The proposal in the article is not a silver bullet. From the article:
a simple computer program, such as those already in use on Internet retail sites, could track people's purchases and help them to dig through what would become a massive repository of music on the Web.
This is precisely what the big companies of the music industry don't want. They want high demand for a small number of items so they can charge a lot for a CD loaded with filler. Along the same lines, performer recognition is preferred above performer selection, again increasing the chance people will buy filler.
Given some of the comments in the thread thus far, I thought you all might be interested to know that some of us here at the University of Maryland's HCI lab have been researching how to embrace the cohabitation of paper and computers. Our philosophy is simple: there are times when paper is better, and there are times when computers are better; why not let users benefit from both without the tedium of transitioning between the two?
We have been using the Anoto paper with a few of the digital pens (each with varying ease of use), and have created some useful systems in the process. Most notably:
ProofRite - A combination of a distributed PADD infrstructure and an extension to AbiWord. It allows for annotations to be incorporated into AbiWord documents, so that Tablet PC users may mark up their document on the screen. Further, users may print an AbiWord document, annotate it on Anoto paper, and have their strokes incorporated into the document.
I have also made a prototype with which users may compose music on Anoto paper and have it automatically converted to a Finale file (a popular piece of composition software), or annotate a printed Finale file and incorporate them back into the file.
The gap between paper and computers has existed for too long. With this research and the amazing new hardware, I personally believe we'll be seeing the gap close quickly.
I believe the poster is trying to say that IPv6 was _less_ of a priority before we had NAT. This is incorrect but not offtopic.
One of the most immediately clear downfalls of IPv4 is the (relatively) small address space. If every IP-addressable machine had to have a world-unique IP address, then IPv4 would have fallen well short, and so IPv6 would have been necessary. However, with the advent of NAT, we are able to have m addresses for n nodes on a network, where m < n. As a matter of fact, m is usually 1.
This is why most machines you'll run into on a private network are 192.168.x.x, or one of the other IP ranges set aside for private network use (see
RFC 1918). (For extra credit, a show of hands of everyone using address 192.168.0.101 right now).
With Qt Nethack and a Zaurus, you can get a dose of the frustrating game any time.
Yes, I know, another "here's a solution to a problem you don't quite have" post, but maybe it will help justify somebody's purchase of the fantastic PDA.
Slashdot Mirror
We have been using the Anoto paper with a few of the digital pens (each with varying ease of use), and have created some useful systems in the process. Most notably:
- François Guimbretière's home page, which has links to all of the Paper Augmented Digital Documents (PADD) papers.
- ProofRite - A combination of a distributed PADD infrstructure and an extension to AbiWord. It allows for annotations to be incorporated into AbiWord documents, so that Tablet PC users may mark up their document on the screen. Further, users may print an AbiWord document, annotate it on Anoto paper, and have their strokes incorporated into the document.
I have also made a prototype with which users may compose music on Anoto paper and have it automatically converted to a Finale file (a popular piece of composition software), or annotate a printed Finale file and incorporate them back into the file.The gap between paper and computers has existed for too long. With this research and the amazing new hardware, I personally believe we'll be seeing the gap close quickly.
-Dave
I believe the poster is trying to say that IPv6 was _less_ of a priority before we had NAT. This is incorrect but not offtopic.
One of the most immediately clear downfalls of IPv4 is the (relatively) small address space. If every IP-addressable machine had to have a world-unique IP address, then IPv4 would have fallen well short, and so IPv6 would have been necessary. However, with the advent of NAT, we are able to have m addresses for n nodes on a network, where m < n. As a matter of fact, m is usually 1.
This is why most machines you'll run into on a private network are 192.168.x.x, or one of the other IP ranges set aside for private network use (see RFC 1918). (For extra credit, a show of hands of everyone using address 192.168.0.101 right now).
For more NAT fun, see RFC 1631.
Yes, I know, another "here's a solution to a problem you don't quite have" post, but maybe it will help justify somebody's purchase of the fantastic PDA.