I can remember back in '98 I was playing with Beta 1 of "Windows NT Workstation 5" back before it became Windows "Profesional" (Though what "professional" would willingly use windows I don't know.)
In any event I was going about configuring it, and since it only had IE 3, I decided to go and install Netscape Communicator since I prefer it. So I faithfully typed "http://www.netscape.com" into IE and low and behold IE displayed an HTTP error I'd never seen before which was something to the effect of
"You don't want to go there."
which translated is:
"
We don't want you to go there."
Needless to say, I thought this was just a little bit offensive, and probably stupid considering the DoJ was right in the middle of the antitrust investigation.
I managed finally to get Netscape (by installing it from a cd distributed by my school) on the machine, and surprisingly "NT5b1" allowed it to run. I guess the IE division of Microsoft has more of a "sense of humor" than the OS department.
It's interesting that Balmer feels that the government shouldn't support Open Source development "because it isn't available to commercial companies."
I would argue that the government should specifically support open source because it's available to everybody, as long as they don't make a profit on it. After all it's the government's business to help its tax payers, not individual corporations. Besides since most government agencies are standardized on Windows platforms, Microsoft is already getting more "government support" money than the open source community ever has.
Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology...
on
2Ghz P4 Shown Off
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· Score: 1
Well you have to admit that it is impressive that the brand new next generation 2GHz processor can outperform the third slowest 850 MHz processor of the previous generation! I'm going to start saving now and shell out as much as I need to so I can buy the fastest processor in the world! ($1 invested at current interest rates should become enough by the time this gets to market) Of course, a month or so later AMD will release a new chip that has the same clock speed and better preformance. (again)
I think Steve Heckler's been watching too may WWII movies. He seems to think this Winston Churchill:
"We shall defend our revenue streams, whatever the cost to Internet users may be, we shall fight in Court rooms everywhere, we shall fight on Napster's servers, we shall fight in ISP's and on people's computers; we shall never surrender."
--Steve Heckler, Sony VP on ending privacy and freedom in the informaiton age.
Sir Winston Churchill on fighting Nazi Germany's attack on the people of Great Britain:
"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender."
--Sir Winston Churchill
This similarity is either comic or pathetic, and I can't figure out which. Either way it's sort of frightening that anyone at such a large coroporation thinks that they could, or should, or should be allowed to determine what information passes in and out of my computer...
The definition of an OS used here is rather foolish and extremely fuzzy. An operating system really is just the lower level kernal which allows for file, memory, and graphics (perhaps) management. You could make an arguement that Unix isn't too great for modern PC's because it doesn't include any graphics/gui support (considering X separately).
The OS plus everything a user needs is something separate entirely. You could, perhaps, call it a "user environment." It is specific to each and every user. I need a file manager, web browser, word processor, telnet client, IDE/compiler, and some graphics apps. But the woman nextdoor needs a file manager, web browser, word processor, spreadsheet, and database. Should all of the above be called an operating system since we're both users and we both use all those apps. If so then MacOS X probably won't be an OS either because it likely won't come with all that.
Besides, how do you deal with other things like internet appliances? Is the entire Palm the OS because it contain's everything the user needs to use for that matter is my hardware, monitor, keyboard, & mouse part of the OS because I need them too? With their nice pretty transparent stuff Apple might like to say so, but I would disagree.
The trouble with the Palm is that you'll still have to get your data compressed at Palm.Net or something like it. I've used a VII and it can be ridiculously slow. Like 5 minutes to download 2k (which had been compressed).
Unfortunately wireless apps over any distance are so slow that they're barely usable. The Palm VII only gets 8Kb/s.
I wonder how this will affect the coming of Digital Radio, as well as the FCC's new standards to ease the starting of small community oriented radio stations...
I believe that similar testing has been done before in the area of taste differences between operating systems.
From the FreeBSD FAQ:
Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD? I know Linux runs cooler than dos, but have never seen a mention of FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot.
A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD tasted sort of orange, whereas Linux tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any particular variances in temperature that I can remember. We eventually had to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results. I think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working on their new ``scratch and sniff'' GUI. It's a funny old business we're in!
I really hate to admit that, but it's true. I definitely prefer to use Open Source software both for philosophical reasons, and for practical ones (quality and poverty).
Nonetheless, as my WordPerfect loving friends and family will point out, Word is very quickly becoming the standard (even where government policy specifies differently).
At my school (University of Pennsylvania) Word is the defacto standard, because most students get new computers as freshmen and MS Office is the default option for preloaded software. When people at Penn exchange papers we don't even bother to talk about format - it's assumed everyone uses Word.
Microsoft apparently had plans to change the format of Word documents to XML in Word 200. This would have allowed for easier conversion to/from HTML, and would have been a nice Open standard. But these plans never panned out. In addition, Microsoft won't release any documentation on the.doc format to open developers. I don't know if you could call this unethical (it is their format after all) but it certainly appears as if MS wants to make sure that only MS Word can view and edit MS Word documents.
Meanwhile, I and other Linux users are sort of left in the lurch. I love to use Linux but I have to collaborate with other people, which means I need to use Word.
I just got StarOffice and it seems to work alright (not well) for working with Powerpoint files. I've yet to see how its word processor does with Word files, but I'm hopefull... Maybe then I'll only have to boot into my Windows drive to watch DVDs (another instance where the Linux community is detrimentally -to the MPAA;-)- ignored) If anyone has any suggestions on better Linux programs for doing the things that the unenlightened (Windows users) do. I'd love to hear them...
I would agree that a new format isn't likely to change many people over unless it's a fairly significant advance, or unless distributers like mp3.com, etc start pushing it while Napster et al shut down. Neither of which are likely to happen. Perhaps the only ways a new standard would be able to gain a foothold would be if it offered significantly better compression (which is, I think, quite difficult at this point, unless it becomes much more lossy) or if it took less time to encode.
As for open standards, I don't think anyone can take mp3's away from people at this point. It's too widespread (who doesn't have an encoder these days) and there are enough companies backing it for their own good.
I'm personally waiting to see where GTK/GNOME go now that this fellow has left. I use KDE now but I've seen reviews that show GNOME runs alot faster so I may be switching...
I certainly agree that ML's implementation of parametric polymorphism (which should be said three times fast) is really useful. However, in the little ML coding that I did for a class I found that it used an awful lot of recursion, and while that made for neat thought exercises in a CS class I wonder what affect it had on performance.
For example, in the limited implemntation of OcamL we were using, we couldn't declare varriables. So data structures, non-homogeneous lists, values, etc had to be passed from function to function, with recursion all over the place (even iteration was done recursively) Ironicly the compiler attempted to detect this iterative recursion and change it to normal iteration in the binary.
Nonetheless, the parametric polymorphism was extremely useful and I found my self sorely missing it when I switch back to C++/Java.
Microsoft says it's supposed to be pronounced C (sharp). But I've almost always heard "#" called the hash mark. Regardless of what the PR folks say I believe that M$'s developers really meant it to be pronounced see-hash. Could this indication of an obsession with pot among Microsoft's developers be an explanation of the buggy history of Windows? I don't know but it does explain things...
I thought the FCC settlement was supposed to bring prices down. Why haven't the record companies complied with that legal action? Ironically, (if I recall correcly) the original price hikes were supposed to "help" consumers by preventing mega-stores like BestBuy from driving small record stores out of business - yeah right. It's obviously greedy and disingenuous actions like this by the major record labels that give creedence to Napster fans.
According to Libertarian economic theory and Bionomics, wouldn't Microsoft be one of the greatest companies on Earth? After all, M$ is at the top of quite a few parts of the software industry in terms of market share. It has consistently proven that it is the "fittest" so it has "survived," whereas all the other competitors in the normal user PC market have failed in the darwinian sense.
Last I heard libertarianism, meant that individuals should have almost complete freedom and that the only purpose for the government should be to keep us from killing each other; and business should be based solely on the idea that whatever happens the business that is best will be the one that wins. Unfortunately, in the real world the invisible hand doesn't quite work the way it's supposed to. Here the big usually get bigger, and either use unfair anti-trust practices to drive the little out of business, or simply buy the little company and assimilate or destroy it. I think we, and the press, and the Department of Justice, and the EU can see both of thise practices in Microsoft.
If anything the ideals of Open Source are opposed to libertarianism and bionomic. Open Source is a collective of individuals working together towards the same goal. By bionomic ideals people should not work together on the same thing. They should work separately on different projects, and then the Market will determine which of those projects can continue to exist. Open sourcing your product simply gives an advantage to your competitors who can see how you did things, and then put them in their project. Bionomics would argue that Open Source should disappear, because the companies that use it will not profit enough, and will be "evolved" out of business.
I've yet to read Cyberselfish but I have heard the author speak and I tend to think that their is at least a grain of thought to what she is saying. My favorite example of her's, was when she pointed out that people in Silicon Valley worked to get tax cuts and other libertarian reforms passed in California a few years ago, and now they are finding that the school systems there no longer produce graduates capable of working for them.
I believe that the PalmOS 3.5 is either out on the "x" models of the Palms or is due out soon.
As for why the Palm retains marketshare for the overall handheld market, I think that has to do (partially) with the fact of it's earlier stable releases (I don't know: is CE stable yet?) but mostly I think it's due to the fact that the Palms attemt to go for an different part of the market. They don't try to replicate a PC, rather they're just designed to be pda's. You can see this in the fact that the Palm file system is optimized for dealing with pda type info, Palm's are much lighter and smaller than WinCE machines, and their battery life is much longer.
You're not going to play mp3's on a Palm (I've coded for it's processor and believe me it's pretty slow), but at the same time it's got handwriting recognition (of a sort), it's pda functions are great, and with the Palm VII or a V with OmniSky you can use the Internet from any city that has BellSouth (or affiliated) towers. For now at least I think Palm's are going to retain their market share for pda types while WinCE makes gains among people who want their to take computer with them in their pocket. Within a few years though they'll probably do pretty mcuh the same amount of stuff even if slightly differently...
Does anyone know how secure IBM's distribution is?
I mean I wouldn't want hackers breaking into my watch. I mean, my God, they could do something as drastic as...as... change the time! Then I'd be forced to depend on the clock on my wall, on my phone, on my computer, etc...
In that case what if I were to forget my password, or if those hackers were to change it? Would I be locked out of my watch?
Guy on street: "Pardon me, do you have the time?"
IBM engineer: "Sorry, I forgot my password so I can't logon to my watch."
Seeing some of George "W" Bush's and Dick Cheney's replies to questions on technology issues, like Napster, I think it's sort of clear that they don't have any idea what's going on, and (worse) that they don't need to learn the issues in tecnology because it is beneath them...
I would tend to disagree with Walter Mossberg's column. There are certainly a lot of things available overseas that have yet to migrate to the US (I ocasionally have a friend of mine form Hong Kong bring me the latest things.) And granted that our cellular phone infrastructure is inferior and inefficient compared to Europe's. But I don't know that we are really all that far behind. To my mind, Mossberg failed to site any real examples of technologies where the US has been surpassed.
Regarding wireless interent access I would argue that Americans have the edge, with the Palm VII, and the OmniSky adaptation for the Palm V/Vx, and with the HandSpring (assuming they ever release any non-vapourware cards...). I don't know anyone who uses their Cellphone for wireless 'Net access, and quite frankly I would much rather check my e-mail on something with a screen large enough to display more than 3 or 4 lines of text, I would be uncomfortable with the notion of buying stocks on(wireless)line if I was unable to fit more than the ticker symbol on my screen. For me it seems that the ability to access the internet with something as small as a cell phone, will be little more than an gimick until they have a much better way to present data.
In term of 'Net appliances, we're way far behind in some irrelevant ways: I don't know if anybody remembers but I think that there was a service by which people in Japan could access news, purchace stocks (maybe), and do other simalar things using their Nintendo (remember that 8-bit thing, we had as kids?) And the French have had something similar to that for decades.
Nonetheless Mossberg seems to have forgotten that the idea of web appliaces has been tried here. It won't play cool games but we do have things like webTV, which would look just fine next to the Cable box on the TV in your kitchen.
The thing about PC's (why American's still love them and why I believe that they'll be around for many years to come) is their versility. People want something that they can surf the 'Net on, and keep track of their finances with, and write documents with, and play games on, and securely and privately store lots of information on (read mp3s these days). It is the great versility of the PC that makes it such a staple of technology. Compared to other web appliances it's a much more open option - we don't even think of putting a new hard-drive into a PC as "hacking" but doing that with a web appliance is a major achievement.
In today's world I don't think that there are many of us who are on the go so much that we need to access our e-mail from anywhere and everywhere all the time. Nor does there appear to be much demand for the limited (web surfing) capabilities of current info appliances. As for the future, we'll see but for right now I would argue that the US is not behind where it counts.
Has anyone gotten a hold of a list of Coremetrics clients, and checked to see what they're doing with this service? It would be nice to see a general site with information listing of e-businesses that take this sort of private info, highlighting those business that don't disclose the fact that they are doing so. That way we would know perhaps to boycott them, since legislating, and catching this sort of thing is probably really difficult. Does anyone know of such a site?
It's interesting to note the disconect that exists between the so called internet or technology culture, and the rest of society. The tech culture of the US very often seems to ignore the rest of the country because it's "not advanced enough," "ignorant," or simply "stupid." All because they don't share our ability and fascination with technology, because they get their news from the local paper rather than/. Not only is this arrogant of us, it's also personally destructive. Regardless of what you think of the role of government, political parties, and politicians; they are how the US is run. The United States, and it's model of government is one of the most successful in the world: simply look at our Constitution, we're only on our second and even that document has only been ammended some 20 times; while many other countries have gone through a great number of systems.
The tech culture needs to recognize that the government is there, it always has been, and it isn't going to go away any time soon. We need to deal with government rather than simply looking at it and grumbling about it. When you post your opinion on Carnivore, the DMCA, or Echelon CC it to your Senator or Congressman or the head of one of the technology committees. While he might not know or care what that "Napster thing" is he'll certainly begin to care after enough constituents e-amil him. Because when it comes down to it, that's his job, and not all politicians are corrupt.
Even so, reading the news it is also clear that the people in government (especially those making the laws) have just as equally as great a tendency to ignore the tech-community. In a recent interview Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Dick Cheney was asked what he thought of the Napster trial. Cheney condecendingly replied that he "hasn't been following it." It's this attitude that new issues in technology are beneith the attention of politicians that is dangerous - this is how, almost by accident, dangerous precidents can be set now that will affect and perhaps damage things like personal privacy or intellectual property for decades.
In short I see an almost parallel disconnect between the tech culture and the rest of the population. We often don't want to deal with the political process that exists, which seems ponderous and corrupt compared to the fast, merit-based pase on which technology operates. At the same time politicians and the rest of the population seem to ignore advances in technology and their implications. I think we all need to meet somewhere in the middle, with the tech culture working within the political process (I already know of one CS person running for Congress in my district - I'm voting for him) and the government realizing the importance of technology and the internet. I belive that this is what will happen as the current batch of technological innovations and the Internet matures. We'll see...
Occasionally when I'm having this problem, I find it really helpful to work on it away from the computer. My first coding teacher always liked to say that the best tool was a pencil and paper. (Of course he couldn't really type but that was his problem.)
As such, I usually have a stack of coversheets from the printer that I scribble on. (That way when I write something like "Damn, I haven't got a clue!!!" and throw the paper in the trash, I don't feel too bad for the waste.) I'll often take a bunch of this and go sit outside the building I'm in and write "pseudo code" for awhile. That way I can get away from my desk and still be productive - which is key.
Another thing that often helps me is finding something like a white- or chalk- board and then diagraming things out- there's plenty of room to work and it's easy to erase mistakes and bad starts. I find this to be another good way to get away from my desk, and to newer, fresher surroundings.
Although lately I've dealt with coder's block primarily by reading every/. story and posting stupid replies, which only I only imagine to be insightful - like this one, for example.
Katz is certainly correct that the implications of this type of ruling are quite widespread. The notion that owners of copyrights (people who have created some peice of intellectual property, or who have bought the rights to that property) should not be able to profit from their creations is a dangerous slippery slope. I think it is necessary to give creators some control of their intellectual property not only to motivate them to continue to create but to have the ability to continue to create.
Unfortunately, producing quality music is expensive: time in a recording studio can be hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour. And getting the word about your music out so it can be appreciated (one of the goals of any artist) can be even more expensive, even with sites like mp3.com and napster. Record labels offer artists both of these things, in return (usually) for the artist's signing over at least part of his coprights. Of course the record labels usually make absurd profits off artists works, while the artists themselves are left by the wayside.
Perhaps what is needed is some way for artists themselves to profit from their music without the overhead of major record labels, by selling individual songs over the internet, choosing their own prices in accordance with how much they value their music and how much the market is willing to pay for it. That way they would be able (hopefully) to afford to continue going to the studio to make music. So that we could all enjoy it (for as much as we value it). I don't know if there's anything like this out there yet but this would certainly fit with the way internet commerce seems to be moving: sites like e-trade becoming the low cost direct agents/brokers for people rather than large separate corperations like stock brokerage firms, and perhaps eventually record labels.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually this has already sort of happened
I can remember back in '98 I was playing with Beta 1 of "Windows NT Workstation 5" back before it became Windows "Profesional" (Though what "professional" would willingly use windows I don't know.)
In any event I was going about configuring it, and since it only had IE 3, I decided to go and install Netscape Communicator since I prefer it. So I faithfully typed "http://www.netscape.com" into IE and low and behold IE displayed an HTTP error I'd never seen before which was something to the effect of
which translated is: Needless to say, I thought this was just a little bit offensive, and probably stupid considering the DoJ was right in the middle of the antitrust investigation.I managed finally to get Netscape (by installing it from a cd distributed by my school) on the machine, and surprisingly "NT5b1" allowed it to run. I guess the IE division of Microsoft has more of a "sense of humor" than the OS department.
BTW The beta sucked...
It's interesting that Balmer feels that the government shouldn't support Open Source development "because it isn't available to commercial companies."
I would argue that the government should specifically support open source because it's available to everybody, as long as they don't make a profit on it. After all it's the government's business to help its tax payers, not individual corporations. Besides since most government agencies are standardized on Windows platforms, Microsoft is already getting more "government support" money than the open source community ever has.
Will they leave the light on for me there too?
Well you have to admit that it is impressive that the brand new next generation 2GHz processor can outperform the third slowest 850 MHz processor of the previous generation! I'm going to start saving now and shell out as much as I need to so I can buy the fastest processor in the world! ($1 invested at current interest rates should become enough by the time this gets to market) Of course, a month or so later AMD will release a new chip that has the same clock speed and better preformance. (again)
The definition of an OS used here is rather foolish and extremely fuzzy. An operating system really is just the lower level kernal which allows for file, memory, and graphics (perhaps) management. You could make an arguement that Unix isn't too great for modern PC's because it doesn't include any graphics/gui support (considering X separately).
The OS plus everything a user needs is something separate entirely. You could, perhaps, call it a "user environment." It is specific to each and every user. I need a file manager, web browser, word processor, telnet client, IDE/compiler, and some graphics apps. But the woman nextdoor needs a file manager, web browser, word processor, spreadsheet, and database. Should all of the above be called an operating system since we're both users and we both use all those apps. If so then MacOS X probably won't be an OS either because it likely won't come with all that.
Besides, how do you deal with other things like internet appliances? Is the entire Palm the OS because it contain's everything the user needs to use for that matter is my hardware, monitor, keyboard, & mouse part of the OS because I need them too? With their nice pretty transparent stuff Apple might like to say so, but I would disagree.
The trouble with the Palm is that you'll still have to get your data compressed at Palm.Net or something like it. I've used a VII and it can be ridiculously slow. Like 5 minutes to download 2k (which had been compressed).
Unfortunately wireless apps over any distance are so slow that they're barely usable. The Palm VII only gets 8Kb/s.
I wonder how this will affect the coming of Digital Radio, as well as the FCC's new standards to ease the starting of small community oriented radio stations...
I believe that similar testing has been done before in the area of taste differences between operating systems.
From the FreeBSD FAQ:
I really hate to admit that, but it's true. I definitely prefer to use Open Source software both for philosophical reasons, and for practical ones (quality and poverty).
Nonetheless, as my WordPerfect loving friends and family will point out, Word is very quickly becoming the standard (even where government policy specifies differently).
At my school (University of Pennsylvania) Word is the defacto standard, because most students get new computers as freshmen and MS Office is the default option for preloaded software. When people at Penn exchange papers we don't even bother to talk about format - it's assumed everyone uses Word.
Microsoft apparently had plans to change the format of Word documents to XML in Word 200. This would have allowed for easier conversion to/from HTML, and would have been a nice Open standard. But these plans never panned out. In addition, Microsoft won't release any documentation on the .doc format to open developers. I don't know if you could call this unethical (it is their format after all) but it certainly appears as if MS wants to make sure that only MS Word can view and edit MS Word documents.
Meanwhile, I and other Linux users are sort of left in the lurch. I love to use Linux but I have to collaborate with other people, which means I need to use Word.
I just got StarOffice and it seems to work alright (not well) for working with Powerpoint files. I've yet to see how its word processor does with Word files, but I'm hopefull... Maybe then I'll only have to boot into my Windows drive to watch DVDs (another instance where the Linux community is detrimentally -to the MPAA ;-)- ignored) If anyone has any suggestions on better Linux programs for doing the things that the unenlightened (Windows users) do. I'd love to hear them...
I would agree that a new format isn't likely to change many people over unless it's a fairly significant advance, or unless distributers like mp3.com, etc start pushing it while Napster et al shut down. Neither of which are likely to happen. Perhaps the only ways a new standard would be able to gain a foothold would be if it offered significantly better compression (which is, I think, quite difficult at this point, unless it becomes much more lossy) or if it took less time to encode.
As for open standards, I don't think anyone can take mp3's away from people at this point. It's too widespread (who doesn't have an encoder these days) and there are enough companies backing it for their own good.
K+L+S! Blintz. Way to show that GTK knowledge!
I'm personally waiting to see where GTK/GNOME go now that this fellow has left. I use KDE now but I've seen reviews that show GNOME runs alot faster so I may be switching...
I certainly agree that ML's implementation of parametric polymorphism (which should be said three times fast) is really useful. However, in the little ML coding that I did for a class I found that it used an awful lot of recursion, and while that made for neat thought exercises in a CS class I wonder what affect it had on performance.
For example, in the limited implemntation of OcamL we were using, we couldn't declare varriables. So data structures, non-homogeneous lists, values, etc had to be passed from function to function, with recursion all over the place (even iteration was done recursively) Ironicly the compiler attempted to detect this iterative recursion and change it to normal iteration in the binary.
Nonetheless, the parametric polymorphism was extremely useful and I found my self sorely missing it when I switch back to C++/Java.
Microsoft says it's supposed to be pronounced C (sharp). But I've almost always heard "#" called the hash mark. Regardless of what the PR folks say I believe that M$'s developers really meant it to be pronounced see-hash. Could this indication of an obsession with pot among Microsoft's developers be an explanation of the buggy history of Windows? I don't know but it does explain things...
I thought the FCC settlement was supposed to bring prices down. Why haven't the record companies complied with that legal action? Ironically, (if I recall correcly) the original price hikes were supposed to "help" consumers by preventing mega-stores like BestBuy from driving small record stores out of business - yeah right. It's obviously greedy and disingenuous actions like this by the major record labels that give creedence to Napster fans.
According to Libertarian economic theory and Bionomics, wouldn't Microsoft be one of the greatest companies on Earth? After all, M$ is at the top of quite a few parts of the software industry in terms of market share. It has consistently proven that it is the "fittest" so it has "survived," whereas all the other competitors in the normal user PC market have failed in the darwinian sense.
Last I heard libertarianism, meant that individuals should have almost complete freedom and that the only purpose for the government should be to keep us from killing each other; and business should be based solely on the idea that whatever happens the business that is best will be the one that wins. Unfortunately, in the real world the invisible hand doesn't quite work the way it's supposed to. Here the big usually get bigger, and either use unfair anti-trust practices to drive the little out of business, or simply buy the little company and assimilate or destroy it. I think we, and the press, and the Department of Justice, and the EU can see both of thise practices in Microsoft.
If anything the ideals of Open Source are opposed to libertarianism and bionomic. Open Source is a collective of individuals working together towards the same goal. By bionomic ideals people should not work together on the same thing. They should work separately on different projects, and then the Market will determine which of those projects can continue to exist. Open sourcing your product simply gives an advantage to your competitors who can see how you did things, and then put them in their project. Bionomics would argue that Open Source should disappear, because the companies that use it will not profit enough, and will be "evolved" out of business.
I've yet to read Cyberselfish but I have heard the author speak and I tend to think that their is at least a grain of thought to what she is saying. My favorite example of her's, was when she pointed out that people in Silicon Valley worked to get tax cuts and other libertarian reforms passed in California a few years ago, and now they are finding that the school systems there no longer produce graduates capable of working for them.
I believe that the PalmOS 3.5 is either out on the "x" models of the Palms or is due out soon.
As for why the Palm retains marketshare for the overall handheld market, I think that has to do (partially) with the fact of it's earlier stable releases (I don't know: is CE stable yet?) but mostly I think it's due to the fact that the Palms attemt to go for an different part of the market. They don't try to replicate a PC, rather they're just designed to be pda's. You can see this in the fact that the Palm file system is optimized for dealing with pda type info, Palm's are much lighter and smaller than WinCE machines, and their battery life is much longer.
You're not going to play mp3's on a Palm (I've coded for it's processor and believe me it's pretty slow), but at the same time it's got handwriting recognition (of a sort), it's pda functions are great, and with the Palm VII or a V with OmniSky you can use the Internet from any city that has BellSouth (or affiliated) towers. For now at least I think Palm's are going to retain their market share for pda types while WinCE makes gains among people who want their to take computer with them in their pocket. Within a few years though they'll probably do pretty mcuh the same amount of stuff even if slightly differently...
Does anyone know how secure IBM's distribution is?
I mean I wouldn't want hackers breaking into my watch. I mean, my God, they could do something as drastic as...as... change the time! Then I'd be forced to depend on the clock on my wall, on my phone, on my computer, etc...
In that case what if I were to forget my password, or if those hackers were to change it? Would I be locked out of my watch?
Seeing some of George "W" Bush's and Dick Cheney's replies to questions on technology issues, like Napster, I think it's sort of clear that they don't have any idea what's going on, and (worse) that they don't need to learn the issues in tecnology because it is beneath them...
I would tend to disagree with Walter Mossberg's column. There are certainly a lot of things available overseas that have yet to migrate to the US (I ocasionally have a friend of mine form Hong Kong bring me the latest things.) And granted that our cellular phone infrastructure is inferior and inefficient compared to Europe's. But I don't know that we are really all that far behind. To my mind, Mossberg failed to site any real examples of technologies where the US has been surpassed.
Regarding wireless interent access I would argue that Americans have the edge, with the Palm VII, and the OmniSky adaptation for the Palm V/Vx, and with the HandSpring (assuming they ever release any non-vapourware cards...). I don't know anyone who uses their Cellphone for wireless 'Net access, and quite frankly I would much rather check my e-mail on something with a screen large enough to display more than 3 or 4 lines of text, I would be uncomfortable with the notion of buying stocks on(wireless)line if I was unable to fit more than the ticker symbol on my screen. For me it seems that the ability to access the internet with something as small as a cell phone, will be little more than an gimick until they have a much better way to present data.
In term of 'Net appliances, we're way far behind in some irrelevant ways: I don't know if anybody remembers but I think that there was a service by which people in Japan could access news, purchace stocks (maybe), and do other simalar things using their Nintendo (remember that 8-bit thing, we had as kids?) And the French have had something similar to that for decades.
Nonetheless Mossberg seems to have forgotten that the idea of web appliaces has been tried here. It won't play cool games but we do have things like webTV, which would look just fine next to the Cable box on the TV in your kitchen.
The thing about PC's (why American's still love them and why I believe that they'll be around for many years to come) is their versility. People want something that they can surf the 'Net on, and keep track of their finances with, and write documents with, and play games on, and securely and privately store lots of information on (read mp3s these days). It is the great versility of the PC that makes it such a staple of technology. Compared to other web appliances it's a much more open option - we don't even think of putting a new hard-drive into a PC as "hacking" but doing that with a web appliance is a major achievement.
In today's world I don't think that there are many of us who are on the go so much that we need to access our e-mail from anywhere and everywhere all the time. Nor does there appear to be much demand for the limited (web surfing) capabilities of current info appliances. As for the future, we'll see but for right now I would argue that the US is not behind where it counts.
Has anyone gotten a hold of a list of Coremetrics clients, and checked to see what they're doing with this service? It would be nice to see a general site with information listing of e-businesses that take this sort of private info, highlighting those business that don't disclose the fact that they are doing so. That way we would know perhaps to boycott them, since legislating, and catching this sort of thing is probably really difficult. Does anyone know of such a site?
It's interesting to note the disconect that exists between the so called internet or technology culture, and the rest of society. The tech culture of the US very often seems to ignore the rest of the country because it's "not advanced enough," "ignorant," or simply "stupid." All because they don't share our ability and fascination with technology, because they get their news from the local paper rather than /. Not only is this arrogant of us, it's also personally destructive. Regardless of what you think of the role of government, political parties, and politicians; they are how the US is run. The United States, and it's model of government is one of the most successful in the world: simply look at our Constitution, we're only on our second and even that document has only been ammended some 20 times; while many other countries have gone through a great number of systems.
The tech culture needs to recognize that the government is there, it always has been, and it isn't going to go away any time soon. We need to deal with government rather than simply looking at it and grumbling about it. When you post your opinion on Carnivore, the DMCA, or Echelon CC it to your Senator or Congressman or the head of one of the technology committees. While he might not know or care what that "Napster thing" is he'll certainly begin to care after enough constituents e-amil him. Because when it comes down to it, that's his job, and not all politicians are corrupt.
Even so, reading the news it is also clear that the people in government (especially those making the laws) have just as equally as great a tendency to ignore the tech-community. In a recent interview Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Dick Cheney was asked what he thought of the Napster trial. Cheney condecendingly replied that he "hasn't been following it." It's this attitude that new issues in technology are beneith the attention of politicians that is dangerous - this is how, almost by accident, dangerous precidents can be set now that will affect and perhaps damage things like personal privacy or intellectual property for decades.
In short I see an almost parallel disconnect between the tech culture and the rest of the population. We often don't want to deal with the political process that exists, which seems ponderous and corrupt compared to the fast, merit-based pase on which technology operates. At the same time politicians and the rest of the population seem to ignore advances in technology and their implications. I think we all need to meet somewhere in the middle, with the tech culture working within the political process (I already know of one CS person running for Congress in my district - I'm voting for him) and the government realizing the importance of technology and the internet. I belive that this is what will happen as the current batch of technological innovations and the Internet matures. We'll see...
Occasionally when I'm having this problem, I find it really helpful to work on it away from the computer. My first coding teacher always liked to say that the best tool was a pencil and paper. (Of course he couldn't really type but that was his problem.)
As such, I usually have a stack of coversheets from the printer that I scribble on. (That way when I write something like "Damn, I haven't got a clue!!!" and throw the paper in the trash, I don't feel too bad for the waste.) I'll often take a bunch of this and go sit outside the building I'm in and write "pseudo code" for awhile. That way I can get away from my desk and still be productive - which is key.
Another thing that often helps me is finding something like a white- or chalk- board and then diagraming things out- there's plenty of room to work and it's easy to erase mistakes and bad starts. I find this to be another good way to get away from my desk, and to newer, fresher surroundings.
Although lately I've dealt with coder's block primarily by reading every /. story and posting stupid replies, which only I only imagine to be insightful - like this one, for example.
I believe Linus Torvalds holds the TM on "Linux," if so I'm almost postitive he's GPL'ed it.
Katz is certainly correct that the implications of this type of ruling are quite widespread. The notion that owners of copyrights (people who have created some peice of intellectual property, or who have bought the rights to that property) should not be able to profit from their creations is a dangerous slippery slope. I think it is necessary to give creators some control of their intellectual property not only to motivate them to continue to create but to have the ability to continue to create.
Unfortunately, producing quality music is expensive: time in a recording studio can be hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour. And getting the word about your music out so it can be appreciated (one of the goals of any artist) can be even more expensive, even with sites like mp3.com and napster. Record labels offer artists both of these things, in return (usually) for the artist's signing over at least part of his coprights. Of course the record labels usually make absurd profits off artists works, while the artists themselves are left by the wayside.
Perhaps what is needed is some way for artists themselves to profit from their music without the overhead of major record labels, by selling individual songs over the internet, choosing their own prices in accordance with how much they value their music and how much the market is willing to pay for it. That way they would be able (hopefully) to afford to continue going to the studio to make music. So that we could all enjoy it (for as much as we value it). I don't know if there's anything like this out there yet but this would certainly fit with the way internet commerce seems to be moving: sites like e-trade becoming the low cost direct agents/brokers for people rather than large separate corperations like stock brokerage firms, and perhaps eventually record labels.