If tablet PC's are "not the solution [for] everyone"--that is, if they are a niche product--how will there ever be enough volume to get the prices down?
No doubt it's possible to sustain a healthy business segment in a niche product. I can see tablets being purchased by those who REALLY NEED them, and are therefore willing to pay enough of a premium to sustain a low-volume product.
But this isn't terribly interesting to the rest of us.
The question that interests most of us is whether tablets are a compelling paradigm for the general user.
I'm still not sure I understand how tablets are supposed to be all that different from Wang Freestyle or GRiDpad or Momenta or Windows for Pen Computing or all the other variations on pen computing that sprung up a decade ago. Why couldn't any of them get any traction if the whole idea is really sound?
...Heck, they can't even get reasonable interoperability with CD media.
Everyone has all these superstitions and voodoo about which dye colors and media types and brands and what speed to record at, and the plain fact is that it is not at all rare to find that a CD you've burned in a pretty-darn-new burner can't be read in someone else's pretty-darn-new drive. Either the standards are no good or the manufacturers aren't following them.
And it was only a few months ago that it transpired that you could burn out the laser in a LOT of DVD-RW drives simply by inserting a new kind of medium (4X, maybe?) that was, of course, SUPPOSED to be backward compatible with the old one--and was, except for the minor detail of destroying drives.
And wasn't it HP that promised that their DVD-RW drives would be compatible with DVD+RW media via a firmware upgrade... and then reneged on the promise?
What a zoo.
Isn't it about time to quit dicking around and set some standards for some reasonable kind of high-capacity medium that gives you some assurance that the data you store today can be read on a different drive tomorrow?
They have to print a unique serial number on each one, anyway... well, why not a barcoded serial number? You've seen the "Where's George" website... well, as part of Total Information Awareness, why not equip every cash register with a scanner that relays the serial number to a central database, and as soon as the same serial number is seen in two places at the same time, zap!
Yeah, yeah, yeah... not very good... how about get some _creative_ suggestions for ingenious, wonderful, complicated technical fixes?
(Locking desktops) Definition of "stability"
on
What's Microsoft Up To?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
...With regard to IT's (real!) need to lock down desktops...
We need a new definition of OS stability.
Today, "stability" basically refers to the ability of an OS to run without crashing _in the absense of configuration changes_.
In the real world, there are ongoing needs to install new software, apply patches, updates, etc.
In a system that had proper modular design, it should be possible to install something new or change a legitimate setting without feeling that you're playing Russian Roulette.
CERTAINLY it should be possible to install vendor-recommended updates with a high level of confidence that it's not going to break something.
Remember all that stuff a few years back, that implied that the problem with stability was that people weren't keeping their systems properly updated and that "self-healing" systems would fix that? Well, now, we all but have them, and, in fact, it's made things worse.
The PROPOSED use of the system seems reasonable enough.
But if it works, what do you think the next applications of the technology are likely to be?
And, of course, the implications of the "piecework" model are a little chilling.
The article says that the "pay for this part-time work would be $8 to $10 an hour" but there's no reason why it would have to stay at that level, why it would have to remain part-time, or why the work would necessarily be given to Americans. I can easily see a world in which companies use this kind of technology to perform constant surveillance on their employees--and the surveillance piecework would be done overseas where the labor rates are lowest.
Does SAIC still use MUMPS?
on
Inside SAIC
·
· Score: 1
SAIC used to be a big user of the MUMPS (or M) language, and a major sponsor of the M Technology Association.
I wonder if they are still using it and whether any of the big projects mentioned are based on it?
"Every business-minded person is looking at Iraq after the war because it is a very rich country," said Riad Safar... Iraq's market potential, as it moves to replace out-of-date business and health systems, is bigger than that of many of its neighbors, including Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Saudi Arabia.... The senior official at Kuwait-based systems integrator International Turnkey Systems, said in a telephone interview today that he thinks "it's going to be a huge market."
And that's just one of a number of articles I've read lately salivating over the prospects of Iraq as a market for American goods.
Maybe the broadband Internet will be up and running before the water is.
Let's see now... Google has "ads" that are small, inconspicuous, clearly separated from the search results, and highly relevant to what you are searching for. Click-through rate is high, Google is making money hand over fist, and nobody is angry at Google or tries to block their "sponsored links."
Like the Yellow Pages, most people don't even think of them as advertising, but as a genuinely useful service.
Others use increasingly intrusive, strident, techniques, present crap that 99% of the audience doesn't want, consequently get negligible click-through rates and less and less ad revenue. And create an arms race between advertisers and ad-blocking software.
So what do the marketers conclude from this? What we need is more intrusive advertising. Sure. You betcha.
(My original subject line was "no, no, no, no, no, no, no." It tripped Slashdot's "lameness filter.")
or what it's worth... I once attended some kind of business seminar in which the speaker, who seemed knowledgeable, claimed that it is an explicit part of many salespeoples' training to count the number of "No's" they hear and not to give up on the sale until they hear seven "No's." He suggested that when you get a--well, it was a long time ago, door-to-door salesman--you should open the conversation with "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Calmly and unemotionally deliver the seven no's and he'll break off and go away.
I don't know whether literally counting the "no's" is the straight dope but I've used this at least a dozen times and it has worked every time.
When I don't feel like being quite that rude, I use a variant, which is to start every sentence with the word "no." "Hi, you've won a free vacation to our famous resort." "No, I don't think I want to do that." "There's nothing to buy." "No, I'm not interested, etc." Takes slightly longer but, indeed, after about seven no's they break off.
It seems that the "no" habit might be a wise one.
I realize that a truly tricky telemarketer could ask a clever reverse question ("I already have you pre-enrolled for our $29.95 a month service. Do you want me to take you off?"). However that would require independent thought and I believe most of them work strictly to a script...
I have the feeling that raw average speed isn't much more meaningful than raw processor CPU speed.
I'm not quite sure what the right technical name for this is, but although DSL is pretty fast in terms of data streaming speed during a download, it is pretty slow in terms of responding to individual file requests.
You can see this, for example, in web pages that are cluttered with dozens of small graphics files. The time for DSL to accept the request for a file, transmit it to the server, and start downloading the requested file is quite long. The result is that on such a web page, the time it takes to display the page is not much better for DSL than for a 56K modem.
I bless DSL whenever I'm downloading software, or a one-meg text file from Project Gutenberg. I love being able to tell searches to display a hundred or two hundred results instead of ten. And the stability and reliability of the connection are great.
But I curse it when I'm on some graphics-cluttered goofy corporate web page watching dozens of little "missing-image" markers blinking into little images. Each little image winks into place instantly instead of giving a fast little top-to-bottom paint, but I still have plenty of time to observe the details.
Why does the computer industry tolerate this sort of thing? When it was hobbyists tinkering with Northstars and Cromemcos and Sols it might have been understandable, but we should have grown up a long time ago.
When you put oil into your car, you know that the oil companies and the car companies have gotten together with the American Petroleum Institute to set standards so that as long as your owner's manual says "API SG" and the oil you buy says "API SG" or better, that oil will work in your car. And you can use Mobil Oil to top up an engine filled with Quaker State without losing any sleep over whether their chemistry is compatible.
You don't rely on friends' stories of whether Quaker State is better than Shell Oil. You know that regardless of the price of the oil, if it says API SG it meets API SG specs and if your car says API SG specs are good enough, they're good enough.
It doesn't benefit anyone if your engine seizes up, and it doesn't benefit anyone if your computer crashes.
It's simple, it's easy, millions of consumers who aren't chemical engineers buy engine oil every day without wrecking their cars.
Why is it expecting too much for computer vendors to do the same?
And, while we're at it, why don't all computers use parity-checked memory? This was standard on 100% of all computers before the micro age, and for some reason people started putting in non-parity memory to save money and asserting that "it works."
And our computers crash a lot, and nobody knows why and nobody does anything about it and everyone just accepts that that's the way computers are...
Assuming these stations have paid the Australian equivalent ASCAP and BMI fees, have the rights to broadcast this material.
IP law is deliberately confusing and can only be sorted out by human beings. (In the case of complex situations, human beings that charge high fees).
There is no way that any simple, inexpensive bit of software can correctly determine whether or not the user does, in fact, have the rights to the use he or she is making.
In every case, of course, the DRM schemes err in the direction of denying use to people that POSSESS rights, never the other way around.
P.S. Yes, I did read the article. This sounds like Midbar's scheme, in which (when it works properly!) the computer still cannot access the real audio tracks, but the special software allows access to lower-quality compressed versions--which can only be played, not copied to the hard drive. So even if the boss had allowed the software to be installed, the station would have probably found that this didn't do any good.
zip is a fine thing, but it's not a pattern-recognition program!
This is the loopiest thing I've heard of since Rosenblatt reported that his Perceptrons could distinguish between music composed by Bach and music composed in imitation of Bach.
Good heavens, any picture that's slightly out of focus will now be declared to be evidence of "biological processes."
I'm guessing that the researchers are not as nutty as they sound and that they've done more than is being reported, but still...
Reminds me of the researchers in the sixties who were publishing analyses of data that supposedly showed "biological clocks." It turned out that they were using smoothing algorithms that, basically, were filters that had a 24-hour peak in the frequency domain--so their analysis was creating the patterns they claimed to be detecting. A debunking article was published in Science in which another research used data from a random number table (the "unicorn" data) and showed that the same analysis techniques showed that the unicorn had a biological clock.
I'm saving them money on data entry... why can't I e-file directly with them? Why must I go through middlemen who charge fees?
It's as if the IRS wouldn't accept paper tax forms directly from me, but required me to take them to a scribe who, for a fee, would copy them onto a new tax form and mail them to the IRS...
I chose it very scientfically: my son's girlfriend used it and recommended it. I like Shutterfly so well that I've never been tempted to switch, so I can't compare it to other services.
It's a Mac-friendly site; their "Shutterfly Smart Upload" application for multiple uploads has a Mac version and it works well.
I love their Snapbooks (six to thirty photoprints that are spiral-bound).
The quality of the pictures seems very satisfactory to me. I've ordered quite a few 8x10's (made from 1600x1200 digital camera pictures) and they all have looked fine.
Shutterfly seems reliable and predictable, the web site is pretty usable and well-designed. The Web-based tools for selecting and organizing pictures work surprisingly well. (I have DSL. I think it might be a little slow on a dialup, though my son's fiancee--things have progressed since she told me about Shutterfly--uses it on a dialup and hasn't complained).
I'm sure this is true of all the digital services, but for gifts to friends, I love being able to select scattered pictures from many rolls of film and being able to combine them (and arrange them, if I'm making a Snapbook) and I love being able to have Shutterfly mail them for me. I order far more reprints and enlargements than in the days when I had to find the negative and circle the number and try to figure out whether the misaligned frame was "5" or "5A"
All my experience so far is with uploaded material: scans and digital camera pictures. These days I take about 80% of my pictures with my digital camera. For my conventional 35mm film snapshots I continue to use a local one-hour photo because they do good work and I want them to stay in business; I haven't tried mailing film to Shutterfly yet.
Three gripes: 1) it's hard to tell WHAT their real prices are because they seem to be continually offering specials (typically 25% off on orders over $50 and things like that). 2) You can't download pictures from them. 3) There is no technical information on how they do color management--no step-by-step on how to set up colorsync or what have you so that you can make what you see on your screen match the print you'll get. I'm not saying this is a problem. I haven't gotten a single print from them that I didn't like. But I just wish they had a technical section on their website where they'd give you step-by-step on how to get a precise screen view of how the print will look.
...in the past, whenever I've gone to WWDC I've been tortured by the catchy, bouncy, wistful David/Bacharach tune "Do You Know the Way to San Jose." It starts running through my head about the time I sign up and doesn't stop until I get home again.
I'd MUCH rather hear Scott McKenzie crooning about gentle people with flowers in their hair.
What I can't figure out is... why are they still specialty items? Why do you only see them in yuppie camping boutiques or boating accessories stores?
The other day I was in the supermarket and saw a big display of flashlights from some familiar mass-market name... I'm afraid I forget which one... that said "LED!" on the package in big letters.
It was a traditional flashlight with a regular incandescent bulb--and a flashing red LED on it, allegedly so you could find it easily in the dark. Why? WHY?
How is this better than pneumatic tubes?... a fine piece of Victorian technology which is still in limited use today e.g. at the local Costco and at my local bank's drive-in teller operation.
Why couldn't you have a viable system of pneumatic tubes providing anywhere-to-anywhere delivery via hub-and-spoke (all tubes are routed from e.g. desks to a single central "hub" location. To send it from point A to point B, you put it in a tube at point A where it gets sent to the hub, where a robot transfers it to the tube that goes to point B...)
Just take a look at this article at www.imaging-resource.com.
This isn't a Mac bigot. This is a guy that completed a slide show project, after much struggle, using DVDit on a Wintel box. "Some helpful souls suggested we'd enjoy life more if we used iDVD on the Mac. So we did."
He started working at 4:50 p.m. Every darn thing he tried just plain worked the way he expected. "At 6:10 we were ready to burn....And we'd spent the whole time -- not just a large part of it -- arranging the show contents rather than fighting the program interface.... We were done at 6:26." He said "...the only [really] aggravating part of the whole process [was] getting the blessed cellophane wrapping off the blank DVD. We can't wait to get these in spindles."
Apple's situation has been the same as it always been. Microsoft, like IBM before it, has the hearts and minds of the corporate IT departments and wins all the top-down purchasing decisions.
But everyone who actually has to use the things finds that Apple's hardware and software, overall, are just plain easier, nicer, faster, and more productive to use than Wintel gear.
As long as the people who actually use computers have any say whatever in what computers they use, Apple has a bright future.
I could be wrong... but I believe that yes, MS Word 1.0 had a pixel-based, as well as the monospace-char-based interface shown in the picture you reference, running under DOS.
It was an option--you had to select it, and you had to have the right graphics card--but I think it was there. I don't know how usable it was.
Microsoft was very slow in getting out a Windows version of Word, by the way. (Remember, Samna beat them by almost a year with Samna Ami?)
Your point about LisaWrite is well-taken, though.
(I am a certified Mac bigot, by the way--or at least I was until OS X came out. I'm a little sorry to confess that it did take a full month before I bought my first Mac in February 1984. Paying $3000 for it. With a teller's check. And had to wait an extra month for the ImageWriter _cable_.)
Buildings are more like wave patterns than like solid matter (oh, wait, solid matter IS wave patterns--well--anyway).
Practically everything manmade that we think of is "permanent" is only as permanent as the institutions and people that support and maintain it.
It's absolutely astonishing just how quickly the most solid-looking things crumble and vanish as soon as we stop paying attention to them. Vacate a town, and a hundred years later someone examining aerial photos with a magnifying glass can see nothing but a slight telltale pattern unevenness in the texture of the vegetation...
What you do when you build it is just the beginning.
To make a building last, build something that people will want to live in and maintain.
Well, what I had in mind in singling out Microsoft Word was not that it was the first word processor. (In my opinion, TJ-2 was the first word processor).
But Wordstar, and Wordperfect, and Wang word processing before that (which was arguably superior to either of them) all fell into the same mould: they were designed for fixed-pitch, monospaced, daisywheel output. And it would be better to describe them as having an integrated full-screen text editor than as having a WYSIWYG display. I was never a Wordstar user but if I recall correctly it even relied on significant usage of RUNOFF-like dot commands that you needed to know, and which were visible onscreen.
Microsoft Word broke that mould. It derived its heritage from, um, what WAS it called? Bravo? on the Alto. Its design center assumed multiple typefaces, proportionally spaced fonts, and full-bore true WYSIWYG screen displays.
And it separated structure from appearance and introduced style sheets.
It didn't make much impact when it was introduced in 1983. People couldn't figure it out right away. Why would you want all that stuff? It was just going to slow down screen drawing. In 1983, people were still excited about systems that could produce boldface on daisywheels by shifting the wheel 1/120th of an inch AND could show you bold on the screen by intensifying the display.
The idea that you would want to see italics as italic was utterly alien to most users at the time.
There was prehistory, notably Bravo, but, once again, Microsoft Word put ALL that stuff together into a real, usable, product that was dramatically different from anything else available at the time and got most of the important stuff right.
That's the same characteristic that many truly brilliant innovations have. Cognoscenti can see some of the prehistory, but still, someone got all the important stuff right, all together, all at once--and everything after that is incrementalism.
Some other examples: look at Visicalc. All the important ideas were already there. (Well, OK, a few more of them fell into place with Context MBA...)
Or, for that matter, the graphic user interface as it existed in the 1984 Mac.
Or, how about adventure games? Not to knock, say, Myst, but Crowther and Woods' original Colossal Cave really gave us an excellent, totally complete, well-implemented example of the genre right out of the starting gate.
Donning my asbesto suit, I think Microsoft Word falls in the same category. The sad part is that this product has not only not improved, in many ways it has slightly deteriorated... Microsoft has not been a good steward of its own innovation.
All of these examples make me realize just how LONG it's really been since I've experienced the "Wow!" of new possibilities opening up in front of me...
Slashdot Mirror
If tablet PC's are "not the solution [for] everyone"--that is, if they are a niche product--how will there ever be enough volume to get the prices down?
No doubt it's possible to sustain a healthy business segment in a niche product. I can see tablets being purchased by those who REALLY NEED them, and are therefore willing to pay enough of a premium to sustain a low-volume product.
But this isn't terribly interesting to the rest of us.
The question that interests most of us is whether tablets are a compelling paradigm for the general user.
I'm still not sure I understand how tablets are supposed to be all that different from Wang Freestyle or GRiDpad or Momenta or Windows for Pen Computing or all the other variations on pen computing that sprung up a decade ago. Why couldn't any of them get any traction if the whole idea is really sound?
...Heck, they can't even get reasonable interoperability with CD media.
Everyone has all these superstitions and voodoo about which dye colors and media types and brands and what speed to record at, and the plain fact is that it is not at all rare to find that a CD you've burned in a pretty-darn-new burner can't be read in someone else's pretty-darn-new drive. Either the standards are no good or the manufacturers aren't following them.
And it was only a few months ago that it transpired that you could burn out the laser in a LOT of DVD-RW drives simply by inserting a new kind of medium (4X, maybe?) that was, of course, SUPPOSED to be backward compatible with the old one--and was, except for the minor detail of destroying drives.
And wasn't it HP that promised that their DVD-RW drives would be compatible with DVD+RW media via a firmware upgrade... and then reneged on the promise?
What a zoo.
Isn't it about time to quit dicking around and set some standards for some reasonable kind of high-capacity medium that gives you some assurance that the data you store today can be read on a different drive tomorrow?
They have to print a unique serial number on each one, anyway... well, why not a barcoded serial number? You've seen the "Where's George" website... well, as part of Total Information Awareness, why not equip every cash register with a scanner that relays the serial number to a central database, and as soon as the same serial number is seen in two places at the same time, zap!
Yeah, yeah, yeah... not very good... how about get some _creative_ suggestions for ingenious, wonderful, complicated technical fixes?
...With regard to IT's (real!) need to lock down desktops...
We need a new definition of OS stability.
Today, "stability" basically refers to the ability of an OS to run without crashing _in the absense of configuration changes_.
In the real world, there are ongoing needs to install new software, apply patches, updates, etc.
In a system that had proper modular design, it should be possible to install something new or change a legitimate setting without feeling that you're playing Russian Roulette.
CERTAINLY it should be possible to install vendor-recommended updates with a high level of confidence that it's not going to break something.
Remember all that stuff a few years back, that implied that the problem with stability was that people weren't keeping their systems properly updated and that "self-healing" systems would fix that? Well, now, we all but have them, and, in fact, it's made things worse.
The PROPOSED use of the system seems reasonable enough.
But if it works, what do you think the next applications of the technology are likely to be?
And, of course, the implications of the "piecework" model are a little chilling.
The article says that the "pay for this part-time work would be $8 to $10 an hour" but there's no reason why it would have to stay at that level, why it would have to remain part-time, or why the work would necessarily be given to Americans. I can easily see a world in which companies use this kind of technology to perform constant surveillance on their employees--and the surveillance piecework would be done overseas where the labor rates are lowest.
SAIC used to be a big user of the MUMPS (or M) language, and a major sponsor of the M Technology Association.
I wonder if they are still using it and whether any of the big projects mentioned are based on it?
at least according to this Computerworld article, "Postwar Iraq seen as big potential tech market."
"Every business-minded person is looking at Iraq after the war because it is a very rich country," said Riad Safar... Iraq's market potential, as it moves to replace out-of-date business and health systems, is bigger than that of many of its neighbors, including Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Saudi Arabia....
The senior official at Kuwait-based systems integrator International Turnkey Systems, said in a telephone interview today that he thinks "it's going to be a huge market."
And that's just one of a number of articles I've read lately salivating over the prospects of Iraq as a market for American goods.
Maybe the broadband Internet will be up and running before the water is.
Let's see now... Google has "ads" that are small, inconspicuous, clearly separated from the search results, and highly relevant to what you are searching for. Click-through rate is high, Google is making money hand over fist, and nobody is angry at Google or tries to block their "sponsored links."
Like the Yellow Pages, most people don't even think of them as advertising, but as a genuinely useful service.
Others use increasingly intrusive, strident, techniques, present crap that 99% of the audience doesn't want, consequently get negligible click-through rates and less and less ad revenue. And create an arms race between advertisers and ad-blocking software.
So what do the marketers conclude from this? What we need is more intrusive advertising. Sure. You betcha.
(My original subject line was "no, no, no, no, no, no, no." It tripped Slashdot's "lameness filter.")
or what it's worth... I once attended some kind of business seminar in which the speaker, who seemed knowledgeable, claimed that it is an explicit part of many salespeoples' training to count the number of "No's" they hear and not to give up on the sale until they hear seven "No's." He suggested that when you get a--well, it was a long time ago, door-to-door salesman--you should open the conversation with "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Calmly and unemotionally deliver the seven no's and he'll break off and go away.
I don't know whether literally counting the "no's" is the straight dope but I've used this at least a dozen times and it has worked every time.
When I don't feel like being quite that rude, I use a variant, which is to start every sentence with the word "no." "Hi, you've won a free vacation to our famous resort." "No, I don't think I want to do that." "There's nothing to buy." "No, I'm not interested, etc." Takes slightly longer but, indeed, after about seven no's they break off.
It seems that the "no" habit might be a wise one.
I realize that a truly tricky telemarketer could ask a clever reverse question ("I already have you pre-enrolled for our $29.95 a month service. Do you want me to take you off?"). However that would require independent thought and I believe most of them work strictly to a script...
I have the feeling that raw average speed isn't much more meaningful than raw processor CPU speed.
I'm not quite sure what the right technical name for this is, but although DSL is pretty fast in terms of data streaming speed during a download, it is pretty slow in terms of responding to individual file requests.
You can see this, for example, in web pages that are cluttered with dozens of small graphics files. The time for DSL to accept the request for a file, transmit it to the server, and start downloading the requested file is quite long. The result is that on such a web page, the time it takes to display the page is not much better for DSL than for a 56K modem.
I bless DSL whenever I'm downloading software, or a one-meg text file from Project Gutenberg. I love being able to tell searches to display a hundred or two hundred results instead of ten. And the stability and reliability of the connection are great.
But I curse it when I'm on some graphics-cluttered goofy corporate web page watching dozens of little "missing-image" markers blinking into little images. Each little image winks into place instantly instead of giving a fast little top-to-bottom paint, but I still have plenty of time to observe the details.
How does cable compare in THIS regard?
Piles?
...truly "bleeding edge..." ...They should have called their releases "preparations..."
Sounds as if 10.3 will be a real pain in the butt...
Why does the computer industry tolerate this sort of thing? When it was hobbyists tinkering with Northstars and Cromemcos and Sols it might have been understandable, but we should have grown up a long time ago.
When you put oil into your car, you know that the oil companies and the car companies have gotten together with the American Petroleum Institute to set standards so that as long as your owner's manual says "API SG" and the oil you buy says "API SG" or better, that oil will work in your car. And you can use Mobil Oil to top up an engine filled with Quaker State without losing any sleep over whether their chemistry is compatible.
You don't rely on friends' stories of whether Quaker State is better than Shell Oil. You know that regardless of the price of the oil, if it says API SG it meets API SG specs and if your car says API SG specs are good enough, they're good enough.
It doesn't benefit anyone if your engine seizes up, and it doesn't benefit anyone if your computer crashes.
It's simple, it's easy, millions of consumers who aren't chemical engineers buy engine oil every day without wrecking their cars.
Why is it expecting too much for computer vendors to do the same?
And, while we're at it, why don't all computers use parity-checked memory? This was standard on 100% of all computers before the micro age, and for some reason people started putting in non-parity memory to save money and asserting that "it works."
And our computers crash a lot, and nobody knows why and nobody does anything about it and everyone just accepts that that's the way computers are...
Assuming these stations have paid the Australian equivalent ASCAP and BMI fees, have the rights to broadcast this material.
IP law is deliberately confusing and can only be sorted out by human beings. (In the case of complex situations, human beings that charge high fees).
There is no way that any simple, inexpensive bit of software can correctly determine whether or not the user does, in fact, have the rights to the use he or she is making.
In every case, of course, the DRM schemes err in the direction of denying use to people that POSSESS rights, never the other way around.
P.S. Yes, I did read the article. This sounds like Midbar's scheme, in which (when it works properly!) the computer still cannot access the real audio tracks, but the special software allows access to lower-quality compressed versions--which can only be played, not copied to the hard drive. So even if the boss had allowed the software to be installed, the station would have probably found that this didn't do any good.
zip is a fine thing, but it's not a pattern-recognition program!
This is the loopiest thing I've heard of since Rosenblatt reported that his Perceptrons could distinguish between music composed by Bach and music composed in imitation of Bach.
Good heavens, any picture that's slightly out of focus will now be declared to be evidence of "biological processes."
I'm guessing that the researchers are not as nutty as they sound and that they've done more than is being reported, but still...
Reminds me of the researchers in the sixties who were publishing analyses of data that supposedly showed "biological clocks." It turned out that they were using smoothing algorithms that, basically, were filters that had a 24-hour peak in the frequency domain--so their analysis was creating the patterns they claimed to be detecting. A debunking article was published in Science in which another research used data from a random number table (the "unicorn" data) and showed that the same analysis techniques showed that the unicorn had a biological clock.
I'm saving them money on data entry... why can't I e-file directly with them? Why must I go through middlemen who charge fees?
It's as if the IRS wouldn't accept paper tax forms directly from me, but required me to take them to a scribe who, for a fee, would copy them onto a new tax form and mail them to the IRS...
...Nickick Petrereleley says Lininux is takaking marketet share from Winindowows?
I chose it very scientfically: my son's girlfriend used it and recommended it. I like Shutterfly so well that I've never been tempted to switch, so I can't compare it to other services.
It's a Mac-friendly site; their "Shutterfly Smart Upload" application for multiple uploads has a Mac version and it works well.
I love their Snapbooks (six to thirty photoprints that are spiral-bound).
The quality of the pictures seems very satisfactory to me. I've ordered quite a few 8x10's (made from 1600x1200 digital camera pictures) and they all have looked fine.
Shutterfly seems reliable and predictable, the web site is pretty usable and well-designed. The Web-based tools for selecting and organizing pictures work surprisingly well. (I have DSL. I think it might be a little slow on a dialup, though my son's fiancee--things have progressed since she told me about Shutterfly--uses it on a dialup and hasn't complained).
I'm sure this is true of all the digital services, but for gifts to friends, I love being able to select scattered pictures from many rolls of film and being able to combine them (and arrange them, if I'm making a Snapbook) and I love being able to have Shutterfly mail them for me. I order far more reprints and enlargements than in the days when I had to find the negative and circle the number and try to figure out whether the misaligned frame was "5" or "5A"
All my experience so far is with uploaded material: scans and digital camera pictures. These days I take about 80% of my pictures with my digital camera. For my conventional 35mm film snapshots I continue to use a local one-hour photo because they do good work and I want them to stay in business; I haven't tried mailing film to Shutterfly yet.
Three gripes: 1) it's hard to tell WHAT their real prices are because they seem to be continually offering specials (typically 25% off on orders over $50 and things like that). 2) You can't download pictures from them. 3) There is no technical information on how they do color management--no step-by-step on how to set up colorsync or what have you so that you can make what you see on your screen match the print you'll get. I'm not saying this is a problem. I haven't gotten a single print from them that I didn't like. But I just wish they had a technical section on their website where they'd give you step-by-step on how to get a precise screen view of how the print will look.
...in the past, whenever I've gone to WWDC I've been tortured by the catchy, bouncy, wistful David/Bacharach tune "Do You Know the Way to San Jose." It starts running through my head about the time I sign up and doesn't stop until I get home again.
I'd MUCH rather hear Scott McKenzie crooning about gentle people with flowers in their hair.
What I can't figure out is... why are they still specialty items? Why do you only see them in yuppie camping boutiques or boating accessories stores?
The other day I was in the supermarket and saw a big display of flashlights from some familiar mass-market name... I'm afraid I forget which one... that said "LED!" on the package in big letters.
It was a traditional flashlight with a regular incandescent bulb--and a flashing red LED on it, allegedly so you could find it easily in the dark. Why? WHY?
How is this better than pneumatic tubes? ... a fine piece of Victorian technology which is still in limited use today e.g. at the local Costco and at my local bank's drive-in teller operation.
Why couldn't you have a viable system of pneumatic tubes providing anywhere-to-anywhere delivery via hub-and-spoke (all tubes are routed from e.g. desks to a single central "hub" location. To send it from point A to point B, you put it in a tube at point A where it gets sent to the hub, where a robot transfers it to the tube that goes to point B...)
Just take a look at this article at www.imaging-resource.com.
...And we'd spent the whole time -- not just a large part of it -- arranging the show contents rather than fighting the program interface.... We were done at 6:26." He said "...the only [really] aggravating part of the whole process [was] getting the blessed cellophane wrapping off the blank DVD. We can't wait to get these in spindles."
This isn't a Mac bigot. This is a guy that completed a slide show project, after much struggle, using DVDit on a Wintel box. "Some helpful souls suggested we'd enjoy life more if we used iDVD on the Mac. So we did."
He started working at 4:50 p.m. Every darn thing he tried just plain worked the way he expected. "At 6:10 we were ready to burn.
Apple's situation has been the same as it always been. Microsoft, like IBM before it, has the hearts and minds of the corporate IT departments and wins all the top-down purchasing decisions.
But everyone who actually has to use the things finds that Apple's hardware and software, overall, are just plain easier, nicer, faster, and more productive to use than Wintel gear.
As long as the people who actually use computers have any say whatever in what computers they use, Apple has a bright future.
I could be wrong... but I believe that yes, MS Word 1.0 had a pixel-based, as well as the monospace-char-based interface shown in the picture you reference, running under DOS.
It was an option--you had to select it, and you had to have the right graphics card--but I think it was there. I don't know how usable it was.
Microsoft was very slow in getting out a Windows version of Word, by the way. (Remember, Samna beat them by almost a year with Samna Ami?)
Your point about LisaWrite is well-taken, though.
(I am a certified Mac bigot, by the way--or at least I was until OS X came out. I'm a little sorry to confess that it did take a full month before I bought my first Mac in February 1984. Paying $3000 for it. With a teller's check. And had to wait an extra month for the ImageWriter _cable_.)
Buildings are more like wave patterns than like solid matter (oh, wait, solid matter IS wave patterns--well--anyway).
Practically everything manmade that we think of is "permanent" is only as permanent as the institutions and people that support and maintain it.
It's absolutely astonishing just how quickly the most solid-looking things crumble and vanish as soon as we stop paying attention to them. Vacate a town, and a hundred years later someone examining aerial photos with a magnifying glass can see nothing but a slight telltale pattern unevenness in the texture of the vegetation...
What you do when you build it is just the beginning.
To make a building last, build something that people will want to live in and maintain.
Take a look at Stewart Brand's book, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
Well, what I had in mind in singling out Microsoft Word was not that it was the first word processor. (In my opinion, TJ-2 was the first word processor).
But Wordstar, and Wordperfect, and Wang word processing before that (which was arguably superior to either of them) all fell into the same mould: they were designed for fixed-pitch, monospaced, daisywheel output. And it would be better to describe them as having an integrated full-screen text editor than as having a WYSIWYG display. I was never a Wordstar user but if I recall correctly it even relied on significant usage of RUNOFF-like dot commands that you needed to know, and which were visible onscreen.
Microsoft Word broke that mould. It derived its heritage from, um, what WAS it called? Bravo? on the Alto. Its design center assumed multiple typefaces, proportionally spaced fonts, and full-bore true WYSIWYG screen displays.
And it separated structure from appearance and introduced style sheets.
It didn't make much impact when it was introduced in 1983. People couldn't figure it out right away. Why would you want all that stuff? It was just going to slow down screen drawing. In 1983, people were still excited about systems that could produce boldface on daisywheels by shifting the wheel 1/120th of an inch AND could show you bold on the screen by intensifying the display.
The idea that you would want to see italics as italic was utterly alien to most users at the time.
There was prehistory, notably Bravo, but, once again, Microsoft Word put ALL that stuff together into a real, usable, product that was dramatically different from anything else available at the time and got most of the important stuff right.
That's the same characteristic that many truly brilliant innovations have. Cognoscenti can see some of the prehistory, but still, someone got all the important stuff right, all together, all at once--and everything after that is incrementalism.
Some other examples: look at Visicalc. All the important ideas were already there. (Well, OK, a few more of them fell into place with Context MBA...)
Or, for that matter, the graphic user interface as it existed in the 1984 Mac.
Or, how about adventure games? Not to knock, say, Myst, but Crowther and Woods' original Colossal Cave really gave us an excellent, totally complete, well-implemented example of the genre right out of the starting gate.
Donning my asbesto suit, I think Microsoft Word falls in the same category. The sad part is that this product has not only not improved, in many ways it has slightly deteriorated... Microsoft has not been a good steward of its own innovation.
All of these examples make me realize just how LONG it's really been since I've experienced the "Wow!" of new possibilities opening up in front of me...