It doesn't make sense to rewrite an operating system every three years. Technology simply isn't advancing at a sufficient pace to make Microsoft's style of monolithic rewrites worthwhile. It drives up development costs for hardware and software manufacturers, causes compatibility issues (I suffered with unstable drivers until very recently on Vista), leads to bloat (using Moore's Law as a thinly veiled excuse) and quite often results in reinventing the wheel.
The interesting thing about Windows 7 is that it'll be released surprisingly hot on the heels of Vista. From a consumer perspective I'm sure they're hoping to encourage a lot of people to upgrade from Vista. However, corporate users are likely to postpone upgrades until Win 7 is available. It's like the Osbourne Effect, except in software, "Hey, look! The super-cool new model is just on the horizon, so don't buy our current stuff!" If MS blows their timeline, they're going to end up with a horrendous drop in revenue over the short term. Ah, well. Ubuntu should be rolling out Lofty Lemur for me by then, anyway.
Selling an RSA encrypted cart containing a collection of books in the public domain is hypocrisy at its best. I concur with some of the others in this thread who recommend loading ebooks onto flash cards; I actually bought a handful of DSTT cards from DealExtreme for under $7 each, shipped. I loaded 'em up with a couple of dozen homebrew titles - including the moonshell video player (with an assortment of PD cartoons and short films) and an ebook app. My friends and family will be getting one, as an example of how the DS is a great homebrew platform. Much more fun than a gift card or dvd.
You're in Canada, right? There's a reasonable chance that your university has a law department. Visit and find someone there who can answer your question based on their expertise in IP and contract law. After all, you wouldn't ask Slashdotters about excising intramedullary spinal cord tumors, because most of us don't have a firm background in neurology. What makes you think we're any more qualified to provide a meaningful legal opinion in your jurisdiction?
Why is it that we're unwilling to allow euthanasia, but if someone dresses an 18-year-old kid up in the wrong uniform we're completely OK with the idea of eviscerating him? The only advantage of having battalions of killing machines is that they lessen the chance that our kids/siblings/parents are the ones dying. It's great as long as we have the best technology, but if the tables are flipped and another nation gets the upper hand we stand the risk of watching millions of our kids get mowed down by Kalashnikov wielding lawnmowers.
*Just look at how Meatloaf had to sue for nearly 20 years because the record company said "Bat out of Hell I", which to this day is still on the top 200 chart, hadn't actually generated a profit! I shit you not!*
Meat Loaf sued songwriter/producer Jim Steinman over the right to use the trademark "Bat out of hell" in conjunction musical performances and recordings. They settled out of court. I am not aware of any legal action resulting from the record company's failure to pay Mr. Loaf for the 45+ million copies of his albums sold to date. Perhaps you can provide a link?
Hang on. The Article One site doesn't say they offer $50,000 rewards. It says, "Earn up to $50,000 for sending in prior art which can invalidate patents." In other words, you could end up with peanuts. They also have a chart listing "profit sharing activities" that is so bewilderingly complex that it's meaningless.
We have the OLPC to thank for this year's Netbook explosion, as manufacturers discovered that there was a real market for modestly spec'd machines in a tiny form factor. Unfortunately, the OLPC looks lame in comparison. It's a great example of how academic projects have difficulty competing in a commercial environment. And, no matter what idealists might proclaim, any time you get into large-scale manufacturing you are forced to operate in a commercial environment. Producing millions of machines "for academic use" requires the same skills as running a for-profit company. You need a sales staff to convince countries to buy the machines by the millions. You need financing for R&D and production. You need hardware and software engineers, and you need a clear roadmap.
Doing this stuff is tougher in academia, and OLPC was hamstrung by a heavy dose of ideology (we've gotta design really clever custom software, make it cute and bleeding-edge, etc.) that commercial manufacturers could side-step. As a result, the OLPC crew futzed around with a very ambitious software framework. They futzed about endlessly tweaking the hardware design. In comparison, Asus actually built a cheap little machine and threw it into the marketplace as a crude first try. It ignited the imagination of manufacturers and consumers alike. Asus is now on their third generation (I think... I've lost track) of netbooks in a little over a year, and others jumped into the fray as soon as they could get their hands on Intel's Atom processor. There is no way that OLPC could keep up with such an aggressive hardware program. The result is that their once revolutionary device now seems quaint.
Actually, it's only a $14.40 difference in price. And the dead tree version has rapid tactile indexing, easy accessibility through bookmarking, and infinite battery life. More to the point, it can be sold to someone else for for a sizable portion of the purchase price at the end of the semester.
I have an excellent library only a couple of miles from my house, giving me access to the latest hardcovers for only $10 per year (plus municipal taxes). It's the best deal going. I occasionally have to wait a few weeks for the titles I need, but it's far more sensible than squandering money on DRM encumbered "copies" that I can't easily share with my wife, lend to a friend or resell.
Thanks for the clarification, but that law makes no sense. Subsections (1) and (2) clearly state that I'm not allowed to "hold or use" the device, then subsection (3) comes along and grants me the express right to use the device while not holding it.
Hmm. There's a gaping hole in the new legislation when it comes to banning devices with screens. The new law prohibits me for using a laptop with a GPS receiver for navigation, because the device could be used for other functions. Same goes for the iPhone. I despise legislation like this because it's already outdated and riddled with holes before it goes into effect.
Sure! But be aware that your car will cost $243 million and travel at a maximum speed of 3 mph, while taking up three lanes with its enormous solar wings. Oh, and its only under warranty for three months because of concerns about the unpredictable Terran atmosphere.
How about:
- A subscription to Make magazine
- A chemistry kit
- A Velleman Electronics kit (he could build a pong game or whatever else catches his interest)
- A robot kit from Parallax.com
- Build a crystal radio with him. Even cooler, build one out of household junk.
- A Digicomp mechanical computer.
Heck, rather than me writing a long list, you should visit the DIY section on my site It should give you a few dozen good ideas. Just be sure to drop me a line if you actually build an ALTAIR 8800, tube amplifier or homebuilt ultralight, though.
All names are made up, when you get right down to it. We have traditionally used a fairly small set of Anglicized names in North America, but that's changing. There are lots of kids of all colors with some fairly creative (and occasionally bizarre) names. The most popular male baby names in the USA include Jaxon, Jaden and Xander. Popular girl's names include Alyssa, Ashlyn and Caitlyn. These are hardly traditional. Common "Afro-American" names are merely an evolving sub-set of modern names. Most importantly, many follow fairly predictable patterns... Jada, Tierra and Imani have a and i endings, denoting female. Darnell and Darius have masculine endings, and names starting in De (as in DeShaw) are male while La denotes female (LaToya).
Imagine an airline that offered 99.9% reliability. Or a new car that runs only 99.9% of the time. 45 minutes per month of downtime sounds reasonable, until that 45 minutes happens to take our entire organization's email system offline for a few adrenaline-filled minutes on a busy Monday morning. Cloud computing is still in its infancy, and will be until the "cloud" offers near-perfect redundancy on both a software and network level.
*Go by an apartment complex and your bound to see many cars that make you shake your head.*
I had a similar thought the other day while driving past a fairly low-end townhouse complex. There were many really nice vehicles sitting in the parking lot, and the odd juxtaposition of "have" and "have not" was jarring. I dread to think what sort of payments the owners are making, especially when they own several nice SUVs - a sizable chunk of their income, I'll bet.
For what it's worth, the DealExtreme link in the summary includes an embedded affiliate code. I appreciate informative links as much as the next guy, but this looks like an attempt to cash in on a/. post.
Tennis for Two was implemented on analog hardware, which is a bit of a cheat. Noughts and Crosses was coded on a primitive digital mainframe which initially had only 512 18-bit words of storage (later expanded to 1024), implemented in mercury delay lines. The digital logic predated the transistor, so it was all tube-based. Douglas had to cram the code to display a raster image of the board and moves on a CRT, along with key debouncing routines and game logic into less than 1K. And he didn't have an assembler or compiler at his disposal. So, yes, tic-tac-toe is a trivial coding exercise by today's standards, but it was impressive for the early 1950s.
I've seen this story bouncing around the media all week. It's wrong. The first video game was Sandy Douglas' Noughts and Crosses, which took advantage of a 35×16 pixel CRT connected to the EDSAC mainframe at the University of Cambridge in 1952. Unlike Tennis For Two, the computer was digital and you played against the computer - a far more sophisticated effort, actually.
Yes, that is a valid point. However, Canadians have municipal elections with multiple paper ballots (each a different color). After we mark our X in the appropriate spot, we drop each into the appropriate box. There's no fuss with "hanging chads" or overly complicated layouts.
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It doesn't make sense to rewrite an operating system every three years. Technology simply isn't advancing at a sufficient pace to make Microsoft's style of monolithic rewrites worthwhile. It drives up development costs for hardware and software manufacturers, causes compatibility issues (I suffered with unstable drivers until very recently on Vista), leads to bloat (using Moore's Law as a thinly veiled excuse) and quite often results in reinventing the wheel.
The interesting thing about Windows 7 is that it'll be released surprisingly hot on the heels of Vista. From a consumer perspective I'm sure they're hoping to encourage a lot of people to upgrade from Vista. However, corporate users are likely to postpone upgrades until Win 7 is available. It's like the Osbourne Effect, except in software, "Hey, look! The super-cool new model is just on the horizon, so don't buy our current stuff!" If MS blows their timeline, they're going to end up with a horrendous drop in revenue over the short term. Ah, well. Ubuntu should be rolling out Lofty Lemur for me by then, anyway.
Selling an RSA encrypted cart containing a collection of books in the public domain is hypocrisy at its best. I concur with some of the others in this thread who recommend loading ebooks onto flash cards; I actually bought a handful of DSTT cards from DealExtreme for under $7 each, shipped. I loaded 'em up with a couple of dozen homebrew titles - including the moonshell video player (with an assortment of PD cartoons and short films) and an ebook app. My friends and family will be getting one, as an example of how the DS is a great homebrew platform. Much more fun than a gift card or dvd.
You're in Canada, right? There's a reasonable chance that your university has a law department. Visit and find someone there who can answer your question based on their expertise in IP and contract law. After all, you wouldn't ask Slashdotters about excising intramedullary spinal cord tumors, because most of us don't have a firm background in neurology. What makes you think we're any more qualified to provide a meaningful legal opinion in your jurisdiction?
Why is it that we're unwilling to allow euthanasia, but if someone dresses an 18-year-old kid up in the wrong uniform we're completely OK with the idea of eviscerating him? The only advantage of having battalions of killing machines is that they lessen the chance that our kids/siblings/parents are the ones dying. It's great as long as we have the best technology, but if the tables are flipped and another nation gets the upper hand we stand the risk of watching millions of our kids get mowed down by Kalashnikov wielding lawnmowers.
*Just look at how Meatloaf had to sue for nearly 20 years because the record company said "Bat out of Hell I", which to this day is still on the top 200 chart, hadn't actually generated a profit! I shit you not!*
Meat Loaf sued songwriter/producer Jim Steinman over the right to use the trademark "Bat out of hell" in conjunction musical performances and recordings. They settled out of court. I am not aware of any legal action resulting from the record company's failure to pay Mr. Loaf for the 45+ million copies of his albums sold to date. Perhaps you can provide a link?
Hang on. The Article One site doesn't say they offer $50,000 rewards. It says, "Earn up to $50,000 for sending in prior art which can invalidate patents." In other words, you could end up with peanuts. They also have a chart listing "profit sharing activities" that is so bewilderingly complex that it's meaningless.
We have the OLPC to thank for this year's Netbook explosion, as manufacturers discovered that there was a real market for modestly spec'd machines in a tiny form factor. Unfortunately, the OLPC looks lame in comparison. It's a great example of how academic projects have difficulty competing in a commercial environment. And, no matter what idealists might proclaim, any time you get into large-scale manufacturing you are forced to operate in a commercial environment. Producing millions of machines "for academic use" requires the same skills as running a for-profit company. You need a sales staff to convince countries to buy the machines by the millions. You need financing for R&D and production. You need hardware and software engineers, and you need a clear roadmap.
Doing this stuff is tougher in academia, and OLPC was hamstrung by a heavy dose of ideology (we've gotta design really clever custom software, make it cute and bleeding-edge, etc.) that commercial manufacturers could side-step. As a result, the OLPC crew futzed around with a very ambitious software framework. They futzed about endlessly tweaking the hardware design. In comparison, Asus actually built a cheap little machine and threw it into the marketplace as a crude first try. It ignited the imagination of manufacturers and consumers alike. Asus is now on their third generation (I think... I've lost track) of netbooks in a little over a year, and others jumped into the fray as soon as they could get their hands on Intel's Atom processor. There is no way that OLPC could keep up with such an aggressive hardware program. The result is that their once revolutionary device now seems quaint.
I said that buying an ebook that I can't share, lend or resell is not sensible. I didn't say anything about selling library books. :)
Actually, it's only a $14.40 difference in price. And the dead tree version has rapid tactile indexing, easy accessibility through bookmarking, and infinite battery life. More to the point, it can be sold to someone else for for a sizable portion of the purchase price at the end of the semester.
I have an excellent library only a couple of miles from my house, giving me access to the latest hardcovers for only $10 per year (plus municipal taxes). It's the best deal going. I occasionally have to wait a few weeks for the titles I need, but it's far more sensible than squandering money on DRM encumbered "copies" that I can't easily share with my wife, lend to a friend or resell.
Thanks for the clarification, but that law makes no sense. Subsections (1) and (2) clearly state that I'm not allowed to "hold or use" the device, then subsection (3) comes along and grants me the express right to use the device while not holding it.
Hmm. There's a gaping hole in the new legislation when it comes to banning devices with screens. The new law prohibits me for using a laptop with a GPS receiver for navigation, because the device could be used for other functions. Same goes for the iPhone. I despise legislation like this because it's already outdated and riddled with holes before it goes into effect.
Sure! But be aware that your car will cost $243 million and travel at a maximum speed of 3 mph, while taking up three lanes with its enormous solar wings. Oh, and its only under warranty for three months because of concerns about the unpredictable Terran atmosphere.
How about:
- A subscription to Make magazine
- A chemistry kit
- A Velleman Electronics kit (he could build a pong game or whatever else catches his interest)
- A robot kit from Parallax.com
- Build a crystal radio with him. Even cooler, build one out of household junk.
- A Digicomp mechanical computer.
Heck, rather than me writing a long list, you should visit the DIY section on my site It should give you a few dozen good ideas. Just be sure to drop me a line if you actually build an ALTAIR 8800, tube amplifier or homebuilt ultralight, though.
All names are made up, when you get right down to it. We have traditionally used a fairly small set of Anglicized names in North America, but that's changing. There are lots of kids of all colors with some fairly creative (and occasionally bizarre) names. The most popular male baby names in the USA include Jaxon, Jaden and Xander. Popular girl's names include Alyssa, Ashlyn and Caitlyn. These are hardly traditional. Common "Afro-American" names are merely an evolving sub-set of modern names. Most importantly, many follow fairly predictable patterns... Jada, Tierra and Imani have a and i endings, denoting female. Darnell and Darius have masculine endings, and names starting in De (as in DeShaw) are male while La denotes female (LaToya).
And the shameful thing is that we know relatively little about the candidates and their real strengths and weaknesses after two years.
Umm. You are aware that Amazon currently offers only 19 products in this newfangled packaging?
Imagine an airline that offered 99.9% reliability. Or a new car that runs only 99.9% of the time. 45 minutes per month of downtime sounds reasonable, until that 45 minutes happens to take our entire organization's email system offline for a few adrenaline-filled minutes on a busy Monday morning. Cloud computing is still in its infancy, and will be until the "cloud" offers near-perfect redundancy on both a software and network level.
*Go by an apartment complex and your bound to see many cars that make you shake your head.*
I had a similar thought the other day while driving past a fairly low-end townhouse complex. There were many really nice vehicles sitting in the parking lot, and the odd juxtaposition of "have" and "have not" was jarring. I dread to think what sort of payments the owners are making, especially when they own several nice SUVs - a sizable chunk of their income, I'll bet.
For what it's worth, the DealExtreme link in the summary includes an embedded affiliate code. I appreciate informative links as much as the next guy, but this looks like an attempt to cash in on a /. post.
LISTER: "Don't give me any of that 'Star Trek' crap. It's too early in the morning."
Tennis for Two was implemented on analog hardware, which is a bit of a cheat. Noughts and Crosses was coded on a primitive digital mainframe which initially had only 512 18-bit words of storage (later expanded to 1024), implemented in mercury delay lines. The digital logic predated the transistor, so it was all tube-based. Douglas had to cram the code to display a raster image of the board and moves on a CRT, along with key debouncing routines and game logic into less than 1K. And he didn't have an assembler or compiler at his disposal. So, yes, tic-tac-toe is a trivial coding exercise by today's standards, but it was impressive for the early 1950s.
I've seen this story bouncing around the media all week. It's wrong. The first video game was Sandy Douglas' Noughts and Crosses, which took advantage of a 35×16 pixel CRT connected to the EDSAC mainframe at the University of Cambridge in 1952. Unlike Tennis For Two, the computer was digital and you played against the computer - a far more sophisticated effort, actually.
Yes, that is a valid point. However, Canadians have municipal elections with multiple paper ballots (each a different color). After we mark our X in the appropriate spot, we drop each into the appropriate box. There's no fuss with "hanging chads" or overly complicated layouts.