Perhaps one thing to look at would be how the various permutations of Windows have split off. everything is supposed to become easier and easier for the user: keeping up on the latest patches, audio/video codecs, drivers and what not. Further, this tactic is emerging into the ability to install and use the operating system at all, witness XP. M$ is actively automating the OS through the Internet. I still get a chill every time Windows Media Player decides it's time to look for an upgrade and my proxy server dials out unbidden.
The point is, Windows machines are turning into dumb terminals. The burden of processing still rests with the terminal instead of the server, which simply enables the software to run. It's an interesting hybrid, and one which fits in with the business model this guy is talking about. If you can't actively control the Internet via the infrastructure, you can always take the control away from the end nodes by crippling their usability without some kind of automated registration and upgrade technique..Net sounds worse to the nth power.
It exploits the dependence of users and businesses on the Internet itself - this kind of control wouldn't have been possible pre-'95. And now they want to re-vamp the whole thing to bring it all together on the business side.
I work at the Health Sciences Center in our local university, and I've become something of a campus go-to-guy for handheld computers. We've got entire departments buying these things up by the TRUCKLOAD, deploying them to the staff and faculty, getting all hot and bothered over having these little things (mostly Palm M505s, but a few visors here and there... fortunately few iPaqs)... but no idea what to do with them. They jump the gun on the technology curve, and have a hard time settling in when their wallets catch up with their brains.
Part of the problem is that I don't think the user base in general doesn't even know what these things are, what they're designed for, and what they're really like to use day to day. The idea of the tricorder may have given use a heads-up on what technology was capable of, but the flip side of that is that people expect all tricorder-like things to be FUCKING TRICORDERS.
Here's what I tell people who ask me what kind of PDA to buy and what it's for:
The Palm Pilot is best likened to a collection of self-organized Rolodex Of Many Colors. Anything you can put on a post-it note, put it on a Palm-compatible device. It will serve you well, but you'll have to start thinking of information in bite-size chunks (like a fun-size Snickers bar).
Windows-CE devices are a scaled down version of Windows on a screen the size of an index card. Want a free demonstration? Go to your desktop. Change the screen resolution to 640x480. Now block half of that out and fire up Word and write your grant proposal. I mean, that's what you're buying a micro-PC for, right? To work on those important things in the few off-minutes you have in your busy lifestyle? Write write write. Erase erase erase. Squint squint squint. Happy with it? Fine, buy an iPaq.
I can't imagine why Joe User would want to turn a Palm-type device into a replacement for the desktop. I've got apps (ThoughtManager comes to mind, Pocket Quicken too) on my Visor Prism that have done more for organizing my thoughts, ideas, presentations and life in general than ANYTHING my PC has ever done for me, and it's simple to use. I also don't have to worry about loading my Visor up with apps that, for some inexplicable reason, hate each other's guts and duke it out in the form of GPFs and incompatible DLLs (Outlook and GroupWise come to mind). I don't have to rebuild the OS everytime I add a bit of hardware with screwy drivers.
I turn it on, and the information is instantly there in fun-size form. No wading through menus. No waiting for the desktop to come up. It's just THERE. With the right hacks and a little finger-training, I can find any information I want in three actions or less.
That's what I want out of these things, and I think it's a common goal.
Relating this to the Health Sciences field - ePocrates is a beautiful little app that maintains a portable drug interaction database. Our residents and other medical-type people swear by it, and it updates itself every time the user does a sync.
Instant info, on demand. That's the Information Age - not MP3s, Powerpoint presentations (dear God, don't even get me started on these fucking wastes of time), voice recognition doo-dads that talk back to me and sound like HAL, or whatever. Just give me a place to put and organise my ideas until I get to the resources I need to make them a reality. Everything else is just a distraction - not bad per se, but it doesn't contribute to my productivity. Until you can fit something like that directly into my brain, you can replace my Visor with anything trying to be more PC-like when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
The Visor also has the added advantage of being a great platform for hobbyists to develop on - being able to beam a program around has, I think, done wonders for the shareware concept.
All computer code can be represented as a series of ons and offs, typically interpreted as 1's and 0's
Any series of 1's and 0's can be interpreted as a base 2 form of some integer x
Pi contains an infinitely variable series of digits which, in chunks, can be taken as integers
Pi is infinite and non-repeating, and therefore contains every possible combination of every integer in the infinite set (some mathbrained guru can feel free to slap me down on this)
Therefore, somewhere in the digits of Pi is a string of digits which, when transformed into binary, form the code to decrypt CCS on a Linux box. All the scientists have to do is find the correct starting position and how may digits need to be calculated. The resulting information could be spread throughout the internet and used to decrypt protected content.
Further investgation into the true nature of Pi is a violation of the DMCA! This must stop at once!
or... Holy moley! Taking that same argument, one could reason that every movie ever made, or that ever could be made, is buried digitally in Pi somewhere! Piracy is built in to the very structure of the universe!!!!
Unfortunately, you didn't go look far enough - the entire quote is:
And my advice to you is this: Learn to write more gooder, as this message makes you look like a dope, and please kill yourself. Just not in that order. See you later. Thanks.
What bugs me most about
virues isn't just that they exist, but that most of them are so stupid. Like this one.
First paragraph, sarcasm. Second paragraph - dumbfuck arrogant reporter bee-yatch. Cripes, he writes like a/.r:)
Tatsujin
Re:Is better TV definition needed ?
on
The Joys of HDTV
·
· Score: 1
I've got a TV that's 20 years old. It's mammoth, about 25" in a giant wooden case on casters. I wouldn't trade it for anything, except when it comes time to move the damn thing.
The picture is fine, too. It's hooked up to a DishTV reciever and, I'll be darned, it actually does show an improvement, but the only thing that affects broadcast TV pictures is the fact that the antenna inside is crap.
I watch TV for about 3 hours a week. Occasionally the wife and I will rent videos and watch those instead. All that HDTV means to me is that five years from now I'll have to make sure I've bought a DVD player that can still send out an RCA signal. I might even take the time to capture my beloved VCR tapes to VCD. Otherwise, fuck 'em. I'm not so hard up for entertainment that I'm going to put a couple of paychecks aside it - I only make that kind of dedication to my bi-yearly 'pooter upgrades:)
Holy crap. There's a beautiful example of why I'm not as into Linux as I thought I'd be. All the new damn acronyms, cryptic application names, non-descriptive settings... I might as well learn to write Cyrillic while I'm at it.
I mean, I look at icons like Network Neighborhood, or My Documents on a Win2K machine, and I can reasonably guess what will happen if I click them (something opens having to do with looking around the network or looking at my documents) or right-clicking them (I can configure something about my network, or where my documents go). Left click, open; right-click, configure. It took a while to discover and get used to, but it's easy.
From the moment I thought to myself, "hmm... I wonder if all the talk about Linux's vaunted network stability is true" I had nothing but trouble for several months. A setup that took me 10 minutes in Windows took me 2 months in Redhat, after hammering out all the wrinkles. Along the way I was learning all sorts of things about.conf's and what have you that were essential to know to create that setup, but have completely vanished by now.
I was just happy to get Redhat installed with Samba and a proxy server. It dials out when my Windowes boxes make an IP request. It works lovely. That was about 6 months ago and I haven't touched the machine since. I'm almost afraid to - I get the feeling it's balanced like an elephant on the head of a pin, and if I so much as THINK about a.conf file, the delecate web of -arguments, daemons and runlevels will just... stop working. And I'll have to figure it out all over again.
Of course, the machine hasn't crashed, BSOD'ed, or just plain crapped out on me in all that time either:)
Consider the possibility:
GPL is fundementally flawed in some way or another that a clever Microsoft lawyer has detected... Microsoft pays Vidomi to settle out of court, thus keeping the GPL from being properly scrutinized in court... GPL advocates hail it as a win and continue to develop code like crazy, feeling that they're safe... Ultra-cool, revolutionary code is developed and published under GPL... Microsoft grabs code, declares it the Next Big Thing, makes bundle without investing the development time!
Horrors. By not contesting the GPL, they're just putting us off our guard.
Saitek Industries has something vaguely similar, though it's not as glitzy as an LCD display - the PC Dash.
I had one of the first generations of these, and loved it loved it loved it. 35 programmable keys (they were the little bubble-wrap type deals, which had some of the tactile feedback everybody's talking about), each key could be programmed for up to 4 functions using a simple latched-shift system... It even had a gamepad-style 8-way hat.
One of the truly nifty features was that it didn't require a driver to be installed - it perfectly emulated a keyboard, repeat rates and all. Configurations could be programmed in via a driver, but for folks who wanted to take their PC Dash around, there was a very cool barcode scanner built in. When you printed out a layout to cover the buttons with, a barcode would go on the page. Plug the dash in, swipe the barcode, and you were off.
The PC Dash 2 is not quite as cool, and I think it took a step backward, but it was USB... the first gen used a PS/2 passthrough. Still, I have very fond memories.
Yea verily, Saitek doth make some of the swiftiest peripherals on the planet. The X-36 throttle is possibly the perfect interface for flight games.
Meanwhile...
Since the Touchscreen can display new screens for each game automatically, I suggest taking it a step further and make it totally dynamic throughout the application. Instead of one screen that stays static for the entire game (requiring you to either make tiny little icons to cover the retinue of commands, or forego commands in favor of bigger icons), give the option for the user to create drill-down style menus which temporarily replace unrelated controls. Press the Inventory button, all the related inventory controls pop up. Press the Weapons button... well, you get the idea. This wouldn't be much good in fast-paced games, but for those of us who prefer our games a little slower-paced, it would truly rock. For the folks who are thinking of dynamic LCARS control panels, there you have it.
Tatsujin
Visit Unclebear.com for all your roleplaying needs that don't involve leather.
I suppose this isn't the place to lament the sad death of the Babylon 5 Flight Sim from Sierra, right? Those bastards.
Plook the Quake engine, I wanna fly a star fury! Blamblamblamblam SWOOOOOOOSH blam blam POP!
Seriously. Full 3-axis rotation in a zero-G, fully newtonian environment. Can'tcha just imagine the tactics?
It's an improvement over new skins on a quake model, anyway. I think one of the reasons they had to drop it was that the controls became more complex than a 104 keyboard could handle...
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps one thing to look at would be how the various permutations of Windows have split off. everything is supposed to become easier and easier for the user: keeping up on the latest patches, audio/video codecs, drivers and what not. Further, this tactic is emerging into the ability to install and use the operating system at all, witness XP. M$ is actively automating the OS through the Internet. I still get a chill every time Windows Media Player decides it's time to look for an upgrade and my proxy server dials out unbidden.
The point is, Windows machines are turning into dumb terminals. The burden of processing still rests with the terminal instead of the server, which simply enables the software to run. It's an interesting hybrid, and one which fits in with the business model this guy is talking about. If you can't actively control the Internet via the infrastructure, you can always take the control away from the end nodes by crippling their usability without some kind of automated registration and upgrade technique. .Net sounds worse to the nth power.
It exploits the dependence of users and businesses on the Internet itself - this kind of control wouldn't have been possible pre-'95. And now they want to re-vamp the whole thing to bring it all together on the business side.
That's what I'm really worried about.
Tatsujin
That makes two of you.
Shut up! Be happy! Take only the drugs prescribed by your boss or supervisor! Remain calm! Sports broadcasts will continue as normal!
The enemy of progress is questions.
Tatsujin
I work at the Health Sciences Center in our local university, and I've become something of a campus go-to-guy for handheld computers. We've got entire departments buying these things up by the TRUCKLOAD, deploying them to the staff and faculty, getting all hot and bothered over having these little things (mostly Palm M505s, but a few visors here and there... fortunately few iPaqs)... but no idea what to do with them. They jump the gun on the technology curve, and have a hard time settling in when their wallets catch up with their brains.
Part of the problem is that I don't think the user base in general doesn't even know what these things are, what they're designed for, and what they're really like to use day to day. The idea of the tricorder may have given use a heads-up on what technology was capable of, but the flip side of that is that people expect all tricorder-like things to be FUCKING TRICORDERS.
Here's what I tell people who ask me what kind of PDA to buy and what it's for:
I can't imagine why Joe User would want to turn a Palm-type device into a replacement for the desktop. I've got apps (ThoughtManager comes to mind, Pocket Quicken too) on my Visor Prism that have done more for organizing my thoughts, ideas, presentations and life in general than ANYTHING my PC has ever done for me, and it's simple to use. I also don't have to worry about loading my Visor up with apps that, for some inexplicable reason, hate each other's guts and duke it out in the form of GPFs and incompatible DLLs (Outlook and GroupWise come to mind). I don't have to rebuild the OS everytime I add a bit of hardware with screwy drivers.
I turn it on, and the information is instantly there in fun-size form. No wading through menus. No waiting for the desktop to come up. It's just THERE. With the right hacks and a little finger-training, I can find any information I want in three actions or less.
That's what I want out of these things, and I think it's a common goal.
Relating this to the Health Sciences field - ePocrates is a beautiful little app that maintains a portable drug interaction database. Our residents and other medical-type people swear by it, and it updates itself every time the user does a sync.
Instant info, on demand. That's the Information Age - not MP3s, Powerpoint presentations (dear God, don't even get me started on these fucking wastes of time), voice recognition doo-dads that talk back to me and sound like HAL, or whatever. Just give me a place to put and organise my ideas until I get to the resources I need to make them a reality. Everything else is just a distraction - not bad per se, but it doesn't contribute to my productivity. Until you can fit something like that directly into my brain, you can replace my Visor with anything trying to be more PC-like when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
The Visor also has the added advantage of being a great platform for hobbyists to develop on - being able to beam a program around has, I think, done wonders for the shareware concept.
/me ducks,
Tatsujin
Consider:
Therefore, somewhere in the digits of Pi is a string of digits which, when transformed into binary, form the code to decrypt CCS on a Linux box. All the scientists have to do is find the correct starting position and how may digits need to be calculated. The resulting information could be spread throughout the internet and used to decrypt protected content.
Further investgation into the true nature of Pi is a violation of the DMCA! This must stop at once!
or... Holy moley! Taking that same argument, one could reason that every movie ever made, or that ever could be made, is buried digitally in Pi somewhere! Piracy is built in to the very structure of the universe!!!!
Tatsujin
I've got a TV that's 20 years old. It's mammoth, about 25" in a giant wooden case on casters. I wouldn't trade it for anything, except when it comes time to move the damn thing.
The picture is fine, too. It's hooked up to a DishTV reciever and, I'll be darned, it actually does show an improvement, but the only thing that affects broadcast TV pictures is the fact that the antenna inside is crap.
I watch TV for about 3 hours a week. Occasionally the wife and I will rent videos and watch those instead. All that HDTV means to me is that five years from now I'll have to make sure I've bought a DVD player that can still send out an RCA signal. I might even take the time to capture my beloved VCR tapes to VCD. Otherwise, fuck 'em. I'm not so hard up for entertainment that I'm going to put a couple of paychecks aside it - I only make that kind of dedication to my bi-yearly 'pooter upgrades :)
Tatsujin
The obvious corrlary is "Teach a man computer technology and he starves to death trudging through 0:Redundant replies on Slashdot..."
Holy crap. There's a beautiful example of why I'm not as into Linux as I thought I'd be. All the new damn acronyms, cryptic application names, non-descriptive settings... I might as well learn to write Cyrillic while I'm at it.
I mean, I look at icons like Network Neighborhood, or My Documents on a Win2K machine, and I can reasonably guess what will happen if I click them (something opens having to do with looking around the network or looking at my documents) or right-clicking them (I can configure something about my network, or where my documents go). Left click, open; right-click, configure. It took a while to discover and get used to, but it's easy.
From the moment I thought to myself, "hmm... I wonder if all the talk about Linux's vaunted network stability is true" I had nothing but trouble for several months. A setup that took me 10 minutes in Windows took me 2 months in Redhat, after hammering out all the wrinkles. Along the way I was learning all sorts of things about .conf's and what have you that were essential to know to create that setup, but have completely vanished by now.
I was just happy to get Redhat installed with Samba and a proxy server. It dials out when my Windowes boxes make an IP request. It works lovely. That was about 6 months ago and I haven't touched the machine since. I'm almost afraid to - I get the feeling it's balanced like an elephant on the head of a pin, and if I so much as THINK about a .conf file, the delecate web of -arguments, daemons and runlevels will just... stop working. And I'll have to figure it out all over again.
Of course, the machine hasn't crashed, BSOD'ed, or just plain crapped out on me in all that time either :)
Tatsujin
Horrors. By not contesting the GPL, they're just putting us off our guard.
Tatsujin
I had one of the first generations of these, and loved it loved it loved it. 35 programmable keys (they were the little bubble-wrap type deals, which had some of the tactile feedback everybody's talking about), each key could be programmed for up to 4 functions using a simple latched-shift system... It even had a gamepad-style 8-way hat.
One of the truly nifty features was that it didn't require a driver to be installed - it perfectly emulated a keyboard, repeat rates and all. Configurations could be programmed in via a driver, but for folks who wanted to take their PC Dash around, there was a very cool barcode scanner built in. When you printed out a layout to cover the buttons with, a barcode would go on the page. Plug the dash in, swipe the barcode, and you were off.
The PC Dash 2 is not quite as cool, and I think it took a step backward, but it was USB... the first gen used a PS/2 passthrough. Still, I have very fond memories.
Yea verily, Saitek doth make some of the swiftiest peripherals on the planet. The X-36 throttle is possibly the perfect interface for flight games.
Meanwhile...
Since the Touchscreen can display new screens for each game automatically, I suggest taking it a step further and make it totally dynamic throughout the application. Instead of one screen that stays static for the entire game (requiring you to either make tiny little icons to cover the retinue of commands, or forego commands in favor of bigger icons), give the option for the user to create drill-down style menus which temporarily replace unrelated controls. Press the Inventory button, all the related inventory controls pop up. Press the Weapons button... well, you get the idea. This wouldn't be much good in fast-paced games, but for those of us who prefer our games a little slower-paced, it would truly rock. For the folks who are thinking of dynamic LCARS control panels, there you have it.
Tatsujin
Visit Unclebear.com for all your roleplaying needs that don't involve leather.
I suppose this isn't the place to lament the sad death of the Babylon 5 Flight Sim from Sierra, right? Those bastards. Plook the Quake engine, I wanna fly a star fury! Blamblamblamblam SWOOOOOOOSH blam blam POP! Seriously. Full 3-axis rotation in a zero-G, fully newtonian environment. Can'tcha just imagine the tactics? It's an improvement over new skins on a quake model, anyway. I think one of the reasons they had to drop it was that the controls became more complex than a 104 keyboard could handle...