How? I don't believe that computers should "intuitively" copy something they are not. I believe that users should have some understanding with how they work before they start using them. And if you have a basic understanding, it's perfectly intuitive that data stored in RAM is lost when you switch the machine off.
To turn it around, should they design cars to be steered with a mouse rather than a steering wheel, because most people are more familiar with a mouse than a steering wheel by the time they reach driving age?
I predict that we will look back at this vocal manipulation and see it the same way. It will have its place in a studio's toolbox where people want to modulate their voice unnaturally fast for a single song and can experiment with it
Isn't that where we're already at? Congratulations for successfully predicting the present and near-past!
We'll end up with the same thing as what has happened with photoshopped magazine images - people expect unreasonable perfection
Nonsense. With the rise of photography, painting became less photorealistic, less naturalistic, more abstract, more gritty.
Music is in the same situation. With tools that enabled the technical perfection of music, came "lo-fi" and other styles that deliberately make the sound more dirty and basic. Electronic music started as an attempt to imitate classical orchestras. But today electronic music generally does not try to emulate traditional instruments, but rather makes sounds which are unique to electronics.
I think your worries about "unreasonable perfection" and "losing touch with reality" are vastly overstated. No, it's more than that. It's completely untrue. All you need to do is listen to a variety of music outside of squeaky-clean pop, and you'll see that most artists are NOT going for perfection in any way. All you need to do is look at contemporary photography and painting, and you'll see that the last thing artists are going for is photoshopped magazine perfection.
Ah, correction, writers are still making music. The "artists" or "singers" on the other hand, are finding more and more ways to artificially make themselves sound better than they really are.
And many performers write their own music. By the way, what's "artificial" about making yourself sound better? Isn't the goal of music to produce something that's pleasing to the ear? Why does it matter how that goal is achieved?
It would only be unintuitive if a computer was a typewriter, and the storage medium was paper. But it's not. The "letter" is stored in volatile RAM. So, it's perfectly intuitive that when you switch off that volatile RAM, the data is lost. Not hard to understand.
If the 'save' concept isn't completely broken, why is it that every single program has to prompt you to save files before you exit the program?
How does that mean that 'save' is completely broken? If it were completely broken, it wouldn't work at all. But clearly it does work, as millions of people have no trouble using it every day.
If saving the file were a necessary part of the utility of the file, then maybe. But it isn't.
But it does have utility. That's how you assign a name to the file, and where it goes. Without that concept, how do you organize your data?
You could expect that, and if you had a snack-making peripheral it wouldn't be unrealistic at all.
My point is not the snack-making part, but the magic elf part. If you had a snack-making peripheral, it would not be elf-powered, it would be powered by electricity.
If your grandmother types a letter, she expects it to still be in the typewriter when she gets back to it, not to have vanished into the ether.
Let's put it in its simplest terms. A computer is not a typewriter. So why should we expect it to behave like one? Most grandmothers are smart enough to know that different devices are used in different ways. She knows you have to "save" the milk by putting it in the refrigerator.
I'm not seeing any downsides to the "alternatives", either.
Then you aren't looking very hard. It's pretty obvious. If the state of something is always maintained, then what happens when you make a mistake? You accidentally type over some important text - and boom, you've lost your document. OK, so to mitigate this, you have a versioning system, which saves each change to the document. But then you fill up your storage rapidly with multiple copies of the same thing, and it also invites security issues.
The way things are now are just a kludgy evolution of making humans work like a computer, instead of making the computer work the way a human expects.
And so is Phantom a kludgy evolution. Everything about computers is kludgy. But this idea of "working the way a human expects" is meaningless nonsense. Firstly, because different people expect different things. Secondly because computers were never an expected development, they are relatively new. And finally, because people DO expect computers to work this way now. Nobody except for the rare illiterate newbie expects their documents to be automatically saved.
Computers are not humans, so they will never "work like a human" any more than you hammer works like a human. Do we expect hammers to be more human-like? No, we expect the users of hammers to learn how to use their tools.
Dragging an example of nearly antiquated technology into a debate about the greatness of the status quo is, to say the least, amusing.
Uhhh... I was responding to somebody who was using old technology as an example, showing that not all pre-digital technology "automatically saves" like a typewriter does.
Wait, the whole benefit of computers is that they don't have limitations,
I never said that. I said they don't have the same limitations as mechanical devices. They obviously have their own limitations.
and yet it's not realistic to expect a computer not to lose the user's data when it's turned off?
When did I ever say that? My computer retains data just fine when I switch it off, because I save it to the hard drive. Why do we need some new metaphor for 'files'?
It's not about eliminating freedom of assembly. It's about eliminating forced assembly which is the union.
Well, that's fine. I don't agree with mandatory union membership. But that's not the same thing as "getting rid of unions," is it? people would still be free to join them. So why did you say "get rid of the unions" rather than "eliminate mandatory membership"?
The concept of persistent vs non-persistent state did not come easily to her, and one has to ask, why should she have to learn about RAM and hard drives and filesystems just to type up a letter?
Because that's how it works. Any alternatives also have major downsides. Your grandmother is an isolated case. Most users now understand the concepts involved. Your grandmother could simply turn on auto-save.
Why can't the system work the way she expected it to, which is to say the way most other machines in the modern world work?
Because more people than your grandmother use computers, and shouldn't be limited by the least competent users. I could expect my computer to work like a magic elf that makes me snacks, but it wouldn't be realistic.
The way most other machines work? What about my 35mm camera? When I take a picture, it needs to be developed and printed, with great care taken not to expose the film to light. I can't just open the camera and see the pictures. Or perhaps a more basic example - when your grandmother types a letter does she just leave it lying around outdoors, or does she store it in a drawer or some other more protected location? When she sends the letter, does she just put it in the mailbox, or does she put it in an envelope first?
Trying to slavishly emulate other physical devices is generally not a good idea in computing. The whole benefit of computers is that they aren't bound to the limitations of mechanical devices.
They are invariably set to shorter yellows to maximize ticket revenue
Except that they aren't. Many parts of the world have red light cameras, where the yellow is not shortened at all, and the yellow duration is set by regulations based on safety research, not ticket revenue.
The problem is that there are red light cameras at all.
Why is that a problem? Do you believe people should be able to run red lights without punishment? Clearly the problem is not the cameras, but the people who tamper with light timings for corrupt purposes.
Here's an idea; Powered by Slashdot® - harness the power of slashdot traffic to generate enough energy to power a small country. If we can ever solve the pickle matrix, we might even be able to generate several megawatts solely from "In Soviet Russia..." jokes.
Slashdot Mirror
(I paid $300 during the 'Oprah' sale on the Kindle 1 in November)
I'm snitting next to Borpoh!
How? I don't believe that computers should "intuitively" copy something they are not. I believe that users should have some understanding with how they work before they start using them. And if you have a basic understanding, it's perfectly intuitive that data stored in RAM is lost when you switch the machine off.
To turn it around, should they design cars to be steered with a mouse rather than a steering wheel, because most people are more familiar with a mouse than a steering wheel by the time they reach driving age?
Anyway, 99% of the "music" released today is pretty much garbage
What do you mean "released today"? Are you under the delusion that there was ever a time when 99% of music released wasn't crap?
Is "Oh, and by the way, we suck" the next line of that song?
I predict that we will look back at this vocal manipulation and see it the same way. It will have its place in a studio's toolbox where people want to modulate their voice unnaturally fast for a single song and can experiment with it
Isn't that where we're already at? Congratulations for successfully predicting the present and near-past!
We'll end up with the same thing as what has happened with photoshopped magazine images - people expect unreasonable perfection
Nonsense. With the rise of photography, painting became less photorealistic, less naturalistic, more abstract, more gritty.
Music is in the same situation. With tools that enabled the technical perfection of music, came "lo-fi" and other styles that deliberately make the sound more dirty and basic. Electronic music started as an attempt to imitate classical orchestras. But today electronic music generally does not try to emulate traditional instruments, but rather makes sounds which are unique to electronics.
I think your worries about "unreasonable perfection" and "losing touch with reality" are vastly overstated. No, it's more than that. It's completely untrue. All you need to do is listen to a variety of music outside of squeaky-clean pop, and you'll see that most artists are NOT going for perfection in any way. All you need to do is look at contemporary photography and painting, and you'll see that the last thing artists are going for is photoshopped magazine perfection.
Voice synthesizer.
How about learning how to sing in tune?
Geee, way to miss the point. Good music doesn't necessarily have to be in tune. Sometimes it's better if it's not.
Is someone who uses gimp or photoshop to run some filters on a drawing a real artist?
They can be. Is putting a urinal in a gallery "real art"?
What's the obsession with being a "real artist" anyway? What does it even mean?
What happens when you put them together in a feedback loop?
The happy slider becomes the orgasmic slider.
... its everywhere, and it sounds like ass.
Only when you notice it...
Ah, correction, writers are still making music. The "artists" or "singers" on the other hand, are finding more and more ways to artificially make themselves sound better than they really are.
And many performers write their own music. By the way, what's "artificial" about making yourself sound better? Isn't the goal of music to produce something that's pleasing to the ear? Why does it matter how that goal is achieved?
It would only be unintuitive if a computer was a typewriter, and the storage medium was paper. But it's not. The "letter" is stored in volatile RAM. So, it's perfectly intuitive that when you switch off that volatile RAM, the data is lost. Not hard to understand.
If the 'save' concept isn't completely broken, why is it that every single program has to prompt you to save files before you exit the program?
How does that mean that 'save' is completely broken? If it were completely broken, it wouldn't work at all. But clearly it does work, as millions of people have no trouble using it every day.
If saving the file were a necessary part of the utility of the file, then maybe. But it isn't.
But it does have utility. That's how you assign a name to the file, and where it goes. Without that concept, how do you organize your data?
You could expect that, and if you had a snack-making peripheral it wouldn't be unrealistic at all.
My point is not the snack-making part, but the magic elf part. If you had a snack-making peripheral, it would not be elf-powered, it would be powered by electricity.
If your grandmother types a letter, she expects it to still be in the typewriter when she gets back to it, not to have vanished into the ether.
Let's put it in its simplest terms. A computer is not a typewriter. So why should we expect it to behave like one? Most grandmothers are smart enough to know that different devices are used in different ways. She knows you have to "save" the milk by putting it in the refrigerator.
I'm not seeing any downsides to the "alternatives", either.
Then you aren't looking very hard. It's pretty obvious. If the state of something is always maintained, then what happens when you make a mistake? You accidentally type over some important text - and boom, you've lost your document. OK, so to mitigate this, you have a versioning system, which saves each change to the document. But then you fill up your storage rapidly with multiple copies of the same thing, and it also invites security issues.
The way things are now are just a kludgy evolution of making humans work like a computer, instead of making the computer work the way a human expects.
And so is Phantom a kludgy evolution. Everything about computers is kludgy. But this idea of "working the way a human expects" is meaningless nonsense. Firstly, because different people expect different things. Secondly because computers were never an expected development, they are relatively new. And finally, because people DO expect computers to work this way now. Nobody except for the rare illiterate newbie expects their documents to be automatically saved.
Computers are not humans, so they will never "work like a human" any more than you hammer works like a human. Do we expect hammers to be more human-like? No, we expect the users of hammers to learn how to use their tools.
Dragging an example of nearly antiquated technology into a debate about the greatness of the status quo is, to say the least, amusing.
Uhhh... I was responding to somebody who was using old technology as an example, showing that not all pre-digital technology "automatically saves" like a typewriter does.
Just remember that the power is limited before you expect to run things like external hard drives off of USB.
Which was kind of the point of my joke.
Wait, the whole benefit of computers is that they don't have limitations,
I never said that. I said they don't have the same limitations as mechanical devices. They obviously have their own limitations.
and yet it's not realistic to expect a computer not to lose the user's data when it's turned off?
When did I ever say that? My computer retains data just fine when I switch it off, because I save it to the hard drive. Why do we need some new metaphor for 'files'?
It's not about eliminating freedom of assembly. It's about eliminating forced assembly which is the union.
Well, that's fine. I don't agree with mandatory union membership. But that's not the same thing as "getting rid of unions," is it? people would still be free to join them. So why did you say "get rid of the unions" rather than "eliminate mandatory membership"?
Looks to me more like you need 220 USB ports.
No problem. I'll just buy more hubs.
The concept of persistent vs non-persistent state did not come easily to her, and one has to ask, why should she have to learn about RAM and hard drives and filesystems just to type up a letter?
Because that's how it works. Any alternatives also have major downsides. Your grandmother is an isolated case. Most users now understand the concepts involved. Your grandmother could simply turn on auto-save.
Why can't the system work the way she expected it to, which is to say the way most other machines in the modern world work?
Because more people than your grandmother use computers, and shouldn't be limited by the least competent users. I could expect my computer to work like a magic elf that makes me snacks, but it wouldn't be realistic.
The way most other machines work? What about my 35mm camera? When I take a picture, it needs to be developed and printed, with great care taken not to expose the film to light. I can't just open the camera and see the pictures. Or perhaps a more basic example - when your grandmother types a letter does she just leave it lying around outdoors, or does she store it in a drawer or some other more protected location? When she sends the letter, does she just put it in the mailbox, or does she put it in an envelope first?
Trying to slavishly emulate other physical devices is generally not a good idea in computing. The whole benefit of computers is that they aren't bound to the limitations of mechanical devices.
They are invariably set to shorter yellows to maximize ticket revenue
Except that they aren't. Many parts of the world have red light cameras, where the yellow is not shortened at all, and the yellow duration is set by regulations based on safety research, not ticket revenue.
Which is a better deterrent, a $350 fine or the risk of a truck turning you into a pancake?
The $350 fine. People are generally very irrational when it comes to safety. But they care a lot about saving a few bucks.
The problem is that there are red light cameras at all.
Why is that a problem? Do you believe people should be able to run red lights without punishment? Clearly the problem is not the cameras, but the people who tamper with light timings for corrupt purposes.
The line is a lie. If your 'n' key is broken, that is.
Here's an idea; Powered by Slashdot® - harness the power of slashdot traffic to generate enough energy to power a small country. If we can ever solve the pickle matrix, we might even be able to generate several megawatts solely from "In Soviet Russia..." jokes.