It targets emergency rescue, security, healthcare, maintenance, logistics, and "many other" applications.
Many other==geeking which may be further qualified as: Listening to you MP3s, watching videos, playing games,
wandering around various cons talking to it and having it respond "by your command", "I can't do that, Dave", "danger, Will Robinson", or
actually trying to impress the heck out of that jerk executive with his Ferrari laptop that he's not such
hot stuff anymore. Alas,...
Availability
Eurotech describes the WWPC as a "user-centric, ubiquitous computing" concept, suggesting that the device is not yet available in product form. The company did not respond to availability enquires by publication time.
If I'm not mistaken, the guy who said this is CEO (or president or something) of News Corp (owns Fox and whatnot), so I think his word should be quite influential to the other broadcasting companies like Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting, Disney, etc.
Yeah, but remember, this guy made his fortune before the internet came along.
Remember Edison talking trash against Tesla? Calling Alternating Current the Devil's something-or-other? Edison was already a success, but felt certain Direct Current was the way to the future. Bugger all the great inventor know about resistance.
I'm not saying he's an idiot, I just think he's waxing enthusiastic on a technology he really doesn't understand, even after 6 or more years. Some companies do well in it and others founder.
I like the internet for instant news, but would I pay for it? No. There's too many free outlets.
Do I click on ads? Once in a while, but most of them are rubbish or things I have no interest in anyway. Perhaps better linking stories to advertising would serve them better. If I'm reading about death in a car bombing I don't think I'm going to be in a mood to look at the new Fords.
The biggest reason that newspapers have it so tough is that the delivery person keeps throwing my newspaper down the hallway. Not near my door, not even at my door, but down the hallway. On Sunday mornings, I find my paper at the bottom of the stairs after the ads been rifled through. Customer service is what needed to save the newspaper industry!
Must be past the end of the Paper Boy Era.
When I was in my late teens I inherited my older brother's paper route. It was somewhere about 65 customers. As this was my main source of income I took a particularly aggressive view towards growing and maintaining the route. In 3.3 years I had it up to 150+ customers, much to the annoyance of paper boys of neighbouring routes. My parents always sent me out with our paper, just in case I saw someone moving into a new house -- I'd introduce myself and give them the paper free and ask if I could sign them up. I was breaking my back, but I was also raking in some decent cash for a highschool kid. I made certain papers weren't left in wet or could be blown away or anything. When I retired and left for college the newspaper said it was too large a route for any one carrier and split it.
Now people drive past and chuck papers in the general vicinity of doors. I know what you mean.
Clearly, analog data distribution is dead. On the digital side, the importance lies in the method of distribution.
There are various methods for distribution and these methods are changing quite often.
Which is why traditional channels are still alive. Mostly because of the lack of a great unification of distribution standards. HTML is about as good as it gets, and there's a bit of variation there - javascript, XML, XHTML, DHTML, etc. If you want to be sure to reach everyone, including those kids the UN is providing $100 laptops to, you're probably going to have to be readable in HTML 3.2 or sommat. Then there's audio and video content. Not quite any one standard, though probably the one company which is making a serious charge in that direction is the one lease expected a couple years ago, Apple.
All things considered, there is obvious importance in staying up to date with technological trends.
Ye Gods! Are you a pundit? You sound just like one!
The greatest challenge for the traditional media now is to engage with more demanding, questioning and better educated consumers, adapting their products for new technology, the Australian-born media mogul said.
"There is only one way. That is by using our skills to create and distribute dynamic, exciting content," he said.
And then the self made man was struck by lightning.
Seriously, with all the crap this guy has ushered into media, he can say "questioning and better educated consumers" with a straight face?
Ok, all that aside, I think he's about 6 years late with that rhetoric. Most media are already edging, some hesitantly, others a bit faster, toward
embracing new technologies. The core problem is how to make a buck at it. Traditional channels have done very well for him. I can't see them entirely
going away.
GameDailyBiz has a rundown on the just-announced Videogame Voters Network.
The network has been established by the ESA with the intent of organizing gamers
into a political force.
This should be interesting. Granted there was the hue and cry (and plenty fun made) over
remarks made by Jack Thompson,
but other than rattling a pretty brittle man's cage, will this prove more of an effort of herding cats?
What about the dark and sinister people who come up with some of the really good (and controversial) games?
Isn't there the opportunity for, just like we whine and bitch and moan about lobbyists in Washington DC making
whores out of our representatives, for these people to manipulate us, the game playing public?
Honestly, I would feel pretty let down if I was in there pitching for Rockstar and then found thy put some
thing in the game, as a joke, which undermined my other positions.
introducing the honorable Senators Gabe and Tycho of the great state of Washington
Ah, yes... nothing like creating an atmosphere of fear to motivate your employees and maintain productivity.
The overlooked reality is: Most work never requires internet access. Email should be for work only.
Prior to the internet, instant messaging, skype, etc. there were actually jobs and people got things done. Now there's the internet and people seem to feel (and I certainly notice this attitude on slashdot) that it's some kind of right for anyone in the company to check the news, view personal email, surf the web, even post on blogs, all on work time. Remarkable. I certainly find it aggrevating when I'm at work and someone's personal cell phone is going off every half hour. Before cell phones people got things done, too, but now there's some human rights issue about how much crap people can do rather than work, just to keep them happy? Whoa. I'm sure during interviews prospective employees don't enquire on how much internet freedom they can expect, as that would likely raise a red flag. Spend some time thinking about why.
If you trust your employees, you might find a lot less security breaches. Many breaches are only due to an employee with an axe to grind.
That's a bit naive. Most of our employees are devious little buggers. As soon as no-one is looking they're sending amusing flash/avi/mpeg between themselves, forwarding jokes someone outside sent to their gmail account (and they've cut-n-pasted them into work mail), etc.
What it really comes down to is establishing a policy and what sanction will be forthcoming on violations. I knew one company that had zero tolerance. A couple sackings and everyone left was quite clear on proper behaviour.
There's a tweakui setting to disable programs from stealing focus. I'm not sure it works all the time but I would assume it at least works more than not having it checked. Why this isn't the default behavior, I can't say.
The setting is General -> Focus -> Prevent applications from stealing focus
Sounds useful, but my point is they should allow a user to config their system to dictate this sort of behaviour. On a console type workstation it may be important, but on a production/office/etc. workstation you'd probably want some passive notification that something needs attention, like some of the dialog things which pop-up on the tool bar.
Something else that's been nagging me is why the heck can't I set where the name of a folder/file/whatever is. Most of the time I'd prefer the name _above_ the icon. I have to grab several windows and lower them to find the right tool across the top of my screen.
This has been why email attachments are regularly stripped and IM is forbidden here. Still, we get stuff because people bring it in on CDs, infected PDA's in dock, etc.
Just one comment, how can you say Origami is a total flop - AFAIK there's no units out there to buy yet at all. Just some hype on engadget etc, then some disappointment when it wasn't what they thought it was...then some interest when they saw the new interface.
It was years ago that I bought into every shiny new wizzy tech that came along. It took years to wear away my blind otimism that new==better. After spending a good amount of my own money and many long hours fighting with things to make them do what I needed experience etched it's way into my assessment of new, wizzy tech. I don't mean to come across as cocky or smug, but I think I've got to the point where I can take a look at something and determine if it's going to be useful and easy to use, or another exasperating time fighting with it to do what I need, not what the designers thought i should have.
One of the reasons I like being a programmer is writing my own tools. There are tools which will kinda-sorta do the things I need, but often more or less and not quite what I had in mind.
I look at Origami and see effectively a big Palm Pilot or smaller version of a Tablet Computer. It will no doubt be popular with anyone a laptop, tablet or Palm/PocketPC doesn't quite work for. On the last few flights I've been on and the last few conferences I've attended I have seen zero Tablets and few, if any, PDA size tools. Everyone hauls around a laptop. I think that's a pretty clear indicator of what the general population is drawn to. Origami is simply Microsofts misguided way of telling people, We know what you really need, despite many tools like this over the years which have vanished. Maybe UPS and FedEx will adopt them, but what they use looks like it could be run over by a truck and still function.
I don't think it's healthy to pattern user functionality on the designs of a company which is trying to expand into everyone elses market, instead of cleaning up their own back yard.
Microsoft doesn't get it. There are things in Windows XP which are still as idiotic as ever. This
isn't evidence of a superiour product, but the result of understanding. The Registry is once again a
completely backwards way of contending with things, and worse, you sometimes have to get into the
Registry to change things which should be straight-forward options in personalising your computer.
Then there's the Single User aspect, all over again. No matter how they pass XP off as a multi-user environment,
it carriest considerable baggage of being single user - case in point: the pop-up key-stealer, when apps suddenly
thrust themselves forward and steal a keystroke for the [ignore] [retry] [cancel] [OK] whatever prompt and vanish if
it meets the input expectation.
What I repeatedly hear from Mac enthusiasts is how quickly a new user can sit down and get right to business, without
thinking half as hard where things are or how settings work. Microsoft made a big deal out of bringing a tonne
of people on board to advise them and examine their user interfaces, but I grow increasingly skeptical that
these were actually people flown to a nice resort, given fine amenities and still shown what Microsoft
thought they should see, rather than simply gaining some real inside, i.e. "so what's the thing you most dislike
about Windows/Office/Etc.?" Rather like a homeless guy will be your best friend if you give him a few bucks.
Consistency must also be taken into account. Microsoft has made a lot of hay (and green) by flogging consistency".
They also have become extremely overconfident because success came too easily. Note many of their recent failures.
And may I be among the first of many to recognise Origami as an utter flop. Looks neat, but it's a niche player, same as Tablet Computers. It's too big and too small at the
same time. Once again a complete misunderstanding of the market.
Linux should strive to be efficient and easy to use, not mugging one of the most inexplicably frustrating environments
ever.
Umm. Exactly how does this help with the global problem of overfishing?
All fry will be implanted with tiny RFID tags and receivers. When they are too close to a fishing vessel Venus will transmit a signal which will make them swim away.
Fair point. Although you have to beg the question, why would the employee use so called "secure delete" software if he had nothing to hide? I know it's a bit of a crappy argument, although it is something to consider.
Apparently on that technical ground the court made, incredibly, a unanimous decision. I find that preposterous and worrying.
he's driving the speed limit, but he was probably speeding before he slowed down to it, let's write him a ticket
Just like throwing contraband out of a moving car. Thing is, its a little trickier than that, because...you don't know what was there to delete in the first place.
Yeah. Where's the subpeona, court order or warrant? I didn't know companies now had that power.
So if he has the files, he's a criminal. But if he doesn't have the files, he's also a criminal? How is deliberate obstruction determined in a case like this?
Seems to me what is lacking here is IAC arguing before the court what specific contents should be on the computer which were destroyed, without authorisation, thus doing harm to the company.
Lord knows, everywhere I've worked, when I left I was expected to clean out my desk, not have a bunch of business analysts doing it to be sure I didn't throw anything useful away. Gosh. To think the massive amount of crap which would litter my computer and desk if I didn't dispose of things is daunting. I must be trusted to use good sense and not throw valuable stuff away, huh?
Adolf Hitler, when challenged by some people, said "I don't need you, I have your children."
Effectively one could say the same thing about those in government who have usurped the rights of the
people since the ink dried on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. "I don't need you, I have the laws."
Worst of all, they have a lot of the children too, because the children don't care or will vigorously defend
the right of the government to deny them their very own rights.
Ideally, a judge would, like the article's author, take one look at the charges and say, "whaaaaat?" just before
throwing the whole silly thing out. Now three loops have decided returning the drive clean is a crime, unanimously.
Ok, there's the thought that work on the laptop would be of value (a project of some sort or list of contacts and estimates
valueable to the next to occupy the position) to the employer and
the employee violated
some work ethic, by destroying company property, but that's now how it reads. More likely the computer would only
contain things meaningful to the employee in the context of producting the actual end work.
Next there will probably be some poor person sued for throwing out old yellowed paper-work, which
had been in the bottom drawer of a desk for 30 years, when retiring.
Does this mean each person must approach the company gestapo for approval to destroy or discard anything?
A laughable concept. IAC are a bully and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit are out of their
league regarding workplaces and technology.
oy, he erased 'is name from the company directory! someone could get seriously lost looking for a former
employee's cubicle and come to great harm! put 'im in irons!
Unfortunately, they voted using a Diebold machine, so it doesn't matter anyway.
I toured the House of Representatives, about 10 years ago, and noticed they had buttons to press for voting. I wonder who audits where the wires really go.
Slashdot Mirror
It targets emergency rescue, security, healthcare, maintenance, logistics, and "many other" applications.
Many other==geeking which may be further qualified as: Listening to you MP3s, watching videos, playing games, wandering around various cons talking to it and having it respond "by your command", "I can't do that, Dave", "danger, Will Robinson", or actually trying to impress the heck out of that jerk executive with his Ferrari laptop that he's not such hot stuff anymore. Alas, ...
I'd probably have to google for it.
Yeah, but remember, this guy made his fortune before the internet came along.
Remember Edison talking trash against Tesla? Calling Alternating Current the Devil's something-or-other? Edison was already a success, but felt certain Direct Current was the way to the future. Bugger all the great inventor know about resistance.
I'm not saying he's an idiot, I just think he's waxing enthusiastic on a technology he really doesn't understand, even after 6 or more years. Some companies do well in it and others founder.
I like the internet for instant news, but would I pay for it? No. There's too many free outlets.
Do I click on ads? Once in a while, but most of them are rubbish or things I have no interest in anyway. Perhaps better linking stories to advertising would serve them better. If I'm reading about death in a car bombing I don't think I'm going to be in a mood to look at the new Fords.
Must be past the end of the Paper Boy Era.
When I was in my late teens I inherited my older brother's paper route. It was somewhere about 65 customers. As this was my main source of income I took a particularly aggressive view towards growing and maintaining the route. In 3.3 years I had it up to 150+ customers, much to the annoyance of paper boys of neighbouring routes. My parents always sent me out with our paper, just in case I saw someone moving into a new house -- I'd introduce myself and give them the paper free and ask if I could sign them up. I was breaking my back, but I was also raking in some decent cash for a highschool kid. I made certain papers weren't left in wet or could be blown away or anything. When I retired and left for college the newspaper said it was too large a route for any one carrier and split it.
Now people drive past and chuck papers in the general vicinity of doors. I know what you mean.
Which is why traditional channels are still alive. Mostly because of the lack of a great unification of distribution standards. HTML is about as good as it gets, and there's a bit of variation there - javascript, XML, XHTML, DHTML, etc. If you want to be sure to reach everyone, including those kids the UN is providing $100 laptops to, you're probably going to have to be readable in HTML 3.2 or sommat. Then there's audio and video content. Not quite any one standard, though probably the one company which is making a serious charge in that direction is the one lease expected a couple years ago, Apple.
All things considered, there is obvious importance in staying up to date with technological trends.
Ye Gods! Are you a pundit? You sound just like one!
Seriously, with all the crap this guy has ushered into media, he can say "questioning and better educated consumers" with a straight face?
Ok, all that aside, I think he's about 6 years late with that rhetoric. Most media are already edging, some hesitantly, others a bit faster, toward embracing new technologies. The core problem is how to make a buck at it. Traditional channels have done very well for him. I can't see them entirely going away.
And people laughed and cried about ebonics. Wait for this stuff to appear in the Congressional Record.
yo, aide, i need do some research, whip on down to the LoC and pick up a copy of "i pwn3d u b33y0tch"
This should be interesting. Granted there was the hue and cry (and plenty fun made) over remarks made by Jack Thompson, but other than rattling a pretty brittle man's cage, will this prove more of an effort of herding cats?
What about the dark and sinister people who come up with some of the really good (and controversial) games? Isn't there the opportunity for, just like we whine and bitch and moan about lobbyists in Washington DC making whores out of our representatives, for these people to manipulate us, the game playing public?
Honestly, I would feel pretty let down if I was in there pitching for Rockstar and then found thy put some thing in the game, as a joke, which undermined my other positions.
introducing the honorable Senators Gabe and Tycho of the great state of Washington
The overlooked reality is: Most work never requires internet access. Email should be for work only.
Prior to the internet, instant messaging, skype, etc. there were actually jobs and people got things done. Now there's the internet and people seem to feel (and I certainly notice this attitude on slashdot) that it's some kind of right for anyone in the company to check the news, view personal email, surf the web, even post on blogs, all on work time. Remarkable. I certainly find it aggrevating when I'm at work and someone's personal cell phone is going off every half hour. Before cell phones people got things done, too, but now there's some human rights issue about how much crap people can do rather than work, just to keep them happy? Whoa. I'm sure during interviews prospective employees don't enquire on how much internet freedom they can expect, as that would likely raise a red flag. Spend some time thinking about why.
That's a bit naive. Most of our employees are devious little buggers. As soon as no-one is looking they're sending amusing flash/avi/mpeg between themselves, forwarding jokes someone outside sent to their gmail account (and they've cut-n-pasted them into work mail), etc.
What it really comes down to is establishing a policy and what sanction will be forthcoming on violations. I knew one company that had zero tolerance. A couple sackings and everyone left was quite clear on proper behaviour.
Sounds useful, but my point is they should allow a user to config their system to dictate this sort of behaviour. On a console type workstation it may be important, but on a production/office/etc. workstation you'd probably want some passive notification that something needs attention, like some of the dialog things which pop-up on the tool bar.
Something else that's been nagging me is why the heck can't I set where the name of a folder/file/whatever is. Most of the time I'd prefer the name _above_ the icon. I have to grab several windows and lower them to find the right tool across the top of my screen.
This has been why email attachments are regularly stripped and IM is forbidden here. Still, we get stuff because people bring it in on CDs, infected PDA's in dock, etc.
It was years ago that I bought into every shiny new wizzy tech that came along. It took years to wear away my blind otimism that new==better. After spending a good amount of my own money and many long hours fighting with things to make them do what I needed experience etched it's way into my assessment of new, wizzy tech. I don't mean to come across as cocky or smug, but I think I've got to the point where I can take a look at something and determine if it's going to be useful and easy to use, or another exasperating time fighting with it to do what I need, not what the designers thought i should have.
One of the reasons I like being a programmer is writing my own tools. There are tools which will kinda-sorta do the things I need, but often more or less and not quite what I had in mind.
I look at Origami and see effectively a big Palm Pilot or smaller version of a Tablet Computer. It will no doubt be popular with anyone a laptop, tablet or Palm/PocketPC doesn't quite work for. On the last few flights I've been on and the last few conferences I've attended I have seen zero Tablets and few, if any, PDA size tools. Everyone hauls around a laptop. I think that's a pretty clear indicator of what the general population is drawn to. Origami is simply Microsofts misguided way of telling people, We know what you really need, despite many tools like this over the years which have vanished. Maybe UPS and FedEx will adopt them, but what they use looks like it could be run over by a truck and still function.
I don't think it's healthy to pattern user functionality on the designs of a company which is trying to expand into everyone elses market, instead of cleaning up their own back yard.
Microsoft doesn't get it. There are things in Windows XP which are still as idiotic as ever. This isn't evidence of a superiour product, but the result of understanding. The Registry is once again a completely backwards way of contending with things, and worse, you sometimes have to get into the Registry to change things which should be straight-forward options in personalising your computer.
Then there's the Single User aspect, all over again. No matter how they pass XP off as a multi-user environment, it carriest considerable baggage of being single user - case in point: the pop-up key-stealer, when apps suddenly thrust themselves forward and steal a keystroke for the [ignore] [retry] [cancel] [OK] whatever prompt and vanish if it meets the input expectation.
What I repeatedly hear from Mac enthusiasts is how quickly a new user can sit down and get right to business, without thinking half as hard where things are or how settings work. Microsoft made a big deal out of bringing a tonne of people on board to advise them and examine their user interfaces, but I grow increasingly skeptical that these were actually people flown to a nice resort, given fine amenities and still shown what Microsoft thought they should see, rather than simply gaining some real inside, i.e. "so what's the thing you most dislike about Windows/Office/Etc.?" Rather like a homeless guy will be your best friend if you give him a few bucks.
Consistency must also be taken into account. Microsoft has made a lot of hay (and green) by flogging consistency".
They also have become extremely overconfident because success came too easily. Note many of their recent failures. And may I be among the first of many to recognise Origami as an utter flop. Looks neat, but it's a niche player, same as Tablet Computers. It's too big and too small at the same time. Once again a complete misunderstanding of the market.
Linux should strive to be efficient and easy to use, not mugging one of the most inexplicably frustrating environments ever.
And avoid sharks with lasers!
All fry will be implanted with tiny RFID tags and receivers. When they are too close to a fishing vessel Venus will transmit a signal which will make them swim away.
Sez a French Farmer: "Mon dieu! I feel like I am being watched by a goddess on a mountain top!"
Sez a Fisherman: "Mais oui! It is like I can feel her crystal eyes burning into the back of my head!"
I certainly hope you're not confusing today's people of Germany with the Nazi regime.
You might wish to draw a parallel with Turkmenistan
Apparently on that technical ground the court made, incredibly, a unanimous decision. I find that preposterous and worrying.
he's driving the speed limit, but he was probably speeding before he slowed down to it, let's write him a ticket
Yeah. Where's the subpeona, court order or warrant? I didn't know companies now had that power.
Seems to me what is lacking here is IAC arguing before the court what specific contents should be on the computer which were destroyed, without authorisation, thus doing harm to the company.
Lord knows, everywhere I've worked, when I left I was expected to clean out my desk, not have a bunch of business analysts doing it to be sure I didn't throw anything useful away. Gosh. To think the massive amount of crap which would litter my computer and desk if I didn't dispose of things is daunting. I must be trusted to use good sense and not throw valuable stuff away, huh?
Adolf Hitler, when challenged by some people, said "I don't need you, I have your children."
Effectively one could say the same thing about those in government who have usurped the rights of the people since the ink dried on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. "I don't need you, I have the laws." Worst of all, they have a lot of the children too, because the children don't care or will vigorously defend the right of the government to deny them their very own rights.
Ideally, a judge would, like the article's author, take one look at the charges and say, "whaaaaat?" just before throwing the whole silly thing out. Now three loops have decided returning the drive clean is a crime, unanimously.
Ok, there's the thought that work on the laptop would be of value (a project of some sort or list of contacts and estimates valueable to the next to occupy the position) to the employer and the employee violated some work ethic, by destroying company property, but that's now how it reads. More likely the computer would only contain things meaningful to the employee in the context of producting the actual end work.
Next there will probably be some poor person sued for throwing out old yellowed paper-work, which had been in the bottom drawer of a desk for 30 years, when retiring.
Does this mean each person must approach the company gestapo for approval to destroy or discard anything?
A laughable concept. IAC are a bully and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit are out of their league regarding workplaces and technology.
oy, he erased 'is name from the company directory! someone could get seriously lost looking for a former employee's cubicle and come to great harm! put 'im in irons!
I toured the House of Representatives, about 10 years ago, and noticed they had buttons to press for voting. I wonder who audits where the wires really go.
Not only that, but in NetHack I can't kill anymore @'s.