Well, INTP here, so at least we have *some* common ground. For me it was: Apple II BASIC --> "Classic" Macintosh with HyperCard --> BASH / C / Python on Linux --> disgusted with computers entirely and more or less Luddite for about 5 years --> Blackberry OS on my phone --> Smalltalk, Scheme, Haskell, and JavaScript/HTML on slightly better Linuxes --> Same stuff on Mac OS X, mostly. Also, NetLogo.
I write this from work, where I'm juggling Fedora and WinXP, neither of which quite "just work" for the fairly simple tasks I expect of them. -- Max On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 1:19 PM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 6/10/2011 12:45 PM, Max OrHai wrote: > > > > On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:09 AM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote: > < snip ... > > >> there is not a whole lot that seems in common between a browser and an OS. >> >> yes, there is Chrome OS, but I sort of suspect this will (probably) fall >> on its face (vs... say... installing real Linux on the netbooks...). >> > > BGB, you're being waay too literal-minded! This thread was (I thought) > about architecture, rather than implementation details of current > technologies. > > > ermm... I think this is my natural tendency, and may have to do some with > psychology... > http://www.personalitypage.com/portraits.html > http://www.personalitypage.com/html/ESTP.html > > > > Chrome OS is a case in point, and FWIW, I expect it to succeed, maybe > even beyond Android, because it's been carefully built to give a seamless, > painless end-user experience. That's what most people want. Almost everyone > who casually uses a computer day-to-day doesn't give a damn about how > "powerful" or configurable it is. They just want it to work, get out of > their way, and not irritate them unnecessarily. Increasingly, most people > spend most of their computer time in a browser anyway. For quite a few, that > is (or easily could be) *all* of their time. Chrome OS just trims away > several layers of what these users would consider pointless complexity. As > others here have mentioned, the Web has *already* become the de-facto > universal communications medium. > > > dunno... > > I got a netbook before, and it came with Xandros... > I was not very impressed, and soon enough ended up replacing it with > Ubuntu... > > I actually spend a lot more of my time in the shell though (usually either > Bash or CMD...). > > > > The interesting question to me is, how do we help ordinary people (like, > you know, children) *use* this powerful new medium to learn, experiment, > express and communicate powerful ideas? As far as this question is concerned > Chrome OS and the Lively Kernel bring us back up to almost the level of > Smalltalk (plus or minus some semantic noise from Javascript, but hey). > Surely we can do better... > > > dunno about kids now... > > when I got started, it was mostly with MS-DOS and QBasic... (and, there was > Win 3.x and Win 95, but generally there wasn't nearly as much > "interesting"/"relevant" in Windows at the time, as most of the "cool stuff" > was in DOS, and if one tried using it from Windows their computer would > generally crash anyways...). > > mostly, it all started out as lots of fiddling with stuff... > > most of this was in the days where internet was dial-up and generally > exclusive to the computer owned by ones' dad... > > oh yays, things were much better with later getting Ethernet in the > house... > > > later, I migrated to C (first TurboC, later DJGPP), and following this, > spent a number of years using Linux (I mostly skipped over Win98 for being > "teh suck"...). > > ended up migrating mostly back to Windows with Win2K and WinXP though, and > have been mostly back in Windows land since (mostly for sake of better > driver support and more availability of games...). > > my recent discovery of being able to use VMware to run Linux rather than > dual-booting, and VMware being a lot more convinient (albeit the lack of HW > acceleration in VMware is lame...). > > > or such... > >
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