4 ms·

Very prescient! That's pretty much how my execs work with MS Teams and my Excel models - they call me and I manipulate them on the screen for them :-D

by snthpy 2y ago

gorkish 2y ago
In the early days at my company, we had an arrangement where the CEO had 3 monitors on his desk. Two faced him, and one faced the other direction and mirrored one of his screens. There was a second keyboard and mouse attached so that someone could sit on the other side of the desk and collaborate. He could keep private data like email on one monitor and other applications on the shared screens. Somewhat comically these were enormous 21" CRT's so by "desk" I actually mean "dining table" I really enjoyed working this way and kind of wish the same experience could be replicated between multiple machines and with more than 2 people. I would like it if anyone could drag an application onto a shared screen where multiple people could control/interact with it while still having the option to take a window from the shared display back to a private display, ie passsing an application from one system to another.
Animats 2y ago
I'm trying to find a reference for this. I remember it from some ancient IBM ad. The system in the article sounds fancier but more like a one-off demo. The later system was just a second remote display plus a voice line; more deployable. The concept comes from NASA's Apollo Mission Control in the 1960s. These screens on the consoles were all just TV receivers. All the display data went onto a cable TV network. Any console could view any source. The network was remoted out, and displays outside the control room could look, too. Any display could be routed to the big screens, too. The same technology was still in use in some USAF facilities well into the 1980s. (Long story. Short version: the 1970s upgrade project failed.) That kind of switching remains a feature of military command and control centers. Some display may suddenly become important, and others need to look at it.
- boulos 2y ago
  The Cronkite one? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BsCkaAuikGY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BsCkaAuikGY
- pastage 2y ago
  I think Asciinema live streaming is a new feature I used it this summer to share terminals from one of my jumphosts. For the security part I only did "anyone can watch" which was usable but felt a bit lacking when I tried to use it. There are lots of UX gotchas with doing screen recording of terminals worst one is that a good broadcast is always a small screen, but when I work I want lots of data. Kubernetes is awful at displaying secret stuff when sharing live terminals for showing ops.
- DoctorOW 2y ago
  I work at a TV station and we use something like these [1]. Basically hundreds of video ins and outs that you can mix and match with the press of a button. [1]: https://www.grassvalley.com/products/routing/vega-100-series/ https://www.grassvalley.com/products/routing/vega-100-series...
- qwezxcrty 2y ago
  Many high energy physics/accelerator institutes have public accessable status dashboards online, if one want to see this concept in action. For example the one for CERN: https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/ https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/
canucker2016 2y ago
In the early 1990s, I was working on GUI email software. Not much different than the email software at university, just the pixel resolution was higher with GUI. The dev team went out "into the field" to help roll out the software to the company. This also allowed us to see how others used the software. At the end of the day, one of the devs reported back that one personal assistant would maximize the email app's window (back when 17" CRT monitors were large) and after each email was processed, she'd print out the email and file it the appropriate spot in a filing cabinet. All the devs were, "But... But... she can just file the email in an email folder in the program. Why does she need hardcopy? Email was supposed to save trees!"
- ido 2y ago
  In the early 90s (maybe '92 or '93) my elementary school had a program where we'd go to the computer room and email kids in another school. There was nothing else to do on those computers that involved the internet (no web browsers), these were (relatively) state of the art 386s running DOS. Anyway I remember we used to write our weekly emails on paper first and then type them into the computer- your quote reminded me of that!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- a2tech 2y ago
  Right after graduating college my wife was looking for work and ended up taking a job as a secretary shared between two chairs at our local university. They thought it was super important that their secretary had a bachelors degree for some reason. One of the chairs would read emails on his iMac, then would handwrite a return message and give it to my wife who would type it into email and send it as him. He didn’t want to type anything. This was around 2008 to give you an idea of timing. My wife didn’t stay for long, but my understanding is he was doing this until he retired sometime in the 20 teens.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    2008. Wow. But I do remember going back to the 90s that there was at least one senior exec at a computer company I worked for who basically didn't touch his terminal as I understand it. His admin printed out and typed everything.

Very prescient! That's pretty much how my execs work with MS Teams and my Excel models - they call me and I manipulate them on the screen for them :-D

by snthpy 2y ago

Very prescient! That's pretty much how my execs work with MS Teams and my Excel models - they call me and I manipulate them on the screen for them :-D

gorkish 2y ago

In the early days at my company, we had an arrangement where the CEO had 3 monitors on his desk. Two faced him, and one faced the other direction and mirrored one of his screens. There was a second keyboard and mouse attached so that someone could sit on the other side of the desk and collaborate. He could keep private data like email on one monitor and other applications on the shared screens. Somewhat comically these were enormous 21" CRT's so by "desk" I actually mean "dining table" I really enjoyed working this way and kind of wish the same experience could be replicated between multiple machines and with more than 2 people. I would like it if anyone could drag an application onto a shared screen where multiple people could control/interact with it while still having the option to take a window from the shared display back to a private display, ie passsing an application from one system to another.

Animats 2y ago

I'm trying to find a reference for this. I remember it from some ancient IBM ad. The system in the article sounds fancier but more like a one-off demo. The later system was just a second remote display plus a voice line; more deployable. The concept comes from NASA's Apollo Mission Control in the 1960s. These screens on the consoles were all just TV receivers. All the display data went onto a cable TV network. Any console could view any source. The network was remoted out, and displays outside the control room could look, too. Any display could be routed to the big screens, too. The same technology was still in use in some USAF facilities well into the 1980s. (Long story. Short version: the 1970s upgrade project failed.) That kind of switching remains a feature of military command and control centers. Some display may suddenly become important, and others need to look at it.

boulos 2y ago
The Cronkite one? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BsCkaAuikGY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BsCkaAuikGY
pastage 2y ago
I think Asciinema live streaming is a new feature I used it this summer to share terminals from one of my jumphosts. For the security part I only did "anyone can watch" which was usable but felt a bit lacking when I tried to use it. There are lots of UX gotchas with doing screen recording of terminals worst one is that a good broadcast is always a small screen, but when I work I want lots of data. Kubernetes is awful at displaying secret stuff when sharing live terminals for showing ops.
DoctorOW 2y ago
I work at a TV station and we use something like these [1]. Basically hundreds of video ins and outs that you can mix and match with the press of a button. [1]: https://www.grassvalley.com/products/routing/vega-100-series/ https://www.grassvalley.com/products/routing/vega-100-series...
qwezxcrty 2y ago
Many high energy physics/accelerator institutes have public accessable status dashboards online, if one want to see this concept in action. For example the one for CERN: https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/ https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/

canucker2016 2y ago

In the early 1990s, I was working on GUI email software. Not much different than the email software at university, just the pixel resolution was higher with GUI. The dev team went out "into the field" to help roll out the software to the company. This also allowed us to see how others used the software. At the end of the day, one of the devs reported back that one personal assistant would maximize the email app's window (back when 17" CRT monitors were large) and after each email was processed, she'd print out the email and file it the appropriate spot in a filing cabinet. All the devs were, "But... But... she can just file the email in an email folder in the program. Why does she need hardcopy? Email was supposed to save trees!"

ido 2y ago
In the early 90s (maybe '92 or '93) my elementary school had a program where we'd go to the computer room and email kids in another school. There was nothing else to do on those computers that involved the internet (no web browsers), these were (relatively) state of the art 386s running DOS. Anyway I remember we used to write our weekly emails on paper first and then type them into the computer- your quote reminded me of that!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
a2tech 2y ago
Right after graduating college my wife was looking for work and ended up taking a job as a secretary shared between two chairs at our local university. They thought it was super important that their secretary had a bachelors degree for some reason. One of the chairs would read emails on his iMac, then would handwrite a return message and give it to my wife who would type it into email and send it as him. He didn’t want to type anything. This was around 2008 to give you an idea of timing. My wife didn’t stay for long, but my understanding is he was doing this until he retired sometime in the 20 teens.
- ghaff 2y ago
  2008. Wow. But I do remember going back to the 90s that there was at least one senior exec at a computer company I worked for who basically didn't touch his terminal as I understand it. His admin printed out and typed everything.