Re: [dev] [OFFTOPIC] Recommended meta-build system

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:15 AM, Noah Birnel <nbirnel_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 04:49:52PM +0100, stanio_AT_cs.tu-berlin.de wrote:
>
>>... a mobile phone with integrated camera,
>> touch screen, 'apps' for learning languages, etc. is as much suckless as an
>> axe with a door bell, toilet paper and nuclear power generator.
>>
> At this point a mobile phone is a general purpose portable computer. The
> camera is no more out of line than the speakers hooked up to your home
> box.

I partly think it's perception shape by marketing. You can still buy a
mobile phone that only has voice functions. You can also buy a more
general communications/entertainment node device which has a host of
hardware and software that's all appropriate to that usage, including
as one component making voice calls. The only problem is that they're
still marketed as "phones" which seems to cause cognition problems for
some people who seem to take is as gospel the label marketers use must
be right and therefore that the device is wrong, rather than vice
versa.

(I've never subscribed to the philosophy that an entity should "do one
thing well" but rather that "there should not have non-orthogonal
capabilities in the same entity". If you're into that sort of thing, I
don't see any reason why you'd consider mobile photo-taking, internet
browsing, causual entertainment games, etc, to be non-orthogonal to
chatting to friends: they're all ways to entertain yourself while not
at home.)

-- 
cheers, dave tweed__________________________
computer vision reasearcher: david.tweed_AT_gmail.com
"while having code so boring anyone can maintain it, use Python." --
attempted insult seen on slashdot