Back in the day, when ISA slots were all the rage, there was this neat little add-on board that you could install in your 286 called a Copy-II-PC card. Now this lil card didn't just pop up for no reason... this was THE way to do bit-for-bit copies of floppy disks. Now some software manufacturers tried their hardest to munge up a floppy in just the right way so that the ol' DOS "diskcopy" would fail, but the Copy-II-PC card didn't miss a beat. You had to tell it which bits to copy (even bits that seemed to be borked to DOS but were actually copy protection) and with the right settings from trial and error, you could figure it out with little effort.
I guess my point is that the music industry seems to be repeating history with these copy-protection schemes. The software industry figured out that copy pro didn't work, and that anyone with $139 for a bit-board could make all the copies of the software that they wanted. So instead of spending money on copy protection, now software companies have invested in better ways of providing software (subscription services, online gaming, on-demand downloads, etc.) which people are willing to pay to use.
When is the music industry going to figure this out? It's time to change the way they do business. Don't keep trying to prevent us from copying something that we are entitled to use!! Give us a better way to buy music, create something that generates greater demand, and actually adds some VALUE and then people will begin to stop copying and pay for originals.
Is it just me, or does anyone else ever go into the SprintPCS store feeling like they are visiting a used car dealership? Besides the clientelle that always seem to be there (people arguing about roaming charges, people 90 days past-due on their bill, someone wanting to cancel service because of a divorce, etc.) the staff almost always has this shady look to them.
About the only place I hate worse than the SprintPCS store is the stupid sunglass counter at the mall.
It's about damn time that the government step in to regulate how these kinds of companies do business. This is actually helpful -- and I'd be willing to bet that in the long-term this kind of regulation actually *gasp* helps cellular companies.
Karma be damned, this can't possibly be mod'd up to a 5, can it? I don't disagree that the dates are factually accurate, but come on!
If you can't see this as inflammatory and meant to instigate people, you must be reading a different post than this one... The last line alone, '...not bad for a nation of "peace lovers"' is enough to mod this as a -1 Troll in my book.
...with the "glowing puck" is a great improvement for me. I'm a casual hockey fan and as such, I need the assistance in order to follow the play as easily. However, I'm sure that hard-core hockey fans will curse me (and the technology) and its very existance.
This is a case where MORE technology, i.e. the ability to enable/disable this feature of the broadcast would be a nice thing to offer. Would I pay a subscription service for this alone? No. But if the technology were included in a satellite package versus one which didn't offer the feature, I'd likely pay a little bit extra just to get the option.
...the CDMA carriers (SprintPCS and Verizon) will have 2Mbps 1xEVDO (TRUE 3G networks) up and active. The biggest single limiting factor to creating a wireless infrastructure is that somewhere it has to tie into fibre optics. Wireless carriers, nacent though the technology is today, have this figured out. Some xx,000 wireless radio towers all terminate at a base station connected to real telco networks.
Creating new wireless networks for purposes of roaming inside a metropolitan area seems like a big waste of resources -- especially considering that wireless carriers have already figured this out.
When your company name becomes a verb (google): to search for something; I'm going to google for that computer part you know that you're onto something.
Google has survived the dot.com bubble burst because they offer a great service that people want. The natural thing for most companies (brick and mortar or otherwise) is to spin-off and leverage the successful business model into something that will grow their company.
Well, despite the negative comments at the head of the Slashdot article, I think that this is actually a good thing. Let more tablet PC alternatives enter the market so we can really test the usability factor of !!!OMG!!! different ways in which we use computers.
I don't think there are many./'ers who don't agree that market forces are how we weed out what is really good and what really stinks. If the company manufacturing these happens to stumble onto a new idea that changes the way in which we compute, they'll succeed fiscally, and hopefully shift (for the better) the way we use laptops and mobile computers. If, on the other hand, this turns out to be another lead-balloon idea based on the notion that "a fool and his money are soon parted" that will play out as well.
I, for one, am excited to see different form factors for mobile platforms. I admit I'm a compute gadget fan, but that's the only way we can improve the status quo.
When I look at areas where both Gnome and KDE can both improve, I see the basics. Things like printing. Things like sound setup. CDRW... DVD... improved.jpg and.tiff and other image management & manipulation.
I know the immediate, knee-jerk response is going to be that there are great programs out there which handle all of the things I listed above. The problem is they aren't as integrated into either Gnome or KDE as they SHOULD be. Whether we like it or not, the Microsoft Windows 2k & XP interface is the gold standard for how applications are integrated into the desktop.
What we should be thinking of is how we simplify the integration of applications into both KDE and Gnome desktops.
Do arcades actually make any money these days? Short of the kid's pizzarias / party places, I can't think of an "arcade" that has a hope of making money. Even the biggies like Dave & Busters seem to make much more profit on the food and beer than on the arcade games.
It seems to me that Microsoft may be dumping these into arcades simply to get enthusiasm up around the XBox so they can traffic more units to the home user. After all, didn't Bill commit that they were going to lose quite a sum on these before profitability was in sight?
I mean come on! Changing the keyboards now would be like changing all the highways in america from the width they are now to half as wide to accomidate smaller, faster (albeit narrower) cars!
But in all seriousness, everything I need to do in programming and even quite a lot of word processing (I was using vi for corporate memos until about 1999 when I was forced to use a Word compatible program) I can do without my fingers leaving their home positions on the keyboards. We don't need better keyboards -- or better mice for that matter. What we really need are better applications that either dynamically adapt to the condition at the time, or take better advantage of the hardware that we've got.
Before, the chant was "High MHz good! Higher MHz better! GHz is the best!" Now, since the general public is no longer susceptible to the pimply-faced kid at CompUSA who convinces ma & paw that a 2.4GHz is indeed 17% faster than a 2.0GHz, Intel needs to shift gears and change their tune.
The really sad part about the entire remarketing campaign is that they will get away with it. The general public has a very short memory for these kinds of stunts -- just look at how well Microsoft is doing after countless screwings over of the populace. Windows ME anyone?
The thing to remember is that with enough marketing funds, you can indeed have success even selling snow to eskimos.
Mod me as a troll, I don't care... this is absurd. Microsoft corporation has proven time and time again that they can't grasp fundamental security practices or concepts. Now, instead of having a boss (BillG) whose motivation is profit, we've got a security chief whose boss (GBush / JAshcroft) who wants to rob us of our civil liberties.
Verisign wants to do this. I mean, since the bubble popped, trading on a name alone doesn't carry much weight, and that is the only reason I can understand that they might want to resurrect the dead...
It's hard to get excited about 144Kbps when 802.11 hotspots are popping up like wildfire. The math is easy to figure out... 11M vs 144K. Granted, I can't drive through town downloading email while in my car over roaming hotspots ((yet)) but then again, the likelyhood of getting dropped by Sprint PCS even in major corridors makes that a "so-what" in my book.
The real reason that CDMA gets me excited is as an augmentation to WLAN connections. To at least have some net connectivity if I'm hopping between hotspots. Not as a replacement for high-speed connections. The ILECs and other broadband carriers have nothing to fear from CDMA and should begin to embrace working together with them.
Why? Because at the end of the day, it's still cheaper, faster, and better to have your connection over physical fibre and no wireless carrier in the world can replace the stuff that is already buried in the ground.
Does this mean the return of cache engines??
on
Yahoo Buying Inktomi
·
· Score: 1
Recently Inktomi bowed out of the cache server business. They cited a number of reasons including considerably reduced revenues from cache software business... but I can't help but wonder if this really was the case of if Inktomi's core competency wasn't search engines. I hope that Yahoo considers reviving the Inktomi cache server systems.
Call me a cynic, but the reality is that the PC industry needs a new reason to sell boxen. This is the next wave of marketing from the big three (two?) PC manufacturers along side of Micro$oft -- create fear, uncertainty and doubt among the majority of PC users who don't know any better and convince them that they need the new *secure* computers along with the latest generation of Windows crap.
Or create a Windows Media PC that allows you to plug your computer seamlessly into your entertainment centre and TV at home -- everyone knows we can't do that today (sarcasm).
The other huge push of course will be the.NET revolution that MS believes will snare all the unwitting mom&pop operations and casual users. And mark my words -- that 1999 Compaq PC that grandma has sitting on her desk at home just won't cut the mustard on the MS controlled.NET-enabled Internet.
It is truly sad, but the computer industry has sunk to the "whiter-than-white" marketing driven society that we all live in today. Intel, Microsoft, HP, etc. all step in line because they know that it's the only way they are gonna sell new computers. What's the world going to be like in 5 years? Hard to say -- but at the rate we are going now, it'll look an awful lot like today but with more widgets and gadgets than we ever need. And I'll still be typing away on my PII-400MHz and accessing the 'net via outdated software.
Insert Obligatory BUG Comment Here...
on
Ants Invade iBook
·
· Score: -1, Redundant
Introducing Red Hat Linux 8.0, a user-friendly Linux operating system.
OK but does it pass the Grandma test? I can just hear myself now, "OK Grandma, type vee-eye "frontslash" etc/hosts... no wait, frontslash... no, not the one above the RETURN key... wait, yours is called the ENTER key?" Still, the "dumbing down" of the interface all in all is a great step in the right direction to capturing new mindshare.
Life on Uranus?
on
Life on Pluto?
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
This just underscores the need for a new, novel, music distribution system that allows the music conglomerates to receive money for sales of the songs their artists record & sing. The PIN system is nothing new... this gimmick has been around for quite some time. All that most of us want is to be able to buy the songs we like with the FREEDOM to use the music as we like (computer, mp3 player, car stereo, home entertainment centre, etc.).
Unfortunately, the result of this infringement will likly just cause the music industry to go back to their pet senators for exceptions or maybe even buying out the patent rights so that they can perpetuate the crap system that exists today.
from the article...
Technology like clustering would be better in Windows than Linux eventually, said Ballmer: "We will beat Linux on clusters."...
As long as you have an OS whose GUI cannot be separated from the rest of the kernel, you'll NEVER have the true clustering capabilities that you have in UNIX/Linux systems today. Not only can you cluster for high availability but you can cluster for computing capacity -- I challenge Microsoft to create a solution that dares compete.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day, when ISA slots were all the rage, there was this neat little add-on board that you could install in your 286 called a Copy-II-PC card. Now this lil card didn't just pop up for no reason... this was THE way to do bit-for-bit copies of floppy disks. Now some software manufacturers tried their hardest to munge up a floppy in just the right way so that the ol' DOS "diskcopy" would fail, but the Copy-II-PC card didn't miss a beat. You had to tell it which bits to copy (even bits that seemed to be borked to DOS but were actually copy protection) and with the right settings from trial and error, you could figure it out with little effort.
I guess my point is that the music industry seems to be repeating history with these copy-protection schemes. The software industry figured out that copy pro didn't work, and that anyone with $139 for a bit-board could make all the copies of the software that they wanted. So instead of spending money on copy protection, now software companies have invested in better ways of providing software (subscription services, online gaming, on-demand downloads, etc.) which people are willing to pay to use.
When is the music industry going to figure this out? It's time to change the way they do business. Don't keep trying to prevent us from copying something that we are entitled to use!! Give us a better way to buy music, create something that generates greater demand, and actually adds some VALUE and then people will begin to stop copying and pay for originals.
Is it just me, or does anyone else ever go into the SprintPCS store feeling like they are visiting a used car dealership? Besides the clientelle that always seem to be there (people arguing about roaming charges, people 90 days past-due on their bill, someone wanting to cancel service because of a divorce, etc.) the staff almost always has this shady look to them.
About the only place I hate worse than the SprintPCS store is the stupid sunglass counter at the mall.
It's about damn time that the government step in to regulate how these kinds of companies do business. This is actually helpful -- and I'd be willing to bet that in the long-term this kind of regulation actually *gasp* helps cellular companies.
Karma be damned, this can't possibly be mod'd up to a 5, can it? I don't disagree that the dates are factually accurate, but come on!
If you can't see this as inflammatory and meant to instigate people, you must be reading a different post than this one... The last line alone, '...not bad for a nation of "peace lovers"' is enough to mod this as a -1 Troll in my book.
...with the "glowing puck" is a great improvement for me. I'm a casual hockey fan and as such, I need the assistance in order to follow the play as easily. However, I'm sure that hard-core hockey fans will curse me (and the technology) and its very existance.
This is a case where MORE technology, i.e. the ability to enable/disable this feature of the broadcast would be a nice thing to offer. Would I pay a subscription service for this alone? No. But if the technology were included in a satellite package versus one which didn't offer the feature, I'd likely pay a little bit extra just to get the option.
Total Pandemonium!!!
hehehe...
...the CDMA carriers (SprintPCS and Verizon) will have 2Mbps 1xEVDO (TRUE 3G networks) up and active. The biggest single limiting factor to creating a wireless infrastructure is that somewhere it has to tie into fibre optics. Wireless carriers, nacent though the technology is today, have this figured out. Some xx,000 wireless radio towers all terminate at a base station connected to real telco networks.
Creating new wireless networks for purposes of roaming inside a metropolitan area seems like a big waste of resources -- especially considering that wireless carriers have already figured this out.
These and a DOS floppy with the right kinds of tools (fdisk, format, edit, etc.) have saved my bacon so many times that I've lost count.
go check out the lyrics for Aenema at http://www.purelyrics.com/index.php? lyrics=utorsdph -- and 7 years early!
When your company name becomes a verb (google): to search for something; I'm going to google for that computer part you know that you're onto something.
Google has survived the dot.com bubble burst because they offer a great service that people want. The natural thing for most companies (brick and mortar or otherwise) is to spin-off and leverage the successful business model into something that will grow their company.
Well, despite the negative comments at the head of the Slashdot article, I think that this is actually a good thing. Let more tablet PC alternatives enter the market so we can really test the usability factor of !!!OMG!!! different ways in which we use computers.
I don't think there are many ./'ers who don't agree that market forces are how we weed out what is really good and what really stinks. If the company manufacturing these happens to stumble onto a new idea that changes the way in which we compute, they'll succeed fiscally, and hopefully shift (for the better) the way we use laptops and mobile computers. If, on the other hand, this turns out to be another lead-balloon idea based on the notion that "a fool and his money are soon parted" that will play out as well.
I, for one, am excited to see different form factors for mobile platforms. I admit I'm a compute gadget fan, but that's the only way we can improve the status quo.
When I look at areas where both Gnome and KDE can both improve, I see the basics. Things like printing. Things like sound setup. CDRW... DVD... improved .jpg and .tiff and other image management & manipulation.
I know the immediate, knee-jerk response is going to be that there are great programs out there which handle all of the things I listed above. The problem is they aren't as integrated into either Gnome or KDE as they SHOULD be. Whether we like it or not, the Microsoft Windows 2k & XP interface is the gold standard for how applications are integrated into the desktop.
What we should be thinking of is how we simplify the integration of applications into both KDE and Gnome desktops.
Do arcades actually make any money these days? Short of the kid's pizzarias / party places, I can't think of an "arcade" that has a hope of making money. Even the biggies like Dave & Busters seem to make much more profit on the food and beer than on the arcade games.
It seems to me that Microsoft may be dumping these into arcades simply to get enthusiasm up around the XBox so they can traffic more units to the home user. After all, didn't Bill commit that they were going to lose quite a sum on these before profitability was in sight?
I mean come on! Changing the keyboards now would be like changing all the highways in america from the width they are now to half as wide to accomidate smaller, faster (albeit narrower) cars!
But in all seriousness, everything I need to do in programming and even quite a lot of word processing (I was using vi for corporate memos until about 1999 when I was forced to use a Word compatible program) I can do without my fingers leaving their home positions on the keyboards. We don't need better keyboards -- or better mice for that matter. What we really need are better applications that either dynamically adapt to the condition at the time, or take better advantage of the hardware that we've got.
Before, the chant was "High MHz good! Higher MHz better! GHz is the best!" Now, since the general public is no longer susceptible to the pimply-faced kid at CompUSA who convinces ma & paw that a 2.4GHz is indeed 17% faster than a 2.0GHz, Intel needs to shift gears and change their tune.
The really sad part about the entire remarketing campaign is that they will get away with it. The general public has a very short memory for these kinds of stunts -- just look at how well Microsoft is doing after countless screwings over of the populace. Windows ME anyone?
The thing to remember is that with enough marketing funds, you can indeed have success even selling snow to eskimos.
Mod me as a troll, I don't care... this is absurd. Microsoft corporation has proven time and time again that they can't grasp fundamental security practices or concepts. Now, instead of having a boss (BillG) whose motivation is profit, we've got a security chief whose boss (GBush / JAshcroft) who wants to rob us of our civil liberties.
Bruce Schneier for Security Chief!!!!
Verisign wants to do this. I mean, since the bubble popped, trading on a name alone doesn't carry much weight, and that is the only reason I can understand that they might want to resurrect the dead...
It's hard to get excited about 144Kbps when 802.11 hotspots are popping up like wildfire. The math is easy to figure out... 11M vs 144K. Granted, I can't drive through town downloading email while in my car over roaming hotspots ((yet)) but then again, the likelyhood of getting dropped by Sprint PCS even in major corridors makes that a "so-what" in my book.
The real reason that CDMA gets me excited is as an augmentation to WLAN connections. To at least have some net connectivity if I'm hopping between hotspots. Not as a replacement for high-speed connections. The ILECs and other broadband carriers have nothing to fear from CDMA and should begin to embrace working together with them.
Why? Because at the end of the day, it's still cheaper, faster, and better to have your connection over physical fibre and no wireless carrier in the world can replace the stuff that is already buried in the ground.
Recently Inktomi bowed out of the cache server business. They cited a number of reasons including considerably reduced revenues from cache software business... but I can't help but wonder if this really was the case of if Inktomi's core competency wasn't search engines. I hope that Yahoo considers reviving the Inktomi cache server systems.
...was 1988. I must be old if I remember that. Now someone hand me my walker and Metamucil.
Path
Call me a cynic, but the reality is that the PC industry needs a new reason to sell boxen. This is the next wave of marketing from the big three (two?) PC manufacturers along side of Micro$oft -- create fear, uncertainty and doubt among the majority of PC users who don't know any better and convince them that they need the new *secure* computers along with the latest generation of Windows crap.
Or create a Windows Media PC that allows you to plug your computer seamlessly into your entertainment centre and TV at home -- everyone knows we can't do that today (sarcasm).
The other huge push of course will be the .NET revolution that MS believes will snare all the unwitting mom&pop operations and casual users. And mark my words -- that 1999 Compaq PC that grandma has sitting on her desk at home just won't cut the mustard on the MS controlled .NET-enabled Internet.
It is truly sad, but the computer industry has sunk to the "whiter-than-white" marketing driven society that we all live in today. Intel, Microsoft, HP, etc. all step in line because they know that it's the only way they are gonna sell new computers. What's the world going to be like in 5 years? Hard to say -- but at the rate we are going now, it'll look an awful lot like today but with more widgets and gadgets than we ever need. And I'll still be typing away on my PII-400MHz and accessing the 'net via outdated software.
ok, ok... it had to be said.
Introducing Red Hat Linux 8.0, a user-friendly Linux operating system.
OK but does it pass the Grandma test? I can just hear myself now, "OK Grandma, type vee-eye "frontslash" etc/hosts... no wait, frontslash... no, not the one above the RETURN key... wait, yours is called the ENTER key?" Still, the "dumbing down" of the interface all in all is a great step in the right direction to capturing new mindshare.
sorry... had to post it!
This just underscores the need for a new, novel, music distribution system that allows the music conglomerates to receive money for sales of the songs their artists record & sing. The PIN system is nothing new... this gimmick has been around for quite some time. All that most of us want is to be able to buy the songs we like with the FREEDOM to use the music as we like (computer, mp3 player, car stereo, home entertainment centre, etc.).
Unfortunately, the result of this infringement will likly just cause the music industry to go back to their pet senators for exceptions or maybe even buying out the patent rights so that they can perpetuate the crap system that exists today.
from the article... Technology like clustering would be better in Windows than Linux eventually, said Ballmer: "We will beat Linux on clusters." ...
As long as you have an OS whose GUI cannot be separated from the rest of the kernel, you'll NEVER have the true clustering capabilities that you have in UNIX/Linux systems today. Not only can you cluster for high availability but you can cluster for computing capacity -- I challenge Microsoft to create a solution that dares compete.