[...] The third MS technology that the Open Source community could really compete in, but appears to be sleeping is SharePoint. [...]
I have never come across it anywhere, in various companies from small shops to international big-timers. I don't know anyone who uses it. Is there any information available on its uptake?
Please mod parent up, and I'm not talking about +1 funny. I had to resort to RAZOR's loader to get my retail version of GTA 4 to run. Without it the game failed with all kinds of inexplicable errors.
You're right and they've already decided by using DRM. You're complaining about the DRM so offer an alternative or don't complain.
Did the GoW packaging advertise the fact that the DRM contained within the software will hamper the costumers' ability to run the game at all? No? Then the parent - and anyone else involved, for that matter - has all reasons to complain.
Software companies already get away with legal cartes blanches regarding faults in their products. Now they add another layer of software that does not add any kind of value for the consumer, that software craps out and gets in the way of legitimate use, and you're saying "sob it"? Nice. Please send me your postal address, I would love to add you to our user base.
I disagree, the parent poster has a point. The vast majority of top-level politicians today is out of touch with the Internet and its phenomenons and the information-sharing mindset it created - they're simply too old! To most of them a computer is a fancy typewriter with an included telefax machine and that thing where they can enter a word, click "Search" and get a list of other things which mention the word in question.
To them issues like net censorship, surveillance, digital downloads, net neutrality, open source etc. are foreign. They have advisors that tell them what to do on those subjects, but they don't have any personal stake in them.
The generations which grew up with today's Internet, on the other hand, take YouTube and other services for granted and feel the effects of restrictions and criminalising legislation. They stand to lose things they enjoy. And I am convinced they won't forget that all too quickly.
[...] when TSHTF, they'll hire some Germans to work 24/7 for a month and it will be awesome, if austere. [...]
Depends. If T-Systems get involved (and seeing how many people they have in their pocket they would get a slice of the cake) we'd be better off just staying with Windows. Or moving to Red Flag Linux and providing free Chinese classes to the whole of the European population. In either case we'd end up with a usable system cheaper and in less time.
Now, for a little puzzle, ask yourself how long it would normally take to create hundreds of email accounts in a secured system?
About as long as it would take to create them in a regular system? Unless the person entering the account data has to do on-the-fly RSA encryption in their head.
Seriously, that security for @whitehouse.gov is (hopefully) tighter than for, say, GMail does not mean that accounts are not likely managed by a few folks via a sleek administrative GUI, just like it's done at any well-managed IT department at medium-sized to large organisations.
What will happen when any good on the store can be replicated at the cost of materials? I suspect that a pirate culture would end up meeting with utter disaster here.
Yes, absolutely! Just like open source software killed off the IT industry! Oh, wait...
So really, we need to face up to the fact that we need a culture that says "you don't deserve it just because you can't pay for it or don't want to pay for it." That sort of thing would pay dividends in other areas, since such a culture would also tend to promote an attitude that you have no right to tell others what to do on most things.
(emphasis mine)
Following your logic, the USA ought to be a bastion of liberalism and tolerance. Ahm, I hate to break it to you, but no, capitalism does not foster civil liberties and mutual respect among humans. Rather the opposite.
Oh yeah, the cloud. And VMs. Right. The saviours of the universe. Frankly, if I were to suggest to my boss that we should license Windows or Exchange as a hosted service he'd have me get my head examined.
We have had enough of the Microsoft ecosystem as it is. MS provides little in terms of service unless you give them the support guys' weight in gold, when shit hits the fan they are not liable for anything and the man-hours we have lost so far because of Windows issues make the licensing costs look cheap.
The last thing we need is another expensive layer of so-called service between us and our data. On the contrary: We finally want to get direct control over all IT issues that could impact our business. Relying on some third-party hoster (in addition to the existing uncontrollable factors - hardware, OS, apps and their support/upgrade paths) just adds another possible point of failure. And judging by our experience with plain old webhosting, internet access and other simple services contracted out to third parties so far it's not a question of whether the cloud will be down (and our business stuck) but how much of the time.
You can't automatically assume something is bad just because Nazi Germany did it.
No, but you chose really, really, really bad examples to make your point. The roads were built using cheap or forced labour and basically no machinery, and they were built to allow the german armed forces quick movement across the whole of Germany, in foresight of the two-front war. Quite a lot of KZ detainees were systematically worked to death building our Autobahnen. And virtually any innovation that took place was driven by the military. Some of the gruel experiments that took place in the concentration camps did yield medical insights that post-war medical science used to the benefit of people, and some of the technology that was invented could be put to civilian use, but I don't really consider that a bargain looking at the price tag that came with it.
[...] A lower-density code that includes color is more likely to survive the color filter array intact than a higher-density monochrome code. Microsoft's triangle code uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black as the code units, and distinguishing those doesn't depend too much on lighting. [...]
Tell that to the camera in my Nokia E65. Depending on the type of light source some colours can be completely off. Not just a shade or two, but they really turn into a different colour, eg. blue tends to become bright green under halide lamps at night if the object I want to photograph only receives indirect lighting, and anything white or greyish tends to turn bright red-orange.
In theory you are right, but judging from my experience with cameras in consumer-grade mobiles I see quite a potential for headache.
Do you disagree with premise 1, premise 2, or the step from 1 and 2 to conclusion 3?
Point taken. I had primarily very small sets of data in mind (we use DataMatrix to identify shipping batches where the batch identification is a 10 digit ID).
[...] But the advantage of Microsoft's code, which uses color to improve density and looks up data on a server, is that it can be decoded more reliably even from a cheap cell phone camera.
Using colour is not necessarily a good idea. Differentiating black forms from white background is simple and reliable enough; but colour recognition is unreliable. There are quite a few variables that cannot be readily controlled or balanced, eg. lighting, the camera's colour settings, bad contrast.
And looking up data on a server isn't an advantage in your context, either: Either a code can be decoded reliably and easily on a low-spec phone or it can't. Whether the decoded data is actual content or only a reference to data on a foreign location does not make a difference.
Thanks for your post. Though I strongly disagree with the following part:
[...] If you can use one operating system, it is (and should be) Windows. For younger students, the school's objective is to teach computer literacy, so they want to have Windows computers. For older students, the school's objective is to use them as a tool and not have to worry about showing the classroom idiot how to use GNOME, so they want to have Windows computers. [...]
Conditioning someone to click at certain screen elements to achieve a certain effect is software training, not an exercise in computer literacy. Computer literacy would be to teach students the concepts and paradigms behind modern software. Then they could find their way around Windows, OS X and Linux by themselves (with a little help from the respective manuals) - by understanding what the hell they are doing instead of mere repetitive training. Basic concepts are shared amongst all mayor desktops: Some kind of menu-based application launcher, a bar that collects open windows, a file manager...they have different names and look (more or less) different in each OS, but GNOME's application menu applies the same paradigms as Windows' Start menu.
Many companies who want to ditch the Windows eco-system or at least parts like MS Office face enormous obstacles in their employees' computer illiteracy. They may know the Office toolbars by heart, but they cannot transfer their knowledge to competing applications because they don't really understand what button X does. Microsoft rewards training over understanding. And that alone should be reason enough to make it unfit for educational use.
I can only speak of the situation here in Germany, but throughout my whole education so far, including several terms in computer science, I have encountered exactly 1 (read: one) Mac in a publicly-funded institution, and that one was located in the arts faculty of my grammar school. Over here Macs are very much limited to visual arts faculties and (usually private) specialised arts and design academies, and even there they hold no monopoly.
Is the situation in other countries that different?
[...] How is society better off from artists loosing rights to their work? [...]
You are aware that for thousands of years societies all around the globe have only been able to develop and survive by replicating and modifying existing material? The idea of ownership over something you cannot touch is quite novel (disregarding claims by spiritual groups).
Why should you have the right to get paid several times for a work done once? Do you pay the mechanic who fixed your car last summer a fee every time you turn on the engine? That your product is an idea instead of an object does not magically make you somehow special. You are a producer who offers a product on the market. That you have the possibility to license copies on which you can impose restrictions is an artificial right, a concession from society. A sensible one, basically, since society benefits from your contributions to culture. But when your rights endanger that contribution beyond what is reasonable to allow you to make a living, culture suffers.
Besides, here's a simple test for you: Try to come up with a unique storyline, never-before-seen characters and an original writing style for a new novel. Something that has never been done before in any comparable fashion anywhere in the world. Could you? I can't.
Culture is mix-and-match. Science is observe-mix-and-match. Could you imagine Einstein's theories being protected by copyright, not open to education and research? Could you imagine the Four Evangelists fighting over who had the right to publish Jesus' biography? Could you imagine the original Luther Bible being burned for copyright infringement? I can't.
Copyright has its place in today's information-centric society and industry. But it has to be weighted very carefully against the need for information to be free (in both senses) so that our culture does not literally starve to death.
Think laptops. Broadband - or any net access, for that matter - is far from cheap, and not available everywhere.
On-line apps can become unreachable for any number of reasons on my end, their end or anywhere in between. The OpenOffice installation on my machine has quite fewer ways to go haywire, and in the majority of cases I can solve the problem myself.
Many interesting plug-ins that I use for my apps are specialised towards a very narrow audience. They would never be offered as options on a platform like Google Docs.
Bandwidth isn't free, and neither is computing power. Those on-line apps will have to find a way to make a profit. Would you want to pay a monthly fee for access to your documents? Or watch advertisement while writing your thesis?
I don't want to practically hand out every single piece of work that I create to someone else. I barely trust myself to keep my systems secure and running, I certainly won't extend this trust to just anybody on the net.
And finally: What's the benefit? Hard-disk space is just as cheap as bandwith, Aptitude takes care of my update needs, I can access my file server from anywhere via my own VPN, so what would I get from an on-line office suite that OOo couldn't deliver and what is worth the risk of not being able to get any work done if the app is unreachable?
Wrong. The "Linux bitches" bitched about not being able to completely remove components like Internet Explorer and Media Player because they were/are wrought too deeply into the OS (and because the wording of some EULAs purportedly would forbid such a modification, but since those are worth nothing in my country's legal system I haven't looked into this aspect). It was commercial competition who bitched about the bundling itself.
What you said, plus: I've never ever seen the kind of rig Sood descibes in his text as "distant memory" anywhere outside an NVIDIA or Intel fair booth. Actually I've never ever seen any machine with Quad-SLI in the real world. Not even our CAD folks have yet reached any limit on their hardware that would justify something like that.
I picked up "hog-pog" during my time in Ireland a few years ago. Its meaning is identical to that of "hodge-podge". I occasionally forget to restrain my idiolect when I speak or write in English on the Internet.
[...] Just install it on a virtual machine on a linux host if necessary so you can restore it from time to time if need be. [...]
Maintaining two full-blown operating systems instead of one just because one of them is apt to break in ignorant hands is not exactly what I'd call solving a problem.
[...] Apart from that, the main advantage of windows is that all the "popular" apps and peripherals in the senior citizen crowd (think of, web-browsing, photo viewing, photo-printing, web-cams etc.) are much more readily available for windows than for linux.
Huh?! First off, I am not aware of any desktop-oriented Linux distribution that ships without a preinstalled web browser, mail client and office suite. Secondly, the times when printing or using web cams under Linux was reserved for kernel hackers are long gone. The initial installation is still not as simple and accessible as it should be, but day-to-day usability is, at least in my experience, better than the hog-pog mix of HP printer applets, Epson scan software and Creative web cam managers.
The major benefit of an environment like GNOME or KDE is that (ideally) all the software you use follows the same paradigms and guidelines, so you always know where to point your mouse for certain things. And for the rather basic use to be expected of sensior citizens I doubt you couldn't just do with what one of these desktops has to offer.
Second that. My mother had avoided any and all contact with computers up until a year ago. I slapped Ubuntu on my old notebook, gave her a crash course in "doing things with that machine" and happiness ensued. She does ask me things from time to time, but so far she hasn't been able to break anything.
Particularly the update management comes in handy: On Windows every program has its own confusing and annoying way of locating updates. On Linux you get one window asking you for one click.
I basically agree with your point, but simply renaming 20 year old cruft to something a little less nerdy is not an improvement, it's a very cheap and ultimately damaging hack.
What really ticks me off is the way options relating to one thing have been broken up and cluttered across a myriad of places. Think display settings and desktop themes. It's even worse than GNOME.
[...] I use Vista at home, I use Vista at work. I have had absolutely no issue with it. [...]
Good for you. But actually you would be the first business user Id've encountered who has not run into an unsolvable problem caused by Vista, be it a technical or one regarding usability.
Vista was about MS standing up to OS X's fizzy design. Nothing more.
Those goggles actually would be useful for fields like emergency services. We're currently experimenting with some low-budget ways to build either a HUD-on-an-off-the-shelf-protective-visor or something like the EyeTap already mentioned. The idea is to put one or more cameras and stuff like IR spots on the helmets and
identify other units by their helmet/gear/vehicle tags and put that info onto the HUD,
enhance the image seen by the wearer (IR illumination, contrast/brightness, colours, b/w...), possibly with the option to use a shutter for certain programmes,
retrieve images from different sources (heat camera, remote cams etc.)
display tactical information (overlay maps and waypoints, messages...) and
watch porn.
Ah well, strike that last one. But you get the idea.
Of course it's a long way off, and some usage scenarios really are just gimmicks and probably not all that useful in the field. But the general concept offers enough options to have us interested.
Slashdot Mirror
[...] The third MS technology that the Open Source community could really compete in, but appears to be sleeping is SharePoint. [...]
I have never come across it anywhere, in various companies from small shops to international big-timers. I don't know anyone who uses it. Is there any information available on its uptake?
Please mod parent up, and I'm not talking about +1 funny. I had to resort to RAZOR's loader to get my retail version of GTA 4 to run. Without it the game failed with all kinds of inexplicable errors.
You're right and they've already decided by using DRM. You're complaining about the DRM so offer an alternative or don't complain.
Did the GoW packaging advertise the fact that the DRM contained within the software will hamper the costumers' ability to run the game at all? No? Then the parent - and anyone else involved, for that matter - has all reasons to complain.
Software companies already get away with legal cartes blanches regarding faults in their products. Now they add another layer of software that does not add any kind of value for the consumer, that software craps out and gets in the way of legitimate use, and you're saying "sob it"? Nice. Please send me your postal address, I would love to add you to our user base.
This line of reasoning is utter nonsense. [...]
I disagree, the parent poster has a point. The vast majority of top-level politicians today is out of touch with the Internet and its phenomenons and the information-sharing mindset it created - they're simply too old! To most of them a computer is a fancy typewriter with an included telefax machine and that thing where they can enter a word, click "Search" and get a list of other things which mention the word in question.
To them issues like net censorship, surveillance, digital downloads, net neutrality, open source etc. are foreign. They have advisors that tell them what to do on those subjects, but they don't have any personal stake in them.
The generations which grew up with today's Internet, on the other hand, take YouTube and other services for granted and feel the effects of restrictions and criminalising legislation. They stand to lose things they enjoy. And I am convinced they won't forget that all too quickly.
[...] when TSHTF, they'll hire some Germans to work 24/7 for a month and it will be awesome, if austere. [...]
Depends. If T-Systems get involved (and seeing how many people they have in their pocket they would get a slice of the cake) we'd be better off just staying with Windows. Or moving to Red Flag Linux and providing free Chinese classes to the whole of the European population. In either case we'd end up with a usable system cheaper and in less time.
Now, for a little puzzle, ask yourself how long it would normally take to create hundreds of email accounts in a secured system?
About as long as it would take to create them in a regular system? Unless the person entering the account data has to do on-the-fly RSA encryption in their head.
Seriously, that security for @whitehouse.gov is (hopefully) tighter than for, say, GMail does not mean that accounts are not likely managed by a few folks via a sleek administrative GUI, just like it's done at any well-managed IT department at medium-sized to large organisations.
[...] At what point can we, as one people, recognize together that this is a failed idea and that trying harder to implement it won't change that?
Somewhere around Doomsday, I'd think. Two days after Duke Nukem Forever comes out...on HURD.
Where do I sign up?
What will happen when any good on the store can be replicated at the cost of materials? I suspect that a pirate culture would end up meeting with utter disaster here.
Yes, absolutely! Just like open source software killed off the IT industry! Oh, wait...
So really, we need to face up to the fact that we need a culture that says "you don't deserve it just because you can't pay for it or don't want to pay for it." That sort of thing would pay dividends in other areas, since such a culture would also tend to promote an attitude that you have no right to tell others what to do on most things.
(emphasis mine)
Following your logic, the USA ought to be a bastion of liberalism and tolerance. Ahm, I hate to break it to you, but no, capitalism does not foster civil liberties and mutual respect among humans. Rather the opposite.
Oh yeah, the cloud. And VMs. Right. The saviours of the universe. Frankly, if I were to suggest to my boss that we should license Windows or Exchange as a hosted service he'd have me get my head examined.
We have had enough of the Microsoft ecosystem as it is. MS provides little in terms of service unless you give them the support guys' weight in gold, when shit hits the fan they are not liable for anything and the man-hours we have lost so far because of Windows issues make the licensing costs look cheap.
The last thing we need is another expensive layer of so-called service between us and our data. On the contrary: We finally want to get direct control over all IT issues that could impact our business. Relying on some third-party hoster (in addition to the existing uncontrollable factors - hardware, OS, apps and their support/upgrade paths) just adds another possible point of failure. And judging by our experience with plain old webhosting, internet access and other simple services contracted out to third parties so far it's not a question of whether the cloud will be down (and our business stuck) but how much of the time.
You can't automatically assume something is bad just because Nazi Germany did it.
No, but you chose really, really, really bad examples to make your point. The roads were built using cheap or forced labour and basically no machinery, and they were built to allow the german armed forces quick movement across the whole of Germany, in foresight of the two-front war. Quite a lot of KZ detainees were systematically worked to death building our Autobahnen. And virtually any innovation that took place was driven by the military. Some of the gruel experiments that took place in the concentration camps did yield medical insights that post-war medical science used to the benefit of people, and some of the technology that was invented could be put to civilian use, but I don't really consider that a bargain looking at the price tag that came with it.
[...] A lower-density code that includes color is more likely to survive the color filter array intact than a higher-density monochrome code. Microsoft's triangle code uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black as the code units, and distinguishing those doesn't depend too much on lighting. [...]
Tell that to the camera in my Nokia E65. Depending on the type of light source some colours can be completely off. Not just a shade or two, but they really turn into a different colour, eg. blue tends to become bright green under halide lamps at night if the object I want to photograph only receives indirect lighting, and anything white or greyish tends to turn bright red-orange.
In theory you are right, but judging from my experience with cameras in consumer-grade mobiles I see quite a potential for headache.
Do you disagree with premise 1, premise 2, or the step from 1 and 2 to conclusion 3?
Point taken. I had primarily very small sets of data in mind (we use DataMatrix to identify shipping batches where the batch identification is a 10 digit ID).
[...] But the advantage of Microsoft's code, which uses color to improve density and looks up data on a server, is that it can be decoded more reliably even from a cheap cell phone camera.
Using colour is not necessarily a good idea. Differentiating black forms from white background is simple and reliable enough; but colour recognition is unreliable. There are quite a few variables that cannot be readily controlled or balanced, eg. lighting, the camera's colour settings, bad contrast.
And looking up data on a server isn't an advantage in your context, either: Either a code can be decoded reliably and easily on a low-spec phone or it can't. Whether the decoded data is actual content or only a reference to data on a foreign location does not make a difference.
Thanks for your post. Though I strongly disagree with the following part:
[...] If you can use one operating system, it is (and should be) Windows. For younger students, the school's objective is to teach computer literacy, so they want to have Windows computers. For older students, the school's objective is to use them as a tool and not have to worry about showing the classroom idiot how to use GNOME, so they want to have Windows computers. [...]
Conditioning someone to click at certain screen elements to achieve a certain effect is software training, not an exercise in computer literacy. Computer literacy would be to teach students the concepts and paradigms behind modern software. Then they could find their way around Windows, OS X and Linux by themselves (with a little help from the respective manuals) - by understanding what the hell they are doing instead of mere repetitive training. Basic concepts are shared amongst all mayor desktops: Some kind of menu-based application launcher, a bar that collects open windows, a file manager...they have different names and look (more or less) different in each OS, but GNOME's application menu applies the same paradigms as Windows' Start menu.
Many companies who want to ditch the Windows eco-system or at least parts like MS Office face enormous obstacles in their employees' computer illiteracy. They may know the Office toolbars by heart, but they cannot transfer their knowledge to competing applications because they don't really understand what button X does. Microsoft rewards training over understanding. And that alone should be reason enough to make it unfit for educational use.
I can only speak of the situation here in Germany, but throughout my whole education so far, including several terms in computer science, I have encountered exactly 1 (read: one) Mac in a publicly-funded institution, and that one was located in the arts faculty of my grammar school. Over here Macs are very much limited to visual arts faculties and (usually private) specialised arts and design academies, and even there they hold no monopoly.
Is the situation in other countries that different?
[...] How is society better off from artists loosing rights to their work? [...]
You are aware that for thousands of years societies all around the globe have only been able to develop and survive by replicating and modifying existing material? The idea of ownership over something you cannot touch is quite novel (disregarding claims by spiritual groups).
Why should you have the right to get paid several times for a work done once? Do you pay the mechanic who fixed your car last summer a fee every time you turn on the engine? That your product is an idea instead of an object does not magically make you somehow special. You are a producer who offers a product on the market. That you have the possibility to license copies on which you can impose restrictions is an artificial right, a concession from society. A sensible one, basically, since society benefits from your contributions to culture. But when your rights endanger that contribution beyond what is reasonable to allow you to make a living, culture suffers.
Besides, here's a simple test for you: Try to come up with a unique storyline, never-before-seen characters and an original writing style for a new novel. Something that has never been done before in any comparable fashion anywhere in the world. Could you? I can't.
Culture is mix-and-match. Science is observe-mix-and-match. Could you imagine Einstein's theories being protected by copyright, not open to education and research? Could you imagine the Four Evangelists fighting over who had the right to publish Jesus' biography? Could you imagine the original Luther Bible being burned for copyright infringement? I can't.
Copyright has its place in today's information-centric society and industry. But it has to be weighted very carefully against the need for information to be free (in both senses) so that our culture does not literally starve to death.
Wrong. The "Linux bitches" bitched about not being able to completely remove components like Internet Explorer and Media Player because they were/are wrought too deeply into the OS (and because the wording of some EULAs purportedly would forbid such a modification, but since those are worth nothing in my country's legal system I haven't looked into this aspect). It was commercial competition who bitched about the bundling itself.
What you said, plus: I've never ever seen the kind of rig Sood descibes in his text as "distant memory" anywhere outside an NVIDIA or Intel fair booth. Actually I've never ever seen any machine with Quad-SLI in the real world. Not even our CAD folks have yet reached any limit on their hardware that would justify something like that.
It's not distant memory, it's a marketing gag.
I picked up "hog-pog" during my time in Ireland a few years ago. Its meaning is identical to that of "hodge-podge". I occasionally forget to restrain my idiolect when I speak or write in English on the Internet.
[...] Just install it on a virtual machine on a linux host if necessary so you can restore it from time to time if need be. [...]
Maintaining two full-blown operating systems instead of one just because one of them is apt to break in ignorant hands is not exactly what I'd call solving a problem.
[...] Apart from that, the main advantage of windows is that all the "popular" apps and peripherals in the senior citizen crowd (think of, web-browsing, photo viewing, photo-printing, web-cams etc.) are much more readily available for windows than for linux.
Huh?! First off, I am not aware of any desktop-oriented Linux distribution that ships without a preinstalled web browser, mail client and office suite. Secondly, the times when printing or using web cams under Linux was reserved for kernel hackers are long gone. The initial installation is still not as simple and accessible as it should be, but day-to-day usability is, at least in my experience, better than the hog-pog mix of HP printer applets, Epson scan software and Creative web cam managers.
The major benefit of an environment like GNOME or KDE is that (ideally) all the software you use follows the same paradigms and guidelines, so you always know where to point your mouse for certain things. And for the rather basic use to be expected of sensior citizens I doubt you couldn't just do with what one of these desktops has to offer.
Second that. My mother had avoided any and all contact with computers up until a year ago. I slapped Ubuntu on my old notebook, gave her a crash course in "doing things with that machine" and happiness ensued. She does ask me things from time to time, but so far she hasn't been able to break anything.
Particularly the update management comes in handy: On Windows every program has its own confusing and annoying way of locating updates. On Linux you get one window asking you for one click.
I basically agree with your point, but simply renaming 20 year old cruft to something a little less nerdy is not an improvement, it's a very cheap and ultimately damaging hack.
What really ticks me off is the way options relating to one thing have been broken up and cluttered across a myriad of places. Think display settings and desktop themes. It's even worse than GNOME.
[...] I use Vista at home, I use Vista at work. I have had absolutely no issue with it. [...]
Good for you. But actually you would be the first business user Id've encountered who has not run into an unsolvable problem caused by Vista, be it a technical or one regarding usability.
Vista was about MS standing up to OS X's fizzy design. Nothing more.
Depends on the definition of 'cool'.
Those goggles actually would be useful for fields like emergency services. We're currently experimenting with some low-budget ways to build either a HUD-on-an-off-the-shelf-protective-visor or something like the EyeTap already mentioned. The idea is to put one or more cameras and stuff like IR spots on the helmets and
Ah well, strike that last one. But you get the idea.
Of course it's a long way off, and some usage scenarios really are just gimmicks and probably not all that useful in the field. But the general concept offers enough options to have us interested.