FireFly was a rating, preference-matching, and suggestion system developed at the MIT Media Lab long before anyone had really heard of Joss Whedon.:-)
There were a couple research versions of the multidimensional matching system run out of the Media Lab (one for music, then an expanded one for music, movies, and books, as I recall). FireFly was the name used for the spinoff company. It went through a brief period of excitment during the internet boom, then (iirc) was purchased by some large corporation or other. (I have a friend who worked on the research project.)
Apparently, the key to developing Massively Better Technology, according to the universe of the Star Trek Universe:
1). Create a massive trade/technology federation based on liberty, freedom, exploration, and the discovery and mostly-open sharing of knowledge.
2). Isolate yourself from it as much as possible. This works best if you can prevent this gigantic group from even knowing you exist. Have nothing to do with it!
I have used an I300 for roughly a year now (a little less), in Sprint, in the Boston area. As you may know, Boston has its own `quirks' for cell coverage, but Sprint is definitely toward the upper end here (whereas it seems to be reported as pretty bad in many places). I've used it in various places around the country, and the Sprint coverage, while far from perfect, seems overall much better than the GSM coverage.
The device itself is good. I've tried most of the PDA/Phone combinations that came out before this one, on non-GSM systems, and I can say comfortably that this is much nicer than both the LG palm-like pdaphone and the Kyocera B&W pdaphone.
Pros: good battery life, bright color screen, sturdy device. Having a `real' color palm device is nice, and the palm/phone integration is pretty good (not perfect).
You can browse the addressbook using up/down `phone rocker keys' on the side (in addition to the normal palm keys on the bottom front), and dial from the addressbook list with the adjacent `voice memo' button. This means that you can dial from the address book entirely one-handed, which I gather may be a problem with some of the newer palm phones. I use DateBk5, and it fully supports the I300 phone integration, which is nice.
The phone comes with both the WAP browser and Blazer; my previous phone (and many of my friend's smaller phones) have only WAP. From this experience, I'm not fond of WAP *at all*, and I basically never use it anymore. I do use a few PQA's (basically, I check Amazon from my phone before buying books/DVDs/CDs, although I generally buy books at local stores anyway). I have ssh on the phone, and while I don't use it often, it has been a lifesaver a couple times.
I don't generally play many computer games (I still haven't started the copy of WarCraftIII that I pre-ordered before it hit stores), but I do find myself playing games on the phone while waiting around, and it's been great. The palm aspect means that it's easy to get new software, which has been great.
The Cons: the screen is small. Basically, they `pinched' a color palm screen to get the overall size down, and it shows. I used to do a lot of `doc work' (reading, minor edits) on my old Palm V, but I rarely do so with my palm phone, although there are other important factors in this decision.
There is no physical keypad. I'm ok with this, but it is a lot worse than having one if you're not dialing from the address book (or voice dial, which the phone does natively (not Sprint's extra service)).
The OS is non-upgradeable, and PalmOS 3.5.2 is pretty long in the tooth these days (more on this later).
The cradle is serial, which, frankly, sucks. I used to manage the device (install sw, backup, I never used the Palm Desktop Software) on my linux laptop, until I upgraded to a laptop without a serial port, then I did without until someone released a serialusb dongle that worked with Mac OS X (the first couple generations didn't).
Right now, I manage it on my G4 desktop, and the Palm Desktop software (I'm not running 10.2, so I haven't tried iSync). The one annoyance is that the software insists on installing a 3.5.3 updater every time I sync, although it always fails to run.
In general, I like this device. It's pretty old, and I've been looking to upgrade for a while now, but I haven't found anything I like as much (for Sprint). The Treo 300 was a serious temptation for a while, but all reports (and several broken demos in Boston stores), it is too fragile for my taste (I hear that Kevin Spacey has broken 3 of them, for example). The I330 isn't really available yet, and doesn't seem to be much of an improvement anyway (a bit nicer hardware, noticably worse battery life). The Samsung I500 and Kyocera 7135 color palm clamshells are both very tempting, but aren't available yet. When they come out, I'll probably get one or the other; in the meantime, I'll stick with the I300.
The Itsy, a research project that arguably laid the foundations for the iPaq, used a similar navigation system, based on rocker switches to scroll through documents.
There was another experimental user interface prototyped on the palm, designed as a sort of a `file/concept manager', where each document showed up as a small icon. Related items were connected by lines. Only the stuff at the center of the screen showed any sort of text description; other things were shrunk and on the periphery, and the user moved around a sort of fish-eye lens. Unfortunately, I can't find my references to the project anymore (google didn't help, although I didn't try for very long). If anyone finds/remembers the project, I'd love to hear about it.
Like democracy, X is an absolutely terrible system, clearly the worst choice, except for every other choice we have so far.
Hey, there are projects out there that would like to replace X, so there's hope.. In the meantime, there are a number of areas where X is a better choice than the primary `alternatives' (Windows and Mac OS; distinct from OS, network-capable, configurable/modular, source available).
Re:Excellent things for the work place..
on
Assorted CES Gizmos
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· Score: 1
Human eyes must be a lot better where you are than where the Human Factors researchers work, since their numbers are more like ``7-10, one medium or two short words''. Note that full US phone numbers push the edge here; which is why phone books and caller-ID is so important on cell phones.
Well, for straightforward, new-user sorts of things, perhaps `no other application' does, but many of the people here have used something like emacs, or nvi, or screen, or... and are quite used to (addicted to? desirous of?) the power, felxibility, and functionality you can get from these sorts of systems.
You have no idea how many people I know who looked at ichat and immediately downloaded Adium. ``It looks nice, and it does support more features, but I can't live without the tabbing!''.
...just think of it as the `virtual desktop' argument, all over again.
I don't mean to be a downer, but the W3c/IETF has had (in the past) various working groups working on/talking about this problem for quite a while. It turns out to be very complicated to do fully generally. You might benefit from some searches through the w3c mailing list archives.
My impression is that the group discussion/design was complicated quite a lot by multiple divergent interests (i.e. live annotations or not, shared or not, modified copy versus reference the original, etc.). I think this may be an area where a small group of people can achieve better success by presenting a mostly-finished design to peer revue (rather than consensual group design).
For my part, I think that such a system would be cool, but my practical needs would be met by a wiki that let you easily move forward/backwards among saved revisions, with some (optional?) way to view metadata about a change (who/when/what/why). CVS provides most of the tools (abstractly; I don't know that I would want to use CVS code).
Good luck! I look forward to hearing about your project in the future...
CMU's AUIS (or whatever they took to calling the expanded Andrew Tool Kit stuff) included a tool very similar to this, ~10 years ago. Students could use a word-processor-like program to write papers (or import them from other sources), then submit them on-line to a central server. Teachers/TAs/whatnot could read, edit, and markup (that is, either change the document or annotate it) on-line, and share the results with other teacher/TA/whatnots and/or the students. It was a pretty useful idea, used for a couple MIT classes, but the implementation was pretty flawed (the server crashed often, and was prone to losing files), so they stopped.
Come to think of it, that's pretty much the experience with AUIS/ATK in general. In significantly less-nice terms, a friend of mine once said:
like all CMU code: way cool design, implementation like wet camel shit.
At this point, I believe that AUIS is pretty much defunct, so I doubt anyone cares. The code is probably available under OSS license if anyone cares (I believe it was old-style BSD (with attribution)).
The Archos jukebox recorders are significantly larger and, in my limited experience, mch less sturdy than the iPod. The Nomad Zen is closer, but, by all reports, still too large.
This size difference can be *critical*. That's why, for example, Hawkins spent so much time carrying around variously sized blocks of wood -- to find the size that would kill the (far more capable, advanced, and already-in-stores) Apple Newton.
I've played with USB devices of this sort, and USB 2.0 is simply too slow for these capacities. I'm excited to hear that USB2.0 support works for linux; in the early days of the Archos Jukebox, the USB storage drivers would crash the linux box pretty regularly.
Yeah, in the end, it all comes down to taste. For me, the ipod is small enough to carry around, while the Archos is (while cheaper), too close to the size of my laptop (sony vaio SR27K) to occupy a useful niche.
SD can be considered sort of the `CardBus equivalent for MMC' -- it's a faster data connection in the same connector footprint. My understanding is that SD cards can be roughly 4x faster than MMC. Additionally, there are a number of non-memory devices that only come in SD format (most interestingly, the SD BlueTooth card).
Unfortunately, SD is a highly propietary format, controlled by a standards consortium that charges very high entrance fees, and heavily restricts the ability of members to distribute information about the format. This is why, for example, the Sharp Zaurus uses a proprietary, closed driver for its SD slot, and why the various Linux-on-iPaq systems (http://www.handhelds.org/) do not have SD support (unless the license/consortium radically changes, there won't be an open driver for this format).
SD/MMC is a nice, convienent format. In its size/power category, it's more functional than SmartCard, which is memory only. The next best competitor is probably MemoryStick, also a very, very closed system. SD/MMC also has the `feature' that it's commonly found on Palm, PocketPC, and Linux handhelds. It's a shame that open systems will be stuck using only the MMC feature set of these systems.
This is a good idea (IMHO, obviously), but it's difficult to think about, and it seems to be particularly difficult thing to build incrementally into current GUI frameworks/systems. There have been a few attempts at it, mostly in the form of `programming environments' like Oberon, or even colorForth. Apple's own MPW was a startlingly interesting attempt along these lines. Perhaps the `most successful' of these projects that comes to mind is Plan 9. Perhaps unfortunately, Plan 9 is experimental in many different ways (intrinsically networked, very tightly held ideas about system interfaces), but they have have interesting data/experience backing up their idea that keyboard+mouse is more efficient and less distracting than switching back and forth. Check it out.
Anyone else know of any publicly available info on other, related systems/experiments?
I can't agree. I have no problem with the command line (I often prefer it for `quick' stuff), but I'll use a GUI for mundane, simple stuff because it's simpler and easier.
Of course, this requires that it be simpler and easier -- many modern GUIs spend way too much effort getting in the way, making the situation worse than if there were no GUI at all.
I have very unusual tastes in GUI layout/feel/look/design/whatever. I run ctwm (plus local hacks). I have gnome installed for Galeon (and I used to have KDE installed only for konqueror) - I don't use the panel, or gdm, or any of that stuff. My desktop background is solid black, on all 5 desktops (all of which get regular use). I do most of my work in emacs, vim, or xterm, plus galeon. Still, I like to have the gui available for when it'll be simpler and easier.
Here's a very simple technique that almost no one notices (in my experience) for dealing with cable costs for those of us with narrow TV tastes: Basic Cable Usually Isn't.
In the US, cable companies are required to carry local network broadcasting at a relatively cheap rate. This is usually NOT what they sell as `basic cable' -- the companies I've seen (AT&T and RCN) have two or three parts to their `basic' cable service. Generally, the `network TV' part has cost me ~$7, the `extra basic' part cost ~$7, and the `extended basic' part cost $13.
I have found that the few channels I actually watch are usually in the `basic' block, so I don't order the other two. This is available to everyone (I believe they are required to do this), but you won't see it advertised; just ask the cable operator.
Interestingly, there's a further trick: generally, digital cable packages offer `digital' versions of `normal' basic cable channels, even ones that are in `extra' or `extended' basic packages. This `doubling up' of channels lets the operators advertise very long lists of channels, but it can also work for you: Digital cable packges are typically ~$15, so if they're available in your area, you can dump `extra' and `extended', add the low-level digital package, and get back almost all of the channels that you `lost' from reducing your basic cable subscription, at a lower cost.
There are tradeoffs, of course (TANSTAAFL), but if you can live with the cable box system of didigtal cable, you can generally meet or increase (PPV, digital music channels, etc.) your cable TV options for less money. I do this and get network broadcast, History, Discovery, TLC, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi, and music channels -- pretty much all I've ever watched..
The trouble is is that disciplines aren't working closely enough together.
Yes, this operation is pretty boring, but so is putting together gui installers, or building unit tests, or writing API documentation -- boring, but important. Interestingly, there are a large number of undergrad/grad Linguistics students who do this sort of thing in college laboratories all the time. They're not CS students, though -- their Linguistics (or Psychology, or Cognitive Science, or whatever wacky department their field was attached to) students.
Someone with a CS professorship, an `open science' bent, and enough funding for 2-3 undergrads (probably $10k each, once you include `overhead') needs to find his or her local Linguistics department and make the world a better place.
> In my mind, making copy protected CDs is akin to > a pub/bar/club having a sign saying "No drugs on > the premesis" - They are helping us stay on the > right side of the law.
The problem with your analogy is this: while it's always illegal to use `drugs' (as you're implying) *anywhere*, copying CDs is NOT illegal.
This is tricky, because most people have an instinctive, off-the-cuff belief that sellers can sell what they want, and people can go somewhere else if they don't like the wares. This is by and large correct (and important to our society), but there *are* a few regulations. Copy-protected CDs come very close to crossing that line (I and many others would say that they cross it).
Another thing that many people either don't know or tend to forget is the ``piracy surcharge''. Basically, the companies now in the RIAA got together a while ago and complained to Congress that copying CDs would *sometimes* be used for piracy. Somehow (you'll be hard pressed to convince me that campaign contributions weren't influential), these companies convinced the US government to pre-apportion a fine for this piracy, spread out over *all* consumers (law-abiding or not), applied to blank audio CDs.
This means that completely law-abiding artists who want to distribute CDs of their work (which they can do completely legally), are fined for the piracy ``in general''. This money is collected *by the government*, *for those companies*. This also means that if you want to make a `backup' copy of an audio CD (which you are explicitly allowed to do), you're paying that fine, collected by the government, and given to the media companies.
This is just one of the many (IMHO silly/stupid) things the industry has been able to `convince' the government to do ``to create a marketplace where content companies are willing to put forth their wares'' -- i.e. market protectionism, but not against competing sellers, but against the citizen-consumers.
As far as Plasma screens go, right now you have two options: 1366x768, or 1024x1024. Things just don't seem to get any higher, from what I can find (and I've looked at several US$15k+ models).
If someone can point me at some counterexamples, I'll be delighted.:)
The `Gazebo' story is older than KotDT, which is a fine publication (gamer cartoon plus news, reviews, original material for Kenzerco products, etc). The strip (not the magazine) started in Shadis, an old game magazine that ended well before Kenzer bought the current Knights group.
Also, Kenzer didn't `buy' D&D 1st edition; they have a license from Hasbro/WotC for some of their products, including the basis for Hackmaster, which bears a distinct similarity (but is also noticably different).
Unfortunately, it turns out that it was kinda too expensive to ever really catch on. Good chunks of it live on underneath MacOSX, of course, but it's a bit dated now.
The real answer to ``why don't they give up?'' is because ``people still want to buy their products''. Doesn't seem so hard to understand. Shrug.
Well, while the NeXT DPS was network-transparent, it also had some pretty serious security problems; a stock NeXT machine that allowed display access was also unintentially allowing the remote user to read and/or execute any file on the machine. `Back in the day', we had a couple NeXT virii that worked as email attachments using these features.
That said, I agree with the earlier poster; network transparency is one of the reasons that X11 is still (imho) superior to all the actually available alternatives...
Slashdot Mirror
FireFly was a rating, preference-matching, and suggestion system developed at the MIT Media Lab long before anyone had really heard of Joss Whedon. :-)
There were a couple research versions of the multidimensional matching system run out of the Media Lab (one for music, then an expanded one for music, movies, and books, as I recall). FireFly was the name used for the spinoff company. It went through a brief period of excitment during the internet boom, then (iirc) was purchased by some large corporation or other. (I have a friend who worked on the research project.)
Apparently, the key to developing Massively Better Technology, according to the universe of the Star Trek Universe:
1). Create a massive trade/technology federation based on liberty, freedom, exploration, and the discovery and mostly-open sharing of knowledge.
2). Isolate yourself from it as much as possible. This works best if you can prevent this gigantic group from even knowing you exist. Have nothing to do with it!
3). Wait.
I have used an I300 for roughly a year now (a little less), in Sprint, in the Boston area. As you may know, Boston has its own `quirks' for cell coverage, but Sprint is definitely toward the upper end here (whereas it seems to be reported as pretty bad in many places). I've used it in various places around the country, and the Sprint coverage, while far from perfect, seems overall much better than the GSM coverage.
The device itself is good. I've tried most of the PDA/Phone combinations that came out before this one, on non-GSM systems, and I can say comfortably that this is much nicer than both the LG palm-like pdaphone and the Kyocera B&W pdaphone.
Pros: good battery life, bright color screen, sturdy device. Having a `real' color palm device is nice, and the palm/phone integration is pretty good (not perfect).
You can browse the addressbook using up/down `phone rocker keys' on the side (in addition to the normal palm keys on the bottom front), and dial from the addressbook list with the adjacent `voice memo' button. This means that you can dial from the address book entirely one-handed, which I gather may be a problem with some of the newer palm phones. I use DateBk5, and it fully supports the I300 phone integration, which is nice.
The phone comes with both the WAP browser and Blazer; my previous phone (and many of my friend's smaller phones) have only WAP. From this experience, I'm not fond of WAP *at all*, and I basically never use it anymore. I do use a few PQA's (basically, I check Amazon from my phone before buying books/DVDs/CDs, although I generally buy books at local stores anyway). I have ssh on the phone, and while I don't use it often, it has been a lifesaver a couple times.
I don't generally play many computer games (I still haven't started the copy of WarCraftIII that I pre-ordered before it hit stores), but I do find myself playing games on the phone while waiting around, and it's been great. The palm aspect means that it's easy to get new software, which has been great.
The Cons: the screen is small. Basically, they `pinched' a color palm screen to get the overall size down, and it shows. I used to do a lot of `doc work' (reading, minor edits) on my old Palm V, but I rarely do so with my palm phone, although there are other important factors in this decision.
There is no physical keypad. I'm ok with this, but it is a lot worse than having one if you're not dialing from the address book (or voice dial, which the phone does natively (not Sprint's extra service)).
The OS is non-upgradeable, and PalmOS 3.5.2 is pretty long in the tooth these days (more on this later).
The cradle is serial, which, frankly, sucks. I used to manage the device (install sw, backup, I never used the Palm Desktop Software) on my linux laptop, until I upgraded to a laptop without a serial port, then I did without until someone released a serialusb dongle that worked with Mac OS X (the first couple generations didn't).
Right now, I manage it on my G4 desktop, and the Palm Desktop software (I'm not running 10.2, so I haven't tried iSync). The one annoyance is that the software insists on installing a 3.5.3 updater every time I sync, although it always fails to run.
In general, I like this device. It's pretty old, and I've been looking to upgrade for a while now, but I haven't found anything I like as much (for Sprint). The Treo 300 was a serious temptation for a while, but all reports (and several broken demos in Boston stores), it is too fragile for my taste (I hear that Kevin Spacey has broken 3 of them, for example). The I330 isn't really available yet, and doesn't seem to be much of an improvement anyway (a bit nicer hardware, noticably worse battery life). The Samsung I500 and Kyocera 7135 color palm clamshells are both very tempting, but aren't available yet. When they come out, I'll probably get one or the other; in the meantime, I'll stick with the I300.
Two related projects that might be interesting:
The Itsy, a research project that arguably laid the foundations for the iPaq, used a similar navigation system, based on rocker switches to scroll through documents.
Itsy Project pages
There was another experimental user interface prototyped on the palm, designed as a sort of a `file/concept manager', where each document showed up as a small icon. Related items were connected by lines. Only the stuff at the center of the screen showed any sort of text description; other things were shrunk and on the periphery, and the user moved around a sort of fish-eye lens. Unfortunately, I can't find my references to the project anymore (google didn't help, although I didn't try for very long). If anyone finds/remembers the project, I'd love to hear about it.
Like democracy, X is an absolutely terrible system, clearly the worst choice, except for every other choice we have so far.
Hey, there are projects out there that would like to replace X, so there's hope.. In the meantime, there are a number of areas where X is a better choice than the primary `alternatives' (Windows and Mac OS; distinct from OS, network-capable, configurable/modular, source available).
Human eyes must be a lot better where you are than where the Human Factors researchers work, since their numbers are more like ``7-10, one medium or two short words''. Note that full US phone numbers push the edge here; which is why phone books and caller-ID is so important on cell phones.
Well, for straightforward, new-user sorts of things, perhaps `no other application' does, but many of the people here have used something like emacs, or nvi, or screen, or... and are quite used to (addicted to? desirous of?) the power, felxibility, and functionality you can get from these sorts of systems.
You have no idea how many people I know who looked at ichat and immediately downloaded Adium. ``It looks nice, and it does support more features, but I can't live without the tabbing!''.
...just think of it as the `virtual desktop' argument, all over again.
I don't mean to be a downer, but the W3c/IETF has had (in the past) various working groups working on/talking about this problem for quite a while. It turns out to be very complicated to do fully generally. You might benefit from some searches through the w3c mailing list archives.
My impression is that the group discussion/design was complicated quite a lot by multiple divergent interests (i.e. live annotations or not, shared or not, modified copy versus reference the original, etc.). I think this may be an area where a small group of people can achieve better success by presenting a mostly-finished design to peer revue (rather than consensual group design).
For my part, I think that such a system would be cool, but my practical needs would be met by a wiki that let you easily move forward/backwards among saved revisions, with some (optional?) way to view metadata about a change (who/when/what/why). CVS provides most of the tools (abstractly; I don't know that I would want to use CVS code).
Good luck! I look forward to hearing about your project in the future...
Perhaps I am simply luckier, but I have never had xpdf get the bounding box wrong in either fashion you describe.
Regardless of luck, I search for text in xpdf without trouble* at least several times a week, for months.
Check it out, at freshmeat, for example.
* by `without trouble', I don't count xpdf's nearly overbearing ugliness as `trouble'. :-)
CMU's AUIS (or whatever they took to calling the expanded Andrew Tool Kit stuff) included a tool very similar to this, ~10 years ago. Students could use a word-processor-like program to write papers (or import them from other sources), then submit them on-line to a central server. Teachers/TAs/whatnot could read, edit, and markup (that is, either change the document or annotate it) on-line, and share the results with other teacher/TA/whatnots and/or the students. It was a pretty useful idea, used for a couple MIT classes, but the implementation was pretty flawed (the server crashed often, and was prone to losing files), so they stopped.
Come to think of it, that's pretty much the experience with AUIS/ATK in general. In significantly less-nice terms, a friend of mine once said:
like all CMU code: way cool design, implementation like wet camel shit.
At this point, I believe that AUIS is pretty much defunct, so I doubt anyone cares. The code is probably available under OSS license if anyone cares (I believe it was old-style BSD (with attribution)).
The Archos jukebox recorders are significantly larger and, in my limited experience, mch less sturdy than the iPod. The Nomad Zen is closer, but, by all reports, still too large.
This size difference can be *critical*. That's why, for example, Hawkins spent so much time carrying around variously sized blocks of wood -- to find the size that would kill the (far more capable, advanced, and already-in-stores) Apple Newton.
I've played with USB devices of this sort, and USB 2.0 is simply too slow for these capacities. I'm excited to hear that USB2.0 support works for linux; in the early days of the Archos Jukebox, the USB storage drivers would crash the linux box pretty regularly.
Yeah, in the end, it all comes down to taste. For me, the ipod is small enough to carry around, while the Archos is (while cheaper), too close to the size of my laptop (sony vaio SR27K) to occupy a useful niche.
SD can be considered sort of the `CardBus equivalent for MMC' -- it's a faster data connection in the same connector footprint. My understanding is that SD cards can be roughly 4x faster than MMC. Additionally, there are a number of non-memory devices that only come in SD format (most interestingly, the SD BlueTooth card).
Unfortunately, SD is a highly propietary format, controlled by a standards consortium that charges very high entrance fees, and heavily restricts the ability of members to distribute information about the format. This is why, for example, the Sharp Zaurus uses a proprietary, closed driver for its SD slot, and why the various Linux-on-iPaq systems (http://www.handhelds.org/) do not have SD support (unless the license/consortium radically changes, there won't be an open driver for this format).
SD/MMC is a nice, convienent format. In its size/power category, it's more functional than SmartCard, which is memory only. The next best competitor is probably MemoryStick, also a very, very closed system. SD/MMC also has the `feature' that it's commonly found on Palm, PocketPC, and Linux handhelds. It's a shame that open systems will be stuck using only the MMC feature set of these systems.
This is a good idea (IMHO, obviously), but it's difficult to think about, and it seems to be particularly difficult thing to build incrementally into current GUI frameworks/systems. There have been a few attempts at it, mostly in the form of `programming environments' like Oberon, or even colorForth. Apple's own MPW was a startlingly interesting attempt along these lines. Perhaps the `most successful' of these projects that comes to mind is Plan 9. Perhaps unfortunately, Plan 9 is experimental in many different ways (intrinsically networked, very tightly held ideas about system interfaces), but they have have interesting data/experience backing up their idea that keyboard+mouse is more efficient and less distracting than switching back and forth. Check it out.
Anyone else know of any publicly available info on other, related systems/experiments?
I can't agree. I have no problem with the command line (I often prefer it for `quick' stuff), but I'll use a GUI for mundane, simple stuff because it's simpler and easier.
Of course, this requires that it be simpler and easier -- many modern GUIs spend way too much effort getting in the way, making the situation worse than if there were no GUI at all.
I have very unusual tastes in GUI layout/feel/look/design/whatever. I run ctwm (plus local hacks). I have gnome installed for Galeon (and I used to have KDE installed only for konqueror) - I don't use the panel, or gdm, or any of that stuff. My desktop background is solid black, on all 5 desktops (all of which get regular use). I do most of my work in emacs, vim, or xterm, plus galeon. Still, I like to have the gui available for when it'll be simpler and easier.
Funny, but untrue. If you're interested, take a look at the Anticircumvention FAQ.
..which was (at least the copy that came with a laptop of mine, never used/installed) labelled ``Windows 95 OSR2, USB Support''...
Here's a very simple technique that almost no one notices (in my experience) for dealing with cable costs for those of us with narrow TV tastes: Basic Cable Usually Isn't.
In the US, cable companies are required to carry local network broadcasting at a relatively cheap rate. This is usually NOT what they sell as `basic cable' -- the companies I've seen (AT&T and RCN) have two or three parts to their `basic' cable service. Generally, the `network TV' part has cost me ~$7, the `extra basic' part cost ~$7, and the `extended basic' part cost $13.
I have found that the few channels I actually watch are usually in the `basic' block, so I don't order the other two. This is available to everyone (I believe they are required to do this), but you won't see it advertised; just ask the cable operator.
Interestingly, there's a further trick: generally, digital cable packages offer `digital' versions of `normal' basic cable channels, even ones that are in `extra' or `extended' basic packages. This `doubling up' of channels lets the operators advertise very long lists of channels, but it can also work for you: Digital cable packges are typically ~$15, so if they're available in your area, you can dump `extra' and `extended', add the low-level digital package, and get back almost all of the channels that you `lost' from reducing your basic cable subscription, at a lower cost.
There are tradeoffs, of course (TANSTAAFL), but if you can live with the cable box system of didigtal cable, you can generally meet or increase (PPV, digital music channels, etc.) your cable TV options for less money. I do this and get network broadcast, History, Discovery, TLC, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi, and music channels -- pretty much all I've ever watched..
s/their Li/they're Li/
sigh.
The trouble is is that disciplines aren't working closely enough together.
Yes, this operation is pretty boring, but so is putting together gui installers, or building unit tests, or writing API documentation -- boring, but important. Interestingly, there are a large number of undergrad/grad Linguistics students who do this sort of thing in college laboratories all the time. They're not CS students, though -- their Linguistics (or Psychology, or Cognitive Science, or whatever wacky department their field was attached to) students.
Someone with a CS professorship, an `open science' bent, and enough funding for 2-3 undergrads (probably $10k each, once you include `overhead') needs to find his or her local Linguistics department and make the world a better place.
Please?
> In my mind, making copy protected CDs is akin to
:]
> a pub/bar/club having a sign saying "No drugs on
> the premesis" - They are helping us stay on the
> right side of the law.
The problem with your analogy is this: while it's always illegal to use `drugs' (as you're implying) *anywhere*, copying CDs is NOT illegal.
This is tricky, because most people have an instinctive, off-the-cuff belief that sellers can sell what they want, and people can go somewhere else if they don't like the wares. This is by and large correct (and important to our society), but there *are* a few regulations. Copy-protected CDs come very close to crossing that line (I and many others would say that they cross it).
Another thing that many people either don't know or tend to forget is the ``piracy surcharge''. Basically, the companies now in the RIAA got together a while ago and complained to Congress that copying CDs would *sometimes* be used for piracy. Somehow (you'll be hard pressed to convince me that campaign contributions weren't influential), these companies convinced the US government to pre-apportion a fine for this piracy, spread out over *all* consumers (law-abiding or not), applied to blank audio CDs.
This means that completely law-abiding artists who want to distribute CDs of their work (which they can do completely legally), are fined for the piracy ``in general''. This money is collected *by the government*, *for those companies*. This also means that if you want to make a `backup' copy of an audio CD (which you are explicitly allowed to do), you're paying that fine, collected by the government, and given to the media companies.
This is just one of the many (IMHO silly/stupid) things the industry has been able to `convince' the government to do ``to create a marketplace where content companies are willing to put forth their wares'' -- i.e. market protectionism, but not against competing sellers, but against the citizen-consumers.
Can you tell that I don't like this law?
As far as Plasma screens go, right now you have two options: 1366x768, or 1024x1024. Things just don't seem to get any higher, from what I can find (and I've looked at several US$15k+ models).
:)
If someone can point me at some counterexamples, I'll be delighted.
The `Gazebo' story is older than KotDT, which is a fine publication (gamer cartoon plus news, reviews, original material for Kenzerco products, etc). The strip (not the magazine) started in Shadis, an old game magazine that ended well before Kenzer bought the current Knights group.
Also, Kenzer didn't `buy' D&D 1st edition; they have a license from Hasbro/WotC for some of their products, including the basis for Hackmaster, which bears a distinct similarity (but is also noticably different).
Unfortunately, it turns out that it was kinda too expensive to ever really catch on. Good chunks of it live on underneath MacOSX, of course, but it's a bit dated now.
The real answer to ``why don't they give up?'' is because ``people still want to buy their products''. Doesn't seem so hard to understand. Shrug.
I periodically look at this url: Fujitsu 510 on eBay
To see what the current prices are like. Rumours amoung the handhelds.org group suggest that linux works fairly well on these devices.
Well, while the NeXT DPS was network-transparent, it also had some pretty serious security problems; a stock NeXT machine that allowed display access was also unintentially allowing the remote user to read and/or execute any file on the machine. `Back in the day', we had a couple NeXT virii that worked as email attachments using these features.
That said, I agree with the earlier poster; network transparency is one of the reasons that X11 is still (imho) superior to all the actually available alternatives...