It's a niche product, doesn't and probably can't make enough money to support itself. Perhaps they will sell it to Mozilla, but I don't see any compelling business reason to keep it around except for the sole simple reason that it is a thorn in the side of Microsoft. come to think of it, given how much Ellison detests Gates and Ballmer et al, he might just sink millions into OpenOffice and make it work right and be a true competitor to MSOffice. I guess it depends on Ellison - will his hate of all things MS make him sink millions into OO and make it a true competitor to MSO, or will he head the bean counters and cut it lose?
It will be very interesting to see how that pans out. I rather like Open Office - it's quirky and kind of ugly, but it does work and its drawing tools are great for business graphics. but its presentation tool (competitor for PowerPoint) sucks even worse than PowerPoint, and PowerPoint is at an advanced stage of suckitude. That said, I hope Ellison sees the promise in Open Office and really runs with it. If he could make OpenOffice presentation better than Keynote, word processing better than Word, and spreadsheet better than Excel, I would pay real money for that.
a device similar to the iPhone, but with 2 USB ports and a miniHDMI port. In essence: the smallest computer. keyboard/mouse go in one USB, a hard drive in the other. Hook up your monitor to it, and you will have a computer that will surf the web, do basic word processing and Office-type stuff. It will cost USD$299.
I don't see Apple doing it as it would evacuate the need for MacBooks, but I could see Panasonic or Nokia or Palm pulling it off.
Iraq is an interesting case. Iraq had signed HUGE deals with the French and the Russians who were going to have massive and in some areas, exclusive access to the oil. Also, Iraq was about to shift its oil from dollars to euros, as a favour to the French and as a jab at the USA. Then the USA invaded, and the deals with France and Russia went into the dustbin.
You have to understand, with the Bush Junta there was no "we". There were corporate interests. Period. Which is much the same as saying "gangland interests". In this case, oil corporations wanted access to the fields to the exclusion of Russia, China, and Europe. The invasion was so badly bungled, and the "peace" that followed was so deeply suboptimal, that the USA oil companies didn't get nearly what they wanted, and now the French and the Russians are back...
You should read "Resource Wars" by prof. Michael T Klare. He goes into great detail on this subject. Another good one is "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin.
I still don't get it. Terabyte drives cost as much as my bi-weekly beer budget, and less every day. Computing power is off of Moore's Law, but is still increasing with multicore and multiprocessors. My computer doesn't have to be hooked up to the interweb to work, nor does it require a subscription to some website to keep rolling. If I want access to the web, I can get it, but that's only a few times a day when I need it.
So, what exactly does "cloud computing" bring to the table for me?
Not much as far as I can see, other than a new crop of buzzwords.
The EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested) in this idea is off the charts in negative territory. Each phase of the process uses energy that could best be used elsewhere. Secondly, put this into the bigger picture: it is to maintain aircraft carriers, i.e., Empire. And why would the USA be sending an ACC somewhere? Oh, perhaps to crush a government sitting on top of oil or other resources deemed indispensible by the American War Machine and its nutty consumerist inhabitants? And why would they bomb one of these nations to flinders? Because it would work against the export land model, freeing up oil to the market that the USA can then steal to keep the suburbs expanding and the war machine rolling... a self perpetuating cancer.
Yet another dumb idea from a military that is an order of magnitude too big.
Further than I would want to throw myself if we're talking about into a room with a lot of angry men with guns.
OK. Room full of angry men with guns. this calls for:
10 lb robot to case the joint before it gets blown to bits by multiple rounds from an AK47, or:
767 gram fragmentation grenade that explodes and shreds the angry men with guns into little tiny pieces.
10lb Robot... 1.75lb grenade... 10lb Robot... 1.75lb grenade...10lb Robot... 1.75lb grenade... I'll take the grenade.
"can see around corners inside buildings, sewers, drainpipes, caves, courtyards" so corners, not distances, and it sounds kind of like they're looking into remote controlled after being thrown.
OK, and you can throw it exactly HOW FAR? A trained Olympic quality athlete has difficulty throwing a 16 pound shotput more than 20 meters. A high school shotput thrown by a high school athlete (which would be roughly equivalent to a fit, if not future, member of the military) tossed a 12lb shotput 81 feet, and it's a bit of a record. Now put this in the hands of your average 30something National Guardsman on his 6th tour of duty in some dusty hellhole - he (or she) is not likely to get those kinds of numbers.
A big drain pipe? Send in the retarded douchebag from chicago with the stupid tribal tatts with a flashlight on his M16 with an RPG mounted. Anything moves, shoot. If it sounds like it will / can shoot back, fire the RPG. He'll be deaf for a week, but hey - this is a volunteer army, not conscription. This is a contract - you are property.
courtyards? Oh, puhleeez. I can see it now...
Ali: Hey - Akmet - look! Someone tossed something over the wall at us into the courtyard. Looks like a robot.
Akmet: Really? Cool. Target practice! Weeee! (TAK TAK TAK) OK. Now it's a pile of junk.
Ali: Good shot, there Akmet.
Akmet: Thanks. Where'd it come from?
Ali: Over there, by the palm tree.
Akmet: OK. Wanna bet who can toss three grenades over there fastest?
Ali: You're on. You can have one of my virgins if this all goes badly.
Akmet: Same here - You're on! 1.2.3. THROW! THROW! THROW!
(WAMP!!..... WAMP!!.... WAMP!!... WAMP!!..... WAMP!!.... WAMP!!...)
Ali: Hah! I win! You owe me a virgin, fucker. So, we should probably check it out.
Akmet: sure. I'll get up on the roof over there, so I can see what's going on and keep you covered - you go out and shoot anything that moves.
Ali: OK.
(seconds later)
TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK
Ali: Hey - Akmet - the grenades got most of 'em but a few were wounded so I shot 'em.
Akmet: good on ya, Ali. Let's go get some lunch.
Ali: all because they heaved some stupid robot.
Akmet: Yeah. Stupid americans. Maybe if they just stayed home and stopped fucking with people, no one would care.
Ali: Yeah. I mean, like do we care about the Norwegians or the Danes? Or the Chileans? Hell no.
Akmet: Yeah - typical imperialist nonsense. They never learn, it seems.
Ali: Yeah. kinda sad.
how far can you heave a 10lb weight into a situation that you can't see directly in front of you? Over a wall? Perhaps. Around a corner? Perhaps. But if there is someone there and they see a 10lb robot arcing into their room / trench / side of the wall, they will:
a. destroy it immediately
b. know exactly where YOU are, and while you are making sense of the "data" it is supplying, you may well expect a counter-offensive move of some deadly force...
Yet another dumb idea from a bloated military that should be pared down by 50% for the next 3 years running.
I have not and will not give up. I'm actually one of "the good guys" in this, in that I have absolute faith that the people I am teaching can think and think well, if given the proper time, tools, place, and encouragement.
I'm sure that if you were one of my students, I would be happy and proud to have you around. You are correct in that there are always some students who are willing and happy to push things intellectually. They are always a steady 15% or so. The problem is the middle and the bottom. The middle is shrinking. Over the past 10 years, the number of willfully ignorant students has increased dramatically, all at the expense of the middle ground - the students who are bright enough, but poorly served and unwillfully ignorant, i.e., they don't "know" because they simply don't know, as opposed to the bottom feeders who don't know and don't want to know and are in school to punch a ticket. They piss me off.
Even still, I do reach out to them all as best I can, but there is always a certain number of them who are categorically useless. So, I do my best to cultivate the ones at the top who care, and enlist the ones in the middle who might care.
Again, thanks for your well thought response. It was an inspiration to read. Cheers,
As an academic, part of what I do is try and get them to think. It's never been easy, but after 30 years of postmodernist bullshit, the layer of cynicism, empty irony, and clueless is so thick and self-reinforcing, it's much more difficult than it used to be to get through to these people. Last year was the hardest.
I quote, "What's wrong withe status quo? It works for me!"
The software houses DON'T keep everything available, and if you set up a site where people can DL old dead software, they come after you with bats and lawyers.
Why? Because Photoshop CS3 is JUST FINE and CS4 is a waste of money. They all want you in the upgrade path. "Just good enough" computing hasn't come to the software market. Yet.
Shanghai
Mumbai
Buenos Aires
Moscow
Karachi
Delhi
Manila
Sao Paulo
Seoul
Istanbul
Jakarta
Mexico City
Lagos
Lima
Tokyo
New York City
Cairo
London
Tehran
Beijing
eventually you'll get to places like Holyhead, Waco, Palo Alto, Bakersfield, Piscataway, Sudbury, Guelph, Alice Springs, etc.
i disagree- I think the USA is in not-quite a death spiral. It has exceeded its reach and the last time I checked (earlier today) it's in debt so deeply (11.65 trillions dollars) that if it was EVER able to pay down the debt at the rate of 1 million dollars a day (which it has NEVER been able to do on a consistent ongoing basis) it would take approximately 31,917 YEARS to pay it off. If it paid down the debt 1000x faster (1 Billion dollars a day) it would still take almost 32 years to pay.
The answer is: it's not getting paid. It will never get paid. And once everyone figures that out they will ditch the USA like a hot potato.
Yeah. Right. Some evil Evil EVIL creature telepathically puts bad ideas in people's heads.
Just because everyone has to die at some point doesn't mean exploring the limits of and about life are not worth investigating. It's called curiosity and wanting to know more about the world we live in. I know people who believe in imaginary friends (or enemies, for that matter) have a problem with that. To such people I can only say - "too bad. it's not that big a deal."
Meh. I remember when DECK first came out - it did 4 stereo tracks and we all about shit our pants. It was FINE and a lot of really great work got done. My guess is the iPhone could probably handle 8 tracks of a stripped down version of Garageband.
I agree with hedwards. There is already talk of a "levelling" and a saturation point. I think Google is smart in developing chrome. I am NOT a fan of "cloud computing" because most of what I do has to do with flop intensive activities (audio and video and image editing) and doing that in the aether is not a wise or efficient idea. If google can make chrome run as well offline as it does online, then they will definitely win that area.
Where I agree with MyLongNickName is that Microsoft is also a moving target. Google may roust them out of the OS game, and FOSS may scramble their software niche, that doesn't mean that M$ is up the creek sans paddle. MS just has to adjust their direction and change targets, using, as usual, Apple as a model. 10 years ago Apple made hardware and a small handful of fairly minor applications. Apple changed targets and focus and now it Rooolz the roost with iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and has a large stable of other fine apps (FinalCutPro, Logic, Keynote, GarageBand, etc.) Watch MS do the same kind of zig zag. It probably won't be the same as Apple (Apple's already there and has staked out the turf) but MS will find some other equally lucrative direction.
As an iPhone has more RAM, storage, speed, and video capabilities than my first half dozen computers, COMBINED, it is absurd to discuss IT in terms of Only Computers. This is where I think we will see even Google's first stumble.
Example: give an iPhone HDMI out and two 6pin USB ports. Game over. No more need for desktop, laptop, anything. Just your "iPhone" and a charger, a monitor and keyboard at home and at the office. Done.
If google's phone system can do that on (x) brand phones (and can convince someone like RIM or Panasonic to build one with HDMI/USB) then Google beats Apple to the punch and wins almost the entire future computer market.
And MS in all of that? They have enough money they could build their own damn phone w/ HDMI/USB, and sell them with Verizon for $200 and beat Google AND Apple to the punch.
It's not a matter of if - it's a question of when and how.
because when all is said and done, the Interviewer gets to fly back to his airconditioned condo in New York, drink expensive Hawaiian coffee and tool around in his BMW. The Interviewee gets to stay and sweat like a pig in the swampy hellhole called Nigeria, where he gets to slap some stupid jitney driver in the unending clusterfuck they call traffic, and suck down a lukewarm coke in the muddy concrete and cardboard dump he calls home, as the interviewer operates from the "there but for the grace of god go i" theory of social justice.
agreed. What is also interesting is how circadian rhythms by age group match up.
You have the "Adults and Children" up at dawn. For numbers, let's say 6 AM. They stay up until just after sunset, say 9 - 10 PM. Then the young adults take their shift, and stay up until about 3 or 4 AM, when the ancient ones (who folded at sunset around 7.30 PM) get up.
WHY would this work? To keep the fire going and guard against predators.
The old folks get things rolling, Adults and kids get up later and organise the days events. By the time they're ready to roll, it's getting on toward mid-day and the young adults are finally up and moving to supply the horse power.
Right and wrong. Teenagers are an invention. It used to be that you went from late childhood (13 - 14) into adulthood. There's a reason why many people had little more than an 8th grade education - after that you were expected to join the world of work. Alexander the Great had pounded much of the world into submission by the time he was 20. "Teenagers" as we understand them are a product of post WW2 western culture as a market for commodity capitalism in the face of expanding resource bases. As resource bases contract and the world goes back to a solar economy, expect the teenager to disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
I rarely have to walk more than 100 feet to a paybox. And if that's too far, I would suggest the problem is not with the paybox....
It will be very interesting to see how that pans out. I rather like Open Office - it's quirky and kind of ugly, but it does work and its drawing tools are great for business graphics. but its presentation tool (competitor for PowerPoint) sucks even worse than PowerPoint, and PowerPoint is at an advanced stage of suckitude. That said, I hope Ellison sees the promise in Open Office and really runs with it. If he could make OpenOffice presentation better than Keynote, word processing better than Word, and spreadsheet better than Excel, I would pay real money for that.
a device similar to the iPhone, but with 2 USB ports and a miniHDMI port. In essence: the smallest computer. keyboard/mouse go in one USB, a hard drive in the other. Hook up your monitor to it, and you will have a computer that will surf the web, do basic word processing and Office-type stuff. It will cost USD$299.
I don't see Apple doing it as it would evacuate the need for MacBooks, but I could see Panasonic or Nokia or Palm pulling it off.
And of course: it would run Linux...
You have to understand, with the Bush Junta there was no "we". There were corporate interests. Period. Which is much the same as saying "gangland interests". In this case, oil corporations wanted access to the fields to the exclusion of Russia, China, and Europe. The invasion was so badly bungled, and the "peace" that followed was so deeply suboptimal, that the USA oil companies didn't get nearly what they wanted, and now the French and the Russians are back...
You should read "Resource Wars" by prof. Michael T Klare. He goes into great detail on this subject. Another good one is "The Prize" by Daniel Yergin.
cheers.
So, what exactly does "cloud computing" bring to the table for me?
Not much as far as I can see, other than a new crop of buzzwords.
Yet another dumb idea from a military that is an order of magnitude too big.
OK. Room full of angry men with guns. this calls for:
10 lb robot to case the joint before it gets blown to bits by multiple rounds from an AK47, or:
767 gram fragmentation grenade that explodes and shreds the angry men with guns into little tiny pieces.
10lb Robot... 1.75lb grenade... 10lb Robot... 1.75lb grenade...10lb Robot... 1.75lb grenade... I'll take the grenade.
"can see around corners inside buildings, sewers, drainpipes, caves, courtyards" so corners, not distances, and it sounds kind of like they're looking into remote controlled after being thrown.
OK, and you can throw it exactly HOW FAR? A trained Olympic quality athlete has difficulty throwing a 16 pound shotput more than 20 meters. A high school shotput thrown by a high school athlete (which would be roughly equivalent to a fit, if not future, member of the military) tossed a 12lb shotput 81 feet, and it's a bit of a record. Now put this in the hands of your average 30something National Guardsman on his 6th tour of duty in some dusty hellhole - he (or she) is not likely to get those kinds of numbers.
A big drain pipe? Send in the retarded douchebag from chicago with the stupid tribal tatts with a flashlight on his M16 with an RPG mounted. Anything moves, shoot. If it sounds like it will / can shoot back, fire the RPG. He'll be deaf for a week, but hey - this is a volunteer army, not conscription. This is a contract - you are property.
courtyards? Oh, puhleeez. I can see it now...
Ali: Hey - Akmet - look! Someone tossed something over the wall at us into the courtyard. Looks like a robot.
Akmet: Really? Cool. Target practice! Weeee! (TAK TAK TAK) OK. Now it's a pile of junk.
Ali: Good shot, there Akmet.
Akmet: Thanks. Where'd it come from?
Ali: Over there, by the palm tree.
Akmet: OK. Wanna bet who can toss three grenades over there fastest?
Ali: You're on. You can have one of my virgins if this all goes badly.
Akmet: Same here - You're on! 1.2.3. THROW! THROW! THROW!
(WAMP!!..... WAMP!!.... WAMP!!... WAMP!!..... WAMP!!.... WAMP!!...)
Ali: Hah! I win! You owe me a virgin, fucker. So, we should probably check it out.
Akmet: sure. I'll get up on the roof over there, so I can see what's going on and keep you covered - you go out and shoot anything that moves.
Ali: OK.
(seconds later)
TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK
Ali: Hey - Akmet - the grenades got most of 'em but a few were wounded so I shot 'em.
Akmet: good on ya, Ali. Let's go get some lunch.
Ali: all because they heaved some stupid robot.
Akmet: Yeah. Stupid americans. Maybe if they just stayed home and stopped fucking with people, no one would care.
Ali: Yeah. I mean, like do we care about the Norwegians or the Danes? Or the Chileans? Hell no.
Akmet: Yeah - typical imperialist nonsense. They never learn, it seems.
Ali: Yeah. kinda sad.
a. destroy it immediately
b. know exactly where YOU are, and while you are making sense of the "data" it is supplying, you may well expect a counter-offensive move of some deadly force...
Yet another dumb idea from a bloated military that should be pared down by 50% for the next 3 years running.
With Waldo! Can you find him?
I have not and will not give up. I'm actually one of "the good guys" in this, in that I have absolute faith that the people I am teaching can think and think well, if given the proper time, tools, place, and encouragement.
I'm sure that if you were one of my students, I would be happy and proud to have you around. You are correct in that there are always some students who are willing and happy to push things intellectually. They are always a steady 15% or so. The problem is the middle and the bottom. The middle is shrinking. Over the past 10 years, the number of willfully ignorant students has increased dramatically, all at the expense of the middle ground - the students who are bright enough, but poorly served and unwillfully ignorant, i.e., they don't "know" because they simply don't know, as opposed to the bottom feeders who don't know and don't want to know and are in school to punch a ticket. They piss me off.
Even still, I do reach out to them all as best I can, but there is always a certain number of them who are categorically useless. So, I do my best to cultivate the ones at the top who care, and enlist the ones in the middle who might care.
Again, thanks for your well thought response. It was an inspiration to read. Cheers,
RS
I quote, "What's wrong withe status quo? It works for me!"
Argh.
Why? Because Photoshop CS3 is JUST FINE and CS4 is a waste of money. They all want you in the upgrade path. "Just good enough" computing hasn't come to the software market. Yet.
Fucking awesome.
Shanghai
Mumbai
Buenos Aires
Moscow
Karachi
Delhi
Manila
Sao Paulo
Seoul
Istanbul
Jakarta
Mexico City
Lagos
Lima
Tokyo
New York City
Cairo
London
Tehran
Beijing
eventually you'll get to places like Holyhead, Waco, Palo Alto, Bakersfield, Piscataway, Sudbury, Guelph, Alice Springs, etc.
RS
The answer is: it's not getting paid. It will never get paid. And once everyone figures that out they will ditch the USA like a hot potato.
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
Just because everyone has to die at some point doesn't mean exploring the limits of and about life are not worth investigating. It's called curiosity and wanting to know more about the world we live in. I know people who believe in imaginary friends (or enemies, for that matter) have a problem with that. To such people I can only say - "too bad. it's not that big a deal."
RS
Meh. I remember when DECK first came out - it did 4 stereo tracks and we all about shit our pants. It was FINE and a lot of really great work got done. My guess is the iPhone could probably handle 8 tracks of a stripped down version of Garageband.
poof. gone.
Yeah - the minidisplay port will do, fer sure...
Where I agree with MyLongNickName is that Microsoft is also a moving target. Google may roust them out of the OS game, and FOSS may scramble their software niche, that doesn't mean that M$ is up the creek sans paddle. MS just has to adjust their direction and change targets, using, as usual, Apple as a model. 10 years ago Apple made hardware and a small handful of fairly minor applications. Apple changed targets and focus and now it Rooolz the roost with iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and has a large stable of other fine apps (FinalCutPro, Logic, Keynote, GarageBand, etc.) Watch MS do the same kind of zig zag. It probably won't be the same as Apple (Apple's already there and has staked out the turf) but MS will find some other equally lucrative direction.
As an iPhone has more RAM, storage, speed, and video capabilities than my first half dozen computers, COMBINED, it is absurd to discuss IT in terms of Only Computers. This is where I think we will see even Google's first stumble.
Example: give an iPhone HDMI out and two 6pin USB ports. Game over. No more need for desktop, laptop, anything. Just your "iPhone" and a charger, a monitor and keyboard at home and at the office. Done.
If google's phone system can do that on (x) brand phones (and can convince someone like RIM or Panasonic to build one with HDMI/USB) then Google beats Apple to the punch and wins almost the entire future computer market.
And MS in all of that? They have enough money they could build their own damn phone w/ HDMI/USB, and sell them with Verizon for $200 and beat Google AND Apple to the punch.
It's not a matter of if - it's a question of when and how.
RS
because when all is said and done, the Interviewer gets to fly back to his airconditioned condo in New York, drink expensive Hawaiian coffee and tool around in his BMW. The Interviewee gets to stay and sweat like a pig in the swampy hellhole called Nigeria, where he gets to slap some stupid jitney driver in the unending clusterfuck they call traffic, and suck down a lukewarm coke in the muddy concrete and cardboard dump he calls home, as the interviewer operates from the "there but for the grace of god go i" theory of social justice.
You have the "Adults and Children" up at dawn. For numbers, let's say 6 AM. They stay up until just after sunset, say 9 - 10 PM. Then the young adults take their shift, and stay up until about 3 or 4 AM, when the ancient ones (who folded at sunset around 7.30 PM) get up.
WHY would this work? To keep the fire going and guard against predators.
The old folks get things rolling, Adults and kids get up later and organise the days events. By the time they're ready to roll, it's getting on toward mid-day and the young adults are finally up and moving to supply the horse power.
It makes sense from a neolithic point of view...
RS
indeed - it's a great book.
Right and wrong. Teenagers are an invention. It used to be that you went from late childhood (13 - 14) into adulthood. There's a reason why many people had little more than an 8th grade education - after that you were expected to join the world of work. Alexander the Great had pounded much of the world into submission by the time he was 20. "Teenagers" as we understand them are a product of post WW2 western culture as a market for commodity capitalism in the face of expanding resource bases. As resource bases contract and the world goes back to a solar economy, expect the teenager to disappear.