Yeah... ZoneAlarm is the best reasonably priced (free) firewall out there for the PC platform. I would like to have the basic *nix setup, but when you're building on a Win32 kernel, you can only do so much. -- Also, Black ICE does NOT stop Back Orifice and like attacks at its default level - you should crank it up one notch for that protection.
The current metaphor system of user interfaces is the best chance at this time to develop 3D interfaces. Almost anyone who plays first person shooter-type games is satisfied with the keyboard-mouse combination that is currently used. It works because the interface is simple.
Imagine yourself in a 3D environment that extends indefinitely. Imagine 3 axes that all intersect at you. The X axis will point infinitely side to side, while the Y axis will point infinitely up and down. The Z axis points infinitely forward and backward. A satisfying 3D interface must find a way to rotate along each of these axes and move forward and backward among these axes.
For using the features of the computer, tasks must still be organized in a certain matter. Windows, dialog boxes, et cetera can still serve this purpose, with their content either rendered as a flat 2D surface on the window itself or they can "pop out" of the window - with "depth" values that make them come of the window. These depth values should be kept small, however because the farther the objects are from their "window," the more chaos and disorganization occurs.
The way that the keyboard+mouse combination works currently is that the mouse is mapped to rotate along the X and Y axes - moving the mouse left will rotate your perspective left around the Y axis and inversely for right, and moving your mouse up will rotate your perspective up around the X axis and inversely for down. You can use the keyboard in this system to move forward and backward along the X and Z axes, and limitedly along the Y axis - you can jump up, and gravity pulls you down, but there isn't the need for a good amount of control in that respect. A typical layout of keys for this approach is E moving forward along the Z axis, D moving backward, and S moving left along the X axis and F moving right.
We already have rotation along the X and Y axes, and movement along the X and Z axes... the movement system along the Y axis is much to weak to be used as a method of navigating through a GUI. What needs to be added to the system is a way to rotate around the Z axis, and a better system of moving along the Y axis. What would be ideal would be a mouse that has buttons on it that would serve as arrow keys arranged in the familiar format, but there isn't really a big market for that. Supply and demand therefore dictates a mouse like that will not be created for at least a couple of years.
We have to use different fingers on the keyboard, or assign more keys to the already in use fingers. We are using the ring finger for left movement along the X axis with the S key; the middle finger controls up and down movement on the Z axis with respectively the E and D keys; and finally the pointer finger moves right along the X axis with the F key. We can map the W key for use by the ring finger to rotation left around the Z axis, and for rotation right, we can map the pointer finger's R key. We can assign movement along the Y axis to the pinky finger. Q can move up and A can move down.
Using this system you can achieve somewhat accurate 3D precision with physical 2D input and output. To move a window or rotate it through the 3D environment, you can do just as you do in a 2D GUI. You hold down the left mouse button to "grab" a portion of the window - like the title bar, and navigate through the user interface, finally letting go of the left mouse button and dropping it where you want it. This presents a problem; it would be hard to select something if you don't have some way to pinpoint where you are "grabbing." A simple targeting reticule, like in FPS games, or guns, a dot, or a circle surrounding the current area pointed at would serve a great purpose. You just grab, rotate, move and drop and there, you've changed the location and rotation to where you want. Resizing windows should be limited from rotation, as that would shear the window and greatly complicate the whole interface.
If you were to modify the contents of a document, you must be able to easily rotate yourself so you are centered in relation to that window. You could simply select the window, press spacebar, and the GUI would automatically align you with the window, "looking" perpendicular to the surface of the window, and aligned so that your Y axis is aligned parallel to the left and right sides of the window.
Now that you are ready to work with your document inside the window, such as the text document, you start typing. However, you now realize that every time you press A, D, E, F, Q, R, S, W, or the spacebar, you manipulate the environment, but not the document. There must be a better way.
The most natural place to look on the keyboard to manipulate the environment with more than 4 keys would be the numeric keypad. You can press numlock to toggle between number mode and manipulation mode. As an added feature, when you are in number mode with the keyboard, the interface can be manipulated as a regular 2D environment, with a traditional cursor and everything! Key assignments could be replacing the keys E, D, S, F, Q, A, W, R, and spacebar with 8, 5, 4, 6, +, Enter, 7, 9, and., respectively. You would have to use the left hand, so accessing + and enter would be a stretch with your thumb, but you would be able to get used to it easily.
This is my wishlist; what actually happens to become a new interface will probably be radically different, but I hope I can provoke such an interface to be designed.
Microsoft really, unfortunately hasn't done anything wrong. The consent agreement prevented them from using their market power from pushing into other related areas and pushing competition out. It was not to limit or discourage the development of integrated products. What is IE really? It's, again unfortuanately, an integrated product. Unless you use Windows 95/NT 4 without IE4 or earlier or a non-windows OS, IE is the program that you use to browse directories. It's even integrated into Windows Explorer, but less blatantly. It uses "HTML Templates" a proprietary XSLT-like technology which reads your directory and pumps out an HTML file which is sent to... guess what?!?!? the IE engine. Therefore, it's pretty much agreed that IE is an integrated product to Windows. That's the discriminant of the equation, the loophole clause. It let's Microsoft free and there's nothing you can do about it... unless you bend the legal system. --OT Below-- The 16th root of 65536? Why, that would be 2! 65536=2^16 (2^16)^(1/16) Multiply exponents raised to powers: 16 1 16 --*--=--=1 1 16 16 2^1=2 --End OT--
Slashdot Mirror
You'll also need qbasic.*
edit.com is pretty much a stripped-down frontend to qbasic
At least this makes it so much easier to view the cached page when a site is slashdotted.
Yeah. Google.
Probably just the slashdot effect.
Yeah... ZoneAlarm is the best reasonably priced (free) firewall out there for the PC platform. I would like to have the basic *nix setup, but when you're building on a Win32 kernel, you can only do so much. -- Also, Black ICE does NOT stop Back Orifice and like attacks at its default level - you should crank it up one notch for that protection.
Then Linux/PHP/MySQL!
I thought Litestep was 2D...
The current metaphor system of user interfaces is the best chance at this time to develop 3D interfaces. Almost anyone who plays first person shooter-type games is satisfied with the keyboard-mouse combination that is currently used. It works because the interface is simple.
., respectively. You would have to use the left hand, so accessing + and enter would be a stretch with your thumb, but you would be able to get used to it easily.
Imagine yourself in a 3D environment that extends indefinitely. Imagine 3 axes that all intersect at you. The X axis will point infinitely side to side, while the Y axis will point infinitely up and down. The Z axis points infinitely forward and backward. A satisfying 3D interface must find a way to rotate along each of these axes and move forward and backward among these axes.
For using the features of the computer, tasks must still be organized in a certain matter. Windows, dialog boxes, et cetera can still serve this purpose, with their content either rendered as a flat 2D surface on the window itself or they can "pop out" of the window - with "depth" values that make them come of the window. These depth values should be kept small, however because the farther the objects are from their "window," the more chaos and disorganization occurs.
The way that the keyboard+mouse combination works currently is that the mouse is mapped to rotate along the X and Y axes - moving the mouse left will rotate your perspective left around the Y axis and inversely for right, and moving your mouse up will rotate your perspective up around the X axis and inversely for down. You can use the keyboard in this system to move forward and backward along the X and Z axes, and limitedly along the Y axis - you can jump up, and gravity pulls you down, but there isn't the need for a good amount of control in that respect. A typical layout of keys for this approach is E moving forward along the Z axis, D moving backward, and S moving left along the X axis and F moving right.
We already have rotation along the X and Y axes, and movement along the X and Z axes... the movement system along the Y axis is much to weak to be used as a method of navigating through a GUI. What needs to be added to the system is a way to rotate around the Z axis, and a better system of moving along the Y axis. What would be ideal would be a mouse that has buttons on it that would serve as arrow keys arranged in the familiar format, but there isn't really a big market for that. Supply and demand therefore dictates a mouse like that will not be created for at least a couple of years.
We have to use different fingers on the keyboard, or assign more keys to the already in use fingers. We are using the ring finger for left movement along the X axis with the S key; the middle finger controls up and down movement on the Z axis with respectively the E and D keys; and finally the pointer finger moves right along the X axis with the F key. We can map the W key for use by the ring finger to rotation left around the Z axis, and for rotation right, we can map the pointer finger's R key. We can assign movement along the Y axis to the pinky finger. Q can move up and A can move down.
Using this system you can achieve somewhat accurate 3D precision with physical 2D input and output. To move a window or rotate it through the 3D environment, you can do just as you do in a 2D GUI. You hold down the left mouse button to "grab" a portion of the window - like the title bar, and navigate through the user interface, finally letting go of the left mouse button and dropping it where you want it. This presents a problem; it would be hard to select something if you don't have some way to pinpoint where you are "grabbing." A simple targeting reticule, like in FPS games, or guns, a dot, or a circle surrounding the current area pointed at would serve a great purpose. You just grab, rotate, move and drop and there, you've changed the location and rotation to where you want. Resizing windows should be limited from rotation, as that would shear the window and greatly complicate the whole interface.
If you were to modify the contents of a document, you must be able to easily rotate yourself so you are centered in relation to that window. You could simply select the window, press spacebar, and the GUI would automatically align you with the window, "looking" perpendicular to the surface of the window, and aligned so that your Y axis is aligned parallel to the left and right sides of the window.
Now that you are ready to work with your document inside the window, such as the text document, you start typing. However, you now realize that every time you press A, D, E, F, Q, R, S, W, or the spacebar, you manipulate the environment, but not the document. There must be a better way.
The most natural place to look on the keyboard to manipulate the environment with more than 4 keys would be the numeric keypad. You can press numlock to toggle between number mode and manipulation mode. As an added feature, when you are in number mode with the keyboard, the interface can be manipulated as a regular 2D environment, with a traditional cursor and everything! Key assignments could be replacing the keys E, D, S, F, Q, A, W, R, and spacebar with 8, 5, 4, 6, +, Enter, 7, 9, and
This is my wishlist; what actually happens to become a new interface will probably be radically different, but I hope I can provoke such an interface to be designed.
----
Last time I checked US/Canada trade was regulated by the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA].
And Advanced Server will be about the size of Detroit!
Microsoft really, unfortunately hasn't done anything wrong. The consent agreement prevented them from using their market power from pushing into other related areas and pushing competition out. It was not to limit or discourage the development of integrated products. What is IE really? It's, again unfortuanately, an integrated product. Unless you use Windows 95/NT 4 without IE4 or earlier or a non-windows OS, IE is the program that you use to browse directories. It's even integrated into Windows Explorer, but less blatantly. It uses "HTML Templates" a proprietary XSLT-like technology which reads your directory and pumps out an HTML file which is sent to... guess what?!?!? the IE engine. Therefore, it's pretty much agreed that IE is an integrated product to Windows. That's the discriminant of the equation, the loophole clause. It let's Microsoft free and there's nothing you can do about it... unless you bend the legal system. --OT Below-- The 16th root of 65536? Why, that would be 2! 65536=2^16 (2^16)^(1/16) Multiply exponents raised to powers: 16 1 16 --*--=--=1 1 16 16 2^1=2 --End OT--