Instead of a bruise on its surface, we would be dead.
Naturally. However, don't forget that Jupiter's gravity is much stronger than ours AND we're much closer to the sun, which means our gravity well is much shallower, the Sun's gravity well is respectively a much larger target, and the end result is that a Shoemaker Levy comet is more likely to simply zip past us or have it's trajectory deflected by the Sun.
It's how MS beat Apple - commodity hardware beat proprietary, the TCO was smaller.
We could argue about it all day, I'm sure, but I recall that Apple had several studies that it had the lower TCO--but what it didn't have was the lower initial cost. Execs would rather pay less now, and either a) let their successor deal with the long-term costs, or b) manage the long term costs, say by hiring and training their own support staff.
I believe that MS beat Apple by having lower initial costs, regardless of a TCO disadvantage; and I think, ironically, Linux is going to do the same to MS, also. MS is now in the same position of Apple in the early 90s, and it's clear how that argument turned out--cheaper and "good enough" wins the day.
That wasn't the case when Apple had a dozen TCO studies saying that it was cheaper to run and maintain; people bought cheap PCs anyways, and payed for the support costs later. It's easier to stomach $10/month of incremental costs than $100 up front purchase price, even though the up front is cheaper in the long run.
I expect the same is true now; the only difference is that now it's MS trying to bang the TCO drum, and they have a louder voice than Apple ever did. But I think history will repeat itself--it's a lot easier to purchase at a lower price now, and "manage" the incremental support costs later. MS is doomed to repeat the Apple lesson--cheaper and "good enough" wins the day in the corp boardroom.
Sure, that'd be great and all. But what killed the Newton was price. So you have to ask yourself, and I'm sure Apple has asked themselves: could we build a tablet with all these features, but at a price point people would buy? And if the answer is "no", then it's really just a waste of time, waste of lots of money, and waste of credibility.
How many people would buy an Apple iTablet at $5K/unit? Probably not enough to recoup development costs, just like with the Newton.
If you're really curious, you get clearance from the military. Once in a great while the government might hire you without clearance to get it for you; but that's not likely, as it can take up to a year to get clearance and that's a year of not being able to even be in the same building as the job that you were hired for.
And thanks to Bush, lots of jobs in the area are going to contractors, who love to hire folks with clearance, but can't get you it, ever. So there it is. If you're cleared, you can work anywhere you want in the DC/MD/VA area, even in a field largely outside your expertise. If you're not, well.
hink it's more likely that Apple will license the cell technology from IBM and Sony than license Mac OS X to them. Buy a G5, get a PS 3 Cell co-processor on-board for free?
Maybe the inclusion of the chip costs Apple $20/unit--but they suddenly go from being the OS that games go to die, to bleeding edge; every eMac and iMac includes the ability to run PS 3 games via embedded Cell processor (and, oh yeah, you need to buy a controller).
Not knowing that much about game development, would the inclusion of the Cell CPU on the Mac MLB enable it to run PS 3 games, or is there more to it than that, like video card etc?
Finally, being a Mac Gamer would no longer be an oxymoron. I think that's one of Apple's biggest holes--and they're likely to know it too.
Or that Microsoft would end up making their OS, for that matter.
When it comes right down to it, they probably figured they had two choices: quit, as the difference between them and their competitors was no longer worth the effort; or make desktops with PPC chips running their own optimized version of Linux. They must have figured that an IBM branded desktop with an IBM PPC would be too difficult to gain market penetration, esp since now OS X resembles linux in many ways. Can't say I agree; I would've thought that an IBM desktop with their own PPC chip running an IBM enhanced version of Yellow Dog Linux (extra development dollars, value-adds, and marketing) would be pretty enticing for Enterprise customers that are more comfortable with the IBM brand than with Apple.
Or it could be that between the PS 3, Xbox Next, and Apple's G5, that IBM felt that it couldn't scale their destkop class CPU manufacture to fill their own needs, and they probably already have contractual obligations to those three players that put their fulfillment first.
I agree with the above post for all the reasons he mentioned. You don't drop $1M on a product because it got "5 thumbs up" in some magazine.
However, to offer some constructive criticism--what you could do is do extensive technical and performance analysis of a working system in a production environment. Instead of being able to sit at your desk and run pretty little tests, you would have to interview customers of a product, and ask them:
why did you choose this product?
did the hype live up to the delivery?
What infrastructure does it interop with?
what are real-world performance numbers?
what are you the happiest about in terms of it's use?
what do you find lacking?
Not nearly as easy to be sure--it'll take finding real customers of the product who have the time and/or inclination to let you do interviews and look at performance metrics. However, I for one would be interested to read case studies of other folks; although I would understand that not every thing would apply to my environment, I would be really interested to learn about the gotchas and real-world performance.
Americans are adverse to diesel, even TDI, for historical reasons. There's been some talk that they're going to try to reintroduce "next-gen" TDI cars in the next few years; how they do in the US market will determine how many more diesels are marketed here in subsequent years.
So the closest we can get to 60mpg is the Prius, which is selling like hotcakes. I think the Smart Car will have a specific demographic, but will do well in those markets: I forsee a lot of them going to big metro areas. But they probably won't do so well in Texas.
Apple's iDisk offering is, or at least once was, WebDAV. Also incorporates quotas and is multi-user capable. Allows them to give nice hooks to publishing directly from iMovie and iPhoto, for example.
Sorry, I don't know exactly how they do it; but I do know that when it was announced (in '99?) there was some discussion about how Apple was accomplishing it. And you could probably reverse-implement their implementation in a few hours of poking.
For that matter, I think SpyMac uses the same thing.
When a Nokia phone comes out with 20GB storage, will you be able to load your iTunes onto that?
YES. Yes, you will. The only songs that have Apple's DRM on them are songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store; that is, downloaded.
The songs that you rip from your own CDs you can rip to either MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, or even.WAV. None of these formats have DRM, as it would be naturally pretty stupid to encode your own song library with DRM restrictions. Even AAC is an open format; while Apple's store does use a form of AAC, it lays on a DRM that is not standard, and not the same format as what you get when you rip it yourself.
So, to repeat--yes. The music stays your own, and you will be able to put it on anything that can understand your choice of format, be it MP3 or AAC, including a 20GB Nokia phone or a 1TB TiVo. Just don't download anything that you have to pay for.
You guys on the "don't install SP2!" bandwagon need to wise up.
You straight up office/cube/lab support guys need to wise up. There's more to life than IE/Outlook/Office. Where I work, we use PCs to analyze genomic data and communicate and control robotic devices that gather DNA information. Often, esp the control software, is written specifically for a version of Win2K, let alone be able to update to XP S2. You heard me right--there's still lots of instances of NT, and even some Mac OS 7.5.3. In many cases, the original vendor is non-existent, hard to reach, or they specifically recommend against updating to a newer version. Often, security updates will break functionality that these applications depend on.
So thanks for the info. I'm sure XP SP2 makes a good kiosk. However, the guy that decided to run a $300K sequencer off a $700 Dell using some bastardized version of Java, and also can't be upgraded to XP or anything reasonably secure needs to have their head examined. I'm looking at you, ABI.
Is that just about the gayest format you've ever encountered? I mean, Flash is required to read a text page, and downloading requires a Flash engine? WTF?
Pray tell, how does this format improve on the usefulness and versatility of HTML?
Let's pretend that this won't suck, and that the budget would be unlimited. Here's who I'd cast:
Ozymandias--Jude Law. Well, ok. At least he's read the books, but I don't think he's big enough. Can you imagine him beating anyone up and throwing them out of a window? Really. I think Chris Sarandon might be better. Or Robert Redford.
The Comedian: Jack Nicholson. Although he'd be pretty old.
Dr. Manhattan--no idea. Clooney?
Silk Spectre: really, any good looking chick would do. Mandi Moore? Natalie Portman? But I think Nate wants to get away from the teenage male demographic by now.
Rohrscach--Dennis Leary. No really--he's not just a bitter comedian anymore. I think he's done a pretty good dramatic turn in "Rescue Me."
Finally, I think the original Silk Spectre could be played by Susan Sarandon, at least in the later years.
The reality of it is that not all of these actors will be available, and, even if they were, they wouldn't all be affordable. I think it's much more likely that, should this story get told as a movie, that they'll pick a central character to focus on, and bring in the rest as time allows. If this wisdom is followed, I think the Dreiberg story would be the best suited for it--he's the universal everyman; depressed, but you can identify with him. Folks that identify with any other character, um, don't go to movies much.
This story has lots of problems to make contemporary and tellable, however.
How do they deal with the USSR standoff? It doesn't have near the poignancy that it did then. In fact, when the Wall came down, I figured that was it for the Watchmen story ever to get made into a movie.
A number of these characters only have violence that describes them, but that kind of violence couldn't be done--I don't think we'll be seeing any characters having a revelation as they contemplate a dog's brains, for instance.
The theme that an attack on NY would bring together the world in peace--well, actually, I think that premise may be why this movie will get made--so the Hollywood liberals can push this message as a counter-argument to what's taking place currently. Folks may simply not buy it, though. Also, there's a strong current of patriotism=violent fascism that I don't think would wash either.
Ah, who am I kidding. This'll suck. It's time has passed.
Will Rorschach kill the pedophilic dressmaker by handcuffing him, giving him a saw, and setting his house on fire?
That was done in the first Mad Max, so I'd say it's not totally out of the question. By Mel Gibson, no less. Of course, I think Hollywood (and Mel!) have changed a lot since then.
If you just did a slavish reproduction of the comic like the first two Harry Potter films or the Dune miniseries - which is the best we can hope for
Ugh. You're right. And now I won't be able to sleep nights. Watchmen comic:Watchmen movie::Dune book:Dune movie, thanks for that. Although I thought the Dune miniseries didn't totally suck; really, the only way to do Watchmen right would be as a mini, which there isn't much chance of getting.
Not always available or appropriate, but you do your research and take the plunge--but before you put all 20,000 users on the chosen solution, you try it out with 100 and then scale it up as it is proved.
The problem with this is that some products are only available to WAN type solutions, so it's either 20,000 users or none. For those, it's naturally more difficult; who do you ask about how the thing is going to work? How many other institutions use the exact product you're investigating, in an environment that's analogous to yours, who also isn't a competitor and therefore not willing to reveal their competitive advantages?
For those, I'd say: do your research as others above have suggested, but then it comes down to nailing the vendor on deliverables--what are the consequences of the product not performing as promised? Rebate, return, free upgrade to the bug-squished version? And support contracts--how much support time does the solution come with to make it work as advertised?
If anyone who wants to sell to the Enterprise isn't willing to give you both written guarantees as to performance--and consequences for failing to perform--as well as some support, they're not really ready to be an Enterprise vendor. That's part of what that $1M buys you.
I count 8 resignations: 4 in the cabinet today, and another 2 senior CIA officials. Plus, Ashcroft and another CIA official earlier. Was there another cabinet level that resigned earlier?
I don't know what this means; but I think it means something. I sure don't recall this many resignations for Clinton's second term...?
Schmeiser lost the suit because he deliberately saved and interbred with GMO seed.
So what? Are you suggesting that it's up to Schmeiser to eradicate these strains from his own land? Why should he bear that burden? Why isn't Monsanto instead persecuted as polluting?
Think about it. I breed mice to be super-intelligent and do my evil bidding. Oops, one escapes! It goes next door, my neighbor catches it. Since my progeny has escaped into the wild, who's responsible for cleaning it up? Either I must be held responsible for making sure no mice can escape, and bear the burden of capturing them if they do; or those that escape into the wild are fair game for the use of others. Currently, Monsanto refuses to accept the responsibility of either position.
Life tends to reproduce vigorously, and find ways around artificial constraints. If Monsanto thinks that they're smart enough to control life, they're being foolish; and furthermore, when they inevitabily fail, they should pay the price for the cleanup.
Even though Schmeiser didn't intend to grow the plant, didn't profit from it's growth, and in fact tried to eradicate it, he was still sued, and he lost. He wasn't able to eradicate it because Monsanto made the plants hard to kill by design.
Ingenious business model, really. Maybe I'll design a (non-fatal) virus that is effectively treated by a medicine that I control. I'll sue anyone that attempts to treat it any other way. Afterall, if you don't want to pay my price, just don't get sick, right?
paragraph 1: learn to use html via text editor, it gives you better control
Thanks, I'm aware of that. I could also learn to play the violin so I don't have to listen to the radio. Oh, that's right--it's not something that I want to spend an hour a week on for the next year.
I don't create lots of websites. If I did, I'd learn HTML. Rather, I would like to throw up the odd one or two page "here's my pics" sites, but I don't want to have to fuss with tables every time. I just want to spend an hour at it.
I've tried netscape etc, but I would sure like to see a web designer that will allow me to drag a picture anywhere inside a box, and build a table that positions it correctly relative to the other elements in the page. For instance something like this. If OSS can design a PhotoShop killer (GIMP), why not a truly WYSIWYG web designer?
Oh, and while we're dreaming, how about a desktop HIG standard? So each time I load a new distro I don't feel like I'm learning a new OS? While that's cool for hobbyists, it hurts corp adoption because Linux continually feels "unpolished." Why can't some consortium develop, decide on the lowest common denominator, and make it a standard that shrinkwrap developers and trainers target? And then you can leave the other stuff for preference panels.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of a bruise on its surface, we would be dead.
Naturally. However, don't forget that Jupiter's gravity is much stronger than ours AND we're much closer to the sun, which means our gravity well is much shallower, the Sun's gravity well is respectively a much larger target, and the end result is that a Shoemaker Levy comet is more likely to simply zip past us or have it's trajectory deflected by the Sun.
It's how MS beat Apple - commodity hardware beat proprietary, the TCO was smaller.
We could argue about it all day, I'm sure, but I recall that Apple had several studies that it had the lower TCO--but what it didn't have was the lower initial cost. Execs would rather pay less now, and either a) let their successor deal with the long-term costs, or b) manage the long term costs, say by hiring and training their own support staff.
I believe that MS beat Apple by having lower initial costs, regardless of a TCO disadvantage; and I think, ironically, Linux is going to do the same to MS, also. MS is now in the same position of Apple in the early 90s, and it's clear how that argument turned out--cheaper and "good enough" wins the day.
TCO is all that matters.
That wasn't the case when Apple had a dozen TCO studies saying that it was cheaper to run and maintain; people bought cheap PCs anyways, and payed for the support costs later. It's easier to stomach $10/month of incremental costs than $100 up front purchase price, even though the up front is cheaper in the long run.
I expect the same is true now; the only difference is that now it's MS trying to bang the TCO drum, and they have a louder voice than Apple ever did. But I think history will repeat itself--it's a lot easier to purchase at a lower price now, and "manage" the incremental support costs later. MS is doomed to repeat the Apple lesson--cheaper and "good enough" wins the day in the corp boardroom.
Sure, that'd be great and all. But what killed the Newton was price. So you have to ask yourself, and I'm sure Apple has asked themselves: could we build a tablet with all these features, but at a price point people would buy? And if the answer is "no", then it's really just a waste of time, waste of lots of money, and waste of credibility.
How many people would buy an Apple iTablet at $5K/unit? Probably not enough to recoup development costs, just like with the Newton.
IANAL, but I thought there was some debate if a game can be patented or copyrighted at all? Can anyone with a clue clarify?
If you're really curious, you get clearance from the military. Once in a great while the government might hire you without clearance to get it for you; but that's not likely, as it can take up to a year to get clearance and that's a year of not being able to even be in the same building as the job that you were hired for.
And thanks to Bush, lots of jobs in the area are going to contractors, who love to hire folks with clearance, but can't get you it, ever. So there it is. If you're cleared, you can work anywhere you want in the DC/MD/VA area, even in a field largely outside your expertise. If you're not, well.
hink it's more likely that Apple will license the cell technology from IBM and Sony than license Mac OS X to them.
Buy a G5, get a PS 3 Cell co-processor on-board for free?
Maybe the inclusion of the chip costs Apple $20/unit--but they suddenly go from being the OS that games go to die, to bleeding edge; every eMac and iMac includes the ability to run PS 3 games via embedded Cell processor (and, oh yeah, you need to buy a controller).
Not knowing that much about game development, would the inclusion of the Cell CPU on the Mac MLB enable it to run PS 3 games, or is there more to it than that, like video card etc?
Finally, being a Mac Gamer would no longer be an oxymoron. I think that's one of Apple's biggest holes--and they're likely to know it too.
Or that Microsoft would end up making their OS, for that matter.
When it comes right down to it, they probably figured they had two choices: quit, as the difference between them and their competitors was no longer worth the effort; or make desktops with PPC chips running their own optimized version of Linux. They must have figured that an IBM branded desktop with an IBM PPC would be too difficult to gain market penetration, esp since now OS X resembles linux in many ways. Can't say I agree; I would've thought that an IBM desktop with their own PPC chip running an IBM enhanced version of Yellow Dog Linux (extra development dollars, value-adds, and marketing) would be pretty enticing for Enterprise customers that are more comfortable with the IBM brand than with Apple.
Or it could be that between the PS 3, Xbox Next, and Apple's G5, that IBM felt that it couldn't scale their destkop class CPU manufacture to fill their own needs, and they probably already have contractual obligations to those three players that put their fulfillment first.
Laptop with wireless internet? You put it under a chair or in a cabinet when not in use?
I agree with the above post for all the reasons he mentioned. You don't drop $1M on a product because it got "5 thumbs up" in some magazine.
However, to offer some constructive criticism--what you could do is do extensive technical and performance analysis of a working system in a production environment. Instead of being able to sit at your desk and run pretty little tests, you would have to interview customers of a product, and ask them:
- why did you choose this product?
- did the hype live up to the delivery?
- What infrastructure does it interop with?
- what are real-world performance numbers?
- what are you the happiest about in terms of it's use?
- what do you find lacking?
Not nearly as easy to be sure--it'll take finding real customers of the product who have the time and/or inclination to let you do interviews and look at performance metrics. However, I for one would be interested to read case studies of other folks; although I would understand that not every thing would apply to my environment, I would be really interested to learn about the gotchas and real-world performance.Americans are adverse to diesel, even TDI, for historical reasons. There's been some talk that they're going to try to reintroduce "next-gen" TDI cars in the next few years; how they do in the US market will determine how many more diesels are marketed here in subsequent years.
So the closest we can get to 60mpg is the Prius, which is selling like hotcakes. I think the Smart Car will have a specific demographic, but will do well in those markets: I forsee a lot of them going to big metro areas. But they probably won't do so well in Texas.
Apple's iDisk offering is, or at least once was, WebDAV. Also incorporates quotas and is multi-user capable. Allows them to give nice hooks to publishing directly from iMovie and iPhoto, for example.
Sorry, I don't know exactly how they do it; but I do know that when it was announced (in '99?) there was some discussion about how Apple was accomplishing it. And you could probably reverse-implement their implementation in a few hours of poking.
For that matter, I think SpyMac uses the same thing.
Many Slashdot readers must have confronted this situation;
indeed!
how have you dealt with it,
vi hosts
slashdot.org 127.0.01
and what were the outcomes of what you did?
Once again having a sex life and showering regularly?
When a Nokia phone comes out with 20GB storage, will you be able to load your iTunes onto that?
YES. Yes, you will. The only songs that have Apple's DRM on them are songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store; that is, downloaded.
The songs that you rip from your own CDs you can rip to either MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, or even
So, to repeat--yes. The music stays your own, and you will be able to put it on anything that can understand your choice of format, be it MP3 or AAC, including a 20GB Nokia phone or a 1TB TiVo. Just don't download anything that you have to pay for.
You guys on the "don't install SP2!" bandwagon need to wise up.
You straight up office/cube/lab support guys need to wise up. There's more to life than IE/Outlook/Office. Where I work, we use PCs to analyze genomic data and communicate and control robotic devices that gather DNA information. Often, esp the control software, is written specifically for a version of Win2K, let alone be able to update to XP S2. You heard me right--there's still lots of instances of NT, and even some Mac OS 7.5.3. In many cases, the original vendor is non-existent, hard to reach, or they specifically recommend against updating to a newer version. Often, security updates will break functionality that these applications depend on.
So thanks for the info. I'm sure XP SP2 makes a good kiosk. However, the guy that decided to run a $300K sequencer off a $700 Dell using some bastardized version of Java, and also can't be upgraded to XP or anything reasonably secure needs to have their head examined. I'm looking at you, ABI.
Is that just about the gayest format you've ever encountered? I mean, Flash is required to read a text page, and downloading requires a Flash engine? WTF?
Pray tell, how does this format improve on the usefulness and versatility of HTML?
Let's pretend that this won't suck, and that the budget would be unlimited. Here's who I'd cast:
The reality of it is that not all of these actors will be available, and, even if they were, they wouldn't all be affordable. I think it's much more likely that, should this story get told as a movie, that they'll pick a central character to focus on, and bring in the rest as time allows. If this wisdom is followed, I think the Dreiberg story would be the best suited for it--he's the universal everyman; depressed, but you can identify with him. Folks that identify with any other character, um, don't go to movies much.
This story has lots of problems to make contemporary and tellable, however.
Ah, who am I kidding. This'll suck. It's time has passed.
Will Rorschach kill the pedophilic dressmaker by handcuffing him, giving him a saw, and setting his house on fire?
That was done in the first Mad Max, so I'd say it's not totally out of the question. By Mel Gibson, no less. Of course, I think Hollywood (and Mel!) have changed a lot since then.
If you just did a slavish reproduction of the comic like the first two Harry Potter films or the Dune miniseries - which is the best we can hope for
Ugh. You're right. And now I won't be able to sleep nights. Watchmen comic:Watchmen movie::Dune book:Dune movie, thanks for that. Although I thought the Dune miniseries didn't totally suck; really, the only way to do Watchmen right would be as a mini, which there isn't much chance of getting.
Not always available or appropriate, but you do your research and take the plunge--but before you put all 20,000 users on the chosen solution, you try it out with 100 and then scale it up as it is proved.
The problem with this is that some products are only available to WAN type solutions, so it's either 20,000 users or none. For those, it's naturally more difficult; who do you ask about how the thing is going to work? How many other institutions use the exact product you're investigating, in an environment that's analogous to yours, who also isn't a competitor and therefore not willing to reveal their competitive advantages?
For those, I'd say: do your research as others above have suggested, but then it comes down to nailing the vendor on deliverables--what are the consequences of the product not performing as promised? Rebate, return, free upgrade to the bug-squished version? And support contracts--how much support time does the solution come with to make it work as advertised?
If anyone who wants to sell to the Enterprise isn't willing to give you both written guarantees as to performance--and consequences for failing to perform--as well as some support, they're not really ready to be an Enterprise vendor. That's part of what that $1M buys you.
I count 8 resignations: 4 in the cabinet today, and another 2 senior CIA officials. Plus, Ashcroft and another CIA official earlier. Was there another cabinet level that resigned earlier?
I don't know what this means; but I think it means something. I sure don't recall this many resignations for Clinton's second term...?
Schmeiser lost the suit because he deliberately saved and interbred with GMO seed.
So what? Are you suggesting that it's up to Schmeiser to eradicate these strains from his own land? Why should he bear that burden? Why isn't Monsanto instead persecuted as polluting?
Think about it. I breed mice to be super-intelligent and do my evil bidding. Oops, one escapes! It goes next door, my neighbor catches it. Since my progeny has escaped into the wild, who's responsible for cleaning it up? Either I must be held responsible for making sure no mice can escape, and bear the burden of capturing them if they do; or those that escape into the wild are fair game for the use of others. Currently, Monsanto refuses to accept the responsibility of either position.
Life tends to reproduce vigorously, and find ways around artificial constraints. If Monsanto thinks that they're smart enough to control life, they're being foolish; and furthermore, when they inevitabily fail, they should pay the price for the cleanup.
Only if the farmers are using GM seeds. If they use normal seeds, then there is no problem with holding back seed for next year.
WRONG.
Percy Schmeiser's battle.
Even though Schmeiser didn't intend to grow the plant, didn't profit from it's growth, and in fact tried to eradicate it, he was still sued, and he lost. He wasn't able to eradicate it because Monsanto made the plants hard to kill by design.
Ingenious business model, really. Maybe I'll design a (non-fatal) virus that is effectively treated by a medicine that I control. I'll sue anyone that attempts to treat it any other way. Afterall, if you don't want to pay my price, just don't get sick, right?
I think you've rather betrayed your own bias.
paragraph 1: learn to use html via text editor, it gives you better control
Thanks, I'm aware of that. I could also learn to play the violin so I don't have to listen to the radio. Oh, that's right--it's not something that I want to spend an hour a week on for the next year.
I don't create lots of websites. If I did, I'd learn HTML. Rather, I would like to throw up the odd one or two page "here's my pics" sites, but I don't want to have to fuss with tables every time. I just want to spend an hour at it.
I've tried netscape etc, but I would sure like to see a web designer that will allow me to drag a picture anywhere inside a box, and build a table that positions it correctly relative to the other elements in the page. For instance something like this. If OSS can design a PhotoShop killer (GIMP), why not a truly WYSIWYG web designer?
Oh, and while we're dreaming, how about a desktop HIG standard? So each time I load a new distro I don't feel like I'm learning a new OS? While that's cool for hobbyists, it hurts corp adoption because Linux continually feels "unpolished." Why can't some consortium develop, decide on the lowest common denominator, and make it a standard that shrinkwrap developers and trainers target? And then you can leave the other stuff for preference panels.