The problem being, most people need a consistent interface between home and work, they want the same system in both, at least if work has to be a general purpose machine. If more work places were locked down to be a system that only did what was necessary for the job then people might be fine with a Ferrari at home, but given the choice between that high performance system at home and consitency, most would rather have the same thing both places.
Again, this isn't the geek system, this is the mother system. As the current generations mature then they may be better able to handle two systems, but right now, people aren't ready.
Linux on the desktop? I'm a geek and I have trouble with it sometimes. I installed Spamassassin today. It took about an hour and DCC failed to install. True, it was like tuning my Ferrari, but its not what most home users are up to just yet. Education is needed.
The thing is, digital cameras are still new. Can you pick up a film camera made 100 years ago and run current film through it? No, you'd have to find special stuff. Same thing will happen with digital cameras as they evolve. True, there are different forces at work. Everyone likes proprietary lockins, but in general I believe digital devices will become interchangable and interconnected as they evolve. You just have to compare things at the same level and digital hasn't been around long enough to compare to current film in that way.
I am a pro-am photographer and I shoot almost exclusively digital because its just easier, i take a few hundred shots per day, but I only develop those that came out the best. Its much cheaper, yet I haven't lost the others, they are all neatly archived.
I think that is a way of the future, and probably will be right before the internet becomes self aware. everything that happens causes changes, those changes propogate out, it becomes an environment where each node is intelligent and responsive, not merely passive.
A worm appears, it affects the first few boxes and they report out what is happening and then the network adapts. Isn't that how the Borg developed? MmM, Borg vs SkyNet. This could get interesting.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about better ways to interface with data, generally with searches but it applies to most anything. Naturally this was inspired by reading some Sci-Fi (Saturn's Race by Niven and someone...the book is in the other room.) I got to thinking, the perfect interface I can imagine is much like an actual room, things laid out visually where you would expect them. The normal 2D GUI has always seemed a bit unnatural to me.
When this is applied to searches, I'd like to see information grouping, liek was mentioned in circles, although I want it more organic. tree structures, book shelves, whatever is most appropriate to the current search, and I want them interchangable so I can format my view however I think works best. In a web search, I like the idea of a street. The major sites, amazon,com, ibm.com, etc are all represented by nice looking storefronts, but there are also dark alleys I can do down, to find less reputable places. So in this case, information is arranged by reputation of the source.
I haven't quite figured out how to approach this from a coding viewpoint, but surely there are projects out there that try this. WilmaScope for example is a good way to look at certain types of data. Why can't more things have this kind of intuitive interface? 3dDesktop is another attempt at this, but it is a mapping of 2D desktops to a 3D shape. I want more of a visual representation than just a bunch of desktops attached to a sphere. I konw there are others out there, but how about some leads? What have you see/used for intuitive data representation? Why hasn't this taken off?
Your point is valid but you miss the audience. As a computer expert you are probably comfortable with the simpler installers that just do what they need, install the OS. but for those who have just one computer and aren't really comfortable with it, having a nice friendly fully functional OS that lets them try things out, search for help online and generally be up and running in 30 seconds is a boon.
It takes me roughly 1 hour to install any OS, windows or linux. Since I just have the one system and its getting rather old, that is at minimum of one hour when I cannot be productive computer wise. If I use a LiveCD then as soon as the CD boots I can keep going while the system installs in the background.
Your point about space is good and I would like to see a LiveCD based Net install. That would work great for new computer users. The CD has the LiveCD image, whatever other files fit and it downloads anything else. However, the CD boots and runs and there is very little wasted space there. You copy the CD to the HDD and its good.
a LiveCD based install just seems like the future of computer installs. Friends of mine who install windows for a living often bemoan how the installer is silent, like it would be better to have some kind of background music while it runs. That's the kind of thing that non-geek people see as progress. Also it just makes me happier, less down time, more powerful visual interface.
Why aren't there more LiveCD installers? I used Knoppix as my debian installer and it was such a good experience that given the choice I would never go back to anything else. Text based installers are powerful, but for the pure user experience, being able to boot into a full OS and surf the web and listen to music while the OS installs in the background seems like the best way. So why aren't there more such discs?
Also related, is this something other geeks would want? I can see the elitism of loving debian's old isntaller, but how much worse is a LiveCD version? Is the only problem hardware support? Its easier to have a simple installer that works on everything than try to get a LiveCD to boot? Appeal to the lowest common denominator?
you're assumed to be mean of spirit, not to have aimed high enough to get caught, mere embezzling rats or at most a sort of criminal investment banker. How does that feel?
As I sit here enjoying the weather in this extradition resistant south pacific island my swiss banker is busy keeping track of the 23 numbered accounts, each with exactly 17.5 million. For me it feels warm and relaxed to be of such mean spirit. How about you? How does it feel to be noble and enjoying the winter weather from your one room apartment with a partial view or if you've already been caught, to be enjoying the attentions of your roommate in whatever maximum security prison you deserve for stealing credit card numbers?
Speed is a good argument for running KDE, but not for a new computer user. They want it friendly, fast is a distant second, actually its probably third behind games. I use gnome on my desktop just because of how reliable I've found it. I've fragged KDE many times but I've found it harder to really break Gnome. Sure, I can get a soda while something loads, but I can generally do that, I'm running a celeron 700. Also, we are arguing the technical wisdom of picking one GUI over another, but that's not really the important part. A good newbie linux distro brings more people in which gets us closer to a critical mass and the all important application developer support. I horribly miss Dreamweaver and photoshop. Gimp is nice, I've done some good things in it, but its not what I'm used to. Bluefish is also nice, but that's just silly in comparison. We have the better OS, we just need the support so we can make it usable for everyone, not just for the subset that can change how they work to accomodate what is available or what a geek thinks they need.
I love having the power to inspect the code of everything I run, but that is almost never an issue for me. I want things to just work. I'd also like an easier upgrade path. I'm still struggling with 2.6. Having some USB issues but I'll get it eventually. My mom however...
I've used linux for years, from back at redhat 4.2 I believe. I've also used a number of the GUIs and I have some pretty strong feelings about them. In every distribution that I've dealt with, Gnome just works. Sure, it has some bugs, but in general its a smoother user experience. I'm sure you can do everything in KDE, but that's if you want to spend hours configuring it. Gnome just works. I do like the power and options available in KDE, but if I was starting with linux, I wouldn't want that. In fact, when I migrate people to linux, they get Gnome. Once they learn the OS, then I might mention there are other GUIs, but for a migration or business oriented distro, go with the one that just works.
That said, I read the article *gasp* and it was about supporting the environments, not the relative qualities of the GUIs and I have to agree that its easier to standardize on one development environment.This is a good move for a new distro and helps to keep their costs down and quality up. I just hope that the fallout from the geeks doesn't kill them before they get going. I'd love another good Debian based distro
KDE is great, but too much is exposed. I don't need three text editors in a right click menu, I want one that just works, although I generally use vi and they never include that in the click menus:(
That is an interesting image and unfortunately, not unexpected, however, I feel a greater unease knowing I can be reliably identified at a distance. I would much prefer the discrete identification that requires me to place my hand on a plate or look into a laser (although I'm not thrilled about the laser.)
Your argument is convincing though, that the public prefers that which is least invasive and gives the greatest sense of security. I do need to research how hard it is to spoof facial recognition. Its easy to look different from who you are, but how hard is it to look like someone specific?
"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant
and filled him with a terrible resolve"
Actually that was just in the movie and was placed there to give an uplifting conclusion because they feared otherwise it might not play well to an American audience. Its become part of folklore now of course.
You either get seriously tough on security, or admit defeat. You can't show you are securing the country if kids can still buy pot, crack and smack.
Yes, because it's well known that kids who do drugs grow up to die in terrorist-related activitiy. What?
If tons of crack can still make it over the border, how can you expect to keep terrorists out? We have drug sniffing dogs and robots, how are those people sniffing dogs coming? And big bags of white stuff tends to stand out more than another normal looking guy. If we really had trustworthy security then nothing larger than a poodle would get into the country without it being known, but that's just not practical, and I'm not sure its desirable. It would give you those nice feelings inside, but it also turns the country into either a fortress or a jail, neither conducive to a friendly and open atmosphere.
I am curious why they are using facial recognition as the primary, iris and fingerprint are much easier to scan and much more reliable, although not practical at a distance. I've read the reports of fingerprints being spoofed and I suppose the same can be done with a contact lense for the iris. Facial recognition spoofing could be harder just because it relies on size and shape and not just lines, but that's pretty weak. So I'm curious why they would use the least reliable one as the primary . Any views? I read the article, well, actually I skimmed, it, but I didn't notice the answer, so is it just the marketing factor of facial recognition?
Because people who code are not people who need a user friendly interface for their camera. There is a small group of people like me who both want a point and click interface and who know something about code, but we are generally too weak in one section or the other to really make something great. I had to create a script to use my camera, there was an app that came with RH9 and Fedora that does it, but its not something that pops up when you plug in the camera, so you have to go hunting through the menus, and then its harder to use than the one button I click that runs the script.
Linux is a wonderful OS, but it is maturing much faster in some areas than others and that causes some growing pains. I would love to see a powerful, friendly interface. CLI is great for speed but far from intuitive. Still, I've been using linux since redhat since 5.2 and it has come an amazingly long way, and has a long way to go.
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The problem being, most people need a consistent interface between home and work, they want the same system in both, at least if work has to be a general purpose machine. If more work places were locked down to be a system that only did what was necessary for the job then people might be fine with a Ferrari at home, but given the choice between that high performance system at home and consitency, most would rather have the same thing both places.
Again, this isn't the geek system, this is the mother system. As the current generations mature then they may be better able to handle two systems, but right now, people aren't ready.
Linux on the desktop? I'm a geek and I have trouble with it sometimes. I installed Spamassassin today. It took about an hour and DCC failed to install. True, it was like tuning my Ferrari, but its not what most home users are up to just yet. Education is needed.
The thing is, digital cameras are still new. Can you pick up a film camera made 100 years ago and run current film through it? No, you'd have to find special stuff. Same thing will happen with digital cameras as they evolve. True, there are different forces at work. Everyone likes proprietary lockins, but in general I believe digital devices will become interchangable and interconnected as they evolve. You just have to compare things at the same level and digital hasn't been around long enough to compare to current film in that way.
I am a pro-am photographer and I shoot almost exclusively digital because its just easier, i take a few hundred shots per day, but I only develop those that came out the best. Its much cheaper, yet I haven't lost the others, they are all neatly archived.
I think that is a way of the future, and probably will be right before the internet becomes self aware. everything that happens causes changes, those changes propogate out, it becomes an environment where each node is intelligent and responsive, not merely passive.
A worm appears, it affects the first few boxes and they report out what is happening and then the network adapts. Isn't that how the Borg developed? MmM, Borg vs SkyNet. This could get interesting.
You mean the one that was replaced with ZIP drives a few years ago?
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about better ways to interface with data, generally with searches but it applies to most anything. Naturally this was inspired by reading some Sci-Fi (Saturn's Race by Niven and someone...the book is in the other room.) I got to thinking, the perfect interface I can imagine is much like an actual room, things laid out visually where you would expect them. The normal 2D GUI has always seemed a bit unnatural to me.
When this is applied to searches, I'd like to see information grouping, liek was mentioned in circles, although I want it more organic. tree structures, book shelves, whatever is most appropriate to the current search, and I want them interchangable so I can format my view however I think works best. In a web search, I like the idea of a street. The major sites, amazon,com, ibm.com, etc are all represented by nice looking storefronts, but there are also dark alleys I can do down, to find less reputable places. So in this case, information is arranged by reputation of the source.
I haven't quite figured out how to approach this from a coding viewpoint, but surely there are projects out there that try this. WilmaScope for example is a good way to look at certain types of data. Why can't more things have this kind of intuitive interface? 3dDesktop is another attempt at this, but it is a mapping of 2D desktops to a 3D shape. I want more of a visual representation than just a bunch of desktops attached to a sphere. I konw there are others out there, but how about some leads? What have you see/used for intuitive data representation? Why hasn't this taken off?It takes me roughly 1 hour to install any OS, windows or linux. Since I just have the one system and its getting rather old, that is at minimum of one hour when I cannot be productive computer wise. If I use a LiveCD then as soon as the CD boots I can keep going while the system installs in the background.
Your point about space is good and I would like to see a LiveCD based Net install. That would work great for new computer users. The CD has the LiveCD image, whatever other files fit and it downloads anything else. However, the CD boots and runs and there is very little wasted space there. You copy the CD to the HDD and its good.
a LiveCD based install just seems like the future of computer installs. Friends of mine who install windows for a living often bemoan how the installer is silent, like it would be better to have some kind of background music while it runs. That's the kind of thing that non-geek people see as progress. Also it just makes me happier, less down time, more powerful visual interface.
Why aren't there more LiveCD installers? I used Knoppix as my debian installer and it was such a good experience that given the choice I would never go back to anything else. Text based installers are powerful, but for the pure user experience, being able to boot into a full OS and surf the web and listen to music while the OS installs in the background seems like the best way. So why aren't there more such discs? Also related, is this something other geeks would want? I can see the elitism of loving debian's old isntaller, but how much worse is a LiveCD version? Is the only problem hardware support? Its easier to have a simple installer that works on everything than try to get a LiveCD to boot? Appeal to the lowest common denominator?
But you said you wanted to avoid crap-floods... What else would require japanese school girls and a minimum middle aged audience?
Speed is a good argument for running KDE, but not for a new computer user. They want it friendly, fast is a distant second, actually its probably third behind games. I use gnome on my desktop just because of how reliable I've found it. I've fragged KDE many times but I've found it harder to really break Gnome. Sure, I can get a soda while something loads, but I can generally do that, I'm running a celeron 700. Also, we are arguing the technical wisdom of picking one GUI over another, but that's not really the important part. A good newbie linux distro brings more people in which gets us closer to a critical mass and the all important application developer support. I horribly miss Dreamweaver and photoshop. Gimp is nice, I've done some good things in it, but its not what I'm used to. Bluefish is also nice, but that's just silly in comparison. We have the better OS, we just need the support so we can make it usable for everyone, not just for the subset that can change how they work to accomodate what is available or what a geek thinks they need.
I love having the power to inspect the code of everything I run, but that is almost never an issue for me. I want things to just work. I'd also like an easier upgrade path. I'm still struggling with 2.6. Having some USB issues but I'll get it eventually. My mom however...
I've used linux for years, from back at redhat 4.2 I believe. I've also used a number of the GUIs and I have some pretty strong feelings about them. In every distribution that I've dealt with, Gnome just works. Sure, it has some bugs, but in general its a smoother user experience. I'm sure you can do everything in KDE, but that's if you want to spend hours configuring it. Gnome just works. I do like the power and options available in KDE, but if I was starting with linux, I wouldn't want that. In fact, when I migrate people to linux, they get Gnome. Once they learn the OS, then I might mention there are other GUIs, but for a migration or business oriented distro, go with the one that just works.
That said, I read the article *gasp* and it was about supporting the environments, not the relative qualities of the GUIs and I have to agree that its easier to standardize on one development environment.This is a good move for a new distro and helps to keep their costs down and quality up. I just hope that the fallout from the geeks doesn't kill them before they get going. I'd love another good Debian based distro
KDE is great, but too much is exposed. I don't need three text editors in a right click menu, I want one that just works, although I generally use vi and they never include that in the click menus:(
That is an interesting image and unfortunately, not unexpected, however, I feel a greater unease knowing I can be reliably identified at a distance. I would much prefer the discrete identification that requires me to place my hand on a plate or look into a laser (although I'm not thrilled about the laser.) Your argument is convincing though, that the public prefers that which is least invasive and gives the greatest sense of security. I do need to research how hard it is to spoof facial recognition. Its easy to look different from who you are, but how hard is it to look like someone specific?
If tons of crack can still make it over the border, how can you expect to keep terrorists out? We have drug sniffing dogs and robots, how are those people sniffing dogs coming? And big bags of white stuff tends to stand out more than another normal looking guy. If we really had trustworthy security then nothing larger than a poodle would get into the country without it being known, but that's just not practical, and I'm not sure its desirable. It would give you those nice feelings inside, but it also turns the country into either a fortress or a jail, neither conducive to a friendly and open atmosphere.
I am curious why they are using facial recognition as the primary, iris and fingerprint are much easier to scan and much more reliable, although not practical at a distance. I've read the reports of fingerprints being spoofed and I suppose the same can be done with a contact lense for the iris. Facial recognition spoofing could be harder just because it relies on size and shape and not just lines, but that's pretty weak. So I'm curious why they would use the least reliable one as the primary . Any views? I read the article, well, actually I skimmed, it, but I didn't notice the answer, so is it just the marketing factor of facial recognition?
Because people who code are not people who need a user friendly interface for their camera. There is a small group of people like me who both want a point and click interface and who know something about code, but we are generally too weak in one section or the other to really make something great. I had to create a script to use my camera, there was an app that came with RH9 and Fedora that does it, but its not something that pops up when you plug in the camera, so you have to go hunting through the menus, and then its harder to use than the one button I click that runs the script. Linux is a wonderful OS, but it is maturing much faster in some areas than others and that causes some growing pains. I would love to see a powerful, friendly interface. CLI is great for speed but far from intuitive. Still, I've been using linux since redhat since 5.2 and it has come an amazingly long way, and has a long way to go.