Your MSNBC article suggests that mutation and evolution of Homo sapiens ceased or at leased slowed at some point, perhaps due to industrialization, transportation, and the resulting intermixing of geographically isolated populations to a dramatic degree. While that dynamic is certainly at work, a more suspicious person might wonder if in fact the evolutionary process has continued in less obvious ways in spite of it? Ways that, for instance, might eventually lead to significant changes in human perception and sociology, rather than overt changes in physiology? Is it possible that some evolutionary mutations might occur that aren't as obvious as skin color or feathers or gills?
Consider, for example, the traits labelled as "autism", particularly "high functioning" autism and Asperger's Syndrome, and Attention Deficit "Disorder". Do these traits truly constitute neurological or physiological disorders, or is it simply that these traits pose considerable inconvenience and cause dischord within our current sociological structures?
Some of the recognized traits of those "disorders" I mentioned are arguably responsible for some of the greatest scientific and engineering successes in human history. If those traits were universally bad in all circumstances, natural selection would have removed them millenia ago. Instead they linger in the gene pool, causing much consternation because those who possess them never quite seem to fit the neurotypical human sociological model. Often, in spite of the most offensive of those traits, some of those who possess these packages of traits are able to achieve what neurotypical humans cannot even on their best days.
Are these traits atavistic? Are they precursory? Considering how much pain and death are caused by current human sociology, is it so hard to imagine that mutation and natural selection might seek a resolution to that little problem? Even Leo Buscaglia, who is certainly neither a geneticist nor an archaeologist, suggested as much when he posited that recent generations have begun evolving "bulbous" foreheads and enlarged forebrains, in response to all the insensitivity and inhumanity in human history.
I'll wager that there are already spin-off Homo sapiens var. something-or-other among us, and have been for millenia, struggling to achieve critical mass and dominance. We're just too bigoted and homogenous in our thinking to see them as such. Being primarily a pack-animal species, we LIKE to think that way.
Of course, the pretty graph at that site doesn't factor the incidentals from the OTHER half of the hybrid equation... like the toxic batteries that have to be replaced and recycled every few years, etc. Great, so it gets 62MPG in *petroleum* cost, but what of the costs they're not talking about?
The eco-deceit of all-electric cars is even worse: they want you to buy the car and feel all warm and fuzzy, like you're helping the environment or the global energy economy; in truth you're doing nothing but continuing to line a few executives' pockets and stock portfolios, because at the end of the day you have to plug your car into an electricity grid that is powered by... PETROLEUM. All you're doing is shifting the petroleum consumption farther "upstream".
So go make yourselves feel good and buy an electric car and renew your Sierra Club membership... NEITHER of those things help combat the respective primary problems: petroleum dependency and overpopulation.
I had read this thread last month, made a mental note of the ideas, and then forgot about it... until I was meandering through Wal-Mart tonight (errr, LAST night):
I found a package of twelve "Vent Filters", intended to be used in floor or wall registers for central air systems. They're just rectangles of 1/16th-inch thick filter material with no framing, cut to fit the width of standard registers and intendeded to be cut to fit the length.
As someone else in this thread noted, filters designed for high-speed airflow might not be appropriate for PC case airflow, and as it happens these are also designed specifically for the generally low air speeds of wall and floor vents.
Price was all of a few bucks. It's made by Web Products of Kansas City, Kansas: www.webproducts.com.
The width of these happens to fit the filter slot in the faceplate of my Antec SX1030 chassis almost perfectly; I never got a filter frame with this case, so I could either stuff several of these in there loose, cut to fit the height, or mod a frame to hold one or more.
These might be exactly what you need for filtering your cases and fans.
After checking out their liquid-metal pages, I happened to visit their magnets page; I couldn't believe how much they were charging for neodymium magnets. Jeez... call or surf to All Magnetics in Anaheim, CA, and you can get those same magnets straight from the horse's mouth for a fraction of what scitoys.com is demanding. If scitoys' liguid metal pricing is as unfair as for their magnets, go somewhere else to get the stuff.
I only know about the magnet pricing and All Magnetics because I bought a magnetic cat door recently, anf the mfr. wanted $15 apiece for extra collar triggers (cheap little plastic shell with a magnet, that would eventually break apart and disgorge the magnet). I decided I could make better for less, and I did.
Senator Santorum:
I'm frequently more articulate and polite than what will follow, but at the moment I'm livid with disbelief and don't believe you've even earned politeness.
After learning of your introduction of the proposed bill S.786, there are only two explanations of your character that seem capable of explaining such a gaping breach of common sense: either (1) you're a gullible idiot, or (2) you're a self-serving schemer. Given what I've already observed of Republican tendencies toward Machiavellianism, I consider the latter a more likely explanation.
I don't believe that I need to explain to you exactly why this a poorly written bill that threatens freedoms, because you've unquestionably already had many people telling you exactly why that is so. The fact that you've chosen to ignore the clear logic they've presented to you is even more damning of your character.
Do yourself and the nation a huge favor and retract or kill this bill, before you find yourself exposed to your constituents as a Champion of Greed or gullible or stupid... or all of the above. Is the padding of a few corporations' wallets really worth the risk of political suicide? No amount of promised campaign contributions will help your political career once word of this becomes widespread... and it is beginning.
... keeping the prices artificially high? Or using addiction marketing techniques to sucker people into getting dependent on a service after a few months of irresistible pricing, and then hitting them with the real monthly cost of the service?
I'm even more angry since I learned here that Australians now get 8mbps service for $30, and I can't even get basic DSL for that!
I, for one, am resisting both DSL and cable because of the business practices and pricing of both the companies involved (SBC and Comcast). Somebody, please, gimme an alternative!
I have one (but no longer use it). It's a thin, flexible, transparent skin, molded to exactly fit whatever keyboard you have. It fits your keyboard because you specify what you have when you order the skin, and they produce one to fit. I wish I could remember the name of the company from which I bought it, and I can't find the box right now.
These skins would be a perfect solution to the stated problem: they could be removed and cleaned, and you *could* pour bleach on these!
That article was a hand-wringing example of people failing to solve a problem because they failed to think outside the box.
High-functioning autistics and those with Asperger's Syndrome have routine problems comprehending and using body language, so will there be a special version of this product for them?
(3) Internet users are increasingly subjected to scams based on misleading or false communications that trick the user into sending money, or trick the user into revealing enough information to enable various forms of identify theft that result in financial loss.
That can easily be re-written as:
American citizens are increasingly subjected to scams based on misleading or false communications and advertising that trick the consumer into buying ("hype"), or revealing personal information that gives corporations an unfair advantage to manipulate them in the future ("membership cards"), resulting in financial loss.
Why doesn't Senator Leahy do something about that?
Americans are defrauded every day, in broad daylight and even in national media, by corporate profiteers and even their own government which can't come clean about their motives. In 2003, for instance, the Clorox Company had a national TV campaign intended to mislead consumers into thinking that ONLY their brand of 5% sodium hypochlorite solution is capable of killing germs.
Where was Senator Leahy's heroic legislative effort then, to pre-emptively prevent the Clorox Company from defrauding consumers in advance of the actual fraudulent act?
Forget Firefox. Forget any alleged pop-up blockers provided by ISPs or broswer makers. Forget any solution that can't be customized and adapted. Proxomitron (free, for Windows) can deal with both current and future threats, not only ads but exploits, cookies, scripting misuse, URL tricks, and every other misuse of HTML that you can imagine. Proxomitron will continue to be effective until HTTP goes the way of the dodo. There's a determined group of users that collaborate routinely to thwart new threats, sharing the results of their efforts for all to benefit.
Unless this wondrous new technology happens to also include another eight or sixteen hardware interrupts, it will be a wondrous waste of time. All of those functions will require interrupts to control them and, as I've learned the hard way in recent years, attempting to share interrupts across devices is more often than not a recipe for migraines. My own attempt to create a "home entertainment PC" has been thwarted specifically because of interrupt conflicts between devices that simply aren't willing to share.
Unless Intel and mobo makers are finally gonna get off their lazy a**es and add more interrupt controllers, this is one consumer who won't be suckered into buying such a system.
Is this really the sort of information one can accidentally stumble upon and "happen to notice"? Or is it more likely that one has to actually have a deliberate aim to have such luck of discovery?
Why don't we recognize this bit of "news" for what it really is: shameless self-promotion by a marginal good guy. We'd damned well better give him the pat on the back (and consulting contract) he wants, lest he swing fully to the Dark Side and blame us all for his fall from grace.
Great, so there's all this extra POTENTIAL connectivity for devices and peripherals. Now where's the extra hardware interrupts and controllers to support a system with more than just a few of those things enabled at once? If we're still stuck in neutral with the same 16 interrupts we've had for almost TWO DECADES, what the heck is the point?
Even the extra four "virtualized" interrupts created by my current motherboard (in Windows, at least) hasn't helped avoid interrupt conflicts. I've had to remove devices and dedicate another system to them because there simply weren't enough interrupts to support ALL the on-board devices and a couple extra PCI cards as well.
So, would somebody please tell me WHY all this "advancement" is so important when we're still handcuffed with the same 16 hardware interrupts that were available in an IBM PC AT?
The results of this survey are misleading. I have an example how the use of the Internet actually INCREASES social contact rather than lessening it:
I started a Yahoo! group for local freethinkers in the area where I live about 14 months ago, and since then members of the group have been gathering twice a month to socialize and discuss whatever's on our minds. Of course we also use the mailing list/forum to do the same during the rest of the month, but that's not an online activity that detracts from socializing, rather that's done when socializing is inconvenient or impossible.
Were it not for our collective online presence and participation, we would never have found each other or wound up socializing twice a month otherwise.
Take that, you bean counters and statistics wonks!
The authors of that commentary are still far too soft on the failings of the system, if you were to ask me. Some of my own suggested reforms - such as restricting patents to ONLY the original applicant and preventing their sale and use as commodities - go considerably further than what this commentary suggests. Preventing inheritance and sale of patents... now THAT is radical.
Nothing in their proposals comes even vaguely close to being a radical reform. What's worse, their proposals would do nothing to curb or limit the lax SUBJECTIVISM that is epidemic within the current system. More OBJECTIVE tests, limits, and controls are needed, not more subjective ones. My radical suggestion that I mentioned above, for instance, lacks any opportunity for subjective interpretation... it's a simple, clear, concise, hard-and-fast rule that leaves no room for lawyerly wiggling.
I know I'm asking too much, however... we live in a country utterly mired in subjectivism, a country that can't even manage to collectively define "obscenity" much less complex issues surrounding intellectual property and invention.
I really wish people would have the decency not to use Slashdot to self-promote or promote their pet cause or project. It's so partisan that it immediately calls into question the objectivity of the person and the veracity of the story. I frankly am amazed that we (in the USA) allow political candidates to vote in their own election, as if they'd ever vote for an opponent? Could we ever expect someone reporting on his own project to ever have anything but glowing testimony for it?
I'm not knocking Slashdot, nor am I specifically knocking this UFD project, but this story and its origin serves to demonstrate one of the inherent flaws in the Slashdot system: anyone can post, even if it's ultimately about himself and anything but objective. This worries me every time I see that the submitter has a conflict of interest.
On the good side of the Slashdot equation, in most cases those conflicts of interest are readily apparent to anyone critical enough to look; if that wasn't so, I wouldn't likely even be able to comment about it because I simply wouldn't know!
I'm just saying it would be nice if I didn't have to be so damned vigilent, if there was a built-in mechanism to shield us all from conflicts of interest, hype, and being duped. At least *here*, if no where else in the world....
I first conceived of this concept and the urgent need for it almost twenty years ago! Even back then the technology existed to do it, but now it can be done even more cheaply and reliably. There's really no excuse, except that the bureaucracy doesn't wanna spend the tax money to fund it: some of their funding comes from the traffic ticket fees collected from the desperate impatient exasperated people who run those traffic lights. If they make the system more efficient and tolerable, it hurts their municipal pocketbooks.
Isn't it in fact more likely that the spammers themselves are taking down their own sites, in order to make themselves *appear* to have been victimized by the Lycos screensaver? The brownie points from the resulting legal sympathy may be worth more to them at this point than keeping the sites live for a few days.
I'll wager an IT manager's job is only crappy when (s)he has no clue how to manage and interact with the almost certainly neurodiverse employees in his department.
I've witnessed this phenomenon myself as a neurodiverse tech employee with fellow neurodiverse coworkers; there was an abnormally high incidence of left-handedness in that department, not to mention ADD, Asperger's Syndrome, and who knows what other interesting "diasabilities" and "disorders". Of course, it was the POSITIVE aspects of those disorders that let them excel at what they were asked to do... most of the time. The company's solution to the relatively minor challenges was to hire a former high school teacher as the department manager! Not surprisingly, he tried to manage the department's employees just as though they were a bunch of rowdy 15-year-olds, which never worked all that well.
This article is philosophical garbage, more industry-funded spin for what the industry dearly wants to achieve. Subscription models for software are rooted in simple greed and the corporate obsession with consistent (and of course massive) monthly cash flow. Software developers and publishers years ago looked at the business models of content publishers and theorized that they could draw a parallel to their own industry and thus justify spinning and marketing software to consumers as an ever-changing product to which one must logically subscribe to receive full benefit, rather than simply buy a license once like an appliance. They've been trying ever since to "re-educate" the public to this notion, and this biased article is the latest bit of propaganda in that effort.
That, of course, is all disingenuous manipulation of the truth. I predict that, if this ongoing bid to mislead consumers of the value of subscribing to software actually succeeds, then the next in line to miseducate consumers will be the actual appliance manufacturers themselves: you'll no longer BUY a washer, microwave, or refrigerator, you'll "subscribe" to them.
Actually, this "subscription" model sounds a lot more like a "rental" model to me, but IANACFO.
Honest. Go rent/buy it and see for yourself. When you then learn who was involved with the movie, you'll understand why. Ridley Scott is an SF cinema wannabe.
Nonproprietary but too limited for my needs. It didn't add or allow navigational indexing with DHTML or JS menus within that file, akin to what a hierarchical FS allows with simple.URL files, so anything more than one or two hundred shortcuts becomes unmanageable in a flat HTML file. At one time I had several thousand shortcuts.
Slashdot Mirror
Mr. Boyle:
Your MSNBC article suggests that mutation and evolution of Homo sapiens ceased or at leased slowed at some point, perhaps due to industrialization, transportation, and the resulting intermixing of geographically isolated populations to a dramatic degree. While that dynamic is certainly at work, a more suspicious person might wonder if in fact the evolutionary process has continued in less obvious ways in spite of it? Ways that, for instance, might eventually lead to significant changes in human perception and sociology, rather than overt changes in physiology? Is it possible that some evolutionary mutations might occur that aren't as obvious as skin color or feathers or gills?
Consider, for example, the traits labelled as "autism", particularly "high functioning" autism and Asperger's Syndrome, and Attention Deficit "Disorder". Do these traits truly constitute neurological or physiological disorders, or is it simply that these traits pose considerable inconvenience and cause dischord within our current sociological structures?
Some of the recognized traits of those "disorders" I mentioned are arguably responsible for some of the greatest scientific and engineering successes in human history. If those traits were universally bad in all circumstances, natural selection would have removed them millenia ago. Instead they linger in the gene pool, causing much consternation because those who possess them never quite seem to fit the neurotypical human sociological model. Often, in spite of the most offensive of those traits, some of those who possess these packages of traits are able to achieve what neurotypical humans cannot even on their best days.
Are these traits atavistic? Are they precursory? Considering how much pain and death are caused by current human sociology, is it so hard to imagine that mutation and natural selection might seek a resolution to that little problem? Even Leo Buscaglia, who is certainly neither a geneticist nor an archaeologist, suggested as much when he posited that recent generations have begun evolving "bulbous" foreheads and enlarged forebrains, in response to all the insensitivity and inhumanity in human history.
I'll wager that there are already spin-off Homo sapiens var. something-or-other among us, and have been for millenia, struggling to achieve critical mass and dominance. We're just too bigoted and homogenous in our thinking to see them as such. Being primarily a pack-animal species, we LIKE to think that way.
Of course, the pretty graph at that site doesn't factor the incidentals from the OTHER half of the hybrid equation... like the toxic batteries that have to be replaced and recycled every few years, etc. Great, so it gets 62MPG in *petroleum* cost, but what of the costs they're not talking about? The eco-deceit of all-electric cars is even worse: they want you to buy the car and feel all warm and fuzzy, like you're helping the environment or the global energy economy; in truth you're doing nothing but continuing to line a few executives' pockets and stock portfolios, because at the end of the day you have to plug your car into an electricity grid that is powered by... PETROLEUM. All you're doing is shifting the petroleum consumption farther "upstream". So go make yourselves feel good and buy an electric car and renew your Sierra Club membership... NEITHER of those things help combat the respective primary problems: petroleum dependency and overpopulation.
I had read this thread last month, made a mental note of the ideas, and then forgot about it... until I was meandering through Wal-Mart tonight (errr, LAST night):
I found a package of twelve "Vent Filters", intended to be used in floor or wall registers for central air systems. They're just rectangles of 1/16th-inch thick filter material with no framing, cut to fit the width of standard registers and intendeded to be cut to fit the length.
As someone else in this thread noted, filters designed for high-speed airflow might not be appropriate for PC case airflow, and as it happens these are also designed specifically for the generally low air speeds of wall and floor vents.
Price was all of a few bucks. It's made by Web Products of Kansas City, Kansas: www.webproducts.com.
The width of these happens to fit the filter slot in the faceplate of my Antec SX1030 chassis almost perfectly; I never got a filter frame with this case, so I could either stuff several of these in there loose, cut to fit the height, or mod a frame to hold one or more.
These might be exactly what you need for filtering your cases and fans.
After checking out their liquid-metal pages, I happened to visit their magnets page; I couldn't believe how much they were charging for neodymium magnets. Jeez... call or surf to All Magnetics in Anaheim, CA, and you can get those same magnets straight from the horse's mouth for a fraction of what scitoys.com is demanding. If scitoys' liguid metal pricing is as unfair as for their magnets, go somewhere else to get the stuff.
I only know about the magnet pricing and All Magnetics because I bought a magnetic cat door recently, anf the mfr. wanted $15 apiece for extra collar triggers (cheap little plastic shell with a magnet, that would eventually break apart and disgorge the magnet). I decided I could make better for less, and I did.
I think I'll stick with my dust-free $50 Koolance solution....
Senator Santorum: I'm frequently more articulate and polite than what will follow, but at the moment I'm livid with disbelief and don't believe you've even earned politeness. After learning of your introduction of the proposed bill S.786, there are only two explanations of your character that seem capable of explaining such a gaping breach of common sense: either (1) you're a gullible idiot, or (2) you're a self-serving schemer. Given what I've already observed of Republican tendencies toward Machiavellianism, I consider the latter a more likely explanation. I don't believe that I need to explain to you exactly why this a poorly written bill that threatens freedoms, because you've unquestionably already had many people telling you exactly why that is so. The fact that you've chosen to ignore the clear logic they've presented to you is even more damning of your character. Do yourself and the nation a huge favor and retract or kill this bill, before you find yourself exposed to your constituents as a Champion of Greed or gullible or stupid... or all of the above. Is the padding of a few corporations' wallets really worth the risk of political suicide? No amount of promised campaign contributions will help your political career once word of this becomes widespread... and it is beginning.
I'm even more angry since I learned here that Australians now get 8mbps service for $30, and I can't even get basic DSL for that!
I, for one, am resisting both DSL and cable because of the business practices and pricing of both the companies involved (SBC and Comcast). Somebody, please, gimme an alternative!
These skins would be a perfect solution to the stated problem: they could be removed and cleaned, and you *could* pour bleach on these!
That article was a hand-wringing example of people failing to solve a problem because they failed to think outside the box.
High-functioning autistics and those with Asperger's Syndrome have routine problems comprehending and using body language, so will there be a special version of this product for them?
I'll be here the rest of the decade, folks.
(3) Internet users are increasingly subjected to scams based on misleading or false communications that trick the user into sending money, or trick the user into revealing enough information to enable various forms of identify theft that result in financial loss.
That can easily be re-written as:
American citizens are increasingly subjected to scams based on misleading or false communications and advertising that trick the consumer into buying ("hype"), or revealing personal information that gives corporations an unfair advantage to manipulate them in the future ("membership cards"), resulting in financial loss.
Why doesn't Senator Leahy do something about that?
Americans are defrauded every day, in broad daylight and even in national media, by corporate profiteers and even their own government which can't come clean about their motives. In 2003, for instance, the Clorox Company had a national TV campaign intended to mislead consumers into thinking that ONLY their brand of 5% sodium hypochlorite solution is capable of killing germs.
Where was Senator Leahy's heroic legislative effort then, to pre-emptively prevent the Clorox Company from defrauding consumers in advance of the actual fraudulent act?
Get it and enjoy safer, securer, faster surfing.
Unless Intel and mobo makers are finally gonna get off their lazy a**es and add more interrupt controllers, this is one consumer who won't be suckered into buying such a system.
Why don't we recognize this bit of "news" for what it really is: shameless self-promotion by a marginal good guy. We'd damned well better give him the pat on the back (and consulting contract) he wants, lest he swing fully to the Dark Side and blame us all for his fall from grace.
Great, so there's all this extra POTENTIAL connectivity for devices and peripherals. Now where's the extra hardware interrupts and controllers to support a system with more than just a few of those things enabled at once? If we're still stuck in neutral with the same 16 interrupts we've had for almost TWO DECADES, what the heck is the point? Even the extra four "virtualized" interrupts created by my current motherboard (in Windows, at least) hasn't helped avoid interrupt conflicts. I've had to remove devices and dedicate another system to them because there simply weren't enough interrupts to support ALL the on-board devices and a couple extra PCI cards as well. So, would somebody please tell me WHY all this "advancement" is so important when we're still handcuffed with the same 16 hardware interrupts that were available in an IBM PC AT?
I started a Yahoo! group for local freethinkers in the area where I live about 14 months ago, and since then members of the group have been gathering twice a month to socialize and discuss whatever's on our minds. Of course we also use the mailing list/forum to do the same during the rest of the month, but that's not an online activity that detracts from socializing, rather that's done when socializing is inconvenient or impossible.
Were it not for our collective online presence and participation, we would never have found each other or wound up socializing twice a month otherwise.
Take that, you bean counters and statistics wonks!
Nothing in their proposals comes even vaguely close to being a radical reform. What's worse, their proposals would do nothing to curb or limit the lax SUBJECTIVISM that is epidemic within the current system. More OBJECTIVE tests, limits, and controls are needed, not more subjective ones. My radical suggestion that I mentioned above, for instance, lacks any opportunity for subjective interpretation... it's a simple, clear, concise, hard-and-fast rule that leaves no room for lawyerly wiggling.
I know I'm asking too much, however... we live in a country utterly mired in subjectivism, a country that can't even manage to collectively define "obscenity" much less complex issues surrounding intellectual property and invention.
I'm not knocking Slashdot, nor am I specifically knocking this UFD project, but this story and its origin serves to demonstrate one of the inherent flaws in the Slashdot system: anyone can post, even if it's ultimately about himself and anything but objective. This worries me every time I see that the submitter has a conflict of interest.
On the good side of the Slashdot equation, in most cases those conflicts of interest are readily apparent to anyone critical enough to look; if that wasn't so, I wouldn't likely even be able to comment about it because I simply wouldn't know!
I'm just saying it would be nice if I didn't have to be so damned vigilent, if there was a built-in mechanism to shield us all from conflicts of interest, hype, and being duped. At least *here*, if no where else in the world....
http://www.hybridadobe.com/
I first conceived of this concept and the urgent need for it almost twenty years ago! Even back then the technology existed to do it, but now it can be done even more cheaply and reliably. There's really no excuse, except that the bureaucracy doesn't wanna spend the tax money to fund it: some of their funding comes from the traffic ticket fees collected from the desperate impatient exasperated people who run those traffic lights. If they make the system more efficient and tolerable, it hurts their municipal pocketbooks.
Isn't it in fact more likely that the spammers themselves are taking down their own sites, in order to make themselves *appear* to have been victimized by the Lycos screensaver? The brownie points from the resulting legal sympathy may be worth more to them at this point than keeping the sites live for a few days.
I've witnessed this phenomenon myself as a neurodiverse tech employee with fellow neurodiverse coworkers; there was an abnormally high incidence of left-handedness in that department, not to mention ADD, Asperger's Syndrome, and who knows what other interesting "diasabilities" and "disorders". Of course, it was the POSITIVE aspects of those disorders that let them excel at what they were asked to do... most of the time. The company's solution to the relatively minor challenges was to hire a former high school teacher as the department manager! Not surprisingly, he tried to manage the department's employees just as though they were a bunch of rowdy 15-year-olds, which never worked all that well.
That, of course, is all disingenuous manipulation of the truth. I predict that, if this ongoing bid to mislead consumers of the value of subscribing to software actually succeeds, then the next in line to miseducate consumers will be the actual appliance manufacturers themselves: you'll no longer BUY a washer, microwave, or refrigerator, you'll "subscribe" to them.
Actually, this "subscription" model sounds a lot more like a "rental" model to me, but IANACFO.
Honest. Go rent/buy it and see for yourself. When you then learn who was involved with the movie, you'll understand why. Ridley Scott is an SF cinema wannabe.
Nonproprietary but too limited for my needs. It didn't add or allow navigational indexing with DHTML or JS menus within that file, akin to what a hierarchical FS allows with simple .URL files, so anything more than one or two hundred shortcuts becomes unmanageable in a flat HTML file. At one time I had several thousand shortcuts.