Some of us like type in different languages, you know. I would love pressing CMD-SHIFT-N to switch to a non-English keymap and see my keys change to reflect the characters I can now type.
Actually, it would make manufacturing keyboards for international sale a little simpler, since the regional keymap could be "printed" onto the keyboard by the OS at boot time.
Which is the most obvious use for an OLED keyboard I can think of. Typing in French? Your machine switches to a French keymap. That and video-game controls.
I don't have a moral problem with people believing in God. But that doesn't mean that their beliefs should not be challenged in public, and that they should not be called on to defend them (and likewise for the opposition). That's pretty much what we do on other topics. No, it isn't. We don't have public debates on most private matters. For example, I've never been called to explain to the public my preference for dark chocolate over milk chocolate. Rather than make religion a public matter, how about we keep it a private one? I don't have to explain why I believe in God, and in exchange little kids in science classes in public schools will never hear the words "Breishit bara Elokim et ha'shamayim v'et ha'aretz."
Now now, everyone knows that Israel is the Zionist Oppressor of the World, and innocent, noble (though temporarily stolen and controlled by Israel) America can't copy a damned thing that bitch has done.
But seriously, do you trust random, stupid TSA screeners enough to let them do what IDF soldiers do? I'll take the IDF any day.
I know you don't like everything being files, but have you looked at a Linux/BSD/Windows implementation of the 9P2000 protocol used by Plan 9? It's an extraordinarily elegant way of - in one single protocol - treating any resource you please as a file and implementing distributed (ie: network-transparent) filesystems.
You know what: you win the article. You've figured out how to produce top-quality, innovative software without closing the source: pay someone (ie: researchers) to produce it, then tell them to release the source under an open license. Of course, the original investor never makes their money back directly, only in the indirect benefit the entire society sees as a result of the software.
And of course, then all that money has to come from somewhere -- usually taxpayer's pockets. Hmm...
Amiga used to have something like that called Arexx. Programs would expose their own functionality as Arexx commands through an "Arexx" port available to IPC.
Thing with that is, you can write the scripting language to do the job and write the wizard to write the scripts, but you can't make people expose their application's functionality to your language.
I understand now. Throughout this discussion, I just thought you were an idiot. Now I see that you're a fanboy. Actually, I was going to buy a Dell laptop and put Gentoo on it until I found out that Apple hardware was apparently considered higher quality (I had always just considered it expensive, since the last time I'd used an Apple machine was a friend's beige box with Mac OS Classic in the '90s). When I got to using OS X, I found I liked it. Big deal.
There are so many truly innovative open-source projects I couldn't name them all, but most just don't get much support because... wait for it... they're too innovative and different. Look at SymphonyOS. Heck, look at bittorrent. You think that didn't innovate? So basically, you're saying that the community doesn't support truly innovative open-source projects, causing them to die for lack of volunteers? That's pretty much my point right there.
Even Apple took a bunch of open source tools as the base of their operating system. Quite so, though I think they could have done better than to copy a BSD userland with a Mach-based kernel (Mach is known and hated for being the crappy first attempt at a functioning microkernel.). Apparently even Apple goes for cheap over good sometimes.
That kind of shit has been in Japan and Taiwan for a couple of years now. OK, I didn't know that. So why did it take until the impending release of the iPhone for some OSS coders and hardware hackers to look at such a neat technology and say, "Let's do that, but with freedom!"?
If you want to talk about reinventing the wheel, Apple did it with the Quartz graphics system. They wrote their own and produced an excellent piece of software rather than implement 20-years-old-and-still-undead X Windows.
You named the problem yourself: that we need thousands of projects to have a chance at seeing a really innovative result. Some smartly invested dollars into a good closed-source coding team led by a real designer can produce results far more consistently.
You see, the Java bashing isn't actually senseless. Java really does suck in the way it pointlessly restricts programming style into object orientation.
Anyway, his point is that Smalltalk and Lisp, two languages that each are the best in their domains, had development environments 20 years ago that look like magic or strong AI compared to today's popular Java IDEs.
Being a great triumph of community function doesn't change the fact that the community could only really unite to copy someone else's work.
Note that. Where's the innovation in open-source? In projects like Perl and Python where a single benevolent dictator wrote an initial working model and then released it into the wild to attract contributors (though with Perl you would never realize it wasn't designed by a committee). But since those were one-man efforts, they two had to build off of previous work, and so you can't run Perl or Python on most non-*nix systems.
This is precisely why there are companies who gladly hold the food by paying salaries to developers of open source software, so you can lead them where you want them to go. IBM, Redhat, Sun, etc. all make an excellent living guiding open source software where their business needs it to go. Sure, sure. But that doesn't encourage any actual innovation in software, it encourages adding another crock onto a heap of old hacks built by badly implementing 30-year-old standards, all of which runs just well enough to keep a small IT department employed (who, coincidentally, keep choosing to run this stuff).
I would actually hand the prize for OSS development to Ubuntu Linux made by Canonical. They got around the "good, cheap, fast: choose two" dichotomy by using philanthropic funds, and the result is a system that manages to almost not betray its decades-old foundations. DISCLAIMER: I am an OS X user, though I can fully understand how Apple obviously takes the path of "good and fast" by throwing "cheap" out the window.
Open source software greatly lowers the barrier to entry into the market which, imho, increases innovation in how business is done. Very probably, in fact, almost definitely. But TFA spoke of innovation in software and in computer science, and all the copying (and then the subsequent touting of a copy of a 30-year-old system as an "alternative" OS) hinders innovation in software engineering and computer science. Whether the trade-off is fair, I leave up to you. I think we should at least be fostering real innovation in academic CS and hobby programming, even if the market won't support it in business.
I mean seriuosly, I don't see closed source software making amazing technical breakthroughs either. Plan 9 from Bell Labs. The iPhone's multi-touch interface. Bluetooth. The Nintendo and Sega games that actually make good use of the Wiimote. VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Portal.
I believe what the original author is seeing is the waning of the industrial revolution in which we're seeing an extensive slow down in technological wonders. Sure computers are getting smaller and with slightly different/better interfaces, but going from steam engines to cell phones was a VERY rapid ramp up... we just don't see that kind of thing anymore. Since I have a huge hulking Dell desktop sitting a meter to my left that was, in 2001, only two steps down from the bleeding edge, and since I'm typing this post on a Macbook Pro (made in 2007) that outstrips that Dell in every possible way due to Moore's Law and the increasing capacity of hard drives while providing several capabilities, like the iSight camera and motion sensors, that weren't even available (at least not cheaply) in 2001, I'd have to say technological development is not slowing down. Maybe it has stopped accelerating, but everyone knows that exponential growth can't continue forever.
I'd say we've reached the point where people problems hold as back more than actual technological problems. If OpenMoko got their shit together (I really wanted one, so now I love to use them as an example of a failed project.), we could all be running mobile phones with multi-touch interfaces, cheap service plans, WiFi internet access, and best of all, software at least open enough to let us program the device. Such a device would, if sold cheaply enough, put established mobile phone and the less savvy mobile video gaming companies out of business, and we have the technology to produce it. It's just the people causing problems.
But "UNIX" doesn't rebut TFA, it reinforces it! The article's whole point is that OSS has done little besides copy the work of closed-source innovators, with GNU/Linux copying Unix being the chief example!
It's because trying to lead open-source developers is like herding cats. Unless you're holding their can of food, they won't go where you want. And if you can't make all of them focus on the single project you want accomplished, you don't get anything done without a huge mass of so many people that everyone can do what they please and you'll still have enough people going your way. But the only way to get that size a mass of volunteers is to work on a "sure thing" project with an established design that moves towards a goal everyone can already see -- to copy an established product.
For example, wasn't the OpenMoko team supposed to have released a user-ready package of hardware and software by now?
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Some of us like type in different languages, you know. I would love pressing CMD-SHIFT-N to switch to a non-English keymap and see my keys change to reflect the characters I can now type.
Actually, it would make manufacturing keyboards for international sale a little simpler, since the regional keymap could be "printed" onto the keyboard by the OS at boot time.
Which is the most obvious use for an OLED keyboard I can think of. Typing in French? Your machine switches to a French keymap. That and video-game controls.
Now now, everyone knows that Israel is the Zionist Oppressor of the World, and innocent, noble (though temporarily stolen and controlled by Israel) America can't copy a damned thing that bitch has done.
But seriously, do you trust random, stupid TSA screeners enough to let them do what IDF soldiers do? I'll take the IDF any day.
Hell, I'm still waiting for these open-source zealots to code an open-source rip-off of Mac OS X. It's a good OS, why doesn't anyone copy it?
Oh, right, because they're too busy resolving package dependencies on Linux.
I know you don't like everything being files, but have you looked at a Linux/BSD/Windows implementation of the 9P2000 protocol used by Plan 9? It's an extraordinarily elegant way of - in one single protocol - treating any resource you please as a file and implementing distributed (ie: network-transparent) filesystems.
You know what: you win the article. You've figured out how to produce top-quality, innovative software without closing the source: pay someone (ie: researchers) to produce it, then tell them to release the source under an open license. Of course, the original investor never makes their money back directly, only in the indirect benefit the entire society sees as a result of the software.
And of course, then all that money has to come from somewhere -- usually taxpayer's pockets. Hmm...
Shit, and it nearly grazed your cap too!
You've been scammed, sweetheart!
Amiga used to have something like that called Arexx. Programs would expose their own functionality as Arexx commands through an "Arexx" port available to IPC.
Thing with that is, you can write the scripting language to do the job and write the wizard to write the scripts, but you can't make people expose their application's functionality to your language.
If you want to talk about reinventing the wheel, Apple did it with the Quartz graphics system. They wrote their own and produced an excellent piece of software rather than implement 20-years-old-and-still-undead X Windows.
So OSS gets written because some guy wants to give an established-but-not-open piece of software featuritis.
You named the problem yourself: that we need thousands of projects to have a chance at seeing a really innovative result. Some smartly invested dollars into a good closed-source coding team led by a real designer can produce results far more consistently.
You see, the Java bashing isn't actually senseless. Java really does suck in the way it pointlessly restricts programming style into object orientation.
Anyway, his point is that Smalltalk and Lisp, two languages that each are the best in their domains, had development environments 20 years ago that look like magic or strong AI compared to today's popular Java IDEs.
My bad on Python then.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/
See? There have been innovations.
The Perl thing is actually news to me -- I thought you needed a Unix underneath to make the shell scripting bits work.
Now does Python only actually require the ANSI C library, or does it require a POSIX implementation on top of that?
Being a great triumph of community function doesn't change the fact that the community could only really unite to copy someone else's work.
Note that. Where's the innovation in open-source? In projects like Perl and Python where a single benevolent dictator wrote an initial working model and then released it into the wild to attract contributors (though with Perl you would never realize it wasn't designed by a committee). But since those were one-man efforts, they two had to build off of previous work, and so you can't run Perl or Python on most non-*nix systems.
Can you give at least a description or two of the really interesting ones? I'd rather like to hear about them.
I would actually hand the prize for OSS development to Ubuntu Linux made by Canonical. They got around the "good, cheap, fast: choose two" dichotomy by using philanthropic funds, and the result is a system that manages to almost not betray its decades-old foundations. DISCLAIMER: I am an OS X user, though I can fully understand how Apple obviously takes the path of "good and fast" by throwing "cheap" out the window. Open source software greatly lowers the barrier to entry into the market which, imho, increases innovation in how business is done. Very probably, in fact, almost definitely. But TFA spoke of innovation in software and in computer science, and all the copying (and then the subsequent touting of a copy of a 30-year-old system as an "alternative" OS) hinders innovation in software engineering and computer science. Whether the trade-off is fair, I leave up to you. I think we should at least be fostering real innovation in academic CS and hobby programming, even if the market won't support it in business. I mean seriuosly, I don't see closed source software making amazing technical breakthroughs either. Plan 9 from Bell Labs. The iPhone's multi-touch interface. Bluetooth. The Nintendo and Sega games that actually make good use of the Wiimote. VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Portal. I believe what the original author is seeing is the waning of the industrial revolution in which we're seeing an extensive slow down in technological wonders. Sure computers are getting smaller and with slightly different/better interfaces, but going from steam engines to cell phones was a VERY rapid ramp up... we just don't see that kind of thing anymore. Since I have a huge hulking Dell desktop sitting a meter to my left that was, in 2001, only two steps down from the bleeding edge, and since I'm typing this post on a Macbook Pro (made in 2007) that outstrips that Dell in every possible way due to Moore's Law and the increasing capacity of hard drives while providing several capabilities, like the iSight camera and motion sensors, that weren't even available (at least not cheaply) in 2001, I'd have to say technological development is not slowing down. Maybe it has stopped accelerating, but everyone knows that exponential growth can't continue forever.
I'd say we've reached the point where people problems hold as back more than actual technological problems. If OpenMoko got their shit together (I really wanted one, so now I love to use them as an example of a failed project.), we could all be running mobile phones with multi-touch interfaces, cheap service plans, WiFi internet access, and best of all, software at least open enough to let us program the device. Such a device would, if sold cheaply enough, put established mobile phone and the less savvy mobile video gaming companies out of business, and we have the technology to produce it. It's just the people causing problems.
But "UNIX" doesn't rebut TFA, it reinforces it! The article's whole point is that OSS has done little besides copy the work of closed-source innovators, with GNU/Linux copying Unix being the chief example!
It's because trying to lead open-source developers is like herding cats. Unless you're holding their can of food, they won't go where you want. And if you can't make all of them focus on the single project you want accomplished, you don't get anything done without a huge mass of so many people that everyone can do what they please and you'll still have enough people going your way. But the only way to get that size a mass of volunteers is to work on a "sure thing" project with an established design that moves towards a goal everyone can already see -- to copy an established product.
For example, wasn't the OpenMoko team supposed to have released a user-ready package of hardware and software by now?