I've usually had near 100% spam kill rates by creating a filter in my mail client that checks whether I'm in the to: or cc: line, and if not, dumping the e-mail. Spammers usually use bcc: (blind carbon copy) to send out their spam (to prevent you from seeing all the other poor schmucks that they spammed).
Of course, this is the way mailing lists work, as well. I usually put filters that shunt mail from mailing lists I'm on into folders, anyhow, so those will run first and pick out the good e-mail.
Of course, if you have real people sending you real e-mail via bcc:, you'll miss it becuase it gets tossed. For me, that's pretty unusual, so it's not an issue.
Most of your arguments (specifically, those dealing with viewing information online) apply to HTML as well. And, if the reader does wish to print, HTML is a miserable format to use.
It's doubtful that someone would want to print out an entire novel themselves, but with shorter format works (short stories, poems, etc.) PDF makes sense. I feel that the drawbacks of PDF vs. HTML for online viewing aren't as great.
The best overall solution is to provide a number of formats. PDF, HTML, some of the e-book formats, such as doc readers for the Pilot and WinCE machines. Let the user choose the format. If you use a good authoring system (FrameMaker) for your content, converting it into each of these formats is a simple matter.
And, of course, plain old text shouldn't be overlooked. It can be fed into a speech synthesizer, and the end-user can listen to it. Heck, you could capture the output and encode it into an MP3... instant audio book. Though, I suspect several hours of listening to a speech synthesized voice will do for the ears what reading online for hours on end does for the eyes...
How about this... say Apple is making a play for the server market (go ahead, say it!). Let's suppose an IS administrator is sold on the Apple OS X server platform but... he has a server room full of x86 legacy hardware. Ripping out all of those machines and replacing them with new Mac hardware, while great for Apple, would put the cost of moving over to the Mac platform out of reach.
Along comes Darwin, which for many server-level tasks looks like OS X. The Apple folks can sell the IS folks on upgrading their exisitng x86 hardware to Darwin, making it interoperate with the new OS X servers, and down the line the customer will very likely replace the x86 hardware with more capable and more compatible Macs. </wildassguess>
At the end of the cold war, with all these nukes lying around, my freinds and I figured a good way to re-use them would be to place a bunch on the moon, and set them off in such a way as to carve a huge smiley face on it.
Just the US's way of saying "hey! Have a Nice Night!"
Ah... and then there's the wackos on alt.chrome.the.moon... I haven't read that group in a while.
Why not let the musicians decide how they'll make a living? Granted, a large number of them do take to the road, choose to be away from their families for weeks or months at a time. But to decide that those who choose not to should not make money by making music I thing is pretty presumtive.
I suspect this will also lead to less, not greater diversity in music. For one thing, the only people who will make money in the music biz are those acts that *can* travel. A lone composer in his basement whipping up symphonies on his bank of synthesizers is out of luck under your plan. "Sorry mate, not paying for your music, since you can't manage to play 5 keyboards at once. But hey, thanks for the tunes."
Also consider that the limited number of venues will act as a force to restict who will be able to make money. This is a limiting factor now to bands that are starting out, but if *every* band out there needs to play live gigs to make their money, things will just get that much more crowded.
Also, the focus on live performance will likely change music itself. Why spend all of the money to cut a studio album when you'll just be giving it away? Bands will just stick with what they can do in concert. If you told the Beatles they couldn't make money off of studio albums, would they have made Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band?
Perhaps some will say that this is a good thing. Well, that's your musical taste. Why enforce your taste on others?
You know, most geeks would throw a hissy fit if management dictated they had to work 9-5, had to wear ties, and the whole works. Why, then, this attitude regarding how others make their money?
If I personally put these into MP3 format and them pipe them through out my house, I'm I in violation of the copyright? What if I place them on a secured server so I can listen to them from my office? If these are still legal how does having mp3.com perform these same services become illegal.
I think the primary point is that in the case of using MP3's on your private network, it's you who are ripping, storing, and transmitting the music. You have a license to listen to that music. Just checking the CD's I have on my desk, the one outstanding statement is "unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws."
Under fair use, you're allowed to make copies for archival and other (what, exactly escapes me at the moment) "fair use." I think, in general, it's agreed that making copies for your self is "fair use." Giving those copies away isn't fair use.
The key difference between you and MP3 is that you're using your copies of the music for your own use. MP3.com is using their copies to give others access. The judge has decided that this does not fall under the provisions of "fair use" for a copyrighted work.
So, no, you're not in violation. You would be in violation if you made your MP3 server available to your freind, even if you limit his/her access to files that you know he/she owns.
OK, "Atticka" why aren't you using your real name? Got something to hide? And is your real, main e-mail address really at hotmail? Hmmm? Why don't we see your full name, address, and phone number on each post? Ashamed of something?
Of course not. Privacy isn't only about hiding criminal misdeeds or things you're ashamed of. It's about not having everyone knowing things they have no reason to know.
Sure, it's hard to argue that people who seek kiddie porn are nothing but scum. But, let's say that a site was out there logging attempted access to more "gray areas." Files like:
taking_drugs.doc
bomb_making_101.doc
0wning_luzer_sites_howto.txt
All of them are pretty shady, but unlike kiddie porn, they are all protected free speech. By tracking this, people could determine political, religious, and other "innocuous" affiliations. Information, generally, that they wouldn't normally have. Do you think potential employers should know if you're straight or gay? Have certain religious affiliations? Do you think your life insurance company has a right to know that you're interested in sky-diving, or perhaps you like rich french food with plenty of artery clogging cholesterol? You don't need to be ashamed of information for you to want it not made public. The second you have to start thinking about what they would think about the information you are looking for, you've already gone past the point of losing your rights.
The problem here is that people and institutions feel secure in jumping to conclusions based on vanishly small amounts of evidence. Download a file on bomb making, and you must be a terrorist. Download a file on bungee jumping, and you must be a bad insurance risk. Do we really want a world where you have to staop and think, now and again, while you're excercising your first amendment rights?
Well, you got to give Microsoft credit. Their ability to reveal their additions to a perfectly good public standard in such a way as to remain propretary is certainly innovative.
So, I read the book on the HHGTTG radio scripts, which went into the background of the radio series... but one thing I never got was... why science fiction? Were you a science fiction fan? A fan of technology?
The way this question came about was that I had read recently that you were involved in the creation of some sort of "real world" HHGTTG (some e-bookish thing, as I recall). I thought it was interesting that a real device has sprung out of what seemed to be a plot device all those years ago...
why aren't browsers not only keeping up, but staying ahead of the curve?
Because the people they are selling web browsers to (well, selling in a metaphorical sense) are people who view web pages, not those who make them.
Sure, you can argue that being able to display all of the CSS standards would result in a really kick-ass browser that joe-user would flock to since it renders tons of pages really well. But, by and large, struggling to adhere to every minor spec in CSS is a diminishing return proposition. If you hit the high points, you can claim CSS (or CSS1) compatibility. Some of the CSS stuff will work, and some people's pages will look neat. Makes the marketing guys happy. Makes users think you're cool. And you don't have to pay all those programmers to do a thorough job.
Let's face it, there are many other pressures on the browsers maker. If you were project manager for IE or Netscape, and you could develop either better support of CSS features, which may marginally make the rendering of pages better, or a killer end-user feature that will make joe-user go "good golly! lookee here!", which will you go for? And, of course, and spare resources you'd probably put into trying to make the thing crash a bit less often, or making it a bit less of a godawful bloated stinking whale of an application.
I suspect, by this point, that a lot of resources are spent just trying to cope with how bloated these apps are.
As for those that are up-and-coming (perhaps you'd throw Mozilla into this category) there is a struggle to get all of the "must haves" into their browser. Think of it. For a complete browser these days, you have to interpret two markup languages (HTML and XML), one scripting language, tie into Java, have a plugin architecture, support a bunch of graphics formats, tie into e-mail programs (or supply your own), and support multiple platforms. And you have to throw that program up against all of the heinous web pages out there that were poorly written, or perhaps just written in a way to try to cope with both IE and Netscape. That's a tall order... and will take a long time to develop. The pressure to cut corners and get the thing out the door is high (especially if you're a for-pay development concern). I'll be impressed if Konqueror can deliver on all of that within a reasonable time.
The images shown are all my own renderings of spacecraft which were planned but never flew operationally, some cancelled before they even left the drawing board. While the pictures are fictional interpretations (except Spiral), the text describing each project is factual unless otherwise indicated.
If the person who makes the images himself is saying they are fictional interpretations then, really, how can you argue as to authenticity? What I said was what he said on the web site. If I'm wrong, he's wrong.
If you read the fine print on this site, you'll see that all of these designs (save one) are made up by the site's author. Aside from the text describing the projects, the author states that these are total fabrications. While I suspect he's done his homework on making the designs look authentic, and they certainly look plausible, I have real doubts any "rogue nation" is going to get anything out of this site that they couldn't get out of "Avaiation Week."
I work in a company where we are using our own product to create documentation. I (and the rest of the documentation team) would love to put together a printed manual, since our product can;t yet produce high-quality printed output. The engineering managers, to a person, have given this idea the thimbs down. "Our users won't need a printed manual!"
One of these managers later demanded a printed copy of our documentation to hand to a new employee... Why? "Oh, well, it's hard to read on screen." They wouldn't give us the resources to do a print-freindly version, nor the engineering resources to make the product produce better printed output, and on top of all that, they expect us to waste time printing out the document so it's handy for new engineers.
And people wonder why documentation is so crummy...
I suspect not... since they have no way of knowing that the call to a land line would end up redirected to a cell phone.
I suspect, to ensure they don't try to call you on your cell phone, that telemarketer's auto dialers are aware of the blocks of phone numbers used by cell phone companies. That's how they obey this restriction.
They have no way of knowing that you've forwarded your calls, so I suspect that, under the law, you can't hold them responsible for the call. Of course, if you tell them that this is your cell phone, and say that your home phone is always forwarded...
Hopefully, they won't actually start calling (oops, direct marketing) you on your cel phone. I rarely answer my phone at home for this very reason.
Actually, in the US, this is illegal. Anyone attempting to solicite you via your cell phone is liable for $500/per incident. See The restrictions telephone solicitation act over at the great Junkbusters site. Very interesting stuff.
I can't see why the e-mail spam of cell phone users should be treated any different than the actual phone call solicitation. Hopefully, Congress will wake up and realize that we need restictions on what a company can do to try to sell it's crap to you.
Depends, I think. My cell phone give me 10 free per month, then $0.10 thereafter. Then again, I've got the lowest service offering from my cell carrier. The high-cost ones throw in more e-mails (as well as more airtime, etc. which is what you really care about).
I agree with others. Hopefully, this is crossing the line enough that the morons in Washington (and other country's capitals where spam is an issue) will wake up and fix the issue.
While I'm sure the Corel angle is why this story is on./, I'd just like to say it's sad to see MetaC's management take the company in a "new direction" which is risky, at best, and likely the first move into a tailspin that'll end in the company tanking.
I've used bunches of their software, dating to before they were MetaStream. They used to be two separate companies... Fractal Design (who made Painter) and er... well, I forget the name of Kai's old company... I also used (and still use) Ray Dream, which Fractal Design had bought shortly before the Kai/Fractal merger.
I've got poser, Kai power tools, Ray Dream, and Bryce... all really cool tools. I hope Corel is good to them, but from what I've seen in the industry, once a product starts wandering from one company to another, it stops being innovative and fresh, and just ends up cranking out fairly minor releases while it falls beind the times.
Of course, a few of the tools I mentioned are not a part of this deal... who knows where (if anyplace) they will end up.
It just leaves you wondering what flavor of crack the MetaCreations management is smoking. They have apparently laid off a bunch of programmers, dumped these poducts on the floor, all in the hope that everyone is going to want fancy 3D images on their e-commerce site, rather than a good ol' picture. Why dump viable products to focus on this? Why not develop both together, or maybe develop a spin-off company to develop the MetaStream format they are going on about?
I heard people on a mailing list for their products rumble when Kai left the company a while ago... perhaps that was the first sign of trouble.
Oh well. I picked upo my Bryce 4.0 upgrade last week from MetaC, so I'm set. No telling if I'd get the chance to do it in the future. And hey, maybe I will get a chance to see Bryce on Linux. At the very least, it would be nice if they released the port of Bryce to Be that they had working. That's why I had put off upgrading for so long.
How is this Linux related in the least? None of MetaCreations products run under Linux (now, at least). It seems to me that Corel is doing this to expand their core business: graphics. Having been one of the big players in the past with graphics tools, it's only natural for them to snatch up this software, now that MetaCreations has pulled it's real bonehaded move.
that the whole GUI glop that surrounds the StarOffice apps is the easy way out to cross-platform compatibility, documentation, and support.
If you did it the other way, where the apps adhered to the UI of the base system, you'd go nutt having to map all of the functionailty to different gestures on the native platforms. You couldn't really seel StarOffice as an app that makes the underlying system moot. You Windows-centric person who sat down at a Mac to use StarOffice would still have a learning curve to figure out how to do and find common things. Ditto for support. You'd need to have support personnel experienced in every single platform (or break the team down into different, specific platform support teams).
As far as development is concerned, I'm sure it's easier to work on one unified GUI. Ditto for QA. You'd need to change your test plan for every platform otherwise. Ditto for documentation. There's only one GUI you have to guide the user around.
Is it the best solution from the viewpoint of the user, who is already familiar with the platform of his or her choice? Nope. But recall who these apps really get sold to. CIOs, the support and systems folks, etc. That's basically who this was designed for. It's probably a good argument against commercial apps of this sort.
Totally taking over the user experience can be a good thing... take some of the Metacreations tools, such as Bryce and Poser. They basically have their own interface, and take over your entire screen. You either hate them with a passion or love them. In general, I think, they were very successful with the target audience of graphic designers, though.
In this case, StarOffice just went for the lowest-common-denominator: the Microsoft Office interface. Probably a safe bet from a corporate viewpoint. People already using Microsoft apps on Windows (the majority of the potential market for the app, that is, when it was being sold) would be able to adapt easily. And it's already been proven that at the very least, people can muddle along with it. A radical departure would probably not been accepted by the market.
It would be interesting to see what StarOffice would have been, had it not been intended to be sold to a corporate market...
20 years or so ago when my freinds and I were reading it, we though David Bowie might make a good Elric. 'Course, now he's a geezer, so... I could rattle off a dozen fantasy/sci-fi books that I'd like to see made into movies (OK, OK, Cook's Black Company series, Zelazny's... err... just about anything) which might be easier with computer-generated effects. But, let's face it, *all* movies are going to become easier and more realistic (or perhaps the word authentic is more fitting). I'm reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels now (which deal with the British Navy, around the era of Napleon. Think Star Trek: TOS, but on a sailing ship). I think the state of the art still isn't quite there yet (oceans are a still a real bitch to get right, I hear) but eventually you could make these novels into really kick-butt movies, without resorting to the old "models in a bathtub" way of filming battles which made all of the old swashbucklers look sorta cheesy. I read about a new Pearl Harbor movie (hmm.... targent... has anyone registered PerlHarbor as a forum for discussing Perl programming?:) in which a lot of the battle will probably be done on computers. The hired a few vintage airplanes, but to really fill the skies with zeros and the sea with wrecked battleships, it's going to have to be CG. Eventually, you figure that more and more of all types of productions will be going virtual. Many might bemoan this, but it will mean that a once huge, blockbuster film can be made for less... meaning more creative risk-taking, meaning lesser know books and totally new concepts coming to the screen. Personally, I can't wait for this sort of stuff to trickle down into the mere mortals realm. I dabble in computer graphics. I suppose, with the software and hardware at my disposal, I could probably remake the CG portions of TRON (well... of course, there's that pesky talent portion of the equation I'm lacking...) today. That was state of the art 20 years ago in movie making... I wonder what I'll be able to whip up on my desktop 20 years from now... stage my own personal battles with 60,000 orcs? Whee!
One this that worries me about TiVo is its reliance on dialing in to find out TV schedules. What if, in the fickle consumer eletronics market, the TiVo tanks and shuts down its lines? Do these essentially become $700 doorstops?
True, I guess that the TiVo is open source, so people could hack it somehow to use another way to access the program information. But I wouldn't bet of the feasability of this.
Come to think of it, has anyone looked into doing this even if TiVo doesn't tank?
Slashdot Mirror
I've usually had near 100% spam kill rates by creating a filter in my mail client that checks whether I'm in the to: or cc: line, and if not, dumping the e-mail. Spammers usually use bcc: (blind carbon copy) to send out their spam (to prevent you from seeing all the other poor schmucks that they spammed).
Of course, this is the way mailing lists work, as well. I usually put filters that shunt mail from mailing lists I'm on into folders, anyhow, so those will run first and pick out the good e-mail.
Of course, if you have real people sending you real e-mail via bcc:, you'll miss it becuase it gets tossed. For me, that's pretty unusual, so it's not an issue.
Most of your arguments (specifically, those dealing with viewing information online) apply to HTML as well. And, if the reader does wish to print, HTML is a miserable format to use.
It's doubtful that someone would want to print out an entire novel themselves, but with shorter format works (short stories, poems, etc.) PDF makes sense. I feel that the drawbacks of PDF vs. HTML for online viewing aren't as great.
The best overall solution is to provide a number of formats. PDF, HTML, some of the e-book formats, such as doc readers for the Pilot and WinCE machines. Let the user choose the format. If you use a good authoring system (FrameMaker) for your content, converting it into each of these formats is a simple matter.
And, of course, plain old text shouldn't be overlooked. It can be fed into a speech synthesizer, and the end-user can listen to it. Heck, you could capture the output and encode it into an MP3... instant audio book. Though, I suspect several hours of listening to a speech synthesized voice will do for the ears what reading online for hours on end does for the eyes...
Lunch was aten by Richard
The guards fell victim to Worf"
Y'know... for a bunch of active folks, it's sort of surprising that Kling... er... tlhIngan Hol is so mired in the passive voice.
Why yes, I'm a writer... how could you tell?
How about this... say Apple is making a play for the server market (go ahead, say it!). Let's suppose an IS administrator is sold on the Apple OS X server platform but... he has a server room full of x86 legacy hardware. Ripping out all of those machines and replacing them with new Mac hardware, while great for Apple, would put the cost of moving over to the Mac platform out of reach.
Along comes Darwin, which for many server-level tasks looks like OS X. The Apple folks can sell the IS folks on upgrading their exisitng x86 hardware to Darwin, making it interoperate with the new OS X servers, and down the line the customer will very likely replace the x86 hardware with more capable and more compatible Macs.
</wildassguess>
At the end of the cold war, with all these nukes lying around, my freinds and I figured a good way to re-use them would be to place a bunch on the moon, and set them off in such a way as to carve a huge smiley face on it.
Just the US's way of saying "hey! Have a Nice Night!"
Ah... and then there's the wackos on alt.chrome.the.moon... I haven't read that group in a while.
For those looking for a download place that's not (yet) ./'ed:
Try Palmgear
Why not let the musicians decide how they'll make a living? Granted, a large number of them do take to the road, choose to be away from their families for weeks or months at a time. But to decide that those who choose not to should not make money by making music I thing is pretty presumtive.
I suspect this will also lead to less, not greater diversity in music. For one thing, the only people who will make money in the music biz are those acts that *can* travel. A lone composer in his basement whipping up symphonies on his bank of synthesizers is out of luck under your plan. "Sorry mate, not paying for your music, since you can't manage to play 5 keyboards at once. But hey, thanks for the tunes."
Also consider that the limited number of venues will act as a force to restict who will be able to make money. This is a limiting factor now to bands that are starting out, but if *every* band out there needs to play live gigs to make their money, things will just get that much more crowded.
Also, the focus on live performance will likely change music itself. Why spend all of the money to cut a studio album when you'll just be giving it away? Bands will just stick with what they can do in concert. If you told the Beatles they couldn't make money off of studio albums, would they have made Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band?
Perhaps some will say that this is a good thing. Well, that's your musical taste. Why enforce your taste on others?
You know, most geeks would throw a hissy fit if management dictated they had to work 9-5, had to wear ties, and the whole works. Why, then, this attitude regarding how others make their money?
If I personally put these into MP3 format and them pipe them through out my house, I'm I in violation of the copyright? What if I place them on a secured server so I can listen to them from my office? If these are still legal how does having mp3.com perform these same services become illegal.
I think the primary point is that in the case of using MP3's on your private network, it's you who are ripping, storing, and transmitting the music. You have a license to listen to that music. Just checking the CD's I have on my desk, the one outstanding statement is "unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws."
Under fair use, you're allowed to make copies for archival and other (what, exactly escapes me at the moment) "fair use." I think, in general, it's agreed that making copies for your self is "fair use." Giving those copies away isn't fair use.
The key difference between you and MP3 is that you're using your copies of the music for your own use. MP3.com is using their copies to give others access. The judge has decided that this does not fall under the provisions of "fair use" for a copyrighted work.
So, no, you're not in violation. You would be in violation if you made your MP3 server available to your freind, even if you limit his/her access to files that you know he/she owns.
OK, "Atticka" why aren't you using your real name? Got something to hide? And is your real, main e-mail address really at hotmail? Hmmm? Why don't we see your full name, address, and phone number on each post? Ashamed of something?
Of course not. Privacy isn't only about hiding criminal misdeeds or things you're ashamed of. It's about not having everyone knowing things they have no reason to know.
Sure, it's hard to argue that people who seek kiddie porn are nothing but scum. But, let's say that a site was out there logging attempted access to more "gray areas." Files like:
All of them are pretty shady, but unlike kiddie porn, they are all protected free speech. By tracking this, people could determine political, religious, and other "innocuous" affiliations. Information, generally, that they wouldn't normally have. Do you think potential employers should know if you're straight or gay? Have certain religious affiliations? Do you think your life insurance company has a right to know that you're interested in sky-diving, or perhaps you like rich french food with plenty of artery clogging cholesterol? You don't need to be ashamed of information for you to want it not made public. The second you have to start thinking about what they would think about the information you are looking for, you've already gone past the point of losing your rights.
The problem here is that people and institutions feel secure in jumping to conclusions based on vanishly small amounts of evidence. Download a file on bomb making, and you must be a terrorist. Download a file on bungee jumping, and you must be a bad insurance risk. Do we really want a world where you have to staop and think, now and again, while you're excercising your first amendment rights?
Well, you got to give Microsoft credit. Their ability to reveal their additions to a perfectly good public standard in such a way as to remain propretary is certainly innovative.
So, I read the book on the HHGTTG radio scripts, which went into the background of the radio series... but one thing I never got was... why science fiction? Were you a science fiction fan? A fan of technology?
The way this question came about was that I had read recently that you were involved in the creation of some sort of "real world" HHGTTG (some e-bookish thing, as I recall). I thought it was interesting that a real device has sprung out of what seemed to be a plot device all those years ago...
why aren't browsers not only keeping up, but staying ahead of the curve?
Because the people they are selling web browsers to (well, selling in a metaphorical sense) are people who view web pages, not those who make them.
Sure, you can argue that being able to display all of the CSS standards would result in a really kick-ass browser that joe-user would flock to since it renders tons of pages really well. But, by and large, struggling to adhere to every minor spec in CSS is a diminishing return proposition. If you hit the high points, you can claim CSS (or CSS1) compatibility. Some of the CSS stuff will work, and some people's pages will look neat. Makes the marketing guys happy. Makes users think you're cool. And you don't have to pay all those programmers to do a thorough job.
Let's face it, there are many other pressures on the browsers maker. If you were project manager for IE or Netscape, and you could develop either better support of CSS features, which may marginally make the rendering of pages better, or a killer end-user feature that will make joe-user go "good golly! lookee here!", which will you go for? And, of course, and spare resources you'd probably put into trying to make the thing crash a bit less often, or making it a bit less of a godawful bloated stinking whale of an application.
I suspect, by this point, that a lot of resources are spent just trying to cope with how bloated these apps are.
As for those that are up-and-coming (perhaps you'd throw Mozilla into this category) there is a struggle to get all of the "must haves" into their browser. Think of it. For a complete browser these days, you have to interpret two markup languages (HTML and XML), one scripting language, tie into Java, have a plugin architecture, support a bunch of graphics formats, tie into e-mail programs (or supply your own), and support multiple platforms. And you have to throw that program up against all of the heinous web pages out there that were poorly written, or perhaps just written in a way to try to cope with both IE and Netscape. That's a tall order... and will take a long time to develop. The pressure to cut corners and get the thing out the door is high (especially if you're a for-pay development concern). I'll be impressed if Konqueror can deliver on all of that within a reasonable time.
Taken directly from the deepcold website:
If the person who makes the images himself is saying they are fictional interpretations then, really, how can you argue as to authenticity? What I said was what he said on the web site. If I'm wrong, he's wrong.
If you read what I posted, I said:
Aside from the text describing the projects, the author states that these are total fabrications.
Meaning, that the text descriptions weren't fabrications.
If you read the fine print on this site, you'll see that all of these designs (save one) are made up by the site's author. Aside from the text describing the projects, the author states that these are total fabrications. While I suspect he's done his homework on making the designs look authentic, and they certainly look plausible, I have real doubts any "rogue nation" is going to get anything out of this site that they couldn't get out of "Avaiation Week."
I work in a company where we are using our own product to create documentation. I (and the rest of the documentation team) would love to put together a printed manual, since our product can;t yet produce high-quality printed output. The engineering managers, to a person, have given this idea the thimbs down. "Our users won't need a printed manual!"
One of these managers later demanded a printed copy of our documentation to hand to a new employee... Why? "Oh, well, it's hard to read on screen." They wouldn't give us the resources to do a print-freindly version, nor the engineering resources to make the product produce better printed output, and on top of all that, they expect us to waste time printing out the document so it's handy for new engineers.
And people wonder why documentation is so crummy...
They Just Don't Get It.
Sounds nifty, although I'd be hard pressed to fit everything I'd want on a laptop onto that thing.... maybe if it had 64 megs of flash...
I suspect not... since they have no way of knowing that the call to a land line would end up redirected to a cell phone.
I suspect, to ensure they don't try to call you on your cell phone, that telemarketer's auto dialers are aware of the blocks of phone numbers used by cell phone companies. That's how they obey this restriction.
They have no way of knowing that you've forwarded your calls, so I suspect that, under the law, you can't hold them responsible for the call. Of course, if you tell them that this is your cell phone, and say that your home phone is always forwarded...
Hopefully, they won't actually start calling (oops, direct marketing) you on your cel phone. I rarely answer my phone at home for this very reason.
Actually, in the US, this is illegal. Anyone attempting to solicite you via your cell phone is liable for $500/per incident. See The restrictions telephone solicitation act over at the great Junkbusters site. Very interesting stuff.
I can't see why the e-mail spam of cell phone users should be treated any different than the actual phone call solicitation. Hopefully, Congress will wake up and realize that we need restictions on what a company can do to try to sell it's crap to you.
Depends, I think. My cell phone give me 10 free per month, then $0.10 thereafter. Then again, I've got the lowest service offering from my cell carrier. The high-cost ones throw in more e-mails (as well as more airtime, etc. which is what you really care about).
I agree with others. Hopefully, this is crossing the line enough that the morons in Washington (and other country's capitals where spam is an issue) will wake up and fix the issue.
While I'm sure the Corel angle is why this story is on ./, I'd just like to say it's sad to see MetaC's management take the company in a "new direction" which is risky, at best, and likely the first move into a tailspin that'll end in the company tanking.
I've used bunches of their software, dating to before they were MetaStream. They used to be two separate companies... Fractal Design (who made Painter) and er... well, I forget the name of Kai's old company... I also used (and still use) Ray Dream, which Fractal Design had bought shortly before the Kai/Fractal merger.
I've got poser, Kai power tools, Ray Dream, and Bryce... all really cool tools. I hope Corel is good to them, but from what I've seen in the industry, once a product starts wandering from one company to another, it stops being innovative and fresh, and just ends up cranking out fairly minor releases while it falls beind the times.
Of course, a few of the tools I mentioned are not a part of this deal... who knows where (if anyplace) they will end up.
It just leaves you wondering what flavor of crack the MetaCreations management is smoking. They have apparently laid off a bunch of programmers, dumped these poducts on the floor, all in the hope that everyone is going to want fancy 3D images on their e-commerce site, rather than a good ol' picture.
Why dump viable products to focus on this? Why not develop both together, or maybe develop a spin-off company to develop the MetaStream format they are going on about?
I heard people on a mailing list for their products rumble when Kai left the company a while ago... perhaps that was the first sign of trouble.
Oh well. I picked upo my Bryce 4.0 upgrade last week from MetaC, so I'm set. No telling if I'd get the chance to do it in the future. And hey, maybe I will get a chance to see Bryce on Linux. At the very least, it would be nice if they released the port of Bryce to Be that they had working. That's why I had put off upgrading for so long.
How is this Linux related in the least? None of MetaCreations products run under Linux (now, at least). It seems to me that Corel is doing this to expand their core business: graphics. Having been one of the big players in the past with graphics tools, it's only natural for them to snatch up this software, now that MetaCreations has pulled it's real bonehaded move.
that the whole GUI glop that surrounds the StarOffice apps is the easy way out to cross-platform compatibility, documentation, and support.
If you did it the other way, where the apps adhered to the UI of the base system, you'd go nutt having to map all of the functionailty to different gestures on the native platforms. You couldn't really seel StarOffice as an app that makes the underlying system moot. You Windows-centric person who sat down at a Mac to use StarOffice would still have a learning curve to figure out how to do and find common things.
Ditto for support. You'd need to have support personnel experienced in every single platform (or break the team down into different, specific platform support teams).
As far as development is concerned, I'm sure it's easier to work on one unified GUI. Ditto for QA. You'd need to change your test plan for every platform otherwise. Ditto for documentation. There's only one GUI you have to guide the user around.
Is it the best solution from the viewpoint of the user, who is already familiar with the platform of his or her choice? Nope. But recall who these apps really get sold to. CIOs, the support and systems folks, etc. That's basically who this was designed for. It's probably a good argument against commercial apps of this sort.
Totally taking over the user experience can be a good thing... take some of the Metacreations tools, such as Bryce and Poser. They basically have their own interface, and take over your entire screen. You either hate them with a passion or love them. In general, I think, they were very successful with the target audience of graphic designers, though.
In this case, StarOffice just went for the lowest-common-denominator: the Microsoft Office interface. Probably a safe bet from a corporate viewpoint. People already using Microsoft apps on Windows (the majority of the potential market for the app, that is, when it was being sold) would be able to adapt easily. And it's already been proven that at the very least, people can muddle along with it. A radical departure would probably not been accepted by the market.
It would be interesting to see what StarOffice would have been, had it not been intended to be sold to a corporate market...
20 years or so ago when my freinds and I were reading it, we though David Bowie might make a good Elric. 'Course, now he's a geezer, so... I could rattle off a dozen fantasy/sci-fi books that I'd like to see made into movies (OK, OK, Cook's Black Company series, Zelazny's... err... just about anything) which might be easier with computer-generated effects. But, let's face it, *all* movies are going to become easier and more realistic (or perhaps the word authentic is more fitting). I'm reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels now (which deal with the British Navy, around the era of Napleon. Think Star Trek: TOS, but on a sailing ship). I think the state of the art still isn't quite there yet (oceans are a still a real bitch to get right, I hear) but eventually you could make these novels into really kick-butt movies, without resorting to the old "models in a bathtub" way of filming battles which made all of the old swashbucklers look sorta cheesy. I read about a new Pearl Harbor movie (hmm.... targent... has anyone registered PerlHarbor as a forum for discussing Perl programming? :) in which a lot of the battle will probably be done on computers. The hired a few vintage airplanes, but to really fill the skies with zeros and the sea with wrecked battleships, it's going to have to be CG. Eventually, you figure that more and more of all types of productions will be going virtual. Many might bemoan this, but it will mean that a once huge, blockbuster film can be made for less... meaning more creative risk-taking, meaning lesser know books and totally new concepts coming to the screen. Personally, I can't wait for this sort of stuff to trickle down into the mere mortals realm. I dabble in computer graphics. I suppose, with the software and hardware at my disposal, I could probably remake the CG portions of TRON (well... of course, there's that pesky talent portion of the equation I'm lacking...) today. That was state of the art 20 years ago in movie making... I wonder what I'll be able to whip up on my desktop 20 years from now... stage my own personal battles with 60,000 orcs? Whee!
One this that worries me about TiVo is its reliance on dialing in to find out TV schedules. What if, in the fickle consumer eletronics market, the TiVo tanks and shuts down its lines? Do these essentially become $700 doorstops?
True, I guess that the TiVo is open source, so people could hack it somehow to use another way to access the program information. But I wouldn't bet of the feasability of this.
Come to think of it, has anyone looked into doing this even if TiVo doesn't tank?