Palm should return to what they knew how to do well once upon a time. Build insanely great personal organizers. It isn't the 1990's anymore and it doesn't HAVE to be a cellphone, we have bluetooth now. Bundling a PDA with a cellphone sounds like a great idea, but it isn't. They operate on two totally different replacement cycles, cellphones (in the US) are tied to the carrier, requiring you to buy from the subset of products your carrier decides to carry. Cell phones have the WRONG FORM FACTOR. Jeff, go back to your blocks of wood and realize the problem and maybe a solution.
Once you make that jump, something like the Folio is at least possible to think about. A big PDA for the DayRunner set that links via Bluetooth or WiFi and offers a stable platform for the road warrier who doesn't need to worry about problems with Windows and can live with a mostly browser based existence except for the vital PDA data and vertical apps kept locally.
And personally I wouldn't trade month long battery runtimes for 'multimedia clips.' A big Folio sized gadget should do it because it needs a Li-Ion battery and a daily charge anyway, but offer at least one handheld that ISN'T an iPod wannabee. These days you could sell a totally kick ass "Palm" for under a hundred dollars. There is a whole untapped market there just waiting.
> I would say that in terms of costs, it is going to be politically unjustifiable to push forward these missions..
Which is governments won't be doing it. NASA would have never been funded for Apollo had it not been for the Cold War. But go we will because it will become economically justifiable. Do the math people. One medium sized asteroid has enough metals in it to satisfy our needs for decades even assuming an ever growing appetite for resources. Sooner or later somebody will figure a way to get at those sort of virtually limitless riches. It just won't be pinhead politicians.
>..more to the point I am fairly sure we are entering into a period of rather more upheaval on earth, > politically, economically and ecologically.
All the more reason to get our butts out there. Many of our political problems would lessen with a new frontier opened up. Economic problems get easier with boundless riches flowing in from the new colonies and ecologically it just makes sense to more heavy polluting industry up and out of the ecosphere.
> or even the suggestion of the rewards that would be possible by doing so.
Well if the potential for virtually limitless living space and material resources don't qualify as a 'reward' in your eyes you should get them examined by a specialist.
> What is particularly interesting about the result is the "new" members of the voting body > (you know the ones that don't normally voted but suspiciously wanted to this time) all voted for YES
You can't stop it, Microsoft is leveraging the inherent weakness all "international instituitions" suffer from. The fantasy that every soverign nation is somehow equal. It is the same one that made the UN into a parliment of tyrants.
And no, I don't really have a solution to the problem. But I could offer a few suggestions to improve this situation.
1) You have to be a dues paying member for three years before you get a vote. That stops countries from being induced to jump in for one vote.
2) You have to be in the top half (two thirds, whatever) of nations in the general industry you want to vote in standards for. That means Cyprus, etc., not being known for their software industry probably wouldn't have been allowed a vote on OOXML. Unfair? Yes, but life isn't fair and giving them a vote is more unfair to everyone else. Perhaps give all the small fry a subcommittee that gets a couple of votes if they are mostly in consensus on an issue.
3) Punish entites who openly game the system like Microsoft is doing. Say toss all MIcrosoft reps from ISO sponsored groups for five years and publicly rebuke national bodies who allowed their votes to be openly rigged.
> But the article is lame because it doesn't give any of the reasons why..
No, the article is lame because of WHY they didn't give any details. After admitting the fault is the government's the author uses most of the article to IMPLY that it is all some sort of conspiracy of the automakers. Had the author gave a clear explanation of what sort of government stupidity was preventing 'out of area sales' on these green cars he would have looked pretty daft trying to lay the blame on the auto industry. But because he did actually mention there being a law being against it and didn't outright put on his tinfoil hat he won't be called to account for his yellow journalism. J school students should study this one as a canonical example of how to do agenda journalism. (And since modern journalism is overtly agenda journalism, out to 'make the world a better place' instead of old fashioned 'just the facts'......)
> The problem as reported is that the Vista DHCP client fails to obtain an address from Linux servers running (I'd presume) ISC dhcpd.
Look folks, this is pretty simple. If this was a 'linux' problem, even one of not accepting slightly malformed packets I'd say it was our problem to fix. But it doesn't have a damned thing to do with 'linux'. The problem appears to be one of Vista failing to interoperate with the ISC DHCP server and sorry, if that damned thing isn't the canonical reference implentation that EVERYBODY should be testing against somebody suggest a more widely deployed implementation? Not making sure that a new product works with both it and the tiny implemenation of DHCP in Linksys routers (the first runner up for most widely deployed implememtation) makes Microsoft at fault.
Of course it ISN'T quite so clear cut because I am not having problems with the ISC DHCP servers under my control successfully handing out addresses to Vista clients.
I really would like to read a clear explanation of the problem from a source in a position to know, not this endless/. theorizing.
> You give me money to keep what you've already got.
Yes it is obvious some have that dream, of eternal profits for no effort. Same dream makes Disney keep buying extensions to copyright until they have bumped up to the International Law's definition of Perpetuity.
But there are more complex forces at work also. In the Beginning there was the Mainframe. All data lived on the Mainframe and the IT demigods who tended it loved the Mainframe, for it gave them power over mortal men. Then the PC came and swept away the old order and the drones loved it, for it gave them Power over the BOFHs who tended the Mainframe. However the drone's joy was short lived for the IT demigods begat the LAN and File Servers and began to concenrate all of the "Really Important Information" back onto their servers and even their Mainframes. But there was a problem that all are now facing, a terrible flaw. Microsoft won the desktop, thus it has never actually worked very well and with the rise of the Internet it is a security nightmare.
SaaS is the attempt to make the desktop unimportant and therefore either replacable or ignorable. As in leave Windows on it but so locked down it can't DO anything but run a locked down browser. And of course this is just a reinvention of the Mainframe/Terminal model with HTML/CSS/AJAX/etc as the new common tongue much as vt102 emulation was in the previous incarnation. The only new twist is combining it with the hot new corporate trend to outsource everything so now the Mainframe is just leased time on someone else's hardware. Oh wow, they reinvented the Timesharing model. Everything new was old once.
> I wonder how much sunlight would have to be absorbed by power cells instead of all being converted to > heat by the usual materials that currently absorb it, before it makes any dent in the increase in global warming.
Can't possibly help against GW.
1. Any heat converted to electricity will almost be converted to heat when the electricity is used. If the device doesn't directly convert it to heat it will convert it to comething (such as EM radiation) that will end up heating something else. Ya no canna repeal the laws of physics.
2. GW isn't a science problem anymore, it is a political/religious problem and thus immune to facts. The only 'solution' to GW is massive government intervention in the market and everyone's lives. i.e. Socialism. Any proposed solution that doesn't include the all important Socialism component will be instantly rejected by 100% of the GW Cult.
> That being said, the owner of the access point is entirely within their rights to both improperly > secure it, and to attempt to pursue those who improperly use it. The analogy of the home with the > door left open applies somewhat well here.
No. If I go into your house it is reasonable to assume that I know I'm doing something wrong. But if I light up my laptop and use the first available signal it really isn't the same thing. Perhaps if the access point vendors added a splash page option for every new association so the rules of access could be displayed, but at that point why not just make them stop broadcasting an ESSID by default. When a laptop or PDA can associate by default with no intervention it is really hard to say the user should divine the state of mind of the owner of the AP. An unsecured access point is indistinguisable from an OPEN access point.
I have used 'available' WiFi before and don't consider myself a thief. My Thinkpad+Cisco350 just refused to associate to my brother's D-Link AP, instead jumping on one of his neighbor's AP regardless how I tried telling it NOT to do that. So I finally said screw it, it's only a 2Mbps link but I can check my mail and read slashdot. By the same token I have told my neighbors I don't care if they connect to mine, that if I ever cared they wouldn't see it anymore. I do know HOW to secure an AP, I choose not to. (I loaded HyperWRT-Thibor14 on it. I can certainly click the button to supress broadcasting the ESSID or enable one of the real security options.) If we all lightened up a bit we could have WiFi signal darned near everywhere.
That said, if some idiot started leaching GBs of bandwidth running BT on my DSL line I'd block em. But my default is to share a resource I have in relative abundance. I don't keep a BT client going 24/7 so most of the time my circuit is idle.
> Honestly, I think the USA's best bet is brain-drain.
I agree. We don't need more damned unskilled labor, our government schools provide that in abundence. But if we want a snowball's chance in hell of maintaining our lifestyle and leadership position in the world we need motivated, educated people by the boatload.
So close the US/Mexico border by any means needed up to and including double walls with crazed killbots roaming between em. Then open the spigots on legal immigration... but in a totally selfish way. Just like you said, brain drain the world. Those declaring an intent to become US citizens move to the front of the line and ditch the H1B program.
Europe is about to descend into a long Arabian Nightmare and even those willfully refusing to see it will start cluing in on it in another couple of years and be looking for an option. We could cherry pick the best and brightest couple of million of em without even making an effort at recruiting. Not to mention how many we could pick off elsewhere with some effort, especially when it bacame clear to the smart ones just what we were doing and the likelyhood of it bringing about a total economic and cultural Golden Age... that they were being invited to be a part of. If we made sure we got a good geographic and ethnic mix and discouraged them from settling into little groups we wouldn't have anything like the problems with Americanizing them we have been having with the Mexican invasion so there wouldn't be much of a nativist backlash to worry about.
Replying to myself..... When slagging someone else's idea I try to propose a better one and posted before doing so.
If the problem is a lack of labor with certain skills, simply seed more scholarships. Best if done in a industry/government partnership since industry is best positioned to know what sorts of skills they are hankering to hire more of. But if you they ain't willing to pony up a part of the money they aren't REALLY interested in solving the problem they just want a handout from the taxpayer and we already have enough welfare of both the individual and corporate sort.
I'd say totally merit based but if some sort of means test was the price to get the Dems on board I could live with it. Score X on the portion of whatever standardized test everyone agreed on and you get a substantial (but except for very rare cases NOT a full free ride. rare being a very poor person taking a highly desired major at an unexpensive school) part of the first year's college paid. Make B+ or better and get the next year, etc.
Rig things where supply and demand set the size of the scholarship based on industry need (their willingness to kick money toward majors), political goals (government willingness to do likewise), etc.
We already have ways to get 'free money for college' in the general case after all. First off is military service. So the only reason for a new program is to encourage people to take particular majors over others.
If we really need more teachers it would be far cheaper in the long run to simply pay more for teachers of subjects suffering from a shortage and allow the market to sort it out. Because once a big shiny new federal government program starts it NEVER ends, decades after whatever problem it was 'urgently' trying to solve has solved itself on it's own or it has become clear to all rational people that the program isn't helping and in fact actually making the problem worse. Nothing matters, the program continues and gets ever increasing budgets.
No, it's a bad idea. All this plan would do is suck a bunch of people into those majors who want the free lunch but don't have the motivation to really pursue the subjects. Much like what happens every few years when Computer Science goes from bust to boom and all sorts of people take it because they think they will make a shitload of money in the field. They make lousy IT people and switch careers as soon as the industry cycles back to bust again.
And the 'Free money!' (of course TANSTAAFL) mentality would totally distort the education establishment even more than the transition of Athletics from a sideline into a major cash cow did.
> While all your points are valid, they don't counter the fact that it is censorship.
No it isn't. It isn't censorship unless the power of the State is involved, since WalMart isn't a government they can't be a censor. What they are doing is exercising business judgement. All retailers do it, they make decisions on products to carry or not carry based on what they believe their target customer base wants. And while it IS true that some Walmart customers would indeed buy rot gut "Urban Yodeling" the presence of such crap would cost them business with their core customers, probably more than the difference in sales between the radio safe version and the uncut edition. Or at least their executives calculate it that way and it is their right to make that decision, not yours.
Or perhaps they just think it is the moral thing to do, kinda doubt that since corporations as a rule are amoral, but I'm always being accused of being an optimist. You might be too old to remember Charlton Heston's stunt of buying shares of Time Warner and then showing up at the stockholders meeting and performing a spoken word version of Cop Killer for the Board in a futile attempt to shame them. Maybe Walmart's Board has a little shame. Of course they also had HRC on their board once so they probably have the morals of weasels.
But again, just to make sure the point isn't lost. Walmart refusing to sell something isn't censorship. Target refusing to sell something isn't censorship. Billy Bob's Redneck Emporium refusing to sell something isn't censorship. The governmemt saying, "Sell that crap and you go to jail and get yer ass pounded." is censorship.
> I'm not entirely convinced it is -just- Microsoft's "bullying" that keeps OEMs from selling naked PCs;
Think ten seconds and you will realize just how wrong you are.
First admit that us geeks here on/. and other places aren't exacly legion compared to the hordes of mass consumer electronics buyers but we ain't exactly zero either. Now thought experiment time. If Microsoft were honoring their agreements NOT to enforce illegal per CPU licensing deals what would be the reason for EVERY manufacturer to have a policy where anytime a Linux crank called em up wanting to buy a machine without Windows to just say, "OK, done. Subtract $20 from the listed price. That is the difference between a stock machine with Windows and one without after we have to manually open the carton and remove the CD and blank the drive. Order 50 and we will talk about saving ya some more." Kinda amazing that instead, after over a decade of us asking, NOT ONE SINGLE MAJOR VENDOR WILL DO IT. Dell now offers preloaded Linux but it still isn't a naked machine sold for LESS THAN WINDOWS. Even Dell's N series machines usually end up costing the same or more than the same hardware loaded with Windows when you play the coupon, rebate and daily special games.
What each and every vendor refuses to do, against all economic theory, is offer what a small but non zero minority of customers have been yelling loudly for over a decade for, to be able to buy a naked PC that is in every way exactly like the same machine offered with Windows, sold for a lower price without a preloaded copy of Windows. Always smoke and mirrors and the naked or Linux preload ends up the same or more and you can't shake a sneaking suspicion you paid the Microsoft tax anyway and they just kept the media and sticker. There are enough of us that basic economic theory says ONE vendor would have satisfied the market unless Microsoft is still illegally distorting it.
> Ummm, that's not exactly an insight. Any story here about software in China mentions that point.
The point was that is isn't just China. And it is a good point, but one I have realized for years. It's why I don't make a big issue of the free beer aspect in discussions. Because Windows is free, almost nobody ever sees a line item on a ticket for a Windows license. It either comes preloaded or bootleg.
Which is the big point the linked article got wrong. Microsoft would never officially make Windows free for home users because it would hose the preload arrangments and they are THE key to maintaining the monopoly. The second problem with the piece is the assertion Microsoft can't acknoledge the benefits of piracy, they have in the case of the third world and China.
Linux must be better than Windows on the merits, disregarding the stocker price. The Thinkpad I'm typing this on came preloaded with XP Pro. It hasn't accumulated a day of runtime in the four years I have been using it. Guess that says how value I see in it.
I kept it just in case I needed to update firmware or call for tech support and they wanted to insist I show the problem exists in Windows. At some point I figured I had better boot over and let it update to SP2 so as to avoid being a menace to the Internet if someone ever used the Windows side. After which it now silently updates the firmware in the Cisco WiFi card at every boot and now I have to remember to reflash it back before shutting down anytime I let XP start. Big disincentive to NEVER boot that turd.
Looking to cash in on the 'ol dead cat bounce? Considering SCOX has always managed to bouce back over the $1 mark to avoid delisting I suspect you might be right. Not going to bet money on it though, this time even former cheerleaders like Daniel Lyons at Forbes say they are dead. Darl has a big ol fork sticking out of his forehead.
Yes they will file a desperate appeal with every court that might possibly have jurisdiction. No it isn't going to help them do anything other than drag this thing out to the end of the year, January at the best. Then it is over and the patent wars will move from saber rattling and into the shooting phase.
> Its more secure having the actually memory embedded inside the machine instead on the outside > in a port, accessible for anyone that have physicall access to your office.
So? CF to IDE bridge taped down in a drive bay. Flash to IDE header gadget plugged direct to an IDE header. They even have em that plug direct to USB headers on the MoBo now. Give em a while and they will have em to direct plug to SATA, assuming they don't now and I just didn't see em last time I was looking stuff like that.
Point being that is almost certainly all Dell will be doing. So why wait, if it is a good idea, just do it!
> Yes - they're maintaining the Open Source client... with a protocol that they hint they will be leaving behind.
One difference. They don't operate any of the servers people actually use. Unless they can convice the server operators (most of whom they can't legally even admit exists, which will make negotiations somewhat awkward) to adopt their closed protocol, who will notice any optional dead protocols their 'official' but little used client supports?
At this point someone simply needs to write up a formal documentation of the protocol as it currently exists and submit it to the W3C, at which point the wire protocol is pretty much settled. And go ahead and pick a new anme because you can bet your last dollar they will pull the trademark crap the second they realize they are being written out of the picture.
> Yeah, because that had nothing to do with the Shah being a despot who tortured > and killed political dissidents.
No argument the Shah was a real piece of work by our standards but probably above average for the region. History will eventually decide whether Cold War "Realpolitik" justified propping him up. It was a different age. But before stamping 'villian' on him now consider this:
There is a substantial 'pro-western' minority in Iran almost three decades after the Shah fell and the mad mullahs took over anything 'western', dress culture, ideas, etc. Have you considered the possibility that those folks learned of us and were exposed to our ways under the Shah's rule? Exposed hard enough that after all these years the imprint hasn't wore off?
But more to today's discussion the fall of the Shah gave the Islamic Radicals their first nation state and the ability to put Sharia back into practice. All the other countries in the region were either Soviet client states who were more prone to Bathist (Islamic Socialism, an oxymoron) systems or just pure dictatorships. Our client states tended towards pure dictators, but our puppets at least paid lip service to human rights and some like the Shah actually encouraged things like women's rights and education, including sending large numbers of his subjects here for a western style education. Now you get to make the argument you seem to be implying that the Mad Mullahs were an improvement.
> Firstly, quoting Ann Coulter, let alone saying she is right, kills almost any chance you had > of being taken seriously as an intellectual.
Reading is Fundamental people, and just learning the words isn't enough, ya have to move on to reading comprehension.
Try rereading what I actually said. I'm saying Ms. Coulter's rather extreme solution would WORK. And even worse that if we got hit really bad a couple more times we might get panicked/angry enough to actually do it. But it should have been pretty clear from this line right before that I didn't think it would be a very good idea long term:
> We had better face it head on and find a better way of dealing with it than the default answer > we will end up being left with if we don't.
If a critical mass say "screw it, it's them or us and it ain't going to be us" we will do something mega violent. And yes we COULD do it and it would WORK. And the side effects would set up yet another problem a generation later. So we need to be find a better answer. Not sure what it is, not even sure there IS a better one, only that we really need to be working on the problem NOW instead of waiting until we run out of time to do anything other than be driven by events.
The problem is Islam is stuck in the dark ages. Christanity evolved (fundies would say became corrupted and debased but screw em) during the enlightenment because it had to, thus it became compatible with the key ideas underlying modern civilization. Islam didn't have that advantage. And as it exists today it is totally incompatible with our civilization. The radicals AREN'T the ones misinterpreting Islam. Their book has all the nasty bits in it that ours does, maybe more, we just choose to ignore the incompatible bits and they don't. So we are faced with four choices:
1. Surrender, Adopt Islam and Sharia law. Over my cold dead body.
2. Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. Seriously. Trying to yank em all the way to harmless Godless European Socialists probably wouldn't be possible. But just switching em to a different holy book probably would be given a willingness to use over the top mega violence. (That would probably destroy our civilization in the end, unintended consequences.....)
3. If you didn't like #2 you really won't like this one. Kill em all and let God/Allah sort em out. End the threat by ending Islam. Practice of Islam punishable by death. Anyone suspected required to publicly curse the name of Allah
> You hit the nail right on the damned head, and so many people are so pathetic at math and are afraid of stupid things noone can > seem to change our course of paranoid overreaction.
No, you want desperately to believe we still live in a world where we aren't at war with Radical Islam. Some of us have seen it coming since the fall of the Shah of Iran and nasty events that happened afterwards. More still understood it by the time of their first attempt on the WTC. Only an idiot could fail to take the hint after 9/11.
Just because we have incredible LUCK doesn't mean we don't have enemies. 9/11 could have easily had a bodycount 5-10 times what happened. We got lucky. Much like the collapse last week of the I35W bridge. Rush hour traffic, including a packed school bus and it all goes splat into the Mississipi river. Single digit bodycount so far. Luck. Give praise to whatever higher being you prefer when it happens but if you expect yer invisible friend to make it happen like that every time you are eventually going to get the piss shocked out of ya. After all, God helps those who help themselves.
But forget all that, 9/11 wasn't about the bodycount. The point of terrorism isn't to KILL, it is to TERRORIZE and 9/11 succeeded beyond UBL's wildest deranged dreams. Be thankful we had a Republican President AND Congress who had the balls to ram a tax cut over the wails of the Dems or the economic shock would likely have thrown us into a full scale depression. If the same number had died in some horrible accident it would have had little effect on the country at large.
That is the difference. We can withstand accidents and natural disasters. We learn from them, our engineers build to avoid the same thing in the future and we go on. But intentional acts of War aimed at random have the potential to end our Civilization. The are only two ways to deal with that threat, end it at the source or become a Security/Police State. As a sane person I of course prefer ending it at the source.
> but it shows without a doubt that "all terrorists are muslim" is such a load of horse shit, and the most of the major > terrorist attacks up until recently were in fact not muslim at all
Not really. Since the end of the IRA name one major terrorist organization that isn't composed of adherents to the "Religion of Peace"? Ok, lets pretend you aren't a total loss and you could think of a couple of regional ones like the Tamil Tigers or Shining Path. Now name one playing on the world stage and/or launching attacks into the 1st World. (i.e. anything the US need worry about) Name one major terrorist attack, successful or unsuccessful, in the last decade that didn't involve the Religion of Peace. It is hard enough to name an attack of any scale that didn't involve someone named after their "Pedophile Prophet".
Not all Muslims are terrorists, but damned near all terrorists ARE Muslim. And most of the non-terrorist Muslims are either afraid of the terrorists are agree with them to a degree, only lacking the personal courage to join the Jihad or agreeing with their goals but disliking their methods. It's a serious problem. We had better face it head on and find a better way of dealing with it than the default answer we will end up being left with if we don't. Because in the end, Ann Coulter's "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christanity" would WORK and if we get panicked into it by a few more successful attacks we will probably do it. We would regret it a generation or two later but ask the Native Americans how much that regret that worked out in tangible benefits.
And now back ontopic.
It figures that the Corporation most identified with cluelessness regarding security would be the first to retreat into a pre 9/11 mindset. Me, I'm more "Mad Eye Moody" in my outlook towards security. Constant Vigilence!
It isn't paranoia when they ARE out to get ya. The only sphere where Microsoft should be addressing security i
> Now, the rich and the capitalists use birth control to limit the number of children they have.
Agreed, but not exactly for the reason you state:
> After all children are expensive and hurt the bottom line (so to speak).
As far as you go you are right, children are an expense for the wealthy instead of an asset. I don't think you are realizing WHY though, especially when you said:
> And the poor are doing the only thing they can do for free anymore.
It's far, far worse. It's due to the way all of our Western Welfare Socialist states have been organized. Law and custom now puts severe disincentives for the middle class to reproduce and fairly significant ones for the wealthy. But the poor are reproducing like crazy because they aren't crazy, all of the incentives are for poor females TO reproduce. (Minor disinctive for poor males to breed but how many males will refuse the call of their glands when a female is in the mood?)
It's the same pattern in every Western country since the 'Progressives' became dominant, pretty hard to not connect the dots and figure out what they are up to. In the end Socialism's principal idea is that all men are equal, in actual fact as opposed to classical liberalism's notion that all men are equal in theory and before the law. Because every attempt to implement Socialism has failed because reality favors the Classical liberal's view that individuals are not precisely "equal" the Socialists aim to 'perfect' man via genetic engineering instead of changing their theory. Thin the herd of the 'successful' and encourage the low end of the curve to increase until everyone is more 'equal.'
> Not really. The 9200's are supported, but that's it.
Eh? I'm running an ATI X850XT here on my testbench just fine with the stock X.org driver and I have the 3D bling turned on. Stellarium does have a habit of going kaboom unless I turn off the bling first.
> Like people are going to not want faster electronic devices?
Many just might not want faster more expensive vs cheap. Computing has changed before and I think it is about to do it again.
During the 80's and much of the '90s it was fairly constant that $1,000 would just get you a usable system, $2,000 would make it pleasant and $4,000 would pretty much hook ya up. The definition of each of those price brackets changed dramatically over that period but the pricing didn't. At the start you got a C64+1541 floppy & maybe a dot matrix printer and hooked it up to an existing TV for that lowball system and by the end it was a Pentium class machine with a 15" monitor and a inkjet.
Then it all changed and suddenly mass market retailers started selling systems very adaquate for net browsing and even games (if you weren't into intense 1st person 3D shooters) for under $1,000 and falling.
I think it about to make another dramatic change. For many users all they want is net access good enough to browse the web, IM and watch YouTube videos, etc. As prices on flat panels continues due to the HD TV craze and flash memory plummets we are about to see the emergence of the Internet tablet. Not a laptop, just a screen & keyboard with WiFi net access. Especially when you factor in the big push for net hosted apps. Yes WE will add apps to em and make small computers out of em but that won't be the primary market. And as Moore's Law relentlessly marches on they will grow more capable, adding good HD video playback etc.
Windows can't play in this new market because the sticker price looks like it is going to start at $200 (the upcoming ASUS product) and will end up at $99 in a few years. Unless they want to totally canabilize Windows Mobile's pricing structure they have no product to compete in that price bracket with and no time to develop one.
> The thing is, it didn't sound SO good as to be absolutely implausible...
Yes it did. I clinked to thier website and read the spec and instantly posted Scam.
Negroponte & co can't hit $150 selling much simpler machines by the million lot and as a non-profit operation to boot. This machine is supposed to have a 14" TFT HD res screen vs the oddball cheap screen on the OLPC. This machine has both a hard drive and DVD drive while the OLPC has a dinky flash drive. The OLPC is coming out of the most lowball Chinese factory in the contract manufacturing business so there are NO more efficiencies to wring out of the price to give these unknown guys a way to offer more for less.
Do the math people. When somebody offers you a new laptop for less than the display and drives cost when delivered by the shipping container while they give every indication of being a showstring operation that can't build a decent webpage or do their own e-commerce it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Scam.
Like all good scams though, it preys upon a weakness in the victim. They might be crooks but they are good con artists. FAQ question #1 was where a good percentage of/. people started WANTING TO BELIEVE so much their common sense switched off.
"#1. Q: Why is the laptop much cheaper than other laptops? A: We see this from a democratic point of view where we believe everyone should be able to afford to have a laptop. The other reason is that we have our own plants where we assemble our laptops."
And you guys were all like; "Yea, everyone should be able to afford a laptop man, like it's a Right or something. The Man is just ripping us off to feed insane Corporate salaries and fat cat shareholders. These are just some hoopy froods sticking it to the System!"
> It might take one or two weeks longer to get the laptop.
No, it might take that long (it says elsewhere 4-6 weeks plus they can shine people on for another week or two) for them to get cash from the credit card clearing house before they disappear. Add up the BOM on that machine and they can't buy those parts in 100,000 lots for $150USD. Scam.
> Since when do we ask permission to bend our gadgets to our will?
Because the iPhone is from Apple and Cmdr Tack drank a full jug of the Kool-Aid. Seriously, replace Apple with ANY other entity and imagine seeing "It's fairly thin on information but if true, this will lead to good things. Like hopefully permission from _____." on the front page of Slashdot... written not just by an idiot editor like Zonk but by the Taco himself. If anyone didn't understand the power of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, here is your proof.
Since when did we need permission to run software on our computers? The vendors have been throwing up technical and legal roadblocks since the Atari 2600 but that hasn't stopped very many people from doing it anyway. Yes the iPhone will be cracked and allowed to run any software. Just like the XBox was cracked and the XBox 360 will eventually be. Just like the PS3 will get the GPU opened up. Just like every TIVO gets more advanced 'protection' and gets opened up anyway. No, just because Steve doesn't like it we aren't going to say "Well, if Steve doesn't want it we will not even try. Might make him cry or something and we can't have that."
Slashdot Mirror
Palm should return to what they knew how to do well once upon a time. Build insanely great personal organizers. It isn't the 1990's anymore and it doesn't HAVE to be a cellphone, we have bluetooth now. Bundling a PDA with a cellphone sounds like a great idea, but it isn't. They operate on two totally different replacement cycles, cellphones (in the US) are tied to the carrier, requiring you to buy from the subset of products your carrier decides to carry. Cell phones have the WRONG FORM FACTOR. Jeff, go back to your blocks of wood and realize the problem and maybe a solution.
Once you make that jump, something like the Folio is at least possible to think about. A big PDA for the DayRunner set that links via Bluetooth or WiFi and offers a stable platform for the road warrier who doesn't need to worry about problems with Windows and can live with a mostly browser based existence except for the vital PDA data and vertical apps kept locally.
And personally I wouldn't trade month long battery runtimes for 'multimedia clips.' A big Folio sized gadget should do it because it needs a Li-Ion battery and a daily charge anyway, but offer at least one handheld that ISN'T an iPod wannabee. These days you could sell a totally kick ass "Palm" for under a hundred dollars. There is a whole untapped market there just waiting.
> I would say that in terms of costs, it is going to be politically unjustifiable to push forward these missions..
..more to the point I am fairly sure we are entering into a period of rather more upheaval on earth,
Which is governments won't be doing it. NASA would have never been funded for Apollo had it not been for the Cold War. But go we will because it will become economically justifiable. Do the math people. One medium sized asteroid has enough metals in it to satisfy our needs for decades even assuming an ever growing appetite for resources. Sooner or later somebody will figure a way to get at those sort of virtually limitless riches. It just won't be pinhead politicians.
>
> politically, economically and ecologically.
All the more reason to get our butts out there. Many of our political problems would lessen with a new frontier opened up. Economic problems get easier with boundless riches flowing in from the new colonies and ecologically it just makes sense to more heavy polluting industry up and out of the ecosphere.
> or even the suggestion of the rewards that would be possible by doing so.
Well if the potential for virtually limitless living space and material resources don't qualify as a 'reward' in your eyes you should get them examined by a specialist.
> What is particularly interesting about the result is the "new" members of the voting body
> (you know the ones that don't normally voted but suspiciously wanted to this time) all voted for YES
You can't stop it, Microsoft is leveraging the inherent weakness all "international instituitions" suffer from. The fantasy that every soverign nation is somehow equal. It is the same one that made the UN into a parliment of tyrants.
And no, I don't really have a solution to the problem. But I could offer a few suggestions to improve this situation.
1) You have to be a dues paying member for three years before you get a vote. That stops countries from being induced to jump in for one vote.
2) You have to be in the top half (two thirds, whatever) of nations in the general industry you want to vote in standards for. That means Cyprus, etc., not being known for their software industry probably wouldn't have been allowed a vote on OOXML. Unfair? Yes, but life isn't fair and giving them a vote is more unfair to everyone else. Perhaps give all the small fry a subcommittee that gets a couple of votes if they are mostly in consensus on an issue.
3) Punish entites who openly game the system like Microsoft is doing. Say toss all MIcrosoft reps from ISO sponsored groups for five years and publicly rebuke national bodies who allowed their votes to be openly rigged.
> But the article is lame because it doesn't give any of the reasons why..
No, the article is lame because of WHY they didn't give any details. After admitting the fault is the government's the author uses most of the article to IMPLY that it is all some sort of conspiracy of the automakers. Had the author gave a clear explanation of what sort of government stupidity was preventing 'out of area sales' on these green cars he would have looked pretty daft trying to lay the blame on the auto industry. But because he did actually mention there being a law being against it and didn't outright put on his tinfoil hat he won't be called to account for his yellow journalism. J school students should study this one as a canonical example of how to do agenda journalism. (And since modern journalism is overtly agenda journalism, out to 'make the world a better place' instead of old fashioned 'just the facts'......)
> The problem as reported is that the Vista DHCP client fails to obtain an address from Linux servers running (I'd presume) ISC dhcpd.
/. theorizing.
Look folks, this is pretty simple. If this was a 'linux' problem, even one of not accepting slightly malformed packets I'd say it was our problem to fix. But it doesn't have a damned thing to do with 'linux'. The problem appears to be one of Vista failing to interoperate with the ISC DHCP server and sorry, if that damned thing isn't the canonical reference implentation that EVERYBODY should be testing against somebody suggest a more widely deployed implementation? Not making sure that a new product works with both it and the tiny implemenation of DHCP in Linksys routers (the first runner up for most widely deployed implememtation) makes Microsoft at fault.
Of course it ISN'T quite so clear cut because I am not having problems with the ISC DHCP servers under my control successfully handing out addresses to Vista clients.
I really would like to read a clear explanation of the problem from a source in a position to know, not this endless
> You give me money to keep what you've already got.
Yes it is obvious some have that dream, of eternal profits for no effort. Same dream makes Disney keep buying extensions to copyright until they have bumped up to the International Law's definition of Perpetuity.
But there are more complex forces at work also. In the Beginning there was the Mainframe. All data lived on the Mainframe and the IT demigods who tended it loved the Mainframe, for it gave them power over mortal men. Then the PC came and swept away the old order and the drones loved it, for it gave them Power over the BOFHs who tended the Mainframe. However the drone's joy was short lived for the IT demigods begat the LAN and File Servers and began to concenrate all of the "Really Important Information" back onto their servers and even their Mainframes. But there was a problem that all are now facing, a terrible flaw. Microsoft won the desktop, thus it has never actually worked very well and with the rise of the Internet it is a security nightmare.
SaaS is the attempt to make the desktop unimportant and therefore either replacable or ignorable. As in leave Windows on it but so locked down it can't DO anything but run a locked down browser. And of course this is just a reinvention of the Mainframe/Terminal model with HTML/CSS/AJAX/etc as the new common tongue much as vt102 emulation was in the previous incarnation. The only new twist is combining it with the hot new corporate trend to outsource everything so now the Mainframe is just leased time on someone else's hardware. Oh wow, they reinvented the Timesharing model. Everything new was old once.
> I wonder how much sunlight would have to be absorbed by power cells instead of all being converted to
> heat by the usual materials that currently absorb it, before it makes any dent in the increase in global warming.
Can't possibly help against GW.
1. Any heat converted to electricity will almost be converted to heat when the electricity is used. If the device doesn't directly convert it to heat it will convert it to comething (such as EM radiation) that will end up heating something else. Ya no canna repeal the laws of physics.
2. GW isn't a science problem anymore, it is a political/religious problem and thus immune to facts. The only 'solution' to GW is massive government intervention in the market and everyone's lives. i.e. Socialism. Any proposed solution that doesn't include the all important Socialism component will be instantly rejected by 100% of the GW Cult.
> That being said, the owner of the access point is entirely within their rights to both improperly
> secure it, and to attempt to pursue those who improperly use it. The analogy of the home with the
> door left open applies somewhat well here.
No. If I go into your house it is reasonable to assume that I know I'm doing something wrong. But if I light up my laptop and use the first available signal it really isn't the same thing. Perhaps if the access point vendors added a splash page option for every new association so the rules of access could be displayed, but at that point why not just make them stop broadcasting an ESSID by default. When a laptop or PDA can associate by default with no intervention it is really hard to say the user should divine the state of mind of the owner of the AP. An unsecured access point is indistinguisable from an OPEN access point.
I have used 'available' WiFi before and don't consider myself a thief. My Thinkpad+Cisco350 just refused to associate to my brother's D-Link AP, instead jumping on one of his neighbor's AP regardless how I tried telling it NOT to do that. So I finally said screw it, it's only a 2Mbps link but I can check my mail and read slashdot. By the same token I have told my neighbors I don't care if they connect to mine, that if I ever cared they wouldn't see it anymore. I do know HOW to secure an AP, I choose not to. (I loaded HyperWRT-Thibor14 on it. I can certainly click the button to supress broadcasting the ESSID or enable one of the real security options.) If we all lightened up a bit we could have WiFi signal darned near everywhere.
That said, if some idiot started leaching GBs of bandwidth running BT on my DSL line I'd block em. But my default is to share a resource I have in relative abundance. I don't keep a BT client going 24/7 so most of the time my circuit is idle.
> Honestly, I think the USA's best bet is brain-drain.
I agree. We don't need more damned unskilled labor, our government schools provide that in abundence. But if we want a snowball's chance in hell of maintaining our lifestyle and leadership position in the world we need motivated, educated people by the boatload.
So close the US/Mexico border by any means needed up to and including double walls with crazed killbots roaming between em. Then open the spigots on legal immigration... but in a totally selfish way. Just like you said, brain drain the world. Those declaring an intent to become US citizens move to the front of the line and ditch the H1B program.
Europe is about to descend into a long Arabian Nightmare and even those willfully refusing to see it will start cluing in on it in another couple of years and be looking for an option. We could cherry pick the best and brightest couple of million of em without even making an effort at recruiting. Not to mention how many we could pick off elsewhere with some effort, especially when it bacame clear to the smart ones just what we were doing and the likelyhood of it bringing about a total economic and cultural Golden Age... that they were being invited to be a part of. If we made sure we got a good geographic and ethnic mix and discouraged them from settling into little groups we wouldn't have anything like the problems with Americanizing them we have been having with the Mexican invasion so there wouldn't be much of a nativist backlash to worry about.
Replying to myself..... When slagging someone else's idea I try to propose a better one and posted before doing so.
If the problem is a lack of labor with certain skills, simply seed more scholarships. Best if done in a industry/government partnership since industry is best positioned to know what sorts of skills they are hankering to hire more of. But if you they ain't willing to pony up a part of the money they aren't REALLY interested in solving the problem they just want a handout from the taxpayer and we already have enough welfare of both the individual and corporate sort.
I'd say totally merit based but if some sort of means test was the price to get the Dems on board I could live with it. Score X on the portion of whatever standardized test everyone agreed on and you get a substantial (but except for very rare cases NOT a full free ride. rare being a very poor person taking a highly desired major at an unexpensive school) part of the first year's college paid. Make B+ or better and get the next year, etc.
Rig things where supply and demand set the size of the scholarship based on industry need (their willingness to kick money toward majors), political goals (government willingness to do likewise), etc.
We already have ways to get 'free money for college' in the general case after all. First off is military service. So the only reason for a new program is to encourage people to take particular majors over others.
If we really need more teachers it would be far cheaper in the long run to simply pay more for teachers of subjects suffering from a shortage and allow the market to sort it out. Because once a big shiny new federal government program starts it NEVER ends, decades after whatever problem it was 'urgently' trying to solve has solved itself on it's own or it has become clear to all rational people that the program isn't helping and in fact actually making the problem worse. Nothing matters, the program continues and gets ever increasing budgets.
No, it's a bad idea. All this plan would do is suck a bunch of people into those majors who want the free lunch but don't have the motivation to really pursue the subjects. Much like what happens every few years when Computer Science goes from bust to boom and all sorts of people take it because they think they will make a shitload of money in the field. They make lousy IT people and switch careers as soon as the industry cycles back to bust again.
And the 'Free money!' (of course TANSTAAFL) mentality would totally distort the education establishment even more than the transition of Athletics from a sideline into a major cash cow did.
> While all your points are valid, they don't counter the fact that it is censorship.
No it isn't. It isn't censorship unless the power of the State is involved, since WalMart isn't a government they can't be a censor. What they are doing is exercising business judgement. All retailers do it, they make decisions on products to carry or not carry based on what they believe their target customer base wants. And while it IS true that some Walmart customers would indeed buy rot gut "Urban Yodeling" the presence of such crap would cost them business with their core customers, probably more than the difference in sales between the radio safe version and the uncut edition. Or at least their executives calculate it that way and it is their right to make that decision, not yours.
Or perhaps they just think it is the moral thing to do, kinda doubt that since corporations as a rule are amoral, but I'm always being accused of being an optimist. You might be too old to remember Charlton Heston's stunt of buying shares of Time Warner and then showing up at the stockholders meeting and performing a spoken word version of Cop Killer for the Board in a futile attempt to shame them. Maybe Walmart's Board has a little shame. Of course they also had HRC on their board once so they probably have the morals of weasels.
But again, just to make sure the point isn't lost. Walmart refusing to sell something isn't censorship. Target refusing to sell something isn't censorship. Billy Bob's Redneck Emporium refusing to sell something isn't censorship. The governmemt saying, "Sell that crap and you go to jail and get yer ass pounded." is censorship.
> I'm not entirely convinced it is -just- Microsoft's "bullying" that keeps OEMs from selling naked PCs;
/. and other places aren't exacly legion compared to the hordes of mass consumer electronics buyers but we ain't exactly zero either. Now thought experiment time. If Microsoft were honoring their agreements NOT to enforce illegal per CPU licensing deals what would be the reason for EVERY manufacturer to have a policy where anytime a Linux crank called em up wanting to buy a machine without Windows to just say, "OK, done. Subtract $20 from the listed price. That is the difference between a stock machine with Windows and one without after we have to manually open the carton and remove the CD and blank the drive. Order 50 and we will talk about saving ya some more." Kinda amazing that instead, after over a decade of us asking, NOT ONE SINGLE MAJOR VENDOR WILL DO IT. Dell now offers preloaded Linux but it still isn't a naked machine sold for LESS THAN WINDOWS. Even Dell's N series machines usually end up costing the same or more than the same hardware loaded with Windows when you play the coupon, rebate and daily special games.
Think ten seconds and you will realize just how wrong you are.
First admit that us geeks here on
What each and every vendor refuses to do, against all economic theory, is offer what a small but non zero minority of customers have been yelling loudly for over a decade for, to be able to buy a naked PC that is in every way exactly like the same machine offered with Windows, sold for a lower price without a preloaded copy of Windows. Always smoke and mirrors and the naked or Linux preload ends up the same or more and you can't shake a sneaking suspicion you paid the Microsoft tax anyway and they just kept the media and sticker. There are enough of us that basic economic theory says ONE vendor would have satisfied the market unless Microsoft is still illegally distorting it.
> Ummm, that's not exactly an insight. Any story here about software in China mentions that point.
The point was that is isn't just China. And it is a good point, but one I have realized for years. It's why I don't make a big issue of the free beer aspect in discussions. Because Windows is free, almost nobody ever sees a line item on a ticket for a Windows license. It either comes preloaded or bootleg.
Which is the big point the linked article got wrong. Microsoft would never officially make Windows free for home users because it would hose the preload arrangments and they are THE key to maintaining the monopoly. The second problem with the piece is the assertion Microsoft can't acknoledge the benefits of piracy, they have in the case of the third world and China.
Linux must be better than Windows on the merits, disregarding the stocker price. The Thinkpad I'm typing this on came preloaded with XP Pro. It hasn't accumulated a day of runtime in the four years I have been using it. Guess that says how value I see in it.
I kept it just in case I needed to update firmware or call for tech support and they wanted to insist I show the problem exists in Windows. At some point I figured I had better boot over and let it update to SP2 so as to avoid being a menace to the Internet if someone ever used the Windows side. After which it now silently updates the firmware in the Cisco WiFi card at every boot and now I have to remember to reflash it back before shutting down anytime I let XP start. Big disincentive to NEVER boot that turd.
> Anything dropping like this just has to bounce!
Looking to cash in on the 'ol dead cat bounce? Considering SCOX has always managed to bouce back over the $1 mark to avoid delisting I suspect you might be right. Not going to bet money on it though, this time even former cheerleaders like Daniel Lyons at Forbes say they are dead. Darl has a big ol fork sticking out of his forehead.
Yes they will file a desperate appeal with every court that might possibly have jurisdiction. No it isn't going to help them do anything other than drag this thing out to the end of the year, January at the best. Then it is over and the patent wars will move from saber rattling and into the shooting phase.
> Its more secure having the actually memory embedded inside the machine instead on the outside
> in a port, accessible for anyone that have physicall access to your office.
So? CF to IDE bridge taped down in a drive bay. Flash to IDE header gadget plugged direct to an IDE header. They even have em that plug direct to USB headers on the MoBo now. Give em a while and they will have em to direct plug to SATA, assuming they don't now and I just didn't see em last time I was looking stuff like that.
Point being that is almost certainly all Dell will be doing. So why wait, if it is a good idea, just do it!
> Yes - they're maintaining the Open Source client... with a protocol that they hint they will be leaving behind.
One difference. They don't operate any of the servers people actually use. Unless they can convice the server operators (most of whom they can't legally even admit exists, which will make negotiations somewhat awkward) to adopt their closed protocol, who will notice any optional dead protocols their 'official' but little used client supports?
At this point someone simply needs to write up a formal documentation of the protocol as it currently exists and submit it to the W3C, at which point the wire protocol is pretty much settled. And go ahead and pick a new anme because you can bet your last dollar they will pull the trademark crap the second they realize they are being written out of the picture.
> Yeah, because that had nothing to do with the Shah being a despot who tortured
> and killed political dissidents.
No argument the Shah was a real piece of work by our standards but probably above average for the region. History will eventually decide whether Cold War "Realpolitik" justified propping him up. It was a different age. But before stamping 'villian' on him now consider this:
There is a substantial 'pro-western' minority in Iran almost three decades after the Shah fell and the mad mullahs took over anything 'western', dress culture, ideas, etc. Have you considered the possibility that those folks learned of us and were exposed to our ways under the Shah's rule? Exposed hard enough that after all these years the imprint hasn't wore off?
But more to today's discussion the fall of the Shah gave the Islamic Radicals their first nation state and the ability to put Sharia back into practice. All the other countries in the region were either Soviet client states who were more prone to Bathist (Islamic Socialism, an oxymoron) systems or just pure dictatorships. Our client states tended towards pure dictators, but our puppets at least paid lip service to human rights and some like the Shah actually encouraged things like women's rights and education, including sending large numbers of his subjects here for a western style education. Now you get to make the argument you seem to be implying that the Mad Mullahs were an improvement.
> Firstly, quoting Ann Coulter, let alone saying she is right, kills almost any chance you had
> of being taken seriously as an intellectual.
Reading is Fundamental people, and just learning the words isn't enough, ya have to move on to reading comprehension.
Try rereading what I actually said. I'm saying Ms. Coulter's rather extreme solution would WORK. And even worse that if we got hit really bad a couple more times we might get panicked/angry enough to actually do it. But it should have been pretty clear from this line right before that I didn't think it would be a very good idea long term:
> We had better face it head on and find a better way of dealing with it than the default answer
> we will end up being left with if we don't.
If a critical mass say "screw it, it's them or us and it ain't going to be us" we will do something mega violent. And yes we COULD do it and it would WORK. And the side effects would set up yet another problem a generation later. So we need to be find a better answer. Not sure what it is, not even sure there IS a better one, only that we really need to be working on the problem NOW instead of waiting until we run out of time to do anything other than be driven by events.
The problem is Islam is stuck in the dark ages. Christanity evolved (fundies would say became corrupted and debased but screw em) during the enlightenment because it had to, thus it became compatible with the key ideas underlying modern civilization. Islam didn't have that advantage. And as it exists today it is totally incompatible with our civilization. The radicals AREN'T the ones misinterpreting Islam. Their book has all the nasty bits in it that ours does, maybe more, we just choose to ignore the incompatible bits and they don't. So we are faced with four choices:
1. Surrender, Adopt Islam and Sharia law. Over my cold dead body.
2. Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. Seriously. Trying to yank em all the way to harmless Godless European Socialists probably wouldn't be possible. But just switching em to a different holy book probably would be given a willingness to use over the top mega violence. (That would probably destroy our civilization in the end, unintended consequences.....)
3. If you didn't like #2 you really won't like this one. Kill em all and let God/Allah sort em out. End the threat by ending Islam. Practice of Islam punishable by death. Anyone suspected required to publicly curse the name of Allah
> You hit the nail right on the damned head, and so many people are so pathetic at math and are afraid of stupid things noone can
> seem to change our course of paranoid overreaction.
No, you want desperately to believe we still live in a world where we aren't at war with Radical Islam. Some of us have seen it coming since the fall of the Shah of Iran and nasty events that happened afterwards. More still understood it by the time of their first attempt on the WTC. Only an idiot could fail to take the hint after 9/11.
Just because we have incredible LUCK doesn't mean we don't have enemies. 9/11 could have easily had a bodycount 5-10 times what happened. We got lucky. Much like the collapse last week of the I35W bridge. Rush hour traffic, including a packed school bus and it all goes splat into the Mississipi river. Single digit bodycount so far. Luck. Give praise to whatever higher being you prefer when it happens but if you expect yer invisible friend to make it happen like that every time you are eventually going to get the piss shocked out of ya. After all, God helps those who help themselves.
But forget all that, 9/11 wasn't about the bodycount. The point of terrorism isn't to KILL, it is to TERRORIZE and 9/11 succeeded beyond UBL's wildest deranged dreams. Be thankful we had a Republican President AND Congress who had the balls to ram a tax cut over the wails of the Dems or the economic shock would likely have thrown us into a full scale depression. If the same number had died in some horrible accident it would have had little effect on the country at large.
That is the difference. We can withstand accidents and natural disasters. We learn from them, our engineers build to avoid the same thing in the future and we go on. But intentional acts of War aimed at random have the potential to end our Civilization. The are only two ways to deal with that threat, end it at the source or become a Security/Police State. As a sane person I of course prefer ending it at the source.
> but it shows without a doubt that "all terrorists are muslim" is such a load of horse shit, and the most of the major
> terrorist attacks up until recently were in fact not muslim at all
Not really. Since the end of the IRA name one major terrorist organization that isn't composed of adherents to the "Religion of Peace"? Ok, lets pretend you aren't a total loss and you could think of a couple of regional ones like the Tamil Tigers or Shining Path. Now name one playing on the world stage and/or launching attacks into the 1st World. (i.e. anything the US need worry about) Name one major terrorist attack, successful or unsuccessful, in the last decade that didn't involve the Religion of Peace. It is hard enough to name an attack of any scale that didn't involve someone named after their "Pedophile Prophet".
Not all Muslims are terrorists, but damned near all terrorists ARE Muslim. And most of the non-terrorist Muslims are either afraid of the terrorists are agree with them to a degree, only lacking the personal courage to join the Jihad or agreeing with their goals but disliking their methods. It's a serious problem. We had better face it head on and find a better way of dealing with it than the default answer we will end up being left with if we don't. Because in the end, Ann Coulter's "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christanity" would WORK and if we get panicked into it by a few more successful attacks we will probably do it. We would regret it a generation or two later but ask the Native Americans how much that regret that worked out in tangible benefits.
And now back ontopic.
It figures that the Corporation most identified with cluelessness regarding security would be the first to retreat into a pre 9/11 mindset. Me, I'm more "Mad Eye Moody" in my outlook towards security. Constant Vigilence!
It isn't paranoia when they ARE out to get ya. The only sphere where Microsoft should be addressing security i
I'm more cynical.
> Now, the rich and the capitalists use birth control to limit the number of children they have.
Agreed, but not exactly for the reason you state:
> After all children are expensive and hurt the bottom line (so to speak).
As far as you go you are right, children are an expense for the wealthy instead of an asset. I don't think you are realizing WHY though, especially when you said:
> And the poor are doing the only thing they can do for free anymore.
It's far, far worse. It's due to the way all of our Western Welfare Socialist states have been organized. Law and custom now puts severe disincentives for the middle class to reproduce and fairly significant ones for the wealthy. But the poor are reproducing like crazy because they aren't crazy, all of the incentives are for poor females TO reproduce. (Minor disinctive for poor males to breed but how many males will refuse the call of their glands when a female is in the mood?)
It's the same pattern in every Western country since the 'Progressives' became dominant, pretty hard to not connect the dots and figure out what they are up to. In the end Socialism's principal idea is that all men are equal, in actual fact as opposed to classical liberalism's notion that all men are equal in theory and before the law. Because every attempt to implement Socialism has failed because reality favors the Classical liberal's view that individuals are not precisely "equal" the Socialists aim to 'perfect' man via genetic engineering instead of changing their theory. Thin the herd of the 'successful' and encourage the low end of the curve to increase until everyone is more 'equal.'
> Not really. The 9200's are supported, but that's it.
Eh? I'm running an ATI X850XT here on my testbench just fine with the stock X.org driver and I have the 3D bling turned on. Stellarium does have a habit of going kaboom unless I turn off the bling first.
> Like people are going to not want faster electronic devices?
Many just might not want faster more expensive vs cheap. Computing has changed before and I think it is about to do it again.
During the 80's and much of the '90s it was fairly constant that $1,000 would just get you a usable system, $2,000 would make it pleasant and $4,000 would pretty much hook ya up. The definition of each of those price brackets changed dramatically over that period but the pricing didn't. At the start you got a C64+1541 floppy & maybe a dot matrix printer and hooked it up to an existing TV for that lowball system and by the end it was a Pentium class machine with a 15" monitor and a inkjet.
Then it all changed and suddenly mass market retailers started selling systems very adaquate for net browsing and even games (if you weren't into intense 1st person 3D shooters) for under $1,000 and falling.
I think it about to make another dramatic change. For many users all they want is net access good enough to browse the web, IM and watch YouTube videos, etc. As prices on flat panels continues due to the HD TV craze and flash memory plummets we are about to see the emergence of the Internet tablet. Not a laptop, just a screen & keyboard with WiFi net access. Especially when you factor in the big push for net hosted apps. Yes WE will add apps to em and make small computers out of em but that won't be the primary market. And as Moore's Law relentlessly marches on they will grow more capable, adding good HD video playback etc.
Windows can't play in this new market because the sticker price looks like it is going to start at $200 (the upcoming ASUS product) and will end up at $99 in a few years. Unless they want to totally canabilize Windows Mobile's pricing structure they have no product to compete in that price bracket with and no time to develop one.
> The thing is, it didn't sound SO good as to be absolutely implausible...
/. people started WANTING TO BELIEVE so much their common sense switched off.
Yes it did. I clinked to thier website and read the spec and instantly posted Scam.
Negroponte & co can't hit $150 selling much simpler machines by the million lot and as a non-profit operation to boot. This machine is supposed to have a 14" TFT HD res screen vs the oddball cheap screen on the OLPC. This machine has both a hard drive and DVD drive while the OLPC has a dinky flash drive. The OLPC is coming out of the most lowball Chinese factory in the contract manufacturing business so there are NO more efficiencies to wring out of the price to give these unknown guys a way to offer more for less.
Do the math people. When somebody offers you a new laptop for less than the display and drives cost when delivered by the shipping container while they give every indication of being a showstring operation that can't build a decent webpage or do their own e-commerce it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Scam.
Like all good scams though, it preys upon a weakness in the victim. They might be crooks but they are good con artists. FAQ question #1 was where a good percentage of
"#1. Q: Why is the laptop much cheaper than other laptops?
A: We see this from a democratic point of view where we believe everyone should be able to afford to have a laptop. The other reason is that we have our own plants where we assemble our laptops."
And you guys were all like; "Yea, everyone should be able to afford a laptop man, like it's a Right or something. The Man is just ripping us off to feed insane Corporate salaries and fat cat shareholders. These are just some hoopy froods sticking it to the System!"
> It might take one or two weeks longer to get the laptop.
No, it might take that long (it says elsewhere 4-6 weeks plus they can shine people on for another week or two) for them to get cash from the credit card clearing house before they disappear. Add up the BOM on that machine and they can't buy those parts in 100,000 lots for $150USD. Scam.
> Since when do we ask permission to bend our gadgets to our will?
Because the iPhone is from Apple and Cmdr Tack drank a full jug of the Kool-Aid. Seriously, replace Apple with ANY other entity and imagine seeing "It's fairly thin on information but if true, this will lead to good things. Like hopefully permission from _____." on the front page of Slashdot... written not just by an idiot editor like Zonk but by the Taco himself. If anyone didn't understand the power of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, here is your proof.
Since when did we need permission to run software on our computers? The vendors have been throwing up technical and legal roadblocks since the Atari 2600 but that hasn't stopped very many people from doing it anyway. Yes the iPhone will be cracked and allowed to run any software. Just like the XBox was cracked and the XBox 360 will eventually be. Just like the PS3 will get the GPU opened up. Just like every TIVO gets more advanced 'protection' and gets opened up anyway. No, just because Steve doesn't like it we aren't going to say "Well, if Steve doesn't want it we will not even try. Might make him cry or something and we can't have that."