Domain: pbs.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to pbs.org.
Comments · 5,110
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Not until the living room
It's good and all, but I don't think we'll see much progress on the "internet video" stuff until the Internet is completely tied to the living room consumer electronics.
While it's great to watch short clips, people don't want to crowd around a PC or sit in a desk chair and watch their shows for the night. They want to plop on their couch, or sit in the easy chair, with their families, and watch content. Internet content needs to seemlessly blend into the living room. When you have instantly available, fully searchable, metadata filled Internet TV content in the living room, then we'll talk. I want to watch whatever I want to watch (WHATEVER, which includes EVERYTHING, from full historical archives of every media to current media), WHENEVER I want. Cable companies, are you listening? Sure, I can try to amass my own collection with an array of PVRs/DVRs, but if it was part of the existing cable subscription (or whatever media subscription), why bother, if EVERYTHING was available?
On a somewhat related note, Cringely had an interesting article about PBS leading the internet TV charge. -
Re:A few random thoughts
Suddenly, you would have people making tens or hundreds of times more than anyone else in their area, bringing in huge amounts of income.
I found this very interesting, it's as though you mentally worked through the entire scenario of "China A" and "China B" on a local rather than national level, without much foreknowledge of the actual situation.I think you'll find that Frontline episode completely fascinating. It lead me to believe that all the buzz surrounding "the ascent of megasuperpower China" is a straw horse and completely untenable in the long run.
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And. . . ?
I'm not going to defend working practices in China. They pale in contrast to Western standards. My issue is why this is news at all. Apple is not the first or last company to have products made overseas in sweatshops. If you really want to target a company, go after Walmart. They may not make any products overseas but they are one of the reasons many companies have moved manufacturing overseas. In order to do business with Walmart, a company has to continuously drive down cost as much as possible. For some companies they only way to save costs is to move manufacturing to China. Watch the Frontline episode Is Walmart Good for America? and make up your own mind.
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Re:Alzheimers Prevention
All that they really need to do is prevent its onset by about 10-15 years. If they could do this it would essentially eliminate the disease, as it arrives very late in life. They don't really need an outright cure, but some way to slow it down to the point where we will likely be dead from other things before we really have to worry about Alzheimers.
There was a great documentary on PBS called "The Forgetting," which went into this, I highly recommend it. http://www.pbs.org/theforgetting/coping/planning.h tml -
Cool!I think this sounds like a great new tool for enhansing television as a learning tool. Shows like NOW are often telling viewers to log onto the website for additional information. Wouldn't it be nice to simply have the computer pull that info up for you as you watch the program? This could be top down or bottom up, with tv shows creating web pages to be loaded, or a wiki style approach where the viewers themselves suggested links(this would of course be difficult during first broadcasts).
What's more, from a commercial standpoint, this doesn't have to be directly related to the program at all. Certain inaudable (to the viewer) clips could be inserted into all kinds of programming to trigger a specific function from the computer. Certainly there are privacy ramifications to this, but I think google is doing the right thing by using their creative staff to push the boundary and experiment on projects such as this. YMMV.
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Re:Only one Big Blue
IBM is screwed. Cringely http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060518
. html has an interesting perspective, he may be right.
IBM has always performed computer stunts to rally their base of believers, but they rely far too heavily on spreading FUD rather than executing. -
Re:Mammoths did try a smaller form
There's a PBS article on the evolution of pgymy animals and humanls. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3209/01-d
i amond.html -
The Tiananmen Square Example
Nice try though. Plus, it could be argued that the wording in your linked page was on their American website, while the censoring occurs on their Chinese webpage. Then, as a previous poster stated, right on the Google.cn results page, it lets you know if there are any results that have been censored.
What are you talking about? Google.cn censors without notifying users that content is being removed. For example...
Here's a Google.com search for "tiananmen"
http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen
Here's a Google.cn search for "tiananmen"
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen
creepy huh?
Frontline did a piece about this a few months ago. It was called "The Tank Man" and it's viewable online.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/vi ew/
Watch part 6, "The struggle to control information." A journalist hands a picture of the tank man to several Chinese university students, and they have -no- idea what the picture is about. That's crazy. -
Re:Even without bringing morality into the questio
This story (and many others) revolve around academic stem cell research... not private research. Furthermore, we're also not talking about pharmaceuticals. We're talking about research that will probably be published for all to see.
We need to get rolling on this stuff with out being inhibited by politicians pandering to uniformed voters.
And even if this does lead to a private company eventually developing a procedure or medication for a serious illness, we'll can deal with pricing fixing and patent abuse if it arises. Look at AIDs medication. If you come up with something that saves a lot of lives and you make the drug unattainable - people march in the streets.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/view/
I'm not saying that it's a good thing for people to be forced to do that, yet if something is important enough, people don't remain idle. -
boycott? You serious?
boycott: an agreement usually among a particular segment of the population to reduce or stop the use and purchase of certain products or activities. (from here)
Question 1: How can you reduce or stop something that's non-existent?
Question 2: Agreement? Among journalists? Yeah, right.
And yes, I Googled for that definition. -
Re:$40
More like $1166.00. (source: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/printable/india
2 _info_print.html). Still not that much when you think about it. Hopefully companies will stop trying to take advantage of people and pay them what they are worth (I know this is unrealistic). A job is worth $x, then they shouldn't think of how to take advantage of someone to save a little extra. I just wish everyone was a little less focused on maximizing profit. -
Re:iZZZZZZZ
And nothing says "street cred" like a modern Western corporation. Hey, I be down wit dat, um, dogg... or word, or whatever. Shizzle-something.
I think you give suburban middle-class kids with lots of 'guilt money' *far* too much credit. Take a trip to a local high school - you'll see more walking billboards than at a NASCAR event...
Corporations have figured out teens for some time now.
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Re:An alternative to pharmaceutical patents
But perhaps you've heard this before 'If medical research were left up to the government we'd have best iron lung in the world but not a polio vaccine.'
If someone does indeed say that, it appears that he is wrong.The polio vaccine was discovered by Dr. Jonas Salk, who was a medical researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. Much of the funding came through the "March of Dimes", which was a grassroots organization founded by president Roosevelt.
So the polio vaccine was in fact developed through public funding rather than by the big pharma companies. And it still counts as one of the biggest medical achievements ever, if you look at the number of people that it saved.
Possibly because the vaccine could be produced freely once it had been discovered, since it was not restricted by patents.
References:
PBS: A Science Odyssey
"Access Excellence" at The National Health Museum -
Windows subsystem in 10.5?
I've read that future versions of Mac OS X for Intel architecture may include a Windows application compatibility subsystem. Will this be compatible with Windows Vista exclusive apps?
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Add Win32/DirectX to XCode...
... This is making more and more sense. Win32/DirectX should be supported environments within XCode, even if the compile target is only Intel, and even if you have to rebuild the GUI in NIBs.
At the very least, DirectX makes sense given games typically run in fullscreen and don't really care about UI widgets anyway.. -
FIRSTHere is a online NewsHour story about FIRST founded by Dean Kamen. An excerpt..
DEAN KAMEN: In this country, we have kids who think what they want to excel at is football or basketball, what they want to do with their time is the entertainment industry, and I think the balance is so distorted that it literally leaves our country at the risk of losing its position in leadership, in technology.
And, as a consequence of that, we will lose our position of leadership in quality of life, standard of living, security, health care, and all of the other things that Americans somehow take for granted. And we've got to change kids' attitudes fast. -
re: manage credit (I'll sign in for this)The reason why public schools do not teach kids about managing credit is because of lobbying against it. There have been plenty of educators and politicians who have tried to put together programs for teaching about credit, and almost all of them have been blocked by the industry.
There was a really good program that ran recently, I think this is it. Good, you can wath the whole thing online. I don't remeber if that program goes into it, but IIRC it does. It's a great program regardless.
I work in the industry, BTW -- not for a credit card pushe^Wissuer. Frankly, I don't understand why the industry is so hellbent on keeping the public ignorant. Credit cards are a useful tool, and with proper education and responsible business practices, the industry would remain very stable and plenty lucrative enough. Pushing consumers into more and more debt is eventually going to cause an industry implosion, or heavy-handed legislation. The amount of consumer debt in the U.S. is just astronomical, and quite frankly, becoming very scary.
So, yeah, there you have it. Public education is beholden to corporate interests these days. Snuffing GOOD programs that would teach kids about responsible credit management, MPAA/RIAA sponsored anti-piracy propoganda programs, etc.
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Re:books vs. video games
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Don't believe it? Watch PBS tonight
"The Man Behind Hitler" airs today--the story of the Goebbels, Hitler's communications genius. The name of the series is "The American Experience," which these days seems horribly appropriate...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goebbels/index.html -
Re:dirty little secret about pig dogs
Here's an article about confirmend use of drop guns
The dogs are still unconfirmed. -
Re:How are they different from these guys...
September 7, 2001 - ZEUS robotic system developed by Computer Motion was used in the trans-Atlantic operation. A doctor in New York removed the diseased gallbladder of a 68-year-old patient in Strasbourg, France.
Apparently these guys are. I believe this is the story you heard... -
It's not the gamesbut when I RTFA I found he mostly talked about how he was sinking a lot of resources into Sony and Microsoft,
What EA's core competency really is, is that they turned software from a high-tech endeavour to a manufacturing practice - and run their software manufacturing plants in much the same way that apparel and auto makers run their manufacturing plants.
By taking this approach, EA can make more cames for the same investment - and even if they're not the best games, they're good enough for many people in much the same way a Honda is good enough compared to a BMW.
I expect EA will have *great* innovaton in business partnerships with Sony and MSFT and *great* innovation in union-busting and pushing the edge of labor laws - and a continued track record of almost no innovation in games. And their shareholders will be happy for it.
Innovations like "Vista DRM will only activate certain Direct-X-11-features for EA games" could be an incredible innovation for MSFT DRM as a reference customer and EA as a competitive advantage.
Please remember everyone there's a big difference between Innovating and Inventing -- Microsoft's a master at the former but sucks at the latter -- and EA aspires to do so as well.
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Re:Key line from TFAThe article reinforces my contention that at some point, Zeno's paradox will no longer apply as an argument against evolution.
1. There aren't an infinite number of ancestors. We're "only" 160,000 generations away from what they're talking about. If we could find all 160,000 ancestors along a line, we'd have a complete record of a speciation event, by anyone's criteria. Obviously we can't, but:
2. There isn't such a thing as a clearly defined species. There's tremendous variance within a species -- think Chihuahua and Great Dane -- and there are groups of separate species which have variable interbreeding success: ring species.
From these two ideas, we can conclude that at some point, variation within a species and sufficient fossil history will give us a continuum from one "species" to another, within which there is enough variation at any point to allow interbreeding, but at the end points, there are clearly two different species. At that point, macroevolution has happened and is conclusively demonstrated. We might never find this point for humans, given the sparsity of the fossil record, but ring species are already living proof of speciation.
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Re:I don't believe this is because of pirates...
I thought that too. Cringely says, here in his 420 column, that Apple has Darwin running with a full Windows API implemented in-house, and has the rights to release this from a prior Microsoft/Apple agreement. The possibility is that all Windows apps would run in OS X natively. Closing the Intel-Darwin source under a "security" excuse could be exactly what they need to do to upgrade everyone's machine to run Darwin with a Windows API, possibly on a native BSD instead of a BSD over Mach...
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Re:Proof that Apple is turning fascist!
The excerpt was not tiny. It went on for quite a while. Even if the police were forced to beat him in submission, they didn't need to beat him for 30-60 seconds after he was in submission (I don't remember the actual time). At any point in the 'tiny excerpt' that was shown publicly an officer could have put handcuffs on the guy and ended it. Instead, they just kept taking turns beating him.
How crazy, criminal or drug addicted the guy was is irrelevant. Nobody deserves that treatment. And if we are going to go into character assasinations lets look into how this was but one out of many (many!) instances of LAPD brutality. The same police department that was named the country's most corrupt. The same one where several years ago many officers were dismissed and charged with things like planting evidence, theft and murder(!). Read about it here. -
GPS to stay? Not necessarily.
As the Earth's magnetic field fluctuates during transition (which we're already seeing), it affects more than the compasses. Our protection from solar radiation substantially decreases as well. Which means that cancers on Earth will go up, but also that satellites will be more likely to fail. So those satellites might just fall out of the sky sooner than you think. Nova had a really good special on the topic a while back, called Magnetic Storm.
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How about Schwartzinegger?Wait... politics aside, are you suggesting Dick Cheney could charm his way into anything?
Ken Lay certainly had his fingers all over Cheney, but even worse, Enron basically gave the job of CA governor to Schwarzenegger. Sit down some time and watch "Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room". Little birdies have told me it is, uh, "readily available" for download.
..or just fire up a google search. Or Check out the PBS Frontline special, Blackout.
Basically, think "Iran Contra arms-for-hostages" scandal, only instead of Regan, President, and arms...think Schwarzenegger, CA Governor, and the CA power grid- which Enron was have an absolute joy shutting down (yes, shutting down.)
From Truthout.org: More important, however, Schwarzenegger still wont respond to questions about why he was at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills two years ago where he, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and junk bond king Michael Milken, met secretly with former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay who was touting a plan for solving the states energy crisis. Other luminaries who were invited but didnt attend the May 24, 2001 meeting included former Los Angeles Laker Earvin Magic Johnson and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle.
While Schwarzenegger, Riordan and Milken listened to Lays pitch, Gov. Davis pleaded with President George Bush to enact much needed price controls on electricity sold in the state, which skyrocketed to more than $200 per megawatt-hour. Davis said that Texas-based energy companies were manipulating Californias power market, charging obscene prices for power and holding consumers hostage. Bush agreed to meet with Davis at the Century Plaza Hotel in West Los Angeles on May 29, 2001, five days after Lay met with Schwarzenegger, to discuss the California power crisis.
At the meeting, Davis asked Bush for federal assistance, such as imposing federally mandated price caps, to rein in soaring energy prices. But Bush refused saying California legislators designed an electricity market that left too many regulatory restrictions in place and thats what caused electricity prices in the state to skyrocket. It was up to the governor to fix the problem, Bush said. However, Bushs response appears to be part of a coordinated effort launched by Lay to have Davis shoulder the blame for the crisis. It worked. According to recent polls, a majority of voters grew increasingly frustrated with the way Davis handled the power crisis. Schwarzenegger has used the energy crisis and missteps by Davis to bolster his standing with potential voters. While Davis took a beating in the press (some energy companies ran attack ads against the governor), Lay used his political clout to gather support for deregulation.
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WHOOOOSH!
If the Chinese people wanted to enjoy the same democracy and human rights that we have in the West, then the Chinese people could get democracy and human rights tomorrow.
Um, actually, they tried that.This is where it got them.
Seriously, you need to read up a little more on just how extensive the demonstrations around Tiananmen Square really were. That wasn't one guy and a bunch of tanks. It was thousands and thousands of people, getting shot in the back by troops armed with assault rifles as they fled. I recommend a recent Frontline special, called "The Tank Man," for more information.
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Re:Now I have to change my answering machine messa
More background information on this whole "Pen Register" information can be found on
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060119. html Crignely's January 19th 2006 posting, There's a Long History of Intercepting Foreign Communications, and Some of It May Have Been Legal. -
Re:OS X - First make it work, then make it fast
That sounds like Rober Cringely's theory of Apple's direction. That is to speed up OS X, drop the microkernel. Pulpit, Native Speaker
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Offtopic: Lusitania
Both would have survived the iceberg collision, which really does make one wonder what was in Lusitania's holds when those torpedoes hit her.
A while back, I did a little bit of research into the Lusitania's sinking, and concluded there was ample evidence to lead one to believe she was carrying munitions. The original design of the ship had deck guns, and while I believe they were removed for extra speed, the Lusitania had indeed been used for smuggling munitions in the past using civilians as a cover. However, Google came up with this link containing some evidence that pointed to a coal dust explosion, and not munitions. But, the Germans probably would have sunk it regardless, since they knew of Lusitania's dual purpose. -
Re:Sad. I loved using their Reality EnginesThat reminds me of this article:
For Nintendo, the problem was different. The Nintendo 64 had been designed in close partnership with Silicon Graphics (SGI). Nearly all the hardware was designed by SGI, as was the development system used to write games. Given that SGI had no real background in video games, this was probably already a bad idea, but then it got worse. There was an internal battle at SGI over whether to even continue its association with Nintendo. SGI founder and then-chairman Jim Clarke wanted to continue the Nintendo alliance, which had made SGI's MIPS processors more numerous even than Intel's. But SGI's management saw Nintendo as a distraction from its real business of high-end graphical computing, so SGI walked out of the Nintendo deal, leaving the game company with no plan for future games. Clarke then left in disgust to start Netscape. SGI's precipitous action is what kept Nintendo from having a fifth-generation game for so long.
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Re:Story
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Re:Wow, what a great comparison of 70s-80s vs now
Actually, no, cancer death rates are falling.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/november96/c ancer_11-14.html
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov96/nci-14.htm
From 1996 - "Cancer death rates have dropped three percent since 1990, that's 15,000 fewer Americans succumbing to the disease every year."
"Since about 1900, the American people have regularly been required to report causes of death, and we have fairly accurate information dating back that far. This is reported through the National Center for Health Statistics. And actually, Dr. Phil Cole, from the University of Alabama, was the first one to identify looking at information through 1994/95 and adding up all the causes of cancer death. And he was the first to identify this trend from the total death cases, dating back to 1990 as a peak year, so '91, '92, '93, '94, and now '95, the death rate has gone down, and what's even more encouraging is in '95, the decrease was almost 2 percent. So depending on how you calculate it, the rate of decrease in deaths is actually accelerating, very good news, indeed." -
Cringely's NerdTV
Cringely offers NerdTV as a bittorrent download. As it is legal there's usually a ton of seeds on each download - nothing better to demonstrate the speed possible with bittorrent.
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RE: PS:I have to point out that I am not alone in the use of that phrase:
...there is empirical evidence that more highly educated people use more complex syntax than less educated people, consistent with the idea that greater exposure to literacy correlates with greater *use* of complex syntax...The early beliefs about the education level of the Unabomber were that he was probably a relatively uneducated laborer. Yet the notes and letters he sent in connection with his mail bombs, as well his following Manifesto, gave strong indication that he was a more highly educated person.
As in previous studies of the exceptionally gifted, the kids in Gross's cohort tended to be the firstborn of small families. The parents were older than average, having delayed having babies until they had completed tertiary studies or achieved financial security. They and the children's grandparents were more highly educated than most people of their generation and more likely to be employed in professional or managerial positions. Children whose parents were born in Asia were significantly over-represented in the group.
There are theories that Shakespeare's plays were actually written by someone else, perhaps someone more highly educated. Names suggested include the statesman and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Southampton (Shakespeare's patron), Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford and even Queen Elizabeth.
Students believed that this is mostly because employers and supervisors in Dominica do not appreciate the talent of the more highly educated and self-motivated employees. Instead, those persons are perceived to be threats to the career mobility of their associates.
Just some examples of the use of the phrase.
If a highly educated person, person A, is viewed to be such by someone with a lesser education than person A, person B, while someone with more education, person C, than person A is present, then isn't person C more highly educated than person A? -
RE: PS:I have to point out that I am not alone in the use of that phrase:
...there is empirical evidence that more highly educated people use more complex syntax than less educated people, consistent with the idea that greater exposure to literacy correlates with greater *use* of complex syntax...The early beliefs about the education level of the Unabomber were that he was probably a relatively uneducated laborer. Yet the notes and letters he sent in connection with his mail bombs, as well his following Manifesto, gave strong indication that he was a more highly educated person.
As in previous studies of the exceptionally gifted, the kids in Gross's cohort tended to be the firstborn of small families. The parents were older than average, having delayed having babies until they had completed tertiary studies or achieved financial security. They and the children's grandparents were more highly educated than most people of their generation and more likely to be employed in professional or managerial positions. Children whose parents were born in Asia were significantly over-represented in the group.
There are theories that Shakespeare's plays were actually written by someone else, perhaps someone more highly educated. Names suggested include the statesman and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Southampton (Shakespeare's patron), Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford and even Queen Elizabeth.
Students believed that this is mostly because employers and supervisors in Dominica do not appreciate the talent of the more highly educated and self-motivated employees. Instead, those persons are perceived to be threats to the career mobility of their associates.
Just some examples of the use of the phrase.
If a highly educated person, person A, is viewed to be such by someone with a lesser education than person A, person B, while someone with more education, person C, than person A is present, then isn't person C more highly educated than person A? -
Re:Universal Healthcare?
Also, a good reason Americans dont have universal coverage is the Republicans fear that Democrats would get and be able to take most of the credit. If the Democrats were successful some Republicans feared they would lose the White House for the next 50 years. Didnt Bob Dole so much as say that to Clinton in the 90's? I was looking for a good quote, but I only found this timeline detailing Clinton's Healthcare policy in his first term. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/backgroun
d /health_debate_page1.html -
Re:Answer is easy.
go have a look in a panda's mouth. Lots of sharp canines, but you won't see many of them eating meat.
Just like us, Pandas are omnivorous (even if 99% of their diet is bamboo). -
Features Removed
* Links to the Backgammon, Hearts, Reversi, Spades, and Checkers games on MSN Gaming Zone have been removed.
* Windows Mail has no support for HTTP mail via the WebDAV protocol
* rexec, rsh, finger and some other command-line tools primarily used to communicate with UNIX-based systems have been removed from the default installation. Services for Unix still provides them as an optional component.
* Services for Macintosh are removed.
* FrontPage Server Extensions has been dropped is being replaced with Windows SharePoint Services client support.
* Significant changes to the logon and authentication architecture has resulted in the removal of GINA.
* Support for enabling a folder for "Web Sharing" with Internet Information Services via the Windows Explorer interface has been removed.
* All the links to MSN are being removed. Probably for business or regulatory reasons. No links means you're (in theory) not pushing MSN, and you're being Web Homepage neutral. Or, it could be they're giving up on MSN? That would be very hard to believe.
* Unix tools are now optional? Considering the growth of Linux, this is surprising since more and more businesses actually are using these tools (especially "rsh" and "ssh". You'd think they'd want more compatibility than less. Wonder if "optional installation" means that you have to select it when you install it, or whether you have to pay for it. My take: Dell will probably include them anyway since so many people need them.
* FrontPage is a major component for many web pages and is a major feature for ISPs. How will this affect all those FrontPage webpages? Will FrontPage still be an optional component in the Server version? If not, how will this affect the ISPs?
* Lack of email support for HTTP via WebDAV: Is this a security concern? How will this affect people? Do a lot of Webmails still do this?
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Cringely has a whole theory that Apple (using MS own source code) will include the Windows XP API in their next release of OS X. (See http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060420. html - the second half of the story). That will mean you could actually run MS Office XP directly on a Mac without Windows. He believes Apple has the rights to use this code since Apple signed a cross licensing agreement with MS back in 1997 or 1998. Windows XP was out in 2002, so Apple would have rights to the code.
I find it hard to believe that Apple would actually be able to do this. However, people I know who work in these places tell me that Apple actually does have licensing rights to the Windows 2000 API (and therefore to most of Windows XP API). Rumors have it that MS gave Apple the licensing rights in exchange for the licensing rights for Mac OS 9 and the NeXTstep code. If that's true, Steve certainly got Bill to drink quite a bit of Koolaid. -
Re:Me too!Giant squid have already been photographed in their natural habitat by Japanese scientists.
This is a better shot by the Japanese team; Squid
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Re:Poor Colbert?
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An Internet Divided
You totally don't get the point. People using IE are ignorant of the problems that non-windows users experience. They dismiss the complaints of those in the other position. I think you need to watch the documentary A Class Divided (for free online) to get a better handle of the type of problems such ignorance creates.
Until IE users "walk a mile in another person's moccasins", they will just continue to accept and perpetuate IE's ostracizing of non-windows users.
- RG>
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Absence of evidence
>all this case is about is absence of evidence as THERE IS NO EVIDENCE for what you're implying.
We have Mark Klein's written statement about tapping fiber at ATT facilities.
> THERE IS NO EVIDENCE
We have Russell Tice's testimony before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations
> THERE IS NO EVIDENCE
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has defended the program
> THERE IS NO EVIDENCE
President Bush says he signed the order.
> THERE IS NO EVIDENCE
Could you try using boldface? Somehow the all-caps hasn't been enough to convince me. -
No Attribution
The thing that peeves me a bit about the article is that he quotes me verbatim and paraphrases for other parts without any attribution. Compare my original email I sent him the night before to his article, and spot the similarities. My email's a bit long and relates to what Apple's plans might be to circumvent Microsoft's Office dominance and fill the gaping gap in their iLife strategy, a decent Office package, without losing a lot of users when Microsoft inevitably retaliates by pulling MS Office. The part about Adobe is in there too, although I didn't say they have to buy Adobe outright now, only controlling interest if Adobe ever threatens to pull killer apps like Photoshop:
"Apple is beholden to two software companies above all: Microsoft and Adobe. Microsoft they may be able to get around, but not Adobe. If Apple loses Photoshop, they lose the CS and MX suite (now Adobe owns Macromedia), and they lose the publishing market (not necessarily in that order), one of their mainstay niche markets that have kept them alive all these years. It's a killer app they must have. Their only alternative would be to buy a majority stake in Adobe to force a native version of the CS suite."
The least he could have done is acknowledge his source.
Martin Andersen -
PBS, not NPR or Infoworld
The column is on the NPR website.
No, npr.org is National Public Radio.http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060427
. html is the Public Broadcasting Service, a completely diferent organization then Infoworld or National Public Radio. -
Everyone has an opinion... Here some data.
I suspect reading some of the points of view in this series of postings
the facts will likely be lightly treated...
Here are some interesting articles and other sources of information I've come across that have helped me form my opinion of Walmart.
Do your homework before having an opinion. Google, some judgement and
chosing reputable sources goes a long way.
The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html
The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l
Wal-Mart
How big can it grow?
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory .cfm?Story_ID=2593089
Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40 /b3852001_mz001.htm
Is Walmart good for America? US Trade with China: Expectations vs. Reality.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/china/trade.html
For those of you that don't read, check out:
Walmart the high cost of low price.
http://www.walmartmovie.com/
Personally I believe the market only works to the benefit of the consumer in the long run when there is true competition. This is something that becomes very difficult when the competition is the size of Walmart and shops in China.
I see Walmart as part of the negative side globalization that is leading to a hollowing out of America, and in the long run is a significant part of what is feeding the trade deficit with China. What makes Walmart so profitable is that in many areas it has little or no competition (small town America) and effectively has almost a monopoly. A monopoly is a form of market failure, and in the long run is never good for the consumer (although its great for the shareholder). In the short term it has lowered prices in many areas, but then its lowered wages too.
Hey but don't take my word for it. Get your own facts, and then make a decision. That's what democracy is about, be an informed citizen, not an opinionated one. -
I love Cringley to death...
... for many reasons, among them his awesome feats of wireless (part 1, part 2) but recently, he really seems to have gone off the deep end. Not as far as Dvorak, but he's getting there. Of course, only time will tell if he's right, but as for this week's column, I doubt Apple will buy Adobe, and I doubt MS Office will die anytime soon. Not only will it not be defeated, it'll still be available on Macs--natively.
There are many things I could say about this. Here's just one: if OpenOffice can't defeat MS Office when it's free and runs on Windows, how in the hell will Apple releasing it make it win? It's entirely possible that there are more OOo/Win users than there are Mac users, period, and it hasn't made a dent in MS' earnings yet.
Looking at a journal entry from last year, I can't see anything that has changed. -
I love Cringley to death...
... for many reasons, among them his awesome feats of wireless (part 1, part 2) but recently, he really seems to have gone off the deep end. Not as far as Dvorak, but he's getting there. Of course, only time will tell if he's right, but as for this week's column, I doubt Apple will buy Adobe, and I doubt MS Office will die anytime soon. Not only will it not be defeated, it'll still be available on Macs--natively.
There are many things I could say about this. Here's just one: if OpenOffice can't defeat MS Office when it's free and runs on Windows, how in the hell will Apple releasing it make it win? It's entirely possible that there are more OOo/Win users than there are Mac users, period, and it hasn't made a dent in MS' earnings yet.
Looking at a journal entry from last year, I can't see anything that has changed. -
PBS Wal-Mart Documentary
No discussion on Wal-Mart would be complete without a link to PBS's Frontline Documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good For America?" - it's a brilliant show that covers many of the bases and it's available free online.
If some would have their way, there wouldn't be this level of high quality documentaries on corporate America. Watch it while it's still available.