RE: freebsd as the basis for something better?
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Nikolas Britton Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 8:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: freebsd as the basis for something better? a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. New gui tools are needed. lets bring the CLI tools to the GUI, like pipes, redirects, etc. some of apples ideas are nice aka NeXTSTEP. Why are we trying to emulate windows when mircosoft just steals it's idea's from apple? lets cut the middle man out. BeOS was cool too. A! Why are you guys still beating the GUI interface? That is so 70's computing technology. The real next generation OS will be voice command. Until then it's just more Window dressing. It's like the Emperor's new clothes - the little boy said Computer please get me a drink of water and the crowd was amazed when the $64,000 OS stacked to the ceiling with GUI just sat there lifeless and dumb. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Nikolas Britton Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 8:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: freebsd as the basis for something better? a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. New gui tools are needed. lets bring the CLI tools to the GUI, like pipes, redirects, etc. some of apples ideas are nice aka NeXTSTEP. Why are we trying to emulate windows when mircosoft just steals it's idea's from apple? lets cut the middle man out. BeOS was cool too. A! Why are you guys still beating the GUI interface? That is so 70's computing technology. The real next generation OS will be voice command. Until then it's just more Window dressing. It's like the Emperor's new clothes - the little boy said Computer please get me a drink of water and the crowd was amazed when the $64,000 OS stacked to the ceiling with GUI just sat there lifeless and dumb. Ted Must seriously disagree. Voice command is of very limited use - it's not private, and difficult to use in crowded surroundings. Further, if you consider the space in the human brain for visual processing vs. aural processing, I think you'll find that visual processing wins. At least for feedback, the human visual system is much better. However, the best interface for human input to machines is, IMHO, still to be determined. I don't claim that the keyboard/mouse interface is best, but it is, again IMHO, superior to voice command. What would be better than keyboard/mouse? I really don't know. One SWAG would be reading brainwaves, or perhap eyeball gestures - but that's just sheer speculation. I'm still a partisan of the command line, however. It's simply too flexible an interface, with too much history, to ignore. The human species has spent far too much intellectual capital making text-based interfaces (try explaining philosophy with pictures only) to the world to give it up, and the interface is so much more powerful than any gui, that I believe it will prove fruitless to try to better it with a GUI. Electron for electron, a text interface is much more information-dense than any GUI - for expressing commands. Note the difference. Getting output in graphic form can be (often is) better than in text, but input is better through the command line. Kurt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
On 6/27/05, Kurt Buff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Nikolas Britton Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 8:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: freebsd as the basis for something better? a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. New gui tools are needed. lets bring the CLI tools to the GUI, like pipes, redirects, etc. some of apples ideas are nice aka NeXTSTEP. Why are we trying to emulate windows when mircosoft just steals it's idea's from apple? lets cut the middle man out. BeOS was cool too. A! Why are you guys still beating the GUI interface? That is so 70's computing technology. The real next generation OS will be voice command. Until then it's just more Window dressing. It's like the Emperor's new clothes - the little boy said Computer please get me a drink of water and the crowd was amazed when the $64,000 OS stacked to the ceiling with GUI just sat there lifeless and dumb. Nice one ted but it would still be cool to have pipe and redirect stuff in the GUI. Basically extending the UNIX philosophy of modular tools into the GUI. I seem to remember someone talking about this in the Daemon's Advocate column @ daemonnews.org but I can't seem to find it, maybe I'm thinking of something else. Ted Must seriously disagree. Voice command is of very limited use - it's not private, and difficult to use in crowded surroundings. Further, if you consider the space in the human brain for visual processing vs. aural processing, I think you'll find that visual processing wins. At least for feedback, the human visual system is much better. However, the best interface for human input to machines is, IMHO, still to be determined. I don't claim that the keyboard/mouse interface is best, but it is, again IMHO, superior to voice command. What would be better than keyboard/mouse? I really don't know. One SWAG would be reading brainwaves, or perhap eyeball gestures - but that's just sheer speculation. You forgot finger and hand gestures and touch and sound sensors. we could have a matrix style plug in the back of are head? A direct brain to computer interface would be the best interface. But it might be too much I/O for a computer to handle, If you don't believe me just look at what your eye's are doing in real-time 3D @ 1000 fps. anyone remember the 3 dimensional touch and hand gesture interface and GUI they used in Minority Report? that would be cool in real life. I'm still a partisan of the command line, however. It's simply too flexible an interface, with too much history, to ignore. The human species has spent far too much intellectual capital making text-based interfaces (try explaining philosophy with pictures only) to the world to give it up, and the interface is so much more powerful than any gui, that I believe it will prove fruitless to try to better it with a GUI. Electron for electron, a text interface is much more information-dense than any GUI - for expressing commands. Note the difference. Getting output in graphic form can be (often is) better than in text, but input is better through the command line. So why can't we mesh the two environments together... The qwerty keyboard, 125 years old, is very inefficient and awkward. point and click = point and grunt, it's a step backwards from the keyboard. What we need is a new interface and a new (GUI) system to exploit it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: freebsd as the basis for something better?
A! Why are you guys still beating the GUI interface? That is so 70's computing technology. The real next generation OS will be voice command. Until then it's just more Window dressing. It's like the Emperor's new clothes - the little boy said Computer please get me a drink of water and the crowd was amazed when the $64,000 OS stacked to the ceiling with GUI just sat there lifeless and dumb. Ted i'm sure we could do something innovative with: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival for instance, just having a hot voice reading my command outputs would already be darn cool to me. -- siño Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get secure FREE email: http://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger http://www.hushmail.com/services-messenger?l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: http://www.hushmail.com/about-affiliate?l=427 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i'm sure we could do something innovative with: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival for instance, just having a hot voice reading my command outputs would already be darn cool to me. I worked there for a while, and know a couple of the people who worked on this project -- certainly talented individuals, though, sadly, Richard Caley is no longer with us. That aside, one of the things I hated was being in a roomful of people coming up to demo time, all babbling away into headset mikes while another set of people had their computer babbling back to them, sounding like Steven Hawking. Enough to drive you up the wall. If I wanted that, I'd work in a call center. And, of course, much of the software I worked on was developed using good, old keyboard and mouse, running good, old CLI Unix, with maybe a GUI C/C++ development environment (though mine was mostly emacs). There are applications where speech input or output are undoubtedly useful. But as a general replacement for keyboard and mouse? No thanks. When people speak to you, they are usually capable of picking up visual and verbal clues that, for example, that tell them when to shut up. Computers are a long, long way from that. And which would you rather do to edit the last command you ran? Type ^P ESC-b ESC-b Del Del 2 SPACE or have to say Redo last command, substitute final 1 for a 2? Time yourself and see which is quicker :-) Then make the example more complicated :-) On the other hand, if I could get my PC to listen in on a technical phone call, and manage to take notes (even verbatim) of what was said, that would save lots of typing up minutes afterwards trying to remember what was actually said. Of course, recognizing telephone quality, technical speech, spoken at normal speed and with the software not trained on the speakers, is, as far as I am aware, several pipe-dreams rolled into one. --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
On Jun 27, 2005, at 2:40 AM, Kurt Buff wrote: Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Nikolas Britton Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 8:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: freebsd as the basis for something better? a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. New gui tools are needed. lets bring the CLI tools to the GUI, like pipes, redirects, etc. some of apples ideas are nice aka NeXTSTEP. Why are we trying to emulate windows when mircosoft just steals it's idea's from apple? lets cut the middle man out. BeOS was cool too. A! Why are you guys still beating the GUI interface? That is so 70's computing technology. The real next generation OS will be voice command. Until then it's just more Window dressing. It's like the Emperor's new clothes - the little boy said Computer please get me a drink of water and the crowd was amazed when the $64,000 OS stacked to the ceiling with GUI just sat there lifeless and dumb. Ted Must seriously disagree. Voice command is of very limited use - it's not private, and difficult to use in crowded surroundings. Further, if you consider the space in the human brain for visual processing vs. aural processing, I think you'll find that visual processing wins. At least for feedback, the human visual system is much better. However, the best interface for human input to machines is, IMHO, still to be determined. I don't claim that the keyboard/mouse interface is best, but it is, again IMHO, superior to voice command. What would be better than keyboard/mouse? I really don't know. One SWAG would be reading brainwaves, or perhap eyeball gestures - but that's just sheer speculation. Bah... The ultimate interface is one where you sit at a table and the whole table surface is a tactile interface to a computer, three dimensionally. File system navigation? The table acts like a 3D version of FSV (ever run that program? It's kind of limited and dated...could use a small overhaul...still a nice one for quickly looking at what is hogging up space in my home directory though at a glance). The table will dance with cubes and pyramids as I just touch and drag a cube representing a file I'm copying to another location on the table. Then tap it a couple times to open it...and a monitor grows from the table to display the contents. A rubbery keyboard also grows from the tabletop as well. Ow...wrists kind of sore from typing too long...tap a customize panel and then draw your finger through the middle of the tactile keyboard, and it splits as if cut by an invisible blade on my finger. Then grasp each half of the keyboard, pull it apart about six inches, and raise the interior pointing side of the keyboard halves about an inch up, angling the keys...instant ergonomic keyboard. When I'm done, you just tell the computer to log you out...the table then settles back into a flat matte surface and activates a table saver of gradually pulsating multicolor ripples as if looking a velvet pond while playing some light acoustic music, waiting for the next user to log in. That would be an interesting interface... And would we really want eyeball gestures? I mean, it's hard enough to deny what we're looking at on the ads and displays to our significant others without the pointer giving us away. :-) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
On 6/27/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Nikolas! Hey don't bash plan9, they have some cool ideas and unix would not exist if it wasn't for bell labs (ATT back then) but mainly I just like glenda (the one in the space suit), can we change the beastie to glenda? http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/glenda.html Plan9 deserves my apologies because of Glenda. Damn cute :) UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. New gui tools are needed. lets bring the CLI tools to the GUI, like pipes, redirects, etc. some of apples ideas are nice aka NeXTSTEP. Why are we trying to emulate windows when mircosoft just steals it's idea's from apple? lets cut the middle man out. BeOS was cool too. Well said. Don't tell anybody about this: www.senseos.org/sos.pdf But that's what I intend to do so far (+ www.quelsolaar.com). I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure how I could help you. A solid supply of ideas would be nice! To bring UNIX to the masses one of the first things we need to do is make installing and running apps easy. Right now we are in what once was called DLL Hell in windows 3.x, is this the best we can do? Hard drive space is a non issue today so what is wrong with making fat binaries that that have all the dependencies compiled into one file. Another apple idea is making the binaries platform independent so it will run on an i386, ppc, sparc, etc. This is the biggest problem I have with UNIX. Step 1: Download the app from developer foo's website. Step 2: Double click on the app. Step 3: The app launches and the dam thing just works. What is so hard about this guys? Anyways... here's a cool video from back in the day, 1991 (DOS 5.0 and windows 3.0 in microsoft's timeline), with steve jobs demoing NeXTSTEP. Microsoft's windows still can't do some of the stuff they where doing back in 91. It a quicktime video btw: http://www.openstep.se/jobs/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
On Jun 27, 2005, at 11:01 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: To bring UNIX to the masses one of the first things we need to do is make installing and running apps easy. Right now we are in what once was called DLL Hell in windows 3.x, is this the best we can do? Hard drive space is a non issue today so what is wrong with making fat binaries that that have all the dependencies compiled into one file. Another apple idea is making the binaries platform independent so it will run on an i386, ppc, sparc, etc. This is the biggest problem I have with UNIX. Step 1: Download the app from developer foo's website. Step 2: Double click on the app. Step 3: The app launches and the dam thing just works. What is so hard about this guys? Anyways... here's a cool video from back in the day, 1991 (DOS 5.0 and windows 3.0 in microsoft's timeline), with steve jobs demoing NeXTSTEP. Microsoft's windows still can't do some of the stuff they where doing back in 91. It a quicktime video btw: http://www.openstep.se/jobs/ Is there any wonder that the people who have already brought Unix to the masses is Steve Jobs and the historical descendent to OpenStep (NEXTStep) -- Mac OS X? Most of what is described above exists in OS X already. Chad --- Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC Your Web App and Email hosting provider [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
On 6/27/05, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 27, 2005, at 11:01 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote: To bring UNIX to the masses one of the first things we need to do is make installing and running apps easy. Right now we are in what once was called DLL Hell in windows 3.x, is this the best we can do? Hard drive space is a non issue today so what is wrong with making fat binaries that that have all the dependencies compiled into one file. Another apple idea is making the binaries platform independent so it will run on an i386, ppc, sparc, etc. This is the biggest problem I have with UNIX. Step 1: Download the app from developer foo's website. Step 2: Double click on the app. Step 3: The app launches and the dam thing just works. What is so hard about this guys? Anyways... here's a cool video from back in the day, 1991 (DOS 5.0 and windows 3.0 in microsoft's timeline), with steve jobs demoing NeXTSTEP. Microsoft's windows still can't do some of the stuff they where doing back in 91. It a quicktime video btw: http://www.openstep.se/jobs/ Is there any wonder that the people who have already brought Unix to the masses is Steve Jobs and the historical descendent to OpenStep (NEXTStep) -- Mac OS X? Most of what is described above exists in OS X already. Anyone want some Cocoa? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
I think this has already been done. And they called it Darwin... a.k.a Mac OS X http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hey! i'm curious about all these new operating systems, that all claim to be the next generation. there are many out there. plan9, hurd, eros, movitz. and many vaporware projects as well, such as lainos. but they all want to reinvent the wheel. i think this approach is wrong. instead, we should try to attach the wheel to its vehicle, and make sure its road is alright. not to mention; going the right way. a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). ofcourse we'd have to get out of the code-only rut, and try to incorporate more natural elements from the ground up. such as design, like that conceived through real life architecture etc. having style doesn't mean it's commercial. i'm curious whether anybody would like to team up with me, to try and map out the ideas for how a real next generation unix would be. i'll soon have a pdf ready for those who are interested. in my humble opinion, this would be a great way for you to make bsd the way you've always wanted it. i guess that's it; -- siño ambrosius Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get secure FREE email: http://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger http://www.hushmail.com/services-messenger?l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: http://www.hushmail.com/about-affiliate?l=427 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
freebsd as the basis for something better?
hey! i'm curious about all these new operating systems, that all claim to be the next generation. there are many out there. plan9, hurd, eros, movitz. and many vaporware projects as well, such as lainos. but they all want to reinvent the wheel. i think this approach is wrong. instead, we should try to attach the wheel to its vehicle, and make sure its road is alright. not to mention; going the right way. a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). ofcourse we'd have to get out of the code-only rut, and try to incorporate more natural elements from the ground up. such as design, like that conceived through real life architecture etc. having style doesn't mean it's commercial. i'm curious whether anybody would like to team up with me, to try and map out the ideas for how a real next generation unix would be. i'll soon have a pdf ready for those who are interested. in my humble opinion, this would be a great way for you to make bsd the way you've always wanted it. i guess that's it; -- siño ambrosius Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get secure FREE email: http://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger http://www.hushmail.com/services-messenger?l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: http://www.hushmail.com/about-affiliate?l=427 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: freebsd as the basis for something better?
On 6/26/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hey! i'm curious about all these new operating systems, that all claim to be the next generation. there are many out there. plan9, hurd, eros, movitz. and many vaporware projects as well, such as lainos. but they all want to reinvent the wheel. i think this approach is wrong. instead, we should try to attach the wheel to its vehicle, and make sure its road is alright. not to mention; going the right way. Hey don't bash plan9, they have some cool ideas and unix would not exist if it wasn't for bell labs (ATT back then) but mainly I just like glenda (the one in the space suit), can we change the beastie to glenda? http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/glenda.html a project where real unix would meet real life, or where open source would meet open minds -- would have to make unix more human- oriented rather than machine-oriented. and in addition to bringing order to the chaos that was laid as the foundation for all unix variants decades ago, it should also deal with new ways of interacting with unix visually. for instance, in ways more convenient than x, and its conventional graphical user interfaces (though these won't go away any time soon). UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. New gui tools are needed. lets bring the CLI tools to the GUI, like pipes, redirects, etc. some of apples ideas are nice aka NeXTSTEP. Why are we trying to emulate windows when mircosoft just steals it's idea's from apple? lets cut the middle man out. BeOS was cool too. ofcourse we'd have to get out of the code-only rut, and try to incorporate more natural elements from the ground up. such as design, like that conceived through real life architecture etc. having style doesn't mean it's commercial. what's that mean? i'm curious whether anybody would like to team up with me, to try and map out the ideas for how a real next generation unix would be. i'll soon have a pdf ready for those who are interested. in my humble opinion, this would be a great way for you to make bsd the way you've always wanted it. I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure how I could help you. i guess that's it; ok ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
