Shame there aren't any HCI researchers working on this stuff. User interface is what lets down most wm's, especially the flashier ones.
Although it might be helpful to get the advice of an HCI expert here, it's going to be of limited effect. Where an HCI pro could have real benefit is in the window manager and toolkit design, because that's where policy decisions are made.
Remember X's longstanding motto and design principle: "mechanism, not policy".
Like, the scrollbars. Linux scrollbars are almost invariably hideous, probably as a result of the motif disease which infects everything. That's a tiny thing, but pervasive, and nobody ever bothers doing anything about it. And yes, i realize the scrollbars aren't handled by X or the WM. I don't care. Would it be that difficult to go and _make_ it so they are?
That would be a mistake. The designers of X wisely adopted a philosophy of "presentation, not policy" which meant basically that you could draw your scrollbars any way you wanted to, and X would allow it. Policy was layered on top of the window system in the window manager and in toolkits -- of which there are many today, including Athena, Motif, Qt, and GTK.
If the X designers had chosen to make policy part of the windowing system, then the only scrollbar today would be the Athena scrollbar. You think Motif scrollbars are bad? Have you tried an Athena scrollbar? Run an xterm. Not one of those new xterm-like programs but a real vintage xterm. Turn on the scrollbar. Run 'ls -lR/' to get some text in your window. Now play with the scrollbar. See what I mean? The buttons have their own logic, but it's highly conterintuitive, and they can't even agree with the rest of the world as to which side of the window it belongs on! Aren't you glad every scrollbar doesn't work that way?
Some people have said that separating presentation from policy has led to mass confusion as the many different window managers and toolkits have tried to compete for acceptance with users and developers. Personally, I think that the abundance of WMs and toolkits have been a good thing, because it's meant choice for us, the users of X. Why should I have to use mwm or olwm when I much prefer Window Maker? Dictating policy and taking away choice is a hallmark of proprietary systems like Windows; X shouldn't try the same thing.
In other words, if you want to scroll down you have to keep the pointer within a few tens of pixels of the scroll bar in the X direction, or the thumb pops back up to where you started scrolling!
I hate that too, and I've sometimes wondered whether it was a side effect of the Apple UI lawsuit... Microsoft would be seeking to distinguish its UI from Apple's to thrawt the copyright claim. Surely not even Microsoft's UI designers would intentionally design in such an annoying and distracting feature.
BTW, Apple's UI is also sensitive to the pointer's X location, but if the pointer wanders outside its "slop" zone, the scroll thumb simply freezes in place -- much friendlier that jumping back to the top of the scrollbar.
But simply tracking the Y position would seem to be both the simplest and most obvious thing to do.
Is it good for computer sex? Can the poor lonely geek-type with only an online girlfriend finally say good-bye to the Sticky Keyboard Syndrome forever? Inquiring minds want to know...
The tapes aren't big enough to hold everything, so there are seperate tapes for take-off, landing, orbit, etc. The tapes need to be changed by hand on the first four machines.
This isn't correct. There are two tape drives called Mass Memory Units (MMUs); each has an identical copy of the flight software, both PASS and BFS. The drives are physically separate units from the GPCs; for the sake of redundancy, they communicate across separate data buses. All five GPCs share the same two MMUs.
The tapes in the MMUs are large enough to hold all the flight software for the different phases of the mission. These separate programs are called "Ops modes". There is an ops mode for each mission phase: OPS 1 for Ascent, OPS 2 for Orbit, OPS 3 for Entry/Landing. There are some other modes, but these are the significant ones.
The tapes do not have to be changed during the mission, but an crew member must manually enter the command for the ops mode transitions. Within an ops mode, the flight software can make its own transitions between program phases -- these are called "major mode transitions" and don't require an access to the MMU.
I'm not a FSW expert, but I've spent the last two+ years writing GPC emulators, so I've become familiar with some of these concepts.
Personally, Hemos, I think what the book does is Fair Use,
The more I think about this position, the less I think I can support it. Fair Use is a legal issue, whereas my questions about Slashdot's behavior are of a moral nature. Forget whether some lawyer can construe their actions as legal -- I'm more concerned with whether it was right for Slashdot to do what it did. To ignore their own copyright policy, just because it wasn't convenient to follow it. That was wrong, and I think Rob and Hemos should acknowledge that.
Although there may be copyright issues involving a post, when an actor or politician says something in public there's always the possibility that he can be quoted.
That would be fine, except for the fact that there's a copyright disclaimer at the bottom of every page on Slashdot, and it reads
The emphasis is mine. "Comments are owned by the Poster" What does this mean if, anything? I believe it means that Slashdot gives up their public-domain claims on Poster's comments -- if not in a legal sense then at least in the broader moral sense. If it doesn't mean that, then what does it mean?
That's not a rhetorical question, Rob. I'd like to see an answer. What do you intend "ownership" to mean, if anything?
Although I despise the software running on the WinCE devices (or whatever they're being called this month), I think the hardware has some extremely cool aspects to it. For starters, there's the larger 16-bit color displays; yes, Palm now makes a color device, but it's 8-bit color and it's still the old 160x160 pixel screen. Second, I like the audio-in/audio-out capabilities of (some of) the CE devices. Being able to record audio notes, or to play MP3s would be something I would like to be able to do on my Palm. On the other hand, the CE devices require faster CPUs, resulting in dismal battery life. They require more memory, which jacks up the cost. And they're still clunky compared to the sleek slim design of the Palm V (I haven't played with the latest generation of the CE devices. though).
So I'd like to see Palm stuff a spiffy new display and some audio capabilities into their devices while still retaining the slim form factor and decent battery life, and of course keeping their software and UI relatively unchanged. Do that and they'd bury Microsoft. As it is, the fancier hardware on the CE toys is going to entice some people over to the Dark Side.
I know two engineers who once carried Palms but ditched them for the better hardware available on CE devices. However, after six months of carrying their CE devices, these guys both said they regretted the decision and like their old Palms better. But if Microsoft really fixes their software, then Palm could have a problem. Spiff up their hardware, though, and it becomes a non-issue.
/. isn't legally required to excerpt from e-mail posts that are posted to be part of a public discussion, and as I understand, the posters are not ID's by name or e-mail anyway. They may have contacted or tried to contact the e-mailers.
Then why does Slashdot's copyright notice at the bottom of every page say that comments are owned by the poster? What does "owned" mean if Slashdot is freely able to take comments and republish them? On the one hand, it's claimed that people own their work, but when it becomes inconvenient to respect that ownership, suddenly it's a public forum, and the comments are public domain.
Let me put this another way: what if I took all the Jon Katz posts including the original articles, stripped them of the Katz name, then without permission republished those posts in a book called Voice from the Slashmouth? How long would it be before I heard from your attorney? Remember, these are posts to a public forum, so they're fair game, right?
What's really sad about this brouhaha is that it's going to detract from what is otherwise a very deep and compelling story.
Personally, Hemos, I think what the book does is Fair Use, and I for one wouldn't complain if my posts had been republished. It doesn't seem substantially different than when Jon quoted posts in his NPR interview.
But that's just speaking for me. Knowing the kind of folks that post here, I expect the Slashdot readership, and especially the quoted posters, will demand an explanation from Jon Katz and Slashdot of why they chose not to attribute and not to seek permission. That "owned by the Poster" comment at the bottom of the Slashdot implies an obligation by Slashdot to its posters. By asserting poster-ownership of comments, you're implying that Slashdot won't treat the comments as Andover property or as public domain. Yet this book seems to take the opposite attitude.
There's a contradiction here. On the one hand, Slashdot claims poster ownership of comments. On the other, Slashdot claims that they're in the public domain (because they're taken from a public forum). So which is it?
1. Can he just take our comments and publish them? Doesn't he have to give credit or get permission from the writers of the origional comments? I mean even if he para-phrases them, he still have to...
First off, you don't know that Jon didn't get permission from those he published. It's a compilation, but it may be a selective compilation, and those selected may have given their permission. But I'd like to hear Jon and Rob say so. Otherwise, I don't see how this book can be in keeping with the copyright notice at the bottom of every slashdot page claiming that "Comments are owned by the Poster." (That's a verbatim cut-n-paste.)
2. Since the origional source is from/., I think/. should get to decide where some of the profits go [I say EFF]
Agreed. The EFF is not only deserving, but given recent attacks on electronic freedoms, probably needs the funds more than ever. I too would vote EFF.
Good point. Exactly what I was going to post. Perhaps the word Ransom Love was looking for was "restrictive". It's not entirely on-target, but it's closer that proprietary.
I seem to recall maybe twenty years back some liberal group, possibly a gay/lesbian organization, got pissed at some ultra-conservative religious-based organization, possible the (now-defunct thank goodness) Moral Majority, and began a campaign of mass calling the MM's 800 number. The idea was not to deny service through availability, but to drain the MM's pocketbook through long-distance charges. I also remember hearing about solo DoS attacks on 800 numbers in which lone individuals would program their modems to dial the target number repeatedly.
These might also be Urban Legends, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen... check it out.
Can you point me to some documentation or specs on the Dell system? I'd love to read about it... if only to know what I'm carrying around in my laptop.
What's the copper pipe in Dell Latitude containing? Is it just a thermal conductor.
I wondered the same thing about the cooling system in my Dell Inspiron 3700. I looked on Dell's site for some detailed technical specs or white papers, but came up empty. My speculation is that it's just air (in which case, you probably move more heat by conduction through the copper pipe). Water would be more effective, but you'd have to ensure that the thing didn't leak. But air might be enough -- you don't have to pipe away all the heat from the CPU, just enough to keep it within tolerance.
Whatever it is, it seems effective. When the fan comes on, the exhaust air is very warm.
What I found most interesting about the article is the tidbit near the end about Mick Jagger owning an Enigma machine (of a different type than the one stolen). He may gather no moss, but antique crypto equipment is another matter.
Assuming you could interpret the GPL so that you could release the patch under a different license, how would you distribute the resulting binary?
The original code is still GPL'ed, and that requires that you make available the sources that were used to build the binary. So anyone who wanted to distribute the program you build would *have* to be able to redistribute either your patch or the patched code. Maybe you could give the patch to people, but you'd have to tell them that they can't redistribute the binary they build unless you give permission to distribute the patch too.
My point is that even if you can distribute a non-GPL patch to GPL code (and I don't think you can), it isn't much use. Your new licensing conditions would have to say that the licensees can't redistribute, and you'd have to enforce that, or you and the licensee are both in violation of the GPL.
The Aura is a return visitor to Slashdot. Rob posted about it a year to a year and a half ago. I remember the photos, although the name "Aura" doesn't sound familiar. Perhaps this is a new model of the same system?
I tried giving the Encyclopedia the ISO-RR33 benchmark integer sequence 99 bottles of beer on the wall..., but it failed to even parse the request. So I simplified it to the integer values in the first six-pack: 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94. This time it parsed the request, but said the sequence wasn't in its database! What good is this site if it doesn't event recognize the beer sequence?
I have to agree. Although I like the iMac's sleek and colorful design, it just doesn't seem sexy with the iBooks. Just the opposite, they look like something that, upon opening, will reveal colorful stickers of Big Bird or Barney, or might play barnyard sounds. Maybe it's just the bright colors, but they look too much like my kids' toys. The graphite SE, though, looks like something I might could carry. (I guess I'm just not a colorful guy; when I bought my Dell Inspiron 3700 last year, I chose the boring gray over the cheesy blue. YMMV)
Slashdot Mirror
Make my own Mars Polar Lander Site? You mean I can have my very own smoking hole in the ground? Instructions:
- Take a plain block of styrofoam.
- Paint it rusty red.
- Set your blowtorch on "crater" and apply to the center of the red landscape. Kids -- get an adult's help!
Optional: add flakes of almuminum and gold foil.--Jim
Shame there aren't any HCI researchers working on this stuff. User interface is what lets down most wm's, especially the flashier ones.
Although it might be helpful to get the advice of an HCI expert here, it's going to be of limited effect. Where an HCI pro could have real benefit is in the window manager and toolkit design, because that's where policy decisions are made.
Remember X's longstanding motto and design principle: "mechanism, not policy".
--Jim
Like, the scrollbars. Linux scrollbars are almost invariably hideous, probably as a result of the motif disease which infects everything. That's a tiny thing, but pervasive, and nobody ever bothers doing anything about it. And yes, i realize the scrollbars aren't handled by X or the WM. I don't care. Would it be that difficult to go and _make_ it so they are?
/' to get some text in your window. Now play with the scrollbar. See what I mean? The buttons have their own logic, but it's highly conterintuitive, and they can't even agree with the rest of the world as to which side of the window it belongs on! Aren't you glad every scrollbar doesn't work that way?
That would be a mistake. The designers of X wisely adopted a philosophy of "presentation, not policy" which meant basically that you could draw your scrollbars any way you wanted to, and X would allow it. Policy was layered on top of the window system in the window manager and in toolkits -- of which there are many today, including Athena, Motif, Qt, and GTK.
If the X designers had chosen to make policy part of the windowing system, then the only scrollbar today would be the Athena scrollbar. You think Motif scrollbars are bad? Have you tried an Athena scrollbar? Run an xterm. Not one of those new xterm-like programs but a real vintage xterm. Turn on the scrollbar. Run 'ls -lR
Some people have said that separating presentation from policy has led to mass confusion as the many different window managers and toolkits have tried to compete for acceptance with users and developers. Personally, I think that the abundance of WMs and toolkits have been a good thing, because it's meant choice for us, the users of X. Why should I have to use mwm or olwm when I much prefer Window Maker? Dictating policy and taking away choice is a hallmark of proprietary systems like Windows; X shouldn't try the same thing.
--Jim
In other words, if you want to scroll down you have to keep the pointer within a few tens of pixels of the scroll bar in the X direction, or the thumb pops back up to where you started scrolling!
I hate that too, and I've sometimes wondered whether it was a side effect of the Apple UI lawsuit... Microsoft would be seeking to distinguish its UI from Apple's to thrawt the copyright claim. Surely not even Microsoft's UI designers would intentionally design in such an annoying and distracting feature.
BTW, Apple's UI is also sensitive to the pointer's X location, but if the pointer wanders outside its "slop" zone, the scroll thumb simply freezes in place -- much friendlier that jumping back to the top of the scrollbar.
But simply tracking the Y position would seem to be both the simplest and most obvious thing to do.
--Jim
Is it good for computer sex? Can the poor lonely geek-type with only an online girlfriend finally say good-bye to the Sticky Keyboard Syndrome forever? Inquiring minds want to know...
--Jim
Maybe we should begin to consider Outlook as a DDOS tool?
It certainly does seem to be a great DDoS opportunity! Maybe anybody with VBScript knowledge should be locked away as a potential hacker?
--Jim
The tapes aren't big enough to hold everything, so there are seperate tapes for take-off, landing, orbit, etc. The tapes need to be changed by hand on the first four machines.
This isn't correct. There are two tape drives called Mass Memory Units (MMUs); each has an identical copy of the flight software, both PASS and BFS. The drives are physically separate units from the GPCs; for the sake of redundancy, they communicate across separate data buses. All five GPCs share the same two MMUs.
The tapes in the MMUs are large enough to hold all the flight software for the different phases of the mission. These separate programs are called "Ops modes". There is an ops mode for each mission phase: OPS 1 for Ascent, OPS 2 for Orbit, OPS 3 for Entry/Landing. There are some other modes, but these are the significant ones.
The tapes do not have to be changed during the mission, but an crew member must manually enter the command for the ops mode transitions. Within an ops mode, the flight software can make its own transitions between program phases -- these are called "major mode transitions" and don't require an access to the MMU.
I'm not a FSW expert, but I've spent the last two+ years writing GPC emulators, so I've become familiar with some of these concepts.
--Jim
Personally, Hemos, I think what the book does is Fair Use,
The more I think about this position, the less I think I can support it. Fair Use is a legal issue, whereas my questions about Slashdot's behavior are of a moral nature. Forget whether some lawyer can construe their actions as legal -- I'm more concerned with whether it was right for Slashdot to do what it did. To ignore their own copyright policy, just because it wasn't convenient to follow it. That was wrong, and I think Rob and Hemos should acknowledge that.
--Jim
That would be fine, except for the fact that there's a copyright disclaimer at the bottom of every page on Slashdot, and it reads
The emphasis is mine. "Comments are owned by the Poster" What does this mean if, anything? I believe it means that Slashdot gives up their public-domain claims on Poster's comments -- if not in a legal sense then at least in the broader moral sense. If it doesn't mean that, then what does it mean?That's not a rhetorical question, Rob. I'd like to see an answer. What do you intend "ownership" to mean, if anything?
--Jim
Although I despise the software running on the WinCE devices (or whatever they're being called this month), I think the hardware has some extremely cool aspects to it. For starters, there's the larger 16-bit color displays; yes, Palm now makes a color device, but it's 8-bit color and it's still the old 160x160 pixel screen. Second, I like the audio-in/audio-out capabilities of (some of) the CE devices. Being able to record audio notes, or to play MP3s would be something I would like to be able to do on my Palm. On the other hand, the CE devices require faster CPUs, resulting in dismal battery life. They require more memory, which jacks up the cost. And they're still clunky compared to the sleek slim design of the Palm V (I haven't played with the latest generation of the CE devices. though).
So I'd like to see Palm stuff a spiffy new display and some audio capabilities into their devices while still retaining the slim form factor and decent battery life, and of course keeping their software and UI relatively unchanged. Do that and they'd bury Microsoft. As it is, the fancier hardware on the CE toys is going to entice some people over to the Dark Side.
I know two engineers who once carried Palms but ditched them for the better hardware available on CE devices. However, after six months of carrying their CE devices, these guys both said they regretted the decision and like their old Palms better. But if Microsoft really fixes their software, then Palm could have a problem. Spiff up their hardware, though, and it becomes a non-issue.
--Jim
/. isn't legally required to excerpt from e-mail posts that are posted to be part of a public discussion, and as I understand, the posters are not ID's by name or e-mail anyway. They may have contacted or tried to contact the e-mailers.
Then why does Slashdot's copyright notice at the bottom of every page say that comments are owned by the poster? What does "owned" mean if Slashdot is freely able to take comments and republish them? On the one hand, it's claimed that people own their work, but when it becomes inconvenient to respect that ownership, suddenly it's a public forum, and the comments are public domain.
Let me put this another way: what if I took all the Jon Katz posts including the original articles, stripped them of the Katz name, then without permission republished those posts in a book called Voice from the Slashmouth? How long would it be before I heard from your attorney? Remember, these are posts to a public forum, so they're fair game, right?
What's really sad about this brouhaha is that it's going to detract from what is otherwise a very deep and compelling story.
Personally, Hemos, I think what the book does is Fair Use, and I for one wouldn't complain if my posts had been republished. It doesn't seem substantially different than when Jon quoted posts in his NPR interview.
But that's just speaking for me. Knowing the kind of folks that post here, I expect the Slashdot readership, and especially the quoted posters, will demand an explanation from Jon Katz and Slashdot of why they chose not to attribute and not to seek permission. That "owned by the Poster" comment at the bottom of the Slashdot implies an obligation by Slashdot to its posters. By asserting poster-ownership of comments, you're implying that Slashdot won't treat the comments as Andover property or as public domain. Yet this book seems to take the opposite attitude.
There's a contradiction here. On the one hand, Slashdot claims poster ownership of comments. On the other, Slashdot claims that they're in the public domain (because they're taken from a public forum). So which is it?
--Jim
First off, you don't know that Jon didn't get permission from those he published. It's a compilation, but it may be a selective compilation, and those selected may have given their permission. But I'd like to hear Jon and Rob say so. Otherwise, I don't see how this book can be in keeping with the copyright notice at the bottom of every slashdot page claiming that "Comments are owned by the Poster." (That's a verbatim cut-n-paste.)
2. Since the origional source is from /., I think /. should get to decide where some of the profits go [I say EFF]
Agreed. The EFF is not only deserving, but given recent attacks on electronic freedoms, probably needs the funds more than ever. I too would vote EFF.
--Jim
proprietary (pr-pr-tr) adj. Abbr. prop., pty.
Good point. Exactly what I was going to post. Perhaps the word Ransom Love was looking for was "restrictive". It's not entirely on-target, but it's closer that proprietary.
--Jim
Say, that's pretty good. I wish pagers had been popular back when the Moral Majority was a target.
--Jim
I seem to recall maybe twenty years back some liberal group, possibly a gay/lesbian organization, got pissed at some ultra-conservative religious-based organization, possible the (now-defunct thank goodness) Moral Majority, and began a campaign of mass calling the MM's 800 number. The idea was not to deny service through availability, but to drain the MM's pocketbook through long-distance charges. I also remember hearing about solo DoS attacks on 800 numbers in which lone individuals would program their modems to dial the target number repeatedly.
These might also be Urban Legends, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen... check it out.
--Jim
Can you point me to some documentation or specs on the Dell system? I'd love to read about it... if only to know what I'm carrying around in my laptop.
--Jim
What's the copper pipe in Dell Latitude containing? Is it just a thermal conductor.
I wondered the same thing about the cooling system in my Dell Inspiron 3700. I looked on Dell's site for some detailed technical specs or white papers, but came up empty. My speculation is that it's just air (in which case, you probably move more heat by conduction through the copper pipe). Water would be more effective, but you'd have to ensure that the thing didn't leak. But air might be enough -- you don't have to pipe away all the heat from the CPU, just enough to keep it within tolerance.
Whatever it is, it seems effective. When the fan comes on, the exhaust air is very warm.
--Jim
please, let's do whis without any "God Save The Queen" puns!
--Jim
What I found most interesting about the article is the tidbit near the end about Mick Jagger owning an Enigma machine (of a different type than the one stolen). He may gather no moss, but antique crypto equipment is another matter.
--Jim
Assuming you could interpret the GPL so that you could release the patch under a different license, how would you distribute the resulting binary?
The original code is still GPL'ed, and that requires that you make available the sources that were used to build the binary. So anyone who wanted to distribute the program you build would *have* to be able to redistribute either your patch or the patched code. Maybe you could give the patch to people, but you'd have to tell them that they can't redistribute the binary they build unless you give permission to distribute the patch too.
My point is that even if you can distribute a non-GPL patch to GPL code (and I don't think you can), it isn't much use. Your new licensing conditions would have to say that the licensees can't redistribute, and you'd have to enforce that, or you and the licensee are both in violation of the GPL.
Sounds like you're tilting at windmills here.
--Jim
The Aura is a return visitor to Slashdot. Rob posted about it a year to a year and a half ago. I remember the photos, although the name "Aura" doesn't sound familiar. Perhaps this is a new model of the same system?
--Jim
I tried giving the Encyclopedia the ISO-RR33 benchmark integer sequence 99 bottles of beer on the wall..., but it failed to even parse the request. So I simplified it to the integer values in the first six-pack: 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94. This time it parsed the request, but said the sequence wasn't in its database! What good is this site if it doesn't event recognize the beer sequence?
--Jim
Cool-named unstable releases:
1.1.1 Beantown
1.1.2 Curse of the Bambino
1.1.3 Tasty Yellow Banana
1.1.4 Ponies for Sale
Well, the first two start a theme. So I have to ask what ponies and bananas have to do with Boston?
--Jim
I was never a fan of the iBox colours
I have to agree. Although I like the iMac's sleek and colorful design, it just doesn't seem sexy with the iBooks. Just the opposite, they look like something that, upon opening, will reveal colorful stickers of Big Bird or Barney, or might play barnyard sounds. Maybe it's just the bright colors, but they look too much like my kids' toys. The graphite SE, though, looks like something I might could carry. (I guess I'm just not a colorful guy; when I bought my Dell Inspiron 3700 last year, I chose the boring gray over the cheesy blue. YMMV)
--Jim