Is this in any way related to the way that Google was able to decide all on it's own that Scientology was crap, and thus bring Operation Clambake up to the top of the search results? (Until they Scientology people got pissed, anyway.)
Google is already starting to show signs of intelligence higher than some people.:)
Mailing a knife (at least within the US) isn't very difficult at all. I personally would prefer it stay that way even though there are some really screwed up people who would love to tell me what I am and am not allowed to do.
Mailing a knife hurts noone. That knife is harmless in a box being transported from one place to another.
I know it's not exactly in the same league, but the Mini isn't a new idea, it's just the logical progression from existing ideas.
Shuttle and FIC, anyone?
I needed a quick new PC after moving into my house last winter, and put together a FIC ICECUBE. It started out as a cheap throw-together system and before I was done I ended up throwing everything I could into the mix for a totally new main system (which for the most part I'm rather pleased by.)
I wasn't meant to have this as my main system very long, because I honestly didn't think performance was going to be the greatest. I just needed something small and easy to move around.
Many people see my Icecube and liken it to a Mac Cube, because in some ways it slightly resembles one, though moreso if you take the handle off of the top (at which point, they become stackable!)
The Mini is smaller, sleeker, and cleaner than the Cube or the new offering from Shuttle and FIC, but you can't say that MINI is starting a revolution. It's more like an evolution.
The Mini is Apple's next step in the direction PCs have already been taking. Why this is catching so much more attention than what has already been happening for a while, I don't know.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you much better off just buying the minimal memory, then going to 1 gig by purchasing and installing it yourself?
Maybe I need to recheck pricing now that they've dropped things, but the other day while putting together my dream "Mini" throwing every option into the mix, I found that their pricing for ram at any configuration was just plain ridiculous.
It seems to me you'd save a considerable amount of cash just installing the ram yourself.
Actually, I could blast right through a Billion Dollars without buying much for myself that I can't already buy.
I would do it building a business from the ground up, hiring individuals, building a custom fascility in the right place, and then get started on a business that wouldn't even begin to bring in revenue for several years.
If I were lucky, a billion dollars would be enough.
The game is interesting when people play it because people have a huge amount of trouble actually being random.
Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like, human thoughts are basically predictable. They open their mouths and words just come out. It doesn't matter which words, though, because it's always just moving air. Never anything interesting, like sausage or acorns.
It won't be long before someone just spites them with a Virtual League Baseball or something.
Besides, if I liked sports (which I don't) I think I'd almost prefer a sports game based on fictitious self made teams, personally trained and built up through hours of gaming just so I could take my memory card over to my friend's house and watch our teams duke it out.
The more these games try to mimick the stats of the real teams, from likeness to abilities, the less personal each game player's team becomes.
It's like the difference between a self made character in an RPG, or playing a famous character from a fantasy novel. At least for me one just has more appeal than the other.
I've always been curious about that though, since we do know that gravity does have some effect on light.
Assuming gravity is a wave, then it's possible that gravity waves do have an impact on light for that reason alone, but as I understand it "Gravity Waves" are still just a theory.
Unless I'm mistaken, there have been experiments suggesting that photons can in the right situations exhibit other properties of having mass, though I'm certainly no expert on this subject.
In the end I've always just been willing to entertain the possibility that photons practically have no mass, but actually probably have some tiny (almost insignificant) amount.
New x86 development at Intel is largely derivative of the P3 core (the family that includes the P-M) and has largely deprecated the overheating/underperforming P4 core.
Yes, but there are little bits of the P4 which weren't a total waste. I believe you can fully expect to see most of the P4 scraped and the useful things they've learned (regarding hyperthreading as well as other things) to be implimented in to ooooh-sooo-delicious Pentium Mmmmmmm....
This would have happened a long time ago if such a good browser had come along sooner.
Firefox is fast, secure, easy to use, skinable, free, and compatible.
For once, IE isn't more popular based on it's merit. It's actually at a technical disadvantage again and it's decline in popularity is a result of that.
I was skeptical about converting most of my less tech savvy associates over to Firefox at first, but when a few actually actively asked me to help them and their feedback was all positive afterwards, I suggested it to a few more and then even more.
Now anyone I don't feel is capable of keeping their system clean while using IE I recommend convert and I've yet to hear one single complaint.
It CAN be connected to a television with that DVI to S-Video or Composite adapter.
Couple a Mini hooked up to a nice television and a wireless keyboard and mouse setup, and it would make a nice living room entertainment computer.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
I would STONGLY suggest that you talk to the guys at the OSDL
I will keep that in mind.
As for me being serious. Yes, I am seriously going to do some reading over the next month or two. Like I said, the worst that can happen is that I'll just decided for myself HOW IMPRACTICAL this whole concept is.
On the other hand....
I think it's a good idea, and many others do as well. That's a start.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
I just don't see a great business plan coming from this.
Apple has all the things you mentioned except a generic platform to run on.
They also have the benefit of having pre-existing applications.
This "New OS" could have the generic platform, but not the apps, though that's a problem that could solve itself if the OS proved to be a desirable enough platform.
I actually can see a business model coming from this, and I actually think I know what it would take to impliment it.
But first the OS has to exist, doesn't it?
First things first.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
Are you a programmer? In case you are, what is fundementally wrong with X-windows?
I am, in fact. Rusty though I may be. I will definately have to spend some time researching before I even consider taking on any major projects.
However, my problems with X (as well as many of my fears) are better stated by another reply, a reply to my original post that I think deserves to be modded up.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
Some things you should ask yourself are how much your solution is helped by replacing X. Is your goal one that could be reached on the window-manager level, like KDE and Gnome? Do you plan on making a high- or low-level API? Are you going to make GTK and QT bindings available?
Definately good questions, that at the moment I don't feel qualified to answer. I have much reading to do.
But my gut instincts tell me I think I would prefer things be low level, and I would like to get away from GTK and QT anything. A single toolkit as part of the environment is an ingredient for a more standardized desktop. Remember, the idea here isn't to cater to the the typical Linux user. The idea is to entice a new breed of Linux user without years of Bash and X experience. Windows users with Mac envy but shallow pockets.
Though as I have already admitted, I have much reading to do.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 2
There have already been a couple of replies along the lines of "What's stopping you..." and "Get started..."
Okay. Okay. I'm off to the book store. I'll have 3 days per week for the next year to do nothing and I have nothing better to do. I could at least READ, RESEARCH, and EXAMINE the possibility.
Why not at least look into this?
If nothing else I might learn a thing or two.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
every major application developer to agree
Why? They don't have to agree to anything. And why would it have to be X Compatible? Aqua isn't, really.
The only thing you would have to do is make it so good that developers would WANT to use it.
If you can get the major big apps to come (Mozilla, Gimp, OpenOffice) then the rest will follow.
Plus, if you cater to developers (esspecially GAME developers) and concentrate on making the environment flexible, easy to design for, and powerful enough to support everything from productivity applications to games, things will invariably crop up.
There is the whole dangerous cycle of needing users to want to use it and having applications to attract users back to needing users to (etc etc).
That of course is a problem for every new environment.
But in this case, there is a need that isn't being filled and this is exactly what is needed to fill that need.
People wanting a free OS that is a good replacement for Windows, without having to buy Mac hardware.
This is the obvious solution, in my opinion, and I know it isn't an easy order to fill. But with the effort of the entire OSS community I don't think it's impossible.
Linux Desktop Thoughts...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've been really thinking about the whole Linux gaining footing thing, and as much as everyone around here just LOVES XWindows and loves to say it's as usable as OS X or Windows, let's face it, in the eyes of most users it simply isn't.
Apple has taken FreeBSD/Darwin and built their own desktop environment around it. OS X is very usable according to most people. And even though there are many camps of people who will argue that Windows is more usable than OS X or vice versa, the one point most people will agree on is that OS X and Windows are both more usable than XWindows and the various window managers. I perosnally hate both KDE and Gnome, and thus use a mostly text BSD box, but I know I'm in the minority there, as well.
Here's what I've been thinking.
What's stopping someone from writing an entire environment like OS X from the ground up, around and on top of Linux, and creating an OS X like environment that is as complete and modern as either OS X or Windows?
I know everybody shudders at the thought of obsoleting their beloved X, but even some OS X users install and use X when they still feel they need it, but I think I'm just being realistic when I think hanging onto X is just overall the wrong strategy for putting Linux on the desktop. (Counter arguments exist, and will likely be in the many replies, and I don't entirely disagree with them, but...)
I really think this is an effort worth pursuing. A new desktop environment built to be the primary way that Linux is used. A Linux based graphical environment designed from the ground up to be a Desktop GUI, following in the footsteps of OSX/Aqua.
To make things easier (here's where many will disagree with me) one could work on such a program primarily focusing on modern hardware and esspecially modern video cards. Let's face it, ATI and NVidia run the show now days anyway.
These are just my thoughts, and I hope people will constructively discuss this possibility instead of throwing around a bunch of "No way, not possible, why bother, go to hell Apple/Microsoft lover" comments.
I like BSD, and I like OS X. I would like to see something similar done with Linux.
Well, it's conspiracy because they were probably going to continue doing it.
This isn't a case of someone who just had been found guilty of copyright infringement at one point, but rather someone who was persisting in the act without any signs of stopping. I think that makes it conspiracy.
Slashdot Mirror
How is this any different from any other mobile device, remote control, game controller, or similar item which has buttons we press repeatedly?
(First Post?)
Is this in any way related to the way that Google was able to decide all on it's own that Scientology was crap, and thus bring Operation Clambake up to the top of the search results? (Until they Scientology people got pissed, anyway.)
:)
Google is already starting to show signs of intelligence higher than some people.
A weapon? How about a tool or a work of art?
Mailing a knife (at least within the US) isn't very difficult at all. I personally would prefer it stay that way even though there are some really screwed up people who would love to tell me what I am and am not allowed to do.
Mailing a knife hurts noone. That knife is harmless in a box being transported from one place to another.
A bomb is a different story.
That was kind of my point, actually.
All of the current day Telecos are more or less the children of the Ma Bell breakup anyway.
"Let's break up Ma Bell so that some 20 years later they will all merge back together to become an even more powerful and unstoppable force."
I know it's not exactly in the same league, but the Mini isn't a new idea, it's just the logical progression from existing ideas.
Shuttle and FIC, anyone?
I needed a quick new PC after moving into my house last winter, and put together a FIC ICECUBE. It started out as a cheap throw-together system and before I was done I ended up throwing everything I could into the mix for a totally new main system (which for the most part I'm rather pleased by.)
I wasn't meant to have this as my main system very long, because I honestly didn't think performance was going to be the greatest. I just needed something small and easy to move around.
Many people see my Icecube and liken it to a Mac Cube, because in some ways it slightly resembles one, though moreso if you take the handle off of the top (at which point, they become stackable!)
The Mini is smaller, sleeker, and cleaner than the Cube or the new offering from Shuttle and FIC, but you can't say that MINI is starting a revolution. It's more like an evolution.
The Mini is Apple's next step in the direction PCs have already been taking. Why this is catching so much more attention than what has already been happening for a while, I don't know.
More of Jobs' RDF at work, imagine.
I know a very talented programmer who went from a very nice income to nothing.
He went nationwide looking for jobs, willing to locate, and finally setteled back here in this town making practically nothing by comparison.
But at least he's a true geek still, since he moved back into his mother's basement.
There's hope for him yet.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you much better off just buying the minimal memory, then going to 1 gig by purchasing and installing it yourself?
Maybe I need to recheck pricing now that they've dropped things, but the other day while putting together my dream "Mini" throwing every option into the mix, I found that their pricing for ram at any configuration was just plain ridiculous.
It seems to me you'd save a considerable amount of cash just installing the ram yourself.
Actually, I could blast right through a Billion Dollars without buying much for myself that I can't already buy.
I would do it building a business from the ground up, hiring individuals, building a custom fascility in the right place, and then get started on a business that wouldn't even begin to bring in revenue for several years.
If I were lucky, a billion dollars would be enough.
Technically that file could not have existed on any affordable consumer grade computer hardware.
:)
File streaming from the smallish available hard drives hadn't been realized.
That file is playing full screen at 320x240 at 25 frames per second, not at all within the realm of possibility on an 8mhz 68000.
That file was in color, and the first Mac... well...
It could've played the sound though.
The game is interesting when people play it because people have a huge amount of trouble actually being random.
Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like, human thoughts are basically predictable. They open their mouths and words just come out. It doesn't matter which words, though, because it's always just moving air. Never anything interesting, like sausage or acorns.
Not often, anyway.
It won't be long before someone just spites them with a Virtual League Baseball or something.
Besides, if I liked sports (which I don't) I think I'd almost prefer a sports game based on fictitious self made teams, personally trained and built up through hours of gaming just so I could take my memory card over to my friend's house and watch our teams duke it out.
The more these games try to mimick the stats of the real teams, from likeness to abilities, the less personal each game player's team becomes.
It's like the difference between a self made character in an RPG, or playing a famous character from a fantasy novel. At least for me one just has more appeal than the other.
Screw MBL, NHL, NFL, NBA, etc.
Actually I was thinking this concept could be extended to be code context sensitive so that it could be used for group coding.
Even as it is, it could be used in that way though.
(Thinking to self...)
I've always been curious about that though, since we do know that gravity does have some effect on light.
Assuming gravity is a wave, then it's possible that gravity waves do have an impact on light for that reason alone, but as I understand it "Gravity Waves" are still just a theory.
Unless I'm mistaken, there have been experiments suggesting that photons can in the right situations exhibit other properties of having mass, though I'm certainly no expert on this subject.
In the end I've always just been willing to entertain the possibility that photons practically have no mass, but actually probably have some tiny (almost insignificant) amount.
Please correct me if I'm dead wrong.
New x86 development at Intel is largely derivative of the P3 core (the family that includes the P-M) and has largely deprecated the overheating/underperforming P4 core.
Yes, but there are little bits of the P4 which weren't a total waste. I believe you can fully expect to see most of the P4 scraped and the useful things they've learned (regarding hyperthreading as well as other things) to be implimented in to ooooh-sooo-delicious Pentium Mmmmmmm....
Pentium HTM? hah hah.
FireFox is actually a good browser.
This would have happened a long time ago if such a good browser had come along sooner.
Firefox is fast, secure, easy to use, skinable, free, and compatible.
For once, IE isn't more popular based on it's merit. It's actually at a technical disadvantage again and it's decline in popularity is a result of that.
I was skeptical about converting most of my less tech savvy associates over to Firefox at first, but when a few actually actively asked me to help them and their feedback was all positive afterwards, I suggested it to a few more and then even more.
Now anyone I don't feel is capable of keeping their system clean while using IE I recommend convert and I've yet to hear one single complaint.
It CAN be connected to a television with that DVI to S-Video or Composite adapter.
Couple a Mini hooked up to a nice television and a wireless keyboard and mouse setup, and it would make a nice living room entertainment computer.
I would STONGLY suggest that you talk to the guys at the OSDL
I will keep that in mind.
As for me being serious. Yes, I am seriously going to do some reading over the next month or two. Like I said, the worst that can happen is that I'll just decided for myself HOW IMPRACTICAL this whole concept is.
On the other hand....
I think it's a good idea, and many others do as well. That's a start.
I just don't see a great business plan coming from this.
Apple has all the things you mentioned except a generic platform to run on.
They also have the benefit of having pre-existing applications.
This "New OS" could have the generic platform, but not the apps, though that's a problem that could solve itself if the OS proved to be a desirable enough platform.
I actually can see a business model coming from this, and I actually think I know what it would take to impliment it.
But first the OS has to exist, doesn't it?
First things first.
Are you a programmer? In case you are, what is fundementally wrong with X-windows?
I am, in fact. Rusty though I may be. I will definately have to spend some time researching before I even consider taking on any major projects.
However, my problems with X (as well as many of my fears) are better stated by another reply, a reply to my original post that I think deserves to be modded up.
It is here.
Some things you should ask yourself are how much your solution is helped by replacing X. Is your goal one that could be reached on the window-manager level, like KDE and Gnome? Do you plan on making a high- or low-level API? Are you going to make GTK and QT bindings available?
Definately good questions, that at the moment I don't feel qualified to answer. I have much reading to do.
But my gut instincts tell me I think I would prefer things be low level, and I would like to get away from GTK and QT anything. A single toolkit as part of the environment is an ingredient for a more standardized desktop. Remember, the idea here isn't to cater to the the typical Linux user. The idea is to entice a new breed of Linux user without years of Bash and X experience. Windows users with Mac envy but shallow pockets.
Though as I have already admitted, I have much reading to do.
There have already been a couple of replies along the lines of "What's stopping you..." and "Get started..."
Okay. Okay. I'm off to the book store. I'll have 3 days per week for the next year to do nothing and I have nothing better to do. I could at least READ, RESEARCH, and EXAMINE the possibility.
Why not at least look into this?
If nothing else I might learn a thing or two.
every major application developer to agree
Why? They don't have to agree to anything. And why would it have to be X Compatible? Aqua isn't, really.
The only thing you would have to do is make it so good that developers would WANT to use it.
If you can get the major big apps to come (Mozilla, Gimp, OpenOffice) then the rest will follow.
Plus, if you cater to developers (esspecially GAME developers) and concentrate on making the environment flexible, easy to design for, and powerful enough to support everything from productivity applications to games, things will invariably crop up.
There is the whole dangerous cycle of needing users to want to use it and having applications to attract users back to needing users to (etc etc).
That of course is a problem for every new environment.
But in this case, there is a need that isn't being filled and this is exactly what is needed to fill that need.
People wanting a free OS that is a good replacement for Windows, without having to buy Mac hardware.
This is the obvious solution, in my opinion, and I know it isn't an easy order to fill. But with the effort of the entire OSS community I don't think it's impossible.
I've been really thinking about the whole Linux gaining footing thing, and as much as everyone around here just LOVES XWindows and loves to say it's as usable as OS X or Windows, let's face it, in the eyes of most users it simply isn't.
Apple has taken FreeBSD/Darwin and built their own desktop environment around it. OS X is very usable according to most people. And even though there are many camps of people who will argue that Windows is more usable than OS X or vice versa, the one point most people will agree on is that OS X and Windows are both more usable than XWindows and the various window managers. I perosnally hate both KDE and Gnome, and thus use a mostly text BSD box, but I know I'm in the minority there, as well.
Here's what I've been thinking.
What's stopping someone from writing an entire environment like OS X from the ground up, around and on top of Linux, and creating an OS X like environment that is as complete and modern as either OS X or Windows?
I know everybody shudders at the thought of obsoleting their beloved X, but even some OS X users install and use X when they still feel they need it, but I think I'm just being realistic when I think hanging onto X is just overall the wrong strategy for putting Linux on the desktop. (Counter arguments exist, and will likely be in the many replies, and I don't entirely disagree with them, but...)
I really think this is an effort worth pursuing. A new desktop environment built to be the primary way that Linux is used. A Linux based graphical environment designed from the ground up to be a Desktop GUI, following in the footsteps of OSX/Aqua.
To make things easier (here's where many will disagree with me) one could work on such a program primarily focusing on modern hardware and esspecially modern video cards. Let's face it, ATI and NVidia run the show now days anyway.
These are just my thoughts, and I hope people will constructively discuss this possibility instead of throwing around a bunch of "No way, not possible, why bother, go to hell Apple/Microsoft lover" comments.
I like BSD, and I like OS X. I would like to see something similar done with Linux.
How is that conspiracy?
Well, it's conspiracy because they were probably going to continue doing it.
This isn't a case of someone who just had been found guilty of copyright infringement at one point, but rather someone who was persisting in the act without any signs of stopping. I think that makes it conspiracy.