The lack of trailing br's at the bottom of the page is awfully noobish. By fitting the page exactly in the screen, he's showing the same anal tendencies (graphic designer obsessive layouts) he was supposed to be rebelling against.
One good thing I can say, his homepage appears to be for dual monitors. Next, if he learns the IMG tag, he can tap the power of NCSA Mosaic.
>If you are making a Linux distribution you ought to be shipping on a PC, not a DVD.
That's a good point. However, Linux does ship on a PC, it's called TiVo. Like Mac, TiVo ships on branded hardware, with a tight interface that does a few things, very well.
Front-ends do sell. Mac, TiVo, cell phones, game consoles are all examples of selling the front-end.
So what will it take for a popular Linux desktop? Well, you can sell office/internet PC's for business lans, once employees realized how stable they were, they would love it.
But for the home market, Linux needs to play games.
How about #3, the major corps who would suddenly become the new media pirates by selling YOUR book with YOUR name and without giving you any money?
After all, the whole way that corps "abuse" copyright is by forcing the author to sign it away! Now we're going to abolish it - what a coup for the publishing industry!
Well, I'm just dropping in here but I wanted to point out that copyright and attribution are essentially the same thing. The essence of copyright is being able to say that you are the author. You should be opposing 99-year copyright terms, which is a legal artifact and not quite the same thing as copyright itself.
>without placing restrictions on who can copy.
Afaik the original term of copy control was something like 7 years. Back in the days of the printing press and horse-drawn mail, you could argue that 7 years was actually quite brief. Again, 99 year terms are the oddity.
Abolish it? Then you're allowing plagiarism. What's to stop Knopf, EMI, or Universal Pictures from cutting an author/musician out of the deal?
Woz said that he never wanted to be famous or super rich; he wanted to be an "average guy" career-wise who was the best in his field (maybe a bit naivete there:)
He said he and Steve Jobs were great friends once who talked about music and philosophy; but Jobs regarded himself more as a Shakespeare/Einstein hero type.
He said Jobs was essential to the success of Apple because Steve Jobs had a better grip on simplifying technology for the masses (whereas Woz simplified technology for its own sake).
He said that his own involvement was more important to Steve Jobs than the other way around because Jobs needed talent and Woz was giving it away for free (open source style, I guess).
He said he's happy because by age 20 he realized he would never be poor.
And in undertones you can see that he went out of his way to be "normal" such as pursuing an 8-year teaching career.
Overall it's a great (and long) interview; you can see Charlie Rose working his hardest and enjoying it when he's not frustrated with Woz's fast talking style.
From the article, "There definitely are those who are Linux zealots, but we did some checking as well." OK they did some checking, and Dell now reassures us that people actually want to run Linux.
Unless there is a huge new hobbyist market, I don't see how this can be the case.
Linux sounds more like Dell's future than today's market. A future that may involve becoming more like Apple. But today, what does linux do, out of the box, that would make you want to switch your desktop?
I can think of one reason: MythTV. Any others??? Or is this a ten-year plan on Dell's part?
I noticed the author describes himself as a "junk science expert" and "advocate of free enterprise." Not sure what makes that better than being a scientist who is enterprising. The politics maybe?
I would say that Lynx's real strength was bringing VGA-color gaming to the console. Gates of Zendocon had eight times more game (50+ levels) than your average 6-8 levels of space shooter. The better Lynx games had depth that reminded you of a 386 PC.
It was also 100x100 resolution pitiful. That's laid out clear as day in the article, and if any of these people had played Lynx, they would certainly remember.
Defender had a full 2D grid of sprites which allowed up/down movement, left/right scrolling and placement of enemies anywhere on the screen. It also had eight buttons and a speed control knob!
In terms of gameplay, Entex's Defender was (amazingly) pretty close to the Atari version. You had to catch falling civilians all over the place. I never got a Tiger because, judging from the commercials, they sacrificed scrolling for a smaller number of large, photo-realistic sprites. Defender was back-lit too:)
Well you're a rare hacker breed. Most contractors in electronics wear ponytails and smoke pot on the way to the client's house. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, they're not serious or educated. And half these guys don't have websites.
IMO you're in a position to make money if you choose to advertise.
Heh. I'm guessing Compaq had both beigeness and branding problems. They were corporate from what I remember. "Does your business earn at least $50k quarterly? Then you should step up to Compaq systems." etc.
Gateway tried retail. I'm guessing everyone drove past the Gateway stores on the way to CompUSA, and then remembered on the way back, with the HP PC already in the back seat.
...which is that aggression can be a good thing. After all, this is why we teach kids to play football, because we want them to learn how to tackle.
But she dismisses this idea in a 3-sentence paragraph:
"Critics counter that some kids may use games to vent anger or distract themselves from problems...but other studies suggest that venting anger doesn't reduce later aggressive behavior, so [i'm still right, let's move on.]"
Overall this article assumes that aggression==crime, and that's an axiomatic flaw. Agression is the extent to which people try to get what they want; some people try too hard, some people not enough.
TFA: >Referring to Linus Pauling, the famous U.S. advocate of vitamin C use as a cure for many illnesses, he said: "Basically, Linus Pauling was right, but he was off by one letter."
OK, who else had the feeling that they were going to bash vitamin C before the end of the article?
I'd get a communications major from a local 2-year university to wear a suit, sit across a table and disinterestedly glance at their resume while asking obtuse questions and coming up with arcane reasons to disqualify them.
This points to a larger issue. People from good schools, become professors at bad ones. People who graduate from bad schools become staff at good ones like MIT.
How is this important? Because all the best psychology graduates went into private practice. The failures became school counselors at Virginia Tech.
No, there's plenty of indie music out there. The key is to get the listening public to realize that Tower Records is the "Reader's Digest" version of a library.
Yes. SEGS consists of parabolic mirrors that focus the sun's heat on a water pipe to create steam. Once you realize that solar rays can be focused to extreme temperatures, the idea of steam follows naturally.
Mirrors+water+sun=very cheap and effective. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a major generation method. For a large scale app you would want a turbine, but on a small scale you could probably do some interesting things with just the steam itself.
After all, the first solar app I saw as a kid was just to heat water for the home. Pipes+black paint+water pump=fewer oil deliveries. Why don't more people do this?
Slashdot Mirror
The lack of trailing br's at the bottom of the page is awfully noobish. By fitting the page exactly in the screen, he's showing the same anal tendencies (graphic designer obsessive layouts) he was supposed to be rebelling against.
One good thing I can say, his homepage appears to be for dual monitors. Next, if he learns the IMG tag, he can tap the power of NCSA Mosaic.
>If you are making a Linux distribution you ought to be shipping on a PC, not a DVD.
That's a good point. However, Linux does ship on a PC, it's called TiVo. Like Mac, TiVo ships on branded hardware, with a tight interface that does a few things, very well.
Front-ends do sell. Mac, TiVo, cell phones, game consoles are all examples of selling the front-end.
So what will it take for a popular Linux desktop? Well, you can sell office/internet PC's for business lans, once employees realized how stable they were, they would love it.
But for the home market, Linux needs to play games.
That's very well said.
>this deal gives Newscorp billions of images NOW.
Well, for 10 cents an image, he actually bought the walls of the museum the images are in. So presumably the images themselves are worth even more.
How about #3, the major corps who would suddenly become the new media pirates by selling YOUR book with YOUR name and without giving you any money?
After all, the whole way that corps "abuse" copyright is by forcing the author to sign it away! Now we're going to abolish it - what a coup for the publishing industry!
>we could (and should) enforce proper attribution
Well, I'm just dropping in here but I wanted to point out that copyright and attribution are essentially the same thing. The essence of copyright is being able to say that you are the author. You should be opposing 99-year copyright terms, which is a legal artifact and not quite the same thing as copyright itself.
>without placing restrictions on who can copy.
Afaik the original term of copy control was something like 7 years. Back in the days of the printing press and horse-drawn mail, you could argue that 7 years was actually quite brief. Again, 99 year terms are the oddity.
Abolish it? Then you're allowing plagiarism. What's to stop Knopf, EMI, or Universal Pictures from cutting an author/musician out of the deal?
Woz said that he never wanted to be famous or super rich; he wanted to be an "average guy" career-wise who was the best in his field (maybe a bit naivete there :)
He said he and Steve Jobs were great friends once who talked about music and philosophy; but Jobs regarded himself more as a Shakespeare/Einstein hero type.
He said Jobs was essential to the success of Apple because Steve Jobs had a better grip on simplifying technology for the masses (whereas Woz simplified technology for its own sake).
He said that his own involvement was more important to Steve Jobs than the other way around because Jobs needed talent and Woz was giving it away for free (open source style, I guess).
He said he's happy because by age 20 he realized he would never be poor.
And in undertones you can see that he went out of his way to be "normal" such as pursuing an 8-year teaching career.
Overall it's a great (and long) interview; you can see Charlie Rose working his hardest and enjoying it when he's not frustrated with Woz's fast talking style.
After reading this interview I think he's underrated.
Good reductionists make the best engineers. Likewise, his obsession with games is revealed as wholly intuitive.
Thanks, that was basically my point.
From the article, "There definitely are those who are Linux zealots, but we did some checking as well." OK they did some checking, and Dell now reassures us that people actually want to run Linux.
Unless there is a huge new hobbyist market, I don't see how this can be the case.
Linux sounds more like Dell's future than today's market. A future that may involve becoming more like Apple. But today, what does linux do, out of the box, that would make you want to switch your desktop?
I can think of one reason: MythTV. Any others??? Or is this a ten-year plan on Dell's part?
Thank you.
I noticed the author describes himself as a "junk science expert" and "advocate of free enterprise." Not sure what makes that better than being a scientist who is enterprising. The politics maybe?
His name is Dennis Troller. Come on.
I would say that Lynx's real strength was bringing VGA-color gaming to the console. Gates of Zendocon had eight times more game (50+ levels) than your average 6-8 levels of space shooter. The better Lynx games had depth that reminded you of a 386 PC.
It was also 100x100 resolution pitiful. That's laid out clear as day in the article, and if any of these people had played Lynx, they would certainly remember.
My favorite was the Defender handheld by Entex.
:)
http://i4.ebayimg.com/03/i/000/9b/fb/8196_1_b.JPG
Defender had a full 2D grid of sprites which allowed up/down movement, left/right scrolling and placement of enemies anywhere on the screen. It also had eight buttons and a speed control knob!
In terms of gameplay, Entex's Defender was (amazingly) pretty close to the Atari version. You had to catch falling civilians all over the place. I never got a Tiger because, judging from the commercials, they sacrificed scrolling for a smaller number of large, photo-realistic sprites. Defender was back-lit too
Well you're a rare hacker breed. Most contractors in electronics wear ponytails and smoke pot on the way to the client's house. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, they're not serious or educated. And half these guys don't have websites.
IMO you're in a position to make money if you choose to advertise.
>I can even use my PSP to control Media Player Classic via a web interface, or control the lights in the house...even check my caller ID.
:)
OK you had me going there for a second
People who actually own home automation systems are far too wealthy and ignorant to be bothered with a game console.
>I can attest that it was relaxing if not thrilling when the light went out while I was on the toilet.
That's like going into my storage unit for ten minutes, usually with boxes piled up in front of the entrance.
TFA: >or illuminate the most appropriate escape signs in an emergency.
We need Plastic Man to do the reach on this one.
Heh. I'm guessing Compaq had both beigeness and branding problems. They were corporate from what I remember. "Does your business earn at least $50k quarterly? Then you should step up to Compaq systems." etc.
Gateway tried retail. I'm guessing everyone drove past the Gateway stores on the way to CompUSA, and then remembered on the way back, with the HP PC already in the back seat.
...which is that aggression can be a good thing. After all, this is why we teach kids to play football, because we want them to learn how to tackle.
But she dismisses this idea in a 3-sentence paragraph:
"Critics counter that some kids may use games to vent anger or distract themselves from problems...but other studies suggest that venting anger doesn't reduce later aggressive behavior, so [i'm still right, let's move on.]"
Overall this article assumes that aggression==crime, and that's an axiomatic flaw. Agression is the extent to which people try to get what they want; some people try too hard, some people not enough.
TFA: >Michael Dell is now conceding that the company may need to....begin working with a retail chain.
Hah! I said this last week when we were talking about HP beating them in sales.
TFA: >Referring to Linus Pauling, the famous U.S. advocate of vitamin C use as a cure for many illnesses, he said: "Basically, Linus Pauling was right, but he was off by one letter."
OK, who else had the feeling that they were going to bash vitamin C before the end of the article?
Hmm. Yeah 4Mb/s is what you should be seeing at home!
I'd get a communications major from a local 2-year university to wear a suit, sit across a table and disinterestedly glance at their resume while asking obtuse questions and coming up with arcane reasons to disqualify them.
This points to a larger issue. People from good schools, become professors at bad ones. People who graduate from bad schools become staff at good ones like MIT.
How is this important? Because all the best psychology graduates went into private practice. The failures became school counselors at Virginia Tech.
No, there's plenty of indie music out there. The key is to get the listening public to realize that Tower Records is the "Reader's Digest" version of a library.
Yes. SEGS consists of parabolic mirrors that focus the sun's heat on a water pipe to create steam. Once you realize that solar rays can be focused to extreme temperatures, the idea of steam follows naturally.
Mirrors+water+sun=very cheap and effective. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a major generation method. For a large scale app you would want a turbine, but on a small scale you could probably do some interesting things with just the steam itself.
After all, the first solar app I saw as a kid was just to heat water for the home. Pipes+black paint+water pump=fewer oil deliveries. Why don't more people do this?