In my day, we had to point and click. and we liked it. None of this fancy scroll wheel or mouse gestures crap. I tell ya, scroll wheels and the obeseity epidemic are not just a coincidence. Sit up straight and do it the good old fashioned way: move that mouse and click for gosh sakes. it builds character.
It does not look that difficult to open. Compared to adding RAM or an airport card to a titanium powerbook, for instance, where you had to take out a bunch of screws and gingerly pry off the bottom half of the case. Or really, upgrading anything in a modern slim notebook.
Apple made the Cube pretty easy and slick to open, but nobody cared really once the novelty wore off.
Does nobody remember microfiche? It's basically same thing. Even vannevar bush expected it to be like this - in 1945. Then Ted Nelson coins the term 'hypertext' in 1969 or so. What you see in jef's demo probably is hypertext, just presented in that specific way to maintain context and to try to be less confusing. In the early days, even going back to bush, hypertext was usually envisioned having two screens - one for the linked-from and one for the linked-to for this reason btw... (Some years ago I whipped up a hack to do that in frames, it would rewrite the href target attribute to point to the opposing frame so in surfing you'd jump back and forth, left to right, right to left always able to see the one before you.)
Yes that may always be true. But given the chance to go above and beyond, some will. I think that's worth it. I have found it to be a great motivator when I can work on something for myself at work, even if there is just no time to do it. I don't know how I'd manage to a hard number like 20%, given deadlines, setbacks, etc; but at the very least corporate support of independent projects wrt resource usage, idea ownership, publication, open source contributions, etc., is important to me. My policy would essentially be: have an idea? Go for it, as long as you get your stuff done... if it's good and relevant, we'll support it.
Apple wants easy to use, pretty, slick, useful and fun consumer apps. they must show off and fully utilize Quartz and integrate well with iLife. OO fits about... hmm, not many of those. I bet it is *far* easier to develop Pages from scratch in ObjC in OSX than port OO to meet the above reqs. No surprise there.
I am sick and tired of companies trying to put their own profits before the greater good of society.
I sympathize with your motivation here... big companies ought to somehow act in ways that are good for society, or perhaps, they should never act against the greater good of society....
but then...
isn't putting profits before the greater good kind of the very definition of a company? companies do not exist without revenue. Instead of demanding they transform into the humble servants of society, I think at the very least there could be more transparency in the relationships and dealings among corporations, the media, and government. Government should be the public's leverage against the antisocial activities of corporations. But not many are really involved and most don't care. Perhaps we need to rethink local government. Perhaps there needs to be a way to get more people directly involved.
fault tolerant, dynamic languages will run at acceptable speeds. Things like squeak smalltalk might be useable. Emulation of more recent but obsolete systems will work and be useful. Today's renderfarm will edge toward the desktop, for near-to-realtime 3D of the kind used in movies and print. Machinima movies will approach photorealism for rendering on-the-fly during playback. That will be the intersection of movies and video games, leading to open source movies (so to speak).
Oh yeah, let me just say, off topic, how much I hate that resize from any side of the window behavior. I used motif for years and never liked that since it is not merely resize, but resize AND MOVE ! I always wanted to be able to resize the window in the up and left directions, but for me, the window content should stay in the same place on the screen just as it does for resizing in the right and bottom directions. Oh, the pain. Pardon me.
For coding or novel writing? Sure. Bad idea. But as a clipboard replacement? How about this - would you like to ditch your old trusty clipboard that you carry around and use standing up for eight hours a day with.... a laptop? I think tablets can be extremely useful without handwriting or voice recognition. They just need durability (for the outside crowd) and extremely accurate pen positioning (for the art crowd).
As an aside, on the subject of HWR - I just don't need it. Until it is virtually perfect in all cases, it will only be a distraction (and a bad bad one at that). I don't see why, for instance, I cannot use a scribble as a filename. The OS can assign it whatever random ASCII or Unicode filesystem filename it wishes, but for my purposes, I can read my own damn handwriting and scribbles. I don't sort and search by filename. I think in time and dates, not names. There are those of use who have a lot of files named Untitled because, well, they are! I do endless amounts of graphic art and photography. (and a good example is how rarely I see the filenames of the 12k+ digital photo files I have, but I know where they are and can drag them into photoshop!)
For actual writing or coding, I need a desk, my collection of chairs, music, my Happy Hacking keyboard, etc. So HWR? who cares! let me scribble away on a tablet.
Remember hotjava? Sun's first introductino to java? we all made fun of it because hey, tic-tac-toe on expensive 1996 Sun hardware, at 1979 speeds. And it still looks like crap. Yet another new interface. What the hell have we done in the meantime? That's what Jef is talking about. Not scientific number crunching and transistor count.
In my opinion, programmers will evolve into a role not unlike gardeners. The objects of the programmers work will be like plants that have a life of their own, an evolved genetic code if you will. Complex systems are only complex to linear thinking and analysis from the outside, whereas they are actually simple when grown. cell division, etc., is a relatively simple process, for instance. Alexander write about this in the Timeless Way of Building and The Nature of Order. Wolfram writes about a similar idea in his New Kind of Science. Programmers today Specify. but Specification has tremendous limitations in scale etc. It is painful and nearly impossible to create systems of great complexity through specification, and even harder to change and grow that complex system over time in any remotely graceful way. We create software of great complexity today, and the trend is upward; the most complex man-made things in the physical world are not created by factories, they are all individuals with individual quirks unable to be fully specified as-designed or as-built. Factories and automation in the industrial sense do not and one might argue can not create or grow large scale complex systems. (where are the bridge factories? the skyscraper factories?) If you think of a garden as a system from the point of view of the individual cells, a gardener has godlike powers of creation. But the plants have a life of their own. Programmers in the future will guide and garden.
Those trends you speak of simply mean more folks are making poor choices.
I have two kids, four and 17 months. In working with them we talk about setting them up for success. That means putting them in an enviroment or giving them the ability to make the right choices. Everyone needs it. The world we live in makes it increasingly difficult for people to make the right choices. It's still a choice, no doubt. But society isn't structured in a way that encourages responsible behavior.
Yes.. but eventually society has to come to grips with the role of advertisers and children in general. will children always be prey to predatory corporations? Children have much more exposure to society at large than ever before, and yet play a smaller role it in (eg the separation of work / family). Children are bigger targets and have less responsibility. Less parental interaction with children. Less adult interaction with children in general. More government power over children (eg education and health standards) and families. Not good trends.
Slashdot Mirror
It's 6ood xo see that somehbv4 else is vsing a Nevvton t0 make Slabbbot entries #
yow think Yom awe so funny @
4 have a Newtonad i + works j USt fine x OK? Much better rm MA Graffxti c -wok .
But the Newton community is growing!
I would worry more about your male teenage friends. They are far more dangerous than grandmothers.
most "people that are like 70" can drive just fine. You must not know any.
In my day, we had to point and click. and we liked it. None of this fancy scroll wheel or mouse gestures crap. I tell ya, scroll wheels and the obeseity epidemic are not just a coincidence. Sit up straight and do it the good old fashioned way: move that mouse and click for gosh sakes. it builds character.
Would your companies erase data if asked?
It does not look that difficult to open. Compared to adding RAM or an airport card to a titanium powerbook, for instance, where you had to take out a bunch of screws and gingerly pry off the bottom half of the case. Or really, upgrading anything in a modern slim notebook.
Apple made the Cube pretty easy and slick to open, but nobody cared really once the novelty wore off.
Does nobody remember microfiche? It's basically same thing. Even vannevar bush expected it to be like this - in 1945. Then Ted Nelson coins the term 'hypertext' in 1969 or so. What you see in jef's demo probably is hypertext, just presented in that specific way to maintain context and to try to be less confusing. In the early days, even going back to bush, hypertext was usually envisioned having two screens - one for the linked-from and one for the linked-to for this reason btw... (Some years ago I whipped up a hack to do that in frames, it would rewrite the href target attribute to point to the opposing frame so in surfing you'd jump back and forth, left to right, right to left always able to see the one before you.)
Well if Jef wants to take over the world, it's a good place to start
Sorry, OT. But still.
Does this imply that reasonable steps should be taken by gun manufactures to prevents guns from being used for crimes?
Nah. Guns aren't a threat to corporations.
Yes that may always be true. But given the chance to go above and beyond, some will. I think that's worth it. I have found it to be a great motivator when I can work on something for myself at work, even if there is just no time to do it. I don't know how I'd manage to a hard number like 20%, given deadlines, setbacks, etc; but at the very least corporate support of independent projects wrt resource usage, idea ownership, publication, open source contributions, etc., is important to me. My policy would essentially be: have an idea? Go for it, as long as you get your stuff done... if it's good and relevant, we'll support it.
Apple wants easy to use, pretty, slick, useful and fun consumer apps. they must show off and fully utilize Quartz and integrate well with iLife. OO fits about... hmm, not many of those. I bet it is *far* easier to develop Pages from scratch in ObjC in OSX than port OO to meet the above reqs. No surprise there.
I think DarwinPorts is working on something like this. Unless I'm mistaken of course...
I am sick and tired of companies trying to put their own profits before the greater good of society.
I sympathize with your motivation here... big companies ought to somehow act in ways that are good for society, or perhaps, they should never act against the greater good of society....
but then...
isn't putting profits before the greater good kind of the very definition of a company? companies do not exist without revenue. Instead of demanding they transform into the humble servants of society, I think at the very least there could be more transparency in the relationships and dealings among corporations, the media, and government. Government should be the public's leverage against the antisocial activities of corporations. But not many are really involved and most don't care. Perhaps we need to rethink local government. Perhaps there needs to be a way to get more people directly involved.
camera battery life is the main one. card readers are also smaller and less annoying than having to carry around yet another cable.
fault tolerant, dynamic languages will run at acceptable speeds. Things like squeak smalltalk might be useable. Emulation of more recent but obsolete systems will work and be useful. Today's renderfarm will edge toward the desktop, for near-to-realtime 3D of the kind used in movies and print. Machinima movies will approach photorealism for rendering on-the-fly during playback. That will be the intersection of movies and video games, leading to open source movies (so to speak).
Oh yeah, let me just say, off topic, how much I hate that resize from any side of the window behavior. I used motif for years and never liked that since it is not merely resize, but resize AND MOVE ! I always wanted to be able to resize the window in the up and left directions, but for me, the window content should stay in the same place on the screen just as it does for resizing in the right and bottom directions. Oh, the pain. Pardon me.
For coding or novel writing? Sure. Bad idea. But as a clipboard replacement? How about this - would you like to ditch your old trusty clipboard that you carry around and use standing up for eight hours a day with.... a laptop? I think tablets can be extremely useful without handwriting or voice recognition. They just need durability (for the outside crowd) and extremely accurate pen positioning (for the art crowd).
As an aside, on the subject of HWR - I just don't need it. Until it is virtually perfect in all cases, it will only be a distraction (and a bad bad one at that). I don't see why, for instance, I cannot use a scribble as a filename. The OS can assign it whatever random ASCII or Unicode filesystem filename it wishes, but for my purposes, I can read my own damn handwriting and scribbles. I don't sort and search by filename. I think in time and dates, not names. There are those of use who have a lot of files named Untitled because, well, they are! I do endless amounts of graphic art and photography. (and a good example is how rarely I see the filenames of the 12k+ digital photo files I have, but I know where they are and can drag them into photoshop!)
For actual writing or coding, I need a desk, my collection of chairs, music, my Happy Hacking keyboard, etc. So HWR? who cares! let me scribble away on a tablet.
C'mon! DOOM is a mood. I hope the movie has the status bar.
Remember hotjava? Sun's first introductino to java? we all made fun of it because hey, tic-tac-toe on expensive 1996 Sun hardware, at 1979 speeds. And it still looks like crap. Yet another new interface. What the hell have we done in the meantime? That's what Jef is talking about. Not scientific number crunching and transistor count.
In my opinion, programmers will evolve into a role not unlike gardeners. The objects of the programmers work will be like plants that have a life of their own, an evolved genetic code if you will. Complex systems are only complex to linear thinking and analysis from the outside, whereas they are actually simple when grown. cell division, etc., is a relatively simple process, for instance. Alexander write about this in the Timeless Way of Building and The Nature of Order. Wolfram writes about a similar idea in his New Kind of Science. Programmers today Specify. but Specification has tremendous limitations in scale etc. It is painful and nearly impossible to create systems of great complexity through specification, and even harder to change and grow that complex system over time in any remotely graceful way. We create software of great complexity today, and the trend is upward; the most complex man-made things in the physical world are not created by factories, they are all individuals with individual quirks unable to be fully specified as-designed or as-built. Factories and automation in the industrial sense do not and one might argue can not create or grow large scale complex systems. (where are the bridge factories? the skyscraper factories?) If you think of a garden as a system from the point of view of the individual cells, a gardener has godlike powers of creation. But the plants have a life of their own. Programmers in the future will guide and garden.
I agree with you 100% about choices. You say
Those trends you speak of simply mean more folks are making poor choices.
I have two kids, four and 17 months. In working with them we talk about setting them up for success. That means putting them in an enviroment or giving them the ability to make the right choices. Everyone needs it. The world we live in makes it increasingly difficult for people to make the right choices. It's still a choice, no doubt. But society isn't structured in a way that encourages responsible behavior.
Yes.. but eventually society has to come to grips with the role of advertisers and children in general. will children always be prey to predatory corporations? Children have much more exposure to society at large than ever before, and yet play a smaller role it in (eg the separation of work / family). Children are bigger targets and have less responsibility. Less parental interaction with children. Less adult interaction with children in general. More government power over children (eg education and health standards) and families. Not good trends.
If I had a mod point for everytime someone said that...