Companies frequently talk about "consumer demand" as if it exists as a steady stream into their corporate headquarters. ("We introduced the new Floozbitznitz2000 to answer our customers' demand for a combination flashlight / vaccuum cleaner / all-terrain vehicle / toothbrush -- and for a limited time we're offering it for special prices!")
In 5 words, "bullshit."
Mandrake though *is* actually opening themselves up to customer demand by saying "Hey, what features or projects are you so interested in that you would not only *pledge* to give money, but *actually* give money for?"
Don't want to give money? Don't. (To Mandrake, the local public TV station, bum down the street -- heck, there are thousands of organizations and individuals you can choose to not give money to!")
I for one am happy to see something close to micropayments for free software projects, organized by a company that sponsors and releases many kilolines of free software, as well as makes a very nice distro to wrap it in.
I'd like to see an option to send money to specific developers, too (the Linus Torvalds 10th Anniv. of Linux Fun Fund?), or to support specific sub-projects. (I'd pay $10 toward a Merlin modem for a developer who'd make them work more nicely with Linux -- anyone else?)
That it happens to be a private, distro-making company organizing this seems to tweak people a lot, but to me it's a perfect demonstration of what makes Free software work -- voluntary interactions that make people happy.
And as someone else has already pointed out, Ford doesn't have a mechanism to let you choose what aspects of their cars your purchase price of a new car goes to improve -- with software, the idea that the future will be what you want it to me makes a lot more sense than it does with nearly any other type of product.
"1) When i say "everyone" has the right to peruse public information, i mean that The Opportunity Exists. I think you are saying that all citizens should have access to public information all the time. I agree in theory, however it is impractical to say the least. Certainly most public libraries are equipped with internet access, but what about those people who are living/on vacation hundreds of miles from a public library?"
Hmm. Well, this sounds like you're saying "Since it's impractical on a small scale for many people to get to a library or other Internet access point, why should be bother to make it accessable to anyone at all?" You're right that not everyone is always at a public internet terminal, but I named that only as a lowest common denominator really, since libraries are in most towns / areas.
You also wrote: "It's their choice - as long as there is still some method of access we're still doing alright."
OK, facietious alert;)
If the patent office was only open 6 months a year, would that be "some method of access" good enough for this? How about 3 months? One week? Three days of banker's hours, every other year, and never when those days fall on Sundays? I object to government arrogance as unreasonable, but it sounds to me like you're apologizing for it.
The government (the managing authority that we pay for, *not* a kingdom or a theocracy which can claim spiritual or absolute dominion) *does* have an obligation to publish as widely as practical within its budget of our dollars, and I think that right now that means the Net -- with online publishing, we're giving it a "big enough lever" to better use the money exacted from us for its operation. Less horrible stewardship, that is. (Yes, USPTO funding is more complicated, but they do get congressional funding and they are established in the service of the public).
Heh, wish I had time for further response, perhaps later.
A coward anonymous wrote: "Public information does not mean everyone gets a free copy of it, just that everyone can peruse it. The fact it was available free online was a gift, not a right."
Two objections, at least:
1) Define "everyone" in the context of "everyone has a right to peruse it" which I think is a fair paraphrase of what you said there. OK, sticking with citizens of particular countries' own patent offices, and in the U.S.... does someone in Washington, Alaska have the same right to peruse Patent Office materials as someone in Washington, D.C.? I'd rather seem them close the physical visiting location (if necessary, not that it need be) than exclude for all practical purposes nearly everyone in the country. If it's online, available for downloading as a PDF, that actually does give anyone the ability to peruse it. Does everyone have a computer and an ISP? No -- but available screentime is easier to obtain than a trip to Washington. Public libraries in all of the various towns I've ever lived in (from tiny to humousgous) are now equipped with computers.
2) For IBM / Delphion to host that info *is* (and is about to become "was") a gift, not a right. Their online tools are better than the ones offered by the patent office itself, too. But in an age where the information can be put online with a similar application of effort to making it available only in person (and with a lot of other practical advantages too -- say, internal use by patent examiners), I'd say it is the burden of the government we pay for to be transparent unless there is a compelling reason for it not to be. So having that information *is* a right, though whether online is the best place for it may be something we disagree about. The USPTO will probably always be behind private companies in its interface etc (it's underfunded and a part of the government), but yes, the right to the knowledge it produces is shared by every citizen. That's exactly what the Net can allow!
On the other hand, bandwidth charges might be reasonable, to prevent people from simply slurping the info up all day at other taxpayers' expense, but they should be conservative and not exact an undue burden, just enough to cover actual used bandwidth / CPU time.
Oh, I dunno... there are places that sound similarly confining (see HavenCo;)) and if you like snow, darkness and books, it might not be so bad.
More importantly, though, it should be staffed like the Enterprise, with a co-ed crew made up only of attractive youngish people from all races in skin-tight clothing.
With 1/2 a million (!! could that have been a typo?!!) servers, they could probably due with a small colony of sysadmins, build a small orgy room, holodeck, etc.
Konqueror and Galeon are the ones I would name, but there are many more on Freshmeat of course which may not be all that good, and if you want text-only your choices go up as well;) Also, many people swear by Opera, even if that's not "a browser project" as I meant that phrase (which is to say, open source software...)
bertok wrote: "".9 very nice"? What have you been using until now that was [gasp] worse than Mozilla 0.9? It's the worst browser I've ever used."
A: heh -- Mozilla M12, M13, M14, M15, M16, M17, M18,.8,.8.1+... (I think that's the right sequence, or was there a.7 instead of M18? Forget right now;)
.9 is really much nicer than all that preceded to my experience. I don't find IE any better, but I suppose I don't use it very often, perhaps there are features I ought to beg for in Mozilla;)
.9 does not crash every minute or so, I happen to prefer the aesthetics of its design to IE's (esp. the new Modern theme!:) ) and I'm not finding the visual glitches that I used to find in previous versions. The speed is fine, at least on this mid-grade but fairly nice laptop (PIII 650, 128MB RAM), and there's still plenty of optimizing to do, so (one hopes) this is anything but a minimum config.
Konqui has some advantages, too, but this is not bad, not bad at all. NS 4.7X offers no advantage over Mozilla I can see, and crashes a lot more (in my experience thus far).
it's the nearly-new (few weeks old) and little-heralded Developers section, just a little different color scheme, the same way the YRO section has a different color scheme.
Expect to see things like programming / conferences / infrastructure in this section:)
Cheers,
timothy
I have the folding keybord for my Visor, I find that Visor+Keyboard is worth far more than Visor+Cost of keyboard. I'm not bad at graffiti, and on the bus or subway, clearly the needs-flat-surface keyboard is not help. Fine. But when I want to compose an email or any other task where chickenscratch -- dang, that's "graffiti" -- will cause me many minutes of slow grief as I hurtle toward death at x-many miles an hour, the keyboard rocks.
The keyfeel is surprizingly good, and I say that as someone who loathes laptop and other keyboards inferior to those which click and if swung could brain elephants. IBM / northgates rule. However, it would tend to remove the size/weight advantage of a Visor / similar if I were to carry my 7-lb IBM keyboard and monstrous ps/2 cable around.
Added to which, there is an advantage to the little keyboard over a typical laptop keyboard in that they are so flat. Laptop keyboards, sitting as they do over a bunch of silly electronics, like hard drive, processor, etc, don't really have much more room to move than the foldup type. And since the folding ones are flat, I find them somewhat less wrist stressful in typical use (random table, library carel, airline tray) where your arms are angled higher than you'd like.
RoninM pointed out that the network / servers AOL runs AIM on belongs to AOL -- good point. And since I posted that little note about "not making any friends," maybe I left the impression that I am mad or indignant that AOL once in a while implements built-in authentication tricks to get rid of unofficial clients. And I am -- a little bit, sometimes;) -- when I let myself.
But in fact, I basically agree with RoninM that as the owner of the network, AOL has no obligation to let other people ride free on the servers that AOL folks thought of and put in place as an (indirect) money maker. Annoying that some very cool clients are kicked off every few months, but nothing immoral, illegal or fattening about it -- it's sort of like if a restaurant stops giving out free ice cream.
However, this is why I say that businesses who want to use IM services might like Jabber / other Free / Open Source project as the basis for their internal msg services, both client *and* server.
No one, not even the "legitimate owner" (because under Free licenses, the right to use is explicitly granted) can take it back from them at some arbitrary future point then.
(Also, I can see people liking open source IM clients because they can be customized heavily to match an organization... company or school colors, built in links to local documents or databases, specialized phone directory, etc etc.)
One book (besides Unbridled Power) that I recommend is called "Why we must abolish the Income Tax and the IRS" (http://shopping.yahoo.com/shop?d=b&id=3222255&cli nk=dmbk-tr)...
The argument there is for sales taxes as a fairer approach, and I think that is at least a better option.
However, whatever form the actual collection takes, here is my modest proposal: link specific areas (down to zipcodes, say) to specific projects. Figure out the tax yield of a certain region, and attach it to a tax-supported project of the closest size you can find. Re-allocate each year and rotate, so people have a chance to see how much various government spending projects cost. I have a feeling that a lot of unctuous, thieving programs would suddenly grow less attractive if a group of specific people realized they actually had to pay for them.
Let's say (for instance) that a certain city generates 105 million dollars: that's the size of the 2001 congressional budget for the National Endowment for the Arts, according to http://arts.endow.gov/endownews/news00/Funding.htm l
Wouldn't it be nice if the citizens of the NEA City had some say about whether their money was being well spent on the project their money is allocated to? (I won't here get into into the even better level of determining how many households should be forced to pay for the next Andres Serrano or Chris Ofili work...)
Black budgets, pork barrel spending, last-minute, closed-door budget "negotiation" (by people who are only redistributing the money, remember, not the ones who earned it) are what lead to the best but least funny Dave Barry columns. If people knew their money was going to support silly, wasteful, counterproductive things, it might lead to some better spending, and the best spending when it comes to tax dollars is less.
I would happily re-direct some of my tax dollars away from tobacco subsidies, psychic viewers for the pentagon, money for pigeon farmers, etc to better things, and even more happily put those wasteful programs out of business (well... not 'business,' but you know what I mean) and keep more of the money I earned.
Just some ranting,
timothy
p.s. (a) Pay off the debt, then talk about "surpluses" b) all alleged "surpluses" are really overcharges for services badly rendered)
I once had a teacher (oh, and I use that term loosely) at a large American university who seemed like an obsessive supporter of Iomega products in general, but specifically Zip disks. Oh, she was so hip and techno, gosh. What a self-congratulatory blather machine.
I told a few of my classmates what a joke they were, pointed out the proprietary problems with them, how few companies ever built in Zip drives, the miniscule capacity, the high price of disks, etc. (I didn't even know about the CoD yet.) But most of them just said "eh, that's nice. Uhh... pass the mustard?" because a) it just didn't concern them all that much, and probably justifiedly so, that the cretinous pedagog said one thing or the other about Zip drives b) most people just don't care much about computer hardware, and by that I mean most people in general, not most people reading Slashdot:)
I hope that lousy, condescending, malodorous, ill-spoken sanctimonious sow had a lot of her savings in Iomega stock. Enjoy your five dollars, Fatty! (Not her real name.)
a) the typical age at which you can get a part-time job in the U.S. is 14, at least it was when I got one at 14;)
b) there are lots of jobs available to kids below that age, depending on environment, especially in suburbia: Mowing lawns / other yard work, babysitting, pool work, pet sitting. The informal economy is also nicely... informal. When I had a minimum wage job, I sure hated to see the chunk that was stripped off "for my own good" by big brother and his pals FICA and the SSA.
If I were a 12-year old so inclned right now, I'd look into networking the neighbors for a commission, reading letters to blind people, and dumpster diving for discarded computers;)
One thing I find interesting about the Yopy is that it's Korean. Samsung seems to have made some steady inroads into American electronics shops with low- and mid-grade VCRs (I had one for a few years, liked the design, but it was not long-lived) and DVD players. (And Samsung, KDS, and LG Electronics have become very visible when shopping for monitors, too.)
We've come to think of Japanese companies like Sony and Sharp as being the high-end makers for certain types of consumer goods, and I wonder if people can point to interesting / overlooked brands from other countries as well.
The large Korean combines / Chaebol (Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung, etc) make products in so many lines it's hard to keep track, but I don't see many of them in this country. (though my recent RAM shopping expedition through Pricewatch led me to a lot of Samsung memory.)
Any thoughts on whether "the next Sony" could be one of these? Right now it seems to me like the qualitative differences (texture, ergonomics, colors) are really the biggest thing separating (for instance, and ignoring other countries for now:)) Japanese and Korean products.
If not, why so?
Random thought...
timothy
p.s. I really want a free yopy, anyone who has an extra can please send it along.
More words, actually: looks like Kozmo is leaving the building. Wonder if I can pick up a cheap gross-out-orange scooter and some cool messenger bags from them?
Yes, I'd like to have local delivery service for things orderend by phone / web / telepathy, but Kozmo ain't it. Want some cat litter by mail? ("We may lose on each sale, but we make up for in volume...")
An AC wrote: "Wow, you had insider info on Microsoft's.Net strategy three years ago! Seems strange that MS only just announced it, what...6 mons ago? It's really sad that slashdot has gotten this bad. I find it odd that no one pointed out this glaring inaccuracy (or exaggeration?) above."
Dear AC:
It's now well into 2001.
And in 1999, Dell was pushing information about the ".Net" thing via Microsoft in their small business computer sales catalogs (and I bet also in the Enterprise ones), complete with little data-cloud diagrams. I had a job editing / revising copy for certain of those catalogs, and even then could not get a straight answer about the real nature of it. And ".Net" was not the first name for this MS project, though the name which preceded it is slipping my mind.
Public announcements are not the only source of information -- the hype had started long before.
There are quite a few companies porting software that used to be Mac-only, Windows-only (or Those Two-only) to Linux, and some others porting SW that used to be aimed exclusively at other *nixen.
Since MS provides the most ubiquitous office software around in the form of Office (and for those who did not purchase The Executive Version of this Record, MS Works), and is not against porting to other platforms -- at least to the Mac OS -- don't you see a potential cash cow in the growing Linux desktop market?
And as you no doubt know, but are perhaps happy about!;) there are certain "stumbling block" applications which some people who would prefer a UNIX/workalike stick to MS OSes in order to use. (MS Project, for instance.) Any thought to porting these (and keeping the customer of the big-ticket software) rather than waiting for a good-enough Free replacement to emerge. They will, in time...
So my title is somewhat facetious, since I don't expect MS to anytime soon open its source code to those things, but selling is another thing. RMS (and I) would prefer a free office suite, and generally Free code . And office suites and other Free software, already good, is getting steadily better. But a lot of businesses would probably be happy to pay you for Office. They already do, after all;)
Is it a matter of developer time? (I'm sure partlly), or is it mostly / primarily a matter of corporate strategy *not* to provide equivalent apps to a non-MS OS? (Apple certainly has that sort of strategy, and they make some very pretty software.)
While there are a lot of versions of Linux (GNU/Linux), and I've heard that as a reason for companies not developing for it, it seems like a rather weak excuse.
Of course, when MS starts selling Office for Linux (and we've all heard the rumors of the port, which you are free to be mum on and confirm or loudly deny;) ) I will eat a small chocolate hat...
Wuggers wrote: "Why would anyone need so much processing power in a web tablet? Let's be reasonable about what these devices can be conventiently used for: comfortable data retrieval (great form factor, no wires, very nice), and unobtrustive data entry (the electronic legal pad). People aren't going to be cruching numbers on them, writing novels, etc. Why a 10Gb harddrive?! A full desktop OS!? This is insanity!"
Eh?
Not that a less-endowed web pad would not also be cool (the Epod is a cool one), but I dunno... whay the heck *shouldn't* someone be able / happy to write a novel on a web pad? Anything with a USB port can take a keyboard, and a webpad with one of the new USB happy hacker boards sounds better to me than the usual laptop.
But whatever it ends up being used for, you sound anxious to limit its options -- why?! A webpad might end up being the guts of a wearable, a remote data station, a giant remote control, home automation doodad, e-book, portable knowledge base, whatever. It's like "640kb ought to be enough for anybody"... why limit when the limits aren't inherently good? A big hard drive? Cool! Maybe I'll use it as an in-field dumping station for digital pictures or even video. Why the heck not?!:) Add a small USB camera, it's my portable videoconference system.
And re: "a full desktop OS" being insanity, well, it depends what constitutes "full" and "desktop" -- certainly I'd like the OS to be appropriate to the device, but in a device with a moderately powerful x86, memory, and a nice screen, why cripple it with a weak OS? There are small Linux distros all over, and 128MB isn't too slouchy. Not huge (anymore) but not bad, and plenty to play with.
The thought process behind bothering people who would like to peacably get
past CSS for simple entertainment reasons:
"Egads! No! Now legions of anti-American
so-called "Leenux" hackers will be
able to watch the movies they paid for on the drives they bought for their
PCs! What if they now buy more movies?! They will surely drive demand to
untendable levels and wreck our industry! Wreck, I tell you!"
U. Existentialist wrote:
"The sort of person who installs an OS purely because of the games available for the platform is just the sort of person that Linux should be shunning now as it always has in the past. The last thing Linux needs is an unearthly invasion of AOLers, which would surely destroy it as a serious platform."
Bah!:)
Actually, if enough AOLers wanted to use Linux, remember, people who use AOL (my mom, and a lot of other people) are willing to pay $20 dollars a month for ease of use, simplicity, etc. Multiply by how many such people there are (and we all want ease of use, it's just that people can define it in very different terms), and divide by the number of distributions who would really like to make money selling to those people, multiply by a fraction which represents how much of that money could be funneled into R&D, UI work, etc, and... I see some nice effects possible:)
"It has been greatly to the advantage of Linux that games have been unavailable on it. This has given it a serious reputation. Look at wjhat happened to Amiga and Workbench - the fact that the Amiga was primarily a gaming platform killed it in the business market."
OK, you gotta be kidding, right?!:) I'll concede that may have been a factor in the decision making of a few PHBs, but probably also one which got Amigas onto a lot of desks in the first place. Tough choices sometimes, but no one was *forced* to play games (or edit video, or track MIDI, etc, etc) on them:)
It's to no one's advantage when a certain class of software (and "games" is pretty broad) is unavailable for a certain OS; if you really wanted 'serious' perhaps we could replace all the games that come with distros now with... actuarial tables, chemistry tutorials and first-aid instructions with graphic pictures.
Besides, Linux doesn't have to "welcome [anyone] to its fold" -- they can just come in for a while, dork around, leave some (GPL, as appropriate) code the way Carmac has, check what's in the fridge and drive away.
timothy
Re:Character motivations and other stuff
on
Hannibal's Return
·
· Score: 1
This is a really good point -- I wish now that I'd thought of this more when I wrote the review.
Verger in the book is not the ugly-but-functional guy in the movie -- he's far less mobile, relies more on his piped-in datastream on all the TVs and monitors (I wished I could purchase that part of the set and run it multi-head...)
His motivation for hating Lecter might still be plenty (I mean, he's had a long time to stew about his serious disfigurement and crippling), but in the book it was more all consuming, and it made sense in that his injuries were more intense. Also, I'd frankly rather he die by the eel as in the book, but it simply would have taken to long to work in enough backstory for that to happen, or at least I bet that was the motivation. I wish there was more of an explanation too of the long evolution of Verger's insane pig (or "insane-pig") plot.
Pete said that while dicey, he didn't have too big a problem believing that 50-year old Lecter could pull off most of the things attributed to him in these two movies.
I agree! Most of Hannibal Lecter's killings are not spur-of-the-moment; he watches his victims, figures out their motivations and weaknesses, times his attacks carefully to minimize his own exposure... as Pete says, he does not pick fair fights, does not hesitate (even seems to enjoy) drugging or otherwise incapacitating his victims first.
50 (or even 60) is not so old that any of the things he does seem outlandish (in practicality, that is, not addressing their morality;) )
I'd still way rather let Anthony Hopkins babysit my children than Bill Clinton. Imagine coming home to find the children gone with Bill as sitter. "Honestly, I have no idea where they might be. I... I was attacked by aliens. I am the most ethical babysitter you've ever had, and these senseless intrusions into my private life... I... did... not... stun and sell to that guy in the moving van... your children, Susan and Bobbie." Well, that's just a thought.
This is a good point -- markets don't simply support an infinite number of vendors of *any* products, whether software, cars, sliced cheese products, etc. The fact that Free software is supporting at least temporarily a pretty broad range of vendors is amazing (to me at least, guess I'm easily amazed;) ), and Yes, hard to deny that there will be continuing globbing of these companies...
However, I have to defend the quality of Stormix, and disagree that it's a 2nd-tier vendor in quality. (In market success is another matter -- guess it sounds like they're having at least some serious trouble right now... fmaxwell is completely correct in noting that a *combination* of factors is really what matters) Stormix (along with Mandrake) is one of the easiest distros to install, gets X working quickly, has intelligent disk tools, and seems to have an overall *clean* approach -- not as software heavy as SuSE or many others, it's true, but the result is a nice, useable system.
I hope this is a glitch and not the last word from Stormix. (Time will tell etc)
No, an anonymous and cowardly reader really did submit this:)
As another reader points out, if we wanted to assign it to a fake account we *could* have, but that's not how it works. If you think about it, it's not that strange that NewsForge and Slashdot have a lot of readers in common -- if they didn't something would be terribly wrong with their management;). Both emphasize free software and its implications, though with markedly different approaches. Now what *I* think is strange are all the stories that we link to anonymously from sites *not* owned by Andover / OSDN;) That seems like much stronger conspiratorial ground.
(I thought the story was hilarious, though, and would happily have posted it as coming from *me* if I had been the first one to spot it on NewsForge:) )
Slashdot Mirror
Companies frequently talk about "consumer demand" as if it exists as a steady stream into their corporate headquarters. ("We introduced the new Floozbitznitz2000 to answer our customers' demand for a combination flashlight / vaccuum cleaner / all-terrain vehicle / toothbrush -- and for a limited time we're offering it for special prices!")
In 5 words, "bullshit."
Mandrake though *is* actually opening themselves up to customer demand by saying "Hey, what features or projects are you so interested in that you would not only *pledge* to give money, but *actually* give money for?"
Don't want to give money? Don't. (To Mandrake, the local public TV station, bum down the street -- heck, there are thousands of organizations and individuals you can choose to not give money to!")
I for one am happy to see something close to micropayments for free software projects, organized by a company that sponsors and releases many kilolines of free software, as well as makes a very nice distro to wrap it in.
I'd like to see an option to send money to specific developers, too (the Linus Torvalds 10th Anniv. of Linux Fun Fund?), or to support specific sub-projects. (I'd pay $10 toward a Merlin modem for a developer who'd make them work more nicely with Linux -- anyone else?)
That it happens to be a private, distro-making company organizing this seems to tweak people a lot, but to me it's a perfect demonstration of what makes Free software work -- voluntary interactions that make people happy.
And as someone else has already pointed out, Ford doesn't have a mechanism to let you choose what aspects of their cars your purchase price of a new car goes to improve -- with software, the idea that the future will be what you want it to me makes a lot more sense than it does with nearly any other type of product.
timothy
Dear Alison:
You said:
"1) When i say "everyone" has the right to peruse public information, i mean that The Opportunity Exists. I think you are saying that all citizens should have access to public information all the time. I agree in theory, however it is impractical to say the least. Certainly most public libraries are equipped with internet access, but what about those people who are living/on vacation hundreds of miles from a public library?"
Hmm. Well, this sounds like you're saying "Since it's impractical on a small scale for many people to get to a library or other Internet access point, why should be bother to make it accessable to anyone at all?" You're right that not everyone is always at a public internet terminal, but I named that only as a lowest common denominator really, since libraries are in most towns / areas.
You also wrote: "It's their choice - as long as there is still some method of access we're still doing alright."
OK, facietious alert;)
If the patent office was only open 6 months a year, would that be "some method of access" good enough for this? How about 3 months? One week? Three days of banker's hours, every other year, and never when those days fall on Sundays? I object to government arrogance as unreasonable, but it sounds to me like you're apologizing for it.
The government (the managing authority that we pay for, *not* a kingdom or a theocracy which can claim spiritual or absolute dominion) *does* have an obligation to publish as widely as practical within its budget of our dollars, and I think that right now that means the Net -- with online publishing, we're giving it a "big enough lever" to better use the money exacted from us for its operation. Less horrible stewardship, that is. (Yes, USPTO funding is more complicated, but they do get congressional funding and they are established in the service of the public).
Heh, wish I had time for further response, perhaps later.
Cheers,
timothy
A coward anonymous wrote: "Public information does not mean everyone gets a free copy of it, just that everyone can peruse it. The fact it was available free online was a gift, not a right."
... does someone in Washington, Alaska have the same right to peruse Patent Office materials as someone in Washington, D.C.? I'd rather seem them close the physical visiting location (if necessary, not that it need be) than exclude for all practical purposes nearly everyone in the country. If it's online, available for downloading as a PDF, that actually does give anyone the ability to peruse it. Does everyone have a computer and an ISP? No -- but available screentime is easier to obtain than a trip to Washington. Public libraries in all of the various towns I've ever lived in (from tiny to humousgous) are now equipped with computers.
Two objections, at least:
1) Define "everyone" in the context of "everyone has a right to peruse it" which I think is a fair paraphrase of what you said there. OK, sticking with citizens of particular countries' own patent offices, and in the U.S.
2) For IBM / Delphion to host that info *is* (and is about to become "was") a gift, not a right. Their online tools are better than the ones offered by the patent office itself, too. But in an age where the information can be put online with a similar application of effort to making it available only in person (and with a lot of other practical advantages too -- say, internal use by patent examiners), I'd say it is the burden of the government we pay for to be transparent unless there is a compelling reason for it not to be. So having that information *is* a right, though whether online is the best place for it may be something we disagree about. The USPTO will probably always be behind private companies in its interface etc (it's underfunded and a part of the government), but yes, the right to the knowledge it produces is shared by every citizen. That's exactly what the Net can allow!
On the other hand, bandwidth charges might be reasonable, to prevent people from simply slurping the info up all day at other taxpayers' expense, but they should be conservative and not exact an undue burden, just enough to cover actual used bandwidth / CPU time.
timothy
Oh, I dunno ... there are places that sound similarly confining (see HavenCo ;)) and if you like snow, darkness and books, it might not be so bad.
More importantly, though, it should be staffed like the Enterprise, with a co-ed crew made up only of attractive youngish people from all races in skin-tight clothing.
With 1/2 a million (!! could that have been a typo?!!) servers, they could probably due with a small colony of sysadmins, build a small orgy room, holodeck, etc.
timothy
Konqueror and Galeon are the ones I would name, but there are many more on Freshmeat of course which may not be all that good, and if you want text-only your choices go up as well;) Also, many people swear by Opera, even if that's not "a browser project" as I meant that phrase (which is to say, open source software ...)
Cheers,
timothy
bertok wrote: "".9 very nice"? What have you been using until now that was [gasp] worse than Mozilla 0.9? It's the worst browser I've ever used."
.8, .8.1+ ... (I think that's the right sequence, or was there a .7 instead of M18? Forget right now ;)
:) ) and I'm not finding the visual glitches that I used to find in previous versions. The speed is fine, at least on this mid-grade but fairly nice laptop (PIII 650, 128MB RAM), and there's still plenty of optimizing to do, so (one hopes) this is anything but a minimum config.
A: heh -- Mozilla M12, M13, M14, M15, M16, M17, M18,
.9 is really much nicer than all that preceded to my experience. I don't find IE any better, but I suppose I don't use it very often, perhaps there are features I ought to beg for in Mozilla;)
.9 does not crash every minute or so, I happen to prefer the aesthetics of its design to IE's (esp. the new Modern theme!
Konqui has some advantages, too, but this is not bad, not bad at all. NS 4.7X offers no advantage over Mozilla I can see, and crashes a lot more (in my experience thus far).
timothy
it's the nearly-new (few weeks old) and little-heralded Developers section, just a little different color scheme, the same way the YRO section has a different color scheme. Expect to see things like programming / conferences / infrastructure in this section :)
Cheers,
timothy
I find not bad at all.
I have the folding keybord for my Visor, I find that Visor+Keyboard is worth far more than Visor+Cost of keyboard. I'm not bad at graffiti, and on the bus or subway, clearly the needs-flat-surface keyboard is not help. Fine. But when I want to compose an email or any other task where chickenscratch -- dang, that's "graffiti" -- will cause me many minutes of slow grief as I hurtle toward death at x-many miles an hour, the keyboard rocks.
The keyfeel is surprizingly good, and I say that as someone who loathes laptop and other keyboards inferior to those which click and if swung could brain elephants. IBM / northgates rule. However, it would tend to remove the size/weight advantage of a Visor / similar if I were to carry my 7-lb IBM keyboard and monstrous ps/2 cable around.
Added to which, there is an advantage to the little keyboard over a typical laptop keyboard in that they are so flat. Laptop keyboards, sitting as they do over a bunch of silly electronics, like hard drive, processor, etc, don't really have much more room to move than the foldup type. And since the folding ones are flat, I find them somewhat less wrist stressful in typical use (random table, library carel, airline tray) where your arms are angled higher than you'd like.
Anyhow,
timothy
is.
:)
timothy
RoninM pointed out that the network / servers AOL runs AIM on belongs to AOL -- good point. And since I posted that little note about "not making any friends," maybe I left the impression that I am mad or indignant that AOL once in a while implements built-in authentication tricks to get rid of unofficial clients. And I am -- a little bit, sometimes;) -- when I let myself.
... company or school colors, built in links to local documents or databases, specialized phone directory, etc etc.)
But in fact, I basically agree with RoninM that as the owner of the network, AOL has no obligation to let other people ride free on the servers that AOL folks thought of and put in place as an (indirect) money maker. Annoying that some very cool clients are kicked off every few months, but nothing immoral, illegal or fattening about it -- it's sort of like if a restaurant stops giving out free ice cream.
However, this is why I say that businesses who want to use IM services might like Jabber / other Free / Open Source project as the basis for their internal msg services, both client *and* server.
No one, not even the "legitimate owner" (because under Free licenses, the right to use is explicitly granted) can take it back from them at some arbitrary future point then.
(Also, I can see people liking open source IM clients because they can be customized heavily to match an organization
Just thoughts,
timothy
Ack!!
... I guess I let the towel drop on that one.
uh
And as the scotsman said, "Aye laddie, it depends on the saize iv yer perch!"
timothy
One book (besides Unbridled Power) that I recommend is called "Why we must abolish the Income Tax and the IRS" (http://shopping.yahoo.com/shop?d=b&id=3222255&cli nk=dmbk-tr) ...
m l
...)
... not 'business,' but you know what I mean) and keep more of the money I earned.
The argument there is for sales taxes as a fairer approach, and I think that is at least a better option.
However, whatever form the actual collection takes, here is my modest proposal: link specific areas (down to zipcodes, say) to specific projects. Figure out the tax yield of a certain region, and attach it to a tax-supported project of the closest size you can find. Re-allocate each year and rotate, so people have a chance to see how much various government spending projects cost. I have a feeling that a lot of unctuous, thieving programs would suddenly grow less attractive if a group of specific people realized they actually had to pay for them.
Let's say (for instance) that a certain city generates 105 million dollars: that's the size of the 2001 congressional budget for the National Endowment for the Arts, according to http://arts.endow.gov/endownews/news00/Funding.ht
Wouldn't it be nice if the citizens of the NEA City had some say about whether their money was being well spent on the project their money is allocated to? (I won't here get into into the even better level of determining how many households should be forced to pay for the next Andres Serrano or Chris Ofili work
Black budgets, pork barrel spending, last-minute, closed-door budget "negotiation" (by people who are only redistributing the money, remember, not the ones who earned it) are what lead to the best but least funny Dave Barry columns. If people knew their money was going to support silly, wasteful, counterproductive things, it might lead to some better spending, and the best spending when it comes to tax dollars is less.
I would happily re-direct some of my tax dollars away from tobacco subsidies, psychic viewers for the pentagon, money for pigeon farmers, etc to better things, and even more happily put those wasteful programs out of business (well
Just some ranting,
timothy
p.s. (a) Pay off the debt, then talk about "surpluses" b) all alleged "surpluses" are really overcharges for services badly rendered)
I once had a teacher (oh, and I use that term loosely) at a large American university who seemed like an obsessive supporter of Iomega products in general, but specifically Zip disks. Oh, she was so hip and techno, gosh. What a self-congratulatory blather machine.
... pass the mustard?" because a) it just didn't concern them all that much, and probably justifiedly so, that the cretinous pedagog said one thing or the other about Zip drives b) most people just don't care much about computer hardware, and by that I mean most people in general, not most people reading Slashdot :)
I told a few of my classmates what a joke they were, pointed out the proprietary problems with them, how few companies ever built in Zip drives, the miniscule capacity, the high price of disks, etc. (I didn't even know about the CoD yet.) But most of them just said "eh, that's nice. Uhh
I hope that lousy, condescending, malodorous, ill-spoken sanctimonious sow had a lot of her savings in Iomega stock. Enjoy your five dollars, Fatty! (Not her real name.)
timothy
a) the typical age at which you can get a part-time job in the U.S. is 14, at least it was when I got one at 14;)
... informal. When I had a minimum wage job, I sure hated to see the chunk that was stripped off "for my own good" by big brother and his pals FICA and the SSA.
b) there are lots of jobs available to kids below that age, depending on environment, especially in suburbia: Mowing lawns / other yard work, babysitting, pool work, pet sitting. The informal economy is also nicely
If I were a 12-year old so inclned right now, I'd look into networking the neighbors for a commission, reading letters to blind people, and dumpster diving for discarded computers;)
timothy
One thing I find interesting about the Yopy is that it's Korean. Samsung seems to have made some steady inroads into American electronics shops with low- and mid-grade VCRs (I had one for a few years, liked the design, but it was not long-lived) and DVD players. (And Samsung, KDS, and LG Electronics have become very visible when shopping for monitors, too.)
:)) Japanese and Korean products.
...
We've come to think of Japanese companies like Sony and Sharp as being the high-end makers for certain types of consumer goods, and I wonder if people can point to interesting / overlooked brands from other countries as well.
The large Korean combines / Chaebol (Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung, etc) make products in so many lines it's hard to keep track, but I don't see many of them in this country. (though my recent RAM shopping expedition through Pricewatch led me to a lot of Samsung memory.)
Any thoughts on whether "the next Sony" could be one of these? Right now it seems to me like the qualitative differences (texture, ergonomics, colors) are really the biggest thing separating (for instance, and ignoring other countries for now
If not, why so?
Random thought
timothy
p.s. I really want a free yopy, anyone who has an extra can please send it along.
Kozmo.
...")
More words, actually: looks like Kozmo is leaving the building. Wonder if I can pick up a cheap gross-out-orange scooter and some cool messenger bags from them?
Yes, I'd like to have local delivery service for things orderend by phone / web / telepathy, but Kozmo ain't it. Want some cat litter by mail? ("We may lose on each sale, but we make up for in volume
timothy
An AC wrote: "Wow, you had insider info on Microsoft's .Net strategy three years ago! Seems strange that MS only just announced it, what...6 mons ago? It's really sad that slashdot has gotten this bad. I find it odd that no one pointed out this glaring inaccuracy (or exaggeration?) above."
Dear AC:
It's now well into 2001.
And in 1999, Dell was pushing information about the ".Net" thing via Microsoft in their small business computer sales catalogs (and I bet also in the Enterprise ones), complete with little data-cloud diagrams. I had a job editing / revising copy for certain of those catalogs, and even then could not get a straight answer about the real nature of it. And ".Net" was not the first name for this MS project, though the name which preceded it is slipping my mind.
Public announcements are not the only source of information -- the hype had started long before.
timothy
Dear Doug:
...
...
There are quite a few companies porting software that used to be Mac-only, Windows-only (or Those Two-only) to Linux, and some others porting SW that used to be aimed exclusively at other *nixen.
Since MS provides the most ubiquitous office software around in the form of Office (and for those who did not purchase The Executive Version of this Record, MS Works), and is not against porting to other platforms -- at least to the Mac OS -- don't you see a potential cash cow in the growing Linux desktop market?
And as you no doubt know, but are perhaps happy about!;) there are certain "stumbling block" applications which some people who would prefer a UNIX/workalike stick to MS OSes in order to use. (MS Project, for instance.) Any thought to porting these (and keeping the customer of the big-ticket software) rather than waiting for a good-enough Free replacement to emerge. They will, in time
So my title is somewhat facetious, since I don't expect MS to anytime soon open its source code to those things, but selling is another thing. RMS (and I) would prefer a free office suite, and generally Free code . And office suites and other Free software, already good, is getting steadily better. But a lot of businesses would probably be happy to pay you for Office. They already do, after all;)
Is it a matter of developer time? (I'm sure partlly), or is it mostly / primarily a matter of corporate strategy *not* to provide equivalent apps to a non-MS OS? (Apple certainly has that sort of strategy, and they make some very pretty software.)
While there are a lot of versions of Linux (GNU/Linux), and I've heard that as a reason for companies not developing for it, it seems like a rather weak excuse.
Of course, when MS starts selling Office for Linux (and we've all heard the rumors of the port, which you are free to be mum on and confirm or loudly deny;) ) I will eat a small chocolate hat
Cheers,
timothy
Wuggers wrote: "Why would anyone need so much processing power in a web tablet? Let's be reasonable about what these devices can be conventiently used for: comfortable data retrieval (great form factor, no wires, very nice), and unobtrustive data entry (the electronic legal pad). People aren't going to be cruching numbers on them, writing novels, etc. Why a 10Gb harddrive?! A full desktop OS!? This is insanity!"
... whay the heck *shouldn't* someone be able / happy to write a novel on a web pad? Anything with a USB port can take a keyboard, and a webpad with one of the new USB happy hacker boards sounds better to me than the usual laptop.
... why limit when the limits aren't inherently good? A big hard drive? Cool! Maybe I'll use it as an in-field dumping station for digital pictures or even video. Why the heck not?! :) Add a small USB camera, it's my portable videoconference system.
Eh?
Not that a less-endowed web pad would not also be cool (the Epod is a cool one), but I dunno
But whatever it ends up being used for, you sound anxious to limit its options -- why?! A webpad might end up being the guts of a wearable, a remote data station, a giant remote control, home automation doodad, e-book, portable knowledge base, whatever. It's like "640kb ought to be enough for anybody"
And re: "a full desktop OS" being insanity, well, it depends what constitutes "full" and "desktop" -- certainly I'd like the OS to be appropriate to the device, but in a device with a moderately powerful x86, memory, and a nice screen, why cripple it with a weak OS? There are small Linux distros all over, and 128MB isn't too slouchy. Not huge (anymore) but not bad, and plenty to play with.
timothy
Bah! :)
Actually, if enough AOLers wanted to use Linux, remember, people who use AOL (my mom, and a lot of other people) are willing to pay $20 dollars a month for ease of use, simplicity, etc. Multiply by how many such people there are (and we all want ease of use, it's just that people can define it in very different terms), and divide by the number of distributions who would really like to make money selling to those people, multiply by a fraction which represents how much of that money could be funneled into R&D, UI work, etc, and ... I see some nice effects possible :)
"It has been greatly to the advantage of Linux that games have been unavailable on it. This has given it a serious reputation. Look at wjhat happened to Amiga and Workbench - the fact that the Amiga was primarily a gaming platform killed it in the business market."
OK, you gotta be kidding, right?! :) I'll concede that may have been a factor in the decision making of a few PHBs, but probably also one which got Amigas onto a lot of desks in the first place. Tough choices sometimes, but no one was *forced* to play games (or edit video, or track MIDI, etc, etc) on them :)
It's to no one's advantage when a certain class of software (and "games" is pretty broad) is unavailable for a certain OS; if you really wanted 'serious' perhaps we could replace all the games that come with distros now with ... actuarial tables, chemistry tutorials and first-aid instructions with graphic pictures.
Besides, Linux doesn't have to "welcome [anyone] to its fold" -- they can just come in for a while, dork around, leave some (GPL, as appropriate) code the way Carmac has, check what's in the fridge and drive away.
timothy
This is a really good point -- I wish now that I'd thought of this more when I wrote the review.
...)
Verger in the book is not the ugly-but-functional guy in the movie -- he's far less mobile, relies more on his piped-in datastream on all the TVs and monitors (I wished I could purchase that part of the set and run it multi-head
His motivation for hating Lecter might still be plenty (I mean, he's had a long time to stew about his serious disfigurement and crippling), but in the book it was more all consuming, and it made sense in that his injuries were more intense. Also, I'd frankly rather he die by the eel as in the book, but it simply would have taken to long to work in enough backstory for that to happen, or at least I bet that was the motivation. I wish there was more of an explanation too of the long evolution of Verger's insane pig (or "insane-pig") plot.
timothy
Pete said that while dicey, he didn't have too big a problem believing that 50-year old Lecter could pull off most of the things attributed to him in these two movies.
... as Pete says, he does not pick fair fights, does not hesitate (even seems to enjoy) drugging or otherwise incapacitating his victims first.
... I was attacked by aliens. I am the most ethical babysitter you've ever had, and these senseless intrusions into my private life ... I ... did ... not ... stun and sell to that guy in the moving van ... your children, Susan and Bobbie." Well, that's just a thought.
I agree! Most of Hannibal Lecter's killings are not spur-of-the-moment; he watches his victims, figures out their motivations and weaknesses, times his attacks carefully to minimize his own exposure
50 (or even 60) is not so old that any of the things he does seem outlandish (in practicality, that is, not addressing their morality;) )
I'd still way rather let Anthony Hopkins babysit my children than Bill Clinton. Imagine coming home to find the children gone with Bill as sitter. "Honestly, I have no idea where they might be. I
timothy
This is a good point -- markets don't simply support an infinite number of vendors of *any* products, whether software, cars, sliced cheese products, etc. The fact that Free software is supporting at least temporarily a pretty broad range of vendors is amazing (to me at least, guess I'm easily amazed;) ), and Yes, hard to deny that there will be continuing globbing of these companies ...
... fmaxwell is completely correct in noting that a *combination* of factors is really what matters) Stormix (along with Mandrake) is one of the easiest distros to install, gets X working quickly, has intelligent disk tools, and seems to have an overall *clean* approach -- not as software heavy as SuSE or many others, it's true, but the result is a nice, useable system.
However, I have to defend the quality of Stormix, and disagree that it's a 2nd-tier vendor in quality. (In market success is another matter -- guess it sounds like they're having at least some serious trouble right now
I hope this is a glitch and not the last word from Stormix. (Time will tell etc)
timothy
owillis:
:)
;). Both emphasize free software and its implications, though with markedly different approaches. Now what *I* think is strange are all the stories that we link to anonymously from sites *not* owned by Andover / OSDN ;) That seems like much stronger conspiratorial ground.
:) )
No, an anonymous and cowardly reader really did submit this
As another reader points out, if we wanted to assign it to a fake account we *could* have, but that's not how it works. If you think about it, it's not that strange that NewsForge and Slashdot have a lot of readers in common -- if they didn't something would be terribly wrong with their management
(I thought the story was hilarious, though, and would happily have posted it as coming from *me* if I had been the first one to spot it on NewsForge
Cheers,
timothy