Re: ASCII Stuff

BoD wrote:
> Veronica Karlsson wrote:
> >
> > In the news readers I'm familiar with you get the next message by
> > "scrolling past the end" of the current message.
> 
> With the one I'm familiar with you just have to click a button.

Sure, I can do that too, but then I would either have to use the mouse
all the time or switch between mouse and keyboard all the time. This way
I can just keep tapping the space bar (very convenient in long
discussions where I don't feel like contributing, i.e. most of the
time).

> > I think we must be talking past each other somehow. Please, show some
> > examples of "answering the whole article"
> 
> Well as a good example there are pictures in this group

I was talking about text, not pictures. This particular newsgroup is a
special case. For example, this is one of the few groups (the only
group?) inhabited by Old People where sigs can be more than four lines
without getting flamed. If you should quote the whole picture? Well,
you'll just have to do what feels right for that particular picture.
Quite often cutting it off (just to keep context) works for pictures
too:

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=3525EC85.446B9B3D%40on.spammer

(actually, the example above is an example of cutting out part of a
picture (my own sig, quoted two steps) and cutting out a whole picture
(Shimrod's sig, not-at-all quoted one step))

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=slrn9vrh7r.97.tjporter%40gronk.porter.net

(here it's not necessary to see the whole picture to recognize it)

Sometimes the size is not a problem:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=35587E9D.446B9B3D%40on.spammer&output=gplain

But sometimes a big picture really *deserves* to be re-posted:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3574398B.2781E494%40on.spammer&output=gplain

> > Who says such "evolution" has to be in the direction of "more
> > intelligent"? All it says is that things change as time passes.
> 
> Ok I'm not a specialist, but I think things tend to be more
> and more "structured", and "organized", not the other way. If not, we
> would not be here to talk about it.

I've seen people complaining about how there seems to be a tendency to
make things simpler to make them more convenient to use for more people.
The people who complain are "experts", those who have learned to use
sophisticated things years ago and suddenly everything new is "dumbed
down". Suddenly it's not possible, or they're not "allowed", to do some
things. Sometimes "more structured and organized" can mean less freedom
for those who know what they're doing.

"Change" is not a synonym to "improvement".

> > > But for instance I'm sure you can find a newsreader that will "hide"<snip>
> >
> > And that would be "intelligent"? **brrr**
> 
> Well an "intelligent" enough newsreader could optimize the reading
> of the articles, for example by coloring quotings depths, or removing
> unimportant parts, thus improving the "human eye bandwidth" you were
> referring to.

How does a computer recognize what parts are "unimportant"? I remember
drawing a lynx once. I used a photo and the "plastic bag" method. I
noticed how my human eye had no problem seeing the eye, but from a
computer's point of view the eye was just one more black spot. The
animal in the photo had black spots all over it and I noticed this
because I was taking little "steps" all around the picture and trying to
fill each "box" with an appropriate character that would make the
picture as a whole look like a big cat. The computer, however, only
"sees" pixels.

http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/pics/ascii/CHRISTMAS99.HTML#D26

> > > an option to hide sigs.
> >
> > THAT can be intelligent
> 
> Of course such features need to be easily desactivable :)

Smileys in Word...   *grrrrrr*

> > > > Our eyes and brains and fingers still work the same way
> > > > they did thousands of years ago.
> > >
> > > Not sure :) Humans do evolve!
> >
> > Yes, but not very quickly.
> 
> Except it may also be a question of culture, and culture evolves a
> lot in a thousand years.

Culture doesn't make you read faster. Culture doesn't give you longer
fingers, or more fingers. Culture doesn't give you a bigger capacity to
take in information.


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