Portable Stereo Creator Gets His Due

Portable Stereo Creator Gets His Due: "The history of Grundig
(Score:5, Informative)
by NigelJohnstone (242811) Alter Relationship on Sunday December 18, @08:23AM (#14284684)
http://www.grundig.com/index.php?id=250 [grundig.com]

1965 The Cassette Recorder C 100 is the first cassette tape recorder made by Grundig. Recording takes place with the DC International System, on cassettes with the dimensions 120 x 77 x 12 mm.

1967 The CC Compact Cassette is introduced and can be listened to with the Cassette Tape Recorder C 200.

1974: The portable Radio Recorder C 6000 Automatic is a best-seller. Over 710,000 units are sold.

He filed for his patent in 1977."
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Re:The hypocrisy of Slashdot
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Jasin Natael (14968) Alter Relationship on Sunday December 18, @09:56AM (#14285138)
(http://www.jyopp.com/)

I will have to qualify your statement, and say that strong should refer only to the strictness of enforcement, not the lengthening of period. This is a mistake that the US legislature has made time and again.

When a company can get licensing fees from a patent or copyright past the end of my lifetime, or when the creator's grandchildren can collect royalties throughout their lifetimes, we have done the opposite of what IP law should do. We have *exempted* the entity in question from ever needing to contribute to society again, when the point should be to *tempt* them with the benefits of further innovation after their temporary monopoly has expired.
Jasin Natael
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Re:The hypocrisy of Slashdot
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Tony Hoyle (11698) Alter Relationship on Sunday December 18, @08:53AM (#14284783)
(http://www.nodomain.org/)
There have been *many* cases of patents retarding innovation.

My favourite is the steam engine - development was stalled for 20 years because of an outstanding patent on high pressure steam valves.

And that was when patents didn't have stupid lifetimes.... If it were like today I suspect we'd still be waiting for someone to invent it.
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http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171436&threshold=4&commentsort=0&tid=227&tid=156&tid=4&mode=thread&cid=14278678
Of course, there are exceptions. Sun demonstrated a music program where you could add instruments to a song as tracks, and control their volume and balance by moving them in 3D in relation to your real life speakers. To make something softer, you could move it further "into" the monitor. To make it only audible on the left speaker, you could move it to the left side of the screen. Quite novel, but certainly not an application that necessitates a 3D "desktop" environment. It could just as well be run as a standalone program in Windows, Linux, or Mac as they are today.

So while I agree that if we were to have a 3D desktop, it would be nice to have a 3D input device, neither seem to add much utility. Personally, I'm stunned that the multi-desktop (virtual desktop) navigation system hasn't made more inroads. I'm addicted to it in KDE, and Windows' powertool feels like a cheap hack by comparison. I'm stunned that neither Windows nor Mac come with it by default. Mac uses Expose, which strikes me as a complex work around to achieve a similar effect. In the future, I think we'll use other subtle advancements like virtual desktops to extend the functionaility of the user interface in ways that allow us to *organize* the information as we access and use it, rather than displaying it in some drastically different way, like a 3D desktop.
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3D not that useful

(Score:5, Insightful)

by Bogtha (906264) on Friday December 16, @10:42PM (#14277902)

Current interfaces aren't 2D, they are 2.5D. There is a z-axis, it's just less immediately obvious than the x and y axes. Ever put one window on top of another? Yep, that's depth.

The reason why 3D interfaces aren't really that useful is that you really need a 3D input device to make use of it. But the trouble is, the way our bodies are built, it's very tiring to wave our hands around all day long. At least with a 2.5D interface, our hands are resting on something.

The other problem is that the value 3D provides over 2.5D is very small. What does it actually get us? We can already put things behind and in front of each other. We can already zoom in and out of structures. We can't rotate well - but that's not something that I think stops useful things from happening.

What we need aren't 3D interfaces, what we need are smarter interfaces. Not necessarily natural language processing, but simple stuff that works and is practical. Tab completion in UNIX shells is a good example. Intellisense in IDEs is another. Clippy is rumoured to have actually been useful in the lab, before it was hobbled for desktop computers. Spotlight is making things easier to find.

These are the kinds of interface enhancements that will be of most use, and they can come along piece-by-piece without anybody noticing, without needing new hardware, and without users being forced into a new paradigm
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http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/12/17/0231226

The tasks performed on a computer.

(Score:5, Insightful)

by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Friday December 16, @11:37PM (#14278068)

I introduce first to you the humble progress bar. A good progress bar does two things. It shows how far along something is (percentage complete) and it show that activity is taking place and your computer has not just frozen again.

So in days past when screen were primitive you simply had a row of dots appearing with maybe if your lucky the occasional 5% added to give something like ......5%........10%....

Add the capabilty for backspace and you usually got a little spinning character made up out of -\|/ to show action taking place. Some more advancement and you got a full bar like 0****5****10****15..| (work with me here this is hard to do in text)

But then GRAPHICS were added. YEAH. So now you could draw a bar slowly being filled (but for some reason loosing the activity indicator). Color was added and now you could make the bar turn from red to green.

2.5d add shadow effect to make the bar appear round. 3d and it can stand up like a real seperate bar on your screen.

And what is the freaking point? Well none. All of them did their work and clearly showed what was happening. Okay they became better looking but it gave no real advantage.

So are there other tasks that can benefit from better graphics? I think you have the following main type of jobs on a pc.

1. Finding things. Locating that file you know you have but have not got a quick link to. Either you search for it by entering some params, this does not need more then a text interface. You navigate a file tree for it. text interface like Midnight Commander works perfectly fine. Oh graphics enable nice extras like previews for images but that is useless when I am searching for a mp3 file and the previews for text documents are so small I can't spot the difference. That is leaving aside that the preview options are usually so slow that I can move a thousand times faster in MC then the graphical browsers. 3d benefits? Can't think of any.
2. Manipulating content. Well unless your trying to edit a 3d content item what is the point? The article already points out that text is best displayed on a 2d service. Now sound manipulation might make sense in 3d, after all stereo sound IS 3D in away so instead of manipulating two 2d waves you could mix them in a 3d wave signal. Never seen this so either it is to hard or it does not offer any benefits. Office/paint/code in 3d? Only as a way to make things extra clear (in the same way that it is easier to code with color highlighting) but no. 2d seems to work fine.
3. Organizing content. Now we are talking. As the article points out 2d is horribly limiting to make complex relations, anyone who has ever drawn a relationship diagram will have found themselves having to cross lines wich always makes things confusing. Add a 3rd dimension and you never have to cross lines. HOWEVER the huge price you pay for it that you now have to control a 3rd dimension wich seems to make things a lot more difficult. You already need a bloody complex mouse to manipulate a large 2d scene (x-y axis mouse + 2 scroll wheels) a 3d scene is even harder. Every 3d game with a free roving camera proves it.

Yes I would like a 3d interface when I am manipulating or inspecting the relations between objects on my pc. But is this a common activity? Well I look up at the tabs of my opera browser. Current desktops already have a sort of 2.5d and perhaps my tabs would be clearer if tabs of new pages where "behind" the tabs they originated from. I arrived at this input screen by opening a new tab from the story page (helps me remember where I was when I am finished here) but this tab is at the end of the tabs not indicating that it has a relation with a tab almost at the beginning.

Still with me? Another example. My music collection has a lot of soundtracks. Trying to organize it completly is a nightmare. Especially if I also want to organize it by genre (so I can easily switch depending on mood). Luckily I am on linux so I can use symlinks so an album can be both in the artist directory AND the movie directory AND the genre directory BUT displaying the relations is impossible. A 3d file browser should be able to show me that the dir "Star Wars A new Hope OST" is in the "Star Wars" dir but also in the "John Williams" but also in the classical dir. I know of no 2d browser who can show me this for linux.

A new interface for me needs to ad something new. I still use midnight commander because it does not hang, it does not choke on 10000 file directories it does not try to get info on every goddamn file it in short does not get in the way. 3d? I can only see one need for it and since most people seem to find iTunes a good way to organize their music I can't see any appeal for it with the mass market, most of them got enough troubles figuring out a 2d mouse.

--
vi VS emacs arguments are pointless and a waste of time.

vi is the best.

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Preview screenshots of Vista beta are circulating here:
http://www.unitedti.org/lofiversion/index.php/t411 3.html [unitedti.org]