"And this, folks, is exactly how bad ideas get implemented."
Rather than pick on a non-engineer you could have done some homework and answered the question yourself. But no, it's easier to doom say rather than actually solve the problem. Which is, in itself, the real problem.
Guess what? Everything involves risk. Nothing is perfectly safe. And we'll never, ever, know all the answers up front. So either do nothing and crawl into your cave... or deal with it.
At least these guys are TRYING to find a solution.
So build some gas plants, a nuke, put hydro where water is, turbines where the wind blows, coal plants where coal is... wait. We do that already. Doh!
No one is suggesting we power the entire planet with aqua-thermal-gradient plants. The 1/300 number was just an example. You know, an illustration? No need for the tree huggers to intstantly raise a hue and cry.
A geothermal heat vent on the ocean floor creates those kinds of vertical convection currents naturally, all the time.
On a less serious note, I think I'll take a shotgun to all the fear mongering Ludites who think we should do nothing at all, and who're unable to see the positive benefits of anything. Thus relieving MY stress levels, and reducing the number of "environmental stressors" to boot...
I've seen that before, but it appears unable to automatically syncronize with my bank and download transactions and upload payments. Being able to import OFX, QFX, QIF and CSV files just isn't the same.
Of course, Quicken for Mac doesn't work there either. It tells me my account "isn't ready", when the PC version's been accessing the same account for years. I also tried to import all of my old PC transactions into it and it just stops. No errors, no messages, no imported data. Nothing.
Useful, yes, but innovative? Copying an application and some documents to a thumb drive? Serioursly, if Microsoft did it and called it "innovative" people here would be laughing their asses off...
"...everyone talks about the poor starving inventor or creator, and noone [sic] talks about all the people that need to be coerced..."
Yeah, some people would like to be paid a little something for their work. Can you imagine? And spreading the costs around so that the people who actually want it pay for their part of it. Outrageous!
BTW, it's NO ONE. NO SPACE ONE. NOONE is not a word. Want to discuss that literacy thing again?
"Basically make CCTV networks accessible by everyone like OSS..."
Never happen. And if it did, the first lawsuit by the guy whose wife used the cameras to track his indiscretions would shut it down. And if a pedophile ever used one to track a kid back to their house... OMG.
"It just has to be a device with Windows-only drivers that you need to use or an app that will never be ported to anything but the latest version of Windows."
So we're talking niche app's and/or hardware? That seems to be a bit different than the original statement regarding a OS that won't run a large proportion of the software people want to run...
I've got a big box of old PC games but as you said, w/o a DOS-based Win95-class system (which I no longer own) I can't play most of them anyway. And it will be interesting to see what "Virtual PC" options become available on the x86-based Macs. It could well be that one could have the best of both worlds...
"A real OS that won't run a large proportion of the software people want to run."
Microsoft Word? Microsoft Excel? Powerpoint? Outlook (Entourage)? Photoshop? Quicken? Dreamweaver? Firefox? Illustrator? InDesign? GoLive? Flash, Freehand, Fireworks? Or most anything not native that will run under Virtual PC?
I just bought a Powerbook recently, and have everything covered that I had running on my Dell. So I guess I'm not sure what major software is missing that most people want to run...
Oh. You must mean GAMES. Okay, but personally, I'd get a "real" computer, and then buy a PS2 or XBox to pound on...
"...there is little or no link between GM crops and this new superweed..."
Are you kidding? New species with new traits can not just randomly occur. What really happened is that our Intelligent Designer decided to create a new superweed....
You mean, other than being on a Marine assault ship filled with machine guns, grenade launchers, flame throwers, and other weapons? But nooo... she has to show off.
It really depends on the type of application. If you're doing some whiz-bang HD video streaming/editing application or 3D game, yes. If you're doing a contact manager or some other UI-centric application that lives in the system toolbox and usually spends billions of cycles waiting for the user to hit the next key, then the pure raw speed of unmanaged code buys you... nothing.
And development speed, time-to-market issues, stability, and other factors may in fact have a higher priority.
As we don't export "making beds" and "cooking tacos" (the category we're discussing) your examples are somewhat less than useful. (Actually, they're completely useless.) So unless you have another major "service" we're EXPORTING...
By that logic we should close all of the colleges and universities as well. Imagine, having to pay someone to teach you something! What a way to lock out those who can't afford to pay for the knowledge.
And really, it's not as if teachers and professors need shelter or food or clothes...
Personally, I think we're just a decade or two away from some truly miraculous advances in medicine, up to and including regeneration. By the 27th century, I would EXPECT most people to make full recoveries from all but the most grievous injuries, assuming that one can be treated in time. While your point might be a valid "realistic" argument for a series set in the present or past, I think it fails to pass muster for one set in the future.
And never sacrificing a series character, to my mind, also sets one up for the dreaded red-shirted security guard syndrome...
All of which are very specialized applications with distinct requirements, and different from each other. A dentist doing a cosmetic tooth replacement is an entirely different animal than a engineer building a bridge and needing to know stress loads and fatigue factors. So while improved 3D interfaces would benefit them, I still don't see how they would help the average office paper shuffler.
If you or someone else is running Linux instead of XP now, then the XP partition isn't running, and XP is not getting pwn3d and causing issues that installing the SP would have fixed. Which is what the rant was about, and why your scenario misses the boat completely.
But hey, any opportunity for a Linux fanboy speech...
Yeah, but why would I want to? I mean, I could already write something down on a real piece of paper, walk down the hall, and stick in into one of two dozen filing cabinets. Somehow I doubt a virtual representation of that would be any better than the real thing.
Flat screens of documents are just fine. We just need smarter organizational and retrieval tools.
3D? Okay, visualize trying to find a real piece of paper in a box in a 20,000 SQFT warehourse. Now, if you want to wander around a virtual 3D space doing the same thing like a rat in a maze looking for the cheese, feel free.
So, to my mind, 3D organizational spaces are the wrong direction. Spotlight and Google Desktop are the first steps in the right direction. Why should I have to organize my work and documents into trees of folders and project hierarchies? Why add keywords when the computer should understand context? Shouldn't the computer be able to do that kind of scut work?
Picture the perfect assistant. "Donna, find that claims letter I sent to Bob last week... no... no... yeah that one. Scroll down... down... okay. It's approved. Attach the current spreadsheet and forward it to Dave. Oh, and let me know if he has any changes."
Now, picture "Donna" as your automated, computerized, super-assistant, with whom you can communicate by voice from anywhere, anytime.
Live with a program like Spotlight for a while, and you start to find yourself bypassing the Finder and Desktop and folders altogether. What's needed is a better way to communicate (voice), and a system smart enough to know who Bob is, who Dave is, what a claims letter is, understands "last week" as a variable period, and can put it all together.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather than pick on a non-engineer you could have done some homework and answered the question yourself. But no, it's easier to doom say rather than actually solve the problem. Which is, in itself, the real problem.
Guess what? Everything involves risk. Nothing is perfectly safe. And we'll never, ever, know all the answers up front. So either do nothing and crawl into your cave... or deal with it.
At least these guys are TRYING to find a solution.
No one is suggesting we power the entire planet with aqua-thermal-gradient plants. The 1/300 number was just an example. You know, an illustration? No need for the tree huggers to intstantly raise a hue and cry.
On a less serious note, I think I'll take a shotgun to all the fear mongering Ludites who think we should do nothing at all, and who're unable to see the positive benefits of anything. Thus relieving MY stress levels, and reducing the number of "environmental stressors" to boot...
Yes, the nipple can be pressed as well as rolled with the fingers... and there's something pornographic about that statement.
Of course, Quicken for Mac doesn't work there either. It tells me my account "isn't ready", when the PC version's been accessing the same account for years. I also tried to import all of my old PC transactions into it and it just stops. No errors, no messages, no imported data. Nothing.
Which is pretty much what it's worth...
Useful, yes, but innovative? Copying an application and some documents to a thumb drive? Serioursly, if Microsoft did it and called it "innovative" people here would be laughing their asses off...
Yeah, some people would like to be paid a little something for their work. Can you imagine? And spreading the costs around so that the people who actually want it pay for their part of it. Outrageous!
BTW, it's NO ONE. NO SPACE ONE. NOONE is not a word. Want to discuss that literacy thing again?
Add some sort of peer review system to help reject "new" patents and I think you've got it.
And what's worse, it's highly popular among the "alternative" OS / FOSS crowd... who're also the ones least likely to pay for anything.
Never happen. And if it did, the first lawsuit by the guy whose wife used the cameras to track his indiscretions would shut it down. And if a pedophile ever used one to track a kid back to their house... OMG.
So we're talking niche app's and/or hardware? That seems to be a bit different than the original statement regarding a OS that won't run a large proportion of the software people want to run...
I've got a big box of old PC games but as you said, w/o a DOS-based Win95-class system (which I no longer own) I can't play most of them anyway. And it will be interesting to see what "Virtual PC" options become available on the x86-based Macs. It could well be that one could have the best of both worlds...
Microsoft Word? Microsoft Excel? Powerpoint? Outlook (Entourage)? Photoshop? Quicken? Dreamweaver? Firefox? Illustrator? InDesign? GoLive? Flash, Freehand, Fireworks? Or most anything not native that will run under Virtual PC?
I just bought a Powerbook recently, and have everything covered that I had running on my Dell. So I guess I'm not sure what major software is missing that most people want to run...
Oh. You must mean GAMES. Okay, but personally, I'd get a "real" computer, and then buy a PS2 or XBox to pound on...
Are you kidding? New species with new traits can not just randomly occur. What really happened is that our Intelligent Designer decided to create a new superweed....
You mean, other than being on a Marine assault ship filled with machine guns, grenade launchers, flame throwers, and other weapons? But nooo... she has to show off.
And development speed, time-to-market issues, stability, and other factors may in fact have a higher priority.
As we don't export "making beds" and "cooking tacos" (the category we're discussing) your examples are somewhat less than useful. (Actually, they're completely useless.) So unless you have another major "service" we're EXPORTING...
And really, it's not as if teachers and professors need shelter or food or clothes...
And never sacrificing a series character, to my mind, also sets one up for the dreaded red-shirted security guard syndrome...
No mystery. When you die in the Matrix, your body dies too. The body can not live without the mind.
All of which are very specialized applications with distinct requirements, and different from each other. A dentist doing a cosmetic tooth replacement is an entirely different animal than a engineer building a bridge and needing to know stress loads and fatigue factors. So while improved 3D interfaces would benefit them, I still don't see how they would help the average office paper shuffler.
That's what I meant when I said "last week is a variable period", and not last week, literally.
But hey, any opportunity for a Linux fanboy speech...
Yeah, but why would I want to? I mean, I could already write something down on a real piece of paper, walk down the hall, and stick in into one of two dozen filing cabinets. Somehow I doubt a virtual representation of that would be any better than the real thing.
3D? Okay, visualize trying to find a real piece of paper in a box in a 20,000 SQFT warehourse. Now, if you want to wander around a virtual 3D space doing the same thing like a rat in a maze looking for the cheese, feel free.
So, to my mind, 3D organizational spaces are the wrong direction. Spotlight and Google Desktop are the first steps in the right direction. Why should I have to organize my work and documents into trees of folders and project hierarchies? Why add keywords when the computer should understand context? Shouldn't the computer be able to do that kind of scut work?
Picture the perfect assistant. "Donna, find that claims letter I sent to Bob last week... no... no... yeah that one. Scroll down... down... okay. It's approved. Attach the current spreadsheet and forward it to Dave. Oh, and let me know if he has any changes."
Now, picture "Donna" as your automated, computerized, super-assistant, with whom you can communicate by voice from anywhere, anytime.
Live with a program like Spotlight for a while, and you start to find yourself bypassing the Finder and Desktop and folders altogether. What's needed is a better way to communicate (voice), and a system smart enough to know who Bob is, who Dave is, what a claims letter is, understands "last week" as a variable period, and can put it all together.
Yeah, it's the Star Trek interface.