Re:COULD be exceedingly useful
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm sorry, people won't use this as a mainstream form of transportation. The smallest form of transportation that people will use is a scooter (Vespa size.... like a small motorcycle). These are widepsread in Europe (ever been to Rome?). Something the size of IT/Ginger is just too small (thats why the motorized Razors haven't caught on). Scooters are small enough to fit a dozen or three on normal city streets (where only 3-4 cars would go) yet large enough to still hold up to 2 riders and a bag or two of groceries while moving at upt to 45 mph. And the greatest part? They use *existing* infrastructure. Don't get me wrong, gyroscopes and no pollution rock in my book, but the fact of the matter is that most people need more functionality out of their vehicles than a motorized skateboard.
Assuming that this is a standardized attachment (ie the same size, etc.) it should be pretty easy for filters on the ISP or client to catch. Also, to my knowledge the only mail clients that can execute code w/o user intervention are M$ products. This narrows the people that can be affected alot.
I wonder if the reviewer would be favourable at all if it wasn't a linux based device
Nope. The product wouldn't even get to market. Inferrior products don't go anywhere unless they've got some reason to survive. In this case the company hopes that Linux users will buy it (over Palm, etc.) simply because it runs Linux, not because it has better features.
Pointless to you (as a Linux user), yes. Pointless to them (as a company), no way. One of the great things about Linux (and Open Source in general) is that everyone now has this awesome repository of code that they can pull from. No longer do people need to start at ground zero in their development cycle, rather they can plunk in code from the Open Source community and get a real jump start.
Now, to get Linux "at the right end" companies just need to be convinced that there is a large enough paying population to justify putting out a product. My bet would be that this is less likely to happen. Even if a company put out a great product that ran on Linux it would likely be cloned, forked, warez or simply not purchased. Typical Linux users don't want to pay for code; if its not Free (as in beer) they don't want it. Now there are some that will plunk down some $$ for a project they like or an application that they need, but overall there is no large market for commercial Linux desktop applications.
1.) Back up your data. Do it twice.
2.) Buy a "Dish Wrap" moving box.
3.) Fill the box to 1 foot deep with shipping peanuts
4.) Wrap your machine in large bubble wrap and secure it with liberal amounts of packing tape
5.) Stand your machine up dead center in the box.
6.) Backfill the box with more shipping peanuts
7.) Make sure that the box is slightly overfilled with shipping peanuts so the box is somewhat difficult to close. This will help to prevent the machine inside from moving around too much.
8.) Insure your shipment. Don't be cheap.
The hostname www.vasoftware.com resolves yet there isn't a press release or anything to that effect on the VA website.
I always find it interesting when News sites get press releases like this before the Company itself updates their own website. It's quite telling about who is important, Wall Street (Journal?!) or clients/customers/fans of the Company itself.
Makes me wonder: Are they in business to hype the stock price or are they in business to make good products?
I don't get your comparison. You are using Windows as a desktop and Linux as a server. I've had NT 4 servers that have been up for months under moderate load with no problems. PII 350 and 256 MB RAM ran MSSQL, an SMTP server (which did a few thousand messages a day) as well as a web server and some client-server applications. The only time I had to bring it down was for critical hotfixes and service packs. Total downtime for the two years that I had the machine was like 12 hours. Not that bad.
If SMTP will go away (as we know it) they just tell the American people "E-Mail will go away" and you better believe that this thing won't get approved. Done Deal.
Signaling a change in long-standing policy for Microsoft, the company said it will deliver all of its software -- including the next version of IIS that will be bundled with Windows.Net Server next year -- in the ``locked down'' position by default.
This is good, and will mean that they'll need to think less out of the box and MORE to actually get their system up and running. OMG, NT admins that need to *know* something? I mean there are some NT guys (and gals) out there that can "do it right" but they're definetly in the minority.
Ok so it wasn't that bad. The opening theme song DOES need to go. The soft porn can stay.... trekkies have sex right? Or at least hormones. The Vulcan vs. Human thing was played up too much, although these Vulcans exhibited more emotion than any I've seen before. The ship can stay, so can the dog. The officer that is the translator (I already forget her name/rank) is forgettable and should quit crying. Space travel is bumpy damnit! Overall is was a pretty good first show.
Apart from someone walking past an unused computer who will see these things? The whole point of a screen saver is to keep the monitor busy when the computer isn't in use. My experience with college computer labs is:
they are full, with people waiting in line to use machines
or they are booked by a class
Perhaps they'd be better off powering down the monitor (saving $$) rather than firing up a screen saver (which doesn't help modern screens anyway).
CPU prices just get passed on to consumers anyway. People who aren't willing to fork over a small extra for a "high end" PC really only need a celeron or PIII machine. Plus, if the consumer demand just isn't there it doesn't make sense to deal with two different manufacturers. GW will always maintain an Intel relationship, so as long as Intel remains the choice for consumers GW can consolidate on Intel.
Now what this does is narrow the market for competitors who still carry AMD lines. Consumers that want AMD will go to whoever will still carry them.
Of course, I get the feeling that the majority of people that want AMD processors will likely be building their own machines anyway. IMHO AMD == a "techie" processor that most consumers don't trust. Its a double-edged sword that AMD needs to deal with. If only techies use their processors then major PC companies will probably drop AMD support due to the sheer fact that they won't be selling many units!
Given that the P4 will just throttle back to cool off (thereby staying up and operational with no data loss) rather than requiring a motherboard manufacturer to build in extra functionality to only _shut_down_ the system IMHO it seems that having the processor control this function is the ideal solution.
Exchange is not just a mail server. If you want just a mail server on NT you can go to 1/2 a dozen other vendors and get a perfectly reliable POP/IMAP/SMTP package. Exchange is groupware, and for its feature set $50 per user isn't all that bad.
Microsoft Research should be figuring out how to improve the performance of NT's Microkernel architecture, improve virtual memory management on multi-media machines and a host of other useful technologies. But they don't. Go figure.
Have ya even looked at what projects they're working on?
Granted. But simply having access to the net does not auto-magically get someone a job. Opportunity or not, there are issues that a homeless person must take care of before they even look for a job. Food, shelter, a bath. I'm being serious here. At the ISP that I used to work at we had a terminal in front for people to use. This one homeless guy started coming in and using it... with the hope of finding a job. After awhile he didn't show up anymore, then one day he shows up again, but this time he was all cleaned up. He said that he finally "broke down" and got a "real" job at the local lumber mill. He was still homeless, but he had camped near a park where he could shower and get clean water. He had saved enough to get new clothes and was working to save up enough for an apartment. He was there (at the ISP) to check the web for some sports scores or something (cause he didn't have TV, presumably). At any rate, my point is that when you are that down on your luck, it usually takes a lot more than email to get you on your feet. Sometimes you just need to break down and work your ass off.
Although many people were hit with the virus, the problem that I had was that Qwest's network just crapped out. My modem was patched right away and wasn't even being hit yet I was loosing packets left and right. Hell I couldn't even get to routers and servers inside the Qwest network at times. Blaming the virus is one thing, but having such a fragile network is shameful. I hopped on Earthlink at a friend's house and it was plenty fast. Hmm? Perhaps Code Red doesn't target Earthlink customers.
I keep waiting for NASA to come up with a technology that is cheap, automated and can be deployed in vast numbers.
To oversimplify the issue: drop a few dozen/hundred/whatever floaty, bouncy balls all over Mars and kick back and let the data roll in. Sure some of the balls will be lost, but as long as a few do their job the mission will succeed.
Sure there are weight issues getting all these things over there, but if the probes were simple enough their and ther numbers large enough I'd imagine that they'd be more successful than other probes have been.
People who are living out of a cardboard box need not apply.
People who are living out of a cardboard box probably have more important things to worry about than email. Nowadays we tend to think of the net as one of the most important things in life. But for the vast majority of the people on this planet the net is almost useless in their day-to-day lives.
A Honda is a Honda, even though countless 3rd party vendors contribute large quantities of parts to the overall vehicle. It would be insane for Honda to give up front branding to a parts vendor. Doing so would be more confusing to the masses and would actually diminish the Honda brand as time went on.
Credit is given to GNU in the tools themselves. RMS has no credible reasoning to request (or demand) that a Linux-based system be called anything but "Linux".
So this little company, Eolas holds a patent that essentially wipes out Java, ActiveX, etc. Only they are just suing Microsoft. Microsoft holds out until.Net is ready (now) and then says that IE won't support the functionality that violates the patent. They switch over to.Net applications and are now in the clear. Meanwhile Eolas is still free to sue Sun, etc. From the article:
"The Eolas patent covers the whole concept of executable content, which is at the very foundation of Java. So it looks like Java, too, is in violation of the patent. For that matter, so is Microsoft's Internet Explorer and ActiveX."
So, it could be argued that M$ is just covering their butt over the Eolas suit. Luckily for them this also pushes their.Net strategy. It will be interesting to see what happens if Eolas goes after Sun for Java.
I would be afraid that government-provided net access would be subject to taxes, censorship, restriction and whatever else the legislature throws in there.
Net access is best left in the private sector, where consumers have choices over who they do business with.
NetZero and Juno are old courtroom buddies, having both sued each other in the past. Now they are merging? I don't tend to be a conspiracy theorist but this sounds odd to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, people won't use this as a mainstream form of transportation. The smallest form of transportation that people will use is a scooter (Vespa size.... like a small motorcycle). These are widepsread in Europe (ever been to Rome?). Something the size of IT/Ginger is just too small (thats why the motorized Razors haven't caught on). Scooters are small enough to fit a dozen or three on normal city streets (where only 3-4 cars would go) yet large enough to still hold up to 2 riders and a bag or two of groceries while moving at upt to 45 mph. And the greatest part? They use *existing* infrastructure. Don't get me wrong, gyroscopes and no pollution rock in my book, but the fact of the matter is that most people need more functionality out of their vehicles than a motorized skateboard.
Assuming that this is a standardized attachment (ie the same size, etc.) it should be pretty easy for filters on the ISP or client to catch. Also, to my knowledge the only mail clients that can execute code w/o user intervention are M$ products. This narrows the people that can be affected alot.
I wonder if the reviewer would be favourable at all if it wasn't a linux based device
Nope. The product wouldn't even get to market. Inferrior products don't go anywhere unless they've got some reason to survive. In this case the company hopes that Linux users will buy it (over Palm, etc.) simply because it runs Linux, not because it has better features.
Pointless to you (as a Linux user), yes. Pointless to them (as a company), no way. One of the great things about Linux (and Open Source in general) is that everyone now has this awesome repository of code that they can pull from. No longer do people need to start at ground zero in their development cycle, rather they can plunk in code from the Open Source community and get a real jump start.
Now, to get Linux "at the right end" companies just need to be convinced that there is a large enough paying population to justify putting out a product. My bet would be that this is less likely to happen. Even if a company put out a great product that ran on Linux it would likely be cloned, forked, warez or simply not purchased. Typical Linux users don't want to pay for code; if its not Free (as in beer) they don't want it. Now there are some that will plunk down some $$ for a project they like or an application that they need, but overall there is no large market for commercial Linux desktop applications.
That is two computers AND a monitor in ONE 4 cubic foot box?!?! I use a larger box for ONE machine. Am I missing something?
1.) Back up your data. Do it twice.
2.) Buy a "Dish Wrap" moving box.
3.) Fill the box to 1 foot deep with shipping peanuts
4.) Wrap your machine in large bubble wrap and secure it with liberal amounts of packing tape
5.) Stand your machine up dead center in the box.
6.) Backfill the box with more shipping peanuts
7.) Make sure that the box is slightly overfilled with shipping peanuts so the box is somewhat difficult to close. This will help to prevent the machine inside from moving around too much.
8.) Insure your shipment. Don't be cheap.
The hostname www.vasoftware.com resolves yet there isn't a press release or anything to that effect on the VA website.
I always find it interesting when News sites get press releases like this before the Company itself updates their own website. It's quite telling about who is important, Wall Street (Journal?!) or clients/customers/fans of the Company itself.
Makes me wonder: Are they in business to hype the stock price or are they in business to make good products?
I don't get your comparison. You are using Windows as a desktop and Linux as a server. I've had NT 4 servers that have been up for months under moderate load with no problems. PII 350 and 256 MB RAM ran MSSQL, an SMTP server (which did a few thousand messages a day) as well as a web server and some client-server applications. The only time I had to bring it down was for critical hotfixes and service packs. Total downtime for the two years that I had the machine was like 12 hours. Not that bad.
If SMTP will go away (as we know it) they just tell the American people "E-Mail will go away" and you better believe that this thing won't get approved. Done Deal.
Signaling a change in long-standing policy for Microsoft, the company said it will deliver all of its software -- including the next version of IIS that will be bundled with Windows .Net Server next year -- in the ``locked down'' position by default.
This is good, and will mean that they'll need to think less out of the box and MORE to actually get their system up and running. OMG, NT admins that need to *know* something? I mean there are some NT guys (and gals) out there that can "do it right" but they're definetly in the minority.
Ok so it wasn't that bad. The opening theme song DOES need to go. The soft porn can stay.... trekkies have sex right? Or at least hormones. The Vulcan vs. Human thing was played up too much, although these Vulcans exhibited more emotion than any I've seen before. The ship can stay, so can the dog. The officer that is the translator (I already forget her name/rank) is forgettable and should quit crying. Space travel is bumpy damnit! Overall is was a pretty good first show.
Should I even watch it now? I'm afraid the show is now completely spoiled for me. Drat! Oh well, back to my Voyager reruns.
Apart from someone walking past an unused computer who will see these things? The whole point of a screen saver is to keep the monitor busy when the computer isn't in use. My experience with college computer labs is:
- they are full, with people waiting in line to use machines
- or they are booked by a class
Perhaps they'd be better off powering down the monitor (saving $$) rather than firing up a screen saver (which doesn't help modern screens anyway).CPU prices just get passed on to consumers anyway. People who aren't willing to fork over a small extra for a "high end" PC really only need a celeron or PIII machine. Plus, if the consumer demand just isn't there it doesn't make sense to deal with two different manufacturers. GW will always maintain an Intel relationship, so as long as Intel remains the choice for consumers GW can consolidate on Intel.
Now what this does is narrow the market for competitors who still carry AMD lines. Consumers that want AMD will go to whoever will still carry them.
Of course, I get the feeling that the majority of people that want AMD processors will likely be building their own machines anyway. IMHO AMD == a "techie" processor that most consumers don't trust. Its a double-edged sword that AMD needs to deal with. If only techies use their processors then major PC companies will probably drop AMD support due to the sheer fact that they won't be selling many units!
Given that the P4 will just throttle back to cool off (thereby staying up and operational with no data loss) rather than requiring a motherboard manufacturer to build in extra functionality to only _shut_down_ the system IMHO it seems that having the processor control this function is the ideal solution.
Exchange is not just a mail server. If you want just a mail server on NT you can go to 1/2 a dozen other vendors and get a perfectly reliable POP/IMAP/SMTP package. Exchange is groupware, and for its feature set $50 per user isn't all that bad.
Microsoft Research should be figuring out how to improve the performance of NT's Microkernel architecture, improve virtual memory management on multi-media machines and a host of other useful technologies. But they don't. Go figure.
Have ya even looked at what projects they're working on?
http://research.microsoft.com/research/
Granted. But simply having access to the net does not auto-magically get someone a job. Opportunity or not, there are issues that a homeless person must take care of before they even look for a job. Food, shelter, a bath. I'm being serious here. At the ISP that I used to work at we had a terminal in front for people to use. This one homeless guy started coming in and using it... with the hope of finding a job. After awhile he didn't show up anymore, then one day he shows up again, but this time he was all cleaned up. He said that he finally "broke down" and got a "real" job at the local lumber mill. He was still homeless, but he had camped near a park where he could shower and get clean water. He had saved enough to get new clothes and was working to save up enough for an apartment. He was there (at the ISP) to check the web for some sports scores or something (cause he didn't have TV, presumably). At any rate, my point is that when you are that down on your luck, it usually takes a lot more than email to get you on your feet. Sometimes you just need to break down and work your ass off.
Although many people were hit with the virus, the problem that I had was that Qwest's network just crapped out. My modem was patched right away and wasn't even being hit yet I was loosing packets left and right. Hell I couldn't even get to routers and servers inside the Qwest network at times. Blaming the virus is one thing, but having such a fragile network is shameful. I hopped on Earthlink at a friend's house and it was plenty fast. Hmm? Perhaps Code Red doesn't target Earthlink customers.
I keep waiting for NASA to come up with a technology that is cheap, automated and can be deployed in vast numbers.
To oversimplify the issue: drop a few dozen/hundred/whatever floaty, bouncy balls all over Mars and kick back and let the data roll in. Sure some of the balls will be lost, but as long as a few do their job the mission will succeed.
Sure there are weight issues getting all these things over there, but if the probes were simple enough their and ther numbers large enough I'd imagine that they'd be more successful than other probes have been.
People who are living out of a cardboard box need not apply.
People who are living out of a cardboard box probably have more important things to worry about than email. Nowadays we tend to think of the net as one of the most important things in life. But for the vast majority of the people on this planet the net is almost useless in their day-to-day lives.
A Honda is a Honda, even though countless 3rd party vendors contribute large quantities of parts to the overall vehicle. It would be insane for Honda to give up front branding to a parts vendor. Doing so would be more confusing to the masses and would actually diminish the Honda brand as time went on.
Credit is given to GNU in the tools themselves. RMS has no credible reasoning to request (or demand) that a Linux-based system be called anything but "Linux".
So this little company, Eolas holds a patent that essentially wipes out Java, ActiveX, etc. Only they are just suing Microsoft. Microsoft holds out until .Net is ready (now) and then says that IE won't support the functionality that violates the patent. They switch over to .Net applications and are now in the clear. Meanwhile Eolas is still free to sue Sun, etc. From the article:
.Net strategy. It will be interesting to see what happens if Eolas goes after Sun for Java.
"The Eolas patent covers the whole concept of executable content, which is at the very foundation of Java. So it looks like Java, too, is in violation of the patent. For that matter, so is Microsoft's Internet Explorer and ActiveX."
So, it could be argued that M$ is just covering their butt over the Eolas suit. Luckily for them this also pushes their
I would be afraid that government-provided net access would be subject to taxes, censorship, restriction and whatever else the legislature throws in there.
Net access is best left in the private sector, where consumers have choices over who they do business with.
NetZero and Juno are old courtroom buddies, having both sued each other in the past. Now they are merging? I don't tend to be a conspiracy theorist but this sounds odd to me.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4290897.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1993249.html