I spent some time recently researching in-wall audio solutions for a kitchen. The "whole-house audio" stuff is extremely pricey, and usually depends on remote power (remember power for speakers is going to take more power than an itty-bitty WinCE device).
I can see devices like this serving as Media Connector boxes to serve music throughout my house... but it still needs an audio amp.
I ended up buying a SpeakerCraft SoundSource, a 50w CD player that sits in the wall... and needs a brick power supply plugged in somewhere outside of the wall (it's going in my crawl space) for under $400. It's got 2 aux inputs, so an external media thing (whether portable or counter mountable like the Roku) can be plugged into it via a wall socket next to it.
High concert ticket prices are hardly news. The Eagles broke $100 during their first "farewell" tour a whole bunch of years ago, long before iTunes and iPods.
It still boils down to the horrendous accounting of the record industry: In the "good old days" of cheap concerts, a live performance was a requirement of the label as a promotion for selling the reocrds, and the artists hoped to get a piece of that.
Currently, most artists never see a royalty beyond the first advance, and the concert tickets (and $10 stickers, $35 t-shirts, etc.) are their source of profit.
And face it: even at a stadium with three nights' peformances, you're only going to let, say 150,000 people see you, in a big city where there could be a million fans or so. Yeah, only the yuppies are getting in, but the bands don't care (See The Last DJ by Tom Petty).
You don't like it? Neither do I. Don't go to $100+ nostalgia shows in stadiums. Go to $12 shows by up-and-coming bands with energy at small clubs where nobody is more than 40 feet from the stage, or in a dingy converted '30's movie house turned mosh pit with a bigger artist workshopping his summer tour. You'll have a lot more fun (and probably walk out of the concert having paid $10-$18 for the artist's CD, with most of that cash going straight to them).
Fans of SNOT (Studs Not On Top) Lego design will love this kit, because there aren't any studs. It looks like everything's designed to hook together with Technic axles and connectors, and no "basic brick" connectivity.
When I was a FIRST Lego League coach, the designs often embedded motors, sensors, even the RCX as part of the structure. The latter was usually a bad, bad, idea, since you'd have to disassemble major parts of your bot to replace batteries, and during a competition, you'd replace batteries every other run.
I welcome the sensor-laden motors, bluetooth, ultrasonic 'vision'... but I wonder if they've beefed up the programming any. Lack of backward compatibility is a surprise -- I've got a number of old sensors and motors.
Dean Ing's "The Big Lifters" deals with multi-mode transportation, including more-efficient trucks for rail-depot to customer transport, delta dirigibles that could 'snag' containers from moving trains, and a reusable launch vehicle that carries virtually no fuel (I'll let you read the book to find out how it launches).
And to top it off, the book has a plot too! You can probably find this book at half.com or bloated e-tailers named after rivers.
I disagree with the Arial/Helvetica crowd: Serifs make large quantities of text more readable. Sans-serifs such as Arial are readable at a distance, and good for grabbing the eye.
Still, Times/Times New Roman sucks wet farts out of dead pigeons. It was designed to cram maximal text into a newspaper column, which does not resemble today's web pages, books, etc.
Fonts such as Bookman, Palatino, Bodoni -- anything with "book" in the title -- are so much more readable as to be stupid not to use. The same benefits of Helvetica are present: large x-height, big holes. You get less text across a single column, but that's a good thing.
This is probably a job for the W3 folks: select a set of mandatory fonts that every browser must support. There are open-source fonts available that can, like the old Mac fonts and Arial, clone up the classics. We just have to all agree on them to make them compatible.
I have diversified tastes. The Who and Nickel Creek don't have much in common. Add enough different bands, and you get "we chose this for mixed instrumentation in a major key."
Which leads to Backstreet Boys.
What they need is several categories with a randomized selection from your multiple tastes.
Even if it fits in current enclosures, it will never be a consumer-grade product like DVD-RW is now. Home DVD-RW for home theater just dropped below $100, and internal drives for desktops are under $30. Blu-Ray/HD-DVD could get there in 5 years (doubtful, as HD will remain a premium item for most of that time).
Until there is a demand for prerecorded media with 300GB on it, there won't be the impetus to make these items cheap. They'll remain in the computer-room-only expensive category.
What might make this technology fly is not a 300GB, 13cm platter, but a PSP UCD-sized disk for portable media with, day, 20GB on it. However, I suspect that falling flash memory prices will overtake this too quickly for it to have much impact on portable media players, camcorders, etc.
It will be valuable and marketable to the server room customers, but don't expect Dell to include these babies in a $399 desktop for at least 6 years.
... and I'm not a robot, really. I only have a copy having picked up an advance reader copy at the Book Expo America last May.
It's a 3x5" book with big print, bad jokes, and every robot cliche ever created. Each chapter attempts to spend a couple pages explaining robot technology (sensors, AI, etc.) and then proceeds to give you ways to foil IR sensors, confuse AI's, etc.
XML piping and simple DOM access to that pipe are very nice. I'm not a Python programmer, so perhaps I'm missing an obvious precedent here, but it's certainly new to me for a command-line mode.
Providers are a nice concept, and I can see these being expanded into slick debuggers: Access a provider of an active IE window and traverse the DOM to figure out just why that AJAX code won't run? Sure, it could happen.
Another nice provider for me would be for MS Word -- batch modification of Word files would be slick, and I could use it today.
Not providing a full provider for WMI is an obvious shortcoming. Providers for the registry are indeed nice, seeing as so much control is based there, versus old DOS environment variables.
Not permitting double-click of MSH files seems silly -- I need to occasionally ship a utility to fix a batch of things out to a coworker, and having to tell them to open a shell is just going to confuse them. The idea of embedding it into a BAT file just gives me shivers.
...officially stated to him that support of OpenDocument in MS Office could happen...
Boy, that's as much a sure thing as when Owl says to Pooh, floating in the floody 100 Acre Wood, "A rescue is being thought of"
More than likely, it will be provided as an import/export format. I haven't viewed either schema, but seeing as Microsoft typically releases next-version converters (including the next XML format) for current version software, another format should be easily done.
After all, wouldn't they rather have Word, Excel, etc. be the default app that opens those docs?
The biggest downside is that there's no easy way to get an overview of everything, you can only see headlines from one feed at a time.
The big advantage is that it does keep track of which headlines you've already read, like a newsreader or an email program.
My current favorite feedreader is http://www.netvibes.com/ -- not to say that that can't use some slick features (keyboard shortcuts, f'rinstance), but I like the rearrangable panes, easy configuration, general flexibility.
Overall, I'd say netvibes is a better 'good morning' dashboard.
The biggest disadvantage I see in having my phone be my next computing platform -- aside from miniscule storage (solvable) and tiny screen (less solvable, although the rollable OLEDs have potential to 'fan-out' a more media-friendly viewscreen) -- is that the phone companies lock these things down like the Fort Knox of revenue that they are (OK, lousy mixed metaphor, deal with it).
F'rinstance: My Verizon-servivced LG VX4400 has a "Brew"-based OS, which is a Java-like system owned by Qualcomm. Qualcomm gives away a compiler, but alas, you can't give away your software without getting it certified by the carriers, which takes some pretty hefty fees. Because of this, I can't even get a Solitaire program on my phone without paying $2 and up a month. No other software is available for upload, even with tools that can transfer data to and from the device, such as BitPim. I don't know if there are any locks on Verizon's Treo's, I would hope it's still basically a Palm device like any other.
Shareware has made these PC and handheld platforms what they are today. Free and low-cost software for the Palm and Pocket PC make these devices indispensible. Meanwhile, the phone companies have no interest in supporting your use of uncertified software: it costs them time and money to deal with issues they cause, and the more open the system, the bigger vulnerability to malware of all sorts.
I'm also concerned about cost and performance of networking: high-speed wireless data is starting to trickle in, but at outrageous prices ($80/month for Verizon's service for the Treo). And that's for each handset/computing platform. I've got 6 computers in my house (one for each of the four of us, a company-owned laptop and a media server). There's no way I'd shell out those kind of fees for even the four computers for the four of us.
More open platforms, such as WinCE-, Palm-, and Linux-based smartphones make this a possibility, but there's got to be some kind of reasonable family data plan: If I pay someone such as SBC (my local phone carrier) for DSL and cell service, is it reasonable that I can get DSL-based wireless service in my house, and WiMax or similar outside, all at one price?
Can I still hack at it?
on
Office 12 Exposed
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· Score: 3, Interesting
What makes the existing Office versions (see caveats below) so useful is their extremely high level of hackability, with very little effort. Both from OLE and the internal Visual Basic for Applications (now Visual Studio.Net for Applications or some such nonsense), the entire (almost) document model is addresable in nice easy to bite chunks, and just about any task can be automated.
Aside from providing income to folks such as myself, it permits many of the limitations of the systems to be exceeded.
So, will these new "chunky toolbars" and property panes, and so on, be addressable using the current methods, in other words, does my current VBA/VS.Net code work... and can I leverage the new features?
With Office 2002 (aka 10 or XP), Microsoft introduced "Task Panes". These things include the XML interface, a substitute for WordPerfect's "Reveal Codes" and a number of other useful things. But it is barely accessible to the automation/document model, and not extensible at all (except for the XML stuff, but that's another show). I would love to be able to add custom items to those "Property Screens" and add my own menu-like toolbars, to give my customers features that are (a) more usable (assuming that this stuff is indeed more usable, I'm not sure yet), and (b) looks like the out-of-the-box features (but work better).
I'll take style over realism when the style contributes to the storytelling and enjoyment of the tale.
I started reading comics in the late 70's/early 80's, and realism was big then. Artists such as Neal Adams (all over Marvel and DC), John Byrne (X-Men), Jim Layton (Iron Man), etc. had taken over from the 60's stylized art of Kirby, and Ditko (Aparo, Swan, Steranko and others sort of spanned the fence between aping an old style and trying for the new realism).
Then, suddenly, there were stylists that blew my mind: Bill Sinkiewicz' wild line style (Moon Knight, Stray Toasters), Mike Mignola's world-devouring blacks (Corum, Hellboy), Walt Simonson's angular structure (Thor), Howard Chaykin's zip-a-tone (American Flagg!, Black Kiss)... I could go on and on... oh, yeah, Frank Miller too.
But for every thing there is a season: sometimes the realistic style works better: Art Ross' painterly style works well for grand epics. Brent Anderson's realism works for Astro City's interaction with the real world, and sometimes a Jim Lee crisp and clean can be a relief.
But this is gaming we're talking about. Sometimes a 64-pixel sprite makes a fun game. Certainly the original Zelda can't be considered realistic. I thought that games such as Wind Waker and Paper Mario were innovative in their use of graphics, and should be applauded.
But the market does rule this sort of thing. If *everybody* wants realism, that's what will be made. If 10% of the market wants some cool style, well, sometimes, they'll get ridden roughshod over.
Big screens, entertainment rooms, etc. make playing games on even a 19" monitor on your desk less than optimal. This makes people more likely to want to play games on a PS42, Xbox reloaded, etc. From the developer's point of view, a known platform, where you don't have to adjust to resolutions, video card limitations, etc. etc. is a big boon.
What sucks about developing for the consoles is the locked-down marketing environment, where you've got to get approval and shelf space from Microsoft and Sony (Nintendo? Nintendon't).
That immediately raises the baseline costs, which justifies a bigger budget to try to pull in a bigger audience, and make those licensing fees a smaller percentage.
The PC market still makes it possible to have low-budget, high-fun games, such as Hamsterball Gold (yeah, it's basically marble madness, but well done), that tar-ball game I forgot the name of, FreeCiv, etc.
And there's work being done there, as described above. It's not dead, but it's not mainstream.
The only benefit I can see is to get past the Catbert gatekeepers who will only select the certified resumes tossed over the transom.
Since that's the worst way to get a new job anyway (Network Network Network), that's still probably of extremely limited value.
Now I had one potential employer who favored candidates for a Project Manager job who had Project Management Institute certification. I didn't get the job (thank the FSM), but the state unemployment office offered to pay for the class and test (about $3500, or eight times what I got in unemployment checks), so I did it. It was outside of my core knowledge, and it's been semi useful (although the class sucked).
We run an e-tail business, and as our products come from our distributors in BIG boxes, and go out to customers usually in little boxes --actually padded envelopes for the majority, it's only the inbetweenies that cause probloems -- having a ready stock of boxes of the right size is a constant problem -- you don't want too big a box, or the mdse rattles around, and you're paying to ship the darn heavier box and packing materials.
So we were tempted to, on rare occasions, use the Priority Mail boxes, turned inside out. USPS prints their logos all over the 'useless' inside to prevent just this abuse.
Of course, Viking and other office supply places sell kraft-paper-brown spray paint, ostensibly to hide old shipping labels. Never gone to those lengths, though.
Because we have a home-based e-tail business (actually, it just moved out of the house into bigger digs), the kids have gotten the hand-me-downs as the requirements of the biz increased. That changed this year, when they were no longer able to play the games they wanted, run Flash MX, etc.
In the last year, both my sons (14 and 17) have gotten new or refurb, ~$500 desktop systems in the 2800MHz range -- 3D cards are crap, but good enough for what they want to do. Both computers are set up in the family room, where they are known to be subject to inspection and monitoring.
My older son (entering Sr year) also has access to an older laptop for writing, etc. in his bedroom -- but this unit has no WiFi, so that we can regulate what hours he's on the net. Otherwise, I know he'd never sleep.
I figure I'm buying him a decent laptop this year. The last laptop I bought for the biz was close to $2K, but that included a dock, very large disc... I'm hoping that the next one will be more around $1200 or less.
I don't use them myself, but when I've had to help out relations (most of whom I've eventually steered away from the Time Warner Borg service, regardless of the fact that I own stock in them), AOL's customer service has been (a) prompt to respond -- short hold times (b) accurate (c) willing to admit what they do and don't know, and that they have to go ask someone (rather than just, 'hold please' (d) willing to call back (e) surprisingly consistent in calling back!
(e) is my biggest pet peeve with my hosting service, by the way.
One other note: helping relations with computer issues is the most thankless job in the world: my mother had me hook up her DSL (jeez, the cartoons on the case the installer disk came in covered everything pretty darn completely), then the painters came and moved everything, and I've had at least three calls which all amount to the #1 item on the tech support tree.
Wait for it.
"Is it plugged in?"
On the other hand, a buddy of mine had me help with some HTML, CSS and CGI stuff, and when I told him my hourly rate, he offered to pay me off in shrimp. Cool!
... then it makes sense for the city to do it. My village of about 60,000 includes trash pickup as a village service, paid by taxpayers. It's cheaper for them to contract it like that than each homeowner to do it on their own (I don't think businesses get a free ride here, so they're subsidizing my trash heap, most likely).
The only ones whining about these things are the service providers hoping to make more money off individuals.
And like trash, everybody, not just residents, benefits. Tourists like the trash they can find on the internet.
According to a quick googling, Tempe is the fifth-largest city in Arizona with a population of 160,000. It's considered part of the Phoenix metro area by the Census administration http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/ta b03.txt, but if it were its own, it would only rank, say around 180 or so (giving it some credit for a metro area).
Wake me when something important happens, like Peoria (#118 at about 350,000), or Shreveport (#105 at just under 400,000).
A space elevator, or beanstalk, has two big problems for construction: 1) materials that are strong enough, and 2) getting it to stay up.
The first we're getting close to being able to handle. The second is just a matter of having a counterweight that balances the 22,500 miles of cable from the equator (more on that later) to the top. Without the counterweight, the ground end drags it down.
That means that we really need to build this sucker from the middle out: extend equal masses out and in (or up and down, if you prefer) from geosynchronous orbit. That's a very expensive proposition. Whether it's cheaper to ship carbon for nanotubes up or go and fetch some carbonaceous asteroids down to our orbit I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
A poster above was concerned about the terrorist target of something like this. The one consolation in this one is that you can't build it on US or European soil: it needs to be at the equator. At least one SF author (I forget which) posited an elevator whose ground-level terminus was an upside-down Y to two islands straddling the equator some hundreds of miles apart. Not the silliest thing I've ever read, but I'm not sure it makes much sense. Tethering one end down will be tricky enough.
So it won't be Imperialist America that's building it... but that's not to say it won't have protestors. It'll cast a shadow pretty much across the entire planet. It will likely change weather patterns in the region.
It will create the most valuable real estate in the world.
It's going to end up in some place where technology and resources are accessible: Brazil, Equador, Congo, Somalia, The Maldives, Indonesia, Malaysia, or some Pacific Island are all candidates, my money is on a spot just south of Singapore -- there's enough high-tech industrial nations close enough to justify it there. Brazil is my second guess.
And who knows, maybe we'll find Saddam building WMDs up there. (obligatory Funny whoring)
It looks like TiVo got squeezed out by Comcast and DirecTV: TiVo walked away from the Comcast deal last year, and I'm betting part of it was due to DirecTV: DTV wouldn't want such close ties with Comcast.
When the DirecTV deals fell apart, TiVo had to go back to Comcast hat in hand, and beg to get the same deal that they could have probably improved upon.
I can just see the next version of the SCOTTEVEST with turbines on the hood, combined with the solar epaulettes... perhaps voltaic electrodes in boots for when trudging through salt marsh?
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I spent some time recently researching in-wall audio solutions for a kitchen.
The "whole-house audio" stuff is extremely pricey, and usually depends on remote power (remember power for speakers is going to take more power than an itty-bitty WinCE device).
I can see devices like this serving as Media Connector boxes to serve music throughout my house... but it still needs an audio amp.
I ended up buying a SpeakerCraft SoundSource, a 50w CD player that sits in the wall... and needs a brick power supply plugged in somewhere outside of the wall (it's going in my crawl space) for under $400. It's got 2 aux inputs, so an external media thing (whether portable or counter mountable like the Roku) can be plugged into it via a wall socket next to it.
High concert ticket prices are hardly news.
The Eagles broke $100 during their first "farewell" tour a whole bunch of years ago, long before iTunes and iPods.
It still boils down to the horrendous accounting of the record industry: In the "good old days" of cheap concerts, a live performance was a requirement of the label as a promotion for selling the reocrds, and the artists hoped to get a piece of that.
Currently, most artists never see a royalty beyond the first advance, and the concert tickets (and $10 stickers, $35 t-shirts, etc.) are their source of profit.
And face it: even at a stadium with three nights' peformances, you're only going to let, say 150,000 people see you, in a big city where there could be a million fans or so. Yeah, only the yuppies are getting in, but the bands don't care (See The Last DJ by Tom Petty).
You don't like it? Neither do I. Don't go to $100+ nostalgia shows in stadiums. Go to $12 shows by up-and-coming bands with energy at small clubs where nobody is more than 40 feet from the stage, or in a dingy converted '30's movie house turned mosh pit with a bigger artist workshopping his summer tour. You'll have a lot more fun (and probably walk out of the concert having paid $10-$18 for the artist's CD, with most of that cash going straight to them).
Fans of SNOT (Studs Not On Top) Lego design will love this kit, because there aren't any studs. It looks like everything's designed to hook together with Technic axles and connectors, and no "basic brick" connectivity.
When I was a FIRST Lego League coach, the designs often embedded motors, sensors, even the RCX as part of the structure. The latter was usually a bad, bad, idea, since you'd have to disassemble major parts of your bot to replace batteries, and during a competition, you'd replace batteries every other run.
I welcome the sensor-laden motors, bluetooth, ultrasonic 'vision'... but I wonder if they've beefed up the programming any. Lack of backward compatibility is a surprise -- I've got a number of old sensors and motors.
Dean Ing's "The Big Lifters" deals with multi-mode transportation, including more-efficient trucks for rail-depot to customer transport, delta dirigibles that could 'snag' containers from moving trains, and a reusable launch vehicle that carries virtually no fuel (I'll let you read the book to find out how it launches).
And to top it off, the book has a plot too!
You can probably find this book at half.com or bloated e-tailers named after rivers.
I disagree with the Arial/Helvetica crowd: Serifs make large quantities of text more readable. Sans-serifs such as Arial are readable at a distance, and good for grabbing the eye.
Still, Times/Times New Roman sucks wet farts out of dead pigeons. It was designed to cram maximal text into a newspaper column, which does not resemble today's web pages, books, etc.
Fonts such as Bookman, Palatino, Bodoni -- anything with "book" in the title -- are so much more readable as to be stupid not to use. The same benefits of Helvetica are present: large x-height, big holes. You get less text across a single column, but that's a good thing.
This is probably a job for the W3 folks: select a set of mandatory fonts that every browser must support. There are open-source fonts available that can, like the old Mac fonts and Arial, clone up the classics. We just have to all agree on them to make them compatible.
I have diversified tastes. The Who and Nickel Creek don't have much in common.
Add enough different bands, and you get "we chose this for mixed instrumentation in a major key."
Which leads to Backstreet Boys.
What they need is several categories with a randomized selection from your multiple tastes.
Even if it fits in current enclosures, it will never be a consumer-grade product like DVD-RW is now. Home DVD-RW for home theater just dropped below $100, and internal drives for desktops are under $30. Blu-Ray/HD-DVD could get there in 5 years (doubtful, as HD will remain a premium item for most of that time).
Until there is a demand for prerecorded media with 300GB on it, there won't be the impetus to make these items cheap. They'll remain in the computer-room-only expensive category.
What might make this technology fly is not a 300GB, 13cm platter, but a PSP UCD-sized disk for portable media with, day, 20GB on it. However, I suspect that falling flash memory prices will overtake this too quickly for it to have much impact on portable media players, camcorders, etc.
It will be valuable and marketable to the server room customers, but don't expect Dell to include these babies in a $399 desktop for at least 6 years.
... and I'm not a robot, really. I only have a copy having picked up an advance reader copy at the Book Expo America last May.
It's a 3x5" book with big print, bad jokes, and every robot cliche ever created. Each chapter attempts to spend a couple pages explaining robot technology (sensors, AI, etc.) and then proceeds to give you ways to foil IR sensors, confuse AI's, etc.
It's just not a very good job.
XML piping and simple DOM access to that pipe are very nice. I'm not a Python programmer, so perhaps I'm missing an obvious precedent here, but it's certainly new to me for a command-line mode.
Providers are a nice concept, and I can see these being expanded into slick debuggers: Access a provider of an active IE window and traverse the DOM to figure out just why that AJAX code won't run? Sure, it could happen.
Another nice provider for me would be for MS Word -- batch modification of Word files would be slick, and I could use it today.
Not providing a full provider for WMI is an obvious shortcoming. Providers for the registry are indeed nice, seeing as so much control is based there, versus old DOS environment variables.
Not permitting double-click of MSH files seems silly -- I need to occasionally ship a utility to fix a batch of things out to a coworker, and having to tell them to open a shell is just going to confuse them. The idea of embedding it into a BAT file just gives me shivers.
Boy, that's as much a sure thing as when Owl says to Pooh, floating in the floody 100 Acre Wood, "A rescue is being thought of"
More than likely, it will be provided as an import/export format. I haven't viewed either schema, but seeing as Microsoft typically releases next-version converters (including the next XML format) for current version software, another format should be easily done.
After all, wouldn't they rather have Word, Excel, etc. be the default app that opens those docs?
The biggest downside is that there's no easy way to get an overview of everything, you can only see headlines from one feed at a time.
The big advantage is that it does keep track of which headlines you've already read, like a newsreader or an email program.
My current favorite feedreader is http://www.netvibes.com/ -- not to say that that can't use some slick features (keyboard shortcuts, f'rinstance), but I like the rearrangable panes, easy configuration, general flexibility.
Overall, I'd say netvibes is a better 'good morning' dashboard.
The biggest disadvantage I see in having my phone be my next computing platform -- aside from miniscule storage (solvable) and tiny screen (less solvable, although the rollable OLEDs have potential to 'fan-out' a more media-friendly viewscreen) -- is that the phone companies lock these things down like the Fort Knox of revenue that they are (OK, lousy mixed metaphor, deal with it).
F'rinstance: My Verizon-servivced LG VX4400 has a "Brew"-based OS, which is a Java-like system owned by Qualcomm. Qualcomm gives away a compiler, but alas, you can't give away your software without getting it certified by the carriers, which takes some pretty hefty fees. Because of this, I can't even get a Solitaire program on my phone without paying $2 and up a month. No other software is available for upload, even with tools that can transfer data to and from the device, such as BitPim. I don't know if there are any locks on Verizon's Treo's, I would hope it's still basically a Palm device like any other.
Shareware has made these PC and handheld platforms what they are today. Free and low-cost software for the Palm and Pocket PC make these devices indispensible. Meanwhile, the phone companies have no interest in supporting your use of uncertified software: it costs them time and money to deal with issues they cause, and the more open the system, the bigger vulnerability to malware of all sorts.
I'm also concerned about cost and performance of networking: high-speed wireless data is starting to trickle in, but at outrageous prices ($80/month for Verizon's service for the Treo). And that's for each handset/computing platform. I've got 6 computers in my house (one for each of the four of us, a company-owned laptop and a media server). There's no way I'd shell out those kind of fees for even the four computers for the four of us.
More open platforms, such as WinCE-, Palm-, and Linux-based smartphones make this a possibility, but there's got to be some kind of reasonable family data plan: If I pay someone such as SBC (my local phone carrier) for DSL and cell service, is it reasonable that I can get DSL-based wireless service in my house, and WiMax or similar outside, all at one price?
What makes the existing Office versions (see caveats below) so useful is their extremely high level of hackability, with very little effort. Both from OLE and the internal Visual Basic for Applications (now Visual Studio .Net for Applications or some such nonsense), the entire (almost) document model is addresable in nice easy to bite chunks, and just about any task can be automated.
Aside from providing income to folks such as myself, it permits many of the limitations of the systems to be exceeded.
So, will these new "chunky toolbars" and property panes, and so on, be addressable using the current methods, in other words, does my current VBA/VS.Net code work... and can I leverage the new features?
With Office 2002 (aka 10 or XP), Microsoft introduced "Task Panes". These things include the XML interface, a substitute for WordPerfect's "Reveal Codes" and a number of other useful things. But it is barely accessible to the automation/document model, and not extensible at all (except for the XML stuff, but that's another show). I would love to be able to add custom items to those "Property Screens" and add my own menu-like toolbars, to give my customers features that are (a) more usable (assuming that this stuff is indeed more usable, I'm not sure yet), and (b) looks like the out-of-the-box features (but work better).
I'll take style over realism when the style contributes to the storytelling and enjoyment of the tale.
I started reading comics in the late 70's/early 80's, and realism was big then. Artists such as Neal Adams (all over Marvel and DC), John Byrne (X-Men), Jim Layton (Iron Man), etc. had taken over from the 60's stylized art of Kirby, and Ditko (Aparo, Swan, Steranko and others sort of spanned the fence between aping an old style and trying for the new realism).
Then, suddenly, there were stylists that blew my mind: Bill Sinkiewicz' wild line style (Moon Knight, Stray Toasters), Mike Mignola's world-devouring blacks (Corum, Hellboy), Walt Simonson's angular structure (Thor), Howard Chaykin's zip-a-tone (American Flagg!, Black Kiss)... I could go on and on... oh, yeah, Frank Miller too.
But for every thing there is a season: sometimes the realistic style works better: Art Ross' painterly style works well for grand epics. Brent Anderson's realism works for Astro City's interaction with the real world, and sometimes a Jim Lee crisp and clean can be a relief.
But this is gaming we're talking about. Sometimes a 64-pixel sprite makes a fun game. Certainly the original Zelda can't be considered realistic. I thought that games such as Wind Waker and Paper Mario were innovative in their use of graphics, and should be applauded.
But the market does rule this sort of thing. If *everybody* wants realism, that's what will be made. If 10% of the market wants some cool style, well, sometimes, they'll get ridden roughshod over.
Big screens, entertainment rooms, etc. make playing games on even a 19" monitor on your desk less than optimal. This makes people more likely to want to play games on a PS42, Xbox reloaded, etc. From the developer's point of view, a known platform, where you don't have to adjust to resolutions, video card limitations, etc. etc. is a big boon.
What sucks about developing for the consoles is the locked-down marketing environment, where you've got to get approval and shelf space from Microsoft and Sony (Nintendo? Nintendon't).
That immediately raises the baseline costs, which justifies a bigger budget to try to pull in a bigger audience, and make those licensing fees a smaller percentage.
The PC market still makes it possible to have low-budget, high-fun games, such as Hamsterball Gold (yeah, it's basically marble madness, but well done), that tar-ball game I forgot the name of, FreeCiv, etc.
And there's work being done there, as described above. It's not dead, but it's not mainstream.
The only benefit I can see is to get past the Catbert gatekeepers who will only select the certified resumes tossed over the transom.
Since that's the worst way to get a new job anyway (Network Network Network), that's still probably of extremely limited value.
Now I had one potential employer who favored candidates for a Project Manager job who had Project Management Institute certification. I didn't get the job (thank the FSM), but the state unemployment office offered to pay for the class and test (about $3500, or eight times what I got in unemployment checks), so I did it. It was outside of my core knowledge, and it's been semi useful (although the class sucked).
Don't e-mail your crimes.
That's why we can't find Osama.
We run an e-tail business, and as our products come from our distributors in BIG boxes, and go out to customers usually in little boxes --actually padded envelopes for the majority, it's only the inbetweenies that cause probloems -- having a ready stock of boxes of the right size is a constant problem -- you don't want too big a box, or the mdse rattles around, and you're paying to ship the darn heavier box and packing materials.
So we were tempted to, on rare occasions, use the Priority Mail boxes, turned inside out. USPS prints their logos all over the 'useless' inside to prevent just this abuse.
Of course, Viking and other office supply places sell kraft-paper-brown spray paint, ostensibly to hide old shipping labels. Never gone to those lengths, though.
Because we have a home-based e-tail business (actually, it just moved out of the house into bigger digs), the kids have gotten the hand-me-downs as the requirements of the biz increased. That changed this year, when they were no longer able to play the games they wanted, run Flash MX, etc.
In the last year, both my sons (14 and 17) have gotten new or refurb, ~$500 desktop systems in the 2800MHz range -- 3D cards are crap, but good enough for what they want to do. Both computers are set up in the family room, where they are known to be subject to inspection and monitoring.
My older son (entering Sr year) also has access to an older laptop for writing, etc. in his bedroom -- but this unit has no WiFi, so that we can regulate what hours he's on the net. Otherwise, I know he'd never sleep.
I figure I'm buying him a decent laptop this year. The last laptop I bought for the biz was close to $2K, but that included a dock, very large disc... I'm hoping that the next one will be more around $1200 or less.
I don't use them myself, but when I've had to help out relations (most of whom I've eventually steered away from the Time Warner Borg service, regardless of the fact that I own stock in them), AOL's customer service has been
(a) prompt to respond -- short hold times
(b) accurate
(c) willing to admit what they do and don't know, and that they have to go ask someone (rather than just, 'hold please'
(d) willing to call back
(e) surprisingly consistent in calling back!
(e) is my biggest pet peeve with my hosting service, by the way.
One other note: helping relations with computer issues is the most thankless job in the world: my mother had me hook up her DSL (jeez, the cartoons on the case the installer disk came in covered everything pretty darn completely), then the painters came and moved everything, and I've had at least three calls which all amount to the #1 item on the tech support tree.
Wait for it.
"Is it plugged in?"
On the other hand, a buddy of mine had me help with some HTML, CSS and CGI stuff, and when I told him my hourly rate, he offered to pay me off in shrimp. Cool!
... then it makes sense for the city to do it.
My village of about 60,000 includes trash pickup as a village service, paid by taxpayers. It's cheaper for them to contract it like that than each homeowner to do it on their own (I don't think businesses get a free ride here, so they're subsidizing my trash heap, most likely).
The only ones whining about these things are the service providers hoping to make more money off individuals.
And like trash, everybody, not just residents, benefits. Tourists like the trash they can find on the internet.
According to a quick googling, Tempe is the fifth-largest city in Arizona with a population of 160,000. It's considered part of the Phoenix metro area by the Census administration http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/ta b03.txt, but if it were its own, it would only rank, say around 180 or so (giving it some credit for a metro area).
Wake me when something important happens, like Peoria (#118 at about 350,000), or Shreveport (#105 at just under 400,000).
A space elevator, or beanstalk, has two big problems for construction: 1) materials that are strong enough, and 2) getting it to stay up.
The first we're getting close to being able to handle. The second is just a matter of having a counterweight that balances the 22,500 miles of cable from the equator (more on that later) to the top. Without the counterweight, the ground end drags it down.
That means that we really need to build this sucker from the middle out: extend equal masses out and in (or up and down, if you prefer) from geosynchronous orbit. That's a very expensive proposition. Whether it's cheaper to ship carbon for nanotubes up or go and fetch some carbonaceous asteroids down to our orbit I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
A poster above was concerned about the terrorist target of something like this. The one consolation in this one is that you can't build it on US or European soil: it needs to be at the equator. At least one SF author (I forget which) posited an elevator whose ground-level terminus was an upside-down Y to two islands straddling the equator some hundreds of miles apart. Not the silliest thing I've ever read, but I'm not sure it makes much sense. Tethering one end down will be tricky enough.
So it won't be Imperialist America that's building it... but that's not to say it won't have protestors. It'll cast a shadow pretty much across the entire planet. It will likely change weather patterns in the region.
It will create the most valuable real estate in the world.
It's going to end up in some place where technology and resources are accessible: Brazil, Equador, Congo, Somalia, The Maldives, Indonesia, Malaysia, or some Pacific Island are all candidates, my money is on a spot just south of Singapore -- there's enough high-tech industrial nations close enough to justify it there. Brazil is my second guess.
And who knows, maybe we'll find Saddam building WMDs up there. (obligatory Funny whoring)
It looks like TiVo got squeezed out by Comcast and DirecTV: TiVo walked away from the Comcast deal last year, and I'm betting part of it was due to DirecTV: DTV wouldn't want such close ties with Comcast.
When the DirecTV deals fell apart, TiVo had to go back to Comcast hat in hand, and beg to get the same deal that they could have probably improved upon.
I can just see the next version of the SCOTTEVEST with turbines on the hood, combined with the solar epaulettes... perhaps voltaic electrodes in boots for when trudging through salt marsh?