As a music medium, these will fail. Music CDs are becoming a read-once-or-twice before storing as a compressed, more convenient data format. Size does not matter when you just stick the CDs in your closet or put on display in your living room. When you can put your music collection into an unscratchable format that be copied from car to house to portable, there is no reason for a permanent physical medium except for backup.
As a computer format these will fail. For archival and distribution you need lots of data space. DVD tech will supplant CDs for this, possibly at a smaller size, but still capable of gigabytes of storage. For temporary storage and transportation, flash technology works fine, is more reliable, and is getting cheaper and larger capacities over time, and is poised to replace floppies permanently.
So I think the trends are against this medium, but time will tell.
Speech recognition would be neat, but imagine an office full of people saying: "Highlight! Save! Open new Speadsheet!" To their compters all day long. Everyone would need a soundproof cubicle to get away form the noise... come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea.
We have "sound proof cubicles" where I work. But this is a clumsy term so we've always just used the word "office".
is that Congress will sell out the entire technology sector and presumeably everyone and anything else to protect the profits of one sector -- the entertainment sector.
Funny, I'll be surprised if they DON'T. Every crisis is just an excuse for the government monster to grow a bit more, and your rights to shrink. Been that way since the civil war, will probably be that way until enough people get fed up enough with it to lop of its head in some fashion.
Well, the problem is that you do need a quantum leap in productivity in order to make a new kind of GUI resonate with users, but in order to do this, you have to throw out so much infrastructure that you can no longer support the current set of applications. You have to start from scratch. And no one knows _exactly_ what to do, otherwise we'd have done it already. And starting from scratch is a huge impediment. So there here we are, continually adding features around the edge of an architecture that will eventually have to be thrown out to make progress. I don't expect to see Apple or Microsoft make this kind of radical move. While Apple has been very creative with colors in recent years, I think their days of disruptive technologies ended with the original mac. And while Microsoft has bought up most of the top researchers in ui design, guaranteeing revenue is clearly their highest priority, and giving users what they want is clearly not. And while I think open source people can be quite creative, it has not been made clear to enough of the right people that the current direction is a dead end on the path to a _significant_ desktop competitor to microsoft.
But you wanted a list. Well lists are a dime a dozen.
You can get a mutually inconsistent set of lists in any of the books which lament the current user interface: See "The Humane Interface", "The Unfinished Revolution", "The Invisible Computer". Full of great ideas, but no coherent designs. This is the hard part. We need a Christopher Columbus or two to do the hard discovery work.
I don't know about gcc, but I compared watcom version 10 or so with visual C/C++ for some C image processing code years ago. IIRC, it was NOT noticably faster than microsoft's compiler at the time (if at all), and was much slower compiling code (and I mean DOG slow). At the time I concluded that it's reputation was some sort of myth, because I did not see anything worth putting up with the slow compile rate. And the debugger was hideous, if I recall correctly. I wanted to get away from microsloth, I really did, but it was a complete let down.
And I thought open source people were stupid when they began to immitate microsoft software. But there goes your training argument....
Alternatively, I've never met anyone who needed training other than a good book and an expert to ask questions of, but I guess there are people out there like that, after all, someone must be buying those "For dummies" books....
How about an increase in your productivity by a factor of 4? (Obivously, productivity depends on lots of things, but not knowing anything else, I think it's a reasonable estimate)
That would certainly be a compelling reason, if in fact Java was general purpose enough to work for the sort of applications I work on. I'm sorry, but for some applications a general purpose garbage collector does not cut it, and you need the speed of stack allocated and inlined array objects, and there are other issues.
Basically, the lower level your coding needs are, the less likely you can use Java. And I'm not talking about kernel code, but the kind of basic building block code that is often built in user land.
Well I've never had a compelling reason to move TO java, so I think perhaps there is a group of people like me that have different needs than the group of people who find Java compelling.
Perhaps Java is _too_ dynamic, _too_ simplified, and _too_ rigidly held by its creators for certain developers. On the other hand C++ is annoyingly crufty, but does let us do stuff that Java will not, and is not controlled by any one company. Java's design prevents many forms of optimizations, and there will always be programs that are impossible to write in Java with anything near C++ speeds. Java can beat C++ in some forms of code where its design does not prevent good optimizations. On the other hand there is a separate but smaller set of optimizations (and associated cruft) that C++ can't perform because of its forced compatability with C and old style linking.
Perhaps IVM will allow someone to build a language that jetisons the cruft from C++ without removing the power, perhaps not. While the JVM design prevents this from happening, the IVM does not seem to prevent it, AFAICT.
It gives the watcher a sense of communion. He feels he is part of that tragedy, however remote he may have been. This can never be duplicated on the Net, simply because, and pardon the cliche, the human angle doesn't exist.
That may be true, but I suspect this desire to be part of someone else's tragedy stems from the same source as the desire to strap ourselves into roller coasters. So I'll stick to the 'net, newspapers, and various forms of nonlethal adrenaline rushes. Thank you.
Yep, but those "simple" solutions are usually slower or less efficient. The history of technology is to evolve simple interfaces to complicated, but better, solutions in order to appeal to the vast majority of non-technologists.
It is, in fact, why I believe that neither Communism nor Objectivism will ever actually work: both assume a priori that all involved in the system will behave like perfect little robots with no free will. Face it: just as there will always be overly-motivated people who will do anything to succeed including screwing over their mother, there will be slackers, and every option inbetween.
I offer a second opinion:
Objectivism won't work because people will never figure out the difference between a principled person acting in rational self-interest and a emotionless automaton with no ethics, principles or values.
A very Watchtower-esque reaction -- must protect oneself from anything that might threaten one's faith, after all.
Interesting point of view. Does the fact that I require more than a few unsubstantiated articles from rags of unknown (at least to me) biases to rattle my believe in minimal government make me a religious zealot?
There is far too much historical data showing economies strangled by statist policies, and others blossoming with minimal government for these articles to "threaten my faith", as you call it. Perhaps you are confusing the scientific method with religion?
In any case, scratching them off my list merely indicates that I would not consider moving to them because of the direction of their government policies, no more no less. If you have a problem with someone prefering a form of government you don't agree with, I would suggest that there is some religion involved in your viewpoint as well.
Very nice revisionist histories. I don't for a second believe that mistakes were not made. However, I don't for a second believe these are objective journalists either. Neither Chile nor New Zealand "neo-liberals" as you call them, got very far before their policies were reversed. Too many make-work jobs were eliminated too fast is my guess.
In any case, I'll scratch them off of my short list.
Well we can't leave the planet (yet), so what are the alternatives? New Zealand? Chile?
I've heard they are just improved from their socialist past, but not quite the libertarian utopia or even close. Any other possibities?
Any place with harsh winters or summers would probably not fly, so that eliminates much of the world right off...
I wonder how many people would actually migrate before the usgov cracks down on migration of high tech workers (and their savings). Heh.
Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
on
HP Buys Compaq
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· Score: 1
Great Rant!
One nit tho..doesn't StrongArm live on at Intel as XScale? Doesn't sound like a proper burial to me.
Re:Wow... this should piss Russia off
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Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 2
Now wait a minute. We may have our problems, but at least the principles that this great country were founded on are still intact: individual rights, limited government, and a fair and equal justice for all.
<ponder>
All right. So much for that. So where's the next gig?
That's nice, but the only message that will send Borders is that their tech book sales are off by 1% for some reason. If you really want to send a message, get a bunch of people together to picket your local Borders. This makes the general public aware and affects their business directly. It also may make it socially unacceptable to put such technology in place in the first place.
Now the hard part is coming up with those catchy slogans....
Ummm, in giving examples where letting the secret information go would allow its distribution, you have provided unintentionally provided arguments for the "information wants to be free" metaphor.
Perhaps this alternative metaphor might work better for you:
Information is like a cookie. An freshly baked cookie has three equilibrium states: stale, destroyed and eaten. Any other state is unstable. The tastier a cookie is, the more it tends toward the eaten state. Since there is no "MunchRight" for cookies you may artificially keep a tasty cookie in the unstable uneaten state only by hiding it or locking it up. After all, cookies want to be eaten.
Software should be free, development of it shouldn't (unless the developer so wishes)
Of course, the problem with this comes when we have a large scale project that takes great effort to write, with several developers, and which has several thousands of customers who have an interest in it being written. How do we make sure that the developers get paid the fairly hefty sum that they will be asking, without anyone losing out?
You say that _all_ software should be free, but there is no justification for this belief other than your needs. Essentially to provide this utopia, you must coerce others to do something they do not want to do -- work for free for your benefit.
On the other hand uncoerced free software is a wonderful thing. And dispite the misguided beliefs of some, disallowing proprietary forks of such software is not coercion -- nothing is forcing you to use it in the first place.
Re:Deja Vu all over again
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2
I agree with your assessment that people shouldn't buy things they don't want. However, it oversimplifies reality in many cases.
Mmmm, yes. Reality is NOT so much each purchase as an individual choice, but rather a result of a long line of individual choices, each based upon previous choices.
Being forced to use or buy some individual distasteful thing is of course unfortunate, but in the end the result of choices that one makes. However, when one company's products are a factor in the somewhat primary choice between merely functioning in society and not, this should not be tolerated by society, IMHO.
At the currently point in time, microsoft products are not _quite_ a necessity to function in society, so I don't agree with the DOJ that microsoft is a threat to society as a "monopoly". On the other hand, use of proprietary microsoft file formats is quite common in business, and you are at a disadvantage if you are unable to make use of them to communicate with other businesses. Proprietary formats are leverage for a company to gain a monopoly over one aspect of a functioning society, and society should not tolerate this. This should not be confused with the "monopoly" gained by a company by doing its business very well. As long as other companies are able to compete by interoperating with the same formats and protocols, a high percentage of market share through excellence should be applauded, not punished.
So I conclude that perhaps a better law than the somewhat subjective and vague "monopoly" law would insist that protocols, devices, mechanisms and other technology used in the process of communication by individuals in society should be well specified and implementable by anyone without license or fee. This would make it impossible for Microsoft or any other company to "own" the technology used by society to function, without requiring open access to the expensively developed technology behind the protocols.
This is the direction things are going. The latest form factors (flexATX and VIA's ITX) are quite small, packed with goodies, and cheap to produce. With VIA's ITX especially, you'll going to see very quiet, low power 10x9x3" boxes with ample capabilities for _most_ home/business uses.
Another possibility for the near future would be something built on Via's ITX form factor. Their reference board (Vt6009) looks perfect for these kinds of application, and real products should be on the cheap side. Built for fanless operation (except for the power supply), it consumes max 6w with the via C3 (cyrix's) processor, making it a option to leave on all of the time as an appliance. Linux support of course is iffy at this point, but it looks like a promising basis for a hackable multimedia hub.
Feature highlights: 1394, usb, dvd motion hw, trident blade 3d, audio i/o, video out, microphone in, socket 370, 1 pci, 1 comm slot, 2 ata 100, ps/2 mouse,keyboard. Size should be something like 10x3x8 inches.
Slap a video/radio tuner in the pci slot, and ethernet or wireless in the comm slot, tack on some powered speakers, and replace your tivo, mp3 jukebox, dvd player, and stereo. Not the mention the possiblities for home surveillance, video intercoms, video editing, and other fun stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
As a music medium, these will fail. Music CDs are becoming a read-once-or-twice before storing as a compressed, more convenient data format. Size does not matter when you just stick the CDs in your closet or put on display in your living room. When you can put your music collection into an unscratchable format that be copied from car to house to portable, there is no reason for a permanent physical medium except for backup.
As a computer format these will fail. For archival and distribution you need lots of data space. DVD tech will supplant CDs for this, possibly at a smaller size, but still capable of gigabytes of storage. For temporary storage and transportation, flash technology works fine, is more reliable, and is getting cheaper and larger capacities over time, and is poised to replace floppies permanently.
So I think the trends are against this medium, but time will tell.
Excellent! And there's no shortage of possible Gail Wynands in this industry, although one database vendor springs to mind...
Speech recognition would be neat, but imagine an office full of people saying: "Highlight! Save! Open new Speadsheet!" To their compters all day long. Everyone would need a soundproof cubicle to get away form the noise... come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea.
We have "sound proof cubicles" where I work. But this is a clumsy term so we've always just used the word "office".
is that Congress will sell out the entire technology sector and presumeably everyone and anything else to protect the profits of one sector -- the entertainment sector.
Funny, I'll be surprised if they DON'T. Every crisis is just an excuse for the government monster to grow a bit more, and your rights to shrink. Been that way since the civil war, will probably be that way until enough people get fed up enough with it to lop of its head in some fashion.
Well, the problem is that you do need a quantum leap in productivity in order to make a new kind of GUI resonate with users, but in order to do this, you have to throw out so much infrastructure that you can no longer support the current set of applications. You have to start from scratch. And no one knows _exactly_ what to do, otherwise we'd have done it already. And starting from scratch is a huge impediment. So there here we are, continually adding features around the edge of an architecture that will eventually have to be thrown out to make progress. I don't expect to see Apple or Microsoft make this kind of radical move. While Apple has been very creative with colors in recent years, I think their days of disruptive technologies ended with the original mac. And while Microsoft has bought up most of the top researchers in ui design, guaranteeing revenue is clearly their highest priority, and giving users what they want is clearly not. And while I think open source people can be quite creative, it has not been made clear to enough of the right people that the current direction is a dead end on the path to a _significant_ desktop competitor to microsoft.
But you wanted a list. Well lists are a dime a dozen.
You can get a mutually inconsistent set of lists in any of the books which lament the current user interface: See "The Humane Interface", "The Unfinished Revolution", "The Invisible Computer". Full of great ideas, but no coherent designs. This is the hard part. We need a Christopher Columbus or two to do the hard discovery work.
I don't know about gcc, but I compared watcom version 10 or so with visual C/C++ for some C image processing code years ago. IIRC, it was NOT noticably faster than microsoft's compiler at the time (if at all), and was much slower compiling code (and I mean DOG slow). At the time I concluded that it's reputation was some sort of myth, because I did not see anything worth putting up with the slow compile rate. And the debugger was hideous, if I recall correctly. I wanted to get away from microsloth, I really did, but it was a complete let down.
And I thought open source people were stupid when they began to immitate microsoft software. But there goes your training argument....
Alternatively, I've never met anyone who needed training other than a good book and an expert to ask questions of, but I guess there are people out there like that, after all, someone must be buying those "For dummies" books....
How about an increase in your productivity by a factor of 4? (Obivously, productivity depends on lots of things, but not knowing anything else, I think it's a reasonable estimate)
That would certainly be a compelling reason, if in fact Java was general purpose enough to work for the sort of applications I work on. I'm sorry, but for some applications a general purpose garbage collector does not cut it, and you need the speed of stack allocated and inlined array objects, and there are other issues.
Basically, the lower level your coding needs are, the less likely you can use Java. And I'm not talking about kernel code, but the kind of basic building block code that is often built in user land.
Well I've never had a compelling reason to move TO java, so I think perhaps there is a group of people like me that have different needs than the group of people who find Java compelling.
Perhaps Java is _too_ dynamic, _too_ simplified, and _too_ rigidly held by its creators for certain developers. On the other hand C++ is annoyingly crufty, but does let us do stuff that Java will not, and is not controlled by any one company. Java's design prevents many forms of optimizations, and there will always be programs that are impossible to write in Java with anything near C++ speeds. Java can beat C++ in some forms of code where its design does not prevent good optimizations. On the other hand there is a separate but smaller set of optimizations (and associated cruft) that C++ can't perform because of its forced compatability with C and old style linking.
Perhaps IVM will allow someone to build a language that jetisons the cruft from C++ without removing the power, perhaps not. While the JVM design prevents this from happening, the IVM does not seem to prevent it, AFAICT.
It gives the watcher a sense of communion. He feels he is part of that tragedy, however remote he may have been. This can never be duplicated on the Net, simply because, and pardon the cliche, the human angle doesn't exist.
That may be true, but I suspect this desire to be part of someone else's tragedy stems from the same source as the desire to strap ourselves into roller coasters. So I'll stick to the 'net, newspapers, and various forms of nonlethal adrenaline rushes. Thank you.
Yep, but those "simple" solutions are usually slower or less efficient. The history of technology is to evolve simple interfaces to complicated, but better, solutions in order to appeal to the vast majority of non-technologists.
atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
I guess spelling isn't part of the test...
It is, in fact, why I believe that neither Communism nor Objectivism will ever actually work: both assume a priori that all involved in the system will behave like perfect little robots with no free will. Face it: just as there will always be overly-motivated people who will do anything to succeed including screwing over their mother, there will be slackers, and every option inbetween.
I offer a second opinion:
Objectivism won't work because people will never figure out the difference between a principled person acting in rational self-interest and a emotionless automaton with no ethics, principles or values.
A very Watchtower-esque reaction -- must protect oneself from anything that might threaten one's faith, after all.
Interesting point of view. Does the fact that I require more than a few unsubstantiated articles from rags of unknown (at least to me) biases to rattle my believe in minimal government make me a religious zealot?
There is far too much historical data showing economies strangled by statist policies, and others blossoming with minimal government for these articles to "threaten my faith", as you call it. Perhaps you are confusing the scientific method with religion?
In any case, scratching them off my list merely indicates that I would not consider moving to them because of the direction of their government policies, no more no less. If you have a problem with someone prefering a form of government you don't agree with, I would suggest that there is some religion involved in your viewpoint as well.
Very nice revisionist histories. I don't for a second believe that mistakes were not made. However, I don't for a second believe these are objective journalists either. Neither Chile nor New Zealand "neo-liberals" as you call them, got very far before their policies were reversed. Too many make-work jobs were eliminated too fast is my guess.
In any case, I'll scratch them off of my short list.
Anyone else want to leave this planet?
Well we can't leave the planet (yet), so what are the alternatives? New Zealand? Chile?
I've heard they are just improved from their socialist past, but not quite the libertarian utopia or even close. Any other possibities?
Any place with harsh winters or summers would probably not fly, so that eliminates much of the world right off...
I wonder how many people would actually migrate before the usgov cracks down on migration of high tech workers (and their savings). Heh.
Great Rant!
One nit tho..doesn't StrongArm live on at Intel as XScale? Doesn't sound like a proper burial to me.
Now wait a minute. We may have our problems, but at least the principles that this great country were founded on are still intact: individual rights, limited government, and a fair and equal justice for all.
<ponder>
All right. So much for that. So where's the next gig?
Well, they'll need the PIN, which I assume they can get by beating it out of you in a dark alley. When the cards get smart, the robbers get brutal....
That's nice, but the only message that will send Borders is that their tech book sales are off by 1% for some reason. If you really want to send a message, get a bunch of people together to picket your local Borders. This makes the general public aware and affects their business directly. It also may make it socially unacceptable to put such technology in place in the first place.
Now the hard part is coming up with those catchy slogans....
Ummm, in giving examples where letting the secret information go would allow its distribution, you have provided unintentionally provided arguments for the "information wants to be free" metaphor.
Perhaps this alternative metaphor might work better for you:
Information is like a cookie. An freshly baked cookie has three equilibrium states: stale, destroyed and eaten. Any other state is unstable. The tastier a cookie is, the more it tends toward the eaten state. Since there is no "MunchRight" for cookies you may artificially keep a tasty cookie in the unstable uneaten state only by hiding it or locking it up. After all, cookies want to be eaten.
Software should be free, development of it shouldn't (unless the developer so wishes)
Of course, the problem with this comes when we have a large scale project that takes great effort to write, with several developers, and which has several thousands of customers who have an interest in it being written. How do we make sure that the developers get paid the fairly hefty sum that they will be asking, without anyone losing out?
You say that _all_ software should be free, but there is no justification for this belief other than your needs. Essentially to provide this utopia, you must coerce others to do something they do not want to do -- work for free for your benefit.
On the other hand uncoerced free software is a wonderful thing. And dispite the misguided beliefs of some, disallowing proprietary forks of such software is not coercion -- nothing is forcing you to use it in the first place.
I agree with your assessment that people shouldn't buy things they don't want. However, it oversimplifies reality in many cases.
Mmmm, yes. Reality is NOT so much each purchase as an individual choice, but rather a result of a long line of individual choices, each based upon previous choices.
Being forced to use or buy some individual distasteful thing is of course unfortunate, but in the end the result of choices that one makes. However, when one company's products are a factor in the somewhat primary choice between merely functioning in society and not, this should not be tolerated by society, IMHO.
At the currently point in time, microsoft products are not _quite_ a necessity to function in society, so I don't agree with the DOJ that microsoft is a threat to society as a "monopoly". On the other hand, use of proprietary microsoft file formats is quite common in business, and you are at a disadvantage if you are unable to make use of them to communicate with other businesses. Proprietary formats are leverage for a company to gain a monopoly over one aspect of a functioning society, and society should not tolerate this. This should not be confused with the "monopoly" gained by a company by doing its business very well. As long as other companies are able to compete by interoperating with the same formats and protocols, a high percentage of market share through excellence should be applauded, not punished.
So I conclude that perhaps a better law than the somewhat subjective and vague "monopoly" law would insist that protocols, devices, mechanisms and other technology used in the process of communication by individuals in society should be well specified and implementable by anyone without license or fee. This would make it impossible for Microsoft or any other company to "own" the technology used by society to function, without requiring open access to the expensively developed technology behind the protocols.
This is the direction things are going. The latest form factors (flexATX and VIA's ITX) are quite small, packed with goodies, and cheap to produce. With VIA's ITX especially, you'll going to see very quiet, low power 10x9x3" boxes with ample capabilities for _most_ home/business uses.
Another possibility for the near future would be something built on Via's ITX form factor. Their reference board (Vt6009) looks perfect for these kinds of application, and real products should be on the cheap side. Built for fanless operation (except for the power supply), it consumes max 6w with the via C3 (cyrix's) processor, making it a option to leave on all of the time as an appliance. Linux support of course is iffy at this point, but it looks like a promising basis for a hackable multimedia hub.
Feature highlights: 1394, usb, dvd motion hw, trident blade 3d, audio i/o, video out, microphone in, socket 370, 1 pci, 1 comm slot, 2 ata 100, ps/2 mouse,keyboard. Size should be something like 10x3x8 inches.
Slap a video/radio tuner in the pci slot, and ethernet or wireless in the comm slot, tack on some powered speakers, and replace your tivo, mp3 jukebox, dvd player, and stereo. Not the mention the possiblities for home surveillance, video intercoms, video editing, and other fun stuff.