Vista: a prototype for OSAF's Networked Personal Information Manager
Andy Hertzfeld 10/29/02
9:58:26 PM
Introduction To Nonlinear Magnification
Nonlinear magnification is central to the many interface techniques that have been described in the literature under such names as "fisheye views" "distortion-oriented presentation" and "focus+context". The basic characteristics of nonlinear magnification are non-occluding in-place magnification which preserves a view of the global context.
Question to investigate - are recordings made by Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic (RF&D) of public domain books themselves in the public domain? and if not, why not?
4:56:32 PM
Toyota Motor Corp., the world's third-largest automaker, plans to use gasoline-electric hybrid engines in all vehicles by 2012 to increase fuel efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions, an executive said. [auto.com]
4:40:02 PM
Let's say you're a client of the Gartner Group. Their latest report says "Do not photocopy" at the bottom of every page. But it'd be really helpful if at an internal meeting you could distribute copies of page 212 because there's a complex chart on it. So you print up 12 copies and hand them out, warning the marketing guy that he's not to send it out to the press. If Gartner were to haul you into court, the judge would lecture the Gartner lawyer for wasting the court's time.
InfoWorld. IBM's $10 gamble with on-demand computing. Although it is not explained in the article, the idea is to build a software infrastructure that can "flip" to handle a myriad of tasks. It also includes an interesting twist. Given that desktop PCs represent the majority of majority of most company's computational horsepower, IBM plans to slave them to a Grid computing architecture. So, an enterprise with 100,000 desktop PCs and 5,000 servers would effectively improve by an order of magnitude the amount of work that can be done.
If they can pull this off, it will be good news to Intel since it would provide a basis for companies to continue to upgrade their PCs. It would also enable IBM to infringe on Microsoft's turf by getting more per desktop than Microsoft gets from companies that adopt this strategy. Is there a broad-based play here that could go beyond SETI at-home and other freebie projects? There might be if IBM or someone else can find a way to pay individuals, corporations, and universities for the use of their spare cycles. How much would the spare cycles on a 2.5 GHz desktop be worth? The key to this may be to look at the cost of replicating this capability in-house. The cost to purchase, house, and power a similar machine could easily cost $4,000 a year over three years (two cycles of Moore's Law). So, given this target cost, would $400 a year in "rental" fees be possible? It may be. This would effectively make buying a computer a freebie. In this model, $4 m a year would buy you the majority of cycles on 10,000 PCs each able to provide multi-gigaflop performance. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
1:57:30 PM
Fortune. Intel's $10 b gamble. So, Andy is hot for broadband wireless...
Here's Andy Grove's prediction: "You know that saying, 'The Internet changes everything'? People now are backing away from it, but I say, Just wait five years. Hundreds of billions of dollars we now spend on voice telecommunications will become a freebie--just like [Cisco CEO] John Chambers has said. That's Moore's Law at work. The entire entertainment industry will be digitally distributed over broadband networks. [Media companies are] going to tip over, because one of them, with its back to the wall, will make the transition, and the others will have to follow. That's Moore's Law at work. Houses will be wireless, broadband will be delivered wirelessly, and home and portable computers and consumer electronics are going to be built to facilitate all of the above..."
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
Thomas Jefferson
1:47:35 PM
The New York Times reports that Finland - a country where 92 percent of households have at least one mobile phone, it isn't too surprising that many children as young as seven or eight have their own phones. [MobileYouth]
12:46:46 PM
I just got a candy from my cs professor for answering his question about Dijkstra's algorithm. Halloween is cool.
12:44:01 PM
Fumbling my phone
To make a long distance call at work I have to dial 37 digits:
12 to call Sprint 11 to enter the number I want to call 14 for my phone card
and if I make a mistake I have to start all over. This is why I'm so into voice dialing. What's that you say? A cell phone? Afraid not, my office is in a cinderblock cave known as Wean Hall. Does anyone have data (and I'm sure it depends on the handset) on the average error rate for dialing a phone?
