Maybe your child will be just as happy with a toy from the attic! Because in the end, the holiday season is not about material things. Ho ho ho.
Yes lets all be ANGRY with Sony because they cant supply enough SOMA to satisfy the mindless-sheeple-consumo-trons they manipulating. Let especially be angry that our underage children, have been polluted by SONY with incomprehensible, unrealistic, abstract, unhealthy desires for ThatLatestGreatThing V2.2231
Is this person for fucking real? He cant honestly be saying that he is upset that Sony cannot product enough wonder-techno-toys to satisfy the demand they created out of thin air for the thing they alone can supply. That parents should be UPSET with Sony for not making enough for everyone - is he so blinded by the Sony Marketroid Dept. that he cannot see that he's been manipulated, and whats worse, he's actually ANGRY WITH THEM for not being able to come up with this thing he thinks he needs.
Im absolutely amazed. I would suggest we tell Sony to shove the PS2 up their collective Ar$e$ and pass laws around the world to STOP ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN! Not only are children incapable of judging there wants vs needs - they havnt the physical capacity to buy the damned thing. SONY (et al) have effectively decided they will brainwash children into nagging their parents until they buy something that SONY has presented to them as being an object of desire.
And this monkey is upset with Sony for not being able to meet demand.... I am beside myself.
You don't like capitalism? You don't like people doing things to make money
I dont like it - I also dont like smug yanks who think that capitalism somehow provides 'choice, freedom, and democracy - and a blowjob'.
TiVo's business plan seems to tie customers wallets to their accounts receivables in an unfair manner... just provide the product and screw your 'service' crap... it is the status quo of the corporate $WHORES$ to try and extort their customers instead of operating in a fair and honest way with responsibility to the community. TiVo is _FAR_ better than most it seems (on the surface) they could have gone the way of the iOpener...
Socialist scenario: If I were a gardner I would clean your yard for free - if you would help install a new vid card in my PC (whatever). We both get what we want.
Capitalist scenario: We both call BigService Corp, pay them $100 per hour to send someone over to do the work (who gets paid $10 per hour). BigService Corp gets filthy rich, you and I have to work like dogs @ $10 per hour for some other BigService Corp.
The bosses control the means to production, we do all the work, and they get rich. Yeah, you'd have to be an idiot to want anything except capitalism. Puhleeze.
corrupt bigoted governments...and the giant corporate dollars that fund them...
I recently asked a fellow who works in my department who is from Africa (Ethiopia in fact), I flatly dont trust major media (except maybe cbc & bbc), I asked frankly "Why is it that the continent of Africa is starving or involved in conflict? What is the problem?"
His reply: "Although the on the 'surface' the conflicts have to do with religion or the 'overthrow of a corrupt' or 'undemocratic' government - what is really taking place is that Large multinationals from China, Japan, Canada (!), and the States, mostly mining companies and the like are involved in the overthrow of governments and funding major conflicts everywhere. What will happen is a party of peoples, say XYZ Liberation Army or somesuch, which may have 'valid ideals', will seek to take place of the present government in a particular country. They will appeal to certain, 'shady figures' who will offer funding-arms-equipment etc in exchange for favour with regards to that regions natural resources when the XYZ Liberation Army takes power."
Basically, "we will help put you in power if you give us the land rights (lease) for that mine". During this process, the leaders of the XYZ who are most 'corrupt' will have gravitated to the front of the organization, because they would be the ones who appeared to be able to deliver what the XYZ Liberation Army's members want: To transplant themselves (for possibly valid ideological reasons) with the present government.
This then leads to a situation where the next group -knowing how the present gov came to power (really in the above afore mentioned scenario)- seeks a new 'moneyed interest' to back them.
I dont have to bother describing what a cyclical problem this is. As a result 95% of the rent collected from leasing the natural resources to these companies goes into the military, to defend their position, and the people starve.
For the cynics who dont believe me? Next time you meet someone who is from Africa - ask them yourself... Can anyone who lived in Africa as adult comment please. I would also like some perspective & corroboration.
Solution: Abolish the WTO, IMF, WorldBank - these organizations are 'fronts' for multinational corporations who are trying to enslave Africa. Again. The 'rest of us' are next.
I just mean that we can be responsible for one another form a more peaceful unity in general, with more consideration for the underprivileged... and more for the 'middle' classes as well. We (The worlds peoples) have to have goals and desires, we must be making collective decisions to better our common future, we have to choose a destination and set course (etc etc) - my point is that humanity has many problems:
Economic Imperialism Environmental Collapse Puritan/Religiously Derived Laws (prostitution/drugs/gay-rights/sodomy etc) Overpopulation Work-Aholism (Stress) Lack of World Wide Universal Health Care (i still think it is important..) Corrupt/Broken American Democracy Consumerism
We should atleast have the collective will to choose to implement solutions, and apply collective resources to solve.
This is what I mean by responsibility - sometimes I feel as if Americans are becoming increasingly selfish, that the idea of self-serving, instant gratification and consumption is accelerating... cant we foresee this becoming a problem?
Im just a litte concerned - what are our plans? What are our priorities?
Dont mean to drag us to this level... but I own one razor, bought it years ago, and I consider th e replacement blades beyond trivial - ~$10 a year for blades... I suppose it could be $45 for a lifetime if you bought a moderate straight razor.
Funny. I consider myself an "early adopter". I was one of the first people to purchase a Palm. I was one of the first people to purchase a Dell Inspiron 4000
Now If you had said "I was one of the first with a Newton, or I was one of the first with a Grid Lap-Top" I may have agreed to your claim as 'first adopter' - but I hardly think there is anything revolutionary about a laptop with snap on/off colour wrist pads. Now would you consider yourself on the techno bleeding edge if you bought a iMac 'before everyone else'...
It cannot, and shouldn't, be done Wrong & Wrong - but clearly irrelevant.
No hacker argues that they shouldn't rip apart their computers as soon as they buy them Every 'hacker' I know removes the case from everything he/she owns - before they plug it in...
Im really not interested in 'speaking for the hackers of the world' here -not only is it far to 31337 for me and just a little silly- but you clearly don't understand the vein of this argument, my response, or the true nature of the article. Did you even read the post that you responded to? The articles? Taco's comments?
A lot of companies rely on internal trade secrets to secure a product. If hackers take apart a console, and create one better than the next generation console a company plans to make, and has already stepped up production for, and is committed to selling, how is the company going to make a profit?
I dont think you get it - if you remain open and honest with your customers - inviting them to develop with you, to help you direct and grow the system you achieve a very special synergy - this synergy is manifested very well in GNU/Linux, the iPaq from Compaq, id Sofware as a whole, TiVo and many others. Where do you think iOpener would be today if they had reacted exactly opposite? Maybe they would still exist.
People are getting increasingly wise to the method's employed by Big Business to screw them - most people refuse to take part in all the schemes by corporate $whores$ who are most obviously trying to rape them. People are avoiding such systems like the plague.
I may have owned a Aibo if it didn't have a memory stick and a SONY label.
The standard 'lock them in and exploit them" method is not working any longer - the more technically inclined are saying "no thank you" and are advising their less knowledgeable brethren the same... you can expect technology in general to completely move in this direction. The internet has enabled people to pursue and communicate their interests to many people, in the process finding people of like mind, and that group is working together for one another - if a company wants to participate in that, they are mostly welcome - but if they choose to go the way of the 'Zap Me' unit as described above, I guarantee they are in for trouble. After all - who are these notorious 'first adopters'*? And how many of those know about the "open source" idea and its advantages? Id bet it is virtually 100%.
*excepting the people with more money than brains.
Every single comment below is pure conjecture - we know NOTHING of this computer (of its real technical spec)
Now, I may agree with everyone that it is highly unlikely that we are going to see the kind of AI described in Arthur C. Clark's 2001. BUT who is to say we wont see a windfall of technical innovation brought on by someone creating a new computer without any reverence for what has come before?
Maybe this person has the next Apple II, Amiga or somesuch that is a break from convention and ends up being a remarkable computer.
Wait until we at least get an idea what OS (something new/something old?) this runs, what the hardware is - you can all say "I told you so" about the AI claims... but who's to say there isn't something interesting here.
Typical selfish attitude - would a better question be "how is my community doing?"
America is still a terribly violent country, with no national healthcare, ever decreasing 'rights and freedoms' - one thing has caused this: American 'cult of greed' myopia, and sheer selfishness manifested in your Big Business.
Does anyone there know the meaning of 'responsibility'? It means alot more than "gettin' paid and taking care of myself".
I believe it was the President of Zimbabwe who said (paraphrase) "I would like to offer officials from my country to act as official observers in your time of democratic crisis" or some such thing.
Whats really funny about this election is that the rest of the world is finding it terribly amusing - that the brash, vein, arrogant American's who always espouse the virtue of their 'example of democracy as being a shinning light' and all that jazz - funny thing is the system is corrupt, broken and ill-conceived. The Republicrats have seized control of the government, blatantly sell legislation to the highest bidders, the nation splits %50 - %50 in an election devoid of ideas or solutions to any real problems, and now Florida is going to drag the whole mess into months of litigation.
As a Canadian, who will take to the ballots tomorrow to elect our Prime Minister, I relish the debate that takes place between our - 5 - parties. I and most other people outside of the States think this whole affair is the funniest thing since the "Clinton Scandal" - America has become a parody of itself.
Here are the Four Things that anyone hoping for a better future can hope come from this Florida debacle:
A) Complete public funding of all elections, and an end to Big Business corrupting your 'democracy'. This is your absolute #1 problem, When/Why do people allow their politicians to openly take bribes? B) See.sig C) Throw the electoral college to the trash. D) Open the public airwaves to real civil debate -on a much larger scale- and remove the partisanship from the debate commission (who exclude all but 'there-own')
Like most people here I use Ping daily. Like most people here I had never heard of Mike Muuss.
But from what Ive read of his writing on his homepage (linked from above) and his letter to the InterNet Historical Society (linked from above) it seems Mike would have had a wry sense of humour.
Mike seems to have been a massive influence on great area's of computing (Internet, TCPIP, UNIX) and that should be celebrated and tech people should be Thankful for his efforts, and due honour paid now that he has passed.
But when a person dies, absolute reverence does not exclude comments of some brevity.
I am SURE, as I would have, foreseen the 100% Packet Loss jokes coming when I was dead - and I would have found the idea very amusing and quite complementary... Ill assume Mike Muss dosnt mind*...
*I know this sounds presumptuous but I think I you would see my point... Apologies to those who find it so nonetheless.
Because that's how they're going to make money (of all things)? Yes - they can try and make money selling OSX if they'd like, I have no problems as long as they operate reasonably and responsibly to their community (citizens and customers).
I think we have to wait a little bit to see how 'honest' and 'open' Apple really gets with OSX. If they open it to be Free (gratis and/or libre) remains to be seen - as far as i can tell their goals are neither at this point.
I mean, you're getting a fully-functioning OS for free (sans an X server). And if you're a Mac developer, you're much better off now. I understand you can write Apps for Mac that dont require a GUI - but Macs are more clearly a workstation machine (mostly, and *nix would be shown to be a Non-GUI server environment (mostly)). Are you suggesting that Darwin will enable Mac developers to build server apps?
Wouldnt they really be better off building ontop of *nix?
Would you rather they have not released any source at all? Absolutely not - but I think Apple has 'a long way to go' in making OSX really open - and Im really hoping they do. I dont think they are being completely honest. And besides - If the Cube becomes more reasonably priced, and they make OSX libre and gratis - it may just be the first Apple box I own... otherwise Ill stick to Linux/BSD on x86.
Steve Jobs...than boost the real underdog, the open source effort behind Darwin. If anyone thinks that Apple's going to do all of Darwin's developing, they either have not been paying attention or are severely deluded. A few notable non-Apple employees have been working on many useful things (/dev/random -- yay!), but the list of Stuff That Needs Doing remains long. Many of these list items aren't anywhere near the top of Apple's list of OS X features -- support for older Power Macs, for example -- so Darwin will have to do without unless an enterprising and energetic outsider steps up.
This whole concept disturbs me. How is it the 'community' should feel bad or somehow 'guilty' that they are not completing the to-do's and building PowerMac support? I recognize their are unique features to Darwin (Mach) but basically it is little more outside of what the BSDs offer already (I am willing to consider that I may be wrong - Darwin _may_ have involved alot of work by Apple & they may have really given the BSDs 'something' - Im not that 'up' on OSX exactly.. but try and understand my point from inital impressions). Why is it the responsibility of the community to build a stable foundation on which OSX can be sold? We must embrace Darwin and make it better?
The way I see it: OSX's most exciting parts are the GUI. Why must the OpenSource movement do the 'support' coding of Darwin while Apple keeps the GUI closed Source? Why would the OpenSource movement enable Apple to sell their Mac OSX when they arent really working in good faith? Apple isnt really interested in enabling extensive porting of OSX - Apple is only going to be selling OSX on Apple boxen and arent interested in OSX running on anything else. Another key ingredient to the 'OpenSource' movement is that we share with developers who work on other than Intel. Like most people here, I would love a new Cube or G4 - but they are too damned expensive (in pure harware spec per $ kind of analysis vs the clones we all build)... What is APPLE offering people? This whole article leaves a bad taste in my mouth - here is Apple (or someone speaking in their interest) saying "Why arent you guys helping us build Darwin?" my reply "Cut the price of your hardware in half (or make it somehow more reasonable) - pay your own developers to port OSX to Intel - and start the OSX League, democratically elect the board, provide some grants/funding"
The OpenSource movement is beginning to look like it may provide a method for proprietary types to subsiize their development costs - without being honest. IBM and RedHat are good examples of companies that I love to support because I think they 'play fair'.
There is a very great distance - in terms of processing - from a hole in the ground (digging material up on an asteroid) and producing something useful. When you look at something constructed of metal - consider all the effort which took that object from ore, to 'sheet metal' of various sizes, to whatever object you are considering.
Although I think mining asteroids is a great idea - and a very worthy goal of human effort (effort much better spent than watching TV and destroying the planet with consumerism/greed and corporate imperialism (another argument)) - We are 'very close' to digging a hole in a Asteroid, which is a great distance from being able to actually do something useful with what we dig up.
You can not stand against the patent machine of the large multi-nationals or the Patent-it-and-sue-em companies out there
Yes - Actually we can, because people elect governments - people make laws. I am very actively 'standing against' large multi-nationals, I protest, I write letters, I rant (obviously) on/., I vote progressively. The point being that this "Global Free Market" is BS (and Software patents are just one issue we are farmiliar w/ b/c we are tech types) - The whole goddamn system is going to get ripped down. Now if you have a choice - AND YOU DO - what are you going to do? Be part of the "you cant stand against them - lets goto the mall and masterbate" types who know the system needs big change -OR- someone who says "this is wrong, I refuse to lay down to MultiNationals changing the world to enslave me and everyone else". Simple - its our choice not 'theirs'
The overall cost is the same, if not higher, and the quality of service tends to be far lower. When a company has no control over what it can charge, it will reduce its quality of service. Have you ever waited in line to renew your license plate, or waited three hours on hold to a phone monopoly
NO! That has NEVER happened to me !
The overall cost is the same, if not higher, and the quality of service tends to be far lower
Sorry I drastically disagree - corporatists concern for profit will drive the actual quality of service down, either through neglect of investment, poorly trained/paid employees, outsourcing yadda yadda. What I am not interested in is spending money for Marketing, Advertising and Teams of rabid lawyers/accountants, these things are necessary evils _ONLY_ in FreeMarket. I dont know about you, but I feel tremendously cheated when I have to buy a bar of soap and know that 3/4 of the price goes to things other than the product. In a regulated, controlled economy you can do away with these things. Regulation != beurocracy. Regulation also does not mean that business can't achieve efficiencies through competition. What the cult-of-ultra-productivity and the American Free Market religion has done is brainwash America to believe you cannot demand any minimum standards of responsibility - in any regard - of the businesses that operate within your community. That is terribly sad. Business has to be responsible to citizens first and foremost, held absolutely accountable. They should be forced to act reasonably. In the American free-for-all-economy no one benefits except corporatists and their progeny. An aristocracy is growing in America - a new ruling class - it is evidenced by the broken political system and the moneyed elite. Dollars are like magnets - they attract one another. Why compete when you can collude? The corporatist economy does only three things: rape and enslave people, rape and enslave the environment and exploit communities. Americans have been so convinced that this 'Cult-of-Me' (evidenced by consumerism and gross irresponsibility of your people) economy provides some 'opportunity', some 'hope' that some day they will be in a position to exploit and rape their neighbor. Have you people ever heard of simple sharing amoungst your community??? The uncontrolled market economy is being 'advertised' the world over by American corporatists, with their hand up the ass of your government, under the guise of "The World Economy" (WTO/IMF/WorldBank) - What America doesn't realize is that the rest of the world sees it coming, they understand the position Americans are in better than themselves, and will not be letting it happen. The truly sad thing is Americans have been convinced this is all in their best interest (this uncontrolled ultrafree market) - but in reality you've been enslaved by US Government Inc. which has made you empathetic, fat and ignorant. Do any Americans think of their Gov as anything more than the legislative arm of Big Business? Why cant you stand up to it? If you have enough money you have access to literally (!) write your own laws. Evidence? You see it as the actions of the USPatentOffice, DMCA, UCTLA (?), Copyright extensions - these are the things You and I are aware of (because we understand technology) but imagine what else is going on in the area's of Health, Agriculture (ect) and other areas we know nothing about? Because you've been bred for empathy and membership in the cult of consumerism and greed by everything around you... WAKE UP!
Before you reply - take a second to think, are they things this person (me) are saying untrue? Is this not the state of America? What he describes - is undoubtedly happening around me - if I disagree with his assertions as to the cause of the situation - what do I think has caused this massive change the last 50 years?? BEFORE your programmed impulse to defend the corporatist party line kicks in...
If Mac OS X can be as good as everyone says it is/will be I have little doubt that Gnome/KDE will both be exceptional GUI UIs in due time. Arent you people tired of this ridiculous debate?
Horrible cliche: Rome wasnt built in a day. but very accurate...
Why get 'down' on the KDE/Gnome teams? I say simply: "Keep up the good work and good luck" - and no I am not pandering.
original, OK. But what about the CLONE of Windows that is KDE? original, OK. But what about the CLONE of Apple that is Windows? original, OK. But what about the CLONE of Alto that is Apple
Why would it even be relevant who thought of it first? Its about as relevant as "My Dad can beat up your Dad" chanted in a school-yard.
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Great, now every man -not just the colourblind- will have to listen to his wife nag that he dosnt know how to dress himself.
Maybe your child will be just as happy with a toy from the attic! Because in the end, the holiday season is not about material things. Ho ho ho.
Yes lets all be ANGRY with Sony because they cant supply enough SOMA to satisfy the mindless-sheeple-consumo-trons they manipulating. Let especially be angry that our underage children, have been polluted by SONY with incomprehensible, unrealistic, abstract, unhealthy desires for ThatLatestGreatThing V2.2231
Is this person for fucking real? He cant honestly be saying that he is upset that Sony cannot product enough wonder-techno-toys to satisfy the demand they created out of thin air for the thing they alone can supply. That parents should be UPSET with Sony for not making enough for everyone - is he so blinded by the Sony Marketroid Dept. that he cannot see that he's been manipulated, and whats worse, he's actually ANGRY WITH THEM for not being able to come up with this thing he thinks he needs.
Im absolutely amazed.
I would suggest we tell Sony to shove the PS2 up their collective Ar$e$ and pass laws around the world to STOP ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN! Not only are children incapable of judging there wants vs needs - they havnt the physical capacity to buy the damned thing. SONY (et al) have effectively decided they will brainwash children into nagging their parents until they buy something that SONY has presented to them as being an object of desire.
And this monkey is upset with Sony for not being able to meet demand.... I am beside myself.
You don't like capitalism? You don't like people doing things to make money
I dont like it - I also dont like smug yanks who think that capitalism somehow provides 'choice, freedom, and democracy - and a blowjob'.
TiVo's business plan seems to tie customers wallets to their accounts receivables in an unfair manner... just provide the product and screw your 'service' crap... it is the status quo of the corporate $WHORES$ to try and extort their customers instead of operating in a fair and honest way with responsibility to the community. TiVo is _FAR_ better than most it seems (on the surface) they could have gone the way of the iOpener...
Socialist scenario:
If I were a gardner I would clean your yard for free - if you would help install a new vid card in my PC (whatever).
We both get what we want.
Capitalist scenario:
We both call BigService Corp, pay them $100 per hour to send someone over to do the work (who gets paid $10 per hour). BigService Corp gets filthy rich, you and I have to work like dogs @ $10 per hour for some other BigService Corp.
The bosses control the means to production, we do all the work, and they get rich. Yeah, you'd have to be an idiot to want anything except capitalism. Puhleeze.
corrupt bigoted governments...and the giant corporate dollars that fund them...
I recently asked a fellow who works in my department who is from Africa (Ethiopia in fact), I flatly dont trust major media (except maybe cbc & bbc), I asked frankly "Why is it that the continent of Africa is starving or involved in conflict? What is the problem?"
His reply: "Although the on the 'surface' the conflicts have to do with religion or the 'overthrow of a corrupt' or 'undemocratic' government - what is really taking place is that Large multinationals from China, Japan, Canada (!), and the States, mostly mining companies and the like are involved in the overthrow of governments and funding major conflicts everywhere. What will happen is a party of peoples, say XYZ Liberation Army or somesuch, which may have 'valid ideals', will seek to take place of the present government in a particular country. They will appeal to certain, 'shady figures' who will offer funding-arms-equipment etc in exchange for favour with regards to that regions natural resources when the XYZ Liberation Army takes power."
Basically, "we will help put you in power if you give us the land rights (lease) for that mine". During this process, the leaders of the XYZ who are most 'corrupt' will have gravitated to the front of the organization, because they would be the ones who appeared to be able to deliver what the XYZ Liberation Army's members want: To transplant themselves (for possibly valid ideological reasons) with the present government.
This then leads to a situation where the next group -knowing how the present gov came to power (really in the above afore mentioned scenario)- seeks a new 'moneyed interest' to back them.
I dont have to bother describing what a cyclical problem this is. As a result 95% of the rent collected from leasing the natural resources to these companies goes into the military, to defend their position, and the people starve.
For the cynics who dont believe me? Next time you meet someone who is from Africa - ask them yourself... Can anyone who lived in Africa as adult comment please. I would also like some perspective & corroboration.
Solution: Abolish the WTO, IMF, WorldBank - these organizations are 'fronts' for multinational corporations who are trying to enslave Africa. Again. The 'rest of us' are next.
in the 99th percentile on a standard of living basis
With Canada being the 100th as stated by the UN.
I just mean that we can be responsible for one another form a more peaceful unity in general, with more consideration for the underprivileged... and more for the 'middle' classes as well. We (The worlds peoples) have to have goals and desires, we must be making collective decisions to better our common future, we have to choose a destination and set course (etc etc) - my point is that humanity has many problems:
Economic Imperialism
Environmental Collapse
Puritan/Religiously Derived Laws (prostitution/drugs/gay-rights/sodomy etc)
Overpopulation
Work-Aholism (Stress)
Lack of World Wide Universal Health Care (i still think it is important..)
Corrupt/Broken American Democracy
Consumerism
We should atleast have the collective will to choose to implement solutions, and apply collective resources to solve.
This is what I mean by responsibility - sometimes I feel as if Americans are becoming increasingly selfish, that the idea of self-serving, instant gratification and consumption is accelerating... cant we foresee this becoming a problem?
Im just a litte concerned - what are our plans? What are our priorities?
Dont mean to drag us to this level... but I own one razor, bought it years ago, and I consider th e replacement blades beyond trivial - ~$10 a year for blades... I suppose it could be $45 for a lifetime if you bought a moderate straight razor.
;)
You still use paper?
Funny. I consider myself an "early adopter". I was one of the first people to purchase a Palm. I was one of the first people to purchase a Dell Inspiron 4000
Now If you had said "I was one of the first with a Newton, or I was one of the first with a Grid Lap-Top" I may have agreed to your claim as 'first adopter' - but I hardly think there is anything revolutionary about a laptop with snap on/off colour wrist pads. Now would you consider yourself on the techno bleeding edge if you bought a iMac 'before everyone else'...
It cannot, and shouldn't, be done
Wrong & Wrong - but clearly irrelevant.
No hacker argues that they shouldn't rip apart their computers as soon as they buy them
Every 'hacker' I know removes the case from everything he/she owns - before they plug it in...
Im really not interested in 'speaking for the hackers of the world' here -not only is it far to 31337 for me and just a little silly- but you clearly don't understand the vein of this argument, my response, or the true nature of the article. Did you even read the post that you responded to? The articles? Taco's comments?
A lot of companies rely on internal trade secrets to secure a product. If hackers take apart a console, and create one better than the next generation console a company plans to make, and has already stepped up production for, and is committed to selling, how is the company going to make a profit?
I dont think you get it - if you remain open and honest with your customers - inviting them to develop with you, to help you direct and grow the system you achieve a very special synergy - this synergy is manifested very well in GNU/Linux, the iPaq from Compaq, id Sofware as a whole, TiVo and many others. Where do you think iOpener would be today if they had reacted exactly opposite? Maybe they would still exist.
People are getting increasingly wise to the method's employed by Big Business to screw them - most people refuse to take part in all the schemes by corporate $whores$ who are most obviously trying to rape them. People are avoiding such systems like the plague.
I may have owned a Aibo if it didn't have a memory stick and a SONY label.
The standard 'lock them in and exploit them" method is not working any longer - the more technically inclined are saying "no thank you" and are advising their less knowledgeable brethren the same... you can expect technology in general to completely move in this direction. The internet has enabled people to pursue and communicate their interests to many people, in the process finding people of like mind, and that group is working together for one another - if a company wants to participate in that, they are mostly welcome - but if they choose to go the way of the 'Zap Me' unit as described above, I guarantee they are in for trouble. After all - who are these notorious 'first adopters'*? And how many of those know about the "open source" idea and its advantages? Id bet it is virtually 100%.
*excepting the people with more money than brains.
Every single comment below is pure conjecture - we know NOTHING of this computer (of its real technical spec)
Now, I may agree with everyone that it is highly unlikely that we are going to see the kind of AI described in Arthur C. Clark's 2001. BUT who is to say we wont see a windfall of technical innovation brought on by someone creating a new computer without any reverence for what has come before?
Maybe this person has the next Apple II, Amiga or somesuch that is a break from convention and ends up being a remarkable computer.
Wait until we at least get an idea what OS (something new/something old?) this runs, what the hardware is - you can all say "I told you so" about the AI claims... but who's to say there isn't something interesting here.
Does anyone have any technical detail?
Is there web site, or IRC channel, or InternetBBS somewhere that intends to connect the different groups building these WLANs?
Would anyone from Windsor, Ontario, Canada be interested in building such a network?
Yeah - the CIA would never get involved in furthering American imperialism... have you ever heard of The Bay of Pigs?
Thanks for the clarity - all these world leaders' quotes were in the same article I read.
Thanks.
it all comes down to "how are you doing?"
Typical selfish attitude - would a better question be "how is my community doing?"
America is still a terribly violent country, with no national healthcare, ever decreasing 'rights and freedoms' - one thing has caused this: American 'cult of greed' myopia, and sheer selfishness manifested in your Big Business.
Does anyone there know the meaning of 'responsibility'? It means alot more than "gettin' paid and taking care of myself".
I believe it was the President of Zimbabwe who said (paraphrase) "I would like to offer officials from my country to act as official observers in your time of democratic crisis" or some such thing.
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Whats really funny about this election is that the rest of the world is finding it terribly amusing - that the brash, vein, arrogant American's who always espouse the virtue of their 'example of democracy as being a shinning light' and all that jazz - funny thing is the system is corrupt, broken and ill-conceived. The Republicrats have seized control of the government, blatantly sell legislation to the highest bidders, the nation splits %50 - %50 in an election devoid of ideas or solutions to any real problems, and now Florida is going to drag the whole mess into months of litigation.
As a Canadian, who will take to the ballots tomorrow to elect our Prime Minister, I relish the debate that takes place between our - 5 - parties. I and most other people outside of the States think this whole affair is the funniest thing since the "Clinton Scandal" - America has become a parody of itself.
Here are the Four Things that anyone hoping for a better future can hope come from this Florida debacle:
A) Complete public funding of all elections, and an end to Big Business corrupting your 'democracy'. This is your absolute #1 problem, When/Why do people allow their politicians to openly take bribes?
B) See
C) Throw the electoral college to the trash.
D) Open the public airwaves to real civil debate -on a much larger scale- and remove the partisanship from the debate commission (who exclude all but 'there-own')
Start a goodamn union.
Simple Answer best buy and the other commercial-world businesses rape people beyone reason because no one is willing to stand up to them.
Like most people here I use Ping daily. Like most people here I had never heard of Mike Muuss.
But from what Ive read of his writing on his homepage (linked from above) and his letter to the InterNet Historical Society (linked from above) it seems Mike would have had a wry sense of humour.
Mike seems to have been a massive influence on great area's of computing (Internet, TCPIP, UNIX) and that should be celebrated and tech people should be Thankful for his efforts, and due honour paid now that he has passed.
But when a person dies, absolute reverence does not exclude comments of some brevity.
I am SURE, as I would have, foreseen the 100% Packet Loss jokes coming when I was dead - and I would have found the idea very amusing and quite complementary... Ill assume Mike Muss dosnt mind*...
*I know this sounds presumptuous but I think I you would see my point... Apologies to those who find it so nonetheless.
Because that's how they're going to make money (of all things)?
Yes - they can try and make money selling OSX if they'd like, I have no problems as long as they operate reasonably and responsibly to their community (citizens and customers).
I think we have to wait a little bit to see how 'honest' and 'open' Apple really gets with OSX. If they open it to be Free (gratis and/or libre) remains to be seen - as far as i can tell their goals are neither at this point.
I mean, you're getting a fully-functioning OS for free (sans an X server). And if you're a Mac developer, you're much better off now.
I understand you can write Apps for Mac that dont require a GUI - but Macs are more clearly a workstation machine (mostly, and *nix would be shown to be a Non-GUI server environment (mostly)). Are you suggesting that Darwin will enable Mac developers to build server apps?
Wouldnt they really be better off building ontop of *nix?
Would you rather they have not released any source at all?
Absolutely not - but I think Apple has 'a long way to go' in making OSX really open - and Im really hoping they do. I dont think they are being completely honest.
And besides - If the Cube becomes more reasonably priced, and they make OSX libre and gratis - it may just be the first Apple box I own... otherwise Ill stick to Linux/BSD on x86.
Steve Jobs...than boost the real underdog, the open source effort behind Darwin.
If anyone thinks that Apple's going to do all of Darwin's developing, they either have not been paying attention or are severely deluded. A few notable non-Apple employees have been working on many useful things (/dev/random -- yay!), but the list of Stuff That Needs Doing remains long. Many of these list items aren't anywhere near the top of Apple's list of OS X features -- support for older Power Macs, for example -- so Darwin will have to do without unless an enterprising and energetic outsider steps up.
This whole concept disturbs me. How is it the 'community' should feel bad or somehow 'guilty' that they are not completing the to-do's and building PowerMac support? I recognize their are unique features to Darwin (Mach) but basically it is little more outside of what the BSDs offer already (I am willing to consider that I may be wrong - Darwin _may_ have involved alot of work by Apple & they may have really given the BSDs 'something' - Im not that 'up' on OSX exactly.. but try and understand my point from inital impressions). Why is it the responsibility of the community to build a stable foundation on which OSX can be sold? We must embrace Darwin and make it better?
The way I see it: OSX's most exciting parts are the GUI. Why must the OpenSource movement do the 'support' coding of Darwin while Apple keeps the GUI closed Source? Why would the OpenSource movement enable Apple to sell their Mac OSX when they arent really working in good faith? Apple isnt really interested in enabling extensive porting of OSX - Apple is only going to be selling OSX on Apple boxen and arent interested in OSX running on anything else. Another key ingredient to the 'OpenSource' movement is that we share with developers who work on other than Intel. Like most people here, I would love a new Cube or G4 - but they are too damned expensive (in pure harware spec per $ kind of analysis vs the clones we all build)... What is APPLE offering people? This whole article leaves a bad taste in my mouth - here is Apple (or someone speaking in their interest) saying "Why arent you guys helping us build Darwin?" my reply "Cut the price of your hardware in half (or make it somehow more reasonable) - pay your own developers to port OSX to Intel - and start the OSX League, democratically elect the board, provide some grants/funding"
The OpenSource movement is beginning to look like it may provide a method for proprietary types to subsiize their development costs - without being honest. IBM and RedHat are good examples of companies that I love to support because I think they 'play fair'.
There is a very great distance - in terms of processing - from a hole in the ground (digging material up on an asteroid) and producing something useful. When you look at something constructed of metal - consider all the effort which took that object from ore, to 'sheet metal' of various sizes, to whatever object you are considering.
Although I think mining asteroids is a great idea - and a very worthy goal of human effort (effort much better spent than watching TV and destroying the planet with consumerism/greed and corporate imperialism (another argument)) - We are 'very close' to digging a hole in a Asteroid, which is a great distance from being able to actually do something useful with what we dig up.
You can not stand against the patent machine of the large multi-nationals or the Patent-it-and-sue-em companies out there
/., I vote progressively. The point being that this "Global Free Market" is BS (and Software patents are just one issue we are farmiliar w/ b/c we are tech types) - The whole goddamn system is going to get ripped down. Now if you have a choice - AND YOU DO - what are you going to do? Be part of the "you cant stand against them - lets goto the mall and masterbate" types who know the system needs big change -OR- someone who says "this is wrong, I refuse to lay down to MultiNationals changing the world to enslave me and everyone else". Simple - its our choice not 'theirs'
Yes - Actually we can, because people elect governments - people make laws. I am very actively 'standing against' large multi-nationals, I protest, I write letters, I rant (obviously) on
Ive made my choice.
The overall cost is the same, if not higher, and the quality of service tends to be far lower. When a company has no control over what it can charge, it will reduce its quality of service. Have you ever waited in line to renew your license plate, or waited three hours on hold to a phone monopoly
NO! That has NEVER happened to me !
The overall cost is the same, if not higher, and the quality of service tends to be far lower
Sorry I drastically disagree - corporatists concern for profit will drive the actual quality of service down, either through neglect of investment, poorly trained/paid employees, outsourcing yadda yadda. What I am not interested in is spending money for Marketing, Advertising and Teams of rabid lawyers/accountants, these things are necessary evils _ONLY_ in FreeMarket. I dont know about you, but I feel tremendously cheated when I have to buy a bar of soap and know that 3/4 of the price goes to things other than the product. In a regulated, controlled economy you can do away with these things. Regulation != beurocracy. Regulation also does not mean that business can't achieve efficiencies through competition. What the cult-of-ultra-productivity and the American Free Market religion has done is brainwash America to believe you cannot demand any minimum standards of responsibility - in any regard - of the businesses that operate within your community. That is terribly sad. Business has to be responsible to citizens first and foremost, held absolutely accountable. They should be forced to act reasonably. In the American free-for-all-economy no one benefits except corporatists and their progeny. An aristocracy is growing in America - a new ruling class - it is evidenced by the broken political system and the moneyed elite. Dollars are like magnets - they attract one another. Why compete when you can collude? The corporatist economy does only three things: rape and enslave people, rape and enslave the environment and exploit communities. Americans have been so convinced that this 'Cult-of-Me' (evidenced by consumerism and gross irresponsibility of your people) economy provides some 'opportunity', some 'hope' that some day they will be in a position to exploit and rape their neighbor. Have you people ever heard of simple sharing amoungst your community??? The uncontrolled market economy is being 'advertised' the world over by American corporatists, with their hand up the ass of your government, under the guise of "The World Economy" (WTO/IMF/WorldBank) - What America doesn't realize is that the rest of the world sees it coming, they understand the position Americans are in better than themselves, and will not be letting it happen. The truly sad thing is Americans have been convinced this is all in their best interest (this uncontrolled ultrafree market) - but in reality you've been enslaved by US Government Inc. which has made you empathetic, fat and ignorant. Do any Americans think of their Gov as anything more than the legislative arm of Big Business? Why cant you stand up to it? If you have enough money you have access to literally (!) write your own laws. Evidence? You see it as the actions of the USPatentOffice, DMCA, UCTLA (?), Copyright extensions - these are the things You and I are aware of (because we understand technology) but imagine what else is going on in the area's of Health, Agriculture (ect) and other areas we know nothing about? Because you've been bred for empathy and membership in the cult of consumerism and greed by everything around you... WAKE UP!
Before you reply - take a second to think, are they things this person (me) are saying untrue? Is this not the state of America? What he describes - is undoubtedly happening around me - if I disagree with his assertions as to the cause of the situation - what do I think has caused this massive change the last 50 years?? BEFORE your programmed impulse to defend the corporatist party line kicks in...
If Mac OS X can be as good as everyone says it is/will be I have little doubt that Gnome/KDE will both be exceptional GUI UIs in due time.
Arent you people tired of this ridiculous debate?
Horrible cliche: Rome wasnt built in a day. but very accurate...
Why get 'down' on the KDE/Gnome teams? I say simply: "Keep up the good work and good luck" - and no I am not pandering.
original, OK. But what about the CLONE of Windows that is KDE?
original, OK. But what about the CLONE of Apple that is Windows?
original, OK. But what about the CLONE of Alto that is Apple
Why would it even be relevant who thought of it first? Its about as relevant as "My Dad can beat up your Dad" chanted in a school-yard.
Remote Desktop!
Excellent! That should make it easier for crackers than going through the trouble of installing BO or Netbus...
What we need to do is run a Eliza client on this thing and send it to the Mall - the innocent sheeple will be convinced we'd been invaded by aliens...