Slashdot Mirror

In no particular order:

Java as Open Source will help in creating smaller versions - perhaps very lightweight browser-plugins - optimized for particular use (media, number crunching, etc.). These browser plugins will help revive Java as a thin-client/web2.0 (3.0?) player in browser-based apps, possibly even making some small inroads against Flash. The 'apollo' project from Adobe may put the kibosh on this, but the increased-eyeballs angle will likely prevent a complete obliteration from happening to desktop Java.

Java will become even faster. Although this has happened in 2006, with the release of Java 6, the full impact will be a refitting of the niche Java apps out there to work specifically with Java 6 and the speed improvements there. This will give some Java some good PR points and case studies with the 'Java is slow' crowd (which I'm definately a member of).

(As I think one of the panelists in the article said) - there will be a greater acceptance of dynamic languages (ruby/php/python/etc) in Java shops, as Java6's support for dynamic languages (JSR 223 I think) will help increase productivity for Java devs willing to think outside their javaBox.

I'm already getting hammered here - not sure how many people are using gzip in the browser to pull from my web server, but http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/martiallaw.html.gz would definitely give you a gzipped version, lightening the load on my bandwidth a bit :)

http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/martiallaw.html

I wrote a bit about this (somewhat negatively) at http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/?p=139 a few days ago. I've been looking for a solid option for having some dictation automatically transcribed to text files, and have this run under Linux. Basically, anyone looking to do this is just out of luck. It'll be years before there's anything useable for the average person. In my post, I reference another article (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3 4072) which also talks about the state of things.

What's frustrating is that there *was* something halfway decent - IBM's ViaVoice - but that's gone. A few of the Linux apps I see out there are layers to run on top of ViaVoice. With that option gone for Linux, those tools are useless. It's like the rug was pulled out from underneath any progress in this arena for the foreseeable future.

I found voxforge a few days ago, and while it seems admirable, it's a small part of the larger problem which I don't see getting any better any time soon.

http://fosterburgess.com/kimsal/?p=89

Can anyone here help with this? Yes, it's a bit offtopic, but I can't be the only one with this problem!

Thanks!

I commented here already, but wanted to reiterate this. It was the 'time warp' feature which this patent trial was about - the ability to perform simultaneous functions, such as recording live TV *and* watching something that was prerecorded (while also being able to pause/rewind/ff/skip-ahead in that program).

What came out at the trial was that echostar's original products did *not* have that functionality. They only incorporated that after getting their hands on a tivo system (which Tivo rather naively or stupidly left with them after a meeting).

Patents are to reward 'non-obvious' or 'novel' inventions. If Tivo functionality was 'non-obvious', why did the companies which had DVRs out well before Tivo (and has far more resources to throw at these projects) *not* include such 'obvious' functionality? Why did they not patent it first, considering they were apparently working in the digitial media field before Tivo? Because, as hard as it is to believe, some of this really *was* non-obvious at the time. Yes, today it all seems obvious, and there are a dozen posts here talking about how their Dish DVRs (or anyone else's) have dual tuners, can record/playback simultaneously, have 'record all programs'-type functions, and so on. Most of these functions are copying the original pioneering work of Tivo, and they don't deserve to have all that R&D ripped off by others too cheap/greedy/stingy to pay the licensing costs.

Had echostar been able to prove they'd had similar stuff under development simultaneously, I might hold a different view of this trial's outcome, but nothing I read (admittedly, there wasn't much reporting direct from the courtroom) indicated echostar had any innovative work going on which would have matched the tivo work/patents. I wrote a little more on this here.

I wrote a small piece about some gmail gripes - does the hosted version behave exactly like gmail.com, or is it slightly different?

Can I search and have it find 'close' words? Google is all about "search", and pretty much forces you in to this as the primary way of finding things, but can't find something you've misspelled.

I agree, and I touched on this topic of Google's growing ownership of data and people seeming not to care about it here. It was more centered on the "google wifi" proposals in the news last fall, but the idea is the same. Many people really DON'T see any harm in it, or "so what, google should be rewarded for this" type of attitude. I've met very few people who understand the importance of how much control google will have over web metadata.

Will we see antitrust actions against google at some point? Maybe that's why they moved the analytics program to 'invite only' from 'free for all'? Imagine if MS had bought an industry leading application (urchin), rolled it in to the next Windows Update, and given it away for free. What would the reaction have been?