What about AIDs related data? Do you think information that contains personal data should be released to the public? I'm all for data being available but some of it really should have some restrictions to protect privacy.
What might be more appropriate is barring Microsoft from participating in government contracts (either as a consultant/contractor or an operating system) until they comply. I know if my employer screws up that is what would happen to them.
As someone who has received a red light ticket I will be one of those complainers. My wife was driving the vehicle but I am the registered owner. My wife was stopped at the intersection but wasn't entirely focused on the light (kids were in the back and apparently distracted her). She noticed the right turn lane move (where I live, we can make a right turn "on red" after a complete stop) and moved forward. Almost immediately she noticed that the light hadn't changed but had crossed some threshold that triggered the camera. She hadn't gone far enough to block any of the lanes, but was enough to get the ticket sent. The cost of the ticket is well below the cost that is worth the time to fight (think it was around $75 USD) so we just paid the fine. Had a police officer been there to see the incident she likely would have been warned rather than fined (hard to say though of course). In any case it would have been my wife with the fine rather than me but in any case it would have been paid from our joint bank account.
As for speed cameras, I'll feel the same way. Along the routes I drive, most cars are speeding by about 10-15 MPH and to my knowledge, traffic accidents are rare. I drive approximately 30 miles each way to work so it's not like I'm only looking at a short stretch of road. Maybe using the speed cameras and traffic cameras to identify trouble spots could lead to "warnings" for drivers and future monitoring by a police officer would be a better plan.
I didn't notice a date on the online Wiimote Safety page so I can't comment to them knowing the original straps were defective. I'm guessing though that the page was updated when they received reports (at whatever volume threshold they use) about the problems. As I indicated above, given Nintendo had to have done demos to see if the Wiimote was a viable interface, if problems existed for "normal" usage, they should have been discovered at that time. Likely any "excessive movements" would have been corrected by the person(s) running the demos so the Wiimote would be used "normally". Does that mean that Nintendo "knew" about a problem? Maybe it does. On the other hand it could just mean that the person running the demo knew that excessive movement cut down on user performance (i.e. if I smash the "A" button, likely I can't hit it as quickly as rapid light taps). Now if Nintendo shipped the straps knowing they were defective, then yes I agree it is negligence. I'm not enough of a Nintendo history fanatic to know if knowingly shipping a defective product is standard practice for Nintendo. Given their slowness to include certain game genres until a satisfactory ESRB rating system was implemented I'd like to think they have some acceptable level of ethics (feel free to shoot me down).
Not having the Wii yet myself, I can't say what is in the user manual but I'm guessing through "normal" usage the problem doesn't exist. The Wiimote straps certainly would have shown themselves to be defective in the early demonstrations for normal usage so likely excessive usage was corrected by people controlling the demonstrations.
Nintendo is offering to replace the original version of the wrist straps for the Wii Remote with a newer version. We have received some reports that when consumers swing the Wii Remote with the original version of the wrist-strap using excessive force and accidentally let go, the cord connecting the controller to the wrist strap can break, potentially causing the Wii Remote to strike bystanders or objects. Because Wii consoles shipped starting in early December already utilized the newer version of the strap, you will need to determine which version of the strap you have before ordering a replacement. To determine if you need the newer version of the strap, or to place an order for a replacement, click here.
Please note the line about "excessive force". I also recall hearing a Nintendo response to the early complaints about Wiimotes breaking TVs. Didn't they say that users were using excessive movement where a small movement would suffice? I'd equate this almost to using your fist to hit the "A" button when a light tap would suffice.
That was the first thing that came to mind to me as well. Glad to see that multiple people came to the same conclusion. I also fail to see how the trigger is any different than those on the bottom of the N64 controller. The whole concept of a "trigger" for a controller can probably be seen on plenty of arcade games as well and it's a obvious thought to take the idea of a gun to a controller given the number of FPS games.
But then we would have to assume that the OS vendor complies with standards. While we'd all like to see OS/software vendors do so, I don't believe they have that obligation, unless of course they state that fact.
The changes that break Google products (or others for that matter) may not relate specifically to the web based applications. Google also provides applications like Desktop Search, Google Earth, etc... that run on the client. Microsoft could potentially lock these applications, under the guise of securing the desktop. Here, 3rd party developers would need to work to ensure their applications are supported on the OS. This is where I was going with my statement about Google having an obligation to make their code work on the OS.
People aren't going to blame MSFT for their Google apps not working. They're going to blame Google.
This would be true if everyone is upgraded at the same time. If person "A", who recently upgraded hardware/OS to MS Vista, has a problem with a common application, they are very likely to talk to Person "B" about it who may not have upgraded yet. Before long, you'll have a growing populations that think:
1) Application is broken
2) Their new (Microsoft Vista based) computer is broken
It's Google's responsibility to make sure our stuff works on the MSFT platform.
Agree with you on that but given the case above, you can see that the the average user may not see things that way.
As for not wanting to watch commercials, broadcasters using the Internet to deliver content will still show you ads for most content I would guess. I know ABC does this for the shows they allow you to view online.
I'm sure at some point that the rates will change but at least for now, they don't have any text in the plans that say rates will go up after one year of service. Comcast, on the other hand, states that the promotional rates are only good for the promotion period and regular rates apply after that. I'm just glad that we have more competition for these services.
Earlier in the year when we had inquired about FiOS, we had the same issue. We could get the broadband but we'd have to use DirecTV for our TV service. We just waited it out until all services were available. We did however contact Comcast and ask them to compete on price before we even made the switch. Comcast did lower our rates on the Internet service but they wouldn't budge on the TV side of the bill. Still, we managed to cut the bill by about $15 until we completely dumped Comcast.
I'm in Howard County so this article covers the TV offering:
Howard County approved Verizon's franchise agreement on Jan. 3. The company expects to begin selling FiOS TV in the county by the end of April
I held off switching until I could do a complete switch over to FiOS. I think the package offering from Verizon FiOS only applied to savings with the VoIP offering (might have been a $5-10 difference) but as I stated above, I already have SunRocket and it is costing a lot less than Vonage, Comcast, or Verizon VoIP offerings.
Verizon sued "Montgomery County asking the court to require the county to negotiate a lawful franchise with the company.
When I worked for PG County, I recall that the county had some network deals setup with Comcast to connect the county offices. I wonder if Montgomery has similar deals and if they included anything to keep Comcast as an exclusive cable TV provider.
I was eager to get off of my local cable provider too. I'm hopeful this competition will drive the prices down (which I can somewhat see with the package Comcast is offering).
I only recently checked to see if DSL was an option in my area and apparently DSL isn't available. Now maybe Verizon disqualified the DSL check based on the fact that I already have FiOS but even checking a neighbors address indicates that DSL isn't available. I don't know if I'd rule out FiOS just on the basis that DSL isn't available from Verizon. You might want to contact your local Verizon office to see if/when FiOS will be available in your neighborhood.
Recently switched to FIOS myself and I'm saving compared to my Comcast bill.
$117 Comcast (Digital Cable without any of the premium channels, broadband at 7 Mbps (although never actually saw rates near that))
$69 Verizon FIOS (Digital TV without any of the premium channels, broadband at 5 Mbps (actually saw rates exceeding that but generally very close to the advertised speed))
Since Verizon FIOS was available in the area (Maryland), Comcast has been pretty heavily advertising their bundle for new customers where you get the Digital Cable ($33), VoIP ($33), and Broadband ($33). Unfortunately that appears to be a one year deal compared to Verizon FIOS which doesn't appear to have plans to jump up after the initial year (hopefully I didn't miss some small print).
FYI - Using SunRocket as my VoIP with the monthly cost under $17 so the Comcast package isn't an option for me.
So, whatever happened to good old fashioned house calls?
In some cases, you have to watch the "types" of money that you use to influence a person. Say that Company A and Company B are both large government contractors competing on a large multi-year contract. Which ever company loses this contract will likely have to downsize or shift a lot of employees to other work. The companies also lose the ability to keep their employees fresh on the latest developments and training in whatever the contract relates to (for example, IT). Often these large contracts will have strict auditing to ensure that both companies are not "buying" future work (i.e. they don't spend research and development, trade show, etc... money that often has tax advantages). One way to influence a decision maker is to target ads at a specific individual or those around that individual hoping to sway them toward your company. Given that the ad has been seen by the public, it "can't" be seen as "buying" the decision maker.
I must say that I'm glad that I'm not a youth football coach in the Boston area. I've been coaching the "B" (developing squad) teams for two years now and I've often wondered about some of the kids I have on my team and what they do for physical activity prior to signing up for football. I think a few of them must self impose restriction on "physical" games like tag. I can't imagine what the athletes would look like if they didn't do some basic games like tag. Kids are into so many activities (many are not sports related) it seems that they often don't get to play much with the neighborhood kids. When they do, they have to compete with video games, the various card battle games, etc.... The school yard is an environment where the kids can develop physically and mentally and the Boston schools apparently are trying to eliminate at least the physical side of it.
One must really consider the impact of changing a natural behavior adjustment such as those exhibited by tag. I wonder if any studies have been done to see if an isolated group of children would naturally start playing a game of tag or if the game is simply learned from older children. It almost seems like a survival skill (although not as "necessary" in modern society) that Boston schools are trying to ban.
The effects of the GPL though are not going to influence the decision makers at my company though. The customers drive policies, not so much the software developers. Certain licenses, like the GPL, though do prohibit integration because of conflicting requirement, namely the license requiring integrated code to be open sourced and the company/customer requirement that code is protected (and this part only applies to code we generate that is unique and not an enhancement to the free open source included software). What really ends up happening is that we have to walk a fine line to avoid certain applications if inclusion would violate a license agreement. IANAL so please forgive if I state this next part incorrectly. I believe that as long as we use the public APIs of a particular project we're pretty much clear to use the code without risk of disclosing the customers code. Where I think we run into a problem is when we have to "wrap" GPL code to allow for inclusion into the solution. I believe the "wrapper" code is subject to opening in this case. Now I certainly wouldn't have any problems doing so but that's where company policy comes into play. The latter case here is where the companies legal department often directs us to find alternate solutions.
It amazes me more that there are morons out there trying to pressure others to allow the closing of code in a free software environment.
It also amazes me at how people can't read and understand a post. I mentioned nothing about closing the entire end product. All I said is that "Not every project needs to have the entire application "open"." I completely support open source projects and would even like to encourage my company to release more of it's code to open source (that's a difficult challenge but at least parts of management are talking about it now). Certainly the various licenses have different requirements and from a corporate stand point, these must be followed carefully. I would never take anyone elses code and close it or claim it to be mine. It would be a violation of most licenses out there and it would violate both my ethics and that of the company I work for. The open source community has produced some truly amazing code but in a corporate world, we can't always open everything up and that limits what can and can't be done with various applications.
If you don't intend to share your own goodies the same way, then to heck with you -- you're not a customer, you're a leech.
Not entirely true. Not every project needs to have the entire application "open". If I use GPL application "A" and integrate it with my application "B", that doesn't mean that I won't contribute to application "A". I may have specific reasons for keeping "B" proprietary while still being a contributor to "A" (i.e. new functionality, bug fixes, testing, etc...). I may not be the great contributor that you are but we could probably find others out there that do more than either of us too.
I had the Epson C86 Stylus and found the ink level reporting to be quite terrible as well. To top it off, the C86 did the same thing my C82 did about a year ago. My C82 reported that the black cartridge was empty (although shaking it indicated that it had a decent amount of ink still) and replacing didn't resolve the problem. Well calling Epson tech support lead to them providing a new C86, even after it was about 6 months out of warranty. I thought that was awfully nice of them until I realized that the C86 doesn't accept the same cartridges as the C82. Well calling tech support again lead to a similar offer but I declined this time. The C88 probably takes a new cartridge design too so I'm giving up on them. Hopefully my HP Deskjet 5440 is better than my past two Epson printers.
My baggage is missing so all I have are the gadgets (including laptop) cloths (Hains Tagless shirts fold real small) and toothpaste, toothbrush, comb etc... that I carried in my hand luggage.
I was just chatting with some of my co-workers who are heading out of country soon on business travel about having to check laptops. In our case, the laptops go through an export control process both from the US side and the country we travel too. We're supposed to be in control of the laptops in order to comply with the export license so I wonder how this change in carry on luggage affects export control.
I can't recall the specific Star Trek Voyager episode to link it but what happens when we start finding explosives surgically embedded into the terrorist? If terrorist are already willing to give their lives, they are just as likely to embed the explosive compounds into their body.
I'll admit that I didn't read the PDF link completely but it sounds like the product is doing a portion of what AeroText has been doing for a while. The only thing that I see that appears different is that it does a form of document clustering. I guess depending on the user requirements that I would rather see more on the relationship extraction over sorting documents into clusters. I can see where there would be a value for it but I could just as easily pick out the documents where relationships were extracted and create clusters there too. I've used AeroText with another product called Centrifuge and I'd be pretty comfortable saying that this is nothing new. You may also want to check out a product from for their software handling text analysis.
I don't know the exact details of this, all I DO know is that there are plenty of Java applications out there that are restricted to a single platform for whatever reason. I may be wrong about the reasons, but the fact is that WORA failed on the desktop
Are you sure that it's a pure Java application or do these applications make calls to native code of some sort? If they are calling an OS specific resource, the problem is in the development. We could throw in that the developer had some reason that forced them to use an OS specific call but I'd guess those applications have very specific requirements and aren't general use applications.
What about WORA for J2ME (i.e. on mobile devices)?
I'll have to agree with you on that topic for now. I'd figure that this will eventually get better as more resources (memory, processing, graphics, etc...) become available on the portable devices.
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What about AIDs related data? Do you think information that contains personal data should be released to the public? I'm all for data being available but some of it really should have some restrictions to protect privacy.
What might be more appropriate is barring Microsoft from participating in government contracts (either as a consultant/contractor or an operating system) until they comply. I know if my employer screws up that is what would happen to them.
As someone who has received a red light ticket I will be one of those complainers. My wife was driving the vehicle but I am the registered owner. My wife was stopped at the intersection but wasn't entirely focused on the light (kids were in the back and apparently distracted her). She noticed the right turn lane move (where I live, we can make a right turn "on red" after a complete stop) and moved forward. Almost immediately she noticed that the light hadn't changed but had crossed some threshold that triggered the camera. She hadn't gone far enough to block any of the lanes, but was enough to get the ticket sent. The cost of the ticket is well below the cost that is worth the time to fight (think it was around $75 USD) so we just paid the fine. Had a police officer been there to see the incident she likely would have been warned rather than fined (hard to say though of course). In any case it would have been my wife with the fine rather than me but in any case it would have been paid from our joint bank account.
As for speed cameras, I'll feel the same way. Along the routes I drive, most cars are speeding by about 10-15 MPH and to my knowledge, traffic accidents are rare. I drive approximately 30 miles each way to work so it's not like I'm only looking at a short stretch of road. Maybe using the speed cameras and traffic cameras to identify trouble spots could lead to "warnings" for drivers and future monitoring by a police officer would be a better plan.
I didn't notice a date on the online Wiimote Safety page so I can't comment to them knowing the original straps were defective. I'm guessing though that the page was updated when they received reports (at whatever volume threshold they use) about the problems. As I indicated above, given Nintendo had to have done demos to see if the Wiimote was a viable interface, if problems existed for "normal" usage, they should have been discovered at that time. Likely any "excessive movements" would have been corrected by the person(s) running the demos so the Wiimote would be used "normally". Does that mean that Nintendo "knew" about a problem? Maybe it does. On the other hand it could just mean that the person running the demo knew that excessive movement cut down on user performance (i.e. if I smash the "A" button, likely I can't hit it as quickly as rapid light taps). Now if Nintendo shipped the straps knowing they were defective, then yes I agree it is negligence. I'm not enough of a Nintendo history fanatic to know if knowingly shipping a defective product is standard practice for Nintendo. Given their slowness to include certain game genres until a satisfactory ESRB rating system was implemented I'd like to think they have some acceptable level of ethics (feel free to shoot me down).
From the Nintendo site (Wii Safety):
Please note the line about "excessive force". I also recall hearing a Nintendo response to the early complaints about Wiimotes breaking TVs. Didn't they say that users were using excessive movement where a small movement would suffice? I'd equate this almost to using your fist to hit the "A" button when a light tap would suffice.
That was the first thing that came to mind to me as well. Glad to see that multiple people came to the same conclusion. I also fail to see how the trigger is any different than those on the bottom of the N64 controller. The whole concept of a "trigger" for a controller can probably be seen on plenty of arcade games as well and it's a obvious thought to take the idea of a gun to a controller given the number of FPS games.
But then we would have to assume that the OS vendor complies with standards. While we'd all like to see OS/software vendors do so, I don't believe they have that obligation, unless of course they state that fact.
The changes that break Google products (or others for that matter) may not relate specifically to the web based applications. Google also provides applications like Desktop Search, Google Earth, etc... that run on the client. Microsoft could potentially lock these applications, under the guise of securing the desktop. Here, 3rd party developers would need to work to ensure their applications are supported on the OS. This is where I was going with my statement about Google having an obligation to make their code work on the OS.
You don't think then that Google has an obligation to make their code work on an operating system?
People aren't going to blame MSFT for their Google apps not working. They're going to blame Google.
This would be true if everyone is upgraded at the same time. If person "A", who recently upgraded hardware/OS to MS Vista, has a problem with a common application, they are very likely to talk to Person "B" about it who may not have upgraded yet. Before long, you'll have a growing populations that think:
1) Application is broken
2) Their new (Microsoft Vista based) computer is broken
It's Google's responsibility to make sure our stuff works on the MSFT platform.
Agree with you on that but given the case above, you can see that the the average user may not see things that way.
Could be that the UK folks are tired of paying the Television License in the UK.
As for not wanting to watch commercials, broadcasters using the Internet to deliver content will still show you ads for most content I would guess. I know ABC does this for the shows they allow you to view online.
Jim
Alas I do not live in Japan so I must be happy with the local offerings.
BTW, the link doesn't work for me...did the article expire 5 years ago? (sorry...had to do it)
I'm sure at some point that the rates will change but at least for now, they don't have any text in the plans that say rates will go up after one year of service. Comcast, on the other hand, states that the promotional rates are only good for the promotion period and regular rates apply after that. I'm just glad that we have more competition for these services.
Earlier in the year when we had inquired about FiOS, we had the same issue. We could get the broadband but we'd have to use DirecTV for our TV service. We just waited it out until all services were available. We did however contact Comcast and ask them to compete on price before we even made the switch. Comcast did lower our rates on the Internet service but they wouldn't budge on the TV side of the bill. Still, we managed to cut the bill by about $15 until we completely dumped Comcast.
I'm in Howard County so this article covers the TV offering:
Howard County approved Verizon's franchise agreement on Jan. 3. The company expects to begin selling FiOS TV in the county by the end of April
I held off switching until I could do a complete switch over to FiOS. I think the package offering from Verizon FiOS only applied to savings with the VoIP offering (might have been a $5-10 difference) but as I stated above, I already have SunRocket and it is costing a lot less than Vonage, Comcast, or Verizon VoIP offerings.
Verizon sued "Montgomery County asking the court to require the county to negotiate a lawful franchise with the company.
When I worked for PG County, I recall that the county had some network deals setup with Comcast to connect the county offices. I wonder if Montgomery has similar deals and if they included anything to keep Comcast as an exclusive cable TV provider.
I was eager to get off of my local cable provider too. I'm hopeful this competition will drive the prices down (which I can somewhat see with the package Comcast is offering).
I only recently checked to see if DSL was an option in my area and apparently DSL isn't available. Now maybe Verizon disqualified the DSL check based on the fact that I already have FiOS but even checking a neighbors address indicates that DSL isn't available. I don't know if I'd rule out FiOS just on the basis that DSL isn't available from Verizon. You might want to contact your local Verizon office to see if/when FiOS will be available in your neighborhood.
Recently switched to FIOS myself and I'm saving compared to my Comcast bill.
$117 Comcast (Digital Cable without any of the premium channels, broadband at 7 Mbps (although never actually saw rates near that))
$69 Verizon FIOS (Digital TV without any of the premium channels, broadband at 5 Mbps (actually saw rates exceeding that but generally very close to the advertised speed))
Since Verizon FIOS was available in the area (Maryland), Comcast has been pretty heavily advertising their bundle for new customers where you get the Digital Cable ($33), VoIP ($33), and Broadband ($33). Unfortunately that appears to be a one year deal compared to Verizon FIOS which doesn't appear to have plans to jump up after the initial year (hopefully I didn't miss some small print).
FYI - Using SunRocket as my VoIP with the monthly cost under $17 so the Comcast package isn't an option for me.
So, whatever happened to good old fashioned house calls?
In some cases, you have to watch the "types" of money that you use to influence a person. Say that Company A and Company B are both large government contractors competing on a large multi-year contract. Which ever company loses this contract will likely have to downsize or shift a lot of employees to other work. The companies also lose the ability to keep their employees fresh on the latest developments and training in whatever the contract relates to (for example, IT). Often these large contracts will have strict auditing to ensure that both companies are not "buying" future work (i.e. they don't spend research and development, trade show, etc... money that often has tax advantages). One way to influence a decision maker is to target ads at a specific individual or those around that individual hoping to sway them toward your company. Given that the ad has been seen by the public, it "can't" be seen as "buying" the decision maker.
I must say that I'm glad that I'm not a youth football coach in the Boston area. I've been coaching the "B" (developing squad) teams for two years now and I've often wondered about some of the kids I have on my team and what they do for physical activity prior to signing up for football. I think a few of them must self impose restriction on "physical" games like tag. I can't imagine what the athletes would look like if they didn't do some basic games like tag. Kids are into so many activities (many are not sports related) it seems that they often don't get to play much with the neighborhood kids. When they do, they have to compete with video games, the various card battle games, etc.... The school yard is an environment where the kids can develop physically and mentally and the Boston schools apparently are trying to eliminate at least the physical side of it.
One must really consider the impact of changing a natural behavior adjustment such as those exhibited by tag. I wonder if any studies have been done to see if an isolated group of children would naturally start playing a game of tag or if the game is simply learned from older children. It almost seems like a survival skill (although not as "necessary" in modern society) that Boston schools are trying to ban.
The effects of the GPL though are not going to influence the decision makers at my company though. The customers drive policies, not so much the software developers. Certain licenses, like the GPL, though do prohibit integration because of conflicting requirement, namely the license requiring integrated code to be open sourced and the company/customer requirement that code is protected (and this part only applies to code we generate that is unique and not an enhancement to the free open source included software). What really ends up happening is that we have to walk a fine line to avoid certain applications if inclusion would violate a license agreement. IANAL so please forgive if I state this next part incorrectly. I believe that as long as we use the public APIs of a particular project we're pretty much clear to use the code without risk of disclosing the customers code. Where I think we run into a problem is when we have to "wrap" GPL code to allow for inclusion into the solution. I believe the "wrapper" code is subject to opening in this case. Now I certainly wouldn't have any problems doing so but that's where company policy comes into play. The latter case here is where the companies legal department often directs us to find alternate solutions.
It amazes me more that there are morons out there trying to pressure others to allow the closing of code in a free software environment.
It also amazes me at how people can't read and understand a post. I mentioned nothing about closing the entire end product. All I said is that "Not every project needs to have the entire application "open"." I completely support open source projects and would even like to encourage my company to release more of it's code to open source (that's a difficult challenge but at least parts of management are talking about it now). Certainly the various licenses have different requirements and from a corporate stand point, these must be followed carefully. I would never take anyone elses code and close it or claim it to be mine. It would be a violation of most licenses out there and it would violate both my ethics and that of the company I work for. The open source community has produced some truly amazing code but in a corporate world, we can't always open everything up and that limits what can and can't be done with various applications.
If you don't intend to share your own goodies the same way, then to heck with you -- you're not a customer, you're a leech.
Not entirely true. Not every project needs to have the entire application "open". If I use GPL application "A" and integrate it with my application "B", that doesn't mean that I won't contribute to application "A". I may have specific reasons for keeping "B" proprietary while still being a contributor to "A" (i.e. new functionality, bug fixes, testing, etc...). I may not be the great contributor that you are but we could probably find others out there that do more than either of us too.
I had the Epson C86 Stylus and found the ink level reporting to be quite terrible as well. To top it off, the C86 did the same thing my C82 did about a year ago. My C82 reported that the black cartridge was empty (although shaking it indicated that it had a decent amount of ink still) and replacing didn't resolve the problem. Well calling Epson tech support lead to them providing a new C86, even after it was about 6 months out of warranty. I thought that was awfully nice of them until I realized that the C86 doesn't accept the same cartridges as the C82. Well calling tech support again lead to a similar offer but I declined this time. The C88 probably takes a new cartridge design too so I'm giving up on them. Hopefully my HP Deskjet 5440 is better than my past two Epson printers.
My baggage is missing so all I have are the gadgets (including laptop) cloths (Hains Tagless shirts fold real small) and toothpaste, toothbrush, comb etc... that I carried in my hand luggage.
I was just chatting with some of my co-workers who are heading out of country soon on business travel about having to check laptops. In our case, the laptops go through an export control process both from the US side and the country we travel too. We're supposed to be in control of the laptops in order to comply with the export license so I wonder how this change in carry on luggage affects export control.
I can't recall the specific Star Trek Voyager episode to link it but what happens when we start finding explosives surgically embedded into the terrorist? If terrorist are already willing to give their lives, they are just as likely to embed the explosive compounds into their body.
I'll admit that I didn't read the PDF link completely but it sounds like the product is doing a portion of what AeroText has been doing for a while. The only thing that I see that appears different is that it does a form of document clustering. I guess depending on the user requirements that I would rather see more on the relationship extraction over sorting documents into clusters. I can see where there would be a value for it but I could just as easily pick out the documents where relationships were extracted and create clusters there too. I've used AeroText with another product called Centrifuge and I'd be pretty comfortable saying that this is nothing new. You may also want to check out a product from for their software handling text analysis.
I don't know the exact details of this, all I DO know is that there are plenty of Java applications out there that are restricted to a single platform for whatever reason. I may be wrong about the reasons, but the fact is that WORA failed on the desktop
Are you sure that it's a pure Java application or do these applications make calls to native code of some sort? If they are calling an OS specific resource, the problem is in the development. We could throw in that the developer had some reason that forced them to use an OS specific call but I'd guess those applications have very specific requirements and aren't general use applications.
What about WORA for J2ME (i.e. on mobile devices)?
I'll have to agree with you on that topic for now. I'd figure that this will eventually get better as more resources (memory, processing, graphics, etc...) become available on the portable devices.