Open standards are best for economic growth because such standards encourage competition and drive prices downward and quality upward in the relevant markets. One of the best examples is the specification for the IBM PC when it debuted in 1981. Although this standard was not open per se, we can consider it to be a de facto open standard because IBM allowed other companies to build clones. Then, many other companies (e.g. Compaq, AST, and others) joined the market, and the ensuing competition grew the market and drastically decreased prices and raised quality. The personal computer on which you are reading this SlashDot article would, today, run much slower and cost much more if IBM were the sole maker of personal computers. Note that the IBM PC with its de facto open standard spawned a multi-billion dollar industry in relatively short time, affirming the value of both open standards and Yankee ingenuity.
Another good example is the de facto open standard called the x86 instruction set. When Intel was the sole producer of microprocessors based on this standard, prices tended to be higher than what they could be. However, competition from AMD forced Intel to slash prices and to drastically raise the bar on performance. Hence, if Intel were the sole producer of x86-based microprocessers, your computer would probably still be using the 80386, and the Pentium 4 with EMT64 with be a century down the road while Intel continued to reap monopoly profits.
In order for these hydrogen stations to be viable, we need more hydrogen-powered cars. They need to be a regular fixture on the Californian highways. Right now, I see a hydrogen-powered car only about once per year.
With any luck, these hydrogen stations will mark the beginning of the end for Islamic tyranny from the Middle East. For too long, we have essentially financed terrorist operations by paying money for gasoline. They money goes to, for example, Saudi Arabia. The Arabs then secretly funnel a bit of that money to anti-American groups in the Middle East.
We end up financing the terrorists. Only a hydrogen-based economy will put an end to this nonsense.
Next question is "Can we build jet fighters and bombers that run off hydrogen?"
The principal reason that Google's management is building a technology center in Oregon is that building and running such a center in Oregon is cheaper than building and running such a center in Silicon Valley. Similar reasoning applies for why the management chose an economically depressed city in Oregon.
Even now, taxes in California are high, and so is the price of property. Why else would management explicitly build a technology center far away from an elite university like Stanford University or UC-Berkeley?
If more companies would do what Google is doing, then the Californian government will start to lower taxes and to limit the number of legal/illegal immigrants flooding into the state. The latter is the cause of the high prices of apartments and residential homes.
$200,000 gets you an excellent, spacious house in most places in Oregon or Texas. That same $200,000 gets you, barely, a small noisy condominium in Silicon Valley.
Linux is easier to maintain than Windows, largely thanks to IBM. Linux is more reliable and is less prone to infection by viruses and malware (e.g. spyware) than Windows. IBM ensures that any OS (whether it is commercial or free) shipped to customers on its computer systems meets stringent requirements for reliability.
IBM has been vindicated. IBM initially tried to dethrone Microsoft by producing OS/2, but it was a failure. Now, IBM has thrown its weight behind a product (i.e. Linux) developed outside of IBM, and that product is succeeding in hurting Windows.
Information cannot be stopped. Knowledge about how to build a nuclear bomb eventually will spread to even terrorists. Well funded terrorists with friends in oil-rich states in the Middle East also have money to acquire all the parts to build a weapon.
What is the defense against the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist? The answer is not a missile shield. Even if the shield is 80% effective, one successful nuclear bomb would be devastating.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc. If the most pressing issue of the day in Syrian become "Gay Marriage: Yes or No?" instead of "Suicide Bomber: Here We Go", then the world is safe. A Westernized Damascus itself would hunt down any nutcases trying to build a nuclear weapon.
I'm not trying to be a troll, but Western culture is the finest in the world. A Western acquaintance who adopted a Korean orphan is proof of the compassion and goodness of Western values. That Korean orphan, shunned and left to die in Korea, eventually attended MIT.
The women in the Middle East are even worse off. The brutal treatment of women in the Middle East speaks volumes about Middle Eastern culture.
The current situation is that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is more highly susceptible to malware (e.g. spyware) than FireFox. You can confirm this situation by (1) using IE for a month to browse porn sites that are chock full of luscious, blonde lesbians and (2) using FireFox for a month to do the same thing. With IE, your computer will be so contaminated with spyware that you will be forced to re-install Windows. With FireFox, your computer will remain intact.
So, in order to make IE competitive with FireFox, the management of Microsoft was forced by the economics of the market to give anti-spyware software away -- for free. Basically, FireFox and its startling growth in marketshare forced Microsoft to be generous.
Bill Gates once said that your computer screen is the most valuable piece of realestate in the world. The management at Microsoft intends to continue to be the owner of that realestate.
Oh. Yes. "Thank you, Mozilla and Firefox! A job, well done!"
Installing a GPS tracking device in each vehicle is a sure violation of privacy. That device could be used to monitor where, not just how far, each person travels.
A much better way to handle this problem is to simply track the number of miles that each vehicle is driven, from the moment that the vehicle has Californian license plates. California already has a system for mandatory smog checks. The technicians at the smog station transmit the results of the smog checks directly to the state computer system.
The technicians could also tranmit the odometer reading as well. Then, the state government could simply determine the number of miles that you have driven the car since the last smog check and could then send you a bill for the use of Californian roads.
I greatly admire the scientists, doctors, and nurses who are pursing research to convert HIV into a cancer fighter. Such research is dangerous for the researchers because they are working with live HIV.
Even doctors and nurses who are not focused on research but who are focused on caring for HIV patients are, in my opinion, heros. They are willing to accept the risks that others shun. There have been occasional stories of nurses who accidentally prick themselves with needles used on HIV patients. Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
Join me in sending an e-mail to CSICOP and requesting that it investigate this supposed black box predicting the future.
Believing in superstitious quackery like this black box has serious ramifications. If enough people believed in this nonsense, then we would end up in setting national policy based on this block box. How would you like the USA to be guided by witches and warlocks?
I have been a fan of Star Trek - The Original Series (ST-TOS) and Star Wars (IV, V, & VI) for ages. The main strength of ST-TOS is that it dealt directly with the social issues of the day. Remember that the 1960s were a turbulent time in America.
I like Star Wars because it has excellent acting and dealt with good versus evil. Star Wars is essentially a medieval tale (of knights and a princess) shrouded in sci-fi props: lasers, spaceships, etc.
The problem with Enterprise is the bad acting. and bad casting. Captain Archer needs to be replaced. We need a swashbuckler like Harrison Ford to be captain. Also, the "sexy role" should be assigned to the communications officer. Being sexy is more than being endowed with breasts; being sexy requires emotion, which is absent from the Vulcan, T'Pol.
We also need a new set of writers. We need to go back to the roots of ST-TOS. Deal with the social issues head on. Remember the old episode with the 2 aliens, each being half white and half black. At the end of the show, you realize that they hate each other because they are white on different sides. Wow. That was an excellent metaphore for race relations.
Enterprise should take homosexuality or Tibet and frame those issues in a big metaphor and give the punch line at the end.
If this ad in the "LA Times" succeeds, I hope that they revamp Enterprise in the way that I suggested. Gene Roddenbery had a great idea when he started ST-TOS. I just hope that it does not end in this horrible way: Enterprise and ST-Voyager.
By the way, another thing that I really like about ST-TOS and Star Wars is the following. Life is full of evil people. Yet, the 2 sci-fi stories say that sometimes, just sometimes, the good people win. I like that idea.
Microsoft's plight is closer to market saturation than it is to rot. Consider what would happen to General Motors (GM) if it almost wiped out all of its competitors in the automobile industry and captured 99% of the market. The remaining 1% goes to the barely surviving competitors. In that case, GM's rapid growth will slow to a crawl. That crawl would essentially be just the sales associated with replacements.
The situation for Microsoft is somewhat worse than GM in our example. Consider Microsoft Word 6.0. Unlike an automobile that wears out, breaks down, and needs to be replaced, Word 6.0 has eternal life. It does not ever wear out. After you have used Word 6.0 for 15 years, Word 6.0 works just as well as it worked 15 years ago.
So, you have no need to replace Word 6.0 unless you want to upgrade. For most people, the upgrade is unnecessary because Word 6.0 already has all the features that you need.
Other software programs have the same "problem". Microsoft has so relentlessly added feature after feature to its products in order to capture most of the marketshare that most consumers now have no further need for additional features.
The only way for Microsoft to grow is to enter into other markets. Hence, you see Bill Gate's fist print in the gaming market as Microsoft pushes the XBox. Unfortunately for Microsoft, there is no guarantee of success in markets beyond the computer-software market.
As a side note, Microsoft will continue to invest heavily in R&D in order to enhance the likelihood of success in those other markets. I would not rule out the possibility of buying Bell Laboratories.
For 2 reasons, I doubt the veracity of Mike Nash's claims that Windows is more secure than Linux. First, due to the open nature of Linux development, Linux enjoys far more testers than Windows. More eyeballs means that more bugs will be found and fixed.
Second, comparing Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox indicates that Windows is likely more bug ridden than major open-source software like Linux. I have used both IE and Firefox. From my experience of visiting thousands of pornographic sites laden with naked women beckoning you to "enter" their site (and other things), I can definitely say that IE is chock full of security problems. After 1 week of pornographic surfing with IE, my entire system (browser and OS) becomes infected with malware -- to the point that I must reload Windows. I have yet to experience the same problem with Firefox.
The only thing that I hate about Firefox is that it is very slow, probably due to the fact that my computer system has limited DRAM and that Firefox must swap to disk more often than IE. Such is the price that I must pay to enjoy porn.
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs made a mistake that will hurt both him and Howard Stern. Stern will be moving to Sirius radio in 2006 January. If Jobs had linked the iPods to Sirius, he would have created a ready audience for Howard Stern and, simultaneously, expanded the market for iPods.
Current iPod buyers are part of the young "hip" crowd, and they have just the type of personality that would be attracted to a Stern radio show. So, too, the current middle-aged crowd who grew up with Stern would likely buy an iPod to tune into the "King of All Media".
Jobs really blew this one. If you are a Stern fan and want Stern to succeed at his new home on Sirius radio, then send an e-mail note to Steve Jobs and tell that arrogant CEO to work with Sirius.
Sometimes, Jobs acts like... well... a "Carly Fiorina".
Why would anyone want to do base-30 mathematics? I hazard a guess that non-binary (i.e. not base-2) computational devices may exist in the distant future. Consider the quantum computer. Perhaps, a physicist can weigh in on this matter. Is the number of states in a quantum computer always a power of 2?
Although M$ churns out mundane but fairly good software as the main line of business, this company has a huge R&D budget, and the central research laboratory at M$ is the equivalent of the old Bell Laboratory. I suspect that the M$ laboratory is not confined to only software research. There is likely small, upstart efforts exploring other technologies.
Certainly, X-Box took me by surprise as, up to its debut, I had always thought of M$ as a software company.
May be, there is something to the warning: "Resistance [in any technology] is future. You will be assimilated."
Recently, Microsoft agreed to establish its Office formats as an open standard in order to comply with Massachusett's laws stipulating open standards (but not necessarily open source). Now, according to the article starting this thread of discussion, Microsoft opposes open-source solutions that use Microsoft formats.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do we have a case of complying with the letter of the law but crapping on the spirit of the law?
This new asteroid actually provides an excellent opportunity to test some of our anti-asteroid proposals. They are intended to prevent an asteroid from actually colliding with earth. This new asteroid will not collide with earth but would provide an opportunity to test anti-asteroid technologies.
Two ideas to test in 2029 are (1) dumping a bunch of white paint on the asteroid from a passing nuclear-powered interplanetary missile and (2) 1 week later, detonate a nuclear warhead loaded on another interplanetary missile that will fly close to but will not impact said asteroid. We had better test these ideas on a safe asteroid instead of waiting for the day when an asteroid aimed at earth actually arrives.
Given the fact that engineering is not perfect, if we do not actually test these anti-asteroid technologies in advance, then we run the high risk of failure when we use them for the 1st time on an actual asteroid destined for earth. To my knowledge, very few engineering products work correctly on the first try. 'Tis better to be safe than sorry.
The search engine at Micro$oft (M$) currently has indexed about 1 billion web pages, but Google has indexed several times that amount. Given time, M$ will eventually index more pages. Eventually, M$ will catch up.
The current barrier to entering the market for search engines is low. The technology is relatively simple as the multitude of search-engine companies will attest.
The advantage that M$ has, over Google, is its huge R&D budget. M$ labs is the modern-day equivalent of the venerable Bell Laboratories, which is shriveling under the management of Lucent. M$ has plucked numerous professors from the computer science departments at top universities by offering incredibly high salaries.
I should probably supply the following information as an anonymous writer. Belgium has a large foreign population. Most of them hail from cultures where abridging civil rights and, in general, human rights is viewed in a positive light. Since Belgium is a democracy, its government and its laws will reflect the wishes of its large foreign population.
Hence, Belgians wholeheartedly embrace the eID, a clear violation of privacy and a technology that would cause Beijing and Pyongyang to salivate.
One reputable analyst, Barbara Simpson, noted that the foreign-born population (including those with Belgian citizenship) now exceeds the native-born population. I have been trying to track down this statistic. Perhaps, someone in Slashdot can help me.
What is happening in Belgium, with its accelerating destruction of Western values and Western society, is merely a foreshadowing of what will happen to the USA if we do not control our borders. When I attend meetings of Amnesty International at my local university, I see many foreign students, but virtually none from China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). As the large Chinese communities in the USA will attest, most of the foreign students will remain permanently in the USA and will significantly impact the Western values in this country.
I wonder whether the anti-trust laws would apply if all the computer companies are implicitly acting in a cartel-like fashion to set the base price of the personal computers (PCs) at $600.
I raise this issue because, in the developed world, there is one sub-market into which PCs have not penetrated. That particular market is the one dominated by people at or near the poverty line. Many families in the housing projects of major cities have never owned a computer, and a $100 PC would actually be ideal for them. It would provide an opportunity for their children to obtain exposure to a technology that is as common as the TV or radio in rich, well-to-do families.
Biggest Market for $100 PC? Developed World
on
The Hundred-Buck PC
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Actually, the biggest market for the $100 personal computer (PC) might actually be the developed world. Given that most customers use PCs almost exclusively for word processing, e-mail, and web surfing, a $100 PC with a low-cost, less-powerful processor like a Pentium II would meet the needs of most customers. Such a PC would sell like hotcakes.
Today's, over-powered (not just in terms of wattage) PCs are overkill for the typical consumer. The bottleneck in downloading pornography is not the rendering done by the processor; the bottleneck is the network. Depending on the size of the pornographic file, 384K DSL line is slow; a 56K line is a pain in the you know where.
The cynical side of me says that Dell, Samsung, and the other major PC makers will keep the $100 PC out of the developed markets like the USA in order to maintain the $600 price point that they are currently stealing from the consumers.
This idea of setting an arbitrarily low price, $100 in this case, for a personal computer (PC) and building the most features into the PC is simply a rehash of the idea behind the VIC-20. About 20 years ago, the management of now defunct Commodore predetermined the price of the new home computer to be $200 because management felt that such a low price point would be attractive for the intended market. Then, Commodore engineers added as many features as they could into the new computer. Commodore marketing called it the "VIC-20", and William Shatner (ugh!) served as the spokesman in the print (and TV?) advertisements.
Maybe, MIT should call the new computer the "VIC-10" and ask Shatner if he wants to do some ads for it. I wonder how the audience in Vietnam would feel if they see William Shatner being dubbed to speak Vietnamese?
I am old enough to have read several "Byte" magazine articles about the Macintosh when it first debuted in 1984. The justification for the 1-button mouse was that the Apple engineers wanted the operation of the pointer to be as simple as possible. They felt that having 2 buttons would confuse the user since she would need to remember the specific functions associated with each button.
Although you and I actually would prefer 3 buttons on the contraption, we are not the typical tech-ignorant consumer. The typical consumer more closely resembles the folks in Florida in 2000. They could not understand even simple instructions on how to complete a paper voting ballot. Sometimes, the sheer ignorance in society can shock us tech-savvy folks who have no hope of ever dating a gorgeous blonde babe.
If you are interested in religious topics discussed by a Christian who actually believes in the validity of the scientific method and other major accomplishments of Western society, then I highly recommend the following book.
Spong actually believes that the most important elements of Christianity is the ethics described by Jesus (regardless of whether he actually existed) but is not the mythology. Many Christians find such an approach to be reprehensible.
For the religiously inclined, click on this link to go to a relatively good (i.e. moderate) viewpoint on the Shroud, by an Epicopalian who thinks like John Shelby Spong (one of the very few Christians whom I respect).
For those (like myself) who are secular, I wish to point out the single greatest problem in the religious view of the Shroud. The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus. This type of reasoning is "Assume the conclusion to be true. Then prove the conclusion." I thought that scientific inquiry is "We don't know what to expect. Let's probe and collect the scientifically provable facts. Then, we draw a conclusion from the facts."
Slashdot Mirror
Another good example is the de facto open standard called the x86 instruction set. When Intel was the sole producer of microprocessors based on this standard, prices tended to be higher than what they could be. However, competition from AMD forced Intel to slash prices and to drastically raise the bar on performance. Hence, if Intel were the sole producer of x86-based microprocessers, your computer would probably still be using the 80386, and the Pentium 4 with EMT64 with be a century down the road while Intel continued to reap monopoly profits.
Open standards are great -- for the consumer!
With any luck, these hydrogen stations will mark the beginning of the end for Islamic tyranny from the Middle East. For too long, we have essentially financed terrorist operations by paying money for gasoline. They money goes to, for example, Saudi Arabia. The Arabs then secretly funnel a bit of that money to anti-American groups in the Middle East.
We end up financing the terrorists. Only a hydrogen-based economy will put an end to this nonsense.
Next question is "Can we build jet fighters and bombers that run off hydrogen?"
Even now, taxes in California are high, and so is the price of property. Why else would management explicitly build a technology center far away from an elite university like Stanford University or UC-Berkeley?
If more companies would do what Google is doing, then the Californian government will start to lower taxes and to limit the number of legal/illegal immigrants flooding into the state. The latter is the cause of the high prices of apartments and residential homes.
$200,000 gets you an excellent, spacious house in most places in Oregon or Texas. That same $200,000 gets you, barely, a small noisy condominium in Silicon Valley.
Linux is easier to maintain than Windows, largely thanks to IBM. Linux is more reliable and is less prone to infection by viruses and malware (e.g. spyware) than Windows. IBM ensures that any OS (whether it is commercial or free) shipped to customers on its computer systems meets stringent requirements for reliability.
IBM has been vindicated. IBM initially tried to dethrone Microsoft by producing OS/2, but it was a failure. Now, IBM has thrown its weight behind a product (i.e. Linux) developed outside of IBM, and that product is succeeding in hurting Windows.
What is the defense against the use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist? The answer is not a missile shield. Even if the shield is 80% effective, one successful nuclear bomb would be devastating.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc. If the most pressing issue of the day in Syrian become "Gay Marriage: Yes or No?" instead of "Suicide Bomber: Here We Go", then the world is safe. A Westernized Damascus itself would hunt down any nutcases trying to build a nuclear weapon.
I'm not trying to be a troll, but Western culture is the finest in the world. A Western acquaintance who adopted a Korean orphan is proof of the compassion and goodness of Western values. That Korean orphan, shunned and left to die in Korea, eventually attended MIT.
The women in the Middle East are even worse off. The brutal treatment of women in the Middle East speaks volumes about Middle Eastern culture.
So, in order to make IE competitive with FireFox, the management of Microsoft was forced by the economics of the market to give anti-spyware software away -- for free. Basically, FireFox and its startling growth in marketshare forced Microsoft to be generous.
Bill Gates once said that your computer screen is the most valuable piece of realestate in the world. The management at Microsoft intends to continue to be the owner of that realestate.
Oh. Yes. "Thank you, Mozilla and Firefox! A job, well done!"
A much better way to handle this problem is to simply track the number of miles that each vehicle is driven, from the moment that the vehicle has Californian license plates. California already has a system for mandatory smog checks. The technicians at the smog station transmit the results of the smog checks directly to the state computer system.
The technicians could also tranmit the odometer reading as well. Then, the state government could simply determine the number of miles that you have driven the car since the last smog check and could then send you a bill for the use of Californian roads.
Well, let's ask the black box that supposedly generates random numbers to predict the future. I kid you not. Two days ago, Slashdot offered a serious news article about some scientists believing that a random number generator can predict the future. If the current merger of Verizon and MCI will cause a calamity in the American economy, the black box should be able to tell us.
(Tongue FIRMLY PLANTED in cheek.)
Even doctors and nurses who are not focused on research but who are focused on caring for HIV patients are, in my opinion, heros. They are willing to accept the risks that others shun. There have been occasional stories of nurses who accidentally prick themselves with needles used on HIV patients. Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
Join me in sending an e-mail to CSICOP and requesting that it investigate this supposed black box predicting the future.
Believing in superstitious quackery like this black box has serious ramifications. If enough people believed in this nonsense, then we would end up in setting national policy based on this block box. How would you like the USA to be guided by witches and warlocks?
I like Star Wars because it has excellent acting and dealt with good versus evil. Star Wars is essentially a medieval tale (of knights and a princess) shrouded in sci-fi props: lasers, spaceships, etc.
The problem with Enterprise is the bad acting. and bad casting. Captain Archer needs to be replaced. We need a swashbuckler like Harrison Ford to be captain. Also, the "sexy role" should be assigned to the communications officer. Being sexy is more than being endowed with breasts; being sexy requires emotion, which is absent from the Vulcan, T'Pol.
We also need a new set of writers. We need to go back to the roots of ST-TOS. Deal with the social issues head on. Remember the old episode with the 2 aliens, each being half white and half black. At the end of the show, you realize that they hate each other because they are white on different sides. Wow. That was an excellent metaphore for race relations.
Enterprise should take homosexuality or Tibet and frame those issues in a big metaphor and give the punch line at the end.
If this ad in the "LA Times" succeeds, I hope that they revamp Enterprise in the way that I suggested. Gene Roddenbery had a great idea when he started ST-TOS. I just hope that it does not end in this horrible way: Enterprise and ST-Voyager.
By the way, another thing that I really like about ST-TOS and Star Wars is the following. Life is full of evil people. Yet, the 2 sci-fi stories say that sometimes, just sometimes, the good people win. I like that idea.
The situation for Microsoft is somewhat worse than GM in our example. Consider Microsoft Word 6.0. Unlike an automobile that wears out, breaks down, and needs to be replaced, Word 6.0 has eternal life. It does not ever wear out. After you have used Word 6.0 for 15 years, Word 6.0 works just as well as it worked 15 years ago.
So, you have no need to replace Word 6.0 unless you want to upgrade. For most people, the upgrade is unnecessary because Word 6.0 already has all the features that you need.
Other software programs have the same "problem". Microsoft has so relentlessly added feature after feature to its products in order to capture most of the marketshare that most consumers now have no further need for additional features.
The only way for Microsoft to grow is to enter into other markets. Hence, you see Bill Gate's fist print in the gaming market as Microsoft pushes the XBox. Unfortunately for Microsoft, there is no guarantee of success in markets beyond the computer-software market.
As a side note, Microsoft will continue to invest heavily in R&D in order to enhance the likelihood of success in those other markets. I would not rule out the possibility of buying Bell Laboratories.
Second, comparing Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox indicates that Windows is likely more bug ridden than major open-source software like Linux. I have used both IE and Firefox. From my experience of visiting thousands of pornographic sites laden with naked women beckoning you to "enter" their site (and other things), I can definitely say that IE is chock full of security problems. After 1 week of pornographic surfing with IE, my entire system (browser and OS) becomes infected with malware -- to the point that I must reload Windows. I have yet to experience the same problem with Firefox.
The only thing that I hate about Firefox is that it is very slow, probably due to the fact that my computer system has limited DRAM and that Firefox must swap to disk more often than IE. Such is the price that I must pay to enjoy porn.
Current iPod buyers are part of the young "hip" crowd, and they have just the type of personality that would be attracted to a Stern radio show. So, too, the current middle-aged crowd who grew up with Stern would likely buy an iPod to tune into the "King of All Media".
Jobs really blew this one. If you are a Stern fan and want Stern to succeed at his new home on Sirius radio, then send an e-mail note to Steve Jobs and tell that arrogant CEO to work with Sirius.
Sometimes, Jobs acts like ... well ... a "Carly Fiorina".
Although M$ churns out mundane but fairly good software as the main line of business, this company has a huge R&D budget, and the central research laboratory at M$ is the equivalent of the old Bell Laboratory. I suspect that the M$ laboratory is not confined to only software research. There is likely small, upstart efforts exploring other technologies.
Certainly, X-Box took me by surprise as, up to its debut, I had always thought of M$ as a software company.
May be, there is something to the warning: "Resistance [in any technology] is future. You will be assimilated."
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do we have a case of complying with the letter of the law but crapping on the spirit of the law?
Two ideas to test in 2029 are (1) dumping a bunch of white paint on the asteroid from a passing nuclear-powered interplanetary missile and (2) 1 week later, detonate a nuclear warhead loaded on another interplanetary missile that will fly close to but will not impact said asteroid. We had better test these ideas on a safe asteroid instead of waiting for the day when an asteroid aimed at earth actually arrives.
Given the fact that engineering is not perfect, if we do not actually test these anti-asteroid technologies in advance, then we run the high risk of failure when we use them for the 1st time on an actual asteroid destined for earth. To my knowledge, very few engineering products work correctly on the first try. 'Tis better to be safe than sorry.
The current barrier to entering the market for search engines is low. The technology is relatively simple as the multitude of search-engine companies will attest.
The advantage that M$ has, over Google, is its huge R&D budget. M$ labs is the modern-day equivalent of the venerable Bell Laboratories, which is shriveling under the management of Lucent. M$ has plucked numerous professors from the computer science departments at top universities by offering incredibly high salaries.
Hence, Belgians wholeheartedly embrace the eID, a clear violation of privacy and a technology that would cause Beijing and Pyongyang to salivate.
One reputable analyst, Barbara Simpson, noted that the foreign-born population (including those with Belgian citizenship) now exceeds the native-born population. I have been trying to track down this statistic. Perhaps, someone in Slashdot can help me.
What is happening in Belgium, with its accelerating destruction of Western values and Western society, is merely a foreshadowing of what will happen to the USA if we do not control our borders. When I attend meetings of Amnesty International at my local university, I see many foreign students, but virtually none from China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). As the large Chinese communities in the USA will attest, most of the foreign students will remain permanently in the USA and will significantly impact the Western values in this country.
I fear for the future of America.
I raise this issue because, in the developed world, there is one sub-market into which PCs have not penetrated. That particular market is the one dominated by people at or near the poverty line. Many families in the housing projects of major cities have never owned a computer, and a $100 PC would actually be ideal for them. It would provide an opportunity for their children to obtain exposure to a technology that is as common as the TV or radio in rich, well-to-do families.
Today's, over-powered (not just in terms of wattage) PCs are overkill for the typical consumer. The bottleneck in downloading pornography is not the rendering done by the processor; the bottleneck is the network. Depending on the size of the pornographic file, 384K DSL line is slow; a 56K line is a pain in the you know where.
The cynical side of me says that Dell, Samsung, and the other major PC makers will keep the $100 PC out of the developed markets like the USA in order to maintain the $600 price point that they are currently stealing from the consumers.
Maybe, MIT should call the new computer the "VIC-10" and ask Shatner if he wants to do some ads for it. I wonder how the audience in Vietnam would feel if they see William Shatner being dubbed to speak Vietnamese?
Although you and I actually would prefer 3 buttons on the contraption, we are not the typical tech-ignorant consumer. The typical consumer more closely resembles the folks in Florida in 2000. They could not understand even simple instructions on how to complete a paper voting ballot. Sometimes, the sheer ignorance in society can shock us tech-savvy folks who have no hope of ever dating a gorgeous blonde babe.
Resurrection: Myth or Reality by John Shelby Spong
Spong actually believes that the most important elements of Christianity is the ethics described by Jesus (regardless of whether he actually existed) but is not the mythology. Many Christians find such an approach to be reprehensible.
For those (like myself) who are secular, I wish to point out the single greatest problem in the religious view of the Shroud. The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus. This type of reasoning is "Assume the conclusion to be true. Then prove the conclusion." I thought that scientific inquiry is "We don't know what to expect. Let's probe and collect the scientifically provable facts. Then, we draw a conclusion from the facts."