Lissa Light and Peter Anderson (scroll to the bottom of this page) reported on their interesting research into engineering better keyboard layouts than Qwerty or Dvorak. They used a few simple heuristics (eg. it's better to hit a sequence of keys with alternating hands; it's better to keep fingers on the home keys) to obtain a fitness rating of keyboard layouts. Then they used simulated annealing techiniques to find layouts that maximized their fitness rating. Their paper is a good introduction to the art of optimizing combinatorial systems.
What does this deal mean for other thin-client productivity software, such as Applixware? This office suite was completely written in Java (afaik), and Applix has opened the source code. I tried the demo a few months ago, and I thought it worked pretty well, even through a 28.8 pipe.
I've never come across any mention of Applix in the news. Anyone familiar with Applix's level of success, or with other competitors?
Insound is the snazziest music shopping site I've come across. I'm not familiar with your progmetalwhatever, but for stuff that I'm interested in (minimalism, ambient, Japanese noise, improv, esoteric older stuff)---as well as basic college radio faves---Insound is great. They have an embedded interface to the (apparently defunct) All Music Guide, so you can learn a lot about artists that you've only heard of in passing.
While where on the topic, can someone please confirm that virii is in fact the plural of virus, and not just some silly neologism (like octopi)? I'm pretty sure that virus is third declension, with plural viri.
Also, I'd like to point out that Danny Hillis was the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, not "Connection Machines". The Connection Machine was TMC's core product. One of his current projects is to build a clock that will run for ten millenia.
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Lissa Light and Peter Anderson (scroll to the bottom of this page) reported on their interesting research into engineering better keyboard layouts than Qwerty or Dvorak. They used a few simple heuristics (eg. it's better to hit a sequence of keys with alternating hands; it's better to keep fingers on the home keys) to obtain a fitness rating of keyboard layouts. Then they used simulated annealing techiniques to find layouts that maximized their fitness rating. Their paper is a good introduction to the art of optimizing combinatorial systems.
What does this deal mean for other thin-client productivity software, such as Applixware? This office suite was completely written in Java (afaik), and Applix has opened the source code. I tried the demo a few months ago, and I thought it worked pretty well, even through a 28.8 pipe.
I've never come across any mention of Applix in the news. Anyone familiar with Applix's level of success, or with other competitors?
Insound is the snazziest music shopping site I've come across. I'm not familiar with your progmetalwhatever, but for stuff that I'm interested in (minimalism, ambient, Japanese noise, improv, esoteric older stuff)---as well as basic college radio faves---Insound is great. They have an embedded interface to the (apparently defunct) All Music Guide, so you can learn a lot about artists that you've only heard of in passing.
Also, I'd like to point out that Danny Hillis was the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, not "Connection Machines". The Connection Machine was TMC's core product. One of his current projects is to build a clock that will run for ten millenia.