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Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

cs.unm.edu

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Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#51

Post by INTPenis »

andrewchoi wrote: post #42
TallGuyShort wrote: post #35

Idea: pipe stdout and stderr through a text-to-speech program. Programs with noisy logs would be running around screaming like lunatics.

Somewhat related: "The best ping story I've ever heard was told to me at a USENIX conference, where a network administrator with an intermittent Ethernet had linked the ping program to his vocoder program, in essence writing: ping goodhost | sed -e 's/.*/ping/' | vocoder He wired the vocoder's output into his office stereo and turned up the volume as loud as he could stand. The computer sat there shouting "Ping, ping…

The FreeBSD game collection had some tunes you could play on the PC speaker around 2004-2005. So I once found myself playing the simpsons tune on the PC speaker of a server (yes it had a pc speaker) on repeat, and going into the server room to find the damn thing.

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#52

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#53

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#54

Post by scoot »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #52

Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.

BumpTop? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BumpTop It was acquired by Google and promptly buried. It was a fun toy, but I could never see myself using it seriously. Really didn't understand what goog's interest was.

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#55

Post by Maakuth »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #52

Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.

fsn[1] seen in Jurassic Park brings that kind of metaphor to the file system. I don't think it's that practical, but it sure looked wonderful in the movie. I guess we better stick to 2D interfaces as long as we don't have 3D controls that equal mouse in their practicality. Maybe one day there'll be a nice Oculus Rift enabled desktop :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#56

Post by mixmastamyk »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #52

Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.

Sounds like Microsoft Bob and some VRML demos I used back in the day. Unsure of the practicality, but could be interesting if done right I suppose.

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#57

Post by syllogism »

GuiA wrote: post #5

The paper got accepted at CHI 2001, but never would make it today. It's a nice summary of what made CHI so great in the past, and how tedious it has become. (For the paper to make it into CHI 2015, it'd probably need a part where the author surveys 50 people and asks them inane questions such as "on a scale from 1 to 5, how likely are you to use the software for your sysadmin needs", and then measures+plots mean time…

What

But this is valueless. It's a stupid idea, for obvious reasons. Okay it's sort of fun, but if a researcher wants to have fun, they should do it on their own time, or apply for funding from an arts council or something. Why should a taxpayer pay for this? Why should we want a conference to publish it?

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#58

Post by Qwertious »

Maakuth wrote: post #55
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #52

Reminds me of a program I played with way back when, which was effectively a desktop replacement - instead of a flat desktop, it presented a 3d-rendered office building of sorts, with web bookmarks and applications rendered as pictures on the wall and things like that. I forgot what it's called though. Still, I wonder if something like that was re-imagined today what it would look like.

fsn[1] seen in Jurassic Park brings that kind of metaphor to the file system. I don't think it's that practical, but it sure looked wonderful in the movie. I guess we better stick to 2D interfaces as long as we don't have 3D controls that equal mouse in their practicality. Maybe one day there'll be a nice Oculus Rift enabled desktop :) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgtba_GpG-U

Wayland is very flexible.

Re: Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

#59

Post by GuiA »

syllogism wrote: post #57
GuiA wrote: post #5

The paper got accepted at CHI 2001, but never would make it today. It's a nice summary of what made CHI so great in the past, and how tedious it has become. (For the paper to make it into CHI 2015, it'd probably need a part where the author surveys 50 people and asks them inane questions such as "on a scale from 1 to 5, how likely are you to use the software for your sysadmin needs", and then measures+plots mean time…

What But this is valueless. It's a stupid idea, for obvious reasons. Okay it's sort of fun, but if a researcher wants to have fun, they should do it on their own time, or apply for funding from an arts council or something. Why should a taxpayer pay for this? Why should we want a conference to publish it?

1) please read the paper that was published (http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html - the Discussion section is the meat of it) and don't base yourself solely on the webpage

And then

2) please enlighten me as to the "obvious reasons" that make it a stupid idea, as I don't find them obvious at all.

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