The point of ebooks will be their ability to be used in new ways. Not simply as a handy DRM distribution mechanism, but in the ways imagined in the form of the Dynabook. Linking information and ideas and personalizing the content in terms of notes and such. You are exactly correct in that the tech interferes, but this is true of computers also. I believe that the two will come together to form this new expression of ideas.
What is required for this is new display technology mimicking the printed page--epaper--which is at least the quality of a printed magazine. Face it, most printed books are crap (I design books). Scondly, an easy way to share content and links will be required. You can't charge a person to look at another's book. Amazon is doing something like this in a sense. Independent ebook readers are doomed. and the pen interface will be a primary method of highlighting and jotting down ideas within the pages.
Books will never go away, but they will become the hightest expression of the idea again--costly, beautiful, and revered.
It seems to me that this is wrong. If I purchase a lotto ticket, it has a refernce number on it which identifies the ticket, or in this case the vote. Providing a voter linked to a number which can be checked online to verify its "result" certainly seems to be the best option. Of course, who would want the citizens to be able to verify their votes?
The idea that you are being tracked is only relevant from a privacy perspective if they know who you are. The most frightening aspect of government "intervention" is the assumption that they know something about you. I think what the Orwellians missed is the idea of customization or personalization. How can we ensure that what is collected is only related to security/safety/convenience aspects? This is likely down the road after we figure out how to use the information. It's like the Gmail scare... "they're watching ME!" Actually nobody cares about "you." Maybe this is what weblogs are good for--to show you how irrelevant you and your opinion actually are. OK, well at least mine. It's so sad!
A personal Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle--they can know either who you are or where you are but never both.
I'm a designer, with some technical inclination, and frankly unless I'm engineering mission critical software, most of the concepts are not that difficult. Do this to open port xxx! So, when I needed to look at my IP Sec to understand how it needed to be programed without paying uunet to do it, I looked around for materials. There wasn't much as far as tutorials go, and uunet did do it for free anyway, but it was mostly just lines of "open port xxx." Oooh, punching holes in a firewall. But that saved me a grand, and as a small business person, this matters.
I don't think that the wireless firewire will be ready for an accross the board rollout by September. The iMac is a wierd machine in a sense, and placing a base on the new displays will solve the same design issues, but require a thousand dollar monitor. But, having a wirless iPod play movies on a 30 display with a Mac base would be the ideal home computer setup. No?
Perhaps this is analogous to the "desktop" concept, and even Apple's implementation of a desktop based on BSD. The network begins to have the intelligence, the tools become untethered, and sooner or later we are running on terminals. It used to be said about the Apple versus Next developers, that the Apple people kept everything on their machines, and the Next people connected with T1s. It's and apt comparison.
Your arguement can be made for Sun, but they also have a vested interest in making the network the computer.
Everybody loves to talk about TOS, and bandwidth costs, and leacherous users, but the real point is business. Not capitalism. You have removed the business from the mileu it exists within. Dave is no longer involved with Userland. Is he still an investor? A board member? In some ways he is inseperable from his company.
As a business person, I look at continuity, rationality, steadiness... in the products and services that I buy or use. When I offer a service, that service needs to be handled in a way which does not reduce my reputation. Let's say that I agree to perform a service for a company, and later decide that it does not meet my goals professionally or in profitability. I decide this one evening over a glass of wine, and call my client the next morning to exit. You can be sure that my reputation will suffer, and other businesses will consider me and by extension my business to be flaky and "untrustworthy." Trust in a business sense. FedEx has been entrusted to deliver my package overnight, not in two days, overnight. Sure, the terms of service declare that I have no recourse. Is that the point. According to "economics" it is. According to business, it is not. The point is they would not get my business.
I have recently considered creating a weblog, and have. I have also recently considered a business blog as a service to my clients, and am in the process of exploring it. These services will cost a fair amount of money if executed well, in a 24/7 sort of way. I looked at Userland, and by extension Dave, and considered it to be a business risk to deal with the company in several ways, which I will not elaborate upon (not a bad way). So, that company will lose at least several thousand dollars in business a year. Simple is it not? Every "business" person knows that even if the work is pro bono, it reflects upon the business good or bad. They offered to host weblogs for free, likely as a "loss leader." And, exited in a way which creates confusion, FUD, and controversy. They need to speak with a public relations firm!
That independent music will become the primary market, and that the consumption will increase greatly. People will explore. But, in order for this to happen, the downward pressure on prices will increase. Artists will never get 50% of the cut, but they will increase their percentage. Better tracking of usage, occuring in many markets, will allow for a better understanding of music/resource usage, and where value is actually added. Labels have value. Musician unions, and licensing groups do also. The service which can increase independent music consumption will win.
iTunes is in good shape, but there is a lot of music sitting around out there.
I agree that the cost of music needs to approach this cost, and as soon as that happens, I'll likely ditch the cds permanently. It's too bad that the music industry has this perspective that we need to own the music. Like every other commodity, costs decline as distribution increases. That said, I'm not holding my breath for wide distribution of songs via this method. iTunes really has a great model, although I wish that albums could be downloaded multiple times. I want to own the license not the data.
Most drawers tend to organize materials down to a manageable number of dimensions. Spoons here, forks there... 2d. A card catalog is a single dimension. As a designer, old typecases are very 2d. Piles are a single dimension scattered about in a two dimensional organization.
So, while file folder are arbitrary, finding documents via search is slow as hell, and people tend to be horrible organizers. Except of course for those with compulsive disorders!
business is often about defining your strategy for approaching new business. ibm is stating that openess will benefit their business. others have recognized this holistic approach to systems design, which from the beginning of computing was really required for high end/specialized systems. some wanted openess for additional reasons, such as freedom in beer and speech. so the same stick has simply been picked up to use in a more competetive environment against businesses not capable of integrating both sides of the computing environment.
so long as everybody has their needs met, it's a good thing(tm).
If you have a wireless network, why can't you set up iTunes to access the music which is located on a remote server? The Express is simply an audio connection, but this most certainly means that future iPods will be wireless. I have to say that this is a really good decision.
Walk into space with wireless iPod, share music over iTunes through perhaps a random list of songs from everybody's iPod. Apple will likely update iTunes to support an ID of some form so you can see who was playing that lame ass song...
I just did a quick Googel search, and didn't find anything about doing this on OS X. Since, I can get 8 Gigs in there, I was wondering if anybody has information on using RAM disks with Apple stuff. Thanks.
I think that the idea of open source, paper trails... is that people are quite capable of policing themselves. Whenever we're required to trust the white middle-aged man behind the curtain, it leaves a certain distaste. Democracy should have democratic, open tools. If I could check my vote on a website, as with a lottery ticket, you'd be damn sure that I would if my candidate lost. Oh Yah, he did...
Perhaps this is exactly what we need as a democracy... people invested enough to check on their votes.
While all of these are interesting, and various people can prove how witty they are, balance is generally a good concept to stick to. Of course that would require a balanced energy policy down to, at the very least, voluntary usage limits (a balanced usage policy). How the hell we can continue driving individuals around in several tons of engineered material is beyond me. How we can continue to go without some checks on our desire for bigger and better is also. The general consensus among those who look into reducing waste, is that a reduction in usage, say packaging materials through engineering, is much more effective than attempting to say recycle, or in this case match ever increasing usage requirements. Plenty O big name brains get by on 56k as opposed to personal T1s.
I would agree that attempting to meet our unreasonable energy requirements through drastically increasing nuclear power is ridiculous, and likely dangerous. There was mention of micro-muclear power plants on/. a while back. I find this interesting, though would rather not have targets scattered across the landscape. A drastic switch in energy types is probably not even possible without massive expenditures. Hey, let's switch to DC current! Where's my electric car? They've been coming! Hydrogen? I put my bets on 20 years for an economy like ours.
I just ditched my BMW, moved into the city, and walk to work. I have to say that I am much happier, not worrying about my car, and losing weight pretty damn rapidly. It was a great decision!
Microsoft certainly benefited from the availability of solid development tools, and now from a development budget which allows it to push the platform. This is a good move on Sun's part, but another necessary move is to get packaged installers available for all platforms, including OS X, which has a solid Java platform in place.
That they rarely have any problems... The single Mac that died was 6100 I had disassembled after installing MKLinux on it after it was basically worthless. I run an office and have been in charge of a dozen machines, routers, switches, and a couple of windows machines. I've configured Cisco switches and routers, set up their firewalls, rebuilt an entire office of Macs in a weekend with all of the software installed, and the only thing that has ever given me trouble, is connecting to the damn Windows machines, or having a shitty Dell hard disk fail a couple of times before they sent me a good one.
If this book included simple directions for getting everything to communicate, it would be worth its weight... But, there is always Google!
It will be interesting to see how T-mobile's coverage is affected by the discontinuation of the roaming agreements with Cingular (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-5219679.html). I live in Chicago and have rarley dropped a call in some of the areas listed with either Verizon or AT&T. But, Wicker park absolutely blew for Verizon, and Lincoln Park sucks for both. I have both services with multiple modems and phones for stuff... Dropped calls are consistent among both services in the area, and the fact that Verizon couldn't get decent coverage in Wicker Park was maddening.
Slashdot Mirror
After he's finished writing all of this material on the web, and the emails, imagine the noose he will have tied! Can you say "prison bitch?"
The point of ebooks will be their ability to be used in new ways. Not simply as a handy DRM distribution mechanism, but in the ways imagined in the form of the Dynabook. Linking information and ideas and personalizing the content in terms of notes and such. You are exactly correct in that the tech interferes, but this is true of computers also. I believe that the two will come together to form this new expression of ideas.
What is required for this is new display technology mimicking the printed page--epaper--which is at least the quality of a printed magazine. Face it, most printed books are crap (I design books). Scondly, an easy way to share content and links will be required. You can't charge a person to look at another's book. Amazon is doing something like this in a sense. Independent ebook readers are doomed. and the pen interface will be a primary method of highlighting and jotting down ideas within the pages.
Books will never go away, but they will become the hightest expression of the idea again--costly, beautiful, and revered.
It seems to me that this is wrong. If I purchase a lotto ticket, it has a refernce number on it which identifies the ticket, or in this case the vote. Providing a voter linked to a number which can be checked online to verify its "result" certainly seems to be the best option. Of course, who would want the citizens to be able to verify their votes?
No, I have nothing else to say!
The idea that you are being tracked is only relevant from a privacy perspective if they know who you are. The most frightening aspect of government "intervention" is the assumption that they know something about you. I think what the Orwellians missed is the idea of customization or personalization. How can we ensure that what is collected is only related to security/safety/convenience aspects? This is likely down the road after we figure out how to use the information. It's like the Gmail scare... "they're watching ME!" Actually nobody cares about "you." Maybe this is what weblogs are good for--to show you how irrelevant you and your opinion actually are. OK, well at least mine. It's so sad!
A personal Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle--they can know either who you are or where you are but never both.
I'm a designer, with some technical inclination, and frankly unless I'm engineering mission critical software, most of the concepts are not that difficult. Do this to open port xxx! So, when I needed to look at my IP Sec to understand how it needed to be programed without paying uunet to do it, I looked around for materials. There wasn't much as far as tutorials go, and uunet did do it for free anyway, but it was mostly just lines of "open port xxx." Oooh, punching holes in a firewall. But that saved me a grand, and as a small business person, this matters.
I don't think that the wireless firewire will be ready for an accross the board rollout by September. The iMac is a wierd machine in a sense, and placing a base on the new displays will solve the same design issues, but require a thousand dollar monitor. But, having a wirless iPod play movies on a 30 display with a Mac base would be the ideal home computer setup. No?
Perhaps this is analogous to the "desktop" concept, and even Apple's implementation of a desktop based on BSD. The network begins to have the intelligence, the tools become untethered, and sooner or later we are running on terminals. It used to be said about the Apple versus Next developers, that the Apple people kept everything on their machines, and the Next people connected with T1s. It's and apt comparison.
Your arguement can be made for Sun, but they also have a vested interest in making the network the computer.
It's called digital crack for a reason...
Do you feel that the idea of being interviewed by your potential employees is a positive or negative experience. And, of course, why?
Everybody loves to talk about TOS, and bandwidth costs, and leacherous users, but the real point is business. Not capitalism. You have removed the business from the mileu it exists within. Dave is no longer involved with Userland. Is he still an investor? A board member? In some ways he is inseperable from his company.
As a business person, I look at continuity, rationality, steadiness... in the products and services that I buy or use. When I offer a service, that service needs to be handled in a way which does not reduce my reputation. Let's say that I agree to perform a service for a company, and later decide that it does not meet my goals professionally or in profitability. I decide this one evening over a glass of wine, and call my client the next morning to exit. You can be sure that my reputation will suffer, and other businesses will consider me and by extension my business to be flaky and "untrustworthy." Trust in a business sense. FedEx has been entrusted to deliver my package overnight, not in two days, overnight. Sure, the terms of service declare that I have no recourse. Is that the point. According to "economics" it is. According to business, it is not. The point is they would not get my business.
I have recently considered creating a weblog, and have. I have also recently considered a business blog as a service to my clients, and am in the process of exploring it. These services will cost a fair amount of money if executed well, in a 24/7 sort of way. I looked at Userland, and by extension Dave, and considered it to be a business risk to deal with the company in several ways, which I will not elaborate upon (not a bad way). So, that company will lose at least several thousand dollars in business a year. Simple is it not? Every "business" person knows that even if the work is pro bono, it reflects upon the business good or bad. They offered to host weblogs for free, likely as a "loss leader." And, exited in a way which creates confusion, FUD, and controversy. They need to speak with a public relations firm!
That independent music will become the primary market, and that the consumption will increase greatly. People will explore. But, in order for this to happen, the downward pressure on prices will increase. Artists will never get 50% of the cut, but they will increase their percentage. Better tracking of usage, occuring in many markets, will allow for a better understanding of music/resource usage, and where value is actually added. Labels have value. Musician unions, and licensing groups do also. The service which can increase independent music consumption will win.
iTunes is in good shape, but there is a lot of music sitting around out there.
I agree that the cost of music needs to approach this cost, and as soon as that happens, I'll likely ditch the cds permanently. It's too bad that the music industry has this perspective that we need to own the music. Like every other commodity, costs decline as distribution increases. That said, I'm not holding my breath for wide distribution of songs via this method. iTunes really has a great model, although I wish that albums could be downloaded multiple times. I want to own the license not the data.
Most drawers tend to organize materials down to a manageable number of dimensions. Spoons here, forks there... 2d. A card catalog is a single dimension. As a designer, old typecases are very 2d. Piles are a single dimension scattered about in a two dimensional organization.
So, while file folder are arbitrary, finding documents via search is slow as hell, and people tend to be horrible organizers. Except of course for those with compulsive disorders!
this telephone thing sucks! Duh! It's data!
business is often about defining your strategy for approaching new business. ibm is stating that openess will benefit their business. others have recognized this holistic approach to systems design, which from the beginning of computing was really required for high end/specialized systems. some wanted openess for additional reasons, such as freedom in beer and speech. so the same stick has simply been picked up to use in a more competetive environment against businesses not capable of integrating both sides of the computing environment.
so long as everybody has their needs met, it's a good thing(tm).
If you have a wireless network, why can't you set up iTunes to access the music which is located on a remote server? The Express is simply an audio connection, but this most certainly means that future iPods will be wireless. I have to say that this is a really good decision.
Walk into space with wireless iPod, share music over iTunes through perhaps a random list of songs from everybody's iPod. Apple will likely update iTunes to support an ID of some form so you can see who was playing that lame ass song...
I just did a quick Googel search, and didn't find anything about doing this on OS X. Since, I can get 8 Gigs in there, I was wondering if anybody has information on using RAM disks with Apple stuff. Thanks.
I think that the idea of open source, paper trails... is that people are quite capable of policing themselves. Whenever we're required to trust the white middle-aged man behind the curtain, it leaves a certain distaste. Democracy should have democratic, open tools. If I could check my vote on a website, as with a lottery ticket, you'd be damn sure that I would if my candidate lost. Oh Yah, he did...
Perhaps this is exactly what we need as a democracy... people invested enough to check on their votes.
While all of these are interesting, and various people can prove how witty they are, balance is generally a good concept to stick to. Of course that would require a balanced energy policy down to, at the very least, voluntary usage limits (a balanced usage policy). How the hell we can continue driving individuals around in several tons of engineered material is beyond me. How we can continue to go without some checks on our desire for bigger and better is also. The general consensus among those who look into reducing waste, is that a reduction in usage, say packaging materials through engineering, is much more effective than attempting to say recycle, or in this case match ever increasing usage requirements. Plenty O big name brains get by on 56k as opposed to personal T1s.
/. a while back. I find this interesting, though would rather not have targets scattered across the landscape. A drastic switch in energy types is probably not even possible without massive expenditures. Hey, let's switch to DC current! Where's my electric car? They've been coming! Hydrogen? I put my bets on 20 years for an economy like ours.
I would agree that attempting to meet our unreasonable energy requirements through drastically increasing nuclear power is ridiculous, and likely dangerous. There was mention of micro-muclear power plants on
I just ditched my BMW, moved into the city, and walk to work. I have to say that I am much happier, not worrying about my car, and losing weight pretty damn rapidly. It was a great decision!
Microsoft certainly benefited from the availability of solid development tools, and now from a development budget which allows it to push the platform. This is a good move on Sun's part, but another necessary move is to get packaged installers available for all platforms, including OS X, which has a solid Java platform in place.
That they rarely have any problems... The single Mac that died was 6100 I had disassembled after installing MKLinux on it after it was basically worthless. I run an office and have been in charge of a dozen machines, routers, switches, and a couple of windows machines. I've configured Cisco switches and routers, set up their firewalls, rebuilt an entire office of Macs in a weekend with all of the software installed, and the only thing that has ever given me trouble, is connecting to the damn Windows machines, or having a shitty Dell hard disk fail a couple of times before they sent me a good one.
If this book included simple directions for getting everything to communicate, it would be worth its weight... But, there is always Google!
It will be interesting to see how T-mobile's coverage is affected by the discontinuation of the roaming agreements with Cingular (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-5219679.html). I live in Chicago and have rarley dropped a call in some of the areas listed with either Verizon or AT&T. But, Wicker park absolutely blew for Verizon, and Lincoln Park sucks for both. I have both services with multiple modems and phones for stuff... Dropped calls are consistent among both services in the area, and the fact that Verizon couldn't get decent coverage in Wicker Park was maddening.
Competition is good!
It's such a soft, gentle blue screen... I feel... sleepy!
As soon as you stated that, I thought, RTFA... But there wasn't one! So, I just said duh!
Yep! MIPS... But, Acorn, Now those are pretty nifty also.