Re:You /. people really like the word "monopoly"
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Broadband Obstacles
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· Score: 5, Interesting
In a free market system, monopolies NATURALLY result from good business practices.
Sometimes they do, more frequently an oligarchy (small number of dominant players, like the "big 3" car makers in the USA). The phone company did not arise naturally, it was one of many competitors. It convinced the government that the many phone companies would never interconnect and the USA would be stuck with lawyers able to contact lawyers and doctors being able to contact doctors, but the lawyers not being able to call doctors. Oddly enough by the time it finally convinced the government to grant them a monopoly the existing phone companies were already interconnecting (after all lawyers frequently want to talk to doctors and the services that can do that makes more money...)
So in fact we had a government granted (aka unnatural) monopoly for about 100 years. Then AT&T was broken up and long distance was no longer a monopoly, however the RBOCs still were. They had all the hard to reproduce physical assets. There is some modest competition for local business service in very populated areas, but not much else...unless you count the woefully few cablecos who are providing local service.
So you have unnatural access to the wiring from one party...
The bell DSL providers are doing better because they provide the service at a lower cost to them, with higher quality service.
Yeah, but it is widely asserted that the RBOCs provide the service cheaper because they don't charge themselves as much for access to the copper. It is widely asserted that their service is better because they control the line techs that check the problems, and keep their competitors at the end of the line. It is also widely asserted that in the greater DC area they strong arm their competitors into agreeing not to serve anyone more then 18k feet away.
This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents)
How can it be a free market operation when it includes government-sponsored monopolies? This is pretty much not a free market, it involves those government-sponsored monopolies controlling most of the resources, and government regulations that in theory force them to share. (And I'll note that is mostly in theory, not practice)
This isn't a failure of the free market any more then Microsoft attempting to port the GIMP to MacOS and failing would be a failure of the open software community.
I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Burroughs, they had the stack baised system and the security-is-done-in-the-compiler (kinf of like Java) model, right? Or was that Sperry?
You can check out Multicians.org if you're curious about Multics. [...]It was actively developed till the 80's, and finally vanished in 2000, but is still quite influencial, of course (mostly by way of Unix).
I want to second this. Multics had many things that Unix was "reinventing" in the late 80s and early 90s. In my "advanced OS" class half the papers we read were less then a year old, and 30% of the papers were on Multics. In fact if I went back and re-read the papers I might find more stuff we are still re-inventing...or at least should:-)
Unix (or Multics, or whatever they had back then running on mainframes) was the system that denied users access to the system.
Unix ran on those little wussy minicomputers, and sometimes midframes. Mainframes ran VM/CMS, I dimly remember an OS/MVT, but can't recall if that was a mainframe OS, and um, now I can't remember what Unisys had. I don't think Unix ran on mainframes until the mid-80s when Amdahl announced UTS which was (I'm pretty sure) a SysV port. Well, I assume it ran before then as an experiment, most likely on IBM 360 or 370s since you could port a new OS to VM while using the machine for other things.
Multics only ever ran on a relatively unpopular GE machine, and was (as far as I know) pretty much just a research system. I could be wrong about that mostly because I only read research papers about it.
Linux's LVM has had snapshotting for about two years now. AFAIK that's longer than -CURRENT has had the capability
Good, I barely knew LVM existed:-) FYI, while current has not had snapshots for more then about a yearish Bostic has had it for a very long time, maybe four years, but no support for forcing I/O (or at least writes) to wait until a checkpoint was made, or to allow one to drain. The difference between research systems and useful for life systems.
Not that that was really helpful to anyone other then Bostic:-)
The rumors about it being slow or buggy are just plain fud. They have fixed almost all of the anoying problems after version 10.1 and it's just getting better
Well, it does suffer from what appears to be the old Mach problem of letting file I/O push out memory pages when it shouldn't (which NetBSD's UVM, FreeBSD's new VM, and Mach's old "foe" Chorus (or was it Ameboa?) all solved). It's kind of a pain to run a small perl script to back up all my pictures to a set of CD ROMs (using cp) and have performance go to crap because of all the paging I/O.
The slow starts are gone, and the drawing seems fast enough on a 500Mhz G3. The Finder still isn't exactly snappy, but you don't grow old and die waiting for it.
It's never been all that buggy for a desktop system, but it isn't rock solid stable like FreeBSD has been for me. For example sometimes the network stack goes all wonky, but doing an "arp -d" for each address (or really the right address) normally fixes that (a trick I learned long ago on the NeXT...).
It ain't bad, and I would put it on my mothers desk in a minute. I use it by choice too. It wouldn't be my first choice for a server though.
I don't know how you can say that interface improvments are regressive. The UNIX/Linux world would still be using TWM if we all kept that mentality.
TWM? That fancy prideful window manager? Feh. No, you want UWM not one of those fancy re-parenting window managers.
And how long has Apple had high-end solutions (they work) for both Wireless connectivity and...
Er, the big deal with Apple wireless is it ain't high end. They were the first with affordable base stations (~$250 when PC ones were far more), and affordable cards ($99 when PC ones were more like $300). Of corse PC base stations are now $200 or a little under, and Apple's have just moved up to $300 (well, and gotten a bit better), and the cards are still $100 (or $47 referb). So all Apple has left is the built in antennas (which totally rock, I like having an antenna I don't have to worry about breaking off when I walk with the laptop).
and DVD recording capabilities?
I'm pretty sure Sony had one within a few months of the G4, and it may have been a few months before, similar price though, and Sony's software really does suck huge. iMovie works much better:-)
I do remember the "don't even breath until I run undelete" kinda panics. Sadly, not even undelete will save you when you accidentally open a file for w instead of a or r mode:(
Yeah, but FFS-snapshots will (if you make them frequently enough). I expect Linux will get a similar thing sooner or later...
Hmmm, that reminds me, another delete problem is snapshots on things like the NetApp NFS toaster, and the BSD FFS-snapshot stuff. Not only do you have to wait for the snapshot to go away before a delete happens, you can't overwrite the file in any easy way since the modifyed blocks are saved off.
The other peoblem with snapshots is if you notice a bad permision and fix it people can still look in the snapshots for quite some time and find the stuff! That could be a real problem for Plan 9 style systems that do one snapshot a day and keep them forever...
The fact you had to use your bosses kids as an example proves that its a niche market.
I could use my in-laws as an example (only one computer, but not close to a phone line, they decided to buy an 802.11 base station and card).
I could use myself, after using 802.11 with a laptop at work a bit I got hooked on not having to sit at my desk to use the net. I could use, um, at least 3 of my friends as an example there too (all for laptop use I think).
Of corse if everyone were like the people I knew wireless was the technology of the last two years, and has nowhere really to go:-) (at least until we buy more computers)
I think any computer savy person already knows that you just don't keep digital records of things you don't want people to find out, and you definitely don't keep them anywhere there's a remote possibility the data could be duplicated.
Criminal masterminds are pretty few and far between. Mostly criminals are kinda dim. Plus if people have been caught cheating on their wives/husbands (not illegal as far as I know, but not a stunningly good idea) by looking at their supermarket club records (catching them buying wine or condoms are the wrong shopping market, that were not used with their spouse)...well, I can imagine you could look at their palm desktop app and find a record for their hot date!
IIRC, DOS used to just replace the first character name of a file with a ? in the FAT when you deleted it, so to undelete it, you just supplied a letter to "rename" the file as.
Er, it also marked the blocks free in the FAT. Putting the first char back lets you read the file, but it won't prevent random blocks from getting overwritten with other data!
I dunno, I was just over at Macintouch reading the iPod reader reports, and everyone and their mother is griping about the lack of a carrying case, and pointing to a handful of companies that offer good ones to fit the iPod.
Of corse they are. Seldom does anyone write in about something they love! Bitching about anything they don't like is way way way more fun. So you always get more complaints the positive comments.
Plus it's hard to keep the bright polished metal back clean, so a lot of people want to hide it. Personally I just stick the thing in my shirt (or jacket) pocket and don't worry.
I've had a Visor for two years now, and have gone through two hip-holster padded carrying cases for it. I have no scratches or cracks on my Visor.
I had mine for what seems like a lot longer (from whenever the pre-orders came in until about six months ago). One small crack on the cover, no big deal. Then I crushed it with my knee when playing with the dog. I doubt most carrying cases would have protected it. Before I had the Visor I had a Palm with the little leather case. The case made it too big and I didn't really like carrying it around. That's why I didn't get one for the Visor.
They have smart marketing people setting the price on their stuff. It's not like they just make it more expensive because they want to see who's stupid enough to buy it.
Yeah, they always hit the right price point, like with the cube...
(I know, they normally hit decent prices though...a little high, but normally justified by quality components and good design)
If the initial load is *THAT* important to you-- that is you want your favorite 5 gigs uploaded in 15 minutes, instead of a couple of hours-- then pay the premium
What premium? Putting FireWire on a device is dirt cheap. I'm willing to pay and extra $10 to have both USB and FireWire.
The real premium for the iPod is the Apple brand (worthless, but you pay for it), tiny size (and to me this is worth it, I have no use for something that won't fit in my pocket), and a clean UI (this has some value, but also some cost - I would like different EQ settings on the iPod then my desktop because the headphones are different from my speakers). The FireWire doesn't really cost anything.
Fact is, with the Riot you're getting a device with 4 times the storage space, plus an FM tuner, for the same price. Oh, and you get a carrying case, too!
On the other hand it looks really bulky. I don't want to walk the dog with it let alone run. When would I carry this thing that I couldn't take my laptop?
iMovie is just a toy for home movies, Final Cut Pro 3 is the bomb for computer editing.
iMovie is also about $900 cheaper (or is it "only" $600 cheaper?), and people have done more then home movies in it. I do admit that FCP3 is far less limited, and if you need 10 video tracks and more then 3 audio tracks, and cuts/fades/effects not in the 80 or so iMovie has, then it is a much better thing to use. iMovie is a lot more then a toy, it's a great starter tool. FCP3 is a lot better, but frequently not needed.
Digital Cameras might be able to use USB2 better, but I still prefer those 3" CD Sony Mavica uses.
I just they would take pictures faster, drop into memory first, then write to disc.
You are not likely to ever get the CD writer in the Mavica as fast as the faster flash cards (or maybe even the microdrives). You want to bust on iMovie for being a toy, and then you talk about the Mavica? The D30's the bomb:-) Or really the EOS-1D, I mean don't you need 8 frames per second and huge image buffer? Doesn't everyone need to have a five stop correction range and ISO 3200?:-)
The 3" CD writere will also always be bigger then CF writers, so you won't see a digital ELPH (PS100/PS110) using one. They are almost as small as the iPod after all...
USB2 is pretty pointless for non-computer devices.
No, it is pointless for devices that you might never want to hook up to a computer:-)
IEEE1394 devices can talk to each other, point-to-point. For example, you can have a 1394 camera interfacing directly with a 1394 editing console which in turn interfaces with a 1394 VTR.
I don't know anyone who does that, which doesn't make it useless, but does make it less valuable. In fact everyone I know with a DV cam would much rather put the movie on their computer and edit it in iMovie or something.
In fact the one place I know people wanted to use device-to-device FW it failed them. None of the new high end DSLRs want to look for a hard drive to write files on, they all want to have a computer suck them out. So no using the cute little portable firewire disks to store digital pics in the field, you need a bulky laptop, or a costly "digital wallet", and definitely no expensing the iPod for use as a storage device with your EOS-1D...
Well, if their pictures are to scale looking at it and the headphones makes me think it is roughly the size of a paperback book, which makes sense if you look at all the crap they cram on the display. If it were iPod sized there would be about four lines of text (they rotated the display).
To me that makes it basically useless. I use the iPod when running, when waling the dog, and sometimes if I have to wait in line. If I'll be somewhere I can lug around that thing I may as well take my laptop which also has all my music, and some other diversions. Maybe other people will have some other focus for the device and like it better, but to me a portable music player should really be portable, not luggable.
The iPod also has a few other nice, but not killer features that this thing seems to lack.
Really? I coulda swore Jobs said 3mil on the 7th. You don't happen to have a reference do you? (I don't have one either, unless you count a ~2 hour QT feed)
Don't shortchange 'em. iMacs appeal to everyone who wants/needs an easy-to-set-up, easy-to-use computer.
For sure I don't. A number of years ago I helped my mom get a Winblows PC because everytime in the past I had recomended the technically better machine (Don't get a PC, Amiga is so much better!) it didn't work out. That thing has ben a royal pain. I had to drill a hole in counter top (with a drmel because I didn't think to bring a drill, and live 30 miles away), it's floppy failed, the software is hard to use, and bloddy things install themselves that she doesn't really want, and she can't get rid of. Plus people seel her cheap poorly working add ons (parallel port scanner -- who had to drill another hole?). And the bloody printer keeps failing (well, I think that is a problem on Macs too since they use the same cheep ink jets).
My in-laws bought a computer recently (once again I was dragged along to help). This time it was an iMac. Other then not fitting in my car as well everything went far far better. I even had to set up a network for this one (no phone line close by) and it was still simpler. Oh, and they seem to have far less problems working it. Also as an added bonus I can use my laptop on their wireless network when I visit:-)
So yeah, I think they are a great thing for people that want an easy to use machine.
Despite the fact that many other computer manufacturers *cough*dell*cough* try to come up with a Wintel supplement to the iMac, they don't do so well.
It's hard to do when you are stuck with Windows as a starting point:-)
Apple is obviously doing something well, and, with the introduction of the new iMac, they're gonna do very well in the future.
I'm not wild about the new one. Not just the styling (seeing it in person it's a lot nicer), but that it starts at $1299 which is not only $100 more then the iBook, but right at the old top-of-the-line price. Granted it is effectavly a larger display and faster CPU, but it is still above the magic $1000 price point, and well above the old $799 starting price, which was a hard sell vs. $500 crap-PC prices...
It's a good thing Apple is keeping the CRT iMac in their line up, hopefully they will continue to do so until the LCD iMac can drop below $1000, and hopefully a lot closer to $500.
The first step is slowing or blocking known filesharing ports and protocols. Users will find a way around this (they'll download the next generation of filesharing tools). So then inbound connections will be blocked. That removes all peer to peer capability, at least for connection based protocols.
I believe that some places are doing blocking, and I think the blocking is a bad idea for very much the reasons you state.
My proposal is different from blocking the ports. I merely want to give preference to other traffic. Assume for the moment that a university has a T3 (I know, that's not much bandwidth anymore, but I happen to know the numbers for that). So there is about 45Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Now assume that you and one other guy are using the net, he is streaming some data from a telescope and has a demand of 22Mbits/sec. You are grabbing a NetBSD ISO from a P2P network and also want 22Mbits/sec. Without traffic shaping you would both get right about 22Mbit/sec for a total of 44Mbit/sec. With my proposed traffic shaping you also both get 22Mbit/sec since there is 45Mbit/sec available. Now lets say I show up and want to use 22Mbits/sec to download CivIII. In the ideal world I'll get 1Mbit/sec and the two of you will both stay at 22Mbit/sec (unless I am really going to use CivIII in some educational manner). As I proposed it you and I get 11.5Mbit/sec and the telescope guy sticks at 22Mbits/sec.
Not blocked, but there is an implicit assumption that the file sharing traffic is less important the the other traffic, one that isn't totally fair, but it probably as good as it gets.
When the point is reached that filesharing is "impossible", the network will be web only. The bad thing about that is the message: The internet is the web, the web is what bigger entities serve and you consume. (All peer to peer had to be removed to stop filesharing, but that's known only to historians.)
That clearly isn't my intent, just to make sure the other traffic gets first crack at the bandwidth.
Is there a better way? I think so. Don't cripple the network technologically, but involve students in the economics of the net.
Hmmm, now who has:
put students into a consumer role which I think is the direct opposite of educating them.
I know, cheap blow.
At that price, most students would be happy to pay for the used bandwidth, if that meant no more "you can't do this, you can't do that". Offer 1 or 2 GB per week free, charge for anything exceeding that and offer some means by which the user can monitor and limit his/her bandwidth usage and everyone but the most hardcode filesharers will be happy.
That doesn't seem too bad either. I have nothing against that solution. In fact it can co-exist with the traffic shaping. You can give some amount of shaped bandwidth for "free" with normal dorm fees, and allow people to buy more non-shaped bandwidth at market rates (which may include fees above what you quoted for equipment and other things).
I don't know how many people would be happy with it and how many would not view it as an escape from being hemmed in, but another excuse to nickel and dime them to death, but that's what pilot studies are for:-)
You'd still use silicon for the wafer. To say otherwise is like saying that deisel fuel makes cars obsolete. They're entirely different problems.
I think it is more like saying "Fuel injector will make gas obsolete". Or maybe foam injection molding (of steel rather then die cast) will make use of steel obsolete...
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Sometimes they do, more frequently an oligarchy (small number of dominant players, like the "big 3" car makers in the USA). The phone company did not arise naturally, it was one of many competitors. It convinced the government that the many phone companies would never interconnect and the USA would be stuck with lawyers able to contact lawyers and doctors being able to contact doctors, but the lawyers not being able to call doctors. Oddly enough by the time it finally convinced the government to grant them a monopoly the existing phone companies were already interconnecting (after all lawyers frequently want to talk to doctors and the services that can do that makes more money...)
So in fact we had a government granted (aka unnatural) monopoly for about 100 years. Then AT&T was broken up and long distance was no longer a monopoly, however the RBOCs still were. They had all the hard to reproduce physical assets. There is some modest competition for local business service in very populated areas, but not much else...unless you count the woefully few cablecos who are providing local service.
So you have unnatural access to the wiring from one party...
Yeah, but it is widely asserted that the RBOCs provide the service cheaper because they don't charge themselves as much for access to the copper. It is widely asserted that their service is better because they control the line techs that check the problems, and keep their competitors at the end of the line. It is also widely asserted that in the greater DC area they strong arm their competitors into agreeing not to serve anyone more then 18k feet away.
To me that sounds a wee bit like:
At least if it is true.
How can it be a free market operation when it includes government-sponsored monopolies? This is pretty much not a free market, it involves those government-sponsored monopolies controlling most of the resources, and government regulations that in theory force them to share. (And I'll note that is mostly in theory, not practice)
This isn't a failure of the free market any more then Microsoft attempting to port the GIMP to MacOS and failing would be a failure of the open software community.
I'm pretty sure I was thinking of Burroughs, they had the stack baised system and the security-is-done-in-the-compiler (kinf of like Java) model, right? Or was that Sperry?
Apparently I can't remember so well!
I want to second this. Multics had many things that Unix was "reinventing" in the late 80s and early 90s. In my "advanced OS" class half the papers we read were less then a year old, and 30% of the papers were on Multics. In fact if I went back and re-read the papers I might find more stuff we are still re-inventing...or at least should :-)
Unix ran on those little wussy minicomputers, and sometimes midframes. Mainframes ran VM/CMS, I dimly remember an OS/MVT, but can't recall if that was a mainframe OS, and um, now I can't remember what Unisys had. I don't think Unix ran on mainframes until the mid-80s when Amdahl announced UTS which was (I'm pretty sure) a SysV port. Well, I assume it ran before then as an experiment, most likely on IBM 360 or 370s since you could port a new OS to VM while using the machine for other things.
Multics only ever ran on a relatively unpopular GE machine, and was (as far as I know) pretty much just a research system. I could be wrong about that mostly because I only read research papers about it.
Good, I barely knew LVM existed :-) FYI, while current has not had snapshots for more then about a yearish Bostic has had it for a very long time, maybe four years, but no support for forcing I/O (or at least writes) to wait until a checkpoint was made, or to allow one to drain. The difference between research systems and useful for life systems.
Not that that was really helpful to anyone other then Bostic :-)
Well, it does suffer from what appears to be the old Mach problem of letting file I/O push out memory pages when it shouldn't (which NetBSD's UVM, FreeBSD's new VM, and Mach's old "foe" Chorus (or was it Ameboa?) all solved). It's kind of a pain to run a small perl script to back up all my pictures to a set of CD ROMs (using cp) and have performance go to crap because of all the paging I/O.
The slow starts are gone, and the drawing seems fast enough on a 500Mhz G3. The Finder still isn't exactly snappy, but you don't grow old and die waiting for it.
It's never been all that buggy for a desktop system, but it isn't rock solid stable like FreeBSD has been for me. For example sometimes the network stack goes all wonky, but doing an "arp -d" for each address (or really the right address) normally fixes that (a trick I learned long ago on the NeXT...).
It ain't bad, and I would put it on my mothers desk in a minute. I use it by choice too. It wouldn't be my first choice for a server though.
TWM? That fancy prideful window manager? Feh. No, you want UWM not one of those fancy re-parenting window managers.
What happens if you have both keyboards plugged in? The bondi to type on, and the pro for eject?
Or you could download the dev kit and try NSWorkspace::unmountAndEjectDeviceAtPath on /dev/rdiskN (N=1 is a good guess).
Just Friday we got the second replacment for our failed 75GXP, so don't think that just because I can joke about it that I'm not bitter too...
Er, the big deal with Apple wireless is it ain't high end. They were the first with affordable base stations (~$250 when PC ones were far more), and affordable cards ($99 when PC ones were more like $300). Of corse PC base stations are now $200 or a little under, and Apple's have just moved up to $300 (well, and gotten a bit better), and the cards are still $100 (or $47 referb). So all Apple has left is the built in antennas (which totally rock, I like having an antenna I don't have to worry about breaking off when I walk with the laptop).
I'm pretty sure Sony had one within a few months of the G4, and it may have been a few months before, similar price though, and Sony's software really does suck huge. iMovie works much better :-)
Yeah, but FFS-snapshots will (if you make them frequently enough). I expect Linux will get a similar thing sooner or later...
Hmmm, that reminds me, another delete problem is snapshots on things like the NetApp NFS toaster, and the BSD FFS-snapshot stuff. Not only do you have to wait for the snapshot to go away before a delete happens, you can't overwrite the file in any easy way since the modifyed blocks are saved off.
The other peoblem with snapshots is if you notice a bad permision and fix it people can still look in the snapshots for quite some time and find the stuff! That could be a real problem for Plan 9 style systems that do one snapshot a day and keep them forever...
I could use my in-laws as an example (only one computer, but not close to a phone line, they decided to buy an 802.11 base station and card).
I could use myself, after using 802.11 with a laptop at work a bit I got hooked on not having to sit at my desk to use the net. I could use, um, at least 3 of my friends as an example there too (all for laptop use I think).
Of corse if everyone were like the people I knew wireless was the technology of the last two years, and has nowhere really to go :-) (at least until we buy more computers)
They have, the 75GXP.
Thanks, it's pretty clear your right, and I'm that whole other thing...
6Mil iMacs and over 100k iPods. I wonder how many more CRT iMacs they will sell after the LCD ones start shipping?
Criminal masterminds are pretty few and far between. Mostly criminals are kinda dim. Plus if people have been caught cheating on their wives/husbands (not illegal as far as I know, but not a stunningly good idea) by looking at their supermarket club records (catching them buying wine or condoms are the wrong shopping market, that were not used with their spouse)...well, I can imagine you could look at their palm desktop app and find a record for their hot date!
Er, it also marked the blocks free in the FAT. Putting the first char back lets you read the file, but it won't prevent random blocks from getting overwritten with other data!
Of corse they are. Seldom does anyone write in about something they love! Bitching about anything they don't like is way way way more fun. So you always get more complaints the positive comments.
Plus it's hard to keep the bright polished metal back clean, so a lot of people want to hide it. Personally I just stick the thing in my shirt (or jacket) pocket and don't worry.
I had mine for what seems like a lot longer (from whenever the pre-orders came in until about six months ago). One small crack on the cover, no big deal. Then I crushed it with my knee when playing with the dog. I doubt most carrying cases would have protected it. Before I had the Visor I had a Palm with the little leather case. The case made it too big and I didn't really like carrying it around. That's why I didn't get one for the Visor.
Yeah, they always hit the right price point, like with the cube...
(I know, they normally hit decent prices though...a little high, but normally justified by quality components and good design)
What premium? Putting FireWire on a device is dirt cheap. I'm willing to pay and extra $10 to have both USB and FireWire.
The real premium for the iPod is the Apple brand (worthless, but you pay for it), tiny size (and to me this is worth it, I have no use for something that won't fit in my pocket), and a clean UI (this has some value, but also some cost - I would like different EQ settings on the iPod then my desktop because the headphones are different from my speakers). The FireWire doesn't really cost anything.
On the other hand it looks really bulky. I don't want to walk the dog with it let alone run. When would I carry this thing that I couldn't take my laptop?
iMovie is also about $900 cheaper (or is it "only" $600 cheaper?), and people have done more then home movies in it. I do admit that FCP3 is far less limited, and if you need 10 video tracks and more then 3 audio tracks, and cuts/fades/effects not in the 80 or so iMovie has, then it is a much better thing to use. iMovie is a lot more then a toy, it's a great starter tool. FCP3 is a lot better, but frequently not needed.
You are not likely to ever get the CD writer in the Mavica as fast as the faster flash cards (or maybe even the microdrives). You want to bust on iMovie for being a toy, and then you talk about the Mavica? The D30's the bomb :-) Or really the EOS-1D, I mean don't you need 8 frames per second and huge image buffer? Doesn't everyone need to have a five stop correction range and ISO 3200? :-)
The 3" CD writere will also always be bigger then CF writers, so you won't see a digital ELPH (PS100/PS110) using one. They are almost as small as the iPod after all...
No, it is pointless for devices that you might never want to hook up to a computer :-)
I don't know anyone who does that, which doesn't make it useless, but does make it less valuable. In fact everyone I know with a DV cam would much rather put the movie on their computer and edit it in iMovie or something.
In fact the one place I know people wanted to use device-to-device FW it failed them. None of the new high end DSLRs want to look for a hard drive to write files on, they all want to have a computer suck them out. So no using the cute little portable firewire disks to store digital pics in the field, you need a bulky laptop, or a costly "digital wallet", and definitely no expensing the iPod for use as a storage device with your EOS-1D...
Well, if their pictures are to scale looking at it and the headphones makes me think it is roughly the size of a paperback book, which makes sense if you look at all the crap they cram on the display. If it were iPod sized there would be about four lines of text (they rotated the display).
To me that makes it basically useless. I use the iPod when running, when waling the dog, and sometimes if I have to wait in line. If I'll be somewhere I can lug around that thing I may as well take my laptop which also has all my music, and some other diversions. Maybe other people will have some other focus for the device and like it better, but to me a portable music player should really be portable, not luggable.
The iPod also has a few other nice, but not killer features that this thing seems to lack.
I believe that some places are doing blocking, and I think the blocking is a bad idea for very much the reasons you state.
My proposal is different from blocking the ports. I merely want to give preference to other traffic. Assume for the moment that a university has a T3 (I know, that's not much bandwidth anymore, but I happen to know the numbers for that). So there is about 45Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Now assume that you and one other guy are using the net, he is streaming some data from a telescope and has a demand of 22Mbits/sec. You are grabbing a NetBSD ISO from a P2P network and also want 22Mbits/sec. Without traffic shaping you would both get right about 22Mbit/sec for a total of 44Mbit/sec. With my proposed traffic shaping you also both get 22Mbit/sec since there is 45Mbit/sec available. Now lets say I show up and want to use 22Mbits/sec to download CivIII. In the ideal world I'll get 1Mbit/sec and the two of you will both stay at 22Mbit/sec (unless I am really going to use CivIII in some educational manner). As I proposed it you and I get 11.5Mbit/sec and the telescope guy sticks at 22Mbits/sec.
Not blocked, but there is an implicit assumption that the file sharing traffic is less important the the other traffic, one that isn't totally fair, but it probably as good as it gets.
That clearly isn't my intent, just to make sure the other traffic gets first crack at the bandwidth.
Hmmm, now who has:
I know, cheap blow.
That doesn't seem too bad either. I have nothing against that solution. In fact it can co-exist with the traffic shaping. You can give some amount of shaped bandwidth for "free" with normal dorm fees, and allow people to buy more non-shaped bandwidth at market rates (which may include fees above what you quoted for equipment and other things).
I don't know how many people would be happy with it and how many would not view it as an escape from being hemmed in, but another excuse to nickel and dime them to death, but that's what pilot studies are for :-)
I think it is more like saying "Fuel injector will make gas obsolete". Or maybe foam injection molding (of steel rather then die cast) will make use of steel obsolete...