Subject: Re: Core Lisp (was Re: cautios question (about languages)) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/07/29 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3142240569026137@naggum.no> * Erik Winkels <aerique@xs4all.nl> | True, no doubt, for the small devices of the moment. However in the next | few years there will probably be a new generation of small devices, wrist | pilots perhaps, that will start out with little memory again. isn't it odd how designers keep making that mistake? I have this mental picture of C programmers who do char input_line[128] and thinking nobody could ever want longer lines than that, whenever I see some new gizmo that comes out with a ridiculous amount of memory. my Nokia GSM (EU) cell phone, for instance, can hold 5 messages in memory, while my Sanyo PCS (US) cell phone can hold a whopping 30. like, wow. the messages are 160 character long with GSM SMS, and 100 characters with PCS messaging. they both can hold 100 phone numbers with names. whee! I'm so excited. "640K should be enough for everyone" is probably the most brilliant thing the man has said (at least if we judge by his book "The Road Ahead"), but there's something in the engineering culture that just doesn't quite get this idea that people want to be relieved of remembering accurately, and there's no limit to what people don't want to remember. whenever I call directory assistance, for instance, chances are that I will call again the next time I need the same number unless I write it down, but all of this stuff is already in electronic form, so why can't the stupid telephone just record it? sigh. some technologies are so lame. #:Erik -- suppose we blasted all politicians into space. would the SETI project find even one of them?