Gawd. If I had a dollar for every Star Trek book on the shelves that looked like either a complete bastardization of what Trek stood for or was a horrible attempt at stretching some more money out of an even-numbered Trek movie...
Well, lets just say I'm glad I never blew any cash on them. I've read a couple to see what they were like, but I had to slog through them.
Something is very wrong when the alleged "science fiction" section in your local bookstore is dominated by franchises (Star Trek, Star Wars, some alternate history bonehead whose name escapes me, but who publishes books at too great a rate to be writing them himself, yada yada yada, the list goes on).
You're most likely thinking of Harry Turtledove. I loved his first couple of alternate history books, but the rest in the series seemed to be rehashing the same thing over and over as padding. If that really is Turtledove cranking out books, I'd love to b his printer toner salesman.
The Star Wars books of a couple years back are what drove me away from Sci-Fi reading, which I only now returned when I checked out the KJA and BH Dune trilogy. I really didn't mind these because they seemed to dovetail right in with the events in the first Dune book. However, I think what people have fallen in love with is the "Dunesy" feel of the royal Houses that only really existed in the first half of that first book and which both Dune movies spent a lot of time on. The Butlerian Jihad and other Dune Legend books should be a better departure from that, but it will still have the old familiarities in strange form. I still have the Diamond Age and Red Mars on the shelf after the Dune 1-6 (re-reading 1-4) and Butlerian Jihad, so I hope there's something reall spectacular in there.
How about sales guys doing demos for applications written for Solaris sparc? Why spend the development $$$ to port to Solaris x86 just for sales guys to do demos when you can get a few of these babies to hand out to the sales guys.
Actually not so unorthodox. PGP's shred function did exactly that to securely delete files. Now, if you toss the PDA out, that's pretty radical security. Makes a whole new case for disposable devices.
This doesn't sound like anything new.
Any CCF format device such as a Pronto featured at RemoteCentral can handle your A/V equipment. There is software and hardware for controlling this on an iPaq. Using a BX24-AHT which is currently compatible with the Misterhouse home automation system, you will soon be able to control your lights and other X10 modules from such CCF devices by simply adding a $7 IR receiver. Add some IR repeaters around the house and you can control it all from anywhere in the house. Use something like a wireless Aquapad to access the home network and the Misterhouse web interface to control it all.
What "Future"? The tech is already here. Just use it.
RTFM will never get grandma to use Linux. The fact that you have to buy a crapintosh to use OS X is a complete crippler. Only once Linux gets close to what OS X offers will it completely bash MS on the PC.
One of the things that always defined the Mac interface was the idea of Human Interface rules when you programmed. MS has broken so many of them, and Linux can barely do any of that.
As a techie, I don't mind config files, but anyone who expects their product to be widely used by the public and does not provide a GUI should be shot. Note, I don't consider great things like Apache something that is widely used by the public. When grandma is setting up her own Apache server we sysadmins are in a world of trouble.
The Win98SE portion is still a license sold to Microsoft. The VMWare is yet another thing to purchase, and it they're less likely to spend the money for that than an MS upgrade.
IE goes straight to MSN and it's search search for many people.
.
That makes it all the more interesting that Windows should be such a big percentage. With the grassroots Linux users' opinion that Windows users are clueless, this should come as a surprise that they would change their search engine preference. I think it is going to come as a rude awakening that once people are given more of a choice to change their application settings by the latest MS service packs, that those MS users are going to try out the other options. But stay on Windows they will.
They're going with the red laser for now because later on they can use the same standard with the blue laser to have everyone throw their red-laser equipment out to upgrade. Thus they get money for both technologies rather than skipping a generation. There are always very early adopters who will buy a new technology out of some desperate need to solve an issue, no matter the cost or the marginal benefits.
For those of you who are HPaq-ese impaired, here is the message:
Dear HPaq customers, We thank you for having purchased our products in the past, but now that we have finalized our merger and cashed our options, we have lost our minds and come to the boggling conclusion that we don't want your money anymore. Please do not buy our products because honestly you can't trust us to inform you when there is a defect with our product. This includes any servers, and handhelds our merger partner might peddle, printers, or whatever the hell it is these people do. As a sign of our gratitude for your service, we will be providing each future customer with a free Berber mousepad under which you can sweep any problems you discover. I you believe the problem doesn't exist, and we believe the problem doesn't exist, then we can work together to warp reality and drive cusomers away like poor starving slobs on the street corner to a free luncheon. Personally, I don't recommend you use these things in anything that might risk a human life or attempt to improve society in any way. Heck, I wouldn't run my porn servers on this crap. Well, gotta run, muy coke dealer is here. And don't forget to F off!
P.S. - Don't unravel the mousepad to see how it's made or we'll sue your ass into orbit under the DCMA.
I am convinced that since we see tons of crappy games written by these "professional human coders" with a great grasp of DirectX and OpenGL, this will simply open the floodgates to more poorly implemented games that will just aggravate us even closer to the point of smashing our keyboards through our screens. If we aren't already there.
Every major company providing broadband got it wrong. Modems peak out at 56kbps. That's usually about 4KB/s, 5 if you're lucky. No single consumer can hurt your bandwidth.
Riiiiight. Because all ISPs have unlimited bandwidth at *their* disposal. All those 56k people connected, no matter how hard they have that line pegged, are generating no traffic that the ISP has to route upstream. TO make it worse they are oversubscribed and can't handle buying more equipment because they aren't making money. When they do get more customers, they are not going to upgrade/expand the network until things start breaking because they need to watch the pennies. That's a vicious circle they have there.
I think of Feng Shui as nothing more than how to make things more appealing in a minimalistic and organised way. Take the whole "flow of the room" concept. Obviously people are going to find your room unappealing if they are constantly tripping on a tipped-over coat rack and having to wade through a sea of clothes because there are no closets or dressers in your home. On the other hand, organizing it in such a fashion would make it really appealing. I feel that somewhere along the way this was once a "human interface for a house" type of rules that was made into "superstition" to make it easier for the common folk to accept as a set of rules. Somewhere in it there is a kernel of truth that isn't a bad idea to check out.
OK, once you have the entertainment PC decked out and running, you'll notice that the cooling fans are practically drowning out your conversations. It's also probably not matching the decor in the house. What type of housing do people use to match the furniture? Since I have a TiVO and Audiotron, I don't use my Lycoris Linux system for audio or video playback or even general login, but as a Misterhouse home automation PC and fileserver for the Audiotron. I have a black GXA2048 Altra rack, some black Optimus speakers, and a Sony 51" RPTV; a case sitting in the middle of the floor won't cut it. I want to have this thing hidden in something so the noise is really muffled - preferably black to match it all - but don't want the K7-700 melting down from being locked away. Does anyone have any links to anything that would fit the bill?
Somehow I think you're making my point with that last line. What would happen to the Internet if the US suddenly blinked off the map? Are you really going to be reading content off a server in India or Nairobi? And don't forget to ask people outside the US what they think of little companies like Sprint and ATT when they have Vodaphone and friends.
My comment is not "the brainwashed Microsoft party line" that you morons seem to cast on every comment that slants towards Microsoft in any way. It's a realization that they have woven themselves into the fabric of industry and entertainment. They are a raw fact of life now like eating and pissing.
I'm a UNIX lover through and through, with Solaris at the top of my list, but I have no delusions that Sun, Linux, or any of the other vendors could even begin to pick up the pieces within a few years. Maybe there would be something that would shine a few years after, but not after making "stagnant economy" an understatement. Statements like all the replies to my post prove that most of you know nothing of Windows networking at the enterprise level and how things like OpenOffice/StarOffice/Ximian are only the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be replicated to covering the day-to-day productivity apps that Microsoft has grafted onto the world. Your little experiences with IE and a few FPS games notwithstanding, there is more to it.
Just a few ex-Microsoft employees? I don't think so. Think of the software vendors, game stores (half these stores are game consoles, half Windows games), and anyone else that is technology related in the most minor way, most of which are skating on thin profit margins as it is, suddenly losing about half their revenue. Clueless users and companies cut off from tech support when something important bombs. The market skitishness after September 11 showed us what happens when businesses disappear of the face of the planet, and they were minor league by comparison. I think this is more like hurricanes off butterfly wings.
Remember that companies like Microsoft are the powerplants of the economy. Laugh while they fail and you will be crying about not being able to eat. Consumers power these companies, so be careful which side you are rooting for when you plunk down your dollars. Hard to find employment from Sony in Japan when you live in the US.
Re:Well if you really want to spend $80.00
on
StarOffice 6.0
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· Score: 1
It's easier just to stare blankly at a wall and say "hold on...ok, I just rebooted it, now what?"
Re:Well if you really want to spend $80.00
on
StarOffice 6.0
·
· Score: 1
One of the things I hate about paying for tech support is that you can hear the guy on the other end of the phone flipping pages in a binder while you are explaining the problem.
"There is a bug in the spell checker that converts all my words into gibberish."
"OK, lets start at page 1. Is your computer plugged in?"
"But that's not where the problem is."
"Please, sir. We need to analyze the whole situation. Have you tried rebooting?"
Simple. Tivo has a commercial skip that the user engages (fast forward) and the ReplayTV has automated it. ReplayTV has made it too easy to ignore the media's wallets so they have drawn their collective ire. Tivo is unfortunately waiting in the wings to see the result and has not noticed that whatever paintbrush is used to color SonicBlue will be spattering on them. We as consumers are now too lethargic to protect our privacy and other rights, so we don't bother to fight it any more than to post a few blurbs in a message board. So all that is left is for these media giants to become more powerful as they steamroll over everything. So laying down for a raping is what the market will bear at this time.
Doesn't this fall under the 5th Amendment somehow? They should have the right to avoid incriminating themselves. The burden of proof is on the suing party to show their side as being true. Or is corporate America somehow immune/unbefitting of the constitutional laws? They are an entity, too, composed of real people, whether you like them or not.
Do you think the world of computing is geared towards the people who make the programs or the people who buy the programs the programmers make? Which do you actually think is the bigger percentage? Sure, the programmers pay unreal amounts for the developer packages, but they each should very well hope that they at least represent 100 or more buyers just to cover their salary. And Joe Sixpack determines what the market bears.
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Gawd. If I had a dollar for every Star Trek book on the shelves that looked like either a complete bastardization of what Trek stood for or was a horrible attempt at stretching some more money out of an even-numbered Trek movie...
Well, lets just say I'm glad I never blew any cash on them. I've read a couple to see what they were like, but I had to slog through them.
Something is very wrong when the alleged "science fiction" section in your local bookstore is dominated by franchises (Star Trek, Star Wars, some alternate history bonehead whose name escapes me, but who publishes books at too great a rate to be writing them himself, yada yada yada, the list goes on).
You're most likely thinking of Harry Turtledove. I loved his first couple of alternate history books, but the rest in the series seemed to be rehashing the same thing over and over as padding. If that really is Turtledove cranking out books, I'd love to b his printer toner salesman.
The Star Wars books of a couple years back are what drove me away from Sci-Fi reading, which I only now returned when I checked out the KJA and BH Dune trilogy. I really didn't mind these because they seemed to dovetail right in with the events in the first Dune book. However, I think what people have fallen in love with is the "Dunesy" feel of the royal Houses that only really existed in the first half of that first book and which both Dune movies spent a lot of time on. The Butlerian Jihad and other Dune Legend books should be a better departure from that, but it will still have the old familiarities in strange form. I still have the Diamond Age and Red Mars on the shelf after the Dune 1-6 (re-reading 1-4) and Butlerian Jihad, so I hope there's something reall spectacular in there.
How about sales guys doing demos for applications written for Solaris sparc? Why spend the development $$$ to port to Solaris x86 just for sales guys to do demos when you can get a few of these babies to hand out to the sales guys.
Actually not so unorthodox. PGP's shred function did exactly that to securely delete files. Now, if you toss the PDA out, that's pretty radical security. Makes a whole new case for disposable devices.
When have you seen window washers inside your building? I wonder if this stuff is toxic when it burns.
This was already on the news this week. It's being touted as a non-toxic way to clean a building of anthrax and reoccupy the building within hours.
This doesn't sound like anything new. Any CCF format device such as a Pronto featured at RemoteCentral can handle your A/V equipment. There is software and hardware for controlling this on an iPaq. Using a BX24-AHT which is currently compatible with the Misterhouse home automation system, you will soon be able to control your lights and other X10 modules from such CCF devices by simply adding a $7 IR receiver. Add some IR repeaters around the house and you can control it all from anywhere in the house. Use something like a wireless Aquapad to access the home network and the Misterhouse web interface to control it all. What "Future"? The tech is already here. Just use it.
RTFM will never get grandma to use Linux. The fact that you have to buy a crapintosh to use OS X is a complete crippler. Only once Linux gets close to what OS X offers will it completely bash MS on the PC.
One of the things that always defined the Mac interface was the idea of Human Interface rules when you programmed. MS has broken so many of them, and Linux can barely do any of that.
As a techie, I don't mind config files, but anyone who expects their product to be widely used by the public and does not provide a GUI should be shot. Note, I don't consider great things like Apache something that is widely used by the public. When grandma is setting up her own Apache server we sysadmins are in a world of trouble.
The Win98SE portion is still a license sold to Microsoft. The VMWare is yet another thing to purchase, and it they're less likely to spend the money for that than an MS upgrade.
IE goes straight to MSN and it's search search for many people.
.That makes it all the more interesting that Windows should be such a big percentage. With the grassroots Linux users' opinion that Windows users are clueless, this should come as a surprise that they would change their search engine preference. I think it is going to come as a rude awakening that once people are given more of a choice to change their application settings by the latest MS service packs, that those MS users are going to try out the other options. But stay on Windows they will.
They're going with the red laser for now because later on they can use the same standard with the blue laser to have everyone throw their red-laser equipment out to upgrade. Thus they get money for both technologies rather than skipping a generation. There are always very early adopters who will buy a new technology out of some desperate need to solve an issue, no matter the cost or the marginal benefits.
For those of you who are HPaq-ese impaired, here is the message:
Dear HPaq customers,
We thank you for having purchased our products in the past, but now that we have finalized our merger and cashed our options, we have lost our minds and come to the boggling conclusion that we don't want your money anymore. Please do not buy our products because honestly you can't trust us to inform you when there is a defect with our product. This includes any servers, and handhelds our merger partner might peddle, printers, or whatever the hell it is these people do. As a sign of our gratitude for your service, we will be providing each future customer with a free Berber mousepad under which you can sweep any problems you discover. I you believe the problem doesn't exist, and we believe the problem doesn't exist, then we can work together to warp reality and drive cusomers away like poor starving slobs on the street corner to a free luncheon. Personally, I don't recommend you use these things in anything that might risk a human life or attempt to improve society in any way. Heck, I wouldn't run my porn servers on this crap. Well, gotta run, muy coke dealer is here. And don't forget to F off!
P.S. - Don't unravel the mousepad to see how it's made or we'll sue your ass into orbit under the DCMA.
I am convinced that since we see tons of crappy games written by these "professional human coders" with a great grasp of DirectX and OpenGL, this will simply open the floodgates to more poorly implemented games that will just aggravate us even closer to the point of smashing our keyboards through our screens. If we aren't already there.
Every major company providing broadband got it wrong. Modems peak out at 56kbps. That's usually about 4KB/s, 5 if you're lucky. No single consumer can hurt your bandwidth.
Riiiiight. Because all ISPs have unlimited bandwidth at *their* disposal. All those 56k people connected, no matter how hard they have that line pegged, are generating no traffic that the ISP has to route upstream. TO make it worse they are oversubscribed and can't handle buying more equipment because they aren't making money. When they do get more customers, they are not going to upgrade/expand the network until things start breaking because they need to watch the pennies. That's a vicious circle they have there.
I think of Feng Shui as nothing more than how to make things more appealing in a minimalistic and organised way. Take the whole "flow of the room" concept. Obviously people are going to find your room unappealing if they are constantly tripping on a tipped-over coat rack and having to wade through a sea of clothes because there are no closets or dressers in your home. On the other hand, organizing it in such a fashion would make it really appealing. I feel that somewhere along the way this was once a "human interface for a house" type of rules that was made into "superstition" to make it easier for the common folk to accept as a set of rules. Somewhere in it there is a kernel of truth that isn't a bad idea to check out.
OK, once you have the entertainment PC decked out and running, you'll notice that the cooling fans are practically drowning out your conversations. It's also probably not matching the decor in the house. What type of housing do people use to match the furniture? Since I have a TiVO and Audiotron, I don't use my Lycoris Linux system for audio or video playback or even general login, but as a Misterhouse home automation PC and fileserver for the Audiotron. I have a black GXA2048 Altra rack, some black Optimus speakers, and a Sony 51" RPTV; a case sitting in the middle of the floor won't cut it. I want to have this thing hidden in something so the noise is really muffled - preferably black to match it all - but don't want the K7-700 melting down from being locked away. Does anyone have any links to anything that would fit the bill?
Somehow I think you're making my point with that last line. What would happen to the Internet if the US suddenly blinked off the map? Are you really going to be reading content off a server in India or Nairobi? And don't forget to ask people outside the US what they think of little companies like Sprint and ATT when they have Vodaphone and friends.
My comment is not "the brainwashed Microsoft party line" that you morons seem to cast on every comment that slants towards Microsoft in any way. It's a realization that they have woven themselves into the fabric of industry and entertainment. They are a raw fact of life now like eating and pissing.
I'm a UNIX lover through and through, with Solaris at the top of my list, but I have no delusions that Sun, Linux, or any of the other vendors could even begin to pick up the pieces within a few years. Maybe there would be something that would shine a few years after, but not after making "stagnant economy" an understatement. Statements like all the replies to my post prove that most of you know nothing of Windows networking at the enterprise level and how things like OpenOffice/StarOffice/Ximian are only the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be replicated to covering the day-to-day productivity apps that Microsoft has grafted onto the world. Your little experiences with IE and a few FPS games notwithstanding, there is more to it.
Just a few ex-Microsoft employees? I don't think so. Think of the software vendors, game stores (half these stores are game consoles, half Windows games), and anyone else that is technology related in the most minor way, most of which are skating on thin profit margins as it is, suddenly losing about half their revenue. Clueless users and companies cut off from tech support when something important bombs. The market skitishness after September 11 showed us what happens when businesses disappear of the face of the planet, and they were minor league by comparison. I think this is more like hurricanes off butterfly wings.
Remember that companies like Microsoft are the powerplants of the economy. Laugh while they fail and you will be crying about not being able to eat. Consumers power these companies, so be careful which side you are rooting for when you plunk down your dollars. Hard to find employment from Sony in Japan when you live in the US.
It's easier just to stare blankly at a wall and say "hold on...ok, I just rebooted it, now what?"
C-3PO will be on the senate floor in the next film now that he is by Padme's side who happens to be married to his owner.
Soylent Green is made from people.
One of the things I hate about paying for tech support is that you can hear the guy on the other end of the phone flipping pages in a binder while you are explaining the problem.
"There is a bug in the spell checker that converts all my words into gibberish."
"OK, lets start at page 1. Is your computer plugged in?"
"But that's not where the problem is."
"Please, sir. We need to analyze the whole situation. Have you tried rebooting?"
Simple. Tivo has a commercial skip that the user engages (fast forward) and the ReplayTV has automated it. ReplayTV has made it too easy to ignore the media's wallets so they have drawn their collective ire. Tivo is unfortunately waiting in the wings to see the result and has not noticed that whatever paintbrush is used to color SonicBlue will be spattering on them. We as consumers are now too lethargic to protect our privacy and other rights, so we don't bother to fight it any more than to post a few blurbs in a message board. So all that is left is for these media giants to become more powerful as they steamroll over everything. So laying down for a raping is what the market will bear at this time.
Doesn't this fall under the 5th Amendment somehow? They should have the right to avoid incriminating themselves. The burden of proof is on the suing party to show their side as being true. Or is corporate America somehow immune/unbefitting of the constitutional laws? They are an entity, too, composed of real people, whether you like them or not.
Do you think the world of computing is geared towards the people who make the programs or the people who buy the programs the programmers make? Which do you actually think is the bigger percentage? Sure, the programmers pay unreal amounts for the developer packages, but they each should very well hope that they at least represent 100 or more buyers just to cover their salary. And Joe Sixpack determines what the market bears.