Personally, I believe that a phone should not be made into a browser. A phone is well.... a PHONE. You're supposed to keep it against your ear and talk into it, not look on some miniscule screen and try to type on it. That's just downright silly. I don't understand why they don't invest much much more energy in 'voice enabling' websites instead. Voice enabling is hellishly complicated from first hand experience, but it's worth the while.
There's a lot of wonderfull *theory* on how it *should* be done, and that it could be done through separating the business logic and the presentation layer, designing good methodologies to go from the business logic to either the voice or the visual (browser) presentation. The theory is all fine. However, it seems to be much much harder in reality to do a good voice representation of your business logic that translates fine into the visual domain.
Now, if they would spend some billions in creating really good tools to actually make a voice enabled site pass the turing test, *that* would make me happy, but no the possibility to have cartoons playing on your cellphone, bah.
By God, that is just unbelievable. Consumer devices with that much power, in a GAME console for crying out loud. Ridiculous... but VERY COOL. I've said in some previous post already that I like IBM's style. Ofcourse I got told then that I am SO easily manipulated, but I'm still of that opinion. I mean, everybody knows that IBM's marketing has ultimately sucked in the past, otherwise Linux would now be competing with OS2. But I have to admit that having a rather poor marketing machine but a KICKASS research and development makes IBM still one of my favorite companies (ok, I kind of like Philips too, but their marketing doesn't just suck, it's downright horrible...). I hope superior technology will eventually beat the crap out of marketing waterheads that only know how to sell stuff and nothing about how to actually MAKE good stuff. Call me naive again.
Doug, learn the golden/. rule man! If you want to be heard, post EARLY! You don't earn karma points just by being a Microsoft director y'know! And now nobody but poor old bored me is going to read Microsoft's response!
Drats, I wish I had some moderation points so I could mod you up a bit and make you look uhhh 'insightfull' ! uhhhh.... uhhhh.. ok, I didn't mean that.
Ok, lemme ask you something so I don't look like a complete halfwit. Since Gartner has apparently in all honesty told Microsoft that this whole Linux thing is just a hoax, does this mean that Microsoft is now going to close the FUD gates, (hey I said Gates!) and stop that sillyness already? Leave us alone, we don't want your company's competition, software, FUD and what all, we just want to make a COOL operating system that works, and guess what, we want it because we were frustrated with what we had, not because what we had was so great, so in a way Microsoft dug it's own uhh whatchamacallit.. gate!
I have wondered this time after time after time again... WHY should GNU/Linux users care what market share GNU/Linux has and whether some BS company like Microsoft lies about it or not? Are we not missing the whole point here that GNU/Linux is all about (well, okay, that's open for interpretation). Did Linus ever set out to write an Operating System that would actually challenge Microsoft's 'OS' ? I don't think so. Did RMS ever set out to create an anarchy that would overthrow the establishment? I don't th... ehr, well maybe:P
I would agree that 'what GNU/Linux is all about' is probably something that changes over time, but did GNU/Linux get to where it is right now by actually TRYING to beat the crap out of M$ or any other software company? I'm sure M$ would be happy to make us all believe that and to lure us to the Dark Side that way and try to make us behave like they do so we all become more predictable to them and therefore easier to beat. I don't think that some healthy competition is harmfull at all, but look at some of the people on here, I mean... it's frightening to see sometimes. Think about the 'bazaar' people, Free Software is written by the people, for the people, and not to beat the crap out of M$.
What we have here, what Free Software writers have founded, COULD IMHO very well be the foundation of a new kind of world where people will actually cooperate together to guarantee the best possible result. Getting angry with some FUD spreading CRAP #(#$)($)(^ deadbeat MORON company like M$ (sorry, had to do that;) is really futile in that perspective.
Just deal with it, Microsoft HAS already been overtaken by the Free Software movement and they are far too late to try and undo it. They cannot stop what has been set in motion anymore. It serves no real practical purpose to worry about their spasms anymore, they'll have those spasms for a few more years until they're dead while Free Software will be thriving and enabling us all to focus on somewhat more important issues than buggy software. Just ignore those spoilt rich brats in Redmond, that's really all you need to do.
You're going to have TV with an 'eye' that laserpinpoints your eyeball movements and makes sure that you're actually watching the ads by seeing if the laser reflects off of your retina. If you're not watching, an electrode that MUST be inserted in your arm in order to start up the TV will be sent a series of electric shocks until your eyeball is properly aligned again.
At work, we discussed the chance of Walker succeeding. Basically, his assumption is that by putting the thrust in the top of the rocket, he'll create some sort of pendulum effect. I even emailed him, asking him if he had any mathematic calculations to back this story up, but he said he had no such calculus at the time, yet he went on to talk about the pendulum.
However, a pendulum always has a force acting on it that's directed upwards. This is because the pendulum hangs on a wire *attached* to something that's fixed. If the pendulum would be attached to something that makes fairly random movements however (much like Walker's rocket, 'attached' to the athmosphere pretty much), the pendulum would not swing all that well and the point of attachment could easily end up being below his rocket, making the rocket point to the White house for example, and kill that arrogant Texan oilbaron. Now THAT would be funny.
This is a pretty cool idea. I've been thinking about (and working on) a 'gamenet' kind of thing based on IRC. It's entirely too immature to even discuss it much but basically it's going to be some sort of well documented and Free piece of software that any game, whether text based or graphics based, with sounds, music etc. could use as it's standard way to 'get online'. Implementing voice over IP could be implemented similarly to a DCC session somehow, hmmm.
I wonder how succesfull it would be to have such a 'gamenet', any reactions? Obviously it would be hellishly difficult since playing games is something entirely different than IRC (chat) or Napster (filetransmission on top of IRC).
'suck it up'... ? I thought you don't do that with BULLshit like this, but with other shit. Then again, I'm Dutch, so what the hell do I know. Anyway, it is truely refreshing to see such a vulgar product of the indoctrination of the consumer society actually stand up and defend rip offs as if they are 'normal' and should be 'sucked up'.
What I'm wondering is if you had these functions to begin with. From what you write it seems you did have them. In that case, this would be like buying a CD player and then later having the salesguy drop by at your house and forcibly removing your 'program' button and telling you you can only get this now for a nomimal fee.
Personally I am not sure whether this is legal, since you have purchased this equipment, along with the original features, and as long as they're not bugs but real functionality that isn't replaced in the upgrade with something comparable then it seems to me that is just plain simple theft, no matter if they break into your frontdoor, your window or through your modem or network connection.
It would be cool to publish the unfinished book on the web and have the large group of Douglas Adams fans 'finish up' the book, moderating each other on each paragraphs pretty much as on/. May the best ending be written by the geeks that love his writings:)
Sheesh. This is 'Funny' ?? By God, boneheaded arrogance will never be funny by my definitions but oh well, here goes. I've been sysadmin, I've been programmer, I've been 'last line' support. Now I do Unix back-end programming. I've worked with 'sysadmins' that can read binary X.25 code and see errors in a whole stack of printed binary trace files. I *awwwww*'ed seeing this guy in his sandals and goatwoolen socks rattle through them and finding the source of our problem. Yes, indeed, he was a sysadmin. I've met more of those people. BOFH is great too, stroke of genius!
I sometimes have to deal with Java 'programmers' these days. They're still stuck in writing process flow diagrams with their 'three month lifecycle' 'product that is creative and saves the face of the company' my ass. I've also worked with guys that integrate SS7 stacks with ATM stacks and *still* understand what the fuck they're doing. Stroke of genius.
I've seen sysadmins trashing a live Oracle filesystem because they never thought of that high reliability SCSI crossmount to the second Oracle server. I've worked with 'Programmers' in the DOTcom cumpanies that only watch their stock options prices.
</BABBLE>
Cut it out people, if you really need to prove that 'your' profession is so much better than somebody else's then by my definitions you're not 'Funny', you're pitifull. It all depends on how good you are in what you do, not in what label you, or your professional owner (sorry had to make it relevant to this discussion with that remark) has classified you.
I think... it's insane that certain tribes
in this world are allowed to torture their
babyboys at birth... I have heard that
they.... it's insane... it's like, so cruel...
They take their FORESKIN away! It should be
forbidden such torture!
You see, my point is, some cultures just think differently about certain things. This is no
reason to suggest they're bad, and there should
be laws against such things, now is it? You
have to embrace what's different because differences are beautifull, no matter how they may initially upset you.
A few years ago with a friend of mine, I built a 100 or so 'fan regulators' and made some money off of selling them. They're very easy to build, takes a couple of resistors, some capacitors, a transistor and an NTC (temperature sensitive resistance). They worked great, gave the fan minimal voltage when it's fairly cold or the system is completely idling, but made the fan spin up when it got warmer inside the powersupply. If anybody's interested, I could probably build some.
Uhhh. You're wrong on the first count. I think the Irish would have LOVED to abolish the English language, but the British pretty much put a knife on their throat saying 'You SHALL use English instead of dat Gaelic!!'.
Didn't anybody tell these people that it's good when people embrace your traditions?
Hmmmm, do you by any chance mean 'Embrace and Extend' ? No thank you.
Perhaps they should make their cultural heritage GPL'ed so that nobody can just take their cultural heritage and make it theirs. Oh wait, that'd give them cancer. Oh I don't know:P
If I would be a General like Bill Gates or Steve Balmer, I would not directly attack which threatens me most. There are interesting theories on here that suggest why Microsoft is attacking the GPL and what interesting spin that is and that GPL is the lowest common denominator of what they're trying to get at.
Let's face it, it is not the GPL that threatens Microsoft. It is not FreeBSD. Or XWindows. It is Linux that's threatening them in the core of their business, the OS that gave them the leverage they need to get where they are.
So if I'd be Gates or Ballmer, I'd start trying to break Linux based companies. Demolish them seceretively. Buy large amounts of stock and dilute their value. Disencourage people from investing money in them by making them swing up and down on a little rope. And meanwhile, give the masses something to chew on like an open and public attack on the GPL.
I must say, I really really like the idea of this. Ofcourse, this is a company that's built on top of 'opensource' software. This is a business model that has not yet proven to be succesfull for ANY company just yet. And true, sometimes these companies are just trying to hop on the train of trendy ideas. I don't think this is neccesarily true for Mandrake. I have read very good things about their distribution and the only reason I have not tried it is because I use Debian and that needs no replacement:P
The bottomline is that this company's efforts support a way of developping software in a way that lots of us/. folks like and believe in as almost an ideology. The people that work there, perhaps even their leaders, are probably/. readers themselves. It is not bad to support a company that represents part of an ideology that you support. In fact it's great in my opinion.
However, I do have some practical problems with this. Why wouldn't Mandrake be able to raise money the 'normal' way? Some investors may just be braindead and put their money in the hype and Linux is not the hype right now... but there are also investors out there that invest with a long term view. Does the 'market' always represent the value of a company and their potential? I do not think so, but I do think that when the market has NO confidence whatsoever in a company, their chances of survival get rather slim. If MandrakeSoft doesn't think a regular IPO is do-able, does this mean they think the market will not favor 'YALC' ? And if the market doesn't, are their survival chances slim to none? And if they are, wouldn't investing money in them, even through a regulation A offering just be the same as throwing your money in the ocean??
I would love to invest money in a company like MandrakeSoft if I *knew* it would guarantee their survival and not just go into a bottomless pit. This is why I invested money in VA Linux as well. I believe that the crunch at the bottom of the market right now is squeezing out companies that have not yet reached maturity. This crunch can kill them before they even get there, while nurturing them might get them through this crisis.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Re:Flywheels are a great solution
on
Flywheel UPS
·
· Score: 1
BTW: If you built portable flywheel "batteries", would they act like gyroscopes?
Well... yes. And this would mean that if the damn wheel would ever fall out of it's socket and start rollin' along, it would try to go in as straight a path as it possibly can!
Maybe two wheels spinning in opposite directions or something.
So I don't wanna live on either side!
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
From the Wheel Out of Control Department
on
Flywheel UPS
·
· Score: 1
Our flywheels also meet Bellcore shock, vibration, and earthquake standards
Honestly.... I wouldn't enjoy living anywhere near 850 pounds of fast spinning flywheel when a quake hits. Please don't bring these things to Los Angeles!!!
HAHAHA, When reading this, I can't help thinking "What a helluf a cool company!" I know, I know, it's illegal, defacing public property 'n all, bad bad bad, and what if EVERYBODY would do stuff like this etc. I must say, I admire IBM. From nanotubes and selfthinking CPU's to flower power hippie stuff covers a pretty darned wide range. Some companies pay a couple of millions to use some old rolling stones tune and other companies... well.. do this:)
I'm not the big fan of large corporations, but IBM seems to have some responsibility and a certain flair. Perhaps their past of doing lots of business with the nazi's taught them that big companies HAVE a responsibility to society and they shouldn't think too lightly of that. Give those guys a nerd award or something;-)
For me personally the Music Industry has very little goodwill left.
Initially when this whole filesharing stuff started, I was of the opinion that I would listen to new songs and buy them if I like them. For quite a while that seemed very plausible.
However, when the RIAA/MPAA started with their nasties, more and more of this plausability turned into a 'no... these people have no relation with 'art' anymore.' If anything has been established by their actions, it is that they have shown their true face, and so have a whole bunch of so called 'artists'.
Art... to me is an expression of one's inner emotions. It shows just how great people can be when they are in the right frame of mind and talented enough to display their art to the public. But Metallica, MPAA, RIAA, and then some, are like a big stinking oozing sewer leaking poisonous chemicals into a sparkling mountain creek. While I used to like Metallica, now when I hear their music, all I think is 'oh it's those assholes'. While the existance of the RIAA was safely hidden from me before this all started, now every CD branded with their logo is tainted.
So no, I will not use their 'service'. Just like I would not buy Nazi memorabilia.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of wonderfull *theory* on how it *should* be done, and that it could be done through separating the business logic and the presentation layer, designing good methodologies to go from the business logic to either the voice or the visual (browser) presentation. The theory is all fine. However, it seems to be much much harder in reality to do a good voice representation of your business logic that translates fine into the visual domain.
Now, if they would spend some billions in creating really good tools to actually make a voice enabled site pass the turing test, *that* would make me happy, but no the possibility to have cartoons playing on your cellphone, bah.
Ask Kasparov, I think he'll call it the daemon machine instead :P
Drats, I wish I had some moderation points so I could mod you up a bit and make you look uhhh 'insightfull' ! uhhhh.... uhhhh.. ok, I didn't mean that.
Ok, lemme ask you something so I don't look like a complete halfwit. Since Gartner has apparently in all honesty told Microsoft that this whole Linux thing is just a hoax, does this mean that Microsoft is now going to close the FUD gates, (hey I said Gates!) and stop that sillyness already? Leave us alone, we don't want your company's competition, software, FUD and what all, we just want to make a COOL operating system that works, and guess what, we want it because we were frustrated with what we had, not because what we had was so great, so in a way Microsoft dug it's own uhh whatchamacallit.. gate!
Now get off of my messageboard :P~
I would agree that 'what GNU/Linux is all about' is probably something that changes over time, but did GNU/Linux get to where it is right now by actually TRYING to beat the crap out of M$ or any other software company? I'm sure M$ would be happy to make us all believe that and to lure us to the Dark Side that way and try to make us behave like they do so we all become more predictable to them and therefore easier to beat. I don't think that some healthy competition is harmfull at all, but look at some of the people on here, I mean... it's frightening to see sometimes. Think about the 'bazaar' people, Free Software is written by the people, for the people, and not to beat the crap out of M$.
What we have here, what Free Software writers have founded, COULD IMHO very well be the foundation of a new kind of world where people will actually cooperate together to guarantee the best possible result. Getting angry with some FUD spreading CRAP #(#$)($)(^ deadbeat MORON company like M$ (sorry, had to do that ;) is really futile in that perspective.
Just deal with it, Microsoft HAS already been overtaken by the Free Software movement and they are far too late to try and undo it. They cannot stop what has been set in motion anymore. It serves no real practical purpose to worry about their spasms anymore, they'll have those spasms for a few more years until they're dead while Free Software will be thriving and enabling us all to focus on somewhat more important issues than buggy software. Just ignore those spoilt rich brats in Redmond, that's really all you need to do.
However, a pendulum always has a force acting on it that's directed upwards. This is because the pendulum hangs on a wire *attached* to something that's fixed. If the pendulum would be attached to something that makes fairly random movements however (much like Walker's rocket, 'attached' to the athmosphere pretty much), the pendulum would not swing all that well and the point of attachment could easily end up being below his rocket, making the rocket point to the White house for example, and kill that arrogant Texan oilbaron. Now THAT would be funny.
I wonder how succesfull it would be to have such a 'gamenet', any reactions? Obviously it would be hellishly difficult since playing games is something entirely different than IRC (chat) or Napster (filetransmission on top of IRC).
Personally I am not sure whether this is legal, since you have purchased this equipment, along with the original features, and as long as they're not bugs but real functionality that isn't replaced in the upgrade with something comparable then it seems to me that is just plain simple theft, no matter if they break into your frontdoor, your window or through your modem or network connection.
I sometimes have to deal with Java 'programmers' these days. They're still stuck in writing process flow diagrams with their 'three month lifecycle' 'product that is creative and saves the face of the company' my ass. I've also worked with guys that integrate SS7 stacks with ATM stacks and *still* understand what the fuck they're doing. Stroke of genius.
I've seen sysadmins trashing a live Oracle filesystem because they never thought of that high reliability SCSI crossmount to the second Oracle server. I've worked with 'Programmers' in the DOTcom cumpanies that only watch their stock options prices.
</BABBLE>
Cut it out people, if you really need to prove that 'your' profession is so much better than somebody else's then by my definitions you're not 'Funny', you're pitifull. It all depends on how good you are in what you do, not in what label you, or your professional owner (sorry had to make it relevant to this discussion with that remark) has classified you.
Do you get it already?
Do you?
I think... it's insane that certain tribes in this world are allowed to torture their babyboys at birth... I have heard that they.... it's insane... it's like, so cruel... They take their FORESKIN away! It should be forbidden such torture!
You see, my point is, some cultures just think differently about certain things. This is no reason to suggest they're bad, and there should be laws against such things, now is it? You have to embrace what's different because differences are beautifull, no matter how they may initially upset you.
Hmmmm, do you by any chance mean 'Embrace and Extend' ? No thank you.
Perhaps they should make their cultural heritage GPL'ed so that nobody can just take their cultural heritage and make it theirs. Oh wait, that'd give them cancer. Oh I don't know :P
Let's face it, it is not the GPL that threatens Microsoft. It is not FreeBSD. Or XWindows. It is Linux that's threatening them in the core of their business, the OS that gave them the leverage they need to get where they are.
So if I'd be Gates or Ballmer, I'd start trying to break Linux based companies. Demolish them seceretively. Buy large amounts of stock and dilute their value. Disencourage people from investing money in them by making them swing up and down on a little rope. And meanwhile, give the masses something to chew on like an open and public attack on the GPL.
Then again, that's just me.
The bottomline is that this company's efforts support a way of developping software in a way that lots of us /. folks like and believe in as almost an ideology. The people that work there, perhaps even their leaders, are probably /. readers themselves. It is not bad to support a company that represents part of an ideology that you support. In fact it's great in my opinion.
However, I do have some practical problems with this. Why wouldn't Mandrake be able to raise money the 'normal' way? Some investors may just be braindead and put their money in the hype and Linux is not the hype right now... but there are also investors out there that invest with a long term view. Does the 'market' always represent the value of a company and their potential? I do not think so, but I do think that when the market has NO confidence whatsoever in a company, their chances of survival get rather slim. If MandrakeSoft doesn't think a regular IPO is do-able, does this mean they think the market will not favor 'YALC' ? And if the market doesn't, are their survival chances slim to none? And if they are, wouldn't investing money in them, even through a regulation A offering just be the same as throwing your money in the ocean??
I would love to invest money in a company like MandrakeSoft if I *knew* it would guarantee their survival and not just go into a bottomless pit. This is why I invested money in VA Linux as well. I believe that the crunch at the bottom of the market right now is squeezing out companies that have not yet reached maturity. This crunch can kill them before they even get there, while nurturing them might get them through this crisis.
Well... yes. And this would mean that if the damn wheel would ever fall out of it's socket and start rollin' along, it would try to go in as straight a path as it possibly can!
Maybe two wheels spinning in opposite directions or something.
So I don't wanna live on either side!
Honestly.... I wouldn't enjoy living anywhere near 850 pounds of fast spinning flywheel when a quake hits. Please don't bring these things to Los Angeles!!!
I'm not the big fan of large corporations, but IBM seems to have some responsibility and a certain flair. Perhaps their past of doing lots of business with the nazi's taught them that big companies HAVE a responsibility to society and they shouldn't think too lightly of that. Give those guys a nerd award or something ;-)
Initially when this whole filesharing stuff started, I was of the opinion that I would listen to new songs and buy them if I like them. For quite a while that seemed very plausible.
However, when the RIAA/MPAA started with their nasties, more and more of this plausability turned into a 'no... these people have no relation with 'art' anymore.' If anything has been established by their actions, it is that they have shown their true face, and so have a whole bunch of so called 'artists'.
Art... to me is an expression of one's inner emotions. It shows just how great people can be when they are in the right frame of mind and talented enough to display their art to the public. But Metallica, MPAA, RIAA, and then some, are like a big stinking oozing sewer leaking poisonous chemicals into a sparkling mountain creek. While I used to like Metallica, now when I hear their music, all I think is 'oh it's those assholes'. While the existance of the RIAA was safely hidden from me before this all started, now every CD branded with their logo is tainted.
So no, I will not use their 'service'. Just like I would not buy Nazi memorabilia.