Now, here we are, the industry is fomenting a counter-revolution to take power back out of the hands of the users. What happens if NCs are successful? Will we have to submit batch jobs to use a Word for Windows server? Important documants delayed a week because our priorty is too low?
You're making the mistake of confusing your own beliefs and priorities with those to whom this technology is targeted.
Do you own all of the equipment you use on a day-to-day basis to do your job? No? Oh, that's right - your company, or University, or ohter sundry organisation does, correct? And guess what - he who pays the piper calls the tunes.
Large organisations need standardisation. Wherever you hear the words "budget", "organisation" and/or "IT Department", it's a natural consequence that control is required of the IT infrastructure within that organisation. Standardisation of Hardware, Software and even configurations of same is the only way in which control can be exercised. Consider the plight of the IT manager who is organisationally responsible for the computing infrastructure, but not for the platforms on which that infrastructure is provided. Think s/he can support that? Think s/he can provide support under those conditions to the 90% of users who don't know computers but have to use them anyway?
Now consider the plight of the IT manager who needs to enable his/her users to communicate both amongst themselves and with the outside world. Communication here includes such things as e-mail, file exchange (think documents, or presentations, or sales data), and probably access to shared information resources (think Web, or Notes, or Exchange, or any one of any number of custom applications). Care to imagine how that can be achieved without standards? Think how many dollars it costs to send someone to a PC to change it's settings away from whatever the User thought looked nice, into something that works. In a 300,000 employee company for example.
Right now, to provide this infrastructure most IT organisations on the planet are forced to build, distribute, support and maintain for themselves a "common platform" made up from off-the-shelf PC software: pick an OS, a productivity suite and a connectivity suite. Even so, you end up with hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of drones^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployees wandering the planet, packing processors, disks, batteries, memory and extremely complex software configurations. All of which can be broken, lost, corrupted or altered. But at least the IT organisation knows what it *should* look like.
IT departments are all over themselves (or at least they should be) for anything which makes this easier. Enter the NC, promising "dumb clients, smart servers". And the servers not only sit in well-maintained, well serviced locations , but they're entirely under the control of the IT organisation.
Of course, it's a new technology, and what's more it's got to fit in and build on what IT departments have already got - can't convince the finance guys to throw out what we've got and start again, can we? Makes us look incompetent. Which is why we see these mutant abortions of solutions like Metaframe, Windows Terminal Server et al. But consider these as stepping stones on the path to a true NC nirvarna. One which can be summarised with the catchphrase "Distributed Computing. Centralised Management".
I've been peripherally involved in an unsuccessful pilot of an NC solution which failed because the technology was too immature, the goals (replace all desktop PCs) too ambitious, the organisation too process bound and politically motivated to adapt to new technology, and because the solution proposed really wasn't easier than giving people desktops - because the investment's already been made in getting that solution working.
All of which means "NC" is a dirty word around here, which is great. Means I can lay hands on hundreds of the things - and they make excellent X Terminals. And X-Terminals are great for running web browsers, or e-mail packages, or as telnet clients to large numbers of unix machines requiring remote administration. Or as displays for network management applications. Even in a highly computer literate organisation!
Are NCs right for everyone? No way. Are they going to replace PCs? No chance. Are they going to result in slimmed-down IT budgets and departments? Nope - they just provide organisations with different (not necessarily "better" or "more efficient") ways of using those resources.
If you're one of the vast majority of computer users on the planet that doesn't actually understand the computer, or even want to, but just wants to write a letter, or send an e-mail, or surf the web, then an NC or NC-like solution may be the best for you. It's like TV ownership - why should you care about how the programs get made? you just want to watch them. Or Telephones - I don't care about echo cancellation, or plesiochronous digital signalling, or time-division multiplexing,I just want to call my Mother in Australia. Why should a user have to care about configuring a network connection, or a printer, or a web browser?
It's not a "freedom" thing, it's not about centralisation of IT. It's about providing higher and higher levels of service, and IT infrastructure in a cheap, controllable way to a large population.
In fact cookies were designed with such nasty things in mind. No, that's not mathematically possible cause browsers use strong hashes to protect cookies from modification.
So why does my.netscape/cookies file contain absolute plain-text for some cookies with no hash (just a timestamp).
A better statement would be Some websites use strong hashes to protect the information they send you in their cookie. Unless I've badly confused myself here
Actually, discussions of religion, money, statistics et al appear to be irrelevent here. Let me see if I can summarise Mr Catz.....
This game's producers seem to be operating under the following moral premise:
Killing people, or graphical representations of people, or aliens, or fantasy creatures is bad(*)
Except when it's our game, in which case it's good.
This is what I believe is the core issue here - internally inconsistent morality. The fact that Christianity (as a sub-class of Religion) and/or Christian values are being used as justification for this stance is mere marketing: pitching it at a particular demographic, if you will.
henley
(*) I have a very strong urge to follow this with "...mmkay?" which should probably give you enough background on my own position here
Isn't it funny how people's opinions and motives of something Christian change depending on whether it's expressly produced by evangelical Christians or not? In Nomine, the Steve Jackson Games RPG of demons vs. angels, is simply a game using the war in Heaven as an interesting setting, and I doubt slashdotters would be up in arms over that...but one whiff of serious intent behind it, and boom, it's ridiculous.
Ummm.. Yes, thank you that's entirely my point.
I have absolutely no problem with fantasy being used to sell a game. Indeed it's nice to see a scenario that isn't "think of the 10 nastiest knightmare-causers and add guts" and instead makes some use of thousands of years worth of history and mythology in a partially authentic way. But the implication from the website and your own post is that this particular game is in some way morally / spiritually better than normal fantasy / sci-fi first person shooters. This is why I'm "Up in arms"* about this game. It could be released by zen gnostics as far as religious group goes, my problem is I'm being preached to about right and wrong in an internally inconsistent manner.
henley
*= actually, I'm still slumped in front of my screen 'n' keyboard trying to keep my eyes open, but please bear with me here.
I've had many emotions and thoughts in the 5 minutes since I made the mistake of following the link.
Mostly, I think I've been spoofed. On the offchance that this IS real, then what's the message?
"Death, killing, blood and war is bad, mmkay? You shouldn't play Quake" But: "Death, war, blood is good as long as it's Angels vs Demons" ?
No, I can't believe it. This is a spoof, right?
Please?
henley
Re:Origins of Snow Crash
on
Snow Crash
·
· Score: 1
One thing that might interest those that have read it is that the opening of the book was originally a short story and quite a comic one at that
Aha! THANK YOU. I've wondered about that because although in my mind it's one of the finest "scene-setters" I've ever read, it's so obviously distinct from the actual plot of the book.
For those who haven't read this book yet (RUN, do not walk, to Amazon now), the background, premise and pacing of this first chapter is a superb piece of writing. To me it's slightly better written than the rest of the book, although that's hardly a criticism. With a fairly silly, throwaway little sub-plot (pizza delivery for the Cyberpunk age), Neal manages to cram in - seamlessly - an enormous amount of background information on the way *his* universe is working (with a fairly subtle sense of humour, too). Before leading into the book proper, if you will.
I've read an awful lot of S.F this year, across a fairly good cross-section of the genre, and "Snow Crash" is probably the best of the bunch for me.
If only they'd release "Cryptonomicon" on this side of the pond a little sooner... Lucky my wife is going to Florida in 2 weeks:-)
Sure, COL is now easier to install than Windows. So what? You do that once in the life of your system if you're lucky, only a few times if you're not. Contrast that with the thousands of hours of computing that you'll do after the install, and it gets to be quite funny.
There are two objections to this argument. One good, one bad.
Firstly, Installation is the first point at which your software product affects it's eventual user. Regardless of how easy it actually is, or how powerfull, First Impressions Last. In my opinion, this is the lesson Microsoft learned early - go on admit it, Windows installations *look* great. For counter-examples, see the OS/2 installer up to version 3 (Warp). Disfunctional, part-graphic, part-text, split into phases almost arbitarily, and requiring continuous care & attention from the user. And then, almost impossible to get to once installed to make tweaks.
Second counter-argument is that this isn't a perfect world. Any Windows user knows that sooner or later they're going to have to re-install at least part of their OS. Do you want them to fear that experience, or feel confident they can negotiate that minefield?
It's perfectly reasonable to point out in response to this that that RPM, Lizard et al tackle the first point adequately, and that Linux / *BSD aren't as fragile / desirous of a reboot as their Windows counterparts.
Both examples I think re-inforce the point that yes, in theory installation should be a one-off fire & forget experience, but the practice is that these are living, changing systems that are evolving to meet the needs of the real world. And more power to them!
I'd expecially love to have one in a holder on my dash board to use mapquest from:).
:smug.What, you mean you don't already?:esmug.
Heh, I'll say this for European standards (GSM) and general sloth-ity: we always take our time but we occasionally get it right
Or to be less jingoistic and slightly more accurate, my current combination of Psion 5 ("classic", if you will) and Ericsson SH888 has already allowed me to:
Do email from a train in the Scottish Highlands
Read Slashdot in a field in Berkshire
Compose & send Email-via-SMS from the comfort of my own car. In Germany.
Receive stock quotes via SMS from wherever I am
...And all without a cable (phone and Psion have an IR link)
(The astute will note that any GSM phone can be used for the last 2 although having a proper keyboard & screen makes it soooo much nicer)
HOWEVER (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) it all comes back to bandwidth. Oh, and cost.
GSM data rate is 9.6KBit/Sec. That's it, no more. It also costs upwards of 10p/minute to use (erm.. 16 of your American Cents, I believe). Checking my e-mail therefore takes about 5 minutes and costs 50 English pennies (around 80 cents).
Now, I'm not without my means, but you certainly can't call that mass-market web-on-the-go, wired for the next century technology, or rather you can but not at that cost.
So my take is that until we see some network technology that has some bandwidth AND is cheap to use (I await responses telling me how much better life is in other countries here), you can forget pervasive mobile telecoms.
The sermon:
The lord already gaveth the Palmtop, the Handheld OSes, and the Mobile Phone. But he giveth not the connectivity unto thine 'net.
Interesting article, and I'd definitely subscribe to the already-expressed opinion that Sir Clarke has a somewhat optimistic timeline there.
However, my point (such as it is), is that I have a friend who's central tenet of Geek Society is that geeks exist to make the cyberpunk predictions of William Gibson come true.
Think about it:
World-wide common network access (check)
Immersive access to same (check...ish, for limited values of "immersive")
Trans-national corporations exploiting this pervasive common communication medium (check)
A hacker "class" which self-organises based on bragging rights in a gift-economy of code sharing (check)
A cracker "underclass" which exists to exploit both of the above (check)
An essentially police-state where all information on "Us" is monitored by "Them" (check.. or rather, getting there)
I disagree with his hypothesis on the grounds of esthetics (geeks can't be this shallow, can they?), however as time goes on I find my position wavering: See developments since Gibson's novels in mobile communications, the web, e-commerce, encryption technology, and the comprehensive failure of society's control mechanisms (i.e. the legal system, business models, political reality) to keep up with all this technology.
Which raises the question here: since we're so obviously running out of things of Gibson's wish list, isn't it about time the geek community got behind another "visionary" and worked on THEIR wish-list instead?
And if so, why not Clarke? I'm all in favour of cheap power, space exploration, an and to war, poverty and famine.
(I just don't think it's doable, that's all. Certainly not in only 1 century)
...but a keyboard means that I either have to put it down or try and balance it on one hand while typing with the other (I've seen it, and it's worth a laugh!) to use the thing on the move.
This is a common comment on the subject of plamtop / PDA input devices, and all I can say is I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done bad.
The Psion 5 and later are definitely designed to be used from a stable surface, no argument there. However, the HP95/100/200 series had excellent keyboards equally suited to both one-handed on-the-move and desktop usage - as long as you had small enough fingers to use them!.
In particular, I'd point out the HP's well-thought out nice touches - like "sticky" shift / function keys, sensible key assignments for common punctuation, and in-built macro programming assignable to function keys(*) - that I really miss from my Psion 5. On the other hand, when I have a surface (which can be as "portable" as my lap), there's no question which is quicker.
But I definitely fall into the category of "If god wanted me to write or do strange graffiti he'd not have invented QWERTY", so if you're comfortable with the idea of waving a metal rod / stick-with-carbon-insert around, ignore all of the above.
(*) - OK this is more of a S/W issue than a keyboard issue. Forgive me for I have sinned
Being a Psion user/fan myself I do wonder where the series 7 will fit into this comparison I did. Perhaps instead of the workabout ? In that case it somehow proofs Psion is following an exact line on their, what I see, winning strategy.
I see the Series 7 as a direct competitor to the WinCE Professional boxes that came out at the start of the year (I may have the marketing name wrong, so please excuse). I refer to the bigger HP Journadas et al.
What's interesting about that is that you're effectively getting the same productivity with the Series 7 as on a WinCE pro box (I don't want to fight holy wars and feature-checklist battles here but I do believe you have the same base function on either platform).
And then you compare the hardware specs for each platform to provide that function. Living proof of the Software Bloat phenomenon, right there in the palm of your hand.....
Alas, while the actual machine doesn't carry any Microsoft software, most of the development and synchronization tools are Windows-specific.
Indeed, what really grates is that the Symbian EPOC Development toolkit - which as you say is tied to Win32 - is based around the gcc compiler.
(although I believe Symbian/Psion-as-was had to pretty much implement their own class libraries etc from scratch (EPOC is entirely written in C++ so be gratefull it works at all, let alone so well!))
I've been reading Slashdot for 6 months now, and this is the first time I've been moved to post.
2030: The world's ecosystem is collapsing under the strain of trying to support 12 billion human beings. New agricultural and animal husbandry techniques are struggling to keep up in the face of strange new diseases and syndromes caused by the amount of genetic engineering having been introduced into the food species and the low tolerance for new diseases because of the amount of domestication away from the original robust strains of food animals and plants.
See http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991002/newsstory8.html Summary: There's a fair old chance that there will never be 12 billion on the planet. Today's predictions have the population of the world at (only) 8.9 Billion by 2050.Indeed, the real long-term planning that gets done now indicates we may have to content with a long-term world-wide population slump after 2070 or so.
To my way of thinking, such a view would invalidate much if not all of your argument's consequences, although obviously the causes - human nature - still applies.
I had a long tract here on GM and what have you, which I've had to remove because it was rubbish. However, I would urge you to review the literature - popular and otherwise. My personal opinion formed from just this is that we just don't know enough about it, period. To me that suggests an appropriate course of actions: Learn all that can be learned about the technology & it's effects.
I cannot, however, resist a side-swipe at my own country here. Mass-media led knee-jerk reaction leading to not only a ban on commercial exploitation (arguable but reasonable), but also an effective ban on research & development (reference the number of GM crop trials destroyed this year in the UK) is not an approach I can condone. Anyone got any jobs in a more mature society?
I started off by violently disagreeing with your conclusions based on your incorrect premise (12 Billion people by 2030). Having now reread both your post and my response, I see we agree on just about everything but the numbers. Ho hum.
Slashdot Mirror
You're making the mistake of confusing your own beliefs and priorities with those to whom this technology is targeted.
Do you own all of the equipment you use on a day-to-day basis to do your job? No? Oh, that's right - your company, or University, or ohter sundry organisation does, correct? And guess what - he who pays the piper calls the tunes.
Large organisations need standardisation. Wherever you hear the words "budget", "organisation" and/or "IT Department", it's a natural consequence that control is required of the IT infrastructure within that organisation. Standardisation of Hardware, Software and even configurations of same is the only way in which control can be exercised. Consider the plight of the IT manager who is organisationally responsible for the computing infrastructure, but not for the platforms on which that infrastructure is provided. Think s/he can support that? Think s/he can provide support under those conditions to the 90% of users who don't know computers but have to use them anyway?
Now consider the plight of the IT manager who needs to enable his/her users to communicate both amongst themselves and with the outside world. Communication here includes such things as e-mail, file exchange (think documents, or presentations, or sales data), and probably access to shared information resources (think Web, or Notes, or Exchange, or any one of any number of custom applications). Care to imagine how that can be achieved without standards? Think how many dollars it costs to send someone to a PC to change it's settings away from whatever the User thought looked nice, into something that works. In a 300,000 employee company for example.
Right now, to provide this infrastructure most IT organisations on the planet are forced to build, distribute, support and maintain for themselves a "common platform" made up from off-the-shelf PC software: pick an OS, a productivity suite and a connectivity suite. Even so, you end up with hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of drones^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployees wandering the planet, packing processors, disks, batteries, memory and extremely complex software configurations. All of which can be broken, lost, corrupted or altered. But at least the IT organisation knows what it *should* look like.
IT departments are all over themselves (or at least they should be) for anything which makes this easier. Enter the NC, promising "dumb clients, smart servers". And the servers not only sit in well-maintained, well serviced locations , but they're entirely under the control of the IT organisation.
Of course, it's a new technology, and what's more it's got to fit in and build on what IT departments have already got - can't convince the finance guys to throw out what we've got and start again, can we? Makes us look incompetent. Which is why we see these mutant abortions of solutions like Metaframe, Windows Terminal Server et al. But consider these as stepping stones on the path to a true NC nirvarna. One which can be summarised with the catchphrase "Distributed Computing. Centralised Management".
I've been peripherally involved in an unsuccessful pilot of an NC solution which failed because the technology was too immature, the goals (replace all desktop PCs) too ambitious, the organisation too process bound and politically motivated to adapt to new technology, and because the solution proposed really wasn't easier than giving people desktops - because the investment's already been made in getting that solution working.
All of which means "NC" is a dirty word around here, which is great. Means I can lay hands on hundreds of the things - and they make excellent X Terminals. And X-Terminals are great for running web browsers, or e-mail packages, or as telnet clients to large numbers of unix machines requiring remote administration. Or as displays for network management applications. Even in a highly computer literate organisation!
Are NCs right for everyone? No way. Are they going to replace PCs? No chance. Are they going to result in slimmed-down IT budgets and departments? Nope - they just provide organisations with different (not necessarily "better" or "more efficient") ways of using those resources.
If you're one of the vast majority of computer users on the planet that doesn't actually understand the computer, or even want to, but just wants to write a letter, or send an e-mail, or surf the web, then an NC or NC-like solution may be the best for you. It's like TV ownership - why should you care about how the programs get made? you just want to watch them. Or Telephones - I don't care about echo cancellation, or plesiochronous digital signalling, or time-division multiplexing,I just want to call my Mother in Australia. Why should a user have to care about configuring a network connection, or a printer, or a web browser?
It's not a "freedom" thing, it's not about centralisation of IT. It's about providing higher and higher levels of service, and IT infrastructure in a cheap, controllable way to a large population.
henley
So why does my .netscape/cookies file contain absolute plain-text for some cookies with no hash (just a timestamp).
A better statement would be Some websites use strong hashes to protect the information they send you in their cookie. Unless I've badly confused myself here
Actually, discussions of religion, money, statistics et al appear to be irrelevent here. Let me see if I can summarise Mr Catz.....
This game's producers seem to be operating under the following moral premise:
This is what I believe is the core issue here - internally inconsistent morality. The fact that Christianity (as a sub-class of Religion) and/or Christian values are being used as justification for this stance is mere marketing: pitching it at a particular demographic, if you will.
henley
(*) I have a very strong urge to follow this with "...mmkay?" which should probably give you enough background on my own position here
Ummm.. Yes, thank you that's entirely my point.
I have absolutely no problem with fantasy being used to sell a game. Indeed it's nice to see a scenario that isn't "think of the 10 nastiest knightmare-causers and add guts" and instead makes some use of thousands of years worth of history and mythology in a partially authentic way. But the implication from the website and your own post is that this particular game is in some way morally / spiritually better than normal fantasy / sci-fi first person shooters. This is why I'm "Up in arms"* about this game. It could be released by zen gnostics as far as religious group goes, my problem is I'm being preached to about right and wrong in an internally inconsistent manner.
henley
*= actually, I'm still slumped in front of my screen 'n' keyboard trying to keep my eyes open, but please bear with me here.
In reference to Eternal Warriors.
I've had many emotions and thoughts in the 5 minutes since I made the mistake of following the link.
Mostly, I think I've been spoofed. On the offchance that this IS real, then what's the message?
"Death, killing, blood and war is bad, mmkay? You shouldn't play Quake" But: "Death, war, blood is good as long as it's Angels vs Demons" ?
No, I can't believe it. This is a spoof, right?
Please?
henley
Aha! THANK YOU. I've wondered about that because although in my mind it's one of the finest "scene-setters" I've ever read, it's so obviously distinct from the actual plot of the book.
For those who haven't read this book yet (RUN, do not walk, to Amazon now), the background, premise and pacing of this first chapter is a superb piece of writing. To me it's slightly better written than the rest of the book, although that's hardly a criticism. With a fairly silly, throwaway little sub-plot (pizza delivery for the Cyberpunk age), Neal manages to cram in - seamlessly - an enormous amount of background information on the way *his* universe is working (with a fairly subtle sense of humour, too). Before leading into the book proper, if you will.
I've read an awful lot of S.F this year, across a fairly good cross-section of the genre, and "Snow Crash" is probably the best of the bunch for me.
If only they'd release "Cryptonomicon" on this side of the pond a little sooner... Lucky my wife is going to Florida in 2 weeks :-)
henley
There are two objections to this argument. One good, one bad.
Firstly, Installation is the first point at which your software product affects it's eventual user. Regardless of how easy it actually is, or how powerfull, First Impressions Last. In my opinion, this is the lesson Microsoft learned early - go on admit it, Windows installations *look* great. For counter-examples, see the OS/2 installer up to version 3 (Warp). Disfunctional, part-graphic, part-text, split into phases almost arbitarily, and requiring continuous care & attention from the user. And then, almost impossible to get to once installed to make tweaks.
Second counter-argument is that this isn't a perfect world. Any Windows user knows that sooner or later they're going to have to re-install at least part of their OS. Do you want them to fear that experience, or feel confident they can negotiate that minefield?
It's perfectly reasonable to point out in response to this that that RPM, Lizard et al tackle the first point adequately, and that Linux / *BSD aren't as fragile / desirous of a reboot as their Windows counterparts.
Both examples I think re-inforce the point that yes, in theory installation should be a one-off fire & forget experience, but the practice is that these are living, changing systems that are evolving to meet the needs of the real world. And more power to them!
henley
Heh, I'll say this for European standards (GSM) and general sloth-ity: we always take our time but we occasionally get it right
Or to be less jingoistic and slightly more accurate, my current combination of Psion 5 ("classic", if you will) and Ericsson SH888 has already allowed me to:
...And all without a cable (phone and Psion have an IR link)
(The astute will note that any GSM phone can be used for the last 2 although having a proper keyboard & screen makes it soooo much nicer)
HOWEVER (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) it all comes back to bandwidth. Oh, and cost.
GSM data rate is 9.6KBit/Sec. That's it, no more. It also costs upwards of 10p/minute to use (erm.. 16 of your American Cents, I believe). Checking my e-mail therefore takes about 5 minutes and costs 50 English pennies (around 80 cents).
Now, I'm not without my means, but you certainly can't call that mass-market web-on-the-go, wired for the next century technology, or rather you can but not at that cost.
So my take is that until we see some network technology that has some bandwidth AND is cheap to use (I await responses telling me how much better life is in other countries here), you can forget pervasive mobile telecoms.
The sermon:
The lord already gaveth the Palmtop, the Handheld OSes, and the Mobile Phone. But he giveth not the connectivity unto thine 'net.
--
The Rev. henley MPhil(Oxon) (Barking)
Interesting article, and I'd definitely subscribe to the already-expressed opinion that Sir Clarke has a somewhat optimistic timeline there.
However, my point (such as it is), is that I have a friend who's central tenet of Geek Society is that geeks exist to make the cyberpunk predictions of William Gibson come true.
Think about it:
I disagree with his hypothesis on the grounds of esthetics (geeks can't be this shallow, can they?), however as time goes on I find my position wavering: See developments since Gibson's novels in mobile communications, the web, e-commerce, encryption technology, and the comprehensive failure of society's control mechanisms (i.e. the legal system, business models, political reality) to keep up with all this technology.
Which raises the question here: since we're so obviously running out of things of Gibson's wish list, isn't it about time the geek community got behind another "visionary" and worked on THEIR wish-list instead?
And if so, why not Clarke? I'm all in favour of cheap power, space exploration, an and to war, poverty and famine.
(I just don't think it's doable, that's all. Certainly not in only 1 century)
henley
This is a common comment on the subject of plamtop / PDA input devices, and all I can say is I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done bad.
The Psion 5 and later are definitely designed to be used from a stable surface, no argument there. However, the HP95/100/200 series had excellent keyboards equally suited to both one-handed on-the-move and desktop usage - as long as you had small enough fingers to use them!.
In particular, I'd point out the HP's well-thought out nice touches - like "sticky" shift / function keys, sensible key assignments for common punctuation, and in-built macro programming assignable to function keys(*) - that I really miss from my Psion 5. On the other hand, when I have a surface (which can be as "portable" as my lap), there's no question which is quicker.
But I definitely fall into the category of "If god wanted me to write or do strange graffiti he'd not have invented QWERTY", so if you're comfortable with the idea of waving a metal rod / stick-with-carbon-insert around, ignore all of the above.
(*) - OK this is more of a S/W issue than a keyboard issue. Forgive me for I have sinned
henley
I see the Series 7 as a direct competitor to the WinCE Professional boxes that came out at the start of the year (I may have the marketing name wrong, so please excuse). I refer to the bigger HP Journadas et al.
What's interesting about that is that you're effectively getting the same productivity with the Series 7 as on a WinCE pro box (I don't want to fight holy wars and feature-checklist battles here but I do believe you have the same base function on either platform).
And then you compare the hardware specs for each platform to provide that function. Living proof of the Software Bloat phenomenon, right there in the palm of your hand.....
henley
Indeed, what really grates is that the Symbian EPOC Development toolkit - which as you say is tied to Win32 - is based around the gcc compiler.
(although I believe Symbian/Psion-as-was had to pretty much implement their own class libraries etc from scratch (EPOC is entirely written in C++ so be gratefull it works at all, let alone so well!))
henley
I've been reading Slashdot for 6 months now, and this is the first time I've been moved to post.
See http://www.newscientist.com /ns/19991002/newsstory8.html Summary: There's a fair old chance that there will never be 12 billion on the planet. Today's predictions have the population of the world at (only) 8.9 Billion by 2050.Indeed, the real long-term planning that gets done now indicates we may have to content with a long-term world-wide population slump after 2070 or so.
To my way of thinking, such a view would invalidate much if not all of your argument's consequences, although obviously the causes - human nature - still applies.
I had a long tract here on GM and what have you, which I've had to remove because it was rubbish. However, I would urge you to review the literature - popular and otherwise. My personal opinion formed from just this is that we just don't know enough about it, period. To me that suggests an appropriate course of actions: Learn all that can be learned about the technology & it's effects.
I cannot, however, resist a side-swipe at my own country here. Mass-media led knee-jerk reaction leading to not only a ban on commercial exploitation (arguable but reasonable), but also an effective ban on research & development (reference the number of GM crop trials destroyed this year in the UK) is not an approach I can condone. Anyone got any jobs in a more mature society?
I started off by violently disagreeing with your conclusions based on your incorrect premise (12 Billion people by 2030). Having now reread both your post and my response, I see we agree on just about everything but the numbers. Ho hum.
henley