A few months ago I needed an accounting package to run my small business. I tried most of the ones on this list, and was very disappointed. It seems like this is an area in which Open Source does not produce superior software. In the end I bought a commercial product.
I think I tried some others on the list too, but can't be dead certain without going back and checking my notes.
Of these, Quasar was the most promising, but it wasn't Ubuntu friendly and the server part couldn't install on an X11-free server. Perhaps this has changed now, although a quick look at the support group shows someone having trouble with Kubuntu. Every other one had some major failing from zero community, abandoned program, crashes (!!!) through to the inability to write readable text to the screen (!!!!).
Aren't the FDA opening themselves to truly massive lawsuits if they haven't followed the advice given to them?
I'm thinking that the first time someone dies of a disease that should have been curable using a last-line defense, aren't their relatives going to be more than a little upset. After all this puts them in the position that they knew or should have known the likely effects. And doesn't the US have a no-win, no-fee system for lawyers.
Some lawyers are going to get very very rich with the eventual $2bn class- action settlement.
I don't know if anyone else is in the running, but you'd think that it would be terribly useful to them to know just how much someone else is prepared to offer for the source code. Even if there is nobody else willing to pay for it, people who wind up companies are bound only by the duty to get the best offer for creditors; the fact that this is a community offer counts for nothing. It certainly would be useful to them to know how much cash is available, to make sure that they get most of it. Tough if there's nothing left for running the system.
So if I was the people putting together the community bid I would shut up about how much they have gathered and how much they will offer.
Information doesn't want to be free; it wants to be used.
I've set up a Drupal store for a client. I've written patches for Drupal ecommerce.
Drupal is a well designed system. The ecommerce module is not in the core. It's an add on and for the most part it's also well-designed.
Drupal and the ecomm modules have pluginability as a key feature, which has lead to very quick development. However, I think that touting ecomm as a good offering is premature. It is improving very quickly, but it's not ready yet to compete with professional solutions. For instance - it only recently aquired a tax subsystem, it doesn't yet have a general purpose shipping choice module and the cart workflow is not polished.
If you need a simple store and you don't sell complex products, it's good enough for you at the moment. If you are thinking of something more complex and can wait a while, come and have a look now, and try it out in a few months time. You can find Drupal here and the ecomm module here.
"For example, they fault Linux OpenOffice desktops for not having all the features in Microsoft Windows Office, even though few actually use all of the Microsoft stuff. So, in essence, they're saying they want desktops cluttered with unnecessary features."
Where to start? This misunderstands software on so many levels. It's true that most people don't want clutter if you ask them. However. People want options. Programs with fewer features have fewer options. People don't vote for fewer options with their feet.
In fact people want options so badly that they will pay for them. It's one of the major reasons why people are prepared to pay money for new versions of software that they already have. They are even prepared to learn new things for the promise that newness brings a better future.
If you want people to switch, talk about how their options are greater, now and in the future. And back this up. Make sure that people don't lose any critical options in the switch. And I'm not just talking about straight features; it's more than that.
Options go even further; future options have value too. I trust that my Windows software will continue to work with future versions of Windows. Hell, even my DOS software still works. I don't use any of it any more, but I have the option to.
If I switched to Linux, here are some options I might lose:
My existing investment in software. Linux plays catchup, and it's far behind the curve.
Possibly my ability to switch back to Windows if things don't work out.
The ability to participate in future Windows technology. This is really important; Windows has a good history of bringing existing ideas to a mass market. I don't want to be on some sort of cut-off island. MS recognises this, and exploits it relentlessly, with new initiatives and extending standards. (Props to the Mono team who recognised the dangers.Net posed to Linux and did something about it.)
Some of my existing investment in hardware. And before you complain about this, read about the HP Laserjet Series II that would never work under Linux. It's not rocket science, it takes effort and MS has the money to make sure that 99.9% of pheripherals work with a new version of Windows.
What options would you lose? What options would you gain? Is the difference worth the pain?
Why exactly would anyone want to donate their bandwidth to movie distributors? What benefit would you get out of it? Restricted viewing rights through DRM doesn't sound like a benefit to me. I don't see how they'd square this circle; it's not a reasonable trade-off.
PCMagazine has crumpled under the load. Here's the Google cache link.
Do Google load balance individual servers? Let's see...
No! No! No! Judge by the whole package
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Beyond Java
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There's a lot of discussion here about the value of particular technical characteristics - static vs dynamic typing, separation of M, V, and C, interpreted vs compiled, lalalala.
The measure of a language is not just about the technical characteristics: there is always a language with some better technical gadgets than the one that you are using at the moment. (And some drawbacks.)
No, you have to judge a language by the package of features that are important to your project.
By that I don't mean the technical aspects alone, although they form a part; here are some non-technical aspects that are critical to whether you adopt a particular language for a particular task:
Is the community that uses the language growing or shrinking?
What's the profile of the commumity? Hobbyists? Professionals? Leading edge or trailing?
Is the language standardised and how many implementations are there?
How much information is there? Support is important.
What libraries are available?
Is there an open source implementation of the language?
Are there well-developed test packs?
What's the pace of development of the language?
And I'm sure there are some that are important to your project that I've left out.
And lastly, what technical characteristics does the language have that will make the job easier?
For ages it's been on my todo list to write something about this on my blog; I've got to make a decision about what language to use for a project that will last a few years.
It's 9am, I'm meant to be at work but I've got a hangover. My PC alarm starts buzzing. Damn! someone is calling me. Mmm, hokay. I make a grab for the PC next to the bed and unroll it. My boss, Alice, is IMing me. I press the "lights camera action" button on the IM portal. The lights in my room brighten, the cameras switch on, and my home network swings into action to make the picture of me look quite a lot better than I am at the moment. For one thing, I'm wearing clothes in the picture in a picture that I see. For another the PC has removed the giant blown up porn image that I put above the bed last week. It's showing me in the office. Smart PC - must say thanks to it.
"Hey Bob", Alice smiles. "Hi Alice - wassup?" "I was hoping I could get a look at the work package for MacIntyre this morning." "Yeah, no problem", I lie, "Gimme a sec - call you back in 5."
I throw the bedclothes off and walk out of my room into the living room. The lights don't brighten because I'm just walking through the space, and the wallscreen stays muted. Down the stairs and into my office which has activated before I get there. My PC was listening to the conversation, so it's got the MacIntyre portal open and a line ready to call back.
I sit down at the table. It's got an active surface and a small flat widescreen, but I get most of my work done on the wallscreen which has got a bunch of portals grouped. The PC has gathered that I'm not at my best and it's put on some low glow lighting on the wallscreen. Kinda like those light shows that were once popular; I've been getting all retro in the last few months.
Mmm, okay. I grab one of the interface pens that are lying around. It's got a 3D accelerometer built in, so it knows all about it's orientation and stuff. Actually, I dunno how it works, but it knows when it's being used. I use it on the desk to enter the MacIntyre portal. I say portal: it's kind of a glowing door that that my point of view travels through to get into a new workspace.
To my left are a pile of files, and to my right is the pile of clips. I've been working on a presentation all week. It's right in front of me. I point at the IM link on the wallscreen and open it. In a moment Alice is there. I pull her into the MacIntyre portal, and now we are both on the wallscreen.
Alice looks pretty good this morning for someone who was at a party until 4 hours ago. I guess being virtual over three locations, means that some people haven't been to bed yet. I don't know where Alice is physically at the moment. A couple of months ago, she was in Tokyo. Maybe she still is.
I pull my dressing gown tight and walk over to the wall; being near naked in front of your boss is kind of a no-no, even if she can't see it that way. As I get closer to the wall, the resolution changes; the pixels are getting smaller and adding detail. Alice is wearing a dress with really small red mandeldots, which are slowly moving. Evidently she is also dressed virtually, or maybe she's really got an active fabric dress; it's pretty hard to tell these days. "You ready?" I ask Alice. She nods and taps on the MacIntyre presentation.
It folds open and starts playing. "It's best if it's immersive", I laser the wall portal to expand and it uses up most of the wall space.
We are standing in an amusement park; MacIntyre own Disney and a bunch of other parks. For the last 6 months I've been designing a new ride for the new park in Gaza. The image we are looking at is beamed in from Gaza, which, pretty amazingly has become the new playground of the middle east. There are kids all around us and grown ups. The PC has inserted our images in the video. I use the pencil to walk us towards the North side of the square, which is where we can see what the new ride will look like. My PC (well actually my grid) is generating the image by compositing images from cameras around the square. Actually that's underplaying it a bit: it's using the images to build a 3D m
While interesting, this isn't exactly earth shattering; Bill Buxton has worked for MS before. In 2005 he had a stint at the Cambridge, UK research lab as a visiting researcher. This article is entirely a PR scoop and really has no place pretending it's news.
Secondly, the research division and product divisions at MS are separate and a lot of what the research teams do, doesn't find its way into products. Bill Buxton will be in the research division. I very much doubt that they would have him working on anything as near-term as UI for Office or Windows. It's much more likely that he will be involved in blue sky thinking and research about making ubiquitous computing a reality, or perhaps about ways in which movie techniques and music can become integral to the ways in which we work with computers, so that they are immersive, or (quite likely) bringing 3D to mainstream user interfaces.
Bill's homepage is here. It has a great deal of info about his interests and work.
Did everyone and his dog do this? Nope, I don't think so. They may have changed their mind (but that's not even clear). Anyway, it's not something to give them a kicking about. If you attack people who are doing good things then you discourage people from helping.
Actually, attacking them is even worse because if you read the article you'll see that it's not clear-cut that they reneged on the offer. They certainly dispute the headline.
Thank you BellSouth for trying to help people who need help. We apologise for the behaviour of a minority on this site.
E Ink have been around for a long time - since at least 1998. The underlying technology is older. They've promised this for most of that time. In the last couple of years they've gone from being prototypes to having some real stuff-you-can-touch-and-buy technology built upon their products (which is more than you can say about most of the competition). The Sony E Ink Libre.
So take it with a pinch of salt when there's an announcement at a trade show; there have been regular updates from Philips promising great things. I suspect a lot of it is for the benefit of the competition.
Just to be clear: I'm not dissing them: The flex display is excellent.
But the real story is that they have built a colour display. This is quite hard to do because the technology depends on small electrically charged particles, white and black. To make colours out of this you either need coloured particles and accurate addressing as well as knowing the colours of each capsule which holds the particles. Hard. Or you need multiple layers and coloured filters, and some careful spacing so that the fields from one layer don't interfere with the next. Or a filter with lots of colours and very, very accurate addressing. Or maybe calibratable addressing.
I certainly didn't ever think that they'd be able to pull colour out of the system. This is quite an achievement.
Eink can be found here. The press release about the colour display is here and the release about the paper, upon which the original post is based is here.
In this room I count 4 devices that have their own transformers. They are all mobile devices. This idea doesn't work well for fixed devices.
Transformers are cheap; $4-$6 each, so they win in terms of cost. However, it might be worthwhile to get rid of clutter.
Yes, other companies tried to be and have been in the same space. This often happens. Some companies get squeezed out, especially when their marketing, funding or technology is significantly worse than the others in the same market.
Splashpower is a really interesting company; a couple of students took developed a business plan for a competition. They won the competition and started the company off the back of it while they were still at university. They used an idea that they reasonably certain could be solved (they were both engineers) and started serious work once the funding was sorted out. They've received angel and venture funding.
Splashpads are quite interesting in that they are active devices. When you drop something onto the pad, there's some communication that goes on between the pad and the device. The pad delivers power to the right place on the pad to recharge that device, and only that place. You don't have to orientate the device correctly, and there's no contact made. You can have multiple devces recharging at once.
If you drop your keys onto the pad then they won't electrocute you when you pick them up. And they won't heat up. If you drop electronics that's not enabled onto the pad, then it won't get electrocuted either.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem. On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised to see at least one cell-phone manufacturer adopting their system, and the first step in widespread adoption is to get individual manufacturers to commit to it. They also have the advantage that past a certain penetration point it becomes a de facto standard.
There are several other competing companies. In my opinion the Splashpower system is one of the best and most likely to succeed providing they can move past initial adoption.
Re braincancer. Deeply, deeply unlikely. Worry about the X-rays emitted from your CRT first.
The deal that you are describing is a publishing deal. And the answer is: it depends.
Publishing works something like this -
Scenario 1. Someone comes to the publisher with an idea. If they have proven ability at understanding and delivering a product, then they get a better royalty deal than if they walk off the street.
Scenario 2. The publisher understands the market that they operate in, and commissions some software. The royalty depends on the ability of the publisher to specify the work; there's more skill in producing a good product when you have only a rough outline than when you have a well-thought out spec.
Regardless of the scenario: Publishing deals typically provide some money up front to the developers (on signing the contract and often in tranches as they hit milestones). (Make a plan for milestones not hit in the contract.) This money is called the advance. It's payment of royalties before they have been earned. This money supports the developer while they build the product. If the product is already built, then there's less risk to the publisher and royalties will typically be higher than if not.
When the publisher takes delivery of the product, there will often be significant work still to make it into a saleable item. It might need a manual, box, CD or DVD, first level helpdesk support, web site and more. The more the developer provides, the more the royalty rates; there's less risk to the publisher.
Finally there's a product that's ready to roll. The publisher advertises it, has reps selling it, may find resellers, and so on. Royalties are typically paid on net income attributable to the product. And here's the key bit - rates vary anywhere from 5% to 17.5%. Typically not on a flat rate. So most often the deal would be structured as 7.5% on the first x thousand net, 10% on the next, etc. Only superstar developers hit the 17.5% rate, and that would be on large sales, probably on a product that arrived near-complete. It's hard for you to make money at this rate. You withhold royalty payments until the advance has been paid off.
To handle all of this you need a detailed, explicit contract covering what rights you both have and what recourses are available to both. On of the key skills of publishers is to be able to write and negotiate these contracts.
As a publisher it also pays to model the investment. The scenario you want is a product where the royalty payments to the developer cover the cost of development of future versions. You want a virtuous cycle - sales success paying for further development. You do not want to structure a deal so that the developers cannot afford to build version 2, 3 and so on. (Obviously this has to be part of the contract - often as an option.) You also want the cycle to be at sensible points - a product renewal cycle of 5 years is not good enough for most markets. So it's really important to accurately forecast and hit the targets, so that the model works. Of course this never happens, so you should have a clear picture of how far you will go in supporting a product that isn't hitting targets.
If this article interested you and you are in the UK or Europe, then this conference about blogging and other social uses of software may interest you. You'll probably find it especially interesting if you have an entrepreneurial bent.
Disclosure: This is a blatant bit of self promotion since I'm involved in organising it.
No point to Karma if you don't use it occasionally.
Oh where to start? This intro is so misleading in so many ways.
Anyone who has noticed anything about computers has noticed that software is intrenched by the network effect; that is, you use a particular bit of software because your friends and colleagues do, and you want to be able to interoperate easily. Windows is a bit of software, and the network effect tells us that it's not going to go away unless Microsoft actively work hard to destroy their market. (This is possible - groups of people make mistakes all the time - but it's not likely.)
Excluding computer geeks, who are a tiny though influential minority, there are only two points where people change operating systems, and one is much less influential than the other.
Firstly, people will change OS when they change computers. BUT everyone wants to completely retain their existing investment in skills and software, so people make the minimum change for the maximum benefit. For most people this means that they are prepared to upgrade operating systems to a later version, but aren't about to change OS completely.
(To change completely the OS has to be 10 times better. That's a tall order since most OSes have incorporated the ideas of command line and GUI, and there aren't many fundemental breakthroughs floating about which can lead to 10x value. Anyone want to prove me wrong?)
The other point where there's the possibility of change is when there's a form-factor change. By that I mean computers physically change shape or function. It happened when mainframes gave way to minis, and when minis gave way to PCs. During the switchover period there's a lot of flux and it's anyone's guess who will come out tops.
But Microsoft recognise this as a serious threat to their business, and whenever a competitive model arises, they work overtime to crush it, whilst making sure that they can switch if need be. (Sensible strategy since it protects the value of their existing investments.)
When EO and GO where hot new ideas that looked like they were on an exponential upwards curve, MS used FUD, Pen Windows, and allegedly anti-competitive behaviour to bleed the idea dry. When thin clients threatened Windows, MS made sure that it was more expensive to use thin computing with Windows than it was to not. When MS figured that there were an awful lot of Playstations, each of which could easily be turned into a computer, they made sure that they had a competitive product so that they could take care of the market if it grew. And with set-top boxes, we have Media Centre edition.
There are two noteworthy cases where there's form-factor change. Firstly, there was a virtual form-factor change with the Internet where was a window of opportunity when the browser could have become the de-facto way of interacting with software, but Microsoft responded to the change fast enough and the opposition wasn't united. MS built IE which took enough share away from Netscape during the period of upheaval which meant that Netscape fell below critical mass for the network effect. This was as much Netscape's failre as MS taking it, because NS didn't build in mechanisms that re-inforced the network effect and they didn't keep providing developers with a better and better platform, whereas MS did, but at the same time made certain that it didn't get so good that it threatened the traditional software model.
The article touches on one area where there's a form factor change which threatens Windows - - cellphones. MS have followed part of their usual strategy - make sure that they own part of the market to fragment it, but also ensure that there's some retained value should there be a serious trend. Cellphone operators play a hefty part too - they don't really like the idea of having an open software platform, probably because they wouldn't/couldn't control it. So while every phone has an OS, only a small percentage of phones expose anything with any serious capability to developers and the user. And what is exposed is tightly controlled. And the platform
The Sex Offender Registration page for the people I've looked at say that there are 638 registered offenders in DC. I didn't do a full count of the people on your list - but it's of the order of 100. I looked at about 1/3 to 1/2 and only found 3 Caucasians. None of the people listed were women. Is there a good reason that you chose these 100 or so? Or is it just because DC has a African American majority? Or was it just random? Or, and I really hope not, are you trying to make some sort of racist point? Why did you choose that particular area? Is it your local neighbourhood?
For anyone thinking of posting some sort of racist crap as a response to this question: keep it to yourselves. We aren't interested.
Okay, so you are tasked with creating a better shell. What would you do?
Off the top of my head: The ability to change languages. Let me use Perl when it's appropriate. Yes, I mean on the command line. Or python. Or whatever.
Objects. I like objects. Lots of them to model the system.
A way to interact with GUI items, so that I can make nice scripts. TCL maybe.
Needs a minimum set of standards so that I can be sure what will work on any system.
Needs to be modular. I want to be able to load and use the printer package. In fact I want to be load my version of the printer package in place of the standard printer package.
I want my scrip to be able to interoperate with other programs & scripts. I want more than one channel to do it on so that I can use one script to control another which is working on data supplied by a third.
The thing is that you haven't defined what a general computing device (GPC) is. And in any case the whole area is a logical mess. You are trying to paper over cracks.
Let's start nearer the top of computing power. You think your PC is a GPC. Going down, what about your Gameboy? It runs an operating system. So that make it a GPC. What about your camera? It too runs an OS. But you don't think of your camera as a GPC.
Now let's say I find a FANTASTIC way for you to take photos with unlimited depth of field - i.e. no blurry backgrounds (unless you want them) then shouldn't the camera be patentable? You would have thought so. (By the way, a key part of it is in software. Does that change your mind?)
Okay - so let's try out a couple of ideas. Let's say the software is not patentable. My way around this is that I will blow the software into hardware - I'll just make a custom chip which replaces the software. Now there's no doubt - this is patentable. So why shouldn't the software version be patentable? Oops, we've come to an uncomfortable logical disconnect.
Trying out idea 2: Let's say the software is patentable. Hey, great! Now let me just port my software to Win32. There. Done. Uh oh. Now we have patented software running on a GPC. So the software on the camera is patentable, but on the PC isn't. Hmm. Logical... disconnect. So maybe the software isn't patentable. Uh oh, we are back at idea 1.
Trying out idea 3: Let's say that the software isn't patentable, but the camera using software is. That is, I have a monopoly over the idea of a camera using software. That's a bit broad - it's already been done. Okay, so it's a camera using software to enhance the image. Nope, that's been done - auto balance. Okay so it's a camera with software that enhances the image to retain depth information. Let's assume it hasn't been done before. (Has it?) [Mr Patent Examiner, if you are reading this, then it's prior art. Here's how I propose to do it: an image is constructed from images taken at a plurality of depths of field. Furthermore, information about the lens is used to solve a series of equations relating to a plurality of images, so as to construct a new image.]
Oops, we are straying into algorithmic territory there. But algorithms aren't patentable. Everyone knows that.
So is there a logical problem here? No, I don't think so, because the patent is for a camera. If Joe does the same thing on a PC, then it's ok.
Yuh. So now I'm imagining I'm another inventor/company. Hey some bastard has a patent on cameras that have blend pictures together with software! Aha! Check out item 2 in the previous post.
2) No program, body of software, or part thereof which is or _can_ _be_ implemented for use on a general purpose computing device shall be held to infringe on _any_ patent.
Terrific! So I can make a camera with exactly the same function because the software can be implemented for use on a GPC. But that's a logical disconnect because it's entirely reasonable for the camera to be patentable.
I think your clauses say that no device that use software as an intrinsic part should be patentable. Probably a bad idea if the camera should be patentable.
But now to throw a spanner in the works. So I patented a camera with software to deblurr. So why can't I patent a computer which deblurrs? Maybe because computers run programs. (Obviousness.) And you can't patent software by itself. (As such.) ??????
Language like this is already present in the European Patent Convention. It says
European patents shall be granted for any inventions which are susceptible of industrial application, which are new and which involve an inventive step.
There is no definition of what an invention is or is not. However, article 52(2) provides a list of things that "in particular" shall not be regarded as inventions (suggesting there might also be other things that are not inventions):
1. discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
2. aesthetic creations;
3. schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers;
4. presentations of information.
However a little further on it says of the above text:
(3) The provisions of paragraph 2 shall exclude patentability of the subject-matter or activities referred to in that provision only to the extent to which a European patent application or European patent relates to such subject-matter or activities as such.
That "as such" has proved to be a large loophole which patent seekers have used.
Slashdot Mirror
A few months ago I needed an accounting package to run my small business. I tried most of the ones on this list, and was very disappointed. It seems like this is an area in which Open Source does not produce superior software. In the end I bought a commercial product.
I can't recommend:
Ledger SMB
OpenAccounting
TurboCash
GnuCash
jGnash
Compiere
Quasar
phpCOIN
I think I tried some others on the list too, but can't be dead certain without going back and checking my notes.
Of these, Quasar was the most promising, but it wasn't Ubuntu friendly and the server part couldn't install on an X11-free server. Perhaps this has changed now, although a quick look at the support group shows someone having trouble with Kubuntu. Every other one had some major failing from zero community, abandoned program, crashes (!!!) through to the inability to write readable text to the screen (!!!!).
Aren't the FDA opening themselves to truly massive lawsuits if they haven't followed the advice given to them?
I'm thinking that the first time someone dies of a disease that should have been curable using a last-line defense, aren't their relatives going to be more than a little upset. After all this puts them in the position that they knew or should have known the likely effects. And doesn't the US have a no-win, no-fee system for lawyers.
Some lawyers are going to get very very rich with the eventual $2bn class- action settlement.
I don't know if anyone else is in the running, but you'd think that it would be terribly useful to them to know just how much someone else is prepared to offer for the source code. Even if there is nobody else willing to pay for it, people who wind up companies are bound only by the duty to get the best offer for creditors; the fact that this is a community offer counts for nothing. It certainly would be useful to them to know how much cash is available, to make sure that they get most of it. Tough if there's nothing left for running the system.
So if I was the people putting together the community bid I would shut up about how much they have gathered and how much they will offer.
Information doesn't want to be free; it wants to be used.
There is however a FANTASTIC debugger that is streets ahead, in some ways, of the *other* one.
It's not OSS either.
It doesn't have a lovely graphical interface.
But, it does run backwards so that once your program crashes or does something wrong you can work out why it happened by following to the root cause.
I've set up a Drupal store for a client. I've written patches for Drupal ecommerce.
Drupal is a well designed system. The ecommerce module is not in the core. It's an add on and for the most part it's also well-designed.
Drupal and the ecomm modules have pluginability as a key feature, which has lead to very quick development. However, I think that touting ecomm as a good offering is premature. It is improving very quickly, but it's not ready yet to compete with professional solutions. For instance - it only recently aquired a tax subsystem, it doesn't yet have a general purpose shipping choice module and the cart workflow is not polished.
If you need a simple store and you don't sell complex products, it's good enough for you at the moment. If you are thinking of something more complex and can wait a while, come and have a look now, and try it out in a few months time. You can find Drupal here and the ecomm module here.
Where to start? This misunderstands software on so many levels. It's true that most people don't want clutter if you ask them. However. People want options. Programs with fewer features have fewer options. People don't vote for fewer options with their feet.
In fact people want options so badly that they will pay for them. It's one of the major reasons why people are prepared to pay money for new versions of software that they already have. They are even prepared to learn new things for the promise that newness brings a better future.
If you want people to switch, talk about how their options are greater, now and in the future. And back this up. Make sure that people don't lose any critical options in the switch. And I'm not just talking about straight features; it's more than that.
Options go even further; future options have value too. I trust that my Windows software will continue to work with future versions of Windows. Hell, even my DOS software still works. I don't use any of it any more, but I have the option to.
If I switched to Linux, here are some options I might lose:
What options would you lose?
What options would you gain?
Is the difference worth the pain?
Why exactly would anyone want to donate their bandwidth to movie distributors? What benefit would you get out of it? Restricted viewing rights through DRM doesn't sound like a benefit to me. I don't see how they'd square this circle; it's not a reasonable trade-off.
Here's a link to the Coral Cache version. And page 2 of the article.
Sorry about that. But it did show that he was right about the switch to Intel. I think a lot of people said that wasn't likely.
Oops!!! Don't mod the last post up. Will find the right one.
PCMagazine has crumpled under the load. Here's the Google cache link.
Do Google load balance individual servers? Let's see...
The measure of a language is not just about the technical characteristics: there is always a language with some better technical gadgets than the one that you are using at the moment. (And some drawbacks.)
No, you have to judge a language by the package of features that are important to your project.
By that I don't mean the technical aspects alone, although they form a part; here are some non-technical aspects that are critical to whether you adopt a particular language for a particular task:
And lastly, what technical characteristics does the language have that will make the job easier?
For ages it's been on my todo list to write something about this on my blog; I've got to make a decision about what language to use for a project that will last a few years.
It's 9am, I'm meant to be at work but I've got a hangover. My PC alarm starts buzzing. Damn! someone is calling me. Mmm, hokay. I make a grab for the PC next to the bed and unroll it. My boss, Alice, is IMing me. I press the "lights camera action" button on the IM portal. The lights in my room brighten, the cameras switch on, and my home network swings into action to make the picture of me look quite a lot better than I am at the moment. For one thing, I'm wearing clothes in the picture in a picture that I see. For another the PC has removed the giant blown up porn image that I put above the bed last week. It's showing me in the office. Smart PC - must say thanks to it.
"Hey Bob", Alice smiles.
"Hi Alice - wassup?"
"I was hoping I could get a look at the work package for MacIntyre this morning."
"Yeah, no problem", I lie, "Gimme a sec - call you back in 5."
I throw the bedclothes off and walk out of my room into the living room. The lights don't brighten because I'm just walking through the space, and the wallscreen stays muted. Down the stairs and into my office which has activated before I get there. My PC was listening to the conversation, so it's got the MacIntyre portal open and a line ready to call back.
I sit down at the table. It's got an active surface and a small flat widescreen, but I get most of my work done on the wallscreen which has got a bunch of portals grouped. The PC has gathered that I'm not at my best and it's put on some low glow lighting on the wallscreen. Kinda like those light shows that were once popular; I've been getting all retro in the last few months.
Mmm, okay. I grab one of the interface pens that are lying around. It's got a 3D accelerometer built in, so it knows all about it's orientation and stuff. Actually, I dunno how it works, but it knows when it's being used. I use it on the desk to enter the MacIntyre portal. I say portal: it's kind of a glowing door that that my point of view travels through to get into a new workspace.
To my left are a pile of files, and to my right is the pile of clips. I've been working on a presentation all week. It's right in front of me. I point at the IM link on the wallscreen and open it. In a moment Alice is there. I pull her into the MacIntyre portal, and now we are both on the wallscreen.
Alice looks pretty good this morning for someone who was at a party until 4 hours ago. I guess being virtual over three locations, means that some people haven't been to bed yet. I don't know where Alice is physically at the moment. A couple of months ago, she was in Tokyo. Maybe she still is.
I pull my dressing gown tight and walk over to the wall; being near naked in front of your boss is kind of a no-no, even if she can't see it that way. As I get closer to the wall, the resolution changes; the pixels are getting smaller and adding detail. Alice is wearing a dress with really small red mandeldots, which are slowly moving. Evidently she is also dressed virtually, or maybe she's really got an active fabric dress; it's pretty hard to tell these days.
"You ready?" I ask Alice. She nods and taps on the MacIntyre presentation.
It folds open and starts playing.
"It's best if it's immersive", I laser the wall portal to expand and it uses up most of the wall space.
We are standing in an amusement park; MacIntyre own Disney and a bunch of other parks. For the last 6 months I've been designing a new ride for the new park in Gaza. The image we are looking at is beamed in from Gaza, which, pretty amazingly has become the new playground of the middle east. There are kids all around us and grown ups. The PC has inserted our images in the video. I use the pencil to walk us towards the North side of the square, which is where we can see what the new ride will look like. My PC (well actually my grid) is generating the image by compositing images from cameras around the square. Actually that's underplaying it a bit: it's using the images to build a 3D m
While interesting, this isn't exactly earth shattering; Bill Buxton has worked for MS before. In 2005 he had a stint at the Cambridge, UK research lab as a visiting researcher. This article is entirely a PR scoop and really has no place pretending it's news.
Secondly, the research division and product divisions at MS are separate and a lot of what the research teams do, doesn't find its way into products. Bill Buxton will be in the research division. I very much doubt that they would have him working on anything as near-term as UI for Office or Windows. It's much more likely that he will be involved in blue sky thinking and research about making ubiquitous computing a reality, or perhaps about ways in which movie techniques and music can become integral to the ways in which we work with computers, so that they are immersive, or (quite likely) bringing 3D to mainstream user interfaces.
Bill's homepage is here. It has a great deal of info about his interests and work.
Wow they offered a building; that's fantastic!
Did everyone and his dog do this? Nope, I don't think so. They may have changed their mind (but that's not even clear). Anyway, it's not something to give them a kicking about. If you attack people who are doing good things then you discourage people from helping.
Actually, attacking them is even worse because if you read the article you'll see that it's not clear-cut that they reneged on the offer. They certainly dispute the headline.
Thank you BellSouth for trying to help people who need help. We apologise for the behaviour of a minority on this site.
E Ink have been around for a long time - since at least 1998. The underlying technology is older. They've promised this for most of that time. In the last couple of years they've gone from being prototypes to having some real stuff-you-can-touch-and-buy technology built upon their products (which is more than you can say about most of the competition). The Sony E Ink Libre.
So take it with a pinch of salt when there's an announcement at a trade show; there have been regular updates from Philips promising great things. I suspect a lot of it is for the benefit of the competition.
Just to be clear: I'm not dissing them: The flex display is excellent.
But the real story is that they have built a colour display. This is quite hard to do because the technology depends on small electrically charged particles, white and black. To make colours out of this you either need coloured particles and accurate addressing as well as knowing the colours of each capsule which holds the particles. Hard. Or you need multiple layers and coloured filters, and some careful spacing so that the fields from one layer don't interfere with the next. Or a filter with lots of colours and very, very accurate addressing. Or maybe calibratable addressing.
I certainly didn't ever think that they'd be able to pull colour out of the system. This is quite an achievement.
Eink can be found here. The press release about the colour display is here and the release about the paper, upon which the original post is based is here.
And this link should take you to the Siemens page about it, which has a photo too.
Looks like the reason they are targeting it at packaging initially is because the images change slowly.
In this room I count 4 devices that have their own transformers. They are all mobile devices. This idea doesn't work well for fixed devices.
Transformers are cheap; $4-$6 each, so they win in terms of cost. However, it might be worthwhile to get rid of clutter.
Yes, other companies tried to be and have been in the same space. This often happens. Some companies get squeezed out, especially when their marketing, funding or technology is significantly worse than the others in the same market.
Splashpower is a really interesting company; a couple of students took developed a business plan for a competition. They won the competition and started the company off the back of it while they were still at university. They used an idea that they reasonably certain could be solved (they were both engineers) and started serious work once the funding was sorted out. They've received angel and venture funding.
Splashpads are quite interesting in that they are active devices. When you drop something onto the pad, there's some communication that goes on between the pad and the device. The pad delivers power to the right place on the pad to recharge that device, and only that place. You don't have to orientate the device correctly, and there's no contact made. You can have multiple devces recharging at once.
If you drop your keys onto the pad then they won't electrocute you when you pick them up. And they won't heat up. If you drop electronics that's not enabled onto the pad, then it won't get electrocuted either.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem. On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised to see at least one cell-phone manufacturer adopting their system, and the first step in widespread adoption is to get individual manufacturers to commit to it. They also have the advantage that past a certain penetration point it becomes a de facto standard.
There are several other competing companies. In my opinion the Splashpower system is one of the best and most likely to succeed providing they can move past initial adoption.
Re braincancer. Deeply, deeply unlikely. Worry about the X-rays emitted from your CRT first.
The deal that you are describing is a publishing deal. And the answer is: it depends.
Publishing works something like this -
Scenario 1.
Someone comes to the publisher with an idea. If they have proven ability at understanding and delivering a product, then they get a better royalty deal than if they walk off the street.
Scenario 2.
The publisher understands the market that they operate in, and commissions some software. The royalty depends on the ability of the publisher to specify the work; there's more skill in producing a good product when you have only a rough outline than when you have a well-thought out spec.
Regardless of the scenario: Publishing deals typically provide some money up front to the developers (on signing the contract and often in tranches as they hit milestones). (Make a plan for milestones not hit in the contract.) This money is called the advance. It's payment of royalties before they have been earned. This money supports the developer while they build the product. If the product is already built, then there's less risk to the publisher and royalties will typically be higher than if not.
When the publisher takes delivery of the product, there will often be significant work still to make it into a saleable item. It might need a manual, box, CD or DVD, first level helpdesk support, web site and more. The more the developer provides, the more the royalty rates; there's less risk to the publisher.
Finally there's a product that's ready to roll. The publisher advertises it, has reps selling it, may find resellers, and so on. Royalties are typically paid on net income attributable to the product. And here's the key bit - rates vary anywhere from 5% to 17.5%. Typically not on a flat rate. So most often the deal would be structured as 7.5% on the first x thousand net, 10% on the next, etc. Only superstar developers hit the 17.5% rate, and that would be on large sales, probably on a product that arrived near-complete. It's hard for you to make money at this rate. You withhold royalty payments until the advance has been paid off.
To handle all of this you need a detailed, explicit contract covering what rights you both have and what recourses are available to both. On of the key skills of publishers is to be able to write and negotiate these contracts.
As a publisher it also pays to model the investment. The scenario you want is a product where the royalty payments to the developer cover the cost of development of future versions. You want a virtuous cycle - sales success paying for further development. You do not want to structure a deal so that the developers cannot afford to build version 2, 3 and so on. (Obviously this has to be part of the contract - often as an option.) You also want the cycle to be at sensible points - a product renewal cycle of 5 years is not good enough for most markets. So it's really important to accurately forecast and hit the targets, so that the model works. Of course this never happens, so you should have a clear picture of how far you will go in supporting a product that isn't hitting targets.
If this article interested you and you are in the UK or Europe, then this conference about blogging and other social uses of software may interest you. You'll probably find it especially interesting if you have an entrepreneurial bent.
Disclosure: This is a blatant bit of self promotion since I'm involved in organising it.
No point to Karma if you don't use it occasionally.
Oh where to start? This intro is so misleading in so many ways.
Anyone who has noticed anything about computers has noticed that software is intrenched by the network effect; that is, you use a particular bit of software because your friends and colleagues do, and you want to be able to interoperate easily. Windows is a bit of software, and the network effect tells us that it's not going to go away unless Microsoft actively work hard to destroy their market. (This is possible - groups of people make mistakes all the time - but it's not likely.)
Excluding computer geeks, who are a tiny though influential minority, there are only two points where people change operating systems, and one is much less influential than the other.
Firstly, people will change OS when they change computers. BUT everyone wants to completely retain their existing investment in skills and software, so people make the minimum change for the maximum benefit. For most people this means that they are prepared to upgrade operating systems to a later version, but aren't about to change OS completely.
(To change completely the OS has to be 10 times better. That's a tall order since most OSes have incorporated the ideas of command line and GUI, and there aren't many fundemental breakthroughs floating about which can lead to 10x value. Anyone want to prove me wrong?)
The other point where there's the possibility of change is when there's a form-factor change. By that I mean computers physically change shape or function. It happened when mainframes gave way to minis, and when minis gave way to PCs. During the switchover period there's a lot of flux and it's anyone's guess who will come out tops.
But Microsoft recognise this as a serious threat to their business, and whenever a competitive model arises, they work overtime to crush it, whilst making sure that they can switch if need be. (Sensible strategy since it protects the value of their existing investments.)
When EO and GO where hot new ideas that looked like they were on an exponential upwards curve, MS used FUD, Pen Windows, and allegedly anti-competitive behaviour to bleed the idea dry. When thin clients threatened Windows, MS made sure that it was more expensive to use thin computing with Windows than it was to not. When MS figured that there were an awful lot of Playstations, each of which could easily be turned into a computer, they made sure that they had a competitive product so that they could take care of the market if it grew. And with set-top boxes, we have Media Centre edition.
There are two noteworthy cases where there's form-factor change. Firstly, there was a virtual form-factor change with the Internet where was a window of opportunity when the browser could have become the de-facto way of interacting with software, but Microsoft responded to the change fast enough and the opposition wasn't united. MS built IE which took enough share away from Netscape during the period of upheaval which meant that Netscape fell below critical mass for the network effect. This was as much Netscape's failre as MS taking it, because NS didn't build in mechanisms that re-inforced the network effect and they didn't keep providing developers with a better and better platform, whereas MS did, but at the same time made certain that it didn't get so good that it threatened the traditional software model.
The article touches on one area where there's a form factor change which threatens Windows - - cellphones. MS have followed part of their usual strategy - make sure that they own part of the market to fragment it, but also ensure that there's some retained value should there be a serious trend. Cellphone operators play a hefty part too - they don't really like the idea of having an open software platform, probably because they wouldn't/couldn't control it. So while every phone has an OS, only a small percentage of phones expose anything with any serious capability to developers and the user. And what is exposed is tightly controlled. And the platform
The Sex Offender Registration page for the people I've looked at say that there are 638 registered offenders in DC. I didn't do a full count of the people on your list - but it's of the order of 100. I looked at about 1/3 to 1/2 and only found 3 Caucasians. None of the people listed were women. Is there a good reason that you chose these 100 or so? Or is it just because DC has a African American majority? Or was it just random? Or, and I really hope not, are you trying to make some sort of racist point? Why did you choose that particular area? Is it your local neighbourhood?
For anyone thinking of posting some sort of racist crap as a response to this question: keep it to yourselves. We aren't interested.
Okay, so you are tasked with creating a better shell. What would you do?
Off the top of my head:
The ability to change languages. Let me use Perl when it's appropriate. Yes, I mean on the command line. Or python. Or whatever.
Objects. I like objects. Lots of them to model the system.
A way to interact with GUI items, so that I can make nice scripts. TCL maybe.
Needs a minimum set of standards so that I can be sure what will work on any system.
Needs to be modular. I want to be able to load and use the printer package. In fact I want to be load my version of the printer package in place of the standard printer package.
I want my scrip to be able to interoperate with other programs & scripts. I want more than one channel to do it on so that I can use one script to control another which is working on data supplied by a third.
What do you want?
Let's start nearer the top of computing power. You think your PC is a GPC. Going down, what about your Gameboy? It runs an operating system. So that make it a GPC. What about your camera? It too runs an OS. But you don't think of your camera as a GPC.
Now let's say I find a FANTASTIC way for you to take photos with unlimited depth of field - i.e. no blurry backgrounds (unless you want them) then shouldn't the camera be patentable? You would have thought so. (By the way, a key part of it is in software. Does that change your mind?)
Okay - so let's try out a couple of ideas. Let's say the software is not patentable. My way around this is that I will blow the software into hardware - I'll just make a custom chip which replaces the software. Now there's no doubt - this is patentable. So why shouldn't the software version be patentable? Oops, we've come to an uncomfortable logical disconnect.
Trying out idea 2: Let's say the software is patentable. Hey, great! Now let me just port my software to Win32. There. Done. Uh oh. Now we have patented software running on a GPC. So the software on the camera is patentable, but on the PC isn't. Hmm. Logical
Trying out idea 3: Let's say that the software isn't patentable, but the camera using software is. That is, I have a monopoly over the idea of a camera using software. That's a bit broad - it's already been done. Okay, so it's a camera using software to enhance the image. Nope, that's been done - auto balance. Okay so it's a camera with software that enhances the image to retain depth information. Let's assume it hasn't been done before. (Has it?) [Mr Patent Examiner, if you are reading this, then it's prior art. Here's how I propose to do it: an image is constructed from images taken at a plurality of depths of field. Furthermore, information about the lens is used to solve a series of equations relating to a plurality of images, so as to construct a new image.]
Oops, we are straying into algorithmic territory there. But algorithms aren't patentable. Everyone knows that.
So is there a logical problem here? No, I don't think so, because the patent is for a camera. If Joe does the same thing on a PC, then it's ok.
Yuh. So now I'm imagining I'm another inventor/company. Hey some bastard has a patent on cameras that have blend pictures together with software! Aha! Check out item 2 in the previous post.Terrific! So I can make a camera with exactly the same function because the software can be implemented for use on a GPC. But that's a logical disconnect because it's entirely reasonable for the camera to be patentable.
I think your clauses say that no device that use software as an intrinsic part should be patentable. Probably a bad idea if the camera should be patentable.
But now to throw a spanner in the works. So I patented a camera with software to deblurr. So why can't I patent a computer which deblurrs? Maybe because computers run programs. (Obviousness.) And you can't patent software by itself. (As such.) ??????
However a little further on it says of the above text:
That "as such" has proved to be a large loophole which patent seekers have used.
What do you think it means?