Right out of Einstein's Bridge (c) 1997
on
Virtual Keyboard
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The first time I saw these virtual keyboard things, I immediately said "Hey-- I read this in a science fiction story once!"
After a bit of searching, I found it-- the exact concept exists in _Einstein's Bridge_, by John Cramer-- came out in 1997.
Here's the bit that discusses the idea:
He opened his briefcase and removed the magic glasses and the data cuffs. He switched on the small computer inside and made sure that its sensor flap was extended outside when he latched the briefcase lid, then slipped it back under the seat in front of him. He pressed a switch recessed in a thick earpiece of the magic glasses, then put them on. He draped the flesh colored data cuff around his left wrist, just in front of his wrist watch, and secured it with the Velcro joint underneat. He repeated the process on his right writs and activated the calibration process, flexing finger, twisting wrists, and bending elbows.
The glasses produced a display screen presented vertically in front of him and a horizontal keyboard etched in bright lines in midair. He reached out, grasped the screen, and moved and stretched it until it filled the full area of the seat back in front of him, then positioned the virtual keyboard to a more confortable position at the surface of the tray table. He called up the report he'd been working on earlier and began to type and revise.
...
He held up the flesh-colored objects in his lap. "These are data cuffs. They go around my wrists and measure my hand and finger positions by monitoring the movement of tendons in my wrists with Doppler-shift ultrasonics. They send the information to the computer over another infrared link. The glasses were making the image of a keyboard on the tray table. When I typed, the cuffs detected my finger motions, the computer correlated them with the locations of the keys it was drawing, and the words I typed appeared on the computer screen that I saw on the seat back."
Thought it was a facinating idea when I first read it-- seems fairly useless without the "magic glasses"...
Look, would you use Hotmail to handle your business's mail? So why would you use MSN, Yahoo, etc. to deal with your business's IM needs? And yes, IM is becoming like email and the phone- another tool that people are relying on more and more to share information.
So, if you care about IM for business use, why wouldn't you just pay for it? I only know of Sametime (which is good for inside your organization and connects via AIM externally). This is a tool for businesses and not for casual users.
But someone should listen up here and make a business out of this for people who want a reliable IM service for casual use.
I would think that there are people out there who would pay something for guaranteed reliability.
I used to work for a company with an IT department that didn't get the whole "customer service" thing. When the network would go down (as it frequently did), we'd all shut off the feature that auto-checks email because the Error Box popups that Eudora generated were really annoying. The place was small enough that we'd just get word of mouth when the servers came up, but sometimes it took a while for someone to check mail and see that it was working again.
I asked the IT folks if they could do a better job of spreading the word when the network goes back up and they agreed to do so. And then started the policy of sending an email out, telling us when the server was back up. Um. Duh. If we found out the server was up from reading the email, we didn't exactly need it, now did we?
My realtor was on the ball and gets the internet. Each day I would get an email showing me which properties were new to the market, which had gone under agreement, what sold and what it sold for. If I wanted to view a property I could click on the link, enter my password and view the listing sheet on her website (which pulled the info from MLS.) All she asked is that if I wanted to visit a property I would call her first.
This is what e-business can do for a savvy real estate agent. It wasn't a fancy site but it was useful, informative and, more importantly, convinced me to work through her because it was just so easy.
The WSJ article says that the default would be "off" so that users would have to turn the feature on.
Look, I hate MS as much as the next person. I've worked for a standards consortium that MS would just as soon see go away forever. I've encountered some truly horrible MS crap that shouldn't have a place in this world (cough, FrontPage). I don't agree with their predatory business practices at all.
But this feature, as much as it galls me to say it, isn't actually evil. It's about the user's ability to customize their interaction with the information the web presents. And whether that customization takes the form of a portal, or a search engine, or an agent, it's all about users wanting the information they deem is relevant to them. So if someone wants to turn on a feature that adds more links that clearly don't look like standard URLs, then I have to say I don't see that as a problem, as long as the feature is optional, and the default is off. And it would be nice to see a disclaimer shown when the user turns it on that alerts them to what the feature is actually going to do and warns them that the "special" links are chosen by MS and not the creators of the websites. Actually it'd be nice to see that disclaimer in the link popup box every time as well.
We need to realize that this is the way the web is going- savvy users are finding ways to cut through the dreck and find what they need. And if they are stupid enough to think that MS-selected links are going to offer then quality browsing... well, I say let them.
Interesting point. I knew I'd been spammed but this is literally the FIRST time a spammer actually had something to say that I actually wanted to hear. I get an average amount of spam that I don't ask for (well, I guess technically all my spam is spam I didn't ask for...that's what spam is) and I see your point- supporting spammers just encourages them.
But OTOH until Google brought the archives back on line it was a no-horse town if you were looking for free web-based access to USENET. And I'm glad to see another free provider trying to provide USENET access via the web, if only to keep Google on their toes.
I guess I'm getting mellow in my old age but I don't plan to not use the site on principle, just because they spammed me. I may not use it because it sucks, but not because they used a business practice I vehemently disagree with. Once upon a time I would do that (I refused to buy from eToys and told all my friends to do the same) but now I just don't care enough. Sad but true. Keep fighting the good fight, though.
I haven't had the time to check it out in depth but I got this mail the other day:
---
USENET archives are now available on http://www.etin.com
Chronologically relevant searching of messages.
Browsing of text and binary newsgroups. Posting.
Free. Public. Complete. Anonymous.
Text messages are archived and retained permanently.
Binaries are retained 10 to 20 days.
---
I don't know how good it is though. I tried a quick search for some of my old postings and got nothing.
Good - Ximian needs to have an eye on the business
on
Ximian gets new CEO
·
· Score: 2
I've done some work with Miguel and Nat and I'm glad to see this. They are both great developers but it's good to know when you need to focus on developing and hand the business over to someone who can deal with all that crap. Nat was definitely swamped up to his eyeballs when I was trying to get him on the phone about 6 months ago and I'm sure it hasn't gotten any better!
It's funny- when you do something well, you get promoted and promoted until eventually you end up in a position which has nothing to do with what you do well. Management and running a business is a whole different skill set from coding and hacking. You have to deal with (ack, evil) sales, marketing, human resources, legal issues and all sorts of garbage which has nothing to do with what you love to do and do well. So you either suck it up and learn how to do the new job (accompanied by a steep learning curve) or you hire someone who knows and likes that stuff so you can spend your time doing what you love.
This is a good move on Ximian's part and a move that most of the Linux companies out there are going to have to make sooner or later. At some point you have to move towards running a business and worry about messy things like profitability.
...what we need is a plugin for aim that allows you to associate a public key with a name on your buddy list... whenver you IM that person it is automatically encrypted, and automatically decrypted on the other end by the receivers private key.
Or another product that recognizes the need for security and builds it in... like Sametime. A government agency actually uses this to communicate confidential info at regular staff meetings between officers spread around the world.
AIM is great for casual use but when people start to use it for business purposes, they are potentially exposing really sensitive info to the world. Instant Messaging is a wonderful business tool but without security it's no good.
(BTW Sametime allows you to message AIM users as well, although not with the same level of security)
Boss #1 Hey, we need to hire a entry level employee
Boss #2 We can't hire just anyone, we want someone with real world experience, even if we are only paying a starting salary
HR Dweeb Hrm, I received this resume from someone who just graduated from WestNorthSouthern University and did the co-op program. They've got some real-world experience and worked at this company whose name I recognize. All the rest in this pile are just out of college with no real work experience beyond waiting tables at Friendly's.
Boss 1&2 in unisonHire them!
I've been on both sides of the equation, as an intern and as an employer. Yeah, I worked for $100/week while I lived in my grandparents' den for 6 months but that got me my first job. And when I see a resume for a just-out-of-college grad with some actual relevant work experience vs. summer jobs, guess which one I'll be more likely to hire?
There's some info on the software that makes the SUBARU Telescope run at http://www.corba.org/industries/research/subaru.ht ml, with a focus on how it uses CORBA to share distrbuted data.
The nature of stealing someone's music means that it will always be obvious that it is theft. (Unless someone is claiming that their garage band sounds like Metallica.) It's very obvious that the person presenting the content (in this case a song) didn't originate it. No matter how you get the content you always know that the musicians created it.
However, stolen web site design is much trickier. The web is a big place and with credit hidden or not given at all, the person putting the site up is letting visitors assume that he/she is a creative person who came up with this site design all on their own. Unless someone sees both sites and makes the comparison (like here) they will usually get away with it.
That's why I think it fits the definition of plagiarism, because this guy isn't going out of his way to make sure visitors know that he took the design from somewhere else. Whether he intends it or not, he is taking credit for someone else's work.
And HTML isn't intangible at all. It's code that your browser interprets to define how you, the visitor, experience the content that is presented. It takes time, effort and creative skill to define that experience, and if it's ripped off and no credit given to the original "HTML Artist" then that's theft.
If I were hiring technical staff here in the Boston area, there's one question I'd need to ask: "When was the last time you went to the MIT Flea Market?" If I get a blank look they'd be out of there...
Remember, HTML is just a presentation "language". It's not what is copyrightable.
What IS copyrightable, however, is the data that it marks up.
Hmmm. Tough issue here. And tough for me to see a difference between reusing someone else's HTML code and plagiarizing someone else's term paper, for example.
Yes, both are just made up of language. HTML in the first case and, say, English in the second. But the term paper isn't a term paper until someone takes all those words the English language makes available and configures them into a term paper that makes sense out of the data it is trying to present. So, in that context, how the language is used is integral to the finished product.
Likewise, a chunk of text isn't a nicely fomatted and graphically interesting web page until someone takes all the options HTML offers and puts them together in an order that makes sense out of the data.
So I'm actually seeing how this case could have merit (although I don't really want to.) Tough one!
My husband's company (in Wilmington, MA, USA) had no phones and the alarm system was going wacky this morning for about 4 hours.
He doesn't know for sure that it's the Feb. 29 bug (someone else's job to worry about it!) but it's a pretty good guess.
I also know that one of my relatives, who works for a government agency, had his software lose about 3 months of data on January 1st because he didn't install the Y2K patch that came out in October 1999. I think there are a lot of incidents that went unreported. You can bet my relative didn't tell his boss that it was a Y2K problem (since it was his fault the patch wasn't applied.)
how else is eBay is going to keep surfers on their site and surf pass their ad banners?
How about by implementing a secure access system? Like New York Times, it would be free but access is not available to non-subscribers.
Right now, E-Bay is like a flea market. Anyone can come in, anyone can sell something. More importantly, nobody is standing st the door keeping people out or making them pay anything to get in.
But as long as E-bay wants to take advantage of people's attraction to free, easy to use locations, they'll have to put up with the inconveneience of people taking advantage of that freedom. After all, they're not providing the products being sold, just a location to sell them. And E-bay still gets their commission on each sale, so they're not really losing out.
If they're so hot and bothered then they should use technology to solve the problem, not lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
After a bit of searching, I found it-- the exact concept exists in _Einstein's Bridge_, by John Cramer-- came out in 1997.
Here's the bit that discusses the idea:
Thought it was a facinating idea when I first read it-- seems fairly useless without the "magic glasses"...
Look, would you use Hotmail to handle your business's mail? So why would you use MSN, Yahoo, etc. to deal with your business's IM needs? And yes, IM is becoming like email and the phone- another tool that people are relying on more and more to share information.
So, if you care about IM for business use, why wouldn't you just pay for it? I only know of Sametime (which is good for inside your organization and connects via AIM externally). This is a tool for businesses and not for casual users.
But someone should listen up here and make a business out of this for people who want a reliable IM service for casual use.
I would think that there are people out there who would pay something for guaranteed reliability.
I used to work for a company with an IT department that didn't get the whole "customer service" thing. When the network would go down (as it frequently did), we'd all shut off the feature that auto-checks email because the Error Box popups that Eudora generated were really annoying. The place was small enough that we'd just get word of mouth when the servers came up, but sometimes it took a while for someone to check mail and see that it was working again.
I asked the IT folks if they could do a better job of spreading the word when the network goes back up and they agreed to do so. And then started the policy of sending an email out, telling us when the server was back up. Um. Duh. If we found out the server was up from reading the email, we didn't exactly need it, now did we?
My realtor was on the ball and gets the internet. Each day I would get an email showing me which properties were new to the market, which had gone under agreement, what sold and what it sold for. If I wanted to view a property I could click on the link, enter my password and view the listing sheet on her website (which pulled the info from MLS.) All she asked is that if I wanted to visit a property I would call her first.
This is what e-business can do for a savvy real estate agent. It wasn't a fancy site but it was useful, informative and, more importantly, convinced me to work through her because it was just so easy.
The WSJ article says that the default would be "off" so that users would have to turn the feature on.
Look, I hate MS as much as the next person. I've worked for a standards consortium that MS would just as soon see go away forever. I've encountered some truly horrible MS crap that shouldn't have a place in this world (cough, FrontPage). I don't agree with their predatory business practices at all.
But this feature, as much as it galls me to say it, isn't actually evil. It's about the user's ability to customize their interaction with the information the web presents. And whether that customization takes the form of a portal, or a search engine, or an agent, it's all about users wanting the information they deem is relevant to them. So if someone wants to turn on a feature that adds more links that clearly don't look like standard URLs, then I have to say I don't see that as a problem, as long as the feature is optional, and the default is off. And it would be nice to see a disclaimer shown when the user turns it on that alerts them to what the feature is actually going to do and warns them that the "special" links are chosen by MS and not the creators of the websites. Actually it'd be nice to see that disclaimer in the link popup box every time as well.
We need to realize that this is the way the web is going- savvy users are finding ways to cut through the dreck and find what they need. And if they are stupid enough to think that MS-selected links are going to offer then quality browsing... well, I say let them.
See The Chronicles of George. Not everyone who answers the phone at the tech desk is the technology wunderkind everybody here seems to be :-)
Interesting point. I knew I'd been spammed but this is literally the FIRST time a spammer actually had something to say that I actually wanted to hear. I get an average amount of spam that I don't ask for (well, I guess technically all my spam is spam I didn't ask for...that's what spam is) and I see your point- supporting spammers just encourages them.
But OTOH until Google brought the archives back on line it was a no-horse town if you were looking for free web-based access to USENET. And I'm glad to see another free provider trying to provide USENET access via the web, if only to keep Google on their toes.
I guess I'm getting mellow in my old age but I don't plan to not use the site on principle, just because they spammed me. I may not use it because it sucks, but not because they used a business practice I vehemently disagree with. Once upon a time I would do that (I refused to buy from eToys and told all my friends to do the same) but now I just don't care enough. Sad but true. Keep fighting the good fight, though.
I haven't had the time to check it out in depth but I got this mail the other day:
---
USENET archives are now available on http://www.etin.com
Chronologically relevant searching of messages.
Browsing of text and binary newsgroups. Posting.
Free. Public. Complete. Anonymous.
Text messages are archived and retained permanently.
Binaries are retained 10 to 20 days.
---
I don't know how good it is though. I tried a quick search for some of my old postings and got nothing.
I've done some work with Miguel and Nat and I'm glad to see this. They are both great developers but it's good to know when you need to focus on developing and hand the business over to someone who can deal with all that crap. Nat was definitely swamped up to his eyeballs when I was trying to get him on the phone about 6 months ago and I'm sure it hasn't gotten any better!
It's funny- when you do something well, you get promoted and promoted until eventually you end up in a position which has nothing to do with what you do well. Management and running a business is a whole different skill set from coding and hacking. You have to deal with (ack, evil) sales, marketing, human resources, legal issues and all sorts of garbage which has nothing to do with what you love to do and do well. So you either suck it up and learn how to do the new job (accompanied by a steep learning curve) or you hire someone who knows and likes that stuff so you can spend your time doing what you love.
This is a good move on Ximian's part and a move that most of the Linux companies out there are going to have to make sooner or later. At some point you have to move towards running a business and worry about messy things like profitability.
...what we need is a plugin for aim that allows you to associate a public key with a name on your buddy list... whenver you IM that person it is automatically encrypted, and automatically decrypted on the other end by the receivers private key.
Or another product that recognizes the need for security and builds it in... like Sametime. A government agency actually uses this to communicate confidential info at regular staff meetings between officers spread around the world.
AIM is great for casual use but when people start to use it for business purposes, they are potentially exposing really sensitive info to the world. Instant Messaging is a wonderful business tool but without security it's no good.
(BTW Sametime allows you to message AIM users as well, although not with the same level of security)
...because this conversation happens often:
Boss #1 Hey, we need to hire a entry level employee
Boss #2 We can't hire just anyone, we want someone with real world experience, even if we are only paying a starting salary
HR Dweeb Hrm, I received this resume from someone who just graduated from WestNorthSouthern University and did the co-op program. They've got some real-world experience and worked at this company whose name I recognize. All the rest in this pile are just out of college with no real work experience beyond waiting tables at Friendly's.
Boss 1&2 in unison Hire them!
I've been on both sides of the equation, as an intern and as an employer. Yeah, I worked for $100/week while I lived in my grandparents' den for 6 months but that got me my first job. And when I see a resume for a just-out-of-college grad with some actual relevant work experience vs. summer jobs, guess which one I'll be more likely to hire?
I'm a fan of this anatomical chocolate heart. Only a geek could truly appreciate it.
Also on that site, brain shaped chocolate covered cherries and a heart gelatin mold.
If ever there was a day to probe Eros, it would be Valentine's Day. If they'd waited two more days they would have done it.
No romantics at NASA, I guess...
Spend some time away from AOL for a change :-) OMG (Object Management Group) is the standards body that develops CORBA.
There's some info on the software that makes the SUBARU Telescope run at http://www.corba.org/industries/research/subaru.ht ml, with a focus on how it uses CORBA to share distrbuted data.
It's apples and oranges.
The nature of stealing someone's music means that it will always be obvious that it is theft. (Unless someone is claiming that their garage band sounds like Metallica.) It's very obvious that the person presenting the content (in this case a song) didn't originate it. No matter how you get the content you always know that the musicians created it.
However, stolen web site design is much trickier. The web is a big place and with credit hidden or not given at all, the person putting the site up is letting visitors assume that he/she is a creative person who came up with this site design all on their own. Unless someone sees both sites and makes the comparison (like here) they will usually get away with it.
That's why I think it fits the definition of plagiarism, because this guy isn't going out of his way to make sure visitors know that he took the design from somewhere else. Whether he intends it or not, he is taking credit for someone else's work.
And HTML isn't intangible at all. It's code that your browser interprets to define how you, the visitor, experience the content that is presented. It takes time, effort and creative skill to define that experience, and if it's ripped off and no credit given to the original "HTML Artist" then that's theft.
So I have a sense of humor and know how to make a joke in a public forum.
And, yes, I'd want to hire people who can take a joke, which obviously puts you off the list.
If I were hiring technical staff here in the Boston area, there's one question I'd need to ask: "When was the last time you went to the MIT Flea Market?" If I get a blank look they'd be out of there...
Remember, HTML is just a presentation "language". It's not what is copyrightable.
What IS copyrightable, however, is the data that it marks up.
Hmmm. Tough issue here. And tough for me to see a difference between reusing someone else's HTML code and plagiarizing someone else's term paper, for example.
Yes, both are just made up of language. HTML in the first case and, say, English in the second. But the term paper isn't a term paper until someone takes all those words the English language makes available and configures them into a term paper that makes sense out of the data it is trying to present. So, in that context, how the language is used is integral to the finished product.
Likewise, a chunk of text isn't a nicely fomatted and graphically interesting web page until someone takes all the options HTML offers and puts them together in an order that makes sense out of the data.
So I'm actually seeing how this case could have merit (although I don't really want to.) Tough one!
Acually the modified picture I had emailed to me today had "Drop the Chalupa!" as the caption.
;-)
It's up here in Boston too; I get it at Stop & Shop.
Chris
(jonesing for some Tiramisu. Or Cinnamon Bun, quite probably the BEST ice cream flavor ever made)
My husband's company (in Wilmington, MA, USA) had no phones and the alarm system was going wacky this morning for about 4 hours.
He doesn't know for sure that it's the Feb. 29 bug (someone else's job to worry about it!) but it's a pretty good guess.
I also know that one of my relatives, who works for a government agency, had his software lose about 3 months of data on January 1st because he didn't install the Y2K patch that came out in October 1999. I think there are a lot of incidents that went unreported. You can bet my relative didn't tell his boss that it was a Y2K problem (since it was his fault the patch wasn't applied.)
"Grammer Police..."
tsk, tsk, tsk...
It's an inescapable rule that those who complain about others' mistakes make one themselves in correcting them.
Now someone gets to find mine...
Chris
Wow- speeding stops trees from falling on cars?! I didn't know that!
How about by implementing a secure access system? Like New York Times, it would be free but access is not available to non-subscribers.
Right now, E-Bay is like a flea market. Anyone can come in, anyone can sell something. More importantly, nobody is standing st the door keeping people out or making them pay anything to get in.
But as long as E-bay wants to take advantage of people's attraction to free, easy to use locations, they'll have to put up with the inconveneience of people taking advantage of that freedom. After all, they're not providing the products being sold, just a location to sell them. And E-bay still gets their commission on each sale, so they're not really losing out.
If they're so hot and bothered then they should use technology to solve the problem, not lawyers.