It seems to me to be a perfectly innocent dating service(???), but perhaps in the mind of the girl who originated the myth the site grew to be a porn site (the reason I'm thinking along these lines is that the girl only told the story weeks after the incident. Research has shown that when children are interviewed as witnesses to a crime or something, usually child-abuse or something cheerful like that, they start to embellish their stories more and more as time and the interviewing go on).
Well, this would be something if it would hit the market...I'd paste it all over my walls if it ever did. Unfortunately, there's always an incredibly long delay between the discovery of a certain technology in a lab and the moment that technology comes into wide use. For my kids' sake (I'm 24), I hope it's worthwile, more worthwile at least than cathode-ray tubes (1920's technology).
There is absolutely NO way this would work.
on
3D LCD's for Sale
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· Score: 1
Judging from the scanty info they give, the information a pixel gives is meant for one eye only. That means that your head would have to be bolted in place for it to ever work, seeing as that it is impossible to keep your head absolutely still without help.
Furthermore, they would have to paralyze your eyemuscles, as the eyes tend to move all over the place without you even realizing it. Even at such a course resolution, involuntary eye movements of about a mm would disrupt the careful setup.
These measures of course would only work if everyone's head would be the same size, seeing as that different head-sizes tend to lead to different distances between the eyes (the distance between the left eye and the right eye, and the distorted projection each eye receives because of this, is what leads to 3D vision). Of course this problem could be solved by configuring the display for each user individually.
You're absolutely right..and I wasn't trying to prove you wrong, just restating the case associating around some points you brought up, namely that an OS interface should be clear and functional. Even if it's ugly, that's ok as long as it helps the user get the work done.
The Linux CLI, for example, is butt-ugly, but at least it's not distracting. It is also, however, not very inspiring, in the sense that a command-line tends to put most people off (and face it, 99% of computer users are not `hackers' (sic)).
It is therefore of the utmost importance to create a usable, clear window manager if Linux is ever to gain any significant acceptance among users who are not systems administrators. Its other strongpoints (stability, configurability) are of no significance in achieving this if a well-thought out interface isn't realized. Soon.
I wasn't complaining about the fact that it's new. It is definitely time for something new: the Macintosh user interface has lost itself in extreme cuddliness without taking into account usability, and as for Windows...it's been said before but I'll say it again-there's just too many damn buttons in your average Windows program.
What I did complain about was that a lot of `theme-developers' seem to mistake excessive artiness for `a fresh approach to designing user interfaces'. Clever image-manipulation does not make a good working environment. A good working environment consists of clear, logical metaphors and a layout that doesn't distract the user from the task he or she is undertaking.
At the moment, I have seen no viable alternative to the Windows/Macintosh paradigm, overstretched as they may be. Most new interfaces (like Propagan(d?)a or MacOsX focus on creating pretty pictures instead. No-one says it's an easy problem to solve: there are entire universities working on it, all to no avail at the present moment. What is needed right now is for someone to come up with the one brilliant idea that will change the whole paradigm. Dumping yet another set of overworked GIMP-manipulations on the web just isn't the way to go.
Looking at the screenshots, comparing them to other desktop themes raises the same old question (again): How come Linux desktop themes always have to be butt-and-butt ugly? I agree, at first glance they can seem spectacular (like these), but imagine having to WORK at a computer that displays that for a long period of time..
Sure, the Macintosh "theme" or (sic) Windows may not be much to look at, but if I have to look at it for hours on end, I know which one I'd prefer.
A desktop should not be an art-exhibition, for chrissakes.
Maybe the people designing themes should worry less about displaying their GIMP-skills and more about user-friendliness (then again, the same may be said about Linux as a whole..I personally like working on it, but there's no way in hell I could get my parents to do so right now - it's just to clumsy for them). After all, a Window manager is a TOOL.
And if it must be ideologically correct, try to take some hints from the Bauhaus, the guys who said that "Less is more" but also that design should serve a social cause. Nice, clean design helps users get the most out of their system.
Maybe it's time some people read the Apple Lisa papers again. To be fair, though, I think standard KDE is OK. Boring, but OK.
To stay ontopic..yeah, let's use our own body electricity. We'll all get cute little tubes that tap into our spines (existenz!). Of course this does mean, that when your system crashes, you run the risk of becoming paralyzed as well, but hey, who cares? And yes, I think wearing hydrogen cells on your body is an exceptionally good idea.
If yr in a sour mood, it'll be easy to see how hardware encryption will lead to the death of all great art that depends to a greater or a lesser degree on technology. To give an example, right now sound cards aren't encrypted yet, though it won't be hard to see how they will be, soon, if this thing catches on. As soon as they are encrypted, the following will happen:
It will only be possible to play music by `bonafide' recording artists (i.e. those with a contract at some huge record company that can afford to pay for an encryption key)through your soundcards. Exit the indies, who have been the only ones to make music interesting during the past twenty, thirty years.
It will be impossible for independent artists without a huge budget to create electronic music, as developers of freeware/shareware music utilities (Buzz!) can't afford an encryption codec. So you can toy with these programs all you want, but your soundcard refuses to play the non-encrypted sounds. You HAVE to buy an obscenely expensive "professional" software tool, as only companies that make these can afford the licencing fees for the encryption.
The result is, that the majors finally get what they want: COMPLETE control of the music industry. And we'll all be forced to listen to Britney Spears all day long.
In fact Giordano Bruno has since long been thought of as a precursor to modernism. Samuel Beckett, for example, wrote a well-known essay describing the connection between him and James Joyce (called Dante..Bruno..Vico..Joyce, I can't remember the exact number of dots, though). His ideas about "panpsychism (belief that reality is constituted by the mind)" were instrumental in defining Joyce's vision (Ulysses, if you'll remember, consists of a description of the reality of Dublin seen through the eyes -stream-of-consciousness- of a number of its inhabitants. The modernists, therefore, were already quite aware of him, so I think it's fair to say his ideas were an important predecessors to our modern mindset. After all, like it or not, Joyce's ideas, as well as Becket's, have slowly slipped into our collective unconscious during the past century.
Why is it that discussions about subjects like this always cause the people who are having them to loose all sense of rationality? Is it because it is painful to realise that one can NEVER be sure of anything, and therefore one can never be sure that we interpret our own or other people's motives correctly? Try to look at it as a science/tech problem. Of course, theoretically, there is a chance that there is sth larger going on that we cannot possibly understand. In practice, however, our common sense and instincts seem to yield the desired results. We interact with other people just fine (barring a few exceptions) based on the assumptions we make about their and our motivations. The rational position therefore would be to accept this fact, to acquiesce to the idea that we're a bunch of molecules interacting with other bunches of molecules and to stop wasting our time with pondering `the beyond'. If there is a `beyond', we'll never learn of its existence anyway, so why bother getting all worked up about it? Man is a chemical process, just like any other -W.F. Hermans
This makes sense...isn't there also a disorder known as hyperactivity? And during an epileptic seizure, brain activity increases in certain parts of the brain, feeding back on itself continuously. If I recall correctly, the feeling you get when you haven't slept for a day or two resembles the feeling you get when you run a VERY high fever.
Being new at this Linux thing, I'm glad to hear that it wasn't JUST my ignorance that made installing SuSE 6.2 annoying and that seasoned users have the same trouble. Installing the normal commandline shell was dead easy (and a joy to use, I might add), but configuring X was useless. And the oft-praised SuSE helpdesk was no use either: `Your soundcard is not supported, read the instructions on the box.' Whereas they should've said `download the latest version of XFree as an RPM from our website', which, when I figured this out by myself, solved the problem. It's going to take just a little bit of extra effort before Linux is ready for a mass market, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.loveusea.com/
It seems to me to be a perfectly innocent dating service(???), but perhaps in the mind of the girl who originated the myth the site grew to be a porn site (the reason I'm thinking along these lines is that the girl only told the story weeks after the incident. Research has shown that when children are interviewed as witnesses to a crime or something, usually child-abuse or something cheerful like that, they start to embellish their stories more and more as time and the interviewing go on).
Well, this would be something if it would hit the market...I'd paste it all over my walls if it ever did. Unfortunately, there's always an incredibly long delay between the discovery of a certain technology in a lab and the moment that technology comes into wide use. For my kids' sake (I'm 24), I hope it's worthwile, more worthwile at least than cathode-ray tubes (1920's technology).
Furthermore, they would have to paralyze your eyemuscles, as the eyes tend to move all over the place without you even realizing it. Even at such a course resolution, involuntary eye movements of about a mm would disrupt the careful setup.
These measures of course would only work if everyone's head would be the same size, seeing as that different head-sizes tend to lead to different distances between the eyes (the distance between the left eye and the right eye, and the distorted projection each eye receives because of this, is what leads to 3D vision). Of course this problem could be solved by configuring the display for each user individually.
The Linux CLI, for example, is butt-ugly, but at least it's not distracting. It is also, however, not very inspiring, in the sense that a command-line tends to put most people off (and face it, 99% of computer users are not `hackers' (sic)).
It is therefore of the utmost importance to create a usable, clear window manager if Linux is ever to gain any significant acceptance among users who are not systems administrators. Its other strongpoints (stability, configurability) are of no significance in achieving this if a well-thought out interface isn't realized. Soon.
What I did complain about was that a lot of `theme-developers' seem to mistake excessive artiness for `a fresh approach to designing user interfaces'. Clever image-manipulation does not make a good working environment. A good working environment consists of clear, logical metaphors and a layout that doesn't distract the user from the task he or she is undertaking.
At the moment, I have seen no viable alternative to the Windows/Macintosh paradigm, overstretched as they may be. Most new interfaces (like Propagan(d?)a or MacOsX focus on creating pretty pictures instead. No-one says it's an easy problem to solve: there are entire universities working on it, all to no avail at the present moment. What is needed right now is for someone to come up with the one brilliant idea that will change the whole paradigm. Dumping yet another set of overworked GIMP-manipulations on the web just isn't the way to go.
Sure, the Macintosh "theme" or (sic) Windows may not be much to look at, but if I have to look at it for hours on end, I know which one I'd prefer.
A desktop should not be an art-exhibition, for chrissakes.
Maybe the people designing themes should worry less about displaying their GIMP-skills and more about user-friendliness (then again, the same may be said about Linux as a whole..I personally like working on it, but there's no way in hell I could get my parents to do so right now - it's just to clumsy for them). After all, a Window manager is a TOOL.
And if it must be ideologically correct, try to take some hints from the Bauhaus, the guys who said that "Less is more" but also that design should serve a social cause. Nice, clean design helps users get the most out of their system.
Maybe it's time some people read the Apple Lisa papers again. To be fair, though, I think standard KDE is OK. Boring, but OK.
To stay ontopic..yeah, let's use our own body electricity. We'll all get cute little tubes that tap into our spines (existenz!). Of course this does mean, that when your system crashes, you run the risk of becoming paralyzed as well, but hey, who cares? And yes, I think wearing hydrogen cells on your body is an exceptionally good idea.
The result is, that the majors finally get what they want: COMPLETE control of the music industry. And we'll all be forced to listen to Britney Spears all day long.
In fact Giordano Bruno has since long been thought of as a precursor to modernism. Samuel Beckett, for example, wrote a well-known essay describing the connection between him and James Joyce (called Dante..Bruno..Vico..Joyce, I can't remember the exact number of dots, though). His ideas about "panpsychism (belief that reality is constituted by the mind)" were instrumental in defining Joyce's vision (Ulysses, if you'll remember, consists of a description of the reality of Dublin seen through the eyes -stream-of-consciousness- of a number of its inhabitants. The modernists, therefore, were already quite aware of him, so I think it's fair to say his ideas were an important predecessors to our modern mindset. After all, like it or not, Joyce's ideas, as well as Becket's, have slowly slipped into our collective unconscious during the past century.
And this is exactly what Microsoft considers a bug
Why is it that discussions about subjects like this always cause the people who are having them to loose all sense of rationality? Is it because it is painful to realise that one can NEVER be sure of anything, and therefore one can never be sure that we interpret our own or other people's motives correctly? Try to look at it as a science/tech problem. Of course, theoretically, there is a chance that there is sth larger going on that we cannot possibly understand. In practice, however, our common sense and instincts seem to yield the desired results. We interact with other people just fine (barring a few exceptions) based on the assumptions we make about their and our motivations. The rational position therefore would be to accept this fact, to acquiesce to the idea that we're a bunch of molecules interacting with other bunches of molecules and to stop wasting our time with pondering `the beyond'. If there is a `beyond', we'll never learn of its existence anyway, so why bother getting all worked up about it? Man is a chemical process, just like any other -W.F. Hermans
This makes sense...isn't there also a disorder known as hyperactivity? And during an epileptic seizure, brain activity increases in certain parts of the brain, feeding back on itself continuously. If I recall correctly, the feeling you get when you haven't slept for a day or two resembles the feeling you get when you run a VERY high fever.
Being new at this Linux thing, I'm glad to hear that it wasn't JUST my ignorance that made installing SuSE 6.2 annoying and that seasoned users have the same trouble. Installing the normal commandline shell was dead easy (and a joy to use, I might add), but configuring X was useless. And the oft-praised SuSE helpdesk was no use either: `Your soundcard is not supported, read the instructions on the box.' Whereas they should've said `download the latest version of XFree as an RPM from our website', which, when I figured this out by myself, solved the problem. It's going to take just a little bit of extra effort before Linux is ready for a mass market, I guess.