When they are the same shape, weight, and feel of a paperback or a hardback book. When they can sit on a shelf and look great. When they can hold onto the story for the same length of time that a book can. When they can be read over and over, shared with others freely, and take ink from a pen for notes.
In short, ebooks will come of age and take over when they become paper books with ink on them. Or is there already something on the market that can do this?
Seriously, between audio books (which take up no space at all and are completely compatible with both the listening technology and habits of listeners) and actual books (which again fit the habits of readers) where is the niche for ebooks? I'm not saying that there isn't a niche. I just can't think of it.
Of course, I never saw the need for the walkman either. I'm not exactly a visionary.
I know that in my job as a teacher I often feel that I'm not entrusted with enough responsibility and, because of that, am unenthused. Now, before I get too flamed for whining about my job, let me say that this is a result of having what I call six layers of idiocy (bureaucracy) above me.
Case in point: the budget for our school is divided into strict segments with fixed dollar amounts for each. Someone in the layers above me decides how much our school can spend in each area. My thought, rather than pay that person, entrust us, the staff at our school, to use the money to our best advantage. That person, whose salary is likely over $100,000 (over twice what I'm paid), could be put to more useful work or that position could be deleted. We would be able to spend the money more effectively and would be much more invested in the budgeting process.
As it is, the way it is, I only care about the money so long as it lasts in any given account. I'm lazy about the money, because I'm not allowed to be creative with it.
MS is a pretty smart group of business people. They have likely built in plenty of wiggle room to counteract any effects of having to lower the price to beat a Linux/OpenSource bid.
For years I used WordPerfect and liked it a whole lot. However, I didn't like the price of it, the upgrades (I know, I didn't HAVE to upgrade), and the fact that the Linux version sucked while the Mac version was discontinued. So I switched to OpenOffice.
Only when 2.0 comes out will I have easy access to all those WP documents.
I use OpenOffice for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think I have a good chance of being able to open my documents for a long time.
That said, I think that this is all a PR thing to get MS to lower their price. I don't believe that a government bureaucracy will make this step for real. Next thing you'll tell me that they've decided to run Linux.
There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.
Now that I re-read it, I see that you're probably right. I'm not as good at really flaming someone as I had hoped. Oh well. Still, I did say unkind things about them. Is this so different from what is being described in the article to which these comments are attached?
I just bought a Scion xA and had to drive forty miles out of my way to do it. The reason was that my local dealership screwed around with me so much that I couldn't stand to buy from them.
I went on the site scionlife.com and in their "Review Dealers" section ripped Romano Scion of Syracuse, NY. I told how they had done me wrong and advised others to never shop there.
Is ScionLife liable? Am I? Is Slashdot liable now that I've put it up here?
And finally, if someone spray paints a swastica on my garage door while I'm out of town and unable to remove it, am I liable for a hate crime?
I've gone on record here at/. as saying that maybe we shouldn't be reading about and going nuts over every bit of news out of SCO, but this seems to take things in another direction. Rathern than Linux having SCO code in it, SCO code now has GPL'ed code in it? Doesn't that mean that besides being absolutely annoying, they've also broken the law? Oh, well in that case, let's have at it.
I wonder what Boies and company get out of this. I remember reading about Boies during the MS trials and he's a fascinating guy. The problem with finding a lawyer fascinating is that eventually they have to defend OJ or Darl McBride or some other idiot. But it seems to me that Boies went into this one where he had a choice to stay outside. Very strange.
Hell, I don't even know if Boies is still involved in any of this. I figure even if he is, they might need a different kind of lawyer for defense instead of attack. Tee-hee.
I wonder if email is going the way of usenet. I used to use usenet all the time but gave up when spam destroyed its usefulness for me. Every member of my family has switched to Google Mail because our ISP mail accounts, even with the different services' spam protections and Thunderbird's filtering capabilities suffer from too much spam. It seems as though these lawsuits, which make for a great public relations thing (even I'm proud of MS for doing this), aren't going to make any real diffence.
How does Google filter spam so well or is it just that the service is new?
I still like the idea of publishing spammers home addresses and then sending credit card applications, catalogs and all the rest to their homes. If we could get each of them to receive a couple bushels of junk mail every day at their homes, maybe that would help. I'm against the idea of handing pornography to their children as they play on the playground, but it does seem poetically just.
What can be done to save email or as Google already done it?
It seems that this is the one that people are concentrating on. Nutty stuff, really. I keep thinking about how we're killing the environment, that we can't get our President to even mention the word conservation, that we are making little to no progress toward using alternative energy sources, and on and on. But the fact that my cell phone might get confused by the new Daylight Savings Time is what we're hearing about not just on/. but on all sorts of other media outlets.
Alright, so I'm going off on this. I understand that/. is news for nerds and tech oriented. This story fits that. I'm not saying that this story doesn't belong on/. (Got that?)
What I'm trying to say is that somehow this is the BIG idea in the energy bill as it is being reported and it doesn't deserve that status.
The Energy bill is a mess the likes of which haven't been seen since the Patriot Act. That's where the focus needs to be.
He says that when he came to the company they decided to focus on the area that was most profitable. He then goes on to say that this focus was not on litigation. It would seem that history will not bear him out on this.
When it comes down to it, is it productive anymore to even worry about this guy? At one time, I think it was, but now, I'm not sure. If he's still a danger to the idea of OSS, then I'm all for taking him apart bit by bit until he cries. But if he's just a harmless troll now, I'm ready to move on.
Has anyone started a betting pool for the final day of SCO's existence? It can't really be that far away, can it?
Finally, one more serious question: He says that they are proud of and focused on their own for-sale version of UNIX. What advantages are there to going with a closed, expensive version of UNIX over either an open, expensive version of Linux or an open, free version of Linux? I really don't know and am very curious.
Are space weapons necessary? No, unless there is a world leader who is a bully and invades other people's territories, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and sacrficing the lives of several thousand of his own people in the process.
Seriously, the weaponizing of space is inevitable no matter how much we all wish it weren't so. It's kind of like the commercialization of the Internet. Only in space, rather than porn, we get deadly weapons. Not exactly a good trade off, but we're fucked either way.
A few questions
on
When Pigs Wifi
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If wi-fi really does become a universal utility then:
-don't most cell phone carriers become irrelevant as calls can be carried on wi-fi phones of some sort?
-can the provider (the US Govt) modify and control content routed through these systems?
-what happens to all those companies now offering pay-for wi-fi services? Do they simply throw up their hands and let it happen?
Don't get me wrong. I would love this. I'm on 56K dial-up because it costs me very little money and I would rather pay for things like food and clothing for my children.
I have a radio in my car and one in my kitchen. Both are tuned to NPR and never go to any other station. The reason is two-part: One, I can't handle the advertisements, annoying personalities, and repetitive play of commercial radio, and two, I like NPR. Either way, I'll probably never listen to any of the mediocre programming elsewhere on my dial. I doubt I'm the only one.
Satellite radio will be part of the change. My guess is that Podcasting will also be huge. It's the radio's version of the Internet with TiVo. Users decide what they want to listen and when, they do it mostly without commercials, and they get to comment directly to programmers of the media.
Why would I want to listen to some schlock programmed by record company execs, peopled with screaming buffoons who can't stop laughing at toilet jokes, and peppered with advertisements for used cars?
As for who is stopping it, I'm not positive, but I think that the US has pretty strict regulations about building ballistic rockets and with whom you're allowed to share that kind of technology.
I think that proving the flight capabilities was one of the primary mission objectives. NASA is and always has been a PR driven machine. They need the public to be watching, to believe in them, and to support them since it's the Congress that funds the program. So NASA is run the way a Hollywood studio is run with the exception that instead of trying to appeal to teen-agers buying tickets and popcorn, NASA works to keep members of Congress happy by intriguing their constituents.
Thus, one of the major problems of the shuttle program: very few people give a damn what they are doing up there. It is seen that they are, literally, going round in circles.
The Mars Rovers on the other hand presented a spectacular opportunity (no pun intended) for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to capture the nation's attention and it worked. They will continue to get funding so long as they continue to present summer blockbusters.
This time the shuttle mission was a cliff hanger. "In our last episode, tragedy struck when all of the astronauts were killed on their return from space." (Please excuse the frivolous tone of that sentence.) And so this mission, the first episode of the new season, was all about showing that the show goes on.
NASA needs to pull a new rabbit out of its hat and they know it. That means a new vehicle, a new mission, and new ideas. Now they just have to get their viewers interested enough to want to fund it. All of that is a lot of work and more reason why space exploration ought to be allowed to be privatized.
"It's a war on terror. These scammers, they hate freedom. That's the only reason they do this. It isn't about the money. It's about hating freedom, and liberty too, and all the other stuff in that yellowed up paper down in the National Archives. We gots to smoke 'em out of their holes and kill 'em." --G.W. Bush
"These Nigerians need to be deported back to Nigeria. What do you mean they're already there? Deport them to some place else then. (Did I say it okay George?)" --Tony Blair
I live in Central New York where we have the pleasure of shopping at Wegmans Supermarkets. Wegmans uses a shopping card, is very receptive to even the smallest suggestions from customers, and goes out of their way to satisfy all customers. They track purchases carefully and have a giant database from which they mark trends and make changes. To put it simply, they rely less on the brand name and more on continuously improving and changing. For this reason, they have sent at least three different supermarket chains in the area scrambling or out of business. Wal-Mart hasn't even made much headway because Wegmans is so good.
Then there's GM. This dinosaur doesn't give people what they want--a well-built car that lasts a long time and sells for a reasonable price. Simply put, they don't get it. They believe that they have always been and that they have always done things the one true way.
I fully believe that what these people are doing is stealing. Personally, I think that people ought just to buy a whole lot less stuff, but even so, it makes it worse for all of us when this stuff happens.
Now, will people say the same about copying cd's of music? I won't. I know, it's a contradiction, but I just don't buy music anymore unless I'm buying it alog with others who will make copies can keep them. Example: I copied Ben Folds' album. I would give him five bucks for it (I figure that's a fair price for an album). But I can't give him five bucks unless I mail it to him.
On the other hand, a small artist like Karen Savoca (a folk artist from Central New York) gets my money every time she releases a cd. She sells the discs at performances and through her web site. Does she make a fortune? No. But it works.
So, the article is about theft. What about music and movie theft? I'm against the first, but I'm okay with the latter. I imagine I'm not the only one.
When I first started reading/. the contents were completely wide open and free. At first, when changes were made to tame the wildness of it, I was skeptical. Such changes often kill off the spirit of the site. However, the/. changes have been good for me. I read only those responses that score a 3 or better, I meta moderate, I moderate, and all of that seems to work well.
The question I have with Wikipedia is how they will go about imposing stricter editorial control. Discipline is often a good thing, but almost as often it can be a very bad thing. I'll be watching what they come up with, commenting on it when possible, and trying to keep the site as one of the most useful on the web.
This is the thing that more people of like mind need to do. All too often, those of us who think that Creationism should remain in the realm of theology, stay quiet on the subject, hoping that it will go away. It won't. This idea has presidential support, Vatican support, Fox News support (of course), and much more. It is being pushed into our lives and the lives of school children. To stop it, we have to stand up and be heard.
It's good to hear that some people are doing just that right here on/.
I agree that this is not the end of the line for human space flight, but this flight does seem to be the end of the line for anything approaching routine space flight with the shuttle. I know that space flight is never (as yet) routine, but the dream of the shuttle was to make it approach that. Clearly, the shuttle does nothing of the sort. It's a very powerful machine, but it is also not the way to go.
At least two positive things are coming out of this shuttle mission. One, the public interest is very engaged in a space shuttle mission (something that hasn't been the case for a while). Two, public interest is also high for building a different type of system to get humans into space.
Either way, we keep moving onward and upward into space.
"However, is this coupling of old technology and designs really the best we can do?"
I don't know if it's the best we can do, but there is something to be said for using older technology that works well and then adding new technology to it. I have had some good success using this weird operating system built on very old Unix technology and coupled with the newest version of Firefox and KDE.
Sometimes old things work very well and it pays to go back to them. As an example, back in the eighties stereo manufacturers went to push-button everything. Turns out that a volume knob is the best way to do things. Just because it comes from the old tube radio days doesn't mean that a volume knob shouldn't be used in the most advanced piece of stereo equipment.
And I wouldn't mind someone grafting bionic parts onto my body. That Steve Austin guy seemed to do okay with it.
This posting reminded me of an article I had read way back when (I couldn't remember) about why the NYC Subway System should be free. I found the article and was surprised. It's by Cringley and was, I think, posted on/. It's how I started reading Cringley's column. Here's a snip:
When I visit New York City, I like to ride the subway. It is the fastest way to get around town and stay out of the weather at the same time. The New York City subway system is a remarkable engineering achievement, but there is one aspect of it that I can't understand -- why they charge people money to ride it.
If, like me, you had literally grown up covering city council meetings for bad newspapers, you'd know that just about every transit agency in America claims that ticket sales cover only 10 to 15 percent of the actual cost of providing their service. The rest of the money apparently comes from government and from annoying transit ads. And if you bothered to wade through those transit committee budget reports, you'd make the startling discovery that the cost of creating and selling transit tickets followed by carrying the money here and there also costs 10 to 15 percent of the actual cost of providing the service. So if we eliminated the money infrastructure from our transit systems, they would run faster and simpler than they do today, nobody would have to buy a ticket, and it would all still cost the same.
Why, knowing this, do they still charge to ride the subway? Part of the reason is that Federal transit money is often configured as matching funds, and the Feds like to match against ticket revenue. No revenue (no tickets), no Federal matching funds. Now that's a silly reason. Another reason is a Puritan work ethic that says people just ought to pay to ride the train, darn it. Of course, there are transit unions that don't want their members to lose their jobs. And finally, there is the argument that making the subway free would lead to its overcrowding with rowdy folks generally going nowhere. Having lost MY work ethic way back in the Summer of Love, I find all these arguments bogus. If people are already paying for the service through their taxes, then they are paying for the service, not freeloading. And the freeloaders can think of many places more comfortable than the subway.
So I think all transit should be free. Poor people could get to work and back, kids could get home easier in the dark, there might be less driving and more fuel efficiency. And the very fact that it would be easier to get to work might make more people inclined to go there, leading to greater economic development. This isn't socialism, it's trickle-down transit.
Go read it and while you're at it, read the rest of his stuff. He's smart, he write's well, and he admits when he's wrong. When someone has those three attributes, he or she is deserving of our time.
Of course, whether or not you think any of this has anything to do with free wi-fi is up to you. Me, I access the web on a 33.6 modem and don't have a laptop, alas.
This is my favorite thing to hear about Linux. Linux will survive on the desktop, on servers, on refrigerators for as long as one person wants to run it there. I have a Linux machine that I use for most things, Windows on my laptop, and an iMac in the bedroom for playing music, movies, and using the web. Everyone wants to get worked up about Linux's survival. It's not survival that matters, it will survive a good long time, it's the advancement of it.
Slashdot Mirror
When they are the same shape, weight, and feel of a paperback or a hardback book. When they can sit on a shelf and look great. When they can hold onto the story for the same length of time that a book can. When they can be read over and over, shared with others freely, and take ink from a pen for notes.
In short, ebooks will come of age and take over when they become paper books with ink on them. Or is there already something on the market that can do this?
Seriously, between audio books (which take up no space at all and are completely compatible with both the listening technology and habits of listeners) and actual books (which again fit the habits of readers) where is the niche for ebooks? I'm not saying that there isn't a niche. I just can't think of it.
Of course, I never saw the need for the walkman either. I'm not exactly a visionary.
I know that in my job as a teacher I often feel that I'm not entrusted with enough responsibility and, because of that, am unenthused. Now, before I get too flamed for whining about my job, let me say that this is a result of having what I call six layers of idiocy (bureaucracy) above me.
Case in point: the budget for our school is divided into strict segments with fixed dollar amounts for each. Someone in the layers above me decides how much our school can spend in each area. My thought, rather than pay that person, entrust us, the staff at our school, to use the money to our best advantage. That person, whose salary is likely over $100,000 (over twice what I'm paid), could be put to more useful work or that position could be deleted. We would be able to spend the money more effectively and would be much more invested in the budgeting process.
As it is, the way it is, I only care about the money so long as it lasts in any given account. I'm lazy about the money, because I'm not allowed to be creative with it.
And thus ends my whining about my job.
MS is a pretty smart group of business people. They have likely built in plenty of wiggle room to counteract any effects of having to lower the price to beat a Linux/OpenSource bid.
For years I used WordPerfect and liked it a whole lot. However, I didn't like the price of it, the upgrades (I know, I didn't HAVE to upgrade), and the fact that the Linux version sucked while the Mac version was discontinued. So I switched to OpenOffice.
Only when 2.0 comes out will I have easy access to all those WP documents.
I use OpenOffice for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think I have a good chance of being able to open my documents for a long time.
That said, I think that this is all a PR thing to get MS to lower their price. I don't believe that a government bureaucracy will make this step for real. Next thing you'll tell me that they've decided to run Linux.
There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.
Now that I re-read it, I see that you're probably right. I'm not as good at really flaming someone as I had hoped. Oh well. Still, I did say unkind things about them. Is this so different from what is being described in the article to which these comments are attached?
By the way, Scions are pretty cool. Go get one.
I just bought a Scion xA and had to drive forty miles out of my way to do it. The reason was that my local dealership screwed around with me so much that I couldn't stand to buy from them.
I went on the site scionlife.com and in their "Review Dealers" section ripped Romano Scion of Syracuse, NY. I told how they had done me wrong and advised others to never shop there.
Is ScionLife liable? Am I? Is Slashdot liable now that I've put it up here?
And finally, if someone spray paints a swastica on my garage door while I'm out of town and unable to remove it, am I liable for a hate crime?
I've gone on record here at /. as saying that maybe we shouldn't be reading about and going nuts over every bit of news out of SCO, but this seems to take things in another direction. Rathern than Linux having SCO code in it, SCO code now has GPL'ed code in it? Doesn't that mean that besides being absolutely annoying, they've also broken the law? Oh, well in that case, let's have at it.
I wonder what Boies and company get out of this. I remember reading about Boies during the MS trials and he's a fascinating guy. The problem with finding a lawyer fascinating is that eventually they have to defend OJ or Darl McBride or some other idiot. But it seems to me that Boies went into this one where he had a choice to stay outside. Very strange.
Hell, I don't even know if Boies is still involved in any of this. I figure even if he is, they might need a different kind of lawyer for defense instead of attack. Tee-hee.
I wonder if email is going the way of usenet. I used to use usenet all the time but gave up when spam destroyed its usefulness for me. Every member of my family has switched to Google Mail because our ISP mail accounts, even with the different services' spam protections and Thunderbird's filtering capabilities suffer from too much spam. It seems as though these lawsuits, which make for a great public relations thing (even I'm proud of MS for doing this), aren't going to make any real diffence.
How does Google filter spam so well or is it just that the service is new?
I still like the idea of publishing spammers home addresses and then sending credit card applications, catalogs and all the rest to their homes. If we could get each of them to receive a couple bushels of junk mail every day at their homes, maybe that would help. I'm against the idea of handing pornography to their children as they play on the playground, but it does seem poetically just.
What can be done to save email or as Google already done it?
It seems that this is the one that people are concentrating on. Nutty stuff, really. I keep thinking about how we're killing the environment, that we can't get our President to even mention the word conservation, that we are making little to no progress toward using alternative energy sources, and on and on. But the fact that my cell phone might get confused by the new Daylight Savings Time is what we're hearing about not just on /. but on all sorts of other media outlets.
/. is news for nerds and tech oriented. This story fits that. I'm not saying that this story doesn't belong on /. (Got that?)
Alright, so I'm going off on this. I understand that
What I'm trying to say is that somehow this is the BIG idea in the energy bill as it is being reported and it doesn't deserve that status.
The Energy bill is a mess the likes of which haven't been seen since the Patriot Act. That's where the focus needs to be.
Oh well.
He says that when he came to the company they decided to focus on the area that was most profitable. He then goes on to say that this focus was not on litigation. It would seem that history will not bear him out on this.
When it comes down to it, is it productive anymore to even worry about this guy? At one time, I think it was, but now, I'm not sure. If he's still a danger to the idea of OSS, then I'm all for taking him apart bit by bit until he cries. But if he's just a harmless troll now, I'm ready to move on.
Has anyone started a betting pool for the final day of SCO's existence? It can't really be that far away, can it?
Finally, one more serious question: He says that they are proud of and focused on their own for-sale version of UNIX. What advantages are there to going with a closed, expensive version of UNIX over either an open, expensive version of Linux or an open, free version of Linux? I really don't know and am very curious.
Are space weapons necessary? No, unless there is a world leader who is a bully and invades other people's territories, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and sacrficing the lives of several thousand of his own people in the process.
Seriously, the weaponizing of space is inevitable no matter how much we all wish it weren't so. It's kind of like the commercialization of the Internet. Only in space, rather than porn, we get deadly weapons. Not exactly a good trade off, but we're fucked either way.
If wi-fi really does become a universal utility then:
-don't most cell phone carriers become irrelevant as calls can be carried on wi-fi phones of some sort?
-can the provider (the US Govt) modify and control content routed through these systems?
-what happens to all those companies now offering pay-for wi-fi services? Do they simply throw up their hands and let it happen?
Don't get me wrong. I would love this. I'm on 56K dial-up because it costs me very little money and I would rather pay for things like food and clothing for my children.
Big radio is a dinosaur.
I have a radio in my car and one in my kitchen. Both are tuned to NPR and never go to any other station. The reason is two-part: One, I can't handle the advertisements, annoying personalities, and repetitive play of commercial radio, and two, I like NPR. Either way, I'll probably never listen to any of the mediocre programming elsewhere on my dial. I doubt I'm the only one.
Satellite radio will be part of the change. My guess is that Podcasting will also be huge. It's the radio's version of the Internet with TiVo. Users decide what they want to listen and when, they do it mostly without commercials, and they get to comment directly to programmers of the media.
Why would I want to listen to some schlock programmed by record company execs, peopled with screaming buffoons who can't stop laughing at toilet jokes, and peppered with advertisements for used cars?
Big radio is dead.
As for who is stopping it, I'm not positive, but I think that the US has pretty strict regulations about building ballistic rockets and with whom you're allowed to share that kind of technology.
I think that proving the flight capabilities was one of the primary mission objectives. NASA is and always has been a PR driven machine. They need the public to be watching, to believe in them, and to support them since it's the Congress that funds the program. So NASA is run the way a Hollywood studio is run with the exception that instead of trying to appeal to teen-agers buying tickets and popcorn, NASA works to keep members of Congress happy by intriguing their constituents.
Thus, one of the major problems of the shuttle program: very few people give a damn what they are doing up there. It is seen that they are, literally, going round in circles.
The Mars Rovers on the other hand presented a spectacular opportunity (no pun intended) for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to capture the nation's attention and it worked. They will continue to get funding so long as they continue to present summer blockbusters.
This time the shuttle mission was a cliff hanger. "In our last episode, tragedy struck when all of the astronauts were killed on their return from space." (Please excuse the frivolous tone of that sentence.) And so this mission, the first episode of the new season, was all about showing that the show goes on.
NASA needs to pull a new rabbit out of its hat and they know it. That means a new vehicle, a new mission, and new ideas. Now they just have to get their viewers interested enough to want to fund it. All of that is a lot of work and more reason why space exploration ought to be allowed to be privatized.
"It's a war on terror. These scammers, they hate freedom. That's the only reason they do this. It isn't about the money. It's about hating freedom, and liberty too, and all the other stuff in that yellowed up paper down in the National Archives. We gots to smoke 'em out of their holes and kill 'em."
--G.W. Bush
"These Nigerians need to be deported back to Nigeria. What do you mean they're already there? Deport them to some place else then. (Did I say it okay George?)"
--Tony Blair
I live in Central New York where we have the pleasure of shopping at Wegmans Supermarkets. Wegmans uses a shopping card, is very receptive to even the smallest suggestions from customers, and goes out of their way to satisfy all customers. They track purchases carefully and have a giant database from which they mark trends and make changes. To put it simply, they rely less on the brand name and more on continuously improving and changing. For this reason, they have sent at least three different supermarket chains in the area scrambling or out of business. Wal-Mart hasn't even made much headway because Wegmans is so good.
Then there's GM. This dinosaur doesn't give people what they want--a well-built car that lasts a long time and sells for a reasonable price. Simply put, they don't get it. They believe that they have always been and that they have always done things the one true way.
Which company will grow?
I fully believe that what these people are doing is stealing. Personally, I think that people ought just to buy a whole lot less stuff, but even so, it makes it worse for all of us when this stuff happens.
Now, will people say the same about copying cd's of music? I won't. I know, it's a contradiction, but I just don't buy music anymore unless I'm buying it alog with others who will make copies can keep them. Example: I copied Ben Folds' album. I would give him five bucks for it (I figure that's a fair price for an album). But I can't give him five bucks unless I mail it to him.
On the other hand, a small artist like Karen Savoca (a folk artist from Central New York) gets my money every time she releases a cd. She sells the discs at performances and through her web site. Does she make a fortune? No. But it works.
So, the article is about theft. What about music and movie theft? I'm against the first, but I'm okay with the latter. I imagine I'm not the only one.
When I first started reading /. the contents were completely wide open and free. At first, when changes were made to tame the wildness of it, I was skeptical. Such changes often kill off the spirit of the site. However, the /. changes have been good for me. I read only those responses that score a 3 or better, I meta moderate, I moderate, and all of that seems to work well.
The question I have with Wikipedia is how they will go about imposing stricter editorial control. Discipline is often a good thing, but almost as often it can be a very bad thing. I'll be watching what they come up with, commenting on it when possible, and trying to keep the site as one of the most useful on the web.
This is the thing that more people of like mind need to do. All too often, those of us who think that Creationism should remain in the realm of theology, stay quiet on the subject, hoping that it will go away. It won't. This idea has presidential support, Vatican support, Fox News support (of course), and much more. It is being pushed into our lives and the lives of school children. To stop it, we have to stand up and be heard.
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It's good to hear that some people are doing just that right here on
I agree that this is not the end of the line for human space flight, but this flight does seem to be the end of the line for anything approaching routine space flight with the shuttle. I know that space flight is never (as yet) routine, but the dream of the shuttle was to make it approach that. Clearly, the shuttle does nothing of the sort. It's a very powerful machine, but it is also not the way to go.
At least two positive things are coming out of this shuttle mission. One, the public interest is very engaged in a space shuttle mission (something that hasn't been the case for a while). Two, public interest is also high for building a different type of system to get humans into space.
Either way, we keep moving onward and upward into space.
"However, is this coupling of old technology and designs really the best we can do?"
I don't know if it's the best we can do, but there is something to be said for using older technology that works well and then adding new technology to it. I have had some good success using this weird operating system built on very old Unix technology and coupled with the newest version of Firefox and KDE.
Sometimes old things work very well and it pays to go back to them. As an example, back in the eighties stereo manufacturers went to push-button everything. Turns out that a volume knob is the best way to do things. Just because it comes from the old tube radio days doesn't mean that a volume knob shouldn't be used in the most advanced piece of stereo equipment.
And I wouldn't mind someone grafting bionic parts onto my body. That Steve Austin guy seemed to do okay with it.
This could not happen. From everything I've read, Bill Gates doesn't work this way and isn't concerned about that kind of immortality.
There is nothing in the history of him or his company to suggest that this is possible.
And, frankly, it's not necessary.
This posting reminded me of an article I had read way back when (I couldn't remember) about why the NYC Subway System should be free. I found the article and was surprised. It's by Cringley and was, I think, posted on /. It's how I started reading Cringley's column. Here's a snip:
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/. ID. So there.
When I visit New York City, I like to ride the subway. It is the fastest way to get around town and stay out of the weather at the same time. The New York City subway system is a remarkable engineering achievement, but there is one aspect of it that I can't understand -- why they charge people money to ride it.
If, like me, you had literally grown up covering city council meetings for bad newspapers, you'd know that just about every transit agency in America claims that ticket sales cover only 10 to 15 percent of the actual cost of providing their service. The rest of the money apparently comes from government and from annoying transit ads. And if you bothered to wade through those transit committee budget reports, you'd make the startling discovery that the cost of creating and selling transit tickets followed by carrying the money here and there also costs 10 to 15 percent of the actual cost of providing the service. So if we eliminated the money infrastructure from our transit systems, they would run faster and simpler than they do today, nobody would have to buy a ticket, and it would all still cost the same.
Why, knowing this, do they still charge to ride the subway? Part of the reason is that Federal transit money is often configured as matching funds, and the Feds like to match against ticket revenue. No revenue (no tickets), no Federal matching funds. Now that's a silly reason. Another reason is a Puritan work ethic that says people just ought to pay to ride the train, darn it. Of course, there are transit unions that don't want their members to lose their jobs. And finally, there is the argument that making the subway free would lead to its overcrowding with rowdy folks generally going nowhere. Having lost MY work ethic way back in the Summer of Love, I find all these arguments bogus. If people are already paying for the service through their taxes, then they are paying for the service, not freeloading. And the freeloaders can think of many places more comfortable than the subway.
So I think all transit should be free. Poor people could get to work and back, kids could get home easier in the dark, there might be less driving and more fuel efficiency. And the very fact that it would be easier to get to work might make more people inclined to go there, leading to greater economic development. This isn't socialism, it's trickle-down transit.
The rest of the article is here:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010208
Go read it and while you're at it, read the rest of his stuff. He's smart, he write's well, and he admits when he's wrong. When someone has those three attributes, he or she is deserving of our time.
Of course, whether or not you think any of this has anything to do with free wi-fi is up to you. Me, I access the web on a 33.6 modem and don't have a laptop, alas.
But I've got a four-digit
"If Linux on the desktop is to survive..."
This is my favorite thing to hear about Linux. Linux will survive on the desktop, on servers, on refrigerators for as long as one person wants to run it there. I have a Linux machine that I use for most things, Windows on my laptop, and an iMac in the bedroom for playing music, movies, and using the web. Everyone wants to get worked up about Linux's survival. It's not survival that matters, it will survive a good long time, it's the advancement of it.
Sheesh.