You betray some ignorance of classical music when you say that - not that it's different from the vast majority of people!
Classical music, though usually lacking in the wholehearted improvisation of jazz (though even that almost always relies on pre-existing chords and styles), still involves a lot of variation from performance to performance. The notes might be the same, but that just means that the musicians are concentrating more on the subtle things than on the notes themselves.
As well, just for the record, it's only quite recently that "classical music" (when will we get a better term?!?!) has not been improvised. Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Paganini, etc.. all improvised - most estimates say they improvised (in concert!) much more music than they ever wrote down. Some classically-trained people still improvise a bit - most decent church organists do, for one. Early music specialists (of which I am one) are always trained in some extemporization.
Perhaps more subtly, but also more importantly IMHO, is that ALL music is improvised when performed half decently - not necessarily everything, but aspects of it.
One example is a saxophone player (mainly classical) who told me in a master class that he takes into account the acoustics of the hall when he's playing. In a boomy, echoey hall, notes that he wants to be short much be played EXTRA short, in order to not be stretched by the reverb. Likewise, in a dry acoustic, notes need to have resonance added to them by the player, as a kind of performing trick, because the room won't create the sound on its own.
Even more importantly than little technical things like this is the fact that any performance is unique, no matter what style. A musician will be playing for the moment - judging his interpretation based on the audience, his feelings, the sound produced, the physical sensations, ambient sound in the hall, etc etc etc... For a truly exceptional performance, all of these things need to be taken into account.
Any music played "without variation" is far from a classical song, in my book! Rather, it's a technical excercise, devoid of music. I'm skeptical of the abilities of this program to do much more than that, though I'll reserve judgement until I can hear it for myself.
Band in a box can do this - I have no idea how good it is though. It also has different styles, etc etc... and you can enter your own tunes and have them played back by different "people"...
I believe that one was "Operation Condor" right at the beginning, in a rather unrelated episode. But boy was it neat! At the end of his daring escape, he fell off a cliff, and bounced around for quite some time - many "ow"s ensued.
Maybe that's so - I won't dispute it. In any case, it has been a while since I read the book in question. What I remember of it though isn't that she made the women seem powerful and in control - rather that she made them seem like PEOPLE - along with all the men, too. This is where many, many fantasy novels fall flat. You get millions of cliched characters, like the aforementioned pointy-eared scantily (yet supposedly protectively) clad swordfighters, and you get the non-existent names in lists of characters (for example, most characters in The Silmarillion, IMHO).
This story had me believing and caring about the people involved, which is something different - not that it's the first time that happened, by any means, but it is a very well-done example of it.
I think genres are continually being redefined, added to, changed, etc... any author who writes interesting new material is doing so. For an obvious example, take the authors that contributed to the whole cyberpunk subgenre of SF - since then, there has been a set of new ideas that countless other stories have drawn on.
In this case, though I haven't read much of MZB's work, I can say that "The Mists of Avalon" managed to tell the arthurian tale without sounding like either a lame kids book, or a boring history text. That was a first for me! I think through that book, and others like it, she convinced a number of people that fantasy isn't just about warrior chicks wearing chainmail bikinis slaying beasties and reaping the rewards - many people began to accept it as a valid genre of Literature. It certainly renewed my faith after having read too many utterly mindless fantasy clones.
Exactly! My family had two cell pohones, one for each car, but we definitely needed them (though they didn't get used all that much).
We lived (I've moved out now) about a half an hour outside of town, and have always been a very busy family. So before the phones, we'd have to plan every day long in advance, to figure out how everyone would get picked up and driven to the next activity/work/home/school. With the cell phones, rather than planning everything, we could just say "I'll call you around noon when i find out where I'll be at 5:00 in order to get picked up" or something of that nature. Certainly, it wasn't about techhie goodies (though I like those too!)
I recommend a series of books by someone who I forget, but who is sure to be easy enough to find... called "The Cross time engineer" (that's also the title of the first book, I believe..)
It's about a guy who goes back in time to medieval poland, and basically starts the industrial revolution several hundred years early, in order to fight off a Mongolian invasion force. It's very interesting becasue he does just what you describe - starts from scratch, mining ore, setting up educational facilities, military, etc... In short, it's not just technological engineering, but sociological. The books are great fun, too! Many silly characters and episodes mixed in with the main plot. It's been years since I read them though... Hope I'm not forgetting stuff!
There isn't much live music now, compared to a hundred years ago!
I think recording has drastically changed the face of the music industry, both in its role in society, and the way it is appreciated. For example, people in general don't listen to music very closely - I've asked a numebr of friends, musical and otherwise, about this, and very few of them care about much beyond "the general tune" or whether the melody is familiar. I think a lot of this has to do with the place of music as a background - you see it as a soundtrack to a tv show, as a jingle in an ad, being played on the radio while driving, etc... And all this time, people are hardly paying attention to it, let alone really trying to get as much value out of it as they can. Because of this (and other things...) music education, and general knowledge suffers.
One way of looking at it is to say that technology has changed the way we do things, so the music should change to reflect that, and we should have styles that are more or less designed to be background. To a small extent, I agree with this, but it gets to the point where nobody knows that anything else is out there.
I wonder if literature has suffered in the same way? Judging from slashdot comments, and other experiences, I would say no. But I don't really know why, except that it's harder to read a book "in the background".
It's also interesting to note that the situation doesn't seem nearly so bleak in Europe as here in Canada, and for the most part, USA. I was tlaking to someone in Finland who told me that EVERY student, by the time they reach grade 3, knows more than I learned as a music major in my first year of university. This is kinda pathetic, and points towards something - I think it has a lot to do with affordable and easily available recordings, but I don't know why there has been so much less change in Europe. Definitely something to look into.
Why would you need a seperate cable for each string? Normal guitars have all the strings mixed together before it ever gets to the patch cord. Mixing like that is done on the guitar...
I've always been rather skeptical about markets, inventing, economy, etc.. However, when I see things like the weather trading, and nonexistent companies like linuxone.com, I have to ask myself just WTF is going on here? How can anyone take this seriously?
That said, I know for a fact aht I don't understand even very legitimate trading. Is there some site out there that explains the basics of all this? I don't see any difference between investing in the weather, and sitting in front of a slot machine! (except for the pretty lights...)
Many worldwide banks offer NetBanking as a way of allowing customers access to their account, bill payments, loan payments, etc over the net. The way this is done is not through a browser, but through a secure on-line client terminal, developed by the bank (which is not open source;-) ).
My bank has an interesting solution here: It uses a client, which does all the wacky password stuff, and then acts as a local proxy, so that you can use your normal browser, but only with the security program working. It can be a bit of a pain to setup when you're already using a proxy, but not all that bad. And it seems to work - I haven't heard of any great problems yet.
Of course, the nice thing about just having stuff on the web is that you don't need any proprietary software - it'll work on any OS that has a browser!
Of course, you'll want decent encryption - would a "simple" solution that used 128 bit encryption be generally decent? Would most of you trust it?
(of course it would depend on a lot of other things... but hey)
If so, all we need is to allow 128 bit encryption everywhere! There's that familiar refrain again...
But then, I also like Dickens a lot, and many people can't stand his long descriptions either.
I didn't even find there were that many descriptions in the books - the things that stood out were the completeness of the world, and the complexity of the plots. (and more so, the rather strange plot development, with about 7 different plots all coming together at the end).
I haven't seen the movie, but I have read Idoru, and LOVED it. Not as much as the original trilogy, but boy was it good!
Of course, opinions differ on all sorts of things, but I have to ask what you didn't like about it? For me, most of it was classic Gibson: many different shards of plot, each glimpsed for a few instants, then coming together at the end in a glorious conclusion, technology having an effect on society as seen through the eyes of "the little people"... I really really liked it.
My big problem is that with most of Gibson's books, the plot is incredibly twisted and convoluted. I found myself going back to reread things just so they made sense! Not that this is a problem with the books - I LOVED it. But I think it'll be awfully tricky to do in movie form without simply telling all the events in the order that they happened, rather than the order which they are told in the book... That might wreck some stuff.. maybe not. Of course, the usual problem of too much stuff in the book to fit a 2 1/2 hour movie applies too... I think 6hr movies should happen more often!!!:)
Such an input device does exist - I'm positive I remember reading something about a "bat". Basically, it's a 3d mouse, as the name implies (is there really anything ELSE they could name it?) I believe that the University of New Brunswick developed it to help them with some mapping, or 3d visualization software years ago. I haven't seen anything on the consumer end of things, but it's certainly doable.
Not all do. I was looking into getting a cable modem in Montreal last year from Videotron. The license agreement specifically prohibits servers of any kind (I wonder if ICQ fits the bill? Or irc DCCs?). However, I talked to some people from customer support, and they said they didn't really care. It was mainly just so they could be completely absolved of any responsibility considering security, etc... I think that's a REALLY stupid reason, but it's nice that they don't care.
On the other hand, they have a putrid license agreement that kind of scares me, really.. Sympatico and NBNet's ADSL service both let you do whatever you want, as long as it isn't illegal. They say "don't waste bandwidth, but do what you want", pretty much. Sympatico doesn't even have a bandwidth limit! And with nbtel, you 5 gigs for $40, and for another $15, you get 20. Very nice. Yay Canada again!;)
I can.:) Sympatico (Bell Canada's ISP) is selling ADSL for $39.95/month. That's in Canadian dollars, mind you.:) I can't wait for september, when I go back to school in a city with wires.. (I'm out in the middle of the woods now. Yay 28.8!)
Just out of curiosity, are there many different styles represented by MP3s, on mp3.com or elsewhere? While I don't MIND electronica and rock/pop (I don't even know what label to apply to anything anymore), my interests are really focused on classical and jazz.
For the record though, if my sax quartet makes a recordning next school year, like we meant to this year, I'm going to look into putting it on mp3.com. I think that kind of music has potential to work very well, since so few people know it. It's VERY hard to get classical saxophone CDs anywhere, and most of them only have the same few pieces. Something like this might ket more people hear some of the music that's out there, without paying through the nose for imports that they've never heard.
NBTel has a similar thing - the service is called "Vibe". It makes a *bit* of sense, since the Vibe network isn't all ADSL. The first bits that they put in a few years ago use some sort of fibre straight to the house. As well, they're allowing for other technologies (SDSL?) on the same plan in the future. However, they don't mention any of that anywhere on the web page. I had to check with some other users to find out. Grr....
Meanwhile, in Montreal, a teeming metropolis, most of the city can't even get a dialup line that doesn't disconnect every half hour or so. A great deal of the city can't even get an overpriced cable modem.
Much to my delight, I found after posting that sympatico (Bell Canada's ISP) has ISDN through a good chunk of montreal! Woohoo! It's actually a very similar deal to NBNet's - $40, unlimited usage, servers, masquerading, etc.. are all fine. It uses DHCP, and static IPs don't exist, but for that price, maybe I'll get dyndns or something.
I don't know if the service is as good as what i've heard from NBNet ADSL, but it's a very good price in any case.
For an interesting take on this, read "Steel Beach" by John Varley (and anything else you can find by him!) There's a park and museum built around the lunar landing sites, but few people bother looking at it... Great book, anyway.
I can't believe what I'm hearing here! Hundreds of dollars, plus all these hassles? I've been looking (only through curiosity, as I live well outside any city, and won't be able to get xDSL for many more years) at the options here in New Brunswick, Canada, and it seems they blow everything else out of the water.
For 39.95 CANADIAN - that's probably under US$30, you get everything - the connection, the modem, 5 gigs of bandwidth (upgradeable to 20 for another $15)...
As well, you have free reign for running servers,etc, and connections within the service don't count towards your overall usage.
The IP situation is a bit odd - you have a static IP for within the service, but if you make external connections, you have a different one, that changes after half an hour of inactivity. Apparently this isn't a big problem, however, since it's very easy to just have a process pinging something every 10 minutes, and you essentially have a static IP (until you reboot). A real static IP can be had for a few $$.
Of course, on top of that, you get mail and news, etc.. from the phone company's ISP, which has been VERY good. I've heard almost no complaints, besides the usual very occasional downtimes.
All in all, I'm reminded of how great this phone system is. We get all this in a primarily rural province (though the ADSL is only in larger communities so far). Meanwhile, in Montreal, a teeming metropolis, most of the city can't even get a dialup line that doesn't disconnect every half hour or so. A great deal of the city can't even get an overpriced cable modem.
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You betray some ignorance of classical music when you say that - not that it's different from the vast majority of people!
Classical music, though usually lacking in the wholehearted improvisation of jazz (though even that almost always relies on pre-existing chords and styles), still involves a lot of variation from performance to performance. The notes might be the same, but that just means that the musicians are concentrating more on the subtle things than on the notes themselves.
As well, just for the record, it's only quite recently that "classical music" (when will we get a better term?!?!) has not been improvised. Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Paganini, etc.. all improvised - most estimates say they improvised (in concert!) much more music than they ever wrote down. Some classically-trained people still improvise a bit - most decent church organists do, for one. Early music specialists (of which I am one) are always trained in some extemporization.
Perhaps more subtly, but also more importantly IMHO, is that ALL music is improvised when performed half decently - not necessarily everything, but aspects of it.
One example is a saxophone player (mainly classical) who told me in a master class that he takes into account the acoustics of the hall when he's playing. In a boomy, echoey hall, notes that he wants to be short much be played EXTRA short, in order to not be stretched by the reverb. Likewise, in a dry acoustic, notes need to have resonance added to them by the player, as a kind of performing trick, because the room won't create the sound on its own.
Even more importantly than little technical things like this is the fact that any performance is unique, no matter what style. A musician will be playing for the moment - judging his interpretation based on the audience, his feelings, the sound produced, the physical sensations, ambient sound in the hall, etc etc etc... For a truly exceptional performance, all of these things need to be taken into account.
Any music played "without variation" is far from a classical song, in my book! Rather, it's a technical excercise, devoid of music. I'm skeptical of the abilities of this program to do much more than that, though I'll reserve judgement until I can hear it for myself.
Band in a box can do this - I have no idea how good it is though. It also has different styles, etc etc... and you can enter your own tunes and have them played back by different "people"...
I believe that one was "Operation Condor" right at the beginning, in a rather unrelated episode. But boy was it neat! At the end of his daring escape, he fell off a cliff, and bounced around for quite some time - many "ow"s ensued.
Maybe that's so - I won't dispute it. In any case, it has been a while since I read the book in question. What I remember of it though isn't that she made the women seem powerful and in control - rather that she made them seem like PEOPLE - along with all the men, too. This is where many, many fantasy novels fall flat. You get millions of cliched characters, like the aforementioned pointy-eared scantily (yet supposedly protectively) clad swordfighters, and you get the non-existent names in lists of characters (for example, most characters in The Silmarillion, IMHO).
This story had me believing and caring about the people involved, which is something different - not that it's the first time that happened, by any means, but it is a very well-done example of it.
I think genres are continually being redefined, added to, changed, etc... any author who writes interesting new material is doing so. For an obvious example, take the authors that contributed to the whole cyberpunk subgenre of SF - since then, there has been a set of new ideas that countless other stories have drawn on.
In this case, though I haven't read much of MZB's work, I can say that "The Mists of Avalon" managed to tell the arthurian tale without sounding like either a lame kids book, or a boring history text. That was a first for me! I think through that book, and others like it, she convinced a number of people that fantasy isn't just about warrior chicks wearing chainmail bikinis slaying beasties and reaping the rewards - many people began to accept it as a valid genre of Literature. It certainly renewed my faith after having read too many utterly mindless fantasy clones.
Exactly! My family had two cell pohones, one for each car, but we definitely needed them (though they didn't get used all that much).
We lived (I've moved out now) about a half an hour outside of town, and have always been a very busy family. So before the phones, we'd have to plan every day long in advance, to figure out how everyone would get picked up and driven to the next activity/work/home/school. With the cell phones, rather than planning everything, we could just say "I'll call you around noon when i find out where I'll be at 5:00 in order to get picked up" or something of that nature. Certainly, it wasn't about techhie goodies (though I like those too!)
I recommend a series of books by someone who I forget, but who is sure to be easy enough to find... called "The Cross time engineer" (that's also the title of the first book, I believe..)
It's about a guy who goes back in time to medieval poland, and basically starts the industrial revolution several hundred years early, in order to fight off a Mongolian invasion force. It's very interesting becasue he does just what you describe - starts from scratch, mining ore, setting up educational facilities, military, etc... In short, it's not just technological engineering, but sociological. The books are great fun, too! Many silly characters and episodes mixed in with the main plot. It's been years since I read them though... Hope I'm not forgetting stuff!
There isn't much live music now, compared to a hundred years ago!
I think recording has drastically changed the face of the music industry, both in its role in society, and the way it is appreciated. For example, people in general don't listen to music very closely - I've asked a numebr of friends, musical and otherwise, about this, and very few of them care about much beyond "the general tune" or whether the melody is familiar. I think a lot of this has to do with the place of music as a background - you see it as a soundtrack to a tv show, as a jingle in an ad, being played on the radio while driving, etc... And all this time, people are hardly paying attention to it, let alone really trying to get as much value out of it as they can. Because of this (and other things...) music education, and general knowledge suffers.
One way of looking at it is to say that technology has changed the way we do things, so the music should change to reflect that, and we should have styles that are more or less designed to be background. To a small extent, I agree with this, but it gets to the point where nobody knows that anything else is out there.
I wonder if literature has suffered in the same way? Judging from slashdot comments, and other experiences, I would say no. But I don't really know why, except that it's harder to read a book "in the background".
It's also interesting to note that the situation doesn't seem nearly so bleak in Europe as here in Canada, and for the most part, USA. I was tlaking to someone in Finland who told me that EVERY student, by the time they reach grade 3, knows more than I learned as a music major in my first year of university. This is kinda pathetic, and points towards something - I think it has a lot to do with affordable and easily available recordings, but I don't know why there has been so much less change in Europe. Definitely something to look into.
McGill offers a D.Mus (in music.. duh.. )
Some music subjects get PhDs though - composition, and musicology, I believe. Performers get D.Mus, and maybe a few others.
Why would you need a seperate cable for each string? Normal guitars have all the strings mixed together before it ever gets to the patch cord. Mixing like that is done on the guitar...
I've always been rather skeptical about markets, inventing, economy, etc.. However, when I see things like the weather trading, and nonexistent companies like linuxone.com, I have to ask myself just WTF is going on here? How can anyone take this seriously?
That said, I know for a fact aht I don't understand even very legitimate trading. Is there some site out there that explains the basics of all this? I don't see any difference between investing in the weather, and sitting in front of a slot machine! (except for the pretty lights...)
Many worldwide banks offer NetBanking as a way of allowing customers access to their account, bill payments, loan payments, etc over the net. The way this is done is not through a browser, but through a secure on-line client terminal, developed by the bank (which is not open source ;-) ).
My bank has an interesting solution here: It uses a client, which does all the wacky password stuff, and then acts as a local proxy, so that you can use your normal browser, but only with the security program working. It can be a bit of a pain to setup when you're already using a proxy, but not all that bad. And it seems to work - I haven't heard of any great problems yet.
Of course, the nice thing about just having stuff on the web is that you don't need any proprietary software - it'll work on any OS that has a browser!
Of course, you'll want decent encryption - would a "simple" solution that used 128 bit encryption be generally decent? Would most of you trust it?
(of course it would depend on a lot of other things... but hey)
If so, all we need is to allow 128 bit encryption everywhere! There's that familiar refrain again...
I disagree. :)
But then, I also like Dickens a lot, and many people can't stand his long descriptions either.
I didn't even find there were that many descriptions in the books - the things that stood out were the completeness of the world, and the complexity of the plots. (and more so, the rather strange plot development, with about 7 different plots all coming together at the end).
I haven't seen the movie, but I have read Idoru, and LOVED it. Not as much as the original trilogy, but boy was it good!
Of course, opinions differ on all sorts of things, but I have to ask what you didn't like about it? For me, most of it was classic Gibson: many different shards of plot, each glimpsed for a few instants, then coming together at the end in a glorious conclusion, technology having an effect on society as seen through the eyes of "the little people"... I really really liked it.
I think he's actually American, officially, but he's been living in Canada for many years now.
My big problem is that with most of Gibson's books, the plot is incredibly twisted and convoluted. I found myself going back to reread things just so they made sense! Not that this is a problem with the books - I LOVED it. But I think it'll be awfully tricky to do in movie form without simply telling all the events in the order that they happened, rather than the order which they are told in the book... That might wreck some stuff.. maybe not. Of course, the usual problem of too much stuff in the book to fit a 2 1/2 hour movie applies too... I think 6hr movies should happen more often!!! :)
Such an input device does exist - I'm positive I remember reading something about a "bat". Basically, it's a 3d mouse, as the name implies (is there really anything ELSE they could name it?) I believe that the University of New Brunswick developed it to help them with some mapping, or 3d visualization software years ago. I haven't seen anything on the consumer end of things, but it's certainly doable.
Not all do. I was looking into getting a cable modem in Montreal last year from Videotron. The license agreement specifically prohibits servers of any kind (I wonder if ICQ fits the bill? Or irc DCCs?). However, I talked to some people from customer support, and they said they didn't really care. It was mainly just so they could be completely absolved of any responsibility considering security, etc... I think that's a REALLY stupid reason, but it's nice that they don't care.
;)
On the other hand, they have a putrid license agreement that kind of scares me, really.. Sympatico and NBNet's ADSL service both let you do whatever you want, as long as it isn't illegal. They say "don't waste bandwidth, but do what you want", pretty much. Sympatico doesn't even have a bandwidth limit! And with nbtel, you 5 gigs for $40, and for another $15, you get 20. Very nice. Yay Canada again!
I can. :) Sympatico (Bell Canada's ISP) is selling ADSL for $39.95/month. That's in Canadian dollars, mind you. :) I can't wait for september, when I go back to school in a city with wires.. (I'm out in the middle of the woods now. Yay 28.8!)
Just out of curiosity, are there many different styles represented by MP3s, on mp3.com or elsewhere? While I don't MIND electronica and rock/pop (I don't even know what label to apply to anything anymore), my interests are really focused on classical and jazz.
For the record though, if my sax quartet makes a recordning next school year, like we meant to this year, I'm going to look into putting it on mp3.com. I think that kind of music has potential to work very well, since so few people know it. It's VERY hard to get classical saxophone CDs anywhere, and most of them only have the same few pieces. Something like this might ket more people hear some of the music that's out there, without paying through the nose for imports that they've never heard.
NBTel has a similar thing - the service is called "Vibe". It makes a *bit* of sense, since the Vibe network isn't all ADSL. The first bits that they put in a few years ago use some sort of fibre straight to the house. As well, they're allowing for other technologies (SDSL?) on the same plan in the future. However, they don't mention any of that anywhere on the web page. I had to check with some other users to find out. Grr....
Meanwhile, in Montreal, a teeming metropolis, most of the city can't even get a dialup line that doesn't disconnect every half hour or so. A great deal of the city can't even get an overpriced cable modem.
Much to my delight, I found after posting that sympatico (Bell Canada's ISP) has ISDN through a good chunk of montreal! Woohoo! It's actually a very similar deal to NBNet's - $40, unlimited usage, servers, masquerading, etc.. are all fine. It uses DHCP, and static IPs don't exist, but for that price, maybe I'll get dyndns or something.
I don't know if the service is as good as what i've heard from NBNet ADSL, but it's a very good price in any case.
..think of it as historic artifacts...
For an interesting take on this, read "Steel Beach" by John Varley (and anything else you can find by him!) There's a park and museum built around the lunar landing sites, but few people bother looking at it... Great book, anyway.
I can't believe what I'm hearing here! Hundreds of dollars, plus all these hassles? I've been looking (only through curiosity, as I live well outside any city, and won't be able to get xDSL for many more years) at the options here in New Brunswick, Canada, and it seems they blow everything else out of the water.
For 39.95 CANADIAN - that's probably under US$30, you get everything - the connection, the modem, 5 gigs of bandwidth (upgradeable to 20 for another $15)...
As well, you have free reign for running servers,etc, and connections within the service don't count towards your overall usage.
The IP situation is a bit odd - you have a static IP for within the service, but if you make external connections, you have a different one, that changes after half an hour of inactivity. Apparently this isn't a big problem, however, since it's very easy to just have a process pinging something every 10 minutes, and you essentially have a static IP (until you reboot). A real static IP can be had for a few $$.
Of course, on top of that, you get mail and news, etc.. from the phone company's ISP, which has been VERY good. I've heard almost no complaints, besides the usual very occasional downtimes.
All in all, I'm reminded of how great this phone system is. We get all this in a primarily rural province (though the ADSL is only in larger communities so far). Meanwhile, in Montreal, a teeming metropolis, most of the city can't even get a dialup line that doesn't disconnect every half hour or so. A great deal of the city can't even get an overpriced cable modem.
Now if only they expand into the country...
"Information retrieval system in an on-line network including separate content and layout of published titles"
Is it just me, or could this apply to just about EVERYTHING on the net? Usenet, most web pages, SGML, heck, even e-mail, to some extent.
Depends how you define "layout". If simply picking a font becomes a layout, then there's practically nothing that uses text and doesn't apply!