I think that Samsung and Google are doing it all wrong. They are still making smartwatches be "companion devices" to smartphones, yet you still have to write custom code to run on the device.
I think that the best type of smartwatch would be one that would act as a dumb terminal to the phone. Let it act as a second screen to the phone with a few button/touch actions plus a few sensors that feed data in the other direction. That would satisfy the most common use cases where a smartwatch would be useful. The others could be hard-coded not as apps but as system features. This would be best for the developer, as you would only have to develop one app - not two. This would be best for the user, as the program code on the "watch" could be simple you would need only a microcontroller that runs at tens of megahertz, and you get long battery life approaching what you are used to get in a watch. But of course, such a device would be too cheap to make and Samsung would not be able to sell it at a premium...
I would say that the Kinesis is in a class above any Microsoft keyboard in terms of ergonomics.
Not only are the hands slanted, but there is more separation between the hands. It has low-force mechanical Cherry MX Brown key switches that are relatively smooth, where as the Microsoft keyboard's keys bind horribly on off-centre key presses. (Cherry MX key switches are all the rage among PC gamers right now...;) ) The lack of numeric keypad is actually ergonomically better in that it allows you to keep your mouse closer to your centre. The keyboard layout can be fully remapped (without drivers, stored in the keyboard) and it can record macros.
Drawbacks is that 1) you must touch-type properly using all fingers and that 2) the keyboard is quite high because of its curved key wells. #1 isn't really a drawback in the long term though, as learning proper touch typing will make you a better typist overall. It is easier to learn touch-typing on a Kinesis than on a flat keyboard.
Nah. The plastic nubs holding the barrel plate to the steel backplane tend to break one by one, and then the barrel plate cracks at the hinges. (it was moulded flat) Enthusiasts often "bolt mod" their Model M keyboards with missing nubs: cut off the remaining nubs, drill up through the barrel plate and install proper nuts and bolts of steel instead. (not necessarily all in that order)
Indeed. I remember laptops made for Microsoft's "Window for Pen Computing" which was a special version of Windows 3.11... and this was back in 1992. There were different types of swivelling screens like on laptops made today for Windows 8.1. Lenovo Yoga and Dell XPS are not novel in the slightest.
The Swedish medical journal system TakeCare is one example. It handles practically all journals in the greater Stockholm area. It has sure had its slew of security problems, although I don't think that those could be attributed so much to the language as to sloppy sysadmins.
But hey... a few years ago I thought that nobody would use Erlang for anything significant, until it became a popular language for web services.
The only option would be "some other wavelet-based image format".
JPEG-2000 is completely different to ordinary JPEG. It is crippled in that the encoding is quite complex, has a tonne of different ways it can be encoded and is therefore difficult to do at speed. The software decoders that are not dead-slow are proprietary. You wouldn't really win anything with using JPEG-2000.
I was surprised when I was a kid back 25 years ago, that my dad could skim through text very fast. He worked as a journalist, and as such he was used to skimming through a lot of text to find the good bits that he could use as leads and sources for his articles.
The difference to the Internet today, is just that more people are exposed to larger amounts of many different types of text, just like "text-workers" like my dad was back then.
I think the general rule should be that the patient should decide about his/her own health. I have met and heard about people that have had various conditions that have opted out on diagnosis, because they want to opt out on a certain treatment. People who have had cancer multiple times and would rather die from cancer the next time than suffer through radiation therapy and chemo, or people who have had an implanted automatic defibrillator that has provided a very painful experience.
If any kind of medical test is done, be it genetic or otherwise, then the test results should automatically only be available to the doctor who had requested the test. Permission to/portions of/ the test results should be available to other doctors only if the patient gives explicit permission.
I see the smartwatch + handsfree headset as something that could be easier to use for many tasks than whipping up a smartphone, especially if the phone is larger than an iPhone.
Many tasks on a smartphone requires two hands if you are going to hold it safely or use multi-touch. A smartwatch requires no hand to receive a text/message, and one hand to touch/press a button.
You could leave your smartphone in the pocket or in your bag until you need a big screen or do a lot of input.
Streaming services are dependent on the distributors supplying them with movies. First thing to know about the movie industry and streaming is that the movie industry is conservative. Second that it is very possessive about its property. This means that the movie distributors pretty much set the terms for the streaming companies and not in a way that is in tune with the times. They dictate the time windows that movies will be available and often also the price at which it will be available to the consumer. Movie distributors often set these the same as for rentals of physical DVDs or VHS cassettes before that. They also mandate the use of one of a few approved DRM schemes and other restrictions, and they are not so eager to allow downloads - and they could see large buffers as being that.
Next, you should know that online streaming is not cheap for the service. The servers and the networks cost real money. That together with the remuneration to the movie distributors means that the profit margin can actually be quite small.
It has been a couple of years since I worked in the online movie streaming business, but I would be surprised if these things changed very much.
You (RMS) have said on numerous occasions that you don't use a cell phone because of privacy issues - that it can be used as a tracking device and underhandedly, for spying on its user.
What do you think of the "security-oriented" Blackphone? Secure enough for RMS?
If I were to publish my own software using a license that was like the GPL v3 except for a clause that said "This software may not be used by the military, the police or by any paramilitary or intelligence organisation, including the NSA", would that be a bad thing? If so, how and why?
(The subject line is just a joke. I'm a vegetarian and climate activist in real life and have been called "tree-hugging hippie" on more than one occasion.)
Instead of paying $1500 for Google Glass, why not make your own! You'll need an old pair of sunglasses, a piece of cardboard, sticky tape and a felt-tip pen.
Remove the glasses from the glass frame, write "Punch Here!" on the cardboard and tape it to the upper part of the frame above the eyes. Ta da!
I think that any web site that relies on Javascript for basic functionality is fundamentally broken. There is standard model for how web pages should work: it is through regular HTML and HTTP POST and GET requests. Javascript is, while useful, only an extension to HTML (so-to-speak), which should, when used, be used to enhance the user interface/user experience.
There are just too many sites out there that break the normal way of interacting with a web page through a web browser, only loading things on a single page dynamically thus breaking the use of the Back and Forward buttons, not allowing pages to be opened in new windows, etc.
"If it aint broke, then don't fix it" applies here.
My user account is from the first day that the site had come up again after a crash that had wiped the user database and everyone had to reregister. My previous user ID was not as low.
Slashcode, which the site runs on is open source. Could we create a new, independent Slashdot that runs classic Slashcode... and get it to host the same community as is hosted here?
Slashdot is based on user content. Once enough users are as active on the new site as they are on the old, the new site will be viable as a replacement.
Some users would have to work on the old site to submit and upvote "stories" with posters and links to the new site, to make people understand which site that they should migrate to.
The article on Ars Technica missed the worst thing about the new ThinkPad keyboard: what happened with the Caps Lock function. To enable Caps Lock, you press the Left Shift key twice.
That's right, one press less than what is required for invoking Sticky Keys under Windows - which everyone hates because it gets invoked when you don't want it. Expect a shitstorm from angry Thinkpad users who will buy laptops with this keyboard.
In my opinion, Microsoft's keyboards have awful key feel. I used to use Key Tronic keyboards. From '97 to 2010 I have used... *drumroll*... two in succession for my home PC. They lasted that long, and without getting spongy. The last one had very shiny keys but there was nothing wrong with the key feel.
In 2010 I started getting into mechanical keyboards, and have been using mechanical keyboards exclusively ever since.
Have you considered getting a Windows 8 tablet with a separate keyboard? I have seen a guy use a Surface Pro with a Happy Hacking Keyboard instead of a laptop.
There are lots of small foldable bluetooth keyboards out there, for use with tablets and cell phones. I think that a manufacturer could make one that is properly split in the middle. Last October, I submitted this design to a small competition held by Ducky (maker of good mechanical keyboards) and got on a shared fourth place.
The big problem with Microsoft's "Natural" line is that the angles are fixed. They fit some model person, but they are not ideal for everyone.
The solution is to get a keyboard that is truly split into two separate parts where the split angle, tent angle, inclination and distance between hands can be freely adjusted. Unfortunately, they are quite a bit more expensive. Examples include Goldtouch, the Kinesis Maxim (rebranded Fujitsu-Siemens), Kinesis Freestyle and the Matias Ergo Pro (due in August).
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I think that Samsung and Google are doing it all wrong.
They are still making smartwatches be "companion devices" to smartphones, yet you still have to write custom code to run on the device.
I think that the best type of smartwatch would be one that would act as a dumb terminal to the phone. Let it act as a second screen to the phone with a few button/touch actions plus a few sensors that feed data in the other direction. That would satisfy the most common use cases where a smartwatch would be useful. The others could be hard-coded not as apps but as system features.
This would be best for the developer, as you would only have to develop one app - not two.
This would be best for the user, as the program code on the "watch" could be simple you would need only a microcontroller that runs at tens of megahertz, and you get long battery life approaching what you are used to get in a watch.
But of course, such a device would be too cheap to make and Samsung would not be able to sell it at a premium...
I would say that the Kinesis is in a class above any Microsoft keyboard in terms of ergonomics.
Not only are the hands slanted, but there is more separation between the hands. ;) )
It has low-force mechanical Cherry MX Brown key switches that are relatively smooth, where as the Microsoft keyboard's keys bind horribly on off-centre key presses. (Cherry MX key switches are all the rage among PC gamers right now...
The lack of numeric keypad is actually ergonomically better in that it allows you to keep your mouse closer to your centre.
The keyboard layout can be fully remapped (without drivers, stored in the keyboard) and it can record macros.
Drawbacks is that 1) you must touch-type properly using all fingers and that 2) the keyboard is quite high because of its curved key wells.
#1 isn't really a drawback in the long term though, as learning proper touch typing will make you a better typist overall. It is easier to learn touch-typing on a Kinesis than on a flat keyboard.
I know people who collect vintage computing equipment that would kill you if they had seen you do that. (figuratively, of course)
Nah. The plastic nubs holding the barrel plate to the steel backplane tend to break one by one, and then the barrel plate cracks at the hinges. (it was moulded flat)
Enthusiasts often "bolt mod" their Model M keyboards with missing nubs: cut off the remaining nubs, drill up through the barrel plate and install proper nuts and bolts of steel instead. (not necessarily all in that order)
Indeed. I remember laptops made for Microsoft's "Window for Pen Computing" which was a special version of Windows 3.11 ... and this was back in 1992.
There were different types of swivelling screens like on laptops made today for Windows 8.1. Lenovo Yoga and Dell XPS are not novel in the slightest.
Large systems are still being done in APL.
The Swedish medical journal system TakeCare is one example. It handles practically all journals in the greater Stockholm area. It has sure had its slew of security problems, although I don't think that those could be attributed so much to the language as to sloppy sysadmins.
But hey... a few years ago I thought that nobody would use Erlang for anything significant, until it became a popular language for web services.
The only option would be "some other wavelet-based image format".
JPEG-2000 is completely different to ordinary JPEG. It is crippled in that the encoding is quite complex, has a tonne of different ways it can be encoded and is therefore difficult to do at speed. The software decoders that are not dead-slow are proprietary.
You wouldn't really win anything with using JPEG-2000.
Back in the '90s, I carried my computer and 14" CRT monitor to and from LAN parties many times.
What do you mean "not handheld"? I carried them in my hands on the subway.
I was surprised when I was a kid back 25 years ago, that my dad could skim through text very fast.
He worked as a journalist, and as such he was used to skimming through a lot of text to find the good bits that he could use as leads and sources for his articles.
The difference to the Internet today, is just that more people are exposed to larger amounts of many different types of text, just like "text-workers" like my dad was back then.
I think the general rule should be that the patient should decide about his/her own health.
I have met and heard about people that have had various conditions that have opted out on diagnosis, because they want to opt out on a certain treatment. People who have had cancer multiple times and would rather die from cancer the next time than suffer through radiation therapy and chemo, or people who have had an implanted automatic defibrillator that has provided a very painful experience.
If any kind of medical test is done, be it genetic or otherwise, then the test results should automatically only be available to the doctor who had requested the test. Permission to /portions of/ the test results should be available to other doctors only if the patient gives explicit permission.
I see the smartwatch + handsfree headset as something that could be easier to use for many tasks than whipping up a smartphone, especially if the phone is larger than an iPhone.
Many tasks on a smartphone requires two hands if you are going to hold it safely or use multi-touch. A smartwatch requires no hand to receive a text/message, and one hand to touch/press a button.
You could leave your smartphone in the pocket or in your bag until you need a big screen or do a lot of input.
Streaming services are dependent on the distributors supplying them with movies. First thing to know about the movie industry and streaming is that the movie industry is conservative. Second that it is very possessive about its property.
This means that the movie distributors pretty much set the terms for the streaming companies and not in a way that is in tune with the times.
They dictate the time windows that movies will be available and often also the price at which it will be available to the consumer. Movie distributors often set these the same as for rentals of physical DVDs or VHS cassettes before that.
They also mandate the use of one of a few approved DRM schemes and other restrictions, and they are not so eager to allow downloads - and they could see large buffers as being that.
Next, you should know that online streaming is not cheap for the service. The servers and the networks cost real money.
That together with the remuneration to the movie distributors means that the profit margin can actually be quite small.
It has been a couple of years since I worked in the online movie streaming business, but I would be surprised if these things changed very much.
This new institute for spying tech is not the first research institute named after Alan Turing.
The Turing Institute was a laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Glasgow, founded in 1983 and closed down in 1994.
It is designed to have much less round-trip communication between program and server which was a performance problem that plagues X.
In other cases it does not necessarily make programs more responsive, but it is designed to avoid tearing and visible redraw.
You (RMS) have said on numerous occasions that you don't use a cell phone because of privacy issues - that it can be used as a tracking device and underhandedly, for spying on its user.
What do you think of the "security-oriented" Blackphone? Secure enough for RMS?
If I were to publish my own software using a license that was like the GPL v3 except for a clause that said "This software may not be used by the military, the police or by any paramilitary or intelligence organisation, including the NSA", would that be a bad thing? If so, how and why?
(The subject line is just a joke. I'm a vegetarian and climate activist in real life and have been called "tree-hugging hippie" on more than one occasion.)
Instead of paying $1500 for Google Glass, why not make your own!
You'll need an old pair of sunglasses, a piece of cardboard, sticky tape and a felt-tip pen.
Remove the glasses from the glass frame, write "Punch Here!" on the cardboard and tape it to the upper part of the frame above the eyes. Ta da!
Maybe it is how jQuery is being used...
I think that any web site that relies on Javascript for basic functionality is fundamentally broken.
There is standard model for how web pages should work: it is through regular HTML and HTTP POST and GET requests. Javascript is, while useful, only an extension to HTML (so-to-speak), which should, when used, be used to enhance the user interface/user experience.
There are just too many sites out there that break the normal way of interacting with a web page through a web browser, only loading things on a single page dynamically thus breaking the use of the Back and Forward buttons, not allowing pages to be opened in new windows, etc.
"If it aint broke, then don't fix it" applies here.
My user account is from the first day that the site had come up again after a crash that had wiped the user database and everyone had to reregister. My previous user ID was not as low.
Slashcode, which the site runs on is open source. Could we create a new, independent Slashdot that runs classic Slashcode ... and get it to host the same community as is hosted here?
Slashdot is based on user content. Once enough users are as active on the new site as they are on the old, the new site will be viable as a replacement.
Some users would have to work on the old site to submit and upvote "stories" with posters and links to the new site, to make people understand which site that they should migrate to.
I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or naive...
The article on Ars Technica missed the worst thing about the new ThinkPad keyboard: what happened with the Caps Lock function.
To enable Caps Lock, you press the Left Shift key twice.
That's right, one press less than what is required for invoking Sticky Keys under Windows - which everyone hates because it gets invoked when you don't want it. Expect a shitstorm from angry Thinkpad users who will buy laptops with this keyboard.
In my opinion, Microsoft's keyboards have awful key feel. ... *drumroll* ... two in succession for my home PC. They lasted that long, and without getting spongy. The last one had very shiny keys but there was nothing wrong with the key feel.
I used to use Key Tronic keyboards. From '97 to 2010 I have used
In 2010 I started getting into mechanical keyboards, and have been using mechanical keyboards exclusively ever since.
Have you considered getting a Windows 8 tablet with a separate keyboard? I have seen a guy use a Surface Pro with a Happy Hacking Keyboard instead of a laptop.
There are lots of small foldable bluetooth keyboards out there, for use with tablets and cell phones. I think that a manufacturer could make one that is properly split in the middle.
Last October, I submitted this design to a small competition held by Ducky (maker of good mechanical keyboards) and got on a shared fourth place.
The big problem with Microsoft's "Natural" line is that the angles are fixed. They fit some model person, but they are not ideal for everyone.
The solution is to get a keyboard that is truly split into two separate parts where the split angle, tent angle, inclination and distance between hands can be freely adjusted. Unfortunately, they are quite a bit more expensive.
Examples include Goldtouch, the Kinesis Maxim (rebranded Fujitsu-Siemens), Kinesis Freestyle and the Matias Ergo Pro (due in August).