My pager uses encrypted FLEX technology and gives me alphanumeric pages and I can get pages from anywhere. So I think I'll stick to the $8 a month... it's really not breaking me.
I have a Wordline FX pager that is almost half the price of a regular pager because it supposedly will give ads out to me. Now as of yet I have gotten no ads, but I am told they're coming. The ads however would be more like coupons and contests that might also be fun to play.
So why not let the cell phone prices come down a little bit so you might have to look at an ad every now and then? That doesn't stop you from watching TV, listening to the radio, reading a magazine or newspaper, or driving for that matter.
Ads make things cheaper and inform us and annoy us. So yeah I'm all for it.
Now that palm is the most favored PDA in my book I've found that it is the absolute best. Even though you can't run windows CE on it... it has perfect windows and linux compatability.
But it brings my next comment. Most people who have palm pilots aren't going to mess with them and run fancy software on them. For the most part all I've seen palms used for is email reading and playing games on. Ohh yeah and as a schedule book.
So miniGL is out for the palm. Does this mean anything really to the average palm user? Not really. But it brings another question... why isn't the palm being used to it's full potential. It's almost a waste of resources. Like anyone who buys a pIII just to email and surf the web and play quake.
But the palm itself has the game planned quite well. It's easy for the average user to use, but also the power user can use it also. So yes developement for the palm shall and will go on.
Okay mp3's are evil I'll admit that... hehehe now that that's off my chest... Mp3's are illegal and wrong and bad and easy to download just look at napster and open nap... Music is a pain anymore because of the commercialization of it. You can't hear a certain type of music on the radio unless the commercialized owners want you to hear it. Mp3's give us the choice back and make it so that we can all enjoy whatever it is we want to listen to. On average EVERYONE buys music so I don't know how much it's really hurting the actual industry. I hold the same theory true today... if I like the band I buy the album... simple as that.
I think pricing is what's bringing everyone down these days. Domains aren't expensive if you look at them from a business perspective, but if you are making a website for non-business reasons all you're doing is losing more money. And today actually getting the domain you want can cause you alot of grief... I'd personally like to see how many domains are "parked" and just being wasted out there.
The main reason I started to consider linux was that you could make X look really pretty and customize it beyond solid colors. Now I know that there is Litestep and other windows Unix-like window managers. Then I saw all that linux could do. I was amazed so I switched over. But if it wasn't for screen captures of FVWM and Gimp I probably would have never switched over. Yeah I'll admit it I didn't switch over because I wanted to fight microsoft. And I didn't want to make a stand against the monopoly. I wanted to play with something new and customizable. And linux was it. Not to mention I got my first Linux CD for free. So that was even more impressive. So yeah that's why we need the prettiness. I mean console linux is nice, but that starts to get really annoying.
I guess this is the kind of publicity linux needs in order to become more mainstream. Though I keep reading that Linux is destined to be the next OS/2 warp. I don't get how with this much support that it could compare to the OS/2. Developers and Techies have seen linux as a wave of the future for years now. And now everyone else gets to randomly read aobut it in the papers or rarely hear about it on the news.
Linux needs people to be born into it. And with corperate support like SGI, Intel, and even Redhat I think we can start to see that. The main reason windows is so popular is that people are used to it. And the question raised "Why switch if it already works".
Let's see radios. Well the music industry basically controls all of them too. Do you really think a free-based system of advertised music will ever beat the ability to play when you want music? I didn't think so either. Besides who has that kind of wireless broadband just sitting around. This is a wonderful idea from a not to technical viewpoint.
It's kind of like "Hey we'll never have to do chores... we'll have computers and robots do them for us." Tell ya what I STILL have to shovel my driveway.
Well at least some one besides Russia and the US are in the space club. I expect that all kinds of countries will start to get into space. Maybe this is the media booster we need to get nasa some more funding.
Personally I see space travel available to everyone in the not so distant future... technology is there and just thinkn of the money you could make for the one time experience of becoming a non-trained space explorer. It'd definantelly be better than anything that disney could come up with. Not to mention now maybe they'll have a good reason to start to take some of the low orbit space trash around the planet itself.
Finally... doesn't this make sense considering the new space station is the "international space station"???
If someone on the streets asks you when your birthday is you'll tell them. If you go to buy something with a check you willingly give your drivers license number, phone number, and address away. If you order something off of a catalog you give your credit card number to the operator. If you pay by credit card at a resteraunt you let the waiter or waitress take your credit card away from you at the table. You put your ATM card into an ATM machine that is not one of your banks. And you even fill out those stupid chain mail survey's.
But someone puts that information into a database and it becomes a violation of privacy?
Granted you should be able to decide if you want it readable, but how much do you really care? My birthday is important to me and I tell everyone... call me egocentric, but I like presents:-)
Wow media is just grand now-a-days. Call me weird, but I bet that in the near future there will be an encrypted form of DVD type media that you can get for free the only catch is you have to be connected to the internet and watch advertisements that they choose for you. That in itself sounds outrageous, but so does the lawsuit against DeCSS.
Now media and other types of entertainment have flourished throughout the years because of clones and competition. Hence why there's more than one TV or NewsPaper. Now Divix tried to come out, but it was a late player in the game and we all saw what happened to that clever device.
Everyone forgets about songs too, remember when DVD audio was supposed to come out? Why are they so worried about it. You could copy DVD movies before DeCSS just now they can blame their losses on some programmer. So I say quit holding back the technology and quit holding back the media.
Maybe MS will one day learn that rushing themselves into releasing a product might cause problems. This is 2 bugs that are out before win2k is out. And let's not forget that MS isn't open source so if there are more bugs (garunteed) that someone finds then they're will be more exploits and the only one to rely on for bug patches will be MS themselves. Guess is yet another push for the linux community.
since when am I an asshole... everyone knows a newbie comments I was refering to are those like "1'm 4n 31337 h4x0r" or "I can root you" or things to taht nature... not "how can I configure lilo to boot windows"... you jump to conclusions... just because you don't know alot about computers doesn't mean you don't have intelligence.
The internet was built around no need for color or gender dispute. The one thing that would get you taunted would be lack of intelligence and a way of showing it. You don't go on irc and get made fun of because you're green, you get made fun of because you make stupid comments. The internet should be held as the one true equal ground for us all. I think that a true hacker can look past color, race, or even religious background and look for something deeper. Intelligence.
So yes I'm all for taking hate away. I'm also for taking away all kinds of other internet pollution. Like kiddie porn, vulgar pictures, and just plain gore. People who need to show their individuality this way can find a better place other than OUR internet.
I can't see WHY this didn't work. And hey if you were an alien and you saw a big thing flying out of the sky and then crash into the ground... would you find that welcoming?
Me either:-)
Glad to see it might not have been a complete failure though
Only geeks would have put the photos with different resolutions. I thought that was the first thing that tipped me off. As for geeks in cool threads. Must we as all geeks always be seen in T-Shirts and Jeans? I mean hey it's the apple way (erm thanks pirates of silicon valley) or heck even the regular athome geek way. But really are suits that bad. When you put on a suit are you less of a geek? Do you loose your geeknesshood (an ordained status among geeks granted through a ritual of sitting in front of the computer for days on end coding).
Personally I don't mind getting all dressed up. Chicks dig guys in suits (thank you ZZtop). And well for girls I prefer a girl dressed up in a nice outfit to that of jeans and a T-Shirt.
What you really don't want to see is geeks in swimming suits (many unmentioned use your own imagination reasons here)
Well since I commented today on the market of linux might as well comment on the marketers of linux. Many company's are begining to see that linux is just like that pretty solaris box that they're competition has. They're also realizing the price behind linux. (free).
Granted linux isn't all free it sure can make those commerical unix's and NT a run for their money. You could run a perfectly stable HTTP server for your company along with a proxy server and hey even an email server on a distribution made 2 years ago. Now that's stability for ya.
But now I'm begining to ramble off topic so I'll jump back. The other problem we're seeing today is that linux isn't the easiest thing to manage and the transition from NT to linux isn't at all easy. So what do you do? Hire someone to help ya out. Security and Working ability are what make linux strong, but you have to make them that way and most people (not most slashdot readers) don't know how to do that.
The problem? Big companies see MSCE as the end-all-be-all of computer maintenance. Even though there is new linux certification it's not as highly respected as that of MSCE. So where do you go from here? Basically the biggest market for linux in the workplace would be contracting. Just get a job here and get a job there. We're starting to see permanent workplaces for linux, but the jobs don't seem that interesting considering if you jump feet first into a company you'll be greated with the most computer illiterate people out there. So unless you want to be a technical support, sysadmin, and all around computer guy most jobs in the linux world today won't be for you.
Exactly... I've brought up this discussion before, but everytime I do I get some linux enthusiastic dweeb who tells me that would take away the basis of linux and open more problems for virus's and such. But most people who download rpm's and deb's or just plain old binaries don't look at the source code. And if they do they don't know what they're reading anyways. I mean of course you can search for the rm -rf commands and such. But still a package loader that will recognize the not so niceness of a binary would be the answer.
Well that's a great idea, but not too many windows users just jump at a $80 - $200 upgrade. Hence why you'll still find windows 95 on quite a few computers. I know that I would have never gotten windows98 unless it came with my new computer. Linux is far far far away from actually getting the average user to use it. Linux isn't easy, linux isn't forced upon the masses, and linux isn't what we grew up with and use constantly at work and school. So linux advocation is a great thing, but when MS is forced to break up and windows is actually distributed by more than one company then we will start to see more people wanting to come over to the stableness of Linux and also to the standardization of linux. A concrete set of standards that all distributions follow would cause linux to become the newest contender. And how do you tell someone that the can upgrade the OS for free? These things are unbelievable to most windows users.
When we see the new XFree and we see big companies like Creative come over to the linux world then we will see the average user using linux.
But like the easiest to install distributions. Why would the average user need an HTTP, FTP and Telnet dameon running? A security minded version of linux protecting the not so keen user of linux from outside troubles is what we need. Corel Linux has a nice pretty installation, but it also puts ProFTPd, Apache, Sendmail, and Telnetd on right at installation. And Root and whatever other user you choose are given no passwords until you set them. Yep that's right... all those services running with Root with no password.
How could great technology be held back from the wanting consumer and producers of today. I mean are you going to tell me that the average joe with a wonderful idea can't just make it happen? erm wait... okay... but still digital just means that crap will be sent in 1's and 0's and more of it can be sent over cable lines. I don't know why the FCC is having such a cow I mean DSS has been around for a while now and anyone craving the digital world can go grab a dish. As for cable companies because of them having control of set areas you have to take what you can get. I mean exactly 2 blocks from me my neighbors had Cable modems and 120 some channels for almost 2 years before they even thought about upgrading my neighborhood. And you know what was even better? We paid exactly the same price for service. Cable companies need to be deregulated. I think that the digital issue isn't really the biggest issue to worry about here.
okay... MS agreed never to enter unix again... but I'm sure they can find some loophole starting that since linux is open source they can make it without commercial gain. Erm wait a product by ms without commercial gain... hhehehehe... nevermind.
Dell makes nice computers, but can every person you talk to on the phone really tell you what the problems are with the computer. It's bad enough to get help with windows. But all in all I think this is showing that linux is a needed os in the world today and maybe if enough corperate vendors start marketing linux we could see more drivers written for it. And dare I say it... a MS Linux?
the average mp3 for me is around 5 megs... which means that this thing could hold a grand total of 12 songs for me (if I got the 64 meg version) Now this is that of a regular cd player... but lets look at a CD player... fairly portable... removable interchangeable media... and hey it costs less than $100... now if the watch could do that then hey I'd get one. The other factor is battery life, I don't want to change a battery everyday and they don't make rechargeable watch batteries. So this is a good idea, but probably won't fly with the buying world. The other thing is getting the mp3's on the watch for the good old linux users out there it looks like you'll have to boot windows if you want to get your new $250 toy to even work.
Slashdot Mirror
My pager uses encrypted FLEX technology and gives me alphanumeric pages and I can get pages from anywhere. So I think I'll stick to the $8 a month ... it's really not breaking me.
So why not let the cell phone prices come down a little bit so you might have to look at an ad every now and then? That doesn't stop you from watching TV, listening to the radio, reading a magazine or newspaper, or driving for that matter.
Ads make things cheaper and inform us and annoy us. So yeah I'm all for it.
But it brings my next comment. Most people who have palm pilots aren't going to mess with them and run fancy software on them. For the most part all I've seen palms used for is email reading and playing games on. Ohh yeah and as a schedule book.
So miniGL is out for the palm. Does this mean anything really to the average palm user? Not really. But it brings another question ... why isn't the palm being used to it's full potential. It's almost a waste of resources. Like anyone who buys a pIII just to email and surf the web and play quake.
But the palm itself has the game planned quite well. It's easy for the average user to use, but also the power user can use it also. So yes developement for the palm shall and will go on.
?\
Okay mp3's are evil I'll admit that ... hehehe now that that's off my chest ... Mp3's are illegal and wrong and bad and easy to download just look at napster and open nap ... Music is a pain anymore because of the commercialization of it. You can't hear a certain type of music on the radio unless the commercialized owners want you to hear it. Mp3's give us the choice back and make it so that we can all enjoy whatever it is we want to listen to. On average EVERYONE buys music so I don't know how much it's really hurting the actual industry. I hold the same theory true today ... if I like the band I buy the album ... simple as that.
I think pricing is what's bringing everyone down these days. Domains aren't expensive if you look at them from a business perspective, but if you are making a website for non-business reasons all you're doing is losing more money. And today actually getting the domain you want can cause you alot of grief... I'd personally like to see how many domains are "parked" and just being wasted out there.
DuG
Linux needs people to be born into it. And with corperate support like SGI, Intel, and even Redhat I think we can start to see that. The main reason windows is so popular is that people are used to it. And the question raised "Why switch if it already works".
It's kind of like "Hey we'll never have to do chores ... we'll have computers and robots do them for us." Tell ya what I STILL have to shovel my driveway.
Personally I see space travel available to everyone in the not so distant future ... technology is there and just thinkn of the money you could make for the one time experience of becoming a non-trained space explorer. It'd definantelly be better than anything that disney could come up with. Not to mention now maybe they'll have a good reason to start to take some of the low orbit space trash around the planet itself.
Finally ... doesn't this make sense considering the new space station is the "international space station"???
But in all seriousness if you were extremely tall someone could market Big and Tall ads at you. If you were older you might want life insurance.
It all comes down to privacy and what are you really going to do with the information and mainly ... why do you have THAT much time? :-)
But someone puts that information into a database and it becomes a violation of privacy?
Granted you should be able to decide if you want it readable, but how much do you really care? My birthday is important to me and I tell everyone ... call me egocentric, but I like presents :-)
Now media and other types of entertainment have flourished throughout the years because of clones and competition. Hence why there's more than one TV or NewsPaper. Now Divix tried to come out, but it was a late player in the game and we all saw what happened to that clever device.
Everyone forgets about songs too, remember when DVD audio was supposed to come out? Why are they so worried about it. You could copy DVD movies before DeCSS just now they can blame their losses on some programmer. So I say quit holding back the technology and quit holding back the media.
Maybe MS will one day learn that rushing themselves into releasing a product might cause problems. This is 2 bugs that are out before win2k is out. And let's not forget that MS isn't open source so if there are more bugs (garunteed) that someone finds then they're will be more exploits and the only one to rely on for bug patches will be MS themselves. Guess is yet another push for the linux community.
since when am I an asshole ... everyone knows a newbie comments I was refering to are those like "1'm 4n 31337 h4x0r" or "I can root you" or things to taht nature ... not "how can I configure lilo to boot windows" ... you jump to conclusions ... just because you don't know alot about computers doesn't mean you don't have intelligence.
So yes I'm all for taking hate away. I'm also for taking away all kinds of other internet pollution. Like kiddie porn, vulgar pictures, and just plain gore. People who need to show their individuality this way can find a better place other than OUR internet.
Me either :-)
Glad to see it might not have been a complete failure though
Only geeks would have put the photos with different resolutions. I thought that was the first thing that tipped me off. As for geeks in cool threads. Must we as all geeks always be seen in T-Shirts and Jeans? I mean hey it's the apple way (erm thanks pirates of silicon valley) or heck even the regular athome geek way. But really are suits that bad. When you put on a suit are you less of a geek? Do you loose your geeknesshood (an ordained status among geeks granted through a ritual of sitting in front of the computer for days on end coding).
Personally I don't mind getting all dressed up. Chicks dig guys in suits (thank you ZZtop). And well for girls I prefer a girl dressed up in a nice outfit to that of jeans and a T-Shirt.
What you really don't want to see is geeks in swimming suits (many unmentioned use your own imagination reasons here)
Granted linux isn't all free it sure can make those commerical unix's and NT a run for their money. You could run a perfectly stable HTTP server for your company along with a proxy server and hey even an email server on a distribution made 2 years ago. Now that's stability for ya.
But now I'm begining to ramble off topic so I'll jump back. The other problem we're seeing today is that linux isn't the easiest thing to manage and the transition from NT to linux isn't at all easy. So what do you do? Hire someone to help ya out. Security and Working ability are what make linux strong, but you have to make them that way and most people (not most slashdot readers) don't know how to do that.
The problem? Big companies see MSCE as the end-all-be-all of computer maintenance. Even though there is new linux certification it's not as highly respected as that of MSCE. So where do you go from here? Basically the biggest market for linux in the workplace would be contracting. Just get a job here and get a job there. We're starting to see permanent workplaces for linux, but the jobs don't seem that interesting considering if you jump feet first into a company you'll be greated with the most computer illiterate people out there. So unless you want to be a technical support, sysadmin, and all around computer guy most jobs in the linux world today won't be for you.
Exactly ... I've brought up this discussion before, but everytime I do I get some linux enthusiastic dweeb who tells me that would take away the basis of linux and open more problems for virus's and such. But most people who download rpm's and deb's or just plain old binaries don't look at the source code. And if they do they don't know what they're reading anyways. I mean of course you can search for the rm -rf commands and such. But still a package loader that will recognize the not so niceness of a binary would be the answer.
When we see the new XFree and we see big companies like Creative come over to the linux world then we will see the average user using linux.
But like the easiest to install distributions. Why would the average user need an HTTP, FTP and Telnet dameon running? A security minded version of linux protecting the not so keen user of linux from outside troubles is what we need. Corel Linux has a nice pretty installation, but it also puts ProFTPd, Apache, Sendmail, and Telnetd on right at installation. And Root and whatever other user you choose are given no passwords until you set them. Yep that's right ... all those services running with Root with no password.
How could great technology be held back from the wanting consumer and producers of today. I mean are you going to tell me that the average joe with a wonderful idea can't just make it happen? erm wait ... okay ... but still digital just means that crap will be sent in 1's and 0's and more of it can be sent over cable lines. I don't know why the FCC is having such a cow I mean DSS has been around for a while now and anyone craving the digital world can go grab a dish. As for cable companies because of them having control of set areas you have to take what you can get. I mean exactly 2 blocks from me my neighbors had Cable modems and 120 some channels for almost 2 years before they even thought about upgrading my neighborhood. And you know what was even better? We paid exactly the same price for service. Cable companies need to be deregulated. I think that the digital issue isn't really the biggest issue to worry about here.
okay ... MS agreed never to enter unix again ... but I'm sure they can find some loophole starting that since linux is open source they can make it without commercial gain. Erm wait a product by ms without commercial gain ... hhehehehe ... nevermind.
Dell makes nice computers, but can every person you talk to on the phone really tell you what the problems are with the computer. It's bad enough to get help with windows. But all in all I think this is showing that linux is a needed os in the world today and maybe if enough corperate vendors start marketing linux we could see more drivers written for it. And dare I say it ... a MS Linux?
the average mp3 for me is around 5 megs ... which means that this thing could hold a grand total of 12 songs for me (if I got the 64 meg version) Now this is that of a regular cd player ... but lets look at a CD player ... fairly portable ... removable interchangeable media ... and hey it costs less than $100 ... now if the watch could do that then hey I'd get one. The other factor is battery life, I don't want to change a battery everyday and they don't make rechargeable watch batteries. So this is a good idea, but probably won't fly with the buying world. The other thing is getting the mp3's on the watch for the good old linux users out there it looks like you'll have to boot windows if you want to get your new $250 toy to even work.