If you had been sitting behind me when I typed it, you would have seen that I didn't even need Google to remember the quote, or who said it. The humor, which you seem to have missed, is that the processor for this tablet is called a Dothan. Since a D is only a few pixels from a B, it seemed funny to me (and at least three mods agreed) to replace Bothans with Dothans. Humor ensues. Or rather, in this case, a pun, or play on words, in which case groaning ensues.
I do hope I've managed to clarify the humor for you. Probably to the point where it's no longer funny.
From an accounting point of view, though, the two costs you mention are one time, or minimally recurring costs, whereas license fees are ongoing. Not that Novell will save $900,000 every single year, but let's say a third of that every year. Funnel that money into some really good corporate trainers that you keep on staff. Or contract trainers for the transition period who also act as mentors/gurus. Or, if Novell already has trainers (which they probably do), pay them a little extra to get up to speed with Linux. In the long run, this may make sense. If more companies did it, we'd have more data to work with. Problem is, the companies that are doing it usually have a vested interest in Linux, so the data will likely be flawed, with costs hidden in other centers (like, uh, say, training).
On a side note, the last company I worked for was a training company trying to go all Linux on the corporate desktops (they train Linux and Windows based apps, so some Windows would always remain). The one remaining obstacle was getting OOo to print page numbers as chapter-page, where the page numbers restart every chapter, so they could replace Word. Never got a chance to look that one up. I'm sure they've figured it out by now (it's been almost a year) and have moved to Linux on most corporate desktops. Unless the CEO and President (who is a Mac user) decided those Mac Minis were a better way to go (he might have).
I just wanted to let everyone know that I am starting an experiment to examine the effects of a placebo. What will happen is, you apply to be a subject in my experiment on the placebo effect. I will administer to you a placebo pill, clearly labelled as a placebo, and you then tell me if my placebo helped your vision to improve, thus showing clearly that the placebo effect is real.
I'm not buying any more versions of Star Wars until Lucas is dead. Preferably for 10 years. Maybe more. After all, Tupac released a posthumous album. Douglas Adams had a collected unfinished works released. Even The Beatles managed a reunion of sorts, what, 15 or 20 years after Lennon was murdered. Maybe I just won't ever buy them again.
I had the scan and pan tapes. The widescreen tapes in the ubercool box still grace my video collection (mostly DVD now). I even shelled out for the Special Edition widescreen tapes (though I question why now - Son of Special Edition DVDs . . . *sigh*). I saw Phantom Menace thrice in the first week. Clones got one trip to the theater, haven't seen it since. Sith will get a trip to the theater as well. Just maybe not the first week. I'd even consider seeing the 3D versions in the theater (IMAX possibly).
Maybe if my daughter likes them in a few years. But not for me anymore. Not until Lucas has returned to dust.
I'm hard pressed to see them doing this. They've sold their PC business to Lenovo. Why would Lenovo care about trusted computing? Isn't China pretty much against MS operating systems? Don't they officially use a home-grown version of Linux?
Another reason I'm glad I use Macs, really. Let's hope Linus's PowerMac really does drive Linux on PPC as much as we all hope it will. Then, let's hope IBM starts pushing PPC based systems more than the Xeon powered servers I always see advertised.
On the basis of this, shouldn't DC be suing Pixar? I mean, "Elastigirl" is basically "Plastic Man" with breasts (and Plastic Man could have breasts anyway, he's plastic!). They have some of the same letters ("lasti"), and sound superfically similar. Plus, evil Pixar even flaunted it by putting Elastigirl in a red outfit! I mean really.
Gazerbeam? Total rip-off of Cyclops (Marvel again).
The point is, in most cases, the super-hero genre is a string of characters with similar abilities all with slightly different names or secondary powers. There's going to be a lot of overlap. Marvel would have to prove that NCSoft set out to promote said infringement. That's not the case. NCSoft is more like Xerox (or, say, a beat-up old Canon multifuction ink jet printer/copier/fax): you can make "infringing" copies, but (a) that's not the intent and (b) the copies all kinda suck anyway.
I'm willing to deactivate a stealth bomber. Not all of them. Just one of them. The one Clinton added, in fact (which was the prototype). We have 21 of them. Let's make it a nice round 20 again, scrap the other one for parts, and pump the maintenance money for the 21st bomber into the V-Ger program.
It's win-win-win: the Bush White House gets to point to Clinton excesses and how they're fixing them, the liberals get to point to a reduction in military spending, and the scientists get to keep one of the most cost effective experiments (per capita) ever running smoothly.
Correct me if I am wrong, but that's for the libraries (java.lang, java.util, etc.) and not for the actual VM code. I've seen the source code for, say, java.lang.String, but never for the VM. Which is not to say I'm right, just that I may have a large gap in my knowledge. Please fill it. I'd love it if there was an OSS JVM.
I agree that skimping on accessories is a problem. But, to be frank, I have a drawer full of USB and FireWire cables of all shapes and lengths. I can't remember when the last time I had to buy a cable was. I just open the drawer, and grab a cable.
I'm probably not typical though. I started collecting these cables a while back, since I've been all Mac at home since '96 (pre-iMac). I hated the hockey puck mouse, but I still have one in my drawer of mystery. Heck, I know it works, it's a good tester for USB ports.
I would suggest that any true Mac fanatic probably has a similar drawer. So, really, they're probably not pissing off most Mac fanatics (there's less than 200 signatures on that petiton), and on the Windows side, it's hit or miss whether a home Wintel box will have FireWire anyway. I don't know anyone with an iPod that uses the dock on a regular basis, as it's not as easy to throw in a bag as a simple cable. Lop off $50 bucks by not including stuff that isn't regularly used. Apple isn't stupid. If they stopped including it, it's because they found out it's not being used. Mac Mini is an extreme case, but, well, I'm not hearing a lot of complaints about the lack of components that are absolutely needed to make the computer useable to most people either.
I might not be a typical movie rental customer, but here's why NetFlix has nothing to fear from the other guys (i.e. me going to a competitor):
Blockbuster: sorry guys, you screwed me on late fees once too often. Did I return anything late? No. Did you let my ex-wife rent with a card I told you to cancel, and then she returned them late, and I had to pay the fees? Yup. Twice! Screw you.
Wal-Mart: do I even have to say anything? I'll never give Wal-Mart another dime. IKEA, Target, sometimes, but mostly I go to Ace Hardware, M&P music stores (like the lovely Zia Records in the Phoenix area), and generally give my money to companies that are better community players. Scottsdale told you to stuff it. They're right. Screw you, too.
Amazon: well, I have nothing critical to say against you from a consumer stand point. You've got a lot of good stuff, and never screwed me over as a customer. But I'm still ticked about the one-click patent, and in this market, you're a me-too-ist, so given the choice, I'm sticking with the original.
Notice that price isn't really a factor for me, so maybe I'm not typical, as I said. NetFlix has a massive collection, with a good selection of esoteric stuff that Blockbuster didn't have when they came along. They do what they say they do, and do it well.
Well, they do explain their own metrics. From the first page, now lost to a/.'ing (and evidently, a Farking as well):
It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't.
So, while transistors and vacuum tubes are indeed cool (the radio in my '48 Studebaker uses vacuum tubes), they aren't considered gadgets.
If you've ever seen James Burke's Connections series, you'd probably include some of the interesting screw-based inventions that allowed for the high precision of gadget 59. But in themselves, they're not gadgets as defined by the contest rules.
While this somewhat true of working with any corporation with their own interests, Sun actually publishes a blessed and compatible JVM for Linux that is kept on par with the Windows and Solaris versions. Apple's version is written in cooperation with Sun, and IBM's, well, I don't know all the details there, but I expect there's an agreement in place. In any case, I've rarely had an issue running Swing GUI based Java apps across multiple platforms.
On the other hand, if you consider Mono not as a.NET framework, but as a stand-alone environment for which.NET compatibility is merely an interesting side effect, then the whole point becomes moot. If interoperability isn't an issue for MS or Mono, then Java is back to standing on the other side of the street as an interoperable language, designed as such, with the clearly stated goal of cross-platform compatibility. There is some evidence that this is the attitude of the Mono developers. So, comparing Mono to Java becomes more academic. Yes, C# is different, maybe faster, maybe better. But it isn't cross-platform, and that's what I'm looking for. Is Java cross-platform? For a given value of "cross-platform," yes. Is Mono? Not even close to the same value.
On the Java side, yes, we don't know what Sun is building in to the JVMs, and OSS JVMs aren't available (though I hear rumors from time to time of a truly OSS JVM), but Java is supported by more than just Sun. IBM has a huge investment in Java technologies, as do Apple and Oracle, to name a couple. Support for different platforms is a well-known goal of Java technology. Until I can build the bytecode on my Mac and run it directly on a Linux, or Windows, or Solaris, or whatever, without recoding, recompiling, and so on, I'll be sticking with Java.
So, in summary, two points: (a) with Java, you're not as much at the mercy of Sun as you are if you think Mono and.NET will remain interoperable and (b) if Mono isn't actively trying to maintain interoperability with.NET, then you're not living under the mercy of MS anyway.
To almost-quote Dennis Miller, about someone who committed suicide after listening to a song by Judas Priest: "If your kid is going to be influenced by anything a rock song has to say, something was going to get him eventually. A low flying helicopter, a deliquent tax return, something. You can't save everybody. Just try not to be living next to them when they go off. I have that embroidered on a throw pillow in my heavily-fortified rumpus room."
Which is pretty callous, I know. But let's keep in mind that the game was a factor, nothing more. The mental state was probably already there, dormant, and waiting for a trigger. 15 years ago, it'd probably have been Judas Priest. Then it was Marilyn Manson. Now it's MMORPGs. And yeah, maybe, later in life, it might have been a tax return. I know they make me depressed. I think this is an overblown case of blaming the messenger.
Microsoft doesn't appear to be able (or remember how) to do anything that doesn't involve ramming something down someone's throat, so, really, the question is moot. With Microsoft, it's not a matter of opt-in, or opt-out. You can't easily (some would say ever) opt-out of IE on your Windows computer. Can you opt-out of ActiveX controls? Until the EU's case, you couldn't really opt-out of Media Player. By opt-out, I mean, I can get rid of it and still have a working, functional Windows system. Google doesn't have that kind of power. Frankly, neither should MS.
journalists who say 'someone told me x but I can't tell you who so you can have a way to verify my story' should be laughed out of town.
Tell that to Woodward and Bernstein.
I know, different case, different context. Just trying to point out there is some grey area here. Apple and the EFF are just trying to shine two different lights on it.
You know why the US even has as much as 7.3%? Because the new Battlestar Galactica airs in the UK first. Give it to us first, and that 7.3% . . . will just go back to the UK's portion, really, solving nothing.
I've read a lot of interesting solutions in this thread. Some might even be feasible. But like the music and movie industries, no one will try any of them until it's too late. Which it may be already.
Logitech makes a wireless controller for PS2 as well. I love it. If I'm playing while my daughter is running around (she likes to dance to Katamari Damacy), there's no cords for her to get tangled in. I suppose the same could be said for pets, etc. Plus, with a large 50" HDTV, it's nice to sit some distance away without the cables hanging around.
Runs on 2 AA batteries, and I can attest to the 50+ hours of life that they mention on the site. Plus with rechargeables (say, a couple pairs), you're in good shape, and the "power pack" is non-proprietary and user-serviceable.
While I agree that the unlimited use fees are getting a lot of people to experiment with newer technology, there is one major difference between your examples and the Napster model: as soon as you stop paying the fee, you no longer have access to the music(1). If you stopped paying the monthly fee for text messages and web access, you'd still have access to all your old text messages, most likely. And really, who's keeping old text messages. But people like to have access to music they bought 10 years ago. If I bought in to Napster's model, and downloaded a song today that I don't get tired of, if I wanted to hear it 10 years from now, I'd have to pay $15. I don't know about you, but 120 months at $15 a month(2) seems rather a high price to pay to listen to a song I liked back in 2005. Of course, I don't even buy $15 a month worth of music anyway, so I'm probably not a target for iTMS or Napster anyway (though I have been getting the iTMS track of the week for a while now). But, my music collection has a temporal breadth that I enjoy, and I'm not paying $15 a month for it. If I can burn all these tracks to CD, then Napster has a serious hole in their model that the record industry is bound to discover sooner or later and shut it down. And when they do, Napster (in their ToS) says tough luck, you can't listen to it any more, but thanks for the cash.
Never mind the fact that the service isn't Mac compatible.
(1) From the Napster website:
"*It is necessary to maintain a Napster subscription in order to continue access to songs downloaded through the Napster service."
(2) This assumes that I couldn't just stop my account and start it up later. Maybe you can.
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gasp hack choke gasp
I know.
If you had been sitting behind me when I typed it, you would have seen that I didn't even need Google to remember the quote, or who said it. The humor, which you seem to have missed, is that the processor for this tablet is called a Dothan. Since a D is only a few pixels from a B, it seemed funny to me (and at least three mods agreed) to replace Bothans with Dothans. Humor ensues. Or rather, in this case, a pun, or play on words, in which case groaning ensues.
I do hope I've managed to clarify the humor for you. Probably to the point where it's no longer funny.
Remember, he who laughs last, thinks slowest.
On a side note, the last company I worked for was a training company trying to go all Linux on the corporate desktops (they train Linux and Windows based apps, so some Windows would always remain). The one remaining obstacle was getting OOo to print page numbers as chapter-page, where the page numbers restart every chapter, so they could replace Word. Never got a chance to look that one up. I'm sure they've figured it out by now (it's been almost a year) and have moved to Linux on most corporate desktops. Unless the CEO and President (who is a Mac user) decided those Mac Minis were a better way to go (he might have).
Many Dothans died to bring us this information.
I just wanted to let everyone know that I am starting an experiment to examine the effects of a placebo. What will happen is, you apply to be a subject in my experiment on the placebo effect. I will administer to you a placebo pill, clearly labelled as a placebo, and you then tell me if my placebo helped your vision to improve, thus showing clearly that the placebo effect is real.
Come, join my placebo effect experiment!
Oh . . . wait . . . right.
I had the scan and pan tapes. The widescreen tapes in the ubercool box still grace my video collection (mostly DVD now). I even shelled out for the Special Edition widescreen tapes (though I question why now - Son of Special Edition DVDs . . . *sigh*). I saw Phantom Menace thrice in the first week. Clones got one trip to the theater, haven't seen it since. Sith will get a trip to the theater as well. Just maybe not the first week. I'd even consider seeing the 3D versions in the theater (IMAX possibly).
Maybe if my daughter likes them in a few years. But not for me anymore. Not until Lucas has returned to dust.
Another reason I'm glad I use Macs, really. Let's hope Linus's PowerMac really does drive Linux on PPC as much as we all hope it will. Then, let's hope IBM starts pushing PPC based systems more than the Xeon powered servers I always see advertised.
Rasmussen went on to say, "Securifying the environment embiggens us all."
Gazerbeam? Total rip-off of Cyclops (Marvel again).
The point is, in most cases, the super-hero genre is a string of characters with similar abilities all with slightly different names or secondary powers. There's going to be a lot of overlap. Marvel would have to prove that NCSoft set out to promote said infringement. That's not the case. NCSoft is more like Xerox (or, say, a beat-up old Canon multifuction ink jet printer/copier/fax): you can make "infringing" copies, but (a) that's not the intent and (b) the copies all kinda suck anyway.
It's win-win-win: the Bush White House gets to point to Clinton excesses and how they're fixing them, the liberals get to point to a reduction in military spending, and the scientists get to keep one of the most cost effective experiments (per capita) ever running smoothly.
Correct me if I am wrong, but that's for the libraries (java.lang, java.util, etc.) and not for the actual VM code. I've seen the source code for, say, java.lang.String, but never for the VM. Which is not to say I'm right, just that I may have a large gap in my knowledge. Please fill it. I'd love it if there was an OSS JVM.
I'm probably not typical though. I started collecting these cables a while back, since I've been all Mac at home since '96 (pre-iMac). I hated the hockey puck mouse, but I still have one in my drawer of mystery. Heck, I know it works, it's a good tester for USB ports.
I would suggest that any true Mac fanatic probably has a similar drawer. So, really, they're probably not pissing off most Mac fanatics (there's less than 200 signatures on that petiton), and on the Windows side, it's hit or miss whether a home Wintel box will have FireWire anyway. I don't know anyone with an iPod that uses the dock on a regular basis, as it's not as easy to throw in a bag as a simple cable. Lop off $50 bucks by not including stuff that isn't regularly used. Apple isn't stupid. If they stopped including it, it's because they found out it's not being used. Mac Mini is an extreme case, but, well, I'm not hearing a lot of complaints about the lack of components that are absolutely needed to make the computer useable to most people either.
Java Applet exploits in the wild?
Tell me those two numbers and then we can talk about which is scarier.
- Blockbuster: sorry guys, you screwed me on late fees once too often. Did I return anything late? No. Did you let my ex-wife rent with a card I told you to cancel, and then she returned them late, and I had to pay the fees? Yup. Twice! Screw you.
- Wal-Mart: do I even have to say anything? I'll never give Wal-Mart another dime. IKEA, Target, sometimes, but mostly I go to Ace Hardware, M&P music stores (like the lovely Zia Records in the Phoenix area), and generally give my money to companies that are better community players. Scottsdale told you to stuff it. They're right. Screw you, too.
- Amazon: well, I have nothing critical to say against you from a consumer stand point. You've got a lot of good stuff, and never screwed me over as a customer. But I'm still ticked about the one-click patent, and in this market, you're a me-too-ist, so given the choice, I'm sticking with the original.
Notice that price isn't really a factor for me, so maybe I'm not typical, as I said. NetFlix has a massive collection, with a good selection of esoteric stuff that Blockbuster didn't have when they came along. They do what they say they do, and do it well.It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't.
So, while transistors and vacuum tubes are indeed cool (the radio in my '48 Studebaker uses vacuum tubes), they aren't considered gadgets.
If you've ever seen James Burke's Connections series, you'd probably include some of the interesting screw-based inventions that allowed for the high precision of gadget 59. But in themselves, they're not gadgets as defined by the contest rules.
On the other hand, if you consider Mono not as a .NET framework, but as a stand-alone environment for which .NET compatibility is merely an interesting side effect, then the whole point becomes moot. If interoperability isn't an issue for MS or Mono, then Java is back to standing on the other side of the street as an interoperable language, designed as such, with the clearly stated goal of cross-platform compatibility. There is some evidence that this is the attitude of the Mono developers. So, comparing Mono to Java becomes more academic. Yes, C# is different, maybe faster, maybe better. But it isn't cross-platform, and that's what I'm looking for. Is Java cross-platform? For a given value of "cross-platform," yes. Is Mono? Not even close to the same value.
On the Java side, yes, we don't know what Sun is building in to the JVMs, and OSS JVMs aren't available (though I hear rumors from time to time of a truly OSS JVM), but Java is supported by more than just Sun. IBM has a huge investment in Java technologies, as do Apple and Oracle, to name a couple. Support for different platforms is a well-known goal of Java technology. Until I can build the bytecode on my Mac and run it directly on a Linux, or Windows, or Solaris, or whatever, without recoding, recompiling, and so on, I'll be sticking with Java.
So, in summary, two points: (a) with Java, you're not as much at the mercy of Sun as you are if you think Mono and .NET will remain interoperable and (b) if Mono isn't actively trying to maintain interoperability with .NET, then you're not living under the mercy of MS anyway.
Which is pretty callous, I know. But let's keep in mind that the game was a factor, nothing more. The mental state was probably already there, dormant, and waiting for a trigger. 15 years ago, it'd probably have been Judas Priest. Then it was Marilyn Manson. Now it's MMORPGs. And yeah, maybe, later in life, it might have been a tax return. I know they make me depressed. I think this is an overblown case of blaming the messenger.
Microsoft doesn't appear to be able (or remember how) to do anything that doesn't involve ramming something down someone's throat, so, really, the question is moot. With Microsoft, it's not a matter of opt-in, or opt-out. You can't easily (some would say ever) opt-out of IE on your Windows computer. Can you opt-out of ActiveX controls? Until the EU's case, you couldn't really opt-out of Media Player. By opt-out, I mean, I can get rid of it and still have a working, functional Windows system. Google doesn't have that kind of power. Frankly, neither should MS.
Tell that to Woodward and Bernstein.
I know, different case, different context. Just trying to point out there is some grey area here. Apple and the EFF are just trying to shine two different lights on it.
I've read a lot of interesting solutions in this thread. Some might even be feasible. But like the music and movie industries, no one will try any of them until it's too late. Which it may be already.
Runs on 2 AA batteries, and I can attest to the 50+ hours of life that they mention on the site. Plus with rechargeables (say, a couple pairs), you're in good shape, and the "power pack" is non-proprietary and user-serviceable.
September 1993
It's even funnier if you imagine the little Napster logo head on a robot body bellowing that in a poor imitation of Nixon as it busts through a wall.
Oh, like either of those is better: Hitler or Abba.
Never mind the fact that the service isn't Mac compatible.
(1) From the Napster website: "*It is necessary to maintain a Napster subscription in order to continue access to songs downloaded through the Napster service."
(2) This assumes that I couldn't just stop my account and start it up later. Maybe you can.