I still think one of the main reasons MD failed to catch on (here in the U.S.), was the down-play of re-recording capability. MD hit the market before the CD-RW and portable flash/HDD players, but there are still many people around that don't know what MD even is.
It seems that Sony wanted people to see the MD as a CD replacement (to the point that they even released some music singles on non-recordable MDs). Sure, there were many people 'in the know' (DJs, many people in Europe), but Joe Six-pack was left out in the cold. LP and cassette tape were replaced by the CD for playback, but there was no main-stream replacement for the -recording- capability of tape. Just imagine what the response would have been if MD were widely advertised as the tape cassette replacement: "It's like tape, only better! Clean, clear music like a CD, and you can record to it! Know how tapes can jam and worst of all, wear out in time? Worry no more! Re-record to the MD as many times as you like, blahblahblah." (yeah, I know, technically it's marketting BS, but that exact same marketting BS made it's way onto the box my MD player/recorder -came in- back then, too...)
The 'killer app' for MD was re-recording capability, and here in the US, the MD missed the boat.
Granted, the USB storage ability tempts me. Wonder if the feds. will start seizing MDs labelled 'Trance Mix' now too, when they come for 'hacker' evidence collection...;)
Now, when Nimoy releases a new record as well, then we can start worrying. You don't know the meaning of 'shock and awe' 'til you've heard the whole damn album that 'The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins' comes from. "The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy," Side One 'Mr. Spock' and Side Two 'Leonard Nimoy.' I mean, daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn... o.o
I mean, really. Time it, cash transaction versus the credit swipe... the approval... waiting for the receipt... singing the receipt. Want to leave the table after a nice dinner? Fine, slip your bills into the payment binder thing, use your change for the server's tip (provided you don't have only big bills), get up, get out. No signatures, no electronic trails.
Nothing says 'anonymous' more than cash, and cash still goes places where American Express/Visa/whatever have not been, and probably never will be. Bills still talk a lot louder than plastics...
And it doesn't cost anything for the 'privlege' of spending your own damn money when you use cash...
Kinda tells you something, when the world of 'credit' is starting to favor people who the creditors know will default and be indentured for years upon years to come......
Anyone else notice how much this thing looks like a first gen. model of Alita's 'Tuned' cycle?
Just a random musing from an anime/manga fan...:)
(oh yeah, and to pre-empt the usual replies, you 'anime iz just pr0n and/or anime fans are freaks/faggots/pedophiles/whatever' trolls can all just fsck yourselves. Have a nice day.)
When equating the 'value' of something, especially in earlier phases of development, evaluating a technology on basis of perceived cost is NOT a winning solution.
I like the "tournament" ideas discussed so far, as DARPA should really test ALL the submissions. Find the best technology now, and further development WILL bring the cost down in the long run. Simply saying 'Oh, but this one is too expensive' has too much potential to eliminate superior technology.
$50/mon for DSL line through Qwest (Qworst as we like to refer to them), $19/mon for ISP at www.csolutions.net. Can run as many machines, as many servers as I want, and can get up to 5 static IPs for $1/each/month. Uptime's been great, customer suport that's been reliable and very available.
My work also has a T-1 through them. Not only the T-1 connection, but also a full Class C block of IPs, all for the price of -just- the T-1 from anyone else 'round here. Then again, we signed up as the ISP was first formed so I believe we got a wee bit of a deal for -that-.;)
Very good service, good people, highly recommended. There -are- still good, smaller-scale ISPs out there, sometimes it's a matter of persistence and luck (the people who formed this ISP broke off from our former ISP, due to mergers and changes in company policies. We just happened to catch word of it as it was happening and jump on with them).
Microsoft taking lessons from the medieval Catholic church?;)
Forget the name, but there's the writings of a monk in the British isles, on how to interpret the existing pagan holidays of the area to 'Christian ideals,' where many of our modern holidays really come from (down to the use of evergreen trees for Christmas, use of silver and gold lights, etc). Interesting read, really...
I mean, it'd only be really cool if they programmed the driving after KITT or the General Lee:
-and the potential to become airborne when hitting bumps. Robot driver - "Hot damn, bet I could get some serious height jumping off those rocks over there! Balls to the wall, baby!"
We'd prefer ICANN to become more of a trade association that promotes the growth of the network rather than a regulatory body - Of course you would, as those 'trade assosciates' would have commercial interests on the line. 'Hey, if someone mis-spells a domain, they get a search page. We could sell advertising space, search placement, etc. Anyone disagree with this idea?' Riiiight...
How do we build a commercial business with ground rules that seem to shift based on personal agenda and emotion versus any particular logical data set? - Of course, that 'particular logical data set' = 'profit!' When 'agendas' and 'emotions' express things such as 'This network should be free of censorship, free of centralized control,' then yes, they ARE anathema to corporate profit philosophies.
Are we going to be in a position to do innovation on this infrastructure, or are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do? - Getting into evolutionary dead-ends is generally a Bad Thing, yes. However, most 'innovation' I hear discussed is for the benefit of corporate interests, rather than improvements of underlying functionality.
A few years ago, there was the talk of making 'Internet 2', making a completely new infrastructure to replace backbones, etc. It would be 'the way of the future,' where we could have 'content on demand,' 'accurate, real-time tele-conferencing,' etc, etc, ad infinitum. Well, after blowing smoke out of their collective a$$es for a time, they've realized the costs and effort involved (back then fiber was being laid down like mad, with no end in sight, so the infrastructure for it would 'just be there'). The talk of a 'second Internet' created/operated/controlled by corporations has dwindled to a trickle. Now, the corporate effort is focusing more and more on the existing Internet. The 'content providers' (MPAA, RIAA), the infrastructure owners (ie. Sprint), 500 lb. gorillas such as Verisign, are now all focusing on the existing Internet, and the 'evolution' and 'innovation' they want are to make the existing Internet into the corporate Utopia that the 'Internet 2' was supposed to be. And it's only going to continue getting worse...
That base level of DNS (domain name system) response is an obligation we took on when we inherited that contract. But it would be commercially unreasonable for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be allowed to build incremental services on top of that if they deliver value. - 'Embrace and extend,' as it were... But how much over-head would all these 'features' entail? For example, the following gem: The funny thing about digital security is that we've lived in a world where we only knew someone was attacking us when they hit our firewalls. It's time to evolve that world so that we get the information that an attack is coming before it hits our front door. What the hell?!? So what do you have, 'notification' packets sent before the 'real' packets?? Do you delay the 'real' packets to give enough time between the 'notification' and 'real'? "But we don't know that data's coming until it actually gets here." No shit, really?!?
And this is the type of person who's a role model for how 'commercialization' of the Internet is going to work... Yeah, I see great things coming, let me tell ya.........
-the Snopes article linked to at the bottom of the page is no longer there, nor does Snopes have any mention of 'Intel' hoaxes other than e-mail hoaxes. 'Google consensus' seems to agree with this being a hoax.
Still though, I can't help but wonder how much time Bill bashers spent trying to find this on silicon...;)
-for added effect. After all, if the private sector initiative to assume responsibility for overseeing the technical coordination of the Domain Name System (DNS) isn't going to step up to bat for ENABLING COMPETITION FOR DOMAIN NAME (.COM) REGISTRATIONS when the organization who for years enjoyed a government-granted monopoly over new domain name registrations and renewals tries something like this, perhaps it's time to look at a replacement for ICANN, neh?;) [Source is here ]
(Granted, many argue that's needed of ICANN anyways, but more prodding of 'Justify your existence, dammit' can't hurt...;) )
-or the 'Where are the flying cars? Dammit, I was promised flying cars!' syndrome.
I was raised on a good bit of sci-fi, starting with Asimov, moving up to Herbert and Heinlein in my early teens. I'm soon to be 25, and I think the term that can best describe my attitude towards space and 'the future in general,' is cynicism.
Look at the tone of sci-fi 40 years ago, and compare it to 15-20 or so years ago. The old-fashioned, nigh-unto-faultless 'epic' hero is pretty much dead, replaced with the flawed hero, the 'anti-hero', etc. The 'pioneer' feel of humanity expanding through space has been replaced with the future of cyberpunk, in all it's zaibatsu controlled glory.
And which future does the present bear out? Hell, since the end of the Cold War brought NASA under public scrutiny and the space budget to a screeching halt, we can barely keep the ISS in order, as pretty much all participants have balked on promises along the line. Present space is getting stale, with little hope for advancement, except through... commercial investment. Which points back to the cyberpunk future, in a world where we already see commercial interests influencing laws of nations (and all you non-US readers, don't be so quick to comdemn us kettles as black, you pots), proposals to electronically track citizens, the broadening suppression of individual rights 'in the interest of the State', the list goes on.
Basically, the world is far from Utopia, and many of us generally see it staying the same or getting worse in the future. Science and technology are only tools. Sure, they may be able to do new things, but they'll just be employed as means to millenia-old ends...
A flying car for every family! We'll have humaniform androids! Space will be colonized! Yeah, I can see the results... The future will be an an interesting place. Yeah, right, you keep saying that, I'll go read my Tolkien to keep my mind off of how the world's on the road to oblivion...
Case in point, my company put out a mailer featuring a nice looking woman in a trenchcoat, holding the trenchcoat closed, showing a little leg at the bottom, with the caption "I have something Graphic to show you." The mailer opened folded open, with the edge of the mailer flap following the edge of the woman's trenchcoat. Open the mailer to find...... an ad for our graphical operator interface terminal!
... Yeah, we got lots of negative feedback from that ad campaign...;)
The Zaurus is for handheld computing, not just 'store my schedule, store my addresses.' For some people, the original capabilities of a PDA are enough. Personally, I've out-grown the 'Palm mentality,' organizer PDAs, hence why I picked up an SL-5500 and sold my Palm IIIxe.
If all you need is provided by a lower-end Palm, great, roll with it and save the money you didn't spend for something else. But for me, the wealth of software available through the Zaurus community, the storage capacity via SD, the flexibility of having a CF slot, and the keyboard (you heard me right, dual-thumbing the keyboard works just fine, and at a decent speed) make the Zaurus worth the cost.
I hafta admit though, I find it ironic how some of my friends' first reactions were, "Woah, you can play Doom on that??" They'll shit a brick when I fire up Quake...;)
A liberty may not pre-empt 'rule of law' or, through enforcement, allow 'rule of law' to come to harm.
The cold logic behind the curtain: Without 'rule of law,' liberties cannot be ensured. Therefor, rule of law becomes paramount to the definition of liberties.
Make rule of law itself the perceived target ('Allowing people to circumvent encryption devices is an affront to established (bought, in our current US system) law'), and it's amazing how fast liberties can be ignored.
Although some times 'liberties' are allowed to influence how the 'rule of law' is executed, the under-lying (and admittedly very hard to 'positively define') 'rule of law' is the foundation. 'Rule of law' (order out of chaos) can be found in dictatorships, solialist communes, theocracies, monarchies, even simple tribes. It's the execution of 'rule of law,' as defined by 'liberties,' that make these governing systems different...
-is the thought of RMS, donned in his St. IGNUtius attire, being worshipped as the Savior of us Linux Users all (with the GPL). "Repent, repent ye sinners! Ye have seen the folley of trusting these corporations. It is time to rise up and code, CODE my children! Trust not the false promises of Open Source, the software must be FREE!!!"
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that Sony wanted people to see the MD as a CD replacement (to the point that they even released some music singles on non-recordable MDs). Sure, there were many people 'in the know' (DJs, many people in Europe), but Joe Six-pack was left out in the cold. LP and cassette tape were replaced by the CD for playback, but there was no main-stream replacement for the -recording- capability of tape. Just imagine what the response would have been if MD were widely advertised as the tape cassette replacement: "It's like tape, only better! Clean, clear music like a CD, and you can record to it! Know how tapes can jam and worst of all, wear out in time? Worry no more! Re-record to the MD as many times as you like, blahblahblah." (yeah, I know, technically it's marketting BS, but that exact same marketting BS made it's way onto the box my MD player/recorder -came in- back then, too...)
The 'killer app' for MD was re-recording capability, and here in the US, the MD missed the boat.
Granted, the USB storage ability tempts me. Wonder if the feds. will start seizing MDs labelled 'Trance Mix' now too, when they come for 'hacker' evidence collection... ;)
Now, when Nimoy releases a new record as well, then we can start worrying. You don't know the meaning of 'shock and awe' 'til you've heard the whole damn album that 'The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins' comes from. "The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy," Side One 'Mr. Spock' and Side Two 'Leonard Nimoy.' I mean, daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn... o.o
-and his getting people to believe in his non-existence is one of the most subtle marketing ploys since Old Scratch did it...
Nothing says 'anonymous' more than cash, and cash still goes places where American Express/Visa/whatever have not been, and probably never will be. Bills still talk a lot louder than plastics...
And it doesn't cost anything for the 'privlege' of spending your own damn money when you use cash...
Kinda tells you something, when the world of 'credit' is starting to favor people who the creditors know will default and be indentured for years upon years to come......
Don't like hearing me say that, Amiga Inc.? Fine then, prove me wrong already, release the damn thing in finished form...
Some of the execs, I hope. My trophy wall needs further decoration...
Now, to see about talking my manager into having us join the Mandrake Club....
really? I didn't think they taught that in american schools...
Of course we learn about it in school. How could we ever forget the "War of Canadian Aggression?"
(That, and the Arrogant Worms sure as hell won't let me forget, either... ;) )
Just a random musing from an anime/manga fan... :)
(oh yeah, and to pre-empt the usual replies, you 'anime iz just pr0n and/or anime fans are freaks/faggots/pedophiles/whatever' trolls can all just fsck yourselves. Have a nice day.)
I like the "tournament" ideas discussed so far, as DARPA should really test ALL the submissions. Find the best technology now, and further development WILL bring the cost down in the long run. Simply saying 'Oh, but this one is too expensive' has too much potential to eliminate superior technology.
My work also has a T-1 through them. Not only the T-1 connection, but also a full Class C block of IPs, all for the price of -just- the T-1 from anyone else 'round here. Then again, we signed up as the ISP was first formed so I believe we got a wee bit of a deal for -that-. ;)
Very good service, good people, highly recommended. There -are- still good, smaller-scale ISPs out there, sometimes it's a matter of persistence and luck (the people who formed this ISP broke off from our former ISP, due to mergers and changes in company policies. We just happened to catch word of it as it was happening and jump on with them).
Forget the name, but there's the writings of a monk in the British isles, on how to interpret the existing pagan holidays of the area to 'Christian ideals,' where many of our modern holidays really come from (down to the use of evergreen trees for Christmas, use of silver and gold lights, etc). Interesting read, really...
-as wasting time by reading a Slashdot story about wasting time, I'd imagine... ;)
I mean, it'd only be really cool if they programmed the driving after KITT or the General Lee:
-and the potential to become airborne when hitting bumps.
Robot driver - "Hot damn, bet I could get some serious height jumping off those rocks over there! Balls to the wall, baby!"
Though, the thought of NASA becoming our 'nuclear trash-man' is both sad and amusing at the same time...
We'd prefer ICANN to become more of a trade association that promotes the growth of the network rather than a regulatory body - Of course you would, as those 'trade assosciates' would have commercial interests on the line. 'Hey, if someone mis-spells a domain, they get a search page. We could sell advertising space, search placement, etc. Anyone disagree with this idea?' Riiiight...
How do we build a commercial business with ground rules that seem to shift based on personal agenda and emotion versus any particular logical data set? - Of course, that 'particular logical data set' = 'profit!' When 'agendas' and 'emotions' express things such as 'This network should be free of censorship, free of centralized control,' then yes, they ARE anathema to corporate profit philosophies.
Are we going to be in a position to do innovation on this infrastructure, or are we going to be locked into obsolete thinking that the DNS was never intended to do anything other than what it was originally supposed to do? - Getting into evolutionary dead-ends is generally a Bad Thing, yes. However, most 'innovation' I hear discussed is for the benefit of corporate interests, rather than improvements of underlying functionality.
A few years ago, there was the talk of making 'Internet 2', making a completely new infrastructure to replace backbones, etc. It would be 'the way of the future,' where we could have 'content on demand,' 'accurate, real-time tele-conferencing,' etc, etc, ad infinitum. Well, after blowing smoke out of their collective a$$es for a time, they've realized the costs and effort involved (back then fiber was being laid down like mad, with no end in sight, so the infrastructure for it would 'just be there'). The talk of a 'second Internet' created/operated/controlled by corporations has dwindled to a trickle. Now, the corporate effort is focusing more and more on the existing Internet. The 'content providers' (MPAA, RIAA), the infrastructure owners (ie. Sprint), 500 lb. gorillas such as Verisign, are now all focusing on the existing Internet, and the 'evolution' and 'innovation' they want are to make the existing Internet into the corporate Utopia that the 'Internet 2' was supposed to be. And it's only going to continue getting worse...
That base level of DNS (domain name system) response is an obligation we took on when we inherited that contract. But it would be commercially unreasonable for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be allowed to build incremental services on top of that if they deliver value. - 'Embrace and extend,' as it were... But how much over-head would all these 'features' entail? For example, the following gem: The funny thing about digital security is that we've lived in a world where we only knew someone was attacking us when they hit our firewalls. It's time to evolve that world so that we get the information that an attack is coming before it hits our front door. What the hell?!? So what do you have, 'notification' packets sent before the 'real' packets?? Do you delay the 'real' packets to give enough time between the 'notification' and 'real'? "But we don't know that data's coming until it actually gets here." No shit, really?!?
And this is the type of person who's a role model for how 'commercialization' of the Internet is going to work... Yeah, I see great things coming, let me tell ya.........
Still though, I can't help but wonder how much time Bill bashers spent trying to find this on silicon... ;)
Ahhh, gotta love the cool, refreshing taste of irony... :>
(Granted, many argue that's needed of ICANN anyways, but more prodding of 'Justify your existence, dammit' can't hurt... ;) )
I was raised on a good bit of sci-fi, starting with Asimov, moving up to Herbert and Heinlein in my early teens. I'm soon to be 25, and I think the term that can best describe my attitude towards space and 'the future in general,' is cynicism.
Look at the tone of sci-fi 40 years ago, and compare it to 15-20 or so years ago. The old-fashioned, nigh-unto-faultless 'epic' hero is pretty much dead, replaced with the flawed hero, the 'anti-hero', etc. The 'pioneer' feel of humanity expanding through space has been replaced with the future of cyberpunk, in all it's zaibatsu controlled glory.
And which future does the present bear out? Hell, since the end of the Cold War brought NASA under public scrutiny and the space budget to a screeching halt, we can barely keep the ISS in order, as pretty much all participants have balked on promises along the line. Present space is getting stale, with little hope for advancement, except through... commercial investment. Which points back to the cyberpunk future, in a world where we already see commercial interests influencing laws of nations (and all you non-US readers, don't be so quick to comdemn us kettles as black, you pots), proposals to electronically track citizens, the broadening suppression of individual rights 'in the interest of the State', the list goes on.
Basically, the world is far from Utopia, and many of us generally see it staying the same or getting worse in the future. Science and technology are only tools. Sure, they may be able to do new things, but they'll just be employed as means to millenia-old ends...
A flying car for every family! We'll have humaniform androids! Space will be colonized!
Yeah, I can see the results...
The future will be an an interesting place.
Yeah, right, you keep saying that, I'll go read my Tolkien to keep my mind off of how the world's on the road to oblivion...
Case in point, my company put out a mailer featuring a nice looking woman in a trenchcoat, holding the trenchcoat closed, showing a little leg at the bottom, with the caption "I have something Graphic to show you." The mailer opened folded open, with the edge of the mailer flap following the edge of the woman's trenchcoat. Open the mailer to find...... an ad for our graphical operator interface terminal!
... Yeah, we got lots of negative feedback from that ad campaign... ;)
The Zaurus is for handheld computing, not just 'store my schedule, store my addresses.' For some people, the original capabilities of a PDA are enough. Personally, I've out-grown the 'Palm mentality,' organizer PDAs, hence why I picked up an SL-5500 and sold my Palm IIIxe.
If all you need is provided by a lower-end Palm, great, roll with it and save the money you didn't spend for something else. But for me, the wealth of software available through the Zaurus community, the storage capacity via SD, the flexibility of having a CF slot, and the keyboard (you heard me right, dual-thumbing the keyboard works just fine, and at a decent speed) make the Zaurus worth the cost.
I hafta admit though, I find it ironic how some of my friends' first reactions were, "Woah, you can play Doom on that??" They'll shit a brick when I fire up Quake... ;)
The cold logic behind the curtain: Without 'rule of law,' liberties cannot be ensured. Therefor, rule of law becomes paramount to the definition of liberties.
Make rule of law itself the perceived target ('Allowing people to circumvent encryption devices is an affront to established (bought, in our current US system) law'), and it's amazing how fast liberties can be ignored.
Although some times 'liberties' are allowed to influence how the 'rule of law' is executed, the under-lying (and admittedly very hard to 'positively define') 'rule of law' is the foundation. 'Rule of law' (order out of chaos) can be found in dictatorships, solialist communes, theocracies, monarchies, even simple tribes. It's the execution of 'rule of law,' as defined by 'liberties,' that make these governing systems different...
"Remember, Big Brother is watch- Dammit, not in the park fountain again!!"
... Be afraid... be very afraid...