Natural enemies of the penguin include seals, Killer whales, and, in the case of young chicks and eggs, several species of seabirds. Healthy adult penguins have no predators on land, so they have no natural fear of humans. While they don't like to be approached directly, these naturally curious birds will sometimes come quite close to a quiet observer to get a better look.
or is anyone else wondering if the real reason many lawmakers voted for this bill was to prevent a single corporation from being able to control the politicians' access to tv ad space? The result is the same, so I guess i'm not really complaining. But it would be great to see if lawmakers were taking media conglomeration into more serious consideration than their own ad space.
Does anyone have any information on how an online tax would affect micropayments? Does PayPal intend to charge tax on deposits?
From what I've read, the big issue with micropayments is, of course, dealing with the amount of overhead involved when using a credit card for purchases of a few cents or even a few dollars. Figuring out tax rates would seem to take this to another level, especially in schemes like Ronald Rivest's which involves 'throwing out' a certain random number of micropayments (i forget the name of it...subject of a few papers, one mentioned on slashdot awhile ago).
It's kinda hard to charge someone 15% of 1c, since over 100 payments you're going to have to charge that 15c somewhere. I believe in the Rivest scheme you get charged soemthing like $10 every now and then, so I suppose that would be the likely place to tax, yet you're not exactly being charged for an actual product, more like adding to a shared account of sorts.
He never said his work, XML, is not well done. What he said was that the programming languages, APIs, and Environments haven't made the task of processing XML easy enough. XML itself is sound, or as sound as many alternatives.
The thing is, back in the day when people wore onions on their belts, programmers had to be convinced that UNIX's "file is a bag of bytes" form of data access was better than the more direct/powerful/convenient methods they'd been used to, like raw access to the drive. But programmers aren't users, and what's great for users, or has benefits beyond the realm of CS will always complicate things for the programmer. However, the more complicated things are for programmers, the longer it will take to build systems and get usable products. So Tim Bray is basically saying that XML has succeeded in the data-interchange modekl, but is failing to also make programmers lives easier, which is also important.
"Most of the industry's growth over the next few years is expected to come from servers using Intel chips and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. These so-called Wintel systems are generally cheaper and offer a wider range of chips."
A wider range of chips under Windows? They dropped the Alpha, so the only chips are Pentiums and Itaniums, right? I suppose you could argue that you have a lot more clones of Intel systems, plus options for Xeons, PIIIs, and such, but it's not really anything like the BSD or Linux systems' idea of "wider range of chips."
Yes, i'm not the wizard of words (or apparently math;) this morning am i?
My main reason for posting was to appease my instinctual reaction to the (somewhat intuitive) mistake soemtimes made that having twice the stuff makes it twice as good/reliable, etc. Which holds true for availability (10-fold in fact), but you'll get less in the case of reliability, and manageability is also a concern since you'll have to constantly check the backup network (if it's not in active use, failures are harder to find or predict for that matter). Also, failures aren't always randomly dispersed throughout the network, as the model might imply. You have to figure out how much failure each part of the network can sustain.
So, throwing more hardware, developers, or whatever at the problem isn't a real solution. Figuring out what was wrong in the first place will let them spend their money more wisely, rather than letting all that hardware go to waste, doing nothing. They could possibly get all the redundancy they want with less than twice the hardware and maybe even increase performance of the network during regular usage.
When i wrote "This isn't to say that the extra redundancy isn't useful" I was saying (without saying) that the redundancy *increases* availability. As you guys promptly clarified, the likelihood that both will go down, and hence be completely unavailable is reduced.
I was simply pointing out that the gut reaction that 2 is better than 1 doesn't always hold true. If I were them, my first priority would be to figure out why their current network failed so horribly (spanning tree apparently) and, rather than having two equally unreliable networks, create a mroe reliable network, with rendundant backups for availability. In a hospital setting, availability is paramount to other concerns, but they're going to incur more than twice the management costs by doubling the same network.
IF you have one train going from NY->LA that's likely to break down 10% of the time, and you get a second identical train going in the opposite direction, what's the probability that one of the trains will fail?
(number of trains) * (probability of failure) = 2 *.10 = 20%
The more components in the system, the more likely it is that parts of the system will be down. This isn't to say that the extra redundancy isn't useful, but it doesn't give you more reliability...it decreases it. So additional mangement costs are incurred in making sure that enough redundancy is always available to compensate for parts of the system that are down, and replacing bad components.
When I was growing up, and wanted to learn how to program, I did it mainly through books I could buy each month at the local bookstore. So it took me awhile to figure out why real code didn't look like it did in books. Here's my answer to soem fo the author's complaints:
Another area where I feel there is room for improvement in the presented style is in the use of hard-coded Strings for lookups - for example, in the AccountManager object there are several lookups of the AccountHome, e.g.:
AccountHome accountHome = (AccountHome)context.lookup(
"java:conp/env/ejb/AccountHome";// Whoops, finding this can be tough!
Yeah, but reading it is easier, especially if you're skimming through or haven't read a particular chapter where they introduce all their constants. Obviously, good practice differs.
One last thing: I know it's minor, but why the insistence on importing explicitly?
So that readers can see the exact dependencies of the class you're writing. In fact, I often write imports explicitly in production code as a form of documentation, but usually not for packages like java.io or packages where nearly every class is needed.
I didn't find that the authors practice on handling nulls and errors fitted with my own
Handling nulls is crucial, but it also clutters the example and makes it longer (somewhat). I would look at it (if they'd included it) and known they were being defensive, but I could see another reader possibly mistaking it for a special case? But i assume page length was [probably the main reason.
Books can strive to give you as much code as possible, but really, you shouldn't use it (and many books have such disclaimers). You're not buying code, you're buying the ideas behind it, so code should be explanatory and descriptive rather than production ready. Some books come with utility libraries or include code from popular, well-used libraries, but even then never cut and paste book code into a production project!
This article barely scratches the surface of the topic of physical (tangible) user interfaces, which has been quite an interesting field for over a decade. Here are my additions, which are still paltry but should hopefully flesh out the topic more for those interested.
First of all, here are some of the arguments i'm familiar with for physical computing initiatives:
We live in physical space and can be much more expressive in it
Computers need to learn how to integrate into human social contexts (which are physical),rather than humans squeezing into computer models of interaction
Comptuers currently demand direct physical attention through keyboards, mice, and monitors "chaining" us to our desks. Physical interfaces should make computers transparently integrated into our environment; especially important for engineering professions, construction work, etc.
Physical computing is more adaptable to people with disabilities, since it's goal is to express information with more physical senses.
The GUI's already been done and I need a research grant;)
Here's a listing of the most historically famous initiatives, most of them starting in the early 90s or before. Many more exist.
Ubiquitous Computing was one initiative at PARC to put computational devices into everything from pens to badges to entire rooms. They mainly worked with office applications, like digital whiteborads, integrated desks. They also attacked the physcal interface from the perspective of human social contexts, that is, making comptuers part of social interactions. At EuroPARC, a somewhat unrrelated project to create paperless offices ended up creating a prototype desk called The Digital Desk that allowed a projected desktop and physical paper documents to work alongside each other on a white tabletop.
One of the first intentional physical interface projects i know of is the Tangible edia group at MIT, whcih is an extension of Hiroshi Ishii's great work called tangible bits. The main focus of this work was to make the concepts of a desktop physical, using "phicons" which always reminded me of monoply peices that you moved around on a table top. There was a gereat adaptation of this made for modeling the construction of light beams, where you moved physical representations of the different components and physically saw the different patterns of light.
It can be hard to actually describe the core concepts narratively, so some great conceptual designs often best convey the real concepts at play. The best has to be Durrell Bishop's Marble Answering Machine. It was an answering machine that represented each message as an encoded marble in a tray. To play a message you moved the marble into a small plate and the message would play, and putting the marble back would cause the message to be deleted, or you could save it someplace else. Here's a tangible bits paper that discusses this project (don't think there's an actual project page for this design).
For a good summary of all these in much better words than i can provide, try Paul Dourish's fabulous work Where the Action Is: The foundations of Embodied Interaction, in which he lays out his argument not just for new forms of embodied/physical interactions, but also some of the changes to core CS principles that are needed to support it. It's much more profound than The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, though not as easily readable.
chimchim
There's a more technical term for this: synergy. Or some people like ogliarchy, ogliopoly, or joint monopoly.
Whatever you call it, to get it you either need to create a standard that is kind of like a treaty not to compete in one particular area, or you buy the other company and reduce the costs associated with competing. Whenever a merger like AOL/TW or HP/Compaq claims to "reduce costs" they really mean "we won't have to spend money competing with these people since we own them".
This isn't to say that good alliances aren't made, and that standards aren't also a way of providing better interoperable products but that the dramatic rise in number of such groups is a much larger phenomenon.
I have to say that giving away IE for free wasn't exactly anti-competitive, though it certainly isn't pretty (competition never is). Their *intent* certainly was more than providing a "better windows", it was a monopolist's intent to crush netscape and control the web.
The IE thing is simply a *symptom* of the fact that they have become a monopoly through previous anti-competitive behaviour like control of OEMs, FUD tactics, etc. Because they are a monopoly they can fund giving away IE with the change in their couch cushions and control the market. They can leverage their power in one area (crappy consumer OS) to dominate many other markets (office productivity, internet software, etc). All the software they create further reaffirms their original monopoly by tying people to windows by making their office documents and database software tied to windows.
It all fits together, and is anti-competitive, but the act of bundling IE in the OS and providing basic internet software for free (which it should be in my view) is not anti-competitive. The bigger issue is how easy it was for them to get *their* browser into the OS since they didn't have to compete with anyone to do so. If Be, Inc had written its own browser and displayed it on the desktop it wouldn't be an issue. But since Microsoft is a monopoly the effect on the market is well, obvious.
If only princess leia's golden bikini were on the list, i'd have to mortgage my first born and sell cowboyneal's soul to microsoft just get get my hands on it. Anyone know what happened to that peice of..uhh...metal;)
christian.
it uses windows for the atlas
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Am i the only one who visited the "software" section of the site? for everyone's benefit:
* Red Hat Linux 7.1
* M$ Windows 98 installed on VMWare for Linux (used only for GPS/Street Atlas RWE)
* VMWare for Linux
* XMMS (Linux)
* StreetAtlas Road Warrior Edition
so the answer is: yes, indeed the screens do look like windows, because they are.
Has anyone ever thought how alien the idea of a library is to our culture? A place where anyone can go in, fill out a form, and read, copy, check out content for *FREE*. Although libraries are a pretty ancient idea, someone in some place or time, namely Alexandria and Andrew Carnegie, sat down and decided to provide this service without first thinking "i can make a buck off this."
If libraries were invented today, books would be no longer than 10 or 20 pages, with leaflets placed in between random pages offering you a free soda at the nearby convenience store. Categorization systems would be determined by advertisers, an in many cases, the books themselves would be written by the advertisers. Looking for a great sci-fi book? Well sort through these three piles of somewhat related materials and you'll find it, and hopefully find 3 more books you'll want to get.
Is this the internet we want? I personally, do most research on the web, and don't bother with the under funded and politically charged (i.e. child-safe) facilities. This makes it more important to have an equal to the concept of a library on the web. Not every site needs to provide things for free. It is a space which can accomodate multiple models, etc. Yet i'm bothered with the gall that most e-entreprenuers have to *demand* retribution for any casual service they provide. Advertisers demand that they control any media, and we are accustomed to relenting. No one ever questions or responds to the demand that we make other people rich. No one ever questions whether a company has the right to overstep the desires of a group of people (this may get me in trouble with some die hard capitalists out there. i'm simply saying that no one ever questionsa company's model or service, or terms for providing that service. i'm not demanding the end of corporations, etc.).
To tie the argument together, i see the recent debate and action over "making the web profitable" and making web advertisement more effective as extremely blind. No one steps out of the demand that the internet, before providing a place for peopel to place home pages, or conduct software development, etc, *must* create revenue or be a failure. I actually think the web *can* be made profitable, but it will take a cultural shift, over many years in which both corporations and people become innately familiar with the medium and don't relegate it to the same fate as radio*.
christian.
* radio languished as a "toy" for about 10 years before corporations stole the radio networks. people made radios, and radio transmitters in their garages and hosted radio shows out of their own living rooms. It was hailed as the tool to make democracy truly possible (sound familiar?). However, two things came together at the right time:
corporations started ralizing they could use radio to control images/brands. Since sound and images (later integrated into TV) are less tangible, they are more persuasive than the printed word (which requires a linear, coherent argument which can be re-read and argued with).
The titanic sank, partially because many independent radio broadcasters were covering the ship's arrival and the coast gaurd blamed these mixed signals for the ships demise. RCA was formed shortly afterward and used this public outcry to gain a monopoly on the "public"" airwaves.
I dont agree with the statement that "if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them. Companies need to compete with the viewer more than the other companies."
This boils down to the core problem with the media conglomerates: are you getting what you like, or liking what you get? I would argue the former, though i think neither are inherently bad or good. THe problem is that you have no say in what you get, but the advertisers do. Advertisers will not want you to be pressed to stand up for your view, unless they can sell you something to support your view. It can even be anti-corporatism if it means buying cute t-shirts and cool soda (think sprite ads).
But we like this, because ads and consumerism are fun and even easier than supporting your political ideas. So no one will ever really feel such animosity to any corporation which brings you the things you like so much. Giving them more coverage only pushes this phenomenon further, because they can expand their advertising and expand their reach into even more of your everyday items that you prefer to use. I love my whitening tartar-control gel better than a hippie concoction anyday, so i'll continue to support them, because their aren't any other viable options. This is the problem.
The topic of "copying" has been one of the biggest issues with linux for me lately. It seems that simply "sopying" windows or making an Aqua Enlightenment theme is very common. Most popular GUI apps have a Windows equivalent. My major question is where, beyond performance, scalability, dependability, etc. does linux outperform or out design microsoft or apple? It seems many writers of linux GUI software simply copy, rather than "innovate" (sorry for the MS trademarked word..). Where/Who in the linux community would create a PDF/Postscript based GUI like apple? Is radical innovation really possible in an OS community designing for the masses? One solution i've dreamt about is the continuing acceptance of linux, which might spur good interface designers, (i was happy about nautilis) which could take the Desktop beyond the capabilities of people whose braun lies in their code. Look accross the internet and you can find many designer communities (www.eboy.com, www.shift.jp.org) which aren't too different than the linux one, and a possible overlap exists. Whether any of these efforts would become standardized is another topic. A unified desktop API might help, but it would need to be one which limited the programmer from the first instincts, which may or may not be the best ideas in terms of UI, but great in software engineering. So my question still remains, where does linux start to innovate versus copying? chimchim
WIth the open-sourcing of a search engine (yes, i know there are others too..) does anyone thijnk much about say a distributed computing based search engine? A sort of spider on every computer, using unused network resources plus cpu cycles? This seems pretty theoretical right now plus i could see privacy concerns a mile away, but a "peoples" search engine could at the least be an interesting marketing gimmick...
It's not just CS but also science that is clearly dominated (in numbers...and i'm sure more in certain instances) by men. FOr the past two years i've followed a lot of the ideas in figuring out why, and though there is a 'calling' per se, why don't more grrl s have it? WHen i started computers (commodore 64 baby!) i was mainly interested in games (couldn't convince my mom to get me a nintendo)...and i get sick everytime i see a make-over program fer girls. THe game aspect is pretty well documented, but its more than a technical hurdle of girls being a harder or more specific market. A few girl gaming sites have been cracked and attacked by bands of boy gamers...maybe the community isn't there...especially at 12 yrs old? Plus, now that computers make into pop songs everyday, computers beyond the geek style of the internet, are seen as really methodical big brother fit-in or die image, or overl technical or whatever you'd like to descibe it as. In the 70s, the 'feminist movement' (which ISN'T a phase thank you very much) focused quite primarily on the social sciences and eliminating porn and in general, female history has largely been stuck in social humanistic ties with housekeeping, soothers of pain, etc. so its not terribly odd that a really cold machined image (however untrue it may be) might not apply...which is sad because even if we don't have a leagues of girls pumping out c code and designing pretty pink kernels instead of playing with hair, on a less technical level so much could be done by utilizing all the different ways of communication. ANd on a day to day level, computers are of course in greater use than before. whatever social theory we can come with, i think the calling idea is something that should but isn't necessarily happening, not because girls aren't logical or can't get into them, because all my (female) friends who used to call me a geek and sorta separate themselves from that part of me, i showed them HTML and just in all my geeky conversations have gotten a lot of them into the web and everything. So it doesn't necessarily take all that much, but it isn't happening on the level of mattel and major game/computer/electronics marketers or the 'general social conscience' that you hear so much of in college...
On the post office's website a week or two ago, they had a press release denying any rumors in a chain email or something that said the exact same thing. this doesn't necessarily mean anything, buti remember it specifically saying that the post office would not support such an idea.
Generally, the post-office is a lot more than just a mail delivery center though; you get yr passport there can register to vote, and a lot of other government services use the Post office as their outlet.
In addition, though the web has been the hottest topic o' the century (well, except if you lived before the second half of this decade..then it was OJ, then the Moon, then JFK, then Charles lindbergh....) email doesn't have the legal status, nor the widespread use of good ole paper. Plus, email doesn't have a home base like paper mail would. What about international eMail, etc.?
This all assumes there'd be a way to track it, and so far, echelon hasn't been admitted to here in the states. Since the internet is composed of a million different servers from different secotrs of the economy, public and private, it'd be hard to track eMail, let alone pick out its originator, unless the ISP got involved, or servers were tracked...anyways, the more this is thought about, the more it becomes another internet rumor...or some stupid politicians...
I've enjoyed X alot, or i guess i should say i enjoy gnome, KDE, and all the rest of the really awesome strides in the LInux UI development area, but i have yet to really become excited over X or to gain much attachement. I like a lot of the features that the client/server model has going for it, but clearly, that's not where it's at solely. Neither is 3D performance alone going to make a kick ass envionment. I would be really interested in seeing what replacements are available and seeing the plannign of a portable and extensible windowing system, but also interesting is the compatibility with the X beast.
If such a project were to start however, fragmentation would be the ULTIMATE enemy. Not just the same harping about UNIX fragmentation's problems, but simply the fact that a cohesive self-contained windowing look/feel/work environment needs a tight group of well trained engineers to get it right. Having people from 30 countries with 10 different hopes for an environment would be hell to keep togehter. BUt the results would be amazing. X may very well be a limiting factor for enticing a full-blown DTP or other graphics-based industries over to linux/UNIX. The performance isn't there and also, there are too many details. THe MacOS is the best i've used, simply because it's so pervasive, self-contained and intuitive. there are only a few primitive concepts in that system that flow through the rest. much of UNIX is like this, but not X. FInally, all the reports i read about linux is "wow, you can hardly tell it's not Windows." I HATE the windows looka nd feel! fvwm irritates me! This may be our chance to not only bring linux up to par but also to innovate. i can't see why there aren't more people, art school students, etc. jumping at this chance to create a fully functional refined and elegant system with powerful postcript, 3d, and vector support (i love IRIX's vecotr icons..)...
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildl ife/penguins/index.shtml
Sheesh slashdot editors, at least do a simple google search first!
or is anyone else wondering if the real reason many lawmakers voted for this bill was to prevent a single corporation from being able to control the politicians' access to tv ad space? The result is the same, so I guess i'm not really complaining. But it would be great to see if lawmakers were taking media conglomeration into more serious consideration than their own ad space.
Finally managed to remember the name of that system:
http://www.peppercoin.com/
Does anyone have any information on how an online tax would affect micropayments? Does PayPal intend to charge tax on deposits?
From what I've read, the big issue with micropayments is, of course, dealing with the amount of overhead involved when using a credit card for purchases of a few cents or even a few dollars. Figuring out tax rates would seem to take this to another level, especially in schemes like Ronald Rivest's which involves 'throwing out' a certain random number of micropayments (i forget the name of it...subject of a few papers, one mentioned on slashdot awhile ago).
It's kinda hard to charge someone 15% of 1c, since over 100 payments you're going to have to charge that 15c somewhere. I believe in the Rivest scheme you get charged soemthing like $10 every now and then, so I suppose that would be the likely place to tax, yet you're not exactly being charged for an actual product, more like adding to a shared account of sorts.
It's no wonder this came from a guy who named a file system after himself. I wonder if he'd namecd his apartm^H^H^H^H^H^H estate after himself.
He never said his work, XML, is not well done. What he said was that the programming languages, APIs, and Environments haven't made the task of processing XML easy enough. XML itself is sound, or as sound as many alternatives.
The thing is, back in the day when people wore onions on their belts, programmers had to be convinced that UNIX's "file is a bag of bytes" form of data access was better than the more direct/powerful/convenient methods they'd been used to, like raw access to the drive. But programmers aren't users, and what's great for users, or has benefits beyond the realm of CS will always complicate things for the programmer. However, the more complicated things are for programmers, the longer it will take to build systems and get usable products. So Tim Bray is basically saying that XML has succeeded in the data-interchange modekl, but is failing to also make programmers lives easier, which is also important.
"Most of the industry's growth over the next few years is expected to come from servers using Intel chips and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. These so-called Wintel systems are generally cheaper and offer a wider range of chips."
A wider range of chips under Windows? They dropped the Alpha, so the only chips are Pentiums and Itaniums, right? I suppose you could argue that you have a lot more clones of Intel systems, plus options for Xeons, PIIIs, and such, but it's not really anything like the BSD or Linux systems' idea of "wider range of chips."
Yes, i'm not the wizard of words (or apparently math ;) this morning am i?
My main reason for posting was to appease my instinctual reaction to the (somewhat intuitive) mistake soemtimes made that having twice the stuff makes it twice as good/reliable, etc. Which holds true for availability (10-fold in fact), but you'll get less in the case of reliability, and manageability is also a concern since you'll have to constantly check the backup network (if it's not in active use, failures are harder to find or predict for that matter). Also, failures aren't always randomly dispersed throughout the network, as the model might imply. You have to figure out how much failure each part of the network can sustain.
So, throwing more hardware, developers, or whatever at the problem isn't a real solution. Figuring out what was wrong in the first place will let them spend their money more wisely, rather than letting all that hardware go to waste, doing nothing. They could possibly get all the redundancy they want with less than twice the hardware and maybe even increase performance of the network during regular usage.
ok, i've totally over spent my $0.02.
Sorry my point was unclear!
;)
When i wrote "This isn't to say that the extra redundancy isn't useful" I was saying (without saying) that the redundancy *increases* availability. As you guys promptly clarified, the likelihood that both will go down, and hence be completely unavailable is reduced.
I was simply pointing out that the gut reaction that 2 is better than 1 doesn't always hold true. If I were them, my first priority would be to figure out why their current network failed so horribly (spanning tree apparently) and, rather than having two equally unreliable networks, create a mroe reliable network, with rendundant backups for availability. In a hospital setting, availability is paramount to other concerns, but they're going to incur more than twice the management costs by doubling the same network.
thanks for callign me out though
Ok, so here's an SAT question for ya:
.10
IF you have one train going from NY->LA that's likely to break down 10% of the time, and you get a second identical train going in the opposite direction, what's the probability that one of the trains will fail?
(number of trains) * (probability of failure)
= 2 *
= 20%
The more components in the system, the more likely it is that parts of the system will be down. This isn't to say that the extra redundancy isn't useful, but it doesn't give you more reliability...it decreases it. So additional mangement costs are incurred in making sure that enough redundancy is always available to compensate for parts of the system that are down, and replacing bad components.
"If successful, it could allow people to touch and feel each other over the Internet."
Yeah, but reading it is easier, especially if you're skimming through or haven't read a particular chapter where they introduce all their constants. Obviously, good practice differs.
So that readers can see the exact dependencies of the class you're writing. In fact, I often write imports explicitly in production code as a form of documentation, but usually not for packages like java.io or packages where nearly every class is needed.
Handling nulls is crucial, but it also clutters the example and makes it longer (somewhat). I would look at it (if they'd included it) and known they were being defensive, but I could see another reader possibly mistaking it for a special case? But i assume page length was [probably the main reason.
Books can strive to give you as much code as possible, but really, you shouldn't use it (and many books have such disclaimers). You're not buying code, you're buying the ideas behind it, so code should be explanatory and descriptive rather than production ready. Some books come with utility libraries or include code from popular, well-used libraries, but even then never cut and paste book code into a production project!
Yup, already been done. Coincidentally dourish has a tale about Neilsen and spam.
First of all, here are some of the arguments i'm familiar with for physical computing initiatives:
Here's a listing of the most historically famous initiatives, most of them starting in the early 90s or before. Many more exist.
Ubiquitous Computing was one initiative at PARC to put computational devices into everything from pens to badges to entire rooms. They mainly worked with office applications, like digital whiteborads, integrated desks. They also attacked the physcal interface from the perspective of human social contexts, that is, making comptuers part of social interactions. At EuroPARC, a somewhat unrrelated project to create paperless offices ended up creating a prototype desk called The Digital Desk that allowed a projected desktop and physical paper documents to work alongside each other on a white tabletop.
One of the first intentional physical interface projects i know of is the Tangible edia group at MIT, whcih is an extension of Hiroshi Ishii's great work called tangible bits. The main focus of this work was to make the concepts of a desktop physical, using "phicons" which always reminded me of monoply peices that you moved around on a table top. There was a gereat adaptation of this made for modeling the construction of light beams, where you moved physical representations of the different components and physically saw the different patterns of light.
It can be hard to actually describe the core concepts narratively, so some great conceptual designs often best convey the real concepts at play. The best has to be Durrell Bishop's Marble Answering Machine. It was an answering machine that represented each message as an encoded marble in a tray. To play a message you moved the marble into a small plate and the message would play, and putting the marble back would cause the message to be deleted, or you could save it someplace else. Here's a tangible bits paper that discusses this project (don't think there's an actual project page for this design).
For a good summary of all these in much better words than i can provide, try Paul Dourish's fabulous work Where the Action Is: The foundations of Embodied Interaction, in which he lays out his argument not just for new forms of embodied/physical interactions, but also some of the changes to core CS principles that are needed to support it. It's much more profound than The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, though not as easily readable. chimchim
There's a more technical term for this: synergy. Or some people like ogliarchy, ogliopoly, or joint monopoly.
Whatever you call it, to get it you either need to create a standard that is kind of like a treaty not to compete in one particular area, or you buy the other company and reduce the costs associated with competing. Whenever a merger like AOL/TW or HP/Compaq claims to "reduce costs" they really mean "we won't have to spend money competing with these people since we own them".
This isn't to say that good alliances aren't made, and that standards aren't also a way of providing better interoperable products but that the dramatic rise in number of such groups is a much larger phenomenon.
I have to say that giving away IE for free wasn't exactly anti-competitive, though it certainly isn't pretty (competition never is). Their *intent* certainly was more than providing a "better windows", it was a monopolist's intent to crush netscape and control the web.
The IE thing is simply a *symptom* of the fact that they have become a monopoly through previous anti-competitive behaviour like control of OEMs, FUD tactics, etc. Because they are a monopoly they can fund giving away IE with the change in their couch cushions and control the market. They can leverage their power in one area (crappy consumer OS) to dominate many other markets (office productivity, internet software, etc). All the software they create further reaffirms their original monopoly by tying people to windows by making their office documents and database software tied to windows.
It all fits together, and is anti-competitive, but the act of bundling IE in the OS and providing basic internet software for free (which it should be in my view) is not anti-competitive. The bigger issue is how easy it was for them to get *their* browser into the OS since they didn't have to compete with anyone to do so. If Be, Inc had written its own browser and displayed it on the desktop it wouldn't be an issue. But since Microsoft is a monopoly the effect on the market is well, obvious.
If only princess leia's golden bikini were on the list, i'd have to mortgage my first born and sell cowboyneal's soul to microsoft just get get my hands on it. Anyone know what happened to that peice of..uhh...metal ;)
christian.
Am i the only one who visited the "software" section of the site? for everyone's benefit:
* Red Hat Linux 7.1
* M$ Windows 98 installed on VMWare for Linux (used only for GPS/Street Atlas RWE)
* VMWare for Linux
* XMMS (Linux)
* StreetAtlas Road Warrior Edition
so the answer is: yes, indeed the screens do look like windows, because they are.
christian.
Has anyone ever thought how alien the idea of a library is to our culture? A place where anyone can go in, fill out a form, and read, copy, check out content for *FREE*. Although libraries are a pretty ancient idea, someone in some place or time, namely Alexandria and Andrew Carnegie, sat down and decided to provide this service without first thinking "i can make a buck off this."
If libraries were invented today, books would be no longer than 10 or 20 pages, with leaflets placed in between random pages offering you a free soda at the nearby convenience store. Categorization systems would be determined by advertisers, an in many cases, the books themselves would be written by the advertisers. Looking for a great sci-fi book? Well sort through these three piles of somewhat related materials and you'll find it, and hopefully find 3 more books you'll want to get.
Is this the internet we want? I personally, do most research on the web, and don't bother with the under funded and politically charged (i.e. child-safe) facilities. This makes it more important to have an equal to the concept of a library on the web. Not every site needs to provide things for free. It is a space which can accomodate multiple models, etc. Yet i'm bothered with the gall that most e-entreprenuers have to *demand* retribution for any casual service they provide. Advertisers demand that they control any media, and we are accustomed to relenting. No one ever questions or responds to the demand that we make other people rich. No one ever questions whether a company has the right to overstep the desires of a group of people (this may get me in trouble with some die hard capitalists out there. i'm simply saying that no one ever questionsa company's model or service, or terms for providing that service. i'm not demanding the end of corporations, etc.).
To tie the argument together, i see the recent debate and action over "making the web profitable" and making web advertisement more effective as extremely blind. No one steps out of the demand that the internet, before providing a place for peopel to place home pages, or conduct software development, etc, *must* create revenue or be a failure. I actually think the web *can* be made profitable, but it will take a cultural shift, over many years in which both corporations and people become innately familiar with the medium and don't relegate it to the same fate as radio*.
christian.
* radio languished as a "toy" for about 10 years before corporations stole the radio networks. people made radios, and radio transmitters in their garages and hosted radio shows out of their own living rooms. It was hailed as the tool to make democracy truly possible (sound familiar?). However, two things came together at the right time:
I dont agree with the statement that "if shows continue to be poor people will not watch them. Companies need to compete with the viewer more than the other companies."
This boils down to the core problem with the media conglomerates: are you getting what you like, or liking what you get? I would argue the former, though i think neither are inherently bad or good. THe problem is that you have no say in what you get, but the advertisers do. Advertisers will not want you to be pressed to stand up for your view, unless they can sell you something to support your view. It can even be anti-corporatism if it means buying cute t-shirts and cool soda (think sprite ads).
But we like this, because ads and consumerism are fun and even easier than supporting your political ideas. So no one will ever really feel such animosity to any corporation which brings you the things you like so much. Giving them more coverage only pushes this phenomenon further, because they can expand their advertising and expand their reach into even more of your everyday items that you prefer to use. I love my whitening tartar-control gel better than a hippie concoction anyday, so i'll continue to support them, because their aren't any other viable options. This is the problem.
The topic of "copying" has been one of the biggest issues with linux for me lately. It seems that simply "sopying" windows or making an Aqua Enlightenment theme is very common. Most popular GUI apps have a Windows equivalent. My major question is where, beyond performance, scalability, dependability, etc. does linux outperform or out design microsoft or apple? It seems many writers of linux GUI software simply copy, rather than "innovate" (sorry for the MS trademarked word..). Where/Who in the linux community would create a PDF/Postscript based GUI like apple? Is radical innovation really possible in an OS community designing for the masses? One solution i've dreamt about is the continuing acceptance of linux, which might spur good interface designers, (i was happy about nautilis) which could take the Desktop beyond the capabilities of people whose braun lies in their code. Look accross the internet and you can find many designer communities (www.eboy.com, www.shift.jp.org) which aren't too different than the linux one, and a possible overlap exists. Whether any of these efforts would become standardized is another topic. A unified desktop API might help, but it would need to be one which limited the programmer from the first instincts, which may or may not be the best ideas in terms of UI, but great in software engineering. So my question still remains, where does linux start to innovate versus copying? chimchim
WIth the open-sourcing of a search engine (yes, i know there are others too..) does anyone thijnk much about say a distributed computing based search engine? A sort of spider on every computer, using unused network resources plus cpu cycles? This seems pretty theoretical right now plus i could see privacy concerns a mile away, but a "peoples" search engine could at the least be an interesting marketing gimmick...
chimchim.
It's not just CS but also science that is clearly dominated (in numbers...and i'm sure more in certain instances) by men. FOr the past two years i've followed a lot of the ideas in figuring out why, and though there is a 'calling' per se, why don't more grrl s have it?
WHen i started computers (commodore 64 baby!) i was mainly interested in games (couldn't convince my mom to get me a nintendo)...and i get sick everytime i see a make-over program fer girls.
THe game aspect is pretty well documented, but its more than a technical hurdle of girls being a harder or more specific market. A few girl gaming sites have been cracked and attacked by bands of boy gamers...maybe the community isn't there...especially at 12 yrs old?
Plus, now that computers make into pop songs everyday, computers beyond the geek style of the internet, are seen as really methodical big brother fit-in or die image, or overl technical or whatever you'd like to descibe it as. In the 70s, the 'feminist movement' (which ISN'T a phase thank you very much) focused quite primarily on the social sciences and eliminating porn and in general, female history has largely been stuck in social humanistic ties with housekeeping, soothers of pain, etc. so its not terribly odd that a really cold machined image (however untrue it may be) might not apply...which is sad because even if we don't have a leagues of girls pumping out c code and designing pretty pink kernels instead of playing with hair, on a less technical level so much could be done by utilizing all the different ways of communication.
ANd on a day to day level, computers are of course in greater use than before. whatever social theory we can come with, i think the calling idea is something that should but isn't necessarily happening, not because girls aren't logical or can't get into them, because all my (female) friends who used to call me a geek and sorta separate themselves from that part of me, i showed them HTML and just in all my geeky conversations have gotten a lot of them into the web and everything. So it doesn't necessarily take all that much, but it isn't happening on the level of mattel and major game/computer/electronics marketers or the 'general social conscience' that you hear so much of in college...
chimchim
On the post office's website a week or two ago, they had a press release denying any rumors in a chain email or something that said the exact same thing. this doesn't necessarily mean anything, buti remember it specifically saying that the post office would not support such an idea.
Generally, the post-office is a lot more than just a mail delivery center though; you get yr passport there can register to vote, and a lot of other government services use the Post office as their outlet.
In addition, though the web has been the hottest topic o' the century (well, except if you lived before the second half of this decade..then it was OJ, then the Moon, then JFK, then Charles lindbergh....) email doesn't have the legal status, nor the widespread use of good ole paper. Plus, email doesn't have a home base like paper mail would. What about international eMail, etc.?
This all assumes there'd be a way to track it, and so far, echelon hasn't been admitted to here in the states. Since the internet is composed of a million different servers from different secotrs of the economy, public and private, it'd be hard to track eMail, let alone pick out its originator, unless the ISP got involved, or servers were tracked...anyways, the more this is thought about, the more it becomes another internet rumor...or some stupid politicians...
chimchim
Spoon!
I've enjoyed X alot, or i guess i should say i enjoy gnome, KDE, and all the rest of the really awesome strides in the LInux UI development area, but i have yet to really become excited over X or to gain much attachement. I like a lot of the features that the client/server model has going for it, but clearly, that's not where it's at solely. Neither is 3D performance alone going to make a kick ass envionment. I would be really interested in seeing what replacements are available and seeing the plannign of a portable and extensible windowing system, but also interesting is the compatibility with the X beast.
If such a project were to start however, fragmentation would be the ULTIMATE enemy. Not just the same harping about UNIX fragmentation's problems, but simply the fact that a cohesive self-contained windowing look/feel/work environment needs a tight group of well trained engineers to get it right. Having people from 30 countries with 10 different hopes for an environment would be hell to keep togehter. BUt the results would be amazing.
X may very well be a limiting factor for enticing a full-blown DTP or other graphics-based industries over to linux/UNIX. The performance isn't there and also, there are too many details. THe MacOS is the best i've used, simply because it's so pervasive, self-contained and intuitive. there are only a few primitive concepts in that system that flow through the rest. much of UNIX is like this, but not X.
FInally, all the reports i read about linux is "wow, you can hardly tell it's not Windows." I HATE the windows looka nd feel! fvwm irritates me! This may be our chance to not only bring linux up to par but also to innovate. i can't see why there aren't more people, art school students, etc. jumping at this chance to create a fully functional refined and elegant system with powerful postcript, 3d, and vector support (i love IRIX's vecotr icons..)...
chimchim