I think you're missing the point. It has to be an impulse buy. Period, end of story. If you start making really fancy, burns exactly what you never wanted to disk machines, they're going to fail. On the other hand, consider loading one of those snack machines with CDs of FireFox, OpenOffice, Mandrake, TuxRacer, Blender3D, the Gutenburg collection, and several other popular computer titles. Such a machine would generate interest. Now add a touchscreen menu that explains to joe-blow what software is what.
"See Marge, it says that this 'OpenOffice' software does everything that Microsoft Office does. And it's only 5 bucks. If it doesn't work, we'll only be out 5 bucks."
True. His primary competition is from Armadillo. Armadillo could probably launch tomorrow, and maybe even be lucky enough to complete the flight. But they're taking the wise course, and getting the bugs worked out of their system first.:-)
Rutan still has a *long* way to go. His craft has only made it up ~20km. That leaves him with about 80km to go. When he has more km behind him instead than ahead of him, then we'll talk.
(Mostly because I wouldn't care to risk much more than that much money in a vending machine.)
Exactly. $5 is low enough to where you figure you can snag it for fun. If you don't like the software, you can throw it out and forget about it. Even if only 1 out of every 5 vending machine purchases work out, you'll still consider yourself ahead of the game.
Besides, vending machines *have* to work on instinctual buys. If I see the latest XPde Desktop Linux CD in the machine as I'm walking into the store, I'm going to salivate at the idea of getting it. If it's in shrink wrap, the idea of parting with $50 is going to stop me from making the purchase. But if it's only $5, the idea of *having* that software will overwhelm my better senses.
Assuming someone doesn't patent the whole idea...:/
You can't patent a business process.
Oh, hrm, you do have to comply with the GPL and put the source on those CDs, though,
Considering how much space is on a CD, I think that would tend to be the least of your problems. I'd be more concerned about where I'm going to get the vending machine from. I could just buy a traditional machine and load it with CDs, but then it would lack an interactive menu. On the other hand, I could pay $$$ for research and development to create a machine that burns the CD on the fly. Unfortunately, that would break the KISS principle and make my life difficult. Thus the best tradeoff is probably a simple machine loaded with prepressed CDs, but with an interactive menu screen that lets you make selections.
I think the problem here is that CompUSA thinks people want traditional software from a vending machine. What people actually want is *cheap* software from a vending machine. i.e. I insert a five dollar bill into the machine, and a copy of Mozilla, Linux, iTunes, etc. pops out. I've now saved myself a huge download and burn processes, all for the low cost of a couple of bucks.
Jack the price up to $50-$200, and people will start expecting more. They'll want shrinkwrapping, manuals, free little dodads that come in the box, and other niceties. No way they're going to be thinking about getting *that* out of a vending machine.
I was waiting for one of these posts. Here's the long and short of it: I want a well supported desktop that will work out of the box. I don't want to recompile the kernel, I don't want to configure the desktop settings before use, I don't want to do anything. All I want to do, is go through the install procedure, and have a cohesive desktop appear. That means that Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware can all take a hike.
If and when I again feel like configuring my system myself, I'll reinstall FreeBSD.
Sorry for being so blunt about it, but it's just how I feel about the subject right now.
As a matter of fact, some browsing the INCAT website shows a picture of the Bay Ferries Cat under the info for the Evolution 10B model, which is one of the more recent ones, around the size of the HSV 2 Swift. Speed is listed at 38 knots fully loaded and 47 knots lightship.
So you're of the opinion that they've simply classified the top speed of the craft? It's certainly possible. However, let me throw a monkey wrench in these numbers.
You listed 38 knots maximum for a fully loaded ship of this type. Assuming that the military used the same design, fully loaded for them would mean 350 men, armor all around, defensive guns and missiles, a couple of helicopters, and probably some landing boats. With all that weight, it's conceivable that the maximum speed could be dropped to 35 knots.
That being said, I would expect the military to soup up the engines a bit. So I would not be at all surprised she has a maximum military power of 40 knots and they just aren't telling anyone about it.
I understand their rational. Unfortunately, that rational makes it useless to me as a desktop environment. Instead, I'm downloading Mandrake while I wait for my JDS CD in the mail.
I've been looking at different Linux desktops lately, and I've come to the conclusion that there is only *one* viable GNOME desktop out there. When I considered which Linux to install, I realized that my current choices were thus:
RedHat Fedora Mandrake Suse Java Desktop System
I actually tried the most recent Fedora and found it to be useless. They refuse to ship NTFS support, MP3 support, or NVidia support. On top of that, my MS Intellimouse keeps locking up. That problem has been there since RedHat 8! What have these people been up to?
That leaves Mandrake, Suse and JDS. Of those three, only JDS is GNOME based (actually quite nicely GNOME based). Thus KDE seems to have won the day.
Seeing as you couldn't escort the thing because it was faster than a warship, it made them a bit uncomfortable.
See, this was where I was actually a bit surprised. Based on the hull of this thing, you'd expect it to be able to make 40+ knots. But according to the posted articles, she's only rated to do 35 knots. When you compare that to the USS Enterprise (made a non-stop, worldwide tour at 32 knots), that's barely enough to keep ahead of the carrier. By the time you get to your destination, the carrier is only an hour or two behind. And unlike these tiny boats, the carrier will have launched fighters, cargo planes, helicopters, and whatever else needs to be deployed, long before you ever get there.
These boats only make sense if they can do 40+ knots. Otherwise they might as well be part of the support group. Perhaps the true top speed is classified?
Or we could simply go nuclear. The biggest problem with radioisotope generators is the problem of keeping them out of landfills, and eventually our water supply. If we solve that problem, we can power laptops and cellphones for half a decade or better.
Sun Freeware has nothing to do with Sun, it's done by volunteers exactly because Sun couldn't be bothered with freeware.
Yes and no. SunFreeware is not run by Sun, but Sun has given them their support, and distributes a CD of their software with Solaris 8 and 9. So the original posters point holds. Sun is not new to freeware.
large body was rotating it would create a drag effect on space-time known as frame dragging.
I think we're all familiar with time dialation (if you haven't read "The Elegent Universe", you're missing the best explanation of *why* time dislation occurs that I have ever heard), but what is frame dragging? What kind of effects does it have on the observer?
Actually, Sun is a big contributor to the GNOME project. So it's a little hard to say that they "just take GNOME". I do agree that the Java Desktop name is a bit silly though. Still, it's a really nice system, and Webstart applications work without any fiddling.
Suse and GNOME? It will probably end up being a lot like Java Desktop System. The demo CD of JDS I've tried is niiice. It's fast, smooth, and even detects 3D hardware automatically. I have not once been to the console in it or experienced an unexpected crash.
I suppose you could say that the Enterprise and the Reliant both weighed several tonnes, although still quite weightless in space.
Two problems with this statement:
1. They probably weigh significantly more than "a few tonnes". Try more along the lines of 10000+. (For comparison, a US aircraft carrier weighs about 17,500 short tons.) 2. Objects in space can still mass thousands of tonnes. Weight is just a gravitational representation of mass.
1. DataDino and Aqua are both "free". Except that Aqua is only "free" for personal use, while DD is "free" for commercial. There's just fewer features activated.
2. Last I checked, Aqua only did SQL queries. DataDino works a little different. It also has the ability to run queries (in the pay version), but it can also browse the data, reverse engineer table source, display relationships, etc. Basically, they're very different products.
1. Camino is (unfortuntaely) very poor at figuring out that JNLP files are actually executable and safe. Safari does a much better job with them.
2. It's a complete application to access databases. You can see it here: http://www.datadino.com. It requests unrestricted access from you so that it can talk over the network and stash drivers on the hard disk. If you go to Up2Go, you'll find plenty of applications that don't request extra permissions.
3. Do you know of any other technologies that actually *warn* you when launching a potentially unsafe application? Microsoft thought it was A-OK to allow embedded web controls full access to your machine. Now ActiveX controls are responsible for auto-installing web-toolbars and spyware.
Sorry I forgot about the security warning. If it really bothers you, go try an application on Up2Go that's marked 100% safe.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're missing the point. It has to be an impulse buy. Period, end of story. If you start making really fancy, burns exactly what you never wanted to disk machines, they're going to fail. On the other hand, consider loading one of those snack machines with CDs of FireFox, OpenOffice, Mandrake, TuxRacer, Blender3D, the Gutenburg collection, and several other popular computer titles. Such a machine would generate interest. Now add a touchscreen menu that explains to joe-blow what software is what.
"See Marge, it says that this 'OpenOffice' software does everything that Microsoft Office does. And it's only 5 bucks. If it doesn't work, we'll only be out 5 bucks."
True. His primary competition is from Armadillo. Armadillo could probably launch tomorrow, and maybe even be lucky enough to complete the flight. But they're taking the wise course, and getting the bugs worked out of their system first. :-)
Rutan still has a *long* way to go. His craft has only made it up ~20km. That leaves him with about 80km to go. When he has more km behind him instead than ahead of him, then we'll talk.
All software - $5
:/
(Mostly because I wouldn't care to risk much more than that much money in a vending machine.)
Exactly. $5 is low enough to where you figure you can snag it for fun. If you don't like the software, you can throw it out and forget about it. Even if only 1 out of every 5 vending machine purchases work out, you'll still consider yourself ahead of the game.
Besides, vending machines *have* to work on instinctual buys. If I see the latest XPde Desktop Linux CD in the machine as I'm walking into the store, I'm going to salivate at the idea of getting it. If it's in shrink wrap, the idea of parting with $50 is going to stop me from making the purchase. But if it's only $5, the idea of *having* that software will overwhelm my better senses.
Assuming someone doesn't patent the whole idea...
You can't patent a business process.
Oh, hrm, you do have to comply with the GPL and put the source on those CDs, though,
Considering how much space is on a CD, I think that would tend to be the least of your problems. I'd be more concerned about where I'm going to get the vending machine from. I could just buy a traditional machine and load it with CDs, but then it would lack an interactive menu. On the other hand, I could pay $$$ for research and development to create a machine that burns the CD on the fly. Unfortunately, that would break the KISS principle and make my life difficult. Thus the best tradeoff is probably a simple machine loaded with prepressed CDs, but with an interactive menu screen that lets you make selections.
I think the problem here is that CompUSA thinks people want traditional software from a vending machine. What people actually want is *cheap* software from a vending machine. i.e. I insert a five dollar bill into the machine, and a copy of Mozilla, Linux, iTunes, etc. pops out. I've now saved myself a huge download and burn processes, all for the low cost of a couple of bucks.
Jack the price up to $50-$200, and people will start expecting more. They'll want shrinkwrapping, manuals, free little dodads that come in the box, and other niceties. No way they're going to be thinking about getting *that* out of a vending machine.
Huh. Didn't realize that people were so interested in this. I'll see about making a journal entry after I'm done working through the options.
I was waiting for one of these posts. Here's the long and short of it: I want a well supported desktop that will work out of the box. I don't want to recompile the kernel, I don't want to configure the desktop settings before use, I don't want to do anything. All I want to do, is go through the install procedure, and have a cohesive desktop appear. That means that Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware can all take a hike.
If and when I again feel like configuring my system myself, I'll reinstall FreeBSD.
Sorry for being so blunt about it, but it's just how I feel about the subject right now.
As a matter of fact, some browsing the INCAT website shows a picture of the Bay Ferries Cat under the info for the Evolution 10B model, which is one of the more recent ones, around the size of the HSV 2 Swift. Speed is listed at 38 knots fully loaded and 47 knots lightship.
So you're of the opinion that they've simply classified the top speed of the craft? It's certainly possible. However, let me throw a monkey wrench in these numbers.
You listed 38 knots maximum for a fully loaded ship of this type. Assuming that the military used the same design, fully loaded for them would mean 350 men, armor all around, defensive guns and missiles, a couple of helicopters, and probably some landing boats. With all that weight, it's conceivable that the maximum speed could be dropped to 35 knots.
That being said, I would expect the military to soup up the engines a bit. So I would not be at all surprised she has a maximum military power of 40 knots and they just aren't telling anyone about it.
I understand their rational. Unfortunately, that rational makes it useless to me as a desktop environment. Instead, I'm downloading Mandrake while I wait for my JDS CD in the mail.
I was using Fedora Core 2. :-(
I've been looking at different Linux desktops lately, and I've come to the conclusion that there is only *one* viable GNOME desktop out there. When I considered which Linux to install, I realized that my current choices were thus:
RedHat Fedora
Mandrake
Suse
Java Desktop System
I actually tried the most recent Fedora and found it to be useless. They refuse to ship NTFS support, MP3 support, or NVidia support. On top of that, my MS Intellimouse keeps locking up. That problem has been there since RedHat 8! What have these people been up to?
That leaves Mandrake, Suse and JDS. Of those three, only JDS is GNOME based (actually quite nicely GNOME based). Thus KDE seems to have won the day.
So, 7.5 seconds in 18 months?
;-)
After which the electricity arcs from the wire to your body, thus killing you dead. Oh, and you'll have to replace a fuse.
Seeing as you couldn't escort the thing because it was faster than a warship, it made them a bit uncomfortable.
See, this was where I was actually a bit surprised. Based on the hull of this thing, you'd expect it to be able to make 40+ knots. But according to the posted articles, she's only rated to do 35 knots. When you compare that to the USS Enterprise (made a non-stop, worldwide tour at 32 knots), that's barely enough to keep ahead of the carrier. By the time you get to your destination, the carrier is only an hour or two behind. And unlike these tiny boats, the carrier will have launched fighters, cargo planes, helicopters, and whatever else needs to be deployed, long before you ever get there.
These boats only make sense if they can do 40+ knots. Otherwise they might as well be part of the support group. Perhaps the true top speed is classified?
Ah yes, good old Sulu from my favorite Star Trek movie.
You're favorite movie?! It was Chekov you insensitive clod! Thanks for trying to spoil *my* favorite movie. Hurmph.
Or we could simply go nuclear. The biggest problem with radioisotope generators is the problem of keeping them out of landfills, and eventually our water supply. If we solve that problem, we can power laptops and cellphones for half a decade or better.
Sun Freeware has nothing to do with Sun, it's done by volunteers exactly because Sun couldn't be bothered with freeware.
Yes and no. SunFreeware is not run by Sun, but Sun has given them their support, and distributes a CD of their software with Solaris 8 and 9. So the original posters point holds. Sun is not new to freeware.
An excellent explanation, sir. Thank you.
Mods, How about helping the guy out?
large body was rotating it would create a drag effect on space-time known as frame dragging.
I think we're all familiar with time dialation (if you haven't read "The Elegent Universe", you're missing the best explanation of *why* time dislation occurs that I have ever heard), but what is frame dragging? What kind of effects does it have on the observer?
Actually, Sun is a big contributor to the GNOME project. So it's a little hard to say that they "just take GNOME". I do agree that the Java Desktop name is a bit silly though. Still, it's a really nice system, and Webstart applications work without any fiddling.
pssstt...
like this
Suse and GNOME? It will probably end up being a lot like Java Desktop System. The demo CD of JDS I've tried is niiice. It's fast, smooth, and even detects 3D hardware automatically. I have not once been to the console in it or experienced an unexpected crash.
I suppose you could say that the Enterprise and the Reliant both weighed several tonnes, although still quite weightless in space.
Two problems with this statement:
1. They probably weigh significantly more than "a few tonnes". Try more along the lines of 10000+. (For comparison, a US aircraft carrier weighs about 17,500 short tons.)
2. Objects in space can still mass thousands of tonnes. Weight is just a gravitational representation of mass.
In Insurrection? (scratches head) Don't remember it. All I remember is Riker playing with his joystick.
I swear that thing was a stupid Microsoft Sidewinder.
ree and does by far more than the dateddino...
1. DataDino and Aqua are both "free". Except that Aqua is only "free" for personal use, while DD is "free" for commercial. There's just fewer features activated.
2. Last I checked, Aqua only did SQL queries. DataDino works a little different. It also has the ability to run queries (in the pay version), but it can also browse the data, reverse engineer table source, display relationships, etc. Basically, they're very different products.
BTW, the price list for Aqua is here: http://www.aquafold.com/licensing.html
1. Camino is (unfortuntaely) very poor at figuring out that JNLP files are actually executable and safe. Safari does a much better job with them.
2. It's a complete application to access databases. You can see it here: http://www.datadino.com. It requests unrestricted access from you so that it can talk over the network and stash drivers on the hard disk. If you go to Up2Go, you'll find plenty of applications that don't request extra permissions.
3. Do you know of any other technologies that actually *warn* you when launching a potentially unsafe application? Microsoft thought it was A-OK to allow embedded web controls full access to your machine. Now ActiveX controls are responsible for auto-installing web-toolbars and spyware.
Sorry I forgot about the security warning. If it really bothers you, go try an application on Up2Go that's marked 100% safe.