The average American soccer mom will need a whole herd of cows in constant "production" to pick the kids up from school.
Well, considering how many Big Macs American soccer moms and their offspring will consume over their lifetimes, I'm guessing that there are already enough "constantly producing" cows being raised to meet that demand. It only makes sense to try to capture unused energy from the very large amount of waste products produced to fill the demand for beef.
Assuming we can find enough grass to feed them
Well, most beef cattle are finished in feedlots and fed grain for at least some of their lives, so they don't need big green rolling hills their entire lives...and have you ever been to North Dakota or southern Saskatchewan and Alberta? Ain't exactly a shortage of grass OR space for free range cows.
this much methane will cause the oceans to rice in less than a decade.
Well from your post I'd say you've at least heard the term "carbon neutral" before...that is what this process is. The methane produced by cows is a carbon source that is offset by the grass eaten by cows, which is a carbon sink. Furthermore, we would probably not need to produce much more methane than we do now for beef production--we'd simply be trappoing unspent stored energy from livestock waste.
This isn't "natural gas" methane--the reason that stuff is supposed to be so bad for our climate is becasue it is released from a source that has been trapped away from our ecosystem for millions of years...it is a carbon source trapped by a carbon sink that is long gone and thus upsets our current ecosystem's balance.
Seriously. Shouldn't we be looking for something more sensible than this?
We currently drill deep into the crust under the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico using gigantic platforms that have to weather lethally strong hurricanes every year. We also dig up huge pits of tar in the far north and produce huge amounts of steam...in arctic conditions...to melt that tar and separate the sediment from the usable oil. To meet the rest of our demands, we ship tankers of the stuff from dangerous foreign countries that are run by crackpots and/or are havens for terrorists who'd love to see us all dead.
Somehow, I can't see how extracting useful hydrocarbons from piles of crap in a pasture would be any less sensible than the above-mentioned methods of getting fuel.
Brazil runs most of its cars on sugar cane extract - a carbon-neutral solution.
Two points here:
1. Brazil runs a LOT of cars on sugar cane, but by far the most fuel consumption is still conventional petroleum products (somewhere areound 75% IIRC)
2. Using sugar cane to make ethanol fuel is NO MORE "CARBON NEUTRAL" than making it from cow dung. Using sugar cane, or corn, or soybeans or potatoes or any other plant to make ethanol fuel is probably more efficient--after all, much of the stored energy in the cows' feed goes to growing the cow. However, we are growing cows for food and hides anyways so we might as well use their waste too...and the process should (in theory) have no more disruption on the world's carbon cycle than plant-based fuels.
Then again, Brazil isn't run by millionaires who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually imporoving things.
Wow...I'm blown away...you REALLY don't know much about global politics do you. Historically speaking, "run by millionares who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually improving things" has been EXACTLY what the Brazillian government was, though I believe there have been efforts to improve there in recent years. It's pretty much a basic fact about south and central America--nations in that region are either corrupt, pseudo-democracies headed by obscenely rich men of low moral standards, or totalitarian dictatorships run by "communist" military generals.
...then I hope I don't have to see it for a loooong time.
I went to a swimming pool that "upgraded" their coin-operated lockers--they went from keys to electonic locks with keypad-entered passcodes a number of years ago, then decided that STILL wasn't snazzy enough and put in fingerprint readers.
I hope they canned the pointy-haired idiot who came up with THAT gem of an idea.
Here is the problem: It is easy enough to get into your locker before you enter the pool. After you go out and swim for a bit your fingers get all wet and wrinkly and your fingerprints actually shrink a bit...it seems that the software is too picky/stupid to compensate, and as a result people have to go and dry their hands under the hot air dryers for several minutes just to open their locks. A lot of people would just give up and get an attendant to open the locker--which would require you to give a sufficiently detailed description of the contents before they'd open it.
Here is the other real excellent part of this deal: only one fingerprint would open a locker--even from the same person, so if I used my right index finger to open it to start with, I couldn't use my left index finger..nor could I add another person's finger so you could share a locker--either you spend extra to get separate lockers or one person always has to go back to re-open it.
If you think using a severed finger even with these readers you're kidding yourself--I'm sure that it'd be too cold and the lack of circulation would alter the fingerprint too much. It sounds to me like this heart rythm thing is just a solution looking for a problem.
Here is the ultimate irony: these state-of-the-art biometric-access lockers were equipped to accept COINS ONLY--no debit and no credit cards, and not even paper cash--and they cost up to $6 for daily rental.
Here I am, still using Office 97 because it does everything I need. Perhaps next year I'll be able to upgrade to OO.o.:)
You don't have to wait until next year--only a month or two.
You see, Open source projects are like dogs--they grow and develop in terms of "dogs years" in relation to Microsoft and most other closed applications. So when Microsoft says OO.o is 10 years behind they mean in terms of how long it would take MICROSOFT to bring OO.o up to MSOffice "quality". However, given that development of popular open source projects happens in dog years, it'll actually take it 10 DOG years to catch up, or only about 17 months.
I mean, look at Windows and MS SQL Server--both took FIVE YEARS or more between major releases. Linux kernel went from 2.2 to 2.4 to 2.6 faster and PostgreSQL went from 6.x to 7.x to 8.x faster too...and in the case of the latter.x releases are actually pretty major. GNOME and KDE and distros release cycle is even more accelerated. Even though a lot of people poke fun every new years about premature declarations that this will be the "year of the Linux desktop", the pace of growth and refinement has been phenomenal, and both GNOME and KDE are now at a point where they are more advanced than Windows XP IMHO--Microsoft is playing catch-up with Vista.
In any case, both OO.o and MS Office are rather too large, cumbersome and feature laden for nearly all my needs. At home, I use Abiword and GNUmeric. They seem mech less cumbersome--they load faster, have a smaller footprint and are basically just more snappy on modestly configured machines. Furthermore, Gnumeric seems much better suited to statistical analysis than Excel--whereas Microsoft seems to place its priority on fancy integration like embedding powerpoints/word documents/flight simulators/etc into its spreadsheets, or making sure its macros are powerful enough to program it to play Pac Man, the developers of GNUmeric decided that maybe a spreadsheet user might like to have accurate calcualtions and a useful function library.
Wow...what a concept...a spreadsheet that does calcualtions well and a word processor that edits and formats documents well. If that means I'm stuck in the mid-90s then let me live in the blissfully ignorant past.
It doesn't make it "abuse of email" just because you don't want large attachments.
Except that is IS an abuse because it clogs email servers as large attachments sit in inboxes waiting to be opened. This means the resources of the email server are strained for every user...it isn't simply a matter of what *I* want
An email is a file. It's got a standard format and it gets sent from host to host.
No, an email is NOT a file--it wasn't originally anyways. Perhaps it is common today for email systems to treat a message as a file but that was NOT how email was designed. An email was set up as more of a "packet"--it is a stream of data within an "envelope" sent from one host to another. It was the MAILBOXES that were the files in which emails were stored--stored emails were not files unto themselves, rather they were records within a file. Then attachments came around and you end up with giant records with gigantic, specially-encoded representations of files embedded into them. The Mailbox file becomes totally huge, and the encoding of the large binary attachment within that file only inflates storage requirements.
Also, "we always used to do it this way" is meaningless. Years have passed. Times have changed.
I know that email server backends are available nowadays that use relational databases and more sophisticated storage of messages, however I was talking about email's heritage--it was never meant for use as a sophisticated file transfer mechanism. Yes times have changed but the problem is that with email and a lot of other technologies it was just evolved in a kludgy fashion rather than finding a proper solution to a new problem.
That's a bunch of crap. P2P provides a new method of finding content.
ummm...the crap is all over you there. Searching for content is only one component of P2P--the other main part of P2P is coordinating and executing file transfers between peers without the involvement of a central server. The most (in)famous of all P2P systems out there is BitTorrent and guess what...that one does nothing at all to help you find a file! It is all about file distribution.
Also, it doesn't get sent to countless email servers anyway, just the few (maybe even just one) that are necessary.
Yes email does get sent to countless servers every day---when people send large attachments then carbon copy everyone. Then it has to sit in those servers until every user has picked up their email--and even longer if it is a POP client who has elected to leave the message on the server until it is removed from the inbox at the client, or it is left in an online foler in an IMAP server. Plus, the entire body of your large email has to bounce its way through routers/gateways/proxies/relays until it reaches its destination and eats up bandwidth.
If large files need to be delivered to multiple recipients, FTP, HTTP, BitTorrent, etc are more efficient. I'm not saying that sending ANY attachments in email is bad, just that there is a lot of inappropriate use of them nowadays.
If you are not a professional organization, and you are trying to send a file to someone who is not connected at the same time as you, then FTP will not help you.
Why not? I've run a personal FTP server before, and it is getting more and more common for people to have persistent, high-speed connections in their homes and always leave their computers on. Any limitations on "servers" by shortsighted and greedy ISPs are artificial restrictions on already capable technology. Also, there are secure implementations of FTP so that is not a problem...plus there is always HTTP which is also better equipped to handle file distribution than email. "Server" programs on "clients" machines are not an impossibility--they are just not engineered for casual home use right now and ISPs have this "server phobia".
In any case, whos to say you need to host your own server to use HTTP or FTP? My Nephew and his wife just had a baby and r
I mentioned what the point is in my original post--for small, non-executable files mostly of a documentation-use nature. If it is a spreadsheet (WITHOUT garbage like VBS macros) or an elecronic copy of a user manual, or an image or other "rich media" that is not alphanumeric in nature (within reason--I'd dislike flash games being sent as an attachment for example).
But sending me.exe files, or 50 megabytes of database snapshot or archived logs? Please don't try to send these things via email then b*tch at me when they bounce or get filtered out...that is abuse of email and there are better ways of doing things.
Email is designed for small file transfer.
NO IT ISN'T. When Mr. Tomlinson sat down at his terminal in the 1970s and came up with email he was trying to create a system for MESSAGE transfer--that is, he wanted to replace the paper inter-office memo with something that was instant and electronic but non-verbal. There was no concept of a "file" involved, and in fact each email recipient only involved a single file (one for each "mailbox" which contained a concatenation of all incoming messages). File attachments came much later when more people saw the need to include non-alphanumeric data to express their message (graphic diagrams would be one of the most common requests). The use of an email message chiefly to transfer a file was an afterthought--a "hack"--simply because humans are lazy and, well if you could send a picture why not a program?
And it's the most convienient way to do peer to peer file transfer we have. FTP requires a server so it is fine as a central repository, but it is not good adhoc transfers between people.
If email was so good at ad-hoc, peer-to-peer file transfer then we wouldn't have had to invent P2P networks and clients. If you are a professional organisation setting up an FTP server is not a difficult task and you only have to do it once. If you have to do ad-hoc transfers of files that are inappropriate for attaching to email then there is also bittorrent--it is peer-to-peer and all you ahve to attach to your email is the little, non-executable.torrent file. Superior means of transfer are there--it just takes time to break old habits and to refine the technology for novice users.
(Actually, that is the direction I think email should be heading--stop with the "big binary attachment" madness and use HYPERLINKS and/or TORRENT FILES to reference "attachments" rather than shooting them all over the world and leaving countless full copies on countless email servers all over the world. Can email client developers not make such a thing transparent or at least easy for beginnners?)
Gmail blocks outbound attachments with exe files, even when those files are included inside zip files.
Google is RIGHT in doing such filtering, although perhaps they should make it clear to users up front on its filtering policies rather than waiting for them to discover it for themselves. Besides, even if outbound executable attachments are blocked how many corporate systems permit them inbound? My employer blocks inbound executables unless you're in certain departments, and the majority of our clients do as well. These systems are getting very smart too--they analyse the actual content of the file rather than the extension and even if you rename your.exe to.abc, ZIP it and rename the.zip extension.xyz our system will check the header content of the files' data and determine it is a ZIP, then extract the files inside to examine THEM if that is how you configure it.
The point is that email was not designed for file transfer and probably will never be the best tool for that purpose. Unfortuantely it cannot always be avoided but it should be whereever possible. If email was seen as a good way to transfer files then FTP wouldn't have been invented--people would've extended email to do it from the start. Since FTP is still around today and is now extended to secure FTP with SSL encryption and authentication THAT is the tool that professionals should use to send such files (that is what I do anyways).
There are some cases where email is the most convenient, such as for non-executable documents (I avoid sending.docs since I consider then "executable"--I send PDFs instead), smaller files and so on. For dealing with more novice users I send an email with the link to the file to click, and for getting files from them I set up a simple HTTPS "gateway" with a file submission form. Just as simple as attachments (for the client anyways) and more secure.
I don't think GMail and other mail systems need to be "fixed"...I think that people have to get out of the mindset of using email to exchange files. Use secure FTP or even HTTPS...or even better for big files use Bittorrent. It annoys me when people complain about limits on email attachments just like it annoys me when people use Excel to create "databases". At least learn to use MS Access dammit...it isn't THAT hard!
...not make up silly excuses about the choice of platform for your IT infrastructure.
They didn't actually disable any of the "no no" services like SSH, and each of the lab's PCs had an IP address that was visible outside of the university.
It does seem off to "waste" good public IPs on lab workstations but depending on the era when things were set up that was commonplace. The workstations at my alma mater also had public IPs, but back then Internet meant Telnet, FTP, Gopher, Archie, WAIS and this new-fangled HTTP "Web" thing was the very latest news. IP addresses were in abundance and the university had a whole class B subnet to itself. Subclassing and NAT were not common practice and in fact, a lot of network applications and protocols were not designed to deal with NAT.
I've never heard SSH referred to as a "no no service". Telnet, FTP, SMTP (especially if relaying was not disabled) absolutely...but SSH is encrypted and authenticated and although not risk-free (vulnerabilities in the most common SSH implementation for example) the risk is low enough that the benefits in terms of remote access and administration are worth it (SSH tunneling through a workstation on campus was a great way to get at services that were otherwise not accessible off-campus, ao I could do my labs at home).
Open source stuff only takes a lot more time and money to implement if your IT people just don't know what they're doing.
That is a completely unsubstantiated assertion on your part. You can point to many studies that both support and refute it, depending on the situation studied and the organisation that sponsored the study. In order for your statement to be tru you'd have to modify it as follows: Computer networks only take a lot more time and money to implement if your IT people don't know what they're doing.
I am personally more comfortable with administration in a UNIX or Linux environment than I am with Windows--that is just the skillset I learned in my scholarly and profesional experience. Because of that skillset it would take me far longer to set up a Windows-baseed network that I'd be comfortable with than it would for Linux or BSD...and when it comes to Solaris or HPUX it'd be about the same, so the huge expense of licensing those systems would dwarf any possilbe extra support costs of Linux or BSD.
Basically if you're looking at a major restructuring/upgrade or a new installation and are examining open source then look at your team...if they're all MCSEs with no UNIX or Linux experience then you'll have to eat the cost of training or compare that cost with licensing costs of Windows. If your team has been administering Solaris or HPUX or SCO or whatever UNIX (as is the case with most CS and engineering departments in post-secondary institutions) then the learning curve for changing to Linux or BSD is quite shallow, and the only concern (and one that is becoming less and less relevant) is if specialised applications such as simulators, schematic capture, PLD synthesisers and so on will run on an open platform--in this day and age if they do not, there is often a very good alternative: for example, lower-level statistics labs might use Microsoft Excel, which will not run on Linux without the assistance of WINE, etc. However, GNUmeric runs in Linux and is superior to Excel in this application.
A blanket statement like "not ready for prime time" in higher education indicates to me that the study was not very well put together--there are places where it is more than ready--it is superior.
If you want to associate yourself with shady, marginally-sane quasi-pyramid-scheme planners then I'd strongly recommend you look at Quixtar instead.
At least with Quixtar you can also get quality Amway products delivered right to your door every month...and you get to go to weekly meetings at the local best Western and make a whole bunch of supportive, shiny-faced, warm-and-fuzzy friends...and you don't even have to stand up and declare that you an alcoholic...and I even think you have far less than 12 steps to follow to achieve happiness too!
But SCO? I dunno man, it runs on spam--even Quixtar people will kick you out if you use spam to build your business. Plus, their CEO looks like a mean bouncer and acts worse...I mean c'mon man...threatening to sue your own customers? With that kind of attitude, how could you ever build your team both deep and wide?
'scuse me, I gotta go take my vitamins, drink my special juice and clean my toilet with these wonderful Amway products...
I did a quick search for soybean oil and it was $8.99 (USD) for a single gallon (cheaper than the organics I saw). We're going to have to bring down the price of soybean oil first for this to be viable.
I think that since the biggest market for soybean oil is for human (and animal?) consumption that the refining process is more expensive than it has to be--fuel grade soybean oil using exising technology might be a bit cheaper, plus there is economy in scale--much larger batches would be produced/distributed for use as fuel than for food.
Also, you make it sound like US$9 per US gallon is really expensive for a fuel. It is actually only the case in the US. At the height of post-Katrina hysteria in Canada fuel in Montreal peaked at nearly CA$1.35 per LITRE. That is already over US$4.50 per US gallon. If the claim of 50MPG is true and it is for mixed driving then that is nearly double the fuel economy of a typical gasoline vehicle. That means that for that week in Montreal when gas was over CA$1.30/Litre that fuel costs for the Soy-powered car would be LESS than gasoline right now...running on food-grade soybean oil!
The situation is already the norm in Europe and Australia. If you take the price of gasoline in the UK and do the exchange/conversion, they're probably already paying close to US$9 for 1 US gallon of gasoline.
If this car is for real these kinds and their school deserve a huge award...they could be future Nobel candidates IMO.
Pioneer never made anything for Tandy. Genexxa and Optimus both made really cheap stuff - name one double tape deck with full logic control like on Pioneer's models.
Sounds like you are in deep denial. You are possibly right that Pioneer didn't make Genexxa and Optima stuff, but I'm VERY sure that the same Taiwanese company made components branded with all three names (Pioneer, Optima and Genexxa and I believe Realistic as well). As one reader pointed out replacement parts for some stuff from Radio Shack would sometimes show up with a Pioneer logo somewhere on ot. Furthermore I've seen things like remote controls for Radio Shack-branded stuff that worked with better-known brands like Pioneer--and these were NOT programmable or multi-function remotes. Even many years ago a stylus or drive belt from some Realistic turntables would've been interchangeable with some Pioneers as well.
The Radio Shack brands and other cheap stuff is not always just re-badged Pioneer of course, but it is common for them to come out of the same factory and share some of the same components, and entry-level Pioneer might be identical to high-end Radio Shack. It's been like that for decades--brand names really haven't meant a thing since the 1960s ended. It doesn't matter what industry--electronics, food, clothing, etc--all the brand stands for is marketing and the logo displayed on the merchandise and at very most perhaps an extra stage of quality control.
Don't worry, you'll adjust to reality soon enough. I came to accept reality many years ago when I pulled the Blaupunkt stereo out of my car to change the lightbulb that illuminated the instrumentation. Inscribed on the back was the phrase "made in Taiwan". How's that for "German quality"?
...if you are the corporate equivalent of the Borg. The funny brand names come from their acquisitions (what the heck Axapta means I don't know...some Danish dude came up with that years before he sold out to Navision...who then sold out to Microsoft). Combine all these kookily-names corporate stepchildren with a team of marketers who are trying to solve the problem of "brand continuity" that almost nobody really cares about and you get the mess that is Microsoft Business Solutions' product line.
It's not all THAT bad...licensing is the worst. There are people who are "licensing specialists" and just deal with licensing. Must be sad to work on a "feature" like product activation that adds absolutely no real value to a system.
That has a firm grip on Office and still does not understand what the hell this post means?
I'd say you're probably in the company of a vast majority of Office users (even a good number of "power users" who can turn straw into gold using VBA macros in Excel). This is because Microsoft is re-positioning Office somewhat and it is going to (try to) occupy a role that traditional Office users are quite unfamiliar with. However, if you happen to be a cubicle-serf at a large corporation then you'll "get it" if you look into it a bit more.
Let me expound on things a bit:
Microsoft already dominates in the small-to-medium enterprise market and the personal computer industry as a whole. This means it has great security but ever-more limited growth potential. It has decided to take on new challenges in many areas where it does not yet dominate, and that is in the enterprise-class server and large-enterprise systems market.
To that end, MS has formed a "business solutions" division and gobbled up a few players in that market--the two most notable being Great Plains and Damgaard/Navision, known for their accounting and ERP software respectively. The Great Plains accounting system and Navision Axapta ERP have now been assimilated into Microsoft's CRM 3.0 and AX 3.0 products as part of the MS strategy to take on SAP from "the bottom"--maintaining these products traditional base of medium-sized enterprises and scaling up to meet those who traditionally look at SAP.
Where does Office fit into all of this? Well, Microsoft already has a firm grip on those corporate IT gonads and it is looking to leverage its position in that market to push "end-to-end integration". THAT is what this story is all about. It is a strategy that has helped Exchange Server to succeed despite the fact that it had (at least at the start) a fairly longstanding and very well-deserved reputation for being a steaming pile o' crap: Microsoft managed to put together a half-decent groupware client in Outlook and used the marketing might of its Office division to entrench it on the corporate desktop...and they managed to continually improve it.
Now, the PHB can have a spiffy and snappy client to connect to his exchange server that is conveniently bundled with the spreadsheet and word processor and presentation software that are all so essential in calculating budget cutbacks, issuing memos for his underlings to ignore and create mind-numbing slideshows for pointless meetings. In the meantime, IBM has their quite capable Lotus server, and it is challenged with a client that looks like ass in comparison and is just as stinky to use. Result? Exchange kicks ass on the competition.
Now MS needs a "differentiator" that distracts PHBs from the trance that only an SAP consultant seems to be able to induce so that it can pick up business for its AX/CRM solution. We all know that PHBs like bright shiny things, and the client application is the most easily polished. I've had a bit of experience with Axapta and can tell you it doesn't offer enough of a differentiator from SAP (which is to say...it looks like ass, just like all ERP systems look like ass). Compared to Office, it is large, slow and arcane. Solution? Make Office the client! Office is far from perfect, but it is fast(er), more integrated and nore familiar with the cubicle serfs. I know it would be a popular option in MY office--right now we have to enter our time in a wretched klunky, Java-applet-based web interface. For example, if we had Axapta/CRM and Office and a "software assurance" agreement then we could look forward to filling out a convenient Excel spreadsheet and have it INSTANTLY update the ERP/CRM system! Wunderbar! PHBs will salivate over it.
This is also all part of a long term strategy to try and own "web services". Office is being remade into an intellegent web services client (R) (TM) that hooks into enterprise systems (sepecially Microsoft enterprise systems) via web services, so that you can interact with some "virtua
it's really no doubt in my mind that this format war will wage itself in the multibillion dollar gaming industry
No it won't, any more than it will revolve around the PC industry or Hollywood. The winner of a "format war" in this day and age MUST get buy-in from all three. Blu-Ray only has buy-in from Hollywood (and even that buy-in is not completely "Universal"). Sony and company seem to have kept the Blu-Ray door fairly shut to the gaming industry: Microsoft and Nintendo are doing their own thing and there is credible speculation that problems with Blu-Ray are one of the key issues that may delay the PS3, and its looking like the PC industry has make its biggest bets on HD DVD because of its lower price point and more solid delivery prospects.
Xbox 360 will not support HDDVD games. This ended the war in my mind. Who the hell is going to spend several hundred dollars for a cumbersome ADDON HD-DVD player for their xbox 360, JUST to watch movies?
Who's to say MS will NEVER support games on HD DVD media? Who's to say the add-on will be "cumbersome"? Yes, history has shown such add-ons have their challenges success-wise (the Sega 32X and Atari Jaguar CD...) but lessons can be learned from such mistakes. MS is good at learning from mistakes--after all, nearly every version 1.0 release in its history have arguably been mistakes and the company still manages to dominate;-).
And as to who would elect to buy a "cumbersome add-on" over a full-fledged player JUST to watch moves: every "early adopter" on a budget. If MS can manage to be one of the "first movers" in the HD DVD player market, and can come in at a lower price point (should be easy enough being it would be a cheaper-to-produce add-on) then it could be a modest success.
Had they REALLY supported HDDVD, they would have waited to bring their product to market, and included a HD-DVD player standard.
With Microsoft's history, why would you expect otherwise? Microsoft has NEVER been about supporting standards in anything! Microsoft is about industry domination. Microsoft is about profit. And yes, I still believe that there's a little tiny bit of MS that wants to be "innovative"--or at least first to market with new technology. Waiting for the technology to be "just perfect" and standards-friendly runs completely counter to their corporate psyche. Sitting on the XBox 360 would mean losing first-mover advantage...frustration from publishers contending with a stagnating market...and above all millions in lost potential sales.
MS was the Johnny-come-lately with the original XBox--it had a pitiful library of titles compared to the PS2 and the console was quite an expensive loss-leader for the company. Sony has pissed away their dominant position by foolishly repeating history with the PS3--they figured that by waiting a WHOLE YEAR after their competition got to market in order to ready up a "revolutionary" competitor to the "evolutionary" XBox people will blindly rush to get their latest shiny toy. It didn't work with Betamax and it probably won't work this time either...the odds are stacked against them and with Sony's recent track record expect them to have a nearly disastrous, glitch-filled launch--by which time Microsoft will have already smoothed over the problems with their own glitch-filled launch of the 360 last year.
BlueRay has won the format wars before they even begun. Look at how profitable Sony made the completely proprietary UMD movie simply because they can profit from their own film distribution division.
As I said, Blu-Ray is FAR from assured a victory...their chance of victory is 50-50 at best right now. Neither format has complete buy-in from Hollywood, PC and gaming industries yet. HD DVD has the advantage right now because it has a greater cross-section of supporters.
I also wouldn't use UMDs as an example of successful proprietary technology, because most people consider the UMD as a movie format to be a relative failure.
Any non-solid in food advertising (hamburger ketchup, cereal milk) is actually glue.
Advertisers are much more creative than that actually. Cereal milk is often glue but there are far more diverse and creative techniques out there for food ads. Ice cream is usually a concoction derived from potato flakes (though not quite made into the same mashed potatoes tha the manufacturer intended). Bread is rarely if ever real fresh bread--it is usually shellacked with a "tasty" varnish and has the consistency of croutons (except more durable--artsy-crafty folks are probably familiar with that sort of modelling dough used to make those ornaments that look like real pastries...). Actual use of real food is pretty commonplace however it is generally room temperature and sometimes horribly altered. As a rule, anything that LOOKS good and can stand up to studio lighting and sit for extended periods is what goes. That is why most "fragile" food is totally fake.
Other industries are "extra flattering" as well...show me an automobile ad that showcases the base model during normal use--it is always the one equipped with the handsome upgraded appearance package and driven by a "professional driver on a closed course". Clothing companies use fashion models that are far from the average physique, and you are kidding yourselves if you think that every one of them is wearing a regular size right off the rack in a store--in a lot of cases the clothes are tailored to fit the specific model. I'd say that the more expensive the clothing label, the more likely clothes have been specially altered to fit the model for the ads.
The video game industry has operated this way since the beginning and I remember in the early 80s that there was a fracas about the use of "artist's renditions" in print ads. Some companies relented and pit in very fine print somewhere in the ad "artist's rendition - actual appearance may vary". One company (Parker Brothers? The publisher of the Popeye and Frogger games for home systems) took out a series of full page ads that showed the same screenshot for ALL the systems (so you'd see variances bewteen the Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Commodore, Apple, etc)--implicitly boasting that they weren't ashamed of their graphics and suggesting that they made an honest effort in developing for ALL platforms while some other game makers did not.
I think the practice was somewhat dishonest but understandable back in the day, since the hardware wasn't capable of making very exciting visuals on its own, and the market was fragmented amongst more platforms with a greater range of capabilities (bigger titles that were published for many platforms would have to resort to full page ads as described above to be completely truthful in their marketing). Today, however, such practice is inexcusable--it is plain dishonesty. Video displays do not melt like ice cream under studio lights, consoles are powerful enough to render great graphics, and the differences in contemporary platforms are pretty much NEVER evident in screenshots or quick flashes of action in ads. By relying on pre-rendered footage and artist renditions modern game publishers are just playing a crooked game of bait and switch. Old habits die hard though--much harder than the justifications for those habits.
The Circuit City puchase of InterTan took place well over a year ago and probably had minimal impact in the past year's performance of Radio Shack. I think it has just been the most recent chapter in a story of long, slow decline for Radio Shack.
Here is a bit of background:
in 1986, Tandy Corporation sold off all its assets and business interests outside the United States to a Canadian company called InterTAN. Although the name of the Canadian firm suggests it was a division of Tandy Corporation this was not the case; InterTAN was wholly independent from Tandy Corp in terms of ownership and corporate structure (The InterTAN name came from the fact that they WERE a division of Tandy until 1986--they were sold off but the name stayed). To maintain a presence outside the US, Tandy gave InterTAN a license to the "Radio Shack" name so that it could continue operating its international stores under that name (mostly in Canada but interTAN also owned and operated a few Radio Shack stores in Europe and even Australia IIRC). This license to the Radio Shack brand extended to the end of 2010.
Tandy later restructured/refocused and changed its name to Radio Shack corporation to match its store brand (in 2000), though InterTAN has retained its name to this day.
Things got complicated in 2004 when US electronics retailer "Circuit City" then bought the whole of InterTAN. Although Circuit City had little to no presence in Canada, Radio Shack found itself in the awkward position of having its biggest rival "own" its brand outside the US! A lawsuit ensued, although for over a year Circuit City's InterTAN division continued to operate its newly-acquired chain of electronics stores under the "Radio Shack" moniker. Since 1986 Canadian Radio Shacks had gradually started looking less and less like the US versions, and when Circuit City came into the picture Radio Shack cut off its supply of private label goods, so by 2005 Canadian Radio Shacks shared nothing in common with the US stores except the name. It seemed odd to me to go into a Radio Shack and see nothing sold with the Radio Shack or Realistic brands on it...
In Mid 2005 Radio Shack won its case against InterTAN and managed to break the licensing contract early, at which time InterTAN had to rename all its stores (they are now known as "The Source by Circuit City"). Interestingly enough, there were a handful of Canadian "independents" (mostly in small towns) that were able to keep the Radio Shack name above the door, because they weren't ever affiliated with InterTAN--they were "mom-and-pop" stores who independently acquired "partnership" agreements with the US company. A very small number of store operators also broke away from InterTAN upon the purchase of that company by Circuit City and also didn't change the name. Furthermore, Radio Shack has mande a noticeable effort to reintroduce its stores on its own--often in the same shopping centres as The Source. These new Radio Shack stores look and feel exactly the same as the US ones, which is to say they are different from anything Canadians have seen.
Interesting side note...although InterTAN originated as a division of Tandy/Radio Shack, after it became an independent corporation in 1986 it didn't stick to just running Radio Shack stores--it also licensed brands from other companies (like Rogers Communications) and operated several regional and national retail and service chains, including:
* Radio Shack (now "The Source") * THS Studio ("talk hear see" - a "boutique" of electronic gadgets) * Battery Plus (sells batteries of all kinds) * Rogers Plus (sells Rogers cellular service and phones) * IQ Crew (a service business consisting of computer geeks who do housecalls to fix your crufty Windows PC)
Most of these ventures were established before Circuit City bought InterTAN.
Its all about accountability. Even if Microsoft may not have the best product, when it fails, the suits are able to hold Microsoft accountable.
Masterful troll, and as anyone who has had experience dealing with an uncooperatinve Microsoft-based solution knows it is a statement so blatantly full of crap it is hilarious. MS has a whole departmnent of legal people whose sole job it is to make sure Microsoft holds as little accountability as legally possible.
A little harder to do that with Debian, or any OSS without corporate backing.
Which is why Debian is not the favourite of corporate customers. IBM, Novel and Red Hat DO back their open source offeringe VERY well though. In fact, an open source solution from one of them is probably a much better bet in terms of accountability than Microsoft, becasue they are "solutions providers". Microsoft is a fairly immature player in that game--their business model is built around selling little boxes stuffed with shiny discs full of data and a bundle of useless paper certificates and "getting started" manuals. MS "innovation" with respect to their business model has been insignificant--it has amounted mostly to replacing physical boxes with certificates, product keys and activations. Since they have such a product-oriented mindset, the best you can hope for accountability-wise is a few hundred dollars in refunds for a scratched disc or botched install of Office as per some canned EULA. A "solutions provider", on the other hand, negotiates a far more comprehensive contract with explicit terms and conditions their business customers can rely on for accountability. The business never gets EVERYTHING they want, but they get a much better deal than Microsoft can normally offer.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
Absolutely true. That is why there is a lot of open source out there that has been deployed and managed by IBM. Often their "free software" solution costs more money than going with Microsoft, however IBM has the reputation of being more reliable, mature and accountable than Microsoft.
Tar sands - okay, let's set aside (as if we could) the environmental devastation these plants are wreaking on the Canadian landscape and the hideous greenhouse emissions related to producing syncrude.
Have you ever BEEN in that particular part of Canada? It's not exactly a pristine, sensitive environment worth preserving at all costs...there are millions of square kms of similar terrain in Canada that isn't saturated with hydrocarbons--it's not like the elk are going to run out of habitat because of tarsands operations--it is the CONSUMPTION of the oil that warms the planet and thaws out the tundra that'll do that. If you are concerned about preserving highly valued Canadian habitat you'd be MUCH better off to look at ways to reduce the consumption of products made with old-growth forest trees from BC. THAT is probably the most ecologically treatened part of Canada at present.
Tar sand extraction in Canada uses natural gas to heat water; in 2004 Canada produced about 1 million barrels of syncrude per day which consumed 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Plans are to go to 2.2 million bpd which would consume 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas. So how are Canada's gas reserves? Production in 2003 (the last year I had figures) was 16.8 billion cubic feet per day - a 0.5 billion cubic foot DECREASE on the previous year. Canada's gas fields are entering long-term decline, just as a significant draw on their reserves comes along.
You make all sorts of flawed assumptions about syncrude production here. The relationship between natureal gas consumed and syncrude produced in the SAGD progess is NOT linear as you imply here. First of all, there is an "economy of scale" situation here...doubling production will consume much more natural gas but still significantly less than double. Second, the process being used by new facilities is considerably more efficient than what is being done in the original facilities.
You also seem to assume that all the energy released in the consumption of this natural gas is used to produce steam for extracting oil from the tarsands. This is not true--more and more of the waste heat from the process is being recovered for use in co-generation facilities (one part of electricity deregulation in Alberta that has actually gone right). Since there is revenue to be had in selling power from these facilities onto the grid it enhances the economic viability of the tarsands significantly, and everyone in the western half of Canada and the US that is on the same power grid can potentially benefit--after all, SOMEONE has to meet the electricity demands of all those Californians plugging in their electric cars every night, and it doesn't look like their own bankrupt utility companies are quite up to the task;-)
The browser history is not available for security reasons. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if anything more than the screen resolution can be obtained.
I guess you are right about the history. However you can get more than just the resolution via Javascript. For example, you can still access the history in a limited fashion by using Javascript to create invisible tags with various URLs, then checking their "visited" property and using XMLHTTPRequest to send this back to your server. You can also sniff for browser, OS and IP Address, and do so more reliably than with server-side techniques (parsing the HTTP request). For example, you could under some circumstances get the REAL IP address of a machine (vs. the proxy address reported on the server side).
Hidden IFrames have all the power of XMLHTTPRequest.
There is a reason they are deprecated (the iframe tag is not valid strict XHTML). I suspect becasue they are very evil--an even worse kludge than XMLHTTPRequest, and the source of some very serious security holes in IE (and even the source of some grief in Firefox). As you mention, in IE even invisible iframes trigger clicks when they submit data in IE, and furthermore iframes can be disabled by the client user independently of Javascript (that is generally standard practice for me with IE anyways).
AJAX does have an important redeeming feature in comparison to VBscript in that it is contained within a Javascript "sandbox", however the implementation is inconsistent. Remember that in IE AJAX relies on an ActiveX control, and if there is a security bug in that control it can be exploited via AJAX. How the sandbox is defined is also inconsistent...IE actually (at one point at least) exposed information about LOCAL HARD DRIVES to Javascript!
The concept behind AJAX is very cool, however I am less than impressed by the implementation. A very important component of AJAX--the XMLHTTPRequest object--is NOT A STANDARD IMPLEMENTATION! It is an idea conceived by the Mozilla team and picked up by others as a de-facto standard..and of course, MS had to be all screwy and come up with their own kludgy way of doing things, naming their object differently and implementing a slightly different model just to be difficult. I think the whole thing should be dropped in favour of the ACTUAL standard (DOM Level 3 "Load and Save" -- a standard released by the W3C nearly two years ago). The W3C standard might look a bit more cumbersome (hey, it fits in with the rest of Javascript and the DOM then) but at least there'd be consistency and some method to the madness.
But U.S. cell providers don't want rich extensible devices, they want to sell you $2 ringtones, $3 music downloads, $10/month online photo albums, and address book backup for $2/month.
Actually, I think cellphone companies would LOVE to have "rich, extensible devices". When I referred to "circumventing their revenue-generating content-delivery system" I meant in terms of USER-CONTROLLED extensibility--most notably the ability for hobbyists to "hack" their smartphones and plug in their own programs via a local connection (outside the cellphone network). Phone companies would be deleriously happy if they could provide "product upgrades" through their service in order to add functionality to the smartphones on their system (at 'x' dollars per update of course, followed by a 'y' dollars per month charge to use the new feature).
Big, monopolistic companies like cellphone and cable companies are usually quite receptive to new technology, so long as it is marketed to them from the "right angle" (that is, it gives them MORE CONTROL over the user experience, along with enriching the user experience itself).
Forget about the back button...that is an annoyance I've grown to tolerate (for almost a decade we've had to deal with "sticky" web pages). MY biggest concerns centre on SECURITY and PRIVACY.
One thing about Javascript is that it is very aware of the client's environment--we can use it to determine screen size, colour depth, browser type, browser history and so forth. Until the introduction of the XMLHTTPRequest object, developers were limited in how they could bring this information into the server. It wasn't impossible (you could do stuff with traditional javascript and server-side programming involving hidden input tags, cookies, automatic page submits/reloads, etc), however the user would usually have a visual cue (IE would produce an audible "click" during page submits and redirects by default, the page would blink, the "throbber" icon and status bar would indicate an HTTP request was happening, etc). Furthermore, such schemes were more easily breakable (disablihng cookies, etc).
Now with AJAX, a coder could write client side script that (for example) enumerates your browser's history and ships it back using the XMLHTTPRequest object. The page does not need to use cookies, install special software like IE "browser helper objects" or need to expose itself through the use of hidden input tags. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread for spyware developers (multi-platform, lightweight, not yet easy to detect). I think javascript is generally better contained than, say, VBS, from a security standpoint, but I still have my concerns.
Worse yet, there isn't much in the way of user control--a person can disable Javascript entirely but then the whole app breaks. Browsers like Firefox can limit the use of javascript to do popo-up ads, alter toolbars and such, but I see nothing regarding security control of the XMLHTTPRequest object. As far as I can tell, if Javascript is enabled at all, a script can make full use of that object, and it'd be REALLY easy to use it to report my browsing history on a constant basis, without me knowing about it unless I do a lot of sleuthing in source files and cache.
In any case, I have some questions for "seasoned" AJAX coders (I am well-versed in Javascript but am a neophyte with ful-blown AJAX apps): What do you do to make sure your app is secure from client-side shenanigans (perhaps an AJAX-equivalent to SQL-injection), what can a user do to manage security within your AJAX app, and have you used AJAX techniques for potentially intrusive purposes (sniffing a client's environment in particular)? You can post anonymously if you've had to "do evil" as part of your job if you want;-)
(BTW, a competent AJAX developer would at least take measures to disable the back button's functionality, and there are measures that can be taken to handle the back button gracefully. It is mostly a matter of sound design...)
Windows Mobile seems to be well on it's way toward taking over a significant portion of this market which needs competition.
Microsoft's success in this area is far from assured. I can honestly say that for every Microsoft smartphone I've seen someone use, I've seen five (well, probably even more) based on other platforms...and to put it plainly, the Microsoft-based super-phones totally suck. They are more expensive, firstly. They are physically huge in comparison to a Blackberry device, the user interface is cumbersome, the battery life is far from being best-in-class and cellular providers provide lackluster support (Blackberry devices are much better supported and promoted I've found). What about their new offensive against RIM with respect to Exchange integration without the need to pay for licenses? Well, if the hardware sucks and is more expensive than Blackberries, and the devices are bound only to Exchange (my rather large employer does not use exchange as its standard) and so on, I'm far from convinced RIM is in trouble.
Basically, it isn't too late for palmsource because the typical end user really doesn't care what the OS is on their phone any more than they care about what kind of microcontrollers are used in their microwaves or MPEG decoders are in their living-room DVD players. People want to push the ON button and be able to make calls, check emails, text each other and just have it work. If anything Microsoft is at a disadvantage because their offerings quite often DON'T "just work", and to make the Windows platform truly competitive on a smart phone I think they're going to have to further re-work their interface to make it look even less "pc-like". Think about it...corporate executives, teenagers and a great deal of other gadget-lovers HATE the Windows PC experience--they merely tolerate it because it (barely) meets their needs in performing various tasks. Most people I know don't want to carry the PC experience with them wherever they go.
At that point the problem for MS becomes how to differentiate themselves form PalmSource and others. Easy intergration with PCs? Pretty flimsy excuse to buy a phone if you ask me--all most people need is some basic addressbook/calender sync, and everyone does that well enough now. Pocket Word/Excel/IE/Outlook? Their full-sized counterparts are ghastly, why would I want to make the experience even ghastlier by cramming them onto a 5cm screen? Sorry, phones aren't PCs and the familiarity of MS Office or the Windows desktop means nothing. Furthermore, "pushing email" is not rocket science and RIM and others can do fine against MS. The challenge MS' competitors face isn't one of technology, or even getting out there fast enough (next year is soon enough...really). The challenge is to out-savvy MS in terms of business model and marketing. Get cell providers and manufacturers, etc on board and you're set. It is PalmSource's and RIMs to lose if they respond to MS plays with boneheaded service and license agreements, slow or non-existent innovation and poor interoperability.
This whole 'Linux phone' thing has, to date, sucked for hobbyists.
With all due respect, with that attitude it sounds like the lack of progress for Linux in this market space has as much to do with the hobbyist community as it does with the manufacturers of these devices. If every open-source-related announcement by an ISV or gadget-maker is met with a response like this from hobbyists there won't be much enthusiasm to keep going down the Free Software path.
Pretty much every company out there in the wireless mobile market doesn't quite "get it" yet when it comes to Free Software, because their legacy and corporate culture is rooted in a highly-proprietary mindset. Normally, everything is patented, encumbered and non-disclosed up the wazoo. It'll take some time for the marketplace to adjust to a modernised business model based on open technology, and Hobbyists, and the Free Software community in general, should offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and real solutions rather than just complaining. IMHO, it looks like this new ALP system has a lot going for it, if only it can land the big backers it needs to get adopted.
Pick a toolset and run with it, preferably something that allows for easy porting from existing OSS apps?
Umm...isn't that exactly what is happening here? Yes, they have engineered their own API, but it looks to me that GTK+ and GStreamer are important components of the new platform. The "open source ecosystem" seems quite unencumbered from an IP standpoint and would certainly not present a porting challenge for existing OSS apps. From that standpoint mobile devices based on this platform should be fairly hobbyist-friendly.
But of course, normal people don't buy smartphones, cell companies do. So it won't happen.
Therein lies the rub. Furthermore, even if a "normal person" bought a smartphone directly, that person would have to subscribe to service s provided by a cell company, and cell comanies are in the "content provider" game first and foremost--and smartphones are just delivery mechanisms in their view. Cell companies want the most whiz-bang "content delivery device" money can buy--the one that can push as many bytes per second, has the most toys like cameras, music players, big bright colour screens, etc. They don't give a crap what the programming toolkit is or about JAR files or SIS files or any of that other properller-head stuff. In fact, if an engineer boasted of the ability to allow end users to plug in custom software it would be seen as a liability because it circumvents their revenue-generating content-delivery system, and furthermore they would lose control over the environment (remember the corporate culture we are dealing with here)
I guess the technical aspect is only half the solution. The rest of the solution is to reform the wireless telecommunications industry in north America (I think it is telling that mobile wireless devices based on Linux are a much larger presence in Asia and parts of Europe).
I never owned a C64 personally, however my school was well stocked with them (they were used for the most part by grades I through IX). When I started in Grade I, my school was equipped with two Apple IIs for use by "gifted" elementary school students, and a number of Commodore PETs for use by high-school students. When the C64 came out a few years later they replaced the Apple IIs for the most part (though they continued to be used to teach programming in some grades--they were even upgraded..one to a II+ and the other to a IIe). Commodores were a popular choice for Canadian schools, since Commodore was founded and headquartered in Canada (although it was actually an offshore corporation as it seems to be tradition amongst many Canadian investors to avoid our sometimes repressive taxation).
The Apple II and C64 therefore make up my first serious experience with computers. The first computer I owned myself was a Colecovision ADAM. I had learned LOGO on the C64 but knew BASIC from the Apple IIs and Coleco "SmartBASIC" shared its syntax with Applesoft BASIC. It was also sold as an "all in one" package (printer, tape drive, etc--just hook up to a TV or monitor and go) and could run all the ColecoVision carts (the hottest system at the time!). All of that sealed the deal, plus the fact that my savings were not large enough to buy a C64 or Apple II system. Canadian Tire had ADAMs on special for a great price so I got one (yes Canadian Tire sold home computers...they were official dealers for Commodore and Coleco)...days before Coleco announced it was halting production of the ADAM....d'OH!
Things turned out pretty OK though...the ADAM enjoyed support from Coleco for a few more months, and 3rd parties continued to produce software and hardware. ADAM user groups provided good support for many years thereafter (I believe a group of enthusiasts persists to this day!). I actually liked to mock C64 owners over the slowness of the C64 whenever they bragged about their sound and graphics capabilities (C64 BASIC not only didn't have commands to support the sound and graphics capabilities, it was also dog slow compared to SmartBASIC, and the C1541 floppy drive was significantly slower than the ADAM's *TAPE* drive!).
Not to say I didn't like the C64, because it was a great machine. I enjoyed "hacking" the C64 machines on display at Canadian Tire (because Canadian Tire salespeople barely had a clue at best)...I'd warm boot the machine out of the demo and typing in silly BASIC programs that said things like show a screen saying "ATARI RULES!"
Other favourite pastimes included typing in games from COMPUTE! (Apple listings often worked with little or no translation, and I later got an Atari which I ended up using for this purpose) and doing animation (using MovieMaker on the Atari, and SmartLOGO on the ADAM...I even manually drew still pictures on the ADAM and animated them by filming onto super 8 film frame-by-frame).
Those were the days...computers did so much less than they do now, but they were usually so much more fun to use.
You probably use computers today specifically because of Microsoft Windows at some point in the past.
Sorry, this is WRONG. By and large we use computers DESPITE using Microsoft Windows, not BECAUSE of it. Microsoft has always been a low-innovation company; it takes old ideas and finds new opportunities for them. Microsoft's very first product, BASIC for the MITS Altair, was an old idea brought into a new market space. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, and didn't invent the OS. By the mid 70's writing a BASIC interpreter was a pretty garden-variety activity for enthusiastic hobbyists fortunate enough to have access to minicomputers. BillG is not a vrey good innovator, but he is a visionary of sorts and can spot unexploited opportunities.
Other innovatinos borrowed by Microsoft:
* Modern microcomputer architecture of BIOS and OS borrowed from Digital Research (BDOS and CP/M)
* Colour graphics (Cromemco(?) Dazzler card, Apple II, Atari 800 all before 1980)
* Mouse (Douglas Engelbart, 1964)
* Graphical User Interface (Xerox Alto in 1973, Apple Lisa in 1983)
* Web Browser (CERN WorldWideWeb, 1990 and NCSA Mosaic, 1993 - MSIE started off as a a re-branded/derivative version of this browser licensed from Spyglass Software--a firm trying to commercialise the academic project)
Microsoft was simply savvy enough to know how to bring these technologies to the masses and establish a dominant, standard platform. Standardisation--THAT is why we all use computers as much as we do today, NOT because MS makes such good software. I think that if we were all lucky enough to have companies that had both Microsoft's "vision" (business savvy, really) and Xerox/Digital Research/Apple/Atari/Commodore's talent for innovation that computing would be far more advanced and ubiquitous than it is today, because computers would actually "work".
It was likely your first operating system.
On this forum, likely NOT. My first exposure to computers was on a freinds TRS-80 CoCo (The original, silver, memory-challenged model 1), and on my school's Apple II (no plus, e, c or gs). The first OS I seriously used was CP/M 2.2. I remember when the lab for Jr/Sr high was upgraded from Commodore PETs to 8088 machines, with the brand-new MSDOS 2.11. Slashdotters are enthusiasts and generally got into computers as early as possible in their lives. If Windows was your first OS then (with a few exceptions) you are probably quite a young/.er...most certainly under 25 anyways...
Why is that? In 2003 Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems, the #1 supplier in Canada of electronic voting machines.
Well, because Canada is smart enough to not actually use Diebold's crappy Windows-based technology. We just completed a federal election yesterday that went pretty much without a hitch. All federal electoral districts in Canada use one, identical system: A paper ballot. The format of all ballots across the nation is identical--the only difference being the names. The names are always in alphabetical order of the candidate's last name, with the full party name printed underneath, in slightly smaller print. Beside each name is a large circle, clearly associated with one of the candidates.
The process of voting in Canada is simple, and identical across the country for federal elections, and pretty much the same for provincial elections as well. You receive a voter registration card in the mail telling you where to vote, and if you are not registered you phone a well advertised 1-800 number to find the location of your poll (you can register any time up to and including voting day). You go to your poliing station and a scrutineer finds and crosses off your name on the official printed copy of the registration (or collects and signs your registration form if you just registered). You are then handed a folded ballot (all ballots in the entire country are even folded the same) and are directed to the voting booth. You then select the candidate by drawing an X in the correct circle using an HB pencil, fold your ballot back up and return it to the scrutineer. The scrutineer removes the perforated section, hands it back and you put it in the ballot box.
It's been like that for decades, and it has always worked perfectly fine. There are no "pregnant chads", no confusing ballot formats, no clunky Windows-PCs-as-voting-machines and no political controversy around the process. We have to improve maintenance of our permanent electors registry, but that is already nearly up to snuff by now, and has never been as bad as the US.
As for electronic voting machines, the company you mentioned only supplies those to MUNICIPAL elections. Furthermore, they are specialised elctronic tabulators, not glorified PCs. You still record your vote on a paper ballot--it is just machine readable now (you connect the broken line next to a candidate). The tabulators count up the official results, however if a judicial recount is ordered in a very close race, it is conducted manually.
If I encounter a Diebold PC in a municipal election I'll be quite disappointed. Since what most cities do ain't broken, I doubt they'll "fix" things in future elections with Diebold's flashy goods.
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The average American soccer mom will need a whole herd of cows in constant "production" to pick the kids up from school.
Well, considering how many Big Macs American soccer moms and their offspring will consume over their lifetimes, I'm guessing that there are already enough "constantly producing" cows being raised to meet that demand. It only makes sense to try to capture unused energy from the very large amount of waste products produced to fill the demand for beef.
Assuming we can find enough grass to feed them
Well, most beef cattle are finished in feedlots and fed grain for at least some of their lives, so they don't need big green rolling hills their entire lives...and have you ever been to North Dakota or southern Saskatchewan and Alberta? Ain't exactly a shortage of grass OR space for free range cows.
this much methane will cause the oceans to rice in less than a decade.
Well from your post I'd say you've at least heard the term "carbon neutral" before...that is what this process is. The methane produced by cows is a carbon source that is offset by the grass eaten by cows, which is a carbon sink. Furthermore, we would probably not need to produce much more methane than we do now for beef production--we'd simply be trappoing unspent stored energy from livestock waste.
This isn't "natural gas" methane--the reason that stuff is supposed to be so bad for our climate is becasue it is released from a source that has been trapped away from our ecosystem for millions of years...it is a carbon source trapped by a carbon sink that is long gone and thus upsets our current ecosystem's balance.
Seriously. Shouldn't we be looking for something more sensible than this?
We currently drill deep into the crust under the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico using gigantic platforms that have to weather lethally strong hurricanes every year. We also dig up huge pits of tar in the far north and produce huge amounts of steam...in arctic conditions...to melt that tar and separate the sediment from the usable oil. To meet the rest of our demands, we ship tankers of the stuff from dangerous foreign countries that are run by crackpots and/or are havens for terrorists who'd love to see us all dead.
Somehow, I can't see how extracting useful hydrocarbons from piles of crap in a pasture would be any less sensible than the above-mentioned methods of getting fuel.
Brazil runs most of its cars on sugar cane extract - a carbon-neutral solution.
Two points here:
1. Brazil runs a LOT of cars on sugar cane, but by far the most fuel consumption is still conventional petroleum products (somewhere areound 75% IIRC)
2. Using sugar cane to make ethanol fuel is NO MORE "CARBON NEUTRAL" than making it from cow dung. Using sugar cane, or corn, or soybeans or potatoes or any other plant to make ethanol fuel is probably more efficient--after all, much of the stored energy in the cows' feed goes to growing the cow. However, we are growing cows for food and hides anyways so we might as well use their waste too...and the process should (in theory) have no more disruption on the world's carbon cycle than plant-based fuels.
Then again, Brazil isn't run by millionaires who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually imporoving things.
Wow...I'm blown away...you REALLY don't know much about global politics do you. Historically speaking, "run by millionares who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually improving things" has been EXACTLY what the Brazillian government was, though I believe there have been efforts to improve there in recent years. It's pretty much a basic fact about south and central America--nations in that region are either corrupt, pseudo-democracies headed by obscenely rich men of low moral standards, or totalitarian dictatorships run by "communist" military generals.
...then I hope I don't have to see it for a loooong time.
I went to a swimming pool that "upgraded" their coin-operated lockers--they went from keys to electonic locks with keypad-entered passcodes a number of years ago, then decided that STILL wasn't snazzy enough and put in fingerprint readers.
I hope they canned the pointy-haired idiot who came up with THAT gem of an idea.
Here is the problem: It is easy enough to get into your locker before you enter the pool. After you go out and swim for a bit your fingers get all wet and wrinkly and your fingerprints actually shrink a bit...it seems that the software is too picky/stupid to compensate, and as a result people have to go and dry their hands under the hot air dryers for several minutes just to open their locks. A lot of people would just give up and get an attendant to open the locker--which would require you to give a sufficiently detailed description of the contents before they'd open it.
Here is the other real excellent part of this deal: only one fingerprint would open a locker--even from the same person, so if I used my right index finger to open it to start with, I couldn't use my left index finger..nor could I add another person's finger so you could share a locker--either you spend extra to get separate lockers or one person always has to go back to re-open it.
If you think using a severed finger even with these readers you're kidding yourself--I'm sure that it'd be too cold and the lack of circulation would alter the fingerprint too much. It sounds to me like this heart rythm thing is just a solution looking for a problem.
Here is the ultimate irony: these state-of-the-art biometric-access lockers were equipped to accept COINS ONLY--no debit and no credit cards, and not even paper cash--and they cost up to $6 for daily rental.
Sometimes, technology is just stupid.
Here I am, still using Office 97 because it does everything I need. Perhaps next year I'll be able to upgrade to OO.o. :)
.x releases are actually pretty major. GNOME and KDE and distros release cycle is even more accelerated. Even though a lot of people poke fun every new years about premature declarations that this will be the "year of the Linux desktop", the pace of growth and refinement has been phenomenal, and both GNOME and KDE are now at a point where they are more advanced than Windows XP IMHO--Microsoft is playing catch-up with Vista.
You don't have to wait until next year--only a month or two.
You see, Open source projects are like dogs--they grow and develop in terms of "dogs years" in relation to Microsoft and most other closed applications. So when Microsoft says OO.o is 10 years behind they mean in terms of how long it would take MICROSOFT to bring OO.o up to MSOffice "quality". However, given that development of popular open source projects happens in dog years, it'll actually take it 10 DOG years to catch up, or only about 17 months.
I mean, look at Windows and MS SQL Server--both took FIVE YEARS or more between major releases. Linux kernel went from 2.2 to 2.4 to 2.6 faster and PostgreSQL went from 6.x to 7.x to 8.x faster too...and in the case of the latter
In any case, both OO.o and MS Office are rather too large, cumbersome and feature laden for nearly all my needs. At home, I use Abiword and GNUmeric. They seem mech less cumbersome--they load faster, have a smaller footprint and are basically just more snappy on modestly configured machines. Furthermore, Gnumeric seems much better suited to statistical analysis than Excel--whereas Microsoft seems to place its priority on fancy integration like embedding powerpoints/word documents/flight simulators/etc into its spreadsheets, or making sure its macros are powerful enough to program it to play Pac Man, the developers of GNUmeric decided that maybe a spreadsheet user might like to have accurate calcualtions and a useful function library.
Wow...what a concept...a spreadsheet that does calcualtions well and a word processor that edits and formats documents well. If that means I'm stuck in the mid-90s then let me live in the blissfully ignorant past.
It doesn't make it "abuse of email" just because you don't want large attachments.
Except that is IS an abuse because it clogs email servers as large attachments sit in inboxes waiting to be opened. This means the resources of the email server are strained for every user...it isn't simply a matter of what *I* want
An email is a file. It's got a standard format and it gets sent from host to host.
No, an email is NOT a file--it wasn't originally anyways. Perhaps it is common today for email systems to treat a message as a file but that was NOT how email was designed. An email was set up as more of a "packet"--it is a stream of data within an "envelope" sent from one host to another. It was the MAILBOXES that were the files in which emails were stored--stored emails were not files unto themselves, rather they were records within a file. Then attachments came around and you end up with giant records with gigantic, specially-encoded representations of files embedded into them. The Mailbox file becomes totally huge, and the encoding of the large binary attachment within that file only inflates storage requirements.
Also, "we always used to do it this way" is meaningless. Years have passed. Times have changed.
I know that email server backends are available nowadays that use relational databases and more sophisticated storage of messages, however I was talking about email's heritage--it was never meant for use as a sophisticated file transfer mechanism. Yes times have changed but the problem is that with email and a lot of other technologies it was just evolved in a kludgy fashion rather than finding a proper solution to a new problem.
That's a bunch of crap. P2P provides a new method of finding content.
ummm...the crap is all over you there. Searching for content is only one component of P2P--the other main part of P2P is coordinating and executing file transfers between peers without the involvement of a central server. The most (in)famous of all P2P systems out there is BitTorrent and guess what...that one does nothing at all to help you find a file! It is all about file distribution.
Also, it doesn't get sent to countless email servers anyway, just the few (maybe even just one) that are necessary.
Yes email does get sent to countless servers every day---when people send large attachments then carbon copy everyone. Then it has to sit in those servers until every user has picked up their email--and even longer if it is a POP client who has elected to leave the message on the server until it is removed from the inbox at the client, or it is left in an online foler in an IMAP server. Plus, the entire body of your large email has to bounce its way through routers/gateways/proxies/relays until it reaches its destination and eats up bandwidth.
If large files need to be delivered to multiple recipients, FTP, HTTP, BitTorrent, etc are more efficient. I'm not saying that sending ANY attachments in email is bad, just that there is a lot of inappropriate use of them nowadays.
If you are not a professional organization, and you are trying to send a file to someone who is not connected at the same time as you, then FTP will not help you.
Why not? I've run a personal FTP server before, and it is getting more and more common for people to have persistent, high-speed connections in their homes and always leave their computers on. Any limitations on "servers" by shortsighted and greedy ISPs are artificial restrictions on already capable technology. Also, there are secure implementations of FTP so that is not a problem...plus there is always HTTP which is also better equipped to handle file distribution than email. "Server" programs on "clients" machines are not an impossibility--they are just not engineered for casual home use right now and ISPs have this "server phobia".
In any case, whos to say you need to host your own server to use HTTP or FTP? My Nephew and his wife just had a baby and r
What do you think the point of attachments is?
.exe files, or 50 megabytes of database snapshot or archived logs? Please don't try to send these things via email then b*tch at me when they bounce or get filtered out...that is abuse of email and there are better ways of doing things.
.torrent file. Superior means of transfer are there--it just takes time to break old habits and to refine the technology for novice users.
I mentioned what the point is in my original post--for small, non-executable files mostly of a documentation-use nature. If it is a spreadsheet (WITHOUT garbage like VBS macros) or an elecronic copy of a user manual, or an image or other "rich media" that is not alphanumeric in nature (within reason--I'd dislike flash games being sent as an attachment for example).
But sending me
Email is designed for small file transfer.
NO IT ISN'T. When Mr. Tomlinson sat down at his terminal in the 1970s and came up with email he was trying to create a system for MESSAGE transfer--that is, he wanted to replace the paper inter-office memo with something that was instant and electronic but non-verbal. There was no concept of a "file" involved, and in fact each email recipient only involved a single file (one for each "mailbox" which contained a concatenation of all incoming messages). File attachments came much later when more people saw the need to include non-alphanumeric data to express their message (graphic diagrams would be one of the most common requests). The use of an email message chiefly to transfer a file was an afterthought--a "hack"--simply because humans are lazy and, well if you could send a picture why not a program?
And it's the most convienient way to do peer to peer file transfer we have. FTP requires a server so it is fine as a central repository, but it is not good adhoc transfers between people.
If email was so good at ad-hoc, peer-to-peer file transfer then we wouldn't have had to invent P2P networks and clients. If you are a professional organisation setting up an FTP server is not a difficult task and you only have to do it once. If you have to do ad-hoc transfers of files that are inappropriate for attaching to email then there is also bittorrent--it is peer-to-peer and all you ahve to attach to your email is the little, non-executable
(Actually, that is the direction I think email should be heading--stop with the "big binary attachment" madness and use HYPERLINKS and/or TORRENT FILES to reference "attachments" rather than shooting them all over the world and leaving countless full copies on countless email servers all over the world. Can email client developers not make such a thing transparent or at least easy for beginnners?)
Gmail blocks outbound attachments with exe files, even when those files are included inside zip files.
.exe to .abc, ZIP it and rename the .zip extension .xyz our system will check the header content of the files' data and determine it is a ZIP, then extract the files inside to examine THEM if that is how you configure it.
.docs since I consider then "executable"--I send PDFs instead), smaller files and so on. For dealing with more novice users I send an email with the link to the file to click, and for getting files from them I set up a simple HTTPS "gateway" with a file submission form. Just as simple as attachments (for the client anyways) and more secure.
Google is RIGHT in doing such filtering, although perhaps they should make it clear to users up front on its filtering policies rather than waiting for them to discover it for themselves. Besides, even if outbound executable attachments are blocked how many corporate systems permit them inbound? My employer blocks inbound executables unless you're in certain departments, and the majority of our clients do as well. These systems are getting very smart too--they analyse the actual content of the file rather than the extension and even if you rename your
The point is that email was not designed for file transfer and probably will never be the best tool for that purpose. Unfortuantely it cannot always be avoided but it should be whereever possible. If email was seen as a good way to transfer files then FTP wouldn't have been invented--people would've extended email to do it from the start. Since FTP is still around today and is now extended to secure FTP with SSL encryption and authentication THAT is the tool that professionals should use to send such files (that is what I do anyways).
There are some cases where email is the most convenient, such as for non-executable documents (I avoid sending
I don't think GMail and other mail systems need to be "fixed"...I think that people have to get out of the mindset of using email to exchange files. Use secure FTP or even HTTPS...or even better for big files use Bittorrent. It annoys me when people complain about limits on email attachments just like it annoys me when people use Excel to create "databases". At least learn to use MS Access dammit...it isn't THAT hard!
...not make up silly excuses about the choice of platform for your IT infrastructure.
They didn't actually disable any of the "no no" services like SSH, and each of the lab's PCs had an IP address that was visible outside of the university.
It does seem off to "waste" good public IPs on lab workstations but depending on the era when things were set up that was commonplace. The workstations at my alma mater also had public IPs, but back then Internet meant Telnet, FTP, Gopher, Archie, WAIS and this new-fangled HTTP "Web" thing was the very latest news. IP addresses were in abundance and the university had a whole class B subnet to itself. Subclassing and NAT were not common practice and in fact, a lot of network applications and protocols were not designed to deal with NAT.
I've never heard SSH referred to as a "no no service". Telnet, FTP, SMTP (especially if relaying was not disabled) absolutely...but SSH is encrypted and authenticated and although not risk-free (vulnerabilities in the most common SSH implementation for example) the risk is low enough that the benefits in terms of remote access and administration are worth it (SSH tunneling through a workstation on campus was a great way to get at services that were otherwise not accessible off-campus, ao I could do my labs at home).
Open source stuff only takes a lot more time and money to implement if your IT people just don't know what they're doing.
That is a completely unsubstantiated assertion on your part. You can point to many studies that both support and refute it, depending on the situation studied and the organisation that sponsored the study. In order for your statement to be tru you'd have to modify it as follows: Computer networks only take a lot more time and money to implement if your IT people don't know what they're doing.
I am personally more comfortable with administration in a UNIX or Linux environment than I am with Windows--that is just the skillset I learned in my scholarly and profesional experience. Because of that skillset it would take me far longer to set up a Windows-baseed network that I'd be comfortable with than it would for Linux or BSD...and when it comes to Solaris or HPUX it'd be about the same, so the huge expense of licensing those systems would dwarf any possilbe extra support costs of Linux or BSD.
Basically if you're looking at a major restructuring/upgrade or a new installation and are examining open source then look at your team...if they're all MCSEs with no UNIX or Linux experience then you'll have to eat the cost of training or compare that cost with licensing costs of Windows. If your team has been administering Solaris or HPUX or SCO or whatever UNIX (as is the case with most CS and engineering departments in post-secondary institutions) then the learning curve for changing to Linux or BSD is quite shallow, and the only concern (and one that is becoming less and less relevant) is if specialised applications such as simulators, schematic capture, PLD synthesisers and so on will run on an open platform--in this day and age if they do not, there is often a very good alternative: for example, lower-level statistics labs might use Microsoft Excel, which will not run on Linux without the assistance of WINE, etc. However, GNUmeric runs in Linux and is superior to Excel in this application.
A blanket statement like "not ready for prime time" in higher education indicates to me that the study was not very well put together--there are places where it is more than ready--it is superior.
If you want to associate yourself with shady, marginally-sane quasi-pyramid-scheme planners then I'd strongly recommend you look at Quixtar instead.
At least with Quixtar you can also get quality Amway products delivered right to your door every month...and you get to go to weekly meetings at the local best Western and make a whole bunch of supportive, shiny-faced, warm-and-fuzzy friends...and you don't even have to stand up and declare that you an alcoholic...and I even think you have far less than 12 steps to follow to achieve happiness too!
But SCO? I dunno man, it runs on spam--even Quixtar people will kick you out if you use spam to build your business. Plus, their CEO looks like a mean bouncer and acts worse...I mean c'mon man...threatening to sue your own customers? With that kind of attitude, how could you ever build your team both deep and wide?
'scuse me, I gotta go take my vitamins, drink my special juice and clean my toilet with these wonderful Amway products...
I did a quick search for soybean oil and it was $8.99 (USD) for a single gallon (cheaper than the organics I saw). We're going to have to bring down the price of soybean oil first for this to be viable.
I think that since the biggest market for soybean oil is for human (and animal?) consumption that the refining process is more expensive than it has to be--fuel grade soybean oil using exising technology might be a bit cheaper, plus there is economy in scale--much larger batches would be produced/distributed for use as fuel than for food.
Also, you make it sound like US$9 per US gallon is really expensive for a fuel. It is actually only the case in the US. At the height of post-Katrina hysteria in Canada fuel in Montreal peaked at nearly CA$1.35 per LITRE. That is already over US$4.50 per US gallon. If the claim of 50MPG is true and it is for mixed driving then that is nearly double the fuel economy of a typical gasoline vehicle. That means that for that week in Montreal when gas was over CA$1.30/Litre that fuel costs for the Soy-powered car would be LESS than gasoline right now...running on food-grade soybean oil!
The situation is already the norm in Europe and Australia. If you take the price of gasoline in the UK and do the exchange/conversion, they're probably already paying close to US$9 for 1 US gallon of gasoline.
If this car is for real these kinds and their school deserve a huge award...they could be future Nobel candidates IMO.
Pioneer never made anything for Tandy. Genexxa and Optimus both made really cheap stuff - name one double tape deck with full logic control like on Pioneer's models.
Sounds like you are in deep denial. You are possibly right that Pioneer didn't make Genexxa and Optima stuff, but I'm VERY sure that the same Taiwanese company made components branded with all three names (Pioneer, Optima and Genexxa and I believe Realistic as well). As one reader pointed out replacement parts for some stuff from Radio Shack would sometimes show up with a Pioneer logo somewhere on ot. Furthermore I've seen things like remote controls for Radio Shack-branded stuff that worked with better-known brands like Pioneer--and these were NOT programmable or multi-function remotes. Even many years ago a stylus or drive belt from some Realistic turntables would've been interchangeable with some Pioneers as well.
The Radio Shack brands and other cheap stuff is not always just re-badged Pioneer of course, but it is common for them to come out of the same factory and share some of the same components, and entry-level Pioneer might be identical to high-end Radio Shack. It's been like that for decades--brand names really haven't meant a thing since the 1960s ended. It doesn't matter what industry--electronics, food, clothing, etc--all the brand stands for is marketing and the logo displayed on the merchandise and at very most perhaps an extra stage of quality control.
Don't worry, you'll adjust to reality soon enough. I came to accept reality many years ago when I pulled the Blaupunkt stereo out of my car to change the lightbulb that illuminated the instrumentation. Inscribed on the back was the phrase "made in Taiwan". How's that for "German quality"?
...if you are the corporate equivalent of the Borg. The funny brand names come from their acquisitions (what the heck Axapta means I don't know...some Danish dude came up with that years before he sold out to Navision...who then sold out to Microsoft). Combine all these kookily-names corporate stepchildren with a team of marketers who are trying to solve the problem of "brand continuity" that almost nobody really cares about and you get the mess that is Microsoft Business Solutions' product line.
It's not all THAT bad...licensing is the worst. There are people who are "licensing specialists" and just deal with licensing. Must be sad to work on a "feature" like product activation that adds absolutely no real value to a system.
That has a firm grip on Office and still does not understand what the hell this post means?
I'd say you're probably in the company of a vast majority of Office users (even a good number of "power users" who can turn straw into gold using VBA macros in Excel). This is because Microsoft is re-positioning Office somewhat and it is going to (try to) occupy a role that traditional Office users are quite unfamiliar with. However, if you happen to be a cubicle-serf at a large corporation then you'll "get it" if you look into it a bit more.
Let me expound on things a bit:
Microsoft already dominates in the small-to-medium enterprise market and the personal computer industry as a whole. This means it has great security but ever-more limited growth potential. It has decided to take on new challenges in many areas where it does not yet dominate, and that is in the enterprise-class server and large-enterprise systems market.
To that end, MS has formed a "business solutions" division and gobbled up a few players in that market--the two most notable being Great Plains and Damgaard/Navision, known for their accounting and ERP software respectively. The Great Plains accounting system and Navision Axapta ERP have now been assimilated into Microsoft's CRM 3.0 and AX 3.0 products as part of the MS strategy to take on SAP from "the bottom"--maintaining these products traditional base of medium-sized enterprises and scaling up to meet those who traditionally look at SAP.
Where does Office fit into all of this? Well, Microsoft already has a firm grip on those corporate IT gonads and it is looking to leverage its position in that market to push "end-to-end integration". THAT is what this story is all about. It is a strategy that has helped Exchange Server to succeed despite the fact that it had (at least at the start) a fairly longstanding and very well-deserved reputation for being a steaming pile o' crap: Microsoft managed to put together a half-decent groupware client in Outlook and used the marketing might of its Office division to entrench it on the corporate desktop...and they managed to continually improve it.
Now, the PHB can have a spiffy and snappy client to connect to his exchange server that is conveniently bundled with the spreadsheet and word processor and presentation software that are all so essential in calculating budget cutbacks, issuing memos for his underlings to ignore and create mind-numbing slideshows for pointless meetings. In the meantime, IBM has their quite capable Lotus server, and it is challenged with a client that looks like ass in comparison and is just as stinky to use. Result? Exchange kicks ass on the competition.
Now MS needs a "differentiator" that distracts PHBs from the trance that only an SAP consultant seems to be able to induce so that it can pick up business for its AX/CRM solution. We all know that PHBs like bright shiny things, and the client application is the most easily polished. I've had a bit of experience with Axapta and can tell you it doesn't offer enough of a differentiator from SAP (which is to say...it looks like ass, just like all ERP systems look like ass). Compared to Office, it is large, slow and arcane. Solution? Make Office the client! Office is far from perfect, but it is fast(er), more integrated and nore familiar with the cubicle serfs. I know it would be a popular option in MY office--right now we have to enter our time in a wretched klunky, Java-applet-based web interface. For example, if we had Axapta/CRM and Office and a "software assurance" agreement then we could look forward to filling out a convenient Excel spreadsheet and have it INSTANTLY update the ERP/CRM system! Wunderbar! PHBs will salivate over it.
This is also all part of a long term strategy to try and own "web services". Office is being remade into an intellegent web services client (R) (TM) that hooks into enterprise systems (sepecially Microsoft enterprise systems) via web services, so that you can interact with some "virtua
it's really no doubt in my mind that this format war will wage itself in the multibillion dollar gaming industry
;-).
No it won't, any more than it will revolve around the PC industry or Hollywood. The winner of a "format war" in this day and age MUST get buy-in from all three. Blu-Ray only has buy-in from Hollywood (and even that buy-in is not completely "Universal"). Sony and company seem to have kept the Blu-Ray door fairly shut to the gaming industry: Microsoft and Nintendo are doing their own thing and there is credible speculation that problems with Blu-Ray are one of the key issues that may delay the PS3, and its looking like the PC industry has make its biggest bets on HD DVD because of its lower price point and more solid delivery prospects.
Xbox 360 will not support HDDVD games. This ended the war in my mind. Who the hell is going to spend several hundred dollars for a cumbersome ADDON HD-DVD player for their xbox 360, JUST to watch movies?
Who's to say MS will NEVER support games on HD DVD media? Who's to say the add-on will be "cumbersome"? Yes, history has shown such add-ons have their challenges success-wise (the Sega 32X and Atari Jaguar CD...) but lessons can be learned from such mistakes. MS is good at learning from mistakes--after all, nearly every version 1.0 release in its history have arguably been mistakes and the company still manages to dominate
And as to who would elect to buy a "cumbersome add-on" over a full-fledged player JUST to watch moves: every "early adopter" on a budget. If MS can manage to be one of the "first movers" in the HD DVD player market, and can come in at a lower price point (should be easy enough being it would be a cheaper-to-produce add-on) then it could be a modest success.
Had they REALLY supported HDDVD, they would have waited to bring their product to market, and included a HD-DVD player standard.
With Microsoft's history, why would you expect otherwise? Microsoft has NEVER been about supporting standards in anything! Microsoft is about industry domination. Microsoft is about profit. And yes, I still believe that there's a little tiny bit of MS that wants to be "innovative"--or at least first to market with new technology. Waiting for the technology to be "just perfect" and standards-friendly runs completely counter to their corporate psyche. Sitting on the XBox 360 would mean losing first-mover advantage...frustration from publishers contending with a stagnating market...and above all millions in lost potential sales.
MS was the Johnny-come-lately with the original XBox--it had a pitiful library of titles compared to the PS2 and the console was quite an expensive loss-leader for the company. Sony has pissed away their dominant position by foolishly repeating history with the PS3--they figured that by waiting a WHOLE YEAR after their competition got to market in order to ready up a "revolutionary" competitor to the "evolutionary" XBox people will blindly rush to get their latest shiny toy. It didn't work with Betamax and it probably won't work this time either...the odds are stacked against them and with Sony's recent track record expect them to have a nearly disastrous, glitch-filled launch--by which time Microsoft will have already smoothed over the problems with their own glitch-filled launch of the 360 last year.
BlueRay has won the format wars before they even begun. Look at how profitable Sony made the completely proprietary UMD movie simply because they can profit from their own film distribution division.
As I said, Blu-Ray is FAR from assured a victory...their chance of victory is 50-50 at best right now. Neither format has complete buy-in from Hollywood, PC and gaming industries yet. HD DVD has the advantage right now because it has a greater cross-section of supporters.
I also wouldn't use UMDs as an example of successful proprietary technology, because most people consider the UMD as a movie format to be a relative failure.
Any non-solid in food advertising (hamburger ketchup, cereal milk) is actually glue.
Advertisers are much more creative than that actually. Cereal milk is often glue but there are far more diverse and creative techniques out there for food ads. Ice cream is usually a concoction derived from potato flakes (though not quite made into the same mashed potatoes tha the manufacturer intended). Bread is rarely if ever real fresh bread--it is usually shellacked with a "tasty" varnish and has the consistency of croutons (except more durable--artsy-crafty folks are probably familiar with that sort of modelling dough used to make those ornaments that look like real pastries...). Actual use of real food is pretty commonplace however it is generally room temperature and sometimes horribly altered. As a rule, anything that LOOKS good and can stand up to studio lighting and sit for extended periods is what goes. That is why most "fragile" food is totally fake.
Other industries are "extra flattering" as well...show me an automobile ad that showcases the base model during normal use--it is always the one equipped with the handsome upgraded appearance package and driven by a "professional driver on a closed course". Clothing companies use fashion models that are far from the average physique, and you are kidding yourselves if you think that every one of them is wearing a regular size right off the rack in a store--in a lot of cases the clothes are tailored to fit the specific model. I'd say that the more expensive the clothing label, the more likely clothes have been specially altered to fit the model for the ads.
The video game industry has operated this way since the beginning and I remember in the early 80s that there was a fracas about the use of "artist's renditions" in print ads. Some companies relented and pit in very fine print somewhere in the ad "artist's rendition - actual appearance may vary". One company (Parker Brothers? The publisher of the Popeye and Frogger games for home systems) took out a series of full page ads that showed the same screenshot for ALL the systems (so you'd see variances bewteen the Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Commodore, Apple, etc)--implicitly boasting that they weren't ashamed of their graphics and suggesting that they made an honest effort in developing for ALL platforms while some other game makers did not.
I think the practice was somewhat dishonest but understandable back in the day, since the hardware wasn't capable of making very exciting visuals on its own, and the market was fragmented amongst more platforms with a greater range of capabilities (bigger titles that were published for many platforms would have to resort to full page ads as described above to be completely truthful in their marketing). Today, however, such practice is inexcusable--it is plain dishonesty. Video displays do not melt like ice cream under studio lights, consoles are powerful enough to render great graphics, and the differences in contemporary platforms are pretty much NEVER evident in screenshots or quick flashes of action in ads. By relying on pre-rendered footage and artist renditions modern game publishers are just playing a crooked game of bait and switch. Old habits die hard though--much harder than the justifications for those habits.
The Circuit City puchase of InterTan took place well over a year ago and probably had minimal impact in the past year's performance of Radio Shack. I think it has just been the most recent chapter in a story of long, slow decline for Radio Shack.
Here is a bit of background:
in 1986, Tandy Corporation sold off all its assets and business interests outside the United States to a Canadian company called InterTAN. Although the name of the Canadian firm suggests it was a division of Tandy Corporation this was not the case; InterTAN was wholly independent from Tandy Corp in terms of ownership and corporate structure (The InterTAN name came from the fact that they WERE a division of Tandy until 1986--they were sold off but the name stayed). To maintain a presence outside the US, Tandy gave InterTAN a license to the "Radio Shack" name so that it could continue operating its international stores under that name (mostly in Canada but interTAN also owned and operated a few Radio Shack stores in Europe and even Australia IIRC). This license to the Radio Shack brand extended to the end of 2010.
Tandy later restructured/refocused and changed its name to Radio Shack corporation to match its store brand (in 2000), though InterTAN has retained its name to this day.
Things got complicated in 2004 when US electronics retailer "Circuit City" then bought the whole of InterTAN. Although Circuit City had little to no presence in Canada, Radio Shack found itself in the awkward position of having its biggest rival "own" its brand outside the US! A lawsuit ensued, although for over a year Circuit City's InterTAN division continued to operate its newly-acquired chain of electronics stores under the "Radio Shack" moniker. Since 1986 Canadian Radio Shacks had gradually started looking less and less like the US versions, and when Circuit City came into the picture Radio Shack cut off its supply of private label goods, so by 2005 Canadian Radio Shacks shared nothing in common with the US stores except the name. It seemed odd to me to go into a Radio Shack and see nothing sold with the Radio Shack or Realistic brands on it...
In Mid 2005 Radio Shack won its case against InterTAN and managed to break the licensing contract early, at which time InterTAN had to rename all its stores (they are now known as "The Source by Circuit City"). Interestingly enough, there were a handful of Canadian "independents" (mostly in small towns) that were able to keep the Radio Shack name above the door, because they weren't ever affiliated with InterTAN--they were "mom-and-pop" stores who independently acquired "partnership" agreements with the US company. A very small number of store operators also broke away from InterTAN upon the purchase of that company by Circuit City and also didn't change the name. Furthermore, Radio Shack has mande a noticeable effort to reintroduce its stores on its own--often in the same shopping centres as The Source. These new Radio Shack stores look and feel exactly the same as the US ones, which is to say they are different from anything Canadians have seen.
Interesting side note...although InterTAN originated as a division of Tandy/Radio Shack, after it became an independent corporation in 1986 it didn't stick to just running Radio Shack stores--it also licensed brands from other companies (like Rogers Communications) and operated several regional and national retail and service chains, including:
* Radio Shack (now "The Source")
* THS Studio ("talk hear see" - a "boutique" of electronic gadgets)
* Battery Plus (sells batteries of all kinds)
* Rogers Plus (sells Rogers cellular service and phones)
* IQ Crew (a service business consisting of computer geeks who do housecalls to fix your crufty Windows PC)
Most of these ventures were established before Circuit City bought InterTAN.
Its all about accountability. Even if Microsoft may not have the best product, when it fails, the suits are able to hold Microsoft accountable.
Masterful troll, and as anyone who has had experience dealing with an uncooperatinve Microsoft-based solution knows it is a statement so blatantly full of crap it is hilarious. MS has a whole departmnent of legal people whose sole job it is to make sure Microsoft holds as little accountability as legally possible.
A little harder to do that with Debian, or any OSS without corporate backing.
Which is why Debian is not the favourite of corporate customers. IBM, Novel and Red Hat DO back their open source offeringe VERY well though. In fact, an open source solution from one of them is probably a much better bet in terms of accountability than Microsoft, becasue they are "solutions providers". Microsoft is a fairly immature player in that game--their business model is built around selling little boxes stuffed with shiny discs full of data and a bundle of useless paper certificates and "getting started" manuals. MS "innovation" with respect to their business model has been insignificant--it has amounted mostly to replacing physical boxes with certificates, product keys and activations. Since they have such a product-oriented mindset, the best you can hope for accountability-wise is a few hundred dollars in refunds for a scratched disc or botched install of Office as per some canned EULA. A "solutions provider", on the other hand, negotiates a far more comprehensive contract with explicit terms and conditions their business customers can rely on for accountability. The business never gets EVERYTHING they want, but they get a much better deal than Microsoft can normally offer.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
Absolutely true. That is why there is a lot of open source out there that has been deployed and managed by IBM. Often their "free software" solution costs more money than going with Microsoft, however IBM has the reputation of being more reliable, mature and accountable than Microsoft.
Tar sands - okay, let's set aside (as if we could) the environmental devastation these plants are wreaking on the Canadian landscape and the hideous greenhouse emissions related to producing syncrude.
;-)
Have you ever BEEN in that particular part of Canada? It's not exactly a pristine, sensitive environment worth preserving at all costs...there are millions of square kms of similar terrain in Canada that isn't saturated with hydrocarbons--it's not like the elk are going to run out of habitat because of tarsands operations--it is the CONSUMPTION of the oil that warms the planet and thaws out the tundra that'll do that. If you are concerned about preserving highly valued Canadian habitat you'd be MUCH better off to look at ways to reduce the consumption of products made with old-growth forest trees from BC. THAT is probably the most ecologically treatened part of Canada at present.
Tar sand extraction in Canada uses natural gas to heat water; in 2004 Canada produced about 1 million barrels of syncrude per day which consumed 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Plans are to go to 2.2 million bpd which would consume 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas. So how are Canada's gas reserves? Production in 2003 (the last year I had figures) was 16.8 billion cubic feet per day - a 0.5 billion cubic foot DECREASE on the previous year. Canada's gas fields are entering long-term decline, just as a significant draw on their reserves comes along.
You make all sorts of flawed assumptions about syncrude production here. The relationship between natureal gas consumed and syncrude produced in the SAGD progess is NOT linear as you imply here. First of all, there is an "economy of scale" situation here...doubling production will consume much more natural gas but still significantly less than double. Second, the process being used by new facilities is considerably more efficient than what is being done in the original facilities.
You also seem to assume that all the energy released in the consumption of this natural gas is used to produce steam for extracting oil from the tarsands. This is not true--more and more of the waste heat from the process is being recovered for use in co-generation facilities (one part of electricity deregulation in Alberta that has actually gone right). Since there is revenue to be had in selling power from these facilities onto the grid it enhances the economic viability of the tarsands significantly, and everyone in the western half of Canada and the US that is on the same power grid can potentially benefit--after all, SOMEONE has to meet the electricity demands of all those Californians plugging in their electric cars every night, and it doesn't look like their own bankrupt utility companies are quite up to the task
The browser history is not available for security reasons. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if anything more than the screen resolution can be obtained.
I guess you are right about the history. However you can get more than just the resolution via Javascript. For example, you can still access the history in a limited fashion by using Javascript to create invisible tags with various URLs, then checking their "visited" property and using XMLHTTPRequest to send this back to your server. You can also sniff for browser, OS and IP Address, and do so more reliably than with server-side techniques (parsing the HTTP request). For example, you could under some circumstances get the REAL IP address of a machine (vs. the proxy address reported on the server side).
Hidden IFrames have all the power of XMLHTTPRequest.
There is a reason they are deprecated (the iframe tag is not valid strict XHTML). I suspect becasue they are very evil--an even worse kludge than XMLHTTPRequest, and the source of some very serious security holes in IE (and even the source of some grief in Firefox). As you mention, in IE even invisible iframes trigger clicks when they submit data in IE, and furthermore iframes can be disabled by the client user independently of Javascript (that is generally standard practice for me with IE anyways).
AJAX does have an important redeeming feature in comparison to VBscript in that it is contained within a Javascript "sandbox", however the implementation is inconsistent. Remember that in IE AJAX relies on an ActiveX control, and if there is a security bug in that control it can be exploited via AJAX. How the sandbox is defined is also inconsistent...IE actually (at one point at least) exposed information about LOCAL HARD DRIVES to Javascript!
The concept behind AJAX is very cool, however I am less than impressed by the implementation. A very important component of AJAX--the XMLHTTPRequest object--is NOT A STANDARD IMPLEMENTATION! It is an idea conceived by the Mozilla team and picked up by others as a de-facto standard..and of course, MS had to be all screwy and come up with their own kludgy way of doing things, naming their object differently and implementing a slightly different model just to be difficult. I think the whole thing should be dropped in favour of the ACTUAL standard (DOM Level 3 "Load and Save" -- a standard released by the W3C nearly two years ago). The W3C standard might look a bit more cumbersome (hey, it fits in with the rest of Javascript and the DOM then) but at least there'd be consistency and some method to the madness.
But U.S. cell providers don't want rich extensible devices, they want to sell you $2 ringtones, $3 music downloads, $10/month online photo albums, and address book backup for $2/month.
Actually, I think cellphone companies would LOVE to have "rich, extensible devices". When I referred to "circumventing their revenue-generating content-delivery system" I meant in terms of USER-CONTROLLED extensibility--most notably the ability for hobbyists to "hack" their smartphones and plug in their own programs via a local connection (outside the cellphone network). Phone companies would be deleriously happy if they could provide "product upgrades" through their service in order to add functionality to the smartphones on their system (at 'x' dollars per update of course, followed by a 'y' dollars per month charge to use the new feature).
Big, monopolistic companies like cellphone and cable companies are usually quite receptive to new technology, so long as it is marketed to them from the "right angle" (that is, it gives them MORE CONTROL over the user experience, along with enriching the user experience itself).
Forget about the back button...that is an annoyance I've grown to tolerate (for almost a decade we've had to deal with "sticky" web pages). MY biggest concerns centre on SECURITY and PRIVACY.
;-)
One thing about Javascript is that it is very aware of the client's environment--we can use it to determine screen size, colour depth, browser type, browser history and so forth. Until the introduction of the XMLHTTPRequest object, developers were limited in how they could bring this information into the server. It wasn't impossible (you could do stuff with traditional javascript and server-side programming involving hidden input tags, cookies, automatic page submits/reloads, etc), however the user would usually have a visual cue (IE would produce an audible "click" during page submits and redirects by default, the page would blink, the "throbber" icon and status bar would indicate an HTTP request was happening, etc). Furthermore, such schemes were more easily breakable (disablihng cookies, etc).
Now with AJAX, a coder could write client side script that (for example) enumerates your browser's history and ships it back using the XMLHTTPRequest object. The page does not need to use cookies, install special software like IE "browser helper objects" or need to expose itself through the use of hidden input tags. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread for spyware developers (multi-platform, lightweight, not yet easy to detect). I think javascript is generally better contained than, say, VBS, from a security standpoint, but I still have my concerns.
Worse yet, there isn't much in the way of user control--a person can disable Javascript entirely but then the whole app breaks. Browsers like Firefox can limit the use of javascript to do popo-up ads, alter toolbars and such, but I see nothing regarding security control of the XMLHTTPRequest object. As far as I can tell, if Javascript is enabled at all, a script can make full use of that object, and it'd be REALLY easy to use it to report my browsing history on a constant basis, without me knowing about it unless I do a lot of sleuthing in source files and cache.
In any case, I have some questions for "seasoned" AJAX coders (I am well-versed in Javascript but am a neophyte with ful-blown AJAX apps): What do you do to make sure your app is secure from client-side shenanigans (perhaps an AJAX-equivalent to SQL-injection), what can a user do to manage security within your AJAX app, and have you used AJAX techniques for potentially intrusive purposes (sniffing a client's environment in particular)? You can post anonymously if you've had to "do evil" as part of your job if you want
(BTW, a competent AJAX developer would at least take measures to disable the back button's functionality, and there are measures that can be taken to handle the back button gracefully. It is mostly a matter of sound design...)
Windows Mobile seems to be well on it's way toward taking over a significant portion of this market which needs competition.
Microsoft's success in this area is far from assured. I can honestly say that for every Microsoft smartphone I've seen someone use, I've seen five (well, probably even more) based on other platforms...and to put it plainly, the Microsoft-based super-phones totally suck. They are more expensive, firstly. They are physically huge in comparison to a Blackberry device, the user interface is cumbersome, the battery life is far from being best-in-class and cellular providers provide lackluster support (Blackberry devices are much better supported and promoted I've found). What about their new offensive against RIM with respect to Exchange integration without the need to pay for licenses? Well, if the hardware sucks and is more expensive than Blackberries, and the devices are bound only to Exchange (my rather large employer does not use exchange as its standard) and so on, I'm far from convinced RIM is in trouble.
Basically, it isn't too late for palmsource because the typical end user really doesn't care what the OS is on their phone any more than they care about what kind of microcontrollers are used in their microwaves or MPEG decoders are in their living-room DVD players. People want to push the ON button and be able to make calls, check emails, text each other and just have it work. If anything Microsoft is at a disadvantage because their offerings quite often DON'T "just work", and to make the Windows platform truly competitive on a smart phone I think they're going to have to further re-work their interface to make it look even less "pc-like". Think about it...corporate executives, teenagers and a great deal of other gadget-lovers HATE the Windows PC experience--they merely tolerate it because it (barely) meets their needs in performing various tasks. Most people I know don't want to carry the PC experience with them wherever they go.
At that point the problem for MS becomes how to differentiate themselves form PalmSource and others. Easy intergration with PCs? Pretty flimsy excuse to buy a phone if you ask me--all most people need is some basic addressbook/calender sync, and everyone does that well enough now. Pocket Word/Excel/IE/Outlook? Their full-sized counterparts are ghastly, why would I want to make the experience even ghastlier by cramming them onto a 5cm screen? Sorry, phones aren't PCs and the familiarity of MS Office or the Windows desktop means nothing. Furthermore, "pushing email" is not rocket science and RIM and others can do fine against MS. The challenge MS' competitors face isn't one of technology, or even getting out there fast enough (next year is soon enough...really). The challenge is to out-savvy MS in terms of business model and marketing. Get cell providers and manufacturers, etc on board and you're set. It is PalmSource's and RIMs to lose if they respond to MS plays with boneheaded service and license agreements, slow or non-existent innovation and poor interoperability.
This whole 'Linux phone' thing has, to date, sucked for hobbyists.
With all due respect, with that attitude it sounds like the lack of progress for Linux in this market space has as much to do with the hobbyist community as it does with the manufacturers of these devices. If every open-source-related announcement by an ISV or gadget-maker is met with a response like this from hobbyists there won't be much enthusiasm to keep going down the Free Software path.
Pretty much every company out there in the wireless mobile market doesn't quite "get it" yet when it comes to Free Software, because their legacy and corporate culture is rooted in a highly-proprietary mindset. Normally, everything is patented, encumbered and non-disclosed up the wazoo. It'll take some time for the marketplace to adjust to a modernised business model based on open technology, and Hobbyists, and the Free Software community in general, should offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and real solutions rather than just complaining. IMHO, it looks like this new ALP system has a lot going for it, if only it can land the big backers it needs to get adopted.
Pick a toolset and run with it, preferably something that allows for easy porting from existing OSS apps?
Umm...isn't that exactly what is happening here? Yes, they have engineered their own API, but it looks to me that GTK+ and GStreamer are important components of the new platform. The "open source ecosystem" seems quite unencumbered from an IP standpoint and would certainly not present a porting challenge for existing OSS apps. From that standpoint mobile devices based on this platform should be fairly hobbyist-friendly.
But of course, normal people don't buy smartphones, cell companies do. So it won't happen.
Therein lies the rub. Furthermore, even if a "normal person" bought a smartphone directly, that person would have to subscribe to service s provided by a cell company, and cell comanies are in the "content provider" game first and foremost--and smartphones are just delivery mechanisms in their view. Cell companies want the most whiz-bang "content delivery device" money can buy--the one that can push as many bytes per second, has the most toys like cameras, music players, big bright colour screens, etc. They don't give a crap what the programming toolkit is or about JAR files or SIS files or any of that other properller-head stuff. In fact, if an engineer boasted of the ability to allow end users to plug in custom software it would be seen as a liability because it circumvents their revenue-generating content-delivery system, and furthermore they would lose control over the environment (remember the corporate culture we are dealing with here)
I guess the technical aspect is only half the solution. The rest of the solution is to reform the wireless telecommunications industry in north America (I think it is telling that mobile wireless devices based on Linux are a much larger presence in Asia and parts of Europe).
I never owned a C64 personally, however my school was well stocked with them (they were used for the most part by grades I through IX). When I started in Grade I, my school was equipped with two Apple IIs for use by "gifted" elementary school students, and a number of Commodore PETs for use by high-school students. When the C64 came out a few years later they replaced the Apple IIs for the most part (though they continued to be used to teach programming in some grades--they were even upgraded..one to a II+ and the other to a IIe). Commodores were a popular choice for Canadian schools, since Commodore was founded and headquartered in Canada (although it was actually an offshore corporation as it seems to be tradition amongst many Canadian investors to avoid our sometimes repressive taxation).
The Apple II and C64 therefore make up my first serious experience with computers. The first computer I owned myself was a Colecovision ADAM. I had learned LOGO on the C64 but knew BASIC from the Apple IIs and Coleco "SmartBASIC" shared its syntax with Applesoft BASIC. It was also sold as an "all in one" package (printer, tape drive, etc--just hook up to a TV or monitor and go) and could run all the ColecoVision carts (the hottest system at the time!). All of that sealed the deal, plus the fact that my savings were not large enough to buy a C64 or Apple II system. Canadian Tire had ADAMs on special for a great price so I got one (yes Canadian Tire sold home computers...they were official dealers for Commodore and Coleco)...days before Coleco announced it was halting production of the ADAM....d'OH!
Things turned out pretty OK though...the ADAM enjoyed support from Coleco for a few more months, and 3rd parties continued to produce software and hardware. ADAM user groups provided good support for many years thereafter (I believe a group of enthusiasts persists to this day!). I actually liked to mock C64 owners over the slowness of the C64 whenever they bragged about their sound and graphics capabilities (C64 BASIC not only didn't have commands to support the sound and graphics capabilities, it was also dog slow compared to SmartBASIC, and the C1541 floppy drive was significantly slower than the ADAM's *TAPE* drive!).
Not to say I didn't like the C64, because it was a great machine. I enjoyed "hacking" the C64 machines on display at Canadian Tire (because Canadian Tire salespeople barely had a clue at best)...I'd warm boot the machine out of the demo and typing in silly BASIC programs that said things like show a screen saying "ATARI RULES!"
Other favourite pastimes included typing in games from COMPUTE! (Apple listings often worked with little or no translation, and I later got an Atari which I ended up using for this purpose) and doing animation (using MovieMaker on the Atari, and SmartLOGO on the ADAM...I even manually drew still pictures on the ADAM and animated them by filming onto super 8 film frame-by-frame).
Those were the days...computers did so much less than they do now, but they were usually so much more fun to use.
You probably use computers today specifically because of Microsoft Windows at some point in the past.
/.er...most certainly under 25 anyways...
Sorry, this is WRONG. By and large we use computers DESPITE using Microsoft Windows, not BECAUSE of it. Microsoft has always been a low-innovation company; it takes old ideas and finds new opportunities for them. Microsoft's very first product, BASIC for the MITS Altair, was an old idea brought into a new market space. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, and didn't invent the OS. By the mid 70's writing a BASIC interpreter was a pretty garden-variety activity for enthusiastic hobbyists fortunate enough to have access to minicomputers. BillG is not a vrey good innovator, but he is a visionary of sorts and can spot unexploited opportunities.
Other innovatinos borrowed by Microsoft:
* Modern microcomputer architecture of BIOS and OS borrowed from Digital Research (BDOS and CP/M)
* Colour graphics (Cromemco(?) Dazzler card, Apple II, Atari 800 all before 1980)
* Mouse (Douglas Engelbart, 1964)
* Graphical User Interface (Xerox Alto in 1973, Apple Lisa in 1983)
* Web Browser (CERN WorldWideWeb, 1990 and NCSA Mosaic, 1993 - MSIE started off as a a re-branded/derivative version of this browser licensed from Spyglass Software--a firm trying to commercialise the academic project)
Microsoft was simply savvy enough to know how to bring these technologies to the masses and establish a dominant, standard platform. Standardisation--THAT is why we all use computers as much as we do today, NOT because MS makes such good software. I think that if we were all lucky enough to have companies that had both Microsoft's "vision" (business savvy, really) and Xerox/Digital Research/Apple/Atari/Commodore's talent for innovation that computing would be far more advanced and ubiquitous than it is today, because computers would actually "work".
It was likely your first operating system.
On this forum, likely NOT. My first exposure to computers was on a freinds TRS-80 CoCo (The original, silver, memory-challenged model 1), and on my school's Apple II (no plus, e, c or gs). The first OS I seriously used was CP/M 2.2. I remember when the lab for Jr/Sr high was upgraded from Commodore PETs to 8088 machines, with the brand-new MSDOS 2.11. Slashdotters are enthusiasts and generally got into computers as early as possible in their lives. If Windows was your first OS then (with a few exceptions) you are probably quite a young
Why is that? In 2003 Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems, the #1 supplier in Canada of electronic voting machines.
Well, because Canada is smart enough to not actually use Diebold's crappy Windows-based technology. We just completed a federal election yesterday that went pretty much without a hitch. All federal electoral districts in Canada use one, identical system: A paper ballot. The format of all ballots across the nation is identical--the only difference being the names. The names are always in alphabetical order of the candidate's last name, with the full party name printed underneath, in slightly smaller print. Beside each name is a large circle, clearly associated with one of the candidates.
The process of voting in Canada is simple, and identical across the country for federal elections, and pretty much the same for provincial elections as well. You receive a voter registration card in the mail telling you where to vote, and if you are not registered you phone a well advertised 1-800 number to find the location of your poll (you can register any time up to and including voting day). You go to your poliing station and a scrutineer finds and crosses off your name on the official printed copy of the registration (or collects and signs your registration form if you just registered). You are then handed a folded ballot (all ballots in the entire country are even folded the same) and are directed to the voting booth. You then select the candidate by drawing an X in the correct circle using an HB pencil, fold your ballot back up and return it to the scrutineer. The scrutineer removes the perforated section, hands it back and you put it in the ballot box.
It's been like that for decades, and it has always worked perfectly fine. There are no "pregnant chads", no confusing ballot formats, no clunky Windows-PCs-as-voting-machines and no political controversy around the process. We have to improve maintenance of our permanent electors registry, but that is already nearly up to snuff by now, and has never been as bad as the US.
As for electronic voting machines, the company you mentioned only supplies those to MUNICIPAL elections. Furthermore, they are specialised elctronic tabulators, not glorified PCs. You still record your vote on a paper ballot--it is just machine readable now (you connect the broken line next to a candidate). The tabulators count up the official results, however if a judicial recount is ordered in a very close race, it is conducted manually.
If I encounter a Diebold PC in a municipal election I'll be quite disappointed. Since what most cities do ain't broken, I doubt they'll "fix" things in future elections with Diebold's flashy goods.