It shouldn't cost a fortune to make a remote display. Kill the local disk (along with overkill power hungry processors) and battery life skyrockets.
This is the 'KILLER-APP' that Linux needs to rule the SOHO market. The OS is already multi-user, but that is only a minor advantage to most people in a home with only one computer. (I find it a major advantage, in that I can give my 6yr old his own account and not worry about him deleting system.dll or config.sys)
A cheap remote display will make the multi-user features of Linux a must-have. Now you only have to buy and maintain one PC in the house. That PC can be hidden in a closet. And for only a small price, everyone can access and use the computer at the same time.
Just run NIS/NFS on the server and the remote display should be trivial. But I don't seeing it happening anytime soon. The rest of the world is locked on MS mindset (1 user==1 computer). The advantage of having 5 people logged on with remote pads will take some advertising, a paradigm shift, if you will.
It has been speculated that quantum computing effects may occur in the brain. However, as I understand it, the current conventional wisdom is that such effects are minimal at best, and do not impact on the overall result of brain function.
Unfortunately, we will never know until we take a very smart person and run their brain through a particle accelerator and watch the effect as it smashes into a solid block of steel. Any volunteers?
Launch a probe that has a base station and lots of miniature 'needle probes', little devices shape like a hypodermic needle with a rotor on top battery in the middle and a sharp needle on the bottom.
The base station lands, and periodically launches the needle probes. The probes start their rotors and run them to stay aloft until the battery is nearly drained. It then falls from the sky and sticks into the ground from the momentum. 'Detectors-on-a-chip' go to work analysing whatever is on the end of the needle and radioing the results back to the base station which relays it to Earth. The rotors double as solar panels (yeah, it'll take forever-and-a-day to recharge, but other probes are busy at the same time). Once the battery has sufficient charge, it fires up the rotors and let the wind carry it someplace else.
Position indicators (ie, the rotor is at 267.3 degrees) on the rotors/solar-panel/directional attenae, combined with a networking infrastructure will allow the needle probes to roughly triangulate their position with the base station would give a good idea of where the analized samples came from. Combine that with arial pictures from the orbiter and you map the data fairly well. The radio telemetry could also be used by the base station to direct a laser at the needle probes to recharge their batteries (the base station being equipped with an excellent nuclear power source 8*)
The spots tested would be completely at random, but who cares. When you're new to an area and completely lost, any direction is as good as any other.
Your idea does sound like the perfect way to sink a company like VA Linux. Get them to spend a lot of capital designing it, then when nobody comes they get hauled into bankruptcy.
One engineer could design this setup in a month. Let's see. Take a vanilla server and stick in a wireless networking card. (That took all of...what...3 seconds?)
Now for the roaming display. Take a notebook and put Linux, a shell and X Windows in ROM. Shouldn't take more than 8Meg of flash memory (Remember, just the server, not the apps). Give it 8Megs of RAM and one of the low-power processors and a wireless networking card. No hard-drive, no floppy, and no CD. Maybe a small speaker. LCD display. The hard part is packaging (and is the only reason I haven't done it myself.), but it shouldn't take too long to layout these standard components and stick them in some nice molded plastic.
Linux has proved itself to be the most portable OS ever created. This will make it much easier to get it on any device they are running.
Once they have Linux on the device, they can enlist any Linux developer to help them develope additional functions and interfaces.
What's the other choice. Pick an OS that must be paid for ($5 added to the cost of a consumer device is massive). TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS to use program this OS. When the next device is developed, buy a different OS and you get to TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS again. Hiring is complicated and expensive because you'll have to TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS you hire in the exotic OS your using. By another company and you have to TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS in this exotic OS the probably have never seen before.
(Is the pattern emerging yet?)
Companies like to have standards that don't involve the areas where they're trying to differentiate themselves, make it cheaper for them to operate, and make their products cheaper. $5 for EPOCH on each production unit cell phone would be a large percentage of the production cost, and that isn't even considering what it cost to train someone in the basics of the OS, let alone paying someone with enough experience to actually be good with the OS.
There is every reason in the world for the hardware companies to want to standardize on a OS layer peice of software. It'll let device operate better together (many more total units sold - all the boats will rise in that wave), make the devices cheaper to develope (making the wave bigger), and by avoiding the proprietary OSs (kiss our butt M$) will make the devices cheaper to market (oohh, big wave).
and call it advertising. At least you can't and still expect to be in business the next day. This just doesn't seem to make any sense anymore. It seems that more and more of the economy is being turned over to 'supported by advertising' revenue models. Eventually, somebody has to sell something sometime.
I know, almost everything solid still requires an exchange of cash, but what percentage of the cyberworld will be turned over to advertising support before there is no more money flowing? Or will the Internet go the way of TV, where all the content was supported by advertisements (and sucked)?
Insurance companies are the most paranoid in the world, and they will want their own auditors to confirm that they are insuring a secure environment. At the least, they will set lower rates for sites with better security.
Insurance is a line-item in company budgets with predictable cost. Managers get bonuses for lowering predictable cost.
Working from those premises, I predict that a company with a verifiably secure Linux/BSD/$OTHER_OS_OS infrastructure will be able to negotiate a lower insurance cost than a company that says, "Microsoft insures us that this software is secure."
I further predict that direct positive impact on the bottom line will do more to push open-source solutions into business than anything else.
Keep all your benchmarks and anecdotal evidence. The insurance companies won't care. They will do the most indepth analysis you could ever imagine, because 1)the have the resources and 2)they'll have REAL money on the line. Smart money goes where the insurance companies do. (Well, at least I trust them to take care of their own money and not give a rats-ass about the OS wars.)
solely because I'm a 5'11 240lb fit confident male, instead of a 6' 135lb slender and attractive female.
Hypothesis: Your appearence(sp?)/attitude/demeanor has more to do with the discrimination than your sex.
My wife told me recently that she has changed how she acts when she goes to night clubs with her friends. According to her, in the past if a male approached her she would respond and make conversation politely while meeting his gaze. Men got the idea that she was on the hunt and would pursue her endlessly, regardless of how many times she said, "I'm MARRIED!!"
Now, she says, she slumps her shoulders when she enters the room and tries to appear ungainly in high heels. She doesn't look at men when they approach her, choosing to look away instead. She says that it has worked.
Teleport to the world of business. Anyone that doesn't sit-up straight and look me in the eye during a meeting is considered weak. Who's at fault if my wife forgets she's at a business meeting instead of a night club?
my mother has (a) been descriminated by a legal arbitrator who told my mother flat out before arbitration that she was going to lose because she's just a "stupid cunt and has no business being in charge of a building site"
As in many cases of 'discrimination' that I've seen, the arbitrators problem lay in something else and the fact that your mother was female was just an easy difference to capitalize on. He could just have easily used the fact that she was a) 'a skinny weakling' b) 'too white' c) 'too dark' d) 'too pretty' (implying low intelligence) e) 'too ugly' (implying low intelligence) f) etc...
My point being that the construction industry has more than its fair share of socially maladjusted grunts that exhibit animalistic tendencies to dominate through ritualistic posturing, but the rest of the world has quite a few too. People communicate more than they know through barely noticable actions. I always enjoy watching documentaries on animal rituals and comparing what I see to what you find in a local bar or board room meeting. The similarities are incredible.
who wins? I don't buy a processor. I buy a computer. I want a 'web-pad' with a small inegrated keyboard, large touch screen running X-windows, >=8hr battery life, and wireless networking. The server I have would work as a base station, and I could use several pads at the same time anywhere in the house. If this device has a Crusoe IC, I'll buy it. Shoot, I'd buy it if it had nothing more than an 20MHz i386 (how much bandwidth is needed to run an X display and take keyboard input?).
I want a computing (as opposed to computer) solution. I don't want another processor tying me to my office chair.
Anyone here with contacts to VA-Linux or some other hardware provider? If they offered a 'home computing solution' (a server and 2 or 3 webpads) for $3000(US) they could wipe up the SOHO market. I'd know I'd jump on it like stink on sh**.
Oh, and did I mention that I wouldn't care what processor was in the web pad?
Now who do you want to make your decisions for you? The Gore Fortune 500 or the Bush Fortune 500?
or -3l337 d00dZ -welfare moms -soccer moms -SUV drivers -Yugo drivers -walkers,bikers and other 'environmentalist nuts' -abortionist -right to lifers -the NRA -gun control supports.
My answer none of the above. But someone will be in control somewhere. Someone, at some time, has to make the 'ultimate decision' on a contested issue. Should that someone be a person that ignores what goes on around them, or someone with enough presence to take advantage of what life offers?
CB radio, that had 40 channels. But they got crowded, so someone developed side-band. The same spectrum was used, but it was split into smaller sections. So the question then becomes, "How small can we make the spectrum slices?" We only have one spectrum, and its size was set by a very strong being a long time ago. Now you can increase bandwidth by increasing the bits Hz on each channel, or increase the number of channels.
Because of innacurrasy(sp?) in manufacturing and other sloppiness, we can't asign an entity a frequency +-1 Hz. You have to spread things out to give everyone some room, or they'll be stepping all over each other. But technology improves, and as it does, equipment can hone in on the proper frequency much more precisely. This removes some of the need to spread stations out so far. It used to be that a radio station needed every bit of their spectrum to transmit music without stepping on the next station. Now stations can actually use part of their spectrum to transmit data.
With this in mind, the bandwidth is (for all intent and purposes) at this point endless.
Smarter, faster, stronger animals eat the smaller, weaker and dumb ones.
Computers have changed society, and some people don't like it.
If we create technological artifacts, some people will discover how to use it to their own advantage. And then they might possibly (oh my god) USE IT TO THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE!!
History has shown that the first society to take advantage of advances in technology will dominate those that do not or are slow in the uptake. If the US dives headlong into this, you may not like the result, but if history is the best oracle the US will dominate.
I really, REALLY hate my neighbor. He is a bully who is rude to everyone in the community. He never keeps his word, and he will lie, cheat and steal. But we can't have him arrested just for being rude.
But then I discover that he's growing pot in his backyard, and that he has a chem lab in his basement for makeing LSD. Why is it wrong for me to tell the police?
The VCs were stupid for forgetting the first law of business: Assume everyone is a lying bastard until they prove beyond a reasonable doubt otherwise.
The employees were stupid for forgetting the first law of the job market: Keep your resume up to date.
It's taken me a long time to get to the cynical point that I'm at now, but I no longer put any loyalty into my job (I'm only here for the paycheck) and I always assume salesmen are hiding something (the first question I ask them is, "So, how do you make your money?").
One of the arguments for using software disk compression back in the day was that it would increase transfer rates. It was faster to move less data across the disk bus and then process it with a fast processor than it was to move the uncompressed data directly to memory.
1) How true was this claim, and if it was true, why isn't it still true?
2) Will the same effect be apparent in harware memory compression? Furthermore, would more performance be seen if the compressor was moved onto the processor so that not as much data had to be moved across the memory bus?
Do people not recognize M$ behavior for what is really is? They're waiting, not for a change of political leadership, but for a change in technological leadership. It's been the same pattern they've used for years. You keep your enemy tied up until you bring out something different. You pooh-pooh the advantages of OS/2 VoiceType while frantically developing competing technology. You proclaim UNIX as too heavy, while working day and night to develop symbolic links.
They're trying to use the same technique here. Every motion they put forth has a request for more time. Meanwhile they're trying to move everyone to a differenct platform that is not part of the case. Once they have leveraged their desktop monopoly into a server monopoly (where the money is at now anyway) they'll thumb their colective noses at the DOJ and laugh the tails off.
Putting the case before the SC will get resolution while it still matter...before M$ can harm other areas of the industry.
Ok, just totally skip over my entire point and respond as you feel.
My point was not whether governments should do business online, or whether poor people should have cable TV.
My point was that the digital divide does not exist. Poor people who can afford cable TV can afford net access. Arguing that the government shouldn't modernize because some choose to spend their money in a manner that locks them out is ridiculous. Arguing that taxpayers should subsidize others bad financial choices is equally ridiculous.
Not having access to the net is not a choice. Buying cable instead of net access is. Don't ask for me to pay for one when you choose the other.
The government is probably the biggest organization to ever exist. You can't expect the thing to wake up one day and say, "Oh, KEWL. The internet. Let's dump 50 yrs of policy and procedures and jump onto this new technology."
Just look at the obstacles that 'crats face. 1)Taxpayers scream if $1 is paid for a coax terminator without 5 different sources being allowed to bid on it.
2)If any special interest group feels that it doesn't get as much advantage as every other it howls (Note: this doesn't mean the said group is hurt, just that it doesn't get as much advantage as all the rest)
3)No one thanks you for improving their life.
4)Everyone blames you if you screw up.
So I'm a bureaucrat. I have bosses (elected officials) who change every few years, and who constantly proclaim that they will 'do things different' in order to appease voters. I will be blaimed for every problem, whether I'm responsible or not, for trying to implement a constantly shifting process voted on by people who have no idea how the process works. I will be blamed for all problems (did I mention that I will be blamed for all problems).
Do I:
A) Step out and try some untested technology that will improve the lives of my customers?
B) Keep quiet with my head down and wait for the next boss with his 'different' way?
Balderdash. I've said this before and I'll say it again. This whole 'digital divide' issues is liberal bullshit.
I live down the road from 'subsidized housing'. Other appropriate names would be the projects or slum. Take your pick. It doesn't matter. The long and short of it is that these are apartments for people who don't make enough to pay the market value of a place to live, so we all chip in to help them out. The place is deplorable, with broken/missing shutters and even siding falling off the building. From the outside the place looks as if it should be condemned.
I would really feel sorry for the people to had to live there except...
-next to nearly every broken shutter is a 18" digital satellite dish. -nearly every other window has an air-conditioning unit in it
I grew up without AC, and the broken TV sets we had were lucky to ever pick up 3 channels. I now program computers for a living. The truth of the matter is that anyone who wants a computer and internet access can get it for less than the cost of basic DSS service.
The people who claim that no one will maintain old projects is simply wrong. For instance, I've been looking for the author of TkWine, a TCL utility that helps you update and maintain a WINE installation. Why? This is a utility I find useful, and it is nearly fully functional,and I'd hate to have to start from the beginning to get to where he/she has it now. The point is to get a system set up with the least amount of pain possible, and this is a useful tool to do it with. If I had to go and write the software from scratch, it would be just as easy to do the wine installation by hand.
As it stands though, TkWine has fallen into a state of disrepair. There is no one to contribute the bug fixes I've made to. So I fix them on my system and no one else gets to benefit from my debugging efforts.
If we, as a community, are going to simply let projects die when the original author moves on, then we might as well use closed source solutions. M$,et.al., put end user in this situation. They basically say, "We've moved on, so you're stuck with what you have, the way it is."
Note: If anyone knows how to contact the author of TkWine, can you tell him drop a line to echristley@hotmail.com so that I can ask him for permission to put the package on this sight?
So if the reporting agency is responsible for every incorrect report, how long would it be before every credit agency is shut down? People who deserve their bad credit will quickly learn that they can bend the system by requiring the agency to 'prove' every item.
In a society where no one has prior knowledge of job applicants, et al, how do we decide if someone is honest and upright or a total scumbag?
Slashdot Mirror
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
It shouldn't cost a fortune to make a remote display. Kill the local disk (along with overkill power hungry processors) and battery life skyrockets.
This is the 'KILLER-APP' that Linux needs to rule the SOHO market. The OS is already multi-user, but that is only a minor advantage to most people in a home with only one computer. (I find it a major advantage, in that I can give my 6yr old his own account and not worry about him deleting system.dll or config.sys)
A cheap remote display will make the multi-user features of Linux a must-have. Now you only have to buy and maintain one PC in the house. That PC can be hidden in a closet. And for only a small price, everyone can access and use the computer at the same time.
Just run NIS/NFS on the server and the remote display should be trivial. But I don't seeing it happening anytime soon. The rest of the world is locked on MS mindset (1 user==1 computer). The advantage of having 5 people logged on with remote pads will take some advertising, a paradigm shift, if you will.
It has been speculated that quantum computing effects may occur in the brain. However, as I understand it, the current conventional wisdom is that such effects are minimal at best, and do not impact on the overall result of brain function.
Unfortunately, we will never know until we take a very smart person and run their brain through a particle accelerator and watch the effect as it smashes into a solid block of steel. Any volunteers?
You need the features provided by ls combined with the features of grep....
ls ???? | grep ?????
You want to combine a whole bunch of components? You can use a shell script or even perl.
We've got reusable code running out our ears.
Combine the two ideas.
Launch a probe that has a base station and lots of miniature 'needle probes', little devices shape like a hypodermic needle with a rotor on top battery in the middle and a sharp needle on the bottom.
The base station lands, and periodically launches the needle probes. The probes start their rotors and run them to stay aloft until the battery is nearly drained. It then falls from the sky and sticks into the ground from the momentum. 'Detectors-on-a-chip' go to work analysing whatever is on the end of the needle and radioing the results back to the base station which relays it to Earth. The rotors double as solar panels (yeah, it'll take forever-and-a-day to recharge, but other probes are busy at the same time). Once the battery has sufficient charge, it fires up the rotors and let the wind carry it someplace else.
Position indicators (ie, the rotor is at 267.3 degrees) on the rotors/solar-panel/directional attenae, combined with a networking infrastructure will allow the needle probes to roughly triangulate their position with the base station would give a good idea of where the analized samples came from. Combine that with arial pictures from the orbiter and you map the data fairly well. The radio telemetry could also be used by the base station to direct a laser at the needle probes to recharge their batteries (the base station being equipped with an excellent nuclear power source 8*)
The spots tested would be completely at random, but who cares. When you're new to an area and completely lost, any direction is as good as any other.
OK, time to quit dreaming and get back to work.
Your idea does sound like the perfect way to sink a company like VA Linux. Get them to spend a lot of capital designing it, then when nobody comes they get hauled into bankruptcy.
...what...3 seconds?)
One engineer could design this setup in a month.
Let's see. Take a vanilla server and stick in a wireless networking card. (That took all of
Now for the roaming display. Take a notebook and put Linux, a shell and X Windows in ROM. Shouldn't take more than 8Meg of flash memory (Remember, just the server, not the apps). Give it 8Megs of RAM and one of the low-power processors and a wireless networking card. No hard-drive, no floppy, and no CD. Maybe a small speaker. LCD display. The hard part is packaging (and is the only reason I haven't done it myself.), but it shouldn't take too long to layout these standard components and stick them in some nice molded plastic.
Because of LABOR cost!
Linux has proved itself to be the most portable OS ever created. This will make it much easier to get it on any device they are running.
Once they have Linux on the device, they can enlist any Linux developer to help them develope additional functions and interfaces.
What's the other choice. Pick an OS that must be paid for ($5 added to the cost of a consumer device is massive). TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS to use program this OS. When the next device is developed, buy a different OS and you get to TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS again. Hiring is complicated and expensive because you'll have to TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS you hire in the exotic OS your using. By another company and you have to TRAIN ALL DEVELOPERS in this exotic OS the probably have never seen before.
(Is the pattern emerging yet?)
Companies like to have standards that don't involve the areas where they're trying to differentiate themselves, make it cheaper for them to operate, and make their products cheaper. $5 for EPOCH on each production unit cell phone would be a large percentage of the production cost, and that isn't even considering what it cost to train someone in the basics of the OS, let alone paying someone with enough experience to actually be good with the OS.
There is every reason in the world for the hardware companies to want to standardize on a OS layer peice of software. It'll let device operate better together (many more total units sold - all the boats will rise in that wave), make the devices cheaper to develope (making the wave bigger), and by avoiding the proprietary OSs (kiss our butt M$) will make the devices cheaper to market (oohh, big wave).
and call it advertising. At least you can't and still expect to be in business the next day. This just doesn't seem to make any sense anymore. It seems that more and more of the economy is being turned over to 'supported by advertising' revenue models. Eventually, somebody has to sell something sometime.
I know, almost everything solid still requires an exchange of cash, but what percentage of the cyberworld will be turned over to advertising support before there is no more money flowing? Or will the Internet go the way of TV, where all the content was supported by advertisements (and sucked)?
And on a good day, my wife and I are both awake enough after the kids go to bed that we can talk for a while.
I was following you until that point. You just talk. Well, there goes your credibility.
8*)
Insurance companies are the most paranoid in the world, and they will want their own auditors to confirm that they are insuring a secure environment. At the least, they will set lower rates for sites with better security.
Insurance is a line-item in company budgets with predictable cost. Managers get bonuses for lowering predictable cost.
Working from those premises, I predict that a company with a verifiably secure Linux/BSD/$OTHER_OS_OS infrastructure will be able to negotiate a lower insurance cost than a company that says, "Microsoft insures us that this software is secure."
I further predict that direct positive impact on the bottom line will do more to push open-source solutions into business than anything else.
Keep all your benchmarks and anecdotal evidence. The insurance companies won't care. They will do the most indepth analysis you could ever imagine, because 1)the have the resources and 2)they'll have REAL money on the line. Smart money goes where the insurance companies do. (Well, at least I trust them to take care of their own money and not give a rats-ass about the OS wars.)
solely because I'm a 5'11 240lb fit confident male, instead of a 6' 135lb slender and attractive female.
Hypothesis: Your appearence(sp?)/attitude/demeanor has more to do with the discrimination than your sex.
My wife told me recently that she has changed how she acts when she goes to night clubs with her friends. According to her, in the past if a male approached her she would respond and make conversation politely while meeting his gaze. Men got the idea that she was on the hunt and would pursue her endlessly, regardless of how many times she said, "I'm MARRIED!!"
Now, she says, she slumps her shoulders when she enters the room and tries to appear ungainly in high heels. She doesn't look at men when they approach her, choosing to look away instead. She says that it has worked.
Teleport to the world of business. Anyone that doesn't sit-up straight and look me in the eye during a meeting is considered weak. Who's at fault if my wife forgets she's at a business meeting instead of a night club?
my mother has (a) been descriminated by a legal arbitrator who told my mother flat out before arbitration that she was going to lose because she's just a "stupid cunt and has no business being in charge of a building site"
As in many cases of 'discrimination' that I've seen, the arbitrators problem lay in something else and the fact that your mother was female was just an easy difference to capitalize on. He could just have easily used the fact that she was
a) 'a skinny weakling'
b) 'too white'
c) 'too dark'
d) 'too pretty' (implying low intelligence)
e) 'too ugly' (implying low intelligence)
f) etc...
My point being that the construction industry has more than its fair share of socially maladjusted grunts that exhibit animalistic tendencies to dominate through ritualistic posturing, but the rest of the world has quite a few too. People communicate more than they know through barely noticable actions. I always enjoy watching documentaries on animal rituals and comparing what I see to what you find in a local bar or board room meeting. The similarities are incredible.
who wins? I don't buy a processor. I buy a computer. I want a 'web-pad' with a small inegrated keyboard, large touch screen running X-windows, >=8hr battery life, and wireless networking. The server I have would work as a base station, and I could use several pads at the same time anywhere in the house. If this device has a Crusoe IC, I'll buy it. Shoot, I'd buy it if it had nothing more than an 20MHz i386 (how much bandwidth is needed to run an X display and take keyboard input?).
I want a computing (as opposed to computer) solution. I don't want another processor tying me to my office chair.
Anyone here with contacts to VA-Linux or some other hardware provider? If they offered a 'home computing solution' (a server and 2 or 3 webpads) for $3000(US) they could wipe up the SOHO market. I'd know I'd jump on it like stink on sh**.
Oh, and did I mention that I wouldn't care what processor was in the web pad?
Now who do you want to make your decisions for you? The Gore Fortune 500 or the Bush Fortune 500?
or
-3l337 d00dZ
-welfare moms
-soccer moms
-SUV drivers
-Yugo drivers
-walkers,bikers and other 'environmentalist nuts'
-abortionist
-right to lifers
-the NRA
-gun control supports.
My answer none of the above. But someone will be in control somewhere. Someone, at some time, has to make the 'ultimate decision' on a contested issue. Should that someone be a person that ignores what goes on around them, or someone with enough presence to take advantage of what life offers?
CB radio, that had 40 channels. But they got crowded, so someone developed side-band. The same spectrum was used, but it was split into smaller sections. So the question then becomes, "How small can we make the spectrum slices?" We only have one spectrum, and its size was set by a very strong being a long time ago. Now you can increase bandwidth by increasing the bits Hz on each channel, or increase the number of channels.
Because of innacurrasy(sp?) in manufacturing and other sloppiness, we can't asign an entity a frequency +-1 Hz. You have to spread things out to give everyone some room, or they'll be stepping all over each other. But technology improves, and as it does, equipment can hone in on the proper frequency much more precisely. This removes some of the need to spread stations out so far. It used to be that a radio station needed every bit of their spectrum to transmit music without stepping on the next station. Now stations can actually use part of their spectrum to transmit data.
With this in mind, the bandwidth is (for all intent and purposes) at this point endless.
Smarter, faster, stronger animals eat the smaller, weaker and dumb ones.
Computers have changed society, and some people don't like it.
If we create technological artifacts, some people will discover how to use it to their own advantage. And then they might possibly (oh my god) USE IT TO THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE!!
History has shown that the first society to take advantage of advances in technology will dominate those that do not or are slow in the uptake. If the US dives headlong into this, you may not like the result, but if history is the best oracle the US will dominate.
I really, REALLY hate my neighbor. He is a bully who is rude to everyone in the community. He never keeps his word, and he will lie, cheat and steal. But we can't have him arrested just for being rude.
But then I discover that he's growing pot in his backyard, and that he has a chem lab in his basement for makeing LSD. Why is it wrong for me to tell the police?
The VCs were stupid for forgetting the first law of business: Assume everyone is a lying bastard until they prove beyond a reasonable doubt otherwise.
The employees were stupid for forgetting the first law of the job market: Keep your resume up to date.
It's taken me a long time to get to the cynical point that I'm at now, but I no longer put any loyalty into my job (I'm only here for the paycheck) and I always assume salesmen are hiding something (the first question I ask them is, "So, how do you make your money?").
One of the arguments for using software disk compression back in the day was that it would increase transfer rates. It was faster to move less data across the disk bus and then process it with a fast processor than it was to move the uncompressed data directly to memory.
1) How true was this claim, and if it was true, why isn't it still true?
2) Will the same effect be apparent in harware memory compression? Furthermore, would more performance be seen if the compressor was moved onto the processor so that not as much data had to be moved across the memory bus?
First they created symbolic links, and now the give us X. Any day now, they'll get around to working on stability.
I CALLED SHOTGUN FIRST!!
The lameness filter it lame, as are all filters. I meant to post that comment in all caps, because you're require to YELL Shotgun.
Do people not recognize M$ behavior for what is really is? They're waiting, not for a change of political leadership, but for a change in technological leadership. It's been the same pattern they've used for years. You keep your enemy tied up until you bring out something different. You pooh-pooh the advantages of OS/2 VoiceType while frantically developing competing technology. You proclaim UNIX as too heavy, while working day and night to develop symbolic links.
They're trying to use the same technique here. Every motion they put forth has a request for more time. Meanwhile they're trying to move everyone to a differenct platform that is not part of the case. Once they have leveraged their desktop monopoly into a server monopoly (where the money is at now anyway) they'll thumb their colective noses at the DOJ and laugh the tails off.
Putting the case before the SC will get resolution while it still matter...before M$ can harm other areas of the industry.
Ok, just totally skip over my entire point and respond as you feel.
My point was not whether governments should do business online, or whether poor people should have cable TV.
My point was that the digital divide does not exist. Poor people who can afford cable TV can afford net access. Arguing that the government shouldn't modernize because some choose to spend their money in a manner that locks them out is ridiculous. Arguing that taxpayers should subsidize others bad financial choices is equally ridiculous.
Not having access to the net is not a choice. Buying cable instead of net access is. Don't ask for me to pay for one when you choose the other.
The government is probably the biggest organization to ever exist. You can't expect the thing to wake up one day and say, "Oh, KEWL. The internet. Let's dump 50 yrs of policy and procedures and jump onto this new technology."
Just look at the obstacles that 'crats face.
1)Taxpayers scream if $1 is paid for a coax terminator without 5 different sources being allowed to bid on it.
2)If any special interest group feels that it doesn't get as much advantage as every other it howls (Note: this doesn't mean the said group is hurt, just that it doesn't get as much advantage as all the rest)
3)No one thanks you for improving their life.
4)Everyone blames you if you screw up.
So I'm a bureaucrat. I have bosses (elected officials) who change every few years, and who constantly proclaim that they will 'do things different' in order to appease voters. I will be blaimed for every problem, whether I'm responsible or not, for trying to implement a constantly shifting process voted on by people who have no idea how the process works. I will be blamed for all problems (did I mention that I will be blamed for all problems).
Do I:
A) Step out and try some untested technology that will improve the lives of my customers?
B) Keep quiet with my head down and wait for the next boss with his 'different' way?
Balderdash. I've said this before and I'll say it again. This whole 'digital divide' issues is liberal bullshit.
I live down the road from 'subsidized housing'. Other appropriate names would be the projects or slum. Take your pick. It doesn't matter. The long and short of it is that these are apartments for people who don't make enough to pay the market value of a place to live, so we all chip in to help them out. The place is deplorable, with broken/missing shutters and even siding falling off the building. From the outside the place looks as if it should be condemned.
I would really feel sorry for the people to had to live there except...
-next to nearly every broken shutter is a 18" digital satellite dish.
-nearly every other window has an air-conditioning unit in it
I grew up without AC, and the broken TV sets we had were lucky to ever pick up 3 channels. I now program computers for a living. The truth of the matter is that anyone who wants a computer and internet access can get it for less than the cost of basic DSS service.
Digital divide? Where?
The people who claim that no one will maintain old projects is simply wrong. For instance, I've been looking for the author of TkWine, a TCL utility that helps you update and maintain a WINE installation. Why? This is a utility I find useful, and it is nearly fully functional,and I'd hate to have to start from the beginning to get to where he/she has it now. The point is to get a system set up with the least amount of pain possible, and this is a useful tool to do it with. If I had to go and write the software from scratch, it would be just as easy to do the wine installation by hand.
As it stands though, TkWine has fallen into a state of disrepair. There is no one to contribute the bug fixes I've made to. So I fix them on my system and no one else gets to benefit from my debugging efforts.
If we, as a community, are going to simply let projects die when the original author moves on, then we might as well use closed source solutions. M$,et.al., put end user in this situation. They basically say, "We've moved on, so you're stuck with what you have, the way it is."
Note: If anyone knows how to contact the author of TkWine, can you tell him drop a line to echristley@hotmail.com so that I can ask him for permission to put the package on this sight?
So if the reporting agency is responsible for every incorrect report, how long would it be before every credit agency is shut down? People who deserve their bad credit will quickly learn that they can bend the system by requiring the agency to 'prove' every item.
In a society where no one has prior knowledge of job applicants, et al, how do we decide if someone is honest and upright or a total scumbag?