"Evil OS X"... the perfect client to a node server!

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Dennis Kane

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Sep 25, 2012, 7:36:37 PM9/25/12
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I was thinking of just responding  to this old thread, in which I talk about the browser based Desktop that I've been working on, but the new thing I've been doing for the past week is so superior that I thought it deserved a completely new thead.  By the way, I know this forum is all about server side Javascript, but there is not really any serious place one can go on the web that talks about the client side.  Besides, with socket.io & websockets... I don't really make much of a distinction between client and server anymore.  I just know that there's no reason to do a document.getElementById() call in node :)

This new thing is a totally shocking clone of OS X.  I knew I was going to have to start over from the ground up, because my previous code base was so sh*tty, haha!  I have really been concentrating on getting a nice, tight little API that developers will positively drool over.  I don't want to make this thing publicly available for many reasons... but you can check out a youtube vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq_W19QokXk) that shows it in action, and I still have my same old crappy prototype online at http://luvluvluv.info.  Well, hopefully this is proof that I am able to do some cool stuff, and hopefully summa yous will want to start being my friend now, LOL!!!

And get this... the current, uncompressed js file size is only 54kb!

Rick Waldron

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Sep 25, 2012, 8:16:56 PM9/25/12
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Dennis,


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Dennis Kane

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Sep 26, 2012, 8:33:02 AM9/26/12
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Have I ever seen a bunch of google links that talk a lot of smack, but that don't really deliver anything of substance?  Why, yes I have, hahaha :D!  Seriously, though, I know there have been quite a few attempts over the years to do things like this in our browsers, but the technology has only caught up to the "dreams" over the last couple years.  I think it's really taken a massive undertaking like the V8 project to allow things like this to become truly viable.  Anyway, the entire concept of a clean, intuitive browser based "operating system" is something that traditional online content providers (based on link clicking ad revenue) should be positively petrified of.

The entire business model of the current Web is that there be an incomprehensible array of sites, each with incomprehensible interfaces, that reduces each one of us to rabid, slobbering link clickers.  From what I've seen of the recent crop of Google IO videos on youtube, there are some real efforts to try to inject some sanity in our online experiences.  But Google is not bigger than the entire universe of web developers who are each beholden to the profit motives of the corporations that they work for.

We know that the Web is an ugly mess.  The entire problem at hand is how to go about locating remote resources.  Currently, we type text strings into input boxes, and are met with thousands and millions of choices.  And even when we do find the "best" site to help us out, there is often very little help in deciphering how to navigate the thing.  But we all know how to navigate our own native operating systems, because we collectively have a decades long history of doing this.  There is just something about windows, icons, and folders that just "makes sense" to us in a very basic way.

Now, with this browser based OS concept in full throttle, we can start thinking about organizing the remote resouces that are most important to us in highly comprehensible ways.  Then, once the organization makes sense, we can actually start to reason about them, and then develop truly semantic interfaces (APIs) into their content.

I mean, all of Google's talk of tomorrow's cutting edge web applications is great and all, but if the problem of locating them persists, then it is really all for naught.  We really need to begin thinking about the Web at a higher level than just one-to-one mappings between HTTP URLs and pages of HTML content.

Rick Waldron

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Sep 26, 2012, 8:46:02 AM9/26/12
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Reply inline...

On Wednesday, September 26, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Dennis Kane wrote:

Have I ever seen a bunch of google links that talk a lot of smack, but that don't really deliver anything of substance?  Why, yes I have, hahaha :D!
I shared it because I thought you'd find it interesting.

 
 Seriously, though, I know there have been quite a few attempts over the years to do things like this in our browsers, but the technology has only caught up to the "dreams" over the last couple years.  I think it's really taken a massive undertaking like the V8 project to allow things like this to become truly viable.  
The guy who created that project I shared with you, works on v8 an chromium.

 
Anyway, the entire concept of a clean, intuitive browser based "operating system" is something that traditional online content providers (based on link clicking ad revenue) should be positively petrified of.

The entire business model of the current Web is that there be an incomprehensible array of sites, each with incomprehensible interfaces, that reduces each one of us to rabid, slobbering link clickers.  From what I've seen of the recent crop of Google IO videos on youtube, there are some real efforts to try to inject some sanity in our online experiences.  But Google is not bigger than the entire universe of web developers who are each beholden to the profit motives of the corporations that they work for.

We know that the Web is an ugly mess.  The entire problem at hand is how to go about locating remote resources.  Currently, we type text strings into input boxes, and are met with thousands and millions of choices.  And even when we do find the "best" site to help us out, there is often very little help in deciphering how to navigate the thing.  But we all know how to navigate our own native operating systems, because we collectively have a decades long history of doing this.  There is just something about windows, icons, and folders that just "makes sense" to us in a very basic way.

Now, with this browser based OS concept in full throttle, we can start thinking about organizing the remote resouces that are most important to us in highly comprehensible ways.  
Have you seen the work on Firefox OS?

Dennis Kane

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Sep 27, 2012, 11:20:05 AM9/27/12
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Well, I think that we can all agree that the idea of a purely portable desktop environment is a highly compelling one, and that there are many ways to approach the problem.  There is, of course, the VNC approach, wherein all of our actions are transmitted over the wire in order to control a remote computer.  The problem of having to wait on all of the network delays obviously leaves much to be desired.

Another way of approaching it is to think of a desktop as a purely logical construct that can be represented fairly well by, for example, a JSON object.  This will allow us to abstract way the "form" of the desktop from its "content" fairly well.  (What I mean by the "form" is simply the locations of icons and the locations + sizes of windows.  By "content", I am talking about the actual data in the files that the icons represent.)

All of the form related stuff can be transmitted by JSON blazingly fast, and the local user will be able to control his/her in-browser desktop without delay.  But the content may very well still be sitting on the remote server, so double clicking on an icon might result in an indeterminate delay before the content is fully loaded, depending on file size and network conditions.  But now we can cache the content, and we won't have to suffer the same delay again... as long as the cache is still intact, of course.

But even beyond the idea of desktop portability, there remains to crucial problem of how to locate, retrieve, and render the various bits of information that are scattered all over the WWW.

In my opinion, all of the past attempts at developing web based desktop environments have failed because they were, at their hearts, focused primarily on replicating native desktop functionality by any means necessary (eg, Flash based desktops) rather than on making actual, functioning websites more responsive and comprehensible.  All of those past efforts amounted to nothing but curiosities because we just don't need our web browsers as gateways to hackish, barely responsive desktop environments.  We will always need our web browsers as gateways to the wild, wonderful, weird place that is the WWW!

As it currently stands, it is next to impossible to reason with the content that is contained on remote machines.  This is because the URL schemes that we use are fairly arbitrary strings of text.  That is, in order to locate a remote resource, we have to get our grubby little hands on some string that looks something like "http://www.somedumbdomain.com/stupidpage?crazy_param=flux&dumb_arg=spam&weird_sid=Gjsk3MKs5hsgf6jeO7Iwjn8YUKs", and on and on it goes.  To the end user, these are incomprehensible, indecipherible messes.  They only make sense to the backend URL parsing algorithms.

And even when we are able to locate a remote resource, due to the fact that the crucial information is usually buried inside of a messy HTML document, we are often no wiser because of our inability to sift through the layout markup in order to finally get to the data that we seek.

So in order to inject some sanity into our online experiences, we have to start thinking about how to allow users to locate the various bits of content that they are after in much more intuitive ways.  And you can't get more intuitive that icons sitting on desktops and in folders!  In this case, a user is no longer forced to remember a random string of text known as a URL... all he/she has to do is know what the icon looks like, and in which folder it might be located.

And power users will be able to reason about remote content using familiar Unix path notation (/path/to/the/file).  They will be able to trivially write scripts that perform various actions depending on whatever state the remote content is in (eg current weather or traffic conditions).  No longer will developers be forced to construct convoluted GET requests in order to retrieve some little bit of information.  There can simply be a "file" named something like "/home/dennis/weather.info" that we can open up by double-clicking or via script... and now we are enlightened!

I am simply trying to make our web browsing experiences better rather than making our desktop experiences worse.  No one will ever get excited about offers of desktops that sit in browser windows.  But the idea of having the world at our fingertips from within the context of a familiar, intuitive interface is something entirely new and exciting!  And being able to reason about the world via programs that are trivial to write is something that should make all of us programmers positively delirious!! 

So the trick now is to get web developers to stop obsessing so much over serving up full fledged HTML documents, and to start thinking about how to offer services that deliver compact, essential nuggets of JSON data that can be delivered into these kinds of in-browser GUIs at blazingly fast speeds.
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P. Douglas Reeder

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Sep 27, 2012, 1:26:06 PM9/27/12
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One mashup to rule them all? That's a tall order.

If you're looking to supplant the WIMP paradigm, you should be familiar with "The Anti-Mac Interface" (really a post-Macintosh UI): http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html

Dennis Kane

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Sep 28, 2012, 9:30:38 PM9/28/12
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Cool!  When I scrolled down to the section called "The Central Role of Language", I realized that the "anti-mac" concept was something I could work with.  I am a believer in the concept of leveraging Javascript in order to devise a kind of higher level computing language that can deal very well in human concepts.  Think of it as a kind of highly structured natural language, and we can start really getting on our way.  The problem is that programmers and logically-minded people in general need to start getting creative with how they think about computers.

When I scroll through this list on any given day, I am often quite disheartened by the utter lack of trying to think of Javascript at a higher level.  There is often so much discussion concerning issues that are well on their way to becoming irrelevant anymore.  Whether to fork off node or whether to make it threaded, for example.  But node is really good enough for anything that can be reasonably thrown at it.  I remember hearing Ryan talking about the fact that node can always be made to be faster, but that the real increase in speed occurred between the leap from the pre-node world to the post-node world.

I think it's high time for many programmers to just take a little breather to think about where we can go next.  I recommend really meditating on some of those Crockford youtube videos, and start thinking about what it really means that we have a blazing fast DOM-aware prototypal scripting language that uses first order functions.  It's all pretty mind blowing when you really think about it.

Developers are just so damn scared to actually *use* the language rather than just using some dumb library that forces you to think in a certain way about in-browser programming.

My API is currently a little messy, but from the beginning, I wanted to focus on keeping it exceedingly simple and intuitive.  There are function calls like make_desktop(), make_window(), and make_icon().  Kids will be able to type these into their browser consoles and see magic happen in front of their eyes.  I'm talking about giving kids of the same kind of experience that us 30 or 40-somethings had when we tapped those BASIC programs from BYTE magazine into black screens with glowing green characters.

In today's world, there is such a schism between the experiences of end users and developers.  When I was in 5th grade, we had a programming class taught by our Math teacher.  These kinds of things are extremely important to teach kids when their minds are eager to learn.

So basically, the way that we think about what our computers are all about needs to start evolving, and it is really up to programmers to start programming in ways that are new/exciting/experimental (just like when we were kids!) rather than so mind numbingly dull.

Dennis Kane

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Sep 30, 2012, 10:35:11 AM9/30/12
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My most recent work can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NTjmy7PbD0

I have added functionality to the bottom dock, including a working Trashcan.

I have still received precisely zero real interest in any of this & I am really eager to get together with programmers who want to get something beautiful started!

My theory is basically that the nature of the front-end experience crucially determines how much "excitement" the back-end administrators will have.  At the moment, the web is filled with absolutely boring/unresponsive front-ends.  So anyone who wants to work with me will really have a leg up in terms of offering the kind of user experience that will keep the back-enders on their toes ("on their toes" == "gamefully employed" ;)

By the way, I am well aware that any business that comes out of this will not want to offer an exact replica of OS X as their front end.  I am using OS X as the ultimate challenge to see how awesome I can make the end user experience.  Once I can get this prototype working as well as possible, then I can start to think about how to make it even better than OS X!

I am all ears in terms of what kinds of services can be offered up through this kind of interface...

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 10:53:15 AM9/30/12
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On Sep 30, 2012 10:35 AM, "Dennis Kane" <dka...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My most recent work can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NTjmy7PbD0
>
> I have added functionality to the bottom dock, including a working Trashcan.
>
> I have still received precisely zero real interest in any of this & I am really eager to get together with programmers who want to get something beautiful started!

I think I speak for most when I say: you've given us nothing to be interested in, aside from a few YouTube videos and some hints about an API that, to be honest, looks nothing like a well designed JavaScript API.

Share some code ;)

Rick

>
> My theory is basically that the nature of the front-end experience crucially determines how much "excitement" the back-end administrators will have.  At the moment, the web is filled with absolutely boring/unresponsive front-ends.  So anyone who wants to work with me will really have a leg up in terms of offering the kind of user experience that will keep the back-enders on their toes ("on their toes" == "gamefully employed" ;)
>
> By the way, I am well aware that any business that comes out of this will not want to offer an exact replica of OS X as their front end.  I am using OS X as the ultimate challenge to see how awesome I can make the end user experience.  Once I can get this prototype working as well as possible, then I can start to think about how to make it even better than OS X!
>
> I am all ears in terms of what kinds of services can be offered up through this kind of interface...
>

Mark Hahn

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Sep 30, 2012, 12:50:12 PM9/30/12
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I know that this is a popular thing to do, but I don't understand it.  Why would you want to put a metaphor that dates from 30 years ago on a modern brower?  I find the hyperlinked documents on the web with responsive web pages to be a better experience.  

Google is working hard to replace the old Microsoft functionality with gmail and google docs, yet you don't find Google using a desktop metaphor with folders and trash cans.  Apps don't spring up from icons into desktop windows, they appear as web pages from web links.

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 12:54:01 PM9/30/12
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@Rick please don't speak for most, speak for your self. If you have no interest then don't comment. Large ideas come from small ideas, I would hate to think that something I might say could have been short sighted may ruin the chances of something good happening coming out of someones effort. IMHO

thanks --jerry 
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Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 12:59:50 PM9/30/12
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The point I think he is making is that some derivative of a familiar metaphor will help people grab on to the functionality or feel more at home. This ia also to say that from this may come something interesting after iteration(x) that is created.

Mark Hahn

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Sep 30, 2012, 1:10:18 PM9/30/12
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This is also to say that from this may come something interesting 

That would be great and I certainly don't want to dampen any enthusiasm.  I'm just giving my opinion as a potential user.

To journey to a great new place, it would seem to be easier to start from somewhere modern instead of something old and moldy.  I have been using computers since the mid '60s and witnessed many metaphors come and go.  I for one would be happy to get rid of the desktop.  Most users nowadays grew up with the web, so it is a metaphor that they are at least as familiar with as the desktop.

Maybe a glimpse into the future of the desktop could prove me wrong.  Where can it go from here?

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 1:32:03 PM9/30/12
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I myself only from the seventies and more into the eighties in a practical way. Accept my apologies but the comment before you was a bit harsh and I was already annoyed. I have never found negative comments to be helpful, I also don't assume that I can see the direction that something will take. What I know is that it is good for people to be creative whatever that form takes. He is putting is ideas out there which is more then most people will ever do. I applaud any effort by a person putting out their own ideas out there for everyone to see and I hope he continues to do it and he gets to where he's going, I hope someday he makes millions from it. I would applaud again. 

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 1:32:56 PM9/30/12
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On Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Gerald Klein wrote:
@Rick please don't speak for most, speak for your self. If you have no interest then don't comment. Large ideas come from small ideas, I would hate to think that something I might say could have been short sighted may ruin the chances of something good happening coming out of someones effort. IMHO

thanks --jerry 

Reel it in buddy, I was the first person to respond to the original post (shared some interesting, related research and information). 

Since then all I've read is long winded soapboxing, with claims that people don't take JavaScript seriously enough as a "high level" language and that no one is innovating quite like the author is... forgive me, but I expect substance to back claims like that. I've spent the last 7 months programming arduino robots with JavaScript and this past week Felix G demoed ARdrone control programs written in JS... None of that would matter if there were no code to show for it. So like I said, show me some code and I'll show you some interest. 


Rick 

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 1:49:23 PM9/30/12
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Call it soap boxing what ever you like, but when you say "I think I speak for most when I say" I have a problem, because you don't. Further the line about show us some code was not what I was talking about, it was the lines prior to that. "you've given us nothing to be interested in, aside from a few YouTube videos and some hints about an API that, to be honest, looks nothing like a well designed JavaScript API" Ah yes a positive and necessary critique from someone with an obvious superior intelligence. Personally I don't care what your creating robots with, this has to do with respect. You know I have always been impressed with braggarts that use accomplishment to justify rude behavior.  

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 1:53:00 PM9/30/12
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On Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Gerald Klein wrote:

I myself only from the seventies and more into the eighties in a practical way. Accept my apologies but the comment before you was a bit harsh and I was already annoyed.

I wasn't being negative, I was identifying exactly what it would take to interest me. As an engineer, I want to know how things work... I guess I wrongly assumed that this list was for engineers that liked to make things or learn how things work. That's why I said "speaking for most", thanks for correcting me there, I won't make the mistake again.


Rick

Mark Hahn

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Sep 30, 2012, 1:55:22 PM9/30/12
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I have never found negative comments to be helpful,

I respectfully disagree.  Informed opinions should be welcome here.

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:01:19 PM9/30/12
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I agree but there is a way of presenting them, further if you have a negative I would assume you must have a positive to supplant it. 

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:06:59 PM9/30/12
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On Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Gerald Klein wrote:

Call it soap boxing what ever you like, but when you say "I think I speak for most when I say" I have a problem, because you don't. Further the line about show us some code was not what I was talking about, it was the lines prior to that. "you've given us nothing to be interested in, aside from a few YouTube videos and some hints about an API that, to be honest, looks nothing like a well designed JavaScript API" Ah yes a positive and necessary critique from someone with an obvious superior intelligence. Personally I don't care what your creating robots with, this has to do with respect. You know I have always been impressed with braggarts that use accomplishment to justify rude behavior.  
I didn't mention those projects to brag at all, I mentioned them because the OP has created a thread of rants making deluded claims and then complains that no one is interested. 

Well... I'm interested, but I want to see more and I don't mean more YouTube videos and rants, I want code.

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:08:51 PM9/30/12
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On Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Mark Hahn wrote:

I have never found negative comments to be helpful,

I respectfully disagree.  Informed opinions should be welcome here.

+1 Informed and critical opinions are necessary for broader growth

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:12:56 PM9/30/12
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"a thread of rants making deluded claims" Here we go negative again, "a thread of rants making deluded claims" you just love to hear yourself talk don't you. I didn't respond to your last post because you started to make reasonable representation of your case, let it go.

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:17:12 PM9/30/12
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The term constructive criticism which is always welcome innately suggests that there is a better alternative idea or path that could be taken. Now logic would also suggest that the person making this criticism have at least an inkling of what that might be. 

Mark Hahn

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:21:21 PM9/30/12
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>  there is a way of presenting them

Yes.  Civility is to be expected.

 if you have a negative I would assume you must have a positive to supplant it. 

Huh?  I have what I have.  This isn't a debate, it's just me giving my opinion.

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:23:50 PM9/30/12
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Once again Mark my responses have not been about you, you have acquitted your self as quite reasonable. 

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:26:25 PM9/30/12
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On Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Gerald Klein wrote:

"a thread of rants making deluded claims" Here we go negative again, "a thread of rants making deluded claims" you just love to hear yourself talk don't you. I didn't respond to your last post because you started to make reasonable representation of your case, let it go.

Have you actually read all of the posts in this thread? I have. It reads like "no one does anything interesting, except for me. Why is everyone ignoring me?" That IS my reasonable case presentation. 

If you want, I'll spend some time gathering examples for you...

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:28:35 PM9/30/12
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If that it was you feel about this thread you know the subject line, give it a pass instead of wasting time talking about something that you have stated does not interest you.

Rick Waldron

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:37:29 PM9/30/12
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On Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Gerald Klein wrote:

The term constructive criticism which is always welcome innately suggests that there is a better alternative idea or path that could be taken. Now logic would also suggest that the person making this criticism have at least an inkling of what that might be. 

I've been really patient with your aggro commentary, but it's clear to me that you're not reading my responses in their entirety.

1. I'm definitely interested in the OPs project. 

2. YouTube videos do not satisfy my interests as a programmer and software engineer. 

3. I want to see some code, that will be exciting 


Hopefully I've made myself perfectly clear this time.

Rick

Gerald Klein

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Sep 30, 2012, 2:42:37 PM9/30/12
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Yes that IS much better, thank you for clearing that up and I am sure OP will respond to that in a more positive fashion. 

Sotonin

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Sep 30, 2012, 3:02:50 PM9/30/12
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I've kept quiet on this thread to see how it plays out. I was waiting for the OP to finally post something similar to "Why is everybody ignoring me why isn't there any interest?". Now that it's happened, here's my 2 cents. 

While I admit It looks neat from the YouTube video, It's just a gimmick. There's been numerous web desktop projects throughout the years and they all fail to garner enough real interest to go anywhere. Quite frankly there are so many UI libraries out there for building nice UI that nothing in your demo is really that revolutionary at all. Node has been around a while for doing the file IO, UI libraries are plentiful. In fact the only thing "special" about your demo is that it's a Mac OS clone... (Good luck open sourcing something thats 100% Apple copyrighted material.). It also doesn't help the OPs general attitude throughout all his posts is "Everything else sucks, my stuff is magical". Very reminiscent of Steve Jobs. Adjusting your tone a little and you might have gotten a little more fish biting.

That said, I have always been interested in the web desktop type projects, just not interested enough to contribute. I like to see the results and code. (This is a programming mailing list afterall, nobody cares much about youtube videos, we want to see code)

Stewart Mckinney

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Sep 30, 2012, 3:21:50 PM9/30/12
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That's pretty much my take. It's nice to see he is enthusiastic about his endeavors, and I wish him the best of luck, but for me if you are not going to show me any code, why are you posting it in this forum? 

Baz

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Sep 30, 2012, 11:10:46 PM9/30/12
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I really like Chrome's "create application shortcut" feature. It lets you treat a website more like an application, by giving it it's own taskbar item (win7), branded icon, separate context (i.e. you can be logged into 2 different gmail accounts in separate app instances - unlike with tabs), and reduced chrome (no tabs, address bar, bookmarks, etc.). I normally have my personal gmail, work gmail, calendar, google docs, home ip camera viewer, cloud9 ide, github, facebook and twitter open in this way (all with their own clearly identifiable icons). It needn't be said that eventually there will be an online alternative to almost every app, and that lots of people will be completely online. 

In that case, people are going to need a way to see and manage all their apps, a starting point. Today we use a desktop metaphor for that, which has been optimized for decades. I can imagine users finding an online version of that for their online apps just as useful. Their cloud apps would be neatly organized, iconized and available to launch. Their cloud documents and cloud media could be viewable and playable with just a few clicks. There could be tools for app discovery and "installation". All accessible from any machine, of course.

I wouldn't bet against a promising scrappy start-up in it for the long-haul pursuing "online desktop" dominance. A brave founder could burst on the scene and declare themselves the first person to live completely on the cloud, giving up all traditional apps. Monetization would come from integration and discovery of content providers (i.e. spotify, netflix, etc.). Judging from the video (I thought it was well done), and if the code holds up, Dennis looks like the technical lead. Open req's: "business co-founder", "investor co-founder" and some devs.

Baz

cayasso

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Oct 1, 2012, 1:32:07 AM10/1/12
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I think Denis reminded us (or me at least) what the browser can do and what is possible, I think taking it to the next level would be to show both worlds web like and desktop like but working together (how would that interface be?) for a better user experience, better usability,etc, its all about facilitating users life, I am a fan of apple for this same reason, apple have done a great job with its new iPhone 5, everything on it has a use, its not there just to be.

Any way good luck Denis! 

JB

On Tuesday, September 25, 2012 5:36:37 PM UTC-6, Dennis Kane wrote:
I was thinking of just responding  to this old thread, in which I talk about the browser based Desktop that I've been working on, but the new thing I've been doing for the past week is so superior that I thought it deserved a completely new thead.  By the way, I know this forum is all about server side Javascript, but there is not really any serious place one can go on the web that talks about the client side.  Besides, with socket.io & websockets... I don't really make much of a distinction between client and server anymore.  I just know that there's no reason to do a document.getElementById() call in node :)

This new thing is a totally shocking clone of OS X.  I knew I was going to have to start over from the ground up, because my previous code base was so sh*tty, haha!  I have really been concentrating on getting a nice, tight little API that developers will positively drool over.  I don't want to make this thing publicly available for many reasons... but you can check out a youtube vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq_W19QokXk) that shows it in action, and I still have my same old crappy prototype online at http://luvluvluv.info.  Well, hopefully this is proof that I am able to do some cool stuff, and hopefully summa yous will want to start being my friend now, LOL!!!

And get this... the current, uncompressed js file size is only 54kb!

Dennis Kane

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Oct 1, 2012, 9:38:11 AM10/1/12
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Respectfully, I am not the typical poster here.  I am a revolutionary and a trailblazer, and everything I do is geared for maximum effect.  I have precisely zero interest in working for paychecks or even creating something for the purpose of selling out to a corporation.  I am interested in starting a truly socialist movement... one whose participants understand that like it or not, we are constantly moving into a post-capitalist future.

This ultimately just means that the historical corporate/ad buying business model will slowly give way to models that have the notion of "social capital" at their core.  For any arbitrarily complicated web domain that does not live and die by the ad revenue "sword" -- for example a university or a municipality -- there is the ever present problem of getting naive users to navigate the domain.

Today's websites typically do not use much logic when organizing their resources.  It all comes down to physical page space.  So if one page becomes too crowded with content, then another page must be created.  Then the problem reduces to how to develop a menu of links that allows to user to navigate to the appropriate resource.  At the moment, there are no standards as to how a site should organize its content.  Everyone has to roll their own navigation solution, and when happening upon a new domain for the first time, a user has to spend an arbitrary amount of time parsing the visual layout, in order to create a site tree in their minds.

For everyone who says that the desktop environment is simply a "metaphor", I would have to disagree.  Our modern desktop GUI's are the result of a evolutionary process... a process that has resulted in the most intuitive and powerful of navigation systems.  All that I am saying is that we stop thinking of the client-side as a mere afterthought.  For anyone who wants to devote their efforts towards codifying a standard client-side browser web-app interface, there will be countless service providers who will breathe a sigh of relief that they will no longer be forced to worry about layout and navigation.

And yes, I know there have been many many efforts in the past that have tried to bring the desktop experience into the browser.  The first obvious problem is that Javascript has only recently become performant enough to allow there to be pretty much zero difference from the native OS in terms of icon/window handling.  

Next, all of those other efforts were pre-HTML5, which pretty much forced the applications to rely upon a back end for the purpose of saving state.  But now, there are so many different ways to save to the client, it actually makes me blush!

And last but not least, we are really talking about doing a kind radical paradigm inversion that conservative corporate interests just have no interest in.  The politics of the modern WWW is such that most websites are completely in service of the corporate bottom line.  And since corporations have historically been all about buying up ad space/ad time in whatever medium it can (print, radio, TV...), the Web has inevitably found itself as having this exact same kind of role.

So there really is not "allowed" to be very much creativity on the Web, if this creativity would only confuse/aggravate the corporate bosses who are just trying to hawk their wares to as many naive consumers as possible.  The result of all of this political mumbo-jumbo is that the lowly web developer is forced to think of him/herself as a mere layout designer... such that the given layout gives sufficient prominence to whatever ad space it is trying to sell.  So the Web becomes nothing but a series of static magazine-like page layouts.  The only difference being that Web pages have magic "hyperlinks" that quickly move us between arbitrary pages.

In this case, the programming language of the Web (Javascript) is completely in service of the thing (the DOM) that allows for the representation of the layouts.  The paradigm inversion ultimately comes down to making the layout representations completely in service of the programming language.  The popular view is that Javascript exists primarily to allow for popup menus and client-side form validation.  This view holds that Javascript is fundamentally incapable of allowing for the kind of functionality that I have demonstrated.

So anyone who tries to do what I am attempting must be fully aware of all of these issues, and must have the appropriate battle plan in place.  Anyone who simply has the "bright idea" to start using Javascript in order to mimic desktop functionality is pretty much doomed to irrelevance if they are not able to mount a good enough challenge against the corporate interests of yore.

Which brings me back to the original point I made on this post.  In order to pull off this paradigm shift, I realize that I have to become a "larger than life" figure.  I have to turn myself into a kind of heroic figure in the minds of the average Web using public.  I currently live in Gainesville, Florida which is home to the massively important institution known as the University of Florida.  I was published as the lead story in the UF student newspaper (The Alligator) under the title, "Turlington Dancer Spreads Love, Equality."  I like to keep myself in terrific shape and walk around in public wearing very short shorts.  I have recently started a roadside campaign, where I've been holding a sign that says, "Fall in Luv with the Web... LuvLuvLuv.info".  You should really see me dancing out there... it's a sight to behold!

By doing this I am making myself the kind of public figure who has the kind of celebrity status to at least have a fighting chance against the fat cat corporate bosses.  I mean, Google itself is still forced to operate under the old paradigm because its fate rests in the hands of the old business model.  There is really not much that Google can do because its very identity is wrapped up in the notion that the Web is truly all about a networked set of static, hyperlinked documents.

But anything I am involved with will begin from the premise that our browsers ultimately exist simply to provide a thin layer between the hardware and the application.  Our in-browser API's are constantly providing more and more access to the native OS.  Application developers can start worrying solely about business logic without any of the mechanism logic getting in the way.  Whenever we want to accomplish a non-trivial task on our computers, we are very often faced with the decision of whether to allow a given native application to gain full, naked access to our hardware.  There is always the inveitable, dreaded prompt that asks if we would like to give program X the ability to... get ready for it... MAKE CHANGES TO THE SYSTEM.

So now we can just start thinking of our browsers as the ultimate sandboxes that have very sophisticted interface building and networking tools.  It will slowly start to dawn on native applications developers that there is just no longer very much demand for their products and services, and they will be required to live under the contraints that the in browser Javascript environment enforces.  Everything I am doing, then, is a bet against a vision of the future that sees the web browser as the only user space native application on any given computer.  Upon booting up, the browser will launch automatically in full screen mode (with no way of minimizing it!).  Given this vision of the future of personal computing, doesn't it make sense to start investing time and energy towards making the client interface as intuitive, configurable, and powerful as possible?

Sotonin

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Oct 1, 2012, 9:56:29 AM10/1/12
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"Respectfully, I am not the typical poster here.  I am a revolutionary and a trailblazer, and everything I do is geared for maximum effect."

This sentence perfectly illustrates why your thread received almost 0 real interest from the beginning. You need to adjust your attitude if you want to get helpful knowledgable folks interested in your project. You are just coming off as a "typical" ego-centric lone wolf programmer whom thinks he is better than everybody else. I don't know you, but with nothing but long winded e-mails that read like marketing speak, I don't feel any desire to get to know you or your project (future projects).

--

Rick Waldron

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Oct 1, 2012, 12:03:21 PM10/1/12
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Something tells me that we're being mega-trolled.

Mark Hahn

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Oct 1, 2012, 2:09:37 PM10/1/12
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So there really is not "allowed" to be very much creativity on the Web,

Yeah, right.  (Sarcasm)

 So the Web becomes nothing but a series of static magazine-like page layouts.

Have you ever seen a Google App?  The app I'm working on now has only one page and it is 100% dynamic.  I also did a one-page app four years ago.

Upon booting up, the browser will launch automatically in full screen mode

Exactly as Chrome OS has done for years.

As I said before you are trying to drag the web back to the desktop metaphor from 30 years ago. Call me when you have some interesting features to propose.  I am always excited to have my mind blown.  Reading drivel about how some naked cowboy is going to change the world does not blow my mind.

My apologies to everyone for feeding the troll.

JohnLeo Zimmer

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Oct 1, 2012, 3:13:35 PM10/1/12
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I'd suggest lithium.  But he probably won't take it voluntarily while he's having so much fun.

GrpZ

Dennis Kane

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Oct 2, 2012, 7:47:45 AM10/2/12
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I hope you are all aware that I fully expect the reception that I have gotten here.  The accusations of mental illness and trollishness are fully expected.  The only problem is that I have a real life outside of professional programming circles.  I know what it takes to make real things happen in this world.  The fact is that it requires much, much more that mere programming talent to have any kind of impact.  The importance of fact that I put my physical ass on the line in the *real world* in order to make profound connections with *real people* is something that the vast majority of you will never be able to comprehend, which is extremely sad.  I mean, I am here in the deep south, for chrissake, where there are so many hillbillies with shotguns who are constantly on the lookout for guys like me to sneer at and intimidate.

So please, be my guest and continue to ridicule in those pithy, sardonic ways that have been perfected over the years on message forums like this.  I am beholden to no one, and it will remain like that.  But please understand that people are falling head over heels for me on a mass level here in the *real world*.  It is just a matter of time before I am able to command their attention and educate them about the Web and about computing in general... so that they will eventually need precisely zero of the services that any of you are offering.

Cheers!
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Chad Engler

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Oct 2, 2012, 4:31:13 PM10/2/12
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I was getting mad up until I read “I have to turn myself into a kind of heroic figure in the minds of the average Web using public.” And then I just couldn’t stop laughing the rest of the way through.

 

-Chad

Dennis Kane

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Oct 5, 2012, 5:37:57 PM10/5/12
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See the newest features here--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF_2DwueGLM

The current version of the program now includes drag and drop functionality of text files from the native desktop straight into the browser desktop or (any of the subfolders). The difference between my drag and drop and all the HTML5 demos that you see on the web is that the dropped files immediately become icons that are integrated into the program.

I will soon start working on getting multimedia icons/files working, so you'll be able to drop those directly in too.  Then I will probably do a very basic kind of image editing demo that will allow you to change individual pixels or some such nonsense.  But I don't want to get bogged down in the details of any particular application, because I always want to stay focused on the big picture of creating a totally powerful and intuitive way to organize our online lives.

Anyway, I know I am quite a controversial figure here, but there should be no controversy that this thing is just about ready for prime time.  I really do need to start getting interested people on board who would like to help me push the web forward.  The basic mission statement for the venture will basically be that the "old web" (HTML4/version 1.0) is dead and gone.  If anyone calls in search of help on their Flintstone era <html> documents with all of their <a href> and <div> tags laying about, we'll just point them in an entirely new direction.  If they still insist on doing things the old way, we'll just hang up on them…  This thing is all about the future!

We can easily develop libraries of high-level interface widgets that people just need to attach event listeners to.  There will be no angle brackets in sight! <hand><coded><html><markup></is></so></last></millenium>!

Come one, come all, for the thrill of your lives :)

Sotonin

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Oct 5, 2012, 5:56:15 PM10/5/12
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Code.... post it.... else Zzzz

--

Stephen Handley

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Oct 8, 2012, 4:17:25 PM10/8/12
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Dennis Kane

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Oct 8, 2012, 8:12:39 PM10/8/12
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Why do you want the code so bad?  It's not like there's any kind of fancy algorithms at work.  There are many many open source windowing packages out there.  It's not exactly rocket science, this.  It's all been done many times before.  The only difference is that this one is *my* baby!  Besides, you are welcome to all the code of my desktop prototype on my site at luvluvluv.info... it's just sitting there on the server for the taking.

I am mainly using this thing as blackmail to get people to be interested in being my friend.  I want to do some real world community building, and something like this will go a long way to get a cooperative business up and running.

Furthermore... you do realize that asking another programmer to "just show me your code" is exactly the same as asking a girl to "just show me your breasts", right?  I mean, I have nothing against it in principle, but, my god... I hardly know ye!!!

My lastest work includes that rubber-band selection feature as well as dropping icons directly onto folder icons (with that "open folder" hover trick).  I have also included some basic image file support.

Rick Waldron

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Oct 8, 2012, 10:31:35 PM10/8/12
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Is it possible to have this address banned?

-Rick

Sotonin

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Oct 8, 2012, 10:39:56 PM10/8/12
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+1 for this

Joshua Gross

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Oct 8, 2012, 11:37:27 PM10/8/12
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Dennis, this is a developer forum. If you want to peddle your software and aren't willing to show something besides videos, you're in the wrong place. 

Also I'm not going to watch a 15 minute video. You're not selling yourself very well, I kindly advise you to move on so this stops clogging my inbox :)

-- Joshua Gross
Christian / SpanDeX / BA Candidate of Computer Science, UW-Madison 2013

Rick Waldron

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Oct 9, 2012, 1:04:06 AM10/9/12
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Funny thing, I said much the same as you have here and got a gnarly chastising. 

-Rick

Joshua Gross

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Oct 9, 2012, 4:10:58 AM10/9/12
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Maybe I'll get one, too :) this doesn't seem to be going anywhere though. 


-- Joshua Gross
Christian / SpanDeX / BA Candidate of Computer Science, UW-Madison 2013

Isaac Schlueter

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Oct 9, 2012, 12:05:45 PM10/9/12
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Guys, be nice. Dennis is unusual, sure, but unusual isn't bad. We're
all unusual in some way. I don't see anything sociopathic or trollish
here, just a lot of excitement about a program he's writing, and
perhaps a bit of naivety regarding the best ways to go about
recruiting contributors.


Dennis,

The reason you're getting no traction here is that your "I'm going to
be a larger than life superhero because of my code, which I want you
to help with, and it'll make you rich, but no, you can't see it"
matches a *very* common pattern of "crazy person", which we've all
seen before. It's a lot of talk, and no substance. It's trying to
spend credibility on credit, and that's not how credibility works.

I'd recommend that you assume that no one will take you seriously, and
focus on overcoming that, if your goal is actually to be successful
and recruit others to your mission of whatever it is you hope to
accomplish with your technology. Of course, if your goal is to get a
little bit of attention, and wave your freak flag, well, then bravo,
you're doing a wonderful job, please carry on :)

FWIW, I agree with most of your politics, and wish you the best of
success. You seem like a nice person. But if you want to recruit
coders, write more code, and fewer words, and share it liberally. The
revolution in software already happened, and that's the new paradigm.
You will gain more credibility if you become a part of the OSS
community before asking it for favors.

Karl

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Oct 9, 2012, 12:16:29 PM10/9/12
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wise words, well phrased, kudos, being friendly doesn't cost anything

Mark Hahn

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Oct 9, 2012, 1:43:41 PM10/9/12
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 I said much the same as you have here and got a gnarly chastising. 

I don't remember exactly what you said, or how I chastised you, but I do remember it was the words used, not the message.  

I was on a curmudgeon role that day.  I chastised someone for calling another user a "tard".  I couldn't believe two people came back and defended his usage.

And yes, I'm the nice-police.

Adam Crabtree

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Oct 9, 2012, 2:16:42 PM10/9/12
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FWIW, it's been done multiple times before.

Carbyn was a real startup that had a lot of the features I've seen mentioned here and was very well executed on IMHO, not to mention the upcoming Firefox OS, webOS, and various others in the past. I empathize with your sentiments that you feel you are seeing beyond the curvature of where things are currently headed, but as everyone states here talk is cheap. Familiarize yourself better with your "competitors" and past precedents and outline specifically in what ways you are trailblazing, in what ways you are iterating, and in what ways you are doing things exactly the same way because they worked well for others and you'll find others tuning out a lot less.

You've been pretty long-winded here. Strive for brevity and conciseness to be more effective. I wanted to experience the story and vision you are painting, but stopped far short as I lost interest, and I am someone that *wanted* to go along. Also, I completely disagree with your political views, but not your passion and goals with this project. Injecting politics into software isn't new, but I think you're going to make more enemies than allies when you do so. In other words, political zealotry is cheap too. Bringing people together is the real hard work.

Best of luck and keep working toward your vision!

Cheers,
Adam Crabtree

Better a little with righteousness
       than much gain with injustice.
Proverbs 16:8

Rick Waldron

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Oct 9, 2012, 3:11:56 PM10/9/12
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On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 1:43 PM, Mark Hahn <ma...@hahnca.com> wrote:
 I said much the same as you have here and got a gnarly chastising. 

I don't remember exactly what you said, or how I chastised you, but I do remember it was the words used, not the message.  


Wasn't talking about you, homeboy.

Stewart Mckinney

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Oct 9, 2012, 4:32:58 PM10/9/12
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May I say, I endorse Mark Hahn for nice-police, 2012.

Also , much agreed with what Issacs said w.r.t "talk less, code and show more". If you don't want to show us all of your code, why not talk about some of the general concepts in a few blog posts, or create a contrived example that sort of touches on what you are doing in your code? I think we all understand keeping some of the secret sauce secret,  but you know, we all come here to learn from one another.

Also, if you really want to be revolutionary or a trail-blazer - or hell, a programmer in general - you will have to adapt the "absolutely giving no fucks" attitude towards what people say about you in general. A part of you will have to internalize it ( or else you will never grow ), but if you are truly working on something great or mind-blowing, there will be a lot of convincing to do.

You aren't going to convince us with YouTube videos. Try some blog posts and some code, instead. Good luck.

Ted Young

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Oct 11, 2012, 4:29:26 PM10/11/12
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I am mainly using this thing as blackmail to get people to be interested in being my friend.  I want to do some real world community building, and something like this will go a long way to get a cooperative business up and running.

Furthermore... you do realize that asking another programmer to "just show me your code" is exactly the same as asking a girl to "just show me your breasts", right?  I mean, I have nothing against it in principle, but, my god... I hardly know ye!!!

Well, sharing code is sort of the main form of currency around web communities these days.  If you look at the people in the node community that other people gravitate towards ( and would jump at a chance to work with ), they all produce quite a bit of useful code that they share with the community.  And if I'm looking at someone as a technical cofounder, reading their code and seeing how they create working, production-ready libraries are at the top of my list.

So anyways… that's how you do it!  Regarding this particular project, I would say many of the people involved in node are people who are interested in rich-client browser apps.  The "browser as OS" is an idea that's been around for years now, and many people are already working on it in some form[1].  However, one of the designs that's been tried and rejected along the way is the idea that a browser OS would just be a re-implementation of a desktop GUI, like macOS, only running on a javascript VM with a "cloud" back-end.  And some design principals, like a desktop with drag-and-drop, are already going away in general as we move towards mouseless computing.  But if out of this project you came up with, say, an improvement on drag-and-drop, or a library that was helpful to people who are building js app's other than a desktop-like interface, people would be interested in those pieces and would give you useful feedback.  So breaking up your code into open source libraries and sharing them is super helpful!

BTW, a good short treatise, that was written before the current web boom but predicts many of it's features, is "In the Beginning… Was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson[2].  Very short, definitely worth the read.

Ted

[1] http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os for the full-court-press version of this

Baz

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Oct 15, 2012, 2:58:05 PM10/15/12
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I don't agree with this call to see the code, or remain silent. Like the OP said, there's nothing revolutionary about it. What is everyone expecting to find - whether it's MVC or MVVM? How de-coupled the objects are? A video is way more informative at this point than abstract code. I personally probably wouldn't have bothered deploying the code without more info. Don't get me wrong I'm not against seeing the code, but it's not fundamental to what the OP is trying to achieve or communicate. If this was 2004 and the video was of an iPhone prototype, I doubt everyone would discredit it because the hardware schematics weren't released. The whole "controversy" is simply a reaction to the OP trying to build a coalition by being divisive and condescending. Some perceive that as strength, others as naivety, I think that's all there is to it.
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