How long do you think it will be before a clueless mac fanboy claims that a flatscreen PC like this was an Apple innovation?
Don't get me wrong, this is very cool, I'd love to have a G5 OSX system in a package so small, but there's a certain segment of mac fans who seem all too eager to attribute innovation to Apple where such credit is undue.
IMHO the RIAA made XM discontinue the XMPCR ASAP because it didn't have any DRM, IIRC. Now everything's AOK because it's DOA, too bad though, if you want XM'S XMPCR USB thing you SOL.
Well yeah, on a per transistor basis they use less power and give off less heat, but the fact that they're smaller means that they're going to be placed closer together too, which I'm sure makes any of these new chips consume as much (or more) power and give off as much (or more) heat as any chip now does.
Just to be a dick, this isn't the first mouse that uses a laser. There were a few laser mice (pre "optical" mice) but they required a special pad so the advantages over a regular mouse were minimal (really just that you didn't have to clean them).
The article is kind of vague on the details, for instance, just how much hotter are these semiconductors going to be able to run? Is it possible that chips made from these will have to use a non-plastic casing material? If so, that would be very cool. I doubt it though, that'd have to be pretty hot.
Even if they aren't that resistant to heat, at least once they light up you'll be able to get a nice charcoal fire going. The problem traditional silicon has always been that once it lights it just kind of smolders out.
If anybody actually wants to do something like this, it would probably make more sense to get a cheap LCD and a microcontroller. You could put together something that works similarly for maybe $20.
It seems like a good sign that people want to keep a list of incompatible devices rather than compatible ones. Is hardware support becoming as complete as this site's beginning seems to indicate?
Maybe, but maybe we're just getting more foolish webmasters.
The first step, I believe, to good marketing is having a good product. Easier said than done, I know, but if you spend your time making a great product then the marketing usually comes pretty easily.
Same thing goes for open source "products", if you want people to use your software, the best thing you can do is spend your time working on it (obviously), especially fixing problems other people have with your program.
In my limited experience, marketing books are usually not very useful. I assume this is because marketing people are better at marketing their book about marketing than they are at writing a good book. Which of course is understandable.
This all reminds me of the "chinese lottery" idea. With all these devices connected, there definitely seems to be a possibility that someone could (illegitimately) harnass the power to crack strong cryptography. Especially since, unlike computers, nobody is expecting their Cellphone or whatever to get hacked. Also unlike a similar scenario with computers on the internet, there could potentially be far far more devices on a network like this.
For those unfamiliar with the idea of a Chinese Lottery, there was a paper written proposing that consumer products could be used as a method of distributed computing. The example used in the paper was that the Chinese government could equip its radios with low-power computing systems and broadcast the data they need processed. The owner of whichever radio finally cracked the key would be rewarded (like a lottery). This was just an example of the idea by the way, it wasn't proposed as a real threat.
Lawrence Lessig proposes a similar scheme in "The Future of Ideas". I doubt he was the first, but that's just what you made me think of. It's a good book, even though it can get kind of dry at times (it is, at least in some capacity, a book about law after all).
As far as your scheme though, I would really like a hard extension limit and I think 25 years for a default term is really too much (I mean, to use your example of Apple II games, many of those games wouldn't even quite be out of term yet). I think 5 or 10 would be much better.
I think it's really a shame that current copyright laws (and retroactive extensions) have limited project Gutenberg to texts from a little after the turn of the century and before.
I just don't understand the point of retroactive copyright extensions. The idea behind copyrights, like patents, is to encourage innovation by allowing the creator an exclusive right for a limited time. If people believe copyright terms need to be extended to achieve this goal, fine. I disagree, but whatever. However, I think it's ludicrous that terms should be extended on works that have already been created, unless maybe they think that extending terms retroactively will lead to more works being produced in the past?
I would have thought that if they were going to hold this up as a landmark that they would have picked a more notable book. I mean, I skimmed through that book and it seemed to have a lot of information and everything, but it's hardly something you would ever read all the way through.
I've used a few keyboards with hotkeys and honestly the only time I've thought they gave any advantage was when I changed my "calculator" button to play Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator" ("I'm the operator with my pocket calculator! When I press a special key, it plays a little melody!").
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What? You can open it up? And upgrade the RAM? And the hard drive too? This isn't an iMac at all!
How long do you think it will be before a clueless mac fanboy claims that a flatscreen PC like this was an Apple innovation?
Don't get me wrong, this is very cool, I'd love to have a G5 OSX system in a package so small, but there's a certain segment of mac fans who seem all too eager to attribute innovation to Apple where such credit is undue.
IMHO the RIAA made XM discontinue the XMPCR ASAP because it didn't have any DRM, IIRC. Now everything's AOK because it's DOA, too bad though, if you want XM'S XMPCR USB thing you SOL.
XMPCR? Couldn't they have come up with a catchier name like DRMXM2PCUSBABCDEFG.
I'm going to call this election early:
John Kerry: 80,000 out of 150,000 votes
George Bush: 160,000 out of 150,000 votes
Well yeah, on a per transistor basis they use less power and give off less heat, but the fact that they're smaller means that they're going to be placed closer together too, which I'm sure makes any of these new chips consume as much (or more) power and give off as much (or more) heat as any chip now does.
Decreasing size is great, sure, but I'm sure any processor built with this process would be at least as hot, if not hotter than a current chip.
Just to be a dick, this isn't the first mouse that uses a laser. There were a few laser mice (pre "optical" mice) but they required a special pad so the advantages over a regular mouse were minimal (really just that you didn't have to clean them).
I for one welcome our new laser-wielding mice overlords.
The article is kind of vague on the details, for instance, just how much hotter are these semiconductors going to be able to run? Is it possible that chips made from these will have to use a non-plastic casing material? If so, that would be very cool. I doubt it though, that'd have to be pretty hot.
Even if they aren't that resistant to heat, at least once they light up you'll be able to get a nice charcoal fire going. The problem traditional silicon has always been that once it lights it just kind of smolders out.
I actually made a post suggesting exactly that in the discussion about that article.
If anybody actually wants to do something like this, it would probably make more sense to get a cheap LCD and a microcontroller. You could put together something that works similarly for maybe $20.
It seems like a good sign that people want to keep a list of incompatible devices rather than compatible ones. Is hardware support becoming as complete as this site's beginning seems to indicate?
Maybe, but maybe we're just getting more foolish webmasters.
The first step, I believe, to good marketing is having a good product. Easier said than done, I know, but if you spend your time making a great product then the marketing usually comes pretty easily.
Same thing goes for open source "products", if you want people to use your software, the best thing you can do is spend your time working on it (obviously), especially fixing problems other people have with your program.
In my limited experience, marketing books are usually not very useful. I assume this is because marketing people are better at marketing their book about marketing than they are at writing a good book. Which of course is understandable.
This all reminds me of the "chinese lottery" idea. With all these devices connected, there definitely seems to be a possibility that someone could (illegitimately) harnass the power to crack strong cryptography. Especially since, unlike computers, nobody is expecting their Cellphone or whatever to get hacked. Also unlike a similar scenario with computers on the internet, there could potentially be far far more devices on a network like this.
For those unfamiliar with the idea of a Chinese Lottery, there was a paper written proposing that consumer products could be used as a method of distributed computing. The example used in the paper was that the Chinese government could equip its radios with low-power computing systems and broadcast the data they need processed. The owner of whichever radio finally cracked the key would be rewarded (like a lottery). This was just an example of the idea by the way, it wasn't proposed as a real threat.
It's not the size of the telescope that matters, it's where you point it.
(it's a sex joke, do you see?)
Verily.
The end is near! Repent internet sinners, for tomorrow will be the second coming of eJesus and we will all be judged.
Lawrence Lessig proposes a similar scheme in "The Future of Ideas". I doubt he was the first, but that's just what you made me think of. It's a good book, even though it can get kind of dry at times (it is, at least in some capacity, a book about law after all).
As far as your scheme though, I would really like a hard extension limit and I think 25 years for a default term is really too much (I mean, to use your example of Apple II games, many of those games wouldn't even quite be out of term yet). I think 5 or 10 would be much better.
I think it's really a shame that current copyright laws (and retroactive extensions) have limited project Gutenberg to texts from a little after the turn of the century and before.
I just don't understand the point of retroactive copyright extensions. The idea behind copyrights, like patents, is to encourage innovation by allowing the creator an exclusive right for a limited time. If people believe copyright terms need to be extended to achieve this goal, fine. I disagree, but whatever. However, I think it's ludicrous that terms should be extended on works that have already been created, unless maybe they think that extending terms retroactively will lead to more works being produced in the past?
I would have thought that if they were going to hold this up as a landmark that they would have picked a more notable book. I mean, I skimmed through that book and it seemed to have a lot of information and everything, but it's hardly something you would ever read all the way through.
I've used a few keyboards with hotkeys and honestly the only time I've thought they gave any advantage was when I changed my "calculator" button to play Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator" ("I'm the operator with my pocket calculator! When I press a special key, it plays a little melody!").
I hope this keyboard has an internet button like Compaq's keyboards do! Finally the internet could be coming to linux!