Casio has had a Touchscreen Data Watch for years..
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Touchscreen Watch
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I don't know the exact Name of the model, but Casio has had a Touchscreen Data Watch for quite some time know. It has a suptantial amount of storage (dunno the exact amount). It even looks quite classic - something of a indistinct 80s design - and it seems to be a part of a kind of classic line that Casio is maintaining beside of that Flashy Postmodernistic Techno European G-Shock style stuff.
Anyway: If you're looking for Touchscreen Wristgadgets, I'd look out for this one.
What was the name of that thing that Hero Protagonist (the guy from Neal Stephensons novel "Snow Crash") carrys around with him? That one with the the two most important programms he uses: "Librarian" and "Earth". Anyway, I want one of those. Right now. Even if it would be from Mickeysoft and called xbox 2 or something. I dont care. Charge me double, I don't care. Just gimme that media/entertainment integrated device.
What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.
Yeah. Shure. What ever you just smoked, timothy, please don't let me have a puff:-).
they're a threat to innocent citizens. Posting instructions of how to commit crimes (sabotage in this case) should be prohibited across boarders. The poloitical background of this is that there is a very fierce anti-nuclear-power movement in germany supportet by 'left' activists. Think of Greenpeace activists with no mind about inocent third parties and you'll get the picture. I hate the "Bahns" miserable missmanagement (I use the train on a regular basis here in germany) and I shure as hell oppose to nuclear power but none the less, these people are criminals and they are a shame to peacefull resitance against "Atomkraft". Sueing a searchengine is of course somewhat of a twist, but I hope this can raise and clarify some issues concerning morally doubtfull internet content and at least leverage trans-european law for this. I might help to know that the german gouverment holds large shares of the "Deutsche Bahn".
Or is that just me? I get constant "object missing" and syntax errors. It's loaded with JavaScript. Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe this guy should have done the tricky stuff with severside perl, eh?
Bad Idea, man. Don't EVER ask a question like that on/., or you'll get fried. 'cuz everybody here knows that "Flash sux(TM)" because Flashsites [insert random website flaw here]. And, by the way, why in hell don't you use HTML 1.1 compliant design, it's all you need. Check out Kornshell and XFree for prime examples of the great webdesign feats achieved in HTML.
To answer your question: I'd predesign templates in Flash 5 and then use ming to modify them. Ming even offers the ability to dynamically insert ActionScript into generated Flash, so it actually is quite powerfull.
As far as I know (me mucho Linux nOOby), the great advantage of the Vim (aside of it's countless downsides of which one is "looking like someone shat on your screen") is that you can run it via telnet with a 9600 baud conection using something like a basic calculator as a keyboard.
What's next? Porting Emacs to QT/KDE? Or rather the other way around, QT to emacs. Which - considering that emacs seems kinda like an OS in itself - could actually be easier.
How about jEdit? Anyone tried that yet? It actually supports more than 2 bit color without requireing a port... (although it is a little sluggish I admit)
No. It doesn't. WinXP reminds me a lot of KDE, though, Mr. Reviewer. I don't know who noticed yet, but essential parts of the XP Workspace are blatant rippofs of KDE and it's KontrolCenter. And that Controlbar isn't a Micros~1 thing either. Let alone the GUI. It's astonishing how many people have come to think of Windows as a synonym for "operating system with graphical user interface". This actually could be the death of that windows trademark in the USA - coming to think of it. On the other hand it's time for a freak like me to notice that the world by now actually has a substancial amount of people who use a PC but can't really even tell a CPU from a network adapter. Gues we gotta go back to helping them along when they come to us for help.
...in the world conclude that focussing on inhouse operating systems and software only provides less long run market share gain and revenue in comparsion to other buisness models (Software branding, service, consulting and 3rd party training), Mickeysoft is gonna pull out their crash programm Linux distro.
Extensively tested at the worlds largest single heap of consumer PCs (Microsoft testing center). With optional reference grade quality Mickeysoft Press Dead Tree Documentation, a rock solid one-klick Installer for x86 and PPC alike, all the plugins you'll ever want and a suite of ready made SLAs for anyone who wants them (because no one's ever gotten fired for shelling out the bucks to M$). And a nice Windows Flag in place of the KDE gear.
And SuSE, Mandrake, RedHat and all the rest are gonna be in deep shit. Trust me.
So I'm wrong? When Mickeysoft and all the rest notice that they've missed the bandwagon they're gonne wither and die? Are you shure? Rember IE?
That's gonna be their OSS strategy. And telling you the truth, I'm actually kinda curious how their distros gonna be like in real.
Intelligently generated true One Time Pads and crypto with them is uncrackable, that's for shure. But this simply doesn't qualify for reasons that allready have been posted here.
Leaving that aside, OTP Crypto actually IS the safe Cryptomechanisim of the future! Nobody knows when someone will find a prime number algorithm or how far for instance the NSA has gotten near to one. Clifford Stoll mentioned something like that in 'The Cuckoos Egg' quite some time ago that hints in this direction. Anyhow, Computers are getting faster and 'bigger', and brute force attacks can bring down a specific cryptomessage of email-length in less than 2 months nowadays, given you've got the hardware or the appropriate distributed computing software. But also mass storage is getting cheaper. With DVD-R just around the corner to consumer market it would be no problem for me to exchange a handfull of OTP disks with my friends that would last a lifetimes worth of crypted email. There only problem here (as with asymmetric crypto) is keeping track of the keys and the parts that where used allready.
A Software to manage this actually is a GPL project I have in mind for quite a time now...mmmmh... anyone interessted in getting it on? Coming to think of it: That would actually also cut down the fuss of constant revoking and updating of public keys. The downside of all this is of course that OTPs can't be public. Smart, ain't I ?:-)
I don't know the exact link (there was an article on/. something like a year ago...) but there's another company building on a chip that's IMPLANTED into your child/dog/grandma with a satellite finder system. From what I remeber it was a passive system (like explorers use to track animal movement) but this implantment idea really scared me. I had thought we weren't in for this kind of stuff until 20 years from now.
Keeping that in mind this watch solution is a 'better' thing (as in 'not quite that crazy').
Whatever you do, don't buy a proprietary CMS. This is serious OSS turf and most of the professional CMS - Vendors I know and deal with in buisness have gone/are just about to go belly up. Note that those who do go belly up usually release their babe as OSS themselves in the end (ars digita - a Java thing I gather - for instance)
There are tons of OSS-CMS solutions out there that kick their proproietary counterparts up and down the street.
Depending on what project scale you have in mind I'd chose between 2 to 3 strategies:
#1: The small, minimum overhead PHP/MySQL (an SSI solution... THE SSI solution) way. Tons of ready to use OSS solutions out there, lot's of ISPs with PHP to go. I personally use phpnuke (kinda like 'slashcode reimplementation in php') as the cms for my webproject (www.modp4rlor.com). Note that PHP rulez the SSI market above ColdFusion, JSP, ASP and all the rest and is somewhat scalable if you use the proprietary stuff like that from zend later on.
#2: The big, fat , hairy project way with all the Java might the OSS community has to offer (apache, tomcat, jakarta, cocoon, turbine, jetstream,... you name it). All of these are leading edge, GPLd and kick serious ass in large scale projects. Allways keep in mind though: Beware of the Java overhead. A lesson hard learned in the recent years by lots of people who thought their 10-hits-a-day Site would look cool with servlets...;;-)
#3: My extra-special, quite very scalable, one size fits all, CMS, DocMS 'n multithreaded Appserver in a box: ZOPE! Features: Exept for some performance critical stuff in C completely written and extendable in Python. A fully OO, bytecode interpreted PL, GPLd of course. Very nice. Easy to learn, next to no overhead for your small projects, powerfull enough for larger stuff like Document Management or Revisioning or Publishing Systems. I know IT-service companies that rely completely on Zope (internal and for customers) and pull some serious projects. Has it's Web and FTP Server on board but can also be run as an addon to others (apache f.i.) Comes with it's own small and unobstrusive SSI solution (DTML - Document Template ML) just suitable for everything that's to small for servlets. Is fully OO and uses it's own Post Relational Database that actually stores EVERYTHING it uses. Very easy to extend via plugins, so called "products" and it's easy to build these plugins too. Oh, almost forgot: It uses a web interface. Only a web interface. And a good one on top. And it takes on klick to install on Windows and something like 4 and a half on Linux. Whatever you're up to, definitely check this one out!
Roxxen is quite cool aswell. AFAICT a sort of smaller Zope using Ruby (sheesh:-) )... Well I could go on but I think you see that there is no need to spend God knows what on Cold Fusion or Intershop:-). Just add a.org or.com to those I mentioned and you find your way through. (to lazy to write links just know:-) )
Just my two cents that came up wilst reading this...
There is an art that's actually quite nice which oyou could consider practicing - Tap Dance. I'm talking about REAL tapdance that actualy involves lifting your ass of that officechair and learning to move somewhat elegant. (Not THAT easy btw.)
These little gadgets are as much art in comparsino to - for an instance - tap dance as typing HTML is to real programming.
...I could go on but you get my point. Like I said, just my two cents for this monday morning.
...and FPS are Massacresims. Period. I play UT myself and enjoy T2 on a regular basis (I play in a clan) but it really boils down to just plain that. FPS train the visual expierience and hand to eye coordination of splattering things/monsters/humanoids/people with a movement of your finger and reduce the social reluctance to hurt/kill/splatter other moving things that scream and bleed that way and reduce the human violance threshhold substacialy when it comes to firearms. Especially if played extensively without any normal social interaction otherwise. That's all scientifically prooven a dozen times and more. If I where king of the US I'd actually prohibit such display of violence on TV and especially in FPS. Nerf Arena Blast can have just the very same tactical challange and the same mechanisim as UT without the screaming and twitchíng and bleeding. It's just that FPS apeal to this animal like instinct that makes people buy not the stuff with the best game mechanisims, but with the most realisticcally displayed massacreing. To my opinion FPS makers to some extent actually could be held liable for the misery caused. But then again it's american law that puts teachers who dare issue sexual education into jail but on the other side allows 12 year olds to get their copy of Hitman 2 without any restictions. No wonder all this crapp happens.
There's allways tons of rant about Flash on/. That's becaus bytes come across with HTML 1.1 compliance just as well as with Flash and/.ers actually seldom notice if a site looks like somebody used a ZX Spectrum to build it.
The Reason why Flash was so successful in the last 3-4 Years is because Desigers where SICK AND TIRED of constantly dealing with the crappiest HTML 4/CSS implementatinon and browser quirks one could imagine. In fact Flash was the only standard one could rely on.
Up to about 6 Months ago Flash was the ONLY way you could get truely plattform independent Typesetting and Layout across the Web. And sound for that matter.
That's mainly why designers would use Flash. Macromedia caught on and now that HTML 4 CSS 2 is finaly something like usable with NS 6.2/IE 5 (IE was the first to implement CSS in a way that actually worked btw) they're steering hard towards a sort of Animation/GUI-VM. Those lingoesk quirks of ActionScript aside, it could very well be that they'll be even more successfull in the future. With XML Sockets and upcoming Video capabilites Flash ist about to push Java of the Client Side Web for good. Aside of online banking maybe. But I wouldn't even say that's for shure.
And talking about lynx-compliant sites: That's not what Flash ever was meant for. And no, a Site isn's just bad because it doesn't show well in lynx.
Slashdot has quite an amount of good programmers and a big heap of *nix users (or at least 'nix wannabees). But honestly now, most rant about compatability and flash being o so crappy and superfluos (actually one of the main reasons to use flash is/was compatability), smartass about HTML being no typesetting language (blahblahblah...it makes me sick!) and at the same time make the crappiest webdesign one could ever imagine. Reading some the comments posted here just gets me fuming again about the arrogant *nix comunity. Bluntly said: Most/.ers don't know sh*t about webdesign, in contrary to what they think their Webdesign is in quality.
My suggestion: Get into it and try for yourself and learn form the people you've seen good webdesign from. A very good community is built around Zeldmans AListApart and WebStandards.org(stick to this site when your going into implementation phase!).
Top of the pops DESIGN (.dcr and flash - of course) you can find at Yugo Nakamuras Site Yugop (check out the archives!!) and at NosePilot(the link at the bottom!). Note that this is DESIGN that is kinda over the top in the way that it actually allready is art.
If you're going to make a massivley content orientaded site you might want to go dynamic form the begining. Check out PHP/MySQL for this. Or get youself a full featured GPLd CMS that are out there for a dime a dozen, maybe like PHPNuke. But that's actually all more webprogramming, that kinda comes later on...
Good luck. Oh, and NEVER discuss design with the people of kornshell.com, xfree.org or listen to the advice from/. patrons. Of course I would be one of the exceptions to that.:-)
Subsricption for Slashdot? Ok. But then also Micropay me back for what I post!!! Based on Modlevel if you will.
That's the whole point: In the Web, money flows from user to ISP and content provider to ISP. There's something wrong here, isn't it? If every ISP would offer micropayment to content providers for bandwidth USED and each user of the Web would pay, all could make their share, quality would increase rapidly and nobody would have to cry just because standard economy kicks in on the WWW.
But the way we have it now, it (the Web) will still allways be just a nerdy pasttime that actually costs a substancial amount of money to obtain, and not that universal media and information highway everybody got so excited about a few years ago.
I wouldn't be suprised if establishing a sane economy model would actually strengthen ISPs that where/are actually also Netproviders like AOL or T-Online. What's with them? Do they offer an ISP cost refund if your site is popular and therefore contributes to the popularity of their service (and therefore brings in the bucks)? Why hasn't anybody done this yet?
The word is "Schadenfreude". Interesting now that I really can't find an english equivalent. Even though I'm a native speaker of both languages.
Sort of like trying to translate these into german: "airborne" and "sophisticated"
BTW: "Schadenfreunde" is the german name for the fun one has seeing others fail or expieriencing any smaller or larger amount of misfortune.
The larger the misfortune is, the more Schadenfreude is considered imoral. Of course.
ZCAM has been around for quite a while now
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The ZCAM Videocam extension is available for more than half a year now.
That fact that it actually works as advertised is somewhat astonishing. If there's a large enough distance between fore and background (> 1,5 Meters) it Keys without any hassle. No more Blue or Greenscreens, that means.
Apart from the obvious general information quality, computer book people in amercia (animals aside) often seems to completely ignore the importance of layout.
The Animal Company makes books that don't have a layout that is a pain to lock at and read.
If you're really from that other computer book publisher then you'd be very well of by improving the layout and typography of your books on a large scale. There so ugly I can hardly justify buying them. Even if it's an exclusive release from some Übergeeks like the three amigos or so. At least the english version. And the german versions, albeit much better in layout and readability (as your german collegues for advice on layout and typo), are sometimes completely useless because they've got the english version pagenumbers in the german editions index.
The time I saw that was the last time I bought a non-animal computer book btw.
So: Drastically improve layout, typo and design and if you publish a german version (which isn't all that of a bad idea - it's a big market) then do it right! Or leave it to the others. It's as simple as that.
And no, the animal peoples layout isn't meant to be an artpiece in itself but it isn't ugly either. That's one of the reasons those other books wander back into the shelf when people are looking for a new book on a subject and fly through those available at the bookstore. English A&Ws always lose that one.
Now that's one valueable advice by a computer-book bibliomaniac you should really think over.
He somehow has to do something with Red Hat or?
Well, I couldn't care less. I'm mainly a Designer, and apart from the missing apps (Freehand, UltraDev, Photoshop, Premiere and an useable Sound Editor) I see no reason whatsoever to give Windoze the credit for a better Desktop.
Yes the Linux Desktop has reached the possiblity for Desktop parrity only half a year ago.(with the arival of halfway usable webbrowsing)
Yes, the naming of apps may be funny for some people, but it basically just plain sux.
Yes, KDE is just as unflexible and unstable as Windoze (don't use it then I keep telling myself...).
Yes, Motif looks like someone shat on your screen. (not to mention the Windoze default desktop..*yuck*)
Yes, it takes a while to get all that stuff running
Yes,and the *nix helpsites - with the crappiest of design available on the web - don't encourage newbies to actually get into *nix very much. Rather the contrary.
Yes, this alltogether sux quite a bit too.
But figure this:
Mickeysofts OSes, as of begining of this year, cost 200$ or more. Without apps or documentation.
Mickeysoft changes their ware every 2 years. That makes 2 months of adjusting and -200$ each time.
That's how they make money, ya'know?
Linux might be the kind I was used to back in old DOS times. (Now please don't any 1bit-color-geek smartass me by starting to compare bash and dos funtionallity - that's not what I mean)
And it might take me the better part of a year to get it running the way a system should.
Mac or 'Doze systems need their time to run smooth aswell, believe me.
But I'll NEVER EVER have to learn an OS again!!! I said: "I'LL NEVER EVER HAVE TO LEARN AN OS AGAIN!" Think this over thrice!
And if there's a problem with Linux, I might be able to fix it. 'Doze or MacOS on the other hand have exactly one (1!) option when you're done with hopefull trying: Reinstall.
Yes it might take another year or two for Mac-only 'stupido' to dig Linux (Honestly, I can't blame them), but to say something like "the Desktop war is won" is just plain bogus. Especially when you mean it's won by Mickesoft. And at the very moment Linux is evolving in leaps and bounds other Oses can only dream of.
No, really. Tell this Bob Young guy (whoever he is) to bugger of and get yourself a SuSE 7.x Pro distro with 7 Cd's one DVD and half a bookshelf of rocksolid 'deadtree' documentation for something like 80 Euro (that's that new european currency in case you've wondered) and you'll dig that those few *nixquirks are worthwhile putting up with. Rather than that constant "buy, install, migrate" cycle Mickeysoft is squeezing the last of revenue out of, before they're probably going to pull some stunt like offering their own Linux-distro.
This guy's right. If you're into buying a PDA, don't forget to check into all those Psion Sales going on just now. They're dirt cheap and even if you don't wanna bother sqeezing Linux on them, EPOC is a very good and solid PDA-OS.
What's the big fuss? This constant/. bitching about licensing. It isn't that NaN get's to own your family when you've installed that plugin. Or that NaN ownz 95% of y'alls PC people out there like Mickeysoft does.
Blender has been for free (beer) since the begining and most certainly allways will be. Because that's the only way they can compete with Maya, Softimage and Houdini. It's the only usable 3D Package that costs nada. Or doesn't cost above 10000$, for that matter. Aside of that NaN owns the software. Period. In any commercial or non-commercial sense.
And so you're not installing a commercial plugin just like Flash. Ok. But calling that license "Draconian" is a bit over the top, imho.
Unless you've contributed Software to the public like Ton Roosendahl (Blender) did, I'd chill out on that issue a little.
On the other hand, if you should only be using GPL'd Software for the sake of it being GPL'd, I wouldn't care to much anyway. You're probably not the 'audience' for this software in the first place.:-)
Sorry to rain on this, but Shockwave 3D is really no match for the Blender solution. First of all its limited to Windows and MacOS. And then it's basically a cut-down version of the more than 2 year old NeMo/Virtools (www.virtools.com) App'n'Web 3D package (which in itself is actually quite remarkable - despite the 5000$ a basic package costs).
Intel and Macromedia 'joined' for Webbased 3D about a year ago to 'develop' a 'new technology' for this. What they actually did was just buy a propretary format - the only one that wasn't yet 'infected' by an 'open source'/'sdk for free' (as in genesis3d/wildtangent) or 'give away for free' (as in Blender) marketing policy.
This could have turned out to be a major competitor to Blender on the Windoze platform if it weren't for Macromedia integrating the developement enviroment into one of the crappiest pieces of software under the sun - Director.
Figure this: Shockwave 3D programming is done in Lingo! *gasp* Intercal aside, it's the most hilarious excuse of a PL. With a set of 300 new commands for 3D. This is actually true.
NaN did it the right way by including Python as PL into Blender. Which also makes it a somewhat more complete solution than VRML.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know the exact Name of the model, but Casio has had a Touchscreen Data Watch for quite some time know. It has a suptantial amount of storage (dunno the exact amount). It even looks quite classic - something of a indistinct 80s design - and it seems to be a part of a kind of classic line that Casio is maintaining beside of that Flashy Postmodernistic Techno European G-Shock style stuff.
Anyway: If you're looking for Touchscreen Wristgadgets, I'd look out for this one.
What was the name of that thing that Hero Protagonist (the guy from Neal Stephensons novel "Snow Crash") carrys around with him? That one with the the two most important programms he uses: "Librarian" and "Earth".
Anyway, I want one of those. Right now.
Even if it would be from Mickeysoft and called xbox 2 or something. I dont care. Charge me double, I don't care. Just gimme that media/entertainment integrated device.
Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)
BTW: First Post? Hope so. Jippeee...
What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.
:-).
Yeah. Shure. What ever you just smoked, timothy, please don't let me have a puff
they're a threat to innocent citizens.
Posting instructions of how to commit crimes (sabotage in this case) should be prohibited across boarders. The poloitical background of this is that there is a very fierce anti-nuclear-power movement in germany supportet by 'left' activists.
Think of Greenpeace activists with no mind about inocent third parties and you'll get the picture.
I hate the "Bahns" miserable missmanagement (I use the train on a regular basis here in germany) and I shure as hell oppose to nuclear power but none the less, these people are criminals and they are a shame to peacefull resitance against "Atomkraft".
Sueing a searchengine is of course somewhat of a twist, but I hope this can raise and clarify some issues concerning morally doubtfull internet content and at least leverage trans-european law for this. I might help to know that the german gouverment holds large shares of the "Deutsche Bahn".
Or is that just me?
I get constant "object missing" and syntax errors.
It's loaded with JavaScript. Does anyone else have this problem?
Maybe this guy should have done the tricky stuff with severside perl, eh?
Bad Idea, man. Don't EVER ask a question like that on /., or you'll get fried. 'cuz everybody here knows that "Flash sux(TM)" because Flashsites [insert random website flaw here].
And, by the way, why in hell don't you use HTML 1.1 compliant design, it's all you need. Check out Kornshell and XFree for prime examples of the great webdesign feats achieved in HTML.
To answer your question: I'd predesign templates in Flash 5 and then use ming to modify them. Ming even offers the ability to dynamically insert ActionScript into generated Flash, so it actually is quite powerfull.
As far as I know (me mucho Linux nOOby), the great advantage of the Vim (aside of it's countless downsides of which one is "looking like someone shat on your screen") is that you can run it via telnet with a 9600 baud conection using something like a basic calculator as a keyboard.
What's next? Porting Emacs to QT/KDE? Or rather the other way around, QT to emacs. Which - considering that emacs seems kinda like an OS in itself - could actually be easier.
How about jEdit? Anyone tried that yet? It actually supports more than 2 bit color without requireing a port... (although it is a little sluggish I admit)
No. It doesn't.
WinXP reminds me a lot of KDE, though, Mr. Reviewer.
I don't know who noticed yet, but essential parts of the XP Workspace are blatant rippofs of KDE and it's KontrolCenter.
And that Controlbar isn't a Micros~1 thing either.
Let alone the GUI.
It's astonishing how many people have come to think of Windows as a synonym for "operating system with graphical user interface". This actually could be the death of that windows trademark in the USA - coming to think of it.
On the other hand it's time for a freak like me to notice that the world by now actually has a substancial amount of people who use a PC but can't really even tell a CPU from a network adapter.
Gues we gotta go back to helping them along when they come to us for help.
...in the world conclude that focussing on inhouse operating systems and software only provides less long run market share gain and revenue in comparsion to other buisness models (Software branding, service, consulting and 3rd party training), Mickeysoft is gonna pull out their crash programm Linux distro.
Extensively tested at the worlds largest single heap of consumer PCs (Microsoft testing center). With optional reference grade quality Mickeysoft Press Dead Tree Documentation, a rock solid one-klick Installer for x86 and PPC alike, all the plugins you'll ever want and a suite of ready made SLAs for anyone who wants them (because no one's ever gotten fired for shelling out the bucks to M$). And a nice Windows Flag in place of the KDE gear.
And SuSE, Mandrake, RedHat and all the rest are gonna be in deep shit. Trust me.
So I'm wrong? When Mickeysoft and all the rest notice that they've missed the bandwagon they're gonne wither and die? Are you shure? Rember IE?
That's gonna be their OSS strategy. And telling you the truth, I'm actually kinda curious how their distros gonna be like in real.
Intelligently generated true One Time Pads and crypto with them is uncrackable, that's for shure. But this simply doesn't qualify for reasons that allready have been posted here.
:-)
Leaving that aside, OTP Crypto actually IS the safe Cryptomechanisim of the future! Nobody knows when someone will find a prime number algorithm or how far for instance the NSA has gotten near to one. Clifford Stoll mentioned something like that in 'The Cuckoos Egg' quite some time ago that hints in this direction.
Anyhow, Computers are getting faster and 'bigger', and brute force attacks can bring down a specific cryptomessage of email-length in less than 2 months nowadays, given you've got the hardware or the appropriate distributed computing software. But also mass storage is getting cheaper. With DVD-R just around the corner to consumer market it would be no problem for me to exchange a handfull of OTP disks with my friends that would last a lifetimes worth of crypted email. There only problem here (as with asymmetric crypto) is keeping track of the keys and the parts that where used allready.
A Software to manage this actually is a GPL project I have in mind for quite a time now...mmmmh... anyone interessted in getting it on?
Coming to think of it: That would actually also cut down the fuss of constant revoking and updating of public keys.
The downside of all this is of course that OTPs can't be public. Smart, ain't I ?
I don't know the exact link (there was an article on /. something like a year ago...) but there's another company building on a chip that's IMPLANTED into your child/dog/grandma with a satellite finder system. From what I remeber it was a passive system (like explorers use to track animal movement) but this implantment idea really scared me. I had thought we weren't in for this kind of stuff until 20 years from now.
Keeping that in mind this watch solution is a 'better' thing (as in 'not quite that crazy').
Whatever you do, don't buy a proprietary CMS.
:-) )... :-). Just add a .org or .com to those I mentioned and you find your way through. (to lazy to write links just know :-) )
This is serious OSS turf and most of the professional CMS - Vendors I know and deal with in buisness have gone/are just about to go belly up. Note that those who do go belly up usually release their babe as OSS themselves in the end (ars digita - a Java thing I gather - for instance)
There are tons of OSS-CMS solutions out there that kick their proproietary counterparts up and down the street.
Depending on what project scale you have in mind I'd chose between 2 to 3 strategies:
#1: The small, minimum overhead PHP/MySQL (an SSI solution... THE SSI solution) way. Tons of ready to use OSS solutions out there, lot's of ISPs with PHP to go. I personally use phpnuke (kinda like 'slashcode reimplementation in php') as the cms for my webproject (www.modp4rlor.com). Note that PHP rulez the SSI market above ColdFusion, JSP, ASP and all the rest and is somewhat scalable if you use the proprietary stuff like that from zend later on.
#2: The big, fat , hairy project way with all the Java might the OSS community has to offer (apache, tomcat, jakarta, cocoon, turbine, jetstream,... you name it). All of these are leading edge, GPLd and kick serious ass in large scale projects. Allways keep in mind though: Beware of the Java overhead. A lesson hard learned in the recent years by lots of people who thought their 10-hits-a-day Site would look cool with servlets...;;-)
#3: My extra-special, quite very scalable, one size fits all, CMS, DocMS 'n multithreaded Appserver in a box: ZOPE!
Features: Exept for some performance critical stuff in C completely written and extendable in Python. A fully OO, bytecode interpreted PL, GPLd of course. Very nice. Easy to learn, next to no overhead for your small projects, powerfull enough for larger stuff like Document Management or Revisioning or Publishing Systems. I know IT-service companies that rely completely on Zope (internal and for customers) and pull some serious projects.
Has it's Web and FTP Server on board but can also be run as an addon to others (apache f.i.)
Comes with it's own small and unobstrusive SSI solution (DTML - Document Template ML) just suitable for everything that's to small for servlets.
Is fully OO and uses it's own Post Relational Database that actually stores EVERYTHING it uses.
Very easy to extend via plugins, so called "products" and it's easy to build these plugins too.
Oh, almost forgot: It uses a web interface. Only a web interface. And a good one on top. And it takes on klick to install on Windows and something like 4 and a half on Linux. Whatever you're up to, definitely check this one out!
Roxxen is quite cool aswell. AFAICT a sort of smaller Zope using Ruby (sheesh
Well I could go on but I think you see that there is no need to spend God knows what on Cold Fusion or Intershop
Just my two cents that came up wilst reading this...
There is an art that's actually quite nice which oyou could consider practicing - Tap Dance. I'm talking about REAL tapdance that actualy involves lifting your ass of that officechair and learning to move somewhat elegant. (Not THAT easy btw.)
These little gadgets are as much art in comparsino to - for an instance - tap dance as typing HTML is to real programming.
...I could go on but you get my point.
Like I said, just my two cents for this monday morning.
...and FPS are Massacresims. Period.
I play UT myself and enjoy T2 on a regular basis (I play in a clan) but it really boils down to just plain that.
FPS train the visual expierience and hand to eye coordination of splattering things/monsters/humanoids/people with a movement of your finger and reduce the social reluctance to hurt/kill/splatter other moving things that scream and bleed that way and reduce the human violance threshhold substacialy when it comes to firearms. Especially if played extensively without any normal social interaction otherwise.
That's all scientifically prooven a dozen times and more.
If I where king of the US I'd actually prohibit such display of violence on TV and especially in FPS. Nerf Arena Blast can have just the very same tactical challange and the same mechanisim as UT without the screaming and twitchíng and bleeding.
It's just that FPS apeal to this animal like instinct that makes people buy not the stuff with the best game mechanisims, but with the most realisticcally displayed massacreing.
To my opinion FPS makers to some extent actually could be held liable for the misery caused. But then again it's american law that puts teachers who dare issue sexual education into jail but on the other side allows 12 year olds to get their copy of Hitman 2 without any restictions.
No wonder all this crapp happens.
There's allways tons of rant about Flash on /. /.ers actually seldom notice if a site looks like somebody used a ZX Spectrum to build it.
/IE 5 (IE was the first to implement CSS in a way that actually worked btw) they're steering hard towards a sort of Animation/GUI-VM. Those lingoesk quirks of ActionScript aside, it could very well be that they'll be even more successfull in the future.
That's becaus bytes come across with HTML 1.1 compliance just as well as with Flash and
The Reason why Flash was so successful in the last 3-4 Years is because Desigers where SICK AND TIRED of constantly dealing with the crappiest HTML 4/CSS implementatinon and browser quirks one could imagine. In fact Flash was the only standard one could rely on.
Up to about 6 Months ago Flash was the ONLY way you could get truely plattform independent Typesetting and Layout across the Web. And sound for that matter.
That's mainly why designers would use Flash. Macromedia caught on and now that HTML 4 CSS 2 is finaly something like usable with NS 6.2
With XML Sockets and upcoming Video capabilites Flash ist about to push Java of the Client Side Web for good. Aside of online banking maybe. But I wouldn't even say that's for shure.
And talking about lynx-compliant sites: That's not what Flash ever was meant for. And no, a Site isn's just bad because it doesn't show well in lynx.
Slashdot has quite an amount of good programmers and a big heap of *nix users (or at least 'nix wannabees). /.ers don't know sh*t about webdesign, in contrary to what they think their Webdesign is in quality.
/. patrons. Of course I would be one of the exceptions to that. :-)
But honestly now, most rant about compatability and flash being o so crappy and superfluos (actually one of the main reasons to use flash is/was compatability), smartass about HTML being no typesetting language (blahblahblah...it makes me sick!) and at the same time make the crappiest webdesign one could ever imagine. Reading some the comments posted here just gets me fuming again about the arrogant *nix comunity.
Bluntly said: Most
My suggestion:
Get into it and try for yourself and learn form the people you've seen good webdesign from. A very good community is built around Zeldmans AListApart and WebStandards.org(stick to this site when your going into implementation phase!).
Top of the pops DESIGN (.dcr and flash - of course) you can find at Yugo Nakamuras Site Yugop (check out the archives!!) and at NosePilot(the link at the bottom!).
Note that this is DESIGN that is kinda over the top in the way that it actually allready is art.
If you're going to make a massivley content orientaded site you might want to go dynamic form the begining. Check out PHP/MySQL for this. Or get youself a full featured GPLd CMS that are out there for a dime a dozen, maybe like PHPNuke. But that's actually all more webprogramming, that kinda comes later on...
Good luck. Oh, and NEVER discuss design with the people of kornshell.com, xfree.org or listen to the advice from
Subsricption for Slashdot? Ok.
But then also Micropay me back for what I post!!!
Based on Modlevel if you will.
That's the whole point:
In the Web, money flows from user to ISP and content provider to ISP. There's something wrong here, isn't it?
If every ISP would offer micropayment to content providers for bandwidth USED and each user of the Web would pay, all could make their share, quality would increase rapidly and nobody would have to cry just because standard economy kicks in on the WWW.
But the way we have it now, it (the Web) will still allways be just a nerdy pasttime that actually costs a substancial amount of money to obtain, and not that universal media and information highway everybody got so excited about a few years ago.
I wouldn't be suprised if establishing a sane economy model would actually strengthen ISPs that where/are actually also Netproviders like AOL or T-Online. What's with them? Do they offer an ISP cost refund if your site is popular and therefore contributes to the popularity of their service (and therefore brings in the bucks)?
Why hasn't anybody done this yet?
The word is "Schadenfreude". Interesting now that I really can't find an english equivalent. Even though I'm a native speaker of both languages.
Sort of like trying to translate these into german: "airborne" and "sophisticated"
BTW: "Schadenfreunde" is the german name for the fun one has seeing others fail or expieriencing any smaller or larger amount of misfortune.
The larger the misfortune is, the more Schadenfreude is considered imoral. Of course.
The ZCAM Videocam extension is available for more than half a year now.
That fact that it actually works as advertised is somewhat astonishing. If there's a large enough distance between fore and background (> 1,5 Meters) it Keys without any hassle. No more Blue or Greenscreens, that means.
Apart from the obvious general information quality, computer book people in amercia (animals aside) often seems to completely ignore the importance of layout.
The Animal Company makes books that don't have a layout that is a pain to lock at and read.
If you're really from that other computer book publisher then you'd be very well of by improving the layout and typography of your books on a large scale. There so ugly I can hardly justify buying them. Even if it's an exclusive release from some Übergeeks like the three amigos or so. At least the english version. And the german versions, albeit much better in layout and readability (as your german collegues for advice on layout and typo), are sometimes completely useless because they've got the english version pagenumbers in the german editions index.
The time I saw that was the last time I bought a non-animal computer book btw.
So: Drastically improve layout, typo and design and if you publish a german version (which isn't all that of a bad idea - it's a big market) then do it right! Or leave it to the others. It's as simple as that.
And no, the animal peoples layout isn't meant to be an artpiece in itself but it isn't ugly either. That's one of the reasons those other books wander back into the shelf when people are looking for a new book on a subject and fly through those available at the bookstore. English A&Ws always lose that one.
Now that's one valueable advice by a computer-book bibliomaniac you should really think over.
He somehow has to do something with Red Hat or?
Well, I couldn't care less. I'm mainly a Designer, and apart from the missing apps (Freehand, UltraDev, Photoshop, Premiere and an useable Sound Editor) I see no reason whatsoever to give Windoze the credit for a better Desktop.
Yes the Linux Desktop has reached the possiblity for Desktop parrity only half a year ago.(with the arival of halfway usable webbrowsing)
Yes, the naming of apps may be funny for some people, but it basically just plain sux.
Yes, KDE is just as unflexible and unstable as Windoze (don't use it then I keep telling myself...).
Yes, Motif looks like someone shat on your screen. (not to mention the Windoze default desktop..*yuck*)
Yes, it takes a while to get all that stuff running
Yes,and the *nix helpsites - with the crappiest of design available on the web - don't encourage newbies to actually get into *nix very much. Rather the contrary.
Yes, this alltogether sux quite a bit too.
But figure this:
Mickeysofts OSes, as of begining of this year, cost 200$ or more. Without apps or documentation.
Mickeysoft changes their ware every 2 years. That makes 2 months of adjusting and -200$ each time.
That's how they make money, ya'know?
Linux might be the kind I was used to back in old DOS times. (Now please don't any 1bit-color-geek smartass me by starting to compare bash and dos funtionallity - that's not what I mean)
And it might take me the better part of a year to get it running the way a system should.
Mac or 'Doze systems need their time to run smooth aswell, believe me.
But I'll NEVER EVER have to learn an OS again!!! I said: "I'LL NEVER EVER HAVE TO LEARN AN OS AGAIN!" Think this over thrice!
And if there's a problem with Linux, I might be able to fix it. 'Doze or MacOS on the other hand have exactly one (1!) option when you're done with hopefull trying: Reinstall.
Yes it might take another year or two for Mac-only 'stupido' to dig Linux (Honestly, I can't blame them), but to say something like "the Desktop war is won" is just plain bogus. Especially when you mean it's won by Mickesoft. And at the very moment Linux is evolving in leaps and bounds other Oses can only dream of.
No, really. Tell this Bob Young guy (whoever he is) to bugger of and get yourself a SuSE 7.x Pro distro with 7 Cd's one DVD and half a bookshelf of rocksolid 'deadtree' documentation for something like 80 Euro (that's that new european currency in case you've wondered) and you'll dig that those few *nixquirks are worthwhile putting up with. Rather than that constant "buy, install, migrate" cycle Mickeysoft is squeezing the last of revenue out of, before they're probably going to pull some stunt like offering their own Linux-distro.
This guy's right. If you're into buying a PDA, don't forget to check into all those Psion Sales going on just now. They're dirt cheap and even if you don't wanna bother sqeezing Linux on them, EPOC is a very good and solid PDA-OS.
What's the big fuss? This constant /. bitching about licensing. It isn't that NaN get's to own your family when you've installed that plugin. Or that NaN ownz 95% of y'alls PC people out there like Mickeysoft does.
:-)
Blender has been for free (beer) since the begining and most certainly allways will be. Because that's the only way they can compete with Maya, Softimage and Houdini. It's the only usable 3D Package that costs nada. Or doesn't cost above 10000$, for that matter. Aside of that NaN owns the software. Period. In any commercial or non-commercial sense.
And so you're not installing a commercial plugin just like Flash. Ok. But calling that license "Draconian" is a bit over the top, imho.
Unless you've contributed Software to the public like Ton Roosendahl (Blender) did, I'd chill out on that issue a little.
On the other hand, if you should only be using GPL'd Software for the sake of it being GPL'd, I wouldn't care to much anyway. You're probably not the 'audience' for this software in the first place.
Sorry to rain on this, but Shockwave 3D is really no match for the Blender solution. First of all its limited to Windows and MacOS. And then it's basically a cut-down version of the more than 2 year old NeMo/Virtools (www.virtools.com) App'n'Web 3D package (which in itself is actually quite remarkable - despite the 5000$ a basic package costs).
Intel and Macromedia 'joined' for Webbased 3D about a year ago to 'develop' a 'new technology' for this. What they actually did was just buy a propretary format - the only one that wasn't yet 'infected' by an 'open source'/'sdk for free' (as in genesis3d/wildtangent) or 'give away for free' (as in Blender) marketing policy.
This could have turned out to be a major competitor to Blender on the Windoze platform if it weren't for Macromedia integrating the developement enviroment into one of the crappiest pieces of software under the sun - Director.
Figure this: Shockwave 3D programming is done in Lingo! *gasp* Intercal aside, it's the most hilarious excuse of a PL. With a set of 300 new commands for 3D. This is actually true.
NaN did it the right way by including Python as PL into Blender. Which also makes it a somewhat more complete solution than VRML.