An excellent point, tepples. Yes, this does appear to be a sea change toward the Apple model - or, even worse, the Commodore 64 - where the hardware is locked to an OS. Even worse: it may be locked to a particular OS version or class of versions - e.g., Pentium IV for Win2k/WinXP. No better way to push a hardware upgrade than to make it compulsory!
I consider this the "consolization" of the PC.
Interestingly, this happens at a time when game consoles are becoming more diverse. The PS2 was the first console to be natively compatible with another console (the PS1.) More importantly, most software is released on multiple platforms (Soul Calibur II was simultaneously released for all three major platforms!)
But even more insidious than the OS lock-in is the software rental model. Goddamnit, if I pay $200 for Office 2000, I expect the right to use that shit whenever I want. I will not tolerate a $10-a-month utility plan on my software applications.
America faces this creeping threat of having an increasing share of its goods offered only on a rental plan. The concept of consumer ownership is eroding. So you'll pay less now... but much more in the long run. And at the end of your lifetime, you will still own nothing.
This is corporate greed combined with corporate laziness - yet another tactic to extract more value out of the market for providing the same basic services. Excellent for the Great White Males who are shareholders/CEOs; bad for the rest of us. America looks more like a caste system every day. The only check on it is the hope of government regulation to say, these things are "goods" and these things are "services"... but sadly, our current federal government is a shameful example of "regulatory capture."
- David Stein
You know where this is really needed? Local file sharing auto-scan/cache.
I'm thorougly of logging onto a network file share, and then having to fumble around with the hierarchial store on many computers to find something - especially given the 5-to-10-second delay in changing folder views, even on a fast network, via WinXP. It's maddening.
Instead, network computers should maintain a low-bandwidth stream of file contents of local computers. When you connect to a network, your computer should auto-spider to locate resources - at very low bandwidth, maybe 5kps. We're really just pulling filenames/sizes/dates, after all. And if you select a particular computer, your spider should immediately map all of its network resources. You can then use a standard search window to find "jethro tull" or whatever.
If every computer offers a low-bandwidth stream like this, even a large network would barely feel the overhead. And it would make finding resources terrifically painless... especially for wireless connections.
C'mon, Microsoft - build useful things like this into Longhorn, not that WinFS relational-database bullshit.
Game companies have undercut their own arguments on this issue by relying heavily on region controls.
On the one hand, it's legitimate to region-protect Japanese games that will be released in America two months later. If unmodded American consoles can't play Japanese games, then Japanese exporters can't sabotage the American release. That's completely legit, and people trying to circumvent copy mechanisms to play the Japanese release have no serious defenses.
But there's no business purpose for region-protecting every game, since many of them won't be exported. When Square region-locks a game to Japan and then doesn't release it in America or Europe, they've simply excluded part of the market for no feasible business purpose. That gives those gamers a legitimate reason to break region protection. Moreover, Square can't claim damages, since 100% of the lost sales were caused by their decision to forego the conversion. (Indeed, they've probably gained some sales, since legitimate gamers would buy their Japanese titles.)
This is simply another example of corporate idiocy. Rather than focusing on select cases of clear harm, these companies obnoxiously assert copy-control rights over their whole body of art, even in cases where their copy control has done them more harm than good. It's like game companies arguing software piracy of abandonware titles that they don't sell any more, or the RIAA suing people for downloading a music track from 1976. Sheer stupidity.
That is because it must have some reasonable confidence that you've given it the deposit before it communicates with the bank that you've made a deposit.
There is no parity between uploading and downloading;
anyone who says different wants to convict you of something.
No - the delay comes before you've inserted your envelope.
You press "Deposit."
The machine prints, "Prepare your envelope and press here when ready," and waits for you.
You do so, and then press the button.
The machine prints, "Please wait," and you wait 3-4 seconds.
The machine then opens the deposit slot and prints, "Please insert your deposit."
Why this intermediate delay? What is it doing that it couldn't be doing while you're preparing your envelope?
You know, I noticed something this weekend. My KeyBank ATM has a Diebold brand label on it.
These are the same ATMs that ask if you want a receipt, and if you hit the No button, the next screen reads: "Thank you! Please take your card and receipt." So you don't want or expect to get a receipt, but you have to wait around anyway to see if it spits one out that might list your account info and balance.
These are also the ATMs that give you time to prepare your deposit envelope ("press this button when your deposit is ready.") But when you push the button, the ATM then reads, "Please wait," and makes you wait for 3-4 seconds. It's like it's spiteful.
These are also the ATMs that occasionally spit out more money than you requested. In addition to having heard many stories of this, I've seen it happen to both a coworker and a relative (via two different ATMs.)
Maybe instead of this, they should concentrate on making a suspend/hibernate that works.
Agreed completely - and I'll take it a step further: An ideal suspend/hibernate mode will be one that runs on almost every reboot.
Think about it. Virtually every time your computer thrashes its way through POST and Windows boot, it's doing the same thing it did last time. So why not just use a memory snapshot of the last time you booted? If you haven't changed the startup processes/options or hardware/drivers, it should work fine. If these have changed, then your next reboot reverts to the old method, and then it takes a new startup snapshot.
Admittedly, the only flaw with this scheme is the Windows registry - this changes frequently with regular program usage. But Windows could keep a registry changelog since the last startup snapshot, and apply the changes after loading the old snapshot. Easy.
This would lead to like a 1-second boot cycle 95% of the time.
Now, that's the kind of thing that BIOS manufacturers should be working on, not ring-minus-one DRM bullshit.
Convincing people to upgrade by allowin ghtem to check Outlook mailbox in BIOS? Are they stoned? Obvious problems:
Routine functions might (probably will) disable the functionality. Move your mailbox folder, apply a password, insert multiple user profiles, include some VB ties in the background - hell, just upgrade your mailbox format, maybe through an Office patch... how'd you like to have to flash update your BIOS after upgrading your BIOS?
If Outlook is inherently tied tightly to functional code (e.g., VBA), and if your BIOS allows you to run this functional code while checking mail, doesn't this give the functional code access to your BIOS? Half the point of Windows is to protect your low-level resources from malicious code - something that BIOS can't do unless it gets as bloated as Windows! Doesn't this pose a huge security risk?
Who really wants this?! This is all of the inconvenience of a stripped-down client, plus all of the bulk of a laptop. It's the worst of both worlds! - If users can wait 45 seconds to check their mail through a full Windows interface, why would they want to use a stripped-down, ugly, bug-ridden BIOS version? Why not just sync your Outlook folder with a PocketPC PDA and read it from your palmtop?
Sadly, this is completely consistent with the lack of innovation plaguing every facet of the software industry. Increasingly, companies seem to embody the principle that their products are good enough for us crummy users - that the R&D expenditures tied to their profits are better spent on special-interest projects, than on genuinely improving their products. Office 2003 has a ton of document-lock features, useful only to large corporations who want to keep their files away from competitors (and, more likely, prosecutors looking for antitrust evidence...) It has NO use for the typical user. Meanwhile, Microsoft can't get around to fixing Office's goddamn bullets and autonumbering, so it's still a stinking pit of frustrating inconsistency. So this story is just more evidence that the current software market is hopelessly broken.
Holy crap, people, how often do we have to do this? It's UNSECURE, people, not INSECURE. Unsecure = vulnerable to unauthorized access or usage. Insecure = your 13-year-old sister whining about her social status.
In tomorrow's episode: Everything you ever wanted to know about apostrophes but were too stupid to have learned in grade school...
Yes, of course! - and then an animated series (a new one, in 3D and stuff), and a spinoff prime-time sitcom, and an LOTR-themed reality TV show, and a MMORPG game...
That will be a great follow-up to the series of books, the first animated series, the current trilogy (with The Hobbit on its way), and about 14 different videogames on several platforms. Each accompanied with its own marketing blitz, so your kid can wear Aragorn tennis shoes and eat Gollum breakfast cereal and brush his teeth with a Frodo-branded toothbrush.
Holy crap, why is it taking so long for the world to get collectively sick of having this story retold in new formats? I vote 20 minutes ago - who's with me?
- David Stein
Re:Yes but what about bluetooth?
on
The Universal Card
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· Score: 3, Insightful
One obvious solution (which admittedly isn't mentioned in the article, and thus shouldn't be assumed to be true) is that the device could/may refuse to hold cards for more than one name.
But everyone has to trust the device to enforce that restriction. A hack for this device, or a copycat device, would exploit that trust quite easily.
- David Stein
Re:Yes but what about bluetooth?
on
The Universal Card
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· Score: 4, Insightful
all your cards are belong to us?
Yeah, that's the obvious problem. Who's to say that the information in the card database is for your credit card? Couldn't it be anyone's credit card?
Credit card companies have taken steps to link the physical card to the bearer - putting your photo on the credit card, printing on the card that merchants should request ID confirmation, etc. This completely sidesteps those mechanisms.
In short,this is the perfect tool for credit card theft. Work at a diner for a month, and scan every customer's credit card into your Chameleon. You can then take a great free vacation to another state and pay for every expense on a different credit card.
It took me about 14 seconds to realize this. And yet, some company spent $beeleeons developing it - probably relying on the old "we can paper over the problem with marketing hype" tactic/fallacy. Any chance the Chameleon is made by Diebold?
That mean, naughty music industry duped you into buying all those CDs - you had not the will power to say no.
What part of "price fixing" don't you understand?
This isn't some weird products liability case (e.g., you McDonald's analogy.) This is a case about the RIAA using its monopoly power over the CD market to set an arbitrarily high price of CDs. It's what happens in the absence of competition. (Another consequence is that the RIAA can abuse its customers and treat us all like scoundrels, without fear of us taking our business to a competitor.)
This crime was complete when the first CD was offered for sale at $20 - even before it was purchased. So your sarcasm is poorly aimed.
But why would you stream the encoded DVD **FROM** the TV to a computer (for storage)??
Look at it this way: Do you want your DVD player in the computer room, or in the living room? Do you want to have to walk all the way to the den in order to change discs?
Similarly, in theory you want to store your DVDs close to your DVD player - do you want to keep your DVDs in the computer room or living room?
Look: You want a DVD player that can (a) send a high-quality signal to a TV, and (b) send a lower-quality (but smaller-volume) stream to your computer. Consider each of these:
The first can only be achieved if the DVD player is connected to the TV.
The second can be done by a DVD player in the living room with a WiFi card, or by a DVD-ROM drive in your computer room. The advantage of the former is that any video stream running through the DVD player could be encoded by the hardware - a DVD, a VHS stream, a TV channel signal, even your videogame console. So you could record any of this by the same mechanism as backing up a DVD - if the DVD player is within your HT setup.
A progressive-scan player that takes input from your computer? Hmm... storing a lot of home-theatre-quality, progressive-scan video with 6.1 sound on a hard drive doesn't fit today's drive capacities or wireless speeds. Won't be feasible without drives hit the terabyte range and gigabit wireless.
What would be much more useful would be a DVD player that hooks up to your TV, but can DIVX encode video (from DVD or any other video source) and stream over 802.11g to another TV, or to your computer for archiving and storage. That way, your TV gets a perfect picture from your DVD player, and your computer can receive and save streams of lower-quality video for any purpose.
Better still: I first read the title as "Still no contact from billg."
Either my contact lens prescription is woefully out of date, or my brain has veered into wishful-thinking territory.
- David Stein
Re:OK maybe I'm just stupid...
on
Equine Speedometers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
However, a GPS can determine the horse's position on Earth accurately on very small intervals (say, 0.1 seconds).
Yeah, they've got great precision. Accuracy, on the other hand...
If you hild a normal (consumer-grade) GPS unit in your hand and stand still, you'll be surprised to find that you're bouncing around like an ADD-ridden five-year-old after eating a bag of Skittles. "I'm here! No, I'm over there! Now I'm 20 feet away and 10 feet underground! Wow!"
Consumer-grade GPS isn't hyper-accurate. Car nav systems play some neat tricks to improve accuracy (averaging several measurements, adjusting your location to the nearest road, etc.), but for precise measurements and speed estimates, you're much better off using other means.
Still, if it's a potential market with questionable accuracy and a large opportunity for manipulation of data, I'm sure Diebold will be happy to vend some products...
This is certainly an excellent rule of thumb and our legislators should follow popular opinion to laws or at least in theory, they won't be re-elected.
It may well work that way in the United States of Idealism, but here in America, that's terrifically naive.
Look - your government is currently conspiring against you. They've assumed the power to spy on your library habits and credit statements while barring anyone from notifying you. They've assumed the power to designate you (quite arbitrarily) an "enemy combatant," so that they can whisk you out of your life and out of the justice system without ever charging you or letting you talk to an attorney.
These powers were authorized by Congressmen at the behest of our President. They're some of the most maliciously hostile pieces of legislation ever passed.
So why haven't we voted them out of office yet? Partly because these abhorrent laws were dubbed the "Patriot Act," and most Americans like feeling supportive of patriotism. And partly because Americans have been whipped into such a constant state of fear and panic that we'll tolerate anything as long as someone tells us we'll be safer as a result. (Seldom mentioned is the fact that we're trading one kind of safety - terrorism by foreign terrorists - for another - terrorism by a government gone nuts.)
But largely - and this is why your notion is admirable but unrealistic - Americans just don't care about their representatives. They care about the must-see-TV-style presidential elections - it's like a political Superbowl, and Americans line up picking sides! But Congress? Mention the term "Senator," and the average American's eyes begin to glaze over. They barely know their representatives' names, let alone their voting histories.
If you think this is cynical, then consider this: Senator Fritz Hollings successfully retired after seven terms in office, despite being a ridiculous shill for big media's hostility toward consumers (cf. DMCA and its odious big brother, the SSSCA.)
Cox clearly states in their terms of service you are NOT permitted to run servers.
Why the hell not? If I want to run a private FTP server so that I can remotely access my files, why should Cox care? As long as I'm not violating a law or excessively using resources (e.g., exceeding a bytecap), Cox should just let me do what I want with the bandwidth that I've purchased.
Thanks for pointing this out - I wanted to broach this topic. Why is bandwidth offered so asymmetrically? Is there any legitimate business reason for the huge asymmetry between upload and download caps? Aren't these two functions identical in terms of the ISP's resource consumption?
Such questionable practices don't bode well for the future of the end-to-end model of the Internet. Bit by bit, it's looking more like the odious producer/consumer model of television.
Cox Cable has been my cable modem ISP for about three or four months. I'm sure that I've exceeded my daily upload limits on at least two occasions, but my connection wasn't terminated/rate-capped/etc. and I didn't receive a warning. I intend such gluts of uploading to be rare, and my monthly totals will probably (barely) not exeed their bytecap, but I appreciate (and require) their flexibility on the daily-use issue.
Much more frustrating is their policy of blocking ports 25 and 80. I don't consider this "unlimited" access. Imagine the cellphone analogue of this "unlimited" service: you can call anywhere any time, so long as the telephone number doesn't contain a 4...
You do when when you want your own personal platform that isn't a Pentium-6-Embedded-Edition.
The OS is different from the processor. Sure, you want an OS interface that's closely tailored to your needs. But the OS is software, held within your data store, so you do get the same user interface wherever you go.
As long as that's true, do you really care what processor is running that OS? All you want is a processor that adds, loads, stores, does binary compares... Windows XP runs 99.99999999% the same on a Pentium as on an Athlon chip. A cross-platfrom OS like I'm describing wouldn't care about the brand of chip you're running.
if you know you're going to be dealing with Mac workstations, you could just install Mac OS X into your iPod and boot any modern Mac off the iPod as a Firewire drive.
But see, that's the point. You don't have a Mac OS or a Microsoft OS or a Linux OS. You just have an operating system that provides an interface customized as you wish, ready to match the hardware you've provided.
Is it really far-fetched? Modern OS's look pretty damn similar - we're down to small differences in application launching and window styles. And they all run Java right now. This could be done right now: Java middleware designed to provide a universal OS experience could be built into the data store and auto-run on every platform.
People also wan't to personalize their displays to a comfortable resolution, change mouse sensitivity, double-click rate, maybe even keyboard layouts.
Again, you're confusing hardware with OS. Are those settings stored somehow on the processor? No, they're just software settings stored in files (win.ini, or the OS registry.) Of course you carry those around in your file store, to be run by the OS stored in the same file store.
I liked Tribes 1 and 2 a good deal - and in fact, I agree strongly that the jetpack transformed it into a very fresh and enjoyable game experience.
However, the screenshots that you provided don't look markedly different from Tribes 1. Indeed, they look considerably more primitive than Tribes 2, which I still believe is great eye candy. Maybe I just saw some subpar screenshots, but I looked at about ten of them.
There is a great game being developed with Garagegames' "Torque" engine. It has rock-solid 32-player multiplayer, high fps, emboss terrain bump-mapping, and, most importantly -- great, unique movement dynamics.
Saw the screenshots, read the info. I think I liked this game more when it was called Tribes (or Tribes2.)
- David Stein
This was done back in the day. It was called the floppy disk. Of course these days we laugh at the capacity of floppies...
Yeah, but that difference is key. Even without Windows bloatware, you couldn't carry around your OS, programs, and all of your files on one floppy. Maybe on a box of floppies, but that's painful beyond belief.
It's sort of sad that we've moved away from this concept, but nobody can agree on a friggin standard.
Java is a good, open computing standard. You probably own a dozen microprocessors that implement Java directly at the hardware level - including your microwave and your car stereo. The interface between Java hardware and Java software is defined with elegance and crystal clarity: in theory and (mostly) in practice, any device that runs the Java instruction set can run programs based on the Java software standard.
The only component truly missing is middleware: a good Java-based operating system that can provide a consistent computing interface to your software (programs and data), and that can cope with whatever Java hardware you want to use. Interface scaling will be key: a Java desktop with a large screen and lots of memory should provide a much more robust interface than a Java PDA.
This can sort of be done today. I leave my computer running all day, ssh into it from the lab and even run X applications on it...
I do the same with Terminal Services. Using that package made me realize the idea that I posted above.
And as to your comment about carrying around your data so that you can drop it into whatever device happens to be handy, it may be worth noting that there is insufficient infrastructure (to say nothing of commercial opportunity) in this sector to make this viable for most of the country (and perhaps for most of the World, though I'm not well traveled enough to speak to that).
Well, this could easily be broken into two tiers.
You carry around the very small file store containing your OS, programs, and your data store. You can plug that into any large kiosk you like.
You can also make a PDA-sized interface for this same device. Or a cellphone device, or an MP3 device. Each device just has some input devices, some output devices, and a general-purpose processor. The software in your file store knows how to present these devices to you, the user, and how to provide access to your data through them. No worldwide infrastructure needed!
So - if you just want to carry around your data, you can do that. If you also want to carry around a small portable interface for it, you can do that, too. It's the best of both worlds!
The poor guy goes to all the trouble to spell out "fanny pack" and you completely ignore it.
:shrug: I saw these as two different concepts. A fanny pack is no more part of "wearable computing" than is a shoulder bag. "Wearable" = clothing, i.e., not a separate container that you add to your clothing for the sole purpose of carrying a device.
What you're missing... is that portable doesn't just mean carrying it around. This would be the perfect PC for a in-car PC setup.
Alright, people, let's think about this for a sec. You have a portable computer with no screen, no speakers, no input devices. But it does have a processor, and a network adapter, and some audio circuitry. Why? These components are basically useless unless you have more gear, so why carry them around?
Look at it another way. When you plug your personalized device into a general-purpose device, what do you want that's personalized? You want your data, of course... but you don't need, or even want, your personal CPU. Or your personal network card, or your personal audio hardware...
Just evision it. You walk up to a keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) kiosk, plug in your Pentium-6-Embedded-Edition processing device, and do some computing. Then you unplug it and walk away, and the next guy walks up and plugs in his Pentium-6-Embedded-Edition processor. And the next guy, and the next guy. Don't you see that the chips are fungible? Why does everyone need one for themselves? Is using your friend's portable-computing processor any different from using yours to do the same computing?
There's an obvious alternative: embed the processor into the KVM kiosk, and into every other general-use device. All you carry around is your data, because that's the only component that is useful to personalize.
(There's a second alternative, too. You don't carry around anything, except maybe a general-purpose access device for reaching your home computer. Every device you use in public or carry around is just a gateway to your home server. It doesn't get much more elegant than that.)
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An excellent point, tepples. Yes, this does appear to be a sea change toward the Apple model - or, even worse, the Commodore 64 - where the hardware is locked to an OS. Even worse: it may be locked to a particular OS version or class of versions - e.g., Pentium IV for Win2k/WinXP. No better way to push a hardware upgrade than to make it compulsory!
I consider this the "consolization" of the PC.
Interestingly, this happens at a time when game consoles are becoming more diverse. The PS2 was the first console to be natively compatible with another console (the PS1.) More importantly, most software is released on multiple platforms (Soul Calibur II was simultaneously released for all three major platforms!)
But even more insidious than the OS lock-in is the software rental model. Goddamnit, if I pay $200 for Office 2000, I expect the right to use that shit whenever I want. I will not tolerate a $10-a-month utility plan on my software applications.
America faces this creeping threat of having an increasing share of its goods offered only on a rental plan. The concept of consumer ownership is eroding. So you'll pay less now... but much more in the long run. And at the end of your lifetime, you will still own nothing.
This is corporate greed combined with corporate laziness - yet another tactic to extract more value out of the market for providing the same basic services. Excellent for the Great White Males who are shareholders/CEOs; bad for the rest of us. America looks more like a caste system every day. The only check on it is the hope of government regulation to say, these things are "goods" and these things are "services"... but sadly, our current federal government is a shameful example of "regulatory capture." - David Stein
I'm thorougly of logging onto a network file share, and then having to fumble around with the hierarchial store on many computers to find something - especially given the 5-to-10-second delay in changing folder views, even on a fast network, via WinXP. It's maddening.
Instead, network computers should maintain a low-bandwidth stream of file contents of local computers. When you connect to a network, your computer should auto-spider to locate resources - at very low bandwidth, maybe 5kps. We're really just pulling filenames/sizes/dates, after all. And if you select a particular computer, your spider should immediately map all of its network resources. You can then use a standard search window to find "jethro tull" or whatever.
If every computer offers a low-bandwidth stream like this, even a large network would barely feel the overhead. And it would make finding resources terrifically painless... especially for wireless connections.
C'mon, Microsoft - build useful things like this into Longhorn, not that WinFS relational-database bullshit.
- David Stein
On the one hand, it's legitimate to region-protect Japanese games that will be released in America two months later. If unmodded American consoles can't play Japanese games, then Japanese exporters can't sabotage the American release. That's completely legit, and people trying to circumvent copy mechanisms to play the Japanese release have no serious defenses.
But there's no business purpose for region-protecting every game, since many of them won't be exported. When Square region-locks a game to Japan and then doesn't release it in America or Europe, they've simply excluded part of the market for no feasible business purpose. That gives those gamers a legitimate reason to break region protection. Moreover, Square can't claim damages, since 100% of the lost sales were caused by their decision to forego the conversion. (Indeed, they've probably gained some sales, since legitimate gamers would buy their Japanese titles.)
This is simply another example of corporate idiocy. Rather than focusing on select cases of clear harm, these companies obnoxiously assert copy-control rights over their whole body of art, even in cases where their copy control has done them more harm than good. It's like game companies arguing software piracy of abandonware titles that they don't sell any more, or the RIAA suing people for downloading a music track from 1976. Sheer stupidity.
- David Stein
No - the delay comes before you've inserted your envelope.
You press "Deposit."
The machine prints, "Prepare your envelope and press here when ready," and waits for you.
You do so, and then press the button.
The machine prints, "Please wait," and you wait 3-4 seconds.
The machine then opens the deposit slot and prints, "Please insert your deposit."
Why this intermediate delay? What is it doing that it couldn't be doing while you're preparing your envelope?
- David Stein
These are the same ATMs that ask if you want a receipt, and if you hit the No button, the next screen reads: "Thank you! Please take your card and receipt." So you don't want or expect to get a receipt, but you have to wait around anyway to see if it spits one out that might list your account info and balance.
These are also the ATMs that give you time to prepare your deposit envelope ("press this button when your deposit is ready.") But when you push the button, the ATM then reads, "Please wait," and makes you wait for 3-4 seconds. It's like it's spiteful.
These are also the ATMs that occasionally spit out more money than you requested. In addition to having heard many stories of this, I've seen it happen to both a coworker and a relative (via two different ATMs.)
I weep for the future of our voting rights...
- David Stein
Agreed completely - and I'll take it a step further: An ideal suspend/hibernate mode will be one that runs on almost every reboot.
Think about it. Virtually every time your computer thrashes its way through POST and Windows boot, it's doing the same thing it did last time. So why not just use a memory snapshot of the last time you booted? If you haven't changed the startup processes/options or hardware/drivers, it should work fine. If these have changed, then your next reboot reverts to the old method, and then it takes a new startup snapshot.
Admittedly, the only flaw with this scheme is the Windows registry - this changes frequently with regular program usage. But Windows could keep a registry changelog since the last startup snapshot, and apply the changes after loading the old snapshot. Easy.
This would lead to like a 1-second boot cycle 95% of the time.
Now, that's the kind of thing that BIOS manufacturers should be working on, not ring-minus-one DRM bullshit.
Convincing people to upgrade by allowin ghtem to check Outlook mailbox in BIOS? Are they stoned? Obvious problems:
- Routine functions might (probably will) disable the functionality. Move your mailbox folder, apply a password, insert multiple user profiles, include some VB ties in the background - hell, just upgrade your mailbox format, maybe through an Office patch... how'd you like to have to flash update your BIOS after upgrading your BIOS?
- If Outlook is inherently tied tightly to functional code (e.g., VBA), and if your BIOS allows you to run this functional code while checking mail, doesn't this give the functional code access to your BIOS? Half the point of Windows is to protect your low-level resources from malicious code - something that BIOS can't do unless it gets as bloated as Windows! Doesn't this pose a huge security risk?
- Who really wants this?! This is all of the inconvenience of a stripped-down client, plus all of the bulk of a laptop. It's the worst of both worlds! - If users can wait 45 seconds to check their mail through a full Windows interface, why would they want to use a stripped-down, ugly, bug-ridden BIOS version? Why not just sync your Outlook folder with a PocketPC PDA and read it from your palmtop?
Sadly, this is completely consistent with the lack of innovation plaguing every facet of the software industry. Increasingly, companies seem to embody the principle that their products are good enough for us crummy users - that the R&D expenditures tied to their profits are better spent on special-interest projects, than on genuinely improving their products. Office 2003 has a ton of document-lock features, useful only to large corporations who want to keep their files away from competitors (and, more likely, prosecutors looking for antitrust evidence...) It has NO use for the typical user. Meanwhile, Microsoft can't get around to fixing Office's goddamn bullets and autonumbering, so it's still a stinking pit of frustrating inconsistency. So this story is just more evidence that the current software market is hopelessly broken.- David Stein
In tomorrow's episode: Everything you ever wanted to know about apostrophes but were too stupid to have learned in grade school...
- David Stein
Yes, of course! - and then an animated series (a new one, in 3D and stuff), and a spinoff prime-time sitcom, and an LOTR-themed reality TV show, and a MMORPG game...
That will be a great follow-up to the series of books, the first animated series, the current trilogy (with The Hobbit on its way), and about 14 different videogames on several platforms. Each accompanied with its own marketing blitz, so your kid can wear Aragorn tennis shoes and eat Gollum breakfast cereal and brush his teeth with a Frodo-branded toothbrush.
Holy crap, why is it taking so long for the world to get collectively sick of having this story retold in new formats? I vote 20 minutes ago - who's with me?
- David Stein
But everyone has to trust the device to enforce that restriction. A hack for this device, or a copycat device, would exploit that trust quite easily.
- David Stein
Yeah, that's the obvious problem. Who's to say that the information in the card database is for your credit card? Couldn't it be anyone's credit card?
Credit card companies have taken steps to link the physical card to the bearer - putting your photo on the credit card, printing on the card that merchants should request ID confirmation, etc. This completely sidesteps those mechanisms.
In short,this is the perfect tool for credit card theft. Work at a diner for a month, and scan every customer's credit card into your Chameleon. You can then take a great free vacation to another state and pay for every expense on a different credit card.
It took me about 14 seconds to realize this. And yet, some company spent $beeleeons developing it - probably relying on the old "we can paper over the problem with marketing hype" tactic/fallacy. Any chance the Chameleon is made by Diebold?
- David Stein
What part of "price fixing" don't you understand?
This isn't some weird products liability case (e.g., you McDonald's analogy.) This is a case about the RIAA using its monopoly power over the CD market to set an arbitrarily high price of CDs. It's what happens in the absence of competition. (Another consequence is that the RIAA can abuse its customers and treat us all like scoundrels, without fear of us taking our business to a competitor.)
This crime was complete when the first CD was offered for sale at $20 - even before it was purchased. So your sarcasm is poorly aimed.
David Stein
Look at it this way: Do you want your DVD player in the computer room, or in the living room? Do you want to have to walk all the way to the den in order to change discs?
Similarly, in theory you want to store your DVDs close to your DVD player - do you want to keep your DVDs in the computer room or living room?
Look: You want a DVD player that can (a) send a high-quality signal to a TV, and (b) send a lower-quality (but smaller-volume) stream to your computer. Consider each of these:
The first can only be achieved if the DVD player is connected to the TV.
The second can be done by a DVD player in the living room with a WiFi card, or by a DVD-ROM drive in your computer room. The advantage of the former is that any video stream running through the DVD player could be encoded by the hardware - a DVD, a VHS stream, a TV channel signal, even your videogame console. So you could record any of this by the same mechanism as backing up a DVD - if the DVD player is within your HT setup.
- David Stein
What would be much more useful would be a DVD player that hooks up to your TV, but can DIVX encode video (from DVD or any other video source) and stream over 802.11g to another TV, or to your computer for archiving and storage. That way, your TV gets a perfect picture from your DVD player, and your computer can receive and save streams of lower-quality video for any purpose.
- David Stein
Either my contact lens prescription is woefully out of date, or my brain has veered into wishful-thinking territory.
- David Stein
Yeah, they've got great precision. Accuracy, on the other hand...
If you hild a normal (consumer-grade) GPS unit in your hand and stand still, you'll be surprised to find that you're bouncing around like an ADD-ridden five-year-old after eating a bag of Skittles. "I'm here! No, I'm over there! Now I'm 20 feet away and 10 feet underground! Wow!"
Consumer-grade GPS isn't hyper-accurate. Car nav systems play some neat tricks to improve accuracy (averaging several measurements, adjusting your location to the nearest road, etc.), but for precise measurements and speed estimates, you're much better off using other means.
Still, if it's a potential market with questionable accuracy and a large opportunity for manipulation of data, I'm sure Diebold will be happy to vend some products...
- David Stein
It may well work that way in the United States of Idealism, but here in America, that's terrifically naive.
Look - your government is currently conspiring against you. They've assumed the power to spy on your library habits and credit statements while barring anyone from notifying you. They've assumed the power to designate you (quite arbitrarily) an "enemy combatant," so that they can whisk you out of your life and out of the justice system without ever charging you or letting you talk to an attorney.
These powers were authorized by Congressmen at the behest of our President. They're some of the most maliciously hostile pieces of legislation ever passed.
So why haven't we voted them out of office yet? Partly because these abhorrent laws were dubbed the "Patriot Act," and most Americans like feeling supportive of patriotism. And partly because Americans have been whipped into such a constant state of fear and panic that we'll tolerate anything as long as someone tells us we'll be safer as a result. (Seldom mentioned is the fact that we're trading one kind of safety - terrorism by foreign terrorists - for another - terrorism by a government gone nuts.)
But largely - and this is why your notion is admirable but unrealistic - Americans just don't care about their representatives. They care about the must-see-TV-style presidential elections - it's like a political Superbowl, and Americans line up picking sides! But Congress? Mention the term "Senator," and the average American's eyes begin to glaze over. They barely know their representatives' names, let alone their voting histories.
If you think this is cynical, then consider this: Senator Fritz Hollings successfully retired after seven terms in office, despite being a ridiculous shill for big media's hostility toward consumers (cf. DMCA and its odious big brother, the SSSCA.)
- David Stein
Why the hell not? If I want to run a private FTP server so that I can remotely access my files, why should Cox care? As long as I'm not violating a law or excessively using resources (e.g., exceeding a bytecap), Cox should just let me do what I want with the bandwidth that I've purchased.
Thanks for pointing this out - I wanted to broach this topic. Why is bandwidth offered so asymmetrically? Is there any legitimate business reason for the huge asymmetry between upload and download caps? Aren't these two functions identical in terms of the ISP's resource consumption?
Such questionable practices don't bode well for the future of the end-to-end model of the Internet. Bit by bit, it's looking more like the odious producer/consumer model of television.
- David Stein
Much more frustrating is their policy of blocking ports 25 and 80. I don't consider this "unlimited" access. Imagine the cellphone analogue of this "unlimited" service: you can call anywhere any time, so long as the telephone number doesn't contain a 4...
- David Stein
The OS is different from the processor. Sure, you want an OS interface that's closely tailored to your needs. But the OS is software, held within your data store, so you do get the same user interface wherever you go.
As long as that's true, do you really care what processor is running that OS? All you want is a processor that adds, loads, stores, does binary compares... Windows XP runs 99.99999999% the same on a Pentium as on an Athlon chip. A cross-platfrom OS like I'm describing wouldn't care about the brand of chip you're running.
if you know you're going to be dealing with Mac workstations, you could just install Mac OS X into your iPod and boot any modern Mac off the iPod as a Firewire drive.
But see, that's the point. You don't have a Mac OS or a Microsoft OS or a Linux OS. You just have an operating system that provides an interface customized as you wish, ready to match the hardware you've provided.
Is it really far-fetched? Modern OS's look pretty damn similar - we're down to small differences in application launching and window styles. And they all run Java right now. This could be done right now: Java middleware designed to provide a universal OS experience could be built into the data store and auto-run on every platform.
People also wan't to personalize their displays to a comfortable resolution, change mouse sensitivity, double-click rate, maybe even keyboard layouts.
Again, you're confusing hardware with OS. Are those settings stored somehow on the processor? No, they're just software settings stored in files (win.ini, or the OS registry.) Of course you carry those around in your file store, to be run by the OS stored in the same file store.
- David Stein
However, the screenshots that you provided don't look markedly different from Tribes 1. Indeed, they look considerably more primitive than Tribes 2, which I still believe is great eye candy. Maybe I just saw some subpar screenshots, but I looked at about ten of them.
- David Stein
Saw the screenshots, read the info. I think I liked this game more when it was called Tribes (or Tribes2.) - David Stein
Yeah, but that difference is key. Even without Windows bloatware, you couldn't carry around your OS, programs, and all of your files on one floppy. Maybe on a box of floppies, but that's painful beyond belief.
It's sort of sad that we've moved away from this concept, but nobody can agree on a friggin standard.
Java is a good, open computing standard. You probably own a dozen microprocessors that implement Java directly at the hardware level - including your microwave and your car stereo. The interface between Java hardware and Java software is defined with elegance and crystal clarity: in theory and (mostly) in practice, any device that runs the Java instruction set can run programs based on the Java software standard.
The only component truly missing is middleware: a good Java-based operating system that can provide a consistent computing interface to your software (programs and data), and that can cope with whatever Java hardware you want to use. Interface scaling will be key: a Java desktop with a large screen and lots of memory should provide a much more robust interface than a Java PDA.
This can sort of be done today. I leave my computer running all day, ssh into it from the lab and even run X applications on it...
I do the same with Terminal Services. Using that package made me realize the idea that I posted above.
- David Stein
Well, this could easily be broken into two tiers.
You carry around the very small file store containing your OS, programs, and your data store. You can plug that into any large kiosk you like.
You can also make a PDA-sized interface for this same device. Or a cellphone device, or an MP3 device. Each device just has some input devices, some output devices, and a general-purpose processor. The software in your file store knows how to present these devices to you, the user, and how to provide access to your data through them. No worldwide infrastructure needed!
So - if you just want to carry around your data, you can do that. If you also want to carry around a small portable interface for it, you can do that, too. It's the best of both worlds!
- David Stein
- David Stein
Alright, people, let's think about this for a sec. You have a portable computer with no screen, no speakers, no input devices. But it does have a processor, and a network adapter, and some audio circuitry. Why? These components are basically useless unless you have more gear, so why carry them around?
Look at it another way. When you plug your personalized device into a general-purpose device, what do you want that's personalized? You want your data, of course... but you don't need, or even want, your personal CPU. Or your personal network card, or your personal audio hardware...
Just evision it. You walk up to a keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) kiosk, plug in your Pentium-6-Embedded-Edition processing device, and do some computing. Then you unplug it and walk away, and the next guy walks up and plugs in his Pentium-6-Embedded-Edition processor. And the next guy, and the next guy. Don't you see that the chips are fungible? Why does everyone need one for themselves? Is using your friend's portable-computing processor any different from using yours to do the same computing?
There's an obvious alternative: embed the processor into the KVM kiosk, and into every other general-use device. All you carry around is your data, because that's the only component that is useful to personalize.
(There's a second alternative, too. You don't carry around anything, except maybe a general-purpose access device for reaching your home computer. Every device you use in public or carry around is just a gateway to your home server. It doesn't get much more elegant than that.)
- David Stein