What we really need in clothing is a new type of clothing that can capture the kinetic energy of our movements, then makes that energy available to the devices that we carry with us and are embedded in our clothing. It would be much like the lights in the soles of our footware that light up with every step except that it could be stored in our clothing, then directed toward the devices we carry with us and wear as they need them.
There's no question this will happen. The only question is: Will it be patented or not. Mabye the best practical use of the Slashdot database is that it contains lots of ideas first disclosed here that can be used to disqualify patent applications, thus speeding the free pursuit of the development of the ideas into products or services for the real world by preventing those who would implement them from being obstructed by patents.
I live real close to this area, am on vacation in Lincoln City at the moment, and I'd like to say that when they say they have no explanations about this phenomenon you should not take that to mean that the annual upwelling of cold water from the bottom just off the continental shelf here is either news to anybody here or is a satisfactory explanation for what is going on here.
By the way, the part about the wind generating these currents, or currents anywhere, is wrong. Currents are generated by a combination of the earth's rotation, the uneven solar heating of the earth's surface and the underwater topologies of the world's oceans. Wind is better thought of as the atmospheric currents and the ocean current patterns clearly do NOT overlap the atmospheric currents.
OK, now, with that out of the way, the point is, nobody yet knows why everything is dead out there. Not you, Not Google, Not me, Not anybody - yet.
It's fair to say that Linux might well not even exist without the work that RMS and his cohorts did in the first years of the FSF's existence.
It's also fair to say that it's NOT true that if RMS hadn't done what he did that someone else would have. It is not to be taken for granted by anyone that without RMS & FSF, sooner or later we would have ended up in essentially the same place we are today.
I know what it's like to have to get a company's permission to write software on their computers, and to pay them a LOT of money for the 'privilege'. NOT FUN. RMS has changed all of our lives in a way that we can only understand by knowing the history and by sitting back for bit and actually thinking about it.
I can't say that for ESR. All he ever did for me was threaten me for using his US service mark 'open source' on my web site, a service mark he didn't actually have. I find it easy to ignore him.
We all use the GNU compiler, GNU tools & the vast body of GNU software. Who is using the OSI compiler, OSI tools and the vast body of OSI software? Nobody - because it doesn't exist. Next time they ask you the difference between what the Free Software Foundation does and what the Open Source Initiative does, mention that.
It takes more than a catchy phrase to cause a revolution - it takes a lifelong dedication to writing the software to launch and to perpetuate a revolution - and that would be GNU.
You obviously didn't read all of the new content on both of the posts I provided for you and all to read, the second of which was entered only a few moments after my first response to you so you could read them both, and which provided plenty of exactly the kind of information which you claim I don't provide. I think you really need to get a grip and maybe even follow the links provided, the ones you say I don't provide. If you don't give a shit about history and you don't like it when people do explain history to you then mebbe you shouldn't bother responding to the posts of people who do like history and who can explain it to you. Responding to the publication of little known facts with sarcasm is not justified even if you don't give a shit about the history of Thousand Island dressing, either. People do care, even if you don't. It would have been far better for the discussion if you had chosen to add to it with any new facts that you were aware of rather than to act like an angry child.
More on this... Gary Allen reprints a section of the book by Eunice Stamm, The History of Cheesemaking in The Empire State from the Early Dutch Settlers to Modern Times. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/opmbs you will read this: ------------- the Catskills were just huge tracts of rocky open land that weren't suitable for farming. Farmers often complained that "there were two stones for every dirt" -- but the deforested hills were ideally suited for cow pastures. This, in turn, created the need for a market that could absorb the glut of New York State dairy products. However, with limited refrigeration available, and fears of tuberculosis in the city, fresh milk could not yet be shipped safely in the large volumes that were being produced. Consequently, cheese makers in the region found a ready market for their products. In 1870, Neufchatel was being made in New Jersey for the New York City market, but Charles Green, living in the village of Chester, in the southern Catskills, thought he could do better. In 1872, he hired a European cheese maker to teach him how to make the soft cheese.
What Green didn't know was that another local cheese maker, William A. Lawrence, had overheard the lessons. Lawrence immediately went home and duplicated the recipe -- but doubled the amount of cream. The result was cream cheese, which was packed and shipped from Philadelphia as "Star Brand Cream Cheese." Lawrence also produced and sold "Cow Brand Neufchatel." By the 1880s he had moved his plant west, to Philadelphia, New York.
At the time, Pennsylvania's Philadelphia had a reputation for making fine foods, so the most fashionable marketing name in the United States was "Philadelphia," and in 1885, the Empire Cheese Company in South Edmeston, New York, registered the brand name "Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese." The Empire Cheese Company's factory burned down in 1900, but was rebuilt as "The Phenix" (like the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes every 500 years -- but spelled without an "o"). The company itself was renamed "The Phenix Cheese Corporation" in 1924, but the name didn't last nearly as long as its namesake because Kraft bought the company along with the "Philadelphia" brand name, in 1928.
Today, Kraft is the world's largest producer of cream cheese, and its factory in Lowville, New York, is responsible for 40% of its production. The next largest producer is Breakstone, with its plant in nearby Downsville. ------------- There you have it. William Lawrence moved to Philadelphia New York to learn how to make cream cheese! OK, so, now, where is Lowville? Well, it's about about 30 minutes down the road from Philadelphia, New York. Surprise, Surprise! When Gary Allen talks about the Catskills being rocky and best suited for Dairy farming he's also talking about the part of New York state where Philadelphia and Lowville are situated, in the St. Lawrence River Valley. All these towns are not in the Catskills, they are in Northern New York, in the area between the Adirondacks and the St. Lawrence River & Lake Ontario. Allen himself doesn't actually say this, but he should have. Another thing - Why in hell would William Lawrence move from the area of Chester, NY, all the way to Northern New York state, to the village & town of Philadelphia, New York? Well, as I explained in my previous post, the people there were already famous for making this same type of cheese by 1870-80! He moved there to learn how - and boy, did he!
Mebbe the people at Kraft think that people would get confused if they printed the truth on their web site, mebbe they just never gave the simple job of learning the truth to any of their researchers - who knows? At any rate, I've just told you much more than you'll learn from Kraft or from Wikipedia. I guess I'll head on over to Wikipedia and replace the myths the people have placed there with the truth when I'm done here.
I'll enhance my assertion. In 1955 my great grandmother, who was born in 1870, personally told me about the village's cream cheese heritage and how she had learned to make cream cheese in the 1870's there in Philadelphia, New York by her grandparents who had been making cream cheese in their home for sale to the public for many years. Hell, we had cream cheese with jelly on the table at breakfast every day. People were spreading it on the slices of the pies they made from the green apples they picked from the orchards in their back yards. The nonsense about cream cheese only being made first in Philadelphia, PA, in 1872 is merely a corporate myth.
Why you get mod points for directing everyone to the Kraft web site and I don't get any for passing on my own direct knowledge of what really happened two centuries ago is beyond me. I used to date the granddaughter of the woman who first devised the recipe for Thousand Island dressing so I know all about that one, too. I could tell lots of interesting stories. Interesting to me, at least, and many of us certainly feel the same way.
Cream cheese was first manufactured in the early 1800's in dozens of homes in Philadelphia, Jefferson County, New York, a Quaker settlement dating back to 1800 in the Chaumont De Leray tracts of Northern New York. I have the written history and maps to prove it. It did not originate in or near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yes, I grew up there and ate lots of cream cheese.
I would buy this if it cost less than $250 and if it had a dedicated graphics processor, 1280 x 1024 at least 64 MB RAM, 8 MB Flash Memory (Optional 128 MB RAM, 32 MB Flash) Linux Kernel 2.6.12 or better Debian Arm File system firmware upgradeable over the network X11 R7 with touchscreen drivers installed Dual USB 2.0 (12Mbit) Host ports Single USB 2.0 (12Mbit) mini Device Port RS-232 / RS-422 / RS-485 Compact Flash slot Type I/II 4-Bit SD/MMC socket Audio via USB and/or Bluetooth Headset 10/100 Ethernet and optional wireless LAN via CF slot XVGA DB15 CRT socket Power via 12V Plugpack and runs on 1 Watt quick mount bracket for rear side of LCD and if it were no bigger than the palm of my hand
The Constitution specifically states that there can be no laws which abridge (i.e., curtail) the freedom of the press. In plain English that means that The Constitution specifially withholds from the government any authority to even investigate the activities of the people when they are about the business of publishing information.
There are no exceptions to this - not even 'national security'.
Of course if The Constitution is considered merely to be a 'Goddamned Piece of Paper', as Bush has described it, and if the people who are involved in violating The Constitution don't care about adhering to it, then all bets are off, which is pretty much where we in the US are at these days.
The US Constitution recognized only individuals with respect to copyrights, patents, etc.. At the point where corporations were given equal status with individuals then all of the rights that had been held by individuals then became rights that corporations could also hold. Corporations can, with this accession, do things that no individual could possibly do. Therein lies many a disaster, many of which lie immediately ahead in the future. Every time a corporation petitions a legislator for a law that gives it more power, the rights of the individuals are the currency paid in this transaction. The eventual outcome of this, it should be clear to all by now, is that a few corporations will hold all the power and no individuals will have any rights except those that the corporations see fit to allow them to have to the extent that it fulfils the plan of the corporations to manipulate the people. As Ralph Nader has often explained, unless and until we people put an end to this individuals will find themselves with fewer and fewer rights, and corporations will grab more and more power over individuals. This is a war, folks. If you don't think so you are condemning your progeny to virtual slavery.
Their using openVPN. When Doug first set openVPN up there was something not quite right with it so he brought the problem to the attention of the person behind openVPN and paid him for several hours of work to address the issue and make it all work just fine. He also makes use of rsync and dynamic DNS. The neat thing, in my opinion, is that none of these components have to either be aware of the POS app and the POS app doesn't have to be aware of them, yet, from the user viewpoint the overall effect of all these systems running together is that they are a monolithic, smooth-running system, even when it's anything but monolithic.
This Canadian customer of ours has about 80 restaurants and has fully deployed our Linux & X Window System POS solution in all of its restaurants all across Canada. HQ enjoys an open VPN link with each of them and all data from the restaurants, including credit/debit cards is remotely synchronized with the storage system at their Toronto HQ. The company's IT staff is actually just one person, Doug deLeeuw. The company is increasing its units by about 25% this year. When you have the kind of control that this company has you find something like that much easier to undertake and you're much more likely to succeed. I doubt that there's another restaurant organization in the world with this kind of advanced POS deployment, not to mention that one person did it all by himself. Perhaps in another five to ten years you'll be able to read about it in a book.
I've said it many times before and I'll continue to say it - Patents on user interfaces and user input techniques are insidious and odious. The reason that this demo and the user interface techniques it shows even exists is because for a very long time you could not get a patent on how something is touched and what happens when you do touch it. Now that the USPTO has decided to begin patenting how you touch something and what happens when you do we can all expect the damage of user interface patents to be forthcoming and unlimited. I can only hope that all the prior art is used to overturn any recent patents and any attempts in the future to patent how we interact with technology.
The difficulty you're experiencing is due to the fact that you don't understand what X is, what X apps on a WAN can imply and that you don't grasp the difference between the experience that a PDA user has and the experience that an X terminal user on a WAN has. Like most people trying to understand the significance of the software on this device you simply don't know what it is that you don't know about it. This will probably become clear to you with time.
So much to explain, except that you seem to find your own mind so amusing already that I see no point in interrupting your amazement. Forgot to run your spellchecker, eh?
Here's a starting point for you. http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/118892 Don't try to monitor keystrokes, Don. There aren't any. Is there even sensitive data where the menu app is running? Doh! You're thinking "X application" and you haven't yet imagined that you should be thinking "GUI". Why should anyone do anything with an application that can do better with a GUI? The answer is, of course, they shouldn't, but it was asking the right question that was the hard part, if there was a hard part. It didn't seem hard to me. I keep running into people like you who savor the orgastic delight of imparting "You can't do that" to others. What is it with you people, anyway? I don't mind if you think you're very clever. The part I'm having trouble with is the part where you think that when you enter a complex system all you need is an ego and a closed mind. Well, my grandchildren did enjoy those little Sims 'characters' for a while but they're back to playing Diddy Kong Racing. They prefer multi-user software and 3D GUIs.
I'm not even a programmer except I do a little with the graphical programming environments that I build for various application-specific vertical markets, but I spend my days inventing software paradigms for people who need software tools. Right now I'm real busy separating the software from the hardware and dissolving applications into GUIs. I simply don't respect the limits that you and others accept.
I guess we all feel bad about the way Dan Turner expressed the frustrations of many with your work in the QuickTime4 GUI but hey, don't take it out on me. I feel your pain, man. I have my own frustrations. Many of my GUI innovation are used everywhere you look but I don't make a dime for 'contributing' them since I didn't patent them and chase people with lawyers. Maybe that was a key dynamic in their universal adoption, though. Funny, that.
Ten years ago I built an rapid application development framework to build application-specific GUIs based on X primitives for vertical markets. I've been improving it since then. It's at viewtouch.com The apps that are built with this don't die when the X server dies. They're mostly point of sale GUIs. I can't remember the last time an X server died, though. If X client apps were vulnerable to this the whole X thing wouldn't be worth much. Thankfully X client apps are not vulnerable to this and X is a unique & valuable way to build vertical market solutions with network GUIs. My point of sale engine, including the development framework is only about 3 Mb. It helps a great deal, by the way, if the GUI is rendered and not built out of bitmaps that have to be constantly flying around the network.
My problem with Buxton (and with Microsoft) is that the fellow has all kinds of GUI patents. I am absolutely against the idea that there should be any patents on any GUI issues, period. I have been playing a pretty significant role in the GUI business myself for over 20 years and I have never attempted to patent anything. I can sleep at night and I enjoy every day because of the satisfaction I have knowing that my GUI ideas have spread across the globe precisely because my GUI innovations work and they were not patented - they could be, and they were, freely copied. I have no respect for people or for companies that patent aspects of GUIs. They are exploiting an obviously dysfunctional legal mechanism at the expense of the needs of all of the people on this planet to be able to interface with technology in ways that are natural and intuitive. I am ashamed of people and companies that engage in GUI patents and I want to apologize to the people of this planet for the harm that GUI patent holders do to them.
Don't we all secretly wish that Microsoft were actually being innovative and that this made any sense at all? In what kind of world do we live that Microsoft might only be trying to figure out how to make more money based on the idea that it somehow owns and is entitled to compensation for many things we do all day long in a scheme that obligates us under the law to pay Microsoft for actually doing them, over and over again?
Slashdot Mirror
What we really need in clothing is a new type of clothing that can capture the kinetic energy of our movements, then makes that energy available to the devices that we carry with us and are embedded in our clothing. It would be much like the lights in the soles of our footware that light up with every step except that it could be stored in our clothing, then directed toward the devices we carry with us and wear as they need them.
There's no question this will happen. The only question is: Will it be patented or not. Mabye the best practical use of the Slashdot database is that it contains lots of ideas first disclosed here that can be used to disqualify patent applications, thus speeding the free pursuit of the development of the ideas into products or services for the real world by preventing those who would implement them from being obstructed by patents.
Informative, 5 ?
I live real close to this area, am on vacation in Lincoln City at the moment, and I'd like to say that when they say they have no explanations about this phenomenon you should not take that to mean that the annual upwelling of cold water from the bottom just off the continental shelf here is either news to anybody here or is a satisfactory explanation for what is going on here.
By the way, the part about the wind generating these currents, or currents anywhere, is wrong. Currents are generated by a combination of the earth's rotation, the uneven solar heating of the earth's surface and the underwater topologies of the world's oceans. Wind is better thought of as the atmospheric currents and the ocean current patterns clearly do NOT overlap the atmospheric currents.
OK, now, with that out of the way, the point is, nobody yet knows why everything is dead out there. Not you, Not Google, Not me, Not anybody - yet.
It's fair to say that Linux might well not even exist without the work that RMS and his cohorts did in the first years of the FSF's existence.
It's also fair to say that it's NOT true that if RMS hadn't done what he did that someone else would have. It is not to be taken for granted by anyone that without RMS & FSF, sooner or later we would have ended up in essentially the same place we are today.
I know what it's like to have to get a company's permission to write software on their computers, and to pay them a LOT of money for the 'privilege'. NOT FUN. RMS has changed all of our lives in a way that we can only understand by knowing the history and by sitting back for bit and actually thinking about it.
I can't say that for ESR. All he ever did for me was threaten me for using his US service mark 'open source' on my web site, a service mark he didn't actually have. I find it easy to ignore him.
Hear! Hear!
Mod This Parent Up !!
We all use the GNU compiler, GNU tools & the vast body of GNU software. Who is using the OSI compiler, OSI tools and the vast body of OSI software? Nobody - because it doesn't exist. Next time they ask you the difference between what the Free Software Foundation does and what the Open Source Initiative does, mention that.
It takes more than a catchy phrase to cause a revolution - it takes a lifelong dedication to writing the software to launch and to perpetuate a revolution - and that would be GNU.
I think you are a sick fuck who should take up blindfolded motorcyle racing in heavily-treed forests.
You obviously didn't read all of the new content on both of the posts I provided for you and all to read, the second of which was entered only a few moments after my first response to you so you could read them both, and which provided plenty of exactly the kind of information which you claim I don't provide. I think you really need to get a grip and maybe even follow the links provided, the ones you say I don't provide. If you don't give a shit about history and you don't like it when people do explain history to you then mebbe you shouldn't bother responding to the posts of people who do like history and who can explain it to you. Responding to the publication of little known facts with sarcasm is not justified even if you don't give a shit about the history of Thousand Island dressing, either. People do care, even if you don't. It would have been far better for the discussion if you had chosen to add to it with any new facts that you were aware of rather than to act like an angry child.
More on this...
Gary Allen reprints a section of the book by Eunice Stamm, The History of Cheesemaking in The Empire State from the Early Dutch Settlers to Modern Times. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/opmbs you will read this:
-------------
the Catskills were just huge tracts of rocky open land that weren't suitable for farming. Farmers often complained that "there were two stones for every dirt" -- but the deforested hills were ideally suited for cow pastures. This, in turn, created the need for a market that could absorb the glut of New York State dairy products. However, with limited refrigeration available, and fears of tuberculosis in the city, fresh milk could not yet be shipped safely in the large volumes that were being produced. Consequently, cheese makers in the region found a ready market for their products. In 1870, Neufchatel was being made in New Jersey for the New York City market, but Charles Green, living in the village of Chester, in the southern Catskills, thought he could do better. In 1872, he hired a European cheese maker to teach him how to make the soft cheese.
What Green didn't know was that another local cheese maker, William A. Lawrence, had overheard the lessons. Lawrence immediately went home and duplicated the recipe -- but doubled the amount of cream. The result was cream cheese, which was packed and shipped from Philadelphia as "Star Brand Cream Cheese." Lawrence also produced and sold "Cow Brand Neufchatel." By the 1880s he had moved his plant west, to Philadelphia, New York.
At the time, Pennsylvania's Philadelphia had a reputation for making fine foods, so the most fashionable marketing name in the United States was "Philadelphia," and in 1885, the Empire Cheese Company in South Edmeston, New York, registered the brand name "Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese." The Empire Cheese Company's factory burned down in 1900, but was rebuilt as "The Phenix" (like the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes every 500 years -- but spelled without an "o"). The company itself was renamed "The Phenix Cheese Corporation" in 1924, but the name didn't last nearly as long as its namesake because Kraft bought the company along with the "Philadelphia" brand name, in 1928.
Today, Kraft is the world's largest producer of cream cheese, and its factory in Lowville, New York, is responsible for 40% of its production. The next largest producer is Breakstone, with its plant in nearby Downsville.
-------------
There you have it. William Lawrence moved to Philadelphia New York to learn how to make cream cheese! OK, so, now, where is Lowville? Well, it's about about 30 minutes down the road from Philadelphia, New York. Surprise, Surprise! When Gary Allen talks about the Catskills being rocky and best suited for Dairy farming he's also talking about the part of New York state where Philadelphia and Lowville are situated, in the St. Lawrence River Valley. All these towns are not in the Catskills, they are in Northern New York, in the area between the Adirondacks and the St. Lawrence River & Lake Ontario. Allen himself doesn't actually say this, but he should have. Another thing - Why in hell would William Lawrence move from the area of Chester, NY, all the way to Northern New York state, to the village & town of Philadelphia, New York? Well, as I explained in my previous post, the people there were already famous for making this same type of cheese by 1870-80! He moved there to learn how - and boy, did he!
Mebbe the people at Kraft think that people would get confused if they printed the truth on their web site, mebbe they just never gave the simple job of learning the truth to any of their researchers - who knows? At any rate, I've just told you much more than you'll learn from Kraft or from Wikipedia. I guess I'll head on over to Wikipedia and replace the myths the people have placed there with the truth when I'm done here.
Gene Mosher
I'll enhance my assertion. In 1955 my great grandmother, who was born in 1870, personally told me about the village's cream cheese heritage and how she had learned to make cream cheese in the 1870's there in Philadelphia, New York by her grandparents who had been making cream cheese in their home for sale to the public for many years. Hell, we had cream cheese with jelly on the table at breakfast every day. People were spreading it on the slices of the pies they made from the green apples they picked from the orchards in their back yards. The nonsense about cream cheese only being made first in Philadelphia, PA, in 1872 is merely a corporate myth.
Why you get mod points for directing everyone to the Kraft web site and I don't get any for passing on my own direct knowledge of what really happened two centuries ago is beyond me. I used to date the granddaughter of the woman who first devised the recipe for Thousand Island dressing so I know all about that one, too. I could tell lots of interesting stories. Interesting to me, at least, and many of us certainly feel the same way.
Cream cheese was first manufactured in the early 1800's in dozens of homes in Philadelphia, Jefferson County, New York, a Quaker settlement dating back to 1800 in the Chaumont De Leray tracts of Northern New York. I have the written history and maps to prove it. It did not originate in or near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yes, I grew up there and ate lots of cream cheese.
I would buy this if it cost less than $250 and if it had
a dedicated graphics processor, 1280 x 1024
at least 64 MB RAM, 8 MB Flash Memory (Optional 128 MB RAM, 32 MB Flash)
Linux Kernel 2.6.12 or better
Debian Arm File system
firmware upgradeable over the network
X11 R7 with touchscreen drivers installed
Dual USB 2.0 (12Mbit) Host ports
Single USB 2.0 (12Mbit) mini Device Port
RS-232 / RS-422 / RS-485
Compact Flash slot Type I/II
4-Bit SD/MMC socket
Audio via USB and/or Bluetooth Headset
10/100 Ethernet and optional wireless LAN via CF slot
XVGA DB15 CRT socket
Power via 12V Plugpack and runs on 1 Watt
quick mount bracket for rear side of LCD
and if it were no bigger than the palm of my hand
Oh, wait, that would be the ThinLinX Hot-E.
The Constitution specifically states that there can be no laws which abridge (i.e., curtail) the freedom of the press. In plain English that means that The Constitution specifially withholds from the government any authority to even investigate the activities of the people when they are about the business of publishing information.
There are no exceptions to this - not even 'national security'.
Of course if The Constitution is considered merely to be a 'Goddamned Piece of Paper', as Bush has described it, and if the people who are involved in violating The Constitution don't care about adhering to it, then all bets are off, which is pretty much where we in the US are at these days.
The US Constitution recognized only individuals with respect to copyrights, patents, etc.. At the point where corporations were given equal status with individuals then all of the rights that had been held by individuals then became rights that corporations could also hold. Corporations can, with this accession, do things that no individual could possibly do. Therein lies many a disaster, many of which lie immediately ahead in the future. Every time a corporation petitions a legislator for a law that gives it more power, the rights of the individuals are the currency paid in this transaction. The eventual outcome of this, it should be clear to all by now, is that a few corporations will hold all the power and no individuals will have any rights except those that the corporations see fit to allow them to have to the extent that it fulfils the plan of the corporations to manipulate the people. As Ralph Nader has often explained, unless and until we people put an end to this individuals will find themselves with fewer and fewer rights, and corporations will grab more and more power over individuals. This is a war, folks. If you don't think so you are condemning your progeny to virtual slavery.
Our web site is viewtouch.
Their using openVPN. When Doug first set openVPN up there was something not quite right with it so he brought the problem to the attention of the person behind openVPN and paid him for several hours of work to address the issue and make it all work just fine. He also makes use of rsync and dynamic DNS. The neat thing, in my opinion, is that none of these components have to either be aware of the POS app and the POS app doesn't have to be aware of them, yet, from the user viewpoint the overall effect of all these systems running together is that they are a monolithic, smooth-running system, even when it's anything but monolithic.
My company is ViewTouch.
This Canadian customer of ours has about 80 restaurants and has fully deployed our Linux & X Window System POS solution in all of its restaurants all across Canada. HQ enjoys an open VPN link with each of them and all data from the restaurants, including credit/debit cards is remotely synchronized with the storage system at their Toronto HQ. The company's IT staff is actually just one person, Doug deLeeuw. The company is increasing its units by about 25% this year. When you have the kind of control that this company has you find something like that much easier to undertake and you're much more likely to succeed. I doubt that there's another restaurant organization in the world with this kind of advanced POS deployment, not to mention that one person did it all by himself. Perhaps in another five to ten years you'll be able to read about it in a book.
I've said it many times before and I'll continue to say it - Patents on user interfaces and user input techniques are insidious and odious. The reason that this demo and the user interface techniques it shows even exists is because for a very long time you could not get a patent on how something is touched and what happens when you do touch it. Now that the USPTO has decided to begin patenting how you touch something and what happens when you do we can all expect the damage of user interface patents to be forthcoming and unlimited. I can only hope that all the prior art is used to overturn any recent patents and any attempts in the future to patent how we interact with technology.
The difficulty you're experiencing is due to the fact that you don't understand what X is, what X apps on a WAN can imply and that you don't grasp the difference between the experience that a PDA user has and the experience that an X terminal user on a WAN has. Like most people trying to understand the significance of the software on this device you simply don't know what it is that you don't know about it. This will probably become clear to you with time.
So much to explain, except that you seem to find your own mind so amusing already that I see no point in interrupting your amazement. Forgot to run your spellchecker, eh?
Here's a starting point for you. http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/118892 Don't try to monitor keystrokes, Don. There aren't any. Is there even sensitive data where the menu app is running? Doh!
You're thinking "X application" and you haven't yet imagined that you should be thinking "GUI". Why should anyone do anything with an application that can do better with a GUI? The answer is, of course, they shouldn't, but it was asking the right question that was the hard part, if there was a hard part. It didn't seem hard to me. I keep running into people like you who savor the orgastic delight of imparting "You can't do that" to others. What is it with you people, anyway? I don't mind if you think you're very clever. The part I'm having trouble with is the part where you think that when you enter a complex system all you need is an ego and a closed mind. Well, my grandchildren did enjoy those little Sims 'characters' for a while but they're back to playing Diddy Kong Racing. They prefer multi-user software and 3D GUIs.
I'm not even a programmer except I do a little with the graphical programming environments that I build for various application-specific vertical markets, but I spend my days inventing software paradigms for people who need software tools. Right now I'm real busy separating the software from the hardware and dissolving applications into GUIs. I simply don't respect the limits that you and others accept.
I guess we all feel bad about the way Dan Turner expressed the frustrations of many with your work in the QuickTime4 GUI but hey, don't take it out on me. I feel your pain, man. I have my own frustrations. Many of my GUI innovation are used everywhere you look but I don't make a dime for 'contributing' them since I didn't patent them and chase people with lawyers. Maybe that was a key dynamic in their universal adoption, though. Funny, that.
None.
Ten years ago I built an rapid application development framework to build application-specific GUIs based on X primitives for vertical markets. I've been improving it since then. It's at viewtouch.com The apps that are built with this don't die when the X server dies. They're mostly point of sale GUIs. I can't remember the last time an X server died, though. If X client apps were vulnerable to this the whole X thing wouldn't be worth much. Thankfully X client apps are not vulnerable to this and X is a unique & valuable way to build vertical market solutions with network GUIs. My point of sale engine, including the development framework is only about 3 Mb. It helps a great deal, by the way, if the GUI is rendered and not built out of bitmaps that have to be constantly flying around the network.
Any X client app that dies when a remote X server dies is poorly written and should never be put into use.
My problem with Buxton (and with Microsoft) is that the fellow has all kinds of GUI patents. I am absolutely against the idea that there should be any patents on any GUI issues, period. I have been playing a pretty significant role in the GUI business myself for over 20 years and I have never attempted to patent anything. I can sleep at night and I enjoy every day because of the satisfaction I have knowing that my GUI ideas have spread across the globe precisely because my GUI innovations work and they were not patented - they could be, and they were, freely copied. I have no respect for people or for companies that patent aspects of GUIs. They are exploiting an obviously dysfunctional legal mechanism at the expense of the needs of all of the people on this planet to be able to interface with technology in ways that are natural and intuitive. I am ashamed of people and companies that engage in GUI patents and I want to apologize to the people of this planet for the harm that GUI patent holders do to them.
- Gene Mosher
Don't we all secretly wish that Microsoft were actually being innovative and that this made any sense at all? In what kind of world do we live that Microsoft might only be trying to figure out how to make more money based on the idea that it somehow owns and is entitled to compensation for many things we do all day long in a scheme that obligates us under the law to pay Microsoft for actually doing them, over and over again?
Here's the link for that..._ and_how.jsp
http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/padlock/what
Isn't this already implemented in Via's Padlock method for the Via CPU's?