home after the PC-ball game

Home after the PC-ball game and my adrenalin is still running. That Linus Crew makes it all look so easy. The flash-n-dash of the other guys is OK for entertainment, but I just don't like being distracted by the bench while the play is going on. I could see a day when the GUI is the product of contention and the OS is the backend. It's the year 2020, the commercial opens by the ZXY GUI company, This is ZXY and this is ZXY on MS, or on Mac. Will those two ever stop? Then a zoom out and the commercial is running in ZXY on Linux!! The vintage Batman theme music plays and a smiling Gnu and Penguin shake hands............a subliminal flash of Stallman and Torvalds.

I think the computer is a crazy creative outcome of a lot of childhood dreams. There was the kid with the purple crayon in story books and a college professor Mr. Woopee on the cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo with the 3dBB (three dimensional black board), and another one had Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo who had that pencil that could virtualize anything. And what about that cat named Felix, whose bag could transform into anything? It goes on and on about some contraption that could materialize what we visualize. We seemed bent on making something out of nothing. Even when computers were invented to manipulate numbers and text, who would have thought that pictures and graphics be next? It is ironic that a machine able to do anything can do nothing without constraint. What's constraint? Constraint is an instruction set that focuses and limits all that talent into procedures that accomplish stuff, you know software.

And what about the display, the picture thing? I still have two bulky CRT monitors that haunt my computer room. They can't compete with the LCD screen on my desk. Today we have laptops and tablet PCs that make the 3dBB a reality. It is all pretty radical for the short time this all was developed in and we haven't even talked about printers. I remember when I bought my first Polaroid camera and the picture slid out the back, developing in my hand. Now that any cheapo desktop printer can pop out a quality photo, camera use is through the roof. I would venture to say most picture taking never sees print. Pictures are the way we converse, "a thousand words" and all. And with the invention of "YouTube", video clips are common stuff for many PC and cellphone users.

What is going to happen to us when we can get one small device that combines phone, camera, Blackberry type functions and services, TV remote, any Bluetooth devices, the garage door opener, house lights and the toilet lid? It eventually will have no buttons and is voice controlled. "Anything you say will be.........." MS will counter with the Jedi mind chip and the malware guys will introduce the mind trick virus. Macs will go retro, a device with one button.
Gad man, will those two ever stop?