1. Check out this link for a device which appears to be (relatively) successfully making a whole PC in a PDA-type device. No batteries, but enough storage to carry darn near anything you'd need. This is an interesting concept, but inexplicably does not have a network connection, which seems to indicate some sort of serious cognitive dysfunction on the part of those responsible for defining the product's features.
2. I think the Yopy folks at Samsung are on to something. If not in the initial product, then with the second rev, when it will be a bit more practical to stuff lots of storage and a built-in ethernet or bluetooth interface into the thing. Don't look at this as a PDA replacement so much as a PC adjuct. This is really the same market Microsoft is aiming for with their new PocketPCs, but I think the Yopy is closer to getting it right.
(I've thought a lot on this topic, enough that I'm considering writing a book. Or maybe statring a company - calls from VCs accepted also...[grin])
Having transferred domains through NSI in the past, I can tell you first hand that they actually have a very good system in place to protect the rights both of the party transferring the domain and the recipient of the transfer.
I was quite impressed with their thoroughness and professionalism, really. Having done a transfer through NSI, I wouldn't hesitate to continue using them if that clause is domainnamebuyersguide's (*that* name's too long!) only beef with them...
They're not perfect, but I really think NSI probably has a better handle on all the aspects of the domain name business than most newcomers. (After all, they've been mercilessly flamed by us for years. Besides, I'd kinda hate to give up DD26! [grin])
This is inexplicably quite a controversial topic, simply because so many people unaccountably appear to believe that shielding children from evil influences is wrong.
Yes, the scary word evil was intended here - unfortunately, one of the first realities we must face if we are to "succeed against the hard realities of adult life" is to recognize that both evil and forces of evil do indeed exist in our world.
Failure to shield young children from these influences will make it impossible for them to ever actually become adults capable of resisting evil influences. My approach is controversial in today's world, but quite practical, and proven by a successful track record hundreds of years of years long. Is yours? (A bit of careful non-present-biased reading will convince you that all the hard questions were answered quite some time ago. there truly is nothing new under the sun from the human anture point of view. Every method you can think of to raise a child has been tried before, and nearly all of them have proven they do not work. Do the research!)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Actually, it was only a couple of years ago that the power utilization of the CPU fell below that of the display for a brief time. Since then, Intel's relentless push for faster and newer processors has more than counteracted more efficiency in other components and more power capacity from prismatic LiIon batteries.
Haven't you noticed that battery life has *fallen* over the past few years after hitting a peak of nearly 8 hours a while back, we're now back down to 2-3 hours on the heavies, and only an hour or so on the ultralites?
I worked for Dell's laptop group a couple of years ago, and can attest to the fact that the 300 MHz mobile Deschutes (P-II) processor had less than half the battery life of some of our earlier mobile Pentium products - and the CPU was the only significant difference from a power point of view.
Can you imagine how long the batteries in a Sony 505 would last if you could use a two-year old mobile pentium instead of the room heater you have to buy now? I for one would gladly trade 400 MHz of clock for all-day battery life...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
No, my point of view is not stupid at all (in fact I can show it's far more internally and externally logically consistent than yours), but it does come from a different worldview, which you are appparently unwilling to acknowledge.
And, actually that (Internet or porn) is exactly the choice facing anyone with children today.
One thing that seems to be lost in all the discussion of how we must let kids visually learn all the latest perversions is that exposing children to sex at an early age has the very real effect of robbing them of their childhood and their innocence. If you're an adult and you have no more willpower than to fall prey to Internet porn, that's one thing, but exposing children to sex is nothing less than child abuse.
One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children. Innocence is and must be part of that. Sadly, innocence is becoming quite difficult for parents to ensure even if they take quite an active and steadfast role in shielding their children. That's why I believe the present system has failed and structural reforms may be the best remaining option. (Note that I'm well familiar with geek culture and values re: freedom, and have been working to build the Internet longer than some/. posters have been alive, but I am no longer proud of what the Internet has become.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
We're just going to differ on the relative merits of the ACLU. I didn't say that I never agreed with them, though, just that the occasions were infrequent. Unfortunately, even when they're right, it's usually for the wrong reasons.
I agree active 'man in the loop" censorship solutions are preferable, but they are by and large impractical and needless to say, labor intensive.
Home censorware solutions are not significantly different from those of libraries. And you can bet I'd be one of the ones making life hell for the school board if any teacher took such an overtly hostile act as assigning the history of gay "rights". Personally, I wnat these sites blocked far more than the skin sites, as they are far more offensive.
Finally, I'd be careful about advertising quotes from a man (Bertrand Russell) who admitted on several occasions that the *only real* reason he opposed Christianity was so he could indulge his own sexual appetites as he saw fit. His moral deficit is most obvious in the brutal rape of the young daughter of a man whose home he was staying in - hardly a role model in anyone's book. Not to mention his arguments don't even hold up to significant scrutiny...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Agreed. There's no reasonable computer substitute for a real book. and none appears to be on the horizon in the near future.
In addition to scribble-ability, there's just the plain information bandwidth point-of-vie, as I've pointed out here on/. before: do the math, and you'll find that you average A-size sheet of paper (with a 1/2 inch border) has an equivalent resolution of 7.56 megapixels at a puny 300 dpi! I don't want bigger pixels, or even faster pretty 3-d ones. I want MORE pixels - that's the only thing that can really make compuers approach the usefulness of books.
(Figuring the relative bandwidths of the average computer desktop versus the average physical desktop and surrounding workspace is left as an excercise for the reader. Let's just say it's staggering.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Actually, they couldn't be more wrong (but then the ACLU is seldom right...)
There is a real problem with unwanted "in your face" porn - just mistype a URL, or get on the spammers' mailing lists, and you know what I mean.
I have kids, and the problem has become alarmingly worse in the past year or two.
I believe a subtle form of censorship is the answer here, but in a different form from either of the solutions being debated here: there needs to be a very good, reliable way to partition the "sleazy side of town" from the rest of the net. Ideally, this would be driven by force of law and would include both IP address as well as namespace partitioning (a.porn top-level?), so that both routing and DNS could be used to prevent exposure of children to these sites. (I and many others firmly believe that exposing children to porn, even accidentally, is a particularly egregious form of child abuse.)
Seriously, we all know the problem is getting out of hand. If we don't clean up our own Internet, someone else will do it for us.
Bottom line: Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor inconvenience of a few sleazy pornographers?
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Well, it would, if there was a reasonably cheap way to get StrongARm systems that had IDE interfaces. Right now, the only way I know to do that is the NetWinder, which is rather ridiculously priced.
I have a few ARM-based touchscreen webphones on the home network, but they don't have disk controller interfaces...
It seems Rebel/HCC has no plans to ever upgrade the NetWinder, but will keep selling the same thing at too-high prices until they finally have to give up. (They are doing plug-upgrades where possible, bigger HD's, etc, but they aren't doing anything else, and couldn't if they wanted to, since they lost their Linux hackers months ago.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
(Comments first, product info later, skip down if you want...)
Actually, there are some very good reasons, starting with the fact that it just plain rubs me the wrong way to have a simple file server sucking up a few hundred watts on a 24/7 basis.
This is a perfect application for an embedded solution, but apparently, the market hasn't quite clued in yet (I'd think small businesses/SOHO would be all over these things, but only Snap and Linksys seem to have gained any traction at all.)
I just looked at the options for my own home, finally deciding it was much cheaper just to get one of these and move the storage function elsewhere than to spend a bunch of bucks on a new PC that will go stale faster than a bowl of crackers in the rain.
ZD did a pretty good review of these things recently (interestingly, many of them run Linux or another Unix deriviative): NAS Comparison Chart
To summarize the review, the Linksys GigaDrive wins bang/buck, but has the downside that they only support SMB. If you need NFS, the next best option is the NetGear Network Disk Drive, which will set you back another $150 for the same 20 GB (ouch!!). If you've got the money, you might consider the Snap, or even some of the other options not in the ZD review, like the file server version of Cobalt's Qube or Raq, or Rebel's NetWinder.
Unfortunately, no one does this well yet. I've wondered myself about the possibility of a box with a simple CPU, a little bit of RAM, and an Ethernet adapter and a disk, prefereably with a slot for another 3-1/2" disk for later expansion. (Axis is the closest to having something like this, but they're pretty expensive, too.)
Let me know if you find any better alternatives - I'm still deciding, since I don't really like any of the current options. (If Linksys would do NFS, I'd buy one tomorrow.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
There are other competing free software licenses out there. It's exactly this sort of behavior from the GPL crowd that tends to make BSD-ish licenses much more attractive (at least to me). As I've said before here, it's the "militant communist" attitude of the "gnazis" that manages to drive as many people away from free software as it attracts. Many factions are (justifiably, I think) nervous about the GPL - events like this don't do much to help. (And the timing is not good, either, with more commercial software companies than ever before weighing the wisdom of freeing thier software assets...)
Geesh, Bruce, if you set out to deter people from reusing/leveraging your software (which is the point of free software, after all) you could scarcely have done a better job...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Having never been to Nigeria myself, and not familiar with the real story behind both sides of the struggle there, I'll defer comment on that particular issue.
I can speak to my personal experience in the environmental area, which is that some of the largest oil companies in the world take their environmental responsibilites *very* seriously, something that both impressed and surprised me when I began working with them.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Sorry, but United Way support is one sure way for me to tell a company *isn't* serious about ensuring it's moey goes to the right things.
In addition to serious and recurring scandals involving large amounts of UW money, there's the simple fact that this orgaization is horrendously inefficient, taking several times more off the top for its own operations than do more effective (and unfortunately far less well funded) charities.
I stopped giving to/through United Way years ago, and I encourage everyone else to do likewise. They are an unnecessary and undesirable middleman in the funds disbursement process, and only serve to sponsor corporate campaigns that paint non-contributors as somehow evil and vile. (Opposing, or even simply not contributing to, UW in some companies can be a serious career-limiting move, something that should in itself give us pause as to the organization's power and true intent...)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
I can also tell you that, especially in California, many of these laws are completely ridiculous, and the "toxic chemicals" may not be toxic, or even "chemicals" at all.
Case in point: my first job out of college was at an aerospace company in southern California that built carbon fiber composites. These are inspected using an ultrasonic imaging technique in which two robot arms squirt a stream of water at opposing sides of the part and the ultrasonic "beam" is propagated through the water. Regular lab-grade deionized water was used in this procedure since you wanted good clean water and didn't want to have to worry about scale buildup, etc.
CA law says, though, that because the deionized water had been "used in an industrial process" (which amounted to nothing more than pumping it through some tubing for a couple of weeks) it was now "hazardous waste" which had to be disposed of at great trouble and expense.
Some of this "hazardous waste" found its way into the drains, as it should have. However - and this is an important caveat - if they had been caught, they could have been charged with "dumping hazardous waste". What a complete and utter racket. I have *no* respect for the enviros and their govenmental thugs after seeing things like this happen in the real world.
Believe it or not, oil companies are among the most ecologically conscious companies on the planet. I worked on an emergency oil spill response network a few years back, and the oil company environmental guys take their jobs *very* seriously. I assure you that at least for the companies I worked with, they will take literally heroic, life-threatening measures to mitigate any damage - like boating into a river of fire in a combined flood/pipeline rupture near Houston a few years back to determine the correct location of the break when all the landmarks were underwater. (This rupture later proved to be due to natural causes from the 1000-year flood scouring the dirt from a few hundred yards of now unsupported pipeline, which finally couldn't stand the strain: it actually broke almost 1/2 mile from the normal river channel.)
Make sure you have some experience with the folks responsible for environmental activities at a company befoer making your decision based solely on the rants of some whiner with a website. This was a company that many people love to hate, and I came away convinced they cared more about the environment where they operated than *anyone* else, including the enviros and especially the gov't flacks.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
While BPA is a problem, it is only one of many xenoestrogens that can cause endocrine disruption, (including possibly even the increased incidence of homosexuality in recent years.)
If your concept of "social responsibility" includes ridding the world of all of the offending substances, you're going to have a tough time. There's little evidence that migration of BPA from say a keyboard to a body through skin contact is significant, but it's far more likely to be a problem in the case of bottled/packaged foods that are in contact with the plastics for extended periods. Have you tried to buy juice in a glass bottle lately? It's become pretty much impossible over these last few months. And kids drink a lot of juice. The point here is that while the jury is still out on things like BPA skin exposure, we are ignoring the possibly much greater danger of plastic in food and drink contact applications. Let's keep our priorities straight - iMacs are not the most significant threat even if you're worried about these things.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
This is a bit OT, but several posts here have strayed into this patch as a solution to overpopulation-caused hunger. Just to set the record straight about the world's population amid all the D6B/overpopulation hysteria:
- Population rates are at an all-time high because people are living longer, not because too many babies are being born. (This is not a bad thing!)
- The consequences of the wrong reaction to this growth could be serious: Over 60 countries are at or below "replacement rates", including all the major industrialized nations.
- These countries will face significant labor shortages and a declining population to support the growing number of elderly. (Utimately exposing Ponzi schemes like Social Security.)
- Only Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East are significantly above replacement rates.
- The population paranoia is not even supported by the UN itself: Almost all of the D6B press is driven by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).
- The UNFPA is not a UN agency, it is an independent agency operating under UN auspices, with close ties to nongovernmental organizations like International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Marie Stopes, which have clear political agendas (and an economic interest in promoting thier point of view.)
- The UN's chief population demographers work for the UN Population Division (UNPD), which is an official entity, operating as a branch of the UN Secretariat.
- UNPD's take on population growth is *quite different*: UNPD has three growth scenarios, and they currently favor the Low Growth scenario as the most likely. This scenario shows population peaking in 2040 and declining thereafter.
Source: http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/10-09-99/inter national_2.asp You may or may not agree with World's editorial position, but I have found them to be obsessively accurate on factual issues.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
I ran into the same problem. I don't use Netscape for mail and never have, but as I recall, one of the come-ons for signing up as a NetCenter member was that you'd get a permanent e-mail address. So much for that.
And Pete's right, there are *no* acceptable usernames left. Hell, someone's even already got "dubdublin", and I have got to believe I'm the only person in the country twisted enough to actually go by a name like "Dub Dublin" (I'm a third, it's a nickname, long story.) There aren't even that many Dublins to start with. It also ticks me off (since I have such an unusual name) that some bozo is running around on AOL/AIM making at least some people suspect that he's me!
Grrrrrrrr, it's this sort of heavy handedness that makes me just want to chuck Netscape. When is the real Mozilla scheduled for completion, anyone? [grin]
Maybe this is the time to finally jump to Opera, but I'd really like to be able to use the same bookmarks everywhere, and Opera isn't cooked on Linux/Unix yet...
This discussion is confusing two important aspects of supercomputing: the viability of the supercomputing concept, and the viability of supercomputer companies.
As a concept, supercomputing is and will remain tremendously viable and important - we'll always (well, OK, for the foreseeable future) be able to engineer fatter, lower latency interconnects within a box than between them as some sort of network. Still, the network guys are closing the gap some, so much so that many former supercomputer customers are now using clusters of some sort or the other to replace supercomputers.
As a business proposition, supercomputing is suicidal. The tidal wave of Moore's law and decently performing commodity hardware and software is firmly against you, not to mention these things take a LOT of man-years to develop and sort out, making it much harder to present customers with a value proposition that makes them willing to part with megabucks. Years ago, it was true that custom silicon gave you a real advantage at the high end - but no longer. The bottom line is that lower cost solutions are becoming "good enough" for the hard problems most people are interested in, so the market is shrinking even as development and manufacturing costs soar. (Remember how much of the economic viability of technology is determined by volume, something these guys will never have, almost by definition.)
Cray has been a walking corpse for years (seriously, go back and see when was the last year they made money - I'll bet it was nearly a decade ago) - even most of their industrial customers have abandoned supercomputers, leaving only a few high end science projects and the spooks as their market. My guess is that if it weren't for the NSA et al, these guys would have been out of business 5-10 years ago.
Try these for Word: NuoMedia.com and ThinkFree.com both have browser accessible office suites available today. In addition, you can expect Sun's StarOffice Portal to be resold on about a zillion sites when it comes out, and there are doubtless others as well that I don't know about. (If nothing else, these should defuse the "no productivity apps" objection to alternative OSes - the OS really doesn't matter anymore...)
These are getting good enough to be considered as a serious option: I'm thinking of completely ditching Windows at home and using these services instead, since (except for Visio) they do what I need from Windows. I've even recommended NetLedger to some folks here recently as the best of all possible worlds for small business accounting - I really think we're just starting to see the tip of the ASP iceberg...
In another year or two, Joe Doaks may balk at any software that isn't available with a web UI. Why would he want to get locked in again?
But Macrovision encoding does not generally exist at all in the digital video, it's added after decoding by the Macrovision chip. (So an EXACT copy of the digital video stream wouldn't include Macrovision!) Macrovision wields a big legal club to force companies to include that chip in any video product. (Thier reasoning apparently is that if the original video was Macrovision encoded, as an equipment manufacturer, you'd be aiding and abetting pirates if you didn't ensure your output was also Macrovision encoded.)
Either ReplayTV or Tivo (I forget which, now) got beat up about this last year because their first boxes didn't have a Macrovision chip, therefore, movies recorded on the box could be cleanly recopied onto a VCR. Macrovision came in swinging their lawyer club, and the digital box guys ran for cover. (How do I know? At my former employer I was asked to quote the Macrovision retrofit. We declined.)
Personally, I think Macrovision's business model is little short of extortion. Macrovision only has about 50 employees, but look at what they made last year! Do you think really think anyone would pay them that much if they weren't afraid of what would happen if they didn't?
IANAL, but agree this won't test the GPL. The GPL is not and will not be upheld by the courts as a shield against otherwise illegal activities. (In this case, as I understand it, Mattel's position is that the authors of CPhack never had the rights to distribute their code in the first place, thus making any claim or issuance under the GPL bogus.)
Look at it this way, if the GPL was that sort of shield, what's to keep someone from taking any code they don't own (like, say, the source for Windows 2000 or BSD) and distributing it under the GPL? (In either case significantly changing the original license without the permission of the owner.) That would be outright theft.
I know this is an unpopular view here, but I maintain the viral nature of the GPL is a very bad idea and will eventually be held to be unenforceable and/or invalid, ultimately doing great damage to the cause of open source software it seeks to promote. (As a thought excercise, just ask yourself the impact of the GPL (which has never been tested in court to my knowledge) being ruled invalid anywhere in the world...)
I'm really surprised I'm the first to post saying there's no way I'd ever let any of these folks get their hooks in my checking account.
I'm further surprised that people who are ostensibly concerned about privacy, abuse of information, and tracking via banner ad cookies are all so willing to give complete strangers the right to take money from thier account.
Although I have credit cards, I refuse to allow any automated withdrawals from my accounts, and I refuse to ever have a debit card for the same reason. If you're going to do this, think seriously about it first, and decide if your freedom, privacy, and possibly your assets are a good exchange for a little convenience. C'mon, how long does it take to pay bills with a checkbook for cryin' out loud? At least by looking at them, I'm less likely to get ripped off - like the extra $78 one company tried to take just recently. Also, as someone pointed out elsewhere, I *have* my cancelled checks - this comes in handy when Postal Service employees steal checks out of the envelope and cash them, as happened last year. I had a paper trail that helped put the bastards away for a long time. If someone swipes cash from me electronically, it's just plain gone - heck they can't even audit legitimate transactions, how well do you think they'll find fraud?
Anything that is a direct vacuum hose into your account is a real and significant risk! Just ask my brother, who shortly after graduating from college had over $5000 stolen on a debit card with no recourse. (I understand this was such aproblem that there is some recourse now, but we all pay for that fraud protection in higher prices.) The theives spent his account dry, automatic overdraft protection from the Visa kicked in, and then they exhausted his remaining credit limit. All in less than twelve hours and without physical possesion of his card.
As an IT professional, I realize that the technology, processes, and laws for performing these kinds of transactions safely and securely are years, if not decades away. Even less intrusive/automatic things like Quicken are not so innocuous: A friend recently had a very tough time in an IRS audit after his computer crashed - he paid his bills electronically and had no records of his expenditures. He figures that mistake cost him maybe $15,000. You can buy a lot of stamps for that.
I suppose the people who use online bill paying are signed up for their local grocery store's affliate card program and have debit cards. (There's a particularly insidious affiliate card program run by Randall's grocery stores here in Texas: in order to avoid exorbitant prices and have the privilege of cashing or writing a check, you have to have their "Remarkable (Ripoff)" card, which identifies you and your purchases with every use.) Where do you think that data goes? If you think they're not building a dtabase of your particular buying habits in their data warehouse, you're incredibly naive. It's none of Randall's business what I in particular buy (although my purchases are not particularly interesting) - the only thing they need to know is what everyone has bought *in aggregate* from the store, but that's not nearly so valuable for marketing purposes. You can't have privacy and that sort of data collection, which is one reason I'll never carry a smart card, like the new blue card AMEX is pushing so hard.
Bottom Line: you either care about privacy or you don't. If you do, act on it, and refuse to give up your rights (because that is exactly what you're doing if you sign up for these services.
It wasn't obvious here at/., because the story was posted after the change, but Netpliance has changed the wording of their disclaimer since this morning:
This morning it read: "Modification of the i-opener in any way is no longer physically possible and is in violation of our terms and conditions and may be in violation of federal law."
Now it reads: "i-opener Internet appliances shipped after March 20, 2000 can no longer be reconfigured in the manner described in recent reports. Modification of the i-opener in any way is in violation of our terms and conditions."
The brash claim that all modifications are impossible is gone, and presumably, their lawyers weighed in that there was no possibility of federal law violations. And the Ts&Cs are still seemingly missing from their site even now, which begs the question of how one could legally "Accept" them (the wording on the button) if they haven't disclosed them yet.
At the very least, it seems they pulled the trigger on this well before they were ready. But then, I suppose after losing probably $400/unit on thier entire inventory, they're a bit punchy. The "developer support" page just makes the whole thing even more bizarre.
And people said the same thing about radios being dangerous and distracting in cars 80 years ago.
It's relatively obvious that people learn to adapt to higher information bandwidth, and have been doing this successfully for decades now. We know that people are capable of correctly processing volumes of information orders of magnitude larger than the most geekified car could provide because we see jet pilots do it every day. Certainly the amount of information to be processes in a modern fighter's HUD (head up display) is considerably greater than what would be in a DVD HUD. (I do agree that it's necessary to see where one is going, so HUDs beat in-dash screens badly. [grin])
Slashdot Mirror
Two things:
1. Check out this link for a device which appears to be (relatively) successfully making a whole PC in a PDA-type device. No batteries, but enough storage to carry darn near anything you'd need. This is an interesting concept, but inexplicably does not have a network connection, which seems to indicate some sort of serious cognitive dysfunction on the part of those responsible for defining the product's features.
2. I think the Yopy folks at Samsung are on to something. If not in the initial product, then with the second rev, when it will be a bit more practical to stuff lots of storage and a built-in ethernet or bluetooth interface into the thing. Don't look at this as a PDA replacement so much as a PC adjuct. This is really the same market Microsoft is aiming for with their new PocketPCs, but I think the Yopy is closer to getting it right.
(I've thought a lot on this topic, enough that I'm considering writing a book. Or maybe statring a company - calls from VCs accepted also...[grin])
Having transferred domains through NSI in the past, I can tell you first hand that they actually have a very good system in place to protect the rights both of the party transferring the domain and the recipient of the transfer.
I was quite impressed with their thoroughness and professionalism, really. Having done a transfer through NSI, I wouldn't hesitate to continue using them if that clause is domainnamebuyersguide's (*that* name's too long!) only beef with them...
They're not perfect, but I really think NSI probably has a better handle on all the aspects of the domain name business than most newcomers. (After all, they've been mercilessly flamed by us for years. Besides, I'd kinda hate to give up DD26! [grin])
Yes, the scary word evil was intended here - unfortunately, one of the first realities we must face if we are to "succeed against the hard realities of adult life" is to recognize that both evil and forces of evil do indeed exist in our world.
Failure to shield young children from these influences will make it impossible for them to ever actually become adults capable of resisting evil influences. My approach is controversial in today's world, but quite practical, and proven by a successful track record hundreds of years of years long. Is yours? (A bit of careful non-present-biased reading will convince you that all the hard questions were answered quite some time ago. there truly is nothing new under the sun from the human anture point of view. Every method you can think of to raise a child has been tried before, and nearly all of them have proven they do not work. Do the research!)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Haven't you noticed that battery life has *fallen* over the past few years after hitting a peak of nearly 8 hours a while back, we're now back down to 2-3 hours on the heavies, and only an hour or so on the ultralites?
I worked for Dell's laptop group a couple of years ago, and can attest to the fact that the 300 MHz mobile Deschutes (P-II) processor had less than half the battery life of some of our earlier mobile Pentium products - and the CPU was the only significant difference from a power point of view.
Can you imagine how long the batteries in a Sony 505 would last if you could use a two-year old mobile pentium instead of the room heater you have to buy now? I for one would gladly trade 400 MHz of clock for all-day battery life...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
And, actually that (Internet or porn) is exactly the choice facing anyone with children today.
One thing that seems to be lost in all the discussion of how we must let kids visually learn all the latest perversions is that exposing children to sex at an early age has the very real effect of robbing them of their childhood and their innocence. If you're an adult and you have no more willpower than to fall prey to Internet porn, that's one thing, but exposing children to sex is nothing less than child abuse.
One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children. Innocence is and must be part of that. Sadly, innocence is becoming quite difficult for parents to ensure even if they take quite an active and steadfast role in shielding their children. That's why I believe the present system has failed and structural reforms may be the best remaining option. (Note that I'm well familiar with geek culture and values re: freedom, and have been working to build the Internet longer than some
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
I agree active 'man in the loop" censorship solutions are preferable, but they are by and large impractical and needless to say, labor intensive.
Home censorware solutions are not significantly different from those of libraries. And you can bet I'd be one of the ones making life hell for the school board if any teacher took such an overtly hostile act as assigning the history of gay "rights". Personally, I wnat these sites blocked far more than the skin sites, as they are far more offensive.
Finally, I'd be careful about advertising quotes from a man (Bertrand Russell) who admitted on several occasions that the *only real* reason he opposed Christianity was so he could indulge his own sexual appetites as he saw fit. His moral deficit is most obvious in the brutal rape of the young daughter of a man whose home he was staying in - hardly a role model in anyone's book. Not to mention his arguments don't even hold up to significant scrutiny...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
In addition to scribble-ability, there's just the plain information bandwidth point-of-vie, as I've pointed out here on
(Figuring the relative bandwidths of the average computer desktop versus the average physical desktop and surrounding workspace is left as an excercise for the reader. Let's just say it's staggering.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
There is a real problem with unwanted "in your face" porn - just mistype a URL, or get on the spammers' mailing lists, and you know what I mean.
I have kids, and the problem has become alarmingly worse in the past year or two.
I believe a subtle form of censorship is the answer here, but in a different form from either of the solutions being debated here: there needs to be a very good, reliable way to partition the "sleazy side of town" from the rest of the net. Ideally, this would be driven by force of law and would include both IP address as well as namespace partitioning (a
Seriously, we all know the problem is getting out of hand. If we don't clean up our own Internet, someone else will do it for us.
Bottom line: Are you willing to sacrifice the future of the entire Internet to avoid the minor inconvenience of a few sleazy pornographers?
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
I have a few ARM-based touchscreen webphones on the home network, but they don't have disk controller interfaces...
It seems Rebel/HCC has no plans to ever upgrade the NetWinder, but will keep selling the same thing at too-high prices until they finally have to give up. (They are doing plug-upgrades where possible, bigger HD's, etc, but they aren't doing anything else, and couldn't if they wanted to, since they lost their Linux hackers months ago.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Actually, there are some very good reasons, starting with the fact that it just plain rubs me the wrong way to have a simple file server sucking up a few hundred watts on a 24/7 basis.
This is a perfect application for an embedded solution, but apparently, the market hasn't quite clued in yet (I'd think small businesses/SOHO would be all over these things, but only Snap and Linksys seem to have gained any traction at all.)
I just looked at the options for my own home, finally deciding it was much cheaper just to get one of these and move the storage function elsewhere than to spend a bunch of bucks on a new PC that will go stale faster than a bowl of crackers in the rain.
ZD did a pretty good review of these things recently (interestingly, many of them run Linux or another Unix deriviative): NAS Comparison Chart
To summarize the review, the Linksys GigaDrive wins bang/buck, but has the downside that they only support SMB. If you need NFS, the next best option is the NetGear Network Disk Drive, which will set you back another $150 for the same 20 GB (ouch!!). If you've got the money, you might consider the Snap, or even some of the other options not in the ZD review, like the file server version of Cobalt's Qube or Raq, or Rebel's NetWinder.
Unfortunately, no one does this well yet. I've wondered myself about the possibility of a box with a simple CPU, a little bit of RAM, and an Ethernet adapter and a disk, prefereably with a slot for another 3-1/2" disk for later expansion. (Axis is the closest to having something like this, but they're pretty expensive, too.)
Let me know if you find any better alternatives - I'm still deciding, since I don't really like any of the current options. (If Linksys would do NFS, I'd buy one tomorrow.)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Geesh, Bruce, if you set out to deter people from reusing/leveraging your software (which is the point of free software, after all) you could scarcely have done a better job...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
I can speak to my personal experience in the environmental area, which is that some of the largest oil companies in the world take their environmental responsibilites *very* seriously, something that both impressed and surprised me when I began working with them.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
In addition to serious and recurring scandals involving large amounts of UW money, there's the simple fact that this orgaization is horrendously inefficient, taking several times more off the top for its own operations than do more effective (and unfortunately far less well funded) charities.
I stopped giving to/through United Way years ago, and I encourage everyone else to do likewise. They are an unnecessary and undesirable middleman in the funds disbursement process, and only serve to sponsor corporate campaigns that paint non-contributors as somehow evil and vile. (Opposing, or even simply not contributing to, UW in some companies can be a serious career-limiting move, something that should in itself give us pause as to the organization's power and true intent...)
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
Case in point: my first job out of college was at an aerospace company in southern California that built carbon fiber composites. These are inspected using an ultrasonic imaging technique in which two robot arms squirt a stream of water at opposing sides of the part and the ultrasonic "beam" is propagated through the water. Regular lab-grade deionized water was used in this procedure since you wanted good clean water and didn't want to have to worry about scale buildup, etc.
CA law says, though, that because the deionized water had been "used in an industrial process" (which amounted to nothing more than pumping it through some tubing for a couple of weeks) it was now "hazardous waste" which had to be disposed of at great trouble and expense.
Some of this "hazardous waste" found its way into the drains, as it should have. However - and this is an important caveat - if they had been caught, they could have been charged with "dumping hazardous waste". What a complete and utter racket. I have *no* respect for the enviros and their govenmental thugs after seeing things like this happen in the real world.
Believe it or not, oil companies are among the most ecologically conscious companies on the planet. I worked on an emergency oil spill response network a few years back, and the oil company environmental guys take their jobs *very* seriously. I assure you that at least for the companies I worked with, they will take literally heroic, life-threatening measures to mitigate any damage - like boating into a river of fire in a combined flood/pipeline rupture near Houston a few years back to determine the correct location of the break when all the landmarks were underwater. (This rupture later proved to be due to natural causes from the 1000-year flood scouring the dirt from a few hundred yards of now unsupported pipeline, which finally couldn't stand the strain: it actually broke almost 1/2 mile from the normal river channel.)
Make sure you have some experience with the folks responsible for environmental activities at a company befoer making your decision based solely on the rants of some whiner with a website. This was a company that many people love to hate, and I came away convinced they cared more about the environment where they operated than *anyone* else, including the enviros and especially the gov't flacks.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
If your concept of "social responsibility" includes ridding the world of all of the offending substances, you're going to have a tough time.
There's little evidence that migration of BPA from say a keyboard to a body through skin contact is significant, but it's far more likely to be a problem in the case of bottled/packaged foods that are in contact with the plastics for extended periods. Have you tried to buy juice in a glass bottle lately? It's become pretty much impossible over these last few months. And kids drink a lot of juice. The point here is that while the jury is still out on things like BPA skin exposure, we are ignoring the possibly much greater danger of plastic in food and drink contact applications. Let's keep our priorities straight - iMacs are not the most significant threat even if you're worried about these things.
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
- Population rates are at an all-time high because people are living longer, not because too many babies are being born. (This is not a bad thing!)
- The consequences of the wrong reaction to this growth could be serious: Over 60 countries are at or below "replacement rates", including all the major industrialized nations.
- These countries will face significant labor shortages and a declining population to support the growing number of elderly. (Utimately exposing Ponzi schemes like Social Security.)
- Only Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East are significantly above replacement rates.
- The population paranoia is not even supported by the UN itself: Almost all of the D6B press is driven by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).
- The UNFPA is not a UN agency, it is an independent agency operating under UN auspices, with close ties to nongovernmental organizations like International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Marie Stopes, which have clear political agendas (and an economic interest in promoting thier point of view.)
- The UN's chief population demographers work for the UN Population Division (UNPD), which is an official entity, operating as a branch of the UN Secretariat.
- UNPD's take on population growth is *quite different*: UNPD has three growth scenarios, and they currently favor the Low Growth scenario as the most likely. This scenario shows population peaking in 2040 and declining thereafter.
Source: http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/10-09-99/inte
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
I ran into the same problem. I don't use Netscape for mail and never have, but as I recall, one of the come-ons for signing up as a NetCenter member was that you'd get a permanent e-mail address. So much for that.
And Pete's right, there are *no* acceptable usernames left. Hell, someone's even already got "dubdublin", and I have got to believe I'm the only person in the country twisted enough to actually go by a name like "Dub Dublin" (I'm a third, it's a nickname, long story.) There aren't even that many Dublins to start with. It also ticks me off (since I have such an unusual name) that some bozo is running around on AOL/AIM making at least some people suspect that he's me!
Grrrrrrrr, it's this sort of heavy handedness that makes me just want to chuck Netscape. When is the real Mozilla scheduled for completion, anyone? [grin]
Maybe this is the time to finally jump to Opera, but I'd really like to be able to use the same bookmarks everywhere, and Opera isn't cooked on Linux/Unix yet...
This discussion is confusing two important aspects of supercomputing: the viability of the supercomputing concept, and the viability of supercomputer companies.
As a concept, supercomputing is and will remain tremendously viable and important - we'll always (well, OK, for the foreseeable future) be able to engineer fatter, lower latency interconnects within a box than between them as some sort of network. Still, the network guys are closing the gap some, so much so that many former supercomputer customers are now using clusters of some sort or the other to replace supercomputers.
As a business proposition, supercomputing is suicidal. The tidal wave of Moore's law and decently performing commodity hardware and software is firmly against you, not to mention these things take a LOT of man-years to develop and sort out, making it much harder to present customers with a value proposition that makes them willing to part with megabucks. Years ago, it was true that custom silicon gave you a real advantage at the high end - but no longer. The bottom line is that lower cost solutions are becoming "good enough" for the hard problems most people are interested in, so the market is shrinking even as development and manufacturing costs soar. (Remember how much of the economic viability of technology is determined by volume, something these guys will never have, almost by definition.)
Cray has been a walking corpse for years (seriously, go back and see when was the last year they made money - I'll bet it was nearly a decade ago) - even most of their industrial customers have abandoned supercomputers, leaving only a few high end science projects and the spooks as their market. My guess is that if it weren't for the NSA et al, these guys would have been out of business 5-10 years ago.
Try these for Word: NuoMedia.com and ThinkFree.com both have browser accessible office suites available today. In addition, you can expect Sun's StarOffice Portal to be resold on about a zillion sites when it comes out, and there are doubtless others as well that I don't know about. (If nothing else, these should defuse the "no productivity apps" objection to alternative OSes - the OS really doesn't matter anymore...)
These are getting good enough to be considered as a serious option: I'm thinking of completely ditching Windows at home and using these services instead, since (except for Visio) they do what I need from Windows. I've even recommended NetLedger to some folks here recently as the best of all possible worlds for small business accounting - I really think we're just starting to see the tip of the ASP iceberg...
In another year or two, Joe Doaks may balk at any software that isn't available with a web UI. Why would he want to get locked in again?
Somebody get this man a *huge* barf bag - he's gonna need it. Slashdot - news about lawsuits, every day.
But Macrovision encoding does not generally exist at all in the digital video, it's added after decoding by the Macrovision chip. (So an EXACT copy of the digital video stream wouldn't include Macrovision!) Macrovision wields a big legal club to force companies to include that chip in any video product. (Thier reasoning apparently is that if the original video was Macrovision encoded, as an equipment manufacturer, you'd be aiding and abetting pirates if you didn't ensure your output was also Macrovision encoded.)
Either ReplayTV or Tivo (I forget which, now) got beat up about this last year because their first boxes didn't have a Macrovision chip, therefore, movies recorded on the box could be cleanly recopied onto a VCR. Macrovision came in swinging their lawyer club, and the digital box guys ran for cover. (How do I know? At my former employer I was asked to quote the Macrovision retrofit. We declined.)
Personally, I think Macrovision's business model is little short of extortion. Macrovision only has about 50 employees, but look at what they made last year! Do you think really think anyone would pay them that much if they weren't afraid of what would happen if they didn't?
IANAL, but agree this won't test the GPL. The GPL is not and will not be upheld by the courts as a shield against otherwise illegal activities. (In this case, as I understand it, Mattel's position is that the authors of CPhack never had the rights to distribute their code in the first place, thus making any claim or issuance under the GPL bogus.)
Look at it this way, if the GPL was that sort of shield, what's to keep someone from taking any code they don't own (like, say, the source for Windows 2000 or BSD) and distributing it under the GPL? (In either case significantly changing the original license without the permission of the owner.) That would be outright theft.
I know this is an unpopular view here, but I maintain the viral nature of the GPL is a very bad idea and will eventually be held to be unenforceable and/or invalid, ultimately doing great damage to the cause of open source software it seeks to promote. (As a thought excercise, just ask yourself the impact of the GPL (which has never been tested in court to my knowledge) being ruled invalid anywhere in the world...)
I'm really surprised I'm the first to post saying there's no way I'd ever let any of these folks get their hooks in my checking account.
I'm further surprised that people who are ostensibly concerned about privacy, abuse of information, and tracking via banner ad cookies are all so willing to give complete strangers the right to take money from thier account.
Although I have credit cards, I refuse to allow any automated withdrawals from my accounts, and I refuse to ever have a debit card for the same reason. If you're going to do this, think seriously about it first, and decide if your freedom, privacy, and possibly your assets are a good exchange for a little convenience. C'mon, how long does it take to pay bills with a checkbook for cryin' out loud? At least by looking at them, I'm less likely to get ripped off - like the extra $78 one company tried to take just recently. Also, as someone pointed out elsewhere, I *have* my cancelled checks - this comes in handy when Postal Service employees steal checks out of the envelope and cash them, as happened last year. I had a paper trail that helped put the bastards away for a long time. If someone swipes cash from me electronically, it's just plain gone - heck they can't even audit legitimate transactions, how well do you think they'll find fraud?
Anything that is a direct vacuum hose into your account is a real and significant risk! Just ask my brother, who shortly after graduating from college had over $5000 stolen on a debit card with no recourse. (I understand this was such aproblem that there is some recourse now, but we all pay for that fraud protection in higher prices.) The theives spent his account dry, automatic overdraft protection from the Visa kicked in, and then they exhausted his remaining credit limit. All in less than twelve hours and without physical possesion of his card.
As an IT professional, I realize that the technology, processes, and laws for performing these kinds of transactions safely and securely are years, if not decades away. Even less intrusive/automatic things like Quicken are not so innocuous: A friend recently had a very tough time in an IRS audit after his computer crashed - he paid his bills electronically and had no records of his expenditures. He figures that mistake cost him maybe $15,000. You can buy a lot of stamps for that.
I suppose the people who use online bill paying are signed up for their local grocery store's affliate card program and have debit cards. (There's a particularly insidious affiliate card program run by Randall's grocery stores here in Texas: in order to avoid exorbitant prices and have the privilege of cashing or writing a check, you have to have their "Remarkable (Ripoff)" card, which identifies you and your purchases with every use.) Where do you think that data goes? If you think they're not building a dtabase of your particular buying habits in their data warehouse, you're incredibly naive. It's none of Randall's business what I in particular buy (although my purchases are not particularly interesting) - the only thing they need to know is what everyone has bought *in aggregate* from the store, but that's not nearly so valuable for marketing purposes. You can't have privacy and that sort of data collection, which is one reason I'll never carry a smart card, like the new blue card AMEX is pushing so hard.
Bottom Line: you either care about privacy or you don't. If you do, act on it, and refuse to give up your rights (because that is exactly what you're doing if you sign up for these services.
It wasn't obvious here at /., because the story was posted after the change, but Netpliance has changed the wording of their disclaimer since this morning:
This morning it read:
"Modification of the i-opener in any way is no longer physically possible and is in violation of our terms and conditions and may be in violation of federal law."
Now it reads:
"i-opener Internet appliances shipped after March 20, 2000 can no longer be reconfigured in the manner described in recent reports. Modification of the i-opener in any way is in violation of our terms and conditions."
The brash claim that all modifications are impossible is gone, and presumably, their lawyers weighed in that there was no possibility of federal law violations. And the Ts&Cs are still seemingly missing from their site even now, which begs the question of how one could legally "Accept" them (the wording on the button) if they haven't disclosed them yet.
At the very least, it seems they pulled the trigger on this well before they were ready. But then, I suppose after losing probably $400/unit on thier entire inventory, they're a bit punchy. The "developer support" page just makes the whole thing even more bizarre.
And people said the same thing about radios being dangerous and distracting in cars 80 years ago.
It's relatively obvious that people learn to adapt to higher information bandwidth, and have been doing this successfully for decades now. We know that people are capable of correctly processing volumes of information orders of magnitude larger than the most geekified car could provide because we see jet pilots do it every day. Certainly the amount of information to be processes in a modern fighter's HUD (head up display) is considerably greater than what would be in a DVD HUD. (I do agree that it's necessary to see where one is going, so HUDs beat in-dash screens badly. [grin])