When a company gets a lot of market, they want to differentiate their products so people stop using the standard and gets locked into their "standard slightly modified".
No no no, It is not an MP3 player(anyone could make an MP3 player), is an Ipod.
No no no, It is not email, email is an standard and we don't want to have to compete with other companies on a levered field, it is the facebook messaging event.
As usual they will make it very easy for people to get in, not so easy to get out.
"I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea."
I feel scared about that, everything you said(later will come audio and video) in a very specific context and frame, like 10 years ago, could be used against you by other people. Bad things could happen when you can't control it(friends of friends could see that)like you could control on gmail.
I agree. Maybe we need a hierarchical system that is dynamic. We need to organize information and in the real world we are constrained, but with computers we are not.
E.g if I need to organize my books, I could move it only to a given position, not another one, I could add labels to my books like "history", or "Initials of the author", but I could only group one way, like all my science papers on one place, if I want to group all the books that talk about sex, or crime, I will have to destroy the other group.
With computers you could create multiple directories trees with links instead of data, so I don't need to multiply the data each new tree. The tech is there(inodes).
Imagine if you study countries according to their population, so you create a hierarchy "most populated", "less populated", "no populated at all", then inside most populated you have "the most populated", "the less populated", and so on.
Then you could have another directory according to the extension in squared kilometers. Another according to their capital coordinates, and so on.
And they control the medium too. If Craig gets the answers right they just can cut this part of the film. They could manufacture whatever they want just editing and putting answers out of context.
The modern version of Cardinal Richelieu:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Linux is getting better each year, Android is getting better each year.
But MS is getting better each year too, like Apple.
The main difference is that MS and Apple improve he overall user experience while Linux and Android center themselves on geeks. Witch is great, for geeks, but not as good for other people.
On Linux I can easily record any sound-video a program plays-displays , I can't do it on windows or Mac because of DRM. It's great for me, normal people don't care.
People care about being able to easily classify their weeding photos using face recognition tech like iphoto does. Linux could do it in complex( and more powerful) ways that my mom can't use.
Of course you have been trained, but what about the fun factor? I mean people love to fit, insert things into other things and feel they fit. Kids feel good when they insert a cube block inside the square hole.
USB cables and Apple batteries design are very good in this regard. No need to look at symbols. It gives you instant sensitive feedback. I'm highly kinesthetic so that is brilliant design for me and a lot of people. Like blind people.
"You make a good point but as I thought on it for a while I came up with this question: Do kids want to be the same kind of adults as their parents?"
My opinion is yes:
They want cars and motorcycles, and houses, and be respected, find friends, find love. The tools they use are just that, means for getting a goal.
I have been teacher too,in general I love kids, and I think is not kids wanting to change, is adults "hating change", halting grow when they get in their comfort zones once grown up.
He is not.If you think he is the misinformed person is you.
You can inform yourself.Search for DRDOS.Search for windows trademark issues,lindows, you know what? they were an entire line of windows branded products before MS, MS destroyed them all, you can search what happened to them.
Windows is a generic word, it can't never be trademarked(unless you are rich to get over the law), that applies to "word", "powerpoint", "project", "excel", "exchange". A word in the English dictionary just can't be trademarked, by law.
Maybe you were a kid then, but there was a time when "word" was not the most used word processor, it was "WordPerfect", and people used Lotus123 instead of "excel". What did MS did? They made windows but didn't let WordPerfect and Lotus123 people(and everybody else, like compiler builders) use the windows API, so MS had a 4 year period of advantage. Once they did, the high level exposed API was slower than what MS used.
I'm tired too. When people don't know they don't know what they don't know.
He is taking a position as "non-engineer" and stated its goals as clear as water: He considers engineers superfluous(ludicrously overstaffed) but will consider himself indispensable. He tries to justify his position to "making their work-week 20 hours"(and later fire them as they are not necessary, because they only work 20 hours!!)
He is making generalizations, and as such he is right and wrong at the same time.
I could sense the engineers fear to lost their job, and his eagerness to justify it.It is a bloodless war, a power war in the company.He want more power(and money, look!, I got rid of those unnecessary people, I'm worth a lot) and less power and responsibility for the others.
Engineers are people, some are smart, some not. They could look at code and marvel themselves if it is good quality, like a experienced painter when he sees a master piece, or will love to modify it if it is trash, like it uses to be because "there is no time" for making it right.
He is being emotional thinking as the engineers are for protecting their selves.
I think he is not proposing anything substantially new. Collecting data before formulating your hypothesis is the norm, not the exception.
First you see an object fall and them you wonder why. The same applies to birds flying, wood afloat, fire, atmospheric pressure... we observe(collect data) first, we make assumptions and look for more data later.
BUT, never underestimate the power of a GooglePlex for gathering and analysing data(like generic one). Never before we had used it, and so we could see things we never did before.
You know what happened when a man without studies created a miscroscope. The "scientist" of the time said that he didn't knew Latin, so he could not be called scientist, and that the microscope will only work for seeing the same things we already know bigger.
I like to change the defaults. When you use to read green on black instead of black over white, or change the font size you realize that the designer only though in one size, and one colour.
PDFs are perfect at only one layout, and font size. At different ones it is just horrible. It doesn't work right on an iphone-android small screen.
When designers choose fonts, it only works at one size, at different ones, areas seems different with the same font.
I check the "many people" rule too. But sports, acting and science is big enough to find good places to stay. In my experience in the electronics sector, everybody wants to do "robots" and "lasers", so you really have to compete with a lot of people for the limited job supply, but you could do great things that are required but not so demanded.
I think this man doesn't get it, as a "former executive" he thinks anything in live is money.
People write apps for iPhones because they dream to do what they love without working for the man. Of course it is only a remote possibility, but it is real.
99% of the people that went to California searching gold didn't find it, as in SouthAfrica, but the now deeper old mine was discovered by a solitary man looking for gold armed just with a mining pan.
There is something in the human spirit that is as valuable as money that makes musicians painters, singers,movie makers or engineers that maybe won't get rich keep trying. Maybe they get to work on what they love.
PS: I'm an iPhone App developer myself, since Linux Click an run app store I believed that a "right" implementation of an Appstore was going to be the future. I expected to be Apple the first to to this. In contrast with this executive they just seem to "get it".
Steve Jobs is really smart in this too, when he creates something he diminish it, so the competitor's executives see an appstore and say: It's only a mere millions dollar market, not important.
IBMs mainframes were the "important stuff", when real money was, mini computers were just "cheap" toys with no real application. People who wanted "job security" deciced to work with the "big boys" because it was safe... until it was not.
A lot of people believe in alternative medicine with a more scientific method that you think: They try it and it works for them, is not superstition.
I have news for you: electromagnetic radiation causes cancer and is able to kill you and kill you fast. That it does is not questionable, the question is how much energy is needed to interfere with the human body. Again no superstition, just being cautious with the live of those you love.
Nobody knows what causes autism, so hypothesis could be done.
It is a complex issue. I read and watched videos and went to a lot of seminars on psicology of productivity. "Read The Power of full engagement"(This is the best book you can read ever!!) and create rituals.
I like investigating new technologies too, so I do it, with limits. I read HN each day but no comments(it drains too much).
Emails and social media at the end of the day.
I do manage my emotional states, and schedule resting time.
I wrote down each day what I want to do(look at how many people here do the same, it works).
Help other people without interest in mind.
Don't "fight" procrastination. Improve productivity(don't focus on your bad, improve your strengths)
In my experience people prefer the "I think" when you are unsure of what you say, and to be clear when you know what you are talking about.
Odds are that a person that never ever say "I think" believes that his opinions are 100% right, witch nobody else will like(Mr Perfect) and a person that always says "I think" is insecure, weak, always depending of what other people think about me mentality.
Agreed. Also the geek people that "study" or "learn" this stuff are the best in the world. They not only do what is needed, but know the reason too, witch many "naturals" don't do(they just are this way).
It takes a lot of work and practice, but it could be learn like anything else.
True, I have learn programming and experience disassembling programs, and is really really difficult to understand how a program work just this way. If the program has millions of lines of code it is nearly impossible.
Patents are a contract, the state gives you monopoly, you give the state the knowledge(with plans, drawings and explanations) of how your thing works. Without showing the code, you should not be granted a patent.
No no no, It is not an MP3 player(anyone could make an MP3 player), is an Ipod.
No no no, It is not email, email is an standard and we don't want to have to compete with other companies on a levered field, it is the facebook messaging event.
As usual they will make it very easy for people to get in, not so easy to get out.
"I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea."
I feel scared about that, everything you said(later will come audio and video) in a very specific context and frame, like 10 years ago, could be used against you by other people. Bad things could happen when you can't control it(friends of friends could see that)like you could control on gmail.