What I wonder about are business users: How much would it take for a global corporation to make the switch to Intel-OSX? What is the amortisation time they would be looking at / hoping for?
Right now, MS is perceived as "stable" - a business can easily invest mill- or billions in an MS IT infrastructure, without worrying too much about availability of products, resources or platform-compatible hardware over the next decade or so. Even if MS is destined to die, it will take a long time for it to peter out completely.
So - what businesses need is a compelling reason to switch, which always comes down to savings, either indirectly through superior performance (which is unlikely - IT guys get MS-PCs to jump through pretty much any hoops they want), or directly via a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) - which is equally unlikely in the mid-term, not least due to retraining costs.
All in all (and IMHO) - businesses won't change in the short-term, because they are not being screwed over by MS *hard enough*, and businesses are a crucial parameter, because a large computer company like Apple (much less MS) cannot survive on private users alone.
Just surfing through the site... it seems a little sparse on technical details. Could be a IP issue I guess. Just some things I was looking for:
- Dynamic range: if the pixels are "layered", what is the impact on the dynmic range of the sensor? The way it is pictured, the red layer is at the bottom (I would have expected blue to penetrate the furthest, but there you go)... how much of the red penetrates, and are the ranges for the "bottom" colours as large as for the "top" colours?
- Focus: depending on how thick the sensor is, this could cut both ways: as it is, if you're doing IR with chemical film, you need to take the shifted focus into account... here, does this "layered" technology compensate for, or work against the focus shift between colours? (I think this could be quite a selling point)
All in all, though, it looks like *another* reason to postpone getting a D-cam, until cams with these babies come out:)
From the end of the article: "However, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Recently, Bill Gates issued a company-wide memo to all Microsoft employees dictating that from this moment forward, security will be a programming priority"
The general question being "Is society becoming too dependent on technology?", that which gives me faith is actually its imperfection. A bit like the police force, which cannot spin a net so fine that it catches all criminals, thus giving a chance to latter-day Robin Hoods, technology is far from perfect, and used in an even less perfect manner.
When I watch some of my clients, or specifically, how they use technology, it's sometimes a wonder they get anywhere, let alone depending on it totally. What they do get by on are resourceful individuals, who are always ready to reinvent the wheel on the spur of the moment, and stop any gap that appears. World tech is a kludge already, so there's no way anybody make one - there is no "central point", no cornerstone that will cause a large portion of any infrastructure to crumble if removed... and that, in this case, is a Good Thing (TM).
(I realise that I am offering up a purely anecdotal argument, so it's all just IMHO.)
The way I understood it, the point that the Edward Castronova makes is that the average EQ "citizen" makes slightly less in Norrath than the average Russian does in Russia. My admittedly meagre point (gee... how did this get to be "insightful"?) is that for this measure (i.e. per-capita income), the size of the country makes no difference. There are two separate things: a) the average EQ "citizen" makes quite a lot of money, which is actually tradable in the open, real-world marketplace (enough to put them at place 77 globally), and b) all together, Norrath is as wealthy as some small countries, with a GNP of 900-odd million dollars (number of "citizens" x average "income") (definitely *not* enough to put them at place 77) And the author of the New Scientist-article was mixing the two. That's all:)
Call me anal retentive, but "per-captia income comparable to that of a small country"?
Heck - I've got a per-capita income comparable to a small country: my income devided by one. Well, I guess it is "New Scientist", and not "New Economist", but still... Gross income? Net income? Anything...
I remember in '86 or '87 seeing a program on TV (ironically) about speeding up films on TV to make room for advertising. They had a nice comparison between Humphry Bogart smoking in "Casablanca" at "true speed" and "on speed" (weeeeee!). The latter looked... unreal - but just in direct comparison mind you.
'Course - I have no link, because them there were (gasp) pre-web days.
Kind of an obvious use of vid-tech though, innit?
Had netscape kept Microsoft in that position, then browser integration would never have been a viable option, because people would have been upset with microsoft if netscape failed to perform properly, or if they didn't really want IE tightly integrated with their OS.
Regardless of what actually happened in the NS/MS issue - I don't think people (i.e. consumers) usually think so far as to be upset with Microsoft, if Microsoft intentionaly inhibits the clean running of an application. All they see is Netscape not running well, and don't give a damn about why, even if it's glaringly clear to the 10% or so who at least know something about the technology that an app has been "hobbled", and some of them are screaming blue murder. Even then, most people just go "eh... s'not running right. Better switch".
The last time MS pulled one of those is when they filtered the user-agent string for the text string "Opera" on their UK site, and if it matched, the site refused to load - without actually stating why, of course. (up on/. a while back... I'm sure you remember).
As I say - regardless of what happened between NS & MS... consumers just don't think that way.
Endless possibilities... haunted houses - you have to be in the house between sunset and sunrise to read that bit... the cliffs the herione falls off - you have to be there to read that bit... the location of the vanilla needle - you have to be there, and gaze up to the stars to read that bit
What I wonder is how, if this comes about, the phone companies will handle it. On the one side it would be *nice* to be able to cram commercial junk into consumers orifices, as provided by the highest bidder, but on the other hand if the system is completely devoid of any kind of filter, consumer acceptance will be zero (imagine *not* being able to shut it off... *shudder*). The commercial opportunity of the era... and they just can't... quite... grasp... it.
I say (and I've said it before) - I'd set my filter to "Kevin Bacon", just for the insider-joke value.
1: The American spy plane was in international waters (as recognized by the rest of the world save China)
I had the strong impression the case was such that the plane was in international airspace (as defined by the US for China), but if a Chinese airplane were as close to the coast of the US, the US would say it was in US airspace (as defined by the US for the US). Pretty damn close, anyway.
Isn't this taking shrinkwrap licensing at bit far? Seems like you have three options:
1) open the CD in the store, read the license, decide if you like it, and make the purchase (or not) accordingly. I don't think store owners would go for opening the shrinkwrap (I wouldn't if I were one).
2) Purchase the CD, then read the license, and if you don't like it, return the CD, giving the reason that you don't like the license. AFAIK, stores successfully refuse software returns if the shrinkwrap has been opened. How is this different?
3) Purchase the CD, then read the license, and if you don't like it, chuck it. You just lost your money.
Point being, the legalese is quite unexpected. Think you're just buying a CD? Noooo, you just got yourself a piece of software, and in doing so, agreed not to look at it too hard, either. "Track three's really cool. Nice riffs. But by law you arent't allowed to listen so closely that you could play them yourself."
even when this movie came out (um, I was 12), I was way too teckie to appreciate it... "anthropomorphisation of comuters? pul-eeeze...". Now I work in a company called Business-Tron [sic], and *nobody (apart from me) knows the movie* (arghhh!) (none of them are 1337 h4x0r enough to know the old BASIC/Pascal "Tron" command, either).
Nowadys, of course, I just say to myself "Wooooo! What were these guys *on*? Gimme some...":)
...ouch! I mean, who, having come across RFC 821, hasn't thought to themselves "woo... spoofable... cool", and tried it out? I foresee the end of silicon valley, within a generation, at a tender age, if such legislation were passed.
Quote: "Barring a new invention, which is always possible, "It should take us to the end of silicon...as we know it today," he [Chuck Gwyn, program director for EUV at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.] said."
The limit for Silicon is hit when the paths "lithogrified" onto the wafers are less than a certain width, by this time measured in number of atoms. The distance between silicon atoms in a wafer is (again AFAIK) 0.235 nm, so today's 0.13-micron processes (130 nm) mean average path widths of ~550 atoms... and I assume it will take a couple of dozen, at least, to make sure the yield doesn't drop through the floor.
So - this is not about anything other than silicon, just the limits of this particular semiconductor.
What else is there? Gallium Arsenide, AFAIK. But that's another story.
There's this guy who's just moved to town and is still getting a feel for the place. One eveing he stumbles into a bar, to be confronted with a group of people yelling numbers at each other, always followed by uprorous laughter.
- "68!"
- [laughter to bring the house down]
- "104!"
- [... and so on]
He catches the barman's eye, and enquires as to the goings-on. The barman explains that it's a joke-club, and that they've codified the jokes, because they all know all of them anyway. This seems very strange to the guy, so after a while he decides to do a test. During a lull in the proceedings, he yells a number of his own:
- "824!", he yells.
The group all turn to him is surprise, before surpassing all previous efforts in expression of mirth. Gratified, and stared at by everyone in the bar, he tries another one:
- "210!"
... but this only evokes some chuckles from the gathering, and they turn back to their own proceedings.
He asks the barkeeper what that was all about, and receives the explanation that, well, the second joke - in all honesty, it wasn't really very well told, but the first one, that was fantastic - it was a new joke.
You just need a big ol' monolithic database containing all possible random strings of digits of a certain length (which will be big, OK, but so is MS Word, and people use that, don't they?), then you mix 'n match the data you're compressing, and all you have to save is the tags of the fixed random strings you're matching to, the length of which will be... oh, wait...
... by compressing some VC's bank account, by a factor of greater than 100!
"It was just data, you know," the sobbing wretch was reportedly told, "just ones and zeros. And hey - you can look at it as a proof of principle. We'll have the general application out... real soon now, real soon".
All I'm saying is that if a corporation is going to use *nix, they're going to have to have people who know *nix to operate it - and for these *nixHacks a kernel fork will be a non-event: they should know what is necessary to run the required environment. There are plenty of forks *there*, but you don't have to use them. OTOH, they might also be just what you are looking for - best of both worlds. As for the easy way and saving time/money: I agree, and that is really the problem, not so much the forks. There are plenty of MSCAs out there, but as for *nixHacks - how should HR go about separating the wheat from the chaff? How can they be sure that if their *nixAdmin leaves, they will be able to find a replacement?
I agree that it's confusing - but I believe that this issue is one of the strengths of open source. Or look at it this way: corporations are going to need People-Who-Know-What-They're-Doing-(TM) if they want to use open source *nix anyway, and such things as kernel forks don't have any impact on that.
And I bought a 1989 Ford Escort 12 years ago, and contrary to intuition, it's as good as new. Indeed, it is indistinguishable from a brand new 1989 model Ford Escort.
Now Ford just called me the other day, and said that if I wanted to continue driving, I'd have to purchase a 2002 model Ford, because my current car would stop working at the end of the year.
Somehow I don't buy (no pun intended) that the environment has changed to such a degree that my current car is incapable of taking me from A to B nowadays.
Slashdot Mirror
What I wonder about are business users: How much would it take for a global corporation to make the switch to Intel-OSX? What is the amortisation time they would be looking at / hoping for?
Right now, MS is perceived as "stable" - a business can easily invest mill- or billions in an MS IT infrastructure, without worrying too much about availability of products, resources or platform-compatible hardware over the next decade or so. Even if MS is destined to die, it will take a long time for it to peter out completely.
So - what businesses need is a compelling reason to switch, which always comes down to savings, either indirectly through superior performance (which is unlikely - IT guys get MS-PCs to jump through pretty much any hoops they want), or directly via a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) - which is equally unlikely in the mid-term, not least due to retraining costs.
All in all (and IMHO) - businesses won't change in the short-term, because they are not being screwed over by MS *hard enough*, and businesses are a crucial parameter, because a large computer company like Apple (much less MS) cannot survive on private users alone.
best of luck you guys
Just surfing through the site ... it seems a little sparse on technical details. Could be a IP issue I guess. Just some things I was looking for:
... how much of the red penetrates, and are the ranges for the "bottom" colours as large as for the "top" colours?
... here, does this "layered" technology compensate for, or work against the focus shift between colours? (I think this could be quite a selling point)
:)
- Dynamic range: if the pixels are "layered", what is the impact on the dynmic range of the sensor? The way it is pictured, the red layer is at the bottom (I would have expected blue to penetrate the furthest, but there you go)
- Focus: depending on how thick the sensor is, this could cut both ways: as it is, if you're doing IR with chemical film, you need to take the shifted focus into account
All in all, though, it looks like *another* reason to postpone getting a D-cam, until cams with these babies come out
From the end of the article:
:)
"However, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Recently, Bill Gates issued a company-wide memo to all Microsoft employees dictating that from this moment forward, security will be a programming priority"
Oh, that's all right then
The general question being "Is society becoming too dependent on technology?", that which gives me faith is actually its imperfection. A bit like the police force, which cannot spin a net so fine that it catches all criminals, thus giving a chance to latter-day Robin Hoods, technology is far from perfect, and used in an even less perfect manner. ... and that, in this case, is a Good Thing (TM).
When I watch some of my clients, or specifically, how they use technology, it's sometimes a wonder they get anywhere, let alone depending on it totally. What they do get by on are resourceful individuals, who are always ready to reinvent the wheel on the spur of the moment, and stop any gap that appears. World tech is a kludge already, so there's no way anybody make one - there is no "central point", no cornerstone that will cause a large portion of any infrastructure to crumble if removed
(I realise that I am offering up a purely anecdotal argument, so it's all just IMHO.)
The way I understood it, the point that the Edward Castronova makes is that the average EQ "citizen" makes slightly less in Norrath than the average Russian does in Russia. My admittedly meagre point (gee ... how did this get to be "insightful"?) is that for this measure (i.e. per-capita income), the size of the country makes no difference. There are two separate things: :)
a) the average EQ "citizen" makes quite a lot of money, which is actually tradable in the open, real-world marketplace (enough to put them at place 77 globally), and
b) all together, Norrath is as wealthy as some small countries, with a GNP of 900-odd million dollars (number of "citizens" x average "income") (definitely *not* enough to put them at place 77)
And the author of the New Scientist-article was mixing the two. That's all
Call me anal retentive, but "per-captia income comparable to that of a small country"?
...
Heck - I've got a per-capita income comparable to a small country: my income devided by one.
Well, I guess it is "New Scientist", and not "New Economist", but still...
Gross income? Net income? Anything
I remember in '86 or '87 seeing a program on TV (ironically) about speeding up films on TV to make room for advertising. They had a nice comparison between Humphry Bogart smoking in "Casablanca" at "true speed" and "on speed" (weeeeee!). The latter looked ... unreal - but just in direct comparison mind you.
'Course - I have no link, because them there were (gasp) pre-web days.
Kind of an obvious use of vid-tech though, innit?
This being modded "Score:5, Informative " is just about the greatest burn in the whole discussion.
Ramen noodles, eh? Whoda thunk...
Had netscape kept Microsoft in that position, then browser integration would never have been a viable option, because people would have been upset with microsoft if netscape failed to perform properly, or if they didn't really want IE tightly integrated with their OS.
... s'not running right. Better switch".
/. a while back ... I'm sure you remember).
... consumers just don't think that way.
Regardless of what actually happened in the NS/MS issue - I don't think people (i.e. consumers) usually think so far as to be upset with Microsoft, if Microsoft intentionaly inhibits the clean running of an application. All they see is Netscape not running well, and don't give a damn about why, even if it's glaringly clear to the 10% or so who at least know something about the technology that an app has been "hobbled", and some of them are screaming blue murder. Even then, most people just go "eh
The last time MS pulled one of those is when they filtered the user-agent string for the text string "Opera" on their UK site, and if it matched, the site refused to load - without actually stating why, of course. (up on
As I say - regardless of what happened between NS & MS
Hah... mindflash! Imagine a Novel on this thing!
... haunted houses - you have to be in the house between sunset and sunrise to read that bit ... the cliffs the herione falls off - you have to be there to read that bit ... the location of the vanilla needle - you have to be there, and gaze up to the stars to read that bit
:)
Endless possibilities
I see a big market for GPS spoofers
What I wonder is how, if this comes about, the phone companies will handle it. On the one side it would be *nice* to be able to cram commercial junk into consumers orifices, as provided by the highest bidder, but on the other hand if the system is completely devoid of any kind of filter, consumer acceptance will be zero (imagine *not* being able to shut it off ... *shudder*). The commercial opportunity of the era ... and they just can't ... quite ... grasp ... it.
I say (and I've said it before) - I'd set my filter to "Kevin Bacon", just for the insider-joke value.
1: The American spy plane was in international waters (as recognized by the rest of the world save China)
I had the strong impression the case was such that the plane was in international airspace (as defined by the US for China), but if a Chinese airplane were as close to the coast of the US, the US would say it was in US airspace (as defined by the US for the US). Pretty damn close, anyway.
Isn't this taking shrinkwrap licensing at bit far? Seems like you have three options:
1) open the CD in the store, read the license, decide if you like it, and make the purchase (or not) accordingly. I don't think store owners would go for opening the shrinkwrap (I wouldn't if I were one).
2) Purchase the CD, then read the license, and if you don't like it, return the CD, giving the reason that you don't like the license. AFAIK, stores successfully refuse software returns if the shrinkwrap has been opened. How is this different?
3) Purchase the CD, then read the license, and if you don't like it, chuck it. You just lost your money.
Point being, the legalese is quite unexpected. Think you're just buying a CD? Noooo, you just got yourself a piece of software, and in doing so, agreed not to look at it too hard, either. "Track three's really cool. Nice riffs. But by law you arent't allowed to listen so closely that you could play them yourself."
even when this movie came out (um, I was 12), I was way too teckie to appreciate it ... "anthropomorphisation of comuters? pul-eeeze...". /Pascal "Tron" command, either).
:)
Now I work in a company called Business-Tron [sic], and *nobody (apart from me) knows the movie* (arghhh!) (none of them are 1337 h4x0r enough to know the old BASIC
Nowadys, of course, I just say to myself "Wooooo! What were these guys *on*? Gimme some..."
[/annoying tangent]
...ouch! I mean, who, having come across RFC 821, hasn't thought to themselves "woo ... spoofable ... cool", and tried it out?
I foresee the end of silicon valley, within a generation, at a tender age, if such legislation were passed.
...how about caning?
Quote: "Barring a new invention, which is always possible, "It should take us to the end of silicon...as we know it today," he [Chuck Gwyn, program director for EUV at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.] said."
... and I assume it will take a couple of dozen, at least, to make sure the yield doesn't drop through the floor.
The limit for Silicon is hit when the paths "lithogrified" onto the wafers are less than a certain width, by this time measured in number of atoms. The distance between silicon atoms in a wafer is (again AFAIK) 0.235 nm, so today's 0.13-micron processes (130 nm) mean average path widths of ~550 atoms
So - this is not about anything other than silicon, just the limits of this particular semiconductor.
What else is there? Gallium Arsenide, AFAIK. But that's another story.
heh ... like the one about the joke-club:
There's this guy who's just moved to town and is still getting a feel for the place. One eveing he stumbles into a bar, to be confronted with a group of people yelling numbers at each other, always followed by uprorous laughter.
- "68!"
- [laughter to bring the house down]
- "104!"
- [... and so on]
He catches the barman's eye, and enquires as to the goings-on. The barman explains that it's a joke-club, and that they've codified the jokes, because they all know all of them anyway. This seems very strange to the guy, so after a while he decides to do a test. During a lull in the proceedings, he yells a number of his own:
- "824!", he yells.
The group all turn to him is surprise, before surpassing all previous efforts in expression of mirth. Gratified, and stared at by everyone in the bar, he tries another one:
- "210!"
... but this only evokes some chuckles from the gathering, and they turn back to their own proceedings.
He asks the barkeeper what that was all about, and receives the explanation that, well, the second joke - in all honesty, it wasn't really very well told, but the first one, that was fantastic - it was a new joke.
You just need a big ol' monolithic database containing all possible random strings of digits of a certain length (which will be big, OK, but so is MS Word, and people use that, don't they?), then you mix 'n match the data you're compressing, and all you have to save is the tags of the fixed random strings you're matching to, the length of which will be ... oh, wait ...
... by compressing some VC's bank account, by a factor of greater than 100!
... real soon now, real soon".
"It was just data, you know," the sobbing wretch was reportedly told, "just ones and zeros. And hey - you can look at it as a proof of principle. We'll have the general application out
Austria - check, France - check, Germany - check, Italy - check, the Netherlands - check, Portugal - check, Spain - check.
:) ?
damn I've got a lot of left-over currency to swap. Good excuse to go on a round-Europe trip
All I'm saying is that if a corporation is going to use *nix, they're going to have to have people who know *nix to operate it - and for these *nixHacks a kernel fork will be a non-event: they should know what is necessary to run the required environment. There are plenty of forks *there*, but you don't have to use them. OTOH, they might also be just what you are looking for - best of both worlds.
As for the easy way and saving time/money: I agree, and that is really the problem, not so much the forks. There are plenty of MSCAs out there, but as for *nixHacks - how should HR go about separating the wheat from the chaff? How can they be sure that if their *nixAdmin leaves, they will be able to find a replacement?
I agree that it's confusing - but I believe that this issue is one of the strengths of open source. Or look at it this way: corporations are going to need People-Who-Know-What-They're-Doing-(TM) if they want to use open source *nix anyway, and such things as kernel forks don't have any impact on that.
And I bought a 1989 Ford Escort 12 years ago, and contrary to intuition, it's as good as new. Indeed, it is indistinguishable from a brand new 1989 model Ford Escort.
Now Ford just called me the other day, and said that if I wanted to continue driving, I'd have to purchase a 2002 model Ford, because my current car would stop working at the end of the year.
Somehow I don't buy (no pun intended) that the environment has changed to such a degree that my current car is incapable of taking me from A to B nowadays.
Hmm... wouldn't that the a "circumvention"? Doesn't that word ring any bells?
I modestly propose that the govmint writes a law stating that all people must CC the US govmint on all their correspondence.
Internationally.