Look at all the problems we've had with landing a craft on Mars - a planet whose surface we can see, which isn't THAT much farther away than Venus (both are too far to do say, human controlled robotics directly). And Mars is just a cold mound of rock, with some relatively flat spots. Its not a huge strecth of existing terrestrial technology to build a Mars rover - all you need to do is keep the electornics warm, and use low power so that you can use solar.
Now, on Venus, the surface temperature is about 750'K - 900'F. now, a server room conks out at a LOT lower temperatures than that. And... did you want to build the lander out of mostly metal? Might not be so smart - it rains sulfuric acid all the time on Venus. That's nasty stuff if you're a lander. Oh, and solar power is out - that sulfuric acid rain comes from a pretty thick cloud cover.
We're also exploring Mars because it seems to be a RELATIVElY Earth-like planet - in that, maybe we can make it work for permanent human habitation.
Venus would just require radically new technology to land on, which isn't smart because the scientific benefits, while real, could be eclipsed in terms of */$ (bang per buck) on other places. And it doesn't look like humans are EVER going to live there. IMHO, the biggest problem that the space program now has is capturing our imagination - a preparing for humans on Mars does it, studying volcanoes on Venus is interesting, but doesn't scratch the human itch for exploration as well.
I don't know how much it costs to develop their HotSync software for the Mac, but I doubt that it's all that expensive. Palm devices also had a monopoly on Macs - heck, even old Newtons can't plug into a modern Mac. And, as Apple would probably point out, when you sell a PDA to a Mac user, today, you're selling it to someone who has a good looking computer and OS, and maybe an iPod with them - in short, if they've got a Palm-powered device, the device is cool by association. Plus, I'll bet that they sold enough PDAs to Mac users to make it worth their while.
There have been rumours for YEARS that Apple has been developing a PDA of some sort - the iPod was originally rumoured to be a combo MP3 player/PDA, but turned out to be mostly an MP3 player with some extra features.
I think PalmSource wants something from Apple - maybe it's an easier way into iSync, maybe its some more cooperation from Apple with the way OS X works... and, maybe they're trying to force Apple into releasing a Palm-powered PDA.
Sure, it's a longshot, but think of what a Palm-powered PDA would do for PalmSource, which now ONLY makes software. It'd give them huge "mindshare," the kind of 'hip' image that Palm doesn't have anymore as they've been replaced by flashier devices.
I don't think it'll work - I think that Apple isn't going to put ANYONE else in charge of an operating system with a GUI - there's no way they're letting PalmSource tell Apple how a button should work.
IF PalmSource doesn't change their mind -- and there's a good chance they will, IMHO -- what it might do is force Apple to enter the PDA market, which I'm sure Steve Jobs wouldn't mind TOO much. They could certainly use a Linux or similar PDA distro and build onto it. Now, I don't know much about PPCs that aren't used in Macs, but doesn't Motorola have some kind of a PPC for embedded apps? Maybe Apple could even use some scaled-down form of Aqua with relatively little modification. That might be cool... but I doubt we'll see PalmSource make Apple tread that path.
Dude, you picked the *wrong* part of Slashdot to complain about "fruit salad" Mozilla-like GUIs. This is apple.slashdot.org . Apple, as in, like, Mac, as in, pin-stripes, candy coloured close/minimise/maximise buttons, as in, 'lickable' GUI. Enough of us are upset that Panther's shoving brushed metal and dark title bars down our throats.
So as a quick run-down on where the right place is to talk about what with GUIs:
slashdot.org - Talk about GUIs some here. Some people will love you and some people will hate you. Although talking about looking like a 'actual windows app' isn't necessarily a plus, mostly because you'll get lots of jokes about how real windows apps mostly just look like a BSOD.
bsd.slashdot.org - Talk about how you hate GUIs and you think all mice, especially the digital kind, are infestations.
apple.slashdot.org - Just repeat what Jobs said. Talk about how good blue scrolling bars look. And never, ever put the word 'right' before 'click'.
Read the article. Appearantly, this satellite was developed by a British company (for what seems to be a really good price) with some "British-trained Nigerain scientists".... it seems to me like the Brits made a sattellite with some Nigerians either on the team or managing or staring through a glass window... who knows.
I'm just wondering, when designing a satellite has been done by a group of college students, when there are university courses that you can take and more or less come out knowing how to make a basic satellite... how impressive is this, really? I'm sure that there are Nigerians (either people born Nigerian that immigrated or Nigerian citizens who were wealthy and just managed to get a degree and a job) who've worked on space/satellite projects before... how important is it really whose flag they paint on the thing?
I think the real focus is on what benefits this could have for Nigerian citizens - the article mentions the possibilty of agricultural benefits (gathering information on climate/sources of water/land use? soil data?), as well as monitoring the oil pipeline - I don't know how effective this will be, but if it can save oil revenue and get it into the government, then this might have some solid benefits (Yes, I know that a lot of the $$ made never sees the starving masses, but, if it works as a percentage... any improvement is welcome). My only concern, then, is that there are other satellites already aloft that could have done the same thing - and Nigerian nationalism could have been fed just by constructing a ground station where the data would be downloaded (having more ground stations would help the satellite's primay user, as well) and evaluated - using Nigerian scientists and maybe even with Nigerian software.
Just my $0.02 (Enough in Nigeria to buy a decent meal -- think about it.)
It sounds to me a lot like you're looking for X - your "real work done" comment just shows that your version of "real work" is different from a lot of people's. I've used X desktops for a while, and switched to a Mac with OS X. I've found that most 'new' X desktops that try to be cute and modern really are just flashy icons that never realy work exactly like they should... I realize that they're a work in progress, and that the're perfect for many uses... but not for everyone.
I personally find Mac OS X better for getting "real work done" - when I've got a lot of windows open, lots of graphics, lots of text, I find that Aqua buckles a LOT less than X. The X11 architecture is seeming more and more ancient -- sure, multiple desktops can be nice, and being able to run programs across a network was an idea WAY ahead of it's time - but X is starting to show it's age.
I thikn that's the root reason that you can't run Aqua ('regular OS X') apps through X - it'd mean basically doing a total screen redraw from Aqua (PDF-based) to X - and that would be S-L-O-W. And it's not very reasonable to ask for programs that were never designed to work with X11 to magically work through X11 - there are PC X11 servers, you don't expect to be able to run WinXP apps through them. What OS X _can_ do is (using Apple's relatively good X11 server) run pretty much any X11 app under the sun - a number of apps (including the Gimp and (IIRC) Open Office) have been ported to the OSX-X11 combo - while still using Aqua for all your other apps. And for most of us, Aqua is fast enough, efficient, and 'lickable'.
But if you want a pure Unix-like set up (X11, boot into console, etc.), then OS X isn't for you - it's got the power 'under the hood' but you clearly want the engine exposed. Fine. You're right, the hardware is amazing.
Has anyone used a Dell PC lately? I've had to fix SO MANY fairly recent (ie shipped with Win XP) Dells that its not even funny. Now, admitadely, a MP3 player isn't as complicated as a space heater... *ahem* I mean, a Pentium 4 3GHz system... but, well, Dell seems to be almost entirley concerned with undercutting competitor's prices and offering slightly better #'s where it's the facts and figures that are a selling point (Basically, I figure that if you take an iPod, add 5GB of space and take $50 off their selling point, you've got what Dell wants to sell their device as). Of course, the catch is, it WON'T be an iPod, it won't have the same sex appeal, it won't have as nice of headphones, etc.
I've been under the impression, however, that Dell was still by enlarge a corporate/business PC manufacturer. I'm wondering what Dell is thinking, trying to do this... even their PDA's can be explained as trying to expand themselves into a 'one stop shop' for corporate computing, like some sort of HP or IBM, but a MP3 player? Weird. And I can't see how they'd expect to get Dell-like margins out of this.... which makes me think they've probably cut quite a few corners.... everywhere.
And my understanding from the Apple iTunes store was that the only way that Apple managed to pull it off was because of their goodstanding with the industry... being Apple and all. Were they a trailblazer making it easy for Dell, or is this just going to be a really inoperable service with none of the music I want?
You know what? That $5.30 an hour is a much bigger deal than you make it seem to be.
I'm glad that you grew up in a family or household where you could get an education so you could go past high school for your education. I'm glad that I grew up in a family where we could find a way to pay for an education to get me where ever I wanted to go with one.
But not everyone is that lucky... they're the ones making minimum wage, and they're the ones to whom an increase in pay of a few percent can mean the most. To many of them, it comes in handy for all kinds of luxiourious items... like the grocery store.
I'm not saying that a lot of the minimum-wage earners aren't middle-class teens at home, using the pay increase to pay for pizza at school cafeterias and weed from outside the local strip mall, but that's not the point.
The minimum wage increase gives 6% more pay to people who REALLY need it... relatively uneducated single parents, people just trying to live a decent and law-abiding life, some immigrants and seniors for whom it's the best job they can get.
You know what else? There might be someday when there really isn't a job in IT anywhere for months... and you find yourself having to take a job at or near minimum wage. Then joke about a 6% pay increase that goes to people who have to use every coupon in the newspaper they can find to be able to afford both toilet paper and lettuce in the same week.
This is one of those cases where, IMHO, privacy isn't really an issue... rights are, privacy not as much.
Doesn't Budget have the right to monitor THEIR OWN CARS? Remember, you don't have to rent from them, they're not say keeping the GPS units in cars once they're no longer theirs, etc.
The entire premise of rule of law is that contracts can be enforced. Technology, in this case, makes contracts more easily enforceable. If, for example, you had turned your rent-a-car into a Budget outside of the 'legal' area, you'd be prosecuted no matter what... this isn't much of a different issue here. As soon as companies find their ability to limit their control of their PHYSICAL property is gone, I think the end result will be less 'rights' for people, in the form of it being either unaffordable or simply impossible to rent a car due to the lack of competition.
This is merely one of the many choices where people make a choice to perhaps limit their privacy to less than it usually would be in exchange for something else - in this case, the right to pay for the use of a car from a specific company. As far as I know, the government never gets ahold of this information, and it's not being sold to private investiagors, et al. who might actually try to profit from this. Its really no different than paying to use a security system in your house - remember, some people actually give a company THEIR MONEY so that the aforementioned company the right and ability to see which doors are opened and when, some even cameras, microphones, etc. to snoop around the house. Why do they do this? Not because they wish for their privacy to be invaded, but realistically, more because they are willing to give up their privacy for something they think to be more valuable - in the case of a security system, peace of mind, in the case of a Budget rent-a-car, mobility away from home. On a side note, if enough of a racket is made in the right way about this, perhaps some companies will start to offer (and advertise) GPS-free cars, either as a competitive measure or at a price premium.
And if this is just my $0.02, my words are dirt cheap.
I'm a high school student now in my second year, and got a Palm at the beginning of my freshman year. Originally, I had a m100, now I've got a m105. Many of my friend's parents (mostly lawers, and a few businessmen) all have Palms. I personally use mine with the Palm Keyboard to take notes, etc. in school. To date, I've never gotten more than a light-hearted "geek" comment from anyone (and when I do, it's usually friends bugging me). The important part of functionality isn't what you can use, it's what you do use. In this respect, a Palm is as useful as a iPaq or other WinCE machine for most users. I take typed notes,I have a spell check and email program, and I have loaded games, like the complete original Sim City.
If the iPaq were the same price, as my m105, would I have bought an iPaq? In all honesty, probably. The color screen, ability to play MP3's and connect to broadband (with an adapter), as well as more expandability than my older m105 are all attractive features, in my mind, set off only by the minor annoyances of a Microsoft logo here and there (in all honesty, having used a Windows CE 1.0 machine for 3 years, WinCE's as stable as Palm), as well as lower (but still long enough for a day's use) battery life, are just too attractive to pass up.
But would I use the extra features? Not often. My computing experience, in terms of the output that I sync to print out, and in terms of the things I can do in on my device, would be almost exactly the same. The prices aren't the same, and as long as people think of a PDA as an accessory and not a full PC, price will remain a (if not the) key selling point to the masses.
Tim
This is probably part of why Phoenix has gone from market dominance to a 2nd, 3rd or 4th fiddle lately.
Seriously, though, I've gone through 4 or so MB's in the last couple years, and, although they were all different brands with different chipsets, none had a Phoneix BIOS.
Evidently, eMachines was trying to make a buck off of this, and with Phoenix, it looks like it would be Phoenix's buck. I think that this will probably alienate OEM's, and I think that the minority who buy retail motherboards all have the intellience not to do this.
Besides, with broadband access, who uses a phone line anyway? My PC hasn't been connected to my phone for 2 years now.
Tim
I seriously considered an iPaq but ended up getting a palm, and (half a school year later) I'm happy I made that choice.
iPaq's are nice devices, color screen, etc.... but think: what are you going to be doing that requires color? Furhtermore, what are you going to be doing that REQUIRES Linux?
Palm's are easy to write apps for in Linux or any other OS, and they're much cheaper (= more money for that upgrade you've wanted).
I got a Palm m100 handheld for $150 and a keyboard for $100. I found that even writing fast enough to give me a cramp wasn't fast enough for handwriting recognition, it's due to the limited space available on a screen. If you're going to be taking notes (like I do with my Palm), you'll NEED a keyboard. The Palm one works perfectly.
Seriously, when you consider that Palm's have a perfectly good notepad-ish application for typing, and a spreadsheet app can be purchased for ~$30, you've got a computer that's every bit as good at taking notes as a iPaq for
I'm not going to be changing the way I take notes (or at least I'm not planning on it), and my Palm's put up with nearly a year of abuse with no signs of wear. I'm finishing my freshman year of HS now, and I'm planning to use my Palm all the way through University. It's that good.
Tim
Something similar happened, in the 1960's or 70's. Trained (police?) dogs were sent to smell students' backpacks and I believe the students themselves. For a significant period of time, the whole school was stopped because students needed to remain in one spot so they could not hide drugs if they had any. So basically you had students sitting in a classroom, doing nothing, waiting for police to show up and search them.
A student went to court saying this was against the constitution because it was an unreasonable search. The Supreme Court agreed. They ruled that it was an unreasonable search because they had no reason to suspect that THAT student was on any type of illegal drugs. If a student was caught using drugs, or showing signs of drug use, and was taken seperately and searched on school property during school hours, that was another matter.
It's also important to remember, however, that the Supreme Court has ruled that while students do not waive their rights when they enter a school building (If I did, I wouldn't go to school, and I think I'd have a pretty good case that the Founding Fathers definately didn't want students to be forced to loose their rights 8 hours a day, 5 days a week), it was still the responsibilty of school administrators to maintain discipline in the school. While I personally believe that if the Framers had wanted rights to be waveable or even flexible, they would have specifically written so in the Consitution, I find this to be an acceptable compromise, and one that I'm not afraid to use if I believe I'm being treated unfairly or catagorized for no appearant reason.
I'm not sure that comparing the Internet to a phone company's the best thing to do. It *might* not be such a bad idea, if I got net access from AT&T for free (without any of the strings that current free-ISPs have, except the tax.) The assumption has been that you rent Net access like you rent a phone line, but I'm not sure that's the best analogy... I mean, the phone company physically has to have a line that goes from my house to their equipment. Unless your net provider's also your cable/phone provider, no physical connection is required that needs to be made by the ISP on the Internet. It could be more like radio, where you're responsible for provinding all the hardware (PC, modem, phone line/cable/whatever) in exchange for profits for AT&T in the form of a tax on your purchases. But it seems that what AT&T is doing (that is charging for AT&T hosted sites to sell to AT&T net access customers) is shooting themselves in the foot. That's one of the advantages that the Net has over all other media: cuthroat, nearly seemless competetion. If I own a domain and it's content, I can change web hosts probably without my customers ever noticing. I can't change my phone number/address with the same simplicity.
I'd considered getting a 'custom' computer built by a company like Dell, Gateway, IBM, etc. I looked around and was impressed with prices, but not features. For example, their 'custom' computers freqently only allow for very rudimentary custimization. For example, I can get a Celeron 500 or a 466, but that's it. I can add RAM but for the life of me I couldn't get out that embedded video card. Also you have no idea what you're getting and where it was made. I've got a friend that ordered 2 machines from (IIRC) Dell, both purchased at the same time and configured with the EXACT same options. Upon inspecting them he noticed that they had nearly entirely different motherboards, a different video card (both just said something to the tune of "8MB embedded video"), and even then you've got no idea how long your M/B will last. Also very important to me is you don't know if you're dealing with a custom form-factor case which could inhibit future upgrades.
Currently I like the 'evolving-computer' where I upgrade parts in a given order: HD now, get a DVD drive next, replace the motherboard, processor, and RAM (unfortunately these frequenlty must come together), then video card, etc. I've found that this means I have a decent computer with a budget of x amount per month. It's never a 'absolute killer', true, but it's always fairly current. I never have to deal with not being able to run an application, nor do I have to deal with the headaches of an entirely new machine.
On the other hand some companies (VA Linux & Penguin Computing come to mind) SERIOUSLY care about the stuff inside the boxes past putting an 'intel inside' sticker on their case. They'll get a good motherboard from a specific company and will frequently tell you *WHAT MOTHERBOARD YOU'RE GETTING* on the computer's information sheet. That's just one example. However these machines frequently are not ALL THAT EASY on the wallet, but because I know it'll boot up every morning for the next 5 years, or run without stopping for the next 5 years, it's frequently worth the money.
The important thing to remember is that *YOUR TIME* is worth money, and sometimes spending $300 more building a custom computer is worth saving 8 hours on the phone with some customer service rep who doesn't actually know anything useful about your machine (what OEM parts were made by, etc.)
I've been thinking about this problem off and on for a while, and since the announement that we've completely mapped a significant milestone of human genetic code, it's been much more on than off.
The possible 'dark' side of this may be self-ending. Katz mentions Communism in his article. The one thing that you'll notice is that with Communism, politicians would make a limited political move (Khruschev coming to power and releasing thousands of political prisioners, for example.) The problem, for the Politburo anyway, ended up not releasing this change but controling humanity's undeniable need to do what they think is best, and the majority's universal tendancy to eventually reach the correct conclusion.
I think that we'll always *EVENTUALLY* reach the correct conclusions. Take slavery, for example. In the United States, early drafts of the Declaration of Independence take steps to 'outlaw' slavery. We made the mistake of letting it continue for a while, but eventually, we formally outlawed it, and are now moving very close to actual racial equality. We're also stronger for coming to the right conclusion on our own. It's unfortuanate that any living creature has to suffer for the lackluster speed at which we reach the correct conclusions, but it's good that we reach them. If we had never had a Nazi Germany and World War II, if we'd never seen the horrible effects of even the most primitive nuclear bomb, do you think that we'd have fought out so strongly and with such power against fascist dictators, or against the use of nuclear weapons? I solemnly don't believe so. For every life lost with the use of nuclear weapons in Japan, how many have been saved by avoding a global horror of a global, thermonuclear war?
Overall, we must exerscise caution when entering uncharted territory, it's dangerous, we must watch our steps, but we must be confident in our species ability to be self-righting, and it's amazing ability to do the correct thing.
Honestly, this isn't all that much of a surprise for a number of reasons. The article goes very lightly on Lockheed Martin's Silent Sentry system which we've had for years. So much, in fact, that the way that it works isn't even classified anymore.
Furthermore, it seems that the by using commercial broadcasts you're risking a lot. Turn on your TV with just an antenna. Even use a really powerful antenna. Unless you're right by your local TV station, you're out of luck. The picture will get scrambled from interfereance over space by the uneven random distrubance of everything from atmosphereic/pressure differences to object's in it's path. So unless you had a vaccum and a perfect signal between all your recieving antennas (as has been pointed out you'd need at leat 3 to get a 3D reading, although more would be helpful.), you'll have some interference and turbulance. Furthermore, radio signals in places like China are less likely to be reliable than in more developed countries.
Also remember that we've had this technology for a number of years. We haven't widely deployed it dispite the fact that it's cheaper to do so than most conventional radars. Believe me, the military likes *NEW* toys more than they like *EXPENSIVE* toys. And this would be a new toy. It evedeintly isn't that reliable, unless the Chinese have managed to leapfrog us in this.
Also it's been pointed out that you can just start taking out TV/radio stations. The silence would be deadly if this was your only air defense. You could also theoretically do such things as rotate the plane every now and then to change the way that it disturbs the air. By traveling at different directions to the wind and at different angles and wind patterns, you'll change the turbulance that you create. Also remember that air craft (with the exception of ones like the F-117, designed before we had good enough computers to effectively design a plane like the F-22) are *DESIGNED* to make as little disturbance as possible. Before it was just areodynamics, now it may be a possible way to be stealthy. Futhermore a system this sensative would also detect things such as low pressure zones, air disturbance created by such things as factories, etc. (especially in cities), and would probably be *MUCH* more prevalant than the signature left by a 20m aircraft.
Doesn't Really Matter What State They're From...
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It's actually more up to the senator. He may have been elected because of his views on technology, but probably he just has support for other issues, was elected, and thought that his constituants wouldn't be opposed to this and it was a good idea. Besides, although I don't really KNOW, I'd bet most geeks vote, and when the US has about 20% of eligable voters actually voting on non-presidential election years, then appealing to voters would be a good idea. Tim
IIRC, that was one of the selling points for K7 systems. And the K6 (the entire line) does have SMP built in, but no chipsets support K6 SMP, as there really isn't much of a market. Usually, SMP is only for either graphics work or work as a server, and the K6 has horrible FPU perfromance comparted to a Intel chip at the same clock speed, and the K6 would only be used in a low-end webserver without SMP.
To me,/. is perfectly fast. Sure, there have been a few reliability problems in recent weeks, *but* remember that/. was, up until very recently running on a dual PII/266 w/256MB RAM. And remember that/. is on a T3, (considering the number of cable modem and ADSL hits/. must get makes a T3 look pretty slow). All things considered,/. is not an eCommerce server. If it was, profits would mean a way faster server (probably AXP w/Linux), a backup system and more people to write scripts (and to debug them, etc.) Although Linux was origionally made to a be a PC UNIX, thus the lower end of UNIX, it's scaled quite nicely. I'd bet a multi-million a-day website running Linux, if I had like a quad Alpha 21264 with a good backup server. Although there are some scalability problems, Linux scales WAY more than SCO UnixWare or Windows NT (it's immeidate competitors, along with possibly Solaris/Intel). But I'd be happy if IBM would just include Linux as an option with all NT-class machines that it offers, as Linux is proven for these machines and is much more scaleable than NT is. Tim
I was reffering to PC's in general. VRML worked fine on my Cyrix 6x86MX 200, with a S3 ViRGE, and 32MB RAM, which was from '97, and Cyrix isn't known for it's great FPU perfromance. And that was in WINDOWS. Linux performance will be considerably better, especially if we can finally get widespread 3D acceleration. My FPU probably performed like a P100's... I'm willing to bet that most computers currently in use for what VRML might be used for (probably home use first, then possibly with video technologies a kind of teleconfrencing system for execs, all connected to the web) are in this catagory, or near enough to do the job. However, if you optimize the applications for K6-2/3/K7 or PIII's, then you'll definately get better performance.
This is a perfect timing-after the VRML consortium became Web3D, it's started to get noticed again. The Cosmo tools are simply the best that there are, PC's are finally powerful enough to do stuff like this, and Open Source can't seem to stop gaining steam.
I currently live in Guyana, and work at the US Embassy here. We've been putting pressure on the government to ease restrictions for some time now, there'd been a recent push for the proxy to be removed. The main reason wasn't censorship, it was speed, as Guyana has a 256K connection split into 4 64K lines: 3 for private ISP's, and one for the US Embassy.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at all the problems we've had with landing a craft on Mars - a planet whose surface we can see, which isn't THAT much farther away than Venus (both are too far to do say, human controlled robotics directly). And Mars is just a cold mound of rock, with some relatively flat spots. Its not a huge strecth of existing terrestrial technology to build a Mars rover - all you need to do is keep the electornics warm, and use low power so that you can use solar.
Now, on Venus, the surface temperature is about 750'K - 900'F. now, a server room conks out at a LOT lower temperatures than that. And... did you want to build the lander out of mostly metal? Might not be so smart - it rains sulfuric acid all the time on Venus. That's nasty stuff if you're a lander. Oh, and solar power is out - that sulfuric acid rain comes from a pretty thick cloud cover.
We're also exploring Mars because it seems to be a RELATIVElY Earth-like planet - in that, maybe we can make it work for permanent human habitation.
Venus would just require radically new technology to land on, which isn't smart because the scientific benefits, while real, could be eclipsed in terms of */$ (bang per buck) on other places. And it doesn't look like humans are EVER going to live there. IMHO, the biggest problem that the space program now has is capturing our imagination - a preparing for humans on Mars does it, studying volcanoes on Venus is interesting, but doesn't scratch the human itch for exploration as well.
I don't know how much it costs to develop their HotSync software for the Mac, but I doubt that it's all that expensive. Palm devices also had a monopoly on Macs - heck, even old Newtons can't plug into a modern Mac. And, as Apple would probably point out, when you sell a PDA to a Mac user, today, you're selling it to someone who has a good looking computer and OS, and maybe an iPod with them - in short, if they've got a Palm-powered device, the device is cool by association. Plus, I'll bet that they sold enough PDAs to Mac users to make it worth their while.
There have been rumours for YEARS that Apple has been developing a PDA of some sort - the iPod was originally rumoured to be a combo MP3 player/PDA, but turned out to be mostly an MP3 player with some extra features.
I think PalmSource wants something from Apple - maybe it's an easier way into iSync, maybe its some more cooperation from Apple with the way OS X works... and, maybe they're trying to force Apple into releasing a Palm-powered PDA.
Sure, it's a longshot, but think of what a Palm-powered PDA would do for PalmSource, which now ONLY makes software. It'd give them huge "mindshare," the kind of 'hip' image that Palm doesn't have anymore as they've been replaced by flashier devices.
I don't think it'll work - I think that Apple isn't going to put ANYONE else in charge of an operating system with a GUI - there's no way they're letting PalmSource tell Apple how a button should work.
IF PalmSource doesn't change their mind -- and there's a good chance they will, IMHO -- what it might do is force Apple to enter the PDA market, which I'm sure Steve Jobs wouldn't mind TOO much. They could certainly use a Linux or similar PDA distro and build onto it. Now, I don't know much about PPCs that aren't used in Macs, but doesn't Motorola have some kind of a PPC for embedded apps? Maybe Apple could even use some scaled-down form of Aqua with relatively little modification. That might be cool... but I doubt we'll see PalmSource make Apple tread that path.
So as a quick run-down on where the right place is to talk about what with GUIs:
slashdot.org - Talk about GUIs some here. Some people will love you and some people will hate you. Although talking about looking like a 'actual windows app' isn't necessarily a plus, mostly because you'll get lots of jokes about how real windows apps mostly just look like a BSOD.
bsd.slashdot.org - Talk about how you hate GUIs and you think all mice, especially the digital kind, are infestations.
apple.slashdot.org - Just repeat what Jobs said. Talk about how good blue scrolling bars look. And never, ever put the word 'right' before 'click'.
Tim
Ialwayswatcheverythingat4xusingmykewlPVRI'vegothoo keduptomyTV.Itsamazing,Igettowatch4XtheTVthatallmy friendsdo,andIusethetimeIsavedtotakeaSpeedReadingc ourseinmyarea.Inowreadbooks4xasfastaseveryone,too. UsingthetimeI'vesaved,I'mworkingonaTimeMachine.Som eofmyfamilythinkI'mcrazy,andthatIalwaystalktoofast now,butIrealizeI'mjustaheadofthetrent.Oh,yeah,I've alsodiscoveredthathittingtheSpaceBarisjustawasteof time-youcanreadthisFINEanyways.Remember,iftimeismo ney,I'mtherichestguyaround.
;-)
Just a thought.
Read the article. Appearantly, this satellite was developed by a British company (for what seems to be a really good price) with some "British-trained Nigerain scientists".... it seems to me like the Brits made a sattellite with some Nigerians either on the team or managing or staring through a glass window... who knows.
I'm just wondering, when designing a satellite has been done by a group of college students, when there are university courses that you can take and more or less come out knowing how to make a basic satellite... how impressive is this, really? I'm sure that there are Nigerians (either people born Nigerian that immigrated or Nigerian citizens who were wealthy and just managed to get a degree and a job) who've worked on space/satellite projects before... how important is it really whose flag they paint on the thing?
I think the real focus is on what benefits this could have for Nigerian citizens - the article mentions the possibilty of agricultural benefits (gathering information on climate/sources of water/land use? soil data?), as well as monitoring the oil pipeline - I don't know how effective this will be, but if it can save oil revenue and get it into the government, then this might have some solid benefits (Yes, I know that a lot of the $$ made never sees the starving masses, but, if it works as a percentage... any improvement is welcome). My only concern, then, is that there are other satellites already aloft that could have done the same thing - and Nigerian nationalism could have been fed just by constructing a ground station where the data would be downloaded (having more ground stations would help the satellite's primay user, as well) and evaluated - using Nigerian scientists and maybe even with Nigerian software.
Just my $0.02 (Enough in Nigeria to buy a decent meal -- think about it.)
Tim
It sounds to me a lot like you're looking for X - your "real work done" comment just shows that your version of "real work" is different from a lot of people's. I've used X desktops for a while, and switched to a Mac with OS X. I've found that most 'new' X desktops that try to be cute and modern really are just flashy icons that never realy work exactly like they should... I realize that they're a work in progress, and that the're perfect for many uses... but not for everyone.
I personally find Mac OS X better for getting "real work done" - when I've got a lot of windows open, lots of graphics, lots of text, I find that Aqua buckles a LOT less than X. The X11 architecture is seeming more and more ancient -- sure, multiple desktops can be nice, and being able to run programs across a network was an idea WAY ahead of it's time - but X is starting to show it's age.
I thikn that's the root reason that you can't run Aqua ('regular OS X') apps through X - it'd mean basically doing a total screen redraw from Aqua (PDF-based) to X - and that would be S-L-O-W. And it's not very reasonable to ask for programs that were never designed to work with X11 to magically work through X11 - there are PC X11 servers, you don't expect to be able to run WinXP apps through them. What OS X _can_ do is (using Apple's relatively good X11 server) run pretty much any X11 app under the sun - a number of apps (including the Gimp and (IIRC) Open Office) have been ported to the OSX-X11 combo - while still using Aqua for all your other apps. And for most of us, Aqua is fast enough, efficient, and 'lickable'.
But if you want a pure Unix-like set up (X11, boot into console, etc.), then OS X isn't for you - it's got the power 'under the hood' but you clearly want the engine exposed. Fine. You're right, the hardware is amazing.
Tim
Has anyone used a Dell PC lately? I've had to fix SO MANY fairly recent (ie shipped with Win XP) Dells that its not even funny. Now, admitadely, a MP3 player isn't as complicated as a space heater... *ahem* I mean, a Pentium 4 3GHz system... but, well, Dell seems to be almost entirley concerned with undercutting competitor's prices and offering slightly better #'s where it's the facts and figures that are a selling point (Basically, I figure that if you take an iPod, add 5GB of space and take $50 off their selling point, you've got what Dell wants to sell their device as). Of course, the catch is, it WON'T be an iPod, it won't have the same sex appeal, it won't have as nice of headphones, etc.
I've been under the impression, however, that Dell was still by enlarge a corporate/business PC manufacturer. I'm wondering what Dell is thinking, trying to do this... even their PDA's can be explained as trying to expand themselves into a 'one stop shop' for corporate computing, like some sort of HP or IBM, but a MP3 player? Weird. And I can't see how they'd expect to get Dell-like margins out of this.... which makes me think they've probably cut quite a few corners.... everywhere.
And my understanding from the Apple iTunes store was that the only way that Apple managed to pull it off was because of their goodstanding with the industry... being Apple and all. Were they a trailblazer making it easy for Dell, or is this just going to be a really inoperable service with none of the music I want?
I guess we'll see.
You know what? That $5.30 an hour is a much bigger deal than you make it seem to be.
I'm glad that you grew up in a family or household where you could get an education so you could go past high school for your education. I'm glad that I grew up in a family where we could find a way to pay for an education to get me where ever I wanted to go with one.
But not everyone is that lucky... they're the ones making minimum wage, and they're the ones to whom an increase in pay of a few percent can mean the most. To many of them, it comes in handy for all kinds of luxiourious items... like the grocery store.
I'm not saying that a lot of the minimum-wage earners aren't middle-class teens at home, using the pay increase to pay for pizza at school cafeterias and weed from outside the local strip mall, but that's not the point.
The minimum wage increase gives 6% more pay to people who REALLY need it... relatively uneducated single parents, people just trying to live a decent and law-abiding life, some immigrants and seniors for whom it's the best job they can get.
You know what else? There might be someday when there really isn't a job in IT anywhere for months... and you find yourself having to take a job at or near minimum wage. Then joke about a 6% pay increase that goes to people who have to use every coupon in the newspaper they can find to be able to afford both toilet paper and lettuce in the same week.
Doesn't Budget have the right to monitor THEIR OWN CARS? Remember, you don't have to rent from them, they're not say keeping the GPS units in cars once they're no longer theirs, etc.
The entire premise of rule of law is that contracts can be enforced. Technology, in this case, makes contracts more easily enforceable. If, for example, you had turned your rent-a-car into a Budget outside of the 'legal' area, you'd be prosecuted no matter what... this isn't much of a different issue here. As soon as companies find their ability to limit their control of their PHYSICAL property is gone, I think the end result will be less 'rights' for people, in the form of it being either unaffordable or simply impossible to rent a car due to the lack of competition.
This is merely one of the many choices where people make a choice to perhaps limit their privacy to less than it usually would be in exchange for something else - in this case, the right to pay for the use of a car from a specific company. As far as I know, the government never gets ahold of this information, and it's not being sold to private investiagors, et al. who might actually try to profit from this. Its really no different than paying to use a security system in your house - remember, some people actually give a company THEIR MONEY so that the aforementioned company the right and ability to see which doors are opened and when, some even cameras, microphones, etc. to snoop around the house. Why do they do this? Not because they wish for their privacy to be invaded, but realistically, more because they are willing to give up their privacy for something they think to be more valuable - in the case of a security system, peace of mind, in the case of a Budget rent-a-car, mobility away from home. On a side note, if enough of a racket is made in the right way about this, perhaps some companies will start to offer (and advertise) GPS-free cars, either as a competitive measure or at a price premium.
And if this is just my $0.02, my words are dirt cheap.
I'd have to disagree with this one.
I'm a high school student now in my second year, and got a Palm at the beginning of my freshman year. Originally, I had a m100, now I've got a m105. Many of my friend's parents (mostly lawers, and a few businessmen) all have Palms. I personally use mine with the Palm Keyboard to take notes, etc. in school. To date, I've never gotten more than a light-hearted "geek" comment from anyone (and when I do, it's usually friends bugging me). The important part of functionality isn't what you can use, it's what you do use. In this respect, a Palm is as useful as a iPaq or other WinCE machine for most users. I take typed notes,I have a spell check and email program, and I have loaded games, like the complete original Sim City. If the iPaq were the same price, as my m105, would I have bought an iPaq? In all honesty, probably. The color screen, ability to play MP3's and connect to broadband (with an adapter), as well as more expandability than my older m105 are all attractive features, in my mind, set off only by the minor annoyances of a Microsoft logo here and there (in all honesty, having used a Windows CE 1.0 machine for 3 years, WinCE's as stable as Palm), as well as lower (but still long enough for a day's use) battery life, are just too attractive to pass up. But would I use the extra features? Not often. My computing experience, in terms of the output that I sync to print out, and in terms of the things I can do in on my device, would be almost exactly the same. The prices aren't the same, and as long as people think of a PDA as an accessory and not a full PC, price will remain a (if not the) key selling point to the masses. TimThis is probably part of why Phoenix has gone from market dominance to a 2nd, 3rd or 4th fiddle lately. Seriously, though, I've gone through 4 or so MB's in the last couple years, and, although they were all different brands with different chipsets, none had a Phoneix BIOS. Evidently, eMachines was trying to make a buck off of this, and with Phoenix, it looks like it would be Phoenix's buck. I think that this will probably alienate OEM's, and I think that the minority who buy retail motherboards all have the intellience not to do this. Besides, with broadband access, who uses a phone line anyway? My PC hasn't been connected to my phone for 2 years now. Tim
I seriously considered an iPaq but ended up getting a palm, and (half a school year later) I'm happy I made that choice. iPaq's are nice devices, color screen, etc.... but think: what are you going to be doing that requires color? Furhtermore, what are you going to be doing that REQUIRES Linux? Palm's are easy to write apps for in Linux or any other OS, and they're much cheaper (= more money for that upgrade you've wanted). I got a Palm m100 handheld for $150 and a keyboard for $100. I found that even writing fast enough to give me a cramp wasn't fast enough for handwriting recognition, it's due to the limited space available on a screen. If you're going to be taking notes (like I do with my Palm), you'll NEED a keyboard. The Palm one works perfectly. Seriously, when you consider that Palm's have a perfectly good notepad-ish application for typing, and a spreadsheet app can be purchased for ~$30, you've got a computer that's every bit as good at taking notes as a iPaq for I'm not going to be changing the way I take notes (or at least I'm not planning on it), and my Palm's put up with nearly a year of abuse with no signs of wear. I'm finishing my freshman year of HS now, and I'm planning to use my Palm all the way through University. It's that good. Tim
Something similar happened, in the 1960's or 70's. Trained (police?) dogs were sent to smell students' backpacks and I believe the students themselves. For a significant period of time, the whole school was stopped because students needed to remain in one spot so they could not hide drugs if they had any. So basically you had students sitting in a classroom, doing nothing, waiting for police to show up and search them.
A student went to court saying this was against the constitution because it was an unreasonable search. The Supreme Court agreed. They ruled that it was an unreasonable search because they had no reason to suspect that THAT student was on any type of illegal drugs. If a student was caught using drugs, or showing signs of drug use, and was taken seperately and searched on school property during school hours, that was another matter.
It's also important to remember, however, that the Supreme Court has ruled that while students do not waive their rights when they enter a school building (If I did, I wouldn't go to school, and I think I'd have a pretty good case that the Founding Fathers definately didn't want students to be forced to loose their rights 8 hours a day, 5 days a week), it was still the responsibilty of school administrators to maintain discipline in the school. While I personally believe that if the Framers had wanted rights to be waveable or even flexible, they would have specifically written so in the Consitution, I find this to be an acceptable compromise, and one that I'm not afraid to use if I believe I'm being treated unfairly or catagorized for no appearant reason.
Just my (long) $0.02
Tim
Just my (tax-free) $0.02.
I'd considered getting a 'custom' computer built by a company like Dell, Gateway, IBM, etc. I looked around and was impressed with prices, but not features. For example, their 'custom' computers freqently only allow for very rudimentary custimization. For example, I can get a Celeron 500 or a 466, but that's it. I can add RAM but for the life of me I couldn't get out that embedded video card. Also you have no idea what you're getting and where it was made. I've got a friend that ordered 2 machines from (IIRC) Dell, both purchased at the same time and configured with the EXACT same options. Upon inspecting them he noticed that they had nearly entirely different motherboards, a different video card (both just said something to the tune of "8MB embedded video"), and even then you've got no idea how long your M/B will last. Also very important to me is you don't know if you're dealing with a custom form-factor case which could inhibit future upgrades.
Currently I like the 'evolving-computer' where I upgrade parts in a given order: HD now, get a DVD drive next, replace the motherboard, processor, and RAM (unfortunately these frequenlty must come together), then video card, etc. I've found that this means I have a decent computer with a budget of x amount per month. It's never a 'absolute killer', true, but it's always fairly current. I never have to deal with not being able to run an application, nor do I have to deal with the headaches of an entirely new machine.
On the other hand some companies (VA Linux & Penguin Computing come to mind) SERIOUSLY care about the stuff inside the boxes past putting an 'intel inside' sticker on their case. They'll get a good motherboard from a specific company and will frequently tell you *WHAT MOTHERBOARD YOU'RE GETTING* on the computer's information sheet. That's just one example. However these machines frequently are not ALL THAT EASY on the wallet, but because I know it'll boot up every morning for the next 5 years, or run without stopping for the next 5 years, it's frequently worth the money.
The important thing to remember is that *YOUR TIME* is worth money, and sometimes spending $300 more building a custom computer is worth saving 8 hours on the phone with some customer service rep who doesn't actually know anything useful about your machine (what OEM parts were made by, etc.)
I've been thinking about this problem off and on for a while, and since the announement that we've completely mapped a significant milestone of human genetic code, it's been much more on than off.
The possible 'dark' side of this may be self-ending. Katz mentions Communism in his article. The one thing that you'll notice is that with Communism, politicians would make a limited political move (Khruschev coming to power and releasing thousands of political prisioners, for example.) The problem, for the Politburo anyway, ended up not releasing this change but controling humanity's undeniable need to do what they think is best, and the majority's universal tendancy to eventually reach the correct conclusion.
I think that we'll always *EVENTUALLY* reach the correct conclusions. Take slavery, for example. In the United States, early drafts of the Declaration of Independence take steps to 'outlaw' slavery. We made the mistake of letting it continue for a while, but eventually, we formally outlawed it, and are now moving very close to actual racial equality. We're also stronger for coming to the right conclusion on our own. It's unfortuanate that any living creature has to suffer for the lackluster speed at which we reach the correct conclusions, but it's good that we reach them. If we had never had a Nazi Germany and World War II, if we'd never seen the horrible effects of even the most primitive nuclear bomb, do you think that we'd have fought out so strongly and with such power against fascist dictators, or against the use of nuclear weapons? I solemnly don't believe so. For every life lost with the use of nuclear weapons in Japan, how many have been saved by avoding a global horror of a global, thermonuclear war?
Overall, we must exerscise caution when entering uncharted territory, it's dangerous, we must watch our steps, but we must be confident in our species ability to be self-righting, and it's amazing ability to do the correct thing.
Honestly, this isn't all that much of a surprise for a number of reasons. The article goes very lightly on Lockheed Martin's Silent Sentry system which we've had for years. So much, in fact, that the way that it works isn't even classified anymore.
Furthermore, it seems that the by using commercial broadcasts you're risking a lot. Turn on your TV with just an antenna. Even use a really powerful antenna. Unless you're right by your local TV station, you're out of luck. The picture will get scrambled from interfereance over space by the uneven random distrubance of everything from atmosphereic/pressure differences to object's in it's path. So unless you had a vaccum and a perfect signal between all your recieving antennas (as has been pointed out you'd need at leat 3 to get a 3D reading, although more would be helpful.), you'll have some interference and turbulance. Furthermore, radio signals in places like China are less likely to be reliable than in more developed countries.
Also remember that we've had this technology for a number of years. We haven't widely deployed it dispite the fact that it's cheaper to do so than most conventional radars. Believe me, the military likes *NEW* toys more than they like *EXPENSIVE* toys. And this would be a new toy. It evedeintly isn't that reliable, unless the Chinese have managed to leapfrog us in this.
Also it's been pointed out that you can just start taking out TV/radio stations. The silence would be deadly if this was your only air defense. You could also theoretically do such things as rotate the plane every now and then to change the way that it disturbs the air. By traveling at different directions to the wind and at different angles and wind patterns, you'll change the turbulance that you create. Also remember that air craft (with the exception of ones like the F-117, designed before we had good enough computers to effectively design a plane like the F-22) are *DESIGNED* to make as little disturbance as possible. Before it was just areodynamics, now it may be a possible way to be stealthy. Futhermore a system this sensative would also detect things such as low pressure zones, air disturbance created by such things as factories, etc. (especially in cities), and would probably be *MUCH* more prevalant than the signature left by a 20m aircraft.
It's actually more up to the senator. He may have been elected because of his views on technology, but probably he just has support for other issues, was elected, and thought that his constituants wouldn't be opposed to this and it was a good idea. Besides, although I don't really KNOW, I'd bet most geeks vote, and when the US has about 20% of eligable voters actually voting on non-presidential election years, then appealing to voters would be a good idea. Tim
IIRC, that was one of the selling points for K7 systems. And the K6 (the entire line) does have SMP built in, but no chipsets support K6 SMP, as there really isn't much of a market. Usually, SMP is only for either graphics work or work as a server, and the K6 has horrible FPU perfromance comparted to a Intel chip at the same clock speed, and the K6 would only be used in a low-end webserver without SMP.
Tim
To me, /. is perfectly fast. Sure, there have been a few reliability problems in recent weeks, *but* remember that /. was, up until very recently running on a dual PII/266 w/256MB RAM. And remember that /. is on a T3, (considering the number of cable modem and ADSL hits /. must get makes a T3 look pretty slow). All things considered, /. is not an eCommerce server. If it was, profits would mean a way faster server (probably AXP w/Linux), a backup system and more people to write scripts (and to debug them, etc.) Although Linux was origionally made to a be a PC UNIX, thus the lower end of UNIX, it's scaled quite nicely. I'd bet a multi-million a-day website running Linux, if I had like a quad Alpha 21264 with a good backup server. Although there are some scalability problems, Linux scales WAY more than SCO UnixWare or Windows NT (it's immeidate competitors, along with possibly Solaris/Intel). But I'd be happy if IBM would just include Linux as an option with all NT-class machines that it offers, as Linux is proven for these machines and is much more scaleable than NT is. Tim
I was reffering to PC's in general. VRML worked fine on my Cyrix 6x86MX 200, with a S3 ViRGE, and 32MB RAM, which was from '97, and Cyrix isn't known for it's great FPU perfromance. And that was in WINDOWS. Linux performance will be considerably better, especially if we can finally get widespread 3D acceleration. My FPU probably performed like a P100's... I'm willing to bet that most computers currently in use for what VRML might be used for (probably home use first, then possibly with video technologies a kind of teleconfrencing system for execs, all connected to the web) are in this catagory, or near enough to do the job. However, if you optimize the applications for K6-2/3/K7 or PIII's, then you'll definately get better performance.
This is a perfect timing-after the VRML consortium became Web3D, it's started to get noticed again. The Cosmo tools are simply the best that there are, PC's are finally powerful enough to do stuff like this, and Open Source can't seem to stop gaining steam.
Tim
I currently live in Guyana, and work at the US Embassy here. We've been putting pressure on the government to ease restrictions for some time now, there'd been a recent push for the proxy to be removed. The main reason wasn't censorship, it was speed, as Guyana has a 256K connection split into 4 64K lines: 3 for private ISP's, and one for the US Embassy.