Really, Educational and Games seems to always fail.
One of my all time favorite games was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? To this day I still have the theme song stuck in my head as well as more world trivia than I really need.
I use Tasktop. It is available as a standalone product or as an eclipse plug-in and will bring all the tasks from the multitude of bug trackers that I use for the various projects together so I can organize them as a todo list. So far it has worked great for me.
The second thing I like about tasktop is that it is an extension of the Mylyn project. Therefore it can limit what I see on my screen to items that are pertinent to my task, including interfacing with Firefox.
You forget, the Dewey Decimal System is patented. Every library that uses it is required to pay over $100 a year for the privilege. I suggest Library of Congress if you are looking for something unencumbered. It is also easier to sub categorize.
The issue of world hunger is an distribution one, not a production one. The federal government today pays millions of dollars for farmers (large corporations now days) to either let a crop rot in the fields, not grow a crop, or not distribute a crop. There are actions by the UN trying to stop this practice. I don't have the link any longer but there have been studies produced by Harvard I believe that prove that we can produce enough food to feed the world, we just can't get it to the people that need it.
I believe that publishers are the ones responsible for most of your complaints. Take for instance Twilight Times.
In answer to your post:
1) Price - Less than 1/3 the cost of a paperback of the same story. ( usually under $5 for new release ).
2) Compatibility - Deliver the book to you in one of many selectable formats including PDF and HTML.
3) Convenience - Will even deliver book in DRM laden format for your reader if you special request it.
4) Quality - While the e-book readers aren't there, but neither are most e-books. This is where publishers should really help the e-book market. A publisher should only publish works of excellent quality. What good is it to have a beautiful e-reader, but nothing worth reading off the screen?
5) Portability - Having documents delivered in Open Formats allows conversion to different types if required in the future.
6) Selection - If you don't want to base your decision on what is available what do you want to base it on? I want to base my decision on quality works and I see that as one of the biggest things that Publishers can do. While self publishing is great for some, I have found that most people can not write as well as they believe they can. I have proof read many manuscripts and am amazed at what some writers believe is quality. Part of a publisher's job is to weed out the great from the not. I look forward to the day that there are 500 billion e-books available, but how to do tell quality at a glance. This is what I hope publishers give us.
7) Price - While you may think $5 for an e-book, it doesn't cost anything to upload/download. The expense in e-books should be people. If you are paying for technology there is a problem. Good editors are not cheep and a e-book should have the same quality as a print book (don't use the last Harry Potter Book as an example of good editing). I was looking the other day and a newly released paperback by someone who is not uber famous is going for $15.45 on Amazon.com on average (uber famous people cost less, I guess it's a quantity thing)
Above and beyond why are e-books just like their print siblings? An e-book should be much more innovative and dynamic. There is not a good reason you can not have music associated with chapters, much like games do. Moving graphics I think I would find annoying, but I am sure someone would find a create use for them that worked. An interactive story that is what I am waiting for. There is no reason a e-book should merely be another version of a print book, it should be above and beyond. I point out Twilight Time merely because I saw an interview with the owner in which she agreed with what I believe e-books will be one day. I hope other publishers are doing the same as this small one. I should also note that all non book like features should be able to be disabled, and should still display like a book if the reader does not support them.
Casio makes something similar to what you are asking for. It is called the Casio Wave Ceptor Tough Solar. It runs off solar power (batter backup for extended dark periods), the watch is available in black on white, or assorted other colors. It uses the Radio from Denver, CO to set itself. There are a few exceptions. The first is it does not automatically do timezone determination (I have had this before, believe me it is not a feature). The second is that it has buttons. While I have never used them it has advanced calendaring, the option of a digital time display, alarm, etc.. It not obtrusive though and very well designed. It also is relatively inexpensive. I think I payed about $100 for mine on sale.
While it was originally designed as a way to import wxWidgets code into your project I have found that the wxCRP project can be very useful for storing snippets of code for reuse. It is language independant and easy to use. It also has the nice feature of avoiding most copy/paste problems by having variables that get auto filled in by scripts that respond to questions. This may be more what you were looking for in your original question than a repository although all code should be stored and revisioned with history.
Why do we need hardening wizzards, tools software and so on. Why can't distributions be secure out of the box ?
What about those of use whom don't use a distro? I often build systems from scratch and this gives me a convient useful tool to lock it down. Also why not go the other direction... Why don't distros use generic tools like this to keep their system secure out of the box. I would like to point out one thing though. People use linux for just about everything today. The wizard gives you the functionality to do non standard things to your system where as if the distro was secure out of the box when you add a new serice would you be able to say it was still secure or what happens if you make a mistake setting up a config file. Generic tools very good at what they do is much better than a large tools or relying on assumptions about the overall state of a system.
The score idea is actually pretty central here. When I first heard about it, I thought it was overly simplistic, but people really do get motivated and sometimes even jazzed up about improving the score on a system. They'll get a lower score than their ego tells them they should and will turn around and harden a few items on the box just to achieve a more encouraging score.
This is an excelent example of making an application have a "value" as incentive to do the right thing. People are by nature competative and will strive to improve a "score" even if it doesn't necessarily help them in any way. I give cudose to whoever decided to add this feature.
This happens to be my favorite game in my house at the moment. I have lots, and lots and lots of games, but Betrayl is great because it takes so little time to play the rules are easy and it is fun over and over again. My wife bought it for me for Christmas because she could not find the game I actually wanted and I have never been so happy about not getting what I asked for before.
We use touch screens for one of our applications. They are placed in access points of Nuclear Power Plants. One thing we found when testing this project is that durability is a lot more important than originally spec'ed. We use a company called Touch Controls for our screens. They have a problem in that it takes forever to get a quote, but their technology is hands down the best.
The options availabe to you depend greatly where you live. For example in Europe there are bio diesel options, I have seen VW's new car that can get 300+ miles to a gallon. In the states there are a few nice alternatives. The nice thing about hybrid cars is the fact you do not have to rely on a newer type of fuel. I have ridden in a few electric cars and they are not very good yet. Also almost all the manufacturers have stopped producing them.
So I would suggest you find out what your options are then decide what you want to do. The new ones are getting a lot more stylish though (If money is one of the driving factors it requires a lot of miles to balance due to the high price of the car.)
I know that a lot of people and companies make money off open source software, but I for one do not write software I put under open source for a specific customer unless that customer is myself. Now I take pride in the code I write and if someone asks me to make it do something and I think it will be fun, I will do it, but I always keep in mind they can do it themselves if they want it bad enought. Look at the comments that McBride made about Open Source:
I believe that the Open Source software model is at a critical stage of development. The Open Source community has its roots in counter-cultural ideals ? the notion of ?Hackers? against Big Business ? but because of recent advances in Linux, the community now has the opportunity to develop software for mainstream American corporations and other global companies. If the Open Source community wants its products to be accepted by enterprise companies, the community itself must follow the rules and procedures that govern mainstream society. This is what global corporations will require. And it is these customers who will determine the ultimate fate of Open Source ? not SCO, not IBM, and not Open Source leaders.
Some enterprise customers have accepted Open Source because IBM has put its name behind it. However, IBM and other Linux vendors are reportedly unwilling to provide intellectual property warranties to their customers. This means that Linux end users must take a hard look at the intellectual property underpinnings of Open Source products and at the GPL (GNU General Public License) licensing model itself.
If the Open Source community wants to develop products for enterprise corporations, it must respect and follow the rule of law. These rules include contracts, copyrights and other intellectual property laws. For several months SCO has been involved in a contentious legal case that we filed against IBM. What are the underlying intellectual property principles that have put SCO in a strong position in this hotly debated legal case? I?d summarize them in this way:
[snip some stuff about ip...]
Finally, it is clear that the Open Source community needs a business model that is sustainable, if it is to grow beyond a part-time avocation into an enterprise-trusted development model. Free Open Source software primarily benefits large vendors, which sell hardware and expensive services that support Linux, but not Linux itself. By providing Open Source software without a warranty, these largest vendors avoid significant costs while increasing their services revenue. Today, that?s the viable Open Source business model. Other Linux companies have already failed and many more are struggling to survive. Few are consistently profitable. It?s time for everyone else in the industry, individuals and small corporations, to under this and to implement our own business model ? something that keeps us alive and profitable. In the long term, the financial stability of software vendors and the legality of their software products are more important to enterprise customers than free software. Rather than fight for the right for free software, it?s far more valuable to design a new business model that enhances the stability and trustworthiness of the Open Source community in the eyes of enterprise customers.
A sustainable business model for software development can be built only on an intellectual property foundation. I invite the Open Source community to explore these possibilities for your own benefit within an Open Source model. Further, the SCO Group is open to ideas of working with the Open Source community to monetize software technology and its underlying intellectual property for all contributors, not just SCO.
I don't know how this happened but, McBride along with lots of the business community has decided that Open Source contributers everywere are doing this for the money and business model. I personally am doing this because I can do what I want and I love coding.
I will have to refute your claim. We have a medium size business that runs on SuSE Linux. Most of our machines are less than 800Mhz with between 128 and 256 MB of RAM and we run both OpenOffice and Mozzila with out any difficulty. I am not saying they are blazingly fast, but you know on a 800Mhz system neither is XP let alone if you have Office XP running on the same machine.
We have run into a simular problem, we *previously* outsourced a good bit of work to Russia, and found the internationalization of OpenOffice had something to be desired. Most of the time Abiword did a better job of formating so we used a script that would convert the documents from Russia to something more useful than a doc. We also found the.doc format limiting and use LaTeX for internal documentation now.
I have an IBM Mouse that I just love, instead of a wheel it has a tab that sticks up like the nipple mice on laptops, only contoured for a finger. The only problem I have had with it is the software does not work with Opera for some reason. It works with every other program I have except opera...
I have always wondered how the ninja was supposed to be able to know where you were going ot move and what you were going to do. Now we know... he can read the patterns in the air and see what your brain wants to do. You know this gives big brother a whole new dimention to play in.
Every time someone sees automation doing something that a person has done historically it seems we are all going to be put out of jobs and the end of the world as we know it is comming. Everything from the assembly line making prefabricated parts to robots that mow lawns. I am not refuting the fact that robots will take over some jobs that people used to do. I am just saying that historically speaking that new technologies have done two things. The first is take over jobs that are either dangerous or boring. The second is cause new jobs to be created to support the automation. It has been proven (wish I could find the link on the Discovery channel about the story) that every new technology that survives for an extended period of time not only has had a direct support structure to support it, but has created off shoot jobs that were never expected increasing the number of people who must be employed. I personlly look forward to the future, what fun it is to live only in the present.
I do not have a 850, but we currently have an 860. I do take care of it like a new born baby (no one but me is alowed to unjam a paper jam) but it has run extreamly well for the past 2 years. The ink is a bit expensive, but it really does last a long time, and after you use the color matching software that comes with it to make your screen show what will print we have never had a problem.
If you are serious about getting rid of the 850 I would be willing to pay to have you ship it to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Really, Educational and Games seems to always fail.
One of my all time favorite games was Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? To this day I still have the theme song stuck in my head as well as more world trivia than I really need.
I use Tasktop. It is available as a standalone product or as an eclipse plug-in and will bring all the tasks from the multitude of bug trackers that I use for the various projects together so I can organize them as a todo list. So far it has worked great for me.
The second thing I like about tasktop is that it is an extension of the Mylyn project. Therefore it can limit what I see on my screen to items that are pertinent to my task, including interfacing with Firefox.
You forget, the Dewey Decimal System is patented. Every library that uses it is required to pay over $100 a year for the privilege. I suggest Library of Congress if you are looking for something unencumbered. It is also easier to sub categorize.
The issue of world hunger is an distribution one, not a production one. The federal government today pays millions of dollars for farmers (large corporations now days) to either let a crop rot in the fields, not grow a crop, or not distribute a crop. There are actions by the UN trying to stop this practice. I don't have the link any longer but there have been studies produced by Harvard I believe that prove that we can produce enough food to feed the world, we just can't get it to the people that need it.
I believe that publishers are the ones responsible for most of your complaints. Take for instance Twilight Times.
In answer to your post:
1) Price - Less than 1/3 the cost of a paperback of the same story. ( usually under $5 for new release ).
2) Compatibility - Deliver the book to you in one of many selectable formats including PDF and HTML.
3) Convenience - Will even deliver book in DRM laden format for your reader if you special request it.
4) Quality - While the e-book readers aren't there, but neither are most e-books. This is where publishers should really help the e-book market. A publisher should only publish works of excellent quality. What good is it to have a beautiful e-reader, but nothing worth reading off the screen?
5) Portability - Having documents delivered in Open Formats allows conversion to different types if required in the future.
6) Selection - If you don't want to base your decision on what is available what do you want to base it on? I want to base my decision on quality works and I see that as one of the biggest things that Publishers can do. While self publishing is great for some, I have found that most people can not write as well as they believe they can. I have proof read many manuscripts and am amazed at what some writers believe is quality. Part of a publisher's job is to weed out the great from the not. I look forward to the day that there are 500 billion e-books available, but how to do tell quality at a glance. This is what I hope publishers give us.
7) Price - While you may think $5 for an e-book, it doesn't cost anything to upload/download. The expense in e-books should be people. If you are paying for technology there is a problem. Good editors are not cheep and a e-book should have the same quality as a print book (don't use the last Harry Potter Book as an example of good editing). I was looking the other day and a newly released paperback by someone who is not uber famous is going for $15.45 on Amazon.com on average (uber famous people cost less, I guess it's a quantity thing)
Above and beyond why are e-books just like their print siblings? An e-book should be much more innovative and dynamic. There is not a good reason you can not have music associated with chapters, much like games do. Moving graphics I think I would find annoying, but I am sure someone would find a create use for them that worked. An interactive story that is what I am waiting for. There is no reason a e-book should merely be another version of a print book, it should be above and beyond. I point out Twilight Time merely because I saw an interview with the owner in which she agreed with what I believe e-books will be one day. I hope other publishers are doing the same as this small one. I should also note that all non book like features should be able to be disabled, and should still display like a book if the reader does not support them.
For publisher with some vision, check out their website:
http://twilighttimesbooks.com/
Casio makes something similar to what you are asking for. It is called the Casio Wave Ceptor Tough Solar. It runs off solar power (batter backup for extended dark periods), the watch is available in black on white, or assorted other colors. It uses the Radio from Denver, CO to set itself. There are a few exceptions. The first is it does not automatically do timezone determination (I have had this before, believe me it is not a feature). The second is that it has buttons. While I have never used them it has advanced calendaring, the option of a digital time display, alarm, etc.. It not obtrusive though and very well designed. It also is relatively inexpensive. I think I payed about $100 for mine on sale.
While it was originally designed as a way to import wxWidgets code into your project I have found that the wxCRP project can be very useful for storing snippets of code for reuse. It is language independant and easy to use. It also has the nice feature of avoiding most copy/paste problems by having variables that get auto filled in by scripts that respond to questions. This may be more what you were looking for in your original question than a repository although all code should be stored and revisioned with history.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jorgb/wxcrp/
I am glad that my network is running distcc. Now after I compile the tool chain I can see how many problems I can identify in a weekend. Life is good!
What about those of use whom don't use a distro? I often build systems from scratch and this gives me a convient useful tool to lock it down. Also why not go the other direction... Why don't distros use generic tools like this to keep their system secure out of the box. I would like to point out one thing though. People use linux for just about everything today. The wizard gives you the functionality to do non standard things to your system where as if the distro was secure out of the box when you add a new serice would you be able to say it was still secure or what happens if you make a mistake setting up a config file. Generic tools very good at what they do is much better than a large tools or relying on assumptions about the overall state of a system.
This is an excelent example of making an application have a "value" as incentive to do the right thing. People are by nature competative and will strive to improve a "score" even if it doesn't necessarily help them in any way. I give cudose to whoever decided to add this feature.
This happens to be my favorite game in my house at the moment. I have lots, and lots and lots of games, but Betrayl is great because it takes so little time to play the rules are easy and it is fun over and over again. My wife bought it for me for Christmas because she could not find the game I actually wanted and I have never been so happy about not getting what I asked for before.
We use touch screens for one of our applications. They are placed in access points of Nuclear Power Plants. One thing we found when testing this project is that durability is a lot more important than originally spec'ed. We use a company called Touch Controls for our screens. They have a problem in that it takes forever to get a quote, but their technology is hands down the best.
The options availabe to you depend greatly where you live. For example in Europe there are bio diesel options, I have seen VW's new car that can get 300+ miles to a gallon. In the states there are a few nice alternatives. The nice thing about hybrid cars is the fact you do not have to rely on a newer type of fuel. I have ridden in a few electric cars and they are not very good yet. Also almost all the manufacturers have stopped producing them.
So I would suggest you find out what your options are then decide what you want to do. The new ones are getting a lot more stylish though
(If money is one of the driving factors it requires a lot of miles to balance due to the high price of the car.)
I will have to refute your claim. We have a medium size business that runs on SuSE Linux. Most of our machines are less than 800Mhz with between 128 and 256 MB of RAM and we run both OpenOffice and Mozzila with out any difficulty. I am not saying they are blazingly fast, but you know on a 800Mhz system neither is XP let alone if you have Office XP running on the same machine.
.doc format limiting and use LaTeX for internal documentation now.
We have run into a simular problem, we *previously* outsourced a good bit of work to Russia, and found the internationalization of OpenOffice had something to be desired. Most of the time Abiword did a better job of formating so we used a script that would convert the documents from Russia to something more useful than a doc. We also found the
I have an IBM Mouse that I just love, instead of a wheel it has a tab that sticks up like the nipple mice on laptops, only contoured for a finger. The only problem I have had with it is the software does not work with Opera for some reason. It works with every other program I have except opera...
I have always wondered how the ninja was supposed to be able to know where you were going ot move and what you were going to do. Now we know... he can read the patterns in the air and see what your brain wants to do. You know this gives big brother a whole new dimention to play in.
Every time someone sees automation doing something that a person has done historically it seems we are all going to be put out of jobs and the end of the world as we know it is comming. Everything from the assembly line making prefabricated parts to robots that mow lawns. I am not refuting the fact that robots will take over some jobs that people used to do. I am just saying that historically speaking that new technologies have done two things. The first is take over jobs that are either dangerous or boring. The second is cause new jobs to be created to support the automation. It has been proven (wish I could find the link on the Discovery channel about the story) that every new technology that survives for an extended period of time not only has had a direct support structure to support it, but has created off shoot jobs that were never expected increasing the number of people who must be employed. I personlly look forward to the future, what fun it is to live only in the present.
I do not have a 850, but we currently have an 860. I do take care of it like a new born baby (no one but me is alowed to unjam a paper jam) but it has run extreamly well for the past 2 years. The ink is a bit expensive, but it really does last a long time, and after you use the color matching software that comes with it to make your screen show what will print we have never had a problem.
If you are serious about getting rid of the 850 I would be willing to pay to have you ship it to me.