Hi. Every since that article that was put up a couple days ago about Jef Raskin's ideas put forth about user interfaces, I've been fascinated with the notion of creating a new kind of user interface. I picked up the book "The Humane Interface" by Raskin, and it reall "blew my mind" so to speak. I'm surprised that noone on advogato or slashdot has mentioned his amazing work. I think a lot of what he has to say can apply to these questions.
If everything he suggests is implemented, the system would not be any operating system that we know of. I've been thinking it would be cool to start a project that would probably be a competitor to gnome and kde, because it could be that they are going down the wrong track by copying the windows/mac style interface. In fact, I would say those interfaces are a disaster. (Read the book, you will see what I mean.)
The question then becomes, do I try to make it mix in with unix so that you can run it as a GUI for unix, or should it be its own environment altogether (with Raskin, there is no such thing as a file. In unix, "everything is a file.") If so, should I build it to run on top of unix or should I just start with some microkernel and ditch unix altogether. If I used unix, should I code it for x, berline, or a generic frame buffer? What language should I use (i'm leaning towards C++), and if I embed a language in the environment, what language should I use (perhaps python, or perhaps "any language" would be better (like scripts in unix can be)).
Then there are all the design decisions for the system itself. After all I'm "not a user interface expert" as Raskin would point out to me I'm sure.:)
I would love to talk to anyone who has read Raskin and knows what I'm talking about.:)
There's a summary of the book here, but it doesn't do the book justice IMHO. (The book has more time to explain what it means. (If you read it and think "huh?"))
http://www.jefraskin.com/summary_of_thi.html
I was looking at sourceforge and doing searches on the web. I can't find anyone doing any work on this concept...
I'm sure he has some great ideas (it's giving me a few ideas) but I don't think he's helping himself much. The whole piece was "I didn't say that. If you would read my book you would know better." Well, let's see. Here's an (printer friendly version) article by him, from Wired magazine.
What does he say? The same stuff he says he didn't say. Start typing to make a document. Start drawing with a pen tablet to make a drawing. "One big mistake is the idea of an operating system." And, "An operating system, even the saccharine Mac or Windows desktop, is the program you have to hassle with before you get to hassle
with the application. It does nothing for you, wastes your time, is unnecessary."
How can he blame his critics for saying such things?
On some Symantec products, they state that the arms-crossed pose of the Holy Pink-shirted One is a trademark of Peter Norton (not Symantec though, Peter Norton is a third party).
Hey, I just heard that Jon Katz article (I think it was a shorter version though) on NPR last night, read by Jon Katz himself. It was on the show Marketplace on NPR.
Jon Katz's story starts 19 minutes into the program.
There are also some other interesting stories in the program, like how Mexico just got the right for its truckers to use US highways due to a NAFTA court. Something called Pink Slip Happy Hour in SF, where people who are looking for jobs can meet recruiters in a more social setting (and how different people are handling getting laid off from dotcoms). And a comedy piece about what it'll be like when Microsoft starts making home appliances.
Rational Rose will do this. It is used for planning a system at the class level (and then generating the class files) or reverse-engineering existing classes into a UML diagram.
Yup, and you can have it all for the low-low price of $2394
I haven't read the Hacker Ethic, but I have just finished reading "Hackers" by Steven Levy (great book). The book is basically about the hacker ethic illustrated by the early hackers at MIT, the hardware hackers of the '70s, and PC game programmers in the early 80's, ending with what happened to the AI lab that RMS was at.
I balked at the ~$25 price for a 200 page book (The Hacker Ethic)... If you've read "Hackers" (anyone) would you know whether this hacker ethic is in line with the book discussed in the article?
Specifically:
Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
Once, I was at my house and I had just gotten some new memory, a 128 MB DIMM, and I went out to grab some food. When I came back, the memory was gone. Of course I didn't want to accuse it out right, but I had a feeling my computer took it. But maybe I had put it somewhere else. So I looked around, but couldn't find it. I said, "alright, who took my memory?" My suspicions were confirmed when the computer said nothing, just sat there with a humming fan and running a screensaver like nothing was going on.
It turns out, my computer stole my memory, and I haven't really trusted it since. I opened it up and there it was, plain as day. Did it think I wouldn't notice?
Science Fiction is about ideas. The best source of new ideas is speculation about imaginary societies, the future, the unknown past, alternate histories, and so on.
One of the most popular works of Science Fiction from the past was a book called Slan, which is not really considered a great book these days (not that I've heard anyway) but the idea behind it was that there was a group of humans (or aliens that looked human) that was vastly superior to the rest of humanity, hidden within society. This idea appealed to the early SF fans.
Later, much of the jargon developed in SF fandom was transfered to hacker jargon. I think the idea of born superiority still appears to the core of hackerdom today.
It is disturbing this is rated "Informative." It was always about Imagine getting sued. The
fact that DR didn't want to display any images is quite obvious; as a child company, it would be
straight out dumb. BUT, don't paint DR too be stupid, nor Imagine. What they did with their "unofficial" pokemon guide book is what every online or text gaming magazine does in the world. They print screenshots and use names. It has always been done. The fact that Nintendo took action is what is disrespectful; they are sueing a company that effectily advertises for them for free.
Your post has some of the most spin I have ever seen on/. It's not true, and the moderators that gave this person points for this unbased, unfair comment should also be ashamed. Before you label something "informative," make sure it indeed contains information.
No, I'm afraid it is you who is mistaken, about a great many things, but I can understand why, because that is what D.R. is claiming, and what Slashdot reported. However, as it turns out, D.R. is taking a lawsuit about published strategy guides with illegally copied Nintendo-owned artwork (drawings, etc.) This is NOT about the D.R. site and it is NOT about screenshots. I'd also like to add that this also shows that D.R. seems to think that the role of a gaming news site is to provide promotion to a company and that by not covering anything Nintendo they are somehow harming Nintendo. If they are harming Nintendo, it is through painting them as some kind of corporate bully by misrepresenting the nature of the initial complaint.
Don't even go off of what Daily Radar says...
Sega rumors which have already been shown to be false...
And then, last time it was the "Nintendo is suing us for screenshots" story which as it turns out, they were actually suing the media conglomerate Imagine that owns their site because they were apparently publishing books with trademarked and copyrighted Pokemon drawings all over it.
There is a really funny
Penny-Arcade comic strip that covers the issue pretty well in my mind.:)
Yeah, but where can I buy a good atari 2600 console? Is there any place that still sells a new 2600 and joystick? I don't mind if it's one of the "new" (Jr.?) ones that is smaller than usual.
(Ever notice how Atari, Nintendo, and Sony all made smaller versions of their most popular consoles?)
It has forms you can fill in and print out and mail to get you off the majority of mailing lists, and another form for credit cards. The first form is also supposed to get you onto a no-phone solicitation list too.
Even though I had said that I had just started sending back postage paid envelopes and cards for snail-spam, I decided this would be a better technique to try first. If that doesn't work, then culture-jamming is necessary.
Corporations use copyrights, trademarks, and patents to control those outside of their own corporate umbrella. If Nintendo is able to claim copyright protection over screenshots, imagine the kind of censorship (the most powerful kind, more insidious than direct censorship: self-censorship) control Nintendo will have over review sites and magazines. In theory, consumers rely on these sites for independent information whether it is strategy guides or product reviews. Any strategy guide not produced by Nintendo is a competitor for their own line of licensed and approved strategy guides. These independent companies need to be able to criticise and contradict the companies they cover, without fear of being sued for copyright and other infringements. Unfortunately, Nintendo has the resources of a multinationals corporation behind it, and can therefore dictate the terms of industry coverage to the press.
Hey, I just started doing that too! But why empty? That just makes it easier for them to sort out. Waste their TIME too. Have no use for that old Linux HOWTO printout? Stick a couple pages in there. Or some of the company's own flyers. Just don't send them back anything that has anything printed on it that would let them know who did it.
Now if only I could figure out a way to Jam that bundle of loose ads (no envelope, like you'd find in the middle of a newspaper, but with more stuff of different sizes and materials) that they deliver every thursday... What, did the postman suddenly become the paperboy? It forces you to go through to make sure you aren't accidentally about to throw out your electric bill.
I like the button on their site: "Click Here to Retain Milberg Weiss"... hehe, it's One-Click Lawsuits! (patent pending)
I can't even figure out what the problem is, and I read the complaint. It just goes to show (as I learned from reading Cryptonomicon) investors are looking for any technicality to use to file a lawsuit against you. Fucking greedy capitalists.
A) Linux still hasn't proven itself on the performance front. Even after several months, the Linux NVIDIA drivers are noticably lower in performance than their Windows counterparts. This happens even at low resolutions where the bitblit thing is not an issue. And with DirectX 8 and, later, Whistler promising huge increases in 3D performance, I don't know how Linux will deliver. Of course, MS could be overinflating their performance claims, but if NT4 and DirectX7 (which essentially made DX faster and more featureful than OpenGL) are any hint, MS *can* make good products, it just depends on if there is the motivation. When you add mediocre 3D performance to the slow desktops (in comparison to Win2K's, anyway) and high memory use (same as Win2K) then you have little reason to use Linux if you're looking for (desktop) performance.
The NVIDIA drivers are closed-source, but you never say "NVIDIA write better drivers for Windows than for Linux" you just say that "Linux" can't compete. You have to recall that MS gave the videocard deal for the XBox to NVIDIA, and makes DirectX features depending on what NVIDIA is going to put in the hardware (and vice versa).
My geekiest geek shirts are the ones I got from the New Mexico High School Supercomputing Challenge. I still wear mine: second annual 1991-1992 (cool black one with a Cray on it) and third annual (which coincidentally has the names of the winners of the poster/t-shirt contest, one of which is the name of a prominent kuro5hin user, and who I also knew in college; I showed up at his dorm once and he was like "that's me on your shirt, by the way."
Re:Linus should have his own action-figure line
on
Linus Talks About 2.4
·
· Score: 1
He needs to be free from monetary constraints in order to realize his true potential, the way Stallman has.
You should have thought of that before he got a mortgage and a couple of kids. Not cheap.:-)
Call their parents and tell them "I am calling from [a large computer hardware company], and just wanted to tell you what a helpful and intelligent programmer your [son/daughter] is. Don't be too concerned if they'd rather play on the computer than watch TV like everyone else."
Slashdot Mirror
Hi. Every since that article that was put up a couple days ago about Jef Raskin's ideas put forth about user interfaces, I've been fascinated with the notion of creating a new kind of user interface. I picked up the book "The Humane Interface" by Raskin, and it reall "blew my mind" so to speak. I'm surprised that noone on advogato or slashdot has mentioned his amazing work. I think a lot of what he has to say can apply to these questions.
:)
:)
If everything he suggests is implemented, the system would not be any operating system that we know of. I've been thinking it would be cool to start a project that would probably be a competitor to gnome and kde, because it could be that they are going down the wrong track by copying the windows/mac style interface. In fact, I would say those interfaces are a disaster. (Read the book, you will see what I mean.)
The question then becomes, do I try to make it mix in with unix so that you can run it as a GUI for unix, or should it be its own environment altogether (with Raskin, there is no such thing as a file. In unix, "everything is a file.") If so, should I build it to run on top of unix or should I just start with some microkernel and ditch unix altogether. If I used unix, should I code it for x, berline, or a generic frame buffer? What language should I use (i'm leaning towards C++), and if I embed a language in the environment, what language should I use (perhaps python, or perhaps "any language" would be better (like scripts in unix can be)).
Then there are all the design decisions for the system itself. After all I'm "not a user interface expert" as Raskin would point out to me I'm sure.
I would love to talk to anyone who has read Raskin and knows what I'm talking about.
There's a summary of the book here, but it doesn't do the book justice IMHO. (The book has more time to explain what it means. (If you read it and think "huh?"))
http://www.jefraskin.com/summary_of_thi.html
I was looking at sourceforge and doing searches on the web. I can't find anyone doing any work on this concept...
DCS1000, not to be confused with the Kodak DCS 660 Digital Camera
I'm sure he has some great ideas (it's giving me a few ideas) but I don't think he's helping himself much. The whole piece was "I didn't say that. If you would read my book you would know better." Well, let's see. Here's an (printer friendly version) article by him, from Wired magazine.
p r.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/1.6_guis_
What does he say? The same stuff he says he didn't say. Start typing to make a document. Start drawing with a pen tablet to make a drawing. "One big mistake is the idea of an operating system." And, "An operating system, even the saccharine Mac or Windows desktop, is the program you have to hassle with before you get to hassle
with the application. It does nothing for you, wastes your time, is unnecessary."
How can he blame his critics for saying such things?
On some Symantec products, they state that the arms-crossed pose of the Holy Pink-shirted One is a trademark of Peter Norton (not Symantec though, Peter Norton is a third party).
Ah, here it is, from:
http://www.symantec.com/legal/legal_note.html
Third Party Trademarks
Peter Norton, Peter Norton's stylized signature, and Peter Norton's crossed-arm pose are U.S. registered trademarks of Peter Norton.
Hey, I just heard that Jon Katz article (I think it was a shorter version though) on NPR last night, read by Jon Katz himself. It was on the show Marketplace on NPR.
t ml
The RealAudio story is here:
http://www.marketplace.org/shows/2001/02/07_mpp.h
Jon Katz's story starts 19 minutes into the program.
There are also some other interesting stories in the program, like how Mexico just got the right for its truckers to use US highways due to a NAFTA court. Something called Pink Slip Happy Hour in SF, where people who are looking for jobs can meet recruiters in a more social setting (and how different people are handling getting laid off from dotcoms). And a comedy piece about what it'll be like when Microsoft starts making home appliances.
Let me guess. You also think refactoring is a "waste of time."
I would say that perl would be good for writing customized little utilities that can then be tied together in shell scripts.
You know, any little program that goes:
(simple filter-type perl program deleted, because SLASHDOT LAMENESS FILTER SUCKS! Oh well.)
and does funny stuff with the input and sends it to the output. (If you are looking at things from a unix point of view.)
It's called UML.
Rational Rose will do this. It is used for planning a system at the class level (and then generating the class files) or reverse-engineering existing classes into a UML diagram.
Yup, and you can have it all for the low-low price of $2394
I balked at the ~$25 price for a 200 page book (The Hacker Ethic)... If you've read "Hackers" (anyone) would you know whether this hacker ethic is in line with the book discussed in the article?
Specifically:
Once, I was at my house and I had just gotten some new memory, a 128 MB DIMM, and I went out to grab some food. When I came back, the memory was gone. Of course I didn't want to accuse it out right, but I had a feeling my computer took it. But maybe I had put it somewhere else. So I looked around, but couldn't find it. I said, "alright, who took my memory?" My suspicions were confirmed when the computer said nothing, just sat there with a humming fan and running a screensaver like nothing was going on.
It turns out, my computer stole my memory, and I haven't really trusted it since. I opened it up and there it was, plain as day. Did it think I wouldn't notice?
Science Fiction is about ideas. The best source of new ideas is speculation about imaginary societies, the future, the unknown past, alternate histories, and so on.
One of the most popular works of Science Fiction from the past was a book called Slan, which is not really considered a great book these days (not that I've heard anyway) but the idea behind it was that there was a group of humans (or aliens that looked human) that was vastly superior to the rest of humanity, hidden within society. This idea appealed to the early SF fans.
Later, much of the jargon developed in SF fandom was transfered to hacker jargon. I think the idea of born superiority still appears to the core of hackerdom today.
If you're going to spend some time in North Edwards it would have been nice for the local websites to mention what's around there.
That's the function of a Chamber of Commerce, which isn't actually part of the city government, it's an organization of local businesses.
It is disturbing this is rated "Informative." It was always about Imagine getting sued. The /. It's not true, and the moderators that gave this person points for this unbased, unfair comment should also be ashamed. Before you label something "informative," make sure it indeed contains information.
fact that DR didn't want to display any images is quite obvious; as a child company, it would be
straight out dumb. BUT, don't paint DR too be stupid, nor Imagine. What they did with their "unofficial" pokemon guide book is what every online or text gaming magazine does in the world. They print screenshots and use names. It has always been done. The fact that Nintendo took action is what is disrespectful; they are sueing a company that effectily advertises for them for free.
Your post has some of the most spin I have ever seen on
No, I'm afraid it is you who is mistaken, about a great many things, but I can understand why, because that is what D.R. is claiming, and what Slashdot reported. However, as it turns out, D.R. is taking a lawsuit about published strategy guides with illegally copied Nintendo-owned artwork (drawings, etc.) This is NOT about the D.R. site and it is NOT about screenshots. I'd also like to add that this also shows that D.R. seems to think that the role of a gaming news site is to provide promotion to a company and that by not covering anything Nintendo they are somehow harming Nintendo. If they are harming Nintendo, it is through painting them as some kind of corporate bully by misrepresenting the nature of the initial complaint.
Therefore, as I stated, Daily Radar Sucks.
Don't even go off of what Daily Radar says...
:)
Sega rumors which have already been shown to be false...
And then, last time it was the "Nintendo is suing us for screenshots" story which as it turns out, they were actually suing the media conglomerate Imagine that owns their site because they were apparently publishing books with trademarked and copyrighted Pokemon drawings all over it.
There is a really funny
Penny-Arcade comic strip that covers the issue pretty well in my mind.
Yeah, but where can I buy a good atari 2600 console? Is there any place that still sells a new 2600 and joystick? I don't mind if it's one of the "new" (Jr.?) ones that is smaller than usual.
(Ever notice how Atari, Nintendo, and Sony all made smaller versions of their most popular consoles?)
Yesterday someone posted the following link:
http://www.talboa.com/junkmail/index.shtml
It has forms you can fill in and print out and mail to get you off the majority of mailing lists, and another form for credit cards. The first form is also supposed to get you onto a no-phone solicitation list too.
Even though I had said that I had just started sending back postage paid envelopes and cards for snail-spam, I decided this would be a better technique to try first. If that doesn't work, then culture-jamming is necessary.
If Patrick Swayze can act in Dirty Dancing with a gimpy knee, surely these actors can make Matrix II with their injuries. :-)
or, Brand Bullies
Corporations use copyrights, trademarks, and patents to control those outside of their own corporate umbrella. If Nintendo is able to claim copyright protection over screenshots, imagine the kind of censorship (the most powerful kind, more insidious than direct censorship: self-censorship) control Nintendo will have over review sites and magazines. In theory, consumers rely on these sites for independent information whether it is strategy guides or product reviews. Any strategy guide not produced by Nintendo is a competitor for their own line of licensed and approved strategy guides. These independent companies need to be able to criticise and contradict the companies they cover, without fear of being sued for copyright and other infringements. Unfortunately, Nintendo has the resources of a multinationals corporation behind it, and can therefore dictate the terms of industry coverage to the press.
We must resist corporate control.
(sending recipient-paid envelopes back)
Hey, I just started doing that too! But why empty? That just makes it easier for them to sort out. Waste their TIME too. Have no use for that old Linux HOWTO printout? Stick a couple pages in there. Or some of the company's own flyers. Just don't send them back anything that has anything printed on it that would let them know who did it.
Now if only I could figure out a way to Jam that bundle of loose ads (no envelope, like you'd find in the middle of a newspaper, but with more stuff of different sizes and materials) that they deliver every thursday... What, did the postman suddenly become the paperboy? It forces you to go through to make sure you aren't accidentally about to throw out your electric bill.
I like the button on their site: "Click Here to Retain Milberg Weiss"... hehe, it's One-Click Lawsuits! (patent pending)
I can't even figure out what the problem is, and I read the complaint. It just goes to show (as I learned from reading Cryptonomicon) investors are looking for any technicality to use to file a lawsuit against you. Fucking greedy capitalists.
That's the stupidest name I ever heard. What genius thought of that?
(It's not flamebait; it's my opinion.)
signed,
a Helix Gnome user
A) Linux still hasn't proven itself on the performance front. Even after several months, the Linux NVIDIA drivers are noticably lower in performance than their Windows counterparts. This happens even at low resolutions where the bitblit thing is not an issue. And with DirectX 8 and, later, Whistler promising huge increases in 3D performance, I don't know how Linux will deliver. Of course, MS could be overinflating their performance claims, but if NT4 and DirectX7 (which essentially made DX faster and more featureful than OpenGL) are any hint, MS *can* make good products, it just depends on if there is the motivation. When you add mediocre 3D performance to the slow desktops (in comparison to Win2K's, anyway) and high memory use (same as Win2K) then you have little reason to use Linux if you're looking for (desktop) performance.
The NVIDIA drivers are closed-source, but you never say "NVIDIA write better drivers for Windows than for Linux" you just say that "Linux" can't compete. You have to recall that MS gave the videocard deal for the XBox to NVIDIA, and makes DirectX features depending on what NVIDIA is going to put in the hardware (and vice versa).
My geekiest geek shirts are the ones I got from the New Mexico High School Supercomputing Challenge. I still wear mine: second annual 1991-1992 (cool black one with a Cray on it) and third annual (which coincidentally has the names of the winners of the poster/t-shirt contest, one of which is the name of a prominent kuro5hin user, and who I also knew in college; I showed up at his dorm once and he was like "that's me on your shirt, by the way."
He needs to be free from monetary constraints in order to realize his true potential, the way Stallman has.
:-)
You should have thought of that before he got a mortgage and a couple of kids. Not cheap.
Call their parents and tell them "I am calling from [a large computer hardware company], and just wanted to tell you what a helpful and intelligent programmer your [son/daughter] is. Don't be too concerned if they'd rather play on the computer than watch TV like everyone else."
I think I'm just kidding, but you never know.