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Alan Kay: The Power Of The Context [pdf]
- swolchok 18y agoShouldn't that be [pdf] in the title, with a second [scribd version] link? If nothing else, it would've gotten me to visit the link sooner that way -- I hate scribd.
- mbrubeck 18y agoGood idea. Updated the link title.
- probablycorey 18y agoIs there anyway we can purge scribd from the internet? Can we pay them to take the site down?
- mlLK 18y agoNo, but you can download a document viewer, quit complaining, and read the pdf.
- biohacker42 18y agoI think they are a YC company so I think we'll be seeing more of them. But I've mentioned here before that I would PAY for a website which would do the oposite of scribd, turn Docs and PDFs and Flash and what not into plain HTML. Fast, no plugins required - awesome.
- mmphosis 18y agohttp://google.com/search?q=cache:SdlYNbOXScIJ:www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf+http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk http://google.com/search?q=cache:SdlYNbOXScIJ:www.vpri.org/p...
- biohacker42 18y agoYes, that's still better then PDFs, but it's not exactly great. That's why I think there's room for a company that does it well.
- jodrellblank 18y agoWho wouldn't want a document rendered in a custom viewer in a flash control in a web page in a tab in a browser? If only I could browse the web from within Scribd, everything would be perfect!
- 10ren 18y agoJust click the first link "Alan Kay: The Power Of The Context [pdf]" instead of the second "[scribd]" link.
- david927 18y agoThis is an old article, and I'm tired of seeing Alan Kay talk about the past. That said, it's true. I'm also baffled that we have no collective memory as an industry. The rush for the almighty Euro has left us reinventing the wheel, the axle, fire... We keep writing the same code over and over, often in different contexts, and jumping up and down at the novelty. It's so funny to hear people rave about Gmail when I was using better mail clients in 1992. Honestly. We have no sense of history and we have lost our way.
- Radix 18y agoIt's so funny to hear people rave about Gmail when I was using better mail clients in 1992. So you must still be using better email clients. Gmail is the best I've come accross; I love tags compared to folders. Please, what is better?
- mahmud 18y agoGmail is the best web client. My favorite email client is actually a newsreader: Forte Inc's Agent, a second best is Eudora. Thunderbird is what I use now, it's OK.
- rbanffy 18y agoIt doesn't go down easily the modern OSs we use are either a GUI-based desktop OS that wouldn't be serious and compete with OS/2 with a billion patches applied or some rehash of 70's Unix. Really... Why is that Smalltalk/80 and Lisp'56 still make Java'2009 seem primitive? Even the Smalltalk/80 environment makes Windows'2009 look primitive (colorful, translucent and primitive).
- david927 18y agoIt's interesting you should say that because I've often considered Smalltalk/80 as the last point we were headed in the right direction. I've spent a long time (a decade, yikes) with some Ph.D students doing research on the trajectory I think it should have taken.
- 18y ago
- andreyf 18y agoThe rest of the VPRI writings is also great: http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php