You, me, everyone has a right to profit from their labors.
What about Sun Microsystems? They're losing money, does that mean their rights are being violated?
If you aren't a monopoly, you have a right to charge whatever you want. That's not the same as a right to profit, because if you aren't a monopoly and demand too much money, your customers go elsewhere.
Just try to open a grocery store and swing an 80% profit margin like MS does on their office and OS divisions. Try to run a car company or run a restauraunt that way, I dare you.
If individuals or other companies had life as easy as Microsoft, our economy wouldn't function at all.
Why does everyone think that simply because software was written in the past it is bad?
Well, let's see. Would you like to use word processor from the 70's, "ed" perhaps? How about a nice video game, let's see we have Pong and Asteroids. Or you could go out on the Internet, I hear there are almost 100 sites hooked up now.
Software *has* improved a lot since the 70s. Yes, I'm aware of the so-called "software crisis." My only question is where do people get the unrealistic expectations that make reality unacceptable in comparison.
I am no friend of Microsoft, but... You are saying a 100% mark-up for software is bad. Just because a company's numbers are in the billions does not nessesarily mean they no longer have a right to make money on their profit?
Nobody has a "right" to profit. The only reason the market system usually works is because of competition, which is supposed to drive down prices on products that are overpriced. In Microsoft's case there's a combination of laws and natural circumstances that prevent pricing pressure on MS.
Microsoft's $50 billion in the bank (or whatever it is) is a market inefficiency.
A larger capacity drive doesn't cost any more to make, so they might as well keep up with technology and keep the product line fresh. Ever notice that you can't buy a 10G drive anymore? Drive space goes for about $0.50 / gig, and that would only work out to $5 which is not doable. If apples doesn't offer a 60gig drive just because it's pointless, the other guy will because it doesn't cost them much extra.
Maybe Apple will also join the video bandwagon as they step up to the bigger drives?
We had a rule that anything more than four lines was absolutely unnacceptable. It annoyed the recipients, was too long for most people to read and had only questionable enforcement value anyway.
Isn't that what small-print legalese is all about? You don't want anybody to read it or understand it. You just want it there, discreetely hidden away until you have to whip it out and hit somebody over the head with it.
Now lets go even further, why would a student need video conferencing IN THEIR DORM ROOM! Its uneeded, its overkill.
I wouldn't say the videoconferencing is "needed," but like the current low bandwidth (text-based) Internet, it could sure be nice.
Look at how TV has taken over from books and newspapers (measured by avg. hours of consumption). Expect the same thing on the Web, as the infrastructure becomes capable of video on demand. The Internet is so heavily text-based now mostly because of bandwith limitations.
Look at CNN, they didn't even bother with a text version until the Web. Maybe this school's paper will be video on demand? They'll be way ahead of the curve.
Having a video archive of lectures available on demand would be hugely beneficial at times, like when you're taking a course from one of those professors who doesn't have any substantial course materials and just sort of jots everything up on the whiteboard.
How about students that copy each others' lab writeups instead of actually doing them? You could easily instrument the lab so students submitted footage of themselves doing the tasks along with the writeup.
I've had Communications and Art courses where part of the assigned courseload was consuming media - little educational videos and so forth. We had to do it at the library in a media center funded by the school, so the applicability there is obvious.
There's always soemthing interesting going on at a university. Maybe you have too much homework to go catch an interesting colloquium or concert, but at least you could catch it live or later than evening.
Study groups can be nice, but the time demands of congregating can be limiting. Courses already have mailing lists and chat rooms; imagine how much richer those could be.
Limited to the techno-elite 1%-ers? I don't see why any of this would be harder to use than the current text-based Internet.
All these applications have direct analogues in business, and as future businesses in their own right. I almost think I'm diminishing the possibilities by suggesting a handful of applications. If anything, I think the temptation would be to go too far, and miss out on live, individual interaction.
It would be nice if Homeland Security could take a break from trying to find terrrorists by which shoelaces they buy to enforce technological security mandates. Unsecured WiFi networks all over the country are very useful to criminals and terrorists.
No, no, no, please don't ask for that.
Look, the Internet is not a secured network - not just WiFi but in general. Let's keep it that way.
I'm glad it doesn't take a license to make a telephone call or use the Internet, even though somewhere, some terrorist is making phone calls. Trying to turn the Internet into some little closed system would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.
As for WiFi security, it's funny how we're still getting this endless deluge of "OH NO! WIFI IS INSECURE!!!" alarmists. The reason people don't care is because it doesn't matter very much. There just aren't many good horror stories about somebody's life getting ruined because their wireless network was compromised.
All of the handhelds that I have evaluated do not have a long enough battery life to be useful.
A full time radio connection (wifi is an example) requires significant power resources.
Handhelds don't have the power.
Well that's the sad thing. The new Sony Clie PEG-TH55 has (had?) Wifi WITH great battery life, by all accounts:
Battery life is phenomenal; I can't honestly remember a time that an electronic device has wowed me with miserly battery consumption. When playing music with the screen off, I got 22 hours and 14 minutes in before the audio capabilities shut down. Surfing the web with WiFi enabled and the screen at half brightness, I got nearly seven hours of use (my cramped fingers!) before the networking shut off.
That's 7 hours of websurfing on a WiFi PDA just barely thicker than a Palm m515!
The hardware will be "free" in the same way as the "free" cell phone you get with a three-year lock-in service contract obliging you to pay hundreds of dollars to "get out" early.
I'm not sure if this is within the power of the commission that did it, for whatever benefit. This kind of power creep is exactly the kind of thing citizens should oppose.
Hmm, I can see "The Industry" arguing against this on some technical grounds like the authority of some particular commission. But won't it be pretty hard to argue that deceptive practices or "leap before you look" lock-ins are good for the consumer, or even for the industry as a whole? Free markets are hurt by deception.
It seems the Golden State has wrecked its economy by going too far with some socialistic ideals in the recent past, and now everybody is skeptical of this "do-gooder" government even if the particular idea is a good one.
I don't quite understand why IBM doesn't want to create something like a G5, only "more serious".
What would such a system have over the Opteron? (Not a rhetorical question).
Also, is this story saying that there is still really no 64-bit linux distro for Athlon64/Opteron? I'm thinking of buying one and took at look at Gentoo's X86-64 forum. But it's hard to get the big picture of how it really is to own one (and run it on a 64 bit OS).
Yeah! The USA is the safest country on earth. And we have GUNS to thank for it.
Well, what do you want me to say? Nobody I know has ever been a victim of violent crime (including mugging), and yes between me and my relatives we do own quite a few guns. In fact I got one for my 12th birthday. That is my experience, so obviously it affects my outlook. It's sad that society has slid so far downhill that kids would even think of killing each other, and now we have to argue about whether we are collectively responsible enough to hold the rights that we do.
Good grief. All this talk is making me happy to live in good old suburbia USA. Say what you will, snobby city dwellers, but I go running out my front door through the high desert most evenings at dusk, look down on the pretty sparkling lights of the city, and never worry about this garbage. The gangsters are down there somewhere shooting each other, I know 'cause I see it on the news.
Well you really don't know until you try. It's just as likely your machine would run faster with less disk access without swap. Just because the kernel chooses to use some swap doesn't mean bad things wouldn't happened with no swap.
Give me a break, it's 880 feet high! Are you telling me that quaint little village is flooded under 800 feet of water every spring!? If it were just for flooding 10 feet off the ground would have done it.
This will have the benefits of not causing noise pollution (I doubt the noise will reach ground level), and not cutting the town in two (as the supports are quite far apart).
It's breakthrough thinking! I mean, spreadsheets and video games both take a cpu, and a hard drive, and a monitor, so why not make some sort of computing machine that can do both? It seems so obvious in retrospect, like all great ideas I guess. Props to Microsoft!
Obviously Evolution and our society are having a difference of opinion as to what constitutes "intelligence" and "success." A culture which scorns the simple fact that "sex is for making babies," and which views family as a lifestyle choice (like whether to buy a waterskiing boat) is not well positioned for the long term.
It's not flaimbait, it's the simple truth. On a societal level, the decision of whether to reproduce is no different from the decision, on a personal level, of whether to breathe.
I see a disturbing trend. The low lifes are breeding while the academics and proffessionals are too busy getting Prada bags and Browns shoes to make kids.
Obviously Evolution and our society are having a difference of opinion as to what constitutes "intelligence" and "success." A culture which scorns the simple fact that "sex is for making babies," and which views family as a lifestyle choice (like whether to buy a waterskiing boat) is not well positioned for the long term.
They paid private contractors to develop the Internet. There's quite a difference.
OK, what is the difference? Because the critical factor here is that the technology came out non-proprietary. What difference does the contractor make? Just another level of beaurocracy between the tax dollars and the engineers.
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If you aren't a monopoly, you have a right to charge whatever you want. That's not the same as a right to profit, because if you aren't a monopoly and demand too much money, your customers go elsewhere.
Just try to open a grocery store and swing an 80% profit margin like MS does on their office and OS divisions. Try to run a car company or run a restauraunt that way, I dare you.
If individuals or other companies had life as easy as Microsoft, our economy wouldn't function at all.
Software *has* improved a lot since the 70s. Yes, I'm aware of the so-called "software crisis." My only question is where do people get the unrealistic expectations that make reality unacceptable in comparison.
Microsoft's $50 billion in the bank (or whatever it is) is a market inefficiency.
Maybe Apple will also join the video bandwagon as they step up to the bigger drives?
What are you saying, that you think the mind has infinite capacity?
Look at how TV has taken over from books and newspapers (measured by avg. hours of consumption). Expect the same thing on the Web, as the infrastructure becomes capable of video on demand. The Internet is so heavily text-based now mostly because of bandwith limitations.
Look at CNN, they didn't even bother with a text version until the Web. Maybe this school's paper will be video on demand? They'll be way ahead of the curve.
Having a video archive of lectures available on demand would be hugely beneficial at times, like when you're taking a course from one of those professors who doesn't have any substantial course materials and just sort of jots everything up on the whiteboard.
How about students that copy each others' lab writeups instead of actually doing them? You could easily instrument the lab so students submitted footage of themselves doing the tasks along with the writeup.
I've had Communications and Art courses where part of the assigned courseload was consuming media - little educational videos and so forth. We had to do it at the library in a media center funded by the school, so the applicability there is obvious.
There's always soemthing interesting going on at a university. Maybe you have too much homework to go catch an interesting colloquium or concert, but at least you could catch it live or later than evening.
Study groups can be nice, but the time demands of congregating can be limiting. Courses already have mailing lists and chat rooms; imagine how much richer those could be.
Limited to the techno-elite 1%-ers? I don't see why any of this would be harder to use than the current text-based Internet.
All these applications have direct analogues in business, and as future businesses in their own right. I almost think I'm diminishing the possibilities by suggesting a handful of applications. If anything, I think the temptation would be to go too far, and miss out on live, individual interaction.
Look, the Internet is not a secured network - not just WiFi but in general. Let's keep it that way.
I'm glad it doesn't take a license to make a telephone call or use the Internet, even though somewhere, some terrorist is making phone calls. Trying to turn the Internet into some little closed system would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.
As for WiFi security, it's funny how we're still getting this endless deluge of "OH NO! WIFI IS INSECURE!!!" alarmists. The reason people don't care is because it doesn't matter very much. There just aren't many good horror stories about somebody's life getting ruined because their wireless network was compromised.
P.S. The TH55 has WiFi, which is killing off bluetooth anyways. (Flamesuit ON)
The hardware will be "free" in the same way as the "free" cell phone you get with a three-year lock-in service contract obliging you to pay hundreds of dollars to "get out" early.
In other words, not free at all.
It seems the Golden State has wrecked its economy by going too far with some socialistic ideals in the recent past, and now everybody is skeptical of this "do-gooder" government even if the particular idea is a good one.
Also, is this story saying that there is still really no 64-bit linux distro for Athlon64/Opteron? I'm thinking of buying one and took at look at Gentoo's X86-64 forum. But it's hard to get the big picture of how it really is to own one (and run it on a 64 bit OS).
Good grief. All this talk is making me happy to live in good old suburbia USA. Say what you will, snobby city dwellers, but I go running out my front door through the high desert most evenings at dusk, look down on the pretty sparkling lights of the city, and never worry about this garbage. The gangsters are down there somewhere shooting each other, I know 'cause I see it on the news.
Well you really don't know until you try. It's just as likely your machine would run faster with less disk access without swap. Just because the kernel chooses to use some swap doesn't mean bad things wouldn't happened with no swap.
This will have the benefits of not causing noise pollution (I doubt the noise will reach ground level), and not cutting the town in two (as the supports are quite far apart).
I notice you didn't mention anything about users, except what a pain in the butt they are.
It's breakthrough thinking! I mean, spreadsheets and video games both take a cpu, and a hard drive, and a monitor, so why not make some sort of computing machine that can do both? It seems so obvious in retrospect, like all great ideas I guess. Props to Microsoft!
That's a bizarre example, since "normal" network cable is UTP = "unshielded twisted pair."