1. Make displays out of things other than CRTs and LED/LCDs. Saw one at SIGGRAPH - Made of wood. Really neat. What about a magnetic screen using nails?
2. Coming up with different types of inputs. Someone at SIGGRAPH had a laser distance finder being used to emulate the mouse. Cost? $100.00 for the laser distance finder. Use a projector to display the computer's screen onto a wall, have the laser distance finder sitting in the corner. Break the beam and ta-da! Instant mouse positioning! I'm sure there are other ways of doing this too.
3. What about coming up with a new type of browser which decouples the graphics from the rest of the program so when you move from one OS to the next you just have to insert the new commands to do the graphics on it? Of course, this would mean creating a new type of browser also.:-) One which is based on a 3D programming language. 2D is, after all, just 3D with one plane always pointing towards the user/screen. Maybe call it BB for Basic Browser or PB for Perl Browser. Either way, the language should be really easy to use, non-OOP (because you are targeting a largely non-programmer audience), and should be able to support pre-compiled programs. I've been working on a similar thing in my spare time - but if someone else worked on a similar project that would probably get me more motivated than I have been.:-)
There are two sides to this issue. The first is that the Supreme Court has already said that the Internet is like television or a newspaper. So it falls under the same category when it comes to the information served up by the various sites. So a company's information is free and should remain that way.
But look at the second side of this issue. When another company begins banging away at a site just to get the information out of it then that company is guilty of a Denial of Service charge. This is because for every request the second company makes of the first company's computer it takes away resources which are needed to handle the customer's requests.
To put this into focus, someone said it is like company A raiding company B's store with cameras, recorders, paper and pencils and interrogating the employees for every single price on every single item. This isn't allowed. But a single employee or manager can go into another store and take notes. It isn't illegal to do that so long as the person doesn't interfere with the normal operations of the store.
To give another example, it is ok to buy a newspaper and read through it to gauge how well your prices are doing versus the competition. But it isn't ok to call up the competition and go through their entire inventory over the phone. Again because you tie up their personel while doing so.
So what should be done? If another company wants to bang away at a given site's information they should pay a service fee to the other company. This service fee could be used to buy a small secondary computer, to hire (or have) someone monitor the system, and an interface (such as a 56K modem or DSL line). The system echos the real computer's transactions and makes them available for transfer. In this way companies which want to gather this information can do so without impacting everyone else. If additional servers are needed, they should be hung off of the sub-server's end of things and not the original server so the updates propagate off across the sub-servers rather than dragging the original server down. After all - who cares if it takes one or two milliseconds to get the information.
Now - knowing the above - why would anyone sue? Because the secondary company (the one who is sucking bandwidth from the server) usually doesn't want to pay for such services. Taken to it's extreme, a company could not function because all of it's resources would be devoted to simply handling these secondary requests. So there is a good reason why they feel they have to sue. It's pretty easy to understand once you get past all of the hype.
Any company has X amount of resources and Y number of customers. If the percentage of Y is reduced due to other companies sucking up all of the resources (X), then the company will go bankrupt. You can't live on air and neither can they. Simple as that.
Ok! Did I hear someone say "But what about search engines?" (I knew I did!) Search engines are not an easy thing to talk about. However, as far as I can tell all of the major search engines obey the robot.txt commands. Ones that don't should have to pay the sites they hit a fee. After all they are doing the same thing as the company in the article - sucking resources.
I don't work for either party involved in the lawsuit or the judge or the lawyers or anyone else involved in this matter.
I'm sorry but this guy sounds like he's eaten one too many Daffodil bulbs.
People like the net because it helps them get information. People hate the net because it gives out information about what they like to do. When you give up info on yourself, you hate it because it's like George Orwell's 1984. Some big brother IS actually watching you. Do you LIKE being watched all the time by a computer? I don't. I don't want someone else to know what I'm working on at home on my computer until I'm ready to share it with others. A truly smart computer card would remember everything that happened around you 24/7 so you could query it and ask it to repeat things you didn't really hear or pay attention to earlier. (So you don't forget to meet your wife at a restaurant or forget her birthday and the like.:-) ) But would you want everyone to know how long you were in the bathroom? Or WHY you were in the bathroom? Do we put smell sensors in the smart cards? Wouldn't they melt under some of these conditions?
Anyway, the guy's stuff is of an idyllic world where no one cares that the thief around the corner has a new supersmart card which can interrogate the machine once you've left and retrieve all of your information. Never mind your government has assured you that they didn't use Uranium 231 to power the card in your pocket and that new rash you've got on your rear has nothing to do with the experimental auto injection system they've installed into the current version of the smartcard so they can test their latest version of the plague on you. Never mind all of that.
But basically remember - there are too many people who do not trust the government, companies, and even their own families to allow us to EVER put ourselves at risk by becoming a mindless bunch of cows and bulls whose only purpose in life is to bring pleasure to those who want to have control over our lives. Maybe you are ready to get down on all fours and have a collar put around your neck - but I'm not.
And as for the rest of the six pages ask yourself this: If a beautiful looking giant spider started walking across your screen while you are logged on - wouldn't it freak you out? Heck, they had a commercial on TV where a roach crawled across the screen and the commercial had to be yanked because people were destroying their TVs trying to find the roach! And what about all of these viruses which come out. Don't you think someone's going to scream "virus!" when the spider crawls? After all - THEY didn't put that spider there. So some virus had to have done it! Right?
Common sense. People won't accept this. No matter what the wrapper.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
2. Coming up with different types of inputs. Someone at SIGGRAPH had a laser distance finder being used to emulate the mouse. Cost? $100.00 for the laser distance finder. Use a projector to display the computer's screen onto a wall, have the laser distance finder sitting in the corner. Break the beam and ta-da! Instant mouse positioning! I'm sure there are other ways of doing this too.
3. What about coming up with a new type of browser which decouples the graphics from the rest of the program so when you move from one OS to the next you just have to insert the new commands to do the graphics on it? Of course, this would mean creating a new type of browser also. :-) One which is based on a 3D programming language. 2D is, after all, just 3D with one plane always pointing towards the user/screen. Maybe call it BB for Basic Browser or PB for Perl Browser. Either way, the language should be really easy to use, non-OOP (because you are targeting a largely non-programmer audience), and should be able to support pre-compiled programs. I've been working on a similar thing in my spare time - but if someone else worked on a similar project that would probably get me more motivated than I have been. :-)
Have fun! :-)
There are two sides to this issue. The first is that the Supreme Court has already said that the Internet is like television or a newspaper. So it falls under the same category when it comes to the information served up by the various sites. So a company's information is free and should remain that way.
But look at the second side of this issue. When another company begins banging away at a site just to get the information out of it then that company is guilty of a Denial of Service charge. This is because for every request the second company makes of the first company's computer it takes away resources which are needed to handle the customer's requests.
To put this into focus, someone said it is like company A raiding company B's store with cameras, recorders, paper and pencils and interrogating the employees for every single price on every single item. This isn't allowed. But a single employee or manager can go into another store and take notes. It isn't illegal to do that so long as the person doesn't interfere with the normal operations of the store.
To give another example, it is ok to buy a newspaper and read through it to gauge how well your prices are doing versus the competition. But it isn't ok to call up the competition and go through their entire inventory over the phone. Again because you tie up their personel while doing so.
So what should be done? If another company wants to bang away at a given site's information they should pay a service fee to the other company. This service fee could be used to buy a small secondary computer, to hire (or have) someone monitor the system, and an interface (such as a 56K modem or DSL line). The system echos the real computer's transactions and makes them available for transfer. In this way companies which want to gather this information can do so without impacting everyone else. If additional servers are needed, they should be hung off of the sub-server's end of things and not the original server so the updates propagate off across the sub-servers rather than dragging the original server down. After all - who cares if it takes one or two milliseconds to get the information.
Now - knowing the above - why would anyone sue? Because the secondary company (the one who is sucking bandwidth from the server) usually doesn't want to pay for such services. Taken to it's extreme, a company could not function because all of it's resources would be devoted to simply handling these secondary requests. So there is a good reason why they feel they have to sue. It's pretty easy to understand once you get past all of the hype.
Any company has X amount of resources and Y number of customers. If the percentage of Y is reduced due to other companies sucking up all of the resources (X), then the company will go bankrupt. You can't live on air and neither can they. Simple as that.
Ok! Did I hear someone say "But what about search engines?" (I knew I did!) Search engines are not an easy thing to talk about. However, as far as I can tell all of the major search engines obey the robot.txt commands. Ones that don't should have to pay the sites they hit a fee. After all they are doing the same thing as the company in the article - sucking resources.
I don't work for either party involved in the lawsuit or the judge or the lawyers or anyone else involved in this matter.
Just my $0.02 worth. :-)
People like the net because it helps them get information. People hate the net because it gives out information about what they like to do. When you give up info on yourself, you hate it because it's like George Orwell's 1984. Some big brother IS actually watching you. Do you LIKE being watched all the time by a computer? I don't. I don't want someone else to know what I'm working on at home on my computer until I'm ready to share it with others. A truly smart computer card would remember everything that happened around you 24/7 so you could query it and ask it to repeat things you didn't really hear or pay attention to earlier. (So you don't forget to meet your wife at a restaurant or forget her birthday and the like. :-) ) But would you want everyone to know how long you were in the bathroom? Or WHY you were in the bathroom? Do we put smell sensors in the smart cards? Wouldn't they melt under some of these conditions?
Anyway, the guy's stuff is of an idyllic world where no one cares that the thief around the corner has a new supersmart card which can interrogate the machine once you've left and retrieve all of your information. Never mind your government has assured you that they didn't use Uranium 231 to power the card in your pocket and that new rash you've got on your rear has nothing to do with the experimental auto injection system they've installed into the current version of the smartcard so they can test their latest version of the plague on you. Never mind all of that.
But basically remember - there are too many people who do not trust the government, companies, and even their own families to allow us to EVER put ourselves at risk by becoming a mindless bunch of cows and bulls whose only purpose in life is to bring pleasure to those who want to have control over our lives. Maybe you are ready to get down on all fours and have a collar put around your neck - but I'm not.
And as for the rest of the six pages ask yourself this: If a beautiful looking giant spider started walking across your screen while you are logged on - wouldn't it freak you out? Heck, they had a commercial on TV where a roach crawled across the screen and the commercial had to be yanked because people were destroying their TVs trying to find the roach! And what about all of these viruses which come out. Don't you think someone's going to scream "virus!" when the spider crawls? After all - THEY didn't put that spider there. So some virus had to have done it! Right?
Common sense. People won't accept this. No matter what the wrapper. :-)