A good comparison, as clinics or hospitals are places where the less crap there is the less there is to worry about keeping clean, dust, etc. A network PC would seem ideal, as the person operating it shouldn't be installing any software and applications should be very limited.
Home, OTOH, requires constant fiddling as each home will have it's own needs: gaming, home-office, A/V, internet use, plus anything I haven't thought of here. Hardware variations will require a flexible platform, which ultimately gets back to square one, where Microsoft doesn't think you should be. I can see why they'd endorse a McDonald's or Cookie-cutter approach, as that reduces their expenses (do I hear the printing of pink-slips in Redmond if this catches on?), increasing profits (remember: Microsoft is a mature company, their market growth is slow and they must grow revenue among their established customers by getting them to buy something.)
As much as my home-made (see journal entries) PC has been at times a pain and others a blessing, I'll keep the flexibility option forever.
Must resist reflex to say, 'utter failure in the works...'
Ok, the first thing that comes to mind is those network PC's I haven't heard bugger about
since the big dotcom dive in corporate spending. If they were a good idea (well, maybe this isn't a well thought out
argument, feel free to disagree) they'd be on a lot of desktops by now. Think how much it would save the PHB
in tech support.
The comparison to Apple is a natural. But, IMHO, Apple survives because they have a loyal following and many of their innovations are just
that, innovations, not copied like *cough* *cough* Microsoft does (Embrace and extend... this always reminds me of the phrase 'share and enjoy'...)
Apple, as far as I can say doesn't try to lock users into their hardware/environment, mostly just happens, but similar software exists on MS Windows and Linus so users are free to leave if they choose. Athens appears a clear ploy to further lock owners not only into
Microsoft Brand Windows Operating System, but Microsoft software products as well, i.e. This product only available for Brand A computer, 'cause all the patents belong to us. Buy these things and you limit your options. Ideal for the manager who
wants to have absolute control, but like IBM's PS/2 systems, a real mess if you want to upgrade or change anything.
While the current PC is a pretty sordid mess, an open standard would be infinitely preferable, for system makers as well as customers.
I think a friend of mine said it best; "You can be into ham radios and you can be into computers, but being into both is taking it just a little too far".
His dad "took it too far" by the way.
My first exposure to computers was through my father's interest in Amature "Ham" Radio. Effectively early computers were considered in the broad range of things "Electronic", i.e. you built your own power supplies, you bought your 2102 memory in plastic sticks (remember those?), you overclocked (yes, even in those days!) your 6502 or z80 with a capacitor here a crystal there and maybe a resistor. So Hamfests, where piles of electronics parts and salvaged industrial goodies where a great place to acquire such stuff. My dad built a couple HeathKit powersupplies (5v & 12v adjustable) and we ran Ohio Scientific (OSI) boards without cabinets and bundles of wire or ribbon cable hanging out, plugged into a modified black and white TV (those with transformers and often available at Penney's or Sears, though for some strange reason selling at a premium at swap and shops.)
The interest persisted in computers and until this year I have made most Findlay, OH swap and shops for the past 30+ years. My dad's feeling too old to make one more trip so looks like last year was the end of the run. I live in California and don't mind the trip, as Findlay in early September has always been a magical time for me and I'll remember it fondly. I highly recommend visiting the swap and shop, first weekend after Labor Day Weekend, held at the fairgrounds (used to be held in the park where The Old Millstream can be found and the Hancock Ice Arena.) When it was in the park was the best of all, but hey, it's still a great Hamfest.
I made it to Dayton, once, ages ago and was awed by the size, give yourself a couple days to see it all and pore through all the junk boxes.:-)
Consider when al Qaeda obtains this information! Bush should intervene before bin Laden gets this!
Bush, nothing! It's up to/. moderators to mod down anything which could be informative or useful in any way to building WMD! They must be alert and seize the moment in the name of Freedom!
Ok, I've suffered through a bag phone (first commonly available cell phones, still have it, too!) and has a succession of ever decreasing sized cell phones and they generally were easier to use, mostly due to form factor and weight. But think about something on your wrist for a moment, try holding your wristwatch up to your cheek as if you were talking into it and listening to it. Awkward, right? A hand-held cell phone is easy, since fingers place it as just the right distance so your elbow can remain close to your body and you're balanced and not smacking into things with your elbow. Try walking a few steps with your wrist near your mouth and notice (unless your arm doesn't match typical proportion, apologies for my insensitive clodness) it's awkward. It may have looked good for Dick Tracy, but without plugging a mini headset into such a thing I think it's not as good. Now, maybe if it were removable from the wrist band with a small twisting interlock you'd have something. <- Please note, all you patent hungry monsters, this idea has been publicly discussed and represents prior art, so fsck off.
Lends a new interpretation of 'Waiting for the Worms' Probably time to run that whole album backwards, forwards at varying speeds and sideways. There's gotta be a prophecy in there somewhere.
Just received my new computer and surprise surprise, it did not actually ship with.NET Framework
This was a bit of a shock when I installed XP Pro on my home system. Still fooling around with a 56K connection, downloading the.net framework (1.0) was an activity to plan around, i.e. start the download and go see a movie. Now for the joy of (1.1) I've downloaded it at work, and will look hopefully for an.MSI which I can just pop on a flashdisk and carry home, rather than go through that slow ~20+Meg download again.
At work I've used dotnet for the past year and half full time.
I've built websites with it, I've build desktop apps with it,
I've even built auto-updating distributed apps with it.
Your post is excellent with much more thought than I could cram into mine (office moving day, sigh.) Effectively.Net is intended for business application development, whether on server or client, or client-server. It has the typical rapid (well, unless you get stuck, it being so new yet, help can be hard to find) development ability of most tools which aren't geared to engineering or game work. Though, as processor speeds increase, hardware architecture improves and people get faster connections (which has been a reversed trend for a while with DSL ISP's going kapoot) the burden becomes less visible.
As an afterthought. I've still got some old games which were probably coded largely in assembler and c and are unplayable because hardware is so damn fast now. MoSlo hasn't been much of a help, either, since it provides uneven compensation for increased horsepower. I think anyone who thinks.NET isn't really too slow needs to see what these old games look like GHz processors and think about where all that increased power has gone.
CLR produces slow code. A trend I observed decades ago appears thus:
As hardware capability and processing speed advance, software takes advantage
in ways previously unthinkable due to severe degradation of overall performance.
Windows isn't fast, it also has overhead, loading up memory with libraries the session
might reference. Put.net with it's CLR on top and you get the feeling you've been
here before. Yes! It was when people complained how slow Java was.
Well, it's pretty much
the same thing. (And before that was UCSD Pascal and P-code) Interpreters don't have brute
strength speed that assembler, or even earlier C++ had. Sure, they're quick for instantiating a zillion objects
from an already loaded class, but are awful for anything doing heavy calculations. For heavy math/memory moving
you'll need tighter native compiled code libraries, which I'm already finding to be a headache.
That and unless your game runs in a browser, your players will have to have the.net Framework (~20 meg, of which
I note 1.1 is now downloading on Microsoft update.)
So what else does.net have to offer? This whole XML thing? Can't say I've ever considered that
a necessity for game play. Maybe it'll allow the player to enjoy games which are Office compatible
or such, doesn't seem relevant. I feel.net is not for game programmers, at least action games.
Probably fine for strategy games which don't have to do a lot of iterating potential moves.
Then again, maybe this explains the long delays for Star Wars: Galaxies and Duke Nukem Forever...
They were forced to by Congress, which under pressure from the dietary supplement ("health food") industry banned the FDA from regulating such as drugs. It's a real scandal.
Unfortunately you're probably closer to the truth than they would have us believe. While the manufacturers, at least a chunk of them, could claim these do no harm (unless taken in absurd quantities, which nobody really knows how much as they aren't regulated or adequately tested), it's hard to disprove whether or not they do no good. So, it's like selling sugar pills, which can be very profitable, hence so much spam regarding all these great meds and supplements.
Spammers, of course, have used far from ethical tactics so they don't go to capitals very well armed to defend themselves, even if they could tote in some 'campaign contributions.'
The FTC also made the insightful discovery that most
spam is fraudulent in some fashion.
Yet, the FDA (also a bureau of the administrative branch of the U.S. goverment, for all you
furriners who take exception to typical insensitive slashdot US-centric and clodish nature, just being clear),
Food and Drug Administration, allows the marketing of 'Herbal Remedies', which effectively let all sorts of
varmints claim to be marginally less illegal by offering these as body part enhancements, muscle mass builders, weight loss
treatments, etc. This should make for more interesting fodder.
Before it was cool to blast the internet for the banal commercialized cesspool we know it today, he called a
spade a spade.
I dropped off the USENET radar about 10 years ago, myself. Pretty much for the same reasons he posted, though I go back now and then for the great resource it still can be (now my bane, and everyone else's, is spam.) Some groups I still participate in are pretty well run by regulars, when not I've learned to just ignore the threads. I hate seeing groups move to moderation.
I volunteer at a folk festival. You learn quickly that with 10,000 people in a campground, courtesy is not
courtesy, its a way of life. We regulary exercise our ability to eject people who get drunk and rowdy. If you
don't, you get chaos, injuries, or worse.
What you are describing is the very foundation of society; with rules and enforcement people can live together in large numbers. Away from the physical manifestation it's proven trickier, like those on/. who show up in the middle of a thread and call someone a 'fuckhead' to no point other than their own selfish amusement.
I'd swear I heard something about not making the Iraqi's endure american "culture", but I've noted the oil minister was one of the first put back to work (and suggesting Iraq may have to leave OPEC so they can sell lots more oil to pay Bechtel and Halliburton to rebuild their country.)
I rather expect as soon as the minders are gone they'll do whatever they damn well please, and IP crap dumped on them from american special interests will chafe and be the first things to go or be utterly ignored.
Maybe Jack Valenti can be embedded next time, eh?
"That's right, Bob, we've found a stash of illegitimate Backstreet Boys CD's in An Nasaryah, so the president was certainly justified in this invasion!"
Seems it must be a sign of a new quarter or spring or moon phase. Ultimately the only way to put a stop to spamming is a few civil trials (possibly criminal, too, wire fraud, etc.) and hang a few examples out to dry. I do believe quite a few spammers are the average schmuck who thinks they can make a few quick bucks. Bust them across the knuckles and others will get the message.
Perhaps if these three got together and ran some decent television commercials which cut to the core of spam it would greatly reduce, i.e.
Would you buy questionable medications from someone who solicits you from a forged email address?
Would you consider giving your personal financial information to someone incapable of proper grammar or even good spelling?
Would you visit a site alleged to contain pr0n/child pr0n knowing your visit may be tracked?
(some percentage, like 100%) of spam is unsolicited, commits an act of trespassing, is made by people who have nothing of actual value to offer and is intent on defrauding you. Visit www.cauce.org for more information.
Sadly, these companies will trumpet how spam costs billions of dollars, but a few million on public information awareness advertising is beyond them. Hell, I don't even see anti-spam public service annoucements on MSNBC or Yahoo. Smells like more ado about nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't help noticing the Athlon XP2600/333 is down to about $145 today. ;-)
Yeah, just imagine...
I wish I could pull this back up:
2001-03-30 23:34:37 CIA Goes Investing in High-Tech as In-Q-Tel (articles,tech) (rejected)
Whom are the stockholders of the CIA? (rhetorical question)
A good comparison, as clinics or hospitals are places where the less crap there is the less there is to worry about keeping clean, dust, etc. A network PC would seem ideal, as the person operating it shouldn't be installing any software and applications should be very limited.
Home, OTOH, requires constant fiddling as each home will have it's own needs: gaming, home-office, A/V, internet use, plus anything I haven't thought of here. Hardware variations will require a flexible platform, which ultimately gets back to square one, where Microsoft doesn't think you should be. I can see why they'd endorse a McDonald's or Cookie-cutter approach, as that reduces their expenses (do I hear the printing of pink-slips in Redmond if this catches on?), increasing profits (remember: Microsoft is a mature company, their market growth is slow and they must grow revenue among their established customers by getting them to buy something.)
As much as my home-made (see journal entries) PC has been at times a pain and others a blessing, I'll keep the flexibility option forever.
Ok, the first thing that comes to mind is those network PC's I haven't heard bugger about since the big dotcom dive in corporate spending. If they were a good idea (well, maybe this isn't a well thought out argument, feel free to disagree) they'd be on a lot of desktops by now. Think how much it would save the PHB in tech support.
The comparison to Apple is a natural. But, IMHO, Apple survives because they have a loyal following and many of their innovations are just that, innovations, not copied like *cough* *cough* Microsoft does (Embrace and extend ... this always reminds me of the phrase 'share and enjoy'...)
Apple, as far as I can say doesn't try to lock users into their hardware/environment, mostly just happens, but similar software exists on MS Windows and Linus so users are free to leave if they choose. Athens appears a clear ploy to further lock owners not only into
Microsoft Brand Windows Operating System, but Microsoft software products as well, i.e. This product only available for Brand A computer, 'cause all the patents belong to us. Buy these things and you limit your options. Ideal for the manager who
wants to have absolute control, but like IBM's PS/2 systems, a real mess if you want to upgrade or change anything.
While the current PC is a pretty sordid mess, an open standard would be infinitely preferable, for system makers as well as customers.
Yeah, then kill you because nanostuff gets through your skin and the light give you malinoma from the inside.
Oop, just posted a reply with similar sentiment, correcting an unembedded link.
"Allo?"
"Allo!"
"I would like to geet a roouum."
"un 'roouum'? Que est un 'roouum'?"
"Ah said roouum, you know a place where you can go and sit?"
"Ah, un 'room', alors, pardon m'seuir![NO CARRIER]
It's right here
Yeah, but do you think service will stay up during one of the notorious french labor strikes?
His dad "took it too far" by the way.
My first exposure to computers was through my father's interest in Amature "Ham" Radio. Effectively early computers were considered in the broad range of things "Electronic", i.e. you built your own power supplies, you bought your 2102 memory in plastic sticks (remember those?), you overclocked (yes, even in those days!) your 6502 or z80 with a capacitor here a crystal there and maybe a resistor. So Hamfests, where piles of electronics parts and salvaged industrial goodies where a great place to acquire such stuff. My dad built a couple HeathKit powersupplies (5v & 12v adjustable) and we ran Ohio Scientific (OSI) boards without cabinets and bundles of wire or ribbon cable hanging out, plugged into a modified black and white TV (those with transformers and often available at Penney's or Sears, though for some strange reason selling at a premium at swap and shops.)
The interest persisted in computers and until this year I have made most Findlay, OH swap and shops for the past 30+ years. My dad's feeling too old to make one more trip so looks like last year was the end of the run. I live in California and don't mind the trip, as Findlay in early September has always been a magical time for me and I'll remember it fondly. I highly recommend visiting the swap and shop, first weekend after Labor Day Weekend, held at the fairgrounds (used to be held in the park where The Old Millstream can be found and the Hancock Ice Arena.) When it was in the park was the best of all, but hey, it's still a great Hamfest.
I made it to Dayton, once, ages ago and was awed by the size, give yourself a couple days to see it all and pore through all the junk boxes. :-)
Bush, nothing! It's up to /. moderators to mod down anything which could be informative or useful in any way to building WMD! They must be alert and seize the moment in the name of Freedom!
"Oh, they already do that? Never mind..."
It's very nice-a."
Ok, I've suffered through a bag phone (first commonly available cell phones, still have it, too!) and has a succession of ever decreasing sized cell phones and they generally were easier to use, mostly due to form factor and weight. But think about something on your wrist for a moment, try holding your wristwatch up to your cheek as if you were talking into it and listening to it. Awkward, right? A hand-held cell phone is easy, since fingers place it as just the right distance so your elbow can remain close to your body and you're balanced and not smacking into things with your elbow. Try walking a few steps with your wrist near your mouth and notice (unless your arm doesn't match typical proportion, apologies for my insensitive clodness) it's awkward. It may have looked good for Dick Tracy, but without plugging a mini headset into such a thing I think it's not as good. Now, maybe if it were removable from the wrist band with a small twisting interlock you'd have something. <- Please note, all you patent hungry monsters, this idea has been publicly discussed and represents prior art, so fsck off.
Lends a new interpretation of 'Waiting for the Worms' Probably time to run that whole album backwards, forwards at varying speeds and sideways. There's gotta be a prophecy in there somewhere.
This was a bit of a shock when I installed XP Pro on my home system. Still fooling around with a 56K connection, downloading the .net framework (1.0) was an activity to plan around, i.e. start the download and go see a movie. Now for the joy of (1.1) I've downloaded it at work, and will look hopefully for an .MSI which I can just pop on a flashdisk and carry home, rather than go through that slow ~20+Meg download again.
Your post is excellent with much more thought than I could cram into mine (office moving day, sigh.) Effectively .Net is intended for business application development, whether on server or client, or client-server. It has the typical rapid (well, unless you get stuck, it being so new yet, help can be hard to find) development ability of most tools which aren't geared to engineering or game work. Though, as processor speeds increase, hardware architecture improves and people get faster connections (which has been a reversed trend for a while with DSL ISP's going kapoot) the burden becomes less visible.
As an afterthought. I've still got some old games which were probably coded largely in assembler and c and are unplayable because hardware is so damn fast now. MoSlo hasn't been much of a help, either, since it provides uneven compensation for increased horsepower. I think anyone who thinks .NET isn't really too slow needs to see what these old games look like GHz processors and think about where all that increased power has gone.
Well, it's pretty much the same thing. (And before that was UCSD Pascal and P-code) Interpreters don't have brute strength speed that assembler, or even earlier C++ had. Sure, they're quick for instantiating a zillion objects from an already loaded class, but are awful for anything doing heavy calculations. For heavy math/memory moving you'll need tighter native compiled code libraries, which I'm already finding to be a headache. That and unless your game runs in a browser, your players will have to have the .net Framework (~20 meg, of which
I note 1.1 is now downloading on Microsoft update.)
So what else does .net have to offer? This whole XML thing? Can't say I've ever considered that
a necessity for game play. Maybe it'll allow the player to enjoy games which are Office compatible
or such, doesn't seem relevant. I feel .net is not for game programmers, at least action games.
Probably fine for strategy games which don't have to do a lot of iterating potential moves.
Then again, maybe this explains the long delays for Star Wars: Galaxies and Duke Nukem Forever...
Unfortunately you're probably closer to the truth than they would have us believe. While the manufacturers, at least a chunk of them, could claim these do no harm (unless taken in absurd quantities, which nobody really knows how much as they aren't regulated or adequately tested), it's hard to disprove whether or not they do no good. So, it's like selling sugar pills, which can be very profitable, hence so much spam regarding all these great meds and supplements.
Spammers, of course, have used far from ethical tactics so they don't go to capitals very well armed to defend themselves, even if they could tote in some 'campaign contributions.'
Yet, the FDA (also a bureau of the administrative branch of the U.S. goverment, for all you furriners who take exception to typical insensitive slashdot US-centric and clodish nature, just being clear), Food and Drug Administration, allows the marketing of 'Herbal Remedies', which effectively let all sorts of varmints claim to be marginally less illegal by offering these as body part enhancements, muscle mass builders, weight loss treatments, etc. This should make for more interesting fodder.
I dropped off the USENET radar about 10 years ago, myself. Pretty much for the same reasons he posted, though I go back now and then for the great resource it still can be (now my bane, and everyone else's, is spam.) Some groups I still participate in are pretty well run by regulars, when not I've learned to just ignore the threads. I hate seeing groups move to moderation.
I volunteer at a folk festival. You learn quickly that with 10,000 people in a campground, courtesy is not courtesy, its a way of life. We regulary exercise our ability to eject people who get drunk and rowdy. If you don't, you get chaos, injuries, or worse.
What you are describing is the very foundation of society; with rules and enforcement people can live together in large numbers. Away from the physical manifestation it's proven trickier, like those on /. who show up in the middle of a thread and call someone a 'fuckhead' to no point other than their own selfish amusement.
Spaf... irate poster, or visionary?
I rather expect as soon as the minders are gone they'll do whatever they damn well please, and IP crap dumped on them from american special interests will chafe and be the first things to go or be utterly ignored.
Maybe Jack Valenti can be embedded next time, eh?
"That's right, Bob, we've found a stash of illegitimate Backstreet Boys CD's in An Nasaryah, so the president was certainly justified in this invasion!"
Says you!
A national house of prayer for all people. So even athiests have a place to pray, right?
Seems like the Jedi faith is making significant headway in the USA, unlike some places.
Perhaps if these three got together and ran some decent television commercials which cut to the core of spam it would greatly reduce, i.e.
Would you buy questionable medications from someone who solicits you from a forged email address?
Would you consider giving your personal financial information to someone incapable of proper grammar or even good spelling?
Would you visit a site alleged to contain pr0n/child pr0n knowing your visit may be tracked?
(some percentage, like 100%) of spam is unsolicited, commits an act of trespassing, is made by people who have nothing of actual value to offer and is intent on defrauding you. Visit www.cauce.org for more information.
Sadly, these companies will trumpet how spam costs billions of dollars, but a few million on public information awareness advertising is beyond them. Hell, I don't even see anti-spam public service annoucements on MSNBC or Yahoo. Smells like more ado about nothing.
Software emulation, I wonder where they dug up that idea...
I dunno bout dat. We seem to be losing more often than we are winning. There's also the question of who 'We' is and what each 'we' wins.
eBay listing (Large Image!)