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Ideas for Computing

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Re: Ideas for Computing

#41
post #27

#54 sounds cool. How about doing something similar for comparing Enterprise Systems/Applications? Anyone to join hands with me?

There was a Show HN post a while ago for this kind of website: http://leanstack.io/cloud-stacks/ (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5736155)

Re: Ideas for Computing

#42
post #2

I've like many of the ideas. Inspiring. +1 I don't understand very well how would you like to implement the "93 Shell Output Pinning". Usually I do that with an array variable.

Perhaps it would be linked with variables, similar to how graphical debuggers can give you a "variables" window which shows variables in scope, and the ability to filter such variables. I suppose the idea is to extend the terminal to be more debugger/IDE like.

Re: Ideas for Computing

#43
post #31
post #22

This reminds of this: http://www.squidi.net/three/ which attempts to define a large number of computer game gameplay mechanics. Maybe we need more forwarding-reaching fiction in our world. More essays on computing futurology, grand envisioning of what we can achieve with software. Even ambitious prototypes of a new way to do something (like Lighttable) A lot of what I see are tooling details, lot of boring effort dup…

The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to improve the state of computing, rather than having a primary focus on revenue. It's unfortunate that groundbreaking ideas are usually not the moneymakers, else we'd see innovation at a quicker rate. Software patents are another hindrance to innovation too. Often t…

Author of the article here.

If everyone monetized everything our industry would collapse.

It's a balance. Innovation and monetization are different beasts. Some ideas are so awesome they just have to be shared. Techies are smart enough to think bigger if they really wanted and make computing better. I hope my example sets a precedent.

Sharing your idea may make technology better than if you kept it secret.

Re: Ideas for Computing

#44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to improve the state of computing, rather than having a primary focus on revenue. It's unfortunate that groundbreaking ideas are usually not the moneymakers, else we'd see innovation at a quicker rate. Software patents are another hindrance to innovation too. Often t…

Author of the article here. If everyone monetized everything our industry would collapse. It's a balance. Innovation and monetization are different beasts. Some ideas are so awesome they just have to be shared. Techies are smart enough to think bigger if they really wanted and make computing better. I hope my example sets a precedent. Sharing your idea may make technology better than if you kept it secret.

I agree about the need for sharing, it's disappointing that those with profit driven motivation can ruin it for us though. Anyone with plenty of money could take one of your brief idea descriptions, implement the basic idea and apply for a patent on the idea - preventing you from using your own idea in future even. Those small descriptions do not serve as prior art in the US patent system. Putting ideas out there like you've done should automatically put them in the public domain, and void any later attempt for overly broad patents to cover the same ideas.

I put many of my own ideas out there, usually in discussion threads though, as I'm not a blogger. There's some overlap between ideas I've had myself and your own ideas, such as the package-manager for package-managers, I've discussed several times and experimented with implementation. It just demonstrates further that ideas that are ready for introduction aren't "inventions" at all: they're inevitable next stages of the evolution of ideas. Yet someone who has the money can claim they invented it, and use the legal system to prevent everyone else using it.

Re: Ideas for Computing

#45

I've thought of some of these independently. (It's good to see somebody else did too.) We could probably make more progress if we all kept a list like this publicly. Or even privately, with snippets shared where appropriate. I know if I went through some old journals I could scrounge up a decent list myself. One I had: Bash scripting in the style of hypercard. Hypercard was described to me as a system that had a set…

> Bash scripting in the style of hypercard.

It sounds like the Clojure library Stevedore [1] does what you're looking for there.

[1] https://github.com/pallet/stevedore

Re: Ideas for Computing

#46
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the article here. If everyone monetized everything our industry would collapse. It's a balance. Innovation and monetization are different beasts. Some ideas are so awesome they just have to be shared. Techies are smart enough to think bigger if they really wanted and make computing better. I hope my example sets a precedent. Sharing your idea may make technology better than if you kept it secret.

I agree about the need for sharing, it's disappointing that those with profit driven motivation can ruin it for us though. Anyone with plenty of money could take one of your brief idea descriptions, implement the basic idea and apply for a patent on the idea - preventing you from using your own idea in future even. Those small descriptions do not serve as prior art in the US patent system. Putting ideas out there lik…

The HN community could form an idea hub to host and protect ideas and monetize them as products to fund further ideas and products.

Re: Ideas for Computing

#48
post #22

This reminds of this: http://www.squidi.net/three/ which attempts to define a large number of computer game gameplay mechanics. Maybe we need more forwarding-reaching fiction in our world. More essays on computing futurology, grand envisioning of what we can achieve with software. Even ambitious prototypes of a new way to do something (like Lighttable) A lot of what I see are tooling details, lot of boring effort dup…

The idea of forward-reaching fiction to encourage advances in science and technology is what Neal Stephenson and others are trying to do with Project Hieroglyph.

http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/

Re: Ideas for Computing

#49
I am working with some students of mine on something like 89, 'Code Journeys'. We call it Storyteller.

http://www.storytellersoftware.com

It allows one to comment on the evolution of code rather than on individual sections of it. Currently, there is not a good place to write down why things have evolved the way they did. There is a search/filtering interface to find only the interesting bits of history.

Re: Ideas for Computing

#50
post #31
post #22

This reminds of this: http://www.squidi.net/three/ which attempts to define a large number of computer game gameplay mechanics. Maybe we need more forwarding-reaching fiction in our world. More essays on computing futurology, grand envisioning of what we can achieve with software. Even ambitious prototypes of a new way to do something (like Lighttable) A lot of what I see are tooling details, lot of boring effort dup…

The problem is most modern computing is driven by the single question: "How can I monetize this idea?" It's only hobbyists and academics that really try to improve the state of computing, rather than having a primary focus on revenue. It's unfortunate that groundbreaking ideas are usually not the moneymakers, else we'd see innovation at a quicker rate. Software patents are another hindrance to innovation too. Often t…

And here we come to the crux of the free market economy. A system that is purposefully built to harbor unsustainable and frigid behavior. A system that, ultimately, defeats innovation and thinking.

Certainly without such restriction the great minds of the world would be free to ponder the future of human-computer interaction and solve real problems. I am vastly underwhelmed at the state of technology in the year 2013.

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