I'm a loyal Be user, and I'm happy Be has got a deal with Sony and Intel (intel is also releasing a BeIA web pad)
However, I must say that Internet Appliances are going to flop. Why? Simply because they are based on the wrong model. Their mantra is that the internet should be fun and easy. Their underlying assumption is that it is not fun and easy and will not be fun and easy based on the cuurrent PC model.
I believe this is fundamentally flawed. Their solution to this 'problem' is to create a myriad of devices- separate and limited appliances that do one or two things and do it well.
And while marketing executives at companies like Sony, Intel, Microsoft and Compaq develop new applications, software, and hardware peripherals that enable the PC to do more and more, they are simultaneously developing products that do less and less, but do it supposedly faster, easier, and more simply.
The point is simply that in the future, the PC will be the appliance. We are already seeing signs of it. Apple, INtel, Compaq and Sony all have computer models with DV options to edit and store digital video. Say goodbye to the VCR. It is also in the works to have af ully networked home piping mp3 music through to every room in the house, say goodbye to individual stereos. PC's can already do email, http, ftp, and instant messaging quite well (and no, it's NOT that difficult to get online, it was somewhat difficult 5 years ago, but with Earthlink, AOL, and other huge providers and their software, anyone can do it).
Simply put, as PCs get more power to do more diverse things, they will become the total appliance and make these email and web machines obsolete. And as the software improves, it will be easier to get on the internet than it already is. The whole INternet Appliance craze seems to me to just be bogus.
What little freedoms we have? Americans unsafe due to Corporatism? Let me tell you a little story.
My fiance is from Albania, a small, poor nation on the Adriatic west of Greece. Albania was a communist nation for nearly 40 years under the "leadership" of one Enver Hoxha. Upon communism's collapse in 1991, my fiance and her family had their hopes high. She came here to study in 1997. Since that time, Albania has become a nation ruled by violent mobs and Socialist lackeys.
My fiance's sister coordinated a program for elementary schools in Albania. She was in charge of money from the west and was tasked with the project of hiring new teachers for hundreds of schools in the cities and towns of Albania. When the socialists came to power in late 1997, they replaced all of the Liberal Democrats in every key position. My fiance's sister, more concerned with building good schools than politics, thought nothing of it. THat is until her boss was replaced by a Socialist lackey who demanded that she hire teachers with little or no training who were loyal to the socialist government. When her sister refused to do that, local socialist officials (who by this time were funnelling western education money into their own pockets) met with her and introduced her to a famous criminal/warlord. He sat and stared at her sister for hours as they had this meeting. This criminal is well known in Albania and IS a murderer and a theif.
My fiance's sister is just as stubborn as anyone, and still refused to hire politically correct teachers. The implicit threats increased, then became explicit ones. Notes left on her front door, in her husband's car. Even shots fired into their apartment in the capital city- all due to her not complying with the socialists in power at the time.
So they came here. She was pregnant. She has a degree in education, and he has a degree in structural engineering. Both of them were under and still are under death threats from the elements in the government in power in Albania. Last month, a note was found in their old apartment that simply stated, "The three of you should take care to watch over each other and not step foot in Albania again." They are currently trying to get political asylum in the USA. All they want is to do the work they went to school for, live a life, pay bills, and gradually increase their wealth. They want to raise their small family. They love Albania, but they see it is full of corruption and problems right now. They truly are the 'tired huddled masses'.
And you have the nerve to talk about 'what little freedoms we have left?" They and other immigrants marvel at the freedoms we enjoy. THey marvel at the 'newness' of this nation. There are racial problems in the USA, but they are not as ingrained and divisive as those in some parts of Europe. And a person who wants to get hired for government work or in the private sector here need not reveal his political values or look over his shoulder for fear of some crime-boss whacking his family. You need a reality check my friend- so do the editors of slashdot.
Back in 91 and 92, I was a Falcon 3.0 junkie.I first installed it on my dad's 386/16 with 4mb of ram. I read the manual cover to cover, and learned how to use the radar and weapons systems.
THen I went and joined a Flight Group on Prodigy's BBS service. I was soon a Lieutenant flying specified missions over Iraq and posting my results on the BBS. Sometimes I'd come up with a lot of kills, air or ground, and sometimes I'd wuss out and return to base early.
Then we got a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM and a 300meg hard drive. Falcon was great! I soon mastered the art of recording varioius parts of my mission with the recording feature and would send those to my commanding officer by simply dialing up to his computer and transferring the file over our 14.4kbps modem. I became a Captain, then a Major, then a full bird Colonel.
I was 16 years old and had just moved to a new town. No friends except for my comrades on Prodigy who shared the same enthusiasm for Falcon 3.0 that I did. It truly was a revolutionary product, and I credit it with being very influential in starting online gaming and clubs.
is still not out. Be has said that it will be released 'when it's done.' I can't imagine how they'll have those kinds of graphics out for BeOS without a new OpenGL package that supports more than just a Voodoo 3 card. Hopefully Be will release it soon, BeOS users have been waiting for it and BONE for over a year.
It's very difficult for a computer savvy person like myself to make the switch. I played with RH 6.1 over a year ago. I was all excited to try an alternative OS on my system. Keep in mind I was no computer newbie, just a linux newbie.
I checked my hardware- everything was standard and supported. Voodoo card, SB 16, ATA 66 hard drive, 440bx mobo with a P3-450. Installation was breeze simply because I had two hard disks. I wasn't afraid of partitioning, but having two hard disks was great. Lilo worked great the first time I ran it. No complaints for installation.
Unfortunately, once I got RH running, with Gnome nad Enlightenment, I didn't know what to do. Sure Netscape worked great, and my network card was supported instantly. So I tried to download some commonly used programs- in this case LICQ. This is the part where savvy Windows/Dos users will have a problem. Coming from a long background in DOS, I had never heard of gcc or compiling programs before installing. Sure mkdir is easy enough to learn, but there rae no tutorials for installing such software. LICQ's page was nice in that it had simple directions to install software, however the installation depended upon other packages being installed, which I as a new user, had no clue. I was faced with the task of trying to install the packages again from the RH cd. All of these packages, like gcc and such, I believer were under the development section. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd need to install development packages to simply install a program. I was tempted to format and reinstall everything included on the CD, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything that would keep me from installing stuff.
RPM's were much better, but still kind of screwy.
The point is Linux is quite easy to install. But installing software without having to edit text files or compiling things is not something a savvy Windows User would expect to have to do. It's frustrating, time consuming, and makes the new Linux user want to give up. Just some thoughts froma non-Linux-developer/geek who was in the same situation as the poster.
They are focusing now on Internet Appliances, thus BeIA, rather than BeOS. BeIA is supposed to be fully customizable for the OEM, including UI and all sorts of other things. It's made to run on as little as 32MB of RAM and has support for Flash, Real, and Opera 4 as it's main browser.
The device spoken of here is yet another iteration of BeIA. This just goes to show the remarkable uses of Be's latest work. Hopefully the networking support will be seamless- not like it is on R5 Pro. Check out http://www.qubit.net for another BeIA enabled device, this one with 802.11b connectivity.
Exactly....
Be Inc. CEO Jean Louis Gasee has said much the same thing. The idea behind BeIA is that it will provide the user with a seamless system. It's not an OS per se at all. It's an appliance, and Be has focused its efforts into creating something that is not operating system like.
When I turn on my vcr, when the stop lights change from red to green, I don't care what OS it's running, I just want it to work. BeIA comes from the same philosophy and should be killer once it's released
In 35 years?
Does anyone know what kind of path they sent this thing on? I mean, that's less than the distance from my chair that I'm sitting in to the Sun, which is some 92 million miles.
Cassini I think has gone further than that, as has all Voyager probes and Pioneeer 10, which last I heard was in the cloud beyond our solar system.
Maybe they should tell it to speed up
The Linux community is certainly different than run of the mill PC users. You guys are trend-setters, not followers. In that light, why do you worry about which company will port what game to Linux? Why don't you start creating your own gaming companies? Take the initiative here. Why react when you can act forecefully? Look at all the money in the community now, billion dollar IPOs, all sorts of opportunities.
As an aside, I, as a BeOS user, would love to have some great games on Linux. Unfortunately, it's still too difficult an OS for me to use and configure, but I see people in your community trying to fix that, the former Apple team developing a user-friendly version of Linux is a great start. Now that's some initiative.
So, a simple two part plan. Build an easier version of linux. Then develop games for it. Create a demand for the game, and you create a demand for Linux. It can be done. Stop reacting and instead act.
Last night, all the self-proclaimed Wise-Men of/. derided NBC for broadcasting the Y2K movie, calling it meaningless hysteria and irresponsible broadcasting. Tonight, there is a snippet of news on a possible discovery of light being reflected off a gas giant near Tau Boote 50 light years away, and some of you same wise men (though not all, some of these posters know of what they speak) are talking about silicon based life-forms and asking why we haven't heard radio communications from this planet?!?! Geez, haven't these particular/.ers taken an elementary course in Astronomy? In any event, I expect the pace of these discoveries to increase. At first, we were able to detect a planet by the gravitational 'wobble' it produced on its star, then we were able to look at how the light from a star dimmed when a planet passed nearby it. According to one of my astro books, we've discovered 6 or 7 planets. Only a few are smaller than Jupiter while the rest are much larger. The interesting thing is, and the question to be answered is, how does such a planet like the one formed around Tau Boote survive the intitial formation of the star? Most astronomers think there is some sort of solar gale when the star is initially formed, and such a gaseous planet could not survive. In any case, it will be even more difficult to detect earth sized planets since they are much smaller and won't radiate near the electromagnetic energy of these gas giants. As for extra-terrestrial life- Well, hopefully Hubble 2, or whatever it will be called, could point its camera at these objects and take some nice snap-shots. If something proves interesting enough, it's not that difficult to move the VLA in New Mexico or some southern Radio 'scope to look at the object. The next century will be a very exciting time for all astronomers.
Actually, more electromagnetic radiation is radiated off of Jupiter than it receives. Although this radiation doesn't take the form of visible light, it radiates more than it receives nonetheless. This is due to Jupiter's massive rotation speed.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a loyal Be user, and I'm happy Be has got a deal with Sony and Intel (intel is also releasing a BeIA web pad) However, I must say that Internet Appliances are going to flop. Why? Simply because they are based on the wrong model. Their mantra is that the internet should be fun and easy. Their underlying assumption is that it is not fun and easy and will not be fun and easy based on the cuurrent PC model. I believe this is fundamentally flawed. Their solution to this 'problem' is to create a myriad of devices- separate and limited appliances that do one or two things and do it well. And while marketing executives at companies like Sony, Intel, Microsoft and Compaq develop new applications, software, and hardware peripherals that enable the PC to do more and more, they are simultaneously developing products that do less and less, but do it supposedly faster, easier, and more simply. The point is simply that in the future, the PC will be the appliance. We are already seeing signs of it. Apple, INtel, Compaq and Sony all have computer models with DV options to edit and store digital video. Say goodbye to the VCR. It is also in the works to have af ully networked home piping mp3 music through to every room in the house, say goodbye to individual stereos. PC's can already do email, http, ftp, and instant messaging quite well (and no, it's NOT that difficult to get online, it was somewhat difficult 5 years ago, but with Earthlink, AOL, and other huge providers and their software, anyone can do it). Simply put, as PCs get more power to do more diverse things, they will become the total appliance and make these email and web machines obsolete. And as the software improves, it will be easier to get on the internet than it already is. The whole INternet Appliance craze seems to me to just be bogus.
What little freedoms we have? Americans unsafe due to Corporatism? Let me tell you a little story. My fiance is from Albania, a small, poor nation on the Adriatic west of Greece. Albania was a communist nation for nearly 40 years under the "leadership" of one Enver Hoxha. Upon communism's collapse in 1991, my fiance and her family had their hopes high. She came here to study in 1997. Since that time, Albania has become a nation ruled by violent mobs and Socialist lackeys. My fiance's sister coordinated a program for elementary schools in Albania. She was in charge of money from the west and was tasked with the project of hiring new teachers for hundreds of schools in the cities and towns of Albania. When the socialists came to power in late 1997, they replaced all of the Liberal Democrats in every key position. My fiance's sister, more concerned with building good schools than politics, thought nothing of it. THat is until her boss was replaced by a Socialist lackey who demanded that she hire teachers with little or no training who were loyal to the socialist government. When her sister refused to do that, local socialist officials (who by this time were funnelling western education money into their own pockets) met with her and introduced her to a famous criminal/warlord. He sat and stared at her sister for hours as they had this meeting. This criminal is well known in Albania and IS a murderer and a theif. My fiance's sister is just as stubborn as anyone, and still refused to hire politically correct teachers. The implicit threats increased, then became explicit ones. Notes left on her front door, in her husband's car. Even shots fired into their apartment in the capital city- all due to her not complying with the socialists in power at the time. So they came here. She was pregnant. She has a degree in education, and he has a degree in structural engineering. Both of them were under and still are under death threats from the elements in the government in power in Albania. Last month, a note was found in their old apartment that simply stated, "The three of you should take care to watch over each other and not step foot in Albania again." They are currently trying to get political asylum in the USA. All they want is to do the work they went to school for, live a life, pay bills, and gradually increase their wealth. They want to raise their small family. They love Albania, but they see it is full of corruption and problems right now. They truly are the 'tired huddled masses'. And you have the nerve to talk about 'what little freedoms we have left?" They and other immigrants marvel at the freedoms we enjoy. THey marvel at the 'newness' of this nation. There are racial problems in the USA, but they are not as ingrained and divisive as those in some parts of Europe. And a person who wants to get hired for government work or in the private sector here need not reveal his political values or look over his shoulder for fear of some crime-boss whacking his family. You need a reality check my friend- so do the editors of slashdot.
THen I went and joined a Flight Group on Prodigy's BBS service. I was soon a Lieutenant flying specified missions over Iraq and posting my results on the BBS. Sometimes I'd come up with a lot of kills, air or ground, and sometimes I'd wuss out and return to base early.
Then we got a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM and a 300meg hard drive. Falcon was great! I soon mastered the art of recording varioius parts of my mission with the recording feature and would send those to my commanding officer by simply dialing up to his computer and transferring the file over our 14.4kbps modem. I became a Captain, then a Major, then a full bird Colonel. I was 16 years old and had just moved to a new town. No friends except for my comrades on Prodigy who shared the same enthusiasm for Falcon 3.0 that I did. It truly was a revolutionary product, and I credit it with being very influential in starting online gaming and clubs.is still not out. Be has said that it will be released 'when it's done.' I can't imagine how they'll have those kinds of graphics out for BeOS without a new OpenGL package that supports more than just a Voodoo 3 card. Hopefully Be will release it soon, BeOS users have been waiting for it and BONE for over a year.
It's very difficult for a computer savvy person like myself to make the switch. I played with RH 6.1 over a year ago. I was all excited to try an alternative OS on my system. Keep in mind I was no computer newbie, just a linux newbie.
I checked my hardware- everything was standard and supported. Voodoo card, SB 16, ATA 66 hard drive, 440bx mobo with a P3-450. Installation was breeze simply because I had two hard disks. I wasn't afraid of partitioning, but having two hard disks was great. Lilo worked great the first time I ran it. No complaints for installation.
Unfortunately, once I got RH running, with Gnome nad Enlightenment, I didn't know what to do. Sure Netscape worked great, and my network card was supported instantly. So I tried to download some commonly used programs- in this case LICQ. This is the part where savvy Windows/Dos users will have a problem. Coming from a long background in DOS, I had never heard of gcc or compiling programs before installing. Sure mkdir is easy enough to learn, but there rae no tutorials for installing such software. LICQ's page was nice in that it had simple directions to install software, however the installation depended upon other packages being installed, which I as a new user, had no clue. I was faced with the task of trying to install the packages again from the RH cd. All of these packages, like gcc and such, I believer were under the development section. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd need to install development packages to simply install a program. I was tempted to format and reinstall everything included on the CD, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything that would keep me from installing stuff.
RPM's were much better, but still kind of screwy.
The point is Linux is quite easy to install. But installing software without having to edit text files or compiling things is not something a savvy Windows User would expect to have to do. It's frustrating, time consuming, and makes the new Linux user want to give up. Just some thoughts froma non-Linux-developer/geek who was in the same situation as the poster.Be Inc. changed it's focus in January.
They are focusing now on Internet Appliances, thus BeIA, rather than BeOS. BeIA is supposed to be fully customizable for the OEM, including UI and all sorts of other things. It's made to run on as little as 32MB of RAM and has support for Flash, Real, and Opera 4 as it's main browser.
The device spoken of here is yet another iteration of BeIA. This just goes to show the remarkable uses of Be's latest work. Hopefully the networking support will be seamless- not like it is on R5 Pro. Check out http://www.qubit.net for another BeIA enabled device, this one with 802.11b connectivity.Exactly.... Be Inc. CEO Jean Louis Gasee has said much the same thing. The idea behind BeIA is that it will provide the user with a seamless system. It's not an OS per se at all. It's an appliance, and Be has focused its efforts into creating something that is not operating system like. When I turn on my vcr, when the stop lights change from red to green, I don't care what OS it's running, I just want it to work. BeIA comes from the same philosophy and should be killer once it's released
In 35 years? Does anyone know what kind of path they sent this thing on? I mean, that's less than the distance from my chair that I'm sitting in to the Sun, which is some 92 million miles. Cassini I think has gone further than that, as has all Voyager probes and Pioneeer 10, which last I heard was in the cloud beyond our solar system. Maybe they should tell it to speed up
Wow looks great. Congrats to the Honda Engineers!
Where did this come from? Out of the blue like this, it's kind of a shock. Has anyone been able to download and try it out yet?
The Linux community is certainly different than run of the mill PC users. You guys are trend-setters, not followers. In that light, why do you worry about which company will port what game to Linux? Why don't you start creating your own gaming companies? Take the initiative here. Why react when you can act forecefully? Look at all the money in the community now, billion dollar IPOs, all sorts of opportunities.
As an aside, I, as a BeOS user, would love to have some great games on Linux. Unfortunately, it's still too difficult an OS for me to use and configure, but I see people in your community trying to fix that, the former Apple team developing a user-friendly version of Linux is a great start. Now that's some initiative.
So, a simple two part plan. Build an easier version of linux. Then develop games for it. Create a demand for the game, and you create a demand for Linux. It can be done. Stop reacting and instead act.
Last night, all the self-proclaimed Wise-Men of /. derided NBC for broadcasting the Y2K movie, calling it meaningless hysteria and irresponsible broadcasting. Tonight, there is a snippet of news on a possible discovery of light being reflected off a gas giant near Tau Boote 50 light years away, and some of you same wise men (though not all, some of these posters know of what they speak) are talking about silicon based life-forms and asking why we haven't heard radio communications from this planet?!?! Geez, haven't these particular /.ers taken an elementary course in Astronomy? In any event, I expect the pace of these discoveries to increase. At first, we were able to detect a planet by the gravitational 'wobble' it produced on its star, then we were able to look at how the light from a star dimmed when a planet passed nearby it. According to one of my astro books, we've discovered 6 or 7 planets. Only a few are smaller than Jupiter while the rest are much larger. The interesting thing is, and the question to be answered is, how does such a planet like the one formed around Tau Boote survive the intitial formation of the star? Most astronomers think there is some sort of solar gale when the star is initially formed, and such a gaseous planet could not survive. In any case, it will be even more difficult to detect earth sized planets since they are much smaller and won't radiate near the electromagnetic energy of these gas giants. As for extra-terrestrial life- Well, hopefully Hubble 2, or whatever it will be called, could point its camera at these objects and take some nice snap-shots. If something proves interesting enough, it's not that difficult to move the VLA in New Mexico or some southern Radio 'scope to look at the object. The next century will be a very exciting time for all astronomers.
Actually, more electromagnetic radiation is radiated off of Jupiter than it receives. Although this radiation doesn't take the form of visible light, it radiates more than it receives nonetheless. This is due to Jupiter's massive rotation speed.
What the fuck are you talking about? Stay on topic