If I were a university network admin, I would want to set up a Jabber server and offer accounts to all students, just as every single university provides them email accounts.
The advantages would be great to have a university-"branded" IM for official use. Of course, the systems would have to be interoperable, and that's why only Jabber makes sense for this purpose.
Don't worry, version 2 of this ad will be created by professional designers! Nothing gets a designer to come out and help like putting something out there for them to criticize.
Much better would be for this discussion to focus on the real issue of the fundraising effort. Thinking about the target market, the choice of NYC as the location, questions about the number of daily readers of this paper (450,000, in fact), thoughts around the Tipping Point concept of Malcolm Gladwell, reaching a new crowd of non-geeks and home/small business users, etc. These are the valuable points we should be talking about! Not the draft, mockup ad that will soon be superceded.
I think you are largely correct, particularly in that we have now given so much power to private corporations that we are far off-balance and will be/have been losing our edge.
In general, the USA succeeded so magnificently because of the balance between government incentives and private corporate incentives. Let either side grow unchecked and it will stifle an industry or an entire economy. Put the two into a relationship that is sometimes competitive and sometimes cooperative (and carefully manage when it is one or the other), and you have the chance to spur innovation, science and technology to ever-greater heights.
Government regulation is necessary to block monopolies and prevent other ways corporate powers bully competitors and customers (obvious monopolies like Standard Oil, AT&T, and Microsoft, as well as employee abuse like Carnegie Steel keeping workers at the job 12 hours a day, 364 days a year).
Corporate competition, garage inventors, and university research are all necessary to prevent the government from getting lazy or bought out by the biggest private enterprises and turning to a sort of post-industrial feudalist system. (I fear that's what is happening to us, in fact.)
Government must keep the economic playing field level, and private scrutiny must keep the government honest.
With the world's billionaires in constant competition for the best toys, particularly huge yachts (saw a Discover channel show on the top ten private yachts in the world), I think that a cool billionaire would eschew yacht ownership for a private luxury zeppelin. At just about $11 million, this model's eminently affordable!
And, you wouldn't be limited to cruising just the oceans, which could get boring. Want to cruise Kansas City? Sure! Float over the Amazon for a few weeks? Of course! How about relaxing over the Sahara Desert or the Grand Canyon for a while. Yes! (And you could throw your foes into the sarlac pit... wait, different technology.)
I agree: no form of transportation has been developed that can outdo walking.
Automobiles are a miserable option for urban environments, and the US census claims that the vast majority of Americans live in metropolitan areas (though mostly in the horrific suburbs).
But anyone who is forced to use a car every single day, or for every trip they make out of the house, really suffers. If cities were designed so that cars could be used once per week or less, we'd have a much higher quality of life. (I'm in LA. The car-induced smog causes 10,000 locals to die of cancer each year. Don't forget lung and heart failures, asthma, etc. But no one cares about the aggregate, only about their immediate convenience.)
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Need an open source, multi-protocol IM client for Mac?
Adium: http://adiumx.com/
If I were a university network admin, I would want to set up a Jabber server and offer accounts to all students, just as every single university provides them email accounts.
The advantages would be great to have a university-"branded" IM for official use. Of course, the systems would have to be interoperable, and that's why only Jabber makes sense for this purpose.
Don't worry, version 2 of this ad will be created by professional designers! Nothing gets a designer to come out and help like putting something out there for them to criticize.
Much better would be for this discussion to focus on the real issue of the fundraising effort. Thinking about the target market, the choice of NYC as the location, questions about the number of daily readers of this paper (450,000, in fact), thoughts around the Tipping Point concept of Malcolm Gladwell, reaching a new crowd of non-geeks and home/small business users, etc. These are the valuable points we should be talking about! Not the draft, mockup ad that will soon be superceded.
Please put an OpenOffice installer on all of those free AOL CDs! I'll collect them and give them to everyone I know if they do...
I think you are largely correct, particularly in that we have now given so much power to private corporations that we are far off-balance and will be/have been losing our edge.
In general, the USA succeeded so magnificently because of the balance between government incentives and private corporate incentives. Let either side grow unchecked and it will stifle an industry or an entire economy. Put the two into a relationship that is sometimes competitive and sometimes cooperative (and carefully manage when it is one or the other), and you have the chance to spur innovation, science and technology to ever-greater heights.
Government regulation is necessary to block monopolies and prevent other ways corporate powers bully competitors and customers (obvious monopolies like Standard Oil, AT&T, and Microsoft, as well as employee abuse like Carnegie Steel keeping workers at the job 12 hours a day, 364 days a year).
Corporate competition, garage inventors, and university research are all necessary to prevent the government from getting lazy or bought out by the biggest private enterprises and turning to a sort of post-industrial feudalist system. (I fear that's what is happening to us, in fact.)
Government must keep the economic playing field level, and private scrutiny must keep the government honest.
With the world's billionaires in constant competition for the best toys, particularly huge yachts (saw a Discover channel show on the top ten private yachts in the world), I think that a cool billionaire would eschew yacht ownership for a private luxury zeppelin. At just about $11 million, this model's eminently affordable!
And, you wouldn't be limited to cruising just the oceans, which could get boring. Want to cruise Kansas City? Sure! Float over the Amazon for a few weeks? Of course! How about relaxing over the Sahara Desert or the Grand Canyon for a while. Yes! (And you could throw your foes into the sarlac pit... wait, different technology.)
I agree: no form of transportation has been developed that can outdo walking.
Automobiles are a miserable option for urban environments, and the US census claims that the vast majority of Americans live in metropolitan areas (though mostly in the horrific suburbs).
But anyone who is forced to use a car every single day, or for every trip they make out of the house, really suffers. If cities were designed so that cars could be used once per week or less, we'd have a much higher quality of life. (I'm in LA. The car-induced smog causes 10,000 locals to die of cancer each year. Don't forget lung and heart failures, asthma, etc. But no one cares about the aggregate, only about their immediate convenience.)
This is where I would prefer to live:
Carfree.com
Sustainable, healthy, quiet, pleasant. Sure beats the schlock that's been built in the USA for the past 50 years!