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On Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:38:24 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> And, unless you have like two screens, and/or some way to port the thing
> down to an eReader, or something, sometimes its just a major pain in the
> ass to flip between a web page, or help file, or some other document,
> and the application you are reading it, to try to understand.
Yup. I have 3 or 4 screens typically available to me at home (one laptop
in need of repair), and it still isn't enough real estate. And I have a
10" screen with a projector in the next room, and sometimes that's not
enough either - though that room isn't really set up to work in, so I
don't use it for that that often.
Maybe I should try that, though, with this mindmap. It's getting pretty
big.
Jim
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On Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:51:22 -0400, nemesis wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmail com> wrote:
>> On 9/4/2012 10:30 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> > I sometimes will print documents out if I want to look at them in a
>> > format larger than my screen can display - for example, a project I'm
>> > working on right now involves redesigning documentation for a product
>> > to make it more maintainable. I'm using a mindmap to do the
>> > organization, but to see the whole thing, I needed to print it out
>> > and assemble it in a 9x9 grid of 8.5x11" sheets.
>> >
>> And, unless you have like two screens, and/or some way to port the
>> thing down to an eReader, or something, sometimes its just a major pain
>> in the ass to flip between a web page, or help file, or some other
>> document, and the application you are reading it, to try to understand.
>
> how is that different from having several printed documents scattered
> over each other on your desk, hmm? ;)
Paper is cheaper than an LCD display.
Jim
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On 9/4/2012 11:51 AM, nemesis wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> On 9/4/2012 10:30 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> I sometimes will print documents out if I want to look at them in a
>>> format larger than my screen can display - for example, a project I'm
>>> working on right now involves redesigning documentation for a product to
>>> make it more maintainable. I'm using a mindmap to do the organization,
>>> but to see the whole thing, I needed to print it out and assemble it in a
>>> 9x9 grid of 8.5x11" sheets.
>>>
>> And, unless you have like two screens, and/or some way to port the thing
>> down to an eReader, or something, sometimes its just a major pain in the
>> ass to flip between a web page, or help file, or some other document,
>> and the application you are reading it, to try to understand.
>
> how is that different from having several printed documents scattered over each
> other on your desk, hmm? ;)
>
Uh.. The fact that you can have them scattered, instead of all stacked
on top of each other? lol
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>> Whatever. He seemed to think there's nothing wrong with my heart. (He
>> also told me that "your blood prezzure is egzelent".)
>
> If he can see that from you ECG he should be practising alternative
> medicine.
Heh, no. He took my blood pressure (and had a listen to my heart) long
before he ordered the ECG.
It still troubles me that here in the 21st century, the only way to
actually measure a person's blood pressure is [still] to crush their arm
until no blood reaches it, and measure how much force it takes to do
that. o_O
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> My dad taught me to program in C64 BASIC. Or rather, he dictated a
> program to me, and I'm just the one who typed it in. Later I sat down
> and read the C64 manual from cover to cover. (No mean feat for a kid who
> was nearly illiterate.)
Hehe, I still remember the first program my dad showed me how to type
in. It was in BBC BASIC and changed the screen mode to a graphics mode
then drew two lines in the shape of a big "T" on the screen. The rest I
learned myself by looking at other programs. There was no "draw circle"
command so I copied a function from another program that did circles.
For years I only knew sin and cos as those funny functions you use to
draw a circle.
> We didn't have computers at school. (They /were/ a relatively new
> commercial product, after all.) When they eventually got some, it fell
> to the school's Religious Education teacher (no, seriously) to "teach us
> about computers".
We were a little ahead at my school, we had a specific IT teacher who
seemed to mostly know his stuff - he often taught people a lesson for
not logging out by moving all their files somewhere else when they
weren't looking, most famously to the head of english :-). I got in
trouble though when I figured out on the Acorn login window after you
clicked OK it simply wrote a null character to the first letter of your
password, the rest was still stored in memory, even after you logged
out! After the IT teacher had logged out I found the location and read
the bytes... "<NULL>OSSMAN". Nice... Apparently he used the same
password for lots of accounts so had to change them all :-)
> By this point, I had already moved on from BASIC to Pascal, using both
> Borland's TurboPascal 5.5 for MS-DOS, and on my Amiga Hi-Speed Pascal
> (who's libraries are nearly identical to TurboPascal, despite the rather
> different hardware). So say I knew more than the teacher did would be an
> understatement.
I moved on from BASIC to ARM assembler (which is infinitely easier than
x86 assembler), it was only once I got a PC that I got a free copy of
Borland C++ Builder on a coverdisc. Again I pretty much taught myself
C++ from reading the samples that came on the disc, and maybe I borrowed
a book or two once from the library.
> (I still recall an incident where I said you shouldn't unplug the
> printer from one machine and into another while both the printer and the
> computers were switched on because it might cause electrical damage. The
> teacher told me that the manual warned you not to unplug the printer
> while the PC is turned on because it might cause physical damage to the
> socket, which is why we always unpluged it from the printer end instead.
> WTF?)
Oh we had plenty of teachers who didn't even know there was an on/off
switch at the back of the machine. This was probably the first time in
history where teachers suddenly get a load of kids who know more than
them about something they are trying to teach!
> These days, I don't feel so smug. In fact, I'm almost beginning to feel
> that the next generation is overtaking *me*. o_O
> What, in the name of God, is an "app"?
>
> Once upon a time, you had the "operating system", which runs the
> machine, and then you had various "application programs" or just
> "applications", which address real-world problem domains.
You answered your own question, app is short for application, it's come
to be associated with small cheap applications that you download for
mobile devices though.
> Suppose, for example, that you are somehow so stupendously rich that you
> can not only afford to /buy/ an iPhone but also to pay the bills for it.
phone and pretty much all your calls and data. There are cheaper
alternatives from competitors like Samsung running Android from as low
data (eg for just checking email and occasional browsing).
> Through mechanisms which I do not really understand at all [Jesus Christ
> I feel old!], it is apparently somehow possible to access the Internet
> with such a device. (Presumably that's part of why it's so damned
> expensive - along with the obvious fact that it's extremely shiny.)
Ummm, haven't most phones allowed you to do that for some time now?
> Since we're here, I might as well ask: the iPad. Sure, I mean, I know
> what it /is/, but... why? What is it /for/? Can anyone articulate a
> coherent explanation?
If you use a phone a lot to read email and browse the internet then
you'd probably appreciate the larger screen. The people I know who have
them are either female or have a female to carry them around for them
(females generally tend to carry around a bag large enough to fit one
in). Or if you're used to using a laptop, an iPad is going to be smaller
and lighter (and boot up much quicker).
Also once you've got used to using multi-touch it's painful to go back
to a mouse (for things like scrolling and zooming). I still prefer a
keyboard for typing lots of text, but for web addresses and short emails
the iPad keyboard is fast enough.
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On 05/09/2012 11:06 AM, scott wrote:
>> My dad taught me to program in C64 BASIC. Or rather, he dictated a
>> program to me, and I'm just the one who typed it in. Later I sat down
>> and read the C64 manual from cover to cover. (No mean feat for a kid who
>> was nearly illiterate.)
>
> Hehe, I still remember the first program my dad showed me how to type
> in. It was in BBC BASIC and changed the screen mode to a graphics mode
> then drew two lines in the shape of a big "T" on the screen. The rest I
> learned myself by looking at other programs. There was no "draw circle"
> command so I copied a function from another program that did circles.
> For years I only knew sin and cos as those funny functions you use to
> draw a circle.
I first learned to program with the Commodore Plus 4 (for whatever
reason, not nearly as famous as the Commodore 64), and also the Sinclair
ZX Spectrum. Both have graphics commands in BASIC.
The C64, on the other hand, has no such features. Turning on graphics
mode requires an elaborate series of POKE commands. And then doing any
actual graphics requires even more complicated maths. And that's just to
turn pixels on or off. I never got as far as drawing any lines.
Now, the Sam Coupe (which you will presumably never have heard of) was a
sensational machine. It had a special ZX Spectrum compatibility mode,
but it also had internal 3 1/4" floppy drives, built-in MIDI ports,
128-colour graphics (!!!), digital audio playback (!!), and a huge user
manual which was a nearly complete tutorial to writing programs in
BASIC, as well as a comprehensive reference for every command in the
language. And this BASIC dialect had commands for such exotic feats as
"draw a line from A to B, turning through C degrees". Really, really
comprehensive.
>> We didn't have computers at school. (They /were/ a relatively new
>> commercial product, after all.) When they eventually got some, it fell
>> to the school's Religious Education teacher (no, seriously) to "teach us
>> about computers".
>
> We were a little ahead at my school, we had a specific IT teacher who
> seemed to mostly know his stuff - he often taught people a lesson for
> not logging out by moving all their files somewhere else when they
> weren't looking, most famously to the head of english :-). I got in
> trouble though when I figured out on the Acorn login window after you
> clicked OK it simply wrote a null character to the first letter of your
> password, the rest was still stored in memory, even after you logged
> out! After the IT teacher had logged out I found the location and read
> the bytes... "<NULL>OSSMAN". Nice... Apparently he used the same
> password for lots of accounts so had to change them all :-)
...and yet, it was YOU that got in trouble, not him. ;-)
>> By this point, I had already moved on from BASIC to Pascal, using both
>> Borland's TurboPascal 5.5 for MS-DOS, and on my Amiga Hi-Speed Pascal
>> (who's libraries are nearly identical to TurboPascal, despite the rather
>> different hardware). So say I knew more than the teacher did would be an
>> understatement.
>
> I moved on from BASIC to ARM assembler (which is infinitely easier than
> x86 assembler),
I moved on from C64 BASIC to C64 assembler - or rather, machine code. I
couldn't afford an actual assembler program. So I used to do it old
skool - you know, with pencil and paper and a giant opcode table. To
this day, I still know, from memory, that RTS [return from subroutine]
is opcode 96 decimal. Decimal because, to run it, you had to write one
of those programs. You know the ones...
10 FOR X = 1 TO 8
20 READ D
30 POKE (43252+X), D
40 NEXT X
50 :
60 DATA 46, 234, 64, 123...
And of course, in BASIC, you can only write numbers in decimal. :-P
Now the Acorn (or was it the Archimedes?) let you write assembler
statements in-line, in the middle of your BASIC program. And it had a
machine code debugger. Damn, that was nice...
> it was only once I got a PC that I got a free copy of
> Borland C++ Builder on a coverdisc.
I knew a guy, and he got me an illegal copy of TurboPascal from work. I
think I may still have those illegal disks somewhere... all 12 of them.
> Again I pretty much taught myself
> C++ from reading the samples that came on the disc, and maybe I borrowed
> a book or two once from the library.
I had a book from the OU which describes "UCSD Pascal". Complete with
notes about p-code and so forth. (It also compares Pascal to FORTRAN and
COBOL, because those are the only other high-level languages, aren't they?)
All the time I was using BASIC, I kept reading scattered references to
these "more powerful" languages like COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal and C. But I
couldn't imagine what "more powerful" would actually look like. Then I
read about Pascal, and it was instantly obvious what a massive, massive
increase in power if offered. I had to wait years to actually try it out
though. Heh.
> Oh we had plenty of teachers who didn't even know there was an on/off
> switch at the back of the machine. This was probably the first time in
> history where teachers suddenly get a load of kids who know more than
> them about something they are trying to teach!
Yeah... I still remember going to college and finding that our Pascal
tutor only found out two weeks ago that he was taking Pascal. So he's
teaching us what he's managed to learn from a book in two weeks. And I'm
like "WTF? Why am I paying for this when I could just read the book
myself?" I mean, college isn't exactly cheap... Where is the quality?
>> What, in the name of God, is an "app"?
>
> You answered your own question, app is short for application, it's come
> to be associated with small cheap applications that you download for
> mobile devices though.
Sure, I get where the name comes from. I don't get what the point is.
>> Suppose, for example, that you are somehow so stupendously rich that you
>> can not only afford to /buy/ an iPhone but also to pay the bills for it.
>
> phone and pretty much all your calls and data. There are cheaper
> alternatives from competitors like Samsung running Android from as low
> data (eg for just checking email and occasional browsing).
friends, so I guess that answers that one.
>> Through mechanisms which I do not really understand at all [Jesus Christ
>> I feel old!], it is apparently somehow possible to access the Internet
>> with such a device. (Presumably that's part of why it's so damned
>> expensive - along with the obvious fact that it's extremely shiny.)
>
> Ummm, haven't most phones allowed you to do that for some time now?
How would I know?
(You will note, of course, that I am *always* sitting in front of a
real, live computer. Why would I need a *phone* to access the Internet?)
>> Since we're here, I might as well ask: the iPad. Sure, I mean, I know
>> what it /is/, but... why? What is it /for/? Can anyone articulate a
>> coherent explanation?
>
> If you use a phone a lot to read email and browse the internet then
> you'd probably appreciate the larger screen.
It's still news to me that you /can/ use a phone to read email or browse
the net, but OK. I can see how a bigger screen would be beneficial. (I
can't even imagine how the **** you would look at a web page on a screen
that's less than an inch across...)
> The people I know who have
> them are either female or have a female to carry them around for them
LOL! You make them sound like slaves or something... Oh, wait.
> Or if you're used to using a laptop, an iPad is going to be smaller
> and lighter (and boot up much quicker).
On the other hand, you can't run any software on it. You can just browse
the Internet.
> Also once you've got used to using multi-touch it's painful to go back
> to a mouse (for things like scrolling and zooming). I still prefer a
> keyboard for typing lots of text, but for web addresses and short emails
> the iPad keyboard is fast enough.
I certainly see how having a larger control surface would make
interaction much easier. Laptop glide-pads are usually tiny, which makes
it really awkward to navigate a huge screen...
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> I moved on from C64 BASIC to C64 assembler - or rather, machine code. I
> couldn't afford an actual assembler program. So I used to do it old
> skool - you know, with pencil and paper and a giant opcode table.
Ouch. Good job the instructions were only 8 bit then...
> Now the Acorn (or was it the Archimedes?) let you write assembler
> statements in-line, in the middle of your BASIC program. And it had a
> machine code debugger. Damn, that was nice...
Yes that's what I learnt on, but I don't remember using any debugger.
Best I had was an error handler I wrote that caught any exceptions and
then printed out the disassembly of the 10 or so instructions either
side of the exception.
> All the time I was using BASIC, I kept reading scattered references to
> these "more powerful" languages like COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal and C.
Oh I never heard of anything like that until there was a short series of
articles in my Acorn magazine about programming in C. But then the C
compiler was useless on the Acorn, it required more RAM than 99.9% of
Acorns had at that time so you needed to use it with some buggy virtual
memory program that was very slow.
> But I
> couldn't imagine what "more powerful" would actually look like. Then I
> read about Pascal, and it was instantly obvious what a massive, massive
> increase in power if offered. I had to wait years to actually try it out
> though. Heh.
I spent several years hacking around with C++ and Glide (the API for
3Dfx cards), then DirectX. But I got really frustrated in that to do
anything useful (ie windows, graphics, sound, network/database stuff)
you needed to find libraries and because I'm not a professional
programmer I always had problems getting them to work, or the
documentation sucked.
I briefly used MS's managed C++ for a bit, but quickly moved onto C# and
have been using that now for the last few years. It suits my needs
perfectly, and even if I don't do any coding for several months I can
get back into it pretty much instantly.
> Sure, I get where the name comes from. I don't get what the point is.
Surely you get the point in general, you mean you don't get the point of
why installing an application on a phone or tablet might be useful? Most
of the apps I have installed on mine are games, a few are just
displaying data available on the web in a more convenient format (like
share prices, adsense earnings, weather). All of them are free apps.
> How would I know?
You must have seen other people with phones, or at least heard of what a
blackberry is? Or seen adverts from Samsapple about their products?
> (You will note, of course, that I am *always* sitting in front of a
> real, live computer. Why would I need a *phone* to access the Internet?)
Lots of people do other things though away from a computer, and having a
phone allows you to read email within 1 second or look up something on
google within 10 seconds without having to walk away and boot up a PC
(if there is even one nearby).
> It's still news to me that you /can/ use a phone to read email or browse
> the net, but OK.
Most devices have wifi too now, so as long as your friends/family are
happy to give you their key you can use that too, and there are plenty
of public places that offer free wifi.
> I can see how a bigger screen would be beneficial. (I
> can't even imagine how the **** you would look at a web page on a screen
> that's less than an inch across...)
My phone's 800x480 I think (and about 4 inches across), and I spent many
years staring at a 640x480 screen, so it does nicely :-) Also most web
pages recognise you're on a mobile device and give a different layout to
the desktop version. People have thought about this.
> On the other hand, you can't run any software on it. You can just browse
> the Internet.
Err no, you can install software, in fact I suspect that is where they
make a lot of money from. On my Android phone I even downloaded the
development stuff (for free) and made a simple program in Java, it took
an afternoon or something to get setup (and I don't even know Java!) and
works very easily - you have it hooked up via USB, and when you hit
"run" in the IDE within 2 seconds it's compiled and running on your phone.
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>
> Now, if the real reason for using Twitter is to follow stuff that's
> happening in real life, then yes, I guess to me the system would be
> completely useless. I can't think of anything that happens in real life
> that I would actually give a damn about...
Yeah, I fogrot that you live in a bubble completely isolated from the
outside world, but even then, one day maybe you'll be caught in an event
(massive car pile up on the highway after two picometers of snow, bus
blown up by Mozambican terrorists, or something like that)
For example, our province's new premier was almost assassinated last
night while giving her victory speech. There were lots of people in
that theater who wanted to know what the heck was going on. Following
the police's and tv stations' Twitter feed was all they had. Likewise,
the tv stations were following the twitter feeds of the people in the
theater to get as many details as they could.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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> On 05/09/2012 11:06 AM, scott wrote:
>> You answered your own question, app is short for application, it's come
>> to be associated with small cheap applications that you download for
>> mobile devices though.
>
> Sure, I get where the name comes from. I don't get what the point is.
>
followed by:
>> Or if you're used to using a laptop, an iPad is going to be smaller
>> and lighter (and boot up much quicker).
>
> On the other hand, you can't run any software on it. You can just browse
> the Internet.
>
Reread those two snippets together a few times. It will eventually sink in.
"Apps" are the software that you run on iThings.
For example, the Wolfram Alpha app that you mentioned earlier. There
are also word processors, spreadsheets, presentation packages, etc...
with varying degrees of compatibility with Ms-Office. Picture
manipulation apps. Movie-making apps, inventory management tools,
games, etc...
Who said the only thing you could do on a tablet was surf the net?
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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>> Now, if the real reason for using Twitter is to follow stuff that's
>> happening in real life, then yes, I guess to me the system would be
>> completely useless. I can't think of anything that happens in real life
>> that I would actually give a damn about...
>
> Yeah, I fogrot that you live in a bubble completely isolated from the
> outside world
It's more that politics and commerce do not interest me.
> For example, our province's new premier was almost assassinated last
> night while giving her victory speech. There were lots of people in that
> theater who wanted to know what the heck was going on. Following the
> police's and tv stations' Twitter feed was all they had. Likewise, the
> tv stations were following the twitter feeds of the people in the
> theater to get as many details as they could.
Damn. And here I was thinking that's what people watch the news and read
newspapers for...
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