I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure. Imagine a person from 1985 who time-traveled to today. Would he really have that much trouble adapting? The stuff we have today is pretty much just an evolution of the same stuff we had then. What's happened in 20 years? Did they (we) have back then what we have today?
Computers? Yup. Just faster and better graphics and more memory. Communications- data? Yup. Just faster. Communications- wired voice? Yup. Pretty much identical. Communications- wireless voice? Yup. Just more ubiquitous. Transportation? Nearly identical. Medicine? Treatments for certain diseases have gotten better, but name one disease that has been CURED in that time? In fact, how many viral diseases have been cured in the entire history of modern medicine... not vaccines, cures for the infected?
It seems to be that if people are mostly satisfied with a technology, then R&D on that technology mostly stops. That's why we still use somewhat evolved 19th century automotive engine technology. There are far more efficient means of propulsion, but things like profit, and in-place infrastructure impede any real progress. Same goes for telecommunications, operating systems (backward compatibility), and on.
I think there comes a point where the exponential growth of technological knowledge tapers off under the frictional (relativistic?) effects of external factors, many of them social... a scientific terminal velocity of sorts. There also comes a point where the scientific questions one is trying to answer grow more fundamental and perhaps exponentially more difficult. (Sure we understand the characteristics of magnetism, but what IS magnetism exactly, and why does it affect only certain materials? Gravity? Nuclear forces? Why are certain cosmic constants what they are?) The scientific community itself can often be an impeding factor. It often needs time to digest new ideas before moving on with newer ones. Sadly, the days of the wild-haired scientist/inventor in his garage-lab are pretty much over. Better communications (internet), originally designed to improve scientific research, may have had an indirect dampening effect here. It's pretty easy to find other people working on similar projects, and may be equally easy to assume they have a better handle on the subject than you... so why bother. Posessivness of ideas and litigious patent holders don't help matters either.
Bottom line, there are a lot of external factors weighing down technological development these days; factors that were not there in decades and centuries past.
Love mine. It has a couple flakey keys on the numeric keypad, but nothing serious. I scoured PC surplus auctions for years before I came across mine, duct-taped to the bottom of a bundle with two other no-name keyboards. Five bucks for all 3! Score!
One other thing about the Omnikey Ultra (mine) that rarely gets mentioned is that it was dip-switch configurable, both in layout and emulation. With the right cable it could be used on an Amiga, Mac, or PC. You just changed the DIP switches to put it in the right mode. I used it on my Amiga for years before moving it to my PC. Just change a couple of switches and voila!
Control and Caps-Lock are interchangable too. Set the switches and move the keycaps.
With more and more TV becoming MPEG compressed anyway, having frames independent of the data in the previous frame is far less likely. Picture elements and frame definition are all getting mushed together and flattened out in the name of bandwidth conservation. I've seen far more streaking and artifacting as a result of overcompression than as a result of display issues. If anything, better displays make signal deficiencies more obvious. The best refresh rate, black level, etc. don't make a damn bit of diffrerence if the video is too highly compressed.
Indeed. I use 2kPro exclusively for my Windows needs. I've used all Windows variants and find 2kPro with the latest service pack/updates, and the latest IE (just for the library updates. I use Mozilla.) to be the best nexus of compatibility, stability, speed, and overhead.
I'm also of the opinion that XP has too many useless bells and whistles that just get in the way. IMO, 2kPro SP4 is the apex of the Windows platform, for what that's worth.
Same is true for the digital satellite services. DirecTV was cracked first because there was the highest demand. Dish Network wasn't cracked wide until DirecTV started to shore up its defenses. Digicipher and PowerVu (the main big-dish encryption schemes) haven't been cracked, not necessarily because they're more sophisticated, but because the same product could already be obtained from another source, so why bother.
In this case the strongest encryption mechanism is to have a competitor with a weaker one transmitting the same data.
The tape mechanism is the weak point in camcorders of any type. All those highly miniaturized interacting parts can become bent or dislodged easily. I just fixed my brother's Canon ZR1 over the weekend. Damn thing seems to have only one screw holding the head assembly in. Jar it too hard and the assembly can rotate, causing head sync problems and blocking/dropouts. The head assembly is easy enough to turn back, but jeez. DV cameras are also VERY touchy about the tape guide alignments.
I have no idea why, in this day of PVR's and Ipods, there isn't a DV-recording camera out there with a standard 30 or 40 GB laptop drive inside. If removability is a factor, they could just sell preformatted drives on rails that go in and out like cartridges.
The Bush Administration/Republican majority didn't cause the economic downturn, true, but they sure as hell exacerbated it by all that deficit spending and stirring up the Middle-East cauldron, causing petroleum prices to go through the roof.
The economy would have come back so much stronger by now if that stuff (and the consequent weak Dollar) wasn't weighing it down.
But why should Bush care, because by the time the shit really hits the fan he'll be long gone and it will be the next president's responsibility to clean up the mess. And he'll be a one-term president because everything fell apart on his watch and the short-memoryed American public will make it out to be his fault. That's pretty much what happened with Carter and Bush Sr. Herbert Hoover too, IIRC.
Some US states don't have state income tax. Some don't have a sales tax. Some state constitutions prohibit such double taxation on the same money.
There has been talk of federal sales taxes from time to time, but IIRC, the consensus is that that's prohibited by the Constitution forbidding federal laws "impeding interstate commerce". The flipside is that it also prohibits states from colluding with one-another outside the framework of the federal government (again, IIRC). I once heard that people who live in Washington (a no income tax state) could shop in neighboring Oregon (a no sales tax state) and potentially pay no state taxes at all, except for things like vehicle registration and property tax (but that's usually a county tax).
I've lived in New York, and been to California many times, both states with relatively high sales and income taxes. Their public services seem to be about the same or even worse than my state (Florida), which doesn't have a state income tax, and has a lower sales tax than either of them. So what are CA and NY doing with all that extra money?
Personally, I think income tax should only be federal, sales tax should only be state, and property tax should only be county. I've got no problem paying higher taxes as long as I have something to show for it. Some double-tax states do. Maryland comes to mind.
Aside: the US federal government somehow got by without a personal income tax at all until the early 20th century, and now it pretty much relies on it....Sean. (Who'd at least like to be able to specify what services a portion of his federal tax payment goes to.)
I saw Firefly and it showed me that Spaceships,
distopic future, and westerns don't stitch together
well if you try to do it too tightly. The premise seemed flawed. I watched 3 or 4 episodes and lost interest. I liked the cast though.
This is the perfect opportunity for a small, up-and-coming channel like DIY to pick up some TechTV-like content and use it to become more popular. Something like the current Canadian incarnation of Call For Help would be a perfect fit for them. A resurrected ScreenSavers too.
The only thing is that TechTV was all about live, realtime viewer interactivity. Most cable channels are only geared for prerecorded programming.
[G4]TechTV was, and AFAIK still is, something like 13% owned by Echostar. Echostar is reportedly in developnent with Universal in creating a new music video channel that actually shows music videos. Perhaps after they look at G4's viewership numbers, they'll cash out and start something better there too. They certainly have the means and an obvious desire to start vertically integrating the way the likes of Time Warner has.
Yeah, and game companies have been declaring their imminent doom due to digital piracy for a decade and a half longer than the other media companies. Hmmm...
Yes. There was a DVD/DIVX studio split back in 1997 or so, when DVD was new. DIVX soon died the firey death it was due and the likes of Disney and Paramount slithered over to the "less secure" DVD format and proceeded to rake in the cash.
I hate both of them and want the trackball back.
I love my iBook's ability to automatically disable/enable the trackpad when I plug/unplug my USB trackball.
That is like the story I heard about a guy receiving what the manufacturer claimed to be the "world's smallest drill bit". He then drilled a hole in the end of it with his drill bit and sent it back to them....Sean.
Wow. They finally got Ethernet out to the apartments? When I lived in Riverknoll that was just a pipe dream, despite it being just a stone's throw from the academic buildings. We had to use 38.4 dialup on a 486sx Slackware box hooked to our apartment LAN as our gateway.
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I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure. Imagine a person from 1985 who time-traveled to today. Would he really have that much trouble adapting? The stuff we have today is pretty much just an evolution of the same stuff we had then.
What's happened in 20 years? Did they (we) have back then what we have today?
Computers? Yup. Just faster and better graphics and more memory.
Communications- data? Yup. Just faster.
Communications- wired voice? Yup. Pretty much identical.
Communications- wireless voice? Yup. Just more ubiquitous.
Transportation? Nearly identical.
Medicine? Treatments for certain diseases have gotten better, but name one disease that has been CURED in that time? In fact, how many viral diseases have been cured in the entire history of modern medicine... not vaccines, cures for the infected?
It seems to be that if people are mostly satisfied with a technology, then R&D on that technology mostly stops. That's why we still use somewhat evolved 19th century automotive engine technology. There are far more efficient means of propulsion, but things like profit, and in-place infrastructure impede any real progress. Same goes for telecommunications, operating systems (backward compatibility), and on.
I think there comes a point where the exponential growth of technological knowledge tapers off under the frictional (relativistic?) effects of external factors, many of them social... a scientific terminal velocity of sorts. There also comes a point where the scientific questions one is trying to answer grow more fundamental and perhaps exponentially more difficult. (Sure we understand the characteristics of magnetism, but what IS magnetism exactly, and why does it affect only certain materials? Gravity? Nuclear forces? Why are certain cosmic constants what they are?) The scientific community itself can often be an impeding factor. It often needs time to digest new ideas before moving on with newer ones. Sadly, the days of the wild-haired scientist/inventor in his garage-lab are pretty much over. Better communications (internet), originally designed to improve scientific research, may have had an indirect dampening effect here. It's pretty easy to find other people working on similar projects, and may be equally easy to assume they have a better handle on the subject than you... so why bother. Posessivness of ideas and litigious patent holders don't help matters either.
Bottom line, there are a lot of external factors weighing down technological development these days; factors that were not there in decades and centuries past.
Love mine. It has a couple flakey keys on the numeric keypad, but nothing serious. I scoured PC surplus auctions for years before I came across mine, duct-taped to the bottom of a bundle with two other no-name keyboards. Five bucks for all 3! Score!
One other thing about the Omnikey Ultra (mine) that rarely gets mentioned is that it was dip-switch configurable, both in layout and emulation. With the right cable it could be used on an Amiga, Mac, or PC. You just changed the DIP switches to put it in the right mode. I used it on my Amiga for years before moving it to my PC. Just change a couple of switches and voila!
Control and Caps-Lock are interchangable too. Set the switches and move the keycaps.
Best keyboard ever made.
With more and more TV becoming MPEG compressed anyway, having frames independent of the data in the previous frame is far less likely. Picture elements and frame definition are all getting mushed together and flattened out in the name of bandwidth conservation. I've seen far more streaking and artifacting as a result of overcompression than as a result of display issues. If anything, better displays make signal deficiencies more obvious. The best refresh rate, black level, etc. don't make a damn bit of diffrerence if the video is too highly compressed.
Hey, I'd love a computer based on a 2ghz 68060!
It would be fast as hell and easy to program.
Nice bus architecture, good memory addressing scheme...
Indeed. I use 2kPro exclusively for my Windows needs. I've used all Windows variants and find 2kPro with the latest service pack/updates, and the latest IE (just for the library updates. I use Mozilla.) to be the best nexus of compatibility, stability, speed, and overhead.
I'm also of the opinion that XP has too many useless bells and whistles that just get in the way. IMO, 2kPro SP4 is the apex of the Windows platform, for what that's worth.
Same is true for the digital satellite services. DirecTV was cracked first because there was the highest demand. Dish Network wasn't cracked wide until DirecTV started to shore up its defenses. Digicipher and PowerVu (the main big-dish encryption schemes) haven't been cracked, not necessarily because they're more sophisticated, but because the same product could already be obtained from another source, so why bother.
In this case the strongest encryption mechanism is to have a competitor with a weaker one transmitting the same data.
How come I wasn't invited to be in their consortium?!
Screw 'em! I'm starting my own consortium. Who's with me? I've got a spare K6-2-500 and a refrigerator box we can make a fort out of.
Read it again.
I wasn't talking about Bush Jr. I was talking about whoever gets elected in 2008. HE will inherit the mess.
I have no idea why, in this day of PVR's and Ipods, there isn't a DV-recording camera out there with a standard 30 or 40 GB laptop drive inside. If removability is a factor, they could just sell preformatted drives on rails that go in and out like cartridges.
The Bush Administration/Republican majority didn't cause the economic downturn, true, but they sure as hell exacerbated it by all that deficit spending and stirring up the Middle-East cauldron, causing petroleum prices to go through the roof.
The economy would have come back so much stronger by now if that stuff (and the consequent weak Dollar) wasn't weighing it down.
But why should Bush care, because by the time the shit really hits the fan he'll be long gone and
it will be the next president's responsibility to clean up the mess. And he'll be a one-term president because everything fell apart on his watch and the short-memoryed American public will make it out to be his fault. That's pretty much what happened with Carter and Bush Sr. Herbert Hoover too, IIRC.
Some US states don't have state income tax.
...Sean. (Who'd at least like to be able to specify what services a portion of his federal tax payment goes to.)
Some don't have a sales tax. Some state constitutions prohibit such double taxation on the same money.
There has been talk of federal sales taxes from time to time, but IIRC, the consensus is that that's prohibited by the Constitution forbidding federal laws "impeding interstate commerce". The flipside is that it also prohibits states from colluding with one-another outside the framework of the federal government (again, IIRC). I once heard that people who live in Washington (a no income tax state) could shop in neighboring Oregon (a no sales tax state) and potentially pay no state taxes at all, except for things like vehicle registration and property tax (but that's usually a county tax).
I've lived in New York, and been to California many times, both states with relatively high sales and income taxes. Their public services seem to be about the same or even worse than my state (Florida), which doesn't have a state income tax, and has a lower sales tax than either of them. So what are CA and NY doing with all that extra money?
Personally, I think income tax should only be federal, sales tax should only be state, and property tax should only be county. I've got no problem paying higher taxes as long as I have something to show for it. Some double-tax states do. Maryland comes to mind.
Aside: the US federal government somehow got by without a personal income tax at all until the early 20th century, and now it pretty much relies on it.
"From the: No, really, we mean it this time dept."
Who else thinks they'll have a shutdown in the last
10 seconds?
Aren't XP SP2 and 2K SP4 like 90% the same code under the hood anyway?
Marx may have been wrong about communism, but he seems to have been dead-on about capitalism.
The only thing is that TechTV was all about live, realtime viewer interactivity. Most cable channels are only geared for prerecorded programming.
[G4]TechTV was, and AFAIK still is, something like 13% owned by Echostar. Echostar is reportedly in developnent with Universal in creating a new music video channel that actually shows music videos. Perhaps after they look at G4's viewership numbers, they'll cash out and start something better there too. They certainly have the means and an obvious desire to start vertically integrating the way the likes of Time Warner has.
My god, that would so brain-draining that it would warp the images on adjacent channels, sucking away any IQ points they might offer!
or so, when DVD was new. DIVX soon died the firey
death it was due and the likes of Disney and
Paramount slithered over to the "less secure" DVD
format and proceeded to rake in the cash.
I hate both of them and want the trackball back. I love my iBook's ability to automatically disable/enable the trackpad when I plug/unplug my USB trackball.
That is like the story I heard about a guy receiving ...Sean.
what the manufacturer claimed to be the "world's smallest drill bit". He then drilled a hole in the
end of it with his drill bit and sent it back to them.
Wow. They finally got Ethernet out to the
...Sean.
apartments? When I lived in Riverknoll that
was just a pipe dream, despite it being just
a stone's throw from the academic buildings.
We had to use 38.4 dialup on a 486sx Slackware
box hooked to our apartment LAN as our gateway.
This was 1995-1997, BTW.