The web is not about "multimedia." The term "multimedia" was coined long before the web; and the web was not based at all on some idea of multimedia. The web isn't multimedia unless you mean "it has pictures and sound" in which case 1930s films are multimedia.
I didn't say that the web somehow defined multimedia. But a significant part (I'd say THE most significant) of what has made the web what it is today (in popularity) is as a delivery vehicle for multimedia content. Back when I first heard the term "multimedia" in the context of computers, it was the ability to deliver something other than text and usually meant pictures (moving or not) and sound. The web is all that. Motion pictures are indeed multimedia. Just like those old presentations with slide projectors and a cassette tape is/was multimedia. OOC, what do YOU mean by "multimedia" in this context?
The rs232 spec requires 25 pins. The 9-pin connectors were rs422.
Your statement lead me to believe you were talking generically. The RS232 spec actually has uses for most of those other pins. Since you said that only 4 were used, you are not referring to the spec, only IBM's use of it (similar to how Apple got away with only using 25 pins for it's SCSI connectors). That the use of the other pins ended up not being relevant as technology moved on doesn't really qualify it as a "flop".
The newton and others sold well at first and are still around; In fact, the newton would be going strong if not for Jobs killing it to throw support behind MacOSX.
I was referring to the early attempts at pushing pen computing into the mainstream. As a technology obviously pen based computing is alive and well (Palm/CE) and many of todays systems benefited from the lessons of those early systems.
While, Pink/Taligent went nowhere, Be, Next, and OS/2 enjoyed long (but small) market. OS/2 was used heavily in ATMs, banks, and hospitals. Next is basically OSX
I have a more detailed reply to one of the other people who mentioned the same thing. But the gist of it is that all those OS's were cool and to an extent sucessful. However, similar to pen computing above, the entire concept of trying to develop the "next" (no pun intended) great OS is what has flopped.
Transmeta is alive. Not doing great, but growing slowly.
This is more of a flop similar to my statement about the.COM boom/bust. Obviously the web is alive and well, the "flop" was the blown out of proportion expectations vs reality. Transmeta promised a lot, and delivered little.
Actaully, Lotus 1-2-3 (windows version) did just fine
It was late and it didn't innovate. It ended up being a decent product, but Excel by then was flashier, and waay to long of a head start. I don't remember Office being "given" away. I do remember when they first started shipping "Office" and the price was indeed significantly cheaper than the original cost of Word and Excel seperately.
Lisa was always about a prototype. It was never expected to last long in the market. It formed the foundation of the Mac.
No, they were developed pretty much concurrently. The Lisa was the business machine, the Mac the personal computer. Lisa flopped because it was too expensive and people didn't understand the value proposition of a gui. Even when they converted the Lisa into the MacXL it went nowhere. It was the original 128k Macintosh that set the foundation.
Actually, PS/2 did just fine except for lack of cards (and their high prices).
I'm talking bigger picture here. PS/2 was a reactionary strike by IBM to try to reign in the clone market. While it was technically superior, the area where it flopped, and this is one of the biggest flops ever, is that it had the exact opposite effect that IBM was trying to achieve in that it caused the rift that IBM could never recover from. IBM spent a lot of time and money while the rest of the PC market was left to mature on it's own, and the rest they say, is history. IBM has NEVER recovered from this attempt.
Egads man, the entire web is all about multimedia. How on earth can you claim that it's a flop?
8" floppies
A flop? It was a earlier technology and part of a natural progression. This is like saying that horses were a flop because everyone uses cars now.
RS-232 serial port (25 pins, of which 4 are used)
Are you saying the port is a flop? Which would be wrong because it's the one legacy port that has/will outlive most others. The fact that it doesn't utilize all 25pins. Well the rs232 spec doesn't mention anything about using 25 pins. 9 pin connectors are also very common as well as using POTS telephone cabling (very popular back in the day to wire terminals).
Audio Cassettes for data storage
Hardly, most of the popular home based computers depended on this cheap technology for there "mass" storage needs. It simply became obsolete.
Actually I didn't make my point clear. I was grouping ALL of them together and calling most attempts to create a next generation OS a flop. As for NeXT, I knew a lot of people would make the OSX association. Fact is though, NeXTStep on it's own was a flop. It was going nowhere fast. That it now forms the basis for a popular OS really doesn't have much to do with what IT was, but what MacOS
What's funny is that I used OS/2 since 1.0 all the way up until a few years ago. I think it's awesome. I was an early BeOS developer (still have my BeBox). I have 5 NeXT based machines. I have some of the early Taligent developers stuff. So I've been a supporter of "alternative" OS's for a long time. However, the "flop" part is the attempt to push these OS's into the mainstream. The articles author isn't really talking about "tech" flops in the sense that they were technical flops, but they are technology based flops.
But they managed to be crushed by a combination of small and not even innovative companies: Microsoft and Intel.
This must be a troll, but I'll bite anyway (it's slow this morning). Sorry, but Apple ALWAYS played second fiddle to IBM/Microsoft in the "pc" market wrt market share.
Plus, even if your history weren't totally wrong, your premise is. Even if Apple went under today, the positive impact they had on the industry is far reaching and prevasive. Some of the particulars can be argued, but the fact is that computing in general is a better place thanks to Apple and therefore they can't be considered a "tech flop". After all, a "flop" doesn't last over 20years.
This should be #1 IMHO. It far dwarfed the whole early pen based computing infatuation. Also...
He breaks out MagicCap/Go seperately. Why? Throw in the Newton and a few others and just say that the early days of pen computing as a general purpose input device was a complete flop.
How about failed OS ventures. Pink, Taligent, Be, NeXT, OS/2, etc.
WebTV? It may have been a flop, but one of the biggest, I think not.
TransMeta anyone?
Windows version Lotus 1-2-3, it's failure helped to change the landscape of application isv's and helped to firmly root Office as defacto.
Apple Lisa/III. Nuff said.
PCJr, NOTHING compared to PS/2, the system that helped IBM lose the PC market.
NEC Corp has done and is doing more to advance battery tech in terms of both innovation and safety
You missed his point entirely. He mention the two semicon manufacturers as a way of pointing out that the "best" solution may be to make devices use less power, vs getting more power/life out of batteries. I disagree as some "power hungry" folk will always need more oomph from their systems and therefore their batteries, and having the cpu sleep to count on getting better life isn't always a viable alternative.
And the really cool thing is that by accepting open source help, the user has to agree to pass along this information to anyone who asks for it! However, the end user is not allowed to use their new found information to profit. Also, the user is NOT indemnified from lawsuits by SCO claiming that help rendered might have originally derived from proprietary SCO sources (e.g. help for formatting a Word doc is obviously derived from help given previously with TROFF).
Re:Unix Tab-Separated ASCII Files vs. XML
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Effective XML
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Sure, XML isn't inherently that deep - but neither are the tab-separated ASCII files which Unix tools used to do all kinds of really powerful things.
I wholeheartedly disagree. XML adds a level of standardization that is unheard of (though not impossible technically to achieve) vs any type of tab/comma/verticalbar/whatever (I'll refer to any file like this as csv). Using csv, you either have to agree on a convention for labeling, or you're stuck using positions to access data. If your schema changes, unless you always add new things at the end, every piece of software that is assuming that ordering breaks. csv files have no standard way of representing parent child relationships (you need some type of agreed upon "record marker" to know what type of record each line contains) or even worse, people flatten the data.
csv files are merely extensions of paper typed columnar data. At least XML goes a step beyond that and models itself more after the conceptual record. This and the more "standardized" definitions makes it significantly more powerful than csv files were in the past.
Goldschmidt's survey seemed to include somewhat low-life representatives of computer security community, the type who goes on shopping sprees on stolen credit cards, so take the findings with a grain of salt."
What, because her survey turned up some "low lifes" it suddenly can't be trusted and must be "taken with a grain of salt"? Where does this logic come from? Had her survey only found up right individuals that were doing it for pure knowledge, then we would take the survey as gospel?
What kind of idiot sys-admin would allow the corporate users , to run their PCs with admin previleges , so that any unwanted junk s/w be installed on their PCs ?
Most places that have developers for one. Not saying this is right, but is almost always the case. And no, developers aren't that much smarter than the general population when it comes to not installing/executing things that maybe they shouldn't.
Which genius allows unrestricted access to confidential corporate data to its users
But if the keylogger makes it's way to enough machines, you're bound to come across more than enough info. Remember, confidential data could be as "small" as knowing the date of a meeting, or even the fact that you're meeting with someone. This piece of information a marketing guy could have.
Why do the corporate firewalls not block out-bound traffic to all ports but a select few HTTP/SSL ect
I would assume that any self respecting trojan would be capable of tunneling through port 80.
Don't open Emails that you have no clue who they came from. This is just common sense.
That line of defense fails when only 1 person forgets this fact (or as a permutation of the following) and the "virus/worm" spreads itself by having the from address of the newly infected person. Plus, it doesn't take a lot of effort to find out who the IT or some other higher up in a company is and use their name as the sender of the email.
Has VOIP missed it's window of opportunity thanks to the continued proliferation of cell phones and favorable calling plans? Both my wife and I have unlimited long distance built into our cellular plans which eliminates one of the biggest "plus's" for VOIP (international calling not withstanding). So for us, VOIP is an utter non-issue. A few years ago, it would have been since we both have family scattered about the US that we called frequently. And with unlimited night/weekend minutes and scads of "plain ole minutes", it makes it even less compeling.
So have the telcos won due to the long gestation period of wide spread VOIP. Other than international callers, or those who shun cell phones, what reason would one have for going with VOIP. Personally the one thing that keeps me attached to my land line, is more of the "comfort" of having such an old tried and true technology around "just in case" (redundancy good). That and it still serves as the "family" phone number for inbound calls. And with cellular home distribution gadgets coming online, even that use will slowly be eliminated.
Back in 1981 or so, IBM came out with a big, clunky supercomputer called the PC.
Huh? Since when did ANYONE (including IBM) consider the PC a supercomputer? And frankly the original PC is not much different in form factor than todays PC, though a lot heavier. And the trend is to have FEWER chips in computers, not more. Now we might have a single "chip" that has 1000 virtual mini-chips inside, or one that performs the same as 1000 do today, but the odds of us having a desktop computer with 1000 cpu's anytime ever is slim and none.
You are correct. What i was getting at was that nobody was making these devices until Apple supported the technology
Once again, I disagree. The current majority of the BT devices are used to support cell phones and pda's. KB/mice are very recent, and M$ had their BT enabled kb/mouse around the same time as Apple did (not sure who was precisely first, but they were close enough to call it even). In this case, I think Apple is helping to row a lot more than the Wintel world, but they didn't help push the boat into the water.
He mentioned breadth of adoption. Wifi is wonderful, but it's use is limited to computer type devices (e.g. PC's, PDA's). Whereas BT is popping up everywhere, if you don't see it, you aren't looking. Wireless keyboards and mice, cell phones, pda's, headsets, printers, camcorders, digital cameras. You might think that wireless kb/mice are not worthwhile, but I know a significant number of people (esp laptop users) who would absolutely disagree.
BTW, 802.11 has been around forever. The current 11mbps standard was preceded by a 2mbps version that was around years ago, waaay before BT.
then Apple started integrating it into their products... pushing the technology very hard
First let me start by saying that my primary computer at home is a PowerBook and I own more Mac's than most small third world countries. But I have to say that your statement is waaaay off base. I personally use BT myself (I have another post that details what) and it's absolutely phones (and headsets), pda's, and keyboard/mice that are driving BT sales. Now as far as pc's go (generic pc as in personal computers, not PC's as in Wintel), Apple is ahead of the curve, but it's not their adoption that's pushing sales, it's all these other devices. Apple is just smart enough to jump on board earlier than other manufacturers (as usual). So I'll give Apple all the credit in the world for being forwrad thinking, but they are NOT driving BT.
I have a SE T616 phone, a Clie NZ90 and a BT dongle on my PC and PowerBook (I also have a DCR-PC120BT Sony DV camcorder with BT, but I haven't actually found a good use for it's BT support). I sync both the T616 and NZ90 via BT with my PC (WinXP and Outlook). I use the T616 as a BT modem on both the Clie and the PowerBook.
For syncing BT is great because I don't have to have a bunch of usb cables spider webbing out to my devices. My phone stays on my belt and the pda just sits where ever it's most convenient. I just press sync in outlook for the phone, or tap sync on the Clie and they just start syncing. Nice. No more having to plug cables in and remember to unplug to actually use the device.
Using the phone as a modem via BT is also great since I usually do this "out in the field", where if I had to drag my phone out of my pocket (where it usually is when I'm out and about) and have a cable running from it to either the Clie or PB, then that would suck. This way it stays where ever I have it (pocket, bag, backpack, maybe even not on me, but close by). It's very nice being able to just whip out the Clie and start surfing instantly.
Now all that said, getting all this wonder and joy to work was a pain in the butt to say the least. Support for USB dongles is sketchy even under XP (OSX is better, but still requires tweaking). And having two different things trying to sync on the desktop can confuse the heck out of the software. But when it's all sorted out, its great.
So I would say, you aint really a nerd unless everything you buy from this point on has BT built in. If you are poo pooing it, take a look first, once you start using it, you aint ever gonna go back.
I thought that too when I first saw the pix, but then I realized that there is a translucent plastic cover over the front of the thing. Or at least I think that's what it looks like. Either that or the whole front has a glass/plastic layer with the buttons underneath (ala Mac Cube power button), I can't imagine that that is the case (literally and figuratively) though.
Also don't expect this thing to sell for under $300
Probably not at first, but don't be too surprised if it's not as far off as people expect. After all, if you think of it as a souped up Clie (similar feature sets, though different implementation of those features, the price savings of the smaller screen being offset by the optical drive), then it doesn't have to be a $700 unit.
It will be quite exciting to see what it REALLY looks like and how it's priced.
While not manditory, the foundations for this are already being setup by the continued expansion of the OnStar (and maybe others?) systems. Given that, I think that the paranoid "slippery slope" underpinnings of the article poster to be a bit melodramatic. I know that they've also been working on various EMP systems to try to shut cars down remotely.
Why do people think environmentalists would be biased, anyway? What are they biased towards? Not dying? Is there some secret Globex-EnviroCorporation Inc in which all tree hugging hippies have undisclosed shares? Or is it possible that they simply understand the value of erring on the side of caution when the stakes are so high?
No, they have an agenda. They have a belief that they feel strongly about, and they want others to either believe it too, or at least be held to the constraints that those beliefs create. This is every bit as greedy has having that "belief" be that my bank account should be the biggest or that Globex-MegaCorp's belief that their balance sheet is the most important thing in the world. Remember, having what one thinks in ones brain is a "good" motive does not justify acts that potentially harm (physically, financially, or otherwise) others.
Can't you see that the logical way to be skeptical about it is to assume that the warning signs mean something significant until you can be sure they don't? Otherwise you're acting like someone with half the symptoms of cancer who wants to wait until they have them all before getting it checked out. After all, you can never be sure so better to do nothing, eh?
Or like getting chemo just because you found a bump on your arm? A situation where the "cure" can be worse than the perceived disease? Shall we have put all AIDS patience on an island, after all, better to be safe than sorry right? The problem with your statement is that you're ignoring the fact that there is a gray area. The problem is that the signs are far from "obvious" and the actions being taken are truely massive in scale and affect the lives of millions. So it is something that warrants careful study, and re-study, and checks and balances to come about to a proper conclusion (or as close as you can reasonbly get).
Don't worry, go ahead and doubt environmentalists. I'm sure businessmen whose entire job is making profits for their own companies are *much* more reliable at telling you what the state of the environment is.
Funny you say that when the article mentions NOTHING about any business being involved in the contradicting studies. As far as I can see, YOU'RE the only one even mentioning business or the profit motive into this equation. I would say that anyone completely believing in EITHER side is just as bad as anyone completely believing in the OTHER side.
This sounds a lot like Fox News doing a preemptive strike. If FN let this go, then if someone else wanted to imitate their ticker, then they'd have a much harder time gettting the other company to back down if it is shown that they allowed someone else to do it unhindered (the two Fox's are related, but I don't think they're the same corp. entity?)
I think the more interesting thing to study would be to determine how much unique data is being generated. I mean who cares if two million people have the latest Britanny Spears song in mp3 format? And that's not even talking about "information", but just simply raw "data". I also wonder if they took into account "data in transit" (being transmitted over the ethernet) and temporary data (caches, etc).
Death of radio actually BAD for music?
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One thing about the radio (as far as music playing) is that it does introduce you to songs that you might not hear otherwise. If people are free to pick the music, then it follows that it would be harder to get exposed to different bands, etc. Right now you turn the radio on and you get fed, they might play a band you never heard of, and wouldn't ordinarily listen to. As online music catches on, one is dependant on word of mouth (via most frequently downloaded lists, etc), which is also true today, but you don't get that "incidental" exposure as you might. It will be interesting to see if this phenomenon is actually good or bad overall for the industry (i.e. musicians, not the RIAA).
Slashdot Mirror
The web is not about "multimedia." The term "multimedia" was coined long before the web; and the web was not based at all on some idea of multimedia. The web isn't multimedia unless you mean "it has pictures and sound" in which case 1930s films are multimedia.
I didn't say that the web somehow defined multimedia. But a significant part (I'd say THE most significant) of what has made the web what it is today (in popularity) is as a delivery vehicle for multimedia content. Back when I first heard the term "multimedia" in the context of computers, it was the ability to deliver something other than text and usually meant pictures (moving or not) and sound. The web is all that. Motion pictures are indeed multimedia. Just like those old presentations with slide projectors and a cassette tape is/was multimedia. OOC, what do YOU mean by "multimedia" in this context?
The rs232 spec requires 25 pins. The 9-pin connectors were rs422.
Your statement lead me to believe you were talking generically. The RS232 spec actually has uses for most of those other pins. Since you said that only 4 were used, you are not referring to the spec, only IBM's use of it (similar to how Apple got away with only using 25 pins for it's SCSI connectors). That the use of the other pins ended up not being relevant as technology moved on doesn't really qualify it as a "flop".
The newton and others sold well at first and are still around; In fact, the newton would be going strong if not for Jobs killing it to throw support behind MacOSX.
.COM boom/bust. Obviously the web is alive and well, the "flop" was the blown out of proportion expectations vs reality. Transmeta promised a lot, and delivered little.
I was referring to the early attempts at pushing pen computing into the mainstream. As a technology obviously pen based computing is alive and well (Palm/CE) and many of todays systems benefited from the lessons of those early systems.
While, Pink/Taligent went nowhere, Be, Next, and OS/2 enjoyed long (but small) market. OS/2 was used heavily in ATMs, banks, and hospitals. Next is basically OSX
I have a more detailed reply to one of the other people who mentioned the same thing. But the gist of it is that all those OS's were cool and to an extent sucessful. However, similar to pen computing above, the entire concept of trying to develop the "next" (no pun intended) great OS is what has flopped.
Transmeta is alive. Not doing great, but growing slowly.
This is more of a flop similar to my statement about the
Actaully, Lotus 1-2-3 (windows version) did just fine
It was late and it didn't innovate. It ended up being a decent product, but Excel by then was flashier, and waay to long of a head start. I don't remember Office being "given" away. I do remember when they first started shipping "Office" and the price was indeed significantly cheaper than the original cost of Word and Excel seperately.
Lisa was always about a prototype. It was never expected to last long in the market. It formed the foundation of the Mac.
No, they were developed pretty much concurrently. The Lisa was the business machine, the Mac the personal computer. Lisa flopped because it was too expensive and people didn't understand the value proposition of a gui. Even when they converted the Lisa into the MacXL it went nowhere. It was the original 128k Macintosh that set the foundation.
Actually, PS/2 did just fine except for lack of cards (and their high prices).
I'm talking bigger picture here. PS/2 was a reactionary strike by IBM to try to reign in the clone market. While it was technically superior, the area where it flopped, and this is one of the biggest flops ever, is that it had the exact opposite effect that IBM was trying to achieve in that it caused the rift that IBM could never recover from. IBM spent a lot of time and money while the rest of the PC market was left to mature on it's own, and the rest they say, is history. IBM has NEVER recovered from this attempt.
"Multimedia"
Egads man, the entire web is all about multimedia. How on earth can you claim that it's a flop?
8" floppies
A flop? It was a earlier technology and part of a natural progression. This is like saying that horses were a flop because everyone uses cars now.
RS-232 serial port (25 pins, of which 4 are used)
Are you saying the port is a flop? Which would be wrong because it's the one legacy port that has/will outlive most others. The fact that it doesn't utilize all 25pins. Well the rs232 spec doesn't mention anything about using 25 pins. 9 pin connectors are also very common as well as using POTS telephone cabling (very popular back in the day to wire terminals).
Audio Cassettes for data storage
Hardly, most of the popular home based computers depended on this cheap technology for there "mass" storage needs. It simply became obsolete.
Actually I didn't make my point clear. I was grouping ALL of them together and calling most attempts to create a next generation OS a flop. As for NeXT, I knew a lot of people would make the OSX association. Fact is though, NeXTStep on it's own was a flop. It was going nowhere fast. That it now forms the basis for a popular OS really doesn't have much to do with what IT was, but what MacOS
What's funny is that I used OS/2 since 1.0 all the way up until a few years ago. I think it's awesome. I was an early BeOS developer (still have my BeBox). I have 5 NeXT based machines. I have some of the early Taligent developers stuff. So I've been a supporter of "alternative" OS's for a long time. However, the "flop" part is the attempt to push these OS's into the mainstream. The articles author isn't really talking about "tech" flops in the sense that they were technical flops, but they are technology based flops.
But they managed to be crushed by a combination of small and not even innovative companies: Microsoft and Intel.
This must be a troll, but I'll bite anyway (it's slow this morning). Sorry, but Apple ALWAYS played second fiddle to IBM/Microsoft in the "pc" market wrt market share.
Plus, even if your history weren't totally wrong, your premise is. Even if Apple went under today, the positive impact they had on the industry is far reaching and prevasive. Some of the particulars can be argued, but the fact is that computing in general is a better place thanks to Apple and therefore they can't be considered a "tech flop". After all, a "flop" doesn't last over 20years.
This should be #1 IMHO. It far dwarfed the whole early pen based computing infatuation. Also ...
He breaks out MagicCap/Go seperately. Why? Throw in the Newton and a few others and just say that the early days of pen computing as a general purpose input device was a complete flop.
How about failed OS ventures. Pink, Taligent, Be, NeXT, OS/2, etc.
WebTV? It may have been a flop, but one of the biggest, I think not.
TransMeta anyone?
Windows version Lotus 1-2-3, it's failure helped to change the landscape of application isv's and helped to firmly root Office as defacto.
Apple Lisa/III. Nuff said.
PCJr, NOTHING compared to PS/2, the system that helped IBM lose the PC market.
NEC Corp has done and is doing more to advance battery tech in terms of both innovation and safety
You missed his point entirely. He mention the two semicon manufacturers as a way of pointing out that the "best" solution may be to make devices use less power, vs getting more power/life out of batteries. I disagree as some "power hungry" folk will always need more oomph from their systems and therefore their batteries, and having the cpu sleep to count on getting better life isn't always a viable alternative.
"Insightful"!?! bwaaaahaaahaaahaaa.
Beautiful man, absofookinlutely beautiful.
And the really cool thing is that by accepting open source help, the user has to agree to pass along this information to anyone who asks for it! However, the end user is not allowed to use their new found information to profit. Also, the user is NOT indemnified from lawsuits by SCO claiming that help rendered might have originally derived from proprietary SCO sources (e.g. help for formatting a Word doc is obviously derived from help given previously with TROFF).
Sure, XML isn't inherently that deep - but neither are the tab-separated ASCII files which Unix tools used to do all kinds of really powerful things.
I wholeheartedly disagree. XML adds a level of standardization that is unheard of (though not impossible technically to achieve) vs any type of tab/comma/verticalbar/whatever (I'll refer to any file like this as csv). Using csv, you either have to agree on a convention for labeling, or you're stuck using positions to access data. If your schema changes, unless you always add new things at the end, every piece of software that is assuming that ordering breaks. csv files have no standard way of representing parent child relationships (you need some type of agreed upon "record marker" to know what type of record each line contains) or even worse, people flatten the data.
csv files are merely extensions of paper typed columnar data. At least XML goes a step beyond that and models itself more after the conceptual record. This and the more "standardized" definitions makes it significantly more powerful than csv files were in the past.
Goldschmidt's survey seemed to include somewhat low-life representatives of computer security community, the type who goes on shopping sprees on stolen credit cards, so take the findings with a grain of salt."
What, because her survey turned up some "low lifes" it suddenly can't be trusted and must be "taken with a grain of salt"? Where does this logic come from? Had her survey only found up right individuals that were doing it for pure knowledge, then we would take the survey as gospel?
What kind of idiot sys-admin would allow the corporate users , to run their PCs with admin previleges , so that any unwanted junk s/w be installed on their PCs ?
Most places that have developers for one. Not saying this is right, but is almost always the case. And no, developers aren't that much smarter than the general population when it comes to not installing/executing things that maybe they shouldn't.
Which genius allows unrestricted access to confidential corporate data to its users
But if the keylogger makes it's way to enough machines, you're bound to come across more than enough info. Remember, confidential data could be as "small" as knowing the date of a meeting, or even the fact that you're meeting with someone. This piece of information a marketing guy could have.
Why do the corporate firewalls not block out-bound traffic to all ports but a select few HTTP/SSL ect
I would assume that any self respecting trojan would be capable of tunneling through port 80.
Don't open Emails that you have no clue who they came from. This is just common sense.
That line of defense fails when only 1 person forgets this fact (or as a permutation of the following) and the "virus/worm" spreads itself by having the from address of the newly infected person. Plus, it doesn't take a lot of effort to find out who the IT or some other higher up in a company is and use their name as the sender of the email.
Has VOIP missed it's window of opportunity thanks to the continued proliferation of cell phones and favorable calling plans? Both my wife and I have unlimited long distance built into our cellular plans which eliminates one of the biggest "plus's" for VOIP (international calling not withstanding). So for us, VOIP is an utter non-issue. A few years ago, it would have been since we both have family scattered about the US that we called frequently. And with unlimited night/weekend minutes and scads of "plain ole minutes", it makes it even less compeling.
So have the telcos won due to the long gestation period of wide spread VOIP. Other than international callers, or those who shun cell phones, what reason would one have for going with VOIP. Personally the one thing that keeps me attached to my land line, is more of the "comfort" of having such an old tried and true technology around "just in case" (redundancy good). That and it still serves as the "family" phone number for inbound calls. And with cellular home distribution gadgets coming online, even that use will slowly be eliminated.
Back in 1981 or so, IBM came out with a big, clunky supercomputer called the PC.
Huh? Since when did ANYONE (including IBM) consider the PC a supercomputer? And frankly the original PC is not much different in form factor than todays PC, though a lot heavier. And the trend is to have FEWER chips in computers, not more. Now we might have a single "chip" that has 1000 virtual mini-chips inside, or one that performs the same as 1000 do today, but the odds of us having a desktop computer with 1000 cpu's anytime ever is slim and none.
You are correct. What i was getting at was that nobody was making these devices until Apple supported the technology
Once again, I disagree. The current majority of the BT devices are used to support cell phones and pda's. KB/mice are very recent, and M$ had their BT enabled kb/mouse around the same time as Apple did (not sure who was precisely first, but they were close enough to call it even). In this case, I think Apple is helping to row a lot more than the Wintel world, but they didn't help push the boat into the water.
He mentioned breadth of adoption. Wifi is wonderful, but it's use is limited to computer type devices (e.g. PC's, PDA's). Whereas BT is popping up everywhere, if you don't see it, you aren't looking. Wireless keyboards and mice, cell phones, pda's, headsets, printers, camcorders, digital cameras. You might think that wireless kb/mice are not worthwhile, but I know a significant number of people (esp laptop users) who would absolutely disagree.
BTW, 802.11 has been around forever. The current 11mbps standard was preceded by a 2mbps version that was around years ago, waaay before BT.
then Apple started integrating it into their products... pushing the technology very hard
First let me start by saying that my primary computer at home is a PowerBook and I own more Mac's than most small third world countries. But I have to say that your statement is waaaay off base. I personally use BT myself (I have another post that details what) and it's absolutely phones (and headsets), pda's, and keyboard/mice that are driving BT sales. Now as far as pc's go (generic pc as in personal computers, not PC's as in Wintel), Apple is ahead of the curve, but it's not their adoption that's pushing sales, it's all these other devices. Apple is just smart enough to jump on board earlier than other manufacturers (as usual). So I'll give Apple all the credit in the world for being forwrad thinking, but they are NOT driving BT.
I have a SE T616 phone, a Clie NZ90 and a BT dongle on my PC and PowerBook (I also have a DCR-PC120BT Sony DV camcorder with BT, but I haven't actually found a good use for it's BT support). I sync both the T616 and NZ90 via BT with my PC (WinXP and Outlook). I use the T616 as a BT modem on both the Clie and the PowerBook.
For syncing BT is great because I don't have to have a bunch of usb cables spider webbing out to my devices. My phone stays on my belt and the pda just sits where ever it's most convenient. I just press sync in outlook for the phone, or tap sync on the Clie and they just start syncing. Nice. No more having to plug cables in and remember to unplug to actually use the device.
Using the phone as a modem via BT is also great since I usually do this "out in the field", where if I had to drag my phone out of my pocket (where it usually is when I'm out and about) and have a cable running from it to either the Clie or PB, then that would suck. This way it stays where ever I have it (pocket, bag, backpack, maybe even not on me, but close by). It's very nice being able to just whip out the Clie and start surfing instantly.
Now all that said, getting all this wonder and joy to work was a pain in the butt to say the least. Support for USB dongles is sketchy even under XP (OSX is better, but still requires tweaking). And having two different things trying to sync on the desktop can confuse the heck out of the software. But when it's all sorted out, its great.
So I would say, you aint really a nerd unless everything you buy from this point on has BT built in. If you are poo pooing it, take a look first, once you start using it, you aint ever gonna go back.
but no raised pad or buttons is awful.
I thought that too when I first saw the pix, but then I realized that there is a translucent plastic cover over the front of the thing. Or at least I think that's what it looks like. Either that or the whole front has a glass/plastic layer with the buttons underneath (ala Mac Cube power button), I can't imagine that that is the case (literally and figuratively) though.
Also don't expect this thing to sell for under $300
Probably not at first, but don't be too surprised if it's not as far off as people expect. After all, if you think of it as a souped up Clie (similar feature sets, though different implementation of those features, the price savings of the smaller screen being offset by the optical drive), then it doesn't have to be a $700 unit.
It will be quite exciting to see what it REALLY looks like and how it's priced.
While not manditory, the foundations for this are already being setup by the continued expansion of the OnStar (and maybe others?) systems. Given that, I think that the paranoid "slippery slope" underpinnings of the article poster to be a bit melodramatic. I know that they've also been working on various EMP systems to try to shut cars down remotely.
Why do people think environmentalists would be biased, anyway? What are they biased towards? Not dying? Is there some secret Globex-EnviroCorporation Inc in which all tree hugging hippies have undisclosed shares? Or is it possible that they simply understand the value of erring on the side of caution when the stakes are so high?
No, they have an agenda. They have a belief that they feel strongly about, and they want others to either believe it too, or at least be held to the constraints that those beliefs create. This is every bit as greedy has having that "belief" be that my bank account should be the biggest or that Globex-MegaCorp's belief that their balance sheet is the most important thing in the world. Remember, having what one thinks in ones brain is a "good" motive does not justify acts that potentially harm (physically, financially, or otherwise) others.
Can't you see that the logical way to be skeptical about it is to assume that the warning signs mean something significant until you can be sure they don't? Otherwise you're acting like someone with half the symptoms of cancer who wants to wait until they have them all before getting it checked out. After all, you can never be sure so better to do nothing, eh?
Or like getting chemo just because you found a bump on your arm? A situation where the "cure" can be worse than the perceived disease? Shall we have put all AIDS patience on an island, after all, better to be safe than sorry right? The problem with your statement is that you're ignoring the fact that there is a gray area. The problem is that the signs are far from "obvious" and the actions being taken are truely massive in scale and affect the lives of millions. So it is something that warrants careful study, and re-study, and checks and balances to come about to a proper conclusion (or as close as you can reasonbly get).
Don't worry, go ahead and doubt environmentalists. I'm sure businessmen whose entire job is making profits for their own companies are *much* more reliable at telling you what the state of the environment is.
Funny you say that when the article mentions NOTHING about any business being involved in the contradicting studies. As far as I can see, YOU'RE the only one even mentioning business or the profit motive into this equation. I would say that anyone completely believing in EITHER side is just as bad as anyone completely believing in the OTHER side.
This sounds a lot like Fox News doing a preemptive strike. If FN let this go, then if someone else wanted to imitate their ticker, then they'd have a much harder time gettting the other company to back down if it is shown that they allowed someone else to do it unhindered (the two Fox's are related, but I don't think they're the same corp. entity?)
I think the more interesting thing to study would be to determine how much unique data is being generated. I mean who cares if two million people have the latest Britanny Spears song in mp3 format? And that's not even talking about "information", but just simply raw "data". I also wonder if they took into account "data in transit" (being transmitted over the ethernet) and temporary data (caches, etc).
One thing about the radio (as far as music playing) is that it does introduce you to songs that you might not hear otherwise. If people are free to pick the music, then it follows that it would be harder to get exposed to different bands, etc. Right now you turn the radio on and you get fed, they might play a band you never heard of, and wouldn't ordinarily listen to. As online music catches on, one is dependant on word of mouth (via most frequently downloaded lists, etc), which is also true today, but you don't get that "incidental" exposure as you might. It will be interesting to see if this phenomenon is actually good or bad overall for the industry (i.e. musicians, not the RIAA).