Commands are somewhat obsolete, because they put the verb first, then the object.
GUI interfaces put the object first, when you click on the file, and the verb second, when you drag the icon or right click and specify a verb to apply.
The latter is more "object oriented" because your selection of verbs is restricted to the type of file. This style is more restrictive to the user, but less error prone, and leads to fewer possible actions.
The next type of interface is like a video game, where you're the object, and the environment operates on you. Clippy is like this.
The issue then becomes inferring possible actions based on what you're doing. The programmer tries to parse the user's input into the mouse and keyboard, and offer up possible paths.
Though this sounds very difficult, it's not always difficult. If the user has chosen to use a "wizard" the severely restricts context, the programmer can easily guess what the user wants to do next, because there isn't much to do: it's usually "Next>>", eventually "Finish", sometimes "Cancel", and sometimes "Back".
Somewhere between Clippy and the Wizard is a context where the user has some freedom, but, is still in a pretty restricted context, so the computer can do "smart" things for the user.
There's room for all these different kinds of interaction. One doesn't replace any other.
They want to "brand" the experience. It's a little appetizer to fancy up the meal of fish sticks and macaroni and cheese.
I get the feeling they want something along the lines of their "hit", "Air". That's a very pleasant sounding lite-rock ditty that would enhance any pointless experience.
That's funny, because I use one of my virtual desktops to hold my widgets. The difference between Dashboard and what I do is that I get to use real programs, not memory-hogging html/javascript programs.
If you're going to count opportunity costs, then you should also factor in transaction overhead (shopping, selecting, and shipping) and the cost to construct the object. I'll grant that some people like to shop and build Ikea furniture, so there's some subjectivity involved -- but, I'm not one of those people.
It's not really more expensive to get good furniture, if you have the money on hand. Something that costs $1,500 and lasts 100 years or more is better than something that costs $300 and won't last more than 10, and cannot really be repaired. If you have to sell it, the depreciation on the expensive item isn't so bad -- you lose a lot up front, but, at some point, the price hits bottom, and then rises. The depreciation on 5 year old particle board is basically the total value of the item.
I fixed up a messed up 50+ year old desk with some danish oil finish and sandpaper. It looks pretty good, and feels solid. This desk was a cheapie back in the day, and nothing special, but it'll go another 50 years or more.
The only reason to get cheap furniture is a lack of money. If you don't have the $$$, there's not much you can do about that.
I was a lousy painter too, but learned the trick: paint thin layers and build up, and make each layer's strokes perpendicular. For a regular wall, two coats should do it. Also, don't paint "up and down"; paint Xs and Ws with a roller. The randomness hides imperfections. When you use a brush, remember that you're just loading it up with paint, and trying to flow the paint onto the surface. Don't try to spread it around a lot or try to pull the brush forever. Think of the brush as a spoon for paint, not as a butter knife.
The other thing I learned about walls is to spend a lot of time going over the surface, removing bits of tape, pulling staples, filling in holes, caulking caps, and sanding down old blobs of paint. Getting the surface "perfect" before painting will make the wall look better. All you're doing is reducing the "noise" or "information" you can see on the wall... the paint goes on and evens out colors.
"Well, it is in the sense that Dell sells PCs. What kind of tailored products does Dell make?"
Servers, pre-configured PCs for IT departments, and consumer PCs.
These are all pretty generic, but a home entertainment PC is no less generic. It's just less flexible than a PC, and has a simpler interface, and a huge hard drive.
Dell sells TVs. So they could bundle a consumer-ish device for "free" with a big TV. People will think "ooh, I have an extra free PC" but within a few months, realize it makes more sense to just use the PC as an entertainment device.
I don't mean that kind of convergence. (People *do* gather around a laptop to watch movies in bed, btw.)
I mean the kind convergence where, instead of specially engineered hardware, you use the generic PC as the platform, and install specific hardware and software to make the box into a tailored product.
Now come at it from the media angle. Consumers are not going to buy movies because the PC supports playing that format. When they will do is buy movies when they have a dedicated device, like a DVD player, that will support them. Who is almost guaranteed to have millions on millions of said devices in homes that are not even all early adopters? Sony, with the PS3.
And... how do you know that Dell isn't thinking about trying to get into a competition with the PS3? People are already building thousands of set top boxes, using their computers as home theater hubs. I've seen people using their computers as TVs. I probably watch as much video on the computer as I do on the regular TV. (Like an hour a week.)
I don't even watch TV much, and I can see what they're going to do. Dell doesn't even have a choice in the matter, really, because this is where the market is going.
It wasn't just that. The clones cannibalized the Apple market. The goal, originally, was to have the clone vendors expand the Mac market.
What this told Apple, I assume, is that it wasn't limited hardware choice or a lack of diversity in marketing that was limiting the growth of the Mac's market share. That meant that some other factor was -- maybe the range or quality of applications, the quality of the OS, or one of the other problem areas for Apple.
The correct action was to disallow the clones. They also lowered their prices a little, and the effect was that the unofficial clones slowly went away. The market share kept shrinking. (And the margin on any computer shrank, much to everyone's delight.)
I think Apple's gone a little too far in the other direction, though. They're releasing a lot of software, and that probably discourages the independent software vendor market. Final Cut Pro, Shake (whatever it's called now), iWork, iLife.... all great software, but they basically lock out other vendors. They're trying to do for themselves what Microsoft did with Excel (killing Lotus) and Word (killing Word Perfect) and Visio (ending Visio's independence).
(Also, I think it was Scully who ended the clone wars.)
Maybe driving games should start with a warning to rest a few minutes after playing the game for a long time, because your responses to driving situations might change.
I'm just not convinced that it's that a road that for use by robot cars exclusively is that different from rail. It's probably cheaper to build, but, you're going to have lower fuel efficiency and it's a benefit that's enjoyed only by people with robot cars... and that'll be a very small minority of people.
Maybe it could be sold to the public if they were bus-only busways, and busway-compatible robot cars could use them.
You could allay people's fears by making a few robot cars drive toward each other in an unsafe manner, and avoid the impending crashes. Once they are convinced that the car will outperform a human driver, then, they'll trust it.
Also, presumably, a robot car would have some "defensive driving" smarts that most people lack.
I think the present animosity to copyright is due to the fact that many of the most valuable copyrights are owned by large publishers, who own many copyrights. This happened because people (in the US) are allowed to sell their copyright to someone else -- that is, they can assign all their rights to someone else.
This situation could be mitigated if people are not allowed to sell their copyrights, but are allowed to lease them for a short period of time. That way, all rights will eventually revert to the author. This is basically what all authors want to negotiate with publishers, but, due to their lack of leverage, they can't negotiate it.
If a company wished to own the copyright outright, they'd have to arrange some kind of work-for-hire contract and treat the artist as an employee, rather than make a system of speculative loans like they do with recording acts. Again, this would be agreeable with authors, who generally don't mind getting paid, up front, for work.
As a final "fix" the author could be summarily protected from suits that would prevent her/him from creating works similar to other works s/he had created before, even for these works for hire.
In the early 90s, some companies in Japan wanted it renamed to "Japanimation" to emphasize the national origins of anime. They failed (partly because it makes you say "jap", but mainly) because the fanboys prefered the shorter "anime", because it was the "real" term, and it signified transcultural reinterpretation ( disney style animation -> anime (japanese) -> anime (english)) and also happened to be nation-neutral. There's international anime today, and the aesthetic is international, so, the fanboys chose the best usage.
This is true, but talent and circumstance are both necessary. I raised the issue because everyone's talking about talent, without thinking much about luck.
Also, it's not like he's be able to have so much luck without the big pile of money that the Apple II generated, back in the 1970s. That cash funded a lot of failures, and one hit: the Mac.
The Mac money was spent on a lot of things, but had one hit: Pixar. NeXT was cool, but it wasn't a financial success.
With that string of success, he came back to Apple, made the iMac, brought back the old NeXT software from the dead, and basically trailed Windows for a while... until the iPod... which was originally a me-too product late to the market until it was mated with the music store (which is also a me-too product).
I think all recent languages compile down into a processor-neutral assembly language. Other language vendors do the same thing with a neutral assembly language, but they don't make the intermediate representation a product.
MS's CLI is just a public implementation intended for multiple languages, and that's being sold to the development market. That way, if you have a language, you'll only write the parts that create the CLI... and MS's JIT optimizes and compiles that code, saving you from having to pay for implementing that part of the compiler.
In theory, the CLI is neutral. In practice, things like that are not really platform independent. Different VMs have different bugs. Big Java apps sometimes demand specific versions of a specific VM... and I don't see that changing.
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It depends on how you're using it.
Commands are somewhat obsolete, because they put the verb first, then the object.
GUI interfaces put the object first, when you click on the file, and the verb second, when you drag the icon or right click and specify a verb to apply.
The latter is more "object oriented" because your selection of verbs is restricted to the type of file. This style is more restrictive to the user, but less error prone, and leads to fewer possible actions.
The next type of interface is like a video game, where you're the object, and the environment operates on you. Clippy is like this.
The issue then becomes inferring possible actions based on what you're doing. The programmer tries to parse the user's input into the mouse and keyboard, and offer up possible paths.
Though this sounds very difficult, it's not always difficult. If the user has chosen to use a "wizard" the severely restricts context, the programmer can easily guess what the user wants to do next, because there isn't much to do: it's usually "Next>>", eventually "Finish", sometimes "Cancel", and sometimes "Back".
Somewhere between Clippy and the Wizard is a context where the user has some freedom, but, is still in a pretty restricted context, so the computer can do "smart" things for the user.
There's room for all these different kinds of interaction. One doesn't replace any other.
They want to "brand" the experience. It's a little appetizer to fancy up the meal of fish sticks and macaroni and cheese.
I get the feeling they want something along the lines of their "hit", "Air". That's a very pleasant sounding lite-rock ditty that would enhance any pointless experience.
how about 'f'?
That's funny, because I use one of my virtual desktops to hold my widgets. The difference between Dashboard and what I do is that I get to use real programs, not memory-hogging html/javascript programs.
If you're going to count opportunity costs, then you should also factor in transaction overhead (shopping, selecting, and shipping) and the cost to construct the object. I'll grant that some people like to shop and build Ikea furniture, so there's some subjectivity involved -- but, I'm not one of those people.
It's not really more expensive to get good furniture, if you have the money on hand. Something that costs $1,500 and lasts 100 years or more is better than something that costs $300 and won't last more than 10, and cannot really be repaired. If you have to sell it, the depreciation on the expensive item isn't so bad -- you lose a lot up front, but, at some point, the price hits bottom, and then rises. The depreciation on 5 year old particle board is basically the total value of the item. I fixed up a messed up 50+ year old desk with some danish oil finish and sandpaper. It looks pretty good, and feels solid. This desk was a cheapie back in the day, and nothing special, but it'll go another 50 years or more. The only reason to get cheap furniture is a lack of money. If you don't have the $$$, there's not much you can do about that.
I was a lousy painter too, but learned the trick: paint thin layers and build up, and make each layer's strokes perpendicular. For a regular wall, two coats should do it. Also, don't paint "up and down"; paint Xs and Ws with a roller. The randomness hides imperfections. When you use a brush, remember that you're just loading it up with paint, and trying to flow the paint onto the surface. Don't try to spread it around a lot or try to pull the brush forever. Think of the brush as a spoon for paint, not as a butter knife.
The other thing I learned about walls is to spend a lot of time going over the surface, removing bits of tape, pulling staples, filling in holes, caulking caps, and sanding down old blobs of paint. Getting the surface "perfect" before painting will make the wall look better. All you're doing is reducing the "noise" or "information" you can see on the wall... the paint goes on and evens out colors.
At some level, it's all about patience.
"Well, it is in the sense that Dell sells PCs. What kind of tailored products does Dell make?"
Servers, pre-configured PCs for IT departments, and consumer PCs.
These are all pretty generic, but a home entertainment PC is no less generic. It's just less flexible than a PC, and has a simpler interface, and a huge hard drive.
Dell sells TVs. So they could bundle a consumer-ish device for "free" with a big TV. People will think "ooh, I have an extra free PC" but within a few months, realize it makes more sense to just use the PC as an entertainment device.
I don't mean that kind of convergence. (People *do* gather around a laptop to watch movies in bed, btw.)
I mean the kind convergence where, instead of specially engineered hardware, you use the generic PC as the platform, and install specific hardware and software to make the box into a tailored product.
That's Dell territory.
And... how do you know that Dell isn't thinking about trying to get into a competition with the PS3? People are already building thousands of set top boxes, using their computers as home theater hubs. I've seen people using their computers as TVs. I probably watch as much video on the computer as I do on the regular TV. (Like an hour a week.)
I don't even watch TV much, and I can see what they're going to do. Dell doesn't even have a choice in the matter, really, because this is where the market is going.
Every other tech geek seems to have a Tivo. The iPod is doing well too.
Dell's selling TVs nowadays.
I think Dell has "convergence" and "set top box" on its mind.
It wasn't just that. The clones cannibalized the Apple market. The goal, originally, was to have the clone vendors expand the Mac market.
What this told Apple, I assume, is that it wasn't limited hardware choice or a lack of diversity in marketing that was limiting the growth of the Mac's market share. That meant that some other factor was -- maybe the range or quality of applications, the quality of the OS, or one of the other problem areas for Apple.
The correct action was to disallow the clones. They also lowered their prices a little, and the effect was that the unofficial clones slowly went away. The market share kept shrinking. (And the margin on any computer shrank, much to everyone's delight.)
I think Apple's gone a little too far in the other direction, though. They're releasing a lot of software, and that probably discourages the independent software vendor market. Final Cut Pro, Shake (whatever it's called now), iWork, iLife.... all great software, but they basically lock out other vendors. They're trying to do for themselves what Microsoft did with Excel (killing Lotus) and Word (killing Word Perfect) and Visio (ending Visio's independence).
(Also, I think it was Scully who ended the clone wars.)
Maybe driving games should start with a warning to rest a few minutes after playing the game for a long time, because your responses to driving situations might change.
I think steep grades an exceptional situation.
I'm just not convinced that it's that a road that for use by robot cars exclusively is that different from rail. It's probably cheaper to build, but, you're going to have lower fuel efficiency and it's a benefit that's enjoyed only by people with robot cars... and that'll be a very small minority of people.
Maybe it could be sold to the public if they were bus-only busways, and busway-compatible robot cars could use them.
You could allay people's fears by making a few robot cars drive toward each other in an unsafe manner, and avoid the impending crashes. Once they are convinced that the car will outperform a human driver, then, they'll trust it.
Also, presumably, a robot car would have some "defensive driving" smarts that most people lack.
>imagine if you build roads that are only used by autonomous vehicles
Wouldn't that be, like, "train tracks?"
I think the present animosity to copyright is due to the fact that many of the most valuable copyrights are owned by large publishers, who own many copyrights. This happened because people (in the US) are allowed to sell their copyright to someone else -- that is, they can assign all their rights to someone else.
This situation could be mitigated if people are not allowed to sell their copyrights, but are allowed to lease them for a short period of time. That way, all rights will eventually revert to the author. This is basically what all authors want to negotiate with publishers, but, due to their lack of leverage, they can't negotiate it.
If a company wished to own the copyright outright, they'd have to arrange some kind of work-for-hire contract and treat the artist as an employee, rather than make a system of speculative loans like they do with recording acts. Again, this would be agreeable with authors, who generally don't mind getting paid, up front, for work.
As a final "fix" the author could be summarily protected from suits that would prevent her/him from creating works similar to other works s/he had created before, even for these works for hire.
In the early 90s, some companies in Japan wanted it renamed to "Japanimation" to emphasize the national origins of anime. They failed (partly because it makes you say "jap", but mainly) because the fanboys prefered the shorter "anime", because it was the "real" term, and it signified transcultural reinterpretation ( disney style animation -> anime (japanese) -> anime (english)) and also happened to be nation-neutral. There's international anime today, and the aesthetic is international, so, the fanboys chose the best usage.
This is true, but talent and circumstance are both necessary. I raised the issue because everyone's talking about talent, without thinking much about luck.
Also, it's not like he's be able to have so much luck without the big pile of money that the Apple II generated, back in the 1970s. That cash funded a lot of failures, and one hit: the Mac.
The Mac money was spent on a lot of things, but had one hit: Pixar. NeXT was cool, but it wasn't a financial success.
With that string of success, he came back to Apple, made the iMac, brought back the old NeXT software from the dead, and basically trailed Windows for a while... until the iPod... which was originally a me-too product late to the market until it was mated with the music store (which is also a me-too product).
It takes some talent to be that lucky.
I don't see how it's a trap. It's right on the website, and they tell you the prices up front. The price is reasonable, too.
This reminds me of a local activist group that calls its yearly party their "Annual Social Event." Is that the kind of name the guy wants to see?
Someone asked me if I knew how to use "Adobe". They meant Illustrator, I think.
Likewise, people always call XPress "Quark" or "Quark XPress", so, now, Quark cannot do anything *but* XPress.
I think all recent languages compile down into a processor-neutral assembly language. Other language vendors do the same thing with a neutral assembly language, but they don't make the intermediate representation a product.
MS's CLI is just a public implementation intended for multiple languages, and that's being sold to the development market. That way, if you have a language, you'll only write the parts that create the CLI... and MS's JIT optimizes and compiles that code, saving you from having to pay for implementing that part of the compiler.
In theory, the CLI is neutral. In practice, things like that are not really platform independent. Different VMs have different bugs. Big Java apps sometimes demand specific versions of a specific VM... and I don't see that changing.
Nobody gets to be as successful as Jobs without a lot of good fortune and luck.