"the company has now announced what it believes to be the first commercially-viable implementation of silicon-on-insulator (SOI)"
so the guy's theories on patents could be valid, though they'd be patents on how to make SOI manufacturable and not on the technology itself. The article also says that it was used for simpler electronics because no one before could figure out how to make a modern processor with SOI.
I can understand this, but the challenges remain. In order to balance like a human being, the mecha will have to have a lot of the same flexibility and dexterity -- not impossible but incredibly hard.
The huge robotic legs (and arms!) will have to be incredibly sensitive and effective to pick up the subtle movements required to even just stand in place. I'm sure he's going to have to figure out how to use proportional control. That is, I think he needs to move a limb slightly and slowly or fast and with more force in order to balance and move like a human. I'm not sure how you'd do this without sensors and computers providing control of motors....
Basically, the input required to move a massive and heavy robot arm is different than the movement we might make with a human arm. Since it's more massive / dense / heavy / powerful than a human arm, complicated inputs (reverse power before you need to stop a movement so you don't overshoot your desired position, yet complete movement ASAP) are required for any movement. This analysis is the sort of thing we do subconsciously with our muscles when we move our own limbs, but isn't reflected in the movement itself. Nor is the "controls" that is used by my brain and human arm the same that would be required for an arm with different dynamics.
So if I rigged a big robotic arm to follow my movements it would have to have computer intelligence that takes into account the dynamics (inertia, degrees of freedom, etc.) of the arm in order to achieve the desired movement. Without computers, the arm will most likely wail around wildly as it tries to match my movement (see below on bang-bang versus proportional control -- well written IMHO). Bang-bang controls are doable mechanically (as simple as switches that trigger movement), and I can only think of one example of proportional control done without computers (James Watt and his flyball governor). I'm sure there are others but purely mechanical proportional control is the exception (and harder to do than to just use a computer).
I don't understand how the movement will work if he sticks to not using computers for this reason. "No computer on huge heavy powerful limbs" equals "hard to control movement" equals "hard to walk!"
It is entirely possible that I just don't get it; I just think that a lot of the difficulties in making a robot walk this way are easy to understate since we walk without having to think about everything that has to go on for us to balance on our two legs, or even just move our limbs.
Don't get me wrong, ever since Robotech I share this dream, and I am very curious to be proven wrong. Hell, I'd be one of the first in line to order one from him it works (well, I'd have to win the lotto first). He does seem convinced that it's going to work out: he's already got plans to sell prototypes when the bugs are all ironed out.
I found this link on controls that mentions at the bottom
Proportional control makes systems run smoother than bang-bang. Most biological systems are proportional, while many engineered and all too many political and social systems are bang-bang
Yeah, I'd hate to be negative (and this is a totally cool project, kudos to the guy) but that's the first thing I thought: getting this thing to walk around is going to be a challenge.
However, he's not trying to build an automonous robot like Honda or Sony. To me it seems that an exoskeleton is the place to start: if it wasn't for the fact that walking upright on two legs is a bit of a controls hat-trick!
I'd imagine that a robot on wheels, with arms that move as you move your own arms would be a more attainable first step for a hobby.
Then again, maybe this guy really does have some clever ideas as to how to walk around without tipping over... still, can you imagine the complexity of staying upright while you lift and lug heavy things around? Heck, even leaning against something to push it while on two robotic legs is complicated, much less ripping up trees by the roots and swinging them over your head Anime-style (I exaggerate, but this more or less seems to be the goal).
Being paid to produce a product isn't mutually exclusive with the deal being a subsidy. In fact, in my mind subsidies do require that you produce something, just at at elevated artificial profitability (thanks to taxpayers).
Not having a wide range of companies competing for contracts makes deals more likely to be, essentially, subsidies ("name your price, any price!").
in the end you agree with the guy you're replying to -- if patents were enforced back then the way they are enforced in the US it would have hindered innovation and competition. Sort of the exact opposite reason why patents are tolerated (I think his point).
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (amongst others, of course) who wrote eloquently why patents should only be tolerated as long as they are beneficial to society, as depending on how they are used they can have the opposite effect.
I totally agree. I'm an ESL student and I think it's actually been beneficial that I had to study English instead of learning it through "osmosis".
Not only that, I remember hearing about a study that said Americans who study a foreign language tend to improve their English skills as well -- so it may just be beneficial to know or be fluent in more than one language (I'd wonder if there is a linguistics explanation for this).
I do wonder about your statement regarding spoken language lacking grammar -- on the surface this doesn't seem possible. Put another way, ability with language (in my personal experience with people I work with) is either present in both or neither forms (spoken and written).
It's hard to imagine that there's 1 meter worth of crumple zone in the Smart car.
It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it seems that half that is still a bit generous -- that alone doubles your figures, right?
Also, assuming constant deceleration -- for sanity's sake, I understand -- greatly reduces the peak force and impact that you're calculating. You're essentially assuming that the crash will only involve a perfect crumple zone.
I don't work in test-crashing cars, but personally I would be surprised if crumple zones are this effective.
The problem is when you run out of crumple zone during impact, and now it's the hardened "walnut like" steel cocoon hitting a wall.
I dunno... personally I came across Richard Stallman, read and understood the basics of the GNU movement before even having heard of Linux. I, of course, decided to then try out Linux.
A bunch of nerds (basically) putting together an OS for fun (well, for deeper reasons as well, but as likely to be driven to tinker as any other reason), and not minding if someone else used it, was too tantalizing to not try (what the #$^&, right?)
I expected it to suck (I hadn't read The Cathedral and the Bazaar yet), since I fully expected the "too many cooks" syndrome. I was surprised to find that it worked well -- in some ways actually better than Windows (anger at MS started the search for an "alternative"), and in some ways not so well (several aborted attempts before I had both X and the net working out-of-the-box, using Mandrake many years ago).
Anyways, my intro to Linux as a non-programmer, and PC-computer-illiterate started with something similar to this TV show. It may or may not be a terribly effective advocacy program for the-OS-known-as-Linux, but I wouldn't discount the fact that there are many people that haven't heard or understand the open source movement, but would still be interested in tinkering, learning a little bit more how computers work, and maybe just running Linux. Not all nerds interested in computers are trained as computer nerds!:)
The good news (for those who think that software patents just don't make any sense) is that the Eurpean union has become a bigger and more important market than the US (overall, it's more people and more money).
If the EU doesn't support software patents, the pressure is going to be a little different (as in "Company X, you want to do business here, in your largest market, that's fine just leave your software patent portfolio at home").
I hope the EU continues on this path for this reason.
I agree with the bulk of your post, I just feel that the job/work/company/industry drain is going to come first (and probably mostly) from China than India -- but it's the same forces at play.
I disagree, I've been playing with a borrowed powerbook, and I have to say that MAC OS X "just works" for stupid people -- everything just works right the first time, and it's not full of security holes.
Funny that you mention brain-envy. I consider myself somewhat literate in physics (engineer by training however), but until I came across this article in the PBS website, I never really appreciated Einstein (and knew him mostly just for the special theory of relativity).
I love this quote at the bottom:
The problems he could not solve remain the ones that define the cutting edge, the most tantalizing and compelling.
You want to make a name for yourself in physics? Einstein is the one to beat.
It might have been invented first, but it *was* independently developed (the concept of mathematical zero) by the native peoples of America (specifically the Maya).
It's *not* a matter of (in this case) of confusion over language, I've always assumed that the Maya discovery of zero (also before Europe) was well-known in the states (and hence the previous poster's comment), and in fact the fact that it was also independently discovered in Southern India is news to me.
The problem with that definition is that it encompasses just about any human activity / hobby / biological function (eating fits that definition nicely, for instance).
I'm not sure how defining mathematics as a sport makes *sense* at any level: it's physical versus the purely mental. At extremes it's the purely cerebral (math) vs. the purely physical (say, weightlifting). Not to say there isn't technique, training, mental preparation in weightlifting, but the phyisical is what's measured and matters.
Hey, maybe we're asking if we want to include such things as math / speed painting / whatever in a competition that's been traditionally physical, but I don't understand how math==sport in any way.
The funny thing is that I do think there's a gray area in what most poeple will readily agree is sport, like basketball. Is the point really the ultimate exhibition of human speed and strength, or is the skill required to lob a ball into a hoop from a distance what's really on display. It's not black and white, in my mind (or even bowling, which I'd consider mostly skill and less physical, so I'm not so sure I'd consider that a sport). But, if I were to come up with one example of something that clearly isn't sport, something that is clearly cerebral as opposed to physical, it'd be math.
That's the part where I'm really curious -- I'm not sure how exactly MS might be able to pull this off. MS has fundamental differences in how they've made their money from IBM -- they're software-as-a-product, IBM pretty much has always been (expensive enterprise) hardware and services -- yeah, there's these new IBM ads, but that's what they've always done.
I'm basing this on the threat to software-as-a-product as a business model from open source -- at least how I view it. I don't think MS will evaporate, but I do think (based on my assumptions) that it will have to go through many more contorsions to reinvent itself than IBM. Maybe I'm underestimating the market for software-as-a-product (and I don't deny that this will continue to exist -- I just see it as a much smaller market than what it is currently, given that for MS it's meant Office and an operating system).
In my mind, the fact that consumer hardware works with MS is due more to the ubiquitous nature of MS -- hardware comes with driver disks and with MS in mind, as opposed to anything in particular that MS does. The end result for the grandmas of the world is the same, however, so I don't disagree with this point, except to note that the tables would be reversed if/when linux was run on a greater number of consumer desktops.
I do see it as the cliched chicken-and-egg problem. Or as I read here on/., "Linux won't be mainstream until Linux is mainstream"
However, I still think that the cash comes from selling your wares to companies, not consumers. For a company, if OO were to become a transparent replacement for MS Office, the underlying OS would not matter (as long as people received their computers with Linux preinstalled/configured to just work, as it now happens with Windows). The fact that it's not a transparent drop-in replacement, IMHO, has more to do with obfuscated data formats than anything else, putting MS in a precarious situation with their bread-and-butter.
I think the conversion will have to take place inside of businesses -- I do agree that for non-technical users, Linux will be more of a hassle until they can download AIM and have it run on their linux desktop, and have their digital cameras pre-packaged with Linux binaries, etc.
The problem for Microsoft, as I see it, is that it's fighting a fundamental change in how they make money. They've made a good pile of cash from selling the same functionality over and over again, and it's becoming clear that this won't cut it anymore.
IBM, on the other hand, went back to their old business plan, which has pretty much always been selling expensive hardware and services to companies willing to pay top dollar for it. This home PC thing was a distraction -- admittedly something IBM seriously screwed up on, but as I see it, nothing more than a distraction from IBM's point of view.
I'm not sure what Microsoft's plan might be -- get into other markets, sure, but what? Their business plan consists on software-as-a-product, and I've come to believe that this is a relic*, or at least certainly seriously put in danger by the rise of open source.
*I do see software-as-a-product continuing, but not in the same scale. Games (where the "hard" part isn't the software, but the game design, art, music, etc.), and niche software products, but nothing like the MS Office or MS operating system cash cow. As far as I know, that's the only place where they've been able to make money. MS has tons of cash, and I'm interested to see what they try to do to reinvent themselves, but IBM had it comparitively easy since their business plan never had to _fundamentally_ change (heck, it's spelled out in the IBM acronym).
You've gotten a ton of replies but: aside from the games (GTA3, Counter-Strike and others were flawless for me), I was amazed at the list of little windows executables that also just worked under Winex (more so, in my experience, than vanilla wine). Winamp, for example, ran flawlessly, from install to sound to even full-screen graphics (visualizer).
I've even had luck with engineering CAD applications installing/running with zero fuss from my end on my Linux machine at work.
I'd say check out the list of supported games (since at least those are guaranteed to work, and if you run into issues as a subscriber you get to b#tch and moan on the lists -- Transgaming tends to be pretty responsive in my experience).
I'm curious to see how great Winex4 is, however, and if it's leaps and bound better then I might just have to give 'em 20 bucks again (Winex3 was worth it to me, still have the rpm laying around...)
Starting on a hill with a stickshift (as in, driving around in San Francisco) is when I use the handbrake -- life would be hard without it actually.
I personally was amazed when I heard that there were stickshift cars without it, seemed pretty dumb (as in "Don't they drive the cars before they sell'em?"). You need to be able to modulate the handbrake to do a smooth start on an incline without slipping backwards -- impossible to do with a foot-break-hand-release mechanism.
I guess the stickshift thing is a personal preference: I still think it's great fun to paddle my own gears (and maybe because I'm lucky to not have to park in traffic getting to/from work). But a handbrake is absolutely necessary when driving a stickshift IMO.
I do think that the Simpsons is one of the greatest TV shows of our times -- and I do think the actors are worth every penny.
However, I was just wondering: how much of that 1 billion is from the US and how much from the rest of the world? Because the voices are dubbed in the rest of the world (at least, certainly in the non-English speaking countries), and a change of actors in the US would have zero impact in those places -- unlike the impact of changing the actors in Friends, which would be obvious even to TV viewers in Italy, watching dubbed episodes.
I'd say that the amount of money FOX is risking is certainly much less than the whole 1 billion bucks.
Though I don't understand how they measured this, but a human baby is supposed to be about the same intelligence as an adult chimp (or was it a gorilla? Don't remember).
And the article was almost devoid of technical details -- but he did allude to the fact that this was something different from most approaches that are called "AI", so I was actually expecting maybe a more fundamental breakthrough, or attempt.
Otherwise, I actually agree with the general sentiment of your post (and I don't think it's a popular position with technologists). But my philosophy professor summerized it as "intelligence as we know it is inately biological". It took him an entire semester to convince me, but he eventually did.
I personally think that the definition of AI will change, and I do still find it hard to believe that we won't be able to eventuall create machines that can do incredibly sophisticated tasks autonomously -- though it does appear that human-like intelligence isn't likely to happen until some more fundamental breaktrhoughs in our understanding in how our brains work (I now imagine that the breaktrhough will be in psychology/philosophy and not in computing sciences, basically).
I read it differently; instead of being a place needed because people can't get X working, it'd be a place to learn how to do new things with Linux.
The availabilty of source code, after all, means that people can (and do) fashion unique things (say like those Linux live cds) and this would be a great place to learn how to tinker away. I think it's a great idea, and has less to do with the reasons Microsoft might have a knowledge base and more to do with the fact that Linux has always been and will continue to be on OS you can study and tinker with (aside from just using).
Not to mention if you like running crazy-packackage-version-v0.01.rpm it'd be nice to have the help you need in one place. Getting the basics set up just isn't much of an issue anymore on mainstream hardware in my personal experience, that's definitely improved leaps and bounds (and continues to improve), and it's not the only reason to set up a knowledge base in Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
the linked IBM article states:
"the company has now announced what it believes to be the first commercially-viable implementation of silicon-on-insulator (SOI)"
so the guy's theories on patents could be valid, though they'd be patents on how to make SOI manufacturable and not on the technology itself. The article also says that it was used for simpler electronics because no one before could figure out how to make a modern processor with SOI.
I can understand this, but the challenges remain. In order to balance like a human being, the mecha will have to have a lot of the same flexibility and dexterity -- not impossible but incredibly hard.
....
1 _2 _3_0_5.html
The huge robotic legs (and arms!) will have to be incredibly sensitive and effective to pick up the subtle movements required to even just stand in place. I'm sure he's going to have to figure out how to use proportional control. That is, I think he needs to move a limb slightly and slowly or fast and with more force in order to balance and move like a human. I'm not sure how you'd do this without sensors and computers providing control of motors
Basically, the input required to move a massive and heavy robot arm is different than the movement we might make with a human arm. Since it's more massive / dense / heavy / powerful than a human arm, complicated inputs (reverse power before you need to stop a movement so you don't overshoot your desired position, yet complete movement ASAP) are required for any movement. This analysis is the sort of thing we do subconsciously with our muscles when we move our own limbs, but isn't reflected in the movement itself. Nor is the "controls" that is used by my brain and human arm the same that would be required for an arm with different dynamics.
So if I rigged a big robotic arm to follow my movements it would have to have computer intelligence that takes into account the dynamics (inertia, degrees of freedom, etc.) of the arm in order to achieve the desired movement. Without computers, the arm will most likely wail around wildly as it tries to match my movement (see below on bang-bang versus proportional control -- well written IMHO). Bang-bang controls are doable mechanically (as simple as switches that trigger movement), and I can only think of one example of proportional control done without computers (James Watt and his flyball governor). I'm sure there are others but purely mechanical proportional control is the exception (and harder to do than to just use a computer).
I don't understand how the movement will work if he sticks to not using computers for this reason. "No computer on huge heavy powerful limbs" equals "hard to control movement" equals "hard to walk!"
It is entirely possible that I just don't get it; I just think that a lot of the difficulties in making a robot walk this way are easy to understate since we walk without having to think about everything that has to go on for us to balance on our two legs, or even just move our limbs.
Don't get me wrong, ever since Robotech I share this dream, and I am very curious to be proven wrong. Hell, I'd be one of the first in line to order one from him it works (well, I'd have to win the lotto first). He does seem convinced that it's going to work out: he's already got plans to sell prototypes when the bugs are all ironed out.
I found this link on controls that mentions at the bottom
Proportional control makes systems run smoother than bang-bang. Most biological systems are proportional, while many engineered and all too many political and social systems are bang-bang
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsection
Yeah, I'd hate to be negative (and this is a totally cool project, kudos to the guy) but that's the first thing I thought: getting this thing to walk around is going to be a challenge.
... still, can you imagine the complexity of staying upright while you lift and lug heavy things around? Heck, even leaning against something to push it while on two robotic legs is complicated, much less ripping up trees by the roots and swinging them over your head Anime-style (I exaggerate, but this more or less seems to be the goal).
However, he's not trying to build an automonous robot like Honda or Sony. To me it seems that an exoskeleton is the place to start: if it wasn't for the fact that walking upright on two legs is a bit of a controls hat-trick!
I'd imagine that a robot on wheels, with arms that move as you move your own arms would be a more attainable first step for a hobby.
Then again, maybe this guy really does have some clever ideas as to how to walk around without tipping over
Being paid to produce a product isn't mutually exclusive with the deal being a subsidy. In fact, in my mind subsidies do require that you produce something, just at at elevated artificial profitability (thanks to taxpayers).
Not having a wide range of companies competing for contracts makes deals more likely to be, essentially, subsidies ("name your price, any price!").
in the end you agree with the guy you're replying to -- if patents were enforced back then the way they are enforced in the US it would have hindered innovation and competition. Sort of the exact opposite reason why patents are tolerated (I think his point).
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (amongst others, of course) who wrote eloquently why patents should only be tolerated as long as they are beneficial to society, as depending on how they are used they can have the opposite effect.
I totally agree. I'm an ESL student and I think it's actually been beneficial that I had to study English instead of learning it through "osmosis".
Not only that, I remember hearing about a study that said Americans who study a foreign language tend to improve their English skills as well -- so it may just be beneficial to know or be fluent in more than one language (I'd wonder if there is a linguistics explanation for this).
I do wonder about your statement regarding spoken language lacking grammar -- on the surface this doesn't seem possible. Put another way, ability with language (in my personal experience with people I work with) is either present in both or neither forms (spoken and written).
It's hard to imagine that there's 1 meter worth of crumple zone in the Smart car.
It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it seems that half that is still a bit generous -- that alone doubles your figures, right?
Also, assuming constant deceleration -- for sanity's sake, I understand -- greatly reduces the peak force and impact that you're calculating. You're essentially assuming that the crash will only involve a perfect crumple zone.
I don't work in test-crashing cars, but personally I would be surprised if crumple zones are this effective.
The problem is when you run out of crumple zone during impact, and now it's the hardened "walnut like" steel cocoon hitting a wall.
I dunno ... personally I came across Richard Stallman, read and understood the basics of the GNU movement before even having heard of Linux. I, of course, decided to then try out Linux.
:)
A bunch of nerds (basically) putting together an OS for fun (well, for deeper reasons as well, but as likely to be driven to tinker as any other reason), and not minding if someone else used it, was too tantalizing to not try (what the #$^&, right?)
I expected it to suck (I hadn't read The Cathedral and the Bazaar yet), since I fully expected the "too many cooks" syndrome. I was surprised to find that it worked well -- in some ways actually better than Windows (anger at MS started the search for an "alternative"), and in some ways not so well (several aborted attempts before I had both X and the net working out-of-the-box, using Mandrake many years ago).
Anyways, my intro to Linux as a non-programmer, and PC-computer-illiterate started with something similar to this TV show. It may or may not be a terribly effective advocacy program for the-OS-known-as-Linux, but I wouldn't discount the fact that there are many people that haven't heard or understand the open source movement, but would still be interested in tinkering, learning a little bit more how computers work, and maybe just running Linux. Not all nerds interested in computers are trained as computer nerds!
The good news (for those who think that software patents just don't make any sense) is that the Eurpean union has become a bigger and more important market than the US (overall, it's more people and more money).
If the EU doesn't support software patents, the pressure is going to be a little different (as in "Company X, you want to do business here, in your largest market, that's fine just leave your software patent portfolio at home").
I hope the EU continues on this path for this reason.
I agree with the bulk of your post, I just feel that the job/work/company/industry drain is going to come first (and probably mostly) from China than India -- but it's the same forces at play.
I disagree, I've been playing with a borrowed powerbook, and I have to say that MAC OS X "just works" for stupid people -- everything just works right the first time, and it's not full of security holes.
Windows is just badly implemented.
Actually, Stallman inspired a movement to create an OS.
Linus manages and has managed the development of a kernel.
Big difference.
Funny that you mention brain-envy. I consider myself somewhat literate in physics (engineer by training however), but until I came across this article in the PBS website, I never really appreciated Einstein (and knew him mostly just for the special theory of relativity).
I love this quote at the bottom:
The problems he could not solve remain the ones that define the cutting edge, the most tantalizing and compelling.
You want to make a name for yourself in physics? Einstein is the one to beat.
It might have been invented first, but it *was* independently developed (the concept of mathematical zero) by the native peoples of America (specifically the Maya).
It's *not* a matter of (in this case) of confusion over language, I've always assumed that the Maya discovery of zero (also before Europe) was well-known in the states (and hence the previous poster's comment), and in fact the fact that it was also independently discovered in Southern India is news to me.
The problem with that definition is that it encompasses just about any human activity / hobby / biological function (eating fits that definition nicely, for instance).
I'm not sure how defining mathematics as a sport makes *sense* at any level: it's physical versus the purely mental. At extremes it's the purely cerebral (math) vs. the purely physical (say, weightlifting). Not to say there isn't technique, training, mental preparation in weightlifting, but the phyisical is what's measured and matters.
Hey, maybe we're asking if we want to include such things as math / speed painting / whatever in a competition that's been traditionally physical, but I don't understand how math==sport in any way.
The funny thing is that I do think there's a gray area in what most poeple will readily agree is sport, like basketball. Is the point really the ultimate exhibition of human speed and strength, or is the skill required to lob a ball into a hoop from a distance what's really on display. It's not black and white, in my mind (or even bowling, which I'd consider mostly skill and less physical, so I'm not so sure I'd consider that a sport). But, if I were to come up with one example of something that clearly isn't sport, something that is clearly cerebral as opposed to physical, it'd be math.
Like IBM, Microsoft can really play it both ways
That's the part where I'm really curious -- I'm not sure how exactly MS might be able to pull this off. MS has fundamental differences in how they've made their money from IBM -- they're software-as-a-product, IBM pretty much has always been (expensive enterprise) hardware and services -- yeah, there's these new IBM ads, but that's what they've always done.
I'm basing this on the threat to software-as-a-product as a business model from open source -- at least how I view it. I don't think MS will evaporate, but I do think (based on my assumptions) that it will have to go through many more contorsions to reinvent itself than IBM. Maybe I'm underestimating the market for software-as-a-product (and I don't deny that this will continue to exist -- I just see it as a much smaller market than what it is currently, given that for MS it's meant Office and an operating system).
In my mind, the fact that consumer hardware works with MS is due more to the ubiquitous nature of MS -- hardware comes with driver disks and with MS in mind, as opposed to anything in particular that MS does. The end result for the grandmas of the world is the same, however, so I don't disagree with this point, except to note that the tables would be reversed if/when linux was run on a greater number of consumer desktops.
/., "Linux won't be mainstream until Linux is mainstream"
I do see it as the cliched chicken-and-egg problem. Or as I read here on
However, I still think that the cash comes from selling your wares to companies, not consumers. For a company, if OO were to become a transparent replacement for MS Office, the underlying OS would not matter (as long as people received their computers with Linux preinstalled/configured to just work, as it now happens with Windows). The fact that it's not a transparent drop-in replacement, IMHO, has more to do with obfuscated data formats than anything else, putting MS in a precarious situation with their bread-and-butter.
I think the conversion will have to take place inside of businesses -- I do agree that for non-technical users, Linux will be more of a hassle until they can download AIM and have it run on their linux desktop, and have their digital cameras pre-packaged with Linux binaries, etc.
The problem for Microsoft, as I see it, is that it's fighting a fundamental change in how they make money. They've made a good pile of cash from selling the same functionality over and over again, and it's becoming clear that this won't cut it anymore.
IBM, on the other hand, went back to their old business plan, which has pretty much always been selling expensive hardware and services to companies willing to pay top dollar for it. This home PC thing was a distraction -- admittedly something IBM seriously screwed up on, but as I see it, nothing more than a distraction from IBM's point of view.
I'm not sure what Microsoft's plan might be -- get into other markets, sure, but what? Their business plan consists on software-as-a-product, and I've come to believe that this is a relic*, or at least certainly seriously put in danger by the rise of open source.
*I do see software-as-a-product continuing, but not in the same scale. Games (where the "hard" part isn't the software, but the game design, art, music, etc.), and niche software products, but nothing like the MS Office or MS operating system cash cow. As far as I know, that's the only place where they've been able to make money. MS has tons of cash, and I'm interested to see what they try to do to reinvent themselves, but IBM had it comparitively easy since their business plan never had to _fundamentally_ change (heck, it's spelled out in the IBM acronym).
You've gotten a ton of replies but: aside from the games (GTA3, Counter-Strike and others were flawless for me), I was amazed at the list of little windows executables that also just worked under Winex (more so, in my experience, than vanilla wine). Winamp, for example, ran flawlessly, from install to sound to even full-screen graphics (visualizer).
...)
I've even had luck with engineering CAD applications installing/running with zero fuss from my end on my Linux machine at work.
I'd say check out the list of supported games (since at least those are guaranteed to work, and if you run into issues as a subscriber you get to b#tch and moan on the lists -- Transgaming tends to be pretty responsive in my experience).
I'm curious to see how great Winex4 is, however, and if it's leaps and bound better then I might just have to give 'em 20 bucks again (Winex3 was worth it to me, still have the rpm laying around
Starting on a hill with a stickshift (as in, driving around in San Francisco) is when I use the handbrake -- life would be hard without it actually.
I personally was amazed when I heard that there were stickshift cars without it, seemed pretty dumb (as in "Don't they drive the cars before they sell'em?"). You need to be able to modulate the handbrake to do a smooth start on an incline without slipping backwards -- impossible to do with a foot-break-hand-release mechanism.
I guess the stickshift thing is a personal preference: I still think it's great fun to paddle my own gears (and maybe because I'm lucky to not have to park in traffic getting to/from work). But a handbrake is absolutely necessary when driving a stickshift IMO.
I do think that the Simpsons is one of the greatest TV shows of our times -- and I do think the actors are worth every penny.
However, I was just wondering: how much of that 1 billion is from the US and how much from the rest of the world? Because the voices are dubbed in the rest of the world (at least, certainly in the non-English speaking countries), and a change of actors in the US would have zero impact in those places -- unlike the impact of changing the actors in Friends, which would be obvious even to TV viewers in Italy, watching dubbed episodes.
I'd say that the amount of money FOX is risking is certainly much less than the whole 1 billion bucks.
You're looking at the wrong release.
The page for 1.7 beta does indeed say 5% reduction in binary size.
Though I don't understand how they measured this, but a human baby is supposed to be about the same intelligence as an adult chimp (or was it a gorilla? Don't remember).
And the article was almost devoid of technical details -- but he did allude to the fact that this was something different from most approaches that are called "AI", so I was actually expecting maybe a more fundamental breakthrough, or attempt.
Otherwise, I actually agree with the general sentiment of your post (and I don't think it's a popular position with technologists). But my philosophy professor summerized it as "intelligence as we know it is inately biological". It took him an entire semester to convince me, but he eventually did.
I personally think that the definition of AI will change, and I do still find it hard to believe that we won't be able to eventuall create machines that can do incredibly sophisticated tasks autonomously -- though it does appear that human-like intelligence isn't likely to happen until some more fundamental breaktrhoughs in our understanding in how our brains work (I now imagine that the breaktrhough will be in psychology/philosophy and not in computing sciences, basically).
and you're on Slashdot.
:)
No broadband at home?
I read it differently; instead of being a place needed because people can't get X working, it'd be a place to learn how to do new things with Linux.
The availabilty of source code, after all, means that people can (and do) fashion unique things (say like those Linux live cds) and this would be a great place to learn how to tinker away. I think it's a great idea, and has less to do with the reasons Microsoft might have a knowledge base and more to do with the fact that Linux has always been and will continue to be on OS you can study and tinker with (aside from just using).
Not to mention if you like running crazy-packackage-version-v0.01.rpm it'd be nice to have the help you need in one place. Getting the basics set up just isn't much of an issue anymore on mainstream hardware in my personal experience, that's definitely improved leaps and bounds (and continues to improve), and it's not the only reason to set up a knowledge base in Linux.