What? Get the hell off Slashdot. You've forfeited your geek license.
He's right though, although in a meaningless way. The price will go up because of inflation... but the money available will have gone up too (assuming they put it in some safe mutual funds and didn't just sit on the cash)
That's like saying, "today, RAM costs $n/GB. In six years, it will be up to $3n/GB."
No, it'd be more accurately like "Today RAM is $n per PC, later it will be $1.2n". That takes into account both a continual rate of monetary inflation, and the fact that you'll need more RAM to get any work done because code bloat will proceed.
Even though SFX rendering will become cheaper, for the next few decades this will just mean that films spend the same (inflation-adjusted) amount, but expect better and better results.
Ticket sales are determined by FX quality relative to other films coming out that year.
CGI like we saw in Skycaptain will be gracing the screens at independant film festivals.
Sky Captain did a poor job, so that isn't saying much. (Sin City annihilates it in every way). The fact is that Sky Captain is an extended remake of a short film that was created by an individual sitting at home with his Mac. The quality didn't improve very much in the jump to a professional studio.
Then when you install the software and click "accept", or in the case of TOS agreements, click "accept" when running the game, you're indicating your acceptance of the agreement. Boom, a contract is formed
Look up the word "indicate" in a legal dictionary. Then explain how a person ripping a plastic bag in any way "indicates" information to a corporation 3000 mi away in another time zone.
For a concrete example, I have an envelope here in my hand. If I rip it in half, I agree to mail you $400. So, have we made a contract or not? And if you have no clue as to if you've joined a contract...
As for your personal opinion, it doesn't matter much in the face of legal opinion.
All the examples you linked are irrelevant (except Moore). They deal with clicking a button which then transmits data over the internet. Those are forms of communication, and both parties have means to be aware of when they enter that contract. A shrinkwrap or clickthru installer should not be valid because the publisher has no way to know what's going on.
Courts have already ruled numerous times that as long as a license
Not the first time a court has ruled in direct opposition to both the letter and spirit of a law. It's about politics.
If I buy a car, do I need to check it all for any text somewere that I would be bound by?
What we need is a car with a little sign that pops up from the steering wheel the first time you get it over 55 mph: "Would you like to contribute an extra $1000 to the automotive dealership? To agree to a binding billable contract, simply depress the brake pedal at any time"
Years before computers existed, there was a rule called the "mailbox rule"
There's another very strongly established legal precedent involving mailboxes. If companies mass-mail out free sample products to random homes, they can't later argue that people deciding to keep the products instead of returning them constitutes some form of joining a contract.
That is much closer to how how shrinkwrap contracts "work".
Most contracts are signed without any negotiation other than the 2nd party consenting to a prepared contract from the 1st party. Typical examples: rentals, lease agreements, fed-ex/ups shipping, etc.
Wrong. I can negotiate with those guys. Their answer will always be "No", but we're still having a negotiation. If I'm renting a car and I use a pen to edit the rental agreement before signing, the clerk will refuse to take it. He's not authorized to accept any contracts not on the list, and because we are negotiating, he has the power to confirm that.
But if I take a pen to a shrinkwrap "contract" sticker on a software box, there is no way for the company to object to my modifications, because we're not really in any kind of position to enter a contract at all.
Rule of thumb: you can't make a contract without some way to communicate.
Years before computers existed, there was a rule called the "mailbox rule", which basically stated that if someone sent you a contract form that said "All that is required is your signature", it was viewed as fully accepted when the recipient put the signed form in the mailbox.
That rule is still around. It just bears no relationship to shrinkwrap or click-thru EULAs.
The mailbox, you see, is a means of COMMUNICATION. By sending back the signed form, you are COMMUNICATING your consent. The other party will be aware that you have decided to enter a contract with them.
Sometimes the word "indicated" is used instead of "communicate", but they both mean the same thing: you take some action for the sole purpose of informing the other party of your consent. I can't pick some action which you are likely to do anyway and declare that I'll interpret it as you willfully joining a binding contract. But I'll give it a try:
By closing this browser window, you agree to mail me $500
Maybe I'll get lucky, but I somehow doubt you'll believe yourself bound by that arbitrary rule from me. Because, after all, we aren't really in direct enough communication to enter into a contract, are we?
Now, at what point in opening a shrinkwrapped box or clicking through an installer (on a non-internet connected PC) does the user communicate anything to the publisher?
and how does that promote science and the arts? and why for a limited time?
The fact that you wrote a question like that shows that you've already given up on trying to challenge my assertion. The rest of your post is just irrelevancies that happen to be true. They might suffice as arguments in some other thread, but are unrelated to my very simple claim.
there is a big difference between something in your FOV and something in focus.
Incidently, you said "see", not "focus". Again, a big difference, and perhaps an indication that you should read what you're typing.
Perhaps you should try reading more carefully the second time through.
Nope, having read it 3 more times, I see that I was still perfectly correct.
To me, that sounds like excusing the slowness of the QWERTY keyboard because slowing things down is always better.
You said it!
Sure. Next time I'm driving NASCAR, I'll let you know. But the reality is that most people aren't NASCAR drivers.
Professional racing is the kind of real-life driving closest to what happens in the videogames you are basing your recommendation of off. Racers have a greater need to make sudden unplanned turns than other people. Also, they have more freedom to modify their vehicles in ways that might violate government rules for the open road.
Yet, they don't use joysticks, and keep steering wheels by preference.
Incidentally, I said "easier", not "better". Again, a big difference,
Wrong, there is little real difference. Every GUI user places "Ease of use" high up in her rankings of importance, so "easy" and "best" are nearly interchangable in this context.
perhaps an indication that you should read what you're replying to.
Actually, it seems more like YOU should read your own messages, so as to know what I'm replying to. For your convenience, here's the question of yours which I (correctly) answered:
I've always found a joystick or controller pad easier to use than a steering wheel. Why, then, do we still use steering wheels in cars?
If you didn't want an answer, don't ask.
But to answer the question, a steering wheel impedes every car game in existence.
That might be true in some limited situations, such as if you are playing an unrealistic game or seated at a chair unlike any a driver could use. Both of those conditions are fairly common, but they invalidate your experience as being predictive for how real cars might behave with a joystick.
That sounds okay, until you realise that no two X applications share the same clipboard.
Funny, I just used C-c / C-v to copy that line from Mozilla Firefox and paste it first into XChat and second into Kopete (another IRC client in KDE, stylistically distinct from konversation). WFM
When a background window wants to pop up a message, it does not steal the focus
Here, students, we can see a simple case of the logical fallacy: "Trying to prove a negative by example". In psychology, we call this the "fundamental attribution error"
A dialog box will pop up IN YOUR CURRENT TAB alerting you that, HELLO, some tab 26 tab
Even worse, is that the dialog will pop up even if there already is a dialog open saying exactly the same thing. So for example, if you visit a few news sites which use META REFRESH HTTP headers, and then leave the computer unattended for a few hours while the internet is disconnected, you can return to literally 99+ little dialogs reporting on the outage.
If the left half of space were meant to be backspace, that would have happened on at least one widely sold typewriter.
Absolutely invalid. Pressing backspace on a typewriter produces a result that is tremendously different and far less useful than pressing it on a computer, so the popularity just isn't directly comprable.
There's not really much the OS can do about this sort of thing
Wrong. Microsoft can and does dictate the install/uninstall behavior of applications that want to bear a Windows Compatible logo.
They could change this situation simply by publishing the recommended correct way to handle it, and then editing their flagship applications to be good examples.
It doesn't take a genius to let installer authors suggest their programs for entry into one of ~10 standard categories, instead of placing them under menus labelled by software publisher.
it's solely in the hands of the applications developers how they choose to create their entries in the Start Menu (or equivalents on other OSes).
Yes, that is where the problem comes from. Installation shouldn't have been left in the hands of individual application developers to figure out whatever they like best. At minimum, there should've been a standard example installer that each Windows app could copy from.
For your OS X dock issue, just drag the Applications folder into the dock.
That should have been the default. An important thing like a menu of applications shouldn't be left for each user to recreate on his own. And even if you do move the app folder down there, it's still not as good as the old app menu (in the upper left corner of OS 9 and previous). That menu (1) was always in the same place, never shifting around depending on the number of open windows. (2) was easiest to click on, because it was in the CORNER of the screen, so the mouse could never go past it. (3) was faster to open, because it worked with a single click, instead of holding the button down while a timer runs.
Or, to put it more generically, what's your UI going to be for saving data from within applications originating from outside the scope of the "local machine" ?
What has been done is give each document window an icon in the upper-left indicating the filetype. Dragging that icon into a folder window saves a copy of the document in that position. (To make that workable, you'd create shortcuts to the standard folders in the corner of your desktop).
That kind of scheme is about as convenient as dragging files to the Trash to delete them.
You have to tilt your head further to see the indicators or mirrors, much further than you'd ever have to tilt it to see any corner of a computer monitor.
Only the passenger door mirror. The other two mirrors should be constantly within the FOV of a non-impaired driver.
The automatic has largely improved the situation with the gear stick, but you still have a stick which you need to touch reasonably often.
Often? Twice per trip, unless parking is very tight. With automatics, you really only need the stick to toggle from forward to backward movement. And if it were
From experience in gaming, I've always found a joystick or controller pad easier to use than a steering wheel.
Absolutely, horribly, dangerously wrong! Joysticks for cars have been tried, and they are far worse. A simple experiment between gamepads and Logitech racing wheels should be able to demonstrate. The steering wheel means that extreme turns require big motions, and this is a critical safety feature.
NASCAR drivers could have joysticks in their cars if they preferred (it would even shave off 2 lbs), but the lack of precision would kill them. If you are medically unable to operate a wheel, then you can purchase acustom joystick driving control, but they aren't popular with healthy drivers for obvious reasons. I wonder what games you've played to give the impression that thumbsicks are better than steering wheels?
I bet i can type out a simple command faster than most people can move their mouse to the corner of the screen.
Really? You seriously would prefer to play a game like Half-Life 2 by repeatedly typing "/shoot shotgun @ headcrab;/shoot shotgun @ zombie;/shoot laser @ cyborg-alien-police-thing;" ?
Let's see how well you last in deathmatch with that technique! Even if we give you tab-completion, the odds will be against you.
Yes it does, but I think it's really hobbled by legacy applications. Because individual application authors do too much custom GUI code deeply entwined in each program, there's no way to get apps suited for the new GUI capabilities without costly and slow individual rewrites.
it is strange that the tablet part isn't offered as a peripheral to an honest computer.
It is available. See the Viewsonic "Wireless monitor". However, there are numerous crippling drawbacks, starting with the $800 pricetag.
How often do you do something like this in the shell: for file in `find . -name \*.[ch] -print` ; do mv $file/var/backup; done
Hopely, nobody does that. Much simpler to say find . -name \*.[ch] -exec mv {}/var/backup \;
This way is not only shorter and with fewer substitutions and escapes, but it is compatible across both bash and csh. (Trivia quiz: the commands we both gave are slightly flawed. What's missing for correctness? See end*)
You're right, however, that it would be very nice if a file-management GUI made this kind of thing easy.
Suggesting that the corners of the screen ought to do something is right out of the stone age, too. Stop making me move my mouse cursor all over the place. I hate that.
Many people would enjoy it, though. Since it's impossible to move the cursor past the screen corners, they are the 4 easiest pixels to hit, especially if your mouse has exponential movement. (The problems arise when the mouse has to go all the way BACK to the previous work area, or if people start inadvertently activating popups when they just wanted to park the cursor out of the way)
This kind of disagreement over small improvements makes me wish for a better system to save user preferences globally. Wouldn't it be great if both Windows Vista and MacOS included a small utility to load (non-dangerous) GUI prefs from a given URL? That way each user could quickly reset almost any machine to act as she likes, which would also create an environment where creative GUI ideas can more quickly propagate.
* Trivia answer: There should be -- after mv, to allow compatibility with filenames beginning with -.
The prime reason why HCI (aka "GUIs") is in such a poor shape is that each application still controls its own GUI.
New OSes have little opportunity for HCI improvements because too many of the details are left down for the application programmers to decide upon. At best, the OS vendor provides a shared GUI library (buttons + widgets), and a guidebook teaching app authors the "right" way to do it.
But, depending on each individual author to carry out the instructions is fundamentally limited and slow. Not every programmer will be aware of the guidelines, choose to obey them, or be capable of following it exactly even if he tries.
And even if all coders were magically obedient to the published standard, it's still non-optimal. New ideas to improve the HCI guidelines cannot be uniformly implemented without waiting years for all programs to be updated. Computers are supposed to REDUCE redundant labor- instead of each app's GUI being written separately, all trying to implement the same guidelines, one piece of code should handle all that functionality in one place. Code reuse is a fundamental rule of software design that has taken far too long to penetrate the HCI world.
What we need are applications written to a high level GUI description service, so that the OS can implement a UI consistent with other programs and exactly tailored to the limitations of this user (Colorblind? Blind? No keyboard? No mouse? No muscular control besides blinking?)
I know that at least the video rental place I go to makes a special deal with whomever they get the DVDs from so that they are allowed to rent them out.
If you're talking about a situation unique to Holland you should mention that. The.org domain is USA by default, and in the USA neither libraries nor rental shops need any special arrangement with the publisher. As long as they've legally bought copies, they can rent them for free or charge.
(Note that some shops may have agreements as a way to save on the cost of buying the movies for full face value, but that isn't necessary)
In the USA, there was a major lawsuit by the first video rental shop which demonstrated this principle. That was around 1980.
Since they can't know what you're downloading, on what basis can they sue you?
If necessary, they'll have a whole new law drawn up. Don't think they can't.
Look at the recent DMCA. The fact that it exists shows that the US Congress is happy to make laws to prevent unauthorized digital distribution of copyrighted entertainment content.
If, as you claim, there is no legal theory by which freenet can be sued, the music lobbyists simply make up a new law prohibiting contributatory anonymization.
If P2p migrates to freenet, then freenet will be outlawed.
Dude, you can't get a patent for a program, only for an algorythm,
There is no such thing as an algorythm. However, 100% of programs are technically algorithms. They could prehaps be patented, but it'd be an enormous waste of time (and paper), considering they can be copyrighted anyway.
If you could patent programs, Microsoft would have the entire software industry sewn-up.
No, backwards. If programs were patentable, it would expire in 21 years and they'd become free. Instead, programs are copyrighted, which never expires.
Why were the IBM clones so much more successful in the end?
Because Apple sold its own OS, but Microsoft sold the OS for IBM. That meant a clone builder could put an OS on his machine without buying it from a competitor in the hardware market.
Hitler would have walked in to England in 1940, RAF or not, and, from a consolidated Europe would have likely beaten Russia.
Basically true, but not quite that much. A solid Dunkirk victory would still not've been enough to give Hitler a military landfall on Britain before 1947. It would've destroyed the RAF to the point where the Luftwaffe could have air superiority over every UK port, rendering an American landing in France impossible... but
Had the Luftwaffe not switched to city bombing, the RAF was literally down to its last day of fighter strength.
You are repeating optimistic Nazi propaganda that was disproven a week later. That is, at best, a big exaggeration. The urban targeting was a mistake, but by itself wasn't what sealed the Luftwaffe's fate. If it had been avoided, the RAF would've pulled their airstrips 50mi north, reducing their response time and increasing bombing effectiveness to the tune of thousands more deaths, but that's still far from decisive.
No one thing won the war on its own. Many individual things, in their absence, would have been enough to have lost it.
If some of those things had combined to "lose" the war, it would still have been won later. By 1949 or so, the fruits of the Manhattan Project would turn Berlin into an atomic wasteland. (Probably after a dozen other bombs had smashed Wehrmarcht strongpoints on the way into Europe)
Slashdot Mirror
What? Get the hell off Slashdot. You've forfeited your geek license.
He's right though, although in a meaningless way. The price will go up because of inflation... but the money available will have gone up too (assuming they put it in some safe mutual funds and didn't just sit on the cash)
That's like saying, "today, RAM costs $n/GB. In six years, it will be up to $3n/GB."
No, it'd be more accurately like "Today RAM is $n per PC, later it will be $1.2n". That takes into account both a continual rate of monetary inflation, and the fact that you'll need more RAM to get any work done because code bloat will proceed.
Even though SFX rendering will become cheaper, for the next few decades this will just mean that films spend the same (inflation-adjusted) amount, but expect better and better results.
Ticket sales are determined by FX quality relative to other films coming out that year.
CGI like we saw in Skycaptain will be gracing the screens at independant film festivals.
Sky Captain did a poor job, so that isn't saying much. (Sin City annihilates it in every way). The fact is that Sky Captain is an extended remake of a short film that was created by an individual sitting at home with his Mac. The quality didn't improve very much in the jump to a professional studio.
Then when you install the software and click "accept", or in the case of TOS agreements, click "accept" when running the game, you're indicating your acceptance of the agreement. Boom, a contract is formed
Look up the word "indicate" in a legal dictionary. Then explain how a person ripping a plastic bag in any way "indicates" information to a corporation 3000 mi away in another time zone.
For a concrete example, I have an envelope here in my hand. If I rip it in half, I agree to mail you $400. So, have we made a contract or not? And if you have no clue as to if you've joined a contract...
As for your personal opinion, it doesn't matter much in the face of legal opinion.
All the examples you linked are irrelevant (except Moore). They deal with clicking a button which then transmits data over the internet. Those are forms of communication, and both parties have means to be aware of when they enter that contract. A shrinkwrap or clickthru installer should not be valid because the publisher has no way to know what's going on.
Courts have already ruled numerous times that as long as a license
Not the first time a court has ruled in direct opposition to both the letter and spirit of a law. It's about politics.
If I buy a car, do I need to check it all for any text somewere that I would be bound by?
What we need is a car with a little sign that pops up from the steering wheel the first time you get it over 55 mph: "Would you like to contribute an extra $1000 to the automotive dealership? To agree to a binding billable contract, simply depress the brake pedal at any time"
Years before computers existed, there was a rule called the "mailbox rule"
There's another very strongly established legal precedent involving mailboxes. If companies mass-mail out free sample products to random homes, they can't later argue that people deciding to keep the products instead of returning them constitutes some form of joining a contract.
That is much closer to how how shrinkwrap contracts "work".
Most contracts are signed without any negotiation other than the 2nd party consenting to a prepared contract from the 1st party. Typical examples: rentals, lease agreements, fed-ex/ups shipping, etc.
Wrong. I can negotiate with those guys. Their answer will always be "No", but we're still having a negotiation. If I'm renting a car and I use a pen to edit the rental agreement before signing, the clerk will refuse to take it. He's not authorized to accept any contracts not on the list, and because we are negotiating, he has the power to confirm that.
But if I take a pen to a shrinkwrap "contract" sticker on a software box, there is no way for the company to object to my modifications, because we're not really in any kind of position to enter a contract at all.
Rule of thumb: you can't make a contract without some way to communicate.
That rule is still around. It just bears no relationship to shrinkwrap or click-thru EULAs.
The mailbox, you see, is a means of COMMUNICATION. By sending back the signed form, you are COMMUNICATING your consent. The other party will be aware that you have decided to enter a contract with them.
Sometimes the word "indicated" is used instead of "communicate", but they both mean the same thing: you take some action for the sole purpose of informing the other party of your consent. I can't pick some action which you are likely to do anyway and declare that I'll interpret it as you willfully joining a binding contract. But I'll give it a try:
Maybe I'll get lucky, but I somehow doubt you'll believe yourself bound by that arbitrary rule from me. Because, after all, we aren't really in direct enough communication to enter into a contract, are we?
Now, at what point in opening a shrinkwrapped box or clicking through an installer (on a non-internet connected PC) does the user communicate anything to the publisher?
and how does that promote science and the arts? and why for a limited time?
The fact that you wrote a question like that shows that you've already given up on trying to challenge my assertion. The rest of your post is just irrelevancies that happen to be true. They might suffice as arguments in some other thread, but are unrelated to my very simple claim.
there is a big difference between something in your FOV and something in focus.
Incidently, you said "see", not "focus". Again, a big difference, and perhaps an indication that you should read what you're typing.
Perhaps you should try reading more carefully the second time through.
Nope, having read it 3 more times, I see that I was still perfectly correct.
To me, that sounds like excusing the slowness of the QWERTY keyboard because slowing things down is always better.
You said it!
Sure. Next time I'm driving NASCAR, I'll let you know. But the reality is that most people aren't NASCAR drivers.
Professional racing is the kind of real-life driving closest to what happens in the videogames you are basing your recommendation of off. Racers have a greater need to make sudden unplanned turns than other people. Also, they have more freedom to modify their vehicles in ways that might violate government rules for the open road.
Yet, they don't use joysticks, and keep steering wheels by preference.
Incidentally, I said "easier", not "better". Again, a big difference,
Wrong, there is little real difference. Every GUI user places "Ease of use" high up in her rankings of importance, so "easy" and "best" are nearly interchangable in this context.
perhaps an indication that you should read what you're replying to.
Actually, it seems more like YOU should read your own messages, so as to know what I'm replying to. For your convenience, here's the question of yours which I (correctly) answered:
I've always found a joystick or controller pad easier to use than a steering wheel. Why, then, do we still use steering wheels in cars?
If you didn't want an answer, don't ask.
But to answer the question, a steering wheel impedes every car game in existence.
That might be true in some limited situations, such as if you are playing an unrealistic game or seated at a chair unlike any a driver could use. Both of those conditions are fairly common, but they invalidate your experience as being predictive for how real cars might behave with a joystick.
That sounds okay, until you realise that no two X applications share the same clipboard.
Funny, I just used C-c / C-v to copy that line from Mozilla Firefox and paste it first into XChat and second into Kopete (another IRC client in KDE, stylistically distinct from konversation). WFM
When a background window wants to pop up a message, it does not steal the focus
Here, students, we can see a simple case of the logical fallacy: "Trying to prove a negative by example". In psychology, we call this the "fundamental attribution error"
A dialog box will pop up IN YOUR CURRENT TAB alerting you that, HELLO, some tab 26 tab
Even worse, is that the dialog will pop up even if there already is a dialog open saying exactly the same thing. So for example, if you visit a few news sites which use META REFRESH HTTP headers, and then leave the computer unattended for a few hours while the internet is disconnected, you can return to literally 99+ little dialogs reporting on the outage.
If the left half of space were meant to be backspace, that would have happened on at least one widely sold typewriter.
Absolutely invalid. Pressing backspace on a typewriter produces a result that is tremendously different and far less useful than pressing it on a computer, so the popularity just isn't directly comprable.
There's not really much the OS can do about this sort of thing
Wrong. Microsoft can and does dictate the install/uninstall behavior of applications that want to bear a Windows Compatible logo.
They could change this situation simply by publishing the recommended correct way to handle it, and then editing their flagship applications to be good examples.
It doesn't take a genius to let installer authors suggest their programs for entry into one of ~10 standard categories, instead of placing them under menus labelled by software publisher.
it's solely in the hands of the applications developers how they choose to create their entries in the Start Menu (or equivalents on other OSes).
Yes, that is where the problem comes from. Installation shouldn't have been left in the hands of individual application developers to figure out whatever they like best. At minimum, there should've been a standard example installer that each Windows app could copy from.
For your OS X dock issue, just drag the Applications folder into the dock.
That should have been the default. An important thing like a menu of applications shouldn't be left for each user to recreate on his own. And even if you do move the app folder down there, it's still not as good as the old app menu (in the upper left corner of OS 9 and previous). That menu
(1) was always in the same place, never shifting around depending on the number of open windows.
(2) was easiest to click on, because it was in the CORNER of the screen, so the mouse could never go past it.
(3) was faster to open, because it worked with a single click, instead of holding the button down while a timer runs.
Or, to put it more generically, what's your UI going to be for saving data from within applications originating from outside the scope of the "local machine" ?
What has been done is give each document window an icon in the upper-left indicating the filetype. Dragging that icon into a folder window saves a copy of the document in that position. (To make that workable, you'd create shortcuts to the standard folders in the corner of your desktop).
That kind of scheme is about as convenient as dragging files to the Trash to delete them.
You have to tilt your head further to see the indicators or mirrors, much further than you'd ever have to tilt it to see any corner of a computer monitor.
Only the passenger door mirror. The other two mirrors should be constantly within the FOV of a non-impaired driver.
The automatic has largely improved the situation with the gear stick, but you still have a stick which you need to touch reasonably often.
Often? Twice per trip, unless parking is very tight. With automatics, you really only need the stick to toggle from forward to backward movement. And if it were
From experience in gaming, I've always found a joystick or controller pad easier to use than a steering wheel.
Absolutely, horribly, dangerously wrong! Joysticks for cars have been tried, and they are far worse. A simple experiment between gamepads and Logitech racing wheels should be able to demonstrate. The steering wheel means that extreme turns require big motions, and this is a critical safety feature.
NASCAR drivers could have joysticks in their cars if they preferred (it would even shave off 2 lbs), but the lack of precision would kill them. If you are medically unable to operate a wheel, then you can purchase a custom joystick driving control, but they aren't popular with healthy drivers for obvious reasons. I wonder what games you've played to give the impression that thumbsicks are better than steering wheels?
I bet i can type out a simple command faster than most people can move their mouse to the corner of the screen.
Really? You seriously would prefer to play a game like Half-Life 2 by repeatedly typing "/shoot shotgun @ headcrab;/shoot shotgun @ zombie;/shoot laser @ cyborg-alien-police-thing;" ?
Let's see how well you last in deathmatch with that technique! Even if we give you tab-completion, the odds will be against you.
The tablet PC shows some promise, but
Yes it does, but I think it's really hobbled by legacy applications. Because individual application authors do too much custom GUI code deeply entwined in each program, there's no way to get apps suited for the new GUI capabilities without costly and slow individual rewrites.
it is strange that the tablet part isn't offered as a peripheral to an honest computer.
It is available. See the Viewsonic "Wireless monitor". However, there are numerous crippling drawbacks, starting with the $800 pricetag.
How often do you do something like this in the shell: /var/backup; done
/var/backup \;
for file in `find . -name \*.[ch] -print` ; do mv $file
Hopely, nobody does that. Much simpler to say
find . -name \*.[ch] -exec mv {}
This way is not only shorter and with fewer substitutions and escapes, but it is compatible across both bash and csh. (Trivia quiz: the commands we both gave are slightly flawed. What's missing for correctness? See end*)
You're right, however, that it would be very nice if a file-management GUI made this kind of thing easy.
Suggesting that the corners of the screen ought to do something is right out of the stone age, too. Stop making me move my mouse cursor all over the place. I hate that.
Many people would enjoy it, though. Since it's impossible to move the cursor past the screen corners, they are the 4 easiest pixels to hit, especially if your mouse has exponential movement. (The problems arise when the mouse has to go all the way BACK to the previous work area, or if people start inadvertently activating popups when they just wanted to park the cursor out of the way)
This kind of disagreement over small improvements makes me wish for a better system to save user preferences globally. Wouldn't it be great if both Windows Vista and MacOS included a small utility to load (non-dangerous) GUI prefs from a given URL? That way each user could quickly reset almost any machine to act as she likes, which would also create an environment where creative GUI ideas can more quickly propagate.
* Trivia answer: There should be -- after mv, to allow compatibility with filenames beginning with -.
The prime reason why HCI (aka "GUIs") is in such a poor shape is that each application still controls its own GUI.
New OSes have little opportunity for HCI improvements because too many of the details are left down for the application programmers to decide upon. At best, the OS vendor provides a shared GUI library (buttons + widgets), and a guidebook teaching app authors the "right" way to do it.
But, depending on each individual author to carry out the instructions is fundamentally limited and slow. Not every programmer will be aware of the guidelines, choose to obey them, or be capable of following it exactly even if he tries.
And even if all coders were magically obedient to the published standard, it's still non-optimal. New ideas to improve the HCI guidelines cannot be uniformly implemented without waiting years for all programs to be updated. Computers are supposed to REDUCE redundant labor- instead of each app's GUI being written separately, all trying to implement the same guidelines, one piece of code should handle all that functionality in one place. Code reuse is a fundamental rule of software design that has taken far too long to penetrate the HCI world.
What we need are applications written to a high level GUI description service, so that the OS can implement a UI consistent with other programs and exactly tailored to the limitations of this user (Colorblind? Blind? No keyboard? No mouse? No muscular control besides blinking?)
I know that at least the video rental place I go to makes a special deal with whomever they get the DVDs from so that they are allowed to rent them out.
.org domain is USA by default, and in the USA neither libraries nor rental shops need any special arrangement with the publisher. As long as they've legally bought copies, they can rent them for free or charge.
If you're talking about a situation unique to Holland you should mention that. The
(Note that some shops may have agreements as a way to save on the cost of buying the movies for full face value, but that isn't necessary)
In the USA, there was a major lawsuit by the first video rental shop which demonstrated this principle. That was around 1980.
Since they can't know what you're downloading, on what basis can they sue you?
If necessary, they'll have a whole new law drawn up. Don't think they can't.
Look at the recent DMCA. The fact that it exists shows that the US Congress is happy to make laws to prevent unauthorized digital distribution of copyrighted entertainment content.
If, as you claim, there is no legal theory by which freenet can be sued, the music lobbyists simply make up a new law prohibiting contributatory anonymization.
If P2p migrates to freenet, then freenet will be outlawed.
Actually, wouldn't the first KILLER app be the Therac-25 controlling software?
No, the first software application of any kind did 1943 naval gun trajectories. Back then, people died when it functioned properly.
Dude, you can't get a patent for a program, only for an algorythm,
There is no such thing as an algorythm. However, 100% of programs are technically algorithms. They could prehaps be patented, but it'd be an enormous waste of time (and paper), considering they can be copyrighted anyway.
If you could patent programs, Microsoft would have the entire software industry sewn-up.
No, backwards. If programs were patentable, it would expire in 21 years and they'd become free. Instead, programs are copyrighted, which never expires.
Why were the IBM clones so much more successful in the end?
Because Apple sold its own OS, but Microsoft sold the OS for IBM. That meant a clone builder could put an OS on his machine without buying it from a competitor in the hardware market.
Hitler would have walked in to England in 1940, RAF or not, and, from a consolidated Europe would have likely beaten Russia.
Basically true, but not quite that much. A solid Dunkirk victory would still not've been enough to give Hitler a military landfall on Britain before 1947. It would've destroyed the RAF to the point where the Luftwaffe could have air superiority over every UK port, rendering an American landing in France impossible... but
Had the Luftwaffe not switched to city bombing, the RAF was literally down to its last day of fighter strength.
You are repeating optimistic Nazi propaganda that was disproven a week later. That is, at best, a big exaggeration. The urban targeting was a mistake, but by itself wasn't what sealed the Luftwaffe's fate. If it had been avoided, the RAF would've pulled their airstrips 50mi north, reducing their response time and increasing bombing effectiveness to the tune of thousands more deaths, but that's still far from decisive.
No one thing won the war on its own. Many individual things, in their absence, would have been enough to have lost it.
If some of those things had combined to "lose" the war, it would still have been won later. By 1949 or so, the fruits of the Manhattan Project would turn Berlin into an atomic wasteland. (Probably after a dozen other bombs had smashed Wehrmarcht strongpoints on the way into Europe)