Using an exclusively hierarchical system for tags as an imitation for a standard folder system removes some of the inherent advantages you get from the metadata approach. Yes of course, you can still tag in that way if appropriate (for example a Visual Studio solution), but I would tend to encourage a 'flatter' approach generally.
A metadata system in Windows is nowhere near what I would hope for since save requesters from programs don't even *offer* to save along some custom tags. And Windows search is painfully slow, even in Windows 7. So yeah, people don't know what they're missing.
The names from your current folder setup would be automatically generated as tags (i.e. the folder names would become the tags). So either you can leave them 'as is', or for tidiness you would have them all put into a single folder along with future files.
One or two seconds fast? I'm a fairly slow typer, but I can easily type a tag name under half a second. Or you can select the tag from a dropdown of recently used tags. Again, you *don't need to do this for every file you save*, especially as it would often be autogenerated.
I need another layer of complexity on top of that like I need a burning dose of the clap.
Obviously you must be right, so let's get Google to change its search into a giant hierarchical mess where you need to navigate several layers of fat deep to get what you want. Never mind that tons of files belong in multiple folders and all that hassle that brings. How about if you want to rate files for how good or how useful to you they are? Again, folders make this a mess.
Remember that tags can imitate folders anyway. Just batch apply a unique tag to a collection of files, and bam, there's your equivalent to a folder. This will often be done automatically if the required metadata was saved with the file, like MP3s do.
I dare you to try that Everything program I mentioned in my initial post, and think about the possibilities something like this could bring.
Worried about portability? The metadata information can be stored as just standard text. I mean, even now, this is happening with the timestamp, comments, and other info stored along with each file.
And why? Time saving obviously - if you value time. Navigating through a dozen folders (and creating those folders and organizing them) is much worse than *instantly* searching for the right file (even one or two letters could easily come up with the right file if it was used recently for example). There are many other benefits too if you read the article at that URL.
Some of the tags would be automatically saved by default for a file, and you can always add tags later, or batch add them. Also, you can add recently used tags from a dropdown list which are updated in realtime as you type single characters, like autocompletion.
Unfortunately, it also means programs would have their load/save requesters modified slightly.
I have recently found an incredibly fast search tool called Everything. We're talking about Google-like searching where the results pop up as you type. It must be something on the order of a fifth of a second for my 1.5 million files. This kind of technology should be widespread - it makes searches actually *pleasant* to do. Anyway thanks to Everything, I worry less now about where I store my files, and I also try to pack in keywords into the filename.
Anyway, this kind of program is just a glimpse of what a future OS would look like. Imagine a system where everything is stored in tags and where folders become obsolete or used far less often. What you have then is a database or metadata file-system. The relatively new Haiku OS uses such a system, and I wrote about the massive advantages from this old page: http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/filesystem.html
Honestly, we'll all be better off the sooner we switch.
I think a slightly more sensible version of flamethrowers would be to use giant halogen heaters in place of streetlights, and feed them megawatts of energy. Quite apart from solving the snow problem, we could even keep our streets warm that way for people to walk along generally.
One could emulate that depth by using a bump-map on a 3D-erized version of the 2D picture. Maybe even copy bump for bump from the original picture, or just create a generic one if there isn't variation in the bumps on the original picture.
As a "mostly vegetarian", this story leaves me somewhat confused and challenges my prejudices a bit (of which I'm fully aware of the irrationality). I don't eat meat mainly because of the 'yuck' factor as well as the sometimes questionable moral issues (and also now because I enjoy the taste of Quorn-type products).
Still, this breakthrough of growing meat is interesting. No blood or anything like that required?
I know people will hate me for saying this, but in a way, it's better if everyone sees practically the same movie. If we're all seeing slightly different views, then we won't all have quite the same experience. I think there's something to be said for having a particular view of the scene intended by the director.
And while giant high end supercomputers may progress more slowly, we're slowly seeing a revolution in personal supercomputing, where everyone can have a share of the pie. Witness CUDA, OpenCL, and projects like GPU.NET (.NET for the GPU, and apparently easy to use, though expensive for now).
Along with advancements such as multitasking in the next generation of GPUs (yes, they can't actually multitask yet, but when they do it'll be killer for a few reasons), and a shared memory with the CPU (by combining both the GPU and CPU into one die, which goes into the CPU socket), and I think the future will be very interesting.
It's okay in the browser I'm using (Opera), apart from the terrible scrolling speed of the page.
But for consolation, every time things slow down with a program or webpage (because Slashdot is slow beyond all hope now), just remember the silver lining - that it encourages upgrades of CPUs/GPUs so we can have more horsepower generally (at least for the programs/pages which *are* written properly).
Huh? That's more than enough pixels to get a legible font. I recently heard of someone who managed to squeeze the font down to 3*5 pixels (or thereabouts), and the font was still more than okay. So not sure what you're complaining about.
If you have a stupidly high resolution (who needs more than 1200*900 or so anyway?), then just set the resolution lower. 800*600 should be fine for you. 100 DPI is more than enough for anybody I reckon.
Yes, the above is a joke you'll be pleased to hear.
Opera zooms in fine if you want to upgrade to that;)
However, comment previewing is absolutely atrocious. 5-10 secs first time. Their database design must be hopeless.
Both of those issues can be solved through a small add-on utility which can parse through the text and give you a summary. Even the text editor could do that on the fly in theory.
But to force error-prone duplication in the form of a header file is a pain which should have disappeared a long time ago.
From what I've heard, Nvidia are planning to allow CUDA to compile to other processors such as Intel's x86 (and presumably the new ARMs).
Remember, in the end, it's just a language, albeit a language that's biased slightly towards Nvidia's architecture. But as like all other languages, there's nothing stopping them from making that same code run on any platform.
It's also somewhat easier to use than OpenCL from what I've heard.
Nice illusion indeed, and at least partially new. A while back, I combined two different illusions to make a single more effective illusion. I wonder if there's any connection with the one in the news article as they both seem to rely on the movement of peripheral vision confusing other aspects of change in peripheral vision:
The effect this one achieves is the disappearence of visual areas rather than 'merely' lessening the effect. Although mine is arguably more dramatic once it happens, it can be slightly tricky to see the effect immediately compared to the one in the news article.
One question which is very important; will the lack of net neutrality affect latency or bandwidth?
Bandwidth will always tend to grow, and it's less of a concern to me about that. But latency tends to fixed, and I'd fight any bias towards the dichotomy in that case.
Exactly, I was recently looking for a laptop that had space for 2 HDs. Course, Seagate I think released a dual drive which takes the space of one, so that could help.
Slashdot Mirror
Using an exclusively hierarchical system for tags as an imitation for a standard folder system removes some of the inherent advantages you get from the metadata approach. Yes of course, you can still tag in that way if appropriate (for example a Visual Studio solution), but I would tend to encourage a 'flatter' approach generally.
A metadata system in Windows is nowhere near what I would hope for since save requesters from programs don't even *offer* to save along some custom tags. And Windows search is painfully slow, even in Windows 7. So yeah, people don't know what they're missing.
The names from your current folder setup would be automatically generated as tags (i.e. the folder names would become the tags). So either you can leave them 'as is', or for tidiness you would have them all put into a single folder along with future files.
One or two seconds fast? I'm a fairly slow typer, but I can easily type a tag name under half a second. Or you can select the tag from a dropdown of recently used tags. Again, you *don't need to do this for every file you save*, especially as it would often be autogenerated.
I need another layer of complexity on top of that like I need a burning dose of the clap.
Obviously you must be right, so let's get Google to change its search into a giant hierarchical mess where you need to navigate several layers of fat deep to get what you want. Never mind that tons of files belong in multiple folders and all that hassle that brings. How about if you want to rate files for how good or how useful to you they are? Again, folders make this a mess.
Remember that tags can imitate folders anyway. Just batch apply a unique tag to a collection of files, and bam, there's your equivalent to a folder. This will often be done automatically if the required metadata was saved with the file, like MP3s do.
I dare you to try that Everything program I mentioned in my initial post, and think about the possibilities something like this could bring.
Yes, though I think we can blame Microsoft more on that front.
Did you read the link in my original post?
Worried about portability? The metadata information can be stored as just standard text. I mean, even now, this is happening with the timestamp, comments, and other info stored along with each file.
And why? Time saving obviously - if you value time. Navigating through a dozen folders (and creating those folders and organizing them) is much worse than *instantly* searching for the right file (even one or two letters could easily come up with the right file if it was used recently for example). There are many other benefits too if you read the article at that URL.
Some of the tags would be automatically saved by default for a file, and you can always add tags later, or batch add them. Also, you can add recently used tags from a dropdown list which are updated in realtime as you type single characters, like autocompletion. Unfortunately, it also means programs would have their load/save requesters modified slightly.
It's easy to think of a way to batch tag multiple files at once. At least in theory.
I have recently found an incredibly fast search tool called Everything. We're talking about Google-like searching where the results pop up as you type. It must be something on the order of a fifth of a second for my 1.5 million files. This kind of technology should be widespread - it makes searches actually *pleasant* to do. Anyway thanks to Everything, I worry less now about where I store my files, and I also try to pack in keywords into the filename.
Anyway, this kind of program is just a glimpse of what a future OS would look like. Imagine a system where everything is stored in tags and where folders become obsolete or used far less often. What you have then is a database or metadata file-system. The relatively new Haiku OS uses such a system, and I wrote about the massive advantages from this old page:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/filesystem.html
Honestly, we'll all be better off the sooner we switch.
This is what you get when the greenies take over ;)
I think a slightly more sensible version of flamethrowers would be to use giant halogen heaters in place of streetlights, and feed them megawatts of energy. Quite apart from solving the snow problem, we could even keep our streets warm that way for people to walk along generally.
One could emulate that depth by using a bump-map on a 3D-erized version of the 2D picture. Maybe even copy bump for bump from the original picture, or just create a generic one if there isn't variation in the bumps on the original picture.
As a "mostly vegetarian", this story leaves me somewhat confused and challenges my prejudices a bit (of which I'm fully aware of the irrationality). I don't eat meat mainly because of the 'yuck' factor as well as the sometimes questionable moral issues (and also now because I enjoy the taste of Quorn-type products). Still, this breakthrough of growing meat is interesting. No blood or anything like that required?
I know people will hate me for saying this, but in a way, it's better if everyone sees practically the same movie. If we're all seeing slightly different views, then we won't all have quite the same experience. I think there's something to be said for having a particular view of the scene intended by the director.
And while giant high end supercomputers may progress more slowly, we're slowly seeing a revolution in personal supercomputing, where everyone can have a share of the pie. Witness CUDA, OpenCL, and projects like GPU.NET (.NET for the GPU, and apparently easy to use, though expensive for now).
Along with advancements such as multitasking in the next generation of GPUs (yes, they can't actually multitask yet, but when they do it'll be killer for a few reasons), and a shared memory with the CPU (by combining both the GPU and CPU into one die, which goes into the CPU socket), and I think the future will be very interesting.
Glad you like the slow/erratic scrolling of the page and the interface generally, particularly when previewing/submitting comments.
It's okay in the browser I'm using (Opera), apart from the terrible scrolling speed of the page.
But for consolation, every time things slow down with a program or webpage (because Slashdot is slow beyond all hope now), just remember the silver lining - that it encourages upgrades of CPUs/GPUs so we can have more horsepower generally (at least for the programs/pages which *are* written properly).
Huh? That's more than enough pixels to get a legible font. I recently heard of someone who managed to squeeze the font down to 3*5 pixels (or thereabouts), and the font was still more than okay. So not sure what you're complaining about.
If you have a stupidly high resolution (who needs more than 1200*900 or so anyway?), then just set the resolution lower. 800*600 should be fine for you. 100 DPI is more than enough for anybody I reckon.
Yes, the above is a joke you'll be pleased to hear.
Opera zooms in fine if you want to upgrade to that ;)
However, comment previewing is absolutely atrocious. 5-10 secs first time. Their database design must be hopeless.
Yes, but what would the advantages have been? Faster speeds, or less bloat maybe?
Might it still be possible to evolve the current mediocre implementation into the initial vision you're referring to?
What is that 'solution', and is there an article about it somewhere?
Both of those issues can be solved through a small add-on utility which can parse through the text and give you a summary. Even the text editor could do that on the fly in theory.
But to force error-prone duplication in the form of a header file is a pain which should have disappeared a long time ago.
I wonder if they'll *finally* get rid of those cumbersome backwards things called header files.
From what I've heard, Nvidia are planning to allow CUDA to compile to other processors such as Intel's x86 (and presumably the new ARMs).
Remember, in the end, it's just a language, albeit a language that's biased slightly towards Nvidia's architecture. But as like all other languages, there's nothing stopping them from making that same code run on any platform.
It's also somewhat easier to use than OpenCL from what I've heard.
Nice illusion indeed, and at least partially new. A while back, I combined two different illusions to make a single more effective illusion. I wonder if there's any connection with the one in the news article as they both seem to rely on the movement of peripheral vision confusing other aspects of change in peripheral vision:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage-vb.html
The effect this one achieves is the disappearence of visual areas rather than 'merely' lessening the effect. Although mine is arguably more dramatic once it happens, it can be slightly tricky to see the effect immediately compared to the one in the news article.
One question which is very important; will the lack of net neutrality affect latency or bandwidth?
Bandwidth will always tend to grow, and it's less of a concern to me about that. But latency tends to fixed, and I'd fight any bias towards the dichotomy in that case.
Exactly, I was recently looking for a laptop that had space for 2 HDs. Course, Seagate I think released a dual drive which takes the space of one, so that could help.