New subject: swordfish HOLODECK

13 Jul 2001

Saw this movie last night, and personally I found the use of "real" jargon 
to describe what they were doing jarring because it didn't work right. Much 
better to have the 'trek like' mishmash of terms that don't make any sense 
but sound good.

The "mega system" that was supposed to be the wet dream of hackers 
everywhere was this thing with about 8 LCD screens set up in some sort of 
technotica holding unit. I thought about this and decided it doesn't work 
on a number of levels, not the least of which is that you can't read stuff 
on the top displays and you cant use them in parallel. Much cleaner to 
build somthing like a jumbotron with 9 screens to give you a 56" monitor 
with effectively 4K x 3K resolution. Then you could move things around and 
even if they spanned monitors they would be readable.

In terms of classic hardware the multiheaded-ness of my SPARCStation was 
useful in that regard, and I do this on my laptop as well (when its 
docked). Clearly the BLIT kind of had the idea (Bell Labs Intelligent 
Terminal) and the VT340 is nice (like the VT420) in that you can swap 
screens easily. I _really_ like the idea of the VT525 on a big screen. I'm 
definitely going to have to try that.

There was also an early hack done on Amigas that slaved three of them 
running 'Jet' to give you three views and thus a wraparound screen effect.

So what is the ideal visual machine? Opinions?

--Chuck