[lit-ideas] Re: Could an academic discipline do this?

I think I'll have to kill this operating system (OS)
war before it starts. These thing make gun rights
debates look civilized.

What we have here is two different perspectives. John
looks at it from user point of view, Leopard allows
him to get this and that done so it must be cool.

Andreas, sidesteps to marketing aside, has a techie
point of view. OS is something you launch programs
from, or more often nowadays launch a browser from.
All OS has to do is stay up and not get in the way of
doing stuff, and any current OS is good enough for the
task. What is so cool about it?


I have to say that after further thought I agree that
an MP3 player needs no design. As to why they even
bother with separate programs for moving files, and
why such a simple thing is such an hassle, the answer
is the all-around disaster known as Digital Rights
Management.

Many gadgets run Linux by the way, and more will in
the future. For the simple reason that you can modify
Linux to do exactly what you want it to do and nothing
else, and you don't have to pay for it. I was looking,
for semi-professional reasons, into EMV card readers
you find in every store to see how they could be
programmed. Well, they can be programmed exactly the
same way as a Linux computers, because they are Linux
computers.

I have to say I don't understand the urge to make
single purpose gadgets. MP3 player is a computer with
an USB disk and sound output. Digital camera is a
computer with an USB disk and a camera. Mobile phone
is a computer with wireless network connection. And so
on. I do not believe that these will be separate
physical devices in the future.


Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland


      
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