Admittedly, it WOULD be nice to see ext3/reiser read/write support for XP. I just don't see it happening any time soon, really.:/ Well, not unless the guy who did the ext2 driver for NT/2K/XP decides to add ext3 support.
They've confirmed it's just an additional layer on top of the existing NTFS in their recent information packages for developers who are getting the early start on Longhorn app development.
First off, the handwriting recognition on these existing Tablet PCs is lightyears beyond the PDA equivelents. Many of these do come with keyboards in a "convertible" format where the keyboard can be detached.
Microsoft has a "remote display" hardware standard like you've described using their RDP protocol, but the whole design sucks. It's been panned more than a few times in reviews.
Artworks. Gabe of Penny Arcade is rather fond of the tablet pc; he was able to pick one up and sketch out a comic the very first time he used it due to the way the pen/screen system is pressure sensitive for applications that support it.
They're also as a alternative laptop replacement-- many of the better Tablet PC designs allow for the user to seperate the keyboard and take just the screen/pen.
Admittedly, what they do over what a laptop does is rather slim, but I've always seen them as the next generation of laptop design, especially since most good models have keyboards.
First off, as far as the applications are concerned, pan/tablet computing is LITERALLY the same as using a mouse; I know this because I've used one. I don't see any reason you couldn't run Autocad on one as is RIGHT NOW.
RAM would be an issue, and CPU speed might not be what you're wanting, but in a device that small you're bound to have issues of the sort-- hell, the battery life on laptops with the kind of specs you're talking are less than 90 minutes at full burn! (This I happen to know because I was recently considering a top-end laptop. I'm thinking I might just go with the tablet instead.)
An interesting idea. I never quite bought into the VF series, myself, but VF4's training ability where it would pick up your style of play over the hours you play was kinda neat. I'm just surprised Capcom never created anything similar....and for that matter, why did they remove it from the rerelease of VF4?
I believe that to be deliberate. All talk of bloatware/cisc/risc and so forth aside, there's an innate tendency in the technology business to ever strive for the next big thing.. even if we don't really NEED it. I don't really consider it a bad thing, personally-- we've hit the limits on what the average consumer "needs" in terms of power but there will always be those of us who push the envelope.
Except that as I understand it, Megaman Battle Network/Rockman.exe are an alternate timeline for the MM universe that hinges on a decision years before the series begins.
I've worked with Jabber in the workplace, and the biggest problems with Jabber all center around the way the project has been at a near-standstill for the past few years.
Jabber 1.x is the only version available, but it's buggy as hell and the transports are either obsoleted (read: non-working) or crash-prone. Jabber 2 is supposed to fix a lot of the headaches, but it's been on the way for years-- and even after they release the server, it'll be months to years before updated transports are created for Jabber 2.
Then, on top of this you have a bunch of half-baked clients-- sorting through the clients to find one that meets your needs and is under a work-acceptable license adds to the headaches.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but that's been my experience with trying to implement Jabber in the workplace.
What division? I know for a fact that the normal landline/bundled customer service tiers use X-terminals with tightly controlled software; IM isn't an option there, period.
I'm not too sure on the straight cellphone division; they use Windows NT, but I'm not sure of the access controls since bundled billing used Citrix to access the wireless systems last I knew.
I haven't, actually, but I have a pretty good reason for it. My friends have all given up on me ever using Linux as a primary OS, because every time I've tried to install it over the past ten years, I've run across one piece of hardware or another that just won't work with it. My most recent attempt had the thing randomly hardlocking due to a problem between SMP and the SCSI card in the machine in question with no solution except to disable SMP.
Technically speaking, though, multi-monitor on Linux should be pretty robust compared to the Microsoft implementation.
Your points are mostly valid, but you might want to know there ARE X-box memory cards; they're mostly only useful for taking your saves to a friend's place though, so most people won't be buying them.
I'd be happy if they'd just produce the next generation GBA with a port that allows me to hook it up to a cellphone; I'd rather buy my own phone and have it seperated from the system so that I'm not wasting battery life on the phone when I'm playing single-player.
Well, while I mostly agree with your statements, I have to put some clarifying thoughts forward on the topic of Sega.
Sega went wrong on an entirely different front, and it came back to bite them in very large ways-- three generations of systems, and five different cases of them shafting the consumers and game manufacturers.
Game Gear. Sega CD. Sega 32X. Saturn. Dreamcast.
Each one of these was yanked before its time, but for different reasons. The Game Gear never had a killer game, so it might be justified. The Sega CD never really got the marketshare. The 32X was abandoned at the very beginning-- Sega never had any intention to support it. The Saturn COULD have done well, except Sega of America was too busy pissing off 3rd party developers. The Dreamcast was abandoned because Sega was finally feeling the effects of the prior generations; of course it stayed alive for several years in Japan, just like the Saturn, but nothing more over here.
Sega's failures can be completely tied to shafting their customers and developers-- with a shaky customer base and angry developers, it's no wonder they couldn't hold on.
Not really a decent parallel with Nintendo, unless you want to try to go from the angle of them having completely boned the N64 from concept to execution.
Maybe so, but do I really need three machines that play DVDs? Hell, I'm kinda doubting whether or not I'll need the DVD playback in my next generation system because my PS2 seems to play them fine. So, DVD playback won't really be a huge factor for a PS3/XBox2 purchase, at least for me-- and I kinda doubt it'll really affect Nintendo in the long run because they can keep their prices lower for having the more narrow focus.
The only thing Nintendo REALLY needs to do is to shake off this "kids only" perception they've had since the N64-- that's what's killing the title base.
I don't see Nintendo failing, though, even if they lose the core console market, simply because they've got the Game Boy brand. Sony's trying to make a move on that market, but I forsee a few issues with the PSP in terms of battery life, game experience, and the discs themselves. Particularly, Sony isn't known for making _durable_ hardware in terms of consoles, and durable is what you really need on a handheld. If the drive mechanism dies as frequently on PSPs as it has for PS1 and PS2 consoles, that'll be the end of the PSP outright.
I've done a bit of dual-monitor in XP, and it can be a real lifesaver to keep API references and other help information on one entire screen and my code on the other.
It does tend to screw with gaming-- or perhaps I should say it _used_ to as of the time I messed with it, so it's the sort of thing you have to keep in mind for troubleshooting purposes. I think most recent software runs okay with it, with a few exceptions where the application can't recognize screen boundaries and forces itself to dock to the side of the first monitor (e.g. IM clients).
Piracy wasn't as rampant? I must disagree: Piracy has been rampant since 1981 at the very least, possibly even dating back further. Organized piracy via BBSes was common all throughout the 1980s and well into the early 1990s; shareware was as pirated as commercial, and ignorance or lack of care on the part of BBS operators led to a lot of registered shareware on regular bbses.
The 'rampant' piracy of today is a little less hidden than it was, but casual piracy hasn't changed in twenty years.
Alright, I'll bite. Put out that prototype and I'll take a look-- as will a lot of others, I'm sure. If your ideas work, who knows? Maybe it'll take off. Maybe you'll make the third paradigm in computing after commandlines and desktops, but I'm skeptical for obvious reason--
It's not that nobody's ever tried to redefine the UI, it's that nobody's ever managed to make a UI that both makes more sense to the user and is more intuitive. Add in the problems involved in relearning what you know (An issue I'd expect to be even more 'traumatic' than the upgrade from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95) and you've got an excellent view of why things have only incrementally improved from the existing desktop metaphor.
So, when I see the prototype I'll evaluate it, but I'll be skeptical in the meantime.
No kidding. It's not often you get such a plausible yet ever-so-slightly incoherent troll. I spotted it right off the bat, but nontheless I think it's pretty skillful to have nailed as many as it did.
1280x1024 isn't precisely what I'd call gigantic; that's just about the average on most modern systems. It's only a step up from 1024x768. Now 1600x1200 might be a different story.
However, I do agree with your assessment; virtual desktops still have a few issues to work out. I swore by them while working from X terminals back when I was with a telecommunications company, as they were just about the only way to keep the multitude of windows under control, but at the same time it took me about seven minutes each day just to get everything set up properly before my shift started.
Sadly (in the sense that bringing up Microsoft is akin to risking sounding like a troll or setting up flamebait..), I have to say that I think XP also fits your description to some extent. Autohide the taskbar and leave grouping on and it's not precisely difficult to find the window you're looking for while still leaving all of your screen realestate open for work.
Unfortunately, this country has become a country of hypocrites-- we preach freedom and justice, then murder in cold blood the first person who even remotely LOOKS like a foreigner. I was in Arizona in 2001, and we had the first murder case of a man originally from India simply because he "looked like an Arabian".
Then, on top of this, any criticism of the government is suddenly "unpatriotic"..
I don't think Linux will ever grab a significant chunk of the desktop market, so long as the present corporate mindset rules-- this mindset has a relatively high chance of spreading to Europe through patents and intellectual property "fixes"..
Re:Gentoo, Portage, Python
on
Linux in 2004?
·
· Score: 1
Odd. I've had the opposite result.
Just reading around, I see a lot more pro-Debian comments. To be honest, there ARE a number of zealots around, but they're on all sides-- the Gentoo ones were a bit more outspoken recently but they've quieted down considerably of late. Hell, I hear a lot more anti-Gentoo zealotry of late, with sigs like "Sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics? Me too!"-- which is ironic since it's a zealotry response in itself, just a negative one.
Maybe what we ALL really need to do is to ignore the zealots for what they are and just choose the distro that does the job how we want it?
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Admittedly, it WOULD be nice to see ext3/reiser read/write support for XP. I just don't see it happening any time soon, really. :/ Well, not unless the guy who did the ext2 driver for NT/2K/XP decides to add ext3 support.
They've confirmed it's just an additional layer on top of the existing NTFS in their recent information packages for developers who are getting the early start on Longhorn app development.
First off, the handwriting recognition on these existing Tablet PCs is lightyears beyond the PDA equivelents. Many of these do come with keyboards in a "convertible" format where the keyboard can be detached.
Microsoft has a "remote display" hardware standard like you've described using their RDP protocol, but the whole design sucks. It's been panned more than a few times in reviews.
Artworks. Gabe of Penny Arcade is rather fond of the tablet pc; he was able to pick one up and sketch out a comic the very first time he used it due to the way the pen/screen system is pressure sensitive for applications that support it.
They're also as a alternative laptop replacement-- many of the better Tablet PC designs allow for the user to seperate the keyboard and take just the screen/pen.
Admittedly, what they do over what a laptop does is rather slim, but I've always seen them as the next generation of laptop design, especially since most good models have keyboards.
First off, as far as the applications are concerned, pan/tablet computing is LITERALLY the same as using a mouse; I know this because I've used one. I don't see any reason you couldn't run Autocad on one as is RIGHT NOW.
RAM would be an issue, and CPU speed might not be what you're wanting, but in a device that small you're bound to have issues of the sort-- hell, the battery life on laptops with the kind of specs you're talking are less than 90 minutes at full burn! (This I happen to know because I was recently considering a top-end laptop. I'm thinking I might just go with the tablet instead.)
An interesting idea. I never quite bought into the VF series, myself, but VF4's training ability where it would pick up your style of play over the hours you play was kinda neat. I'm just surprised Capcom never created anything similar. ...and for that matter, why did they remove it from the rerelease of VF4?
I believe that to be deliberate. All talk of bloatware/cisc/risc and so forth aside, there's an innate tendency in the technology business to ever strive for the next big thing.. even if we don't really NEED it. I don't really consider it a bad thing, personally-- we've hit the limits on what the average consumer "needs" in terms of power but there will always be those of us who push the envelope.
Except that as I understand it, Megaman Battle Network/Rockman.exe are an alternate timeline for the MM universe that hinges on a decision years before the series begins.
This.. it's hard to say how this will tie in.
Feeling a bit pasture prime, perhaps?
I've worked with Jabber in the workplace, and the biggest problems with Jabber all center around the way the project has been at a near-standstill for the past few years.
Jabber 1.x is the only version available, but it's buggy as hell and the transports are either obsoleted (read: non-working) or crash-prone. Jabber 2 is supposed to fix a lot of the headaches, but it's been on the way for years-- and even after they release the server, it'll be months to years before updated transports are created for Jabber 2.
Then, on top of this you have a bunch of half-baked clients-- sorting through the clients to find one that meets your needs and is under a work-acceptable license adds to the headaches.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but that's been my experience with trying to implement Jabber in the workplace.
Sounds like it works pretty well, though I'd be very concerned with information overload by getting swamped during critical moments.
What division? I know for a fact that the normal landline/bundled customer service tiers use X-terminals with tightly controlled software; IM isn't an option there, period.
I'm not too sure on the straight cellphone division; they use Windows NT, but I'm not sure of the access controls since bundled billing used Citrix to access the wireless systems last I knew.
I wonder how much has changed in three years.
I haven't, actually, but I have a pretty good reason for it. My friends have all given up on me ever using Linux as a primary OS, because every time I've tried to install it over the past ten years, I've run across one piece of hardware or another that just won't work with it. My most recent attempt had the thing randomly hardlocking due to a problem between SMP and the SCSI card in the machine in question with no solution except to disable SMP.
Technically speaking, though, multi-monitor on Linux should be pretty robust compared to the Microsoft implementation.
Your points are mostly valid, but you might want to know there ARE X-box memory cards; they're mostly only useful for taking your saves to a friend's place though, so most people won't be buying them.
I'd be happy if they'd just produce the next generation GBA with a port that allows me to hook it up to a cellphone; I'd rather buy my own phone and have it seperated from the system so that I'm not wasting battery life on the phone when I'm playing single-player.
Well, while I mostly agree with your statements, I have to put some clarifying thoughts forward on the topic of Sega.
Sega went wrong on an entirely different front, and it came back to bite them in very large ways-- three generations of systems, and five different cases of them shafting the consumers and game manufacturers.
Game Gear. Sega CD. Sega 32X. Saturn. Dreamcast.
Each one of these was yanked before its time, but for different reasons. The Game Gear never had a killer game, so it might be justified. The Sega CD never really got the marketshare. The 32X was abandoned at the very beginning-- Sega never had any intention to support it. The Saturn COULD have done well, except Sega of America was too busy pissing off 3rd party developers. The Dreamcast was abandoned because Sega was finally feeling the effects of the prior generations; of course it stayed alive for several years in Japan, just like the Saturn, but nothing more over here.
Sega's failures can be completely tied to shafting their customers and developers-- with a shaky customer base and angry developers, it's no wonder they couldn't hold on.
Not really a decent parallel with Nintendo, unless you want to try to go from the angle of them having completely boned the N64 from concept to execution.
Maybe so, but do I really need three machines that play DVDs? Hell, I'm kinda doubting whether or not I'll need the DVD playback in my next generation system because my PS2 seems to play them fine. So, DVD playback won't really be a huge factor for a PS3/XBox2 purchase, at least for me-- and I kinda doubt it'll really affect Nintendo in the long run because they can keep their prices lower for having the more narrow focus.
The only thing Nintendo REALLY needs to do is to shake off this "kids only" perception they've had since the N64-- that's what's killing the title base.
I don't see Nintendo failing, though, even if they lose the core console market, simply because they've got the Game Boy brand. Sony's trying to make a move on that market, but I forsee a few issues with the PSP in terms of battery life, game experience, and the discs themselves. Particularly, Sony isn't known for making _durable_ hardware in terms of consoles, and durable is what you really need on a handheld. If the drive mechanism dies as frequently on PSPs as it has for PS1 and PS2 consoles, that'll be the end of the PSP outright.
I've done a bit of dual-monitor in XP, and it can be a real lifesaver to keep API references and other help information on one entire screen and my code on the other.
It does tend to screw with gaming-- or perhaps I should say it _used_ to as of the time I messed with it, so it's the sort of thing you have to keep in mind for troubleshooting purposes. I think most recent software runs okay with it, with a few exceptions where the application can't recognize screen boundaries and forces itself to dock to the side of the first monitor (e.g. IM clients).
Piracy wasn't as rampant? I must disagree: Piracy has been rampant since 1981 at the very least, possibly even dating back further. Organized piracy via BBSes was common all throughout the 1980s and well into the early 1990s; shareware was as pirated as commercial, and ignorance or lack of care on the part of BBS operators led to a lot of registered shareware on regular bbses.
The 'rampant' piracy of today is a little less hidden than it was, but casual piracy hasn't changed in twenty years.
Alright, I'll bite. Put out that prototype and I'll take a look-- as will a lot of others, I'm sure. If your ideas work, who knows? Maybe it'll take off. Maybe you'll make the third paradigm in computing after commandlines and desktops, but I'm skeptical for obvious reason--
It's not that nobody's ever tried to redefine the UI, it's that nobody's ever managed to make a UI that both makes more sense to the user and is more intuitive. Add in the problems involved in relearning what you know (An issue I'd expect to be even more 'traumatic' than the upgrade from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95) and you've got an excellent view of why things have only incrementally improved from the existing desktop metaphor.
So, when I see the prototype I'll evaluate it, but I'll be skeptical in the meantime.
Wouldn't screen be a workable alternative? One instance of xterm per place you're connecting to, multiple virtual xterms in each.
It'd probably require some adjustment in how you work, so it might not be such a good alternative for you, but I live by it at work.
No kidding. It's not often you get such a plausible yet ever-so-slightly incoherent troll. I spotted it right off the bat, but nontheless I think it's pretty skillful to have nailed as many as it did.
1280x1024 isn't precisely what I'd call gigantic; that's just about the average on most modern systems. It's only a step up from 1024x768. Now 1600x1200 might be a different story.
However, I do agree with your assessment; virtual desktops still have a few issues to work out. I swore by them while working from X terminals back when I was with a telecommunications company, as they were just about the only way to keep the multitude of windows under control, but at the same time it took me about seven minutes each day just to get everything set up properly before my shift started.
Sadly (in the sense that bringing up Microsoft is akin to risking sounding like a troll or setting up flamebait..), I have to say that I think XP also fits your description to some extent. Autohide the taskbar and leave grouping on and it's not precisely difficult to find the window you're looking for while still leaving all of your screen realestate open for work.
Unfortunately, this country has become a country of hypocrites-- we preach freedom and justice, then murder in cold blood the first person who even remotely LOOKS like a foreigner. I was in Arizona in 2001, and we had the first murder case of a man originally from India simply because he "looked like an Arabian".
Then, on top of this, any criticism of the government is suddenly "unpatriotic"..
I don't think Linux will ever grab a significant chunk of the desktop market, so long as the present corporate mindset rules-- this mindset has a relatively high chance of spreading to Europe through patents and intellectual property "fixes"..
Odd. I've had the opposite result.
Just reading around, I see a lot more pro-Debian comments. To be honest, there ARE a number of zealots around, but they're on all sides-- the Gentoo ones were a bit more outspoken recently but they've quieted down considerably of late. Hell, I hear a lot more anti-Gentoo zealotry of late, with sigs like "Sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics? Me too!"-- which is ironic since it's a zealotry response in itself, just a negative one.
Maybe what we ALL really need to do is to ignore the zealots for what they are and just choose the distro that does the job how we want it?