I too tried to buy a new ATI card, but after a little 5830 64-bit ubuntu driver fiasco I gave up and went with nVidia. It's really sad when open driver is slow, and proprietary is buggy to the point of being not worth the time to install, and explanations going around the lines of "well, 3D graphics is much faster, but 2D kinda suffers". While nVidia drivers are closed, so far I was more lucky with them under linux, and they pretty much 'just work'.
And performance was a bit sketchy too. But most of all, it didn't have a clear 30-seconds or less explanation on what exactly it should be used to, and be better at it than email/IM. So, wow factor was there, but users got bored, and went back to the regular bulletin boards. Where it's not that important to see that someone is typing right now, everything is more or less static and easy to understand.
I suppose online support could use it to communicate with customers, but then it'd need some heavy tweaking...
In addition to marketoids demanding that you use Blur, there's a bigger problem. Once the device is marked as End of Life (and original Droid already is, right? Been less than a year) I kinda doubt that Motorola will dedicate any resources to bolding Blur onto newer revisions of Android. Which means users will be stuck in a certain version. Even though new ones could theoretically be used, as hardware is powerful enough (or it could be stripped down by geniuses from XDA Dev:) ) At least they need to disable eFuse on "no longer supported" devices. Otherwise, just another example of planned obsolescence (and even worse than iPhone).
These rumors have been around for how many years now? I bet Apple will just wait another year or so and then LTE-capable iPhone model will be born (iPhone 5 anyone?) which, OMG, really finally _will_ be Verizon capable. Sprint will be out of luck for a while due to different provisioning and absence of clear LTE rollout plans (WiMax is pretty much out of luck, and even Clear was saying something like "Well, we can switch to LTE if we really want to", so no iPhone support for WiMax)
I think sites like Drudge Report are not the enemy (perceived or real) of traditional news sites. Specifically, because they just put links. Drudge links directly to the media site with barely a sentence from the story. Google News goes a bit further, by providing a small snippet. The real problem would be many other smaller/different sites that reprint the story whole and then get listed in Drudge/Goole News. For that to be avoided, News Corp needs to be as open to search engines and other true aggregators, as possible. So their breaking news story would be listed first, got all the hits it deserved, and all ad revenue they can earn.
With a pay+search walls in place, chances are Drudge won't link to them any more, but same stories will still circle the web. Which probably means next step will be a fountain of lawsuits against smaller news sources, draconian limits in reprint license (you can't have page with reprint indexed by Google or something) and raising prices for news feeds.
Given that most of the "sell now" were automatically triggered, it just looks like someone massively shorted an index. Or there is a spill-over somewhere, with one automated system detecting severe drop in dow component, and executing a rule that says "when physical stuff goes to hell, dump all virtual/electronics". So you automatically have a sell-off in Google, which triggers Microsoft, Apple, Adobe (or something similar, with other rules saying "if one index component goes down more than 5%, take action against index")
But for everyone else, it'd be difficult - "If your Google High Speed Home Connection is down, please email us and we will get back to you in 2 to 5 business days"?:)
Seriously, this probably would work out better for small compact communities with lots of users. Except I bet those are either in exclusive contracts already (apartment complexes, universities that provide their own network, etc), or are too far from nearby Google node with no easy way to plug them in. Getting permit to run a new fiber to individual home is very expensive. So for homeowners with existing homes (versus communities being built out) this is also probably not realistic. Perhaps this could be expanded later with small local wireless segments, but again, given how "interactive" google's support is, this won't work for regular users.
Interesting experiment, not holding my breath though *sigh*
If something like that will happen, I can imagine neighborhood teenagers suspiciously lounging about near your place. Because their newest cell phones will be recharged for free:) Of course you can lock down "over the air" emissions by shielding that room... but it means your cell, while charging, won't be able to receive/place calls. Which would require a femtocell inside that charging room, which makes it all even more expensive.
So... please pull your gadgets out of the pocket and put them on the mat for now. Thanks:)
I think the best outcome would be to have just augmented reality glasses (like in DennÅ Coil (éèãããf)) that can show you content, let you make a phone call with gesture, and keeps all the data in the cloud. Convenient, easy to use, fun:) Though I have to admit, some gestures for placing calls could look somewhat dorky. But then, so can be the sight of someone pecking at the virtual keyboard to type a long message...
Yes, I know you're not supposed to pick on plot holes in "sci-fi" movies, but still... - Why there wasn't any kind of military picket around the ship? You mean everyone got bored and then just let a few hundred tons of alien ship and technologies float around? Really? Without it being picked clean on "spare parts" by locals/guests/people who always wanted to have an alien souvenir?:) - Aliens are selling weapons? But they don't use them. Because they are "workers"? But they have this huge stockpiles of those weapons. But humans can't use weapons either, but they do buy them. Eh? Or is this the souvenir part?:) - When someone mutates, isn't it better to kinda isolate the subject and see where it leads instead of just immediately do the autopsy, that will show that subject died due to an autopsy? Or this is the side effect of scientists getting disinterested in alien technologies in 20 years?
Then I suppose we should be expecting a new virus/botnet to be built soon. So that they can hack the key to the old botnet:) And if they attach pretty screensaver showing computations in real time, users probably will sign up voluntarily
Weren't they the guys who claimed users will gladly flock to the Most Standard Compliant Browser Ever? (*cough* them *cough*)
I think after some time with the ballot and still no noticeable market share growth (and by noticeable I mean really noticeable, like 3-5% in absolute numbers) they will have to rethink this whole "standards make the world go round" mantra.
Yes, they are technically correct, it's wonderful to have NEW sites to be standard compliant. It's usually not economically feasible to re-do everything if it's already there, supports IE/Firefox but doesn't work with Opera. No, other than developers and some beurocrats, regular users don't care if site is standard compliant. They care that it "works" or doesn't work in the browser. And even if they select Opera on the ballot, after a few failed "web experiences" they probably either switch to Firefox, or back to IE. Which is fine with me. One less set of quirks to support.
But Opera will probably sue Microsoft because of not getting more users anyways:)
As for vector graphics, I don't think it matters if browser supports it natively, or if it evolves into Flash situation, where most browsers don't do it themselves, but everyone installs it as soon as they hit YouTube or other flash based site.
And get on a smaller horse, by making itself by default behave _exactly_ like Firefox (or IE) regarding those "non-standard-compliant-enough" sites. Add "I want to browse Opera style" for those who prefers principles over ability to view most sites normally:)
Once it gains, say, 10% of the marketplace across most high-traffic sites, developers will bother to try to make their sites compatible with Opera too.
Otherwise it's like making a car that is great, user friendly, but can only drive on fully standard-compliant roads, causing horrible clunking and unpredictable turns and jumps on not-so-compliant roads (that won't be re-paved because other cars don't have many issues). Good for principles, bad for market share.
Don't forget that CDMA network is not free. So, add to price of components one or two years of pre-paid data access. Which is probably cheap, but not free.
Actually, in Texas highways have two different speed limit. One is for night-time driving and is 5 MPH lower. They are placed on the same pole -- "normal" would say 70 and "inverse" one below 65.
I wonder how much they have to pay for external bandwidth. I always thought that "super data centers" are used to help split the job between multiple special effects studios, so, say, group in London can work on part of the shot and still have all data in the same place. Except in New Zealand there are no "unlimited" plans, and there are severe bandwidth caps in place.
You certainly remember that "Russian attack" on Estonia turned out to be not related to Russian government at all, right? So, I agree. Just like with Estonia here we probably have other things happening -- overloaded lines, servers crashing under the load, and so on. By default in large enough country there will be enough people who will do something bad out of "patriotism". Blaming "big bad government" for something like that is a good way to play up victim status ("we didn't do anything (except, probably, started a war because we wanted to re-take the breakaway area) and this evil Russia sacked hackers on our servers! Oh horrors!") with no real way to disprove it. Only after all of the simpliest explanations are ruled out I will believe in something a conspiracy nut would propose:)
Could skip all this "build your own" stuff (ok, read it thoroughly) and buy one of those chinese-made SIM card duplicators for about 20 bucks. Or a USB reader for even less. Because, you know, you don't always have to build stuff:)
If somebody so high up in the Cancer Center quotes non-existing non-peer-reviewed (and generally biased) unpublished research in justifying "cellphones will give you cancer" announcements, what can you expect from the rest of the Center? Better go elsewhere. Like Houston...
I know it's all computationally intensive and impressive in that aspect, but pictures in the article don't really look much better than your average videogame. Same triangular shapes, ugly, clearly "rendered" landscapes.
I wonder if anyone tried to do hardware acceleration with, say, splines or something other than triangles.
All they have to do is plaster local market with "We're REALLY unlimited" and "Cable sells you 6 hours of internet + more charges" or "Have you checked your internet usage meter?" With that all new subscribers will pretty much be scared away from cable. Because the last thing a newbie wants to do is do something wrong on the computer and get "a bill for $100 bucks extra". And it's true. Leave your TV Viewing app on, and you're screwed.
p.s. TW is already claiming that "limits are easy to change", of course with them limits will only be going down. For economical reasons...
It seems to be like those genie stories -- if you don't spell out your wish in such minute details as to make "misunderstanding" impossible, you won't get what you want. So Google forced FCC to spell out its wish but didn't provide enough details. Frankly it's understandable -- if device that Verizon sells under its own brand can't do email from the beginning and is not available as a "standalone" product from phone manufacturer, you can't accuse Verizon of disabling the feature (not without defining a superset of all features that have to be available on all phones by default). Thus "any application" rule automatically does not apply. It's the same as demanding Nokia to include in all its handsets special software for google mail (versus some limited pop3/imap reader).
After that, Verizon is also free to charge different rates based on if user has Verizon device or not. Buying device + plan = "discount". Buying third party "open" device + plan = quadrupled bill with less features. Rules didn't state that certain features have to be available on all plans for the same price, did they? The [incredibly overpriced] choice will be there.
In the end, Google either had to make FCC to spell out more restrictions, or throw a heap of cash at the auction to actually win it, then spend years learning and building its own network. For now, bad genie may win.
The biggest question is what level of support this comes with. I have my doubts over a number of third party companies that can fix your Domino server if something within its database goes screwy. If you have to pay for support, then it's a bad deal (just compare the number of Exchange specialist/providers to a number of Domino specialists that are not inside of IBM)
While they certainly don't want to disclose anything, they will probably be forced to disclose it to defense, so claims can be validated and/or rebutted properly. Otherwise it's the same claim as SCO -- "I have tons of evidence you did very bad thing, but I won't show it to anyone, not even a judge"
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I too tried to buy a new ATI card, but after a little 5830 64-bit ubuntu driver fiasco I gave up and went with nVidia.
It's really sad when open driver is slow, and proprietary is buggy to the point of being not worth the time to install, and explanations going around the lines of "well, 3D graphics is much faster, but 2D kinda suffers".
While nVidia drivers are closed, so far I was more lucky with them under linux, and they pretty much 'just work'.
And performance was a bit sketchy too. But most of all, it didn't have a clear 30-seconds or less explanation on what exactly it should be used to, and be better at it than email/IM.
So, wow factor was there, but users got bored, and went back to the regular bulletin boards. Where it's not that important to see that someone is typing right now, everything is more or less static and easy to understand.
I suppose online support could use it to communicate with customers, but then it'd need some heavy tweaking...
In addition to marketoids demanding that you use Blur, there's a bigger problem. Once the device is marked as End of Life (and original Droid already is, right? Been less than a year) I kinda doubt that Motorola will dedicate any resources to bolding Blur onto newer revisions of Android. :) )
Which means users will be stuck in a certain version. Even though new ones could theoretically be used, as hardware is powerful enough (or it could be stripped down by geniuses from XDA Dev
At least they need to disable eFuse on "no longer supported" devices. Otherwise, just another example of planned obsolescence (and even worse than iPhone).
These rumors have been around for how many years now? I bet Apple will just wait another year or so and then LTE-capable iPhone model will be born (iPhone 5 anyone?) which, OMG, really finally _will_ be Verizon capable.
Sprint will be out of luck for a while due to different provisioning and absence of clear LTE rollout plans (WiMax is pretty much out of luck, and even Clear was saying something like "Well, we can switch to LTE if we really want to", so no iPhone support for WiMax)
I think sites like Drudge Report are not the enemy (perceived or real) of traditional news sites. Specifically, because they just put links. Drudge links directly to the media site with barely a sentence from the story.
Google News goes a bit further, by providing a small snippet.
The real problem would be many other smaller/different sites that reprint the story whole and then get listed in Drudge/Goole News. For that to be avoided, News Corp needs to be as open to search engines and other true aggregators, as possible. So their breaking news story would be listed first, got all the hits it deserved, and all ad revenue they can earn.
With a pay+search walls in place, chances are Drudge won't link to them any more, but same stories will still circle the web. Which probably means next step will be a fountain of lawsuits against smaller news sources, draconian limits in reprint license (you can't have page with reprint indexed by Google or something) and raising prices for news feeds.
Oh well.
Given that most of the "sell now" were automatically triggered, it just looks like someone massively shorted an index.
Or there is a spill-over somewhere, with one automated system detecting severe drop in dow component, and executing a rule that says "when physical stuff goes to hell, dump all virtual/electronics". So you automatically have a sell-off in Google, which triggers Microsoft, Apple, Adobe (or something similar, with other rules saying "if one index component goes down more than 5%, take action against index")
But for everyone else, it'd be difficult - "If your Google High Speed Home Connection is down, please email us and we will get back to you in 2 to 5 business days"? :)
Seriously, this probably would work out better for small compact communities with lots of users. Except I bet those are either in exclusive contracts already (apartment complexes, universities that provide their own network, etc), or are too far from nearby Google node with no easy way to plug them in.
Getting permit to run a new fiber to individual home is very expensive. So for homeowners with existing homes (versus communities being built out) this is also probably not realistic.
Perhaps this could be expanded later with small local wireless segments, but again, given how "interactive" google's support is, this won't work for regular users.
Interesting experiment, not holding my breath though *sigh*
If something like that will happen, I can imagine neighborhood teenagers suspiciously lounging about near your place. Because their newest cell phones will be recharged for free :)
Of course you can lock down "over the air" emissions by shielding that room... but it means your cell, while charging, won't be able to receive/place calls. Which would require a femtocell inside that charging room, which makes it all even more expensive.
So... please pull your gadgets out of the pocket and put them on the mat for now. :)
Thanks
I think the best outcome would be to have just augmented reality glasses (like in DennÅ Coil (éèãããf)) that can show you content, let you make a phone call with gesture, and keeps all the data in the cloud. :)
Convenient, easy to use, fun
Though I have to admit, some gestures for placing calls could look somewhat dorky. But then, so can be the sight of someone pecking at the virtual keyboard to type a long message...
Yes, I know you're not supposed to pick on plot holes in "sci-fi" movies, but still... :) :)
- Why there wasn't any kind of military picket around the ship? You mean everyone got bored and then just let a few hundred tons of alien ship and technologies float around? Really? Without it being picked clean on "spare parts" by locals/guests/people who always wanted to have an alien souvenir?
- Aliens are selling weapons? But they don't use them. Because they are "workers"? But they have this huge stockpiles of those weapons. But humans can't use weapons either, but they do buy them. Eh? Or is this the souvenir part?
- When someone mutates, isn't it better to kinda isolate the subject and see where it leads instead of just immediately do the autopsy, that will show that subject died due to an autopsy? Or this is the side effect of scientists getting disinterested in alien technologies in 20 years?
*sigh*
Except machines will be using humans for ... well... you know which way to make electricity.
In-pod plumbing... it's gonna be big!
Then I suppose we should be expecting a new virus/botnet to be built soon. So that they can hack the key to the old botnet :)
And if they attach pretty screensaver showing computations in real time, users probably will sign up voluntarily
Weren't they the guys who claimed users will gladly flock to the Most Standard Compliant Browser Ever? (*cough* them *cough*)
I think after some time with the ballot and still no noticeable market share growth (and by noticeable I mean really noticeable, like 3-5% in absolute numbers) they will have to rethink this whole "standards make the world go round" mantra.
Yes, they are technically correct, it's wonderful to have NEW sites to be standard compliant. It's usually not economically feasible to re-do everything if it's already there, supports IE/Firefox but doesn't work with Opera.
No, other than developers and some beurocrats, regular users don't care if site is standard compliant. They care that it "works" or doesn't work in the browser. And even if they select Opera on the ballot, after a few failed "web experiences" they probably either switch to Firefox, or back to IE. Which is fine with me.
One less set of quirks to support.
But Opera will probably sue Microsoft because of not getting more users anyways :)
As for vector graphics, I don't think it matters if browser supports it natively, or if it evolves into Flash situation, where most browsers don't do it themselves, but everyone installs it as soon as they hit YouTube or other flash based site.
And get on a smaller horse, by making itself by default behave _exactly_ like Firefox (or IE) regarding those "non-standard-compliant-enough" sites. :)
Add "I want to browse Opera style" for those who prefers principles over ability to view most sites normally
Once it gains, say, 10% of the marketplace across most high-traffic sites, developers will bother to try to make their sites compatible with Opera too.
Otherwise it's like making a car that is great, user friendly, but can only drive on fully standard-compliant roads, causing horrible clunking and unpredictable turns and jumps on not-so-compliant roads (that won't be re-paved because other cars don't have many issues). Good for principles, bad for market share.
Don't forget that CDMA network is not free. So, add to price of components one or two years of pre-paid data access. Which is probably cheap, but not free.
Actually, in Texas highways have two different speed limit. One is for night-time driving and is 5 MPH lower. They are placed on the same pole -- "normal" would say 70 and "inverse" one below 65.
I wonder how much they have to pay for external bandwidth. I always thought that "super data centers" are used to help split the job between multiple special effects studios, so, say, group in London can work on part of the shot and still have all data in the same place.
Except in New Zealand there are no "unlimited" plans, and there are severe bandwidth caps in place.
You certainly remember that "Russian attack" on Estonia turned out to be not related to Russian government at all, right? :)
So, I agree. Just like with Estonia here we probably have other things happening -- overloaded lines, servers crashing under the load, and so on.
By default in large enough country there will be enough people who will do something bad out of "patriotism".
Blaming "big bad government" for something like that is a good way to play up victim status ("we didn't do anything (except, probably, started a war because we wanted to re-take the breakaway area) and this evil Russia sacked hackers on our servers! Oh horrors!") with no real way to disprove it.
Only after all of the simpliest explanations are ruled out I will believe in something a conspiracy nut would propose
Could skip all this "build your own" stuff (ok, read it thoroughly) and buy one of those chinese-made SIM card duplicators for about 20 bucks. Or a USB reader for even less. :)
Because, you know, you don't always have to build stuff
If somebody so high up in the Cancer Center quotes non-existing non-peer-reviewed (and generally biased) unpublished research in justifying "cellphones will give you cancer" announcements, what can you expect from the rest of the Center?
Better go elsewhere. Like Houston...
I know it's all computationally intensive and impressive in that aspect, but pictures in the article don't really look much better than your average videogame. Same triangular shapes, ugly, clearly "rendered" landscapes.
I wonder if anyone tried to do hardware acceleration with, say, splines or something other than triangles.
All they have to do is plaster local market with "We're REALLY unlimited" and "Cable sells you 6 hours of internet + more charges" or "Have you checked your internet usage meter?"
With that all new subscribers will pretty much be scared away from cable.
Because the last thing a newbie wants to do is do something wrong on the computer and get "a bill for $100 bucks extra". And it's true. Leave your TV Viewing app on, and you're screwed.
p.s. TW is already claiming that "limits are easy to change", of course with them limits will only be going down. For economical reasons...
It seems to be like those genie stories -- if you don't spell out your wish in such minute details as to make "misunderstanding" impossible, you won't get what you want. So Google forced FCC to spell out its wish but didn't provide enough details.
Frankly it's understandable -- if device that Verizon sells under its own brand can't do email from the beginning and is not available as a "standalone" product from phone manufacturer, you can't accuse Verizon of disabling the feature (not without defining a superset of all features that have to be available on all phones by default).
Thus "any application" rule automatically does not apply. It's the same as demanding Nokia to include in all its handsets special software for google mail (versus some limited pop3/imap reader).
After that, Verizon is also free to charge different rates based on if user has Verizon device or not. Buying device + plan = "discount". Buying third party "open" device + plan = quadrupled bill with less features.
Rules didn't state that certain features have to be available on all plans for the same price, did they? The [incredibly overpriced] choice will be there.
In the end, Google either had to make FCC to spell out more restrictions, or throw a heap of cash at the auction to actually win it, then spend years learning and building its own network. For now, bad genie may win.
The biggest question is what level of support this comes with. I have my doubts over a number of third party companies that can fix your Domino server if something within its database goes screwy. If you have to pay for support, then it's a bad deal (just compare the number of Exchange specialist/providers to a number of Domino specialists that are not inside of IBM)
While they certainly don't want to disclose anything, they will probably be forced to disclose it to defense, so claims can be validated and/or rebutted properly. Otherwise it's the same claim as SCO -- "I have tons of evidence you did very bad thing, but I won't show it to anyone, not even a judge"