With the combined democrat vote in the lower house, the coalition and Democrats had a clear mandate of both majority of voters and majority of states to introduce the legislation.
But the democrats had said they wouldn't support a GST. Then, once they'd got the votes and got the seats, Meg changed her mind and the democrats swung the GST in.
I've never voted democrat, and after Meg's duplicity I never will.
Quite possibly. I'm pretty sure the Apple II had a Microsoft BASIC. And the C128 definitely had a Microsoft BASIC. Grepping the C128 roms turns up "(C)1977 MICROSOFT CORP".
But the BASIC wasn't what made these computers sell well. The "killer" games and apps for these computers didn't use BASIC at all. They all wrote directly to the hardware.
This was what I meant when I said Microsoft played a small but non-important role in these earlier consoles.
$1500 for a SQL Server license is NOTHING compared to an equivalent license from IBM and especially Oracle
If you want to talk cheap then you are better off with PostgreSQL or even MySQL. Seeing as you already poo-poo'd Oracle and DB2 despite them being technically superior, proving that you are not interested in technical merits, you might as well pick the cheapest database.
While Oracle is a superior product and DB2 has its advantages, nothing is as easy to use and flexible as SQL 7 or SQL 2000.
These are databases, not e-mail clients. The fact that you consider "easy-to-use" a necessary feature for a database is ludicrous. Databases aren't useful by themselves. You additionally need the ability to program SQL and some variation of frontend language. This is PROGRAMMER TERRITORY, and so you should not be using the same criteria to select a database as you would pick an e-mail client or word processor.
This is a clear sign of the declining quality of computer professionals. You can read as much disgust into the emphasized word as you see fit. You apparently think the first criteria for choosing a database isn't data-integrity, robustness, transaction speed, rollback features, data-type support, customer support, or any other "true" criteria. You seem to think that the most important criteria is that you can click a mouse button and get a list of options. You have your priorities completely messed up.
Linux was released in 1991. It was usable for my purposes in 1992 (I dumped Interactive for it).
So you expect secretaries to have moved to Linux in 1992?
I did say my purposes. Afterall, we were talking about databases, so in context I hadn't really thought that secretaries were the main issue here.
But on the matter of secretaries. Keep in mind that UNIX was invented so patent typists - i.e. secretaries - could enter information. My first computer-related job was in 1991 and involved upgrading an ISC system which had 10 VT100 dumb terminals hooked off a serial board. It was used by - wait for it - 10 secretaries who used vi and troff for preparing letters and invoices. I think people often underestimate the high intelligence required to be a good secretary.
No, when Word started to take the market is when it had a version in Windows that introduced a novel concept: WYSIWYG.
I was of course talking about Word for DOS, which began to supplant WordPerfect because Word shipped "for free" on new PCs. This should have been obvious from my reference to MultiMate: the CPM/DOS word processor.
But your point is wrong anyway. There were WYSIWYG word processors in the 80s for the Amiga, the Atari, the Macintosh, etc. Microsoft even had a graphical version of Word on the Macintosh many years before Word for Windows appeared. And they certainly weren't the 1st WYSIWYG word processor for the Macintosh. Heck, I remember running some crappy WYSIWYG word processor on my C64.
I'm almost certain that GEM had a rather good WYSIWYG word processor as well, so that means you could have gotten WYSIWYG word processing on your IBM-PC before Windows even existed.
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
Ok, 2 faults here. First, you're completely wrong. There were a wealth of personal computers before MS came along. The C64, the TRS-80, the Apple-II, the BBC Micro. MS had some minor parts in some of these computers, but they certainly weren't instrumental in making computers affordable. If any single person could possibly make that claim it would be Wozniak.
Second fault, you are implying causation when all you have is correlation. Computer prices were dropping ANYWAY.
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market;
Microsoft Windows has consistently gotten more expensive. It has quadrupled in price since the first real release (Windows 3.0) even when taking out the effect of inflation.
they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle,
Nonsense! SQL Server is junk. People who deal with large/complicated datasets recommend either DB2 (the proper mainframe version) or Oracle. MS SQL Server is a toy.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992 what competition was there?
MacOS, GEOS, Desq-View, OpenLook, CDE, OS/2, GEM, WorkBench,... Every single one of them was arguably better in at least one category. And I would say that 3 from the above list were better than Windows 3.1 in every category.
Certainly not Linux.
Linux was released in 1991. It was usable for my purposes in 1992 (I dumped Interactive for it).
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
More confusion over the difference between correlation and causation. Here's an extreme example of your mistake: 100% of people who ate carrots in the 1800s are now dead. Your logic produces the conclusion that carrots cause people to die. This is because you confuse correlation with causation.
(believe me - just check the price of a spreadsheet 20 years ago),
Check the price of computer hardware 20 years ago. Microsoft doesn't produce hardware, yet you would seemingly give them credit for the reduction in hardware prices too.
Damaging Microsoft would damage the consumer. What do you want people to use? Star Office?
When Word started to dominate the market it was demonstrably inferior to WordPerfect. Word had an inferior interface. Word was slower and consumed more disk. Word corrupted your documents on a regular basis. Word supported fewer printers. Word had fewer features. At the time I always thought Word was a rather poor knockoff of MultiMate, and nowhere near as good as WordPerfect.
So why is Word dominant today? It certainly isn't because Word was a better product.
Let me put it this way: if you went to court over what you thought was an unfair and illegal term in your apartment rental contract, would you expect the judge to simply say the contract was broken and therefore you must move out immediately or face trespassing charges (since the landlord owns the apartment)? Of course not, you'd expect him to change the contract, possibly nullifying odious restrictions, without asking for your landlord's permission. Judges can do that when presented with an illegal contract.
Exactly! The classic example is Fleetwood Mac against their label. The label company had put some ridiculous clauses into the contract, and the young naive members of Fleetwood Mac signed without consulting legal advice. They got screwed heavily in terms of royalties and touring. They took the label to court: the judge ruled that the contract was UNFAIR and had it invalidated. The label company then had to renegotiate with a very successful and popular band which now had enough money to hire lawyers. Fleetwood Mac got a fairer deal by the end of it.
Judges use the law to guide them, but they are not afraid to "ignore" the law when it is clearly unfair. This is why judges are supposed to be (a) very smart (b) very honest (c) very experienced.
...that courts will rule that GPL'd software is in the public domain,
Nonsense. If the GPL is found to have no legal grounding then the software license reverts to the standard copyright, which means NOBODY except the author can distribute the code. The author is then free to pick a license other than the GPL (presumably the GPLv3 which corrects whatever is found lacking).
For a court to rule that GPL'd code is public domain is to steal intellectual property from the author and give it to the public. No court has ever done this. It would create such a dangerous precedent that even GPL hating companies like Microsoft would oppose such a ruling. It would be the destruction of ALL intellectual property.
In other words, Microsoft representatives warned, "anyone who adds or innovates under the GPL agrees to make the resulting code, in its entirety, available for all to use "
It only took them more than a decade to figure this out. What a crack legal team.
... [which] might constrain innovating stemming from taxpayer-funded software development."
This is particularly amusing. Apparently the word "innovation" now means "take existing code someone else wrote, and sell it as your own after making possibly trivial changes". The BSD comments preceding this quote seem to support that conclusion as well.
It also shows a complete lack of understanding of the nature of open source. It's a GLOBAL effort, not an effort funded solely by the USA taxpayers. If it was possible to measure value to the Open Source community as contributed by country, I'm sure Australia and Finland would be at or very near the top.
So perhaps Australia should send a great big invoice to the USA government, demanding payment for all the code the USA has been using for free? No, because that's not the point of open source. The point of open source is to increase the value of software to SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, not to the select few individuals that happen to be in the right place at the right time when IBM decides to throw money around looking for a cheap OS for a rushed personal computer project.
The NVIDIA drivers fully exploit their hardware - the same cannot be said about any of the open source drivers at the present time.
And this one deserves special comment, because it's borderline insulting. From dri-devel, MGA400 driver that Gareth has just done some work on:
Windows 98 - 58fps in Q3A demo001
Linux/DRI - 72fps in Q3A demo001
The DRI is already pushing the limits of most of the hardware it supports. Mesa has recently gone through significant re-architecture work to prepare for the limits of future hardware.
I don't know about the device the article author is referring to, but the USB key I played with could do challenge/response, so it must have had an onboard CPU.
This thing is JUST A DISK...
The article's device might be. That's why I made it clear that I was playing with a different device. There's really no need for you to fly off the handle like this. Makes you look weird.
I've played with one of these devices which looked like a key, plugged in the USB port, and had a private encryption key on it (in addition to the storage space). The device came with Windows 2000 software that encrypted your files and you needed to insert the key and type a passcode to decrypt the files.
A company I know is experimenting with these devices to see if they can modify PAM to use the USB keys. The concept is in many ways similar to the Java ring that McNealy demonstrated in 1999, but the key shape is (I think) more convenient to store, carry, and definitely more convenient to plugin to your computer.
Four problems I noted while playing with one of these devices.
First, the model I was using was made out of cheap plastic. It felt flimsy and lightweight. I keep my key chain in my jeans pocket, and I was concerned the flimsy plastic would break (which would be an absolute disaster).
Second, when the USB key is on your keychain it is REALLY inconvenient to plug it into the USB port on a laptop. Your keys get in the way and the weight of the keys dangles down and puts huge stress on the USB key. If the USB key becomes at all popular, I can see a strong market for those little retractable cords that some people use with their ID cards.
Third, the USB key is actually quite thick. On my laptop - which has two USB ports close to each other - you couldn't use the second port while the key was plugged in. The company had thought of this and supplied a small extension cord, but this wasn't at all convenient to carry around.
Fourth, a thought experiment rather than an actual experience. When you lose your house keys you curse a lot, then you hire a locksmith to bust into your house and change your locks. If you lose your USB key then there's no recourse. If I had highly precious data, I'd be storing it all on backup tape UNENCRYPTED, or I'd be making sure there were copies of the USB key stored in multiple (safe) deposit boxes.
And I said light BULB. I also later stated you should move over to energy saving globes, which are simply compact fluoros.
46" (115CM): 220W.
Which is trivially close to my 300W.
317W Now, on to my computer... 14" Monitor: 80W
HDD 12v@500mA, 5v@1200mA: 12W Mobo/CPU: 80W CD-ROM drive (playing CD): ~50W Cable modem: 20W Speakers: 50W nominal miscellaneous other things: 50W Total: 342W well there ya go.
Seeing as I never mentioned computer OR monitor (I only mentioned motherboard/CPU or hard disk) I honestly can't see what you're trying to argue here. If you work out your HDD there: 12*0.5 + 5*1.2 = 12W. That's pretty close to the 10-20W figure I gave! And your motherboard/CPU is very unlikely to be 12W: the Pentium-4 is 55W just by itself.
Next time you try and burst someone's bubble, try a little harder.
So what's my point? Leaving a light bulb on overnight is far more wasteful. Watching TV for 2 hours is far more wasteful. Having a hot shower rather than a cold shower is more wasteful. Using an air conditioner rather than opening a window (or having a properly designed house) is far more wasteful.
Try saving power in the real world first, then start worrying about the piddling small amounts of power consumed by your 20W hard disk. Turn off some light bulbs, use energy saving globes, don't use the air conditioner, have a cold shower, go read a book rather than watch the 80cm TV, ride a bicycle rather than drive that car to the local supermarket. These are all REAL energy savings.
Sorry Andover / VA Linux, Sourceforge is too slow. I like Freshmeat
If you just use freshmeat/sourceforge as sites to leech software, sure you'll probably like freshmeat more than sourceforge.
But if you develop software then there is no comparison. Sourceforge has bug tracking, patch managers, technical support, CVS archives, maillist admins, maillist archives, etc, etc.
I like Freshmeat too. I use it for finding the odd piece of software when it is not in Debian. But there's no comparison to Sourceforge for code development in an online working group.
Sourceforge is easily the best online project managing software I've ever used. It balances neatly between open-source requirements (public mailing lists, constant availability of source) and private requirements for developers (private areas, admin areas, shell accounts, etc).
Fair enough. But...they still run on petroleum gasoline, don't they? The better ones might not use quite as much of it, and they might burn it a bit more cleanly, but certainly we're not seeing any real, fundamental progress there. Where are the solar cars? The electric cars? The fuel cells?
You're looking in the wrong places. You seem to think your local car dealer is going to sell you the latest most revolutionary car there is. Wrong. Your local car dealer will sell something that's guaranteed to sell. That's going to be a boring standard nothing-revolutionary car.
There have been revolutionary new engines: for example the orbital engine which is 2x more powerful and 1/2 the weight and gets 3x the fuel efficiency.
But you'll never see this engine sold in a car from your local dealer.
It's economics. The infrastructure is nearly impossible to displace that quickly. There are 100s of billions of dollars invested into primary and secondary manufacturing plants, training and education for post-production mechanical repairs, secondary production for parts suppliers, etc.
It takes time to displace infrastructure. The biggest problem facing fuel cell cars right now isn't the car (they are powerful enough, and are safe enough). It's the fact that you'll get one tank's worth of driving then you'll not find any pumping stations to refuel at.
You're wrong if you think revolutionary change isn't going on. It's just that the infrastructure resists change. The revolution occurs quietly and in niche areas first.
It's like the auto industry -- we can make some mighty fancy looking cars now, but they still all go 65 mph down the highway.
Oh yeah, except for the fact that road deaths are down from their all-time high of 50,000 dead per year (USA) in the 60s. All thanks to Nader's perseverance and the auto industry's realisation that people actually do want to live.
Oh, and that cars are now get 3x the mileage than their 60s predecessors. The exception being the recent (mostly USA) trend towards great big behemoth trucks instead of cars. Regardless, the engine is still more efficient.
Oh, and the introduction of car computers and
fuel injection and traction control and antilock braking and 4-wheel steering. The use of lighter alloys and stronger frames and safer rollcages.
Looking only at a car's speed is a ridiculous way to measure progress. Sure, it's evolutionary not revolutionary. This doesn't justify a stupid claim that cars today aren't any better than the cars of yesteryear.
the safest and cleanest method of power generation... nuclear plants
While I agree with you that nuclear is safer and cleaner than coal/oil/gas, it's certainly not CHEAPER. Nuclear power has many hidden costs that make coal/oil the most economic.
And I'd disagree that nuclear is safer or cleaner than wind/solar/geothermal/wavepower. Unfortunately none of these cleaner/safer sources have proven to be cheap either.
Do people ever stop and think about whether a given development is a good thing or not, before pushing forward on it?
Science isn't a "good" thing nor a "bad" thing, anymore than knowledge is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. Science and knowledge and "pushing forwards" the boundaries of understanding are entirely orthogonal to concepts like "good" and "bad".
It's what people do with the knowledge that we can judge as being "good" or "bad".
Occasionally the way the science is conducted can also be seen as "good" or "bad".
But never make the mistake of thinking that science itself is "good" or "bad".
I'd hate to think that our ability to gain knowledge was restricted by anything other than intelligence and dedication.
They cite the large uncompressed format as a deterrent against Internet copying. Are they completely naive?
People don't copy DVD data directly over the Internet. First it's ripped from DVD to disk. Then the raw data is compressed to MPEG4 and MP3, resulting in approximately 600megabytes of data.
At no point is the 9gigabytes or so of DVD data sent over the Internet.
So what does D-VHS buy you? People will get the raw data onto their hard disks even if they have to resort to framegrabbers. Then the compressed 600megabytes image is created just as before.
The D-VHS marketting department must have been really struggling for something good to say, if this is the best they can come up with.
I was faced every day with fellow students who were SO SURE that they were smarter than me.
This is completely normal computer-instilled arrogance though. Every single computing student or worker I've ever met has been like this. The average IT worker has to be the most ego-driven person on the face of the planet.
I honestly think you're overreacting. I don't have the first-hand knowledge that you've had to your own encounters, but I do know that what you have said so far sounds exactly like what I have experienced as a middle-aged white male.
Everywhere I've worked (UNIX Systems Admin/Engineering) I've been seen as a remarkably compentent, skilled worker....until I meet the customer face-to-face.
And how old are you? How do you dress? Do you have punk style hair? Is your speech "refined" or do you speak l337? Do you sport a goatee or some other form of "irresponsible" beard? Do you have annoying habits like shifting your feet, picking your nose, using huge hand gestures, putting your hands in your pockets, scratching your crotch?
I've seen exactly the same situation you have just described, only it happened to a young white male who happens to like his hair coloured blue and studs in his lips. On the phone he sounds not at all unusual. When customers meet him face to face they fully freak out.
I guarantee he's either got parents as priviliged as most of yours, or he worked his ASS off to get to where he is now.
And I don't see how this particular situation is caused by skin colour. Of course, if you come from a privileged family then you'll have a 1st rate head start in computing. If you come from a poorer family then you'll need to work your ARSE off to get anywhere in computing. But this is an economic situation and it applies equally to all people of all skin colours.
Though I don't often say this, it seems to me you've got a great big chip on your shoulder.
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But the democrats had said they wouldn't support a GST. Then, once they'd got the votes and got the seats, Meg changed her mind and the democrats swung the GST in.
I've never voted democrat, and after Meg's duplicity I never will.
Quite possibly. I'm pretty sure the Apple II had a Microsoft BASIC. And the C128 definitely had a Microsoft BASIC. Grepping the C128 roms turns up "(C)1977 MICROSOFT CORP".
But the BASIC wasn't what made these computers sell well. The "killer" games and apps for these computers didn't use BASIC at all. They all wrote directly to the hardware.
This was what I meant when I said Microsoft played a small but non-important role in these earlier consoles.
If you want to talk cheap then you are better off with PostgreSQL or even MySQL. Seeing as you already poo-poo'd Oracle and DB2 despite them being technically superior, proving that you are not interested in technical merits, you might as well pick the cheapest database.
These are databases, not e-mail clients. The fact that you consider "easy-to-use" a necessary feature for a database is ludicrous. Databases aren't useful by themselves. You additionally need the ability to program SQL and some variation of frontend language. This is PROGRAMMER TERRITORY, and so you should not be using the same criteria to select a database as you would pick an e-mail client or word processor.
This is a clear sign of the declining quality of computer professionals. You can read as much disgust into the emphasized word as you see fit. You apparently think the first criteria for choosing a database isn't data-integrity, robustness, transaction speed, rollback features, data-type support, customer support, or any other "true" criteria. You seem to think that the most important criteria is that you can click a mouse button and get a list of options. You have your priorities completely messed up.
I did say my purposes. Afterall, we were talking about databases, so in context I hadn't really thought that secretaries were the main issue here.
But on the matter of secretaries. Keep in mind that UNIX was invented so patent typists - i.e. secretaries - could enter information. My first computer-related job was in 1991 and involved upgrading an ISC system which had 10 VT100 dumb terminals hooked off a serial board. It was used by - wait for it - 10 secretaries who used vi and troff for preparing letters and invoices. I think people often underestimate the high intelligence required to be a good secretary.
I was of course talking about Word for DOS, which began to supplant WordPerfect because Word shipped "for free" on new PCs. This should have been obvious from my reference to MultiMate: the CPM/DOS word processor.
But your point is wrong anyway. There were WYSIWYG word processors in the 80s for the Amiga, the Atari, the Macintosh, etc. Microsoft even had a graphical version of Word on the Macintosh many years before Word for Windows appeared. And they certainly weren't the 1st WYSIWYG word processor for the Macintosh. Heck, I remember running some crappy WYSIWYG word processor on my C64.
I'm almost certain that GEM had a rather good WYSIWYG word processor as well, so that means you could have gotten WYSIWYG word processing on your IBM-PC before Windows even existed.
Ok, 2 faults here. First, you're completely wrong. There were a wealth of personal computers before MS came along. The C64, the TRS-80, the Apple-II, the BBC Micro. MS had some minor parts in some of these computers, but they certainly weren't instrumental in making computers affordable. If any single person could possibly make that claim it would be Wozniak.
Second fault, you are implying causation when all you have is correlation. Computer prices were dropping ANYWAY.
Microsoft Windows has consistently gotten more expensive. It has quadrupled in price since the first real release (Windows 3.0) even when taking out the effect of inflation.
Nonsense! SQL Server is junk. People who deal with large/complicated datasets recommend either DB2 (the proper mainframe version) or Oracle. MS SQL Server is a toy.
MacOS, GEOS, Desq-View, OpenLook, CDE, OS/2, GEM, WorkBench, ... Every single one of them was arguably better in at least one category. And I would say that 3 from the above list were better than Windows 3.1 in every category.
Linux was released in 1991. It was usable for my purposes in 1992 (I dumped Interactive for it).
More confusion over the difference between correlation and causation. Here's an extreme example of your mistake: 100% of people who ate carrots in the 1800s are now dead. Your logic produces the conclusion that carrots cause people to die. This is because you confuse correlation with causation.
Check the price of computer hardware 20 years ago. Microsoft doesn't produce hardware, yet you would seemingly give them credit for the reduction in hardware prices too.
When Word started to dominate the market it was demonstrably inferior to WordPerfect. Word had an inferior interface. Word was slower and consumed more disk. Word corrupted your documents on a regular basis. Word supported fewer printers. Word had fewer features. At the time I always thought Word was a rather poor knockoff of MultiMate, and nowhere near as good as WordPerfect.
So why is Word dominant today? It certainly isn't because Word was a better product.
Because Simpsons is like sex: even when it's bad, it's good.
Err, I hope nobody interprets this as me wanting to have sex with Marge Simpson, because she's NOTHING compared to Wilma Flintstone.
Spoiling the story for people who haven't read it yet is REALLY BAD FORM.
Exactly! The classic example is Fleetwood Mac against their label. The label company had put some ridiculous clauses into the contract, and the young naive members of Fleetwood Mac signed without consulting legal advice. They got screwed heavily in terms of royalties and touring. They took the label to court: the judge ruled that the contract was UNFAIR and had it invalidated. The label company then had to renegotiate with a very successful and popular band which now had enough money to hire lawyers. Fleetwood Mac got a fairer deal by the end of it.
Judges use the law to guide them, but they are not afraid to "ignore" the law when it is clearly unfair. This is why judges are supposed to be (a) very smart (b) very honest (c) very experienced.
Nonsense. If the GPL is found to have no legal grounding then the software license reverts to the standard copyright, which means NOBODY except the author can distribute the code. The author is then free to pick a license other than the GPL (presumably the GPLv3 which corrects whatever is found lacking).
For a court to rule that GPL'd code is public domain is to steal intellectual property from the author and give it to the public. No court has ever done this. It would create such a dangerous precedent that even GPL hating companies like Microsoft would oppose such a ruling. It would be the destruction of ALL intellectual property.
It only took them more than a decade to figure this out. What a crack legal team.
This is particularly amusing. Apparently the word "innovation" now means "take existing code someone else wrote, and sell it as your own after making possibly trivial changes". The BSD comments preceding this quote seem to support that conclusion as well.
It also shows a complete lack of understanding of the nature of open source. It's a GLOBAL effort, not an effort funded solely by the USA taxpayers. If it was possible to measure value to the Open Source community as contributed by country, I'm sure Australia and Finland would be at or very near the top.
So perhaps Australia should send a great big invoice to the USA government, demanding payment for all the code the USA has been using for free? No, because that's not the point of open source. The point of open source is to increase the value of software to SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, not to the select few individuals that happen to be in the right place at the right time when IBM decides to throw money around looking for a cheap OS for a rushed personal computer project.
And this one deserves special comment, because it's borderline insulting. From dri-devel, MGA400 driver that Gareth has just done some work on:
The DRI is already pushing the limits of most of the hardware it supports. Mesa has recently gone through significant re-architecture work to prepare for the limits of future hardware.
This is not true. T&L support for the radeon is on the way.
This is also not true. The specs are under NDA but the DRI developers have them.
Perhaps because the nVidia hardware is significantly faster than the Matrox G### hardware.
Really, if you want to insult the open sourced DRI effort, at least take the time to think the argument through first.
I don't know about the device the article author is referring to, but the USB key I played with could do challenge/response, so it must have had an onboard CPU.
The article's device might be. That's why I made it clear that I was playing with a different device. There's really no need for you to fly off the handle like this. Makes you look weird.
I've played with one of these devices which looked like a key, plugged in the USB port, and had a private encryption key on it (in addition to the storage space). The device came with Windows 2000 software that encrypted your files and you needed to insert the key and type a passcode to decrypt the files.
A company I know is experimenting with these devices to see if they can modify PAM to use the USB keys. The concept is in many ways similar to the Java ring that McNealy demonstrated in 1999, but the key shape is (I think) more convenient to store, carry, and definitely more convenient to plugin to your computer.
Four problems I noted while playing with one of these devices.
First, the model I was using was made out of cheap plastic. It felt flimsy and lightweight. I keep my key chain in my jeans pocket, and I was concerned the flimsy plastic would break (which would be an absolute disaster).
Second, when the USB key is on your keychain it is REALLY inconvenient to plug it into the USB port on a laptop. Your keys get in the way and the weight of the keys dangles down and puts huge stress on the USB key. If the USB key becomes at all popular, I can see a strong market for those little retractable cords that some people use with their ID cards.
Third, the USB key is actually quite thick. On my laptop - which has two USB ports close to each other - you couldn't use the second port while the key was plugged in. The company had thought of this and supplied a small extension cord, but this wasn't at all convenient to carry around.
Fourth, a thought experiment rather than an actual experience. When you lose your house keys you curse a lot, then you hire a locksmith to bust into your house and change your locks. If you lose your USB key then there's no recourse. If I had highly precious data, I'd be storing it all on backup tape UNENCRYPTED, or I'd be making sure there were copies of the USB key stored in multiple (safe) deposit boxes.
That's OK, you didn't.
And I said light BULB. I also later stated you should move over to energy saving globes, which are simply compact fluoros.
Which is trivially close to my 300W.
Seeing as I never mentioned computer OR monitor (I only mentioned motherboard/CPU or hard disk) I honestly can't see what you're trying to argue here. If you work out your HDD there: 12*0.5 + 5*1.2 = 12W. That's pretty close to the 10-20W figure I gave! And your motherboard/CPU is very unlikely to be 12W: the Pentium-4 is 55W just by itself.
Next time you try and burst someone's bubble, try a little harder.
A hard drive is between 10W and 20W.
A motherboard/CPU is maybe 80W.
A light bulb is 100W
A television is 300W
A washing machine is 500W
A vacuum cleaner is 1500W
A hot air clothes dryer is 2000W
A cold air conditioner is 2500W
A hot water heater is 4000W
So what's my point? Leaving a light bulb on overnight is far more wasteful. Watching TV for 2 hours is far more wasteful. Having a hot shower rather than a cold shower is more wasteful. Using an air conditioner rather than opening a window (or having a properly designed house) is far more wasteful.
Try saving power in the real world first, then start worrying about the piddling small amounts of power consumed by your 20W hard disk. Turn off some light bulbs, use energy saving globes, don't use the air conditioner, have a cold shower, go read a book rather than watch the 80cm TV, ride a bicycle rather than drive that car to the local supermarket. These are all REAL energy savings.
If you just use freshmeat/sourceforge as sites to leech software, sure you'll probably like freshmeat more than sourceforge.
But if you develop software then there is no comparison. Sourceforge has bug tracking, patch managers, technical support, CVS archives, maillist admins, maillist archives, etc, etc.
I like Freshmeat too. I use it for finding the odd piece of software when it is not in Debian. But there's no comparison to Sourceforge for code development in an online working group.
Sourceforge is easily the best online project managing software I've ever used. It balances neatly between open-source requirements (public mailing lists, constant availability of source) and private requirements for developers (private areas, admin areas, shell accounts, etc).
PS: I use sourceforge every day.
You're looking in the wrong places. You seem to think your local car dealer is going to sell you the latest most revolutionary car there is. Wrong. Your local car dealer will sell something that's guaranteed to sell. That's going to be a boring standard nothing-revolutionary car.
There have been revolutionary new engines: for example the orbital engine which is 2x more powerful and 1/2 the weight and gets 3x the fuel efficiency.
But you'll never see this engine sold in a car from your local dealer.
It's economics. The infrastructure is nearly impossible to displace that quickly. There are 100s of billions of dollars invested into primary and secondary manufacturing plants, training and education for post-production mechanical repairs, secondary production for parts suppliers, etc.
It takes time to displace infrastructure. The biggest problem facing fuel cell cars right now isn't the car (they are powerful enough, and are safe enough). It's the fact that you'll get one tank's worth of driving then you'll not find any pumping stations to refuel at.
You're wrong if you think revolutionary change isn't going on. It's just that the infrastructure resists change. The revolution occurs quietly and in niche areas first.
Oh yeah, except for the fact that road deaths are down from their all-time high of 50,000 dead per year (USA) in the 60s. All thanks to Nader's perseverance and the auto industry's realisation that people actually do want to live.
Oh, and that cars are now get 3x the mileage than their 60s predecessors. The exception being the recent (mostly USA) trend towards great big behemoth trucks instead of cars. Regardless, the engine is still more efficient.
Oh, and the introduction of car computers and fuel injection and traction control and antilock braking and 4-wheel steering. The use of lighter alloys and stronger frames and safer rollcages.
Looking only at a car's speed is a ridiculous way to measure progress. Sure, it's evolutionary not revolutionary. This doesn't justify a stupid claim that cars today aren't any better than the cars of yesteryear.
While I agree with you that nuclear is safer and cleaner than coal/oil/gas, it's certainly not CHEAPER. Nuclear power has many hidden costs that make coal/oil the most economic.
And I'd disagree that nuclear is safer or cleaner than wind/solar/geothermal/wavepower. Unfortunately none of these cleaner/safer sources have proven to be cheap either.
Science isn't a "good" thing nor a "bad" thing, anymore than knowledge is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. Science and knowledge and "pushing forwards" the boundaries of understanding are entirely orthogonal to concepts like "good" and "bad".
It's what people do with the knowledge that we can judge as being "good" or "bad".
Occasionally the way the science is conducted can also be seen as "good" or "bad".
But never make the mistake of thinking that science itself is "good" or "bad".
I'd hate to think that our ability to gain knowledge was restricted by anything other than intelligence and dedication.
... Bill Gates will be your next president?
If you ignore the 100s of paid developers that work for VA, producing nothing but 100% free open source code for Linux, you'd be right.
They cite the large uncompressed format as a deterrent against Internet copying. Are they completely naive?
People don't copy DVD data directly over the Internet. First it's ripped from DVD to disk. Then the raw data is compressed to MPEG4 and MP3, resulting in approximately 600megabytes of data.
At no point is the 9gigabytes or so of DVD data sent over the Internet.
So what does D-VHS buy you? People will get the raw data onto their hard disks even if they have to resort to framegrabbers. Then the compressed 600megabytes image is created just as before.
The D-VHS marketting department must have been really struggling for something good to say, if this is the best they can come up with.
This is completely normal computer-instilled arrogance though. Every single computing student or worker I've ever met has been like this. The average IT worker has to be the most ego-driven person on the face of the planet.
I honestly think you're overreacting. I don't have the first-hand knowledge that you've had to your own encounters, but I do know that what you have said so far sounds exactly like what I have experienced as a middle-aged white male.
And how old are you? How do you dress? Do you have punk style hair? Is your speech "refined" or do you speak l337? Do you sport a goatee or some other form of "irresponsible" beard? Do you have annoying habits like shifting your feet, picking your nose, using huge hand gestures, putting your hands in your pockets, scratching your crotch?
I've seen exactly the same situation you have just described, only it happened to a young white male who happens to like his hair coloured blue and studs in his lips. On the phone he sounds not at all unusual. When customers meet him face to face they fully freak out.
And I don't see how this particular situation is caused by skin colour. Of course, if you come from a privileged family then you'll have a 1st rate head start in computing. If you come from a poorer family then you'll need to work your ARSE off to get anywhere in computing. But this is an economic situation and it applies equally to all people of all skin colours.
Though I don't often say this, it seems to me you've got a great big chip on your shoulder.