I'll tell you why these are not even close to what may come out of Apple.
Simplicity. I don't think Apple is in the game of mixing functionalities (I think Sony is a better contender for that). That is why there is no FM tuner in iPods.
Watch that plays music? No one wants to do anything except keep time using their watch. I mean no one sensible.
The main reason why iPod beats the rest is the software and a slick, usable player that is not cluttered with buttons for everything. The Music store aside, I bought an iPod only because of these two reasons. Even if no one bought from the Apple store, iPod would be a strong seller. Have you seen women with the Creative player?
Why would unseasoned users want to Upgrade their Kernel?? I don't understand. RedHat has up2date which also updates the kernel (mini updates only). There is absolutely no reason to get the new kernel unless there is a box on a shop shelf saying "new kernel 2.6 Libranet 3.0".
Sun cannot market to the masses. They are good at marketing to companies, and their sales guys probably play good Golf, but I have often found their marketing Cryptic for the average person. Starting from "The network is the computer". Java doesn't really have a big brand name when it comes to computers, and they should drop it and may be call it Sun Desktop instead. They are trying to build a new brand name as opposed to using the old one.
Wal-Mart will be ready to sell this, but only on their website (like the Mandrake and Lindows $200 computers).
But equality is a lost cause. Talk to me about one country where everyone is considered equal by others. I mean in their minds. In a vast majority of lands, you will not get equality, but justice. That's what separates the democracies from the other forms of government. If a lower caste person goes to court, he gets the same treatment as someone from the upper caste does. I cannot speak for exceptions, of course.
The minds of upper caste people have been washed for millenia to believe that they are superior to others. This will not change. But, what has changed is that people are given justice.
Really? This is insightful indeed. I don't think I want flammable TV screens. Or a bullet proof vest that burns. Do you think people will be able to burn this after merging it with a substrate?? Enjoy your short Karma filled life:).
BASIC -- Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
1. It's for beginners, please don't use it for anything beyond that.
2. It's really all-purpose, so don't use it for high performance / interesting applications
3. Symbolic -- you don't understand a word of it 10 days down the road
4. Instruction Code -- A slightly evolved version of Assembly
How is anyone even using this??
Even in the hunter gatherer days, humans needed to be in groups. The greatest disadvantage of working from home is just that. You are "working" from "home". There is something to be said about some days when you are constantly interrupted and the weather is fabulous outside. And yeah...commuting is a bi+ch! But, meeting your fellow hunters is a great way to start your day.
Sun's new move is good enough for them to get into the x86 server space. I don't think anyone at the enterprise level is replacing all their SPARCs quite yet, even though the average x86 user thinks that's the way to go for servers. And when enterprise users think of a good vendor to do hardware business with, they might as well go with Sun. I also don't believe all the hype that predicts the death of every other form of Unix other than Linux. Solaris is a solid platform, and will continue to be until Linux can perform SMP like Solaris, handle I/O banks like Solaris.
"This other thing is a tornado. The business will implode once you can download a movie, give it to your friends and not have a moral problem with doing it. Then we're screwed. Literally, our very lives are at stake now. George and I are just praying that we can finish 'Episode III' in time, before it's all over."
Is this guy SERIOUS? I mean...cut me some slack. So this guy and Lucas haven't made any money at all from the toys, action figures, costumes, DVDs, laser discs, box office, books etc., etc.,??
I do understand that the DVD experience is becoming better by the day, but come on, who doesn't like going to the movies if they are actually made well??
Looks like everyone who criticizes/. gets a bashing when it comes to the articles themselves. Several stories are repeated, like the one with life on Venus.
First article And another one
Obviously the editors accept certain stories without question as long as it's about the DMCA or aliens. And I will be modded down for this. I know.
Imagine someone actually going through these switch campaigns, and getting poorer by 3000 bucks. "Suckers!!" yell Apple and Microsoft, and end up high fiving each other..
I am more paranoid than the average Joe, but the average Joe doesn't really know what is going on out there does he.
"I am so inconsequential, the government could care less about me" arguments work for a while. But read "The Trial" by Franz Kafka to see what a totalitarian state could do to you.
Why does everyone scoff at digital ids? Large corporations ask you to wear a badge everywhere. They do a background check before giving you a job, and you can be tracked as long as you are within their domain.
The real issue with Digital IDs is that your trail can be traced all over the map. That's not something anyone wants. I want to be authenticated, but not by using the same digital id everywhere. There should be public domain websites (where nothing is logged) and private access websites (where I need to present digital ids).
I agree with the author about the distributions. I think they load your machine up with several choices for the same application. I have a 192MB PII 266, and I installed RedHat 7.3 and found that I had to tweak and uninstall several things and stop various services before I got reasonably fast GNOME desktop. I know it's a pain to run GNOME on an old box, but still, I am guessing GNOME 2.0 is slower than the 1.4 version I have on my machine. I guess I need a hardware upgrade, but if I just want to choose that path, I might as well go with *gasp* M$FT!
It's a nice move to a low end market, but will people really buy this as opposed to others which come with a backlight, non-rubberized screen and more than 2MB of memory and faster than 16MHz? For another 50 bucks, can I not get an industrial strength handheld? I mean if my friend was new to this whole thing, I would much rather recommend something for $150 which has 8MB...
I used SuSE 8.0 for a while. It's certainly not a distro for the clock speed/memory challenged computers. I have tried Redhat 7.3 too. Every one of these commercial distros bothered me in some way. They were doing some neat stuff, but mostly the problem lay in the fact that "not everything works". But, may be in 5 years, things would improve a lot and I would buy a 20 Ghz machine with enough memory.
Seems like there are several news articles and no real matter. If it actually comes out March next year, I would be surprised. But, if they manage to pull it off, seems like a good PDA. Given that Palm is going down on it's specs for PDA on the Zire (is it really 16 Mhz? My clock on the wall runs faster), and every other PDA being so high priced, I would go for this one.
It is tough not to get political when your scientific and technological freedom to do what you want is curbed by Digital Rights Acts, Software Patenting issues and other similar governmental measures.
It is still being used in structural analysis tools. These old fortran programs run and run well. Libraries of stuff have been built long ago and they just work. Sure, C is great, but for running simulations which are 2 days long on a Cray, Fortran can't be beat.
I thought Mac OS X was a consumer OS (despite the old BSD kernel), pointed toward those who do not want to use the command line. Why the hell is anyone even bothering to rig this set up to compile Darwin and X? Thoroughly stupid if you ask me. Just use the goddamn machine for doing things. If you really want to know how to use UNIX, get a *real* UNIX box instead.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll tell you why these are not even close to what may come out of Apple.
Simplicity. I don't think Apple is in the game of mixing functionalities (I think Sony is a better contender for that). That is why there is no FM tuner in iPods.
Watch that plays music? No one wants to do anything except keep time using their watch. I mean no one sensible.
The main reason why iPod beats the rest is the software and a slick, usable player that is not cluttered with buttons for everything. The Music store aside, I bought an iPod only because of these two reasons. Even if no one bought from the Apple store, iPod would be a strong seller. Have you seen women with the Creative player?
Check out www.bpl.org (Text below the select box) and World Library
my 2c
Wal-Mart will be ready to sell this, but only on their website (like the Mandrake and Lindows $200 computers).
And a huge Ctrl-Key doesn't hurt. This is exactly what we need on Slashdot. Innovative retrograders...
But equality is a lost cause. Talk to me about one country where everyone is considered equal by others. I mean in their minds. In a vast majority of lands, you will not get equality, but justice. That's what separates the democracies from the other forms of government. If a lower caste person goes to court, he gets the same treatment as someone from the upper caste does. I cannot speak for exceptions, of course.
The minds of upper caste people have been washed for millenia to believe that they are superior to others. This will not change. But, what has changed is that people are given justice.
Really? This is insightful indeed. I don't think I want flammable TV screens. Or a bullet proof vest that burns. Do you think people will be able to burn this after merging it with a substrate?? Enjoy your short Karma filled life :).
BASIC -- Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
1. It's for beginners, please don't use it for anything beyond that.
2. It's really all-purpose, so don't use it for high performance / interesting applications
3. Symbolic -- you don't understand a word of it 10 days down the road
4. Instruction Code -- A slightly evolved version of Assembly
How is anyone even using this??
"Free your OS"
And I shall remember these words exactly for the rest of my life
Is this guy SERIOUS? I mean...cut me some slack. So this guy and Lucas haven't made any money at all from the toys, action figures, costumes, DVDs, laser discs, box office, books etc., etc.,??
I do understand that the DVD experience is becoming better by the day, but come on, who doesn't like going to the movies if they are actually made well??
Why redheads have piercings and piercers dye their hair red? Just curious...you never know..
Looks like everyone who criticizes /. gets a bashing when it comes to the articles themselves. Several stories are repeated, like the one with life on Venus.
First article
And another one
Obviously the editors accept certain stories without question as long as it's about the DMCA or aliens. And I will be modded down for this. I know.
Imagine someone actually going through these switch campaigns, and getting poorer by 3000 bucks. "Suckers!!" yell Apple and Microsoft, and end up high fiving each other..
"I am so inconsequential, the government could care less about me" arguments work for a while. But read "The Trial" by Franz Kafka to see what a totalitarian state could do to you.
The real issue with Digital IDs is that your trail can be traced all over the map. That's not something anyone wants. I want to be authenticated, but not by using the same digital id everywhere. There should be public domain websites (where nothing is logged) and private access websites (where I need to present digital ids).
My not so much as $0.02 worth
I agree with the author about the distributions. I think they load your machine up with several choices for the same application. I have a 192MB PII 266, and I installed RedHat 7.3 and found that I had to tweak and uninstall several things and stop various services before I got reasonably fast GNOME desktop. I know it's a pain to run GNOME on an old box, but still, I am guessing GNOME 2.0 is slower than the 1.4 version I have on my machine. I guess I need a hardware upgrade, but if I just want to choose that path, I might as well go with *gasp* M$FT!
It's a nice move to a low end market, but will people really buy this as opposed to others which come with a backlight, non-rubberized screen and more than 2MB of memory and faster than 16MHz? For another 50 bucks, can I not get an industrial strength handheld? I mean if my friend was new to this whole thing, I would much rather recommend something for $150 which has 8MB...
I used SuSE 8.0 for a while. It's certainly not a distro for the clock speed/memory challenged computers. I have tried Redhat 7.3 too. Every one of these commercial distros bothered me in some way. They were doing some neat stuff, but mostly the problem lay in the fact that "not everything works". But, may be in 5 years, things would improve a lot and I would buy a 20 Ghz machine with enough memory.
Seems like there are several news articles and no real matter. If it actually comes out March next year, I would be surprised. But, if they manage to pull it off, seems like a good PDA. Given that Palm is going down on it's specs for PDA on the Zire (is it really 16 Mhz? My clock on the wall runs faster), and every other PDA being so high priced, I would go for this one.