for me as an european what is remarkable here is how many people feel the need to come up with creationism in this forum. what kind of religious fundamentalism is this?
I'm not sure what being a European might have to do with it - there are lots of Creationists there, too, but they seem less willing to speak freely, possibly for fear of reprisals.
There happen to be quite a lot of us that are trained as scientists and/or engineers, have looked at the data, and come to the conclusion that Creation 1) requires orders of magnitude less faith in the unseen than does evolution, and 2) fits the available data considerably better, too.
I don't want or intend to turn this into a flame fest, but if you're at all interested in why, I'd suggest looking in one of several places:
Uber-hacker Do-While Jones' excellent site on why science is against evolution. Be sure not to miss the archives of the newsletter, Disclosure - reading through these will keep you up nights if evolution is important to your world view... (Check out the article on "Lucy" for an enlightening look at the art of passing off a total pipe dream as "science".)
There's a pretty good book out called "In Six Days" containing essays from 50 respected PhDs who explain why they find it considerably easier and more scientifically consistent to belive in Creation than evolution.
Michael Behe's excellent book, Darwin's Black Box. This outlines the irreducible complexity argument for Creation that is far better butressed by actual science than is evolution.
or is it just another incarnation of the kind of thought that makes people believe in UFOs or witchcraft?
Creationists aren't stupid, or ignorant. There are a few that are knee-jerk fundamentalists, but I find many more are thoughtful scholars. I find that many Creationists are better versed on the science and the data relating to origins than most all evolutionists. In short, the only thing science can say with certainty about origins is that we do not know. Do not be so quick to dismiss alternatives that may well be completely legitimate, even if their implications may be quite uncomfortable for you... Please read up as suggested above before flaming.
Then perhaps you can explain a few things for us then, like Carpet Rock in Arizona, the remnant of an immense steel-reinforced dam?
There's a new one on me - one might expect Google to have *some* reference to such a thing, but no such luck... Any pointers?
Not that I expect finding such a thing would make any more difference than the thousands of well-documented "impossible" finds have already made to the Church of the Evolution...
I'm going to go somewhat against the flow of the technology-obsessed geeks posting here and point out that HDTV's success or failure will depend on the great masses of average TV viewers out there, not a few videophiles.
HDTV almost certainly will not make its scheduled transition for several very good reasons:
- HDTV sets are *really* expensive. They will remain so until volume grows, so this is a chicken-and-egg problem with no reasonable solution. Most people will NOT buy a new TV to deal with HDTV. TV viewership is falling as it is with more and more channels of tripe. Really high-fidelity tripe is not likely to sell any better.
- Existing OTA (over the air) TV viewers will have to use set-top HDTV tuners after the transition. I predict that when the average TV viewer realizes the government is planning to force everyone (especially those that *only have* OTA TV access) to buy a $300-400 tuner box, there will be a huge outcry and the FCC will back down quickly. Expect the race/class card trump to be played here.
- Remember that 70% of US TV viewers get their signal over cable. There is no standard way to deliver HDTV over cable (nor will there be for some time), and in any case, the MSOs (cable companies) are balking at burning more of thier bandwidth for local stations. The FCC has determined that MSOs are *not* required to carry both analog and digital broadcasts for local stations, and most don't want to. If the local stations then, have to choose between sending out their analog or HDTV signals over cable, they *won't* pick HDTV, since doing so would cut them off from the majority of their audience, allowing their competitors to clean their clocks.
- There is an implicit assumption in most of the HDTV advocate posts that HDTV will be actually be worth something. In reality, the FCC has consciously not spcified that HDTV bandwidth be used to deliver HDTV picture. The stations can carve up the HDTV bandwidth in any way they want to - it's likely that many will choose to use that bandwidth to deliver several lower-quality channels and datacasting services, for example, rather than a single HD channel. This is fairly predictable, since there's more money in several smaller chunks of bandwidth than one big one.
- The technological complexity that HDTV throws into the already overly complex interconnections of DVD players, VCRS, cable tuner boxes, satellite receivers, etc. is not to be overlooked. Most people (even many geeks, from what I've seen) do *not* have the skills required to figure out how everything *should* be connected, and even if correctly connected, the devices themselves don't lend themselves to quick or easy reconfiguration during viewing. The simple fact that hooking up more than two sources to the average TV is a major PITA will keep many away.
- Another ugly secret of HDTV today is that (in almost all cities today), if you want it, you'll have to re-enter the wild and wooly world of TV antennas in order to receive your local HDTV broadcast. This is the ugly secret of the HDTV industry - there are almost no cable systems that can deliver HDTV signals. Don't confuse "Digital Cable", which is just the regular NTSC stuff with MPEG encoding and a digital conditional access system (CAS) with delivery of HDTV over cable. They are very different. In almost all areas of the country today, you have only two options for receiving an HDTV signal: Broadcast antenna, or the few channels that are available via satellite, if you have a new enough box/dish and deep pockets for programming.
- Further, the lack of off-line HDTV video sources (videotapes, discs, etc.) is another crippling blow. 16:9 is nice, but not enough to drive most people to HDTV. The MPAA and its ilk are not likely to allow HD media anytime soon, so don't expect to use that capability you paid for except as noted above.
All in all, HDTV is *far* too expensive, troublesome, and immature to reach the market penetration it *must* achieve to be successful. Personally, I laugh at people paying thousands of dollars for technology that will be obsolete by the time they get a chance to use it.
My call: HDTV will remain an expensive toy for several years, and the FCC will back off from its timetable once the general populace realizes it's being railroaded, leaving the industry in a shambles. It is possible, although not entirely likely, that HDTV will wither away entirely at that time, replaced by HD-over-IP standards that avoid the problems of HDTV entirely. I wouldn't buy any HDTV gear for another several years in any case, even if there were anything out there worth watching.
(As an aside, one of the more interesting (and terrifying, for the industry) possible outcomes of the FCC sticking to its guns and forcing analog off the air would be a wholesale exodus of people simply deciding that they can easily live without TV at all given the cost in both dollars and aggravation to go through with the "upgrade". Forced upgrades are likely to work even less well here than in the Microsoft world. If these people started reading old books again instead, HDTV could turn out to be a very good thing for society...;-) )
It's been a while (about a year) since I last investigated this, so I may be off-base, but I think this is still reasonably current:
Most of the cellphone companies, especially the PCS ones, claim to be able to deliver digital data connections. Almost none of them can, and if they can, the performance is painfully slow. These folks just don't understand the value of opening up their bit stream. (Dream On: Really, I just want a good IP pipe, and I'll decide myself whether to use it for web, mail, telephony, or whatever. This assumes that the phone companies are interested in building an open IP architecture, sadly, they're not...)
So far as I know, there are no wireless ISP services that offer both road coverage and non-painful speeds.
Probably the best option today from a coverage standpoint and a real data solution is one of the CDPD-based services like OmniSky or GoAmerica. You can also start at the sites of the equipment providers like Sierra Wireless or Novatel Wireless. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired, but is likely the best reasonably-priced option available now.
Alternatively, you could try to live in the 802.11b world, hoping to find access points. Some cities have better documentation of this than others - Austin has a very incomplete list at Austinwireless.Net, mostly because RoadRunner is heavy-handedly disconnecting people they find out are running 802.11b APs. This is not a great option, but actually getting better as 802.11b takes off - lot's of offices and coffee houses have this stuff now.
Of course there are the exotic options like Iridium, but it's expensive and I expect most of their bandwidth is being used by the DoD right now...
Metricom's Ricochet was a great system if you could get it, but I was never able to consider it: they never got enough of Austin covered to really make it an option. The only people I know that were really able to use Ricochet were in the Silicon Valley (San Jose) area, where the coverage is pretty good. It would be nice to see this approach (if not this company and its implementation) make a comeback - microcells are a great idea technically, but it appears to me that the cost of getting the rights for microcell sites is what killed them, compounded by the sheer volume of sites they need. I expect Metricom's cost of site acquisition was astronomical, except in places like San Jose where the city gave them carte blanche to hang boxes on any light pole.
Granted, webserver uptime isn't the gold standard of reliablity, but BSD is a real workhorse - it's huge in ISPs and quite prevalent in telecom as well - both markets where stability is key.
Still, if you look at the architecture and internals much at all, you'll quickly realize that BSD A) is better suited for "real work" than Linux (for instance the Linux I/O layers, especially SCSI and the current single global I/O spinlock, are a disaster area), and, B) has an architecture that results in considerably better stability than Linux over the long haul. (The threads model is a perfect example: KSE is a brilliant solution: you get the parallelism of SMP with the lightning fast user-land context switch and NO kernel overhead. KSE and SMPng will put BSD well on the way to catching Solaris. A good quick overview of these BSD features are in this OSNews interview with FreeBSD's Matt Dillon.)
I'm not at all anti-Linux (in fact, my company bases its primary product on Linux, and we recently partnered to bring IP SAN support to mainframe Linux), but it's simply not fair or accurate to say that the BSDs are not used or suited for real work: In reality, the BSDs are far better suited for "real work" than Linux in some cases, although still far behind Solaris and AIX in many important ways (which may or may not be critical in any given application environment.)
The key,of course, is knowing what attributes are critical in what circumstances and choosing any technology, even the OS, appropriately...
However, reliability is the key. The simple reality of Linux' stability is a selling point beyond compare.
Then I have to conclude you haven't spent much time with real Unix OSes. I like Linux, and it's now quite reliable enough to use for some types of mission-critical tasks, but to claim that it's even in the same league as Solaris, AIX, or the BSDs is ridiculous. Linux is good, but it's not nearly that good, and BSD is the only really stable open source OS.
Check out how many of the top uptime sites at Netcraft are running BSD vs. how many are running Linux if you want an eye-opener in this department. (For those too lazy to click through, you won't find anything *but* BSD in the top ten - BSD variants hold 40 out of the top 50 uptimes. (With IRIX rounding out the other ten just to prove that they can remain stable running integer apps, anyway...))
Have a look at Oracle Small Business (formerly NetLedger) - this is an entirely web-hosted full Oracle-based accounting system that will provide the real-world features you need.
It will be a long, long time (if ever) before there's anything in the open source world that's even remotely good enough to run a business on...
Despite your anti-patents rant (BTW: their patents are broad, but hardly "unfair"), it's worth noting that it's SonicBlue, through their FrontPath subsidiary, that introduced one of the first Linux-based Transmeta-powered tablet computers on the market. Not only that, the box is entirely optimized for Linux. It now supports Windows, but that was a late addition - all development up through the first production test units was done with Linux. (I know because I was asked to help them get Windows properly running and certified on the box.)
Judaism picks up the concept of a strong devil about the time of the Persian exile.
That would come as quite a surprise to the ancient Jews that set down the books of Genesis and Job! Job is almost certainly the oldest book in the Bible. (Oldest in the sense that the manuscripts that exist of Job are older than those that exist for other works.) Both books make it pretty clear that the Adversary exists (as the Serpent that tempted Eve in Genesis, explicitly as Satan in Job) and exerts considerable strength, although equally clearly only so much as God allows him...
I'm quite sure Tolkein wasn't Christian, but C.S. Lewis had read LotR and it drew him to christianity.
Go back and re-read virtually anything that chronicles the early interactions between Lewis and Tolkien. Tha latter was certainly a Christian, and stronly influenced Lewis' conversion.
As an aside, World is *by far* the most balanced and truthful news magazine out there. They admit up front the fact that they adhere to a Christian worldview, and explicitly and openly talk about the ways that affects their reporting. World is now the fourth-largest news magazine in the U.S. - none of the larger three (Time, Newsweek, US News) even approach this degree of forthcoming about their worldview...
What even more people are unaware of is that the author of Beowulf was almost certainly an early northern Christian. There are many indications in the text that evidence this, although it is not explicit in any particular place, to my knowledge. Vol. 9, Issue 4 of Credenda/Agenda from a few years ago discusses this aspect of Beowulf, and how it impacted the Anglo-Saxon mind. Worth a read if you're interested in Beowulf and early Christian literature.
As an aside, Christians (and perhaps others as well) stand to learn a lot about correct reasoning about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the current issue of Credenda/Agenda. A choice quote:
We hold a national worship service that can only be described as a theological crapfest, and more faux-evangelicals will be distraught over the use of crapfest than are upset by the worship of other gods.
Reportedly, the earlier ones worked well, and it's primarily the later ones that are a complete disaster.
Sad, because traditionally, IBM drives have been head and shoulders above their competition in reliability. (This is *especially* true of laptop drives.) I switched to Maxtors a few months ago, partly because of the IBM 75GB problems, partly because I wanted 100 GB drives anyway, and so far, the've performed beautifully in non-trivial quantities in arrays - not one failure so far. I'm looking at the new 7500 RPM WD drives, but am reluctant to consider giving up the reliability of the Maxtors...
Dublin, when I hear you rambling I would guess that your dad is a patent lawyer. I will try some correction:
No, my dad's not a patent lawyer, but he does hold a number of patents, all of which are truly new and innovative.
Some other examples where patents had negative effects:
- WAP: it blocked further innovations that would have been more appreciated by the market.
- digital and internet TV: only a very select group of companies is active of this market. Most companies prefer to leave this legal minefield to others.
WAP died because it was an incredibly stupid idea, and darn near useless, not because the phone.com folks were too heavyhanded with the patents, even though they were.
As for digital/Internet TV, I'll give you only one point there: The Gemstar patent on displaying on-screen program guide information in a grid has caused some minor problems in the industry, but really only for those that refuse to license it. (For those who are wondering, this is why the DirectTV guide works pretty well, and the Scientific Atlanta digital set-top guide is so clunky - the latter are designed around the Gemstar patent.) I personally think this one is not non-obvious, but Gemstar has proven otherwise - to the point that TV Guide decided not long ago to buy Gemstar for that patent...
I'll just point out (for those too lazy to click through on the link above) That one of these is labelled as an iMac when you click through to the "bigger picture".
Here's the relevant shot:http://www.acorncreative.tv/imac2.html, which shows "The New iMac" as having a Cinema Display up to 15.2", 500, 600, or 700 MHz G3, Airport, CD/CDR/CDR-DVD combo drive, and integral Harman/Kardon speakers.
I'll also chime in as someone qualified to comment on the economics of the box (I was formerly a Program Manager for Dell's laptop lines, Latitude and Inspiron): I think this is do-able at an iMac price point. LCD screens are down to where this can easily be done. (Heck, I just paid $400 (after $100 rebate) for a very nice 17" standalone LCD display. Surely apple can do better in quantity...) Laptop components haven't really been all that much more expensive than desktop components for several years - the reason laptop prices have remained high is that the OEMs are soaking the market for what it's willing to pay, rahther than what it costs them to produce. The margins on laptops are several times higher than the margins on desktops.
This is all a volume economics game: and Apple re-learned something very important with the iMac: if you build it, they will come. And if they do, you'll have the volume to make the economics work for all those "expensive" features that differentiate your product from the rest. (Things like FireWire, USB, built-in networking (wired or wireless, depending), serious audio, great RISC processors, and now, integral Cinema flatscreens...)
Also, patents to have limited duration--eventually the work reverts to the public domain. The secret of making half-silvered mirrors was jealously guarded in Europe for years, retarding the development of optics.
This is an excellent point I didn't make in the interest of brevity.
I think the real only problem with patents, especially software and computer patents, is that the pace of development has so far outstripped the term of the patents.
Personally, I'd like to see some sort of self-regulating system that would adjust the length of all patents issued in any particular field between 5 and 20 years, inversely proportional to the number of patents granted in that field over the past twelve months. Five years seems long enough for even the fast moving stuff (remember it needs to be long enough to recover R&D costs and make some money), 20 should be enough for the slow-moving stuff. Such a system also fights abuse, since big companies that file lots of patents just because they can (IBM, anyone?) would find that such a practice is self-defeating, and devalues their important patents. Also, it tends to favor original inventors that bring true innovation, while devaluing the fruits of the system for those that seek to profit by simply filing lots of patents late to "get a piece of the action". If those patents are shorter, the incentive to abuse the system is considerably less. It's key that such a self-regulator be pegged to patents *granted* rather than patents *filed* - that way, the term changes only kick in if there's innovation sufficient to be patentable in the first place. (If terms were tied to filings, malicious groups could "poison the waterhole" for everyone...)
Nothing says you have to apply for a patent. But if you invent something that is novel, useful, and non-obvious to one reasonably schooled in the art, and you want to have a chance at taking it to market unmolested, then you'll file a patent on it.
The cost argument doesn't wash: Patents can be had for a few hundred dollars in filing fees. People usually use patent attorneys becuse its easier and quicker, but it's NOT required. In fact, in the US, the USPTO is REQUIRED to assist you in your filing as an individual inventor without counsel. PLEASE read up before you flame: I'd suggest Nolo's excellent book, Patent it Yourself Sadly, most people here on/. just blast away against patents because Stallman doesn't like them, without ever bothering to learn how they work. Stallman's wrong about a lot of things, patents are #2 on the list. (Emacs instead of vi is #1... Now *that's* flamebait!)
Pay a little attention: there will always be some isolated innovation by lone inventors.
The point is that if you want to harness that innovation to create a technological society (which requires a technological *economy*, sorry communists!), then patents aren't just nice, they're absolutely vital.
I don't deny that patent abuse occurs - but the system works *very* well in rooting out bad patents in places where it actually matters. (Nobody cares if Joe Doaks is silly enough to pay for 15 diesel-powered toenail clipper patents, so those bad patents will stand unchallenged, the ones that matter are contested, as they should be. The system works, and works well.)
"Memes" don't really exist, now do they? And I've yet to see Dawkins (or Chomsky for that matter) be right about much of anything of any importance. Dawkins is a classic case of, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything *better* be a nail!"
My larger point was simply that using words like "boxen" makes all technical folks look like the jerks that many are...
I hate to reply to my own post, but this is NOT flamebait! I was attempting to point out that patents are a key underpinning of the economic system that makes a technological world possible.
I realize that many here at/. love to hate patents without having thought of this vital aspect of the problem, but in the context of the article posted, that's pretty dang relevant!
For more info on how big companies can abuse patents, and how they keep them from steam-rolling the little guys, see my letter to the editor in LWN a while back: http://lwn.net/2000/0420/backpage.phtml#backpage
It's very appropriate that the following was included (seemingly as an afterthought, almost) in Linda Bowles column today:
One of the greatest social inventions in all of recorded history is the patent. This simple concept that the fruit of a man's labor and creativity belongs to him, and may not be stolen by others, is the cornerstone of the capitalistic idea. Its impact is to encourage productivity, investment and entrepreneurship, thereby creating jobs and enriching society as a whole. It is a brilliant example of the alignment of individual self interest with societal self interest.
She's got it nailed. I laugh at the/. community whining about losing their jobs at the same time they make every effort to undermine the technology economy. Remember, folks, patents are the ONLY thing keeping Microsoft from stomping on everyone it feels like in the computer industry. If you think they're bad now, give some thought to how bad they'd be in a world where no one but the biggest baddest bully would ever make money of any real innovation.
The destruction of patents (even software patents, which at best could stand to have shorter terms) would eliminate virtually all technology investment - the US is so amazingly productive and innovative in large part because of our patent system. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to realize that innovation is caused by a good patent system. If the US abandons or cripples its world-leading patent system, we'll see innovations stagnate, the big companies will totally dominate, and it could take the world economy decades or more to recover.
Why people on/. think trying to change the plural of box to boxen is "3L337", I don't know. I do know that using the word "boxen" simply makes the writer look like an imbecile. One "box". Two or more "boxes". There, that's not too hard for someone that can figure out how to get a dozen buggy Linux apps sort of working together, right?
(And yes, I've been around long enough to remember when this started - when those trying to be cool used "VAXen" as the plural of VAX, but it made the speaker (no one would have used it in print!) look idiotic then, and I don't know any of those people that use "boxen" as the plural of "box" today.
Seriously, folks, this is not an off-topic rant, since it's a response to Michael's headline posting. Insisting on using such cheesy language as "boxen" and warez-speak only reinforces the streotypical image of the technically competent as antisocial and out-of-touch.
I suppose this is just another sign that/. has been taken over by pimply script kiddies and can no longer claim to be a place where any serious and thoughtful discussion takes place. (Of course, I suppose that was a foregone conclusion once the/. editors made a regular feature of the perpetually sophomoric Jon Katz and his whining victimization rants...)
The Kyocera Smart Phone (6035) does this now, and it works quite well. Right down to asking you if you'd like to call so-and-so if it's not entirely sure what you said.) Although I don't know for sure, the new Samsung Palm phone probably has voice dialing as well, as most of thier regular phones have had it for some time...
Two good reasons for integrating these two (at least for me):
1. I wound up carrying both my Palm Pro and Qualcomm ThinPhone everywhere anyway, and I got tired of carrying two boxes around.
2. After living with the Kyocera 6035, I would never, ever want to go back to a phone that didn't have all my contact information in it. *All* my numbers are at hand and dialable with a tap or two. I never wish I'd programmed another number in the phone or have to change it in two places. Sometimes integration doesn't provide real value - but here it does. Phone + Palm = BIG WIN
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for me as an european what is remarkable here is how many people feel the need to come up with creationism in this forum. what kind of religious fundamentalism is this?
I'm not sure what being a European might have to do with it - there are lots of Creationists there, too, but they seem less willing to speak freely, possibly for fear of reprisals.
There happen to be quite a lot of us that are trained as scientists and/or engineers, have looked at the data, and come to the conclusion that Creation 1) requires orders of magnitude less faith in the unseen than does evolution, and 2) fits the available data considerably better, too.
I don't want or intend to turn this into a flame fest, but if you're at all interested in why, I'd suggest looking in one of several places:
Uber-hacker Do-While Jones' excellent site on why science is against evolution. Be sure not to miss the archives of the newsletter, Disclosure - reading through these will keep you up nights if evolution is important to your world view... (Check out the article on "Lucy" for an enlightening look at the art of passing off a total pipe dream as "science".)
There's a pretty good book out called "In Six Days" containing essays from 50 respected PhDs who explain why they find it considerably easier and more scientifically consistent to belive in Creation than evolution.
Michael Behe's excellent book, Darwin's Black Box. This outlines the irreducible complexity argument for Creation that is far better butressed by actual science than is evolution.
or is it just another incarnation of the kind of thought that makes people believe in UFOs or witchcraft?
Creationists aren't stupid, or ignorant. There are a few that are knee-jerk fundamentalists, but I find many more are thoughtful scholars. I find that many Creationists are better versed on the science and the data relating to origins than most all evolutionists. In short, the only thing science can say with certainty about origins is that we do not know. Do not be so quick to dismiss alternatives that may well be completely legitimate, even if their implications may be quite uncomfortable for you... Please read up as suggested above before flaming.
Then perhaps you can explain a few things for us then, like Carpet Rock in Arizona, the remnant of an immense steel-reinforced dam?
There's a new one on me - one might expect Google to have *some* reference to such a thing, but no such luck... Any pointers?
Not that I expect finding such a thing would make any more difference than the thousands of well-documented "impossible" finds have already made to the Church of the Evolution...
I'm going to go somewhat against the flow of the technology-obsessed geeks posting here and point out that HDTV's success or failure will depend on the great masses of average TV viewers out there, not a few videophiles.
HDTV almost certainly will not make its scheduled transition for several very good reasons:
All in all, HDTV is *far* too expensive, troublesome, and immature to reach the market penetration it *must* achieve to be successful. Personally, I laugh at people paying thousands of dollars for technology that will be obsolete by the time they get a chance to use it.
My call: HDTV will remain an expensive toy for several years, and the FCC will back off from its timetable once the general populace realizes it's being railroaded, leaving the industry in a shambles. It is possible, although not entirely likely, that HDTV will wither away entirely at that time, replaced by HD-over-IP standards that avoid the problems of HDTV entirely. I wouldn't buy any HDTV gear for another several years in any case, even if there were anything out there worth watching.
(As an aside, one of the more interesting (and terrifying, for the industry) possible outcomes of the FCC sticking to its guns and forcing analog off the air would be a wholesale exodus of people simply deciding that they can easily live without TV at all given the cost in both dollars and aggravation to go through with the "upgrade". Forced upgrades are likely to work even less well here than in the Microsoft world. If these people started reading old books again instead, HDTV could turn out to be a very good thing for society...
It's been a while (about a year) since I last investigated this, so I may be off-base, but I think this is still reasonably current:
Most of the cellphone companies, especially the PCS ones, claim to be able to deliver digital data connections. Almost none of them can, and if they can, the performance is painfully slow. These folks just don't understand the value of opening up their bit stream. (Dream On: Really, I just want a good IP pipe, and I'll decide myself whether to use it for web, mail, telephony, or whatever. This assumes that the phone companies are interested in building an open IP architecture, sadly, they're not...)
So far as I know, there are no wireless ISP services that offer both road coverage and non-painful speeds.
Probably the best option today from a coverage standpoint and a real data solution is one of the CDPD-based services like OmniSky or GoAmerica. You can also start at the sites of the equipment providers like Sierra Wireless or Novatel Wireless. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired, but is likely the best reasonably-priced option available now.
Alternatively, you could try to live in the 802.11b world, hoping to find access points. Some cities have better documentation of this than others - Austin has a very incomplete list at Austinwireless.Net, mostly because RoadRunner is heavy-handedly disconnecting people they find out are running 802.11b APs. This is not a great option, but actually getting better as 802.11b takes off - lot's of offices and coffee houses have this stuff now.
Of course there are the exotic options like Iridium, but it's expensive and I expect most of their bandwidth is being used by the DoD right now...
Metricom's Ricochet was a great system if you could get it, but I was never able to consider it: they never got enough of Austin covered to really make it an option. The only people I know that were really able to use Ricochet were in the Silicon Valley (San Jose) area, where the coverage is pretty good. It would be nice to see this approach (if not this company and its implementation) make a comeback - microcells are a great idea technically, but it appears to me that the cost of getting the rights for microcell sites is what killed them, compounded by the sheer volume of sites they need. I expect Metricom's cost of site acquisition was astronomical, except in places like San Jose where the city gave them carte blanche to hang boxes on any light pole.
Granted, webserver uptime isn't the gold standard of reliablity, but BSD is a real workhorse - it's huge in ISPs and quite prevalent in telecom as well - both markets where stability is key.
Still, if you look at the architecture and internals much at all, you'll quickly realize that BSD A) is better suited for "real work" than Linux (for instance the Linux I/O layers, especially SCSI and the current single global I/O spinlock, are a disaster area), and, B) has an architecture that results in considerably better stability than Linux over the long haul. (The threads model is a perfect example: KSE is a brilliant solution: you get the parallelism of SMP with the lightning fast user-land context switch and NO kernel overhead. KSE and SMPng will put BSD well on the way to catching Solaris. A good quick overview of these BSD features are in this OSNews interview with FreeBSD's Matt Dillon.)
I'm not at all anti-Linux (in fact, my company bases its primary product on Linux, and we recently partnered to bring IP SAN support to mainframe Linux), but it's simply not fair or accurate to say that the BSDs are not used or suited for real work: In reality, the BSDs are far better suited for "real work" than Linux in some cases, although still far behind Solaris and AIX in many important ways (which may or may not be critical in any given application environment.)
The key,of course, is knowing what attributes are critical in what circumstances and choosing any technology, even the OS, appropriately...
However, reliability is the key. The simple reality of Linux' stability is a selling point beyond compare.
Then I have to conclude you haven't spent much time with real Unix OSes. I like Linux, and it's now quite reliable enough to use for some types of mission-critical tasks, but to claim that it's even in the same league as Solaris, AIX, or the BSDs is ridiculous. Linux is good, but it's not nearly that good, and BSD is the only really stable open source OS.
Check out how many of the top uptime sites at Netcraft are running BSD vs. how many are running Linux if you want an eye-opener in this department. (For those too lazy to click through, you won't find anything *but* BSD in the top ten - BSD variants hold 40 out of the top 50 uptimes. (With IRIX rounding out the other ten just to prove that they can remain stable running integer apps, anyway...))
Have a look at Oracle Small Business (formerly NetLedger) - this is an entirely web-hosted full Oracle-based accounting system that will provide the real-world features you need.
It will be a long, long time (if ever) before there's anything in the open source world that's even remotely good enough to run a business on...
Despite your anti-patents rant (BTW: their patents are broad, but hardly "unfair"), it's worth noting that it's SonicBlue, through their FrontPath subsidiary, that introduced one of the first Linux-based Transmeta-powered tablet computers on the market. Not only that, the box is entirely optimized for Linux. It now supports Windows, but that was a late addition - all development up through the first production test units was done with Linux. (I know because I was asked to help them get Windows properly running and certified on the box.)
Somebody mod this up. I was going to post this same quote. It's hard to argue with Tolkien's own words on the subject...
Judaism picks up the concept of a strong devil about the time of the Persian exile.
That would come as quite a surprise to the ancient Jews that set down the books of Genesis and Job! Job is almost certainly the oldest book in the Bible. (Oldest in the sense that the manuscripts that exist of Job are older than those that exist for other works.) Both books make it pretty clear that the Adversary exists (as the Serpent that tempted Eve in Genesis, explicitly as Satan in Job) and exerts considerable strength, although equally clearly only so much as God allows him...
I'm quite sure Tolkein wasn't Christian, but C.S. Lewis had read LotR and it drew him to christianity.
Go back and re-read virtually anything that chronicles the early interactions between Lewis and Tolkien. Tha latter was certainly a Christian, and stronly influenced Lewis' conversion.
As an aside, World is *by far* the most balanced and truthful news magazine out there. They admit up front the fact that they adhere to a Christian worldview, and explicitly and openly talk about the ways that affects their reporting. World is now the fourth-largest news magazine in the U.S. - none of the larger three (Time, Newsweek, US News) even approach this degree of forthcoming about their worldview...
As an aside, Christians (and perhaps others as well) stand to learn a lot about correct reasoning about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the current issue of Credenda/Agenda. A choice quote:
Well worth a read.
Reportedly, the earlier ones worked well, and it's primarily the later ones that are a complete disaster.
Sad, because traditionally, IBM drives have been head and shoulders above their competition in reliability. (This is *especially* true of laptop drives.) I switched to Maxtors a few months ago, partly because of the IBM 75GB problems, partly because I wanted 100 GB drives anyway, and so far, the've performed beautifully in non-trivial quantities in arrays - not one failure so far. I'm looking at the new 7500 RPM WD drives, but am reluctant to consider giving up the reliability of the Maxtors...
Dublin, when I hear you rambling I would guess that your dad is a patent lawyer. I will try some correction:
No, my dad's not a patent lawyer, but he does hold a number of patents, all of which are truly new and innovative.
Some other examples where patents had negative effects:
- WAP: it blocked further innovations that would have been more appreciated by the market.
- digital and internet TV: only a very select group of companies is active of this market. Most companies prefer to leave this legal minefield to others.
WAP died because it was an incredibly stupid idea, and darn near useless, not because the phone.com folks were too heavyhanded with the patents, even though they were.
As for digital/Internet TV, I'll give you only one point there: The Gemstar patent on displaying on-screen program guide information in a grid has caused some minor problems in the industry, but really only for those that refuse to license it. (For those who are wondering, this is why the DirectTV guide works pretty well, and the Scientific Atlanta digital set-top guide is so clunky - the latter are designed around the Gemstar patent.) I personally think this one is not non-obvious, but Gemstar has proven otherwise - to the point that TV Guide decided not long ago to buy Gemstar for that patent...
I'll just point out (for those too lazy to click through on the link above) That one of these is labelled as an iMac when you click through to the "bigger picture".
Here's the relevant shot:http://www.acorncreative.tv/imac2.html, which shows "The New iMac" as having a Cinema Display up to 15.2", 500, 600, or 700 MHz G3, Airport, CD/CDR/CDR-DVD combo drive, and integral Harman/Kardon speakers.
I'll also chime in as someone qualified to comment on the economics of the box (I was formerly a Program Manager for Dell's laptop lines, Latitude and Inspiron): I think this is do-able at an iMac price point. LCD screens are down to where this can easily be done. (Heck, I just paid $400 (after $100 rebate) for a very nice 17" standalone LCD display. Surely apple can do better in quantity...) Laptop components haven't really been all that much more expensive than desktop components for several years - the reason laptop prices have remained high is that the OEMs are soaking the market for what it's willing to pay, rahther than what it costs them to produce. The margins on laptops are several times higher than the margins on desktops.
This is all a volume economics game: and Apple re-learned something very important with the iMac: if you build it, they will come. And if they do, you'll have the volume to make the economics work for all those "expensive" features that differentiate your product from the rest. (Things like FireWire, USB, built-in networking (wired or wireless, depending), serious audio, great RISC processors, and now, integral Cinema flatscreens...)
Also, patents to have limited duration--eventually the work reverts to the public domain. The secret of making half-silvered mirrors was jealously guarded in Europe for years, retarding the development of optics.
This is an excellent point I didn't make in the interest of brevity.
I think the real only problem with patents, especially software and computer patents, is that the pace of development has so far outstripped the term of the patents.
Personally, I'd like to see some sort of self-regulating system that would adjust the length of all patents issued in any particular field between 5 and 20 years, inversely proportional to the number of patents granted in that field over the past twelve months. Five years seems long enough for even the fast moving stuff (remember it needs to be long enough to recover R&D costs and make some money), 20 should be enough for the slow-moving stuff. Such a system also fights abuse, since big companies that file lots of patents just because they can (IBM, anyone?) would find that such a practice is self-defeating, and devalues their important patents. Also, it tends to favor original inventors that bring true innovation, while devaluing the fruits of the system for those that seek to profit by simply filing lots of patents late to "get a piece of the action". If those patents are shorter, the incentive to abuse the system is considerably less. It's key that such a self-regulator be pegged to patents *granted* rather than patents *filed* - that way, the term changes only kick in if there's innovation sufficient to be patentable in the first place. (If terms were tied to filings, malicious groups could "poison the waterhole" for everyone...)
Nothing says you have to apply for a patent. But if you invent something that is novel, useful, and non-obvious to one reasonably schooled in the art, and you want to have a chance at taking it to market unmolested, then you'll file a patent on it.
/. just blast away against patents because Stallman doesn't like them, without ever bothering to learn how they work. Stallman's wrong about a lot of things, patents are #2 on the list. (Emacs instead of vi is #1... Now *that's* flamebait!)
The cost argument doesn't wash: Patents can be had for a few hundred dollars in filing fees. People usually use patent attorneys becuse its easier and quicker, but it's NOT required. In fact, in the US, the USPTO is REQUIRED to assist you in your filing as an individual inventor without counsel. PLEASE read up before you flame: I'd suggest Nolo's excellent book, Patent it Yourself Sadly, most people here on
Pay a little attention: there will always be some isolated innovation by lone inventors.
The point is that if you want to harness that innovation to create a technological society (which requires a technological *economy*, sorry communists!), then patents aren't just nice, they're absolutely vital.
I don't deny that patent abuse occurs - but the system works *very* well in rooting out bad patents in places where it actually matters. (Nobody cares if Joe Doaks is silly enough to pay for 15 diesel-powered toenail clipper patents, so those bad patents will stand unchallenged, the ones that matter are contested, as they should be. The system works, and works well.)
"Memes" don't really exist, now do they? And I've yet to see Dawkins (or Chomsky for that matter) be right about much of anything of any importance. Dawkins is a classic case of, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything *better* be a nail!"
My larger point was simply that using words like "boxen" makes all technical folks look like the jerks that many are...
I hate to reply to my own post, but this is NOT flamebait! I was attempting to point out that patents are a key underpinning of the economic system that makes a technological world possible.
/. love to hate patents without having thought of this vital aspect of the problem, but in the context of the article posted, that's pretty dang relevant!
I realize that many here at
For more info on how big companies can abuse patents, and how they keep them from steam-rolling the little guys, see my letter to the editor in LWN a while back: http://lwn.net/2000/0420/backpage.phtml#backpage
She's got it nailed. I laugh at the
The destruction of patents (even software patents, which at best could stand to have shorter terms) would eliminate virtually all technology investment - the US is so amazingly productive and innovative in large part because of our patent system. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to realize that innovation is caused by a good patent system. If the US abandons or cripples its world-leading patent system, we'll see innovations stagnate, the big companies will totally dominate, and it could take the world economy decades or more to recover.
THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS "BOXEN"!
/. think trying to change the plural of box to boxen is "3L337", I don't know. I do know that using the word "boxen" simply makes the writer look like an imbecile. One "box". Two or more "boxes". There, that's not too hard for someone that can figure out how to get a dozen buggy Linux apps sort of working together, right?
/. has been taken over by pimply script kiddies and can no longer claim to be a place where any serious and thoughtful discussion takes place. (Of course, I suppose that was a foregone conclusion once the /. editors made a regular feature of the perpetually sophomoric Jon Katz and his whining victimization rants...)
Why people on
(And yes, I've been around long enough to remember when this started - when those trying to be cool used "VAXen" as the plural of VAX, but it made the speaker (no one would have used it in print!) look idiotic then, and I don't know any of those people that use "boxen" as the plural of "box" today.
Seriously, folks, this is not an off-topic rant, since it's a response to Michael's headline posting. Insisting on using such cheesy language as "boxen" and warez-speak only reinforces the streotypical image of the technically competent as antisocial and out-of-touch.
I suppose this is just another sign that
You forgot "Close cover before striking"...
The Kyocera Smart Phone (6035) does this now, and it works quite well. Right down to asking you if you'd like to call so-and-so if it's not entirely sure what you said.) Although I don't know for sure, the new Samsung Palm phone probably has voice dialing as well, as most of thier regular phones have had it for some time...
Two good reasons for integrating these two (at least for me):
1. I wound up carrying both my Palm Pro and Qualcomm ThinPhone everywhere anyway, and I got tired of carrying two boxes around.
2. After living with the Kyocera 6035, I would never, ever want to go back to a phone that didn't have all my contact information in it. *All* my numbers are at hand and dialable with a tap or two. I never wish I'd programmed another number in the phone or have to change it in two places. Sometimes integration doesn't provide real value - but here it does. Phone + Palm = BIG WIN