OT: Siftables, the toy blocks that think

[George Bailey (Bedford Falls)]

Enjoy!

[Garth Wilson]

Impressive, but sure looks like another one of those things they do "just because we can," not because it has any value.

[David Hayden]

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Impressive, but sure looks like another one of those things they do "just because we can," not because it has any value.

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Yeah, not like anything going on here at the HP Museum! Now if you'll excuse, I'm going to get back to my 25 year old calculator.... :)

[Walter B]

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Impressive, but sure looks like another one of those things they do "just because we can," not because it has any value.

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That's all playing is about, isn't it? It may lead to something nevertheless.

[db (martinez, ca.)]

There's already a musical machine that will repeat itself until someone throws a block at it. They're called banjo players.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Good morning!

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There's already a musical machine that will repeat itself until someone throws a block at it. They're called banjo players.

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Hahaha - that's a real good one :-)



I think that it's important to experiment with new man/machine interfaces as much as possible (and how I would love to get paid for playing with these Siftable thingies ...)! I am convinced that long-time slide rule users initally made fun of electronic calculator users, and that investing money in the development of the HP35 was as brave from HP then as it is now MIT regarding these "toy block" computers.


And didn't we old time "punch-card-and-command-line" computer users laugh about the first workstations with GUI and mouse from Xerox, Atari and Apple?


At least I would like something like this "siftable" comcept to become reality!

Greetings, Max

[Garth Wilson]

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I am convinced that long-time slide rule users initally made fun of electronic calculator users

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I was a slide-rule user but went to calcs for the programmability.

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And didn't we old time "punch-card-and-command-line" computer users laugh about the first workstations with GUI and mouse from Xerox, Atari and Apple?

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I'm still not too fond of GUI, and I keep all the stupid little pictures on mine turned off, since you can't tell what they are anyway without the words under them. You don't need GUI to have graphics, or to have point-and-click, or to have windows, all of which I have in my DOS software I still use although with a hi-res monitor. Our son is turning into somewhat of a Linux expert and he prefers the command line. I hate touch screens though, with their paralax and looking through that grime on the screen, the gizmos where you sign for a credit-card transaction or a delivery confirmation (I never can make it look like my signature on there) and I liked the ATM interfaces at the banks before they made them color and made them unusable when the sun is low and shining right on them. There are a lot of new technologies I like, and a lot of other ones I wish would quickly go extinct like the talking cars of the 80's.

I remember when the Apple Newton first came out and I was reading about the handwriting recognition that was supposed to replace the quaint keyboard. The technology was impressive, but I thought, "Someone has forgotten that the reason we used to type letters before we had computers was that it was faster-- a lot faster!" I hope the keyboard never goes away in favor of voice recognition, because I can type a lot better than I can talk.

Edited: 17 Feb 2009, 4:21 a.m.