> Whoa! I sat and scratched my head at > who was higher than ATI that didnt > start with nVidia."
I'm quite sure that nobody in this thread is suggesting that ATI is number three behind intel when it comes to GPU speed, but thanks for your input anyway.
"cover the costs of development and to underwrite further research.
I heard an interview on the radio a few weeks ago regarding just this. I cannot remember the interviewee's name, but I do recall that he was presented as a very credible person from a university who sits (or once sat) on the Pharmacutical Review Committee*. Of course, he may have had a barrow to push, but he certainly didn't overtly bash the drug industry during the interview. If I recall correctly he was being interviewed over the ramifications of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and how it might affect Australia.
Anyway, according to that chap, R&D costs account for about 10% of the retail price drugs are ultimately sold at.
Proportionally, most of the costs of drugs (more than 50% IIRC) are taken up by advertising and marketing. He said that executive salaries generally cost the big drug companies more than their research does. He made a point of clarifying that he meant executive salaries, and that he was not referring to the salaries of the scientists at all.
* In Australia, most drugs are placed into the Pharmacutical Benefit Scheme (PBS) which caps the cost of drugs to the consumer (the government makes up the difference) Consequently, any new drug that comes along has to apply to the PBS for entry onto the register, lest consumers be forced to pay full price (which would in turn mean far lower sales of the drug, very often ZERO sales). The PBS is overseen by a committee, which is made up of representatives from drug companies, academics, doctors and politicians. The committee decides on which drugs will be admitted and which will not. Hence, anybody who sits on the committee should have a fairly good idea of how the industry works.
" noisy muffler is actually just a way to be sure people around you don't squish you like a bug"
That should read "be sure people behind you don't squish you like a bug" of course, but then that wouldn't make any sense, just like the whole "noisy bike as a safety measure" argument itself doesn't make any sense.
If bikers truly wanted to use sound to alert drivers of their presence, they would fit those "reverse alarms" that trucks have on to their bikes and have them go -beep- -beep- -beep- while they are out riding.;-)
Can you buy a mac sans the OS? I'm not a mac user so I really don't know. I am assuming that you can't.
If you can't, then by definition, it is impossible to completely pirate OSX (PearPC usage ignored for the time being as it is fun and all, but pretty much usless at this point). The worst thing that can happen (from apples perspective) is that they miss out on upgrade revenue when people copy their OS CD's. The very fact that apple is the only company that you can buy the hardware to run it on and that the hardware always includes the OS when you buy it means that for every mac there is out there they have already sold a corresponding copy of the Mac OS, of some version or another.
Sure, they would probably love people to cough up another 130 bucks for every point upgrade they realease, but the fact is that they are still in a far better position in this respect compared to microsoft, who despite their best efforts to bludgeon OEMs into forcing people to pay for Windows with every PC sold is still a long way behind the eight-ball in this regard.
So, I can sort of understand why apple would be somewhat ambivilent regarding OS piracy as compared to MS with all their product activation and licence keys etc.
" Keep in mind, Apple likes their boxes QUIET. I'm thinking you could get away with two big ass heatsinks and fans on that 2.5GHz G5. Also, from what I've heard, the 12" AlBook has some heat problems, so Apple could release a hot laptop..."
You do realise that if your CPU is dissipating enough heat to put a small furnace to shame, it doesn't really matter how efficiently you move this heat out of the laptop because you will be wasting so much power that your battery life will be shot to hell anyway.
"Real geeks, like me, pick up the phone, dial their ISP, and whistle and screetch into the reciever"
hehe
Many is the time I've done just that to initiate handshaking on a remote modem/fax to see if it's answering properly. It's pretty funny when you tell non-geek onlookers that you can "speak fluent modem" just before you do it;-)
This is partly correct, but ignores some critical prehistory.
Back in the 70's and early 80's there were two basic software components that were totally critical to the launch of any new (disk based) computer platform, the Operating System and the programming language/interpreter. Without both of these things being present a PC was in effect, useless.
At that time the 8 bit Z80 archicture was the king, and the predominant forces in these two areas for Z80 machines were Digitial Research (CP/M OS) and Microsoft (BASIC language).
When IBM enlisted the help of Microsoft (being the number one language provider), it was actually the intention of Microsoft that they would only provide the BASIC language, which was their area of expertise at the time, while the incumbant Digital Research would provide the OS. They contacted Digital Research and setup the necessary meetings with IBM.
What followed was a communications bungle between the DR people and IBM, and Gates was smart enough to recognise a golden opportunity when he saw it and run with it. It was then, and only then that he obtained the rights to what would later become MS-DOS. He bought it instead of developing it inhouse simply due to the last minute nature of the situation, he did not have the time to develop his own OS from scratch. He needed an OS and he needed it now so he went out and bought one.
It is true Gates and MS have done many evil things in the past, but Gates' entry into the OS market was a simple case of right place, right time. He didn't screw anybody over in that particlular transaction and he didn't rely on his mother to get him the gig.
>> Microsoft was losing to DR-DOS at the start >> of the nineties, until Microsoft added a false >> message about the incompatability of DR-DOS >> (Gates knew it was false from Microsoft's own >> testing).
> This message never appeared in versions sold to > consumers. Is the rest of your information as > accurate?
How this bunk got modded "informative" is beyond my comprehension. It seems only fools and horses get the mod points around here.
Anyway, a case settled only this year that included evidence proving that Bill Gates did exactly that
The Register ran a story on it back in april. Unfortunately the url to the case evidence has gone stale now but the memo's were right there, in black and white, I assure you.
Good point. In fact that reminds me that i have a Compaq ProLiant server here with hotswap SCSI drives which don't have the usual scsi connector on them (I am talking about the actuall HDD found inside the "hot swap module". I remember I had to replace a drive and could only get one by calling HP. I think the CPU modules in that are as you describe.
"You completely missed my point. If that functionality is missing then they can't participate with others. It will be other people, usually friends and family, who send them the forms, the links to media sites, the invites for instant messenging etc."
I'm not missing the point. The people I am referring to are not doing these things right now. In fact they are not using the internet at all because a) it is too hard b) they are afraid c) all of the above.
Ergo, if they are not doing these things now then any device that allows them to do at least some of these things, even if only to a limited extent, is a functionality improvment over the status quo.
My father is a case in point. He lives in another state. I rarely get to actually see him. Back in 1999 he purchased a laptop computer and a dial up account just so he could get emails, and occasionally browse the web. He does not want to do IM. He does not want to watch movies on the net. He just wants to send and receive email, and do really basic web browsing.
At some point he managed to leave his dial up internet connected over night by accident. I saw him last month and he bought his laptop along for me to fix. He has been nursing this thing along for years, just doing emails, fighting the malware that it is completely infested with all the way. He has 4 year old version of Adobe reader, 4 year old video codecs, IE crashes as soon as you try to load it. He cannot view GIFs or JPGs because they are associated with IE and IE crashes as soon as it tries to load. You get the idea I'm sure. Everything is totally and utterly fucked up, yet he nurses it along because it still manages to work for what he really wants, which is email.
For him, a $100 box that could send/receive emails, browse the web and do basic productivity stuff would be a godsend. He doesn't WANT all that other crap, and he certainly doesn't want all the malware that goes along with it.
If someone like AOL were to offer an ISP account, where for a monthly service fee you received a small appliance, an LCD screen, kbd+mouse, a printer and internet access, then they would make a killing, I assure you. Every six or twelve months they could send out a CD with the simple instruction to "place the CD in the tray, switch the box on, wait for the green light to come on, reboot". Voila, you have new codecs and PDF reader, SSL certs and all that guff.
Easy
Would it be something I'd want to use? Hell no. But sure as hell my Dad would, and apart from the temptation for "AOL" to insert their own specially approved spyware into the system I can't see an insurmountable problem with the idea really.
"And the new memory stick/bootable DVD doesn't change the ability to add spyware. How many people verified that the AOL CDs they received actually came from AOL?"
Unless somebody got hold of AOL's mailing list, then they would have to be pretty keen to press and blind mail millions of CD's around the world in the hope that they might get lucky and send one to a person that had this device and is willing to install it on faith alone. It would be quite a costly exercise and probably near impossible to do without resorting to addressing the letters as "To the proprietor". If the person had an AOL account, then they would expect any mail they receive from "AOL" to be addressed to them personally. If the scammer managed to get over those hurdles, then I'm sure that "AOL" would catch wind of it and they would trace where the CD's are coming from and crack down pretty hard on the people producing them. And there are other ways to ensure that only verified CD's can be run. Microsoft already has such technology in their XBox. Yes, it can be cracked through hardware mods, but then if Grandma is modding her AOL appliance, she can hardly complain if she consequently gets hacked then, can she.
Dell et' al do this, and more. You don't think they sell all those PC's with integrated video and shared video RAM because it's a better solution do you? Not to mention the 120W PSU you will most likely get because that is the bare minimum rating required to power the system in it's default form.
Another thing you should do if you have the opportunity to look inside lots of name brand PCs is to take note of all the "wire mods" they have on their PCBs. You won't see many stock Asus motherboards out there with cut tracks and bits of hookup wire to reroute signals (to fix hardware bugs in the original design), but you see plenty of such hacks on your fancy Compaq or HP pc's, I assure you.
"How long before you can send a card around electronically because some family member is graduating and everyone gets to put their comments on it?
Does your family actually do that shit? Wow! I have only ever seen this happen in office environmnts, like when a person leaves the company and such. I'll take your word for it that you do.
All I can say is that if the inability for family members to pass around to each other signed Word documents in leiu of normal greeting cards, get togethers or telephone calls is your primary source of resistance to such a device, then I have all but won the argument.
All the little details change a lot on the internet. For example you can't use a 5 year old version of Yahoo Messenger anymore
Who cares? I have not used Yahoo messager once in my entire life. I don't expect the target demographic I am talking about here cares much about Yahoo Messenger either. If you do care about Yahoo Messenger, so called "form filling out" abilities and all the other stuff you are on about here then by all means, go out and buy a goddamned Real Computer. If you don't care about that stuff, and you just want to read/send emails, browse the web and print the occasional letter out without having to be concerned about 'net nasties, then perhaps you might like to consider this $100 net appliance that llows you to do these things risk free.
"If it is impossible to update the device"
It is not impossible to update the device, you just can't do it from within the user domain, and you can't do it on a micro level. You have to update it on a macro level instead. Have you heard of Knoppix linux at all? You "can't update" Knoppix from userspace either, because it runs directly off a CD. You can however, slip in a new disc and you will receive a whole new and updated yet still completely static version of the Knoppix OS.
heya
I played DoD for about a year or so way back in 2001. It was, like you suggest, less prone to be inhabited by retarded children back then, which is exactly why I chose to play it. It's good to hear that it may remain that way even today.
The problem with all those online games, including DoD, becomes apparent as you get older. Generally speaking, older = more responsibilities, and more responsibilities = less time to waste playing games.
I recently played thoough Far Cry, and I was able to do that in dribs and drabs as opportunities presented. You can't play online games in dribs and drabs. The people online tend to spend great deals of time playing the same maps over and over and over and they get very good at them. I may be a 25 year veteran gamer, but I certainly don't have the "twitch abilities" nor the down-to-the-square-inch map knowledge of the younger crowd these days.
These days I simply prefer good, single player based games. I can play them at my own pace, and my opponents remain exactly as competent as they were designed to be, no matter how long it takes me to play the game.
Tackling an online game requires a certain amount of dedication and practice if one wants to rise above the level of simple kill-fodder. Quite frankly, I don't choose to apply whatever dedication and practice time I may still possess to something as empty and meaningless as a computer game.
"I never understood the fawning and wankery people did over Half Life.
How nice for you. On the other hand, did you stop to consider that other people might not understand the "fawning and wankery" that large numbers of Counterstrike zealots carry on with to this very day?
As far as I'm concerned, Counterstrike is a haven for juvenile fuckwads and as such performs its role of isolating cretins from the rest of society superbly.
Myself, I much prefer to play a decent single player game than an online game populated by dickhead TKers, wallhack cheaters and pathetic teenagers who have nothing better to do with their lives than to constantly be honing their "mad-skilz" in order to make it impossible for casual players to last more than 5 seconds per round.
The difference between you and I (apart from the obvious of course), is that I recognise that this is merely my opinion, and that other people might feel vehemently differently.
"The point is that this person is redistributing someone else's copyrighted work."
Actually, does anybody know whether this guy is "distributing" anything yet? Apart from apparently giving a copy to a journalist for review purposes, I haven't seen any evidence yet that he has been "distributing" anything. I certainly haven't managed to get a copy from him (not that I tried very hard or anything)
The whole thing is just a giant con job really. Not unlike the Adams Platform fiasco, only in a much more time compressed fashion and with far less people actually being ripped off financially.
Well, there is no reason that the hardware cannot be usable for more than five years, given the limited applications it will need to support.
"Your 5 year PC example shows just how useless this device would be."
I disagree. The very fact that clueless users are quite prepared to plod along using antiquated software that is riddled with bugs and spyware way past the point that you and I would be prepared to go tells me that they would be more than happy to have a machine with limited functionality that just keeps working. You and I are geeks but they are not so their expectations are far lower than ours might be. In fact if the box simply kept working as well as it did when they first bought it then they would be getting a far better experience than they do right now.
5 year old web browsers, instant messengers, versions of SSL, media players etc will very highly constrain being able to use the device for interpersonal communication.
You are missing the point. The sort of person this would be aimed at does not care much about anything other than your really basic stuff. If there were a large proportion of people out there using this stuff, webmasters could tailor their websites to make sure that a basic version works with the "basic" functionality these people use. Too many people are already building websites that require too many "latest and greatest" bits of crapware. In my opinion this should be discouraged. I am sick and tired of going to websites that demand that I have the latest and greatest version of flashplayer, even though I just installed the then latest and greatest a few weeks earlier. There is no excuse for that. Newer versions that break backwards compatibility should be released very rarely, not on a bloody monthly basis (this is a bit of an exageration of course, but you get the point I'm sure). As for IM, these protocols need not change at all very much. Most of the "enhancements" in IM clients amount to finding better ways to throw advertising in your face anyway. If you were in control of the mythical Fixed Functionality OS that we are discussing here, you would be in control of the server side stuff for your IM client so you would be able to ensure that the protocols you use remain static over a reasonable peroiod of time, say a couple of years at a stretch. Having said that, I have not met a person above 30 who has any interest in IM at all anyway so you might not even need an IM client in the first place. The whole idea is to reduce the complexity of the device to the bare minimum after all
They may be somewhat feasible in a business environment,
I disagree. I'm talking about a box with basic, limited and fixed functionality here, suitable for non technical users who just want to be able to browse the web, type a letter occasionally and send and receive emails. These people want to be able to just that without having to worry about all the crap that normally goes along with owning a PC. If that limited functionality doesn't float your boat then by all means, go out and buy yourself a Proper PC, but you had better be prepared to do the hard work of keeping it clean yourself. Horses for courses and all that guff
but using "thin" devices with remotely displayed desktops is way easier and more effective.
"Physical media updates won't solve the spyware/virus problem either, although they will make it somewhat more expensive. As a bad guy, simply send disks with your spyware already on it to people. Depending on your opinion of AOL, that can already be considered to have been done:-)
Well, to be honest you can only protect people from their own stupidity up to a point. To return to the "Grandmother" scenario, I would expect that either grandma would have the update disk sent to her by someone she knows (ie a geek grandchild or somesuch) with instructions on what to do or she would ignore it when it arrives until somebody (such as the geek grandchild) comes to visit, at which point she may or may not remember receiving it anyway.
"For the latter my example is a card being sent round several people to "sign" but done as an office suite document"
I do not see the fixed functionality PC as being suitable for an office environment. Offices can afford to have full/part time IT person(s) whose job it is to keep users out of trouble.
It would be purely aimed at the clueless home user demographic. The sort of thing you could give your Grandmother safe in the knowledge that it will just work, and will not require any security related decision making on her part.
Slashdot Mirror
>> ATI is the number 3 player
> Whoa! I sat and scratched my head at
> who was higher than ATI that didnt
> start with nVidia."
I'm quite sure that nobody in this thread is suggesting that ATI is number three behind intel when it comes to GPU speed, but thanks for your input anyway.
If it's not nVidia, then who are the best?
Think chipsets with integrated graphics.
Intel sells shitloads of integrated graphics chipsets to the likes of Dell, HP and Gateway
That would be "underladies", no?
Whoaa! That's way too much information, thanks very much.
"cover the costs of development and to underwrite further research.
I heard an interview on the radio a few weeks ago regarding just this. I cannot remember the interviewee's name, but I do recall that he was presented as a very credible person from a university who sits (or once sat) on the Pharmacutical Review Committee*. Of course, he may have had a barrow to push, but he certainly didn't overtly bash the drug industry during the interview. If I recall correctly he was being interviewed over the ramifications of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and how it might affect Australia.
Anyway, according to that chap, R&D costs account for about 10% of the retail price drugs are ultimately sold at.
Proportionally, most of the costs of drugs (more than 50% IIRC) are taken up by advertising and marketing. He said that executive salaries generally cost the big drug companies more than their research does. He made a point of clarifying that he meant executive salaries, and that he was not referring to the salaries of the scientists at all.
* In Australia, most drugs are placed into the Pharmacutical Benefit Scheme (PBS) which caps the cost of drugs to the consumer (the government makes up the difference) Consequently, any new drug that comes along has to apply to the PBS for entry onto the register, lest consumers be forced to pay full price (which would in turn mean far lower sales of the drug, very often ZERO sales). The PBS is overseen by a committee, which is made up of representatives from drug companies, academics, doctors and politicians. The committee decides on which drugs will be admitted and which will not. Hence, anybody who sits on the committee should have a fairly good idea of how the industry works.
" noisy muffler is actually just a way to be sure people around you don't squish you like a bug"
That should read "be sure people behind you don't squish you like a bug" of course, but then that wouldn't make any sense, just like the whole "noisy bike as a safety measure" argument itself doesn't make any sense.
If bikers truly wanted to use sound to alert drivers of their presence, they would fit those "reverse alarms" that trucks have on to their bikes and have them go -beep- -beep- -beep- while they are out riding. ;-)
Or he could open his own TV-less bar of course . . .
"Apple doesn't care if you pirate it" (OSX)
Can you buy a mac sans the OS? I'm not a mac user so I really don't know. I am assuming that you can't.
If you can't, then by definition, it is impossible to completely pirate OSX (PearPC usage ignored for the time being as it is fun and all, but pretty much usless at this point). The worst thing that can happen (from apples perspective) is that they miss out on upgrade revenue when people copy their OS CD's. The very fact that apple is the only company that you can buy the hardware to run it on and that the hardware always includes the OS when you buy it means that for every mac there is out there they have already sold a corresponding copy of the Mac OS, of some version or another.
Sure, they would probably love people to cough up another 130 bucks for every point upgrade they realease, but the fact is that they are still in a far better position in this respect compared to microsoft, who despite their best efforts to bludgeon OEMs into forcing people to pay for Windows with every PC sold is still a long way behind the eight-ball in this regard.So, I can sort of understand why apple would be somewhat ambivilent regarding OS piracy as compared to MS with all their product activation and licence keys etc.
" Keep in mind, Apple likes their boxes QUIET. I'm thinking you could get away with two big ass heatsinks and fans on that 2.5GHz G5. Also, from what I've heard, the 12" AlBook has some heat problems, so Apple could release a hot laptop..."
You do realise that if your CPU is dissipating enough heat to put a small furnace to shame, it doesn't really matter how efficiently you move this heat out of the laptop because you will be wasting so much power that your battery life will be shot to hell anyway.
"Note that I haven't used IE in decades
Really? So you were using IE, what, more than 20 years ago?
Fascinating.
"Real geeks, like me, pick up the phone, dial their ISP, and whistle and screetch into the reciever"
;-)
hehe
Many is the time I've done just that to initiate handshaking on a remote modem/fax to see if it's answering properly. It's pretty funny when you tell non-geek onlookers that you can "speak fluent modem" just before you do it
This is partly correct, but ignores some critical prehistory.
Back in the 70's and early 80's there were two basic software components that were totally critical to the launch of any new (disk based) computer platform, the Operating System and the programming language/interpreter. Without both of these things being present a PC was in effect, useless.
At that time the 8 bit Z80 archicture was the king, and the predominant forces in these two areas for Z80 machines were Digitial Research (CP/M OS) and Microsoft (BASIC language).
When IBM enlisted the help of Microsoft (being the number one language provider), it was actually the intention of Microsoft that they would only provide the BASIC language, which was their area of expertise at the time, while the incumbant Digital Research would provide the OS. They contacted Digital Research and setup the necessary meetings with IBM.
What followed was a communications bungle between the DR people and IBM, and Gates was smart enough to recognise a golden opportunity when he saw it and run with it. It was then, and only then that he obtained the rights to what would later become MS-DOS. He bought it instead of developing it inhouse simply due to the last minute nature of the situation, he did not have the time to develop his own OS from scratch. He needed an OS and he needed it now so he went out and bought one.
It is true Gates and MS have done many evil things in the past, but Gates' entry into the OS market was a simple case of right place, right time. He didn't screw anybody over in that particlular transaction and he didn't rely on his mother to get him the gig.
>> Microsoft was losing to DR-DOS at the start
>> of the nineties, until Microsoft added a false
>> message about the incompatability of DR-DOS
>> (Gates knew it was false from Microsoft's own
>> testing).
> This message never appeared in versions sold to
> consumers. Is the rest of your information as
> accurate?
How this bunk got modded "informative" is beyond my comprehension. It seems only fools and horses get the mod points around here.
Anyway, a case settled only this year that included evidence proving that Bill Gates did exactly that
The Register ran a story on it back in april. Unfortunately the url to the case evidence has gone stale now but the memo's were right there, in black and white, I assure you.
Good point. In fact that reminds me that i have a Compaq ProLiant server here with hotswap SCSI drives which don't have the usual scsi connector on them (I am talking about the actuall HDD found inside the "hot swap module". I remember I had to replace a drive and could only get one by calling HP. I think the CPU modules in that are as you describe.
"You completely missed my point. If that functionality is missing then they can't participate with others. It will be other people, usually friends and family, who send them the forms, the links to media sites, the invites for instant messenging etc."
I'm not missing the point. The people I am referring to are not doing these things right now. In fact they are not using the internet at all because a) it is too hard b) they are afraid c) all of the above.
Ergo, if they are not doing these things now then any device that allows them to do at least some of these things, even if only to a limited extent, is a functionality improvment over the status quo.
My father is a case in point. He lives in another state. I rarely get to actually see him. Back in 1999 he purchased a laptop computer and a dial up account just so he could get emails, and occasionally browse the web. He does not want to do IM. He does not want to watch movies on the net. He just wants to send and receive email, and do really basic web browsing.
At some point he managed to leave his dial up internet connected over night by accident. I saw him last month and he bought his laptop along for me to fix. He has been nursing this thing along for years, just doing emails, fighting the malware that it is completely infested with all the way. He has 4 year old version of Adobe reader, 4 year old video codecs, IE crashes as soon as you try to load it. He cannot view GIFs or JPGs because they are associated with IE and IE crashes as soon as it tries to load. You get the idea I'm sure. Everything is totally and utterly fucked up, yet he nurses it along because it still manages to work for what he really wants, which is email.
For him, a $100 box that could send/receive emails, browse the web and do basic productivity stuff would be a godsend. He doesn't WANT all that other crap, and he certainly doesn't want all the malware that goes along with it.
If someone like AOL were to offer an ISP account, where for a monthly service fee you received a small appliance, an LCD screen, kbd+mouse, a printer and internet access, then they would make a killing, I assure you. Every six or twelve months they could send out a CD with the simple instruction to "place the CD in the tray, switch the box on, wait for the green light to come on, reboot". Voila, you have new codecs and PDF reader, SSL certs and all that guff.
Easy
Would it be something I'd want to use? Hell no. But sure as hell my Dad would, and apart from the temptation for "AOL" to insert their own specially approved spyware into the system I can't see an insurmountable problem with the idea really.
"And the new memory stick/bootable DVD doesn't change the ability to add spyware. How many people verified that the AOL CDs they received actually came from AOL?"
Unless somebody got hold of AOL's mailing list, then they would have to be pretty keen to press and blind mail millions of CD's around the world in the hope that they might get lucky and send one to a person that had this device and is willing to install it on faith alone. It would be quite a costly exercise and probably near impossible to do without resorting to addressing the letters as "To the proprietor". If the person had an AOL account, then they would expect any mail they receive from "AOL" to be addressed to them personally. If the scammer managed to get over those hurdles, then I'm sure that "AOL" would catch wind of it and they would trace where the CD's are coming from and crack down pretty hard on the people producing them. And there are other ways to ensure that only verified CD's can be run. Microsoft already has such technology in their XBox. Yes, it can be cracked through hardware mods, but then if Grandma is modding her AOL appliance, she can hardly complain if she consequently gets hacked then, can she.
Dell et' al do this, and more. You don't think they sell all those PC's with integrated video and shared video RAM because it's a better solution do you? Not to mention the 120W PSU you will most likely get because that is the bare minimum rating required to power the system in it's default form.
Another thing you should do if you have the opportunity to look inside lots of name brand PCs is to take note of all the "wire mods" they have on their PCBs. You won't see many stock Asus motherboards out there with cut tracks and bits of hookup wire to reroute signals (to fix hardware bugs in the original design), but you see plenty of such hacks on your fancy Compaq or HP pc's, I assure you.
"How long before you can send a card around electronically because some family member is graduating and everyone gets to put their comments on it?
Does your family actually do that shit? Wow! I have only ever seen this happen in office environmnts, like when a person leaves the company and such. I'll take your word for it that you do.
All I can say is that if the inability for family members to pass around to each other signed Word documents in leiu of normal greeting cards, get togethers or telephone calls is your primary source of resistance to such a device, then I have all but won the argument.
All the little details change a lot on the internet. For example you can't use a 5 year old version of Yahoo Messenger anymore
Who cares? I have not used Yahoo messager once in my entire life. I don't expect the target demographic I am talking about here cares much about Yahoo Messenger either. If you do care about Yahoo Messenger, so called "form filling out" abilities and all the other stuff you are on about here then by all means, go out and buy a goddamned Real Computer. If you don't care about that stuff, and you just want to read/send emails, browse the web and print the occasional letter out without having to be concerned about 'net nasties, then perhaps you might like to consider this $100 net appliance that llows you to do these things risk free.
"If it is impossible to update the device"
It is not impossible to update the device, you just can't do it from within the user domain, and you can't do it on a micro level. You have to update it on a macro level instead. Have you heard of Knoppix linux at all? You "can't update" Knoppix from userspace either, because it runs directly off a CD. You can however, slip in a new disc and you will receive a whole new and updated yet still completely static version of the Knoppix OS.
heya I played DoD for about a year or so way back in 2001. It was, like you suggest, less prone to be inhabited by retarded children back then, which is exactly why I chose to play it. It's good to hear that it may remain that way even today. The problem with all those online games, including DoD, becomes apparent as you get older. Generally speaking, older = more responsibilities, and more responsibilities = less time to waste playing games. I recently played thoough Far Cry, and I was able to do that in dribs and drabs as opportunities presented. You can't play online games in dribs and drabs. The people online tend to spend great deals of time playing the same maps over and over and over and they get very good at them. I may be a 25 year veteran gamer, but I certainly don't have the "twitch abilities" nor the down-to-the-square-inch map knowledge of the younger crowd these days. These days I simply prefer good, single player based games. I can play them at my own pace, and my opponents remain exactly as competent as they were designed to be, no matter how long it takes me to play the game. Tackling an online game requires a certain amount of dedication and practice if one wants to rise above the level of simple kill-fodder. Quite frankly, I don't choose to apply whatever dedication and practice time I may still possess to something as empty and meaningless as a computer game.
"I never understood the fawning and wankery people did over Half Life.
How nice for you. On the other hand, did you stop to consider that other people might not understand the "fawning and wankery" that large numbers of Counterstrike zealots carry on with to this very day?
As far as I'm concerned, Counterstrike is a haven for juvenile fuckwads and as such performs its role of isolating cretins from the rest of society superbly.
Myself, I much prefer to play a decent single player game than an online game populated by dickhead TKers, wallhack cheaters and pathetic teenagers who have nothing better to do with their lives than to constantly be honing their "mad-skilz" in order to make it impossible for casual players to last more than 5 seconds per round.
The difference between you and I (apart from the obvious of course), is that I recognise that this is merely my opinion, and that other people might feel vehemently differently.
"The point is that this person is redistributing someone else's copyrighted work."
Actually, does anybody know whether this guy is "distributing" anything yet? Apart from apparently giving a copy to a journalist for review purposes, I haven't seen any evidence yet that he has been "distributing" anything. I certainly haven't managed to get a copy from him (not that I tried very hard or anything)
The whole thing is just a giant con job really. Not unlike the Adams Platform fiasco, only in a much more time compressed fashion and with far less people actually being ripped off financially.
hehe
Does anybody know whether Derek Smart has ever gone head-to-head with "Rod Speed" before?
"So how long do you expect the device to last?
Well, there is no reason that the hardware cannot be usable for more than five years, given the limited applications it will need to support."Your 5 year PC example shows just how useless this device would be."
I disagree. The very fact that clueless users are quite prepared to plod along using antiquated software that is riddled with bugs and spyware way past the point that you and I would be prepared to go tells me that they would be more than happy to have a machine with limited functionality that just keeps working. You and I are geeks but they are not so their expectations are far lower than ours might be. In fact if the box simply kept working as well as it did when they first bought it then they would be getting a far better experience than they do right now.
5 year old web browsers, instant messengers, versions of SSL, media players etc will very highly constrain being able to use the device for interpersonal communication.
You are missing the point. The sort of person this would be aimed at does not care much about anything other than your really basic stuff. If there were a large proportion of people out there using this stuff, webmasters could tailor their websites to make sure that a basic version works with the "basic" functionality these people use. Too many people are already building websites that require too many "latest and greatest" bits of crapware. In my opinion this should be discouraged. I am sick and tired of going to websites that demand that I have the latest and greatest version of flashplayer, even though I just installed the then latest and greatest a few weeks earlier. There is no excuse for that. Newer versions that break backwards compatibility should be released very rarely, not on a bloody monthly basis (this is a bit of an exageration of course, but you get the point I'm sure). As for IM, these protocols need not change at all very much. Most of the "enhancements" in IM clients amount to finding better ways to throw advertising in your face anyway. If you were in control of the mythical Fixed Functionality OS that we are discussing here, you would be in control of the server side stuff for your IM client so you would be able to ensure that the protocols you use remain static over a reasonable peroiod of time, say a couple of years at a stretch. Having said that, I have not met a person above 30 who has any interest in IM at all anyway so you might not even need an IM client in the first place. The whole idea is to reduce the complexity of the device to the bare minimum after all
They may be somewhat feasible in a business environment,
I disagree. I'm talking about a box with basic, limited and fixed functionality here, suitable for non technical users who just want to be able to browse the web, type a letter occasionally and send and receive emails. These people want to be able to just that without having to worry about all the crap that normally goes along with owning a PC. If that limited functionality doesn't float your boat then by all means, go out and buy yourself a Proper PC, but you had better be prepared to do the hard work of keeping it clean yourself. Horses for courses and all that guffbut using "thin" devices with remotely displayed desktops is way easier and more effective.
Agreed
"Physical media updates won't solve the spyware/virus problem either, although they will make it somewhat more expensive. As a bad guy, simply send disks with your spyware already on it to people. Depending on your opinion of AOL, that can already be considered to have been done :-)
Well, to be honest you can only protect people from their own stupidity up to a point. To return to the "Grandmother" scenario, I would expect that either grandma would have the update disk sent to her by someone she knows (ie a geek grandchild or somesuch) with instructions on what to do or she would ignore it when it arrives until somebody (such as the geek grandchild) comes to visit, at which point she may or may not remember receiving it anyway.
"For the latter my example is a card being sent round several people to "sign" but done as an office suite document"
I do not see the fixed functionality PC as being suitable for an office environment. Offices can afford to have full/part time IT person(s) whose job it is to keep users out of trouble.
It would be purely aimed at the clueless home user demographic. The sort of thing you could give your Grandmother safe in the knowledge that it will just work, and will not require any security related decision making on her part.