There is no such thing as an interpreted language. There are languages, and there are interpreters and compilers.
Are you really well acquainted with gcj? I'm sorry, but I don't get how the end result or even the stuff going into it (and the required inputs, like making some explicit calls that would never be required in Java) can be called Java anymore.
the point I didn't make well was that when a language has been designed to execute inside a containing environment (the JRE or whatever facsimile thereof) you can't just up and erase that... without emulating all the stuff that was supposed to be alive in that environment. Taking a look at the gcj's to-do list and all the stuff that isn't yet supported should be enough to show you not only that this is not a trivial task, but to suggest that perhaps it's not a useful task, and I say that knowing that people have worked very hard on the project.
Maybe it makes sense for some resource-constrained settings like embedded systems, but there i've used Java straight up, satisfactorily. Granted, these are not life-critical systems I've built, but rather than compiling Java - or trying to - the better answer is to use a more appropriate language in those circumstances.
Java is a bit nicer than C++ but it just can't perform at the level of C (how many OS'es are written in Java?)
What with Java being an interpreted language and all, how would ya write an OS in Java? I guess you've have to have an OS-OS that runs the interpreter and provides all the low-level stuff that... what? oh. Yeah. turtles all the way down, isn't it? I guess if ya had that, we could write a Java OS and then find out.
Anyway just suggestin' that performance doesn't necessarily explain the "why isn't the OS written in java" question. A doesn't follow B. Socrates is not mortal, etc.
Gotta learn all about mail induction, flats, storage days, document prep fees charged by the minute but billed by the second, the assumption that eveyr piece of mail weighs a minimum of one ounce for shredding-weight-per-day calculations.
omfg
Thanks but I'll wait til I can figure out if this will cost $20 or $200 per month since I have no control over my inbound mail.
"VB macros within files will not be accessible and users will not be able to view or modify them. However, the files themselves can be edited without affecting or changing the macros."
This sounds like a huge benefit! Maybe it'll encourage a few more people to switch, to improve the security of their Office environment. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but kudos to Microsoft for this security unhancement. Perhaps if this goes well, they'll similarly unhance the Windows version of Office.
I remember the press at the time, and received one of the letters (as a dealer). It was a pretty big deal at the time. if you don't remember the whole OS/2// Windows debacle, then you can't begin to understand what those times were like.
Your version of what happened with Word Perfect and Windows is not accurate.
Remember that "back in the day" computers were not fast, and things like word processors, if they were to be responsive at all, were hand-optimized. WP iirc was written in assembly or very close to it, and was not only fast but quite reliable as well, even working fine with very large documents.
Thus any version of "Word Perfect" for another OS (e.g. Windows or OS/2, which we'll revisit in a sec) had to be a complete rewrite from scratch, absolutely referring back to the DOS version for guidance, but nonetheless, from scratch.
At the time there were three new-looking operating environments for the PC: Windows and Windows 386, which were seen as a stopgap, and the new up-and-coming OS that everyone would have in a year or two: OS/2. Microsoft and IBM were co-developing this graphical, multitasking OS and it would be the common platform for the future. I have a very fat, very nice OS/2 for Developers book purchased in 1988 that I paid big bucks for, and studied carefully so I'd be ready.
WordPerfect Corp. had this book too, and devoted big, big staffing and money to development of WordPerfect for OS/2 and had the thing ready to ship, more or less... and so did Microsoft, or so we thought..... then in one big swoop, Microsoft released: - Microsoft Windows (1.0? I forget what it was called) -... Word for Windows 1.0 (omigawd it was awful, but it worked in Windows)... and broke off the OS/2 relationship with IBM, saying it had decided that Windows would be its platform for the future, ("j/k about that OS/2, mmmkay?")
I was a WordPerfect reseller at the time. Things were so screwy that WP actually sent out letters to resellers and was in the press, iirc, talking about the big, big screw.
WP scrambled to ship a Windows version, but never really caught up, I think in part becuase they tried to cross their DOS version (code-driven, a rough equivalent of TeX) with the ugly example of "Windows word processing" that Microsoft offered in Word 1.0. Note that transmuting code from OS/2 to Windows 1.0 was not a small feat, so it's not like they could just change a compiler switch and carry on. Windows back then was not well documented (c.f. many lawsuits and settlements), and the dev tools weren't particularly good, what with it being 1.0 and developed on the sly and all.
In short, Word for Windows had been developed as this new Windows was coming together, and had all the benefits that an application gets when co-developed with the library that it stands on... and WordPerfect was left in the dark. I felt sorry for WP, really. They were a good company and the developers were good guys... I interacted with them a few times over some small bugs I'd identified. Yeah, you could actually communicate with a developer back then, on occasion.
my bad on "proprietary OS". I thought i'd edited that out.
OS update costing money: 1) they distinguish between "Software Update" and "Operating System Upgrade," a sign of potential trouble if ever there was one 2) This FAQ which is almost impossible to find without stumbling into... and the fact that they've raised the idea of "price" in the make-believe question in the FAQ
4. What is the cost of upgrading to the Internet Tablet 2006 software edition? Nokia will publish the distribution details later this year. The cost will depend on the distribution method of the software package.
wait wait wait... europe.nokia.com? why do they get all the good stuff? am i "allowed" to have one of these in the US? (If not i guess I could move)
Yeah, that's very nearly it. I may settle for this despite the propietary os. 3 hours isn't quite enough battery life, but yeah, the Nokia 770 looks like it would do "enough" to get me by... thanks for the tip.
Nokia has apparently created and (for the moment) supports maemo.org, a developer site for the developer's kit that ONLY supports at this time, this single device.. it'd suck to be orphaned at some future date. The developer's program is "closed" but the code and stuff are still there, and the updates. I'm confused.
And the 2006 OS update is going to cost money. that sucks.
In the long run, e-Ink displays are essential... miniscule power consumption, negligible weight, excellent contrast... what's not to like?
I'm inferring that the e-ink "paper" must still be pretty expensive given the price points of all the announced reader products, not counting the Hanlin I originally mentioned (not shipping yet so all bets are off 'til it's in a box and available for purchase).
I'd say that can be extended to replace "computers" with "individual programming languages" and suggest that you need to find a better computer science program elsewhere... Computer Science is not about creating maintenance programmers.
SRP $349, runs Linux, aimed at EU and US markets... they're hooked up with E-Ink and have China-scale overhead, so maybe $349 SRP will translate to $200-$250 street price if they actually release this... looks like more than the usual vaporware.
I wish the E-Ink prototype kit didn't cost $3,000 or I'd just build my own reader. I really want a cheap reader on the cost scale of a disposable mp3 player so I don't have to worry constantly about losing or trashing it. I wouldn't set out to lose or trash it, but I'd replace a $150 reader pretty fast, and a $800 reader pretty much not at all.
When finished driving your Zipcar, take it back to the place you found it, wave your ZipCard over the sensor in the windshield to lock it and end your rental period, and step away from the vehicle.
Yes, they describe the cars as "living" (their marketers can be a little too cute at times) in specific locations... Parking is very hard to come by here, so this makes sense for a lot of reasons, including that you're never very far from a car. I usually rent one that's near "where I'm going to be" when I want it, which isn't usually my apartment. The cars are sprinkled all around town. By car faeries.
Jeez, people write without knowing much around here. Oh sorry, i forgot where i am.
There is a whole flock of bicycle dudes who go out (in all weather, all year long) and take care of the cars. As well, Zipcar members are encouraged to inspect the car when they go to get it, and to immediately report any problems - dents, out of washer fluid, whatever.
If it's something dumb like washer fluid, you can even buy more and they'll reimburse if you can't charge it on the (provided in the car) fleet gasoline charge card.
Far as I know, the concept is flying and has been for like 6 years now. I am a very happy Zipcar customer. I've been able to get rid of my car altogether, saving many $thousands a year... and in exchange, I pay a few $hundreds per year for use of a practically new car, with insurance, maintenance and fuel provided, whenever I need one.
As far as "whenever I need one" they seem to add cars pretty aggressively to follow demand. I've never been totally closed out... maybe you have to walk an extra 2 or 3 blocks to get to one at a specific time, but that's not really a big deal. It does require some adjustments to how you think about getting around, but the only reason I had a car in the past was for those trips that totally don't work on a bike (and taxis - just forget it, they're miserable and expensive)... this provides it.
There are significant-enough cash penalties ($25 and up) for bringing back a car late and in my experience, it very seldom happens... I have a feeling that if someone were abusing the system, they'd be quickly booted anyway.
Zipcar is a great example of a new generation of companies that is somewhat selective about its customers, assumes we are at least a bit smarter than algae, and holds customers accountable for their end of the contract (while also upholding its own end of the contract).
I've had no BS from this company and I've been a member for several years.
So... generally.. if you reserve a car for a certain time, you really can expect that it'll be there when you go to get it.
I've really got to disagree with this. I can't imagine anything more confusing than the typical out-of-box experience with a new Dell. The last machine I installed for someone spent about half an hour trying to sell me stuff on the way to "starting up." This is crazy and confusing. There's nothing wrong with including CD/DVD burning software on a machine - in fact it should be there. But there is something wrong when that software insists I need to go online and pay more money for some sort of upgrade, or when someone else has decided that software (e.g. AOL) should launch and run itself even if there's no indication that I want it.
This is about selling stuff to people by cramming it down their throats. It's not about helping novices.
"...when the Sony name wasn't covered in enough red tape to fill the Grand Canyon"
I've heard of mixing metaphors before, but that's a doozy. It really takes the cake and eats it too. I'm between a rock and a hard place trying to sort out this barrel of monkeys.
Much obliged to any word wizard out there who can 'splin me the bit about red tape all over the Sony name, and the grand canyon. I mean, tape doesn't take up a lot of space. That'd be a lot of tape. Did the writer mean red ink? Is it environmentally a good idea to put red ink in the grand canyon?
Now, are they talking about forwarding ALL AT&T traffic to NSA? I find that really really hard to believe. How much data is that? Can someone point to some known tech that can handle that....ALL that data? I'm not asking for "secret-I-bet-they-have-cold-fusion-computers" BS tech that someone *thinks* the NSA has.
What's so hard to believe? It's just traffic that AT&T are already forwarding to/thru/across AT&T networks... so by virtue of the simple existence of this traffic, there's plainly enough capacity out there, and then some, to "handle" it.
AT&T also, according to EFF, have give the NSA unfettered access to their "Daytona" database of the source and destination of every phone call ever placed on their network going back to Fred Flintstone's first called-in sick day down at the quarry.
This all presumes that there's universal agreement (across cultures and legal regimes) and a completely clear definition/dividing line for what is and is not porn. Think about it for a second and you will, I hope, realize that there is as much gray area in this matter as there is any any other case of trying to divide expression into clearly delineated categories. Appearance of an xxx domain presumes that content can be easily segmented into "porn" and "not porn" but I'd argue that except for the obvious cases, that's not really easy to do. What about a porn site that also hosts a "safe sex" discussion forum? A personal site with an R or PG picture of a porn star on it?
There's a pretty good body of research, going back quite a few years, that suggests that kids who use word processors for writing assignments turn out to be better writers.
From this research (Table 1) they conclude that in general:
students who use word processing software in the context of writing instruction programs tend to write more, revise more (at least at a surface level), make fewer errors, and have better attitudes toward their writing than students who do not use word processing software (1997, 131).
However, they caution that:
Teachers who use word processing software with their students should not expect writing quality to improve automatically. Improvements of that kind depend largely on other factors such as the type of writing instruction. But the potential value of word processing has been established, making it one of the most validated uses of technology in education (1997, 131).
One of the results I'm most fond of is the bit about experimentation - how word processors allow words and the organization of a block of ideas to be rearranged wholesale, played with, and tested.
New writers become good writers though practice. The malleability of word processed words (as compared to typed- or hand-written words - both of which are pretty high stakes by comparison) equates to a lot more practice in the same amount of time.
I was fortunate to work at a newspaper and with word processor-equipped computers when word processing was not the norm. As a result of all that practice, though it may not show here on Slashdot, my writing improved markedly.
Your argument sounds good in theory, but that's not how it happened.
Telcos were legal monopolies for many years, in exchange for doing the work (NOT "taking the risk") to build out the infrastructure. The customers paid for that build-out with higher-than-necessary rates (had there been competition), all manner of rules about where you could get a telephone (from the phone company, only), how you could get a phone (rentals only, no purchases), and on and on.
During that period many miles of copper and fiber were rolled out, but also innovation was stymied (for example, ISDN was stifled in the US while Europe had it for ages as an everyday service), and all our grannies paid a big chunk of their social security money each month to rent that princess phone next to the bed (ac adapter and "night light" option extra).
So don't discuss "forcing a company to share" something that they didn't really build but by incentives granted by the same people who now want to use that which was built.
it has some sorta audio output for clicki-ness and other mousey feedback. Not the same as a mechanical click on the fingers, but sounds plausible. I'm trained on a tappable trackpad and a small travel-mouse with a very short travel on the buttons, so i don't think i would miss the clicking.
Quoth Apple: Mighty Mouse even sounds as good as it feels. The audio feedback built into Mighty Mouse provides an aural sensation that responds to your movements. A tiny speaker inside Mighty Mouse produces button-clicking and Scroll Ball-rolling sound effects.
this is a very old idea, going back to the time that manufacturers tried to conserve materials and only put as much junk into the waste stream (and expense on the backs of consumers) as was necessary to get the job done.
Maybe it indicates that the market has spoken and where these companies were unable to knock down ink cartridge competitors with legal maneuvering, they'll now try to do it by bring the price down to the level that consumers want.
wait wait wait.
i am totally confused by this article.
Canon has used a dual print head/ink tank design for ages and ages.
Maybe the true innovation is the use of photolithography to produce the components.
i think the writer was either confused or hornswoggled. Maybe both.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you really well acquainted with gcj? I'm sorry, but I don't get how the end result or even the stuff going into it (and the required inputs, like making some explicit calls that would never be required in Java) can be called Java anymore.
the point I didn't make well was that when a language has been designed to execute inside a containing environment (the JRE or whatever facsimile thereof) you can't just up and erase that... without emulating all the stuff that was supposed to be alive in that environment. Taking a look at the gcj's to-do list and all the stuff that isn't yet supported should be enough to show you not only that this is not a trivial task, but to suggest that perhaps it's not a useful task, and I say that knowing that people have worked very hard on the project.
Maybe it makes sense for some resource-constrained settings like embedded systems, but there i've used Java straight up, satisfactorily. Granted, these are not life-critical systems I've built, but rather than compiling Java - or trying to - the better answer is to use a more appropriate language in those circumstances.
What with Java being an interpreted language and all, how would ya write an OS in Java? I guess you've have to have an OS-OS that runs the interpreter and provides all the low-level stuff that... what? oh. Yeah. turtles all the way down, isn't it? I guess if ya had that, we could write a Java OS and then find out.
Anyway just suggestin' that performance doesn't necessarily explain the "why isn't the OS written in java" question. A doesn't follow B. Socrates is not mortal, etc.
wow. that was unnecessarily harsh. Your words would have meant a lot more without all the invectives.
um, it might LOOK like $20 a month, but keep reading. The price schedule has ten dense footnotes!
http://www.remotecontrolmail.com/pricing.php
Gotta learn all about mail induction, flats, storage days, document prep fees charged by the minute but billed by the second, the assumption that eveyr piece of mail weighs a minimum of one ounce for shredding-weight-per-day calculations.
omfg
Thanks but I'll wait til I can figure out if this will cost $20 or $200 per month since I have no control over my inbound mail.
"VB macros within files will not be accessible and users will not be able to view or modify them. However, the files themselves can be edited without affecting or changing the macros."
This sounds like a huge benefit! Maybe it'll encourage a few more people to switch, to improve the security of their Office environment. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but kudos to Microsoft for this security unhancement. Perhaps if this goes well, they'll similarly unhance the Windows version of Office.
Don't say bollocks if you weren't there....
// Windows debacle, then you can't begin to understand what those times were like.
I remember the press at the time, and received one of the letters (as a dealer). It was a pretty big deal at the time. if you don't remember the whole OS/2
Your version of what happened with Word Perfect and Windows is not accurate.
.. then in one big swoop, Microsoft released: ... Word for Windows 1.0 (omigawd it was awful, but it worked in Windows) ... and broke off the OS/2 relationship with IBM, saying it had decided that Windows would be its platform for the future, ("j/k about that OS/2, mmmkay?")
Remember that "back in the day" computers were not fast, and things like word processors, if they were to be responsive at all, were hand-optimized. WP iirc was written in assembly or very close to it, and was not only fast but quite reliable as well, even working fine with very large documents.
Thus any version of "Word Perfect" for another OS (e.g. Windows or OS/2, which we'll revisit in a sec) had to be a complete rewrite from scratch, absolutely referring back to the DOS version for guidance, but nonetheless, from scratch.
At the time there were three new-looking operating environments for the PC: Windows and Windows 386, which were seen as a stopgap, and the new up-and-coming OS that everyone would have in a year or two: OS/2. Microsoft and IBM were co-developing this graphical, multitasking OS and it would be the common platform for the future. I have a very fat, very nice OS/2 for Developers book purchased in 1988 that I paid big bucks for, and studied carefully so I'd be ready.
WordPerfect Corp. had this book too, and devoted big, big staffing and money to development of WordPerfect for OS/2 and had the thing ready to ship, more or less... and so did Microsoft, or so we thought...
- Microsoft Windows (1.0? I forget what it was called)
-
I was a WordPerfect reseller at the time. Things were so screwy that WP actually sent out letters to resellers and was in the press, iirc, talking about the big, big screw.
WP scrambled to ship a Windows version, but never really caught up, I think in part becuase they tried to cross their DOS version (code-driven, a rough equivalent of TeX) with the ugly example of "Windows word processing" that Microsoft offered in Word 1.0. Note that transmuting code from OS/2 to Windows 1.0 was not a small feat, so it's not like they could just change a compiler switch and carry on. Windows back then was not well documented (c.f. many lawsuits and settlements), and the dev tools weren't particularly good, what with it being 1.0 and developed on the sly and all.
In short, Word for Windows had been developed as this new Windows was coming together, and had all the benefits that an application gets when co-developed with the library that it stands on... and WordPerfect was left in the dark. I felt sorry for WP, really. They were a good company and the developers were good guys... I interacted with them a few times over some small bugs I'd identified. Yeah, you could actually communicate with a developer back then, on occasion.
OS update costing money:
1) they distinguish between "Software Update" and "Operating System Upgrade," a sign of potential trouble if ever there was one
2) This FAQ which is almost impossible to find without stumbling into... and the fact that they've raised the idea of "price" in the make-believe question in the FAQ
** happy dance **
wait wait wait... europe.nokia.com? why do they get all the good stuff? am i "allowed" to have one of these in the US? (If not i guess I could move)
Yeah, that's very nearly it. I may settle for this despite the propietary os. 3 hours isn't quite enough battery life, but yeah, the Nokia 770 looks like it would do "enough" to get me by... thanks for the tip.
Nokia has apparently created and (for the moment) supports maemo.org, a developer site for the developer's kit that ONLY supports at this time, this single device.. it'd suck to be orphaned at some future date. The developer's program is "closed" but the code and stuff are still there, and the updates. I'm confused.
And the 2006 OS update is going to cost money. that sucks.
In the long run, e-Ink displays are essential... miniscule power consumption, negligible weight, excellent contrast... what's not to like?
I'm inferring that the e-ink "paper" must still be pretty expensive given the price points of all the announced reader products, not counting the Hanlin I originally mentioned (not shipping yet so all bets are off 'til it's in a box and available for purchase).
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-- attributed to Edsger Dijkstra
I'd say that can be extended to replace "computers" with "individual programming languages" and suggest that you need to find a better computer science program elsewhere... Computer Science is not about creating maintenance programmers.
800 bucks for the featured item? That seems pretty steep for such a limited device when Dell is shipping full-featured notebooks for $500 and up...
This looked interesting...
V2 eBook Reader
SRP $349, runs Linux, aimed at EU and US markets... they're hooked up with E-Ink and have China-scale overhead, so maybe $349 SRP will translate to $200-$250 street price if they actually release this... looks like more than the usual vaporware.
specs
I wish the E-Ink prototype kit didn't cost $3,000 or I'd just build my own reader. I really want a cheap reader on the cost scale of a disposable mp3 player so I don't have to worry constantly about losing or trashing it. I wouldn't set out to lose or trash it, but I'd replace a $150 reader pretty fast, and a $800 reader pretty much not at all.
When finished driving your Zipcar, take it back to the place you found it, wave your ZipCard over the sensor in the windshield to lock it and end your rental period, and step away from the vehicle.
Yes, they describe the cars as "living" (their marketers can be a little too cute at times) in specific locations... Parking is very hard to come by here, so this makes sense for a lot of reasons, including that you're never very far from a car. I usually rent one that's near "where I'm going to be" when I want it, which isn't usually my apartment. The cars are sprinkled all around town. By car faeries.
Jeez, people write without knowing much around here. Oh sorry, i forgot where i am.
There is a whole flock of bicycle dudes who go out (in all weather, all year long) and take care of the cars. As well, Zipcar members are encouraged to inspect the car when they go to get it, and to immediately report any problems - dents, out of washer fluid, whatever.
If it's something dumb like washer fluid, you can even buy more and they'll reimburse if you can't charge it on the (provided in the car) fleet gasoline charge card.
Far as I know, the concept is flying and has been for like 6 years now. I am a very happy Zipcar customer. I've been able to get rid of my car altogether, saving many $thousands a year... and in exchange, I pay a few $hundreds per year for use of a practically new car, with insurance, maintenance and fuel provided, whenever I need one.
As far as "whenever I need one" they seem to add cars pretty aggressively to follow demand. I've never been totally closed out... maybe you have to walk an extra 2 or 3 blocks to get to one at a specific time, but that's not really a big deal. It does require some adjustments to how you think about getting around, but the only reason I had a car in the past was for those trips that totally don't work on a bike (and taxis - just forget it, they're miserable and expensive)... this provides it.
RTFWebSite...
There are significant-enough cash penalties ($25 and up) for bringing back a car late and in my experience, it very seldom happens... I have a feeling that if someone were abusing the system, they'd be quickly booted anyway.
Zipcar is a great example of a new generation of companies that is somewhat selective about its customers, assumes we are at least a bit smarter than algae, and holds customers accountable for their end of the contract (while also upholding its own end of the contract).
I've had no BS from this company and I've been a member for several years.
So... generally.. if you reserve a car for a certain time, you really can expect that it'll be there when you go to get it.
I've really got to disagree with this. I can't imagine anything more confusing than the typical out-of-box experience with a new Dell. The last machine I installed for someone spent about half an hour trying to sell me stuff on the way to "starting up." This is crazy and confusing. There's nothing wrong with including CD/DVD burning software on a machine - in fact it should be there. But there is something wrong when that software insists I need to go online and pay more money for some sort of upgrade, or when someone else has decided that software (e.g. AOL) should launch and run itself even if there's no indication that I want it.
This is about selling stuff to people by cramming it down their throats. It's not about helping novices.
"...when the Sony name wasn't covered in enough red tape to fill the Grand Canyon"
I've heard of mixing metaphors before, but that's a doozy. It really takes the cake and eats it too. I'm between a rock and a hard place trying to sort out this barrel of monkeys.
Much obliged to any word wizard out there who can 'splin me the bit about red tape all over the Sony name, and the grand canyon. I mean, tape doesn't take up a lot of space. That'd be a lot of tape. Did the writer mean red ink? Is it environmentally a good idea to put red ink in the grand canyon?
Now mind you, if they are culling and selectively storing data ... as certainly is happening, if the stuff is flowing as EFF claims.
they don't need to keep every/thing/ to make every/one/ a person of interest eventually.
Now, are they talking about forwarding ALL AT&T traffic to NSA? I find that really really hard to believe. How much data is that? Can someone point to some known tech that can handle that....ALL that data? I'm not asking for "secret-I-bet-they-have-cold-fusion-computers" BS tech that someone *thinks* the NSA has.
What's so hard to believe? It's just traffic that AT&T are already forwarding to/thru/across AT&T networks... so by virtue of the simple existence of this traffic, there's plainly enough capacity out there, and then some, to "handle" it.
AT&T also, according to EFF, have give the NSA unfettered access to their "Daytona" database of the source and destination of every phone call ever placed on their network going back to Fred Flintstone's first called-in sick day down at the quarry.
This all presumes that there's universal agreement (across cultures and legal regimes) and a completely clear definition/dividing line for what is and is not porn. Think about it for a second and you will, I hope, realize that there is as much gray area in this matter as there is any any other case of trying to divide expression into clearly delineated categories. Appearance of an xxx domain presumes that content can be easily segmented into "porn" and "not porn" but I'd argue that except for the obvious cases, that's not really easy to do. What about a porn site that also hosts a "safe sex" discussion forum? A personal site with an R or PG picture of a porn star on it?
There's a pretty good body of research, going back quite a few years, that suggests that kids who use word processors for writing assignments turn out to be better writers.
Here's a pretty decent overview (ca. 1999) from the first Google result on the subject.
From this research (Table 1) they conclude that in general:
students who use word processing software in the context of writing instruction programs tend to write more, revise more (at least at a surface level), make fewer errors, and have better attitudes toward their writing than students who do not use word processing software (1997, 131).
However, they caution that:
Teachers who use word processing software with their students should not expect writing quality to improve automatically. Improvements of that kind depend largely on other factors such as the type of writing instruction. But the potential value of word processing has been established, making it one of the most validated uses of technology in education (1997, 131).
One of the results I'm most fond of is the bit about experimentation - how word processors allow words and the organization of a block of ideas to be rearranged wholesale, played with, and tested.
New writers become good writers though practice. The malleability of word processed words (as compared to typed- or hand-written words - both of which are pretty high stakes by comparison) equates to a lot more practice in the same amount of time.
I was fortunate to work at a newspaper and with word processor-equipped computers when word processing was not the norm. As a result of all that practice, though it may not show here on Slashdot, my writing improved markedly.
Slightly worse, it's over the entire lifetime of the entire bank of machines, not the individual machines.
Your argument sounds good in theory, but that's not how it happened.
Telcos were legal monopolies for many years, in exchange for doing the work (NOT "taking the risk") to build out the infrastructure. The customers paid for that build-out with higher-than-necessary rates (had there been competition), all manner of rules about where you could get a telephone (from the phone company, only), how you could get a phone (rentals only, no purchases), and on and on.
During that period many miles of copper and fiber were rolled out, but also innovation was stymied (for example, ISDN was stifled in the US while Europe had it for ages as an everyday service), and all our grannies paid a big chunk of their social security money each month to rent that princess phone next to the bed (ac adapter and "night light" option extra).
So don't discuss "forcing a company to share" something that they didn't really build but by incentives granted by the same people who now want to use that which was built.
it has some sorta audio output for clicki-ness and other mousey feedback. Not the same as a mechanical click on the fingers, but sounds plausible. I'm trained on a tappable trackpad and a small travel-mouse with a very short travel on the buttons, so i don't think i would miss the clicking.
Quoth Apple:
Mighty Mouse even sounds as good as it feels. The audio feedback built into Mighty Mouse provides an aural sensation that responds to your movements. A tiny speaker inside Mighty Mouse produces button-clicking and Scroll Ball-rolling sound effects.
this is a very old idea, going back to the time that manufacturers tried to conserve materials and only put as much junk into the waste stream (and expense on the backs of consumers) as was necessary to get the job done.
Maybe it indicates that the market has spoken and where these companies were unable to knock down ink cartridge competitors with legal maneuvering, they'll now try to do it by bring the price down to the level that consumers want.
wait wait wait.
i am totally confused by this article.
Canon has used a dual print head/ink tank design for ages and ages.
Maybe the true innovation is the use of photolithography to produce the components.
i think the writer was either confused or hornswoggled. Maybe both.