Fanatics all agree with each other, follow the same popular trends and religions, and support the status quo. Thus: X-Windows Fanatics. IBM-PC Fanatics. Flash Fanatics.
NeWS Freaks, Amiga Freaks and SVG Freaks have a lot in common, and tend to share a special bond.
X makes you do input-processing application-side, but that doesn't really introduce an inefficiency.
You are quite incorrect, sir.
The data rate of a mouse/keyboard even uncompressed never approaches more than 100 bytes/second. That's really not a bottleneck for the roles X is aimed at.
It's the round trip time, not the data rate, that causes the delay. Sluggish mouse tracking is very noticeable, and makes interactive applications impossible to use. Try running GIMP over a modem -- it's unusable!
The application also has to send graphics commands back down to the server in response to mouse motion, which you have neglected to account for in your bytes/second calculation.
So why not just download a graphics editor into the window server, so any other application can easily reuse it as a plug-in component? Then any trivial application (like the clock) could incorporate a fully functional graphics editor (so you could edit the graphics used for the face and hands). You could use a customizable clock over a slow network connection, because it would not have to send the same complex graphics commands each second to redraw the face and hands -- in fact the entire clock could run in the window system itself without requiring another process like XClock.
Am I crazy for suggesting incorporating a graphics editor into the window server, just for a silly clock? Well why not? It's been done before.
You could implement distributed objects with PostScript graphics that download data to the NeWS server, where it's locally rendered as scalable PostScript graphics, without generating any unnecessary network activity.
HyperLook illustrates why I think it's important to be able to download code into the user interface and process input locally.
But nobody is trying to remote X over a cell-phone link. However, X is quite usable over a low-bandwidth link, given an appropriate compression technology.
You illustrate my point for me.
You kids take free infinite bandwidth for granted these days, so I bring up cell phones to remind you that bandwidth is neither infinite nor free.
X is simply not useable over a low-bandwidth link such as a cell phone, compression technology or not. The ultimate compression technology is executable code, which is the basis of NeWS architectures.
If you can convince app developers to write their code in Javascript, than more power to you.
What year are you living, in 1994?
Zillions of app developers write their code in JavaScript every day. I've written many JavaScript components and applications that incorporate them, and I love it. Fasteroids, Run-On-Sentence and Pie Menu Schema Editor are some simple examples, but it's easy to write much more complex desktop applications, and even entire desktop windowing interfaces, in JavaScript.
But that's where I was getting at with the Lisp comment. To be
You most likely cannot do it in X Windows. But the needs of applications have changed a great deal since then. Consider doing text and graphics highlighting on an HTML page.
Which brings us back to my point, that "doing it on a web page" is using a NeWS-like architecture.
So what possible advantage is there to have the enormously complex layer of X-Windows in there, between the web browser and the operating system?
X-Windows is not solving any problems, if it's just introducing another huge layer that gets you nowhere towards you goal of "doing it on a web page".
X-Windows was a failure as a distributed window system. The fact that you're using this realtime interactive distributed multiuser application called Slashdot via HTTP instead of X Protocol, illustrates my point.
What do you mean by "is"? "Should always be in every case"? Or "X-Windows has always forced us to do it this way"?
There is no need to download code into the server to do this.
Says who? I certainly see a need. Would you want to run an X-Windows server on a cell phone, where you have to pay for bandwidth and wait for round trips? Nope.
A NeWS-like architecture is much more efficient for implementing distributed applications on cell phones, because it permits the application to download executable code to the phone, saves the user time and money, as provides a high quality, responsive user interface.
X-Windows simply makes no economic sense, unless you're a workstation or network switch vendor, intent on tricking your customers into gobbling up all of their resources, so they have to buy more equipment from you.
You need a safe language to do this (to avoid crashing the server with bad downloaded code), and I don't know if a lot of people would be willing to write their X code in Lisp.
Have you ever heard of a language called "JavaScript"? In case you never heard of it, believe me: there are a lot of people willing to download JavaScript code.
Why, you may even be downloading and running JavaScript code right now, and not even realize it! Why yes, JavaScript is quite a lot like Lisp, thank you. Welcome to 2004!
X-Windows Fanatics simply don't realize that the world has moved on and left them far behind, years ago.
In case it's not obvious: The web browser / http server model IS a NeWS-like architecture.
NeWS proved James Gosling's point years ago. He was right. He went on to develop Java, but ironically, in the end JavaScript won out as the client-side extension language of the web, while Java is popular on the server side. (Note that the definitions of "client" and "server" have switched place, which may explain why it's not obvious to some people that NeWS's architecture won).
So now we're all using HTML and JavaScript instead of PostScript, web browsers instead of NeWS servers, web servers instead of NeWS clients, http instead of the NeWS Wire Service.
Microsoft learned and understood the lessons of NeWS, which were lost on the X-Windows Fanatics, who thought they had killed it off for good, and that nothing like NeWS would ever happen again.
Then it happend: the World Wide Web.
Fast-Forward to 2004...
Linux is a failure on the desktop because of X-Windows. Anyone who truly loves Linux should hate X-Windows, for the tragic harm it's done to our beloved Linux.
Linux is the victim in this relationship. Where X-Windows has succeeded as a Geigeresque Parasite firmly strapped to the face of the Linux desktop, the victim has suffed grave harm and lost potential, and is in deadly danger of becoming irrelevant.
SCO needs no business plan, no products, no court case, no legal briefs: Microsoft and SCO need only stand by and cheer as X-Windows slowly strangles the life out of Linux's last hope on the desktop.
Even if the effort to remove the X-Windows Parasite from Linux were to succeed, what mutated monsterous mechanisms (not policies!) will come bursting out of Linux's chest, once the evil eggs it's laid in the hearts and minds of Linux programmers hatch?
"SGI shipped a very high-performance X implementation."
You must be talking about 4Sight, SGI's window server that integrated both X11 and NeWS 1.1 (Network extensible Window System). Thanks the NeWS, clients could make efficient use of the network bandwidth by downloading PostScript programs into the server, which executed locally and only sent responses over the network when absolutely necessary.
In 1988, I helped develop the NeWS driver for UniPress Emacs. James Gosling wrote UniPress's version of Emacs, as well as the NeWS window system itself. UniPress Emacs ran quite nicely on 4Sight. Emacs downloaded code to handle all the pop-up menus (pie menus or linear menus -- you could decide) and text selection feedback locally in the server.
After Emacs draws the text on the screen, it downloads a short array of numbers telling the server how many characters wide each line is, so the code running in the server knows just what it needs to give local text selection feedback.
So when you press down and drag to select text in emacs, the selection feedback is instantaneous even if you're running over a low speed dial-up connection. When you release the button or move the cursor outside of the scroll region, only then does it send a message back up to Emacs telling it to select the text, or initiate autoscroll.
How would you do that in X-Windows? Please explain your approach to extending the X-Windows server to support local text selection in emacs (and local pop-up menus while you're at it), without any unnecessary network traffic?
You completely miss the point by bringing up the red herring of your graphics card performance, and ignoring the distributed architecture of X-Windows, and how it was designed to be used.
X-Windows was designed to be a distributed window system, to operate over the network.
Yet it was foolishly not designed to support extensibility: dynamically downloading code to the server to perform local input processing, feedback and graphics, and to vastly reduce the amount of network traffic.
If your web browser had to perform a round trip to the web server each time you press a key, would you say that's a good efficient design? Nope. Would it matter that your graphics card can blit ~2GB of 100x100 pixmaps per second? Nope.
Iraq has stockpiled of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Nobody ever bothers to check the facts that Bush says in his State of the Union Address, so all emphatic misstatements of fact are purely accidental, and certainly not intended to mislead.
You're Unamerican for suggesting that Bush is a liar.
The Iran/Contra scandal wasn't about trading Arms for Hostages.
Don't you think that after 15 years somebody would have gotten around to doing some "optimisation and consolidation", if there was any possible way to fix how broken X-Windows is without also breaking all the horrible client programs that use it?
I was digging through some old papers, and ran across a 15 year old "XNextEvent" newsletter, "The Official Newsletter of XUG, the X User's Group", Volume 1 Number 2, from June 1988. Here's an article that illustrates how far the usage of the term "X Windows" has evolved over the past 15 years. (Too bad The Window System Improperly Known as X Windows itself hasn't evolved.)
Someone on slashdot asks, "
Why is it still called X-Windows?".
Predictably, the first reply says: "It isn't. It's called 'The X Window System.' Or simply 'X'. 'X Windows' is a misnomer."
He didn't ask why it is "X-Windows". He asked why it's called "X-Windows". You're wrong that it isn't called "X-Windows". It is! It's just that it isn't "X-Windows". Being something is independent of being called something.
The answer to the question 'Why is it still called X-Windows?' is: It's still called X-Windows in order to annoy the X-Windows Fanatics, who take it upon themselves to correct you every time you call it X-Windows. That's why it's called X-Windows.
The following definitive guide to the consequences of saying "X Windows" is from the June 1988 "XNextEvent" newsletter, "The Official Newsletter of XUG, the X User's Group", Volume 1 Number 2:
Things That Happen When You Say 'X Windows'
THE OFFICAL NAMES
The official names of the software described herein are:
X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11
Note that the phrases X.11, X-11, X Windows or any permutation thereof, are explicitly excluded from this list and should not be used to describe the X Window System (window system should be thought of as one word).
The above should be enough to scare anyone into using the proper terminology, but sadly enough, it's not. Recently, certain people, lacking sufficient motivation to change their speech patterns, have fallen victim to various 'accidents', or 'misfortune'. I've compiled a short list of happenings, some of which I have witnessed, others which remain heresay. I'm not claiming any direct connection between their speech habits and the reported incidents, but you be the judge... And woe betide any who set the cursed phrase into print!
You are forced to explain toolkit programming to X neophytes.
Bob Schiefler says, "You should know better than that!"
The Power Supply (and unknown boards) on your workstation mysteriously give up the ghost.
Ditto for the controller board for the disk on your new Sun.
Your hair falls out.
xmh refuses to come up in a useful size, no matter what you fiddle.
You inexplicitly lose both of your complete Ultrix Doc sets.
I'm qualified to say how Copyleft is spelled. It's one word.
Re:Anybody still running SunOS on a SparcStation 2
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The point is, I'd much rather have a virtual sparcstation running in software on my laptop anywhere I go, than any kind of real sparcstation that I have to lug around and plug into the wall.
-Don
Anybody still running SunOS on a SparcStation 2?
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I still refuse to downgrade my SparcStation 2 pizza box to Slowlaris. It still runs trusty old SunOS 4.1.2. I bought through the Sun employee discount program (60% off) in 1991. Unfortunately the 60% off was considered a taxable "benefit", so after I paid for computer, they surprized me with a bill for the taxes on the 60% I saved, which was more than a whole paycheck! Owch.
Of course the non-rechargable battery in the idprom wore out after a few years, it lost its identity, and has to be rebooted manually from the Forth firmware. (I think it was the first SparcStation with Mitch Bradley's wonderful Open Boot roms built in.)
I'd sure like to find a good SS2 emulator that runs on a modern computer, so I can run all my old SunOS software without hauling out the old pizzabox.
Downloadable Sims Object:
Price: 100 Simoleans
NASA's Spirit Rover tests its defensive mechanisms against aggressive Martian Robots Gone Wild, by Flipping the first Bird on Mars [image censored by NASA]. NASA has assured the public that at this time, no Martian Robots Gone Wild have been detected by Spirit, and this is simply a standard diagnostic procedure.
"However, because Debian offers users the option of non-Free Software, RMS no longer recommends it."
This just goes to the core of how much the community actually values his endorsement. If you didn't take him so seriously, why would you care what he recommends?
You're trying to dictate what rms should and should not recommend. It's his recommendation to give, not yours -- don't begrudge him of his opinion. Ignore him if you don't agree with him. By trying to take away his right to his own opinion, and telling him what you think it's important for him to endorse instead, you're only making him more powerful and important.
The way to defeat RMS is to clone him. If everybody who reads this were to become a raving RMS clone, that would commoditize his brand of didacticism. He would not have a such a corner on the market, and therefore would no longer be the center of attention.
(Chevy Chase taps me on the shoulder and says "Emily, that already happened. It's called slashdot.")
You thought Zip drives were annoying? I remember seeing those Exatron Stringy Floppies being hyped and demonstrated at computer shows when decked-out TRS-80's with expension interfaces were all the rage.
"What many home computer users really need is something that is many times faster than a cassettes but much cheaper than a disk. Such devices exist and are known as 'floppy tapes' or 'stringy floppies'. Originally developed in America for Tandy's TRS-80 Model 1 system by Exactron, the first stringly-floppy used a continuous loop of tape in a cartridge housing; the idea was borrowed from the eight track audio tape system that was fashionable some years ago. The principle of operation is simple; the tape loop circulates constantly, so the various programs can be found much more quickly. A catalogue of all the programs and files stored on tape is also kept (just like the directory on a disk), so a list of the contents is always available."
Here's a Creative Computing article about the wonders of Stringy Floppies. I really loved that magazine. David Ahl's da man! (Note to kids about the article: Kate Bush is not the president's daughter.)
"Whether or not the wafertape has any real future in the microcomputer
industry is for Exatron to decide. If it takes the time to finish its
product, that certainly will be a start."
Re:Read Mark Weiser's original work on UbiComp
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Thanks -- your change of mind means more than karma points. Unfortunately Mark Wieser passed away and can no longer defend his ideas from misunderstanding and shameless exploitation.
The "pervasive computing" people have co-opted Ubiquituous Computing, and perverted and hyped the ideas to sell it to the military (who eagerly respond to the pervasive penis-oriented penetration metaphore).
-Don
Read Mark Weiser's original work on UbiComp
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The late Mark Weiser invented the term "Ubiquitous Computing" to describe what he calls: 'the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.'
Ubiquitous Computing argues that technology should not be a juggernaut, the center of attention, the giant blinking home-theatrical shrine set up in the middle of the living room that the whole family sits around and worships while they tan from its glowing radiation. It should strive to be more like the grains of sand on a beach, not the stone heads of Easter Island.
Ubiquitous Computing is anything but pretentious. The article comes off as pretentious and dramatic, because that's the authors' style of presenting themselves, not because there's anything pretentious about Ubiquitous Computing. They're from Alias|Wavefront|SGI, what else do you expect? Of course they're pretentious and full of themselves, hyping up their corporate promotional/SGI blustering/Hollywood pandering/defense contracting/demo rigging/grant pandering/virtual reality sucking bullshit. That's just their job.
Other dramatic penis-oriented alpha-male researchers have ignore the "calm" aspect of Ubiquitous Computing and instead have tried to co-opt the idea and rename it "Pervasive Computing", which is misguided and misses the original point of Ubiquitous Computing. Pervasive means to permeate, charge, compenetrate, impenetrate, impregnate, interpenetrate, penetrate, percolate, saturate, transfuse. They're thinking with their dicks. And corporate America loves them, because of it.
"Ubiquitous Computing" was named after Phillip K Dick's amazing book Ubik:
"Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand. Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, Ubik (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll:
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
Mark Weiser explained what Ubiquitous Computing isn't:
"Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences."
Here are two definitions of Ubiquitous Computing that he proposed:
Ubiquitous Computing #1
Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.
Ubiquitous Computing #2
For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a c
Pie menus are a naturally efficient way to operate a tilt-sensitive user interface. Scrolling up and down through one-dimensional linear menus with a device that can tilt in any directions is a waste of the device's potential.
Here's a cool research paper from Sony's Computer Science Labs, about "tilting pie menus". I love it! I can't wait till all cell phones can sense tilt. Tilt control rocks!
It would be interesting to see an open source toolkit that does the same thing as WVG, but uses open standards and remains cross platform.
Batik is a great step towards such a platform. Except that it's written in Java, which doesn't play well with others.
I'd love to have a hot-rod version of Batik rewritten in clean efficient C++. I'd also like to have an external binary plug-in facility for Batik, so you can plug in efficient rasterizers, vector and raster filter effects, video players, real time video input, etc.
SVG at least tries to make efficient use of XML, and doesn't go overboard with the nested elements. For example, paths are not described by a bunch of sub-elements, but rather by a string attribute that's quite compact. It supports a concise syntax for absolute and relative coordinates (to send fewer digits), vertical and horizontal drawing (to send only the required axis), etc.
The SVG comittee decided against the use of nested sub-elements to describe paths, because it would have such a huge overhead in the size of the file and especially all the dom elements that would be required to represent and expose it.
Where did they get this idea? From VML, which was Microsoft's previous attempt at a vector graphics markup language, which is still built into the browser. VML actually has a bunch of good ideas in it, and it can be included inline on the web page.
Here's an example of a game called "Fasteroids" that I wrote in JavaScript and VML, that only runs in Internet Explorer of couse. I recently rewrote Fasteroids for SVG, which was pretty straightforward, but I haven't posted the source to that yet. I've also implemented pie menus for SVG. Ask me if you're interested.
Slashdot Mirror
-Don
What, you were't refereing to me? But I've been waiting for years to use that line!
X-Windows has Fanatics. NeWS has Freaks.
IBM-PC has Fanatics. Amiga has Freaks.
Flash has Fanatics. SVG has Freaks.
Fanatics all agree with each other, follow the same popular trends and religions, and support the status quo. Thus: X-Windows Fanatics. IBM-PC Fanatics. Flash Fanatics.
NeWS Freaks, Amiga Freaks and SVG Freaks have a lot in common, and tend to share a special bond.
-Don
You are quite incorrect, sir.
It's the round trip time, not the data rate, that causes the delay. Sluggish mouse tracking is very noticeable, and makes interactive applications impossible to use. Try running GIMP over a modem -- it's unusable!
The application also has to send graphics commands back down to the server in response to mouse motion, which you have neglected to account for in your bytes/second calculation.
So why not just download a graphics editor into the window server, so any other application can easily reuse it as a plug-in component? Then any trivial application (like the clock) could incorporate a fully functional graphics editor (so you could edit the graphics used for the face and hands). You could use a customizable clock over a slow network connection, because it would not have to send the same complex graphics commands each second to redraw the face and hands -- in fact the entire clock could run in the window system itself without requiring another process like XClock.
Am I crazy for suggesting incorporating a graphics editor into the window server, just for a silly clock? Well why not? It's been done before.
The HyperLook user interface system, which was based on NeWS, had a fully functional PostScript graphics editor component that ran in entirely within the NeWS server.
You could implement distributed objects with PostScript graphics that download data to the NeWS server, where it's locally rendered as scalable PostScript graphics, without generating any unnecessary network activity.
Ordinary users could use the graphics editor to create custom skins with structured PostScript graphics. With the built-in user interface editor, you could totally reconfigure the user interface while it was running.
HyperLook illustrates why I think it's important to be able to download code into the user interface and process input locally.
You illustrate my point for me. You kids take free infinite bandwidth for granted these days, so I bring up cell phones to remind you that bandwidth is neither infinite nor free.
X is simply not useable over a low-bandwidth link such as a cell phone, compression technology or not. The ultimate compression technology is executable code, which is the basis of NeWS architectures.
What year are you living, in 1994? Zillions of app developers write their code in JavaScript every day. I've written many JavaScript components and applications that incorporate them, and I love it. Fasteroids, Run-On-Sentence and Pie Menu Schema Editor are some simple examples, but it's easy to write much more complex desktop applications, and even entire desktop windowing interfaces, in JavaScript.
So what possible advantage is there to have the enormously complex layer of X-Windows in there, between the web browser and the operating system?
X-Windows is not solving any problems, if it's just introducing another huge layer that gets you nowhere towards you goal of "doing it on a web page".
X-Windows was a failure as a distributed window system. The fact that you're using this realtime interactive distributed multiuser application called Slashdot via HTTP instead of X Protocol, illustrates my point.
-Don
A NeWS-like architecture is much more efficient for implementing distributed applications on cell phones, because it permits the application to download executable code to the phone, saves the user time and money, as provides a high quality, responsive user interface.
X-Windows simply makes no economic sense, unless you're a workstation or network switch vendor, intent on tricking your customers into gobbling up all of their resources, so they have to buy more equipment from you.
Have you ever heard of a language called "JavaScript"? In case you never heard of it, believe me: there are a lot of people willing to download JavaScript code. Why, you may even be downloading and running JavaScript code right now, and not even realize it! Why yes, JavaScript is quite a lot like Lisp, thank you. Welcome to 2004!X-Windows Fanatics simply don't realize that the world has moved on and left them far behind, years ago.
In case it's not obvious: The web browser / http server model IS a NeWS-like architecture. NeWS proved James Gosling's point years ago. He was right. He went on to develop Java, but ironically, in the end JavaScript won out as the client-side extension language of the web, while Java is popular on the server side. (Note that the definitions of "client" and "server" have switched place, which may explain why it's not obvious to some people that NeWS's architecture won).
So now we're all using HTML and JavaScript instead of PostScript, web browsers instead of NeWS servers, web servers instead of NeWS clients, http instead of the NeWS Wire Service.
Microsoft learned and understood the lessons of NeWS, which were lost on the X-Windows Fanatics, who thought they had killed it off for good, and that nothing like NeWS would ever happen again.
Then it happend: the World Wide Web.
Fast-Forward to 2004...
Linux is a failure on the desktop because of X-Windows. Anyone who truly loves Linux should hate X-Windows, for the tragic harm it's done to our beloved Linux.
Linux is the victim in this relationship. Where X-Windows has succeeded as a Geigeresque Parasite firmly strapped to the face of the Linux desktop, the victim has suffed grave harm and lost potential, and is in deadly danger of becoming irrelevant.
SCO needs no business plan, no products, no court case, no legal briefs: Microsoft and SCO need only stand by and cheer as X-Windows slowly strangles the life out of Linux's last hope on the desktop.
Even if the effort to remove the X-Windows Parasite from Linux were to succeed, what mutated monsterous mechanisms (not policies!) will come bursting out of Linux's chest, once the evil eggs it's laid in the hearts and minds of Linux programmers hatch?
-Don
In 1988, I helped develop the NeWS driver for UniPress Emacs. James Gosling wrote UniPress's version of Emacs, as well as the NeWS window system itself. UniPress Emacs ran quite nicely on 4Sight. Emacs downloaded code to handle all the pop-up menus (pie menus or linear menus -- you could decide) and text selection feedback locally in the server.
After Emacs draws the text on the screen, it downloads a short array of numbers telling the server how many characters wide each line is, so the code running in the server knows just what it needs to give local text selection feedback.
So when you press down and drag to select text in emacs, the selection feedback is instantaneous even if you're running over a low speed dial-up connection. When you release the button or move the cursor outside of the scroll region, only then does it send a message back up to Emacs telling it to select the text, or initiate autoscroll.
How would you do that in X-Windows? Please explain your approach to extending the X-Windows server to support local text selection in emacs (and local pop-up menus while you're at it), without any unnecessary network traffic?
-Don
X-Windows was designed to be a distributed window system, to operate over the network.
Yet it was foolishly not designed to support extensibility: dynamically downloading code to the server to perform local input processing, feedback and graphics, and to vastly reduce the amount of network traffic.
If your web browser had to perform a round trip to the web server each time you press a key, would you say that's a good efficient design? Nope. Would it matter that your graphics card can blit ~2GB of 100x100 pixmaps per second? Nope.
-Don
-Don
X is modular.
George W Bush is a Compassionate Conservative.
Iraq has stockpiled of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Nobody ever bothers to check the facts that Bush says in his State of the Union Address, so all emphatic misstatements of fact are purely accidental, and certainly not intended to mislead.
You're Unamerican for suggesting that Bush is a liar.
The Iran/Contra scandal wasn't about trading Arms for Hostages.
OJ Simpson didn't do it.
Got any more good ones for us?
-Don
-Don
Things That Happen When You Say 'X Windows'
THE OFFICAL NAMES
The official names of the software described herein are:
X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11
Note that the phrases X.11, X-11, X Windows or any permutation thereof, are explicitly excluded from this list and should not be used to describe the X Window System (window system should be thought of as one word).
The above should be enough to scare anyone into using the proper terminology, but sadly enough, it's not. Recently, certain people, lacking sufficient motivation to change their speech patterns, have fallen victim to various 'accidents', or 'misfortune'. I've compiled a short list of happenings, some of which I have witnessed, others which remain heresay. I'm not claiming any direct connection between their speech habits and the reported incidents, but you be the judge... And woe betide any who set the cursed phrase into print!
You are forced to explain toolkit programming to X neophytes.
Bob Schiefler says, "You should know better than that!"
The Power Supply (and unknown boards) on your workstation mysteriously give up the ghost.
Ditto for the controller board for the disk on your new Sun.
Your hair falls out.
xmh refuses to come up in a useful size, no matter what you fiddle.
You inexplicitly lose both of your complete Ultrix Doc sets.
R2 won't build.
Bob Schiefler says "Type 'man X'".
Your nifty new X screen saver just won't go away.
The window you're working in loses input focus. Permanently
-Don
I'm qualified to say how Copyleft is spelled. It's one word.
-Don
Of course the non-rechargable battery in the idprom wore out after a few years, it lost its identity, and has to be rebooted manually from the Forth firmware. (I think it was the first SparcStation with Mitch Bradley's wonderful Open Boot roms built in.)
I'd sure like to find a good SS2 emulator that runs on a modern computer, so I can run all my old SunOS software without hauling out the old pizzabox.
-Don
Spirit Flips the First Bird on Mars
Downloadable Sims Object:
Price: 100 Simoleans
NASA's Spirit Rover tests its defensive mechanisms against aggressive Martian Robots Gone Wild, by Flipping the first Bird on Mars [image censored by NASA]. NASA has assured the public that at this time, no Martian Robots Gone Wild have been detected by Spirit, and this is simply a standard diagnostic procedure.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/004 /2P126721799EFF0200P2215R2M1.JPG
Download: http://www.donhopkins.com/blog/SimsObjects/2004/01 /09/mars_3x3_544938.iff
-Don
You're trying to dictate what rms should and should not recommend. It's his recommendation to give, not yours -- don't begrudge him of his opinion. Ignore him if you don't agree with him. By trying to take away his right to his own opinion, and telling him what you think it's important for him to endorse instead, you're only making him more powerful and important.
The way to defeat RMS is to clone him. If everybody who reads this were to become a raving RMS clone, that would commoditize his brand of didacticism. He would not have a such a corner on the market, and therefore would no longer be the center of attention.
(Chevy Chase taps me on the shoulder and says "Emily, that already happened. It's called slashdot.")
Oh, never mind.
This has been Weekend Update, with Emily Litella.
-Don
Oh yeah, and he's inspired many people to do great things, for an against the causes he believes in.
-Don
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/hardware/feata.html
"What many home computer users really need is something that is many times faster than a cassettes but much cheaper than a disk. Such devices exist and are known as 'floppy tapes' or 'stringy floppies'. Originally developed in America for Tandy's TRS-80 Model 1 system by Exactron, the first stringly-floppy used a continuous loop of tape in a cartridge housing; the idea was borrowed from the eight track audio tape system that was fashionable some years ago. The principle of operation is simple; the tape loop circulates constantly, so the various programs can be found much more quickly. A catalogue of all the programs and files stored on tape is also kept (just like the directory on a disk), so a list of the contents is always available."
Here's a Creative Computing article about the wonders of Stringy Floppies. I really loved that magazine. David Ahl's da man! (Note to kids about the article: Kate Bush is not the president's daughter.)
"Whether or not the wafertape has any real future in the microcomputer industry is for Exatron to decide. If it takes the time to finish its product, that certainly will be a start."
-Don
-Don
The "pervasive computing" people have co-opted Ubiquituous Computing, and perverted and hyped the ideas to sell it to the military (who eagerly respond to the pervasive penis-oriented penetration metaphore).
-Don
Ubiquitous Computing argues that technology should not be a juggernaut, the center of attention, the giant blinking home-theatrical shrine set up in the middle of the living room that the whole family sits around and worships while they tan from its glowing radiation. It should strive to be more like the grains of sand on a beach, not the stone heads of Easter Island.
Ubiquitous Computing is anything but pretentious. The article comes off as pretentious and dramatic, because that's the authors' style of presenting themselves, not because there's anything pretentious about Ubiquitous Computing. They're from Alias|Wavefront|SGI, what else do you expect? Of course they're pretentious and full of themselves, hyping up their corporate promotional/SGI blustering/Hollywood pandering/defense contracting/demo rigging/grant pandering/virtual reality sucking bullshit. That's just their job.
Other dramatic penis-oriented alpha-male researchers have ignore the "calm" aspect of Ubiquitous Computing and instead have tried to co-opt the idea and rename it "Pervasive Computing", which is misguided and misses the original point of Ubiquitous Computing. Pervasive means to permeate, charge, compenetrate, impenetrate, impregnate, interpenetrate, penetrate, percolate, saturate, transfuse. They're thinking with their dicks. And corporate America loves them, because of it.
"Ubiquitous Computing" was named after Phillip K Dick's amazing book Ubik:
"Nobody but Philip K. Dick could so successfully combine SF comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong, shifting underfoot like quicksand. Besides grisly ideas like funeral parlors where you swap gossip for the advice of the frozen dead, Ubik (1969) offers such deadpan farce as a moneyless character's attack on the robot apartment door that demands a five-cent toll:
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
Mark Weiser explained what Ubiquitous Computing isn't:
"Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences."
Here are two definitions of Ubiquitous Computing that he proposed:
Ubiquitous Computing #1
Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.
Ubiquitous Computing #2
For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a c
Pie menus are a naturally efficient way to operate a tilt-sensitive user interface. Scrolling up and down through one-dimensional linear menus with a device that can tilt in any directions is a waste of the device's potential.
Here's a cool research paper from Sony's Computer Science Labs, about "tilting pie menus". I love it! I can't wait till all cell phones can sense tilt. Tilt control rocks!
Tilting Operations for Small Screen Computers
By Jun Rekimoto, Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Inc.
More details: Tilting Operations for Small Screen Interfaces (Tech Note)
HTML version from Google
-Don
-Don
I'd love to have a hot-rod version of Batik rewritten in clean efficient C++. I'd also like to have an external binary plug-in facility for Batik, so you can plug in efficient rasterizers, vector and raster filter effects, video players, real time video input, etc.
-Don
The SVG comittee decided against the use of nested sub-elements to describe paths, because it would have such a huge overhead in the size of the file and especially all the dom elements that would be required to represent and expose it.
Where did they get this idea? From VML, which was Microsoft's previous attempt at a vector graphics markup language, which is still built into the browser. VML actually has a bunch of good ideas in it, and it can be included inline on the web page.
Here's an example of a game called "Fasteroids" that I wrote in JavaScript and VML, that only runs in Internet Explorer of couse. I recently rewrote Fasteroids for SVG, which was pretty straightforward, but I haven't posted the source to that yet. I've also implemented pie menus for SVG. Ask me if you're interested.
http://www.piemenu.com/fasteroids.html
-Don