I agree that once you don't watch TV anymore you don't really miss it.
It's somewhat sad when you mention to someone that you don't watch TV on a regular basis and them looking totally shocked. I bought a used large screen TV cheaply a few years ago but I lived in a valley where you could only receive one or two channels clear enough to see after you've messed with attennas long enough. Everyone wondered why'd I get the TV. To watch movies. (When I watch a movie I want to see it as it's meant to be.)
For a few years I didn't even own a TV. A couple I knew gave me one just because they couldn't stand the thought that I didn't have one. Now I watch a show every now and then and think I would like to see it on a regular basis. (24, Alias, CSI) The only problem, since I've had the habit of not turning on the TV other than to see a movie I forget about the show and several episodes go by before I see it again.
Strangly I remember a Simpson's episode where the childrens show was canceled so the kids had to find other things to do and everyone was in a utopic like world for a moment.
But the biggest thing is people are so hooked on TV today that it controls most of what they think and how they relate. I don't watch TV because it became mind numbing after a while. Now seeing other's reactions to how TV effects their lives makes me not want to start back. Shows just keeep seeming to degenrate more and more. The ones that actually make you think are few and far between. WHen they do happen to get aired they don't tend to last long.
One of the points of Mono is to make a fully compatible version of the.NET implementation for non Windows platforms.
I don't really see this as competing directly with MS. Remember at first there was hinting that Corel would write a Linux version of.NET. That doesn't seem to be happing, and so there's Mono instead. If anything this helps MS so they don't have to do it themselves. I helps Linux in they get an implementation which is also Open Source. It helps developers, especially large propietary vendors in that they can develop without GPL concerns which will attract more people to use it. This then helps everyone in that they can have more software available to them that can be run of the OS of there choice and (hopefully) maintain compatiblity between them. This'll also help in which there won't have to be completely different code bases to be maintained for software so once it's written on one platform very little will have to be done to port it to another.
What happened to the Game Gear in this history. It's only mentioned once very vaguely that some company was going to sell a cheaper version of it and other Sega products. Game Gear was a great product, just had bad battery life which eventually killed it (and it not being marketed very well).
What actually will a distributed network do for business
A business depends on relyable information and information sharing. If anyone can add info to the network to be searched through then it wont "fly" inmost businesses.
Why, because any business that has any quality assurance, needs a relyable information source and needs to know that source and it has to be controled.
I ran across a problem in this in trying to convince some clients to supply a company I worked for with CAD files instead of paper if they had them. I was told getting the files wasn't the problem but they were goverment agencies and making sure they were the current controled drawings was. They all told me if I could solve that then they would do it immediately as it would greatly reduce the load on hard copies they had to make.
In the engineering world if you wanted a drawing of some item and could go into a Gnutella like client and do a search for it would have been great. It would save time in redrawing it yourself, which could be considerable hours depending on what it was. But the question is where you got the drawing and how can you be sure it was current and accurate. There's no quality checks. Even if you knew the source how did you know it was the most current. If all the engineers/drafters that were connected to the network had a client on there computers what if the drawing they had was out of date.
Controlled networks with proper TTLs and maximum hops can work fine despite these numbers. But quality of info still needs to be determined and examined.
In the end I kept coming up with a single or system of central repositories to check against but seemed to contradict the thinking of a distributed network with no central database to check against.
This is a good altenative license to the GPL I think. I don't know what the codebase is for the software really, I was just interested in what type of licensing this is.
This is a good license to me, some parts may be a bit excessive and monopolistic. But otherwise this is a good license.It has what I'd like to see of more software licenses.
To me this is what this licenses says. Or rather this is the type of license I can build from it. Unfortunately I'd have to consult a lawyer to be really specific.
Basically from what I see, you are free to use and distribute the software as long as you don't derive any revenue from said software.
Any modifications you make, and I will assume, make and distribute (private you do want you want), you have to let them know before you do it and submit them the changes. I think this is fair because it's their software though you've modified it. (I'm not talking about this software in specific but just what the license can imply to any software.) If a change is made and released I as a developer would want to know about it. I would want to make sure that I agree with said changes and that if I didn't then that software isn't associated with my software other than it being a derivative work. Not every company will do this but some will, with a good enough change, may include you with the developers of the project and you may get something,whether revenue or another sort of agreement from said project. Whether that's their motive or not it's one to build off.
Now granted the part of receiving anything is purely in the hands of the holder of the original license. But you get to have software that you can use for free and spread around. If you make a modification then the party that originally made said software wants to know. (This is what I add.)If it's a significant enough modification and I don't accept it into the source then you are free to fork it as you please. Provided that you don't try to market or distribute it as another version of said software but present it as something different with reference that it derived from said software.
Sounds kinda contradictory but it's not. If I don't want to agree to the modification but you feel it's necessary then you can fork it and it becomes something different. Under copyright law with enough modification, it should be easy to prove that you've modified it enough that I feel it's a satisfactory enough of a modification for me to reject it. (Otherwise we would have come to some agreement that wasn't just purely monatary in nature.) Thus it's has been forked and you are free to distribute the forked version that includes your modification inclusively but not exclusively. Some may not, but I would maintain that if you at anytime disband, disable or nullify, your modification and there are no other modifications dependent upon your modification, then the said software reverts back to original license since it is now compatible with the original software you originally licensed. This includes if they're were further modifications that were incoporated after it was forked. And if the modifications are dependent upon modification made to the said forked software but not dependant upon the modifications that caused it to be forked. If a modification has been made to the forked software and the modification is not dependent upon the modification of the forked software, and the modification can exist within the original software then it is a modification to the original software. It is then incumbent upon the modifier to submit the modification to the submitter of the original software.
This is fair because it allows you and others as developers to do as you please and enter under agreements with the orginal developer, to do what you want with software. If you want to modify and not charge that's fine as long as it meets the distribution rules. Namely not claiming to be or be confused with the original other than a derivative. If the original developer wants to do what they want with the software that's fine becuase you'll have entered an agreement satisfactory to you with the software if they accepted and kept your modification. Two way street, you have to agree to the developer having accepted your modification and they have to abide by the agreement or not use the modification upon which you're free fork and distribute because they rejected you.
That's what I want out of a license. A license that gives me the right chose what I want by an agreement with the licensor (is that a word?) and not be forced to do because it's been licensed in a way that I don't agree what I want.
Re:Believe it or not...
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Dorm Storm?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What you do then is speak to them about everything but computers while you set theirs up. Then you look like somone who has another life who also just happens to know computers. Only tell them what's going on if they ask a question. The less specific they are the less specific you are. You'll still be "the guy who can fix my computer" but you may also be somone to associate with beyond computers.
Re:My sugestion - Limited support
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· Score: 1
Your number one point is a major and important one. While setting up a friends dorm at a college I spoke to the help desk and instisted to them that the actual network jack wasn't working. They insisted it wasn't working because I was setting up NT and not 95 or 98. After two weeks of calls they finally sent someone to check the jack and in 5 minutes he had it fixed. The cable to the hub in the basement wasn't plugged in. No other problems after that.
Provide Information
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· Score: 1, Informative
The biggest help I think is to provide the needed information in the form of flyers and on the School Website before the week actually begins. People who know how to setup there own computers will look there before they get to school usually so they have the needed info to connect.
If someone calls for info and not asistance give them the info or make a prerecorded message that provides all the necessary information.
And you can do what one school did, in which any computer with a working dhcp client could connect and get access to the schools local website only. Once on it they were instructed to fill out an online request form which registered their mac address to dorm room number and student. Then all they had to do was reboot or restart the dchp client to get full access.
But the biggest thing is mostly to provide the information so anyone with experience can do it by themselves without having to call and jump through hoops to get what they need. I don't know how many times I had problems getting simple information from help desks because they insisted on knowing the OS and all they supported was Win95/98 and wouldn't touch NT/2000 at all when I wasn't asking that.
Naysayers of Microsoft and.NET should take heed of this article. The internet is going through another growth shift. It's now moving beyond serving pages.
Linux is a componentized OS. Plug in the parts you want and go. Wouldn't it be great if their was a framework to base applications and services in the same way?
Hence.NET..NET is not just about subscriptions and ways that Microsoft can charge differently for products. It's about developing a new platform. One in which apps can naturally talk to each other. Data can be distributed and viewed across networks, as seemlessly as opening a local file..NET is OLE and COM all grown up.
Microsoft was late getting to the internet but this time they're on target if not ahead of the curve. The internet as a medium is now more about communications and distributed data sharing rather than just viewing web pages. Days of the internet being just an online brochure or reference are diminishing. With.NET built into all they're products MS is setting themselves up to repeat history all over again. Put something that is being overlooked into the world with their name on it thus being it's dominant influence. Getting it in the hands of the common user so eventually they think everything should be this way. Will it take 20 some odd years for the world to look and wonder how they got this dominance, then began another crusade to reduce them?
Business and users today want to be able to combine more and more data from different apps together and present it as they want. XML is making this happen. Developers and non-developers want to be able to do this in the language of they're choosing. They want to be able to send the data to others and know they can open and handle it. This is.NET and where things are heading. As the world gets more and more connected people will expect more and more from this connectivity.
As businesses grow and generate more data that must be shared internally and externally they need tools that will allow this. They see that people can look at their websites for informaation. Then after they add databases to them the information becomes more dynamic. As process get more involved so does the methods in which the data gathering and sharing happens. The business world wants it now, and users yesterday. That's why IIS is growing despite it's problems. The data in business doesn't need to be converted but can be used as is.
This isn't a IIS vs Apache or a Windows vs Linux situation. But rather it's I have this data, and I want to do this with it. But I don't want to switch or convert the way it's generated either.
I don't know if this thread is on the security of Lycos or the security and handling of scripting. So about lycos. They're just displaying links and desriptions so all scripting should be filtered out of there entries. They need to improve on there filtering methods.
Ok. There's been a lot of talk about all the bad in scripting. It's gotta have some good uses. I think it does.
For instance any type of use of dHTML needs some type of scripting involved. Forms that dynamically change content as it's being filled out are good as they save the user time and makes it easier for them to fill out. 90% of the users I support only want to focus on the task at hand and not have to figure ways around doing that task. The biggest request I get is Can it be made easier.
That's how the business and user world is. And it's those two worlds that most of the internet is geared towards.
I think Microsoft was on to something with the whole OS as Browser thing but when it about it wrong. It should be the Browser as an OS. Here's what I would like to see happen.
A browser that implements scripts to run srictly inside the browser in a protected sandbox. The browser starts with a main top level page and any subsequent windows opened inside of the browser open over the top level page. The browser should have a setting on how many child windows can be opened at a time. (Opera seems to be headed in that direction but the windows are either all maximized or not. Strictly MDI.) Scripts being abled to be compiled to byte code. The browsers should have an option that can be set as to whether or not it will start with a VM for scripts preinitialized for the byte code or not.
Kinda sounds like Java applets. But Java applets require to much overhead compared to scripts. A browser like I want will probably use more overhead too but it will all be initialized when it is opened. Java provides some of the functionality but there's one major problem I haven't overcome. I can't find out any documentation that allows for java to get access to the full DOM. I've seen some on Sun's site but it's very limited. If it had as much as scripting does then I think it would be used more. Then you get a little more security than you can get with scripts. If anyone knows about this please let me know.
.Net seems to be headed this way and provide this but I'm still checking and it's to early to tell yet. If so aside from the subscriptions it's a good thing.
Take a look at what goes on and is said on most game forums. Big name games, support from mainstream developers, and games that take advantage are the latest technology is it. Money isn't just the answer, opensource or no opensource isn't either. Free versus a cost for consoles or games. No sorry. Microsoft with all there money isn't having the smoothest of times getting XBox pushed. They still lack the software support that Sony has and as such the only have a fanactical fan base currently til it is actually shipped. They're hoping that by the next set of games is due to be released after it is shipped that they have more support from the companies like SQUARE for example whom they don't have currently.
Gamers and PC users are not the same. Being based on Linux or being opensource means nothing to the gamers that companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo depend on to be there.
This will just be a specialized system for enthusiaists to have. The questions that came to my mind with it being opensource is what if someone develops a game that uses a library of a later build or modified build of the one I have. How will this be updated? Will it involve recompiling the kernel? Will games have to be compiled to run on my machine?
If it's seen as a challenge to get Linux to the corporate desktop, then it's nearly impossible to get it to gamers. All they want is to play games. They don't want to look at code, they don't want to be able to modify the consoles kernel, or recode the game. (Maybe have options to customize portions but certainly not by recoding it.) Everything that is the boon to why Linux is good is the dearth as to it's survival as an opensource console.
For this to succeed maybe these guys can take at least on lesson from Microsoft. And that is to seriously analyze gamers and see how they think and act and what they want.
I think it can. The net shouldn't be treated as an ambiguous entity out there in the ethers of the computer world. At the moment the Net isn't being used nearly to the potential it can be.
First it has to be identified. What is it?
The Net is not the Web. The Web is an application of the Net. To many people mix and see the two as one versus one being a part of the other. The Net is a transport medium for digitized content using TCP/IP as an underlying protocol.
When the idea of using the Net means not just putting up a website but using it to transmit whatever we want then the Real Net revolution will come. At the moment it's more of just a Web Revolution. The technologies haven't been used en masse yet. Online gaming seems to be one of the few area actually taking adavantage of the Net.
If IPv6 ever come to full fruition I think we may see the Revolutionizing effects of the Net as a technology of technologies.
I'm picturing that broadband connectivity will be a standard utility provided like, telephone and cable. It will also probably be sometype of convergence of these to utilities to provide one super utility. Things from science fiction like the monitor panel embedded in the wall that acts as a monitor, video phone, news/infomation displayer, tv, art, etc. will no longer be just science ficition. I do it as well as many of my friends already use are computers this way now.
The problems not the technology but the lacking in its use.
But Joe sixpack can go to the store or download some software and install it on a windows machine by himself if the setup program is easy enough. And it is for about 80% of the software out there. No compiling, finding the right libraries, editing of configuration files, watching what window manager he uses.
Things are changing and the selling of goods through environments like the Internet will alter things soon. However I think CD's will be around for a while. Think about it they still make and sell tapes in the store. I know a lot of people who say a tape is good enough for them. For all the people that download music there are still so many more who don't and who don't even know it's really possible. I completely wired and setup it up for network and internet access throughout. It's setup so everyone with a computer has access to a collective set of music, and general content. But that's in my home and few people are setup like that or even considering doing that. Several people who grew up with me are at the opposite point. They have at most (and most not) a single computer with 56k access through a single phone line in the home that's used for all telephone calls. And desire to go no further technologically. Big businesses knows this and so do record companies. Until the tech user reach an point where they are the majority target market things we will crawl toward the disapperance of CD stores.
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I agree that once you don't watch TV anymore you don't really miss it.
It's somewhat sad when you mention to someone that you don't watch TV on a regular basis and them looking totally shocked. I bought a used large screen TV cheaply a few years ago but I lived in a valley where you could only receive one or two channels clear enough to see after you've messed with attennas long enough. Everyone wondered why'd I get the TV. To watch movies. (When I watch a movie I want to see it as it's meant to be.)
For a few years I didn't even own a TV. A couple I knew gave me one just because they couldn't stand the thought that I didn't have one. Now I watch a show every now and then and think I would like to see it on a regular basis. (24, Alias, CSI) The only problem, since I've had the habit of not turning on the TV other than to see a movie I forget about the show and several episodes go by before I see it again.
Strangly I remember a Simpson's episode where the childrens show was canceled so the kids had to find other things to do and everyone was in a utopic like world for a moment.
But the biggest thing is people are so hooked on TV today that it controls most of what they think and how they relate. I don't watch TV because it became mind numbing after a while. Now seeing other's reactions to how TV effects their lives makes me not want to start back. Shows just keeep seeming to degenrate more and more. The ones that actually make you think are few and far between. WHen they do happen to get aired they don't tend to last long.
One of the points of Mono is to make a fully compatible version of the .NET implementation for non Windows platforms.
.NET. That doesn't seem to be happing, and so there's Mono instead. If anything this helps MS so they don't have to do it themselves. I helps Linux in they get an implementation which is also Open Source. It helps developers, especially large propietary vendors in that they can develop without GPL concerns which will attract more people to use it. This then helps everyone in that they can have more software available to them that can be run of the OS of there choice and (hopefully) maintain compatiblity between them. This'll also help in which there won't have to be completely different code bases to be maintained for software so once it's written on one platform very little will have to be done to port it to another.
I don't really see this as competing directly with MS. Remember at first there was hinting that Corel would write a Linux version of
What happened to the Game Gear in this history. It's only mentioned once very vaguely that some company was going to sell a cheaper version of it and other Sega products. Game Gear was a great product, just had bad battery life which eventually killed it (and it not being marketed very well).
What actually will a distributed network do for business
A business depends on relyable information and information sharing. If anyone can add info to the network to be searched through then it wont "fly" inmost businesses.
Why, because any business that has any quality assurance, needs a relyable information source and needs to know that source and it has to be controled.
I ran across a problem in this in trying to convince some clients to supply a company I worked for with CAD files instead of paper if they had them. I was told getting the files wasn't the problem but they were goverment agencies and making sure they were the current controled drawings was. They all told me if I could solve that then they would do it immediately as it would greatly reduce the load on hard copies they had to make.
In the engineering world if you wanted a drawing of some item and could go into a Gnutella like client and do a search for it would have been great. It would save time in redrawing it yourself, which could be considerable hours depending on what it was. But the question is where you got the drawing and how can you be sure it was current and accurate. There's no quality checks. Even if you knew the source how did you know it was the most current. If all the engineers/drafters that were connected to the network had a client on there computers what if the drawing they had was out of date.
Controlled networks with proper TTLs and maximum hops can work fine despite these numbers. But quality of info still needs to be determined and examined.
In the end I kept coming up with a single or system of central repositories to check against but seemed to contradict the thinking of a distributed network with no central database to check against.
This is a good altenative license to the GPL I think. I don't know what the codebase is for the software really, I was just interested in what type of licensing this is.
This is a good license to me, some parts may be a bit excessive and monopolistic. But otherwise this is a good license.It has what I'd like to see of more software licenses.
To me this is what this licenses says. Or rather this is the type of license I can build from it. Unfortunately I'd have to consult a lawyer to be really specific.
Basically from what I see, you are free to use and distribute the software as long as you don't derive any revenue from said software.
Any modifications you make, and I will assume, make and distribute (private you do want you want), you have to let them know before you do it and submit them the changes. I think this is fair because it's their software though you've modified it. (I'm not talking about this software in specific but just what the license can imply to any software.) If a change is made and released I as a developer would want to know about it. I would want to make sure that I agree with said changes and that if I didn't then that software isn't associated with my software other than it being a derivative work. Not every company will do this but some will, with a good enough change, may include you with the developers of the project and you may get something,whether revenue or another sort of agreement from said project. Whether that's their motive or not it's one to build off.
Now granted the part of receiving anything is purely in the hands of the holder of the original license. But you get to have software that you can use for free and spread around. If you make a modification then the party that originally made said software wants to know. (This is what I add.)If it's a significant enough modification and I don't accept it into the source then you are free to fork it as you please. Provided that you don't try to market or distribute it as another version of said software but present it as something different with reference that it derived from said software.
Sounds kinda contradictory but it's not. If I don't want to agree to the modification but you feel it's necessary then you can fork it and it becomes something different. Under copyright law with enough modification, it should be easy to prove that you've modified it enough that I feel it's a satisfactory enough of a modification for me to reject it. (Otherwise we would have come to some agreement that wasn't just purely monatary in nature.) Thus it's has been forked and you are free to distribute the forked version that includes your modification inclusively but not exclusively. Some may not, but I would maintain that if you at anytime disband, disable or nullify, your modification and there are no other modifications dependent upon your modification, then the said software reverts back to original license since it is now compatible with the original software you originally licensed. This includes if they're were further modifications that were incoporated after it was forked. And if the modifications are dependent upon modification made to the said forked software but not dependant upon the modifications that caused it to be forked. If a modification has been made to the forked software and the modification is not dependent upon the modification of the forked software, and the modification can exist within the original software then it is a modification to the original software. It is then incumbent upon the modifier to submit the modification to the submitter of the original software.
This is fair because it allows you and others as developers to do as you please and enter under agreements with the orginal developer, to do what you want with software. If you want to modify and not charge that's fine as long as it meets the distribution rules. Namely not claiming to be or be confused with the original other than a derivative. If the original developer wants to do what they want with the software that's fine becuase you'll have entered an agreement satisfactory to you with the software if they accepted and kept your modification. Two way street, you have to agree to the developer having accepted your modification and they have to abide by the agreement or not use the modification upon which you're free fork and distribute because they rejected you.
That's what I want out of a license. A license that gives me the right chose what I want by an agreement with the licensor (is that a word?) and not be forced to do because it's been licensed in a way that I don't agree what I want.
What you do then is speak to them about everything but computers while you set theirs up. Then you look like somone who has another life who also just happens to know computers. Only tell them what's going on if they ask a question. The less specific they are the less specific you are. You'll still be "the guy who can fix my computer" but you may also be somone to associate with beyond computers.
Your number one point is a major and important one. While setting up a friends dorm at a college I spoke to the help desk and instisted to them that the actual network jack wasn't working. They insisted it wasn't working because I was setting up NT and not 95 or 98. After two weeks of calls they finally sent someone to check the jack and in 5 minutes he had it fixed. The cable to the hub in the basement wasn't plugged in. No other problems after that.
The biggest help I think is to provide the needed information in the form of flyers and on the School Website before the week actually begins. People who know how to setup there own computers will look there before they get to school usually so they have the needed info to connect.
If someone calls for info and not asistance give them the info or make a prerecorded message that provides all the necessary information.
And you can do what one school did, in which any computer with a working dhcp client could connect and get access to the schools local website only. Once on it they were instructed to fill out an online request form which registered their mac address to dorm room number and student. Then all they had to do was reboot or restart the dchp client to get full access.
But the biggest thing is mostly to provide the information so anyone with experience can do it by themselves without having to call and jump through hoops to get what they need. I don't know how many times I had problems getting simple information from help desks because they insisted on knowing the OS and all they supported was Win95/98 and wouldn't touch NT/2000 at all when I wasn't asking that.
Naysayers of Microsoft and .NET should take heed of this article. The internet is going through another growth shift. It's now moving beyond serving pages.
Linux is a componentized OS. Plug in the parts you want and go. Wouldn't it be great if their was a framework to base applications and services in the same way?
Hence .NET. .NET is not just about subscriptions and ways that Microsoft can charge differently for products. It's about developing a new platform. One in which apps can naturally talk to each other. Data can be distributed and viewed across networks, as seemlessly as opening a local file. .NET is OLE and COM all grown up.
Microsoft was late getting to the internet but this time they're on target if not ahead of the curve. The internet as a medium is now more about communications and distributed data sharing rather than just viewing web pages. Days of the internet being just an online brochure or reference are diminishing. With .NET built into all they're products MS is setting themselves up to repeat history all over again. Put something that is being overlooked into the world with their name on it thus being it's dominant influence. Getting it in the hands of the common user so eventually they think everything should be this way. Will it take 20 some odd years for the world to look and wonder how they got this dominance, then began another crusade to reduce them?
Business and users today want to be able to combine more and more data from different apps together and present it as they want. XML is making this happen. Developers and non-developers want to be able to do this in the language of they're choosing. They want to be able to send the data to others and know they can open and handle it. This is .NET and where things are heading. As the world gets more and more connected people will expect more and more from this connectivity.
As businesses grow and generate more data that must be shared internally and externally they need tools that will allow this. They see that people can look at their websites for informaation. Then after they add databases to them the information becomes more dynamic. As process get more involved so does the methods in which the data gathering and sharing happens. The business world wants it now, and users yesterday. That's why IIS is growing despite it's problems. The data in business doesn't need to be converted but can be used as is.
This isn't a IIS vs Apache or a Windows vs Linux situation. But rather it's I have this data, and I want to do this with it. But I don't want to switch or convert the way it's generated either.
I don't know if this thread is on the security of Lycos or the security and handling of scripting. So about lycos. They're just displaying links and desriptions so all scripting should be filtered out of there entries. They need to improve on there filtering methods.
Ok. There's been a lot of talk about all the bad in scripting. It's gotta have some good uses. I think it does.
For instance any type of use of dHTML needs some type of scripting involved. Forms that dynamically change content as it's being filled out are good as they save the user time and makes it easier for them to fill out. 90% of the users I support only want to focus on the task at hand and not have to figure ways around doing that task. The biggest request I get is Can it be made easier.
That's how the business and user world is. And it's those two worlds that most of the internet is geared towards.
I think Microsoft was on to something with the whole OS as Browser thing but when it about it wrong. It should be the Browser as an OS. Here's what I would like to see happen.
A browser that implements scripts to run srictly inside the browser in a protected sandbox. The browser starts with a main top level page and any subsequent windows opened inside of the browser open over the top level page. The browser should have a setting on how many child windows can be opened at a time. (Opera seems to be headed in that direction but the windows are either all maximized or not. Strictly MDI.) Scripts being abled to be compiled to byte code. The browsers should have an option that can be set as to whether or not it will start with a VM for scripts preinitialized for the byte code or not.
Kinda sounds like Java applets. But Java applets require to much overhead compared to scripts. A browser like I want will probably use more overhead too but it will all be initialized when it is opened. Java provides some of the functionality but there's one major problem I haven't overcome. I can't find out any documentation that allows for java to get access to the full DOM. I've seen some on Sun's site but it's very limited. If it had as much as scripting does then I think it would be used more. Then you get a little more security than you can get with scripts. If anyone knows about this please let me know.
.Net seems to be headed this way and provide this but I'm still checking and it's to early to tell yet. If so aside from the subscriptions it's a good thing.
Take a look at what goes on and is said on most game forums. Big name games, support from mainstream developers, and games that take advantage are the latest technology is it. Money isn't just the answer, opensource or no opensource isn't either. Free versus a cost for consoles or games. No sorry. Microsoft with all there money isn't having the smoothest of times getting XBox pushed. They still lack the software support that Sony has and as such the only have a fanactical fan base currently til it is actually shipped. They're hoping that by the next set of games is due to be released after it is shipped that they have more support from the companies like SQUARE for example whom they don't have currently.
Gamers and PC users are not the same. Being based on Linux or being opensource means nothing to the gamers that companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo depend on to be there.
This will just be a specialized system for enthusiaists to have. The questions that came to my mind with it being opensource is what if someone develops a game that uses a library of a later build or modified build of the one I have. How will this be updated? Will it involve recompiling the kernel? Will games have to be compiled to run on my machine?
If it's seen as a challenge to get Linux to the corporate desktop, then it's nearly impossible to get it to gamers. All they want is to play games. They don't want to look at code, they don't want to be able to modify the consoles kernel, or recode the game. (Maybe have options to customize portions but certainly not by recoding it.) Everything that is the boon to why Linux is good is the dearth as to it's survival as an opensource console.
For this to succeed maybe these guys can take at least on lesson from Microsoft. And that is to seriously analyze gamers and see how they think and act and what they want.
I think it can. The net shouldn't be treated as an ambiguous entity out there in the ethers of the computer world. At the moment the Net isn't being used nearly to the potential it can be. First it has to be identified. What is it? The Net is not the Web. The Web is an application of the Net. To many people mix and see the two as one versus one being a part of the other. The Net is a transport medium for digitized content using TCP/IP as an underlying protocol. When the idea of using the Net means not just putting up a website but using it to transmit whatever we want then the Real Net revolution will come. At the moment it's more of just a Web Revolution. The technologies haven't been used en masse yet. Online gaming seems to be one of the few area actually taking adavantage of the Net. If IPv6 ever come to full fruition I think we may see the Revolutionizing effects of the Net as a technology of technologies. I'm picturing that broadband connectivity will be a standard utility provided like, telephone and cable. It will also probably be sometype of convergence of these to utilities to provide one super utility. Things from science fiction like the monitor panel embedded in the wall that acts as a monitor, video phone, news/infomation displayer, tv, art, etc. will no longer be just science ficition. I do it as well as many of my friends already use are computers this way now. The problems not the technology but the lacking in its use.
But Joe sixpack can go to the store or download some software and install it on a windows machine by himself if the setup program is easy enough. And it is for about 80% of the software out there. No compiling, finding the right libraries, editing of configuration files, watching what window manager he uses.
Finally someone whose used Linux for awhile and knows it admits that it does have flaws and is not for the average user.
Things are changing and the selling of goods through environments like the Internet will alter things soon. However I think CD's will be around for a while. Think about it they still make and sell tapes in the store. I know a lot of people who say a tape is good enough for them. For all the people that download music there are still so many more who don't and who don't even know it's really possible. I completely wired and setup it up for network and internet access throughout. It's setup so everyone with a computer has access to a collective set of music, and general content. But that's in my home and few people are setup like that or even considering doing that. Several people who grew up with me are at the opposite point. They have at most (and most not) a single computer with 56k access through a single phone line in the home that's used for all telephone calls. And desire to go no further technologically. Big businesses knows this and so do record companies. Until the tech user reach an point where they are the majority target market things we will crawl toward the disapperance of CD stores.