Opportunity to compete against AOL with Mozilla?
on
Mozilla M17 Is Out
·
· Score: 1
Is there an opportunity for a company to sell Mozilla support and offer an easy to use, easy to install version of Mozilla that doesn't suck like everyone is saying Netscape PR2 does? Why doesn't someone grab the source, start a new company and run with it?
Do I get equal time on the pulpit at a xitian church to teach evolution?
No one is compelled to attend a xtian church or other religious institution. Attendance at public schools is mandatory for children unless their parents can afford to place them in a private school.
An experiment to start in this direction would be to have people use a system and tell them it has a natural language interface and see what they do. You could have a person monitoring their input remotely, then responding to their actions. It would appear as if the system was responding to their natural language commands.
The reason for doing this would be to see how people act with what they think is an intelligent machine. Once you know that, you design the interface to match those expectations.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40 per cent of men worked more than 40 hours a week in l998, an increase of 5 percentage points in the last two decades. As for women, 22 per cent worked more than 40 hours aweek, compared with just 14 per cent in 1979.
So, is it possible that salary disparities between men and women are due to the fact that men work more hours?
I guess I'm being skeptical here, but I won't buy into this whole Crusoe/Transmeta idea until I can sit at my breakfast table reading/. using wireless LAN.
You can do this today with an iBook or Powerbook and Apple's AirPort technology.
I just love the look of this. Miyazaki really captures the look of rural Japan, and his attention to detail and ability to portray everyday things very accurately, accentuates the magic and wonder and cuteness of Totoro and friends. Very simple, but this is its strength.
SOI can be used in one of two ways. It can be used to create low-power chips. In this case, by keeping clock speed the same, SOI would reduce the power consumption of a chip by two to three times.
Apple already claims >5 hour battery life for Powerbooks. With a 2 to 3 times power consumption decrease for the processor, how much more battery life can they get?
I'd like to be able to speak into a cell phone "What's the weather like in New York?" and get a response from my favorite weather site. Or "Read me today's Slashdot headlines." The agent could also give you a call to report certain events. "I found a Linux server on dell.com for $699. Interested?" it might say. It could even call you on special occasions: "Call your Mom. It's her birthday."
Yes, this is very ambitious, but maybe some small part of this is feasible for your project?
So my question is this: My co-worker is a failed linux hack (could not understand where he was to type 'man tar' in order to get the manpage), has never written a line of code anywhere in his life, has no concept of logic, etc..etc.. etc. but thinks that he is (and is currently gettting seed money for a project) going to be able to write a massive application that runs against a mySQL database using web objects with no experience whatsoever... Or no effort.
Is web object so sweet that it can work this magic? If so have I wasted my time learning PHP, Perl, C, etc.. (just kidding)
I feel for your friend's backers. His project is doomed. He might be able to whip out a prototype with the Wizard tools, but the "magic" of WebObjects is being able to write business logic in Java or Objective-C while WebObjects takes care of managing the database and lets you build a GUI without any extra code. If your friend can't code business logic, he's headed for a brick wall real fast.
Does WebObjects qualify for this category? The fact that it's even more proprietary than Java probably doesn't make it popular among/. readers, but otherwise it has a lot going for it.
Works with Apache, IIS, Netscape servers.
Works with many commercial databases (not sure about ODBC, MySQL).
Develop on NT, Mac OS X Server (and upcoming MacOS X); deploy on NT, Solaris, other commercial Unixen. (But not Linux, unfortunately.)
Can develop in compiled, strongly typed yet flexible object oriented languages like Java and Objective C, or in edit-then-test scripting languages like WebScript.
Database to object mapping technology (EOF) rocks. I'm not aware of anything like it.
GUI tools rock. User interface can be changed without touching any code or recompiling.
Outstanding code library in the Foundation Kit classes. Great collection, date and string classes.
I understand why *WE*, the end users, would benefit from multiple hardware sources, but how would it benefit Apple? In essence, Apple would split itself into an OS company and commodity hardware vendor (by putting themselves on a level playing field as the cloners, otherwise there's no benefit to the consumer). Basically, they would be following the business model of Be on the OS side, which doesn't seem to have gotten Be very far. They would lose the advantage they have over PC cloners, which is control of both hardware and OS.
I can see three models for profitable OS development.
Have a monopoly on OS's that run on commodity hardware, backed up by a ton of legacy apps (M$).
Contribute freely to an open source OS; make money through support, service, documentation and customization (RHAT).
Develop a proprietary OS and proprietary hardware that leverage each other (Apple, Sun).
A lot of comments on newspaper content, but not much on how newspaper distribution can change. How about a PC program that downloads and prints out newspaper content every morning at a pre-set time? The user could select what content they wanted and grab it off the printer for their morning coffee/breakfast/commute, and the paper could target adds to the reader's demographics. An alternative would be to automatically load it into a Palm or other electronic reader. Also, the information could be up to date at the time it's printed out. The paper someone prints out at 8am could be more up to date than the paper someone else printed out at 5am (traffic info? weather updates? school closings?). And of course, readers could log into the website later in the day to get more in depth info.
Of course, someone would have to figure out how to reformat the newspaper so that it flows well on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, or on a Palm screen. But I think this could work.
Of course, the biggest problem with WebObjects is the cost. Not too many folks can afford the $10,000 entrance fee to get started.
You can get Mac OS X Server for $499, including a limited version of WebObjects, at the Apple Store. Of course, you need to shell about for a recent Mac if you don't already have one, but it's still cheaper than $10,000.
Yahoo was started by a couple of stereotypical geeks. So was Hewlett Packard, Intel, Apple, Sun and (lets face it) Microsoft. (That is if you give a little leeway to the definition of 'geek'.) But it always seems to be the Marketroids who win in the end...
I don't get it. You list companies that are obvious examples of how geeks have gained immense influence and bank accounts, but then say the marketdroids always win? Gates is definitely a geek, just one who happens to have more skills in business strategy than hacking. And Paul Allen isn't hurting either. Yahoo is an excellent example of geeks who made it big. Woz could have had (and probably still could have) lots of money and power, but decided to pursue other things. Jim Clark is another geek who proved he could kick any marketdroid's butt at their own game. Even Jeff Bezos seems pretty geeky from the write-ups I have read about him (like Gates, just happened to be better at business than physics and computer science, both of which he tried in college).
Even Time magazine named perhaps the greatest geek of them all, Albert Einstein, man of the century. One of the reasons they gave for choosing him was that science and technology had greater influence on this century than politics, warfare, art or religion.
Put it this way. 100 years from now, is it more likely that someone will remember some businessman from this century, or Albert Einstein?
If CBS or NBC want to doctor up otherwise footage, they should be forced to include a caption saying "portions of this telecast are being digitally altered" and DISallowed from adding a caption such as "Live" or anything else deceiving the viewer into believing what he is seeing is actually what's there.
Apple got the GUI right the first time out, and nobody's really made any earth shattering improvements to it since. Why not just steal their work, as great artists are known to do? There can still be a lot of flexibility in how widgets look, but programs should work in more or less the same way from the user's standpoint. Users should be able to expect a new program to work like other programs they already know. This, as much as anything, has been what's kept Apple's rabid customers loyal to the Mac over the past 15 years.
In my mind this is insufferable anthrocentrism. Humans, completely without proof, cling to the idea that they are unique and special in some vague and undefinable way.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we ARE unique and special out of everything in the universe we know of THUS FAR. In the future there may be information processing machines/creatures equal to us, but it hasn't happened yet, or at least we aren't aware of them yet.
You know this is true - we already have mechanisms that can translate like a third-grader and write stories like a fourth-grader.
I don't know about writing stories, but countless third graders speak several languages fluently, and switch between them without effort. They can tell you what was said sometimes without remembering for sure which language it was spoken in originally (my wife still does this after speaking with her Italian parents (and no, she's not a third grader:)). No computer remotely approaches the ability to do this.
This is a very common theme in Sci-Fi. Man creates robots. Robots develop self awareness, introspection, and thought. Robots (for some reason) lack "emotion" and "sensation". Robot seeks to become more human.
You're glossing over very deep questions. Does "self awareness, introspection, and thought" spring up automatically with a certain level of complexity? Does it have to be "programmed in"? How can you tell for sure which programs/robots have these qualities and which don't? The Turing Test doesn't work very well, as programs obviously NOT having these qualities have come very close to passing for a human already. These are profound questions that men have debated for centuries, but you speak as if the answers are trivial and self evident.
I adhere in some ways to the Behaviorist notion that what matters about intelligence is a) what goes into the machine and b) what comes out. There is nothing else.
Uh, right. So I guess all of those neurologists and cognitive scientists should just throw out all of their work and give up. Skinner was right. There's just no point in studying what goes on in the human brain.
"Whether or not we should do this" is inherently a normative question that implies values, standards, dare I say... "morals."... Fine. Then don't consult a religious person for a religious perspective, because the answer you will receive is antithetical to the pursuit of science.
I find quite the opposite to be true. Scientists don't deal at all with normative values (at least in their capacity as scientists). It is religious leaders and ethicists who spend a great deal of time studying and thinking about these questions. Therefore, they should be better equiped than scientists to answer such questions.
Bully for Arnold if he's found some faith in his life. Really. But he didn't need to share.
I don't understand. What's wrong with showing the positive, uplifting side of faith in a movie? You don't seem to have a problem with a movie that purportedly criticizes faith (Dogma).
I think someone should watch Miracle on 34th St. this holiday season, and stop being such a Scrooge.
There are huge changes in store for Microsoft's beleaguered Windows CE operating system, starting with its name.
As a long suffering Macinstosh user, I remember when the company run by Gil Amelio was officially christened "Beleaguered Apple Computer Corp." by the press. I find it quite a turn around that a M$ product has now taken on that moniker, while Steve Jobs' company now goes by "Resurgent Apple Computer."
-jimbo
ps I think I've seen the beleagured tag attached to Compaq somewhere as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple could probably wrap the runtime services it's built into WebObjects and have one the best freaking Java server platforms on the market.
That's exactly what Apple plans to do.
-jimbo
Is there an opportunity for a company to sell Mozilla support and offer an easy to use, easy to install version of Mozilla that doesn't suck like everyone is saying Netscape PR2 does? Why doesn't someone grab the source, start a new company and run with it?
-jimbo
Do I get equal time on the pulpit at a xitian church to teach evolution?
No one is compelled to attend a xtian church or other religious institution. Attendance at public schools is mandatory for children unless their parents can afford to place them in a private school.
-jimbo
An experiment to start in this direction would be to have people use a system and tell them it has a natural language interface and see what they do. You could have a person monitoring their input remotely, then responding to their actions. It would appear as if the system was responding to their natural language commands.
The reason for doing this would be to see how people act with what they think is an intelligent machine. Once you know that, you design the interface to match those expectations.
-jimbo
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40 per cent of men worked more than 40 hours a week in l998, an increase of 5 percentage points in the last two decades. As for women, 22 per cent worked more than 40 hours aweek, compared with just 14 per cent in 1979.
So, is it possible that salary disparities between men and women are due to the fact that men work more hours?
-jimbo
Don't answer anything. Stonewall. Deny knowledge of everything. It sure worked for Bill Gates in the antitrust case.
-jimbo
I guess I'm being skeptical here, but I won't buy into this whole Crusoe/Transmeta idea until I can sit at my breakfast table reading /. using wireless LAN.
You can do this today with an iBook or Powerbook and Apple's AirPort technology.
-jimbo
I just love the look of this. Miyazaki really captures the look of rural Japan, and his attention to detail and ability to portray everyday things very accurately, accentuates the magic and wonder and cuteness of Totoro and friends. Very simple, but this is its strength.
-jimbo
From the ZDNet article:
SOI can be used in one of two ways. It can be used to create low-power chips. In this case, by keeping clock speed the same, SOI would reduce the power consumption of a chip by two to three times.
Apple already claims >5 hour battery life for Powerbooks. With a 2 to 3 times power consumption decrease for the processor, how much more battery life can they get?
-jimbo
I distinctly remember the iMac/G3 starting at ~300Mhz 2 years ago.
The first iMac was 233Mhz.
-jimbo
I'd like to be able to speak into a cell phone "What's the weather like in New York?" and get a response from my favorite weather site. Or "Read me today's Slashdot headlines." The agent could also give you a call to report certain events. "I found a Linux server on dell.com for $699. Interested?" it might say. It could even call you on special occasions: "Call your Mom. It's her birthday."
Yes, this is very ambitious, but maybe some small part of this is feasible for your project?
-jimbo
So my question is this: My co-worker is a failed linux hack (could not understand where he was to type 'man tar' in order to get the manpage), has never written a line of code anywhere in his life, has no concept of logic, etc ..etc.. etc. but thinks that he is (and is currently gettting seed money for a project) going to be able to write a massive application that runs against a mySQL database using web objects with no experience whatsoever... Or no effort.
Is web object so sweet that it can work this magic? If so have I wasted my time learning PHP, Perl, C, etc.. (just kidding)
I feel for your friend's backers. His project is doomed. He might be able to whip out a prototype with the Wizard tools, but the "magic" of WebObjects is being able to write business logic in Java or Objective-C while WebObjects takes care of managing the database and lets you build a GUI without any extra code. If your friend can't code business logic, he's headed for a brick wall real fast.
-jimbo
Did I miss anything?
-jimbo
Can anyone tell me?
Thanks,
-jimbo
I understand why *WE*, the end users, would benefit from multiple hardware sources, but how would it benefit Apple? In essence, Apple would split itself into an OS company and commodity hardware vendor (by putting themselves on a level playing field as the cloners, otherwise there's no benefit to the consumer). Basically, they would be following the business model of Be on the OS side, which doesn't seem to have gotten Be very far. They would lose the advantage they have over PC cloners, which is control of both hardware and OS.
I can see three models for profitable OS development.
Of these, 3 is the only viable one for Apple.
-jimbo
A lot of comments on newspaper content, but not much on how newspaper distribution can change. How about a PC program that downloads and prints out newspaper content every morning at a pre-set time? The user could select what content they wanted and grab it off the printer for their morning coffee/breakfast/commute, and the paper could target adds to the reader's demographics. An alternative would be to automatically load it into a Palm or other electronic reader. Also, the information could be up to date at the time it's printed out. The paper someone prints out at 8am could be more up to date than the paper someone else printed out at 5am (traffic info? weather updates? school closings?). And of course, readers could log into the website later in the day to get more in depth info.
Of course, someone would have to figure out how to reformat the newspaper so that it flows well on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, or on a Palm screen. But I think this could work.
Any other suggestions?
-jimbo
Of course, the biggest problem with WebObjects is the cost. Not too many folks can afford the $10,000 entrance fee to get started.
You can get Mac OS X Server for $499, including a limited version of WebObjects, at the Apple Store. Of course, you need to shell about for a recent Mac if you don't already have one, but it's still cheaper than $10,000.
-jimbo
Yahoo was started by a couple of stereotypical geeks. So was Hewlett Packard, Intel, Apple, Sun and (lets face it) Microsoft. (That is if you give a little leeway to the definition of 'geek'.) But it always seems to be the Marketroids who win in the end...
I don't get it. You list companies that are obvious examples of how geeks have gained immense influence and bank accounts, but then say the marketdroids always win? Gates is definitely a geek, just one who happens to have more skills in business strategy than hacking. And Paul Allen isn't hurting either. Yahoo is an excellent example of geeks who made it big. Woz could have had (and probably still could have) lots of money and power, but decided to pursue other things. Jim Clark is another geek who proved he could kick any marketdroid's butt at their own game. Even Jeff Bezos seems pretty geeky from the write-ups I have read about him (like Gates, just happened to be better at business than physics and computer science, both of which he tried in college).
Even Time magazine named perhaps the greatest geek of them all, Albert Einstein, man of the century. One of the reasons they gave for choosing him was that science and technology had greater influence on this century than politics, warfare, art or religion.
Put it this way. 100 years from now, is it more likely that someone will remember some businessman from this century, or Albert Einstein?
-jimbo
If CBS or NBC want to doctor up otherwise footage, they should be forced to include a caption saying "portions of this telecast are being digitally altered" and DISallowed from adding a caption such as "Live" or anything else deceiving the viewer into believing what he is seeing is actually what's there.
-jimbo
What evidence do you have that AOL is behind Mozilla?
-jimbo
You can find them here.
Apple got the GUI right the first time out, and nobody's really made any earth shattering improvements to it since. Why not just steal their work, as great artists are known to do? There can still be a lot of flexibility in how widgets look, but programs should work in more or less the same way from the user's standpoint. Users should be able to expect a new program to work like other programs they already know. This, as much as anything, has been what's kept Apple's rabid customers loyal to the Mac over the past 15 years.
-jimbo
In my mind this is insufferable anthrocentrism. Humans, completely without proof, cling to the idea that they are unique and special in some vague and undefinable way.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we ARE unique and special out of everything in the universe we know of THUS FAR. In the future there may be information processing machines/creatures equal to us, but it hasn't happened yet, or at least we aren't aware of them yet.
You know this is true - we already have mechanisms that can translate like a third-grader and write stories like a fourth-grader.
I don't know about writing stories, but countless third graders speak several languages fluently, and switch between them without effort. They can tell you what was said sometimes without remembering for sure which language it was spoken in originally (my wife still does this after speaking with her Italian parents (and no, she's not a third grader :)). No computer remotely approaches the ability to do this.
This is a very common theme in Sci-Fi. Man creates robots. Robots develop self awareness, introspection, and thought. Robots (for some reason) lack "emotion" and "sensation". Robot seeks to become more human.
You're glossing over very deep questions. Does "self awareness, introspection, and thought" spring up automatically with a certain level of complexity? Does it have to be "programmed in"? How can you tell for sure which programs/robots have these qualities and which don't? The Turing Test doesn't work very well, as programs obviously NOT having these qualities have come very close to passing for a human already. These are profound questions that men have debated for centuries, but you speak as if the answers are trivial and self evident.
I adhere in some ways to the Behaviorist notion that what matters about intelligence is a) what goes into the machine and b) what comes out. There is nothing else.
Uh, right. So I guess all of those neurologists and cognitive scientists should just throw out all of their work and give up. Skinner was right. There's just no point in studying what goes on in the human brain.
-jimbo
"Whether or not we should do this" is inherently a normative question that implies values, standards, dare I say... "morals." ... Fine. Then don't consult a religious person for a religious perspective, because the answer you will receive is antithetical to the pursuit of science.
I find quite the opposite to be true. Scientists don't deal at all with normative values (at least in their capacity as scientists). It is religious leaders and ethicists who spend a great deal of time studying and thinking about these questions. Therefore, they should be better equiped than scientists to answer such questions.
-jimbo
Bully for Arnold if he's found some faith in his life. Really. But he didn't need to share.
I don't understand. What's wrong with showing the positive, uplifting side of faith in a movie? You don't seem to have a problem with a movie that purportedly criticizes faith (Dogma).
I think someone should watch Miracle on 34th St. this holiday season, and stop being such a Scrooge.
Happy Holidays!
-jimbo
There are huge changes in store for Microsoft's beleaguered Windows CE operating system, starting with its name.
As a long suffering Macinstosh user, I remember when the company run by Gil Amelio was officially christened "Beleaguered Apple Computer Corp." by the press. I find it quite a turn around that a M$ product has now taken on that moniker, while Steve Jobs' company now goes by "Resurgent Apple Computer."
-jimbo
ps I think I've seen the beleagured tag attached to Compaq somewhere as well.