It's funny when people think that it's interesting that the internet can cater to both women and those over 50 years old. I can see that being odd some 15 years ago, when the internet wasn't readily available to the public, and when PCs were just for the wealthy geeks in town.
But these days EVERYone has a PC. People do things like shop, bank, and communicate using PCs. 66% of American women go on-line [according to Pew, 2005]. My elderly mother and all her friends use the internet every day.
So what's the big deal about a let's-share-our-shit forum that appears to attract woman over 50? I bet the on-line barbie forum attracts a lot of pre-teen girls, and the knitting forums have a surprising number of women. I even know women that use eBay.
Welcome to the new world, where women and older people use the internet too.
but what are you even going to lose on a normal cell phone apart from your address book and some text messages?
A few examples:
1. Your ability to make and receive phone calls of any kind. 2. Your privacy - who you call/who calls you could be xmited to a 3rd party 3. Your privacy - your approximate location could be xmited to a 3rd party
Cell phones work on standards. Compromising handsets could leverage these standards. Imagine all of the crazy things you could do if you could reprogram a few million active handsets.
In a way, the new iMac is like a laptop - you can pull it apart and replace components, but it isn't as if it was designed for home user disassembly (like an ATX beige box.)
On the flip side, there are Mac designs like the eMac, which require significant disassembly to upgrade the drives. And to upgrade the CPU, your only real choice is to overclock with your soldering iron. And you have to deal with the high voltage CRT.
I always liked internal Mac design, but older Macs, although somewhat elegant on the inside, were very difficult to upgrade. Sometimes you open up an old Mac and you go "woah, it is shocking that they made it so fancy on the inside of this computer". No wonder they sold the translucent iMacs. But that pretty inside was designed for ease of factory assembly, not for ease of upgrades.
Bill Thompson is right, but there is a much, much larger problem that's out there: cell phones. Cell phones are always connected to a large network. There are billions of them, And very few cell phones run any kind of anti-viral or anti-trojan software.
Although Bill may be writing to ride on the coat tail's of Apple's recent success, the Macintosh can get infected by a virus or a trojan program. In fact, some of the earliest computer viruses in the wild were found on the Mac. The Mac virus problem isn't as large as the Windows virus problem, but that's because there are many more Windows machines intermingling out there.
Any networked device, from routers to mainframes, from Bluetooth devices to cell phones to the XBox 360, may be vulerable to malware. All need robust security.
I've had no problems using GPS with Linux, but I bet it'll get worse over time, as I believe the vendors will continue to try harder to lock customers into their own software packages.
I was under the impression that there was enough propriatery work in both Apple's software and hardware that they'd had full control over retail dealing of Apple products. They can even tell dealers at which price to sell things. Could Apple sue this outfit?
We could all individually sue this outfit for having a stupid name.
But no, Apple has no particular rights when it comes to the modification or resale of Apple-branded equipment. I don't know of a contract or legal statute that the modifiers would be violating. There are no obvious copyright or trademark violations here.
I think you could buy an iBook, melt it into the shape of a ball, and sell it on eBay. And I think that Apple would be OK with that.
First the president starts recording our phone calls, and now Apple is looking at the music we buy from Apple.
What's next???
Will banks start sharing our personal data with vendors? Will manufacturers use warranty registration card data to track our buying habits? Will advertisers try to track our surfing habits with electronic tokens placed in our browser?
To me, it looks like an Apple product that Dell is trying to emulate. Like the Dell "eYePoD 2000" music/video/fm radio/cassette player. Innovation at its finest!
I had a lot of time off between Christmas and New Year's. So I got out that vinyl and gave it a listen. Heh, it DOES sound pretty darn good... shocking, in fact. Good vinyl has very little "pops and hiss".
I'm now in the process of ripping all of my vinyl (as much of it isn't available on CD or on-line). It's a great way to listen to all of my old music. I wrote about it here.
Yep, I read the article. In a nutshell, if you want support and documentation for your iPod-centric engineering effort from Apple, then you have to pay Apple. This is unprecedented? Since when?
The article does spin it as a "requirement", but it's only a requirement if you want or need the support. I can start cranking out iPod accessories tomorrow, and I don't need to give anything to Apple to make it happen. However, documentation and support is pretty darn helpful when engineering something.
This clock is designed to be more of a monument than a useful timepiece - something that will help people understand their short time on earth, versus a science instrument.
However the engineering effort to make this clock as accurate and as long-lasting as promised is truly impressive. Few things built today are designed to last that long (exception: perhaps long-term nuclear waste storage?) The materials : stone, steel, tungsten - and the size of the parts, and the mechanics of the thing that allows for 10,000 years of wear, along with easy maintenance - man, these are not things that even your top-notch mechanical engineer does.
Interestingly enough, this guy is working on a long term clock, while others can't even get little clocks to work right. Some public clocks can be grossly imprecise. It's funny how someone running a time service can't get their own time right. Hopefully the telcos will hook up their time services to this clock - or NTP services. Whichever is easier.
I do not have to pay Ford license fee to put a Fram filter, Monroe shocks, Michelin tires, Panasonic stereo, a Midwest Mustang hood scoop, BBS rims, a trailer hitch, a Vortech supercharger, larger after market fuel injectors, and a set of heads from some company in central Florida on my car. To even think that some licensing agreement with Ford should exist before hand 100% is completely insane.
Whoa, so you think that a company doesn't pay to put a Ford logo on it's retail box in order to say that it is "factory blessed"? You've GOT to be kidding. Of course there are licensing fees involved.
Some product companies don't want to pay a license fee, and so they can't use the official logo. Fram is a good case - they have a good reputation, so they don't NEED to license anything from Ford. On the flip side, Ford won't bless just any crap product for logo use.
The decision to buy a license strictly depends on if the seller thinks it's profitable to use the logo (giving customers comfort, and therefore increasing sales) at the expense of the licensing fees.
These licensing deals happen all the time. Most customers don't realize it. If you see a product box with an MS-Windows or MacOS logo on it anywhere, you can bet that there is a license involved.
The interesting twist is that they are being released as MP3 - which for the world of audio books is something pretty new.
My local public library has had a special section for MP3-based audio CDs for at least a year now. The only issue is that many traditional CD players in homes and in cars can't play MP3 CDs. But I'd rather have one MP3 CD versus 15 traditional audio CDs. Admittedly, it's a pretty darn good local library.
And regarding DRM - hell, regular audio CDs aren't DRM'd, so the execs don't need to worry about theft from an MP3 CD any more than they have to worry about theft from a regular audio CD. After all, an MP3 is only one rip away.
So what we're hearing is that we'll need to lose five GPS satellites - 18% of them - before GPS isn't 100% available world-wide 100% of the time.
Of course, an event could cause us to lose 100% of them at once. But if we just fail one at a time, the redundancy appears to be sufficient. Losing one (or even four) satellites isn't a problem. When one fails, you shoot up another. When a bunch of them fail at once - well, it could happen, but at that point all the redundancy in the world likely isn't going to help.
GPS is a pretty cool technology, but sadly some vendors are crappy when it comes to Linux or even Mac support. Platform support is what we should be pissed about. Damned Garmin just refuses to support anything well except Windows, perhaps because Garmin's desktop software developers aren't permitted to do anything except maintain their ancient Windows software. Some people have managed to get this stuff to work on Linux and the Mac, but it just ain't the same as full, documented support.
Here's a real time saver: I've taken the article and cut out a lot of the fat and left just his pearls of wisdom. This is a guy we can all learn from.
I was to be part of a team of highly skilled, versatile,.NET Ninjas. We were going to produce top-notch software for the nuclear power industry.
It did not go as planned. "You're not growing fast enough! You're barely in the middle of the pack." was the kind of feedback I was getting from my supervisor. My friends quickly learned I liked to talk about work less and less.
Only one thing kept me going -- pure ego.
They explained to me, in a level and professional tone, that I was going to be let go.
So why are you being so sarcastic? Did Rutan steal your girlfriend or something?
Ah yes, in fact he did steal my girlfriend, and that leads directly to sarcasm. As you too have obviously experienced.
Honestly, I'm damn tired of hearing about Rutan on Good Morning America and all the other faux news shows. He is a commendable engineer, but the marketing aspect of this particular achievement is very much over the top. There are plenty of engineers and scientists that have accomplished amazing things, but they go very much unpraised.
Scaled Composites simply won't let this one fall out of the news. If they keep their focus on the engineering accomplishments, they wouldn't need such a full-press marketing push.
Don't get me wrong - it isn't Rutan himself; it's the investors* trying to capitalize on their investment in attempts to augment their engineering accomplishment. They're using Rutan as a tool and a personality to further their own agenda. Show Rutan with some failures - all engineering is full of "lessons learned". Show us that he's a smart guy who takes good risks that don't always work out right.
Show me reality: I don't want a sugar-coated made-for-TV mini series that's merely based on reality. Rutan has some great accomplishments, but please don't compare the SSO success with Yeager and Limburgh.
SpaceShipOne is on it's way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. There it will join other historic craft such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and Yeager's Glamorous Glennis.
I am planning a group trip to the Smithsonian to visit this incredibly innovative machine of the 21st century. As I'm sure you know, the noble genius of Burt Rutan has once again improved the American way of life by developing this impressive ship. Soon we will all be traveling to space, and we'll remember Rutan as the leader that made it happen.
The craft was honorably donated to the Smithsonian by the Scaled Composites shareholders so that all Americans can bask in their stunning glory. They are the true American Heroes, easily meeting and sometimes exceeding the accomplishments of Lindbergh, Yeager, Glenn, and Armstrong. SpaceShipOne should be your first and last stop when visiting the Smithsonian.
A bill in Congress is now focusing on how to best teach space science to our country's children. A key part of this bill is that schools will be required to honor the investors of SpaceShipOne, and give those investors equal time with the government-funded NASA. All chilrdren should be made aware that SpaceShipOne supports the American way of life in terms of Freedom and excellence. Unlike NASA, which is a dismal failure of big government policies funded by a Kennedy that sends single-use rockets to Mars. Dumb.
The SpaceShipOne exhibit is co-sponsored by Kraft Macaroni & Cheese: another American Hero loved by all kids. When you think of SpaceShipOne, think of the heros of Rutan and Allen, and think of the delicious wholesome goodness of Kraft.
Hopefully, NYC is simply doing what it needs to do to protect its legal rights over the map. These cease-and-desist letters and fees are not always about screwing the little guy - sometimes they are about making sure you don't lose your own rights in the eyes of the law.
The real but relatively inconsequential fee of $500 might offer NYC some protection.
And therefore, hopefully the $500 will be reimbursed by Bloomburg or some high level MTA official - as a private citizen who knows that this is a neat, innovative idea.
Given the fact that Voyager only costs $4.1M a year, hopefully someone will realize that it's not really an effective cost saving measure before they pull the plug!
Whoa! I think you need a SERIOUS reality check. Do you realize what one can do with $4.1 MILLION a year? You crazy space cadets only think of yourself, and not the needs of this country:
We could rebuild Trent Lott's house in New Orleans
We could give a federal tax rebate to a person that earns $15 million/year
We could have a series of meeting with the oil industry executives - including a nice catered lunch
The government could support a mismanaged airline for an entire day
So before you just jump around throwing away our hard-earned money, please think of those in need.
Simply read the other articles and the source documents offered by both Massachusetts and Microsoft (linked by the prior) - they address all of your questions if you read them: short and long term costs, legal concerns, document retention concerns, and solutions.
- Oracle plans to be chummy with IBM products. - There is a passing mention of Apache and Hibernate. - Not worth reading unless you have a strong fetish for IBM and Oracle.
The biggest problems are keeping it together, and keeping it protected from harm, like accidently hitting it in a plane, or lightning strikes. It could become a terrorist target.
Whoa, it'll take years to build it. By then, we will have won the war on terror.
How the hell can you transfer the Windows look and feel to other platforms?
It's as dumb as taking one culture's social norms and dumping them onto another's culture. Of course, we've learned in the past that such an approach leads to death and destruction.
There are only two options here: (1) Microsoft is stupid, or (2) Microsoft would like to encourage death and destruction.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny when people think that it's interesting that the internet can cater to both women and those over 50 years old. I can see that being odd some 15 years ago, when the internet wasn't readily available to the public, and when PCs were just for the wealthy geeks in town.
But these days EVERYone has a PC. People do things like shop, bank, and communicate using PCs. 66% of American women go on-line [according to Pew, 2005]. My elderly mother and all her friends use the internet every day.
So what's the big deal about a let's-share-our-shit forum that appears to attract woman over 50? I bet the on-line barbie forum attracts a lot of pre-teen girls, and the knitting forums have a surprising number of women. I even know women that use eBay.
Welcome to the new world, where women and older people use the internet too.
but what are you even going to lose on a normal cell phone apart from your address book and some text messages?
A few examples:
1. Your ability to make and receive phone calls of any kind.
2. Your privacy - who you call/who calls you could be xmited to a 3rd party
3. Your privacy - your approximate location could be xmited to a 3rd party
Cell phones work on standards. Compromising handsets could leverage these standards. Imagine all of the crazy things you could do if you could reprogram a few million active handsets.
In a way, the new iMac is like a laptop - you can pull it apart and replace components, but it isn't as if it was designed for home user disassembly (like an ATX beige box.)
On the flip side, there are Mac designs like the eMac, which require significant disassembly to upgrade the drives. And to upgrade the CPU, your only real choice is to overclock with your soldering iron. And you have to deal with the high voltage CRT.
I always liked internal Mac design, but older Macs, although somewhat elegant on the inside, were very difficult to upgrade. Sometimes you open up an old Mac and you go "woah, it is shocking that they made it so fancy on the inside of this computer". No wonder they sold the translucent iMacs. But that pretty inside was designed for ease of factory assembly, not for ease of upgrades.
Bill Thompson is right, but there is a much, much larger problem that's out there: cell phones. Cell phones are always connected to a large network. There are billions of them, And very few cell phones run any kind of anti-viral or anti-trojan software.
Although Bill may be writing to ride on the coat tail's of Apple's recent success, the Macintosh can get infected by a virus or a trojan program. In fact, some of the earliest computer viruses in the wild were found on the Mac. The Mac virus problem isn't as large as the Windows virus problem, but that's because there are many more Windows machines intermingling out there.
Any networked device, from routers to mainframes, from Bluetooth devices to cell phones to the XBox 360, may be vulerable to malware. All need robust security.
Flash and Java support are NOT minor bugs.
It sounds like we have someone who likes to make everything P1/Blocker.
It is true that vendors are going more propietary - just see the article by this cowboy: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5745
t rex-vistac-with.html
For Linux and Macintosh, there are ways you can get at least the proprietary Garmin GPS's to work. See http://lancej.blogspot.com/2005/10/using-garmin-e
I've had no problems using GPS with Linux, but I bet it'll get worse over time, as I believe the vendors will continue to try harder to lock customers into their own software packages.
I was under the impression that there was enough propriatery work in both Apple's software and hardware that they'd had full control over retail dealing of Apple products. They can even tell dealers at which price to sell things. Could Apple sue this outfit?
We could all individually sue this outfit for having a stupid name.
But no, Apple has no particular rights when it comes to the modification or resale of Apple-branded equipment. I don't know of a contract or legal statute that the modifiers would be violating. There are no obvious copyright or trademark violations here.
I think you could buy an iBook, melt it into the shape of a ball, and sell it on eBay. And I think that Apple would be OK with that.
First the president starts recording our phone calls, and now Apple is looking at the music we buy from Apple.
What's next???
Will banks start sharing our personal data with vendors? Will manufacturers use warranty registration card data to track our buying habits? Will advertisers try to track our surfing habits with electronic tokens placed in our browser?
The possibilities are scary!
To me, it looks like an Apple product that Dell is trying to emulate. Like the Dell "eYePoD 2000" music/video/fm radio/cassette player. Innovation at its finest!
I had a lot of time off between Christmas and New Year's. So I got out that vinyl and gave it a listen. Heh, it DOES sound pretty darn good... shocking, in fact. Good vinyl has very little "pops and hiss".
I'm now in the process of ripping all of my vinyl (as much of it isn't available on CD or on-line). It's a great way to listen to all of my old music. I wrote about it here.
Yep, I read the article. In a nutshell, if you want support and documentation for your iPod-centric engineering effort from Apple, then you have to pay Apple. This is unprecedented? Since when?
The article does spin it as a "requirement", but it's only a requirement if you want or need the support. I can start cranking out iPod accessories tomorrow, and I don't need to give anything to Apple to make it happen. However, documentation and support is pretty darn helpful when engineering something.
This clock is designed to be more of a monument than a useful timepiece - something that will help people understand their short time on earth, versus a science instrument.
However the engineering effort to make this clock as accurate and as long-lasting as promised is truly impressive. Few things built today are designed to last that long (exception: perhaps long-term nuclear waste storage?) The materials : stone, steel, tungsten - and the size of the parts, and the mechanics of the thing that allows for 10,000 years of wear, along with easy maintenance - man, these are not things that even your top-notch mechanical engineer does.
Interestingly enough, this guy is working on a long term clock, while others can't even get little clocks to work right. Some public clocks can be grossly imprecise. It's funny how someone running a time service can't get their own time right. Hopefully the telcos will hook up their time services to this clock - or NTP services. Whichever is easier.
I do not have to pay Ford license fee to put a Fram filter, Monroe shocks, Michelin tires, Panasonic stereo, a Midwest Mustang hood scoop, BBS rims, a trailer hitch, a Vortech supercharger, larger after market fuel injectors, and a set of heads from some company in central Florida on my car. To even think that some licensing agreement with Ford should exist before hand 100% is completely insane.
Whoa, so you think that a company doesn't pay to put a Ford logo on it's retail box in order to say that it is "factory blessed"? You've GOT to be kidding. Of course there are licensing fees involved.
Some product companies don't want to pay a license fee, and so they can't use the official logo. Fram is a good case - they have a good reputation, so they don't NEED to license anything from Ford. On the flip side, Ford won't bless just any crap product for logo use.
The decision to buy a license strictly depends on if the seller thinks it's profitable to use the logo (giving customers comfort, and therefore increasing sales) at the expense of the licensing fees.
These licensing deals happen all the time. Most customers don't realize it. If you see a product box with an MS-Windows or MacOS logo on it anywhere, you can bet that there is a license involved.
The interesting twist is that they are being released as MP3 - which for the world of audio books is something pretty new.
My local public library has had a special section for MP3-based audio CDs for at least a year now. The only issue is that many traditional CD players in homes and in cars can't play MP3 CDs. But I'd rather have one MP3 CD versus 15 traditional audio CDs. Admittedly, it's a pretty darn good local library.
And regarding DRM - hell, regular audio CDs aren't DRM'd, so the execs don't need to worry about theft from an MP3 CD any more than they have to worry about theft from a regular audio CD. After all, an MP3 is only one rip away.
So what we're hearing is that we'll need to lose five GPS satellites - 18% of them - before GPS isn't 100% available world-wide 100% of the time.
Of course, an event could cause us to lose 100% of them at once. But if we just fail one at a time, the redundancy appears to be sufficient. Losing one (or even four) satellites isn't a problem. When one fails, you shoot up another. When a bunch of them fail at once - well, it could happen, but at that point all the redundancy in the world likely isn't going to help.
GPS is a pretty cool technology, but sadly some vendors are crappy when it comes to Linux or even Mac support. Platform support is what we should be pissed about. Damned Garmin just refuses to support anything well except Windows, perhaps because Garmin's desktop software developers aren't permitted to do anything except maintain their ancient Windows software. Some people have managed to get this stuff to work on Linux and the Mac, but it just ain't the same as full, documented support.
Maybe the Mac is too hard for them.
Here's a real time saver: I've taken the article and cut out a lot of the fat and left just his pearls of wisdom. This is a guy we can all learn from.
.NET Ninjas. We were going to produce top-notch software for the nuclear power industry.
I was to be part of a team of highly skilled, versatile,
It did not go as planned. "You're not growing fast enough! You're barely in the middle of the pack." was the kind of feedback I was getting from my supervisor. My friends quickly learned I liked to talk about work less and less.
Only one thing kept me going -- pure ego.
They explained to me, in a level and professional tone, that I was going to be let go.
So why are you being so sarcastic? Did Rutan steal your girlfriend or something?
Ah yes, in fact he did steal my girlfriend, and that leads directly to sarcasm. As you too have obviously experienced.
Honestly, I'm damn tired of hearing about Rutan on Good Morning America and all the other faux news shows. He is a commendable engineer, but the marketing aspect of this particular achievement is very much over the top. There are plenty of engineers and scientists that have accomplished amazing things, but they go very much unpraised.
Scaled Composites simply won't let this one fall out of the news. If they keep their focus on the engineering accomplishments, they wouldn't need such a full-press marketing push.
Don't get me wrong - it isn't Rutan himself; it's the investors* trying to capitalize on their investment in attempts to augment their engineering accomplishment. They're using Rutan as a tool and a personality to further their own agenda. Show Rutan with some failures - all engineering is full of "lessons learned". Show us that he's a smart guy who takes good risks that don't always work out right.
Show me reality: I don't want a sugar-coated made-for-TV mini series that's merely based on reality. Rutan has some great accomplishments, but please don't compare the SSO success with Yeager and Limburgh.
* yes, I know Rutan is an investor too
SpaceShipOne is on it's way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. There it will join other historic craft such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and Yeager's Glamorous Glennis.
I am planning a group trip to the Smithsonian to visit this incredibly innovative machine of the 21st century. As I'm sure you know, the noble genius of Burt Rutan has once again improved the American way of life by developing this impressive ship. Soon we will all be traveling to space, and we'll remember Rutan as the leader that made it happen.
The craft was honorably donated to the Smithsonian by the Scaled Composites shareholders so that all Americans can bask in their stunning glory. They are the true American Heroes, easily meeting and sometimes exceeding the accomplishments of Lindbergh, Yeager, Glenn, and Armstrong. SpaceShipOne should be your first and last stop when visiting the Smithsonian.
A bill in Congress is now focusing on how to best teach space science to our country's children. A key part of this bill is that schools will be required to honor the investors of SpaceShipOne, and give those investors equal time with the government-funded NASA. All chilrdren should be made aware that SpaceShipOne supports the American way of life in terms of Freedom and excellence. Unlike NASA, which is a dismal failure of big government policies funded by a Kennedy that sends single-use rockets to Mars. Dumb.
The SpaceShipOne exhibit is co-sponsored by Kraft Macaroni & Cheese: another American Hero loved by all kids. When you think of SpaceShipOne, think of the heros of Rutan and Allen, and think of the delicious wholesome goodness of Kraft.
Hopefully, NYC is simply doing what it needs to do to protect its legal rights over the map. These cease-and-desist letters and fees are not always about screwing the little guy - sometimes they are about making sure you don't lose your own rights in the eyes of the law.
The real but relatively inconsequential fee of $500 might offer NYC some protection.
And therefore, hopefully the $500 will be reimbursed by Bloomburg or some high level MTA official - as a private citizen who knows that this is a neat, innovative idea.
Whoa! I think you need a SERIOUS reality check. Do you realize what one can do with $4.1 MILLION a year? You crazy space cadets only think of yourself, and not the needs of this country:
So before you just jump around throwing away our hard-earned money, please think of those in need.
Simply read the other articles and the source documents offered by both Massachusetts and Microsoft (linked by the prior) - they address all of your questions if you read them: short and long term costs, legal concerns, document retention concerns, and solutions.
- Oracle plans to be chummy with IBM products.
- There is a passing mention of Apache and Hibernate.
- Not worth reading unless you have a strong fetish for IBM and Oracle.
The biggest problems are keeping it together, and keeping it protected from harm, like accidently hitting it in a plane, or lightning strikes. It could become a terrorist target.
Whoa, it'll take years to build it. By then, we will have won the war on terror.
How the hell can you transfer the Windows look and feel to other platforms?
It's as dumb as taking one culture's social norms and dumping them onto another's culture. Of course, we've learned in the past that such an approach leads to death and destruction.
There are only two options here: (1) Microsoft is stupid, or (2) Microsoft would like to encourage death and destruction.
Lexmark discounts certain cartridges with the understanding that the user will return the spent cartridges to Lexmark.
I often see $1.25 Lexmark carts on the shelves at Staples.
Yeah, right. That's what I call bullshit.
Now we can look forward to buying cars that are only licensed to use Exxon fuel, and if we use any other fuel we'll be thrown in jail.
Welcome to the new corporate-regulated America.