глупости всякие тут в ноутпэде записывал...

new ways to think of software

- customizable ad nausea, but no complex options dialogs
speech interface: "I want this thing to work like this"

- software development
could shift to creating building blocks the user will be able combine into final 'products'

GoogleOS already on the way?

Just dawned on me. Ain't Google chock full of brilliant people? If I can see the deficiencies of each of the existing solutions for a desktop OS (Windows/Linux/Mac), sure these guys do, too?

Of course, the collective intelligence at Google being immensely smarter than I am, they may also see well past that into the future. Kurzweil promises gradual transition of the traditional computers to the back stage while smart integrated devices take their bite of the people's computing needs.

Could it be that they see the imminent demise of the desktop and choose to concentrate on things like Android instead.

OTOH what do you replace your corporate worker's email/word/excel with?

singularity scratchpad

- Kurzweil: Turning off the fat insulin receptor gene, for example, enabled animals to eat as much as they want and remain slim and get the health benefits of being slim
- Kurzweil: And we have new forms of gene therapy that allow us to add new genes to adults
- Kurzweil: The major religions emerged in prescientific times. There is still wisdom there but we need to consider that a major motivation was rationalizing death as a good thing.

- Is there any possibility whatsoever for quantum computing capabilities to evolve in carbon-based life?

- Can we design a living creature with wheels? O_o

ыдфырвщеющкп

Товарищ, вам сюда :)

An OS that doesn't suck? Anyone? Please?

- an open source kernel
- utf-8
- Unix line endings (LF)
- a graphical environment that tries to be fast and user friendly first, worries about "network transparency" later
- mount volumes without creating a mount point first
- eject the cd-rom even if there are open files
- change process priority without being root
- signed binaries
- universal binaries
- run (legacy) Windows applications
- application oriented filesystem hierarchy (see Windows/OS X/Gobo Linux)
- document oriented (as opposed to Mac OS X)
- application-modal popup dialogs (see Mac OS). Stick to current application window, move with the window, don't show up in taskbar
- Windows taskbar until, if ever, something better is invented
- application settings stored in text files (xml?), machine parsing/writing oriented but human -editable. Alternatively, use a sort of registry but make it mountable as a filesystem

Unanswered questions

- What is humor? What is music? Are these just random exploits of the brain mechanics? Or the product of sexual selection?
(to be continued)