It doesn't say anything about exploitation of developing nations. The word is mis-used by way too many people.
The (Canadian) city where I live hosted a big international summit some time ago. Protesters staged continual demonstrations about the evils of "Globalisation" (peaceful ones to their credit). Literally the majority of these protesters came from outside Canada, from the US and all over Europe. Was it lost on them that they were participating in the GLOBALISATION of their protest movement?
Globalisation is inevitable...there is NOTHING that can or should be done to stop it. What is important is that you make your voice heard and be an active participant in the process. I may not have agreed with everything the protesters had to say (and am amused at their use of the word) but I applaud them for making their views known and doing it peacefully.
As for going to live in 3rd world countries it seems that in most cases skilled workers (both native and immigrant) are actually treated quite well. They pay is only mediocre by western standards. The quality of life is on par with middle class America. Housing is cheap or free and the employer provides free transportation to and from the office. I'd say that's changing people's attitudes alright--their views of globalisation are becoming more favourable.
...beyond work if you live a life as a "nomad"? That's crap! It's the 21st century man! Communications technology makes physical location nearly irrelevant. Many of my family members and friends travel extensively and have made good friends with fellow nomads all over the world. IM and email are good for keeping in touch--you should try using them sometimes. My girlfriend's brother met an Aussie nomad in Vancouver, now ehty arte engaged to be married in Australia. They both have friends and family on three continents. All my more nomadic friends manage to stay in touch and some even meet up several times a year--sometimes in locations that are neither person's "home"!
A nomadic lifestyle isn't for everyone, so if you prefer to put down roots somewhere there is always telecommuting--that is essentially what workers in India, Ireland, Canada and other outsourcing hotspots are doing for their parent companies anyways.
The Aussie is right--this is an era of globalisation and you'd better get used to it. It is sad that the US, a country historically known for its pioneering spirit and innovation, has become more whiny, inward-looking and reactionary than the average country with respect to immigration. The US got where it is today beause of immigration from all over the world. It seems selfish in this day and age to expect the rest of the world shouldn't be able to benefit from immigration as well.
Hey, if Darwin's theory works in nature expect it in the economy as well. The US will adapt or die. India and other developing nations have been closer to death and have simply started adapting faster. In the end it'll all even out--unless of course politics unduly interferes and fouls up the balance of things.
Sun produced a patch before the issue was released to the public.
You say that like it was a good thing. I don't think it is. I'd rather have had Sun issue a security bulletin outlining the problem and how to avoid it as soon as they knew about the problem. Concealing a product defect until after it is fixed and it is most convenient for the compnay (and has the least impact on share price) is not trustworthy behaviour. Microsoft does that too often too and I hate it.
Just because a defect hasn't been offically disclosed does not mean people with malicious intent do not know about it. I want to know about a problem as soon as it is discovered so I can work around it until it is fixed. The longer vendors of closed software (or leaders of open source projects) drag their feet in informing the public, the more opportunity there is for the defect to be exploited by intelligent but malicious individuals with advance knowledge.
My employer sells mission critical equipment where failure can result in extensive property damage, injury or death. If a defect is discovered it MUST be reported IMMEDIATELY. We cannot wait for a firmware update because someone could stumble upon the defect and be killed. Any time there is a potential problem reported it includes a recommended workaround. If there is no acceptable workaround the product is recalled (this is rare--it has not happened while I have worked here).
Why is it that this practice is considered "due diligence" and the responsible thing to do in other industries, but in the IT/software world it is considered reckless by some to inform the public of all issues in a timely fashion?
My parents live in northern Michigan and they don't even have access to dial-up without paying long distance charges!
Northern Michigan? You say that like it's the friggin North Pole or something! Michigan is not exactly remote or thinly populated. Try...ohhh maybe Norhtern Saskatchewan, or maybe Yukon or NWT. There are places there that you have to fly to in the summer because the roads melt and disappear into the muskeg. Astonighingly some of these communities have good broadband access (I suppose if you live next to a diamond mine the community can spring for it).
Heck you don't even have to leave your own country. I might not laugh out loud if you said northern MAINE perhaps, or North Dakota. But Norhtern Michigan? You don't know what remote is man...
Population in Canada is actually much more concentrated in cities than US. They are all squeezed along the southern border where its warmer.
That is actually false. According to census data http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/p opvil2.html just under 80 percent of Canadians live in urban centres....which is nearly the SAME as the US. The only difference is that in the US the population is coastal and around the great lakes instead of along the border. Despite that, broadband use is double in Canada. The difference isn't because of population density at all. It is because despite media content being somewhat over-regulated, internet access was never mired in government/monopoly regulation to the degree it was in the US. Furthermore, broadband in Canada for the longest time was 30% to 50% cheaper than in the US so it was more accessible to its residents.
In regards to the latitude of settlement, one of the four biggest population centres of Canada--the Calgary-Edmonton corridor with over 2 million people--does not border the US and in fact runs perpendicular from the border. Despite Edmonton being one of the most northern major cities (pop. over 500,000) in the world its residents could get boradbant internet before pretty much everyone in the US. Another interesting factoid: The first commercial use of long-distance fibre-optic cable in the world was in Canada, and the longest functioning fibre optic cable in the world in around 1980 was in the Calgary area. The population might be "concentrated" but it is only compressed north-south in most places--it is still very long east-west, so communication technology in Canada became advanced out of necessity.
Yes, we will quite likely be using word processors over the (inter|intra)net in some years. But we won't be doing so over HTML, because it's simply not up to the task.
Well, if you are using a word processor HTML is quite up to the task as a document format. For the user-interface however, I agree--HTML+CSS+Javascript is cumbersome (although it is possible to do). XUL really is cool and has a huge head start on XAML. What is critical though is that XUL applications become much more commonplace on the Windows desktop before Longhorn reaches wide release. Microsoft would then lose its leverage.
One thing I have my doubt about is that we will be using word processors and other apps solely over the internet/network any time soon. The integration will probably be seamless and local and network functionality will be based on common standards, but we've got a ways to go before wired and wireless internet is reliable and trustworthy enough to forego any and all software capable of connectionless operation.
My personal view is that the more distributed the system is the better. I am not comfortable with ISPs and software companies turning into ASPs with gigantic data centres serving whole cities/regions/nations. The impact of such a centre succumbing to disaster or even losing connectivity would be too great. Although the risk could probably be made sufficiently small some day, end usersstill have to clear that psycological barrier of losing at least some control over one's own data and applications (I know that I have my reservations--it would simply make draconian DRM technology that much easier).
What I'd like to see is a simplified, standardised version of the setup in my home:
Broadband connectivity provided with a static IP/server connections permitted and no other frills (other than perhaps security-related packet filtering)--no free mail addresses, space on some distant web server, etc. It would be a utility just like the heating bill. Every home would have a server of sorts that would provide the actual internet services (email, web server, net-aware applications...). It would probably run Linux but no one would notice or care because it would be like the Linksys router you can buy now--a little fanless box with nothing but a power connector, ethernet and WiFi. It would require less maintenance than your furnace.
Clients would be cheap--probably wireless and mostly portable--and might also run Linux off compact-flash (again nobody would really care about that any more than they care about who wrote the firmware for their microwave today). Applications and data storage would be on the home server beyond the desktop environment. Basics like what is provided by Office would be commodity apps installed on the home server appliance by default. Users could purchase or otherwise obtain programs like they order books from amazon and installs and upgrades would be invisible to the user. Furthermore, the clients would be capable of limited local storage and application functionality when not connected to the home LAN.
I know that the telephone and power grids rely on central coordination, etc and that computing services could run that way, but with the latter you are dealing with personalised setups and data to a much larger extent. Furthermore traditional utilities are moving toward more distributed systems as well (deregulated electrical industry that permits industrial customers to employ co-generation--and eventually maybe residential and/or farmers could do the same with fuel cell technology--and in phones VoIP is growing). The advantage is that smaller/simpler systems are generally more reliable so if end users are disconnected from "the grid" (power grid, the 'net, etc) they can still function independently for some time. Also, in the less-likely event that the home network goes down it won't create a huge disruption.
I hope that this becomes the trend--unfortunately there will be resistance from established monopolistic players. It
...because it seems to stay up and alive forever, even though everyone knows it's dead;-)
There sure are a lot of bold predictions made by both camps considering "Open Solaris" is barely off the ground--is it a true "Free Software" license or is it somewhat encumbered like Java? Will a development community like Mozilla foundation be set up? Even if it is all done "right" it'll probably take years to get the ball rolling in earnest...an eternity in the industry. If I ever made such a bold prediction as "open Solaris will kill Linux" or "Linux will always rule because it had such a big head start" I'd go dig out my Byte and Compute magazines from the early 80s to see what the experts predicted for the next 5 to 20 years. That way it keeps my confidence in check and I won't look quite so foolish in 2010 or 2015 or later.
I tend to think not. "There's more than one way to do it" is a phrase I associate with the Perl language--probably the best example of an open development process applied to language development. I don't recall Larry Wall micro-managing the process, enforcing special licensing requirements on developers of Perl programming tools or sending nasty-grams to developers for using the name "Perl" in a project title.
By and large, the source for Perl and its libraries is wide open (I believe the "artistic license" allows the code to be "stolen" for proprietary use..not sure though). Despite the "lack of discipline" Perl is quite consistent between platforms. I've written some pretty fancy Perl that runs without modification on my Linux box as well as in the ActiveState perl on Microsoft Windows.
I think Python and Ruby are also quite open and neither seems to have problems with forking or undue platform incompatibilities. I don't think that it matters if it is open or proprietary, headed by a "benevolent dictator" or designed by committee in terms of design stability and compatibility. If the leaders are responsive and genuinely considerate to users and other developers needs then it will result in success.
If it was indeed true that Linus was becoming beligerent or uncooperative (I see no indicatoin of that) then the license allows disgruntled users to produce a fork that addresses those needs. If Sun and/or the 900 or so merchants in their "bazaar" become disconnected then...well you're SOL and have to invent your own alternative/derivative and it had better not have a coffee-related name (and it has happened--I do not think it was MS' fault alone that it created an incompatible Java and its own alternative in C#--Sun created the environment that allowed it to happen). Open projects are also not immune to the problem--XFree86 for example. In the end though things sort themselves out and we get Linux and Perl and Apache and Mozilla/Firefox and a whole host of successful applications (even closed ones--MS Office and Visual Studio.NET are pretty successful by many measures by and large because they cater to the user's needs).
...were light reading like that. I guess it was much more common for people to have no idea about computers back then so they needed a "gentle" introduction.
I remember Ladybird books from the library when I was just a wee lad...I think they exclusivley published childrens books. Between grades I and III I was big into science type books and there was a series of them from Ladybird--I probably took all of them out eventually. I think they were noted for making Sunday School books too.
Even the 1979 version of the Ladybird book was looking dated when I was into those books. My first face to face encounter with a "real live" computer was aroung 1981 seeing the "computer lab" that the big kids got to use (I think it was a whopping three Commodore PETs--in Canadian schools Commodore ruled until Apple hit its stride a couple years later--probably because Commodore was originally a Canadian company in addition to it being an early player in the PC market). Later us younger kids got to work on the "new" Apple II+s (but odd ones--they were black instead of beige and were labelled "Bell+Howell" like the movie projectors) and eventualy Commodore 64s.
I guess I was an odd duck...I liked science and technology books at an early age--besides those I liked Roald Dahl (Charlie and the chocolate factory, etc), Mortechai Richler (Jacob Two Two books) and Ian Fleming (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). So if it wasn't science-related it was fiction that was just a bit twisted. If I wasn't destined for a career in science or engineering I probably would've been another Tim Burton.
skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited
This bill contradicts itself. I find most commercials/promotional announcements objectionable, and more and more these days are sexually explicit. Does the "skip objectionable content" part trump the "prohibit skipping commercials" part? Really, I don't want my kids minds to be warped by the likes of Britney Spears selling brown sugar water or any other product.
I'm glad I live in Canada where the government doesn't try to tell us what we can and cannot watch...Oh wait...
Keynes realized that spending for the sake of spending itself can be used to prop up a demand-side collapse.
That's the problem--in practice it has not been balanced just like Reaganomics wasn't balanced, and I think that leads to over-corrections that make boom-bust business cycles worse. Obviously, you cannot reduce taxes on businesses and the rich to zero to stimulate the economy on a permanent basis and still have a workable budget. Conversely, you cannot prop up the demand side with welfare programmes and state-sponsored megaprojects forever because that requires deficit spending and drives inflation (Canada during the late 60s to the early 80s is a good example--The Canadian dollar started out worth MORE than a US dollar and ended up plunging to 70-odd cents. As a kid I remember going to the store every Sunday and the price of my favourite chocolate bar would literally increase every week at the worst point).
Spending for the sake of spending Keynesian-style (that is, solely in the name of economic stability) is a sham in the same way Reaganomics was a sham. There should be a legitimate/concrete reason for all expenditures and taxation. WWII and the rebuilding of Europe were damn good reasons. Building six-lane expressways where four-lane ones would do, housing projects in the wrong places and planting trees to beautify the bald-headed prairie might be well intended but are not justifiable when the cupboard is bare, just like tax-cuts are ill-advised if they cannot be afforded.
I guess I'm of the mind that govenrments should tax at a level the public is comfortable with and always maintain an essentially balanced budget whenever possible regardless of what economic analysis shows about supply-side or demand-side strength. The private sector might not be perfect at keeping that balance, but governmants have demonstrated that their ham-handed attempts at steering the economy are rarely successful in the long-term.
...as it is instightful, but also calls total partisan bullshit that is becoming so damn tiresome now. Perhaps it was a bad idea for/. to start a politics forum during the election becasue it seems to have drawn the Bush-bashing trolls out from under their mold-infested rocks, which brings on the wrath of a small but vocal minority of shrill Bush-apologists.
The parent poster is right. The US government has been asleep at the wheel since Carter...hell it's been longer than that. It's the same with Canadian govenrment too--They've been asleep for over well over 20 years too. The public that bother to get politically involved tend to focus too much on partisan posturing and let the bureaucratic lunatics run the asylum (the European governments are falling quite out of touch too). It hasn't mattered which party has held power--all the administrations were acting in a self-interested manner.
Thing is, it is still a democratic society and democratically elected governments have the authority to call the shots over the mandates of these regulatory agencies. The problem with the FCC, CIA and others is that they were given vague or broad mandates. The FCC is just acting like a "good" bureaucratdoes--interpret its mandate to the broadest extent to justify its existence and ever-increasing budget (kind of like how three-year-old children behave). Congress has to get off its collective ass and set boundaries. Won't happen easily though because even though RIAA and MPAA member corporations can't vote, they sure make good campaign funders.
Yes it was, but it was far from Keynesian in nature (government spending != keynesian economics). Little to none of that spending was on domesic infrastructure, increased welfare or worker benefits--it was almost all for weapons production and the war effort in general. The benefits of that spending "trickled down" supply-side style during the post-war boon
Oh come on. That war-built industrial capacity was only possible because of an aggressive tax regime.
Correct--the world was still paying for the war in the 50s. Re-building Europe provided a lot of steam for the economy so there was a lot of capacity for tax revenue.
one gladly accepted at the time
EXACTLY. In that time and place, it was seen as a civic duty to support the war effort. People gladly accepted big tax increase because they perceived it as going towards a good cause (fighting against tyrrany, rebiulding war-torn Europe etc). They were also led to believe that much of the tax burden was a temporary war measure (that is how Canadians were sold on implementing Income Tax 90 years ago too).
It is harder to defend big spending programmes during peacetime. People don't like seeing their money used to fund kickbacks to well-connected businessmen and lobbyists' pet projects. Even now in the era of "war on terror" a lot of people question the legitimacy of the current military action. Pretty hard to get people to open up their wallets now like they did in the 40s and 50s.
As I said before, supply-side or demand-side depende on the acceptance of society, and what REALLY matters is that it is sustainable (you cannot overspend forever).
Hey let's not forget the recession that came after Reagan [...] there was that Clinton guy who raised income taxes [...] That went pretty well, don't you think?
The consequences of policies of the current government are not always felt in that govenrnments term in office. Furthermore the direction of the economy is not always the result of the overall economic philosophy (supply side vs demand side). Are you suggesting that it took time for Reganomics to cause a POST-Reagan recession, but Clinton was able to fix everything instantly within his term? The effects of raising or lowering taxes are rarely instantaneous. Republicans would no doubt say that G H Bush got the ball rolling on the economic recovery and that Clinton just came in at an opportune moment--that Clinton merely managed to not screw up that recovery.
There are forces in play on the economy beyond the economic policy of government as well. Did the "new deal" really do anything to end the Great Depression, or was it the start of World War II and the end of drought? The industrial capacity built up during the war and increased agricultural production created a lasting boom into the 50's that I'd say survived DESPITE the tax regime rather than because of it.
The inflationary 70's is often attributed to bad economic policy of the 50s and 60s. Reganomics provided a solution but it was an over-correction (or rather it was not a balanced solution). There are some compelling arguments for Reagan-style supply-side economics, but given Reagan's other expensive priorities (fighting the Cold War) it is obvious that lowering taxes without corresponding spending limits is not sustainable. G W Bush is following in those footsteps with the "war on terror". Hopefully that war is concluded in a timely enough fashion before the US descends into insolvency (the cold war ended just in time when you think about it).
I don't think there is one answer--I think it depends on what a particular society is willing to accept. If it values individual freedom then there is probably a low tolerance for taxes. It is a known fact that raising taxes beyond a certain level will cause revenue to DECLINE. In the last decade for example, several Canadian provinces reduced their income tax levels and saw their tax revenue INCREASE. That tolerance level has to be found and spending adjusted accordingly.
Hmmm...quite off-topic I suppose, except that it seems that the patent system is quite out-of-step with supply-side economics. Supply-side economies strive to remove expenses and regulatory barriers from business, and the current patent system has made it EASIER to set up those barriers (given patents are essentially government-mandated monopolies). Also, keep in mind that some of the more contentious portions of patent law were instituted during the Clinton administration. Where was he to veto that bill (if he did indeed resist the changes to patents and copyrights that are proving problematic today I'd welcome/.ers input).
...than to judge by pictures. The article says there is a single standard connector on the motherboard to replace the myriad of fiddly little jumper-like 2-pin connectors. BTX case makers must terminate the "assortment of little twistyfellas" to this single, standard connector. This means you no longer must decipher the secret code screen-printed onto the board or refer to the "happy-excellent Engrish manual" to figure out where the plugs go and what the proper polarity is to make the LEDs emit light.
The "twistyfellas" won't likely disappear any time soon because case designers may want to place the LEDs in different areas of the case, but at least they all find their way to a single connector now.
Actually, you spelled "Terabyte" wrong. Nonetheless, it is interesting that we now have the ability to store a nearly universal collection of musical works on a system that'll fit on your desk and is obtainable by the average joe.
What else can you expect? Microsoft invented the "embrace and extend" strategy and they are simply applying that to their search database by scraping Google and tacking on their stuff.
Where it gets sinister is when they appear to "steal" the content. What if the Google page has meta tags or a robots.txt rule specifying the page should not be indexed? What if the terms of service for Google do not permit the unauthorised re-branding or other use of their search results (they do in fact)? Wouldn't you say it's wrong for MS to send the MSNBot a crawlin' then?
I dunno...maybe there isn't a stong defence for Google, but if this is true somehow it seems unethical to build a business on the heavy investment of time and money of others against their will. If they wanted to build on others' work they should use Open Source material like Google did in developing their technology. If they need content they can hunt for it themselves, or get it from a similarly free source (embrace and extend DMOZ directory for example).
I believe in the philosophy of "Free software" and all but I also think that in general you should respect the wishes of others and Google I'm sure wouldn't like this. I also think it would be a bit hypocritical of MS if it did this given its position on sharing its own IP.
...it's just that geeks are just wired differently in the brain--we have different thought processes than normal "dumb people". Artsy types are also wired differently in the brain than normal people. While geeks and artsy types are usually polar opposites (left brained vs right brained, etc) they share common characteristics (much like how communist and facist dictatorships do in the political space). One such trait is the continual search for new and different ways of doing things--there is both left-brained and right-brained creativity.
Most people are in the "mushy middle"--they aren't dumb it's just that their intelligence is just spread out a bit more and are thus not quite as "creative" or curious. The average "mushy middle" person has the benefit of being more socially adjusted but is also a creature of habit and is not easily driven to deviate from his comfort zone unless circumstances make things annoying enough to disturb that comfort. This is the only theory I've been able to come up with explaining why IE and Outlook have been allowed to rot and fester and continue to enjoy market dominance even in the face of free competition.
It isn't a name thing as much as it is good marketing or else Excel would've flopped because it didn't have "Calc" or "Spreadsheet" in the name. Excel was part of the Office juggernaut and is now market leader so out of habit now "Excel==Spreadsheet". Hell, when I started in university the school had just implemented WWW directories on student's accounts so they could have home pages and I know for the first little while people would say "look at the Mosaic page I made"!
Things are changing though because "mushy middle" is becoming uncomfortable. They are afraid of the WWW and their inbox because the news and the experts are telling them it is swimming with nasties that will corrupt their machines, spy on them and steal their account numbers. Even mainstream media is now starting to emphasise "windows" and "internet explorer". That is enough to get them thinking. They are very easy sells when they become vicims one too many times.
Anyway, to help the creature of habit with the conversion, I install Firefox and Thunderbird, and use "Set Program Access and Defaults" to remove the icons for IE and Outlook in addition to setting the Mozilla counterparts to the default clients. Furthermore, I rename the Mozilla icons to the generic "Web Browser" and "Email". This has resulted in a pretty much universally positive reception. I believe it would be second nature for people to click on "the fox" and "the bird" if that's what they learned to do from the start, or have done it long enough.
Blaming piracy on lost revenue is basically targeting a symptom rather than the underlying cause.
RIAA has overlooked the fact that it is completely obvious to consumers that they are being ripped off. Buying a CD often costs more than half of what it does to buy a DVD. Everyone can see they are over-priced. Recording songs is way cheaper than shooting a movie. DVDs hold 5 to 10 times more data than CDs. Music CDs hold 74 minutes or less of music and movies are always longer than that, plus there are no special features on a CD. Paying $15 or more for a CD just feels like you're being gouged.
MPAA whines about lost revenue and piracy while making historically high profits. DVDs are more reasonably priced but it still costs over $50 for parents to take kids out to the cinema. Add to that actors who get milions for three months work and it's hard to make people feel bad about copying a movie even if it is wrong (yes, it is still wrong). Furthermore, they play these idiotic, outdated games with primitive encryption and region codes and varying distribution dates that frustrate movie fans outside the USA. I bet a lot of pirated video is copied from North American and Quebec DVDs for viewing in the UK, France and other french and english speaking international viewers.
Let the **AAs keep trying to treat the symptom instead of the disease and sue away (and ignore the cure that Apple found). Eventually they will die of consumption.
Money certainly is important in supporting open projects, but there are other things that need to be done as well. I'd say there are three main categories:
* monetary support--help feed the coders
* technical support--dontate time and skills to find and fix bugs, or add functionality
* moral support--advocacy/evangelism, marketing, publicity.
The first two everyone has been aware of for some time. People have donated $ to software causes and sent in patches since before the dawn of GNU. The last point is one that has been neglected until recently (Mozilla has woken up and realised the importance of such support for example). Lulu has done something brilliant in addressing the third form of support, while still helping the cause financially.
In order for FOSS alternatives to become mainstream they have to be marketed in a more mainstream fashion. Mainstream computer users mostly run systems with closed software, and are used to going to Best Buy, picking up a box with a printed manual and a plastic disc and paying for it. If they buy online or mail order they expect something shipped.
The averager person is not as comfortable as the typical FOSS geek with supporting a system that has no tangible goods associated with it. Illogical as it seems to us geeks, simply having the software available on a CD, in a box with a printed manual all professionally done, lends the product credibility.
Look at Windows. It has been playing catch-up to Linux stability- and security-wise for years now. The pack-in documentation of the retail box distribution is pretty much useless and is never read. Furthermore, most people get nothing but a lisence certificate and recovery CD with pre-installed OEM editions. Regardless, tech support is nearly useless and real documentation is buried in online files.
Sometimes, it seems that the mere fact that Microsoft professionally packages the product and fills store shelves world-wide make MS Windows or MS Office appear to Joe Schmoe to be more credible than Linux Distro X or OpenOffice. Yeah yeah, MS is a monopoly and could put feces in the box and make money, but they weren't always a monopoly. They got there not with the best technology but with shrewd business decisions and effective marketing at a time when competitors had neither.
"performance capture" is just a euphemism for "motion capture" which has gotten a pretty bad rap among animators.
The term I heard when I was involved in classical animation (not involving computers at all) was "rotoscoping". And yes, it did and still does get a bad rap from animators from the "old school" when it is misused. The rotoscoped characters stick out like a sore thumb becasue of the inconsistencies--the characters MOVE like real life but LOOK like cartoons when rotoscoped, so they always look out of place.
Using computers to do rotoscoping in 3-D hasn't helped the situation. Computers capture real motion TOO faithfully, but are "not quite" there in generating realistic humans yet--so digital humans that look a bit "creepy" might even look creepier when rotoscoping is used.
I think that maybe one day computers will be able to visually re-create humans convincingly enough to make rotoscoping work (so a black man could convincingly perform as a white woman without it being a gag like it was in White Chicks for example). Perhaps it worked on Jar Jar or Gollum because there was little to no facial capture (just body movements) and the characters were far drifferent from humans.
In the mean time, it probably would've been better to use digital compositing to put human characters into the fanciful virtual world of the Polar Express. It has worked well enough in the past and at least the characters themselves would be consistent.
Animators exagerate and slightly alter movement for dramatic effect and visual appeal, and so the "spirit" of the movement matches the visual representation of the charater (which is very seldom photo-realistic).
Rotoscoping is a fine techniquein some cases (those being when the entire sceme is rotoscoped--background, characters and all, so the entire scene is "consistently inconsistent"). It is a bit much to ask an animator to paint a figure on movement she does not control and expect it to look better than when the visual appearance and movement of a character are under one person's control (be it actor or animator).
The technology is not quite mature enough to be practical or reliable for many uses. Even worse, the novelty of the idea means the technology is applied inappropriately.
The article sumary makes this comment:
Kind of thing that you can put in all the car ignitions and lockers where password entry using keyboard can become too obtrusive.
These are exactly two places where present technololgy does NOT work well (or the stuff that works well is too expensive). The West Edmonton Mall is the worlds biggest, so as a convenience they have lockers for patrons to use as they shop. Additionally, there are lockers at the water park. The mall has recently started implementing biometrics for locker access, starting at the water park.
Let me tell, you that was THE BIGGEST MISTAKE and waste of money they could've done. I'd rather have kept the keypad and used the cost savings to lower rates (a small locker costs $6 for a day). In the water park, you get wet. The fingerprint readers to not work on wet fingers. You also get cold, and the surface of your fingers gets wrinkly and shrink slightly. This also makes the reader inoperative. Half the time, you have to dry off and warm your hands thoroughly under the air dryer before you can open your damn locker. It took me 10 minutes of trying.
Furthermore, the software is too primitive to allow multiple fingerprints to open a locker so if you share a locker to save money the person who opened the locker has to get everyone elses posessions. There is also the accessibility issue. I have a friend that has no hands due to birth defects. He could not use fingerprint biometrics and the reader is not designed to practically accommodate toe prints.
The idea of using fingerprints on car ignitions at this point is also ill-advised at this point. The technology is either too picky to reliably read the scan, or too forgiving that it allows false reads. I forsee being locked out of my car during inclement weather. In April my fingers will be too wet during rainstorms to work, and in the winter they will be too cold. I get -30 degree temperatures in January where I live. I do NOT want to have to take off my mitts and fiddle with a thumbprint lock until I get frostbite, so I'm gonna need a key to get in the car. I might as well use that key to start the car too.
It's the same thing with firearms and such. Even in non-emergency situations like hunting I'm sure the user doesn't want to futz around with some biometric safety lock scheme, and I'm even more sure they don't want to pay significantly more for the gun because of the added feature when a mechanical safety has sufficed until now. Also, the same problems apply--it could malfunction if our fingers are cold, wet or dirty which could likely happen.
Technology for technology's sake is just silly. If it doesn't make something work better or cost less without affectig usability then it shouldn't be used. I do NOT need electronics in my toaster, my coat keeps me warm just fine without being "smart" and I'm not so brain dead I cannot remember the combination to my locker. Just leave it all be please.
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(from dictionary.com)
globalisation
n : growth to a global or worldwide scale
It doesn't say anything about exploitation of developing nations. The word is mis-used by way too many people.
The (Canadian) city where I live hosted a big international summit some time ago. Protesters staged continual demonstrations about the evils of "Globalisation" (peaceful ones to their credit). Literally the majority of these protesters came from outside Canada, from the US and all over Europe. Was it lost on them that they were participating in the GLOBALISATION of their protest movement?
Globalisation is inevitable...there is NOTHING that can or should be done to stop it. What is important is that you make your voice heard and be an active participant in the process. I may not have agreed with everything the protesters had to say (and am amused at their use of the word) but I applaud them for making their views known and doing it peacefully.
As for going to live in 3rd world countries it seems that in most cases skilled workers (both native and immigrant) are actually treated quite well. They pay is only mediocre by western standards. The quality of life is on par with middle class America. Housing is cheap or free and the employer provides free transportation to and from the office. I'd say that's changing people's attitudes alright--their views of globalisation are becoming more favourable.
...beyond work if you live a life as a "nomad"? That's crap! It's the 21st century man! Communications technology makes physical location nearly irrelevant. Many of my family members and friends travel extensively and have made good friends with fellow nomads all over the world. IM and email are good for keeping in touch--you should try using them sometimes. My girlfriend's brother met an Aussie nomad in Vancouver, now ehty arte engaged to be married in Australia. They both have friends and family on three continents. All my more nomadic friends manage to stay in touch and some even meet up several times a year--sometimes in locations that are neither person's "home"!
A nomadic lifestyle isn't for everyone, so if you prefer to put down roots somewhere there is always telecommuting--that is essentially what workers in India, Ireland, Canada and other outsourcing hotspots are doing for their parent companies anyways.
The Aussie is right--this is an era of globalisation and you'd better get used to it. It is sad that the US, a country historically known for its pioneering spirit and innovation, has become more whiny, inward-looking and reactionary than the average country with respect to immigration. The US got where it is today beause of immigration from all over the world. It seems selfish in this day and age to expect the rest of the world shouldn't be able to benefit from immigration as well.
Hey, if Darwin's theory works in nature expect it in the economy as well. The US will adapt or die. India and other developing nations have been closer to death and have simply started adapting faster. In the end it'll all even out--unless of course politics unduly interferes and fouls up the balance of things.
Sun produced a patch before the issue was released to the public.
You say that like it was a good thing. I don't think it is. I'd rather have had Sun issue a security bulletin outlining the problem and how to avoid it as soon as they knew about the problem. Concealing a product defect until after it is fixed and it is most convenient for the compnay (and has the least impact on share price) is not trustworthy behaviour. Microsoft does that too often too and I hate it.
Just because a defect hasn't been offically disclosed does not mean people with malicious intent do not know about it. I want to know about a problem as soon as it is discovered so I can work around it until it is fixed. The longer vendors of closed software (or leaders of open source projects) drag their feet in informing the public, the more opportunity there is for the defect to be exploited by intelligent but malicious individuals with advance knowledge.
My employer sells mission critical equipment where failure can result in extensive property damage, injury or death. If a defect is discovered it MUST be reported IMMEDIATELY. We cannot wait for a firmware update because someone could stumble upon the defect and be killed. Any time there is a potential problem reported it includes a recommended workaround. If there is no acceptable workaround the product is recalled (this is rare--it has not happened while I have worked here).
Why is it that this practice is considered "due diligence" and the responsible thing to do in other industries, but in the IT/software world it is considered reckless by some to inform the public of all issues in a timely fashion?
My parents live in northern Michigan and they don't even have access to dial-up without paying long distance charges!
Northern Michigan? You say that like it's the friggin North Pole or something! Michigan is not exactly remote or thinly populated. Try...ohhh maybe Norhtern Saskatchewan, or maybe Yukon or NWT. There are places there that you have to fly to in the summer because the roads melt and disappear into the muskeg. Astonighingly some of these communities have good broadband access (I suppose if you live next to a diamond mine the community can spring for it).
Heck you don't even have to leave your own country. I might not laugh out loud if you said northern MAINE perhaps, or North Dakota. But Norhtern Michigan? You don't know what remote is man...
Population in Canada is actually much more concentrated in cities than US. They are all squeezed along the southern border where its warmer.
p opvil2.html just under 80 percent of Canadians live in urban centres....which is nearly the SAME as the US. The only difference is that in the US the population is coastal and around the great lakes instead of along the border. Despite that, broadband use is double in Canada. The difference isn't because of population density at all. It is because despite media content being somewhat over-regulated, internet access was never mired in government/monopoly regulation to the degree it was in the US. Furthermore, broadband in Canada for the longest time was 30% to 50% cheaper than in the US so it was more accessible to its residents.
That is actually false. According to census data http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/
In regards to the latitude of settlement, one of the four biggest population centres of Canada--the Calgary-Edmonton corridor with over 2 million people--does not border the US and in fact runs perpendicular from the border. Despite Edmonton being one of the most northern major cities (pop. over 500,000) in the world its residents could get boradbant internet before pretty much everyone in the US. Another interesting factoid: The first commercial use of long-distance fibre-optic cable in the world was in Canada, and the longest functioning fibre optic cable in the world in around 1980 was in the Calgary area. The population might be "concentrated" but it is only compressed north-south in most places--it is still very long east-west, so communication technology in Canada became advanced out of necessity.
Yes, we will quite likely be using word processors over the (inter|intra)net in some years. But we won't be doing so over HTML, because it's simply not up to the task.
Well, if you are using a word processor HTML is quite up to the task as a document format. For the user-interface however, I agree--HTML+CSS+Javascript is cumbersome (although it is possible to do). XUL really is cool and has a huge head start on XAML. What is critical though is that XUL applications become much more commonplace on the Windows desktop before Longhorn reaches wide release. Microsoft would then lose its leverage.
One thing I have my doubt about is that we will be using word processors and other apps solely over the internet/network any time soon. The integration will probably be seamless and local and network functionality will be based on common standards, but we've got a ways to go before wired and wireless internet is reliable and trustworthy enough to forego any and all software capable of connectionless operation.
My personal view is that the more distributed the system is the better. I am not comfortable with ISPs and software companies turning into ASPs with gigantic data centres serving whole cities/regions/nations. The impact of such a centre succumbing to disaster or even losing connectivity would be too great. Although the risk could probably be made sufficiently small some day, end usersstill have to clear that psycological barrier of losing at least some control over one's own data and applications (I know that I have my reservations--it would simply make draconian DRM technology that much easier).
What I'd like to see is a simplified, standardised version of the setup in my home:
Broadband connectivity provided with a static IP/server connections permitted and no other frills (other than perhaps security-related packet filtering)--no free mail addresses, space on some distant web server, etc. It would be a utility just like the heating bill. Every home would have a server of sorts that would provide the actual internet services (email, web server, net-aware applications...). It would probably run Linux but no one would notice or care because it would be like the Linksys router you can buy now--a little fanless box with nothing but a power connector, ethernet and WiFi. It would require less maintenance than your furnace.
Clients would be cheap--probably wireless and mostly portable--and might also run Linux off compact-flash (again nobody would really care about that any more than they care about who wrote the firmware for their microwave today). Applications and data storage would be on the home server beyond the desktop environment. Basics like what is provided by Office would be commodity apps installed on the home server appliance by default. Users could purchase or otherwise obtain programs like they order books from amazon and installs and upgrades would be invisible to the user. Furthermore, the clients would be capable of limited local storage and application functionality when not connected to the home LAN.
I know that the telephone and power grids rely on central coordination, etc and that computing services could run that way, but with the latter you are dealing with personalised setups and data to a much larger extent. Furthermore traditional utilities are moving toward more distributed systems as well (deregulated electrical industry that permits industrial customers to employ co-generation--and eventually maybe residential and/or farmers could do the same with fuel cell technology--and in phones VoIP is growing). The advantage is that smaller/simpler systems are generally more reliable so if end users are disconnected from "the grid" (power grid, the 'net, etc) they can still function independently for some time. Also, in the less-likely event that the home network goes down it won't create a huge disruption.
I hope that this becomes the trend--unfortunately there will be resistance from established monopolistic players. It
...because it seems to stay up and alive forever, even though everyone knows it's dead ;-)
There sure are a lot of bold predictions made by both camps considering "Open Solaris" is barely off the ground--is it a true "Free Software" license or is it somewhat encumbered like Java? Will a development community like Mozilla foundation be set up? Even if it is all done "right" it'll probably take years to get the ball rolling in earnest...an eternity in the industry. If I ever made such a bold prediction as "open Solaris will kill Linux" or "Linux will always rule because it had such a big head start" I'd go dig out my Byte and Compute magazines from the early 80s to see what the experts predicted for the next 5 to 20 years. That way it keeps my confidence in check and I won't look quite so foolish in 2010 or 2015 or later.
I tend to think not. "There's more than one way to do it" is a phrase I associate with the Perl language--probably the best example of an open development process applied to language development. I don't recall Larry Wall micro-managing the process, enforcing special licensing requirements on developers of Perl programming tools or sending nasty-grams to developers for using the name "Perl" in a project title.
By and large, the source for Perl and its libraries is wide open (I believe the "artistic license" allows the code to be "stolen" for proprietary use..not sure though). Despite the "lack of discipline" Perl is quite consistent between platforms. I've written some pretty fancy Perl that runs without modification on my Linux box as well as in the ActiveState perl on Microsoft Windows.
I think Python and Ruby are also quite open and neither seems to have problems with forking or undue platform incompatibilities. I don't think that it matters if it is open or proprietary, headed by a "benevolent dictator" or designed by committee in terms of design stability and compatibility. If the leaders are responsive and genuinely considerate to users and other developers needs then it will result in success.
If it was indeed true that Linus was becoming beligerent or uncooperative (I see no indicatoin of that) then the license allows disgruntled users to produce a fork that addresses those needs. If Sun and/or the 900 or so merchants in their "bazaar" become disconnected then...well you're SOL and have to invent your own alternative/derivative and it had better not have a coffee-related name (and it has happened--I do not think it was MS' fault alone that it created an incompatible Java and its own alternative in C#--Sun created the environment that allowed it to happen). Open projects are also not immune to the problem--XFree86 for example. In the end though things sort themselves out and we get Linux and Perl and Apache and Mozilla/Firefox and a whole host of successful applications (even closed ones--MS Office and Visual Studio.NET are pretty successful by many measures by and large because they cater to the user's needs).
...were light reading like that. I guess it was much more common for people to have no idea about computers back then so they needed a "gentle" introduction.
I remember Ladybird books from the library when I was just a wee lad...I think they exclusivley published childrens books. Between grades I and III I was big into science type books and there was a series of them from Ladybird--I probably took all of them out eventually. I think they were noted for making Sunday School books too.
Even the 1979 version of the Ladybird book was looking dated when I was into those books. My first face to face encounter with a "real live" computer was aroung 1981 seeing the "computer lab" that the big kids got to use (I think it was a whopping three Commodore PETs--in Canadian schools Commodore ruled until Apple hit its stride a couple years later--probably because Commodore was originally a Canadian company in addition to it being an early player in the PC market). Later us younger kids got to work on the "new" Apple II+s (but odd ones--they were black instead of beige and were labelled "Bell+Howell" like the movie projectors) and eventualy Commodore 64s.
I guess I was an odd duck...I liked science and technology books at an early age--besides those I liked Roald Dahl (Charlie and the chocolate factory, etc), Mortechai Richler (Jacob Two Two books) and Ian Fleming (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). So if it wasn't science-related it was fiction that was just a bit twisted. If I wasn't destined for a career in science or engineering I probably would've been another Tim Burton.
skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited
This bill contradicts itself. I find most commercials/promotional announcements objectionable, and more and more these days are sexually explicit. Does the "skip objectionable content" part trump the "prohibit skipping commercials" part? Really, I don't want my kids minds to be warped by the likes of Britney Spears selling brown sugar water or any other product.
I'm glad I live in Canada where the government doesn't try to tell us what we can and cannot watch...Oh wait...
Keynes realized that spending for the sake of spending itself can be used to prop up a demand-side collapse.
That's the problem--in practice it has not been balanced just like Reaganomics wasn't balanced, and I think that leads to over-corrections that make boom-bust business cycles worse. Obviously, you cannot reduce taxes on businesses and the rich to zero to stimulate the economy on a permanent basis and still have a workable budget. Conversely, you cannot prop up the demand side with welfare programmes and state-sponsored megaprojects forever because that requires deficit spending and drives inflation (Canada during the late 60s to the early 80s is a good example--The Canadian dollar started out worth MORE than a US dollar and ended up plunging to 70-odd cents. As a kid I remember going to the store every Sunday and the price of my favourite chocolate bar would literally increase every week at the worst point).
Spending for the sake of spending Keynesian-style (that is, solely in the name of economic stability) is a sham in the same way Reaganomics was a sham. There should be a legitimate/concrete reason for all expenditures and taxation. WWII and the rebuilding of Europe were damn good reasons. Building six-lane expressways where four-lane ones would do, housing projects in the wrong places and planting trees to beautify the bald-headed prairie might be well intended but are not justifiable when the cupboard is bare, just like tax-cuts are ill-advised if they cannot be afforded.
I guess I'm of the mind that govenrments should tax at a level the public is comfortable with and always maintain an essentially balanced budget whenever possible regardless of what economic analysis shows about supply-side or demand-side strength. The private sector might not be perfect at keeping that balance, but governmants have demonstrated that their ham-handed attempts at steering the economy are rarely successful in the long-term.
...as it is instightful, but also calls total partisan bullshit that is becoming so damn tiresome now. Perhaps it was a bad idea for /. to start a politics forum during the election becasue it seems to have drawn the Bush-bashing trolls out from under their mold-infested rocks, which brings on the wrath of a small but vocal minority of shrill Bush-apologists.
The parent poster is right. The US government has been asleep at the wheel since Carter...hell it's been longer than that. It's the same with Canadian govenrment too--They've been asleep for over well over 20 years too. The public that bother to get politically involved tend to focus too much on partisan posturing and let the bureaucratic lunatics run the asylum (the European governments are falling quite out of touch too). It hasn't mattered which party has held power--all the administrations were acting in a self-interested manner.
Thing is, it is still a democratic society and democratically elected governments have the authority to call the shots over the mandates of these regulatory agencies. The problem with the FCC, CIA and others is that they were given vague or broad mandates. The FCC is just acting like a "good" bureaucratdoes--interpret its mandate to the broadest extent to justify its existence and ever-increasing budget (kind of like how three-year-old children behave). Congress has to get off its collective ass and set boundaries. Won't happen easily though because even though RIAA and MPAA member corporations can't vote, they sure make good campaign funders.
Yes! Now there was amazing government spending
Yes it was, but it was far from Keynesian in nature (government spending != keynesian economics). Little to none of that spending was on domesic infrastructure, increased welfare or worker benefits--it was almost all for weapons production and the war effort in general. The benefits of that spending "trickled down" supply-side style during the post-war boon
Oh come on. That war-built industrial capacity was only possible because of an aggressive tax regime.
Correct--the world was still paying for the war in the 50s. Re-building Europe provided a lot of steam for the economy so there was a lot of capacity for tax revenue.
one gladly accepted at the time
EXACTLY. In that time and place, it was seen as a civic duty to support the war effort. People gladly accepted big tax increase because they perceived it as going towards a good cause (fighting against tyrrany, rebiulding war-torn Europe etc). They were also led to believe that much of the tax burden was a temporary war measure (that is how Canadians were sold on implementing Income Tax 90 years ago too).
It is harder to defend big spending programmes during peacetime. People don't like seeing their money used to fund kickbacks to well-connected businessmen and lobbyists' pet projects. Even now in the era of "war on terror" a lot of people question the legitimacy of the current military action. Pretty hard to get people to open up their wallets now like they did in the 40s and 50s.
As I said before, supply-side or demand-side depende on the acceptance of society, and what REALLY matters is that it is sustainable (you cannot overspend forever).
Hey let's not forget the recession that came after Reagan [...] there was that Clinton guy who raised income taxes [...] That went pretty well, don't you think?
/.ers input).
The consequences of policies of the current government are not always felt in that govenrnments term in office. Furthermore the direction of the economy is not always the result of the overall economic philosophy (supply side vs demand side). Are you suggesting that it took time for Reganomics to cause a POST-Reagan recession, but Clinton was able to fix everything instantly within his term? The effects of raising or lowering taxes are rarely instantaneous. Republicans would no doubt say that G H Bush got the ball rolling on the economic recovery and that Clinton just came in at an opportune moment--that Clinton merely managed to not screw up that recovery.
There are forces in play on the economy beyond the economic policy of government as well. Did the "new deal" really do anything to end the Great Depression, or was it the start of World War II and the end of drought? The industrial capacity built up during the war and increased agricultural production created a lasting boom into the 50's that I'd say survived DESPITE the tax regime rather than because of it.
The inflationary 70's is often attributed to bad economic policy of the 50s and 60s. Reganomics provided a solution but it was an over-correction (or rather it was not a balanced solution). There are some compelling arguments for Reagan-style supply-side economics, but given Reagan's other expensive priorities (fighting the Cold War) it is obvious that lowering taxes without corresponding spending limits is not sustainable. G W Bush is following in those footsteps with the "war on terror". Hopefully that war is concluded in a timely enough fashion before the US descends into insolvency (the cold war ended just in time when you think about it).
I don't think there is one answer--I think it depends on what a particular society is willing to accept. If it values individual freedom then there is probably a low tolerance for taxes. It is a known fact that raising taxes beyond a certain level will cause revenue to DECLINE. In the last decade for example, several Canadian provinces reduced their income tax levels and saw their tax revenue INCREASE. That tolerance level has to be found and spending adjusted accordingly.
Hmmm...quite off-topic I suppose, except that it seems that the patent system is quite out-of-step with supply-side economics. Supply-side economies strive to remove expenses and regulatory barriers from business, and the current patent system has made it EASIER to set up those barriers (given patents are essentially government-mandated monopolies). Also, keep in mind that some of the more contentious portions of patent law were instituted during the Clinton administration. Where was he to veto that bill (if he did indeed resist the changes to patents and copyrights that are proving problematic today I'd welcome
...than to judge by pictures. The article says there is a single standard connector on the motherboard to replace the myriad of fiddly little jumper-like 2-pin connectors. BTX case makers must terminate the "assortment of little twistyfellas" to this single, standard connector. This means you no longer must decipher the secret code screen-printed onto the board or refer to the "happy-excellent Engrish manual" to figure out where the plugs go and what the proper polarity is to make the LEDs emit light.
The "twistyfellas" won't likely disappear any time soon because case designers may want to place the LEDs in different areas of the case, but at least they all find their way to a single connector now.
Actually, you spelled "Terabyte" wrong. Nonetheless, it is interesting that we now have the ability to store a nearly universal collection of musical works on a system that'll fit on your desk and is obtainable by the average joe.
You misspelled "giggabyte"
Thank you for the correction, Mr. Quayle
What else can you expect? Microsoft invented the "embrace and extend" strategy and they are simply applying that to their search database by scraping Google and tacking on their stuff.
Where it gets sinister is when they appear to "steal" the content. What if the Google page has meta tags or a robots.txt rule specifying the page should not be indexed? What if the terms of service for Google do not permit the unauthorised re-branding or other use of their search results (they do in fact)? Wouldn't you say it's wrong for MS to send the MSNBot a crawlin' then?
I dunno...maybe there isn't a stong defence for Google, but if this is true somehow it seems unethical to build a business on the heavy investment of time and money of others against their will. If they wanted to build on others' work they should use Open Source material like Google did in developing their technology. If they need content they can hunt for it themselves, or get it from a similarly free source (embrace and extend DMOZ directory for example).
I believe in the philosophy of "Free software" and all but I also think that in general you should respect the wishes of others and Google I'm sure wouldn't like this. I also think it would be a bit hypocritical of MS if it did this given its position on sharing its own IP.
...it's just that geeks are just wired differently in the brain--we have different thought processes than normal "dumb people". Artsy types are also wired differently in the brain than normal people. While geeks and artsy types are usually polar opposites (left brained vs right brained, etc) they share common characteristics (much like how communist and facist dictatorships do in the political space). One such trait is the continual search for new and different ways of doing things--there is both left-brained and right-brained creativity.
Most people are in the "mushy middle"--they aren't dumb it's just that their intelligence is just spread out a bit more and are thus not quite as "creative" or curious. The average "mushy middle" person has the benefit of being more socially adjusted but is also a creature of habit and is not easily driven to deviate from his comfort zone unless circumstances make things annoying enough to disturb that comfort. This is the only theory I've been able to come up with explaining why IE and Outlook have been allowed to rot and fester and continue to enjoy market dominance even in the face of free competition.
It isn't a name thing as much as it is good marketing or else Excel would've flopped because it didn't have "Calc" or "Spreadsheet" in the name. Excel was part of the Office juggernaut and is now market leader so out of habit now "Excel==Spreadsheet". Hell, when I started in university the school had just implemented WWW directories on student's accounts so they could have home pages and I know for the first little while people would say "look at the Mosaic page I made"!
Things are changing though because "mushy middle" is becoming uncomfortable. They are afraid of the WWW and their inbox because the news and the experts are telling them it is swimming with nasties that will corrupt their machines, spy on them and steal their account numbers. Even mainstream media is now starting to emphasise "windows" and "internet explorer". That is enough to get them thinking. They are very easy sells when they become vicims one too many times.
Anyway, to help the creature of habit with the conversion, I install Firefox and Thunderbird, and use "Set Program Access and Defaults" to remove the icons for IE and Outlook in addition to setting the Mozilla counterparts to the default clients. Furthermore, I rename the Mozilla icons to the generic "Web Browser" and "Email". This has resulted in a pretty much universally positive reception. I believe it would be second nature for people to click on "the fox" and "the bird" if that's what they learned to do from the start, or have done it long enough.
...in the iPod she keeps in her pocket. It is nice to see her so enthusiastic about new technology.
I have to wonder about her sudden interest though...hmmmm....
Blaming piracy on lost revenue is basically targeting a symptom rather than the underlying cause.
RIAA has overlooked the fact that it is completely obvious to consumers that they are being ripped off. Buying a CD often costs more than half of what it does to buy a DVD. Everyone can see they are over-priced. Recording songs is way cheaper than shooting a movie. DVDs hold 5 to 10 times more data than CDs. Music CDs hold 74 minutes or less of music and movies are always longer than that, plus there are no special features on a CD. Paying $15 or more for a CD just feels like you're being gouged.
MPAA whines about lost revenue and piracy while making historically high profits. DVDs are more reasonably priced but it still costs over $50 for parents to take kids out to the cinema. Add to that actors who get milions for three months work and it's hard to make people feel bad about copying a movie even if it is wrong (yes, it is still wrong). Furthermore, they play these idiotic, outdated games with primitive encryption and region codes and varying distribution dates that frustrate movie fans outside the USA. I bet a lot of pirated video is copied from North American and Quebec DVDs for viewing in the UK, France and other french and english speaking international viewers.
Let the **AAs keep trying to treat the symptom instead of the disease and sue away (and ignore the cure that Apple found). Eventually they will die of consumption.
Money certainly is important in supporting open projects, but there are other things that need to be done as well. I'd say there are three main categories:
* monetary support--help feed the coders
* technical support--dontate time and skills to find and fix bugs, or add functionality
* moral support--advocacy/evangelism, marketing, publicity.
The first two everyone has been aware of for some time. People have donated $ to software causes and sent in patches since before the dawn of GNU. The last point is one that has been neglected until recently (Mozilla has woken up and realised the importance of such support for example). Lulu has done something brilliant in addressing the third form of support, while still helping the cause financially.
In order for FOSS alternatives to become mainstream they have to be marketed in a more mainstream fashion. Mainstream computer users mostly run systems with closed software, and are used to going to Best Buy, picking up a box with a printed manual and a plastic disc and paying for it. If they buy online or mail order they expect something shipped.
The averager person is not as comfortable as the typical FOSS geek with supporting a system that has no tangible goods associated with it. Illogical as it seems to us geeks, simply having the software available on a CD, in a box with a printed manual all professionally done, lends the product credibility.
Look at Windows. It has been playing catch-up to Linux stability- and security-wise for years now. The pack-in documentation of the retail box distribution is pretty much useless and is never read. Furthermore, most people get nothing but a lisence certificate and recovery CD with pre-installed OEM editions. Regardless, tech support is nearly useless and real documentation is buried in online files.
Sometimes, it seems that the mere fact that Microsoft professionally packages the product and fills store shelves world-wide make MS Windows or MS Office appear to Joe Schmoe to be more credible than Linux Distro X or OpenOffice. Yeah yeah, MS is a monopoly and could put feces in the box and make money, but they weren't always a monopoly. They got there not with the best technology but with shrewd business decisions and effective marketing at a time when competitors had neither.
"performance capture" is just a euphemism for "motion capture" which has gotten a pretty bad rap among animators.
The term I heard when I was involved in classical animation (not involving computers at all) was "rotoscoping". And yes, it did and still does get a bad rap from animators from the "old school" when it is misused. The rotoscoped characters stick out like a sore thumb becasue of the inconsistencies--the characters MOVE like real life but LOOK like cartoons when rotoscoped, so they always look out of place.
Using computers to do rotoscoping in 3-D hasn't helped the situation. Computers capture real motion TOO faithfully, but are "not quite" there in generating realistic humans yet--so digital humans that look a bit "creepy" might even look creepier when rotoscoping is used.
I think that maybe one day computers will be able to visually re-create humans convincingly enough to make rotoscoping work (so a black man could convincingly perform as a white woman without it being a gag like it was in White Chicks for example). Perhaps it worked on Jar Jar or Gollum because there was little to no facial capture (just body movements) and the characters were far drifferent from humans.
In the mean time, it probably would've been better to use digital compositing to put human characters into the fanciful virtual world of the Polar Express. It has worked well enough in the past and at least the characters themselves would be consistent.
Animators exagerate and slightly alter movement for dramatic effect and visual appeal, and so the "spirit" of the movement matches the visual representation of the charater (which is very seldom photo-realistic).
Rotoscoping is a fine techniquein some cases (those being when the entire sceme is rotoscoped--background, characters and all, so the entire scene is "consistently inconsistent"). It is a bit much to ask an animator to paint a figure on movement she does not control and expect it to look better than when the visual appearance and movement of a character are under one person's control (be it actor or animator).
The technology is not quite mature enough to be practical or reliable for many uses. Even worse, the novelty of the idea means the technology is applied inappropriately.
The article sumary makes this comment:
Kind of thing that you can put in all the car ignitions and lockers where password entry using keyboard can become too obtrusive.
These are exactly two places where present technololgy does NOT work well (or the stuff that works well is too expensive). The West Edmonton Mall is the worlds biggest, so as a convenience they have lockers for patrons to use as they shop. Additionally, there are lockers at the water park. The mall has recently started implementing biometrics for locker access, starting at the water park.
Let me tell, you that was THE BIGGEST MISTAKE and waste of money they could've done. I'd rather have kept the keypad and used the cost savings to lower rates (a small locker costs $6 for a day). In the water park, you get wet. The fingerprint readers to not work on wet fingers. You also get cold, and the surface of your fingers gets wrinkly and shrink slightly. This also makes the reader inoperative. Half the time, you have to dry off and warm your hands thoroughly under the air dryer before you can open your damn locker. It took me 10 minutes of trying.
Furthermore, the software is too primitive to allow multiple fingerprints to open a locker so if you share a locker to save money the person who opened the locker has to get everyone elses posessions. There is also the accessibility issue. I have a friend that has no hands due to birth defects. He could not use fingerprint biometrics and the reader is not designed to practically accommodate toe prints.
The idea of using fingerprints on car ignitions at this point is also ill-advised at this point. The technology is either too picky to reliably read the scan, or too forgiving that it allows false reads. I forsee being locked out of my car during inclement weather. In April my fingers will be too wet during rainstorms to work, and in the winter they will be too cold. I get -30 degree temperatures in January where I live. I do NOT want to have to take off my mitts and fiddle with a thumbprint lock until I get frostbite, so I'm gonna need a key to get in the car. I might as well use that key to start the car too.
It's the same thing with firearms and such. Even in non-emergency situations like hunting I'm sure the user doesn't want to futz around with some biometric safety lock scheme, and I'm even more sure they don't want to pay significantly more for the gun because of the added feature when a mechanical safety has sufficed until now. Also, the same problems apply--it could malfunction if our fingers are cold, wet or dirty which could likely happen.
Technology for technology's sake is just silly. If it doesn't make something work better or cost less without affectig usability then it shouldn't be used. I do NOT need electronics in my toaster, my coat keeps me warm just fine without being "smart" and I'm not so brain dead I cannot remember the combination to my locker. Just leave it all be please.
...that he licences to the patent office. Something like:
"A method for reviewing and granting patent requests automatically via computer"
Might explain what's going on out there.