The idea is that in a capatalism, the government isn't allowed to unfairly compete with private corperations... in a capatalism it is undesirable to have the government run everything
"in a capatalism?" Call me old-fashioned, but I'm still attached to the old-fashioned term "democracy."
And no, I'm not an adherent of the rigid ideology that nothing has value until it's monetized.
1) They refresh from the server so if something goes wrong you can simply push the off button and turn them on again
Moving components to the server room doesn't stop them from breaking, especially since (like I said) the thin clients are still nearly PCs in themselves. Especially in the case of this Levono system where each user apparently has their own blade. Hopefully there is a reduction in hard drive count, which would help. On the other hand there's increased reliance on the network, which will cause downtime.
3) Your end users don't have physical access to machines with data on them. This is a huge plus for security.
For every user who steals a hard drive, a thousand will use email. Think clients don't help.
I predict that, once again, the thin clients will end up costing about as much as mid-spec PCs, leaving nothing left over to justify the cost of a big expensive server for the backroom.
You can accomplish practically the same thing by using PCs with a standardized configuration and putting home directories on a fileserver.
I'd say it's way to early to make that prediction. I doubt these will go anywhere.
IMHO the problem is that the "thin" client must have almost all the resources of a normal pc... processor, memory, video card, nic, screen, mouse, keyboard, usb ports, everything except perhaps a hard drive. So what's the point?
Allowing arbitrary registration of TLDs wouldn't do away with the TLDs we already have - it would add many names (such as "slashdot") without invalidating today's names (such as "slashdot.org"). As such, arbitrary TLD's could not increase name contention.
Currently TLD's are already fairly useless for that purpose. Try "whois mcdonalds.org". The fight over "sex" would be no worse than the fight over "sex.com" that already happened.
I do agree with your previous assertion that country codes are useful, but again, I'm not suggesting they go away, or that the existing TLDs be forcibly opened up (i.e..fr would still point to something in France, as it does now).
I'll bet over 80% of lookups are for.com, and most of the rest for.org. I won't even bother to look up a reference unless you think I'm wrong. The point is, the few TLD's in use are worthless precisely because their branching factor in the heirarchy is so low. They are worthless technically (for load balancing), and worthless semantically (because there's no relation between all the domains under.com).
Its not about the convenience, its about the selection and the availability.
And it's about late fees! I am extremely hesitant to rent any more, because I know it will end up costing me as much as a movie ticket once the late fees are paid.
How long until.coke and.pepsi are top level domains?
I think that's a good suggestion. Let's do away with TLD's -.com,.net, and.org, since they are useless, and just have http://slashdot./ People who want subdomains could still do so of course.
...at least until the HD-DVD encryption is cracked.
Anybody care to bet how long breaking HD CSS will take?
I know the conventional slashdot wisdom is "no time at all" but I'm not so sure. There was a long, annoying period of several years during which linux could not play DVDs. The manufacturers have a lot of money at stake (well, at least the content producers do) and I wouldn't be surprised if they finall get it right.
1000 transcievers over a 40 square mile area doesn't sound so bad to me. If the population is much denser than that, then wired net access is likely available.
Re:Why can't we distribute this work?
on
Software Telescope
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· Score: 1
There you go, just string up a 10Gbit/s fiber to my house and I guarantee unfettered access to my PeoplePC!
After a Palm 3, Palm 5, Palm 515, and now a (Palm-OS) Sony Clie, I am planning to switch as well. The sophistication of the devices has outgrown the Palm OS. I want memory protection instead of resets all the time. I want a more general purpose, hackable device; my orphaned Clie requires odd, scarcely documented APIs that aren't even standard between my Clie and other PalmOS devices.
Oh please. When are we going to get past, "I know! Let's just write perfect software all the time!"
It's well past time to start using typesafe languages for most software - at least in theory. Unfortunately I don't see how this will come about in the OSS world in the forseeable future, because no such virtual runtime exists.
The OSS JVMs are closest I guess, but without an OSS CLASSPATH they don't really count. Besides, there's no mainstream support for targeting the JVM from other languages. On the bright side, I see more significant OSS projects being written in script, such as Python, but modules from different scripting languages will never integrate seamlessly without a common runtime. Maybe Perl's Parrot will get us there one day.
I hate to say it but Microsoft has the right idea with CLR, which is language independent. They are positioned to become the first to use widespread managed code for the userspace. (I realize they're falling short of their original plans for building Longhorn on.net, but they seem way ahead of anybody else).
If Microsoft does manage to solve the problem of buffer overruns in practice, the continued presense of these bugs in OSS will look really bad.
Exactly. Why go to all this trouble of reading irises and fingerprints? You could accomplish the same thing by tatooing users' passwords to their foreheads. Biometrics are just like normal passwords, but easier to steal and harder to change.
Intestment in technology fell off a cliff in 2001. That's what happens.
There are still trillions of dollars spent on information systems worldwide every year - far more than, for instance, biotech. The difference is that relatively little of the infosystems money is going to development and even less to research, because there doesn't seem to be much of interest on the horizon. That's what bothers me.
I agree OSX is nice, but to me it's just asymtotically arriving at what the original Macintosh aimed for 20 years ago - WIMP nirvana. Virtual reality grabbed everybody's imagination, then fizzled and died.
"lunar eclipse" normally means visibility from the sun to the moon is blocked (by the earth), which still isn't what he means, namely blocking visibility from the earth to the moon. I don't think there's a word for that because it has never happend.
Not always - one strong defense might be better than the same defense plus a weak one. There's a diluting effect, both technical (because defenses can create more vulnerabilities) but more importantly the human factor, because people only have so much time and attention to devote to these things, to learning them and keeping them up to date.
Working in a bureaucracy, I've found that new rules are either ignored, or obeyed at the expense of attention to old ones. Time, attention, and willingness to comply are limited.
I agree that everyone should read and understand the fine print of what they sign and agree to.
Unfortunately this suggestion is ridiculous. Even minor purchases require agreeing to long contracts full of legal jargon. Just yesterday Vonage sent me an email requiring I agree to their new TOS. There's probably nothing too bad in it, but who knows? It would take hours to analyze (just see what a lawyer bills you to look over it), and for all you know they might send out another ammended contract next week.
Just about everything in modern computing was developed and commercialized by IBM, including but not limited to:
But wait a moment, how many of those things came out during Microsoft's lifetime?
I was at a conference this past week, and one presenter said that the information technology industry is mature, and the smart money is moving onto to biotech. Your list of 25-year-old+ computer innovations seems to lend support to his assertion. Then I read that SGI is dying and think about how many more computer makers there were 20 years ago than now. And processor speeds have stalled for the first time ever, leading to the multicore band-aid.
For all Ballmer's bluster about innovation, it seems to me the entire industry is stale. Where we go from here I don't know.
They always focused on the high end for $$ except for a brief time in about 94-96, and that killed them.
Staying focused on the high end wouldn't have saved them. The fact is PCs can now do most of what needs to be done, and cheaply. It's not like companies are still shelling out $80K for somebody else's workstations.
I don't think SGI could have been saved without switching to a completely different business. They should have just sold there assets when there was something left to sell.
Linux has always been a much bigger competative threat to UNIX vendors than to Mr Softy in Redmond.
Silicon Graphics was about *hardware* anyways. Sure, they had their Unix variant, but what 80's workstation vendor didn't? No, they were about high-end graphics, period. If it weren't for games bringing 3d graphics to PCs, SGI could still be doing just fine selling graphics workstations running Linux.
Funny you should say that, because the most rabid anti-Linux people I've ever seen were the ones on comp.sys.sgi.*.
Back in 1997 I got flamed by some SGI employee for asking how to initialize OpenGL under Windows 95 on the comp.graphics.api.opengl newsgroup. I think they saw this day coming even then, with the rise of commodity hardware.
I guess it's hard to be a good sport when your livlihood is going down the toilet.
With 2B people to feed, China has much more pressing issues that saving the Earth from comets.
"Feeding the people" is a matter of economic growth. With 9.1% economic growth last year, I'd say they're growing their economy about as fast anybody would dare try.
Now that China is a manufacturing superpower, the next logical steps up the value chain would be research, development, and marketing. Then they can fire all the foreign executives who now keep so much of the value of what they make through outsourcing.
It's not getting screwed because you're getting the same price as before.
Would you like to offer me an interest-free loan?
The value of $100 now is not the same as $10 for each of the next 10 years. Ever notice how a lump-sum lottery payout is only about half the advertized prize?
Slashdot Mirror
All too familiar, is it not?
And no, I'm not an adherent of the rigid ideology that nothing has value until it's monetized.
I predict that, once again, the thin clients will end up costing about as much as mid-spec PCs, leaving nothing left over to justify the cost of a big expensive server for the backroom.
You can accomplish practically the same thing by using PCs with a standardized configuration and putting home directories on a fileserver.
IMHO the problem is that the "thin" client must have almost all the resources of a normal pc... processor, memory, video card, nic, screen, mouse, keyboard, usb ports, everything except perhaps a hard drive. So what's the point?
Currently TLD's are already fairly useless for that purpose. Try "whois mcdonalds.org". The fight over "sex" would be no worse than the fight over "sex.com" that already happened.
I do agree with your previous assertion that country codes are useful, but again, I'm not suggesting they go away, or that the existing TLDs be forcibly opened up (i.e. .fr would still point to something in France, as it does now).
I'll bet over 80% of lookups are for .com, and most of the rest for .org. I won't even bother to look up a reference unless you think I'm wrong. The point is, the few TLD's in use are worthless precisely because their branching factor in the heirarchy is so low. They are worthless technically (for load balancing), and worthless semantically (because there's no relation between all the domains under .com).
I know the conventional slashdot wisdom is "no time at all" but I'm not so sure. There was a long, annoying period of several years during which linux could not play DVDs. The manufacturers have a lot of money at stake (well, at least the content producers do) and I wouldn't be surprised if they finall get it right.
1000 transcievers over a 40 square mile area doesn't sound so bad to me. If the population is much denser than that, then wired net access is likely available.
There you go, just string up a 10Gbit/s fiber to my house and I guarantee unfettered access to my PeoplePC!
After a Palm 3, Palm 5, Palm 515, and now a (Palm-OS) Sony Clie, I am planning to switch as well. The sophistication of the devices has outgrown the Palm OS. I want memory protection instead of resets all the time. I want a more general purpose, hackable device; my orphaned Clie requires odd, scarcely documented APIs that aren't even standard between my Clie and other PalmOS devices.
It's well past time to start using typesafe languages for most software - at least in theory. Unfortunately I don't see how this will come about in the OSS world in the forseeable future, because no such virtual runtime exists.
The OSS JVMs are closest I guess, but without an OSS CLASSPATH they don't really count. Besides, there's no mainstream support for targeting the JVM from other languages. On the bright side, I see more significant OSS projects being written in script, such as Python, but modules from different scripting languages will never integrate seamlessly without a common runtime. Maybe Perl's Parrot will get us there one day.
I hate to say it but Microsoft has the right idea with CLR, which is language independent. They are positioned to become the first to use widespread managed code for the userspace. (I realize they're falling short of their original plans for building Longhorn on .net, but they seem way ahead of anybody else).
If Microsoft does manage to solve the problem of buffer overruns in practice, the continued presense of these bugs in OSS will look really bad.
Exactly. Why go to all this trouble of reading irises and fingerprints? You could accomplish the same thing by tatooing users' passwords to their foreheads. Biometrics are just like normal passwords, but easier to steal and harder to change.
I agree OSX is nice, but to me it's just asymtotically arriving at what the original Macintosh aimed for 20 years ago - WIMP nirvana. Virtual reality grabbed everybody's imagination, then fizzled and died.
Working in a bureaucracy, I've found that new rules are either ignored, or obeyed at the expense of attention to old ones. Time, attention, and willingness to comply are limited.
I was at a conference this past week, and one presenter said that the information technology industry is mature, and the smart money is moving onto to biotech. Your list of 25-year-old+ computer innovations seems to lend support to his assertion. Then I read that SGI is dying and think about how many more computer makers there were 20 years ago than now. And processor speeds have stalled for the first time ever, leading to the multicore band-aid.
For all Ballmer's bluster about innovation, it seems to me the entire industry is stale. Where we go from here I don't know.
I don't think SGI could have been saved without switching to a completely different business. They should have just sold there assets when there was something left to sell.
I guess it's hard to be a good sport when your livlihood is going down the toilet.
Now that China is a manufacturing superpower, the next logical steps up the value chain would be research, development, and marketing. Then they can fire all the foreign executives who now keep so much of the value of what they make through outsourcing.
The value of $100 now is not the same as $10 for each of the next 10 years. Ever notice how a lump-sum lottery payout is only about half the advertized prize?