I love helping users figure out exactly how their suggested feature should work, even to the point of helping them write documentation for it before I start programming. I really enjoy listening and trying to figure out what they want and how to put together existing and custom code to get there. =) They might not start with a clear idea of what they want, but with enough questions, we usually get somewhere useful.
I maintain a personal information manager. We encourage people to send even their silliest ideas to the mailing list. What seems frivolous to one might be incredibly useful for other people, and I've implemented half-jokes that turned out to be incredibly cool things. Code complexity is kept manageable through liberal use of personal configuration files. =) Basically, it costs the rest of the community nothing if I add additional features for just one person. One of my goals is really to tailor Planner to the needs of individual users, so even if code is useful for only one person, I'll still try to write it or encourage other people to try it out. Our community is a fantastic example of user-driven innovation. =)
This environment has not only encouraged people to think about personalizing their PIM to fit the way they work, it has even gotten non-programmers and newbies to explore LISP. People describe themselves as addicted to Planner! =) User-centered development makes maintaining software so much fun.
When I'm studying a language, I like finding an open source project I care about and looking for something to tweak. Advantages of this include feedback from other developers, an instant framework to fit your small changes into, and the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you make something other people will use. You can pick up the idioms of the language quickly by reading code used in real life. Participating in an open source project also connects to a lot of other people who already know the language you want to learn, and you can ask them for help.
Don't be intimidated by the size of projects. Pick a project, browse through the source code, try to get the feel of things. You can usually find a bug report small enough for you to work on. If not, think of a feature you'd like to have and try to implement it. =)
You might be interested in Llamagraphics' LifeBalance
method, then. It think it lets you do hierarchical tasks with changing
priority levels. Haven't tried it (as mentioned, I maintain a much
simpler organizer), but it sounds like the way you work.
Getting Things Done is a way of planning your life. You think of the major projects you want to do and write down the desired outcomes. Then you think of the very next thing you need to do in order to achieve that outcome: small steps toward your goal! When you accomplish that, you think of the next step, and the next step, and so on.
Some tasks have to be accomplished by a certain date, so you write those down in a special area. Some tasks can only be done in a certain location or context, so you note those as well.
Keeping your goals in front of you and thinking of the next step you need to accomplish makes even intimidating projects seem much easier. =)
I maintain planner.el, an organizer for Emacs. Although it was originally written to support the Franklin-Covey method and other ways of planning, some of my users have looked into using Planner to support the Getting Things Done method. Because planner.el stores all of its information in plain text files with a little markup, it's been easy to adapt to people's particular styles.
Our mailing list has around 80 people from around the world. I love trying to get planner.el to fit people's working styles instead of forcing a particular method on them. =)
Be careful what you wish for. =) The windows-menus-icons-pointers (WIMP) paradigm we're used to on the desktop requires far too much concentration on a wearable, according to WIMP Considered Fatal. There are, however, people trying to find alternatives. You might want to check out the links and archives on wearables.blu.org, and Google for papers related to wearable computing.
Personal thoughts: I got an M1 head-mounted display, but I found it to be too cumbersome (heavy on the head) and it distracted other people. Not a hardware hacker, so I haven't done any of the covert mods. Anyway, I switched to a monaural headset (just a single earphone+mic, looks like a handsfree kit) and am using Emacspeak for sound output. I still occasionally get confused, but it's pretty decent. I use a Twiddler for key input. The whole thing is pretty unobtrusive. I look like I'm listening to music and/or texting.
That said, shouldn't kids be learning how to read? There are a number of games that help kids develop reading skills, and it's certainly a very useful skill. Not all books are in electronic form, after all...
Customizing Debian-style menus is actually not as difficult as it sounds. To modify the standard menus, add, edit or delete files in/usr/lib/menu (might be somewhere else for non-Debian systems). Many window managers allow you to specify your own menu. You can also usually include other menu files.
I've customized my own menus for fvwm and blackbox. I'm not a GNOME or KDE fan because I save all the memory and the cycles I have for Emacs. Debian menu system integration is actually pretty good, although I hardly browse through the menu. Who needs menus when you've got a terminal window open?;)
I use a Twiddler too, and I find the easy programmability of Emacs (and those funky keyboard macros!) to be absolutely wonderful when I chord. In addition, Emacspeak's speech synthesis also helps when I'm walking around. =)
You might want to tweak your Emacs to make it more friendly.
First, no one's forcing them to use Photoshop/Quicken/Visio/Director/Office.
Second, if more people posted.txt,.rtf and.html, we wouldn't have this.doc problem.
Third, do we _really_ need all of this stuff? If you're just starting out, do you need all of the whizbang features of Photoshop? Do we really need the macro capabilities of Word documents? Some people do. Most don't.
Sometimes we use software features to cover up our own lack of skills, and that's why people feel they have to go for the biggest, most featureful pieces of software - because they don't want to face the fact that they can't hack it with tools that don't have whizbang feature #42.
Sometimes we use software to make life more convenient for us. We already know how to do those funky things, but some tools make them easier to do than others. The more people use open source programs (maybe even contributing to them!), the better open source programs can be. It's just a matter of evolving software until it does what we want. Now some people can't take that, so they'll just stay with proprietary, expensive software - a dead end as far as they're concerned - but some people have the patience to work with and improve open source software. =)
Ah, but what about companies?
Why would the industry hire some open source free-as-in-speech-_and_-beer- geek instead of someone who cut his or her teeth on pirated copies of the software that the company uses (perhaps even legitimately)?
At first glance it seems that committing to open source as students penalizes us when we get into the industry and we're expected to know how to deal with MS SQL Server and stuff like that. We'd have to learn on the job - and that's valuable time! We'd have to learn how to do Photoshop and Flash and things like that!
But it's not as simple as that. While the proprietary software pirate might be familiar with the ins and outs of the software he or she used, there aer other things to consider. The open source geek would have demonstrated resourcefulness and ethics. Maybe the open source geek would be able to help the company save more money. At the very least, the open source geek would be able to adapt to the 'far superior' closed source proprietary tools that the company uses, and upgrading from an okay tool to a great tool is easier than going from a great tool to an okay tool.
And dare I mention that no one is being forced to be a graphic designer? (Okay, maybe some people are, but...)
If we tell people that piracy is okay, what we're teaching people is that they can ignore their conscience in order to earn the kind of money they want. Yes, some software companies set ridiculous prices for their software - prices far out of a school or student's budget. Yes, some companies are downright mean. That's no excuse. Do the right thing.
Face it, most of the World Wide Web is junk. Search for information and you're likely to come across unrelated personal homepages or data from unreliable sites. Similarly you might be overwhelmed with too much data - information overload.
That's where good queries, source scoping, and ranking algorithms come in. In order to sift through the gazillion pages on the Net, we need a way to find out which pages are likely to interest us. Indexing more pages may help, but that's only one part of the answer.
As for search engine comparisons... well, Google's been really, really nice. =) Googlebars. Innovations. Funky things going on in Google Labs. I don't think Google's going to be easily replaced as _the_ search engine. I'll try AllTheWeb - looks interesting - but Google's cool.
A pair of Linux iPAQs with expansion sleeves may work fantastically in this environment. Get two CF or PCMCIA network cards, install them on the iPAQs (the old 3630s or maybe even the monochrome iPAQs will do just fine), and check away. You can even install netcat.
It's really portable and flexible, and you can test all sorts of things easily.
Incidentally, for wireless neworks - there are tools for helping you check wireless signal strength. Grab a supported WLAN card, plug it in, and wander around the building checking if your wireless network's okay.
I'm really glad I got into programming contests in high school. I had a teacher who told me hey, why don't you try out. I did, and I joined a bunch of people who enjoyed programming as much as I did. I learned a great deal from them, and I hope I was able to teach something in return. In fact, some of the people I met through programming contests are now my closest friends.
International competitions are also quite fun. I miss the International Software Competitition (part of the South East Asia Regional Computer Conference [SEARCC]). Unlike the international competitions I joined later on, the ISC really gave us time to mix, socialize, tour the place... We not only programmed (in QBASIC, of all languages!) but we also played cards with the other delegates, swapped souvenirs, and traded tips. I owe my real start in Linux to a pack of CDs someone gave me at one of these conferences, so I guess you can say it has changed my life.
I'm really glad I got into programming contests. The contests have all sorts of perks - travel to another country for free, maybe even win a prize or two (fame, fortune, and a line in your resume!). I often even get a room all to myself because there aren't that many other girls around.
The early exposure I got to data structures and algorithms and the training I received in problem solving helped me a lot in computer science, and the confidence I gained from the competitions allow me to think of doing even cooler things.;)
That aside, there are some kinds of contests I enjoy more than others. I started with the usual solve-N-problems-within-M-hours, but when I got into develop-and-present-applications-within-X-days I realized how much fun I'd been missing.
The typical problem-based contests often test how quickly you can realize the problem before you is just a mishmash of problems you'd already encountered during training. That's where the heavy duty practice machinery comes in. When you can glance at a problem and realize it reduces to something you've already solved before, you're practically done - all you have to do is code, debug, and test! While fun, sometimes it feels a little... hmm... too much like an exercise.
In contrast, I feel that competitions that center on the quick development of an application given some specifications echo the 'real world' a bit more. In one particularly big contest we were in when I was a sophomore, I worked with four seniors to turn out this networked disk usage / process count monitor in Java. Ran on both Windows and Linux, so gained plus points for being cross-platform. There were criteria for documentation, presentation, even teamwork... We were holed up in a training complex for 3 days, with 24h food, drinks, and access to 5 computers - one of the most fun 3 days of my life. <laugh>
Oh, let's not forget trivia contests. Sometimes those are hard ("I can't believe I forgot that!"), but they're also quite fun. I particularly enjoyed the twist the Hewlett-Packard TechQuiz added: a "technopreneurship" round, where you'd not only have to answer trivia but also place bids that depended on your confidence. That was fun. =)
So yes, I've found programming contests to be very worthwhile. It brought me in contact with other geeks (and not just those in my immediate area), it forced me to learn about all sorts of cool things, and it helped me really become comfortable with computer science. Definitely something I'd do over again.
Congratulations to both of you. I was feeling really unsentimental during Valentine's - even wore a black Windows XP shirt (blech! - don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux user), but waking up and reading this story.. gosh. Maybe there's hope for geeks yet.
Excellent, excellent proposal. Have a terrific life!
Exactly! =) It doesn't even have to be as powerful as my desktop yet - my needs are simpler when I'm on the go; all I need is a connection to the Net and a good interface for processing small data. I can connect to more powerful computers if I need to do more work. =)
I don't think we know enough about the brain yet to do microchip implants, but gadgets are perfectly fine with me. I want to try out funky input and output devices! <laugh>
I find it rather interesting that Slashdot people seem to generally like technology, but stop at the point of having tech in their clothes. Yes, the concern for privacy is very real, but hey - wearable computing looks like it can be pretty fun.
Advances in wearable computing mean better battery life even for the non-adventurous. Better processing power. Smaller computers that last longer. Tie that in with ubiquitous computing and we can really live in a wired world.
Although a few people say they wouldn't want to be connected to the Internet all the time, I for one would love to (as long as I don't get DDOS'd!). I find search engines like Google incredibly useful when I'm tracking down information. I like keeping notes electronically because I can grep through them for the stuff I _know_ I wrote down somewhere. I'd love to have access to the Net everywhere.
I'm a little forgetful, so I'd appreciate having a computer take care of things like reminding me about appointments. If it could also watch where I put things down, that would keep me from losing things all the time! (Big win, definitely.) A computer that could match names and faces would be a good thing, too. Phone numbers, notes, reminders, birthdays... so much data could help me when dealing with other people.
I'd like to have it in class, too. I'm a teaching assistant for an introductory CS course and while checking papers I usually make a lot of notes on how the students are doing. I'd like those notes to pop up when I'm talking to students, so that we can talk about the things they're having problems with. As a student, I have to admit that wearable computing will be a little distracting - I might be surfing the Net looking at related information instead of listening to the teacher! - but I'm sure a reasonable compromise can be achieved.
I really want to do research in wearable computing because I want computers to be so close and comfortable that we practically forget about them. I just don't know where to start. I'll be graduating pretty soon, so I'm looking at universities that do work in wearable computing - quite a few! - but it's hard to give the field a try, especially since the components are pretty expensive and practically impossible to get here in the Philippines. =) Maybe I can save up for one of those HUDs...
People don't really have to be so negative about wearable computing. If you don't like it, don't wear it!;) I don't really mind whatever loss of privacy might accompany it. I don't care if Starbucks knows I drink hot chocolate; hey, it would be nice if they could spell my name right all the time! I don't mind if companies know my preferences, but the smart thing for them to do is also note that I don't like spam - a company that deals fairly with me will earn my respect and possibly purchases. =) If losing a little privacy comes with having a computer (and not just a computer, but the Internet!) with me all the time, in a form more portable and convenient than the laptop I bring around constantly... hey, I'm all for wearable computing. =)
<plug>
So, is any wearable computing company or lab looking for new interns/students/whatever? =)
</plug>
That could be a little difficult. There's a reason why we're undergraduates - the intro sequence is nice, gives us a taste of what to expect, gets us excited...
Well, you could push graduate-level work into the freshmen year, scare off everyone who hadn't been doing college-level work in high school, and just work with the geniuses who are left, but what's the fun in that? What about the students who might have potential that _could_ have been developed, had they been brought up to speed first?
Intro sequences and survey courses do have their uses, after all. =)
Still, I'm all for advanced students being able to get on the fast track.
Found a way around that. =) I browse the library shelves, occasionally random-walking until I hit something interesting. Or I peek at what other searches there are. The New Acquisitions shelf/list is also quite varied.
Going back on topic:
I'm in my third year of BS computer science at a liberal arts college in the Philippines. It's not really well-known as the best CS school - a more technical school holds that honor - but I love it anyway. =) Besides, philosophy's actually _really_ interesting. Wouldn't have thought it could be that fun.
Hailstorm admittedly looks cool. The Microsoft press room has a couple of articles and press releases. I'd love to have a really nice web-based calendar/whatever else...
But if Microsoft is going to charge for the service, how does that work?
We had a great time at our Linux10 celebration here in Manila, Philippines. Quite a few mini-talks on various topics. It was so much fun to meet other geeks, and there were plenty of newbies to brainwa... indoctrina... _help_, yeah, that's it.
My mom even attended the StarOffice talk! Way coooool. =)
Pardon my naivete, but doesn't tagging the books work?
There are always these huge detectors along the entrances, anyway. Most bookstores tag their books, and if you limit the kind of packages that people can take in, you should be able to control theft pretty well.
Besides, even with facial recognition, how are you going to define and detect "suspicious" behavior? Software might be smart enough to track both visible and obscured objects, but it could also make mistakes. Juggling books might also confuse the software.
Tagging the books might be better, and it doesn't raise all the questions about privacy and stuff. Of course, you need to make sure that the tags aren't removed...
There are LaTeX processors for most platforms. A quick Google search can be rather useful.
As for viewing LaTeX files, you can convert them to many popular formats - HTML, postscript, PDF, RTF, DOC... - or use a browser plugin. IBM's TechExplorer (http://www.software.ibm.com/network/techexplorer/ ) allows you to view TeX, LaTeX and MathML documents in IE or Netscape.
LaTeX is much more flexible than any other format I've tried so far. It can do books, articles, reports, and slides - and these are all standard packages. The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network is to LaTeX as CPAN is to Perl - an immensely useful repository of cool stuff. =)
Slashdot Mirror
I love helping users figure out exactly how their suggested feature should work, even to the point of helping them write documentation for it before I start programming. I really enjoy listening and trying to figure out what they want and how to put together existing and custom code to get there. =) They might not start with a clear idea of what they want, but with enough questions, we usually get somewhere useful.
I maintain a personal information manager. We encourage people to send even their silliest ideas to the mailing list. What seems frivolous to one might be incredibly useful for other people, and I've implemented half-jokes that turned out to be incredibly cool things. Code complexity is kept manageable through liberal use of personal configuration files. =) Basically, it costs the rest of the community nothing if I add additional features for just one person. One of my goals is really to tailor Planner to the needs of individual users, so even if code is useful for only one person, I'll still try to write it or encourage other people to try it out. Our community is a fantastic example of user-driven innovation. =) This environment has not only encouraged people to think about personalizing their PIM to fit the way they work, it has even gotten non-programmers and newbies to explore LISP. People describe themselves as addicted to Planner! =) User-centered development makes maintaining software so much fun.
When I'm studying a language, I like finding an open source project I care about and looking for something to tweak. Advantages of this include feedback from other developers, an instant framework to fit your small changes into, and the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you make something other people will use. You can pick up the idioms of the language quickly by reading code used in real life. Participating in an open source project also connects to a lot of other people who already know the language you want to learn, and you can ask them for help.
Don't be intimidated by the size of projects. Pick a project, browse through the source code, try to get the feel of things. You can usually find a bug report small enough for you to work on. If not, think of a feature you'd like to have and try to implement it. =)
Great way to get into a language.
You might be interested in Llamagraphics' LifeBalance method, then. It think it lets you do hierarchical tasks with changing priority levels. Haven't tried it (as mentioned, I maintain a much simpler organizer), but it sounds like the way you work.
Some tasks have to be accomplished by a certain date, so you write those down in a special area. Some tasks can only be done in a certain location or context, so you note those as well.
Keeping your goals in front of you and thinking of the next step you need to accomplish makes even intimidating projects seem much easier. =)
- Someone who uses planner.el to support GTD
- My thoughts on GTD
- My page on PlannerMode
- The EmacsWiki page on PlannerMode
Our mailing list has around 80 people from around the world. I love trying to get planner.el to fit people's working styles instead of forcing a particular method on them. =)Personal thoughts: I got an M1 head-mounted display, but I found it to be too cumbersome (heavy on the head) and it distracted other people. Not a hardware hacker, so I haven't done any of the covert mods. Anyway, I switched to a monaural headset (just a single earphone+mic, looks like a handsfree kit) and am using Emacspeak for sound output. I still occasionally get confused, but it's pretty decent. I use a Twiddler for key input. The whole thing is pretty unobtrusive. I look like I'm listening to music and/or texting.
That said, shouldn't kids be learning how to read? There are a number of games that help kids develop reading skills, and it's certainly a very useful skill. Not all books are in electronic form, after all...
Customizing Debian-style menus is actually not as difficult as it sounds. To modify the standard menus, add, edit or delete files in /usr/lib/menu (might be somewhere else for non-Debian systems). Many window managers allow you to specify your own menu. You can also usually include other menu files.
I've customized my own menus for fvwm and blackbox. I'm not a GNOME or KDE fan because I save all the memory and the cycles I have for Emacs. Debian menu system integration is actually pretty good, although I hardly browse through the menu. Who needs menus when you've got a terminal window open? ;)
I use a Twiddler too, and I find the easy programmability of Emacs (and those funky keyboard macros!) to be absolutely wonderful when I chord. In addition, Emacspeak's speech synthesis also helps when I'm walking around. =)
You might want to tweak your Emacs to make it more friendly.
First, no one's forcing them to use Photoshop/Quicken/Visio/Director/Office.
.txt, .rtf and .html, we wouldn't have this .doc problem.
Second, if more people posted
Third, do we _really_ need all of this stuff? If you're just starting out, do you need all of the whizbang features of Photoshop? Do we really need the macro capabilities of Word documents? Some people do. Most don't.
Sometimes we use software features to cover up our own lack of skills, and that's why people feel they have to go for the biggest, most featureful pieces of software - because they don't want to face the fact that they can't hack it with tools that don't have whizbang feature #42.
Sometimes we use software to make life more convenient for us. We already know how to do those funky things, but some tools make them easier to do than others. The more people use open source programs (maybe even contributing to them!), the better open source programs can be. It's just a matter of evolving software until it does what we want. Now some people can't take that, so they'll just stay with proprietary, expensive software - a dead end as far as they're concerned - but some people have the patience to work with and improve open source software. =)
Ah, but what about companies?
Why would the industry hire some open source free-as-in-speech-_and_-beer- geek instead of someone who cut his or her teeth on pirated copies of the software that the company uses (perhaps even legitimately)?
At first glance it seems that committing to open source as students penalizes us when we get into the industry and we're expected to know how to deal with MS SQL Server and stuff like that. We'd have to learn on the job - and that's valuable time! We'd have to learn how to do Photoshop and Flash and things like that!
But it's not as simple as that. While the proprietary software pirate might be familiar with the ins and outs of the software he or she used, there aer other things to consider. The open source geek would have demonstrated resourcefulness and ethics. Maybe the open source geek would be able to help the company save more money. At the very least, the open source geek would be able to adapt to the 'far superior' closed source proprietary tools that the company uses, and upgrading from an okay tool to a great tool is easier than going from a great tool to an okay tool.
And dare I mention that no one is being forced to be a graphic designer? (Okay, maybe some people are, but...)
If we tell people that piracy is okay, what we're teaching people is that they can ignore their conscience in order to earn the kind of money they want. Yes, some software companies set ridiculous prices for their software - prices far out of a school or student's budget. Yes, some companies are downright mean. That's no excuse. Do the right thing.
You always have a choice.
Face it, most of the World Wide Web is junk. Search for information and you're likely to come across unrelated personal homepages or data from unreliable sites. Similarly you might be overwhelmed with too much data - information overload.
That's where good queries, source scoping, and ranking algorithms come in. In order to sift through the gazillion pages on the Net, we need a way to find out which pages are likely to interest us. Indexing more pages may help, but that's only one part of the answer.
As for search engine comparisons... well, Google's been really, really nice. =) Googlebars. Innovations. Funky things going on in Google Labs. I don't think Google's going to be easily replaced as _the_ search engine. I'll try AllTheWeb - looks interesting - but Google's cool.
It's really portable and flexible, and you can test all sorts of things easily.
Incidentally, for wireless neworks - there are tools for helping you check wireless signal strength. Grab a supported WLAN card, plug it in, and wander around the building checking if your wireless network's okay.
International competitions are also quite fun. I miss the International Software Competitition (part of the South East Asia Regional Computer Conference [SEARCC]). Unlike the international competitions I joined later on, the ISC really gave us time to mix, socialize, tour the place... We not only programmed (in QBASIC, of all languages!) but we also played cards with the other delegates, swapped souvenirs, and traded tips. I owe my real start in Linux to a pack of CDs someone gave me at one of these conferences, so I guess you can say it has changed my life.
I'm really glad I got into programming contests. The contests have all sorts of perks - travel to another country for free, maybe even win a prize or two (fame, fortune, and a line in your resume!). I often even get a room all to myself because there aren't that many other girls around. The early exposure I got to data structures and algorithms and the training I received in problem solving helped me a lot in computer science, and the confidence I gained from the competitions allow me to think of doing even cooler things. ;)
That aside, there are some kinds of contests I enjoy more than others. I started with the usual solve-N-problems-within-M-hours, but when I got into develop-and-present-applications-within-X-days I realized how much fun I'd been missing.
The typical problem-based contests often test how quickly you can realize the problem before you is just a mishmash of problems you'd already encountered during training. That's where the heavy duty practice machinery comes in. When you can glance at a problem and realize it reduces to something you've already solved before, you're practically done - all you have to do is code, debug, and test! While fun, sometimes it feels a little... hmm... too much like an exercise.
In contrast, I feel that competitions that center on the quick development of an application given some specifications echo the 'real world' a bit more. In one particularly big contest we were in when I was a sophomore, I worked with four seniors to turn out this networked disk usage / process count monitor in Java. Ran on both Windows and Linux, so gained plus points for being cross-platform. There were criteria for documentation, presentation, even teamwork... We were holed up in a training complex for 3 days, with 24h food, drinks, and access to 5 computers - one of the most fun 3 days of my life. <laugh>
Oh, let's not forget trivia contests. Sometimes those are hard ("I can't believe I forgot that!"), but they're also quite fun. I particularly enjoyed the twist the Hewlett-Packard TechQuiz added: a "technopreneurship" round, where you'd not only have to answer trivia but also place bids that depended on your confidence. That was fun. =)
So yes, I've found programming contests to be very worthwhile. It brought me in contact with other geeks (and not just those in my immediate area), it forced me to learn about all sorts of cool things, and it helped me really become comfortable with computer science. Definitely something I'd do over again.
Excellent, excellent proposal. Have a terrific life!
I don't think we know enough about the brain yet to do microchip implants, but gadgets are perfectly fine with me. I want to try out funky input and output devices! <laugh>
Advances in wearable computing mean better battery life even for the non-adventurous. Better processing power. Smaller computers that last longer. Tie that in with ubiquitous computing and we can really live in a wired world.
Although a few people say they wouldn't want to be connected to the Internet all the time, I for one would love to (as long as I don't get DDOS'd!). I find search engines like Google incredibly useful when I'm tracking down information. I like keeping notes electronically because I can grep through them for the stuff I _know_ I wrote down somewhere. I'd love to have access to the Net everywhere.
I'm a little forgetful, so I'd appreciate having a computer take care of things like reminding me about appointments. If it could also watch where I put things down, that would keep me from losing things all the time! (Big win, definitely.) A computer that could match names and faces would be a good thing, too. Phone numbers, notes, reminders, birthdays... so much data could help me when dealing with other people.
I'd like to have it in class, too. I'm a teaching assistant for an introductory CS course and while checking papers I usually make a lot of notes on how the students are doing. I'd like those notes to pop up when I'm talking to students, so that we can talk about the things they're having problems with. As a student, I have to admit that wearable computing will be a little distracting - I might be surfing the Net looking at related information instead of listening to the teacher! - but I'm sure a reasonable compromise can be achieved.
I really want to do research in wearable computing because I want computers to be so close and comfortable that we practically forget about them. I just don't know where to start. I'll be graduating pretty soon, so I'm looking at universities that do work in wearable computing - quite a few! - but it's hard to give the field a try, especially since the components are pretty expensive and practically impossible to get here in the Philippines. =) Maybe I can save up for one of those HUDs...
People don't really have to be so negative about wearable computing. If you don't like it, don't wear it! ;) I don't really mind whatever loss of privacy might accompany it. I don't care if Starbucks knows I drink hot chocolate; hey, it would be nice if they could spell my name right all the time! I don't mind if companies know my preferences, but the smart thing for them to do is also note that I don't like spam - a company that deals fairly with me will earn my respect and possibly purchases. =) If losing a little privacy comes with having a computer (and not just a computer, but the Internet!) with me all the time, in a form more portable and convenient than the laptop I bring around constantly... hey, I'm all for wearable computing. =)
<plug> So, is any wearable computing company or lab looking for new interns/students/whatever? =) </plug>
Well, you could push graduate-level work into the freshmen year, scare off everyone who hadn't been doing college-level work in high school, and just work with the geniuses who are left, but what's the fun in that? What about the students who might have potential that _could_ have been developed, had they been brought up to speed first?
Intro sequences and survey courses do have their uses, after all. =)
Still, I'm all for advanced students being able to get on the fast track.
Going back on topic:
I'm in my third year of BS computer science at a liberal arts college in the Philippines. It's not really well-known as the best CS school - a more technical school holds that honor - but I love it anyway. =) Besides, philosophy's actually _really_ interesting. Wouldn't have thought it could be that fun.
But if Microsoft is going to charge for the service, how does that work?
I'm not a coffee drinker - it's too bitter (even mocha tastes weird) and I haven't gotten used to it yet.
I like chocolate. Chocolate's great. The sugar'll probably be Very Bad for me later, though. No win.
What about tea?
My mom even attended the StarOffice talk! Way coooool. =)
There are always these huge detectors along the entrances, anyway. Most bookstores tag their books, and if you limit the kind of packages that people can take in, you should be able to control theft pretty well.
Besides, even with facial recognition, how are you going to define and detect "suspicious" behavior? Software might be smart enough to track both visible and obscured objects, but it could also make mistakes. Juggling books might also confuse the software.
Tagging the books might be better, and it doesn't raise all the questions about privacy and stuff. Of course, you need to make sure that the tags aren't removed...
... use the schwartz indeed.
There are LaTeX processors for most platforms. A quick Google search can be rather useful.
As for viewing LaTeX files, you can convert them to many popular formats - HTML, postscript, PDF, RTF, DOC... - or use a browser plugin. IBM's TechExplorer (http://www.software.ibm.com/network/techexplorer/ ) allows you to view TeX, LaTeX and MathML documents in IE or Netscape.
LaTeX is much more flexible than any other format I've tried so far. It can do books, articles, reports, and slides - and these are all standard packages. The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network is to LaTeX as CPAN is to Perl - an immensely useful repository of cool stuff. =)
It's not too hard to learn, either. You can pick up the Not-So Short Guide to LaTeX (http://wso.williams.edu/how/lshort2e) or any of the other tutorials on the Net.
LaTeX is beautiful. I haven't had to use anything else for my papers ever since I discovered the joys of LaTeX. <g>