Why even legitimize this bullshit? You've reported the suit. That's news. Great. Noted. Thank you. Now show some spine, by not allowing yourselves to be "spun" by their PR dept.
This has been one of my pet peeves for awhile. Forget portable bookmarks for now -- it's hard enough managing them on one machine, or within each browser! Mozilla still uses a crusty old Netscape design, where moving bookmarks around, sticking them in folders, etc., is a real pain in the ass. IE is the same way. I can imagine Microsoft and Netscape might want to make this difficult, to keep people from zapping the bookmarks (advertising) these companies stick into their products.
I suspect this because IE's bookmark interface used to be better...
My favorite was with IE from a few generations ago -- maybe IE4 -- where it was just a standard file manager window. You could select, and drag and drop bookmarks en masse into folders. You can't do this with Mozilla, at least that I know of. I forget what Konquerer does -- I usually use Mozilla anyway. So my bookmarks menus grow to epic lengths, 'til I finally get disgusted, delete them, and start over. Or I don't use them at all, and just hit Google when I forget where something is.
This is ridiculous. Other people I know complain about the same thing.
There are various deals by which you can get rights, none of which are really feasible. Basically, they want a headcount of the people watching, and a certain amount of money per head. The only standard deal in the industry is like a regular theater, where you have scheduled showings and sell a ticket to each individual. This is not feasible in a cafe or bar evironment, where the movie is in the background and people come and go. The only deals like this that are currently in place for such an evironment are PPV TV deals for sports bars, etc.
For music, companies like Muzak have standard deals for background music, based on store traffic or sales, out of which fees go to the original artist. But there are no standard deals for films.
With indie films, you're on your own with the individual producer or distrbutor. However, these people have to be careful who they do business with -- if they cut a deal with you, they may ruin their chances of a deal with someone else who doesn't like your deal -- such as a traditional distributor. Like with music, it isn't the studios or labels that run the show, but the distributors.
In a city like NY or LA, there are enough artist/indie filmmakers who would let you screen their films, but chasing them down is a full time job in itself. And even then, you're basically playing to them and their friends, once. It doesn't exactly pack the house, and these people are generally not big spenders -- not enough to cover big city rent, anyway. Many of these businesses have tried and failed. If this could happen anywhere, it would be NY or LA, and it hasn't. I can think of half a dozen in LA alone that have tried in the last few years, and if they didn't fail outright, they morphed into something else.
Such businesses could maybe work as certain models -- such as silent movie theme restaurants, showing movies for which the copyrights have expired. But current films? Forget it.
IMO, one of Sun's biggest problems lately is Ellison going on and on about Linux. In the past, a lot of Sun boxes were bought to run Oracle. People bought Sun because of the perception that it's Oracle's native platform, where Oracle would run best. Now that Ellison is on the Linux bandwagon, that perception isn't as prevalent. This has to be hurting Sun.
I wish both Ellison and McNealy would just shut the fuck up. Anti-Microsoft braggadoccio only serves to draw Microsoft's attention and ire. These two loudmouths aren't doing the free/opensource movement any favors.
The problem is that the big theater chains control the channels of distribution, and are afraid of competition. I and several other people I know have tried to get various theater businesses going, including cinema cafes back in the mid-80s. It's nearly impossible to obtain the rights to do this.
The theater industry has its familiar business model, and is not interested in changing. And as long as it has the power to avoid change, it will. The only hope is to convince them of the missed opportunities. The first successful step will probably to get them to partner with a chain of sports bars or something. This too will be difficult, because all the major theater chains are family businesses run by third generation ne'er do wells -- more concerned with holding on to what they have than exploring new possibilities.
IOW, this is a really tough nut to crack. It's a shame, because the possiblities are incredible. Many others have been thinking these very same things, and trying new business models for decades. Every time, they've been crushed by the powers that be. New technology may provide more leverage, but that's not the heart of the matter.
Like the dinosaur music industry, the theater industry's attitude is this:
Don't forget the internet is global. Many companies, and government entities, would gladly pay lots of money, perhaps *billions*, for customized search solutions from Google -- the only company that can do certain very valuable things on a large scale. It is rumored that Google sold some kind of search solution to the Chinese government, which blocks sites they don't want their people to have access to. This sounds evil, but it may very well be the compromise that allows the Chinese people to have internet access at all. I can envision deals like this being worth billions.
So maybe there's actually money to be made here. If something's that good of a cash cow, why sell it?
Another reason for Kleiner Perkins etc. to want to hold onto Google is in courting future clients, or as a tool to compete with. A new startup may benefit from Google's technology, and by having that "in-house," KP may be able to offer a better deal -- or stiff resistance if that client signs with someone else.
Port Blakely Communities is also drawing the high-tech work force by requiring that every home - from the upper-$100,000s carriage houses to the $1,000,000 single-family homes - be wired to accommodate their needs. Buyers get an in-home LAN, data outlets throughout the home, a fiber optic connection to a data panel inside the home, 100 Mbps network speed, free community Intranet connection, and the choice of DSL, cable, or even fiber optics for high-speed internet access.
This is all well and good. More communities should require this kind of thing. However, the hard problem is making the argument that builders should be required to do this. I'd really like to see a web page dedicated to this -- listing exactly what's needed, and what the costs really are. For example, each house needs this number of those jacks, so many feet of this wire, and a switch like this, all costing how many dollars. And for every so many houses, one of these big switches that cost that much, etc.
The thing is, it doesn't have to be fiber. Ethernet would suffice, and be a hell of a lot better and cheaper than most people's current broadband options. Sure it will be outdated someday, but it's so cheap to stick into new construction now, that it should be required by most communities.
...which is the real point behind such projects -- not only a computer in every room, but a server in every coat closet, and a business running out of every bedroom.
You don't know many apartment operators, obviously. Even the large companies (mostly REITs) are extraordinarily conservative operators who do not change their ways of doing business easily. Especially post-bubble, most are likely to look at other amenities first, such as security, fitness centers, etc. Putting in technology infrastructure, which will likely involve additional costs, is not going to be an easy sell.
I do know apartment operators, and unfortunately you are correct. It doesn't help that property management is often the business of the ne'er do well son in law, the slacker grandchild, or other idiot who either couldn't or wouldn't do anything else. No MIT grads, in other words...
One thing that really surprised me was how fast Knoppix runs. Compared to the other distros I've had on my laptop (Redhat and Mandrake), Knoppix screams. The others were noticeably slower than Windows, while Knoppix is at least on par, maybe faster. Of course it's a little slow loading applications from a CD, but otherwise it's a screamer.
The boot speed is incredible, especially considering all the hardware detection it's doing. I'm up and running in about 30 seconds. Win2k takes at least 3-4 minutes, every time.
I've had little experience with Debian. People say it's faster, and now I see they're not kidding.
This would only be possible if you can load the whole CD into RAM and swap. I don't know if this is possible the way Knoppix is set up, but there may be a switch you can use at startup that does it. Currently it seems to run only off the CD for me, so when starting a new app I have to wait for the CD to spin up to load it.
Great! I'm buying a USB memory key today!
on
Knoppix 3.2 Available
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I've been waiting for this "persistent home" version of Knoppix to appear. Now when I travel I may even be able to leave my laptop behind -- all I need is a Knoppix CD, and a USB memory key.
3G is flat rate now... Shirky's asleep!
on
Permanet vs. Nearlynet
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The second problem is that 3G services don't just have the wrong prices, they have the wrong kind of prices -- metered -- while Wifi is flat-rate.
It may not be everyone's idea of the mythical 3G, but Verizon's Express Network offers flat-rate, unilmited use for $99 per month. The advertised speed is 144kbps.
As it stands, Eclipse has more features than Idea, plus a whole bunch of plugins. Eclipse has tools for working on big, complex projects. Idea shines as a more basic editor, where it leaves everything else behind. It's just much more nicely done, with a much cleaner interface. I especially like how it automatically adds import statements, AFAIK the only IDE that does that.
The best way to find out which is better for you is to download both and try them.
FYI, Quicken's.qif file format is wide open, a de facto standard that anyone can write to. I don't understand why more developers don't take advantage of this fact. If you're writing a new Quicken-replacement program you should just use it, rather than reinvent the wheel -- whether your product is commercial, GPL, or whatever. You can download the.qif spec from Intuit.
Intuit has more incentive to keep their file formats open becuase what keeps Quicken and especially Quickbooks going is the ability for developers to create add ons. Quickbooks has a whole industry of add-on developers. By using the.qif standard, you can plug into this community too. The more stuff your product will interface with, the more attractive it will be, be it commericial, GPL, or whatever.
Smart filtering does work, and it's been around a little while now. There's no excuse for Microsoft not including it in Outlook Express, the most common email application by far. They key to stopping spam is smart filtering for the masses. Then it would be hard enough to send spam that few would bother to try.
Personally, I'm using POPFile, and it works great.
Slashdot Mirror
...maybe the smart people can be left alone to solve some of the problems that actually matter.
Why even legitimize this bullshit? You've reported the suit. That's news. Great. Noted. Thank you. Now show some spine, by not allowing yourselves to be "spun" by their PR dept.
This has been one of my pet peeves for awhile. Forget portable bookmarks for now -- it's hard enough managing them on one machine, or within each browser! Mozilla still uses a crusty old Netscape design, where moving bookmarks around, sticking them in folders, etc., is a real pain in the ass. IE is the same way. I can imagine Microsoft and Netscape might want to make this difficult, to keep people from zapping the bookmarks (advertising) these companies stick into their products.
I suspect this because IE's bookmark interface used to be better...
My favorite was with IE from a few generations ago -- maybe IE4 -- where it was just a standard file manager window. You could select, and drag and drop bookmarks en masse into folders. You can't do this with Mozilla, at least that I know of. I forget what Konquerer does -- I usually use Mozilla anyway. So my bookmarks menus grow to epic lengths, 'til I finally get disgusted, delete them, and start over. Or I don't use them at all, and just hit Google when I forget where something is.
This is ridiculous. Other people I know complain about the same thing.
The appeal of Ogg has nothing to do with DRM. Ogg ensures a royalty-free codec. DRM for content is a completely different matter.
There are various deals by which you can get rights, none of which are really feasible. Basically, they want a headcount of the people watching, and a certain amount of money per head. The only standard deal in the industry is like a regular theater, where you have scheduled showings and sell a ticket to each individual. This is not feasible in a cafe or bar evironment, where the movie is in the background and people come and go. The only deals like this that are currently in place for such an evironment are PPV TV deals for sports bars, etc.
For music, companies like Muzak have standard deals for background music, based on store traffic or sales, out of which fees go to the original artist. But there are no standard deals for films.
With indie films, you're on your own with the individual producer or distrbutor. However, these people have to be careful who they do business with -- if they cut a deal with you, they may ruin their chances of a deal with someone else who doesn't like your deal -- such as a traditional distributor. Like with music, it isn't the studios or labels that run the show, but the distributors.
In a city like NY or LA, there are enough artist/indie filmmakers who would let you screen their films, but chasing them down is a full time job in itself. And even then, you're basically playing to them and their friends, once. It doesn't exactly pack the house, and these people are generally not big spenders -- not enough to cover big city rent, anyway. Many of these businesses have tried and failed. If this could happen anywhere, it would be NY or LA, and it hasn't. I can think of half a dozen in LA alone that have tried in the last few years, and if they didn't fail outright, they morphed into something else.
Such businesses could maybe work as certain models -- such as silent movie theme restaurants, showing movies for which the copyrights have expired. But current films? Forget it.
I bet ol' Larry will change his tune then!
IMO, one of Sun's biggest problems lately is Ellison going on and on about Linux. In the past, a lot of Sun boxes were bought to run Oracle. People bought Sun because of the perception that it's Oracle's native platform, where Oracle would run best. Now that Ellison is on the Linux bandwagon, that perception isn't as prevalent. This has to be hurting Sun.
I wish both Ellison and McNealy would just shut the fuck up. Anti-Microsoft braggadoccio only serves to draw Microsoft's attention and ire. These two loudmouths aren't doing the free/opensource movement any favors.
Absolutely.
The problem is that the big theater chains control the channels of distribution, and are afraid of competition. I and several other people I know have tried to get various theater businesses going, including cinema cafes back in the mid-80s. It's nearly impossible to obtain the rights to do this.
The theater industry has its familiar business model, and is not interested in changing. And as long as it has the power to avoid change, it will. The only hope is to convince them of the missed opportunities. The first successful step will probably to get them to partner with a chain of sports bars or something. This too will be difficult, because all the major theater chains are family businesses run by third generation ne'er do wells -- more concerned with holding on to what they have than exploring new possibilities.
IOW, this is a really tough nut to crack. It's a shame, because the possiblities are incredible. Many others have been thinking these very same things, and trying new business models for decades. Every time, they've been crushed by the powers that be. New technology may provide more leverage, but that's not the heart of the matter.
Like the dinosaur music industry, the theater industry's attitude is this:
We don't have to.
We shouldn't have to.
We refuse to.
Don't even bother to try, we'll sue.
Please don't spring new acronyms upon us without defining them. Not all of us are clued into the PHP world, and all its pet names and acronyms.
"Naive!"
Don't forget the internet is global. Many companies, and government entities, would gladly pay lots of money, perhaps *billions*, for customized search solutions from Google -- the only company that can do certain very valuable things on a large scale. It is rumored that Google sold some kind of search solution to the Chinese government, which blocks sites they don't want their people to have access to. This sounds evil, but it may very well be the compromise that allows the Chinese people to have internet access at all. I can envision deals like this being worth billions.
So maybe there's actually money to be made here. If something's that good of a cash cow, why sell it?
Another reason for Kleiner Perkins etc. to want to hold onto Google is in courting future clients, or as a tool to compete with. A new startup may benefit from Google's technology, and by having that "in-house," KP may be able to offer a better deal -- or stiff resistance if that client signs with someone else.
Port Blakely Communities is also drawing the high-tech work force by requiring that every home - from the upper-$100,000s carriage houses to the $1,000,000 single-family homes - be wired to accommodate their needs. Buyers get an in-home LAN, data outlets throughout the home, a fiber optic connection to a data panel inside the home, 100 Mbps network speed, free community Intranet connection, and the choice of DSL, cable, or even fiber optics for high-speed internet access.
This is all well and good. More communities should require this kind of thing. However, the hard problem is making the argument that builders should be required to do this. I'd really like to see a web page dedicated to this -- listing exactly what's needed, and what the costs really are. For example, each house needs this number of those jacks, so many feet of this wire, and a switch like this, all costing how many dollars. And for every so many houses, one of these big switches that cost that much, etc.
The thing is, it doesn't have to be fiber. Ethernet would suffice, and be a hell of a lot better and cheaper than most people's current broadband options. Sure it will be outdated someday, but it's so cheap to stick into new construction now, that it should be required by most communities.
...which is the real point behind such projects -- not only a computer in every room, but a server in every coat closet, and a business running out of every bedroom.
You don't know many apartment operators, obviously. Even the large companies (mostly REITs) are extraordinarily conservative operators who do not change their ways of doing business easily. Especially post-bubble, most are likely to look at other amenities first, such as security, fitness centers, etc. Putting in technology infrastructure, which will likely involve additional costs, is not going to be an easy sell.
I do know apartment operators, and unfortunately you are correct. It doesn't help that property management is often the business of the ne'er do well son in law, the slacker grandchild, or other idiot who either couldn't or wouldn't do anything else. No MIT grads, in other words...
And a desktop computer, of course!
Or a borrowed laptop! Any x86 machine!
One thing that really surprised me was how fast Knoppix runs. Compared to the other distros I've had on my laptop (Redhat and Mandrake), Knoppix screams. The others were noticeably slower than Windows, while Knoppix is at least on par, maybe faster. Of course it's a little slow loading applications from a CD, but otherwise it's a screamer.
The boot speed is incredible, especially considering all the hardware detection it's doing. I'm up and running in about 30 seconds. Win2k takes at least 3-4 minutes, every time.
I've had little experience with Debian. People say it's faster, and now I see they're not kidding.
This would only be possible if you can load the whole CD into RAM and swap. I don't know if this is possible the way Knoppix is set up, but there may be a switch you can use at startup that does it. Currently it seems to run only off the CD for me, so when starting a new app I have to wait for the CD to spin up to load it.
I've been waiting for this "persistent home" version of Knoppix to appear. Now when I travel I may even be able to leave my laptop behind -- all I need is a Knoppix CD, and a USB memory key.
The second problem is that 3G services don't just have the wrong prices, they have the wrong kind of prices -- metered -- while Wifi is flat-rate.
It may not be everyone's idea of the mythical 3G, but Verizon's Express Network offers flat-rate, unilmited use for $99 per month. The advertised speed is 144kbps.
As it stands, Eclipse has more features than Idea, plus a whole bunch of plugins. Eclipse has tools for working on big, complex projects. Idea shines as a more basic editor, where it leaves everything else behind. It's just much more nicely done, with a much cleaner interface. I especially like how it automatically adds import statements, AFAIK the only IDE that does that.
The best way to find out which is better for you is to download both and try them.
"So why do astronomers always compare the size of meteors to Volkswagen bugs?"
They're the most familiar car to astronomers, 'cuz they're the only one most of them can afford to drive.
You buy somebody else's technology and sell it under your own name, on the assumption that your name makes the product more sellable.
Do they really think CTOs are that stupid? No wonder Sun is going down the tubes.
FYI, Quicken's .qif file format is wide open, a de facto standard that anyone can write to. I don't understand why more developers don't take advantage of this fact. If you're writing a new Quicken-replacement program you should just use it, rather than reinvent the wheel -- whether your product is commercial, GPL, or whatever. You can download the .qif spec from Intuit.
.qif standard, you can plug into this community too. The more stuff your product will interface with, the more attractive it will be, be it commericial, GPL, or whatever.
Intuit has more incentive to keep their file formats open becuase what keeps Quicken and especially Quickbooks going is the ability for developers to create add ons. Quickbooks has a whole industry of add-on developers. By using the
Smart filtering does work, and it's been around a little while now. There's no excuse for Microsoft not including it in Outlook Express, the most common email application by far. They key to stopping spam is smart filtering for the masses. Then it would be hard enough to send spam that few would bother to try.
Personally, I'm using POPFile, and it works great.