Although slightly offtopic, tabs should really be a feature of the window manager, not any one program. Check out this paper for some cool ideas. Why cant I glue together a web browser, by terminal and a text editor into one tabbed bundle? Why shouldnt I be able to tear off tabs and turn them into real windows? etc. If tabs were part of the window manager and not the application this type of thing would be easy.
They are almost the same. Norman says that because of the word psychology in POET his book was being put in the self-help section of bookstores. So psychology was replaced with design.
It would be pretty cool if they could build a decent screen into a pair of glasses though. Then the portability of something this size would be a definite benifit.
True. What I was getting at is that there are lots of problems associated software: bugs, needed features, broken/ineffictent ways to complete a task, documentation, etc.
The key is that once a problem is identified as a problem a company can pay to have it fixed. An open source project can request to have it fixed and either it will or wont.
Of course on the other hand anyone has the potential to fix a problem in open software. Only a few people within a company have the power to actually fix a problem in closed software.
Microsoft's advantage is not that it controls PC hardware (if it does). The real advantages is that they have money to pay people to do work. If something needs to be done they dont need to worry about waiting for someone interested in fixing that problem to come along. They pay someone to do it. Most open source projects dont have that capability.
The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.
I'll disagree (partially) with the statement that it takes millions of $ to innovate. It can be done, but it takes more than hacking code. You must understand your users and what they actually need (not what they think they need). In general this is a hard process and it is not surprising that it takes a business so much money, they are driven by marking and rarely by what the users actually need. And just because it takes a company so much money that doesnt mean it needs to be that way. That is like saying it must be expensive to get into space, look at all of the money NASA spends. It doesnt need to be that way.
A small group of people can do a rather good job of figuring out what is needed. Once that is done you have a good idea of what features your software should support (the things that are currently broken in your user's work process). Take a read through Beyer, H & Holtzblatt, K. (1998) Contextual design: Defining customer-centered systems. This gives you a process of going from start to finish of figuring out what should be innovated.
Given this process, there is no reason a couple of open source people couldnt go and figure out what to innovate on, and then actually build it. You wouldnt need to copy other companies applications.
> * Run every device you can on batteries. The power supplied by batteries is always vastly cleaner than power converted from AC.
Dont't bother. Anything you use is going to have a switching power supply to generate all of the needed internal voltages. If it is garbage on AC then it's probably garbage on DC. They did not design the board properly, go find another.
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Although slightly offtopic, tabs should really be a feature of the window manager, not any one program. Check out this paper for some cool ideas. Why cant I glue together a web browser, by terminal and a text editor into one tabbed bundle? Why shouldnt I be able to tear off tabs and turn them into real windows? etc. If tabs were part of the window manager and not the application this type of thing would be easy.
They are almost the same. Norman says that because of the word psychology in POET his book was being put in the self-help section of bookstores. So psychology was replaced with design.
It would be pretty cool if they could build a decent screen into a pair of glasses though. Then the portability of something this size would be a definite benifit.
Like this?
They havent got it quite right just yet. However, I've been wearing a version that clips onto your classes for over 3 years now.
"Fixing" may be the wrong term here.
True. What I was getting at is that there are lots of problems associated software: bugs, needed features, broken/ineffictent ways to complete a task, documentation, etc.
The key is that once a problem is identified as a problem a company can pay to have it fixed. An open source project can request to have it fixed and either it will or wont.
Of course on the other hand anyone has the potential to fix a problem in open software. Only a few people within a company have the power to actually fix a problem in closed software.
Microsoft's advantage is not that it controls PC hardware (if it does). The real advantages is that they have money to pay people to do work. If something needs to be done they dont need to worry about waiting for someone interested in fixing that problem to come along. They pay someone to do it. Most open source projects dont have that capability.
The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.
I'll disagree (partially) with the statement that it takes millions of $ to innovate. It can be done, but it takes more than hacking code. You must understand your users and what they actually need (not what they think they need). In general this is a hard process and it is not surprising that it takes a business so much money, they are driven by marking and rarely by what the users actually need. And just because it takes a company so much money that doesnt mean it needs to be that way. That is like saying it must be expensive to get into space, look at all of the money NASA spends. It doesnt need to be that way.
A small group of people can do a rather good job of figuring out what is needed. Once that is done you have a good idea of what features your software should support (the things that are currently broken in your user's work process). Take a read through Beyer, H & Holtzblatt, K. (1998) Contextual design: Defining customer-centered systems. This gives you a process of going from start to finish of figuring out what should be innovated.
Given this process, there is no reason a couple of open source people couldnt go and figure out what to innovate on, and then actually build it. You wouldnt need to copy other companies applications.
> * Run every device you can on batteries. The power supplied by batteries is always vastly cleaner than power converted from AC.
Dont't bother. Anything you use is going to have a switching power supply to generate all of the needed internal voltages. If it is garbage on AC then it's probably garbage on DC. They did not design the board properly, go find another.