The problem with the product you refer to is that the display comes from above. As you can see in the picture, it projects onto the hand that's hovering over the screen. This would be a nightmare for a business application (application in the sense of usage, not program). Why? Because the point of this product is for more than one person to use it at a time.
WRT Linux, however. Have the Xorg folks gotten around to incorporating multiple pointer devices yet? I know there was talk of being able to use two mice, but the last time I checked the both controlled the same cursor.
What about the last administration and it's wagging the dog wars in Somalia and Kosovo Hmm, so I'm guessing that you think that, had the Japanese not bombed Pearl Harbor, that the US should've remained an impartial 3rd party during WW2? I believe that the US had a responsibility to protect the ethnic minorities from ethnic cleansing, especially considering the US's responsibilities as the (in practice) "head" of NATO.
Clinton used ethnic cleansing as his argument for getting involved in Kosovo.
Bush used "Saddam has WMD's; we know where they are!" which turned in to "Saddam had the capacity/capability to create WMD's" which turned in to "Saddam was a bad guy!" Moreover, Bush created the closest thing to a self-fulfilling prophecy when he talked about Iraq's (although he specifically said Saddam instead of Iraq) ties with Al-Qaeda.
I agree with Barton; Clinton & Bush Jr. are clearly one and the same.
I don't know if I can handle that again. If this years topic is Lolcats then I'm going to have to top myself No need to worry. I'm predicting a resurgance of goatse
Can anyone tell me what sort of hardware one needs to watch FiOS TV? If you need an equivalent of a cablebox, do the ones provided by Verizon at least have something of the equivalent of Firewire output? Or is it pretty much just component, s-vid, composite, and HDMI?
When was the last time you heard someone say or write "That makes sense. Maybe I'm wrong." Well, that's because 99% of the time people never admit that they were wrong. Rather than admitting weakness and announcing that they were wrong (and hence, human,) they just assume the new/opposite position and disregard what they've previously supported/claimed.
Gun control only keeps guns out of the "right hands". "Wrong hands" will find access to guns, regardless of the law. Gun control helps keep guns out of the hands of people who are incompitent when it somes to handling guns. I'm not for banning all guns; I have great respect for people who go hunting, whether they use rifles or bow & arrow. I've never understood the idea of hunting with a pistol, but if somebody can intelligently explain the purpose of hunting with a pistol vs a rifle or a shotgun, then I'm sure I'll respect that too.
What I don't respect are people who live in cities their whole lives and buy a gun by claiming to protect themselves. Out in the country? Yes; if an animal charges you, you may need a gun. In the city? I think the odds of person A being "mentally unstable" (to be P.C. Or we could just say "fucked up") enough to go in to a store and fire a gun at someone because they did nothing more than brush shoulders without apologizing, than it is for a person to:
A) Have the pistol they purchased legally on them B) Be aware of a specific threat C) Be able to withdraw said legal gun safely D) Neutralize the threat without damage to anyone/anything around the threat
I say this because if the person is aware of the specific threat, odds are that they're probably being mugged or held up in some other fashion. In this event, the person who is the assaulter would be able to see the victim reach for a weapon and neutralize the victim before being attacked.
I also say the above because a very large number of victims of gun violence are innocent bystanders. Them packing a gun is not going to make them any safer, either.
But the bonds that shape the form of the surface are just as strong. The loose stuff will be able to move just as easily, but the stuff barely sticking out of the ground won't. Put a flag pole in the ground, exposing only the top foot (the rest is buried underground.) The flag pole will weigh 1/4 of its amount on Earth, but you're still going to need the same amount of force to break off that foot that's sticking above ground.
Granted, weight is not a good unit here, as the moon's gravity is around 1/4 that of the earth's (I think). But the machine looks pretty light-weight to me, especially in terms of construction equipment. How practical would this thing be? I can only see it being used as something to move a person from point A to point B. Imagining how it would use a plow is stretching my imagination.
Consoles have always been cheaper than PCs That statement is invalid. The PS3 cost Sony ~$850.00 to make and was intentionally sold at a loss. Had they sold the system at a profit, the price to consumers would have been have been close to a grand(likely more). Consumers would have had a fit if they had to pay "PC" prices for a console, even if this device is essentially a proprietary "PC" with a more traditional console controller. Um, consumers did pay as much as a computer, and in some cases, more. Not all of them, but there were plenty who spent over $2,000 for a PS3, and many more were spending around $1,500 to get a preorder claim.
What if they spent 5 years or however long it would take for getting these two robots to get within spitting distance of each other, then had them attack each other Battlebotsstyle while recording the encounter with whatever orbiters Europe and the US have circling Mars?
Now that Sony essentially wields monopoly control over all things Blu-ray, you may have noticed that the prices of all things Blu-ray have gone up in non-trivial ways. This would seem to indicate that Sony has jacked up the cost of using Blu-ray technologies in response to their having won the HD war. Sony seems to be characteristically abusive to their 'partners' and ultimately to the consumer. Resources for Blu-ray technology didn't suddenly become scarce, it just didn't have competition and so they decided to raise the prices anticipating increased demand. Um, you've got that wrong there. Sony isn't jacking up the prices on their products. They've sold their products to their customers (i.e. retailers.) In order to get their products off their customers' hands, they paid their customers for each product their customers sold. That is often what happens when retailers put things on sale: their suppliers pay them to get inventory to move.
Instead of raising prices, Sony is simply not paying a premium to have Bluray devices fly off the shelf anymore because now all it's competing against is DVD instead of HD-DVD. So, moral of the story is that, to you it may seem like a price increase, but it's really just that they're no longer on sale any more. Just like when a new album comes out: it's on sale for the first week or two so it can top Billboard and get more publicity that way; after the promotion, it costs the usual $15 instead of the promotional $10.
That may be true, but why does the consumer have to pay for it? Either ESPN (or whoever) lowers their prices to be competitive, or understands that for that kind of pricing, they'll have less orders. Or, consumers could say "Hey, I really want ESPN, so I'm willing to pay more for that than the Golf Channel."
People are willing to pay a premium (or differential price) for channels like HBO. What makes you think it would be any different for other channels? I know I'd be willing to pay more for ESPN than whatever the average charge per channel is for standard cable. Why? Because I'm not going to lease Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, Oxygen, any religious channels, Style, Hallmark, or anything else that doesn't interest me. Instead, I would choose ESPN, ESPN2, MTVHD (since it appears to be the only MTV that plays a diverse range of music videos instead their reality TV crap), Comedy Central, Spike, AMC, TBS, BBC America, and HBO. Oh yeah, I'd also get the Big 10 Network. With that combination, I'll have all of the sports I care about from EPSN* and TBS, music videos and concerts from MTVHD, the Daily Show & Colbert Report from Comedy Central, 007 Marathons and MXC from Spike, and great programs from HBO, the BBC, and AMC. I know, for a fact, that if priced with reasonable premiums, that this would cost less than the $40-50 that standard cable costs.
Honestly, and this is going to be redunant here, but the thing that is hurting the adoption of FOSS and Linux is the the group of zealots who proclaim that product X is bad because it's not FOSS. This is rubbish. For the majority of the people out there, they want something that is good enough at a price they're willing to pay. Additionally, if there was no proprietary software for Linux, there would be no Linux versions of Maya, no StarOffice, no Crossover Office or Cedega. However, there are clearly markets for these kinds of software because people view them as providing more value than anything else out there.
Likewise, if the Linux Foundation and Microsoft worked together, resulting in software that works with both platforms (e.g. a Linux version of Office; Microsoft software being able to communicate with Linux-based software; Linux-based software being able to communicate better with Microsoft software; etc) then I fail to see how, to a rational person, that this would be a Bad Thing(tm).
The whole reason why Linus created Linux was to be able to have a choice in what he used. By saying "Bah! Don't let X do this!" you're taking away their choice and undermining the whole reason of why there ever was a Linux movement.
Windows XP was released Q4 2001, Windows Vista was released Q1 2007, Windows 7 is scheduled for Q4 2009 Ignoring fact-checking and that Vista was more than 2 years past due; if Windows 7 comes out on time, wouldn't that mean that there is virtually no incentive for companies to switch to Vista? I know that corporations are very conservative and rarely jump ship to a new technology when it's untested, but seeing how much/little Microsoft's done to smooth out quirks with Vista, methinks that companies wouldn't have many more problems if they jumped over Vista to Windows 7, and it would also cut down on re-training employees from XP->Vista->7 to merely XP->7.
But will this get me around the whole "You may only access this content in Great Britain?" That's my biggest beef: the BBC doesn't allow anyone to access their content when they're out of the country. This applies not only to people who are not British residents, but also to those who are and happen to be out of the country for a brief time.
Even for people who aren't British residents, I wish that people could subscribe (yes, for a fee) to the BBC and access their domestic content. I hate only being able to access their content via BBC America. For one reason, cable companies bundle it with a bunch of other crap that I'll never, ever watch. Another is that BBCA edits material to fit more commercials and to appease all those who called and wrote the FCC about Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
Xenu, I believe. Wouldn't he actually approve of it? I haven't read the book, let alone TFA, but I would've guessed that he created the whole bittorrent protocol by means of having Thetans carry packets from computer to computer via his ginormous spaceship.
What about cultures where the first name is the surname? How are these companies going to assure those (billions of) individuals that their identifiable name is not being sold?
So where as you used to just cheekily shout "You've missed a bit!" - now you get to email them with co-ordinates and a satellite photo as proof... and then blog it all. Fuck that. I'd rather record my movements one time, then have the equivalent of a Roomba trace my route whenever I say "Go." I'd have a solar-powered mower that runs on its own while I sit on the deck reading a book.
More Linux users aren't gamers because the gamers aren't (as an overreaching generalization) switching to Linux. People don't switch platforms if the things they do aren't easier on the target platform. Gamers are no different than AutoCAD geeks or Photoshop mavens.
The old cliche "build it and they will come" applies. But in today's "gotta make the next quarter's number" world, nobody's going to build it if the customers aren't already there.
Wall St. is the bane of capitalism's existence. The problem doesn't lie with Wall St. The problem is that no company wants to be the only one to bear the weight of the investment because all of the other companies will profit maximize by writing games for Linux later and taking advantage of the time value of their money. While one company is spending so much effort to build up the Linux platform, all of the other companies continue to build for Windows and reinvest their capital in to their Windows lines. Once the Linux platform is about a year from being deemed 'developed enough,' the companies will begin to convert, but this will be several years after Company A has begun to build up the platform.
And no, ID and Epic have not built up the platform. Building up the platform would involve something along the lines of EA releasing Spore for Linux and bundling linux versions of games with companies like Dell.
Of course, the smart thing would be that ISPs distribute the content themselves, so it does not really cost them in terms of external bandwith. That's exactly what the major ISPs here plan to do with IPTV. That's great if you're able to use a major ISP. However, what about all of the people using municipal systems? What about watching a movie somewhere that doesn't have an internet connection, like in a vehicle?
Sorry, but physical media is here to stay. Sure, it'll diminish in presense, much like it has for the music industry; but the last time I checked, CD's are still selling heathily.
The rest of this aside... I don't think the last chapter of the book about Microsoft buying Yahoo! is written yet. Not that I'm predicting MS will successfully buy Yahoo! in the near future either, but I doubt the initial offer was much more than your choice of an opening gambit or a shot across the bow. It'll never pass Europe's Antitrust laws. Look at how long it took for them to approve Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. And Google didn't have any $multi-hundred-billion fines to pay the EU, either.
- GNOME needs to be more usable. Sometimes I think that it was made for 5 year olds. - Once you get over the fact that Office 2007 is not Office 2003, Office 2007 is a good example of how to make things simple AND usable. Now, as a Gnome user and not a KDE user, I'm going to pass on commenting on KDE (I'm neither going to attack it nor defend it.) However, how, exactly, is Gnome not *usable enough*? What, specifically, are usability features that GNOME lacks? Please, make a list. You state that "Office 2007 is a good example of how to make things simple AND usable." How is Gnome not usable?
The only way Linux will make significant inroads for the market share is if/when companies start creating proprietary, in-house software to run on Linux. Despite geeks' efforts to switch their friends over from Windows to a *NIX-based operating system, the only noticable inroads will come from Apple. That's mostly due to their laptops, not their desktops. Maybe when Microsoft breaks compatibility with enough DOS-based programs the companies will transition over. But until then, the cost-benefit analysis is telling them that it's not worth the effort right now.
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The problem with the product you refer to is that the display comes from above. As you can see in the picture, it projects onto the hand that's hovering over the screen. This would be a nightmare for a business application (application in the sense of usage, not program). Why? Because the point of this product is for more than one person to use it at a time.
WRT Linux, however. Have the Xorg folks gotten around to incorporating multiple pointer devices yet? I know there was talk of being able to use two mice, but the last time I checked the both controlled the same cursor.
Clinton used ethnic cleansing as his argument for getting involved in Kosovo.
Bush used "Saddam has WMD's; we know where they are!" which turned in to "Saddam had the capacity/capability to create WMD's" which turned in to "Saddam was a bad guy!" Moreover, Bush created the closest thing to a self-fulfilling prophecy when he talked about Iraq's (although he specifically said Saddam instead of Iraq) ties with Al-Qaeda.
I agree with Barton; Clinton & Bush Jr. are clearly one and the same.
Can anyone tell me what sort of hardware one needs to watch FiOS TV? If you need an equivalent of a cablebox, do the ones provided by Verizon at least have something of the equivalent of Firewire output? Or is it pretty much just component, s-vid, composite, and HDMI?
E.g. Look at Hillary.
...if women talked a little less? I think we might, just might, start listening (& hence start paying attention to what they're saying) then
What I don't respect are people who live in cities their whole lives and buy a gun by claiming to protect themselves. Out in the country? Yes; if an animal charges you, you may need a gun. In the city? I think the odds of person A being "mentally unstable" (to be P.C. Or we could just say "fucked up") enough to go in to a store and fire a gun at someone because they did nothing more than brush shoulders without apologizing, than it is for a person to:
A) Have the pistol they purchased legally on them
B) Be aware of a specific threat
C) Be able to withdraw said legal gun safely
D) Neutralize the threat without damage to anyone/anything around the threat
I say this because if the person is aware of the specific threat, odds are that they're probably being mugged or held up in some other fashion. In this event, the person who is the assaulter would be able to see the victim reach for a weapon and neutralize the victim before being attacked.
I also say the above because a very large number of victims of gun violence are innocent bystanders. Them packing a gun is not going to make them any safer, either.
But the bonds that shape the form of the surface are just as strong. The loose stuff will be able to move just as easily, but the stuff barely sticking out of the ground won't. Put a flag pole in the ground, exposing only the top foot (the rest is buried underground.) The flag pole will weigh 1/4 of its amount on Earth, but you're still going to need the same amount of force to break off that foot that's sticking above ground.
Granted, weight is not a good unit here, as the moon's gravity is around 1/4 that of the earth's (I think). But the machine looks pretty light-weight to me, especially in terms of construction equipment. How practical would this thing be? I can only see it being used as something to move a person from point A to point B. Imagining how it would use a plow is stretching my imagination.
What if they spent 5 years or however long it would take for getting these two robots to get within spitting distance of each other, then had them attack each other Battlebots style while recording the encounter with whatever orbiters Europe and the US have circling Mars?
Instead of raising prices, Sony is simply not paying a premium to have Bluray devices fly off the shelf anymore because now all it's competing against is DVD instead of HD-DVD. So, moral of the story is that, to you it may seem like a price increase, but it's really just that they're no longer on sale any more. Just like when a new album comes out: it's on sale for the first week or two so it can top Billboard and get more publicity that way; after the promotion, it costs the usual $15 instead of the promotional $10.
People are willing to pay a premium (or differential price) for channels like HBO. What makes you think it would be any different for other channels? I know I'd be willing to pay more for ESPN than whatever the average charge per channel is for standard cable. Why? Because I'm not going to lease Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, Oxygen, any religious channels, Style, Hallmark, or anything else that doesn't interest me. Instead, I would choose ESPN, ESPN2, MTVHD (since it appears to be the only MTV that plays a diverse range of music videos instead their reality TV crap), Comedy Central, Spike, AMC, TBS, BBC America, and HBO. Oh yeah, I'd also get the Big 10 Network. With that combination, I'll have all of the sports I care about from EPSN* and TBS, music videos and concerts from MTVHD, the Daily Show & Colbert Report from Comedy Central, 007 Marathons and MXC from Spike, and great programs from HBO, the BBC, and AMC. I know, for a fact, that if priced with reasonable premiums, that this would cost less than the $40-50 that standard cable costs.
Honestly, and this is going to be redunant here, but the thing that is hurting the adoption of FOSS and Linux is the the group of zealots who proclaim that product X is bad because it's not FOSS. This is rubbish. For the majority of the people out there, they want something that is good enough at a price they're willing to pay. Additionally, if there was no proprietary software for Linux, there would be no Linux versions of Maya, no StarOffice, no Crossover Office or Cedega. However, there are clearly markets for these kinds of software because people view them as providing more value than anything else out there.
Likewise, if the Linux Foundation and Microsoft worked together, resulting in software that works with both platforms (e.g. a Linux version of Office; Microsoft software being able to communicate with Linux-based software; Linux-based software being able to communicate better with Microsoft software; etc) then I fail to see how, to a rational person, that this would be a Bad Thing(tm).
The whole reason why Linus created Linux was to be able to have a choice in what he used. By saying "Bah! Don't let X do this!" you're taking away their choice and undermining the whole reason of why there ever was a Linux movement.
Windows Vista was released Q1 2007,
Windows 7 is scheduled for Q4 2009 Ignoring fact-checking and that Vista was more than 2 years past due; if Windows 7 comes out on time, wouldn't that mean that there is virtually no incentive for companies to switch to Vista? I know that corporations are very conservative and rarely jump ship to a new technology when it's untested, but seeing how much/little Microsoft's done to smooth out quirks with Vista, methinks that companies wouldn't have many more problems if they jumped over Vista to Windows 7, and it would also cut down on re-training employees from XP->Vista->7 to merely XP->7.
But will this get me around the whole "You may only access this content in Great Britain?" That's my biggest beef: the BBC doesn't allow anyone to access their content when they're out of the country. This applies not only to people who are not British residents, but also to those who are and happen to be out of the country for a brief time.
Even for people who aren't British residents, I wish that people could subscribe (yes, for a fee) to the BBC and access their domestic content. I hate only being able to access their content via BBC America. For one reason, cable companies bundle it with a bunch of other crap that I'll never, ever watch. Another is that BBCA edits material to fit more commercials and to appease all those who called and wrote the FCC about Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
What about cultures where the first name is the surname? How are these companies going to assure those (billions of) individuals that their identifiable name is not being sold?
The old cliche "build it and they will come" applies. But in today's "gotta make the next quarter's number" world, nobody's going to build it if the customers aren't already there.
Wall St. is the bane of capitalism's existence. The problem doesn't lie with Wall St. The problem is that no company wants to be the only one to bear the weight of the investment because all of the other companies will profit maximize by writing games for Linux later and taking advantage of the time value of their money. While one company is spending so much effort to build up the Linux platform, all of the other companies continue to build for Windows and reinvest their capital in to their Windows lines. Once the Linux platform is about a year from being deemed 'developed enough,' the companies will begin to convert, but this will be several years after Company A has begun to build up the platform.
And no, ID and Epic have not built up the platform. Building up the platform would involve something along the lines of EA releasing Spore for Linux and bundling linux versions of games with companies like Dell.
Sorry, but physical media is here to stay. Sure, it'll diminish in presense, much like it has for the music industry; but the last time I checked, CD's are still selling heathily.
- Once you get over the fact that Office 2007 is not Office 2003, Office 2007 is a good example of how to make things simple AND usable. Now, as a Gnome user and not a KDE user, I'm going to pass on commenting on KDE (I'm neither going to attack it nor defend it.) However, how, exactly, is Gnome not *usable enough*? What, specifically, are usability features that GNOME lacks? Please, make a list. You state that "Office 2007 is a good example of how to make things simple AND usable." How is Gnome not usable?
The only way Linux will make significant inroads for the market share is if/when companies start creating proprietary, in-house software to run on Linux. Despite geeks' efforts to switch their friends over from Windows to a *NIX-based operating system, the only noticable inroads will come from Apple. That's mostly due to their laptops, not their desktops. Maybe when Microsoft breaks compatibility with enough DOS-based programs the companies will transition over. But until then, the cost-benefit analysis is telling them that it's not worth the effort right now.
Old != Smart Get off my lawn!