It surprised me to find all the other things that Ms. Bergman did.
The IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) shows that she did voices such as Daphne on the new Scooby Doo, Bimbette on Beauty And The Beast, and some voices for Star Wars EP1-TPM.
She even did vocals on Weird Al's "Pretty Fly For A Rabbi" ("How ya doin', Bernie?")
A great talent has been lost and this is very sad.
Wherever you are Mary Kay, I hope you are at peace.
Having lived in two small towns in AZ (one pop:25K and the other pop:50+K), the cost of bandwidth is an issue, particularly local loop.
In the first town, there is only one source for local loop and that's the local Telco - an independent (with the highest rate of return to it's investors of any utility in the nation).
The college I worked for was quoted over $3,000 (that's right, over three thousand dollars) per month for a T1. That's T1, not T3. This is the going rate as the local loop is to Phoenix -- not quite local in my book. Of course, when they're the only game in town, they can ask whatever they want, right? Can anyone say "monopoly"?
Also, no DSL and the Cable modem thing is just new and not yet bidirectional. There are only three ISP's of which I am aware -- one is the local Telco, another is a guy who buys bandwidth through the local Telco and the third is the Cable company.
I haven't been involved too much in pricing here in the second town, but I hear (anecdotally) that the prices are considerably higher than the "big city" price, but not on the order of 10X "big city" like the first small town.
So the difference between running a T1 and co-locating a box somewhere in the "big city" could add up to some significant money if you try to operate out of small towns.
I can make a lot of driving trips to Phoenix to fix something for the difference between $300 and $3,000 per month. Hell, for that kind of money, I could keep someone on retainer to fix whatever goes wrong. On second thought, for that differential, I could keep a second full box ready for hot swap.:)
I feel sorry for those folks who are losing their jobs, but other than that, good riddance.
It's the end of an era that caused me a great many headaches with poor quality non-standard machines that people bought into because they were cheap.
Bon Voyage to Packard Smell as it sets sail into the obscurity of poor quality computer history.
Also, I acknowledge that this comment isn't terribly original, or even interesting. I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what might appear in this thread that could be said that would be unique or interesting... drawing a blank. Maybe someone will surprize me.
I don't know of anyone who ever liked the old PB's, maybe someone will come out of the woodwork who is actually sad or, god forbid, even broken up about this. (Other than a current employee who will be losing a job, and I have great compassion for them:)
"There is no question they can price themselves out of that market, which would easily look to alternative [operating systems], like Linux and Unix," according to Aberdeen analyst James Gruener.
Couldn't have said it better my self. As the price of maintaing the status quo goes up, the up-front cost of switching to an alternative goes down.:)
I love it. I just hope we see a whole lot more switching taking place. And I, for one, will do what I can to help that along.:)
...I guess I may have to learn to write code for real now, huh?
There seems to be a lot of sound and fury over the whole Palm Pilot "thing." I feel like I have missed something. I don't own one, but have seen and played with a couple of them. Ok, you write on the screen with a stylus (in a strange proprietary language), you run preloaded PIM-purposed apps, you can load additional apps, you can beam information from one to another with IR, yada, yada, yada. Ok, neat.
***And how does this differ from the Apple Newton that I have had and used for the last 5 or 6 years?***
Ok, I can answer my own question. It's somewhat smaller, has a longer battery life (both a result of the endless march of technology), and, most importantly (it seems) is not made by Apple.
Ok, so Apple didn't have the balls to stick it out and put some money in continuing to improve the Newton, but it seems like there is some descrimination going on here. Sort of a corollary of the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) or ABM (Anything But Microsoft) rules.
It wasn't cool to use a hand-held personal organizer that was made by apple, but as soon as some company more closely related to the PC side of things comes out with the same product, all of a sudden it's the Next Thing (tm)?
And in this case, we're not even necessarily talking about Windoze compatibility as the selling point; the WinCE hand-helds don't seem to be doing so well.
My Newton does all of the things you described here, and, had Apple continued to develop it, there would be modules for this-and-that like the Visor is going to have. And I can write my characters, block uppercase or lower or cursive anywhere on the screen instead in a little teeny box at the bottom in Graffitti (of course Graffitti was a third party add-on product for the Newton years ago, so I had that option too.) I can use IR to transmit data, it had a PCMCIA slot and I could plug in a modem or print to an appletalk network/printer. Had development continued, I can see a USB port or two on the Newton or maybe even FireWire.
I guess I'm just ranting because people don't seem to acknowledge the origin of the Palm and the craze.
There seems to be a universal pattern; some company makes a Really Cool Thing (tm). It's a little pricey, so they ooh and aahh and wish they could have one. Some other company makes a cheap imitation (can we say "MacOS 87 = Win 95" boys and girls?) and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. No one seems willing to pay for quality and instead just looks for cheap crap... and there is someone out there willing to create it and sell it to them. (Are 'ya listenin' Bill?)
And then GNU/FSF/Open Source/etc./etc. throws a monkey wrench into the whole works by proving that you can get good quality stuff for less than cheap, sometimes free.:)
My Newton is 5 or 6 years old, and I'm still using it. I wonder how many Palm Pilots will last that long either in utility or simply functionality.
I'm just wondering if owning or using Apple products is going to remain *outre'* for the rest of my life. It's a little disheartening, especially when day-to-day events prove the statement that:
"If you want to see where the PC industry is going tomorrow, look at Apple today."
Ok, *rant off*... and I have my fire-retardant undies on.:)
BTW, I really appreciate my/. community... it seems we are one of the last bastions of truly free speech left anywhere.
I don't mean to make light of this. Yes, two people have been killed and this is a fundamental wrong thing (tm), it's just that there is this pattern that I keep seeing.
A few years ago, U.S. Postal workers flipped out regularly and started shooting up their place of employment. We haven't seen these events in Post Offices for a while. What happened? What changed? Was it just a phase of the moon? A syzygy (sp? - planetary alignment)? Some temporary problem of extraterrestrial influence? Maybe stress?
Hmmm... we might be onto something here. Perhaps the conditions were too repetitious/opressive/stressful and people flipped out. Maybe as a result of those events, the work model changed a bit. Maybe the bosses are a little less authoritarian. Maybe postal workers are being a little nicer to each other.
If the above is true, it could be a result of fear that their fellow workers might be capable of hurting them, or it could just be a recognition that there was a problem to start with and a sincere desire to make a positive change.
The bottom line is that there were a series of these events and now we haven't heard of such events for a long time.
In April, we had the Columbine shooting. There are some questions yet as to who the shooters were (philosophically), and their motives and targets. As a former High School outcast/geek, I can understand if their motive was fear or anger at jocks, being picked on, or excluded, or the structure or whatever. Maybe it was even due to their own mental imbalances. (I'm not condoning their behavior, only saying that I understand.) In any case, there is some reason why this happened and similar or copycat events continue to occur. There is some stressor, and I hope that these tragic events will cause the average person (student) to take a closer look, to stop and think about the impact of their actions. I can only hope that whatever brought about the change at the Post Office can happen in America's Schools. Maybe Jocks won't pick on Geeks because they're afraid of being shot. I realize that this is the wrong means to the desired end, but if we can take what was a tragic circumstance and make positive change as a result, at least there is some good. (My fellow Geeks, please do not take this a permission to go and shoot Jocks, and please do not believe that this is a good way to make a difference. I'm just arguing that since it's already done, maybe there can be some positive change.)
It appears that problems seem to fester and not come to serious light, let alone get lanced, until some extraordinarily bad event takes place. This is really unfortunate, but seems to be true.
Even though I agree that the killing of these two "shady" businessmen is certainly about the monetary fraud they committed, if it causes a Spammer to stop and think, "Maybe there is someone out there pissed off enough about what I am doing that they might try to do me bodily harm...", even to simply stop and consider the impact of his/her actions on others, this can only lead to improvement in our internet community the same as improvement has come to the Post Office.
Yes, I do recognize the downsides to all this as have been stated in many other posts. Labeling this as a Spam revenge thing can cause certain less-than-critically-thinking individuals to see us in a bad light. And this is the same tactic (at least the fear component) that has made it damned difficult for many women to obtain consitutionally protected abortion services. But there are facets of life that are simply fait accompli and we try appreciate the benefits we receive and fight against the injustices. As with most things, they can be used for bad or good.
IANAS (I am not a sociologist:), but these are just my observations of what is. Events like this are always bad, I just hope for some positive outcome when I see them. And what I look forward to in the future is recognition of and solutions to problems before horrible acts of violence force them to our attention. It has been said that "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom", but I think that if we can be attentive to the subtle things, our path will be smoother.
I work for a governmental agency that oversees contractors, and the inspectors have to take notes and record time and personnel data on construction sites.
This has been done for years with Fujitsu Stylistic 500 hand-held Pen-based units. (486/50 with max of about 20MB ram - and whatever size you can get a type 3 PCMCIA hard drive; 340? - although they're grayscale and I haven't tried X on them, they would make a nice little Linux boxen if someone would write the drivers for the pen function.;)
We have recently begun to deploy some model of these "tanks". I haven't heard any feedback yet, but it will be interesting. Based on the number of pen units out there, if they were all replaced, there might be a test-bed of several hundred machines... and, lucky me, I'm one of the ones who is going to get to try fix them (or pass along for warranty work) when they break. I'll have a feel for how good they are in 6 months to a year. They've gotta be better than the Compaq Armada 7800's.:)
BTW, a little off-topic, but I keep seeing this word "administrate". I always thought it was "administer." (I know, I looked it up in the dictionary and they are both verbs and synonyms.) Does this word *sound* dumb to anyone else?
It's just like "taking one's medication" instead of "taking one's medicine." "Administrate" and "medication" sound so haughty, pompous and self-important. Does it seem that way to anyone else?
Perhaps CT or Hemos will consider an article on this so I don't get moderated in obscurity for off-topic? I just hate bad Karma.:)
IBM will have to be careful here. A lot of the luster and the coolness factor will be lost if they even contemplate putting their recently announced ID chip in this machine.
Trying to track me is bad enough, but trying to track me while I'm wearing my computer starts to look a lot like the movie "Enemy Of The State".
They could drop the price to $100 and I wouldn't buy it unless I could clip that chip or install an OS that wouldn't allow the chip to function.
I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but the whole point to this web/internet thing is the exchange of information and ideas, not following mindless trends of fashion or creating a bunch of flash that has nothing to do with the material being conveyed. Sure aesthetics are important, but they do not override the value of the content.
All the html I write is "content enhanced" and designed to be seen in any browser. I don't have problems with backward compatability because I stay away from using tags that are designed to rigidly control the display on the *user's* browser. That was the whole point to HTML and the browser, wasn't it? So that the user gets to control the display of the content? I absolutely stay away from any tag that is browser or platform specific. I want the greatest potential audience for my *content*.
I guess I'm old guard. In the earliest days of the internet (as some will remember), your access could be terminated for trying to sell something to another person. Just think how much bandwidth we would have available now if there was no spam or "get rich quick...", and worse, chain email.
Newer is not necessarily better. I have conveyed my message here and didn't use a single HTML tag.
This has not been intended as flamebait, just and expression of *my* opinion.
I just hate the fact that the memory of the Newton is so lost in these discussions. I still have an MP100 that I use all the time. I taught it to read and it taught me to write... still in English, but better.:)
It allows me to write in block or cursive, and doesn't restrict me to graffiti (how come no one talks about the fact that you can't write natural language on these Palm things?). Graffiti was an aftermarket product for the Newton years ago. And I can write or draw anywhere on the screen on my Newton, it doesn't restrict me to a little block at the bottom.
Plug and Play? My Newton has a PCMCIA slot and on these card(s) allows me to load several apps or store data, and they are immediately recognized when I insert them. There was a modem (I never bought it). It has IR communications *and* and apple serial port which I have used with an appletalk adapter to print to any number of laser printers in a lab I used to manage.
I don't have a Palm, and I'm not sure whether I'll buy one. It seems it could be useful, and I will acknowledge it's smaller than my Newton, but to make me learn a new language just to be able to communicate with it... hmmm... I thought this was about the computer becoming an appliance and adapting to us...
Well I've rambled enough. I didn't intend for this to be anti-Apple flame-bait, I'm just melancholy and I hate to see the history overlooked.:)
I sure hope ICQ stays out of the fray in this battle.
I know that the most powerful force in the universe is entropy, and ICQ will eventually go to crap, but right now, it's a more than adequate messaging system with no advertisements and works most of the time.
M$ could be in trouble. If it's illegal to "cause" this to happen, wouldn't it be illegal to manufacture the product that "causes" this. M$ themselves would be guilty, as would the OEM's, as would any user who purchased this product and installed it themselves, yes?
Would this make NC a M$-free zone? Worse things could happen, eh?:)
BTW, I agree that this portion of the statute is even more important and may have more impact than the SPAM provisions.
Russ
Sort of like Apple and M$???
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
Maybe I should use Bill's words:
"imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under it's own name... without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art" --Bill Gates, 1983
Or from a recent TV movie... Steve: "Our stuff is better, Bill." Bill: "That doesn't matter!"
Well, in this case, it does matter. And mostly because it's $free$. With Bill and Steve, customers had/have to make a choice between two products which cost a significant chunk of money. And like *most* other things, you get what you pay for. The knock-off (M$ 9x/NT) is made more cheaply works for crap but the hardware is really cheap. The better product (of the two) requires different hardware and works better.
The above-mentioned exception is free software, in particular the GNU/LINUX community's products. If one can call them products. (Can you give something away and call it a product??? But I digress.) In this case, you can use the cheaper hardware, but get the OS and apps for $free - a really big difference.
I work for a state agency that recently spent $500,000 licensing M$ Exchange for mail. A half a million dollars so they could be incompatible with the rest of the 'net world and make sure thier support costs remain high.... and that's my tax money too.:( With the various solutions we all know of, this could have been done for $free!
I wonder how many people's lives could have been made happier and healthier with that $.5M in the state's health insurance system?
Virtually every major religion of the world today has at it's core being kindly toward others, do unto as you would be done, etc. Well, the core of the original speaker's words anyway, not the crap that comes out of the control and power mill that springs up around each religion as it "matures" and each member tries to manipulate it for their own personal profit/benefit... Is this not the underlying premise of communism/marxism etc.? From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need?
The place where people get confused is where they equate totalitarianism to communism, but the equation looks like this:
Religous founder's words => manipulative controlling dogma
Communist principles => manipulative controlling government
So, I can understand where RMS is coming from.
Except as the result of #2 above, I can't find a place to put capitalism...
I have a hard time believing that the benefit others receive from a coder working to solve a problem and then allowing others to have that code, or writing and releasing code toward the purpose of the approval of his peers is a bad thing. In much the same way that I have a hard time believing that the basic principles of communism/marxism are a bad thing.
I just wish that, if people are going to insult one another and throw derogatory terms around or lead government witch hunts, they use the correct term -- totalitarianism or facism.
Basically, call me a communist if you want, but know what you are calling me. If you call me a totalitarian or a facist, then I may be offended and begin to take issue. But if you call me a communist, I'm going to be proud that I have an interest in helping my fellow man (and yes, woman:) and being a cooperative member of society.
BTW, ESR's arguments and the concept of "the gift economy" are also presented from a slightly different angle in "The Celestine Prophecy" by Redfield.
It was also interesting to see a post here in response to that movie that talked about the sum that Apple paid Xerox to look at their technology. Maybe they didn't pay to copy it, but at least they made a token.
And please remember that when M$ bought $150M of *non-voting* Apple stock that *couldn't be sold for five years*, Apple had $1.1B (that's right, Billion) CASH in the bank, not counting physical plant, product ready to ship, other assets, etc. That "investment" was roughly equivalent to what Bill would spend for a media splash for a new product or a charitable (read: tax and pr) donation. M$ did not "bail out" Apple!
Sorry if some of this this is a little off topic, but I felt the need to rant.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) shows that she did voices such as Daphne on the new Scooby Doo, Bimbette on Beauty And The Beast, and some voices for Star Wars EP1-TPM.
She even did vocals on Weird Al's "Pretty Fly For A Rabbi" ("How ya doin', Bernie?")
A great talent has been lost and this is very sad.
Wherever you are Mary Kay, I hope you are at peace.
Russ
Having lived in two small towns in AZ (one pop:25K and the other pop:50+K), the cost of bandwidth is an issue, particularly local loop.
:)
In the first town, there is only one source for local loop and that's the local Telco - an independent (with the highest rate of return to it's investors of any utility in the nation).
The college I worked for was quoted over $3,000 (that's right, over three thousand dollars) per month for a T1. That's T1, not T3. This is the going rate as the local loop is to Phoenix -- not quite local in my book. Of course, when they're the only game in town, they can ask whatever they want, right? Can anyone say "monopoly"?
Also, no DSL and the Cable modem thing is just new and not yet bidirectional. There are only three ISP's of which I am aware -- one is the local Telco, another is a guy who buys bandwidth through the local Telco and the third is the Cable company.
I haven't been involved too much in pricing here in the second town, but I hear (anecdotally) that the prices are considerably higher than the "big city" price, but not on the order of 10X "big city" like the first small town.
So the difference between running a T1 and co-locating a box somewhere in the "big city" could add up to some significant money if you try to operate out of small towns.
I can make a lot of driving trips to Phoenix to fix something for the difference between $300 and $3,000 per month. Hell, for that kind of money, I could keep someone on retainer to fix whatever goes wrong. On second thought, for that differential, I could keep a second full box ready for hot swap.
Russ
If someone would like to establish a presence to report on these kinds of problems, I just checked and there a few domain names available:
stupidpatents.com, org, net
dumbpatents.com, org, net
obviouspatents.com, org, net
Anyone else got a better idea for a name?
Maybe something like:
LosingOurFreedomBecauseOfObviousPatents.com, org, net?
Russ
I feel sorry for those folks who are losing their jobs, but other than that, good riddance.
:)
It's the end of an era that caused me a great many headaches with poor quality non-standard machines that people bought into because they were cheap.
Bon Voyage to Packard Smell as it sets sail into the obscurity of poor quality computer history.
Also, I acknowledge that this comment isn't terribly original, or even interesting. I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what might appear in this thread that could be said that would be unique or interesting... drawing a blank. Maybe someone will surprize me.
I don't know of anyone who ever liked the old PB's, maybe someone will come out of the woodwork who is actually sad or, god forbid, even broken up about this. (Other than a current employee who will be losing a job, and I have great compassion for them
Russ
Couldn't have said it better my self. As the price of maintaing the status quo goes up, the up-front cost of switching to an alternative goes down. :)
I love it. I just hope we see a whole lot more switching taking place. And I, for one, will do what I can to help that along. :)
Russ
There seems to be a lot of sound and fury over the whole Palm Pilot "thing." I feel like I have missed something. I don't own one, but have seen and played with a couple of them. Ok, you write on the screen with a stylus (in a strange proprietary language), you run preloaded PIM-purposed apps, you can load additional apps, you can beam information from one to another with IR, yada, yada, yada. Ok, neat.
:)
:)
/. community... it seems we are one of the last bastions of truly free speech left anywhere.
***And how does this differ from the Apple Newton that I have had and used for the last 5 or 6 years?***
Ok, I can answer my own question. It's somewhat smaller, has a longer battery life (both a result of the endless march of technology), and, most importantly (it seems) is not made by Apple.
Ok, so Apple didn't have the balls to stick it out and put some money in continuing to improve the Newton, but it seems like there is some descrimination going on here. Sort of a corollary of the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) or ABM (Anything But Microsoft) rules.
It wasn't cool to use a hand-held personal organizer that was made by apple, but as soon as some company more closely related to the PC side of things comes out with the same product, all of a sudden it's the Next Thing (tm)?
And in this case, we're not even necessarily talking about Windoze compatibility as the selling point; the WinCE hand-helds don't seem to be doing so well.
My Newton does all of the things you described here, and, had Apple continued to develop it, there would be modules for this-and-that like the Visor is going to have. And I can write my characters, block uppercase or lower or cursive anywhere on the screen instead in a little teeny box at the bottom in Graffitti (of course Graffitti was a third party add-on product for the Newton years ago, so I had that option too.) I can use IR to transmit data, it had a PCMCIA slot and I could plug in a modem or print to an appletalk network/printer. Had development continued, I can see a USB port or two on the Newton or maybe even FireWire.
I guess I'm just ranting because people don't seem to acknowledge the origin of the Palm and the craze.
There seems to be a universal pattern; some company makes a Really Cool Thing (tm). It's a little pricey, so they ooh and aahh and wish they could have one. Some other company makes a cheap imitation (can we say "MacOS 87 = Win 95" boys and girls?) and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. No one seems willing to pay for quality and instead just looks for cheap crap... and there is someone out there willing to create it and sell it to them. (Are 'ya listenin' Bill?)
And then GNU/FSF/Open Source/etc./etc. throws a monkey wrench into the whole works by proving that you can get good quality stuff for less than cheap, sometimes free.
My Newton is 5 or 6 years old, and I'm still using it. I wonder how many Palm Pilots will last that long either in utility or simply functionality.
I'm just wondering if owning or using Apple products is going to remain *outre'* for the rest of my life. It's a little disheartening, especially when day-to-day events prove the statement that:
"If you want to see where the PC industry is going tomorrow, look at Apple today."
Ok, *rant off*... and I have my fire-retardant undies on.
BTW, I really appreciate my
Russ
I don't mean to make light of this. Yes, two people have been killed and this is a fundamental wrong thing (tm), it's just that there is this pattern that I keep seeing.
:), but these are just my observations of what is. Events like this are always bad, I just hope for some positive outcome when I see them. And what I look forward to in the future is recognition of and solutions to problems before horrible acts of violence force them to our attention. It has been said that "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom", but I think that if we can be attentive to the subtle things, our path will be smoother.
A few years ago, U.S. Postal workers flipped out regularly and started shooting up their place of employment. We haven't seen these events in Post Offices for a while. What happened? What changed? Was it just a phase of the moon? A syzygy (sp? - planetary alignment)? Some temporary problem of extraterrestrial influence? Maybe stress?
Hmmm... we might be onto something here. Perhaps the conditions were too repetitious/opressive/stressful and people flipped out. Maybe as a result of those events, the work model changed a bit. Maybe the bosses are a little less authoritarian. Maybe postal workers are being a little nicer to each other.
If the above is true, it could be a result of fear that their fellow workers might be capable of hurting them, or it could just be a recognition that there was a problem to start with and a sincere desire to make a positive change.
The bottom line is that there were a series of these events and now we haven't heard of such events for a long time.
In April, we had the Columbine shooting. There are some questions yet as to who the shooters were (philosophically), and their motives and targets. As a former High School outcast/geek, I can understand if their motive was fear or anger at jocks, being picked on, or excluded, or the structure or whatever. Maybe it was even due to their own mental imbalances. (I'm not condoning their behavior, only saying that I understand.) In any case, there is some reason why this happened and similar or copycat events continue to occur. There is some stressor, and I hope that these tragic events will cause the average person (student) to take a closer look, to stop and think about the impact of their actions. I can only hope that whatever brought about the change at the Post Office can happen in America's Schools. Maybe Jocks won't pick on Geeks because they're afraid of being shot. I realize that this is the wrong means to the desired end, but if we can take what was a tragic circumstance and make positive change as a result, at least there is some good. (My fellow Geeks, please do not take this a permission to go and shoot Jocks, and please do not believe that this is a good way to make a difference. I'm just arguing that since it's already done, maybe there can be some positive change.)
It appears that problems seem to fester and not come to serious light, let alone get lanced, until some extraordinarily bad event takes place. This is really unfortunate, but seems to be true.
Even though I agree that the killing of these two "shady" businessmen is certainly about the monetary fraud they committed, if it causes a Spammer to stop and think, "Maybe there is someone out there pissed off enough about what I am doing that they might try to do me bodily harm...", even to simply stop and consider the impact of his/her actions on others, this can only lead to improvement in our internet community the same as improvement has come to the Post Office.
Yes, I do recognize the downsides to all this as have been stated in many other posts. Labeling this as a Spam revenge thing can cause certain less-than-critically-thinking individuals to see us in a bad light. And this is the same tactic (at least the fear component) that has made it damned difficult for many women to obtain consitutionally protected abortion services. But there are facets of life that are simply fait accompli and we try appreciate the benefits we receive and fight against the injustices. As with most things, they can be used for bad or good.
IANAS (I am not a sociologist
Russ
I work for a governmental agency that oversees contractors, and the inspectors have to take notes and record time and personnel data on construction sites.
;)
:)
:)
This has been done for years with Fujitsu Stylistic 500 hand-held Pen-based units. (486/50 with max of about 20MB ram - and whatever size you can get a type 3 PCMCIA hard drive; 340? - although they're grayscale and I haven't tried X on them, they would make a nice little Linux boxen if someone would write the drivers for the pen function.
We have recently begun to deploy some model of these "tanks". I haven't heard any feedback yet, but it will be interesting. Based on the number of pen units out there, if they were all replaced, there might be a test-bed of several hundred machines... and, lucky me, I'm one of the ones who is going to get to try fix them (or pass along for warranty work) when they break. I'll have a feel for how good they are in 6 months to a year. They've gotta be better than the Compaq Armada 7800's.
BTW, a little off-topic, but I keep seeing this word "administrate". I always thought it was "administer." (I know, I looked it up in the dictionary and they are both verbs and synonyms.) Does this word *sound* dumb to anyone else?
It's just like "taking one's medication" instead of "taking one's medicine." "Administrate" and "medication" sound so haughty, pompous and self-important. Does it seem that way to anyone else?
Perhaps CT or Hemos will consider an article on this so I don't get moderated in obscurity for off-topic? I just hate bad Karma.
Russ
IBM will have to be careful here. A lot of the luster and the coolness factor will be lost if they even contemplate putting their recently announced ID chip in this machine.
Trying to track me is bad enough, but trying to track me while I'm wearing my computer starts to look a lot like the movie "Enemy Of The State".
They could drop the price to $100 and I wouldn't buy it unless I could clip that chip or install an OS that wouldn't allow the chip to function.
Russ
I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but the whole point to this web/internet thing is the exchange of information and ideas, not following mindless trends of fashion or creating a bunch of flash that has nothing to do with the material being conveyed. Sure aesthetics are important, but they do not override the value of the content.
All the html I write is "content enhanced" and designed to be seen in any browser. I don't have problems with backward compatability because I stay away from using tags that are designed to rigidly control the display on the *user's* browser. That was the whole point to HTML and the browser, wasn't it? So that the user gets to control the display of the content? I absolutely stay away from any tag that is browser or platform specific. I want the greatest potential audience for my *content*.
I guess I'm old guard. In the earliest days of the internet (as some will remember), your access could be terminated for trying to sell something to another person. Just think how much bandwidth we would have available now if there was no spam or "get rich quick...", and worse, chain email.
Newer is not necessarily better. I have conveyed my message here and didn't use a single HTML tag.
This has not been intended as flamebait, just and expression of *my* opinion.
Russ
I just hate the fact that the memory of the Newton is so lost in these discussions. I still have an MP100 that I use all the time. I taught it to read and it taught me to write... still in English, but better. :)
:)
It allows me to write in block or cursive, and doesn't restrict me to graffiti (how come no one talks about the fact that you can't write natural language on these Palm things?). Graffiti was an aftermarket product for the Newton years ago. And I can write or draw anywhere on the screen on my Newton, it doesn't restrict me to a little block at the bottom.
Plug and Play? My Newton has a PCMCIA slot and on these card(s) allows me to load several apps or store data, and they are immediately recognized when I insert them. There was a modem (I never bought it). It has IR communications *and* and apple serial port which I have used with an appletalk adapter to print to any number of laser printers in a lab I used to manage.
I don't have a Palm, and I'm not sure whether I'll buy one. It seems it could be useful, and I will acknowledge it's smaller than my Newton, but to make me learn a new language just to be able to communicate with it... hmmm... I thought this was about the computer becoming an appliance and adapting to us...
Well I've rambled enough. I didn't intend for this to be anti-Apple flame-bait, I'm just melancholy and I hate to see the history overlooked.
Russ
I sure hope ICQ stays out of the fray in this battle.
I know that the most powerful force in the universe is entropy, and ICQ will eventually go to crap, but right now, it's a more than adequate messaging system with no advertisements and works most of the time.
I just hope they all leave it alone.
Russ
M$ could be in trouble. If it's illegal to "cause" this to happen, wouldn't it be illegal to manufacture the product that "causes" this. M$ themselves would be guilty, as would the OEM's, as would any user who purchased this product and installed it themselves, yes?
:)
Would this make NC a M$-free zone?
Worse things could happen, eh?
BTW, I agree that this portion of the statute is even more important and may have more impact than the SPAM provisions.
Russ
Maybe I should use Bill's words:
... and that's my tax money too. :( With the various solutions we all know of, this could have been done for $free!
:) and being a cooperative member of society.
:)
"imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under it's own name... without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art" --Bill Gates, 1983
Or from a recent TV movie...
Steve: "Our stuff is better, Bill."
Bill: "That doesn't matter!"
Well, in this case, it does matter. And mostly because it's $free$. With Bill and Steve, customers had/have to make a choice between two products which cost a significant chunk of money. And like *most* other things, you get what you pay for. The knock-off (M$ 9x/NT) is made more cheaply works for crap but the hardware is really cheap. The better product (of the two) requires different hardware and works better.
The above-mentioned exception is free software, in particular the GNU/LINUX community's products. If one can call them products. (Can you give something away and call it a product??? But I digress.) In this case, you can use the cheaper hardware, but get the OS and apps for $free - a really big difference.
I work for a state agency that recently spent $500,000 licensing M$ Exchange for mail. A half a million dollars so they could be incompatible with the rest of the 'net world and make sure thier support costs remain high.
I wonder how many people's lives could have been made happier and healthier with that $.5M in the state's health insurance system?
Virtually every major religion of the world today has at it's core being kindly toward others, do unto as you would be done, etc. Well, the core of the original speaker's words anyway, not the crap that comes out of the control and power mill that springs up around each religion as it "matures" and each member tries to manipulate it for their own personal profit/benefit... Is this not the underlying premise of communism/marxism etc.? From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need?
The place where people get confused is where they equate totalitarianism to communism, but the equation looks like this:
Religous founder's words => manipulative controlling dogma
Communist principles => manipulative controlling government
So, I can understand where RMS is coming from.
Except as the result of #2 above, I can't find a place to put capitalism...
I have a hard time believing that the benefit others receive from a coder working to solve a problem and then allowing others to have that code, or writing and releasing code toward the purpose of the approval of his peers is a bad thing. In much the same way that I have a hard time believing that the basic principles of communism/marxism are a bad thing.
I just wish that, if people are going to insult one another and throw derogatory terms around or lead government witch hunts, they use the correct term -- totalitarianism or facism.
Basically, call me a communist if you want, but know what you are calling me. If you call me a totalitarian or a facist, then I may be offended and begin to take issue. But if you call me a communist, I'm going to be proud that I have an interest in helping my fellow man (and yes, woman
BTW, ESR's arguments and the concept of "the gift economy" are also presented from a slightly different angle in "The Celestine Prophecy" by Redfield.
It was also interesting to see a post here in response to that movie that talked about the sum that Apple paid Xerox to look at their technology. Maybe they didn't pay to copy it, but at least they made a token.
And please remember that when M$ bought $150M of *non-voting* Apple stock that *couldn't be sold for five years*, Apple had $1.1B (that's right, Billion) CASH in the bank, not counting physical plant, product ready to ship, other assets, etc. That "investment" was roughly equivalent to what Bill would spend for a media splash for a new product or a charitable (read: tax and pr) donation. M$ did not "bail out" Apple!
Sorry if some of this this is a little off topic, but I felt the need to rant.
Russ