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Slashback: Gnoogle, PlayStation, Assault
Location, location, location. A lot of people were interested in the Google contest whose winner was announced last week; Dan Egnor creator of that entry, writes "FYI, I've released the code for the winning Google contest entry under the GPL."
You mean they weren't just saying Hi? Anonymous Goodfella writes: "In an update to the Dangers of Being a Microbiologist, the AP [news.com.au] is reporting an attack on a Tennessee state medical examiner who gave evidence to an inquiry into the death of infectious diseases researcher Don Wiley. Coroner O.C. Smith was left tied with barbed wire to an apparent explosive."
Jakob Nielsen says Flash No Longer Evil Allen Varney writes "Given that Flash MX now supports the back button, Unicode, and accessibility, and has introduced p$user interface components, usability guru Jakob Nielsen today updated his famous 'Flash: 99% Bad' rant from October 2000. (Scroll down to see the update, stirringly titled 'Flash Now Improved.') His Nielsen Norman Group has formed a strategic alliance with Macromedia to start educating one million Flash designers in the fundamentals of good design. You did know that Flash .SWF is now an open format, right?"
Step 47: remove blindfold, scream. For those anxiously awaiting (or judiciously pondering) the Linux upgrade kit for the PS2, some words to consider from reader silvaran, who writes: "I just received my Playstation 2 Linux kit in the mail. I was disappointed to find that none of the monitors (3) that I had function properly with it. So I took to following the instructions on a blind install. It's not the most elegant of solutions, but it works. You need a blank memory card to install, but everything else is included in the kit. I'm on my way to a full Linux installation, complete with 100mbit networking, 40-gig HD and a USB keyboard and mouse; also included are full documentation on taking advantage of the PS2 hardware under Linux."
That blind install looks not for the faint of heart -- still, it would be nice if every distro included a simple walk through like that for when a monitor just isn't handy :)
Reader microwerx adds some a few more words of advice and caution: "[T]he PS2 Linux Kit will not read CDRs, so you'll have to use the supplied 10/100 Ethernet Adapter to get stuff in and out of the machine. One very good thing about the PS2 Linux Kit was the documentation regarding the Emotion Engine chip, etc. There's at least 2000+ pages of information regarding how it all works in glorious PDF format. There is also a OpenGL-like library (ps2gl) that supports the hardware. I also understand that SDL also works. Another is the amount of equipment you receive. You get a USB mouse and keyboard, a 10/100MBPS Ethernet Adaptor, A VGA convertor, and a 40Gb Hard drive. And all of this stuff appears to have some future use (you may have to remove Linux to use them nonetheless). So, once again, unless you just want the novelty of having a PS2 Workstation, developing console games, or setting up a small home server, I don't believe that you'll gain too much additional functionality. An overall rating of 3 1/2 stars out of 5 is certainly in order (because after all, it is for game development)."
sigh I jumped here with excitement, an "open source google clone!"
Who cares about the .swf format? The key is in .fla files, which is still closed AFAIK.
.swf files, I'm cool.
Anyway, I don't care. I don't have a flash plugin on any of my boxen, and I couldn't be happier. Have yet to see a site I want to read that requires flash. Until Pokey is published as
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I'd like to know if the PS2 modchip alleviates the cd-r/dvd-r problem. If so, is there enough to this $350 system to make a decent little home system to play with? Is anyone working on something for the ps2 similar to the XBox Linux Project?
Geez... 15 posts and they all have to do with 'gnoogle.' *sigh*
Did you notice at the end of the article about the medical examiner the writer offered up a couple of enemies that could be responsible. Pure speculation. Conspiracy theorists mad had him for ruling the suspicious death of a researcher to be natural medical causes? But its the backround story that is interesting to me. Allegedly, 12 to 20 of the top researchers in communicable diseases have died under suspicious circumstances over the past few months??? Has anyone heard anything about this before? Google found nothing for me.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
On a completely serious note, has anyone given any thought to a "real" blind install procedure for Linux -- i.e., a tool/procedure targetted at visually-impaired users wishing to use Linux?
In the same way that modern distros "do enough" to get X windows installing and running, and then switch to a graphical installer, I can imagine a "blind" installer doing what's required to install a sound driver and speech synthesizer, and then talking the user through the rest of the installation (questions about partitions, etc.).
As someone else alluded too, this could also be useful for a sighted person doing an install on a headless machine.
Does anything like this exist currently?
It's wierd every monitor I've tried had sync-on-green. Once I installed x2x It's just become a seemless part of my desktop. I have two monitors for the workstation and one for the playstation, and I just move the mouse across to the playstation and I can type there. It's not quite fast enough to run KDE or Gnome, but it's been pretty painless so far, things just compile and run. I'm still poring over the docs, but I expect to be able to make some speedy ps2GL apps once I'm up on the peculiarities.
It drives the monitor at 1280x1024 @ 75Hz which is better than I expected. The boot DVD lets you boot any kernel you like, there's already a BSD port. You need the disk to boot so unless you can press silver DVD's you can't distribute the games very far. As stated before they don't document the BIOS calls for accessing the DVD drive without a 'is this a Sony disk' check. But if you walked their drivers in a debugger you could probably figure it out, though all that would give you is a DVD/CD player, you still couldn't boot without their DVD or a harware modification.
The biggest problem with it as a general purpose machine is probably the measly 32 Megs of RAM. I might look into this, but it probably requires more than just installing new chips. But it isn't a general purpose machine, one of the memory transfer rates is 38 GB/s... just try that on a PC....
come be and check out the site. http://ps2linuxkit.com
if you would like to help leave a message on the board or drop me an email frank@ps2linuxkit.com
thank you,
frank
Yup. Doesn't get much more open than ASCII.
How long has Flash been around? Like 6 years? And how many authoring tools are there? Something like 3? How many viewers? Uh... one, right?
By contrast, SVG has been a W3C recommendation for all of 8 months, and I know of at least 4 aurhoring tools (not to mention the one I'm making right now, or numerous text editors) and 2 major viewers (along with a host of upcoming handheld viewers). Looks like open standards promote competition and innovation... who would have thought!?
Not to knock Flash... it has its uses. But before you commit to a technology on which to build a serious data-driven website with interactive graphics, do yourself a favor and check out SVG. The SVG-Wiki is a good place to start.
A fair number of game GUIs (the 2D parts used for setup and such) are written in Flash and executed with a non-Macromedia Flash engine. This is done so that the Flash authoring tools can be used. This approach could be applied to other applications.
It's probably more suitable for things like a music player than a system administration program, but it's an option. Most importantly, it lets you separate the GUI part from the programming part, which means the GUI designer can get some real work done.
"The winner is Daniel Egnor, a former Microsoft employee ."
"My code is available to the public under the terms of the GNU Public License."
No wonder he got fired!
Professional typesetters do use sans serif fonts on-screen, because here the resolution is not good enough for the serifs, and so they act as noise rather than reading cues.
Unfortunately I cannot find the article ATM, but somewhere on the web is an interview with the person who designed the free Microsoft fonts (who is a professional type-face designer), and he explains what he did to ensure optimal readability on-screen -- an interesting read...