When I heard about this on NPR last week, it occured to me that a great number of people fail to understand the basic nature of a computer: it's a thought amplification tool. Just as a saw is a tool that improves the speed, efficiency, and precision that you can cut things with, a computer is a tool that allows you to augment your ability to think in a wide variety of ways. If you weren't raised by your elders (regardless of color) to place a high degree of value on thinking, no amount of free or subsidized access to computers and 'Net connectivity will make them usefull. We would be far better off spending the money on improving basic public education, focusing on thinking rather rote memorization.
We have reached the point in the evolution of the human race where its continued existence depends on our children being smarter than their parents. As simple proof, I offer the mere existence of a list of Environmental Protection Agency SuperFund sites.
Officials at the Pentagon were heard to scream in agony as the installation was turned into a smoldering heap of molten slag.
Now THAT one is improbable. . . the building is poured concrete. ..now, the PARKING LOTS, on the other hand..
Concrete will turn to slag, if you get it hot enough. Even if you don't melt it, you might be able to turn it into the world's largest stone oven. Just before the attack, they'll be wondering why three tractor-trailers full of Pillsbury Cinamon Rolls are being delivered.
They *allowed* the buddy video drivers to run in supervisor mode/at the lowest level, bypassing all of the protections of running it in user mode.
An improperly written user-mode driver can bus-lock a machine just as easily as an improperly written kernel-mode driver. Running in user-space only lets you catch certain classes of errors more easily.
Planetwide e-money == U.S. loses some control over economic policy (ask the European gov'ts how they feel about the Euro).
Thus, the U.S. doesn't want open crypto
All other arguments from the U.S. gov. are straw men. The funny thing is that this policy will hurt much more in the long run than it helps in the short run. Quoting Alan Greenspan (unrelatedly) from yesterday's headlines:
``The United States has been in the forefront of the postwar opening up of international markets, much to our, and the rest of the world's, benefit,'' Greenspan said. ``It would be a great tragedy were that process reversed."
It looks to me like activestate plans to add features to the "windows" version of perl that do not exist on other platforms (activex controls for example).
How is this any different than Xlib or Tk extentions for *NIX? Or native GUI support under BeOS, DECWindows or GEM? Not all Perl scripts are meant to be portable.
Perhaps a more natural analogy would be programs and cooking recipies. One could argue that recipies are already used to "program" the machines that bake Twinkies and mix and bottle Jolt Cola.
A few years ago, I wrote some code to "read" english-language descriptions of property deeds and then used the description to draw plat maps in AutoCAD. As natural language tools get more sophisticated, you'll be able to program all sorts of tasks in your native tongue (perhaps even by speaking the recipie). Then where will you draw the line between speech and programming?
Some considerations for making a desktop, pointer-driven version:
The input "box" should be hidden until needed.
Some combination of modifier keys should bring the box on to the screen, centered underneath the cursor.
While the input box is on the screen, it steals all cursor events, so as not to confuse apps if the cursor leaves the box.
Optionally, a short, discreet beep should be issued each time the cursor enters a quadrant giving audible feedback on stroke progression. If you pick different tones for each quadrant, you'll get accustomed to the "sound" of each glyph, and know when you mess up.
The size of the box could be enlarged to accomodate sloppy strokers, or shrunk to increase speed for the proficient.
Once you're proficient enough, the box could be dispensed with all together, and you'd be able to type without taking your hands off the mouse, watching your input go right into your document.
Slashdot Mirror
We have reached the point in the evolution of the human race where its continued existence depends on our children being smarter than their parents. As simple proof, I offer the mere existence of a list of Environmental Protection Agency SuperFund sites.
Now THAT one is improbable. . . the building is poured concrete. . .now, the PARKING LOTS, on the other hand. .
Concrete will turn to slag, if you get it hot enough. Even if you don't melt it, you might be able to turn it into the world's largest stone oven. Just before the attack, they'll be wondering why three tractor-trailers full of Pillsbury Cinamon Rolls are being delivered.
An improperly written user-mode driver can bus-lock a machine just as easily as an improperly written kernel-mode driver. Running in user-space only lets you catch certain classes of errors more easily.
Here are a list of the mentioned purchasers, by market cap:
All other arguments from the U.S. gov. are straw men. The funny thing is that this policy will hurt much more in the long run than it helps in the short run. Quoting Alan Greenspan (unrelatedly) from yesterday's headlines:
``The United States has been in the forefront of the postwar opening up of international markets, much to our, and the rest of the world's, benefit,'' Greenspan said. ``It would be a great tragedy were that process reversed."
How is this any different than Xlib or Tk extentions for *NIX? Or native GUI support under BeOS, DECWindows or GEM? Not all Perl scripts are meant to be portable.
A few years ago, I wrote some code to "read" english-language descriptions of property deeds and then used the description to draw plat maps in AutoCAD. As natural language tools get more sophisticated, you'll be able to program all sorts of tasks in your native tongue (perhaps even by speaking the recipie). Then where will you draw the line between speech and programming?
Some considerations for making a desktop, pointer-driven version: