As hackers, we should recognize that there is a right tool for the job. Ipad is just another tool. It does less than a laptop because it's meant to be a simpler tool than a laptop.
Eventually the market will decide if a tablet is a niche or mainstream product. But for me at least, I couldn't be happier.
You talk endlessly about "Platform", and "Ecosystem", which are great things. They are playgrounds on which software flourishes: new ideas germinate, grow, and make impact on the world. What you say about these playgrounds is all true.
But you are forgetting one thing: Microsoft cares about selling software. Which means they care about platform and ecosystems *as long as they get to sell software*.
Sure, Facebook or Wikipedia could have been written on ASP.NET. But Microsoft won't have seen a dime from them. Do you think MS cares if if the whole world runs.NET if it doesn't generate revenue? Sun thought they did. They cared that Java become an important "platform" and an "ecosystem", so gave it away for free. But in the end, they still couldn't sell their servers and was bought out by a company that knew how to sell software.
You mention the Apache Foundation as this great hub / resource for Java development. Yes, it's true. But MS is not in the business to compete with the Apache foundation. Microsoft doesn't care about innovation, or new ideas. They just want to sell software and make money.
See, this is why MS has no interest in "helping" Mono. They want the option to pull the plug when something exists that threaten their revenue.
It may seem that there is little difference between "market share", and "revenue share". Sometimes they are correlated. But MS is smart enough not to forgo the latter to obtain the former.
You do realize that Prius's gear level is just a joystick, right? There is nothing mechanically connected, which means that if the computer is confused, then _there is nothing the driver can do_, except stomp on the breaks.
Actually there is. The car turns itself off if you hold the power button for 3 seconds. But in a panic situation, a person would most likely press the button repeatedly, instead of holding it steady for 3 long seconds. Other manufactures turn off on rapid button press in a short time, instead, which seems better.
Ok, so iPad isn't even out yet, but google still feels threatened enough to put out a hastly put together "concept art" as a "demo". Sheesh.
One thing everyone seems to have missed about the iPad announcement is the fact that apple will have iWorks on it for $30. This has two implications: 1. Nobody else will write a full on office app for iPad. 2. Nobody will write a full office app for any other touch tablet.
Yes, I see all the limitations of a tablet. But as an internet consumption device, it is an ideal form factor. And at $100, I can replace it every 6 months.
Back in the late 90's I was hopeful that easy to use encryption plug-ins for mail clients would finally bring encryption to the masses. But when gmail came along, with a Gig of space and full text search through your past, end-to-end encryption was finished.
Currently I'm hoping for crypto id tokens to catch on to stop all the id theft issues, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.
I think the only feasible thing for that is for the Government to hand out crypto tokens with a central auth server, and severe penalties for abuse (much like mail fraud), so that at least there is one *good* way to be identified as who you say you are.
Say what you will about Big Brother, but at least voters can do something about government abuse of personal information. Corporate abuse is absolutely unregulated.
Absolutely right. I wish more languages are accommodating of proportional fonts. I have no problems with Java or Python, or c++, but in some languages (like Obj-C you mentioned and sql) proportional fonts look awful. Thank goodness eclipse allows different fonts for different language editors (I use DejaVu Sans and Mono for everything, even on windows boxes!)
I don't imagine I'll be moving trading my Tundra in for an alternate fuel source vehicle any time soon.
Would you say the same thing when gas cost $12/gallon?
We are supposed to be in the worst economic recession in decades, and oil still costs $80/barrel. So where do you think oil price will be in a recovery?
I'd learn to say, "Make my hybrid a plug-in, please."
By your reasoning a computer scientist from the 60's would be aghast that we use our current computing resources to "read the news", "look at pictures", and to "talk to friends".
Of course, few people do use the computing power to do science and art and such, but 99% of humans just want to do the stuff we've been doing since the hunter-gatherer times: hang out with our tribe and entertain each other with stories. And more technology will not change that.
Yeah, yeah. Windows control 99.99% of germs, I mean desktop computers.
I've been freed from Windows for about 4 years now, and there is no way in hell i am going back. I barely tolerate it on my netbook (hardware driver issues), and I install linux on all of my other machines now for these reasons: 1. I spend 95% of my non-work computing time in Firefox. 2. I spend 95% of my work computing time in Firefox and Eclipse. 3. The other 8%, there are linux software for those. 4. I use Virtualbox for the 2% of the time I _need_ Windows.
In return for not using Windows, I gain: 1. I don't worry about firewalls, or anti-virus software. 2. Complete incremental backup of computer to network drive, usb drive, whatever. 3. nfs, and sshfs. They really are awesome. Windows/mac users don't even know what they are missing.
And most importantly: 4. New OS every few months, FREE. FOREVER..
I'm surprised nobody has brought up firefox's (and thunderbird's) master password feature. I believe it uses strong encryption to store all your passwords. Since almost all of my passwords are for websites now a days, it's great. Of course, I also keep a backup in a gpg encrypted file.
I've been looking for the same thing for a long time, except I want to have ECC RAM on a machine that runs 24/7 and shuttles files back and forth. Apparently, there is no such product (Not mini-pc, not Atom-anything, not notebooks, etc). I've ended up using one of those cheap Dell T100 series machines (ECC RAM, but only two drives supported) that you can pick up during a dell promotion. It draws 50W at idle.
Does anyone know of _any_ low power solution that uses ECC RAM?
Oh come on, there is no reason to turn this into some diatribe about the government handing out money to foreigners. Why is it that your ex is working on a PhD and you are not? Why do you think half of US PhD's are awarded to foreign born? Is it because the evil government favors foreigners? Or is that Americans just don't give a shit about science and engineering any more?
Go to any science graduate course in any of the top 10 universities, and more than half are foreign born. The US high tech and biotech industries are full of foreigners. We basically built our technological superiority by attracting bright foreigners away from their home countries. Remember Google? This process is called the "brain drain", and it is a Good Thing(Tm) to hand out money to smart foreigners to come to the states. It strengthens our economy
In my observation, scientists and engineers are much better regarded in other countries than in the US. Why is that? Don't people know that science is the foundation of all of our economic growth?
Instead of blaming the government, we should blame the policy makers, the fiscal conservatives who cut subsidies so that higher education becomes a luxury for the rich, the religious zealots wants to stop teaching science to children, the ignorant that wants to stop funding "volcano research" and fund home schooling, etc, etc.
IMHO, subsidized higher education is the best investment we can make for ourselves, and anyone who's against it is basically arguing to shoot ourselves in the foot. That means you.
People often mistakenly equate having intelligence with having emotion, but this is simply (biologically) incorrect. Let me explain.
Emotions exist to bestow beneficial behavior to a creature without requiring a lot of thinking: i.e., Fear: Run away from a scary animal, Love: staying with a mate or child long enough to raise them, etc. Primates, being social animals have other emotions that benefit the member to survive and reproduce in a society: sense of fairness, jealousy, altruism, etc.
Human intelligence evolved on top of this existing emotional structure. Because emotions are designed to be this behavioral drivers for our survival, it's no wonder we spend a huge amount of time thinking, interpreting, and rationalizing our emotions.
But if we could design intelligence without all the evolutionary baggage, what should that drive look like? That's the question being asked here.
I chalk this up to bad market research. Dell probably asked a focus group how they could improve on the 10" netbook. The focus group probably said a bigger screen and faster cpu. How much more will they pay for it? $150 bucks.
Now Dell goes and makes one at that price point and screen size. Except the 12" is heavier and eats into the already mediocure battery life, it's waaay more expensive than the the 7" models that are practically being given away. No wonder it doesn't sell well.
I think Dell market research here forgot that the real desirable factor in netbook is the low, low price, portability, and long battery life. Ignore the core features customers love, and they will ignore you. How shocking!
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh, wasn't my point clear enough? How about this:
Does a $80 hunting knife do less than a $60 Swiss army knife? Yes.
What would I use at any given time? It depends.
<sarcasm>The innovation of the Swiss army knife over a good hunting knife is *staggering*. </sarcasm>
Yet I chose a simpler tool most of the time
As hackers, we should recognize that there is a right tool for the job. Ipad is just another tool. It does less than a laptop because it's meant to be a simpler tool than a laptop.
Eventually the market will decide if a tablet is a niche or mainstream product. But for me at least, I couldn't be happier.
You talk endlessly about "Platform", and "Ecosystem", which are great things. They are playgrounds on which software flourishes: new ideas germinate, grow, and make impact on the world. What you say about these playgrounds is all true.
But you are forgetting one thing: Microsoft cares about selling software. Which means they care about platform and ecosystems *as long as they get to sell software*.
Sure, Facebook or Wikipedia could have been written on ASP.NET. But Microsoft won't have seen a dime from them. Do you think MS cares if if the whole world runs .NET if it doesn't generate revenue? Sun thought they did. They cared that Java become an important "platform" and an "ecosystem", so gave it away for free. But in the end, they still couldn't sell their servers and was bought out by a company that knew how to sell software.
You mention the Apache Foundation as this great hub / resource for Java development. Yes, it's true. But MS is not in the business to compete with the Apache foundation. Microsoft doesn't care about innovation, or new ideas. They just want to sell software and make money.
See, this is why MS has no interest in "helping" Mono. They want the option to pull the plug when something exists that threaten their revenue.
It may seem that there is little difference between "market share", and "revenue share". Sometimes they are correlated. But MS is smart enough not to forgo the latter to obtain the former.
You do realize that Prius's gear level is just a joystick, right? There is nothing mechanically connected, which means that if the computer is confused, then _there is nothing the driver can do_, except stomp on the breaks.
Actually there is. The car turns itself off if you hold the power button for 3 seconds. But in a panic situation, a person would most likely press the button repeatedly, instead of holding it steady for 3 long seconds. Other manufactures turn off on rapid button press in a short time, instead, which seems better.
I'll believe this when Google and Yahoo Finance can do their charts in HTML5.
Ok, so iPad isn't even out yet, but google still feels threatened enough to put out a hastly put together "concept art" as a "demo". Sheesh.
One thing everyone seems to have missed about the iPad announcement is the fact that apple will have iWorks on it for $30. This has two implications:
1. Nobody else will write a full on office app for iPad.
2. Nobody will write a full office app for any other touch tablet.
Chew on that for a while.
Yes, I see all the limitations of a tablet. But as an internet consumption device, it is an ideal form factor. And at $100, I can replace it every 6 months.
Finally, something I want to buy.
Back in the late 90's I was hopeful that easy to use encryption plug-ins for mail clients would finally bring encryption to the masses. But when gmail came along, with a Gig of space and full text search through your past, end-to-end encryption was finished.
Currently I'm hoping for crypto id tokens to catch on to stop all the id theft issues, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.
I think the only feasible thing for that is for the Government to hand out crypto tokens with a central auth server, and severe penalties for abuse (much like mail fraud), so that at least there is one *good* way to be identified as who you say you are.
Say what you will about Big Brother, but at least voters can do something about government abuse of personal information. Corporate abuse is absolutely unregulated.
Absolutely right. I wish more languages are accommodating of proportional fonts. I have no problems with Java or Python, or c++, but in some languages (like Obj-C you mentioned and sql) proportional fonts look awful. Thank goodness eclipse allows different fonts for different language editors (I use DejaVu Sans and Mono for everything, even on windows boxes!)
Huh, I didn't know that FreeBSD pf is not up to date. FreeBSD does have multiple firewall options, though.
But since OP asked about Wireless support, does OpenBSD have good wireless support now?
Without more performance and cost requirements, it's really hard to figure out what would work for you.
Are your users all in one building? Over a large area? Are you talking about a dozen access points or hundreds?
Without some more specific information, only advice I can give is:
Soekris boxes with FreeBSD.
Good luck.
I don't imagine I'll be moving trading my Tundra in for an alternate fuel source vehicle any time soon.
Would you say the same thing when gas cost $12/gallon?
We are supposed to be in the worst economic recession in decades, and oil still costs $80/barrel. So where do you think oil price will be in a recovery?
I'd learn to say, "Make my hybrid a plug-in, please."
By your reasoning a computer scientist from the 60's would be aghast that we use our current computing resources to "read the news", "look at pictures", and to "talk to friends".
Of course, few people do use the computing power to do science and art and such, but 99% of humans just want to do the stuff we've been doing since the hunter-gatherer times: hang out with our tribe and entertain each other with stories. And more technology will not change that.
i'd spend it doing something else anyway to avoid people like you.
I spend my time avoiding people who can't read complete sentences. I said "firefox and eclipse".
Yeah, yeah. Windows control 99.99% of germs, I mean desktop computers.
I've been freed from Windows for about 4 years now, and there is no way in hell i am going back. I barely tolerate it on my netbook (hardware driver issues), and I install linux on all of my other machines now for these reasons:
1. I spend 95% of my non-work computing time in Firefox.
2. I spend 95% of my work computing time in Firefox and Eclipse.
3. The other 8%, there are linux software for those.
4. I use Virtualbox for the 2% of the time I _need_ Windows.
In return for not using Windows, I gain:
1. I don't worry about firewalls, or anti-virus software.
2. Complete incremental backup of computer to network drive, usb drive, whatever.
3. nfs, and sshfs. They really are awesome. Windows/mac users don't even know what they are missing.
And most importantly:
4. New OS every few months, FREE. FOREVER..
I'm surprised nobody has brought up firefox's (and thunderbird's) master password feature. I believe it uses strong encryption to store all your passwords. Since almost all of my passwords are for websites now a days, it's great. Of course, I also keep a backup in a gpg encrypted file.
I've been looking for the same thing for a long time, except I want to have ECC RAM on a machine that runs 24/7 and shuttles files back and forth. Apparently, there is no such product (Not mini-pc, not Atom-anything, not notebooks, etc). I've ended up using one of those cheap Dell T100 series machines (ECC RAM, but only two drives supported) that you can pick up during a dell promotion. It draws 50W at idle.
Does anyone know of _any_ low power solution that uses ECC RAM?
Marry me!
Sure, send me a note to dokebi@biffmail.com and let's see what happens!
I finished my PhD in in one of the top 5 Engineering schools two years ago. I think I know what I'm talking about.
Oh come on, there is no reason to turn this into some diatribe about the government handing out money to foreigners. Why is it that your ex is working on a PhD and you are not? Why do you think half of US PhD's are awarded to foreign born? Is it because the evil government favors foreigners? Or is that Americans just don't give a shit about science and engineering any more?
Go to any science graduate course in any of the top 10 universities, and more than half are foreign born. The US high tech and biotech industries are full of foreigners. We basically built our technological superiority by attracting bright foreigners away from their home countries. Remember Google? This process is called the "brain drain", and it is a Good Thing(Tm) to hand out money to smart foreigners to come to the states. It strengthens our economy
In my observation, scientists and engineers are much better regarded in other countries than in the US. Why is that? Don't people know that science is the foundation of all of our economic growth?
Instead of blaming the government, we should blame the policy makers, the fiscal conservatives who cut subsidies so that higher education becomes a luxury for the rich, the religious zealots wants to stop teaching science to children, the ignorant that wants to stop funding "volcano research" and fund home schooling, etc, etc. IMHO, subsidized higher education is the best investment we can make for ourselves, and anyone who's against it is basically arguing to shoot ourselves in the foot. That means you.
Except they propose an experiment to answer that very question. And if god can be proven *or* disproven by experiment, then is he really god? :)
People often mistakenly equate having intelligence with having emotion, but this is simply (biologically) incorrect. Let me explain.
Emotions exist to bestow beneficial behavior to a creature without requiring a lot of thinking: i.e., Fear: Run away from a scary animal, Love: staying with a mate or child long enough to raise them, etc. Primates, being social animals have other emotions that benefit the member to survive and reproduce in a society: sense of fairness, jealousy, altruism, etc.
Human intelligence evolved on top of this existing emotional structure. Because emotions are designed to be this behavioral drivers for our survival, it's no wonder we spend a huge amount of time thinking, interpreting, and rationalizing our emotions.
But if we could design intelligence without all the evolutionary baggage, what should that drive look like? That's the question being asked here.
Actual US 2007 Outlays [1]:
NASA: 15.9 Billion USD
DOT: 61.7 Billion USD
DOD: 529.9 Billion USD (excluding War on Terror)
We could cut 10% of DOD's budget, and increase NASA's budget by over 400%. Or DOT's budget by 85%.
Clearly, we need to give space exploration a military spin (like we did in the 60's).
[1]: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/USbudget/fy09/browse.html
It's got more letters than most words I've learnt.
There, I fixed it for you.
I chalk this up to bad market research. Dell probably asked a focus group how they could improve on the 10" netbook. The focus group probably said a bigger screen and faster cpu. How much more will they pay for it? $150 bucks.
Now Dell goes and makes one at that price point and screen size. Except the 12" is heavier and eats into the already mediocure battery life, it's waaay more expensive than the the 7" models that are practically being given away. No wonder it doesn't sell well.
I think Dell market research here forgot that the real desirable factor in netbook is the low, low price, portability, and long battery life. Ignore the core features customers love, and they will ignore you. How shocking!