Since current theories regarding the mass die out of the dinosaurs seem to revolve around a collision of either a comet or asteroid with the Earth, one's got to wonder if these geniuses have ever heard of the term Mutually Assured Destruction.
Geez...
(Someone please tell me that this is an April Fool's joke that someone just found underneath a pile of magazines.)
``It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.''
I wonder if he couldn't get McDonalds to pay him for the free advertising they're getting? It would help him defray the cost of the soybean oil fuel.:-)
I'd be surprised -- very surprised -- if a medical records system based on a Microsoft-written OS or application could pass muster with regards to the access controls and tracking required by HIPAA. And that's not even getting into the problems related to the multitude of vulnerabilities that are built into the various versions of Windows. If I found out that my medical records were being accessed by a Microsoft computer? Well, that's about the time I'd think about becoming a Christian Scientist.
IMHO, Microsoft is years away from having a secure enough system for me to trust them with even my personal calendar let alone my family's financial and medical history.
``All they have to do is revoke the Windows licenses of any lawyers who join the lawsuit, and that way the lawyers won't be able to write their documents.''
That would eliminate only a few lawyers. Most legal offices prefer WordPerfect.
You have to wonder just how many of these will Microsoft have to defend. Even if they win all of them, how can their management seriously think that the general public perceives that they're the best thing going in the field of computers? (Like MS management thinks they do now.) Eventually someone's gotta wise up and begin thinking that this can't all be about deep pockets. It may not be the guys at the top who begin seeing this first. But they'll realize that their charmed position in the minds of the consumers is fading (fast) when it starts filtering up that they can't attract good programmers anymore and that many of the employees are leaving.
This unit'll make it tough to listen to any music with decent beat and use your computer at the same time. ``Sorry boss. How could I have known that listening to Nine Inch Nails would delete all the files in the source directories?''
Nah. I don't think it's that they're afraid that it'll get in the way of their broadband media distribution franchise. I think it's pressure from big commercial interests to refrain from giving the common guy the bandwidth to be able to communicate with the rest of the internet. After all, if Joe Shmoe can make his voice heard above the din of the commercial entities that are trying to turn the internet into just another advertising mechanism, people might tune out the commercial parts of the net and start talking and listening to each other. Who knows they might even be tempted to tell others about how lousy the commercial interests are treating their customers. A dangerous development if there ever was one. Especially if you're one of those entities that want to have a lot of passive eyeballs out there merely looking at ads and buying things. And you don't need a lot of bandwidth to transmit your credit card number to an online store you know.
On the other hand, perhaps Freenet would help out in allowing people to disseminate their ideas to a broader audience without requiring a fat pipe into their home. Let each of the hosts of the Freenet users act as an individual leaflet.
--
``Now, instead of the relatively long (30-60sec) T.V. Commercials, we have 7 second commercials. The next generation is not going to be able to focus reliably on anything if we continue to shorten the collective attention span. Does anyone else think that perhaps shortening the length and increasing the intensity of advertisements is a bad thing?''
Actually, I think the plan is that they'll shorten the ads to the point that they're virtually subliminal but not short enough to be illegal (assuming, of course, that subliminal ads are still illegal). Before long, you won't even notice the ads.
``Some of the drive behind this is that selling interruption-based ads is easier, because the media buyers who bought TV/radio ads are well familar with them.''
The reason that people don't watch as much television (at least the people I know) is they're sick to death of ``interruption-based ads''. They're not as effective as they think. I rarely watch them on TV... I use the time they're on to go to the bathroom, raid the refrigerator, read a bit of my snail mail or the newspaper.
When will the ``media buyers'' figure out that the internet is not television? Sites that try to recreate the so-called television experience on my computer will not have me as a visitor. How many of those free internet connection portals that required that you click through an advertisement every so often are still around? Not many I'll bet and ``interruption-based ads'' are probably the reason.
How many people have bandwidth that they can devote to downloading a set of 600MB ISO images to burn onto a CD-ROM? I find that it's a big enough pain to download a comprehensive set of patches to apply to one of the Tru64 systems at work -- usually about, say, 70MB (which include text and postscript versions of the patch release notes, installation guides, etc.) -- that I usually wait until after hours to keep from impacting anyone else.
I guess some people are a lot more patient than I am when it comes to downloading software. I really can't imagine seeing any benefit in taking the time to downloading up to a half dozen ISO images. It's gotta be cheaper to drive to the nearest bookstore and just purchase a distribution. Plus there's the disk space needed to hold all this prior to burning. Heck, if I have 600 MB free on a disk it doesn't seem to stay that way for long.:-)
How many downloaders are they trying to get to pay the fifteen bucks. It surely can't be that many.
``ever use "protect" or "secure" when what you really mean is "restrict".''
Right! Does anyone seriously think that a ``Secure PC (tm)'' will offer the end-user any more security than garden-variety PCs do now? Is running Microsoft Windows Whatever on a Secure PC going to be any more secure than Windows users expect today? What will be more secure is the music files. The cracker that breaks into your Windows PC won't be able to play the music files they're able to steal from you.
What's the benefit of the Secure PC to the end user? None? I thought so.
You complain that the CS graduates are all business oriented but did your research laboratory donate several million in new computers or provide free software to the college? No-o-o.
Seriously... I think what you're seeing is the trend of the vast majority of Universities to become training grounds for businesses. ``We'll donate X dollars in equipment and software (and take a nice tax write off to boot) if you'll include the following areas in your curriculum.'' Do you think they do this for the advancement of knowledge in the field? Or do you think it's for the benefit of the company -- making it easier to find new and cheaper employees?
I can remember the days when companies actually trained their employees in the processes that they used. Many firms hired new engineers, for example, and had them in an orientation program for the first six months to a year moving from division to division getting first hand experience by working on a variety of projects in the company. After that year or hands-on orientation, you and the people in charge of those divisions made a decision on where you would be able to work best. Nowadays companies expect that the Universities have done this training for them so that their new hires can ``hit the ground running''. Then we wonder where the innovation went. Orientation consists of a short talk by the benefits people and a ten minute lecture about how to fill out your time and expense sheets. IMHO, Universities should be more concerned with training the people who come up with tomorrow's ideas rather than training folks to solve today's problems using today's tools.
Send a FAX instead. I've heard aout Congressional staffer ignoring emails for some time. Honest-to-God letters and FAXes are more difficult to ignore. Imagine how difficult it'd be to mount a campaign where everyone send a letter via registered mail. ``Senator Smith, we've been signing for registered letters all day long for the last two weeks. I think your constituents have a strong opinion about that Bill you're sponsoring.'' Too bad sending a registered letter costs a couple of bucks. If only there were a way to send a registered FAX.
Can't say that I do. Some of his articles seem to make me want to agree with him. Others make me wonder what he's been smoking. Say what you will about him, he seems to spawn a lot of postings. Even from people who think he's a waste of time. I think the real question isn't ``Why do you hate JonKatz?'' but, rather, ``Why, if you hate JonKatz so much, are you spending time making posts about why you hate JonKatz so much. Don't have anything better to do?''
I, for one, wish there was a filter that would omit any postings in reply to a JonKatz article that contain words like ``gasbag'', etc. It gets so old scrolling past them. But, then, perhaps that's their point. Fill the replies with a lot of garbage so that people won't bother to even look any more. Sort of like those ``arbiters of all correct thinking'' (what I like to call ``the political correctness Nazis'') who infest college campuses and attend lectures by people that they disagree so they can shout them down. After all, if they don't agree with a speaker's views, then no one else should be allowed to hear them either.
``Due to the distance and the venues of communication (internet chat, email and telephone chat), I won't be able to resolve these problems in less than 2 days. I'm not on a schedule, but this COULD have been resolved in an hour if we could only see and talk to each other face to face.''
I won't argue that face-to-face communications isn't valuable. But if people who are geographically separated have to work on a project together, they have to work in a different manner than they would if they sat across the hallway from one another. (Yes, I know: Duh!) Electronic collaboration can work well provided the people involved (including management) understand that the way that they're going to interact is going to be different. I've seen it work and had it work for me but it takes some getting used to.
Organizations that rely heavily on oral communications seem to have the most trouble (and the most resistant to) adapting to an online workgroup arrangement. At least in my experience, anyway. They are in the habit, for whatever reason, of not writing anything down. Those new to online collaboration tend to flail around when they're forced into putting their thoughts down on paper or into a online forum database. These are the organizations that never follow up a meeting with an email (or, heck, even a hardcopy memo) with notes of what was discussed and decided. Everyone's idea of what went on during that meeting differs and eventually you'll have people going in different directions based on their unique memories of what was decided in the meeting. I've always described those situations as ``progress via Brownian motion''. My motto is: ``Oral tradition has no place in project management''. Works for me anyway. Of course, there's always one person who thinks that what they have to say is so important that everyone will write it down for them. Those are the folks who'll torpedo any online collaboration.
On the other hand, having a 12 hour time difference in team members work schedules like you described would present some problems. But it's nothing that couldn't be solved by both sides shifting their work schedules a bit to have a little bit of overlap. I wouldn't want to do this for a project that was going to run for several months, though. And you might be able to shift schedules around a bit to have overlap, say, one day a week so people can actually get a conference call set up.
I actually prefer situations where tream members communicate via an online forum. Even when there isn't
``the two spammers arrested "appeared convinced that what they were doing wasn't illegal."''
Of course they'd think that. The clowns who used to send advertisements for toner to your Fax machine used to think they were providing a valuable service as well. It's not their fax machine was being tied up.
It almost (and I can't put enough emphasis on that word) makes you want to see ISPs begin charging for every email sent. But, of course, there'd be some ridiculous discount for ``bulk mailing'' like the USPO does that would make smamming affordable and sending an email to grandma expensive.
Let's see... In the last few months we've, so far, heard:
Assuring your customers' privacy costs too much. (Corporations have the right to invade everyone's privacy if it furthers the cause of commerce.)
Protecting the health of the employees that make the corporation money costs too much. (If we had to make sure out employees had protections against RSI, we've never be able to hand out those multi-million dollar raises and huge stock option packages to the CEO and the $10M severance package we had to pay his predecessor.)
Corporate regulations that protect the environment will be too expensive. (This is an old one. Beside the old fogies that are running the company will be dead long before the environment is shot to hell anyway. What do they care?)
Let's add a couple more. You know they're coming:
Supplying clean air and potable water to the building where the employees work will be too expensive. (Do you have any idea how much it costs to replace air and water filters each month? Just be thankful we're changing them every two years. We wouldn't do it at all if we could get away with it. Besides, the air on the golf courses and resorts where we hold out meetings is just fine.)
Office supplies are too expensive. Employees must bring their own. (You folks are just stealing them anyway. And we have you on videotape so don't think we don't know.)
The courts have told us that it's alright to monitor you at work so guess what... (So be prepared to defend your keystroke counts at your next review.)
It boggles the mind that an entity that exists only on paper and by the permission of the government (You remember the government, don't you? That little thing ``By and Of The People''?) has more rights than ordinary citizens. How long before there is a major backlash by the public against the perks handed out to corporations by local, state, and the federal governments? I'm guessing not too long.
Then what's with the LA Times? Guess no one there listens to NPR.
I guess I really can't slam 'em too hard, though. I've heard things on the radio or seen them on the 'net before they made it into the Chicago Tribune. I've gotten so used to getting most of my news on the internet that it's getting harder to understand the delays in seeing something in print. And the newpapers' web sites are usually nothing more than electronic versions of the same stories appearing in the daily print edition. I suppose if CNN was available in hard copy form it'd be last week's news too.
I heard about this on the radio about two weeks ago. So much for that ``Internet Time'' concept. Either that or the backlog of submissions at Slashdot must be monumental.
I first thought what a stupid idea. Paper phone. Who'd buy one? But then I thought: What a great idea for drug dealers and terrorists! Buy a paper phone at the corner 7-11, negotiate your deal over the paper phone, and toss it in the trash when you're done. ``Sir, we completed the trace on that phone call. It came from a trash can on the corner of 1st and Main.''
Nah, I guess I still think it's a stupid idea. (Which probably means it'll sell like hotcakes.) I wonder if the inventor has put any thought into the litter problem. It's bad enought seeing McDonald's wrapper blowing down the streets of the city. Now we'll see paper cell phones in the gutter.:-)
I just got back from a week at Disney World and one of the things that I found most entertaining was the tour of the animation department at Disney/MGM. I didn't see a single Windows machine during the entire tour. Outside of a couple of Apple systems everything else seemed to be UNIX based. The sight of the ``X'' screensaver was quite satisfying.
I've read some goofy terms of service for ISP that forbade you from using masquerading. Of course, when you look elsewhere on their web site they sell packages that include the ability to do masquerading. So, basically, they'd be miffed if you bypassed their package (and fee) by doing it yourself.
I don't think it's illegal. You really need to read their ToS and find out what they don't want you doing. If they catch you doing something that they specifically didn't want you doing, they can clobber you.
Ain't nice but I don't think it's illegal. Specially outside the U.S. where some countries have some pretty restrictive telecomm regulations and your ISP may just be the government. For example, I'd hate to be a modem user in Europe; the rates are horribly high.
``Users are not seeing the cool stuff we are doing to justify our paychecks. Well, let's just force them to see our nifty pages full of dancing baloney and squinty fonts that could give a lawyer eyestrain.''
Hell, some sites make me long for the days when all I had was lynx. All I am looking for is information, not an Internet experience. And I'm far from alone in feeling this way. I wonder if web developers are aware that when many web users utter ``Whoa!'' when they see a web page, what they meant was ``Whoa! What's all this stuff'' and not ``Whoa! Isn't that cool.''
``If anything, one could argue that being free to develop whatever you want, without having to follow the rules set out for you by upper management, could result in more innovation, not less. It's exactly because open source projects don't have anyone to answer to (i.e. management, shareholders, etc) that they can innovate, by trying new things. Traditional management structures in closed-source companies don't like trying new things, they like to stick to older, proven, tried-and-true methods, hence, less innovation.''
Hear, hear. At most companies, R&D is not something that they like spending a lot of resources on. It's done (I want to say ``tolerated'' but that might be too strong a word) to the extent that it sometimes produces something useful that the rest of the company can build, sell, and make huge profits on. (They'd prefer that product ideas sprang, fully developed, from the brow of Athena.) OSS development is more like pure R&D than most companies actually do in the software area. Of course, not all R&D produces a marketable product and not all open source orojects are wildly successful. If it did, maybe we'd have cured the common cold, cancer, and AIDS and all of our software would have natural language interfaces and be crashproof... and we'd have had them years ago.:-)
Microsoft's and other traditional software houses that crow on endlessly about how much they spend on R&D are just trying to impress you with how much of a sacrifice they've made to the bottom line. I'm thinking that Microsoft's problem is that they are spending a ton-o-bucks on what they call R&D and it's not resulting in the same level of innovation that the OSS folks are producing. That's gotta stick in their craw.
``Designing a silent and highly efficient fan requires some serious aerodinamics, sound propagation and thermal conduction research.
...
Just look at the blade shapes...''
Or, perhaps, some technologies that would probably be covered by munitions export control laws in the US (I'm thinking of the technology that got Toshiba in trouble some years ago involving ultra-quiet submarine props).
Slashdot Mirror
Since current theories regarding the mass die out of the dinosaurs seem to revolve around a collision of either a comet or asteroid with the Earth, one's got to wonder if these geniuses have ever heard of the term Mutually Assured Destruction.
Geez...
(Someone please tell me that this is an April Fool's joke that someone just found underneath a pile of magazines.)
--
...that smell like McDonald's fries?
I wonder if he couldn't get McDonalds to pay him for the free advertising they're getting? It would help him defray the cost of the soybean oil fuel. :-)
--
I'd be surprised -- very surprised -- if a medical records system based on a Microsoft-written OS or application could pass muster with regards to the access controls and tracking required by HIPAA. And that's not even getting into the problems related to the multitude of vulnerabilities that are built into the various versions of Windows. If I found out that my medical records were being accessed by a Microsoft computer? Well, that's about the time I'd think about becoming a Christian Scientist.
IMHO, Microsoft is years away from having a secure enough system for me to trust them with even my personal calendar let alone my family's financial and medical history.
--
That would eliminate only a few lawyers. Most legal offices prefer WordPerfect.
--
You have to wonder just how many of these will Microsoft have to defend. Even if they win all of them, how can their management seriously think that the general public perceives that they're the best thing going in the field of computers? (Like MS management thinks they do now.) Eventually someone's gotta wise up and begin thinking that this can't all be about deep pockets. It may not be the guys at the top who begin seeing this first. But they'll realize that their charmed position in the minds of the consumers is fading (fast) when it starts filtering up that they can't attract good programmers anymore and that many of the employees are leaving.
Or maybe not. But one can dream, eh?
--
This unit'll make it tough to listen to any music with decent beat and use your computer at the same time. ``Sorry boss. How could I have known that listening to Nine Inch Nails would delete all the files in the source directories?''
--
Nah. I don't think it's that they're afraid that it'll get in the way of their broadband media distribution franchise. I think it's pressure from big commercial interests to refrain from giving the common guy the bandwidth to be able to communicate with the rest of the internet. After all, if Joe Shmoe can make his voice heard above the din of the commercial entities that are trying to turn the internet into just another advertising mechanism, people might tune out the commercial parts of the net and start talking and listening to each other. Who knows they might even be tempted to tell others about how lousy the commercial interests are treating their customers. A dangerous development if there ever was one. Especially if you're one of those entities that want to have a lot of passive eyeballs out there merely looking at ads and buying things. And you don't need a lot of bandwidth to transmit your credit card number to an online store you know.
On the other hand, perhaps Freenet would help out in allowing people to disseminate their ideas to a broader audience without requiring a fat pipe into their home. Let each of the hosts of the Freenet users act as an individual leaflet.
--
Actually, I think the plan is that they'll shorten the ads to the point that they're virtually subliminal but not short enough to be illegal (assuming, of course, that subliminal ads are still illegal). Before long, you won't even notice the ads.
--
The reason that people don't watch as much television (at least the people I know) is they're sick to death of ``interruption-based ads''. They're not as effective as they think. I rarely watch them on TV... I use the time they're on to go to the bathroom, raid the refrigerator, read a bit of my snail mail or the newspaper.
When will the ``media buyers'' figure out that the internet is not television? Sites that try to recreate the so-called television experience on my computer will not have me as a visitor. How many of those free internet connection portals that required that you click through an advertisement every so often are still around? Not many I'll bet and ``interruption-based ads'' are probably the reason.
--
How many people have bandwidth that they can devote to downloading a set of 600MB ISO images to burn onto a CD-ROM? I find that it's a big enough pain to download a comprehensive set of patches to apply to one of the Tru64 systems at work -- usually about, say, 70MB (which include text and postscript versions of the patch release notes, installation guides, etc.) -- that I usually wait until after hours to keep from impacting anyone else.
I guess some people are a lot more patient than I am when it comes to downloading software. I really can't imagine seeing any benefit in taking the time to downloading up to a half dozen ISO images. It's gotta be cheaper to drive to the nearest bookstore and just purchase a distribution. Plus there's the disk space needed to hold all this prior to burning. Heck, if I have 600 MB free on a disk it doesn't seem to stay that way for long. :-)
How many downloaders are they trying to get to pay the fifteen bucks. It surely can't be that many.
--
Right! Does anyone seriously think that a ``Secure PC (tm)'' will offer the end-user any more security than garden-variety PCs do now? Is running Microsoft Windows Whatever on a Secure PC going to be any more secure than Windows users expect today? What will be more secure is the music files. The cracker that breaks into your Windows PC won't be able to play the music files they're able to steal from you.
What's the benefit of the Secure PC to the end user? None? I thought so.
--
You complain that the CS graduates are all business oriented but did your research laboratory donate several million in new computers or provide free software to the college? No-o-o.
Seriously... I think what you're seeing is the trend of the vast majority of Universities to become training grounds for businesses. ``We'll donate X dollars in equipment and software (and take a nice tax write off to boot) if you'll include the following areas in your curriculum.'' Do you think they do this for the advancement of knowledge in the field? Or do you think it's for the benefit of the company -- making it easier to find new and cheaper employees?
I can remember the days when companies actually trained their employees in the processes that they used. Many firms hired new engineers, for example, and had them in an orientation program for the first six months to a year moving from division to division getting first hand experience by working on a variety of projects in the company. After that year or hands-on orientation, you and the people in charge of those divisions made a decision on where you would be able to work best. Nowadays companies expect that the Universities have done this training for them so that their new hires can ``hit the ground running''. Then we wonder where the innovation went. Orientation consists of a short talk by the benefits people and a ten minute lecture about how to fill out your time and expense sheets. IMHO, Universities should be more concerned with training the people who come up with tomorrow's ideas rather than training folks to solve today's problems using today's tools.
--
Send a FAX instead. I've heard aout Congressional staffer ignoring emails for some time. Honest-to-God letters and FAXes are more difficult to ignore. Imagine how difficult it'd be to mount a campaign where everyone send a letter via registered mail. ``Senator Smith, we've been signing for registered letters all day long for the last two weeks. I think your constituents have a strong opinion about that Bill you're sponsoring.'' Too bad sending a registered letter costs a couple of bucks. If only there were a way to send a registered FAX.
--
Can't say that I do. Some of his articles seem to make me want to agree with him. Others make me wonder what he's been smoking. Say what you will about him, he seems to spawn a lot of postings. Even from people who think he's a waste of time. I think the real question isn't ``Why do you hate JonKatz?'' but, rather, ``Why, if you hate JonKatz so much, are you spending time making posts about why you hate JonKatz so much. Don't have anything better to do?''
I, for one, wish there was a filter that would omit any postings in reply to a JonKatz article that contain words like ``gasbag'', etc. It gets so old scrolling past them. But, then, perhaps that's their point. Fill the replies with a lot of garbage so that people won't bother to even look any more. Sort of like those ``arbiters of all correct thinking'' (what I like to call ``the political correctness Nazis'') who infest college campuses and attend lectures by people that they disagree so they can shout them down. After all, if they don't agree with a speaker's views, then no one else should be allowed to hear them either.
(Okay, JonKatz haters... flame away!)
--
I won't argue that face-to-face communications isn't valuable. But if people who are geographically separated have to work on a project together, they have to work in a different manner than they would if they sat across the hallway from one another. (Yes, I know: Duh!) Electronic collaboration can work well provided the people involved (including management) understand that the way that they're going to interact is going to be different. I've seen it work and had it work for me but it takes some getting used to.
Organizations that rely heavily on oral communications seem to have the most trouble (and the most resistant to) adapting to an online workgroup arrangement. At least in my experience, anyway. They are in the habit, for whatever reason, of not writing anything down. Those new to online collaboration tend to flail around when they're forced into putting their thoughts down on paper or into a online forum database. These are the organizations that never follow up a meeting with an email (or, heck, even a hardcopy memo) with notes of what was discussed and decided. Everyone's idea of what went on during that meeting differs and eventually you'll have people going in different directions based on their unique memories of what was decided in the meeting. I've always described those situations as ``progress via Brownian motion''. My motto is: ``Oral tradition has no place in project management''. Works for me anyway. Of course, there's always one person who thinks that what they have to say is so important that everyone will write it down for them. Those are the folks who'll torpedo any online collaboration.
On the other hand, having a 12 hour time difference in team members work schedules like you described would present some problems. But it's nothing that couldn't be solved by both sides shifting their work schedules a bit to have a little bit of overlap. I wouldn't want to do this for a project that was going to run for several months, though. And you might be able to shift schedules around a bit to have overlap, say, one day a week so people can actually get a conference call set up.
I actually prefer situations where tream members communicate via an online forum. Even when there isn't
--
Of course they'd think that. The clowns who used to send advertisements for toner to your Fax machine used to think they were providing a valuable service as well. It's not their fax machine was being tied up.
It almost (and I can't put enough emphasis on that word) makes you want to see ISPs begin charging for every email sent. But, of course, there'd be some ridiculous discount for ``bulk mailing'' like the USPO does that would make smamming affordable and sending an email to grandma expensive.
--
Let's see... In the last few months we've, so far, heard:
Let's add a couple more. You know they're coming:
It boggles the mind that an entity that exists only on paper and by the permission of the government (You remember the government, don't you? That little thing ``By and Of The People''?) has more rights than ordinary citizens. How long before there is a major backlash by the public against the perks handed out to corporations by local, state, and the federal governments? I'm guessing not too long.
--
Then what's with the LA Times? Guess no one there listens to NPR.
I guess I really can't slam 'em too hard, though. I've heard things on the radio or seen them on the 'net before they made it into the Chicago Tribune. I've gotten so used to getting most of my news on the internet that it's getting harder to understand the delays in seeing something in print. And the newpapers' web sites are usually nothing more than electronic versions of the same stories appearing in the daily print edition. I suppose if CNN was available in hard copy form it'd be last week's news too.
--
I heard about this on the radio about two weeks ago. So much for that ``Internet Time'' concept. Either that or the backlog of submissions at Slashdot must be monumental.
I first thought what a stupid idea. Paper phone. Who'd buy one? But then I thought: What a great idea for drug dealers and terrorists! Buy a paper phone at the corner 7-11, negotiate your deal over the paper phone, and toss it in the trash when you're done. ``Sir, we completed the trace on that phone call. It came from a trash can on the corner of 1st and Main.''
Nah, I guess I still think it's a stupid idea. (Which probably means it'll sell like hotcakes.) I wonder if the inventor has put any thought into the litter problem. It's bad enought seeing McDonald's wrapper blowing down the streets of the city. Now we'll see paper cell phones in the gutter. :-)
--
I just got back from a week at Disney World and one of the things that I found most entertaining was the tour of the animation department at Disney/MGM. I didn't see a single Windows machine during the entire tour. Outside of a couple of Apple systems everything else seemed to be UNIX based. The sight of the ``X'' screensaver was quite satisfying.
--
I've read some goofy terms of service for ISP that forbade you from using masquerading. Of course, when you look elsewhere on their web site they sell packages that include the ability to do masquerading. So, basically, they'd be miffed if you bypassed their package (and fee) by doing it yourself.
I don't think it's illegal. You really need to read their ToS and find out what they don't want you doing. If they catch you doing something that they specifically didn't want you doing, they can clobber you.
Ain't nice but I don't think it's illegal. Specially outside the U.S. where some countries have some pretty restrictive telecomm regulations and your ISP may just be the government. For example, I'd hate to be a modem user in Europe; the rates are horribly high.
--
Sorry.
I didn't mean to imply that there's only one web programmer out there. After all, who would they unite with?
There are, in fact, three web programmers. Again, sorry for any confusion.
--
``Users are not seeing the cool stuff we are doing to justify our paychecks. Well, let's just force them to see our nifty pages full of dancing baloney and squinty fonts that could give a lawyer eyestrain.''
Hell, some sites make me long for the days when all I had was lynx. All I am looking for is information, not an Internet experience. And I'm far from alone in feeling this way. I wonder if web developers are aware that when many web users utter ``Whoa!'' when they see a web page, what they meant was ``Whoa! What's all this stuff'' and not ``Whoa! Isn't that cool.''
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Hear, hear. At most companies, R&D is not something that they like spending a lot of resources on. It's done (I want to say ``tolerated'' but that might be too strong a word) to the extent that it sometimes produces something useful that the rest of the company can build, sell, and make huge profits on. (They'd prefer that product ideas sprang, fully developed, from the brow of Athena.) OSS development is more like pure R&D than most companies actually do in the software area. Of course, not all R&D produces a marketable product and not all open source orojects are wildly successful. If it did, maybe we'd have cured the common cold, cancer, and AIDS and all of our software would have natural language interfaces and be crashproof... and we'd have had them years ago. :-)
Microsoft's and other traditional software houses that crow on endlessly about how much they spend on R&D are just trying to impress you with how much of a sacrifice they've made to the bottom line. I'm thinking that Microsoft's problem is that they are spending a ton-o-bucks on what they call R&D and it's not resulting in the same level of innovation that the OSS folks are producing. That's gotta stick in their craw.
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Or, perhaps, some technologies that would probably be covered by munitions export control laws in the US (I'm thinking of the technology that got Toshiba in trouble some years ago involving ultra-quiet submarine props).
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