..., guys from Compaq , got closer with their car, the turbine/electric/flywheel deal they tried a few years ago. I never followed it, I guess they stopped working on it after *some* initial successes, and some disappointments.
A friend of mine had a suzuki RE5 liquid cooled wankel engine way back in the day, quite a radical bike for the era, it sounded pretty spiffy, different, but nice. Ran fast, too.
...74 dart custom, both with the slant six. The valiant had three on the tree, the dart was auto, and my recollection was like yours, over 20 MPG averagee\ city/highway and enough oomph to get down the road at a reasonable speed and to climb hills and it had full bench seats and could accomodate plenty of people and cargo. Heh, once I floored my dart across tennessee in tandem with some dude piloting an old BMW I think a 1400 on the highway just because I could, indicated on the speedo 110 for a long time, I only slowed down when I saw the semi's slow down and pull over to the right to avoid smokies. Great little cars, well, medium sized, reliable as all get out, and start no matter how cold it got outside, to well below zero F. I actually could NOT give the dart a tune up, try as I might, it was a point system, and it was my usual deal back then to adjust & clean points and clean plugs at every oil change. The points were never burnt, never went out of adjustment, and the plugs stayed clean. The only thing I didn't like about the engine was the placement of the distributor,way down low,it was subject to getting wet and bork on on you if you were driving in rural areas and had to cross those cement pads that go under streams that they have some places in lieu of more expensive bridges, but besides that, always cranked and ran good, got great mileage.
I also had a 69 fiat rear engine spyder, that thing got a true 50 mpg or better,I wuz amazed really, but was slower than what you think of as sports car performance "normally", because it only had an 850 cc engine (that I built to - had to, it was a junker when I got it, a salvage yard worn out thing- over 900cc )with oversized forged pistons, a bore and polish job done at a racing shop by guys who cared about details, weight balanced to a couple grams of the lightest, tedious but effective on RPM gain, along with the rods and the other assorted normal engine hotrodding jazz on the intake runners and whatnot,and etc, etc), but still wicked fun to drive around, it would still be a nice commuter car. It would go around 70 tops, but it was a fun 70. Acceleration was "acceptable", that's it, 4 speed manual, with a transaxle arrangement and flex joints to the rear wheels, quite unusual really. I *think* it weighed in around 1200 or so lbs. Anyway, mucho easier to work on than even an air cooled beetle, and that's saying a lot.
Cars would get MUCH more mileage and power and run cleaner if people would be able to accept the bulk of the loot you pay for a car going into engineering the engine and drivetrain, instead of the paint job, the interior, the stereos, the climate zone control stuff, all the flash, etc.
You look to professional racing for real engineering advances in materials sciences and machining and configuration, because MO powah and MO mileage rules there, and that's where the number #1 engineering branes go get jobs, because they get paid better and it's more fun for them. Detroit and Stuttgart and Tokyo get the grade #2 guys designing and building, very roughly speaking.
It's also a factor of car companies have to keep lines open all the time, they COULD build cars that lasted 3 times as long and ran better all around, etc, but it would put them out of business shortly, so they don't do it.
We as a society don't demand more reliability and mileage near as much as we want luxury, comfort, sound systems, and whatnot. You take the same (just to pick a generic ball park figure)20 grand to spend on a car, put it into drivetrain engineering instead of flash and blinkenlights, it'll perform better all around, but people won't be as satisified with it, so they won't sell very well. You CAN have both, but it costs severely.
And the other deal with cars is, petroleum is just filthy stuff, it's incredibly hard to make it burn clean and efficiently*,it's BTU dense but filthy, it drives up the costs a lot. Merely switching liquid fuels to ethanol or methanol would solve a lot of problems of cost and complexity.
.... or a better description, oppressive governments, have only one way to stay in power. That is to successfully brainwash every suceeding generation into acception the oppression. And I mean brainwash, mass conditioning, whatever you want to call it. They KNOW that once a person is a full adult, and has undergone a life long societal indoctrination, that they rarely ever become anit-regime, they "go along to get along". They have been successfully force-morphed into a situation known in psychological circles as a being a victim of the "stockholm" syndrome, where the victim identifies so closely with the victimiser that they become willing in their desire to stay victimised, and cooperate beyond what is rational. This is true all over the planet, all through history. There are exceptions and extraordinary situations where it can be broken, but they are rare enough for each to become important milestones in history. In the US, it was the revolt over what was at the time "legitimate authority", ie, subservience to King George and royal rule and direction. Every single person who took part in the rebellion was by defintion a terrorist, and engaged in "illegal activity", overlapping felonies usually.
One of the main felonies was anti-regime pamphleteering, really the only way to spread ideas that ran contrary to the current group think acceptance of oppression at the time, that and some private and illegal soap boxing. that was it for communications back then, they used what communication was available at the time to spread ideas that were philosophically in opposition to the "approved" brainwashing.
China knows this, they can't let younger people break the mold, internet acccess allows differring ideas to be presented that they can't control as easily. Even with adults there it is highly restricted.
In western society it is somewhat different, but remarkably similar as well, although the differences are more subtle, the results are the same. Generation after generation societally conditioned to accept whatever the status quo is, and to only question to the point that is "allowed" by the regimists. It's done from a standpoint of forced government indoctrination in the schools, from what passes as entertainment, from what passes as the "full complete unbiased news" and so on, reinforced via "laws" that insist on whatever is the current group-think.
You'll notice that as soon as you approach whatever limits that allow for a peek to the other side that governments go absolutely ape squat in trying to nix it, we see it all the time, it only matters in the form of degree really. Chinas with communications are currently move overt, but western governments are getting there slowly but surely as well, they just have to do it in baby steps that are small enough to fit inside a brainwashing model that allows for new ideas of "legal" oppression to be accepted by the preponderence of their particular citizenry as "normal".
this is pretty vague in the article. Is having your admin run some shell scripts that modify a canned package count as a new piece of custom software? Would that be re-taxed then if it was bought in the first place? How many times can something be taxed? Or would it be proportional by..line count of code? If package x costed 100 clams, and was 50,000 lines of code and you modified x amounts of code and... you can see where this could go. Is it a brand new transaction then? The entire package, or is it proportionally taxed, or what? It's cuckoo really.
rhetorical question. If you follow around US federal reserve notes,from the second they are poof created, they are all tax dollars already, ie, it's all been taxed into government ownership previously. If you are dealing in FRNs, none of it is your property. None, zero. It's all the governments (well, a private banks paper), and they let you use some of it. And being legal debt instruments, they start out as a debt, and you get paid with a debt,you attempt to pay off a debt by transferring another debt, and so on. They retax their own debt, and so on.
Sound incredibly stupid? Why yes,yes it is, it is an extremely stupid way to create "money" for anyone productive, but it's a superscam con for the people who start it and have people faked out into using it. It's fat city for the other guys. Using future debt as a medium of exchange instead of having money represent produced-wealth is lame to begin with, but it sure is handy for government and some rich banks. aaack, another time...It's such an overwhelming and successful con....
Anyway, without seeing how the law is worded it's hard to tell,I'm only looking at the article, but seems like it's so open ended and vague that it would rapidly rise (most likely) to beyond this 64 million dollars with the application of normal bureaucratic greed. Then come the lawyers and the courts and the judges and the lawsuits,typical government crap.
You know, the soviet union collapsed when their economy was so much black market and grey market and government bloat that it eclipsed the above board official "white market". It had as much to do with that as anything reagan did with military one upsmanship. Our government now is doing it's level best to force everyone into being a criminal it appears, doing it's level best to make the economy so incredibly lamer complex with regulations and scams that they think up that's it's almost impossible to deal with it. I wonder if they really understand what will eventually happen, if it's intentional, or if they are truly that incredibly stupid.
... decades ago to basically build the same thing, but using a medium weight but powerful road bike. Much better horsepower to weight ratio, air cooled engine, etc. some sort of heavy duty crank down onto the real wheel rubber (synthetics of some sort) roller for a PTO going to a reduction gear, then to some sort of transaxle arrangement, then to twin opposing revolution aft mounted overhead props. You would ( I think) also gain a nice atabilizing effect from the gyro effect of the rear wheel running in the vertical plane. I think though the main drawback would be torque, and the strength of the crank assembly. You need TORQUE and component STRENGTH to push that air, it's pretty different from a lightweight wheel spinning real fast, the engines are designed differently. Airplane engines are stout babies. But I still think it's quite possible.
never did build it tho, that's a few spare dollars I never had......
what I DID do was build one of the first mountain bikes, before they were called mountain bikes, I think before there were any on the market from anyplace. Maybe, don't know but I think so.. Fat tired, huge geared 10 speeder, started on it in 76, finished roughly early 78, it was still winter because I took it out on a snowmobile trail and ran it. Mucho fun.. It worked *great*, although nothing like the carbon fiber monoshok whizzbangs they have now of course, but still..schweet. I always wanted one, running off road on trails was a big sport to me, just insane stuff for the era, I never met anyone back then personally who did it, but the thin wheeled bikes just sucked, always tore them up (I owned a shop back then, always tinkering), or you'd get beat up from the shock, or just bog down, etc. They just "lacked" off road ability. So I built my own. sigh... never did anything with the idea, wish I had now. Can't tell ya how many people asked to buy it from me...man...I wuz stoopid. Don't even have the bike now, it got "stolen" in a manner of speaking from a storage unit by the storage unit managers, they sold my stuff erroneously. Long story.
Love robots. I have no doubt as soon as they can make them realistic enough, they'll be a buhzillion dollar business.
... that is just too funny! I won't ask why the pinto flying car never made it ( I liked the concept though, makes some sense), and I will be forced to guess why these love dolls are in business.
so, what's wrong with my idea then, with the cell phones and just the cheap signs? Little to no cost to you guys, a lot of people might actually think it's a good idea, and follow along. I wasn't trying to be a smart ass, but you did ask for opinion on the tracking deal, my opinion is, government already tracks people enough. I was offerring a legitimate, non-intrusive, voluntary and constructive way to perhaps get what everyone wants, a better environment for you guys to find lost/hurt hikers, while maintaining peoples privacy and avoiding government "tracking" of people.
Seemed reasonable to me, I wasn't trolling, I was really offering a perhaps simpler solution.. and I stand by my statement, we were designed as a nation of risk takers who traded off "security" for freedom and privacy for the most part.
I understand the needs of community support for health and safety issues, I am all for it, but I am against *more* government and way against more invasive and intruisive government, and anysort of tracking goes right up my list. I've been a volunteer firefighter in my youth, was active in orienteering, and long been a proponent and advocate of personal preparedness and survivalism. That is my major net presence anyway, and my meatworld expertise,to the point of training and consulting sometimes in it, so I am aware of survival issues in wilderness. I have done several multi month long treks myself, all seasons and climates, as well as just extenede pure near-wilderness, non-modern technological oriented "living". I understand your concerns, been there, done that myself, almost needed the services a few times even. Close but not quite.
I am also aware that informed people are safer than uninformed people who just happen to have a gadget with them, or who think some gadget will 'save" them from the effort of THINKING and acting responsibly., or who are lulled into a false sense of security because "government" will "take care of them", which is *exactly* what I see this scheme of having radio trackers installed on the trails to be. EGADS we have E-nough surveillance cameras, data mining, forms, licenses, restictions, rules, laws,checkpoints, and government "helpful workers" in every shapoe manner and form that can be thought of now, in society "for your safety and security" without mucking up the last remaining place people can be closer to nature and actually be forced to be *competent* and to assume the risk of hiking...
Search and rescue is a tough job. Granted. The hikers, for better or worse, know shit can happen, let's take that for granted too, and if they don't, can't or won't, then too bad for them basically. Let adults be adults, they assume or SHOULD assume they can get into trouble, you assume that almost everytime you actually have to perform your service and duty it will be very difficult,it will suck, it's a volunteer job, so let it go at that. That's my advice, FWIW, and the reasoning behind it.
Oh, one more thing, on the extremely practical side. Say you deploy your sensors, realisitically, really, think about it, how long do you think they will last? Think about the money for them coming out of your pocket, instead of someone elses pocket, because it *will be* coming out of someones pocket, and think if you personally would put them out on your nickle.
...doesn't exist, nor dot org, I just checked, it sounded so cool.
this is just wrong. it is just too good of a name to go unused, but I'm broke right now.
Will whomever gets it please give me an email addy from there? Or just start a web based email there? It's certainly got more zing that @google or @hotmail or @yahoo or @my_isp.com
... are notoriously easy to be sucked into abuse of power over other humans. I watched a fascinating little clip the other day about a psychological study done in the 70's. At this college, they divided up the class, 1/2 became prisoners, half the guards, for a projected 2 week incarceration. They even got the local cops to start it off by "arresting" the detainess at home when tHey weren't expecting it. It was supposed to run for two weeks, but it only lasted 5 DAYS until they had to emergency shut down the experiment. It's on tape, you can see how the prisoners got demoralised, desperate and wimpy, and how the guards got correspondigly more aggressive, right into sadism, into sick "fun". that was on dateline the other night, BTW. They interviewed these people, was interesting to hear the takes they had for their actions 30 some years ago.
You talk to any HONEST combat vet, they'll tell you torture is common place, abuse and killings of civilians and prisoners is common place. It's beyoind common. I mean, what excactly is a "free fire" zone like they had in nam? Them old fart officers they got who are all nam vets know this, it's amusing to see them act oh so surprised and keep sputtering how "it's just a few guys" and "it should never happen". That is SUCH a freekin joke.
War is about state sanctioned murder, that's about it. they take real young people and ENCOURAGE them to change what society tells them, to change into inflicitng death and pain on others is to be rewarded, the better you get at it, the higher you go in rank, the more money you make, the more "honor" and medals you get. This is like duh, what do they expect to happen? Sometimes it's because of a nation getting invaded by another, but that is the exception, usually wars come about from a profit angle (this one, it's the oil and some of the leaders we have are israel firsters, not USA firsters)), but usually war comes about from a few connected fatcats having a beef with some other connected fatcats some other place, but they "give the orders" so millions get to suffer from their buffoonery (and cowardice). You don't see too many national leaders "fighting" any more, like in ye olden days, at least the doofus king back then would strap on a sword and go out and cha cha right along with his men.
And it goes on in jails around the US as well on the street. From torture to murder. And I KNOW it does, nuff said. Any HONEST cop will tell you the same thing as well.
It's gotten out of control. These nimrods have single handedly taken the last remaining 1/5th of the worlds muslim populations who were at least neutral towards the UD and made them all start listening to the nutjob fundy mullah jihaders. I hope the neocons are proud to be the cause of ww3.
I have seen a lot of administrations, this one we got now is THE WORST one of the bunch, near as I can tell, and most of them been more or less "bad", but these guys.... sheesh.... To call them incompetetent stupid liars would be a compliment.
This guy aaron russo for prez is looking good to me, I think I'll probably let diebold enter his name into their blackhole voting machine where it can disappear. It's the thought that counts...dang if I'll vote for either mainstream evil.
--it's used to time the passage of deer down a trail with a sonic sonar sensor. You can adjust the sensitivity, and it time stamps if any large enough critter goes by. You have to go by and check the recordings, and reset it. runs off a 9 volt, lasts for days. sporting goods stores carry them. I don't know the cost new now though.
I think you'd be better off posting signs asking people to please carry cell phones, and to stay in touch with friends periodically as to their approximate location,or even just leave themselves voice mail that some friend or relative has the access code to (something like that) then if they go missing the friends will be contacting you anyway, with the last known x-y. No privacy concerns, let adults be adults and assume their adult repsonsibilities.
Basically, we don't need any more nanny state or government tracking. Our nation was founded on the principle that we gladly accepted "more risk in our personal lives" in exchange for this "freedom to be YOU" deal, and when it was run that way it was a beautiful thing.
I can get as far as my own desktop running moz -> robin ->moxua ->robin -> moxula -> slashdot main page, but it won't go past there for me,it's hanging, can't get to reply to myself, had to go back. It might be my antique box is bogging down though.
...SLICK! It's like a whole computar inside a web page that inside your..computar on the web...uhh, IT'S NEAT THOUGH!
what else could you do with this? it's just so.... interesting, write a web page that becomes a virtual computer. Much coolness el grande. Hmm, a super proxy. hey! I'm gonna use moxula to goto robin to goto moxula then post back, see if it works....
I don't know if this is possible, but this is my idea. Is it possible for the spam fax recipient, to have the specific incoming phone number from the spammers be redirected to one of those #900 pay for psychic phone sex lines at so many dollars per minute? I know you can get call forwarding, so... is this possible, to restrict the call forwarding to a specific incoming phone number, or would the bill show up at.. who's box? I don't know but I think you can see the idea here, Just automate the response so it turns around on them. Or have their spam go to another spammers number, and so on and so forth, the "telephone spam honeypot of doom".
..and because it's so easy to get yourself sued. It is SO easy to find yourself in court over something just totally lame, BUT, it will cost your beaucoup to deal with it, no matter what. And our legal system is EXPENSIVE to dork around in, expensive, overly complicated, nuts in other words.
Joe free software developer writes a prog, some companies use it. Then along comes someone with this vague patent they got back in 1986 and sues them all, running the odds that enough will cave that they will make money. Having indemnification helps mitigate risk, it's a simple concept that most business and industry runs under now, and it's not going away anytime soon, and eventually, there will be dozens of companies offering this sort of financial package. And the larger companies are grabbing patents on every two lines of code they can think of now, it's nuts, but until that is changed,until patenting "thoughts" is not allowed, eventually the legal system will bog down development. It already IS if you look around.
We COULD slow it down with a "loser pays" law system on civil infringements,that is automatic and not reqiring of a separate suit, and make it apply *equally* to the lawyers involved, as well as the principals. That would help slow down predatory lawyers, who really don't care what case they take,or what the merits are or are not, as long as they get paid.
...analogies, they aren't the same thing you are talking about. That was just the quickest thing I could think of, staring out the window to the back yard at the tank, heh. Seemed to fit. Yes, the insurance is an issue, but the upfront cost is an issue, too. 1000 clams for the 250 gallon tank, then another 250-500 to get it filled, adds up quick. A good thing about the propane though, you can order it in the summer when it's the cheapest, take delivery in the fall, when the prices inevitably rise.
As to the softwares, and hardwares issues, either way, unless you buy it all outright one time, then maintain it all yourself, and eeeeek it out as long as possible, you'll be picking one of the other two options, which is what most businesse do now. As to forced upgrades, well, there's always "the other guys" waiting in th wings if you don't like the current company's demands. Bound to be someone will take over the contract and not insist on an upgrade. That's the good thing about open source, someone else can do it, too. And also, that's why I think the diskless clients are a good idea, for really large businesses, if they have enough ram slots. Demands of the apps go up, add another stick of ram. Deploying all new software done at the intranet server level becomes much easier then, and probably won't require total hardware upgrades near as fast. Heck, I'm still on a pentium pro 200, running FC1 (got my pre order in for 2!), it runs fine-once I added another stick of 128 that is. And I still got one more free slot. This is a 1996 box, that's eeeeeking it out. It's a dualy, too, but I never found the other processor and voltage regulator yet though, they made two kinds (IBM), and as luck would have it mine is the off the wall rare one, but still, I bet with another processor and maxing out the ram I could run this thing for several more years (planning on it anyway). It runs moz, OO, whatever just fine. I don't game or run 3-d computer modeling, etc, but for everything else, it's plenty good enough. I think business needs to look at what they got and use it better, that's all, and someone is gonna give them the products to do that eventually, and the only way you can make loot off of free software is to give it away, offer some service, basically renting it. You are paying for timely upgrades and and some handholding.
And yes, data getting hosed, or security flaws getting your business owned. That's why I think the industry is now mature enough to offer warranties, either voluntary or required by law, like other consumer products, and they in turn will need insurance, same as every other business has. If they can get copyrights, patents, etc, they can offer warranties, and cover their own butts with underwriting via insurance. The coding will solve itself in short order by coding shop attrition. Good stuff will rool, crapware will drool, like it always does eventually.
Our legal system is flawed, but it's the best thing we have now (well, deuling would be a good thing....), and it will require some test cases to establish precedent on expected use, useability, normal "wear and tear", etc, like has evolved with other products. Well, IMO anyway, I think it needs to happen. I bet it does too, one way or the other.
I also think all IT grunts need a union, too, but that's a side issue, but I think an IT union could help bring about stability in the market and better quality coding becoming the industry standard. Less code, but better over all average quality and maturity would be *nice*, and better stuff will last longer, be able to be rented longer, for fairer prices. That couldn't hurt.
It's interesting watching the evolution. My dad was a mainframe guy, I was touring big iron shops in the late 50's, saw what-was-then in detail, it's been an amzing transformation in such a short time historically speaking. I remember having a vivid daydream when I was around 14 or so, one of them that sticks with youforever. If I was a better renderer I could still reproduce it.. I was sitting in front o
...businesses are finding it harder to make any money with that design,and it's constantly borken and compromised, plus being expensiv(er), and they are insecure when you have to police every single employee you have to not be lame with his or her box. The expense isn't aquiring the software, it's running it 24/7/365, the "running it" part is the only place cash can show up realistically now.
For the person at home,or very small shops where everyone is on a first name basis with each other, sure, totally free, in house customised, makes more sense, yep, like we have now is great,works fine, it's what I want too. For joe medium and big business, I bet this other model takes over more, because it will "just work" better. Simple economics and for security and ease of deployment, it just makes more sense for businesses to have a more locked down while still easier to deploy and use sort of arrangement,using cheaper hardware that doesn't obsolesce as fast, and when they can pass off the bulk of the technical details to a specialist company for the cheap fee of two bucks a month a head, well, they will take a hard look at that as a *good deal*.
If the monthly costs start to rise dramatically, or if they can't pull it off, if the business still suffers , hmm, "bogus-ness" instead of doing "busi-ness", then it will fail. Have to see how IBM and some others do this thing. It is sort of what redhat and novell/suse are trying to do as well, if you look at it harder, and IBM just dropped the gauntlet down on price, too, dramatically.* The larger difference with IBM is that it's net based, both intra and inter. That lets companies use very good quality server hardware, concentrate on those things, robust is good, and just use very cheap hardware that is plenty good enough for the desktop, and with bandwith what it is today in intranets, it will work just fine for most applications. Not all, but most.
*I didn't see what if any the up-front costs are. IBM would be quite smart if they made it free though.
There's a meatworld example that has worked out well, homeowner propane tanks. You get the large tanks delivered and setup for free or like a few dollars a year. The propane companies are interested in making their money from selling you propane, not renting the tanks. Yes, it leads to a vendor lockin, but it eliminates a ton of upfront costs when you don't have to drop a grand or ore to buy a tank and get it set up, that you only use for a few appliances, and they are kept reasonably honest in that if their prices start to suck, you can call them up and have that thing hauled off, at their expense, and go with another service, who offer the same thing. As a consequence, it's a decent competitive market (as far as any energy stuff sold is). You CAN buy your own tank, then constantly shop around for the best fill er up prices, but most people have opted for the free or cheap yearly rent model, just because it works out better, less hassle, more or less the samepropane price. Service is the main thing, do they actually deliver promptly when you need it, is the price fair enough.
I've used both at the same time, I own my RV propane tanks, but the bulk tank for the house was rented. Same deal with computers, small scale, good to own your own, use it as you wish, large scale in a commercial setting, let a serious computer do the heavy lifting, access it with a fast decent terminal that won't need to be "upgraded" any time soon and doesn't break and can be made to be secure and require little in the way of maintenance. I bet most companies desktops could be replaced with diskless clients with a few gigs of ram installed.
I was just commenting on something along these lines in the "rest of the world will force use of linux" article thread, and I refresh and here's THIS story, which goes along with a prediction I alluded to, more of a universal communications trend, with the apps being server based. I think hardware will follow suit shortly as well, with universal and easy communications between machines and devices dictating more on how softwares are designed, which is the main design goal of this "internet thing" anyway..
It's really the only way to make money with the trend towards to linux-ish environment, subscription services and customization, and that is going to beless of import compared to the actual meatworld aspect of USING the net and computing to make money, as opposed to making that possible. That means large computing industries will stil be there and important, but not like they were in the past, where the mere adoption of newer technology was the profit maker, it will by necessity switch back to "this is the tool, NOW we work with the tool to make money". Just "the tool business" will go back to second place, like it has in every other business. In other words, you use the tools to work, the tool itself is not "the work". Microsoftsd model, is "the toolis always the work", thinking people are just going to keep shoveling huge amounts of cash their way. Erroneous thinking. IBMs idea is more correct, tools are getting cheaper inevitably and more widespread, but they have to be *cheap*,and make the money on bulk sales of the tools and just a tool sharpening service, if I can use that analogy.
And IBM will do better the cheaper they make the initial install, the cheaper they can get those tools out the door, all the way to "free" install if they are *really* smart, and make their cash from just the subscription for maintainence and updates and upgrades, and that has to be cheap, and I see they are planning on only 2 bucks a seat, so there ya go, it's a smooth move on their part, IMO.
Love it when I get immediate backup like this!
For a basic rule of thumb, look to what the younger people in business adopt,or more accurately what they bring in that's fresh in the way of ideas that they are enthusiastic about, then flash forward one to two decades,and you'll see that is what is "dominant" then. You can go back in history and see it repeated all the time, in a variety of businesses and practices.
Right now, the main hardware interest with very young people is really an all in one portable device that does everything, I mean *everything*. You look 10 years from now, that will be the dominant platform, hardware that can do anything, and will be able to communicate with any other hardware, either in physical proximity to other devices with wireless, or in an internet revolving mesh-like manner using a combination of wires and wireless, all revolving around what the internet is morphing into.
... widespread diversity. Linux could become dominant, easily, but it won't be one single distro or way of doing things. It's rather a unique concept in the business world, but there are other examples that are close enough. An example analogy might be the early railroad days with each company having their own track gauge sizes. Eventually it was agreed to have a single gauge, but there were still multiple railroads and brands of engines and cars. They also agreed to play nice with each other and use each others tracks, and the government in a lot of cases stepped in and adjusted laws in the favor of retaining (or seizing via eminent domain) right of ways for the tracks.
I think FOSS will be universally adopted, because it has the momentum and mindshare now within the developer community of the younger people,not the users yet but the developers, who are becoming the techs/admins and eventually the managers all across the professional IT board, the dreaded PHBes. They will use what they are comfortable with, and attrition will negate the dominance of closed source and propietary and (more) expensive.
But I also think that change in hardware will dictate what gets used as well, I can foresee when all devices use embedded, and that will extend to the desktop, both home and business, which will go to a merge between a full thin client model, distributed computing, and stand alone single use machines. Hmm, for example, the "business desktop" that comes prebuilt to work only with a secure company server system, and is even more modular than wehat we have today, extremely easy plug and play modularity, with "aware" components that don't have to work in conjunction with extremely specific hardware, following the USB and Firewire progression modality, and that also contain their own processors, ram, OS and so forth. Plug it in, it can talk to all the other devices, not being dependent on a single OS, just having a common way to communicate in other words.
It's interesting to watch it really. Cellphones that are becoming PDAs with audio video capabilities, PDAs that evolve into cell phones, desktops that resemble laptops (smaller, adoption of LCDish screens, etc), laptops that can mimic powerful desktops justfrom advanced features, etc. Hardrives becoming more RAM like, while RAM being used more and more like a hardrive used to be used for.
It's quite amazing really, because we've crossed the point where any sort of single monolithic standard can be dominant, there just isn't time to market something extensively before it's entirely obsolete, this will gradually force just the interoperability standards of communicating between devices to determine general computing trends more than anything else, and even there that's a moving target right now.
First, it should be required to provide a warranty, same as every other consumer product out there. The coding is not the consumers business, same as the construction of the vacuum cleaner, blender, lamp or whatever is not the consumers business. But, those products, manufactured and sold for a profit, carry warranties, real and implied, by law. They must be suitable for the purpose intended, and free from *major* defects.
It's a simple concept with a lot of case law behind it, so if you want examples of "how much" that is, you can research it. Example:Ford can build cars that should act as cars, but when a brand new tire on a brand new car explodes, causing the cars to tip over,and KEEPS happening, and it gets revealed they knew about it and kept shipping them out the door, that becomes a major problem, and common sense tilts towards the consumer. If the tires just wear out and need to be replaced after like 50,000 miles or something, that is considered normal mainteanasce, it has nothing to do with ford and the consumer needs a reasonable upgrade. If the driver is just completely drunk, passed out, going 100MPH on a wet slippery road and flips over, that is considered "lame", it's not Fords fault,, no harm no foul, no redress possible by the consumer, because common sense works in the companies favor then..and societies favor.
There's your differences in a crude analogy.
Second, remove corporate personhood, have every corporate decison be attached (eventually)to a named individual, so that any normal business contract goes between named human beings, not between a human being and a piece of paper with a stamp on it filed away in a drawer in delaware some place.
Seroiusness of a security hole, because there are no standards-well, make some. You should be able to get onto the internet without getting owned easily. I ran mac classic for years and years, never had a firewall, never got owned. I never even got a virus, although I know a few existed, and used email extensively, got attachments, went to every web page I felt like going to. It CAN be done obviously. If an OS and set of apps/packages, windows in this case, that comes with internet connection ability, has no rational way to keep from getting owned without a third party firewall, and even then it still keeps getting borked, and literally has a virus a day associated with it, then something is just plain common sense "wrong" with that, then the product is "defective", and when you see the owner is the single richest guy on the planet, the company one of the richest, that they seemed to aquire more money than some nations have hanging around, then it tends to make people with common sense go "hmm, maybe them boys just wrote and shipped JUNK, and ripped people off". How they then got millions of people to run it for years by using blackmail and bribery and threats and extortions with hardware manufactuers is now legal history, they DID it. Now it's gotten into criminality,not just laziness, incompetence and greed, but outright criminality, but because they are "big" and a "corporation", nothing of note happens to them.
Something is just "common sense" wrong there.
Provide the firewall, or a secure system which works, code so there's as little as possible that can go wrong in the kernel and file system from outside the users keyboard. It can be done, greatly mitigated over what is out there now. They just didn't want to do it then, and laughed all the way to several banks.
That seems to be a flaw, a generous flaw, and our legal system has a dandy way to deal with it, a regular jury of your peers, looking at both sides of the issue, not some political appointee judge issuing royal edicts. You put 12 people on a jury, people who have used computers and gone on the internet, and let *them* decide in a case what is "reasonable" or not, and that becomes your legal standard, same as everything else.
Code just gets a totally free skate, that's all, and they always want the free skate. If you want to s
Slashdot Mirror
..., guys from Compaq , got closer with their car, the turbine/electric/flywheel deal they tried a few years ago. I never followed it, I guess they stopped working on it after *some* initial successes, and some disappointments.
A friend of mine had a suzuki RE5 liquid cooled wankel engine way back in the day, quite a radical bike for the era, it sounded pretty spiffy, different, but nice. Ran fast, too.
...74 dart custom, both with the slant six. The valiant had three on the tree, the dart was auto, and my recollection was like yours, over 20 MPG averagee\ city/highway and enough oomph to get down the road at a reasonable speed and to climb hills and it had full bench seats and could accomodate plenty of people and cargo. Heh, once I floored my dart across tennessee in tandem with some dude piloting an old BMW I think a 1400 on the highway just because I could, indicated on the speedo 110 for a long time, I only slowed down when I saw the semi's slow down and pull over to the right to avoid smokies. Great little cars, well, medium sized, reliable as all get out, and start no matter how cold it got outside, to well below zero F. I actually could NOT give the dart a tune up, try as I might, it was a point system, and it was my usual deal back then to adjust & clean points and clean plugs at every oil change. The points were never burnt, never went out of adjustment, and the plugs stayed clean. The only thing I didn't like about the engine was the placement of the distributor,way down low,it was subject to getting wet and bork on on you if you were driving in rural areas and had to cross those cement pads that go under streams that they have some places in lieu of more expensive bridges, but besides that, always cranked and ran good, got great mileage.
I also had a 69 fiat rear engine spyder, that thing got a true 50 mpg or better,I wuz amazed really, but was slower than what you think of as sports car performance "normally", because it only had an 850 cc engine (that I built to - had to, it was a junker when I got it, a salvage yard worn out thing- over 900cc )with oversized forged pistons, a bore and polish job done at a racing shop by guys who cared about details, weight balanced to a couple grams of the lightest, tedious but effective on RPM gain, along with the rods and the other assorted normal engine hotrodding jazz on the intake runners and whatnot,and etc, etc), but still wicked fun to drive around, it would still be a nice commuter car. It would go around 70 tops, but it was a fun 70. Acceleration was "acceptable", that's it, 4 speed manual, with a transaxle arrangement and flex joints to the rear wheels, quite unusual really. I *think* it weighed in around 1200 or so lbs. Anyway, mucho easier to work on than even an air cooled beetle, and that's saying a lot.
Cars would get MUCH more mileage and power and run cleaner if people would be able to accept the bulk of the loot you pay for a car going into engineering the engine and drivetrain, instead of the paint job, the interior, the stereos, the climate zone control stuff, all the flash, etc.
You look to professional racing for real engineering advances in materials sciences and machining and configuration, because MO powah and MO mileage rules there, and that's where the number #1 engineering branes go get jobs, because they get paid better and it's more fun for them. Detroit and Stuttgart and Tokyo get the grade #2 guys designing and building, very roughly speaking.
It's also a factor of car companies have to keep lines open all the time, they COULD build cars that lasted 3 times as long and ran better all around, etc, but it would put them out of business shortly, so they don't do it.
We as a society don't demand more reliability and mileage near as much as we want luxury, comfort, sound systems, and whatnot. You take the same (just to pick a generic ball park figure)20 grand to spend on a car, put it into drivetrain engineering instead of flash and blinkenlights, it'll perform better all around, but people won't be as satisified with it, so they won't sell very well. You CAN have both, but it costs severely.
And the other deal with cars is, petroleum is just filthy stuff, it's incredibly hard to make it burn clean and efficiently*,it's BTU dense but filthy, it drives up the costs a lot. Merely switching liquid fuels to ethanol or methanol would solve a lot of problems of cost and complexity.
*
.... or a better description, oppressive governments, have only one way to stay in power. That is to successfully brainwash every suceeding generation into acception the oppression. And I mean brainwash, mass conditioning, whatever you want to call it. They KNOW that once a person is a full adult, and has undergone a life long societal indoctrination, that they rarely ever become anit-regime, they "go along to get along".
They have been successfully force-morphed into a situation known in psychological circles as a being a victim of the "stockholm" syndrome, where the victim identifies so closely with the victimiser that they become willing in their desire to stay victimised, and cooperate beyond what is rational. This is true all over the planet, all through history. There are exceptions and extraordinary situations where it can be broken, but they are rare enough for each to become important milestones in history. In the US, it was the revolt over what was at the time "legitimate authority", ie, subservience to King George and royal rule and direction. Every single person who took part in the rebellion was by defintion a terrorist, and engaged in "illegal activity", overlapping felonies usually.
One of the main felonies was anti-regime pamphleteering, really the only way to spread ideas that ran contrary to the current group think acceptance of oppression at the time, that and some private and illegal soap boxing. that was it for communications back then, they used what communication was available at the time to spread ideas that were philosophically in opposition to the "approved" brainwashing.
China knows this, they can't let younger people break the mold, internet acccess allows differring ideas to be presented that they can't control as easily. Even with adults there it is highly restricted.
In western society it is somewhat different, but remarkably similar as well, although the differences are more subtle, the results are the same. Generation after generation societally conditioned to accept whatever the status quo is, and to only question to the point that is "allowed" by the regimists. It's done from a standpoint of forced government indoctrination in the schools, from what passes as entertainment, from what passes as the "full complete unbiased news" and so on, reinforced via "laws" that insist on whatever is the current group-think.
You'll notice that as soon as you approach whatever limits that allow for a peek to the other side that governments go absolutely ape squat in trying to nix it, we see it all the time, it only matters in the form of degree really. Chinas with communications are currently move overt, but western governments are getting there slowly but surely as well, they just have to do it in baby steps that are small enough to fit inside a brainwashing model that allows for new ideas of "legal" oppression to be accepted by the preponderence of their particular citizenry as "normal".
this is pretty vague in the article. Is having your admin run some shell scripts that modify a canned package count as a new piece of custom software? Would that be re-taxed then if it was bought in the first place? How many times can something be taxed? Or would it be proportional by..line count of code? If package x costed 100 clams, and was 50,000 lines of code and you modified x amounts of code and... you can see where this could go. Is it a brand new transaction then? The entire package, or is it proportionally taxed, or what? It's cuckoo really.
rhetorical question. If you follow around US federal reserve notes,from the second they are poof created, they are all tax dollars already, ie, it's all been taxed into government ownership previously. If you are dealing in FRNs, none of it is your property. None, zero. It's all the governments (well, a private banks paper), and they let you use some of it. And being legal debt instruments, they start out as a debt, and you get paid with a debt,you attempt to pay off a debt by transferring another debt, and so on. They retax their own debt, and so on.
Sound incredibly stupid? Why yes,yes it is, it is an extremely stupid way to create "money" for anyone productive, but it's a superscam con for the people who start it and have people faked out into using it. It's fat city for the other guys. Using future debt as a medium of exchange instead of having money represent produced-wealth is lame to begin with, but it sure is handy for government and some rich banks.
aaack, another time...It's such an overwhelming and successful con....
Anyway, without seeing how the law is worded it's hard to tell,I'm only looking at the article, but seems like it's so open ended and vague that it would rapidly rise (most likely) to beyond this 64 million dollars with the application of normal bureaucratic greed. Then come the lawyers and the courts and the judges and the lawsuits,typical government crap.
You know, the soviet union collapsed when their economy was so much black market and grey market and government bloat that it eclipsed the above board official "white market". It had as much to do with that as anything reagan did with military one upsmanship. Our government now is doing it's level best to force everyone into being a criminal it appears, doing it's level best to make the economy so incredibly lamer complex with regulations and scams that they think up that's it's almost impossible to deal with it. I wonder if they really understand what will eventually happen, if it's intentional, or if they are truly that incredibly stupid.
... decades ago to basically build the same thing, but using a medium weight but powerful road bike. Much better horsepower to weight ratio, air cooled engine, etc. some sort of heavy duty crank down onto the real wheel rubber (synthetics of some sort) roller for a PTO going to a reduction gear, then to some sort of transaxle arrangement, then to twin opposing revolution aft mounted overhead props. You would ( I think) also gain a nice atabilizing effect from the gyro effect of the rear wheel running in the vertical plane. I think though the main drawback would be torque, and the strength of the crank assembly. You need TORQUE and component STRENGTH to push that air, it's pretty different from a lightweight wheel spinning real fast, the engines are designed differently. Airplane engines are stout babies. But I still think it's quite possible.
never did build it tho, that's a few spare dollars I never had......
what I DID do was build one of the first mountain bikes, before they were called mountain bikes, I think before there were any on the market from anyplace. Maybe, don't know but I think so.. Fat tired, huge geared 10 speeder, started on it in 76, finished roughly early 78, it was still winter because I took it out on a snowmobile trail and ran it. Mucho fun.. It worked *great*, although nothing like the carbon fiber monoshok whizzbangs they have now of course, but still..schweet. I always wanted one, running off road on trails was a big sport to me, just insane stuff for the era, I never met anyone back then personally who did it, but the thin wheeled bikes just sucked, always tore them up (I owned a shop back then, always tinkering), or you'd get beat up from the shock, or just bog down, etc. They just "lacked" off road ability. So I built my own. sigh... never did anything with the idea, wish I had now. Can't tell ya how many people asked to buy it from me...man...I wuz stoopid. Don't even have the bike now, it got "stolen" in a manner of speaking from a storage unit by the storage unit managers, they sold my stuff erroneously. Long story.
Love robots. I have no doubt as soon as they can make them realistic enough, they'll be a buhzillion dollar business.
... that is just too funny! I won't ask why the pinto flying car never made it ( I liked the concept though, makes some sense), and I will be forced to guess why these love dolls are in business.
oh man.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
way cool! So, what ya gonna do with it then?
I'll send ya off an email soonest,today or tomorrow, got storms coming here, might have to log off soon, don't know.
so, what's wrong with my idea then, with the cell phones and just the cheap signs? Little to no cost to you guys, a lot of people might actually think it's a good idea, and follow along. I wasn't trying to be a smart ass, but you did ask for opinion on the tracking deal, my opinion is, government already tracks people enough. I was offerring a legitimate, non-intrusive, voluntary and constructive way to perhaps get what everyone wants, a better environment for you guys to find lost/hurt hikers, while maintaining peoples privacy and avoiding government "tracking" of people.
Seemed reasonable to me, I wasn't trolling, I was really offering a perhaps simpler solution.. and I stand by my statement, we were designed as a nation of risk takers who traded off "security" for freedom and privacy for the most part.
I understand the needs of community support for health and safety issues, I am all for it, but I am against *more* government and way against more invasive and intruisive government, and anysort of tracking goes right up my list. I've been a volunteer firefighter in my youth, was active in orienteering, and long been a proponent and advocate of personal preparedness and survivalism. That is my major net presence anyway, and my meatworld expertise,to the point of training and consulting sometimes in it, so I am aware of survival issues in wilderness. I have done several multi month long treks myself, all seasons and climates, as well as just extenede pure near-wilderness, non-modern technological oriented "living". I understand your concerns, been there, done that myself, almost needed the services a few times even. Close but not quite.
I am also aware that informed people are safer than uninformed people who just happen to have a gadget with them, or who think some gadget will 'save" them from the effort of THINKING and acting responsibly., or who are lulled into a false sense of security because "government" will "take care of them", which is *exactly* what I see this scheme of having radio trackers installed on the trails to be. EGADS we have E-nough surveillance cameras, data mining, forms, licenses, restictions, rules, laws,checkpoints, and government "helpful workers" in every shapoe manner and form that can be thought of now, in society "for your safety and security" without mucking up the last remaining place people can be closer to nature and actually be forced to be *competent* and to assume the risk of hiking...
Search and rescue is a tough job. Granted. The hikers, for better or worse, know shit can happen, let's take that for granted too, and if they don't, can't or won't, then too bad for them basically. Let adults be adults, they assume or SHOULD assume they can get into trouble, you assume that almost everytime you actually have to perform your service and duty it will be very difficult,it will suck, it's a volunteer job, so let it go at that. That's my advice, FWIW, and the reasoning behind it.
Oh, one more thing, on the extremely practical side. Say you deploy your sensors, realisitically, really, think about it, how long do you think they will last? Think about the money for them coming out of your pocket, instead of someone elses pocket, because it *will be* coming out of someones pocket, and think if you personally would put them out on your nickle.
I bet you'd conclude it's not a swift idea then.
%^)
...doesn't exist, nor dot org, I just checked, it sounded so cool.
this is just wrong. it is just too good of a name to go unused, but I'm broke right now.
Will whomever gets it please give me an email addy from there? Or just start a web based email there? It's certainly got more zing that @google or @hotmail or @yahoo or @my_isp.com
... are notoriously easy to be sucked into abuse of power over other humans. I watched a fascinating little clip the other day about a psychological study done in the 70's. At this college, they divided up the class, 1/2 became prisoners, half the guards, for a projected 2 week incarceration. They even got the local cops to start it off by "arresting" the detainess at home when tHey weren't expecting it. It was supposed to run for two weeks, but it only lasted 5 DAYS until they had to emergency shut down the experiment. It's on tape, you can see how the prisoners got demoralised, desperate and wimpy, and how the guards got correspondigly more aggressive, right into sadism, into sick "fun". that was on dateline the other night, BTW. They interviewed these people, was interesting to hear the takes they had for their actions 30 some years ago.
You talk to any HONEST combat vet, they'll tell you torture is common place, abuse and killings of civilians and prisoners is common place. It's beyoind common. I mean, what excactly is a "free fire" zone like they had in nam? Them old fart officers they got who are all nam vets know this, it's amusing to see them act oh so surprised and keep sputtering how "it's just a few guys" and "it should never happen". That is SUCH a freekin joke.
War is about state sanctioned murder, that's about it. they take real young people and ENCOURAGE them to change what society tells them, to change into inflicitng death and pain on others is to be rewarded, the better you get at it, the higher you go in rank, the more money you make, the more "honor" and medals you get. This is like duh, what do they expect to happen? Sometimes it's because of a nation getting invaded by another, but that is the exception, usually wars come about from a profit angle (this one, it's the oil and some of the leaders we have are israel firsters, not USA firsters)), but usually war comes about from a few connected fatcats having a beef with some other connected fatcats some other place, but they "give the orders" so millions get to suffer from their buffoonery (and cowardice). You don't see too many national leaders "fighting" any more, like in ye olden days, at least the doofus king back then would strap on a sword and go out and cha cha right along with his men.
And it goes on in jails around the US as well on the street. From torture to murder. And I KNOW it does, nuff said. Any HONEST cop will tell you the same thing as well.
It's gotten out of control. These nimrods have single handedly taken the last remaining 1/5th of the worlds muslim populations who were at least neutral towards the UD and made them all start listening to the nutjob fundy mullah jihaders. I hope the neocons are proud to be the cause of ww3.
I have seen a lot of administrations, this one we got now is THE WORST one of the bunch, near as I can tell, and most of them been more or less "bad", but these guys.... sheesh.... To call them incompetetent stupid liars would be a compliment.
This guy aaron russo for prez is looking good to me, I think I'll probably let diebold enter his name into their blackhole voting machine where it can disappear. It's the thought that counts...dang if I'll vote for either mainstream evil.
%^)
--it's used to time the passage of deer down a trail with a sonic sonar sensor. You can adjust the sensitivity, and it time stamps if any large enough critter goes by. You have to go by and check the recordings, and reset it. runs off a 9 volt, lasts for days. sporting goods stores carry them. I don't know the cost new now though.
I think you'd be better off posting signs asking people to please carry cell phones, and to stay in touch with friends periodically as to their approximate location,or even just leave themselves voice mail that some friend or relative has the access code to (something like that) then if they go missing the friends will be contacting you anyway, with the last known x-y. No privacy concerns, let adults be adults and assume their adult repsonsibilities.
Basically, we don't need any more nanny state or government tracking. Our nation was founded on the principle that we gladly accepted "more risk in our personal lives" in exchange for this "freedom to be YOU" deal, and when it was run that way it was a beautiful thing.
that's rilly the question
I can get as far as my own desktop running moz -> robin ->moxua ->robin -> moxula -> slashdot main page, but it won't go past there for me,it's hanging, can't get to reply to myself, had to go back. It might be my antique box is bogging down though.
it is very nice though, shows some cool thinking.
...SLICK! It's like a whole computar inside a web page that inside your..computar on the web...uhh, IT'S NEAT THOUGH!
what else could you do with this? it's just so.... interesting, write a web page that becomes a virtual computer. Much coolness el grande. Hmm, a super proxy. hey! I'm gonna use moxula to goto robin to goto moxula then post back, see if it works....
I don't know if this is possible, but this is my idea. Is it possible for the spam fax recipient, to have the specific incoming phone number from the spammers be redirected to one of those #900 pay for psychic phone sex lines at so many dollars per minute? I know you can get call forwarding, so... is this possible, to restrict the call forwarding to a specific incoming phone number, or would the bill show up at.. who's box? I don't know but I think you can see the idea here, Just automate the response so it turns around on them. Or have their spam go to another spammers number, and so on and so forth, the "telephone spam honeypot of doom".
TSHOD © under the WTFC general purpose internet posting license
..and because it's so easy to get yourself sued. It is SO easy to find yourself in court over something just totally lame, BUT, it will cost your beaucoup to deal with it, no matter what. And our legal system is EXPENSIVE to dork around in, expensive, overly complicated, nuts in other words.
Joe free software developer writes a prog, some companies use it. Then along comes someone with this vague patent they got back in 1986 and sues them all, running the odds that enough will cave that they will make money. Having indemnification helps mitigate risk, it's a simple concept that most business and industry runs under now, and it's not going away anytime soon, and eventually, there will be dozens of companies offering this sort of financial package. And the larger companies are grabbing patents on every two lines of code they can think of now, it's nuts, but until that is changed,until patenting "thoughts" is not allowed, eventually the legal system will bog down development. It already IS if you look around.
We COULD slow it down with a "loser pays" law system on civil infringements,that is automatic and not reqiring of a separate suit, and make it apply *equally* to the lawyers involved, as well as the principals. That would help slow down predatory lawyers, who really don't care what case they take,or what the merits are or are not, as long as they get paid.
...analogies, they aren't the same thing you are talking about. That was just the quickest thing I could think of, staring out the window to the back yard at the tank, heh. Seemed to fit. Yes, the insurance is an issue, but the upfront cost is an issue, too. 1000 clams for the 250 gallon tank, then another 250-500 to get it filled, adds up quick. A good thing about the propane though, you can order it in the summer when it's the cheapest, take delivery in the fall, when the prices inevitably rise.
As to the softwares, and hardwares issues, either way, unless you buy it all outright one time, then maintain it all yourself, and eeeeek it out as long as possible, you'll be picking one of the other two options, which is what most businesse do now. As to forced upgrades, well, there's always "the other guys" waiting in th wings if you don't like the current company's demands. Bound to be someone will take over the contract and not insist on an upgrade. That's the good thing about open source, someone else can do it, too. And also, that's why I think the diskless clients are a good idea, for really large businesses, if they have enough ram slots. Demands of the apps go up, add another stick of ram. Deploying all new software done at the intranet server level becomes much easier then, and probably won't require total hardware upgrades near as fast. Heck, I'm still on a pentium pro 200, running FC1 (got my pre order in for 2!), it runs fine-once I added another stick of 128 that is. And I still got one more free slot. This is a 1996 box, that's eeeeeking it out. It's a dualy, too, but I never found the other processor and voltage regulator yet though, they made two kinds (IBM), and as luck would have it mine is the off the wall rare one, but still, I bet with another processor and maxing out the ram I could run this thing for several more years (planning on it anyway). It runs moz, OO, whatever just fine. I don't game or run 3-d computer modeling, etc, but for everything else, it's plenty good enough. I think business needs to look at what they got and use it better, that's all, and someone is gonna give them the products to do that eventually, and the only way you can make loot off of free software is to give it away, offer some service, basically renting it. You are paying for timely upgrades and and some handholding.
And yes, data getting hosed, or security flaws getting your business owned. That's why I think the industry is now mature enough to offer warranties, either voluntary or required by law, like other consumer products, and they in turn will need insurance, same as every other business has. If they can get copyrights, patents, etc, they can offer warranties, and cover their own butts with underwriting via insurance. The coding will solve itself in short order by coding shop attrition. Good stuff will rool, crapware will drool, like it always does eventually.
Our legal system is flawed, but it's the best thing we have now (well, deuling would be a good thing....), and it will require some test cases to establish precedent on expected use, useability, normal "wear and tear", etc, like has evolved with other products. Well, IMO anyway, I think it needs to happen. I bet it does too, one way or the other.
I also think all IT grunts need a union, too, but that's a side issue, but I think an IT union could help bring about stability in the market and better quality coding becoming the industry standard. Less code, but better over all average quality and maturity would be *nice*, and better stuff will last longer, be able to be rented longer, for fairer prices. That couldn't hurt.
It's interesting watching the evolution. My dad was a mainframe guy, I was touring big iron shops in the late 50's, saw what-was-then in detail, it's been an amzing transformation in such a short time historically speaking. I remember having a vivid daydream when I was around 14 or so, one of them that sticks with youforever. If I was a better renderer I could still reproduce it.. I was sitting in front o
...businesses are finding it harder to make any money with that design,and it's constantly borken and compromised, plus being expensiv(er), and they are insecure when you have to police every single employee you have to not be lame with his or her box. The expense isn't aquiring the software, it's running it 24/7/365, the "running it" part is the only place cash can show up realistically now.
For the person at home,or very small shops where everyone is on a first name basis with each other, sure, totally free, in house customised, makes more sense, yep, like we have now is great,works fine, it's what I want too. For joe medium and big business, I bet this other model takes over more, because it will "just work" better. Simple economics and for security and ease of deployment, it just makes more sense for businesses to have a more locked down while still easier to deploy and use sort of arrangement,using cheaper hardware that doesn't obsolesce as fast, and when they can pass off the bulk of the technical details to a specialist company for the cheap fee of two bucks a month a head, well, they will take a hard look at that as a *good deal*.
If the monthly costs start to rise dramatically, or if they can't pull it off, if the business still suffers , hmm, "bogus-ness" instead of doing "busi-ness", then it will fail. Have to see how IBM and some others do this thing. It is sort of what redhat and novell/suse are trying to do as well, if you look at it harder, and IBM just dropped the gauntlet down on price, too, dramatically.* The larger difference with IBM is that it's net based, both intra and inter. That lets companies use very good quality server hardware, concentrate on those things, robust is good, and just use very cheap hardware that is plenty good enough for the desktop, and with bandwith what it is today in intranets, it will work just fine for most applications. Not all, but most.
*I didn't see what if any the up-front costs are. IBM would be quite smart if they made it free though.
There's a meatworld example that has worked out well, homeowner propane tanks. You get the large tanks delivered and setup for free or like a few dollars a year. The propane companies are interested in making their money from selling you propane, not renting the tanks. Yes, it leads to a vendor lockin, but it eliminates a ton of upfront costs when you don't have to drop a grand or ore to buy a tank and get it set up, that you only use for a few appliances, and they are kept reasonably honest in that if their prices start to suck, you can call them up and have that thing hauled off, at their expense, and go with another service, who offer the same thing. As a consequence, it's a decent competitive market (as far as any energy stuff sold is). You CAN buy your own tank, then constantly shop around for the best fill er up prices, but most people have opted for the free or cheap yearly rent model, just because it works out better, less hassle, more or less the samepropane price. Service is the main thing, do they actually deliver promptly when you need it, is the price fair enough.
I've used both at the same time, I own my RV propane tanks, but the bulk tank for the house was rented. Same deal with computers, small scale, good to own your own, use it as you wish, large scale in a commercial setting, let a serious computer do the heavy lifting, access it with a fast decent terminal that won't need to be "upgraded" any time soon and doesn't break and can be made to be secure and require little in the way of maintenance. I bet most companies desktops could be replaced with diskless clients with a few gigs of ram installed.
... "K" money better, it is definetly in the "oohhh, shiny" category.
hehehe heheheh heheh
I was just commenting on something along these lines in the "rest of the world will force use of linux" article thread, and I refresh and here's THIS story, which goes along with a prediction I alluded to, more of a universal communications trend, with the apps being server based. I think hardware will follow suit shortly as well, with universal and easy communications between machines and devices dictating more on how softwares are designed, which is the main design goal of this "internet thing" anyway..
It's really the only way to make money with the trend towards to linux-ish environment, subscription services and customization, and that is going to beless of import compared to the actual meatworld aspect of USING the net and computing to make money, as opposed to making that possible. That means large computing industries will stil be there and important, but not like they were in the past, where the mere adoption of newer technology was the profit maker, it will by necessity switch back to "this is the tool, NOW we work with the tool to make money". Just "the tool business" will go back to second place, like it has in every other business. In other words, you use the tools to work, the tool itself is not "the work". Microsoftsd model, is "the toolis always the work", thinking people are just going to keep shoveling huge amounts of cash their way. Erroneous thinking. IBMs idea is more correct, tools are getting cheaper inevitably and more widespread, but they have to be *cheap*,and make the money on bulk sales of the tools and just a tool sharpening service, if I can use that analogy.
And IBM will do better the cheaper they make the initial install, the cheaper they can get those tools out the door, all the way to "free" install if they are *really* smart, and make their cash from just the subscription for maintainence and updates and upgrades, and that has to be cheap, and I see they are planning on only 2 bucks a seat, so there ya go, it's a smooth move on their part, IMO.
Love it when I get immediate backup like this!
For a basic rule of thumb, look to what the younger people in business adopt,or more accurately what they bring in that's fresh in the way of ideas that they are enthusiastic about, then flash forward one to two decades,and you'll see that is what is "dominant" then. You can go back in history and see it repeated all the time, in a variety of businesses and practices.
Right now, the main hardware interest with very young people is really an all in one portable device that does everything, I mean *everything*. You look 10 years from now, that will be the dominant platform, hardware that can do anything, and will be able to communicate with any other hardware, either in physical proximity to other devices with wireless, or in an internet revolving mesh-like manner using a combination of wires and wireless, all revolving around what the internet is morphing into.
IBM gets it right this time I think.
... widespread diversity. Linux could become dominant, easily, but it won't be one single distro or way of doing things. It's rather a unique concept in the business world, but there are other examples that are close enough. An example analogy might be the early railroad days with each company having their own track gauge sizes. Eventually it was agreed to have a single gauge, but there were still multiple railroads and brands of engines and cars. They also agreed to play nice with each other and use each others tracks, and the government in a lot of cases stepped in and adjusted laws in the favor of retaining (or seizing via eminent domain) right of ways for the tracks.
I think FOSS will be universally adopted, because it has the momentum and mindshare now within the developer community of the younger people,not the users yet but the developers, who are becoming the techs/admins and eventually the managers all across the professional IT board, the dreaded PHBes. They will use what they are comfortable with, and attrition will negate the dominance of closed source and propietary and (more) expensive.
But I also think that change in hardware will dictate what gets used as well, I can foresee when all devices use embedded, and that will extend to the desktop, both home and business, which will go to a merge between a full thin client model, distributed computing, and stand alone single use machines. Hmm, for example, the "business desktop" that comes prebuilt to work only with a secure company server system, and is even more modular than wehat we have today, extremely easy plug and play modularity, with "aware" components that don't have to work in conjunction with extremely specific hardware, following the USB and Firewire progression modality, and that also contain their own processors, ram, OS and so forth. Plug it in, it can talk to all the other devices, not being dependent on a single OS, just having a common way to communicate in other words.
It's interesting to watch it really. Cellphones that are becoming PDAs with audio video capabilities, PDAs that evolve into cell phones, desktops that resemble laptops (smaller, adoption of LCDish screens, etc), laptops that can mimic powerful desktops justfrom advanced features, etc. Hardrives becoming more RAM like, while RAM being used more and more like a hardrive used to be used for.
It's quite amazing really, because we've crossed the point where any sort of single monolithic standard can be dominant, there just isn't time to market something extensively before it's entirely obsolete, this will gradually force just the interoperability standards of communicating between devices to determine general computing trends more than anything else, and even there that's a moving target right now.
...shouldn't it be liteur? They like all the extras... makes it fancy or something.....
I think IM chat speak will become dominant, spelling-wise.
First, it should be required to provide a warranty, same as every other consumer product out there. The coding is not the consumers business, same as the construction of the vacuum cleaner, blender, lamp or whatever is not the consumers business. But, those products, manufactured and sold for a profit, carry warranties, real and implied, by law. They must be suitable for the purpose intended, and free from *major* defects.
It's a simple concept with a lot of case law behind it, so if you want examples of "how much" that is, you can research it. Example:Ford can build cars that should act as cars, but when a brand new tire on a brand new car explodes, causing the cars to tip over,and KEEPS happening, and it gets revealed they knew about it and kept shipping them out the door, that becomes a major problem, and common sense tilts towards the consumer. If the tires just wear out and need to be replaced after like 50,000 miles or something, that is considered normal mainteanasce, it has nothing to do with ford and the consumer needs a reasonable upgrade. If the driver is just completely drunk, passed out, going 100MPH on a wet slippery road and flips over, that is considered "lame", it's not Fords fault,, no harm no foul, no redress possible by the consumer, because common sense works in the companies favor then..and societies favor.
There's your differences in a crude analogy.
Second, remove corporate personhood, have every corporate decison be attached (eventually)to a named individual, so that any normal business contract goes between named human beings, not between a human being and a piece of paper with a stamp on it filed away in a drawer in delaware some place.
Seroiusness of a security hole, because there are no standards-well, make some. You should be able to get onto the internet without getting owned easily. I ran mac classic for years and years, never had a firewall, never got owned. I never even got a virus, although I know a few existed, and used email extensively, got attachments, went to every web page I felt like going to. It CAN be done obviously. If an OS and set of apps/packages, windows in this case, that comes with internet connection ability, has no rational way to keep from getting owned without a third party firewall, and even then it still keeps getting borked, and literally has a virus a day associated with it, then something is just plain common sense "wrong" with that, then the product is "defective", and when you see the owner is the single richest guy on the planet, the company one of the richest, that they seemed to aquire more money than some nations have hanging around, then it tends to make people with common sense go "hmm, maybe them boys just wrote and shipped JUNK, and ripped people off". How they then got millions of people to run it for years by using blackmail and bribery and threats and extortions with hardware manufactuers is now legal history, they DID it. Now it's gotten into criminality,not just laziness, incompetence and greed, but outright criminality, but because they are "big" and a "corporation", nothing of note happens to them.
Something is just "common sense" wrong there.
Provide the firewall, or a secure system which works, code so there's as little as possible that can go wrong in the kernel and file system from outside the users keyboard. It can be done, greatly mitigated over what is out there now. They just didn't want to do it then, and laughed all the way to several banks.
That seems to be a flaw, a generous flaw, and our legal system has a dandy way to deal with it, a regular jury of your peers, looking at both sides of the issue, not some political appointee judge issuing royal edicts. You put 12 people on a jury, people who have used computers and gone on the internet, and let *them* decide in a case what is "reasonable" or not, and that becomes your legal standard, same as everything else.
Code just gets a totally free skate, that's all, and they always want the free skate. If you want to s
... google news has slashdot showing up, and google groups has this guy, number #1 for nigritude ultramarine, and also the only one