Generally the religious right aren't all that interested in funding NASA. Afterall, the Bible doesn't really talk about there being anything up there so there must not be. Unless they are really really fundamentalist and think of heaven as being physically up, hell physically down. In that case they are even more against trying to go there, that's for God to take them on his terms. Look what happened to Nimrod and the Tower of Babel!
If they get there way there won't BE a NASA for those kids to work at when they grow up.
The "handlers" that train most people are their parents. By the time they start watching Fox news they are just looking for reassurance that the ideas they were taught to base their lives on aren't the crap that reality keeps revealing them to be.
I agree that it's probably not fears of bugged hardware because I'm sure it's all about cheaper labor. That's what motivates all business decisions isn't it? Greed!
I wouldn't compare fear of India's spy programs to fear of US ones though. One is all over the news, blogs, etc... the other isn't.
Google glass and similar devices will not turn out to be usefull because too many people have already decided they are not useful without even trying it. If/whenever it is finally released to the wide public and at a price that people can reasonably be expected to buy it it will probably just flop. It's too bad though, there was problably some great potential there. But... ludite society wins again.
It's an open encyclopedia. They are all about the FREE sharing of information, it's what they are. That IS a kind of political organization. They aren't World Book selling encyclopedias at your door or Encarta helping push Windows PCs in the early 90s!
On the other hand, if the open formats have already lost then they will have to eventually give up and share what they can in the format that people can consume it in.
" Once you can do what you want with the upgraded version of the old tech, you don't need the general computer. "
Yes, that seems to be how the masses see things.
It makes me sad though.
I don't want 1000 different single purpose devices cluttering up my home and my life. I want one pocket sized general purpose device that does it all with two docking stations, one laptop sized and one desktop sized. Anything else is wasteful of money and space, creates pointless clutter and is hard to take it all with me.
Unfortunately the way things are going such a thing isn't going to exist. My cellphone is close, it's a Droid Bionic with a Lap Dock but that is temporary since the Lapdock has been discontinued and the whole concept seems to have gone with it. It never really was a solution due to the various Desktop OS features still missing in Android (multiple windows PLEASE!) and inability to have multiple monitors. One could almost DIY something like that using a Beaglebone, Raspi or simialr but they are kind of underpowered and it would still be a challenge to get down to cellphone size. Even then, a DIY solution is going to be lacking content due to DRM.
I would buy something like this. I can't be alone! Why won't the market sell it to me?
I wonder if flexible, stretchy transistors would be useful in traditional non-flexible electronics.I'm thinking that being able to flex and move internally whenever the device is dropped or bumped might make things last longer.
A lot of people like to say that the Desktop PC is dead or dying. I doubt that but I think the market is going to shrink A LOT in the next 10 years. What people seem to forget is that before the internet most people did not have PCs and yet, there were several companies making a lot of money selling them.
I think most people in our society have a strong aversion to technology. They don't want to learn about it, they may want something from it (the internet) but they don't want to make ANY effort to learn anything about it in order to get that. It's not that they are unable or even unwilling to learn something, it's specifically technology. They learn other things in absurd detail like sports stats and clebrity trivia.
People don't want to see technology. They are repulsed by the site of something that looks technical. That's why TVs have to be flatter. You only see the front, the front is a picture of something else, not a TV. Before flat screens the big thing was to hide them inside cabinets with doors that close. People do that to their stereos too. Somehow a overpriced but cheap piece of fiberboard is better to look at than some shiny piece of kit.
I think what we actually have is a society full of wannabe ludites. They would be ludites except... they can't break themselves of their internet and entertainment habits to become real ludites.
But, now there are tablets and other small devices. Tablets and phones look more like jewelry and require less actual learning to use. So, the ludite wanabee masses are ditching the PCs they didn't really want to have in the first place and getting their fix from their.
But, that tech friendly minority of the population that always existed before has not gone extinct. We too will use our tablets and phones where it is appropriate but some things are just better on a bigger device that is not encumbered by the size, energy and weight restrictions of a portable. We will buy Desktops just like we did 15-20 years ago. That is a much smaller market but it was big enough to float large corporations then, it will be big enough now... once the number of competitors is whittled down a bit.
The sad thing is I think their time with PCs was actually starting to mend people's mass psychosis of tech hatred. Now people will just revert back to their old ways.
Resolution is a silly difference to get all worked up about. Web developers have dealt with it since the dawn of the web. Actually, so have desktop applications since the begining of the personal computer! Using HTML controls it is really easy to make an interface that looks good at a wide variety of sizes. It just takes a bit different of a mindset. A computer/tablet/phone should not be designed for like it is a printing press rolling out identical pages of dead trees! It's ok if something looks a little different on one screen vs another so long as it looks good and is usable.
I've never used 'iBook Author'. Is there really no similar product available for other platforms? If not it's not a techical issue, surely there could be one. Actually, going back to the HTML idea, there have been no-code WYSIWYG editors available forever now. How would one handle the 'interactive' part? I don't know but admitting I have never seen it I am skeptical that iBook Author actually allows significant interactivity without some form of coding. Making something interactive means you have to tell it when the user does this... do that. It's a series of instructions. That's exactly what programming is! Maybe Apple did a good job sugar coating it? If so, they are hardly unique in doing so. Just look at wiring or lego mindstorms for example. People have been making programming look less like programming since Logo but it it still comes down to 'the more power you want to give the user the more complicated for the user it will be'.
"And they have little incentive to do anything else, as the iPad is the usual tablet that schools use." Ok... which is the cause, which is the effect?
Ultimately what I see schools doing today is using public tax dollars to ensure a generation of kids grows up using one company's products. This is not a good way to ensure healthy competition and innovation in the future.
That's an interesting statement. Are you sure? To make any statement starting with "the first computer was..." you had better come up with a good robust definition of "computer". Depending on what you decide for that I bet you could vary the date of your 'first computer' by several millenia.
Then... what forgotten invention from a time before the one you chose will (or will not) be discovered by archaeologists tomorrow?
Maybe the first computer was some piles of stones that someone counted and shuffled stones around between them. Actually.. that sounds like a pretty likely predecessor to the abacus! Maybe somebody got tired of having to form the piles for each use and decided to put them on rods in a frame.
"GUI toolkits will likely continue to support both X11 and Wayland backends"
But what does that mean? As someone who will hold onto X with a death grip until Wayland is on par with X for remote display support what does it mean that toolkits will continue to support X? Does that mean that applications will support X IF I can compile them myself? With 'everyone' using Wayland and myself still on X will I no longer be able to use pre-compiled binaries? Will I be completely shut out from closed source software?
Or will any program built using a toolkit that supports both just run on either without any added difficulty?
If the Wayland developers could answer questions like this in a clear manner maybe a lot of us would be less concerned and combative towards Wayland. Or.. maybe our fears would just be confirmed. I see all sorts of internet posts regarding the remote display issue but usually the Wayland developers seem to either just throw it over the fence as 'not our problem' or get way to deep, talking about the technical details of how GUI development works. Maybe the answers are there but we aren't all X developers, we don't all want to be Wayland developers either!
I also see posts that someone has remote display working on Wayland posted on some GIT repository. But, what does one need to do to use it? Is it rootless, rooted or both? (both have their places, both should exist in any 'final' product). Again, maybe the answers are there but they are posted in a manner that is WAY too deep into Wayland internals.
"While in principle I agree it would be better if you could pick your own tablet, this is nearly as unrealistic as saying you could pick your own books"
I agree but... I would like to point out that it is only unrealistic for 'political' reasons. Using HTML5 frameworks like Phonegap or Rho Mobile, etc... it is easy to build apps that run on nearly every tablet. Don't be mistaken, I am talking about real, installable, full functioned apps, not glorified webpages. The fact that instead the courseware authors are creating iOS only apps... Maybe it is just coincidence that those companies are all staffed with Apple fans but I suspect the truth is more nefarious and involves money changing hands.
Could teachers handle a multi-OS environment? An HTML5 app isn't really going to be laid out any different between platforms. The only differences would be in color schemes and widgits, think Apple vs Android number pickers, select boxes, etc... Yeah, it's different but pretty self-explanitory. As for the OS itself, what would the teachers be concerned with besides how to start the app? They aren't going to be walking through the setup areas! Find the correct icon for the courseware app, stick your finger on it, remove. What tablet is any different from that?
Am I being naive as to what differences the teachers can handle?
I went through HighSchool and College with an HP calculator. Everybody around here uses TI ones. They were completely different and none of my teachers knew anything about them. My parents picked it out because the sales guy told them it was more powerful (and it was). I had to listen through the teachers explain what to do on the TI, then search through the big fat manual and figure out the HP equivalent right there in class. I stuck with it because by the time I realized what a pain it would be I was used to it and didn't want to start over w/ TI. My teachers never made me switch.
It didnt' break me, I graduated college with a minor in Mathematics. I don't think the difference between two tablet OSs is going to be anything nearly as difficult as the difference between TI/HP calculators.
I think the problem the AC was getting at is that a tax-funded organization is making the decision that people will spend their money with a specific company. It's basically a case of the government deciding that Apple wins, Google and any other competitors lose. Free-market competion doesn't happen. If you make the assumption that kids will chose as adults the platform they started on all schools chosing iOS (and that's what they seem to be doing) creates a defacto command economy in the mobile market.
I have always had interests in both software and hardware tinkering. When I had a job doing hardware tinkering though I became much more interested in software tinkering at home and rarely did much with hardware. Since I became a programmer what I want to do at home is build things, real objects with my hands, not sit in front of a keyboard.
And then there is the fact that on the rare occasion I do feel like doing a software project at home, my worplace is unfortunately a mostly Windows shop. I prefer Linux (although... at least Windows isn't Mac!) So nope. not learning much for work at home.
Seriously? So things are moving TOWARDS digitizer pens? I remember back when I was a kid in the 80s instead of touch screens there were light pens. They were super expensive and only a few places I knew of had them. Then there were touch screens but they only responded to the touch of a pen that had a wire going back into the device. I'm not sure exactly how those worked, capacitance between the pen and the screen I guess.
Then finally we had actual touch screens. All you had to do was touch it, with your finger if blunt was ok, use a piece of plastic with a pencil-like point if you wanted precision.
Now we are back to the damn pens all because people want to pretend they are living in the world of Minority Report with their multi-touch pinch zoom? Come on! I want something that is designed to USE, not something that is designed to SELL.
Why is a digitizer the 'proper' way to do it? Because the marketing people say so?
I had two resistive touch screen devices before the capacitive screen craze hit, a Sharp Zaurus and a windows mobile phone. The stylus was cheap and easy to replace but better yet, it didn't really have to be a stylus. Anything pointy but not so pointy as to leave marks would do. Actually, with a little practice I found I could do almost as well with my fingernail as with the stylus. I'm talking about writing and drawing here, not just pressing buttons. To be fair I did start cutting my right index fingernail to just a little bit of a point (not so much as anyone would ever notice it)
Why should I have to carry around some expensive second piece of hardware when my finger does the trick just fine with a resistive touch screen? Why should I be locked into Samsung? I just had a Samsung phone. It sucked bad, it locked up or slowed down almost constantly.
Also, I've noticed that the mini-notebooks seem to have changed. I have what I think is a complete set of the older ones. The new ones appear to be the old ones combined into fewer but larger books. Is that all they are? Or is there new material? I'd like to verify that I have them all or buy any that I am missing but it looks like simply comparing titles will not do the trick and I don't think I want to bring in my collection to compare page by page!
It is still just a retail job. Are they going to pay the same for their employees as a company would pay a qualified engineer? If not then why WOULD someone who 'knew that' work there?
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Generally the religious right aren't all that interested in funding NASA. Afterall, the Bible doesn't really talk about there being anything up there so there must not be. Unless they are really really fundamentalist and think of heaven as being physically up, hell physically down. In that case they are even more against trying to go there, that's for God to take them on his terms. Look what happened to Nimrod and the Tower of Babel!
If they get there way there won't BE a NASA for those kids to work at when they grow up.
"Rather risky, though. You're taking someone else's word for what was actually written, and the Church often had its own agenda."
Makes you wonder who taught them to think that way in the first place doesn't it?
Bull.
The "handlers" that train most people are their parents. By the time they start watching Fox news they are just looking for reassurance that the ideas they were taught to base their lives on aren't the crap that reality keeps revealing them to be.
I agree that it's probably not fears of bugged hardware because I'm sure it's all about cheaper labor. That's what motivates all business decisions isn't it? Greed!
I wouldn't compare fear of India's spy programs to fear of US ones though. One is all over the news, blogs, etc... the other isn't.
Google glass and similar devices will not turn out to be usefull because too many people have already decided they are not useful without even trying it. If/whenever it is finally released to the wide public and at a price that people can reasonably be expected to buy it it will probably just flop. It's too bad though, there was problably some great potential there. But... ludite society wins again.
Putin is confident they will be "properly motivated"
It's an open encyclopedia. They are all about the FREE sharing of information, it's what they are. That IS a kind of political organization. They aren't World Book selling encyclopedias at your door or Encarta helping push Windows PCs in the early 90s!
On the other hand, if the open formats have already lost then they will have to eventually give up and share what they can in the format that people can consume it in.
Hardly! They never could have uninstalled so many that way. Don't you know Windows Update doesn't run on pirated copies of Windows anymore?
If you can afford to buy Photoshop why not just hire a "rocket surgeon"?
" Once you can do what you want with the upgraded version of the old tech, you don't need the general computer. "
Yes, that seems to be how the masses see things.
It makes me sad though.
I don't want 1000 different single purpose devices cluttering up my home and my life. I want one pocket sized general purpose device that does it all with two docking stations, one laptop sized and one desktop sized. Anything else is wasteful of money and space, creates pointless clutter and is hard to take it all with me.
Unfortunately the way things are going such a thing isn't going to exist. My cellphone is close, it's a Droid Bionic with a Lap Dock but that is temporary since the Lapdock has been discontinued and the whole concept seems to have gone with it. It never really was a solution due to the various Desktop OS features still missing in Android (multiple windows PLEASE!) and inability to have multiple monitors. One could almost DIY something like that using a Beaglebone, Raspi or simialr but they are kind of underpowered and it would still be a challenge to get down to cellphone size. Even then, a DIY solution is going to be lacking content due to DRM.
I would buy something like this. I can't be alone! Why won't the market sell it to me?
I wonder if flexible, stretchy transistors would be useful in traditional non-flexible electronics.I'm thinking that being able to flex and move internally whenever the device is dropped or bumped might make things last longer.
A lot of people like to say that the Desktop PC is dead or dying. I doubt that but I think the market is going to shrink A LOT in the next 10 years. What people seem to forget is that before the internet most people did not have PCs and yet, there were several companies making a lot of money selling them.
I think most people in our society have a strong aversion to technology. They don't want to learn about it, they may want something from it (the internet) but they don't want to make ANY effort to learn anything about it in order to get that. It's not that they are unable or even unwilling to learn something, it's specifically technology. They learn other things in absurd detail like sports stats and clebrity trivia.
People don't want to see technology. They are repulsed by the site of something that looks technical. That's why TVs have to be flatter. You only see the front, the front is a picture of something else, not a TV. Before flat screens the big thing was to hide them inside cabinets with doors that close. People do that to their stereos too. Somehow a overpriced but cheap piece of fiberboard is better to look at than some shiny piece of kit.
I think what we actually have is a society full of wannabe ludites. They would be ludites except... they can't break themselves of their internet and entertainment habits to become real ludites.
But, now there are tablets and other small devices. Tablets and phones look more like jewelry and require less actual learning to use. So, the ludite wanabee masses are ditching the PCs they didn't really want to have in the first place and getting their fix from their.
But, that tech friendly minority of the population that always existed before has not gone extinct. We too will use our tablets and phones where it is appropriate but some things are just better on a bigger device that is not encumbered by the size, energy and weight restrictions of a portable. We will buy Desktops just like we did 15-20 years ago. That is a much smaller market but it was big enough to float large corporations then, it will be big enough now... once the number of competitors is whittled down a bit.
The sad thing is I think their time with PCs was actually starting to mend people's mass psychosis of tech hatred. Now people will just revert back to their old ways.
Resolution is a silly difference to get all worked up about. Web developers have dealt with it since the dawn of the web. Actually, so have desktop applications since the begining of the personal computer! Using HTML controls it is really easy to make an interface that looks good at a wide variety of sizes. It just takes a bit different of a mindset. A computer/tablet/phone should not be designed for like it is a printing press rolling out identical pages of dead trees! It's ok if something looks a little different on one screen vs another so long as it looks good and is usable.
I've never used 'iBook Author'. Is there really no similar product available for other platforms? If not it's not a techical issue, surely there could be one. Actually, going back to the HTML idea, there have been no-code WYSIWYG editors available forever now. How would one handle the 'interactive' part? I don't know but admitting I have never seen it I am skeptical that iBook Author actually allows significant interactivity without some form of coding. Making something interactive means you have to tell it when the user does this... do that. It's a series of instructions. That's exactly what programming is! Maybe Apple did a good job sugar coating it? If so, they are hardly unique in doing so. Just look at wiring or lego mindstorms for example. People have been making programming look less like programming since Logo but it it still comes down to 'the more power you want to give the user the more complicated for the user it will be'.
"And they have little incentive to do anything else, as the iPad is the usual tablet that schools use." Ok... which is the cause, which is the effect?
Ultimately what I see schools doing today is using public tax dollars to ensure a generation of kids grows up using one company's products. This is not a good way to ensure healthy competition and innovation in the future.
Are you saying that the ONLY supply of these materials is in the conflict areas? I don't think that is true.
"The first human made computer was the Abacus."
Uh huh..
That's an interesting statement. Are you sure? To make any statement starting with "the first computer was..." you had better come up with a good robust definition of "computer". Depending on what you decide for that I bet you could vary the date of your 'first computer' by several millenia.
Then... what forgotten invention from a time before the one you chose will (or will not) be discovered by archaeologists tomorrow?
Maybe the first computer was some piles of stones that someone counted and shuffled stones around between them. Actually.. that sounds like a pretty likely predecessor to the abacus! Maybe somebody got tired of having to form the piles for each use and decided to put them on rods in a frame.
"GUI toolkits will likely continue to support both X11 and Wayland backends"
But what does that mean? As someone who will hold onto X with a death grip until Wayland is on par with X for remote display support what does it mean that toolkits will continue to support X? Does that mean that applications will support X IF I can compile them myself? With 'everyone' using Wayland and myself still on X will I no longer be able to use pre-compiled binaries? Will I be completely shut out from closed source software?
Or will any program built using a toolkit that supports both just run on either without any added difficulty?
If the Wayland developers could answer questions like this in a clear manner maybe a lot of us would be less concerned and combative towards Wayland. Or.. maybe our fears would just be confirmed. I see all sorts of internet posts regarding the remote display issue but usually the Wayland developers seem to either just throw it over the fence as 'not our problem' or get way to deep, talking about the technical details of how GUI development works. Maybe the answers are there but we aren't all X developers, we don't all want to be Wayland developers either!
I also see posts that someone has remote display working on Wayland posted on some GIT repository. But, what does one need to do to use it? Is it rootless, rooted or both? (both have their places, both should exist in any 'final' product). Again, maybe the answers are there but they are posted in a manner that is WAY too deep into Wayland internals.
"While in principle I agree it would be better if you could pick your own tablet, this is nearly as unrealistic as saying you could pick your own books"
I agree but... I would like to point out that it is only unrealistic for 'political' reasons. Using HTML5 frameworks like Phonegap or Rho Mobile, etc... it is easy to build apps that run on nearly every tablet. Don't be mistaken, I am talking about real, installable, full functioned apps, not glorified webpages. The fact that instead the courseware authors are creating iOS only apps... Maybe it is just coincidence that those companies are all staffed with Apple fans but I suspect the truth is more nefarious and involves money changing hands.
Could teachers handle a multi-OS environment? An HTML5 app isn't really going to be laid out any different between platforms. The only differences would be in color schemes and widgits, think Apple vs Android number pickers, select boxes, etc... Yeah, it's different but pretty self-explanitory. As for the OS itself, what would the teachers be concerned with besides how to start the app? They aren't going to be walking through the setup areas! Find the correct icon for the courseware app, stick your finger on it, remove. What tablet is any different from that?
Am I being naive as to what differences the teachers can handle?
I went through HighSchool and College with an HP calculator. Everybody around here uses TI ones. They were completely different and none of my teachers knew anything about them. My parents picked it out because the sales guy told them it was more powerful (and it was). I had to listen through the teachers explain what to do on the TI, then search through the big fat manual and figure out the HP equivalent right there in class. I stuck with it because by the time I realized what a pain it would be I was used to it and didn't want to start over w/ TI. My teachers never made me switch.
It didnt' break me, I graduated college with a minor in Mathematics. I don't think the difference between two tablet OSs is going to be anything nearly as difficult as the difference between TI/HP calculators.
I think the problem the AC was getting at is that a tax-funded organization is making the decision that people will spend their money with a specific company. It's basically a case of the government deciding that Apple wins, Google and any other competitors lose. Free-market competion doesn't happen. If you make the assumption that kids will chose as adults the platform they started on all schools chosing iOS (and that's what they seem to be doing) creates a defacto command economy in the mobile market.
Life in Titan's oceans??? ummm.. those oceans aren't water!
I have always had interests in both software and hardware tinkering. When I had a job doing hardware tinkering though I became much more interested in software tinkering at home and rarely did much with hardware. Since I became a programmer what I want to do at home is build things, real objects with my hands, not sit in front of a keyboard.
And then there is the fact that on the rare occasion I do feel like doing a software project at home, my worplace is unfortunately a mostly Windows shop. I prefer Linux (although... at least Windows isn't Mac!) So nope. not learning much for work at home.
Seriously? So things are moving TOWARDS digitizer pens? I remember back when I was a kid in the 80s instead of touch screens there were light pens. They were super expensive and only a few places I knew of had them. Then there were touch screens but they only responded to the touch of a pen that had a wire going back into the device. I'm not sure exactly how those worked, capacitance between the pen and the screen I guess.
Then finally we had actual touch screens. All you had to do was touch it, with your finger if blunt was ok, use a piece of plastic with a pencil-like point if you wanted precision.
Now we are back to the damn pens all because people want to pretend they are living in the world of Minority Report with their multi-touch pinch zoom? Come on! I want something that is designed to USE, not something that is designed to SELL.
Why is a digitizer the 'proper' way to do it? Because the marketing people say so?
I had two resistive touch screen devices before the capacitive screen craze hit, a Sharp Zaurus and a windows mobile phone. The stylus was cheap and easy to replace but better yet, it didn't really have to be a stylus. Anything pointy but not so pointy as to leave marks would do. Actually, with a little practice I found I could do almost as well with my fingernail as with the stylus. I'm talking about writing and drawing here, not just pressing buttons. To be fair I did start cutting my right index fingernail to just a little bit of a point (not so much as anyone would ever notice it)
Why should I have to carry around some expensive second piece of hardware when my finger does the trick just fine with a resistive touch screen? Why should I be locked into Samsung? I just had a Samsung phone. It sucked bad, it locked up or slowed down almost constantly.
One would expect he is kicked out of the university now. No more exam for him!
What's next? Any new books?
Also, I've noticed that the mini-notebooks seem to have changed. I have what I think is a complete set of the older ones. The new ones appear to be the old ones combined into fewer but larger books. Is that all they are? Or is there new material? I'd like to verify that I have them all or buy any that I am missing but it looks like simply comparing titles will not do the trick and I don't think I want to bring in my collection to compare page by page!
It is still just a retail job. Are they going to pay the same for their employees as a company would pay a qualified engineer? If not then why WOULD someone who 'knew that' work there?