swernli

There was a post on here a few days ago about just such a distributed system. Diaspora, and it's under development by some current college students looking for crowdsourced funding: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321651

I've been saying this about Google for years. When a company makes money of off advertisements and gives away services for free, the people taking the services are not customers, and the free services are bait.

Because this isn't something you posted on Facebook, this is just visiting a site and as a consequence having an application added. As the article points out, though the app doesn't show up on your profile, a friend who looks at the application home page will you see you in a list of "friends who have this application."

I agree it's hypocritical to post something on a Facebook wall and then complain if someone reads it; you post something, it's public to some extent, and you'd better be ready to face consequences of that. But this is an admitted bug that allows friends to see if you've visited a site without you having taken action other than visiting the site. That's just plain wrong.

A fair point (though technically sudoku can have multiple solutions, they are all equally correct; there is no range of correctness, it's just binary). However, I think something like this is useful as a proof of concept for a GA system, because it's easy to judge its solutions. Many textbook examples of GA I've seen involve evolving a best fit line for a given line, and the simple examples use functions like y = x^2+1 because its easy to judge completion.

I agree about the timeframe. I think the issue is not when the technology will be ready, but when the money will be ready to embrace the disruption. So the tech will be ready in 5 years, but the products and paradigms wont make their way into the wild (outside of academia) until 6 or 7 years after that.

That makes sense, but misses one important point: most people who are convinced they are superstars are wrong.

That is a really good point. Google can survive without specific personal data. Facebook cannot, by definition. That is a major factor in Google's favor.

>Google has a much better revenue model since it is not tied to there being a conflict of interest between them and their users.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Google is also in the business of using any tracking data it can gather on users to deliver ads. Google's primary money maker is advertising, whether in search results or in banner ads. Their customers are not their email/chat/docs users, their customers are the companies that buy advertising. Email/chat/docs users are the product that they sell to advertisers when they promise that the ads will reach an audience. The free services they offer are the honey pot to convince the users to get an account and be tracked. Google is in the same precarious position as Facebook, people just talk about it less.

Sounds like a return to the AOL model of accessing the internet through a portal.

Some part of me likes the idea of a portal by which I access information, but when I stop and think about it, in my mind that portal is the browswer and the data is the raw web. I don't like the idea of a site with personal information directing my use. But I'm atypical: I don't do social stuff, and I tend to use mail clients to download my mail through imap rather than webmail.

An interesting point, though I don't think it justifies the way the new article chose to change the meaning of the original by rephrasing it.

I don't think it's just Windows that encourages x86 use; it's also the fact that the ecosystem is richer for that chipset anyway (hardware compatibility for things like the webcam and card reader come to mind). If you decide to go with a linux distro on top of custom hardware, then you might have to develop drivers yourself, as well as build up some UI paradigms customized for touch. WebOS gives them a great starting point to do just that, so in the end their actions still look consistent with their goals.

I wish I could downvote articles. This is a shoddy regurgitation of the Techcrunch article from last week, with slightly more formal language (and thus misleading with its implied certainty). Let's compare:

Techcrunch: "But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project (something CrunchGear mentioned months ago). HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system."

AfterDawn: "Sources say HP was not happy with the overall performance of Windows 7 on their unreleased tablet, saying the OS was too power-hungry... TechCrunch says also that HP is set to drop the Intel processor used in the tablet, which would completely kill off any chance of Windows 7 being used."

Funny how the echo suddenly changes it to the OS being too power hungry instead of the chipset, huh? It saddens me that this is how "news" often gets reported. People keep repeating mistaken versions of what they heard without doing any investigation of their own, until the facts get completely muddled. It's like a giant game of telephone...

I don't think you've tried the app he is talking about. The ABC app for iPad is for watching the streaming video of recent shows. It has nothing to do with articles or sharing.

Call me old fashioned, but when I want to share something with a friend, I either tell them about it myself when I see them, or worst case scenario I shoot a quick email that says "Check out the new episode of Castle on abc.com!" The only people I know who wouldn't be able to parse that simple message and then go to the website and watch the show also don't check their email or even have an active account. Not everything has to be an automatic, shareable mini-link that can be pasted into a twitter stream.

Makes perfect sense to me, as that is my use as well. I find myself very rarely turning to my laptop at home. iPad for web browsing, video watching when I'm not in front of the netflix enabled xbox 360, and pretty much all communication, with my iPhone picking up the slack in the text messaging department.

For me, it's definitely not a complete laptop replacement, but at home I wasn't really fully utilizing my laptop anyway, so this ends up being more than perfect.

I completely agree with this usage case, but I still don't miss it on the iPad. I think this comes down to the fact that I'm never trying to balance work and casual browsing on the iPad. At work, I might have several 'tab queues' open in order to keep a hold on articles or sites I want to glance at between things. But on the iPad, I just go one article at a time, reading them in turn, browsing the comments too. I never feel the need to build the queue, because I'm not going to be turning away from the pages for work anytime soon, and even if I do, the work is being done in a different place, so I just put the device down. Then again, I also leave the iPad at home, as a purely entertainment and communications device. Couch and bed surfing, comic viewing, and video watching.

Which requires that you put it on something. I was trying to point out that even with the existing software keyboard on the iPad, it's easier for me to type standing up one handed than on a laptop or netbook, simply because of the form factor. If you have a surface to place the netbook on, then great... if you don't then you are facing the same problem the peice is trying to address, but with fewer options for solving it.

Us.

Yes, because a netbook is so much easier to type on while holding it up with both hands...

I've found myself feeling the same way too. Unless it's something I really want to do on a computer or device that clearly wasn't designed to do that, my expectation nowadays is that something should just work. Especially when I (perhaps mistakenly) think I understand the problem well enough that I believe it could be made to just work.

Not true. The background services offered by the OS allow the apps to still receive calls/IMs etc while not in the foreground. According to Apple press release:

"These services include background audio, so apps like Pandora can play music in the background, and VoIP, so VoIP apps can receive a VoIP call even when the iPhone is asleep or the user is running other apps."

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/08iphoneos.html

I think it's possible people will get real work done on an iPad, but it just requires that they change some or many of their paradigms of production. Like any new tool, it may enable new forms of creation at the expense of some older ones, but that doesn't mean the older ones disappear.

> The iPad may well be - and probably is - the future of content consumption, web browsing, gaming, and perhaps television viewing. There's a difference between that though, and the future of computing.

I think this is a great point, and couldn't agree with you more. In the midst of media frenzies, where the echo chamber (including company marketting departments) starts throwing around terms without regard to the deeper implications of them, it can be easy to forget that "computing" is a lot of things. When someone is writing a novel in a nice word processor or emailing photos to a friend, that's part of computing. So is designing a video game, programming a utility software, and editting music. "Computing" is a lot of things, and it certainly doesn't just mean crunching numbers in a programmable calculator, as it used to way back in the day. I think that's a part of what's bothering people when the iPad is referred to as the future of computing: it implies that all the other stuff that the iPad omits isn't computing. But to say that the iPad has no place in the future of computing is to make the same mistake in reverse (you didn't say that, but a lot of people have made comments in that vein).

From my perspective, saying the iPad is the future of computing is no worse than saying that some new octo-core, power-guzzling chip is the future of computing, or that voice interface is the future of computing. That chip won't be so nice in a low-power netbook, and I wouldn't want to dictate my code to the computer when I could just type it. But all these technological innovations and products have a place in the ever-changing landscape that is computing. And by providing more devices that sit in different niches and excel at different things, with either broad capabilities or limited ones, we are succeeding in the goal of expanding what is possible within the sum total of activities that is "computing." As long as we keep doing that, we keep adding to that nebulous idea that is the future of computing.

I'd say the iPad makes the next step harder, not impossible. Just because you wouldn't want to program on it doesn't mean someone else wouldn't. And if someone wanted to write a novel, nothing is stopping them from starting to write it on an iPad, one day realizing they want an external keyboard, then making the jump to a netbook or maybe even writing on the desktop that they can (and maybe already do) sync the iPad with.

Personally, I'd be more concerned that this new generation of texters, tweeters, and Facebook wall-posters doesn't have the attention span and grammatical capability to write a novel, regardless of what physical tools are available to do so. I was surprised at how many of my classmates freshman year of college were found lacking in the area of writing skills, and I don't imagine the pervasiveness of terse, abbrievieted, and often shallow communication is improving that.

I don't think this is the Zune phone. It's more like the Windows Phone equivalent of the Motorola BackFlip: not quite a smart phone, but higher on the foodchain that a text+call only phone. It's designed for social stuff[1], and just social stuff (no third-party apps, no flash, no silverlight). Not surprising when you consider that it was designed by the folks who made the SideKick, I guess. Apparently some people want a phone that isn't a computer, but is really just a social networking assistant. Wouldn't do it for me, but it seems like it's a niche that companies are interested in competing over.

[1]: Where "social stuff" also means Facebook, Twitter, and email, instead of just text and calling.

The search is customizable to either google or yahoo. You can reach that from within the safari settings on the iPhone OS.

I think even that is too long. Think about when that one second would occur: when the app you are using needs more memory, you are running low, and the system is closing the least recently used app. Right at that moment is the worst time, user experience wise, to have a delay, especially a delay on the order of half to one second.

Thank you. This phrases what I've been feeling for years (especially ever since the rush of Twitter based services). When you decide to make yourself dependent on someone else's product, and you don't get a formal partnership agreement from them, you are opening yourself up to disaster. And by no means should you expect the creator of that product to bend over backwards just to accommodate you. If you don't like their changes, or something they do interferes with your business, then leave. If you can't reasonably do that because you have inexorably linked your livelihood to that product, then that is no one's fault but your own.

Perhaps a nitpick, but

>So, firstly, the quality of games won't change at all, and secondly, it's relatively easy to port a game from the iPhone to a different platform. The only thing they are restricting is using better, more productive tools to create games.

He kind of contradicts himself there. He points out that cross-compiling makes it relatively easy to port the iPhone game to a different platform, and then says all Apple is doing is preventing people from using more powerful tools. But they are also preventing people from doing the aforementioned porting. It seems to me that when people shout, "Hey, now we won't be able to easily port our apps and games to another platform!" Apple will just say, "Exactly."

I'm inclined to disagree with you. This may slow or impede the growth of the App Store, but Apple still has plenty of partners producing amazing apps (have you seen the Marvel and ABC apps? Stunning, functional, and downright great to use, which probably has something to do with both of them being owned by Disney where Jobs has major influence). They may lose a lot of individual devs, but they'll still have big players, who are increasingly learning how to make good software.

Speaking as a user, I've never liked Android. It feels bad using it; it's not as quick or fluid, the ui animations aren't as crisp, the tapping seems less accurate, and I have serious trouble with their keyboards (on-screen and physical). I've met people who feel the same, and I've met people who make similar comments about the iPhone. In the end, people will buy what they like, and Apple makes a product of a level of quality that is easy for lots of folks to like, and they know exactly what level of quality to expect. Android is a hodgepodge of devices that range from cool to embarrassingly rough. My opinion is that until they do some serious cleaning up of their ecosystem and their OS, they've got a long hard battle for actual mindshare in the general public.

As a developer, I find myself inspired by form factor. That's my own limitation on creativity, I suppose. I don't think of an idea, and then imagine a device that would work for it. I look at a device, and imagine ways to use it. I am inspired by the iPad, and my position is that I will do whatever is necessary to make the app that I want to use. If that means learning to be proficient in Objective-C, so be it. I'm not saying what Apple did is fair, but I don't see how it would stop me.

But then again, my livelihood doesn't depend on, and I would never try to put myself in the situation where it did.

Seems to me like their "Game Center" thing might address this. I personally avoid Facebook, but if I look at my iPhone and can see that 3 of my friends are playing a particular game, I would be influenced much the way I imagine folks who receive Facebook game invites do.

Actually, I'd probably be influenced more, since I know some Facebook games force you to recommend it in order to get access. But if this game center, like XBox Live, can just show me what my friends are actually playing... that's the best endorsement they can give me :)

My apologies; looking back at what I wrote, I realize I did respond harshly. Your comment (and you) deserved more courtesy than that...

I guess my disagreement stems from the fact that I don't see what I type into those boxes as commands (even though some search boxes, like the one in the Windows start menu, can work that way). I think of those boxes as fixed to one command, search, and all I get to type are parameters.

I don't think there is anything wrong with saying, you just have to have the right device for the right task. If what you need is to check email and browse websites, get something that does that. It might do more, but if that's all you need, than it doesn't have to do more. Likewise, if you need a "very specific genealogy application" then you know you have to get something that runs that. Just because some customers need something specific doesn't mean that everyone needs something that can do everything. You just need to find the right thing fo the job.

Case in point, I have a friend who was going on a multi-year trip to Australia. She wanted to get a computer that could travel with her, run skype, let her update her blog and upload pictures. Other than that, she didn't need anything else. She may do heavy picture editting on her Macbook at home, but she realized for a trip like this, all she needed was a netbook with linux on it. She got skype and webbrowsing, and the ability to pull pictures off of her camera. She realized a full Macbook or Windows laptop would've been overkill, so picked the right tool for what she needed.