There's the other problem: How does one distinguish between punctuated equilibrium and gradualism?
I think that's one of Dennett's centeral points, that it is a better of perspective and scale.
I know it's a bit of a cop out to make an assertation and then say "but I'm really not equipped to argue this" and go on my merry way but...I've read Dennett's points, couched in opposition to Gould, and it seemed pretty convincing, but I haven't really read a good debate where both sides go at it. And I think it is a somewhat academic debate (and of course, always runs the risks of some creationist pointing to honest intellectual disagreement within a certain framework (i.e. that evolution has been the source of biological diversity) as evidence that "even the scientists can't agree on what they're talking about!")
And like I said, I'm a big Dennett fan boy. Darwin's Dangerous Idea was incredibly exhilarating for such an academic book, and Conciousness Explained is about the best non-fiction book I've ever read.
I get lousy cellphone coverage at my house. And I'm pessimistic that this "congnitive" functionality would help much...instead, I'd just have something else to blame: "aw man, my phone must be retarded..."
Maybe we should forget waiting for the next boom. A different way of looking at things is that the way things are working now is 'normal'. Of course, then we get into debates about what 'normal' is.;)
Yeah, entering the field in 1996, ridden the boom, surviving the bust (amazingly, to me, with a stable and slightly rising salary), I wonder what "normal" should be thought of as.
But it is interesting to see how the evolution of technology is close to the current theories about evolutionary biology (something I know only a little about) in that there are incremental changes and modifications over long periods, interrupted by sudden large changes.
Ehh, because I'm such a Dennett fanboy (and love his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea), I guess I agree with his view that the neodarwinian "puncuated equilibrium" is mostly a mismeasuring of the historical record.
In general, though, there really hasn't been many qualitative changes in my online life for a number of years now. I'm programming in J2EE that got started in 2000, use a PDA 80% identical to the one I got in 1997, connecting to the internet at the same cable modem speeds as I was in 1998, using a desktop OS whose UI at least was 90% established in 1995...and don't even get me started on how old the essential principle of Unix is...
As far as I could tell they took out the bird's eye view from GTA:VC.
I hadn't played with the original or 2 too much before, just a little, but I was struck by how similar the 3D overhead looked to the originals (or should I have been impressed the other way around??)
GTA3 was very difficult to play like that however.
I know the behaviour you're talking about, but hardly ever see it. Sometimes it seems les page specific and more of a funk that the browser gets itself into. Anyways, it happens so rarely and the the remedy is so simple that I don't see it as much of an issue. YMMV.
Having a small, personal audience blog is great. It's the blogs that are clearly aiming for a mass audience yet have an excessively naval gazing attitude that really annoy. (Also annoying, and my page is a little guilty of this, are blogs that are just playing "best of" metafilter, slashdot, memepool, and/or boingboing.)
Fair enough, I'm not trying to force no tabs on the world, just pointing out a (at least on Windows) solution to the dilemna you described.
And listing off a bunch of tabs doesn't really add to your case. I could have that many browser windows open without breaking a sweat. About the only compromise I've had to make in that regard is giving two lines rather than one for the OS taskbar, now that I'm running at higher resolutions (1024 or 1280) and don't miss the extra line.
So, wouldn't you get 70-90% of the advantage by dragging your taskbar to the top of the screen?
I think it's a red herring...unless you have a biggo-giganto monitor (and I use a decent 18" LCD at home, that I sit reasonaly close to), then it's not how far your eyes have to travel, it's how big a target they have to stop at...I think quickly moving your eyes to the bottom of the screen and then scanning is as fast or faster than locating a tab bar somewhere *near* the top of the current window, and then scanning. (and when I'm interacting with a webpage, my attention is in the middle of the content, not on my browser navbar)
I guess the Phoenix site icons would be a little useful, although what % of sites actually bother making their own icon?
Re:The percentage of Safari Users that would use t
on
Hyatt Discusses Tabs
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· Score: 1
windowskey+M, then go to the taskbar and click on what you want?
Or is this audience not sophisticated enough to identify their desired window by icon and caption, and then need to see the whole thing?
PS, another reason I don't like tabs is I'm very sensitive about vertical real estate. In every browser, I try to put the home, stop, reload button bar, the File menu, and the address bar on a single line. So it makes sense to have one "tab bar" for the entire OS, i.e. the taskbar. (on the other hand, recently I've started keeping the taskbar at two buttons high, since otherwise the captions are too truncated to be useful.)
I thought I'd like XP's "pile up button by app" feature, but it turns out it both puts me an extra click from what I want to get to as well as prevents me from scanning titles visually without using the mouse...
I've only played with tabs a little, but they don't seem to useful to me.
I'm not a newbie who only uses one browser window, but I find if I'm trying to multitask in more than 4 or 5 windows at once, it's probably time to step back, take a breath, and refocus and prioritize my activities.
John, my way of coping with your situation is to right click to "open new window" with my mouse, then use my left hand to immediately alt-tab back to what I was reading. I don't have to wait for the new page to load, and I don't have to click back in my old window...Windows has made some subtle good decisions in the order alt-tab uses.
Is it possible that this whole "blogging" craze has been the fastest flash-in-the-pan to hit the technology world yet? Dare I dream that the even the uber-geeks and posers have already come to the conclusion that "hey, you know what? I'm not really that exciting, and nobody cares what I had for breakfast today"?
If that's what you think Blogs are, you're reading the wrong ones. Nice strawman.
Decent blogs are either link centric, or commentary by someone who's smart. There are a number of crappy ones, but so what.
I think video blogs are a bad idea, because it eliminates some of the advantages of the text and static image based web; you can browse, skim, and follow links from text, and you have mroe flexibility in how you parcel out your attention (close read all at once, reading here and there while doing something else, etc)
I think there's *some* room for this kind of format though; anyone remember the very funny daily (and now defunct) Internet show "Computer Stew"? ZD Net pulled the plug alas, but they had some funny stuff...and the got started with less than $3000 of consumer grade hardware.
(Hmm, looks you can still see episodes -- I should see if they still have their music video tribute to Notepad.exe....
Heh...one very shallow message of hope: What do a bunch of rich people know? I mean hell, last year they thought a recovery was just around the corner, maybe they're wrong in their pessimism too.
For all you VC hatas out there... I think a lot depends on which game you start with. I got a PS2 for VC (well, actually in hope that THundertanks was a decent game, but that's a different story), enjoyed it a lot, and bought GTA3...I really missed the new stuff VC added (in particular, having your character be mute was distracting, I felt like I was being assigned missions ala "Wing Commander" rather than playing a real human) and the city seemed small and cramped, with boats as more of an afterthought, and only the "middle island" interesting at all.
Huh. Why do companies have to be for licenses? If I write a book where the character drives a 1996 Green Honda Civic Hatchback, would I have to pay royalties?
I have one of those keyboards, but i don't need it all the time. Usually I just keep it at work.
It's pretty cool...some people have docking stations that turn their laptop into a virtual desktop machine. I have a cheap but usable keyboard that turns my palm into a virtual laptop (well, not quite...)
And this is an old old big keyboard, circa 1998 or 99. The "newer" ones fold up to something roughly the size of a Palm...total package is still notably smaller than a newton (and it seperates, so you could carry the palm in one pocket and the keybaord in another.)
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time - it's like a multi-generational meeting. Kirk, didn't you use to take pride in dressing like the evil dude from Indy Jones?
Heh, no, I naturally look like the guy; and for some of my winters at Tufts I wore a darkish fedora hat and an inherited nice cashmere longish coat that I'd wear, which didn't help matters...
And Grant Taylor, god of ACS:), living legend at my time...
Yeah, Grant helped me install Linux, pre-1.0, when getting X to work was a real bear and required cracking the monitor manual. He also was at the center of the Linux Printer HOWTO if memory serves. Among other fine qualities.
I worked at Eaton right after Kirk did, with Roman, Merredith & Sarah, and Todd.
Yeah...wasn't that the group at the core of the CULT OF BACON?
Tufts was in the news again yesterday, with protestors about daddy bush speaking there.
Sure has. We still have a big honkin news server of course, often joking that its our most reliable service. Never goes down, never needs any attention.
Glad to hear it's so stable, hopefully they'll keep it up for a good long time...I use my.cs account for news, so I can get to my.newsrc from anywhere...
[SNIP] Thats why I can't get into usenet. Its just become all too sad.
I think you may be confusing Usenet @ tufts with Usenet in general.
Clearly, Usenet at Tufts is diminished. And people all over the world are less likely to pick it up. Many groups are falling by the wayside... but many others are prospering. It's all about community...and Usenet is great because it lets you choose your UI and get in touch with people of all sorts of different interests...most groups are fairly tolerant of a non-hobbyist popping in and asking a politely worded question.
The eminent Death of Usenet has been a choke for years, but I'd give it at least decades.
Kind of reminds me of tufts.general. Did that die? I discontinued my tufts.* feed some time back...
Yeah, it's down to...yikes, maybe 2 posts a year of the "where did everybody go?" variety. And the oddball selling something, who doesn't realize how dead it is.
I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at Tufts (and elsewhere)
I think Tufts has some web based messageboards that might be a lot more active these days, or at least last time I looked. Still, i miss tufts.gen and the get-togethers at redbones...
Ah, old time reminiscing... > Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine", > everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.
And remained as such for a while (tho it used to do imap too) until I believe we decomissioned all mail services on it last month. (dragged me kicking and screaming over to trumpeter... how I miss procmail... )
Heh, desktop email apps mighta been after my time...I've always been kind of old schooler wrt e-mail, I used Pine 'til I finally wrote my own crappy webmail.
'Course, I was too much of a snob for Pearl (keep wanting to spell it "perl") or Emerald, really...I had a "Jade" account as a UC for a bit, and then usually stuck to the comp sci stuff.
Still, it was fun to be a part of that...as well as on the outskirts of those massive line printers in Eaton, with the print server "Henson" and all the PCs named after muppets. I remember when the big thing was adding those to the LAN and updating to spiffy new 486s--and even some of those brand new Pentiums!
Heck, when I was there, there was only a handful of terminal rooms. You needed your advisor to sign an approval form just to get an account on the system (pearl? emerald? all the old servers were named after gemstones or something). Needless to say, trying to explain email to my English advisor who used only a typewriter (and probably still does) was challenging to say the least...
Well, yeah, in the mid-early-90s, Tufts was little bit slow to the popularization of e-mail. (Remember, this was when the Web was still a little obscure scientific thing from Switzerland and you could grab domains like "mcdonalds.com" and "mtv.com" without much problem.)
So Pearl was this VMS system, mostly around for running Stats programs. As more and more students started getting accounts and dialing in (1200 or 2400 baud for the most part) Pearl got slower and overburdened 'til it couldn't be used for its original purposes. Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine", everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.
Things were probably a little worse off because of a previous falling out between "Academic Computing Services" and the Computer Science Department. CS students generally mostly lived on the departments Unix machines (most often named for musical terms, andante, forte, allegro, etc, instead of gemstones.)
Those terminal rooms were kind of fun, I like the little one we set up in Carmichael. I think they spraypainted them really ugly colors so they'd be less likely to be stolen...
Heh! I was on some of the "Tufts Connect" committees when the dorms were being wired, back in 1995-96. In fact on my laptop I sketched the version of the logo (later nicknamed "Frankie" and later retired when the program tried to distance itself from some early bad karma in terms of the required net/cable/long distance packages) -- you can still see it here -- though they removed the angelish wings I gave it.
I was student manager of the PC lab there. That was some great experience for me. Also, I got my first semi-pro programming experience at their Cirricular Software Studio.
Tufts is a good school I think, but man do the students like to bitch. A lot of rich kids who expect privelege and middle class smart kids who didn't get to a higher rung place (It turned out Elaine from "Seinfeld" went there as her safety school)
As for this article, i dunno. They want to chart a middle course between too strict and draconian cracking down of oddball positive uses of the network, and being too la-dee-dah about everything.
Slashdot Mirror
There's the other problem: How does one distinguish between punctuated equilibrium and gradualism?
I think that's one of Dennett's centeral points, that it is a better of perspective and scale.
I know it's a bit of a cop out to make an assertation and then say "but I'm really not equipped to argue this" and go on my merry way but...I've read Dennett's points, couched in opposition to Gould, and it seemed pretty convincing, but I haven't really read a good debate where both sides go at it. And I think it is a somewhat academic debate (and of course, always runs the risks of some creationist pointing to honest intellectual disagreement within a certain framework (i.e. that evolution has been the source of biological diversity) as evidence that "even the scientists can't agree on what they're talking about!")
And like I said, I'm a big Dennett fan boy. Darwin's Dangerous Idea was incredibly exhilarating for such an academic book, and Conciousness Explained is about the best non-fiction book I've ever read.
I get lousy cellphone coverage at my house. And I'm pessimistic that this "congnitive" functionality would help much...instead, I'd just have something else to blame: "aw man, my phone must be retarded..."
Maybe we should forget waiting for the next boom. A different way of looking at things is that the way things are working now is 'normal'. Of course, then we get into debates about what 'normal' is. ;)
Yeah, entering the field in 1996, ridden the boom, surviving the bust (amazingly, to me, with a stable and slightly rising salary), I wonder what "normal" should be thought of as.
But it is interesting to see how the evolution of technology is close to the current theories about evolutionary biology (something I know only a little about) in that there are incremental changes and modifications over long periods, interrupted by sudden large changes.
Ehh, because I'm such a Dennett fanboy (and love his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea), I guess I agree with his view that the neodarwinian "puncuated equilibrium" is mostly a mismeasuring of the historical record.
In general, though, there really hasn't been many qualitative changes in my online life for a number of years now. I'm programming in J2EE that got started in 2000, use a PDA 80% identical to the one I got in 1997, connecting to the internet at the same cable modem speeds as I was in 1998, using a desktop OS whose UI at least was 90% established in 1995...and don't even get me started on how old the essential principle of Unix is...
As far as I could tell they took out the bird's eye view from GTA:VC.
I hadn't played with the original or 2 too much before, just a little, but I was struck by how similar the 3D overhead looked to the originals (or should I have been impressed the other way around??)
GTA3 was very difficult to play like that however.
I know the behaviour you're talking about, but hardly ever see it. Sometimes it seems les page specific and more of a funk that the browser gets itself into. Anyways, it happens so rarely and the the remedy is so simple that I don't see it as much of an issue. YMMV.
Sorry, I was painting with too broad a brush.
Having a small, personal audience blog is great. It's the blogs that are clearly aiming for a mass audience yet have an excessively naval gazing attitude that really annoy. (Also annoying, and my page is a little guilty of this, are blogs that are just playing "best of" metafilter, slashdot, memepool, and/or boingboing.)
Fair enough, I'm not trying to force no tabs on the world, just pointing out a (at least on Windows) solution to the dilemna you described.
And listing off a bunch of tabs doesn't really add to your case. I could have that many browser windows open without breaking a sweat. About the only compromise I've had to make in that regard is giving two lines rather than one for the OS taskbar, now that I'm running at higher resolutions (1024 or 1280) and don't miss the extra line.
So, wouldn't you get 70-90% of the advantage by dragging your taskbar to the top of the screen?
I think it's a red herring...unless you have a biggo-giganto monitor (and I use a decent 18" LCD at home, that I sit reasonaly close to), then it's not how far your eyes have to travel, it's how big a target they have to stop at...I think quickly moving your eyes to the bottom of the screen and then scanning is as fast or faster than locating a tab bar somewhere *near* the top of the current window, and then scanning. (and when I'm interacting with a webpage, my attention is in the middle of the content, not on my browser navbar)
I guess the Phoenix site icons would be a little useful, although what % of sites actually bother making their own icon?
windowskey+M, then go to the taskbar and click on what you want?
Or is this audience not sophisticated enough to identify their desired window by icon and caption, and then need to see the whole thing?
PS, another reason I don't like tabs is I'm very sensitive about vertical real estate. In every browser, I try to put the home, stop, reload button bar, the File menu, and the address bar on a single line. So it makes sense to have one "tab bar" for the entire OS, i.e. the taskbar. (on the other hand, recently I've started keeping the taskbar at two buttons high, since otherwise the captions are too truncated to be useful.)
I thought I'd like XP's "pile up button by app" feature, but it turns out it both puts me an extra click from what I want to get to as well as prevents me from scanning titles visually without using the mouse...
I've only played with tabs a little, but they don't seem to useful to me.
I'm not a newbie who only uses one browser window, but I find if I'm trying to multitask in more than 4 or 5 windows at once, it's probably time to step back, take a breath, and refocus and prioritize my activities.
John, my way of coping with your situation is to right click to "open new window" with my mouse, then use my left hand to immediately alt-tab back to what I was reading. I don't have to wait for the new page to load, and I don't have to click back in my old window...Windows has made some subtle good decisions in the order alt-tab uses.
Is it possible that this whole "blogging" craze has been the fastest flash-in-the-pan to hit the technology world yet? Dare I dream that the even the uber-geeks and posers have already come to the conclusion that "hey, you know what? I'm not really that exciting, and nobody cares what I had for breakfast today"?
....
If that's what you think Blogs are, you're reading the wrong ones. Nice strawman.
Decent blogs are either link centric, or commentary by someone who's smart. There are a number of crappy ones, but so what.
I think video blogs are a bad idea, because it eliminates some of the advantages of the text and static image based web; you can browse, skim, and follow links from text, and you have mroe flexibility in how you parcel out your attention (close read all at once, reading here and there while doing something else, etc)
I think there's *some* room for this kind of format though; anyone remember the very funny daily (and now defunct) Internet show "Computer Stew"? ZD Net pulled the plug alas, but they had some funny stuff...and the got started with less than $3000 of consumer grade hardware.
(Hmm, looks you can still see episodes -- I should see if they still have their music video tribute to Notepad.exe
Heh...one very shallow message of hope:
What do a bunch of rich people know? I mean hell, last year they thought a recovery was just around the corner, maybe they're wrong in their pessimism too.
Well, here's hoping.
For all you VC hatas out there...
I think a lot depends on which game you start with. I got a PS2 for VC (well, actually in hope that THundertanks was a decent game, but that's a different story), enjoyed it a lot, and bought GTA3...I really missed the new stuff VC added (in particular, having your character be mute was distracting, I felt like I was being assigned missions ala "Wing Commander" rather than playing a real human) and the city seemed small and cramped, with boats as more of an afterthought, and only the "middle island" interesting at all.
Huh. Why do companies have to be for licenses? If I write a book where the character drives a 1996 Green Honda Civic Hatchback, would I have to pay royalties?
Or is it about the shapes and images somehow?
So what do people think of the content itself? Are we that close to the brink?
I have one of those keyboards, but i don't need it all the time. Usually I just keep it at work.
It's pretty cool...some people have docking stations that turn their laptop into a virtual desktop machine. I have a cheap but usable keyboard that turns my palm into a virtual laptop (well, not quite...)
And this is an old old big keyboard, circa 1998 or 99. The "newer" ones fold up to something roughly the size of a Palm...total package is still notably smaller than a newton (and it seperates, so you could carry the palm in one pocket and the keybaord in another.)
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time - it's like a multi-generational meeting. Kirk, didn't you use to take pride in dressing like the evil dude from Indy Jones?
:), living legend at my time...
Heh, no, I naturally look like the guy; and for some of my winters at Tufts I wore a darkish fedora hat and an inherited nice cashmere longish coat that I'd wear, which didn't help matters...
And Grant Taylor, god of ACS
Yeah, Grant helped me install Linux, pre-1.0, when getting X to work was a real bear and required cracking the monitor manual. He also was at the center of the Linux Printer HOWTO if memory serves. Among other fine qualities.
I worked at Eaton right after Kirk did, with Roman, Merredith & Sarah, and Todd.
Yeah...wasn't that the group at the core of the CULT OF BACON?
Tufts was in the news again yesterday, with protestors about daddy bush speaking there.
Sure has. We still have a big honkin news server of course, often joking that its our most reliable service. Never goes down, never needs any attention.
.cs account for news, so I can get to my .newsrc from anywhere...
Glad to hear it's so stable, hopefully they'll keep it up for a good long time...I use my
[SNIP]
Thats why I can't get into usenet. Its just become all too sad.
I think you may be confusing Usenet @ tufts with Usenet in general.
Clearly, Usenet at Tufts is diminished. And people all over the world are less likely to pick it up. Many groups are falling by the wayside... but many others are prospering. It's all about community...and Usenet is great because it lets you choose your UI and get in touch with people of all sorts of different interests...most groups are fairly tolerant of a non-hobbyist popping in and asking a politely worded question.
The eminent Death of Usenet has been a choke for years, but I'd give it at least decades.
Yeah, still in Boston.
I play darts w/ Gowen (along with a bunch of folk from TErradyne)
Who's still around? Roberto I think...M Cable's in Colorado or something...
I was wondering if a flying museum would work, built around it as it continued its journey.
Then I started wondering about the effect of the gravity generated by such a museum...
Hey, long time no see, etc...
Is this Grant of the "3 musketeers" Grant? Hiya!
Kind of reminds me of tufts.general. Did that die? I discontinued my tufts.* feed some time back...
Yeah, it's down to...yikes, maybe 2 posts a year of the "where did everybody go?" variety. And the oddball selling something, who doesn't realize how dead it is.
I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at Tufts (and elsewhere)
I think Tufts has some web based messageboards that might be a lot more active these days, or at least last time I looked. Still, i miss tufts.gen and the get-togethers at redbones...
Ah, old time reminiscing...
> Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine",
> everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.
And remained as such for a while (tho it used to do imap too) until I believe we decomissioned all mail services on it last month. (dragged me kicking and screaming over to trumpeter... how I miss procmail... )
Heh, desktop email apps mighta been after my time...I've always been kind of old schooler wrt e-mail, I used Pine 'til I finally wrote my own crappy webmail.
'Course, I was too much of a snob for Pearl (keep wanting to spell it "perl") or Emerald, really...I had a "Jade" account as a UC for a bit, and then usually stuck to the comp sci stuff.
Still, it was fun to be a part of that...as well as on the outskirts of those massive line printers in Eaton, with the print server "Henson" and all the PCs named after muppets. I remember when the big thing was adding those to the LAN and updating to spiffy new 486s--and even some of those brand new Pentiums!
Go Jumbos, and all that...
Heck, when I was there, there was only a handful of terminal rooms. You needed your advisor to sign an approval form just to get an account on the system (pearl? emerald? all the old servers were named after gemstones or something). Needless to say, trying to explain email to my English advisor who used only a typewriter (and probably still does) was challenging to say the least...
Well, yeah, in the mid-early-90s, Tufts was little bit slow to the popularization of e-mail. (Remember, this was when the Web was still a little obscure scientific thing from Switzerland and you could grab domains like "mcdonalds.com" and "mtv.com" without much problem.)
So Pearl was this VMS system, mostly around for running Stats programs. As more and more students started getting accounts and dialing in (1200 or 2400 baud for the most part) Pearl got slower and overburdened 'til it couldn't be used for its original purposes. Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine", everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.
Things were probably a little worse off because of a previous falling out between "Academic Computing Services" and the Computer Science Department. CS students generally mostly lived on the departments Unix machines (most often named for musical terms, andante, forte, allegro, etc, instead of gemstones.)
Those terminal rooms were kind of fun, I like the little one we set up in Carmichael. I think they spraypainted them really ugly colors so they'd be less likely to be stolen...
Heh! I was on some of the "Tufts Connect" committees when the dorms were being wired, back in 1995-96. In fact on my laptop I sketched the version of the logo (later nicknamed "Frankie" and later retired when the program tried to distance itself from some early bad karma in terms of the required net/cable/long distance packages) -- you can still see it here -- though they removed the angelish wings I gave it.
I was student manager of the PC lab there. That was some great experience for me. Also, I got my first semi-pro programming experience at their Cirricular Software Studio.
Tufts is a good school I think, but man do the students like to bitch. A lot of rich kids who expect privelege and middle class smart kids who didn't get to a higher rung place (It turned out Elaine from "Seinfeld" went there as her safety school)
As for this article, i dunno. They want to chart a middle course between too strict and draconian cracking down of oddball positive uses of the network, and being too la-dee-dah about everything.