Paperless Mars

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-09 15:32:57

Wires decrease mobility, though. On a space ship you want to move about. So either you have plugs all over the place, or you have really long wires. In either case, you still have to deal with them being in the way.

How about a combo of both?

soph · 2003-02-09 15:40:53

I guess that would be best, although you could always just go to a link hub to download and upload your information!

Tablet books are a good idea, especially if you can write to them. For example, you can write a journal on a tablet, or a blueprint, mission briefing, etc, upload it to the server, and send it out to earth. You could read any mission updates, news, and so on from earth.

I prefer PCs for computing, because laptops simply aren't as powerful and reliable. You can fix a PC much more easily, and you can keep oodles of spare parts, which are cheap.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-09 16:30:11

That's only because no one has felt like opening up the laptop industry. There isn't like, a standard laptop design like there are with PCs (ATX, mini ATX, etc).

I personally prefer to use a laptop. I have an old pentium 2, but as soon as my desktop PC blows up (wish it would already, damnit), I will be getting a good laptop.

I suspect that we'd be using custom software on these tablet PCs, software which isn't bloated like current PC software. So speed wouldn't be an issue.

soph · 2003-02-09 16:45:16

the speed was in relation to computers-tablet PCs are not really in the category i was talking about-for definition sake, tablet PC=palmesque, computer=laptop vs. PC.

I wouldn't say that laptops havent been explored, it's just that it's so much easier to design a PC because you can make it bigger and thus easier to keep cool. Also, you can put in more expansion slots, and bigger hardware. There really isn't much room in a laptop to put in slots or new hardware.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-09 19:11:32

Yeah, that's why I like laptops, they're way more custom than PCs. They consume less electricity, and create less heat. If only desktops were designed with efficiency in mind.

But you should know that tablet PCs, by definition, are just as powerful as regular PCs. In fact, Microsoft just came out with a P4 tablet PC.

I was thinking more along the lines of an ARM processor with custom software and a nicer screen than basic tablet PCs. Perhaps with even a portable keyboard (I hate touch screens for input, and my handwriting sucks).

soph · 2003-02-09 21:20:10

You can actually customize a PC more than a laptop

But, processor is not the end-all measure of power. The motherboard is probably more important. With a dual-line motherboard, only available for a regular PC, you get full potential out of your 2 ghz athlon (which are, imho, better than pentiums). They dont have these for tablets!

You could have touch screens and keyboards, for personal preference, and certain applications (ex. drawing) require handwriting!

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 09:00:16

I like AMD more, too, but I thought AMD laptops were hotter?

soph · 2003-02-10 13:45:50

could be, but thats why PCs are better, they have longer lives because they have more air and space. There are a lot more cooling options!

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 13:49:47

I work daily with ARM processors. They're very very cool. If your PC needs to be cooled, it's inefficienct. I expect these tablet PCs or whatever devices we use, to be highly efficient, using software that is custom built. Like I said before.

soph · 2003-02-10 14:11:30

I think that somebody should write a programming program. It really shouldn't be that hard for an experienced programmer...

But it doesn't mean that it's innefficient. The processor could also be working harder, because you have more peripherals, and a more demanding motherboard. Water-cooling might work for a tablet, but I'm not sure. You could certainly get more raw power out of a conventional PC, and you could have more application verstaility, because there is more room for expansion.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 14:17:08

Heh, a programming program?

What does a programming program do?

And excess heat does too mean you're inefficient. If the processor is working harder doing something in software which could be done in hardware, then that software and hardware is inefficient.

Modularity is the key. Several small cool processors can get more done than one processor doing all of the jobs at once.

soph · 2003-02-10 14:22:49

Again, it depends on the motherboard. New motherboards have two lines. On old motherboards, they tried to force all the power down one "street" so to speak. Now you have two, so there's less waste and more efficiency.

If the processor is working harder doing something in software which could be done in hardware, then that software and hardware is inefficient.

Erm, it works harder because there is more hardware (ex. I have a CD-RW drive, a DVD drive, a vid card, a floppy drive, a zip drive, a LAN, and then I have 2 hubs of external connections...I could never fit all this into a laptop or tablet PC. I'm also getting more speed.)

A programming program would be a program that allows you to choose what you want your software to do (i.e. word processing, imaging, and so on.) The main idea would be to have this program on one computer, and burn the created program to a CD, so you can use it on other programs. This would simplify things for the average PC user.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 14:33:28

Your drives are controlled by the IO controller. If that IO controller wasn't there, and IO was done in software, the CPU would have to work harder, dealing with all the different devices.

Understand?

A programming program doesn't make much sense. The closest you can get to that is perhaps something like Smalltalk, but even then, you're still programming a language. The language is just more visual than usual.

soph · 2003-02-10 14:35:21

Actually, Lego has a program that lets you program robots-it's actually pretty well done.

I know how I/O is done, but more hardware usually means that you need more processing power...you also get more speed out of your PC than your laptop.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 16:08:28

Not if it was modular. Perhaps more hardware means more bandwidth, but not necessarily more processer power. Each device just has its own communication chip, cache, etc.

Logo itself, is a language which allows you to program robots. Logo is actually a subset of Lisp, which a lot of people don't really realize. In any case, Logo isn't what you're looking for in this particular instance.

soph · 2003-02-10 16:36:57

The whole point was a simplified program that lets you tailor a program to your needs. For the professional, this would make things a tad easier, but for the amateur, it would allow them to program new software easily.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 18:17:15

Why have tons of different software when one set suits your needs perfectly? All you have to do is have each set of software extremely customizable, so that people can design the GUI how they saw fit.

For example; I, for one, would enjoy having mouse gesture type commands for most windows. Instead of going all the way up to the little X at to close a window, I could just wave my mouse a certain way, or my finger for that matter, and it would do what I intended.

Such things could be facilitated by a program with several different input methods, not several different programs all with one kind of input method.

soph · 2003-02-10 18:20:21

the problem with that is how specific do you want to get with your motion? Do you want to make it so difficult that you cant do it? Or do you want to make it so simple that you could do it accidentally? The benefit of having an "X" is that to hit it, you have to want to hit it, and it isn't overly hard to do.

Josh Cryer · 2003-02-10 20:55:58

Hmm, why can't I make it so simple yet difficult that I couldn't do it accidently, but I my intent could be interpreted? I use mouse gestures in Opera. There simply is no issue with using them...

...mouse gestures weren't even thought of when the little X was invented. Personally, I would do away with that little cm wide bar at the top of most screens, in favor of a completely mouse gesture system.

Most gestures are no more than 4 moves. Which is just about as many moves as some characters require for you to write them. Not excessive at all.

It's not like it's impossible to have a gesture system which doesn't make many mistakes. And the ones you do have probably wouldn't be any worse than ones with a non-gesture system.

soph · 2003-03-08 09:55:01

You could probably have "themes" that allow you to have whatever gesture, or non-gesture, setup that you wanted. I could use my little bar, and you could use your gestures. If it was designed by a skilled programmer, and not using lazy coding (i.e. using English instead of real code to write the program), this could be a small, small file. Even using lazy coding, this could probably be made under 10 megabytes, which, considering we can have 10 gigabyte DVD's, and 200 gigabyte HD's (commercially, and compact-large network hard drives can be multi-terrabyte), 10 mb is less than your average memory leak.

On another note-a major reason why we need paper on Earth is because it's fast, and not everybody has access to the same information. Data transfer can be long and tedious (now that more and more broadband is used, we see more e-commerce usage-I just did an e-commerce business plan, and I was very humbled by the 400% increase in B2B e-commerce from 1997 to 2000).

Mars gives us a unique chance, then. What if we had a central information server, that everybody could connect to? You needn't put your valuable information there-in fact, it could be on a completely separate connection than your private data. But this way, you could upload information right to your server, and somebody over at Technocorp could get their data right away. Download it onto a DVD, put it in their Tablet, and pass it to the right employee. Lose it, just get it from the server again.

Josh Cryer · 2003-03-08 18:58:45

Sure, you could call them themes. That's what I was talking about when I said, ?All you have to do is have each set of software extremely customizable, so that people can design the GUI how they saw fit.?

I think 10MB is excessive for a GUI. I've always been a minimalist, though. If you've ever run QNX you'd know what I mean. The whole thing runs in only a few megs of memory. Assuming the software is specificlly ported to these tablets, obviously the GUI would be compact.

And I always hated centralization. Centralization means one thing, control. Whoever controls the main computer controls the information you have stored there. Sure, you lose a tablet, you lose the information on that tablet. You lose the central server, though, everyone loses their information.

The funny part, is aht the central server would have to be redundant, with backups and so on. Why not just have a decentralized cluster where information is stored highly redundantly, and no one person can access others information without PGP keys and so on? It'd be much safer. Plus, no one could control anyone.

soph · 2003-03-08 19:21:29

Nobody would control the server-what I was saying is you could have a common exchange medium-uploading something is much easier than e-mailing it. It could be similar to the Library of Congress.

Obviously you wouldn't put your sensitive data on this server-you might not even leave your information on there-it could be a quick, upload-download-delete (like a fax, I guess).

My 10 MB example was just to illustrate that it wouldn't really be a significant amount, even if it was that large.

dicktice · 2003-03-09 12:57:46

The other day, when I took a little jaunt into the future to research my latest Future History novel (it was after the WW III, or IV period--it's always hard to tell since they look so alike). Well, most of the hightech recorded data was inaccessible, wouldn't you know, because there were no compatible read-out gizmos left. Luckily, they had continued printing books and magazines, so I was able to scan pages I needed from underground library archives into my laptop, for retrieval when I got back home. Makes you think, though....

Josh Cryer · 2003-03-11 06:18:42

soph, sure, you could upload things to a central proxy or cache or whatever. Or you could just saturate all the nodes in the system with lots of redundant data. Then, when it came time to retrive your data, you could get it very fast, since each node would have a redundant copy, and you'd always be close to one. Depending on a centralized server is stupid since it would be so prone to problems.

dicktice, everyone loves to make that argument. But what if you lost the capacity to understand whatever language something was written in? You'd be in the same boat.

Is not going from paper to analoug tape the same as going from rock carvings to paper? It's actually easier to read backwards, once you think about it, since we already have the knowledge of past methods.

Think of the ISO standard which CDROMs are based on as the Rosetta Stone of that media! Without the Rosetta Stone, we would have never figured out Egyptian, and without the ISO standard, we could ?lose? the ablity to make CDROMs or whatever.

I'm not saying that paper and so on doesn't have it's place, I'm just saying the concepts are similar when you think about it. And obviously nothing is easier than writing something down.

dicktice · 2003-03-11 11:07:23

Josh: Speaking of "paper," the other day a well-travelled friend showed me an Australian banknote, of (it felt like) mylar, "printed" on both sides, in colour, with transparent windows and ... well I don't know what because he took it back before I could find a magnifying glass. Well, I suppose that's paper, but you certainly can't (better not) write on it. Your reaction to my bit of levity, was interesting. I think every new, innovative medium for data recording/readout should, when incorporated in place of what went before, should be "rosetta-ed" for future referencing. If I knew what I mean, I would continue...but I don't, for the moment. Great response--thanks!

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