2007年3月28日 星期三

Suggestion for Linux hardware detection

After I restructure the hard drives in my computer, the only distribution in my computer: Fedora refuse to work.
The reason: what is written in the fstab and what it detect in hardware is different. Actually, it is troublesome for these who change hardware often (like carrying the hard drive away for work) to change the configuration from shell every time they use a new computer. I suspect that maybe only for Fedora, but it is most likely all distribution has a fixed fstab and check accordingly in the boot time.

My suggestions are:
1. Why don't all distribution adapt a Live-CD-like hardware detection scheme? i.e. The fstab and everything is dynamically change every in each boot time, therefore saving user the time to rewrite the fstab.
2. Why there is all the stupid Master, Slave jumper on hd and cd/dvdrom so the computer can't recognize a hardware even though it is already connected? Why can't we have an architecture that doesn't require jumper to distinguish between master and slave?
Master and Slave is only determine by its physical connection, nothing more.
3. Why can't there be more than one version of a library exist in the same distribution? What is the harm if two versions of the same library exist? Since the program would know which version of library it needs anyway, why we must have a single version only. That would resolve the trouble for incompatible program that require two versions of the same library.

2007年3月2日 星期五

THe problem of existing Chinese-word algorithm

In Chinese language, there exist a lot of words that composite of more than one character, and their meaning can't be easily guess from individual character.(basic semantic units) So in Chinese input method, there is an algorithmic that automatically locate the next character by the character you input. Presumably that would save the user's time in inputting Chinese.
For instance, if you enter B, then a choice would pop-up with BA, BAC, BDD, BFE... etc. The user only need to pick one of many option, therefore save user's time by preventing the need to enter the whole word(For example, BAC).

The problem of this algorithmic is that is it is using only First character base system, and it has no memory. It would assume every character you enter is the first character of the word, and list the choice of word accordingly. For instance, assume BAC is a word, then the input of BA would not prompt the option BAC. And instead it list the choice of all words start with A. So the challenge to remake the algorithmic sensitive to more than one character, that could theoretically done by a function to mark the end of last complete semantic unit, and store any character afterward in the memory, then use this value in memory to search for words starting with these character.

We could further extend this idea to the case of people remember only part of the word, like A?C?. Once the user type ?, the program would be on-hold for automatically guess the character; only after the user mark the end of word( i.e. the last ?) would the program start locating for the word match this combination.

My suggestion could be implemented using any MySQL like database. And all words are enter in the dictionary. The point is so that everyone with lower literacy level could easily navigate the Internet.