cloudguy, to random

Thankfully the press can thank Larry Tesler and Tim Mott for inventing Cut and Paste at Xerox Labs in late 1974.

Because without them they'd be having to type Þórkötlustaðahverfi a lot this week while the Icelandic volcano threatens to explode.

teajaygrey,
@teajaygrey@rap.social avatar

@cloudguy I'm more or less certain that NLS (oNLine System) from Doug Engelbart's ARC (Augmentation Research Center) group at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) already demonstrated copying and pasting of text in the 1968 "Mother of All Demos".

Salient excerpt here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rKUf9DWRI&t=90s

Complete (one hour 40 minute) recording of the Mother of All Demos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY&

However, it is true, if perhaps lesser known, that Xerox's PARC had a cross-licensing arrangement with SRI and SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab).

Lamentably, due to Hollywood BS such as Pirates of Silicon Valley, many (almost all?) in pop culture erroneously attribute inventions to PARC which were previously invented under Engelbart's team and elsewhere.

For example even earlier, Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad (movie clip below from 1962, doctoral thesis completed in 1963) had copying and pasting graphical objects and object inheritance, a clip here narrated by Alan Kay (who was a student of Sutherland and also later worked at PARC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI

skyfaller, to random
@skyfaller@jawns.club avatar

Is there any being grown in the USA that's available for consumers to buy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_Rice_Intensification

SRI apparently greatly reduces the emitted by rice farming, among other benefits, and I would like to support a less carbon-intensive approach.

My main source for SRI rice so far has been Lotus Foods, which does not currently offer US-grown SRI rice, to my knowledge.

Crisis-hit Sri Lanka may allow Indian rupee to be used in local transactions (abcnews.go.com)

Sri Lanka is considering the possibility of allowing the use of the Indian rupee to be used in local transactions, as the island nation struggles to build its depleted foreign reserves and to emerge from last year’s unprecedented economic crisis

ajroach42, to random
@ajroach42@retro.social avatar

what would the modern computer look like if it had not been designed by the military?

teajaygrey,
@teajaygrey@rap.social avatar

@lori I'm mostly just paraphrasing what the I recall being described as results from user group studies at SRI were on pointing devices.

The mouse wasn't the only thing they tried. Light pens predated the mouse (e.g. in Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI )

My understanding is that Bill English/ARC/The Augment group at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) under Doug(las) Engelbart experimented with various pointing devices, before settling on a 3 button mouse.

Some iterations had fewer (perhaps even no? I don't recall) buttons, some had as many as five buttons I seem to recall?

They even purportedly experimented with a pointing that was driven by knee movements (presumably to allow the hands to be free for other things, though perhaps this may have also been useful for accessibility much in the way there are some alternative pointing devices based upon eye tracking or breathing in more recent decades)

In SRI's studies apparently 3 buttons was considered ideal by most users?

Admittedly, they experimented with a lot of other things when it came to user input too.

For example, instead of relying solely on a QWERTY keyboard layout, NLS used a "chorded" keyboard (image attached).

Similar to playing notes on piano keys, or stenographer keyboards, multiple keys could be held simultaneously, to produce different characters.

Some years ago, an app was made available for mobile touch screen devices, by Adam Kumpf from Teague Labs but that app did not keep up & isn't in app stores anymore. (remnant: https://www.fastcompany.com/1669042/a-famous-inventors-forgotten-idea-a-one-handed-touch-screen-keyboard).

Others made an interface for the original hardware to an iPad (e.g: https://valerielandau.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/engelbart-typing-on-the-ipad-with-the-chorded-keyset/ ).

Presumably due to the versatility of the chorded keyset (typically used by the left hand) excessive buttons on the mouse (typically used by the right hand) made it such that 3 buttons seemed sufficient?

@alcinnz @ajroach42

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