Pronounced tee-neff, and short for Transport Neutral Encapsulation
Format, a proprietary format used by the Microsoft Exchange and
Outlook E-Mail clients when sending messages formatted as Rich Text
Format (RTF). When Microsoft Exchange thinks that it is sending a
message to another Microsoft E-Mail client, it extracts all the
formatting information and encodes it in a special TNEF block. It then
sends the message in two parts - the text message with the formatting
removed and the formatting instructions in the TNEF block. On the
receiving side, a Microsoft e-mail client processes the TNEF block and
re-formats the message. Unfortunately, most non-Microsoft E-Mail
clients cannot decipher TNEF blocks. Consequently, when you receive a
TNEF-encoded message with a non-Microsoft e-mail client, the TNEF part
appears as a long sequence of hexadecimal digits, either in the
message itself or as an attached file (usually named
WINMAIL.DAT). These WINMAIL.DAT files serve no useful purpose so you
can delete them.
So it's not UNICODE or something like it, it's extra formatting information that, unfortunately, is proprietary.
Assuming we're talking about fiction:
Most books tell a narrative, they have a beginning, a middle and an end. As far as I understand it, an interactive book lets you change either the decisions made by the characters, or the events that affect them.
If there aren't many choices, then I don't see why it needs an e- prefix, you can simply put the extra text in a bigger book with 'if you think John should eat the sheep's eyeball, turn to page 234', and the like. If there are lots more decision points, isn't this just a text based adventure game? If so, then a good text-based adventure, written by an accomplished author would be quite fun, but can it offer the same power as a good novel?
When I read a book, I expect the author to make me see the world differently to the way I saw it before. Good books can be funny, informative, insightful, interesting...in fact, all the possibilities in the Slashdot moderator's pull down...if they are none of these things, then they aren't worth reading. The trouble is that to be one of those things often requires saying something quite complex, and that takes time. In some of the best books I've read, it's only in the final few pages that the author's real point becomes clear... Can an author make a single, important point, given all the different routes through the book? Can an author make enough interesting, different points?
Novels aren't the only types of literature, of course, anybody remember the interactive comic books from the 70s? Arrow pointing down the manhole cover marked 'page 71', up the lampost, 'page 23'. These were graphic adventures, I guess.
One of the most interesting interactive books on the web is Jeff Ryman's 253 about 253 people on a tube train. You pick a person, read about them, who they are, what they're thinking, who they're looking at on the train and so on. The book is heavily hyperlinked so that you can find people that know each other, are looking at each other, share the same likes/dislikes and so on.
It works because there's no narrative; it's a vehicle for Ryman's characterisations and descriptive prose, which are excellent. Well worth checking out. You can also buy it as a paper book, which is just as good (especially to read on the tube). But, how many types of 253 can we have - 122: people on a New York Subway, 12,456: people at soccer match etc...
One final point, ebooks won't really catch on until the displays are as nice to read as paper-I have a 600x600 laser printer in the office, but it's still not as easy to read as a novel. Books have a really good user interface, they look pretty on my shelves, and I can read them in the bath without being too worried - I might cause £10 worth of damage if I drop it (to the book that is)...
It is interesting how the open source community gets so het up about the legal status of software licenses and copyright. It seems to me that this eagerness to uphold the law, and to make damn sure that everything is above board suddenly stops as soon as mp3s raise their ugly head.
Most people dont ever realize that Qt is totally not free in windows (as far as I know:)
Isn't this a good thing for free software - you can write exactly the same app, and it's free in Linux and costs under Windows?
Absolutely. Running an installer program like this feels like dealing with a call-center.
'Thank you for installing Netscape, Your are in a queue. Your download request will be answered shortly'
At least it doesn't play the 'William Tell Overture' in four part square-wave harmony or force you to listen to Phill Collins whilst it installs...
Only a matter of time of course.
Language is acquired by age five, and those patterns that you have are identical with the patterns of your parents, older siblings, and the others who were around you speaking your native tongue.
I'm afraid I don't agree. I use words like floppy, mp3, and lemon grass a lot more than either of my parents or brothers. I use geek in a non-pejorative way. etc... I also construct my sentences slightly differently, because I'm a child of the 80's not the 50's. So, my vocabulary and grammar is a mixture that results from many different influences.
I don't think learning a foreign language would help much, because in order to get past the 'Monkey is in the tree' stage, you will be reading newspapers and talking to other people. You will learn some of their ideosyncrasies and start using them. Mixed-up in your own, unique way, of course.
There are two different arguments in here Phil, both of which are important:
Firstly, how 'truth' is pursued within the boundaries of a particular scientific community, and secondly, how those outside the community try to manipulate the work for their own benefits.
What you refer to with reference to your own field is the tension that arises when the boundaries become blured - and, I agree, commercial funding of academic research labs can result in unfortunate situations.
Reading some of the other posts, it is interesting to see people complaining that the scientific establishment, which controls funding and publications, is intransigent and guided by vanity and personal ambition. At the same time, others are complaining about quite the opposite - fraudulent, or faulty, science that claims exciting new breakthroughs, is too easy to sell to an uneducated, gullible public. This suggests to me that the current peer-review process, coupled with scientific method is probably the best compromise we can come up with at the moment. The intransigence of peer review at least provides a level of hysteresis, and, I think I'm right in saying, most of the most embarassing 'scientific' cock-ups were as a result of people not publishing under peer-review (e.g. Arpad Puztai and his Genetically Modified Potatoes - I notice that sounds like a fairground act, which seems quite appropriate really:-)).
As far as outside manipulation goes, you are right that science tries to build a self-sustaining edifice, that industry and politics try to manipulate it, and that academic scientists have a duty to be aware of these pressures and resist them.
The thing that irritates me the most is the use of the phrase 'there is no scientific evidence that...' (insert Mad Cow disease and BSE, uranium tipped shells, Genetically Modified anything...). Generally, this is because no one has done the experiment. This is the same problem that predicate calculus has - True and False aren't enough to represent incomplete knowledge.
There is no scientific evidence that I am not a teapot. It would be foolish, however, to assume that, as a result, I am one.
Often, these arguments are combined with the use of spurious statistics - Children in single parent families are more likely to commit crime, therefore divorce should be made harder. Creative people are, apparently, more accident prone, therefore if you're accident prone, you're likely to be creative. People that wear skirts to school do better in exams, therefore, we should oblige all children to wear skirts so that their academic grades improve. Fire engines are associated with fires, therefore we should ban fire engines...etc... All these statements are equally ridiculous, it's just that some appear less so than others.
Slashdot Mirror
I must admit, I didn't know exactly what TNEF was, and I got the impression that a few other people who were posting didn't either.
This is what I found at CSGNetwork's Online Computer, Telephony & Electronics Reference
Pronounced tee-neff, and short for Transport Neutral Encapsulation
Format, a proprietary format used by the Microsoft Exchange and
Outlook E-Mail clients when sending messages formatted as Rich Text
Format (RTF). When Microsoft Exchange thinks that it is sending a
message to another Microsoft E-Mail client, it extracts all the
formatting information and encodes it in a special TNEF block. It then
sends the message in two parts - the text message with the formatting
removed and the formatting instructions in the TNEF block. On the
receiving side, a Microsoft e-mail client processes the TNEF block and
re-formats the message. Unfortunately, most non-Microsoft E-Mail
clients cannot decipher TNEF blocks. Consequently, when you receive a
TNEF-encoded message with a non-Microsoft e-mail client, the TNEF part
appears as a long sequence of hexadecimal digits, either in the
message itself or as an attached file (usually named
WINMAIL.DAT). These WINMAIL.DAT files serve no useful purpose so you
can delete them.
So it's not UNICODE or something like it, it's extra formatting information that, unfortunately, is proprietary.
Most books tell a narrative, they have a beginning, a middle and an end. As far as I understand it, an interactive book lets you change either the decisions made by the characters, or the events that affect them.
If there aren't many choices, then I don't see why it needs an e- prefix, you can simply put the extra text in a bigger book with 'if you think John should eat the sheep's eyeball, turn to page 234', and the like. If there are lots more decision points, isn't this just a text based adventure game? If so, then a good text-based adventure, written by an accomplished author would be quite fun, but can it offer the same power as a good novel?
When I read a book, I expect the author to make me see the world differently to the way I saw it before. Good books can be funny, informative, insightful, interesting...in fact, all the possibilities in the Slashdot moderator's pull down...if they are none of these things, then they aren't worth reading. The trouble is that to be one of those things often requires saying something quite complex, and that takes time. In some of the best books I've read, it's only in the final few pages that the author's real point becomes clear... Can an author make a single, important point, given all the different routes through the book? Can an author make enough interesting, different points?
Novels aren't the only types of literature, of course, anybody remember the interactive comic books from the 70s? Arrow pointing down the manhole cover marked 'page 71', up the lampost, 'page 23'. These were graphic adventures, I guess.
One of the most interesting interactive books on the web is Jeff Ryman's 253 about 253 people on a tube train. You pick a person, read about them, who they are, what they're thinking, who they're looking at on the train and so on. The book is heavily hyperlinked so that you can find people that know each other, are looking at each other, share the same likes/dislikes and so on.
It works because there's no narrative; it's a vehicle for Ryman's characterisations and descriptive prose, which are excellent. Well worth checking out. You can also buy it as a paper book, which is just as good (especially to read on the tube). But, how many types of 253 can we have - 122: people on a New York Subway, 12,456: people at soccer match etc...
One final point, ebooks won't really catch on until the displays are as nice to read as paper-I have a 600x600 laser printer in the office, but it's still not as easy to read as a novel. Books have a really good user interface, they look pretty on my shelves, and I can read them in the bath without being too worried - I might cause £10 worth of damage if I drop it (to the book that is)...
It is interesting how the open source community gets so het up about the legal status of software licenses and copyright. It seems to me that this eagerness to uphold the law, and to make damn sure that everything is above board suddenly stops as soon as mp3s raise their ugly head.
Most people dont ever realize that Qt is totally not free in windows (as far as I know :)
Isn't this a good thing for free software - you can write exactly the same app, and it's free in Linux and costs under Windows?
Still haven't worked out what I'd actually do with one.
Am I the only person that thinks that 'Palm pilot' sounds like a euphamism?
Can I buy either of these things yet - if so do you know how much? I'm in Lust...
Absolutely. Running an installer program like this feels like dealing with a call-center.
'Thank you for installing Netscape, Your are in a queue. Your download request will be answered shortly'
At least it doesn't play the 'William Tell Overture' in four part square-wave harmony or force you to listen to Phill Collins whilst it installs...
Only a matter of time of course.
That's independent, free and rather good.
Would she be any worse at it than my father? Let's keep pushing those stereotypes shall we?
Language is acquired by age five, and those patterns that you have are identical with the patterns of your parents, older siblings, and the others who were around you speaking your native tongue.
I'm afraid I don't agree. I use words like floppy, mp3, and lemon grass a lot more than either of my parents or brothers. I use geek in a non-pejorative way. etc... I also construct my sentences slightly differently, because I'm a child of the 80's not the 50's. So, my vocabulary and grammar is a mixture that results from many different influences.
I don't think learning a foreign language would help much, because in order to get past the 'Monkey is in the tree' stage, you will be reading newspapers and talking to other people. You will learn some of their ideosyncrasies and start using them. Mixed-up in your own, unique way, of course.
There are two different arguments in here Phil, both of which are important:
:-)).
Firstly, how 'truth' is pursued within the boundaries of a particular scientific community, and secondly, how those outside the community try to manipulate the work for their own benefits.
What you refer to with reference to your own field is the tension that arises when the boundaries become blured - and, I agree, commercial funding of academic research labs can result in unfortunate situations.
Reading some of the other posts, it is interesting to see people complaining that the scientific establishment, which controls funding and publications, is intransigent and guided by vanity and personal ambition. At the same time, others are complaining about quite the opposite - fraudulent, or faulty, science that claims exciting new breakthroughs, is too easy to sell to an uneducated, gullible public. This suggests to me that the current peer-review process, coupled with scientific method is probably the best compromise we can come up with at the moment. The intransigence of peer review at least provides a level of hysteresis, and, I think I'm right in saying, most of the most embarassing 'scientific' cock-ups were as a result of people not publishing under peer-review (e.g. Arpad Puztai and his Genetically Modified Potatoes - I notice that sounds like a fairground act, which seems quite appropriate really
As far as outside manipulation goes, you are right that science tries to build a self-sustaining edifice, that industry and politics try to manipulate it, and that academic scientists have a duty to be aware of these pressures and resist them.
The thing that irritates me the most is the use of the phrase 'there is no scientific evidence that...' (insert Mad Cow disease and BSE, uranium tipped shells, Genetically Modified anything...). Generally, this is because no one has done the experiment. This is the same problem that predicate calculus has - True and False aren't enough to represent incomplete knowledge.
There is no scientific evidence that I am not a teapot. It would be foolish, however, to assume that, as a result, I am one.
Often, these arguments are combined with the use of spurious statistics - Children in single parent families are more likely to commit crime, therefore divorce should be made harder. Creative people are, apparently, more accident prone, therefore if you're accident prone, you're likely to be creative. People that wear skirts to school do better in exams, therefore, we should oblige all children to wear skirts so that their academic grades improve. Fire engines are associated with fires, therefore we should ban fire engines...etc... All these statements are equally ridiculous, it's just that some appear less so than others.
Websites like this, for example:
http://www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk/