But the applications *are* the walls

Post #244,468 by tuberculosis 2/13/06 10:50:05 PM Reply	But the applications are the walls This is my central complaint. There's a lot of good capability in TurboTax (depreciation calculations for example) - but I can only use it inside the TurboTax wall. This is why I find myself using Squeak more and everything else less all the time. Its just a big parts bin with a nice direct manipulation capability that allows me to build ad-hoc goodies all the time. Frankly, I hope the $100 third world laptop ends up with a tiny bsd core and Squeak as the primary shell/UI (integrate gecko as a plugin). Imagine what these people will create on their own with no walls in their systems? "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,517 by drewk 2/14/06 9:32:04 AM Reply	They're also inevitable Take Greg's example from a week or so back where he was massaging some fugly data. It took about a hour to figure out. Looking back at the one line that does all the work, it would take at least twice that for anyone else to figure out what it's doing. Now let's say you want to hand that off to an ops person to run on each new dataset. They don't know how it works, and frankly don't need to know. You probably don't want them messing with it and breaking it, so you put it behind a GUI with a "Browse" button to select the input file and a "Go" button. Two years down the road the source format changes slightly. Is it faster to reverse engineer the existing "application" and figure out where to change it, or re-build it from scratch? Well, that depends on whether you still have Greg working for you. Which, again, is why I said you don't need applications, but the majority of users do need them. And before you say I'm not giving "average users" enough credit, instead of pointing me to the kids doing robotics control, answer my question: did you ever do level 1 helpdesk? That isn't arrogance or condescension, either. The average 18-year-old taking an auto-shop class knows more about how my car works than I do. No one has the time to know everything. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,526 by ben_tilly 2/14/06 10:56:41 AM Reply	Necessary for other reasons as well Let's think about a couple of important applications. Email. Email is pretty simple in principle. But I don't happen to want Todd to have access to my email. In other words the walls constructed by that application happen to be desireable for privacy reasons. Todd's work. I don't know about anyone else, but I think that a company that is going to handle credit cards and deliver actual stuff has an obligation to protect that data. Which means lots of walls that the provider wants for financial reasons. A web browser. Yeah, it would be great if we could just take the simple approach and let websites run whatever they want on your machine. Simple, powerful, and flexible. Unfortunately there are a bunch of people who want to run software on your machine that you don't want running software on your machine. And one of the biggest complaints about Internet Explorer is not that it has walls, but that it doesn't have effective walls to prevent that! I agree with Todd that a lot of programs could be made a lot nicer by making them expose more of how they work. And this is a vision that many people have tried to explore (eg it was the idea behind Microsoft's OLE). But it would generally be a bad idea to try to achieve it by removing the idea of applications entirely. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #244,544 by tuberculosis 2/14/06 1:15:51 PM Reply	There's a couple projects aimed at addressing security one is squeak-e - capability based security that lots of others are playing with. The other is something called islands - literally hunks of runtime/data with no references in or out. If you can't reach it you can mess with it. I'm not particularly well versed on these technologies but they are being addressed. Finally, you can get "walls" by running things in different VM's as they're just different unix processes. I'm not saying walls are bad - just that we've put a whole lot of them in stupid places (and not enough in others it seems). I think this horse is pretty much done. Fun discussion - thanks. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,547 by drewk 2/14/06 1:42:58 PM Reply	Bah, break for lunch and people go and end the discussion === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,566 by tuberculosis 2/14/06 3:09:58 PM Reply	I've made it back to the office - gotta catch up! "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,600 by boxley 2/14/06 7:22:35 PM Reply	email has walls? think again every keystroke in that message body travels thru multiple public points that have accesss to every keystroke. At the receiptiant end it sits on someone elses server who can read all of it until you pop it to your local machine. If you have delete server side after pop it is then (somewhat) safe on your machine unless upstream a pipe is being made to redirect copies. Email is about the most unsafe application available in use today. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
Post #244,601 by drewk 2/14/06 7:26:09 PM Reply	That's what client-side encryption is for === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,602 by ben_tilly 2/14/06 7:29:26 PM Reply	As far as most recipients are concerned, it does Don't believe me? Ask a secretary to read your email to you. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #244,609 by boxley 2/14/06 8:25:23 PM Reply	like windows, its the perception of security that counts Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
Post #244,615 by ben_tilly 2/14/06 9:50:40 PM Reply	It is more complex than that People actively want slightly insecure systems. The classic example is our cars. Nobody wants their car to be broken into. But if any auto manufacturer produced cars that police officers etc can't break into after your key gets locked inside, you'd wind up with a lot of very pissed off people. That's why slim jims still work, even though it would be trivial to make a car that can't be broken into that way. Everyone knows that some very technical people can read their emails. Everyone knows that some bad people can likewise. But their friends and aquaintances can't, so they have reasonable privacy. And the capability for violation isn't a big issue - in fact if they develop email problems, they hope those same technical people will be able to use their control of the system to solve their problems. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #244,543 by tuberculosis 2/14/06 1:10:28 PM Reply	I was the king of level 1 help desk I give great help desk. It's how I got started in the industry. Eventually I got tired of taking shit for the boneheaded moves of idiot programmers just because I picked up the phone and figured I could do better. Turns out I was right. Specifically I was the the entire tech support department/product manager/release coordinator and wrote most of the quick start leaflets for Affinity Microsystems - a little 5-person Mac utilities company in 1990. [link\|http://www.google.com/search?q=affinity+tempo+macintosh\|http://www.google.co...y+tempo+macintosh] And incidentally, we had users make amazingly elaborate sequences of events simply by saying "watch this" doing their thing, going back and tweaking wait conditions (users could snap a picture of a button and have the sequence wait until the button became enabled, or watch for a progress indicator to hit 100% before proceeding). This is another form of end user programming and the stories I got from users about what they did with this facility was astonishing. (We also counted Herbie Hancock as a user and he stopped by our MacWorld booth to say thanks and hi). I'm not saying you can't make tools with GUI controls BTW, just that I think the whole thing needs to fit into a single architecture runtime. [link\|http://squeaksource.com\|http://squeaksource.com] can be run by anyone (its a little like cpan) and in fact I've just installed a copy for my own use at [link\|http://ss.blackbagops.net\|http://ss.blackbagops.net]. The distro is a squeak image that shows a single window with a field for port number and 2 buttons, 'start' and 'stop'. Sounds a little like what you're talking about - right? "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,546 by drewk 2/14/06 1:41:29 PM Reply	Followed a link from the google search This link to a [link\|http://www.prefab.com/playerbrochure.html\|description of Player]. It sounds like it allows you to record scripts on a Mac UI. So it's an application that allows you to automate the use of another application. Okay, so maybe that wasn't an example of how things should work, it was just the place you did help desk. But when answering questions about scripting, didn't you ever encounter people who didn't get the concept of iterations or pattern matching? Scripting the behavior "click the down arrow three times" is very different from "click the down arrow until the cursor is on the line that ends with a date -- and here is what a date looks like". This is trivial to someone who thinks that way, to normal humans it's not. To normal humans you get things like space-delimited files where you asked for tab-delimited, and they don't understand why it makes a difference. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,553 by tuberculosis 2/14/06 2:03:30 PM Reply	Hey, I had people who didn't know a menu from a window I was just answering where I did my tech support. I don't think scripting systems like that (the current one is appleEvents and automator) are the answer although they do get a lot of people "most of the way" there. As for files - I reckon maybe 5% of users even know there are files and directories in their machine. My mom certainly has never grasped the concept. Again, why should they care? Why is there more than one file format? "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,560 by drewk 2/14/06 2:18:58 PM Reply	I don't want to keep reinventing things To me, an application (a good one) represents the solution to a problem. To continue using TurboTax as an example, that is how you do taxes. (Actually TurboTax Pro is how my friend, the accountant, does taxes. But I digress.) There may be a better way, there may be a more open way. But until I'm trying to do complex financial analysis, it works for me. And I disagree that the calculations are what TurboTax is valuable for. It's the tax code and forms that are built into it. By "forms" I don't just mean the printable forms, although that is part of it. I mean the description of what data is required for each IRS form. Could you write something that does what TurboTax does, but leaves the data in an open format? Sure. Could you build in wizards to walk you through the process, asking all the right questions? Yes. And when you're done, how would that thing not be an "application"? === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,565 by Another Scott 2/14/06 2:59:29 PM Reply	Taxes are probably a bad example. I think that Todd wants computers to have a built-in toolbox full of tools that let people build things in any way they want to do whatever they like with their own information. Without understanding OOP and Indentation and Dictionaries and Persistence and Scope and Shapes and DLLs and Compilers and Stuff. A virtual Erector Set or set of fine woodworking + metal working tools in the machine. Taxes are a bad example because there are lots of laws that determine how the numbers should be crunched. A toolbox approach won't work very well there. But a toolbox approach would work very well for figuring out materials needed to do a room remodeling project or making a recipe collection (has anyone ever done that with a home PC?) or making a jukebox + movie player + ... "Hey Martha! I just figured out a way to record the Olympics while we're at the Bingo Hall! We can watch our favorite shows any time we want now! You just drag this thingy here, and add this thingy here and IT WORKS!" rather than the KnoppMyth/MythTV approach... My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #244,573 by drewk 2/14/06 4:05:05 PM Reply	Depends on what you want an example of For me, it's a good example of why "applications" work. And while I love the idea of Bob showing Martha that he figured out how to record the Olympics, I think there's only two ways he's going to get that experience: All the parts to do it are already built, and he is really just assembling them. Strong AI. Obviously I think assembling pre-built parts is more likely. It is also the Unix philosophy of small tools that each do one thing, which I agree with. That's not the same thing as "no applications". === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,614 by tuberculosis 2/14/06 9:32:13 PM Reply	Bingo I love the idea of Bob showing Martha that he figured out how to record the Olympics, I think there's only two ways he's going to get that experience: 1. All the parts to do it are already built, and he is really just assembling them. Well duh. WTF do you think Squeak is? Maybe a small number of direct types (numbers, characters), of which are composed a fairly rich set of complex types, all of which are work together using a syntax that's dead simple. What I object to is shit that doesn't work together because, well, it just doesen't work together. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,618 by drewk 2/14/06 10:02:41 PM Reply	You're fighting human nature Bob figures out how to record the Olympics. He's so proud of himself as he starts to show Martha. Martha says, "I don't care how you made it. What do I have to click?" Most people don't want to make things, they want to use them. If someone else already made something that's pretty close to what they want, they'll use that. Hell, I'm using KDE right now because the people driving Gnome borked it -- meaning simply that it no longer does what I want it to, and which it used to do. KDE also doesn't do quite what I want it to, but it's closer than Gnome. I could probably get it the last 10% with a few more hours tweaking, but I just don't care that much. People use Windows because other people have already written programs for that platform that do what they want. (For people buying their first computer, I think you could substitute one of the new distros like Mepis or Ubuntu.) If you told the average user that you had a Brave New System where they're going to have to figure out everything for themselves, they'll take Windows in a heartbeat. They just want to turn it on and use it. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,624 by Another Scott 2/14/06 10:59:50 PM Reply	Take your last thought a little farther... They just want to turn it on and use it. People really want their PC to be their personal computer, to be intuitive and work the way it does in science fiction. They want it to be a general purpose machine as it was promised to be. Remember the way an 80-year-old approaches a PC or Mac for the first time? CPUs have enough power, and memory is cheap enough now, that it should be possible for PCs to have discoverable interfaces and built-in capabilities to allow a reasonable person to figure out how to make a PC do what they want. It's the legacy of Windows that's holding that capability back. Cheers, Scott.
Post #244,681 by tuberculosis 2/15/06 1:47:00 PM Reply	Evidence runs to the contrary Most people don't want to make things, they want to use them. Really? Sure you don't want to take that back? The act of creation if fundamentally rewarding. Everybody likes to make things. Steve Jobs bet the company on the idea that people generally like to create things (songs, playlists, websites, photo albums, pictures, DVDs, etc). It seem to be paying off - more and more people are buying the things because they like the things they can make with it. If you were right, people would only turn on the TV and sitin front of it full time (yes some people do this - they generally have no impact on the world and can safely be ignored). "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,684 by boxley 2/15/06 1:59:17 PM Reply	you can safely ignore drewk [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=241272\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=241272] :-) thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
Post #244,697 by drewk 2/15/06 3:06:11 PM Reply	You have a much looser definition of "make stuff" than I do Steve Jobs bet the company on the idea that people generally like to create things (songs, playlists, websites, photo albums, pictures, DVDs, etc). It seem to be paying off - more and more people are buying the things because they like the things they can make with it. People have been making pictures and photo albums for decades. We've computerized it. Big whoop. Same with DVDs, people have been shooting on VHS and before that on Super 8, also for decades. Songs? Either you're playing an instrument, you're sampling, or you're writing sheet music and having the computer play it. None of those seem to be new. Websites? Lots of people are happy with the AOL site creater -- whatever they call it -- at least judging by the number of sites built with it. Apple doesn't seem to have lead that charge. Playlists? You're kidding, right? You never made a mix tape? So we boosted the capacity and put it in a nice form factor. Great piece of hardware and really well executed, though. But all of these prove my point, not yours. Each one of these is a tool or application that Apple produced that does one thing very well. No user took a general-purpose device and figured out how to burn DVDs from it. When I said people don't want to "make stuff", I meant invention of new things. They want to make another iteration of something they've seen before. Most new songs sound like something else you've heard before. Most pictures of the Grand Canyon look just like the same picture everyone else has taken of the Grand Canyon. If you were right, people would only turn on the TV and sitin front of it full time (yes some people do this - they generally have no impact on the world and can safely be ignored). Just checking: you do know that's completely wishful thinking, don't you? === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,766 by tuberculosis 2/15/06 5:28:06 PM Reply	Complete Bollocks And I don't have any more time to argue with someone who lives under a rock. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,773 by admin 2/15/06 5:43:12 PM Reply	You're kidding me, right? Do you realize exactly how far "no, you have to figure out how to build your own web browser out of these 'parts'" would go with my wife? Hell, she won't even learn how to use a spreadsheet herself, let alone build one. There will always be "applications". Whether or not they work well with each other and have open data formats is what's up for grabs. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,776 by tuberculosis 2/15/06 5:48:02 PM Reply	There will always be people too old to learn my uncle calls me to adjust his digital thermostat for him. What of it? As for the web browser - its a component (in my environment it is). So? I'm not arguing against assembling components and calling them "things" (applications if you like) I'm arguing against making them opaque and indivisible. To me, that's stupid. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,778 by admin 2/15/06 6:04:06 PM Reply	I'll let you tell her she's "too old" to learn And sit back behind the Lexan shield while she disabuses you. It's not "too old to learn". It's "couldn't give a rat's arse, that's someone else's job". Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,787 by tonytib 2/15/06 7:03:06 PM Reply	It's also called respecting someone else's domain and not expecting everyone to be fascinated by yours. I'm in agreement with AdminScott. Just because Todd's a geek, doesn't mean everyone is. Sure, it's nice to be able to modify something to fit yourself perfectly - if it's in a field you care about. Heck, a lot of people mod their cars to get them perfect for them (coilovers, shocks, exhaust, chipping, turbos, wheels, seat covers, etc), but most people don't care. My wife wouldn't care about anything Todd is excited about. She's fine never using a computer except for an occasional e-mail. So what? There's much more to life than computers, and she's excellent at her work, much better than I could ever be. --Tony Life is too short to worry about perfection
Post #244,795 by tuberculosis 2/15/06 7:47:15 PM Reply	Point missed again and I'm gonna make it one more time with no support. Computers suck. They suck because we build shit called apps rather than systems. So nothing works with anything. Which sucks. You might be happy living with shit that sucks. I aspire to better. Sheesh. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,797 by admin 2/15/06 7:50:19 PM Reply	And you're missing the point we're trying to make. Lots of people would rather deal with "apps" than with "systems", because they sit down to do one thing at a time. Whether those apps deal with each other well is immaterial. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,799 by jake123 2/15/06 7:54:20 PM Reply	I wouldn't say immaterial I hear users bitch all the time about the fact that they can't do this with that. One of the reasons MP3 is so popular is because it works with just about everything, despite the fact that it's not that good. --\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca \n [link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] [link\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] \n Kingston Ontario Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #244,837 by admin 2/15/06 9:36:37 PM Reply	MP3 is a data format, not an architecture. Just about everything works with CSV, too. No one here is saying that open data formats are bad. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,873 by jake123 2/16/06 1:01:46 AM Reply	Not my point My point is that it's wildly popular because it travels well across different applications. --\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca \n [link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] [link\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] \n Kingston Ontario Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #244,810 by tuberculosis 2/15/06 8:35:24 PM Reply	I don't give a flip about your point because its orthogonal to mine. And besides, you've completely missed the bit about the tangerine. I'm calling for standardization and you're arguing that everybody is happy dragging a giant duffle bag of wall warts around because we can't agree on a standard for voltage for small devices. That's your position. Fine whatever. I'm arguing architecture with the first two little pigs. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,817 by boxley 2/15/06 8:42:25 PM Reply	ICLRPD (new thread) Created as new thread #244816 titled [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=244816\|ICLRPD] Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
Post #244,833 by admin 2/15/06 9:32:45 PM 2/15/06 9:35:01 PM Reply	Uh, yeah. I bow to the "superior intellect", Khan. It's not orthogonal, because ordinary users DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT ARCHITECTURE. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..." Edited by admin Feb. 15, 2006, 09:34:11 PM EST Edited by admin Feb. 15, 2006, 09:35:01 PM EST Expand All History
Post #244,842 by drewk 2/15/06 9:56:02 PM Reply	I don't have to bow to nobody! Until I'm working again, that is. :-/ I just thought of a perfect example of the type of thing I believe Todd would like to see. Taxes and grocery shopping. Huh? Okay, there are applications -- written for web-enabled refrigerators -- that help you track what food you have on hand, make menus from it, and put together a shopping list for what you'll need. Kind of cool, actually. There are also applications that help you do your taxes. What these two things have in common is that both of them deal with expenses. Wouldn't it be cool if the money you spend on your groceries, according to the fridgePod, were automatically debited from your net worth calculation and listed as non-tax expenses? No more duplicated data entry. Odds are, there are no two such apps that would make this easy for the average user. If they both had the same data model for money, it might be easy to make them work together, so it's a good idea. But if that happens, it's still going to be a programmer doing the integration. I could give my mother a fridgePod and a copy of TurboTax that are designed with the same currency model, and she would never try to figure out how to make them talk to each other. Unless the installation routine from one app discovered the other and built the connection, hers would remain unconnected. So yes, small apps with open, standard interfaces are good. Tools that can be easily plugged together are good. Making it easier for developers to create new things is good. But saying it's users who want to plug them together is IMO wishful thinking. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,847 by admin 2/15/06 10:05:11 PM Reply	Exactly. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,871 by tonytib 2/16/06 12:30:54 AM Reply	Right on! When I take photos, I don't care what chip, processor, and language the camera uses - I just want it to work well as a good tool (which is why I have a KM7D - it has the best interface of any digital camera). When I want to edit and print those photos, I don't care how the program is made; I just want to be able to edit and print with ease (so I use PS7). I can be very creative making photographs - and Squeak doesn't help my photographic creativity one bit. --Tony Of course, the real key to photography is light and composition anyway, not the camera or editor. But it helps to use good tools, and not have to create them myself.
Post #244,879 by tuberculosis 2/16/06 1:16:11 AM 2/16/06 1:17:38 AM Reply	The ignorance around here is staggering [link\|http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2411\|http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2411] [link\|http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3269\|http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3269] And you'd be pissed if every single camera out there used a proprietary image format, wouldn't ya. So you do care at some level about the implementation of your camera. I will toss out one more little datapoint. Remember Hypercard? It was a dead easy sort of "thing" maker you could use to produce content with a great little language that was a LOT like english. People with no technical skills at all built all kinds of things with it to solve problems of their own. End user programming remains an unfilled need. Better apps isn't the answer - better components that are easy to stick together to do things is. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush Edited by tuberculosis Feb. 16, 2006, 01:17:38 AM EST Expand All History
Post #244,907 by drewk 2/16/06 9:06:14 AM Reply	We disagree with you, so we're ignorant ... good call === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #244,949 by tuberculosis 2/16/06 11:33:15 AM Reply	Something about photos - not capable - links what did I miss there? "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,965 by tonytib 2/16/06 11:54:38 AM Reply	Something about Photoshop, easy to use, etc not webcams and filters. Usefulness to me: zero. Photoshop filters are quite easy to use, and besides PS does so much more that's critical; for example, using magic wand to select areas that I want to apply the filter to. I'm sure that could be done in Squeak, but I highly doubt it has. I have no doubt there's a lot of value in Squeak. Heck, I like components a lot; even COM components can add a lot of value (I know COM components can also add a lot of pain). But Squeak isn't going to replace applications. There's a lot of value in putting together the components to make a polished finished product. After all, it's not that hard to make your own MP3 player using standard components (Circuit Cellar has articles on it), but it is hard to make one with a good user interface like the iPod. --Tony
Post #244,972 by folkert 2/16/06 12:18:35 PM Reply	Heck... I can do all that stuff using ImageMagick from teh sukcy command line. If I were to have to run a squeak VM just to do video / image processing, I'd refrain. Anything that they were showing can be done in Photoshop, yes even scriptable. But why script with Photoshop when ImageMagick is about a trillion time faster for doing the simple to very complex things Photoshop does. Not to mention re-inventing the wheel for image and video processing in squeak. But each has its points. It is just a matter of using what you have. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* Freedom is not FREE. Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars? SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0; 0 rows returned.
Post #244,909 by admin 2/16/06 9:09:16 AM Reply	The arrogance around here is staggering. Get off your fucking high horse, Todd. No where did I say that components are bad. Yes, scriptable/programmable things are nice... for about 5% of the public. In the end, the user could care less if everything is written in GOTOs and INTERCAL, as long as it does what they want it to do. And once again, oh-so-enlightened one: DATA FORMAT IS NOT IMPLEMENTATION. It can drive it, yes, but you can have completely non-componentized cameras that all use the same image format. So quit pissing on everyone here because they don't agree with you about user's wants, and stop trying to represent that disagreement as stupidity and ignorance. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,950 by tuberculosis 2/16/06 11:34:53 AM Reply	Fine - you're all wrong and we'll leave it at that becuase I can barely cope with the UI complexity of my cell phone - but the teenagers are all over them. You say users can't deal with complexity and don't care. I see different. You can stop replying any time. Cool huh. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
Post #244,969 by admin 2/16/06 12:07:44 PM Reply	As soon as you stop misrepresenting me I will I didn't say "can't" and I didn't say they all don't care. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #244,806 by tonytib 2/15/06 8:19:16 PM Reply	You keep missing the point First, many people don't care if computers are a turd or a diamond. They're just not important to their lives. Second, for many people (such as my wife), they're not interested in doing fancy things, they're basically interested in a very simple way of doing the things they want to (e.g. turn on the computer, check e-mail, answer e-mail). So well designed applications are perfect for them, whether it's a monolithic app designed by megacorp or something put together from components just for them (e.g. by their geeky husband). The issue of how best to solve problems is another matter. My feeling is that applications are typically the best answer (including web apps), although there's a good cause for making them out of pieces (e.g. typical Unix approach). --Tony
Post #246,673 by lincoln 3/3/06 12:07:05 PM Reply	ICLRPD (new thread) Created as new thread #246672 titled [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=246672\|ICLRPD] lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net\|contact me]

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