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Yeah, it's been done. :-)

I'm not sure (yet) how you'd use liquid crystal lenses to give you 3D displays, but it'd be cool to have a display sitting at regular display distance, but where the image looks like it's a movie screen, movie screen distance away. Could reduce eyestrain a lot, though you'd have to keep your head "in the zone" to see the whole image at once. And you could do it with a regular lens.

Except that using Lynx tells the authorities that you are a malicious h4x0r...apparently, using a "non-standard" browser will cause the SWAT team to descend on you in true Terry GilliamBrazil style.

In that vein, check out the beautiful ElectriClerk -- a 1923 Underwood typewriter as a keyboard for a Mac.

Anyone else thinking of Brazil and the computers they used?

...spacecraft from the elevator without a 29B/6 form that's been stamped.

Surely that should be 27B/6, or are you not making cunning subtle references to Brazil.

Jedidiah.

I think we'll all have many pipes.

Man, with all those ducts, your house must look like something out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil

An example of what can happen when the government collects too much information can be seen in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil.
Back when I first saw this, I thought "yeah, right" but now it actually seem possible.

Mistakes WILL be made.

"A plain-clothed Ministry of Information official enters and reads the notice of Buttle's incarceration, including the principle of Information Retrieval charges, and then forces the dazed and panic-stricken Mrs. Buttle to sign the documents as her husband (with muffled cries heard under the burlap) is hauled away:

I hereby inform you under powers entrusted to me under Section 476 that Mr. Buttle, Archibald, residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri La Towers, has been invited to assist the Ministry of Information with certain inquiries and that he is liable to certain financial obligations as specified in Council Order RB-stroke-C-Z-stroke-nine-O-seven-stroke-X.

That is your receipt for your husband. Thank you. And this is my receipt for your receipt."

Agreed, multiple *diverse* sources are ultra-necessary for any meaningful, valid understanding.

My reason for choosing those ones, though, is:

not 'sanitized' the way ALL North American mass-media 'news' is...

English journalism is cutting-enough as to be reasonably trustworthy...

The Guardian freely offers deeply dissident, oft non-Western or non-Anglo understandings...

Reuters is rather international ( but I still prefer non-N.A. sources .. I don't know how 'torqued' and dumbed-down the N.A. version of 'em is ), and

Radio Netherlands is a treasure: unlike the imperial assumptions of anglo-culture, they were trader-culture, and dependent, to great degree, on 'The Continent', and so have to keep levelly-aware, and the habit seems to have remained with 'em...

I remember when the America/Iraq propaganda/religion started developing, Radio Netherlands ran ( and critiqued ) a speech by .. who-was-it, the Iranian Prime Minister -grumble- President, then? Something like that, insightful, and .. totally non-reported here, because it wasn't a Conforming/Obedient Opinion Authorized by the Department of Reality[tm].

( is it just me, or does our world feel more like the movie Brazil, of late? )

The total non-reporting of the perspective they gave, though, among our 'free press'...

made me understand that .. automagically trusting those who maintain they are journalists, is

deeply dubious.

Belonging Conformity, then is one drug I don't want in my blood, at all.

*Ignoring what is* .. cannot grant one understanding, why isn't diversely-perceiving, then, an addiction?

Your comment about bias, though, yeah, that's why I stopped listening to the BBC..
not anywhere near as bad as N.A. 'news', but...
LOL
.. for some contrast, with the N.A. Officious And Authoritative Pablum, try Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting which systematically attacks all the biass among N.A. mass-media .. that offends them..
( warning, though, you will lose your belief in mass-media's Inherent Truth[tm], and will probably get that they slant -just as much- as the ones they attack...

Isn't arranged ignorance comforting+wonderful.

( BTW: being humanitarian means being non-imperial, non-institutionian, in determination ... one can have only one heart-determination, and if politics is it, or institutional importance, or position, or nationalism, or human-heart-worth, or living-soul-essence, whatever: just being honest in one's heart about the nature of one's religion, is a measure of peace...
Sun Tzu: A Supreme General doesn't excel in battle, because he removed all cause for it. Only non-supreme generals get/create battles.
As a means of creating a black/white biggest-bludgeon-rules world, though, devoid of UN-democracy, I'd say the action has already been proactively..
.. just a thought : /

Here's a nifty quote, from one of the pages I link-to:
"Unfortunately I'm not certain that politicians inside the US have any appreciation of the situation on the ground. I think they operate to a very large extent from prejudice and ideology, and as such, seeing as they've designated Iran a member of the axis of evil and c

Car in Brazil

VW Concept Car

Grin, I always thought that car in Brazil was cool. We're all in it together.

Congratulations to VW, this is a very cool thing, despite the smart-ass remarks above.

Car in Brazil

VW Concept Car

Grin, I always thought that car in Brazil was cool. We're all in it together.

Congratulations to VW, this is a very cool thing, despite the smart-ass remarks above.

Hmm.... add a magnifying lens and some motor oil, and you've got the computers from the movie Brazil

One thing that the original MacOS (for better or worse) tried to get away from was file-centric computing. The goal was to get a bird's eye view of your data, just pick up the thing you want.

The reason he refers to OS X as a throwback is that you can't get much more file-centric than *nix. While the readership of /. may enjoy finding the fastest way to copy all the files containing string "foo" into folder "bar", to most people that behavior reminds them of those people who drive 70 mph down backstreets in order to reach their destination one minute earlier.

Desktop shortcuts, start menus, apple menus, double-clicks, they're all ways of navigating faster through hierarchical file systems. I think he's mainly trying to point out that better product design could intuit what the user wanted to accomplish, starting with the first thing touched or said.

Think about when you're trying to teach your grandmother how to use email. After some time, the conversation will probably progress to this:

granny: "So I, what's the word, click on the green thing to write email?"

That conversation would probably go a lot faster if you could say "pick up the pen" instead.

...and the associated costs.

Please refer to FAQ

What's all this about trouble getting Brazil distributed?

Basically, there was a big fight between Gilliam and the studio who wanted to ruin the movie. At one point Gilliam went into their offices, holding a lighter up to the reel. He's got quite a flair for the drama.

http://www.trond.com/brazil/b_faq02.html

There's lots more information about it in various places as well. Most of it not as "pretty" as in the link I provided. The fight got really nasty.