; to ensure that commisioned flights aren't turned into effective kamikaze weapons.
There are all kinds of considerations here that would either require the industry to establish a credible self-regulatory body, for a citizen's association to establish credible certification body, or for Government to step in and regulate it. Now how many industries regulate themselves honestly and scrupulously? How many consumer association bodies have the power to bring down corporate malpractice? The void has to be filled by Government.
It's not the nanny state, nor is it beurocratic cronyism. It's protecting the nation from a bloody-minded selfish few.
Of course, the state can be a bad regulator, as US institutions often are, but that's another matter.
You're essentially saying that we shouldn't embrace any kind of derived work that isn't almost identical to the original. Why?
As far as I'm concerned, derived works that make significant modifications are a great thing. Have you never read any revisionings of great plays, or listened to any covers or remixes of great songs?
If anything, we don't get enough of this sort of work. That's partly because of prohibitive financial and legal considerations (ever tried to license a remix?) and partly because people have this stupid idea that we should "stay true to the original".
Granted with cultural works it's less likely that a derived work will be as good as the original, but getting around these issues is precisely what the free software, free culture movement is all about.
Hah, well here's a lesson for people being interviewed: never mention a buzzword!
Short answer: KDE plans pervasive search.
To put it in context, Aaron was being interviewed about usability in the KDE desktop, and talked a little about some plans for pervasive search technology in the KDE desktop. We're talking about putting meta-data and search technology everywhere, from the help center to the browser to the file dialogue.
Aaron unfortunately mentioned Google, and hey presto, the Internet lights up with silly rumours;-)
Re:KDE and Knome infect X ?
on
The Power of X
·
· Score: 1
You're confusing X.org and freedesktop.org
X.org is a windowing system.
freedesktop.org is an umbrella project bringing together desktop-related Free Software projects.
So X.org is but one of fd.o's many projects, including that clipart library. That certainly isn't going into X.org;-)
The grandparent of this post is also either making things up or very misinformed. X.org have no plans to integrate things like window managers into X. X.org will remain an implementation of the X protocol, and will in fact become increasingly flexible for GUI developers, whether they want a simple window manager or a full desktop environment.
Check you facts before you agree with a Slashdot post;-)
Also, I'm interested when you say you're "open to minimal regulations". Do you count forcing open standards upon IT companies as "minimal"?
For Microsoft to have embraced open standards to the extent that they couldn't have monopolised the OS and Office markets, the US Government would have had to prosecute any company that published any software in the USA that didn't allow full interoperation. That, on the face of it, seems like a pretty huge move into the market to me, akin to forcing car companies to make it easy for 3rd party spare parts manufacturers, or even forcing all businesses in impoverished areas to invest a certain percentage of their revenue in the local economy. All of them can be argued for on grounds of stimulating the market, which is perhaps (I'm guessing) how you'd justify any minimal regulation of the market.
"""But then of course the libertarian crew will shout me down for suggesting that a market alone isn't the best way to regulate industries;-) """
Are you joking? Why would a libertarian shout you down for that? -A Libertarian
Well to begin with, two of the core ideas of liberalism are the free market and small government (with a little "g"). If the market isn't the only regulatory mechanism, then that implies some form of governance, be it from a national government, or an international "authority" (e.g. the UN or ICANN). That's an expansion of government into the free market.
And second, because I've heard too many libertarians play devil's advocate over the Microsoft antitrust case and get themselves into a real muddle, torn between the Ayn Rand nonsense and common sense. Regulation in the IT market to stop Microsoft would either have meant an antitrust authority with real teeth, or laws to tackle the root of the problem, e.g. mandating compatability with established standards, including prosecution of companies that don't release interoperation specifications, etc.
If one were to change the context and talk about regulation and (Tobin style) taxation of financial markets for the sake of keeping people off the poverty line, a libertarian would have to object out of principle.
There's something profoundly strange about reading an article comparing Apple and Microsoft as proprietary vs. open;-)
A more interesting thought experiment (more interesting than I-love-Apple dreaming, that is) would be to imagine a possible world in which Microsoft embraced and developed open standards from the start. Of course there'd be no good business reason for this, but one has to wonder what would have become of OS/2, BeOS, Netscape and other big competitors if they had been able to interoperate with Microsoft products properly.
But then of course the libertarian crew will shout me down for suggesting that a market alone isn't the best way to regulate industries;-)
Bruce Perens... basically says he wants to see it in writing
Well quite. What reason have we got to trust IBM? Just because their current business interests are tied in with the Linux kernel, it doesn't follow that they're never going to attack any Free Software project with patents. They even added the proviso that they won't attack the kernel "unless, of course, we are forced to defend ourselves"!
An executive making a promise like that at a trade show is more or less meaningless. Now if they signed a legal agreement with the Free Software Foundation promising never to attack any GPL-ed project, or even just with the kernel guys, there'd be something to celebrate here.
And of course the wider issue is that they should lobby against software patents full-stop; they damage Free and proprietary software alike, mostly affecting small and medium businesses and community projects. But of course IBM is never going to do that;-)
First, you can't distribute software under the GPL and then further restrict its use with patents.
Second, activists from around Europe, in concert with anti-swpat businesses and political parties, have already got the Parliament to vote for a directive that prohibits software patents, and with more help from concerned Free Software users we can do it again this winter.
And finally, even if the FSF Europe did go and file a load of patents in the European Patent Office, they'd cost so much to defend (~1 million Euros) that they'd be an easy picking for any large company.
One thing that Graham's essay didn't address directly, but that he alluded to, is not only how you can tell a Great Hacker from an ordinary Hacker, but how one can tell how good a Hacker is in general.
He mentioned several key qualities, namely: curiosity, concentration, and the desire for control and autonomy over tools and environment. He suggested that Great Hackers exhibit these qualities, but it's not as though you can judge how curious a person is, or rate their desire for autonomy (they might just be a jerk).
Perhaps the more important thing is that people have these qualities at all. In societies where people seek life quality in television, money and "quality time", we ought to all admire the Hacker's qualities and aspire to them (amongst others, of course). Companies ought not to worry too much about Great Hackers, if they are as rare as Graham suggests, but it's well worth considering how they can improve the lives of their employees and thereby improve their productivity.
Hackers don't just give us great software... they give us a successful model of how we can improve ourselves. Well, except in terms of exercise perhaps;-)
Ah. In the UK, at least, it's still 40 hours, under EU laws. I was referring to an EU-led effort to impose a 36 hour working week across the Union.
Depending on what your priorities are, the calls for longer working hours are either a sensible readjustment to maximise productivity, or a mistaken knee-jerk reaction. In my personal opinion, the potential benefits of moving towards long-term working hour reductions, and moving away from productivity being the sole measure of success, far outweigh the negatives.
In many green and left academic circles, there's growing enthusiasm for ideas like this, and even in some conservative circles (those concerned with conserving their values more than those solely concerned with productivity). The moves in Germany and other countries back to longer working hours could be short-term, or they could become the standard. It depends a lot on how the ideas of working hours pan out in terms of their viability and their effects on society, as well as other factors affecting the balance in political systems (i.e. who is in power, and what their agenda is).
Oh I saw Squeak, and it does look really good. But I was talking more about him doing something to tackle the culture he complains about, and that can't be done simply with another bit of technology.
He's saying two things: there isn't enough cool tech coming out, and there's not a culture of creativity. He tackles the first superbly with his work, but seems "all talk" on the latter.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is to say that there is a lot more to commercialisation than consumers making their preferences known through a market.
Take any cultural field, and you're almost guaranteed that the commercial sector is less innovative and more populist than other sectors. That's fine, but you need the non-commercial and less commercial sectors, otherwise you're left with stagnant pap. Commercial sectors don't like risk, and their whole outlook is based on financial considerations. So it's natural that they are going to be relatively short sighted and conservative, even when it comes to something like computers.
The result? A computing industry that is almost entirely in the "commercial pap" sector, with very little non-commercial stuff going on. This means, amongst other things, not nearly as much innovation within the industry as we could have.
And since the industry has become so commercial, it's not particularly interested in looking at opportunities for enabling us to become more creative. Computer games are merely an example of a sector that, today at least, gives us next to no opportunity for creativity. They could do. The Internet is the best example - most commercial involvement is in the form of "we provide, you consume", or at the very least very cheap, shallow forms of participation. All of the really interesting participation is going on in less-commercial or non-commercial areas of the 'Net.
I'd guess that it's this problem he's talking about. It's not about forcing some idea of creativity upon the public, but changing the industry's focus from profit to enabling creativity.
I wouldn't say that computers have made us less intelligent, but, along with TV and other "one-way" inventions it's certainly helped a lot of people be far less creative in their day to day activities.
How many people now sit around playing computer games or watching TV rather than being creative?
Of course there's a flipside, and a lot of people (including myself) are now far more creative with computers, but I think Alan Kay's point was that very few people fit this description, and that has a lot to do with the focus from the computing industry.
Of course he might talk a little more about why this is the case, which he touches on when he mentions commercialisation, and to analyse why it's become more commercialised and what we can do about it, but either he or the journalist obviously wasn't interested in that.
Indeed, the one theme Alan Kay didn't address is motivation.
The "heydey" he speaks fondly of was one in which a great deal of development was done in labs in Universities or other geeky hacker havens. There you had a culture of creativity, sharing in communities and inspiring each other to create great new things. Perhaps that culture manifested itself in the technology they created.
But now of course we have a culture that is increasingly commercialised and profit-orientated. The result? Exactly the problem he decries... technology with limited vision.
The solution, surely, is not to just hope that somebody creates some great new technology, but to try to change that culture? Putting words like creativity, community and sharing back into the corporate vocabulary would go a long way.
He should just advocate Free Software or Creative Commons or any number of other good initiatives as good solutions, rather than whining and then waxing mysterious about his vapourware, especialy if he's as great a person as he's made out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
For Konqueror at least it's not any extra code. Maybe some developers are used to having to develop everything from scratch, but here in GNU/Linux we have these lovely things called APIs.
Any KDE application can get spellchecking in forms with no effort. It comes with the KDE libraries. That's just a sensible way to do things, and one reason that Konqueror and applications like it will always require less effect to rock - they inherit improvements made across the platform.
Familiarity and intuitivity are not the same
:)
Bang on the mark. There's also something to be said for unintuitive interfaces that are great once you learn them. Look at the disaster zone that is Blender, or any other 3D studio for that matter, and lots of audio software too. The idea is that, while they might be a royal pain in the arse to learn, they're supposed to be much easier to use once you get the hang of them.
I've used The GIMP for about five years now so I'm completely used to the interface, and it's really nice. I love having multiple windows, being able to easily minimise some or shove them on different virtual desktops (you poor Windows users!). I've been trying out Krita recently, which has a single window design, and I just don't like it, it feels to cluttered. I find The GIMP much easier to use than I did Photoshop back when I was a Windows user.
So there you go, not intuitive but completely familiar
Democracy preceded Plato, you know, and summing up his opinion of democracy as "mob rule" is a bit misleading particularly because his main concern was with the dictatorship of the orators, which has no parallel in Digg.
Also, the fact that "important users" with fans might cause lots of people to digg a story rather undermines your point. Why would they be deemed important? Perhaps because people trust them, because they have a good reputation, and so on? It's just a less transparent, unsystematic version of slashdot karma.
Free Software is motivated by the moral need to create a Free Way to use computers -- to free software users from their "masters".
Open Source software is motivated by the practical advantages of the Open Source development process.
;-) So long as each movement encapsulates something different, they'll be relevant. And I don't see that going away unless everyone ceases to care about freedom, community and property laws, or businesses and programmers find the radical implications and approach of Free Software palatable.
Well, yes. But one can go further to point out that Open Source is simply a development methodology. If you distill Open Source according to the Open Source Institute and Eric Raymond down you get nothing really questioning the way we think of property, community and the place of information in society. If proprietary methodologies happened to create better software, Open Source advocates couldn't really complain. Free Software, by contrast, is the same development methodology as well as a radical (and thus far ill defined) philosophy with political, economic and social implications.
The point the author of the parent article misses is that to people outside the relatively small circle of programmers and tech managers, development methodologies are uninteresting and unimportant. To governments, NGOs and academics, Free Software is very interesting. To everyone else, both are dull
Or you could just point out that if a journalist ever makes a correction, the publication will include that prominently in the article, or publish a correction in a later edition.
If that really were the author posting that comment, she's either an idiot or LinuxWorld are an untrustworthy news source.
So no, it's not her.
Right, disentangling your various objections...
People sue all the damn time.
So you think that a litigious culture is the solution? America has to be one of the most litigious countries in the world, and yet companies continue to get away with astonishing acts of incompetence and negligence.
Without law prohibiting actions that could endanger society or the environment, you'd surely have to wait until after a problem to sue based on criminal damage, manslaughter or some such charge? Would you be so keen on your litigious solution after half of your house has been demolished, killing your wife or housemate?
Surely a more rational approach would be to prohibit these kinds of practices, regulate to stop them from happening in the first place, and litigate where companies fail to comply? At least that's the model that is generally accepted in Europe, and we are making great strides towards weaving corporate responsibility into our laws so that we aren't left with consumer associations and individuals trying to sue for malpractice after disasters.
Corporations shouldn't be able to shield their owners from liability
No, they shouldn't. But that's an argument against the absurd legal protections that the US Govt affords corporations. It's a separate issue to regulation.
the government shouldn't be allowed to impose laws not passed by any legislative body (which is what a regulation is)
I don't know the full details of this round of legislation & regulatory documents, but you seem to be disputing the operation of government in just about every democracy (AFAIK). You are suggesting that a national legislative body ought to not only pass the legislation defining what is to be regulated, but that it should then pass the implementation of that legislation - the regulation - as well!
If executive bodies aren't invested with the ability to create and implement regulation based upon previous legislation, you'd either need an enormous and even more beurocratic legislative body to check over the regulation, or you'd not have regulation at all. Why not trust the legislative and judicial branches of power to check on the executive?
Of course, as I said in another post, the US system may be an exceptional case due to its inability to adapt to various factors including corporate influence. So then you're onto the issue of how the US system deals with those factors, not of regulation in general.
Thank goodness someone can resist the kneejerk libertarian cry against Government involvement. Of course it's good that someone regulates this.
Why?
To ensure basic passenger safety; to ensure that they can cover themselves with insurance; to ensure that the vehicles don't destroy the environment more than they should; to ensure that commisioned flights aren't turned into effective kamikaze weapons.
There are all kinds of considerations here that would either require the industry to establish a credible self-regulatory body, for a citizen's association to establish credible certification body, or for Government to step in and regulate it. Now how many industries regulate themselves honestly and scrupulously? How many consumer association bodies have the power to bring down corporate malpractice? The void has to be filled by Government.
It's not the nanny state, nor is it beurocratic cronyism. It's protecting the nation from a bloody-minded selfish few.
Of course, the state can be a bad regulator, as US institutions often are, but that's another matter.
You're essentially saying that we shouldn't embrace any kind of derived work that isn't almost identical to the original. Why?
As far as I'm concerned, derived works that make significant modifications are a great thing. Have you never read any revisionings of great plays, or listened to any covers or remixes of great songs?
If anything, we don't get enough of this sort of work. That's partly because of prohibitive financial and legal considerations (ever tried to license a remix?) and partly because people have this stupid idea that we should "stay true to the original".
Granted with cultural works it's less likely that a derived work will be as good as the original, but getting around these issues is precisely what the free software, free culture movement is all about.
Hah, well here's a lesson for people being interviewed: never mention a buzzword!
;-)
Short answer: KDE plans pervasive search.
To put it in context, Aaron was being interviewed about usability in the KDE desktop, and talked a little about some plans for pervasive search technology in the KDE desktop. We're talking about putting meta-data and search technology everywhere, from the help center to the browser to the file dialogue.
Aaron unfortunately mentioned Google, and hey presto, the Internet lights up with silly rumours
You're confusing X.org and freedesktop.org
;-)
;-)
X.org is a windowing system.
freedesktop.org is an umbrella project bringing together desktop-related Free Software projects.
So X.org is but one of fd.o's many projects, including that clipart library. That certainly isn't going into X.org
The grandparent of this post is also either making things up or very misinformed. X.org have no plans to integrate things like window managers into X. X.org will remain an implementation of the X protocol, and will in fact become increasingly flexible for GUI developers, whether they want a simple window manager or a full desktop environment.
Check you facts before you agree with a Slashdot post
Do you see now how they were related?
Also, I'm interested when you say you're "open to minimal regulations". Do you count forcing open standards upon IT companies as "minimal"?
For Microsoft to have embraced open standards to the extent that they couldn't have monopolised the OS and Office markets, the US Government would have had to prosecute any company that published any software in the USA that didn't allow full interoperation. That, on the face of it, seems like a pretty huge move into the market to me, akin to forcing car companies to make it easy for 3rd party spare parts manufacturers, or even forcing all businesses in impoverished areas to invest a certain percentage of their revenue in the local economy. All of them can be argued for on grounds of stimulating the market, which is perhaps (I'm guessing) how you'd justify any minimal regulation of the market.
"""But then of course the libertarian crew will shout me down for suggesting that a market alone isn't the best way to regulate industries ;-) """
Are you joking? Why would a libertarian shout you down for that? -A Libertarian
Well to begin with, two of the core ideas of liberalism are the free market and small government (with a little "g"). If the market isn't the only regulatory mechanism, then that implies some form of governance, be it from a national government, or an international "authority" (e.g. the UN or ICANN). That's an expansion of government into the free market.
And second, because I've heard too many libertarians play devil's advocate over the Microsoft antitrust case and get themselves into a real muddle, torn between the Ayn Rand nonsense and common sense. Regulation in the IT market to stop Microsoft would either have meant an antitrust authority with real teeth, or laws to tackle the root of the problem, e.g. mandating compatability with established standards, including prosecution of companies that don't release interoperation specifications, etc.
If one were to change the context and talk about regulation and (Tobin style) taxation of financial markets for the sake of keeping people off the poverty line, a libertarian would have to object out of principle.
There's something profoundly strange about reading an article comparing Apple and Microsoft as proprietary vs. open ;-)
;-)
A more interesting thought experiment (more interesting than I-love-Apple dreaming, that is) would be to imagine a possible world in which Microsoft embraced and developed open standards from the start. Of course there'd be no good business reason for this, but one has to wonder what would have become of OS/2, BeOS, Netscape and other big competitors if they had been able to interoperate with Microsoft products properly.
But then of course the libertarian crew will shout me down for suggesting that a market alone isn't the best way to regulate industries
Bruce Perens ... basically says he wants to see it in writing
;-)
Well quite. What reason have we got to trust IBM? Just because their current business interests are tied in with the Linux kernel, it doesn't follow that they're never going to attack any Free Software project with patents. They even added the proviso that they won't attack the kernel "unless, of course, we are forced to defend ourselves"!
An executive making a promise like that at a trade show is more or less meaningless. Now if they signed a legal agreement with the Free Software Foundation promising never to attack any GPL-ed project, or even just with the kernel guys, there'd be something to celebrate here.
And of course the wider issue is that they should lobby against software patents full-stop; they damage Free and proprietary software alike, mostly affecting small and medium businesses and community projects. But of course IBM is never going to do that
You're wrong on three counts.
First, you can't distribute software under the GPL and then further restrict its use with patents.
Second, activists from around Europe, in concert with anti-swpat businesses and political parties, have already got the Parliament to vote for a directive that prohibits software patents, and with more help from concerned Free Software users we can do it again this winter.
And finally, even if the FSF Europe did go and file a load of patents in the European Patent Office, they'd cost so much to defend (~1 million Euros) that they'd be an easy picking for any large company.
One thing that Graham's essay didn't address directly, but that he alluded to, is not only how you can tell a Great Hacker from an ordinary Hacker, but how one can tell how good a Hacker is in general.
;-)
He mentioned several key qualities, namely: curiosity, concentration, and the desire for control and autonomy over tools and environment. He suggested that Great Hackers exhibit these qualities, but it's not as though you can judge how curious a person is, or rate their desire for autonomy (they might just be a jerk).
Perhaps the more important thing is that people have these qualities at all. In societies where people seek life quality in television, money and "quality time", we ought to all admire the Hacker's qualities and aspire to them (amongst others, of course). Companies ought not to worry too much about Great Hackers, if they are as rare as Graham suggests, but it's well worth considering how they can improve the lives of their employees and thereby improve their productivity.
Hackers don't just give us great software... they give us a successful model of how we can improve ourselves. Well, except in terms of exercise perhaps
I see you work for the KDE press department too ;-)
Ah. In the UK, at least, it's still 40 hours, under EU laws. I was referring to an EU-led effort to impose a 36 hour working week across the Union.
Depending on what your priorities are, the calls for longer working hours are either a sensible readjustment to maximise productivity, or a mistaken knee-jerk reaction. In my personal opinion, the potential benefits of moving towards long-term working hour reductions, and moving away from productivity being the sole measure of success, far outweigh the negatives.
In many green and left academic circles, there's growing enthusiasm for ideas like this, and even in some conservative circles (those concerned with conserving their values more than those solely concerned with productivity). The moves in Germany and other countries back to longer working hours could be short-term, or they could become the standard. It depends a lot on how the ideas of working hours pan out in terms of their viability and their effects on society, as well as other factors affecting the balance in political systems (i.e. who is in power, and what their agenda is).
There's still a strong movement in Europe to tackle this. The 40 hour working week should, in the near future, be reduced further to 36 hours.
It's quite possible for us to reduce working hours and maintain the same levels of productivity and pay.
Of course alongside laws on working hours, we also need to tackle the culture of working at home, on the train, on holiday, at weekends, etc.
Oh I saw Squeak, and it does look really good. But I was talking more about him doing something to tackle the culture he complains about, and that can't be done simply with another bit of technology.
He's saying two things: there isn't enough cool tech coming out, and there's not a culture of creativity. He tackles the first superbly with his work, but seems "all talk" on the latter.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is to say that there is a lot more to commercialisation than consumers making their preferences known through a market.
Take any cultural field, and you're almost guaranteed that the commercial sector is less innovative and more populist than other sectors. That's fine, but you need the non-commercial and less commercial sectors, otherwise you're left with stagnant pap. Commercial sectors don't like risk, and their whole outlook is based on financial considerations. So it's natural that they are going to be relatively short sighted and conservative, even when it comes to something like computers.
The result? A computing industry that is almost entirely in the "commercial pap" sector, with very little non-commercial stuff going on. This means, amongst other things, not nearly as much innovation within the industry as we could have.
And since the industry has become so commercial, it's not particularly interested in looking at opportunities for enabling us to become more creative. Computer games are merely an example of a sector that, today at least, gives us next to no opportunity for creativity. They could do. The Internet is the best example - most commercial involvement is in the form of "we provide, you consume", or at the very least very cheap, shallow forms of participation. All of the really interesting participation is going on in less-commercial or non-commercial areas of the 'Net.
I'd guess that it's this problem he's talking about. It's not about forcing some idea of creativity upon the public, but changing the industry's focus from profit to enabling creativity.
I wouldn't say that computers have made us less intelligent, but, along with TV and other "one-way" inventions it's certainly helped a lot of people be far less creative in their day to day activities.
How many people now sit around playing computer games or watching TV rather than being creative?
Of course there's a flipside, and a lot of people (including myself) are now far more creative with computers, but I think Alan Kay's point was that very few people fit this description, and that has a lot to do with the focus from the computing industry.
Of course he might talk a little more about why this is the case, which he touches on when he mentions commercialisation, and to analyse why it's become more commercialised and what we can do about it, but either he or the journalist obviously wasn't interested in that.
Indeed, the one theme Alan Kay didn't address is motivation.
The "heydey" he speaks fondly of was one in which a great deal of development was done in labs in Universities or other geeky hacker havens. There you had a culture of creativity, sharing in communities and inspiring each other to create great new things. Perhaps that culture manifested itself in the technology they created.
But now of course we have a culture that is increasingly commercialised and profit-orientated. The result? Exactly the problem he decries... technology with limited vision.
The solution, surely, is not to just hope that somebody creates some great new technology, but to try to change that culture? Putting words like creativity, community and sharing back into the corporate vocabulary would go a long way.
He should just advocate Free Software or Creative Commons or any number of other good initiatives as good solutions, rather than whining and then waxing mysterious about his vapourware, especialy if he's as great a person as he's made out to be.
Well now you've blown it!
Hint: Security through obscurity requires obscurity.
Not to mention VFolders in KMail ;-)