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This is a repost of mine...

"Well it works for me, I don't care about anyone else."

That has to be the most selfish thought I've heard in a long time...

To turn it around;
"Nothing else anyone does matters, so anything they do won't affect or improve my status."

This is obviously false. Someone writes a better USB driver, and all of a sudden your camera stops crashing your PC. Someone tweaks the networking code, and your Quake framerates increase by 3%. I dunno if I'm eloquent enough to get my point across, but being selfishly isolated is a bad thing. Sigh, I wish I could articulate better.

So why is it important to get Unix onto everyones desktop? The same reason it's on yours. If it's useful to you, if it's powerful, if it's flexible, if it's reliable, or affordable or whatever. If it's worth something to you, it's worth it for everyone else!

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As *cool* as seti@home and distributed.net are, they don't count as making our world better. They are good things and cool things, but do not help make the computer a life-style quality multiplier.

I can only think of trivial examples, like parsing, categorizing, and analyzing the music you listen to (songprinting, frequency of play, length of play, type of play) to help you find more music you like, and sharing this info with other machines to make music databases as easy to browse and search as the internet has made text databases browseable (if not easy).

But what can a single 400MHz machine do to make the average household 10% happier?

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What for?

Here I have a 650MHz P3, there a 300MHz P2, at home a Celeron 450, and in my hand a 400MHz P3 laptop

Most suck power being idle.

What can we do (Open Source, PC industry, software industry) to make computers truly powerful, useful, productive! All these resources, Python, Perl, C/C++, CPUs, memory, storage, networking...

What can we be doing with all of this capacity to truly make our world better?

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"Well it works for me, I don't care about anyone else."

That has to be the most selfish thought I've heard in a long time...

To turn it around;
"Nothing else anyone does matters, so anything they do won't affect or improve my status."

This is obviously false. Someone writes a better USB driver, and all of a sudden your camera stops crashing your PC. Someone tweaks the networking code, and your Quake framerates increase by 3%. I dunno if I'm eloquent enough to get my point across, but being selfishly isolated is a bad thing. Sigh, I wish I could articulate better.

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I've always wondered about these attempts to deliver linux to the common man.

Good people want to share the power and freedom they've been given by Linux and Un*x!

What i've always found appealing about the unix design is that it doesn't dumb things down in an attempt to be more 'user friendly'.

You speak as if user friendly and powerful are exclusive! All user friendly means is that the device, software, or application is conducive to allowing users to use it. If it is powerful *and* user friendly, it's a much better product than something that is only powerful, or only user friendly, right?

The command line is a beautiful thing, but it doesn't mean my mother should be exposed to it.

Absolutely correct! To each their level of comfort, need, and use!

Personally, i've always seen true user friendliness as a sacrifice to power. I would rather have a high learning curve but more power than an OS that's easy to use, but offers me less power.

Ah, so you do believe that user friendly and powerful are at cross purposes!

User friendly means useful and useable to the user, right? But the whole point of 'engineering' and 'design' is to solve a problem within a set of constraints. Mac OS X, and not Linux, is engineered and designed to be user friendly. It is designed to be useable. Linux is designed and engineered to be useful. Not useable. There is nothing stopping a software company to shift the design balance; to create something more powerful at the sacrifice of learning curve, but the point is that the learning curve is something inherent in the design of the product. Apple, more or less, takes that into account. Myself I don't believe that user friendly comes at the expense of power. User friendly means that the learning curve is shallower near the beginning, and designed such that it is *always* shallow enough for the user to gain access to the next step up in power. To be non-user friendly is to ignore or forget about the learning curve, such that to access twice the power, you need to do twice or more work!

In short, marketing UNIX to my mother would be a mistake.

No, in short, marketing Linux to your mother would be a mistake. OS X has much less of those limitations, while retaining everything BSD and Un*x.

She neither wants nor needs most of the benefits that it provides.

She will not and cannot know until she reaches the appropriate level of the learning curve. Linux doesn't offer that opportunity. OS X should.

She has a hard enough time using Windows.

That is Windows fault and has little bearing on Linux (except that Linux has chosen to ape Windows), Mac, or Mac OS X.

I see no problem in having different operating systems aimed at different audiences, rather than having one OS that tries to do everything.

A perfectly valid observation!

Why exactly does linux *want* world domination? The entire UNIX philosophy is that it's better to have things be the best at what they do, rather than trying to do everything.

Because until OS X is released, it was the best candidate for making the computing world a better place ^^

I want a powerful, stable, useful, desktop. I use Linux. In my generous heart, I want other people to use it to, so I work at making it more accessable. That's the impetus right there for world domination.

However, a lot of this will get sapped by OS X; it will provide for the power, the stability, and the usefulness. All that's left for me, the user, is to help promote Apple in selling Macs so that everyone has access to such a useful device, at the loss and inconvenience of Windows, Intel, and Linux. Linux didn't step up to the plate, so it falls back onto Apple to provide all of this.

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Airplanes are easier to fly!

I dunno if you are old enough to know, but it used to be that computers, fly by wire, and autopilot were all pipe dreams. Where moving the controls pushed and pulled at pneumatic and hydrolic lines that moved ailerons and flaps according to your movements.

I daresay your Lear Jet is only difficult because computing and processing hasn't made the last step yet, where the interface to the sky isn't the plane, but the computer model in which you 'point and click' and let the plane handle the rest. I believe they are working on that.

That aside, that's a crap argument for computers. Are you saying that your retard cousin *shouldn't* be able to use a PC? There are whole loads of people who are PC challenged, and making them easier isn't a good thing?

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So that means all the Linux crowd should really be leapfrogging Windows and copying the original host; Apple!

Why the heck have KDE, GNOME, etc, all been aping Windows, when Microsoft has itself been aping Mac? If we really want powerful Linux UI development, shouldn't we be copying the most developed and intuitive UI in existence? Apple's?

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Point for the first paragraph. Excellent point, even. This is what people pay for, when they buy Apple, software and hardware.

The second point is true too. Apple need not control every point in the product to make a profit. The whole concept of maximum advantage and relative advantage means the most profit and growth occurs when Apple sells and produces what it is best at, and other corps sell and produce what they are best at, and a synergistic whole is produced; Apple-> OSes and Hardware, UI and user experience, and then let other people create the rest that Apple doesn't decide to be strong in. Adobe is a good example. So is HP.

Point the third I can't give you.
"If only it would run on x86 hardware, Windows users would flock away from the evil empire"
Thats about as true as saying
"If only users would buy Mac hardware, Windows users would flock away from the evil empire"

In terms of practicality, guess what? Apple would make *their* own hardware, even if it were x86. They'd spend as much resources creating their x86 hardware as they do their PPC hardware, leaving a situation where people still can't run OS X on vanilla x86 boxen without at least some compatibility card or a set of 'emulation' drivers to fool the system into thinking it's Apple Boxen. Apple boot rom, USB hardware, Firewire hardware, busses and chipsets, etc.

Well, don't buy Apple; but I'd prefer and recommend them over Dell, Compaq, Gateway, or Micron. IBM, Toshiba, and Fujitsu I like ^^

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So here's a uninformed post by me ^^
X has competition; Mac OS X

I'll let everyone else fight over this comment =)

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Hmm, apologies for the fact that the following message is a little 'inflamatory'. I get carried away.

To name some 'facts'

Look it up if you want confirmation.

MPEG4 != DivX

The original DivX hacked a Microsoft implementation of the MPEG4 *draft* and created their own format.

So don't support the Microsoft version, and don't support the DivX version!

What's the alternative? MPEG4! OpenDivX is supposedly MPEG4 compliant, but it does not support the MPEG4 file format (go figure); Windows, hopefully, will support the real thing, and not just ASF/WMA implementations, as should Quicktime 5. Don't settle for DivX; it would be like settling for RealAudio when mp3 is just around the corner...



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Physical limitations can be overcome;

Imagine midair projection. Laser beams exciting the gases in the very air itself to create an illuminated image viewable at all angles; just shy of being holographic

Imagine the analogy to a good set of headphones; a pair of display glasses.

It isn't the wrong point at all, the technology and the innovation will grow to accomodate our increasingly 'leisure' oriented society.

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One generation? I doubt it. It's possible, but because they just recently introduced the GF3 a couple of weeks ago, and it will be coming to market in a few weeks, that means NVIDIA will have released something akin to the GF4 in less than 6 months?

I think it's a safer bet to say that the Xbox will use an enhanced or tailored version of the GF3.

XBox specs say the NVIDIA chip will run at 250MHz, where the GF3 currently runs at 200MHz; however, process improvements may allow for the GF3 ultra, to be released in 6 months, to run at 250, 300, or higher speeds.

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Yeah, I can see the appeal in terms of price, but I don't see why people think this is going to be such an awesome 'gaming' machine, when it really isn't so extraordinary...

And as per the processor, I know they are of different breeds... but still, a 733MHz G4 vs a 733MHz PIII isn't exactly unfair, since they both exhibit the same clock!

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Actually, in comparison, the Edge is 0.1oz lighter than the m500 or m505, 0.06in thinner, but 0.2in taller, with the same memory and screen size (lacking only color)

Sorry for the horridly constructed sentence structure. Edge doesn't get Palm OS 4.0, but compensates with a non-sdmi expansion slot and hitting the same price point.

Anyway, I think you're right, people will pay some more for style and flair. Look at the Titanium Powerbook!


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Look cool...

Like a Titanium Powerbook?

Sorry, that's beside the issue I wanted to reply to =)

As per horrid gaming boxes; they have a faster processor, more memory, and higher resolution than a comparable (though cheaper) Gameboy Color.

Those things have been successful for 11 years now, so I don't think it's fair to say that a Visor or Palm makes a 'horrid' game box.

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So I don't get why people are so excited about the Xbox, technologically; I guess before graduating a CS/CE major, I didn't know any better... is that all that's happening now? Compare, say, a PowerMac tower:
Similar NVidia card
DVDR/DVD/CDRW (take your pick)
Ethernet
Hard drive
It also has a faster processor (G4 at 733MHz) as well as gigabit ethernet(I think)

I guess it's going to be 8x more expensive, but the point is those hardware junkies could get a similar machine now... while the BSD people, well, can wait for their XBox, I guess.

Is it the prospect of a Microsoft driven gaming economy? Or the high quality of Microsoft software? What?

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There is a distinct separation between something being wrong, being enforceable, and something you didn't mention, something illegal.

To some minds, banning DeCSS is ridiculous. It isn't illegal (reverse engineering software, such as the Xing player) to write, nor is it illegal to use (fair use of one's own DVDs!)

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You're not talking so much about CS as you are about work experience and job suitability after graduation.

There are multiple parts to the problem, among them:

Analytic thought
Process and practicies
Theory and understanding
Ability

There are probably a handful more categories I've left out.

But to have excellence in one without being capable in all the others won't help you when you graduate. What you're advocating helps to teach process and practices, and perhaps ability, without mentioning analytic thought or theory. Some people naturally have skill or talent in analytic thought. Most don't. Most people have no theory until taught it; some are self taught.

But you need all four, at the minimum, which means good coursework (language and platform is irrelevant!) to teach analytic thought, theory, and process. An excellent course taught with LISP can cover all three, despite being an unpopular development language. Once you figure out theory, thought, and process, it should be a breeze to pick up the flavor of the year, be it Java, C, or whatever.


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An mp3-cd player is still, what, 2x the size of a md player?

I haven't seen a miniCDr mp3 player, but that may be the same size of an md player.

I was comparing size and portability when I said 64mb units. Those things are overpriced and underpowered, compared to a mdplayer or even one of your CD-mp3 devices

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As per media type, I was comparing size to size. A minidisk is bigger than any flash device, but it's also much smaller than a CD. Are there any mp3 miniCD devices? How about the price of miniCD-Rs? Those are only $45 for 50, and have 180mb storage. That's about 100 minutes of mp3 at a decent quality rate, so it beats the minidisc, but I haven't seen any players that fit that size.

You're right, I didn't clearly distinguish between atrac and atrac3; my own MD-MT20 from Sharp touts itself as a 6th generation ATRAC, but that's more to do with their implementation of ATRAC(1) and nothing to do with ATRAC3, which is specifically targetted for the MemoryStick devices, I think. I'm not sure, but I don't think ATRAC3 is availabe on minidisc, though sony's own page on ATRAC3 mentions easy transform from ATRAC3 to ATRAC here

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ATRAC is making decent inroads into the US. It has the advantage of being sylish, small, and cheap.
74min of MD is $2.50
64mb of MP3 is $90-$120
I meant ATRAC built into MD format. Dunno about software and MemorySticks, only as an audio disc format.

You're right that MD support is so far only in audio components and md players. I've been looking for a md boombox, myself, and have only seen 3, and no stores carry them. You can optically copy ATRAC files to/from MD, and there is also 2x support on some deck components. I don't know about perfect cloning, however, but I suspect that's limited due to Sony/RIAA/copyright concerns. Too bad.

I don't like MS myself, but the MD format is nice because it's cheap. It's only comparable in the PC world is the HipZip from Iomega. It's also cheaper to just get a standalone MD player for $90-$130 and $3 discs than a PDA+MP3+CF, along with a good 10 hourplayback life.

As per battery life, it supposedly gets 11hours, more than the Handspring Prism...

But as per your PalmV + MP3CD, that's a good bet.

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http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/micro /overvw.htm

They used to market 170mb, but even IBM's webpage only mentions 340, 512, and 1gb.


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The Handspring Visor can fairly trivially support CF (dunno about CF+)

There are sites that sell or document how to construct a Handspring module that is essentially a passive CF to PCMCIA adaptor with 2 or 3 wires changed to allow a Visor to see a CF card.

And there aren't any 90mb IBM microdrives. They come in 340mb, 5xxsomething and 1gb sizes.

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I dunno, I think there must be some market if Windows CE machines are selling, right? The Clie seems to fit that niche, with a 320x320 screen, multimedia capabilities, etc.

It's an entertainment device, like a minidisc player. ATRAC support.
It's a PDA, like a palm pilot!
It's got a high resolution screen and a faster CPU, so it can play Gameboy games!
You can finally do maps decently on it, with double the resolution and high color.

Is it doing too many things at once? I dunno. But it's pretty feature complete against Windows CE machines, and really doesn't compete against other Palm devices yet.

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It may well defeat the intent and purpose of the PalmVx, Visor Platinum, etc, or the newer M105, but not the purpose of Palm per se.

The PalmOS today is supposed to be more powerful and flexible to keep up with advancing technology just like the new Sony. If this were unleased 2 years ago, it would have been stupid, but in today's tech, it would seem to make sense.

What I wonder is why the thing doesn't have a built in 320x320 camera!

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This is probably one of the few things saving Apple right now; that it is sooo incredibly easy to connect to the net with an Apple PC, and that just because it's clocked half of a competing IBM PC, it actually isn't any slower because it's the net that's slowing you down.

On the other hand, Apple can't corner the hardcore gamer's market because they are clocked at half an Athlon or Intel CPU.

The really ironic part is that the XBox will be using a variation of the GeForce3 on a Celeron-like processor, at CPU speeds no faster than, say, a G4 tower with a GeForce3 today... so it *still* may be possible that Apple isn't nearly as bad off as everything thinks. Then there's the other box, the GameCube... which uses a 403MHz G3 with some fancy ArtX/ATI chipset... which will still probably be comparable to the GeForce3 and a 600MHz G4.

All that really is waiting is the games, not the hardware.

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Yeah, nice thought.

Is it really true, or just an urban legend, that it's those $1k junkers commiting the top 70% of the pollution right now?

On the other hand, I guess it's your 'right' to say that the pollution of a $1k junker is worth $23k in value, since that's what you're going to 'buy' with the money you save on the junker...

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My bad. Conversion power error when going from English to Metric units.

10k = 6m
1000k = 600m

That still fits Ron's def of reasonable, at least.

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I know it's not the purist's car, being a hybrid and all, but on the other hand, an Electric car's fuel is either smelly coal or dirty plutonium/uranium, for the most part.

Acceleration: Dunno, but it's probably reasonable ^^
Top speed: It'll do at least freeway speeds!

Good looking: Yes! It looks like a streamlined old school Honda Civic!

Reasonable range: Yes! 10.6 gallons, 60mpg == 600 m, ~100,000km range!)

Recharge time: Braking regenerative charging, as well as fuel assisted...

Reasonable price tag: Yes! $24k

Your 'only' tradeoff is that there is a gas tank, and that you get the 'burden' of having to visit the pump every 100,000km...

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If the projects were very dissimilar, yet they were still able to graft code from project A to project B, then there may be a pretty good understanding of the code itself in order to affect a transformation without changing correctness!

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Where the motto is: "Unfortunately, half of you are below average, for the first time in your life!"

Collaboration is encouraged, for the most part!

Of course, I never saw the dark seamy side of student life. What dark seamy side? I don't know, I never saw it!

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First, the Xbox, a consumer console.

The the Xboy, the portable game machine.

The the Xboz, the arcade cart!

Or something like that.

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Is that despite being profitable, this software isn't closely aligned with O'Rielly's goals to be worth maintaining.

Imagine if O'Rielly owned a nation wide retail pizza chain that made them money?

As much as it was fun or profitable, it really is a distraction to his other goals. A man can only handle so many things at once!

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Makes me want to sink my movie buying dollars back into VHS.

I mean, that's where all this Macrovision headache started in the first place; in your VCR! It just migrated into the DVD player from the VCR, and at least some brands of DVD have the option to turn off the Macrovision.

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I think the inkjet stuff may be more useful in terms of producing printed PCBs and wiring with simple logic, leaving most of the power and computation to standard ICs and such.

So this kind of stuff wouldn't be useless either.

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Open source, man!

I spend time and effort to develop a car Ogg player and GPS receiver.

I am part of a group of people who have similar interests, so we all share our variations on the designs, LCD or display implementations, voice activated, IR, bluetooth, etc.

Over a period of months or years, we all have in car dash Ogg players, GPS recievers with voice activation and other random stuff.

Other people take this and adapt it to Visor handspring modules

They add power saving and cycling functions, or something. Or they make it smaller.

Feedback occurs, and the indash unit becomes smaller. We get enough space to add more features.

Back and forth.

Isn't this how the Open Source model works?

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I'm not going to argue 'who' is to blame in terms of MS being a monopoly.

The issue at stake is that they *are* a monopoly, and they have use said monopoly in ways that hurt the consumer, and in the process have also done illegal things to boot.

Even without the monopoly, those two things can be dealt with, but with the monopoly, they are much graver issues.

'For the average user at home Windows is the best operating system'

Did you forget the fact that there exists a system called Mac OS?

For the average user at home, perhaps the 'cheapest' system is a Windows OS with an Intel PC. But there are plenty of non cheap WinTel systems that put them in the same price range as the Mac OS. What then?

Then the fact that most people couldn't install Linux. Most people can't even install Windows! The cute thing is that those same people *can* install Mac OS. Not that I've done it (I can install Windows or Linux, btw), but it's supposed to be as simple as dragging a MacOS folder from a bootable CD onto the Apple machine, or something like that.

Microsoft does have a rival. The fact that people don't know about it is Apple's fault for being too stealthy in advertising. What if Apple advertised on all the strengths of their platform? I dunno what would happen, but I would think Macs would be more popular and common, and due to economic volume, cheaper and higher performance to boot!

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It means you can choose not to have a 'gay' color on your iMac, just download and print in your fav color, to match your favorite color scheme.

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It'll raise the level of computer literacy by a notch. Not only will it be divided into the standard 2 groups:

Can program VCR
Cannot program VCR

The Can program VCR group will be divided into

Can read PCB
Cannot read PCB

Joking aside, it wouldn't be difficult to, like a script kiddy, just download blueprints and get yourself a homebrew mp3 player, but how can you 'trust' such kits, implicitly, any more than you can trust software?

Mostly it should be okay, but the odd virus here and there could wreak havoc on someone. So a new class of 'anti-trojan' software, as well as more literacy in computer skills in general, needs to taught.

I would like to have a private fab and rapid prototype lab in my garage. That would be muy nifto.

Louis

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The same way that literacy, pencils, pens, ink, paper, and books destroyed the iron grip of the autocracy and nobility of hundreds of years ago, printable computers can break the grip of monolithic oligarchies dictating hardware and standards to people who don't need them.

Don't you have any sense of decency, to post such utter garbage in the first place, perdida?

(go ahead mark me as troll or whatever, it really doesn't matter)

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Argh, I'm so frustrated. Bad day, just need to vent a little.

This post isn't insightful. Some moderator has mistaken this for a thoughtful, considered statement balanced between two extremes.

Just to dissect this post a little:
When considered rationally, it's obvious that funding support for the ISS is much more important than research about the atmosphere of Pluto.

I doubt anyone can rationally argue the merits of one over the merits over another. Both sides have merits, and the powerful thing about science and research is that you don't know the value of those merits until it is tied in with other bits of knowledge.

... but I doubt that over that time[centuries] period the composition of Pluto's atmosphere will ever be relevant in any practical sense.

Again, this isn't something one can judge except in hindsight. I can agree with the logic that we can't afford to send a probe to Pluto, I can't agree with the logic that the knowledge gained won't 'ever be relevant in any practical sense.'

Argh, I'm just pissed. Apologies to the readers who have to see this rant ^^

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I wish targetted ads work!

Do you know what I want to see?

I want to know about shows and performances in my area. If the Circus comes to town. If Cirque Du Soleil is playing. If Stomp! or whatever hot new show is there.

I want the link to connect to a ticket office, to schedules and fares, to a map service, and reviews of the performance.

I want to know about music performances as well, of Taiko drums and Chinese acrobats and martial arts tournaments in the area.

How do we get the banner ads to work like this?

For product or services, I rely on Google. I want a new video card? I do a Google search on the appropriate websites. I look for "video card reviews performance price"

But for topical, local, and timely information, Google isn't very good.

And I don't want to be always trawling various ticket sites for what's new. I just want to know if Disney's Lion King on Ice is in the area, or something.

I'm sure that's worthy of advertising as much as anything else!

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And thus we underscore the significance of individual disconnect.

I thought it was about front/back, someone though browser buttons front/back, someone else thought the left-rightness of humans as associated with left-right writing.

What about a radial species, like a starfish? They may have a totally different idea of front/back

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It's already done, in language, for slightly similar reasons.

At least according to some linguistic theory (me not being a linguist, cunning or otherwise) the conjugation and tense structure adds more layers of context around a piece of speech so that even if taken by itself, or distorted, or mangled, meaning can still be extracted from it.

It's definitely redundant encoding of information, and learners of the languages in question (like Latin!) say it's horrible, but it probably stems from oral times when data transmission was horribly unreliable and error prone.

So perhaps what your proposing is encoding more structure into a language, meta-language like, something unlike Perl.

I hope you're not going to reinvinte Python.

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I think you're mixing up computer science, software engineering, and programming.

Computer science, to stress the science, is real. It touches complexity and information theory, entropy, transmission and coding theory, algorithmic analysis, and statistics.

CS is an artificial construct only as much as math is our approximation of the way information is conveyed, or physics an approximation of the way the universe works.

CS is separated by math by only a thin boundary, at parts.

Languages, kernels, etc, are software implementations of CS theory and thought. It is a step lower than CS, and on the job experience is not enough to qualify for CS status. I'm not very good at CS, myself, but have some of the training from college.

Everything you're talking about concerning CS is more related to programming and work. "How many times have you had to learn something for a specific project and never had to use it again." Deals with programming and instances, not with algorithms, complexity, computability, efficiency, or optimization. All of the above is closer to CS, and as such are irreduciably common to all problems.

Being good at CS doesn't translate to being good at programming. Compare CS to being good at critical analysis and diagnosis, where programming is being good at surgery.

One is a thought game, the other an implementation one.

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It's not the ridiculous.

A computer scientist is not defined by the existence or use of computers. As a macho ego statement, "Real Computer Scientists don't use computers" is silly, but not ridiculous.

Just like the analogy that physicists don't play with physical objects. Some do, but quite a few don't. They border on the realm of math, of course.

You're right that it is elitism, but computer science is much more about the science of computation than the science of computers. In that sense, CS can live perfectly fine without computers. Just a pen and paper will do.

On the other hand, programmers are much more intimately tied to computers, and as such can't trivially exist without them. Programming is an implementation and a justification of the science of computation in the same way that carpentry and architecture are implementations and justifications of the science of physics.

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To repeat what everyone else is saying, Math cannot be avoided if you're interested in computers ^^

Algorithms, optimizations, sorting, searching, patterns, etc, are all mathematical in nature. Even if you can't grok the math, you have to have some intuition involved, or you're just not going to be able to do the CS work.

You're correct that 90% of jobs can be doen by either a CSc or CEng. But those 90% of jobs can also be done by math majors who programmed on the side, or people who were EEs, or whatever. If you can do some real analytical thinking, and can handle structured work, you can program ^^

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Gomen!

I stand corrected!

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http://delphion.com/details?&pn10=US05959624

They actually have a patent that already covers theme switching by changing resources or drawing procedures.

09/074,543

That one (can't find it, but it's referenced) covers sound effects in a GUI.

So I don't know that there is anything 'wrong' with this patent, given that there are other similar patents in the system, or that this is anything other than 'business as usual' for corporate America...

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http://delphion.com/details?&pn10=US05959624

This one was filed in Jan 97,
Systems and methods for providing a user with increased
flexibility and control over the appearance and behavior of
objects on a user interface are disclosed. Sets of objects can
be grouped into themes to provide a user with a distinct overall
impression of the interface. These themes can be switched
dynamically by switching pointers to drawing procedures or
switching data being supplied to these procedures. To buffer
applications from the switchable nature of graphical user
interfaces, colors and patterns used to implement the interface
objects are abstracted from the interface by, for example,
pattern look-up tables.

Seems to have been granted in 1999 and covers the concept of theme switching by changing resources in look-up tables.

As opposed to the patent in the current story, which covers the theme engine, which is the process by which themes are changed.

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