It seems very disingenuous that these same manufacturers who talk about all the "costs" of bringing CDs to market can do the same marketing, advertising, and distribution for tapes, which cost more to manufacture, and sell them for $7-$8.
The price of CDs are set entirely by demand. They charge as high as they think consumers can stand to pay. The costs on the supply side of the equation have nothing to do with the price because it is not a free market (there is no real competition).
As far as alternatives, I won't pirate, and I don't like the idea of buying and renewing a license to play the White Album and then getting the CD and any other format I want of it at cost. I like owning a piece of media with fair use. It would be interesting, though, to see how such a licensing system would affect these so-called "costs". Maybe we'd just pay a few dollars directly to the artists, who would pay their own studio/production costs, and there would be competition between web sites, CD manufacturers, and a guy down the street with a CD-burner to see who could distribute the actual bits for the lowest price.
I was really surprised by the great lengths that were taken by Charlie Rose in his interview with Travolta yesterday to emphasize that the movie was not about Scientology and that they weren't going to talk about that. It was just strange, because the whole thing sounded defensive, and I've never heard Charlie qualify an interview like that before.
It would be almost like if he were to interview John Rocker and say, "This has nothing to do with anything that might of been said that might have offended anyone, we're just going to talk about baseball."
Needless to say, even with no connection made to Scientology, I failed to see any redeeming qualities in the movie clips that would make me buy a ticket to see this. Apparently this was Travolta's pet project, and it took him 20 years to get enough "clout" in hollywood to get it made. The fact that he had to mention three or four times that George Lucas liked it didn't help either. I'm pretty sure this will be the flop of the summer. With all the qualifying and shameless plugging, it was not one of Charlie's usually outstanding interviews.
I don't think it would make any difference how many wise/. readers became patent examiners at the USPTO. The system in place there would just punish anyone trying to make a difference. Meanwhile, the more expedient examiners will get bonuses and be promoted to supervisor. It is a management problem, and therefore can only be solved with new management.
We need insiders in the Bush and Gore campaigns, who understand the importance of this issue and will work to get the next president to put real scientists in charge of USPTO. They need to end the policies with reward examiners for volume, and provide incentives for nonrigorous approval processes.
This, of course, is about as likely as the FCC coming up with a fair process for the allocation of broadcast spectrum, or the goverment discontinuing the purchase of M$ software.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
I really enjoyed a recent interview of Andy Grove I saw on The Charlie Rose Show, largely because Charlie kept trying to get Andy to say something really powerful, and Andy was seemed very careful. Andy Grove is known as a survivor of prostate cancer, and did a lot of research into the latest treatments and medical knowledge on the disease. So Charlie asked him what Mayor Giuliani should do (because Giuliani recently announced that his doctors detected he has early stages of prostate cancer). Andy said something like, "I can't say what he should do. I will only say what I have experienced. He may find that my experiences are pertinent to his situation..." This is just an example, but throughout the interview Andy consistently spoke equivocally, or qualified his opinions. I think this is really refreshing, since we all know that on the subjects he was talking about he could certainly be considered an authority. I think it's an academic influence that leads people to speak carefully like that.
So I guess I'm really rambling off topic here, but I just wanted to share this because I agree that too many people (especially ACs) speak in absolutes and make claims that they can't support because they don't have the knowledge to defend their opinions.
I can't imagine what Harrison Ford was thinking making a movie about a crazy inventor who wanted to civilize the third world by introducing wood-burning refrigeration and Air Conditioning. It's pretty funny when you think about it. I just remember these natives getting really scared of ice. Only in the 80's, I suppose =)
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand how Chess is a finite game at all. Does that mean there are a finite number of states (which I'd concede), or a finite number of moves (which I wouldn't)? Are there simple enough methods to determine which states are possible and which ones aren't without having to traverse extremely long sets of moves?
I guess I'm conjecturing that maybe there are some states which can only be reached through an extremely long set of moves, so it would take a nearly infinite amount of time to figure out if the state is valid or not. So even though the states are finite, knowing the complete set of valid states on a board could take infinity.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Re:Clarification: "Solve"
on
Solving Chess?
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· Score: 1
Thanks for the explanation. I'm a layman as far as this stuff goes, but I have some doubts that this is solvable. I can't imagine a simple list of moves that could definitely lead to victory, since the opponent could surely move his pieces in some way as to block some of your planned moves. So, I assume that you would need a branching tree of moves and responses.
I'll take your example of "white to win in two." There could be a solution of two moves if the setup is just so. But certainly there could be some setups where checkmate was possible in two moves, but not certain. In these cases, white's second move would depend on black's move. In this case, again depending on the setup, I think you could either have a tree of moves so that no matter what the black does, white has the right move to beat it, or a mixed tree that includes some black moves which preclude checkmate in two. So I think it all depends on the setup and the movements of the opponent.
There's a really interesting passage in Douglas Hofstadler's Godel, Escher, Bach which I think pertains to this topic. It's been a while since I read it, and I don't have the book with me now, so bear with me. He's explaining systems of mathematics, as an introduction to explaining Russell and White's Principia Mathematica. I forget the example he uses, so I'll devise my own. Suppose my system starts with the axiom 5 and the only valid operation is that you can multiply by 2 or 3. So 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 45 are obviously valid numbers in my system. He has a name (which I forget, damn!) for this type of system where the operations only go in one direction. You can take a really high number and determine if it is valid with a simple algorithm. But if I allow a dividing operation, say you can divide by 5. Then it get's more difficult, because you could go back and forth multiplying and dividing in different combinations many many times to get to a number. So if I give you a big number, say a with many decimal digits, and I ask you to prove if it's valid in my system or not, then it's impossible to solve negatively. Just because you've been trying permutations on your supercomputer for twenty years with no solution, doesn't mean you've proven that the number isn't a valid part of my system, so you have to keep calculating, and in the end, I'm not sure if you can ever prove that it isn't, just that perhaps it is when and if do eventually get a solution.
Sorry I couldn't explain that more concisely. Anyway, a game like tic-tac-toe is simple because it goes in one direction. For every possible state there is a finite number of permutations of moves that could have gotten you there. In chess, it's unfortunately the other case. It's like someone said before about the number of moves being greater than the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe. I suppose you could devise a set of rules, to prevent loops, or to limit them to a finite number of repetitions, but that would defeat the purpose of solving the perfect game of chess, since it would depart from the official rules, so then you'd just be looking for optimal moves or practical strategies to help you win in most cases.
Going back to the tic-tac-toe example, I think it's interesting that this simple game cannot be played perfectly. You can guarantee a draw, but you can only win if the opponent makes a mistake. I know this proves nothing, but I venture that with all the additional orders of magnitude of complexity that you have in chess, there can't be a guaranteed way to win.
Without the rule of law, there could be no capitalism. The government has a legitimate responsibility to ensure that companies follow the law. It's not interference with the marketplace, it's protecting the marketplace.
The power of the invisible hand is mighty indeed, but it couldn't have stopped Al Capone from controlling Chicago. Market forces only work when there is a free market. Microsoft has done everything possible to prevent fair competition. They didn't use clubs, but the principle is the same. They're not being punished for their success, they're being punished for their illegal actions.
Whatever beneficial societal changes may or may not be attributable to the MS marketing machine, they have no bearing on this case. Without Bell, we'd still be using telegrams, but it was still better for the public to break up Bell.
Breaking up MS into OS and apps doesn't destroy or even affect Windows, Office, or IE as products. It prevents the MS marketing dept from misusing their monopoly position. You may think differently, but there is very little benefit gained by the integration of apps with the OS. In fact, I see very little integration at all, aside from default file associations, and the fact that MS Office just uses the Windows OS better than competitors, who don't have the same information. IE has been used to enhance the desktop and file manager, but those enhancements could be done independently of the browser.
Remember that Bill Gates didn't write DOS, he bought it. He didn't invent the interface, he copied it. He didn't invent any applications, he just copied and improved competing applications. If MS never existed, we'd be still have PC's, good apps, good OS's. We will never know what things would be like if MS hadn't been around. I won't say things would be better or worse, because I don't know. What I do know is that things would definitely be better if MS had never broken the law.
Has anyone noticed that Microsoft seems to be deliberately trying to piss of the DOJ and state's attorneys general? I'm no fan of MS, but I've always been pretty impressed with their strategy, especially in legal matters. So are they trying to get the worst possible punishment on purpose? Are they betting on reversing the findings of law on appeal by claiming the DOJ was too harsh? I don't get it.
If I were MS, I'd be very quiet right now, with perhaps an occasional mention of how much competition MS faces from Linux, Apache, Oracle, AOL, Sun, etc.
Quite right. Jakob Nielsen wrote an article a while back about the idea of scrapping the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) interface. Unfortunately, he never proposed what should replace it. I'd be interested to see what the open-source community could do with a PDA.
When everyone telnets to your PDA via wireless internet, it will work a lot better if it runs a true multi-user operating system.;)
Actually, good point. What's wrong with Palm? I guess I fail to see the benefit of a CLI in a device with no keyboard. On the other hand, Linux would allow application developers to make completely customized user interfaces for their clients.
Your mom and my mom should form a mutual support group. I can't say RTFM to her, I'm like, "please, please read the f-, um, manual I bought you."
Damn MS for designing an interface that lets you change things you don't want to change, instilling fear in the hearts of newbies who know not where they just clicked.
I think the problems you describe aren't a symptom of the new "faster" society, but the fact that our society is in transition from the Industrial Age to whatever we end up calling this new world we're now steppping into. Older people often talk about the 50's or the 40's as a good time, without all these problems you mention. I don't think it's because people were better then, but that society was more constant. That was the peak of the Industrial Age, and everyone understood how the world worked. Kids knew what was and wasn't morally acceptable. They knew when they were ready to get married. Young people knew the path to success was hard work and education. Workers knew to be loyal to their employers. Government knew how to control and manage the economy. I could go on.
We're probably smarter and better informed today, but as a society we don't know the things that affect our lives the way earlier people did because they cannot be determined in this age of transition. Our technology has given us more choices and we just haven't come to a consensus about things yet.
We may never again have a time of slow change like our grandparents had, but in another 20 or 30 years, we will have figured out better ways of dealing with constant change. I think younger people today are more comfortable with the fast pace of change than older generations. The fact that Gen Y are still teenagers makes them appear to have more problems, but teenagers always have problems. If you look at Gen X, I think you see a lot of young professionals who are comfortable with our technology and the pace of change. A lot of Gen Xers are waiting to have families, wishing not to repeat the mistakes of their parents.
I think in 20 years things won't seem so crazy, they'll just seem "normal". And I'm hoping the internet will eliminate waiting in line.
I don't know how many times I've burned the popcorn because I couldn't just wait four minutes to listen for when it stops popping. I'll always try to find something to do for three minutes, and then I'll come back to the popcorn just in time to stop it. Of course about a third of the time I get distracted and forget to turn off the popcorn. As bad as burnt popcorn smells, you'd think I'd have learned by now, but I just can't stand the thought of wasting three minutes!
Re:Missing references & Third Wave
on
Faster
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· Score: 1
Actually it's Power Shift. I've only read The Third Wave, but I plan to read the others (when I get time;)
The Third Wave, even after 20 years, is a great book, mostly for the way it elucidates the way the changes we've seen in our lifetimes are not just a new trend. Toffler sees this as the "third wave" of civilization, with the first being the rise of agriculture and settlement, and the second being the Industrial Revolution. His predictions about what the third wave will be about haven't all panned out (he predicted undersea settlement), but his most valuable insight (to me, at least) is the idea that this new age we're in is separate from and will gradually replace the Industrial Revolution. Toffler's analysis of how the Industrial Revolution changed the world, through centralization of power/control, standardization, credentialism replacing apprenticeship, synchronization of our daily lives (think rush hour) is right on the mark. I think his hypothesis that all these things must soon change is true also, although the power structures of the Industrial Age are reluctant to let go. It will be interesting to see what replaces these industrial age dinosaurs:
Anyone else notice the similarities between Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen?
Let's see:
all powerful gold ring, which eventually destroys anyone who wears it
mythological humanoid races
epic plot/story/character development
innocent hero who must carry the ring as a surrogate for the more noble side of a power struggle between larger forces
ultimate end is the destruction of the ring as an implement of power
political implications?
I would need a re-reading of the Tolkien Ring cycle to find more similarities. For anyone reading who hasn't been interested in opera before, I highly recommend Wagner's ring cycle. The music is nothing like prissy Italian opera. It's more like John Williams' soundtrack to the Star Wars Trilogy, only darker and more complex. Ok, end plug.
I had a different experience with the original Star Wars Trilogy. The gap between the movies just intensified the adventure. It took me three years playing with my homemade "Hoth" and "Bespin" playsets before they got old to me. I had quite an elaborate trap-door carbon-freezing mechanism for Bespin (back then I only knew it as "Cloud City"). Before these I just imagined the beige carpet as the desert of Tatooine, and a small shipping box filled with those foam "peanuts" made a great Death Star trash compactor.
Boy, this brings back memories! Anyway, I like the anticipation that the gaps built up for me, and I wonder if today's kids don't really care about Star Wars because they see it as yet another in a long series of toy fads (i.e. Power rangers, pokemon, etc). I wonder if I'll be able to impress my own kids with the significance of Star Wars some day, if they see the movies all at once.
I agree that most people don't need to encrypt their email, but privacy is only one of many legitimate uses for encryption. As the web expands from mostly commercial information to (hopefully) more information written by ordinary individuals, encryption will be an important tool for authentication.
If Neal Stephenson posted a comment on Slashdot, or sent an email to a newsgroup, most people would doubt its authenticity. We rely on old-fashioned methods (like journalistic integrity) to verify the source of information. Encryption is the only way to open up the element of trust, so that trustworthy information can flow freely, without having to go through the "gatekeepers" of traditional media.
You're right, it would be better if they GPLed PalmOS. Handspring pays for a license. Still, can't I cheer for Palm to crush WinCE?:^D OSS/Free or not, defeating M$, IMHO, is a noble cause.
I read that the reason they (the two Palm founders who left 3COM and started Handspring) left was to be able to build more devices using the PalmOS. The Visor is the first step, but I think they could make a killer e-book. A Steno-pad sized PalmOS device would be a real laptop-killer for most simple uses.
BTW, they make more money and give up less control and ownership with an IPO than with more VC.
Palm should welcome the competition from Handspring. It makes the Palm OS more widely accepted, while keeping their feet to the fire on hardware. The result will be the dominance of Palm OS over CE. The competition seems to be quite friendly, since the two product can work together harmoniously. It ends up benefitting consumers as well, by encouraging hardware innovation and keeping prices competitive.
The only advantage that WinCE had over Palm was that there was healthy competition among the hardware makers. That advantage is now gone. (Oh, and color, too)
I predict the HS IPO will be very successful and that HS and Palm will both be very healthy companies for some time to come as they take more and more marketshare away from WinCE.
As a Navy guy, I must disagree. You are correct that the Navy moves slow with IT. But that's why Linux would be ideal. With Linux, you don't have to upgrade hardware and software every 2-3 years. When you learn how to do something, you don't have to relearn it with each new OS update. Also the Navy already has sailors and technicians who are trained to use commercial Unix for various systems. Those skills could be easily transferred to Linux.
The biggest obstacle to DoD adoption of Linux is mindshare. The guys in charge are not geeks, they believe every lie that ever came out of Redmond, their knowledge of technology is about five years behind the power curve, and they cling to an outdated (non-open source-centric) view of how software should be purchased and supported.
Slashdot Mirror
The price of CDs are set entirely by demand. They charge as high as they think consumers can stand to pay. The costs on the supply side of the equation have nothing to do with the price because it is not a free market (there is no real competition).
As far as alternatives, I won't pirate, and I don't like the idea of buying and renewing a license to play the White Album and then getting the CD and any other format I want of it at cost. I like owning a piece of media with fair use. It would be interesting, though, to see how such a licensing system would affect these so-called "costs". Maybe we'd just pay a few dollars directly to the artists, who would pay their own studio/production costs, and there would be competition between web sites, CD manufacturers, and a guy down the street with a CD-burner to see who could distribute the actual bits for the lowest price.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
It would be almost like if he were to interview John Rocker and say, "This has nothing to do with anything that might of been said that might have offended anyone, we're just going to talk about baseball."
Needless to say, even with no connection made to Scientology, I failed to see any redeeming qualities in the movie clips that would make me buy a ticket to see this. Apparently this was Travolta's pet project, and it took him 20 years to get enough "clout" in hollywood to get it made. The fact that he had to mention three or four times that George Lucas liked it didn't help either. I'm pretty sure this will be the flop of the summer. With all the qualifying and shameless plugging, it was not one of Charlie's usually outstanding interviews.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
We need insiders in the Bush and Gore campaigns, who understand the importance of this issue and will work to get the next president to put real scientists in charge of USPTO. They need to end the policies with reward examiners for volume, and provide incentives for nonrigorous approval processes.
This, of course, is about as likely as the FCC coming up with a fair process for the allocation of broadcast spectrum, or the goverment discontinuing the purchase of M$ software.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
I really enjoyed a recent interview of Andy Grove I saw on The Charlie Rose Show, largely because Charlie kept trying to get Andy to say something really powerful, and Andy was seemed very careful. Andy Grove is known as a survivor of prostate cancer, and did a lot of research into the latest treatments and medical knowledge on the disease. So Charlie asked him what Mayor Giuliani should do (because Giuliani recently announced that his doctors detected he has early stages of prostate cancer). Andy said something like, "I can't say what he should do. I will only say what I have experienced. He may find that my experiences are pertinent to his situation..." This is just an example, but throughout the interview Andy consistently spoke equivocally, or qualified his opinions. I think this is really refreshing, since we all know that on the subjects he was talking about he could certainly be considered an authority. I think it's an academic influence that leads people to speak carefully like that.
So I guess I'm really rambling off topic here, but I just wanted to share this because I agree that too many people (especially ACs) speak in absolutes and make claims that they can't support because they don't have the knowledge to defend their opinions.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
I guess I'm conjecturing that maybe there are some states which can only be reached through an extremely long set of moves, so it would take a nearly infinite amount of time to figure out if the state is valid or not. So even though the states are finite, knowing the complete set of valid states on a board could take infinity.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
I'll take your example of "white to win in two." There could be a solution of two moves if the setup is just so. But certainly there could be some setups where checkmate was possible in two moves, but not certain. In these cases, white's second move would depend on black's move. In this case, again depending on the setup, I think you could either have a tree of moves so that no matter what the black does, white has the right move to beat it, or a mixed tree that includes some black moves which preclude checkmate in two. So I think it all depends on the setup and the movements of the opponent.
There's a really interesting passage in Douglas Hofstadler's Godel, Escher, Bach which I think pertains to this topic. It's been a while since I read it, and I don't have the book with me now, so bear with me. He's explaining systems of mathematics, as an introduction to explaining Russell and White's Principia Mathematica. I forget the example he uses, so I'll devise my own. Suppose my system starts with the axiom 5 and the only valid operation is that you can multiply by 2 or 3. So 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 45 are obviously valid numbers in my system. He has a name (which I forget, damn!) for this type of system where the operations only go in one direction. You can take a really high number and determine if it is valid with a simple algorithm. But if I allow a dividing operation, say you can divide by 5. Then it get's more difficult, because you could go back and forth multiplying and dividing in different combinations many many times to get to a number. So if I give you a big number, say a with many decimal digits, and I ask you to prove if it's valid in my system or not, then it's impossible to solve negatively. Just because you've been trying permutations on your supercomputer for twenty years with no solution, doesn't mean you've proven that the number isn't a valid part of my system, so you have to keep calculating, and in the end, I'm not sure if you can ever prove that it isn't, just that perhaps it is when and if do eventually get a solution.
Sorry I couldn't explain that more concisely. Anyway, a game like tic-tac-toe is simple because it goes in one direction. For every possible state there is a finite number of permutations of moves that could have gotten you there. In chess, it's unfortunately the other case. It's like someone said before about the number of moves being greater than the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe. I suppose you could devise a set of rules, to prevent loops, or to limit them to a finite number of repetitions, but that would defeat the purpose of solving the perfect game of chess, since it would depart from the official rules, so then you'd just be looking for optimal moves or practical strategies to help you win in most cases.
Going back to the tic-tac-toe example, I think it's interesting that this simple game cannot be played perfectly. You can guarantee a draw, but you can only win if the opponent makes a mistake. I know this proves nothing, but I venture that with all the additional orders of magnitude of complexity that you have in chess, there can't be a guaranteed way to win.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
The power of the invisible hand is mighty indeed, but it couldn't have stopped Al Capone from controlling Chicago. Market forces only work when there is a free market. Microsoft has done everything possible to prevent fair competition. They didn't use clubs, but the principle is the same. They're not being punished for their success, they're being punished for their illegal actions.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Breaking up MS into OS and apps doesn't destroy or even affect Windows, Office, or IE as products. It prevents the MS marketing dept from misusing their monopoly position. You may think differently, but there is very little benefit gained by the integration of apps with the OS. In fact, I see very little integration at all, aside from default file associations, and the fact that MS Office just uses the Windows OS better than competitors, who don't have the same information. IE has been used to enhance the desktop and file manager, but those enhancements could be done independently of the browser.
Remember that Bill Gates didn't write DOS, he bought it. He didn't invent the interface, he copied it. He didn't invent any applications, he just copied and improved competing applications. If MS never existed, we'd be still have PC's, good apps, good OS's. We will never know what things would be like if MS hadn't been around. I won't say things would be better or worse, because I don't know. What I do know is that things would definitely be better if MS had never broken the law.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
If I were MS, I'd be very quiet right now, with perhaps an occasional mention of how much competition MS faces from Linux, Apache, Oracle, AOL, Sun, etc.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Actually, good point. What's wrong with Palm? I guess I fail to see the benefit of a CLI in a device with no keyboard. On the other hand, Linux would allow application developers to make completely customized user interfaces for their clients.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Damn MS for designing an interface that lets you change things you don't want to change, instilling fear in the hearts of newbies who know not where they just clicked.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
We're probably smarter and better informed today, but as a society we don't know the things that affect our lives the way earlier people did because they cannot be determined in this age of transition. Our technology has given us more choices and we just haven't come to a consensus about things yet.
We may never again have a time of slow change like our grandparents had, but in another 20 or 30 years, we will have figured out better ways of dealing with constant change. I think younger people today are more comfortable with the fast pace of change than older generations. The fact that Gen Y are still teenagers makes them appear to have more problems, but teenagers always have problems. If you look at Gen X, I think you see a lot of young professionals who are comfortable with our technology and the pace of change. A lot of Gen Xers are waiting to have families, wishing not to repeat the mistakes of their parents.
I think in 20 years things won't seem so crazy, they'll just seem "normal". And I'm hoping the internet will eliminate waiting in line.
I don't know how many times I've burned the popcorn because I couldn't just wait four minutes to listen for when it stops popping. I'll always try to find something to do for three minutes, and then I'll come back to the popcorn just in time to stop it. Of course about a third of the time I get distracted and forget to turn off the popcorn. As bad as burnt popcorn smells, you'd think I'd have learned by now, but I just can't stand the thought of wasting three minutes!
The Third Wave, even after 20 years, is a great book, mostly for the way it elucidates the way the changes we've seen in our lifetimes are not just a new trend. Toffler sees this as the "third wave" of civilization, with the first being the rise of agriculture and settlement, and the second being the Industrial Revolution. His predictions about what the third wave will be about haven't all panned out (he predicted undersea settlement), but his most valuable insight (to me, at least) is the idea that this new age we're in is separate from and will gradually replace the Industrial Revolution. Toffler's analysis of how the Industrial Revolution changed the world, through centralization of power/control, standardization, credentialism replacing apprenticeship, synchronization of our daily lives (think rush hour) is right on the mark. I think his hypothesis that all these things must soon change is true also, although the power structures of the Industrial Age are reluctant to let go. It will be interesting to see what replaces these industrial age dinosaurs:
Let's see:
I would need a re-reading of the Tolkien Ring cycle to find more similarities. For anyone reading who hasn't been interested in opera before, I highly recommend Wagner's ring cycle. The music is nothing like prissy Italian opera. It's more like John Williams' soundtrack to the Star Wars Trilogy, only darker and more complex. Ok, end plug.
Boy, this brings back memories! Anyway, I like the anticipation that the gaps built up for me, and I wonder if today's kids don't really care about Star Wars because they see it as yet another in a long series of toy fads (i.e. Power rangers, pokemon, etc). I wonder if I'll be able to impress my own kids with the significance of Star Wars some day, if they see the movies all at once.
If Neal Stephenson posted a comment on Slashdot, or sent an email to a newsgroup, most people would doubt its authenticity. We rely on old-fashioned methods (like journalistic integrity) to verify the source of information. Encryption is the only way to open up the element of trust, so that trustworthy information can flow freely, without having to go through the "gatekeepers" of traditional media.
or, for another example, read Genesis chapter 1, the part about the snake.
I read that the reason they (the two Palm founders who left 3COM and started Handspring) left was to be able to build more devices using the PalmOS. The Visor is the first step, but I think they could make a killer e-book. A Steno-pad sized PalmOS device would be a real laptop-killer for most simple uses.
BTW, they make more money and give up less control and ownership with an IPO than with more VC.
The only advantage that WinCE had over Palm was that there was healthy competition among the hardware makers. That advantage is now gone. (Oh, and color, too)
I predict the HS IPO will be very successful and that HS and Palm will both be very healthy companies for some time to come as they take more and more marketshare away from WinCE.
The biggest obstacle to DoD adoption of Linux is mindshare. The guys in charge are not geeks, they believe every lie that ever came out of Redmond, their knowledge of technology is about five years behind the power curve, and they cling to an outdated (non-open source-centric) view of how software should be purchased and supported.