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3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize
MadFarmAnimalz writes "Science Magazine's reporting on the results of the NSF's Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge and the first prize in the Illustrations category has been claimed by the Innolab 3D File Manager, which was developed on linux. Apparently this involves arranging data in a ferris wheel type structure." The data is arranged by its relationship with its content, rather than by its physical position on a hard drive or its file system.
Does this mean that you have to wait for your files to get back down to the bottom to be able to read them???
No, I didn't RTFA, and I'm sure I'll get modded Offtopic, but the thought occurs to me:
Why are we, the free software community, busting ass to integrate pseudo-3d technologies to the desktop (AA-fonts, SVG-icons, real alpha blending), while it seems obvious that the next step is going to be a fully 3d-enabled desktop, with 3d icons placed in the current 2d-metaphor? Already new computers with new accellerators can push so many polys that the overhead is not measurable by users.
Browsing your pr0n collection will never be what it used to be again.
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
Rather than having a software layer which groups files by content rather than tree structure, why not impliment a SQL type of system to access ReiserFS after all it is a database underneeth.
Doing this through the filesystem strikes me as alot more efficient than a quick hack of a filemanager.
Even Microsoft are working on a file system based
There is no god
3D File System Navigator for IRIX 4.0.1+
If you are on OS X and would like to sample 3D navigation of disk drive content, there is a nice free project that does this, aptly named 3DOSX.
It uses Open GL to make the file system into 3D rotatable platters, and the platters are linked together. Can swim around the platters looking at the different documents.
Some screenshots are here:
3DOSX Screenshots
The project homepage is here:
3DOSX Homepage
It is an interesting look into alternative ways of doing things.
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No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
When it is an opensource product , it is bad manners not to give a bittorent link with a story posting. while Ican't do that either , here is an actual download page ... Kinda slow
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This is more pretty-printing than real innovation. They claim to arrange data by relation but the thing still knows active folders, parent folders and subfolders. And the color scheme (subfolders are blue) focuses on the hierarchical structure of the folders and not the relation of the data. So they took one way of organizing and presenting files that works for most people most of the time but has a few big shortcomings, pretty-printed it in a somewhat confusing way and added relational sugar that can only add to the confusion.
Pretty, but not impressive.
One problem with this type of arrangement is that it requires thoughtful meta-description of all content (which scientists do but PHBs don't). What you have an interesting way of representing "degrees of separation", not a "triumph of Linux on the Desktop." The challenge ( http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/events/sevc/overview.htm ) was:
"This new international contest is designed to recognize outstanding achievements by scientists and engineers in the use of visual media to promote understanding of research results."
So for the visual representation of linked data structure, sure this looks great. As a GUI, heck no. "File Manager" seems like a misnomer here.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
In Mac OS X you can set the dock to magnify the programs your mouse is over.
:-) The fact that list view has been here for so long should say something. People like lists where everything looks the same. Having things pop up from unreadable sizes out of nowhere seems a little unnatural.
This is how I am guessing this new 3D navigation works, by magnifying as you move around.
I turned my dock's magnification off.
I am inclined to say that the revolutionary idea that will change how we look at our computer desktop has not yet come.
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Does this look like a souped up ring interface from the classic Secret of Mana published by Square-Enix (nee Square)?
It does to me...
i don't see the big hubbub... this is an illustration prize. no one said this is a useful or even remotely useable filemanager. The screen snapshot the team submitted from the program is "visually striking," says panel of judges member Boyce Rensberger. the judging was on how their screenshot looked as far as i can tell. the runners up were a watercolor painting of a macrophage and the cover of a book. whoopee, a pretty filemanager.
And just to get my daily flamebait rating: Who modded the parent offtopic? It's a valid questioning of the usefulness of the program mentioned in the article
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It seemed to draw massive CPU, but here it is. Note that the reason it wasn't so responsive was because I was compiling openoffice-ximian in the background. And I was running the XFree nvidia driver, instead of their proprietary... Maybe you'll have better luck.
/ in nolab/3dfm-1.0.tar.gz
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http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/sf/subcat/in
Credits to: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=78355&cid=695
Data has to first be organized in a meaningful way; how it is displayed -- 3D, 2D, a list, ... -- is output not content. Get angry; In 0.21 seconds Google! can find just about anything on the planet, yet the local network or the computer in front of you may take hours of effort and asking people to pull out the one important detail you need at the moment. Personally, I've spent months attempting to get basic documentation on systems I'm working on...not because it doesn't exist, but because nobody knows where it is!
Here are five ways to organize and retrieve data using computers;
Right now, file systems are handled by manual and basic search tools. (Minor frustration: Why doesn't Windows by default have something like the unix-style 'find -amin or -cmin'? Is it the tools or the file system?)
The next step should be system-wide VFolders and unlimited Ad-hoc queries. To be truely valuable, the results should show up as real and potentially persistant objects not as fake tool-specific or GUI-only results.
Unfortunately, in the name of 'ease of use' the Automatic structure that is tool-specific will probably become dominate in both Windows and MacOS...leading to more data being ignored and eventually lost.
Gnome and KDE developers are moving in the right direction with virtual file systems (VFS, ioslave) though the device concept is specific to the UI or the supporting libraries and has no reality at the file or device level.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Since when did *any* O/S show files based on their physical location. Letssee I'll just go to cylinder 34, track 32, block 23 and pull up my pr0n...
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