Re: Computing Editorial (please read)

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

wildstar128 wrote:

>"Ruud Dingemans" <rtech@home.nl> wrote in message
>news:b0jrbo$oag$1@news2.tilbu1.nb.home.nl...
>
>> (Besides, everybody + dog seems to think it was Xerox which invented the
>> whole graphical/mouse thing of controlling a computer with the Alto from
>> 1973. In fact it was Engelbart and SRI since 1963, culminating in the
>> famous 1968 demo, so if anything, Xerox was taking other people's ideas
>> itself.)
>
>I viewed the demonstration of the program. You are quite correct. The demo
>was beautiful. It was mostly text structured but had a legendary
>demonstration of a mouse. Which inspired Xerox team in around 1978-1980. The
>difference was Xerox evolved the concept further with actual Graphical
>environment. Then a couple years later Apple came by and then developed an
>even more evolved GUI for the Lisa and perfected it more with Mac.
>
>So we know Billy, heard of the GUI and wanted to make their own so they
>started with a version that fitted more closely to their DOS platform. Thus
>Windows 1.0 was not an OS but an Operating Environment. M$ never built a
>true GUI OS until Windows NT era. Removing DOS.
>
>As we all know, new ideas are built upon previous ideas. There is no such
>thing as completely new - never been thought of ideas. Its just making them
>real. 

Bingo.

In the mid-60s, interactive "direct manipulation" graphics interfaces were
exciting to a lot of people, including me.  Most of us were inspired by
the truly groundbreaking work of Ivan Sutherland at MIT on Sketchpad.

Attaching "object" semantics to graphical objects that could be "touched"
and "moved" by a pointing device was a wonderful leap of imagination,
and attaching mnemonic icons to things was a relatively obvious
extension of the underlying concepts.

Thankfully scientists, engineers, and artists feel free to use ideas
wherever they find them.  If they didn't we'd still be rolling around on
the original (patented in perpetuity) logs, and everytime that the sun
appeared in a picture, it would have someones copyright symbol
next to it!  ;-)

"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron in the big picture.

As John Pierce said:  "Newton said that he 'stood on the shoulders
of giants', but in computer science we stand on each other's toes."

-michael

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