Charging the last terrified rapscallion

BTW, about Opera - the newest events with OpenAI and other stuff and Winamp devs not being prosecuted for GPL violations all lead me to one thought.

Are leaked Presto sources really-really illegal to use?

OOXML is Microsoft’s proprietary format it itself doesn’t implement consistently.

Either you meant OpenDocument or you meant that you want a magic wand.

Linux is still mostly US-dependent as a project.

There’s a kind of people who think they don’t need to know an industry to know where it’s heading and where the progress is.

Mobile computers being thinner and replacing buttons with touchscreens are from that kind of delusions.

Now built-in chatbots with voice recognition and synthesis are all the rage. If you remember that “elevator in Scotland” sketch.

That already works, even India and China have (unnoticed by Western public opinion) transitioned from growth to stable situation, and it’s predicted their populations will be shrinking.

We are going to have the problem of too few people, not too many.

Yes, and we also need that for personal computers.

I mean, monochrome easy on the eyes displays being all you need to normally use it. All the fancy stuff on a separate hires color display that may even not be there.

We will have proper computing in our age.

Returning proper controls for most things is just the first step.

Seems similar to some tanks.

I haven’t driven a tank.

That and buttons that are almost as flat as touchscreens.

I want my clickety-click Fallout and Star Wars rugged industrial feeling.

This always happens, with change you have things you don’t need and things you need, and things you consider and things you don’t consider, and things you had and things you will have. Of these there’s a combination of things you had, you need and you don’t consider. Which means you will not have them, while needing them and not considering them.

Correct good feedback is in that area.

I don’t know Don, I’m sure he’s a fine guy, but I’ve read about all these kinds of rules (EDIT: emerging) much earlier - as early as 1940s, with airplanes and cars and other machines in production and in front lines that people had to operate for long hours under strain and make as few mistakes as possible.

Even USSR, not the Rome of ergonomics, had GOSTs for average ratio of errors an operator makes on a certain machine, machines had to be inside those numbers in tests involving people, or they wouldn’t get adopted into wide usage.

Note how the criterion is defined. Not formalities like the shape of something or the layout conforming to some vague definition, but the results of an actual test on people. Of course, though, there were also a myriad GOSTs as to how the specific controls may look, a GOST for every detail one could use in a device.

Not answering your question, I would expect the main contributing factors to be the same as everywhere.

One man’s innovation is another man’s loss. This is why power distribution affects conditions for innovation - people with power always fight against innovation bringing them loss.

A libertarian society is better than a corporate society then, and a corporate society is better than an authoritarian society.

Then there’s the incentive for innovation - if it brings one power, then one will work for it, and if it doesn’t - less likely.

This is why a libertarian society is worse than a libertarian society minus some patent protection, but better than one where patents are strong and do not reflect inventiveness and are used to gatekeep markets.

This is also why China is more innovative than Russia - in China some efficiency in actually making things makes one more powerful, but in Russia power is purely a matter of capturing it.

Political parties calling for deregulation usually in fact call for token deregulation in some areas and more regulation where their corporate sponsors need it.

Deregulation in patent and IP law is a good thing. The thing is - it’s not the same as most other laws, it’s the fight over definition of property on an enormous amount of value. It was treated without sufficient attention, so now it’s pretty bad.

I think any real change in that would require something similar to a revolution. Everywhere, especially in countries home to corporations built on such legal framework.

There’s the unsolvable problem - to prevent companies doing stupid things.

And there’s the solvable problem - have enough competition so that companies doing stupid things would become or remain small.

Which is why all the stupidity in computer industry in our days is a result of patent laws and protectionism.

I think Sun made mice that didn’t work without their metallic mouse pad, that had some sort of grid on it.

Apple’s problem is in following:

There are industrial designers, fashion designers, managers and engineers.

Apple doesn’t have industrial designers. Only fashion designers pretending.

In a normal company managers consult designers and engineers back and forth, both figuring out some compromise and also asking the other group whether there is a better way.

Not in Apple. Their designers are clearly superior hierarchically to engineers.

And in the end their products are of inferior quality (for that price).

Apple’s idea of how things should look and work, when expressed in words, is absolutely fine! It’s actually wonderful. And perfectly possible, it’s actually the same goal as with industrial ergonomics.

Except they don’t have the process they need to fulfill that. They only have the PR to pretend.

It is convenient when you don’t hit that button accidentally, only by lifting the thing up.

Seems consistent with the Apple justification of “ape users shouldn’t be physically able to do something stupid, then they won’t blame the computer”.

Anything involving a ministry in Russia is not a serious plan. They’ll receive funding, hire a couple of bash script writers, well, maybe a couple of people who’ll write drivers for Elbrus, Baikal or something that’s sort of developed and produced in Russia, but nobody really uses it even in governmental structures.

While how we should view it is shown in “Idiocracy”, Azimov’s “Foundation”, 20-17 BBY era of Star Wars EU. And in fuckload of other fiction showing use of too complex blackbox interconnected technology as Troyan horse by some enemy. And, of course, if some people here have read real science fiction, then in Lem’s books and stories.

OK. I just meant that one can demand that as a sign of respect or something. With a sufficient degree of narcissism.

Marcus Aurelius apparently has found a way

Maybe you are right. I’m thinking about the wrong kind of autistic people right now.