Out of about half a dozen drives I buy a year for personal use probably one, on average, goes bad in less than a year. All different brands and models. I'm a little hard on drives (constantly on PC that usually writes files almost constantly 24/7) but not harder than I think fair to expect them to handle. On systems I manage that are under 'normal' use I still see about one in a dozen die within the year. Pretty crappy survival rate IMO which has caused me to start switching to all RAID redundant drive configs so that all files are restorable without having to dig through backups. I can pick up a TB of drive space for about $700 now without to much effort so I think it'd be great to stop worrying about cramming more into less space and lame coolness options and instead just make the drives reliable. Three years of life under on-going but not heavy load is all I want.
If the kid got home made porno from the guy and still went to see him either the kid was dumb as dirt or was looking for what was offered. The guy should get some minor punishment (Being a frag target should be good enough.) for messing around with a minor but that should be enough. A 14 year old should be old enough to understand sexual concepts and know if they want to respond or not. Probably the parents should ground the kid from playing XBox for a while and learn to pay a bit more attention to what their kid is up to.
It's kind of cool but I'd rather see effort spent on more reliable drives. I cool mine and everything and still have a couple die a year. They're under load but not unreasonable load. Just make the darn things last at least a couple years each.
How do you use a computer effeciently with one hand hard wired to it? I guess with a long extension cord it'd be possible but annoying. Either that or you have to bother taking off your watch which is more labor than just pulling out a normal memory stick.
Most Bluetooth devices let you set who can access them - passwords and all that. Not to likely to have your data stolen unless you disable the security features.
A bluetooth memory thingie on your wrist would be actually useful (for those of us who use bluetooth) but how useful is a watch/wrist memory thing that requires taking it off your wrist to use or leaving your hand chained to the machine while in use.
Libertarians have the unfortunate friendliness with big business that seems to put them against the goals I'd image appropiate for an intellectual freedom party. I'm against big government but I'm also against monster corporations. I'm not entirely a socialist or an anarchist either. Guess I don't fit in anywhere.
Of course! Everything I say on Slashdot is copyrighted, trademarked, and patented. Oh - and I have a patent on the concept of a digital reply to a digital message so you owe me $20,000 for this violation.;)
I also patented all forms of argument and indifference so don't you even think about refusal to pay or you'll just owe me more money. Call now, lawyers are standing by!
True, but you have to start somewhere. With growing attacks on normal people the RIAA, MPAA, etc could swell your members especially among young people that don't usually vote. You don't have to win, you just have to make a big enough stink that your cause is noticed. You don't have to get elected to influence things.
If you could shape your arguments to appeal to other parties you could possibly get them on your side too and pull members from their ranks.
If nothing else you could develop a community for spreading the anti-Holywood message. I really hate all the commercials that lie and tell kids it's illegal to copy music and movies. I'd love to put some pro-consumer ads out in competition.
I think we need to make copyleft a concept that exists sepperate from copyright as we work to weaken classic copyright laws. Copyleft offers something that straight public domain doesn't in that it disallows hiding of IP based on the IP of others. I think that is an important option for authors.
Also I wouldn't get rid of copyright altogether - I'd just weaken it by making the cost of holding a copyright double yearly. Start off at $1 for the first year and double it every year until the holder decides it isn't profitable to keep holding it. Also I'd make it so you actually had to register something for it to count as copyrighted - none of this crap that every thing you write, doodle, or whatever is copyrighted.
Patents I'd all but kill. No soft patents such as software, genetics, or business practices. A patent shouldn't count unless you have a working model either. Dim ideas of what might be possible shouldn't be protected or the world will be owned by sci-fi writers and 13yo kids.
Defining what a PC is isn't the easiest thing anymore even if you know exactly how a device works. Google would be smart to do a thin-client that delivers most of it's apps over the network so that the device is tightly coupled to their services and so that it's much easier for them to keep the device secure and running smoothly. It might look and act like a PC but not work like a PC so would it be a PC? Working as a media center would not be to much out of left field. It'd let Google grab the PC and TV all in one swoop. Pretty smart really.
A Google PC running a Google OS (Linux/X/Gecko based thin client?) seems a real possibility and very obvious thing to do with the direction computing is moving. Offering such a device could seriously wound Apple and Microsoft as the primary OS providers and would seriously hurt any software providers that didn't adapt to the transition. Google could even sell developer tools to help create software for this new platform and convert old software. Google could put itself into the role Microsoft wants to be in but doesn't know how to be in.
Wouldn't it be better to create your own party in your own country to represent the same ideals? Here in the US I'd be willing to join such a party. Something that supports individual privacy, the right to reverse engineer, the weakening of IP laws (no software/genetic/business/etc patents and short copyright periods), encouragement of open standards, encouragement of open source, etc. I wouldn't call it the Piracy Party though. The Intellectual Freedom party would be could. You could do some good marketing with 'IF?'.
OS X is horrible for managing a lot of different open windows and they've maimed a lot of basic functionality like the way the ALT-TAB, DEL/BCKSPC, HOME, END, PAGE UP, and PAGE DOWN keys work. Also using any networking features on OS X run much slower on OS X than they do on Linux or straight BSD (not as bad as Windows but still considerably worse). File management on OS X is another thing that is horribly slow in general. Yes, it's easy to use but that doesn't make it effecient for real work. Even Windows beats OS X when it comes to power of file management.
It's BSD roots even make the command-line tools less effecient than Linux as the GNU tools offer a lot of time/effort saving options that the BSD tools lack - not that most Mac users are likely to know the difference.
OS X has the eye candy thing down. I'd love for them to spend some serious energy in making it more effecient to work in. There's no shame in an option to switch into an advanced user mode. There might be shame in admitting that changing standard functionality (that's largely existed since the days of the typewriter) such as the behavior of HOME, END, etc was a bad idea and changing it back to that standard functionality but they should bite the bullet and just do it.
I'm sure I'll be flamed. In one statement I said I think Windows, OS X, KDE, and Gnome are crap. Thinking that a focus on looks over usability is foolish is about enough to get a guy killed most days. Still it's important to keep saying it so maybe others will notice that most attention is spent on eye candy and making things easy for stupid people.
All have their little bugs but I think KDE and Gnome are more usable than OS X or Windows if you're doing real (complex) work across several applications and windows. If all you do is look at porn and play minesweeper than any of the above will do for ya.
It didn't help that it was mostly sold in video game stores. Stupid move. It should have been sold along side other phones. Among other phones from the time it mostly made them look like crap. It's still a lot better than a good many of them. It's really a good handheld gaming machine especially if you're into multiplayer.
That combined with the stupid issues of side talking and being hard to switch cards in the original N-Gage are what doomed it. The gaming and phone abilities of the QD are pretty good really.
They should have embraced the opensource community too. It's not as if the OSS community would hurt their commercial games but the extra games would have boosted their pull. As it is you can program for it (and many other phones) in Java but there is little support from phone makers for this community. Just encouraging that community would grow the developer pool for their market which can only help them. Programming for handheld devices is nice because you aren't expected to have cutting edge visuals and massive amounts of artwork - you can focus on gameplay. My favorite handheld games are logic games I can play in small bites. Worms is cool and I can't wait for Civilization to hit the N-Gage.:)
To bad OS X's UI is actually even worse than KDE/Gnome - not as bad as Windows but pretty suck ass for getting real work done. It looks pretty though so it gets people to buy it. Functionality doesn't seem to matter. I'll be impressed the day they stop focusing on eye candy and actually make the system easy to use for complex work. Make the hard stuff easy.
Unfortunately my N-Gage seems to be going that way. I like it a lot but they marketed it so poorly that it seems to be a dead end. Overall the QD is a great product. Adding a digital camera and making it easier to use as an MP3 player would go a long way towards making it perfect. Making a deal with Sony to merge the PSP with N-Gage's phone features would be cool.
I think an opensource handheld has a lot of posibilities. Gaming, phone, camera, PDA, GPS, etc. These are standard enough functions that within a few generations of product opensource could really develop something nice. No need to wait ten years for big companies to catch up with our needs and wants - we can just do what we want with it. How many of us didn't think of adding games, web, email, camera, music player, etc to our phone years before such features were actually available? With a working base we could be really creative. GP2X could be a good starting point. It'd be smart for console and phone developers to fund such a project as it'd be a breeding ground for new concepts at little cost to themselves with little chance of it creating much real competition to them.
When I was a kid I thought of capsule motels at the mall as a place where men could take a nap while women shopped. After I later found out that the Japanese already have such hotels I am even more inclined to think they're a good idea. My only suggestion is to have them accessible from a door on the side rather than from a door on the end. Fat Americans don't want to shimmy into a small space. Be more like a bed on a train.
I like to go with the black ski mask and hooded sweatshirt look. For some reason it always seems to get me asked to leave businesses though. Gee banks and gasmarts are so sensitive to modest people.
But interestingly enough I'm perfectly able to rip my new DVDs on my new DVD drive under Linux despite any region encoding. Yet another reason for me not to use Windows. In face of their control freak tactics throughout Vista it'd take one hell of a list of awesome features to make me even consider using Vista. Windows 2000 is still my favorite Windows but overall I would take Mac OS or Linux over Windows any day of the week.
(Extra grudge this week - trying to fix corrupted file permissions in a NTFS file system using XP Home was fun. Oh love the holidays and helping family without the proper tools at hand. It makes perfect sense for an OS not to give you the ability to manipulate file permissions right?)
$1000 from their family is a lot more than most of us get. Friends and family are exactly 'who you know'. Having friends and family that are suportive can make a major difference.
Selling ad space online isn't much of a new idea no matter what your pricing plan. I've been doing it for more than 12 years. As I said, per pixel is a good pricing scheme but they didn't say why you'd go to his site and look at the ads - if people aren't looking at the ads they won't continue selling. Pretty easy to make a lot of money off a fad (look at the pet rock) but it isn't a real business unless you can sustain it. I hope the kid has some ideas how to keep those eyeballs.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we just need to switch to flash-based drives. They are pretty reliable so long as you don't write to the same area over and over.
Out of about half a dozen drives I buy a year for personal use probably one, on average, goes bad in less than a year. All different brands and models. I'm a little hard on drives (constantly on PC that usually writes files almost constantly 24/7) but not harder than I think fair to expect them to handle. On systems I manage that are under 'normal' use I still see about one in a dozen die within the year. Pretty crappy survival rate IMO which has caused me to start switching to all RAID redundant drive configs so that all files are restorable without having to dig through backups. I can pick up a TB of drive space for about $700 now without to much effort so I think it'd be great to stop worrying about cramming more into less space and lame coolness options and instead just make the drives reliable. Three years of life under on-going but not heavy load is all I want.
If the kid got home made porno from the guy and still went to see him either the kid was dumb as dirt or was looking for what was offered. The guy should get some minor punishment (Being a frag target should be good enough.) for messing around with a minor but that should be enough. A 14 year old should be old enough to understand sexual concepts and know if they want to respond or not. Probably the parents should ground the kid from playing XBox for a while and learn to pay a bit more attention to what their kid is up to.
Hardly. It happens on many different computers of different ages and makes and in different locations.
It's kind of cool but I'd rather see effort spent on more reliable drives. I cool mine and everything and still have a couple die a year. They're under load but not unreasonable load. Just make the darn things last at least a couple years each.
How do you use a computer effeciently with one hand hard wired to it? I guess with a long extension cord it'd be possible but annoying. Either that or you have to bother taking off your watch which is more labor than just pulling out a normal memory stick.
Most Bluetooth devices let you set who can access them - passwords and all that. Not to likely to have your data stolen unless you disable the security features.
Access it from your phone, computer, and PDA all at once! ;)
A bluetooth memory thingie on your wrist would be actually useful (for those of us who use bluetooth) but how useful is a watch/wrist memory thing that requires taking it off your wrist to use or leaving your hand chained to the machine while in use.
Video killed the..
Libertarians have the unfortunate friendliness with big business that seems to put them against the goals I'd image appropiate for an intellectual freedom party. I'm against big government but I'm also against monster corporations. I'm not entirely a socialist or an anarchist either. Guess I don't fit in anywhere.
Of course! Everything I say on Slashdot is copyrighted, trademarked, and patented. Oh - and I have a patent on the concept of a digital reply to a digital message so you owe me $20,000 for this violation. ;)
I also patented all forms of argument and indifference so don't you even think about refusal to pay or you'll just owe me more money. Call now, lawyers are standing by!
True, but you have to start somewhere. With growing attacks on normal people the RIAA, MPAA, etc could swell your members especially among young people that don't usually vote. You don't have to win, you just have to make a big enough stink that your cause is noticed. You don't have to get elected to influence things.
If you could shape your arguments to appeal to other parties you could possibly get them on your side too and pull members from their ranks.
If nothing else you could develop a community for spreading the anti-Holywood message. I really hate all the commercials that lie and tell kids it's illegal to copy music and movies. I'd love to put some pro-consumer ads out in competition.
I think we need to make copyleft a concept that exists sepperate from copyright as we work to weaken classic copyright laws. Copyleft offers something that straight public domain doesn't in that it disallows hiding of IP based on the IP of others. I think that is an important option for authors.
Also I wouldn't get rid of copyright altogether - I'd just weaken it by making the cost of holding a copyright double yearly. Start off at $1 for the first year and double it every year until the holder decides it isn't profitable to keep holding it. Also I'd make it so you actually had to register something for it to count as copyrighted - none of this crap that every thing you write, doodle, or whatever is copyrighted.
Patents I'd all but kill. No soft patents such as software, genetics, or business practices. A patent shouldn't count unless you have a working model either. Dim ideas of what might be possible shouldn't be protected or the world will be owned by sci-fi writers and 13yo kids.
Defining what a PC is isn't the easiest thing anymore even if you know exactly how a device works. Google would be smart to do a thin-client that delivers most of it's apps over the network so that the device is tightly coupled to their services and so that it's much easier for them to keep the device secure and running smoothly. It might look and act like a PC but not work like a PC so would it be a PC? Working as a media center would not be to much out of left field. It'd let Google grab the PC and TV all in one swoop. Pretty smart really.
A Google PC running a Google OS (Linux/X/Gecko based thin client?) seems a real possibility and very obvious thing to do with the direction computing is moving. Offering such a device could seriously wound Apple and Microsoft as the primary OS providers and would seriously hurt any software providers that didn't adapt to the transition. Google could even sell developer tools to help create software for this new platform and convert old software. Google could put itself into the role Microsoft wants to be in but doesn't know how to be in.
Wouldn't it be better to create your own party in your own country to represent the same ideals? Here in the US I'd be willing to join such a party. Something that supports individual privacy, the right to reverse engineer, the weakening of IP laws (no software/genetic/business/etc patents and short copyright periods), encouragement of open standards, encouragement of open source, etc. I wouldn't call it the Piracy Party though. The Intellectual Freedom party would be could. You could do some good marketing with 'IF?'.
OS X is horrible for managing a lot of different open windows and they've maimed a lot of basic functionality like the way the ALT-TAB, DEL/BCKSPC, HOME, END, PAGE UP, and PAGE DOWN keys work. Also using any networking features on OS X run much slower on OS X than they do on Linux or straight BSD (not as bad as Windows but still considerably worse). File management on OS X is another thing that is horribly slow in general. Yes, it's easy to use but that doesn't make it effecient for real work. Even Windows beats OS X when it comes to power of file management.
It's BSD roots even make the command-line tools less effecient than Linux as the GNU tools offer a lot of time/effort saving options that the BSD tools lack - not that most Mac users are likely to know the difference.
OS X has the eye candy thing down. I'd love for them to spend some serious energy in making it more effecient to work in. There's no shame in an option to switch into an advanced user mode. There might be shame in admitting that changing standard functionality (that's largely existed since the days of the typewriter) such as the behavior of HOME, END, etc was a bad idea and changing it back to that standard functionality but they should bite the bullet and just do it.
I'm sure I'll be flamed. In one statement I said I think Windows, OS X, KDE, and Gnome are crap. Thinking that a focus on looks over usability is foolish is about enough to get a guy killed most days. Still it's important to keep saying it so maybe others will notice that most attention is spent on eye candy and making things easy for stupid people.
All have their little bugs but I think KDE and Gnome are more usable than OS X or Windows if you're doing real (complex) work across several applications and windows. If all you do is look at porn and play minesweeper than any of the above will do for ya.
It didn't help that it was mostly sold in video game stores. Stupid move. It should have been sold along side other phones. Among other phones from the time it mostly made them look like crap. It's still a lot better than a good many of them. It's really a good handheld gaming machine especially if you're into multiplayer.
:)
That combined with the stupid issues of side talking and being hard to switch cards in the original N-Gage are what doomed it. The gaming and phone abilities of the QD are pretty good really.
They should have embraced the opensource community too. It's not as if the OSS community would hurt their commercial games but the extra games would have boosted their pull. As it is you can program for it (and many other phones) in Java but there is little support from phone makers for this community. Just encouraging that community would grow the developer pool for their market which can only help them. Programming for handheld devices is nice because you aren't expected to have cutting edge visuals and massive amounts of artwork - you can focus on gameplay. My favorite handheld games are logic games I can play in small bites. Worms is cool and I can't wait for Civilization to hit the N-Gage.
To bad OS X's UI is actually even worse than KDE/Gnome - not as bad as Windows but pretty suck ass for getting real work done. It looks pretty though so it gets people to buy it. Functionality doesn't seem to matter. I'll be impressed the day they stop focusing on eye candy and actually make the system easy to use for complex work. Make the hard stuff easy.
Unfortunately my N-Gage seems to be going that way. I like it a lot but they marketed it so poorly that it seems to be a dead end. Overall the QD is a great product. Adding a digital camera and making it easier to use as an MP3 player would go a long way towards making it perfect. Making a deal with Sony to merge the PSP with N-Gage's phone features would be cool.
I think an opensource handheld has a lot of posibilities. Gaming, phone, camera, PDA, GPS, etc. These are standard enough functions that within a few generations of product opensource could really develop something nice. No need to wait ten years for big companies to catch up with our needs and wants - we can just do what we want with it. How many of us didn't think of adding games, web, email, camera, music player, etc to our phone years before such features were actually available? With a working base we could be really creative. GP2X could be a good starting point. It'd be smart for console and phone developers to fund such a project as it'd be a breeding ground for new concepts at little cost to themselves with little chance of it creating much real competition to them.
If it had GPS built-in that was programable I'd buy a bunch and write some custom programs for it. Maybe in the next version or as an add-on.
When I was a kid I thought of capsule motels at the mall as a place where men could take a nap while women shopped. After I later found out that the Japanese already have such hotels I am even more inclined to think they're a good idea. My only suggestion is to have them accessible from a door on the side rather than from a door on the end. Fat Americans don't want to shimmy into a small space. Be more like a bed on a train.
I like to go with the black ski mask and hooded sweatshirt look. For some reason it always seems to get me asked to leave businesses though. Gee banks and gasmarts are so sensitive to modest people.
But interestingly enough I'm perfectly able to rip my new DVDs on my new DVD drive under Linux despite any region encoding. Yet another reason for me not to use Windows. In face of their control freak tactics throughout Vista it'd take one hell of a list of awesome features to make me even consider using Vista. Windows 2000 is still my favorite Windows but overall I would take Mac OS or Linux over Windows any day of the week.
(Extra grudge this week - trying to fix corrupted file permissions in a NTFS file system using XP Home was fun. Oh love the holidays and helping family without the proper tools at hand. It makes perfect sense for an OS not to give you the ability to manipulate file permissions right?)
$1000 from their family is a lot more than most of us get. Friends and family are exactly 'who you know'. Having friends and family that are suportive can make a major difference.
Selling ad space online isn't much of a new idea no matter what your pricing plan. I've been doing it for more than 12 years. As I said, per pixel is a good pricing scheme but they didn't say why you'd go to his site and look at the ads - if people aren't looking at the ads they won't continue selling. Pretty easy to make a lot of money off a fad (look at the pet rock) but it isn't a real business unless you can sustain it. I hope the kid has some ideas how to keep those eyeballs.