It's not a food, and it's not a drug. The other uses for a tactile display don't even have to be medical; they could be for video games. Where does the FDA have jurisdiction?
The FDA manages to cover just about anything medical, including scooters for the disabled. There may not be much difference between a Segway and similar robotics for the disabled, but one costs a LOT more than the other.
If patents aren't involved (or if they're expired), what stops a competitor from copying the design into that of its own device?
Copyright, actually. You can't just directly rip off a device without expecting legal reprocussions. Not that it could be done without the manufacturing blue prints. Just like you need source code to be truely effective in reverse engineering software, you need the blueprints for mechanical devices. Without those prints, you'd need to reverse engineer it, which is just as much work as starting from scratch.
How not cheap? How much of the $20 per pin is actuators and controllers and how much is margin? I wonder...
Looking at Digikey, I've got actuators at about 30 cents a piece. Unfortunately, that doesn't give the cost of control mechanisms, mounting, or wiring.
It's possible to find uses for tactile displays other than for blind people. This expanded market could lead to economies of scale that increase supply across the board.
Possible, but not likely. I don't know if you've ever worked for a medical company before, but the FDA regulations virtually guarantee that any product produced will cost 10x what it should and take 3-5 years to develop.
Which is why I asked when the patents will run out, so that other companies could compete for the dollars that governments are willing to pay to give these devices to blind veterans.
My point is that it really isn't patents. The exhorbant costs in developing this stuff means that they need high margins to stay in business. As a result, you're doubtful to find anyone selling them cheaper.
As comedian Chris Rock put it, "I wish you a merry welfare and a happy food stamp." It's the same argument about prescription drugs. I can point you to a lot of people on the political right who would disagree with your "But not too much" assessment.
It's not a great situation, but even medical companies can't push their markups too far. If they do, the result would be a media circus on par with the $100-hammer-stored-in-a-warehouse-that-no-one-ever -uses story.
2. Margins have to be high because of the limited market. Lower cost items would put the company out of business.
3. Development costs are high, due to a lot of custom parts.
4. Because they can sell the devices for that much. I believe that the government has support programs that will pay for devices like these, so the prices tend to be somewhat inflated. (But not too much.)
*chuckle* I'm not sure if you're being humourous or sarcastic, so I'll just give a serious reply.
As I understand it, simply sanding the pins was insufficient. Being as thin as the pins were, they were always going to be hard on people's hands. At the time I wondered about a rubber covering, but my guess is that such a covering would be easily punctured if it was thin enough not to obscure the information.:-)
I like having feedback on things like tab completion not working,
To each their own, I guess. In my case, I'm rather annoyed at the Sun CDE terminal. While you can switch the bell to a flash, there is no way to completely disable the functionality. A minor thing, perhaps, but it bugs me to no end.:-/
well, even the well-crafted unix CLI tools could use some work before they'd be useful for Text-To-Speech applications.
I'm not sure that the parent was referring to text-to-speech. In the case of a 80x25 terminal, it would be quite easy to build a monitor that pops up the bumps for each braille character. Reading it would be as simple as scanning down the page. Obviously "less" would be needed to prevent things from scrolling too fast.
Such devices already exist, although I think they only provide one line at a time (for some reason).
Such devices already exist, including those built into mice so the blind can "feel" icons and borders as the pointer slides over them.
I'm not at all surprised. In fact, I knew such devices existed. The issue is that the last generation I saw were unusable due to low resolution and sharp pins. Also, some support from the OS tends to help a lot. (e.g. Inverted buttons.)
It sounds like they've come a long way, though.:-)
You mean, something like this? There are a variety of one handed keyboard designs, the most common of which are chorded keyboards. The primary issue is that they require a lot more training than a standard 104-key keyboard. Most people wouldn't bother with such training, but in the case of blind users, many already go through various special training. (e.g. Braille, sign-language, etc.)
Braille consists of raised bumps. "Inverting" them, i.e. turning them into dents, renders them essentially unreadable.
Sorry, I was unclear. I was referring to icons and buttons being inverted. Text should never be inverted, but should actually be raised when selected. Thanks for catching that.
The first thing I tend to do is turn off the damn bell. I can tell when my input is not accepted just fine, thank you. In fact, (as I stated in my post) I consistently mute my computer unless I'm listening to music or watching television. (I have a TV card.)
Considering that muting the computer would have the same effect as being deaf (rest of the environment excluded), I fail to see how the terminal bell would help.
The only case where I see an issue is with people who are both deaf and blind. Special notifications such as new email would be hard for them to detect. The only solution I can find in that situation is to add a vibrator to the touch device. If the system has an event that the user should know about, the device should vibrate litely. Info should also be added to a system log that the user can check to figure out what the latest event was. (Especially useful for when the user was away from his/her desk.)
What is the point of that? Braille is meant to be felt, and would have no purpose on a screen
Dude, read it again. I'm suggesting that they have a screen that they can *feel*. Regular characters would be very difficult to discern on such a device, so changing the fonts to braille is the best solution.
Re:Then how is the production funded?
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If someone won't watch adverts on TV, what makes you think he'll watch them on the computer?
Define "don't watch"? If you mean that consumers ignore them, then there are no new challenges in this model.
Bear in mind it's impossible to get viewing figures from bittorrent,
I said "BitTorrent-like". If the studio controlled the tracker, they could indeed know the viewing figures. In any case, the sharing algorithm would have to be more linear in order to provide a real-time data stream.
especially when skipping them means just pressing a button.
Why build a fast-forward into the delivery mechanism? Especially since you still need to stream the data, so the viewer might as well be forced to watch. A "chapters" implementation can be used to allow users to skip or backup between scenes in case they're interrupted. (But not cut out commercials!)
Not very many people at all want to watch TV on the computer. Compare the people with broadband Internet with TVs. The numbers are vastly different.
Well, that's an entirely different problem. The answer is digital convergence, but the question is how to speed up the process? My wife and I already use our computer as a television via a TV Card. For our next computer, I'm considering using a Plasma TV with DVI for the monitor, which would give us a complete TV and computer in one.
I have a few thoughts on how to make an accessable Internet distribution model, but I'm not going to enumerate them here. I have been planning to blog the ideas in the near future, so if you're interested (and ONLY if you're interested) keep an eye on my blog. (Posts are about once a week.) Otherwise, I'm sure that quite a few ideas could pop up if the internet model were pushed hard enough.
1. Use a device that creates a topographical image on a pad based on the screen color values. This would allow the blind user to "feel" his way around the screen. More advanced versions could allow the user to use his hands as a mouse, by accepting a certain amount of pressure as a click.
2. Controls on the device should allow the user to "zoom in" on particular areas. This would help the user more easily find toolbar buttons and the like.
3. Replace the system fonts with braille fonts. (I'm uncertain as to how one might add bold or italics for emphasis, but I'm sure a system can be devised. Perhaps extra bumps outside the normal character area?)
4. No right clicks. Right clicking is more of functionality for advanced users anyway. Mac OS X can get along without it, so other OSes should be able to do so as well.
5. "Selected" items should actually invert in the control device. This would allow the person to easily understand what (s)he has selected at the moment.
6. Standard controls such as checkboxes, radio buttons, and the like should be skinned to be more "feel" friendly. i.e. Simple invertable boxes would work better for checkboxes and radio buttons than our current iconic forms.
7. One handed brail keyboard? It's just a thought, but if the blind could be taught to use a one hand keyboard, they could read and type at the same time.
Deaf: What are some of the actual challenges facing a deaf computer user? Computers are primarily visual, and tend to suffer little with the loss of sound. (Unless I'm listening to music, I usually keep my machines muted.) My only thought is that the standard issues of movie subtitles apply.
You made the assertion that Sun Specific APIs do not exist, saying 'all I can say is, "They're in the fine manual."'
You're confusing two different points. The first one is that Sun Specific APIs no longer exist in OOo 2.0. The second point is that any valid APIs OOo uses are in TFM.
In my opinion, to go with the comic theme from your handle, you're painting Sun as some rather loaded, Hulk like character, that's every moment about to explode and go on a rampage in too tight shorts in an outburst of barely controlled rage.
No, you are painting them that way. Why you are, I have no idea. My point is clear enough. Your choice to ignore it is both confusing and frustrating.
Dude, serious diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain going on here.
Question: When did I say that a new protocol is necessary? Answer: I didn't.
Just settle yer' horses down, take a deep breath, and re-read what I said. You'll find that you're "argument" acheives nothing but repeating what I've already said.:-)
If you want to see Sun Specific APIs in action, please grep over the 1.0.x source code for imports of com.sun.* or sun.* namespaces. Those APIs are not specified, so they can not be implemented.
I'm afraid you're misunderstanding me. As I said, Sun finally fixed these issues in the 2.0 series, yet that is where the charges are levied. I pointed that very fact out, and was ignored and pointed to 1.x references (as you yourself are doing). If someone wanted to raise a stink, they should have done it prior to 2.x - when the teams got things in order.
I believe you're boxing with your own shadow, here. On one hand you're the one saying 'Sun could have crushed OSS! They could find many reasons to sue you, personally, even now!' on the other hand you're nevertheless saying 'Sun will never sue OSS projects. They never did.'. I think you are simultaneously arguing both sides of a heated 'Sun is evil! No it's not!' debate taking place somewhere else.
Dalibor, you have a very strange way of twisting my words. Simply put, my point is that Sun has every reason to be pissed off, every method available to squash those who piss them off, and yet restrains themselves and works hard to be a "good guy". How you get opposing viewpoints from that, I have no idea.
You seem to take the pain, suffering, and (my goodness!) bad press that Sun gets pretty personally. Do you happen to work for Sun's PR team? Or are you by chance one of their Evangelists?
I do not work for Sun, but I am a longtime member of the Java Community. We've met before under the JL forums, but I've decided to withdraw my identity here.
Re:More Stupidity!
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 4, Informative
Doesn't high margin imply high profit?
Nope. If I create a product that costs $10 to manufacture, sell it for $12, but sell 10,000,000 units, then I have made $20,000,000 profit on a 16% margin. On the other hand, if I create a product that costs $6 to manufacture and sell 10,000 unit for $12 a piece, I'd have made $60,000 on a 50% margin. Given the choice, most people would go for the 16% margin because it means more money.
The risk, however, is that you might fail to capture the market and only sell a small number. Any up front costs (which can be considerable in high profit dealings) are lost. Now if you consider that the 16% margin has an upfront cost of $100,000, but the 50% margin has an upfront cost of only $1,000, how do you think that effects the risk/reward ratio?
As I understand it, the teenage/young adult market (i.e. The Star Trek market) is one of the most profitable markets in Television. The key with the reality shows is that they're less able to attract those high-profitability markets, but they accept less risk and higher margins. (Which is different from higher profits, BTW.)
Re:And...?
on
P2P and TV
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It was his reaction to the whole thing. Instead of pondering what this sudden influx of a fanbase for a non-existent show means, he jumps straight to the "cover it up through force" method.
In other words, I'm not really talking about copyrights. Then again, neither is Mr. Hoffman.;-)
Re:Then how is the production funded?
on
P2P and TV
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You're watching no ads. I'm not sure you realize how much money advertising brings to the table here.
There's nothing stopping Internet distribution from including ads. Sure, some people will remove them, but the majority wouldn't bother. There are also other models that can be explored, such as BitTorrent-like streaming where the final file is really not accessable to the user.
Want five more? Come buy the boxed set.
This is the "first hit free" model. It's based on the idea that most people aren't going to bother running around trying to find another free hit. They'll just pay for it. There will always be a small group trying to game the system, but they are insignificant.
Reading the article, my gut feeling is that this is nothing more than a grass-roots effort to get a show into production. Just like the fan-base of FireFly was built through BitTorrent, so will the fan-base of this show be build. I don't think it really has anything to do with the P2P aspect other than the fact that P2P technology was used for distribution. Similar things happened prior to the Internet with leaked tapes, whereupon copies upon copies were made.
More Stupidity!
on
P2P and TV
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Hoffman added that the pilot's unauthorized distribution is "unacceptable and illegal... no matter what the underlying motives" and said the company hasn't ruled out taking legal action "when it comes to stopping the illegal distribution of our copyright material."
Quick! Cover it up! People aren't supposed to know we're rejecting the GOOD shows in favor of more idiocy! God forbid that a television network pander to an intelligent clientele. After all, you're all supposed to slurp up the low cost, low profit, low intelligence, but HIGH MARGIN reality shows! Who wants to worry about actually pleasing customers? Just pander to the stupidity! That's the ticket!
Gah. And television networks wonder why no one is tuning in anymore. It must be because there isn't enough stupidity. Bring on Big Brother on Survivor Island where the worst singer is voted into fear factor stunts! In Dolby 5.1 no less! That'll bring in the ratings!
What about it? M&M's, RC, Pepsi, SPAM, Ovaltine, and several other products have survived for many years. However, these exceptions do not in any way detract from my original point. The market moves on and many products are lost or reinvented.
Your example of Coca-Cola is actually one of the worst ones you could have chosen, because Coke *did* have to reinvent themselves. It just so happened that their reinvention stirred such strong emotions in the market, that Coca-Cola's original product was again guaranteed success in the market.:-)
However, it doesn't at all add up to a change away from X11R6.
I'm sorry, I must have been unclear. The first part of my post was merely a discussion over the fact that an X12 server need not be incompatible with an X11 server. The second part of my post was a separate point which was that the real issue at hand is not the need for a new protocol (despite the cruftiness of the current protocol), but rather the need for a better X-Server architecture.:-)
Small note: Egomanic suggested using drivers that run outside of Ring 0. That's just as acceptable. The key is that X-Windows get out of the business of managing the underlying hardware.:-)
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It's not a food, and it's not a drug. The other uses for a tactile display don't even have to be medical; they could be for video games. Where does the FDA have jurisdiction?
The FDA manages to cover just about anything medical, including scooters for the disabled. There may not be much difference between a Segway and similar robotics for the disabled, but one costs a LOT more than the other.
If patents aren't involved (or if they're expired), what stops a competitor from copying the design into that of its own device?
Copyright, actually. You can't just directly rip off a device without expecting legal reprocussions. Not that it could be done without the manufacturing blue prints. Just like you need source code to be truely effective in reverse engineering software, you need the blueprints for mechanical devices. Without those prints, you'd need to reverse engineer it, which is just as much work as starting from scratch.
How not cheap? How much of the $20 per pin is actuators and controllers and how much is margin? I wonder...
r -uses story.
Looking at Digikey, I've got actuators at about 30 cents a piece. Unfortunately, that doesn't give the cost of control mechanisms, mounting, or wiring.
It's possible to find uses for tactile displays other than for blind people. This expanded market could lead to economies of scale that increase supply across the board.
Possible, but not likely. I don't know if you've ever worked for a medical company before, but the FDA regulations virtually guarantee that any product produced will cost 10x what it should and take 3-5 years to develop.
Which is why I asked when the patents will run out, so that other companies could compete for the dollars that governments are willing to pay to give these devices to blind veterans.
My point is that it really isn't patents. The exhorbant costs in developing this stuff means that they need high margins to stay in business. As a result, you're doubtful to find anyone selling them cheaper.
As comedian Chris Rock put it, "I wish you a merry welfare and a happy food stamp." It's the same argument about prescription drugs. I can point you to a lot of people on the political right who would disagree with your "But not too much" assessment.
It's not a great situation, but even medical companies can't push their markups too far. If they do, the result would be a media circus on par with the $100-hammer-stored-in-a-warehouse-that-no-one-eve
There are a couple of issues:
1. Actuators aren't cheap. You need one per pin.
2. Margins have to be high because of the limited market. Lower cost items would put the company out of business.
3. Development costs are high, due to a lot of custom parts.
4. Because they can sell the devices for that much. I believe that the government has support programs that will pay for devices like these, so the prices tend to be somewhat inflated. (But not too much.)
Yeah, they've learned to sand the pins.
:-)
*chuckle* I'm not sure if you're being humourous or sarcastic, so I'll just give a serious reply.
As I understand it, simply sanding the pins was insufficient. Being as thin as the pins were, they were always going to be hard on people's hands. At the time I wondered about a rubber covering, but my guess is that such a covering would be easily punctured if it was thin enough not to obscure the information.
I like having feedback on things like tab completion not working,
:-/
To each their own, I guess. In my case, I'm rather annoyed at the Sun CDE terminal. While you can switch the bell to a flash, there is no way to completely disable the functionality. A minor thing, perhaps, but it bugs me to no end.
well, even the well-crafted unix CLI tools could use some work before they'd be useful for Text-To-Speech applications.
I'm not sure that the parent was referring to text-to-speech. In the case of a 80x25 terminal, it would be quite easy to build a monitor that pops up the bumps for each braille character. Reading it would be as simple as scanning down the page. Obviously "less" would be needed to prevent things from scrolling too fast.
Such devices already exist, although I think they only provide one line at a time (for some reason).
Such devices already exist, including those built into mice so the blind can "feel" icons and borders as the pointer slides over them.
:-)
I'm not at all surprised. In fact, I knew such devices existed. The issue is that the last generation I saw were unusable due to low resolution and sharp pins. Also, some support from the OS tends to help a lot. (e.g. Inverted buttons.)
It sounds like they've come a long way, though.
Man, if they ever develop such a thing,
You mean, something like this? There are a variety of one handed keyboard designs, the most common of which are chorded keyboards. The primary issue is that they require a lot more training than a standard 104-key keyboard. Most people wouldn't bother with such training, but in the case of blind users, many already go through various special training. (e.g. Braille, sign-language, etc.)
Braille consists of raised bumps. "Inverting" them, i.e. turning them into dents, renders them essentially unreadable.
Sorry, I was unclear. I was referring to icons and buttons being inverted. Text should never be inverted, but should actually be raised when selected. Thanks for catching that.
The first thing I tend to do is turn off the damn bell. I can tell when my input is not accepted just fine, thank you. In fact, (as I stated in my post) I consistently mute my computer unless I'm listening to music or watching television. (I have a TV card.)
Considering that muting the computer would have the same effect as being deaf (rest of the environment excluded), I fail to see how the terminal bell would help.
The only case where I see an issue is with people who are both deaf and blind. Special notifications such as new email would be hard for them to detect. The only solution I can find in that situation is to add a vibrator to the touch device. If the system has an event that the user should know about, the device should vibrate litely. Info should also be added to a system log that the user can check to figure out what the latest event was. (Especially useful for when the user was away from his/her desk.)
What is the point of that? Braille is meant to be felt, and would have no purpose on a screen
Dude, read it again. I'm suggesting that they have a screen that they can *feel*. Regular characters would be very difficult to discern on such a device, so changing the fonts to braille is the best solution.
If someone won't watch adverts on TV, what makes you think he'll watch them on the computer?
Define "don't watch"? If you mean that consumers ignore them, then there are no new challenges in this model.
Bear in mind it's impossible to get viewing figures from bittorrent,
I said "BitTorrent-like". If the studio controlled the tracker, they could indeed know the viewing figures. In any case, the sharing algorithm would have to be more linear in order to provide a real-time data stream.
especially when skipping them means just pressing a button.
Why build a fast-forward into the delivery mechanism? Especially since you still need to stream the data, so the viewer might as well be forced to watch. A "chapters" implementation can be used to allow users to skip or backup between scenes in case they're interrupted. (But not cut out commercials!)
Not very many people at all want to watch TV on the computer. Compare the people with broadband Internet with TVs. The numbers are vastly different.
Well, that's an entirely different problem. The answer is digital convergence, but the question is how to speed up the process? My wife and I already use our computer as a television via a TV Card. For our next computer, I'm considering using a Plasma TV with DVI for the monitor, which would give us a complete TV and computer in one.
I have a few thoughts on how to make an accessable Internet distribution model, but I'm not going to enumerate them here. I have been planning to blog the ideas in the near future, so if you're interested (and ONLY if you're interested) keep an eye on my blog. (Posts are about once a week.) Otherwise, I'm sure that quite a few ideas could pop up if the internet model were pushed hard enough.
Blind:
1. Use a device that creates a topographical image on a pad based on the screen color values. This would allow the blind user to "feel" his way around the screen. More advanced versions could allow the user to use his hands as a mouse, by accepting a certain amount of pressure as a click.
2. Controls on the device should allow the user to "zoom in" on particular areas. This would help the user more easily find toolbar buttons and the like.
3. Replace the system fonts with braille fonts. (I'm uncertain as to how one might add bold or italics for emphasis, but I'm sure a system can be devised. Perhaps extra bumps outside the normal character area?)
4. No right clicks. Right clicking is more of functionality for advanced users anyway. Mac OS X can get along without it, so other OSes should be able to do so as well.
5. "Selected" items should actually invert in the control device. This would allow the person to easily understand what (s)he has selected at the moment.
6. Standard controls such as checkboxes, radio buttons, and the like should be skinned to be more "feel" friendly. i.e. Simple invertable boxes would work better for checkboxes and radio buttons than our current iconic forms.
7. One handed brail keyboard? It's just a thought, but if the blind could be taught to use a one hand keyboard, they could read and type at the same time.
Deaf: What are some of the actual challenges facing a deaf computer user? Computers are primarily visual, and tend to suffer little with the loss of sound. (Unless I'm listening to music, I usually keep my machines muted.) My only thought is that the standard issues of movie subtitles apply.
You made the assertion that Sun Specific APIs do not exist, saying 'all I can say is, "They're in the fine manual."'
You're confusing two different points. The first one is that Sun Specific APIs no longer exist in OOo 2.0. The second point is that any valid APIs OOo uses are in TFM.
In my opinion, to go with the comic theme from your handle, you're painting Sun as some rather loaded, Hulk like character, that's every moment about to explode and go on a rampage in too tight shorts in an outburst of barely controlled rage.
No, you are painting them that way. Why you are, I have no idea. My point is clear enough. Your choice to ignore it is both confusing and frustrating.
Dude, serious diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain going on here.
:-)
Question: When did I say that a new protocol is necessary?
Answer: I didn't.
Just settle yer' horses down, take a deep breath, and re-read what I said. You'll find that you're "argument" acheives nothing but repeating what I've already said.
Question: Would it have killed you to read the followup note?
If you want to see Sun Specific APIs in action, please grep over the 1.0.x source code for imports of com.sun.* or sun.* namespaces. Those APIs are not specified, so they can not be implemented.
I'm afraid you're misunderstanding me. As I said, Sun finally fixed these issues in the 2.0 series, yet that is where the charges are levied. I pointed that very fact out, and was ignored and pointed to 1.x references (as you yourself are doing). If someone wanted to raise a stink, they should have done it prior to 2.x - when the teams got things in order.
I believe you're boxing with your own shadow, here. On one hand you're the one saying 'Sun could have crushed OSS! They could find many reasons to sue you, personally, even now!' on the other hand you're nevertheless saying 'Sun will never sue OSS projects. They never did.'. I think you are simultaneously arguing both sides of a heated 'Sun is evil! No it's not!' debate taking place somewhere else.
Dalibor, you have a very strange way of twisting my words. Simply put, my point is that Sun has every reason to be pissed off, every method available to squash those who piss them off, and yet restrains themselves and works hard to be a "good guy". How you get opposing viewpoints from that, I have no idea.
You seem to take the pain, suffering, and (my goodness!) bad press that Sun gets pretty personally. Do you happen to work for Sun's PR team? Or are you by chance one of their Evangelists?
I do not work for Sun, but I am a longtime member of the Java Community. We've met before under the JL forums, but I've decided to withdraw my identity here.
Doesn't high margin imply high profit?
Nope. If I create a product that costs $10 to manufacture, sell it for $12, but sell 10,000,000 units, then I have made $20,000,000 profit on a 16% margin. On the other hand, if I create a product that costs $6 to manufacture and sell 10,000 unit for $12 a piece, I'd have made $60,000 on a 50% margin. Given the choice, most people would go for the 16% margin because it means more money.
The risk, however, is that you might fail to capture the market and only sell a small number. Any up front costs (which can be considerable in high profit dealings) are lost. Now if you consider that the 16% margin has an upfront cost of $100,000, but the 50% margin has an upfront cost of only $1,000, how do you think that effects the risk/reward ratio?
As I understand it, the teenage/young adult market (i.e. The Star Trek market) is one of the most profitable markets in Television. The key with the reality shows is that they're less able to attract those high-profitability markets, but they accept less risk and higher margins. (Which is different from higher profits, BTW.)
It was his reaction to the whole thing. Instead of pondering what this sudden influx of a fanbase for a non-existent show means, he jumps straight to the "cover it up through force" method.
;-)
In other words, I'm not really talking about copyrights. Then again, neither is Mr. Hoffman.
You're watching no ads. I'm not sure you realize how much money advertising brings to the table here.
There's nothing stopping Internet distribution from including ads. Sure, some people will remove them, but the majority wouldn't bother. There are also other models that can be explored, such as BitTorrent-like streaming where the final file is really not accessable to the user.
Want five more? Come buy the boxed set.
This is the "first hit free" model. It's based on the idea that most people aren't going to bother running around trying to find another free hit. They'll just pay for it. There will always be a small group trying to game the system, but they are insignificant.
Reading the article, my gut feeling is that this is nothing more than a grass-roots effort to get a show into production. Just like the fan-base of FireFly was built through BitTorrent, so will the fan-base of this show be build. I don't think it really has anything to do with the P2P aspect other than the fact that P2P technology was used for distribution. Similar things happened prior to the Internet with leaked tapes, whereupon copies upon copies were made.
Hoffman added that the pilot's unauthorized distribution is "unacceptable and illegal ... no matter what the underlying motives" and said the company hasn't ruled out taking legal action "when it comes to stopping the illegal distribution of our copyright material."
Quick! Cover it up! People aren't supposed to know we're rejecting the GOOD shows in favor of more idiocy! God forbid that a television network pander to an intelligent clientele. After all, you're all supposed to slurp up the low cost, low profit, low intelligence, but HIGH MARGIN reality shows! Who wants to worry about actually pleasing customers? Just pander to the stupidity! That's the ticket!
Gah. And television networks wonder why no one is tuning in anymore. It must be because there isn't enough stupidity. Bring on Big Brother on Survivor Island where the worst singer is voted into fear factor stunts! In Dolby 5.1 no less! That'll bring in the ratings!
Coca-Cola ?
:-)
What about it? M&M's, RC, Pepsi, SPAM, Ovaltine, and several other products have survived for many years. However, these exceptions do not in any way detract from my original point. The market moves on and many products are lost or reinvented.
Your example of Coca-Cola is actually one of the worst ones you could have chosen, because Coke *did* have to reinvent themselves. It just so happened that their reinvention stirred such strong emotions in the market, that Coca-Cola's original product was again guaranteed success in the market.
However, it doesn't at all add up to a change away from X11R6.
:-)
I'm sorry, I must have been unclear. The first part of my post was merely a discussion over the fact that an X12 server need not be incompatible with an X11 server. The second part of my post was a separate point which was that the real issue at hand is not the need for a new protocol (despite the cruftiness of the current protocol), but rather the need for a better X-Server architecture.
Small note: Egomanic suggested using drivers that run outside of Ring 0. That's just as acceptable. The key is that X-Windows get out of the business of managing the underlying hardware. :-)