Coleco went bankrupt and the receivers sold the assets in around 1987 or so. I cannot remember if it was Parker Brothers which in turn was absorbed by Hasbro or if it went to Hasbro directly. It isn't entirely clear, but whatever rights Hasbro had to Coleco titles most likely went to Infogrames with its purchase of Hasbro's Interactive division. Ironically, over a decade later Hasbro purchased the rights to Atari corp (the home console and computer part of Atari), so in the end the former arch rivals endedup under he same corporate umbrella.
One thing that is for certain is that distribution rights to basically all Coleco games (generally all the ones that have the 12-second COLECOVISION intro scren) and leftover hardware and cartridge inventory went to Telegames. A coleco-compatible system and the related games have remained available continuously to this day. It appears that they have finally run out of stock of the console, but they still sell the cartridges and compilation CDs with emulator included for the PC. That is why Atari probably won't be putting out Coleco games--unless they do a 2000's take on them, plus the fact that Coleco didn't release many original titles (they were licencees with Konami, Exidy, Nintendo, Sega, etc).
Telegames was one of the first companies to really take issue with the ROM sites, however I can't really blame people for posing ROMS online--telegames continues to peddle cartriges at inflated prices--only collector enthusiasts would drop $25 (and higher!) for common games like Donkey Kong Jr or Pepper II when you can get 'em for a buck at a flea market or free images online.
At any rate, except for really obscure, oddball stuff almost NO GAMES drop off the face of the earth--if a company that was any significant size dies, its assets are generally scooped up by another venture.
Some people suggest its simply a resurgence in 80s nostalgia that made these products rise from the dead. I think that's partially true, however I think the nostalgia manifested itself in the emulator and ROM scene because the original publishers largely ignored the phenomenon--they only cried foul once they realised they missed an oportunity.
Pervies around the world are jumping for joy--now they can not only take pictures of you changing in the locker room after your workout while they "check their voicemail"--now they can get full motion video with sound too! Oh joy!
Doesn't take too many of them to get cellphone use completely banned--the gym I go to already tells you to not to bother bringing them in--if staff sees someone using it they apparently confiscate it from you until you are ready to leave. I'm sure cinemas and stadiums are equally thrilled about such devices.
Besides hte fact that I've never really seen the appeal in having a phone that has features beyond basic PDA--especially since they do a crappy job at them and seems to compromise the basic functions as well. I'm not gonna waste my money on a new phone that is ALMOST as good as my old one at making phone calls, plus can take fuzzy pictures, jerky video and translate to Korean--just to find out I can't use it in a bunch of places.
* It is overpriced by 100 percent--I'd say it has to be half its current street price to be considered as an "impulse buy"
* You need to hack the hardware or buy a game cube PLUS an adapter to play the games on a TV. That is completely stupid--either having to be a hardware hacker or spend way more. What the hell is wrong with putting a "TV Out" port right on the device, or including in the box an inexpensive docking station/charger that has it?
* The games are still too expensive--most are $20 or more. For games that simple they should sell for less than $10.
* You need classic joysticks, paddles or trackballs to fully recreate the experience of those old games. I'm not aware of any such addons to the GBA, and really--pressing little buttons just doesn't cut it for Centipede or Breakout. Yes, the GBA is about portability but the device I'm picturing would address the requirements of both the road and the living room.
Here's what I think Atari should do: Create a console on par with the SNES. That sort of hardware should be extremely cheap at this point, and could easily be manufactured for retail prices in the $20-$40 range. Sell simple "smart card" games (or something equally as inexpensive to manufacture) for $5-$10 a piece.
I've been thinking about just such an idea for awhile now too, but with some variations/additions related to my open-system sensibilities:
* Use proven (if dated) technology based on off-the-shelf designs like Z80 and 68K processors. System functions (graphics, sound and I/O) would be handles by separate CPU cores working in tandem--a "quad Z80 system" perhaps. Development costs would be low as a result, and with a good design performance would be quite adequate. One FPGA could even hold most of the logic.
* Not only would it be mini, cheap and cool--it would be non-proprietary at the peripheral connectivity level at least. Games and memory cards would be distributed in the compact flash format, or maybe even on USB ROM keys. Users could connect the system to a PC's USB port like a palm pilot to load in games form the 'net. Same with game controllers--they'd use USB--none of this oddball crap like consoles have today (blatanly implemented to screw consumers over).
* The hardware architecture would be simple enough (as would the BIOS/OS/API firmware) that hobbyists could develop their own creations. The manufactured device could even come with software along the lines of LEGO Mindstorms programming software, or STOS BASIC from the old Atari days or some such thing. Kids could make their own games on a PC, save them, share with friends, have contests.
* Once the device was released to production with stable specifications, said specs would be released as a gaming platform that could be implemented by other vendors. Hasn't worked for consoles (yet) but it made the PC industry what it is today.
Don't kow how well it would go over in the industry, given its MPAA/RIAA closed, protectionist culture. It basically takes the floor out from under the games software industry as it is now so I wouldn't expect publishers to clamour to develop for it. However, unless Atari or Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony made it getting developers on board would be a struggle regardless of how open the system was (hence the strategy for making development appealing to the mass public).
I think that even though it might be much harder to make billions with this strategy, I think that we've lost a lot in terms of creativity in computing since the "good old days" just prior to the shakeout in the 80s when computers were not only cheap but simple and oriented towards development (it's been a long time since you could boot into BASIC and create). It'd be great if somehow we could re-ignite that hobbyist culture again. Such a culture is barely a flicker now--and it exists almost solely because of Linux and the Free Software movement. I'd like to think that there are millions of geek-parents with a mindset similar to mine who'd put down $39.95 for a cool little digital camera-sized box that hooks to a television to play and can be loaded with little Johnny's latest creations.
Anyways...just in case someone DOES try to take and pervert this idea and patent the crap out of it, etc, I hereby copyright this idea and grant use under the Creative Commons License on this day, the 7th of September 2004;-)
Thank you for your insightful contribution to the discussion, Ralph Wiggum. You demonstrate the failings of the American education system far more effectively than any book can.
Plus, for some reason I cannot fathom...it's kinda funny...
...your son's school is in--from an IT infrastructure standpoint anyways. The pre-MMX Pentium 133 I had seven years ago had USB ports for cryin' out loud. And even over a DECADE ago when I was in high school we had a LAN and a dial-up connection/BBS. Granted, there were still some 8088s hanging around when I was in tenth grade, but they were gone the next year and even then the technology was there to fire up Telix at home, dial up the school and download your stuff--all during the age of widespread floppy use--at a small rural school no less.
Ironically however those capabilities were rarely used as floppies were so commonplace (and I believe better made than the crap they sell now), and students don't want to do homework so bad that they'd download it from the BBS at a maximum raging speed of 2400 baud.
Anyways, the death of the floppy may be long and slow but it has been dying for a few years now. I'd say it was diagnosed with a terminal illness when Apple started selling floppy-less machines. My employer uses floppies for license keys right now, but by this time next year the requirement for floppy drives will be gone completely and replaced with a network-based system. Other supliers are rapidly replacing LPT dongles and floppies with USB keys or network-based schemes as well. Industrial and commercial users hang onto technology longer than home users, and even they are getting rid of floppies now. Oddly enough, although home consumers were complaining about missing floppy drives, I find that business and industrial customers are screaming for the opposite--they WANT to get rid of floppy drives and floppies in general. Floppies are unreliable, cause disorganisation and can compromise the security of important systems--they were always a pain in the ass that you had to deal with because there was no alternative. There are alternatives now and I'm betting floppies will get harder to find in stock and prices will rise a bit until they are overpriced, special order items like 30- and 72-pin SIMM memory is now. It's already happining--if you go to the local Future Shop or Best Buy they are relegated to a tiny space on the end of the bottom shelf of a big rack packed with flash media cards, DVD+/-Rs and CDRs--most all of which are cheaper per megabyte and more reliable than floppies.
It's probably in a wheat field...
on
Wheat Field Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2, Interesting
...because its big and flat--a great obstruction-free place to put up a big tall transmitter. Wheat fields--those next to railway tracks in particular--tend to be home to grain elevators, or the larger, modern grain terminal equivalents. These structures are very tall and are an ideal mounting point for transmitters.
Community Networks is a company in Alberta, Canada that runs a broadband ISP for rural residents near the city of Calgary called EFirehose (I do not work for them but my parents still reside on the farm and are happy customers that switched from Telus due to foot-dragging in providing more than marginally acceptable telephone service, much less the DSL service they promised would come some day--but that's another story).
I am not sure about the exact area of coverage, but based upon the list of rural communities they serve I KNOW it is also significantly bigger in area than the Philadelphia proposal. Community Networks also provides wireless broadband to some rural schools using highly directional antennae. For example, I believe the school in Bassano is served by a signal beamed from 100s of kms away in Calgary.
I'm not sure exactly where the claim of worlds largest hotspot came from in regards to Philly, but perhaps it has to do with population since the larger areas covered by wireless in Washingston State and Alberta serve rural areas. Also, the Alberta service is a private venture and is not wide-open to public use. However it is fairly cheap--about CA$40 or US$30 per month for 1 to 2.5 megabit connectivity, and for more money you can get business service, including 5 megabit connectivity and static, public IP addresses--great for rural facilities that wish to maintain their own setup for email servers, VPN gateways to main offices in the city, etc.
The letter linked in the article asserts that the file in question is all or part of the "X Files" television show belonging to an organisation represented by the MPAA. Their assertion is NOT TRUE. The file in question is the source to a X Windows file manager that belongs to Mikko Kiviniemi.
The MPAA also states in their letter (in the excerpt shown in the grandparent to this post) that they are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights to the material in question. The material in question really belongs to Mr. Kiviniemi, and I really doubt he authorised the MPAA on his behalf, so that assertion is also false.
I think that if they can't be charged with purjury then at the very least some or all of the recipients of these letters should pursue a court order to forbid the MPAA from sending legally threatening letters with blatantly flase information to innocent people. In any case, the MPAA should be banned from using a computerised system to scan file repositories and automatically issue such threats. The MPAA should be required to MANUALLY EXAMINE EVERY FILE they discover by automated means before making such bold assertions to minimise false accusations.
...at least with most general purpose, commercial software. It's not quite the same as with more specific projects--even custom programming projects.
With a traditional "normal" project, in order to be successful you MUST spend time nailing down requirements, strictly defining the scope and budget, assigning the team, etc. In a custom software project for example, you can text on the exact hardware they will be using on site, and the exact user audience and have a good idea of the requirements--and STILL a great many of these projects do not live up to expectations. When the requirements are met, the project is done--end of story.
Nothing Microsoft puts out works like a normal project. Microsoft relies on a constantly shifting, growing scope for Office and Windows in order release new versions to maintain its revenue stream. Furthermore, the requirements are so complex as to be nearly impossible to define--there are thousands of variations in the target hardware (and in the case of Office, two very different architectures--Wintel and Mac). With Office the development team is very large and is actually two teams. As pointed out in the article, the left and right hands often don't know what the other is doing, and team members come and go and change roles. Also, unlike a "real" project, there is no end to development--it's an endless cycle of develop-release-patch.
Don't blame Microsoft either--it is just using the same "release early and often" strategy as Open Source--the difference is that MS is a marketing company more than anything else and marketing people can't sell something with "alpha" or "beta" or "version 0.x" in the title, so if it is even "kinda" working--well enough to get it out the door and get people's money, the marketers will put it out as 1.0 or a "model year" or whatever.
That works OK with open source because there isn't the same profit motive--people aren't paying cold hard cash and so don't expect perfection, and developers just want to make good, useful software so if they don't feel it is finished they'll release it as 0.1 to suggest a work in progress--never mind the fact that nearly every open source product is already better than a 1.0 MS product far before it reaches 1.0 itself.
However, since MS develops commercial products, markets them as prefection and people spend a lot of money to buy them, this model frustrates users, so now MS is pressured to change their model, and they have basically poured vast amounts of resources into fixing their pathetically broken current flagship product to pacify angry customers. If you look at the release cycle of Windows in the past there has been a 2 to 3 year cycle (Win 3.0 in 1990, 3.1 in 1992(?), 95, 98 in late 1997, Me/2000 in late 1999/early 2000, XP in late 2001). By the time Longhorn comes out it'll be DOUBLE the normal cycle period--they essentially skipped a release (or one could say decided to give the release away to users in the form of XP SP2). Longhorn BETTER be a good buy or MS could acually be in for a world of hurt for the first time in its history.
So how long SHOULD MS spend fixing instead of releasing? One could argue that Windows has NEVER been good enough to be called a "production release" by some standards, while others might say that MS has lost their way be delaying Longhorn for so long and dwelling on fixing an already long-in-the-tooth OS. With Open/Free software the answer is easier: if it compiles and the major stuff works put it out there--even as Ver 0.1. Nerds everywhere will download, compile and tinker, and some will even help debug, sending logs and patches and so on. Release cycles are commonly every six months (or faster!). That's OK if you can get the software for free and see the source, but it's intolerable if the source is inaccessible and you pay dearly for licensing costs.
...is a pretty good analogy when you thnk about it:
* MS Word/Office is built around a big, powerful and complex engine, just like a Ferrari. Both are high-performance but tempermental and quirky.
* OpenOffice is derived from another project (StarOffice) which Sun bought (through purchase of StarDivision) rather than invented itself. The Yugo is derived from the Zastava GTL from Eastern Europe, the design of which Zastava bought (from Fiat for the Fiat 128) rather than invented itself.
* The casual MS Word user is completely mystified by its exotic internal workings. When things go wrong they must contend with clueless and/or irritated tech support people who offer incomprehensible advice. Proper support is expensive. The Ferrari driver is also mystified by the internal workings of his car, and when things go wrong must contend with a clueless and/or irritated Italian mechanic who offers incomprehensible advice. Parts and labour are expensive.
* The dealer network was always sparse and is now non-existant, so Yugo drivers must fend for themselves by searching the wrecking yards for parts. The internal workings are primitive but well known to owners--there is no fancy, proprietary technology. Tech support for OpenOffice is sparse to non-existant, so OO.o users must fend for themselves by Googling for patches on the 'net. The source is less complex than that of MS Office and is open, so it is known to many of its users.
* A lot of people know and use MS office because it is more powerful and popular than the rest, so they put up with all the annoyances and pay a lot of money for it, even though they don't use it to its full potential. Most Ferrari drivers buy a Ferrari because it is powerful and a popular status symbol, so they put up with all the annoyances and pay a fortune for it, even if they can't legally drive it anywhere NEAR it's full potential--and seldom do.
* Properly cared for, a Yugo can serve you well as basic transportation--even though it has less features than a lot of other cars and is slow to start. OpenOffice, properly used, can serve you well as a productivity suite--even though it has less features than some other office suites and is a bit slow to start.
* Both the Yugo and OpenOffice can be obtained and used for basically no money and some amount of tinkering.
I think maybe they did at the time they spearheaded the CSS standard, but I think they have decided it is no longer useful to them. How else can you explain the fact that Internet Explorer, the browser offered by the company that INVENTED CSS, has pretty much the most broken implementation of the current CSS standard--and they are making literally ZERO effort into making the rendering engine of IE compliant?
I think that despite patenting CSS, Microsoft no longer sees it fitting in with their "vision" as they wish to relaise it in Longhorn. CSS isn't an XML application, it is already "embraced" by everyone and MS cannot easily "extend", is too closely tied with HTML/web page model and so on. Microsoft wants the future of personal computing to be Longhorn: A seamless desktop, all.NET-ified, with all sorts of XML-based protocols like XAML (wrapped up in patents and licenses to "protect" them from the GPL and let MS control them). XHTML will be a piece in that puzzle, but MS wants the WWW to gradually and quietly go away and for HTTP servers to suck in and puke out web services using its new XML-based languages instead (the same ones to be used by its locally running applications).
The end result on the users desktop will look very slick and will be very elegant, seamless and smooth, such that you'd barely know or care about the difference between the local desktop and the 'net (so long as you are running the newest P-IV class PC with a gig of RAM and more than 3 GHz processor--and conected to fast broadband of course). That makes MS look revolutionalry and forward thinking, but that's not the most important motivation for such a grand vision.
What MS REALLY gets from this is a chance to perpetuate its lock-in and sustain its monopoly. It is hoping to establish a foundation that is visible and easy enough to implement by anyone, but is encumbered by patents and licensing. Money isn't the issue--in fact MS will probably encourage royalty-free implementations. However, they will use patent and copyright law to its full extent to limit that software's "freedom". They don't want your money, but they REALLY don't want you to make GPL software using the tools they offer you--they want you to close the source and make a profit and buy more MS products, or release it as public domain or BSD so they can steal it for themselves.
That's why I really hope GNOME, KDE, freedesktop.org, etc can push some of their currently bleeding-edge stuff out there before Longhorn can gain traction to take the steam out of MS big new thing. That, and I hope there is reluctance on the public's part to throw away their already-working hardware and software just to have the newest thing from MS.
Not to be a pessimist, but just imagine what some terrorists with flying cars could do?
Probably something similar to what a terrorist could do behind the wheel of a stolen tanker truck full of explosive fuel. It's pointless to worry excessively about such things when you can't control them. As for how they are controlled, I'd think it would be an extension of current drivers licenses, registration and traffic law--there would certainly be flying corridors and "lanes" and the extra capacity opened up by adding a third dimension could reduce congestion considerably.
Seriously though, I know the world has to be viligant in the face of terrorism and all, but where does it end? Will it get as bad as (or worse than) at the height of the cold war where people were buying personal bomb shelters and running into them to duck and cover when some kook rattles his sabre? If living safe requires me to lock myself up in my house and huddle in a corner, or else subject myself to background checks and cavity searches to do anything meaningful outside then screw it--I'd rather live dangerously free.
If the first thought on everyone's mind when hearing about some new technological advance is wondering how terrorists could abuse it then it means the terrorists are winning--eventually they will have gained control of us through intimidation.
Do you assert that "Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top" simply because of stories you read on the 'net, or do you have substantial evidence of this? Perhaps you are old enough to remember the tragedy at Chernobyl but have you ever even BEEN to Russia or any other former Soviet republics, or know people who have? Or perhaps do you live there now and your own personal circumstances have not been good since the fall of the USSR and you remember the good times?
From my perspective it looks like the Soviets were quite the opposite--they neither cared for citizens at large nor did they have an adequate public healthcare system. This fellow was highly educated and had skills and background considered important to the state. Furthermore, the more plant operators, technicians and engineers that survived, the more witnesses the state had to obtain information from in analysing the explosion. At least in the US there is SOME degree of protection and money can buy you good care--in the USSR you had to hope the Soviet government thought you were worth saving.
This isn't a case of a good system turning bad through stagnation and corruption either--the Soviet Union was rotten to the core right from the beginning in 1917. My grandmother's family was not really wealthy but did live alright on their own farm in Ukraine--until the revolution when their farm was seized and they were expelled from their property. My grandmother was a small child and the family faced great enough hardship that they fled to Canada to make a new life. A lot of attention is paid to the fact millions were killed in concentration camps during Hitler's reign of Germany, and rightly so. Unfortunately not so much attention is paid to the criminal acts of Stalin, who committed genocidal atrocities that probably even surpassed those of the monster Hitler.
Until communism fell we only had information that was either filtered by the Soviet state or came from informants or defectors, but our eyes were really opened with the breakup of the USSR. Although great effort was placed on central planning as a means to enforce equality, the reality was that there was no equality--central planners decided who was "more equal" than others. As a result, if you had connections in the politburo or were blessed with certain skills, intelligence or family ties you were taken care of.
If you were a farm worker, or coal miner or factory worker you were worthy of little more than enough sustinance to perform your duties--the system established just the kind of classes that the revolution was supposed to eliminate. So as engineers, doctors, politicians and such got top notch hospital treatment, schoolchildren in Kiev got untreated tumours and lesions, coal miners got emphesyma and citizens in general got to live in riteky state housing built with concrete largely reinforced with straw and refuse.
I suspect that you grew up believing in the communist ideal and never had to live in the reality of it, or you actually DID live in it and were fortunate enough to be part of the "more equal" strata of Soviet society--that is, you or your family were "white collar" partipants in the state machine. Admittedly, post-Soviet Russia hasn't been all that kind to that segment of society.
I dunno about that...Paris Hilton already comes across as a space cadet to me--I don't recall a single time I've seen her with her feet firmly planted on Earth.
On a more general note, I've heard a lot of people say the near future will be the same as they are now only more of it (you paint a slightly pessimistic picture, but whatever). It makes me wonder how far out you have to go before it changes from "more of the same" to "new and different". I can only imagine if this was the 1970s and you were predicting the 2000s using the same logic for example:
"Computers will be better but Moores new-fangled law won't last--it'll be too expensive to keep up. We'll have 16-bit computers with maybe a whole megabyte of RAM if we're lucky, but they'll only cost like $50 and even the starving children in Africa will have them. They will be powerful enough that they can be much more useful stand-alone and time-sharing, multi-user and networking stuff will be mostly obsolete"
"Ditch the 8-track, these new cassettes will be all the rage--by then they might hold 8 hours of music. Might be tough to afford a new deck to play them though with all these layoffs"
"Computer lab geeks will be playing with cool new toys--probably UNIX on million-dollar hardware, but CP/M and the Digital Research company will still dominate on small systems..by then they'll be up to version 10 or more I'm sure. A lot of companies like MITS, ProcTech, IMSAI and Cromemco are designing around the S100 bus and can use each others cards--I bet a standard around S100 will evolve and these new upstarts like Apple will die quick deaths"
"World unrest will increase, not decrease. The Soviets will prove to be an everlasting red menace--they along with China will catch up and maybe surpass us technologically. We'll get used to ducking and covering and keeping our bomb shelters stocked."
"We'll keep going to the moon and build a base there, but we'll lose interest. Too expensive to reach mars at all. We won't manage to develop a reusable spacecraft by then but we'll send up quite a few Apollo missions."
"Gas prices will be $5.00 per gallon, electric cars are still a novelty but bull size cars and vans will be non-existant. By far the most popular cars will be smaller ones with small 6 or 4 cylinder engines like the Ford Pinto, AMC Pacer and Plymouth Volare. The imports like the VW Rabbit and the Honda Civic will be popular but their tendancy to rust prematurely in our climate might limit their success a bit"
"Textile technology will improve, giving us lighter, breathable, more exiting nylon, rayon and polyesters. Day-glo colours, sparkles and new textures will be all the rage. Cosmetics allows for wild makeup jobs and attention-getting afro sculptures"
"Things will be calm in Vietnam for awhile then slowly revert back to instability--the emboldened Commies will take over all of south Asia and Carter and the USA public will still be politically hurting too much from the last "conflict" to do anything to stop it"
Hmmm...sounds bizarre. I guess either the asumption of "more of the same" is flawed or a 25-30 year timeframe breaks down that approach, or some combination of both.
Well, like I said at the end of my post, the timing or details might be off but my point was it was much less "bunk" than you think.
a) You made my point exactly: sci-fi not only attempts to predict the future, it also influences future invention and design. I never argued around a ten-year timeframe, but if you insist: in 1994 cellphones were more than twice the size and weight, were analogue and had a fraction of the battery life. Their displays were typically monochrome seven-segment, numeric-only vacuum-flourescent or LCD. Now we have very small, digital, high-resolution phones that play music, video games, store our contact and schedules, get our email, surf the 'net, play music and take pictures. (oh and BTW, the origianl star trek never had badge communicators--they were belt-mounted flip-open just like a cellphone)
b) You're right--a wristwatch is not practical for any device requiring a user interface. We do, however, have watches that wirelessly transmit and store data, monitor heart rate etc. IBM even demonstrated a Linux-powered computer/PDA watch They are not wild commercial successes but they DID come into being as predicted.
c) Don't be foolish--reading news online or downloding it from the 'net into the "paper device" waiting in the kitchen was the POINT of the "electronic paper" in Sawyer's article! What did you think--a paperboy dropped a new one on the doorstep every morning like the dead tree version? The reason for "electronic paper" is that is is non-disposable, portable, light-weight and durable--perfect for reading at the table with your toast and tea.
d) If you are aware of Moore's law then why scoff at predictions based on it? In 1994 a 486/66 with 8 MB RAM and 240MB HD would've been a higher-end machine--now multiply all those performance numbers by FIFTY and you have something that is mostly a BUDGET machine today. I certainly couldn't fathom EVERYTHING that might have been done with that technology, although we can make a lot of guesses.
e) Hey, don't rag on the sci-fi toilets, ok? The first versions have been commercially available for more than two years. Who's to say the price won't come down to afforable levels and features improve in 10 years. Look at what happened with the price and quality of colour laser printers and big-screen TVs in that time
f) I did a job search last a little more than a year ago. There weren't a LOT of telecommuting jobs but there were a few. Quite a number of companies allow flex hours and partial telecommuting (including my own employer). About 5-10% of our sales and support people already telecommute. Sawyer predicted 50% in ten years...who knows? Doesn't sound that far out. I tend to think it won't be that big, but I do see a trend towards it. If location really mattered than we wouldn't have call centres in India serving customers in the USA would we?
g) I didn't say rote memorisation was completely gone nor that it was a good idea all the time. That said, if your poly-sci course (or language or chem for that matter) relied very heavily on rote memorisation rather than learning concepts and critical thinking than it is a pretty crappy course. Since you finished college in 2001 it might be safe to assume you have been out of grade school for five or more years. I'm a few years older still (but not by much), but I've had the chance to see what kids experience in grade school now. My kids will certainly be using calulators by grade six (some grade FOUR teachers introduce them, to my chagrin). Children use PCs right from grade one and may use them for "real" school work by third grade. By grade seven they may be researching for reports on the 'net regularly. Graphing scientific calculators are a REQUIREMENT by high school, and many, if not most seniors in the academic stream bring notebook PCs to school. I went to a rural school, and was one of the first to take a distance education course in high school 11 years ago
There's just too many parts, and too much effort, required to produce just *one* of the "miraculous future inventions* that people have been promoting since the birth of sci-fi.
Really...is that a fact? I'm glad not everyone is like you and discounts everything in sci-fi because they didn't get their personal robot or flying car as predicted. Remember the "fi" in si-fi is FICTION--it is MADE UP in the minds of those imagining what the future will bring, and in the case of sci-fi dramaticised to fit with the story.
As for "miraculous future inventions" being economically infeasable, I'd say your blanket statment is quite inaccurate:
You don't pay much attention to the old Star Trek episodes do ya? Don't know bout you, but the flip-open communicators sure look like the cellphone I carry with me today. Today's flat-panel monitors also look a lot like the screens sitting on the conference tables in many of those episodes too. Even though we don't all strap our gagets to our wrist like Dick Tracey did our radios, music players, pagers, phones and so on could certainly be made small enough to wear on our wrists if we wanted to. Electronic newspapers bed by radio waves--well I already read the news online, and we have tablet PCs with 802.11x *radio* communication, and there has been a lot of advancement in display technology that allows for flexible, reflective electronic display AND flexible ICs.
Even as recently as ten years ago someone like you probably would've said "a drive smaller than a pen that holds hundreds of megabytes? That would cost a fortune and would be too easy to lose! Nobody needs to carry that much data anyways!" Well, today I carry a keychain around that holds 256 MB and I can tell you it comes in very handy when you have to (re-)install WinXP or 2k on-site and need the security updates/firewall/etc to keep it from puking 30 seconds after getting on a network. If you aren't a techie its great for carrying photos and movie clips around so you can just plug in at a friends and show off your kids, garden, pets, etc. Step back and think about that...sounds a bit "sci-fi" if you remember life in the 80s eh?
Smallpox used to mean certain death...now a "trivially easy" vaccination prevents infection and the disease is basically extinct. That's one pathogen that rolled over and died in the face of a "miracle cure" scenario. Diabetes also meant certain premature death, and is now "trivially" treatable and in some cases curable. Cancer survival rates have also dramatically risen even within my own lifetime (and I'm not that old). Cyctic Fibrosis used to kill all its sufferers before they reached adulthood, and now they can expect to live far longer.
I'd argue with you about telecommuting--it's true that far less than half of people telecommute exclusively, but I'd say there are a LOT of people who do so part-time at least--and I did full-time for awhile. Even so, technology has completely changed business culture. How often does the secretary do dictation in short-hand anymore? How many typewriters are in your office? How often do you get an inter-office memo on PAPER anymore?
When did you last set foot in a school? "Rote memorisation" is already all but gone. Kids barely learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and then they are given calculators--I didn't get to use one until ninth grade, now elementary kids have them! High school kids all get graphic scientific calculators--it's pretty close to mandatory now. In high school we only used computers in business-ed courses and after class to do homework, now they're all over the place.
Electric cars in all the streets--HELLO, we are already heading there, I'm starting to see more and more Toyota Prius and Honda Insight cars out there, and more hybrid models are cropping up (even SUVs), and with oil heading to $50/barrel I don't think the trend towards electric power will slow--the economics are shifting.
You might want to re-think your opinion about "just plain dumb" and 2-5% accuracy. The details and timing might be off in sci-fi but an amazing amount af this stuff does indeed show up in the future.
Do sympatico and other bb providers in Canada get rid of the ridiculous download caps?
Enforced quotas seem to be disappearing, although it seems to have played some small part in keeping costs down and service more consistent during the growing pains for or five years ago. Today I know of no major broadband provider where I live (Alberta) that will cut you off for downloading more than a specific amount of data. However, it is common to have usage monitored (for capacity, not content) and to be extra-billed for very high usage. I've found, however, that to exceed the cost of what most US residents pay for comparable service I'd have to fill my hard drive every month.
I would also guess that even within Canada the area I live in is somewhat exceptional in regards to communication technology. Alberta was the first place in the entire world to have commercial use of fibre optic communications between two sites. It was also the first place in the world (or at least North America--can't remember which) to roll out high-speed internet over cable (in 1996 to 1997), and the first in Canada (and one of the first in the world) to have DSL. Alberta is the home to the first digitally switched public phone network on the continent as well.
A lot of harping has been going on about how the US is a big country and that is why it is taking longer to adopt broadband. When it is brought up that Canada is even bigger and is quite a bit ahead of the US in that area they counter that most of the population is squished up within 100km of the US border. I really don't get this argument at all. The city of Edmonton, Alberta is somtheing like 500 km away from the border and it got cable broadband internet before ANYONE in the US did (I know, I lived there at the time). Also, if you calculate the area of land within 100km of the US border and figure out the population DENSITY in this region it is STILL less than half of the average density for the US.
Canada didn't excel in communications IN SPITE of being big and sparsely populated, it was BECAUSE of it. The distance between people made the need and demand that much greater, and as a result Candians either invent the technology or are among the first to make use of it. Too bad Canadians have such a hard time making money off it though--it all ends up getting built somewhere else.
But I thought that it was only MS Access DBs running on Windows 2000 that crashed
Ummm...I saw reference to ADODB in your parent post--is that not Active Data Objects (A Microsoft-only technology)? Also, there is nothing in the reported error suggesting MySQL was the database either. Remember, PHP is available on Windows and supports connectivity to many different database backends, so as far as we know the site is running PHP on Win2K with an MS Access database connecting via ADO/ODBC (yes it is a possible combination).
Seems to me, however, that the above configuration would be like building a sturdy brick house on a pile of wet sand--it's bound to sink when loaded to any degree...
Those with critical VMS-based systems are breathing a sigh of relief that there will be support and replacement hardware for their old-but-reliable servers that have been running VMS non-stop, 24/7/365 for the past DECADE. If you are used to that kind of reliability you are obviously the type that would be advers to changing the entire hardware architecture until the last possible moment. Many of them are the type of folks who wailed and gnashed teeth when they had to migrate from the old VAX hardware to theie "new fangled" 200 MHz Alpha-based hardware--and it still ran the same OS!
Anyways, I haven't seen a lot of discussion on what happens to the IP (Intellectual Property) once HP puts the Alpha out to pasture for good. I'd like to see it released to the public domain or made "open source" so royalty-free implementations can continue to be made by a large number of third parties. It would be very cool if any Joe Blow could download the VHDL or Verilog files to synthisize their very own Alpha-core-based FPGAs!
It is difficult to get a Windows user to feign even a polite interest in the internals of an operating system.
I think a good deal (maybe not all) windows users might find your assumtion a bit insulting as well--even some non-technical ones. although many probably aren't interested in knowing the internals, I think your argument that they would prefer all updates to be automatic and invisible is wrong. Windows XP and 2000 can already be set up to check for, download and intall all critical updates automatically, and the only indication it is happening is the little globe in the taskbar.
EVERY beginner user (not some, not most...every single one) where I had set up automatic updates this way compalined. some examples:
* I inadvertantly set this up on my father's PC when he still used dial-up (that due to noisy phone lines could never manage more than 22 kbps). It was continually downloading updates (resuming where it left off if he hung up in the middle of one). It was barely usable to start with--if he tried to open his email it was coming in at about 1200 baud!
* I set this up for a guy running a small delivery business and he complained loudly about things changing by themselves and the annoying balloon messages emanating from the systray icon implying it was installing an update whether he liked it or not.
* A retired lady (grandmother of a friend of mine) noticed the automatic updates for the first time and called me up because she thought it might be a virus--she got bit by a system compromise that popped up alert boxes,etc all by itself, and she noticed the update icon appear and increased light-blinking on her cable modem and it reminded her of what happened when she got the virus.
Unless it could be COMPLETELY invisible and you can GUARANTEE a patch won't break something (a recent update broke some of my employers software for example), NO user wants stuff to happen without them knowing about it--not even beginning Windows users. I find they don't mind if CHECKS are done, but they want to control the download and install to be done on teir own time.
Does this leave the chance of unpatched systems? sure...but there is ALWAYS going to be the case where a patch shouldn't be put in the moment it is available and detected by update.
The average PC user (in fact one that is sharper than average) might think "Okay, I'm finished installing Windows. I'd better hood up to the 'net and run Windows Update to get all my patches". It doesn't dawn on them unless a helpful salesperson (a rare commodity) or a tech-savvy friend reminds them to put some sort of firewall mechansim in place before even toucfhing the CAT5 cable on an Windows box.
Try installing any Linux lackage that is 2 years old and see how long it takes for it to get rooted before you bother to enable a firewall!
Actually, I did that with an older Mandrake distro--probably almost 3 years old now. During install it had the option to set the security level and I picked "paranoid" setting. I even selected encryption packages that had to be installed over the 'net because of US legal crap, so it was on the net (directly connected to my DSL, with no firewall at all). It was only in that state for a week or so, but it was NEVER rooted or compromised in any way between that time and when I bothered to set it up with packet filtering, NAT, etc etc (to serve as the router for my home LAN).
Mandrake (although far form perfect) has demonstrated in the past few years that a good degree of security can be applied right out of the box without requiring a CS degree to figure out. Even on that old distro everything was locked down, the network-oriented services were off by default and TCP wrappers were in place with all hosts except localhost denied. Later they put in Shorewall and included Bastille hardening package in the distro.
What has happened since the 2-year-old release of XP? It was released with serious security flaws that once discovered rendered an unpatched system completely useless in literally less than a minute (I don't care what the article says, Ive NEVER seen an unpatched XP system last nearly 20 minutes--perhaps that includes dialup machines). Furthermore, the default installation runs all kinds of services (why the hell would Windows Messenger be turned on by default, or even be available at all on the Home edition?) and what security tools they eventually provided were OFF by default. It took until THIS YEAR for MS to fix this back-asswards situation, and Mandrake (among other distros) were taking action THREE YEARS AGO when it was jsut starting to become a serious problem with Red Hat default installs getting compromised.
To this day my Windows box still runs 2000--it's as messed up security-wise as XP, but it's still stable and fixable and less resource-hungry than XP. I'm never upgrading Windows on my machines ever again because I won't waste my money on an OS that does nothing but add flashy cartoony crap to my screen and is no more secure than 2k. By the time 2000 is unsupported I'm hoping to have migrated to Linux completely anyways.
It'll take a lot of convincing for MS to change my mind with Longhorn. I suspect it'll be fine on its own but will have no end of compatibility-related issues with present Win32 apps--and it wouldn't surprise me if some of them will be security issues either.
I agree that it is hard to explain a buffer overflow to non-technical people, but I've done it before to their satisfaction. A lot of people want to know more about how their computers (and other appliances) work. Furthermore, lack of detail can translate to lack of trust. There has to be a balance between technobabble and plain, simple english.
If all a user wants to know about a bug is something general like you suggest then the list of critical updates in Windows Update or on the SP2 page would look like this:
123456 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer 123457 - A flaw in Outlook Express may allow an attacker to control your computer 123458 - A flaw in Windows XP may allow an attacker to control your computer 123459 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer 123460 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer 123461 - A flaw in Windows XP may allow an attacker to control your computer 123462 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
Honestly, how would this be ANY more useful to a user than something line "A buffer overflow in IE's URI parsing routines could allow an attacker to perform a cross-site scripting attack"? Sure, most users would not know what that means without reading the details, however, I think a lot of users would not be comforted by the above list. Is it the same flaw? How does the flaw manifest itself? Does it apply to my setup?
In fact I think most users would feel a bit insulted by overly vague information on updates--as if MS feels they are not smart enough to handle any sort of detail. "Okay boys and girls, Windows has a booboo. Run this program and it'll but a bandaid on the booboo and everything will be alright again".
I think I'd personally prefer technobabble, at least it sounds more credible (like someone knows something about software).
...you are only partly right. In 1998 it could be pretty easy to install Red Hat (for example) with total lack of security as well--and I saw the results when friends with no Linux or UNIX experience at all would throw Red Hat on a leftover box, connect it to their cable internet and have it comporimised before the day was out. The total newbie audience was limited, however, and even newbies with an interest in Linux learned quickly how to secure their machines.
That is where the difference lies. The Linux community (from end user right up to the distribution companies) learn much more quickly. Fast forward to 2002 when WinXP was shiny and new and Red Hat and other distros really grew up. By then, you could get SELinux. A newbie could install Mandrake with everything locked down in a very secure configuration simply by clicking "high" or "paranoid" during installation. The kernel and applications were patched and maintained, and features such as packet filtering were included in the OS and continually improved. As a result, you are SAFER with Linux on the net now than you were with Linux on the internet of 1998.
Microsoft learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during that time. Windows XP was released with NO improvements to security--either in the OS itself or with its default configuration over WinNT or 2k. Everything was wide open. In fact, XP Home--despite being based on the same WinNT core as the other editions, had WORSE security. Microsoft figured the concept of protected access to system functions was too complicated for the home user (an admin password would just confuse people). As a result, things such as raw sockets were left wide open to anyone who gained access to the system--which was relatively easy to do with XP home. These huge blunders are only being corrected now with SP2.
Saying that this Win98 demo demonstrates how "users should keep up or upgrade to XP" is misleading. If the same blissfully ignorant user were to put an unpatched, unprotected XP box on a cable internet connection I GUARANTEE you it would be compromised MUCH QUICKER than a Win98 box. I've seen it before myself--witness some poor schmuck upgrade his Win98 box to XP, and in the time it took me to go and grab a bite to eat he had it on the net and connecting to Windows Update. Before the updates were finished downloading it was infected with THREE blaster and sasser variants and started rebooting spontaneously. Users should do more than just keep up to date or chane OSes. Users have to adopt good security practises--don't hook to the 'net without making sure there are not weak passwords, stupid open ports/services present etc. and probably a firewall in place. Keep virus software up to date at least daily and so on. Furthermore, Microsoft and other providers must make it easier for users to adopt these measures (and they are--slowly but surely. Still not up to snuff yet though).
A good Linux distro is a good basis for a secure system (better than any Windows OS I'd say). Sure it's not perfect (nothing is) but even though Linux might not be at the head of the security class, it isn' the retarded, paste-eating child in the corner that Microsoft has demonstrated itself to be.
...because they made the computer reboot before it could show up. And if you're clever or lucky enough to avoid that, you'll see that they changed the colour to black! (at least that is what I observed)
Shoulda changed it to another colour though because the BSOD acronym still fits...oh well.
The new and improved B(lack)SOD includes brand new, even more vague and useless error messages too! Yay! At least they are MUCH less common than in Win9x/Me or NT.
Anyways, I saw the sample animation...looks way cool but it looks like it is far from automatic. It does really make the rotoscoping process much faster and doesn't seem to impede too much on the "creativity" aspect--looks like it allows a lot of latitude to apply your own artistic style.
Don't think it'll ever replace "pure" animation (manually done frame by frame). It just has this "stiff" characteristic. It's hard to explain, but it is kinda like how you can almost always tell when a drawing is traced from a photograph. "Real" animation seems to add warmth and character--for all the computer rendering in Shrek for example, the actual character animation was manually done by artists with mice and digitiser pads at workstations (ie the position of the characters were manually set every few frames--computers did the rendering, camera movements, lighting, in-betweens etc).
The guy who owned the fallwell.com site did so with the intent to:
a) deceive those who intended to visit the evangelist's site using a similar address
b) profit from the deception by selling literature critical of Mr. Falwell
I think that B alone should be legal. However, A is questionable--unless there is a valid defence for using the domain name or trademark.
That said, since the intent was both A and B the ruling was absolutely correct. It doesn't impede on free speech--the same exact content could be put online at falwellsucks.com.
I figure the case should've been ruled the other way if:
* The site clearly stated it was AGAINST Jerry Falwel, or was an obvious parody (and perhaps a link to the site most visitors probably intended to visit)
* If the owner of the site actually WAS Fallwell (regardless of the content), or was a business with that name but in an unrelated industry (first come first serve in cases of conflict I'd say)
There are some cases that went the WRONG way. MikeRoweSoft.com was one of them. The owner was named Mike Rowe and the name was clearly a parody of the Microsoft name. Although software was the subject of both, they were clearly different entities and could not be confused (it isn't easy to mistakenly type or be confused by MikeRoweSoft as is the case with Fallwell vs Falwell).
There was also the case of PETA.org vs PETA.com -- the legitimate site for some reason was the latter, and when they decided.org would be more suitible they discovered to their dismay that PETA.org was already occupied by a parody site called People Eating Tasty Animals. The site clearly stated it was a parody and had a link to peta.com (the "real" PeTA). At that point I don't think it was selling merchandise, but it was clearly anti-PeTA. Even if it was a for-profit site (doing both A and B above) it should've been allowed because:
* It was clearly a parody site and directed those deceived to the "real" site.
* There was a real reason to have the domain--PETA matches for both organisations.
* First come first served--The "real" PeTA drgeed its feet on.org because it had already secured.com
So yes...first come first served--IF you have a convincing argument to retain the name and it wasn't a blatant, greedy example of sqatting.
Slashdot Mirror
Coleco went bankrupt and the receivers sold the assets in around 1987 or so. I cannot remember if it was Parker Brothers which in turn was absorbed by Hasbro or if it went to Hasbro directly. It isn't entirely clear, but whatever rights Hasbro had to Coleco titles most likely went to Infogrames with its purchase of Hasbro's Interactive division. Ironically, over a decade later Hasbro purchased the rights to Atari corp (the home console and computer part of Atari), so in the end the former arch rivals endedup under he same corporate umbrella.
One thing that is for certain is that distribution rights to basically all Coleco games (generally all the ones that have the 12-second COLECOVISION intro scren) and leftover hardware and cartridge inventory went to Telegames. A coleco-compatible system and the related games have remained available continuously to this day. It appears that they have finally run out of stock of the console, but they still sell the cartridges and compilation CDs with emulator included for the PC. That is why Atari probably won't be putting out Coleco games--unless they do a 2000's take on them, plus the fact that Coleco didn't release many original titles (they were licencees with Konami, Exidy, Nintendo, Sega, etc).
Telegames was one of the first companies to really take issue with the ROM sites, however I can't really blame people for posing ROMS online--telegames continues to peddle cartriges at inflated prices--only collector enthusiasts would drop $25 (and higher!) for common games like Donkey Kong Jr or Pepper II when you can get 'em for a buck at a flea market or free images online.
At any rate, except for really obscure, oddball stuff almost NO GAMES drop off the face of the earth--if a company that was any significant size dies, its assets are generally scooped up by another venture.
Some people suggest its simply a resurgence in 80s nostalgia that made these products rise from the dead. I think that's partially true, however I think the nostalgia manifested itself in the emulator and ROM scene because the original publishers largely ignored the phenomenon--they only cried foul once they realised they missed an oportunity.
Yup--just great...
Pervies around the world are jumping for joy--now they can not only take pictures of you changing in the locker room after your workout while they "check their voicemail"--now they can get full motion video with sound too! Oh joy!
Doesn't take too many of them to get cellphone use completely banned--the gym I go to already tells you to not to bother bringing them in--if staff sees someone using it they apparently confiscate it from you until you are ready to leave. I'm sure cinemas and stadiums are equally thrilled about such devices.
Besides hte fact that I've never really seen the appeal in having a phone that has features beyond basic PDA--especially since they do a crappy job at them and seems to compromise the basic functions as well. I'm not gonna waste my money on a new phone that is ALMOST as good as my old one at making phone calls, plus can take fuzzy pictures, jerky video and translate to Korean--just to find out I can't use it in a bunch of places.
...for several reasons.
* It is overpriced by 100 percent--I'd say it has to be half its current street price to be considered as an "impulse buy"
* You need to hack the hardware or buy a game cube PLUS an adapter to play the games on a TV. That is completely stupid--either having to be a hardware hacker or spend way more. What the hell is wrong with putting a "TV Out" port right on the device, or including in the box an inexpensive docking station/charger that has it?
* The games are still too expensive--most are $20 or more. For games that simple they should sell for less than $10.
* You need classic joysticks, paddles or trackballs to fully recreate the experience of those old games. I'm not aware of any such addons to the GBA, and really--pressing little buttons just doesn't cut it for Centipede or Breakout. Yes, the GBA is about portability but the device I'm picturing would address the requirements of both the road and the living room.
Here's what I think Atari should do: Create a console on par with the SNES. That sort of hardware should be extremely cheap at this point, and could easily be manufactured for retail prices in the $20-$40 range. Sell simple "smart card" games (or something equally as inexpensive to manufacture) for $5-$10 a piece.
;-)
I've been thinking about just such an idea for awhile now too, but with some variations/additions related to my open-system sensibilities:
* Use proven (if dated) technology based on off-the-shelf designs like Z80 and 68K processors. System functions (graphics, sound and I/O) would be handles by separate CPU cores working in tandem--a "quad Z80 system" perhaps. Development costs would be low as a result, and with a good design performance would be quite adequate. One FPGA could even hold most of the logic.
* Not only would it be mini, cheap and cool--it would be non-proprietary at the peripheral connectivity level at least. Games and memory cards would be distributed in the compact flash format, or maybe even on USB ROM keys. Users could connect the system to a PC's USB port like a palm pilot to load in games form the 'net. Same with game controllers--they'd use USB--none
of this oddball crap like consoles have today (blatanly implemented to screw consumers over).
* The hardware architecture would be simple enough (as would the BIOS/OS/API firmware) that hobbyists could develop their own creations. The manufactured device could even come with software along the lines of LEGO Mindstorms programming software, or STOS BASIC from the old Atari days or some such thing. Kids could make their own games on a PC, save them, share with friends, have contests.
* Once the device was released to production with stable specifications, said specs would be released as a gaming platform that could be implemented by other vendors. Hasn't worked for consoles (yet) but it made the PC industry what it is today.
Don't kow how well it would go over in the industry, given its MPAA/RIAA closed, protectionist culture. It basically takes the floor out from under the games software industry as it is now so I wouldn't expect publishers to clamour to develop for it. However, unless Atari or Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony made it getting developers on board would be a struggle regardless of how open the system was (hence the strategy for making development appealing to the mass public).
I think that even though it might be much harder to make billions with this strategy, I think that we've lost a lot in terms of creativity in computing since the "good old days" just prior to the shakeout in the 80s when computers were not only cheap but simple and oriented towards development (it's been a long time since you could boot into BASIC and create). It'd be great if somehow we could re-ignite that hobbyist culture again. Such a culture is barely a flicker now--and it exists almost solely because of Linux and the Free Software movement. I'd like to think that there are millions of geek-parents with a mindset similar to mine who'd put down $39.95 for a cool little digital camera-sized box that hooks to a television to play and can be loaded with little Johnny's latest creations.
Anyways...just in case someone DOES try to take and pervert this idea and patent the crap out of it, etc, I hereby copyright this idea and grant use under the Creative Commons License on this day, the 7th of September 2004
i love banans
Thank you for your insightful contribution to the discussion, Ralph Wiggum. You demonstrate the failings of the American education system far more effectively than any book can.
Plus, for some reason I cannot fathom...it's kinda funny...
...your son's school is in--from an IT infrastructure standpoint anyways. The pre-MMX Pentium 133 I had seven years ago had USB ports for cryin' out loud. And even over a DECADE ago when I was in high school we had a LAN and a dial-up connection/BBS. Granted, there were still some 8088s hanging around when I was in tenth grade, but they were gone the next year and even then the technology was there to fire up Telix at home, dial up the school and download your stuff--all during the age of widespread floppy use--at a small rural school no less.
Ironically however those capabilities were rarely used as floppies were so commonplace (and I believe better made than the crap they sell now), and students don't want to do homework so bad that they'd download it from the BBS at a maximum raging speed of 2400 baud.
Anyways, the death of the floppy may be long and slow but it has been dying for a few years now. I'd say it was diagnosed with a terminal illness when Apple started selling floppy-less machines. My employer uses floppies for license keys right now, but by this time next year the requirement for floppy drives will be gone completely and replaced with a network-based system. Other supliers are rapidly replacing LPT dongles and floppies with USB keys or network-based schemes as well. Industrial and commercial users hang onto technology longer than home users, and even they are getting rid of floppies now. Oddly enough, although home consumers were complaining about missing floppy drives, I find that business and industrial customers are screaming for the opposite--they WANT to get rid of floppy drives and floppies in general. Floppies are unreliable, cause disorganisation and can compromise the security of important systems--they were always a pain in the ass that you had to deal with because there was no alternative. There are alternatives now and I'm betting floppies will get harder to find in stock and prices will rise a bit until they are overpriced, special order items like 30- and 72-pin SIMM memory is now. It's already happining--if you go to the local Future Shop or Best Buy they are relegated to a tiny space on the end of the bottom shelf of a big rack packed with flash media cards, DVD+/-Rs and CDRs--most all of which are cheaper per megabyte and more reliable than floppies.
...because its big and flat--a great obstruction-free place to put up a big tall transmitter. Wheat fields--those next to railway tracks in particular--tend to be home to grain elevators, or the larger, modern grain terminal equivalents. These structures are very tall and are an ideal mounting point for transmitters.
Community Networks is a company in Alberta, Canada that runs a broadband ISP for rural residents near the city of Calgary called EFirehose (I do not work for them but my parents still reside on the farm and are happy customers that switched from Telus due to foot-dragging in providing more than marginally acceptable telephone service, much less the DSL service they promised would come some day--but that's another story).
I am not sure about the exact area of coverage, but based upon the list of rural communities they serve I KNOW it is also significantly bigger in area than the Philadelphia proposal. Community Networks also provides wireless broadband to some rural schools using highly directional antennae. For example, I believe the school in Bassano is served by a signal beamed from 100s of kms away in Calgary.
I'm not sure exactly where the claim of worlds largest hotspot came from in regards to Philly, but perhaps it has to do with population since the larger areas covered by wireless in Washingston State and Alberta serve rural areas. Also, the Alberta service is a private venture and is not wide-open to public use. However it is fairly cheap--about CA$40 or US$30 per month for 1 to 2.5 megabit connectivity, and for more money you can get business service, including 5 megabit connectivity and static, public IP addresses--great for rural facilities that wish to maintain their own setup for email servers, VPN gateways to main offices in the city, etc.
The letter linked in the article asserts that the file in question is all or part of the "X Files" television show belonging to an organisation represented by the MPAA. Their assertion is NOT TRUE. The file in question is the source to a X Windows file manager that belongs to Mikko Kiviniemi.
The MPAA also states in their letter (in the excerpt shown in the grandparent to this post) that they are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights to the material in question. The material in question really belongs to Mr. Kiviniemi, and I really doubt he authorised the MPAA on his behalf, so that assertion is also false.
I think that if they can't be charged with purjury then at the very least some or all of the recipients of these letters should pursue a court order to forbid the MPAA from sending legally threatening letters with blatantly flase information to innocent people. In any case, the MPAA should be banned from using a computerised system to scan file repositories and automatically issue such threats. The MPAA should be required to MANUALLY EXAMINE EVERY FILE they discover by automated means before making such bold assertions to minimise false accusations.
...at least with most general purpose, commercial software. It's not quite the same as with more specific projects--even custom programming projects.
With a traditional "normal" project, in order to be successful you MUST spend time nailing down requirements, strictly defining the scope and budget, assigning the team, etc. In a custom software project for example, you can text on the exact hardware they will be using on site, and the exact user audience and have a good idea of the requirements--and STILL a great many of these projects do not live up to expectations. When the requirements are met, the project is done--end of story.
Nothing Microsoft puts out works like a normal project. Microsoft relies on a constantly shifting, growing scope for Office and Windows in order release new versions to maintain its revenue stream. Furthermore, the requirements are so complex as to be nearly impossible to define--there are thousands of variations in the target hardware (and in the case of Office, two very different architectures--Wintel and Mac). With Office the development team is very large and is actually two teams. As pointed out in the article, the left and right hands often don't know what the other is doing, and team members come and go and change roles. Also, unlike a "real" project, there is no end to development--it's an endless cycle of develop-release-patch.
Don't blame Microsoft either--it is just using the same "release early and often" strategy as Open Source--the difference is that MS is a marketing company more than anything else and marketing people can't sell something with "alpha" or "beta" or "version 0.x" in the title, so if it is even "kinda" working--well enough to get it out the door and get people's money, the marketers will put it out as 1.0 or a "model year" or whatever.
That works OK with open source because there isn't the same profit motive--people aren't paying cold hard cash and so don't expect perfection, and developers just want to make good, useful software so if they don't feel it is finished they'll release it as 0.1 to suggest a work in progress--never mind the fact that nearly every open source product is already better than a 1.0 MS product far before it reaches 1.0 itself.
However, since MS develops commercial products, markets them as prefection and people spend a lot of money to buy them, this model frustrates users, so now MS is pressured to change their model, and they have basically poured vast amounts of resources into fixing their pathetically broken current flagship product to pacify angry customers. If you look at the release cycle of Windows in the past there has been a 2 to 3 year cycle (Win 3.0 in 1990, 3.1 in 1992(?), 95, 98 in late 1997, Me/2000 in late 1999/early 2000, XP in late 2001). By the time Longhorn comes out it'll be DOUBLE the normal cycle period--they essentially skipped a release (or one could say decided to give the release away to users in the form of XP SP2). Longhorn BETTER be a good buy or MS could acually be in for a world of hurt for the first time in its history.
So how long SHOULD MS spend fixing instead of releasing? One could argue that Windows has NEVER been good enough to be called a "production release" by some standards, while others might say that MS has lost their way be delaying Longhorn for so long and dwelling on fixing an already long-in-the-tooth OS. With Open/Free software the answer is easier: if it compiles and the major stuff works put it out there--even as Ver 0.1. Nerds everywhere will download, compile and tinker, and some will even help debug, sending logs and patches and so on. Release cycles are commonly every six months (or faster!). That's OK if you can get the software for free and see the source, but it's intolerable if the source is inaccessible and you pay dearly for licensing costs.
...is a pretty good analogy when you thnk about it:
* MS Word/Office is built around a big, powerful and complex engine, just like a Ferrari. Both are high-performance but tempermental and quirky.
* OpenOffice is derived from another project (StarOffice) which Sun bought (through purchase of StarDivision) rather than invented itself. The Yugo is derived from the Zastava GTL from Eastern Europe, the design of which Zastava bought (from Fiat for the Fiat 128) rather than invented itself.
* The casual MS Word user is completely mystified by its exotic internal workings. When things go wrong they must contend with clueless and/or irritated tech support people who offer incomprehensible advice. Proper support is expensive. The Ferrari driver is also mystified by the internal workings of his car, and when things go wrong must contend with a clueless and/or irritated Italian mechanic who offers incomprehensible advice. Parts and labour are expensive.
* The dealer network was always sparse and is now non-existant, so Yugo drivers must fend for themselves by searching the wrecking yards for parts. The internal workings are primitive but well known to owners--there is no fancy, proprietary technology. Tech support for OpenOffice is sparse to non-existant, so OO.o users must fend for themselves by Googling for patches on the 'net. The source is less complex than that of MS Office and is open, so it is known to many of its users.
* A lot of people know and use MS office because it is more powerful and popular than the rest, so they put up with all the annoyances and pay a lot of money for it, even though they don't use it to its full potential. Most Ferrari drivers buy a Ferrari because it is powerful and a popular status symbol, so they put up with all the annoyances and pay a fortune for it, even if they can't legally drive it anywhere NEAR it's full potential--and seldom do.
* Properly cared for, a Yugo can serve you well as basic transportation--even though it has less features than a lot of other cars and is slow to start. OpenOffice, properly used, can serve you well as a productivity suite--even though it has less features than some other office suites and is a bit slow to start.
* Both the Yugo and OpenOffice can be obtained and used for basically no money and some amount of tinkering.
I think maybe they did at the time they spearheaded the CSS standard, but I think they have decided it is no longer useful to them. How else can you explain the fact that Internet Explorer, the browser offered by the company that INVENTED CSS, has pretty much the most broken implementation of the current CSS standard--and they are making literally ZERO effort into making the rendering engine of IE compliant?
.NET-ified, with all sorts of XML-based protocols like XAML (wrapped up in patents and licenses to "protect" them from the GPL and let MS control them). XHTML will be a piece in that puzzle, but MS wants the WWW to gradually and quietly go away and for HTTP servers to suck in and puke out web services using its new XML-based languages instead (the same ones to be used by its locally running applications).
I think that despite patenting CSS, Microsoft no longer sees it fitting in with their "vision" as they wish to relaise it in Longhorn. CSS isn't an XML application, it is already "embraced" by everyone and MS cannot easily "extend", is too closely tied with HTML/web page model and so on. Microsoft wants the future of personal computing to be Longhorn: A seamless desktop, all
The end result on the users desktop will look very slick and will be very elegant, seamless and smooth, such that you'd barely know or care about the difference between the local desktop and the 'net (so long as you are running the newest P-IV class PC with a gig of RAM and more than 3 GHz processor--and conected to fast broadband of course). That makes MS look revolutionalry and forward thinking, but that's not the most important motivation for such a grand vision.
What MS REALLY gets from this is a chance to perpetuate its lock-in and sustain its monopoly. It is hoping to establish a foundation that is visible and easy enough to implement by anyone, but is encumbered by patents and licensing. Money isn't the issue--in fact MS will probably encourage royalty-free implementations. However, they will use patent and copyright law to its full extent to limit that software's "freedom". They don't want your money, but they REALLY don't want you to make GPL software using the tools they offer you--they want you to close the source and make a profit and buy more MS products, or release it as public domain or BSD so they can steal it for themselves.
That's why I really hope GNOME, KDE, freedesktop.org, etc can push some of their currently bleeding-edge stuff out there before Longhorn can gain traction to take the steam out of MS big new thing. That, and I hope there is reluctance on the public's part to throw away their already-working hardware and software just to have the newest thing from MS.
Not to be a pessimist, but just imagine what some terrorists with flying cars could do?
Probably something similar to what a terrorist could do behind the wheel of a stolen tanker truck full of explosive fuel. It's pointless to worry excessively about such things when you can't control them. As for how they are controlled, I'd think it would be an extension of current drivers licenses, registration and traffic law--there would certainly be flying corridors and "lanes" and the extra capacity opened up by adding a third dimension could reduce congestion considerably.
Seriously though, I know the world has to be viligant in the face of terrorism and all, but where does it end? Will it get as bad as (or worse than) at the height of the cold war where people were buying personal bomb shelters and running into them to duck and cover when some kook rattles his sabre? If living safe requires me to lock myself up in my house and huddle in a corner, or else subject myself to background checks and cavity searches to do anything meaningful outside then screw it--I'd rather live dangerously free.
If the first thought on everyone's mind when hearing about some new technological advance is wondering how terrorists could abuse it then it means the terrorists are winning--eventually they will have gained control of us through intimidation.
Do you assert that "Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top" simply because of stories you read on the 'net, or do you have substantial evidence of this? Perhaps you are old enough to remember the tragedy at Chernobyl but have you ever even BEEN to Russia or any other former Soviet republics, or know people who have? Or perhaps do you live there now and your own personal circumstances have not been good since the fall of the USSR and you remember the good times?
From my perspective it looks like the Soviets were quite the opposite--they neither cared for citizens at large nor did they have an adequate public healthcare system. This fellow was highly educated and had skills and background considered important to the state. Furthermore, the more plant operators, technicians and engineers that survived, the more witnesses the state had to obtain information from in analysing the explosion. At least in the US there is SOME degree of protection and money can buy you good care--in the USSR you had to hope the Soviet government thought you were worth saving.
This isn't a case of a good system turning bad through stagnation and corruption either--the Soviet Union was rotten to the core right from the beginning in 1917. My grandmother's family was not really wealthy but did live alright on their own farm in Ukraine--until the revolution when their farm was seized and they were expelled from their property. My grandmother was a small child and the family faced great enough hardship that they fled to Canada to make a new life. A lot of attention is paid to the fact millions were killed in concentration camps during Hitler's reign of Germany, and rightly so. Unfortunately not so much attention is paid to the criminal acts of Stalin, who committed genocidal atrocities that probably even surpassed those of the monster Hitler.
Until communism fell we only had information that was either filtered by the Soviet state or came from informants or defectors, but our eyes were really opened with the breakup of the USSR. Although great effort was placed on central planning as a means to enforce equality, the reality was that there was no equality--central planners decided who was "more equal" than others. As a result, if you had connections in the politburo or were blessed with certain skills, intelligence or family ties you were taken care of.
If you were a farm worker, or coal miner or factory worker you were worthy of little more than enough sustinance to perform your duties--the system established just the kind of classes that the revolution was supposed to eliminate. So as engineers, doctors, politicians and such got top notch hospital treatment, schoolchildren in Kiev got untreated tumours and lesions, coal miners got emphesyma and citizens in general got to live in riteky state housing built with concrete largely reinforced with straw and refuse.
I suspect that you grew up believing in the communist ideal and never had to live in the reality of it, or you actually DID live in it and were fortunate enough to be part of the "more equal" strata of Soviet society--that is, you or your family were "white collar" partipants in the state machine. Admittedly, post-Soviet Russia hasn't been all that kind to that segment of society.
There will not be a Hilton in space
I dunno about that...Paris Hilton already comes across as a space cadet to me--I don't recall a single time I've seen her with her feet firmly planted on Earth.
On a more general note, I've heard a lot of people say the near future will be the same as they are now only more of it (you paint a slightly pessimistic picture, but whatever). It makes me wonder how far out you have to go before it changes from "more of the same" to "new and different". I can only imagine if this was the 1970s and you were predicting the 2000s using the same logic for example:
"Computers will be better but Moores new-fangled law won't last--it'll be too expensive to keep up. We'll have 16-bit computers with maybe a whole megabyte of RAM if we're lucky, but they'll only cost like $50 and even the starving children in Africa will have them. They will be powerful enough that they can be much more useful stand-alone and time-sharing, multi-user and networking stuff will be mostly obsolete"
"Ditch the 8-track, these new cassettes will be all the rage--by then they might hold 8 hours of music. Might be tough to afford a new deck to play them though with all these layoffs"
"Computer lab geeks will be playing with cool new toys--probably UNIX on million-dollar hardware, but CP/M and the Digital Research company will still dominate on small systems..by then they'll be up to version 10 or more I'm sure. A lot of companies like MITS, ProcTech, IMSAI and Cromemco are designing around the S100 bus and can use each others cards--I bet a standard around S100 will evolve and these new upstarts like Apple will die quick deaths"
"World unrest will increase, not decrease. The Soviets will prove to be an everlasting red menace--they along with China will catch up and maybe surpass us technologically. We'll get used to ducking and covering and keeping our bomb shelters stocked."
"We'll keep going to the moon and build a base there, but we'll lose interest. Too expensive to reach mars at all. We won't manage to develop a reusable spacecraft by then but we'll send up quite a few Apollo missions."
"Gas prices will be $5.00 per gallon, electric cars are still a novelty but bull size cars and vans will be non-existant. By far the most popular cars will be smaller ones with small 6 or 4 cylinder engines like the Ford Pinto, AMC Pacer and Plymouth Volare. The imports like the VW Rabbit and the Honda Civic will be popular but their tendancy to rust prematurely in our climate might limit their success a bit"
"Textile technology will improve, giving us lighter, breathable, more exiting nylon, rayon and polyesters. Day-glo colours, sparkles and new textures will be all the rage. Cosmetics allows for wild makeup jobs and attention-getting afro sculptures"
"Things will be calm in Vietnam for awhile then slowly revert back to instability--the emboldened Commies will take over all of south Asia and Carter and the USA public will still be politically hurting too much from the last "conflict" to do anything to stop it"
Hmmm...sounds bizarre. I guess either the asumption of "more of the same" is flawed or a 25-30 year timeframe breaks down that approach, or some combination of both.
Well, like I said at the end of my post, the timing or details might be off but my point was it was much less "bunk" than you think.
a) You made my point exactly: sci-fi not only attempts to predict the future, it also influences future invention and design. I never argued around a ten-year timeframe, but if you insist: in 1994 cellphones were more than twice the size and weight, were analogue and had a fraction of the battery life. Their displays were typically monochrome seven-segment, numeric-only vacuum-flourescent or LCD. Now we have very small, digital, high-resolution phones that play music, video games, store our contact and schedules, get our email, surf the 'net, play music and take pictures. (oh and BTW, the origianl star trek never had badge communicators--they were belt-mounted flip-open just like a cellphone)
b) You're right--a wristwatch is not practical for any device requiring a user interface. We do, however, have watches that wirelessly transmit and store data, monitor heart rate etc. IBM even demonstrated a Linux-powered computer/PDA watch They are not wild commercial successes but they DID come into being as predicted.
c) Don't be foolish--reading news online or downloding it from the 'net into the "paper device" waiting in the kitchen was the POINT of the "electronic paper" in Sawyer's article! What did you think--a paperboy dropped a new one on the doorstep every morning like the dead tree version? The reason for "electronic paper" is that is is non-disposable, portable, light-weight and durable--perfect for reading at the table with your toast and tea.
d) If you are aware of Moore's law then why scoff at predictions based on it? In 1994 a 486/66 with 8 MB RAM and 240MB HD would've been a higher-end machine--now multiply all those performance numbers by FIFTY and you have something that is mostly a BUDGET machine today. I certainly couldn't fathom EVERYTHING that might have been done with that technology, although we can make a lot of guesses.
e) Hey, don't rag on the sci-fi toilets, ok? The first versions have been commercially available for more than two years. Who's to say the price won't come down to afforable levels and features improve in 10 years. Look at what happened with the price and quality of colour laser printers and big-screen TVs in that time
f) I did a job search last a little more than a year ago. There weren't a LOT of telecommuting jobs but there were a few. Quite a number of companies allow flex hours and partial telecommuting (including my own employer). About 5-10% of our sales and support people already telecommute. Sawyer predicted 50% in ten years...who knows? Doesn't sound that far out. I tend to think it won't be that big, but I do see a trend towards it. If location really mattered than we wouldn't have call centres in India serving customers in the USA would we?
g) I didn't say rote memorisation was completely gone nor that it was a good idea all the time. That said, if your poly-sci course (or language or chem for that matter) relied very heavily on rote memorisation rather than learning concepts and critical thinking than it is a pretty crappy course. Since you finished college in 2001 it might be safe to assume you have been out of grade school for five or more years. I'm a few years older still (but not by much), but I've had the chance to see what kids experience in grade school now. My kids will certainly be using calulators by grade six (some grade FOUR teachers introduce them, to my chagrin). Children use PCs right from grade one and may use them for "real" school work by third grade. By grade seven they may be researching for reports on the 'net regularly. Graphing scientific calculators are a REQUIREMENT by high school, and many, if not most seniors in the academic stream bring notebook PCs to school. I went to a rural school, and was one of the first to take a distance education course in high school 11 years ago
There's just too many parts, and too much effort, required to produce just *one* of the "miraculous future inventions* that people have been promoting since the birth of sci-fi.
Really...is that a fact? I'm glad not everyone is like you and discounts everything in sci-fi because they didn't get their personal robot or flying car as predicted. Remember the "fi" in si-fi is FICTION--it is MADE UP in the minds of those imagining what the future will bring, and in the case of sci-fi dramaticised to fit with the story.
As for "miraculous future inventions" being economically infeasable, I'd say your blanket statment is quite inaccurate:
You don't pay much attention to the old Star Trek episodes do ya? Don't know bout you, but the flip-open communicators sure look like the cellphone I carry with me today. Today's flat-panel monitors also look a lot like the screens sitting on the conference tables in many of those episodes too. Even though we don't all strap our gagets to our wrist like Dick Tracey did our radios, music players, pagers, phones and so on could certainly be made small enough to wear on our wrists if we wanted to. Electronic newspapers bed by radio waves--well I already read the news online, and we have tablet PCs with 802.11x *radio* communication, and there has been a lot of advancement in display technology that allows for flexible, reflective electronic display AND flexible ICs.
Even as recently as ten years ago someone like you probably would've said "a drive smaller than a pen that holds hundreds of megabytes? That would cost a fortune and would be too easy to lose! Nobody needs to carry that much data anyways!" Well, today I carry a keychain around that holds 256 MB and I can tell you it comes in very handy when you have to (re-)install WinXP or 2k on-site and need the security updates/firewall/etc to keep it from puking 30 seconds after getting on a network. If you aren't a techie its great for carrying photos and movie clips around so you can just plug in at a friends and show off your kids, garden, pets, etc. Step back and think about that...sounds a bit "sci-fi" if you remember life in the 80s eh?
Smallpox used to mean certain death...now a "trivially easy" vaccination prevents infection and the disease is basically extinct. That's one pathogen that rolled over and died in the face of a "miracle cure" scenario. Diabetes also meant certain premature death, and is now "trivially" treatable and in some cases curable. Cancer survival rates have also dramatically risen even within my own lifetime (and I'm not that old). Cyctic Fibrosis used to kill all its sufferers before they reached adulthood, and now they can expect to live far longer.
I'd argue with you about telecommuting--it's true that far less than half of people telecommute exclusively, but I'd say there are a LOT of people who do so part-time at least--and I did full-time for awhile. Even so, technology has completely changed business culture. How often does the secretary do dictation in short-hand anymore? How many typewriters are in your office? How often do you get an inter-office memo on PAPER anymore?
When did you last set foot in a school? "Rote memorisation" is already all but gone. Kids barely learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and then they are given calculators--I didn't get to use one until ninth grade, now elementary kids have them! High school kids all get graphic scientific calculators--it's pretty close to mandatory now. In high school we only used computers in business-ed courses and after class to do homework, now they're all over the place.
Electric cars in all the streets--HELLO, we are already heading there, I'm starting to see more and more Toyota Prius and Honda Insight cars out there, and more hybrid models are cropping up (even SUVs), and with oil heading to $50/barrel I don't think the trend towards electric power will slow--the economics are shifting.
You might want to re-think your opinion about "just plain dumb" and 2-5% accuracy. The details and timing might be off in sci-fi but an amazing amount af this stuff does indeed show up in the future.
Do sympatico and other bb providers in Canada get rid of the ridiculous download caps?
Enforced quotas seem to be disappearing, although it seems to have played some small part in keeping costs down and service more consistent during the growing pains for or five years ago. Today I know of no major broadband provider where I live (Alberta) that will cut you off for downloading more than a specific amount of data. However, it is common to have usage monitored (for capacity, not content) and to be extra-billed for very high usage. I've found, however, that to exceed the cost of what most US residents pay for comparable service I'd have to fill my hard drive every month.
I would also guess that even within Canada the area I live in is somewhat exceptional in regards to communication technology. Alberta was the first place in the entire world to have commercial use of fibre optic communications between two sites. It was also the first place in the world (or at least North America--can't remember which) to roll out high-speed internet over cable (in 1996 to 1997), and the first in Canada (and one of the first in the world) to have DSL. Alberta is the home to the first digitally switched public phone network on the continent as well.
A lot of harping has been going on about how the US is a big country and that is why it is taking longer to adopt broadband. When it is brought up that Canada is even bigger and is quite a bit ahead of the US in that area they counter that most of the population is squished up within 100km of the US border. I really don't get this argument at all. The city of Edmonton, Alberta is somtheing like 500 km away from the border and it got cable broadband internet before ANYONE in the US did (I know, I lived there at the time). Also, if you calculate the area of land within 100km of the US border and figure out the population DENSITY in this region it is STILL less than half of the average density for the US.
Canada didn't excel in communications IN SPITE of being big and sparsely populated, it was BECAUSE of it. The distance between people made the need and demand that much greater, and as a result Candians either invent the technology or are among the first to make use of it. Too bad Canadians have such a hard time making money off it though--it all ends up getting built somewhere else.
But I thought that it was only MS Access DBs running on Windows 2000 that crashed
Ummm...I saw reference to ADODB in your parent post--is that not Active Data Objects (A Microsoft-only technology)? Also, there is nothing in the reported error suggesting MySQL was the database either. Remember, PHP is available on Windows and supports connectivity to many different database backends, so as far as we know the site is running PHP on Win2K with an MS Access database connecting via ADO/ODBC (yes it is a possible combination).
Seems to me, however, that the above configuration would be like building a sturdy brick house on a pile of wet sand--it's bound to sink when loaded to any degree...
Those with critical VMS-based systems are breathing a sigh of relief that there will be support and replacement hardware for their old-but-reliable servers that have been running VMS non-stop, 24/7/365 for the past DECADE. If you are used to that kind of reliability you are obviously the type that would be advers to changing the entire hardware architecture until the last possible moment. Many of them are the type of folks who wailed and gnashed teeth when they had to migrate from the old VAX hardware to theie "new fangled" 200 MHz Alpha-based hardware--and it still ran the same OS!
Anyways, I haven't seen a lot of discussion on what happens to the IP (Intellectual Property) once HP puts the Alpha out to pasture for good. I'd like to see it released to the public domain or made "open source" so royalty-free implementations can continue to be made by a large number of third parties. It would be very cool if any Joe Blow could download the VHDL or Verilog files to synthisize their very own Alpha-core-based FPGAs!
It is difficult to get a Windows user to feign even a polite interest in the internals of an operating system.
I think a good deal (maybe not all) windows users might find your assumtion a bit insulting as well--even some non-technical ones. although many probably aren't interested in knowing the internals, I think your argument that they would prefer all updates to be automatic and invisible is wrong. Windows XP and 2000 can already be set up to check for, download and intall all critical updates automatically, and the only indication it is happening is the little globe in the taskbar.
EVERY beginner user (not some, not most...every single one) where I had set up automatic updates this way compalined. some examples:
* I inadvertantly set this up on my father's PC when he still used dial-up (that due to noisy phone lines could never manage more than 22 kbps). It was continually downloading updates (resuming where it left off if he hung up in the middle of one). It was barely usable to start with--if he tried to open his email it was coming in at about 1200 baud!
* I set this up for a guy running a small delivery business and he complained loudly about things changing by themselves and the annoying balloon messages emanating from the systray icon implying it was installing an update whether he liked it or not.
* A retired lady (grandmother of a friend of mine) noticed the automatic updates for the first time and called me up because she thought it might be a virus--she got bit by a system compromise that popped up alert boxes,etc all by itself, and she noticed the update icon appear and increased light-blinking on her cable modem and it reminded her of what happened when she got the virus.
Unless it could be COMPLETELY invisible and you can GUARANTEE a patch won't break something (a recent update broke some of my employers software for example), NO user wants stuff to happen without them knowing about it--not even beginning Windows users. I find they don't mind if CHECKS are done, but they want to control the download and install to be done on teir own time.
Does this leave the chance of unpatched systems? sure...but there is ALWAYS going to be the case where a patch shouldn't be put in the moment it is available and detected by update.
The average PC user (in fact one that is sharper than average) might think "Okay, I'm finished installing Windows. I'd better hood up to the 'net and run Windows Update to get all my patches". It doesn't dawn on them unless a helpful salesperson (a rare commodity) or a tech-savvy friend reminds them to put some sort of firewall mechansim in place before even toucfhing the CAT5 cable on an Windows box.
Try installing any Linux lackage that is 2 years old and see how long it takes for it to get rooted before you bother to enable a firewall!
Actually, I did that with an older Mandrake distro--probably almost 3 years old now. During install it had the option to set the security level and I picked "paranoid" setting. I even selected encryption packages that had to be installed over the 'net because of US legal crap, so it was on the net (directly connected to my DSL, with no firewall at all). It was only in that state for a week or so, but it was NEVER rooted or compromised in any way between that time and when I bothered to set it up with packet filtering, NAT, etc etc (to serve as the router for my home LAN).
Mandrake (although far form perfect) has demonstrated in the past few years that a good degree of security can be applied right out of the box without requiring a CS degree to figure out. Even on that old distro everything was locked down, the network-oriented services were off by default and TCP wrappers were in place with all hosts except localhost denied. Later they put in Shorewall and included Bastille hardening package in the distro.
What has happened since the 2-year-old release of XP? It was released with serious security flaws that once discovered rendered an unpatched system completely useless in literally less than a minute (I don't care what the article says, Ive NEVER seen an unpatched XP system last nearly 20 minutes--perhaps that includes dialup machines). Furthermore, the default installation runs all kinds of services (why the hell would Windows Messenger be turned on by default, or even be available at all on the Home edition?) and what security tools they eventually provided were OFF by default. It took until THIS YEAR for MS to fix this back-asswards situation, and Mandrake (among other distros) were taking action THREE YEARS AGO when it was jsut starting to become a serious problem with Red Hat default installs getting compromised.
To this day my Windows box still runs 2000--it's as messed up security-wise as XP, but it's still stable and fixable and less resource-hungry than XP. I'm never upgrading Windows on my machines ever again because I won't waste my money on an OS that does nothing but add flashy cartoony crap to my screen and is no more secure than 2k. By the time 2000 is unsupported I'm hoping to have migrated to Linux completely anyways.
It'll take a lot of convincing for MS to change my mind with Longhorn. I suspect it'll be fine on its own but will have no end of compatibility-related issues with present Win32 apps--and it wouldn't surprise me if some of them will be security issues either.
...even if they don't really understand it.
I agree that it is hard to explain a buffer overflow to non-technical people, but I've done it before to their satisfaction. A lot of people want to know more about how their computers (and other appliances) work. Furthermore, lack of detail can translate to lack of trust. There has to be a balance between technobabble and plain, simple english.
If all a user wants to know about a bug is something general like you suggest then the list of critical updates in Windows Update or on the SP2 page would look like this:
123456 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
123457 - A flaw in Outlook Express may allow an attacker to control your computer
123458 - A flaw in Windows XP may allow an attacker to control your computer
123459 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
123460 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
123461 - A flaw in Windows XP may allow an attacker to control your computer
123462 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
Honestly, how would this be ANY more useful to a user than something line "A buffer overflow in IE's URI parsing routines could allow an attacker to perform a cross-site scripting attack"? Sure, most users would not know what that means without reading the details, however, I think a lot of users would not be comforted by the above list. Is it the same flaw? How does the flaw manifest itself? Does it apply to my setup?
In fact I think most users would feel a bit insulted by overly vague information on updates--as if MS feels they are not smart enough to handle any sort of detail. "Okay boys and girls, Windows has a booboo. Run this program and it'll but a bandaid on the booboo and everything will be alright again".
I think I'd personally prefer technobabble, at least it sounds more credible (like someone knows something about software).
...you are only partly right. In 1998 it could be pretty easy to install Red Hat (for example) with total lack of security as well--and I saw the results when friends with no Linux or UNIX experience at all would throw Red Hat on a leftover box, connect it to their cable internet and have it comporimised before the day was out. The total newbie audience was limited, however, and even newbies with an interest in Linux learned quickly how to secure their machines.
That is where the difference lies. The Linux community (from end user right up to the distribution companies) learn much more quickly. Fast forward to 2002 when WinXP was shiny and new and Red Hat and other distros really grew up. By then, you could get SELinux. A newbie could install Mandrake with everything locked down in a very secure configuration simply by clicking "high" or "paranoid" during installation. The kernel and applications were patched and maintained, and features such as packet filtering were included in the OS and continually improved. As a result, you are SAFER with Linux on the net now than you were with Linux on the internet of 1998.
Microsoft learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during that time. Windows XP was released with NO improvements to security--either in the OS itself or with its default configuration over WinNT or 2k. Everything was wide open. In fact, XP Home--despite being based on the same WinNT core as the other editions, had WORSE security. Microsoft figured the concept of protected access to system functions was too complicated for the home user (an admin password would just confuse people). As a result, things such as raw sockets were left wide open to anyone who gained access to the system--which was relatively easy to do with XP home. These huge blunders are only being corrected now with SP2.
Saying that this Win98 demo demonstrates how "users should keep up or upgrade to XP" is misleading. If the same blissfully ignorant user were to put an unpatched, unprotected XP box on a cable internet connection I GUARANTEE you it would be compromised MUCH QUICKER than a Win98 box. I've seen it before myself--witness some poor schmuck upgrade his Win98 box to XP, and in the time it took me to go and grab a bite to eat he had it on the net and connecting to Windows Update. Before the updates were finished downloading it was infected with THREE blaster and sasser variants and started rebooting spontaneously. Users should do more than just keep up to date or chane OSes. Users have to adopt good security practises--don't hook to the 'net without making sure there are not weak passwords, stupid open ports/services present etc. and probably a firewall in place. Keep virus software up to date at least daily and so on. Furthermore, Microsoft and other providers must make it easier for users to adopt these measures (and they are--slowly but surely. Still not up to snuff yet though).
A good Linux distro is a good basis for a secure system (better than any Windows OS I'd say). Sure it's not perfect (nothing is) but even though Linux might not be at the head of the security class, it isn' the retarded, paste-eating child in the corner that Microsoft has demonstrated itself to be.
...because they made the computer reboot before it could show up. And if you're clever or lucky enough to avoid that, you'll see that they changed the colour to black! (at least that is what I observed)
Shoulda changed it to another colour though because the BSOD acronym still fits...oh well.
The new and improved B(lack)SOD includes brand new, even more vague and useless error messages too! Yay! At least they are MUCH less common than in Win9x/Me or NT.
Anyways, I saw the sample animation...looks way cool but it looks like it is far from automatic. It does really make the rotoscoping process much faster and doesn't seem to impede too much on the "creativity" aspect--looks like it allows a lot of latitude to apply your own artistic style.
Don't think it'll ever replace "pure" animation (manually done frame by frame). It just has this "stiff" characteristic. It's hard to explain, but it is kinda like how you can almost always tell when a drawing is traced from a photograph. "Real" animation seems to add warmth and character--for all the computer rendering in Shrek for example, the actual character animation was manually done by artists with mice and digitiser pads at workstations (ie the position of the characters were manually set every few frames--computers did the rendering, camera movements, lighting, in-betweens etc).
The guy who owned the fallwell.com site did so with the intent to:
.org would be more suitible they discovered to their dismay that PETA.org was already occupied by a parody site called People Eating Tasty Animals. The site clearly stated it was a parody and had a link to peta.com (the "real" PeTA). At that point I don't think it was selling merchandise, but it was clearly anti-PeTA. Even if it was a for-profit site (doing both A and B above) it should've been allowed because:
.org because it had already secured .com
a) deceive those who intended to visit the evangelist's site using a similar address
b) profit from the deception by selling literature critical of Mr. Falwell
I think that B alone should be legal. However, A is questionable--unless there is a valid defence for using the domain name or trademark.
That said, since the intent was both A and B the ruling was absolutely correct. It doesn't impede on free speech--the same exact content could be put online at falwellsucks.com.
I figure the case should've been ruled the other way if:
* The site clearly stated it was AGAINST Jerry Falwel, or was an obvious parody (and perhaps a link to the site most visitors probably intended to visit)
* If the owner of the site actually WAS Fallwell (regardless of the content), or was a business with that name but in an unrelated industry (first come first serve in cases of conflict I'd say)
There are some cases that went the WRONG way. MikeRoweSoft.com was one of them. The owner was named Mike Rowe and the name was clearly a parody of the Microsoft name. Although software was the subject of both, they were clearly different entities and could not be confused (it isn't easy to mistakenly type or be confused by MikeRoweSoft as is the case with Fallwell vs Falwell).
There was also the case of PETA.org vs PETA.com -- the legitimate site for some reason was the latter, and when they decided
* It was clearly a parody site and directed those deceived to the "real" site.
* There was a real reason to have the domain--PETA matches for both organisations.
* First come first served--The "real" PeTA drgeed its feet on
So yes...first come first served--IF you have a convincing argument to retain the name and it wasn't a blatant, greedy example of sqatting.