Did they have a separate editor for each item? How can color laserjet be replacing inkjet but dot matrix printers be replaced by inkjet or laserjet?
The main reasons to buy an inkjet printer is for color or for wide printing. The article argues that for color printing, a laserjet is now the better choice. And for the wide printing, which is now solidly in the domain of the inkjet printer, the inkjet replaced the pen plotter, not the dot matrix printer. As such, I do not think anyone has replaced a dot matrix printer with a inkjet in at least 5 years.
In the places where dot matrix printers a still used, like POS, they need speed, form capability, low cost, and indelible ink. The inkjet printer satisfies at most speed. The laserjet printer can potentially satisfy all four, as it is fast enough to individually print a few pages for a form in the time that dot matrix prints a single page.
And, OTOH why do i want to go back to the bad old days and carry around a phone the size of a paperback. The increasing phone size is one of the reasons why I still use my old Startac. With the small battery, I can slip it in my pocket when i go out for the evening. I know that some people use phones and PDAs as an affectation, like to pick up bed mates and stuff, but I just want the phone out of the way.
And, when I needed a PDA, I carried a Palm V. That way I have phone that works very well as a phone, and a PDA that works very well as a PDA, instead of one things that doesn' work well as anything. Better yet, the two together were still smaller than any reasonable combination available, even today.
An interesting read on this is the book Can Animals and Machines be Persons by Justin Leiber. It is a dialogue based in the notion that the United Nations speak not of humans or homo sapiens, but of 'persons'. A person is generally defined as a living human, but might be expanded beyond that definition. IIRC, the book takes the form of a discussion at the UN in an effort to discover if personhood should be granted to certain animals and machines. It is a good and reletively fast read.
What the statement represented was his lack of ability to see that the world is not limited to the technology that MS decides that we need. The statement represents the companies repeated failure to foresee the needs of the customers. This failure has been precipitated their GUI interface years after Apple, their browser software years after Mosaic and almost a year after Mozilla, and there so-called net strategy years after Java. The only reason they were able to survive all these fiascos is because they were able to aggressively develop and exploit their monopoly.
I do not want to make this Motorola vs intel thing, or whatever, but to speak directly to the memory issue, the need for more than hacked together 64K chunks were well known in in 1981, and plenty of machines were shipping out of the factory with much more memory For instance, apple memory doubled almost every year. In 1979 the Apple || shipped with 64K. The Apple ||| shipped in 1980 with 128K and was replaced the next year with a 256K model. This was still not enough memory. By 1983 the Lisa shipped with 1MB, although at a price few were willing to pay. The fact that the Intel machines had to employ extremely ugly hacks to get to 640K, and even uglier third party utilities to unreliably get beyond that is just a testament to the a lack of creativity. The Apple lines aggressively exploited technology and by 1986 had a 1MB machine expandable on board to 4MB.
I guess the question is what you would call the true copyright holder. In the olden days a movie was made around one or few personalities. The studios would have these people under contract, and trade them among the studios as needed. The studios also had staff directors producers, etc to make a film. As time went by, the studios lost control of the actors and had to hire them on a case by case basis. In all cases, the studios own the copyright because they paid for it.
In music, the labels create compilations of tracks around one or more personalities. These personalities give themselves to the label in exchange for an up front cash loan that will be presumable repaid to the label with future profits. The studio owns the personality for an agreed upon interval. Sometimes the personality is also a lyricist, composers, and maybe even producer. In other cases the studio put up the money to acquire these resources. The studio arguable has every right to retain copyright until all costs and reasonable profit has been paid by the artist.
So, to a degree, both the MPAA and RIAA represent the true copyright holder, which is not the necessarily the personalities that the product is centered on, but the entity that footed the costs of production. The benefit to the companies in both situations is to keep the market tightly control so a significant amount of the products have to flow through them, at least as middle men, so the executives and shareholders can be continued to be payed the monies to which they have become accustomed. A splintering of the market, which is what internet distribution might represent, would significantly affect the top pay.
One other thing. The MPAA is probably very worried about this. The ban on screeners is one example. Another is refusal to pay for digital projectors. Most estimates say that the movie studios would save a great deal of money in just a few years. However, they might also remove themselves as middle men for independent movie distribution. Without the million or so for film prints, independents might be able to afford independent distribution.
I wish the issue of control were publicized more. The RIAA and the member companies are not worried about the artists, they are not even worried that much about copyright infringement. What they are worried about is the possibility that long term profits of the corporations will be decimated.
This is happening somewhat in the movie industry. Independent films have been gaining market share. The majors have insulated themselves by distributing the independent films and by the fact that a movie theater needs to fill seats, which leaves the independent film without a large advertising budget or an Oscar nomination without a home.
The only thing the RIAA has is the fact that radio sells records, and they pay Clear Channel enough money to keep independent records off the radio. This is why they attacked internet radio so much. It represents the ultimate loss of control. This is why they don't want to distribute tracks over the internet. Almost no physical costs means the barriers to entry are almost non-existent. They have to do so now because people are just downloading the tracks anyway. It will be interesting to see what the restriction on the internet retailers will be.
Of course the big concert halls will be still be owned by the corporations, and the children with their innate need to fit in will still beg their parents for 50 bucks to see the teen heart throb. OTOH, the kids can be smart. I remember a few years ago when our clear channel station that played music which was only minimally offensive to the suburban parent finally had to admit defeat to the Hip Hop revolution. The kids couldn't bring themselves to change the radio station, but they could certainly pick up the phone and complain that the station was pretty much the only station that would not play 'Stan'.
I think you are largely correct in your reasoning, except for one small point, but the reasoning does not support censorship as it is now implemented.
First, i think talking to kids about sex is important. Not so much telling what is what, but to set up a structure and logical boundaries. For instance, talking about respectful relationships will naturally lead to idea that randomly fornicating with every willing partner on campus is not a good idea. Likewise such discussion can lead to rules about curfews, proper protection, and non-abusive relationships. Because the rules are now based on concepts the child can understand, the rules are much more likely to be followed.
Second, if the protection from porn is to protect the child from developing a skewed vision of the relationship, then the current system is ineffective. Viewing simple pictures of naked people or clothed persons kissing or cuddling is not likely to corrupt their mind. One could even make argument that older children seeing people masturbate would not affect their view of relationships. OTOH, some of the stuff depicting totally inappropriate relationships, either through violence or degradation of women, that is often freely available to children, at least those in the critical 11-14 year old range, is likely to really screw up thier minds.
As such, most censorship is based on morality, not the protection of the child based on current scientific knowledge. If it were, the magazine with the all but nekkid female sprawled over a car and the magazine with the people hitting each other would be on the top rack with the Hustler's.
Perhaps your grace could reference where we poor ignorant masses might educate ourselves rather than just insult us for lack of knowledge.
I hope it is not that you believe we are all too stupid to learn that you did not point to the method of protest or Prior art and Ex Parte Reexamination. One would at least a link to the fees.
When I first read this article I was thinking, like, funny article. This story really confused me because i could not for the life of me see anything that would be offensive to anyone
Upon a careful rereading I came up with two possibilities. First, and most likely is the math lesson on bitwise math operators. In my experience the average person get very offended why I start talking about math. On several occasions I have feared for my life. Most of the time, though, the bird I am chatting up just walks away.
The other possibility is that MS had sent a cease and desist order. The article clearly puts Excel in a negative light by indicating that it has not always been the only Spreadsheet, and, even worse, implying that other spreadsheets had more functionality. I am sure this violates the Excel licensing agreements. Likewise MS may have sent a complaint for the mention of DOS.
I hope someone will post the edited text so I may understand the offensive material.
This is real interesting because I would think Forbes would be pro IP. For instance, do they support the RIAA? I guess they do not. Music for all practical intents and purposes is free. If someone buys music, it is out of a respect for laws and various contracts that says we buy goods and services. We have always been able to get music for free, it is just easier now. The fact that music sales have remained as high as they have, in spite of music being freely available, in spite of the RIAA attacking customers and potential customers, in spite of the economy being in such a slump that many people have no money.
And does Forbes believe in EULA that says you must have a license for each machine or each processor? I guess not. After all, the consequences to businesses for violating these agreements are extreme. A company with several PCs and lacking a single license for the MS software could be a great deal of trouble. And the gestapo tactics of the BSA audits and spy software certainly cannot be good a corporation.
Many of these adults remind me so much of adolescents who want to pick and choose the rules. The GPL is disclosed up front and a person chooses to use the GPL code or not. If they choose to used it and violate the license, there are consequences, just like any other violation. It is childish to say after the fact that the rules are unfair. The rules were agreed to when the software was used. And unlike some other software or music licenses, there is no element of constraint or duress, and the GPL has no element of unreasonable restrictions of rights.
The fact is that corporations want others to pay for their worthless products, but refuse the same in return. We have seen this with the RIAA and expensive industry reports. I have seen this with guys make 100K a year but only go to movies when they are free. And we see this know with companies that steal code but complain when others do the same.
The problem with blaming tutorials is that it ignores design problems and appropriateness of the interface to the user.
For example there were are are cases where a two physical ports look the same but preform different functions. Although this regrettable situation can be remedied through tutorials, color coding, and patient tech support personnel spending countless hours assisting the helpless lusers, better original design decisions could have avoided the problem altogether.
Such a situation also shows up in software. For example, in older versions of MS Word the file/new menu selection was mapped to a complex tabbed table of reformatted documents, with names like 'normal', while the key-stroke equivalent was mapped to the creation of a new document. In order for the new user, which was the one more likely to use the menu, to make use of the tabbed list, such a user would first have understand what all the words on the tabbed list meant. OTOH the more experienced user, might make better use of the selection, but would be more likely to use the key stroke. In later versions the mapped the menu item to a wizard, which makes a little more sense. The end result is the new user cannot accomplish simple tasks without first understanding much more than is minimally required for the simple task.
The same is true for Mozilla, which is arguable a web browser. The file/new menu command result in submenu. This submenu does not list a 'browser' or 'web page' but 'navigator'. Again, tutorials can help, but the user must know that unfamiliar notion of what a 'navigator' is. Obviously Mozilla falls to the bloat trap and therefore cannot have a simple file/new window such as Camino of IE, but a non-branded standard solution might save users some time.
The issue gets worse when you consider previous knowledge of new users. In your example, you want to describe the right mouse button (which already gets you in trouble with left handed users) as displaying less common commands. What are the less common commands? Why are they on the right mouse button? I have trouble holding down the button and moving the mouse? The left button immediately results in an action, so i am scared to use the right mouse button because it might result in a confusing action? A user with significant amounts of previous knowledge knows exactly what you are taking about and knows how to fix mistake. A new user just does not need that kind of problems on top of everything else. And expecting them to go through a long tutorial, no matter how wonderful it is, just to use a mouse is just ridiculous.
The whole point of a WIMP is to allow users to get started on work with minimal prior knowledge and minimal training. It also acknowledges that advance concepts are built over time as the learner build structures in which those advance concepts can be formed. Without those previous structures, tutorials do little good.
Most schools are a lost cause. The BSA scares the shit out of them. Most the staff they can afford can install MS software and nothing else. The inability for schools to make effective decisions is shown by the fact that they exclusively use and design for IE, even though IE is more likely to present offensive material to the child. The school response is not installing a browser that can protect the child from popups, cookies(which no child at any primary or secondary school has any legitimate need for) and malicious controls, but to install filters and punish the child if offensive material inadvertently appears.
In most educational institutions MS is practically giving away their software. I predict a time when the only cost will be support contracts. MS knows on which side their bread is buttered. MS knows that schools do not have the resources to mess with anything that even appears complicated. MS knows that teachers don't care what computer is in a classroom, as long as it works. MS knows that software is worthless to most end users, and therefore is providing licensing avenues through education and corporations so people can pay the desired price.
The only time that MS has been displaced is when the BSA comes in a threatens an audit or MS screws the customer through licenses. The reality is for most schools OO.o would probably be more expensive than MS Office.
I use OO.o because I can no longer get office for free. Even the $150 educational price is more than it is worth.
And they need to specify the violation, prove the violation, and give time to remedy the violation. Prior to this there is cause to revoke the license, and speaking of revoking the license in merely a marketing ploy and unlikely to be of any legal signifince.
As has been mentioned, they key point is how and for what causes a license can be revoked. In the case of SGI and IBM it looks like they are contracted for perpetual licenses and there is due process for the termination of the license.
In your example of a drivers license, this would mean that I am guaranteed renewal unless, for instance, I break a specific law. The State would have to prove that I broke an exact law and said law was grounds for termination. In fact, it would be wrong for the State to talk about my 'license being terminated' prior to the time that a court found that I had broken a specific law. Even then there might be another court case to show that the act was in fact violation of the license. Until such court decisions, violation would be a possibility, not a reality.
What SCO is trying to do is treat the license as if it was a short term deal that had to be renewed on regular basis. In such cases one can say the license will be revoked. No due process is needed. The license expires and it is not renewed.
What IBM and SGI are trying to say is SCO cannot do this, and until the violations are proven, probably in court, and until negotiations have failed to find a compromise, the license will remain in effect. In fact, SCO may be in violation of the license, and is likely to be shown as negotiating in bad faith, for it's public comments.
I think it is more like they have say what they feel and have a broad perspective, which is much more honorable than equivocating.
Many of the quotes are about violence against children. While we all say we want to protect children, what do we do to make it happen. We are talking right now about how important tax cuts are. How we are being taxed to death. I wonder if any of those people with 10 million in the bank and a take home salary of over a million would give up some of those tax cuts to supply a truly fee and universal immunization for all children.
Likewise, the dangers and benefits of SUVs can be debated all day. But what about cow catchers on trucks and SUVs. Most of these never leave the city. I have not seen a cow in a road since I was a kid. Is there any reason for these except to inflict maximum damage to a kid who is unfortunate to get in front of one these while the driver is on the phone?
And of course we talk about how kids are now merely another demographic for the corporations. Disney promised not market violent movies to kids, but that did not stop them from marketing toys from those violent movies. Unlike when i was growing up, there is almost nothing on TV that promotes proper nutrition, but only commercials that promote high fact, high simple carb, junk food.
The reality is that even though these are a bit extreme, and the specifics may be different, they pretty much reflect the values of US society. When I drive south of here i see production plants that refuse to install updated technology because profit is more important that the quality of life. To paraphrase, Human happiness and the health of the planet that supports us in not so important as corporate profit We see immigrant laborers go without pay for a honest days work because the people who hire these human beings see them as nothing more than garbage and know they can't get a lawyer. To paraphrase, immigrant labour has less value than the back-hoe I might rent from the store. We feed our starving children, but we put coke and junk food machines in the school because the only way for a child to pay for his or her education is poison their bodies. To paraphrase to properly feed a malnourished child would be a disservice for our shareholders.
Your quotes would have much more funny and effective if they were more balances, like the one where our commander in chief invited the enemy to attack the people under his command.
There are three big questions. First, why would use a 3.5" screen when 5" screen DVD player go for under 400. The second is what kind of DRM is Sony going to include to protect it's products. The third is where is the content going to come from.
The last two are important. The iPod and the Apple store are not encumbered with excessive DRM. Sony, targeting a product for the windows market, is probably looking to develop some sort of DRM protected pay-per-view movie download library. I can easily imagine them using Windows Media Player to come up with all sorts of complicated schemes to limit the use of the movies once they are on the player.
And five movies isn't really all that significant for many uses of this device. If one is traveling, it is not uncommon to take two to four times that many movies. This is easy to do with DVDs and a portable player. With this player on would have to have a laptop to hold the extra movies, and then why not just us a laptop.
If i write a book and get some to else to publish it, even if I pay all publishing costs, I am not a publisher i am a writer. If I create a web site and host it, even if i pay all hosting site, I am web site developer or author, not an ISP, even if I pay all hosting costs.
Unless one is running a publishing company of ISP, one is niether.
My understanding is that the ban does not affect the truly independent production companies, just the pseudo independent ones owned by the major studios. These studios produce a few quality films to get their name mentioned at the Oscars. In the past they did not want to spend the money releasing these films to a wide audience, or advertising the film. Such activities can double the cost of a film. Apparently they have now decided the screeners are more trouble than they are worth. Therefore the majors will just have to subsidize the releasing and advertising of the films or give up on the boutique names. If they subsidize release this will benefit everyone because it will allow the public to see films they might not otherwise have an opportunity to, and may review demand in the art film theaters, many of which have small screening rooms rooms (about 100 or 200 seats) and could screen a few films a day. In the unlikely case they give up, it might be good news for the independents.
First, everything has an uncertain danger, and the measure of uncertainty is measured by statistics. Medical procedures typically have a measurable danger associated with them, and this why we pay highly trained professionals administer them. Some people accept the danger even for procedures with no medical value, and some people will not. Some people don't want to risk the danger but the societal pressures are so great they do it anyway. Some people just don't understand the risk.
For these reasons I do not think the issue is the danger of the drugs to an individual, per se, because we often allow individuals to take such risks. I think some organizations, particularly the Olympics, are worried more about the second and third issue. Allowing the drugs to be used will force everyone to use the drugs, and may create a fictional sense about the safety ofthe drugs. It may ultimately be a matter of PR. The olympics, for instance, is about family entertainment and many families do not want their kids to believe that drugs are beneficial, even though this is message that is broadcast through most other major sporting events. By taking the high road on this the Olympics may be protecting revenue.
As far as answering if drugs or other medical procedures is cheating, that depends on the purpose of the event. If the event is to measure how random fluctuations and hard work has made one person better than another person who has done equally hard work, then drugs are cheating. If the event is mainly entertainment, again as in the case of most sporting events in the US, then drugs are certainly not cheating. Since there is no serious level of competition, the issue is really just to be as entertaining as possible. This situation is especially illustrated in leagues where revenue is shared between the teams. In any case, the drugs may in fact measure a different set of random fluctuations and this further muddles the argument.
First, this is not a recession in the tech market, it is a contraction. The US recession ended quite some time ago, and, assuming that no permanent damage has been to the economy by the greed of those who seek profit by any means necessary, we should expect the overall economy to be back up and running. The timing of this depends on how long it takes for the greedy people to satiate their desire for money and return control to more moderate leaders. However, we are have some expansion at present, and tech people with the proper skills are finding jobs.
Second, a company cannot simply terminate an out-sourcing agreement and expect to retain the original market share. A certain amount of transfer of knowledge, skills, and process much be shared during an outsourcing agreement, and those do not magically disappear from an outsourcing partner. We have seen this in many industries. Most major fashion houses now have very cheap lines to compete with former partners. There are a number of electrical and electronic component manufacturers that have had to dramatically cut prices to compete with former partners. And, of course, many major household brands have all but disappeared because the manufactures that once produce their goods not produce goods for Wal Mart, which has been transformed from a retail outlet for major brands to the major and successful competitors of those brands.
So, if we put these two things together it does not look good for the US tech worker. If a tech worker has been out of a job for a year, there are many workers who have been out of a job for less that a year to compete against. The outsourcing projects are probably going to remain in effect until the economy is released, which could be another year or so. In that time the outsourcing partners are going to be learning how to do technology without US partners, and become competitors as soon as the US partners release them from the contract. Add in the increased productivity from more efficient tools, and the fact that much of the tech force in late 90's to early 2000's were to build the internet infrastructure, which is now built, and do Y2K work, and one has little hope that any tech workers not employed in 2003 will ever really be needed.
I don't see why we shouldn't reply to every email and spider every link. The purpose of the a the from: and reply to: fields in an email is to allow us the receiver to reply to email. Now some corporate interests wants us to believe that the average user only has the right to receive email, but not reply. This is just wrong. It is the same thing with links. If someone sends a link the assumption is that they want whoever or whatever receives that email to click the link. Any other assumption is plain wrong.
Now if someone sends out thousands of email with a forged from or reply header, or includes a URL with the intention of causing damage to a site, then that is illegal. It is a DDOS attack and various authorities have had some luck apprehending suspects in such cases. In these cases the sender of spam is the cause of the DDOS, as the end user is just doing what one does with email, and the authorities then have additional reasons to apprehend the spammer.
Additionally, even though URL can be obscured, the purpose of most spam is to get people to go a vendor site. It would certainly be a good thing for such sites to receive several thousand hits in a short period of time. At worst the site will be so slow that the ignorant people who would do business with it will run out of patience before wasting their money. At best, the hosting company will get pissed off enough to pull the site. The ultimate would be to hose the hosting company enough so that the other customer become angry enough to complain. End user complaints have no effect, so what else are we supposed to do. Such a concerted effort may encourage the more ethical hosting companies to not host spammers, and the less ethical to charge more.
And I am not being simplistic. If open relays in Asia are helping spammers let's DDOS out of existence. If hosting companies in Canada are aiding and abetting spammers, lets make it clear that accomplices will suffer consequences. If a spammer hurts an innocent web site, let the law prosecute those responsible to the extent of the law. The US has have extradition agreements with Canada.
And btw, I am picking on canada because a large number of spams i receive are for companies hosted and registered in Canada.
It's interesting that you are comparing the new napster to Apple and not one of the other music services. The comparison should really between the other windows DRM music services. Apple is actually doing rather well.
I noticed in the WSJ today that they were doing another hatchet job on Apple. Basically saying that the music service would never impact their bottom line enough to matter. One of their arguments was that they when the got into the windows market there is so much competition that Apple would not be able to significantly increase sales. Of course when apple releases it's windows version they are going to be increasing their market 30 fold, and there are only like 5 serious competitors out there. The other thing they fail to realize it that the Apple DRM is much less restrictive than the Windows DRM, which may mean people will prefer the apple store, and perhaps even buy an ipod.
In any case the article did admit that sales were still going strong and does probably create a profit center, which is the important thing. If selling music online isn't profitable, then the RIAA is going to win.
The funniest thing about the article was they ended it by implying that apple was foolish to even still be im the hardware business as Dell is the only ones who do computer hardware right. That may be true, but isn't it Dell who has the most butt ugly MP3 player on the planet?
First things first. Science moves from that we can measure, to predicting other things we can measure in an effort to create a model. As long as the predictions are correct in a domain, the model is correct. Truth is derived from the model if you choose to do so. If one so chooses, there is nothing in science that says the god, or a coyote, or a big red blob did not create the earth and fill it with life. If you try to argue with a scientist he or she will disagree because it does not fit the model, but in that case truth is not being argued. Merely pragmatics.
My favorite example is that of a light switch. When you turn on a light, what happens. A scientist might believe that at a top level you close a circuit which allows electrons to flow which are then allowed to excite other loosely held electrons in atoms which, when the become less exited, emit a photon. A creationist might say the switch signals god to create some light. The only difference between the two is that the former allows us to build a lamp and computers.
I am not going to pretend i know what creationists are about, because i do not. However, I do know what science is about and i know that your comments are about as offensive as me saying the catholic hierarchy is so determined to protect it's power that it is more than willing to let children be molested until the second coming. Neither this statement or you logic is an accurate representation of the established order.
Why is this? Because science only works if it is constrained to a known set of boundaries and rules. The first rule is nothing is off limits. Although certain scientists have specific beliefs, and are free to try to prove them, science itself doesn't. Therefore when a new idea comes up science does not worry about the consequences, it just tests the idea. Likewise when an old idea fails, science doesn't worry about the failure, but just tries to fix it. Individuals will care, buy science doesn't. Both cases are expected and the processes will take care of the consequences.
The three big examples are the aether, the quantization of energy, newtonian mechanics, and the equivalence of the formulation of quantum mechanics. In the first example there was a time when we believed, by the observation of water and sound and radio waves, that all waves needed matter to travel though. Therefore light must have something to travel through and that something was called aether. That was disproven in the late 19th century by michelson-morley. This had great ramifications on science, and many people tried to disprove it. Ultimately the aether was disproven, science adapted, and we survived.
A few years later Planck was trying to figure our why certain equations predicted infinities where infinities did not and reasonable could not exist. He postulated quantized energy, which lead to the extremely uncomfortable random universe in which science currently theorizes. In fact we see that life seems to be pretty deterministic, so science had to come up with a way to make quantum mechanics deterministic at the macroscopic level, and it did. Note that science did not try to change quantum mechanics to fit our assumptions that the world is deterministic.
Then we come to old Einstein, who had beliefs about everything. He believe that Maxwell's equations were ugly. He believed that quantum mechanics (QM) was deeply flawed. Both of these beliefs served science well. The first lead to special relativity and the realization that newtonian mechanics was flawed, and it's domain had to be restricted to what we call non-relativistic domains. The second lead to some of the work that gives us confidence in the validity of QM.
Later Feynman also beliefs. He believed that one formulation of QM was beautiful, and was ugly, so the ugly one had to be wrong. His work however just showed the two to be equivalent, and further stabilized QM. It also allowed quite a few more uncomfortable philosophica
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The main reasons to buy an inkjet printer is for color or for wide printing. The article argues that for color printing, a laserjet is now the better choice. And for the wide printing, which is now solidly in the domain of the inkjet printer, the inkjet replaced the pen plotter, not the dot matrix printer. As such, I do not think anyone has replaced a dot matrix printer with a inkjet in at least 5 years.
In the places where dot matrix printers a still used, like POS, they need speed, form capability, low cost, and indelible ink. The inkjet printer satisfies at most speed. The laserjet printer can potentially satisfy all four, as it is fast enough to individually print a few pages for a form in the time that dot matrix prints a single page.
And, when I needed a PDA, I carried a Palm V. That way I have phone that works very well as a phone, and a PDA that works very well as a PDA, instead of one things that doesn' work well as anything. Better yet, the two together were still smaller than any reasonable combination available, even today.
An interesting read on this is the book Can Animals and Machines be Persons by Justin Leiber. It is a dialogue based in the notion that the United Nations speak not of humans or homo sapiens, but of 'persons'. A person is generally defined as a living human, but might be expanded beyond that definition. IIRC, the book takes the form of a discussion at the UN in an effort to discover if personhood should be granted to certain animals and machines. It is a good and reletively fast read.
I do not want to make this Motorola vs intel thing, or whatever, but to speak directly to the memory issue, the need for more than hacked together 64K chunks were well known in in 1981, and plenty of machines were shipping out of the factory with much more memory For instance, apple memory doubled almost every year. In 1979 the Apple || shipped with 64K. The Apple ||| shipped in 1980 with 128K and was replaced the next year with a 256K model. This was still not enough memory. By 1983 the Lisa shipped with 1MB, although at a price few were willing to pay. The fact that the Intel machines had to employ extremely ugly hacks to get to 640K, and even uglier third party utilities to unreliably get beyond that is just a testament to the a lack of creativity. The Apple lines aggressively exploited technology and by 1986 had a 1MB machine expandable on board to 4MB.
In music, the labels create compilations of tracks around one or more personalities. These personalities give themselves to the label in exchange for an up front cash loan that will be presumable repaid to the label with future profits. The studio owns the personality for an agreed upon interval. Sometimes the personality is also a lyricist, composers, and maybe even producer. In other cases the studio put up the money to acquire these resources. The studio arguable has every right to retain copyright until all costs and reasonable profit has been paid by the artist.
So, to a degree, both the MPAA and RIAA represent the true copyright holder, which is not the necessarily the personalities that the product is centered on, but the entity that footed the costs of production. The benefit to the companies in both situations is to keep the market tightly control so a significant amount of the products have to flow through them, at least as middle men, so the executives and shareholders can be continued to be payed the monies to which they have become accustomed. A splintering of the market, which is what internet distribution might represent, would significantly affect the top pay.
One other thing. The MPAA is probably very worried about this. The ban on screeners is one example. Another is refusal to pay for digital projectors. Most estimates say that the movie studios would save a great deal of money in just a few years. However, they might also remove themselves as middle men for independent movie distribution. Without the million or so for film prints, independents might be able to afford independent distribution.
This is happening somewhat in the movie industry. Independent films have been gaining market share. The majors have insulated themselves by distributing the independent films and by the fact that a movie theater needs to fill seats, which leaves the independent film without a large advertising budget or an Oscar nomination without a home.
The only thing the RIAA has is the fact that radio sells records, and they pay Clear Channel enough money to keep independent records off the radio. This is why they attacked internet radio so much. It represents the ultimate loss of control. This is why they don't want to distribute tracks over the internet. Almost no physical costs means the barriers to entry are almost non-existent. They have to do so now because people are just downloading the tracks anyway. It will be interesting to see what the restriction on the internet retailers will be.
Of course the big concert halls will be still be owned by the corporations, and the children with their innate need to fit in will still beg their parents for 50 bucks to see the teen heart throb. OTOH, the kids can be smart. I remember a few years ago when our clear channel station that played music which was only minimally offensive to the suburban parent finally had to admit defeat to the Hip Hop revolution. The kids couldn't bring themselves to change the radio station, but they could certainly pick up the phone and complain that the station was pretty much the only station that would not play 'Stan'.
First, i think talking to kids about sex is important. Not so much telling what is what, but to set up a structure and logical boundaries. For instance, talking about respectful relationships will naturally lead to idea that randomly fornicating with every willing partner on campus is not a good idea. Likewise such discussion can lead to rules about curfews, proper protection, and non-abusive relationships. Because the rules are now based on concepts the child can understand, the rules are much more likely to be followed.
Second, if the protection from porn is to protect the child from developing a skewed vision of the relationship, then the current system is ineffective. Viewing simple pictures of naked people or clothed persons kissing or cuddling is not likely to corrupt their mind. One could even make argument that older children seeing people masturbate would not affect their view of relationships. OTOH, some of the stuff depicting totally inappropriate relationships, either through violence or degradation of women, that is often freely available to children, at least those in the critical 11-14 year old range, is likely to really screw up thier minds.
As such, most censorship is based on morality, not the protection of the child based on current scientific knowledge. If it were, the magazine with the all but nekkid female sprawled over a car and the magazine with the people hitting each other would be on the top rack with the Hustler's.
I hope it is not that you believe we are all too stupid to learn that you did not point to the method of protest or Prior art and Ex Parte Reexamination. One would at least a link to the fees.
Upon a careful rereading I came up with two possibilities. First, and most likely is the math lesson on bitwise math operators. In my experience the average person get very offended why I start talking about math. On several occasions I have feared for my life. Most of the time, though, the bird I am chatting up just walks away.
The other possibility is that MS had sent a cease and desist order. The article clearly puts Excel in a negative light by indicating that it has not always been the only Spreadsheet, and, even worse, implying that other spreadsheets had more functionality. I am sure this violates the Excel licensing agreements. Likewise MS may have sent a complaint for the mention of DOS.
I hope someone will post the edited text so I may understand the offensive material.
And does Forbes believe in EULA that says you must have a license for each machine or each processor? I guess not. After all, the consequences to businesses for violating these agreements are extreme. A company with several PCs and lacking a single license for the MS software could be a great deal of trouble. And the gestapo tactics of the BSA audits and spy software certainly cannot be good a corporation.
Many of these adults remind me so much of adolescents who want to pick and choose the rules. The GPL is disclosed up front and a person chooses to use the GPL code or not. If they choose to used it and violate the license, there are consequences, just like any other violation. It is childish to say after the fact that the rules are unfair. The rules were agreed to when the software was used. And unlike some other software or music licenses, there is no element of constraint or duress, and the GPL has no element of unreasonable restrictions of rights.
The fact is that corporations want others to pay for their worthless products, but refuse the same in return. We have seen this with the RIAA and expensive industry reports. I have seen this with guys make 100K a year but only go to movies when they are free. And we see this know with companies that steal code but complain when others do the same.
For example there were are are cases where a two physical ports look the same but preform different functions. Although this regrettable situation can be remedied through tutorials, color coding, and patient tech support personnel spending countless hours assisting the helpless lusers, better original design decisions could have avoided the problem altogether.
Such a situation also shows up in software. For example, in older versions of MS Word the file/new menu selection was mapped to a complex tabbed table of reformatted documents, with names like 'normal', while the key-stroke equivalent was mapped to the creation of a new document. In order for the new user, which was the one more likely to use the menu, to make use of the tabbed list, such a user would first have understand what all the words on the tabbed list meant. OTOH the more experienced user, might make better use of the selection, but would be more likely to use the key stroke. In later versions the mapped the menu item to a wizard, which makes a little more sense. The end result is the new user cannot accomplish simple tasks without first understanding much more than is minimally required for the simple task.
The same is true for Mozilla, which is arguable a web browser. The file/new menu command result in submenu. This submenu does not list a 'browser' or 'web page' but 'navigator'. Again, tutorials can help, but the user must know that unfamiliar notion of what a 'navigator' is. Obviously Mozilla falls to the bloat trap and therefore cannot have a simple file/new window such as Camino of IE, but a non-branded standard solution might save users some time.
The issue gets worse when you consider previous knowledge of new users. In your example, you want to describe the right mouse button (which already gets you in trouble with left handed users) as displaying less common commands. What are the less common commands? Why are they on the right mouse button? I have trouble holding down the button and moving the mouse? The left button immediately results in an action, so i am scared to use the right mouse button because it might result in a confusing action? A user with significant amounts of previous knowledge knows exactly what you are taking about and knows how to fix mistake. A new user just does not need that kind of problems on top of everything else. And expecting them to go through a long tutorial, no matter how wonderful it is, just to use a mouse is just ridiculous.
The whole point of a WIMP is to allow users to get started on work with minimal prior knowledge and minimal training. It also acknowledges that advance concepts are built over time as the learner build structures in which those advance concepts can be formed. Without those previous structures, tutorials do little good.
In most educational institutions MS is practically giving away their software. I predict a time when the only cost will be support contracts. MS knows on which side their bread is buttered. MS knows that schools do not have the resources to mess with anything that even appears complicated. MS knows that teachers don't care what computer is in a classroom, as long as it works. MS knows that software is worthless to most end users, and therefore is providing licensing avenues through education and corporations so people can pay the desired price.
The only time that MS has been displaced is when the BSA comes in a threatens an audit or MS screws the customer through licenses. The reality is for most schools OO.o would probably be more expensive than MS Office.
I use OO.o because I can no longer get office for free. Even the $150 educational price is more than it is worth.
I think I almost went to work for that company. They went out of business, huh. Now at least I am not so bummed at not getting the job.
And they need to specify the violation, prove the violation, and give time to remedy the violation. Prior to this there is cause to revoke the license, and speaking of revoking the license in merely a marketing ploy and unlikely to be of any legal signifince.
In your example of a drivers license, this would mean that I am guaranteed renewal unless, for instance, I break a specific law. The State would have to prove that I broke an exact law and said law was grounds for termination. In fact, it would be wrong for the State to talk about my 'license being terminated' prior to the time that a court found that I had broken a specific law. Even then there might be another court case to show that the act was in fact violation of the license. Until such court decisions, violation would be a possibility, not a reality.
What SCO is trying to do is treat the license as if it was a short term deal that had to be renewed on regular basis. In such cases one can say the license will be revoked. No due process is needed. The license expires and it is not renewed.
What IBM and SGI are trying to say is SCO cannot do this, and until the violations are proven, probably in court, and until negotiations have failed to find a compromise, the license will remain in effect. In fact, SCO may be in violation of the license, and is likely to be shown as negotiating in bad faith, for it's public comments.
Many of the quotes are about violence against children. While we all say we want to protect children, what do we do to make it happen. We are talking right now about how important tax cuts are. How we are being taxed to death. I wonder if any of those people with 10 million in the bank and a take home salary of over a million would give up some of those tax cuts to supply a truly fee and universal immunization for all children.
Likewise, the dangers and benefits of SUVs can be debated all day. But what about cow catchers on trucks and SUVs. Most of these never leave the city. I have not seen a cow in a road since I was a kid. Is there any reason for these except to inflict maximum damage to a kid who is unfortunate to get in front of one these while the driver is on the phone?
And of course we talk about how kids are now merely another demographic for the corporations. Disney promised not market violent movies to kids, but that did not stop them from marketing toys from those violent movies. Unlike when i was growing up, there is almost nothing on TV that promotes proper nutrition, but only commercials that promote high fact, high simple carb, junk food.
The reality is that even though these are a bit extreme, and the specifics may be different, they pretty much reflect the values of US society. When I drive south of here i see production plants that refuse to install updated technology because profit is more important that the quality of life. To paraphrase, Human happiness and the health of the planet that supports us in not so important as corporate profit We see immigrant laborers go without pay for a honest days work because the people who hire these human beings see them as nothing more than garbage and know they can't get a lawyer. To paraphrase, immigrant labour has less value than the back-hoe I might rent from the store. We feed our starving children, but we put coke and junk food machines in the school because the only way for a child to pay for his or her education is poison their bodies. To paraphrase to properly feed a malnourished child would be a disservice for our shareholders.
Your quotes would have much more funny and effective if they were more balances, like the one where our commander in chief invited the enemy to attack the people under his command.
The last two are important. The iPod and the Apple store are not encumbered with excessive DRM. Sony, targeting a product for the windows market, is probably looking to develop some sort of DRM protected pay-per-view movie download library. I can easily imagine them using Windows Media Player to come up with all sorts of complicated schemes to limit the use of the movies once they are on the player.
And five movies isn't really all that significant for many uses of this device. If one is traveling, it is not uncommon to take two to four times that many movies. This is easy to do with DVDs and a portable player. With this player on would have to have a laptop to hold the extra movies, and then why not just us a laptop.
Unless one is running a publishing company of ISP, one is niether.
My understanding is that the ban does not affect the truly independent production companies, just the pseudo independent ones owned by the major studios. These studios produce a few quality films to get their name mentioned at the Oscars. In the past they did not want to spend the money releasing these films to a wide audience, or advertising the film. Such activities can double the cost of a film. Apparently they have now decided the screeners are more trouble than they are worth. Therefore the majors will just have to subsidize the releasing and advertising of the films or give up on the boutique names. If they subsidize release this will benefit everyone because it will allow the public to see films they might not otherwise have an opportunity to, and may review demand in the art film theaters, many of which have small screening rooms rooms (about 100 or 200 seats) and could screen a few films a day. In the unlikely case they give up, it might be good news for the independents.
For these reasons I do not think the issue is the danger of the drugs to an individual, per se, because we often allow individuals to take such risks. I think some organizations, particularly the Olympics, are worried more about the second and third issue. Allowing the drugs to be used will force everyone to use the drugs, and may create a fictional sense about the safety ofthe drugs. It may ultimately be a matter of PR. The olympics, for instance, is about family entertainment and many families do not want their kids to believe that drugs are beneficial, even though this is message that is broadcast through most other major sporting events. By taking the high road on this the Olympics may be protecting revenue.
As far as answering if drugs or other medical procedures is cheating, that depends on the purpose of the event. If the event is to measure how random fluctuations and hard work has made one person better than another person who has done equally hard work, then drugs are cheating. If the event is mainly entertainment, again as in the case of most sporting events in the US, then drugs are certainly not cheating. Since there is no serious level of competition, the issue is really just to be as entertaining as possible. This situation is especially illustrated in leagues where revenue is shared between the teams. In any case, the drugs may in fact measure a different set of random fluctuations and this further muddles the argument.
No it means that we will have yet more republican mice abusing drugs and then telling our kids abusing drugs is bad.
First, this is not a recession in the tech market, it is a contraction. The US recession ended quite some time ago, and, assuming that no permanent damage has been to the economy by the greed of those who seek profit by any means necessary, we should expect the overall economy to be back up and running. The timing of this depends on how long it takes for the greedy people to satiate their desire for money and return control to more moderate leaders. However, we are have some expansion at present, and tech people with the proper skills are finding jobs.
Second, a company cannot simply terminate an out-sourcing agreement and expect to retain the original market share. A certain amount of transfer of knowledge, skills, and process much be shared during an outsourcing agreement, and those do not magically disappear from an outsourcing partner. We have seen this in many industries. Most major fashion houses now have very cheap lines to compete with former partners. There are a number of electrical and electronic component manufacturers that have had to dramatically cut prices to compete with former partners. And, of course, many major household brands have all but disappeared because the manufactures that once produce their goods not produce goods for Wal Mart, which has been transformed from a retail outlet for major brands to the major and successful competitors of those brands.
So, if we put these two things together it does not look good for the US tech worker. If a tech worker has been out of a job for a year, there are many workers who have been out of a job for less that a year to compete against. The outsourcing projects are probably going to remain in effect until the economy is released, which could be another year or so. In that time the outsourcing partners are going to be learning how to do technology without US partners, and become competitors as soon as the US partners release them from the contract. Add in the increased productivity from more efficient tools, and the fact that much of the tech force in late 90's to early 2000's were to build the internet infrastructure, which is now built, and do Y2K work, and one has little hope that any tech workers not employed in 2003 will ever really be needed.
Now if someone sends out thousands of email with a forged from or reply header, or includes a URL with the intention of causing damage to a site, then that is illegal. It is a DDOS attack and various authorities have had some luck apprehending suspects in such cases. In these cases the sender of spam is the cause of the DDOS, as the end user is just doing what one does with email, and the authorities then have additional reasons to apprehend the spammer.
Additionally, even though URL can be obscured, the purpose of most spam is to get people to go a vendor site. It would certainly be a good thing for such sites to receive several thousand hits in a short period of time. At worst the site will be so slow that the ignorant people who would do business with it will run out of patience before wasting their money. At best, the hosting company will get pissed off enough to pull the site. The ultimate would be to hose the hosting company enough so that the other customer become angry enough to complain. End user complaints have no effect, so what else are we supposed to do. Such a concerted effort may encourage the more ethical hosting companies to not host spammers, and the less ethical to charge more.
And I am not being simplistic. If open relays in Asia are helping spammers let's DDOS out of existence. If hosting companies in Canada are aiding and abetting spammers, lets make it clear that accomplices will suffer consequences. If a spammer hurts an innocent web site, let the law prosecute those responsible to the extent of the law. The US has have extradition agreements with Canada.
And btw, I am picking on canada because a large number of spams i receive are for companies hosted and registered in Canada.
I noticed in the WSJ today that they were doing another hatchet job on Apple. Basically saying that the music service would never impact their bottom line enough to matter. One of their arguments was that they when the got into the windows market there is so much competition that Apple would not be able to significantly increase sales. Of course when apple releases it's windows version they are going to be increasing their market 30 fold, and there are only like 5 serious competitors out there. The other thing they fail to realize it that the Apple DRM is much less restrictive than the Windows DRM, which may mean people will prefer the apple store, and perhaps even buy an ipod.
In any case the article did admit that sales were still going strong and does probably create a profit center, which is the important thing. If selling music online isn't profitable, then the RIAA is going to win.
The funniest thing about the article was they ended it by implying that apple was foolish to even still be im the hardware business as Dell is the only ones who do computer hardware right. That may be true, but isn't it Dell who has the most butt ugly MP3 player on the planet?
First things first. Science moves from that we can measure, to predicting other things we can measure in an effort to create a model. As long as the predictions are correct in a domain, the model is correct. Truth is derived from the model if you choose to do so. If one so chooses, there is nothing in science that says the god, or a coyote, or a big red blob did not create the earth and fill it with life. If you try to argue with a scientist he or she will disagree because it does not fit the model, but in that case truth is not being argued. Merely pragmatics.
My favorite example is that of a light switch. When you turn on a light, what happens. A scientist might believe that at a top level you close a circuit which allows electrons to flow which are then allowed to excite other loosely held electrons in atoms which, when the become less exited, emit a photon. A creationist might say the switch signals god to create some light. The only difference between the two is that the former allows us to build a lamp and computers.
I am not going to pretend i know what creationists are about, because i do not. However, I do know what science is about and i know that your comments are about as offensive as me saying the catholic hierarchy is so determined to protect it's power that it is more than willing to let children be molested until the second coming. Neither this statement or you logic is an accurate representation of the established order.
Why is this? Because science only works if it is constrained to a known set of boundaries and rules. The first rule is nothing is off limits. Although certain scientists have specific beliefs, and are free to try to prove them, science itself doesn't. Therefore when a new idea comes up science does not worry about the consequences, it just tests the idea. Likewise when an old idea fails, science doesn't worry about the failure, but just tries to fix it. Individuals will care, buy science doesn't. Both cases are expected and the processes will take care of the consequences.
The three big examples are the aether, the quantization of energy, newtonian mechanics, and the equivalence of the formulation of quantum mechanics. In the first example there was a time when we believed, by the observation of water and sound and radio waves, that all waves needed matter to travel though. Therefore light must have something to travel through and that something was called aether. That was disproven in the late 19th century by michelson-morley. This had great ramifications on science, and many people tried to disprove it. Ultimately the aether was disproven, science adapted, and we survived.
A few years later Planck was trying to figure our why certain equations predicted infinities where infinities did not and reasonable could not exist. He postulated quantized energy, which lead to the extremely uncomfortable random universe in which science currently theorizes. In fact we see that life seems to be pretty deterministic, so science had to come up with a way to make quantum mechanics deterministic at the macroscopic level, and it did. Note that science did not try to change quantum mechanics to fit our assumptions that the world is deterministic.
Then we come to old Einstein, who had beliefs about everything. He believe that Maxwell's equations were ugly. He believed that quantum mechanics (QM) was deeply flawed. Both of these beliefs served science well. The first lead to special relativity and the realization that newtonian mechanics was flawed, and it's domain had to be restricted to what we call non-relativistic domains. The second lead to some of the work that gives us confidence in the validity of QM.
Later Feynman also beliefs. He believed that one formulation of QM was beautiful, and was ugly, so the ugly one had to be wrong. His work however just showed the two to be equivalent, and further stabilized QM. It also allowed quite a few more uncomfortable philosophica