Call me old school, (okay, a lot of you will call much nastier things than that) but I just don't like the idea of another logo. Notice that on Raymond's little proposal page there almost as much space devoted to who should *not* use that logo than to what the logo is actually supposed to represent. This starts to make me feel that the purpose is to draw lines on the ground and say "you can come in but you "others" have to stay out".
I think other parts of this discussion are probably already arguing about "data vs. information" but this post, I think, points out one of the reasons for that argument: between 1999 and 2002, how many more digital cameras are around and how much larger (in pixels/bits) are the images? Just because there are more digital pics with more pixels each, doesn't mean that there are more actual pictures being taken. And for each new digital camera that is being used, how many fewer film cameras are being used. I suspect that there *are* more pictures being taken but this study doesn't necessarily prove that.
I don't think it's quite such an intractable "can of worms" as you suggest. A parallel argument to the one made in this article is the idea that we are adopting technology with the mindset that no other culture in the history of mankind has had the kind tech change (and concomitant cultural change) that we are experiencing. This mindset leads, IMHO, to the belief that, since we live in an unprecedented age, then there is no historical precedent to guide us through our current state of change. This, as you can imagine, leads to the unenviable postion of repeating history's mistakes.
I think that the average citzen of our various cultures can learn (or be taught) that there is a lot to learn from our (and other's) adoption of technology in the past to begin to spot those unintended consequences before they get so large as to be impossible to deal with.
I realize that part of the argument in this comment (and in the article itself) is that a normal market economy gets us into these situations because people have demanded the technologies that now become problematic. Nevertheless, I believe that citizens of market economies can learn to not make these demands (see above) because they realize that the new technology may prove to be problematic and that various societies have, to greater or lesser degrees, the ability to enforce their citizen's wishes to avoid any given great-new-idea that is "guaranteed" to reduce scarcity.
I always think it's nice when developers try to put their own software into a bit historical/cultural context: konspire
However, that little page about their own "revolution" is so full of (gratuitous) errors I don't know where to begin.
They start as if content never existed before the written word. Sorry, what do they think all that oral culture was for the first 100,000 years of human history if not content (information)?
Then they go on to say that after the invention of the printing press content was still owned by large organizations. Ummm, not actually. That's what Gutenberg's press was all about. Ever hear of Martin Luther? He almost *brought down* the large organization of his day. The Catholic Church, that is.
I could go on, the mistakes keep on coming, but I think you get the picture.
Like I said, I admire developers who see their own efforts in the big picture. I just shudder when they don't understand the big picture that they're looking at!
I read it now and again. It wasn't all that bad.I used to sit in front of the computer and check out their favourite web sites, and so on. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that good, either. The idea of a 'Canadian Wired' which they set themselves up to be (whether they were willing to admit it or not) is problematic. Wired is very much American. So why would a 'Canadian Wired' look or feel anything like Wired? And if it doesn't, then it's not 'Wired' at all, is it?
I think they fell into a 'we're just the same but different' trap which made it hard to figure out what they themselves thought they were doing. IMHO, that's lethal for a cultural magazine.
There are a few issues at work here that might need explaining before everyone launches off on an isn't-it-terrible-living-behind-the-frozen-curtain kind of tirade.
The court proceedings currently going on in this case is a Preliminary Hearing which is, I believe, kind of like an American Grand Jury trial. Except, Preliminary Hearings are not conducted in secret. In theory anyone can go and watch and reports about them are not normally prohibited from the public. In addition, AFAIK, Canadian jury selection is done with far less scrutiny of jurors than is done in the U.S. so it's harder for lawyers to check each juror to find out whether they are likely to be tainted.
So, in some ways, the judge is just trying to make the best of a situation he's inherited but doesn't have much control over. This is a hugely high-profile case here in our town and he knows that if details of the case are out there, getting an untainted jury who won't be a guarantee of appeal whether the guy is convicted or not is almost impossible.
dcobbler
Re:Is this a good thing? Nigerian Miss World Riots
on
Smart Mobs
·
· Score: 1
This reminds me of one of my favourite hobby horses...
...That there are lots of examples in the history of technology to tell us a little bit about what the effects of our current (new) technology might be. In fact, maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that something like the Miss World pageant is both repulsive to certain cultural groups and is a good opportunity for somebody to engage in some local political muscle-flexing.
I would hope that somebody learned a lesson from that fiasco. Perhaps a similar lesson to the one that the Catholic church might have learned when Martin Luther figured out how he could use the power of printed caricatures to break their monopoly.
Cheers,
Dcobbler
Re:Value of networks...
on
Smart Mobs
·
· Score: 1
Maybe here is a practical example of the wikipedia definition.
I bought a used iMac for my family. I put more memory in it so it runs just fine but it has a 6gb hdd. That's a problem because their mp3s and pictures fill up that drive fast. So, I networked my old ppro with a series of hand-me-down scsi drives (that total 10gb) to handle some of the data. That keeps the iMac drive from filling-up so fast. The 'value' to me is that I can use existing hardware to , basically, keep each other relevant and useful for my family.
Maybe one could say: "the value of the network is what you get out of it" (if that isn't too trite).
I just put OS/2 on an old p120 laptop with 24mb of RAM. It works fine. Had some trouble with networking but that, ummm, was my fault. See the discussion at the digital cobbler.
OS/2 was my full-time OS choice from about 1992 to 1997. I'm glad to have a chance to get back to it. It's still one of my favourite GUIs. And truth be told, this old laptop was surplussed from my office because it was 'broken' but what was actually broken was the fact that its Win95 network/modem drivers were garbage that kept BSOD-ing.
I think the 'death of OS/2' aspect of this discussion is greatly exagerated. It can still happily exist on systems where it is the most appropriate OS. In my case that means networking with Mac OS X and Win 2K simultaneously on the same home LAN. Nothing 'dead' about that.
Usability is not tacked on at the end. In fact, if you've tried to tack some usability on to the end of your way-cool-code, then your little app is almost certainly not that usable. That's a big problem with OSS, as far as I can tell. You've got to think about *how* people are going to use it and *why* they would use it before you write the code that is the *what* of the equation. I'm an Information Architect, the how and why is what I insist on before my app developer writes the code that does it all. We get much better results than trying to proceed in the other direction.
Somebody in an earlier post said that OSS app coders are just interested in "utilitarian" stuff and that's why they are like they are (the apps, that is). Uh Uh. I don't think so. "Utilitarian" means that someone has to *utilize* the thing. If there's no usability, then utility is a lot harder to acheive.
I don't think Neilsen is god. I think his usability equations don't give enough credit for software and sites that are compelling, as well as functional but, that said, the usability gurus have a lot to teach OSS creators. IMHO.
Nope. I wasn't that guy. My dad was the physics teacher in my high-school. I kep my head down, man. Way down. When I got to 1st-year sciences at U. I discovered all the profs were like my dad. No wonder I flunked;-)
I'm a great believer in 'use what you have' network building and the power of Metcalfe's law (and all that). Maybe this is even better than going out and haranguing the government for money for a super-expensive super-computer. If this works out, (and, I guess, that might be seen tomorrow) then even little universities (and little research departments in not-sexy areas of study) could get big computing power when they need it but not have to ransom their entire research agenda just to afford the big computer
Dcobbler
Cobbling together your digital environment: www.digitalcobbler.com
...if we are using Linux why would we consider switching...
How on earth do "we" know the answer to that question? You could be using Linux for any number of reasons and I can't assume that your reasons are the same as mine. x86 Darwin might not have been released for any reasons connected with Linux so an "if linux then why this" line of questioning isn't really any help, as far as I'm concerned.
...and for the record, I run SUSE 8.1 on my desktop at work and OS 10.2 on my iMac at home. Both do their respective jobs splendidly and I have no use I can see right now for Darwin on x86.
Well, I've got to agree with this, sort of. I'm in charge of a little project that is supposed to be a non-profit but every once in a while the board says "let's try and sell some of these services". The board members who are business-types haven't a clue how our services work and those who are not busines-types haven't a clue why someone would pay for this. They look at me and I'm not a business man and wasn't hired to turn these services into money, in the first place.
Right about then I think to myself, wouldn't it be nice if I could turn to a VP of Business Development (or some such) and say, 'why don't you get back to them with a feasibility blah, blah, blah' instead of having to duck.
Man, I think I just defended the MBAs. I need a break....
How can something be "post-modern" Wouldn't the newly post-modern become modern, and the old modern simply old?
You're assuming that 'modern' = 'new' but it also is a name applied to a certain eras in history. The 'modern' era of the mid-20th century was about art and design. The 'modern' era of science and philosophy started about 500 years ago and included the rise of numeracy, the invention of calculus and algorithms and much of the science that made computers and programming possible (so far). Read Information Ages by Hobart and Schiffman for more about this.
Although, in this case they seem to be talking about 'modern' as in the 20th-century-art-and-design, could the results of their thesis move computer science beyond the 'modern age of science'?
I hate to get all deep and philosophical but this is so deliciously "old guard" vs. "new guard".
The old guard PR hacks who put this together must be struck dumb by how this has played out. Think about it for a second. Their esoteric tricks that they've been using for years have turned around and bitten them to the core. They put together what they thought was some appropriately stylized words with an appropriate picture from a stock agency. In the old days, stock agencies were the province of specialists and now, some smart person is able to find the *exact same picture* and link to it alongside their little piece of PR trickery.
It gets worse. In the old days, once a piece of their work was published, it was cast in stone, so to speak. The public only saw what the PR folks wanted them to see and didn't see anything that might have been held back. But today, another smart person is able to delve into that sacrosanct PR document and find out all sorts of names and addresses that should have been (from the perspective of the PR hacks) forever kept secret!
Why wouldn't it be most sensible to concentrate on the security of each device on the network? So, then anybody could get on the network anytime they want but they couldn't get into any server on the network without the right ID & Pass and without encrypting their data if that server requires it. Maybe I am just naive (sp?) but isn't that how security on the *internet* is handled anyway?
Dcobbler.
www.digitalcobbler.com
Okay,
There's a bit more information about the location in this post down below: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=34968& cid=3778976.
I guess I could have found some of this info if I wasn't so blasted lazy... err, I mean *busy*.
DC
www.digitalcobbler.com
There *is* a picture taken from that same window! (Damn! I'm at work and haven't got the time to research it blah, blah... blah). I've seen it. I might even have it in a book at home. It's not taken with the original technology (obviously) but it's was taken sometime in the last two decades (iirc) and there's apparently no mystery as to where that location is. I think Niepce wrote it down somewhere. A good search on google might, in fact, turn up a copy of said picture.
DC
www.digitalcobbler.com
I was just thinking of how this feels compared to fitaly. I've been using fitaly for about a year and it's my standard palm input method. I never use graffiti anymore. I use fitaly a lot more than my folding keyboard but that's because I don't carry the keyboard everywhere I go.
Now, having just used Dasher for a few minutes I can see that it's really good! I'm very impressed with the short time it takes to get up to a decent speed. Afterall, we all know the alphabet but we don't all know the order of the fitaly keys; that had to be learned and, although I respect Fitaly's assertion that their key layout follows logical principles unlike the qwerty keyboard, it still takes some brain power and memorization. With this Dasher, I found myself concentrating on the word I was trying to spell and not having to worry about "where" I might find the letter I'm after. I think that kind of intuitiveness is extremely valuable.
I can see, however, some of the problems with Dasher that others have already pointed out. You can get a bit sea-sick, it seems. But maybe this is just something the brain gets used to . The most valid criticism so for is that it's non-tactile. That means you have to look at it all the time. Certainly that's one of the main advantages of "touch-typing", I'd say. Fitaly keyboards pose this problem too, as far as I'm concerned.
If numbers are too tough, then you shouldn't be playing with that much money anyway. In 2004, we get to hear about how this system discriminates against the color blind.
Yeah! And next thing you know, people will be wanting colour on their computer screens! Morons! There'll be nothing but trouble when they start up with that!
I can't give any credence to these writers. They are emoting loudly from their anuses.
Yeah, those were more or less my sentiments exactly.
I just bought a brand new iMac G4. It's an excellent computer. It's the second Mac to enter my house and join the home network so maybe we're becoming a Mac family (and I don't care).
After reading this article I was sitting here thinking, "what's this guy's problem? This is probably the best computer I've ever owned." But the moment passed. Like people here have been saying, this guy is simply being paid to troll. And being paid by a company that gets a lot of advertising dollars from Apple's competitors. Not that that would make any difference to him, I'm sure.
Digital Cobbler (www.digitalcobbler.com)
Re:On Katz and Dogs (was Re:Yes, you are)
on
Dog Bites Website
·
· Score: 1
Kintanon wrote: In my mind, WE = Everyone with a UID under 100K.
That's called the "drawbridge mentality".
And I imagine for you, WE = everyone under 553567.
And you imagine this why? Because I had the nerve to disagree with you? Don't assume that I look at the world the way you do.
PH
Re:On Katz and Dogs (was Re:Yes, you are)
on
Dog Bites Website
·
· Score: 1
Kintanon wrote:
>Maybe, just perhaps, we don't WANT our boundaries pushed?? [snip]
Hmm, yes, that's a very interesting point until I try and figure out just exactly who is "we"? Is that whoever was here the longest? Who has the highest moderation totals (however that happens)? The/. editors? The shareholders of the company that owns/.?
One thing about communities is that they change. Even when they become fixated on resisting change within their community. That fixation is, in fact, change.
PH
www.digitalcobbler.com
Re:On Katz and Dogs (was Re:Yes, you are)
on
Dog Bites Website
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Despite how much I admire the obvious glee that our Mr. Katz seems to derive from rattling some of your cages, I'm impressed with Casio282's counter argument but I'm not sure I'm swayed in his/her/its (remember: on the internet, no one knows you're a dog;-] ) favour.
It's almost a pure judgement call: do you agree with Katz because he's introducing a new topic to a community to which he himself undoubtedly belongs; or is he abusing his privileged position in that community by introducing a (maybe self-serving) topic that very few others could get away with? I'm thinking that, on balance, what Katz has done is a good thing. Besides the stated purpose that he is showing others how powerful the net is for small operators to market in (which is in itself a very valuable lesson), I think he is also pushing the boundary of Slashdot in a way that illustrates a very important lesson for many/. denizens. THat is that there is very little in the way of commerce and communication that digitzation and the net have no influence upon.
I think the most interesting affect of this will be whether this broadens the scope of/. in general and whether other, less prominent, members of the community can introduce discussions within this broadened scope.
Slashdot Mirror
Call me old school, (okay, a lot of you will call much nastier things than that) but I just don't like the idea of another logo. Notice that on Raymond's little proposal page there almost as much space devoted to who should *not* use that logo than to what the logo is actually supposed to represent. This starts to make me feel that the purpose is to draw lines on the ground and say "you can come in but you "others" have to stay out".
Cheers, Dcobbler.
I think other parts of this discussion are probably already arguing about "data vs. information" but this post, I think, points out one of the reasons for that argument: between 1999 and 2002, how many more digital cameras are around and how much larger (in pixels/bits) are the images? Just because there are more digital pics with more pixels each, doesn't mean that there are more actual pictures being taken. And for each new digital camera that is being used, how many fewer film cameras are being used. I suspect that there *are* more pictures being taken but this study doesn't necessarily prove that.
Cheers,
Dcobbler.
I don't think it's quite such an intractable "can of worms" as you suggest. A parallel argument to the one made in this article is the idea that we are adopting technology with the mindset that no other culture in the history of mankind has had the kind tech change (and concomitant cultural change) that we are experiencing. This mindset leads, IMHO, to the belief that, since we live in an unprecedented age, then there is no historical precedent to guide us through our current state of change. This, as you can imagine, leads to the unenviable postion of repeating history's mistakes.
I think that the average citzen of our various cultures can learn (or be taught) that there is a lot to learn from our (and other's) adoption of technology in the past to begin to spot those unintended consequences before they get so large as to be impossible to deal with.
I realize that part of the argument in this comment (and in the article itself) is that a normal market economy gets us into these situations because people have demanded the technologies that now become problematic. Nevertheless, I believe that citizens of market economies can learn to not make these demands (see above) because they realize that the new technology may prove to be problematic and that various societies have, to greater or lesser degrees, the ability to enforce their citizen's wishes to avoid any given great-new-idea that is "guaranteed" to reduce scarcity.
Just my two cents.
dcobb.
I always think it's nice when developers try to put their own software into a bit historical/cultural context: konspire
However, that little page about their own "revolution" is so full of (gratuitous) errors I don't know where to begin.
They start as if content never existed before the written word. Sorry, what do they think all that oral culture was for the first 100,000 years of human history if not content (information)?
Then they go on to say that after the invention of the printing press content was still owned by large organizations. Ummm, not actually. That's what Gutenberg's press was all about. Ever hear of Martin Luther? He almost *brought down* the large organization of his day. The Catholic Church, that is.
I could go on, the mistakes keep on coming, but I think you get the picture.
Like I said, I admire developers who see their own efforts in the big picture. I just shudder when they don't understand the big picture that they're looking at!
Cheers, dcobbler
www.digitalcobbler.com
I read it now and again. It wasn't all that bad.I used to sit in front of the computer and check out their favourite web sites, and so on. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that good, either. The idea of a 'Canadian Wired' which they set themselves up to be (whether they were willing to admit it or not) is problematic. Wired is very much American. So why would a 'Canadian Wired' look or feel anything like Wired? And if it doesn't, then it's not 'Wired' at all, is it?
I think they fell into a 'we're just the same but different' trap which made it hard to figure out what they themselves thought they were doing. IMHO, that's lethal for a cultural magazine.
Cheers,
Dcobbler
There are a few issues at work here that might need explaining before everyone launches off on an isn't-it-terrible-living-behind-the-frozen-curtain kind of tirade.
The court proceedings currently going on in this case is a Preliminary Hearing which is, I believe, kind of like an American Grand Jury trial. Except, Preliminary Hearings are not conducted in secret. In theory anyone can go and watch and reports about them are not normally prohibited from the public. In addition, AFAIK, Canadian jury selection is done with far less scrutiny of jurors than is done in the U.S. so it's harder for lawyers to check each juror to find out whether they are likely to be tainted.
So, in some ways, the judge is just trying to make the best of a situation he's inherited but doesn't have much control over. This is a hugely high-profile case here in our town and he knows that if details of the case are out there, getting an untainted jury who won't be a guarantee of appeal whether the guy is convicted or not is almost impossible.
dcobbler
This reminds me of one of my favourite hobby horses...
...That there are lots of examples in the history of technology to tell us a little bit about what the effects of our current (new) technology might be. In fact, maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that something like the Miss World pageant is both repulsive to certain cultural groups and is a good opportunity for somebody to engage in some local political muscle-flexing.
I would hope that somebody learned a lesson from that fiasco. Perhaps a similar lesson to the one that the Catholic church might have learned when Martin Luther figured out how he could use the power of printed caricatures to break their monopoly.
Cheers,
Dcobbler
Maybe here is a practical example of the wikipedia definition.
I bought a used iMac for my family. I put more memory in it so it runs just fine but it has a 6gb hdd. That's a problem because their mp3s and pictures fill up that drive fast. So, I networked my old ppro with a series of hand-me-down scsi drives (that total 10gb) to handle some of the data. That keeps the iMac drive from filling-up so fast. The 'value' to me is that I can use existing hardware to , basically, keep each other relevant and useful for my family.
Maybe one could say: "the value of the network is what you get out of it" (if that isn't too trite).
Dcobbler.
I just put OS/2 on an old p120 laptop with 24mb of RAM. It works fine. Had some trouble with networking but that, ummm, was my fault. See the discussion at the digital cobbler.
OS/2 was my full-time OS choice from about 1992 to 1997. I'm glad to have a chance to get back to it. It's still one of my favourite GUIs. And truth be told, this old laptop was surplussed from my office because it was 'broken' but what was actually broken was the fact that its Win95 network/modem drivers were garbage that kept BSOD-ing.
I think the 'death of OS/2' aspect of this discussion is greatly exagerated. It can still happily exist on systems where it is the most appropriate OS. In my case that means networking with Mac OS X and Win 2K simultaneously on the same home LAN. Nothing 'dead' about that.
Dcobbler
Usability is not tacked on at the end. In fact, if you've tried to tack some usability on to the end of your way-cool-code, then your little app is almost certainly not that usable. That's a big problem with OSS, as far as I can tell. You've got to think about *how* people are going to use it and *why* they would use it before you write the code that is the *what* of the equation. I'm an Information Architect, the how and why is what I insist on before my app developer writes the code that does it all. We get much better results than trying to proceed in the other direction.
Somebody in an earlier post said that OSS app coders are just interested in "utilitarian" stuff and that's why they are like they are (the apps, that is). Uh Uh. I don't think so. "Utilitarian" means that someone has to *utilize* the thing. If there's no usability, then utility is a lot harder to acheive.
I don't think Neilsen is god. I think his usability equations don't give enough credit for software and sites that are compelling, as well as functional but, that said, the usability gurus have a lot to teach OSS creators. IMHO.
dcobbler
Nope. I wasn't that guy. My dad was the physics teacher in my high-school. I kep my head down, man. Way down. When I got to 1st-year sciences at U. I discovered all the profs were like my dad. No wonder I flunked ;-)
dcobbler
I'm a great believer in 'use what you have' network building and the power of Metcalfe's law (and all that). Maybe this is even better than going out and haranguing the government for money for a super-expensive super-computer. If this works out, (and, I guess, that might be seen tomorrow) then even little universities (and little research departments in not-sexy areas of study) could get big computing power when they need it but not have to ransom their entire research agenda just to afford the big computer
Dcobbler
Cobbling together your digital environment: www.digitalcobbler.com
...if we are using Linux why would we consider switching...
...and for the record, I run SUSE 8.1 on my desktop at work and OS 10.2 on my iMac at home. Both do their respective jobs splendidly and I have no use I can see right now for Darwin on x86.
How on earth do "we" know the answer to that question? You could be using Linux for any number of reasons and I can't assume that your reasons are the same as mine. x86 Darwin might not have been released for any reasons connected with Linux so an "if linux then why this" line of questioning isn't really any help, as far as I'm concerned.
DCobbler www.digitalcobbler.com (shameless plug)
Well, I've got to agree with this, sort of. I'm in charge of a little project that is supposed to be a non-profit but every once in a while the board says "let's try and sell some of these services". The board members who are business-types haven't a clue how our services work and those who are not busines-types haven't a clue why someone would pay for this. They look at me and I'm not a business man and wasn't hired to turn these services into money, in the first place.
Right about then I think to myself, wouldn't it be nice if I could turn to a VP of Business Development (or some such) and say, 'why don't you get back to them with a feasibility blah, blah, blah' instead of having to duck.
Man, I think I just defended the MBAs. I need a break....
Dcobbler
www.digitalcobbler.com
How can something be "post-modern" Wouldn't the newly post-modern become modern, and the old modern simply old?
You're assuming that 'modern' = 'new' but it also is a name applied to a certain eras in history. The 'modern' era of the mid-20th century was about art and design. The 'modern' era of science and philosophy started about 500 years ago and included the rise of numeracy, the invention of calculus and algorithms and much of the science that made computers and programming possible (so far). Read Information Ages by Hobart and Schiffman for more about this.
Although, in this case they seem to be talking about 'modern' as in the 20th-century-art-and-design, could the results of their thesis move computer science beyond the 'modern age of science'?
dcobbler
www.digitalcobbler.com
I hate to get all deep and philosophical but this is so deliciously "old guard" vs. "new guard". The old guard PR hacks who put this together must be struck dumb by how this has played out. Think about it for a second. Their esoteric tricks that they've been using for years have turned around and bitten them to the core. They put together what they thought was some appropriately stylized words with an appropriate picture from a stock agency. In the old days, stock agencies were the province of specialists and now, some smart person is able to find the *exact same picture* and link to it alongside their little piece of PR trickery.
It gets worse. In the old days, once a piece of their work was published, it was cast in stone, so to speak. The public only saw what the PR folks wanted them to see and didn't see anything that might have been held back. But today, another smart person is able to delve into that sacrosanct PR document and find out all sorts of names and addresses that should have been (from the perspective of the PR hacks) forever kept secret!
It really is a new world, don't you think?
dcobbler
www.digitalcobbler.com
Why wouldn't it be most sensible to concentrate on the security of each device on the network? So, then anybody could get on the network anytime they want but they couldn't get into any server on the network without the right ID & Pass and without encrypting their data if that server requires it. Maybe I am just naive (sp?) but isn't that how security on the *internet* is handled anyway? Dcobbler. www.digitalcobbler.com
Okay, There's a bit more information about the location in this post down below: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=34968& cid=3778976.
I guess I could have found some of this info if I wasn't so blasted lazy... err, I mean *busy*.
DC
www.digitalcobbler.com
There *is* a picture taken from that same window! (Damn! I'm at work and haven't got the time to research it blah, blah... blah). I've seen it. I might even have it in a book at home. It's not taken with the original technology (obviously) but it's was taken sometime in the last two decades (iirc) and there's apparently no mystery as to where that location is. I think Niepce wrote it down somewhere. A good search on google might, in fact, turn up a copy of said picture.
DC www.digitalcobbler.com
I was just thinking of how this feels compared to fitaly. I've been using fitaly for about a year and it's my standard palm input method. I never use graffiti anymore. I use fitaly a lot more than my folding keyboard but that's because I don't carry the keyboard everywhere I go.
Now, having just used Dasher for a few minutes I can see that it's really good! I'm very impressed with the short time it takes to get up to a decent speed. Afterall, we all know the alphabet but we don't all know the order of the fitaly keys; that had to be learned and, although I respect Fitaly's assertion that their key layout follows logical principles unlike the qwerty keyboard, it still takes some brain power and memorization. With this Dasher, I found myself concentrating on the word I was trying to spell and not having to worry about "where" I might find the letter I'm after. I think that kind of intuitiveness is extremely valuable.
I can see, however, some of the problems with Dasher that others have already pointed out. You can get a bit sea-sick, it seems. But maybe this is just something the brain gets used to . The most valid criticism so for is that it's non-tactile. That means you have to look at it all the time. Certainly that's one of the main advantages of "touch-typing", I'd say. Fitaly keyboards pose this problem too, as far as I'm concerned.
cheers,
DC
www.digitalcobbler.com
Yeah! And next thing you know, people will be wanting colour on their computer screens! Morons! There'll be nothing but trouble when they start up with that!
Yeah, those were more or less my sentiments exactly.
I just bought a brand new iMac G4. It's an excellent computer. It's the second Mac to enter my house and join the home network so maybe we're becoming a Mac family (and I don't care).
After reading this article I was sitting here thinking, "what's this guy's problem? This is probably the best computer I've ever owned." But the moment passed. Like people here have been saying, this guy is simply being paid to troll. And being paid by a company that gets a lot of advertising dollars from Apple's competitors. Not that that would make any difference to him, I'm sure.
Digital Cobbler (www.digitalcobbler.com)
Kintanon wrote:
In my mind, WE = Everyone with a UID under 100K.
That's called the "drawbridge mentality".
And I imagine for you, WE = everyone under 553567.
And you imagine this why? Because I had the nerve to disagree with you? Don't assume that I look at the world the way you do.
PH
Kintanon wrote: >Maybe, just perhaps, we don't WANT our boundaries pushed?? [snip] Hmm, yes, that's a very interesting point until I try and figure out just exactly who is "we"? Is that whoever was here the longest? Who has the highest moderation totals (however that happens)? The /. editors? The shareholders of the company that owns /.?
One thing about communities is that they change. Even when they become fixated on resisting change within their community. That fixation is, in fact, change.
PH
www.digitalcobbler.com
Despite how much I admire the obvious glee that our Mr. Katz seems to derive from rattling some of your cages, I'm impressed with Casio282's counter argument but I'm not sure I'm swayed in his/her/its (remember: on the internet, no one knows you're a dog ;-] ) favour.
/. denizens. THat is that there is very little in the way of commerce and communication that digitzation and the net have no influence upon.
/. in general and whether other, less prominent, members of the community can introduce discussions within this broadened scope.
It's almost a pure judgement call: do you agree with Katz because he's introducing a new topic to a community to which he himself undoubtedly belongs; or is he abusing his privileged position in that community by introducing a (maybe self-serving) topic that very few others could get away with? I'm thinking that, on balance, what Katz has done is a good thing. Besides the stated purpose that he is showing others how powerful the net is for small operators to market in (which is in itself a very valuable lesson), I think he is also pushing the boundary of Slashdot in a way that illustrates a very important lesson for many
I think the most interesting affect of this will be whether this broadens the scope of
Cheers,
PH.
www.digitalcobbler.com