Postings in October 2011
Real users, real feedback
We released Maliit 0.80.7 on Friday. Over these last days, I am doubly proud about our project. Not only did the N9's virtual keyboard get astonishing reviews across the board, but what's even better: We managed to keep this software open-source. In our communities, there will always be those who focus too much on technical aspects. I remember the technical struggles we had even within MeeGo! But now we get feedback from real users who couldn't care less about what Qt or MeeGo Touch is, and to be honest, that's a refreshing change.
Being here at Qt's Developer Days 2011, it feels great to get such feedback directly, from first-time users of the Nokia N9. Especially the fine haptic feedback and the keyboard's accuracy gets noticed.
I also had the possibility to see a Japanese input method — running on the N9 and powered by Maliit. Seeing how well this plugin already integrates with the platform, I feel that our architecture yet again has been justified. I am looking forward to see more Maliit plugins, and more platforms using Maliit!
On Populism
Funny posting on planet gnome today: A message to liberals. No comments enabled on that blog. Not nice: Post to some closed circle (forum, social network, ...) if you fear feedback.
Anyway.
A quick look at the situation in Greece and UK should be enough to understand where this is going.
In Greece was ruined by some pervert kind of socialism: Use cheap money to give the population unreasonable gifts, to ignore tax evasion, to bloat public service beyond all sanity, to pay unreasonable wages.
UK is a different story, they indeed have some quite liberal society. To me it seems they somehow failed to regulate their finance market by a) not properly taxing it b) moving the risk from share holders to tax payers c) letting banks betray citizens by handing out unjustified loans. This all caused a giant finance bubble and massive brain drain in producing industries.
Notice that in liberal theory governments are required to create proper basic conditions, enforcing sane behavior. Letting people just do what they want is anarchy, not liberalism.
Thank you Steve!
Very sad day. World lost one of its biggest geniuses. Steve, thank you for your awesome ideas! Life would be so much more boring, so much more complicated without your contributions.
