Kinda sad how the upshot of all the nifty news technology is the rather boring (though admittedly valuable) goal of low power consumption. The original press conference read sort of like the Cheese Shop Sketch.
"The crusoe can emulate any chip at all." "Like a PowerPC?" "Theoretically." "Or an Alpha?" "Technically." "Or a Dragonball?" "Probably." "So what can it actually emulate?" "Any chip at all, so long as it's an x86."
...which leads to the question, if all the Open licenses are found to be invalid under US law, how big a disaster is that? Can the Free/OS Software community limp along with all code in the Dreaded Public Domain, or do we pack up and go home?
I suspect that PayPal (which is currently mostly used for EBay auctions, I think) will be able to accomodate that niche eventually. It should be very straightforward: "To make a donation to this site, enter your Paypal name, password, and the amount you want to donate in the fields below."
Wasn't there an essay on a similar topic called "The Street Performer Protocol" floating around recently? Anyone have the link for that?
There are several EEs in BeOS (check the BeOS Bible for an incomplete list). The one I'm fond of is that just about any exotic keystroke-mouseclick combination on the browser's "About" box brings up a pop-up window with the message "Stop looking for an easter egg. There isn't one."
Sad but true. Starting from 2 doesn't hurt either. I've been accumulating points much faster since I made it past the threshhold.
For a while, I tried, as a moderator, to read all the way down to the end of older discussions. Later, I tried jumping a random distance down before starting to moderate. These days I usually read at a minimum of +3, and take advantage (somewhat guiltily) of other people's hard work.
If it's any comfort, I don't think my comment deserved a five either.
Theres a distinct parallel with this and an OS choice. exists primarily to empower the user.
Well, one notable difference is that when Windows crashes, you don't die. I hope you realize that your favorite toy is the leading non-disease cause of death for Americans. (check out the really cool & flexible database search I got that link from, btw)
I'm kinda OT here--you were complaining about George Jetson cars, not car alternatives, but the attitude that a personal four-seat internal combustion vehicle is a fundamental human right is beginning to get to me. Have you been downtown in a major city lately? I live near Boston, and Car Culture is killing the pleasure of being outdoors in my city. The noise, the stink, the endless loops of oppressive asphalt are choking any sort of pleasure in walking around in public places. And it's not like the motorists are happy either--they're stuck in frustrating jams because a car is not a good tool for getting around a city
Some other tangential points:
The Times bit about the personal-bubble rails is telling (see, I did have something to say about the actual article!). God forbid that you should actually have to associate with your fellow human beings on your way to work! Perhaps we can refine the technology further and have the rails run inside of buildings as well. Then you'd never have to leave your cube at all--what bliss!
It's fascinating when people get outraged over the price of gas--after all, everyone knows what it should cost, right? Gas should cost what it did when I first got my driver's license. If the price rises much above that, someone must be cheating.
Well, we do know that FIC has a contract with Be, Inc. to use BeIA (whenever the damn thing comes out) in "internet appliances." Whether that means the Aqua is going to be running BeIA isn't clear.
Love that language in the page, though. Favorite phrases include:
Aqua uses Touch panel and Stylus to be the input device for spontaneous Internet accessing.
...we can turn it to the backside and let Aqua stand firmly on the desk. How amazing it is!
using Lithium battery to complete superior wireless Internet access out of question.
I was very impressed on photo.net with your welfare reform essay, and particularly taken by your thesis that America's domestic aid policy is primarily driven by a sour and puritanical terror of giving money to those who might not deserve it.
I was therefore surprised to find your elaborate dissection of how Bill Gates doesn't deserve his money.
Of course he doesn't deserve his money! No economy has ever managed to allocate wealth by merit! But, by losing sleep over that fact, aren't you participating in something very like the nosiness you elsewhere deplore?
A friend of mine who's into BDSM was all cranky because when she tried to search for kink gear in eBay, she kept finding Everquest weapons for sale instead. Guess she's celebrating this week...
I agree with Cliff. More communication among drivers would be a Bad Thing. Even apart from the increase in violence, do we really need another thing to distract drivers from the road?
Yes, yes! This is why we BeOS junkies are biting our nails down to about the second knuckle. The maker of our favorite OS has decided to throw its fortunes into a product that DOESN'T FLICKIN' EXIST YET!! For fun sometime skim '99 Be press releases announcing BeIA webpads to be released Q1 '00. Grr.
"...and more on the very real pattern of injustice brought to bear on people through employers and other institutions. Stephenson said he was less worried these days about broad, theoretical privacy issues than about a recent incident in which a stray bullet crashed through a window at a friend's house and narrowly missed a sleeping child."
Now, admittedly, almmost getting shot in your bedroom is unjust(for most people), and arguably even an invasion of privacy. But unless the guy's boss was in the habit of reminding him to come to work by firing shells through the front window, I have trouble seeing how this is an example of injustices perpetrated by employers & c. What's the connection here?
Unix-style security makes it hard for a virus to get enough authority to wreak any havoc.
Linux doesn't have the easily abused networking and macro systems that keep cropping up in WindowsXX
Open Source software means you can see the virus sittin' there.
Of these, I'm skeptical of 1 and 3.
Is 1 still the case, as more and more people are learning Linux at home, with no experience of an actual mulituser UNIX system? Might'nt there be enough people routinely running as root these days to invalidate the barriers of Linux's design?
2 is perfectly reasonable, though--as others have already pointed out--there's nothing to keep that from changing in the future.
As for 3, isn't there a potential (I don't know if it's already been tried yet) for deceptive "open source" software with the binary not actually derived from the provided source? Folks who download and compile the source would be safe, but folks who download the executable get a nasty surprise.
Fallows' résumé is a little more complicated than that; he was appointed editor-in-chief of US News & World Report after his jerimiad against sleazy news reporting, Breaking the News, got a lot of attention. Apparently he was successful enough in making the magazine more high-minded that the readership dropped, and he was booted after about a year
Peanut Gallery: What's your point, Sebbo?
Er...that he has some experience at the executive end, too, though none that I know of writing code.
Remind me not to enter into any contracts with Mr. Fallows.
I also volunteered not to publish a memoir or an "inside Microsoft" confessional -- or not to do so without allowing the company to read and approve it ahead of time, which is the same thing as agreeing not to do it.
I love Knuth's line, "Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things." I should make it my.sig file... Oh, wait; I think I see a potential problem here.
Slashdot Mirror
The scenery has no depth to it either...
Don't forget the writing.
And the acting...
I can remember back when "Newsflash: Technology Trade Show Not Linux-Centric" wouldn't exactly have been a presses stopper.
Is it time to have a Stupid Tech Product Name Slashdot logo, to go with teh Stupid Patents logo? What would the image be, though?
Kinda sad how the upshot of all the nifty news technology is the rather boring (though admittedly valuable) goal of low power consumption. The original press conference read sort of like the Cheese Shop Sketch.
"The crusoe can emulate any chip at all."
"Like a PowerPC?"
"Theoretically."
"Or an Alpha?"
"Technically."
"Or a Dragonball?"
"Probably."
"So what can it actually emulate?"
"Any chip at all, so long as it's an x86."
...which leads to the question, if all the Open licenses are found to be invalid under US law, how big a disaster is that? Can the Free/OS Software community limp along with all code in the Dreaded Public Domain, or do we pack up and go home?
I agree that if the information revolution has now happened it ain't all of that, but what if it's just starting?
For good or ill, in a few decades, virtually everyone may be connected all the time. Then it will be time to compare
I suspect that PayPal (which is currently mostly used for EBay auctions, I think) will be able to accomodate that niche eventually. It should be very straightforward: "To make a donation to this site, enter your Paypal name, password, and the amount you want to donate in the fields below."
Wasn't there an essay on a similar topic called "The Street Performer Protocol" floating around recently? Anyone have the link for that?
There are several EEs in BeOS (check the BeOS Bible for an incomplete list). The one I'm fond of is that just about any exotic keystroke-mouseclick combination on the browser's "About" box brings up a pop-up window with the message "Stop looking for an easter egg. There isn't one."
Sad but true. Starting from 2 doesn't hurt either. I've been accumulating points much faster since I made it past the threshhold.
For a while, I tried, as a moderator, to read all the way down to the end of older discussions. Later, I tried jumping a random distance down before starting to moderate. These days I usually read at a minimum of +3, and take advantage (somewhat guiltily) of other people's hard work.
If it's any comfort, I don't think my comment deserved a five either.
Theres a distinct parallel with this and an OS choice. exists primarily to empower the user.
Well, one notable difference is that when Windows crashes, you don't die. I hope you realize that your favorite toy is the leading non-disease cause of death for Americans. (check out the really cool & flexible database search I got that link from, btw)
I'm kinda OT here--you were complaining about George Jetson cars, not car alternatives, but the attitude that a personal four-seat internal combustion vehicle is a fundamental human right is beginning to get to me. Have you been downtown in a major city lately? I live near Boston, and Car Culture is killing the pleasure of being outdoors in my city. The noise, the stink, the endless loops of oppressive asphalt are choking any sort of pleasure in walking around in public places. And it's not like the motorists are happy either--they're stuck in frustrating jams because a car is not a good tool for getting around a city
Some other tangential points:
The Times bit about the personal-bubble rails is telling (see, I did have something to say about the actual article!). God forbid that you should actually have to associate with your fellow human beings on your way to work! Perhaps we can refine the technology further and have the rails run inside of buildings as well. Then you'd never have to leave your cube at all--what bliss!
It's fascinating when people get outraged over the price of gas--after all, everyone knows what it should cost, right? Gas should cost what it did when I first got my driver's license. If the price rises much above that, someone must be cheating.
Yeah...
Good thing none of the Linux advocates have a vested interest in the success of Linux.
Love that language in the page, though. Favorite phrases include:
...maybe someone should write an FAQ...
Dunno about a FAQ, but there's a mailing list/lobbying group at Ajax.org. Good luck.
I was very impressed on photo.net with your welfare reform essay, and particularly taken by your thesis that America's domestic aid policy is primarily driven by a sour and puritanical terror of giving money to those who might not deserve it.
I was therefore surprised to find your elaborate dissection of how Bill Gates doesn't deserve his money.
Of course he doesn't deserve his money! No economy has ever managed to allocate wealth by merit! But, by losing sleep over that fact, aren't you participating in something very like the nosiness you elsewhere deplore?
A friend of mine who's into BDSM was all cranky because when she tried to search for kink gear in eBay, she kept finding Everquest weapons for sale instead. Guess she's celebrating this week...
I agree with Cliff. More communication among drivers would be a Bad Thing. Even apart from the increase in violence, do we really need another thing to distract drivers from the road?
Yes, yes! This is why we BeOS junkies are biting our nails down to about the second knuckle. The maker of our favorite OS has decided to throw its fortunes into a product that DOESN'T FLICKIN' EXIST YET!! For fun sometime skim '99 Be press releases announcing BeIA webpads to be released Q1 '00. Grr.
"...and more on the very real pattern of injustice brought to bear on people through employers and other institutions. Stephenson said he was less worried these days about broad, theoretical privacy issues than about a recent incident in which a stray bullet crashed through a window at a friend's house and narrowly missed a sleeping child."
Now, admittedly, almmost getting shot in your bedroom is unjust(for most people), and arguably even an invasion of privacy. But unless the guy's boss was in the habit of reminding him to come to work by firing shells through the front window, I have trouble seeing how this is an example of injustices perpetrated by employers & c. What's the connection here?
BeOSCentral is kinda only half-there these days.
BeGroovy has more-or-less taken over the niche of funky, chatty news site.
BeNews has a full review of R5 Pro and Free up now.
Yabel (Yet Another BeOS Link) has a nice RDF index of the top news from most of the major BeOS sites.
Of these, I'm skeptical of 1 and 3.
Is 1 still the case, as more and more people are learning Linux at home, with no experience of an actual mulituser UNIX system? Might'nt there be enough people routinely running as root these days to invalidate the barriers of Linux's design?
2 is perfectly reasonable, though--as others have already pointed out--there's nothing to keep that from changing in the future.
As for 3, isn't there a potential (I don't know if it's already been tried yet) for deceptive "open source" software with the binary not actually derived from the provided source? Folks who download and compile the source would be safe, but folks who download the executable get a nasty surprise.
Hm. The site seems to be slashdotted.
We can come up with better words than those...
"Pungent"
"Quixotic"
"Post-postmodern"
"Touching"
"Outré"
"Demented"
"Obvious"
"Bloodthirsty"
And one more really useful one,
"Wrong."
Fallows' résumé is a little more complicated than that; he was appointed editor-in-chief of US News & World Report after his jerimiad against sleazy news reporting, Breaking the News, got a lot of attention. Apparently he was successful enough in making the magazine more high-minded that the readership dropped, and he was booted after about a year
Peanut Gallery: What's your point, Sebbo?
Er...that he has some experience at the executive end, too, though none that I know of writing code.
I also volunteered not to publish a memoir or an "inside Microsoft" confessional -- or not to do so without allowing the company to read and approve it ahead of time, which is the same thing as agreeing not to do it.
I love Knuth's line, "Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the .sig file... Oh, wait; I think I see a potential problem here.
bottom of things." I should make it my