Posts by BenWilson

Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    thanks, xerox

    :-) I was pretty careful to say popularized rather than invented . Although it might be more accurate to thank MS for unpopularizing command lines.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    And now the future where kids have no idea and think computers are just magic is upon us. /me sobs with overwhelming angst and premature nostalgia.

    LOL, you're under-rating kids, like us oldies always do. The kids who are interested will know more than we ever did about computers. Well, OK, some arcane skills will be a lot less commonplace, coding in assembly language will be a bit like making horseshoes, and spaghetti code will become as indecipherable as ancient scrolls (particularly since we come from storage poor days, where putting remarks in code was extravagant). But overall, they just have all the advantages. Bless them. Our gift to them is that we did the hard, shitty, yards. They will not appreciate that, of course, one of the things that has been crap about getting old since time began. Christ, I came from a time before the internet, when training oneself had to be done with books, and the only search engine was the index at the back, and the library card catalog.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    Apropos reinventing file systems: this is no invention. Palm OS and the old Newton have worked just like this for years and years. It's a good idea though! Nice to see it get mainstream traction.

    I seem to remember it was actually one of the main bitches that Apple fanboys had about Windows For Workgroups, that it didn't simply expose the file system.

    I, for one, will always thank Apple for popularizing the modern GUI. Taking things back to appliance is something that isn't really innovative, although it may be practical, particularly if you want to make big $ from it. I'm personally reasonably happy with a netbook running Windows - all my software is free, except for Visual Studio (which I wouldn't dream of even trying to use on a little lappie), same as my workstation, so there's no real hassle involved in using it.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    @SteveBallantyne. Dave Jr did work the iPhone out in the end, and we enjoyed many hours of painless use after that first muck around. I don't think it was the Atari that put him off them Apples. More likely different priorities for how to spend his free cash - he wanted the horsepower in his wheels, not his computer.

    I left higher education Apple literate, personally. That's what they taught computer science on in my day. But there were no jobs in it. Precisely zero workplaces I've worked in have had any Apples. But the shift was not particularly painful, any more than the shift to Apples from Commodores had been.

    Whilst it's annoying to be somewhat locked in by virtue of knowing PCs, it has been fortunately the most power you get in a machine for $ since basically about 1990. To me that's worth something, but I'm fully respectful that people are happy to pay $ not to have to deal with the endless configurability of the PC world. Appliances have their place.

    Sad (but not surprised) to hear no Terry sequels are forthcoming. Hope those options come to something!

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Of rights, choice, money ...…,

    When that bus hits, it is ACC who you'd turn to - and as we know the elephant in the room for the last couple of decades is the vastly unfair discrepancy in service levels depending on how you come to be disabled. Those not eligible for ACC receive a patchwork of meagre benefits and rationed services.

    For sure. Our level of support for the boy increased, at a rough guess about 8-fold when his ACC claim was approved. It reminded me of the scene in "As Good As It Gets" when Jack Nicholson's character pays for the waitresses son's care. Going from a bunch of people kindly struggling to give us what time they have from the goodness of their hearts, to a professional team strongly coordinated, with role divisions, years of experience in acquiring the tools, filling the forms, each specialist working their own part, but in cohesion with the others, working with all the other carers (parents, Barnardos, kindergarten, etc) to teach and motivate them, long term plans, regular assessments. It blew me away, and there is no question it has paid dividends for my son. It angers me that a similar level of care isn't available to the disabled who can't tie the whole thing to an accident.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    People are going mental for lovely old analogue stuff.

    Yeah, I'm still a fan of the biro and paper notebook. Incredibly reliable and flexible. My graphic designer mate says he still mocks up with pen and pencil, then scans and uses software afterward - he found it just made his creative juices flow better.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Of rights, choice, money ...…,

    Dysfunctionphobia is a good word for it. As a parent of a disabled child, we get a benefit for attendant care. I originally felt just that little bit uncomfortable with it. The problem is that I don't have any perspective and I think most people are in this boat too.

    The argument that family carers are just "doing what's expected", so don't need to be paid as non-family carers are is so breathtakingly ignorant and morally wrong, I simply don't understand how it was ever justified. Noone who's ever seen what these people do would think that this is equivalent to "normal" parenting (which isn't exactly easy either).

    Actually I think it's easy enough to just not know the difference. The discomfort I allude to above comes from the feeling that getting paid to do something I would certainly do anyway for free (looking after my child to the best of my abilities), is somehow wrong. Basically, since he was our first child, we never had any experience of childcare to compare with. Everyone says it's hard work, and it certainly was, and still is. But because it was also work I loved, because I love the boy and want the best for him, it didn't really feel that hard.

    Nonetheless, when I speak to actual professionals who deal with a lot of families, they have always assured us that we have to do a lot more than most people would, that the cares and responsibilities and self-training we've had to go through are unusual.

    And it has taken its toll on my career. I didn't really appreciate how much, thinking what we do was just normal for families. But now I've had a second, and he seems ludicrously easy by comparison. It's very hard, in fact, to break out of the mindset that the second child doesn't need the same kind of care at all, that we don't have to go an extra mile to teach him the basics. As one doctor put it, he is "boringly healthy".

    In the older child's first year my wife and I spent hundreds of hours working with therapists (who come during work hours), learning how to apply their skills. It's a little less now, but set that against the fact that most parents don't have to do any of this at all and it kind of shows the cost to us.

    So it's only recently that I've come to realize that the attendant care is actually quite a fair thing after all, if we live in a society that wants to help the disabled.

    It's money well spent too, since the care is 24/7 - pretty hard to get that from an agency without paying through the nose.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    > Wilson, Hopeful, Barnes and others -- has it occurred to you that such considerations are more valuable to many of us than your emotional investment in hardware and software systems that are irrelevant to our needs.

    Burn!

    lol. Steve, good to hear from you. Irony: It was your own son with whom I had my extremely poor iPhone first experience. But I'm certainly not emotionally attached to any of my hardware, other than my MR2. Like I said, Apples have their place. So far, that place has never been my place. Might get an iPhone this year though, my 6 year old phone is long overdue for retirement.

    So, if the NZ publishing industry doesn't pull the pin, when can I expect to be reading the sequels I've only been waiting my whole life for? NZ needs its Herge, and you the man. </whipcrack>

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Field Theory: The Sad News Springboks,

    Don't forget Rocky . Just stop at #3.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Do Want?,

    I nominate the iSay, although I don't know yet what it would actually do or look like.

    iFry surely.

    “It emits a blue light, which is one of the most stimulating lights to the little receptors we all have in the back of our eyeballs, which send messages to the brain to say whether it’s day or night and whether we should be awake or go to sleep.”

    I read in black and white personally. Although there is most likely some blue in that white. And it's totally soporific, particularly if you turn out the lights. I speculate that looking at a light surrounded by darkness is like sitting around a campfire, and the message to the brain is 'sleeeeeep'.

    Naturally, when it's time to sleep, I read different things - I don't try reading cerebral stuff (when I converted Gio's thesis (I sought permission only slightly after the fact) I had a crap night's sleep, brain churning with postmodernism for hours. A very troubled imaginary, perhaps ;-)). I go for stuff that's simple and evocative. Arabian Nights gave me dozens of excellent sleeps when I was a bit insomniac once. But I could see the iPad might be good for things that are a bit longer that you do need to use your brain for.

    I don't feel bitter at Apple the way some here do. They do tend to make good things, they're just a bit pricey for someone whose geek budget is limited to either tax-deductibles or things for the family. So the iPhone stayed on the iWish list, pipped at the post by a hugely revamped entertainment unit. Maybe this year.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

Last ←Newer Page 1 799 800 801 802 803 1066 Older→ First