...but the one thing it doesn't do is offer the ability to talk to a support technician on the phone when it won't work properly...
You're kidding, right?
Tech support for a web browser! Really, who is going to call up microsoft, wait on the phone for 45min+ or pay US$20/hour to get help on using a browser? The only reason someone would _need_ tech support for IE is if they were working with its activeX capability. But even then, one is better off reading the documentation.
Mozilla is very nice but still rough around the edges. It is catching up quickly on IE-- only a matter of time before it surpasses it.
Soon, IE will be playing catch-up. IE 7 will certainly have tabbed browsing, for example.
To get around latency, it would be necessary to deliver enough data to cover all possible reactions within some span of time that is greater than the latency period. The problem is that you can do that with something like a handshake. However, it could be done with objects whose movements are bound by deterministic forces + the forces applied by the client.
A handshake with latency... I can't imagine what that would "feel" like.
Thats what I did in the early 90's: undergrad followed by a completely unstructured 2 years as a slacker, followed by many years in grad school. Grad school was a great experience, and I was able to land nice jobs afterwords (in a field almost completely un-related to what I studied).
From the point of view of many artists and their fans, your band has already "made it". What could be better than for a band to play good music the way they want-- and without the interference of suit people.
If you are after more recognition and airplay then send more stuff to cool free-form college radio stations. They will play the music if it is good-- and not surprisingly, you end up getting gigs in those towns because a lot of the people who put on independent music shows are associated with free-form radio stations.
This is the way that many many bands got big: REM, Soundgarden, B-52's, the clash, etc...
As for "technology": Having mp3's all over the place can only help you. That's the ultimate goal of a band, right? to make music and have people hear it. Now you have the additional luxury of the web and mp3's-- your stuff can get out and you can sell it and promo it on the web rather than being limited to some obscure stinky newsprint fanzine.
As you can see, rolling your own PC is not the cheapest way to get a PC. However, if you want a really nice system, it is the best way to go.
I have built around a dozen PC over the last few years, and have helped or observed other people's efforts.
The following parts have always yielded a good PC:
- Asus motherboard - Creative Labs soundblaster live, sound card - IBM or Maxtor HD IDE - Whatever got good reviews lately for the CDR, monitor, and speakers - Latest Nvidia-based video card - Crucial (micron) DIMMS - Any popular NIC - External serial modem, diamond or US Robotics - microsoft intelli-eye mouse - IBM keyboard - A nice OS: W2K or Linux/unix (avoid W98, ME).
>[nokia cell phone, voicemail directions] ...it has instructions about a paragraph long...
Too long!
My qualcomm has a button with a picture of an envelope on it. Press the button, get list of messages, hit "talk" to listen to messages. I never looked at the manual, it was not necessary. Setting up voice mail is done via verbal prompts.
Maybe that is one of the reasons why people frequently wreck while using cell phones-- too many menial mental tasks to go through to perform the basic functions.
What I am trying to say is that it is up to the manufacturer to make devices and interfaces that don't require the user to be "fearless" of technology. This is a difficult challenge, but if it means more people will use better technology it is well worth it.
I don't know how many times I've heard "Just show me what I need to know; I don't want to learn all that other stuff" from any number of technophobes.
That's because most user interfaces are fussy, annoying and inconsistent with each other, especially mobile devices like cell phones. I don't blame people for not wanting to learn one fussy interface after another. Most don't really have "technophobia", what they really have is "I-don't-want-to-waste-my-time-o-phobia".
Your wife's phone may simply have a bad design. Common functions such as voice mail checking should be easily (in one step) activated. Checking voicemail should be so obvious, that there is nothing that needs to be remembered. If this is not the case, look for a better phone because this interface problem has already been solved.
So I will need to purchase XML Spy, Microsoft.NET Framework, or learn to use Emacs in order to process information. That cuts out 99% of the population.
You need to make a distinction between those that process information and those that create the tools that others use to process information. If you are creating tools, yes, you do need to spend a lot of time learning complicated XML details and you do need to use some annoying technology. If you are not a programmer and you just need to "process information", XML will and is already transparently making your life easier.
Do you think more or fewer people create their own websites now that we have FrontPage?
XML is intended to by manipulated by software-- not by people directly. In the future, you will not need to "see" the xml or its gritty details. It will be possible to manipulate XML comprehensively using standards-compliant toolsets. That is what the w3c is in the process of engineering now and because of the scope and generality of the project it MUST be complex.
It may indeed be necessary to have a PHD to grasp the inner workings of XML and all its related technologies. However, the end result of all of these efforts will be software tools made by many many software vendors that only require elementary school education to use.
> CRT monitors no matter how small are still big, clunky, and waist [sp] energy
Not all of them, check out the stuff that Candescent is making:
http://www.candescent.com/
These are "thin" crts (field emmisson displays). They essentially are thousands of microscopic cathode ray guns per pixel. The resulting display is much brighter than liquid crystal based displays.
In any case, I am surprised that no one has
mentioned LabVIEW-- a graphical programming
language that people can learn very quickly
and that can do serious work like machine vision
and motion applications as well as being
the language of choice for data acquisition
and process monitoring. LabVIEW has been around
for more than 10 years now.
I guess the lesson is, for every task, the best tool is the one that does the job.
No, there is almost always an infinite number of ways of getting a job done. Engineering is all about finding the best way to do it within the constraints of reality. Very rarely is there only ONE way to do something.
You are right that there is little incentive to upgrade when the system does the job. In fact, I once helped remove a PDP11 that had been operating until 1997. The system performed its function for ~20 years, and there literally was no reason to use anything else until servicing it became intractable. The Czech hospital is probably playing the same game. If they are smart, they have a plan for replacing this thing when it stops functioning. It is doubtful that the failure of the device will cause a crisis (its not like a heart/lung machine). The device simply automates a tedious task, so it can probably be down for an indefinite amount of time until a replacement is created.
I work in a dowdy little engineering company, that has a high regard for appearance. Ironically, the design of the office and even the entire office complex is swarming with bad taste.
To make matters worse, there are people in the office that use EXTREME quantities of cheap cologne and perfume. This LITERALLY forces me to stay a minimum of 20 feet away to avoid getting a headache.
I really miss my graduate school environment-- a 24-7 rat's nest of cabling/electronics, and bullet-proof office furniture from the 50's, blissfully exempt from bean-counting jackasses, department store paintings and useless erognomic furniture.
That probably won't help in this case. That McDonald's will be able to survive on tourist and motorist traffic alone.
In return, the local community gains a handful of part-time jobs for its teenagers, an eyesore building, and the stink of hamburgers and french fries.
Jose did the right thing. Sometimes, the only way to communicate is by disobedience. Not every place should look like a godforsaken Northern Virginia suburb.
Platter speed is not the only concern, of course. Bit density is just as important.
There is still a long way to go. It is possible to increase the current commercial storage density by at least another order of magnitude-- I'd have to look it up. Try IBM's website, they have recently read and written in laboratory tests densities of 35.5 Gigabits per square inch.
Other technologies include ferroelectric storage (using electric polarization instead of magnetization). This has, in theory, far greater storage density than magnetic storage because the walls of ferroelectric domains are typically thousands of times thinner than those of ferromagnetic domains.
Get this, they can run another OS! And who takes hours? I can install LInux, build a custom kernel, and configure everything I need in under 40 minutes *flex*
Fine, then in your picture, linux will go the way of VMS and TWENEX. If you cannot understand that the usefulness of a network, OS, or anything, increases more than linearly as more and more people use it, there is nothing else that can be said to you.
By the way, no one is impressed that it takes you less than X minutes to set-up linux. It is how you got there that is important. How much effort did it take? After answering that consider whether or not anyoneone who has full time job can realistically devote the same effort.
What's elitist about telling someone to read the damn instruction manual to something? It's because of people like you that we've got people who can't do something as simple as give the correct change at checkouts......
Really, its people like you that are holding linux back from being what it should be-- a ubiquitous OS that everyone can use. Actually, I take that back. Rather, it is IN SPITE of people like you linux is moving forward as a mainstream OS.
GET THIS: NON-PROGRAMMERS USE COMPUTERS TOO. It shouldn't hours of reading to perform simple administrative tasks.
You can have your cake and eat it too. The existence of easy to use graphical tools does not necessarily mean that text-based tools are going out the window (no pun intended).
Face it, some things are just a nightmare in linux. For example, making it so that you can have decent good-looking fonts in X requires a brilliantly written 20+ page how-to. Things just HAVE TO get better than this. Very few people have the time to read dozens of pages of information to change each little aspect of their computing experience.
Graphical front-ends are a good idea, epecially for administrative tasks that are done once per installation or that are changed infrequently or on machines that are administered by someone that is not a professional administrator. It is very hard to remember the details of commands like mount, for example. The man page is very long and complex for this command and it creates a feeling of dread in someone that just wants to get some work done.
The difference is under Linux you can *CHOOSE* not to run a GUI,which is something you GUI freaks would love to take away.
No one wants to take away anybody's command shell, man. What an irrational statement you made!
What "the GUI freaks" want is a computing environment that does not require absurd amounts of dedication to learn, and one that can be used by people other than programmers. This is clearly not an unreasonable thing to work for in the linux community.
Linux has clearly come a long way in the last few years. It is competative in the server market, and it is slowly gaining ground in the desktop market. In order for it to bury MS operating systems, linux must become easier and better than windows-- especially in things that non-programmers consider to be important: ease of use and reliability. The only way to design a GUI properly is to give the people what they want and then test it. You can't do that by sitting in a room and just thinking really hard, you have to perform studies that involve people.
Slashdot Mirror
You're kidding, right?
Tech support for a web browser! Really, who is going to call up microsoft, wait on the phone for 45min+ or pay US$20/hour to get help on using a browser? The only reason someone would _need_ tech support for IE is if they were working with its activeX capability. But even then, one is better off reading the documentation.
Mozilla is very nice but still rough around the edges. It is catching up quickly on IE-- only a matter of time before it surpasses it.
Soon, IE will be playing catch-up. IE 7 will certainly have tabbed browsing, for example.
To get around latency, it would be necessary to deliver enough data to cover all possible reactions within some span of time that is greater than the latency period. The problem is that you can do that with something like a handshake. However, it could be done with objects whose movements are bound by deterministic forces + the forces applied by the client.
A handshake with latency... I can't imagine what that would "feel" like.
If I see one more checkboard or curved mirror surface on "art" generated by a raytracing program I _will_ kill someone.
Yep,
Thats what I did in the early 90's: undergrad followed by a completely unstructured 2 years as a slacker, followed by many years in grad school. Grad school was a great experience, and I was able to land nice jobs afterwords (in a field almost completely un-related to what I studied).
Follow your bliss!
-- who said that?
From the point of view of many artists and their fans, your band has already "made it". What could be better than for a band to play good music the way they want-- and without the interference of suit people.
If you are after more recognition and airplay then send more stuff to cool free-form college radio stations. They will play the music if it is good-- and not surprisingly, you end up getting gigs in those towns because a lot of the people who put on independent music shows are associated with free-form radio stations.
This is the way that many many bands got big: REM, Soundgarden, B-52's, the clash, etc...
As for "technology":
Having mp3's all over the place can only help you. That's the ultimate goal of a band, right? to make music and have people hear it. Now you have the additional luxury of the web and mp3's-- your stuff can get out and you can sell it and promo it on the web rather than being limited to some obscure stinky newsprint fanzine.
> You have to wonder if the symbolism
> of the novel figured into the name
> of the OS... or if it's totally coincidental.
I think it is deliberate. I mean, there was even an OS called "Plan-9" at one point:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/
Sun's name choice just has higher aspirations!
As you can see, rolling your own PC is not the cheapest way to get a PC. However, if you want a really nice system, it is the best way to go.
I have built around a dozen PC over the last few years, and have helped or observed other people's efforts.
The following parts have always yielded a good PC:
- Asus motherboard
- Creative Labs soundblaster live, sound card
- IBM or Maxtor HD IDE
- Whatever got good reviews lately for the CDR, monitor, and speakers
- Latest Nvidia-based video card
- Crucial (micron) DIMMS
- Any popular NIC
- External serial modem, diamond or US Robotics
- microsoft intelli-eye mouse
- IBM keyboard
- A nice OS: W2K or Linux/unix (avoid W98, ME).
Does anybody else think this thing looks ugly compared to other handheld devices?
Geez, at least they could have made it circular or maybe added some interchangable plastic skins.
The device looks like an oversize old cellphone with no keypad.
How does the virtual keyboard detect keypresses?
I can't believe no one is talking about that on slashdot!
>[nokia cell phone, voicemail directions]
...it has instructions about a paragraph long ...
Too long!
My qualcomm has a button with a picture of an envelope on it. Press the button, get list of messages, hit "talk" to listen to messages. I never looked at the manual, it was not necessary. Setting up voice mail is done via verbal prompts.
Maybe that is one of the reasons why people frequently wreck while using cell phones-- too many menial mental tasks to go through to perform the basic functions.
What I am trying to say is that it is up to the manufacturer to make devices and interfaces that don't require the user to be "fearless" of technology. This is a difficult challenge, but if it means more people will use better technology it is well worth it.
I don't know how many times I've heard "Just show me what I need to know; I don't want to learn all that other stuff" from any number of technophobes.
That's because most user interfaces are fussy, annoying and inconsistent with each other, especially mobile devices like cell phones. I don't blame people for not wanting to learn one fussy interface after another. Most don't really have "technophobia", what they really have is "I-don't-want-to-waste-my-time-o-phobia".
Your wife's phone may simply have a bad design. Common functions such as voice mail checking should be easily (in one step) activated. Checking voicemail should be so obvious, that there is nothing that needs to be remembered. If this is not the case, look for a better phone because this interface problem has already been solved.
You need to make a distinction between those that process information and those that create the tools that others use to process information. If you are creating tools, yes, you do need to spend a lot of time learning complicated XML details and you do need to use some annoying technology. If you are not a programmer and you just need to "process information", XML will and is already transparently making your life easier.
Do you think more or fewer people create their own websites now that we have FrontPage?Yeah more, so?
XML is intended to by manipulated by software-- not by people directly. In the future, you will not need to "see" the xml or its gritty details. It will be possible to manipulate XML comprehensively using standards-compliant toolsets. That is what the w3c is in the process of engineering now and because of the scope and generality of the project it MUST be complex.
It may indeed be necessary to have a PHD to grasp the inner workings of XML and all its related technologies. However, the end result of all of these efforts will be software tools made by many many software vendors that only require elementary school education to use.
-H.
> CRT monitors no matter how small are still big, clunky, and waist [sp] energy
Not all of them, check out the stuff that Candescent is making:
http://www.candescent.com/
These are "thin" crts (field emmisson displays). They essentially are thousands of microscopic cathode ray guns per pixel. The resulting display is much brighter than liquid crystal based displays.
Sadly, they do not seem to be mass producing yet.
I wish there were some pictures of it.
In any case, I am surprised that no one has
mentioned LabVIEW-- a graphical programming
language that people can learn very quickly
and that can do serious work like machine vision
and motion applications as well as being
the language of choice for data acquisition
and process monitoring. LabVIEW has been around
for more than 10 years now.
No, there is almost always an infinite number of ways of getting a job done. Engineering is all about finding the best way to do it within the constraints of reality. Very rarely is there only ONE way to do something.
You are right that there is little incentive to upgrade when the system does the job. In fact, I once helped remove a PDP11 that had been operating until 1997. The system performed its function for ~20 years, and there literally was no reason to use anything else until servicing it became intractable. The Czech hospital is probably playing the same game. If they are smart, they have a plan for replacing this thing when it stops functioning. It is doubtful that the failure of the device will cause a crisis (its not like a heart/lung machine). The device simply automates a tedious task, so it can probably be down for an indefinite amount of time until a replacement is created.
I work in a dowdy little engineering company, that has a high regard for appearance. Ironically, the design of the office and even the entire office complex is swarming with bad taste.
To make matters worse, there are people in the office that use EXTREME quantities of cheap cologne and perfume. This LITERALLY forces me to stay a minimum of 20 feet away to avoid getting a headache.
I really miss my graduate school environment-- a 24-7 rat's nest of cabling/electronics, and bullet-proof office furniture from the 50's, blissfully exempt from bean-counting jackasses, department store paintings and useless erognomic furniture.
That probably won't help in this case. That McDonald's will be able to survive on tourist and motorist traffic alone.
In return, the local community gains a handful of part-time jobs for its teenagers, an eyesore building, and the stink of hamburgers and french fries.
Jose did the right thing. Sometimes, the only way to communicate is by disobedience. Not every place should look like a godforsaken Northern Virginia suburb.
No way! Is that true? What a rip-off!
Platter speed is not the only concern, of course. Bit density is just as important.
There is still a long way to go. It is possible to increase the current commercial storage density by at least another order of magnitude-- I'd have to look it up. Try IBM's website, they have recently read and written in laboratory tests densities of 35.5 Gigabits per square inch.
Other technologies include ferroelectric storage (using electric polarization instead of magnetization). This has, in theory, far greater storage density than magnetic storage because the walls of ferroelectric domains are typically thousands of times thinner than those of ferromagnetic domains.
Yes, I do it is... http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/font_howto/htm l1file/
Fine, then in your picture, linux will go the way of VMS and TWENEX. If you cannot understand that the usefulness of a network, OS, or anything, increases more than linearly as more and more people use it, there is nothing else that can be said to you.
By the way, no one is impressed that it takes you less than X minutes to set-up linux. It is how you got there that is important. How much effort did it take? After answering that consider whether or not anyoneone who has full time job can realistically devote the same effort.
Really, its people like you that are holding linux back from being what it should be-- a ubiquitous OS that everyone can use. Actually, I take that back. Rather, it is IN SPITE of people like you linux is moving forward as a mainstream OS.
GET THIS: NON-PROGRAMMERS USE COMPUTERS TOO. It shouldn't hours of reading to perform simple administrative tasks.
You can have your cake and eat it too. The existence of easy to use graphical tools does not necessarily mean that text-based tools are going out the window (no pun intended).
Face it, some things are just a nightmare in linux. For example, making it so that you can have decent good-looking fonts in X requires a brilliantly written 20+ page how-to. Things just HAVE TO get better than this. Very few people have the time to read dozens of pages of information to change each little aspect of their computing experience.
Graphical front-ends are a good idea, epecially for administrative tasks that are done once per installation or that are changed infrequently or on machines that are administered by someone that is not a professional administrator. It is very hard to remember the details of commands like mount, for example. The man page is very long and complex for this command and it creates a feeling of dread in someone that just wants to get some work done.
No one wants to take away anybody's command shell, man. What an irrational statement you made!
What "the GUI freaks" want is a computing environment that does not require absurd amounts of dedication to learn, and one that can be used by people other than programmers. This is clearly not an unreasonable thing to work for in the linux community.
Linux has clearly come a long way in the last few years. It is competative in the server market, and it is slowly gaining ground in the desktop market. In order for it to bury MS operating systems, linux must become easier and better than windows-- especially in things that non-programmers consider to be important: ease of use and reliability. The only way to design a GUI properly is to give the people what they want and then test it. You can't do that by sitting in a room and just thinking really hard, you have to perform studies that involve people.
So C.Lee, exactly which studies are a joke?