Granted, it was with CRTs, but early on it became obvious to many Mac users that, in a windowed environment, your productivity could improve if you could increase the usable desktop area.
I bet a bunch of "normal"-sized LCDs refresh much faster than One Horking Big LCD would. Once you get the LCD panels aligned to counteract the fact that they're separate monitors, scrolling from one to another is no big thing -- you hardly notice the frame edges between.
Whenever I see announcements about these kinds of breakthroughs, I fantasize afresh: How about a 60" concave (wraparound) display?? I want something I can play flight sims on.
I guess the biggest challenge would be the refresh rate for something that big -- that's probably why a lot of training simulators use projection or models with tracking cameras.
A big, immersive display like that would also be bitchin' for those of us who like to leave a lot of windows open simultaneously. One of my pet peeves is running out of desktop space.
...to be able to turn on my car radio and hear international music (mostly African and Middle Eastern pop) when I'm driving around town in Columbia, SC. And as long as a potential listenership exists, once the technology's in place I'll probably be able to get it. No more Contemporary Christian/lite rock/golden oldies/"country" crap.
First thought: This'll be job security for the antitrust people at the DOJ and SEC.
Second: Remember that scene in the Oliver Stone film _Salvador_, with James Woods? The photojournalist (Woods' character) witnesses the "good" revolutionaries about to shoot captured national troops -- the oppressors -- in a combination of revenge and expedience, and he warns them (futilely) "You'll become like they are! You'll become like they are!"
If it all comes true, I hope I've switched to *ix by then. I *like* AOL, but I'll change my tune quickly if they start dictating how software's gonna work under the hood.
What gets me about these devices is, they seem to be (at least initially) aimed at niche markets like industrial uses. If this doohickey is priced competitively with a 19" monitor, it'll rule the world. But if it's another multi-$1000 highly specialized product, here we'll all be standing with our noses pressed against the window.
Here's one of the few instances where Microsoft's insidious reach could do consumers some good: I'd like to see Billy Boy co-opt this puppy for M$ as part of a gaming headset. If it had motion detection (and maybe 360-degree sound) added, it would make quite a package in tandem with Flight Simulator and whatever else they're shoveling anymore.
By the way, does 25mm eye relief mean I can wear my eyeglasses with this thing?
Wow. A new payment paradigm for us tech writers: I've never gotten propositioned to write a manual "on spec" like this. Too bad I don't already have a Linux box up and running. Doing this kind of stuff is my meat and drink.
Tell ya what. Give me a system (maybe a bitchin' VA Research machine) to work on, and I'll just do the job for the good of the community. The $$ can go back to the FSF so they can extrude more code.
Since when was this about making fashion statements?
Timur, they're neither: They're works in progress.
on
Geeks in Rolling Stone
·
· Score: 1
Oh, I dunno, Timur. I remember a buncha years ago when I was a college dropout so green and desperate for work that I took a technical writing job at $14K/yr. And I wasn't the most urbane or perfectly-adjusted guy you were likely to meet, either.
They're nineteen. Give 'em a break; there's still a lot of living for them to do while they get used to being adults. I'm 37, and your brashness makes me wonder if you're closer to my age or theirs.
These two guys aren't perfect by a long shot, but you can't deny they've shown some guts, tenacity, and initiative.
After reading how you picked apart the article to tear them down, I wonder who real loser is. It's neither of them.
Salon: Now that you have it, don't screw with it
on
Salon buys The Well
·
· Score: 2
One of the key phenomena about the Internet is the sense of community it fosters. I sure hope Salon's got this firmly in mind and recognizes it as an enduring virtue of the WELL.
...now if they'd add some feedback for head movement and orientation (accelerometers & attitude sensors), imagine what this could do for flight sims, Doom, Quake, Descent et al.
BTW, I'm legally blind in one eye. I've never experienced stereooptic vision (& never will), so any of you who have tried setups like this: How realistic is the 3D effect?
Where I work, they're using SmartFilter or something like it. Weirdly enough, I can look at Suck, but I can't read Omni Magazine...go figure. Try to land on the same banned page 3 times, an automatic report lands in your boss' email inbox.
But if I fire up AOL on my desktop, I can look at any damn thing I please. Apparently I'm tunneling thru the firewall & into AOL's server.
BFHD, I can waterproof a keyboard with tear-off plastic wrap. But a keyboard you can roll up and stick in your bag...now THAT'S pretty darn cool. When we get to where you can have a rollup 21" flat screen monitor too, that'll be about perfect.
Another reason Word appears to be "talking" to the OS in the background could be that the Fast Find feature is enabled. Basically, Office is indexing your hard drive so that in the event you go searching for a document through an Office app, Office can use the database it created.
It's a good thing to jettison, although it's not quite as trivial to disable as turning off features in Word's Tools>Options dialog box.
I know how to do it in 95, but I don't know my way around NT, but basically, it's a control panel. Under '95, you open the Fast Find control panel, delete the Fast Find database file(s)corresponding to the drive(s) you'd like Windows to just leave the hell alone, confirm your choice(s), and close the control panel.
As a technical writer who's obliged to use the corporate standard -- you guessed it, M$ Office -- I feel I speak for tens of thousands of tech writers everywhere when I say this:
Bill Gates, FIX THE DAMN MASTER DOCUMENT FEATURE IN WORD!!! It sucks. It doesn't act as documented, and it EATS documents! Word absolutely, completely SLURPS OUT LOUD when it comes to producing manual-length documents.
Bill, I sure hope somebody shows you this rant.
OK. Whew. I feel better. Sorry, folks....
I told you so, I told you so, I told you so
on
MS Office for Linux
·
· Score: 1
I said that was a possiblity right here in/. and nobody listened. "A prophet is without honor in his own time." Next, let's see if I'm right about AOL for Linux.
My mom-in-law told me about this, and I thought she was kidding at first -- I laughed and laughed! When I realized she was serious, I said, "Well, you know, I wonder if he's ever thought about Kukla, Fran and Ollie -- an interspecies menage a trois. And what about that strange relationship between Buck Smith and Howdy Doody -- as wholesome as it seemed on the surface, didn't those too seem kind of clingy? And Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and Capt. Kangaroo -- who's to say what the hell's really going on here? (Raised a Catholic, I can remember a time when nobody would dare *imagine* a priest doing anything unwholesome with a child.)
For anyone cursed with a sex drive, the world is a dark, evil, frightening place. That's what Jerry's tapped into.
Seriously -- if Compaq and HP are getting on board this train, anybody want to bet how long before we see MS Office for *ix? (They'll probably never swallow their crow sandwich and call it "... for Linux.")
"Conn, sonar...Transient, transient! Reboot noises! NT in the water, bearing two two seven!"
If we're really doing the IT21 thing with NT, the USN is doomed and America is finished as a sea power. You Read It Here First.;)
Strange Days, hell. More like Neuromancer.
on
Type with your Mind
·
· Score: 1
This reminds me an awful lot of how characters in Gibson's short stories and novels wear tiara of 'trodes in order to "see" a common, quasi-hallucinatory visual representation of cyberspace. Granted, this trial application is for input rather than output, but it's interesting to think about the far-out ramifications. Finally I can have that fling with Morgan Fairchild...
Slashdot Mirror
Granted, it was with CRTs, but early on it became obvious to many Mac users that, in a windowed environment, your productivity could improve if you could increase the usable desktop area.
I bet a bunch of "normal"-sized LCDs refresh much faster than One Horking Big LCD would. Once you get the LCD panels aligned to counteract the fact that they're separate monitors, scrolling from one to another is no big thing -- you hardly notice the frame edges between.
Whenever I see announcements about these kinds of breakthroughs, I fantasize afresh: How about a 60" concave (wraparound) display?? I want something I can play flight sims on.
I guess the biggest challenge would be the refresh rate for something that big -- that's probably why a lot of training simulators use projection or models with tracking cameras.
A big, immersive display like that would also be bitchin' for those of us who like to leave a lot of windows open simultaneously. One of my pet peeves is running out of desktop space.
...to be able to turn on my car radio and hear international music (mostly African and Middle Eastern pop) when I'm driving around town in Columbia, SC. And as long as a potential listenership exists, once the technology's in place I'll probably be able to get it. No more Contemporary Christian/lite rock/golden oldies/"country" crap.
First thought: This'll be job security for the antitrust people at the DOJ and SEC.
Second: Remember that scene in the Oliver Stone film _Salvador_, with James Woods? The photojournalist (Woods' character) witnesses the "good" revolutionaries about to shoot captured national troops -- the oppressors -- in a combination of revenge and expedience, and he warns them (futilely) "You'll become like they are! You'll become like they are!"
If it all comes true, I hope I've switched to *ix by then. I *like* AOL, but I'll change my tune quickly if they start dictating how software's gonna work under the hood.
What gets me about these devices is, they seem to be (at least initially) aimed at niche markets like industrial uses. If this doohickey is priced competitively with a 19" monitor, it'll rule the world. But if it's another multi-$1000 highly specialized product, here we'll all be standing with our noses pressed against the window.
Here's one of the few instances where Microsoft's insidious reach could do consumers some good: I'd like to see Billy Boy co-opt this puppy for M$ as part of a gaming headset. If it had motion detection (and maybe 360-degree sound) added, it would make quite a package in tandem with Flight Simulator and whatever else they're shoveling anymore.
By the way, does 25mm eye relief mean I can wear my eyeglasses with this thing?
re: the aol.com address: Fuck you very much.
Wow. A new payment paradigm for us tech writers: I've never gotten propositioned to write a manual "on spec" like this. Too bad I don't already have a Linux box up and running. Doing this kind of stuff is my meat and drink.
Tell ya what. Give me a system (maybe a bitchin' VA Research machine) to work on, and I'll just do the job for the good of the community. The $$ can go back to the FSF so they can extrude more code.
Let's see what kinds of replies this gets...
BSD has that cute li'l daemon, don't they?
Since when was this about making fashion statements?
Oh, I dunno, Timur. I remember a buncha years ago when I was a college dropout so green and desperate for work that I took a technical writing job at $14K/yr. And I wasn't the most urbane or perfectly-adjusted guy you were likely to meet, either.
They're nineteen. Give 'em a break; there's still a lot of living for them to do while they get used to being adults. I'm 37, and your brashness makes me wonder if you're closer to my age or theirs.
These two guys aren't perfect by a long shot, but you can't deny they've shown some guts, tenacity, and initiative.
After reading how you picked apart the article to tear them down, I wonder who real loser is. It's neither of them.
One of the key phenomena about the Internet is the sense of community it fosters. I sure hope Salon's got this firmly in mind and recognizes it as an enduring virtue of the WELL.
Geez, let's not go giving Bill any ideas, OK?
Humor-challenged, I see...
...now if they'd add some feedback for head movement and orientation (accelerometers & attitude sensors), imagine what this could do for flight sims, Doom, Quake, Descent et al.
BTW, I'm legally blind in one eye. I've never experienced stereooptic vision (& never will), so any of you who have tried setups like this: How realistic is the 3D effect?
Where I work, they're using SmartFilter or something like it. Weirdly enough, I can look at Suck, but I can't read Omni Magazine...go figure. Try to land on the same banned page 3 times, an automatic report lands in your boss' email inbox.
But if I fire up AOL on my desktop, I can look at any damn thing I please. Apparently I'm tunneling thru the firewall & into AOL's server.
BFHD, I can waterproof a keyboard with tear-off plastic wrap. But a keyboard you can roll up and stick in your bag...now THAT'S pretty darn cool. When we get to where you can have a rollup 21" flat screen monitor too, that'll be about perfect.
Gawd, what fun everybody could have re-engineering that bit o' code!
Another reason Word appears to be "talking" to the OS in the background could be that the Fast Find feature is enabled. Basically, Office is indexing your hard drive so that in the event you go searching for a document through an Office app, Office can use the database it created.
It's a good thing to jettison, although it's not quite as trivial to disable as turning off features in Word's Tools>Options dialog box.
I know how to do it in 95, but I don't know my way around NT, but basically, it's a control panel. Under '95, you open the Fast Find control panel, delete the Fast Find database file(s)corresponding to the drive(s) you'd like Windows to just leave the hell alone, confirm your choice(s), and close the control panel.
As a technical writer who's obliged to use the corporate standard -- you guessed it, M$ Office -- I feel I speak for tens of thousands of tech writers everywhere when I say this:
Bill Gates, FIX THE DAMN MASTER DOCUMENT FEATURE IN WORD!!! It sucks. It doesn't act as documented, and it EATS documents! Word absolutely, completely SLURPS OUT LOUD when it comes to producing manual-length documents.
Bill, I sure hope somebody shows you this rant.
OK. Whew. I feel better. Sorry, folks....
I said that was a possiblity right here in
&*#%$!! you all very much.
Love and kisses, Alums
Kitchen table works fine for me and Mrs. Alums...
My mom-in-law told me about this, and I thought she was kidding at first -- I laughed and laughed! When I realized she was serious, I said, "Well, you know, I wonder if he's ever thought about Kukla, Fran and Ollie -- an interspecies menage a trois. And what about that strange relationship between Buck Smith and Howdy Doody -- as wholesome as it seemed on the surface, didn't those too seem kind of clingy? And Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and Capt. Kangaroo -- who's to say what the hell's really going on here? (Raised a Catholic, I can remember a time when nobody would dare *imagine* a priest doing anything unwholesome with a child.)
For anyone cursed with a sex drive, the world is a dark, evil, frightening place. That's what Jerry's tapped into.
Just my thoughts.
...when there's an AOL client available for it.
Seriously -- if Compaq and HP are getting on board this train, anybody want to bet how long before we see MS Office for *ix? (They'll probably never swallow their crow sandwich and call it "... for Linux.")
Oh, my Gawd, what is my Navy coming to?
;)
I can hear it now:
"Conn, sonar...Transient, transient! Reboot noises! NT in the water, bearing two two seven!"
If we're really doing the IT21 thing with NT, the USN is doomed and America is finished as a sea power. You Read It Here First.
This reminds me an awful lot of how characters in Gibson's short stories and novels wear tiara of 'trodes in order to "see" a common, quasi-hallucinatory visual representation of cyberspace. Granted, this trial application is for input rather than output, but it's interesting to think about the far-out ramifications. Finally I can have that fling with Morgan Fairchild...