Look at how little the MacOS interface changed before OSX
Really? Actually there were many changes into the Mac UI. There were watershed events like the introduction of the Platinum look but along the way many tweaks were rolled out also: (apologies if I don't know the proper terms)
Collapsable "Windowshade" widget and action
Drag-to-a-bottom-tab windows
Tear-off task switcher
Pop-open folders for drilling-down
Navigation Services
Heirarchical Apple Menu
The still-born Themes & sound-sets
The applet-bar (blanking completely on the name)
Adoption of Alt-Tab for task switching
The fully keyboard-navigatable desktop
While they weren't jarring in-your-face changes they were all significent changes and certianly not symptomatic of a moribund UI.
Lots of folks are crying: "I want my custom desktop" and "This will stifle innovation".
Why?
Nobody is suggesting anyone be locked into these. Nobody is suggesting these be graven into stone never to become v.2 as progress marches on.
What this would do would be provide a common basis for new folks, a baseline for support folks, a universal look for screen-shots and documentation. If along the way some solid UI design were applied, usability testing done and minimal esthetics incorporated then so much the better.
Tweak away, replace, bend, fold, spindle, mutilate. But at least folks who are bewildered and lost could go to a common default and see something reasonable and trivially relate it to the documention or support folks. A simple menu option of "Default" would do wonders and all the better that it be consistant across toolkits.
Of course the next question is "What?" Here's where I think a good process of involving folks who are knowledgable in this area along with things like testing and feedback and skills in UI-standards-making would be incredibly valuable. Nothing against the coders but frankly, and many would agree, many desktops today are bad Windows reimplementations, wannabe-MacOS X looks or terrible pistaches of any number of good-ideas-running-into-eachother. A committee of KDE and Gnome AND others working on a timeline with a budget and a set of goals and opportunity for community feedback would be ideal, something with conflict-resolution built in from the beginning.
And if it stinks up the place it gets ignored. Or fixed in v.2. But at least we'll have taken the chance of a basic common UI gtting a shot and possibly accruing the benefits that would accrue from such. As for those looking to use something different, more innovative, more complex, more suited to them - go right ahead.
There's no technical reason for TiVo or Replay or anyone else not serving Canada - the issue is content and language. For the nifty on-screen guides and recording features to work there needs to be someone supplying the listing data and that's not been done for Canada. CanCon, privacy, neither are relevant to this it's just the darn feed and coding a dual-language version.
Bell Express Vu satellite TV service already works just fine though I expect they're just piping through the listings they've already got. Of course that's also only a listing of just what they offer and not trying to track what the various broadcast markets have along with the numerous cable services and their numerous tiers & packages.
Eventually the Canadian market will get served. All of the suppliers have stated this; it's just that they're focusing on filling out their large US markets along with the very-experienced-with-paying-for-TV UK. Doubtless when they can put some capitol into further expansion, get some more experience operating outside of their native land, become familiar with multilingual services, then they'll make their respective grabs for the Canadian market.
By the way apparently serving these numerous local listings is not a trivial problem. Bell's own Sympatico ISP/Portal dropped the listings they offered when their supplier TVGrid.Com went bust, hasn't replaced them yet. I believe TV Guide Canada still offers listings but that's about it. Anyone know who serves the newspapers for their guides?
As to the US I know TiVo is supplied by Tribune but TiVo has also stated that they've built their system so they can change providers based on services and costs, there's no lock-in. This is promising as should a Canadian provider negotiate a contract with TiVo or Replay or any other PVR system and these businesses make the dual-language jump then things should go quickly.
So whats the progress of the Sorenson codec on non-OSX UNIX? How about Aqua themes? How is Apple helping me again?
Boohoo
If you want the Soreson codec then find someone to pony up the cold hard cash to license it. The developers put a lot of work into it and decided this is how they want it to go. That they didn't give it away - well hell that's their right. Apple saw it, liked it, ponied up the money to license it. No guns or extortion were involved.
On the other hand QuickTime is pretty much free to use and doesn't depend on the Sorenson codec, works with lots of codecs.
For that matter why aren't you bleating about MS and their licensed formats? Or Real?
Codecs are hard to build, require LOTS of work and yes those folks are loathe to give it away. Sorry - not everything is free and we don't live in a socialist economy.
As to Apple and it's Aqua theme - again they spent a lot of work developing their trade dress and yes have a right to defend it. Sorry it's soo nice, got develop your own look and quit trying to rip off others.
So how's Apple "helping" you? By giving away lots of their stuff. Not all of it - tough. If you disagree send me your car keys or is all property theft in your world?
"Apple's Ernest Prabhakar is reporting that BSD is now 3 times as popular on the desktop as Linux, largely thanks to MacOSX, of course. He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX."
Well, only very sorta.
MS Office X runs with Apple's Carbon compatibility layer (even though it's no longer able to run on MacOS 8 or 9.) This isn't the same as running on Apple's Cocoa Nextstep-based libraries and not at all like running on raw Unix.
So yeah, it's running on Unix, however pretty much entirely within a proprietary Apple compatibility library that is MacOS X specific and itself unlikely and probably unable to be ported to other Unix flavors.
Great for MacOS X folks, not very relevant to the rest of the Unix world.
This is a genetic clone, the same as an "identical twin"
Even "identical twins" are often not actually identical; for example hair and pigment patterns often differ. The same is true for clones.
While temperament and other characteristics are likely somewhat inherited prenatal nutrition and womb environment have significant if poorly-understood effects
Furthermore how the animal is raised (nurture) also has a profound influence on the temperament and behaviors of an animal
So, while this critter may indeed may be a clone it is not the original reincarnated and will differ in any number of ways.
Finally, contrary to any number of unimaginatively-written SF& Horror stories clones haven't shown any special abilities or to be any more susceptible to demonic possession (though with Siamese cats this may be moot - who could tell if they're being unnaturally evil?) However there is a high rate of failure and the produced animals have shown a greater susceptibility to illness and abnormalities (again, with Siamese cats this is also about par for the course already.)
Is it possible the general public doesn't care about these machines?
Is it possible the public doesn't care? Yes.
Witness "The Computer Museum". Originally Gordon Bell's private collection (as in the VAX guy then Nat'l Science Foundation) it was formalized into "The Digital Computer Museum" - Digital as in DEC.
Later when folks at other companies became leery of donating gifts to their competitor's in-house museum it was spun off into the space built for a transportation museum and became "The Computer Museum". Gordon's wife Gwen took a leadership role, DEC donated lots of support and the place went... nowhere.
It was a good try. Gwen's vision had always been halls of gray boxes through to the movers and shakers of the industry would make pilgrimages, fund through philanthropic impulse, perhaps hold power lunches at a cafe. Instead the bread-and-butter reality of school groups and tourists finally prevailed and more "friendly" exhibits (eg the Walk-Through Computer) were installed as budgets permitted.
However too little too late. The costs of running a museum were high, lots of local computer groups were themselves failing (many of them burning the TCM along the way) and the place never really found its feet. The great hope of the sexy Java-based virtual fish tank teaching all sorts of interesting theories took a few million bucks in donations and produced a pretty but most incomprehensible exhibit that, frankly, tanked the place.
The programs went to Boston's Museum of Science, the collections out to the west coast branch where they were reincarnated as what we see today.
So - do folks care? I doubt it.
There's a limited set of folks that are willing to pay to see collections of old boxes.
There are a limited number of folks willing to come and see tomorrows-technologies-today even in Silly Valley and these are by definition short-lived exhibits requiring constant rotation.
There is a limited amount of corporate-sponsorship possible before place looses credibility and appears to (or does) sell out and becomes a big sales gimmick.
There's a limited amount of government monies out there for museums, historical objects, and research.
Museums cost. Yes I know to folks on the outside they look nice and simple but they're not. What you see on the floor is usually far less then 1/10th of a collection: A collection that requires high-quality (museum-quality) storage if you're to treat it right for the ages. It requires research and documentation and maintenance. It requires insurance and access and continual expansion if it is to keep up. The public facilities themselves need to be maintained and insured and secured and managed. The exhibits must be maintained and updated and replaced on a regular place if you want folks to ever come back. Grants need to be applied for and marketing has to happen to get word out and keep folks coming. Staff needs to be paid for as well as support be given to research programs and visiting scholars. Then there are the daily school groups and tour groups and regular private rentals and public special events etc.
This all takes a lot of money and widespread support, particularly if you're to do a good job and respect the trust your collection represents.
Yes hope springs eternal but we've already been here once. Yes it's Silly Valley and there's a dearth of tourist facilities and lots of folks who did get rich on dotcom and are looking for something they can sponsor. But Boston had it's own computer folks and more students then you can shake a stick at. Six of one, half dozen of the other and it still doesn't add up to enough. I've fond memories of TCM and wish TMHC the best but feel ultimately this sort of project is too big for a stand-alone institution while serving too small a niche; other institutions like the Smithsonian with larger budgets, stronger research programs, their own collections with more facilities & more services would do better.
But hey, the second time is always better.
The author was involved at the setting up of Computer Place at Boston's Museum of Science. Later I became a manager at The Computer Museum. Afterwards I went back to school and from there into industry though I've always kept up with much of The Computer Museum news from a distance. If we met there drop a line.
Anyone else wanna take walk into the PHB's office with this thing in a pan, shout out "Lets kick this up a notch!" and toss on some chopped chillis and cilantro?
By the way, for those of us that live in places where it gets cold a good word of warning to users, particularly laptop folks, is to let their electronics warm up & dry off before using them.
Leaving gear in the car trunk or wherever, particularly overnight, cools it down to ambient which in Montreal right now is about -10c to -20c at night. Then bringing it into one's nice warm steamy house means condensation on components like the hard drive, some batteries, metal shields, etc. This film of moisture can cause problems like corrosion and shorting resulting in everything from intermittant flakiness to outright failure.
Thus aside from sticktion and under-spec cold batteries & capaciters & the thermal stress of running a frozen laptop/palmtop it's just best to let the whole thing warm up and dry out before using. In those cases putting on top of the 'fridge (where the warm air from the condensor blows up) or inside an oven with a pilot light AND NOT USING THE OVEN or on a table near (not *on*) a radiator are all actually good ideas.
... a project with a technological/learning/experimental bent that can be carried out over two days in 2005, across six continents, involving on the order of 3000 children as participants, drawing from a multi-million dollar budget.
Translated:
I need ideas for a feel-good high-tech PR project. We've got some money to blow
(unsubstantiated & IMHO very dubious) and want the techies to give us suggestions.
Well, to start off with the idea of some small bit of technology distributed to ~3,000 kids for two days will change the world is flat out stupid.
If you or your backers were really interested in something substantive then you'd be looking at plugging into some established organization and seeing that the money or tools or whatever resources you have to offer can realisticly do with real-world issues (and yes, lots of those folks can blue-sky dream too, just they've got an idea of how 3000 kids lives could be made better in a substantive way.)
But no, you want a big pile of sponsored egoboo with some web-site left afterwards as a testament to your vision and caring. Bleh.
Topics I can't predict, but I can tell you the mediums I desire.
Nicely bound books that open flat and have a bit of margin-room for notes. The cover needn't be elaborate or thick or anything, heck a nice bit of plastic would do just as well. Headings that make sense and are at the top of each page. Even better Chapter / Subject / Topic on each page top.
Along with this I'd like a decent web site, something that contains the full text of the book with corrections & updates highlighted on a changes-page as well as in the body. Personally I don't see these as competing with the bound version of the book but if need be have some sort of coupon or registration system but put that web site up.
I'd also really like it if there were some sort of Wiki or other notes system attachable to the various parts of the online book where other readers can put their own notes and share them, pointers to other resources, updates etc. This would require some sort of administration I realize but would immensely add to the value of the book, presumably be a good sales medium for related products.
Along with this a Bayesian logic "Help Engine" would be most appreciated. Half of the time I know that whatever is in the book, I just can't find it. A "wizerd" guiding me to the right spot drawing on the index and glossary would be most appreciated.
Finally, and this seems terribly trivial to me but it is so rarely done: I'd like to be able to type in the page number of my bound book (in URL)and jump right to it in the online version, check for updates etc. I know I can drill down to it from the online index but page numbers are useful markers and can be trivially used as pointers in the online version.
Oh, and having worked with any nuber of non-native anglophones over the years a button for machine-translating a page on the website into whatever else is availiable would also help many of those folks. It may not be the best quality translation but sometimes it's enough to kick the mental gear far enough it all makes sense. Going to a 3rd-party service for the translation is a hassle, building in a translate link would be useful.
Its Miguel's company, and in the free market he's free to make whatever strategic decisions he likes.
Ximian is Miguel's company - Gnome is not.
If RMS doesn't like it, he can either make an equity investment in Ximian, or he can shut his cake hole.
One need not have an investment to comment or have an opinion on a subject.
The "G" in Gnome stands for GNU, which RMS very much does have a legitimate interest in.
This man is becoming increasingly irritating, a modern day Rasputin (in looks as well as deeds).
I'm sorry - when did a dresscode get implimented? Please submit an 8x10 glossy of yourself for us to comment upon before you make another such clueless posting.
Oh great, RMS, MS,.NET, Gnome, can we get more/. hot-button things into there?
RMS is a person; try to avoid ad-hominem attacks and instead focus on his acts & ideas
Miguel de Icaza also deserves the same respect
MS is a business - it is not inherently evil nor has Bill Gates been conclusively identified as Cthulu-Jr
MS puts out lots of ideas & products. Just like with any other ideas they can be used for good or ill, or as intended by MS or not
RMS through the GNU licenses does have an interest in how & where they are applied (to ensure compliance.) It is reasonable to anticipate possible conflicts and resolve them early
Or this can all degenerate into a bunch of folks screaming how they don't like whatever
OK - first I'm not a Newton-nut. I never owned one, never used one, glanced at friend's and said "Sweet".
That out of the way it was a sweet bit o technology, if big and bulky and with handwriting recognition that took a few revs to get worked out.
However it also had NewtonScript which appears to have been a fab development environment and incorperated some really useful ideas about a common OS-service database; something which Palm & MS-Palm folks are now really hurting for.
So, and regardless of the move to ARM processors, I'm wondering if anyone is considering doing a gnuwtonscript and releasing that? I'm well aware that Apple holds that code tightly to it's breast, has no intentions of making it's own palm-device (and so averred in an SEC-regulated announcement last year) and that the Newton folks were soon scattered to the winds after their unit was shut down...
But a decade later it seems to be a thing that would be wildly popular and fit right into the emerging needs of the little beasts.
-- Michael
ps Please feel free to correct me on the details, like I said I was never a Newton-person other then admiring them from afar.
Why would I want to swap mywhatever for yourwhatever?
Do you think that many folks would be interested in my collection of big-furry-guy-smut and male chorus recordings?
P2P works 'cause folks can browse. Without browsing we might as well all burn CDs and send them chain-mail to eachother, then at least there'd be a chance of tastes being somewhat congruent.
Keep in mind, the calendar in use at the time had 12 months of 30 days each. (There is some evidence that the earth's orbit has slowed down. Many ancient civilizations had a 360 day year.)
Care to offer a reputable cite for that "earth's orbit has slowed down" statement? Every case I'm aware of as an orbit decays it gets *shorter* and *faster*. Furthermore there's never been any relationship between our planet's orbit and it's rotationial speed (years/days.)
Or is this one of those bits of knowledge handed out in those little paper tracts I toss away?
Actually it is (almost) the same Rexx - one of my old Amiga buddies way back when went nuts when he discovered Rexx on his Amiga, apparently they supported it really well.
So there's a point but is it unique?
Wintel has VB able to claw into most things and easy to play with as well as ports of most big scripting languages including (I believe) Rexx. MacOS & MacOS X both (and their applications!) support their native AppleScript as well as standard hooks (Open Scripting Architecture) for any number of other languages including Perl, TCL, Phython and even JavaScript. Linux/BSD/etc. of course have all of those scripting languages though few of their larger applications support scripting in any sort of universally structured way (command line switches notwithstanding.)
A great scripting language is a joy and yes Amiga was innovative in that on a GUI platform but that was then, today it's hardly a distinguishing feature. Heck if that were critical we'd be knee deep in OS/2 right now (IMHO a kewler OS then Amiga and having it's own stalwarts.)
Lovely theory and one a bunch of folks followed into the money pit.
Bandwidth costs: That episode of Enterprise is gonna take anywhere from 250-500MB and your $2, demographic information and eyeballs for 8 minutes of commercials ain't gonna cover it.
Next while it's not easy to fast-forward or skip commercials right now it will be about two hours after such a service as you're proposing is released.
Then there's the point that in that first hundred of folks to download this will be a few who will chop out the irrelevant bits and throw them on their p2p servers and the whole model will collapse 'cause there are a lot of folks willing to share (even though it doesn't work big-scale economically) and others more then happy to get without paying.
Now, some sort of on-demand streaming is likely to happen, but it's gonna involve lots of heavy encryption and may not use your PC at all but a game console, hopped up DVD-player or most likely a next-gen TiVo-type player. The streaming will likely come from your cable head-end and you'll pay just lik you do existing Pay-Per-View.
At last an affordable replacement to the (RIP) Tivo (although I think they still sell them in the US... more extremely rich geeks there I suppose).
They're in business, selling well, did great over the holiday season, just shipped v.2 hardware and secured a US$50 million round of financing.
It's a bit before its time, though. Home users haven't really got the bandwidth to use this (ADSL penetration in the UK is at something like 1.5% of households... the rest are on 56K). The kind of people who have broadband & don't mind waiting 3 hours for an episode of star trek to download can already get all this by trawling Usenet, and the rest haven't got the patience or the hardware.
Actually much of this has moved to the p2p services as Usenet is becoming clogged, retention times are down and really it's about the worst medium for distributing big binaries like these.
I thought the idea of putting your favourite programs on an IPAQ was amusing... 32MB wouldn't get you much video (about a minute if you're lucky, more if you don't give a crap about the quality).
Apparently you're also out of the loop on compression these days - figure each minute on something with an iPaq-size screen taking under 1 MB. A typical Star Trek Enterprise episode with intro and all at very good quality at a reasonable size clocks in at about 300-450 MB.
Wow - 3 for 3 and you were wrong on each, got anything else you need to be corrected on? This is/. y'know, news for folks who might know what they're talking about.
If the Aussies can't fund their own program I'm sure any number of other nations or private institutions would be willing to receive the materials and maintain them.
Or no doubt some biotech company might be willing to do so in return for rights to the contents and any future derivatives thereof...
Of course these sorts of prospects usually spur native donors and the project is thus "rescued" but it is sad that things come to such a crisis, particularly when the Australian fauna (and flora) are unique in the world.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
Thanks for the great response. Apparently the ability to have different bit-depth screens is important to some folks.
I'm still not sure how critical it is to the majority of us nor that it can't be reproduced (and some if it's functioniality seems predicated on remedying other Amiga OS weaknesses) but yes, I can see the advantages. Again, I wouldn't be suprised if MacOS X can't offer much of what you want with some work but it'll never run those 100's of games, at least not natively (hmmm - Virtual PC running....) nor behave like the WorkBench.
Each to his own.
So do you think there are enough folks interested in using Amiga or enough developers willing to support it that it will ever "take off" in any more-then-obscure-hobbyist way? I know anything is possible but do you expect it to happen or are we seeing the cadaver get yet another shock through the heart but afterwards it'll still be laying there on the table, lovely but going nowhere fast?
Slashdot Mirror
S'allright - soon as they heard they surrendered. You're now in charge; can you do something about the dog poop?
Really? Actually there were many changes into the Mac UI. There were watershed events like the introduction of the Platinum look but along the way many tweaks were rolled out also:
(apologies if I don't know the proper terms)
- Collapsable "Windowshade" widget and action
- Drag-to-a-bottom-tab windows
- Tear-off task switcher
- Pop-open folders for drilling-down
- Navigation Services
- Heirarchical Apple Menu
- The still-born Themes & sound-sets
- The applet-bar (blanking completely on the name)
- Adoption of Alt-Tab for task switching
- The fully keyboard-navigatable desktop
While they weren't jarring in-your-face changes they were all significent changes and certianly not symptomatic of a moribund UI.Why?
Nobody is suggesting anyone be locked into these. Nobody is suggesting these be graven into stone never to become v.2 as progress marches on.
What this would do would be provide a common basis for new folks, a baseline for support folks, a universal look for screen-shots and documentation. If along the way some solid UI design were applied, usability testing done and minimal esthetics incorporated then so much the better.
Tweak away, replace, bend, fold, spindle, mutilate. But at least folks who are bewildered and lost could go to a common default and see something reasonable and trivially relate it to the documention or support folks. A simple menu option of "Default" would do wonders and all the better that it be consistant across toolkits.
Of course the next question is "What?" Here's where I think a good process of involving folks who are knowledgable in this area along with things like testing and feedback and skills in UI-standards-making would be incredibly valuable. Nothing against the coders but frankly, and many would agree, many desktops today are bad Windows reimplementations, wannabe-MacOS X looks or terrible pistaches of any number of good-ideas-running-into-eachother. A committee of KDE and Gnome AND others working on a timeline with a budget and a set of goals and opportunity for community feedback would be ideal, something with conflict-resolution built in from the beginning.
And if it stinks up the place it gets ignored. Or fixed in v.2. But at least we'll have taken the chance of a basic common UI gtting a shot and possibly accruing the benefits that would accrue from such. As for those looking to use something different, more innovative, more complex, more suited to them - go right ahead.
Bell Express Vu satellite TV service already works just fine though I expect they're just piping through the listings they've already got. Of course that's also only a listing of just what they offer and not trying to track what the various broadcast markets have along with the numerous cable services and their numerous tiers & packages.
Eventually the Canadian market will get served. All of the suppliers have stated this; it's just that they're focusing on filling out their large US markets along with the very-experienced-with-paying-for-TV UK. Doubtless when they can put some capitol into further expansion, get some more experience operating outside of their native land, become familiar with multilingual services, then they'll make their respective grabs for the Canadian market.
By the way apparently serving these numerous local listings is not a trivial problem. Bell's own Sympatico ISP/Portal dropped the listings they offered when their supplier TVGrid.Com went bust, hasn't replaced them yet. I believe TV Guide Canada still offers listings but that's about it. Anyone know who serves the newspapers for their guides?
As to the US I know TiVo is supplied by Tribune but TiVo has also stated that they've built their system so they can change providers based on services and costs, there's no lock-in. This is promising as should a Canadian provider negotiate a contract with TiVo or Replay or any other PVR system and these businesses make the dual-language jump then things should go quickly.
Boohoo
If you want the Soreson codec then find someone to pony up the cold hard cash to license it. The developers put a lot of work into it and decided this is how they want it to go. That they didn't give it away - well hell that's their right. Apple saw it, liked it, ponied up the money to license it. No guns or extortion were involved.
On the other hand QuickTime is pretty much free to use and doesn't depend on the Sorenson codec, works with lots of codecs.
For that matter why aren't you bleating about MS and their licensed formats? Or Real?
Codecs are hard to build, require LOTS of work and yes those folks are loathe to give it away. Sorry - not everything is free and we don't live in a socialist economy.
As to Apple and it's Aqua theme - again they spent a lot of work developing their trade dress and yes have a right to defend it. Sorry it's soo nice, got develop your own look and quit trying to rip off others.
So how's Apple "helping" you? By giving away lots of their stuff. Not all of it - tough. If you disagree send me your car keys or is all property theft in your world?
Soo tired of the gimme-gimme-gimme whiners.
MS Office X runs with Apple's Carbon compatibility layer (even though it's no longer able to run on MacOS 8 or 9.) This isn't the same as running on Apple's Cocoa Nextstep-based libraries and not at all like running on raw Unix.
So yeah, it's running on Unix, however pretty much entirely within a proprietary Apple compatibility library that is MacOS X specific and itself unlikely and probably unable to be ported to other Unix flavors.
Great for MacOS X folks, not very relevant to the rest of the Unix world.
- This is a genetic clone, the same as an "identical twin"
- Even "identical twins" are often not actually identical; for example hair and pigment patterns often differ. The same is true for clones.
- While temperament and other characteristics are likely somewhat inherited prenatal nutrition and womb environment have significant if poorly-understood effects
- Furthermore how the animal is raised (nurture) also has a profound influence on the temperament and behaviors of an animal
So, while this critter may indeed may be a clone it is not the original reincarnated and will differ in any number of ways.Finally, contrary to any number of unimaginatively-written SF& Horror stories clones haven't shown any special abilities or to be any more susceptible to demonic possession (though with Siamese cats this may be moot - who could tell if they're being unnaturally evil?) However there is a high rate of failure and the produced animals have shown a greater susceptibility to illness and abnormalities (again, with Siamese cats this is also about par for the course already.)
Is it possible the public doesn't care? Yes.
Witness "The Computer Museum". Originally Gordon Bell's private collection (as in the VAX guy then Nat'l Science Foundation) it was formalized into "The Digital Computer Museum" - Digital as in DEC.
Later when folks at other companies became leery of donating gifts to their competitor's in-house museum it was spun off into the space built for a transportation museum and became "The Computer Museum". Gordon's wife Gwen took a leadership role, DEC donated lots of support and the place went... nowhere.
It was a good try. Gwen's vision had always been halls of gray boxes through to the movers and shakers of the industry would make pilgrimages, fund through philanthropic impulse, perhaps hold power lunches at a cafe. Instead the bread-and-butter reality of school groups and tourists finally prevailed and more "friendly" exhibits (eg the Walk-Through Computer) were installed as budgets permitted.
However too little too late. The costs of running a museum were high, lots of local computer groups were themselves failing (many of them burning the TCM along the way) and the place never really found its feet. The great hope of the sexy Java-based virtual fish tank teaching all sorts of interesting theories took a few million bucks in donations and produced a pretty but most incomprehensible exhibit that, frankly, tanked the place.
The programs went to Boston's Museum of Science, the collections out to the west coast branch where they were reincarnated as what we see today.
So - do folks care? I doubt it.
Museums cost. Yes I know to folks on the outside they look nice and simple but they're not. What you see on the floor is usually far less then 1/10th of a collection: A collection that requires high-quality (museum-quality) storage if you're to treat it right for the ages. It requires research and documentation and maintenance. It requires insurance and access and continual expansion if it is to keep up. The public facilities themselves need to be maintained and insured and secured and managed. The exhibits must be maintained and updated and replaced on a regular place if you want folks to ever come back. Grants need to be applied for and marketing has to happen to get word out and keep folks coming. Staff needs to be paid for as well as support be given to research programs and visiting scholars. Then there are the daily school groups and tour groups and regular private rentals and public special events etc.
This all takes a lot of money and widespread support, particularly if you're to do a good job and respect the trust your collection represents.
Yes hope springs eternal but we've already been here once. Yes it's Silly Valley and there's a dearth of tourist facilities and lots of folks who did get rich on dotcom and are looking for something they can sponsor. But Boston had it's own computer folks and more students then you can shake a stick at. Six of one, half dozen of the other and it still doesn't add up to enough. I've fond memories of TCM and wish TMHC the best but feel ultimately this sort of project is too big for a stand-alone institution while serving too small a niche; other institutions like the Smithsonian with larger budgets, stronger research programs, their own collections with more facilities & more services would do better.
But hey, the second time is always better.
The author was involved at the setting up of Computer Place at Boston's Museum of Science. Later I became a manager at The Computer Museum. Afterwards I went back to school and from there into industry though I've always kept up with much of The Computer Museum news from a distance. If we met there drop a line.
Leaving gear in the car trunk or wherever, particularly overnight, cools it down to ambient which in Montreal right now is about -10c to -20c at night. Then bringing it into one's nice warm steamy house means condensation on components like the hard drive, some batteries, metal shields, etc. This film of moisture can cause problems like corrosion and shorting resulting in everything from intermittant flakiness to outright failure.
Thus aside from sticktion and under-spec cold batteries & capaciters & the thermal stress of running a frozen laptop/palmtop it's just best to let the whole thing warm up and dry out before using. In those cases putting on top of the 'fridge (where the warm air from the condensor blows up) or inside an oven with a pilot light AND NOT USING THE OVEN or on a table near (not *on*) a radiator are all actually good ideas.
Foolish PHB, everyone knows you use a Microwave, not a Gas Oven!
Some people...
On "This Old Geek hosted by McGyver" Feb 29th (not availiable on all PBS stations, ask your parents for permission first.)
Translated:
Well, to start off with the idea of some small bit of technology distributed to ~3,000 kids for two days will change the world is flat out stupid.
If you or your backers were really interested in something substantive then you'd be looking at plugging into some established organization and seeing that the money or tools or whatever resources you have to offer can realisticly do with real-world issues (and yes, lots of those folks can blue-sky dream too, just they've got an idea of how 3000 kids lives could be made better in a substantive way.)
But no, you want a big pile of sponsored egoboo with some web-site left afterwards as a testament to your vision and caring. Bleh.
Nicely bound books that open flat and have a bit of margin-room for notes. The cover needn't be elaborate or thick or anything, heck a nice bit of plastic would do just as well. Headings that make sense and are at the top of each page. Even better Chapter / Subject / Topic on each page top.
Along with this I'd like a decent web site, something that contains the full text of the book with corrections & updates highlighted on a changes-page as well as in the body. Personally I don't see these as competing with the bound version of the book but if need be have some sort of coupon or registration system but put that web site up.
I'd also really like it if there were some sort of Wiki or other notes system attachable to the various parts of the online book where other readers can put their own notes and share them, pointers to other resources, updates etc. This would require some sort of administration I realize but would immensely add to the value of the book, presumably be a good sales medium for related products.
Along with this a Bayesian logic "Help Engine" would be most appreciated. Half of the time I know that whatever is in the book, I just can't find it. A "wizerd" guiding me to the right spot drawing on the index and glossary would be most appreciated.
Finally, and this seems terribly trivial to me but it is so rarely done: I'd like to be able to type in the page number of my bound book (in URL)and jump right to it in the online version, check for updates etc. I know I can drill down to it from the online index but page numbers are useful markers and can be trivially used as pointers in the online version.
Oh, and having worked with any nuber of non-native anglophones over the years a button for machine-translating a page on the website into whatever else is availiable would also help many of those folks. It may not be the best quality translation but sometimes it's enough to kick the mental gear far enough it all makes sense. Going to a 3rd-party service for the translation is a hassle, building in a translate link would be useful.
- One need not have an investment to comment or have an opinion on a subject.
- The "G" in Gnome stands for GNU, which RMS very much does have a legitimate interest in.
I'm sorry - when did a dresscode get implimented? Please submit an 8x10 glossy of yourself for us to comment upon before you make another such clueless posting.-
RMS is a person; try to avoid ad-hominem attacks and instead focus on his acts & ideas
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Miguel de Icaza also deserves the same respect
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MS is a business - it is not inherently evil nor has Bill Gates been conclusively identified as Cthulu-Jr
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MS puts out lots of ideas & products. Just like with any other ideas they can be used for good or ill, or as intended by MS or not
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RMS through the GNU licenses does have an interest in how & where they are applied (to ensure compliance.) It is reasonable to anticipate possible conflicts and resolve them early
Or this can all degenerate into a bunch of folks screaming how they don't like whateverThat out of the way it was a sweet bit o technology, if big and bulky and with handwriting recognition that took a few revs to get worked out.
However it also had NewtonScript which appears to have been a fab development environment and incorperated some really useful ideas about a common OS-service database; something which Palm & MS-Palm folks are now really hurting for.
So, and regardless of the move to ARM processors, I'm wondering if anyone is considering doing a gnuwtonscript and releasing that? I'm well aware that Apple holds that code tightly to it's breast, has no intentions of making it's own palm-device (and so averred in an SEC-regulated announcement last year) and that the Newton folks were soon scattered to the winds after their unit was shut down...
But a decade later it seems to be a thing that would be wildly popular and fit right into the emerging needs of the little beasts.
-- Michael
ps Please feel free to correct me on the details, like I said I was never a Newton-person other then admiring them from afar.
Do you think that many folks would be interested in my collection of big-furry-guy-smut and male chorus recordings?
P2P works 'cause folks can browse. Without browsing we might as well all burn CDs and send them chain-mail to eachother, then at least there'd be a chance of tastes being somewhat congruent.
Or is this one of those bits of knowledge handed out in those little paper tracts I toss away?
So there's a point but is it unique?
Wintel has VB able to claw into most things and easy to play with as well as ports of most big scripting languages including (I believe) Rexx. MacOS & MacOS X both (and their applications!) support their native AppleScript as well as standard hooks (Open Scripting Architecture) for any number of other languages including Perl, TCL, Phython and even JavaScript. Linux/BSD/etc. of course have all of those scripting languages though few of their larger applications support scripting in any sort of universally structured way (command line switches notwithstanding.)
A great scripting language is a joy and yes Amiga was innovative in that on a GUI platform but that was then, today it's hardly a distinguishing feature. Heck if that were critical we'd be knee deep in OS/2 right now (IMHO a kewler OS then Amiga and having it's own stalwarts.)
Bandwidth costs: That episode of Enterprise is gonna take anywhere from 250-500MB and your $2, demographic information and eyeballs for 8 minutes of commercials ain't gonna cover it.
Next while it's not easy to fast-forward or skip commercials right now it will be about two hours after such a service as you're proposing is released.
Then there's the point that in that first hundred of folks to download this will be a few who will chop out the irrelevant bits and throw them on their p2p servers and the whole model will collapse 'cause there are a lot of folks willing to share (even though it doesn't work big-scale economically) and others more then happy to get without paying.
Now, some sort of on-demand streaming is likely to happen, but it's gonna involve lots of heavy encryption and may not use your PC at all but a game console, hopped up DVD-player or most likely a next-gen TiVo-type player. The streaming will likely come from your cable head-end and you'll pay just lik you do existing Pay-Per-View.
Wow - 3 for 3 and you were wrong on each, got anything else you need to be corrected on? This is /. y'know, news for folks who might know what they're talking about.
Or no doubt some biotech company might be willing to do so in return for rights to the contents and any future derivatives thereof...
Of course these sorts of prospects usually spur native donors and the project is thus "rescued" but it is sad that things come to such a crisis, particularly when the Australian fauna (and flora) are unique in the world.
I'm still not sure how critical it is to the majority of us nor that it can't be reproduced (and some if it's functioniality seems predicated on remedying other Amiga OS weaknesses) but yes, I can see the advantages. Again, I wouldn't be suprised if MacOS X can't offer much of what you want with some work but it'll never run those 100's of games, at least not natively (hmmm - Virtual PC running....) nor behave like the WorkBench.
Each to his own.
So do you think there are enough folks interested in using Amiga or enough developers willing to support it that it will ever "take off" in any more-then-obscure-hobbyist way? I know anything is possible but do you expect it to happen or are we seeing the cadaver get yet another shock through the heart but afterwards it'll still be laying there on the table, lovely but going nowhere fast?
grin