t might even be in Apple's best interest to do something like this -- at least donate manpower to the cause.
Apple has already done this. Check out devphil's comments in this discussion for info on how Apple tweaked gcc for OS X and how some of these changes have already been incorporated into the gcc distribution.
Re:Street Performer Protocol would be appropriate
on
Shadowmarch Launched
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· Score: 1
No, King *thought* was a failure. The project brought in $80,000 US. That's *tons* of money for a short story.
Good point. I'm sure Stephen King's noteriety has alot to do with that $80k figure. But considering Williams' modest goal is just for the project to be self sustaining, then I'll retreat a bit from my earlier stance of "it's unlikely [Shadowmarch] will succeed using the standard subscription model". I stand by my statement that the Street Performer Protocol would be a better approach.
Yes, this device -- or something like it -- is a good candidate for use as a sex toy. However, the mild electric current used hardly puts such activity in the S&M category. I know, I have a TENS unit, and yes, I have put it on my private parts. You can turn it up to the point that it's painful. However, there's lots of interesting settings prior to crossing the pain threshold.
A better comparison would be to a vibrator. I'm sure the range of intensity on this controller is far less than a TENS unit. In reality, the results would probably bore someone in S&M scene.
Street Performer Protocol would be appropriate
on
Shadowmarch Launched
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· Score: 4
I wish Tad Williams great success in his endeavor. However, it's unlikely it will succeed using the standard subscription model. A better approach would be to use the Street Performer Protocol.
The infrastructure doesn't exist for a subscription model on the Internet that effectively limits distribution to paying subscribers. Williams writes, "people start passing too many free copies of the Shadowmarch story around and we get to the point where it doesn't pay for itself anymore, then I'll have to stop doing it". In that case, Shadowmarch is as good as dead. We'll get a few good stories, then perhaps after getting involved and interested, we'll find out the experiment has been cancelled without completion. Why would I pay $20 for that risk? Perhaps subscribers would receive the remaining stories in print form. That would be less than satisfactory...a consolation prize of sorts.
Admittedly, there isn't much infrastructure for the Street Performer Protocol, either. However, there is PayPal and the Amazon.com Honor System, as well as others. Furthermore, with the Street Performer Protocol, you want people passing out copies...that's free, even "viral" marketing.
The trick is to keep people from altering the story, such as removing your attribution and instructions on how they can make a donation to support the public work. This is considerably less difficult a problem to solve than attempting to prevent "unpaid copies" from leaking out into the public. It's easier on a technical level and the incentive for cooperating with the protocol greater than the incentive to respect the copy protection of the subscription model.
It remains to be seen if the Street Performer Protocol would generate enough revenue to support the project, but that's why it's an experiment. As others have pointed out, we've already had the "limited distribution on the Internet" experiment, i.e. Stephen King's "The Plant". It was a failure.
This is a shame, because upto now, I believed Amazon.com was honest and respected my privacy. I trusted Amazon.com and preferred purchasing from you even when you didn't have the best prices. I bought Christmas presents almost exclusively from Amazon.com the last two years.
However, your actions speak louder than your privacy policies. Now I find myself wondering, how else I might have been mislead. What other ways will you violate the letter or the spirit of your policies, especially now that the pressure to turn profitable is at its highest?
This will have a chilling effect on Amazon.com and all online commerce. If Amazon.com can't be trusted, who can?
Sincerely disappointed,
Tim
The worst part is, I don't really believe this will accomplish much. I'd like to believe that such behavior does have a chilling effect on ecommerce. More likely, I'm the minority in a sea of lemmings with open pocketbooks.
Stupid admin errors happen both on NT and UNIX - they're not a feature of the OS.
First, just because someone makes an error doesn't mean they made a stupid mistake. Just as we don't know whether this was human error or buggy software, we don't know if this was a stupid mistake or an easily made error.
Second, robustness (i.e. lack of error proneness) is indeed a feature of all software. Human error rate when performing a task is a useful metric for evaluating software usability. An OS that is "easy to secure" has a feature that many would find advantagous.
Ideally, computers should serve humans. Making a task error prone requiring a human to go through the proper hoops or suffer a security breach is a reversal of this ideal.
Installation is a big hurdle
on
Swarmcast GPLed
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· Score: 1
Here's what it took for me to try the Swarmcast beta:
locate, download, and install a Java2 runtime
download and install Java Web Start
click through a prompt that warned "this software wants to do anything on your system"
it also didn't work with Mozilla (probably a Mozilla bug), but others report that it's mostly Netscape 4.x and IE specific
This is alot to discourage someone from even trying it out.
Swarmcast is a great idea and I was impressed by how well it worked once I set it up. However, it needs either a simplified intallation process or to come bundled with your OS/environment. Otherwise, the swarm will be limited to those geeks who bother to go through the installation.
That Ximian is considering incorporating it into Red Carpet is a nice step, but that's a rather narrow application. It does nothing for my browsing downloads. A nicer step would be incorporating Swarmcast into GNOME Transfer Manager or something similar. Ditto that for Windows and Mac.
I really do love Java, but from a pragmatic point of view almost noone has Java2 and Java Web Start installed. I think at most people will tolerate a single downloaded installer that "does the right thing" and works from thence forth.
Naturally, a review can't build up a supporting argument for the points made in the book. Therefore it's no suprise that several posters have refuted some of Raskin's proposals using arguments that Raskin addressed in his book. Here's a summary of counterpoints to several of the most common responses I found in this discussion. Also tossed in are an occasional citation from The Invisible Computer by Donald Norman. It is an excellent companion to Raskin's book.
A common point. But buried behind it is another fact. We are all different. What is humane and efficient for one person is a nightmare for another.
and
I think something that a lot of people miss is the fact that the average computer user is very different from the average Slashdot reader or Linux user.
Human beings are far more similar cognetively (psychologically) than they are different. Before we worry about designing interfaces that are optimized to those differences, we must first develop interfaces that are best suited to the %99.99 ways we think and behave alike. One example cited in the book is that human beings can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Raskin writes that the current state of user interfaces is nowhere close to being ready for the minor tweaks to our differences.
Someone else's idea of "the most natural way to do x" often times isn't mine. I guess that's why I always set custom keys in games, use emacs, and think PERL is fun to hack around with.
The above comment was arguing against having a Single Way to Do It. It's partially refuted by the previous counterargument. It's further refuted by Raskin's coverage of "habituation". The degree to which an interface becomes easy to use is directly proportional to the degree to which users can develop habits using the system. Having more than one way to do it prevents or slows down habituation by forcing the user to make a concious choice about which way to do it. The UI is also complicated by increasing the number of commands in the system.
However, i don't think that the thing [another poster] is saying and the thing Raskin is saying are mutually exclusive.
In an ideal world, there should be only one way to do it, BUT the USER should be able to determine what this one way is.
Actually, they are mutually exclusive. Having a "single way to do it" means having a single, system-wide command to perform an operation. See above counterargument for why a single command is good. Furthermore, if having the user "choose" involves setting a preference that changes the way the system behaves, then you've created a mode. Modes are bad, m'kay?
Intuitive
Several posts talk about "intuitive" interfaces. Raskin points out that there is no such thing. People usually mean "familiar" when they talk about intuitiveness, i.e. a UI that is like another UI they have already learned or become habituated to.
One problem... in the book he talks a lot about products like this Canon word processor that didn't seem like commercial successes. They may have been "humane" or even efficient, but no one bought them. What good is that?
In the The Invisible Computer Norman writes that there are 3 equally necessary legs to support a product: Technical, User Experience, and Marketing. Canon Cat had two of the three licked, but failed on marketing. That doesn't diminish the value of it technical and user experience achievements.
I might buy the book just to see what he means by "no file hierarchies". I've read about this book before, and that was what stuck out the last time as well.
Yes, buy the book. Raskin's proposal for an interface without file hierarchies, file managers, or "files" per se is my favorite part. He addresses categorizing, organization, and finding documents.
The thing is, I can't imagine an interface that is 100% intuitive to use, without requiring the user to think about details of the interface, and simultaneously allows the sort of massive power you'd get from, say, putting together a five-command Unix pipeline that picks out all the lines that appear exactly twice in a text file. So if you aren't allowed separate beginner and expert modes, what can you possibly do?
This one's hard to address completely in a single paragraph. In short: efficient interfaces that allow habituation are both friendly and capable of expert use. Raskin dispells the notion that "user friendly" means "dumbed down". A humane interface is usable and powerful. A much better argument is in the book.
1 app with 1000 features versus 1000 apps with 1 features
I'm sure there has to be a happy medium in this somewhere. [Another poster] sites Word as a program that tries to do everything, to the point that you get lost in the features. I agree. But on the other extreme, I have my latest Linux-Mandrake CD set with thousands of applications. Most of these apps only have one use.
Actually, Raskin proposes something more like 0 applications, 1 system, N number of user created documents, 100's of commands that work in all documents. As an example he writes about the "calculate" command. Say a user wants to type in a formula and calculate the result. In contemporary systems, the user must run the spreadsheet application, type the formula into one of the approved formula entry text areas, and execute the formula. Raskin proposes that the user should be able to select any text, anywhere, and perform a "calculate" command on it (perhaps by pressing "calculate" on their keyboard). The selection is replaced with the result (which could be "can't calculate", "Not a Number", "Divide by Zero", etc.). The original formula is preserved in the document. So calculating a formula is reduced to: 1) type in formula 2) select formula 3) calculate selection.
Apple's OpenDoc was a step in this direction. You started with a document, and then invoked the editors to create the different pieces of your document. I think it was heading away from the application-centric approach, but like a lot of Apple projects of the mid-nineties, it got toasted before it really got off the ground.
Raskin directly addresses OpenDoc. OpenDoc and OLE (and it's ancestors) are still the wrong approach. The "different editors" are still applications, just disguised. It still has the same mode problems as seperate applications depending on which part of the document I'm editing, i.e. "am I in spreadsheet mode right now, or am I word processing mode, or am I in paint program mode?".
Can you imagine trying to play Quake using a MS word (or emacs.. or vi.. or pretty much anything not remotely related to 3d navigation) interface? Or for that matter, trying to type out that document the boss wants in 20 minutes if you have to use a mouse/keyboard combination to pick letters from your latest Quake/text editor mix?
Citing The Invisible Computer again, Norman would say that these should be seperate devices. That is, one device for the creation and navigation of content and information. Another device for playing games. Norman proposes abandoning the general purpose computer and instead having multiple, less expensive devices focused on a single activity.
I just wired a portion of my house. I recommend using the Leviton QuickPort outlets or outlet covers. These are outlet covers with square holes in them. The holes accept snap in QuickPort jacks. Leviton sells QuickPort jacks for RJ45 jack, RJ11, and coax (they may sell more, this is what I saw on the shelf). They come in 1, 2, 4 and 6 hole varieties.
For my computer room, I bought 2 of the 6 hole variety, 8 RJ 45 jacks and one package of 4 blanks to cover the 2 unused holes. That way I have 4 ethernet ports on opposite walls with 2 spots on each wall open for future jacks.
You can buy them from http://smarthome.com and probably elsewhere online, but you might also try your local Home Depot (they were cheaper there). While there, pick up some blue 3/4" flexible conduit that they sell in 10' sections. Even if you don't have a junction box, you can still run the conduit to your outlet holes keeping you from having to fish through walls each time you want to pull wire. Of course, having conduit everywhere would be nice, but even just running conduit through those difficult areas is a big plus.
Also, when you run the first wire, drag a piece of nylon cord with it. Then you can pull your wires through always dragging along a nylon cord so you can do the next pull.
Laurie Anderson has a multimedia performance called "Songs and Stories from Moby Dick". She uses various hi tech devices, including some powerful DSP hardware/software that allows her to pitchshift her voice in realtime (including 3 part harmonizing with herself). The show also includes miscellaneous visual effects/props. Two high powered projectors "paint" the set through the show.
The obvious benefit is the lack of cables. This may seem like no big deal, but I tell you, with my USB cradle, two computers, a laptop with external floppy, joystick, speakers, etc.. it's nice to have one fewer cable to worry about (actually, for me, 2 fewer cables because I have a cordless keyboard).
The cons:
Changing batteries. I find I can go about 1 month with days consisting of 4-10 hours of use. But it's still agravating when the mouse starts flaking out before my brain goes "oh yeah, time to change the battery". Would have been much better if the trackball included some sort of LED indicator instead of just relying on it failing to function to let you know the battery was dying.
Lower sample rate. The number of updates per second is lower than its corded brethren. This has no noticeable effect in most cases. I do find this is a major drawback for playing Quake. Enough that I'll probably buy a corded USB mouse or trackball to use as a second mouse when playing FPSs.
Purchase it from someplace with a good return policy. It's different enough from corded trackballs that I'm sure it's not for everyone.
Mozilla Nightly Install HOWTO (was Re:Where to...)
on
Mozilla .6 Released
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· Score: 1
Here's a HOWTO I wrote on getting mozilla nightly builds installed on linux, including getting the Personal Security Manager installed and working for non-root users. The install instructions never worked as written and I never found a useful HOWTO when searching. Maybe I'm alone, but in case I'm not, here's the HOWTO:
C'mon, Taco, could you mask the contempt a little bit better, next time:
from the match-made-somewhere dept...After Bruce's
brief stint as a venture capitalist (which followed his Stint with Debian and OSI among other organizations)...[emphasis added]
That post, was in fact, informative. But wasn't its parent even more so? Afterall, as opposed to pointing out the RFC, it pointed to practical information on an implementation of that RFC, in this case, Apache, undoubtably the Web server that Jens is using.
The RFC is for people implementing a Web server. Apache's content negotiation is for people providing resources in multiple languages (among other things). Which of those do you think Jens is? Yes, that's right, the latter. Making the RFCs slightly off-topic.
I am also a follower of the "semantic HTML" religion. However, when you say, "For slashdot to give this woman credence as an "expert" is truly shameful.", you must be forgetting what the default Slashdot page looks like in the first place. Sure, at least/. doesn't use a fixed width column for the main content. But the pages are so bloated (and poorly designed, sorry Rob/Jeff), that I've been using/. in "light mode" for about a year now.
If the article posted was critical of Weinman's advice, then there would be something to say. As I see it, the comment is entirely consistent with/.'s design philosophy.
It's interesting to read what Dave Farber, recently Named FCC Chief Technologist, has to say about Internet 2. You can read his position paper on Internet 2, which he calls NII2000. Even if you don't agree with his position, it's an excellent paper.
Hopefully it means that if universities want to continue building their ivory tower, they won't be doing it with my tax dollars (or not as many, anyway).
I don't think there needs to be a standard user interface per se, but there is a need for standards on user interface behavior.
I agree. The Web blew the then current notion of consistent UI out of the water. Of course, having some level of consistency is important, even with Web sites. But the fact that now Apple, once the torch bearer of consistent UI standards, is distributing the non-standard QuickTime UI, makes it pretty clear that some variability is acceptable.
We don't need more applications... We need better applications. Instead of saying, "I want to write my own web browser," why not contribute to Mozilla instead? Instead of writing "Yet Another MP3 Player," contribute code to one of the more established ones.
You're missing the point on how Open Source software development produces better software. If you think in terms of evolution or "software Darwinism", then the variety of 30 competing projects is a good thing. Instant Messaging on Linux is still a new niche where a lot of experimentation is going on. Eventually, things will settle down and a few successful clients will emerge. If projects like Jabber are any indication, then the end result is going to be software that is better than commercial alternatives...a common theme with OS software.
You do highlight an important challenge: developing reputation managers for Open Source. Something like Epinions.com, but geared to our community. Something to help you seperate the wheat from the chaff.
When using freshmeat, I usually have to scan several entries. By looking at their various summaries, Web pages, and frequently by trying out a few packages, I filter out the projects that don't seem to be very well supported. This usually works, but it is time consuming, and doesn't take advantage of the fact that someone else with similar interests as mine probably just did the same thing a week ago. Collaborative Filtering, which is just a form of reputation management, would come in real handy. In fact, I'd be suprised if FreshMeat wasn't already working on this.
However, I've personally tired of trying to give companies a "clue". Unless I feel like I've already established a relationship with a company, I'll rarely contact them.
Instead, I'll just vote with my dollar. If I can get Quake 3 online before I can get it retail, I'll buy it online. I'll leave it to the retail stores to figure out on their own why they lost my sale. Either they will get a clue, or be outcompeted by the company that does get it.
What's even funnier is reading all the justifications given in reply for not having it available in HTML. Especially now that the Web site reads: The document will be available for download from this page in three formats: WordPerfect 6, Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). =)
I work at a Web design company that has a legacy in multimedia CD-ROMs and graphic Web design. We have recently moved into more content driven sites. A few coworkers and myself have been lobbying hard for taking accessibility into consideration when designing and building our Web sites. We've had little success in making changes.
I believe that hearing a screen reader read an inaccessible site would make the problem much less abstract, as it seemed to for you, and hopefully convince more of my coworkers to give a damn.
Hmm...I'm not a member of AOL. I don't pay any access fees to AOL. And yet if I go to http://www.aol.com/ I can see their Web site. IANAL, but that seems pretty public to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple has already done this. Check out devphil's comments in this discussion for info on how Apple tweaked gcc for OS X and how some of these changes have already been incorporated into the gcc distribution.
Good point. I'm sure Stephen King's noteriety has alot to do with that $80k figure. But considering Williams' modest goal is just for the project to be self sustaining, then I'll retreat a bit from my earlier stance of "it's unlikely [Shadowmarch] will succeed using the standard subscription model". I stand by my statement that the Street Performer Protocol would be a better approach.
Yes, this device -- or something like it -- is a good candidate for use as a sex toy. However, the mild electric current used hardly puts such activity in the S&M category. I know, I have a TENS unit, and yes, I have put it on my private parts. You can turn it up to the point that it's painful. However, there's lots of interesting settings prior to crossing the pain threshold.
A better comparison would be to a vibrator. I'm sure the range of intensity on this controller is far less than a TENS unit. In reality, the results would probably bore someone in S&M scene.
I wish Tad Williams great success in his endeavor. However, it's unlikely it will succeed using the standard subscription model. A better approach would be to use the Street Performer Protocol.
The infrastructure doesn't exist for a subscription model on the Internet that effectively limits distribution to paying subscribers. Williams writes, "people start passing too many free copies of the Shadowmarch story around and we get to the point where it doesn't pay for itself anymore, then I'll have to stop doing it". In that case, Shadowmarch is as good as dead. We'll get a few good stories, then perhaps after getting involved and interested, we'll find out the experiment has been cancelled without completion. Why would I pay $20 for that risk? Perhaps subscribers would receive the remaining stories in print form. That would be less than satisfactory...a consolation prize of sorts.
Admittedly, there isn't much infrastructure for the Street Performer Protocol, either. However, there is PayPal and the Amazon.com Honor System, as well as others. Furthermore, with the Street Performer Protocol, you want people passing out copies...that's free, even "viral" marketing.
The trick is to keep people from altering the story, such as removing your attribution and instructions on how they can make a donation to support the public work. This is considerably less difficult a problem to solve than attempting to prevent "unpaid copies" from leaking out into the public. It's easier on a technical level and the incentive for cooperating with the protocol greater than the incentive to respect the copy protection of the subscription model.
It remains to be seen if the Street Performer Protocol would generate enough revenue to support the project, but that's why it's an experiment. As others have pointed out, we've already had the "limited distribution on the Internet" experiment, i.e. Stephen King's "The Plant". It was a failure.
Here's the email I sent to Amazon.com letting them know how I feel:
The worst part is, I don't really believe this will accomplish much. I'd like to believe that such behavior does have a chilling effect on ecommerce. More likely, I'm the minority in a sea of lemmings with open pocketbooks.
First, just because someone makes an error doesn't mean they made a stupid mistake. Just as we don't know whether this was human error or buggy software, we don't know if this was a stupid mistake or an easily made error.
Second, robustness (i.e. lack of error proneness) is indeed a feature of all software. Human error rate when performing a task is a useful metric for evaluating software usability. An OS that is "easy to secure" has a feature that many would find advantagous.
Ideally, computers should serve humans. Making a task error prone requiring a human to go through the proper hoops or suffer a security breach is a reversal of this ideal.
Here's what it took for me to try the Swarmcast beta:
This is alot to discourage someone from even trying it out.
Swarmcast is a great idea and I was impressed by how well it worked once I set it up. However, it needs either a simplified intallation process or to come bundled with your OS/environment. Otherwise, the swarm will be limited to those geeks who bother to go through the installation.
That Ximian is considering incorporating it into Red Carpet is a nice step, but that's a rather narrow application. It does nothing for my browsing downloads. A nicer step would be incorporating Swarmcast into GNOME Transfer Manager or something similar. Ditto that for Windows and Mac.
I really do love Java, but from a pragmatic point of view almost noone has Java2 and Java Web Start installed. I think at most people will tolerate a single downloaded installer that "does the right thing" and works from thence forth.
Naturally, a review can't build up a supporting argument for the points made in the book. Therefore it's no suprise that several posters have refuted some of Raskin's proposals using arguments that Raskin addressed in his book. Here's a summary of counterpoints to several of the most common responses I found in this discussion. Also tossed in are an occasional citation from The Invisible Computer by Donald Norman. It is an excellent companion to Raskin's book.
and
Human beings are far more similar cognetively (psychologically) than they are different. Before we worry about designing interfaces that are optimized to those differences, we must first develop interfaces that are best suited to the %99.99 ways we think and behave alike. One example cited in the book is that human beings can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Raskin writes that the current state of user interfaces is nowhere close to being ready for the minor tweaks to our differences.
The above comment was arguing against having a Single Way to Do It. It's partially refuted by the previous counterargument. It's further refuted by Raskin's coverage of "habituation". The degree to which an interface becomes easy to use is directly proportional to the degree to which users can develop habits using the system. Having more than one way to do it prevents or slows down habituation by forcing the user to make a concious choice about which way to do it. The UI is also complicated by increasing the number of commands in the system.
Actually, they are mutually exclusive. Having a "single way to do it" means having a single, system-wide command to perform an operation. See above counterargument for why a single command is good. Furthermore, if having the user "choose" involves setting a preference that changes the way the system behaves, then you've created a mode. Modes are bad, m'kay?
Several posts talk about "intuitive" interfaces. Raskin points out that there is no such thing. People usually mean "familiar" when they talk about intuitiveness, i.e. a UI that is like another UI they have already learned or become habituated to.
In the The Invisible Computer Norman writes that there are 3 equally necessary legs to support a product: Technical, User Experience, and Marketing. Canon Cat had two of the three licked, but failed on marketing. That doesn't diminish the value of it technical and user experience achievements.
Yes, buy the book. Raskin's proposal for an interface without file hierarchies, file managers, or "files" per se is my favorite part. He addresses categorizing, organization, and finding documents.
This one's hard to address completely in a single paragraph. In short: efficient interfaces that allow habituation are both friendly and capable of expert use. Raskin dispells the notion that "user friendly" means "dumbed down". A humane interface is usable and powerful. A much better argument is in the book.
Actually, Raskin proposes something more like 0 applications, 1 system, N number of user created documents, 100's of commands that work in all documents. As an example he writes about the "calculate" command. Say a user wants to type in a formula and calculate the result. In contemporary systems, the user must run the spreadsheet application, type the formula into one of the approved formula entry text areas, and execute the formula. Raskin proposes that the user should be able to select any text, anywhere, and perform a "calculate" command on it (perhaps by pressing "calculate" on their keyboard). The selection is replaced with the result (which could be "can't calculate", "Not a Number", "Divide by Zero", etc.). The original formula is preserved in the document. So calculating a formula is reduced to: 1) type in formula 2) select formula 3) calculate selection.
Raskin directly addresses OpenDoc. OpenDoc and OLE (and it's ancestors) are still the wrong approach. The "different editors" are still applications, just disguised. It still has the same mode problems as seperate applications depending on which part of the document I'm editing, i.e. "am I in spreadsheet mode right now, or am I word processing mode, or am I in paint program mode?".
Citing The Invisible Computer again, Norman would say that these should be seperate devices. That is, one device for the creation and navigation of content and information. Another device for playing games. Norman proposes abandoning the general purpose computer and instead having multiple, less expensive devices focused on a single activity.
I just wired a portion of my house. I recommend using the Leviton QuickPort outlets or outlet covers. These are outlet covers with square holes in them. The holes accept snap in QuickPort jacks. Leviton sells QuickPort jacks for RJ45 jack, RJ11, and coax (they may sell more, this is what I saw on the shelf). They come in 1, 2, 4 and 6 hole varieties.
For my computer room, I bought 2 of the 6 hole variety, 8 RJ 45 jacks and one package of 4 blanks to cover the 2 unused holes. That way I have 4 ethernet ports on opposite walls with 2 spots on each wall open for future jacks.
You can buy them from http://smarthome.com and probably elsewhere online, but you might also try your local Home Depot (they were cheaper there). While there, pick up some blue 3/4" flexible conduit that they sell in 10' sections. Even if you don't have a junction box, you can still run the conduit to your outlet holes keeping you from having to fish through walls each time you want to pull wire. Of course, having conduit everywhere would be nice, but even just running conduit through those difficult areas is a big plus.
Also, when you run the first wire, drag a piece of nylon cord with it. Then you can pull your wires through always dragging along a nylon cord so you can do the next pull.
Laurie Anderson has a multimedia performance called "Songs and Stories from Moby Dick". She uses various hi tech devices, including some powerful DSP hardware/software that allows her to pitchshift her voice in realtime (including 3 part harmonizing with herself). The show also includes miscellaneous visual effects/props. Two high powered projectors "paint" the set through the show.
It's slightly offbeat, but I enjoyed the show.
...is thinking that our school system wants kids to think for themselves.
The majority of our schools are designed to produce people who:
In other words, they are designed to produce factory workers. No joke.
I'm using the Logitech Cordless Trackman.
The obvious benefit is the lack of cables. This may seem like no big deal, but I tell you, with my USB cradle, two computers, a laptop with external floppy, joystick, speakers, etc.. it's nice to have one fewer cable to worry about (actually, for me, 2 fewer cables because I have a cordless keyboard).
The cons:
Changing batteries. I find I can go about 1 month with days consisting of 4-10 hours of use. But it's still agravating when the mouse starts flaking out before my brain goes "oh yeah, time to change the battery". Would have been much better if the trackball included some sort of LED indicator instead of just relying on it failing to function to let you know the battery was dying.
Lower sample rate. The number of updates per second is lower than its corded brethren. This has no noticeable effect in most cases. I do find this is a major drawback for playing Quake. Enough that I'll probably buy a corded USB mouse or trackball to use as a second mouse when playing FPSs.
Purchase it from someplace with a good return policy. It's different enough from corded trackballs that I'm sure it's not for everyone.
http://tool-man.org/docs/HOWTO/Mozilla-Nightly-Ins tall-HOWTO
C'mon, Taco, could you mask the contempt a little bit better, next time:
Show some integrity, for chrissakes.
Uhm...moderators, hello?
That post, was in fact, informative. But wasn't its parent even more so? Afterall, as opposed to pointing out the RFC, it pointed to practical information on an implementation of that RFC, in this case, Apache, undoubtably the Web server that Jens is using.
The RFC is for people implementing a Web server. Apache's content negotiation is for people providing resources in multiple languages (among other things). Which of those do you think Jens is? Yes, that's right, the latter. Making the RFCs slightly off-topic.
I am also a follower of the "semantic HTML" religion. However, when you say, "For slashdot to give this woman credence as an "expert" is truly shameful.", you must be forgetting what the default Slashdot page looks like in the first place. Sure, at least /. doesn't use a fixed width column for the main content. But the pages are so bloated (and poorly designed, sorry Rob/Jeff), that I've been using /. in "light mode" for about a year now.
If the article posted was critical of Weinman's advice, then there would be something to say. As I see it, the comment is entirely consistent with /.'s design philosophy.
The full paper is available from http://www.counterpane.com. <rant>Unfortunately, Bruce Schneier hasn't yet realized that PDF and Postscript are only appropriate for printing, not publishing on the Web</rant>.
It's interesting to read what Dave Farber, recently Named FCC Chief Technologist, has to say about Internet 2. You can read his position paper on Internet 2, which he calls NII2000. Even if you don't agree with his position, it's an excellent paper.
Hopefully it means that if universities want to continue building their ivory tower, they won't be doing it with my tax dollars (or not as many, anyway).
I don't think there needs to be a standard user interface per se, but there is a need for standards on user interface behavior.
I agree. The Web blew the then current notion of consistent UI out of the water. Of course, having some level of consistency is important, even with Web sites. But the fact that now Apple, once the torch bearer of consistent UI standards, is distributing the non-standard QuickTime UI, makes it pretty clear that some variability is acceptable.
We don't need more applications... We need better applications. Instead of saying, "I want to write my own web browser," why not contribute to Mozilla instead? Instead of writing "Yet Another MP3 Player," contribute code to one of the more established ones.
You're missing the point on how Open Source software development produces better software. If you think in terms of evolution or "software Darwinism", then the variety of 30 competing projects is a good thing. Instant Messaging on Linux is still a new niche where a lot of experimentation is going on. Eventually, things will settle down and a few successful clients will emerge. If projects like Jabber are any indication, then the end result is going to be software that is better than commercial alternatives...a common theme with OS software.
You do highlight an important challenge: developing reputation managers for Open Source. Something like Epinions.com, but geared to our community. Something to help you seperate the wheat from the chaff.
When using freshmeat, I usually have to scan several entries. By looking at their various summaries, Web pages, and frequently by trying out a few packages, I filter out the projects that don't seem to be very well supported. This usually works, but it is time consuming, and doesn't take advantage of the fact that someone else with similar interests as mine probably just did the same thing a week ago. Collaborative Filtering, which is just a form of reputation management, would come in real handy. In fact, I'd be suprised if FreshMeat wasn't already working on this.
Oh, you mean the same cool guys that violated gamers' privacy by harvesting your email without your permission?
Yeah, yeah...they apologized and promised never to do it again. The point is, nobody's perfect.
Excellent idea.
However, I've personally tired of trying to give companies a "clue". Unless I feel like I've already established a relationship with a company, I'll rarely contact them.
Instead, I'll just vote with my dollar. If I can get Quake 3 online before I can get it retail, I'll buy it online. I'll leave it to the retail stores to figure out on their own why they lost my sale. Either they will get a clue, or be outcompeted by the company that does get it.
Tim
What's even funnier is reading all the justifications given in reply for not having it available in HTML. Especially now that the Web site reads: The document will be available for download from this page in three formats: WordPerfect 6, Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). =)
Is that audio clip available online anywhere?
I work at a Web design company that has a legacy in multimedia CD-ROMs and graphic Web design. We have recently moved into more content driven sites. A few coworkers and myself have been lobbying hard for taking accessibility into consideration when designing and building our Web sites. We've had little success in making changes.
I believe that hearing a screen reader read an inaccessible site would make the problem much less abstract, as it seemed to for you, and hopefully convince more of my coworkers to give a damn.
Hmm...I'm not a member of AOL. I don't pay any access fees to AOL. And yet if I go to http://www.aol.com/ I can see their Web site. IANAL, but that seems pretty public to me.