After a point, users must develop a deeper understanding of how a given software package works in order to use it effectively.
You mentioned word processing as an example... carrying that along, Microsoft Word faced a huge amount of resistance from WordPerfect users who had internalized WordPerfect's 'stream-of-markup' model for representing formatted text. In both cases, you could highlight text and make it bold, but WordPerfect's model was much clearer to more advanced users. Microsoft has tried to replicate some of this over the years with 'show formatting', but it isn't as effective because the underlying data model is so much more complex. (Where does formatting come from? The character, paragraph, paragraph style... and on and on.)
I should point out that I'm using the term 'data model' vs. 'data structure' deliberately. I would agree with you that users probably don't care about the specific representation for WordPerfect's 'stream of tags'.... only that it's there and has a set of well defined and predictable operations.
Most of the ergonomic mice I've seen fix about half the ergonomic problem with mice. They focus on the position of the user's hand and wrist, ignoring the fact that on a desktop PC operated by a right handed user, the mouse is located to the right of the keyboard, past the arrow keys and numeric keypad. Any amount of mouse use involves either moving the keyboard to the left or holding your arm extended to the right for a potentially extended period of time. I'm not an expert, but this seems far removed from the recommendations of balanced posture that most ergonomics experts tend to advocate. By that argument, you'd almost be better off using a TrackPoint and trying to focus as much as possible on using the keyboard instead of the pointing device.
So you posted to let me know that I was posting in spite of the fact that, as I posted, the original poster was no longer posting. Does that about sum it up?
Well, we're all 'special' in our own unique ways.:-)
To be frank, I wouldn't have been quite so harsh (ass-like, if you wish) if he hadn't just happened to make one of mistakes that proved exactly my point about the difference between cons cells and lists.
"Based on your argument C doesn't have arrays, just pointers with some syntactic sugar."
I'd actually agree with that.... A bit of trivia: in C, what's the difference between a[b] and b[a]?...... Nothing, they are semantically equivalent to *(a + b) and *(b + a).
Keep in mind that I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing: in the case of Lisp lists, the added flexibilty that comes from their representation can be tremendously useful. However, it does complicate things. Just as an example, consider what happens when you define a function that traverses a list. Since Lisp lists can't be identified as being finite until you traverse them, you need to either be willing to tolerate functions that don't end when passed certain kinds of 'lists' or include extra baggage to detect when they're in an infinite list. Lisp also doesn't make the guarantee that the last 'next list' in a list is even a list at all: another edge case that's introduced by the fact that Lisp doesn't have first class lists.
Something else to consider is that Lisp doesn't even have to have cons cells at all. There's nothing to keep them from being represented internally as structures, arrays, or even closures. In other words, not only does the LISt Processing language not have lists as a first class type, it doesn't even have to have their component cons cells as a first class type. Lists can entirely be implemented using types the original poster seems to believe Lisp doesn't even have at all. Which brings me to the second reason I was an ass in my response... my experience has been that blanket statements tend to oversimplify things and can ultimately lead to bad decisions. If this guy has really reduced Lisp to nested lists, Perl to hash tables, Embedded programming to arrays, and Databases to B-trees, I question his ability to think critically in any amount of depth about software engineering problems. Of course, he could also be the best developer on the planet... After all, this is Slashdot, so you do have allow for the possibility of incompletely thought through 'pissing contest' posts. Which is the third and final reason I was somewhat an ass.:-)
At the very least the original poster has shown the presence of mind not to keep posting in this thread..
Dude, I was arguing on Slashdot about the number and proper usage of data types in Lisp, of all things... I think looking like an ass was pretty much a part of the deal from the get go.
"Just think about it. '(a b c) will be recognised as a 3 element list by any LISP programmer, and not as 2 cons cells plus 3 atoms (which would be equally correct). "
Actually no... it's 3 cons cells. The syntax (a b c) is shorthand for (a . (b . ( c . ()))). This kind of misunderstanding is precisely why any competent (key word) LISP programmer understands the difference between lists and cons cells I was referring to in my original post. The closest structure with only two cons cells is this (a b . c).
Now, As long as we're being pedantic, what you actually wrote, '(a b c), is shorthand for (quote (a b c)). The numbers of cons cells and atoms in that case is a 'exercise for the reader', but suffice it to say that both your numbers are wrong.
"Lisp uses only nested linked lists, that can be interpreted as binary trees."
As much as people keep saying it, this is totally false... Common Lisp does not even have lists as an intrinsic type. What it does have are cons cells, several kinds of numbers, symbols, characters, strings, several kinds of vectors and arrays, hash tables, structures, instances, and lexical closures among other types native to the language.
Lists are to Lisp what Strings are to C: a convention built upon more basic structures. In the case of C, a string is a convention built up on null terminated arrays of characters. In the case of Lisp, a list is a series of chained together cons cells.
"The PC-style keyboard on my linux box also has separate Return and Enter keys. I'm not sure if they all do, but mine does. Again, they seem to act identically in a few apps that I tried."
They generate different scan codes (VK_* under Windows), but I don't think PC's ever made the same logical distinction that Macs once did.
"And the keys don't really send CR or LF chars.... They send more complex codes that the input software maps to those ASCII chars."
Keycodes are actually pretty simple: on the systems I've seen, it's pretty much 1-key=1-keycode. Mapping them (or sequences thereof) to characters is decidedly non-trivial these days.
"So what software distinguishes the Return and Enter keys, when both are present?"
My knowledge is old, as you might expect from my comment regarding OSX. I remember this from an old Pascal (!) IDE running on System 7 or 8 on a Macintosh Classic. This would have been from around 1992 or 3.
"Hmmm... OK, I promise not to tell all my Linux boxes what they're missing!"
My hunch is that there are at least half a dozen ways in Linux to bind keys to interesting features.:-)
"There's an icon to clear the desktop on the taskbar that's adequate so as not to require an extra key on the keyboard just for that rare use."
Yeah, but mousing over to a 16x16 (or whatever) pixel icon at the edge of the screen and clicking is slower... Windows has an icon too, and I _never_ use it.
"If you _really_ need the extra Meta key then you can always UN-map it."
Heh... none of this isn't about _needing_ anything, it's more about _wanting_ something. That's probably why people get so excited about it. Nobody argues about the need for a keyboard... just specific keys and where they're located.
"Why the hell would I want to have two separate ways to type numbers?"
Having done a little data entry work (15 years ago), I can say from first hand experience that the number pad can be hugely faster for entering numbers than the top row. My accountant is a big fan of number pads too: he exclusively uses laptops, but has a stack of plug in number pads to go with them.
On Windows, the damn windows keys actually have a couple good useses: Windows+L either locks the machine or lets you switch users, depending on how your machine is configured. Windows+M minimizes all the windows, leaving a clean desktop.
Even (Especially?) on Unix, getting rid of a shift key and all the implied shortcut keys seems a little rash...
"That is the only way you will ever have any integrity or honor ever again."
Have you ever stopped to consider that getting verbally pissed off at folks who disagree with you isn't the best way to win people to your cause? After all, here I am, a disgruntled former Bush supporter looking for a place to land in an election year. If you really gave a damn about your cause would you be a) trying to woo me to your side or b) hurling random insults? Personally, if I were you, I'd want this mschaef dude voting for your candidates, but that's just me.
"Republican belief in a culture of entitlement".
It's FDR that started that ball rolling with the New Deal. It was useful at the time, but it's been a very corrosive influence on the national culture since then. Hell, even Joe Kennedy came out against the New Deal. Have you ever looked at a graph of government spending as a fraction of GDP? We were idling along at <5% until FDR came around. Even ignoring World War II, government spending (and the attitude of entitlement that goes with it) has been linearly increasing since then, culiminating in a huge budget imbalance.
(See, it really is possible to talk about politics without resulting to personal attacks. I was pretty tempted to suggest you take some lith^H^H^H^H... Damn! maybe it's not possible, after all.)
"I really hope you don't think that the parties are so close together on issues outside of copyrights and patents because they really aren't."
Well, I don't think that either parties' national candidates have the guts to make the decisions that truly need to be made. Either side will sell out for a vote. Hollings' support of the SSSCA is one example of this, but the total lack of willingness to do anything significant about Social Security and Medicare deficits is another. That said, Bush's performance has been willfully bad: he took us to war, increased Medicare benefits, and lowered taxes, all at the same time. It's the trifecta of dumb. Our Social Security and Medicare commitments are something like $40-50T higher than what we'll take in over the rest of the century. Somebody needs to have the guts to stand up and say things like "lower benefits, higher taxes", somehow get elected, and somehow get their policies in place. Otherwise, America has a serious problem.
I really hope this is alarmist, but being a pissed off fiscal conservative (who actually voted for Bush), I feel entitled.:-)
"Many of these assholes should be kicked out come the elections in November."
The problem is that there are assholes on both sides of the aisle. Fritz Hollings (D-Disney^H^H^H^H^H^HSouth Carolina) sponsored the SSSCA, which tried to introduce some pretty extreme copyright enforcement provisions itself. Both the parties are so close together on so many issues like this, I'm not sure it matters who is in office.
This reminds me of an exchange between Thomas Watson of IBM and Seymour Cray of CDC:
"Last week Control data... announced the 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory developing the system there were only 34 people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers.. Contrasting this modest effort with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer." - Watson
"It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question." - Cray
"I'll give you that. It was a better operating system at its core than the Mac OS was, and that gave me a few nervous laughs at the time. Nevertheless, driver development is a huge hassle now, there's no support behind it except for community. Be OS almost has a bigger following at this point.;) "
You're absolutely right, of course... for years, NewtonOS has been an absolute disaster in terms of support. I can understand why Apple didn't do this, but open source NewtonOS would have been a compelling thing, particularly on modern hardware.
NewtonOS was a remarkable piece of software for the time, moreso than Windows has ever been. Prototype based object orientation was baked into the system software, individuaul objects could be split between ROM and RAM to save storage, and the system had a built in persistant object store, among other things. For a 10-15 year old design running with just a couple MB of ROM and a couple hundred KB of RAM, it's an amazing accomplishment, and probably still far more appropriate to a handheld device than Windows (even CE).
"How you can even compare our progress in biological science to our progress in electronics is laughable. We've taken the first few baby steps. Barely. "
Biological science is a lot more complex than electronics. We also have not been at it in a scientific way for nearly as long.
"No great breakthroughs that transform the lives of average people, like television or penicillin or power plants or automobiles. Just baby steps. "
That's all you'll see: a bunch of baby steps, and one day you'll wake up and the world is changed.
"if humanity were focused more on developing as a species and less on making money with the least possible effort. We need more cooperation as a species-- and note that "cooperation" and "competition" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. "
Sadly, it's competition, greed, and fear that drive most progress. Capitalism is just the best way we have to harnass this power for now, and patents are a part of the process. The fraction of people that will do the work and take the risks required for true innovation when there is not a chance for personal reward is much smaller than the already small fraction of people that will do it when there is a chance for personal reward. Idealism will not change that.
"During the Space Race, broad swaths of humanity came together and cooperated to compete-- the West versus the soviet East. What did we accomplish? We went from the first suborbital flight to landing on the fucking moon in less than a decade.
THAT is what humanity can do when its priorities are aligned properly. "
THAT is what humanity can do when it's scared to death of being vaporized by the 'enemy's' ICBM's and 'superior' technical prowess. Anyway, why is 'landing on the moon' a worthwhile priority for 99.9% of humankind? It's kind of like the Palace of Versailles or a large Cathedral would have been 400 years ago: a nice way to stroke the ego of a select few, but largely useless for the masses.
""Christ. Look at the earthshaking technologies that were invented/discovered and/or popularized in the interval from roughly 1860 to 1960: Radio, the telephone, the television, the laser, nuclear fission, the automobile, the airplane, the rocket, the microwave oven, the computer...
Now look at what we've achieved since then. Uhhh..... let's see. Um. PDAs?... Blackberries?... Cell phones? (read: radio + telephone)... umm... well, our computers are smaller now, and faster?... "
This is rated 5, insightful? Unbelievable.
Comparing mass market technology to what was commonplace 45 years ago:
Automobiles are: faster, more reliable, safer, more nicely equipped, and cheaper to buy. Some are even more efficient, if you value that enough to buy such a model.
Computers (not just desktops and laptops, but embedded, as well) are cheaper (by orders of magnitude), faster (by orders of magnitude), more efficient (by orders of magnitude), move available (by orders of magnitude)... get the picture?
With respect to medical technology: Yesterday, I walked into the hospital, had an MRI taken, burned onto a CD, and now I'm able to browse a 3 dimensional model of the innards of my hip in real time on my personal laptop. (Along with a radiologist, who probably works halfway around the world.)
Photography now has zero marginal cost for 'dud' pictures. It has zero marginal cost for sending pictures to family.
Airline transit (even International) is cheaper and more accessible.
I can now pay bills online, in a minute or two.
....and on and on and on...
I grew up in the 80's, and remember pretty clearly what life was like back then. It's pretty easy for me to say that life is incredibly improved by technology compared to what was commonplace even 20 years ago, much less compared to 40 years ago.
Maybe it's the fact that all these improvements are incremental that makes them more difficult to see, but I can assure you that life would be very different for 1960 Caspian, compared to 2006 Caspian. At the very least, you wouldn't have nearly as large a potential audience for your cynical crap...
"When you think about it, all these investment banks do is take nothing, divide it up, sell it, and make a huge amount of profit on the hard work of entrepreneurs. "
That's incorrect.
Trading companies serve a couple useful purposes. Firstly, they help bring liquidity to the capital markets. This makes capital more available 'hard working entrepreneurs' who can then use it to do other interesting things. Secondly, they create and trade in instruments that allow the risks associated with various investements to be hedged and managed.
For example, if you don't want to take the risk that some stock you own will decline in value you can buy a put option created and sold by a trading firm. The put gives you the right to force your counterparty to buy your shares at a preset price, thus protecting you from some or all of the potential downside. Another good example is the 'leveled bills' (one price each month all year long) that natural gas and electricity companies have started to sell. They're effectively a call option on natgas or electrical power.
What both of these instruments do (and both are created by what you term as 'creators of nothing') is move risk from one entity to another. You don't want risk? Buy an option to 'insure' your existing investment or guarantee a price. You do want risk? Buy some options and you can invest in a commodity without fronting the cash to buy the commodity itself.
The key value the trading company creates is that it has the intellectual and monetary capital to create and price these instruments. If BankX sells you a call on Natgas, what that really means is that 1) they know how to price the risk 2) they can take some of the risk on themselves, perhaps to hedge another position they have and/or 3) they have buyers for the risk.
In short, they're selling their knowledge and access.......Just like software companies.
Slashdot Mirror
After a point, users must develop a deeper understanding of how a given software package works in order to use it effectively.
You mentioned word processing as an example... carrying that along, Microsoft Word faced a huge amount of resistance from WordPerfect users who had internalized WordPerfect's 'stream-of-markup' model for representing formatted text. In both cases, you could highlight text and make it bold, but WordPerfect's model was much clearer to more advanced users. Microsoft has tried to replicate some of this over the years with 'show formatting', but it isn't as effective because the underlying data model is so much more complex. (Where does formatting come from? The character, paragraph, paragraph style... and on and on.)
I should point out that I'm using the term 'data model' vs. 'data structure' deliberately. I would agree with you that users probably don't care about the specific representation for WordPerfect's 'stream of tags'.... only that it's there and has a set of well defined and predictable operations.
Most of the ergonomic mice I've seen fix about half the ergonomic problem with mice. They focus on the position of the user's hand and wrist, ignoring the fact that on a desktop PC operated by a right handed user, the mouse is located to the right of the keyboard, past the arrow keys and numeric keypad. Any amount of mouse use involves either moving the keyboard to the left or holding your arm extended to the right for a potentially extended period of time. I'm not an expert, but this seems far removed from the recommendations of balanced posture that most ergonomics experts tend to advocate. By that argument, you'd almost be better off using a TrackPoint and trying to focus as much as possible on using the keyboard instead of the pointing device.
"But you haven't let that stop you."
So you posted to let me know that I was posting in spite of the fact that, as I posted, the original poster was no longer posting. Does that about sum it up?
"But you wear it so well! "
:-)
...... Nothing, they are semantically equivalent to *(a + b) and *(b + a).
:-)
Well, we're all 'special' in our own unique ways.
To be frank, I wouldn't have been quite so harsh (ass-like, if you wish) if he hadn't just happened to make one of mistakes that proved exactly my point about the difference between cons cells and lists.
"Based on your argument C doesn't have arrays, just pointers with some syntactic sugar."
I'd actually agree with that.... A bit of trivia: in C, what's the difference between a[b] and b[a]?
Keep in mind that I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing: in the case of Lisp lists, the added flexibilty that comes from their representation can be tremendously useful. However, it does complicate things. Just as an example, consider what happens when you define a function that traverses a list. Since Lisp lists can't be identified as being finite until you traverse them, you need to either be willing to tolerate functions that don't end when passed certain kinds of 'lists' or include extra baggage to detect when they're in an infinite list. Lisp also doesn't make the guarantee that the last 'next list' in a list is even a list at all: another edge case that's introduced by the fact that Lisp doesn't have first class lists.
Something else to consider is that Lisp doesn't even have to have cons cells at all. There's nothing to keep them from being represented internally as structures, arrays, or even closures. In other words, not only does the LISt Processing language not have lists as a first class type, it doesn't even have to have their component cons cells as a first class type. Lists can entirely be implemented using types the original poster seems to believe Lisp doesn't even have at all. Which brings me to the second reason I was an ass in my response... my experience has been that blanket statements tend to oversimplify things and can ultimately lead to bad decisions. If this guy has really reduced Lisp to nested lists, Perl to hash tables, Embedded programming to arrays, and Databases to B-trees, I question his ability to think critically in any amount of depth about software engineering problems. Of course, he could also be the best developer on the planet... After all, this is Slashdot, so you do have allow for the possibility of incompletely thought through 'pissing contest' posts. Which is the third and final reason I was somewhat an ass.
At the very least the original poster has shown the presence of mind not to keep posting in this thread..
"you just made yourself look like an ass."
Dude, I was arguing on Slashdot about the number and proper usage of data types in Lisp, of all things... I think looking like an ass was pretty much a part of the deal from the get go.
"Just think about it. '(a b c) will be recognised as a 3 element list by any LISP programmer, and not as 2 cons cells plus 3 atoms (which would be equally correct). "
Actually no... it's 3 cons cells. The syntax (a b c) is shorthand for (a . (b . ( c . ()))). This kind of misunderstanding is precisely why any competent (key word) LISP programmer understands the difference between lists and cons cells I was referring to in my original post. The closest structure with only two cons cells is this (a b . c).
Now, As long as we're being pedantic, what you actually wrote, '(a b c), is shorthand for (quote (a b c)). The numbers of cons cells and atoms in that case is a 'exercise for the reader', but suffice it to say that both your numbers are wrong.
"Lisp uses only nested linked lists, that can be interpreted as binary trees."
As much as people keep saying it, this is totally false... Common Lisp does not even have lists as an intrinsic type. What it does have are cons cells, several kinds of numbers, symbols, characters, strings, several kinds of vectors and arrays, hash tables, structures, instances, and lexical closures among other types native to the language.
Lists are to Lisp what Strings are to C: a convention built upon more basic structures. In the case of C, a string is a convention built up on null terminated arrays of characters. In the case of Lisp, a list is a series of chained together cons cells.
"The PC-style keyboard on my linux box also has separate Return and Enter keys. I'm not sure if they all do, but mine does. Again, they seem to act identically in a few apps that I tried."
They generate different scan codes (VK_* under Windows), but I don't think PC's ever made the same logical distinction that Macs once did.
"And the keys don't really send CR or LF chars.... They send more complex codes that the input software maps to those ASCII chars."
Keycodes are actually pretty simple: on the systems I've seen, it's pretty much 1-key=1-keycode. Mapping them (or sequences thereof) to characters is decidedly non-trivial these days.
"So what software distinguishes the Return and Enter keys, when both are present?"
My knowledge is old, as you might expect from my comment regarding OSX. I remember this from an old Pascal (!) IDE running on System 7 or 8 on a Macintosh Classic. This would have been from around 1992 or 3.
"Hmmm... OK, I promise not to tell all my Linux boxes what they're missing!"
:-)
My hunch is that there are at least half a dozen ways in Linux to bind keys to interesting features.
"There's an icon to clear the desktop on the taskbar that's adequate so as not to require an extra key on the keyboard just for that rare use."
Yeah, but mousing over to a 16x16 (or whatever) pixel icon at the edge of the screen and clicking is slower... Windows has an icon too, and I _never_ use it.
"If you _really_ need the extra Meta key then you can always UN-map it."
Heh... none of this isn't about _needing_ anything, it's more about _wanting_ something. That's probably why people get so excited about it. Nobody argues about the need for a keyboard... just specific keys and where they're located.
" please mention the pointlessness of the ... Pause keys (they have almost never been used for anything), "
On DOS, Pause used to send the BIOS into a loop that preempted user code from running: sort of an enforced pause.
I've also seen a bunch of games that use pause to... well... pause the game. Seems like a good use to mme.
"Why the hell would I want to have two separate ways to type numbers?"
Having done a little data entry work (15 years ago), I can say from first hand experience that the number pad can be hugely faster for entering numbers than the top row. My accountant is a big fan of number pads too: he exclusively uses laptops, but has a stack of plug in number pads to go with them.
" But I don't think I've ever used the Enter (not Return; Enter) key. If you want to repurpose a useless key, Enter should be the first candidate."
They're 'useful' on Macs. IIRC, Enter is LF and Return is CR (or vice versa).
Dunno if OSX changed this any, but I suspect not.
"My Caps Lock key is gainfully in use to change the keyboard layout between English and Danish."
That's splendid! How does it work? Is it a standard OS feature or some kind of add on?
"That, and turning off those damn Windows keys!"
On Windows, the damn windows keys actually have a couple good useses: Windows+L either locks the machine or lets you switch users, depending on how your machine is configured. Windows+M minimizes all the windows, leaving a clean desktop.
Even (Especially?) on Unix, getting rid of a shift key and all the implied shortcut keys seems a little rash...
On Windows, Caps Lock and Control can be swepped. A similar technique can be used to make caps lock a redundant control key:
http://www.manicai.net/comp/swap-caps-ctrl.html
There are also ways to do this on Unix, but I don't remember what they are.
"That is the only way you will ever have any integrity or honor ever again."
Have you ever stopped to consider that getting verbally pissed off at folks who disagree with you isn't the best way to win people to your cause? After all, here I am, a disgruntled former Bush supporter looking for a place to land in an election year. If you really gave a damn about your cause would you be a) trying to woo me to your side or b) hurling random insults? Personally, if I were you, I'd want this mschaef dude voting for your candidates, but that's just me.
"Republican belief in a culture of entitlement".
It's FDR that started that ball rolling with the New Deal. It was useful at the time, but it's been a very corrosive influence on the national culture since then. Hell, even Joe Kennedy came out against the New Deal. Have you ever looked at a graph of government spending as a fraction of GDP? We were idling along at <5% until FDR came around. Even ignoring World War II, government spending (and the attitude of entitlement that goes with it) has been linearly increasing since then, culiminating in a huge budget imbalance.
(See, it really is possible to talk about politics without resulting to personal attacks. I was pretty tempted to suggest you take some lith^H^H^H^H... Damn! maybe it's not possible, after all.)
"I really hope you don't think that the parties are so close together on issues outside of copyrights and patents because they really aren't."
:-)
Well, I don't think that either parties' national candidates have the guts to make the decisions that truly need to be made. Either side will sell out for a vote. Hollings' support of the SSSCA is one example of this, but the total lack of willingness to do anything significant about Social Security and Medicare deficits is another. That said, Bush's performance has been willfully bad: he took us to war, increased Medicare benefits, and lowered taxes, all at the same time. It's the trifecta of dumb. Our Social Security and Medicare commitments are something like $40-50T higher than what we'll take in over the rest of the century. Somebody needs to have the guts to stand up and say things like "lower benefits, higher taxes", somehow get elected, and somehow get their policies in place. Otherwise, America has a serious problem.
I really hope this is alarmist, but being a pissed off fiscal conservative (who actually voted for Bush), I feel entitled.
"Many of these assholes should be kicked out come the elections in November."
The problem is that there are assholes on both sides of the aisle. Fritz Hollings (D-Disney^H^H^H^H^H^HSouth Carolina) sponsored the SSSCA, which tried to introduce some pretty extreme copyright enforcement provisions itself. Both the parties are so close together on so many issues like this, I'm not sure it matters who is in office.
This reminds me of an exchange between Thomas Watson of IBM and Seymour Cray of CDC:
"Last week Control data... announced the 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory developing the system there were only 34 people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers.. Contrasting this modest effort with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer." - Watson
"It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question." - Cray
It looks like that might happen again...
"I'll give you that. It was a better operating system at its core than the Mac OS was, and that gave me a few nervous laughs at the time. Nevertheless, driver development is a huge hassle now, there's no support behind it except for community. Be OS almost has a bigger following at this point. ;) "
You're absolutely right, of course... for years, NewtonOS has been an absolute disaster in terms of support. I can understand why Apple didn't do this, but open source NewtonOS would have been a compelling thing, particularly on modern hardware.
"* It runs a real operating system"
NewtonOS was a remarkable piece of software for the time, moreso than Windows has ever been. Prototype based object orientation was baked into the system software, individuaul objects could be split between ROM and RAM to save storage, and the system had a built in persistant object store, among other things. For a 10-15 year old design running with just a couple MB of ROM and a couple hundred KB of RAM, it's an amazing accomplishment, and probably still far more appropriate to a handheld device than Windows (even CE).
"How you can even compare our progress in biological science to our progress in electronics is laughable. We've taken the first few baby steps. Barely. "
Biological science is a lot more complex than electronics. We also have not been at it in a scientific way for nearly as long.
"No great breakthroughs that transform the lives of average people, like television or penicillin or power plants or automobiles. Just baby steps. "
That's all you'll see: a bunch of baby steps, and one day you'll wake up and the world is changed.
"if humanity were focused more on developing as a species and less on making money with the least possible effort. We need more cooperation as a species-- and note that "cooperation" and "competition" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. "
Sadly, it's competition, greed, and fear that drive most progress. Capitalism is just the best way we have to harnass this power for now, and patents are a part of the process. The fraction of people that will do the work and take the risks required for true innovation when there is not a chance for personal reward is much smaller than the already small fraction of people that will do it when there is a chance for personal reward. Idealism will not change that.
"During the Space Race, broad swaths of humanity came together and cooperated to compete-- the West versus the soviet East. What did we accomplish? We went from the first suborbital flight to landing on the fucking moon in less than a decade.
THAT is what humanity can do when its priorities are aligned properly. "
THAT is what humanity can do when it's scared to death of being vaporized by the 'enemy's' ICBM's and 'superior' technical prowess. Anyway, why is 'landing on the moon' a worthwhile priority for 99.9% of humankind? It's kind of like the Palace of Versailles or a large Cathedral would have been 400 years ago: a nice way to stroke the ego of a select few, but largely useless for the masses.
Now look at what we've achieved since then. Uhhh..... let's see. Um. PDAs?
This is rated 5, insightful? Unbelievable.
Comparing mass market technology to what was commonplace 45 years ago:
I grew up in the 80's, and remember pretty clearly what life was like back then. It's pretty easy for me to say that life is incredibly improved by technology compared to what was commonplace even 20 years ago, much less compared to 40 years ago.
Maybe it's the fact that all these improvements are incremental that makes them more difficult to see, but I can assure you that life would be very different for 1960 Caspian, compared to 2006 Caspian. At the very least, you wouldn't have nearly as large a potential audience for your cynical crap...
"When you think about it, all these investment banks do is take nothing, divide it up, sell it, and make a huge amount of profit on the hard work of entrepreneurs. "
...Just like software companies.
That's incorrect.
Trading companies serve a couple useful purposes. Firstly, they help bring liquidity to the capital markets. This makes capital more available 'hard working entrepreneurs' who can then use it to do other interesting things. Secondly, they create and trade in instruments that allow the risks associated with various investements to be hedged and managed.
For example, if you don't want to take the risk that some stock you own will decline in value you can buy a put option created and sold by a trading firm. The put gives you the right to force your counterparty to buy your shares at a preset price, thus protecting you from some or all of the potential downside. Another good example is the 'leveled bills' (one price each month all year long) that natural gas and electricity companies have started to sell. They're effectively a call option on natgas or electrical power.
What both of these instruments do (and both are created by what you term as 'creators of nothing') is move risk from one entity to another. You don't want risk? Buy an option to 'insure' your existing investment or guarantee a price. You do want risk? Buy some options and you can invest in a commodity without fronting the cash to buy the commodity itself.
The key value the trading company creates is that it has the intellectual and monetary capital to create and price these instruments. If BankX sells you a call on Natgas, what that really means is that 1) they know how to price the risk 2) they can take some of the risk on themselves, perhaps to hedge another position they have and/or 3) they have buyers for the risk.
In short, they're selling their knowledge and access....