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09:10:17 <Fare> anyone here interested in buying a lispm?
09:10:42 <smokie> whee! yeah
09:11:03 <smokie> well, only vaguely interested. i can't come pick it up in france, nor pay much
09:12:11 smokie going home.
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10:10:20 <water> re
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11:50:24 <we_sleep> Fare: lispm's are crazy
11:50:29 [NICK] we_sleep changed nick to: feelicks
11:55:09 <Fare> are they?
11:55:38 <Fare> I'm crazy about lispm's
12:02:55 <water> felix: what makes you say that?
12:06:06 <water> oh btw, fare, apple is now selling dvd/cd burners :)
12:16:21 <Fare> how much is a blank dvd?
12:16:58 <Fare> die, intellectual property, die!
12:18:13 <water> the disc itself can't be that much
12:18:48 <water> apple's also giving away the software to work with the drives of course
12:21:09 <feelicks> lispms just look very cool
12:21:26 <feelicks> crazy i am using saying that they are nice and interesting
12:23:05 <water> oh
12:23:35 <water> we're mostly interested in learning from what good ideas they have put into their software
12:23:40 feelicks is a dumb american kid who uses too much slang
12:23:50 <feelicks> i assumed that
12:24:10 <water> in that case "crazyk00l" works ;)
12:24:12 <feelicks> i think language based os's are very interesting and as far as i know they were the first such machines - right?
12:24:22 <water> hardly
12:24:25 <feelicks> ya!
12:24:37 <water> there was the burroughs b500 long ago
12:24:40 <water> er...
12:24:42 <water> b5000
12:25:00 <water> but it wasn't oriented toward any specific language
12:25:03 <feelicks> what are they? got a link?
12:25:09 <water> hrm
12:25:17 <water> do a google search on burroughs machine
12:25:38 <water> they're very old
12:25:51 <water> there also are the forth processors
12:25:59 <feelicks> old machines are awesome
12:26:20 <water> there's also the Xerox Star machine
12:26:27 <feelicks> i knew about forth stuff but i did not know when they were used
12:26:28 <water> which was more about bcpl
12:26:48 <water> lisp machines were definitely the best effort
12:27:10 <water> but they weren't a completely novel approach... just an evolution
12:27:23 <feelicks> i think it's funny how it was all about mit pride
12:30:17 <water> also mit lost a lot of its free lisp hackers to symbolics because of lispm's
12:30:44 <water> so it had a kind of negative cultural effect
12:31:01 <water> especially as symbolics stuff is ridiculously proprietary
12:31:40 <feelicks> sounds negative to me
12:32:15 <feelicks> i`mreally interested in computer culutural history, but sometimes its hard to find books
12:32:38 feelicks doesnt like looking like a jerk talking to older computer enthuists
12:34:28 <water> there's an early-80s book called "hackers" iirc
12:34:43 <water> i remember reading it at a library... it was really insightful
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12:35:02 <water> how old are you?
12:35:43 <feelicks> i finished the age of intelligent machines today and picked up mythical man month
12:35:46 <feelicks> 15
12:36:46 <water> why the hell are you reading those books?
12:36:58 <water> those are almost as bad as GEB
12:37:17 <Fare> why do you say GEB is bad?
12:37:29 <feelicks> they are interesting
12:37:37 <feelicks> GEB?
12:37:44 <Fare> it certainly has flaws, but it's still a monumental achievement
12:37:58 <water> abi: geb
12:37:59 <abi> geb is _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ by Douglas Hofstadter or insanely great or forget this nonsense and read a real book like UC&C
12:38:50 <water> bah, so were cartesian coordinates in the 1500's, but you don't read a treatise on them to learn it now :P
12:39:10 <feelicks> abi: uc&c
12:39:10 <abi> uc&c is Understanding Computers and Cognition or skip GEB and read a real book like this one :)
12:39:21 <water> besides, GEB is 99% designed to confuse you
12:39:23 <Fare> "Hackers" is available fulltext from Gutemberg.
12:39:29 <feelicks> uc&c?
12:39:32 <water> Fare: oh good
12:42:06 <water> felix: what about it?
12:42:23 <feelicks> they're on my list now
12:42:40 <feelicks> what about what? i was asking what uc&c was but now i know
12:44:47 <Fare> abi: UC&C ?
12:44:47 <abi> UC&C is Understanding Computers and Cognition or skip GEB and read a real book like this one :)
12:45:39 <Fare> who's the author of UC&C ?
12:46:13 <Fare> or maybe discuss on #lisp ? rainer is there, btw
12:46:16 water looks
12:46:27 <water> Winograd and...
12:46:37 <water> Flores
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14:34:46 <water> hey tcn
14:34:52 <tcn> hey
14:35:09 <water> eihrul has dropped off the face of the earth it seems :P
14:35:23 <water> i haven't seen a sign of him all wekk
14:35:26 <water> week even
14:35:48 <water> how's retro?
14:35:58 <tcn> either that or he changed his nick to feeelicks
14:36:08 <feelicks> he didnt
14:36:13 <tcn> hehe
14:36:33 <tcn> retro.. same as last week
14:36:36 <water> anyway he has working pidgin code but hasn't posted it :P
14:37:02 <water> which i think i would kill him for it, except that he is so valuable
14:37:12 <water> hrm
14:37:50 <Fare> tcn!
14:38:04 <tcn> um, what's pidgin?
14:38:18 <water> hm he's been logging in to bespin, though
14:38:20 <Fare> maybe he was too disappointed by core's behavior and decided to let go
14:38:47 <Fare> what's marvelous is that core still promises that clementine will (someday) be free software.
14:38:53 <water> i think that i may have an account for core's company
14:39:08 <water> how can he say that??
14:39:10 <Fare> uh? whaddyamean?
14:39:28 <Fare> I guess that 90 years from now, it will be public domain, hence free software.
14:39:45 <Fare> or sooner, if we get to void IP laws.
14:39:47 <water> well if it's not free, he won't get this account :)
14:39:48 <feelicks> and obsolyte
14:39:57 <Fare> feelicks: and obsolete
14:40:39 <water> clementine better be as cheap as dirt if he expects to make money off of it as IP
14:42:27 <tcn> IP freely :)
14:42:58 <water> two points for the bad pun
14:45:24 <tcn> what's pidgin?
14:47:21 <water> slate with self-style MOs
14:47:32 <water> i.e. strict evaluation
14:48:10 <tcn> oic
14:49:03 <tcn> (short sentences... i'm in between qwerty and dvorak
14:50:22 <water> MOs written in pidgin would bootstrap actual slate
14:50:22 <water> and then slate-in-slate etc
14:50:26 <feelicks> tcn: you should move yours keys around then make a new mapping
14:50:37 <tcn> hehe
14:51:07 <tcn> hmm let's see if I can remember qwerty too.. yup :)
14:51:32 <tcn> and here's dvorak :)
14:54:00 <water> speaking of kb's
14:54:27 <water> i may have an interesting "tunes kb" design based on the symbolics lisp kb
14:54:53 <water> or rather based on it and say those chording handheld kb's
14:55:34 <feelicks> water: extra keys or moving around alphanumerics?
14:55:42 <Fare> water: unless you plan to sell volume, it will be mostly a few-person experiment
14:55:53 <Fare> expensive, with little user feedback, etc
14:56:50 <water> felix: hardly
14:57:05 <water> Fare: yeah well it's just a design for now
14:57:43 <Fare> if I were to experiment in input devices, I'd like to test non-keyboard devices, including voice.
14:59:17 [NICK] kc-meeting changed nick to: kc5tja
15:00:23 <water> any decent voice interface, though, would require a mature tunes environment before i would even touch it
15:01:58 <tcn> hehe, imagine doing that in forth..
15:02:53 <tcn> "is that 2@ or 2 @ ?"
15:04:25 <water> yes that'd be a nightmare
15:04:42 <water> for almost any programming language
15:04:57 <Fare> I don't imagine doing symbolic manipulations in Forth.
15:06:45 <tcn> hmmm
15:07:40 <tcn> a voice iface would just wear out your vocal cords :)
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15:08:14 water reads about CoLab from Xerox PARc
15:08:28 <Fare> tcn: then a whistle-based interface
15:09:04 <water> Fare: sound-related mediums are not nearly well understood enough
15:15:23 <Fare> brainwave devices, maybe
15:15:37 <water> heh
15:15:45 <water> incremental improvements Fare
15:16:23 <water> trust me, this kb design i'm thinking of is no ordinary keyboard
15:17:03 <water> more like a supergeneralization of what keys as such are capable of, applied uniformly to all keys on the device
15:18:46 <Fare> )
15:18:55 <Fare> I'd like to see it.
15:20:46 <water> it would probably be easiest to simulate it in software at first
15:21:07 <water> part of the idea is that it would be an embedded computer
15:22:00 <water> hell, for now i can't even think of a better labelling for the keys than none
15:22:12 <water> (or colors or something ambiguous)
15:22:52 <water> i had a simpler-semantics idea for a kb like that for my <> language back in high school
15:23:13 <water> back then i wanted 3 sides of a cube with 4x4 rows of keys
15:23:29 <tcn> hey, you could do something like ogham..
15:23:30 <water> or two cubes with 2 sides of 4x4
15:23:42 <water> ogham sucks
15:24:06 water says that about every other conlang, though )
15:24:25 <tcn> // || / \\ 
15:24:51 <Fare> I once thought about LCD displays on each key
15:25:22 <water> touchscreen based kb's
15:25:31 <Fare> abi: conlang?
15:25:32 <abi> conlang is see http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Language_and_Linguistics/Constructed_Languages/
15:25:47 <water> one display for each key, though, would bankrupt ppl
15:27:36 <Fare> bizarrely, I saw a keyboard that had a special row of keys with suck LCD display, at a multilingual translator office
15:27:42 <water> what would work, though, is an lcd touchscreen with dynamic tactile feedback
15:27:50 <water> oh?
15:30:27 <Fare> that was long after I had the idea, but quite some time ago. must have been pretty expensive, despite the bad resolution of the LCD.
15:33:59 <tcn> ogham has 4-5 groups of 4-5 letters, (aouei blfsn etc...) each group is a certain type of slash, repeated 1-5 times to tell them apart..
15:34:18 <tcn> A |  O ||  U ||| etc...
15:34:19 <water> "type of slash"?
15:34:44 <tcn> M /  G  //  etc.
15:34:52 <water> and how is the slash denoted verbally?
15:35:18 water thinks this sounds like an idea without a need
15:35:21 <tcn> the name of the letter
15:35:33 <water> huh?
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15:35:59 <tcn> it was a good way of writing on rocks :)
15:36:05 <water> stop attempting to explain if this is not worth hearing
15:36:11 <water> oh lovely
15:36:47 <water> i can appreciate that constraint, but i don't think that that's even a decent way to handle it
15:37:48 <tcn> anyway. you could have one hand choose the group and the other choose a letter in that group
15:38:19 <water> why not use coordinates?
15:38:30 <water> i.e. a 5x5 grid?
15:38:49 <tcn> less movement
15:39:13 <water> heh
15:39:27 <water> the whole language expression is based on using the hands held in the air?
15:39:56 <tcn> eh?
15:40:02 <water> is there a picture of this? ;)
15:40:25 <Fare> did you read about chuck moore's input device?
15:40:26 <tcn> it's for irish
15:40:27 water notes pictures as a very strong argument against most conlang improvements
15:40:40 <water> Fare: which one?
15:40:47 <tcn> haha
15:41:14 <water> tcn: so why did you bring it up?
15:43:04 <tcn> cause it's not so far from english
15:43:21 <water> um
15:43:33 <water> <> is quite far from english
15:43:50 <water> and this keyboard i propose would not be english-biased
15:44:12 <tcn> tell ya what, i'll write a driver for it in retro :)
15:44:16 <Fare> his 7 key input device, 4 arrows + 3 buttons, IIRC
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15:44:18 <water> so?
15:44:27 <Fare> the one he uses in OKAD.
15:44:33 <water> hi hcf
15:44:39 <hcf> hi
15:44:54 <water> can you contact eihrul and find out wtf he is up to?
15:45:25 <water> OKAD?
15:45:28 <water> abi: okad
15:45:43 <water> no acronyms are allowed in here without informing abi
15:45:53 <water> this place swims with acronyms
15:46:09 <water> well maybe not informing abi, but at least explaining
15:48:47 <Fare> OKAD is a small system (a few tens of K) written in FORTH with which Chuck Moore designs his Forth chips. He uses transistors far overspec, thanks to a analog model of transistors that takes heating into account.
15:48:49 <tcn> surely there aren't as many acronyms here as there are in the navy :)
15:49:26 <water> hm
15:49:39 <water> ok irrelevance has set in
15:51:16 <tcn> yeah, just answer the fooking question fare ;)
15:52:27 <Fare> what question?
15:57:38 <Fare> emu!!!
15:57:54 <tcn> I think we've killed enough time for one day
15:58:00 <water> Fare: wrong channel
15:58:08 <water> tcn: bye bye
15:58:24 <water> tcn: unless you have something relevant to talk about
15:58:51 <tcn> nah, i want to program
15:59:04 <tcn> take care!
15:59:18 <Fare> doh
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16:08:18 <water> brb
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16:26:02 <water> re
16:26:16 <scipient> hi water
16:27:07 water is seeing some interesting comparisons about meta-programming in forth and self in the self mailing list
16:27:11 <water> and just plain programming
16:28:36 <scipient> you've expressed dissatisfaction w/ mechanisms like mailing lists, IRC, websites for purposes of collaboration on a project like Tunes ...  i'm curious what your specific complaints are and what your specifications would be for an effective collaboration mechanism
16:28:53 <water> sure
16:29:34 <water> for one, mailing lists are straight text... there's no agreed-on structure or format except for some loose conventions which text actually hinders
16:29:53 <scipient> agreed
16:29:54 <water> (for example, line-wrapping at 72 or whatever characters)
16:30:32 <water> for number two, the important thing is to take discussions and refine them into something publishable or releasable as code
16:30:44 <scipient> mailing lists are very poor at showing the current consensus on previous discussions
16:30:47 <water> which i would call a "vertical" direction
16:33:06 <scipient> how do Wikis fail?
16:33:22 <water> wikis don't allow for structure to be built in anywhere
16:33:38 <water> i.e. you can't reprogram them
16:33:43 <water> or make some part of them concrete
16:33:43 <scipient> what kind of structure would you want to be able to build?
16:33:52 <water> any kind i want
16:34:10 <water> like Lisp's lists are not structures but structure components
16:34:28 <water> (although lisp is not the best for this for tunes)
16:35:48 <scipient> ok.. let me get some basic assumptions straight.. is the general idea of a collection of realtime-editable documents suitable for your concept of a good collaborative mechanism?
16:36:42 <water> yes, but it's not enough as such of course
16:36:47 <scipient> of course
16:37:09 <water> and realtime is the way life works :)
16:37:18 <water> so it has to be possible
16:38:23 <scipient> what are some things you'd want to be able to do?  automatically generate publishable documents in arbitrary output formats?
16:38:46 <scipient> (based on some subset of the documents in the collab. mechanism)
16:38:49 <water> no, arbitrary output format is stretching things
16:39:02 <water> i.e. it's a separate goal
16:39:05 <scipient> well, arbitrary but chosen from a limited set like Tex, HTML, PDF etc.
16:39:37 <water> maybe, but only dynamically
16:40:10 <water> like i said, it's a separate goal
16:40:15 <scipient> ok
16:40:49 <water> anyway, the idea is to be able to reach into this collaborative space using several different styles
16:41:15 <water> irc is one style... the format encourages one-line statements
16:41:20 <water> (and no structure, which is its problem)
16:41:59 <water> email is another style, encouraging streams but the format is limited and the interaction is in blocks
16:42:10 <water> block-level interaction is not bad, though
16:42:38 <water> because it's the step between one-line discussions and publishable thesis statements with elaboration
16:43:07 <water> i'm saying getting from here (one-liners) to publishable documents could be seamless
16:43:31 <water> (both implementationally and in terms of what's easiest at the moment to perform)
16:44:30 <water> one required feature for that to happen is structuring of text, and above the text level, the ability to have annotations to any level
16:44:42 <water> like me making a one-line comment about an HLL web page
16:45:32 <water> if i make the statement "here", someone who works at the email-level should be able to respond to it sensibly and very easily
16:45:50 <water> follow?
16:45:56 <scipient> yes
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16:46:23 <water> not only should it be easy to respond to, it should not require deciphering of logs to perceive
16:46:42 <scipient> is there anything close to this in existence?
16:46:46 <water> which is what the structuring is for... to make sure that a computer can automatically manage the interface to it
16:46:54 <water> sure
16:47:08 <water> but not for texts specifically
16:47:29 <water> squeak has nebraska for sharing windows and programming in morphic collaboratively in them
16:47:46 <water> which descends from self's kansas
16:47:53 <water> which in turn descends from PARC'x CoLab
16:48:15 <water> which was a physical blackboard that was wired to be a networked shared window
16:48:30 <scipient> cool
16:48:40 <water> i have a url for it
16:48:59 <scipient> for CoLab?
16:49:11 <water> http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/members/stefik/
16:49:13 <water> yep
16:50:55 <scipient> is there an existing system you'd recommend as a starting point, or are they all too far off the mark from what you want?
16:52:12 <water> nebraska or the LispM OS/Environment
16:52:40 <water> xanadu pretty much missed the mark entirely
16:52:59 <water> although they had some interesting ideas
16:54:30 <water> tomorrow i will be going to Tril's house to work on a LispM
16:54:44 <water> and take plenty of screenshots and make sure i learn a lot
16:56:14 <water> hm
16:56:28 water just noticed a surprising thing in Mac OS X aqua
16:56:37 <Fare> what?
16:56:54 <water> in the doc, context menus look like text baloons
16:56:58 <water> er...dock
16:57:23 <scipient> do you have a url for nebraska?
16:57:33 <water> abi: nebraska
16:57:33 <abi> nebraska is [squeak+sw] a toolkit for building remote interactions with Morphic in Squeak at http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1356
16:57:43 <scipient> thx
16:58:04 <water> it is interesting only because it links together two ways of looking at objects-in-contexts
16:58:15 <water> which i have previously been thinking of
16:58:37 <water> it's terrible as is because you only get it in the limited doc
16:58:40 <water> er... dock
17:07:37 <water> btw Fare i may be going to Comdex this year
17:07:47 <Fare> great!
17:07:58 <Fare> you may even meet core, there
17:08:02 <water> not officially for tunes/arrow
17:08:08 <water> heh
17:08:14 <water> may i deck him? :)
17:08:46 <water> (decking being a rather forceful meeting of the fist with the face :)
17:09:34 <Fare> on eihrul's behalf, maybe
17:09:50 <water> yeah that would be the only reason
17:15:28 <water> cool
17:15:53 <water> a google search that reaches a swiki can actually index an editing page for a particular node
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17:19:43 [MODE] ChanServ set mode: +o Tril
17:20:06 [TOPIC] Tril: abi is using up the most RAM of any process on Bespin!
17:20:18 <water> hey tril
17:20:22 <Tril> hi
17:20:22 <water> abi: stats
17:20:24 <abi> Since Thu Jan 11 19:07:16 2001, there have been 0 modifications and 10 questions.  I have been awake for 22 hours, 13 minutes, 8 seconds this session, and currently reference 1736 factoids.
17:20:41 <water> i take it abi loads all those factoids into ram
17:20:47 <water> hrm
17:20:47 <Tril> maybe
17:20:53 <water> well you missed hcf anyway
17:20:58 <Tril> I'm not complaining
17:21:32 <water> what's up?
17:21:33 <scipient> yeah, doesn't abi just keep it all in a perl hash
17:22:47 <water> Tril: is saturday or sunday easier for you to meet?
17:22:55 <water> you didn't say
17:37:06 <water> god damn it, where's eihrul?
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