Wouldn't that be nice. There are already barcodes on all of the bags. It would be a simple matter to use RFID instead. And hey, wouldn't it be nice if you had one on your ticket, then they could tell that you were on the plane and that your luggage was not, or vise versa. I guess I'd have to say that while I'm fairly big on privacy, I'd gladly be tracked if it ment that my luggage would find me. (Hey, if the spooks are following me, as long as they are watching my luggage, I'm happy) I guess I've just done the dance with the baggage claim one to many times to really stress about my 'privacy' in an airport terminal. They already make me take my shoes off, don't trust me to have a lid on the beverage I buy *in* the gate and rifle through my luggage while I'm waiting... I don't think there's much left to know other than I'm in the can vs standing in line at the Cinna-bun.
I think the RFID/tin foil hat thing is going a bit far. I actually work with RFID. (GEN 2 tags) They are not evil, they are actually (at least with how I use them) trying to reduce the cost cunsumers pay by helping people manage inventory, something noone seems to be able to do. I think there just needs to be a nice little contract with the public. i.e. the vendors stick nice bright red RFID stickers on boxes, and people too lazy to take their razor blades out of the box can get 'tracked'. The fact of the matter is that that number (at least how it's used on the tags I use) mean jack to most anyone but the interested parties and retail systems are not really that advanced that you could actually be tracked by the tag on your box of Wheat Thins. Honesty, openness, and we can all get along.
My first thought from a letter frequency stand point was that the even division of the alphabet was bound to be off on a frequency stand point, but oddly enough, if you believe this chart (which I did only on a quick Google... first table I could paste into a spreadsheet:) ), it's more balanced than the QWERTY layout. (The alpha layout is 47.55% on the left hand with the QWERTY as 60.23%)
Of course the enter key and all the punctuation throw a wrench in there, but interesting for a several minute assessment. (Karma wh0r3s are left with Dvorak as an exercise.) Personally, I'm lost on those damn alpha-layout labelers. There has to be some secret QWERTY cabal out there somewhere that will put a stop to this.
So, I know how development cycles go, but release dates on these things always remind me of the old slapstick routine where the guy goes to pick up his hat, only to kick it, tries again, kicks again, ad nauseum. That and it's already not possible to get on a plane with a lighter, there are resrictions on shipping lithium ion. Good luck on getting through the airport with your fuel cell. >;^)
Ever hear the expression, "Fish for a man, he eats that day, teach a man to fish and he eats for his whole life"?? Simplistic yes, but the view "Just feed them" only works for today. Who then feeds them tomorrow? The next day? I look at all of these countries and all the poverty and one very basic fact comes to mind as to why they are where they are. No natural resources. Period. Why is the US where it is today? Capitalism, yes, but all of the natural resources in our borders sure helped that.
If these people want to keep living where they are they need to exploit the one resource they have, themselves. Now they can either, make shoes for Nike or, get and education and join a lot of the other world in the information biz. Seeing as the shipping costs are cheaper, I'd shoot for the latter.
Stop the ludite bullshit. Let's let the third world get on the Net and see what they have to say about things. Or is the argument really that the longer they stay uneducated, off of the Net and out of the global mind, the longer we can ignore them?
I thought about this as I heard that the local public radio station was going to archive all of its old recordings to digital. Even with NPR (a *public* radio station that I give money to) they are putting audio on the Net in Real Audio. This was OK as long as I had NetTransport and a Real Audio player burned into the ROM of my Treo... But when I picked up a LifeDrive and finaly had gigs of space to carry audio, I was rudely awakened to the fact that Real *has* no player that works on the LifeDrive. Makes you wonder *what* format they are going to archive things to
Using Linux and dealing with my wife's Mac, I've sadly come to be used to this, but the bigger issue here is both that in the future, people will find that the media they find is not playable, not do to the fact that they can't read the media (which is still and issue) but because the media is in an undocumented, proprietory format. Look at DVD. They mention Laser Disc in TFA but I can't (legally) play a DVD *today* on my Linux box, much less years from now after the "trade secret" knowledge of how to decode the info is gone. The same for project Gutenburg vs all the e-book formats. I think it's a good idea to get *everything* in digital, but with all the crappy DRM ideas that will only let an e-book work on *one* reader, that info is doomed. Info needs to be digital so that the people *today* have affordable access, but in something more concrete for tomorrow.
It's not tech that is the issue here folks, its the IP laws that will kill the media. The sad part is that it's probably safer to put my will on a USB key than a CD (both stupid ideas if you want people to read them) and paper makes both look fragile in terms of time. But what would you say if the records were in a bank in a safe depost in New Orleans? (9th ward maybe)
To make a short story long. Yes, digital will pose and issue, but only if we don't think about both the medium *and* the format. The sick joke of the industry today is that while we could now probably throw a portable DVD player in a time capsule with the DVD of our message, if the RIAA and MPAA have their way, the people of the future won't be able to copy the data. That would be piracy!
The one thing that gets me about the Telcos is that at least here in Minneapolis, Cingular (at the time AT&T) forced the move. All of the cities police squads use CDPD to talk back to the HQ (for which AT&T gladly charged them) then a few years ago they stated that they were going to drop all CDPD in favor of GPRS. My company (which uses it for other reasons) was not to happy, but the city had just invested all that hard earned tax payer dollars into the radio system. So, now they are looking at WiFi.
My understanding is that here in Minneapolis, the city is going to give a thrid party right of way to deloy the WiFi and cap the amount that they can charge the city for use. To make things more profitable they are allowing that same company to offer the WiFi to the public (most likely here for a fee)
The one point here is that even if it's not *free* WiFi there is a legitimate use for city wide WiFi. Police cars are the first. But if it is free and the cost of the embedded WiFi devices goes down, there are many other things the city could use the net for. Reading meters is one. I canned my POTS line a while back (no point for it anymore, waste of cash and only telemarketers called the line) only to find several months later that all of the water meters in the city dial in via a modem to the city! So now I have all my bill estimated.:) But other things like parking meters, street lights, etc. all could save the city time and money if they could tell the city themselves that they needed fixing. It's not replacing jobs, it's letting people with city jobs spend their time providing the services that we pay them to do as opposed to spending time *looking* for something to do.:)
And before modding me as flaimbait, let me explain. Disclaimer: I've coded (and been paid to do so) on Mac OS 7/8/9/X, DOS, Win 95/98/2000/XP, Palm OS 3/4/5/6, Linux, HPUX, Solaris, etc... Basicly I'm a Rodney King of OSs, they all have merits and they all suck in some way. Open your mind and code a bit before you flame an OS
I had a friend years back that actually *owned* a BeBox, in all it's blue blinking glory. At the time, we were Mac coders. We marvled at the twin LED cpu load meters on the sides, we watched the wicked kewl graphics demos that really should not have been possible at that time. And we were in awe...
Then they dropped the hardware. Understandable, they were Years Ahead Of Their Time(TM) on case mods, and hardware leads to actual loss. (Where as software, short of your cost in printed packaging and plastic CDs is slim.) Fine, it ran on a Mac, there where UMax clones to be had, and all was good...
Then Jobs came back. Good for Apple, bad for any clone vendor or anyone trying to make an OS *other* than MacOS run. (And lets face it folks even if you are a Mac zealot, you have to admit that OS 7/ early OS 8 (basicly OS 7 *skinned*) sucked pretty hard. Be ran circles around it. Hell even my cheap Linux laptop with X was doing painted window drags as opposed to the "outline" window move) Fine, Be went to x86, and some of us where like "kewl", but by then the alternate OS crowd was all about Linux and all the hot stuff was for Linux, so it was still just a toy. The other kick in the head was the rumors that Apple was about to buy Be (knowing the OS was damn kewl) but Job (again) stepped in and said, no, we're going to take my failed company Next and use that. (Any one else here about the Steve Jobs/Star Trek link of every other company/movie sucking) So another strike. I was able to play with "Rhapsody" way back then and the Yellow Box/Blue Box world of the Mac of tomorrow. (Ribbing the Mac people that they were bending to the POSIX side of the force.)
So be goes limping along. They beg vendors to install Be dual boot with Windoze *for*free*. No go. In the mean time, *some* of us got over the fact that Jobs killed the Newton, got a Palm III (which was finally, in our eyes, a viable, hackable platform) and being the MetroWerks people that we were and oh so familiar API for the Palm, switched over. (The GCC port was a big help to.) All was well.
I switched over to the dark side for a few years and did some Windoze coding (for food), still dabbling in Mac coding and Palm. OS X (finally) arrived. I moved my cheese to be able to get paid to code for the Palm. All was good. And then came the faithful PalmSource where we all learned that some of the essence of Be had seeped into Palm and OS 6 (Cobalt, that damn blue again) It was deva vu all over again. Watching the rotating cubes (again) and all of the other fun things I was seeing again for the first time. I was overjoyed... but with that same nagging feeling that this was not going to end well. Even as we partyed with Skyy Vodka and all of the other glowing blueness... the curse was there....
And here we are, PalmSource axed the BeNess of Cobalt and is going Linux (and was just bought out.) And someone is going to even *try* and hint that Be will "make a come back". I for one will be staying the hell away from it at all costs.
I expect to hear of some freak meteor accident with a key developer in the near future.
... and claim that thanks to Darwin being BSD based, it's been "running on the XBox for years". Rumors on SlashDot will surface about pirated versions on the upcoming 'Liger' release ('bred' using GAs for its magical cross platform qualites) all ready being available in Torrent form.
Oh and of course Marathon will replace Halo as the defacto multiplayer game on the XBox... Did I miss anything? Oh the rumors of the upcoming Amiga port.
It's easy to date photos if you have some frame of reference. In Minnesota we have the Severs Corn Maze (get it, maize maze haha, boy can us Minnesotans whoop it up!) They normally do a different maze each year. I looked it up for fun and it dates it as either 2002 or 2003 (they just had to have the same map those years.) You can see the past mazes on their web site through the path "Our Story" > "Past Mazes" > "More" x 5. (Warning, total Flash site ahead) Looks like they dug out the "Corn Maze" letters for the parking lot by the time the Google photo was taken. (Both 2000 and 2004 they had the year in the maze itself, would have helped here) MSN has a lovely black and white photo of dirt in the same place for the curious. No help there.... My guess is that we're getting recycled Terra Server photos Not a shocker, but with the change M$ throws around, you'd think that they could get some fresher (post 09/11/2001 at least) photos.
Not to start another My Favorite Google Map thread... This was on topic.... really.
I've been working on web stuff as of late and am always utterly amazed at the strings that come out of browsers. Why is it that in the land of arguments over standards on HTML, CSS, etc there is never any gripe about standardizing the UA string? (Yes I know that most browsers are forced to lie because of moronic web sites, but can't we spoof a standardized string?)
Take handhelds to start. Blazer, on the Treo 600, for the most part claims that it is Windows 95, with handy addition of tacking on the screen size a the end (i.e. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160x160)(wow, that would be nice to see in a spec, no? Rather then the "This best viewed at" crap.) Jeers for saying you're Win95, but big points on the screen size. But it goes on. Even ie is never just ie, oh no, there's your.NET CLR version, all of the spyware that's installed itself. What a mess!
It's a catch 22. Smart websites are nice in the case of handhelds if they are done like say Google, they give you the handheld version of the site and let you opt into the normal view. Great! I'd argue that *all* browsers should send the current window size. I can't tell you how many sites I've been on on my PC and had to stretch the window just to read the text.
The other one where they detect your device and send you to a page... and don't let you go elsewhere. (T-Mobile bundles hotspot software with the Palm LifeDrive, but just try and go to T-Mobiles homepage on a LifeDrive... just try it.)
So, standardized strings to UA, good. Helping out small screen users, good. Hell even the I've-worked-for-3-days-to get-this-to-display-the-same-in-FireFox-and-IE-and -I'm just-going-to-break-down-and-serve-different-pages is fine, as long as you just default to something over than "You must have IE 6 to view this page"
I use to travel in circles where reliability was compared to the dial tone of a phone... when you pick it up, it was always there. (of course except for midnight on Dec 31, 1999 when everyone picked up the phone at once to test just that, doh!)
My theory is that the people on the computer side, realizing that it was not in fact possible to move up to that level, instead opted to bring phone quality down to a more acceptable level. And the "smartphone" was born....
Having spent many hours in server rooms, freezing my butt off, (As you usually only have to do major work in the summer, on weekends, when your dressed for it.... not) I've often wondered why racks/servers aren't designed with an intake on one end and an outtake on the other. Or at least just a sealed rack with a connection at the top/bottom. (It'd be like a freezer section for servers, you could even leave notes, like IPs in the frost on the glass!) Now granted it would most likely be doomed to be vendor specific, but we're used to that with the rails already, right? >;^)
Seriously, you'd think cooking the units would be much more efficient. You could lock down things like humidity, and even cool things well below what makes sense now (power wise that is).
Oh well, I suppose all of that makes way to much sense.
Vendors miss the boat on tablets...
on
IBM Tablet Announced
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
My personal annoyance about the "tablet PC" market is that latter part... the "PC". When they first started the craze way back in 2000 or so, I thought, it would be a cool idea. Meaning just a tablet Something with a nice, readable screen (digital paper was all the buzz as well) that I could use to read normal 8.5x11 documentation on. Maybe take notes, but that's it You know, like a tablet of paper. Simple, thin, low power. Kind of an over grown PDA. I don't want the PC part, I have a nice desktop for when I'm at my desk and a pretty swell laptop that I do work on in a more mobile fasion (read coffee shop hacking). The missing piece is the tablet. Something to take with when I walk away from both. Something I can read on the bus, or curl up in a chair with.
Yes I have a stack of PDA's in my junk drawer. I read quite a bit on a Palm III and I'm up to watching vids on the bus on my PalmOne LiveDrive. It's not the same. I can't sit outside and read (can't see the screen in direct light) and I still end up carrying a notebook and killing trees to print RFC's (laser double-sided, 2-up... I don't need back problems as well as getting stoned by tree huggers)
Is it a plot by the paper companies? (Or ink/toner sellers?) This is what's keeping paper alive. It's all these reviewers that complain that this tablet is a little wimpy on the processor or that tablet won't replace a laptop. Duh! Not the point. Charging $2k plus ain't going to help either. Let's take a big step back, and work on good old hirez, black and white text folks, you know, like in every best selling book, manual and most all newspapers. Then we can go WiFi and bluetooth keyboards and the mess.
I was in the public sector for a while. People always would look at me for poo-pooing direct deposit. Little did they know that the bank involved had them running the data over on a weekly basis on a floppy disk. The program to generate that disk was the biggest chunk of crap I've seen in my software days (from my coding and all the 2 bit shareware I've seen) Scary stuff.
Now I'm in a bigger corp, that not only demands that you are direct deposit, but is not trying to get you to give up the paper copy they send you to tell you they paid you. (No thank you) That and now the crapware exists as what we are supposed to do our expence reporting to AMEX. My wife (stillin the public sector) already has to go online and print hers regularly if she wants to keep it. (Ask yourself if you trust your company to not lose that data.) This is *not* tin foil hat stuff folks. I can't wait until some outsourced online paycheck viewing software gets hacked and people are in the same boat.
People outside the sectors have to realize. We want this stuff. But not with the mentality that this industry treats things. Things are very lax, and the players in the field seem to be mostly "consultants" that don't really know what they are doing but are good at making the higher ups feel better. This needs to be opened up. The data formats need to be transparent and there needs to be some competition. If your system can't stand someone knowing how it works and still be secure, it wasn't "secure" begin with.
So where is the site that's tracking all of this crap anyway. Step up with a link for some Karma points. Let's see ratings, by company on who has it togather (or no yet hacked at least) Then people can start ditching groups that don't protect their info. (Or at least give someone new a chance to lose it)
Seriously folks! I just finally switched over to an optical scrolly wheely mouse thingy as I found one in the discount bin at the local Micro Center. (like $7 wahoo!) Before that I was using the serial mouse (at least it was only 9 pin) mouse from like '93. Why, because I don't play "twitch" games, and I've been a pro at the both-button-press-for-the-third button for years. (That and the X10 driver that I pulled on my last box update didn't play well with the mouse.:) I'd say the same for my keyboard. I've been through countless boxen, as many kernels (more actually) and never saw the need.
Not to pull out the old "They don't make 'em like they used to crap." (well, they don't and they don't cost what they used to either) But the long and the short of it is until you can't buy them at Walmart (VHS anyone?) they ain't goin' anywhere.
However, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has yet to ratify the mobile WiMax standard, known as 802.16e.
Right. So the question is this, who really defines a standard a body like IEEE, or the first set of vendors to hit the market with a workable product. Sad, but painfully true. I say bully for them. Even if they come out with their own proprietary setup, if they release it soon, it'll only force the others to follow. That and it's not like I *really* used to choice in the telcom space anyway.(modem types, locked cell phones, etc)
Telcoms need to find a niche and move there fast. "3G" is going to hit too little too late. My city is one of the brave that's planning on lighting up public WiFi which will blow the doors off any of the offerings that are coming Real Soon Now(TM) from our beloved telcos. Nokia's not stupid. I can see them offering a VOIP cellphone when the time is right. (And T-Mobile may be thinking about biting from what I here)
That, and when it happens, it's going to be the areas with crappy cell coverage thumbing thier noses at what will by then be some 3 remaining cell companies.
I'd start snatching up any dark fiber out there if I had the spare change to do so. I wouldn't be shocked at all if in a near future, cell phone companies have to roll to the old POTS model of not charging for local minutes and make their cash on long distance routing. I only own a cell now (ditched the POTS a while back) I have no qualms about VIOPing home from a free WiFi access point for local calls.
Did some Mac programming many moons ago (pre OS 8 or so) The older file systems didn't really have directory paths like some one from DOS/Unix thought of them. Sure there was a finder and things where displayed like they had a "path" but you had to go through the toolkit and you couldn't have two files in different directories with the same name. It was bloody odd and somewhat difficult to use from a programmer stand point. (Any other crusty Mac coders want to clarify? Hypercard stack people excluded. >;) )
I say bully for anyone trying something new on file organization, but I think the battle is more on the users interface to the files and not the actual storage. Making people dig for things is rather low tech anyway. PC files should be organized by concepts and not location (again, as the user sees them) If I want to look for files, I should put in "Bob" ( a predefined concept that I put in) and get back pictures of Bob, documents I wrote (for/with/to) him, e-mail, and even files that I got from him. Add concepts, narrow the search and you have your file. Apps would of course have to be set up to tag as much data for you (Bob's e-mail was on the message that contained the file, etc) But it's a good start.
We can't hope to reach a semantic web until we get used to dealing with all data in a semantic nature. The problem is that issue is that it goes against the profit model of companies on the Net. (That only want you to get lost in *their* poorly designed site. Anyone else miss the *old* CDNow?) I can see a start with Semantic Shopping(TM) But you need a vender netural, Froogle-like set up where you can look for the concept "Rock" and "Top Forty" and get links to buy songs, CDs, and videos of the related query from all vendors. (An yes, at this rate it will be Google doing it.)
Anyway. I'm sure what ever it is it will be Insanely Great (TM), The Next Big Thing (TM) and if there is any merit to it Redmond will quietly add it at some point after Apple has ditched it... and we'll then be able to have comments about way back when Apple was ahead of its time.
'Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?'
I find this really odd as someone that ditched my land line and now *only* use my cell. The number one requirement with that was that I could use it anywhere in my house.
I work for a large-ish company and as such have the luxury of being able to take test units home from all of the vendors. We ended up with T-Mobile, but the main reason for that was that I can be in my basement and still talk on the phone. On a humerous aside I have a friend who has Verizon and can only manage to get text messages out of his house. I guess I can tell him now that it's just because he has 'unreal expectations'. (My phone works just fine in said same house.)
It's really about the service folks. If Verizon was the only carrier that worked, that's where I'd be. When my city lights up with Wi-Fi, that's where I'll be doing VOIP. At least I can rest easy knowing that Verizon won't be bidding on that project.
I'm all for campaign reform, but it just seems odd that anyone could limit 'public communication' with respect to the Internet. Granted banner ads add a whole new dimension to reaching an audience. Even if they could place restrictions on overt campaigning, its the shadow tactics that have more effect anyway. ie You can shape someone's opinion by what you don't print/say sometimes more than what you do. I myself read news from many sources and people I know and talk with point me to articles on all sides of the coin. Unfortunately some people out there can't get past their one news source. (Fox/CNN/blah/blah they all have a bias folks) But people aren't changing view at that point anyway.
Of course even if they did try and limit things. If they can't control porn/spam/gambling/etc on the net now, they sure as hell wouldn't be able to do anything about people blogging on servers outside the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't that be nice. There are already barcodes on all of the bags. It would be a simple matter to use RFID instead. And hey, wouldn't it be nice if you had one on your ticket, then they could tell that you were on the plane and that your luggage was not, or vise versa. I guess I'd have to say that while I'm fairly big on privacy, I'd gladly be tracked if it ment that my luggage would find me. (Hey, if the spooks are following me, as long as they are watching my luggage, I'm happy) I guess I've just done the dance with the baggage claim one to many times to really stress about my 'privacy' in an airport terminal. They already make me take my shoes off, don't trust me to have a lid on the beverage I buy *in* the gate and rifle through my luggage while I'm waiting... I don't think there's much left to know other than I'm in the can vs standing in line at the Cinna-bun.
I think the RFID/tin foil hat thing is going a bit far. I actually work with RFID. (GEN 2 tags) They are not evil, they are actually (at least with how I use them) trying to reduce the cost cunsumers pay by helping people manage inventory, something noone seems to be able to do. I think there just needs to be a nice little contract with the public. i.e. the vendors stick nice bright red RFID stickers on boxes, and people too lazy to take their razor blades out of the box can get 'tracked'. The fact of the matter is that that number (at least how it's used on the tags I use) mean jack to most anyone but the interested parties and retail systems are not really that advanced that you could actually be tracked by the tag on your box of Wheat Thins. Honesty, openness, and we can all get along.
It's buzzword compliant, isn't that enough for you folks!
:)
Seriously though folks, did you expect Apple to release something that non-Mac people could use? What would be the point in that?
(Disclamer, I own multiple fruity boxes, save the flames
My first thought from a letter frequency stand point was that the even division of the alphabet was bound to be off on a frequency stand point, but oddly enough, if you believe this chart (which I did only on a quick Google... first table I could paste into a spreadsheet :) ), it's more balanced than the QWERTY layout. (The alpha layout is 47.55% on the left hand with the QWERTY as 60.23%)
Of course the enter key and all the punctuation throw a wrench in there, but interesting for a several minute assessment. (Karma wh0r3s are left with Dvorak as an exercise.) Personally, I'm lost on those damn alpha-layout labelers. There has to be some secret QWERTY cabal out there somewhere that will put a stop to this.
Though this was familiar...
/. in the first place...
Then quotethed said same Taco: Besides inspiration, the site features practical advice, like why not to window mod hard drives.
Course, pointing these things out only serves to help one reflect on exactly how much time one has wasted reading
The German version, not the crappy english one:
Völlig losgelöst
von der Erde
schwebt das Raumschiff
völlig schwerelos
So, I know how development cycles go, but release dates on these things always remind me of the old slapstick routine where the guy goes to pick up his hat, only to kick it, tries again, kicks again, ad nauseum. That and it's already not possible to get on a plane with a lighter, there are resrictions on shipping lithium ion. Good luck on getting through the airport with your fuel cell. >;^)
One full stomach per child.
Ever hear the expression, "Fish for a man, he eats that day, teach a man to fish and he eats for his whole life"?? Simplistic yes, but the view "Just feed them" only works for today. Who then feeds them tomorrow? The next day? I look at all of these countries and all the poverty and one very basic fact comes to mind as to why they are where they are. No natural resources. Period. Why is the US where it is today? Capitalism, yes, but all of the natural resources in our borders sure helped that.
If these people want to keep living where they are they need to exploit the one resource they have, themselves. Now they can either, make shoes for Nike or, get and education and join a lot of the other world in the information biz. Seeing as the shipping costs are cheaper, I'd shoot for the latter.
Stop the ludite bullshit. Let's let the third world get on the Net and see what they have to say about things. Or is the argument really that the longer they stay uneducated, off of the Net and out of the global mind, the longer we can ignore them?
I thought about this as I heard that the local public radio station was going to archive all of its old recordings to digital. Even with NPR (a *public* radio station that I give money to) they are putting audio on the Net in Real Audio. This was OK as long as I had NetTransport and a Real Audio player burned into the ROM of my Treo... But when I picked up a LifeDrive and finaly had gigs of space to carry audio, I was rudely awakened to the fact that Real *has* no player that works on the LifeDrive. Makes you wonder *what* format they are going to archive things to
Using Linux and dealing with my wife's Mac, I've sadly come to be used to this, but the bigger issue here is both that in the future, people will find that the media they find is not playable, not do to the fact that they can't read the media (which is still and issue) but because the media is in an undocumented, proprietory format. Look at DVD. They mention Laser Disc in TFA but I can't (legally) play a DVD *today* on my Linux box, much less years from now after the "trade secret" knowledge of how to decode the info is gone. The same for project Gutenburg vs all the e-book formats. I think it's a good idea to get *everything* in digital, but with all the crappy DRM ideas that will only let an e-book work on *one* reader, that info is doomed. Info needs to be digital so that the people *today* have affordable access, but in something more concrete for tomorrow.
It's not tech that is the issue here folks, its the IP laws that will kill the media. The sad part is that it's probably safer to put my will on a USB key than a CD (both stupid ideas if you want people to read them) and paper makes both look fragile in terms of time. But what would you say if the records were in a bank in a safe depost in New Orleans? (9th ward maybe)
To make a short story long. Yes, digital will pose and issue, but only if we don't think about both the medium *and* the format. The sick joke of the industry today is that while we could now probably throw a portable DVD player in a time capsule with the DVD of our message, if the RIAA and MPAA have their way, the people of the future won't be able to copy the data. That would be piracy!
The one thing that gets me about the Telcos is that at least here in Minneapolis, Cingular (at the time AT&T) forced the move. All of the cities police squads use CDPD to talk back to the HQ (for which AT&T gladly charged them) then a few years ago they stated that they were going to drop all CDPD in favor of GPRS. My company (which uses it for other reasons) was not to happy, but the city had just invested all that hard earned tax payer dollars into the radio system. So, now they are looking at WiFi.
:) But other things like parking meters, street lights, etc. all could save the city time and money if they could tell the city themselves that they needed fixing. It's not replacing jobs, it's letting people with city jobs spend their time providing the services that we pay them to do as opposed to spending time *looking* for something to do. :)
My understanding is that here in Minneapolis, the city is going to give a thrid party right of way to deloy the WiFi and cap the amount that they can charge the city for use. To make things more profitable they are allowing that same company to offer the WiFi to the public (most likely here for a fee)
The one point here is that even if it's not *free* WiFi there is a legitimate use for city wide WiFi. Police cars are the first. But if it is free and the cost of the embedded WiFi devices goes down, there are many other things the city could use the net for. Reading meters is one. I canned my POTS line a while back (no point for it anymore, waste of cash and only telemarketers called the line) only to find several months later that all of the water meters in the city dial in via a modem to the city! So now I have all my bill estimated.
And before modding me as flaimbait, let me explain. Disclaimer: I've coded (and been paid to do so) on Mac OS 7/8/9/X, DOS, Win 95/98/2000/XP, Palm OS 3/4/5/6, Linux, HPUX, Solaris, etc... Basicly I'm a Rodney King of OSs, they all have merits and they all suck in some way. Open your mind and code a bit before you flame an OS
I had a friend years back that actually *owned* a BeBox, in all it's blue blinking glory. At the time, we were Mac coders. We marvled at the twin LED cpu load meters on the sides, we watched the wicked kewl graphics demos that really should not have been possible at that time. And we were in awe...
Then they dropped the hardware. Understandable, they were Years Ahead Of Their Time(TM) on case mods, and hardware leads to actual loss. (Where as software, short of your cost in printed packaging and plastic CDs is slim.) Fine, it ran on a Mac, there where UMax clones to be had, and all was good...
Then Jobs came back. Good for Apple, bad for any clone vendor or anyone trying to make an OS *other* than MacOS run. (And lets face it folks even if you are a Mac zealot, you have to admit that OS 7/ early OS 8 (basicly OS 7 *skinned*) sucked pretty hard. Be ran circles around it. Hell even my cheap Linux laptop with X was doing painted window drags as opposed to the "outline" window move) Fine, Be went to x86, and some of us where like "kewl", but by then the alternate OS crowd was all about Linux and all the hot stuff was for Linux, so it was still just a toy. The other kick in the head was the rumors that Apple was about to buy Be (knowing the OS was damn kewl) but Job (again) stepped in and said, no, we're going to take my failed company Next and use that. (Any one else here about the Steve Jobs/Star Trek link of every other company/movie sucking) So another strike. I was able to play with "Rhapsody" way back then and the Yellow Box/Blue Box world of the Mac of tomorrow. (Ribbing the Mac people that they were bending to the POSIX side of the force.)
So be goes limping along. They beg vendors to install Be dual boot with Windoze *for*free*. No go. In the mean time, *some* of us got over the fact that Jobs killed the Newton, got a Palm III (which was finally, in our eyes, a viable, hackable platform) and being the MetroWerks people that we were and oh so familiar API for the Palm, switched over. (The GCC port was a big help to.) All was well.
I switched over to the dark side for a few years and did some Windoze coding (for food), still dabbling in Mac coding and Palm. OS X (finally) arrived. I moved my cheese to be able to get paid to code for the Palm. All was good. And then came the faithful PalmSource where we all learned that some of the essence of Be had seeped into Palm and OS 6 (Cobalt, that damn blue again) It was deva vu all over again. Watching the rotating cubes (again) and all of the other fun things I was seeing again for the first time. I was overjoyed... but with that same nagging feeling that this was not going to end well. Even as we partyed with Skyy Vodka and all of the other glowing blueness... the curse was there....
And here we are, PalmSource axed the BeNess of Cobalt and is going Linux (and was just bought out.) And someone is going to even *try* and hint that Be will "make a come back". I for one will be staying the hell away from it at all costs.
I expect to hear of some freak meteor accident with a key developer in the near future.
... and claim that thanks to Darwin being BSD based, it's been "running on the XBox for years". Rumors on SlashDot will surface about pirated versions on the upcoming 'Liger' release ('bred' using GAs for its magical cross platform qualites) all ready being available in Torrent form.
Oh and of course Marathon will replace Halo as the defacto multiplayer game on the XBox... Did I miss anything? Oh the rumors of the upcoming Amiga port.
Of course MSN gets you a much better view than Google. I mean come on, where do you think your boss would look first?
Still I'll admit that I Googled for the address and got a hit without even having to drill down!
It's easy to date photos if you have some frame of reference. In Minnesota we have the Severs Corn Maze (get it, maize maze haha, boy can us Minnesotans whoop it up!) They normally do a different maze each year. I looked it up for fun and it dates it as either 2002 or 2003 (they just had to have the same map those years.) You can see the past mazes on their web site through the path "Our Story" > "Past Mazes" > "More" x 5. (Warning, total Flash site ahead) Looks like they dug out the "Corn Maze" letters for the parking lot by the time the Google photo was taken. (Both 2000 and 2004 they had the year in the maze itself, would have helped here) MSN has a lovely black and white photo of dirt in the same place for the curious. No help there.... My guess is that we're getting recycled Terra Server photos Not a shocker, but with the change M$ throws around, you'd think that they could get some fresher (post 09/11/2001 at least) photos.
Not to start another My Favorite Google Map thread... This was on topic.... really.
I've been working on web stuff as of late and am always utterly amazed at the strings that come out of browsers. Why is it that in the land of arguments over standards on HTML, CSS, etc there is never any gripe about standardizing the UA string? (Yes I know that most browsers are forced to lie because of moronic web sites, but can't we spoof a standardized string?)
.NET CLR version, all of the spyware that's installed itself. What a mess!
d -I'm just-going-to-break-down-and-serve-different-pages is fine, as long as you just default to something over than "You must have IE 6 to view this page"
Take handhelds to start. Blazer, on the Treo 600, for the most part claims that it is Windows 95, with handy addition of tacking on the screen size a the end (i.e. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160x160)(wow, that would be nice to see in a spec, no? Rather then the "This best viewed at" crap.) Jeers for saying you're Win95, but big points on the screen size. But it goes on. Even ie is never just ie, oh no, there's your
It's a catch 22. Smart websites are nice in the case of handhelds if they are done like say Google, they give you the handheld version of the site and let you opt into the normal view. Great! I'd argue that *all* browsers should send the current window size. I can't tell you how many sites I've been on on my PC and had to stretch the window just to read the text. The other one where they detect your device and send you to a page... and don't let you go elsewhere. (T-Mobile bundles hotspot software with the Palm LifeDrive, but just try and go to T-Mobiles homepage on a LifeDrive... just try it.)
So, standardized strings to UA, good. Helping out small screen users, good. Hell even the I've-worked-for-3-days-to get-this-to-display-the-same-in-FireFox-and-IE-an
It is in no way feasable right now, given the ballooning US budget deficit.
Depends, does Haliburton have an aerospace division?
I use to travel in circles where reliability was compared to the dial tone of a phone... when you pick it up, it was always there. (of course except for midnight on Dec 31, 1999 when everyone picked up the phone at once to test just that, doh!)
My theory is that the people on the computer side, realizing that it was not in fact possible to move up to that level, instead opted to bring phone quality down to a more acceptable level. And the "smartphone" was born....
Having spent many hours in server rooms, freezing my butt off, (As you usually only have to do major work in the summer, on weekends, when your dressed for it.... not) I've often wondered why racks/servers aren't designed with an intake on one end and an outtake on the other. Or at least just a sealed rack with a connection at the top/bottom. (It'd be like a freezer section for servers, you could even leave notes, like IPs in the frost on the glass!) Now granted it would most likely be doomed to be vendor specific, but we're used to that with the rails already, right? >;^)
Seriously, you'd think cooking the units would be much more efficient. You could lock down things like humidity, and even cool things well below what makes sense now (power wise that is).
Oh well, I suppose all of that makes way to much sense.
My personal annoyance about the "tablet PC" market is that latter part... the "PC". When they first started the craze way back in 2000 or so, I thought, it would be a cool idea. Meaning just a tablet Something with a nice, readable screen (digital paper was all the buzz as well) that I could use to read normal 8.5x11 documentation on. Maybe take notes, but that's it You know, like a tablet of paper. Simple, thin, low power. Kind of an over grown PDA. I don't want the PC part, I have a nice desktop for when I'm at my desk and a pretty swell laptop that I do work on in a more mobile fasion (read coffee shop hacking). The missing piece is the tablet. Something to take with when I walk away from both. Something I can read on the bus, or curl up in a chair with.
Yes I have a stack of PDA's in my junk drawer. I read quite a bit on a Palm III and I'm up to watching vids on the bus on my PalmOne LiveDrive. It's not the same. I can't sit outside and read (can't see the screen in direct light) and I still end up carrying a notebook and killing trees to print RFC's (laser double-sided, 2-up... I don't need back problems as well as getting stoned by tree huggers)
Is it a plot by the paper companies? (Or ink/toner sellers?) This is what's keeping paper alive. It's all these reviewers that complain that this tablet is a little wimpy on the processor or that tablet won't replace a laptop. Duh! Not the point. Charging $2k plus ain't going to help either. Let's take a big step back, and work on good old hirez, black and white text folks, you know, like in every best selling book, manual and most all newspapers. Then we can go WiFi and bluetooth keyboards and the mess.
Am I alone here?
I was in the public sector for a while. People always would look at me for poo-pooing direct deposit. Little did they know that the bank involved had them running the data over on a weekly basis on a floppy disk. The program to generate that disk was the biggest chunk of crap I've seen in my software days (from my coding and all the 2 bit shareware I've seen) Scary stuff.
Now I'm in a bigger corp, that not only demands that you are direct deposit, but is not trying to get you to give up the paper copy they send you to tell you they paid you. (No thank you) That and now the crapware exists as what we are supposed to do our expence reporting to AMEX. My wife (stillin the public sector) already has to go online and print hers regularly if she wants to keep it. (Ask yourself if you trust your company to not lose that data.) This is *not* tin foil hat stuff folks. I can't wait until some outsourced online paycheck viewing software gets hacked and people are in the same boat.
People outside the sectors have to realize. We want this stuff. But not with the mentality that this industry treats things. Things are very lax, and the players in the field seem to be mostly "consultants" that don't really know what they are doing but are good at making the higher ups feel better. This needs to be opened up. The data formats need to be transparent and there needs to be some competition. If your system can't stand someone knowing how it works and still be secure, it wasn't "secure" begin with.
So where is the site that's tracking all of this crap anyway. Step up with a link for some Karma points. Let's see ratings, by company on who has it togather (or no yet hacked at least) Then people can start ditching groups that don't protect their info. (Or at least give someone new a chance to lose it)
Could this be the end of scroll wheels?
:) I'd say the same for my keyboard. I've been through countless boxen, as many kernels (more actually) and never saw the need.
Seriously folks! I just finally switched over to an optical scrolly wheely mouse thingy as I found one in the discount bin at the local Micro Center. (like $7 wahoo!) Before that I was using the serial mouse (at least it was only 9 pin) mouse from like '93. Why, because I don't play "twitch" games, and I've been a pro at the both-button-press-for-the-third button for years. (That and the X10 driver that I pulled on my last box update didn't play well with the mouse.
Not to pull out the old "They don't make 'em like they used to crap." (well, they don't and they don't cost what they used to either) But the long and the short of it is until you can't buy them at Walmart (VHS anyone?) they ain't goin' anywhere.
However, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has yet to ratify the mobile WiMax standard, known as 802.16e.
Right. So the question is this, who really defines a standard a body like IEEE, or the first set of vendors to hit the market with a workable product. Sad, but painfully true. I say bully for them. Even if they come out with their own proprietary setup, if they release it soon, it'll only force the others to follow. That and it's not like I *really* used to choice in the telcom space anyway.(modem types, locked cell phones, etc)
Telcoms need to find a niche and move there fast. "3G" is going to hit too little too late. My city is one of the brave that's planning on lighting up public WiFi which will blow the doors off any of the offerings that are coming Real Soon Now(TM) from our beloved telcos. Nokia's not stupid. I can see them offering a VOIP cellphone when the time is right. (And T-Mobile may be thinking about biting from what I here) That, and when it happens, it's going to be the areas with crappy cell coverage thumbing thier noses at what will by then be some 3 remaining cell companies.
I'd start snatching up any dark fiber out there if I had the spare change to do so. I wouldn't be shocked at all if in a near future, cell phone companies have to roll to the old POTS model of not charging for local minutes and make their cash on long distance routing. I only own a cell now (ditched the POTS a while back) I have no qualms about VIOPing home from a free WiFi access point for local calls.
Did some Mac programming many moons ago (pre OS 8 or so) The older file systems didn't really have directory paths like some one from DOS/Unix thought of them. Sure there was a finder and things where displayed like they had a "path" but you had to go through the toolkit and you couldn't have two files in different directories with the same name. It was bloody odd and somewhat difficult to use from a programmer stand point. (Any other crusty Mac coders want to clarify? Hypercard stack people excluded. >;) )
I say bully for anyone trying something new on file organization, but I think the battle is more on the users interface to the files and not the actual storage. Making people dig for things is rather low tech anyway. PC files should be organized by concepts and not location (again, as the user sees them) If I want to look for files, I should put in "Bob" ( a predefined concept that I put in) and get back pictures of Bob, documents I wrote (for/with/to) him, e-mail, and even files that I got from him. Add concepts, narrow the search and you have your file. Apps would of course have to be set up to tag as much data for you (Bob's e-mail was on the message that contained the file, etc) But it's a good start.
We can't hope to reach a semantic web until we get used to dealing with all data in a semantic nature. The problem is that issue is that it goes against the profit model of companies on the Net. (That only want you to get lost in *their* poorly designed site. Anyone else miss the *old* CDNow?) I can see a start with Semantic Shopping(TM) But you need a vender netural, Froogle-like set up where you can look for the concept "Rock" and "Top Forty" and get links to buy songs, CDs, and videos of the related query from all vendors. (An yes, at this rate it will be Google doing it.)
Anyway. I'm sure what ever it is it will be Insanely Great (TM), The Next Big Thing (TM) and if there is any merit to it Redmond will quietly add it at some point after Apple has ditched it... and we'll then be able to have comments about way back when Apple was ahead of its time.
You mean The Legend of Curley's Gold
Sheesh, it's all in the delivery. (I'll take my -1 grammer Nazi now.)
'Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?' I find this really odd as someone that ditched my land line and now *only* use my cell. The number one requirement with that was that I could use it anywhere in my house.
I work for a large-ish company and as such have the luxury of being able to take test units home from all of the vendors. We ended up with T-Mobile, but the main reason for that was that I can be in my basement and still talk on the phone. On a humerous aside I have a friend who has Verizon and can only manage to get text messages out of his house. I guess I can tell him now that it's just because he has 'unreal expectations'. (My phone works just fine in said same house.)
It's really about the service folks. If Verizon was the only carrier that worked, that's where I'd be. When my city lights up with Wi-Fi, that's where I'll be doing VOIP. At least I can rest easy knowing that Verizon won't be bidding on that project.
I'm all for campaign reform, but it just seems odd that anyone could limit 'public communication' with respect to the Internet. Granted banner ads add a whole new dimension to reaching an audience. Even if they could place restrictions on overt campaigning, its the shadow tactics that have more effect anyway. ie You can shape someone's opinion by what you don't print/say sometimes more than what you do. I myself read news from many sources and people I know and talk with point me to articles on all sides of the coin. Unfortunately some people out there can't get past their one news source. (Fox/CNN/blah/blah they all have a bias folks) But people aren't changing view at that point anyway.
Of course even if they did try and limit things. If they can't control porn/spam/gambling/etc on the net now, they sure as hell wouldn't be able to do anything about people blogging on servers outside the US.