This man can't write! The whole thing is one big stream-of-consciousness mess that completely detracts from anything he has to say. And please, could he make up his mind on Microsoft--either he hates them, in which case he should already stop cooperating with them all the time, or he doesn't, in which case he should just shut up.
The posted story gives the impression that LocoNet actually runs the trains. That's not true. The protocol on the track is DCC (Digital Command Control), created by Lenz Electronics of Germany and donated to the NMRA. It's a broadcast-only protocol with currently no feedback mechanism, though work is under way on that. LocoNet is the communications mechanism between the booster that sends the signal onto the track, and the hand throttles that control the trains. That one was developed by DigiTrax.
I can see the status appeal of having a Sun box, but as a primary machine to me it seems like it would suck. What kind of driver support does Solaris have for the kinds of devices you want to hook up to your main machine? Like USB Zip drives (which they mention), digital camcorders, PCL printers, (USB?) modems, (USB and SCSI) scanners, sound cards, video cards, joysticks, and all the other good stuff.
> DirecTV may say they require it but they don't enforce it at all.
That's true, but I doubt that's how most customers use it. I'd say most people simply plug it in because they don't understand how it all works anyway. The point was that a phone connection requirement isn't a significant deterrent for a product's success.
> Before you conclude "bull" on the phone outlet (it's a major issue for me
Tough for you. Even the most non-techie people I've seen would hardly consider a phone outlet requirement a show stopper. Blowing an afternoon stringing an extension cord from another wall? Get real!
> you ought to check the sales figures for Tivo. Tivo is a great product. People love it. But for
> some reason, they aren't buying it.
Uh, yeah, the reason being that it's expensive. I know lots of people that think it's cool, but $350+ is just a smidgeon above the impulse theshold for many. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the phone outlet. DirecTV and Dish certainly have no sales problems, and they both require phone outlets.
- it's write-once, which I don't find acceptable anymore. I only buy CD-RW and want the same capability in any other medium.
- it's hideously expensive, especially for a non-reusable medium.
- since it's mechanical, the reading mechanism will always be larger, more fragile, more expensive, and require more power than solid state devices
> divx failed because the technology came out before the connectivity was present (in most
> homes it still isn't present). People are not enthusiastic about having to plug a phone line
> into the box on top of their TV set.
Bull. Since when is finding a phone outlet a major issue? DirecTV (for PPV) and TiVo both require it, and that hasn't curbed their success. What killed Divx was:
- disks were too expensive by PPV or rental standards
- you couldn't play the disc on a friend's machine, even after buying it. This was a major downer, since people like to congregate at friends' houses to watch movies.
- even purchased movies required a Divx player and phone connection to play
- Divx movies had less features (no 16:9, worse sound, etc)
- little choice in players, especially name brands
> You people can claim all you want about how 'we defeated divx.'
People voted with their wallets and Circuit City lost, so I don't know what you're talking about.
The world is full of demonstation CRT killers, yet the only ones I can buy are $10,000 monsters based on 10-year old technology. I want to finally see some of this cool tech actually reach the market, and the supposed cheap production costs invariably touted actually translate into affordable prices. Until then, yawn!
BTW, what does the backlight have to do with LCD update speed? Some reporters need to get a clue.
> It could WIN the war of guns, but there'd be no world left to dominante.
Against whom exactly? One or two major enemies maybe, but that's about it. Besides, that kind of speculation is pointless, since the US doesn't have the political machinery necessary for that kind of futility.
The US is also becoming less the international economic juggernaut that it was by virtue of the Cold War. It's amazing how much less competitive many American companies are when they have to compete on a worldwide scale. It's back to buying the governments then. Which, come to think of it, isn't all that different from the golden hammer scenario of government contractors.
> Just take a look at WWII itself; Germany, Italy, and Japan were all thoroughly crushed and
> have not been at all eager to fight anyone since.
I think you're seriously misguided as to why Germany or Japan haven't fought anyone again. Besides, the type of "crushing" you are referring to is commonly known as annihilation and is really the only effective means of accomplishing what you're suggesting. No country could indulge in that while still calling itself democratic or humane.
...is that Bill, his laywers and Anders Hejlsberg sat down, figured out all the things in Java that would need to be changed in a clone so as not to get sued (again), and then Bill told Anders "make it so!"
> and the US starts to really work on reducing emissions.
But they are. School kids in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia have been painting green trees on inner-city houses for months now, and they will keep doing it until all the CO2 emissions have been neutralized.
> The current batch of clients that support HTML email (include Lookout) do NOT have any such feature
Outlook most certainly can, including Outlook Express. Simply open the contact in the address book and check "Send E-Mail using plain text only". Besides, I don't share your feelings about HTML email. Each new medium developed should be able to repesent information to the richest extent possible. Using plain text only is an artificial limitation that makes only some people happy. Those people should strive to develop email clients that let them strip the plain text out of rich email, but they shouldn't be allowed to dictate what everyone else uses.
All said, there is no denying that a rich medium invites poor taste. Crass use of fonts, colors and sizes can indeed make email very unreadable, but that reflects more on the poor taste and inexperience of the author than on the flaws of the medium. A good email client would offer a sensible set of filters that can let you normalize rich email to whatever you want: full formatting, colors only, fonts only, or plain text only.
I was just pulling your leg. It was mainly a play on the recent hypocrisy surrounding the US elections. When people wondered how the US can be a true democracy when the majority presidential vote doesn't count, smug conservatives all to happy with the turn of events countered that the US was not a democracy but a republic. Small technicality, and if pressed I doubt they would defend the viewpoint that the US does not in fact espouse democratic principles.
No, it's a republic, same as the US. No democracy anywhere in the title. Now East Germany, the old GDR, was a true democracy: the German Democratic Republic. How much more democratic than that does it get?
I'm wondering how long it will be before some company comes out with a "home video archiving" system based on MPEG-4 and CD-RW media. Basically a fast embedded PC with a CD-RW drive and a 4GB HD or so. You could store more than 2h of TV quality video and have a player/recorder in one unit. The whole thing could probably come in at a $500 price point or so. I think they could start a de-facto standard because of the availability of the technology and particularly the cheapness of the media alone. With the proper software you could buffer an existing CD-x (CD-R or CD-RW) to the HD, rearrange scenes, mix in some new stuff from the TV (or TiVo), then shoot the whole thing back to CD-x. With a decently-fast burner of 8x or so that would take less than 10 minutes. Given a well thought-out interface the whole thing could be made dead easy to use.
Hmm, maybe the reporters were confused about UMTS and GSM, but who's ever heard of that? So a UMTS device can be on-line constantly and receive individual packets, such as email or pages, without going into some sort of off-hook mode? That's neat, then I want it, and I want it now.
Oh, oh, and it should also have an MP3 player, because they can always do it better anyway. And a file manager. And a plug-in architecture, so I can expand it into an entire OS if I so choose.
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This man can't write! The whole thing is one big stream-of-consciousness mess that completely detracts from anything he has to say. And please, could he make up his mind on Microsoft--either he hates them, in which case he should already stop cooperating with them all the time, or he doesn't, in which case he should just shut up.
The posted story gives the impression that LocoNet actually runs the trains. That's not true. The protocol on the track is DCC (Digital Command Control), created by Lenz Electronics of Germany and donated to the NMRA. It's a broadcast-only protocol with currently no feedback mechanism, though work is under way on that. LocoNet is the communications mechanism between the booster that sends the signal onto the track, and the hand throttles that control the trains. That one was developed by DigiTrax.
> Huh? USB? What's that? It's a Sun Ultra.
Then go to their web site and check out the specs of the machine. They're specifically touting USB and 1394.
I can see the status appeal of having a Sun box, but as a primary machine to me it seems like it would suck. What kind of driver support does Solaris have for the kinds of devices you want to hook up to your main machine? Like USB Zip drives (which they mention), digital camcorders, PCL printers, (USB?) modems, (USB and SCSI) scanners, sound cards, video cards, joysticks, and all the other good stuff.
> DirecTV may say they require it but they don't enforce it at all.
That's true, but I doubt that's how most customers use it. I'd say most people simply plug it in because they don't understand how it all works anyway. The point was that a phone connection requirement isn't a significant deterrent for a product's success.
> Before you conclude "bull" on the phone outlet (it's a major issue for me
Tough for you. Even the most non-techie people I've seen would hardly consider a phone outlet requirement a show stopper. Blowing an afternoon stringing an extension cord from another wall? Get real!
> you ought to check the sales figures for Tivo. Tivo is a great product. People love it. But for
> some reason, they aren't buying it.
Uh, yeah, the reason being that it's expensive. I know lots of people that think it's cool, but $350+ is just a smidgeon above the impulse theshold for many. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the phone outlet. DirecTV and Dish certainly have no sales problems, and they both require phone outlets.
- it's write-once, which I don't find acceptable anymore. I only buy CD-RW and want the same capability in any other medium.
- it's hideously expensive, especially for a non-reusable medium.
- since it's mechanical, the reading mechanism will always be larger, more fragile, more expensive, and require more power than solid state devices
> divx failed because the technology came out before the connectivity was present (in most
> homes it still isn't present). People are not enthusiastic about having to plug a phone line
> into the box on top of their TV set.
Bull. Since when is finding a phone outlet a major issue? DirecTV (for PPV) and TiVo both require it, and that hasn't curbed their success. What killed Divx was:
- disks were too expensive by PPV or rental standards
- you couldn't play the disc on a friend's machine, even after buying it. This was a major downer, since people like to congregate at friends' houses to watch movies.
- even purchased movies required a Divx player and phone connection to play
- Divx movies had less features (no 16:9, worse sound, etc)
- little choice in players, especially name brands
> You people can claim all you want about how 'we defeated divx.'
People voted with their wallets and Circuit City lost, so I don't know what you're talking about.
> Yet her you are advocating EXACTLY the same approach to get round the glibc fiasco.
I believe he's not thinking of static linking as actually "shipping your own shared libraries", which in essence it really is.
> Linux/x86/glibc-2.2 - 310696 (76 pages)
Damn! And I thought Delphi Hello World! programs were pigs at 270K. Of course, it remains to be seen how bloated Kylix programs will be.
The world is full of demonstation CRT killers, yet the only ones I can buy are $10,000 monsters based on 10-year old technology. I want to finally see some of this cool tech actually reach the market, and the supposed cheap production costs invariably touted actually translate into affordable prices. Until then, yawn!
BTW, what does the backlight have to do with LCD update speed? Some reporters need to get a clue.
> It could WIN the war of guns, but there'd be no world left to dominante.
Against whom exactly? One or two major enemies maybe, but that's about it. Besides, that kind of speculation is pointless, since the US doesn't have the political machinery necessary for that kind of futility.
The US is also becoming less the international economic juggernaut that it was by virtue of the Cold War. It's amazing how much less competitive many American companies are when they have to compete on a worldwide scale. It's back to buying the governments then. Which, come to think of it, isn't all that different from the golden hammer scenario of government contractors.
> Just take a look at WWII itself; Germany, Italy, and Japan were all thoroughly crushed and
> have not been at all eager to fight anyone since.
I think you're seriously misguided as to why Germany or Japan haven't fought anyone again. Besides, the type of "crushing" you are referring to is commonly known as annihilation and is really the only effective means of accomplishing what you're suggesting. No country could indulge in that while still calling itself democratic or humane.
> Sometimes the best victory is one in which you crush your opponent and convince him never to try
> you again.
WWI --> Treaty of Versailles, crushing the opponent --> WWII. Doesn't work.
...is that Bill, his laywers and Anders Hejlsberg sat down, figured out all the things in Java that would need to be changed in a clone so as not to get sued (again), and then Bill told Anders "make it so!"
Yeah, but then he couldn't have converted each period to a goatsex link.
I love the Singapore airport. It's definitely one of the coolest around.
> and the US starts to really work on reducing emissions.
But they are. School kids in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia have been painting green trees on inner-city houses for months now, and they will keep doing it until all the CO2 emissions have been neutralized.
> The current batch of clients that support HTML email (include Lookout) do NOT have any such feature
Outlook most certainly can, including Outlook Express. Simply open the contact in the address book and check "Send E-Mail using plain text only". Besides, I don't share your feelings about HTML email. Each new medium developed should be able to repesent information to the richest extent possible. Using plain text only is an artificial limitation that makes only some people happy. Those people should strive to develop email clients that let them strip the plain text out of rich email, but they shouldn't be allowed to dictate what everyone else uses.
All said, there is no denying that a rich medium invites poor taste. Crass use of fonts, colors and sizes can indeed make email very unreadable, but that reflects more on the poor taste and inexperience of the author than on the flaws of the medium. A good email client would offer a sensible set of filters that can let you normalize rich email to whatever you want: full formatting, colors only, fonts only, or plain text only.
I was just pulling your leg. It was mainly a play on the recent hypocrisy surrounding the US elections. When people wondered how the US can be a true democracy when the majority presidential vote doesn't count, smug conservatives all to happy with the turn of events countered that the US was not a democracy but a republic. Small technicality, and if pressed I doubt they would defend the viewpoint that the US does not in fact espouse democratic principles.
> France is a democracy right?
No, it's a republic, same as the US. No democracy anywhere in the title. Now East Germany, the old GDR, was a true democracy: the German Democratic Republic. How much more democratic than that does it get?
I'm wondering how long it will be before some company comes out with a "home video archiving" system based on MPEG-4 and CD-RW media. Basically a fast embedded PC with a CD-RW drive and a 4GB HD or so. You could store more than 2h of TV quality video and have a player/recorder in one unit. The whole thing could probably come in at a $500 price point or so. I think they could start a de-facto standard because of the availability of the technology and particularly the cheapness of the media alone. With the proper software you could buffer an existing CD-x (CD-R or CD-RW) to the HD, rearrange scenes, mix in some new stuff from the TV (or TiVo), then shoot the whole thing back to CD-x. With a decently-fast burner of 8x or so that would take less than 10 minutes. Given a well thought-out interface the whole thing could be made dead easy to use.
> Yeah, I'd rather be operated by a robot running Windows 2004 than by a human ...
You mean Whistler? Eeek.
Hmm, maybe the reporters were confused about UMTS and GSM, but who's ever heard of that? So a UMTS device can be on-line constantly and receive individual packets, such as email or pages, without going into some sort of off-hook mode? That's neat, then I want it, and I want it now.
Oh, oh, and it should also have an MP3 player, because they can always do it better anyway. And a file manager. And a plug-in architecture, so I can expand it into an entire OS if I so choose.