I do not see why an authoritative role had to be eternally entrusted to a single company. A govenment is an authority but there always is a possiblity of take-over by another party through a democratic election. That is (at least in theory) what prevents a govenment from corruption and over-spending our tax money.
In the present case, the work that is to be done is not a product development but mainly administrative tasks. For the administrative tasks you would simply pick a company that could do the best service with the minimal cost.
Of course if you simply assume the Internet is so precious and a for-profit company should not be trusted for the tasks, there is no choice but to pay whatever the money your entrusted company asks. It is just same as what a govenment agency does to the tax-payers.
The task should be authoratative but that does not necessarily mean a single company should have a monopoly over the job position.
H2S is extremely poisonous. So you could use the setup to kill a person anonymously.
Re:Question about ICANN's place in the world
on
ICANN Budget Questioned
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
An international organization controlled by goverments tends to work bureaucratically and inefficiently. A commercial company can be more flexible and efficient if it is not in monopoly. I think we somehow needs a competition here.
Some of IT matter, some of IT do not.
on
Why I.T. Matters
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In the early stage of its development, every technology provides profits to those who have it because it makes a differece to those who have not. But you need an investiment and that particular technology may not last long enough to compenstate the investiment. So the question at this stage is if the investiment can be justified against the risk. Naturally, there is no clear answer to the question.
Unless you have monopoly on it, eventually the technology becomes ubiquitous and you can no longer expect a gain by making the difference. But at this stage, the technology is a must. So you need to have it regardless you like it or not. So the question at this point is how to maintain the technology with a minimal cost.
The so-called IT involves various different technologies. Some are in their early stage, and some in the ubiquitous state. So it is wrong to make a disucussion using such the broad concept term. Some of IT matter, some of IT do not.
As far as I see, this law is to protect the privacy of the senders who may not realize the nature of Gmail.
Google's arguments over the rights of the senders is weak; it is only Google's promise that it will not read the mail just like provider's automated virus scanner or spam filter.
It is probably OK as far as Google is in the business, but naturally you never know who would take over Google if something happened. You might be held responsible for the violation of their privacy by the senders.
BBC's initiative just amazes the Japanese, who need to pay $130/yr (or $250/yr including a few satellite channels) to the Nippon Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), and NHK has just recently
introduced DRM restrictions on its digital broadcast.
And they literally come to your house to collect the fee!
ScanSnap may be just what you need if the notes are on a uniform-sized paper (e.g. A4 or letter). You need Acrobat (included) on a Windows machine, but you just set the notes on the scanner and click a mouse then it scans 50 sheets (both sides in one-pass) without human intervention and gives you an Acrobat file in a few minutes. It is small and weighs light so you can easily bring it into the secretary's office. The price is also reasonable ($495 with Acrobat 6.0), and it seems they are even offering a $100 rebate now.
The specified resolution is for a colored documents. For a b/w one, you will get a better resolution. You can obtain scan samples from a
Japanese page (pdf files at the bottom).
Actually, a newer model, fi-5110EOX, has already been available in Japan, and I think that is why they are offering a rebate now. The new model have usb2.0 connection and a higher resolution mode (excellent) that is not possible with fi-4110.
For those who with curiosity, here is its "About" page...(the English version appears at the bottom).
Slashdot Japan started on May 28, 2001 and is about to celebrate the third anniversary. It receives a few constant news posts per day and enjoys reasonably high activity.
According to a local newspaper (Nagano, Japan), the present estimated lifespan for the prototype is 1000-2000 hours, which needs to be boosted to 10000 hours before appearing in your living room.
Hitachi Co. Ltd. (CEO: Etsuhiko Shouyama) has developed a novel 3D image display technology, which allows a 360 degrees view from any direction. The technology allows a viewer to enjoy a 3D image that appears to be floating in the middle of the air. With the proprietary camera system, one can take and view a captured real-time 3D image. The taken image can be sent over a network and played in distant places simultaneously --- this makes a totally new presentation style possible. The technology is expected to be use as a new image-based information system in various fields.
Holography has been a well-known method for playing floating 3D images to date. However, playing a 3D image requires preparation of an interference pattern (hologram), and this make real-time playing of a captured 3D image impossible.
Real-time playing of a captured 3D image will bring, for example, projection of 3D images of a person or an object in the air, which has appeared in SF movies, to the real world. As a new style in oversea business, discussion of a product design or a presentation to a customer can be made based on the image of a sample freshly made here in Japan.
The Hitachi Human Interaction Laboratory in the Hitachi Fundamental Research Center has developed the 3D image display technology that allows one to view a real-time 3D image floating in the air from any direction. This comes with a demonstration system, cylindrical 3D image display "Transport." The developed display technology has the following features.
(1) 3D image display by a simple mechanism
The system is based on simultaneous projection of the images of a subject taken from multiple direction onto a proprietary prepared rotating screen. In the experimental display "Transport," the images of the subject taken from 24 different directions are projected to (a) mirror(s) at the top by (a) LCD projector(s) set in the base. The projected images are reflected by the mirror(s) to 24 mirrors placed around the rotating screen, and further directed on to the screen.
(2) Real-time display of captured 3D image
The Lab developed a proprietary camera system that automatically produces images of a subject from 24 different angles. Directly sending the images captured by the camera system to the LCD projector displays the captured 3D image in real time. The captured image can be sent to a distant place by connecting the camera system to "Transport."
The developed 3D image display technology can handle both still and animated images with full colors and from computer-generated graphics to real image captures. The technology may find various applications in business and entertainment as a unconventional display system for 3D image presentation and information distribution in the ubiquitous era.
(Notes about *1) holography and *2) Hitachi Human Interaction Lab)
Left: Overviews of the display system (left) and the camera system(right)
Right: (top) "It appears to be floating in the air."
You can see examples of BIOS-OS integration in game consoles and PDAs. Usually, one gets more performance out of a hardware by the integration (and copyright control, of course). The downside is, once the manufacturer abandons the hardware, it becomes a junk. However attractive and still usable the hardware is, it is very difficult to use it other than in the original design.
Also, all hardwares have their physical life limit and eventually will become broken. Then an emulator is an option but a proprietary BIOS-OS makes the development of an emulator extremely hard. The fate of Sega Saturn would be a good example.
Apple amazes me by providing an excellent emulator for OS8-9 softwares on OS X. I still use Word98 for Mac on my G4.
I usually apply updates blindly, but this time I skipped 10.2.8 when it first appeared in the update list. I somehow felt uneasy, and it may have been because of the rumor on MacFixIt, I do not know.
I mostly agree with you. I would like see a separate patch for a security problem rapidly. And for the feature enhancement, updates should first appear as release candidates, so that brave users can try them on a non-production Mac but at their own risk.
I do not see why Apple wants to put all patches into one big update.
Users always seek a better user interface. And as far as you use an office suite with a proprietary format, you will have little choice.
With an open standard format, you can pick another office suite with suitable features (including interface of course) at any time. Faster the migration to an open standard, less closed-format documents you will have and brighter the future.
I do not say XML is the best open standard. I even do not think that the most of users care what XML is. What matters is that it is an open standard. It may not be the best but it is easy to make conversion from one open standard format to another later. What dissapointed me most is MS's unwillingness to compete in an open ground and to make users choose a better office suite. I would like to say, "let users decide."
The point of the migration in time depends on what a user needs an office suite for. In most of tasks, OpenOffice.org is quite sufficient. Its interface is surely going to be further improved, and it is about time for an average user to consider freeing oneself from MS.
When you think of a vast polulation whose native language does not use alphabets, internationalization is one of the fundamental features any self-respecting office suite should not miss.
StarOffice 7 will have Japanese and Chinese versions (under the name of StarSuite 7), and the OOo community has been putting much efforts to make other languages available.
In fact, from what I heard of, one of the show-stopper in the release of the OOo1.1 final is a bug in Chinese font handling.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not see why an authoritative role had to be eternally entrusted to a single company. A govenment is an authority but there always is a possiblity of take-over by another party through a democratic election. That is (at least in theory) what prevents a govenment from corruption and over-spending our tax money.
In the present case, the work that is to be done is not a product development but mainly administrative tasks. For the administrative tasks you would simply pick a company that could do the best service with the minimal cost.
Of course if you simply assume the Internet is so precious and a for-profit company should not be trusted for the tasks, there is no choice but to pay whatever the money your entrusted company asks. It is just same as what a govenment agency does to the tax-payers.
The task should be authoratative but that does not necessarily mean a single company should have a monopoly over the job position.
H2S is extremely poisonous. So you could use the setup to kill a person anonymously.
An international organization controlled by goverments tends to work bureaucratically and inefficiently. A commercial company can be more flexible and efficient if it is not in monopoly. I think we somehow needs a competition here.
In the early stage of its development, every technology provides profits to those who have it because it makes a differece to those who have not. But you need an investiment and that particular technology may not last long enough to compenstate the investiment. So the question at this stage is if the investiment can be justified against the risk. Naturally, there is no clear answer to the question.
Unless you have monopoly on it, eventually the technology becomes ubiquitous and you can no longer expect a gain by making the difference. But at this stage, the technology is a must. So you need to have it regardless you like it or not. So the question at this point is how to maintain the technology with a minimal cost.
The so-called IT involves various different technologies. Some are in their early stage, and some in the ubiquitous state. So it is wrong to make a disucussion using such the broad concept term. Some of IT matter, some of IT do not.
As far as I see, this law is to protect the privacy of the senders who may not realize the nature of Gmail.
Google's arguments over the rights of the senders is weak; it is only Google's promise that it will not read the mail just like provider's automated virus scanner or spam filter.
It is probably OK as far as Google is in the business, but naturally you never know who would take over Google if something happened. You might be held responsible for the violation of their privacy by the senders.
BBC's initiative just amazes the Japanese, who need to pay $130/yr (or $250/yr including a few satellite channels) to the Nippon Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), and NHK has just recently introduced DRM restrictions on its digital broadcast.
And they literally come to your house to collect the fee!
ScanSnap may be just what you need if the notes are on a uniform-sized paper (e.g. A4 or letter). You need Acrobat (included) on a Windows machine, but you just set the notes on the scanner and click a mouse then it scans 50 sheets (both sides in one-pass) without human intervention and gives you an Acrobat file in a few minutes. It is small and weighs light so you can easily bring it into the secretary's office. The price is also reasonable ($495 with Acrobat 6.0), and it seems they are even offering a $100 rebate now.
The specified resolution is for a colored documents. For a b/w one, you will get a better resolution. You can obtain scan samples from a Japanese page (pdf files at the bottom).
Actually, a newer model, fi-5110EOX, has already been available in Japan, and I think that is why they are offering a rebate now. The new model have usb2.0 connection and a higher resolution mode (excellent) that is not possible with fi-4110.
Appears HERE .
It seems the plane weighs a bit more than 16 grams...
For those who with curiosity, here is its "About" page...(the English version appears at the bottom).
Slashdot Japan started on May 28, 2001 and is about to celebrate the third anniversary. It receives a few constant news posts per day and enjoys reasonably high activity.
The thickness of the OLED panel is 2.1mm, and it does not need a backlight.
According to a local newspaper (Nagano, Japan), the present estimated lifespan for the prototype is 1000-2000 hours, which needs to be boosted to 10000 hours before appearing in your living room.
I hope this helps.
Hitachi Co. Ltd. (CEO: Etsuhiko Shouyama) has developed a novel 3D image display technology, which allows a 360 degrees view from any direction. The technology allows a viewer to enjoy a 3D image that appears to be floating in the middle of the air. With the proprietary camera system, one can take and view a captured real-time 3D image. The taken image can be sent over a network and played in distant places simultaneously --- this makes a totally new presentation style possible. The technology is expected to be use as a new image-based information system in various fields.
Holography has been a well-known method for playing floating 3D images to date. However, playing a 3D image requires preparation of an interference pattern (hologram), and this make real-time playing of a captured 3D image impossible.
Real-time playing of a captured 3D image will bring, for example, projection of 3D images of a person or an object in the air, which has appeared in SF movies, to the real world. As a new style in oversea business, discussion of a product design or a presentation to a customer can be made based on the image of a sample freshly made here in Japan.
The Hitachi Human Interaction Laboratory in the Hitachi Fundamental Research Center has developed the 3D image display technology that allows one to view a real-time 3D image floating in the air from any direction. This comes with a demonstration system, cylindrical 3D image display "Transport." The developed display technology has the following features.
(1) 3D image display by a simple mechanism
The system is based on simultaneous projection of the images of a subject taken from multiple direction onto a proprietary prepared rotating screen. In the experimental display "Transport," the images of the subject taken from 24 different directions are projected to (a) mirror(s) at the top by (a) LCD projector(s) set in the base. The projected images are reflected by the mirror(s) to 24 mirrors placed around the rotating screen, and further directed on to the screen.
(2) Real-time display of captured 3D image
The Lab developed a proprietary camera system that automatically produces images of a subject from 24 different angles. Directly sending the images captured by the camera system to the LCD projector displays the captured 3D image in real time. The captured image can be sent to a distant place by connecting the camera system to "Transport."
The developed 3D image display technology can handle both still and animated images with full colors and from computer-generated graphics to real image captures. The technology may find various applications in business and entertainment as a unconventional display system for 3D image presentation and information distribution in the ubiquitous era.
(Notes about *1) holography and *2) Hitachi Human Interaction Lab)
Left: Overviews of the display system (left) and the camera system(right)
Right: (top) "It appears to be floating in the air."
(bottom) "One can move around and see."
And,
Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 (400MHz XScale w/Linux-based):0.44lb
The specs are similar, so why not linux? Probably I should wait till the next Zaurus appears.
You can see examples of BIOS-OS integration in game consoles and PDAs. Usually, one gets more performance out of a hardware by the integration (and copyright control, of course). The downside is, once the manufacturer abandons the hardware, it becomes a junk. However attractive and still usable the hardware is, it is very difficult to use it other than in the original design.
Also, all hardwares have their physical life limit and eventually will become broken. Then an emulator is an option but a proprietary BIOS-OS makes the development of an emulator extremely hard. The fate of Sega Saturn would be a good example.
Apple amazes me by providing an excellent emulator for OS8-9 softwares on OS X. I still use Word98 for Mac on my G4.
I usually apply updates blindly, but this time I skipped 10.2.8 when it first appeared in the update list. I somehow felt uneasy, and it may have been because of the rumor on MacFixIt, I do not know.
I mostly agree with you. I would like see a separate patch for a security problem rapidly. And for the feature enhancement, updates should first appear as release candidates, so that brave users can try them on a non-production Mac but at their own risk.
I do not see why Apple wants to put all patches into one big update.
This is a matter of addiction. As for alcohols, essential points in the remedy are,
(1) confession in front of other people
(2) symbolic destruction of the source of the addiction.
This may actually help them to cut themselves off from the "my precious one" mentality.
"Over 300 self-confessed computer addicts have participated to destroy their own hardware in a spectacular fashion."
"Over 300 self-confessed computer addicts participated to show their brain destroyed by their own hardware in a spectacular fashion."
Users always seek a better user interface. And as far as you use an office suite with a proprietary format, you will have little choice.
With an open standard format, you can pick another office suite with suitable features (including interface of course) at any time. Faster the migration to an open standard, less closed-format documents you will have and brighter the future.
I do not say XML is the best open standard. I even do not think that the most of users care what XML is. What matters is that it is an open standard. It may not be the best but it is easy to make conversion from one open standard format to another later. What dissapointed me most is MS's unwillingness to compete in an open ground and to make users choose a better office suite. I would like to say, "let users decide."
The point of the migration in time depends on what a user needs an office suite for. In most of tasks, OpenOffice.org is quite sufficient. Its interface is surely going to be further improved, and it is about time for an average user to consider freeing oneself from MS.
When you think of a vast polulation whose native language does not use alphabets, internationalization is one of the fundamental features any self-respecting office suite should not miss.
StarOffice 7 will have Japanese and Chinese versions (under the name of StarSuite 7), and the OOo community has been putting much efforts to make other languages available.
In fact, from what I heard of, one of the show-stopper in the release of the OOo1.1 final is a bug in Chinese font handling.