Re:OH WELL! I'm an idiot! I don't know ****!
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VisionTek Folds
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The obvious comment is that coding for new hardware is considerably easier when full disclosure of HW specs is present. Most of the video cards seem to require some sort of NDA to be signed to get access to that stuff.
Reverse engineering is always an option, but it takes time. By the time a video card can be reverse engineered fully, it'll be obsolete.
For the time being I think you will have to stick with the binary only drivers. However, I think that the HW vendors should follow Id's lead in their engines. 2 years after the product is released (or obsolete) the HW specs should be released for that card. Then the HW can potentially live forever.
Of course the good HW architectures (Nvidia) that are backward compatable will be able to work with open-sourced drivers based on released specs.
Not sure what the requirements are, but if you are looking for secure access, you may want to consider a web-based file repository with an SSL front-end on it. You could have your choice of Apache & mod_ssl, or Stronghold (Apache derivative)
If using OpenSSH is questionable, using the #1 webserver shouldn't be. If Apache isn't proven or reliable in their eyes, then you have a really tough uphill battle.
Ask this question. What are the taxes used to buy? Microsoft Software. If the government uses GPL/OSS/Free Software, less taxes are needed.
Of course, I'm not saying that the government will not need a ton of money (with the $500 hammers & all). But losing taxes to GPL software should encourage the Gov't to find more cost-effective solutions to their problems.
I remember watching Discovery channel where they discussed the space junk floating out there. I would think that would be a major hinderance to having a reliable power supply. With all the junk out there, and a (presumably) rather large satellite, it's just asking for problems unless there is a lot of armor to protect it with.
I think even the ISS is a target, but they have some major shielding to protect the areas that are most likely to get hit.
That brings up another question, how does the armor effectively deal with the space junk, without creating more junk out there after absorbing the impact?
WinAmp is the most popular mp3 client for Windows. Obviously their attempt at a monopoly failed there.
All it takes is for the MS Media Player to take over the MP3's, and provide a pleasant experience for all of the new Windows XP users. The first versions kind of stunk (like IE), but it seems like MS is getting it together and improving it so that it's competitive.
Most people using IE use it because it's standard, and they don't update IE because they don't know how, or dial-up takes too long.
Once people don't have to look for an MP3 player, MS will have a lock-in with those users. After that, it's time to squeeze out MP3's, and push for the proprietary formats.
As for the compression SW, it's probobally small beans to MS. But if they see money is to be made, WinZip will probobally be in a big world of hurt.
If the US makes strong encryption illegal, only the criminals will use strong encryption, while the everyday Joe can't protect his business e-mail.
The same thing will probobally happen, like what happened with guns. "Guns are bad, M'Kay..", or so they think. But the problem isn't the gun, it's the user of the gun. The everyday Joe who has a shotgun in his house (properly locked up from his kids of course) is not likely to get screwed around with by a burgler. Especially if it's advertised he is armed.
Let the encryption be free, and attack the real problem, the criminals themselves.
Besides, like it's been mentioned before, criminals who don't use the phone, send e-mail, or use any electronic communication have a lot of security right there. They don't need the hard encryption if the message is never intercepted.
What this says to me is that MS has been promoting widespread programmer incompetancy and inflated cost of ownership. How else to explain the above scenario? How else to explain the need for dozens of people in one scenario in one body of technology where the same thing is accomplished by a mere handful? If the personnel are legitamate experts, then that means that the technology itself is inherently flawed.
Well, it could be the developer and not the tools they use. Don't flame since I don't know the company, but doesn't it seem possible that the better developers, the ones that read tons of books & articles & tinker at home, would therefore choose to be on the non-MS side of the house & therefore develop better?
Thinking about here, the users of MS are all pretty much managers or the guys that are doing Project schedules all day. The Engineers are using Windows to connect to their *nix boxen (this is slowly changing to Linux -> *nix boxen) to do the real work.
Guess what I'm trying to suggest is that maybe MS doesn't make developers dumb, dumb developers chose microsoft.
It is being used widely in the industry, and I think educational institutions have a responsibility to realease students with marketable skills.
As for performance, it is slower than some languages closer to the heart of a computer, but speed is not the point of an educational language, constructs and methodology are.
Not to be nitpicky, but you mention providing marketable skills & performance isn't the issue. If Java is a slow performer, wouldn't it tend to hurt students more learning a language that is slow, and klunky? Last I checked, there were plenty of jobs available for C & C++ programmers. I have a feeling that Java may be a fad, and C/C++ will be around and fall back in favor unless Java really takes off.
Java lets you do some cool stuff, and it lets you do some really klunky stuff, but it isn't designed for performance. Any industry that is CPU bound (Simulation, number crunching, gaming, local applications, etc.) needs to be coded to run fast. Industries that are network bound (ISP's, ASP's, Portals, etc.) don't really care about how much the CPU is choking because the network is the bottleneck.
I have a feeling, once the network is no longer the bottleneck, Java either better get fast quick, or it's going to be going back to C/C++ for speed.
One example I can think of off the top of my head is the ability to create a backup of your software media for archival purpose.
You could not take videotapes of screens. Rather you must have 100% digital copies of the original media. If you don't have the 100% copies, the files themselves may be slightly modified & render your copy useless.
Is digital the issue vs. being 100% correct? For example, supposing an educational course was being given in music appreciation, and it was important to listen & analyze a piece of music, listening to each individual instrument and critiquing each section. Which strings were off, which horns played too early, etc. Without a 100% accurate copy you cannot fully appreciate or analyze the music as it was intended to be listened to.
What about distribution of images & programs over the internet in general? If an image is not copied 100% correctly, it appears corrupted & is useless
Would any of these qualify or generate additional/better arguments?
Try CUPS with GTKlp. I'll take that over windows printing anyday thank you very much. I mean, send duplex print jobs, specify print trays, even 4 pages to 1 sheet of paper. And no, the windows print drivers do not support those options.
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
Umm, rpm -Uvh or rpm -Fvh . Many an NT Admin has worshipped RPM, rather than sitting down & doing click-next, click-next, click-accept... There is WinInstall, but that's another bastard of a story.
5. Poor graphics support
Well, I do really like the NVIDIA drivers
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
Ahem, MSIE 5.x, Ahem
As a workstation OS, I'll take it over any commercial Unix OS anyday.
I seem to recall that there was development on an application of AI to use it to find better ways to design logic gates & the such. They put it to the test and found it optimized a bunch of circuits that were hand-designed (something like 300 gates to 75 gates).
I guess what I'm getting at is that yeah, a programmer could design & layout the chip according to his needs, but wouldn't it be better to describe the chip (ala C-Program), and run it through another system that would program your chip most efficiently?
The good news is, now you can include in all of your messages "The receiver does not have my consent to forward this message". Does that mean that any discussion of this e-mail is heresay? And if the mail is forwarded, does this equate to wiretapping (ie: Linda Tripp tape recording Monica, and releasing the tapes?)
Now the bad would be internal business e-mail(maybe not so bad). I've seen e-mails sent from Jane, forwarded to John, and the stuck in my e -mail bin. Jane must now give permission to John. John has to give permission to someone else, and then I need to get permission if I'm going to forward that e-mail.
Should businesses be responsible for getting permission from the originator of the e-mail? Will this be something added to employee's contracts? "I hereby give my life to you, and you may forward my e-mails by default".
Here's another thought, Jane sends e-mail to John, John gets permission and sends it to me. Do I need to get permission from both Jane & John to forward it on, or only John's permission?
...be to provide a genuine DNS Service? I mean, provide a DNS Server that resolves the new TLD's, this way all services can work correctly? And all you would have to do at the OS level is change your resolv.conf (for Unices) to point at the new system and change the DNS lookup order for Windows.
Of course another solution would be to provide a hack that sits at resolver level that allows all "normal" DNS lookups to go through your ISP, but these special requests get filtered at the OS level and forwarded to the new system.
But the best solution (IMHO) is for the ISP's to add the DNS Server to the named.ca file so it gets resolved (more or less) proper.
Providing a plug-in is a fine hack, but it must provide someway to resolve names to DNS Entries. It's just a question of whether the resolution comes at the application or the OS level.
One comment I haven't seen is this seems to assume everyone will want to work together to get things back to where they were.
For some reason, I don't buy it.
I mean look at all the big players out there. If technology just suddenly died away, what makes you think that all the geniuses out there will want to sit down and design a single chip, or work together to come up with a single solution for everything. There are too many ego's to stroke and conflicting ideas to expect everything to work together seamlessly.
Granted, it'd be nice in a utopian society to have all computer architecture answers now, and develop the ultimate computer architecture to get society back to where it is, but don't forget that people are greedy and will want you to buy their computer and their components.
Besides, do you really want one solution to solve everything? Just like Windows is your single solution to the OS. In other words, one solution (perfect or not) is a monopoly.
I remember taking my first Introduction to Operating Systems class in College, and there was a lot of reference to Tannenbaums book. The actual OS book we had was good, but vague and at a high level.
I wonder whether this would be a good "textbook" to teach the practical aspects of an OS, and then relate it to a "standard" OS (rather than the Older Unices, or VAX systems).
I seem to recall there was a robot designed to actually eat slugs in the UK. The theory being is that the robot would live in a garden, and hunt the slugs down. Once it found them, it you spear them, and then eat them, using their decomposing bodies as fuel.
Now only if it can be done for Lawyers (redundant, I'm sure, but still)
How about not waiting a minute or more for your personal computer or laptop to boot up? With MRAM, "instant-on" computing becomes possible
When using the most popular OS (ie: NT, Win 9x), I don't think this would be much of an advantage. You almost need to reboot daily/weekly to make sure your system starts from scratch. Otherwise, you'd have 2 weeks of memory leaks, and other associated garbage floating around.
Not to say Linux is better. On my Dell Inspiron, coming out of suspend mode makes it do other weird things (but I tend to want to blame Dell over Linux).
Well, I can think of many different companies with these kinds of "gotchas" not to mention their maintenance support
<B>*</b> Cadence Software. If you don't pay the yearly fee, their software license is set to shut down. I'm not sure how much their software costs, but I think it's in the order of tens of thousands per head. Not cheap
<b>*</b> Rational Software. Actually, they get you on the maintenance fees. Rather expensive to maintain, but with out it you can't get the latest version of the software, or transfer licenses
<b>*</b> SGI. Yes, SGI is very very very bad in this department. You get the SW fees, then the OS fees, and then Maintenance fees. Oh and if you forget a year of maintenance, or forget a machine, they get you twice as hard.
Alot of the bigger SW companies really know how to bend corporations over with regards to SW maintenance. Only a couple I know of actually are balsy enough to build in the self-destruct mechanism. This is just a few of the many reasons we are going away from the proprietary solutions and into more open solutions. With the SW maintenance/support agreements, you'd expect to get support as well, but oftentimes it turns into phone transfer tag.
So I guess I have to say MS isn't really the only bad-guy here, they're not the first. But hopefully they will be the last major company to offer these kinds of services.
Our company is on Flex time with mandatory core hours from 9-3. This basically means you must be in the plant between 9am & 3pm, but you can arrive at 6:30 & leave at 3, or show up at 9am & leave at 5:30. But those 6 hours you must be in plant so meetings can be held, & business can be done
*) Reduced use in PTO (personal time off). You can have a Dr. appointment early in the morning or late in the afternoon & not use that time off
*) Don't have to be stressed over making it in at a given time. You don't have to cuss over traffic being bad & showing up at 9:10, while your boss is bitching that you showed up late
*) Reduced micro-management. Managers don't have to stand around and see when you come in & go just to make sure that you show up by 9am
*) Good for early risers/late risers. I'm usually into work by 6:30 so I can get out while there is still sunlight. Ok, during the summer there is sunlight, but still. It's nice to go for bike rides & do something outside after work to blow off steam.
*) Can increase support coverage. I work in IT as well, and people in my department work from as early as 5:30 in the morning (don't know how) to as late as 5:30-6pm in the evening. So by having flextime, employees can come & go as they need or want, and can stagger the coverage in a department or area.
*) Employee moral/perks. In this day and age where Tech workers are hard to come by, they should be treated more like gold. If they do decide to take away flex-time, quit & work for someplace that does have flex-time unless you really really really like what you are doing. I wouldn't give up flex-time, I won't give up the option of wearing blue jeans. If my company takes that away, there are at least 5 other companies in the are that still offer these perks and are hiring. Your company should also be concerned about keeping their employees happy. I seriously doubt you are the only one that would consider walking if flex-time disappears.
Those are some of the big reasons I see for flex time. It doesn't just help the employees but the company as well. It helps keep the company competitive, by offering a perk that really won't cost the company much if anything.
What do you mean metalab.unc.edu changed it's name to www.ibiblio.org. Does sunsite.unc.edu still work? I'd hate to have to go through & change all of my FTP links.
I seem to recall from an article back in X-Mas (I think SJ Mercury News, but not sure) about this. The idea presented is generally that Human's can remember information easier if it is in a static form. ie: The information is halfway down on page 15.
Seems that the scroll bars aren't static enough for most people.
On the converse side of things, if electronic-ink takes off, I would think this may reduce the paper consumption. Why? Well if you have a book of e-ink, the words & data should all show up on the same location of the page you are looking for. (At least that's my theory)
I hope we will find out before we run out of trees.
Oh, and no, I'm not no stinking tree-hugging hippie, I'd just rather walk through a forest instead of a parking lot.
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Reverse engineering is always an option, but it takes time. By the time a video card can be reverse engineered fully, it'll be obsolete.
For the time being I think you will have to stick with the binary only drivers. However, I think that the HW vendors should follow Id's lead in their engines. 2 years after the product is released (or obsolete) the HW specs should be released for that card. Then the HW can potentially live forever.
Of course the good HW architectures (Nvidia) that are backward compatable will be able to work with open-sourced drivers based on released specs.
Not sure what the requirements are, but if you are looking for secure access, you may want to consider a web-based file repository with an SSL front-end on it. You could have your choice of Apache & mod_ssl, or Stronghold (Apache derivative)
If using OpenSSH is questionable, using the #1 webserver shouldn't be. If Apache isn't proven or reliable in their eyes, then you have a really tough uphill battle.
At least that's what it feels like the MS guy is getting...
Ask this question. What are the taxes used to buy? Microsoft Software. If the government uses GPL/OSS/Free Software, less taxes are needed.
Of course, I'm not saying that the government will not need a ton of money (with the $500 hammers & all). But losing taxes to GPL software should encourage the Gov't to find more cost-effective solutions to their problems.
I remember watching Discovery channel where they discussed the space junk floating out there. I would think that would be a major hinderance to having a reliable power supply. With all the junk out there, and a (presumably) rather large satellite, it's just asking for problems unless there is a lot of armor to protect it with.
I think even the ISS is a target, but they have some major shielding to protect the areas that are most likely to get hit.
That brings up another question, how does the armor effectively deal with the space junk, without creating more junk out there after absorbing the impact?
All it takes is for the MS Media Player to take over the MP3's, and provide a pleasant experience for all of the new Windows XP users. The first versions kind of stunk (like IE), but it seems like MS is getting it together and improving it so that it's competitive.
Most people using IE use it because it's standard, and they don't update IE because they don't know how, or dial-up takes too long.
Once people don't have to look for an MP3 player, MS will have a lock-in with those users. After that, it's time to squeeze out MP3's, and push for the proprietary formats.
As for the compression SW, it's probobally small beans to MS. But if they see money is to be made, WinZip will probobally be in a big world of hurt.
If the US makes strong encryption illegal, only the criminals will use strong encryption, while the everyday Joe can't protect his business e-mail.
The same thing will probobally happen, like what happened with guns. "Guns are bad, M'Kay..", or so they think. But the problem isn't the gun, it's the user of the gun. The everyday Joe who has a shotgun in his house (properly locked up from his kids of course) is not likely to get screwed around with by a burgler. Especially if it's advertised he is armed.
Let the encryption be free, and attack the real problem, the criminals themselves.
Besides, like it's been mentioned before, criminals who don't use the phone, send e-mail, or use any electronic communication have a lot of security right there. They don't need the hard encryption if the message is never intercepted.
What about Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't fear the Reaper"?
Damn, I'm gonna miss listening to these songs on the radio here. (They own our Rock station 92.5 WKGB) Some I agree with, but a lot I don't.
I'm certainly reconsidering a purchase of an AMD System now. I was planning on building my next one from scratch.
Now it seems that Intel might get some more of my cash. Just a little too nervous to watch $150 go up in smoke because of a freak accident.
Well, it could be the developer and not the tools they use. Don't flame since I don't know the company, but doesn't it seem possible that the better developers, the ones that read tons of books & articles & tinker at home, would therefore choose to be on the non-MS side of the house & therefore develop better?
Thinking about here, the users of MS are all pretty much managers or the guys that are doing Project schedules all day. The Engineers are using Windows to connect to their *nix boxen (this is slowly changing to Linux -> *nix boxen) to do the real work.
Guess what I'm trying to suggest is that maybe MS doesn't make developers dumb, dumb developers chose microsoft.
As for performance, it is slower than some languages closer to the heart of a computer, but speed is not the point of an educational language, constructs and methodology are.
Not to be nitpicky, but you mention providing marketable skills & performance isn't the issue. If Java is a slow performer, wouldn't it tend to hurt students more learning a language that is slow, and klunky? Last I checked, there were plenty of jobs available for C & C++ programmers. I have a feeling that Java may be a fad, and C/C++ will be around and fall back in favor unless Java really takes off.
Java lets you do some cool stuff, and it lets you do some really klunky stuff, but it isn't designed for performance. Any industry that is CPU bound (Simulation, number crunching, gaming, local applications, etc.) needs to be coded to run fast. Industries that are network bound (ISP's, ASP's, Portals, etc.) don't really care about how much the CPU is choking because the network is the bottleneck. I have a feeling, once the network is no longer the bottleneck, Java either better get fast quick, or it's going to be going back to C/C++ for speed.
You could not take videotapes of screens. Rather you must have 100% digital copies of the original media. If you don't have the 100% copies, the files themselves may be slightly modified & render your copy useless.
Is digital the issue vs. being 100% correct? For example, supposing an educational course was being given in music appreciation, and it was important to listen & analyze a piece of music, listening to each individual instrument and critiquing each section. Which strings were off, which horns played too early, etc. Without a 100% accurate copy you cannot fully appreciate or analyze the music as it was intended to be listened to.
What about distribution of images & programs over the internet in general? If an image is not copied 100% correctly, it appears corrupted & is useless
Would any of these qualify or generate additional/better arguments?
Granted, but I prefer VIM anyday.
3. Poor printing services
Try CUPS with GTKlp. I'll take that over windows printing anyday thank you very much. I mean, send duplex print jobs, specify print trays, even 4 pages to 1 sheet of paper. And no, the windows print drivers do not support those options.
4. Its harder to update anything on Linux than Windows and MacOS
Umm, rpm -Uvh or rpm -Fvh . Many an NT Admin has worshipped RPM, rather than sitting down & doing click-next, click-next, click-accept... There is WinInstall, but that's another bastard of a story.
5. Poor graphics support
Well, I do really like the NVIDIA drivers
7. Each Linux variant ships with security holes
Ahem, MSIE 5.x, Ahem
As a workstation OS, I'll take it over any commercial Unix OS anyday.
I guess what I'm getting at is that yeah, a programmer could design & layout the chip according to his needs, but wouldn't it be better to describe the chip (ala C-Program), and run it through another system that would program your chip most efficiently?
Now the bad would be internal business e-mail(maybe not so bad). I've seen e-mails sent from Jane, forwarded to John, and the stuck in my e -mail bin. Jane must now give permission to John. John has to give permission to someone else, and then I need to get permission if I'm going to forward that e-mail.
Should businesses be responsible for getting permission from the originator of the e-mail? Will this be something added to employee's contracts? "I hereby give my life to you, and you may forward my e-mails by default".
Here's another thought, Jane sends e-mail to John, John gets permission and sends it to me. Do I need to get permission from both Jane & John to forward it on, or only John's permission?
Talk about opening a big ole can of worms.
Of course another solution would be to provide a hack that sits at resolver level that allows all "normal" DNS lookups to go through your ISP, but these special requests get filtered at the OS level and forwarded to the new system.
But the best solution (IMHO) is for the ISP's to add the DNS Server to the named.ca file so it gets resolved (more or less) proper.
Providing a plug-in is a fine hack, but it must provide someway to resolve names to DNS Entries. It's just a question of whether the resolution comes at the application or the OS level.
For some reason, I don't buy it.
I mean look at all the big players out there. If technology just suddenly died away, what makes you think that all the geniuses out there will want to sit down and design a single chip, or work together to come up with a single solution for everything. There are too many ego's to stroke and conflicting ideas to expect everything to work together seamlessly.
Granted, it'd be nice in a utopian society to have all computer architecture answers now, and develop the ultimate computer architecture to get society back to where it is, but don't forget that people are greedy and will want you to buy their computer and their components.
Besides, do you really want one solution to solve everything? Just like Windows is your single solution to the OS. In other words, one solution (perfect or not) is a monopoly.
I wonder whether this would be a good "textbook" to teach the practical aspects of an OS, and then relate it to a "standard" OS (rather than the Older Unices, or VAX systems).
Any comments or thoughts from that aspect?
Now only if it can be done for Lawyers (redundant, I'm sure, but still)
- How about not waiting a minute or more for your personal computer or laptop to boot up? With MRAM, "instant-on" computing becomes possible
When using the most popular OS (ie: NT, Win 9x), I don't think this would be much of an advantage. You almost need to reboot daily/weekly to make sure your system starts from scratch. Otherwise, you'd have 2 weeks of memory leaks, and other associated garbage floating around.Not to say Linux is better. On my Dell Inspiron, coming out of suspend mode makes it do other weird things (but I tend to want to blame Dell over Linux).
Well, I can think of many different companies with these kinds of "gotchas" not to mention their maintenance support
<B>*</b> Cadence Software. If you don't pay the yearly fee, their software license is set to shut down. I'm not sure how much their software costs, but I think it's in the order of tens of thousands per head. Not cheap
<b>*</b> Rational Software. Actually, they get you on the maintenance fees. Rather expensive to maintain, but with out it you can't get the latest version of the software, or transfer licenses
<b>*</b> SGI. Yes, SGI is very very very bad in this department. You get the SW fees, then the OS fees, and then Maintenance fees. Oh and if you forget a year of maintenance, or forget a machine, they get you twice as hard.
Alot of the bigger SW companies really know how to bend corporations over with regards to SW maintenance. Only a couple I know of actually are balsy enough to build in the self-destruct mechanism. This is just a few of the many reasons we are going away from the proprietary solutions and into more open solutions. With the SW maintenance/support agreements, you'd expect to get support as well, but oftentimes it turns into phone transfer tag.
So I guess I have to say MS isn't really the only bad-guy here, they're not the first. But hopefully they will be the last major company to offer these kinds of services.
Our company is on Flex time with mandatory core hours from 9-3. This basically means you must be in the plant between 9am & 3pm, but you can arrive at 6:30 & leave at 3, or show up at 9am & leave at 5:30. But those 6 hours you must be in plant so meetings can be held, & business can be done
*) Reduced use in PTO (personal time off). You can have a Dr. appointment early in the morning or late in the afternoon & not use that time off
*) Don't have to be stressed over making it in at a given time. You don't have to cuss over traffic being bad & showing up at 9:10, while your boss is bitching that you showed up late
*) Reduced micro-management. Managers don't have to stand around and see when you come in & go just to make sure that you show up by 9am
*) Good for early risers/late risers. I'm usually into work by 6:30 so I can get out while there is still sunlight. Ok, during the summer there is sunlight, but still. It's nice to go for bike rides & do something outside after work to blow off steam.
*) Can increase support coverage. I work in IT as well, and people in my department work from as early as 5:30 in the morning (don't know how) to as late as 5:30-6pm in the evening. So by having flextime, employees can come & go as they need or want, and can stagger the coverage in a department or area.
*) Employee moral/perks. In this day and age where Tech workers are hard to come by, they should be treated more like gold. If they do decide to take away flex-time, quit & work for someplace that does have flex-time unless you really really really like what you are doing. I wouldn't give up flex-time, I won't give up the option of wearing blue jeans. If my company takes that away, there are at least 5 other companies in the are that still offer these perks and are hiring. Your company should also be concerned about keeping their employees happy. I seriously doubt you are the only one that would consider walking if flex-time disappears.
Those are some of the big reasons I see for flex time. It doesn't just help the employees but the company as well. It helps keep the company competitive, by offering a perk that really won't cost the company much if anything.
What do you mean metalab.unc.edu changed it's name to www.ibiblio.org. Does sunsite.unc.edu still work? I'd hate to have to go through & change all of my FTP links.
Gee, seems that while I was writing my post, Everyone else was writing about it as well...
I seem to recall from an article back in X-Mas (I think SJ Mercury News, but not sure) about this.
The idea presented is generally that Human's can remember information easier if it is in a static form. ie: The information is halfway down on page 15.
Seems that the scroll bars aren't static enough for most people.
On the converse side of things, if electronic-ink takes off, I would think this may reduce the paper consumption. Why? Well if you have a book of e-ink, the words & data should all show up on the same location of the page you are looking for. (At least that's my theory)
I hope we will find out before we run out of trees.
Oh, and no, I'm not no stinking tree-hugging hippie, I'd just rather walk through a forest instead of a parking lot.