Enough people use free software to access the internet (especially all those web/email/gateway/application/etc servers running on linux, BSD etc) that you could never exclude free software from the internet without a lot of complaints.
Show me a GIMP plugin that can convert your output into something that will look the same on as it does on screen and you might see graphic artists (the kind who do things like catalogs, advertisments and so on and who are one of the big customer groups for Photoshop) switch.
Simulations like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Sim City. Put the finantial data, guest/peep/sim thoughts, overview maps and other things on one monitor and have the main game window in another window.
RTS games, put things like construction, resource management and things on one monitor and put the gameplay battlefield on another.
So, instead of having to go back to your base to build more tanks, you can just go over to the other monitor and do it. Then, when the tanks are ready, go back to your base and send them into battle.
Flight sims obviously would benifit from multiple monitors (put the instrument cluster on one monitor and the cockpit view on another)
True, it is happening at universities. But, there are STILL a lot of people using paper and pen. We are nowhere near the vision (not just in this article but many other future thinking books and articles) where every student has a computer and all lessons are done on the computer.
Depending on the sattelite, all you need to see it is an inexpensive telescope or binoculars (or even the naked eye in some cases e.g. ISS I think) and you can see whatever is up there. Trying to stop people from A.Looking at what is in the sky and B.Tracking where it goes and its orbital pattern is futile, anyone with some skills can figure this out.
What might be a concern is if, somehow, these people are able to identify exactly what sattelite it is. (for the classified sattelites anyway)
Simple answer Give the robot cars extra wheels that can run on tracks as well as normal tyres. (similar to what the road-rail excavators they use for maintanence today) When you come down the on-ramp of a robot equipped highway, you turn onto a short bit of track that is also road. The car wheels go up, the track wheels go down and the robot takes over, merging into the stream of cars going down the train track. To get off, the reverse happens. You pull out onto a short bit of track near the off-ramp, the train wheels go up, the car wheels go down and the vehicle goes back into human drive mode.
Firstly the use of the track makes it almost impossible for idiots to use the "robot" lane (when was the last time you heard of anyone driving a road vehicle down a train track outside of a hollywood movie?). And secondly, because its track, it enforces the position of the vehicles and ensures that they cant go off the road (well obviously they can derail but modern rail systems almost never do that unless there is a fault with the train or the track somewhere). Plus, sensors in the cars and road would talk to each other to make sure that speed limits were adhered to (and with this system you could probobly go much faster than the cars in the normal lanes next to you)
Although it would probobly be expensive to lay the tracks down every stretch of highway you want to allow robot cars to use.
Start small and allow flying cars but only if you have a proper pilots licence and know how to fly airplanes. That way, anyone flying one would know how to avoid mid-air collisions etc.
CEOs, business executives and anyone else rich enough could just hire "pilot chauffers" (after all, they generally already have personal drivers) and avoid being stuck in traffic.
Slowly more people would buy "flying cars" (as the prices fell) and get the requisite pilots licence to fly them.
So a company might have T1 or Frame Relay or Fibre or whatever as the main link to the outside world but will then have an ISDN BRI link in case the main link fails.
Optical disks DID take off in a big way. Digital libraries DID arrive (although google and wikipedia and the like appeared instead of the vision of optical disks full of information, mostly thanks to the.com boom and the broadband revolution. HDTV is here on the tech side but the content providers are holding it back by instisting on locking it up with copy protection.
ISDN as a protocol didnt really take off, it got replaced by Fibre Optic links, DSL, Cable and Wireless. But the idea of a global interconnected network did arrive.
We still dont have the vision of a true "multimedia" center yet (people dont want to use their computer, email, internet etc in the living room, they want to do it in the office). Although devices like the X-Box with XBMC or MCE, Tivo and others are moving towards the idea of being able to have ALL your media in one place (although again the media corps want to lock it up with copy protection and stop all this)
Best quote from the article "The personal computer as we know it will persist longer in the home than in business," he predicts. "But by 1996-1997, they'll start to disappear. They'll become a low-end commodity like the typewriter". Like thats gonna happen.
Also "Movies will probably be squirted into the home through the telecommunications lines and compressed into eight seconds on the erasable disk in your living room". Yeah right, like hollywood is going to allow THAT to happen:)
Voice Recognition has never really taken off, probobly because its such a pain in the ass to use. (plus, in order for it to be accurate, you have to spend a large amount of time training it to recognize your voice).
The VCR isnt dead yet but the Tivo and friends are clearly gaining. If they werent so expensive, I would buy one just so I could record all the stuff I cant watch because I have to go to work.
Home automation by computer never quite made it, no idea why though. (cost?)
The musings on portability reflect PDAs like palms and pocket PCs perfectly. They didnt get the whole "students at school and uni will be using computers instead of pen and paper" thing right though (probobly because portable computers still arent affordable enough to give to students to use)
Virtual worlds (including the idea of eyeglass-type HUDs) never really took off because science hasnt yet overcome the motion sicness & headache problems that VR machines cause.
Laser printers never became a fixture in the home when the Ink Jet printer became the affordable option (dot-matrix printers seem to have gone the way of the dodo so they got that bit right)
The prediction of hypertext encyclopedias is dead on (look at Wikipedia as well as the cd-rom encyclopedias from companies like britannica and world book)
Seems like the area where they made the most wrong guesses is in the area of the "digital home" where everything is connected and talking to each other and where your TV set can flash an icon in the corner to let you know that important email you were waiting for has just arrived or where your fridge can tell the supermarket computer that you are out of milk and to put it on the shopping list.
Re:For those of us who are unaware...
on
ReactOS Code Audit
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Basicly, what happened is that someone found code (assembler code) in the kernel that looked suspiciously like what you get if you disassemble the same piece of microsoft code (with similar "magic numbers" for stack adjustments and stuff) and cried foul. So now, they are going to audit the code to look for possible suspect code. And they are going to tighten their rules to prevent anything bad from happening in the future.
Acording to what I saw on the mailing list, most of the potentially suspect code is in the kernel and device drivers rather than all the upper level user bits.
I was taking pictures of a Shell gas station to get inspiration for my LEGO creations and I was told not to photograph so close to the gas pumps because I might cause a spark.
No big deal as I already had the photos I wanted that required me to get anywhere near the pumps so I moved back and photographed the rest of the gas station.
Although with todays new society, I wouldnt be surprised if photographs I have taken before would be considered "suspect" if I was to take them today.
Technically Coca-Cola isnt an energy drink but it keeps me going all day at work:)
If someone came up with a drink that had all the energy drink bits from drinks like Red Bull and V but the flavor and taste bits of Coke, I would probobly drink it. Just avoid the new Coke Zero (or whatever they call it)
I too LOVE delphi although I havent used it for as many things lately (I have been using C/C++ because I want to gain experience in writing win32 GUI apps with C/C++, plus my Object Pascal is a little rusty) but there are definatly things Delphi is good for.
Remember that even on OSX, there is still a shared library for the HTML rendering engine (the KHTML engine that underlies Safari). Because its a system library with a (presumably) documented interface, any application author developing for OSX can embed that library into their app.
Ans, just as on windows, if you remove the HTML rendering engine from the system, some apps will break.
What it means is that if I have an idea for a new gizmo that might or might not work and there are patents on technology that is somehow connected to the idea, I can go and develop the idea without worrying about the patents. Then, if the idea doesnt work, I dont need to worry about the patents. I only have to get a licence if my idea actually works and goes into production.
well I havent been following the whole saga but from what I can tell, what is happening is that where political people have removed content (generally content that could hurt the candidate in the comming US elections I suspect), that content is being put back. Also, the various people and IP addresses concerned are being blocked.
If this means Disney can go back to making films as good as The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, I will be VERY happy. Finding Nemo & Monsters Inc are both up there with the best of Disney and if the people that made those films happen are in charge at disney, that HAS to bode well for the future of Disney animated films.
Baicly, simple economics says that if changing the price (up or down) of what you are selling results in a greater total profit (i.e. a greater * ) then you should change the price.
If selling games cheaper resulted in greater total profit, the games companies would be doing it. (although given the way big media is operating these days, an understanding of basic economics is probobly beoynd them:)
Slashdot Mirror
Enough people use free software to access the internet (especially all those web/email/gateway/application/etc servers running on linux, BSD etc) that you could never exclude free software from the internet without a lot of complaints.
How come I can get a 100baseFX or 1000baseFX network card for so cheap then? :)
:)
Yes I know that longer fibre is more expensive to use (I have done cisco CCNA), I was making a joke
Why hasnt someone made something for Windows that can do PDF and that isnt as "heavyweight" as Acrobat is?
Show me a GIMP plugin that can convert your output into something that will look the same on as it does on screen and you might see graphic artists (the kind who do things like catalogs, advertisments and so on and who are one of the big customer groups for Photoshop) switch.
If a provider here in Australia tried to implement crap like this, people would jump ship. (I know I would)
Simulations like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Sim City. Put the finantial data, guest/peep/sim thoughts, overview maps and other things on one monitor and have the main game window in another window.
RTS games, put things like construction, resource management and things on one monitor and put the gameplay battlefield on another.
So, instead of having to go back to your base to build more tanks, you can just go over to the other monitor and do it. Then, when the tanks are ready, go back to your base and send them into battle.
Flight sims obviously would benifit from multiple monitors (put the instrument cluster on one monitor and the cockpit view on another)
True, it is happening at universities.
But, there are STILL a lot of people using paper and pen.
We are nowhere near the vision (not just in this article but many other future thinking books and articles) where every student has a computer and all lessons are done on the computer.
What do they do about cardboard boxes, sheep & other obstacles on railway tracks now?
Just do the same thing.
Depending on the sattelite, all you need to see it is an inexpensive telescope or binoculars (or even the naked eye in some cases e.g. ISS I think) and you can see whatever is up there.
Trying to stop people from A.Looking at what is in the sky and B.Tracking where it goes and its orbital pattern is futile, anyone with some skills can figure this out.
What might be a concern is if, somehow, these people are able to identify exactly what sattelite it is. (for the classified sattelites anyway)
Simple answer
Give the robot cars extra wheels that can run on tracks as well as normal tyres. (similar to what the road-rail excavators they use for maintanence today)
When you come down the on-ramp of a robot equipped highway, you turn onto a short bit of track that is also road. The car wheels go up, the track wheels go down and the robot takes over, merging into the stream of cars going down the train track. To get off, the reverse happens. You pull out onto a short bit of track near the off-ramp, the train wheels go up, the car wheels go down and the vehicle goes back into human drive mode.
Firstly the use of the track makes it almost impossible for idiots to use the "robot" lane (when was the last time you heard of anyone driving a road vehicle down a train track outside of a hollywood movie?). And secondly, because its track, it enforces the position of the vehicles and ensures that they cant go off the road (well obviously they can derail but modern rail systems almost never do that unless there is a fault with the train or the track somewhere). Plus, sensors in the cars and road would talk to each other to make sure that speed limits were adhered to (and with this system you could probobly go much faster than the cars in the normal lanes next to you)
Although it would probobly be expensive to lay the tracks down every stretch of highway you want to allow robot cars to use.
Yep, thats what footbridges, underpasses etc are for.
Start small and allow flying cars but only if you have a proper pilots licence and know how to fly airplanes. That way, anyone flying one would know how to avoid mid-air collisions etc.
CEOs, business executives and anyone else rich enough could just hire "pilot chauffers" (after all, they generally already have personal drivers) and avoid being stuck in traffic.
Slowly more people would buy "flying cars" (as the prices fell) and get the requisite pilots licence to fly them.
Also, ISDN is quite common as a backup link.
So a company might have T1 or Frame Relay or Fibre or whatever as the main link to the outside world but will then have an ISDN BRI link in case the main link fails.
They got some right and some wrong.
.com boom and the broadband revolution.
:)
Optical disks DID take off in a big way.
Digital libraries DID arrive (although google and wikipedia and the like appeared instead of the vision of optical disks full of information, mostly thanks to the
HDTV is here on the tech side but the content providers are holding it back by instisting on locking it up with copy protection.
ISDN as a protocol didnt really take off, it got replaced by Fibre Optic links, DSL, Cable and Wireless. But the idea of a global interconnected network did arrive.
We still dont have the vision of a true "multimedia" center yet (people dont want to use their computer, email, internet etc in the living room, they want to do it in the office). Although devices like the X-Box with XBMC or MCE, Tivo and others are moving towards the idea of being able to have ALL your media in one place (although again the media corps want to lock it up with copy protection and stop all this)
Best quote from the article "The personal computer as we know it will persist longer in the home than in business," he predicts. "But by 1996-1997, they'll start to disappear. They'll become a low-end commodity like the typewriter". Like thats gonna happen.
Also "Movies will probably be squirted into the home through the telecommunications lines and compressed into eight seconds on the erasable disk in your living room". Yeah right, like hollywood is going to allow THAT to happen
Voice Recognition has never really taken off, probobly because its such a pain in the ass to use. (plus, in order for it to be accurate, you have to spend a large amount of time training it to recognize your voice).
The VCR isnt dead yet but the Tivo and friends are clearly gaining. If they werent so expensive, I would buy one just so I could record all the stuff I cant watch because I have to go to work.
Home automation by computer never quite made it, no idea why though. (cost?)
The musings on portability reflect PDAs like palms and pocket PCs perfectly. They didnt get the whole "students at school and uni will be using computers instead of pen and paper" thing right though (probobly because portable computers still arent affordable enough to give to students to use)
Virtual worlds (including the idea of eyeglass-type HUDs) never really took off because science hasnt yet overcome the motion sicness & headache problems that VR machines cause.
Laser printers never became a fixture in the home when the Ink Jet printer became the affordable option (dot-matrix printers seem to have gone the way of the dodo so they got that bit right)
The prediction of hypertext encyclopedias is dead on (look at Wikipedia as well as the cd-rom encyclopedias from companies like britannica and world book)
Seems like the area where they made the most wrong guesses is in the area of the "digital home" where everything is connected and talking to each other and where your TV set can flash an icon in the corner to let you know that important email you were waiting for has just arrived or where your fridge can tell the supermarket computer that you are out of milk and to put it on the shopping list.
Basicly, what happened is that someone found code (assembler code) in the kernel that looked suspiciously like what you get if you disassemble the same piece of microsoft code (with similar "magic numbers" for stack adjustments and stuff) and cried foul. So now, they are going to audit the code to look for possible suspect code. And they are going to tighten their rules to prevent anything bad from happening in the future.
Acording to what I saw on the mailing list, most of the potentially suspect code is in the kernel and device drivers rather than all the upper level user bits.
I was taking pictures of a Shell gas station to get inspiration for my LEGO creations and I was told not to photograph so close to the gas pumps because I might cause a spark.
No big deal as I already had the photos I wanted that required me to get anywhere near the pumps so I moved back and photographed the rest of the gas station.
Although with todays new society, I wouldnt be surprised if photographs I have taken before would be considered "suspect" if I was to take them today.
What about energy drinks that contain ingrediants like Gurana and the like?
Technically Coca-Cola isnt an energy drink but it keeps me going all day at work :)
If someone came up with a drink that had all the energy drink bits from drinks like Red Bull and V but the flavor and taste bits of Coke, I would probobly drink it.
Just avoid the new Coke Zero (or whatever they call it)
I too LOVE delphi although I havent used it for as many things lately (I have been using C/C++ because I want to gain experience in writing win32 GUI apps with C/C++, plus my Object Pascal is a little rusty) but there are definatly things Delphi is good for.
Remember that even on OSX, there is still a shared library for the HTML rendering engine (the KHTML engine that underlies Safari). Because its a system library with a (presumably) documented interface, any application author developing for OSX can embed that library into their app.
Ans, just as on windows, if you remove the HTML rendering engine from the system, some apps will break.
What it means is that if I have an idea for a new gizmo that might or might not work and there are patents on technology that is somehow connected to the idea, I can go and develop the idea without worrying about the patents. Then, if the idea doesnt work, I dont need to worry about the patents.
I only have to get a licence if my idea actually works and goes into production.
well I havent been following the whole saga but from what I can tell, what is happening is that where political people have removed content (generally content that could hurt the candidate in the comming US elections I suspect), that content is being put back. Also, the various people and IP addresses concerned are being blocked.
If this means Disney can go back to making films as good as The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, I will be VERY happy.
Finding Nemo & Monsters Inc are both up there with the best of Disney and if the people that made those films happen are in charge at disney, that HAS to bode well for the future of Disney animated films.
The "Powers That Be" are reverting the entries back to what they should be and blocking the IPs of those who are carrying out the action.
Baicly, simple economics says that if changing the price (up or down) of what you are selling results in a greater total profit (i.e. a greater * ) then you should change the price.
:)
If selling games cheaper resulted in greater total profit, the games companies would be doing it. (although given the way big media is operating these days, an understanding of basic economics is probobly beoynd them