Well I think Eclipse is what a "next generation" emacs could be. While Emacs is useful it is not my sort of tool. I would much prefer a Visual Studio type of tool. I guess it is what you are used to.
You are right on all of your points. But I ask the following. Can your HP-UX station use authentication that allows it to hook into Active Directory with all bells and whistles? Probably not.
It is not that Microsoft changes the basics. That is pretty easy to catch up to. What is more problematic is keeping up.
Let me explain. Lets say that I build an application using the Windows API (actually am). Everything works fine until the user starts using it on Windows XP or Windows 2000. You may ask why? Well according to the new security rules the application must only save content under the "My Documents" folder and not the folder installed to or something else. So now you are wondering how do I get access to the "My Documents" folder? The answer is a brand new API that is only available in a modern Platform SDK because when Visual C++ was released the API did not exist.
Do you see the issue? It is not that they break backward compatibility. It is that they introduce new rules which require you force upgrade your code. And that will happen with.NET. That is also why Miguel is dreaming about doing.NET on LINUX.
Yeah Useful, Bull...t. Why must I wait until next year to see content such as Enterprise here in Europe? Does that make sense? NO...
Why must I listen to English content in Germany? Why can I not choose? Have you ever listened to dubbed shows? Obviously not...
I do not like piracy, but when broadcasters in this day and age add artificial barriers then THEY SHOULD BE PIRATED. I am more than willing to pay for Enterprise content. And so would many other people in Europe.
So I ask you why not allow it? Again the stupid broadcasters!!!
I also did not watch the Olympics because of their greed. Did not miss much!!! Times have change and so should the way content is broadcasted...
Re:One simple reason why it won't work:
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
> governments with strong Neo-Nazi elements.
And Louisana was what??? KKK Yes? How about Pat Buchanan? Or how about many of the other Republicans? Sorry elements exist on both sides of the pond...
> I am sure that some Europeans don't like the inroads American culture has made into their society. However I am sort of puzzled by the apparent feeling of European governments that they must legislate to insure local content in their media. What sort of freedom is this? Shouldn't Europeans be free to listen or watch whatever they please?
Ahh, interesting arugment so how come I cannot eat unpasturized cheese (Roquefort)? Or import any vehicle that has been deemed to be safe in Europe? Again my point is that both sides of the pond have just as restrictive policies in one thing or another.
Ignorance is not exclusive to Americans or Europeans. It happens on both sides. I always find this funny because I think that Europe has become the brash teenager who has come to age and America is the old foggie going, Yes but you still need to learn this that and the other thing.
Re:One simple reason why it won't work:
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
Excuse me, but give it a rest...
Just to give you an illustration here is my point. Ask any European if they have met either a German or British plated car in any EU country other than Germany and British. Answer is YES because Germans and Brits travel.
BTW your argument of true labour movement in the US is incorrect. I know I have lived there. Some people in some states move, whereas others do not. For example Southerner's do not tend to move. They stick fixed. However a Northerner will tend to move aorund.
Will a Frenchman move? Not likely, but a German, Brit, Irish sure will move...
Re:One simple reason why it won't work:
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, but those are old reasons. Really...
First grudges centuries old. Most of them are actually gone. And those that are still there want to separate from the country, but not the Union. That is the kicker of it. Take Northern Italy for example. They wanted to separate from Southern Italy. Then asked if they wanted to separate from the Union and the response was, "What loose all that trade and such? Never..." Nobody in Europe does not want to be part of the union. This is something that has come to pass.
Next about immigration. This is not an Intra-EU problem, but a problem of people trying to get into the EU. Nobody has anything against an EU member moving from one country to another EU country. Having lived in many of the EU countries I have never witnessed it. The only thing I witnessed is that some people get annoyed that all the vaction spots are getting bought out.
Re:Xenophobia and pig headedness ?
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Again let me re-iterate that I am German who is a French wanna-be. And I love my EU counterparts with all heart... BUT the following could be said.
Well if the EU were a vehicle and the individual members in the car we'd have the following:
1) Germans steering the vehicle saying "We are Germans our cars are meant for high speed and we can handle the curves. It vill work alvays."
2) Italians stepping on the gas peddle saying "Speed is in our blood, faster is better"
3) French every now and then stepping on the clutch in full speed saying "Philosphically we are the cultural backbone of the union and hence stepping on the clutch makes it possible to assess whether or not the car is driving in the right direction on the correct road in the proper weather conditions that are best for fostering a cooperative system of interacting people at a higher plane of conditioning" (if you understand that you must be French;) ) 4) The spaniard would constantly be fiddling with the rear view mirror and asking "Do I look good, is my hair in the right order?"
5) The Finn would twiddle with the onboard GPS system equipped with GPRS, RDS, CD, MP3 and proudly say "Hey guys no idea where we are, but guess what I just sent an SMS to my buddy in Sweden stating we are somewhere in Europe"
6) The Greek would be relegated to the trunk of the car and while the car is parked will have changed summer tires to winter tires, filled the gas tank, and checked the oil. Afterwards the rest of the troup asks why the Greek did not refill the windshield wiper fluid and moan at how critical it was that they have a filled windshield wiper fluid tank.
7) The Irish will be neatly dressed and organized and ready to rock and roll. But then moan out load that the Dutch is smoking pot beside him.
8) And finally the Brit seeing this mess of people decides to join the bunch "because it seems like the right thing to do and we would not want to stand out of the crowd". But realizing the mess takes control of the key turns off the car "yelling there is a bloody curve that cannot be handled at 300 KPH" and yet everybody looks blankly at the Brit as if the Brit came from another planet...
Sorry for not including the others, but I ran out of time...
Re:One simple reason why it won't work:
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
Do you even understand the EU? First it is not the EC, but EU and second the thing that many forget to realize is that there is an entire generation that thinks EU. Anyone under 30 is in favour of the Euro because many of them consider themselves European.
And nationalism will not get in the way because people will not consider the EU as evil. This is because EU integration spanned generations.
Re:Xenophobia and pig headedness ?
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Me as a German and having lived in the UK, I thank God that there are Brits in the EU. Because without the Brits the EU would have gone to hell in hand-basket. Sure the Brits sometimes challenge too much. But very often the Brits are a sounding board of reason. If the EU were mainly run by Germany and France there would be NO EU!!!!
So maybe this with the Brits sitting it out may be a funny thing. But eventually things will be different. Until then the EU would do well to listen more often to the Brits...
I think variety is good. Keeps things interesting. But what bothers me about HURD is that they promote that it has all of the new things, but read the following:
> On the negative side, the support for character devices (like sound cards) and other hardware is mostly missing. Although the POSIX interface is provided, some additional interfaces like POSIX threads, shared memories or semaphores are still under development.
Ah, folks that is the heart of HURD, the advantage of handling shared memories, semaphores, clusters, etc. What the HURD developers should have done is focused on the hard stuff and then I think people would whine less.
Exactly. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is mainframe thinking all over again. The key to keeping things up and running is to make it redundent.
I find it so sad in the information world we keep thinking single data point and single information point. And people keep thinking things like FreeNet, GNUTella, etc are just "copyright" violators. In fact they are the future of the Internet. But the suits would much rather sell single point of failure systems.
I read the article and thought pretty cool. But and this is kind of funny. Consider the following comment.
>Tilden has created an army of lifelike robotic bugs that use transistors, rather than computers, to control their actions.
If I am not mistaken a computer is nothing more than a bunch of transistors put together. Hence this is not that amazing (interesting yes).
I thought actually these bugs were the ones that were built using analog technologies. I do not know who, but there is a scientist that uses no transistors, just analog circuits.
I tend to agree that Ximian is latching onto Microsoft. When a company works together with Microsoft it works for a while until they get crushed.
As proof, please anybody give me a company that has been able to work long time with Microsoft? Answer NONE!
Microsoft sucks the air out of any company that works with them. All I can say for Ximain is that sure it is your business decision to do this, but RIP. I say this lasts until the DOJ situation is over.
And this is why this technology is BAD!!! Personalization is not about pigeonholing a person. This is why personalization has not worked for anyone. Companies think that just because a person likes such and such then they must also like that. Well beep, wrong answer.
The problem with personalization technology is that it works on past behavior. And the thing is that we humans tend to be quirky and fad based. As a result it is basically impossible to tell what people want. Hence why did things like Rubik cubes, Beenie dolls, Cabbage Patch kids cannot be predicted.
What is harder and companies are not solving is contextual personalization. Basically what happens is that instead of attempting to figure out what the system thinks you want, the system helps you figure out what you want.
For example lets say you want to buy a stero. Well you goto store 1 and get quotes for pieces A and B. Then Store 2 get quotes for piece A so long as you buy C. Get an agent to optimize the situation.
How could I see this in TV? Simple, lets say that I am cleaning the house and feel blue. At that point the "agent" should set the channel to something like "The Country Music Channel". This is a system that I would like!!! But it is very different...
This is basic agent technology and very difficult to do.
If you distribute human labor over all who come calling, it is far from evident that "for most people" the hours they must devote to laboring has decreased. Child labor is on the rise, planetwide, corellated with increasing poverty in those locales. You could even say that children working even in affluent societies are directly expressing the cultural impoverishment setting in.
Commute times are also increasing, especially if you count the time for queuing up for necessities. You are appealing from a comfortable position of being lodged on the good side of a skewed world of inequities. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing all the same.
Beep.... Sorry, but guy you are looking this from a very narrow point of view. Things have changed massively.
First child labor, please a vague statement like child labor is on the rise is meaningless. In some countries child labor is being tackled and solved, whereas other countries are just not coming into the picture.
Now about the gap between the rich and poor. Again this is not entirely true. Sure Bill Gates is worth 50 Billion. But so WHAT!!! The population in the Western world has gotten further and achieved more. My point is how many cars do you need? How many houses do you need? The basic essentials and then some are being very nicely accomodated for everyone.
Now about the comment of being lodged in a position on the good side of a skewed world? Well sorry, but I have been on the "other" part of the world. My sister lives, and my parents lived in the "other" world. And to shatter the image that "third" world needs help, things are actually getting better. What we now perceive as the third world is in fact much smaller than what used to be the third world. If you look at much of South America, or Asia you will see that things are getting better in comparison to one hundred years ago.
Now about commute times getting longer, please get out of North America and look at other places in the world. Having lived/ing in Europe commuting times are not getting longer, but shorter. Europe has and is investing heavily into getting a better public transportation system.
David Brin once said "We always tend to look on the negative side of things and never look at what we accomplish. And the big problems of our day would seem laughably small in days gone past."
No, actually that is one point that was very correct in the article. Human labor as pointed out in the traditional sense as defined in the -communist manifesto- is actually drastically decreasing.
The amount of human labor require to "build" anything is much less than 100 years ago. People are starting to do "jobs" that amuse them. Open Source while it could be defined as labor is actual amusement. Humans need to do something and that something is just building things to amuse them.
Actually here a reference to Star Trek would be very applicable. Star Trek Next Generation could be a GPL type society. Sure people "work", but they do it for amusement to expand one's horizon. There is no money (unless they are dealing with Ferengi's;) ).
The point is that humans do things to amuse themselves. Me, I am a consultant, speaker, book author. I "add" nothing to the value chain, but yet people still give me money to talk about my ideas. It is the same in the music, film, etc industries. People pay to have other people "amuse" them. And this amusement is only increasing. This is good because people are not forced anymore to do things they do not want to...
To be honest I always thought remote controls were a BAD idea. Starting a car and just letting it idle is not a good thing for the motor in the first place. It spews out pollutants galore, etc...
Now before anyone says, but here in xxx it is -xxx degrees. Yeah, and ever heard of a garage? I live in Switzerland right now, but am Canadian and have a house near Montreal. And folks it gets cold in Canada!!! When we bought the house we made DAMM sure that it had a garage. Why? Simply nice warm car, easy to carry the groceries, no snow or ice to clean off, etc.
And the best part is that I can drive to my inlaws in my PJ's without ever stepping out (They have an automatic garage as well).
What bothers me about the band thing is that it is pre-created crap used to make money. Seriously...
Look at how bad things have gotten. Elton John refuses to make anymore albums because he is so disgusted with how things are going.
I watch the "band" building sessions. And from it I saw that the they look for the following things; coordination, stage presence, good looks and singing talent. The kicker was that the "director" said singing was at the last thing they look for. Why? Simple in a "band" it is easy to hide the lack of singing ability. Look at the remake of Billy Joels "Uptown girl" remake. The boy band did not have the ability to sing to the same ability as Billy Joel.
The point I am trying to make is that here in Europe the boy/girl band has become a pure money making scheme. THey just keep pumping out the bands and raising the hype. They are not interested in musical talent!!! And that is why the music industry is dead and decayed...
There is a new band "BroSis" and from the TV talk they are now International Stars. BULLDODO... They have one song no chart, but the marketing machine just keeps on going. BTW as a disclaimer there is one BroSis member who has real talent. Forget his name though.
Music Industry has decayed and rotted...
on
Rent Music Over the Net
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Last week here in Switzerland I decided to go to the shop and buy some video games. Well on my way I saw some CD's, VHS tapes and DVD's for sale.
So I look at the price and they are as follows:
CD: CHF 19.90
VHS: CHF 19.90
DVD: CHF 29.90
Notice something interesting here. The VHS tape is the same price as the CD. Two things to note here.
First when CD's and cassettes co-existed the price difference was not that big.
Second a movie basically costs the same price as a movie. I hear the music industry whining on how much it costs to produce a CD, but EXCUSE' me how much does it cost to produce a film?
The point is that the music industry is lost. While the music industry worries about illegal P2P the movie industry already has made their content easily available.
Here is what I mean. Notice how easy it is to get movie content? Either through Pay Per View, Movie Theathers, Movie Channels, Hotel viewing, DVD's, Rental's, etc. The point is that the music industry has flooded the channels and as such their income is assured in one form or another.
The music industry on the other hand has decided combat anything that is not based on sales of media... And the worst part is that the music industry keeps pumping out CRAP in terms of boy and girl bands.
Maybe the music industry should take a lesson from the movie industry...
I think the guy was not in charge of MS security in terms of software development, but IT infrastructure. And in that case it was a really good find. This guy managed fort Microsoft and MS knew how to keep its internal network in pretty good shape... Even with all of the gadgets and VPN's that they have.
Come on... Windows a mess with respect to cut, copy and paste? I think not!!!!
The way that Windows does it is with a clipboard and I prefer that way because it keeps the formatting information. For example when I copy HTML then I get HTML and not something wierd. On LINUX this simply does not work correctly...
For example I am a big fan of Star Trek (new series another debate for another day). The point is that I am not keen on waiting and I found out why people have to wait. IT IS BECAUSE THE NETWORKS ARE BASTARDS...
I live in Europe and have lived in multiple places (UK, Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland) And in each place I get digital TV. Now all of the digital TV companies only provide content in their native language. It is not because the networks cannot handle multiple languages (They can), but the copyright holders re media companies like the RIAA and networks are idiots.
This is how come SKY has to be encrypted. It is not because SKY does not want to broadcast Europe wide, but they cannot. When SKY One started they were the first ones to bring out content. People flocked to them in droves. The European Courts then said that SKY can still broadcast, but only encrypted. And those who want to decrypt the signal have to buy cards and live in the UK.
The interesting bit is Canal+. Canal+ is a French carrier and has a good digital network. You would figure that Canal+ being French would only broadcast in French (oui, oui)... Ha! Canal+ has most of its content in multi-language. This means when I lived in France I used to watch episodes of Friends, Drew Carey, etc one week after the North American friends. Canal+ has proven that it is possible...
So why is there still a problem? My thinking is Germany. The German media (BTW I am German) has their heads so far up their ass that they have no idea what is going on. The German media companies are afraid of competition. Why? Because German content is CRAP! All of the other countries can produce stuff, but Germans have no idea what good content is (Ok there are exceptions, ie TV Total). For example an American company just came in and bought a huge chunk of German cable and now Germans are crying wolf because "German crap" content might not be carried.
If the German media (and others) actually listened to what the people wanted maybe there would not be people like me who use the file sharing networks!!!
Hey dipshit!!! Multi-lingualism is the way of the future and not just a single language. I suppose that if you program you ONLY program in one language. And of course you only use one tool when fixing anything, namely the hammer...
Knowledge is not just about being able to read and write. Learning is about being able to think and reason... And knowing other cultures and languages broadens one's horizon...
No offense meant here, but this is something that has already been solved very well in the windows world. It is the key strokes "Ctrl-c", "Ctrl-v".
I do not mean to be offensive here, but Windows actually has this one solved really well. I know on the LINUX platform this is an absolute mess and pain in the butt.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I think Eclipse is what a "next generation" emacs could be. While Emacs is useful it is not my sort of tool. I would much prefer a Visual Studio type of tool. I guess it is what you are used to.
You are right on all of your points. But I ask the following. Can your HP-UX station use authentication that allows it to hook into Active Directory with all bells and whistles? Probably not.
.NET. That is also why Miguel is dreaming about doing .NET on LINUX.
It is not that Microsoft changes the basics. That is pretty easy to catch up to. What is more problematic is keeping up.
Let me explain. Lets say that I build an application using the Windows API (actually am). Everything works fine until the user starts using it on Windows XP or Windows 2000. You may ask why? Well according to the new security rules the application must only save content under the "My Documents" folder and not the folder installed to or something else. So now you are wondering how do I get access to the "My Documents" folder? The answer is a brand new API that is only available in a modern Platform SDK because when Visual C++ was released the API did not exist.
Do you see the issue? It is not that they break backward compatibility. It is that they introduce new rules which require you force upgrade your code. And that will happen with
Yeah Useful, Bull...t. Why must I wait until next year to see content such as Enterprise here in Europe? Does that make sense? NO...
Why must I listen to English content in Germany? Why can I not choose? Have you ever listened to dubbed shows? Obviously not...
I do not like piracy, but when broadcasters in this day and age add artificial barriers then THEY SHOULD BE PIRATED. I am more than willing to pay for Enterprise content. And so would many other people in Europe.
So I ask you why not allow it? Again the stupid broadcasters!!!
I also did not watch the Olympics because of their greed. Did not miss much!!! Times have change and so should the way content is broadcasted...
> governments with strong Neo-Nazi elements.
And Louisana was what??? KKK Yes? How about Pat Buchanan? Or how about many of the other Republicans? Sorry elements exist on both sides of the pond...
> I am sure that some Europeans don't like the inroads American culture has made into their society. However I am sort of puzzled by the apparent feeling of European governments that they must legislate to insure local content in their media. What sort of freedom is this? Shouldn't Europeans be free to listen or watch whatever they please?
Ahh, interesting arugment so how come I cannot eat unpasturized cheese (Roquefort)? Or import any vehicle that has been deemed to be safe in Europe? Again my point is that both sides of the pond have just as restrictive policies in one thing or another.
Ignorance is not exclusive to Americans or Europeans. It happens on both sides. I always find this funny because I think that Europe has become the brash teenager who has come to age and America is the old foggie going, Yes but you still need to learn this that and the other thing.
Excuse me, but give it a rest...
Just to give you an illustration here is my point. Ask any European if they have met either a German or British plated car in any EU country other than Germany and British. Answer is YES because Germans and Brits travel.
BTW your argument of true labour movement in the US is incorrect. I know I have lived there. Some people in some states move, whereas others do not. For example Southerner's do not tend to move. They stick fixed. However a Northerner will tend to move aorund.
Will a Frenchman move? Not likely, but a German, Brit, Irish sure will move...
Sorry, but those are old reasons. Really...
First grudges centuries old. Most of them are actually gone. And those that are still there want to separate from the country, but not the Union. That is the kicker of it. Take Northern Italy for example. They wanted to separate from Southern Italy. Then asked if they wanted to separate from the Union and the response was, "What loose all that trade and such? Never..." Nobody in Europe does not want to be part of the union. This is something that has come to pass.
Next about immigration. This is not an Intra-EU problem, but a problem of people trying to get into the EU. Nobody has anything against an EU member moving from one country to another EU country. Having lived in many of the EU countries I have never witnessed it. The only thing I witnessed is that some people get annoyed that all the vaction spots are getting bought out.
Again let me re-iterate that I am German who is a French wanna-be. And I love my EU counterparts with all heart... BUT the following could be said.
;) ) 4) The spaniard would constantly be fiddling with the rear view mirror and asking "Do I look good, is my hair in the right order?"
Well if the EU were a vehicle and the individual members in the car we'd have the following:
1) Germans steering the vehicle saying "We are Germans our cars are meant for high speed and we can handle the curves. It vill work alvays."
2) Italians stepping on the gas peddle saying "Speed is in our blood, faster is better"
3) French every now and then stepping on the clutch in full speed saying "Philosphically we are the cultural backbone of the union and hence stepping on the clutch makes it possible to assess whether or not the car is driving in the right direction on the correct road in the proper weather conditions that are best for fostering a cooperative system of interacting people at a higher plane of conditioning" (if you understand that you must be French
5) The Finn would twiddle with the onboard GPS system equipped with GPRS, RDS, CD, MP3 and proudly say "Hey guys no idea where we are, but guess what I just sent an SMS to my buddy in Sweden stating we are somewhere in Europe"
6) The Greek would be relegated to the trunk of the car and while the car is parked will have changed summer tires to winter tires, filled the gas tank, and checked the oil. Afterwards the rest of the troup asks why the Greek did not refill the windshield wiper fluid and moan at how critical it was that they have a filled windshield wiper fluid tank.
7) The Irish will be neatly dressed and organized and ready to rock and roll. But then moan out load that the Dutch is smoking pot beside him.
8) And finally the Brit seeing this mess of people decides to join the bunch "because it seems like the right thing to do and we would not want to stand out of the crowd". But realizing the mess takes control of the key turns off the car "yelling there is a bloody curve that cannot be handled at 300 KPH" and yet everybody looks blankly at the Brit as if the Brit came from another planet...
Sorry for not including the others, but I ran out of time...
Do you even understand the EU? First it is not the EC, but EU and second the thing that many forget to realize is that there is an entire generation that thinks EU. Anyone under 30 is in favour of the Euro because many of them consider themselves European.
And nationalism will not get in the way because people will not consider the EU as evil. This is because EU integration spanned generations.
Me as a German and having lived in the UK, I thank God that there are Brits in the EU. Because without the Brits the EU would have gone to hell in hand-basket. Sure the Brits sometimes challenge too much. But very often the Brits are a sounding board of reason. If the EU were mainly run by Germany and France there would be NO EU!!!!
So maybe this with the Brits sitting it out may be a funny thing. But eventually things will be different. Until then the EU would do well to listen more often to the Brits...
I think variety is good. Keeps things interesting. But what bothers me about HURD is that they promote that it has all of the new things, but read the following:
> On the negative side, the support for character devices (like sound cards) and other hardware is mostly missing. Although the POSIX interface is provided, some additional interfaces like POSIX threads, shared memories or semaphores are still under development.
Ah, folks that is the heart of HURD, the advantage of handling shared memories, semaphores, clusters, etc. What the HURD developers should have done is focused on the hard stuff and then I think people would whine less.
Exactly. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is mainframe thinking all over again. The key to keeping things up and running is to make it redundent.
I find it so sad in the information world we keep thinking single data point and single information point. And people keep thinking things like FreeNet, GNUTella, etc are just "copyright" violators. In fact they are the future of the Internet. But the suits would much rather sell single point of failure systems.
C'est la vie, maybe one day
I read the article and thought pretty cool. But and this is kind of funny. Consider the following comment.
>Tilden has created an army of lifelike robotic bugs that use transistors, rather than computers, to control their actions.
If I am not mistaken a computer is nothing more than a bunch of transistors put together. Hence this is not that amazing (interesting yes).
I thought actually these bugs were the ones that were built using analog technologies. I do not know who, but there is a scientist that uses no transistors, just analog circuits.
I tend to agree that Ximian is latching onto Microsoft. When a company works together with Microsoft it works for a while until they get crushed.
As proof, please anybody give me a company that has been able to work long time with Microsoft? Answer NONE!
Microsoft sucks the air out of any company that works with them. All I can say for Ximain is that sure it is your business decision to do this, but RIP. I say this lasts until the DOJ situation is over.
And this is why this technology is BAD!!! Personalization is not about pigeonholing a person. This is why personalization has not worked for anyone. Companies think that just because a person likes such and such then they must also like that. Well beep, wrong answer.
The problem with personalization technology is that it works on past behavior. And the thing is that we humans tend to be quirky and fad based. As a result it is basically impossible to tell what people want. Hence why did things like Rubik cubes, Beenie dolls, Cabbage Patch kids cannot be predicted.
What is harder and companies are not solving is contextual personalization. Basically what happens is that instead of attempting to figure out what the system thinks you want, the system helps you figure out what you want.
For example lets say you want to buy a stero. Well you goto store 1 and get quotes for pieces A and B. Then Store 2 get quotes for piece A so long as you buy C. Get an agent to optimize the situation.
How could I see this in TV? Simple, lets say that I am cleaning the house and feel blue. At that point the "agent" should set the channel to something like "The Country Music Channel". This is a system that I would like!!! But it is very different...
This is basic agent technology and very difficult to do.
Beep.... Sorry, but guy you are looking this from a very narrow point of view. Things have changed massively.
First child labor, please a vague statement like child labor is on the rise is meaningless. In some countries child labor is being tackled and solved, whereas other countries are just not coming into the picture.
Now about the gap between the rich and poor. Again this is not entirely true. Sure Bill Gates is worth 50 Billion. But so WHAT!!! The population in the Western world has gotten further and achieved more. My point is how many cars do you need? How many houses do you need? The basic essentials and then some are being very nicely accomodated for everyone.
Now about the comment of being lodged in a position on the good side of a skewed world? Well sorry, but I have been on the "other" part of the world. My sister lives, and my parents lived in the "other" world. And to shatter the image that "third" world needs help, things are actually getting better. What we now perceive as the third world is in fact much smaller than what used to be the third world. If you look at much of South America, or Asia you will see that things are getting better in comparison to one hundred years ago.
Now about commute times getting longer, please get out of North America and look at other places in the world. Having lived/ing in Europe commuting times are not getting longer, but shorter. Europe has and is investing heavily into getting a better public transportation system.
David Brin once said "We always tend to look on the negative side of things and never look at what we accomplish. And the big problems of our day would seem laughably small in days gone past."
No, actually that is one point that was very correct in the article. Human labor as pointed out in the traditional sense as defined in the -communist manifesto- is actually drastically decreasing.
;) ).
The amount of human labor require to "build" anything is much less than 100 years ago. People are starting to do "jobs" that amuse them. Open Source while it could be defined as labor is actual amusement. Humans need to do something and that something is just building things to amuse them.
Actually here a reference to Star Trek would be very applicable. Star Trek Next Generation could be a GPL type society. Sure people "work", but they do it for amusement to expand one's horizon. There is no money (unless they are dealing with Ferengi's
The point is that humans do things to amuse themselves. Me, I am a consultant, speaker, book author. I "add" nothing to the value chain, but yet people still give me money to talk about my ideas. It is the same in the music, film, etc industries. People pay to have other people "amuse" them. And this amusement is only increasing. This is good because people are not forced anymore to do things they do not want to...
I agree it is warm on the East side, but have you taken a look at the West side of the coast? Snow galore... The total opposite of last year...
To be honest I always thought remote controls were a BAD idea. Starting a car and just letting it idle is not a good thing for the motor in the first place. It spews out pollutants galore, etc...
Now before anyone says, but here in xxx it is -xxx degrees. Yeah, and ever heard of a garage? I live in Switzerland right now, but am Canadian and have a house near Montreal. And folks it gets cold in Canada!!! When we bought the house we made DAMM sure that it had a garage. Why? Simply nice warm car, easy to carry the groceries, no snow or ice to clean off, etc.
And the best part is that I can drive to my inlaws in my PJ's without ever stepping out (They have an automatic garage as well).
That is a better solution to the problem!!!!
What bothers me about the band thing is that it is pre-created crap used to make money. Seriously...
Look at how bad things have gotten. Elton John refuses to make anymore albums because he is so disgusted with how things are going.
I watch the "band" building sessions. And from it I saw that the they look for the following things; coordination, stage presence, good looks and singing talent. The kicker was that the "director" said singing was at the last thing they look for. Why? Simple in a "band" it is easy to hide the lack of singing ability. Look at the remake of Billy Joels "Uptown girl" remake. The boy band did not have the ability to sing to the same ability as Billy Joel.
The point I am trying to make is that here in Europe the boy/girl band has become a pure money making scheme. THey just keep pumping out the bands and raising the hype. They are not interested in musical talent!!! And that is why the music industry is dead and decayed...
There is a new band "BroSis" and from the TV talk they are now International Stars. BULLDODO... They have one song no chart, but the marketing machine just keeps on going. BTW as a disclaimer there is one BroSis member who has real talent. Forget his name though.
Last week here in Switzerland I decided to go to the shop and buy some video games. Well on my way I saw some CD's, VHS tapes and DVD's for sale.
So I look at the price and they are as follows:
CD: CHF 19.90
VHS: CHF 19.90
DVD: CHF 29.90
Notice something interesting here. The VHS tape is the same price as the CD. Two things to note here.
First when CD's and cassettes co-existed the price difference was not that big.
Second a movie basically costs the same price as a movie. I hear the music industry whining on how much it costs to produce a CD, but EXCUSE' me how much does it cost to produce a film?
The point is that the music industry is lost. While the music industry worries about illegal P2P the movie industry already has made their content easily available.
Here is what I mean. Notice how easy it is to get movie content? Either through Pay Per View, Movie Theathers, Movie Channels, Hotel viewing, DVD's, Rental's, etc. The point is that the music industry has flooded the channels and as such their income is assured in one form or another.
The music industry on the other hand has decided combat anything that is not based on sales of media... And the worst part is that the music industry keeps pumping out CRAP in terms of boy and girl bands.
Maybe the music industry should take a lesson from the movie industry...
I think the guy was not in charge of MS security in terms of software development, but IT infrastructure. And in that case it was a really good find. This guy managed fort Microsoft and MS knew how to keep its internal network in pretty good shape... Even with all of the gadgets and VPN's that they have.
Come on... Windows a mess with respect to cut, copy and paste? I think not!!!!
The way that Windows does it is with a clipboard and I prefer that way because it keeps the formatting information. For example when I copy HTML then I get HTML and not something wierd. On LINUX this simply does not work correctly...
And it will keep happening...
For example I am a big fan of Star Trek (new series another debate for another day). The point is that I am not keen on waiting and I found out why people have to wait. IT IS BECAUSE THE NETWORKS ARE BASTARDS...
I live in Europe and have lived in multiple places (UK, Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland) And in each place I get digital TV. Now all of the digital TV companies only provide content in their native language. It is not because the networks cannot handle multiple languages (They can), but the copyright holders re media companies like the RIAA and networks are idiots.
This is how come SKY has to be encrypted. It is not because SKY does not want to broadcast Europe wide, but they cannot. When SKY One started they were the first ones to bring out content. People flocked to them in droves. The European Courts then said that SKY can still broadcast, but only encrypted. And those who want to decrypt the signal have to buy cards and live in the UK.
The interesting bit is Canal+. Canal+ is a French carrier and has a good digital network. You would figure that Canal+ being French would only broadcast in French (oui, oui)... Ha! Canal+ has most of its content in multi-language. This means when I lived in France I used to watch episodes of Friends, Drew Carey, etc one week after the North American friends. Canal+ has proven that it is possible...
So why is there still a problem? My thinking is Germany. The German media (BTW I am German) has their heads so far up their ass that they have no idea what is going on. The German media companies are afraid of competition. Why? Because German content is CRAP! All of the other countries can produce stuff, but Germans have no idea what good content is (Ok there are exceptions, ie TV Total). For example an American company just came in and bought a huge chunk of German cable and now Germans are crying wolf because "German crap" content might not be carried.
If the German media (and others) actually listened to what the people wanted maybe there would not be people like me who use the file sharing networks!!!
Hey dipshit!!! Multi-lingualism is the way of the future and not just a single language. I suppose that if you program you ONLY program in one language. And of course you only use one tool when fixing anything, namely the hammer...
Knowledge is not just about being able to read and write. Learning is about being able to think and reason... And knowing other cultures and languages broadens one's horizon...
No offense meant here, but this is something that has already been solved very well in the windows world. It is the key strokes "Ctrl-c", "Ctrl-v".
I do not mean to be offensive here, but Windows actually has this one solved really well. I know on the LINUX platform this is an absolute mess and pain in the butt.