From my experience, one of the problems is that nobody really seems to agree on exactly how to interpret his models; especially ART2 seems to be something nobody really bothers with in practice. I have seen a couple of pretty complete implementations, but they differ pretty wildly on the results you get. Rather, people seem to take his conceptual ideas and incorporating the ones that make sense into their own models.
Of course, other countries will then likely impose punitive tariffs on US software and services, while continuing a gradual increase of services trade with each other. US companies will thus pay quite a lot more for their IT infrastructure and services than their competitors in other countries. Not a good trend in the long run.
You could try to become totally insular, of course - forbid all import and export whatsoever. That way you will have your dream world of only american products, made by americans, only for americans. It'd make the rest of the world a little more relaxed place to live as well.
A company might, however. These units cost about the same, or a little more, than a standard PC. Unlike a standard PC, however, they are geared from start to be slave units to a server. The user can mess up far less on one of these than they can on a PC, and any software updates and other administration happens on the server and not on the individual desktop units. A user can use any client anywhere; nobody's locked to one particular machine (and replacing a faulty unit is done in minutes, with no need to mess around with backup restoration). And, of course, if you need more capacity, you only need to upgrade the server backend, so these have a lifespan that is a good deal longer than a standard PC.
The decrease in administration hassles, the improved security, the decreased power consumption and the interchangeability all add up to a pretty compelling advantage compared to putting a full-blown PC on every desk - for a medium to large organization.
Not every scientist have an interest in cancer or AIDS, for that matter. People will tend to do research on whatever they find interesting and intriguing. To some extent you can direct it through grants and the like, but only to an extent.
To put it another way: Why do we have a huge entertainment industry making shows, music, movies and games, when they could all be working on cancer and AIDS?
A point in the MIT piece shows that they do not really understand what they are talking about. They say:
"A micropayment system like BitPass would allow consumers to experiment with new content but also to place their support behind specific artists whose work they find consistently rewarding and interesting. Ultimately, they are paying for only the content they consume--and not shelling out a fixed sum every month."
In other words, they see pay-as-you-go as a benefit to the consumer. Problem is, the consumer does not view it as a benefit; rather the opposite.
A number of studies have shown that people greatly prefer a fixed-cost structure over use-based payment - even when they demonstrably would save significant amounts of money by switching over. People find the need to constantly decide whether a given use is worth the money; and to feel they constantly have to monitor and aveluate their usage spending to be a burden that is disproportionate to the amount of money they would save, even when the amount is quite significant.
I know that the most liberating aspect for me of going for a fixed line, rather than using a modem, was not the speed, but rather the liberation of being online at all times, using it whenever I wanted without worrying about telephone charges (local calls are metered in most of Europe).
So, no, I do not really believe in "micropayments" in the sense they are talking about it here.
Well, this kind of 3D can be useful, since it gives you actual stereoscopic cues.
Just keep the normal desktop look and functionality, but use this to really give different windows on screen different depth. Visualizing stacking order would be a very informative cue, helping people make better sense of their desktop.
Another, related, use would be to make floating windows (such as panels and the like), really float in front. Done right, you would no longer feel that they take up screen estate (even though they still do), and be _less_ conspicuous when you aren't interested in them, and more conspicuous when you are.
The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels.
Sawfish: Just run it. There are some people hacking on it, I believe, so it should be maintained. And tell the sawfish devels if there is something you miss.
The terminal: They are all the same application with multiple windows; cuts down on resource use. Of course, if it dies, so do they all - that's the downside. You can, however, start a new terminal, explicitly stating that it should not be another instance in an existing gnome-terminal application:
gnome-terminal --disable-factory
That will give you an independent terminal instance that will not be affected. Of course, you pay by a bit higher total resource use, but that is probably worth it for you.
The problem is, where do you draw the line today? When phone calls went over the phone lines, that was easy. No it isn't.
What _is_ VoIP, and when is it enough like a phone call to make it taxable as such? Does it need to touch the normal phone system? Does the VoIP system need to have the capability to rout to the normal system? Is it taxable VoIP if I run Gnomemeeting to talk with a friend? If we use picture and text, but not voice? Only text - is IRC a 'phone system'? Is it a phone system if the IRC user is deaf? Is it phone if I record a message and send it via email?
The point of the article is that it no longer makes sense to regulate various forms of communication in isolation, as the different forms aren't isolated anymore.
Could this be used to establish ssh tunneling from clients to the AP? That would, in my eyes, be far preferable to the somewhat lacking link security that 802.11 offers today.
The noise problem is one of the major reasons supersonic passenger aircraft never took off. The Concorde, for example, is simply not allowed to fly to most potential destinations, due to the noise levels.
And, well, yes, not using up energy to produce an impressive bang certainly improves energy use somewhat; that is not the reason for this developmen, though.
Say you need Thingy X to work the patent (where X is anything from some strange add-in card, modified motherboard or whatever). Big Company Y does not want to pay for the patent when using it. They commission small company Z to build Thingy X - not the five or ten that Y needs, but five or ten thousand. Pay off one or two store chains to carry the remaining Thingy X. Voila - it's off-the-shelf, patent is void, Big Company Y wins.
Even easier loophole: THe patent covers something that by it's nature would be used in off-the-shelf components. Build aforementioned components and sell. Patent is void.
The principal idea is sound, but needs to be refined quite a bit, I'd think, and less connected to definitions of "standard" or "off the shelf".
The hardware is absolutely top-notch. I was drooling after about five minutes of trying it out. I absolutely worship the screen-orientation function. And, of course, having access to a shell (a _real_ shell) with ssh and so on is a huge, huge benefit.
Unfortunately, Qtopia lets the device down. it is slow, clumsy and - obviously - memory innefficient. It also precludes any hope of porting any gtk apps to the device (and well over 95% of all apps I'm interested in are such).
Far better would be using a more lightweight toolkit - gtk, perhaps - or fltk, if nothing else to deflect the unnessecary acrimony between toolkit proponents.
I am also disappointed in the Linux-compatible syncing options available. I run Evolution, like most Linux users, but there is no simple way of syncing to it. Frunstrating. I almost bought a unit, but the drawbacks for a Linux user is just too large.
Yep. I played with one a while ago as well, and well, Qtopia is really not a good fit for the PDA form factor.
On a PDA, I interact with one application at a time. I _really_ don't need a WM taking up space. I don't need a title bar. And I don't want a really big row of sundry buttons taking up the bottom - or a gigantic scrollbar taking up space on the right for that matter.
A PDA is not a small laptop. It is not used as a small laptop. Please make allowances for this.
BTW I was watching something not too long ago about some european network buying the rights to remake "Who's the Boss?" for Euro audiences, so dont try to play the "We're more creative and cultured than you" card.
Umm, 'Survivor' originated on Swedish TV - and on the State-owned, license-financed Swedish TV, no less. And if I could ever change historical facts using a time machine, that fact would be pretty high on the list.
Believe me, the fact that reality shows started out in Europe is, if anything, a greater embarrasment here than it could ever be in the USA.
You have a point. However: "They gambled their future on the notion that people would actually watch "Joe Millionaire" or "American Idol", and they were right."
They took that 'gamble' only after those same shows - and others, like the one you call 'survivor' - had been running rampant throughout europe for three years already. Buying the remake rights for a concept that's already been higly successful across two other continents is not really taking a chance.
I tried SuSE on a spare machine a while ago, and their Gnome support was, well, lackluster. They had somehow managed to make it slower and buggier than the release it was based on, whereas Redhat's Gnome version always has a bit of added spit and polish, making it even slightly better than the official release.
That's just a fine for non-compliance with a court order. Suing SCO over defamation or damaged business is a different matter - and something that is likely a lot easier with this fine as a background.
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From my experience, one of the problems is that nobody really seems to agree on exactly how to interpret his models; especially ART2 seems to be something nobody really bothers with in practice. I have seen a couple of pretty complete implementations, but they differ pretty wildly on the results you get. Rather, people seem to take his conceptual ideas and incorporating the ones that make sense into their own models.
Do so.
Of course, other countries will then likely impose punitive tariffs on US software and services, while continuing a gradual increase of services trade with each other. US companies will thus pay quite a lot more for their IT infrastructure and services than their competitors in other countries. Not a good trend in the long run.
You could try to become totally insular, of course - forbid all import and export whatsoever. That way you will have your dream world of only american products, made by americans, only for americans. It'd make the rest of the world a little more relaxed place to live as well.
Basically, you shouldn't buy it.
A company might, however. These units cost about the same, or a little more, than a standard PC. Unlike a standard PC, however, they are geared from start to be slave units to a server. The user can mess up far less on one of these than they can on a PC, and any software updates and other administration happens on the server and not on the individual desktop units. A user can use any client anywhere; nobody's locked to one particular machine (and replacing a faulty unit is done in minutes, with no need to mess around with backup restoration). And, of course, if you need more capacity, you only need to upgrade the server backend, so these have a lifespan that is a good deal longer than a standard PC.
The decrease in administration hassles, the improved security, the decreased power consumption and the interchangeability all add up to a pretty compelling advantage compared to putting a full-blown PC on every desk - for a medium to large organization.
Not every scientist have an interest in cancer or AIDS, for that matter. People will tend to do research on whatever they find interesting and intriguing. To some extent you can direct it through grants and the like, but only to an extent.
To put it another way: Why do we have a huge entertainment industry making shows, music, movies and games, when they could all be working on cancer and AIDS?
A point in the MIT piece shows that they do not really understand what they are talking about. They say:
"A micropayment system like BitPass would allow consumers to experiment with new content but also to place their support behind specific artists whose work they find consistently rewarding and interesting. Ultimately, they are paying for only the content they consume--and not shelling out a fixed sum every month."
In other words, they see pay-as-you-go as a benefit to the consumer. Problem is, the consumer does not view it as a benefit; rather the opposite.
A number of studies have shown that people greatly prefer a fixed-cost structure over use-based payment - even when they demonstrably would save significant amounts of money by switching over. People find the need to constantly decide whether a given use is worth the money; and to feel they constantly have to monitor and aveluate their usage spending to be a burden that is disproportionate to the amount of money they would save, even when the amount is quite significant.
I know that the most liberating aspect for me of going for a fixed line, rather than using a modem, was not the speed, but rather the liberation of being online at all times, using it whenever I wanted without worrying about telephone charges (local calls are metered in most of Europe).
So, no, I do not really believe in "micropayments" in the sense they are talking about it here.
Yes, I really feel I want to become part of a community that spends so much time spewing hate over other people's preferences.
Well, this kind of 3D can be useful, since it gives you actual stereoscopic cues.
Just keep the normal desktop look and functionality, but use this to really give different windows on screen different depth. Visualizing stacking order would be a very informative cue, helping people make better sense of their desktop.
Another, related, use would be to make floating windows (such as panels and the like), really float in front. Done right, you would no longer feel that they take up screen estate (even though they still do), and be _less_ conspicuous when you aren't interested in them, and more conspicuous when you are.
Yep. Dealing with malpractice issues and byzantine procedure reimbursement rules sure sounds a lot more relaxing.
To have it remember sawfish, you need to save your session once on logout.
I believe the foot icon is easy enough to change using gconf-editor.
The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels.
Sawfish: Just run it. There are some people hacking on it, I believe, so it should be maintained. And tell the sawfish devels if there is something you miss.
The terminal: They are all the same application with multiple windows; cuts down on resource use. Of course, if it dies, so do they all - that's the downside. You can, however, start a new terminal, explicitly stating that it should not be another instance in an existing gnome-terminal application:
gnome-terminal --disable-factory
That will give you an independent terminal instance that will not be affected. Of course, you pay by a bit higher total resource use, but that is probably worth it for you.
I would be more worried about killing the machine from the duct tape failing than from tiny magnetic fields from the memory.
The problem is, where do you draw the line today? When phone calls went over the phone lines, that was easy. No it isn't.
What _is_ VoIP, and when is it enough like a phone call to make it taxable as such? Does it need to touch the normal phone system? Does the VoIP system need to have the capability to rout to the normal system? Is it taxable VoIP if I run Gnomemeeting to talk with a friend? If we use picture and text, but not voice? Only text - is IRC a 'phone system'? Is it a phone system if the IRC user is deaf? Is it phone if I record a message and send it via email?
The point of the article is that it no longer makes sense to regulate various forms of communication in isolation, as the different forms aren't isolated anymore.
Um, do "we"? What exactly - that there isn't other sites you can visit instead, by the way?
Not drain holes that was the problem in the end. It was the disassembling, cleaning and assembling that killed it, I think.
Could this be used to establish ssh tunneling from clients to the AP? That would, in my eyes, be far preferable to the somewhat lacking link security that 802.11 offers today.
The noise problem is one of the major reasons supersonic passenger aircraft never took off. The Concorde, for example, is simply not allowed to fly to most potential destinations, due to the noise levels.
And, well, yes, not using up energy to produce an impressive bang certainly improves energy use somewhat; that is not the reason for this developmen, though.
Spill coffee in it, repeatedly, over a period of five years. :(
Interesting idea, but with some loopholes.
Say you need Thingy X to work the patent (where X is anything from some strange add-in card, modified motherboard or whatever). Big Company Y does not want to pay for the patent when using it. They commission small company Z to build Thingy X - not the five or ten that Y needs, but five or ten thousand. Pay off one or two store chains to carry the remaining Thingy X. Voila - it's off-the-shelf, patent is void, Big Company Y wins.
Even easier loophole: THe patent covers something that by it's nature would be used in off-the-shelf components. Build aforementioned components and sell. Patent is void.
The principal idea is sound, but needs to be refined quite a bit, I'd think, and less connected to definitions of "standard" or "off the shelf".
This is a real, collective movement. This is Our Cause!
Err... No.
I agree.
The hardware is absolutely top-notch. I was drooling after about five minutes of trying it out. I absolutely worship the screen-orientation function. And, of course, having access to a shell (a _real_ shell) with ssh and so on is a huge, huge benefit.
Unfortunately, Qtopia lets the device down. it is slow, clumsy and - obviously - memory innefficient. It also precludes any hope of porting any gtk apps to the device (and well over 95% of all apps I'm interested in are such).
Far better would be using a more lightweight toolkit - gtk, perhaps - or fltk, if nothing else to deflect the unnessecary acrimony between toolkit proponents.
I am also disappointed in the Linux-compatible syncing options available. I run Evolution, like most Linux users, but there is no simple way of syncing to it. Frunstrating. I almost bought a unit, but the drawbacks for a Linux user is just too large.
Yep. I played with one a while ago as well, and well, Qtopia is really not a good fit for the PDA form factor.
On a PDA, I interact with one application at a time. I _really_ don't need a WM taking up space. I don't need a title bar. And I don't want a really big row of sundry buttons taking up the bottom - or a gigantic scrollbar taking up space on the right for that matter.
A PDA is not a small laptop. It is not used as a small laptop. Please make allowances for this.
BTW I was watching something not too long ago about some european network buying the rights to remake "Who's the Boss?" for Euro audiences, so dont try to play the "We're more creative and cultured than you" card.
Umm, 'Survivor' originated on Swedish TV - and on the State-owned, license-financed Swedish TV, no less. And if I could ever change historical facts using a time machine, that fact would be pretty high on the list.
Believe me, the fact that reality shows started out in Europe is, if anything, a greater embarrasment here than it could ever be in the USA.
You have a point. However: "They gambled their future on the notion that people would actually watch "Joe Millionaire" or "American Idol", and they were right."
They took that 'gamble' only after those same shows - and others, like the one you call 'survivor' - had been running rampant throughout europe for three years already. Buying the remake rights for a concept that's already been higly successful across two other continents is not really taking a chance.
How has Mandrake treated Gnome? Is it good?
I tried SuSE on a spare machine a while ago, and their Gnome support was, well, lackluster. They had somehow managed to make it slower and buggier than the release it was based on, whereas Redhat's Gnome version always has a bit of added spit and polish, making it even slightly better than the official release.
That's just a fine for non-compliance with a court order. Suing SCO over defamation or damaged business is a different matter - and something that is likely a lot easier with this fine as a background.