Doesn't this seem like a lot of overhead for the card companies? Now, not only do they have to keep track of millions of cards and billions of dollars spent through them, but they also have to ensure that the right cards are being used by the right retailers. Yes it's convienent, but how much is it going to cost?
That's not for the card companies to manage - it's for YOU to manage. For example, I leave my credit card number on file at Netflix.com, and they charge me every month. If I wanted to, I could use a disposable number for that, and I'd know if it got used anywhere else that Netflix's database had been compromised. Then, I'd only have to cancel one disposable card, instead of reentering my card number at all of the places I do business with.
This is actually a Good Thing, no offense to Martha Stewart. I had my wallet stolen in Mexico a while back, and ever since, I've had a separate credit card that I use just for online transactions. It helps me prevent fraud (that account should never show anything but the same four or five retailers) and makes it a lot easier if I get my pocket picked again - my services keep coming, regardless of whether I have to stop my other cards.
Keep in mind that the hundreds of people who got blinded by butchered procedures won't be posting followups here on/., because they're blind now.
Congratulations on your improved vision. I'm happy for you, and I wish you the best. But a friend of mine lost all vision in one of his eyes, and about 50% of the vision in the other eye. It's not all wine and roses in eyesurgeryville.
I dont need to go blind in 20 years because some company overlooked a problem in it's haste to get this to the market to make money.
This is why laser eye correction is taking so long to catch on. There were some real butcher jobs early on, and getting your eyes worked on is nothing like getting some liposuction done. (Or so I'm told.) My eyesight is just way, way too valuable to get frivolous elective surgery done. My glasses work just fine, thank you, and they're a lot cheaper than surgery.
How does the 20 - scale work anyway? Is there a maximum (20/0)? Is it linear or logarithmic with respect to the quality of your vision? Is the denominator just a measurement? Why 20, is it just normalized to average vision?
Disclaimer: I'm no optha^M^M^Mopthi^M^M^M eye doctor, but here's how I understand it to work:
Your vision in feet / Normal vision in feet
For example, if you have 20/10, that means you can see at 20' what most people have to get within 10' in order to see. (A street sign, breast size, writing on the wall, whatever.)
At my last checkup, I had 20/40, meaning I have worse than average vision. I have to be only 20' away from the chart to get the same results that the normal person can see within 40'.
A good way to explain the theoretical max of 20/2.5 that they're talking about is to think about computer monitors. If you sit 2.5' away from your 17" monitor, you can read everything fine. These robotic eyes would allow you to read the same text on the same monitor, standing TWENTY FEET AWAY, with the exact same accuracy as someone sitting just 2.5' away. That's astounding.
Or think of it another way: it's pretty hard to get within 2.5' of Natalie Portman, but if you plunk down the money for these roboeyes, you only have to get 20' away in order to find out if she's really got perfect skin or not.
Let's just get rid of the whole damn license. Just release your software if you want and don't release it if you don't want. This DOES NOT require lawyers.
Sounds good in theory, but here's the problem: what happens when a company grabs an open-source product like Linux, makes its own proprietary mods, and then sells the whole thing for a profit - but doesn't allow you to see its changes? That's the problem with doing away with licenses: you can't stop people from doing BAD things with your software.
A good license (like the GPL) ensures that the work you do is protected, and someone can't rip it off. That's why so many people jump on the Linux bandwagon: they know that the coding they do will be used for the good of the community, not ripped off and shoved into a big, closed-source entity.
Imagine if Microsoft walked into the Linux fray, dedicated a team of 1,000 programmers to making Linux better, but none of the community was allowed to see the code anymore? What if they released a new version of MS Windows that's actually a Linux base, with the Windows UI on top of it? Suddenly, MS is gaining from everyone's open source work. That's not fair, but that's what happens if you get rid of licenses altogether.
Right now, the Linux community is protected by RMS's bulldogs, because they fight to make sure what we do stays in the public domain. Lose the licenses, and you lose the right to fight companies who want to rape and pillage the source code for their own benefit (and ultimately harm Linux as a whole.)
you just heard is thousands of/. users starting up new browsers to search for 18gb FC drives for $70. Man, if I got a deal like that, I'd resell 'em to my boss for $400 and we'd both be ecstatic.
I have to congratulate Jlab on doing a stunningly great job on the safety pages. I was awestruck that you put the emergency evacuation plans available for the public to see, right down to showing where the extinguishers are in each building. Amazing.
However, each one of these pages alone represents a true barrier to the handicapped. For example, if a visually impaired user heard the fire alarm, and navigated to the Jlab web site in order to find their way out of the building, one can just imagine their screams of fright when they realize that their only resource is a JPEG. Oh, the horror. If only the web designers had thought ahead, and planned for these kinds of circumstances, death could have been avoided.
Sarcasm aside, man, you really do have a heck of a case for the undue burden clause. A lot of the stuff on this site is frills. (An image of each building?) You could indeed make them more accessible, or you could just plain delete them. I love the site, you're doing a great job of disseminating information, but some of that stuff just isn't necessary for the outside world to see over the internet, is it?
Re:Unions are such parasites
on
The Jungle
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· Score: 1
Amazon is struggling to even stay in business. Do the unions care at all about that? No. Those guys don't even stop to think about how they can help make Amazon a success. Instead, all they care about is themselves.
That's the strength of a union, and we can both see how it's useful for unskilled workers. For guys turning wrenches in a Detroit auto line, it's good. I'm fully aware that if the automakers could, they'd move all their production to cheaper plants, like VW does with Brazil and Mexico. If it wasn't for unions, tons of Americans would be just plain out of jobs, and I can respect that. Automakers would close plants more often when business got sour, and sure, automakers would be more profitable, but less people would have jobs. I can see how that's a good thing for the workers.
But with tech workers, we don't worry about that, because frankly, there's nowhere else to go. Amazon could indeed pack up the books and head for Mexico, but they'd still have to hire their programmers from the good old U S of A. With all the hype surrounding overseas programming outfits, there's still plenty of problems: bad communication skills, horrible user interfaces, lack of team development, and more. Tech workers are still secure enough that they're not eating Ramen noodles for dinner. Granted, lots more of them are coming up the pipeline, but the demand isn't diminishing or even holding stable. It's skyrocketing. Our company hired a couple of people not because we needed their specific skills: we just needed more programmers, and two Java guys are better than nobody. (I know, it's a duct-tape fix, but that's the way it goes.)
If we'd have had a union, though, those two fellas wouldn't be on the payroll, because we couldn't have afforded the risk that they'd catch on to our systems. As it is now, we took that gamble, and it's paying off.
Unions in technology area BAD idea. Tech labor is still way too valuable, and techs hold most of the power. You don't/have/ to work 70 hour weeks in this industry. The people who do usually want to because they expect a big payoff (IPO what have you).
RIGHT ON! My girlfriend works for a unionized company, but I don't. My company just got taken over by a bigger one, and when I told my boss I wanted a 100% pay raise to go along to the new company, he had to scrape his jaw off the floor. I got it, because he knew I was worth it, and he didn't have a choice, because other people were jumping ship rather than relocate.
But if I'd have been a member of a union, I'd have been screwed, because my pay rates would have been locked down. I would have had to go through a chain of people to get any negotiating done, and everybody else would have wanted a piece of the same action I got. No way, folks, I work hard for ME, not for anybody else. If you want to get ahead, you just work hard. Amazing how people will take care of you if you're actually worth something to the company.
Besides, all these companies that are laying people off just plain wouldn't have hired so many if they had unions, anyway. My girlfriend is overworked to death, because her bosses would rather pay union overtime than risk hiring more union staff - people they can't lay off when times get thin. Does she like the overtime? No. Can she do anything about it? No, because her union bosses tell her that's the way the contract got negotiated, and it protects her job. Whoop-dee-doo. In the free market, she could bend her boss over the table, but not with a union.
Don't get me wrong, unions are great in certain circumstances. If you're an unskilled worker, and you want to protect your job, it's awesome. If you don't have the ability to go out and get another job easily, they're the best. But for tech people, who can find another job at the drop of a hat, they're a pain in the butt and a barrier to better wages.
Re:Good, The New Workers need to unionise.
on
The Jungle
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· Score: 2
How exactly did unions help the 26,000 workers who just lost their jobs at Chrysler? Here's a quote from CNN telling you what a great job they did:
The United Auto Workers union, which represents hourly workers in the United States, had no immediate comment on the closings and staffing cuts.
No comment, eh? Wow, there's a powerful statement. Gotta have those guys on my side, I tell ya. I keep seeing all this pro-union schtick, but it's awfully silent about how ineffective unions seem to be these days in the places they're already in effect.
I'm surprised nobody else on here caught this in the letter at F*ckedCompany that somebody else posted here, but SmartPlanet's employees are getting the axe too. But somehow they twist it around to say:
But creating courseware and handling customer
maintenance as well as developing courses, is extremely resource intensive,
and not a core focus of our business. We feel that by focusing on our core
strengths, we can actually make SmartPlanet even more successful than we
have to date.
Huh? How do you lay off most of the staff and at the same time make it more successful? Unless most of the staff was involved in sending out the spam I usually got from them, I can't quite understand how that would work.
Part of the original strength of SmartPlanet was knowing that the people behind the tutorials actually knew what they were talking about. SP had guys with doctorates teaching the classes, and when you interacted with them, you walked away with the impression that they weren't just holding paper certificates they got through the mail. These were smart people.
So now they're going to downsize to a few monkeys and make it a better site? Huh? Hope my company doesn't take that same attitude.
Antialiasing basically means blending the edges - not so bad that things appear "blurry", just that they have smoother blends from one edge to the next. Fonts are usually the easiest to appreciate - they look finer, more distinct, as opposed to blocky and pixelated. They're smoother, easier on the eyes.
All I can say is if we're relying on this company to do the PR necessary for Linux to take over the world, we'd better prepare for a mighty long battle. That is the plainest, lamest, almost-Front-Page-inest looking web site I've ever seen for a supposed PR group. I'm mortified to think about what kind of advertising collateral they put out.
This has to be one of the larger reasons Microsoft is doing so well: they shovel money into advertising. Joe Sixpack sees the huge two-page spreads advertising Microsoft's five-nines reliability, and thinks, "Hmmm, must be reliable." The ads are gorgeous, they're everywhere, and you're driven to think the company must be doing a lot of things right in order to afford that kind of advertising. After all, this isn't like a dot-com that blew out an entire year's ad budget on a single Super Bowl spot: Microsoft spends more on ads than most companies make in revenue.
Linux, on the other hand, gets a lot of press, but not the picture type. Linux reviews or articles tend to be long, wordy affairs, not quick glamorous ads, and thus people's eyes glaze over.
Continental's in-flight magazine had a great article on Linux last month. I fly a lot, so I made it a point to ask a couple of my co-passengers if they'd read the article. It was a unanimous "No." Why? Because articles about computers are boring to them.
But they can't help but see Microsoft's fast, easy-to-digest ads. (And yes, I asked.)
Someone's going to pipe up and respond that Linux isn't ready for end users. That's correct, but it doesn't matter, because end users aren't going to ASK for it. End users routinely ask me when they can get upgraded to Win2k, even though they have no idea what the difference is (or why I won't put it on their P300 laptop with 64mb ram.)
Good advertising generates demand. No advertising doesn't. Bad advertising generates repulsion. (Think sock puppet.) So with that in mind, I'm horrified by the Linux International website, because it's even worse than no advertising at all.
Yeah, that's what I've been clamoring for. Yet another OS to run on my x86, preferably one without a killer app or widespread support, and even better if it's one that won't support my existing apps. I want something pretty. It doesn't need to do anything that Linux/Windows/Beos does. I've always thought that the world needs more OS's. I'd love to go back to the early 80's, when every time I sat down at a new desk, I had to learn a new set of commands just to get my work done. Woohoo! My heart beats with anticipation.
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free? Do you think it can compete with Windows where Linux can't? Do you think it's genuinely better? I don't get it.
Mac OS X won't penetrate large organizations, either. Network admins have their hands full with 95/98 desktops, 2000 desktops, 2000 servers, Linux servers, and Netware servers. Mac OS X will be looked at as just another unproven alternative with no real history, an answer looking for a question.
I also can't believe posters haven't mentioned the failed 3rd-party hardware problems generated when Apple let other manufacturers build PowerPC boxes. Remember that? Apple couldn't stand letting other people build boxes and run Apple software. Now we're hearing rumbles that not only will it run on other boxes, but it'll be boxes that Apple hasn't put their golden blessing on. That's ridiculous - Apple dropped that hot potato years ago, and they're not likely to pick it up again.
There's already lots of robots in use by manufacturers, robots that stand around bolting, welding, lifting, and so on all day. This story scared me at first, because I started thinking that these things would be not only autonomous but MOBILE as well.
Turns out they're not. They're basically remote controlled devices, with limited decisionmaking of their own. Whew.
I know, that's why we were all slapping it around to see if it kept recording smoothly or if the laser "lost track". Believe me, this thing was pretty impressive. The only thing stopping me from dropping it on the floor was the fact that it was tethered to the table.
Well, that and the fact that I couldn't take my eyes off the blond model. Woohoo!
This thing was at Comdex, and it wasn't anywhere near as motion-sensitive as you guys are playing it out to be.
Hitachi had three gorgeous models on stage, and there were four of these videocameras hooked up to TV's. The public could walk up, play with the videocameras, and film the models as they walked around. It was hilarious. I've never felt so guilty for taking part in a product demonstration.
I jostled it, moved it up and down, slapped it sideways, and when I played back the recording, it was great. (Well, granted, it looked like it'd been filmed by a drunken monkey, but the reproduction was perfect.)
There were literally dozens of us standing around the display at all times, scoping out the hardware (ahem). I can't believe I'm the first poster to remember it.
and you get a great sitcom about MIT dorm life. "Hey, everybody, let's hop on a rocket, blast off into the atmosphere, and GRAB Mir as it comes down! We'll all use our rockets and manuever this thing to the dorm! We can disassemble it and leave it in the professor's room as a joke! Hee hee!"
Hey, this has incredible implications for the airline industry. Instead of paying ridiculous fares to get yourself somewhere you don't really want to be (the airport), you could just hop on a rocket, head for the stratosphere, and then guide yourself down to the general vicinity using your handy rocket-powered backpack.
I'm seeing new uses for building roofs. Executives could land exactly on the building they wanted to visit, rather than waiting for cabs and lugging luggage through security checkpoints. As a frequent flier, let me just say that this is one heck of an idea.
None of the companies this article mentions will compensate you for your computing time. Until they do, this whole thing isn't going to take off, because there just isn't enough motivation for Joe Q. User to install this software. Why would they install something they don't understand, at a privacy risk and a stability risk, for no immediate personal benefit?
I used the Distributed client for quite a while, but I switched to Seti just because it had a cooler screen saver. I've got a bunch of computers in my office that are usually idle, and this at least looks cool when the PHBs walk by.
At least Entropia (one of the companies in the article) gets that part of the motivation, and provides you with a color screensaver. It's not nearly as good as the Seti one, but it's something.
They didn't review the Happy Hacker keyboard because it doesn't really ease the pain of repetitive stress injury. The goal of the article was to discuss RSI-preventing keyboards, and a keyboard that would fit on a PDA. The Happy Hacker, great as it may be, does not fit either of those qualifications.
And yet, they are a standard around the world because everyone uses them. This is exactly the same difficulty that Linux faces viv-a-vis Windows.
If you're complaining about Windows being a standard because everyone uses it, then you don't grasp the concept of a standard. The QWERTY-all-in-a-straight-row may be a standard, but that doesn't stop me from using a different one. Just because my neighbors run Windows doesn't stop me from using Linux, either.
If the entire planet ran Linux, would that make you feel better about using it? Why? Is achieving the "standard" label that important to you?
I don't choose my keyboard to be different - I choose it because it's what I want to use. I don't care who else is using it. I don't choose my OS to be different, either - I choose the one I want to use to get my job done. It doesn't matter to me whether you're running the same OS as I am, or whether mine is a standard. It's the one I want to use, that's all. Same with my keyboard.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't this seem like a lot of overhead for the card companies? Now, not only do they have to keep track of millions of cards and billions of dollars spent through them, but they also have to ensure that the right cards are being used by the right retailers. Yes it's convienent, but how much is it going to cost?
That's not for the card companies to manage - it's for YOU to manage. For example, I leave my credit card number on file at Netflix.com, and they charge me every month. If I wanted to, I could use a disposable number for that, and I'd know if it got used anywhere else that Netflix's database had been compromised. Then, I'd only have to cancel one disposable card, instead of reentering my card number at all of the places I do business with.
This is actually a Good Thing, no offense to Martha Stewart. I had my wallet stolen in Mexico a while back, and ever since, I've had a separate credit card that I use just for online transactions. It helps me prevent fraud (that account should never show anything but the same four or five retailers) and makes it a lot easier if I get my pocket picked again - my services keep coming, regardless of whether I have to stop my other cards.
And he whines about the cost of the Tektronix ink. Wait until he sees this stuff.
It's light, sturdy, and more importantly has two giant sized blow holes....
This quote comes from:
A: National Geographic describing killer whales
B: Slashdot describing computer cases
C: Hustler describing blow-up companions
Is that your final answer?
Keep in mind that the hundreds of people who got blinded by butchered procedures won't be posting followups here on /., because they're blind now.
Congratulations on your improved vision. I'm happy for you, and I wish you the best. But a friend of mine lost all vision in one of his eyes, and about 50% of the vision in the other eye. It's not all wine and roses in eyesurgeryville.
I dont need to go blind in 20 years because some company overlooked a problem in it's haste to get this to the market to make money.
This is why laser eye correction is taking so long to catch on. There were some real butcher jobs early on, and getting your eyes worked on is nothing like getting some liposuction done. (Or so I'm told.) My eyesight is just way, way too valuable to get frivolous elective surgery done. My glasses work just fine, thank you, and they're a lot cheaper than surgery.
How does the 20 - scale work anyway? Is there a maximum (20/0)? Is it linear or logarithmic with respect to the quality of your vision? Is the denominator just a measurement? Why 20, is it just normalized to average vision?
Disclaimer: I'm no optha^M^M^Mopthi^M^M^M eye doctor, but here's how I understand it to work:
Your vision in feet / Normal vision in feet
For example, if you have 20/10, that means you can see at 20' what most people have to get within 10' in order to see. (A street sign, breast size, writing on the wall, whatever.)
At my last checkup, I had 20/40, meaning I have worse than average vision. I have to be only 20' away from the chart to get the same results that the normal person can see within 40'.
A good way to explain the theoretical max of 20/2.5 that they're talking about is to think about computer monitors. If you sit 2.5' away from your 17" monitor, you can read everything fine. These robotic eyes would allow you to read the same text on the same monitor, standing TWENTY FEET AWAY, with the exact same accuracy as someone sitting just 2.5' away. That's astounding.
Or think of it another way: it's pretty hard to get within 2.5' of Natalie Portman, but if you plunk down the money for these roboeyes, you only have to get 20' away in order to find out if she's really got perfect skin or not.
Let's just get rid of the whole damn license. Just release your software if you want and don't release it if you don't want. This DOES NOT require lawyers.
Sounds good in theory, but here's the problem: what happens when a company grabs an open-source product like Linux, makes its own proprietary mods, and then sells the whole thing for a profit - but doesn't allow you to see its changes? That's the problem with doing away with licenses: you can't stop people from doing BAD things with your software.
A good license (like the GPL) ensures that the work you do is protected, and someone can't rip it off. That's why so many people jump on the Linux bandwagon: they know that the coding they do will be used for the good of the community, not ripped off and shoved into a big, closed-source entity.
Imagine if Microsoft walked into the Linux fray, dedicated a team of 1,000 programmers to making Linux better, but none of the community was allowed to see the code anymore? What if they released a new version of MS Windows that's actually a Linux base, with the Windows UI on top of it? Suddenly, MS is gaining from everyone's open source work. That's not fair, but that's what happens if you get rid of licenses altogether.
Right now, the Linux community is protected by RMS's bulldogs, because they fight to make sure what we do stays in the public domain. Lose the licenses, and you lose the right to fight companies who want to rape and pillage the source code for their own benefit (and ultimately harm Linux as a whole.)
you just heard is thousands of /. users starting up new browsers to search for 18gb FC drives for $70. Man, if I got a deal like that, I'd resell 'em to my boss for $400 and we'd both be ecstatic.
I have to congratulate Jlab on doing a stunningly great job on the safety pages. I was awestruck that you put the emergency evacuation plans available for the public to see, right down to showing where the extinguishers are in each building. Amazing.
However, each one of these pages alone represents a true barrier to the handicapped. For example, if a visually impaired user heard the fire alarm, and navigated to the Jlab web site in order to find their way out of the building, one can just imagine their screams of fright when they realize that their only resource is a JPEG. Oh, the horror. If only the web designers had thought ahead, and planned for these kinds of circumstances, death could have been avoided.
Sarcasm aside, man, you really do have a heck of a case for the undue burden clause. A lot of the stuff on this site is frills. (An image of each building?) You could indeed make them more accessible, or you could just plain delete them. I love the site, you're doing a great job of disseminating information, but some of that stuff just isn't necessary for the outside world to see over the internet, is it?
Amazon is struggling to even stay in business. Do the unions care at all about that? No. Those guys don't even stop to think about how they can help make Amazon a success. Instead, all they care about is themselves.
That's the strength of a union, and we can both see how it's useful for unskilled workers. For guys turning wrenches in a Detroit auto line, it's good. I'm fully aware that if the automakers could, they'd move all their production to cheaper plants, like VW does with Brazil and Mexico. If it wasn't for unions, tons of Americans would be just plain out of jobs, and I can respect that. Automakers would close plants more often when business got sour, and sure, automakers would be more profitable, but less people would have jobs. I can see how that's a good thing for the workers.
But with tech workers, we don't worry about that, because frankly, there's nowhere else to go. Amazon could indeed pack up the books and head for Mexico, but they'd still have to hire their programmers from the good old U S of A. With all the hype surrounding overseas programming outfits, there's still plenty of problems: bad communication skills, horrible user interfaces, lack of team development, and more. Tech workers are still secure enough that they're not eating Ramen noodles for dinner. Granted, lots more of them are coming up the pipeline, but the demand isn't diminishing or even holding stable. It's skyrocketing. Our company hired a couple of people not because we needed their specific skills: we just needed more programmers, and two Java guys are better than nobody. (I know, it's a duct-tape fix, but that's the way it goes.)
If we'd have had a union, though, those two fellas wouldn't be on the payroll, because we couldn't have afforded the risk that they'd catch on to our systems. As it is now, we took that gamble, and it's paying off.
Unions in technology area BAD idea. Tech labor is still way too valuable, and techs hold most of the power. You don't /have/ to work 70 hour weeks in this industry. The people who do usually want to because they expect a big payoff (IPO what have you).
RIGHT ON! My girlfriend works for a unionized company, but I don't. My company just got taken over by a bigger one, and when I told my boss I wanted a 100% pay raise to go along to the new company, he had to scrape his jaw off the floor. I got it, because he knew I was worth it, and he didn't have a choice, because other people were jumping ship rather than relocate.
But if I'd have been a member of a union, I'd have been screwed, because my pay rates would have been locked down. I would have had to go through a chain of people to get any negotiating done, and everybody else would have wanted a piece of the same action I got. No way, folks, I work hard for ME, not for anybody else. If you want to get ahead, you just work hard. Amazing how people will take care of you if you're actually worth something to the company.
Besides, all these companies that are laying people off just plain wouldn't have hired so many if they had unions, anyway. My girlfriend is overworked to death, because her bosses would rather pay union overtime than risk hiring more union staff - people they can't lay off when times get thin. Does she like the overtime? No. Can she do anything about it? No, because her union bosses tell her that's the way the contract got negotiated, and it protects her job. Whoop-dee-doo. In the free market, she could bend her boss over the table, but not with a union.
Don't get me wrong, unions are great in certain circumstances. If you're an unskilled worker, and you want to protect your job, it's awesome. If you don't have the ability to go out and get another job easily, they're the best. But for tech people, who can find another job at the drop of a hat, they're a pain in the butt and a barrier to better wages.
How exactly did unions help the 26,000 workers who just lost their jobs at Chrysler? Here's a quote from CNN telling you what a great job they did:
The United Auto Workers union, which represents hourly workers in the United States, had no immediate comment on the closings and staffing cuts.
No comment, eh? Wow, there's a powerful statement. Gotta have those guys on my side, I tell ya. I keep seeing all this pro-union schtick, but it's awfully silent about how ineffective unions seem to be these days in the places they're already in effect.
I'm surprised nobody else on here caught this in the letter at F*ckedCompany that somebody else posted here, but SmartPlanet's employees are getting the axe too. But somehow they twist it around to say:
But creating courseware and handling customer maintenance as well as developing courses, is extremely resource intensive, and not a core focus of our business. We feel that by focusing on our core strengths, we can actually make SmartPlanet even more successful than we have to date.
Huh? How do you lay off most of the staff and at the same time make it more successful? Unless most of the staff was involved in sending out the spam I usually got from them, I can't quite understand how that would work.
Part of the original strength of SmartPlanet was knowing that the people behind the tutorials actually knew what they were talking about. SP had guys with doctorates teaching the classes, and when you interacted with them, you walked away with the impression that they weren't just holding paper certificates they got through the mail. These were smart people.
So now they're going to downsize to a few monkeys and make it a better site? Huh? Hope my company doesn't take that same attitude.
Antialiasing basically means blending the edges - not so bad that things appear "blurry", just that they have smoother blends from one edge to the next. Fonts are usually the easiest to appreciate - they look finer, more distinct, as opposed to blocky and pixelated. They're smoother, easier on the eyes.
All I can say is if we're relying on this company to do the PR necessary for Linux to take over the world, we'd better prepare for a mighty long battle. That is the plainest, lamest, almost-Front-Page-inest looking web site I've ever seen for a supposed PR group. I'm mortified to think about what kind of advertising collateral they put out.
This has to be one of the larger reasons Microsoft is doing so well: they shovel money into advertising. Joe Sixpack sees the huge two-page spreads advertising Microsoft's five-nines reliability, and thinks, "Hmmm, must be reliable." The ads are gorgeous, they're everywhere, and you're driven to think the company must be doing a lot of things right in order to afford that kind of advertising. After all, this isn't like a dot-com that blew out an entire year's ad budget on a single Super Bowl spot: Microsoft spends more on ads than most companies make in revenue.
Linux, on the other hand, gets a lot of press, but not the picture type. Linux reviews or articles tend to be long, wordy affairs, not quick glamorous ads, and thus people's eyes glaze over.
Continental's in-flight magazine had a great article on Linux last month. I fly a lot, so I made it a point to ask a couple of my co-passengers if they'd read the article. It was a unanimous "No." Why? Because articles about computers are boring to them.
But they can't help but see Microsoft's fast, easy-to-digest ads. (And yes, I asked.)
Someone's going to pipe up and respond that Linux isn't ready for end users. That's correct, but it doesn't matter, because end users aren't going to ASK for it. End users routinely ask me when they can get upgraded to Win2k, even though they have no idea what the difference is (or why I won't put it on their P300 laptop with 64mb ram.)
Good advertising generates demand. No advertising doesn't. Bad advertising generates repulsion. (Think sock puppet.) So with that in mind, I'm horrified by the Linux International website, because it's even worse than no advertising at all.
Yeah, that's what I've been clamoring for. Yet another OS to run on my x86, preferably one without a killer app or widespread support, and even better if it's one that won't support my existing apps. I want something pretty. It doesn't need to do anything that Linux/Windows/Beos does. I've always thought that the world needs more OS's. I'd love to go back to the early 80's, when every time I sat down at a new desk, I had to learn a new set of commands just to get my work done. Woohoo! My heart beats with anticipation.
Seriously, folks, what is it about Mac OS X that would make you shell out money for it when Linux is free? Do you think it can compete with Windows where Linux can't? Do you think it's genuinely better? I don't get it.
Mac OS X won't penetrate large organizations, either. Network admins have their hands full with 95/98 desktops, 2000 desktops, 2000 servers, Linux servers, and Netware servers. Mac OS X will be looked at as just another unproven alternative with no real history, an answer looking for a question.
I also can't believe posters haven't mentioned the failed 3rd-party hardware problems generated when Apple let other manufacturers build PowerPC boxes. Remember that? Apple couldn't stand letting other people build boxes and run Apple software. Now we're hearing rumbles that not only will it run on other boxes, but it'll be boxes that Apple hasn't put their golden blessing on. That's ridiculous - Apple dropped that hot potato years ago, and they're not likely to pick it up again.
There's already lots of robots in use by manufacturers, robots that stand around bolting, welding, lifting, and so on all day. This story scared me at first, because I started thinking that these things would be not only autonomous but MOBILE as well.
Turns out they're not. They're basically remote controlled devices, with limited decisionmaking of their own. Whew.
The site's already slashdotted, too. Geez.
I know, that's why we were all slapping it around to see if it kept recording smoothly or if the laser "lost track". Believe me, this thing was pretty impressive. The only thing stopping me from dropping it on the floor was the fact that it was tethered to the table.
Well, that and the fact that I couldn't take my eyes off the blond model. Woohoo!
This thing was at Comdex, and it wasn't anywhere near as motion-sensitive as you guys are playing it out to be.
Hitachi had three gorgeous models on stage, and there were four of these videocameras hooked up to TV's. The public could walk up, play with the videocameras, and film the models as they walked around. It was hilarious. I've never felt so guilty for taking part in a product demonstration.
I jostled it, moved it up and down, slapped it sideways, and when I played back the recording, it was great. (Well, granted, it looked like it'd been filmed by a drunken monkey, but the reproduction was perfect.)
There were literally dozens of us standing around the display at all times, scoping out the hardware (ahem). I can't believe I'm the first poster to remember it.
and you get a great sitcom about MIT dorm life. "Hey, everybody, let's hop on a rocket, blast off into the atmosphere, and GRAB Mir as it comes down! We'll all use our rockets and manuever this thing to the dorm! We can disassemble it and leave it in the professor's room as a joke! Hee hee!"
Hey, this has incredible implications for the airline industry. Instead of paying ridiculous fares to get yourself somewhere you don't really want to be (the airport), you could just hop on a rocket, head for the stratosphere, and then guide yourself down to the general vicinity using your handy rocket-powered backpack.
I'm seeing new uses for building roofs. Executives could land exactly on the building they wanted to visit, rather than waiting for cabs and lugging luggage through security checkpoints. As a frequent flier, let me just say that this is one heck of an idea.
Not.
None of the companies this article mentions will compensate you for your computing time. Until they do, this whole thing isn't going to take off, because there just isn't enough motivation for Joe Q. User to install this software. Why would they install something they don't understand, at a privacy risk and a stability risk, for no immediate personal benefit?
I used the Distributed client for quite a while, but I switched to Seti just because it had a cooler screen saver. I've got a bunch of computers in my office that are usually idle, and this at least looks cool when the PHBs walk by.
At least Entropia (one of the companies in the article) gets that part of the motivation, and provides you with a color screensaver. It's not nearly as good as the Seti one, but it's something.
It was showing last week at the Landmark here by the Compaq Center, but it's gone already. You missed it. Gotta move quick. :-D
They didn't review the Happy Hacker keyboard because it doesn't really ease the pain of repetitive stress injury. The goal of the article was to discuss RSI-preventing keyboards, and a keyboard that would fit on a PDA. The Happy Hacker, great as it may be, does not fit either of those qualifications.
And yet, they are a standard around the world because everyone uses them. This is exactly the same difficulty that Linux faces viv-a-vis Windows.
If you're complaining about Windows being a standard because everyone uses it, then you don't grasp the concept of a standard. The QWERTY-all-in-a-straight-row may be a standard, but that doesn't stop me from using a different one. Just because my neighbors run Windows doesn't stop me from using Linux, either.
If the entire planet ran Linux, would that make you feel better about using it? Why? Is achieving the "standard" label that important to you?
I don't choose my keyboard to be different - I choose it because it's what I want to use. I don't care who else is using it. I don't choose my OS to be different, either - I choose the one I want to use to get my job done. It doesn't matter to me whether you're running the same OS as I am, or whether mine is a standard. It's the one I want to use, that's all. Same with my keyboard.