I think the fact that Oracle snooped on Microsoft's allies using a private detective indicates that we may some very damaging issues that could cause a different outcome to the US v. Microsoft case.
I've always wondered why Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy have close relationships with the Clinton Administration. If there is evidence that "funny money" was passed between Oracle/Sun and the Democratic National Committee in order for the DoJ under Janet Reno and Joel Klein to expedite US v. Microsoft, then Ellison and McNealy could be charged with violating the Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Federal laws. It will also prove that the entire US v. Microsoft case was done on behest of some very rich competitors, not on behest of consumers, which negates the whole point of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Given the way the Internet Explorer 5.01 for Windows 95/98/NT4/2000 can be "modularly" updated using Windows Update, don't be surprised once the final spec for MNG is published Microsoft (or whatever company that handles IE in the future:-) will have an update available to make IE read.MNG files.
I find it very amusing that people think the x86 CPU architecture is obselete.
That may have been true for the 8086 with its 1 MB memory addressing limit and the 80286 with its 16 MB memory addressing limit, but once the 386DX with its 32-bit flat memory addressing scheme became available, in theory the x86 can address as much as 4 GB of system RAM! It's mostly memory physical limits on the motherboard and motherboard memory controller chip limits that has limited computers from addressing all 4 GB until now.
Besides, the x86 architecture has undergone an unbelievable increase in performance. Remember when the first 386DX CPU's were rated at a meager 12 MHz 15 years ago? We now have Pentium IIIEB and Athlon CPU's running at around 83 times the clock speed of the original 386DX and vastly better memory management.
Besides, very few programs for stand-alone workstations demand more than 256 MB of RAM nowadays. And most server applications run extremely well with 1 GB of RAM, especially on the Linux server machines.
The big bottlenecks are no longer the CPU; it's mostly hard disk access times and access times through the network adapter card that holds your system back. Now you know why RAID 5 hard drive arrays and Gigabit Ethernet NIC's are used on high-end servers.
However, I do see that non-x86 architectures may become more prominent in the next three to four years. Projects such as LinuxPPC will allow Linux applications to run on systems that use the PowerPC CPU, a CPU with superb memory addressing capability and an equally superb FPU unit. If Linux becomes popular enough, maybe we might even see a revival of the PReP platform in an updated version running LinuxPPC, machines sold to people who need serious FPU processing power such as engineers and computer animation artists.
If the companies that give out registered DNS names on the Internet (Network Solutions, Register.com, and so on) can agree to a standard on how to give out names using the new TLD's, then we can save ourselves a lot of hassles on how to "block" unauthorized sites from children.
I myself would propose this TLD for adult sites:.AOS (AOS means Adult-Only Site). Web browsers from the start can set the default so they can't log onto.AOS sites without first sending an encrypted password. For example, Playboy's web site can be divided into two parts, one the original playboy.com for their general-interest material and the new playboy.aos for their adult-oriented material. It also means sites such as whitehouse.com will have to switch to whitehouse.aos to avoid confusion with the whitehouse.gov domain.
If I were the ITU-TSS I would strongly suggest they hold a conference in conjunction with ICANN to finalize the new TLD names as soon as possible.
What I find so ironic about this entire case is that when you look at Solaris 7.x, do you know what you do to search system resources in graphical mode? You use a WEB browser!! (Scott McNealy conveniently forgets to mention this in his anti-Microsoft diatribes.)
And look at how Konqueror for KDE and the upcoming Nautilus interface for Gnome; gee, why are they using the "web" model to search system resources?
In short, while everyone derides Microsoft for integrating Internet Explorer into Windows 98, they seem to conveniently ignore the fact that Solaris 7.x and the KDE/Gnome interfaces can do just the same....
My guess is that if George W. Bush is elected, he could pursue two ways to end this suit more to Microsoft's terms:
1. Issue an executive clemency order to pardon Microsoft of all charges.
2. Or have Bush-appointed DoJ officials work out a deal with Microsoft where MS will stay together, but (just to please the anti-MS crowd) we'll see the end of OEM bundling, and Microsoft make available to OEM's a "Plain Jane" version of the successor to Windows 2000 and Windows ME (e.g., the "Whistler" project) that has no web browsers or multimedia software installed.
By the way, things don't look good for Gore; besides Gore being shackled by the Clinton legacy, Gore is strangely unfriendly to news reporters, in sharp contrast to Bush being surprisingly accessible to reporters even now.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with this case right from the word "go" was the fact that EVERYBODY knew that Judge Thomas P. Jackson was going to stick it to Microsoft regardless of testimony. I won't be surprised if most of the case gets dumped out the window by the Appeals Court given the Appeals Court's penchant for overturning Jackson's decisions.
I think the reason why the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC took this case almost immediately is very simple: they may want to stick it to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson AGAIN.:-)
People forget that Judge Jackson has been overturned quite a number of times by this Appeals Court, including overturning two judgements by him against Microsoft. Now that the Appeals Court has taken US v. Microsoft, this means that the chances of the Supreme Court getting the case will go down pretty quickly. In short, don't expect an Appeals Court ruling until around February 2001, and if George W. Bush is elected President, we may not even make it THAT far.
However, you do have to admit that not having to mine for uranium (with all the environmental hassles associated with mining) and also dealing with spent nuclear fuel rods is a definite plus. Since deuterium is easily extractable from seawater, that means if you're next to the ocean there's 1 BILLION years of fuel for a fusion reactor right there for the taking.
I think a commercial fusion reactor becomes possible between 2015 and 2020.
You just won the "Fire Extinguisher Award" for stopping those unnecessary flames about the Nautilus project being developed by Eazel.
One thing people conveniently forget is that on recent desktop versions of Solaris the interface literally IS a system browser--you access all resources in graphical mode using what is more or less a Web browser, even more so than Microsoft did with Active Desktop on Windows 95 OSR 2.5 and later!
I strongly support your efforts on Nautilus. The fact that one of the big contributors is Andy Hertzfeld (one of the few programmers out there that truly has a clue about graphical interface design--after all, he did much of the work for original Macintosh GUI) bodes well for the project.
I remember a story back in 1983 when Pacific Gas & Electric raised their utility bills to totally silly levels for its time. There was a homeowner in Cameron Park, CA who has solar-powered EVERYTHING in his house; he saw his PG&E utility bill go from US$14 to US$28, and was definitely NOT a happy camper (and even reported it to the local newspapers). I mean, this homeowner was just about off the local utility grid and still got stuck with a 100% price increase!
Fortunately, modern technology has reduced power needs even for computers. If your computer and monitor is Energy Star-rated it means the computer supports APM or ACPI power management and the monitor supports DPMS power management; you can set it so after a set time the system essentially draws less than two percent of power consumption when everything is on.
I think it's time we build more natural gas electric generating plants.
The reason is simple: you can get methane, ethane and propane from almost any hydrocarbon source. Provide the incentive to create plants that can convert coal to the natural gases I mentioned and the USA could easily generate a LOT more electric power quickly.
People forget that natural gas burns far more cleanly than gasoline, diesel or coal, and in fact a number of cities have converted their public transit buses so they use compressed natural gas (CNG) as fuel. (The best example of this I know of is Sacramento's Regional Transit, which has very few diesel-powered buses left.)
Here in the Bay Area, there are folks who think the new CNG-powered power plant south of San Jose, CA is going to be a problem. Unfortunately, they conveniently forget that because CNG burns so cleanly, the effect on air pollution will be extremely miniscule, to say the least.
In short, with clean-burning natural gas plants out there, we can buy time until more advanced technologies such as improved solar power plants, improved wind generators, and eventually fusion power comes on line. IMHO, the day that fusion power plants become practical is the day the energy crisis is effectively OVER; there is enough deuterium in seawater to cover the current energy worldwide energy demand for the next one BILLION years (I kid you not). Since fusion plants will not have any emissions, our biggest source of air pollution--powerplant smokestack emissions--will be gone; we also don't have to worry about spent radioactive fuel rods because the radioactive byproduct of deuterium fusion reaction is tritium, which also can be used a fusion fuel.
You're right about the decline of pinball machines.
After all, the machines cost a lot of money and time to build because of the many moving parts inside the machine. Today's arcade videogames are cheaper because the "guts" of an arcade videogame is the computer itself, which is generally going to last longer than a pinball machine full of intricate moving parts; it's almost akin to comparing a Swiss chronometer watch to a Casio digital watch.
Given that the costs of hard disk storage has gone literally straight down in the last seven years (you can get a 75 GB ATA-66 IDE hard drive for around US$550!), I think if they do the encryption right, the days of celluloid film may begin its slow decline in popularity.
Remember, unlike film, digital has these advantages:
1. No worries about dust, scratches or damaged prints due to projector problems.
2. Color saturation that is more consistent than film.
3. The ability to encode multilingual dialogue audio AND subtitling on the same copy easily. And the audio will be digitally clear, too.
Indeed, because of eliminating the need to make actual physical prints of the movie (which cost a LOT of money per copy and weigh a lot for multiple reels that encompasses a single movie), the whole issue of "regional" releases of blockbuster movies could be rendered moot. Imagine by 2005 when Star Wars Episode Three is released, they could do a simultaneous release worldwide because there will no longer be a need to strike prints and ship them worldwide--the original will be sent to theaters worldwide in 256-bit encrypted digital format.
Unfortunately, people who are used to the "feel" of the Microsoft Mouse--from the "Dove Bar" unit to today's Intellimouse Explorer--will HATE the iMac mouse with a passion.
The reason is simple: it's very uncomfortable to hold onto for any long periods of time. It doesn't "fall into your hand" like a good mouse pointer is nowadays. I myself use the Logitech Marble Mouse trackball, and I love it for its comfortable feel in your left or right hand using it.
I for one am NOT looking forward to this mouse, especially if it has no buttons.
The problem with trying to make the thing work by feel is that you'll have to find some way to accommodate different hand sizes, otherwise users of different hand sizes will have trouble launching mouse-based commands properly. HOPEFULLY, Apple will not be dumb enough to shape it like a hockey puck, because the mouse that came with the iMac and G3/G4 PowerMacs sucks like a vacuum cleaner in terms of decent hand feel. -_-
What I find interesting recently is that despite all the grousing about Microsoft software, many Linux users LOVE Microsoft hardware. The various Microsoft mice pointers and the Microsoft Natural and Natural Elite keyboards are very well-liked for its excellent ergonomic feel. The MS Natural keyboards does take a little getting used to, but after using them for a while going back to a regular keyboard is very uncomfortable in comparison.
My suggested recommendations!
on
Essential Anime
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· Score: 2
Rob,
If you're looking for great anime to see, here are the really good ones I think you'll enjoy:
1. Cowboy Bebop. I'm glad you have seen it, because not only does it have a GREAT storyline, but excellent quality animation and better yet, GREAT background music thanks to Yoko Kanno, perhaps the best composer of music for anime in Japan right now.
2. The Vision of Escaflowne. Excellent storyline, excellent interaction between characters, and OAV (read: high quality) animation all the way through the series from start to end. I consider it the second best anime series of the 1990's after Cowboy Bebop.
3. Saber Marionette J. A very pleasant surprise (especially after seeing the subtitled edition), because you really empathize with Lime, Cherry and Bloodberry as they "grow up" from the beginning to end.
4. Slayers, Slayers Next and Slayers Try. These three are the best "fun" series of the 1990's, with lots of great humor, character interaction and surprisingly serious storylines at the end of each series. The nice thing about the three Slayers series is the fact it really does parody all those bad sessions of role-playing games done on pencil and paper--think of it as "Knights of the Dinner Table" come alive. (^_^)
4. Revolutionary Girl Utena. I'm hoping that Central Park Media will have the guts to release all 39 episodes, because by the time you reach the end you'll be reaching for a bottle of painkillers trying to keep up with all the little details and plot twists that are important for this series. Utterly weird, and utterly brilliant.
5. New War Report Gundam W(ing). I'm hoping you can start collecting the series on DVD (Bandai is starting to do that now here in the USA), because it truely is one of the best of the Gundam series (and you on DVD you will hear the very catchy opening and closing themes done by the Japanese pop group Two-Mix).
IMHO, you can't got wrong with the series I've recommended. They are all top-notch and all are highly recommended by serious anime fans.
In all the comments about using the Indian Railway's wiring to setup Internet connection, that's actually a GREAT idea because the wiring infrastructure is already in place to do it.
In fact, one of the things that made the railroads in the USA a LOT of money during the 1970's and 1980's was making their right-of-way property available to lay down fiber-optic telecommunications cables. Southern Pacific did this on all their right of way locations using their SPRINT operation, and in fact if you have a chance to follow the SP (now UP) tracks in California you'll see occasional warning signs indicating buried communications cables.
I think what the Indian Railways ought to do is to use the right-of-way property on their rail lines to lay down high-speed fiber-optic lines all over India. That way, there can be a major boost in telephone, television, and high-speed Internet access capability all over India.
I think you're kind of underestimating the power of the Internet.
Remember, the Internet is a true democratic means to transmit information--you can read newspapers from all over the world, read commentaries from political web sites of every persuasion, and have discussions on web-based discussion boards and NNTP newsgroups.
Already, people like Al Gore have to be VERY careful what he says, because people on the Internet can dig up old statements from him that will contradict his current stances.
IMHO, the Internet may end up being the most democratizing force in human history, because it has made is possible for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to spread information at speeds no one dreamt about even ten years ago. In the old days, you had to rely on newspapers, radio and television to get the news; now, you can get information 24 hours a days from anywhere in the world that can connect you to the public Internet.
What I find interesting about a lot of anti-American sentiments is that while they gripe a lot about the USA, most of the critics tend to fall flat on their face when they're confronted with this question posed by talk show host Ken Hamblin: Can you pick a better country?
The USA may not be perfect, but it's certainly the most successful stable government in human history, where a transition of power from one elected representative to another tends to go relatively smoothly, even in the case of Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.
While a parliamentary republic may work in many countries, the problem is that if you have many political factions it can cause considerable chaos because a party in power can be voted out in a vote of no confidence or the party can call for early general elections--this happens very frequently in places like Italy. Given the very wide ethnic/racial groupings in the USA, a parliamentary republic would result in governments falling as much as once per year or more; this means much more participation of citizens since they may have to vote on national elections quite a bit more often.
Personally, I think it's time that Americans should be MORE participating in how the government runs. You should contact your elected representative as much as possible, because contrary to what some cynics they DO value comments from their constituents. The Internet may be the perfect medium for this, as noted by the rise of discussion boards on many web sites and Internet newsgroups.
While the AOL/Gateway device using the Crusoe CPU may be technically a fine idea, there are some issues we need to settle here.
First, will there be local data storage available for this device, or will it become a glorified "dumb" terminal?
Second, will this device allow the playback of streaming A/V files in Real G2, Windows Media and Quicktime 4.x formats? Or how about plugins such as Macromedia Shockwave/Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader?
Third, what kind of connection beyond the obvious V.90 analog modem will available?
And finally, will it be AOL-only, or can we set up settings from our own ISP?
Gateway has the right idea, but unless it can connect to any ISP the customer chooses and can use the standard browser plugin programs, it's not going to be as popular as AOL thinks.
Personally, by applying 128-bit encryption to audio, video, and book text files, it will be just about impossible to break the encryption. People forget that 128-bit encryption is a VERY tough nut to crack--even the National Security Agency, the largest user of supercomputers in the the USA, can only decrypt a single 128-bit "key" at a rate a once every several HOURS. That means that it will take a hugely-massive Beowulf array of Linux workstations working in a single-room LAN to seriously consider breaking 128-bit encryption, and frankly, most of the world's hackers cannot do this quite yet.
I would charge a this rate:
Audio albums: US$4 for full album, and US$0.40 per song.
Video movies: US$6.50 per movie.
Book text files: US$4 per full book text for "hardback" releases, US$2 for "paperback" releases.
With these very low prices--reflected to consider we no longer have to pay for media and packaging costs--the incentive for piracy will drop to near zero.
(As an aside, I'm surprised that someone has not considered taking the DiVX format and converting it to a 128-bit encrypted format as a medium for direct-Internet sales of movies. Given that most movies are around 650 MB in size in DiVX format, anyone with a broadband Internet connection can download the movie pretty quickly.)
Personally, one thing that we can do is modify Napster so it trades only in time-limited digital music files. That way, it'll allow you do download 56 kb/s 128-bit encrypted sound files that will work for up to 3-4 days on your computer, and 56 kb/s stream with MP3-like compression is more than enough to "preview" the track but not at the sound quality that encourages piracy.
In short, it appears you just made lemonade out of a lemon, as the old saying goes.:-)
At least now I know there will be Socket A motherboards available when the "Thunderbird" Athlon ships in June. I didn't want a repeat of last August when CPU's were easy to come by but motherboards were hard to come by.
Actually, what really killed off the idea of the CPU serial number was the fact that _Microsoft_ was not going to support that feature in Windows 98, NT 4.0 and 2000. You can hate Microsoft all you want, but when 85% of the OS market is not interested in the CPU serial number, that other 15% isn't going to be interested, either.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the fact that Oracle snooped on Microsoft's allies using a private detective indicates that we may some very damaging issues that could cause a different outcome to the US v. Microsoft case.
I've always wondered why Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy have close relationships with the Clinton Administration. If there is evidence that "funny money" was passed between Oracle/Sun and the Democratic National Committee in order for the DoJ under Janet Reno and Joel Klein to expedite US v. Microsoft, then Ellison and McNealy could be charged with violating the Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Federal laws. It will also prove that the entire US v. Microsoft case was done on behest of some very rich competitors, not on behest of consumers, which negates the whole point of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Given the way the Internet Explorer 5.01 for Windows 95/98/NT4/2000 can be "modularly" updated using Windows Update, don't be surprised once the final spec for MNG is published Microsoft (or whatever company that handles IE in the future :-) will have an update available to make IE read .MNG files.
Folks,
I find it very amusing that people think the x86 CPU architecture is obselete.
That may have been true for the 8086 with its 1 MB memory addressing limit and the 80286 with its 16 MB memory addressing limit, but once the 386DX with its 32-bit flat memory addressing scheme became available, in theory the x86 can address as much as 4 GB of system RAM! It's mostly memory physical limits on the motherboard and motherboard memory controller chip limits that has limited computers from addressing all 4 GB until now.
Besides, the x86 architecture has undergone an unbelievable increase in performance. Remember when the first 386DX CPU's were rated at a meager 12 MHz 15 years ago? We now have Pentium IIIEB and Athlon CPU's running at around 83 times the clock speed of the original 386DX and vastly better memory management.
Besides, very few programs for stand-alone workstations demand more than 256 MB of RAM nowadays. And most server applications run extremely well with 1 GB of RAM, especially on the Linux server machines.
The big bottlenecks are no longer the CPU; it's mostly hard disk access times and access times through the network adapter card that holds your system back. Now you know why RAID 5 hard drive arrays and Gigabit Ethernet NIC's are used on high-end servers.
However, I do see that non-x86 architectures may become more prominent in the next three to four years. Projects such as LinuxPPC will allow Linux applications to run on systems that use the PowerPC CPU, a CPU with superb memory addressing capability and an equally superb FPU unit. If Linux becomes popular enough, maybe we might even see a revival of the PReP platform in an updated version running LinuxPPC, machines sold to people who need serious FPU processing power such as engineers and computer animation artists.
If the companies that give out registered DNS names on the Internet (Network Solutions, Register.com, and so on) can agree to a standard on how to give out names using the new TLD's, then we can save ourselves a lot of hassles on how to "block" unauthorized sites from children.
.AOS (AOS means Adult-Only Site). Web browsers from the start can set the default so they can't log onto .AOS sites without first sending an encrypted password. For example, Playboy's web site can be divided into two parts, one the original playboy.com for their general-interest material and the new playboy.aos for their adult-oriented material. It also means sites such as whitehouse.com will have to switch to whitehouse.aos to avoid confusion with the whitehouse.gov domain.
I myself would propose this TLD for adult sites:
If I were the ITU-TSS I would strongly suggest they hold a conference in conjunction with ICANN to finalize the new TLD names as soon as possible.
What I find so ironic about this entire case is that when you look at Solaris 7.x, do you know what you do to search system resources in graphical mode? You use a WEB browser!! (Scott McNealy conveniently forgets to mention this in his anti-Microsoft diatribes.)
And look at how Konqueror for KDE and the upcoming Nautilus interface for Gnome; gee, why are they using the "web" model to search system resources?
In short, while everyone derides Microsoft for integrating Internet Explorer into Windows 98, they seem to conveniently ignore the fact that Solaris 7.x and the KDE/Gnome interfaces can do just the same....
My guess is that if George W. Bush is elected, he could pursue two ways to end this suit more to Microsoft's terms:
1. Issue an executive clemency order to pardon Microsoft of all charges.
2. Or have Bush-appointed DoJ officials work out a deal with Microsoft where MS will stay together, but (just to please the anti-MS crowd) we'll see the end of OEM bundling, and Microsoft make available to OEM's a "Plain Jane" version of the successor to Windows 2000 and Windows ME (e.g., the "Whistler" project) that has no web browsers or multimedia software installed.
By the way, things don't look good for Gore; besides Gore being shackled by the Clinton legacy, Gore is strangely unfriendly to news reporters, in sharp contrast to Bush being surprisingly accessible to reporters even now.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with this case right from the word "go" was the fact that EVERYBODY knew that Judge Thomas P. Jackson was going to stick it to Microsoft regardless of testimony. I won't be surprised if most of the case gets dumped out the window by the Appeals Court given the Appeals Court's penchant for overturning Jackson's decisions.
Folks,
:-)
I think the reason why the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC took this case almost immediately is very simple: they may want to stick it to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson AGAIN.
People forget that Judge Jackson has been overturned quite a number of times by this Appeals Court, including overturning two judgements by him against Microsoft. Now that the Appeals Court has taken US v. Microsoft, this means that the chances of the Supreme Court getting the case will go down pretty quickly. In short, don't expect an Appeals Court ruling until around February 2001, and if George W. Bush is elected President, we may not even make it THAT far.
However, you do have to admit that not having to mine for uranium (with all the environmental hassles associated with mining) and also dealing with spent nuclear fuel rods is a definite plus. Since deuterium is easily extractable from seawater, that means if you're next to the ocean there's 1 BILLION years of fuel for a fusion reactor right there for the taking.
I think a commercial fusion reactor becomes possible between 2015 and 2020.
Ali,
You just won the "Fire Extinguisher Award" for stopping those unnecessary flames about the Nautilus project being developed by Eazel.
One thing people conveniently forget is that on recent desktop versions of Solaris the interface literally IS a system browser--you access all resources in graphical mode using what is more or less a Web browser, even more so than Microsoft did with Active Desktop on Windows 95 OSR 2.5 and later!
I strongly support your efforts on Nautilus. The fact that one of the big contributors is Andy Hertzfeld (one of the few programmers out there that truly has a clue about graphical interface design--after all, he did much of the work for original Macintosh GUI) bodes well for the project.
I remember a story back in 1983 when Pacific Gas & Electric raised their utility bills to totally silly levels for its time. There was a homeowner in Cameron Park, CA who has solar-powered EVERYTHING in his house; he saw his PG&E utility bill go from US$14 to US$28, and was definitely NOT a happy camper (and even reported it to the local newspapers). I mean, this homeowner was just about off the local utility grid and still got stuck with a 100% price increase!
Fortunately, modern technology has reduced power needs even for computers. If your computer and monitor is Energy Star-rated it means the computer supports APM or ACPI power management and the monitor supports DPMS power management; you can set it so after a set time the system essentially draws less than two percent of power consumption when everything is on.
Folks,
I think it's time we build more natural gas electric generating plants.
The reason is simple: you can get methane, ethane and propane from almost any hydrocarbon source. Provide the incentive to create plants that can convert coal to the natural gases I mentioned and the USA could easily generate a LOT more electric power quickly.
People forget that natural gas burns far more cleanly than gasoline, diesel or coal, and in fact a number of cities have converted their public transit buses so they use compressed natural gas (CNG) as fuel. (The best example of this I know of is Sacramento's Regional Transit, which has very few diesel-powered buses left.)
Here in the Bay Area, there are folks who think the new CNG-powered power plant south of San Jose, CA is going to be a problem. Unfortunately, they conveniently forget that because CNG burns so cleanly, the effect on air pollution will be extremely miniscule, to say the least.
In short, with clean-burning natural gas plants out there, we can buy time until more advanced technologies such as improved solar power plants, improved wind generators, and eventually fusion power comes on line. IMHO, the day that fusion power plants become practical is the day the energy crisis is effectively OVER; there is enough deuterium in seawater to cover the current energy worldwide energy demand for the next one BILLION years (I kid you not). Since fusion plants will not have any emissions, our biggest source of air pollution--powerplant smokestack emissions--will be gone; we also don't have to worry about spent radioactive fuel rods because the radioactive byproduct of deuterium fusion reaction is tritium, which also can be used a fusion fuel.
You're right about the decline of pinball machines.
After all, the machines cost a lot of money and time to build because of the many moving parts inside the machine. Today's arcade videogames are cheaper because the "guts" of an arcade videogame is the computer itself, which is generally going to last longer than a pinball machine full of intricate moving parts; it's almost akin to comparing a Swiss chronometer watch to a Casio digital watch.
Given that the costs of hard disk storage has gone literally straight down in the last seven years (you can get a 75 GB ATA-66 IDE hard drive for around US$550!), I think if they do the encryption right, the days of celluloid film may begin its slow decline in popularity.
Remember, unlike film, digital has these advantages:
1. No worries about dust, scratches or damaged prints due to projector problems.
2. Color saturation that is more consistent than film.
3. The ability to encode multilingual dialogue audio AND subtitling on the same copy easily. And the audio will be digitally clear, too.
Indeed, because of eliminating the need to make actual physical prints of the movie (which cost a LOT of money per copy and weigh a lot for multiple reels that encompasses a single movie), the whole issue of "regional" releases of blockbuster movies could be rendered moot. Imagine by 2005 when Star Wars Episode Three is released, they could do a simultaneous release worldwide because there will no longer be a need to strike prints and ship them worldwide--the original will be sent to theaters worldwide in 256-bit encrypted digital format.
Unfortunately, people who are used to the "feel" of the Microsoft Mouse--from the "Dove Bar" unit to today's Intellimouse Explorer--will HATE the iMac mouse with a passion.
The reason is simple: it's very uncomfortable to hold onto for any long periods of time. It doesn't "fall into your hand" like a good mouse pointer is nowadays. I myself use the Logitech Marble Mouse trackball, and I love it for its comfortable feel in your left or right hand using it.
I for one am NOT looking forward to this mouse, especially if it has no buttons.
The problem with trying to make the thing work by feel is that you'll have to find some way to accommodate different hand sizes, otherwise users of different hand sizes will have trouble launching mouse-based commands properly. HOPEFULLY, Apple will not be dumb enough to shape it like a hockey puck, because the mouse that came with the iMac and G3/G4 PowerMacs sucks like a vacuum cleaner in terms of decent hand feel. -_-
What I find interesting recently is that despite all the grousing about Microsoft software, many Linux users LOVE Microsoft hardware. The various Microsoft mice pointers and the Microsoft Natural and Natural Elite keyboards are very well-liked for its excellent ergonomic feel. The MS Natural keyboards does take a little getting used to, but after using them for a while going back to a regular keyboard is very uncomfortable in comparison.
Rob,
If you're looking for great anime to see, here are the really good ones I think you'll enjoy:
1. Cowboy Bebop. I'm glad you have seen it, because not only does it have a GREAT storyline, but excellent quality animation and better yet, GREAT background music thanks to Yoko Kanno, perhaps the best composer of music for anime in Japan right now.
2. The Vision of Escaflowne. Excellent storyline, excellent interaction between characters, and OAV (read: high quality) animation all the way through the series from start to end. I consider it the second best anime series of the 1990's after Cowboy Bebop.
3. Saber Marionette J. A very pleasant surprise (especially after seeing the subtitled edition), because you really empathize with Lime, Cherry and Bloodberry as they "grow up" from the beginning to end.
4. Slayers, Slayers Next and Slayers Try. These three are the best "fun" series of the 1990's, with lots of great humor, character interaction and surprisingly serious storylines at the end of each series. The nice thing about the three Slayers series is the fact it really does parody all those bad sessions of role-playing games done on pencil and paper--think of it as "Knights of the Dinner Table" come alive. (^_^)
4. Revolutionary Girl Utena. I'm hoping that Central Park Media will have the guts to release all 39 episodes, because by the time you reach the end you'll be reaching for a bottle of painkillers trying to keep up with all the little details and plot twists that are important for this series. Utterly weird, and utterly brilliant.
5. New War Report Gundam W(ing). I'm hoping you can start collecting the series on DVD (Bandai is starting to do that now here in the USA), because it truely is one of the best of the Gundam series (and you on DVD you will hear the very catchy opening and closing themes done by the Japanese pop group Two-Mix).
IMHO, you can't got wrong with the series I've recommended. They are all top-notch and all are highly recommended by serious anime fans.
In all the comments about using the Indian Railway's wiring to setup Internet connection, that's actually a GREAT idea because the wiring infrastructure is already in place to do it.
In fact, one of the things that made the railroads in the USA a LOT of money during the 1970's and 1980's was making their right-of-way property available to lay down fiber-optic telecommunications cables. Southern Pacific did this on all their right of way locations using their SPRINT operation, and in fact if you have a chance to follow the SP (now UP) tracks in California you'll see occasional warning signs indicating buried communications cables.
I think what the Indian Railways ought to do is to use the right-of-way property on their rail lines to lay down high-speed fiber-optic lines all over India. That way, there can be a major boost in telephone, television, and high-speed Internet access capability all over India.
I think you're kind of underestimating the power of the Internet.
Remember, the Internet is a true democratic means to transmit information--you can read newspapers from all over the world, read commentaries from political web sites of every persuasion, and have discussions on web-based discussion boards and NNTP newsgroups.
Already, people like Al Gore have to be VERY careful what he says, because people on the Internet can dig up old statements from him that will contradict his current stances.
IMHO, the Internet may end up being the most democratizing force in human history, because it has made is possible for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to spread information at speeds no one dreamt about even ten years ago. In the old days, you had to rely on newspapers, radio and television to get the news; now, you can get information 24 hours a days from anywhere in the world that can connect you to the public Internet.
What I find interesting about a lot of anti-American sentiments is that while they gripe a lot about the USA, most of the critics tend to fall flat on their face when they're confronted with this question posed by talk show host Ken Hamblin: Can you pick a better country?
The USA may not be perfect, but it's certainly the most successful stable government in human history, where a transition of power from one elected representative to another tends to go relatively smoothly, even in the case of Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.
While a parliamentary republic may work in many countries, the problem is that if you have many political factions it can cause considerable chaos because a party in power can be voted out in a vote of no confidence or the party can call for early general elections--this happens very frequently in places like Italy. Given the very wide ethnic/racial groupings in the USA, a parliamentary republic would result in governments falling as much as once per year or more; this means much more participation of citizens since they may have to vote on national elections quite a bit more often.
Personally, I think it's time that Americans should be MORE participating in how the government runs. You should contact your elected representative as much as possible, because contrary to what some cynics they DO value comments from their constituents. The Internet may be the perfect medium for this, as noted by the rise of discussion boards on many web sites and Internet newsgroups.
While the AOL/Gateway device using the Crusoe CPU may be technically a fine idea, there are some issues we need to settle here.
First, will there be local data storage available for this device, or will it become a glorified "dumb" terminal?
Second, will this device allow the playback of streaming A/V files in Real G2, Windows Media and Quicktime 4.x formats? Or how about plugins such as Macromedia Shockwave/Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader?
Third, what kind of connection beyond the obvious V.90 analog modem will available?
And finally, will it be AOL-only, or can we set up settings from our own ISP?
Gateway has the right idea, but unless it can connect to any ISP the customer chooses and can use the standard browser plugin programs, it's not going to be as popular as AOL thinks.
Mike,
I read your article with great interest.
Personally, by applying 128-bit encryption to audio, video, and book text files, it will be just about impossible to break the encryption. People forget that 128-bit encryption is a VERY tough nut to crack--even the National Security Agency, the largest user of supercomputers in the the USA, can only decrypt a single 128-bit "key" at a rate a once every several HOURS. That means that it will take a hugely-massive Beowulf array of Linux workstations working in a single-room LAN to seriously consider breaking 128-bit encryption, and frankly, most of the world's hackers cannot do this quite yet.
I would charge a this rate:
Audio albums: US$4 for full album, and US$0.40 per song.
Video movies: US$6.50 per movie.
Book text files: US$4 per full book text for "hardback" releases, US$2 for "paperback" releases.
With these very low prices--reflected to consider we no longer have to pay for media and packaging costs--the incentive for piracy will drop to near zero.
(As an aside, I'm surprised that someone has not considered taking the DiVX format and converting it to a 128-bit encrypted format as a medium for direct-Internet sales of movies. Given that most movies are around 650 MB in size in DiVX format, anyone with a broadband Internet connection can download the movie pretty quickly.)
Tony,
:-)
I like your opinion! (^_^)
Personally, one thing that we can do is modify Napster so it trades only in time-limited digital music files. That way, it'll allow you do download 56 kb/s 128-bit encrypted sound files that will work for up to 3-4 days on your computer, and 56 kb/s stream with MP3-like compression is more than enough to "preview" the track but not at the sound quality that encourages piracy.
In short, it appears you just made lemonade out of a lemon, as the old saying goes.
Thanks for the insightful information! (^_^)
At least now I know there will be Socket A motherboards available when the "Thunderbird" Athlon ships in June. I didn't want a repeat of last August when CPU's were easy to come by but motherboards were hard to come by.
Actually, what really killed off the idea of the CPU serial number was the fact that _Microsoft_ was not going to support that feature in Windows 98, NT 4.0 and 2000. You can hate Microsoft all you want, but when 85% of the OS market is not interested in the CPU serial number, that other 15% isn't going to be interested, either.