Nice line of reasoning. Before I read your comment, I was pondering how long it would take for a fundamentalist Christian version of the internet to be born in the U.S. I have some modest proposals for what such a net(s) could be called:
I once worked on my next-door-neighbor's computer to solve a printer problem. The printer was not connected, and he didn't know what kind of cable he needed. I found a spare USB cable that would fit. I felt it was odd that his USB connections were so far down at the bottom of the back of his case, but I've seen a lot of odd cases. I downloaded the drivers and installed them, nothing unusual; the printer was soon working normally. My delighted neighbor and asked me if I could check the computer's CD drive. He told me that the last time he had tried to use it, the CDs just kept sliding right off the drawer each time he tried to load it. I was surprised to find that the CD drive was at the very bottom of the front of the case. Curious, I tried to find the maker's name. It was LLED, except the letters were written backwards.
It was a very easy fix, I can tell you. I managed to get everything set, and get out of his apartment and back into mine before I burst out laughing. I told my girlfriend about the mysterious DELL computer case I had just seen and how I had fixed my neighbor's computer simply by flipping it right side up.
She refused to believe that anyone could be that stupid, but there you have it.
I wouldn't do well with this at all. If I knew that a fear detector was being used, I would start to be afraid that I might be afraid of it and that fear would grow into a panic that I might be sufficiently afraid to set the thing off, which would be scary because then I'd start imagining my interrogation at the hands of jackbooted DHS thugs with their enormous attack rottweilers and their hideous cattle prods. The image of rottweilers using cattle prods on me would be too much for me to bear and I'd just set off the fear detector, which would be a relief because then the suspense would finally be over and then the interrogation could begin in earnest.
Oh my god, I passed through a cloud of radioactive particles and I've been shrunken down to the size of a field mouse! Now my clock is systematically hunting me down using its video camera, and giant, piercing claws!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!...snort...hummm? Oh sorry hon, I guess I was having a nightmare, it was terrible...there was this clock and...
I keep thinking it would be fun within the game to have the developers target known and confirmed gold spammers (this has to be done completely reliably) and mark them with a unique and characteristic stigma visible to all. The gold spammer would then be subject to attack by any and all players in game, and when killed, would drop a great item (or gold) that could only be obtained through killing a gold spammer. It's just a thought, there are many problems with this idea (what if a player were wrongly identified as a gold spammer? It will happen) but gold spammer hunts could be a fun and widely played aspect of an MMORPG that exercised such a policy. People would be arranging to buy gold to identify spammers just to kill them (in some games). Their business could shrivel on the vine depending on how actively other players hunt them. I see something like the mob scenes in old Frankenstein movies carrying torches and pitchforks.
Then please, by all means...DO NOT READ SCIENCE FICTION! And please...comment on what you have not and will never read with authority and conviciton. That always impresses people. :-)
I came to it from the other direction, and read the book before seeing the movie. As often happens in these cases, the movie left me very disappointed...partly because the images I had formed in my imagination were completely different from those in the film...and I missed the philosophy and the subtle, dry humor in the accounts of the early history of the exploration of Solaris that were in the book.
However, one thing that the movie got exactly right was the plight and the pathos of poor Rheya...one of the most poignant characters in all science fiction, she's like a ghost come back to haunt herself. Blade Runner slightly touches on her plight with the character of Rachel, but only fleetingly and timidly; it never engages the emotions as they are engaged in the book and movie versions of Solaris.
Humm...now you're making me want to go reread Solaris, and then watch the movie:-)
Thanks so much for reviewing this, I've been thinking of rereading Lem's work...as well as looking into Phillip K. Dick again.
I recently reread Lem's "The Futurological Congress" and was struck with how horrifyingly funny it is when read in the context the post Sept. 11 world. Lem's description of standard hotel emergency (anti-terrorism) gear is a hoot.
"Some of the hotel furnishings puzzled me---the ten-foot crowbar propped up in a corner of the jade and jasper bathroom, for example, or the khaki camouflage cape in the closet, or the sack of hardtack under the bed. Over the tub, next to the towels, hung an enormous spool of standard Alpine rope, and on the door was a card I first noticed when I went to triple-lock the super-yale. It read: "This Room Guaranteed BOMB-FREE. From the Management."
The thing that is most striking to me about Lem is how incredibly creative the man is. He tosses off more ideas per chapter (or short story) than one finds in most trilogies (or dare I say it...in the entire life's output of many science fiction writers). Miraculous stuff.
You might check with Macromedia, I'm a teacher, and as a teacher I bought Flash MX (It's the new version, the successor to Flash 5. The user interface is much more refined) for $99 USD. They may be willing to swing such a deal for non-profit groups.
On the Plus side: Flash MX allows Flash files to be indexed on search engines, has accessibility features for vision impaired and handicapped users.
If used well, I don't think there is anything that can beat it for what it does. It's the most commonly used special feature plug-in around and most browsers can view Flash files (According to Macromedia's figures, 98% of all Internet users have the Flash plug-in installed).
File sizes need not be large at all, Flash uses vector graphics rather than raster graphics to save time on downloads (at the expense of CPU cycles on the user machine...the processing power needed to display vector graphics is somewhat higher than displaying raster graphics such as jpeg, gif and png images).
Despite what is being said in reply to your question, not everyone on the internet is an open-source fanatic that avoids Flash for ethical reasons. I would say a very miniscule percentage, and not likely within the scope of your target audience (to the upcoming firestormers, flame me, bake me, scorch me, but it's ture).
Using Flash on a website is not, be definition, bad design. Commerical designers the world over use it extensively, and for a reason.
On the Downside:
Flash has a steep learning cure. It isn't quite vertical, but it's pretty close to it at first. If you're used to vector graphics programs, that will help somewhat. Once you've learned how to draw and animate shapes, text and objects in Flash, you will discover that you have not even begun to scratch the surface, Actionscript is next, and it's enormously powerful. You will need to read several books on both Flash and Actionscript to come to grips with the full potential of the medium, also a good deal of time and practice to master it.
If someone in your group is passionately interested in learning the tool, and creating a great website with it, go for it...but he or she will be outlaying a fair amount of money and time on books and practice. I'll wager they'll get a kick out of it, and in time produce splended results, but Flash can be quite intimidating at first...if not to say opaque and inscrutable. This isn't Powerpoint! I think any tool you use will ultimately require a lot of study however.
Personally, I use it to give presentations to my students on many topics. I have one of my classroom computers hooked up to a very large presentation monitor, but I don't do very much webdesign with it at the moment, although I am making three or four sites using it, they are secondary to my current purpose. For the future, I'm looking toward web-based exercises and testing applications. I use it in place of many other programs, and I use it almost constantly. I've read a couple of books on it, and am reading three more (now mostly dealing with actionscript). I swear by it, but for what I'm doing, it so much more than adaquately fills my needs. It's overkill for me, but overkill is the American way, isn't it?
HTML itself takes quite a bit of education in good webdesign, even if you're using a WYSIWYG HTML editor, so some education is going to be necessary whatever you do.
Are there alternatives to Flash? Adobe's LiveMotion 2 looks interesting...and it will handle Flash SWF format files...but I don't think its userbase is nearly as large, and I feel you're probably better off just using Flash to make Flash files in the end. It does cost USD $199 however (introductiory price).
Adobe and many others are developing SVG, which are scalable vector graphics in XML, and they will do many of the things Flash can do...but I doubt if the SVG plugin is very commonly used at all at the moment. Check it out at www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8
This site contains links to many other articles on the subject, and I think it bears a lot of promise for the future of the web.
I'd vote for Flash, myself, but you're not going to get immediate results from it. I do have high praise for the product, but whatever medium you choose, you're going to have to do the hard work of mastering it. Flash is a means to this end, and then some.
Have you considered KDE? I know it's a desktop environment, but its office suite is (in my opinion) nicer than Wordperfect, or Star Office (I haven't tried Applixware). WP and Star Office eat a lot of resources on their own...I suspect this is because they first Windows apps, that have been ported over to Linux (I could be very wrong on this, but that's how they seem). KDE's Koffice is still in development, but what they have so far is very impressive. In addition, KDE has a very polished user interface...and once it hits 2.0 it should be quite stable, and be quite feature-rich. The stable version is quite solid.
As for distro, RedHat is easy to install, but Debian seems to be more complete, and the packages work! It is definately easier to upgrade. It will take more digging, and learning on the installer's side, but it should install easily over many machines once you've got it set up for replication.
Debian is refusing to distribute KDE over licensing issues, and this situation is likely to continue, but there's nothing to stop you from installing it yourself, and then propagating it out over your workstations. Try it out, and their Koffice and see what you think.
I believe 64meg of RAM will be plenty for your needs. While KDE is a big system, it runs very quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like the rest of us monkeys are going to have to learn that, "With great power comes great responsibility."
Nice line of reasoning. Before I read your comment, I was pondering how long it would take for a fundamentalist Christian version of the internet to be born in the U.S. I have some modest proposals for what such a net(s) could be called:
apostlescreed
sanctimonyus
fishnet
crossroads
Other suggestions?
I once worked on my next-door-neighbor's computer to solve a printer problem. The printer was not connected, and he didn't know what kind of cable he needed. I found a spare USB cable that would fit. I felt it was odd that his USB connections were so far down at the bottom of the back of his case, but I've seen a lot of odd cases. I downloaded the drivers and installed them, nothing unusual; the printer was soon working normally. My delighted neighbor and asked me if I could check the computer's CD drive. He told me that the last time he had tried to use it, the CDs just kept sliding right off the drawer each time he tried to load it. I was surprised to find that the CD drive was at the very bottom of the front of the case. Curious, I tried to find the maker's name. It was LLED, except the letters were written backwards.
It was a very easy fix, I can tell you. I managed to get everything set, and get out of his apartment and back into mine before I burst out laughing. I told my girlfriend about the mysterious DELL computer case I had just seen and how I had fixed my neighbor's computer simply by flipping it right side up.
She refused to believe that anyone could be that stupid, but there you have it.
Micro changes in air density, my ass!
I wouldn't do well with this at all. If I knew that a fear detector was being used, I would start to be afraid that I might be afraid of it and that fear would grow into a panic that I might be sufficiently afraid to set the thing off, which would be scary because then I'd start imagining my interrogation at the hands of jackbooted DHS thugs with their enormous attack rottweilers and their hideous cattle prods. The image of rottweilers using cattle prods on me would be too much for me to bear and I'd just set off the fear detector, which would be a relief because then the suspense would finally be over and then the interrogation could begin in earnest.
Very truely yours,
Franz Kafka
Oh my god, I passed through a cloud of radioactive particles and I've been shrunken down to the size of a field mouse! Now my clock is systematically hunting me down using its video camera, and giant, piercing claws!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! ...snort...hummm? Oh sorry hon, I guess I was having a nightmare, it was terrible...there was this clock and...
I keep thinking it would be fun within the game to have the developers target known and confirmed gold spammers (this has to be done completely reliably) and mark them with a unique and characteristic stigma visible to all. The gold spammer would then be subject to attack by any and all players in game, and when killed, would drop a great item (or gold) that could only be obtained through killing a gold spammer. It's just a thought, there are many problems with this idea (what if a player were wrongly identified as a gold spammer? It will happen) but gold spammer hunts could be a fun and widely played aspect of an MMORPG that exercised such a policy. People would be arranging to buy gold to identify spammers just to kill them (in some games). Their business could shrivel on the vine depending on how actively other players hunt them. I see something like the mob scenes in old Frankenstein movies carrying torches and pitchforks.
laughing...
Then please, by all means...DO NOT READ SCIENCE FICTION! And please...comment on what you have not and will never read with authority and conviciton. That always impresses people.
:-)
Vince
chente@attbi.com
I came to it from the other direction, and read the book before seeing the movie. As often happens in these cases, the movie left me very disappointed...partly because the images I had formed in my imagination were completely different from those in the film...and I missed the philosophy and the subtle, dry humor in the accounts of the early history of the exploration of Solaris that were in the book.
:-)
However, one thing that the movie got exactly right was the plight and the pathos of poor Rheya...one of the most poignant characters in all science fiction, she's like a ghost come back to haunt herself. Blade Runner slightly touches on her plight with the character of Rachel, but only fleetingly and timidly; it never engages the emotions as they are engaged in the book and movie versions of Solaris.
Humm...now you're making me want to go reread Solaris, and then watch the movie
Vince
chente@attbi.com
Thanks so much for reviewing this, I've been thinking of rereading Lem's work...as well as looking into Phillip K. Dick again.
I recently reread Lem's "The Futurological Congress" and was struck with how horrifyingly funny it is when read in the context the post Sept. 11 world. Lem's description of standard hotel emergency (anti-terrorism) gear is a hoot.
"Some of the hotel furnishings puzzled me---the ten-foot crowbar propped up in a corner of the jade and jasper bathroom, for example, or the khaki camouflage cape in the closet, or the sack of hardtack under the bed. Over the tub, next to the towels, hung an enormous spool of standard Alpine rope, and on the door was a card I first noticed when I went to triple-lock the super-yale. It read: "This Room Guaranteed BOMB-FREE. From the Management."
The thing that is most striking to me about Lem is how incredibly creative the man is. He tosses off more ideas per chapter (or short story) than one finds in most trilogies (or dare I say it...in the entire life's output of many science fiction writers). Miraculous stuff.
Vince
chente@attbi.com
You might check with Macromedia, I'm a teacher, and as a teacher I bought Flash MX (It's the new version, the successor to Flash 5. The user interface is much more refined) for $99 USD. They may be willing to swing such a deal for non-profit groups.
On the Plus side:
Flash MX allows Flash files to be indexed on search engines, has accessibility features for vision impaired and handicapped users.
If used well, I don't think there is anything that can beat it for what it does. It's the most commonly used special feature plug-in around and most browsers can view Flash files (According to Macromedia's figures, 98% of all Internet users have the Flash plug-in installed).
File sizes need not be large at all, Flash uses vector graphics rather than raster graphics to save time on downloads (at the expense of CPU cycles on the user machine...the processing power needed to display vector graphics is somewhat higher than displaying raster graphics such as jpeg, gif and png images).
Despite what is being said in reply to your question, not everyone on the internet is an open-source fanatic that avoids Flash for ethical reasons. I would say a very miniscule percentage, and not likely within the scope of your target audience (to the upcoming firestormers, flame me, bake me, scorch me, but it's ture).
Using Flash on a website is not, be definition, bad design. Commerical designers the world over use it extensively, and for a reason.
On the Downside:
Flash has a steep learning cure. It isn't quite vertical, but it's pretty close to it at first. If you're used to vector graphics programs, that will help somewhat. Once you've learned how to draw and animate shapes, text and objects in Flash, you will discover that you have not even begun to scratch the surface, Actionscript is next, and it's enormously powerful. You will need to read several books on both Flash and Actionscript to come to grips with the full potential of the medium, also a good deal of time and practice to master it.
If someone in your group is passionately interested in learning the tool, and creating a great website with it, go for it...but he or she will be outlaying a fair amount of money and time on books and practice. I'll wager they'll get a kick out of it, and in time produce splended results, but Flash can be quite intimidating at first...if not to say opaque and inscrutable. This isn't Powerpoint! I think any tool you use will ultimately require a lot of study however.
Personally, I use it to give presentations to my students on many topics. I have one of my classroom computers hooked up to a very large presentation monitor, but I don't do very much webdesign with it at the moment, although I am making three or four sites using it, they are secondary to my current purpose. For the future, I'm looking toward web-based exercises and testing applications. I use it in place of many other programs, and I use it almost constantly. I've read a couple of books on it, and am reading three more (now mostly dealing with actionscript). I swear by it, but for what I'm doing, it so much more than adaquately fills my needs. It's overkill for me, but overkill is the American way, isn't it?
HTML itself takes quite a bit of education in good webdesign, even if you're using a WYSIWYG HTML editor, so some education is going to be necessary whatever you do.
Are there alternatives to Flash? Adobe's LiveMotion 2 looks interesting...and it will handle Flash SWF format files...but I don't think its userbase is nearly as large, and I feel you're probably better off just using Flash to make Flash files in the end. It does cost USD $199 however (introductiory price).
Adobe and many others are developing SVG, which are scalable vector graphics in XML, and they will do many of the things Flash can do...but I doubt if the SVG plugin is very commonly used at all at the moment. Check it out at www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8
This site contains links to many other articles on the subject, and I think it bears a lot of promise for the future of the web.
I'd vote for Flash, myself, but you're not going to get immediate results from it. I do have high praise for the product, but whatever medium you choose, you're going to have to do the hard work of mastering it. Flash is a means to this end, and then some.
Vince Frost
chente@attbi.com
Have you considered KDE? I know it's a desktop environment, but its office suite is (in my opinion) nicer than Wordperfect, or Star Office (I haven't tried Applixware). WP and Star Office eat a lot of resources on their own...I suspect this is because they first Windows apps, that have been ported over to Linux (I could be very wrong on this, but that's how they seem). KDE's Koffice is still in development, but what they have so far is very impressive. In addition, KDE has a very polished user interface...and once it hits 2.0 it should be quite stable, and be quite feature-rich. The stable version is quite solid.
As for distro, RedHat is easy to install, but Debian seems to be more complete, and the packages work! It is definately easier to upgrade. It will take more digging, and learning on the installer's side, but it should install easily over many machines once you've got it set up for replication.
Debian is refusing to distribute KDE over licensing issues, and this situation is likely to continue, but there's nothing to stop you from installing it yourself, and then propagating it out over your workstations. Try it out, and their Koffice and see what you think.
I believe 64meg of RAM will be plenty for your needs. While KDE is a big system, it runs very quickly.
I'm happy at any rate, this is Tom Waits' new label.