Re: [9fans] speaking of kenc

[W B Hacker <wbh@conducive.org>]

lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:

*snip*

> 
> PS: I keep thinking that this is not 9fans, but rather
> alt.folklore.computers.  Does anyone out there have a copy of
> Hollingdale and Toothill (Digital Computers, was it?) that they would
> be willing to part with for a moderate amount of money?
> 
> 

Well...

'C' *has* had an inordinately long run, and that has not always pleased even its 
creators. No tool remains 'good enough' forever, let alone 'best and only'.

Similarly, Plan9 itself seems to have gone from bleeding edge to minor sideshow 
without much time on stage in between.

Speaking of respect, admiration, use as a source of inspiration, partial 
emulation - not of 'popularity', per se. A Loonix 'distro' it is not.

UTF-8 - for which I am very grateful, seems to be the most visible and enduring 
contribution, and few who depedn on it are even aware that it was Plan9 related.

Maybe it is again time to do something new and shed another round of baggage - 
even if it is not HP Maxim's '.. whole nine yards'.

Available CPU power is astonishing nowadays. More than we can actually put to 
work on personal task if not 'servicing' (as in animal husbandry) MS Orifice and 
their parasites.


How about a voice-driven, speaker-independent human-machine interface?

Demonstrated, and quite well, even with Mandarin, by IBM on a mainframe no more 
powerful THEN than commodity CPU and aoofrdable RAM are NOW.

A natural for remote 'plumbing' over a 'net.  Speech bandwidth need is really 
small compared to VNC or large file transfer for local manipulation when all ou 
want is the *answer* the human PA we can no longer afford to emply coudl have 
gotten for you.

Hands free, and surely beats hell out of those itty-bitty keypads... could even 
make acme/rio paging model finally make sense...

Computer voice:  <selectable size chunk of speach output>.

user's voice: ['more' | 'repeat' | 'end' | 'next' | 'new'| 'snarf']

;-)

.. hmm  .. or was Plan9 involved in AT&T automated attendant / directory service 
interfaces in the first place?

... seems a natural fit to the networking model.

Bill