27 Jun
1998
27 Jun
'98
9:53 a.m.
I guess I missed that one. Wasn't particularly useful, though versions
were used as Packard Bell's "Navigator" and a popular game called
"Myst"
;)
Bob was touted by Microsoft as the way user interfaces
would work from
that point on. It was seen as a way to bring computers to mere
consumers,
and launched at CES with great fanfare IIRC.
If you use a keyboard. Imagine a touch screen keyboard that reconfigured
itself for your task, and had an enzyme coating that broke down your
skin oils to prevent stains (you'd have to take breaks, of course, to
prevent skin from drying out), like in Star Trek:The Next Generation.
It's farfetched, but I doubt we'll use mechanical keyboard forever.
Touch screens make you take your hands off the keyboard
and leave a
greasy
mess on your screen while you try in vain to do high
resolution tasks
with
your low res finger.
Can you type while you're buried inside a router closet trying to check
network cables? I sure can't...
Even in humans, voice recognition isn't great.
That's why there are so
many different words for "huh?". You'll always be able to communicate
with your computer faster and more accurately with a keyboard.
Supercomputers are becoming less and less common because as things get
cheaper, it's no longer 'super' but 'high-power', and in two years,
'entry-level'. AI works best in parallel, so do simulations like the
ones India didn't want to stick to.
The supercomputer tar pits are littered with the
remains of parallel
processing companies. They go fast only for a relatively small subset
of
programs.
-- Doug
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