For what it's worth, the car was your avatar. I prefer that to the gorgeous looking but rather superflous humanoid avatars in games like EVE - of course, in EVE, your starship is your avatar, too.
Yes, well, so much is obvious. If you had done well, you'd probably have argued, incorrectly, that the plural for virus is viri (-us to -i, as in fungus to fungi). Virii is just BS, where would the second -i come from? Anyway, viruses is definitely the correct plural form as recognised by many dictionaries. For more information do a search and read something like this.
Would be nice to make it a setting dependent on user preference or user agent. But I guess the processing required to process the comment each time depending on user input it too high compared to just processing it once when it's added.
At least in my experience, apropos is the second command to learn (after man, since you won't know what to do with the results, if you don't already understand what 'man' is for).
Right. And users shouldn't be required to learn any command to eject a CD. Not desktop Linux users, anyway. My mother certainly doesn't know any command line program on her Win XP box...
Sounds like an easy way to make an app freak out if you ask me.
That's a matter of point of view. Programs have to deal with unexpected user behaviour, that's why calculator programs tell you "Cannot divide by zero." instead of crashing. So either you prevent the user from ejecting a CD, that is you countermand his order, even if it was on a "hardware" level like the eject button (what's next, the reset button), or you treat it like it is, just another user input. Obviously there are more or less critical reactions programs need to initiate if the medium they have an open handle to is removed - Konquerer should, for instance, better handle it extremely gracefully, for instance by displaying a friendly error message and going back to the last readable directory. An app unexpectedly unable to write should also display an error and ask for another directory to write to, etc.
Notice how the mouse wheel already scrolls window's contents that are arranged horizontally? At least it does that for me. I don't really see a lot of use for another wheel at least in file system explorers. I'm not sure about wave editing - maybe the same can be applied. Generally, the scrolling wheel is just that, a scrolling wheel. There's no reason why it should only be used for scrolling up and down, and conversely it's been adapted for many other uses: scrolling sideways, zooming in and out, switching items or weapons in games, and so on.
Now I really don't mind if Microsoft "innovates" and "creates" a four-way mouse wheel - of course, it's not much of an innovation, since mice with additional means to scroll in another dimension have been around for years, but I don't mind the occasional evolutionary step, either. Apart from the first introduction of the mouse wheel (who did that, incidently?), it's been mostly evolution and not revolution for the mouse interface in the last n years, including the allegedly revolutionary step towards optical sensors. However, I'm a bit dubious if this will work well. Previous designs I've seen had a second wheel, some of them even had a wheel that actually rolled horizontally. I doubt they were comfortable to use, especially the last variant. (Try scrolling an imaginary horizontal wheel - not exactly comfortable.) From the sounds of the article, the existing mouse-wheel will tilt left and right, making it sound a bit similar to a coolie-hat on joysticks, maybe something like a cross between wheel and coolie-hat. Hohumm. It's better than a horizontal wheel, but it still requires horizontal finger movement, which sucks. There's also the question of accidently tilting the wheel when you only wanted to scroll or click.
An approach I'd prefer would be a simple software solution, using one of the mice's many (superflous, IMHO) modifier buttons. One of the thumb buttons on my mouse would do very nicely: if pressed, the wheel scrolls horizontally, if not it's the typical vertical scrolling. Obviously this would only make sense in apps which routinely scroll both ways, like spreadsheets. Note that this kind of thing is already routinely done in games! Not really with sideways scrolling, but it's extremely common to have the right mouse button function as a modifier making the wheel zoom instead of scroll or toggle etc. Of course, this wouldn't let Microsoft sell new hardware, so I guess this doesn't appeal to them a whole lot.
Anyway, I don't mind this. I'll try it, but I doubt I need it, so I guess I can save money by not buying a mouse with this feature. Then again, I'm sure people also said that when mouse wheels were first introduces, so what do I know. =)
Oh and for the record, I'm using a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer right now - fine device!
Heh, you're right! Couldn't find it anywhere, though dictionary.com lists it as available as Premium Content. My translation program (I'm German) does know "immersive", on the other hand. Anyway, it's most certainly a word, as language is what you make of it, even though some more conservative speakers of the English language might wince upon hearing it. Recently had a big discussion in a similar vein on the word "intuitivity", which isn't listed in any dictionary either but still used a lot, and with merit, in IT discussions. (I'm also a linguist, incidently.)
In the recent tactical FPS Raven Shield, there was hardly any health meter: there was a circle, filled meant full health, semi-filled meant a character is wounded, and empty meant the characters was dead. This reflected very well that, realistically, there are not 100 health and 100 armor points enemy gun fire has to rip through, but rather the first hit will often wound if not kill you. Since there was ample feedback telling you in which of the three states you were in currently, I doubt I had to rely on the circle very often, and I probably would have gotten used to it being gone rather easily. (On the other hand, getting rid of it as a display for teammate health would not have been as practical.)
What's behind what I am saying is that maybe these kind of "natural" feedback systems, since they rely on the player interpreting what they're seeing and hearing, work better in more realistic games, where players can apply their real world experience or ideas to the game.
I don't want a 'big white couch' to sit down on and save my game. I want to hit start/select, choose 'save game', pick a slot, save the game, and then get back to playing.
Actually, what you're proposing would be a major design, not only interface, change. Saving anywhere, anywhere as opposed to saving only at certain pre-determined spots. Also, in the article, the "big white couch" is actually considered a kind of go-between between what you call the utilitarian and the immersive approach: the couch is extremely out-of-place in the game world, but it's still in the game world. Personally, I think it's pretty charming.:)
Also, I can't really come up with a more "utilitarian" interface for this kind of "save spot" style saving. It's extremely common among console games, and the interface's been implemented in various styles. I guess just opening up a window with save slots is more utilitarian and less immersive, but it's not much of a win in utility so you might as well go with the couch.
As for saying this "save spot" saving sucks, well, maybe it does, maybe it does not - certainly the game in question, Ico, would not have worked with "ubiqitous" saving without some major modifications, though. It's also been used in so many console games, there are obviously reasons to use it. One of them is technical, and starting to lose some merit: saving in "save spots" requires far less data on the gaming world - in fact for some games, the id of the "save spot" suffices. Of course, on PCs and with some consoles getting HDs and such this is not much of an issue anymore.
Sorry for going on a tangent. I realize I'm only replying to part of your post and I'm not commenting (either validating or invalidating) on the rest.:)
Cool, I didn't know that. Thanks! Especially interesting considering the Axim 5 is a very respectable PDA, although I think it looks terribly bulky. That said, judging by the page you linked to and the subsequent page of the developer, the project is very much in an early stage.
Still, it's a good start, hopefully support for other PocketPC PDAs will start to become available as well. Incidently, I've always wondered if the familiar distribution shouldn't be easily portable to other PDAs - aren't they extremely similar inside?
Because the current iPAQs are way better than the current Zaurus. (Or at least the Zaurus models readily available in Europe and the USA.)
For instance, I'm currently looking into getting a iPaq 19xx series PDA. It's extremely light-weight - I think it weighs about half as much as the Zaurus - and is also smaller than most of the other PDAs. Much in the same vein as the entry-level Toshibas (e3xx), with the difference that "good progress is being made" by the familiar developers in porting familiar to the h19xx family of devices. I'm not aware of any such movements to get Linux on a Toshiba PDA, sadly, and I did look for it.
Okay, and that's just one part of the PDA market, the entry-level market with it's low scale PDAs. iPADs also dominate the (very) high-end market, and have done so for years. The recently released 22xx series is just mean. Of course there are other great PDAs, including the Zaurus models mainly available in Japan, but the iPADs have been bleeding edge for a long time now. And they are the only PocketPC PDAs which can be flashed to Linux - my hat is off in regard to the familiar developers, but also to the Compaq/HP engineers that, if I recall correctly, helped familiar off a great start.
But the Python version contains lots of special characters and special syntax, especially the positional one ("%(1)s", wow!), which make it hard to read for anyone not accustomed to the printf format string. I think the version of the original poster is very convenient to read and understand, even though I am more accustomed to the style of your code since I know some Python and a lot PHP.
Obviously, this is a matter of taste and familiarization, though.
Maybe you should have considered a different store than CompUSA...
I recently considered buying a CRT, thinking that innovation has largely stop and now that they're not as cool as LCDs anymore, they ought to be cheap - well not really. There's still some innovation, and the high-end 19" and 21" ones are still way too expensive for my purse.
The illegality of an action on its own is not a very strong argument. Not if it's up against a large number of people - a larger number than have voted for the current American president (nice one, EFF!) - thinking the same actions are moral.
Incidently, those numbers are from the end of 2001, grossly outdated in the Internet context. Here's a more up-to-date (for the most part) and way more elaborate list from the 2002 CIA factbook. It's also apparently more conservative, since the numbers quoted for the USA and Germany are both lower, significantly so for the USA (165 instead 185 millions). I doubt the number of users has fallen in either country in the last two years...
Anyway, it's fairly save to say that if every American user turned off the file sharing option, it'd have a tremendous effect on the global filesharing equations, even if there are more European than American nodes[1]. Also Europe seems to be heading a similar route with the EUCD - which would leave the Asian nodes.
[1] Which isn't necessarily true - there probably are more or less P2P users per 1000 Internet users in Europe than in the USA. Interesting question actually... I'd wager that copyright violation is more common here than in the USA, at least that's the impression I sometimes get from Internet boards: I've seen lots of youths and young people who say copyright violation is wrong (and act accordingly), while I don't think I've met any German computer user under the age of 25 who does not, on occasion, commit thought theft. On the other hand, broadband Internet access and flat fee services used to be rare around here, although that's gotten better to a point where I assume (I'm sure there's data) broadband usage is on about the same level as in the USA.
Believe it or not, some (Japanese) toilets actually do that already. I'm not sure if more than a proof-of-concept one was built and how sophisticated the analyser is, but at some level it's been done.:O
It's wide open, claiming to be a public service. But even if it wasn't, even if it did claim to be private, the mere fact that you're running an anonymous FTP service implies that you basically grant everyone the right to download.
Slashdot Mirror
For what it's worth, the car was your avatar. I prefer that to the gorgeous looking but rather superflous humanoid avatars in games like EVE - of course, in EVE, your starship is your avatar, too.
Granted I never did that well in Latin ...
Yes, well, so much is obvious. If you had done well, you'd probably have argued, incorrectly, that the plural for virus is viri (-us to -i, as in fungus to fungi). Virii is just BS, where would the second -i come from? Anyway, viruses is definitely the correct plural form as recognised by many dictionaries. For more information do a search and read something like this.
Would be nice to make it a setting dependent on user preference or user agent. But I guess the processing required to process the comment each time depending on user input it too high compared to just processing it once when it's added.
That's a matter of point of view. Programs have to deal with unexpected user behaviour, that's why calculator programs tell you "Cannot divide by zero." instead of crashing. So either you prevent the user from ejecting a CD, that is you countermand his order, even if it was on a "hardware" level like the eject button (what's next, the reset button), or you treat it like it is, just another user input. Obviously there are more or less critical reactions programs need to initiate if the medium they have an open handle to is removed - Konquerer should, for instance, better handle it extremely gracefully, for instance by displaying a friendly error message and going back to the last readable directory. An app unexpectedly unable to write should also display an error and ask for another directory to write to, etc.
Hm. So what would you suggest to say instead of intuitivity? That is, in describing how intuitive, say, an operating system interface is.
Notice how the mouse wheel already scrolls window's contents that are arranged horizontally? At least it does that for me. I don't really see a lot of use for another wheel at least in file system explorers. I'm not sure about wave editing - maybe the same can be applied. Generally, the scrolling wheel is just that, a scrolling wheel. There's no reason why it should only be used for scrolling up and down, and conversely it's been adapted for many other uses: scrolling sideways, zooming in and out, switching items or weapons in games, and so on.
Now I really don't mind if Microsoft "innovates" and "creates" a four-way mouse wheel - of course, it's not much of an innovation, since mice with additional means to scroll in another dimension have been around for years, but I don't mind the occasional evolutionary step, either. Apart from the first introduction of the mouse wheel (who did that, incidently?), it's been mostly evolution and not revolution for the mouse interface in the last n years, including the allegedly revolutionary step towards optical sensors.
However, I'm a bit dubious if this will work well. Previous designs I've seen had a second wheel, some of them even had a wheel that actually rolled horizontally. I doubt they were comfortable to use, especially the last variant. (Try scrolling an imaginary horizontal wheel - not exactly comfortable.) From the sounds of the article, the existing mouse-wheel will tilt left and right, making it sound a bit similar to a coolie-hat on joysticks, maybe something like a cross between wheel and coolie-hat. Hohumm. It's better than a horizontal wheel, but it still requires horizontal finger movement, which sucks. There's also the question of accidently tilting the wheel when you only wanted to scroll or click.
An approach I'd prefer would be a simple software solution, using one of the mice's many (superflous, IMHO) modifier buttons. One of the thumb buttons on my mouse would do very nicely: if pressed, the wheel scrolls horizontally, if not it's the typical vertical scrolling. Obviously this would only make sense in apps which routinely scroll both ways, like spreadsheets. Note that this kind of thing is already routinely done in games! Not really with sideways scrolling, but it's extremely common to have the right mouse button function as a modifier making the wheel zoom instead of scroll or toggle etc.
Of course, this wouldn't let Microsoft sell new hardware, so I guess this doesn't appeal to them a whole lot.
Anyway, I don't mind this. I'll try it, but I doubt I need it, so I guess I can save money by not buying a mouse with this feature. Then again, I'm sure people also said that when mouse wheels were first introduces, so what do I know. =)
Oh and for the record, I'm using a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer right now - fine device!
You must be joking.
I agree, "King" Richard did breathe and eat this stuff and it showed, he seemed quite the loony. Oh wait, maybe that wasn't what you were saying. :)
Heh, you're right! Couldn't find it anywhere, though dictionary.com lists it as available as Premium Content. My translation program (I'm German) does know "immersive", on the other hand. Anyway, it's most certainly a word, as language is what you make of it, even though some more conservative speakers of the English language might wince upon hearing it. Recently had a big discussion in a similar vein on the word "intuitivity", which isn't listed in any dictionary either but still used a lot, and with merit, in IT discussions. (I'm also a linguist, incidently.)
In the recent tactical FPS Raven Shield, there was hardly any health meter: there was a circle, filled meant full health, semi-filled meant a character is wounded, and empty meant the characters was dead. This reflected very well that, realistically, there are not 100 health and 100 armor points enemy gun fire has to rip through, but rather the first hit will often wound if not kill you. Since there was ample feedback telling you in which of the three states you were in currently, I doubt I had to rely on the circle very often, and I probably would have gotten used to it being gone rather easily. (On the other hand, getting rid of it as a display for teammate health would not have been as practical.)
;)
What's behind what I am saying is that maybe these kind of "natural" feedback systems, since they rely on the player interpreting what they're seeing and hearing, work better in more realistic games, where players can apply their real world experience or ideas to the game.
Hohumm. Or maybe not.
Also, in the article, the "big white couch" is actually considered a kind of go-between between what you call the utilitarian and the immersive approach: the couch is extremely out-of-place in the game world, but it's still in the game world. Personally, I think it's pretty charming.
Also, I can't really come up with a more "utilitarian" interface for this kind of "save spot" style saving. It's extremely common among console games, and the interface's been implemented in various styles. I guess just opening up a window with save slots is more utilitarian and less immersive, but it's not much of a win in utility so you might as well go with the couch.
As for saying this "save spot" saving sucks, well, maybe it does, maybe it does not - certainly the game in question, Ico, would not have worked with "ubiqitous" saving without some major modifications, though. It's also been used in so many console games, there are obviously reasons to use it. One of them is technical, and starting to lose some merit: saving in "save spots" requires far less data on the gaming world - in fact for some games, the id of the "save spot" suffices. Of course, on PCs and with some consoles getting HDs and such this is not much of an issue anymore.
Sorry for going on a tangent. I realize I'm only replying to part of your post and I'm not commenting (either validating or invalidating) on the rest.
Since you were wondering how to spell it - the word is "immersive".
Okay. Buy and read a book. Maybe it could teach you spelling!
Cool, I didn't know that. Thanks! Especially interesting considering the Axim 5 is a very respectable PDA, although I think it looks terribly bulky. That said, judging by the page you linked to and the subsequent page of the developer, the project is very much in an early stage.
Still, it's a good start, hopefully support for other PocketPC PDAs will start to become available as well. Incidently, I've always wondered if the familiar distribution shouldn't be easily portable to other PDAs - aren't they extremely similar inside?
Linux is just the kernel, the OS is GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod! Sorry, could not resist. Hey, at least I turned off the Karma Bonus.
Because the current iPAQs are way better than the current Zaurus. (Or at least the Zaurus models readily available in Europe and the USA.)
For instance, I'm currently looking into getting a iPaq 19xx series PDA. It's extremely light-weight - I think it weighs about half as much as the Zaurus - and is also smaller than most of the other PDAs. Much in the same vein as the entry-level Toshibas (e3xx), with the difference that "good progress is being made" by the familiar developers in porting familiar to the h19xx family of devices. I'm not aware of any such movements to get Linux on a Toshiba PDA, sadly, and I did look for it.
Okay, and that's just one part of the PDA market, the entry-level market with it's low scale PDAs. iPADs also dominate the (very) high-end market, and have done so for years. The recently released 22xx series is just mean. Of course there are other great PDAs, including the Zaurus models mainly available in Japan, but the iPADs have been bleeding edge for a long time now. And they are the only PocketPC PDAs which can be flashed to Linux - my hat is off in regard to the familiar developers, but also to the Compaq/HP engineers that, if I recall correctly, helped familiar off a great start.
But the Python version contains lots of special characters and special syntax, especially the positional one ("%(1)s", wow!), which make it hard to read for anyone not accustomed to the printf format string. I think the version of the original poster is very convenient to read and understand, even though I am more accustomed to the style of your code since I know some Python and a lot PHP.
Obviously, this is a matter of taste and familiarization, though.
Maybe you should have considered a different store than CompUSA...
I recently considered buying a CRT, thinking that innovation has largely stop and now that they're not as cool as LCDs anymore, they ought to be cheap - well not really. There's still some innovation, and the high-end 19" and 21" ones are still way too expensive for my purse.
The illegality of an action on its own is not a very strong argument. Not if it's up against a large number of people - a larger number than have voted for the current American president (nice one, EFF!) - thinking the same actions are moral.
Thank god my P2P user name is "0" (that is ASCII 0x30, or zero), then - I hope the actual algorithm is implemented in PHP.
Incidently, those numbers are from the end of 2001, grossly outdated in the Internet context. Here's a more up-to-date (for the most part) and way more elaborate list from the 2002 CIA factbook. It's also apparently more conservative, since the numbers quoted for the USA and Germany are both lower, significantly so for the USA (165 instead 185 millions). I doubt the number of users has fallen in either country in the last two years...
... I'd wager that copyright violation is more common here than in the USA, at least that's the impression I sometimes get from Internet boards: I've seen lots of youths and young people who say copyright violation is wrong (and act accordingly), while I don't think I've met any German computer user under the age of 25 who does not, on occasion, commit thought theft. On the other hand, broadband Internet access and flat fee services used to be rare around here, although that's gotten better to a point where I assume (I'm sure there's data) broadband usage is on about the same level as in the USA.
Anyway, it's fairly save to say that if every American user turned off the file sharing option, it'd have a tremendous effect on the global filesharing equations, even if there are more European than American nodes[1]. Also Europe seems to be heading a similar route with the EUCD - which would leave the Asian nodes.
[1] Which isn't necessarily true - there probably are more or less P2P users per 1000 Internet users in Europe than in the USA. Interesting question actually
Believe it or not, some (Japanese) toilets actually do that already. I'm not sure if more than a proof-of-concept one was built and how sophisticated the analyser is, but at some level it's been done. :O
Yeah, that's kind of my point. :)
It's wide open, claiming to be a public service. But even if it wasn't, even if it did claim to be private, the mere fact that you're running an anonymous FTP service implies that you basically grant everyone the right to download.
Well, it was a simple enough typo, no need to make a fuss about it. It's certainly not very interesting linguistically.
And mock me all you want, but I wasn't kidding, I really do think it's interesting! =)