[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:19:43 +0300
"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <gsm at mendelson.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 12:36:05PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Nothing wrong with packaged solutions, I use them all the time, but first
> > I learned to do it myself.
> 
> I just wish that if you understand enough about the requirments for a 
> program to write a configure script, you actually included those
> requirements in the list of requirements on the web page. That way I did
> not have to find it out by runing configure and finding it out the hard way
> (running configure, adding something, tweaking a config parameter, running
> configure again until either you give up or succeed).

That's one reason why open source is often called open sores.  Of course,
commercial products have the same issues.

Undated information is another problem.

I play a couple of war games where the users create a lot of modifications.
The modifications are sometimes very creative and well done, but are almost
universally undocumented and poorly distributed.

> 1. Package an open source operating system so that the "common man"
>    will be able to buy it for a small sum and install and use it easily
>    on their computer. No it is not Linux. It's also not covered by the GPL.

I wish BSD was in the position Linux was in myself.

I also wish there were more choices for good compilers and base libraries.

> 2. A handheld gaming device. Not the same as the one from my company
>    that failed, but new and improved. 

Doable.  The OS doesn't really matter, as long as it does the job and the
cost is low (whether free or not).

> 3. A more generic handheld device. An "information appliance" in your
>    hand, heavily subsidised by the huge gaming market.

Something I've thought might be interesting is a hand held outliner.

NeXT used to have a really neat program that looked like a notebook, and you
used it to store all of your personal information, project information...
just about anything.  It had outliner and other features.

Something like that packed into a hand-held, and companion programs for the
desktop with sharing and synchronization would be nice.

Right now there are programs like that, but they are all incompatible, and
none of them are portable.

> Seed investors and professional CEO's needed. :-)

I've got $5... :)


-- 
shannon / There is a limit to how stupid people really are, just as there's
-------'  a limit to the amount of hydrogen in the Universe.  There's a lot, 
but there's a limit.  -- Dave C. Barber on a.f.c.