I guess it depends on Ellison - will his hate of all things MS make him sink millions into OO and make it a true competitor to MSO, or will he head the bean counters and cut it lose?
The geek sees an office suite.
Microsoft sees an office system that scales to a business of any size:
No money being sent to the western Capitalist Pigs, for starters - not even for legal copies. People who are forced away from MS holding their hands (Hail, Clippy!) will be forced to learn how an operating system works - thereby creating more potential hackers to attack the Pentagon
Apple and Microsoft own 99% of the desktop precisely because users have no desire to poke about under the hood.
That's not their job. That's not where the money is.
The mechanic can make a living. But he isn't the one driving the Porsche.
What do you suppose the export market in hardware and software for Windows is worth to China?
Microsoft China employs 3500 in R&D:
Dr Zhang's research staff were responsible for a few features in Windows 7, including systems recovery and diagnosis, speech technology and multi-touch. Dr Zhang singled out smart devices, cloud computing, natural language, search and graphics as focus areas for the R&D group. "We're looking at how we can extend the capabilities of a computer and put in more intelligence in devices. Smart sensors would be one area that we will see a lot of work in. But I personally like to keep it simple... technology should be simple, not complex," he said, citing that as the reason why he doesn't use a touchpad smart phone. [Microsoft] increased its global R&D budget by $US1 billion to $US9bn this year
Microsoft is becoming AOL. A crappy, proprietary, expensive, unreliable impediment to getting onto the internet. Their applications have plateaued, and open-source desktop and web-based competitors are improving rapidly. They'll hang on longer, but they've begun their long decline.
The true Slashdot geek can't post about Microsoft without his brain dissolving into mush. Fantasy rules and reality is an intrusion.
Listen to one of your own:
And then there's Microsoft. The company prints billions of dollars worth of profits each quarter from its Windows franchise, yet for years it has been quietly developing its next big operating system. And no, I'm not referring to Windows 7.
Microsoft has created a bridge "between personal productivity and line-of-business applications," one that stitches together Microsoft's "desktop" dominance with its cloud ambitions.
It's called SharePoint, and with over 100 million seats and $1 billion in revenue, the odds are that your company already has it installed.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer long ago declared that "SharePoint is the definitive operating system or platform for the middle tier," and I don't think he's using the term "operating system" lightly.
Increasingly, SharePoint is the center of the Microsoft universe, at least, for enterprise computing. SharePoint serves as the hub for Microsoft's suite of operating systems, applications, and third-party software. It is a content application server, of sorts, one that provides the platform upon which so much of Microsoft's value is now being built.
I've disparaged SharePoint in the past for its tendency to lock customers into its proprietary repository. But let's be clear: a large number of companies seem perfectly happy to make that trade-off and are actively using SharePoint at the heart of their intranets, extranets, and Web sites.
Matt Assay is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management.
He was even blunter when speaking to The New York Times:
SharePoint is saving Microsoft's Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in. It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping."
And staying with that kind of thought process, one wonders why anybody bothered with Linux development from the mid 90's.
Net Applications tracks any device with a measurable global presence on the web. The numbers for Linux are - to put it charitably - not particularly impressive.
I don't think Ogg Theora - advancing at the same glacial pace - has fifteen years to become a contender.
Switzerland wants not to have street view in their country? Turn it off. Don't spend another dime on it. [Put] up a notice that says "Street view is blocked for this country by order of the Swiss government." And then wash your hands of it. Maybe then other countries will be more reasonable about your services when they recognize that if they give you too hard a time about things...
And just maybe the party that stands up to Google will find itself in control of the cantons and the Federal Assembly.
A lesson that won't be lost on others.
People can turn dangerously territorial when it comes down to the intimacies of home and neighborhood.
The geek never sees the warning signs until it is too late.
But what if I want to make derivative works out of it? You know, like Disney did with all of Grimm's fairy tales.
Rogers & Hammerstein produced their own musical version of Cinderella for fifties television. Mary Martin had a memorable turn on stage and in live TV as Peter Pan.
What the geek wants is the right to churn out derivatives based on Disney's unique interpretation of these stories - and not at all incidentally the right to use Disney's unique supporting cast of characters, character designs, etc.
I can imagine a similar discussion in 1875: "What will telegraphs look like in the future?"
1876 will see the introduction of the telephone and the modern typewriter. I believe also the modern stock ticker.
The stock ticker requires synchronization across a network. There were a lot of folks - like the railroads - interested in "precision" time and other services.
The basic tech is then in place for a telex service: Keyboard entry Mechanical printers. Punch tape or ribbon for data storage and transmission.
That brings you pretty close to Hollerith's tabulating machine.
The first class hotel in those days had elaborate electro-mechanical signaling systems for room service orders.
Successful voice transmission implies practical multiplex telegraphy. Facsimile and mechanical television awaits only the invention of the "electric eye."
The theoretical foundation might be a little weaker - but you are probably going to see practical wireless communication pretty quickly.
On my 3G phone (I'm on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, shared via my lovely Cradlepoint router on-the-go even), I can watch TV on-demand. I can listen to music, on-demand. I can read my websites, send my emails, talk via Google voice/Gizmo5 VoIP, send SMS via Google Voice, etc
To me this reads like BnL Hell without the hoverchairs.
Repeat after me: Jury Nullification. Cases with laws this unjust should never get past a jury.
But what if the jury believes that justice is being done? That the geek's defense is fraudulent? The juror is a small-C conservative. He has worked hard for what he has. He accepts responsibility. He does not believe in the free lunch.
Most sci-fi movies these days are nothing more than action movies or horror movies dressed up with aliens and rayguns. District 9 actually uses the premise to tell us something about ourselves. I don't recall the last "sci-fi" movie I watched that did that.
Wall-E won the Nebula for best script and the Hugo Award for best long-form sci-fi drama.
There is a lot to think about here - and it can't be reduced to a formula.
Paying famous celebrities insane sums of money for voice overs
Vocal performance in an animated feature or a video game seems easy only when you've heard it done well.
How can District 9 which is such a great movie with some of the best unique effects Ive seen in a recent Sci Fi movie cost 30 Million and yet Transformers 2 cost $228 million
It's not unusual for a low-budget flick to take off in late summer. The question is whether District 9 has enough gas to keep flying.
The Transformers franchise has proven remarkably durable.
Surveillance and stalking both are the same wrong thing. Not the cops, not an agent, and not a private person, should be able to do it, and not be punished.
In ordinary police work, surveillance means keeping something or someone under watch.
For reasons which tend to be fairly well defined and defensible.
I have a different view on punishment and right/wrong, because I think there is no such thing as guilt. It's all causality.
In law there are two significant definitions of guilt.
The first is that you have been judged responsible - or have admitted responsibility - for the crime for which you were charged. The second might be considered shame or remorse.
I haven't the least notion of what you mean by "casuality."
The geek needs to remember as well the elemental power of Rockwell's image of the rest, peace and security we all need and hope to find at home and in our family: Freedom from Fear
That too is precious - and it cannot be sustained if those who protect it live in fear themselves.
Something you are forgetting is police officers serve the public and are on public payroll, thus their jobs are public information and so is what they do. You are trying to compare a civil servant to a civilian.
The civil servant is by definition a civilian.
One of the most singular and characteristic features of American democracy is that the military does not have general police powers.
To take an absolutist view of free speech has important and dangerous consequences.
It doesn't end the world of secrets.
It simply drives it deeper underground - where the rules can be enforced outside the law.
The geek doesn't get an "open" police force. What he gets is the night rider. The vigilante. The death squad.
See, this is what I don't get - why does everyone think HDMI is so awesome? It's just DVI with a couple extra pins for audio.
It's become far more than that:
HDMI 1.4 was released on May 28, 2009. HDMI 1.4 increases the maximum resolution to 4K × 2K (3840×2160p at 24Hz/25Hz/30Hz and 4096×2160p at 24Hz, which is a resolution used with digital theaters); an HDMI Ethernet Channel, which allows for a 100 Mb/s Ethernet connection between the two HDMI connected devices; and introduces an Audio Return Channel, 3D Over HDMI, a new Micro HDMI Connector, expanded support for color spaces, and an Automotive Connection System. HDMI
What the user sees is painless auto-configuration of video and sound and a noticeable reduction of cable-clutter.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it depends on Ellison - will his hate of all things MS make him sink millions into OO and make it a true competitor to MSO, or will he head the bean counters and cut it lose?
The geek sees an office suite.
Microsoft sees an office system that scales to a business of any size:
Microsoft, Google, and VMware redefine the OS, Microsoft's SharePoint Thrives in the Recession
100 million seats for SharePoint.
This is the market in which Ellison must compete - and throwing a few more pennies into OpenOffice.org doesn't yield much of a return.
No money being sent to the western Capitalist Pigs, for starters - not even for legal copies. People who are forced away from MS holding their hands (Hail, Clippy!) will be forced to learn how an operating system works - thereby creating more potential hackers to attack the Pentagon
Apple and Microsoft own 99% of the desktop precisely because users have no desire to poke about under the hood.
That's not their job. That's not where the money is.
The mechanic can make a living. But he isn't the one driving the Porsche.
What do you suppose the export market in hardware and software for Windows is worth to China?
Microsoft China employs 3500 in R&D:
Dr Zhang's research staff were responsible for a few features in Windows 7, including systems recovery and diagnosis, speech technology and multi-touch. Dr Zhang singled out smart devices, cloud computing, natural language, search and graphics as focus areas for the R&D group. "We're looking at how we can extend the capabilities of a computer and put in more intelligence in devices. Smart sensors would be one area that we will see a lot of work in. But I personally like to keep it simple ... technology should be simple, not complex," he said, citing that as the reason why he doesn't use a touchpad smart phone. [Microsoft] increased its global R&D budget by $US1 billion to $US9bn this year
I once worked on a site, where we got 16 million visits *a day*!
Which is what your employer is paying you to deliver.
If those numbers go down because you are too "principled" to support IE - he will find someone a tad more flexible.
Microsoft is becoming AOL. A crappy, proprietary, expensive, unreliable impediment to getting onto the internet. Their applications have plateaued, and open-source desktop and web-based competitors are improving rapidly. They'll hang on longer, but they've begun their long decline.
The true Slashdot geek can't post about Microsoft without his brain dissolving into mush. Fantasy rules and reality is an intrusion.
Listen to one of your own:
And then there's Microsoft. The company prints billions of dollars worth of profits each quarter from its Windows franchise, yet for years it has been quietly developing its next big operating system. And no, I'm not referring to Windows 7.
Microsoft has created a bridge "between personal productivity and line-of-business applications," one that stitches together Microsoft's "desktop" dominance with its cloud ambitions.
It's called SharePoint, and with over 100 million seats and $1 billion in revenue, the odds are that your company already has it installed.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer long ago declared that "SharePoint is the definitive operating system or platform for the middle tier," and I don't think he's using the term "operating system" lightly.
Increasingly, SharePoint is the center of the Microsoft universe, at least, for enterprise computing. SharePoint serves as the hub for Microsoft's suite of operating systems, applications, and third-party software. It is a content application server, of sorts, one that provides the platform upon which so much of Microsoft's value is now being built.
I've disparaged SharePoint in the past for its tendency to lock customers into its proprietary repository. But let's be clear: a large number of companies seem perfectly happy to make that trade-off and are actively using SharePoint at the heart of their intranets, extranets, and Web sites.
Microsoft, Google, and VMware redefine the OS
Matt Assay is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management.
He was even blunter when speaking to The New York Times:
SharePoint is saving Microsoft's Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in. It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping."
Microsoft's SharePoint Thrives in the Recession
90%? What? That's a bit odd. Really, it's 70% and dropping like a rock.
I see no significant change in market share for IE or Firefox in the better part of a year. Top Browser Share Trend.
The take-up of IE8 has been faster than Firefox 3.5. Top Browser Share Trend.
And staying with that kind of thought process, one wonders why anybody bothered with Linux development from the mid 90's.
Net Applications tracks any device with a measurable global presence on the web. The numbers for Linux are - to put it charitably - not particularly impressive.
I don't think Ogg Theora - advancing at the same glacial pace - has fifteen years to become a contender.
Top Operating System Share Trend, Operating System Market Share
Advice for Google:
Switzerland wants not to have street view in their country? Turn it off. Don't spend another dime on it. [Put] up a notice that says "Street view is blocked for this country by order of the Swiss government." And then wash your hands of it. Maybe then other countries will be more reasonable about your services when they recognize that if they give you too hard a time about things...
And just maybe the party that stands up to Google will find itself in control of the cantons and the Federal Assembly.
A lesson that won't be lost on others.
People can turn dangerously territorial when it comes down to the intimacies of home and neighborhood.
The geek never sees the warning signs until it is too late.
Why don't they just use Google's opt-out feature.
Tell me why - when the shoe is on the other foot - the geek will settle for nothing less than "opt-in."
From the project page: "No downloads or plugins are necessary other than Flash ..."
Which means that the SVG support could just as well be integrated into Flash itself - the one plug-in every browser must support.
No matter how loudly the geek in the back row moans and groans in complaint.
But what if I want to make derivative works out of it?
You know, like Disney did with all of Grimm's fairy tales.
Rogers & Hammerstein produced their own musical version of Cinderella for fifties television. Mary Martin had a memorable turn on stage and in live TV as Peter Pan.
What the geek wants is the right to churn out derivatives based on Disney's unique interpretation of these stories - and not at all incidentally the right to use Disney's unique supporting cast of characters, character designs, etc.
I can imagine a similar discussion in 1875: "What will telegraphs look like in the future?"
1876 will see the introduction of the telephone and the modern typewriter. I believe also the modern stock ticker.
The stock ticker requires synchronization across a network. There were a lot of folks - like the railroads - interested in "precision" time and other services.
The basic tech is then in place for a telex service:
Keyboard entry Mechanical printers. Punch tape or ribbon for data storage and transmission.
That brings you pretty close to Hollerith's tabulating machine.
The first class hotel in those days had elaborate electro-mechanical signaling systems for room service orders.
Successful voice transmission implies practical multiplex telegraphy. Facsimile and mechanical television awaits only the invention of the "electric eye."
The theoretical foundation might be a little weaker - but you are probably going to see practical wireless communication pretty quickly.
On my 3G phone (I'm on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, shared via my lovely Cradlepoint router on-the-go even), I can watch TV on-demand. I can listen to music, on-demand. I can read my websites, send my emails, talk via Google voice/Gizmo5 VoIP, send SMS via Google Voice, etc
To me this reads like BnL Hell without the hoverchairs.
You will die first before the vast majority of today's' culture is available to you legally
There is damn little that isn't available legally.
It's just that not everything is available for free.
Entry into the public domain does not guarantee you access to the original - to the master prints or recordings.
It doesn't give you access to unpublished drafts, storyboards, concept designs, deleted scenes, sets, props, costumes, etc.
It does not guarantee funding for storage, restoration or distribution.
This is a problem that won't go away easily. This image is perpetuated every day by stupid people that for some reason hate open source.
OpenOffice.org has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun.
You see a lot of that in FOSS - but it has always been something the geek has chosen to underplay.
It strips away many of his own most deeply cherished myths - and none is more deeply cherished than that of The Cowboy, The Lone Gunman.
Another possible reason the BSA is not vilified is that they do not sue 12 year olds.
Nether does the RIAA.
They sue the owner of the account. The head of the household.
The "kitten on the keys" is a geek's defense.
It would of course be amusing to know what sort of music and movies the defendant claims his kids were downloading.
Repeat after me: Jury Nullification.
Cases with laws this unjust should never get past a jury.
But what if the jury believes that justice is being done? That the geek's defense is fraudulent?
The juror is a small-C conservative. He has worked hard for what he has. He accepts responsibility. He does not believe in the free lunch.
If the RIAA/MPAA is so reviled - why is it that "the jury of his peers" hammers the file sharer into the ground when these cases go to trial?
The geek is quick to assume that he is representative of the larger community of which he is a part.
That everyone believes in his right to his free media fix.
But when things go wrong - these assumptions are never seriously questioned.
It is easier to take refuge in loose talk about the incompetence of the lawyers, the jury and the bribery of the judge.
Perhaps not:
The newly weighted Net Applications stats are telling:
Top Operating System Share Trend, Top Operating System Share Trend
Roughly speaking, the global desktop is 70% XP, 20% Vista, 5% OSX, 1% Win 7, 1% Linux and 3% Everything Else.
Even with all of this what ended up killing it off for me was that I could only find one service station within 5 miles of my house that had diesel.
This is still a problem in the states - and the distance can be much more than five miles. Price is another barrier.
AOL, purveyor of overpriced, under-performing dialup access and horrendous software to complete morons
The geek is elitist.
If you don't share his knowledge and values you are by definition sub-human - a moron.
AOL introduced flat-rate monthly subscriptions at a mass market price - which defines Internet service to this day.
AOL's software hid its complexities from the user.
It stripped away the last vestiges of the BBS.
It had a graphical UI, automatic updates. You didn't have to configure an e-mail account. You didn't have to understand file transfer protocols.
The user experience wasn't so very different from the modern stand-alone web browser. That made the transition easy.
It also meant that Internet would never again be the geek's private playground.
Most sci-fi movies these days are nothing more than action movies or horror movies dressed up with aliens and rayguns. District 9 actually uses the premise to tell us something about ourselves. I don't recall the last "sci-fi" movie I watched that did that.
Wall-E won the Nebula for best script and the Hugo Award for best long-form sci-fi drama.
There is a lot to think about here - and it can't be reduced to a formula.
Paying famous celebrities insane sums of money for voice overs
Vocal performance in an animated feature or a video game seems easy only when you've heard it done well.
How can District 9 which is such a great movie with some of the best unique effects Ive seen in a recent Sci Fi movie cost 30 Million and yet Transformers 2 cost $228 million
It's not unusual for a low-budget flick to take off in late summer. The question is whether District 9 has enough gas to keep flying.
The Transformers franchise has proven remarkably durable.
Revenge of the Fallen has grossed almost $400 million dollars in the US alone.
Surveillance and stalking both are the same wrong thing. Not the cops, not an agent, and not a private person, should be able to do it, and not be punished.
In ordinary police work, surveillance means keeping something or someone under watch.
For reasons which tend to be fairly well defined and defensible.
I have a different view on punishment and right/wrong, because I think there is no such thing as guilt. It's all causality.
In law there are two significant definitions of guilt.
The first is that you have been judged responsible - or have admitted responsibility - for the crime for which you were charged. The second might be considered shame or remorse.
I haven't the least notion of what you mean by "casuality."
The purpose it serves is to express her freedom of speech.
Freedom of Speech in the American context has its roots in the desire for unconstrained political debate.
That is why Norman Rockwell chose the New England town meeting as his example. Freedom of Speech, The Saturday Evening Post, February 20, 1943
The geek needs to remember as well the elemental power of Rockwell's image of the rest, peace and security we all need and hope to find at home and in our family: Freedom from Fear
That too is precious - and it cannot be sustained if those who protect it live in fear themselves.
Something you are forgetting is police officers serve the public and are on public payroll, thus their jobs are public information and so is what they do. You are trying to compare a civil servant to a civilian.
The civil servant is by definition a civilian.
One of the most singular and characteristic features of American democracy is that the military does not have general police powers.
To take an absolutist view of free speech has important and dangerous consequences.
It doesn't end the world of secrets.
It simply drives it deeper underground - where the rules can be enforced outside the law.
The geek doesn't get an "open" police force. What he gets is the night rider. The vigilante. The death squad.
See, this is what I don't get - why does everyone think HDMI is so awesome? It's just DVI with a couple extra pins for audio.
It's become far more than that:
HDMI 1.4 was released on May 28, 2009. HDMI 1.4 increases the maximum resolution to 4K × 2K (3840×2160p at 24Hz/25Hz/30Hz and 4096×2160p at 24Hz, which is a resolution used with digital theaters); an HDMI Ethernet Channel, which allows for a 100 Mb/s Ethernet connection between the two HDMI connected devices; and introduces an Audio Return Channel, 3D Over HDMI, a new Micro HDMI Connector, expanded support for color spaces, and an Automotive Connection System. HDMI
What the user sees is painless auto-configuration of video and sound and a noticeable reduction of cable-clutter.