The success of open source is that it is easy for the masses to get access to the "products". This would not be the case with an open source hardware project.
Unfortuantely, I suspect this will not be successful.
You may have read about them on Slashdot in February as they successfully made it to the South Pole. After that they recuperated for two weeks and have been skiing towards the North Pole for over two months
Hey moron, give me more credit than that. Then again, since you posted as A.C., maybe you have an excuse.
"Text mode" (whether or not it's DOS mode or UNIX mode) means just pure text, no fancy formatting crap that makes a normal "memo" 10 times it's needed size.
That's all you need for most of the "documents" I receive and send.
Star Office and OOo are bloatware. So is M$ Office for that matter.
Why do I need everything all combined into one massive tool?
Why do people complain when I email them a doc I type in emacs text mode?
I understand the need to create professional documents, but I would fathom a guess that 99% of what word-like apps are used for are the wrong things. An email "memo" doesn't need to be an attached word doc.
That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.
This whole office "suite" thing is one massive mistake on everyones part.
Make small, fast apps that do just what they are supposed to do. Sheesh...
"The free television that we've all enjoyed for so many years is based on us watching these commercials," said Jamie C. Kellner, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting...
Free? I don't know about Jamie, but I pay $80/month for my TV. I'm damn well going to watch what I want.
Verizon's Call Intercept rocks. For about $5 male deer a month, you can have all phone calls that do not transmit their number forwarded to a prompt that makes them say there name.
And, if it has the range that 802.11 is *supposed* to have, we'll all be happy. But, if it behaves like current wireless devices, I'll need two WAP's in every room of my house.
Imagine my disappointment after reading about 802.11 and getting a WAP and card for my Zaurus thinking that I could walk around my block with an instant messenger app running. As Topsy says, "Forget about it!" I couldn't walk to the other side of my house.
As I'm sure most of you already know, beware of claims of bandwidth and range...
Microsoft has a monopoly. You cannot beat that. Any switch at this time will cause you more grief than happiness (other than the satisfaction of getting M$ off your machines).
Your business guys will need M$. You administrators (not SA's!) will need M$. Your customers will need you to have M$. Etc.
You will loose (at least in the short term - which might be the long term, if you know what I mean) if you switch.
I have... I now run linux with vmware so I can get the required Lotus Bloats spam messages my company sends out.
This is the common misconception with upgrades. Yeah, 133 is faster than 100 but by how much in terms of percentage gain? Not very noticible, as is shown in the article.
People always *have* to have the fastest. Me? Two generations behind the latest is still really fast for 99% of what I do (heck, Unreal Tournament on a PII450 with an older 3d card rocks!).
Even if you saw a 50% increase in speed, how much would it affect your day-to-day operations? And... we're not even clost to that number here.
Look, the bottom line is that of course it's modular and of course Microsoft has put connections to try to bind things together (in, many times, a really poor hack as I pointed out in a previous comment).
The legal tactic the Gov is using is smart (for a change). They are pulling a "Microsoft" - say they are going to do it, so now people know it can be done, and then not doing it because it wastes time.
It's more like, if we hack it together so badly, it will be really secure because people won't be able to understand it.
That is why the "Print" pop-up menu button in the windows explorer actually has to launch MS Word (and take over your full screen and control of your desktop - but don't hit a key or it will mess up!) rather than doing it non-graphically in the background, right?
It seems that Galeon (mozilla), the old netscape, Opera, etc. all have problems interfacing with "the outside world", i.e. the monitor and the printer.
It took me forever to configure my RH7.2 box to display fonts in Galeon so I could read them. Opera still doesn't work right.
And printing is another headache - either it's cutting stuff off or setting the wrong zoom level, etc.
What needs to be done here is a better way to interface with the windowing system and the printer subsystem (isn't postscript pretty well understood these days?).
We're so close to having these things kick butt on IE...
I love what SO et al. stand for. However, without the official recognition that Microsoft IS a monopoly, SO and the rest will never make it to the prime time. MS's closed source file formats that change from version to version kill any chances that these other products will ever be successful. Too bad. A lot of work has been put into this...
After thinking many times about teaching my grandparents and my wife's father how to use it, I realized that dispite their lack of an understanding in much of the stuff we take for granted (like the connection of pressing the button on the mouse making a selection on the screen), they had physical limitations as well.
None of them could easily type on the keyboard due to lack of motorcontrol (from old age and arthritis). Kind of put a damper on the whole thing and I wound up not doing it.
/greg
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried integrating any interesting technology onto your bikes?
Like remapping fuel curves, electronic gizmos, heads-up GPS displays, augmented reality, etc.
The success of open source is that it is easy for the masses to get access to the "products". This would not be the case with an open source hardware project.
Unfortuantely, I suspect this will not be successful.
Cool! Given the range of WiFi in my house, we will now have antenna towers every 50 feet rather than every quarter mile.
Hey, the tops of those telephone poles aren't being used - maybe we could use those. Go Global Irradiation!!
I bet they have some problems skiing in Peru...
Not really.
I've got emacs running on my Zaurus with 32mb of memory. I'd like to see SO do that.
The point is that while emacs is configurable (take what you want), these "suites" are basically not.
Hey moron, give me more credit than that. Then again, since you posted as A.C., maybe you have an excuse.
"Text mode" (whether or not it's DOS mode or UNIX mode) means just pure text, no fancy formatting crap that makes a normal "memo" 10 times it's needed size.
That's all you need for most of the "documents" I receive and send.
Then create a common API so *different* apps can communicate.
Suites suck. They are too big. Small apps is the way to go.
Star Office and OOo are bloatware. So is M$ Office for that matter.
Why do I need everything all combined into one massive tool?
Why do people complain when I email them a doc I type in emacs text mode?
I understand the need to create professional documents, but I would fathom a guess that 99% of what word-like apps are used for are the wrong things. An email "memo" doesn't need to be an attached word doc.
That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.
This whole office "suite" thing is one massive mistake on everyones part.
Make small, fast apps that do just what they are supposed to do. Sheesh...
</rant>
"The free television that we've all enjoyed for so many years is based on us watching these commercials," said Jamie C. Kellner, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting...
Free? I don't know about Jamie, but I pay $80/month for my TV. I'm damn well going to watch what I want.
TiVo rules...
RMS was the right person at the right time. It's just not that time right now...
:-) )
He helped a lot when there was no one else. Not everyone is good at everything and they should know when to step aside or at least tread lightly.
But "fucking ass" he is not... (except when he sings!
Verizon's Call Intercept rocks. For about $5 male deer a month, you can have all phone calls that do not transmit their number forwarded to a prompt that makes them say there name.
I have had ZERO telemarketers. End of story.
It's worth every penny.
And, if it has the range that 802.11 is *supposed* to have, we'll all be happy. But, if it behaves like current wireless devices, I'll need two WAP's in every room of my house.
Imagine my disappointment after reading about 802.11 and getting a WAP and card for my Zaurus thinking that I could walk around my block with an instant messenger app running. As Topsy says, "Forget about it!" I couldn't walk to the other side of my house.
As I'm sure most of you already know, beware of claims of bandwidth and range...
Microsoft has a monopoly. You cannot beat that. Any switch at this time will cause you more grief than happiness (other than the satisfaction of getting M$ off your machines).
Your business guys will need M$. You administrators (not SA's!) will need M$. Your customers will need you to have M$. Etc.
You will loose (at least in the short term - which might be the long term, if you know what I mean) if you switch.
I have... I now run linux with vmware so I can get the required Lotus Bloats spam messages my company sends out.
This is the common misconception with upgrades. Yeah, 133 is faster than 100 but by how much in terms of percentage gain? Not very noticible, as is shown in the article.
People always *have* to have the fastest. Me? Two generations behind the latest is still really fast for 99% of what I do (heck, Unreal Tournament on a PII450 with an older 3d card rocks!).
Even if you saw a 50% increase in speed, how much would it affect your day-to-day operations? And... we're not even clost to that number here.
Look, the bottom line is that of course it's modular and of course Microsoft has put connections to try to bind things together (in, many times, a really poor hack as I pointed out in a previous comment).
:-) )
The legal tactic the Gov is using is smart (for a change). They are pulling a "Microsoft" - say they are going to do it, so now people know it can be done, and then not doing it because it wastes time.
Go Gov! (in this case
It's more like, if we hack it together so badly, it will be really secure because people won't be able to understand it.
That is why the "Print" pop-up menu button in the windows explorer actually has to launch MS Word (and take over your full screen and control of your desktop - but don't hit a key or it will mess up!) rather than doing it non-graphically in the background, right?
I'm not positive, but I believe even if it is unregulated as to its use, the amount of power that a tranmitter can emit *is* regulated by the FCC.
Can someone back me up on this?
Yes, this is true, BUT...
.xyz file...
Why should I have to? And this is the quintessential problem with most OSS development going on these days:
Yes, OSS rules the world and will defeat Microsoft!!! Oh, but you have to add this and that to your
We ain't gonna "win" that way...
It seems that Galeon (mozilla), the old netscape, Opera, etc. all have problems interfacing with "the outside world", i.e. the monitor and the printer.
It took me forever to configure my RH7.2 box to display fonts in Galeon so I could read them. Opera still doesn't work right.
And printing is another headache - either it's cutting stuff off or setting the wrong zoom level, etc.
What needs to be done here is a better way to interface with the windowing system and the printer subsystem (isn't postscript pretty well understood these days?).
We're so close to having these things kick butt on IE...
"Hey! You can't eat on the table! That's the *periodic* table!"
- Quote from Dr. Strangetable
No need for tag team. Either having Jamie scaring everone with a new hairdoo and RMS scaring everyone with his singing would be enough. :-)
/greg
I love what SO et al. stand for. However, without the official recognition that Microsoft IS a monopoly, SO and the rest will never make it to the prime time. MS's closed source file formats that change from version to version kill any chances that these other products will ever be successful. Too bad. A lot of work has been put into this...
/greg
After thinking many times about teaching my grandparents and my wife's father how to use it, I realized that dispite their lack of an understanding in much of the stuff we take for granted (like the connection of pressing the button on the mouse making a selection on the screen), they had physical limitations as well.
/greg
None of them could easily type on the keyboard due to lack of motorcontrol (from old age and arthritis). Kind of put a damper on the whole thing and I wound up not doing it.