The tablet as currently conceived by Microsoft and its hardware partners is not much of an innovation. What would be truly innovative would be simply to add touch screens to laptops. I don't know how many times I've watched a computer neophyte look at a dialogue box with a big, fat "OK" button at the bottom and not have the slightest notion what to do.
On the other hand, the Palm, followed by WinCE/PPC clones, achieved tablet PC status years ago and is the true innovator in this area.
Consider how far the laptop/desktop family is from being a true appliance, and how close the Palmtop family is.
To use a laptop, you must do the following steps:
- open the clamshell, locate the little power button and turn it on.
- watch as it comes to life; little LEDs light up, and after a minute or so you see the Windows splash screen.
- Wait until you see either a login screen or the actual desktop (depends on versions of Windows, how configured, etc.)
- Wait another minute or so while all the little proggies in the System Tray initialize and load. Watch Yahoo Messenger announce, irrelevantly, that it is logging you in.
- If you were savvy enough to understand "hybernation", you may have skipped a couple of these steps, but why should a user have to know the difference between hybernating and shutting down?
- Optionally, see one or two "Windows Update" messages pop up that you don't understand and aren't interested in.
- Now, find the application you are seeking--typically, your word processor, spreadsheet, PIM, or browser. It may be represented by a little icon among a sea of icons on the desktop, since you don't know anything about folders and other tricks to keep things clean. Or, it may be hidden somewhere deep in the Start menu; for example, Start->Programs->Adobe->Acrobat->Reade r (or something like that).
- Watch the application's splash screen announce its existence. Then, the application comes up. Now, at last, you can get to work, though you must play by the rules of the application.
- When you are done working, you can't simply close the computer; you must "save your work", a task which neophytes do not understand. You don't need to "save your work" when you turn off your television; it remembers what channel you were on last time. Yet, you must do this mysterious thing with your wordpro/spreadsheet or else you will "lose your work", something your long-suffering computer literate friends will angrily scold you about.
- Now, you shut down the system, either by Start->Shutdown->Turn off Computer, or by pressing power switch (in recent hardware and Windows versions) or by closing the clamshell (in recent hardware).
With the Palm/PPC, your main obstacle is finding your app amongst the icons. Chances are, you're using one of the apps bound to a hardware button anyway; just press Calendar, the thing pops on and poof! you're looking at today's schedule. No fuss, no muss. Just point at the thing you want, start writing on it, etc.
I believe the so-called Tablet PC will go away soon and we will, one hopes, see what little innovations it did possess finding their way into conventional laptops where they belong, minus Microsoft's hefty royalty overhead.
I agree with your idealism but actually, it was not really the average customer that reacted so much as the press that blew up the story and created a lot of the outrage. Lots of software has DRM built in to it. In this case, the mainstream press trumpeted the matter and forced it into Joe Taxpayer's dim consciousness just enough that he felt "outrage" even though he might not quite understand the issues the way a computer-literate/. reader would.
I don't think Intuit is any better or worse than any other company. For example, I would prefer to purchase their products than, say, Microsoft Money, because I want to encourage competition. Having said that, I'd be most likely to go with the product that runs under Crossover on my Linux system, and that happened to be Taxcut this past year. Don't know if Turbotax works as well but I can't imagine any malware aimed at Windows users would affect my Linux system too much.
Good headhunters, or recruitment professionals, are not in it for a quick buck; they wish to develop long term relationships with client companies and employees. They accumulate a list of stable, well-placed managers in good companies that they can call up every three months and discuss their needs. Similarly, they develop a catalogue of top-notch talent that they can place in position after position.
An excellent recruiter will get to know you, the contractor/employee, your skills and temperament to the point where they can place you in a good job. They will do their due diligence and check your references carefully; they will also have enough industry savvy to know whether your skills are out of place.
Fifteen years of experience has taught me that these people do exist but are few and far between. When you meet one, cultivate a relationship with him or her and it will pay off in the long term, even if you don't necessarily land a job after the first phone call.
The AMD reference design may not make it in the long term but it is still significant news. It's quite possible that a few years from now, the only surviving PDA designs will be generic, Linux-powered platforms made by all sorts of no-name factories in China, India, etc. If the software is free, the hardware is more likely to standardize and become a commodity, much as the PC did. I hope this happens and we'll see $25 PDAs that do just about everything the average person needs. Too bad for Palm and MS; they'll have to innovate to stay in the race.
The charm and challenge of the science fiction experience is the open-mindedness which it begs of the reader. Surely there exists in the great panorama of science and speculative fiction a bit of room in the corner for novels like the Harry Potter series. The fact that J. K. Rowling has made a huge fortune seems to color other authors' perceptions of her talents to the point where their denigrations of her writing begin to sound like sour grapes. Friend aalan, happen you to be a writer?
Rowling's use of language, at least in the un-Bowdlerized U.K. editions, manages to be clever and amusing. The faux-Latin names of spells and the suggestive surnames like Fudge, Malfoy, and Lupin lend the stories enough of a fairy tale flavor to charm the child's mind while making the adult smile. Real life human foibles abound; parents can read these stories along with their children and feel fully committed to this world of magic.
As for comparisons with hard science fiction like Vinge or Ender's Game, surely this is comparing apples and oranges. They are utterly different types of stories within the very broad category of "F&SF". No more sense would it make to pit Conan against Doc Savage (though such an idea rendered into novel would be quite intriguing).
One should also consider the impact of a literary work upon society. Rowling surely deserves recognition, if not a Hugo then some sort of accolade, if only because she is educating generations of children in the mysterious ways of adults: politics, deceipt, pomposity, kindness, and generosity. Don't believe what you read in newspapers, her books scream; don't trust those high mucky-mucks in their comfortable offices.
SUVs are an over-sold segment of the car market. For every one like yourself with legitimate reasons to drive a gas guzzler pseudo-truck there must be a hundred people who just like the status symbol, or being "above" the traffic, or because their 10-year-old wanted one.
Most SUVs that I see in morning and evening commuter traffic are carrying exactly one (1) person, probably nothing in the cargo section, and the roads are dry and safe most of the time. In addition to endangering drivers in compact cars, these monstrosities are helping pay for al-Qaeda, suicide bombers, and anti-Western extremists all over the Muslim world. Man.
Therefore, I propose that we have here in the USA a progressive sales tax on gasoline: For MPG = 10, driver must pay extra $1 in tax per gallon 10 - 15 MPG = $.80 tax 15 - 18 MPG = $.50 tax etc. until you reach 60 MPG which would incur no tax at all.
The tax would go to pay for road repairs necessitated by all those heavy SUVs and also subsidize collision insurance for small car drivers, since statistically an SUV will cream a compact in a collision.
SUVs furthermore should be taxed like the trucks that they are rather than like the passenger cars they pretend to be.
High mileage cars such as hybrids should be un-taxed; i.e. there should be substantial tax breaks to make them competitive with traditional vehicles. Alternative fuels like grain alcohols should be encouraged any way possible; put all that midwestern corn to use.
In a few years the U.S. could be a net energy exporter and also reduce its accounts deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars a year, if only it had the political will to enact some of these policies.
To the original poster... yes! Buy a hybrid; at least you're doing your little bit.
But which CD-R's are to be trusted? The article implies that even major brands had problems. My 6-cents-per-disc CD-R's are branded with names like TDK, FujiFilm, Kodak, and AT&T. What brand can I trust, if not these?
If the SCO executives are so stupid, why is their stock rising? It's above $13 today. Somebody out there knows something is happening, even as Slashdot continues to publish these disparaging articles. I wonder if they're negotiating to sell the company to Sun or Microsoft right now; that would explain the stock behavior. Certainly nothing else does.
I read somewhere (can't find the ref, WSJ maybe) that California might have avoided its electricity shortage last summer simply by painting the roofs of all public buildings white.
I would advocate solar cells and solar water heating systems mandated for all public buildings, and make a tax incentive to home owners to install them on new or existing properties. Add to that fuel cells in the basement to store excess power for use at night or in cloudy weather. (It should be noted that, contrary to common belief, solar roof systems do work in cloudy weather.)
Every house should be able to coast for a few days on stored power during a blackout.
Remote towns and rural residences should make maximum use of wind, solar, and hydro power to mitigate the costs of transporting electricity from distant plants.
I'm surprised Mr. Bush did not announce a package of tax incentives to make these things a reality. But, I suppose that he takes a corporate, big oil point of view; simply swap hydrogen for petroleum and keep the existing infrastructure.
A tax incentive for hybrid gas-electric cars would be nice, too. Cut oil consumption and solve so many other problems: dependence on nasty Arab dictators, greenhouse pollution, etc.
As a logical extension of what you wrote, why not have all Linux contributors file a class action suit against SCO? There are tens of thousands of people out there who own a piece of Linux in the sense that they contributed their code, beta testing efforts, documentation, etc. Split these people into groups of about 1000 and file dozens or hundreds of suits against SCO for theft, defamation of character, whatever. They will have to pay lawyers to respond to each query, motion, response, challenge, request for documents, deposition, etc. Now that's a way to drain their legal fund.
great idea; I have a static page with thousands of random email addresses generated by this Perl script, but this wpoison is sweet; the pages seem genuine and it would keep a robot busy for a long time.
I'd like to see millions of web sites adopt this approach; then perhaps spammers would be overwhelmed by bogus email addresses and it would cost them more money to figure out ways around it, if it's even possible.
The principle is similar to the Nigerian spam baiting that some of us engage in; if thousands of us did it, these turds would simply be overwhelmed and would have to find some other way to make a living!
Can anyone please tell me what impact this has on europeans???
Yes, I'd be glad to. Stifling the freedom to innovate and rewarding pirates in the world's largest economy is a generally bad thing. Europeans contribute lots of great open source software, but so do Americans. If the Americans slow down on OSS contributions, it will only hurt Europeans. Is that clear enough?
Generally speaking, if your neighbor is happy and prosperous then you will be happy and prosperous, too. It's a fairly well understood principle. If you take the short-sighted and selfish attitude that what's bad for your neighbor is good for you, then you will get what you deserve.
If you still don't understand, then I'll put it in terms that even the most self-centered, tunnel-visioned person can relate to. If the American tech economy slows down, the market for European products in the U.S. will shrink and Europeans will make less money.
SCOX 10.75 last trade: 4:48PM change: -0.462 (-4.12%)
IBM 84.15 Last trade: 4:29pm Change: +1.40 (+1.69%)
A mildly good day for IBM, a rather poor day for SCO considering the NASDAQ was up 2.46%.
Still, SCO is up from $6 and change a week or two ago; someone must think something good's happening for this company. I can't imagine what; it's been only bad news for them, especially that SCO may be liable to thousands of kernel contributors for violating their GPL'd copyrights--yay!
How is a tablet PC different from a laptop, aside from touch sensitive screen and missing keyboard? They added a really great, useful feature and took one away. I say, add touch sensitivity to an existing laptop design and you have a winner. Make the lid swivel so you can close it with the display on the outside, add some handwriting recognition software and you have effectively a "tablet PC".
I would never buy a tablet PC simply because I consider the keyboard an efficient, indispensable way to get data into my computer. Its recognition of my typing is 100% accurate; my typing skill is the only gating factor.
My Palm became much more useful as a data entry device when I obtained a keyboard for it. This whole tablet thing seems like a gimmick and a step backward to me.
If thousands of recipients of such scams wrote back to the senders and engaged them in long, drawn out conversations, they would be so swamped with email that they would have to give up eventually. So everyone, hit reply every time you get a Nigerian/Angolan/Whatever scam letter that has a real return address. Their business depends on suckers replying to them, so GIVE THEM WHAT THEY ASK FOR!
Here's an example of such a conversation I had! It's actually kind of fun to see how long you can string them along.
It goes without saying that you should not give out your personal information to these slimeballs.
Sun is no longer a workstation or server company; they are the Java company. They are getting a lot of their business from Java these days--selling packages, selling Sun University courses, JavaOne, etc.
Undoubtedly, the server business continues to pay some of the bills, but this business model is in doubt; IBM can out-compete them at the high end and LinTel is eating their lunch at the low end and, increasingly, in the mid-range. They really need to reinvent themselves as an enterprise solution provider rather than a hardware provider that (for some reason) invented Java.
I think Sun should merge or form a strategic alliance with WebLogic and position themselves as a total server, middleware and web services provider with their state of the art technology. They have a huge advantage in that everyone but Microsoft supports and promotes Java, including Sun's fiercest competitors. They have tremendous domain expertise; a lot of the people who developed Java, J2EE and so forth are still working at Sun.
Alternatively, perhaps IBM should buy JavaSoft and let the rest of Sun die a quick and merciful death. IBM's stake in Java is so huge now that it's hard to imagine they are not considering this option.
That being said, the pilot-link maintainer (hey, that's me!) has fixed this in a pseudo-fashion by adding a sleep() loop in the latest CVS code that I can see, which means you can launch pilot-link first, or hit the HotSync button on your Palm/Cradle first, and it will "Just Work".
Hey, that's great news! I use jpilot with my Tungsten T all the time and it's a pain to always have to press the hotsync button first, wait a few seconds for the USB device to be registered, and then finally do a sync. Thanks for doing that. When will it make it into a stable release?
Why? Well, probably these know-nothing executives were sitting around watching their stock tank and their product sales drop and said "What can we do to turn around this company? What assets do we have?" And some bright attorney spoke up and said, "Let's sue everyone for infringement!" And there you have it. They probably didn't think through the implications of this action. Suing a huge corporation like IBM is not something to be undertaken lightly; the U.S. government tried it and failed, after all.
I think your point that they have failed to make public even one example is quite important. Maybe they are too busy retrofitting Linux code into their Unix kernel right now to bolster their case.
Why anyone would buy SCO right now is beyond me; they don't have a business model and their only asset seems to be the rights to a soon-to-be extinct operating system. The irony is that this action may hasten Unix's demise. SCO is demonstrating that they are not a responsible player in the *nix community; they're nothing but a spoiler now.
This is just another hard disk recorder; what's the big deal? HD recorders have been around for years. These units are distinguished by the fact that they can encode MP3 and have CF slots, both of which sound like handy features to me but highly unlikely to attract the wrath of our friends at the RIAA. These products start at $2000 which is appropriate for their target market of recording professionals.
You can buy a PC for around $300 or $400 that can record to hard disk and encode MP3 and write to a CF card. So what? Nothing's new here. I like to read about HD recorders because I do some recording work, but this hardly counts as major news for/. Clearly we have a non-news day today.
There was a pretty good article about this on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday. (You may need to be a subscriber to access this link). Anyway, he created at least 343 Earthlink accounts and every one of them was based on a stolen identity (credit card, bank account information). That's the part I find amazing. Isn't fraudulent use of other people's credit card numbers enough to put this guy in jail?
His grandmother thinks he's a nice guy:
...her grandson brings her breakfast from McDonald's when she asks. "He would do anything for me," she says.
Mrs. Carmack said she doesn't know what her grandson does for work. She didn't know anything about a lawsuit, she said, but it sounded "real sad." She added, "Maybe if they got jobs for the fellows, they wouldn't have to do this."
Well that's an interesting prediction, but it doesn't take into account all factors in this equation. Consider the economic ramifications of economic growth combined with outsourcing of IT work.
As the economy recovers and new technologies are adopted, companies will develop products to take advantage of them. Customers will enjoy cheaper and easier access to their bank accounts, more efficient processing of their credit applications, etc.
Though offshore programmers benefit greatly from this expansion, the U.S. economy as a whole also benefits from cost savings and general growth in production and consumption. Jobs will be created, inevitably.
Companies continue to hire locally in order to have a local tech person who can interface with the offshore team. Since more companies are profitable, more local techies will get hired.
Another point to consider is that as demand grows, very gradually we will see salaries rising in India. They have a lot of people but only so many of them can get into a university or otherwise learn the necessary skills to do software engineering. Unlike the U.S., there are not university seats for everyone who wants one. It will take a long time for costs to become prohibitive but it's likely that the difference between offshore and domestic labor costs will shrink somewhat, and the benefits of domestic labor will begin to outweigh the higher price.
Finally I would suggest that American programmers need to get creative and find better ways to earn a buck, such as to associate themselves with a high demand technology or product line, e.g. Oracle Applications,.NET or J2EE middleware tools, etc., and market themselves as go-to people who can get a company's system up and running. Maybe they will farm out the grunt work to an offshore developer, maybe not. But you've got to get out of a commodity market.
Just some ideas. I myself am struggling to find my next consulting contract and I'm likely going to move away from coder-for-hire to more of a product development mode. It's a tough market right now but I think there will be some great opportunities in the next 3-5 years.
Your first point is valid. But as for your assertation that their parents were "oblivious" and "shocked", that is pure speculation on your part and is not at all consistent with their behavior. One of the fathers was quoted as saying "That sounds like something he would do," or words to that effect. What's more, your explanation of the Columbine killers' behavior is laughable; surely not every kid from New Jersey is going to commit mass murder-suicides simply because he was dropped into a clique-ish Midwestern high school? You know, lots of us went to sucky schools and survived the experience without killing even one person.
I believe those kids were sociopaths. That's the only explanation that makes any sense. Even implying that average kids could behave this way is ridiculous; average kids can be very unhappy and sometimes do bad things, even terrible things, but by and large kids can distinguish right from wrong and know when to stop.
Sorry, but I've already patented the idea of patenting ideas. Therefore, anyone who submits a patent to the PTO and earns any money from it owes me money.
Next I'm going to patent walking, eating, and fornicating. I figure, if even 10% of Americans fork over a penny for these activities, I'll be rich.
Slashdot Mirror
The tablet as currently conceived by Microsoft and its hardware partners is not much of an innovation. What would be truly innovative would be simply to add touch screens to laptops. I don't know how many times I've watched a computer neophyte look at a dialogue box with a big, fat "OK" button at the bottom and not have the slightest notion what to do.
On the other hand, the Palm, followed by WinCE/PPC clones, achieved tablet PC status years ago and is the true innovator in this area.
Consider how far the laptop/desktop family is from being a true appliance, and how close the Palmtop family is.
To use a laptop, you must do the following steps:
- open the clamshell, locate the little power button and turn it on.
- watch as it comes to life; little LEDs light up, and after a minute or so you see the Windows splash screen.
- Wait until you see either a login screen or the actual desktop (depends on versions of Windows, how configured, etc.)
- Wait another minute or so while all the little proggies in the System Tray initialize and load. Watch Yahoo Messenger announce, irrelevantly, that it is logging you in.
- If you were savvy enough to understand "hybernation", you may have skipped a couple of these steps, but why should a user have to know the difference between hybernating and shutting down?
- Optionally, see one or two "Windows Update" messages pop up that you don't understand and aren't interested in.
- Now, find the application you are seeking--typically, your word processor, spreadsheet, PIM, or browser. It may be represented by a little icon among a sea of icons on the desktop, since you don't know anything about folders and other tricks to keep things clean. Or, it may be hidden somewhere deep in the Start menu; for example, Start->Programs->Adobe->Acrobat->Reade r (or something like that).
- Watch the application's splash screen announce its existence. Then, the application comes up. Now, at last, you can get to work, though you must play by the rules of the application.
- When you are done working, you can't simply close the computer; you must "save your work", a task which neophytes do not understand. You don't need to "save your work" when you turn off your television; it remembers what channel you were on last time. Yet, you must do this mysterious thing with your wordpro/spreadsheet or else you will "lose your work", something your long-suffering computer literate friends will angrily scold you about.
- Now, you shut down the system, either by Start->Shutdown->Turn off Computer, or by pressing power switch (in recent hardware and Windows versions) or by closing the clamshell (in recent hardware).
With the Palm/PPC, your main obstacle is finding your app amongst the icons. Chances are, you're using one of the apps bound to a hardware button anyway; just press Calendar, the thing pops on and poof! you're looking at today's schedule. No fuss, no muss. Just point at the thing you want, start writing on it, etc.
I believe the so-called Tablet PC will go away soon and we will, one hopes, see what little innovations it did possess finding their way into conventional laptops where they belong, minus Microsoft's hefty royalty overhead.
I agree with your idealism but actually, it was not really the average customer that reacted so much as the press that blew up the story and created a lot of the outrage. Lots of software has DRM built in to it. In this case, the mainstream press trumpeted the matter and forced it into Joe Taxpayer's dim consciousness just enough that he felt "outrage" even though he might not quite understand the issues the way a computer-literate /. reader would.
I don't think Intuit is any better or worse than any other company. For example, I would prefer to purchase their products than, say, Microsoft Money, because I want to encourage competition. Having said that, I'd be most likely to go with the product that runs under Crossover on my Linux system, and that happened to be Taxcut this past year. Don't know if Turbotax works as well but I can't imagine any malware aimed at Windows users would affect my Linux system too much.
doesn't work for me in redhat 8, KDE 3.1.4, XFree86 4.3.0
seems to just make some previous clipboard item active again.
Good headhunters, or recruitment professionals, are not in it for a quick buck; they wish to develop long term relationships with client companies and employees. They accumulate a list of stable, well-placed managers in good companies that they can call up every three months and discuss their needs. Similarly, they develop a catalogue of top-notch talent that they can place in position after position.
An excellent recruiter will get to know you, the contractor/employee, your skills and temperament to the point where they can place you in a good job. They will do their due diligence and check your references carefully; they will also have enough industry savvy to know whether your skills are out of place.
Fifteen years of experience has taught me that these people do exist but are few and far between. When you meet one, cultivate a relationship with him or her and it will pay off in the long term, even if you don't necessarily land a job after the first phone call.
The AMD reference design may not make it in the long term but it is still significant news. It's quite possible that a few years from now, the only surviving PDA designs will be generic, Linux-powered platforms made by all sorts of no-name factories in China, India, etc. If the software is free, the hardware is more likely to standardize and become a commodity, much as the PC did. I hope this happens and we'll see $25 PDAs that do just about everything the average person needs. Too bad for Palm and MS; they'll have to innovate to stay in the race.
The charm and challenge of the science fiction experience is the open-mindedness which it begs of the reader. Surely there exists in the great panorama of science and speculative fiction a bit of room in the corner for novels like the Harry Potter series. The fact that J. K. Rowling has made a huge fortune seems to color other authors' perceptions of her talents to the point where their denigrations of her writing begin to sound like sour grapes. Friend aalan, happen you to be a writer?
Rowling's use of language, at least in the un-Bowdlerized U.K. editions, manages to be clever and amusing. The faux-Latin names of spells and the suggestive surnames like Fudge, Malfoy, and Lupin lend the stories enough of a fairy tale flavor to charm the child's mind while making the adult smile. Real life human foibles abound; parents can read these stories along with their children and feel fully committed to this world of magic.
As for comparisons with hard science fiction like Vinge or Ender's Game, surely this is comparing apples and oranges. They are utterly different types of stories within the very broad category of "F&SF". No more sense would it make to pit Conan against Doc Savage (though such an idea rendered into novel would be quite intriguing).
One should also consider the impact of a literary work upon society. Rowling surely deserves recognition, if not a Hugo then some sort of accolade, if only because she is educating generations of children in the mysterious ways of adults: politics, deceipt, pomposity, kindness, and generosity. Don't believe what you read in newspapers, her books scream; don't trust those high mucky-mucks in their comfortable offices.
Children (and adults) could read worse.
SUVs are an over-sold segment of the car market. For every one like yourself with legitimate reasons to drive a gas guzzler pseudo-truck there must be a hundred people who just like the status symbol, or being "above" the traffic, or because their 10-year-old wanted one.
Most SUVs that I see in morning and evening commuter traffic are carrying exactly one (1) person, probably nothing in the cargo section, and the roads are dry and safe most of the time. In addition to endangering drivers in compact cars, these monstrosities are helping pay for al-Qaeda, suicide bombers, and anti-Western extremists all over the Muslim world. Man.
Therefore, I propose that we have here in the USA a progressive sales tax on gasoline:
For MPG = 10, driver must pay extra $1 in tax per gallon
10 - 15 MPG = $.80 tax
15 - 18 MPG = $.50 tax
etc. until you reach 60 MPG which would incur no tax at all.
The tax would go to pay for road repairs necessitated by all those heavy SUVs and also subsidize collision insurance for small car drivers, since statistically an SUV will cream a compact in a collision.
SUVs furthermore should be taxed like the trucks that they are rather than like the passenger cars they pretend to be.
High mileage cars such as hybrids should be un-taxed; i.e. there should be substantial tax breaks to make them competitive with traditional vehicles. Alternative fuels like grain alcohols should be encouraged any way possible; put all that midwestern corn to use.
In a few years the U.S. could be a net energy exporter and also reduce its accounts deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars a year, if only it had the political will to enact some of these policies.
To the original poster... yes! Buy a hybrid; at least you're doing your little bit.
But which CD-R's are to be trusted? The article implies that even major brands had problems. My 6-cents-per-disc CD-R's are branded with names like TDK, FujiFilm, Kodak, and AT&T. What brand can I trust, if not these?
:-(
Maybe it's time to go back to tape
If the SCO executives are so stupid, why is their stock rising? It's above $13 today. Somebody out there knows something is happening, even as Slashdot continues to publish these disparaging articles. I wonder if they're negotiating to sell the company to Sun or Microsoft right now; that would explain the stock behavior. Certainly nothing else does.
Conservation. What a concept.
I read somewhere (can't find the ref, WSJ maybe) that California might have avoided its electricity shortage last summer simply by painting the roofs of all public buildings white.
I would advocate solar cells and solar water heating systems mandated for all public buildings, and make a tax incentive to home owners to install them on new or existing properties. Add to that fuel cells in the basement to store excess power for use at night or in cloudy weather. (It should be noted that, contrary to common belief, solar roof systems do work in cloudy weather.)
Every house should be able to coast for a few days on stored power during a blackout.
Remote towns and rural residences should make maximum use of wind, solar, and hydro power to mitigate the costs of transporting electricity from distant plants.
I'm surprised Mr. Bush did not announce a package of tax incentives to make these things a reality. But, I suppose that he takes a corporate, big oil point of view; simply swap hydrogen for petroleum and keep the existing infrastructure.
A tax incentive for hybrid gas-electric cars would be nice, too. Cut oil consumption and solve so many other problems: dependence on nasty Arab dictators, greenhouse pollution, etc.
As a logical extension of what you wrote, why not have all Linux contributors file a class action suit against SCO? There are tens of thousands of people out there who own a piece of Linux in the sense that they contributed their code, beta testing efforts, documentation, etc. Split these people into groups of about 1000 and file dozens or hundreds of suits against SCO for theft, defamation of character, whatever. They will have to pay lawyers to respond to each query, motion, response, challenge, request for documents, deposition, etc. Now that's a way to drain their legal fund.
great idea; I have a static page with thousands of random email addresses generated by this Perl script, but this wpoison is sweet; the pages seem genuine and it would keep a robot busy for a long time.
I'd like to see millions of web sites adopt this approach; then perhaps spammers would be overwhelmed by bogus email addresses and it would cost them more money to figure out ways around it, if it's even possible.
The principle is similar to the Nigerian spam baiting that some of us engage in; if thousands of us did it, these turds would simply be overwhelmed and would have to find some other way to make a living!
Can anyone please tell me what impact this has on europeans???
Yes, I'd be glad to. Stifling the freedom to innovate and rewarding pirates in the world's largest economy is a generally bad thing. Europeans contribute lots of great open source software, but so do Americans. If the Americans slow down on OSS contributions, it will only hurt Europeans. Is that clear enough?
Generally speaking, if your neighbor is happy and prosperous then you will be happy and prosperous, too. It's a fairly well understood principle. If you take the short-sighted and selfish attitude that what's bad for your neighbor is good for you, then you will get what you deserve.
If you still don't understand, then I'll put it in terms that even the most self-centered, tunnel-visioned person can relate to. If the American tech economy slows down, the market for European products in the U.S. will shrink and Europeans will make less money.
Actually...
SCOX 10.75
last trade: 4:48PM
change: -0.462 (-4.12%)
IBM 84.15
Last trade: 4:29pm
Change: +1.40 (+1.69%)
A mildly good day for IBM, a rather poor day for SCO considering the NASDAQ was up 2.46%.
Still, SCO is up from $6 and change a week or two ago; someone must think something good's happening for this company. I can't imagine what; it's been only bad news for them, especially that SCO may be liable to thousands of kernel contributors for violating their GPL'd copyrights--yay!
How is a tablet PC different from a laptop, aside from touch sensitive screen and missing keyboard? They added a really great, useful feature and took one away. I say, add touch sensitivity to an existing laptop design and you have a winner. Make the lid swivel so you can close it with the display on the outside, add some handwriting recognition software and you have effectively a "tablet PC".
I would never buy a tablet PC simply because I consider the keyboard an efficient, indispensable way to get data into my computer. Its recognition of my typing is 100% accurate; my typing skill is the only gating factor.
My Palm became much more useful as a data entry device when I obtained a keyboard for it. This whole tablet thing seems like a gimmick and a step backward to me.
If thousands of recipients of such scams wrote back to the senders and engaged them in long, drawn out conversations, they would be so swamped with email that they would have to give up eventually. So everyone, hit reply every time you get a Nigerian/Angolan/Whatever scam letter that has a real return address. Their business depends on suckers replying to them, so GIVE THEM WHAT THEY ASK FOR!
Here's an example of such a conversation I had! It's actually kind of fun to see how long you can string them along.
It goes without saying that you should not give out your personal information to these slimeballs.
Sun is no longer a workstation or server company; they are the Java company. They are getting a lot of their business from Java these days--selling packages, selling Sun University courses, JavaOne, etc.
Undoubtedly, the server business continues to pay some of the bills, but this business model is in doubt; IBM can out-compete them at the high end and LinTel is eating their lunch at the low end and, increasingly, in the mid-range. They really need to reinvent themselves as an enterprise solution provider rather than a hardware provider that (for some reason) invented Java.
I think Sun should merge or form a strategic alliance with WebLogic and position themselves as a total server, middleware and web services provider with their state of the art technology. They have a huge advantage in that everyone but Microsoft supports and promotes Java, including Sun's fiercest competitors. They have tremendous domain expertise; a lot of the people who developed Java, J2EE and so forth are still working at Sun.
Alternatively, perhaps IBM should buy JavaSoft and let the rest of Sun die a quick and merciful death. IBM's stake in Java is so huge now that it's hard to imagine they are not considering this option.
Just some thoughts on a Sunday morning....
Why? Well, probably these know-nothing executives were sitting around watching their stock tank and their product sales drop and said "What can we do to turn around this company? What assets do we have?" And some bright attorney spoke up and said, "Let's sue everyone for infringement!" And there you have it. They probably didn't think through the implications of this action. Suing a huge corporation like IBM is not something to be undertaken lightly; the U.S. government tried it and failed, after all.
I think your point that they have failed to make public even one example is quite important. Maybe they are too busy retrofitting Linux code into their Unix kernel right now to bolster their case.
Why anyone would buy SCO right now is beyond me; they don't have a business model and their only asset seems to be the rights to a soon-to-be extinct operating system. The irony is that this action may hasten Unix's demise. SCO is demonstrating that they are not a responsible player in the *nix community; they're nothing but a spoiler now.
This is just another hard disk recorder; what's the big deal? HD recorders have been around for years. These units are distinguished by the fact that they can encode MP3 and have CF slots, both of which sound like handy features to me but highly unlikely to attract the wrath of our friends at the RIAA. These products start at $2000 which is appropriate for their target market of recording professionals.
/. Clearly we have a non-news day today.
You can buy a PC for around $300 or $400 that can record to hard disk and encode MP3 and write to a CF card. So what? Nothing's new here. I like to read about HD recorders because I do some recording work, but this hardly counts as major news for
He was using stolen credit card/bank account information. Not clear if he was actually charging off those card or just using them to sign up with.
His grandmother thinks he's a nice guy: Indeed.
Well that's an interesting prediction, but it doesn't take into account all factors in this equation. Consider the economic ramifications of economic growth combined with outsourcing of IT work.
.NET or J2EE middleware tools, etc., and market themselves as go-to people who can get a company's system up and running. Maybe they will farm out the grunt work to an offshore developer, maybe not. But you've got to get out of a commodity market .
As the economy recovers and new technologies are adopted, companies will develop products to take advantage of them. Customers will enjoy cheaper and easier access to their bank accounts, more efficient processing of their credit applications, etc.
Though offshore programmers benefit greatly from this expansion, the U.S. economy as a whole also benefits from cost savings and general growth in production and consumption. Jobs will be created, inevitably.
Companies continue to hire locally in order to have a local tech person who can interface with the offshore team. Since more companies are profitable, more local techies will get hired.
Another point to consider is that as demand grows, very gradually we will see salaries rising in India. They have a lot of people but only so many of them can get into a university or otherwise learn the necessary skills to do software engineering. Unlike the U.S., there are not university seats for everyone who wants one. It will take a long time for costs to become prohibitive but it's likely that the difference between offshore and domestic labor costs will shrink somewhat, and the benefits of domestic labor will begin to outweigh the higher price.
Finally I would suggest that American programmers need to get creative and find better ways to earn a buck, such as to associate themselves with a high demand technology or product line, e.g. Oracle Applications,
Just some ideas. I myself am struggling to find my next consulting contract and I'm likely going to move away from coder-for-hire to more of a product development mode. It's a tough market right now but I think there will be some great opportunities in the next 3-5 years.
Your first point is valid. But as for your assertation that their parents were "oblivious" and "shocked", that is pure speculation on your part and is not at all consistent with their behavior. One of the fathers was quoted as saying "That sounds like something he would do," or words to that effect. What's more, your explanation of the Columbine killers' behavior is laughable; surely not every kid from New Jersey is going to commit mass murder-suicides simply because he was dropped into a clique-ish Midwestern high school? You know, lots of us went to sucky schools and survived the experience without killing even one person.
I believe those kids were sociopaths. That's the only explanation that makes any sense. Even implying that average kids could behave this way is ridiculous; average kids can be very unhappy and sometimes do bad things, even terrible things, but by and large kids can distinguish right from wrong and know when to stop.
Sorry, but I've already patented the idea of patenting ideas. Therefore, anyone who submits a patent to the PTO and earns any money from it owes me money.
Next I'm going to patent walking, eating, and fornicating. I figure, if even 10% of Americans fork over a penny for these activities, I'll be rich.
Patents are wonderful!