While not exactly a touchscreen, I spent many hours/days/weeks/months programming and using an HP 9845C back in the 1980s. It had a series of 8 soft-keys built into the lower edge of the display that could be controlled via software to display menu options and generate interrupts when pressed. Users of our software (and that of many others) used these soft-keys extensively to navigate information. Users also switched regularly back to the keyboard to enter queries, etc.
While I do remember some arm tiredness, the rapid dance of fingers across the soft-keys was so efficient for navigation that everyone loved the system. It might be worth reflecting on the details of this design. For example, the user could rest the hand on the display frame or the body of the computer without straying too far from the soft-keys; all of the "touchscreen" actions were at the lower edge of the display. Both of these features decreased arm strain.
FWIW, some applications on this machine used light-pens, which also required a touchscreen-like mechanic It might be worth exploring what use cases found these awkward devices to be wins. I notice that the Wikipedia article on light-pens claims Gorilla-arm led to the demise of light-pens, but without citation.
Seriously, if patients take the records home with them, then what. I don't personally have any knowledge that would allow me to understand the records.
You're thinking way too small....
I would think one of the primary results of this would be the instant creation of a vast array of online services where one could upload the records and see them processed in a variety of way. I also expect that regulation of such services would be a nightmare, since the line between "processing" and "practicing medicine" would be extremely narrow. Security is obviously another issue. On the other hand, in many other areas there have been mechanisms for rating online services that have been at least somewhat successful in granting authority in reasonable ways.
> What have you invented that we would have heard of?
Not to take any credit away from a lot of other fine work on this technology, but I had something to do with the Linear Tape-Open system. The sales figures suggest someone around here may have heard of it. You can look at the patent yourself and decide if you think the technology was obvious or not.
Another example--a software (or at least firmware) patent--might be more controversial. This one is an algorithm to make the Trackpoint pointing device more responsive. Again, perhaps this one would seem obvious to someone who had studied control systems, but nobody up to that point in the business of isometric joysticks had conceived of the problem in these terms and proposed a solution of this sort.
> If something can't be rendered in 'practical form', can it be an actual 'invention' ?
Legally, yes. Part of the patent disclosure requirement is that the inventor must state the best way(s) s/he can think of to reduce the invention to practice. Because of the importance of filing dates and overenthusiasm, this is sometimes (often?) done prematurely, amounting to a certain bit of wasted of time. I have also been guilty of that, unfortunately.
As someone who has done a fair bit of inventing and patenting, I find generalized disdain for patented inventions to be a little irritating. (This is apart from arguments about whether intellectual property is a proper category or whether its legal protection is a good idea). Yes, many patents may have titles that make them sound trivial, and quick reads of them may make you snigger. But in the U.S., one criterion for ruling against patentability is that "the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains" (35 U.S.C. 103 (A)). I think most of my patent submissions have been initially rejected as "obvious" (one particularly entertaining case was a patent examiner's note that the shape of the recording elements in my magnetic head bore remarkable similarity to a piece of plastic someone had devised to keep a garden hose from snagging on the tire while you're washing your car). However, arguing against an "obviousness" claim is straightforward:
1. Prove that the problem has been recognized for some time; 2. Show that engineers have attempted a variety of solutions to the known problem; 3. Clearly explain how your own invention's method for solving the problem is different from existing solutions.
Of course, this doesn't do anything to prove that the invention is useful, actually does solve the problem, can be reduced to practical form, etc. It just demonstrates that the invention was not obvious at the time. It also does not mean the inventor is a genius or that nobody else on the planet could come up with the solution. It just means that it may qualify to be a patentable invention.
My own favorite case of proving non-obviousness to myself was having a renowned engineer in the field look at my proposal and tell me that he was quite sure it could not possibly work, though he could not exactly explain why. A couple of weeks later we met in the hall with him telling me that he had been intrigued enough to run simulations while I was building a prototype. We both came to the conclusion that it indeed could and did work.
Lots of crazy stuff gets patented all the time, but the process of describing and justifying an invention as such is...not completely obvious.
As a former IBM researcher, some projects are not aimed very directly at product or bottom-line value. Increasing the stature of the corporation in the public eye and gaining acclaim within the scholarly world of the scientific community are also valued very highly. Of course, most projects have some product connection, but there are a limited number of well thought out "grand challenge" projects that need not.
His Democrats Congress passed a bill, and he signed into law, a requirement that I MUST...[do xyz]...or be punished (fined $...)).
Not really advocating either way, but the alternative Republican-favored approach is to give tax rebates for the economic behavior you want (e.g. health cost savings accounts, buying energy efficient cars, etc.). Both are forms of government influence over economic behavior.
Back in the not-too-distant past when I worked on tape R&D at IBM, we were entertained by these non-stories. At the time, IBM made more money off of tape than the whole disk industry made all together.
As to the geek-factor, it's worth noting that the slower product cycle for tape development (driven largely by interoperability being maintained for a long time) means that a tape developer can have a lot more fun than a disk developer. When we were inventing the LTO technologies, there was huge freedom to create something new and interesting compared with the difficulty of making even modest changes to the disk product line.
Totally agree. For me (I eventually became a research physicist), the connection point was a simple experiment in a high-school physics class where we were able to predict the equilibrium temperature of the combination of a heated brass weight and a styrofoam cup of water. It was the connection between the math and the reality that was amazing to me -- that you could know pretty much exactly what the result would be ahead of time...and the you could design a particular outcome and make it happen. I guess it is the mark of nerddom, but I was hooked.
My officemate produced a beautiful doctoral dissertation with LaTex. Unfortunately, he has now been manually re-working it over the course of several weeks to coerce LaTeX to format it more like MSWord so that it will be approved by the publisher who is printing his book. "Everyone else" produces "camera ready" copy for this book series using MSWord with provided templates. When my friend argues with the editor that his LaTeX output is better, he is told that those styles are no longer considered better -- I assume this means that Uncle Bill has managed to win the formatting game as he has managed to control what is "proper" grammar through his green squiggles.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is his sad story. And this is a top-rung German academic book publisher. (They turned down my book [another story] but fortunately, my publisher does all of the typesetting for me!).
Forgive my ignorance but I don't really understand the problem here. Why not just activate Office? You can do it over the internet or by a toll free phone call. You can only open Office apps so many times before you must activate it, so why delay? The issue is that "activate" means "buy" -- i.e. to convert a trial/downloaded/whatever copy to a validated, purchased copy.
This exact same thing happened to me just yesterday. My laptop came with a full trial copy of Office. I purchased a copy of Office Standard (only a few of the apps) and tried to use my key to validate my pre-installed copy (thinking it would only validate the apps I had purchased). But it didn't work so I installed my Office Standard and validated it with my key.
Then I tried to get the export-to-PDF add-in from the Microsoft site but it proclaimed that only one copy of Office on my computer was validated so I couldn't update the other. Net result -- un-install one; un-install the other; re-install Office Standard; back in business.
My condolences. Unfortunately, this illustrates the problem -- contributing to Wikipedia is simply not viewed as professionally worthwhile for academics. This results in lower quality articles. I was trying to transpose the problem of Wikipedia's quality to one of raising Wikipedia's reputation among the contributing constituency.
Actually, most scholars contribute their writing for little or no direct compensation. In fact, some scholars pay journals to publish their articles. Instead of payment from the publishers, scholars are usually funded by their sponsoring organizations (e.g. universities, corporate research centers, etc.) to do high quality scholarship, which is funded by a variety of sources (e.g. student tuition, endowments, research grants, product profits).
Publishing high quality work is simply part of the package of being a successful scholar. So the key to getting top notch scholars to work on wikipedia is to generate appropriate reputation feedback. If it is CV-able that I wrote the definitive wikipedia article in my field, there will be competition amongst scholars to do it.
In my current field of biblical studies, scholars donate literally decades of work editing the critical editions of ancient texts, generating modern translations, writing commentaries, etc. without any additional compensation beyond their base pay. In my previous fields of physics, computer science, and computer-human interaction, the vast majority of top scholars receive very little direct compensation for the many articles, books, and reference book entries that they write. But they do receive scholarly acclaim for doing so -- and there is tremendous pressure from their sponsors to produce documentably important output.
In my experience, professional drive, fame, and dedication to the scholarly field generally drive scholars more than money, after the basic bills are paid.
As one holding a number of patents (sorry, part of the problem, I suppose....), my experience is that many patent applications are initially rejected by the patent office for reasons of obviousness.
So how does one prove that a solution to a problem is non-obvious? One technique that has proved successful in my personal experience is to demonstrate that a certain problem is well known within the art and yet no one has ever proposed or implemented this approach to solving the problem. Such an argument then requires two steps: (1) demonstrating that experts in the field have struggled with the problem for some time and (2) claiming that no prior art has been found with the inventor's solution.
I'm curious if anyone thinks this is inadequate or if other proofs of "non-obviousness" are possible.
(No comment on the obviousness of the upside down phone patent)
One of the best things I ever did (ok, nowhere very close to the top really) was shift my keyboard to "press the Shift key to turn off Caps Lock" mode. In Windows XP this is done in the Control Panel | Regional and Language Options | Text Services and Input Languages | Key Settings (or see http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArti cle.asp?ID=389). That way you get rid of the infinitely irritating Caps Lock toggle that you never can get into the right state and Shift always brings you home again. Also, it means Caps Lock is never accidently on beyond your next use of the Shift key. Try it...you'll never go back.
The real problem is "embrace and extend", which means MS will officially support OpenDoc but it will work differently enough in MSOffice from what the standard intended that institutions will still require that documents be produced in MSOffice. This is exactly the problem we have with HTML and IE.
The OASIS committees will seek to improve OpenDocument-based products for people with disabilities; add digital rights management features that would interoperate with Microsoft Office-based DRM systems; and standardize spreadsheet formula formats, Sutor [Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source] said.
(emphasis added)
Do we really want a standard that enables DRM? Is there such a thing as acceptable DRM? Why is this a good thing for OpenDocument?
My mom was employed by NASA (aka NACA) as a "computer" during the Mercury space program. In those days, each engineer had his computer and the computers wore skirts (as they liked to say). She did the calculations for the rescue rocket that was mounted on top of the capsule.
I always enjoy telling people that my mother was a computer. The response I normally get is an understanding and condescending nod.
Instead of counting processes, you need to count processes that use significant amounts of CPU. My XP box with about 10 long-term apps running is showing 78 processes right now. But only 11 (not counting idle) have used more than 1 min of CPU time over the 2 days of uptime (congratulations, windows...).
Whatever the btwdins.exe process is (yes, I know, it's bluetooth, which is turned off) with its 0:00:00 CPU usage and 5 I/O reads, it won't help my system perform better if it has its own core to run in!
It would take more study to figure out how perceived system performance might go up with better concurrency, but a first glance says that at least real-time virus scan could use it.
Back a few years, IBM sold a laptop where you could detach the back cover of the lid, exposing the screen so that it could be placed on an overhead projector. I worked with Ted Selker who invented it, so I had a homemade prototype version. When I presented at conferences and everyone else struggled with F7 and video formats, I just whipped the back off my Thinkpad and put it on top of the overhead projector. I don't think anyone listened to my talk because they were all craning their necks to see what I had done with the display. All of the questions afterward were about where to buy such a nifty device rather than anything about my talk!
The removable back was also useful for working outdoors. You could put a white reflective surface behind the screen and backlight with sunlight, making it usable no matter how bright it was.
Someone like IBM could sponsor this whole thing without a dent in the budget.
This is a common misconception. Just because an organization is large does not imply that money (even small amounts) is easily found. In fact, large corporations tend to be very tightly managed to strive for the goal that every dollar goes toward something productive. Public companies need to please investors, and that means that each and every invested dollar needs to make the expected return. Large corporations do have the ability to invest in things that small entities can't, but only if it is in the company's eventual interest.
Arguably, a research-oriented corporation like IBM might be very interested in funding the public availability of scholarly research (e.g., as a platform for advertising their own scholarly [and therefore technology] achievements, as part of a push toward an information-rich environment that needs lots of computing resources, etc.). But I wouldn't argue from the point of view that there's just money around to be used on whatever!
I was fascinated by the history of management theory as presented in "Fabric of This World". From the "I know how to do this better than you so do it my way or else" to the "wow -- you're great at this...how can I help you?" approaches, there's much to be learned by the evolution of how people have learned to effectively manage. As I reflected on the different approaches, I could see each of my previous managers in the spectrum. Not a practical guide, but an insightful one. (BTW, this is a book by a Christian about the Christian idea of work, but even if that's not where you're coming from, the management theory part is great. My high-tech corporate manager and peers really appreciated a summary of it that I circulated).
Personally, I've managed to keep myself out of management since I'd be terrible at it!
I actually wrote an adventure game on a 16k RAM TRS-80 back in high school for my Latin class, following the escapades of Publius and Furianus around Rome. You could play in either Latin or English, switching dynamically between the languages. It was helpful for learning vocabulary, and reading the place descriptions was sometimes challenging. Of course the commands you give are intentionally bad grammar, but for reading it was great.
So -- I'm learning German now....any German adventure games out there? This could be fun!
...because I couldn't live without my PDA. I'm not the gadgety type, but when they gave me a PDA at work 6 years ago, within a week I couldn't live without it. It tracks my life. People, places, events, recipes, Christmas lists, etc. etc. etc. And having this history of my life in there is surprisingly useful. For instance, last week I was applying for a visa and needed to list all of my previous visits to the country. With my PDA it was a snap. When my friend says, "Let's have sushi at that same place as last time", I don't have to look dumb and say I don't remember where it was because the name, address and directions are right there in my PDA.
So what's wrong with this picture? Should I upgrade my cell phone to do all this stuff rather than just be a phone? BTW, my wife depends on her PDA as a physician for everything from textbooks of internal medicine, to drug formularies, to calculators for blood oxygen levels. Please don't take away our PDAs!!
Slashdot Mirror
While not exactly a touchscreen, I spent many hours/days/weeks/months programming and using an HP 9845C back in the 1980s. It had a series of 8 soft-keys built into the lower edge of the display that could be controlled via software to display menu options and generate interrupts when pressed. Users of our software (and that of many others) used these soft-keys extensively to navigate information. Users also switched regularly back to the keyboard to enter queries, etc.
While I do remember some arm tiredness, the rapid dance of fingers across the soft-keys was so efficient for navigation that everyone loved the system. It might be worth reflecting on the details of this design. For example, the user could rest the hand on the display frame or the body of the computer without straying too far from the soft-keys; all of the "touchscreen" actions were at the lower edge of the display. Both of these features decreased arm strain.
FWIW, some applications on this machine used light-pens, which also required a touchscreen-like mechanic It might be worth exploring what use cases found these awkward devices to be wins. I notice that the Wikipedia article on light-pens claims Gorilla-arm led to the demise of light-pens, but without citation.
FTFY.... "Nearly half (46%) of American adults are currently paying to use a smartphone..."
Seriously, if patients take the records home with them, then what. I don't personally have any knowledge that would allow me to understand the records.
You're thinking way too small....
I would think one of the primary results of this would be the instant creation of a vast array of online services where one could upload the records and see them processed in a variety of way. I also expect that regulation of such services would be a nightmare, since the line between "processing" and "practicing medicine" would be extremely narrow. Security is obviously another issue. On the other hand, in many other areas there have been mechanisms for rating online services that have been at least somewhat successful in granting authority in reasonable ways.
> What have you invented that we would have heard of?
Not to take any credit away from a lot of other fine work on this technology, but I had something to do with the Linear Tape-Open system. The sales figures suggest someone around here may have heard of it. You can look at the patent yourself and decide if you think the technology was obvious or not.
Another example--a software (or at least firmware) patent--might be more controversial. This one is an algorithm to make the Trackpoint pointing device more responsive. Again, perhaps this one would seem obvious to someone who had studied control systems, but nobody up to that point in the business of isometric joysticks had conceived of the problem in these terms and proposed a solution of this sort.
> If something can't be rendered in 'practical form', can it be an actual 'invention' ?
Legally, yes. Part of the patent disclosure requirement is that the inventor must state the best way(s) s/he can think of to reduce the invention to practice. Because of the importance of filing dates and overenthusiasm, this is sometimes (often?) done prematurely, amounting to a certain bit of wasted of time. I have also been guilty of that, unfortunately.
As someone who has done a fair bit of inventing and patenting, I find generalized disdain for patented inventions to be a little irritating. (This is apart from arguments about whether intellectual property is a proper category or whether its legal protection is a good idea). Yes, many patents may have titles that make them sound trivial, and quick reads of them may make you snigger. But in the U.S., one criterion for ruling against patentability is that "the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains" (35 U.S.C. 103 (A)). I think most of my patent submissions have been initially rejected as "obvious" (one particularly entertaining case was a patent examiner's note that the shape of the recording elements in my magnetic head bore remarkable similarity to a piece of plastic someone had devised to keep a garden hose from snagging on the tire while you're washing your car). However, arguing against an "obviousness" claim is straightforward:
1. Prove that the problem has been recognized for some time;
2. Show that engineers have attempted a variety of solutions to the known problem;
3. Clearly explain how your own invention's method for solving the problem is different from existing solutions.
Of course, this doesn't do anything to prove that the invention is useful, actually does solve the problem, can be reduced to practical form, etc. It just demonstrates that the invention was not obvious at the time. It also does not mean the inventor is a genius or that nobody else on the planet could come up with the solution. It just means that it may qualify to be a patentable invention.
My own favorite case of proving non-obviousness to myself was having a renowned engineer in the field look at my proposal and tell me that he was quite sure it could not possibly work, though he could not exactly explain why. A couple of weeks later we met in the hall with him telling me that he had been intrigued enough to run simulations while I was building a prototype. We both came to the conclusion that it indeed could and did work.
Lots of crazy stuff gets patented all the time, but the process of describing and justifying an invention as such is...not completely obvious.
As a former IBM researcher, some projects are not aimed very directly at product or bottom-line value. Increasing the stature of the corporation in the public eye and gaining acclaim within the scholarly world of the scientific community are also valued very highly. Of course, most projects have some product connection, but there are a limited number of well thought out "grand challenge" projects that need not.
His Democrats Congress passed a bill, and he signed into law, a requirement that I MUST...[do xyz]...or be punished (fined $...)).
Not really advocating either way, but the alternative Republican-favored approach is to give tax rebates for the economic behavior you want (e.g. health cost savings accounts, buying energy efficient cars, etc.). Both are forms of government influence over economic behavior.
Back in the not-too-distant past when I worked on tape R&D at IBM, we were entertained by these non-stories. At the time, IBM made more money off of tape than the whole disk industry made all together.
As to the geek-factor, it's worth noting that the slower product cycle for tape development (driven largely by interoperability being maintained for a long time) means that a tape developer can have a lot more fun than a disk developer. When we were inventing the LTO technologies, there was huge freedom to create something new and interesting compared with the difficulty of making even modest changes to the disk product line.
Totally agree. For me (I eventually became a research physicist), the connection point was a simple experiment in a high-school physics class where we were able to predict the equilibrium temperature of the combination of a heated brass weight and a styrofoam cup of water. It was the connection between the math and the reality that was amazing to me -- that you could know pretty much exactly what the result would be ahead of time...and the you could design a particular outcome and make it happen. I guess it is the mark of nerddom, but I was hooked.
My officemate produced a beautiful doctoral dissertation with LaTex. Unfortunately, he has now been manually re-working it over the course of several weeks to coerce LaTeX to format it more like MSWord so that it will be approved by the publisher who is printing his book. "Everyone else" produces "camera ready" copy for this book series using MSWord with provided templates. When my friend argues with the editor that his LaTeX output is better, he is told that those styles are no longer considered better -- I assume this means that Uncle Bill has managed to win the formatting game as he has managed to control what is "proper" grammar through his green squiggles.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is his sad story. And this is a top-rung German academic book publisher. (They turned down my book [another story] but fortunately, my publisher does all of the typesetting for me!).
This exact same thing happened to me just yesterday. My laptop came with a full trial copy of Office. I purchased a copy of Office Standard (only a few of the apps) and tried to use my key to validate my pre-installed copy (thinking it would only validate the apps I had purchased). But it didn't work so I installed my Office Standard and validated it with my key.
Then I tried to get the export-to-PDF add-in from the Microsoft site but it proclaimed that only one copy of Office on my computer was validated so I couldn't update the other. Net result -- un-install one; un-install the other; re-install Office Standard; back in business.
What a stupid pain.
My condolences. Unfortunately, this illustrates the problem -- contributing to Wikipedia is simply not viewed as professionally worthwhile for academics. This results in lower quality articles. I was trying to transpose the problem of Wikipedia's quality to one of raising Wikipedia's reputation among the contributing constituency.
Actually, most scholars contribute their writing for little or no direct compensation. In fact, some scholars pay journals to publish their articles. Instead of payment from the publishers, scholars are usually funded by their sponsoring organizations (e.g. universities, corporate research centers, etc.) to do high quality scholarship, which is funded by a variety of sources (e.g. student tuition, endowments, research grants, product profits).
Publishing high quality work is simply part of the package of being a successful scholar. So the key to getting top notch scholars to work on wikipedia is to generate appropriate reputation feedback. If it is CV-able that I wrote the definitive wikipedia article in my field, there will be competition amongst scholars to do it.
In my current field of biblical studies, scholars donate literally decades of work editing the critical editions of ancient texts, generating modern translations, writing commentaries, etc. without any additional compensation beyond their base pay. In my previous fields of physics, computer science, and computer-human interaction, the vast majority of top scholars receive very little direct compensation for the many articles, books, and reference book entries that they write. But they do receive scholarly acclaim for doing so -- and there is tremendous pressure from their sponsors to produce documentably important output.
In my experience, professional drive, fame, and dedication to the scholarly field generally drive scholars more than money, after the basic bills are paid.
As one holding a number of patents (sorry, part of the problem, I suppose....), my experience is that many patent applications are initially rejected by the patent office for reasons of obviousness.
So how does one prove that a solution to a problem is non-obvious? One technique that has proved successful in my personal experience is to demonstrate that a certain problem is well known within the art and yet no one has ever proposed or implemented this approach to solving the problem. Such an argument then requires two steps: (1) demonstrating that experts in the field have struggled with the problem for some time and (2) claiming that no prior art has been found with the inventor's solution.
I'm curious if anyone thinks this is inadequate or if other proofs of "non-obviousness" are possible.
(No comment on the obviousness of the upside down phone patent)
One of the best things I ever did (ok, nowhere very close to the top really) was shift my keyboard to "press the Shift key to turn off Caps Lock" mode. In Windows XP this is done in the Control Panel | Regional and Language Options | Text Services and Input Languages | Key Settings (or see http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArti cle.asp?ID=389). That way you get rid of the infinitely irritating Caps Lock toggle that you never can get into the right state and Shift always brings you home again. Also, it means Caps Lock is never accidently on beyond your next use of the Shift key. Try it...you'll never go back.
The real problem is "embrace and extend", which means MS will officially support OpenDoc but it will work differently enough in MSOffice from what the standard intended that institutions will still require that documents be produced in MSOffice. This is exactly the problem we have with HTML and IE.
Do we really want a standard that enables DRM? Is there such a thing as acceptable DRM? Why is this a good thing for OpenDocument?
My mom was employed by NASA (aka NACA) as a "computer" during the Mercury space program. In those days, each engineer had his computer and the computers wore skirts (as they liked to say). She did the calculations for the rescue rocket that was mounted on top of the capsule.
I always enjoy telling people that my mother was a computer. The response I normally get is an understanding and condescending nod.
Instead of counting processes, you need to count processes that use significant amounts of CPU. My XP box with about 10 long-term apps running is showing 78 processes right now. But only 11 (not counting idle) have used more than 1 min of CPU time over the 2 days of uptime (congratulations, windows...).
Whatever the btwdins.exe process is (yes, I know, it's bluetooth, which is turned off) with its 0:00:00 CPU usage and 5 I/O reads, it won't help my system perform better if it has its own core to run in!
It would take more study to figure out how perceived system performance might go up with better concurrency, but a first glance says that at least real-time virus scan could use it.
Back a few years, IBM sold a laptop where you could detach the back cover of the lid, exposing the screen so that it could be placed on an overhead projector. I worked with Ted Selker who invented it, so I had a homemade prototype version. When I presented at conferences and everyone else struggled with F7 and video formats, I just whipped the back off my Thinkpad and put it on top of the overhead projector. I don't think anyone listened to my talk because they were all craning their necks to see what I had done with the display. All of the questions afterward were about where to buy such a nifty device rather than anything about my talk!
The removable back was also useful for working outdoors. You could put a white reflective surface behind the screen and backlight with sunlight, making it usable no matter how bright it was.
This is a common misconception. Just because an organization is large does not imply that money (even small amounts) is easily found. In fact, large corporations tend to be very tightly managed to strive for the goal that every dollar goes toward something productive. Public companies need to please investors, and that means that each and every invested dollar needs to make the expected return. Large corporations do have the ability to invest in things that small entities can't, but only if it is in the company's eventual interest.
Arguably, a research-oriented corporation like IBM might be very interested in funding the public availability of scholarly research (e.g., as a platform for advertising their own scholarly [and therefore technology] achievements, as part of a push toward an information-rich environment that needs lots of computing resources, etc.). But I wouldn't argue from the point of view that there's just money around to be used on whatever!
Personally, I've managed to keep myself out of management since I'd be terrible at it!
I actually wrote an adventure game on a 16k RAM TRS-80 back in high school for my Latin class, following the escapades of Publius and Furianus around Rome. You could play in either Latin or English, switching dynamically between the languages. It was helpful for learning vocabulary, and reading the place descriptions was sometimes challenging. Of course the commands you give are intentionally bad grammar, but for reading it was great.
So -- I'm learning German now....any German adventure games out there? This could be fun!
So what's wrong with this picture? Should I upgrade my cell phone to do all this stuff rather than just be a phone? BTW, my wife depends on her PDA as a physician for everything from textbooks of internal medicine, to drug formularies, to calculators for blood oxygen levels. Please don't take away our PDAs!!