Well, if I'm entering SMSes, I'd like a device with a full keyboard ala blackberry, etc- Entering them on a numpad is just as painful as a scroll pad would be...
As for phone numbers, since this device will be synced up to a computer anyway, why not give the user a slick functionality for organizing their phone numbers with names through an iTunes add-on?
Now they actually have to superimpose them on top of each other (note how the scroll pad intersects the number keys)- Don't these designers understand that this is a horrible design?
It's so obvious what to do: The scroll wheel is great for picking songs and numbers to call out of the address book- For numbers, just use voice recognition: Having a recognizer just for digits works fantastically already- Heck, they wouldn't even have to do the recognition in the handset, but use a central server to handle that part, if it requires too many computrons!
For crissakes, the whole point of the scroll pad is that it is a versatile input device- The scroll pad is all you need!
...the Mac Zealots were the first to adopt the idea- Suddenly, around the time Windows 3.0 came out, GUIs were all over TV and had gripped the imagination of the general non-geek population and it became unthinkable to release a computer without a GUI.
When this happened, my mac friends ribbed me by saying "Look we were right! GUIs are better!"
But I still consider the GUI a step back in computer usability, for many of the reasons outlined in Paul's essay, plus many more!
A keyboard is just a perfect way to enter commands into a computer-
Sorry folks- you're just gonna have to learn how to type in commands without clicking on perty pictures if you want to learn how to use a reasonably complicated application efficiently:) Unfortunately, many programs can no longer run on just a keyboard, due to the GUI devolution.
Well, we still woop their butt in robot basketball.
Oh- Plus, our team just lost because they were intimidated by the German robotic soccer hooligans.
Bill comes off looking pretty bad in this...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
...basically, his whole argument in this article is "we're worried about Google because they're so much like us"
That is exactly the weasily, me too type of argument that shows exactly why (IMNSHO) Microsoft is often perceived as a drain on progress in the tech industry and why they aren't at all like Goggle:)
This Has Little To Do With Web Acceleration...
on
Google Web Accelerator
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
...and everything to do with decreasing loads/speeding up Google sites. After using it for several minutes, I noticed that any froogle/googlegroups/google search I do has marked time savings- more than any other sites I found (except CNN front page, which is also much faster and well suited for this kind of thing...)
Basically, running the web accelerator allows google to have compressed copies of all their pre-generated search pages and use the proprietary webaccelerator internals to give them a strategic advantage over web publishers/services/searches- Imagine the benefits this could have on their internal server load if adopted by 90% of web suers...
Basically what they patented (from what I gather) is the idea of taking many factoids about a news company and putting it into a balanced formula to create a "trust" number.
However, they are not patenting the formula itself, but just the idea of using such a formula, it seems...
This seems like another case of taking an obvious idea and trying to block the competition by patenting it.
Of course, if you _really_ parenthesize properly, you'd end up with something that looks just like Lisp:)
Re:This is not a troll, but a query...
on
Practical Common Lisp
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
There is really only one thing you need to know about lisp- Lisp essentially has NO SYNTAX. What this means is that your program is an abstract syntax tree that goes directly into the compiler.
Compilers in other languages first need to convert the program into an AST before compiling the code. (this is a bit of an oversimplification, but essentially true.) If you want three reasons, I can explain the repercussions of programming directly in an AST:
Elegance: In Lisp, you don't have to worry about idiosyncracies in the head of the language designers like you do in other languages: You don't have to worry about whether AND has precedence over EQUALS (Delphi programmers know this trap) you don't need to worry when a line needs to end in a semicolon, etc. etc.
Macros: By being an AST, Lisp lets you trick the compiler into thinking it sees other code than is actually there. This is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than so-called "macros" in other languages- In Lisp you can turn your programming language into basically ANY programming language you want, within the language itself. Read Peter's excellent book or check out this site for more info.
Productivity: You can program in the purely-functional style that has been shown to increase programmer productivity by having a property called "referential transparency" and having the easily serializable syntax-expression format. Basically, with Lisp you can analyze/manipulate/automate the bejeezus out of your code very easily, under the mantra "code is data, data is code".
That's what I like about Lisp, anyway...
Re:Learn Lisp Without Installing Anything on Your
on
Practical Common Lisp
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Learn Lisp Without Installing Anything on Your PC
on
Practical Common Lisp
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I have a tutorial available that teaches lisp in comic-book form. It is geared to quickly ramp up a newbie to some very advanced lisp tool very quickly.
It uses a free online telnet lisp that lets you try Lisp with zero install required.
Now all they need to do is add the following ability to make it perfect:
1. Allow people to apt-get packages while the CD is running. Then...
2. Import user files from Win into a Knoppix-side directory. Finally...
3. (this is the important one) Press a button and presto! The system builds an ISO of original winknoppix+packages+userfiles that is a no-fuss super-customized knoppix CD!
If they could make that... then a seamless transition to Linux goodness would finally be within reach for everyone!
In an RDBMS XML is just treated as a big "blob" of data- Although translating the raw binary data to XML theoretically has some tiny overhead, in practice large data objects take time to transfer over a network and that far outweighs the tiny conversion time the client needs to do to convert the data into an XML document.
Paul Graham's essay on the legacy of the dotcom boom/bust is a great read. It tries to tease out what worked and didn't work during the boom and how to carry through the positive elements of the tech explosion into the future:
What the Bubble Got Right
Couldn't this theoretically replace the internet altogether? Once the densities of these "s" hotspots is high enough, wouldn't it be theoretically possible to retrieve a page, send an email, etc. without ever having to transmit the message over the internet "proper"?
When I wrote that sentence, I was writing a short form of the sentence:
posts on slashdot are subjective statements and any references to "public interest" is going to reflect the poster's opinion of what the "public interest" is
Given this expansion, it would be possible to substitute "public interest" and "my opinion of what public interest is"
In it's earlier form, I agree that your formulation is logically defendable, although (IMHO) a bit silly.
...It does seem that everyone I know, personally, is already either using Firefox or just the kind of person that'll probably always use internet explorer forever. Let's hope this isn't the case...
...on the other hand, it is not uncommon, according to some business theories, for products to reach a temporary plateau after having reached all "early adopters" and that the majority of users will follow after a delay. Maybe that's where FireFox is now...who knows...
> Let's substitute what you've admitted in this post.
Well, you're commiting a clear logical fallacy with this substitution, since I never said "I" is equivalent to "public interest". By your logic, you could never make a statement about a third person in writing.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if I'm entering SMSes, I'd like a device with a full keyboard ala blackberry, etc- Entering them on a numpad is just as painful as a scroll pad would be...
As for phone numbers, since this device will be synced up to a computer anyway, why not give the user a slick functionality for organizing their phone numbers with names through an iTunes add-on?
That would be far easier to use, in my opinion...
Now they actually have to superimpose them on top of each other (note how the scroll pad intersects the number keys)- Don't these designers understand that this is a horrible design?
It's so obvious what to do: The scroll wheel is great for picking songs and numbers to call out of the address book- For numbers, just use voice recognition: Having a recognizer just for digits works fantastically already- Heck, they wouldn't even have to do the recognition in the handset, but use a central server to handle that part, if it requires too many computrons!
For crissakes, the whole point of the scroll pad is that it is a versatile input device- The scroll pad is all you need!
...the Mac Zealots were the first to adopt the idea- Suddenly, around the time Windows 3.0 came out, GUIs were all over TV and had gripped the imagination of the general non-geek population and it became unthinkable to release a computer without a GUI.
:) Unfortunately, many programs can no longer run on just a keyboard, due to the GUI devolution.
When this happened, my mac friends ribbed me by saying "Look we were right! GUIs are better!"
But I still consider the GUI a step back in computer usability, for many of the reasons outlined in Paul's essay, plus many more!
A keyboard is just a perfect way to enter commands into a computer-
Sorry folks- you're just gonna have to learn how to type in commands without clicking on perty pictures if you want to learn how to use a reasonably complicated application efficiently
Person Y says technology by company X won't last.
Instead, person Y believes technology made by person Y's company will win long-term!
Well, we still woop their butt in robot basketball.
Oh- Plus, our team just lost because they were intimidated by the German robotic soccer hooligans.
...basically, his whole argument in this article is "we're worried about Google because they're so much like us"
:)
That is exactly the weasily, me too type of argument that shows exactly why (IMNSHO) Microsoft is often perceived as a drain on progress in the tech industry and why they aren't at all like Goggle
...and everything to do with decreasing loads/speeding up Google sites. After using it for several minutes, I noticed that any froogle/googlegroups/google search I do has marked time savings- more than any other sites I found (except CNN front page, which is also much faster and well suited for this kind of thing...)
Basically, running the web accelerator allows google to have compressed copies of all their pre-generated search pages and use the proprietary webaccelerator internals to give them a strategic advantage over web publishers/services/searches- Imagine the benefits this could have on their internal server load if adopted by 90% of web suers...
In typical Google fashion, a very clever move!
Basically what they patented (from what I gather) is the idea of taking many factoids about a news company and putting it into a balanced formula to create a "trust" number.
However, they are not patenting the formula itself, but just the idea of using such a formula, it seems...
This seems like another case of taking an obvious idea and trying to block the competition by patenting it.
> if you parenthesize properly...
:)
Of course, if you _really_ parenthesize properly, you'd end up with something that looks just like Lisp
There is really only one thing you need to know about lisp- Lisp essentially has NO SYNTAX. What this means is that your program is an abstract syntax tree that goes directly into the compiler.
Compilers in other languages first need to convert the program into an AST before compiling the code. (this is a bit of an oversimplification, but essentially true.) If you want three reasons, I can explain the repercussions of programming directly in an AST:
Elegance: In Lisp, you don't have to worry about idiosyncracies in the head of the language designers like you do in other languages: You don't have to worry about whether AND has precedence over EQUALS (Delphi programmers know this trap) you don't need to worry when a line needs to end in a semicolon, etc. etc.
Macros: By being an AST, Lisp lets you trick the compiler into thinking it sees other code than is actually there. This is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than so-called "macros" in other languages- In Lisp you can turn your programming language into basically ANY programming language you want, within the language itself. Read Peter's excellent book or check out this site for more info.
Productivity: You can program in the purely-functional style that has been shown to increase programmer productivity by having a property called "referential transparency" and having the easily serializable syntax-expression format. Basically, with Lisp you can analyze/manipulate/automate the bejeezus out of your code very easily, under the mantra "code is data, data is code".
That's what I like about Lisp, anyway...
Oops- Here's the link: tutorial
I have a tutorial available that teaches lisp in comic-book form. It is geared to quickly ramp up a newbie to some very advanced lisp tool very quickly.
It uses a free online telnet lisp that lets you try Lisp with zero install required.
KHAAAAAAARTMAN!
Is it just me, or is April 1st slowly evolving away from a "joke news" day and turning into a kind of "Christmas" for Adults/Geeks?
Now all they need to do is add the following ability to make it perfect:
1. Allow people to apt-get packages while the CD is running. Then...
2. Import user files from Win into a Knoppix-side directory. Finally...
3. (this is the important one) Press a button and presto! The system builds an ISO of original winknoppix+packages+userfiles that is a no-fuss super-customized knoppix CD!
If they could make that... then a seamless transition to Linux goodness would finally be within reach for everyone!
OK- In that case, I agree that that might warrant moving away from RDBMS.
In an RDBMS XML is just treated as a big "blob" of data- Although translating the raw binary data to XML theoretically has some tiny overhead, in practice large data objects take time to transfer over a network and that far outweighs the tiny conversion time the client needs to do to convert the data into an XML document.
Paul Graham's essay on the legacy of the dotcom boom/bust is a great read. It tries to tease out what worked and didn't work during the boom and how to carry through the positive elements of the tech explosion into the future: What the Bubble Got Right
Couldn't this theoretically replace the internet altogether? Once the densities of these "s" hotspots is high enough, wouldn't it be theoretically possible to retrieve a page, send an email, etc. without ever having to transmit the message over the internet "proper"?
I take that back- Reading my original post I can see that you had simply truncated my sentence to change its meaning.
not cool.
> Reconcile the apparent contradiction, please.
You have a valid argument, admittedly...
When I wrote that sentence, I was writing a short form of the sentence:
posts on slashdot are subjective statements and any references to "public interest" is going to reflect the poster's opinion of what the "public interest" is
Given this expansion, it would be possible to substitute "public interest" and "my opinion of what public interest is"
In it's earlier form, I agree that your formulation is logically defendable, although (IMHO) a bit silly.
admittedly, a pretty flimsy basis for any meaningful predicitons...
...It does seem that everyone I know, personally, is already either using Firefox or just the kind of person that'll probably always use internet explorer forever. Let's hope this isn't the case...
...on the other hand, it is not uncommon, according to some business theories, for products to reach a temporary plateau after having reached all "early adopters" and that the majority of users will follow after a delay. Maybe that's where FireFox is now...who knows...
> Let's substitute what you've admitted in this post.
Well, you're commiting a clear logical fallacy with this substitution, since I never said "I" is equivalent to "public interest". By your logic, you could never make a statement about a third person in writing.
> Any kind of mechanised vote counting whatsoever serves to hide the vote counting process from the electorate.
Interesting perspective! Not sure if I agree, but definitely thought-provoking...