It's a common belief that old people don't understand computers, and 
young people are all computer whizz kids. Certainly it's the case that 
my parents could never ever figure out how to program the VHS machine to 
actually record stuff at an appointed time, whereas having read the 
instructions, I always found this to be pretty easy. (Mind you, I often 
had to double-check the instructions; usually these things aren't very 
"obvious" without consulting the manual first.)

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.) Initially I found it hard figuring out where to 
start, and I stayed up until ridiculously late at night on many 
occasions trying to get a broken chain of logic to work by repeatedly 
hitting it (i.e., tweaking minor trivial details like loop endpoints, 
endlessly trying all possible combinations to see if any of them work). 
But eventually I learned that when a program doesn't work, the correct 
thing to do is to step back and look at what isn't working, why it 
doesn't work, and how to make a better design.

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". I remember them well: a set of RM Nimbus 80186 
systems. Each had dual floppy disk drives, and we had a single colour 
dot matrix printer to share between 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 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?)

I could continue with such anecdotes. Suffice it to say, I've always 
been good with computers, computer technology, and modern electronics in 
general. And a lot of the other people around me, particularly older 
people, haven't been. I guess I felt a certain sense of smugness about that.

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

There are several new-fangled things that I really just don't "get". 
Allow me to list some examples:



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.

Java gave us "applets", those pointless Tic-Tac-Toe example programs 
which are supposed to prove how fantastic and important Java is. But now 
the mobile revolution has given us "apps".

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. 
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.)

Now, if you're a maths nerd like me, you might know about Wolfram Alpha, 
the website where any question, no matter how pointless, can be 
submitted to Wolfram's Mathematica software and Wolfram's huge data 
repository to try to answer your question. It's a neat idea, although 
damned if I can think of a single /useful/ purpose for it. (Especially 
since Wolfram seem to be adding more and more restrictions to what you 
can actually do with it. They /are/ trying to make you pay £8,000 for a 
full copy of Mathematica, after all...)

Anyone, anywhere [except China] can visit this website and ask it 
pointless questions. So far, so good.

Here's where it gets weird: For a mere $35, you can buy the "Wolfram 
Alpha app" for your iPhone, which lets you access the power of Wolfram 
Alpha. Or you could, you know, visit the website for free, like 
everybody else is already doing. WTF?



Next up, the "netbook". Now the idea behind this one is pretty simple. 
If you want a portable computer, you can buy a laptop. But laptops are 
pretty expensive, especially if you want one that's any good. Now 
actually, it turns out a lot of people just want something to surf the 
Internet with. And you don't actually /need/ an 8-core Intel Sandy 
Bridge EP with 8GB triple-channel RAM and a high-end discrete GPU just 
to surf the net. Hell, you don't even "really" need an entire OS; just a 
web browser.

So - the idea goes - you can buy a netbook instead. It's like a laptop, 
but it's usually physically smaller, has web-oriented software that's 
simpler to use, has a much lower technical specification, and 
consequently is much cheaper than a real laptop. Because, if you just 
want to surf, you don't need the higher spec.

That's the theory. The trouble is, as best as I can tell, netbooks /do/ 
have stripped-down software, lower specification, and smaller size. They 
also have EXACTLY THE SAME PRICE as a laptop. (!)

Given that the entire /point/ of a netbook is to be a cheaper 
alternative to a laptop for people who don't need the extra power, the 
fact that it isn't any cheaper seems like a pretty big deal. Again, WTF?



Then we come to things like Twitter. Actually, before I get into this, I 
should probably back up a bit.

There was a long time when I couldn't figure out what the hell the 
/point/ of all this "social media" stuff was. This is probably partly 
because I don't have any friends. But every such site I got bullied into 
joining (required XKCD quote: http://xkcd.com/146/ ) was a complete 
waste of time. You create a profile, fill out a bunch of fields, and 
that's it. There's nothing to "do" after that.

On top of this, all of these sites were /shockingly/ unreliable and 
buggy. I can't even express how useless they were. They just flat-out 
DID NOT WORK PROPERLY. I've never seen such a thing from a /website/ 
before. You would have thought there couldn't be too many things that 
could go wrong with a mere web page. You would be wrong, apparently.

And then I joined Facebook. /This/ actually has a point. You can use it 
to /talk/ to people. You can arrange meetings. You can share any 
interesting photos you might have. You can ask people for opinions, etc. 
I'm not the type of person to sit on Facebook all day (I have far more 
interesting things to do), but it does at least do /something/ remotely 
useful.

Twitter, on the other hand, baffles me. It's, like, this huge Internet 
phenomenon. Your corporation is /nothing/ unless it's on Twitter. And 
yet... Well, let me put it this way. I once had this conversation with 
my dad:

Dad: So what *is* Twitter then?
Me: You know how on Facebook you can post your status?
Dad: Yeah?
Me: THAT'S ALL TWITTER DOES!!
Dad: ...WTF?

Not only that, but the few times I've actually been on Twitter, half the 
posts are replies to other people's posts, and there is LITERALLY NO WAY 
to find out what they're replies to. (!) Seriously, the most basic, most 
immediately obvious thing, the very first thing I tried to do, Twitter 
can't do. WTF?



Similar to the Netbook, we have episodic games. The idea, apparently, is 
to release smaller games more often for a lower price, rather than 
larger games less often for a higher price.

Personally, /all/ of my favourite games have been vast monolithic 
adventures. The idea of getting a game in little dribs and drabs is 
highly unappealing to me. They say how people are "too busy" now to play 
big monolithic games. Then again, "they" also say that any game without 
an online multiplayer component is commercially unviable. And then along 
comes Skyrim... :-P

(In a similar manner, while I do enjoy watching a good TV series, 
nothing compares to a good film. You know, a big monolithic video 
experience as opposed to an episodic one.)

Most puzzlingly of all, Valve seem to have mastered the "smaller games" 
part, but don't seem to have grasped the "more often" or "cheaper" 
parts. WTF?



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? You can't use it as a phone, you can't easily type 
stuff on it, it's too big to easily carry around... so what can you 
actually do with the thing? (I agree, it is very, VERY shiny, and that's 
cool. But there has to be a bit more than that to justify the 
astronomical price tag...)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I could continue with such anecdotes. Suffice it to say, I've always
> been good with computers, computer technology, and modern electronics in
> general. And a lot of the other people around me, particularly older
> people, haven't been. I guess I felt a certain sense of smugness about that.
>
> 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

heh, you can't wait to know how it feels when the 40's are close.

> 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.
>
> Java gave us "applets", those pointless Tic-Tac-Toe example programs
> which are supposed to prove how fantastic and important Java is. But now
> the mobile revolution has given us "apps".

short for application.  It's an application program running under mobile OSes
such as iOS or Android.

Apple was the one to spread this word, part of its "App Store" which can be read
as either application or apple.

> 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.

or you can buy a cheap Android which is still miles ahead of older dumbphones.

> 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.)

they come with a minimodem requiring a 2G/3G/4G chip from cellphone carriers
companies to operate.


> Now, if you're a maths nerd like me, you might know about Wolfram Alpha,
> the website where any question, no matter how pointless, can be
> submitted to Wolfram's Mathematica software and Wolfram's huge data
> repository to try to answer your question. It's a neat idea, although
> damned if I can think of a single /useful/ purpose for it. (Especially
> since Wolfram seem to be adding more and more restrictions to what you
> can actually do with it. They /are/ trying to make you pay £8,000 for a
> full copy of Mathematica, after all...)
>
> Anyone, anywhere [except China] can visit this website and ask it
> pointless questions. So far, so good.
>
> Here's where it gets weird: For a mere $35, you can buy the "Wolfram
> Alpha app" for your iPhone, which lets you access the power of Wolfram
> Alpha. Or you could, you know, visit the website for free, like
> everybody else is already doing. WTF?

yes, most "apps" are just stupid conversions of web pages.  You heard it right:
Jobs was the man able to sell people converted web pages for a fee.

that said, there are many apps that do a lot more than just offer a better web
form.  Comics reading, games, apps dealing with maps and GPS info etc.


> That's the theory. The trouble is, as best as I can tell, netbooks /do/
> have stripped-down software, lower specification, and smaller size. They
> also have EXACTLY THE SAME PRICE as a laptop. (!)

no, they're a tad cheaper.  At least when compared to good laptops, not cheapo
breako ones.


> Dad: So what *is* Twitter then?
> Me: You know how on Facebook you can post your status?
> Dad: Yeah?
> Me: THAT'S ALL TWITTER DOES!!
> Dad: ...WTF?

would you be sad if I told you some of my coworkers think it's useful as a news
aggregator of sorts?  Yes, my IT coworkers don't know RSS aggregators.  pretty
sad indeed.



> Not only that, but the few times I've actually been on Twitter, half the
> posts are replies to other people's posts, and there is LITERALLY NO WAY
> to find out what they're replies to. (!) Seriously, the most basic, most
> immediately obvious thing, the very first thing I tried to do, Twitter
> can't do. WTF?

reading twitter is like entering a bird jailhouse full of parrots, all repeating
the same cries over and over.


> 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? You can't use it as a phone, you can't easily type
> stuff on it, it's too big to easily carry around... so what can you
> actually do with the thing? (I agree, it is very, VERY shiny, and that's
> cool. But there has to be a bit more than that to justify the
> astronomical price tag...)

I don't dig tablets either.  I picture them either as a big phoneless smartphone
or a keyboardless laptop, both far more useful.  Even taking pictures with it is
silly.  As it stands, it's made only for audio-visual consumption.  Even reading
isn't all that great.

I'll dig them when they come with e-ink screens and a stylus so you can actually
write and draw (and read comfortably).

Post a reply to this message

On 9/2/2012 10:01, nemesis wrote:
> I'll dig them when they come with e-ink screens and a stylus so you can actually
> write and draw (and read comfortably).

We have those. They're called Tablet PCs. They were a commercial failure, 
but I love mine. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 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? You can't use it as a phone, you can't easily type 
> stuff on it, it's too big to easily carry around... so what can you 
> actually do with the thing? (I agree, it is very, VERY shiny, and that's 
> cool. But there has to be a bit more than that to justify the 
> astronomical price tag...)

You can type quite well with the iPad, actually. (The iPhone is a bit more
difficult because it's so small, but it's not very difficult. Heck, there
are people who type faster on an iPhone than you type with a PC keyboard.
And they are using only their thumbs.)

The iPad is a really decent gaming platform, completely on par with the actual
modern portable consoles. There are also tons of utility applications that
you can run on it. (There are several hundreds of thousands of applications
that have been designed explicitly for the iPad. At least some percentage of
them are actually quite good, so there literally are thousands of really good
apps and games for it, most of which are explicitly designed for the big
touchscreen that the device offers.)

You can surf the internet, you can watch movies (watching a movie is as
easy as just bying it on iTunes and playing it), you can read books, you
can check your email, facebook, twitter, whatnot, you can take and edit
photos and video (there are actually pretty decent video editing software
for the iPad). You can even compose music. All these things can be done on a
decent smartphone as well, but the big screen really makes a huge difference,
especially when surfing, playing games or watching movies. (If you have ever
used the internet with a smartphone for some time, and then try it with the
iPad, the smartphone will start feeling *awful* because of the small screen.)

The device is larger than a phone, but smaller than a laptop. If you are
the kind of person who carries a laptop, the iPad wouldn't be a problem
at all.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I'll dig them when they come with e-ink screens and a stylus so you can actually
> write and draw (and read comfortably).

Try multitouching with a stylus.

(You *can* use the iPad with a stylus. Of course it needs to be specifically
designed for it to work with the finger detection technology, but once you
get one of those, they work quite well. The iPad has pretty accurate detection
hardware.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 2012-09-02 13:36, Darren New wrote:
> We have those. They're called Tablet PCs. They were a commercial
> failure, but I love mine. :-)

Ditto.  Only thing that'd be be better is if it were thinner, and had 
higher resolution.

Oh wait, MS is coming out with that in a few months.  With 
pressure-sensitive stylus input (something the iPad doesn't have).  Too 
bad I won't be able to afford one anymore, even if they are only $300 or 
whatever.

Actually there are a few other brands that have that, already, but...the 
MS thing should be nice.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

Post a reply to this message

> 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.)
>
lol Mostly, its a marriage of of a TCP/IP type network thing, which maps
your phone to their network, using an ID, and a technology patented way
back in WWII, which the woman who came up with it had intended to be
used to circumvent German attempts to scramble torpedo guidance. The
military proved to be total morons (it was rejected and never used
during the war, or even after, for decades), but the original concept
was that you have something about the size of a pocket watch, on both
the torpedoes receiver, and the transmitter, then you would feed in a
bit of paper, at the same time, into both, which was similar to a punch
card. Each "hole" would cause the frequency to change, basically hopping
from one to the next, so the enemy couldn't pinpoint which one you where
using, and jam it. The same identical, save in electronic form,
technology is at the center of cell tower systems. Otherwise, you are
just using a lot of antennae, listening to all those frequencies, then
passing data back and forth, and into the main network, via the same
sort of system the internet itself uses to work out which set of servers
to pass your information through, to get from, say from Google to you,
and to send your requests to the right places.

If anything, since cell phones are mobile, their system can't do what
the internet has done, and undermine its flexibility, by hard coding
some routes into the network paths (which is why one server can go down
now, and you can't get there from here any more). Since the networks
work almost exactly the same though, in terms of digital packets, its
trivial to translate your "internet" address to a "cell" address, and 
pass the messages to the right locations.

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 2012-09-02 13:36, Darren New wrote:
> > We have those. They're called Tablet PCs. They were a commercial
> > failure, but I love mine. :-)
>
> Ditto.  Only thing that'd be be better is if it were thinner, and had
> higher resolution.]]

isn't that merely a desktop PC with a touch screen layer upon the screen
display?

surely a failure, as touch is kinda pointless when the screen is a bit far from
your reach (and you need to rise your arms) and it simply isn't a tablet.

> Oh wait, MS is coming out with that in a few months.  With
> pressure-sensitive stylus input (something the iPad doesn't have).  Too
> bad I won't be able to afford one anymore, even if they are only $300 or
> whatever.

it's Surface, isn't it?

I still prefer my wacom "tablet".  It feels like paper.  Writing on glass is not
that fun.

Post a reply to this message

On 2012-09-02 22:24, nemesis wrote:
> Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Ditto.  Only thing that'd be be better is if it were thinner, and had
>> higher resolution.]]
>
> isn't that merely a desktop PC with a touch screen layer upon the screen
> display?

Actually, I'm not so much into wanting touch, unless it's smart enough 
to know that I'm laying my hand on the thing while drawing with the 
stylus.  Though being able to use the smudge tool with my finger would 
be cool.

> it's Surface, isn't it?

Think so, yeah.

> I still prefer my wacom "tablet".  It feels like paper.  Writing on glass is not
> that fun.

The good Tablet PCs use Wacom for their interface...the last Wacom 
tablet I used that was separate was the Graphire (original series), and 
I've never used anything more advanced, since that's basically what's 
inside Tablet PCs, functionality-wise.  256 levels of pressure, no 
tilt/direction sensing.

I hear the textured tablet surfaces chew through nibs like candy.  I've 
never replaced my Tablet PC stylus nib yet...

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 02 Sep 2012 23:24:05 -0400, nemesis wrote:

> I still prefer my wacom "tablet".  It feels like paper.  Writing on
> glass is not that fun.

I concur with that.  Got myself an Intuos4 M a couple years ago and I 
really like it.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 9/2/2012 15:47, Tim Cook wrote:
> On 2012-09-02 13:36, Darren New wrote:
>> We have those. They're called Tablet PCs. They were a commercial
>> failure, but I love mine. :-)
>
> Ditto. Only thing that'd be be better is if it were thinner, and had higher
> resolution.

No. What would make it better is if the touch screen also served as a 
flat-bed scanner. ;-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

On 2-9-2012 16:09, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Then we come to things like Twitter. Actually, before I get into this, I
> should probably back up a bit.
>
> There was a long time when I couldn't figure out what the hell the
> /point/ of all this "social media" stuff was. This is probably partly
> because I don't have any friends. But every such site I got bullied into
> joining (required XKCD quote: http://xkcd.com/146/ ) was a complete
> waste of time. You create a profile, fill out a bunch of fields, and
> that's it. There's nothing to "do" after that.
>
> On top of this, all of these sites were /shockingly/ unreliable and
> buggy. I can't even express how useless they were. They just flat-out
> DID NOT WORK PROPERLY. I've never seen such a thing from a /website/
> before. You would have thought there couldn't be too many things that
> could go wrong with a mere web page. You would be wrong, apparently.
>
> And then I joined Facebook. /This/ actually has a point. You can use it
> to /talk/ to people. You can arrange meetings. You can share any
> interesting photos you might have. You can ask people for opinions, etc.
> I'm not the type of person to sit on Facebook all day (I have far more
> interesting things to do), but it does at least do /something/ remotely
> useful.
>
> Twitter, on the other hand, baffles me. It's, like, this huge Internet
> phenomenon. Your corporation is /nothing/ unless it's on Twitter. And
> yet... Well, let me put it this way. I once had this conversation with
> my dad:
>
> Dad: So what *is* Twitter then?
> Me: You know how on Facebook you can post your status?
> Dad: Yeah?
> Me: THAT'S ALL TWITTER DOES!!
> Dad: ...WTF?

I think you are using it wrong. probably depends on who you are following.
Over the last few days I have been warned about some articles that are 
relevant to my life as a member of an international organization, been 
alerted for a radio-program about something relevant, seen that the UN 
is raising awareness of Chagas and today participated in a national 
debate on the future of technology and education.
Never once posted a status message.


> Not only that, but the few times I've actually been on Twitter, half the
> posts are replies to other people's posts, and there is LITERALLY NO WAY
> to find out what they're replies to. (!) Seriously, the most basic, most
> immediately obvious thing, the very first thing I tried to do, Twitter
> can't do. WTF?

A typical example of something that is simple, yet apparently not 
intuitive for some. Although I must admit that it might also depend on 
the interface. On my mobile App it is more difficult than on the webpage.


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

On 9/2/2012 20:24, nemesis wrote:
> isn't that merely a desktop PC with a touch screen layer upon the screen
> display?

More like a laptop with a touch screen layer. What made it special was the 
software, tho. Handwriting recognition that actually worked, One Note, etc.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834110486

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

On 9/2/2012 17:28, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The same identical, save in electronic form,
> technology is at the center of cell tower systems.

Well, no, not really.

That said, yeah, there's basically a modem in the phone that takes the 
digital signal from your internet stack and sends it over analog radio 
signals to the cell tower. All the stuff handling roaming and IP address 
assignment and all that is handled at the layer below the IP layer, which 
the internet doesn't even try to address, which is why you don't see things 
like roaming wifi connections.

> Since the networks
> work almost exactly the same though, in terms of digital packets, its
> trivial to translate your "internet" address to a "cell" address, and pass
> the messages to the right locations.

I would phrase it more that IP is designed to be capable of being carried 
over pretty much any network, and the various cell protocols are various 
types of networks, so it's a straight forward mapping.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

On 3-9-2012 22:00, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/2/2012 15:47, Tim Cook wrote:
>> On 2012-09-02 13:36, Darren New wrote:
>>> We have those. They're called Tablet PCs. They were a commercial
>>> failure, but I love mine. :-)
>>
>> Ditto. Only thing that'd be be better is if it were thinner, and had
>> higher
>> resolution.
>
> No. What would make it better is if the touch screen also served as a
> flat-bed scanner. ;-)

Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a 
paperless society.
Or do you want to copy data from one machine to the other by stacking 
them with facing screens? And why do the words *touch* screen and 
flat-*bed* suddenly suggest something else.


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:15:10 +0200, andrel wrote:

> Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a
> paperless society.

Paperless society is a myth, but being able to scan existing documents 
could help get closer to paperless, no?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 3-9-2012 22:43, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:15:10 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>> Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a
>> paperless society.
>
> Paperless society is a myth,

like flat screens won't happen. Oh sorry we do have them now. They were 
a myth for a large number of years and then suddenly within a few years 
they replaced all CRTs.

> but being able to scan existing documents
> could help get closer to paperless, no?

No. Almost everything I read, and I assume you as well, was digital 
before it was painted on a dead tree. In stead of scanning and OCRing 
just give me that file.

-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

On 9/3/2012 13:15, andrel wrote:
> Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a paperless
> society.

Exactly! I used mine for record keeping while I was traveling. The ability 
to slap someone else's piece of paper on it, scan it, and toss the actual 
paper would be great.

> Or do you want to copy data from one machine to the other by stacking them
> with facing screens?

If the data is already digitized, I have no need to use baroque methods for 
moving the data.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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On 2012-09-03 18:33, Darren New wrote:
> Exactly! I used mine for record keeping while I was traveling. The
> ability to slap someone else's piece of paper on it, scan it, and toss
> the actual paper would be great.

Second only in popularity to the all-in-one printer/shredder, renowned 
for removing the hassle of the middle step of needing to handle the 
document.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

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On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:52:19 +0200, andrel wrote:

> On 3-9-2012 22:43, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:15:10 +0200, andrel wrote:
>>
>>> Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a
>>> paperless society.
>>
>> Paperless society is a myth,
> 
> like flat screens won't happen. Oh sorry we do have them now. They were
> a myth for a large number of years and then suddenly within a few years
> they replaced all CRTs.

I don't see a paperless society in place.  Do you?

I tried to order a transcript of my college grades about a year ago.  I 
signed the paperwork using my Wacom tablet and e-mailed it back. The 
signature was rejected - I had to print out the stupid form, sign it *in 
pen*, scan it back into the computer, and e-mail it to them.

Until legal requirements are changed in society so that an electronic 
signature is considered legal and binding - *uniformly* - we won't have a 
paperless society, and we're no where close to that.

>> but being able to scan existing documents could help get closer to
>> paperless, no?
> 
> No. Almost everything I read, and I assume you as well, was digital
> before it was painted on a dead tree. In stead of scanning and OCRing
> just give me that file.

Once upon a time, I had a set of books written by the author Honoré de 
Balzac that were printed in the early 20th century.  I can assure you 
those were not digital before being printed on dead tree.

I also have in my possession copies of the Sherlock Holmes stories and 
the works of H. G. Wells, printed before digital writing systems were in 
common use.  In fact, I've got a fair selection of books that were 
printed well before digital systems were in common use in publishing - 
and the vast majority (if not all of them) of those books are not 
actually considered "rare".

Can you read files in Envoy format?  I've got some materials in that 
format as well - good luck finding a system that can read them. ;)

Jim

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Le 2012-09-03 23:58, Jim Henderson a écrit :
> Until legal requirements are changed in society so that an electronic
> signature is considered legal and binding - *uniformly* - we won't have a
> paperless society, and we're no where close to that.
>

It's starting to happen.  In my neck of the woods, lawyers, engineers 
anbd architects have a digital certificate and we can digitally sign 
PDFs.  This makes sure that our plans or contracts have not been 
tampered with after we were finished them.

> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:52:19 +0200, andrel wrote:
>>
>> No. Almost everything I read, and I assume you as well, was digital
>> before it was painted on a dead tree. In stead of scanning and OCRing
>> just give me that file.
>

See above.  Getting the original AutoCAD or Word file could allow you to 
modify it.  In many cases, it might be a Really Bad Idea(tm).

Also, until they make A-sized ipads, reading plans in .PDF format will 
not be popular on a construction site or shop floor.

-- 
/*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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Le 2012-09-02 10:09, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
> Twitter, on the other hand, baffles me. It's, like, this huge Internet
> phenomenon. Your corporation is /nothing/ unless it's on Twitter. And
> yet... Well, let me put it this way. I once had this conversation with
> my dad:
>
> Dad: So what *is* Twitter then?
> Me: You know how on Facebook you can post your status?
> Dad: Yeah?
> Me: THAT'S ALL TWITTER DOES!!
> Dad: ...WTF?
>
> Not only that, but the few times I've actually been on Twitter, half the
> posts are replies to other people's posts, and there is LITERALLY NO WAY
> to find out what they're replies to. (!) Seriously, the most basic, most
> immediately obvious thing, the very first thing I tried to do, Twitter
> can't do. WTF?
>

I don't know if it's your eye-sight, or you are overlooking an obvious 
feature just for the sake of a good rant, but you can "unroll the 
conversation" to see exactly what they are replying to.  If it's not 
there, them the person you are following was not really replying to 
anything someone said on Twitter.  They might have "replied" to 
something the person said on tv or in a newspaper.

Also, the strength of Twitter is not following certain individuals, 
although that can be interesting in the case of public figures or 
journalists, but following keywords (or hashtags), this way you can see 
what everyone has to say about topic X.  This come especially handy in 
fast moving situations or live events, where no one has a complete 
picture of what is going on.

-- 
/*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 4-9-2012 5:58, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:52:19 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>> On 3-9-2012 22:43, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:15:10 +0200, andrel wrote:
>>>
>>>> Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a
>>>> paperless society.
>>>
>>> Paperless society is a myth,
>>
>> like flat screens won't happen. Oh sorry we do have them now. They were
>> a myth for a large number of years and then suddenly within a few years
>> they replaced all CRTs.
>
> I don't see a paperless society in place.  Do you?

partly, I am printing things about once a week or less. I used to print 
3-4 documents a day. I do most of my revisions on screen.


> I tried to order a transcript of my college grades about a year ago.  I
> signed the paperwork using my Wacom tablet and e-mailed it back. The
> signature was rejected - I had to print out the stupid form, sign it *in
> pen*, scan it back into the computer, and e-mail it to them.
>
> Until legal requirements are changed in society so that an electronic
> signature is considered legal and binding - *uniformly* - we won't have a
> paperless society, and we're no where close to that.

I do know these issues. As a matter of fact I often do receive faxes 
with ECG's on the fax in my room. That it happens does not mean that 
this scanning of paper versions is the common thing to do. By far most 
of my communication is digitally. So I am not paperless, but paper is 
only about 25% of my world now and that number is reducing fast.

>>> but being able to scan existing documents could help get closer to
>>> paperless, no?
>>
>> No. Almost everything I read, and I assume you as well, was digital
>> before it was painted on a dead tree. In stead of scanning and OCRing
>> just give me that file.
>
> Once upon a time, I had a set of books written by the author Honoré de
> Balzac that were printed in the early 20th century.  I can assure you
> those were not digital before being printed on dead tree.
>
> I also have in my possession copies of the Sherlock Holmes stories and
> the works of H. G. Wells, printed before digital writing systems were in
> common use.  In fact, I've got a fair selection of books that were
> printed well before digital systems were in common use in publishing -
> and the vast majority (if not all of them) of those books are not
> actually considered "rare".

I was not talking about what you have, but about what you normally read. 
I also have many books printed before digital, just to show my age, but 
I don't read them as often as I do read things printed later.
Also I don't see you wanting to scan any of those books. The point of 
having these is having these, not the reading. In 5 years time you will 
be reading them digitally if you want to read them again.

> Can you read files in Envoy format?  I've got some materials in that
> format as well - good luck finding a system that can read them. ;)

But do you also have the dead tree version of those?
Do you want it as it was printed at the time or just the content?

-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

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On Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:47:46 +0200, andrel wrote:

>> I don't see a paperless society in place.  Do you?
> 
> partly, I am printing things about once a week or less. I used to print
> 3-4 documents a day. I do most of my revisions on screen.

Sure, we're getting closer, but I don't think we'll get 100% of the way 
there.  There's too much dependency on the "old" way of doing things 
(financial records, for example, in the US have to be kept for 7 years, 
and many of those are paper.  Expense reports at my last employer 
couldn't be handled without physical receipts being turned in, etc.)

> I do know these issues. As a matter of fact I often do receive faxes
> with ECG's on the fax in my room. That it happens does not mean that
> this scanning of paper versions is the common thing to do. By far most
> of my communication is digitally. So I am not paperless, but paper is
> only about 25% of my world now and that number is reducing fast.

Yes, but *the* world is where it's important. :)

> I was not talking about what you have, but about what you normally read.
> I also have many books printed before digital, just to show my age, but
> I don't read them as often as I do read things printed later.
> Also I don't see you wanting to scan any of those books. The point of
> having these is having these, not the reading. In 5 years time you will
> be reading them digitally if you want to read them again.

Many of them I do have in digital format, yes.

>> Can you read files in Envoy format?  I've got some materials in that
>> format as well - good luck finding a system that can read them. ;)
> 
> But do you also have the dead tree version of those?

One or two of them, yes.

> Do you want it as it was printed at the time or just the content?

The content is obviously the important thing.  But my point wasn't that 
we *could* be digital with stuff, but that we're not a paperless society, 
and the chance of us getting fully paperless are not that good until 
things that legislate hard copy or physical signatures on paper are 
done.  Given the speed with which the US legislature does anything, I 
expect it'll be a couple hundred years before the US has a chance at 
being paperless.

But then again, our legislature (at the national level) is somewhat 
regressive, maybe if we get more progressives in, we'll get there sooner.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:52:19 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
> > On 3-9-2012 22:43, Jim Henderson wrote:
> >> On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:15:10 +0200, andrel wrote:
> >>
> >>> Why on earth would you want to do that? The thing is meant for a
> >>> paperless society.
> >>
> >> Paperless society is a myth,
> >
> > like flat screens won't happen. Oh sorry we do have them now. They were
> > a myth for a large number of years and then suddenly within a few years
> > they replaced all CRTs.
>
> I don't see a paperless society in place.  Do you?

I see a society hungry for greay meat junk food packed in paper carton.

Most people at workplace print like mad.  Doesn't matter that most of them can't
read well let alone correctly interpret text.

As for myself, I've been reading books like I've never read before ever since I
bought a smartphone (soon enough on e-ink reader too).  I get my news from the
web, not from newspaper.  I don't print documents, I read them on screen (also
much better for the occasional copy-n-paste).  I pay most of my bills either
with a credit card, online in the bank or with coins (bus).

Signing perhaps is the only thing that still requires me handling paper in any
significative way.

can't speak for others, but I don't think most of my generation feel otherwise.

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On Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:20:12 -0400, nemesis wrote:

>> I don't see a paperless society in place.  Do you?
> 
> I see a society hungry for greay meat junk food packed in paper carton.

Indeed that's true.

> Most people at workplace print like mad.  Doesn't matter that most of
> them can't read well let alone correctly interpret text.

LOL, I hear ya there.

> As for myself, I've been reading books like I've never read before ever
> since I bought a smartphone (soon enough on e-ink reader too).  I get my
> news from the web, not from newspaper.  I don't print documents, I read
> them on screen (also much better for the occasional copy-n-paste).  I
> pay most of my bills either with a credit card, online in the bank or
> with coins (bus).
> 
> Signing perhaps is the only thing that still requires me handling paper
> in any significative way.

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.

Which of course is now outdated because I've made changes to the doc.

But I also find that even though I do a lot of authoring electronically, 
it's still sometimes easier to mark up a hardcopy.

> can't speak for others, but I don't think most of my generation feel
> otherwise.

I know my stepson tends not to print stuff out - probably doesn't hurt 
that he doesn't currently have a printer. :)

Jim

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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. Few times 
I really wish I had gotten a Kindle Fire, for that reason, except that I 
would still have the problem of, "Some front ports on your machine will 
shut down, if only charging a device." I mean, what idiot came up with 
that idea for a USB hub?

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On 04/09/2012 05:47 PM, andrel wrote:
> I do know these issues. As a matter of fact I often do receive faxes
> with ECG's on the fax in my room.

Fun memory: Visiting the doctor, who pulled up the scanned copy of my 
ECG, and then sat there looking at his computer screen with his head 
sizeways. (Seriously? There isn't a button to rotate the scanned image?)

Whatever. He seemed to think there's nothing wrong with my heart. (He 
also told me that "your blood prezzure is egzelent".)

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On 9/3/2012 1:07 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/2/2012 17:28, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> The same identical, save in electronic form,
>> technology is at the center of cell tower systems.
>
> Well, no, not really.
>
Odd then that, a few years back, she was recognized, finally, for having 
invented the idea, and it was attributed as one of the key features that 
make cell phone networks possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

"Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for 
modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, 
COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections, and CDMA used in some cordless 
and wireless telephones."

So, OK, you may be generally correct, in that a lot of modern phones 
don't use CDMA any more. lol

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>> Not only that, but the few times I've actually been on Twitter, half the
>> posts are replies to other people's posts, and there is LITERALLY NO WAY
>> to find out what they're replies to. (!) Seriously, the most basic, most
>> immediately obvious thing, the very first thing I tried to do, Twitter
>> can't do. WTF?
>
> I don't know if it's your eye-sight, or you are overlooking an obvious
> feature just for the sake of a good rant, but you can "unroll the
> conversation" to see exactly what they are replying to. If it's not
> there, them the person you are following was not really replying to
> anything someone said on Twitter. They might have "replied" to something
> the person said on tv or in a newspaper.
>
> Also, the strength of Twitter is not following certain individuals,
> although that can be interesting in the case of public figures or
> journalists, but following keywords (or hashtags), this way you can see
> what everyone has to say about topic X. This come especially handy in
> fast moving situations or live events, where no one has a complete
> picture of what is going on.

I looked at the Twitter pages for the cast of QC. Every single post was 
a reply to something one of the other cast members had said. (Then 
again, they're all fictional characters, so...) Literally, an entire 
page of half-conversations. Mostly between multiple unpeople.

I just went back to look, and holy hell, they've added a button to 
follow whole conversations. Not why the heck didn't it have that 2 years 
ago?? It's the single most obvious thing you would want! It's the second 
thing you'd implement, right after the ability to create an account and 
post stuff.

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...

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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? ;)

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>> 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? ;)

You don't have to file the stuff away afterwards. ;-)

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On 4-9-2012 20:41, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 04/09/2012 05:47 PM, andrel wrote:
>> I do know these issues. As a matter of fact I often do receive faxes
>> with ECG's on the fax in my room.
>
> Fun memory: Visiting the doctor, who pulled up the scanned copy of my
> ECG, and then sat there looking at his computer screen with his head
> sizeways. (Seriously? There isn't a button to rotate the scanned image?)

I knew a doctor who would read ECG's upside down. If anyone dared say 
something about that he would reply that he would not be distracted by 
his expectations of what an ECG of a normal person should look like.

> 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.


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

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] 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? ;)

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

Post a reply to this message

>> 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.

You don't need to be rich to afford £40 a month, and that will cover the 
phone and pretty much all your calls and data. There are cheaper 
alternatives from competitors like Samsung running Android from as low 
as £10-£15 per month if you're happy with a lower allowance on calls and 
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.

Post a reply to this message

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.
>
> You don't need to be rich to afford £40 a month, and that will cover the
> phone and pretty much all your calls and data. There are cheaper
> alternatives from competitors like Samsung running Android from as low
> as £10-£15 per month if you're happy with a lower allowance on calls and
> data (eg for just checking email and occasional browsing).

I spend about £20/year on my phone. Then again, I don't have any 
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...

Post a reply to this message

> 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.

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-09-04 14:51, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
>
> 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 }

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-09-05 07:03, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
> 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 }

Post a reply to this message

>> 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...

Post a reply to this message

>> 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...

Oh, it's not /that/ bad. The 6502 only has a few dozen instructions, 
each with a handful of addressing modes. Sure, that makes hundreds of 
possible opcodes, but you hardly ever use most of them.

I did attempt to /write/ an assembler. Or at least, a BASIC program with 
the entire opcode list contained in DATA statements. But long before I 
finished the data entry part, the program was already taking /way/ too 
long to do a linear search for the right opcode. If only I knew back 
them about hash tables and binary search trees. ;-)

>> 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.

I'm guessing you're talking about a slightly different time frame. 
Alternatively, maybe you just read different literature than I did.

(I still have a kids' science book which proudly proclaims that the most 
powerful computer ever to exist is the Cray II. It broke the 1 gigaFLOPS 
barrier. Aaaand then my current GPU produces about 480 gigaFLOPS, so....)

>> 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.

I did Pascal for years. We "learned" Pascal at college. And C. (I still 
remember reading an introductory C book and thinking "eew, yuck!") 
Between college and uni I learned Java (and object-oriented 
programming.) At uni we did Smalltalk [which I've never heard of before 
or since], and then Java. At Graham's suggestion, I learned Eiffel. And 
since then, I've learned PostScript, Tcl, I've at least looked at Lisp 
and Prolog, and then of course I learned Haskell and never looked back.

[I wonder exactly when I learned Haskell... I honestly can't remember. 
One day I found a TeX document I wrote about Haskell, and it was dated 5 
years ago, and I was like OMG! Really?? I still thought I'd only been 
using it a few weeks...]

>> 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?

I don't get why you would install an app which just displays the 
contents of a specific web page. I mean, isn't that what a web browser 
already does??

Then again, mobile isn't the only platform with "apps". You get spades 
of them on Facebook. I keep getting notifications that this app or that 
app wants to access my stuff. (Obviously, I click the "go **** yourself" 
button.)

>> 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?

I know that other people /have/ phones. I wouldn't know what their 
actual capabilities are though. I don't often interact with other humans 
in person.

Come to think of it, I did have to set up a Blackberry once. It had the 
most horrid controls. A track ball that you click by pressing on it (in 
other words, as soon as you try to click a button, the cursor moves 
away). The keys were so tiny even my skinny fingers couldn't operate 
them. And trying to type in a 20-letter string of gibberish when it 
keeps trying to correct the spelling just isn't fun... It never did work 
in the end.

>> (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).

Sure. I'm saying this would not be useful /to me/. Not everyone is like 
me though.

>> 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 :-)

It's like you can get those portable DVD players, which invariably have 
a 4-inch screen. Somehow, watching a picture that's so tiny you can 
barely make out the actors' faces just doesn't seem as enjoyable as 
watching it on a huge 40-inch display... But maybe that's just me. After 
all, they sell these stupid things for many hundreds of pounds, so 
*somebody* must be buying them...

> Also most web
> pages recognise you're on a mobile device and give a different layout to
> the desktop version.

That sounds /highly/ unlikely...

> People have thought about this.

OK, that sounds almost completely impossible! :-P

>> 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.

It's not minimal CPU power, no input devices other than a touch screen, 
and a fairly small display. What useful software could you possibly run?

Post a reply to this message

On 05/09/2012 02:57 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> "Apps" are the software that you run on iThings.
>
> For example, the Wolfram Alpha app that you mentioned earlier.

...the Wolfram Alpha app I mentioned as an example of utter pointlessness?

> There are
> also word processors, spreadsheets, presentation packages, etc...

How can you operate a word processor or a spreadsheet without a keyboard?

> Who said the only thing you could do on a tablet was surf the net?

I didn't say tablet, I said iPad.

Post a reply to this message

> I don't get why you would install an app which just displays the
> contents of a specific web page. I mean, isn't that what a web browser
> already does??

Some apps are like that (essentially just shortcuts to web pages, 
perhaps with auto login and remembering certain settings etc.) which 
isn't a problem, so long as they are free. Other apps do more useful 
stuff though that isn't possible through a web page.

> It's like you can get those portable DVD players, which invariably have
> a 4-inch screen. Somehow, watching a picture that's so tiny you can
> barely make out the actors' faces just doesn't seem as enjoyable as
> watching it on a huge 40-inch display...

Hold your phone closer to your eyes then, Nokia have a full-HD 
(1920x1080) phone in the pipeline/announced, so quality should be fine 
for making out actors faces :-)

>> Also most web
>> pages recognise you're on a mobile device and give a different layout to
>> the desktop version.
>
> That sounds /highly/ unlikely...

But true, and some even prompt you to ask if you want to download their 
mobile app (eg if you visit facebook).

> It's not minimal CPU power, no input devices other than a touch screen,
> and a fairly small display. What useful software could you possibly run?

Depends what you're interested in. Browse the google play store for ideas.

Post a reply to this message

On 5-9-2012 9:10, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> 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

nope. There are things like finger blood pressure meters (finapres and 
similar). NOn invasive and continuous and therefore used e.g in the OR. 
Other methods may use catheters to measure pressure at different points 
in the cardiovascular system.
But the method you describe is the more easy and cheap one.
Now you are unemployed I suggest you do your research before making any 
sweeping statement. ;)


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 05/09/2012 11:06 AM, scott wrote:
> > 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...)

hello, caveman.  Our minimum smartphone screen sizes are now 4"

> On the other hand, you can't run any software on it. You can just browse
> the Internet.

ooga-booga

Post a reply to this message

On 05/09/2012 4:40 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> I didn't say tablet, I said iPad.

What is an iPad if it is not a tablet?

And you use an on screen keyboard.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 05/09/2012 05:05 PM, scott wrote:
>> I don't get why you would install an app which just displays the
>> contents of a specific web page. I mean, isn't that what a web browser
>> already does??
>
> Some apps are like that (essentially just shortcuts to web pages,
> perhaps with auto login and remembering certain settings etc.) which
> isn't a problem, so long as they are free.

Which is why the high price of the WA app is so anomalous.

> Other apps do more useful
> stuff though that isn't possible through a web page.

OK, but... like what?

>> It's like you can get those portable DVD players, which invariably have
>> a 4-inch screen. Somehow, watching a picture that's so tiny you can
>> barely make out the actors' faces just doesn't seem as enjoyable as
>> watching it on a huge 40-inch display...
>
> Hold your phone closer to your eyes then, Nokia have a full-HD
> (1920x1080) phone in the pipeline/announced, so quality should be fine
> for making out actors faces :-)

Full HD, on a screen only an inch across. How pointless...

(You realise that the human eye can only focus on objects a certain 
distance away from your face, right? Never mind if you want to see it 
with both eyes simultaneously.)

>>> Also most web
>>> pages recognise you're on a mobile device and give a different layout to
>>> the desktop version.
>>
>> That sounds /highly/ unlikely...
>
> But true, and some even prompt you to ask if you want to download their
> mobile app (eg if you visit facebook).

Oh, I know Facebook is /constantly/ trying to shove stuff like that in 
my face...

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