Battery life in digital cameras is bad enough as is - let alone how it'll get worse with mechanical equipment like a CD-R (even a small one). You have to spin the motor, operate the servos, and fire the laser in order to write. Combined with everything else (the LCD's suck power too, and so to the CCD's), I really don't see the future of digital photography including floppies or CD's much longer - even the optimized drives like the IBM Microdrives or the Iomega Clik are going to suck more power than flash.
Right now, digital photography is in a flux state anyhow. At the high end, it's been adequate for years (my old company was shooting production ads with digital medium-format backs like the Leaf back 6+ years ago), but the low end is just arriving at the point now where the quality equals what you can get from consumer-grade film.
Unfortunately, those cameras cost about $1000, and you still get crappy battery life.
Digital photography has really taken off the last couple of years, but I won't replace my trusty Nikon until I can buy a 3K x 2K pixel camera with 3x optical zoom, lens switching capability, USB and CF support, and enough battery life to take 150-200 photos on a charge (with flash as needed) for about $500. The feature set is out there today at twice that price. Until then, I'll continue to schlep my handy Apple QuickTake 200 (with 5v Smartmedia) to parties as my only digital device.
Microsoft makes a lot of profit from Office on the Mac. Their office suite market share is even more dominant on MacOS than on Windows - which is part of the reason that Access wasn't ported. Microsoft has no Mac office suite competition with a database.
Interestingly, Excel and Word were both Mac programs _first_, before Windows even existed. There used to be a CLI version of Word for DOS, but it was scrapped. PowerPoint was originally developed by a company called Nashoba Systems as a Mac product (back in '87 or so), and then MS bought the company (a sidenote - the Nashoba guys also produced Nutshell and Filemaker). So Microsoft has a long history of producing Mac software and making a lot of money with it.
Apple wouldn't have to go nutty to get OS X up on Intel hardware. The Darwin core already runs, OpenStep (which forms the guts of OS X) was Intel/PowerPC based all along, and Apple is almost certainly making an effort to keep the code readily portable. I'd guess that they could have everything but the Classic environment up on Intel hardware within a couple of months of the PowerPC version of the OS shipping.
That said, I don't see Apple actively trying to play in offering Windows "compatibility", and OS X native apps will be scarce for a while - most "Native" apps will likely just be Carbonized Classic apps for a year or so. Carbonizing is a lot faster and cheaper than building a native app, and you get most of the benefits of OS X that way.
The other wildcard is that Linux will have advanced substantially in the timeframe the article mentions. Though the OS X he mentions would likely trounce today's Linux, Linux is a moving target, as is Windows.
I think the likelier scenario is that Apple, with an OS X like described in the article (that is, one that can host Windows apps) would gather a solid 10-20% of the OS marketplace since you're taking what was essentially an OS noted for it's bulletproofness (NeXTStep/OpenStep) and overall quality, and souping it up. If it can run Windows apps, too, there's a pent-up demand for an OS like that.
The Mac hardware version of OS X would then likely do about the same business - giving Apple a total of from 20-40% of the market across platforms. Probably on the lower side of that, maybe about a combined (X86 and PPC) 20-25%.
Linux continues to make inroads, and hits some enterprise desktops, but makes the biggest impact in the server room, taking about 40% of the server market over Windows 2000, NetWare,and other platforms. Linux remains a solid niche player on the desktop, with about a 10-15% market share, but penetrates a few Fortune 500-class companies thanks to increased applications support.
The Microsoft Windows company's OS remains the default OS for most consumer systems, as market pressures from Apple and Linux force them to finally start improving the broken things (like security) in Windows today. Windows improves at a faster pace than usual, and retains about half the market.
And then, everybody makes a lot of money. Microsoft Windows Co. makes a little less than they're used to, but Microsoft Office Co. makes money hand over fist, porting their dominant Office 2001 product to every operating system under the sun, and not coincidentally blowing Sun out of the water entirely with their StarOffice gambit.
The only loser: Sun, who bought and invested in an Office alternative that nobody wants now that they can get Office on every platform.
I remember the cat experiment - it was featured here on/. at the time. I was absolutely amazed that they did it (and I think I posted a suitably witty comment here at the time), but after I got to thinking about it a little bit more I was really bothered by that one. On the one hand, it taught us a tremendous amount about how the optic system works, but they had to slice into the living brain of a cat to do so. That just doesn't work for me.
I think, upon some reflection, that my dividing line falls somewhere in the "awareness + feeling" category. If a creature has the ability to feel pain or discomfort, then the guidelines for experimentation should be strict as hell (I would count on a code of ethics rather than regulation in a perfect world, which this most certainly is not). I would only perform experiments that have a direct relationship to saving lives, either of humans or more animals on animals that meet this criterion.
I would not restrict things done with cell samples or "cultured" tissue - so long as the sample is obtained without harming the animal (or human) involved.
I will still wear leather and eat meat. That, to me, gets directly into the traditional food chain, and humans were designed to be omnivorous - with (as far as I can tell), a diet of grains, fruits, and vegetables supplemented by occasional meat. Given that belief/assumption, leather is a byproduct of the process. If animals were not killed for food, I think I'd see the leather question somewhat differently.
Good point. Though Windows has no security whatsoever, it'd be trivial for the cable companies and DSL providers to provide basic, network-level security for their users that could at least block most of these DDOS script kiddie tools from getting "go" signals.
Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the user, but given the cluelessness of most home (and many office) users, and the inherent vulnerability of Windows, the network providers really need to step up and fill this gap soon.
There's no reason why filtering couldn't be built into the cable modem (the same way many of them now block NetBIOS), and updated by central control at the head end to block new threats.
That said, given that it's cable companies doing this, the login for administration would probably be:
Extracting a brain and spinal cord from a living creature (even if it's "only" a lamprey) in order to harvest a few cells for an experiment bothers me more than I'd like it to. It's a fascinating study in robotics, and an interesting experiment, but what about when they start trying this with mammals? Mice, chimps, dogs, cats - it's easy to start drawing that line ever closer to humans or your own pet.
Mind you, I'm not some PETA fanatic who only wears Naugahide for leather (who cares about a few Naugas?), and I'm not inherently opposed to animal experimentation, but I think I wouldn't perform an experiment like this, regardless of how useful the information is. I wouldn't test cosmetics on animals, either - though there are definitely appropriate uses for testing drugs and other things.
Then again, I'm just not completely sure - am I way off base in being disturbed by this?
- -Josh Turiel
This has been coming for a while, now...
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Copyrant
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· Score: 2
Ironically, this is a typical Microsoft move - a seemingly simple change that "improves the experience for our customers", but is shortsighted, stupid, inconvenient, and is just an abuse of monopoly power that pisses everybody off. Wasn't there a lawsuit recently about this kind of thing?
For years, Windows has needed the system CD for just about any change made to the system (your mouse has moved - please insert the disk "Windows 95" in Drive D:). They have changed that somewhat - by putting all the install files into a directory on the machine (on a Win9x PC, typically c:\windows\options\cabs), and setting the Registry's installation path to scan that directory for all files. It still doesn't work perfectly, but it was an improvement - virtually all large OEM's do this.
From that, only providing the OS itself on a recovery CD was an obvious step. They also now put a sticker with the OS install key on the side of each PC under this arrangement. Theoretically, this all makes sense to do - because the OS itself is stashed on the hard drive, and any "going to the CD" is eliminated by design. In theory, the only thing you'd need a CD for would be a total reinstall, and thusly having the whole recovery process automated off a boot CD would therefore be a Good Thing - especially for the less sophisticated home user. If you are buying an OS upgrade at some point you'd get a CD then, only when you needed it.
But we know it's bullshit. Microsoft is mainly guilty of not thinking this through and pissing people off at a really inopportune time for them. There are scenarios where the OS CD might, in fact, be needed (playing with a different OS, finding an obscure driver file that otherwise just takes up space, booting the Win2K Recovery Console, trying to boot clean to fix a virus - Windows has some problems with them, I've heard), and the only way to get a CD now is either by copying it form someone who has one, buying a shrink-wrapped copy or, if you are a corporate user like us on one of their licensing plans (Open, Select, or Enterprise) you can get the media for next to nothing. As a Select (applications) and Enterprise (OS) customer, I get a huge box with a master copy of literally _everything_ they make. From that, I can duplicate to my hearts' contect and install galore, but I do need to track and pay for my licenses. When I was an Open customer previously, licenses and media were sold separate; I'd buy whatever combination I needed. And the media was cheap - barely above the cost of packaging and duplication for any given product.
So this doesn't really hurt the corporate user. We have plenty of ways to deal with it, and I rarely have any use for the CD that comes with a system, anyway. We just download the appropriate pre-configured NT Workstation image for a department onto each PC when it arrives with Ghost and blow away whatever was on it in the first place. This does hurt the home/hobbyist user, the small business user (who doesn't necessarily benefit from the licensing programs), and the large OEM (who has to abide by this) as well. Ultimately, this will probably help sales at the small white box companies, since they still get to distribute CD's (for now, at least), since the user categories above may have no other easy recourse for getting media easily.
The funny thing here is that piracy is the biggest competition Microsoft has for market share. Microsoft dominates the market, and I suspect there's more pirated Microsoft software than Linux and MacOS combined. It obviously has had a huge impact on their profits, though... (/sarcasm)
Good, perfectly legit point. Linux has improved significantly in the last year, and the desktop experience is much better than it was then. But I'm still not ready to try turning it into a user desktop for the "average user" of myth. Today, I'd have no qualms about deploying Linux as a server in my organization. But not as a desktop, yet.
I disagree with the premise that it "won't happen if people don't start doing it today", though. If you try to force Linux into a position that, for the most part, today's distributions, desktop applications, and GUI's don't justify you're risking causing serious harm to your business for no reason other than political issues with Microsoft. I can't responsibly make that decision for my company at this point. A few people can, and more power to them. Linux has come a long way in the past year, and is now a viable server platform for most companies. That's a hell of a good start, and I'm happy with that so far. The desktop, though it has improved and continues to improve quickly, still has a ways to go.
Remember, if the only tool you have is a hammer (Linux), everything looks like a nail. To run a company's network efficiently and responsibly, you should have a full set of tools in your toolchest - and unfortunately, one of them usually needs to be Windows. But that doesn't mean Windows has to be the only tool, either - or even your most commonly used one. But sometimes, even though it's an ugly, low-quality tool it's still the right tool for the job.
Well, if you want to avoid an MS-based office, you basically have a handful of options.
Option one: Set up Linux workstations (or Solaris, or whatever). Install StarOffice, Applixware, or WordPerfect (if you're using Linux). Teach your users the basics of operating in a Unix environment, and build their login environment to be as simple as possible. Then accept the limitations you'll face on peripheral usage, software, compatibility, etc. There are workarounds for a lot of it.
Option two: Buy a whole load of Macs. Use AppleWorks, Netscape, and Eudora as your operating environment. Apple's stopped including Office translators, though, so you'll have to buy them from Dataviz. There used to be other options on the Mac, but Office steamrolled Lotus and Corel right out of the ballgame. Office has a higher competitive marketshare on the Mac than it has on Windows even - because there's no high-end competition. StarOffice is supposed to be on the way now, though.
That all said, it's not necessarily practical to go MS-free. For the most part, Office on Windows is the easiest, most practical way for the average office drone to get things done. It's bloated, granted, and it comes from Shub-Redmond, but it still works quite well for what it is. If you also put your users on NT (not servers, mind you, but users), you have enough tools to lock the systems down sufficiently to keep the users out of trouble and still let them think they control their systems.
Where it is easy and practical to go MS-free is in the back end. NetWare is still the slickest file & print server out there, and their directory services work real well and give you nice admin tools that can control systems across platforms. Linux, xBSD, or Solaris all also run well on the back end, and are tremendously robust and flexible. Not as easy to administer as NetWare, and without the cross-platform (Windows included) directory tools, but a viable option. Exchange is easy to replace - you can use Notes, GroupWise, or a Unix-based system like OpenMail. Presto. Eliminating Exchange/Outlook has just rendered you significantly less vulnerable to nasty virii and worms that plague Windows users. Besides that, you can easily avoid running Microsoft databases - Oracle, Sybase, Informix, or a host of others run very well, cross-platform, and have all sorts of development tools available.
Basically, it's easy to ditch MS for a lot of applications, but Windows probably makes more sense today for the average office worker. Ask this question again in a year, and there's a real good chance my answer will be different.
- -Josh Turiel
I still don't see the point
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Iridium Saved?
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· Score: 5
Sure, if they buy Iridium they'll get a functioning satellite network for pennies on the dollar. And it can be run pretty cheaply, I'm sure - Motorola is still spending money to run it until they all get augered in, so it can't be too bad. But even if they can rescue it on the cheap and start suddenly selling the sat phones again for low prices, there's still one big problem.
Iridium has, essentially, an expiration date.
These satellites are all in LEO, and only have a lifespan of about 5-7 years or so before they flame out. The earliest launched satellites are already approaching their end of life, and even buying the network on the cheap doesn't do anything to relieve the replacement cost. Just because the current space assets are cheap doesn't get you out of the cost of building the network all over again over the next decade. It'll still cost billions to put 66 more of these in orbit.
Can they get the critical mass of users needed to make replacement viable before the capital drain gets too bad? Somebody must believe that's the case, but I really doubt it.
Because it was free (we got 5 of them in their switch promotion - and the HP4000 switch rocks). I'm hacking around with one, and I gave the other ones to my staff. It's not a bad little unit. The screen may not be 16-bit, but it's more than good enough for AvantGo browsing and e-book reading (which, along with Inbox sync, is all I do with it). I use the HP a decent amount during the work day.
My Palm Vx, though, is still much handier because:
It's half the size of the HP. Even though the HP does fit in a pocket (barely), it's a lot heavier than the Palm. It's faster for most tasks (except offline browsing). The battery life is much better (though the HP isn't as bad as I expected - I can easily get through a couple of workdays before it needs a recharge). I can sync the Palm with my iBook and my Linux box - not just with Windows.
They have an utterly horrid reputation among the DSL community of being unresponsive, delay-prone, and having billing problems galore, among others. I think it's a matter of trying to be too big, too fast. That said, I'm a happy customer because:
(a) I only use them for my home pipe and DNS - I provide my own mail and web server. Unless I'm down, I only have to contact hostmaster if I create a new host entry. Other than one outage in August that lasted about a day, I haven't had any reason to contact support or billing since I got the service last spring.
(b) When I got the router, I configured it myself and they don't even have the password. So if I want to cange something I don't have to wait for them.
The way DSL installs work is that the DSL provider (several companies like Covad or, in my case, Northpoint) leases the UNE (Unbundled Network Elements or, in this case, the copper loop itself) from the ILEC. They pay around $8/month for this. Covad provides the DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer) in your CO, too. They partition it into several VPN's, one for each ISP that they work with at that CO. Flashcom is just one of the ISP's that works with Covad in your area - they provide the "value-added" services of email (outsourced, but I don't remember who), web hosting, Usenet (outsourced to Supernews), billing, etc. Most of the DSL ISP's, ironically, outsource in turn virtually all of their operation but the billing and DNS.
In fact, here in Massachusetts many of Bell Atlantic's Infospeed DSL customers are actually wholesale customers - serviced through a different ISP.
The biggest problem for DSL service is this: DSL is a non-tariffed service (unlike, say, POTS, ISDN or T-1). There's no service guarantee associated with it, and if it's out there's no grounds for you to report anyone to your state's DPU. If your ISP is unresponsive, that's a problem in getting the wholesaler notified properly. If the wholesaler and ILEC are on bad terms (Covad has a reputation here for a fairly adversarial relationship with BA), then the ILEC may "misplace" service requests for a while - that's just how they are. For $8/month, the ILEC generally isn't too motivated to help out.
One thing that can help is to cultivate a good relationship with the local ILEC techs if you have the opportunity. Who works on what at a CO is rigidly determined by rules (ILEC techs are not allowed to touch stuff belonging to their co-located CLEC's), but if one of the techs is friendly with you, they may just take care of the problem if they happen to hear about it. Easy fixes can happen that way.
As far as the CPE, you own that - though Flashcom bought it. Your contract paid for it. If it's burned out, you should be able to contact the manufacturer yourself and get it replaced. Or you can settle the matter by buying another one - DSL routers are getting cheap. Good luck either way.
...even though I'm a Linux (and Mac) user, and proud of it!
It makes virtually no economic sense to target Linux with a game release for most companies. Development is not cheap, and you need to fish where the fish are - not where you want them to be. That means that you develop games for Windows and/or consoles first, then, later, you can either port the game to another platform yourself, or, easier still, license it to a porting company who will take on most of the risk. Both Linux and Macintosh have an ecosystem of companies that will port a game very nicely.
In the same vein, that's why there are no Open Source or Free games to speak of (I don't count the toys that come with every distro). All the huge, profitable games that will show up here are ports. When you license that game, you distribute it however the licensor wants. And they're not going to allow an Open Source version of their smash hit on Linux while keeping the Windows version closed. I'm happy with the gestures that companies like Id and Bungie have taken - opening up their older engines for people looking to do cool stuff. Gaming is sufficiently cutthroat that the Open Source model just breaks down entirely there.
Linux's desktop penetration will be insignificant until business apps are running there. It's got a long way to go yet before the home user would even be able to use it, let alone buy games for Linux. We get a little cocky here sometimes because slashdot's such a big community. The Real World is a lot bigger - and if three times the percentage of/. users buy a Linux game as compared to Real Life users (ie. Windows), the game's still going to lose a boatload of money for just about any major game publisher.
I can recall a story from long ago and far away that once upon a time apple had an earlier version of one of their OS recompiled and running on and intel platform.
they dropped the project because it ran a bit faster than their own official Apple hardware, and they didn't want to shoot themselves in the hardware department.
There was a project to port MacOS to Intel, called "Star Trek" internally if I recall. And from what I remember of it, they had amazing initial success getting the OS up and working, and most of the functionality implemented. "Most" is key here. It was pretty fast (though PowerPC itself had a big performance lead at the time, Apple's supporting architecture was dog-slow), but there were still a good amount of key features not implemented yet at the demo point. Apple's good at getting an OS project most of the way there - it's the last 25% or so that kills them.
Ultimately, Apple decided to stick with PowerPC, and they have since based their hardware on faster stuff that's comparable to the state of the art in PC hardware (100 MHz bus, AGP, ATA-66, etc). So an Intel port for the "classic" MacOS (which is what Star Trek was) wouldn't be relevant and a waste of time and resources. That said, OS X on Intel would be a different story, and if Apple ultimately supported OS X native and Carbonized MacOS (through emulation - a recompile would be a killer) apps on an OS X Intel port, it would probably be a Good Thing. But they need to concentrate on their own platform before they give serious thought to a port. The fact that Darwin (the core of OS X) runs on Intel helps show that it's not too far from their minds.
Gene Kranz is representative of a breed of engineer that is dying out - and the epitome of the "get it done - period" ethic. The space program of the '60s and '70s was a place where impossible things were done on a daily basis, using incredibly crude equipment, with lives at stake constantly - all resting on the actions and work of a staff of nerds and a handful of ex-fighter jocks who liked to tinker and explore. Wow, that's cool.
The pressures they faced were enormous, and they pulled it off with incredible aplomb, given that the risks were far higher than the chance that stock options may go underwater. The leadership and teamwork principles that came out of NASA's glory days have, unfortunately, not made enough of an impact on everyday business, and NASA themselves lost their way for a long time.
But basically (I'm rambling a bit here, I know), when we think about hacking, great feats of engineering, and doing the Right Thing at all costs, we should be thinking of Kranz and the amazing group of people he worked with at NASA in those years. Getting three men to the Moon and back safely, multiple times, using about as much computing power as a free solar calculator is truly one of the great hacks of all time. Buy the book, and remember them the next time you need to propose a toast.
In Space: 1999, the moon was hurled from orbit by a nuclear blast. Granted, the blast was from a runaway reaction of nuclear waste, not a "bomb" per se, but it's still a nuclear blast.
It's a little weird to see that people were seriously considering the idea of a big blast. Though the premise of the show was admittedly far-fetched, I would think anything big enough to be seen clearly from Earth would have a risk of affecting the Moon's orbit - not necessarily knocking it out. But the risk of changing the orbit enough to affect tides, weather, and such on Earth would not be insignificant, I'd expect.
Yet another reason to not screw with H-bombs. And here's a semi-scary thought. Space: 1999 was a series in the mid '70s, when lunar exploration was real, and the expectation was we'd be focusing on lunar exploration - a moonbase seemed like a somewhat reasonable stretch to assume we'd have by then (and the stapler guns they shot & the Eagle spacecraft were real cool). 1999 came and went, and all we have to show for it is a rickety old space station (Mir), another one being built behind schedule and over budget, and no realistic hope of going anywhere other than Earth orbit for the forseeable future. A pity.
$299 isn't too bad a deal, but I wonder how it'll play against Dreamcast's $199 price. Not to mention that N64 and PSX1 are both $99 (though I wanted to pick up a PSX1 yesterday, and everywhere I stopped in was sold out). The big question is what will the competition do? If Sega responds with a price cut to, say, $149, it may slow Sony down.
After all, each of these companies has had, and squandered, the market lead at some point - except Sony so far. Is it their turn? I don't think the average console gamer is concerned about the gory details that we may care about ("Gee - the PSX2 processes an extra megatexel per second compared to the Dreamcast - of _course_ everyone will buy the PSX2!") so much as they care about the important stuff, like:
How much are the games? How cool are the games? How many cool games are there? Are there lots of good accessories?
If Sony slips on any of these, they lose - and selling the box for $299 makes the margin for error even thinner.
The good news is that response is definitely faster. The bad news (perhaps) is that this may be due to my being online at 5:50 EDT, when all the good little geeks who don't have to go to the airport this morning are still in bed. I'll try it later this morning, after the country wakes up.
However, loading a large text page (like this one) is noticeably faster, as are the image loads. And the preview is really fast. I remember when you were talking about this at Geek Pride last month - Exodus is a good shop and for a/.-type site it's probably the best option for you. Good job.
I'm definitely looking forward to this one - but I'll wait for multi-user capability first before I buy it. Virtually all my geek friends have Palms, and we could probably have quite the I/R fragfest with these puppies.
From what little I can see, it looks kind of like a cross between Daleks, Wolfenstein 3D, and the old Mac classic Maze Wars. Cool little app for a Palm.
Maybe RMS should move on to the other causes he thinks he could be of benefit to. His time as the leader of Open Source is over.
Methinks you miss the point. RMS has never been the leader of the Open Source "movement". He's not interested in that. What RMS advocates is Free Software, and that's a different animal (though they look the same on the surface)entirely. To put it simply:
Free Software is, by definition, open source. It also gives you full usage and reproduction rights, and prevents those rights from being taken away.
Open Source software is not necessarily Free. The source is available to StarOffice - it's Open Source software. But try downloading the code, changing a few text strings, then selling it as "FooOffice". Sun's lawyers would slap the taste right out of your mouth, you'd be hit so hard. And rightly so. Were StarOffice Free Software, this would not be an issue. Sun would not have the right to stop you from doing that.
Open Source is definitely a Good Thing, and useful. I'd rather see Open Source software with commercial restrictions than see closed commercial restricted software. But Free Software is the ideal that RMS has always been striving for - and Open Source is, at best, just a step in that direction. Remember, with people like RMS and his ideals out on the "fringe", it turns ESR and the rest of the Open Sourcers into the mainstream. And that's good for us all right now. Just a couple of years ago, Open Source itself was the "wacky fringe". How far we've come in just a short time!
This kind of has been on the periphery of things since last week's discussion of the new version of CE. One of the arguments against CE is that Windows just doesn't scale down to a handheld device - a device like a Palm (or the late, lamented Newton, for that matter) that has an OS designed from the ground up specifically for handheld devices has big advantages over a downsized PC.
I'm not sure one way or another here. I own a Palm Vx (and I had a Palm III and a Pilot Pro before that), and I used to have a Newton MessagePad 100, and before that a Sharp Wizard (with the touchscreen). I've used CE, and it's okay, but bloated as hell. All in all, I've been using some type of pocket device since about 1991 or so. The Wizard was great for it's time, but there was no easy PC synchronization at the time, and the pen was just for drawing and selecting on-screen buttons - it couldn't do even rudimentary data entry. On the other hand, it had separate batteries for operation and memory backup, and could go 6+ months of pretty regular use before you had to replace the battery. And it was pretty thin, so it worked well with a coat pocket.
Newton was a revelation when it came out. I saw it and immediately had to have one. The speed was OK, the battery life wasn't too bad (fresh batteries every couple of weeks), but it was bigger than the Sharp it replaced. The OS was smart as hell, despite the mediocre recognition (which got better with time) - it's still the only device where it was intuitive to tell it "schedule lunch with Bob tomorrow" and it could figure out what you meant! They were still too big when Apple Steved the whole Newton line, but if Newton had been allowed to keep on going it very well might have left CE stillborn at the high end and larger form factor.
My Palm is terrific because it's small, quick, and streamlined. Data entry is simple, synchronization is simple, and it works well with my iBook, Windows PC, and Linux PC. It's not as smart as my Newton was (natively), and I can't use real handwriting (Grafitti was originally a Newton software package before the Pilot existed), but it's small enough for the shirt pocket (the Holy Grail), and the battery life is the best since the Wizard. CE is a blivet in comparison.
CE still uses an old-fashioned filesystem metaphor, stores apps separate from executable space, and crams much of an interface designed at least for a 640x480 display into 1/4 the real estate. Despite improvements in the new version, how can that satisfy the needs of the computing/PDA mainstream? I'm afraid that Yopy will be the same. It's nice-looking hardware, but I don't see how Linux works any better than PalmOS or even CE as a PDA operating system. I'd much rather see Linux running on a system in the class of the CE "Jupiter" mininotebooks or even the handhelds rather than the palmtop-class hardware - I think the effort needed to put a usable distro onto a PDA isn't going to be worth it. I hope I'm wrong.
I just don't think Linux's strength lies in the PDA space - the only benefit I see is (theoretically) easier development because a Unix programmer should be able to easily write code for a Linux-based PDA like the Yopy. But writing Palm code is already pretty simple, and a lot of Win32 expertise can be re-used on CE (which, unfortunately, is a strength of CE). Sadly, I see Yopy getting squished in the market and that can't help the Linux cause at all - hopefully a failure won't hurt it, either.
A UI should present a simple view by default to the user that makes most, if not all, of the functionality of the software available. 10% of the learning should be able to accomplish 90% of the tasks you'd need to perform. Ideally, the user should be able to happily use the product without ever being forced to dig deep into customization, preferences, skins, or any of the like - the UI should, however, offer any additional chrome as an option. The original Mac (with a few exceptions like dragging disks to the Trash) came pretty close to this ideal - but has become more complicated and convoluted with time.
Installers should be smart - either dragging the application to the hard drive should be sufficient to install it properly (like much of the simpler Mac software), or a simple installer (the new Windows Installer isn't bad), or a.configure script that handles everything necessary. Reasonable defaults should be set, and the advanced user should have a simple way to access those defaults to change them.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a CLI - so long as users can function without it. In that sense, it'll be interesting to see how MacOS X turns out. Applications should be consistent to the OS's bulit-in UI functionality - using the system's UI elements should be the default behavior for any application. Chrome and skin use should be optional, if used at all.
Finally, the keyboard/pointing device combination should be enough for most anything. Not that there's a lot of alternatives out there, but I don't see voice recognition (in cubicle farms?) or touchscreens (the old "gorilla arm" syndrome) being too useful for anything but a specialized environment. Day-to-day applications should not be designed with those type of inputs in mind. More audio feedback would be nice to see in the future, so long as it's not required to use the systems properly.
For the most part, I remain a relative fan of the MacOS for UI consistency and design. Though it's a lot more complicated than it used to be, and there really isn't easy access to the underlying OS (AppleScript is great and powerful, but a CLI would have been nice years ago), I agree with the pundit (I can't remember who it was) many years ago who said, basically, "The Mac is the first and only personal computer that's good enough to dislike". And though I own and use systems running Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux, when I go home and just want to turn on one of my computers and just get something done quickly and easily, without having to think about how to do it - 9 times out of 10 that means turning on my Mac. So I really guess a good UI should steal as much of that as possible.
So Nvidia will be king of the hill again for now, at least until the next announcement cycle. Maybe it's me, but I think that video cards have gotten so fast that at this point even the lowest-end cards (anything more potent than the integrated video in the i810 chipset) have more than enough horesepower to handle any users' typical 3D needs (including very enjoyable gaming). Right now the money for a supreme video card is arguably better spent on tons o' RAM and an ATA-66 drive/controller combo for faster performance in everyday apps.
As for picking a video card, I'd just look for the best possible support for your OS of choice - though Nvidia's performance and support under Windows is terrific, their Linux support is awful so no matter how swank the GeForce is it's out of the running to go into my systems. I still dual-boot, but I'd rather not.
ATI and 3Dfx do a better job of supporting Windows/Linux/Mac, so I buy mainly their cards. I'm willing to trade off a few FPS playing Quake III under Windows for that Linux and Mac support. But hey, if you don't mind Windows and you live to frag, then this GeForce 2 sounds pretty darned sweet.
The folks over at Synaptics (the touchpad company) wrote a Theremin program for Windows - the link is here. It's a cool little toy that kind of gives people an idea of what the instrument is about.
I went to view them on the Fish PC website and I'll say this - if Apple could beat Future Power and eMachines in court, they should have no problem whatsoever stomping this one. Even though I don't see anything wrong with other companies trying to imitate the Apple "style", this is a dead ringer for an iMac, even down to the color choices. The only difference of any significance appears to be a few control buttons on the front panel. What were these guys thinking? Like it or not, this looks like an open-and-shut case for Apple, and a waste of time and money for Fish.
Version 3.0 of WinCE is just Microsoft finally "getting it right" as they have in the past. The same thing was true of Windows, it finally became viable with the 3.0 release.
Windows NT 4.0 is even the third version of NT (3.1, 3.5, 4.0)....
You do have a good point - There have been a handful of programs where Microsoft has had a winner from the first rev (the first version of Excel - on the Mac originally - was pretty innovative, and Word PC was fairly solid from the start - in fact, on the Mac side at least the 3rd version of Word was a disaster) - but they typically require a few iterations to really tune the product. The Microsoft pattern seems to be something like this:
1: Pre-announce to try and freeze the market in place.
2: Release version 1. This product usually has major shortcomings, but is reasonably stable - just exasperating.
3: Incorporate loads of new features and call it version 2. 2.0 usually is pretty bloated from all the new features and buggy as can be. It pretty much serves to full the features checklist that the suits use to buy software.
4: Fix most of the bugs, streamline the program, and fix the funky stuff in the interface (well, most of it...). Begin dominating the world with it.
The one thing positive I'll say about their process is that they do listen better than many companies, and by version 3.0 they typically have what Joe User wants. There is at least some basis other than pure monopolistic spirit behind Microsoft's dominance in most areas - they may not be doing the Right Thing, but they give enough to most users that the market is willing to put up with them.
Remember, Microsoft would love it if they had all the computing world, but those of us here on/. are not their market. And we're a distinct minority, unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
Battery life in digital cameras is bad enough as is - let alone how it'll get worse with mechanical equipment like a CD-R (even a small one). You have to spin the motor, operate the servos, and fire the laser in order to write. Combined with everything else (the LCD's suck power too, and so to the CCD's), I really don't see the future of digital photography including floppies or CD's much longer - even the optimized drives like the IBM Microdrives or the Iomega Clik are going to suck more power than flash.
Right now, digital photography is in a flux state anyhow. At the high end, it's been adequate for years (my old company was shooting production ads with digital medium-format backs like the Leaf back 6+ years ago), but the low end is just arriving at the point now where the quality equals what you can get from consumer-grade film.
Unfortunately, those cameras cost about $1000, and you still get crappy battery life.
Digital photography has really taken off the last couple of years, but I won't replace my trusty Nikon until I can buy a 3K x 2K pixel camera with 3x optical zoom, lens switching capability, USB and CF support, and enough battery life to take 150-200 photos on a charge (with flash as needed) for about $500. The feature set is out there today at twice that price. Until then, I'll continue to schlep my handy Apple QuickTake 200 (with 5v Smartmedia) to parties as my only digital device.
- -Josh Turiel
Microsoft makes a lot of profit from Office on the Mac. Their office suite market share is even more dominant on MacOS than on Windows - which is part of the reason that Access wasn't ported. Microsoft has no Mac office suite competition with a database.
Interestingly, Excel and Word were both Mac programs _first_, before Windows even existed. There used to be a CLI version of Word for DOS, but it was scrapped. PowerPoint was originally developed by a company called Nashoba Systems as a Mac product (back in '87 or so), and then MS bought the company (a sidenote - the Nashoba guys also produced Nutshell and Filemaker). So Microsoft has a long history of producing Mac software and making a lot of money with it.
Apple wouldn't have to go nutty to get OS X up on Intel hardware. The Darwin core already runs, OpenStep (which forms the guts of OS X) was Intel/PowerPC based all along, and Apple is almost certainly making an effort to keep the code readily portable. I'd guess that they could have everything but the Classic environment up on Intel hardware within a couple of months of the PowerPC version of the OS shipping.
That said, I don't see Apple actively trying to play in offering Windows "compatibility", and OS X native apps will be scarce for a while - most "Native" apps will likely just be Carbonized Classic apps for a year or so. Carbonizing is a lot faster and cheaper than building a native app, and you get most of the benefits of OS X that way.
The other wildcard is that Linux will have advanced substantially in the timeframe the article mentions. Though the OS X he mentions would likely trounce today's Linux, Linux is a moving target, as is Windows.
I think the likelier scenario is that Apple, with an OS X like described in the article (that is, one that can host Windows apps) would gather a solid 10-20% of the OS marketplace since you're taking what was essentially an OS noted for it's bulletproofness (NeXTStep/OpenStep) and overall quality, and souping it up. If it can run Windows apps, too, there's a pent-up demand for an OS like that.
The Mac hardware version of OS X would then likely do about the same business - giving Apple a total of from 20-40% of the market across platforms. Probably on the lower side of that, maybe about a combined (X86 and PPC) 20-25%.
Linux continues to make inroads, and hits some enterprise desktops, but makes the biggest impact in the server room, taking about 40% of the server market over Windows 2000, NetWare,and other platforms. Linux remains a solid niche player on the desktop, with about a 10-15% market share, but penetrates a few Fortune 500-class companies thanks to increased applications support.
The Microsoft Windows company's OS remains the default OS for most consumer systems, as market pressures from Apple and Linux force them to finally start improving the broken things (like security) in Windows today. Windows improves at a faster pace than usual, and retains about half the market.
And then, everybody makes a lot of money. Microsoft Windows Co. makes a little less than they're used to, but Microsoft Office Co. makes money hand over fist, porting their dominant Office 2001 product to every operating system under the sun, and not coincidentally blowing Sun out of the water entirely with their StarOffice gambit.
The only loser: Sun, who bought and invested in an Office alternative that nobody wants now that they can get Office on every platform.
- -Josh Turiel
I remember the cat experiment - it was featured here on /. at the time. I was absolutely amazed that they did it (and I think I posted a suitably witty comment here at the time), but after I got to thinking about it a little bit more I was really bothered by that one. On the one hand, it taught us a tremendous amount about how the optic system works, but they had to slice into the living brain of a cat to do so. That just doesn't work for me.
I think, upon some reflection, that my dividing line falls somewhere in the "awareness + feeling" category. If a creature has the ability to feel pain or discomfort, then the guidelines for experimentation should be strict as hell (I would count on a code of ethics rather than regulation in a perfect world, which this most certainly is not). I would only perform experiments that have a direct relationship to saving lives, either of humans or more animals on animals that meet this criterion.
I would not restrict things done with cell samples or "cultured" tissue - so long as the sample is obtained without harming the animal (or human) involved.
I will still wear leather and eat meat. That, to me, gets directly into the traditional food chain, and humans were designed to be omnivorous - with (as far as I can tell), a diet of grains, fruits, and vegetables supplemented by occasional meat. Given that belief/assumption, leather is a byproduct of the process. If animals were not killed for food, I think I'd see the leather question somewhat differently.
- -Josh Turiel
Good point. Though Windows has no security whatsoever, it'd be trivial for the cable companies and DSL providers to provide basic, network-level security for their users that could at least block most of these DDOS script kiddie tools from getting "go" signals.
Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the user, but given the cluelessness of most home (and many office) users, and the inherent vulnerability of Windows, the network providers really need to step up and fill this gap soon.
There's no reason why filtering couldn't be built into the cable modem (the same way many of them now block NetBIOS), and updated by central control at the head end to block new threats.
That said, given that it's cable companies doing this, the login for administration would probably be:
Login: admin
Password: admin
Scary, huh?
- -Josh Turiel
Extracting a brain and spinal cord from a living creature (even if it's "only" a lamprey) in order to harvest a few cells for an experiment bothers me more than I'd like it to. It's a fascinating study in robotics, and an interesting experiment, but what about when they start trying this with mammals? Mice, chimps, dogs, cats - it's easy to start drawing that line ever closer to humans or your own pet.
Mind you, I'm not some PETA fanatic who only wears Naugahide for leather (who cares about a few Naugas?), and I'm not inherently opposed to animal experimentation, but I think I wouldn't perform an experiment like this, regardless of how useful the information is. I wouldn't test cosmetics on animals, either - though there are definitely appropriate uses for testing drugs and other things.
Then again, I'm just not completely sure - am I way off base in being disturbed by this?
- -Josh Turiel
Ironically, this is a typical Microsoft move - a seemingly simple change that "improves the experience for our customers", but is shortsighted, stupid, inconvenient, and is just an abuse of monopoly power that pisses everybody off. Wasn't there a lawsuit recently about this kind of thing?
For years, Windows has needed the system CD for just about any change made to the system (your mouse has moved - please insert the disk "Windows 95" in Drive D:). They have changed that somewhat - by putting all the install files into a directory on the machine (on a Win9x PC, typically c:\windows\options\cabs), and setting the Registry's installation path to scan that directory for all files. It still doesn't work perfectly, but it was an improvement - virtually all large OEM's do this.
From that, only providing the OS itself on a recovery CD was an obvious step. They also now put a sticker with the OS install key on the side of each PC under this arrangement. Theoretically, this all makes sense to do - because the OS itself is stashed on the hard drive, and any "going to the CD" is eliminated by design. In theory, the only thing you'd need a CD for would be a total reinstall, and thusly having the whole recovery process automated off a boot CD would therefore be a Good Thing - especially for the less sophisticated home user. If you are buying an OS upgrade at some point you'd get a CD then, only when you needed it.
But we know it's bullshit. Microsoft is mainly guilty of not thinking this through and pissing people off at a really inopportune time for them. There are scenarios where the OS CD might, in fact, be needed (playing with a different OS, finding an obscure driver file that otherwise just takes up space, booting the Win2K Recovery Console, trying to boot clean to fix a virus - Windows has some problems with them, I've heard), and the only way to get a CD now is either by copying it form someone who has one, buying a shrink-wrapped copy or, if you are a corporate user like us on one of their licensing plans (Open, Select, or Enterprise) you can get the media for next to nothing. As a Select (applications) and Enterprise (OS) customer, I get a huge box with a master copy of literally _everything_ they make. From that, I can duplicate to my hearts' contect and install galore, but I do need to track and pay for my licenses. When I was an Open customer previously, licenses and media were sold separate; I'd buy whatever combination I needed. And the media was cheap - barely above the cost of packaging and duplication for any given product.
So this doesn't really hurt the corporate user. We have plenty of ways to deal with it, and I rarely have any use for the CD that comes with a system, anyway. We just download the appropriate pre-configured NT Workstation image for a department onto each PC when it arrives with Ghost and blow away whatever was on it in the first place. This does hurt the home/hobbyist user, the small business user (who doesn't necessarily benefit from the licensing programs), and the large OEM (who has to abide by this) as well. Ultimately, this will probably help sales at the small white box companies, since they still get to distribute CD's (for now, at least), since the user categories above may have no other easy recourse for getting media easily.
The funny thing here is that piracy is the biggest competition Microsoft has for market share. Microsoft dominates the market, and I suspect there's more pirated Microsoft software than Linux and MacOS combined. It obviously has had a huge impact on their profits, though... (/sarcasm)
- -Josh Turiel
Good, perfectly legit point. Linux has improved significantly in the last year, and the desktop experience is much better than it was then. But I'm still not ready to try turning it into a user desktop for the "average user" of myth. Today, I'd have no qualms about deploying Linux as a server in my organization. But not as a desktop, yet.
I disagree with the premise that it "won't happen if people don't start doing it today", though. If you try to force Linux into a position that, for the most part, today's distributions, desktop applications, and GUI's don't justify you're risking causing serious harm to your business for no reason other than political issues with Microsoft. I can't responsibly make that decision for my company at this point. A few people can, and more power to them. Linux has come a long way in the past year, and is now a viable server platform for most companies. That's a hell of a good start, and I'm happy with that so far. The desktop, though it has improved and continues to improve quickly, still has a ways to go.
Remember, if the only tool you have is a hammer (Linux), everything looks like a nail. To run a company's network efficiently and responsibly, you should have a full set of tools in your toolchest - and unfortunately, one of them usually needs to be Windows. But that doesn't mean Windows has to be the only tool, either - or even your most commonly used one. But sometimes, even though it's an ugly, low-quality tool it's still the right tool for the job.
- -Josh Turiel
Well, if you want to avoid an MS-based office, you basically have a handful of options.
Option one: Set up Linux workstations (or Solaris, or whatever). Install StarOffice, Applixware, or WordPerfect (if you're using Linux). Teach your users the basics of operating in a Unix environment, and build their login environment to be as simple as possible. Then accept the limitations you'll face on peripheral usage, software, compatibility, etc. There are workarounds for a lot of it.
Option two: Buy a whole load of Macs. Use AppleWorks, Netscape, and Eudora as your operating environment. Apple's stopped including Office translators, though, so you'll have to buy them from Dataviz. There used to be other options on the Mac, but Office steamrolled Lotus and Corel right out of the ballgame. Office has a higher competitive marketshare on the Mac than it has on Windows even - because there's no high-end competition. StarOffice is supposed to be on the way now, though.
That all said, it's not necessarily practical to go MS-free. For the most part, Office on Windows is the easiest, most practical way for the average office drone to get things done. It's bloated, granted, and it comes from Shub-Redmond, but it still works quite well for what it is. If you also put your users on NT (not servers, mind you, but users), you have enough tools to lock the systems down sufficiently to keep the users out of trouble and still let them think they control their systems.
Where it is easy and practical to go MS-free is in the back end. NetWare is still the slickest file & print server out there, and their directory services work real well and give you nice admin tools that can control systems across platforms. Linux, xBSD, or Solaris all also run well on the back end, and are tremendously robust and flexible. Not as easy to administer as NetWare, and without the cross-platform (Windows included) directory tools, but a viable option. Exchange is easy to replace - you can use Notes, GroupWise, or a Unix-based system like OpenMail. Presto. Eliminating Exchange/Outlook has just rendered you significantly less vulnerable to nasty virii and worms that plague Windows users. Besides that, you can easily avoid running Microsoft databases - Oracle, Sybase, Informix, or a host of others run very well, cross-platform, and have all sorts of development tools available.
Basically, it's easy to ditch MS for a lot of applications, but Windows probably makes more sense today for the average office worker. Ask this question again in a year, and there's a real good chance my answer will be different.
- -Josh Turiel
Sure, if they buy Iridium they'll get a functioning satellite network for pennies on the dollar. And it can be run pretty cheaply, I'm sure - Motorola is still spending money to run it until they all get augered in, so it can't be too bad. But even if they can rescue it on the cheap and start suddenly selling the sat phones again for low prices, there's still one big problem.
Iridium has, essentially, an expiration date.
These satellites are all in LEO, and only have a lifespan of about 5-7 years or so before they flame out. The earliest launched satellites are already approaching their end of life, and even buying the network on the cheap doesn't do anything to relieve the replacement cost. Just because the current space assets are cheap doesn't get you out of the cost of building the network all over again over the next decade. It'll still cost billions to put 66 more of these in orbit.
Can they get the critical mass of users needed to make replacement viable before the capital drain gets too bad? Somebody must believe that's the case, but I really doubt it.
- -Josh Turiel
Because it was free (we got 5 of them in their switch promotion - and the HP4000 switch rocks). I'm hacking around with one, and I gave the other ones to my staff. It's not a bad little unit. The screen may not be 16-bit, but it's more than good enough for AvantGo browsing and e-book reading (which, along with Inbox sync, is all I do with it). I use the HP a decent amount during the work day.
My Palm Vx, though, is still much handier because:
It's half the size of the HP. Even though the HP does fit in a pocket (barely), it's a lot heavier than the Palm.
It's faster for most tasks (except offline browsing).
The battery life is much better (though the HP isn't as bad as I expected - I can easily get through a couple of workdays before it needs a recharge).
I can sync the Palm with my iBook and my Linux box - not just with Windows.
And finally:
Palm isn't Microsoft!
- -Josh Turiel
They have an utterly horrid reputation among the DSL community of being unresponsive, delay-prone, and having billing problems galore, among others. I think it's a matter of trying to be too big, too fast. That said, I'm a happy customer because:
(a) I only use them for my home pipe and DNS - I provide my own mail and web server. Unless I'm down, I only have to contact hostmaster if I create a new host entry. Other than one outage in August that lasted about a day, I haven't had any reason to contact support or billing since I got the service last spring.
(b) When I got the router, I configured it myself and they don't even have the password. So if I want to cange something I don't have to wait for them.
The way DSL installs work is that the DSL provider (several companies like Covad or, in my case, Northpoint) leases the UNE (Unbundled Network Elements or, in this case, the copper loop itself) from the ILEC. They pay around $8/month for this. Covad provides the DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer) in your CO, too. They partition it into several VPN's, one for each ISP that they work with at that CO. Flashcom is just one of the ISP's that works with Covad in your area - they provide the "value-added" services of email (outsourced, but I don't remember who), web hosting, Usenet (outsourced to Supernews), billing, etc. Most of the DSL ISP's, ironically, outsource in turn virtually all of their operation but the billing and DNS.
In fact, here in Massachusetts many of Bell Atlantic's Infospeed DSL customers are actually wholesale customers - serviced through a different ISP.
The biggest problem for DSL service is this: DSL is a non-tariffed service (unlike, say, POTS, ISDN or T-1). There's no service guarantee associated with it, and if it's out there's no grounds for you to report anyone to your state's DPU. If your ISP is unresponsive, that's a problem in getting the wholesaler notified properly. If the wholesaler and ILEC are on bad terms (Covad has a reputation here for a fairly adversarial relationship with BA), then the ILEC may "misplace" service requests for a while - that's just how they are. For $8/month, the ILEC generally isn't too motivated to help out.
One thing that can help is to cultivate a good relationship with the local ILEC techs if you have the opportunity. Who works on what at a CO is rigidly determined by rules (ILEC techs are not allowed to touch stuff belonging to their co-located CLEC's), but if one of the techs is friendly with you, they may just take care of the problem if they happen to hear about it. Easy fixes can happen that way.
As far as the CPE, you own that - though Flashcom bought it. Your contract paid for it. If it's burned out, you should be able to contact the manufacturer yourself and get it replaced. Or you can settle the matter by buying another one - DSL routers are getting cheap. Good luck either way.
- -Josh Turiel
...even though I'm a Linux (and Mac) user, and proud of it!
/. users buy a Linux game as compared to Real Life users (ie. Windows), the game's still going to lose a boatload of money for just about any major game publisher.
It makes virtually no economic sense to target Linux with a game release for most companies. Development is not cheap, and you need to fish where the fish are - not where you want them to be. That means that you develop games for Windows and/or consoles first, then, later, you can either port the game to another platform yourself, or, easier still, license it to a porting company who will take on most of the risk. Both Linux and Macintosh have an ecosystem of companies that will port a game very nicely.
In the same vein, that's why there are no Open Source or Free games to speak of (I don't count the toys that come with every distro). All the huge, profitable games that will show up here are ports. When you license that game, you distribute it however the licensor wants. And they're not going to allow an Open Source version of their smash hit on Linux while keeping the Windows version closed. I'm happy with the gestures that companies like Id and Bungie have taken - opening up their older engines for people looking to do cool stuff. Gaming is sufficiently cutthroat that the Open Source model just breaks down entirely there.
Linux's desktop penetration will be insignificant until business apps are running there. It's got a long way to go yet before the home user would even be able to use it, let alone buy games for Linux. We get a little cocky here sometimes because slashdot's such a big community. The Real World is a lot bigger - and if three times the percentage of
- -Josh Turiel
There was a project to port MacOS to Intel, called "Star Trek" internally if I recall. And from what I remember of it, they had amazing initial success getting the OS up and working, and most of the functionality implemented. "Most" is key here. It was pretty fast (though PowerPC itself had a big performance lead at the time, Apple's supporting architecture was dog-slow), but there were still a good amount of key features not implemented yet at the demo point. Apple's good at getting an OS project most of the way there - it's the last 25% or so that kills them.
Ultimately, Apple decided to stick with PowerPC, and they have since based their hardware on faster stuff that's comparable to the state of the art in PC hardware (100 MHz bus, AGP, ATA-66, etc). So an Intel port for the "classic" MacOS (which is what Star Trek was) wouldn't be relevant and a waste of time and resources. That said, OS X on Intel would be a different story, and if Apple ultimately supported OS X native and Carbonized MacOS (through emulation - a recompile would be a killer) apps on an OS X Intel port, it would probably be a Good Thing. But they need to concentrate on their own platform before they give serious thought to a port. The fact that Darwin (the core of OS X) runs on Intel helps show that it's not too far from their minds.
- -Josh Turiel
Gene Kranz is representative of a breed of engineer that is dying out - and the epitome of the "get it done - period" ethic. The space program of the '60s and '70s was a place where impossible things were done on a daily basis, using incredibly crude equipment, with lives at stake constantly - all resting on the actions and work of a staff of nerds and a handful of ex-fighter jocks who liked to tinker and explore. Wow, that's cool.
The pressures they faced were enormous, and they pulled it off with incredible aplomb, given that the risks were far higher than the chance that stock options may go underwater. The leadership and teamwork principles that came out of NASA's glory days have, unfortunately, not made enough of an impact on everyday business, and NASA themselves lost their way for a long time.
But basically (I'm rambling a bit here, I know), when we think about hacking, great feats of engineering, and doing the Right Thing at all costs, we should be thinking of Kranz and the amazing group of people he worked with at NASA in those years. Getting three men to the Moon and back safely, multiple times, using about as much computing power as a free solar calculator is truly one of the great hacks of all time. Buy the book, and remember them the next time you need to propose a toast.
- -Josh Turiel
In Space: 1999, the moon was hurled from orbit by a nuclear blast. Granted, the blast was from a runaway reaction of nuclear waste, not a "bomb" per se, but it's still a nuclear blast.
It's a little weird to see that people were seriously considering the idea of a big blast. Though the premise of the show was admittedly far-fetched, I would think anything big enough to be seen clearly from Earth would have a risk of affecting the Moon's orbit - not necessarily knocking it out. But the risk of changing the orbit enough to affect tides, weather, and such on Earth would not be insignificant, I'd expect.
Yet another reason to not screw with H-bombs. And here's a semi-scary thought. Space: 1999 was a series in the mid '70s, when lunar exploration was real, and the expectation was we'd be focusing on lunar exploration - a moonbase seemed like a somewhat reasonable stretch to assume we'd have by then (and the stapler guns they shot & the Eagle spacecraft were real cool). 1999 came and went, and all we have to show for it is a rickety old space station (Mir), another one being built behind schedule and over budget, and no realistic hope of going anywhere other than Earth orbit for the forseeable future. A pity.
- -Josh Turiel
$299 isn't too bad a deal, but I wonder how it'll play against Dreamcast's $199 price. Not to mention that N64 and PSX1 are both $99 (though I wanted to pick up a PSX1 yesterday, and everywhere I stopped in was sold out). The big question is what will the competition do? If Sega responds with a price cut to, say, $149, it may slow Sony down.
After all, each of these companies has had, and squandered, the market lead at some point - except Sony so far. Is it their turn? I don't think the average console gamer is concerned about the gory details that we may care about ("Gee - the PSX2 processes an extra megatexel per second compared to the Dreamcast - of _course_ everyone will buy the PSX2!") so much as they care about the important stuff, like:
How much are the games?
How cool are the games?
How many cool games are there?
Are there lots of good accessories?
If Sony slips on any of these, they lose - and selling the box for $299 makes the margin for error even thinner.
- -Josh Turiel
The good news is that response is definitely faster. The bad news (perhaps) is that this may be due to my being online at 5:50 EDT, when all the good little geeks who don't have to go to the airport this morning are still in bed. I'll try it later this morning, after the country wakes up.
/.-type site it's probably the best option for you. Good job.
However, loading a large text page (like this one) is noticeably faster, as are the image loads. And the preview is really fast. I remember when you were talking about this at Geek Pride last month - Exodus is a good shop and for a
- -Josh Turiel
I'm definitely looking forward to this one - but I'll wait for multi-user capability first before I buy it. Virtually all my geek friends have Palms, and we could probably have quite the I/R fragfest with these puppies.
From what little I can see, it looks kind of like a cross between Daleks, Wolfenstein 3D, and the old Mac classic Maze Wars. Cool little app for a Palm.
- -Josh Turiel
Methinks you miss the point. RMS has never been the leader of the Open Source "movement". He's not interested in that. What RMS advocates is Free Software, and that's a different animal (though they look the same on the surface)entirely. To put it simply:
Free Software is, by definition, open source. It also gives you full usage and reproduction rights, and prevents those rights from being taken away.
Open Source software is not necessarily Free. The source is available to StarOffice - it's Open Source software. But try downloading the code, changing a few text strings, then selling it as "FooOffice". Sun's lawyers would slap the taste right out of your mouth, you'd be hit so hard. And rightly so. Were StarOffice Free Software, this would not be an issue. Sun would not have the right to stop you from doing that.
Open Source is definitely a Good Thing, and useful. I'd rather see Open Source software with commercial restrictions than see closed commercial restricted software. But Free Software is the ideal that RMS has always been striving for - and Open Source is, at best, just a step in that direction. Remember, with people like RMS and his ideals out on the "fringe", it turns ESR and the rest of the Open Sourcers into the mainstream. And that's good for us all right now. Just a couple of years ago, Open Source itself was the "wacky fringe". How far we've come in just a short time!
- -Josh Turiel
This kind of has been on the periphery of things since last week's discussion of the new version of CE. One of the arguments against CE is that Windows just doesn't scale down to a handheld device - a device like a Palm (or the late, lamented Newton, for that matter) that has an OS designed from the ground up specifically for handheld devices has big advantages over a downsized PC.
I'm not sure one way or another here. I own a Palm Vx (and I had a Palm III and a Pilot Pro before that), and I used to have a Newton MessagePad 100, and before that a Sharp Wizard (with the touchscreen). I've used CE, and it's okay, but bloated as hell. All in all, I've been using some type of pocket device since about 1991 or so. The Wizard was great for it's time, but there was no easy PC synchronization at the time, and the pen was just for drawing and selecting on-screen buttons - it couldn't do even rudimentary data entry. On the other hand, it had separate batteries for operation and memory backup, and could go 6+ months of pretty regular use before you had to replace the battery. And it was pretty thin, so it worked well with a coat pocket.
Newton was a revelation when it came out. I saw it and immediately had to have one. The speed was OK, the battery life wasn't too bad (fresh batteries every couple of weeks), but it was bigger than the Sharp it replaced. The OS was smart as hell, despite the mediocre recognition (which got better with time) - it's still the only device where it was intuitive to tell it "schedule lunch with Bob tomorrow" and it could figure out what you meant! They were still too big when Apple Steved the whole Newton line, but if Newton had been allowed to keep on going it very well might have left CE stillborn at the high end and larger form factor.
My Palm is terrific because it's small, quick, and streamlined. Data entry is simple, synchronization is simple, and it works well with my iBook, Windows PC, and Linux PC. It's not as smart as my Newton was (natively), and I can't use real handwriting (Grafitti was originally a Newton software package before the Pilot existed), but it's small enough for the shirt pocket (the Holy Grail), and the battery life is the best since the Wizard. CE is a blivet in comparison.
CE still uses an old-fashioned filesystem metaphor, stores apps separate from executable space, and crams much of an interface designed at least for a 640x480 display into 1/4 the real estate. Despite improvements in the new version, how can that satisfy the needs of the computing/PDA mainstream? I'm afraid that Yopy will be the same. It's nice-looking hardware, but I don't see how Linux works any better than PalmOS or even CE as a PDA operating system. I'd much rather see Linux running on a system in the class of the CE "Jupiter" mininotebooks or even the handhelds rather than the palmtop-class hardware - I think the effort needed to put a usable distro onto a PDA isn't going to be worth it. I hope I'm wrong.
I just don't think Linux's strength lies in the PDA space - the only benefit I see is (theoretically) easier development because a Unix programmer should be able to easily write code for a Linux-based PDA like the Yopy. But writing Palm code is already pretty simple, and a lot of Win32 expertise can be re-used on CE (which, unfortunately, is a strength of CE). Sadly, I see Yopy getting squished in the market and that can't help the Linux cause at all - hopefully a failure won't hurt it, either.
- -Josh Turiel
A UI should present a simple view by default to the user that makes most, if not all, of the functionality of the software available. 10% of the learning should be able to accomplish 90% of the tasks you'd need to perform. Ideally, the user should be able to happily use the product without ever being forced to dig deep into customization, preferences, skins, or any of the like - the UI should, however, offer any additional chrome as an option. The original Mac (with a few exceptions like dragging disks to the Trash) came pretty close to this ideal - but has become more complicated and convoluted with time.
.configure script that handles everything necessary. Reasonable defaults should be set, and the advanced user should have a simple way to access those defaults to change them.
Installers should be smart - either dragging the application to the hard drive should be sufficient to install it properly (like much of the simpler Mac software), or a simple installer (the new Windows Installer isn't bad), or a
There's nothing inherently wrong with a CLI - so long as users can function without it. In that sense, it'll be interesting to see how MacOS X turns out. Applications should be consistent to the OS's bulit-in UI functionality - using the system's UI elements should be the default behavior for any application. Chrome and skin use should be optional, if used at all.
Finally, the keyboard/pointing device combination should be enough for most anything. Not that there's a lot of alternatives out there, but I don't see voice recognition (in cubicle farms?) or touchscreens (the old "gorilla arm" syndrome) being too useful for anything but a specialized environment. Day-to-day applications should not be designed with those type of inputs in mind. More audio feedback would be nice to see in the future, so long as it's not required to use the systems properly.
For the most part, I remain a relative fan of the MacOS for UI consistency and design. Though it's a lot more complicated than it used to be, and there really isn't easy access to the underlying OS (AppleScript is great and powerful, but a CLI would have been nice years ago), I agree with the pundit (I can't remember who it was) many years ago who said, basically, "The Mac is the first and only personal computer that's good enough to dislike". And though I own and use systems running Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux, when I go home and just want to turn on one of my computers and just get something done quickly and easily, without having to think about how to do it - 9 times out of 10 that means turning on my Mac. So I really guess a good UI should steal as much of that as possible.
- -Josh Turiel
So Nvidia will be king of the hill again for now, at least until the next announcement cycle. Maybe it's me, but I think that video cards have gotten so fast that at this point even the lowest-end cards (anything more potent than the integrated video in the i810 chipset) have more than enough horesepower to handle any users' typical 3D needs (including very enjoyable gaming). Right now the money for a supreme video card is arguably better spent on tons o' RAM and an ATA-66 drive/controller combo for faster performance in everyday apps.
As for picking a video card, I'd just look for the best possible support for your OS of choice - though Nvidia's performance and support under Windows is terrific, their Linux support is awful so no matter how swank the GeForce is it's out of the running to go into my systems. I still dual-boot, but I'd rather not.
ATI and 3Dfx do a better job of supporting Windows/Linux/Mac, so I buy mainly their cards. I'm willing to trade off a few FPS playing Quake III under Windows for that Linux and Mac support. But hey, if you don't mind Windows and you live to frag, then this GeForce 2 sounds pretty darned sweet.
- -Josh Turiel
The folks over at Synaptics (the touchpad company) wrote a Theremin program for Windows - the link is here. It's a cool little toy that kind of gives people an idea of what the instrument is about.
- -Josh Turiel
I went to view them on the Fish PC website and I'll say this - if Apple could beat Future Power and eMachines in court, they should have no problem whatsoever stomping this one. Even though I don't see anything wrong with other companies trying to imitate the Apple "style", this is a dead ringer for an iMac, even down to the color choices. The only difference of any significance appears to be a few control buttons on the front panel. What were these guys thinking? Like it or not, this looks like an open-and-shut case for Apple, and a waste of time and money for Fish.
- -Josh Turiel
You do have a good point - There have been a handful of programs where Microsoft has had a winner from the first rev (the first version of Excel - on the Mac originally - was pretty innovative, and Word PC was fairly solid from the start - in fact, on the Mac side at least the 3rd version of Word was a disaster) - but they typically require a few iterations to really tune the product. The Microsoft pattern seems to be something like this:
1: Pre-announce to try and freeze the market in place.
2: Release version 1. This product usually has major shortcomings, but is reasonably stable - just exasperating.
3: Incorporate loads of new features and call it version 2. 2.0 usually is pretty bloated from all the new features and buggy as can be. It pretty much serves to full the features checklist that the suits use to buy software.
4: Fix most of the bugs, streamline the program, and fix the funky stuff in the interface (well, most of it...). Begin dominating the world with it.
The one thing positive I'll say about their process is that they do listen better than many companies, and by version 3.0 they typically have what Joe User wants. There is at least some basis other than pure monopolistic spirit behind Microsoft's dominance in most areas - they may not be doing the Right Thing, but they give enough to most users that the market is willing to put up with them.
Remember, Microsoft would love it if they had all the computing world, but those of us here on
- -Josh Turiel