what kind of machine does Stephan Hawking use nowadays? Last I heard him in early 90's, he was still using 80286 based machine. Today's PDAs running at 400 MHz, 32 bit, should atleast be 50 times faster.
Even if the format is xml, that doesn't do anything. after all, we do understand "1" and "0", does it mean, decoding.doc binary format is trivial? openoffice.org not only wants to come out with XML format, but each elements in it will have a well defined interpretation (which is what is not fully known for MS Word and other word processors). Currently, the only generic standard for document exchange using XML is HTML. All other XML standards are based on vertical markets.
If there is a well defined format for generic documents, then that would benefit a lot. E.g. you would be able to do "grep" on presentation doc just as easily as ascii docs. It would also simplify conversion from one format to another easily by using this common format as intermediate. If there are N formats for docs and if we want conversion between all of them, we need N*(N-1) filters. If there is a common format, we only need 2*N filters. Thus conversion between WordPerfect and Word can go like: WordPerfect-->Common-->Word.
there is plenty of dark fiber available. the problem is that of last mile. the wireless solution offers excellent choice atleast in not too dense areas and specially where dark fiber capacity is available. 802.11b/a are just the starting point. there is plenty of unused spectrum available once you go above 25 GHz for which the technology is still sitting in the lab.
Dell has $50 off on the very first day of sale. this gives a new meaning to MSRP. Dell is the manufacturer, seller, promoter everything. on the very first unit they sell, they call it $50 off. $50 off of what?
in another news, book publishers association has banned selling books to people who can write or type. "once you can type, you can copy a book and sell or share a pirated book", says one of the top publisher spokesperson on condition of anonymity. this means, many internet book publishers will not be able to sell the books to people who are not using voice interactive browsers like IE. they would only be allowed to place order via voice, including credit card information. in another news, USA has banned teaching writing in schools. "Writing will only be taught on need basis in advanced courses", says LA school board district administrator.
how is this different from using a small machine with a minimal OS and a VNC client connected to some machine with VNC server running? Such a terminal will allow accessing any machine (not just PC running XP). Well may be it has SSL style authentication (the number 1 drawback of VNC in my opinion). MS seems to be desparate in expanding in non-pc software: XBox, Tablet PC, Pocket PC, etc...
"No matter how fast they make the drivers, no matter how much they optimize it - a client-server based desktop environment is ALWAYS going to be slower than a non-c/s solution"
Slower by how much percentage? 0.1? It is like saying, you won't take bath in ocean because fish f**k in it. I not only use X, but use VNC client exclusively on my laptop to access all my unix/linux boxes at work and haven't felt it slow. I access the same sessions from home/work/travel etc. BTW, I do heavy development work on unix/linux. I use windows a lot, however not because of X on unix. In fact, I consider X to be number one point of using Unix. Look at VNC on PC and you would know (it typically eats 20-30% CPU on 1GHz PC vs less than 1% on 400 MHz Linux). My reason for using windows are:
Lack of good fonts. They are improving and now a days a well tuned linux has quality comparable to PC. Still Unix boxes don't have good fonts or the apps don't use them correctly.
Many stupid websites shut you out, if you don't use Netscape or IE. I hate Netscape as a browser (though it is my exclusive mail client and HTML editor). On windows, I use IE for those sites and Opera otherwise.
I have a laptop which came pre-installed with windows and no media. Due to lack of time and media for XP, didn't feel like playing with Linux. Even if I could, the only use of this laptop is to browse, access unix/linux machines and view photo/video taken with digital camera/camcorder. Linux has no advantage in this space. For other machines, I use Linux/Unix.
I guess, X has something which windows never had and most likely won't have for ages. It is stupidity of Unix/Linux marketing folks for not exploiting this advantage.
Your second point:
"There's no accountability for bugs, so they're only fixed when someone feels like it."
You are comparing commercial apps in windows with free apps on Linux. I use almost all commercial only apps on Unix/Linux, and can vouch that there are far less failures on unix/linux than on windows. Just last night, my XP started acting weird on network (it was booted in morning), so I tried to shut down. Well shutdown hung too! I had to hard boot it. While I reboot my XP about once a day (haven't seen uptime more than 1 week on reasonably used XP and more than 2 weeks on NT) while all other unix/linux boxes that I remotely access, are booted once a quarter or so (typically for adding some OS patches) and they are used much more heavily.
I guess, Linux/Unix folks would rather be without U than be without X (pun intended).
the biggest cost is the capital cost for solar power. 8-9K is a lot of money. True, the ROI calculations will show 5 year return, but it is very unlikely that households will invest 8-9K on a new untested technology. The only way this would work, is if there are some major players who would install it across a large community and then include the cost in HOA. Until that happens, individual home owners will be reluctant. Also, the businesses also needs to take lead before individuals do. Forget about solar power, we haven't seen people paying extra for car fuel efficiency which is much well understood by consumers.
we keep on talking about all these new batteries, but still continue to use the oldest battery system, that is lead acid. when counted in total energy, this is the most commonly used battery types in the world. until, i see some replacement of this, it would be hard to believe that battery industry has changed dramatically.
there was some thread on slashdot about 50 year nuclear energy battery. that reminds of a watch made by Westinghouse in early 90s which used to claim 25 year battery. Does anyone remember the details and if it is still available in market (or similar ones)? I never saw the real watch anywhere but had seen lots of ads in trade magazines.
they should start upgrade service. e.g. BMG should allow purchase of one new CD for the return of 2-3 old BMG CDs. This will encourage people to buy more CDs and recycle old used ones. (i know many people who simply buy old CDs because they are as good as new). Since the vendor discount is higher than the resale value of CD, most people will trade-in rather than selling it. With less used CDs in the market, they can sell more new ones.
BusinessWorld is quite a famous magazine in India. However, I was surprised to see that the entire site didn't have any advertizement. Also the cover shows the retail price to be Re.5 which is equivalent of US 10 cents. Also the article is quite thorough in its coverage and analysis.
"Couldn't you sue the people misusing the trademark, for fraud or something?"
Not unless you own the said trademark. That is why you sue Philips which in turn would be required to do one of the three things: 1) sue the trademark violators 2) Lose the trademark 3) publicly accept the fact that CDDA logo doesn't guarantee compatibility (in which case the trademark loses its value). The option 2 and 3 are bad for Philips, so they will adopt option 1.
if you copyprotect music on CD, then it is no more audio CD, it is data CD. And as we know, data CDs are more friendlier to computer CD drives than to audio CD players. As such, it will cause more harm playing on non-upgradable audio CD players, while computer CD drive manufacturers would issue a simple patch.
CDDA is a trademarked logo (owned by Philips?). If you have a non-defective CD with CDDA logo and a player with CDDA logo but not compatible with each other, then sue Philips. Trademark laws in USA says that either you protect your trademark or lose it. Either Philips have to publicly announce that CDDA logo doesn't guarantee compatibility or they would lose the trademark (for allowing improper usage).
How do they sense shells? Rockets are easier to sense because of extra gas and heat emitted. Shells are passive, small in size and virtually invisible (specially because of its motion and high altitude).
Microsoft, Intel and other big companies drive consumer psychology to define "what is needed". Thus they control the mindset, e.g. "GHz+ PC is NEEDED". Other than gaming, nearly 90%+ consumer PCs that I have seen, can accomplish their task with just 100-300 MHz processor with CPU load of 20-40%. Tablet PC? Who needs one? Not until MS, Intel scream loudly. Then all of sudden, students will be required to have one (note that some colleges require laptop with MS OS on it).
My wife did a course on Unix at UC-Berkeley. AOL, PC, MS Office were required for that course. This is the success story of AOL-Intel-MS which managed to sell themselves to a Unix student at UCB. Transmeta is just not big enough to sell themselves in a crowded market all by itself. Linux will not help them. They will need Microsoft support (who else can help them in x86 market). Most likely, even MS will not help them. They will exploit Transmeta to force Intel and AMD to come up with low-cost technology for tablet-pc that they won't to push through consumer's throat.
Toyota has come out with a car CD player which doubles as a coffee cup holder.
Frankly, what is the advantage of combining mouse with a laser pointer? I can get laser pointer as cheap as USD-10 and size of a small key-chain. Besides, during presentation, I don't run the risk of draining mouse battery power, which if exhausted would put me in more trouble.
It would have been great, if they had come out with two separate devices but with some mechanical coupling, so that they can be held together as if it is 1.
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what kind of machine does Stephan Hawking use nowadays? Last I heard him in early 90's, he was still using 80286 based machine. Today's PDAs running at 400 MHz, 32 bit, should atleast be 50 times faster.
the female contraceptive pills biggest advantage is that if females don't take it, they suffer.
If there is a well defined format for generic documents, then that would benefit a lot. E.g. you would be able to do "grep" on presentation doc just as easily as ascii docs. It would also simplify conversion from one format to another easily by using this common format as intermediate. If there are N formats for docs and if we want conversion between all of them, we need N*(N-1) filters. If there is a common format, we only need 2*N filters. Thus conversion between WordPerfect and Word can go like: WordPerfect-->Common-->Word.
there is plenty of dark fiber available. the problem is that of last mile. the wireless solution offers excellent choice atleast in not too dense areas and specially where dark fiber capacity is available. 802.11b/a are just the starting point. there is plenty of unused spectrum available once you go above 25 GHz for which the technology is still sitting in the lab.
Dell has $50 off on the very first day of sale. this gives a new meaning to MSRP. Dell is the manufacturer, seller, promoter everything. on the very first unit they sell, they call it $50 off. $50 off of what?
in another news, book publishers association has banned selling books to people who can write or type. "once you can type, you can copy a book and sell or share a pirated book", says one of the top publisher spokesperson on condition of anonymity. this means, many internet book publishers will not be able to sell the books to people who are not using voice interactive browsers like IE. they would only be allowed to place order via voice, including credit card information. in another news, USA has banned teaching writing in schools. "Writing will only be taught on need basis in advanced courses", says LA school board district administrator.
how is this different from using a small machine with a minimal OS and a VNC client connected to some machine with VNC server running? Such a terminal will allow accessing any machine (not just PC running XP). Well may be it has SSL style authentication (the number 1 drawback of VNC in my opinion). MS seems to be desparate in expanding in non-pc software: XBox, Tablet PC, Pocket PC, etc...
Slower by how much percentage? 0.1? It is like saying, you won't take bath in ocean because fish f**k in it. I not only use X, but use VNC client exclusively on my laptop to access all my unix/linux boxes at work and haven't felt it slow. I access the same sessions from home/work/travel etc. BTW, I do heavy development work on unix/linux. I use windows a lot, however not because of X on unix. In fact, I consider X to be number one point of using Unix. Look at VNC on PC and you would know (it typically eats 20-30% CPU on 1GHz PC vs less than 1% on 400 MHz Linux). My reason for using windows are:
Lack of good fonts. They are improving and now a days a well tuned linux has quality comparable to PC. Still Unix boxes don't have good fonts or the apps don't use them correctly.
Many stupid websites shut you out, if you don't use Netscape or IE. I hate Netscape as a browser (though it is my exclusive mail client and HTML editor). On windows, I use IE for those sites and Opera otherwise.
I have a laptop which came pre-installed with windows and no media. Due to lack of time and media for XP, didn't feel like playing with Linux. Even if I could, the only use of this laptop is to browse, access unix/linux machines and view photo/video taken with digital camera/camcorder. Linux has no advantage in this space. For other machines, I use Linux/Unix.
I guess, X has something which windows never had and most likely won't have for ages. It is stupidity of Unix/Linux marketing folks for not exploiting this advantage. Your second point: "There's no accountability for bugs, so they're only fixed when someone feels like it."
You are comparing commercial apps in windows with free apps on Linux. I use almost all commercial only apps on Unix/Linux, and can vouch that there are far less failures on unix/linux than on windows. Just last night, my XP started acting weird on network (it was booted in morning), so I tried to shut down. Well shutdown hung too! I had to hard boot it. While I reboot my XP about once a day (haven't seen uptime more than 1 week on reasonably used XP and more than 2 weeks on NT) while all other unix/linux boxes that I remotely access, are booted once a quarter or so (typically for adding some OS patches) and they are used much more heavily.
I guess, Linux/Unix folks would rather be without U than be without X (pun intended).
Does anyone want 40" knife in kitchen? yes, if you just want to play games with it.
the biggest cost is the capital cost for solar power. 8-9K is a lot of money. True, the ROI calculations will show 5 year return, but it is very unlikely that households will invest 8-9K on a new untested technology. The only way this would work, is if there are some major players who would install it across a large community and then include the cost in HOA. Until that happens, individual home owners will be reluctant. Also, the businesses also needs to take lead before individuals do. Forget about solar power, we haven't seen people paying extra for car fuel efficiency which is much well understood by consumers.
we keep on talking about all these new batteries, but still continue to use the oldest battery system, that is lead acid. when counted in total energy, this is the most commonly used battery types in the world. until, i see some replacement of this, it would be hard to believe that battery industry has changed dramatically.
there was some thread on slashdot about 50 year nuclear energy battery. that reminds of a watch made by Westinghouse in early 90s which used to claim 25 year battery. Does anyone remember the details and if it is still available in market (or similar ones)? I never saw the real watch anywhere but had seen lots of ads in trade magazines.
if stan lee wants to make profit, he should open source his characters.
Quite frankly, we typically blame things which we can't understand, on something which is even harder to understand.
they should start upgrade service. e.g. BMG should allow purchase of one new CD for the return of 2-3 old BMG CDs. This will encourage people to buy more CDs and recycle old used ones. (i know many people who simply buy old CDs because they are as good as new). Since the vendor discount is higher than the resale value of CD, most people will trade-in rather than selling it. With less used CDs in the market, they can sell more new ones.
BusinessWorld is quite a famous magazine in India. However, I was surprised to see that the entire site didn't have any advertizement. Also the cover shows the retail price to be Re.5 which is equivalent of US 10 cents. Also the article is quite thorough in its coverage and analysis.
yeah, and i have a even more smarter browser. it encrypts all displayed images, so no one knows that the image on the screen is p0xxxrn.
1) Moon landing 2) Holocaust 3) Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombs 4) Cuban missile crisis 5) Elvis Presley dead 6) 9/11 ...
Not unless you own the said trademark. That is why you sue Philips which in turn would be required to do one of the three things: 1) sue the trademark violators 2) Lose the trademark 3) publicly accept the fact that CDDA logo doesn't guarantee compatibility (in which case the trademark loses its value). The option 2 and 3 are bad for Philips, so they will adopt option 1.
if you copyprotect music on CD, then it is no more audio CD, it is data CD. And as we know, data CDs are more friendlier to computer CD drives than to audio CD players. As such, it will cause more harm playing on non-upgradable audio CD players, while computer CD drive manufacturers would issue a simple patch.
CDDA is a trademarked logo (owned by Philips?). If you have a non-defective CD with CDDA logo and a player with CDDA logo but not compatible with each other, then sue Philips. Trademark laws in USA says that either you protect your trademark or lose it. Either Philips have to publicly announce that CDDA logo doesn't guarantee compatibility or they would lose the trademark (for allowing improper usage).
How do they sense shells? Rockets are easier to sense because of extra gas and heat emitted. Shells are passive, small in size and virtually invisible (specially because of its motion and high altitude).
My wife did a course on Unix at UC-Berkeley. AOL, PC, MS Office were required for that course. This is the success story of AOL-Intel-MS which managed to sell themselves to a Unix student at UCB. Transmeta is just not big enough to sell themselves in a crowded market all by itself. Linux will not help them. They will need Microsoft support (who else can help them in x86 market). Most likely, even MS will not help them. They will exploit Transmeta to force Intel and AMD to come up with low-cost technology for tablet-pc that they won't to push through consumer's throat.
though I wish this was really true, but unfortunately, it is just a joke.
Frankly, what is the advantage of combining mouse with a laser pointer? I can get laser pointer as cheap as USD-10 and size of a small key-chain. Besides, during presentation, I don't run the risk of draining mouse battery power, which if exhausted would put me in more trouble.
It would have been great, if they had come out with two separate devices but with some mechanical coupling, so that they can be held together as if it is 1.